tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56985991514225429392024-02-08T00:53:26.883-05:00Euvoluntary Exchange...Exchange is creationMungowitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02340064320347875601noreply@blogger.comBlogger1019125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698599151422542939.post-22795196822014418832016-08-23T11:55:00.001-04:002016-08-23T11:55:59.933-04:00INK DOES NOT WORK AND TASTES AWFUL. TERRIBLE PEN 1/10 WOULD NOT BUY AGAIN.Mylan Pharmaceuticals has altered its price schedule for epinephrine auto-injector EpiPenⓇ. The wholesale price is now $365.16, up from around $50 this time last year. Naturally, this price change, unconnected as it is to the unit costs of production, has prompted a bit of moral outrage.<br />
<br />
viz:<br />
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There's no reason an EpiPen, which costs Mylan just a few dollars to make, should cost families more than $600. <a href="https://t.co/rVWUlMxD0Q">https://t.co/rVWUlMxD0Q</a></div>
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) <a href="https://twitter.com/SenSanders/status/766263360933466112">August 18, 2016</a></blockquote>
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>Quite true. Anaphylactic shock is as terrifying as it is swift. In cases of severe allergy, the windpipe clamps shut and if you're alone, you have to hope that your vision doesn't fade before you can reach your dose. I have been assured by competent, trustworthy health care professionals that lethal suffocation can be somewhat uncomfortable. One shot of epinephrine can relieve the worst of the symptoms almost immediately, and another administered 30 minutes later can relieve lingering issues. Consult a physician before use, and seek medical attention if an attack occurs.<br />
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Point is, for some folks, a single bee sting or a couple of peanuts is all that's required for permanent residence with John Cleese's infamous Norwegian Blue, but for the EpiPenⓇ. And it would indeed be a travesty if families had to pay up to a grand for the mistake of a kid accidentally getting a mouthful of Uncle Mike's pad thai. So is this the case? Is Mylan CEO Heather Bresch actually asking bog-standard customers to pony up a car payment per dose?<br />
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The short answer: yes, if.<br />
<br />
The long answer: no, but.<br />
<br />
The <b><a href="https://www.epipen.com/en/hcp/about-epipen/help-your-patients-save">MY EPIPEN SAVINGS CARD™</a></b> is available to customers under the following restrictions (from the link; emphasis mine):<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
This SAVINGS card can be redeemed only by patients or patient guardians who are 18 years of age or older who are a resident of the United States and its territories. <b>Not valid for cash paying patients</b> (except for commercially insured patients without coverage for EpiPen® Auto-Injector) <b>and patients who are covered by any state or federally funded healthcare program</b>, including but not limited to any state pharmaceutical assistance program, Medicare (Part D or otherwise), Medicaid, Medigap, VA or DOD, or TriCare. This SAVINGS card is not health insurance. The SAVINGS card is not transferable and the amount of the benefit cannot exceed the patient’s out-of-pocket expenses. Cannot be combined with any other rebate/coupon, free trial, or similar offer for the specified prescription. Program expires 12/31/2016. Program managed by McKesson Corporation on behalf of Mylan Specialty L.P. Product dispensed pursuant to program rules and federal and state laws. Void where prohibited. The parties reserve the right to amend or end this program at any time without notice.</blockquote>
So if your insurance company covers EpiPen, your insurance company picks up the tab. If you pay by cash, you pick up the tab—unless your shiftless commercial insurer doesn't cover it, in which case Mylan has your back. It's a bit confusing, isn't it? Perhaps the wording is too difficult for journalists and politicians to parse, leading to all the pitchforks and the torches. I understand.<br />
<br />
At any rate, it seems to me that what we have here is classic price discrimination. The savings cards means that <i>insured</i> patients who are still unable to pay can get their life-saving emergency epinephrine injections at (roughly) zero price, with institutional payers (insurance companies, states, the federal government, &c) absorbing the residual production costs. Put another way, it's precisely the same approach taken by the PPACA: end customers pay next to nothing, and the costs of care are socialized. Only now it's a hated pharmaceutical firm doing it, so we make all suitable preparations to punish the wicked heretic.<br />
<br />
Then again, auto-injectors are not strictly bound by patent law, and epinephrine is a generic drug, so you can <a href="https://www.maxiaids.com/autojector-ii-for-easy-injection?gclid=CKP-05vy184CFQMFaQodu14Idg">always</a> <a href="http://www.epinephrineautoinject.com/">just</a> <a href="https://www.auvi-q.com/">go shopping</a> <a href="http://adrenaclick.com/">for</a> <a href="http://www.allegromedical.com/diabetic-supplies-c520/autoject-2-self-injection-device-p176268.html?">alternatives</a>. There's no law that says you have to buy the name-brand product.<br />
<br />
Yet.Samuel Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16635024719984640919noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698599151422542939.post-7735443372213252702016-07-14T09:24:00.003-04:002016-07-14T09:24:47.405-04:00Round the Decay of that Colossal WreckScott Greenfield <a href="http://blog.simplejustice.us/2016/07/14/killer-robots-useful-cheap-and-ubiquitous/">rightly bemoans</a> law enforcement's use of robotics in situations that typically call for classic negotiation and conflict resolution. Cops de-escalate because a big part of the cost of a confrontation with armed bad dudes is the possibility of taking a ride home in a hearse. No one wants to eat lead, therefore wait the guy out, talk him down, or lay siege. Unfortunately, playing a waiting game with a desperado is expensive. Not only do showdowns incur direct payroll costs, but every officer stationed in a crouch behind a cruiser waiting for the madman to stand down is an officer not patrolling the community to maintain good law and order. Petty criminals get themselves a Roman holiday when some loony-pants starts shooting up a demonstration. In econ 101 terms, the use of a disposable weapon-bearing robot is relatively cheaper than the next best alternative.<br />
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Or at least in a one-shot interaction (pun unintentional). This one time, it's expedient to send in R2-D2 to blow up a bad guy so that we can all get back to our regular beat, or make it home in time to catch the last couple of innings, or whatever. The problem is that weapons systems have a bit of a tendency to metastasize. Military advantage is fleeting. Macedonian King Philip II believed that his armies' use of the ballista would mean the permanent end of warfare, since all other peoples would be so cowed by the mighty weapon that they would lay down their arms in the face of his superiority.<br />
