Immorality East and West: Are Immoral Behaviors Especially Harmful, or Especially Uncivilized?

Emma Buchtel et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming

Abstract: What makes some acts immoral? Although Western theories of morality often define harmful behaviors as centrally immoral, whether this is applicable to other cultures is still under debate. In particular, Confucianism emphasizes civility as fundamental to moral excellence. We describe three studies examining how the word immoral is used by Chinese and Westerners. Layperson-generated examples were used to examine cultural differences in which behaviors are called “immoral” (Study 1, n = 609; Study 2, n = 480), and whether “immoral” behaviors were best characterized as particularly harmful versus uncivilized (Study 3, N = 443). Results suggest that Chinese were more likely to use the word immoral for behaviors that were uncivilized, rather than exceptionally harmful, whereas Westerners were more likely to link immorality tightly to harm. More research into lay concepts of morality is needed to inform theories of moral cognition and improve understanding of human conceptualizations of social norms.

Nod to Kevin Lewis

Winnie the Pooh, First Day on the Job. Also LAST Day...

This young woman did not really think through the way the Winnie the Pooh costume was supposed to look.  She likely meant well, but....Well, see for yourself.

Need to be more careful about putting the pants on.  If you put them on backwards, you'll scare the children, and amuse me.   And William H, who was amused enough to send it in.

Pretty High Up, Without Ropes or Harnesses

This is remarkable.



The backstory, and some still photos.

Nod to Susan L.

Fox Wash, Donkey Rinse

So, I saw this article, "Wal-Mart Recalls Donkey Meat in China," and I assumed that people were complaining that Wal-Mart was selling donkey meat as if it were pork.

But...no.  The problem is that Wal-Mart is selling fox meat as if it were donkey meat.  Selling donkey meat is fine. "Damn,  Xiùyīng, this tastes like ass!  Where did you get this?"

"Wal-Mart, isn't it great?"

"It sure is!  Can I have some more?"

And so I had to go to Warren Zevon for a title.  Sometimes it's the only way.

On the Road: Excerpt

How times have changed. Jack Kerouac's description of a hip NY party in the late 1940s in On the Road:

The party was enormous; there was something going on in every corner...There was even a Chinese girl.

Apparently some guy went upstairs with her. But then he was horny again in three hours.

(Nod to Raoul)

D-Boo Deals

I think D-Boo pretty much p'wns this guy. But to be fair the other guy appears to be an idiot.

Still, give credit where credit is due: Donald Boudreaux, we salute you! Grow on, you crazy China! I would like for all of us to be rich, NOT for the US to be dominant.

Big Foot, but not THAT Big!

Man orders size 14.5 slipper, gets size 1450.

Not convinced that this is real. A little too pat, at the expense of those "wacky Chinese." Still, a good picture. "Real" slipper at lower left.

(Nod to the Blonde)

UPDATE: More and more questions. "His oversized foot..." FOOT? He only has one? Apparently, because he even says, "I am going to sell it on Ebay." Not them, it. Wouldn't it be a little strange to get an order for one slipper? I mean, even separately from the size 1450 thing, which is probably pretty common, if Art Carden buys shoes. Overall, I cry bullish.

No HCR, No Jobs

I win drinks in bars sometimes by betting on the answers to two questions. First, what nation in the world "lost" the most jobs between 1990 and 2005? Second, what nation in the world leads in the value of manufacturing products? (Yes, I have fussed about this before, it's true)

The answers are the U.S. and China, but not in that order. China lost by far the most manufacturing jobs between 1990 and 2005, and the U.S. still leads the next largest manufacturing economy by a full 25%.

Think about it: in 1990, a "factory" in China was a large shed with 1,200 workers with sewing macihines, sitting beside a pile of patterns, cloth, and scraps. Today that factory is 100 times as productive, but it only has 30 employees tending modern and lightning fast machines.

The same thing has happened in the U.S., in industry after industry. As we increased our output, we "lost" jobs to increased productivity. We didn't ship those jobs to China; China lost even more jobs than we did.

The difference is that China more than replaced its lost jobs with new jobs, in new industries. Until recently, the U.S. has always been able to do that, too. What has changed?

The problem is both obvious and hard to see: it's health care costs. The U.S. has produced quite a few new service sector jobs, jobs at the lower end of the pay scale, jobs that don't usually come with health benefits.

