What do scientists think? (last post for awhile)

Many contentious social and political issues are informed by scientific research. Debates on these issues often appeal to the authority of the researchers in this field. Consulting experts is good component of a decision-making strategy when we don't have the time to thoroughly investigate some issue personally.

However, this still requires that we answer two questions:

1. who are the credible experts?
2. what do they think?

I'll get back to these issues in a moment, but I first want to point to a underutilized resource for answering these questions: the National Academies, including the National Academy of Sciences(NAS). The National Academies regularly produce reports on issues of interest to the public, including Climate Change, and Evolution. The National Academies assemble committees of experts on a given topic, which then produce reports that state the opinions of the experts and also review much of the evidence behind their opinions. If you want to know what scientists believe about some field of research and why they believe it, first go to the NAS.

Given the availability of these resources, it's distressing that many people harbor severe misimpressions about expert opinion. Typical errors include the misidentification of experts and exaggeration of the influence of fringe opinions within the research community.

One common error in identifying experts is to consider all scientists to be experts in all fields of research, or all members of a field (e.g. biology) to be experts in all subfields within that field. Even within a subfield (e.g. microbial evolution), there are many lines of research being performed and expertise is not evenly distributed. I think that part of the reason for this error is that the public often isn't aware of the vast amount of research being done these days (which is only going to increase as the global economy expands).

It's true that a scientist may be better than a non-scientist at interpreting the debates in a random field of science, but there are still plenty of people who will have greater expertise than that random scientist. This is the idea behind the reports issued by the NAS: non-scientists turn to scientists as a whole for expertise, and scientists then identify those among their ranks with the greatest expertise.

Another common error regarding expert opinion is to identify one or a few experts (or near-experts) with a particular opinion and then interpreting that opinion to be common among the community of researchers. To make it worse, this one dissident's deviation from the standard opinion is often exaggerated and interpreted as dissent from the core components of the standard theory, rather than being dissent from a particular aspect of the theory (I've seen this with evolution, global warming, and HIV as the cause of AIDS).

Dissent is essential to scientific progress, and scientists often give disproportionate attention to dissenting opinions, if for no other reason than that without disagreement there is nothing to research. However, this emphasis on dissent within the scientific community should not translate into giving dissenters excess influence in public discourse. There are many reasons that a person can arrive at an erroneous conclusion, so there is not much information in the fact that people disagree. Going by the principle that there is one correct opinion and many erroneous opinions, we should pay attention when a large number of experts agree on a point, and not give much attention to the scattered and diverse dissensions (unless you are interested in the issue for purely intellectual reasons).

Unfortunately, the public and the press is good at finding a few voices that provide whatever opinion they want to hear, yet are incapable of surveying the opinion of the large number of experts who hold the dominant opinion...probably because those experts are doing research rather than writing blogs or talking to reporters. This is why we have reports from the NAS.

People also feel that they should be directly informed about the issues affecting their lives, and want to see both sides of "the debate", even though the debate is often driven by groups with an economic or ideological interest in persuading others to the view the world in a particular way. For those who want to rely on experts for guidance but not conclusions, the public debate often degrades into an exchange between two experts (e.g. ClimateSci and RealClimate). While the reader will still have nothing resembling expertise, I suppose that they can more directly evaluate the credibility of the two experts. However, they need to keep in mind that if the blogger representing the dominant view does something that discredits his personal opinion, the reader still has to contend with the credibility of everyone else who supports the majority view.

Science denialism

Despite some accusations, global warming theory is not a fad. See the following paper:

Peterson, Thomas & Connolley, William & Fleck, John (September 2008). The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus. American Meteorological Society. http://ams.allenpress.com/archive/1520-0477/89/9/pdf/i1520-0477-89-9-1325.pdf

The hypothesis was proposed over 100 years ago, and has been a focus of serious research since the 1950s or so, and has been the consensus opinion of climate researchers for about 20 years now.
The fact that most of the public kept their heads in the sand* through this process is irrelevant. Science does not progress by going back to square one at the request of every ignoramus who decides that he wants to passively investigate some phenomenon as a part time hobby.

This post was inspired by the discussions at Libertarians for Junk Science, and is related to my post at Freedom Democrats The Politicization of Climate Science.

*with the help of plenty of profiteers driven by ulterior motives

Politicization of Climate Sciences

Written for Freedom Democrats

In the wake of Climategate, climate researcher Mike Hulme has articulated the ideal role of science in public discourse. Basically, he declares that scientific debates should be kept separate from ethical debates (leaving aside bias inherent in hypothesis generation and choice of research directions), while still informing our actions. This is a nice ideal, but ignores the fact that people will enter scientific debates with ulterior motives and it can be hard for the layman to distinguish between the sincere scientist and these charlatans.

In contrast to Mike Hulme's call for the separation of science and politics, we have his colleague James Hansen (head of NASA's Goddard) who is quite happy to transform his scientific prestige into a platform for political moralizing. In reviewing Hansen's new book for DailyKos, DarkSyde introduces him in this manner:

To be a top climate scientist today means being up to speed in graduate level physics, advanced mathematics, planetary astronomy, meteorology, paleontology, oceanography, bio and geo-chemistry, dealing with programmers and constantly shifting computer architectures, and now on top of everything else, you have to be a tireless political activist and media celebrity.(emphasis mine)

No, you don't have to be a political activist...at least not in Hulme's model of science and politics. The scientific method strives for consensus, while the political method strives for domination; If Hansen and DarkSyde want to make politicians out of scientists, then they should expect politicized resistance and deal with it as a political dispute.

When Hansen compares carbon emission credits to the Indulgences that sparked the reformation, he just sounds like a moralizing fool (even to someone like me who agrees with his preference for a carbon tax, in this case).

There is no necessary connection between doing research and political advocacy. A scientist does have a responsibility to communicate his findings to the public, and when his findings have urgent implications, there is not time to allow the knowledge to percolate through the formal education system (i.e. inform other researchers, who inform their students at university, who become teachers in the primary and secondary schools). So there is an imperative for some member of the field to directly communicate the field's findings to the general public, which probably means being "a media celebrity". However, this is an issue for all academic disciplines, and it is not a requirement for everyone in the field--certain individuals naturally distinguish themselves within the field as communicators and politicians (often taking jobs such as heading major research institutions), and these individuals are the natural public spokespersons of the field.

But what if the research findings have implications for economic policy? If the spokesperson ignored those implications, they would be neglectful in their communication to the public, but taking a position politicizes the field of study. Following Hulme's model, I suggest that that the scientist make a point of contacting political activists, informing them of the situation, and allowing them to advocate for policy changes. This may even include sitting down with them for a public Q&A, where the scientist acts as a resource on which they draw as they suggest policy responses. This could be either a live discussion, or a book where the first chapter describes the scientific situation and the subsequent chapters are written by activists/politicians who explore the implications.

I'm not saying that scientists should avoid politics all together, just that they shouldn't use their prestige as a practicing scientist to gain exceptional authority in their political advocacy (at least until they have retired).

"Causes celebre" in the gay marriage culture wars

Written for Freedom Democrats

The culture wars surrounding gay marriage are dragging on, and each side has a new anecdote showing how they are the victim of injustice.

First well take a well known injustice from the gay marriage proponents, the risk of being prohibited from visiting one's partner in the hospital:

...after the 39-year-old was rushed by ambulance to a Florida medical center, she fought for her life alone.

Her partner of 18 years, Janice Langbehn, said she was not allowed to see Pond for eight hours as she lay dying, and their children were never given the chance to say goodbye.

A libertarian radical may want to avoid the issue of state recognition of marriage and look at what gives a hospital the right to turn away visitors, or what gives visitors the right to demand access to a patient...but such investigations would be largely academic and as a practical issue, we need to recognize (as the commentators here do) that the state has no business granting special privileges to people who adhere to a particular lifestyle or ideology. Any two people should be able to enter into a partnership with all of the rights and privileges typically associated with marriage.

The other story supports the contention of gay marriage opponents that the recognition of gay marriage will result in everyone being forced to express approval of gay marriages. This is basically the communitarian position that our lives cannot be coherently partitioned into public and private aspects. In this particular case, we are dealing with the social pressure to acknowledge major events in the lives of our co-workers and sympathize with their feelings regarding these events--our economic lives cannot be separated from our social and family relationships. A Massachusetts man claims that he was fired for refusing to express support for his coworker's same-sex marriage.

