Economics – Rolling Doughnut

I have pessimistic thoughts on protests

Protesting is necessary. There are injustices in the world that won’t fix themselves. It takes commitment and bravery to fight because power, the cause of most injustice, loves compliance.

Protest is also dangerous. Some of that is because power¹ loves compliance. Protest needs to remain focused and controlled. I don’t want to say “non-threatening”, since I don’t mean a willingness to accept whatever sham of rights power is willing to concede. No, not that. But at best it will be unpleasant. People whose rights aren’t violated – or who are content to have their rights violated, especially – will let you know you should like having your rights violated. They are miserable people. It will be necessary to face and ignore that nastiness.

But the danger I’m thinking of is more the danger from unleashing energy into combatting injustice. It’s easy to lose the thread on the principle involved in the fight. It’s inviting for anyone with a message to attach themselves to a protest and hijack it for other purposes. It isn’t easy to control that, either, because it’s seductive to think, “More people are joining us, we’re winning!”. Maybe, but maybe not.

Obviously the last couple days are on my mind. The protests from both Friday and Saturday reflect my point. Friday it was the predictable violence². It isn’t inevitable with a protest with a focused message, but Friday’s protests weren’t focused. “Anti-Trump” is a choose-your-own-adventure opportunity for grievances. But that also means it’s foolish to judge opposition to Trump on this inevitable violence.

Yesterday’s protest resulted in no violence, as far as I’m aware. I think that has much to do with coherence on the message. The danger awaits, though, for what the marches hope to accomplish. I’ve seen many astute voices pointing out that yesterday was the beginning. That’s correct. The work begins now. But I don’t think that work is to keep the momentum. The work is to prevent the message from fracturing. I’m not optimistic.

The stated principle for yesterday’s protest, as I understand it, was that women are human beings deserving equal rights. Great, I’m on board. But it’s clear this movement has the potential for power. That focus on principle will disappear. Here, I’ll pick a random example I encountered. The list has the above principle. It then expands to the LGBTQ community. I’m still on board because I think this is the same principle at its core. Human beings deserve equal rights. Third is resisting racism. Yep, still there.

Then, with numbers four, five, and six, are climate change, income inequality, and universal health care. That’s a fracturing divergence. “… we must immediately address the damage we have done and continue…” I agree that climate change is real, and that humans are a reason. But there’s so much room to disagree on how to address the damage. Maybe we’ll agree on what to do, but there will be disagreement.

For income inequality, “Wages for working people must rise. Wages for working people must rise. A healthy and growing middle class is not a naturally occurring phenomenon. It must be cultivated through sensible economic policy.” I agree that a healthy and growing middle class is not a natural phenomenon. The natural human condition is dirt-scratching poverty. But what is the sensible economic policy that raises wages for working people? Is it by decreeing the minimum wage is $X? That is economic policy, but it is not sensible. Work that can’t justify the minimum wage will be automated. The goal is an economy in which people can support themselves (with the understanding that no perfect economy can exist). I can’t support a push for an economic policy based in feelings that will not work. But attaching “income inequality” to the push for equal rights means fracturing the movement.

And universal health care. Opposition to what other countries do is not a wish for poor and sick people to die already. That every other industrialized nation does this does not mean they do it perfectly, or that they do not get free-rider benefits from the United States because we don’t do it their way. It also does not prove it can be replicated here.

It’s clear a push like this expects the result of yesterday’s march to be the further implementation of a progressive political platform. That just takes a message that “women’s rights are human rights” and makes it explicitly – and incorrectly – political. The coherence of the demand disappears.

Some of this I already know from experience with protesting and agitating for change. I’ve protested in sunshine and rain, in heat and cold. I’ve had people yell at me and I’ve had respectful conversations. It’s a messy process with rewards and perils throughout. Along with, “I hadn’t thought of it that way,” there’s disagreement and the “with us or against us” mentality within the group. I’ve seen people be right for unbelievably wrong reasons. It’s a fringe rather than universal, but the fringe gets the attention. Did you see more of the peaceful protests from Friday or the smashing windows? And when someone encounters a group protesting what they haven’t thought about or don’t agree with, do they remember the person trying to convince them or the lunatics? What’s more effective, “May I talk with you about genital mutilation” or “May I talk with you about genital mutilation and how vaccines cause autism and the one percent”? The former is principled in science and ethics. The latter is “I have a mishmash of agenda items and you need to accept them all.” Putting human equality into a mix of progressive (or conservative) political policies is no different.

