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Don Boudreaux writes about how conscription supposedly increases fairness.#
I do not doubt that the men and women who voluntarily enlist in the military are drawn largely from middle- and (perhaps especially) working-class families. Nevertheless, the notion of conscription-created fairness is untenable.
Most obviously, it's impossible (for me, at any rate) to see how forcing people against their will to serve in the military (or in the Peace Corp, or as pastry chefs, or as whatever) advances fairness. If persons A, B, and C voluntarily agree to perform task X, while persons D, E, and F voluntarily agree to perform task Y, where is the unfairness? Or, looked at another way: What is fair about compelling D, E, and F — or even A, B, and C — to perform task X? And what difference does it make if task X is more dangerous than task Y? Is it unfair that some of us voluntarily work (dangerous) night-shifts at convenience stores while others of us voluntarily work in the very safe groves of academe?
Arnold Kling explains Economic Attribution Error.#
Recently, a book club in which I participate met to discuss Gladwell's book. Ironically, one of the participants proceeded to commit what I think of as the Economic Attribution Error. That is when someone attributes the behavior of key macroeconomic indicators, such as the exchange rate, the Budget deficit, or the unemployment rate, to the fundamental character traits of government officials, such as the President or the Chairman of the Federal Reserve. In fact, the values of these variables depend mostly on the context provided by the private sector - the influence of fiscal and monetary policy tends to be vastly overstated.
Gina Smith jokes on cannibals. Yes!#
Carl Blesius on skin cancer and tanning booths:#
Shortly after New Hampshire passed a bill requiring tanning booth operators to be educated about the risks of UV exposure, clients to be informed of risks of UV exposure, and parents to be involved in their child's decision to expose themselves to a known carcinogen and shortly before the golden state (California) considered flat out banning children under 18 from using personal toasters without a prescription (regrettably the bill did not pass on the 2nd, but is still up for reconsideration) I ran across a charged word (via Dermchat) that I liked. It is one of those words that could help make a difference by influencing peoples views and attitudes: "Tanorexia" (gives a feel for the seriousness of the problem). Every 15 year old girl that hears that word immediately knows what it is getting at.
After working on a "skin cancer project" in Heidelberg I got a taste of the irrational murky claims coming from the indoor-tanning industry: "safer than the sun", "the personal toasters are not dangerous", "they are good for you". Bah! Now that the research is coming out that refutes all of this I wonder how long it is going to take for them to get in trouble. Although it is disappointing that the bill did not pass in California (Ayes 9. Noes 19.), it is good to see the industry on the radar.
I am in favour of more information being abound about the dangers of tanning, but I am not in favour of the government making personal choices such as this illegal. I will still sneer and laugh at every tanner I meet, however.
Razib writes about the difficulty of predicting the path of a civilization based on its texts. He writes that people can justify (rationalization) any text with any ideology that they already have with only the tools of imagination and selective extraction.#
For example, the Bible was the primary source document for Christian civilization from about the 6th century A.D. to the 13th century A.D.. Even after the 13th century, literacy for the vast majority of individuals within Christendom basically meant being able to read the Bible (in particular after Protestant translations into the vernacular). So, can we predict the nature of Biblo-centric cultures? To some extent, but...as I note in a comment below, the Bible has been used to justify just about every political and social system under heaven (I hyperbolize for effect, but those who have studied the literature of Christian libertarians and the Christian Reconstructionists might wonder if they are reading from the same book!). The Bible has within it enough contradictions that one can select whatever passage suits an individual. The Hebrew Bible has enough ethnic cleansing to satisfy the warrior while the parables of Jesus can be rendered in a pacifist fashion. Christian civilization itself is cleaved and subdivided, as Samuel Huntington acknowledges in The Clash of Civilizations, even splitting the "Orthodox" from the Western Christian tradition.
Essentially the lesson is that the texts of civilizations, i.e. the influence of past intellectuals, do not last and retain their message long. This is because they are internally diverse enough and without mass-understanding that new ideas can claim them as a foundation regardless of whether the original writers intended such support.