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Cheap weapons-bearing robots mean that the relative price of doing harm from afar is dropping. This is as true for sovereign armies as for municipal police as for backyard hobbyists. Remember the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Heemeyer">killdozer</a>? The 2016 version would have a Rasperry Pi and a mobile phone in lieu of a pilot. Or how about a quadrocopter swarm fitted with homebrew chemical weapons? Just imagine how many dishonorable, despicable ways wicked men might conjure to slay their foes once a) the price of remote murder drops sufficiently and b) the Overton window for assassination-by-remote opens. DPD officers might be obliged to confront some serious regrets once the renegade element decides that robotic combat is fair play.<br />
<br />
Some genies can be corralled with strict control over production bottlenecks. The great expense of enriching uranium means that backyard nukes are probably forever unlikely. The same goes for hobbyist howitzers and tinkerer tanks. But little 3-D printed, remote-controlled drones? I urge you to remember which side shot first.Samuel Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16635024719984640919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698599151422542939.post-55018200583940870912016-06-09T10:58:00.002-04:002016-06-09T10:58:52.872-04:00The Em Who Was ThursdayKevin Erdmann takes a brief respite from housing <i>market</i> analysis to conduct a bit of housing <i>political </i>analysis.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://idiosyncraticwhisk.blogspot.com/2016/06/housing-part-157-we-cant-win.html">ATSRTWT</a><br />
<a href="http://idiosyncraticwhisk.blogspot.com/2016/06/housing-part-158-low-down-payments-and.html">Here too.</a><br />
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As it happens, I'm also in the middle of Robin Hanson's first (among many to come, I hope) book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Age-Em-Work-Robots-Earth/dp/0198754620">The Age of Em</a>. I was fortunate enough to review Robin's very first pass at an outline, and I'm pleased to see my high expectations exceeded. I mention the two together because the housing kerfuffle and its aftermath suffer from the classic political problem of vocal, well-organized competing constituencies with narrowly-defined policy preferences. I cannot help but wonder how badly these sorts of problems might plague a society with trillions of... well, I can't quite call them "individuals" since one of the key features of ems is that they're able to be copied quickly and cheaply. Let's just go with Robin's convention and call them "Ems".<br />
<br />
For illustration, let us return again to the fair nation of Mungerica. Time passes differently in Mungerica thanks to the estuary effects of the tides or something. Each Mungerican day that passes corresponds perfectly to either a single political problem or a single political resolution. Therefore, on Monday, citizens might notice that mice are raiding the palace cheese and petition the king to do something about it. On Tuesday, the king resolves to import a thousand cats. On Wednesday, other citizens, ones unmolested by mice, but deadly allergic to cats, notice the surfeit feline population, and beg His Majesty to rid the grounds of the kitty menace. On Thursday, the head of state, ever vigilant to the needs of his people, imports a bunch of dogs to chase the cats away. On Friday, another third, previously silent, chunk of the population succumbs to their natural fear of dogs and pleads the throne evict the mongrels. On Saturday, the king imports a shipment of lions. On Sunday, the kingdom of Mungerica rests (shomer shabbos).<br />
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Erdmann's political cycle mess isn't all that different than the sorry, abused Mungericans (though he swaps in "we" to stand in for what may be different minority coalitions with different political goals). A group of citizens sees a problem, begs Congress for help, and shrugs when the inevitable unintended consequences happen, since those consequences are of little interest. What's a little debt crisis, after all, when the important thing is that marginal consumers get access to homes, higher education, medicine, fill-in-the-blank? What am I, a banker? Similarly, if I'm an index fund manager for a pension portfolio, while it might be nice for folks to get a starter home a few years ahead of schedule, my primary obligation is to my clients: if my fund goes t.u., a lot of good, honest people will be that much closer to eating cat food while they wait for their stipend to arrive. Put another way, system stability is often a secondary consideration when narrow, highly-regarded interests are at stake. Ideally, political representatives would be chosen who most highly value long-term stability, but that seems to be a historical rarity.<br />
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In Em-world, many thousands of subjective years can pass in the course of a single orbit of the planet around the sun. To slow-speed outside observers, this incredibly fast civilization might spawn empires that rise and fall in the span of a single breath. I wonder what the present-day policy implications might be for the prospect of uploading minds not-especially well suited to the task of rigorous backward induction and political stability.<br />
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The important questions I have is these: are the forces that select for electoral success the same as the forces that select for the stability of civilizations? Are the moral intuitions that interfere with folks' ability to freely exchange enough of an obstacle to worry about?<br />
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Put another way:<br />
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<a href="http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=4131">via SMBC</a>Samuel Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16635024719984640919noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698599151422542939.post-33994214270417334132016-04-12T11:15:00.001-04:002016-04-12T11:16:07.011-04:00Price Discrimination vs. DLCYouTube user ShoddyCast is one of my favorite channels o'er yonder. For one, he is obsessively, charmingly pedantic about minor video game physics inconsistencies. For two, he cusses like a middle school boy. These are qualities I can't help but admire. But consider this recent foray into economics (featuring Richard Thaler, no less):<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NIqENyJwkg8" width="560"></iframe><br />
<br />