Maybe I’m wrong on thinking this is putting human equality into a mix of progressive political policies. It’s possible, and if it’s true, do you want to convince me or condescend to me? Whether I’m right or wrong, that’s your choice.

For example:

I’ve seen so many men today screaming about rights for Islamic women and genital mutilation. I look forward to your march re: those issues!

Or do you guys only bring those issues up to try to de-legitimize someone else’s voice?

And a sample response:

@JulieDiCaro I think we both know the answer to that question.

I’ve marched and written extensively on the rights involved. I get laughed at for it. I get screamed at. I’m told how disrespectful I am when I emphasize the principle³ involved. There’s no curiosity that I maybe know what I’m talking about from research and experience. I don’t hold the right view, so my opinion should be mocked.

The same condescension is in those tweets. Maybe one/some/all of these men know? Or maybe they’re all awful people merely trying to change the subject. It’s probably the latter. Probably.

I composed a reply on Twitter but deleted it because 140 characters wouldn’t convey the message. Ms. DiCaro is saying “Don’t hijack the moment.” I agree with that sentiment but not the delivery. For example, I don’t jump into discussions purely about female genital mutilation to say “what about men?” unless the discussion includes crackpot opinions presented as fact or shoddy wishing masquerading as a principled defense of why girls deserve protection and boys should be happy about circumcision. But if you really want equality, “my body, my choice” applies to boys, or it can mean “my child, my choice” applies to girls. If you don’t stand for principle, don’t be shocked if it leads where you don’t want to go.

Anyway, my point is that protests lose focus. They work against uniting a coalition on shared principle, preferring to enforce ideological rigidity. Yes
terday’s march and what follows can be principled. It won’t be. There were speakers yesterday advocating for equal rights who also support male genital mutilation. Some rights are more equal than others, somehow, which will probably become generalized into the platform, so do not be surprised when this movement collapses into an incoherent, powerless mess without the necessary vigilance to adhere to “women are human beings deserving equal rights”. Prove me wrong, please.

Post Script: Damnit, I realized I didn’t talk about nazis yet. I’ve rambled enough, so I’m not going to work this into the above. Fucking nazis are evil scum. Don’t sucker-punch evil fucking nazi scum. Because it’s dumb and counter-productive and escalates into more violence. Yes, Hitler. But a street corner in Washington, DC on January 20, 2017 is not Omaha Beach. Maybe it will be if we don’t challenge President Trump’s administration every second until 1/20/21, 1/20/25, or his impeachment. But we’re not there today. Not sucker-punching evil fucking nazis is not appeasement. Sucker-punching nazis is closer to the definition of conceding principles in favor of political expediency. That isn’t righteous. That’s a different form of authoritarianism. And if you want to require this fight continue until 1/20/25, sucker-punching nazis is a great way to create the lawlessness excuse Trump wants in order to make that a reality.

¹ Power expects compliance from everyone, not just women. This is why emphasis on “patriarchy” is so weird to me. I’ve yet to encounter an instance of someone saying “patriarchy” in which saying “power” wouldn’t be more precise. I’m open to explanations and/or scenarios for why that isn’t true.

² Destruction of property is violence. Someone has to clean it up. Someone has to pay for its repair or replacement. That requires work, so destroying someone’s property necessarily involves forcing someone to do something they wouldn’t otherwise need to do. It is force.

³ Non-therapeutic genital cutting on a non-consenting individual is unethical. All human beings are equal, with the same rights. I’m a feminist, including on that principle. But some feminists don’t believe this right is equal. So sure, I’m a feminist, but the label isn’t enough for me to know that we agree on human rights.