Vadala claims the woman...mentioned four times that she had married her partner. He said he then left the store briefly to visit the airport's chapel before returning.

"I found it offensive that she repeatedly brought it up," Vadala said. "By the fourth time she mentioned it, I felt God wanted me to express how I felt about the matter, so I did. But my tone was downright apologetic. I said, 'Regarding your homosexuality, I think that's bad stuff.'"

The woman, according to Vadala, then said, "Human resources, buddy — keep your opinions to yourself," before exiting the store.

Two days later, Vadala, who had been employed for just a matter of weeks, received a termination letter citing the company's zero-tolerance policy regarding "harassment" and "inappropriate and unprofessional" comments.

This story lends some credibility to the assertion that state recognition of gay marriage will essentially force everyone to kowtow to the idea that a gay marriage is just as valuable to a heterosexual marriage. I would normally consider that argument to be pure paranoia, but even with the example before me I have little sympathy for that concern. First, if these people are concerned about employers using their influence to silence their employees, then they shouldn't be fussing over gay marriage, they should be objecting to the fact that employment can typically be terminated without cause. Gays have to live with this reality every day when they hide their romantic lives from their employers out of fear of being fired for being gay. At least this guy got fired because of how he interacted with his coworker. Second, their "solution" is actually a more extreme version of the "problem": for fear of ideological conformity being imposed in the workplace, they want to impose an ideological conformity on the entire society. Funk that.

What were the Soviets thinking?

Cross-posted to FreedomDemocrats

The issue of trust is one that is central to politics, but often seems to get left out political philosophy. Our decisions of who to trust and how we can trust them depend on what we expect to occur if others get a power advantage over us. Conversely, this influences how we use our power when we gain advantages over others. All of this is of course based on our experiences*, and cannot be fully encapsulated in an ahistorical philosophy.

During the much of the Cold War, the balance of power was actually a balance of terror--the strategy of nuclear deterrence known as Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). My childhood was in the 1980's, in America. Even in my community of middle-class liberals, the Soviet threat was ever present. I'm not surprized to see that the Bulliten of the Atomic Scientists marks the early 80's as a period of increased risk of global nuclear war.

All of that fear is put into a broader perspective by Nicholas Thompson's article at Wired describing the Soviet doomsday machine. I'm not sure if I believe the facts presented (it seems to be based on rumors and an interview with a single Russian expat), but it is interesting to think about how the MAD stalemate would be influenced by a system that could launch a nuclear strike even if the entire civilian and military command structure was destroyed. At the least, the story got me in the mood for Halloween.

Another interesting fact of the Cold War is that the commies saw themselves (and their military interventions) as a progressive force. After all, most of their military actions were primarily targeted at at repressive feudal or colonial regimes--not at liberal democratic counties directly. Glenn Greenwald discussed the universality of war propaganda, in which he notes how the justifications of Russian soldiers in Afghanistan were eerily similar to the justifications of our own soldiers. So from the Soviet perspective, if they got power in Afghanistan, the country would be egalitarian, peaceful, and prosperous, but if their enemies gained power, it would remain repressive, warring, and impoverished.

Finally, here is probably the biggest issue underlying the entire Cold War, and I have no direct information about what the Soviets thought: What did they think would happen if they lost?

I know the American/Western side of this equation: their totalitarian system would be imposed on us, just as it had been imposed on East Germany. We had popular visions of such a system, ranging from Orwell's classic novel 1984 (also a pretty good movie) to the Swayze movie Red Dawn (one of my favorites for awhile, incidentally made in 1984, and being remade next year).

But what did the Soviet Union's public think would happen to them if their military were weak? Was it the classic "rape and pillage" of invading hordes? Or were their fears founded in Marxist theory? Did they expect trans-national corporations to establish polluting, dangerous factories while paying starvation wages and dismantling all social services, including the education system? Or perhaps even worse, their countries would become decapitalized colonies, producing commodities for export. Perhaps they would even become the battlefield for colonial wars among Western powers, who would inevitably start fighting among themselves once The Revolution was crushed.

I know that the Soviet state produced extensive propaganda, and that much of the public saw through it. But for those who feared losing the Cold War, does anyone know what they thought the consequences would be?

*For Drama and SciFi fans, the recent SyFy TV series, Battlestar Galactica, does an excellent job examining the issue of trust between warring groups.

Manned space exploration -- what a crock!

Cross-posted to Freedom Democrats. (note for new readers)

Frustration is the leitmotif in the lives of most men, particularly today—the frustration of inarticulate desires, with no knowledge of the means to achieve them. In the sight and hearing of a crumbling world, Apollo 11 enacted the story of an audacious purpose, its execution, its triumph, and the means that achieved it—the story and the demonstration of man’s highest potential.
--Ayn Rand
As for the Pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs.
--Henry David Thoreau

One of the things that has always baffled me about Ayn Rand (a self-described rational egoist and free-marketer) was her gushing endorsement of NASA's manned space flight program. She celebrates it as a symbol of the potential of rationality, but completely ignores the fact that this rationality emanated from the centralized, coercive state. The fact that this was a government program should have given her cause to consider whether this sort of project was, or ever could be, the product of free men. Another reason to pause is the recognition that this project was instigated in direct response to a challenge from the USSR--"let's see if we can beat them at their own game"!
Manned space exploration is pure political propaganda, financed by tribute from slaves. Rand should have seen that, but she (and her present-day disciples) are apparently blind to it. Erika Holzer says that Rand treated centralized, coercive planning as a given and figured that we might as well get something worthwhile (i.e. technology-based spectacles) out of it. But when Rand writes "Apollo 11’s triumph is not political; it is philosophical" she is elevating her own wishful thinking over the actual forces that drive human behavior. The Apollo program was political from its conception to its execution. It was conceived to justify corporate liberalism at home, and American hegemony abroad. It was designed to engage the sense of wonder of 10 year-old boys while also speaking to their hardnosed elders by demonstrating the awesome power of the USA.
The issue of practical benefits is absent from Rand's assessment of the Apollo program. Holzer even endorses the view (expressed by Krauthammer), that considerations of practicality are a distraction from the true purpose of the spectacle. However, this illustrates exactly why no rational, free man would expend substantial effort on this project. Krauthammer says that "we retreated" from the moon, but the truth is that "we" had no reason to stay. "We" went there simply to show that "we" could do it. Any attempt to create a permanent human presence on the moon or send people to Mars using modern technology would be the largest boondoggle in human history. Maybe these projects would be feasible after extensive robotic exploration and infrastructure development, but not in the near future.
There's a reason I've been putting we in quotes: the most perverse message from these "individualist" cheerleaders of manned space flight is that they portray human greatness as a social project rather than an individual project. They speak as though the only alternative to manned space flight is to vainly obsess over the eradication of poverty or get lost in shallow self-gratification (egoism, perhaps?). They ignore the possibility of redirecting money from manned space flight to basic scientific research, both terrestrial and cosmic. Most fundamentally they deny the possibility that individuals, left with control over their lives and the fruit of their labors, could ever contribute to anything worthwhile.
Note: The title may lead some readers to expect a full argument against sending people into space (see comments). Instead, these readers will find nothing more than an individualist criticism of Ayn Rand's argument for manned space exploration as a form of ideological propaganda. If there are any other serious arguments for manned space exploration, I do not know of them and this essay does not address them. I have not seen any serious proposals for a manned space exploration program that had scientific or economic goals. If such proposals existed, then I would retract the title, but so far everyone (including Presidents Kennedy and Bush) seem to view manned space exploration as ideological propaganda. My disdain for current proposals for manned space exploration do not extend to robotic exploration, or continued experimentation with long term (but near-Earth) space habitation, nor does it apply to some hypothetical future time when manned space exploration could have a serious economic or scientific purpose.

