The Times is confused

Regular readers of the New York Times know that the Grey Lady fancies herself a champion of the common man. Recent articles and editorials have focused on the hardships faced by ordinary folks confronted with the rising costs of energy and food, as well as the number of jobs being lost overseas due to evil international trade and big, scary corporations. See what I mean here, here, and here.

The Times is also opposed to anything involving actions taken by the Bush administration, pretty much regardless of what they are. So naturally, when pro-business lobbyists (corporations! ew!) start lining up in support of last-minute reforms, a ludicrously-biased article (not an editorial) against any and all of the proposed changes qualifies as some of the news that's fit to print. Trouble is, the Times pretty much cherry-picks all the bad stuff that would come from the reforms without considering any potential benefits, advocating policies that will worsen the problems they courageously publicize in the above examples.

If rising energy costs are a problem, especially as temperatures are dropping all over the northern US, shouldn't we be looking for ways to let energy companies offer lower prices for their product? If you write for the New York Times, the answer is no.

At the Interior Department, coal companies are lobbying for a regulation that would allow them to dump rock and dirt from mountaintop mining operations into nearby streams and valleys. It would be prohibitively expensive to haul away the material, they say, and there are no waste sites in the area. Luke Popovich, a vice president of the National Mining Association, said that a Democratic president was more likely to side with “the greens.”

It may very well be that letting coal mining companies dump their waste products in streams is a bad idea that should be made illegal. The sticking point is that that people don't just dig up coal and dump rocks into streams because they think it's fun - they do it because they're trying to make electricity, which is an expensive process. Paying people to drive trucks long distances for a more environmentally-friendly dumping site will inevitably raise the costs of energy production. That the Times is simultaneously against people being cold in the wintertime (a very bold stance, by the way) and pretty clearly against any reforms that might lower the price of energy is simply irresponsible journalism.

The Times is also - along with most of the normal world - bravely and vehemently opposed to hunger. Supporting measures that might reduce the cost of chicken production, however, seems to be a little further than the paper is willing to go.

Perdue Farms, one of the nation’s largest poultry producers, said that it was “essentially impossible to provide an accurate estimate of any ammonia releases,” and that a reporting requirement would place “an undue and useless burden” on farmers.

But environmental groups told the Bush administration that “ammonia emissions from poultry operations pose great risk to public health.” And, they noted, a federal judge in Kentucky has found that farmers discharge ammonia from their barns, into the environment, so it will not sicken or kill the chickens.

I'm not entirely sure what that last sentence means (surely concentrated ammonia in a barn is different from a few parts per million in the atmosphere), but again we are faced with a direct conflict of interest. Chicken is food, which can help make hunger go away. Unfortunately, those nasty prices sometimes get in the way of everyone having as much chicken as they want. So of course, if hunger is a problem, food prices are the cause. Letting chicken farmers lower their costs (one might think) would be a good thing.

The way this article is written is pretty obviously slanted, but the real problem with it is that big business lobbyists are portrayed as evil money-grubbing planet-destroying poverty-spreading Bush cuddlers. Environmental lobbyists are quoted and presented as people who just care about the earth, and what could possibly be wrong with that? The consequences of the regulations they support aren't really given any thought.

Personally, I care more about hungry, cold people than I do about ammonia or river contamination, but really I care about both. I don't think writing an article explaining the costs and benefits of both sides would be too difficult. How much cheaper would energy be if coal companies could dump their waste products wherever they want? How many more people could buy chicken if farmers didn't have to worry about putting ammonia into the air? Is ammonia pollution really a problem? If so, how much should we be worrying about it? The Times doesn't seem to know the answer to these questions, and I doubt they thought to ask them in the first place. That's alright, though. Nobody really pays attention to national papers of record anyway.

Oh.

Big day for Venezuela

Chavez' constitutional reforms are being put to a national vote today. Maybe they'll be passed enthusiastically by a completely legitimate election, maybe not. But I'm having a hard time envisioning a guy like Hugo throwing up his hands and acknowledging the "will of the people" if the results don't go his way. That's just me, though - we'll see what happens.