He gets several points absolutely correct. Game (and console) pre-orders work well for physical media, so long as the quantity demanded on or around release date is unpredictable. I recall some trouble landing a copy of <i>Silent Hill</i> near its release date, for example. And since I'm the sort of gamer who likes to play a few favorite franchise titles right away, this was irksome. Or maybe it was vexing. Irritating? Whatever the sensation, pre-orders purported to ease the problem. I was promised to no longer be confounded <i>on release day</i>. I was guaranteed a physical copy in my hot little hands. Because I'm the type of player for whom that is important.<br />
<br />
Another point he gets right is the time value of money. Unfortunately, he gets it right for the wrong reasons. $60 today is indeed worth more to me than $60 a year from now, but that's true even without inflation. And it's even true without the explicit opportunity cost of foregone investment.<br />
<br />
Perhaps I should pause for a moment to cover the concept of opportunity cost. <a href="http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/OpportunityCost.html">Here's the superlative David Henderson on the topic</a>. Opportunity cost is the [subjective] value of the next-most attractive alternative. In the case of the Fallout 4 season pass (at the original price), the $30 I dropped would have bought me 3 pizzas from my favorite local pizzeria (Tuesdays are buy one, get one free at Brick Pizza). For putting money into a lockbox, the alternative uses could include a couple extra shares in an ETF or an interest-bearing savings account (good luck finding one), but it doesn't have to. All that's needed to show the opportunity cost of holding cash is that you're restrained from spending it. Something might come along that you value more than that thirty bucks, but too bad, Sally. It's out of reach. Better luck next time. You might recognize this as a component to our good friend the <b>regret</b> condition.<br />
<br />
He also mostly gets Thaler right. At most department stores, prices on the sale racks are still above the cost of goods sold. Therefore, the full markup price is absurdly, unreasonably high. This sales tactic relies on a cognitive illusion: you think you get a screaming deal on a pair of trousers for $20 because on another day, they might have sold for five times that price. You shake your head and pity the poor sucker too unlucky to shop on that particular day and walk off proud of your shopping acumen. But here's the curious thing: every so often, trousers are indeed sold at full retail price.<br />
<br />
What gives? Are these spendthrifts actually behaving irrationally?<br />
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What we have here is a yes, if/no, but situation. It is indeed classically irrational to pay full price for something if the lower price is <i>predictably </i>available and if the opportunity cost of waiting for it is lower than the price differential.<br />
<br />
Let me give you a quick example. One day, I was scheduled to teach an early morning Public Choice class. My favorite parking spot on campus is a seldom-used dirt and gravel lot near the football pitch on the west side of Patriot Circle. If you know the GMU campus, it's across the street from the hotel (which I think is now closed). Being a brisk early spring morning, the nearby hill that I often used as a shortcut was slick with dew. When I attempted to carefully plot my way down the hill, I lost my footing, went ass over teakettle, and completely ruined my slacks. I had a big ol' mud streak all the way up my left leg. With class starting in 20 minutes, I needed a new pair of pants, pronto. I hopped back into my car, hightailed it to a TJ Maxx, bought what I needed, and tore ass to Robinson B just in time to start my lecture on the Condorcet Paradox. In other words, I had very high opportunity costs thanks to the urgency of my shopping excursion. I was willing to pay more for convenience and speed.<br />
<br />
So is it classically irrational to pay full price under normal situations? No, not as long as you can't adequately predict the pattern of future prices. What you're doing by pre-paying is essentially buying a call option. You put your money down now in the expectation that future prices will either rise (<b>which is exactly what happened with <i>Fallout 4</i></b>) or that something else will change with your own subjective valuation of the good in question. Farmers do this all the time. If you've ever seen the 80s comedy classic Trading Places, you'll be at least passingly familiar with the Frozen Concentrate Orange Juice futures market. This is just a fancy, centralized method for Florida orange farmers to sell their July crop in February. This is quite a boon to farmers who are more interested in fertilizer and weeds than in the vagaries of global demand. The same idea applies with individual pre-purchases. Buying all the DLC ahead of time is a player's way of betting on expected content expansions.<br />
<br />
But, and it's a big but, there exist incentives to gain additional information about the future state of the world. For retail department store sales, Thaler is right on the money: it's common knowledge that department stores have been taking great advantage of silly little cognitive blind spots for ages now. You are indeed a sucker to walk out of a Macy's thinking you put one over on the hapless merchant by buying off the discount rack. With low information costs like this, there's precious little excuse to pay prestige prices. But does a season pass for premium content fit this model?<br />
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Maybe. It depends on the publisher. Bethesda is notable for releasing DLC that often exceeds the quality of the base game. After the infamous horse armor incident with Oblivion, they overcompensated by giving us the massive <i>Shivering Isles</i> expansion, <i>Mothership Zeta, Dawnguard, Dragonborn, Broken Steel,</i> on and on. And the four New Vegas expansions (even though it was Obsidian rather than Bethesda) were all as good or better than the base game. Tell me you wouldn't be happy just playing <i>Old World Blues </i>as a stand-alone title. Point is, a long-time Bethesda customer has certain expectations about their add-on content. Incidentally, the same holds true for <i>Borderlands</i> publisher 2K. I felt confident enough that the net present value of all the season pass content for <i>Borderlands 2</i> exceeded the opportunity cost of biding my time. As it turns out, I was right in that instance. The $30 I spent on that pass was a great deal less than the $60+ I would have had to pay on release day to get Gaige, Captain Scarlett, <i>Mr. Torgue's Campaign of Carnage</i>, and the splendid D&D-themed <i>Assault on Dragon Keep</i>. Recall that for these titles, I am the type of player to pay full price for the pleasure of playing them on or very near their release date.<br />
