Frenic
Russell Roberts on jobs as costs not benefits and the amazing changes in long-distance telephone service since 1920.#
We tend to romaticize manufacturing jobs and look down on service jobs. We associate the former with rugged steelworkers, grimy in their overalls, using a smelter. Service jobs don't produce anything, say the critics. On the surface, Federal Express merely moves packages around. But actually Federal Express does something quite extraordinary—they make the world smaller buy getting packages from here to there more quickly.
Cheaper long-distance does the same thing. In 1920, it cost $26 [per ten minutes] to make a phone call from New York to Los Angeles. Today, it's virtually free as this article in today's Washington Post points out. But that $26 figure was in 1920 dollars. In today's dollars, the cost in 1920 was $287. Here's the chart from the Post article showing the long decline, in real and nominal terms of the cost of long distance:
James Robertson doesn't like Paul Graham's "Great Hackers."#
That's the trouble with Graham's idea of a hacker. He elevates the sort of developer that lives off in the clouds, building their own idea of perfection without regard to what anyone else might need. You know what? I don't need that kind of guy on my team - Graham can keep him. I want the kind of people we have on the Cincom Smalltalk team now - extremely bright, highly motivated developers - who listen and respond to customers. Are they perfect? Heck no, no more than I'm a perfect Product Manager. We know who pays the bills though. I'm not sure Graham gets that part.
Tyler Cowen links to a story about how children don't like playing games with their fathers.#
Children rate their fathers as among their least popular playmates because they are too competitive, according to research among more than 1,000 youngsters.
They "played to win", lacked imagination or were simply at a loss as to how to play games, said the Children's Play Council, which commissioned the survey with the Children's Society.
Children up to the age of 12 would rather play with their friends, their mother or their brothers and sisters.
I wonder if there is a difference to the child between fathers who don't want to insulate their children from the real world of people who can beat them at a game and fathers who are just trying to win to put the kid down.
Tyler Cowen on a common "myth" about free trade.#
I am all for free trade, as loyal readers of MR will know. But it is a common myth to think that agricultural free trade will cause say, Africa, to blossom or achieve significantly greater gains from world markets. Even if African consumers end up paying lower prices for food, African producers will see very mixed results. And how effectively do we expect the damaged producers to be reallocated to other sectors? Africa as a whole could still benefit in the longer run, given the theory of comparative advantage, but this is hardly the scenario that everyone has in mind.
LWN Weekly Edition for July 29, 2004 is available and has a report from OLS.#
Awesome! Everybody loves a makeout party.#
Michael Williams comments on transgenders:#
Some may be quick to claim that these suicides are caused by a society that refuses to accept the transgendered, but isn't is more likely that a person who would want to undergo irreversible surgery to change his gender is already pretty disturbed? Wouldn't he be better served by counseling than by pandering to his psychosis by validating his self-destructive impulses? One of the tragedies of modern anything-goes morality is that people who really need help are dismissed as simply living an alternative lifestyle; it costs lives and ruins families.
All I know is that I haven't seen a man trapped in a woman's body since before I was born.
François-René Rideau writes about Justice, Police, and Government.#
Some people, including many libertarians, argue against the principle of "Preemptive Strike". To be just, you should never strike first, they say, for justice is about doing to culprits according to what they've actually done, and not according to speculations about what they could have done. Yeah, right. With such a principle, you should wait for the suicide bomber to kill hundreds and more, before you may punish him? I hope you can put together the bits to which he was the first to be blown. And a woman should wait for the rapist to rape her, before she may react? And then what, for a perfect reciprocal justice, what she gains is the right to rape him in return? How utterly stupid! Sure, Justice never strikes first. Judicial prosecution against innocents is a bad joke; it isn't Justice to kill a menacing criminal, or to put to jail a burglar who failed at his burglary, or a would-be rapist who was arrested before he could have his ways, or a fraud who failed to deceive his target. No it ain't Justice, and those who claim it is are morons or frauds indeed. But there is such thing as Police, and Police is exactly what these things are: preventing villains from doing harm.
The second half of the third paragraph is the most important part to read.