These are the new storms, same as the old storms

One of my greatest annoyances in today's world of environmentally-sensitive college students is the tendency for people my age to blame almost anything weather-related on global warming. Seemingly no climatic event can escape global warming's sinister influence.

Unseasonably-warm fall day? And to think, people say global warming isn't a problem. Big snow storm in January? Global warming causes extreme weather patterns! Endangered species? Global warming. Bad crop season? Global warming. Really cold winter day? Global warming.

For many such students, the horrible event of hurricane Katrina's landfall was simply fuel to the fire. All those displaced and devastated people would have been saved if we'd just stopped using fossil fuels, don't you see? ... Storms get stronger and more frequent because of global warming, didn't you know that? ... Just look how much stronger hurricanes are today - look how much more damage they're causing! ... and on and on.

I don't want to give the impression that I'm refuting global warming as an existing phenomenon. Clearly the earth is warmer now than it was in the recent past, and clearly human beings are putting things into the sky that cause the planet's temperature to increase. What remains to be seen, however, is whether we humans have had an impact equal to that of lighting a match in a building of several stories, or to, say, turning on the oven in your kitchen (see Coyote Blog for a better explanation).

Beyond any doubt, however, is the fact that strange weather patterns have existed as long as there has been weather. Pick any cold climate. Pick Vermont. Vermont has been having the occasional crazy-warm days in the middle of December for centuries, just as there have been temperatures on July nights that dip into the 40's. I have heard someone remark, aghast, at the powerful affects of global warming during the weirdly warm days every goddamn time. But, of course, no one mentions the cold days, they just complain about the cold. Similarly, hurricanes have been happening for a very long time. Just because we happen to see a big one come along at the same time as lots of people start to learn more and more about global warming does not mean that the two are related.

Patrick J. Michaels of the Cato Institute, summarizing a study performed by Roger Pielke, Jr. of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado, explains:

Is the planet warmer than it was? Yes. Is there any trend in hurricane-related damages in the United States, where good records of damages exist? After accounting simultaneously for inflation, population, and property values, no.

Even without accounting for population increases (which have been large), Katrina doesn't top the damages list. Again, Mr. Michaels:

Katrina pales in comparison to the Great Miami hurricane of 1926. Pielke gives two estimates, averaging around $148 billion. AIR pegs it at $160 billion. Given the trajectory of property values and population in Florida, Pielke notes that a $500 billion hurricane (in today's dollars) should be quite likely by the 2020s.

A little history. After the Great Miami and Katrina, the remaining top ten storms (in descending order) occurred in 1900 (Galveston 1), 1915 (Galveston 2), 1992 (Andrew), 1983 (New England), 1944 (unnamed), 1928 (Lake Okeechobee 4), 1960 (Donna/Florida), and 1969 (Camille/Mississippi). There is no obvious bias toward recent years. In fact, the combination of the 1926 and 1928 hurricanes places the damages in 1926-35 nearly 15% higher than 1996-2005, the last decade Pielke studied.

Michaels adds at the end of the article that monetary damages from hurricanes and tropical storms do show an increasing trend, but only if factors like property values (above inflation) and population aren't taken into account. It's just a silly, childish way of comparing costs, almost as bad as comparing earthquake damages in pre- and post-1849 San Francisco without adjusting for the fact that there was no one around before 1849.

So stop it, environmental people, if you're reading. I'm right there with you on the whole defending the environment thing, really, but citing stupid day-to-day anecdotal evidence confuses a very important debate about the future of our race and planet. Thank you.

I will continue putting bullets through my foot as long as my opponent pledges to do the same

The setting: CNN/YouTube Republican Debate

The question (#11): will you eliminate farm subsidies?

The answer (from Giuliani and Romney): blah, blah, energy independence, blah, can't rely on other countries to supply our food, blah blah, NOT UNTIL EUROPE REDUCES THEIR OWN EVEN LARGER SUBSIDIES.

That'll show 'em.

