Results for “coup”
639 found

Let the Dog Out!

Dog the Bounty Hunter was arrested and jailed recently on charges related to his capture of Andrew Luster in Mexico.  Here’s a couple of paragraphs from a long-term project:

Andrew
Luster had it all, a multi-million dollar trust fund, good looks, and a bachelor
pad just off the beach in Mussel Shoals, California. Luster, the great-grandson of cosmetics
legend Max Factor, spent his days surfing and cruising the clubs. His life would have been unremarkable if sad had
he not had a fetish for sex with the unconscious. When the first woman alleged rape, Luster
claimed mutual consent but the videotapes that the police discovered when they searched
his home told a different story. Eventually
more than ten women came forward and Luster was convicted of twenty counts of
rape and sentenced to 124 years in prison. There was only one problem. Luster could not be found.

Shortly
before he was expected to take the stand, Luster withdrew funds from his stock
accounts, arranged for his dog to be taken care of and skipped town on a one
million dollar bail bond. The FBI put
Luster on their Most Wanted list but months passed with no results. In the end, the authorities never found him.  But Luster but he was brought to justice – by
a dog. Duane Chapman, now known by the
title of his television show, Dog: The Bounty Hunter, had been tracking Luster
for months. He picked up clues to his whereabouts
from old phone bills and from Luster’s mother who inadvertently revealed that
Luster spoke fluent Spanish. Finally, a
tip from someone who had seen Dog on television brought Dog to a small town in Mexico with great surfing. Days later Dog spotted Luster at a taco stand and made the arrest.

Unfortunately for Dog, bounty hunting is illegal in Mexico and the US authorities, who in my opinion are embarrassed by their failure to capture Luster, haven’t tried to intervene with the Mexican government to let the charges drop in the interests of justice.

For more on the effectiveness of bounty hunters versus the police see my paper.

Markets in everything, aviation edition

Georgia corporate pilot Bob Smith  has a soaring sideline:
helping couples join the infamous "mile-high club."  For $299, he’ll
take a frisky twosome past 5,280 feet in a Piper Cherokee 6 fitted with
a mattress.  The hour-long [TC: only?] flights out of Carrollton, Ga., (details at milehighatlanta.com) have lured couples from as far as New York.

Here is the full story.  3/4 of the flights are booked by women, and not by male partners.  Not all couples want their names on the certificate, and yes you get to keep the sheets.

Joe Stiglitz watch

Let me start with the concessions.  Joe Stiglitz is one of the most brilliant economic theorists of the last thirty years.  The current Bolivian distribution of wealth is drastically unfair and is a legacy of prior and indeed ongoing theft and oppression.  Large enough resource confiscations, as occurred when the Saudis nationalized Western oil interests, can make a people better off. 

Now let’s move to the train wreck, quoted from The New York Times Book Review, written by Alma Guillermoprieto:

Stiglitz and his wife first visited Bolivia four years ago, and returned in May. "Morales’s election was such a big thing," he said in a recent phone conversation, "that we decided to make the effort to go down there and take a look."  He spent one day of the visit listening to Powerpoint presentations by members of Morales’s economic team, most of whom are academics who at some point have studied abroad.  He found his interlocutors thoughtful and impressive, he said.

In May, Evo Morales decreed the nationalization of the energy industry…In July, Stiglitz, who has written about energy resources and how they are used, did not seem to find the policy startling or irrational, even though it has enraged the representatives of the companies that have invested in Bolivia’s tempting deposits of natural gas.

It should be noted that the Bolivians were receiving only 18 percent royalties on these resources, and that figure was calculated on a base lower than market prices might imply, given that the country is landlocked and does not receive market prices for its gas.  So yes it is unfair.

