Cultural diversity and copyright
These are usually considered two separate issues, but now they are moving together:
1. Countries that keep out foreign films with strict quotas, such as South Korea, encourage their citizenries to turn to piracy. South Koreans are perhaps the world’s most notorious illegal downloaders of movies.
2. Lately the French have made a big push for tough copyright enforcement. No, they are not concerned about Madonna’s royalties. Rather they believe that enforceable copyright is a prerequisite of cultural protection. They cannot keep out American culture if the medium is illegal downloads.
3. 16 million songs and one million movies are illegally downloaded in France each day, four times more than are purchased legally (see Variety magazine, July 26 issue, p.11). It is believed that Hollywood movies are the most popular downloads.
4. Given the new option of (illegal) movie downloads, Hollywood filmmakers have more to lose from quotas than before. It will lead foreign consumers to expect to receive movies for free. The foreign market now accounts for more than half of Hollywood box office revenue.
5. It is unusual to see France and the United States so closely aligned on a cultural issue — film and music copyright — albeit for different reasons.
In the United States the major artists typically scream loudest about copyright infringement. They care more about being paid than about being widely distributed. Many niche artists see downloads, legal or not, as a new way to reach audiences.
If niche artists can live with downloads, why cannot the French, who are not a popular culture juggernaut? Most likely, some of the French care more about keeping out American culture than about boosting French niche artists. Their goal is to protect a French mainstream culture, not to enable French innovation. And given these preferences, they hold the consistent albeit disagreeable position of favoring both cultural protectionism and strict copyright enforcement.
Are people becoming happier over time?
We are much richer yet in a survey format Americans do not express greater satisfaction with their lives than they did in times past. What does this mean?
Some individuals suggest that we are pursuing an excess of material goods at the expense of true joys and satisfactions. Arnold Kling offers another interpretation:
Imagine that you could go back a few hundred years and ask people if they are “very happy,” “fairly happy,” or “not happy.” Suppose that this survey showed that happiness was approximately the same back then as it is today. Would it be fair to conclude that the tangible goods that we have today contribute nothing to happiness? People a few hundred years ago had no idea what it was like to live with indoor plumbing, abundant food, and antibiotics. People today have no idea what it was like to live without them. How can a “happiness survey” provide a meaningful comparison of the two eras?
In [Robert] Frank’s view, what the surveys show is that consumers have been behaving myopically, striving for more tangible goods without increasing their happiness. An alternative hypothesis is that in answering the surveys the consumers are behaving myopically, reporting on their happiness relative to a near-term baseline. That is, when you ask a consumer in 2004 if she is happy, she instinctively makes a relative comparison to how she remembers 2003. If she could remember how she felt in 1974, and she were focused on that as a baseline, she might answer the question differently.
Happiness research can be used to account for behavioral failures to maximize utility. Most alcoholics are not happy by traditional standards yet they drink of their own volition. So we might use happiness research to suggest a higher tax on alcohol than on vaccines for children. Or happiness research tells us to get the bad news over with, rather than suffering under its expectation. Happiness research is not a suitable tool for making broad comparisons of well-being over long periods of time.
Here is a useful dialogue on happiness research and economics. Here is Bryan Caplan’s earlier post on the policy implications of happiness economics.
Addendum: Try living with 1954 technology for a mere ten days, thanks to the ever-excellent GeekPress.com for the lead.
Decentral Intelligence Agency
I have yet to see a good argument for creating a new director of intelligence. It’s true that the intelligence agencies failed to share information. But an epi-central director of intelligence doesn’t solve that problem and may make it worse. The implicit model of the 9/11 Commission is command and control – move all the information from the roots of the tree to the top of tree and then one all-encompassing-mind will evaluate it and make the right decision. Does that model sound familiar? Sure it does, that’s the model of economic planning that is currently lying on the ash-heap of history. It’s the model that Mises and Hayek subjected to withering criticism in the socialist calculation debate of the 1930s.
In brief, consider the following two defects of the economic Czar model. First, even if the information were to make it all the way to the top it would be difficult, well nigh-impossible, for a single mind to grasp it all and make it useful. This is especially true when there are no prices and hence no way of aggregating the information into a common unit (the so-called terror market was one way of alleviating this problem). Second, information is lost as it moves up the hierarchy – it has to be because not all information is easily communicable, bandwidth isn’t infinite, and the people at the top demand information loss because as you move up the tree the amount of information becomes overwhelming.
