Markets versus Politics - The Real Choice: … Too often policy arguments proceed as follows: A) politics “fails” because it does not produce the theoretically optimal result, therefore B) market processes are necessary. But B does not follow from A. The failure of government to produce an optimal result does not ensure that market processes will do a better job. From a social democratic perspective – or any perspective that is inherently suspicious of privatization – the burden should be on those advocating market processes to explain why the marketplace can be expected to produce a better result than the political process. In such an inquiry, the theoretical virtues of a basic equilibrium model of perfect competition are no more relevant than Pigouvian theories of government intervention. Both are blackboard abstractions that often have little bearing on what occurs in the real world. What matters is how privatization — and make no mistake, the subordination of political decisions to the marketplace is always political — is likely to affect the status quo ante, and whether the consequences of such intervention (and the attendant rent-seeking, transaction costs, etc.) constitute an improvement in the real world.
The introduction of market mechanisms into politics may be well intentioned, but that does not make it any more likely to generate positive results. Indeed, insofar as noble intentions leave the likely consequences of such interventions unexamined, such policies may make us all worse off.
(see here for original).
Today, European leaders meet to wave through a raft of measures purported to fight terrorism. The public story is that the bombings in Spain have galvanised EU member states into wider and deeper cooperation to prevent and detect terrorism. The reality is that many of the measures to be agreed have little directly to do with fighting terrorism, and much to do with increasing police powers and budgets.
Kieran suggests ” that people who subscribe to Intelligent Design theory need to have the perverse mechanics of childbirth explained to them.” Carl Zimmer goes one step further, and asks why the intelligent design crowd doesn’t embrace “one of the most successful, intricate examples of complexity in nature” - the cancer tumour.
Cancer cells grow at astonishing speeds, defying the many safeguards that are supposed to keep cells obedient to the needs of the body. And in order to grow so fast, they have to get lots of fuel, which they do by diverting blood vessels towards themselves and nurturing new vessels to sprout from old ones. They fight off a hostile immune system with all manner of camouflage and manipulation, and many cancer cells have strategies for fending off toxic chemotherapy drugs. When tumors get mature, they can send off colonizers to invade new tissues. These pioneers can release enzymes that dissolve collagen blocking their path; when they reach a new organ, they can secrete other proteins that let them anchor themselves to neighboring cells. While oncologists are a long way from fully understanding how cancer cells manage all this, it’s now clear that the answer can be found in their genes. Their genes differ from those of normal cells in many big and little ways, working together to produce a unique network of proteins exquisitely suited for the tumor’s success. All in all, it sounds like a splendid example of complexity produced by design. The chances that random natural processes could have altered all the genes required for a cell function as a cancer cell must be tiny—too tiny, some might argue, to be believed.
I’d be more excited if he had started posting to Language Log, but even if we won’t be seeing flashes of linguistic brilliance, it’s still newsworthy that Noam Chomsky has started a blog. The introductory post is a little hard to decipher.
This blog will include brief comments on diverse topics of concern in our time. They will sometimes come from the ZNet sustainer forum system where Noam interacts through a forum of his own, sometimes from direct submissions, sometimes culled from mail and other outlets — always from Noam Chomsky.
Posted by Noam Chomsky
I wouldn’t have guessed that Noam Chomsky calls Noam Chomsky “Noam Chomsky”, but if it’s good enough for Rickey Henderson I guess it’s good enough for the Noam.
Hat tip: NicoPitney over at Kos.
Interesting, but also a bit demoralizing, to see the bloggers of the Harvard Law Federalist Society on the side of Intelligent Design Theory. (See Cosma Shalizi and Brian Leiter for context.) Maybe it’s only a short hop from originalism about the Founding Fathers to creationism about God the Father. They’d probably describe themselves as being on the side of free speech and free thought rather than pseudo-science and sophistry, though their hysterical description of Leiter’s criticisms as “thuggish,” “vicious,” “naked threats” leads me to think that Harvard Law students are a lot more thin-skinned than they ought to be. My own view is that people who subscribe to Intelligent Design theory need to have the perverse mechanics of childbirth explained to them.