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And that last bit there is really the key to price discrimination. Not all shoppers are created equal. Not everyone is so enamored of fictional universes that they'll rush to get new releases on the day they drop. I'm still somewhat baffled that there can be a new Madden every year that sells extremely well, despite being pretty much identical to the previous year, but for a few roster changes. The same goes for the endless parade of FPS titles. But Fallout? You bet your ass I'm first in line to get the Bloody Mess perk and start exploding super mutants all over that wasteland.<br />
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The last component here, is of course, Steam sales. Most big titles will bundle up a Game of the Year edition complete with all the DLC a year or so after its initial release. And another year or so after that, you can usually rely on that GoY edition to go on deep discount in the Steam store during one of their periodic (and predictable!) annual sales. For players willing to wait a while, you can get some screaming deals on titles that have been out for a few years. Well over half my Steam library was acquired this way. This pattern is just as well known, just as predictable as Presidents' Day sales at department stores. However, Steam sales are also just as irrelevant to an impatient fan as Presidents' Day sales are to someone who just skidded down a muddy hill and has to teach a class. I want <i>Far Harbor</i> the day it drops, not a moment later. The opportunity cost of waiting exceeds my desire to play as soon as is reasonably possible.<br />
<br />
Long story short, if you're an impatient fan, and you have a pretty good expectation that the forthcoming content will be pretty good, Season Passes can be a pretty good deal. Casual fans or folks less confident about the quality of forthcoming DLC are probably better off holding out for the Game of the Year edition round about Christmas time.<br />
<br />
Another decent way of thinking about it is that some folks will pay full price to see a movie on opening night. Are they being irrational when they could simply wait until it gets to Netflix? Why or why not?Samuel Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16635024719984640919noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698599151422542939.post-12367913650753388812016-03-21T08:36:00.000-04:002016-03-21T08:36:03.874-04:00Martin Tenbones vs Army of DorknessNeil Gaiman, on Twitter:<br />
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It's weird thinking that I wrote this in '97... <a href="https://t.co/yi57Pv8KDj">https://t.co/yi57Pv8KDj</a></div>
— Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) <a href="https://twitter.com/neilhimself/status/711062871166201857">March 19, 2016</a></blockquote>
The panels at the link come from <u>A Game of You</u>, one of the little sidebar miniseries in <i>The Sandman</i>. In contrast to many of the other characters in the run, the cheerleader-type blonde protagonist was what the kids these days are calling a "normie": a plain-vanilla citizen. No spider collection, no multicolored hair, no ancient immortal who sits down to drink tea with emperors. Just a regular girl with a regular life. Well, she <i>is</i> incubating an otherdimensional entity in a fragment of her dreams, a chunk of which escapes into the waking world in the form of a giant talking dog that gets shot by the NYPD, but that's neither here nor there. The point is, Barbie is a Regular Girl, and by using a Regular Girl, Gaiman gets to deliver what I thought at the time to be a particularly nasty barb to comic shop owners. Namely, that their places were inimical to girls.<br />
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I thought it was a nasty barb, and my first reaction was that it was a strange thing for Gaiman, who was writing under the fledgling Vertigo property of DC at the time to paint this gruesome caricature of a comics proprietor. It seemed like shitting where one eats, so to speak. But then I've never been a girl in a comic shop. And in 1997, I have to admit, I did know more than one comic shop that, were I a girl, I would have thought twice before entering.<br />
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I sort of understand how it could happen, too. My economics training tells me that there's a pretty big premium to be paid if you want to alienate a market segment as large as "all women" so therefore, we shouldn't expect to see nasty, unkempt, leering clerks very often. But on the other hand, there <i>are</i> men who have been on the receiving end of contempt from women their whole lives, and developing a carapace of misogyny is one way of coping with that. Comics and roleplaying games occasionally provide a refuge for these sorts of guys, since they're traditionally boys' pursuits. If girls loathe you, go where the girls aren't. Right?<br />
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But then something happened. Some of what happened was Gaiman himself. Girls started liking comics in a big way. Sandman had something like 60% female readership. The relative price of running a sour-smelling, female-hostile comic shop increased dramatically. Shop owners who were unwilling to cater to the new customers lost a lot of business. So you'd expect shops like these to be dinosaurs, relics of a bygone era.<br />
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Apparently not. His followers began tweeting sordid tales of how some places have gotten <i>worse</i>, as if the no-girls-allowed sensibility has overtaken the remorseless economics. That should be worrying. There's something in the culture that has some men so badly alienated that they're leaving sales on the table in an industry that hasn't been a guaranteed moneymaker since Michael Keaton was Batman.<br />
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I occasionally think there's a larger malaise out there and a lot of this stuff: gamergate, Trump, Sad Puppies, this comic shop thing... I think these all might be symptoms of the same underlying problem. I'm not sure what the ultimate cause is, but even if the source can be accurately identified, I'm not convinced that there is an easy or cheap solution.<br />
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>Samuel Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16635024719984640919noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698599151422542939.post-58861388849467239812016-03-02T09:08:00.001-05:002016-03-02T09:08:51.226-05:00Risk, Reward, and Romance: I Do Like Them. Sam I Am.Happy birthday, Dr. Seuss.<br />
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Today, my 4 year old dressed up as Sally from The Cat In The Hat despite her reluctance to wear a bow in her hair in celebration of your contributions to Western Literature. How many young minds have your iambs set off on a lifetime relationship with the joy of reading, I wonder?<br />
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More interestingly, how have you mirrored and shaped your native culture? Your major canon is infused with the very same specific cultural values that Tocqueville identified as being idiosyncratically American. Horton is loyal and diligent <i>to a fault</i>: he sits on an egg until it hatches (deus ex machina ending notwithstanding) despite any promise of reward other than the preservation of his own trustworthiness. He exhorts the Whos of Whoville to overcome the tragedy of the commons (a finer allegory for Western expansion I can hardly imagine) for the common defense.<br />