An intelligence-Czar faces exactly the same problems. So what can be done? The intelligence agencies need tools that can spread information rapidly and widely and that are open to anyone with information whether they are at the bottom or the top of the hierarchy…Sound familiar? Yes, blogs and wikis are the right idea. And no I am not being flip. A central information repository that everyone can access may be part of the solution but centralizing information is not the same as centralizing decision making authority (remember “groupthink?” – the solution to our intelligence problems must face the problems of 9/11 and the problems of Iraq which are not the same.) Other ideas are to reward information sharing instead of hoarding – we should probably classify less information not more – and to rotate staff across bureaus in order to encourage collaboration and informal information sharing. Others more expert in this area will have more specific suggestions but my primary suggestion is that the models to follow are those of markets, webs, and networks.
Addendum: See also Tyler’s related and important discussion.
Wonder Bread
I’ve been buying this organic bread recently. I’m not a big organic guy (could you guess?) but it’s low-carb and yet doesn’t taste like cardboard. Several times, however, the bread has gone moldy within a day or two. Yuck. So I took some back to the store all indignant about how I only just bought this bread and now its moldy. The clerk explained it to me – heh, it’s organic – no preservatives, get it? Oh, that’s what preservatives do. I will never question civilization again.
Open doors and locks with your skin
Unlocking cars and activating devices securely could soon be a matter of simply touching them, thanks to a communications system that transmits data across the skin.
“We are using the body as a signal transmitter,” says CEO Peter Rosenbeck. “You simply have a transmitter, a person and a receiver.”
Rosenbeck says the system operates at just 30 nanoamperes, making it entirely safe for people to use. The code transmitted by the electric signal allows cars to be unlocked, doors opened or other devices started.
You do need to carry a credit card-sized object in your pocket. Here is the full story.
Cyclopaedia of Political Economy
Have you ever wondered what nineteenth century, classical liberal political economy looked like? No, not the classic writers but rather ordinary political economy?
A new web resource answers your question. John J. Lalor’s Cyclopaedia of Political Science, Political Economy collected classical liberal writings on the economic issues of the day, circa 1881. You can now access and read the work in its entirety. Here is information about the book and author.
For one sample, here is the brief article on the political economy of debt. Or try this entry on the balance of trade, still relevant today. The item on the division of labor remains eloquent and insightful. Gustav de Molinari writes passionately on the link between freedom, prosperity, and the arts, a favorite topic of mine. I’ve spent a good bit of time browsing through the book (both recently and much earlier), and it offers surprisingly few clunkers. On social issues it is consistently liberal and progressive.
Kudos to the ever-excellent Liberty Fund for putting the work on-line. Until their efforts, you could buy the book for a mere $675.
Addendum: The links to the previous version of this post have now been fixed.
Nigeria gets a movie theater
No, not an open-air cinema, or a DVD player projecting onto a large screen, but rather a real movie theater:
Lagos is the biggest city in Nigeria and sub-Saharan Africa, but until recently it did not even have any cinemas.
Lagos now has its first multi-screen cinema complex – a rarity in Africa
That is all the more surprising given that Nigerians love watching films: the country is famous for its thriving and expanding home-video industry.
Now, however, that has all changed, thanks to the Silverbird Cinemas – an upmarket five-screen Cineplex in the heart of Victoria Island.
The project has faced numerous obstacles:
There were cinemas in Lagos in the 1960s, but they began going out of business in the 1970s – partly because of the difficulties of operating under military dictatorship.
Cinemas closed down across the country and today many are used as Pentecostal churches or Islamic education centres.
But even with Ben Murray-Bruce’s enthusiasm, this was not the easiest project to get off the ground.
Nigeria has an erratic power supply, which means that seven generators have been installed to make sure that the films do not stop mid-show and the air-conditioning does not break down.
Mr Murray-Bruce has also had to convince film distributors that it is safe to send prints to Lagos – a city already awash with pirated DVDs of top Hollywood films.
Here is the full story.
Think about this account next time you hear someone blame the small number of African films on Hollywood or Bollywood cultural imperialism.
Regulating sex work
In June of 2003, New Zealand decriminalized prostitution. As a result, the industry fell under the aegis of the NZ Occupational Safety and Health Service who have produced a Jocelyn Elders? Alas, the New Zealanders are not so liberal with regard to other policies – you can go to a brothel, for example, but don’t try lighting up after sex or you will be in contravention of the law.