European governments punish their own people by confiscating the equivalent of billions of dollars in tax revenues and putting it toward the propping up of inefficient, expensive farms. They could simply let European citizens select their own food based on price and quality, but they don't. As a response, the US government turns around and does the exact same thing to Americans. Fantastic.

Sort of like a hostage negotiator who grabs someone off the street and shouts into the hijacked building, "LET THE PRISONERS GO ...OR THIS POOR BASTARD GETS IT!"

Fear and Loathing in Guanajuato

Last night I was lucky enough to get invited to a costume party at a friend of a friend of a friend's apartment. I didn't really have a costume, so I shaved most of my week-old stubble, leaving behind a red, horseshoe-shaped Hulk Hogan style goatee and flavor saver – which I think might become a Fu Manchu with a little cultivation – to go with my already unkempt sideburns. I threw on a grey wool zig-zag-patterned Mexican-style tunic, a bright white cowboy hat, a pair of khakis, and I was ready to go. I still didn't have a costume, but at least I looked like a dumbass.

Around seven o’clock my Norwegian roommate and I headed out, ate some dinner, bought several 40-ounce bottles of Mexican beer, and rolled to a different apartment to pregame. The group waiting for us there consisted of one American, one Mexican, one German, and five Norwegians, all but two of whom had put together a costume of some sort. We sat around the kitchen counter for a few hours, drinking the beer, listening to music, and trying to determine the best adhesive for six-foot-six inch Burt Reynolds’ fake mustache (scotch tape was eventually selected, but it came off every time he smiled). Once our collective blood-alcohol had climbed sufficiently, we decided to make the 20-minute trek to the real party.

Off we went, strutting through downtown Guanajuato under the full moon, eating up all the shouts and horn honks sent our way by shocked and amused Guanajuatensis. Among the nine of us were two trolls, their hair dyed green and styled to stick straight up in a wavy, fluffy, flame-like ordeal; one cat; one Aristotles, wrapped in a golden sheet, laurel crown fashioned from pieces of a Christmas wreath; one Spanish missionary, long beige poncho draped over his shoulders, a crucifix dangling from his neck; one oddly-dressed white boy (me); and, of course, a giant Burt Reynolds, popping his collar and winking or pointing two parallel index fingers at each gawking passerby.

The walk was really surreal. I kept thinking of certain scenes from "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," when Johnny Depp's character (Hunter Thompson) walks through public places on all kinds of drugs, constantly convinced that people are watching him as he stares back at them with wide, wild eyes, careening dangerously through large crowds. The difference is that we were largely in control, but people really were staring at us with their jaws hanging slack. I got the sense that if we had been on acid, or mescaline, or whatever other crazy hallucinogens Thompson ingested in that story, we might have dreamed ourselves up and been really terrified - for good reason, mind you. Instead, we were the hallucination, and every innocent, sober convenience store patron, pedestrian, and bus passenger got to trip out for a couple minutes, whether they wanted to or not.

Truth be told, we felt sort of untouchable, like partiers cruising through town on a parade float, separated from the masses by a layer of absurdity.

* * *

I’m not sure what it is about dressing strangely that changes the way people act, but parties with alcohol and costumes always have a distinctly different feel from normal gatherings. It could be that I’m just a little bit insecure when I wear regular, this-is-who-I-am clothing, and that costumes allow me to feel like the things I do aren’t really of consequence. I don’t act completely crazy, but I get the sense that I’m more comfortable being outgoing and that I’m more creative when it comes to striking up conversations. I don’t think I’m alone on this, either. I bet lots of people feel a little more open, more free, and more relaxed when they throw on a stupid costume (as long as everyone else looks stupid, too). Costumes serve as sort of an equalizer for people who otherwise feel uncool, unattractive, or just generally awkward in social situations, and they were working their magic last night at the party. Everyone, as far as I could tell, was having a fantastic time, and we didn’t stop partying until well after five AM.