Update: For somewhat more in-depth and professional commentary on ID and evolution, check out the newly-formed Panda’s Thumb group blog.
Does anyone know if there’s a free electronic copy of Moore’s Principia Ethica online anywhere? It should be out of copyright, so there’d be no legal reason it wouldn’t be posted, but maybe no one thought it important enough to convert to electronic form. I wanted to cut and paste some long sections because I got interested in the role of necessity and a priority in Moore’s meta-ethical views, and it would be more convenient to (a) not have to transcribe things and (b) be able to refer readers immediately to the passages I’m talking about.
Henry’s post on Microsoft as a monopolist is generating a lively discussion. A side-point popped up that I think is worth discussing. As a libertarian, Micha Gertner doesn’t like Henry’s argument that “sometimes (as here) the maintenance of competition requires vigorous state intervention”. Micha asks,
So the solution to a monopoly is … a monopoly? […] Henry’s proposed solution—vigorous state intervention—is no solution at all; it merely sweeps the problem under the rug.
Leaving aside the empirical details — Henry isn’t arguing that the State become a manufacturer of operating systems, Micah equivocates in his use of the word “monopoly” and also understates heroically when he says “the only advantage Microsoft has over Mozilla in this respect is that Internet Explorer comes preinstalled with the Windows operating system” — I just want to focus on Micha’s implication that Henry is arguing in a circle. As it turns out, this kind of argument is a mainstay of social theory. And libertarians are the people most likely to make it in other contexts, as with the claim that the solution to a market failure is more markets. That is, when they acknowledge the reality of market failure at all, free-marketeers often want to argue that the problem isn’t that the market has run amok but that it hasn’t been allowed enough room to work its magic. For example, a market failure in one area — say, negative externalities due to pollution — can be remedied by introducing another market — say, for pollution credits.
Over at Anggarrgoon, Claire is worried about losing the hidden benefits of graduate school.
I finished my dissertation today. … What excuse will I use now when I try to eat cereal with a fork? or have no clean clothes? or when I eat porridge for dinner? probably that I’m making the most of it before I stop being a grad student and have to be respectable…
, dissertations are so useful….
Here’s a true story. When I was reading that a few hours ago, all the talk of food made me kinda hungry. So I headed over to the kitchen, washed a bowl, pulled out the cereal box, and then looked at the clock and realised a bowl of cardboard-flavoured cereal wasn’t what I needed at that time of day. But had I not noticed the clock, I think I’d think that being an academic would have been a pretty good excuse in the circumstances. So provided the job market for Australian linguists is as strong as it should be, Claire will have all the excuses she needs for a long long time.
More seriously, congratulations to Clare on finishing the thesis. I wonder how many people there are so far who have finished a PhD while maintaining an academic blog?
Invisible Adjunct has announced that she will be leaving academia and giving up her blog. It’s a very considerable loss - her blog has been wry, balanced, and very very smart. It’s become the core of a real community. She’s going to be missed.
Brad DeLong speaks to the costs of Microsoft’s market dominance.
I certainly think that I have been harmed by Microsoft’s bundling Internet Explorer with its Windows operating system. Remember the days when there was not one single dominant browser that came preinstalled on 95% of PCs sold? Back then there was ferocious competition in the browser market, as first a number of competitors and then Netscape and Microsoft worked furiously to upgrade their browsers and add new features to them. … And now? There is no progress in browsers at all. Why should anyone (besides crazed open sourcies) write a new browser? Why should Microsoft spend any money improving its browser?
It’s a point that’s made eloquently in Albert Hirschman’s Exit, Voice and Loyalty. Hirschman, who has had far greater influence on political scientists and sociologists than his fellow economists (Brad is an exception) points out that the real costs of monopoly are much greater than the inefficient prices they maintain to extract rents. Monopolies are lazy. They have no reason to respond to their customers - where else, after all, can dissatisfied customers go? Without the threat of exit, monopolies face few incentives to improve their service.