All of this reminds me of the following IQ test question:
What is the minimum number of condoms required for safe sex in each case:
(a) two men with two women
(b) one man with three women or three men with one woman
(c) three men with each other
(d) 2k+1 men with one woman
(e) m men and n women
Is there anyone in the world smart enough to figure out the answer and lucky enough to find the knowledge useful? Answers here in case you are simply lucky.
Addendum: Tyler also wrote about condoms recently. I promise we will get back to economics soon. Of course, the great Richard Posner did write a whole book about sex so we have strong precedent for these discussions. More information on the regulation of prostitution can be found at Wikipedia. Thanks to Eric Crampton for the link.
Has there been a free trade breakthrough?
Remember that old saying, something like “Things are never as bad, or as good, as they seem.” It applies to international trade as well.
Numerous reports suggest that the WTO has achieved a breakthrough. The core deal appears to suggest that many poor countries will lower their tariffs on manufactured goods and the rich countries will limit or eliminate export subsidies and protection for agriculture. But there is more here than meets the eye.
The first worry is an obvious one. There is no date given for the change in agricultural policies. Keep in mind that the rich countries are masters of obfuscation and delay on this issue, if not outright obstruction. Plus the rich countries can exempt “special” products, if they so choose.
Arvind Panagariya suggests that our concerns should run deeper:
Current production and export subsidies flood world markets with the subsidised products and drive their prices down. The removal of these measures will raise the prices of the products in question. This will benefit the exporters and hurt the importers of these products. Food products happen to be among the most heavily subsidised items and as many as 45 of the world’s least developed countries are net food importers, according to calculations by the economists Alberto Valdes and Alex McCalla. Even when we consider all agricultural products, 33 least developed countries are net importers.
A counter-argument may be that, once the subsidies are eliminated and world prices increase, the least developed countries will become net exporters of the products. But this is doubtful for two reasons: such a change can turn at most only a handful of these countries into net exporters and the switch from net importer to net exporter status by itself is not enough to bring an overall benefit. As food prices rise, so will losses on food imports. Only if a country becomes a sufficiently large exporter will it be able to offset these losses.
In other words, even if reform comes about, the main beneficiaries will be the taxpayers in the rich countries. Export subsidies benefit consumers abroad, even if they do not maximize aggregate value.
Nonetheless it is trickier than Panagariya indicates. Many agricultural interventions keep world prices up, not down, by preventing the reallocation of farming to its most productive geographic venues. Nonetheless it is not obvious that the very poor countries would be big winners in any competitive reshuffling of sectoral specializations. In fact we might expect technology to make agriculture increasingly high-tech. We are then back to the case where export subsidies hurt taxpayers in rich countries but help consumers in poor countries.
Also keep in mind that many poor countries already enjoy free bilateral access to EU markets for many agricultural commodities, with rice, sugar, and bananas being prominent exceptions. So if liberalization causes food prices in Europe to fall, agricultural exporters in the poor countries may again be worse off.
I am all for free trade, as loyal readers of MR will know. But it is a common myth to think that agricultural free trade will cause say, Africa, to blossom or achieve significantly greater gains from world markets. Even if African consumers end up paying lower prices for food, African producers will see very mixed results. And how effectively do we expect the damaged producers to be reallocated to other sectors? Africa as a whole could still benefit in the longer run, given the theory of comparative advantage, but this is hardly the scenario that everyone has in mind.
Addendum: Ben Muse offers an analysis and extensive links.
Dad is a stinker
Children rate their fathers as among their least popular playmates because they are too competitive, according to research among more than 1,000 youngsters.
They “played to win”, lacked imagination or were simply at a loss as to how to play games, said the Children’s Play Council, which commissioned the survey with the Children’s Society.
Children up to the age of 12 would rather play with their friends, their mother or their brothers and sisters.
Only one in 16 chose their fathers as their ideal companion. Dads were rated slightly above grandparents (one in 33) [so what’s wrong with them, TC asks?]. One in 50 children said they would rather play on their own.
Tim Gill, director of the Children’s Play Council, said: “Dads have difficulty not being too competitive. Several fathers said they found it hard to get down to their children’s level. And they don’t find it easy to let children win.
And what does the resident sociologist say?
Frank Furedi, professor of sociology at the University of Kent at Canterbury, said: “Fathers are living through their children much more which means they lose sight of the line that distinguishes adult from child.
“It’s also partly a power control issue. Fathers want to let their children know they are still ‘players’.”
Here is the full story.
Touching the Void
Imagine that you are trapped on a mountain in the Peruvian Andes, your leg is broken in several places, you are severely dehydrated, bitterly cold, all alone…. and you can’t get this song by Bony M out of your head. You don’t even like the song. Now, that’s hell.
