Month: July 2007
Jefferson’s Last Letter
In his last letter Thomas Jefferson declined for reasons of ill health to attend a celebration in Washington on the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
I should, indeed, with peculiar delight, have met and
exchanged there congratulations personally with the small band, the
remnant of that host of worthies, who joined with us on that day, in
the bold and doubtful election we were to make for our country,
between submission or the sword; and to have enjoyed with them the
consolatory fact, that our fellow citizens, after half a century of
experience and prosperity, continue to approve the choice we made.
May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts
sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing
men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and
superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the
blessings and security of self-government. That form which we have
substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of
reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to
the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has
already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of
mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored
few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace
of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let
the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of
these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.
A libertarian approach to water policy
Presented in one long, excellent blog post (do read it), here is a partial response. I’ll note that water policy has long been an area where libertarian insights are hardest to apply. Property rights in water (to the molecules? to a flow? to water of a certain quality? what is the natural unit? …and don’t even get me started on water tables) are more of a fiction than, say, property rights to your toothbrush. That makes administrative law more important, more valuable, and more of a balancing effect for water than for most other sectors of the economy.
If you wish to purge yourself of all libertarian tendencies, just study water law for a few months.
If you wish to increase your libertarian tendencies, study farm policy, corporate welfare, teachers’ unions, or anti-marijuana laws. A stroll by the HUD building isn’t a bad refresher course either.
Do unfree countries grow faster?
Right now they do, check out this chart. But fear not for the consilience of liberty and utility. Kevin Hassett is citing Arrow when he should be invoking Robert Solow. The poorer countries are playing "catch-up" by adopting Western technologies and business practices. In the classic Solow model catch-up will give them a higher rate of economic growth but of course they still have a lower level of per capita income. And why are those same poorer countries playing catch-up more today than they did thirty years ago?
Sentences worth commuting
Two reading recommendations from me
Slate.com has a new book forum, I am also the T.C. on page two. Excerpt from my contribution:
Clare Clark’s The Nature of Monsters is a flat-out fun read. Set in 1718, the story blends influences from Edgar Allen Poe, Alfred Hitchcock, Michel Foucault (the potentially monstrous nature of scientific knowledge), and Daniel Defoe. Imagine a veiled apothecary who appears to practice black magic, holds captive a woman who is virtually mentally retarded, and has strange dealings with a free-thinking bookseller. Should you, as a pregnant woman without a husband, stay in his house or flee? The tone of the book is serious, and the style is borrowed from the 18th century. Things are most dangerous precisely when they appear most safe.
But is it underrated? You’ll find more recommendations at the link.
Which are the underrated classics of Western literature?
We continue Underrated Week, noting that this entry is sure to inspire philosophic debate. Can it plausibly be argued that Michael Jordan is an underrated basketball player? That Wayne Gretzky is an underrated hockey player? Yes, I say.
When it comes to the Western classics, I hold a few works above all others, and by an order of magnitude: Homer, the Hebrew Bible, Cervantes’s Don Quixote, Shakespeare, Proust, Moby Dick, Joyce’s Ulysses (shriek if you wish), and the two major novels of Tolstoy.
Yes, those are the most underrated classics. There are simply too many people who lump them in with Rabelais, Stendhal, Twain, Mann and other totally splendid but slightly less than divine works. If I could read Italian, Dante might also make the list.
Next in line would be Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Goethe’s Faust (German language version only), and of course Bleak House of Charles Dickens; read the latter carefully and you will see plot twists that very few if any critics catch. If you’re simply listing the best novel whose wonders most educated people have no clue of (one extreme form of underrating), Bleak House is the clear winner (loser?) on the entire list.
The destruction of Tysons Corner?
It’s not quite Hurricane Katrina on the way, but I can’t wrap my mind around how Tysons Corner will keep going. The plan is to take one of America’s most successful "edge cities" and centrally plan it into a walkable neighborhood, yet that is to happen while five major roads — three of them multi-lane highways — will continue to carve up the whole area.
Have I mentioned they will build elevated rail service to Dulles Airport? This sounds quaint and European but there is already a dedicated, virtually traffic-free road to that airport, in addition to three or four totally usable back routes. The new rail line will sit atop Route 7 (the major artery), necessitating its widening and the destruction of the side and access roads which make transversing the area a workable proposition.