My NHL Lockout Theory

I’m a huge hockey fan. I dabbled in watching the game in the early ’90s. I’m a Chicago Blackhawks fan today because of Jeremy Roenick in 1990. However, in those pre-Internet days, I didn’t have sufficient access to either the rules or broadcasts to appreciate the game. My southern hometown didn’t get an ice rink until I was in college. I slowly faded away from the game. I regret that now.

Thankfully, in 2009, I discovered adult beer league hockey. I joined a team and finally grasped the rules and, more importantly, the beauty of the game. The strategy, the flow, even the simple sound of skates cutting through ice… All of it is amazing and fills me with joy. I can’t drop hockey again.

That history makes the current NHL lockout frustrating. I love NHL hockey. I watch every Blackhawks game, and a significant number of games beyond that on the Center Ice television package. The league is betting on the fact that I’ll return. And I will. There is no doubt on that. The league won’t lose me. Although I’ll likely buy less merchandise, if any, for a while to punish the league and the players, I’m not going to watch less.

At Backhand Shelf, Justin Bourne explores this in depth. I agree with it all. Here’s the gist:

Friedman never directly says it in the piece, but I think the implication is exactly what I’ve been trying to put into words for awhile now: Gary Bettman is overestimating hockey fans passion for the NHL (my words, not his). Something about the current mess made me tag this post with both “final straw” and “camel’s back.”

Bettman has seen the fans come back time and time again during his tenure, and is unwisely taking the fans for granted once more.

What he doesn’t realize, is that hockey fans love hockey, not the NHL. The love the Stanley Cup, but it doesn’t belong to the league. The love pond hockey, which is why the league’s heart-string twanging nostalgic playoff commercials are so widely beloved. There is no loyalty to some “shield,” the way Roger Goodell refers to the NFL. There’s hockey, and goddamn is it a terrific game.

Even if the league does get it figured out and only a half-season is missed, I’ll call it now: the fans aren’t coming running back this time (unless it happens like, soon-soon). There’s only so many times you can abuse someone before they snap. Some people have shorter fuses than others, and I’ve talked to people who’ve gone from anger to apathy this time, which as Elliotte implies, should be petrifying for the NHL.

Exactly. However, I disagree with the generally-accepted underlying theory that the NHL lockout is evidence that the league takes for granted that a floor exists where the league will always have certain fans and their money. I think it’s something worse. Despite record revenue growth and reason for optimism, the league believes it is near its ceiling. Instead of viewing this as greed, the stupidity of a second lockout in eight years makes sense if the league’s owners believe they are fighting for a larger piece of a revenue stream that has neared its maximum.

The most telling fact for my theory, I think, is the recent television deal with NBC Sports Network. It’s a ten-year deal. I can understand why the league would want stability. And they reached a new high in annual value for that deal, at $200 million per season. The deals for other leagues make that look like pocket change, but for the NHL, it’s progress. But if they believed that the league will continue to grow at approximately 7%, give or take minor currency fluctuations between the U.S. and Canadian dollars, why lock at that rate for a decade? And why lockout now when a missed season would merely tack on a free season in year 11 for NBC Sports Network? I’m certain the owners know that the free 11th year could instead bring them far more in present value than the $200 million they’ll get this year if they don’t play hockey. I think they don’t believe the NHL can grow enough to generate a significant jump in 2022. We’re near the maximum the sport can produce as a permanent niche for entertainment dollars.

Or I could be wrong and the NHL, Commissioner Gary Bettman, and NHLPA executive director Donald Fehr are egotistical lunatics indifferently destroying the league for their own short-term need to win at all costs.

I Prefer FPS Over MMORPG

I’m not a fan of privilege as a foundational argument. It’s confining and limiting. It’s focused on generalizations without regard for the individuals involved. It establishes a hierarchy for problems with the result, if not purpose, of minimizing any X that is less severe than Y according to the person wielding the argument. It’s claptrap that eventually resolves to “Shut up”.