By The True Believer, one would also think that every new wave based on an old text will support the underlying philosophy of United Action and Self-Sacrifice. Thus the success (the lasting) of an older text depends on its ability to promote these qualities, and this also is a partial explanation of why a new idea may seek their support. (The other part is, I imagine, as a way to get a "backdoor" into the minds of those who, for example, "believe" in Christianity but are not completely certain what that means.)
Nova Spivack writes about The Corporation.#
Another question I've been thinking about: Is there a way to add feedback to corporate revenues such that they benefit or suffer due to additional factors such as their environmental impact, social impact, etc.? For example, could corporations be rewarded or penalized financially by an independent body for various good or bad behaviors?
[...]
Still, there is a problem that everyone recognizes -- large multinational corporations answer to nobody yet affect everybody. They are not democracies -- neither their employees nor the people in the communities and biospheres they impact have significant voting power over their behavior
This is a signal that Nova does understand how corporations make money. They have customers. They must please these customers. If the customers value "environmental impact" or "social impact", then they can decide to pay more or less (buy or not) the corporations goods. Many people do not understand that this is a general behavior of the market, instead the only think about the idea of staged boycott. If it helps you to understand the concept, our preferences are a natural set of boycotts against goods and corporations we don't agree with. Similarly, your choice of employer is a vote for that employer or against all others.
If people (a) refuse to work for this evil companies, and (b) refuse to buy from them, and will relinquish this embargo on whatever conditions are relevant, then the companies will change or go bankrupt. The only way this can be interrupted is by the government--when the government forces its citizens to buy certain products (by buying them itself with their money) or refuses to allow them to buy other products (by restricting the market á la protectionism or Prohibition.)
That these companies still exist is a sign that either (a) people do not agree with Nova, (b) people do not understand their power (like Nova), or (c) the government is preventing them from exercising choice.
Democracy is breaking because it was not designed to handle such large populations (in other words the Electoral College system is obsolete!), and because it was not designed to withstand corporate influences (corporations did not exist when our republic was designed).
1. The claim that corporations did not exist is untenable and would be trivial to defeat with a cursory look at European history.
2. The Electoral College system is designed to deal with large populations. Quick explanation: More people live in cities than in rural areas, if the popular vote was decisive than governments would be slanted towards the will of the people in the cities. The Electoral College system tries to spread the power equally and protect the minority of the rural denizens. Often time I think people who complain about the Electoral College are just refusing to admit that maybe everyone doesn't agree with them.
3. I do, however, agree that the United States democracy and economy have a difficult time interacting. I attribute this to the lack of separation of State and economy, that is that the State has power and regulatory control over aspects of the economy.
The simplistic hope that "the market will sort it out" has not led to a solution and doesn't show any sign of doing so -- in fact we just see Tragedy of the Commons taking place on a global scale.
Nova admits misunderstanding of The Tragedy of the Commons. It says that a public held resource (i.e. held like in Socialism and not as a private property) will be abused and destroyed. The lesson it teaches is that private property is what makes things sustainable, and thus is a strange lesson to bring up in a piece against Capitalism.
An apology: I want to be clear that I admire Nova's work in technology and his wide interesting. I also enjoy the work of his father and am glad that they both publish weblogs. Perhaps I am too cold in insisting that Nova "does not understand" and for this I am sorry and will recant if proved wrong.
Frank Shostak in The Myth of Shock-Free Monetary Policy makes his case against two popular views of monetary policy with a preference for hard-money beneath the surface.#
Tyler Cowen linked to How to Get Federal Spending Under Control in March.#
Some of the stuff mentioned is just ridiculous.
But there is occasionally some weird language:
Budget cutters often commit the tactical error of settling for small reductions or lengthy phaseouts of obsolete programs instead of immediately terminating them. They mistakenly believe that securing small program reductions now will allow them to come back and cut the program more next time.
But leaving obsolete programs in place simply creates an opportunity for future Congresses to restore funding. Furthermore, retaining the programs leaves the bureaucracy in place and allows it to enlist interest groups in a counteroffensive against spending reductions. The old line that "those attacking the throne had better kill the king on the first shot" applies to government programs as well.