Quotations like this scare me:
VDOT has agreed to narrow the eight future lanes of Route 7 to 11
feet from the standard 12, to allow for two additional pedestrian
crossings beneath the aerial line and to build eight-foot sidewalks."We’ve
always emphasized that we need wider sidewalks, we need more pedestrian
crosswalks, we need to slow traffic down," Stevens said [emphasis added].
I have heard construction will take six to eight years, which I assume means eight to twelve years.
Aesthetically you may or may not like what Tysons Corner has become, but at this point there is no turning back. I simply do not see how an already traffic-heavy Tysons Corner will survive this onslaught. The theory is that enough people will live in nearby condos (didn’t the real estate bubble just burst?) that in the proverbial long run traffic will fall. Betting markets, anyone? When people rely on an area as one part of their programme for auto-based, carry-around-big-packages, lug the kids, multiple stops, mass transit doesn’t have much of a chance.
I’ve already made my plans ("Find new Persian restaurant with Zereskh Polo") for avoiding the area altogether, quite possibly for the rest of my adult life. Does that mean I have to buy my iPhone soon?
This issue has received plenty of local publicity, but I wonder how many people know that the planners soon will be destroying an American triumph? Even around here I think most people do not yet believe this is actually going to happen.
Supply and demand
The price of machetes has halved in parts of Nigeria since the end of
general elections in April because demand from thugs sponsored by
politicians has subsided, the state-owned News Agency of Nigeria
reported.
Here is the link. Thanks to Bulent Murtezaoglu for the pointer.
A Year Without Chinese Goods
Sara Bongiorni and her family attempted to live without goods made in
China for a year, and found that it was no simple task. She has
documented the project in a book called, A Year Without ‘Made in China.
In a book? A printed book? You mean the kind of book that is made out of um…paper and ink? Good luck Sara, I love you but for at least a year — maybe more — I won’t be reading any Chinese goods you try to send my way…
Here is the link.
Medical free trade zones
Why not open up a Medical Free Trade Zone in, say, Detroit? Health care
workers in the zone would not be required to get US visas or licenses,
and any malpractice claims would be resolved in the courts of the
worker’s home country.
That is from the comments. Of course in principle we could combine this with a single-payer system or other reforms. That’ll cure those rationing blues and those long waits for hip replacement surgery. Or you might favor a single-payer system but be willing to do this in the meantime, for the many millions of uninsured, at least some of whom are waiting in agony. How about it, people?
But let’s make it geographically central, I say Memphis not Detroit. Or would you feel better if it were a floating pavilion in the Caribbean? A floating pavilion in the Indian Ocean? Bangalore?
I have Bangalore at 8510 miles from Falls Church, VA. Do I hear medical free trade at 8509 miles? 8508? Can we get the mileage down into triple digits…?
Addendum: Ezra Klein flirts with libertarian anarchism, sort of…
Bryan Caplan in *The New Yorker*
Louis Menand, who has written a book on pragmatism, writes in response to Caplan:
In the end, the group that loses these contests must abide by the outcome, must regard the wishes of the majority as legitimate. The only way it can be expected to do so is if it has been made to feel that it had a voice in the process, even if that voice is, in practical terms, symbolic. A great virtue of democratic polities is stability. The toleration of silly opinions is (to speak like an economist) a small price to pay for it.
There is much more at the link.
Addendum: Here is a good sentence from Menand: "People are less modern than the times in which they live, in other words, and the failure to comprehend this is what can make economists seem like happy bulldozers."
Compensating Variations
The British Parliament was debating how much slave owners should be compensated for their losses, 20 million pounds as it turned out, when a furious John Stuart Mill rose to his feet thundering, "I should have thought it was the slaves who should be compensated."
I am reminded of this story, which is probably apocryphal, whenever I hear about how we must compensate "the losers" from globalization. Really? Why should they get any compensation at all?
Imagine that transportation costs fall so that Joe buys his shoes from China. Why do lower transportation costs impose an obligation on Joe to compensate Mary, a U.S. shoe maker? If transportation costs rise (say because the price of oil increases) does Mary have an obligation to compensate Joe?