Common sense: it's what they asked for

Cross posted to Freedom Democrats

Glen Greenwald complains about how Glen Beck is presenting himself as a modern day Thomas Paine, by writing his own pamphlet called "Common Sense". I'm not sure exactly what Beck is getting at in the book, but I have no respect for his intellect (though his rants are quite amusing) so I won't be reading it. However, I doubt that Beck and his audience are really ready to hold up Thomas Paine as their mascot.

If you want to read some brilliant writing that contains innovative and profound thoughts (penned by a brave man), check out Pain's writing:

1. Common Sense: A masterpiece of radical political propaganda. Paine took an idea that had previously seemed like common sense (allegiance to the monarchy) and presented it as pure madness.
2. Agrarian Justice: An argument for the citizen's dividend funded by a land tax. As a matter of practicality, Paine suggested a lump sum payment to all young adults and regular payments to the elderly, all funded by an inheritance tax (which would effectively be a land tax, since he lived in an agrarian society).
3. The Age of Reason: A critical examination of Christianity.
4. Rights of Man: Defending the French Revolution against Burkean criticism.

To top off Paine's anti-conservative credentials, he typically presented elected government as the incarnation of the people's will, and would probably be baffled by the application of "Common Sense" to such a government (but maybe not if he had seen how the American experiment has turned out).

The Whole Foods boycott: self-absorbed political fetishism

Reposted from Freedom Democrats

Radley Balko expresses his frustration with the healthcare reform proponents who want to boycott Whole Foods due to a WSJ Op-Ed written by John Mackey. This dispute brings up all types of issues (some reviewed at NYT), from the exaggerated influence of corporate CEOs to how the WSJ opinion pages are typically a partisan vomit pile, but one interesting factor is the revelation of fetishized thinking among the boycott organizers.

Balko's main argument against the boycott is that Whole Foods is a great corporate citizen (we've previously discussed Mackey's views on this topic). To anyone who actually cares about real people living real lives, this should immensely outweigh the fact that Mackey is writing in opposition to a particular health care reform proposal. In his followup, Balko also chastizes those who view unionization as being more important than worker inclusion in decision-making and benefits. He summarizes the union fetish thusly:

If Mackey’s opposition to unions is your reason for hating Whole Foods, sorry, but you don’t really care about workers. You care about unions.

Finally, there is a bit of a partisan fetish behind this boycott proposal. I think half of what set off the boycotters is that Mackey promoted traditionally Republican talking points in a mainstream newspaper full of Republican hacks. I'm sure that was really offensive, especially after the WSJ editors worked their Republican hack magic on Mackey's writing. Fortunately (as my pro-ObamaCare wife points out), most people are not partisan hacks and will not boycott Whole Foods over this.

Balko's final thesis seems to be that the boycott is really about power -- about squelching open open debate on proposals that one disagrees with.

These people don’t want a discussion. They don’t want to hear ideas. They want you to shut up and do what they say, or they’re going to punish you.

In many respects, the quest for power is the epitome of political fetishism--valuing an abstraction over the real value of human welfare. The basic process is that a person convinces himself that once he achieves the abstraction, everything else will take care of itself. The fallacy here is two fold -- first, these abstract goals arise from speculative social theories and we should not have any confidence in the cause-effect relations that are proposed; second, people adhering to different fetishized social theories will struggle over the abstraction (i.e. power) to the point that the original goal is forgotten about. As sung by Axel Rose:

But still the wars go on as the years go by
With no love of God or human rights
'Cause all these dreams are swept aside
By bloody hands of the hypnotized
Who carry the cross of homicide
And history bears the scars of our civil wars

Cult of the President; The Presidential Medal of Freedom

President Obama today awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to 16 people. It was top news on Google News.

President Barack Obama awarded the nation's highest civilian honor to 16 "agents of change" on Wednesday, highlighting their accomplishments as examples of the heights a person can reach and the difference they can make in the lives of others.

...

Film star Sidney Poitier, civil rights icon the Rev. Joseph Lowery and tennis legend Billie Jean King joined former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and retired Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa in receiving the honor, the first such medals awarded by Obama.

So which president decided it was his role to honor people for achievements that are typically independent of the state? Who decided that the President was the ultimate arbiter of cultural achievement, thereby advancing the cult of the presidency?

It seems that JFK really initiated the Presidential Medal of Freedom in its current form (Truman used it for civilian contributions to the efforts of WWII).

Figures.

The "Lone Wolf Initiative", profiling, and government by blacklist

Republished from Freedom Democrats

USA today has a cover story about the Federal Lone Wolf Initiative, an Obama administration program to foil the plots of "lone offenders"-- terrorists who plan their attacks in the absence of coordination with terrorist networks. Information about the program is sparse, and USA Today seems to be getting a few vague descriptions from anonymous informers within the FBI. Some of the tactics used by this initiative are reasonable (taking a second look at the records of convicts and the evidence in closed terrorism cases), while others sound a lot like profiling of the general civilian population ("suspicious purchases at fertilizer or chemical suppliers"). The ACLU says that they are concerned about the risk of racial and political profiling. Frankly, I think this type of profiling will be inevitable; the FBI will want to maximize the chance that all would-be terrorists are on this list, so they'll face constant pressure to incorporate any information that could improve predictions. They will inevitably use information that has implications for civil liberties.

The article doesn't indicate how this new watch list will be used. If the lone-wolf initiative casts a broad net, then one likely use will be to tag individuals for the secret no-fly list--which will also be the "no gun" list if some people have their way. If you believe Michael Chertoff (fat chance), there are currently only 250 Americans on this list, but the FBI estimates that 20,000 Americans are in the Terrorist Screening Database, which probably feeds information to the no-fly list, and the ACLU gives even higher estimates. We already know that the Feds tried to use consumer profiling techniques to build this list, and I feel pretty sure that they will try again.

Independent of the risk of profiling, any broad attempt to screen the civilian population will be rife with corruption, resulting either from the prejudices or political agendas of the administrators.

PS. We have previously discussed the Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list, which places even more extensive restrictions on people. While both lists represent a threat to due-process and a move towards government by blacklist, I believe that the no-fly list is substantially more threatening. In contrast to the SDN list, the no-fly list is secret and can include Americans. I don't mean to dismiss the unfairness of putting an innocent foreign national on such a list, but there is a big difference between being harassed in your homeland and being harassed in a foreign land.

Cap and Trade: better than the worst

Below are some thoughts on the cap-and-trade system making its way through Congress. This is in response to a discussion by some libertarian Democrats, in which the bill was heralded as a "free market" reform. I'm assuming the audience is familiar with the basic economics of the situation.

Overall, I'm tolerant of this legislation because I believe that we need to get serious about reducing our CO2 emissions. However, I don't think that it illustrates any revolutionary change in our economy or politics. In fact it is a good illustration of "more of the same", where special interest groups use their political power to rob the rest of us, and politicians respond to every problem (even problems they created) by expanding their own power, as discussed after the Freedom Democrats post. Those two tendencies have made substantial contributions to our environmental problems, and ultimately pose a greater threat to humanity than even rising sea levels, megastorms, and the spread of tropical disease.

==============================================
I agree that Cap and Trade, being a broad and direct approach to the problem of CO2 accumulation, is better than micromanagement of indirect contributors to the problem (e.g. fuel efficiency standards). However, I don't think that this improvement is due to libertarian influence in the Democratic Party, and think that the "trade" part of the policy should NOT be lauded as a "free market solution".

First, this lighter form of regulation is due to broad changes in our political culture that have developed over the past 30 years -- and probably got their main push from Regan's political success (and possibly from an academic consensus and the development of new tools for enforcing broad regulations).

Second, there is nothing "free" about the invention of a market that has no reason to exist. As far as I can tell, Economists generally prefer a direct emissions tax over a cap and trade system. We only have the CnT system due to general economic ignorance among the populace (such that Republicans can score points by calling it "cap and tax", simply pointing out that it would increase costs in the same general manner that a tax would). CnT also seems to get some support from the fact that it is easily corruptible, allowing massive handouts to powerful special interest groups. The main effect of the market in emission credit will be to cause uncertainty in the price of carbon emissions. A market doesn't do anything productive if the government has already placed a hard limit on the supply of a good.