Peter Leeson ponders how to solve "the homeless problem."#
The homeless problem is a hard one to crack. The way I see it, there are basically two ways to reduce the number of homeless people wandering around in the streets--increase the cost of "being homeless" or decrease the benefit. Increasing the cost is hard to do. Short of punishments that involve violating the Constitution, it's pretty hard to raise the cost of being homeless. Fines won't work, and even jail probably won't either. Three meals and a roof--albeit in a jailhouse--are often preferable to eating out of a garbage can and sleeping on the sidewalk. In short, it's tough to take something away from someone who doesn't have anything to begin with. Reducing the benefits of homelessness can prove equally challenging. For obvious reasons, homeless people tend to situate themselves in populated areas with lots of tourists when possible. This is what makes Las Vegas a more attractive place to panhandle than a rural town in Montana with a population of 3. So, unless Las Vegas is willing to cut down on the very features of the city that draw people to it in the first place, it's going to have to deal with some bonus panhandling and public urination. Enjoy.
What about making it easier for these people to get jobs, or people to give them to them? Indentured servitude* or below minimum-wage jobs come to mind.
* If you don't like the idea of indentured servitude, try to think of a better term for joining the military voluntarily (rather than forcibly in a draft.)
Michael Williams points to John Kerry missing "38 of 49 public hearings during the eight years he served on the [Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.]"#
David Boaz: "The Left and Right are in the Same Sorry Rut."#
[Liberals] and conservatives have more in common than you might think.
Both believe in government magic. And they want you to believe in it too. They want you to believe the president can be Superman, Santa Claus and Mother Teresa all rolled into one and that he can cure poverty and racism, keep kids off drugs and keep families together. Magical thinking is cute among children. But adults should know that the world is complicated and that legislative actions often fail, or backfire, or have unintended consequences or disappear into bureaucratic sinkholes.
Both ignore history. Liberals look at the 20th century's grand experiment of capitalism versus socialism -- the United States versus the Soviet Union, Western Europe versus Eastern Europe, China versus Hong Kong -- and somehow conclude that what the U.S. needs today is more socialism. National health insurance, a more centralized educational system, government regulation for our most dynamic industries -- in every case ignoring the historical triumph of competition and freedom. Conservatives think government can restore the world of the 1950s, ignoring the most basic lesson of history: Things change.
Just once I'd like to see Hollywood make a film in which the International Red Cross and Amnesty International, backed by wealthy Sandinistas, conspire to spark a number of simultaneous school shootings by disgruntled, bullied geeks; and then use the anti-gun sentiment to convince the American public to repeal the Second Amendment, upon which time the Chinese invade the country. Sound silly? Throw in a Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity cameo to play the CNN interviewer and you've got the antithesis of Demme's remake.
Ralph Fiennes is Lord Voldemort#
It's time to download your Torah studies.#
Andrew Moroz quotes Bush somewhat misleadingly.#
In a recent speech, Bush declared that his administration will "never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people." (source)
The quote in context:
Third, this bill meets our commitment to America's Armed Forces by preparing them to meet the threats of tomorrow. Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we. We must never stop thinking about how best to defend our country when we all must always be forward-thinking.
I no longer care about the battle for the definition of blogging or the meaning of it all. But, Seth Finkelstein is still the best defender against insanity.#
Arnold Kling wrote an essay about Robert Frank and his happiness research.#
Frank makes a strong claim that people cannot make a rational choice between tangible and intangible consumption, always choosing too much of the former. However, if this theory were correct, it would seem to me that it would lead to a convergence of lifestyles. Everyone would have a similar commute, a similar job, and an almost-identical collection of goods and services.
Instead, what I observe is greater lifestyle diversity. Compared with fifty years ago, there are more women who work outside the home, but many women choose to stay at home or work part time. Compared with fifty years ago, there are more people who retire in their fifties, but there are many people who work well into their seventies. There are affluent people living in parts of downtown Washington, DC that were slums several decades ago, and there are also affluent people living in rural areas 50 miles away. There are people who watch television whenever they are at home, and there are people who rarely watch it.
And earlier he wrote a similar essay on Richard Laylard's research in the same area:
Layard's analytical edifice rests on an empirical foundation of survey evidence known as "happiness research." Psychologists will ask people questions such as "would you rather earn $50,000 in a world where others earn half that or earn $100,000 in a world where others earn double that?" The responses are used as indicators of whether people value relative or absolute income. Layard reports that these surveys indicate that most people would prefer higher relative income to higher absolute income.
Economists tend to distrust survey research. We believe that people indicate their desires by how they behave--we call this "revealed preference." For example, we rarely see affluent people move into poor neighborhoods in order to enjoy higher relative incomes. We often see immigrants come to the United States knowing that they will be relatively poor. Thus, their behavior appears to suggest that people value absolute income rather than relative income. Given a conflict between surveys and behavior, economists tend to view the survey results as unreliable.