So here’s my suggestion: let’s make costumes a more regular part of normal life. Let’s do what we can to make truly outrageous, disarming, asshole-ish clothing more accepted. You wanna go to work as Batman today? Go right ahead! UPS man, you wanna deliver packages in drag? Just make sure the packages get there on time. Going shopping today? Throw on a dress, paint your face teal, hike up some striped socks, spike your hair, lace up your basketball shoes, and hit the town!

I could be mistaken, but I don’t see insecurities going away any time soon. With that in mind, let's advocate more lunacy and fun ... even if it just means more costume parties.

More from Discover

This article is pretty sweet. It doesn't strike me as entirely out of the realm of possible occurrences that humans will figure out a way to stop the aging process entirely sometime in the next few centuries, which in some ways would be great. In a lot of other ways, I think it might suck.

Regardless, this article should have been called "How long would the elves in Lord of the Rings really Live?" or maybe "If you were Super Mario, and you ate one of those flower things, how long could you go without falling in a hole or getting crushed by huge pillars of stone?"

Día Acción de Gracias

I spent most of today really, really wishing I could fly north for some of Ma and Pa Gelbs' delicious cooking. Instead, I'm here in Mexico, where celebrating Thanksgiving would be sort of like us gringos taking the day off from work and preparing feasts in honor of the arrival of Spanish Conquistadors in the 16th century. I dunno if that analogy works perfectly, but you get the idea. It would be weird.

Lucky for me, though, the program I'm with - which is entirely run by Mexicans - decided to throw a little party, complete with traditional Turkey Day fixin's. We ate in the dining hall of one of the host-moms' houses, which I assume is more of a mansion, though I didn't see the whole thing (our 10 tables, each of which could seat 10 people, fit easily. I don't know anyone in the US with a dining room this big).

There was decent beer, good food, and a few program directors and students made little speeches, thanking everyone (how appropriate!) for their contributions throughout the semester. The wait staff (!) even walked around with pretty little pewter vessels in one hand ("Mas gravy, señor?"). The first course was a big plate of tide-bottle-orange spaghetti, which threw me off a little, but everything else was pretty much spot-on, right down to the pumpkin pie dessert. The whole thing went off without a hitch, and I really couldn't have asked for a better way to spend my first Thanksgiving away from my family.

I'm thankful for my family, my friends, my health, and all the other wonderful things going on in my life right now. Thanks to everyone who's taken a few minutes out of their day to read this blog. I'm having a blast doing the writing, and I hope I've provided some insights that made the trip to this address worthwhile.

Hope everyone had a fantastic Thursday. Take 'er easy.

Just a fancy term for economics?

Several articles and posts have been published recently about the potential demise of the internet as we know it. This one from the BBC says that by 2010 we may already be experiencing slower downloads and more frequently failed transactions. Since 2008 is only a little over a month away, a failing internet two years from now seems like a pretty big deal to me, especially since I'm having so much fun with this brand-new blog.

But as a closet Promethean (whoops), I probably won't be losing a lot of sleep on this one. I'm not sure if the term is widely used, but Prometheans are people like Julian Simon who basically believe that human ingenuity will allow us to get it together and figure shit out. I still consider myself something of a borderline Promethean, though, since ... well, I just haven't been around very long. Additionally, I think the term itself might come from people who look at Julian Simon and other pro-growth economists and scoff, so I don't know if I should be comfortable slapping myself with the opposition's label. Whatever, too late.

Anyway, I strongly believe that humans will sort out this internet crisis before it becomes a serious problem. Seems to me, people like John Doyle over at CalTech will have the situation under control. Carl Zimmer's article in Discover Magazine explains Doyle's experience, ideas, and even some of the toys he's already been working on (like the one that runs fast enough to send every word from every document in the Library of Congress across the country in 15 minutes). It's a nice piece.

Needless to say, much of the information being processed by Doyle and his colleagues is way, way over my head. I have no idea how something like the internet can possibly function properly. Who's responsible for taking care of the servers? How can people work on changing and improving the entire internet when people like me already have such seemingly in-depth access to it? How can the internet really be defined as one single entity when there are so many ISP's, servers, websites, and users? Obviously, I have no idea. I don't even know if these questions make any sense.