But under the new regime, the gas yields only $820 milliion in revenue a year.  That is over $100 a person a year.  Lots of money for a poor Bolivian, but hardly enough to retire on or hardly enough to then stagnate.  And Bolivia wrecks its credibility with foreign investors.  And a renegotiation of the deal with the private companies would have been possible.  And most state energy companies are very badly run.  And energy and indeed natural gas shortages are already popping up in Bolivia.  And many people in the wealthier, eastern part of the country (e.g., Santa Cruz) opposed nationalization; they are keen to do business with Brazil.  And few poor countries — dare I say any? — have done well going down the route of economic populism.  And if we are going to be populist, is anyone — read: Stiglitz — calling for that money to go directly to Bolivia’s citizens?  That includes the indigenous ones who live on the barren altiplano and even now don’t control the government and probably never will.  Yup, those people.  (I might add that I have such a hat, which I cherish, although Natasha asks I do not wear it in the United States.)

Addendum: Here is Brad DeLong on Paul Krugman’s economic populism: "…when I read Paul’s call for "smart, bold populism," I am reminded of earlier calls a couple of decades ago by Milton Friedman, Marty Feldstein, and their ilk for smart, bold conservatism or smart, bold libertarianism.  But they did not get what they ordered: on the economic policy front the policies of Reagan and of Bush II have been a horrible botch.  What populist policies that we can think of would be smart?  And how can we make our high politicians allergic to populist policies that are stupid?"

Philosophical journeys

As a young teen I wanted to start with all of Plato’s Dialogues (yes including Parmenides, which I loved, but I didn’t finish The Laws) plus the major works of modern philosophy.  I used the old John Hospers text to identify Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant.  I read some Aristotle too, although he bored me.  Then I read lots of Karl Popper and Brand Blanshard, the old-fashioned defender of rationalism and critic of positivism.  I gobbled up George Smith and Antony Flew on atheism.  I was influenced by Ayn Rand’s moral defense of capitalism, though I was never impressed by her as a philosopher. 

Much later I read Nozick, Rawls, and Parfit.  Parfit made by far the biggest impression on me.  The other two, however smart, seemed predictable.

In graduate school I read Quine avidly.  George Romanos’s book on Quine I found more useful than any single Quine work, although Word and Object and the essay on "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" are the places to start.  Quine remains a major influence, including on how I think about blog posts.  Which thicket of assumptions might lead one to a possible conclusion?  I took a class on philosophy of language with Hilary Putnam and developed interests in Kripke and others, but they never displaced Quine in my affections.  I developed a fondness for William James.  From Rorty I saw more value in the Continentals, although I prefer to misread them.  I flirted with the early German romantics and their rejection of philosophy, at times mediated through J.S. Mill.

Later experience with Liberty Fund interested me in "deep" readings of Montesquieu, Tocqueville, Maimonides, and some of the other "Straussian" texts.  I’ve never been a Straussian, though.  I’ve made attempts to understand Heidegger but without any success. 

Right now the philosophy journals I read are Ethics and Philosophy and Public Affairs.  When it comes to metaphysics, mind-body problems, and the like, I prefer books, usually of a semi-popular nature.  The academic debates on these topics are too rarified to interest me very much.

That is my path, in a nutshell.  I don’t pretend it is an optimal sequence for others. 

The bottom line: I have learned to focus on the philosophy which clicked with me at the time.  The rest was just so much blah blah blah.  Philosophy books are more like self-help tomes, or fun record albums, than they let on.

Any suggestions for how our reader should choose a path?

What do CEOs and other notables pay attention to?

Janine Benyus, author of Biomimicry, has a good answer:

"As far as my media diet, I’m a hoover for print and will read whatever blows my way … I find New Scientist to be the best sci mag. Also subscribe to Wired, Onion and Resurgence. I use a feedreader to keep up with about 35 sources (news digests and blogs). We have an extensive, active backchannel portfolio of blogs for the Biomimicry Ravalli Republic.
POV: Nightline, Daily Show, NOW, Comedy Channel Presents, couple of
Showtime dramas. Love stand up comedy for its honesty and pathos about
the current state of things. And, of course, I can waste away my youth
surfing the web. Love living in this era."