Such is the case with John Scalzi’s recent post, Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is. From the beginning it sets out the argument’s flaw as a definitive, justifiable rule that allows anyone who agrees with it to “prove” that the person who disagrees commits an error. Usually being dense, or something similar. It’s a way to shut down debate rather than start or continue one.

I’ve been thinking of a way to explain to straight white males how life works for them, without invoking the dreaded word “privilege,” to which they react like vampires being fed a garlic tart at high noon. It’s not that the word “privilege” is incorrect, it’s that it’s not their word. When confronted with “privilege,” they fiddle with the word itself, and haul out the dictionaries and find every possible way to talk about the word but not any of the things the word signifies.

It starts with condescension. Straight white men need to be educated, and if you challenge the argument, you’re proving your need to be educated. It’s stupid. It signals that there are default rules, either implicitly or explicitly assumed, that no one may disagree with. The only real question it allows is who’s next in needing to be educated about their privilege with respect to someone else under a simplified set of rules: straight minority males or non-straight white males.

Mr. Scalzi’s argument on privilege is easy enough to understand:

Dudes. Imagine life here in the US — or indeed, pretty much anywhere in the Western world — is a massive role playing game, like World of Warcraft except appallingly mundane, where most quests involve the acquisition of money, cell phones and donuts, although not always at the same time. Let’s call it The Real World. You have installed The Real World on your computer and are about to start playing, but first you go to the settings tab to bind your keys, fiddle with your defaults, and choose the difficulty setting for the game. Got it?

Okay: In the role playing game known as The Real World, “Straight White Male” is the lowest difficulty setting there is.

As a generalization with no context, sure. But that’s shallow thinking. It’s meaningless. We don’t live our lives as generalizations. Our interactions are more complicated and messy than simple identifying characteristics. Mr. Scalzi’s argument rests on the basis that sexual orientation, skin color, and gender are the three supreme defining characteristics and life should be judged accordingly. All else being equal, would I encounter an easier, harder, or indistinguishable challenge in working with Mr. Scalzi as a Straight White Male than a Gay Minority Female would? I bet on indistinguishable.

He acknowledges other characteristics within the metaphor but makes them subordinate to these three:

Likewise, it’s certainly possible someone playing at a higher difficulty setting is progressing more quickly than you are, because they had more points initially given to them by the computer and/or their highest stats are wealth, intelligence and constitution and/or simply because they play the game better than you do. It doesn’t change the fact you are still playing on the lowest difficulty setting.

I disagree that these three are the complete, highest characteristics. Is a straight white female born with genius-level intelligence, a trust fund, and a respectable family name playing on a more difficult level than a poor, stupid straight white male? What’s the scenario, fixing a flat tire on the side of the road? Being treated respectfully at the Mini Mart?

A later argument demonstrates the largest hole (emphasis in original):

And maybe at this point you say, hey, I like a challenge, I want to change my difficulty setting! Well, here’s the thing: In The Real World, you don’t unlock any rewards or receive any benefit for playing on higher difficulty settings. The game is just harder, and potentially a lot less fun. And you say, okay, but what if I want to replay the game later on a higher difficulty setting, just to see what it’s like? Well, here’s the other thing about The Real World: You only get to play it once. So why make it more difficult than it has to be? Your goal is to win the game, not make it difficult.

My goal is to “win” the game? According to whom? Judged by what criterion/criteria? By whose criterion/criteria? In which game? The argument fails because it neglects the reality that straight white male, gay minority female, and everyone in-between are people with unique, complex mixes of characteristics playing – or not playing – the game to which Straight White Man is the lowest difficulty setting. There are many games. There are different players. And there are different game masters. Context matters. Generalizations bludgeon.

Money Is a Tool, Not an Inverse Proof of Personal Value

A mindset exists around money and choices involved in acquiring it that I don’t understand. I comprehend that this exists, but I’m not sure why or how it develops and persists. Lauren McLaughlin writes about a New York Times article on Wall Street layoffs:

According to this New York Times article, young wannabe bankers are the first to go in the most recent round of financial sector lay-offs.

I know. Boo hoo, right?

