Against torture prosecution

by  Tyler Cowen in

At many blogs (Sullivan, Yglesias, DeLong, among others) you will find ongoing arguments for prosecuting the torturers who ran our government for a while.  I am in agreement with the moral stance of these critics but I don't agree with their practical conclusions.  I believe that a full investigation would lead the U.S. public to, ultimately, side with torture, side with the torturers, and side against the prosecutors.  That's why we can't proceed and Obama probably understands that.  If another attack happened this would be all the more true.

On top of everything else, major Democrats in Congress are likely complicit and the Democrats as a whole hardly made this a campaign issue in 2004; in 2008 the economy was their winning issue, not torture.

One of the excellent students in my Law and Literature class wrote the following sentence in his final paper:

In some of the books, and almost all of the movies we have seen that the law goes as far as people are willing to support it.

That sad truth is another cost of the practice of torture.  The American public, now having affiliated itself with torture, will be reluctant to condemn torture for some time to come.  The "endowment effect" here seems to be strong.

An acquittal or mistrial would lose the chunk of world opinion that Obama has been winning back.  And a trial might prompt another terrorist attack, if only to force acquittal and make America look bad once again.

Pushing for prosecution would more likely endanger rule of law than preserve it, which is a sorry state of affairs.

Addendum: Here is more from Matt Yglesias.

Sentences to ponder

by  Tyler Cowen in

Cities that instituted quarantine, school closings, bans on public
gatherings and other such procedures early in the epidemic had peak
death rates 30 percent to 50 percent lower than those that did not.

That is from a study of the pandemic of 1918-1919 and here is more, from 2007.  The best place to follow what is going on in Mexico — where such restrictions are now common — is ElUniversal.  People in Mexico are dying of the flu every day; what is the chance that only the benign version of the virus crosses the border?

Are you hot?

by  Alex Tabarrok in

Ever since the 2003 outbreak of SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, Hong Kong has used infrared scanners to measure the facial temperatures of all arrivals at its airport and at its border crossings with mainland China.

The NYTimes reporting on how Hong Kong is probably better prepared than any other place in the world for a flu pandemic.

Hat tip to Monique van Hoek.

Why does the music from Cape Verde sound so sad?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Might one reason be recurring famine?:

Despite its name, Cape Verde is an arid landmass with minimal agricultural potential.  The excess mortality associated with its major famines in unparalleled in relative terms.  A famine in 1773-76 is said to have removed 44 percent of the population; a second in 1830-33 is claimed to have killed 42 percent of the population of seventy thousand or so; and a third in 1854-56 to have killed 25 percent.  In 1860 the population was ninety thousand; 40 percent of Cape Verdeans were reported to have died of famine in 1863-67.  Despite a population loss of thirty thousand, the population was put at eighty thousand in 1870.  Twentieth-century famines in Cape Verde were less deadly, but still extreme relative to most contemporaneous ones elsewhere: 15 percent of the population (or twenty thousand) in 1900-1903; 16 percent (twenty-five thousand) in 1920-22; 15 percent (twenty thousand) in 1940-43; and 18 percent (thirty thousand) in 1946-48…

…such death tolls imply extraordinary noncrisis population growth.  For instance, if the population estimates for 1830 and 1860 are credited, making good the damage inflicted by the famine of 1830-33 would have required an annual population growth rate of about 4 percent between 1833 and 1860 — despite the loss of a quarter or so of the population in 1854-56.

That is all from the new and noteworthy Famine: A Short History, by Cormac O Grada.  Here is the book's home page.

Here are the author's working papers on famine.

Countercyclical assets, a continuing series

by  Tyler Cowen in

Lebanon, at least for now:

But while number crunchers elsewhere toil to trim over-optimistic
estimates into punier real results, statisticians at the Banque du
Liban are revising theirs sharply upwards. Lebanon’s GDP grew during
2008, not at an annual rate of 7.5%, it seems, but at 9% or better.

Yet even that trend-bucking number looks modest compared to other
milestones scored by this small, almost comically turbulent country.
Last year the value of deposits in Lebanese commercial banks rose by
15% to an impressive $94 billion, equal to 327% of GDP. Industrial
exports surged 24%. Tax revenues, tourist arrivals, banking profits and
the number of construction permits all soared by a third or more. A
giant 46% leap in net capital inflows helped Lebanon post a record $3.5
billion surplus in its balance of payments, and boosted the Banque du
Liban’s own reserves to a cosy $22 billion, nearly double its holdings
a year ago.

Nor does this upswing show much sign of slowing. Sales of new cars are
up by 19%, and the number of tourists arriving in the country in the
first three months of this year increased by 50% compared with the same
period last year. Property prices are holding the past few years’ heady
gains, and worries that the global recession would force home thousands
of Lebanese expatriates, slashing the remittances that underpin the
economy, have so far proven unfounded.

New thinking in real estate, China market(s) of the day

by  Tyler Cowen in

Who needs Match.com?

Jin Tai Cheng, a Beijing company, is offering a creative solution for
prospective buyers at its "Ecological Bay" Villa project. The company
encourages future homeowners to date its sales girls and promises a
wedding present of RMB 60,000 to any couple that ends up getting
married. The official story is that the company lured the sales ladies
with a commitment to pay 8% in sales commissions as well as the
opportunity to strike gold by securing a wealthy husband.