Of course, it’s far harder to model or to measure these effects than it is to measure the inefficiencies caused by monopoly pricing (and even that involves a fair amount of guesswork). Still, they’re the real reason for welcoming the EU’s forthcoming decision to restrain Microsoft’s shenanigans with media player software. If Microsoft has its way, we can expect to have similarly sloppy, bug-ridden media software, with infrequent updates and proprietary standards. This isn’t to say that Microsoft’s competitors have the consumer’s interests at heart: inside every lean, hungry entrepreneur, there’s a bloated monopolist struggling to get out. But without competition, there’s no restraint on firms’ ability to abuse consumers, and sometimes (as here) the maintenance of competition requires vigorous state intervention.
I wish I could have normal recurring dreams like everyone else seems to; falling off buildings, discovering you’re naked in a crowd of people, or even flying. But no. Two or three times a year, unprompted by anything particular in my waking life, I have to re-sit the Leaving Cert. And not just re-sit it. I am sent to a new school half way through the school year, and have to figure out how, this time, I will manage to pass Honours Maths.
The Guardian leader today is about Jack Vettriano “the self-taught Scottish painter of melancholily erotic encounters laced with a subliminal narratives”. Vettriano was the subject of an over-respectful treatment by Melvyn Bragg on British TV the other day. Pointing out the Mr V is now very rich (£500,000) and that the public buys posters of his work in large numbers, the leader-writer asks:
Why is the most popular artist in Britain still shunned by its publicly funded galleries?
To which the answer is, simply and obviously, that his work is kitsch rubbish and that the curators of galleries have an elite function of educating the public and shouldn’t pander to their prejudices. (On this anti-democratic note, I’m off to New York for a week, where I’m sure that neither the Metropolitan nor MOMA have sunk so low as to be hanging Vettriano.)
Most politicians have got the memo that says book-burning is a no-no, but it seems that not all of them realised that this was meant to extend to other forms of written expression as well. It seems an Abercrombie & Fitch t-shirt with the slogan “It’s all relative in West Virginia” (picture below fold) has upset the West Virginia governor Bob Wise (D).
“I write to you today to demand that you immediately remove this item from your stores and your print and online catalogues,” Wise wrote [to Abercrombie & Fitch]. “In addition, these shirts must be destroyed at once to avoid any possibility of resale and proof be given thereof.”(link)
I can see why some people would find the t-shirt offensive. And to be fair the governor is not advocating a law against it. But government officials campaigning for the destruction of written material because of what is written still makes me worried.
Story via Jonathan Ichikawa1.
Where I come from, a “Removal” is when the body of a recently deceased person is transported from their house or the Funeral Home to the Church, where it awaits the funeral ceremony. I believe the phrase “The Viewing” is roughly equivalent in the United States. Which is why Patrick Belton’s words threw me off for a few moments:
Haaretz has a number of good pieces about the removal this morning of Sheikh Yassin: … Dichter argued against Yassin’s removal … while Europeans considered Yassin’s removal (to my mind, dubiously - has anyone seen a fleshed-out argument?) as a violation of international law …
Now, Patrick also quotes a news report that uses the correct word in this context — i.e., “assassination” — so I’m wondering why he avoids it himself. I can’t think of any good argument to prefer a euphemism like “removal” to “assassination,” or even to “killing.” Is it well-established in this context? Is the unarticulated implication here that actions of this sort cannot count as assassinations because they are carried out by the State? This seems obviously wrong. Better to just come out and say that you thought they were right to kill him, I think, than let a euphemism do the work for you. If not, then should I expect to read about “removal attempts” in future? And what does this new usage imply about companies who carry out furniture removals?