Which gets to another big "anti-market" aspect of the Cap and Trade system relative to a carbon tax: there is no way for the public to make tradeoffs between different goods. We are not free to decide, in aggregate, that the ability to emit carbon dioxide is valuable or not. No matter how valuable these credits are, we will not be able to produce more carbon dioxide. Conversely, if a technological breakthru allows us to produce clean electricity for the same cost as coal electricity, then the price of the credits will plummet and we will produce the same amount of CO2 as before. The only change is that the rentseekers and speculators will extract less wealth from the rest of us.

A tax would behave much more like an ideal free market where the price of a good tends towards the cost of its production.

"Public Good", or "Tyranny"

Are speed limits a public good, or just a form of tyranny? Apparently, the answer depends on who you ask. I view speed limits from within the public goods paradigm -- that there is a conflict between the driver's desire for rapid transportation (or power tripping) and the general public's desire to avoid high-speed collisions. However, others seem to disagree and even consider it to be an altruistic act to undermine the enforcement of speed limits...implying that they view speed limits as a form of tyranny.

In this second category are the drivers who map out speed traps for Trapster. Trapster is part of the newest generation of Internet applications that rely on a community of volunteers to construct a map of speed traps for the benefit of the community of users. As far as I am aware, Trapster and similar systems provide no rewards to users who contribute information. This behavior seems to be driven by anti-authoritarian sentiments among the contributors ("F**k the police!") or perhaps by a more focused opposition to speed limits.

This issue raises a fundamental problem in the "public goods" justification for governmental action: if people disagree about whether the "public good" is actually good, then can it legitimately be considered a public good? At what point does it simply become tyranny? Some Georgists have argued that community collection of land rents would address this problem by dispersing the net value of the "public good" evenly among all citizens. I don't follow this line of thought, and am driven towards more traditional libertarian responses, either by devolving governmental power to the smallest geographic level and allowing citizens to "vote with their feet", or limiting governmental action to areas where that action is supported by almost all of the people in the jurisdiction.

The cult of the Presidency: cultural leadership

Cross-posted to SwordsCrossed and FreedomDemocrats.

During the Presidential campaign, Gene Healy at Reason wrote up an article about the Cult of the Presidency -- describing the unreasonable faith that many Americans place in the Presidency and its occupant.* Despite the hypocritical right-wing hand-wringing over the implications of Obama's effectiveness in mass politics, Obama cannot take credit for inventing the Cult of the Presidency.

A number of recent events have vividly illustrated one long-standing aspect of the Presidential cult -- the idea that the President is the ultimate arbiter of cultural worth and the representative of a national consensus on cultural issues. These events showed that Americans expect the President to be the ultimate representative on issues as broad as military valor, piousness, and athletic accomplishment.

It is this last issue --condemnation of James Harrison for abstaining from the customary White House reception for the Superbowl victors-- that really shows the American people's obsession with the President's cultural leadership. Harrison was roundly condemned for bucking convention and the decision of his team (and his failure to provide a reasonable explanation for doing so). The more extreme commentary depicted his refusal not just as a foolishly missed opportunity, but as a snub against the entire American nation:

I find Harrison’s quote to be in the slap in the face you, me, the entire Pittsburgh Steelers organization, the NFL, the President or the United States, and our entire nation.

Other commentators examined what might pass as a good explanation for his behavior:

Some people say that he just doesn’t see a presidential visit as anything special, and that he’s just being a rugged individual. Harrison did, in fact, pass on a trip to the White House in 2006, when the Steelers won the Super Bowl and when George W. Bush was president.

But most people who exercise individualism usually have put some real thought into why they’re defying the status quo. They don’t just blurt out nonsense.

I would have loved for Harrison to say something like "I've received enough recognition from the league and our fans; the President has his own job to do and I don't think this is a good use of time for either of us." Unfortunately, he didn't give any such explanation, so we'll never know how American football fans would have responded to a direct criticism of the President's role as cultural leader.

On the issue of recognizing military valor, it is reasonable that the President would be involved. After all, he is the commander-in-chief of our armed forces. Likewise, it would be appropriate for the President to recognize outstanding contributions from any government employee.

I think that the President's role as military leader makes it easy for his office to experience a sort of mission creep in cultural areas. When he recognizes the sacrifices of soldiers under his command, he has to appeal to the values that led the soldier to make his sacrifice. This quickly brings us to religious issues, and other profound cultural statements.

Of course, this bumps right up against the notion of the US government as a secular institution. To those who would encase the Presidency in their own religious rhetoric, a good response comes from Rev. C. Welton Gaddy of the Interfaith Allaince:

President Obama is not the Pastor-in-Chief of the nation and Shirley Dobson's Task Force is not the spiritual judge of the president's personal or official actions.

I also wonder how the religious-right reconcile their merger of religion and politics with Jesus' prohibition against public/political displays of piety.

In summary, we don't have to be die-hard libertarians to object to the idea that the President embodies a national cultural consensus. We don't even have to be fans of cultural pluralism -- we only have to believe in the separation of power and responsibility among various institutions in society: the President is in charge of running the government, not guiding our cultural life.

*Following the election, some progressives took a moment to reconsider their relationship with Obama now that he had won the election, but this did not obviate the need for a continued "Cult of the President Watch" at Reason.com, reporting episodes of the volk fawning over Obama. The zealous adoration of President-elect Obama bothered me also, and I felt a bit nauseous when I heard that some cities had made special arrangements to name streets after Obama, not only while he is alive, but while he is still President. Getting elected to the Presidency is undoubtedly a great personal accomplishment, but the social accomplishment of electing a black man is not Obama's accomplishment -- it is the accomplishment of all those people who fought racism throughout American history.

Demoralizing Moralism: The Futility of Fetishized Values

Below is an abridged version of an interesting essay by Jason McQuinn published in Anarchy Magazine (#58) back in 2005. I've reprinted it here, while removing a bunch of text that is specific to the particular community the author was writing for (and Americanizing the spelling). I assume those anarchists don't mind.

My source: Demoralizing Moralism: The Futility of Fetishized Values from Anarchy magazine #58 by Jason McQuinn
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morality:
N. (pl. -ies) principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior. (The New Oxford American Dictionary)

moralism:
N. the practice of moralizing, esp. showing a tendency to make judgments about others' morality (The New Oxford American Dictionary)


Introduction:

Most anarchists-just like most other people on the planet-remain relatively naive concerning the many problems with theories and practices of compulsory morality and moralism. Positive, uncritical references to various forms of compulsory morality are nearly ubiquitous in both historical and contemporary anarchist writings, despite the occasional influence of Max Stirner's critique of morality amongst the more widely read. Even amongst anarchist writers who have actually taken the effort to read Max Stirner's 1844 master work, The Ego and Its Own (the publishing date was 1845, but it actually appeared in late 1844), his powerful and important critique of morality often remains either misunderstood, unduly ignored or ignorantly rejected. And although most anarchists may understand that moralism is most often a self-defeating practice in radical social movements, it is generally only excessive references to morality that are so understood, rather than uncritical submission to compulsory morality per se.

Every social theory-including those based on philosophy, religion or science-contains judgments of value by necessity. There is no form of knowledge that can be strictly value-free or even value-neutral. Unlike the natural sciences which can more easily-though never completely-evade acknowledgment of the human values expressed within their hypotheses, theories and research programs, the social sciences are unable to hide their multiple commitments to particular forms and particular expressions of human values. As Max Weber (one of the most important of the early scientific social theorists) put it: "There is no absolutely 'objective' scientific analysis of culture or of 'social phenomena' independent of special and 'one-sided' viewpoints to which-expressedly or tacitly, consciously or unconsciously-they are selected, analyzed and organized for expository purposes." (see Max Weber's The Methodology of the Social Sciences edited by Edward Schils & Henry Parsons [The Free Press, Glencoe, Illinois, 1949])

Values are even more obviously implicated in radical social theories which are explicitly formulated to aid the pursuit of deeply rooted structural changes in society. But such values can be constituted in two distinctly different manners: (1) as finite, historical expressions of people's individual and social desires, and (2) as being imputed to have some form of fetishized, transcendental-often absolute, ahistorical or objective-existence over and above human individuals and communities. Unfortunately, there is no commonplace, well-understood terminology to easily distinguish these two manners of constituting and speaking of human values. And this alone can lead to misunderstandings.