Joe Tripodi of Allstate has another good response:

"I’d summarize as: Read about it; experience it; observe it. I get a ton of e-mails every day from Media Post, Brand Week, Ad Week, NYT,
etc, etc. I try reading books about the ‘new world order,’ but find
they are virtually obsolete before I finish them. Experience it! You
have to walk the talk. I have iPods (regular, Nano and Shuffle), three
TiVos (sacrilege, I know, but time is too short to watch all the
commercials), 8700c Blackberry, DirecTV, HDTV, etc. I try to spend time
regularly on new web destinations, especially those generating some
buzz. Observe it! I have three young children (10, 8, 6) and learn more
from them than any new-media ‘guru.’ They sit near the epicenter of
this ADD economy. Recently they’ve been swept away by the cultural
Tsunami called "American Idol." Lots of gaming, surfing, texting, etc.

Remember Barry Schwartz?  He is the guy who wrote The Paradox of Choice: Why Less is More.  Here is his answer:

"Frankly, what I do is ignore new stuff as long as I possibly can. I
let the rest of the world force me to do new things just to be
compatible with them. My view is that anything that doesn’t last at
least three years after its initial appearance isn’t worth knowing
about. But I’m an old-fashioned guy."

Puts the whole book in perspective, doesn’t it?

Here is the whole story.  Thanks to Tim Sullivan for the pointer.

Trudie on time management

First, check out Tyler’s earlier tips on time management.  Read this one too.  That’s right, you.  The one who doesn’t usually click on the links.  Read them.  Don’t tell me you don’t have enough time.

The bigger question is whether time management is something you need to improve.  The "Friends" part of your brain sounds quite fundamental, why tamper with it?  Don’t think all that Bruckner stuff, or for that matter the Journal of Law and Economics, beats a good TV show.  (Even Nigerian movies can be worse than Law and Order, believe it or not!)  Cost-benefit analysis suggests that acceptance will come easier than change.

It sounds as if you are already an expert consumer, and indeed consumption is the ultimate goal of economic activity.

Being "completely rational" would be a high form of hell.  Tyler tells me that his high levels of cultural consumption are his form of irrationality, not the contrary.  And most of his activities are quite passive; he has never been in a kayak, refuses to go "natural diving," and surely blogging does not compare with building a software company or hunting a boar.  Don’t confuse a restless nature with seizing life by the throat and living it to the fullest (although, of course, some people do both, including Tyler).  In any case the key is to enjoy and indeed cultivate the irrationalities you have (indeed that is all you have), at least provided they do not become destructive vis-a-vis other people.

Trudie again thanks Tim Harford for pioneering the concept of economic advice; Tyler has added Tim’s website to the Interesting People roll on the left hand side of this blog.

Kenneth Arrow on academic freedom

Bowen: There was a study done recently by an economist at Santa Clara University,
Daniel Klein, showing disproportionate numbers of registered Democrats
versus registered Republicans in various departments at the
University of California, Berkeley,
and Stanford. [The study’s findings are available at
http://www.ratio.se/pdf/wp/dk_aw_voter.pdf.] He has concluded that this
kind of ideological imbalance has a negative impact on the education of
students. He implies
that
there is a temptation to hire one’s own. Conservative activist David
Horowitz has made much the same kind of statement, saying that faculty
are preaching rather than teaching. And why?  Because there’s a gross
imbalance between liberals and conservatives in the professoriate.
Effectively,
they are calling for government regulation of the academy [TC: Klein is not, this is inaccurate]. Do you worry
about calls for legislation at the state level to correct this
situation? Does this worry you as an economist or as a professor?

Arrow:
You know, it certainly does worry me. It would worry me a lot if
legislation passed. There was a concern at one time that there would be
repression of the left. And now there are concerns that the left is
taking over. It’s hard for me to judge, of course, but I must say that
my department
contains
a number of Republicans. And they were appointed by a democratic group,
whose members said these guys are good, and we’ve got to hire them. And
so far, I have not seen it work the other way, but I’m a little
concerned about where it could swing. In this case, the criticism seems
to be just wrong, because I think the departments hire on the basis of
merit. And I think it’s nonsense to say that we’re discriminating
against Republicans. We hire them all the time. On the other hand,
there was a department here that until the 1960s would not appoint
a
Jew. And, finally, the university did interfere, you see, in that case.
The dean took over the department. He took away the power to appoint
from the department and changed its   composition in three or four
years. In fact, I was amazed how rapidly he was able to turn things
around
to strengthen an already very good department. To defend the autonomy
of that department would not have been something I would have been very
happy to do.