I won’t ask anyone to shed a tear for these youngsters who still have plenty of time to rethink the trajectory of their professional lives. Besides, looked at one way, the recession is the best thing to happen to this generation of young, ambitious college grads. Without easy access to the lucrative field of magical fairy dust mortgage derivatives, they might actually do something meaningful with their lives.

Having two degrees in finance and multiple friends who entered the field in the mid-’90s, I’d take issue with the idea of “easy” access to the financial industry. But that quibble aside, I’d ask why Ms. McLaughlin should spend her time in the (potentially) lucrative field of magical fairy dust novel writing. If she couldn’t do that, she might actually do something meaningful with her life, to be determined by me for her.

I only offer that in jest. Novel writing is a respectable, useful profession, and I admire anyone who can a) do it and b) make a living at it. It doesn’t matter if the author writes books I would read or not. I’m not silly enough to demand that my tastes, preferences, and needs be the only criteria by which everyone must decide what is worthwhile in the world.

The same applies to the world of finance. I think the impulse to condemn finance in total rests on the same misguided notion that all bankers from 2008 were criminals who should be arrested for causing a financial crisis. It’s a simplistic approach to a complicated topic. The industry doesn’t have to be perfect to be useful.

This is not to say I admire the banker lifestyle described in the article or in Ms. McLaughlin’s post. I don’t, but again, that’s because it doesn’t appeal to me, not because it’s inherently flawed or bad. And there are real people suffering in that story. Should we only have empathy for someone until they make a certain income?

Which brings me to a great post by Jason Kuznicki:

The economist Justin Wolfers tweeted an interesting poll result yesterday, from Kaiser (though I’m having trouble finding it at the moment):

As far as you are concerned, do we have too many rich people in this country (31%), too few (21%), or about the right amount? (42%)

As far as I am concerned, 73% of the country appears to have lost its mind. I’d like everyone to be rich, which means, obviously, that we have too few rich people.

He’s right. If we’re going to focus on artificial, ever-shifting definitions of class in America, we should be working to help everyone move up, not knock the “right” people down for being “wrong” in some way.

Individual Preferences Are Subjective

I recommend this month’s featured article at Econlib, “The Relentless Subjectivity of Value” by Max Borders. It’s in the context of economics, but anyone who reads my work here will surely recognize something familiar and useful. My favorite excerpt:

Nudging assumes a universal standard of well-being that simply cannot exist. For example, is it really that great to live longer? If foregoing scotch and bacon allows me to increase my life expectancy from 88 to 90, is it worth it to me? Will any amount of information possessed by folks at the Department of Health and Human Services cause me to see the light? I doubt it. I value my nightcap more than I value three more years at Shady Oaks. And I don’t want to hear “you’ll thank me when you’re 90” because, a) I’m not 90 and b) I may or may not enjoy the life of incontinence at Shady Oaks. Call me irrational, but if you do, you’re simply substituting your preferences for mine. Time, context and perspective count for a lot. Of course, none of this is meant to argue that your preferences or mine can’t be changed by either nudging or thoughtful advice. The point is that architecting choices means rigging the incentives in favor of another’s preferences, with no objective standard of value.

Again, even if you don’t care about the economics, it’s an interesting essay worth your time.

Corporatism ≠ Capitalism

I’m always fascinated by critiques of capitalism that rely on untrue assumptions. From a Boing Boing review of John Lanchester’s Whoops!: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay earlier this week:

Lanchester explains the econopocalypse thus: a climate (the fall of the Soviet Union and the triumphal do-no-wrong belief in unfettered capitalism that ensued), a problem (using derivatives to expand risk, rather than limit it, which led to reckless lending in the housing market), a mistake (bankers assuming that they had laid off the risk using complex derivatives) and a failure (regulators refusing to look the financial gift-horse in the mouth). This provides an excellent framework for explaining the ways in which history, greed, and hubris conspired to create the worst financial crisis in memory.

There may be a “triumphal do-no-wrong belief in unfettered capitalism,” but the presence of regulators proves that what we have is neither unfettered nor capitalism. Since, according to the review of his book, Mr. Lanchester concludes that the economy will remain sluggish due to regulatory capture, the current climate is corporatism.