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But it's in Green Eggs And Ham that we really see the curious tension in the American experience. A hidebound conservative, hectored incessantly by a pestering Bohemian, dismantles a Chestertonian fence to find he enjoys verdigris-tinted breakfast cuisine. A Romantic confronts the objections of a prude. This, I believe, is the central conflict brought over from the Continent. It is a conflict found few other places. And it is a book that could be written nowhere else.<br />
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Happy birthday, Dr. Seuss. May your eternal rest be ever euvoluntary.<br />
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Also, my daughter nearly broke down in tears when she heard you died 20 years before she was born.Samuel Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16635024719984640919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698599151422542939.post-55182017346229232932016-02-20T13:04:00.001-05:002016-02-20T13:04:12.559-05:00Regrets, Small and LargeThere must be a word for the sensation evoked by reading the link below. It isn't schadenfreude, neither is it pity. It's the feeling you get when you witness someone expressing regret over perfectly predictable consequences.<br />
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<a href="https://medium.com/@taliajane/an-open-letter-to-my-ceo-fb73df021e7a#.xhk9hij9r">As they say, read the whole thing</a>, my friends.<br />
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Take note of the postscript. The author was relieved of employment (thanks to the contents of the post?). Does this come as a relief or as additional regret?<br />
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How euvoluntary is it to tell your CEO off in public?<br />
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For more on bosses and bunny slippers, <a href="http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2008/Mungerfirms.html">here is Mungo</a> in his own words.Samuel Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16635024719984640919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698599151422542939.post-65998756024656825672016-02-03T03:58:00.002-05:002016-02-03T03:58:57.041-05:00The Irrational Regret of Automatic WithholdingLadies and Gentlemen, I present you the following:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Today, I found out that my tax filing status was never changed after my divorce. This means I haven't been paying enough and now the government wants its money. FML</blockquote>
<a href="http://www.fmylife.com/money/21522112">source</a><br />
<br />
A proletarian gripe, yes. But it's a sentiment pretty widely shared. If you have ever taught a principles course, ask yourself how often you've had to explain the permanent income hypothesis to students. Consider how much effort you've expended trying to shoo away the notion that IRS withholding is pretty close to the worst sort of savings scheme outside of payday lending. Now consider how many students out there never bothered to show up to your classroom in the first place.<br />
<br />
Now take a moment to think just how easy it might be to hoodwink a democracy.<br />
<br />
I am curious how stubborn a tick this automatic withholding it. Some programs cannot easily be dislodged once in place, thanks to popular support. IRS policy seems at first blush to lack popular support, yet I think it enjoys just enough indifference among the people that multipartisan support by elites is sufficient to ensure its longevity.Samuel Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16635024719984640919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698599151422542939.post-91185644622309652242016-01-29T14:08:00.000-05:002016-01-29T14:08:41.315-05:00Dank FederalismWith the winter chill pestering my Old Virginia home, family swimming excursions are enjoyed at the local rec center. Obliged by my aversion for idle conversation with strangers, I look to heavy tomes to deter the other parents (if not as a signal, then as a melee weapon as a matter of final resort). One of the more imposing volumes in my library is a hardcover translation of Tocqueville, so I've been revisiting Democracy in America while my 4 year old practices the ancient art of annoying other adults.<br />
<br />
Something struck me in DiA's dissection of American culture. Federalism, separated hierarchical government, seemed to him to be more than a mere political choice, selected from a suite of otherwise-mostly-equal options. In a rather Humean fashion, he claimed that the town-state-nation organization of politics arose from the very sentiments of the typical Yankee ploughman. Think of it as Tiebout-plus. Rather than residents moving to new towns that better suit their peccadilloes, American residents use American little-d democracy to move town policies to suit them. He didn't say so, but there's pretty good English countryside precedent for this predilection. Peasants settled their own disputes in common law courts rather than petitioning the crown or some local lord. The American colonialists were basically just peasants with a little more self-determination.<br />
<br />
The point is, the heuristics of the people determined the form of the organizational structures that were later codified in the national, state, and local constitutions, laws, and codes. Sentiments preceded rules. If this is true, I must wonder what sentiments preceded the slow abolition of local self-determination. What moral intuition explains the gradual loss of town and state sovereignty?<br />
<br />
I'm in the habit of thinking of politics as being simply another form of exchange (albeit with a bit more coercion). If I am to cling to this habit, perhaps I should consider taking more seriously the sources of political tastes and how malleable they might be. Sometimes, the bargaining set is null, no matter how well you haggle. What happens when a nation develops irreconcilable differences?Samuel Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16635024719984640919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698599151422542939.post-13283785623495442522016-01-18T11:00:00.001-05:002016-01-18T11:00:34.904-05:00Despotism in AmericaCount Alexis de Tocqueville on the (17th c.) Connecticut code of laws (<u>Democracy in America</u> vol. 1 ch. 2) [translation errors mostly mine]:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Among these memorials, we will particularly single out, as particularly characteristic, the code of laws given the little State of Connecticut in 1650. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The legislators of Connecticut begin with penal laws, and, for their composition, they conceive of the strange idea to borrow provisions from sacred texts:</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Whosoever shall worship any other God than the Lord,” says the preamble, “shall surely be put to death.” </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