That’s one of the lighter moments in Touching the Void a harrowing, awe-inspiring, true-story of two climbers made into a great movie/documentary. Aside from the sheer entertainment value, very sheer in this case, the move has a lot to say about the diversity of preferences, the will to survive and believe it or not, how to achieve goals. Touching the Void also nicely disposes of that old canard about there being no atheists in foxholes. Highly recommended.
Patents for everything
Or is that Markets in Everything?
Read this patent application for paying people to watch commercials:
Described are methods and apparatus for encouraging viewers to pay attention to television programs, commercials in particular, by offering viewers some incentive to watch. In one embodiment, viewers are notified that they can receive frequent-flier miles for answering one or more simple questions at the conclusion of the commercial. To verify that the viewer paid attention to the commercial, the answer to the question may be based on the content of the commercial. A sponsor might ask, for example, that the viewer identify the name of the sponsor or the color of an announcer’s shirt. A correct answer indicates that the viewer watched the commercial, and that the viewer is therefore entitled to some reward. For example, viewers who watch the commercial may be entered in a prize drawing, or may receive prize points, such as frequent-flier miles. In other embodiments, viewers may verify that they watched a given program by selecting an icon or pressing a button on a remote control.
That’s now owned by Microsoft, by the way, in case you are wondering why they are paying such a huge dividend. Here is the original link from TechDirt.
Literary role models for bloggers
All writers have their role models. To whom should bloggers look?
One obvious choice is Samuel Pepys, who kept regular diaries for about ten years. But Adam Sisman’s excellent book, written before the advent of blogging, nonetheless directs our attention to the Scot James Boswell:
Boswell’s plain, direct prose was easy to read, and appealed to twentieth-century readers as [Samuel] Johnson’s mannered, classical style never could. Moreover, Boswell’s interest in himself, which seemed so peculiar to his contemporaries, was very much more acceptable two centuries later. Indeed, Boswell seemed to offer a unique combination: a writer who poured the contents of his mind freely into his journal, without either embarrassment or knowingness…Here was a miracle: a pre-Freudian autobiographer who revealed everything in his mind, without restraint, concealment, or distortion. Or so it seemed.
Boswell [borrowed] techniques from the novel, the theatre, and the confessional memoir. With meticulous care, with long-practised skill, and with a generous imagination, he crafted a character who lived and breathed [TC: I have long felt that Boswell, not Samuel Johnson, is the real biographical subject of Boswell’s Life of Johnson]. He also set new scholarly standards; his verification of every possible detail, which seemed so eccentric to his contemporaries, would become the norm. In doing what he did, he relied mainly on instinct, his sense of what would serve his purpose best.
Hmm…and like many bloggers, Boswell often got in trouble for writing up his private conversations with others.
Safe sex, sells saris
The Indian city of Varanasi is getting through around 600,000 condoms a day, but this is no population control exercise. The weavers of the holy city, home to the world-famous Banarasi saris, have made the contraceptives a vital part of garment production.
The weaver rubs the condom on the loom’s shuttle, which is softened by the lubricant thus making the process of weaving faster.
The lubricant does not leave any stain on the silk thread which might soil the valuable saris.
There are around 150,000 to 200,000 hand and power looms in Varanasi alone and almost all are using the technique.
And every loom has a daily consumption of three or four condoms.
At first, weavers stocked up on condoms from the family planning department under a government scheme to provide them free of cost.
Some weavers even registered with fake identities to get their hands on the precious prophylactics.
Here is the full story. Thanks to Paul N for the pointer.
Profits and an Independent Press
He who pays the piper, picks the tune. In China, that moral has proved to be a surprising link between economic reform and political reform.
More than a quarter century after China launched economic reforms while continuing to restrict political freedom, the government still owns and controls all of the country’s newspapers and television stations. But journalists have fought off party censors in one sensitive subject area after another, and they are waging a daily battle for even greater freedoms.
This push is driven in part by economics. In a sweeping industry overhaul, the government is withdrawing subsidies from state media outlets, holding them responsible for their own profits and losses and opening the door to private investment. The market has led newspapers to set aside propaganda and deliver stories that readers are actually interested in. Many have turned to gossip or entertainment, but there is also a financial incentive to produce a scarce commodity: journalism that challenges the government.
That’s from a very good Washington Post story about a courageous newspaper editor in China, jailed for questioning the local police.