I’m not sure if the mistaken word choice originates with Mr. Lanchester or the book’s reviewer, Cory Doctorow. Regardless, those of us who support capitalism (as a synonym for a free market) do not support corporatism.

Correlation Still Does Not Equal Causation

Nancy Pelosi’s office blogged about the Department of Labor’s latest jobs report. This graph is included in the brief entry:

From this, Rep. Pelosi declares:

Today’s jobs report marks a welcome step in the right direction for our economy and our families: the unemployment rate is going down. The Recovery Act, which Congress passed one year ago to pull our economy back from the brink of collapse, has already created or saved nearly 2 million jobs so far.

Yet our work is far from over. This recession that President Obama inherited has taken the worst toll on our job market since World War II. Too many workers have lost their jobs through no fault of their own. Leaders of both parties must work together to keep our recovery on track by helping small businesses create jobs, investing in our infrastructure and clean energy industries, and keeping police, firefighters, and teachers on the job. Congress will continue to act to build a new foundation for long-term prosperity.

I see the correlation I’m supposed to perceive, but that doesn’t prove what Rep. Pelosi expects me to assume, that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is the reason the graph looks as it does. It’s easy to claim success when you establish superficial results as the standards for success. If she’s going to make this claim, she must defend it with specific details about how money was spent and how that improved the jobs situation. Saying it isn’t enough if you’re skeptical of power rather than merely skeptical of your ideological opponents.

(Via Irene retweeting Markos Moulitsas)

Schumer and Hatch Almost Discover Incentives

Senators Charles Schumer and Orrin Hatch have a plan to help employment. As expected, the usual caveat about bi-partisan action applies.

Here’s the idea: Starting immediately after enactment, any private-sector employer that hires a worker who had been unemployed for at least 60 days will not have to pay its 6.2 percent Social Security payroll tax on that employee for the duration of 2010. The Social Security trust fund will then be made whole with spending cuts elsewhere in the budget between now and 2015. That’s it. Simple to understand, and easy to explain.

I’m going to leave the issue of economics, of whether or not this could work, to those more qualified to answer. For me, the issue is incentives. They’re trying to create an incentive for employers to expand employment. It’s fine if you like that sort of meddling, but I don’t. I’d rather they get the government out of the way than try to find the ‘correct’ plan to lead. They’ve already stated in the article that the Congress of the 1970s created ineffective, burdensome incentives. Our default assumption should be that today’s Congress will do the same whenever it tries.

To this plan, though, what about the worker who hasn’t been unemployed at least 60 days? Why is it fair to disadvantage her, however marginally? What’s magical about day 60 that isn’t burdensome about day 59? Day 58? I can think of many complicated individual circumstances – some ridiculous, some not – complicated by this arbitrary incentive.

In addition, because the benefit starts on the date of hiring and does not have an arbitrary cap, more businesses will want to use it. And since it is an elimination of the employer’s share of the Social Security tax for these workers — rather than a fixed or capped dollar amount — the complexities of making the incentive work with a firm’s payroll software are greatly reduced because employers will know simply to zero out the tax for these workers.

I work with financial software systems. Contrary to what the good senators believe, software design often excludes “simply zero out the tax” for individual workers. Incorporating such changes is often supported in a company’s license with the software provider, but those changes must be implemented in some capacity. That takes time. Maybe it is “simply zero out the tax,” but it’s more likely to require a new field to turn this feature on and off. That requires testing to verify that it doesn’t create other problems. These changes may require new code to apply the proposed 60 day minimum requirement for unemployment history. There may also be new levels of approval, since you wouldn’t want everyone to have the authority to “simply zero out the tax.” All of this must be maintained.

In the current environment, no business wants to wait until 2011 to receive a tax credit for someone it hires today. Another obvious benefit of this proposal to forgive payroll taxes is that it keeps money in a business’s pockets, since the tax is simply not collected in the first place.

If these software changes can’t be implemented immediately, the tax will be collected in the first place, creating further paperwork to receive a refund.