Problems of terminology

Terminology is a problem with many aspects of social critique wherever overcoming the many facets of social alienation is concerned. For every form of compulsory fetishization, whether religion, ideology, politics, commodity-fetishism and work, or morality, there remains a corresponding form of non-fetishized thinking and activity that is most often uncritically lumped together with it. Thus, the critique of religion often founders on a widespread, irrational insistence that nonfetishized thinking about life and the cosmos actually constitutes a form religion (even when it self-consciously denies such an identity). And that, therefore, since this particular imputed form of religion is not fetishized, then the critique of religion as such (as fetishization of the realm of the spiritual, divine or sacred) is argued to be unfounded. Similarly, those opposed to the critique of ideology tend to consistently (if insincerely) claim to see no difference between fetishized social theory and nonfetishized social theory, calling every form of social theory "ideology" in order to evade the sting of criticism for their own devotion to particular ideological mystifications...

....

Although most dictionary definitions of morality clearly imply it involves the fetishization of values, this implication is lost on most readers. For example, The New Oxford American Dictionary defines morality as "principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior." Obviously, the "right and wrong or good and bad" qualifiers here are most likely to be taken (unself-consciously) as fetishized, transcendental values, rather than as particular, finite choices with no claims to any reality beyond the unique desires of individual human beings. However, the moment the critique of morality is raised, even in Anarchy magazine, there are always those who pop up with the aim to confuse things (in order to defend their own moralistic commitments) by claiming in one form or another that there is no such thing as a non-moral human value!

Most people, in common with dictionary definitions, would never say that a person expressing her or his own desires with no claim to transcendental status for them is being moral by valuing a particular goal. But the defenders of morality will come out of the woodwork to claim that even the most finite, ephemeral and contingent human desire indicates the existence of a moral system every bit as real as those taught by the various branches of the Catholic Church!

To avoid this intentional confusionism wrought by those afraid of any criticism directed at their own sacred cows, people pursuing critiques of morality usually attempt to make a clear distinction between ethics and morality. In this case, ethics is considered to be concerned with finite, non-fetishized values, while morality is concerned with fetishized, transcendental values: right and wrong or good and bad. Unfortunately, since there is almost no radical and substantial criticism of morality in our popular culture (as opposed to the mountains of superficial and insubstantial, partial criticisms of morality), appeals by moralists to dictionary definitions of "ethics" often derail such attempts. (Most dictionary definitions in an alienated, moralistic society will be unlikely reflect the possibility that a dichotomy between fetishized and nonfetishized values could even exist. For most people consistently nonfetishized values simply aren't considered possible).

Therefore, in this essay, I will try to refer to the critique of "compulsory morality" in order to make it absolutely clear that I'm speaking of a system of fetishized values that demand compliance....I will also refer to "finite ethics" to make it clear that the alternative to compulsory morality involves finite, nonfetishized values.

The anatomy of compulsory morality

Compulsory morality involves self-subjugation to a system or set of values that are, for one reason or another, believed to require mandatory compliance-even if the person believing this is unable to-as the cliché goes-"live up to them." Although compulsory morality can potentially be grounded within an individual's subjective experience, it is almost always instead grounded somewhere outside the realm of directly lived human experience.

For example, religious forms of morality are commonly grounded in such unlikely (nonexistent) places as "the Word of God," or other forms of supposed direct revelation from some sort of unseen, disembodied, (unreal) Spirit. (Of course, this grounding is generally mediated through the supposed gods' appointed representatives on Earth, however irrational the belief in the authenticity of these representatives might be.) In this form of compulsory morality, God is supposed to be the source of moral values that must be followed because the source-whatever it may be-is in some sense considered far more real and important than the unique individual person who cannot be trusted to know what she or he should do without the guidance of a system of fetishized, sacred values. The formal structure of compulsory religious morality is thus: sacred values from an unseen source to be followed by a relatively worthless human being whatever the context.
With a system of values like this, whatever the actual content of the morality, is it any wonder that people attempting to live this form of alienation are constantly mystified about their lives, desires and social relationships?

However, in these modern times, the place of religion has often been supplanted by other things, like Science, or particular social or political ideologies (like Marxism) that demand compulsory adherence.

...

Science is one example of a source of many forms of modern, enlightened compulsory morality. I have capitalized it above to indicate that it is not the actual practice of experimental exploration of nature in pursuit of knowledge (science) of which I'm speaking, but an ideological construct (Science) of particular fetishized scientific ideas taken out of their finite, experimental contexts and elevated into general, quasi-religious principles. The prestige of the various forms of scientism (ideologies and worship of Science) is based on the practical accomplishments of experimental science in combination with industrial capitalism. Together their power seems to rival that of the old gods for many modern citizens of the civilized world. For those whom religion no longer satisfies, but who do not yet understand the social origins of ideas and values, the various forms of scientism can be very appealing.

They all involve the deduction of value systems from particular, reified scientific (or semi-scientific, or even pseudo-scientific) theories. Notable examples include the (misnamed) social Darwinist ideas whose morality is usually based on some version of the Spencerian "survival of the fittest" ("and Devil take the hindmost"), the ideologists of the fetishized gene whose morality is based on imagining what genes (as if they had minds of their own!) would want "their" bodies to do to promote their reproduction or evolution, and all the various ethnological, zoological, or evolutionary psychological reifications of humanity whose moralities are all based on imagining that our values are determined in one form or another by biology or genetics, etc.

The formal structure of the various scientific moralities is, once again, the same as that for religious morality: sacred values from an unseen source to be followed by a relatively worthless human being whatever the context. Like religious morality, scientific versions of morality attempt to limit and determine what is supposed to be humanly desirable and possible, narrowing the choices that can be made by true believers.
...

Radical moralism?

In the absence of genuinely lived community (of contestation) and a genuinely revolutionary movement throughout society, many would-be radicals tend to retreat into other activities that substitute for radical, direct action. One of the easiest traps to fall into is the reduction of the radical project into a moralistic project (and, as a corollary, the reduction of subversive, radical discourse into relatively meaningless moralistic discourses). Instead of creating a subversively radical social theory in concert with other rebels and putting it into practice with them with the aim of directly eliminating as many aspects of domination and social alienation as possible, the goal becomes the rigidly Manichaean division of the social world into "good" and "bad" parts (in themselves--outside of any context), with the aim of mechanically suppressing the "bad" wherever and whenever possible, and enlarging the "good."

Instead of a dialectical social theory aimed at increasingly sophisticated understanding in conjunction with an increasingly sophisticated, subversive practice, moralistic ideologies are aimed at simplistic dividing and labeling with little or no regard for context or the totality! For environmental moralists, for example, recycling and wilderness are always good, while SUVs and new housing developments are always bad. Context doesn't matter, resulting in mechanistic strategies aimed at, for example, simply discouraging SUV use (whether by firebombing new SUVs or working for legislation that makes them more expensive), or discouraging the construction of new housing (whether by arson or attempting to organize political pressure on developers). Rather than encouraging the spread of the (practical and theoretical) critique of capital and state as parts of a worldwide system of social alienation and domination, moralism tends to result in always seeing the entire social world in a series of single-issue blinders.

...

Examples could also be given for other forms of would-be radical moralism like pacifism, many forms of leftism including most Marxist ideologies, and various other single-issue campaigns.

One of the most striking aspects of moralistic practice involves the generally futile attempts to communicate across the finite ethics/compulsory morality divide. Even when those who have no belief in any fetishized value-systems make quite clear that their criticisms and commentary develop from their own practical experiences within particular social contexts and historical situations, their words are almost automatically interpreted instead through a moralistic framework that assumes these criticisms and commentary must be based on some undeclared, but still-transcendent system of values!
...

The effects of morality

Whatever the specific content of compulsory morality, the effects are basically similar. A person's ability to think clearly and act decisively in his or her own interests (within appropriate contexts) is compromised or sabotaged. If people are not able to consciously act in their own individual and communal interests, they will almost certainly end up acting instead in the (alien) interests of another in some fashion.