This is followed by ten or twelve enactments of the same kind, copied verbatim from Deuteronomy, Exodus, and Leviticus.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Blasphemy, sorcery, adultery, and rape were punished with death; an outrage offered by a son to his parents was to be punished similarly. The legislation of a rude and half-civilized people was thus transferred to an enlightened and morally mild community; the consequence was that the punishment of death was never more frequently prescribed by the statute, and never more rarely applied to the guilty.</blockquote>
Side note: I'm aware of the physical condition of many of the original pages, but Tocqueville is an eminently clear, vigorous writer. It is indeed a shame that so many English translations of DiA are prone to burdening his prose with extra baggage. If the original author writes clearly, a good translation should reflect that propensity, <i>n'est ce pas</i>?<br />
<br />
Tocqueville was contrasting the character of the sons of the Puritans in New England with the more commercially-minded settlers in Virginia. His claim was that the character of the nation was as the character of a man: one might observe the traits of the adult in the behavior of the child. A nation forged by commerce is one likely to retain commercial virtues; a nation of browbeating harridans is likely to cling to petty despotism. The wonder of America, claims ol' Lexy, is that she is a land of both.<br />
<br />
So there is, should you believe de Tocqueville, a curious bundle of predispositions in the United States. On the one hand, there is a deep and abiding appreciation for hard work, honesty, integrity, trust, professionalism, honor, and prudence. On the other hand, there is a deep skepticism about profligacy, ostentation, inequality, and aristocracy. We Americans appreciate the life of an honest yeoman, and revile the pomp of inherited privilege. Or so goes the predisposition anyway. The American mythology seems mostly consistent with that story, even if the actual experience says otherwise.<br />
<br />
What, I wonder, might this tell us about the odd moral intuitions about commerce in America? The Connecticut anti-fops described above would doubtless appreciate Elizabethan sumptuary laws, and might find kinship with the <i>petit</i> paternalism flogged in the academy and on the campaign trail. The tight-buckled Capotain-doffing burgher might even see in this round's crop of insufferable presidential candidates something to love: here an authoritarian who promises to scour the land of undesirables, there another authoritarian who promises to purge ostentatious displays of illicit wealth.<br />
<br />
I do wonder though. I wonder to what extent these national predispositions color our individual moral intuitions about the nature and extent of the market. Euvoluntary exchange is great, at least until it enriches someone enough that they start behaving boorishly? Exchange can't be euvoluntary if it violates the ancient legislation of a rude and half-civilized people? This presents a curious puzzle for those few of us not instinctively bound by the mores of either the Plymouth rockers or the Richmond rollers. How can you possibly argue convincingly against the crushing weight of four hundred years of national opinion? Reason is slave to the passions, nowhere so much as in the unexamined tabernacle of the poll.<br />
<br />
Also, I had totally forgotten that de Tocqueville was nobility. I wonder why we don't include that little tidbit more often in class.Samuel Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16635024719984640919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698599151422542939.post-59814571573927036062016-01-05T18:46:00.000-05:002016-01-05T18:46:41.292-05:00Discover Your Macadamia NutWriting at the Foundation for Economics Education, Duke University Professor of Political Science Michael C. Munger excoriates Ricardo. Comparative advantage, he argues, is a dead letter in an age of highly mobile capital, fewer obstructions in labor markets, and an astonishing acceleration in the market discovery process.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://fee.org/freeman/comparative-advantage-an-idea-whose-time-has-passed/">ATSRTWT</a><br />
<br />
Analysts seeking to understand idiosyncratic patterns of production and exchange need look no further than the two fundamental questions of economics:<br />
<br />
1) Opportunity cost: what is the value <i>to all <b>salient </b>parties</i> of alternative uses of the resources in question?<br />
<br />
2) Division of labor: to what extent does the structure of the market permit buyers and sellers to strike a mutually beneficial (dare I say euvoluntary?) exchange?<br />
<br />
Answer these two questions, my friends, and you can explain why it was that New England was home to most American manufacturing in the 19th century (lower opportunity cost for building multi-story mills plus Western European immigration) as well as the advent of the sharing economy (insanely cheap communication allows for otherwise idle resources to be employed rapidly). The "comparative advantage" of dumpy Connecticut mill towns was an illusion, little more than the vagaries of historical accident and geographical fancy. Imagine an alternate history where Jamestown had been a few miles north, out of the swamp and the disease. Semi-skilled laborers might have landed in Roanoke rather than Boston and the American industrial revolution might have taken place on the Potomac. And don't tell me for an instant that you think there's something innately advantageous about an ambitious family renting out a spare bedroom with Airbnb.<br />
<br />
So is there <i>any</i> role left for comparative advantage? Shall we toss Ricardo's poor bones onto the pyre and be done with him? I'm not entirely sure.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Admittedly, it was a significant intellectual achievement to show that the weaker trading partner benefits from trade, even if the stronger partner is better at everything. <b>But those fixed differences have largely disappeared in many markets.</b> The question of what should be produced, and where, is now answered by dynamic processes of market signals and price movements, driven by human ingenuity and creativity. The cost savings resulting from successfully dividing labor and automating production processes dwarf the considerations that made comparative advantage a useful concept in economics.</blockquote>
Emphasis added.<br />
<br />
Judged against the immense volume of commerce on this little blue-green planet of ours, the macadamia nut is pretty humble. Yet this sensitive little guy is picky about climate. Perhaps not as sensitive as the vanilla orchid, but you're not likely to find a macadamia farm in Wisconsin. Dairy farmers give up too much milk production to justify a futile attempt at hothouse macadamia trees, at least at typical market prices. Australia is better suited to the task (70% of world macadamia nut production is Australian). You might say that fixed geographical differences persist in some agricultural markets. Nuts. Spices. Wine. Wild-yeast beer.<br />