Bowen: The  economics department at the University of Chicago
has had a reputation for many years for being quite conservative. Do
you think that’s the exception that proves the rule that you hire, as
you said earlier, on the basis of merit, not on the basis of party
identification of ideology?

Arrow:
There are people in that department who are not conservative. It’s a
very good department. Most of the conservatives are really quite
outstanding. I think they flock together.
I
don’t think it’s entirely the case where you pick your own kind. I
don’t think the economics department here is reproducing itself.
They’re different politically and methodologically. I think
methodological problems have been bigger more often than political
issues. I do not believe
the
university, the central administration, should be totally unconcerned
about appointments. I used to believe that the department had to be
completely autonomous. It took me a couple of years to realize that
that was not right.

I can remember an instance at Chicago
in which there was an incident involving a professor of economics who
was sort of a village atheist type. He was a very good economist, but a
little eccentric. He believed that religion was one of the big
oppressive things in this world. This fellow saw a priest in class. He
went and gave his whole lecture on the evils of the Catholic church.
The next time the priest came, he gives another lecture. The priest
finally quit the class, and the professor said that he could finally go
on with the course.

Well,
you know, the priest went to the chair of the department who had a very
good record on academic freedom at the university. And the chair said
it was a question of academic freedom. He wouldn’t interfere with this
professor.
   
      

TC: Does anyone have data on Stanford?
 

China story of the day

Farmer Yan Shihai was happily married for more than 30 years. Then late last year, seemingly out of the blue, the 57-year-old grandfather and his loving wife got a divorce.

Within months, all three of his adult children and their spouses also split up. So did almost every other married person in Yan’s village of 4,000 – an astounding 98% of Renhe’s married couples officially parted, according to the local government.

But instead of tension or tears, the couples waiting in line at the local registry to end their marriages were practically jolly. They believed they were taking advantage of a legal loophole that allowed them to get an extra apartment.

As they understood the compensation deal, each married couple would receive a small two-bedroom apartment in return for their land and farmhouse. Those divorced would get a one-bedroom apartment each. The villagers figured that would be a better deal, that they could live in one apartment and make a little extra income from selling or renting out the extra one.

The government, however, changed the rules and denied the new benefit.  The final result?

…most of the former marriages are in tatters. Considering the prospect of a future without financial security, remarrying now simply seems too much of a hassle. Promises are souring. Stunned villagers are watching their life partners drift off. Some have found new love. Others are deciding to try out freedom from a marriage they never thought they wanted to leave.

Here is the full story, and thanks to Tim Sullivan for the pointer.

Global Markets in Everything

Surrogate motherhood meets globalization.

When Reshma gives birth next month in this small
Indian town, the newborn will be immediately handed over to its
biological parents, non-resident Indians who live in London and who
have been unable to bear a child on their own. In return for renting
her womb, Reshma will be paid $2,800 – a significant sum by Indian
standards.

"These amounts are still nearly three times cheaper than what surrogacy in the UK would cost us," [the parents] say.

A little strange but I have a lot of respect for the surrogate mother and her husband:

"I have two cherubic children of my own," says
Reshma, who withheld her real name for fear of disapproval by
neighbors. "That couple has none. Imagine how much happiness this baby
will give them."

Reshma’s husband Vinod – not his real name – says
his paltry $50 montly pay as a painter would not be enough to educate
his two children. He says the extra money will allow him to invest in
his children’s education and to buy a new home.

Thanks to Pablo Halkyard for the pointer.

Male reproductive rights?

With the suit, NCM hopes to establish that a man who unintentionally
fathers a child has the right to decline financial responsibility for
that child, a right based on the same principles laid out in the 1973
case that made abortion legal…

The NCM has been looking for an appropriate plaintiff for this case
for more than 10 years. It finally found one in Matt Dubay…who claims he and
his ex-girlfriend did not use birth control because of her assurances
that she could not get pregnant due to a medical condition. But the
couple, who Dubay told Salon were together for about three months, did
conceive, and Dubay’s ex elected to keep the child, for whom he now
pays $500 a month in child support, despite his contention that he was
always clear about not wanting the child.