But those "good" jobs, the ones that President is looking for? Health care costs have driven a wedge between what employers pay and what they get in terms of productivity. Wages for workers in many industries has been flat, or nearly flat, in real terms since 1990. But total compensation, especially health care costs on the best jobs, has increased at a rate of more than 3% per year on average. (Census Report in 2008)

Employers paying more, workers seeing no increase in take-home pay: a constantly increasing wedge being driven into job growth. More than all of our productivity growth has been sucked into the voracious maw of health care costs. Until we break the connection between jobs and health care, there is no way for the U.S. to begin to recover job growth.

Unfortunately, the fiasco of HCR in 2009 made this problem worse, not better. Our HCR law created a complex, expensive system with no cost controls. And since insurance cannot cost less than the care it covers, this implicit but very real tax on job creation is hamstringing the recovery.

The wisdom of the American businessman

People, did you know that California was bankrupt? Me neither.

Did you know that the Chinese government "manages its economy with incredible care"? Me neither.

Do you know that the US really needs to make some cool five year plans like China (and the Soviet Union, and North Korea and Cuba)? Me neither.

That is, I didn't know any of these gems until I read Robert J. Herbold's Op Ed in today's WSJ, which is titled "China vs. America: Which is the Developing Country?" (I am not making any of this up).

Here is a link to the article and let me highly recommend it as a fun way to start your day.

If I understood how to do it, this would be a great "grand game" opportunity.

Cheaper is an innovation

I have this on-going argument with my man K-Koopa.

My claim is that the Chinese are performing important innovations in solar power panels. Not big changes, but marginal ones that will make production cheaper and will make use of solar power possible.

(And, as Angus has noted, this is a GOOD thing...for us)

Anyway, Matt Ridley makes a more general form of that argument: marginal changes that reduce cost are the core innovations we can expect from active economies. The major innovations (steel, steam engines, transistors, silicon circuits) are pretty rare. The key innovations are finding ways to make other innovations affordable and mass produced.

China and the US Debt

China and the United States: The Bonds of Debt, by Donald D. Hester
Professor of Economics, Emeritus
The University of Wisconsin – Madison

Abstract
This paper explores the large and growing indebtedness of the United States to the People’s Republic of China. Beginning with the 1971 reestablishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries, international trade between them expanded but was very modest until the mid 1980s. At that point, China under Deng Xiaoping adopted a variation on the successful export strategy that had been pioneered by Japan and the smaller Asian “tigers”. The first section of the paper analyzes the distinctive features of this variation and provides tabular information about trade and foreign exchange balances and the exchange rate between the dollar and yuan. The second section proposes a crude game-theoretic discussion of what each country might gain and lose from their large growing financial entanglement in the short and long run. The third section is a discussion of the limits of the imbalance and how U.S. debts to and Chinese claims on other countries impact the relation between the P.R.C. and the U.S. The concluding section focuses on the paradox of a poor and rapidly growing authoritarian country financing an undisciplined and relatively declining democratic superpower.

Is Thomas Friedman "the stupidest man alive" ?

Well he certainly has stiff competition (most notably Donald Luskin (see here and here), but this NY Times column puts Sir Thomas directly in the running.

His argument is that "Red China has decided to become Green China" and since (according to him) going green is a zero sum game, they are going to bury stupid dumb corrupt America under a green on red avalanche:

Unfortunately, we’re still not racing. It’s like Sputnik went up and we think it’s just a shooting star. Instead of a strategic response, too many of our politicians are still trapped in their own dumb-as-we-wanna-be bubble, where we’re always No. 1...

There are, as you might imagine, a few problems with his argument. First off, he has no evidence that China has actually decided to go green. He mentions exactly two things. (1) An American "solar equipment maker" has opened a research center in China, and (2) A Chinese solar panel manufacturer told him that the party secretary of the town where the company is located told the Chinese business man that he wanted the party to support the business.

Oh my!


Even dumber than the notion that China, the world's biggest polluter, has gone green is the notion that going green is a zero sum competition. Friedman doesn't even try to argue for this point, he simply assumes it as self evident.

Friedman does find another idiot to quote here:

“If they invest in 21st-century technologies and we invest in 20th-century technologies, they’ll win,” says David Sandalow, the assistant secretary of energy for policy.

Oh my!

He then concludes, in classic stupidest man fashion, by completely undercutting his argument:

Of course, China will continue to grow with cheap, dirty coal, to arrest over-eager environmentalists and to strip African forests for wood and minerals. Have no doubt about that. But have no doubt either that, without declaring it, China is embarking on a new, parallel path of clean power deployment and innovation. It is the Sputnik of our day. We ignore it at our peril.

My conclusion: Thomas Friedman is a prime challenger for the position of stupidest man alive. We ignore him at our comedic peril.