<br />
And, perhaps also in natural talents. "Ringo isn't even the best drummer in The Beatles" may be a false Lennon quote, but it captures the spirit of immutable differences in endowments. Try as I might, I'll never have the lungs and paddle-like extremities of Phelps, nor will I be able to dunk from the free-throw line (indeed, I'll never be able to dunk at all, except on my daughter's toy hoop). I will never write anything as good as either <i>Charge of the Light Brigade </i>or <i>Ozymandias</i>. I can't sing. But where Munger's point shines, it is here. Ability is one part natural talent and 99 parts practice. I had no particular affinity, no natural talent for operating a nuclear reactor, nor for churning out button blanks. Yet I performed these tasks admirably enough with sufficient practice. Opportunity cost and the division of labor determine the extent to which I am able to discover and hone what talents nature has bestowed. Comparative advantage is a starting point, a suggestion. At the extremes, in winner-take-all tournament competition, it might still matter, but for most of us, we pick something that suits our tastes and then practice until we get good at it.<br />
<br />
And then we have to start all over again when the market conditions change. Life, friends, ain't easy in the hive.Samuel Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16635024719984640919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698599151422542939.post-16970467344272342842016-01-05T09:58:00.002-05:002016-01-05T09:58:57.342-05:00Too Weak?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
There is a problem with human workers. Here it is:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZnPHs2NDoxWAYjZbdiEBLg-cecuzt6gMEn3okBtVeK2k8Dn0ASLdCj4yjddkpWgKA9H2Z6SpgxB-8kquHjQoSPpN2c40l-kgLCMoxsBG50QVJwWstpuNz41F16PojyfJwsi93Rnygb9VM/s1600/Voluntary..JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZnPHs2NDoxWAYjZbdiEBLg-cecuzt6gMEn3okBtVeK2k8Dn0ASLdCj4yjddkpWgKA9H2Z6SpgxB-8kquHjQoSPpN2c40l-kgLCMoxsBG50QVJwWstpuNz41F16PojyfJwsi93Rnygb9VM/s400/Voluntary..JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Does this mean that ALL exchange is not euvoluntary? Is it true that we "must" perform services in exchange for currency? I have heard people argue just this point. Since we need food, all payment for labor is exploitative. Of course, usually there are many different ways for me to earn money. But suppose there is only one? The "company town" thing.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3454">Here is the entire SMBC comic, which is wonderful...</a> Perhaps the problem is honesty?</div>
Mungowitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02340064320347875601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698599151422542939.post-17935709254031785942016-01-02T10:30:00.000-05:002016-01-02T10:30:45.257-05:00Can You CHOOSE Free Will?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886915300659">The freedom to excel: Belief in free will predicts better academic performance </a><br />
<br />
Gilad Feldman, Subramanya Prasad Chandrashekar & Kin Fai Ellick Wong<br />
Personality and Individual Differences<br />
February 2016, Pages 377–383<br />
<br />
Abstract:
Increasing evidence supports the importance of beliefs in predicting positive outcomes in life. We examined the performance implications of the belief in free will as an abstract, philosophical belief that views the self as free from internal and external constraints and capable of choosing and directing one's own path. In Study 1 (N = 116, undergraduates), belief in free will was associated with higher performance on an academic proofreading task. In Study 2 (N = 614, undergraduates), we examined performance in real academic settings, and the belief in free will measured at the beginning of the semester predicted better course and semester grades at the end of the semester. Importantly, we found support for the distinctive contribution of the belief in free will in comparison to well-established predictors of academic performance — trait self-control and implicit theories. We conclude that individual differences in the endorsement of the belief in free will are a significant and unique predictor of academic achievement.
<br />
<br /></div>
Mungowitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02340064320347875601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698599151422542939.post-39884312873182424102015-12-26T10:15:00.000-05:002015-12-26T10:15:05.475-05:00Corporate Activism: Freedom of Association?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
An interesting dilemma. On the one hand, there is the <a href="https://bfi.uchicago.edu/feature-story/corporate-social-responsibilty-friedmans-view">famous Friedman thesis, </a>that corporations need not, and perhaps should not, engage in "civic duty" actions.<br />
<br />
If you think that's wrong, then you in effect enable corporations to act on their own social agendas. Which gives you the Koch Foundation. I happen to admire the Koch Foundation, but many of my colleagues BOTH say Friedman is wrong and yet CGKF should be prevented from having any say in social activity. You gots to PICK, folks. Those are the choices.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/orsc.2015.1017?journalCode=orsc">Radical Repertoires: The Incidence and Impact of Corporate-Sponsored Social Activism</a><br />
<br />
Mary-Hunter McDonnell<br />
Organization Science, forthcoming<br />
<br />
Abstract:
This article explores when and why firms participate in overt corporate-sponsored social activism. To shed light on this question, I empirically explore the emergence and implications of a new strategic phenomenon in nonmarket strategy - the corporate-sponsored boycott - in which firms voluntarily cooperate with contentious social movement organizations to sponsor boycotts that protest the contested social practices of other companies or entities at higher orders of market organization, such as industries, transnational regulators, or states. Using a longitudinal database that tracks the social movement challenges faced by 300 large companies between 1993 and 2007, I provide evidence that overt corporate-sponsored activism is used by companies that are chronically targeted and losing ground to activists, especially when those companies are facing a reputational deficit. Furthermore, I find that participation in overt corporate-sponsored activism is associated with significant decreases in the number of activist challenges targeting a firm in the future, suggesting that the tactic may effectively defend a firm from contentious threat by allowing firms to co-opt allies within the activist population. I discuss implications of these findings for social movement research, nonmarket strategy, and the study of corporate social responsibility.