What I do know is that the types of insanely complicated, seemingly chaotic networks on which Doyle is an expert are much more obvious than the article makes them seem. The author gives examples like E. Coli bacteria and the inner workings of the human body, comparing them to the internet in their ability to constantly expand and adapt while remaining unbelievably intricate without the aid of any obvious regulators or outside influence. Their trade is defined as follows:

"Control theorists, roughly speaking, try to understand how complicated things can run efficiently, quickly, and safely instead of crashing, exploding, or otherwise grinding to a halt."

Sounds an awful lot like markets, no? I wonder if control theorists study free exchange, the system by which huge societies make themselves every day more robust in terms of wealth and complexity. Perhaps they travel to Hong Kong, a place where each transactions between individuals are appallingly simple, and yet the island's interactions with itself and the rest of the world are nuanced at a level beyond the powers of human observation.

Nah. Probably a bunch of statists.

Good try, though

I'm almost certain that Mark Winne is a very nice person. According to his editorial in yesterday's Washington Post, he has spent much of his life working to organize food banks and food drives in an effort to help feed the hungry. Any life dedicated to such services is admirable.

Unfortunately, it seems Mark has also dedicated much of his life to being a moron.

See, Mr. Winne has had a recent change of heart. Things he used to believe in and work to create, like charitable food donations, have fallen out of favor in his eyes. Check out his description of US food banks:

"America's far-flung network of emergency food programs -- from Second Harvest to tens of thousands of neighborhood food pantries -- constitutes one of the largest charitable institutions in the nation. Its vast base of volunteers and donors and its ever-expanding distribution infrastructure have made it a powerful force in shaping popular perceptions of domestic hunger and other forms of need. But in the end, one of its most lasting effects has been to sidetrack efforts to eradicate hunger and its root cause, poverty."

I mean, who even hears about poverty anymore? I used to worry about it all the time, but now that there are food banks - fuck it! I'm sure everyone's fine. It's kinda like the Red Cross - ever since they came around, who talks about health care problems anymore? Clearly they convinced Washington and the general public not to worry long ago. Red Cross has things under control.

I'm trying not to be completely cynical here, since I actually sort of agree with part of this article. The idea of creating a population of people dependent on handouts is a little bit scary, and food banks certainly have the potential to do just that. But Winne's conclusion is that the government should be spending lots more money in efforts to "end poverty." In the process he insinuates that private, charitable donations create dependency, while handouts funded by taxpayers on threat of force somehow do not. His thinking reminds me of the now widely-spurned Labor Theory of Value, according to which consumers price goods based on the processes required to create them. The theory is wrong because most people generally don't care how products are made. They value things for what they are as a final product. Diamonds are expensive because they are rare and beautiful, not because people are impressed by the elaborate processes undergone in their extraction from the bowels of the earth.

Along those same lines, people value food because it makes them less hungry. They value donations of foodstuffs because money not spent on food is money that can be spent on other valuable goods, such as more food. And since free food is free food, I doubt people care very much how they get it. They probably would line up in even greater numbers for free handouts of cash, which can be used to buy any product, and which the government already organizes through welfare programs.

Now, welfare programs are widely lambasted for their inefficiencies and lack of poverty alleviation, and I can understand the argument that their real problems come from not enough funding. I don't agree, but I can see the logic. Unconscionable, however, is the implication that the problem of dependency can somehow be solved by more government handouts. Just as food is food, a handout is a handout. I'm not opposed to free food giveaways, but their social effects are undeniable (many of them are good). Very deniable is the idea that a difference exists between a government giveaway and a private giveaway, at least for the recipients. Mark actually sums up my point rather nicely in his article's title:

"When Handouts Keep Coming, the Food Line Never Ends."

Worst of all, though, is Winne's notion that poverty would somehow be alleviated if the following took place:

"Put all the emergency food volunteers and staff and board members from across the country on buses to Washington, to tell Congress to mandate a living wage, health care for all and adequate employment and child-care programs, and you would have a convoy that might stretch from New York City to our nation's capital."