There are some additional rules that would have to be put in place. For example, eligible workers would have to be hired for a minimum of 30 hours per week, and workers who are family members of the employer would not be eligible. The payroll tax reduction would be for private-sector jobs only; new jobs that are created by tax dollars in the first place would not be eligible. And any employer with a lower total payroll in 2010 than it had in 2009 would have to forfeit the benefit — businesses shouldn’t be allowed to shed jobs and still receive a tax benefit.

Isn’t this plan supposed to be simple?

Like all politics, this is about appearances hiding the desire for control. There’s no concern for productivity. Much can happen in the next eleven months that could cause a company to shed jobs, despite a good faith effort to expand. But it shouldn’t be allowed, because we need full employment, not full productivity. To a politician, digging unneeded holes is no less valuable than any other job. This is no more true than when the politician can claim credit for creating the hole-digging job.

“With your head on my shoulders we could wreck civilization!”

I haven’t followed the story surrounding The Pirate Bay closely, but I know enough to find no outrage at the recent conviction of the four founders. I don’t share what seems to be the typical libertarian revulsion at copyright laws. Although I agree they’re flawed as they’re written, there are legal ways for content producers to contract with customers that ignore the process. The system is broken but the free market created a work-around. So, I’m not ready to hoist a Live Free or Die banner on this issue.

That’s my short version. I like this longer, more detailed version from Eugenia’s Rants and Thoughts.

In my opinion, they are indeed guilty — they have been total assholes to lawyers who have sent them takedown notices over time. These dumbasses think that they are some kind of revolutionist heroes. Yes, a revolution is needed for copyright laws and the entertainment industry today, but these guys haven’t realized that in this day and age there is only one way to start a revolution: work through the existing system’s limitations and lobby extensively for new laws. Anything [sic] other approach will be shot down by the system and the corporations. This is not 1789 France. You can’t win with riffles, and picketing or rage anymore. You simply can’t ignore the laws. We live in a bureaucratic, corporation-led world, and so you will have to work through these constrains to change the world (e.g. via Creative Commons which is a clever approach that doesn’t cancel the current laws, so it can’t piss off the establishment to come after you). This Gandhi approach works: if you don’t buy the RIAA/MPAA-bound products, these empires will eventually fall, but it’s the only way to do it.

I’d change “corporation-led world” to a more general reference about special interests, but that’s mostly semantics based on politics. The basic idea is correct. If you don’t like the rules, refuse to participate or change them. Violating them instead is not a valid option.

Title reference here.

Linkfest

LINK: From the April issue of reason, Matt Welch addresses the ongoing topic of “liberalterianism” and how it’s doomed. The heart of his argument, which I agree with completely:

It is certainly no surprise that any party, let alone the Democrats, would want to use that fancy government once it held the awesome reins of power. Unified Republican governance this decade should disabuse even the most gullible from the notion that either of our two major parties is ever going to enact a small-government agenda, especially during a perceived crisis. But already during Obama’s first 100 days we’ve seen how quickly liberals will turn against libertarians once they’re no longer swinging at the same piñata.

Small-l libertarians will never find sufficient common ground with anyone interested in maintaining partisanship at the expense of ideas.

LINK: Also from reason Ronald Bailey discusses a free market approach to health care coverage proposed by University of Chicago economist John Cochrane.

So how does health-status insurance work? As Cochrane explains, “Market-based lifetime health insurance has two components: medical insurance and health-status insurance. Medical insurance covers your medical expenses in the current year, minus deductibles and copayments. Health-status insurance covers the risk that your medical premiums will rise.” Cochrane offers the example of a 25-year-old who will likely incur $2,000 in medical expenses in a year. His medical policy component would thus cost about $2,000 per year, plus administrative fees and profit. For purposes of illustration, Cochrane then assumes the 25-year-old has a 1 percent risk of developing a chronic medical condition that would increase his average medical expenses to $10,000 per year. In that case, he would be able to buy medical insurance for $10,000 per year—which is a big financial hit. That’s where health-status insurance comes in: It insures that you can be insured in the future.