In most forms of compulsory morality this other around whose interests values are oriented is an abstract idea rather than a person or persons: God, Science, Nature, one's Country (or Nation-State), the Economy or Ecology, etc. (Although there are always real people, social groups and organizations just waiting to exploit the victims of morality by acting as mediators between them and their abstract ideals.) Even in those cases in which values are explicitly oriented towards people or groups of people (for example, the class-struggle morality that puts the Working Class at the center of value), these values usually remain oriented much more towards the abstract idea of the person or the group than towards any actual, concrete, living persons: the fetishized idea of the Proletariat or the Party (rather than actual living and breathing workers or the individual members who make up the party), Humanity (in the abstract rather than in the form of an aggregate of concrete individuals in all their interrelationships), the State, etc.

People whose compulsory moralities are organized around these abstract ideas attempt to force themselves to follow their demands because they have displaced (projected or alienated) their own subjectivity onto them, usually through the influence of years and years of alienating and
demoralizing socialization and indoctrination. Rather than understanding and acting for themselves the victims of morality attempt to make themselves the puppets of the abstract ideas they fetishize.

Living without morality

The radical alternative to morality involves the creation of critical self-theory. The formation of any coherent and effective anarchist perspective and practice requires that people develop (through interaction with their natural and social environments) a relatively sophisticated understanding of themselves and their places in their social and natural worlds. Without a consciously understood subjective locus of understanding, without a clear focus on one's own personal and social interests, it is impossible to develop a critical social theory that can comprehend social alienation and the possibilities for its supersession. Critical self-theory and critical social theory are two essential poles of one comprehensive project.

Only by developing and maintaining a self-critical understanding of oneself and one's world can people make comprehensively rational decisions about what their most genuine interests are and how to pursue them (rather than making narrowly or partially rationalized decisions which won't accurately reflect themselves or their overall context). In the 19th century language of Max Stirner, this kind of critical self-understanding was termed "self conscious egoism," but today it makes more sense to jettison this outdated, pre-Freudian term in favor of "self-theory."

Critical self-understanding involves the simultaneous development of a finite ethics, a set of values consistent with what are considered and felt to be one's most important interests, that are expressed in everyday life activities. These values are organic expressions of one's radical subjectivity, of one's self-possession, self-understanding and self-activity. They don't originate outside of one's life, demanding one's subjection, because they originate from one's own direct life-experiences and serve one's own interests.

The "War on Terror" and the "Reign of Terror"

A stray comment at Swords Crossed has driven me to read up on the French Reign of Terror. Upon reading quotes by Maximilien Robespierre, I recalled a conversation from earlier today with an Indian friend regarding the terrorist attacks on Mumbai. He asserted that the Indian government had made a mistake in repealing some laws relating to terrorism (apparently,the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act of 1987, which allows prolonged detention without trial and expired in 1995 following accusations that it was being abused; alternatively he may have been referring to the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance passed in 2001, updated in 2002, and repealed in 2004 after assertions of abuse).

Anyway, his basic attitude was "terrorists don't deserve procedural rights"--of course, assuming that the government is rigorous and honest in its identification of "terrorists". I've seen this same attitude in Americans who say that they wouldn't care if the government methodically tapped our phones to gather information about terrorism. Today, I saw the same basic attitude reflected in quotes from Robespierre, the architect of la Terreur. For instance:

The revolutionary government has to summon extraordinary activity to its aid precisely because it is at war. It is subjected to less binding and less uniform regulations, because the circumstances in which it finds itself are tempestuous and shifting, above all because it is compelled to deploy, swiftly and incessantly, new resources to meet new and pressing dangers.

The principle concern  of constitutional government is civil liberty; that of revolutionary government, public liberty. Under a constitutional government little more is required than to protect the individual against abuses by the state, whereas revolutionary government is obliged to defend the state itself against the factions that assail it from every quarter.

To good citizens revolutionary government owes the full protection of the state; to the enemies of the people it owes only death.

These ideas are in themselves sufficient to explain the origin and the nature of the laws that we term revolutionary. Those who call them arbitrary or tyrannical are foolish or perverse sophists who seek to reconcile white with black and black with white: they prescribe the same system for peace and war, for health and sickness; or rather their only object is to resurrect tyranny and destroy the fatherland.

 On Revolutionary Government (1793) in The Human Rights Reader

He goes on with the accusations of treason, and concludes by  calling for the reorganization of a special court, the Revolutionary Tribunal. Replace "revolutionary government" with "wartime government" and I wouldn't be able to distinguish this terrorist's rhetoric from George W. Bush's -- though in modern America there is no such thing as peace (In the 63 years since the end of WWII, we've had only 11 years in which we were not involved in either the Cold War or the War on Terror--and during all but two of those years we were at war with Iraq.)

From Wikiquote:

Terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is therefore an emanation of virtue; it is not so much a special principle as it is a consequence of the general principle of democracy applied to our country's most urgent needs. 

and...

We must smother the internal and external enemies of the Republic or perish with it; now in this situation, the first maxim of your policy ought to be to lead the people by reason and the people's enemies by terror. 

I like to think that Americans are less susceptible to these rationalizations of power than the 18th-century French were, but given how far we've gone when faced with a threat that is totally insignificant relative to what they faced (or even what the US faced at that time), I may lose some of that faith.

McCain's ACORN conspiracy theory

McCain: We need to know the full extent of Senator Obama's relationship with ACORN, who is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.

McCain made this serious accusation during the third presidential debate. It has also been propagated by television advertisements, and extensive editorializing by Obama's opponents. However, if we look into the specific accusations against ACORN (let alone the actual evidence), they do not add up into the grand conspiracy theory that McCain is promoting.

Others have addressed the vapidness of trying to link Obama to ACORN's alleged grand conspiracy, and also some of the facts behind the allegations. I'm going to limit myself to a critique of how the grand-conspiracy claim cannot be built up from the specific allegations, and how the alleged voter-registration fraud would not be a reasonable act of someone involved in this grand conspiracy.

Before I get into the details, I want to point out that the ACORN conspiracy theory (or scapegoating, perhaps) is even broader than these baseless accusations of voter fraud. McCain is even trying to blame ACORN for the fact that Wall-Street bankers failed to manage their risk properly (see the TV commercial)--as if this relatively tiny organization could pressure the banking industry into destroying its own foundations at a time that it was raking in hundreds of billions of dollars in profits each year (FWIW, Greenspan places much/most of the blame on investor demand for mortgage backed securities).

Let's look at the traits of this grand conspiracy theory being promoted by McCain and his campaign:

1. It is national: McCain implies this during his debate tirade, by focusing on a national organization (ACORN) and emphasizing the vast scale of the conspiracy. His TV advertisement explicitly refers to a "nationwide voter fraud".
2. It relies on ACORN's infrastructure.
3. It begins with fraudulent voter registration, and will be consummated with actual fraudulent votes being cast in swing states.

Consider how many people must be involved in this. First, there are the people who actually filled out the fraudulent forms, then there are their supervisors (up to the national level), and finally there are the individuals who will actually cast false ballots (with some sort of false identification).

I'm guessing this would involve hundreds of people, and law-enforcement agencies have apparently caught tens of people from that first group (registration fraud)--yet not a single person is alleged to belong to either of the other two groups (national coordination, and vote fraud).

Look at the propaganda I linked to above, and any other source you know of. Please let me know if any person has been charged/accused of participating in national coordination of registration fraud, or any sort of vote fraud.

Aside from the fact that we have no evidence of the most important components of this grand conspiracy, there is also the problem that this conspiracy would be the most asinine, bumbling conspiracy that I've ever heard of. Look at the allegations from the NRO editorial:

1. First, the foot-soldiers in this conspiracy are "lazy crackheads"--as if such people could be relied on to keep their mouths shut about a conspiracy.
2. ACORN illegally employed felons on work-release--no allegation that they were involved in any fraud, or that they would be reliable participants in a conspiracy.
   
3. They registered "the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys" and Mickey Mouse -- as if using celebrity names wouldn't obviously attract attention to their activities.
   
4. "21 separate voter-registration applications were filed for a single voter in Miami"-- again, a pretty obvious red-flag.
5. "attempted to register untold numbers of dead, underage, imprisoned, imaginary, or otherwise ineligible voters ...apparently pulled out of the phone book at random" -- this might actually be useful for voter fraud, but there'd be a major risk of getting caught when you actually try to impersonate someone who has already voted (or who should be in jail!).
   