Mandate a livable fu**ing wage??! That's your solution???

Say it with me now:
Price controls cause supply shortages. Low income is better than zero income. Mandated wage floors will not help.
Price controls cause supply shortages. Low income is better than zero income. Mandated wage floors will not help.
Price controls cause supply shortages. Low income is better than zero income. Mandated wage floors will not help.

Mark can ignore the laws of supply and demand all he wants, but they're not going anywhere.

Okay (deep breath). I feel better.

I guess that settles it?

The illegal immigration debate in the United States seems to be largely over, at least from my perspective. I just finished watching both of the the recent major party debates, and not one leading candidate suggested the possibility that illegal immigrants are anything but a "growing problem." The candidates' ideas of how to keep illegals out are varied, but overall they agree: undocumented aliens are a disease which needs to be cured (I should note that Kucinich sort of came out in favor of freer immigration, but he's against free trade and loves unions, which creates a rather large conflict of interest. Also, let's be real - he's got no shot at the nomination).

Lots of candidates from both parties readily support increased legal immigration, by which I suppose they mean the flow of immigrants who have been approved on a case-by-case basis by our government. Today, legal immigrants tend to be educated, skilled workers or their family members, but that's only because their numbers are so limited by bureaucratic quotas and inefficiencies (granted, we still allow more immigrants to enter each year than any other country in the world). The problem with this "solution" is that eventually we will have to start allowing in immigrants of slightly less impressive backgrounds if we are to expand legal immigration. There are far more people who want to move to the United States than there are skilled workers with good prospects for high-paying jobs, meaning more legal immigration will drastically change the demographic of the immigrant population. Expand immigration enough, and the same people who were supposedly stealing jobs and committing crimes at appalling rates as illegals will be allowed to enter as documented, legal aliens. The "problems" created by inflows of unskilled workers will not have gone away, but the government will have a better idea of who lives where and they'll be able to collect taxes more easily.

So, problem ... solved?

To me, most politicians approach the immigration debate from the wrong angle to begin with. They view economics as a zero-sum game in which one immigrant's improved fortune has to create some sort of misfortune for an American. That fact is that immigrants can and do create wealth for themselves at no one's expense. The same false logic applies to free trade. Many people assume that jobs and cash being sent abroad have to cause nationals to lose their jobs or lower their wages. John Edwards and Dennis Kucinich often bring up the massive job losses that American workers have incurred as a result of freer trade between the US and China or Mexico. What they never mention is the much larger number of entirely new jobs which have been created as a result of economic growth, a phenomenon inextricably linked to increased trade. Similarly, politicians don't often talk about the available improvements in standards of living for illegal aliens. The continued traffic of immigrants risking almost all of their already-limited assets to get to the US is proof enough of the opportunities that exist there.

To make matters worse, both parties seem to have agreed that we need to start cracking down on employers of illegal immigrants, people whose only crime is the provision of work at a mutually agreed-upon wage. If they've been convinced somewhere along the way that minimum wage laws don't cause unemployment (read: labor shortages), watch what happens when businesses have to start paying every illegal immigrant six bucks an hour.

It seems to me that increased human mobility has almost always been followed by increased human prosperity. For that reason, among others, I believe that people have the right to live wherever they want, provided they obtain their property via consensual means. In fact, if we cancel for xenophobia and racism, any argument for increased immigration restrictions directed at foreigners is really no different from arguing for increased mobility restrictions between states within the US. And why stop there? If immigration restrictions are justifiable because the movement of new people and new workers from Mexico to California hurts Californian workers, shouldn't we be restricting human mobility of all kinds? Doesn't a Vermonter moving to New Hampshire hurt the workers of New Hampshire? What about a Brooklynite moving to Queens?

Even if we accept the horror stories of job losses and drug trafficking supposedly attributable to immigration, the policies being advocated won't make any difference. Immigrants will still be the same exact people with the same exact same desires: get a job, create a better life for myself and my family. Your government can label me however they want.