Just finished James Hynes’ Kings of Infinite Space, which I found a little disappointing after his very funny The Lecturer’s Tale. KOISP takes up a failed academic (his downfall is described in a previous Hynes novella) who ends up temping as a typist/technical writer for the Texas state government. There’s some clever, funny commentary along the way, including this description of the protagonist’s previous job working for a school textbook company.
For eight months Paul sat in a little gray cube under harsh fluorescent lighting and composed grammar exercises for grades six through twelve. His job was to accommodate an old workbook by expunging any content that did not meet the textbook guidelines of Texas and California, the company’s two biggest markets. Fundamentalist Texas forbade even the most benign references to the supernatural (the first step towards the Satanic sacrifice of newborns), while nutritionally correct California forbade any references to red meat, white sugar or dairy products (the biochemical causes of racism, sexism and homophobia).
Still, the book just doesn’t have as much venom and verve as The Lecturer’s Tale. The setting isn’t as developed; the character sketches aren’t as pointed or as sharp. My very strong impression is that Hynes is much more comfortable describing academia than bureaucracy and office politics - his best jokes still riff off academic debates. Further, the main conceit of the book - downsized penpushers turned feral ghouls, scuttling through the ceilings and walls of office buildings - has been done before, and done better, in William Browning Spencer’s wonderfully droll Resume with Monsters. If you want to read a funny dead-end-job/comedy/horror mash-up, read Browning Spencer; if you want to read Hynes at his best, buy or borrow The Lecturer’s Tale. Unfortunately, Kings of Infinite Space simply isn’t as good as either.
I’ve been reading the Aubrey-Maturin books by Patrick O’Brian and was struck by an episode in Post Captain . The hero, Jack Aubrey has been given command of a ship but is being pursued by his creditors and faces indefinite imprisonment for debt if they catch him. Reaching Portsmouth and his crew, he turns on the bailiffs who have been pursuing him and routs them. Several are knocked down and, in a marvellous twist, Aubrey presses them into service on his ship.
It struck me on reading O’Brian that this kind of thing would happen routinely in a libertarian utopia. On the one hand, bankruptcy and limited liability, the first great pieces of government interference with freedom of contract would be abolished, and imprisonment for debt presumably reintroduced. On the other hand, since most libertarians envisage a minimal state with no real taxing powers but a continuing responsibility for defence, reliance on conscription would be almost inevitable. From the libertarian viewpoint, any form of taxation constitutes slavery, and fairness is not a proper concern of policy, so there can be no particular objection to the press gang as opposed to, say, voluntary recruitment financed by involuntary income taxes.
I arrived in Pasadena (from Sydney) yesterday. Or possibly today. I’m still adjusting to jetlag, driving on the right and Los Angeles in general. The view of the mountains from the hotel is beautiful, at least in the photo in the hotel guidebook. Right now the smog makes them invisible. The area around the hotel has the usual collection of dull office blocks and carpark-like structures that turn out also to be office blocks. I’ve seen three buildings so far that are more than three stories tall, face the street on at least two sides, and have no windows at all: a Bank of America, a Target, and a Macy’s. I don’t have very high expectations when it comes to urban design, but these things look like the Simpsons’ Springfield Mall. They might as well have “Ministry of Truth” or “Central Reprocessing” written on the side. Is Pasadena particularly bad in this respect? Or has nine months away from the U.S. been enough for me to start paying attention to this kind of thing again?
Atrios links to this pretty good Wall Street journal article on the many conflicting accounts about the government’s immediate response to the September 11 attacks. Much of the confusion is probably due to the inevitable difficulty in remembering precise timelines, but I’d bet that at least some of the time some people are deliberately making things up.
One thing I didn’t know was that Cheney’s office is still sticking to the story that there was a credible threat to Air Force One that day. I thought that story had been officially inoperative for years now.
Here’s a semantic construction I hadn’t heard before. (This was on SportsCenter, or some sports show, on the weekend.)
(1) Nevada upset Gonzaga by 19 points on Saturday.
That isn’t, or at least wasn’t, a sentence in my dialect.