6. "registrations...filed from nonexistent addresses"--another red flag; and how would the importers get their voter-registration cards?
   
7. "forged signatures"-- bad, but no indication of intention to commit registration fraud.
   
8. "In July of 2007, five ACORN activists pleaded guilty to fraud in Washington State for submitting nearly 2,000 phony voter applications"--and yet they did not provide any evidence of a conspiracy to commit electoral fraud.

I'm thinking about this from the perspective of how this conspiracy would play out in Pennsylvania. We have pretty lax ID laws, but we are pretty stringent on absentee ballots. If I were to submit a fraudulent registration, I would not know of its success until I received my voter registration card at home. Furthermore, to vote absentee, I would need to have the ballot mailed to my home. This makes it worthless for me to register at other people's addresses, and it would be pretty obvious if a large number of "voters" registered from my house.

Finally, why would an electoral-fraud conspiracy submit it's fraudulent applications in a big package (i.e. the ACORN submissions). Knowing that many of their fraudulent registrations would get caught, they would want to avoid any indication that their registrations were connected to each other. The obvious way for them to submit their application would be as if they were regular individuals just registering to vote as a regular order of business--not part of a transparently fraudulent voter registration drive.

The only reasonable strategy I can think of for voter-side electoral fraud would be to register a large, ineligible population with a strong preference for one party or another -- yet I haven't heard any allegations of the type.

So overall, there is no basis for McCain's claims about a grand conspiracy within ACORN, and it really only takes a little common sense to see through his BS.

Why is our government creating cartels?

In today's commentary on Marketplace, Robert Reich articulated some thoughts that have been bouncing around in my head since the government started bailing out financial firms: Maybe 'too big to fail' is just 'too big':

We seem to have forgotten that the original purpose of antitrust law was also to prevent companies from becoming too powerful. Too powerful in that so many other companies depended on them, so many jobs turned on them and so many consumers or investors or depositors needed them, that the economy as a whole would be endangered if they failed. Too powerful in that they could wield inordinate political influence of a sort that might gain them extra favors from Washington.

Maybe the biggest irony today is that Washington policymakers who are funneling taxpayer dollars to these too-big-to-fail companies are simultaneously pushing them to consolidate into even bigger companies.

These companies aren't quite monopolies, but the fact that they are "too big to fail" seems to imply that they are involved in a form of market manipulation, whether intentional or not.

The prospect of corporate mergers leads me to ask "what is a corporation": it is a legally binding agreement among producers to regulate the production, pricing, and marketing of a good. This is the definition of a cartel, except that a corporation is treated as a single legal entity rather than a collection of entities. The fact that the maintenance of the corporation is legally enforced (shareholders cannot withdraw their capital) is important, because cartels are unstable in the absence of legal enforcement.

The very existence of a corporation (a creation of the state) implies the need for rules regulating how large a corporation can be. We've become very lax in this regard, and I think we're getting screwed for it.

Books: The Black Swan; The Impact of the Highly Improbable

The Black Swan, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb is an engaging book about an important topic. However, if a reader who is familiar with the topic(s) will not find any new ideas.

This book is about risk management; specifically, how to deal with the risks arising from unpredictable events. To examine this issue, Taleb crafts a narrative that surveys a number of intellectual fields, including probability theory, complexity theory, epistemology (empiricism and philosophy of science), cognitive psychology, and social psychology. For a systematic summary, see Wikipedia.

The most striking thing about this book was Taleb's prescience with regard to the recent financial crisis. This book was published in April 2007, but Taleb (who made his "f*** you money" during the stock market crash of 1987) asserted that modern financial risk-assessment is total bullshit, and that when some unpredictable disruption occurs, the structure of the financial system will cause cataclysmic failure. Oh boy, was he right!

This book is supposed to be practical, so it's worth mentioning the advice provided. It can basically be summed up with two points:

1. Know the limits of prediction (specifically, that some very important phenomena are fundamentally unpredictable). Don't fool yourself into thinking that you what the probabilities of events are (as if you were playing a game with well-defined rules)
   
2. When you make predictions for unpredictable phenomena, ask yourself what are the consequences of being wrong. Don't estimate probabilities of being wrong--just avoid situations where being wrong will be fatal.

This book also has a few messages for how we think about social issues. One is that many "experts" are frauds, in that they pretend to be able to predict phenomena that are fundamentally unpredictable. The other is the randomness plays a major role in personal success, especially when we are looking at people who are extremely successful.

Taleb also warns us about putting much faith in predictions about what the world will be like in a few decades. He specifically dismissed predictions that the American Social Security system will be bankrupt in 40 years, implying that the funding of SS in 2048 is a concern for the people living in 2048, not for those of us living in 2008. By extension, we may also downplay predictions of radical climate change over the next few decades. However, both types of predictions do have value in that they provide us with a sense of the range of possible scenarios that we should be prepared for. [added after initial publication]

One more merit for this book is that it provides a good description of the life a scientist, including the methodological, psychological, and social aspects. I recommend this book for anyone interested in pursuing a career in science.

The main drawback of this book is that the author comes off as being quite arrogant. He is dismissive of many scientists, claiming that they make unjustifiable assumptions about the probability distribution of events. He even claimed that psychologists were "lucky" that they frequently used binary (Yes/No) measurements for which probability distributions ARE predictable. In fact, this is no accident. A careful scientist will design experiments in a way that the data conforms to certain assumptions, thereby allowing hypotheses to be tested. If you look in a book like Handbook of Parametric and Nonparametric Statistical Procedures, you will find extensive discussions about when it is appropriate to use various probability distributions.

Taleb also engaging in a form of name-dropping, describing how his arguments have gotten under the skin of a number of prominent intellectuals. This is the down-side of his narrative style of writing. However, the narrative of his life is what keeps this book interesting even if you are thinking "I know this already".

Liberty, security, and luxury

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

-Benjamin Franklin

Over the past decade we have been constantly exhorted to trade our liberties for safety--both economic and physical. Sometimes, the liberties in question have been essential. As I tried to illustrate with a tribute to Frederic Douglass, we should not view our liberty as a luxury to be sacrificed in the name of security; indeed, liberty is the basis of our security. We cannot rely on others (e.g. the Feds) to protect us from a dangerous world, if that requires that we relinquish some of our ability to navigate the threats and challenges in the world on our own.

The sad thing is that even as we have been asked to delegate our personal rights to a government that seems determined to avoid oversight, we have undermined our own security with our thoughtless pursuit of luxury (eloquently described by One Drop at Too Sense). Our financial system is freezing up because everyone, from bankers down to homeowners, was blinded by the easy money that fell into their hands so that they refused to consider the risks that they were taking. Now people are failing to make mortgage payments, banks are failing on their obligations, and we are facing the prospect of a depression--mass business closure, mass unemployment, and mass homelessness.

This is not the recipe for security. Without a functioning economy we will not have the ability to fight terrorists, or any other military threat that may arise. Anyway, an economic depression will damage our health and community much more than any terrorist could.

This financial problem didn't come out of the blue--the signs have been there for years, most prominently in our trade deficit and the total absence of personal savings. To see how deep we're in the hole, consider the magnitude of our total debt (government and private)--it stands at 350% of GDP after growing for a few decades from a baseline of 150% of GDP from the 50's thru the 70's.

After the terrorist attacks of September 2001, you might have thought that Americans would get serious and dedicate our immense resources to the task of creating security at home and in the world. Instead, our President told us to shop and let him take care of our security. We dutifully continued with a binge of self-indulgence unparalleled in human history (perhaps comforted by faith in the paradox of thrift). Not only did we fail to reshape the world, but we couldn't even run our own country in a sustainable manner. Now that our credit has been cut off, what are we to do?

We've had a scare, and we may have tough times ahead of us. We can recover, and I believe that we can go on to transform the world for the better if we recognize that there are still plenty of problems in the world (even in America) and that we are not entitled to anything. We need to face our problems head-on.