Here is the story.  Yet rarely is a market as simple as it sounds at first.  It seems they are trying to pair up "lesser" prospects without portraying them as such:

…a local Real Estate executive I spoke to pointed out that the
girls on offer are not that attractive. His theory is that the
developer is not making money on selling apartments and so it signed a
deal with a matchmaking agency to marry these "unwanted" girls to rich
husbands. In return, the developer will receive much more than RMB
60,000 for every girl they manage to "give away". This way, the girls
don't lose face by putting themselves on sale, the husbands don't lose
face by going directly to an agency to look for a bride, and the
developer makes a nice profit. In a country with too many apartments
and not enough girls, this doesn't sound like a bad idea.

I thank The Browser for the pointer.

Convexifying the choice set, an ongoing series

by  Tyler Cowen in

There is a new proposal for chess:

  • Slight Win: A player wins slightly if any of the following
    conditions hold:
    d. The opponent offers to concede a slight win and he or she agrees,
    e. He or she stalemates his or her opponent.
    f. Without making a move, a player calls the arbiter and proves that as
    a result of her opponent's last move, the same position has occurred thrice.

The player that wins slightly gets 4/6 points, and the player that loses slightly
get 2/6 points.

Why not go further and allow the players to bargain for a split sum of any magnitude?  "I offer you .5713 to stop playing now…"

From the comments, at Effect Measure

by  Tyler Cowen in

It surprises me that no one has mentioned this, so i'll end years of
quietly lurking and say it myself: a possible explanation for the
difference in clinical picture here vs Mexico lies in the sample size
here. 8 of 8 confirmed "swine flu" cases here have not involved serious
lower respiratory infection or death. But about 60 of about 1,000
generally unconfirmed cases of "swine flu" in Mexico have. If those all
confirm, that's about a 6% CFR. From what i've read, we don't have data
yet on the CFR of confirmed cases in Mexico, and we don't have a
satistically significant sample here for measuring phenomena in the
single percentage digits.

This tells me that there is no confirmed or statistically
significant difference in the clinical picture between US & Mexico.

Of course Mexico is where most of the data points lie.  That's Suzanne Bunton.  Read the other comments too.  If the Obama administration believes in competent government, it would be nice if they would meet the public health standards currently practiced by the government in Mexico.  Even a completed fence would not stop a virus and there is otherwise no reason to wait.  Should we in the meantime count on a more favorable mutation to protect us?

Markets in less than everything

by  Tyler Cowen in

But to other writers and editors, the Kindle is the ultimate bad idea whose time has come. Anne Fadiman,
the author, was relieved to learn that her essay collection, “Ex
Libris,” was not available on Kindle. “It would really be ironic if it
were,” she said of the book, which evokes her abiding passion for books
as objects.

Here is the article, interesting throughout.

The new swine flu: this is not a joke

by  Tyler Cowen in

The outbreak even hit Mexico's beloved national pastime — two sold-out
football matches Sunday — Pumas vs. Chivas and America vs. Tecos —
will be played in empty stadiums to prevent the spread of the disease.

Here is the story.  Some people are puzzled as to how human, pig, and bird strains of the flu have mixed together, but if you have spent any time in rural Mexico the answer is obvious: these creatures all live together in close quarters.

Here is my earlier study on how an economist should think about avian flu and pandemics.  You can follow the latest developments at Recombinomics and Crofsblog (the best blogroll on the topic) and Effect Measure.  Revere, an experienced professional, puts it simply:

There is ample room for serious worry. WHO is convening its expert
panel under the International Health Regulations to determine if the
pandemic threat level should be increased from phase 3 to phase 4. In
our view, this isn't even a close call. We are in phase 4 and if WHO
doesn't call it they risk being considered irrelevant and without
credibility.

I will repeat the general point that public health is one of the best ways to spend government money, as it is (often, not always) a true public good.

What I’ve been reading

by  Tyler Cowen in

1. Siddharth Kara, Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery.  A serious research effort and the best book so far on its topic.

2. Joseph Contreras, In the Shadow of the Giant: The Americanization of Modern Mexico.  A neglected side of recent Mexican history; one of the best books on where Mexico is headed.  Here is a recent article on related progress in Mexico's legal system.

3. Mahmood Mamdani, Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror.  This revisionist account argues the conflict is political rather than racial and that the notion of "genocide" is an externally imposed category for international political reasons.  I found the arguments of this book hard to assess but it made for stimulating reading.

4. George Scialabba, What are Intellectuals Good For?, recommendation via Henry.  Fascinating essays on 20th century intellectuals, from an "ethical left" point of view.  I especially liked the piece on Pasolini (a favorite director of mine).

5. Dying Inside, by Robert Silverberg.  This 1972 classic has just been republished.  Is it science fiction or speculative fiction?  In any case it is full of social science; the basic premise is about how other people react to a man who has the ability to read peoples' minds and how psychologically destructive this power turns out to be.  If you wish to read every great science fiction book this is a must.