Apparently, Coke has nicked its business plan for Dasani from Trotter’s Independent Trading - bottled tap water with added contaminants. Does it glow in the dark too?
Following on from Chris’s post on the ethics of ritual slaughter, I thought I’d put up a link to one of the best things I read last year in the Guardian, on the ins and outs of the Halal meat industry. Suffice it to say that the definition of “Halal”, as with so many regulatory issues in the food industry, is a somewhat fluid concept, subject to the same sorts fo industry lobbying and regulatory capture as any other (reading between the lines, I pick up that the real problem for the halal industry is that if you don’t stun animals before slaughter, then they tend to kick around a bit, damaging the meat and leading to wastage costs which cannot always be passed on to the consumer).
Suffice it to say that if you really believe that it is a grave sin for you to eat meat which was not killed in the precise manner prevalent in Mecca around 622 CE, then it is probably not a good idea to go shopping for stuff branded “Halal” in the UK. It looks to me as if vegetarianism is the only religiously safe option for fundamentalist Muslims in the UK. For non-fundamentalists who understand that the strict traditional approach is not consistent with the realities of a modern abbattoir, then surely there can be no principled objection to starting up a debate about what compromises can reasonably be expected between religion and animal welfare.
I have no comparable information easily accessible online about the Kosher meat industry, but kosher/non-kosher scandals are a staple of the North London local press, so I would guess that similar arguments go through …
I have a letter in todays’s Guardian on l’affaire Cavanagh (on which see JQ’s earlier post and, especially, comments there by Harry). There are also supportive letters from Edward Lucas of the Economist and Bernard Crick (who is, perhaps, somewhat compromised by his previous association with Cavanagh’s employer, on which, see Chris Brooke ). One benefit of having a blog is that, when the Guardian edit your letter you can publish the unexpurgated version yourself. They’ve not done a bad job, but here’s the original with the bits the Guardian cut out in italics:
Political philosophers often entertain hypotheses which ordinary people find outlandish or even outrageous . They do this in order to clarify our our fundamental commitments about justice, fairness, liberty, and so on. Even when they have come to a considered view about those commitments , the question of how principles translate into policy is a difficult one. I take it that a liberal newspaper like the Guardian believes that such fundamental inquiry by academics has a place, indeed and essential place, in the political ecology of a free society. How deplorable it is then, when one of your correspondents, in search of material to discredit David Blunkett, should dig out theoretical reflections made in a wholly different context by Matt Cavanagh, a former philosopher now employed as a policy advisor. Kudos is due to Blunkett for being willing to seek the advice of someone who has been so sharply critical of him in the past. Taking Cavanagh’s quotes from their context, then crying “race” and seeking soundbites from backbenchers to embarrass a minister is behaviour worthy of muckraking tabloids, not of the Guardian.
Classics
Michael Hendry
David Meadows
Religion
AKM Adam
Ryan Overbey
Telford Work (theology)
Library Science
Norma Bruce
Biology/Medicine
Bloviator
Anthony Cox
Susan Ferrari
Amy Greenwood
La Di Da
John M. Lynch
Charles Murtaugh
Paul Z. Myers
Respectful of Otters
Amity Wilczek (biology)
Theodore Wong
Physics/Applied Physics
Trish Amuntrud
Sean Carroll
Jacques Distler
Irascible Professor
Michael Nielsen
Chad Orzel
Math/Statistics
Dead Parrots
Christopher Genovese
Jason Rosenhouse
Vlorbik
Peter Woit
Complex Systems
Cosma Shalizi
Bill Tozier
Chemistry
"Keneth Miles"
Engineering
Zack Amjal
Chris Hall
University Administration
Frank Admissions
Architecture/Urban development
City Comforts (urban planning)
Unfolio
Panchromatica
Earth Sciences
Our Take
Other sources of information
Arts and Letters Daily
Imprints
Political Theory Daily Review
Science and Technology Daily Review