Narratives of civil conflict

Posted at Swords Crossed

Much of our political discourse refers to narratives of civil conflict, either using them to frame issues (e.g. Lou Dobbs' War on the Middle Class) or accusing others of promoting these narratives of conflict (e.g. class war, racism) rather than narratives of unity. Below is a haphazard analysis of narratives of civil conflict. I'd love to hear your thoughts, as well as any recommended readings on the topic.

People have disputes for a number reasons; often disputes are tied to specific situations or events, but they can also be viewed as part of a general conflict between two parties. In the later case, the participants in the dispute view the problem as arising from some intrinsic quality of the other participant. These are the situations that I will be discussing as conflicts: their resolution requires a fundamental change in the relationship between the participants, rather than just reaching an agreement about some specific issue that is viewed as being external to the participants.

Civil conflicts exist between groups in a society, and revolve around access to power within that society. Power is often embodied in control of the dominant public institutions of that society (e.g. states, schools, churches, media, businesses, etc). In some societies, such as explicitly multi-ethnic states, the different groups may be relatively equal in power, even as each strives to gain more power. However, in the USA, narratives of conflict seem to be framed in terms of dominant and subordinate groups, so I'll be focusing on conflicts with that structure. The people who control public institutions I'll call "the elite", whereas the rest of society will be "the commoners".

In a stratified society like this, there is a narrative of unity, which is how the elite/commoners are supposed to cooperate harmoniously. Primarily, the narrative of unity requires that the elite acts in the interests of the entire society. The narrative of unity can also require that the elite allow some institutions (e.g. the family) to remain under the jurisdiction of the commoners, that the elite share the culture of the commoners, that the elite have respect for the commoners, and that membership in the elite is based on personal merit. A narrative of conflict describes how the narrative of unity fails.

The simplest narrative of civil conflict proposes that conflict arises directly from the nature of the dominant institutions in society and the separation of the society into the elite and the commoners. This class conflict narrative suggests that the elite form a coherent group, where control of major institutions is mixed or exchangeable, and status is inherited--resulting in a distinct social and cultural group that runs society with the primary interest of assuring its own status. This narrative isn't particularly common in America, and political opponents are often attacked by suggesting that they are promoting this narrative.

A more traditional narrative in America is that of ethnic conflict. The most extreme case involves the legacy of racism in America. For much of American history, the dominant institutions defined a "black" race that was explicitly excluded from power and exploited. Coming out of that period, many members of the resulting ethnic group distrust the dominant institutions in America and has been the source of "black resentment" and "black separatist" movements. From this perspective, affirmative action programs seem to be an attempt to create a narrative of unity between African-Americans (blacks) and the dominant (white) institutions of America, not an attempt to provide individualistic opportunities.

I was inspired to write this as part of an effort to understand another narrative of conflict, which seems to on the rise in recent years. It seems to be embodied in terms like "angry white men", and preached by talk radio hosts and the Fox News network. It is particularly complicated because it blurs the distinction between the elite and commoners, yet still plays on those concepts. It often attacks the elite on the basis that they hate the institutions that they control. Even as the narrators revel in their outsider/commoner status, they celebrate the power of their institutions and culture. There seem to be several aspects to this narrative.

One part seems to be nationalistic, with the idea that the national elite has abandoned its national base in favor of building an internationalist/post-nationalist community. When the nation in question is powerful and prosperous (like white America), this gets confusing because almost all members are relatively privileged, yet many members see themselves being passed over by individuals from groups that had previously been subordinate (as with Affirmative Action).

Aside from this "betrayal of nationality" narrative, this conservative movement also builds on a narrative of "creeping socialism"--or the expansion of public (elite) institutions into private realms, such as child-rearing, that have traditionally been the jurisdiction of the commoners.

This conservative narrative of conflict also seems to include complaints about the shifting balance of power among public institutions, for example, the expanding influence of schools and decreasing influence of churches.

Finally, I've noticed that conservative pundits like to attack professionals (e.g the media and academics) as "the elite" even as they celebrate the political and economic elite. I find this particularly strange since the professional elite is much more meritocratic than the political/economic elite. Furthermore, the professional elite have very little power over the lives of commoners, yet the political/economic elite can turn their lives upside down on a whim.

So, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this issue, particularly any thoughts on how conservatives can favor expansion of police powers and the freedom of corporations even as they rant about "the elite".

Proportional Punishment

I, for one, was heartened by the Supreme Court's decision to uphold the limit that states may only apply the death penalty in response to crimes that result in death. As an Obama supporter, I am disappointed that Obama disagrees:

"I have said repeatedly that I think that the death penalty should be applied in very narrow circumstances for the most egregious of crimes. I think that the rape of a small child, 6 or 8 years old, is a heinous crime," he said, adding that if a state determines the death penalty should apply in such cases, they should be allowed to impose it.

Apparently, his disagreement arises from the view that killing is a form of self-expression:

he supports capital punishment in cases "so heinous, so beyond the pale, that the community is justified in expressing the full measure of its outrage by meting out the ultimate punishment."

In contrast, I think that the act of destroying a life should be taken a little more seriously (or perhaps, I think that temper tantrums should be taken less seriously). When I remember Newt Gingrich's call to make drug dealing a capital offense, or the attempt of the Illinois legislature to make gang activity a capital crime, I'm glad that there is a Constitutional prohibition on expanding the use of the death penalty.

Virginia Sloan of the Constitution Project says it well:

That the rape of a child is a horrific crime that deserves a firm and swift punishment is not in doubt. But expanding the list of crimes eligible for the death penalty to include non-homicide crimes would have undermined the long-standing principle of civilized societies that reserves the ultimate penalty for those who commit the most heinous murders. Anything less than categorical exclusion of non-homicide crimes would have provided too great an opportunity for the unconstitutionally overbroad, random, arbitrary, and capricious application of the death penalty.

We are not the property of the state (or "the community"), and there must be a limit on what methods the government can use to coerce us for its ends.

Live Free or Die: a tribute to Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass' autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, is one of the best books that I've read and deserves to be read once, if not repeatedly. It provides a well-written perspective on how slavery impacted Americans, and displays the perspective of one of America's heroes. Furthermore the Narrative itself is of historical interest because of the role it played in the abolitionist movement.

While pondering Douglass' words, I realized that this book illustrates two sides of the revolutionary-era maxim "Live Free or Die".

First, we often associate the phrase Live Free or Die with the macho boasts of Revolutionary war heroes. The New Hampshire state motto originates with a toast written by General George Stark:

Live free or die: Death is not the worst of evils.

This sentiment mirrors the more famous quote of Patrick Henry:

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

When Frederick Douglass was in bondage, he probably was unaware of these quotes, but when Douglass later described his travails, he also expressed this sentiment in his own words. While his demands were more modest, his depiction was much more concrete:

My long-crushed spirit rose, cowardice departed, bold defiance took its place; and I now resolved that, however long I might remain a slave in form, the day had passed forever when I could be a slave in fact. I did not hesitate to let it be known of me, that the white man who expected to succeed in whipping, must also succeed in killing me.

Douglass also provided a visceral depiction of why a person would be driven to such extremes:

I often found myself regretting my own existence, and wishing myself dead; and but for the hope of being free, I have no doubt but that I should have killed myself, or done something for which I should have been killed.

He is not merely stating that he is willing to risk death to gain freedom, but that slavery is no better than death, and is only made bearable by the prospect of future freedom. With that mindset, but with almost no social support, Douglass went about creating the conditions that would allow him to escape.

The second interpretation of "Live Free or Die" is not a macho boast, or a judgment of risks vs. reward, but a simple fact of life: the slave has no security. This is the fundamental basis of slavery, and a key point that may drive a slave to despair. Douglass also provided a good illustration of this notion, as he was made to fear for his life more than once. He also witnessed how whites could kill a slave on a whim and summarized the situation thusly:

It was a common saying, even among little white boys, that it was worth a half-cent to kill a [slave] and a half-cent to bury one.

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That's all that I can say about Frederick Douglass today, but I hope it provides you with the motivation to read (or re-read) his book. I assure you that it is short and well-written. You can probably get it for $6 at your local books store (B&N reprints many historical works like this). You can also read it online.

As long as we're on this subject, let's not forget that the battle against slavery has not ended: 10 Shocking Facts About Global Slavery in 2008