Save your moralizing, let’s do tax incidence theory.  If you were a woman and wanted an unwilling father, or at least wasn’t trying too hard to avoid one, what kind of guy would you pick?  Smart, not a criminal, tall, high-earning, and possibly nerdy.  You also would pick a flexible, mild-mannered guy, on the grounds that he might grow to like the idea of parenthood (there is some chance you will decide to keep him in the picture). 

If financial responsibility could be repudiated, these guys would find it harder to get quality sex.  This is a simple economic principal: change the terms at one end of a deal, and they shift back at the other end.  The ex-cons, who will take off in any case and are known to have this quality, would not be penalized.  They might get even more sex.

Now which of the nerdy guys will suffer the most from holding greater "reproductive rights"?  The risk-loving, sex-crazed nerds who like to sleep with strange women and are willing to chance paternity (just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?).  And the nerds who know they are sterile or vasectomized.  Did I mention the nerd who doesn’t much mind a bit of financial (and other kinds of) servitude?  No longer will these guys be viewed as potential appealing "victims."

Who will mind this change the least?  The local dullard — you went to high school with him but hoped you never had to marry him — who wants to settle down with a wife and family, but otherwise faced competition from the smarter nerd tricked or lured into siring a kid. 

The bottom line: This change would be a tax on male nerd sex.  It would boost male nerd autonomy, but which of these do nerds need more?

No, one data point does not test a theory, especially when that data point is selected for purposes of national image.  Nonetheless here is a photo of Matt Dubay, computer technician.  Here is a video of Matt.  Prior to the paternity suit, Matt had owned his dream car, a 1998 Trans Am.

An epistolary romance

Dear Sir or Madam:
You may love to see me smile, but I, however, love to see me eat.
Please send me coupons for free McDonald’s product, so that I may
continue to eat (and smile).
Thank you well in advance,

Tom Locke, eating enthusiast

CVS got this:

Dear Sir or Madam:
I am a health and wellness addict. Please send me a random product
which you think I would enjoy. It doesn’t have to be something big,
just something nice! I like surprises.
Thank you in advance,

Tom Locke, health enthusiast

What would happen if you sent one hundred letters like that to the leading consumer product corporations in the United States?  Read here.  You also could call this post "How to spend $39," "How to measure industrial concentration," "How to find corporate addresses," "Experimental economics, for real," or (how many of you get this one?) "Hoping for a durable goods monopolist."

Here is part (but not all) of the upshot:

Wrigley’s (#6) basically told me to buy my own gum – as well as exactly where to buy it.
I guess they figured since they’re nice enough to keep making it, I should be nice enough to keep
buying it.  And I probably will.  It’s interesting to note that Wrigley’s letter starts out,
"Thank you for visiting Wrigley.com".  I didn’t visit Wrigley.com.  I visited the post office.

Smuckers
(#40) basically just said no. Nothing fancy or elaborate. Just no. And
a cute little Smuckers logo on their letterhead to top it off. Well…
the joke’s on Smuckers. I plan to run that letter through my juicer
and make my own jellies and jams. Boom!

Thanks to Cynical-C blog for the pointer.

Cooperative game theory vs. sexual selection

Roughgarden said that pairings are often better explained by creating a viable team than by finding the highest quality genes. Couples are usually genetically similar, she said, and their differences are often complementary: Both members provide the team with the strengths the other lacks.

"To make an analogy with humans, the number of children a couple can raise to adulthood is more influenced by the income of the family rather than the genetic makeup," Akcay said. "We think that in most species, this is what is going on: Males and females choose each other for ecological benefits rather than superior genetic makeups."

Read more here, including criticisms, hat tip to www.politicaltheory.info for the pointer.

The best sentence I read today

And – expected utility theory notwithstanding – people adapt more
easily to 100% certain bad events than to 95% certain bad events.

Here is more.

Further thoughts: I can see how the possibility of fertility treatments might make a couple worse off, if those treatments don’t work.  But is it better to feel "I will never have sex again," or would you rather hold on to the five percent chance?  What exactly makes these two cases different?