Or imagine that tariffs have long protected the shoe industry and now the tariffs are lifted allowing Joe to save some money. Why does this impose an obligation on Joe to compensate Mary? Indeed, shouldn’t Mary have to compensate Joe? After all because of the tariffs for many years Joe had to labor extra hours to buy shoes – shouldn’t Joe be compensated for this injustice?
Think about it this way: Suppose the mafia threatens to do you harm if you don’t buy at over-inflated prices from Guido’s Supplies. For many years you buy but one day the mafia is forced out of business. Now you are free to buy from any supplier. Must you compensate Guido for his losses?
Of course, I understand that we might have to compensate the losers from globalization because without compensation they won’t allow us to trade. My question is different. It might be expedient to compensate slave owners but is this justice?
Addendum: It was Benjamin Pearson not Mill (see my comment below for citations).
Is economic inequality bad for growth?
How many times have you heard that meme? It turns out that political inequality is possibly at fault. Acemoglu et. al. report:
Is inequality harmful for economic growth? Is the underdevelopment of
Latin America related to its unequal distribution of wealth? A recently
emerging consensus claims not only that economic inequality has
detrimental effects on economic growth in general, but also that
differences in economic inequality across the American continent during
the 19th century are responsible for the radically different economic
performances of the north and south of the continent. In this paper we
investigate this hypothesis using unique 19th century micro data on
land ownership and political office holding in the state of
Cundinamarca, Colombia. Our results shed considerable doubt on this
consensus. Even though Cundinamarca is indeed more unequal than the
Northern United States at the time, within Cundinamarca municipalities
that were more unequal in the 19th century (as measured by the land
gini) are more developed today. Instead, we argue that political rather
than economic inequality might be more important in understanding
long-run development paths and document that municipalities with
greater political inequality, as measured by political concentration,
are less developed today. We also show that during this critical period
the politically powerful were able to amass greater wealth, which is
consistent with one of the channels through which political inequality
might affect economic allocations. Overall our findings shed doubt on
the conventional wisdom and suggest that research on long-run
comparative development should investigate the implications of
political inequality as well as those of economic inequality.
In other words, at least from that data set, the real problem seems to be rent-seeking behavior through the political process. Here is the link. Here is a non-gated version of the paper.
Micropayments
1. Nick Szabo on how small price changes can become
3. Why Facebook isn’t the future of the web
4. Follow the numbers: why U.S. health care won’t be cheap anytime soon
Underrated science fiction
Yes it is "Underrated Week" and our next genre is science fiction.
But – sorry guys — I don’t think there is much underrated science fiction. You might think the genre as a whole is underrated, but within the genre there are so many sad desperate souls (I know, I am one of them) who will clutch at straws and elevate the mediocre into the worthwhile and the worthwhile into the superlative.
Science fiction has been treading water since the 1960s. Since that time its most glorious achievements have been on the screen, not on the printed page. There are some excellent individual books, such as Eon or Hyperion, but the genre is mostly retreads. Nor do I think much of attempts to cross science fiction with "serious fiction," whether it is coming from Philip K. Dick or Doris Lessing. Yes the idea is cool but the execution is usually quite flawed.
Still we all must have our picks, so here are mine:
1. Sphere, from Michael Crichton. Forget the last few books. He is the best science fiction writer in contemporary times, though his publisher works very hard to make sure that label does not stick.
2. Star Maker, by Olaf Stapledon. Read Stapleton if you fervently believe that British Hegelianism is the missing element in most science fiction. Yet this is probably my favorite science fiction novel of all time, who else can credibly skip over 20,000 years in a single breath? "Civilizations rose and fell, yet now we must move on," or something like that. Honorable mentions go to Stapledon’s Odd John and especially Sirius.
3. Jonathan Lethem, Gun with Occasional Music. This is marketed as contemporary literature, which keeps away the science fiction fans.
It is hard to call Joe Haldeman underrated but still there are fans who don’t know he is one of the best science fiction writers, period.
I guess there is some underrated science fiction after all.
Crying Uncle: OK people, I retract the claim "Science fiction has been treading water since the 1960s." Card and Butler are the most convincing counterexamples.