I’m not fully convinced that this would work, but I’m not unconvinced, either. I don’t know enough. However, the idea seems to be based in personal responsibility. Life is unfair, so some of us get sick. There are costs involved. It’s unfortunate if medical costs cause financial distress. We should mitigate that, but provide individuals the options to do that for themselves. That is the right approach.

Mr. Cochrane also discusses how his plan would help separate health insurance from employer provision. That will be a feature of any responsible health care reform. (Transferring the incentive from employer to government does not qualify as that type of responsible reform.)

LINK: Harold Meyerson is an incurious propagandist:

But in the United States, conservatives have never bashed socialism because its specter was actually stalking America. Rather, they’ve wielded the cudgel against such progressive reforms as free universal education, the minimum wage or tighter financial regulations. Their signal success is to have kept the United States free from the taint of universal health care. The result: We have the world’s highest health-care costs, borne by businesses and employees that cannot afford them; nearly 50 million Americans have no coverage; infant mortality rates are higher than those in 41 nations — but at least (phew!) we don’t have socialized medicine.

Universal education is not “free”. The minimum wage costs jobs. Financial regulations overlooked obvious warnings of Bernie Madoff. “Nearly 50 million” uninsured is not true. Infant mortality is more complex than a quick comparison can demonstrate.

He also wrote this, so it’s clear that he’s interested in his narrative more than facts.

Take it from a democratic socialist: Laissez-faire American capitalism is about to be supplanted not by socialism but by a more regulated, viable capitalism. And the reason isn’t that the woods are full of secret socialists who are only now outing themselves.

We do not have laissez-faire capitalism. No amount of stating preferred explanations will make them true.

LINK: Steven Pearlstein defends President Obama’s budget in a way I don’t fully understand.

In the meantime, the federal government is one of the few entities that is still able to borrow in the current environment, and given the perceived safety of buying government bonds, the cost of that borrowing is about as low as it has ever been. From a purely cash-flow point of view, substituting 18 percent credit card debt with 3 percent Treasury bond debt is a positive development for the grandchildren.

The 18 percent credit card debt makes no sense here. Government borrowing isn’t replacing that. And my hypothetical grandchildren do not have any debt right now. Adding more, even at 3 percent, is hardly a positive development for them. The administration intends to grow the debt, not refinance it.

Refinancing costs are relevant, too. If the so-called positive development of new debt at 3 percent interest helps us, what will this new debt look like at 4, 5, or more percent when interest rates rise, as they will? Maintaining the apparently-permanent interest payments is a cost.

He continues with a bit about how infrastructure creates lasting economic value without defending it. Would the Bridge to Nowhere have justified its cost? Doesn’t matter, it seems. He reassures:

Strange as it may sound, there are times when it’s necessary to make things worse in order to make them better. Fighting a war to achieve a lasting peace. Making a patient sick to cure his cancer with radiation or chemotherapy. And, yes, taking on more debt to help get the country out of a debt-induced recession.

Unlike chemotherapy, where doctors eventually stop dosing a patient, what evidence do we have that politicians will ever believe we’ve reached the “ideal time for the government to deleverage and put its financial house in order”? The new deficit spending is permanent. The only open question once the budget passes is who will pay for it. Right now, the answer is “the rich” and the Chinese. Eventually, it will be the middle class, including all of our grandchildren.

LINK: Wanting an iPhone does not mean a consumer is entitled to an iPhone with the carrier of his choice.

The Consumers Union, the New America Foundation, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, as well as software provider Mozilla and small wireless carriers MetroPCS (PCS) and Leap Wireless International (LEAP), are lining up in opposition not only to the Apple-AT&T partnership, but to all manner of arrangements whereby mobile phones are tethered exclusively to a single wireless service provider.

Apparently a voluntary contract between two parties means nothing if it means a consumer has to then make a choice that she doesn’t like. I want an iPhone with Sprint, but I can’t get it. My response is to decide which has more value and act accordingly, not whine to the government.

More Consumers Union nonsense here and here.