<br />
<br /></div>
Mungowitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02340064320347875601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698599151422542939.post-62503641562035797212015-12-23T05:17:00.002-05:002015-12-23T05:17:53.754-05:00Best Alternative To New EntertainmentI didn't expect to particularly enjoy the new Star Wars movie. The franchise is hoary. It bears the weight of nearly 40 years of cruft. We finicky old-timer fans expected Wonder Boy JJ Abrams to not only atone for past sins, but to put aside a few of his own signature cinematographical signatures to revive the modern Prometheus. I expected something flashy, mostly devoid of substance. I expected a 2 hour-and-change music video with Wookiees. I basically got what I expected. I even got a few nods to the extended universe, which surprised me since Disney explicitly jettisoned the novel series when they acquired the rights.<br />
<br />
I didn't expect to particularly enjoy the new Star Wars movie, but I did expect the kids in the audience to. I was six years old when Empire opened, just about the ideal age to truly lose myself in Hoth, Dagobah, and Bespin. I was the right age to beg my parents for the Kenner toys that unfortunately lacked the joint articulation seen on the superior G.I. Joe action figures (woe betide any who dared call these toys by their hidden, secret name: dolls). I would run around the dirt lot, swinging sticks and making whooshing sounds with my mouth trying to mimic lightsaber foley. It occurs to me now that I wasn't so much in love with Star Wars as I adored being a kid. Because being a kid is pretty awesome. Most of the time.<br />
<br />
But Star Wars filled an entertainment void, doncha know. 1980 also gave us Raging Bull, Airplane!, The Shining, Ordinary People, The Big Red One... <a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/top/bestofrt/?year=1980">here, look for yourself</a>. Conspicuously absent are movies aimed at the young teen crowd. Hollywood was mostly busy catering to Baby Boomers. Rightfully so, too. Go where the money is. Go where you can please the most customers. If you're old enough to have outgrown Disney, tough nuts, pal. Deal with it. Go ride your bike.<br />
<br />
Things are considerably different now. Marvel is actually making superhero movies that don't suck tepid cat piss (have you seen the trailers for Civil War? Of course you have. They have to cast Carol Danvers one of these days. I wonder who they'll get). Online streaming services let you binge-watch extended-form episodic content that embarrass what passed for television in the early 1980s (I challenge you to attempt to re-watch Dukes of Hazzard or The A-Team with older eyes). And video games? 2 hours and 16 minutes in an IMAX theater is a nice little wasted afternoon, but I can promise you that this time next year, I will remember the names Evie and Jacob Frye, but I'll probably have forgotten Kylo Ren and Poe Dameron.<br />
<br />
Put simply, there is simply too much competition for Star Wars to catch the 1977 lightning in a bottle. Fans have remarkable alternatives. So yes, I expected the target audience to get a kick out of the movie, but when I saw the kids just milling around bored outside of the theater after the show, I suppose I shouldn't have been too surprised. We live in an age of wonders, after all. It's easy to abandon wonder in the midst of non-stop magic.Samuel Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16635024719984640919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698599151422542939.post-83735400677904381582015-12-22T08:37:00.001-05:002015-12-22T08:37:20.055-05:00Let there be MARKETS....in Kidneys?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26474298">A Cost-Benefit Analysis of Government Compensation of Kidney Donors </a><br />
<br />
Philip Held et al.<br />
American Journal of Transplantation, forthcoming<br />
<br />
Abstract:
From 5000 to 10 000 kidney patients die prematurely in the United States each year, and about 100 000 more suffer the debilitating effects of dialysis, because of a shortage of transplant kidneys. To reduce this shortage, many advocate having the government compensate kidney donors. This paper presents a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis of such a change. It considers not only the substantial savings to society because kidney recipients would no longer need expensive dialysis treatments — $1.45 million per kidney recipient — but also estimates the monetary value of the longer and healthier lives that kidney recipients enjoy — about $1.3 million per recipient. These numbers dwarf the proposed $45 000-per-kidney compensation that might be needed to end the kidney shortage and eliminate the kidney transplant waiting list. From the viewpoint of society, the net benefit from saving thousands of lives each year and reducing the suffering of 100 000 more receiving dialysis would be about $46 billion per year, with the benefits exceeding the costs by a factor of 3. In addition, it would save taxpayers about $12 billion each year.<br />
<br />
A euvoluntary exchange? How could we tell?<br />
<br />
(Nod to Kevin Lewis for the reference) <br />
<br /></div>
Mungowitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02340064320347875601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698599151422542939.post-38228353436839319472015-12-18T08:46:00.001-05:002015-12-18T08:46:15.876-05:00A Prophylactic Against Backlash.In a local-interest-story-goes-national, an Old Dominion schoolboard hit the emergency brake after parents got their delicates in a pinch over a homework assignment.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/18/us/virginia-school-shut-islam-homework/">ATSRTWT</a><br />
<br />
I'm not quite old enough to remember the anti-Catholic sentiments that accompanied the Irish and Polish immigrant waves of the early 20th c, but it does occur to me that there's some pretty decent longstanding arrangements between secular education authorities and their ecumenical brethren. The idea of keeping religious instruction out of public schools is as felicitous as keeping, say, discussions of paleontology out of the pulpit. Some domains are not compatible. I thought commonplace pedestrian United States jurisprudence learned that lesson during the fiasco of the Scopes trial.<br />
<br />
Maybe I was wrong.<br />
<br />
Exodus 20:8-11, y'all.<br />
<br />
Amendment 1 to the United States Constitution, y'all.Samuel Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16635024719984640919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698599151422542939.post-86518692964026859222015-12-13T20:43:00.002-05:002015-12-13T20:43:45.571-05:00Shame On You, Miami HeraldThe Miami Herald publishes a women's prison exposé detailing allegations of abuse. So far, so good. But then they have the temerity to title it "Bartered sex, corruption and cover-ups behind bars in nation’s largest women’s prison."<br />
<br />
"Bartered" sex, as if the farmer's wife is swapping two chickens for a skein of yarn.<br />
<br />
No, Miami Herald, that is not "barter." That is rape. The guard-prisoner relationship is and must always be coercive. "Coerced sex" is fancy-talk for rape.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/news/special-reports/florida-prisons/article49175685.html">ATSRTWT</a><br />
<br />
NB, I do not fault the author for the rubbish headline. Composing headlines typically falls to editors.<br />
<br />
Good pick for the lead anecdote though. I appreciate it when anyone highlights the cruelty and absurdity of the nation's barbaric drug prohibition statutes.Samuel Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16635024719984640919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698599151422542939.post-12207542620770088762015-12-07T16:56:00.001-05:002015-12-07T16:56:17.393-05:00Hostile Fire PayIs hostile fire pay coercive?<br />
<br />
I'm in the middle of eavesdropping on a Twitter conversation. The relevant tweets are from a non-follower, so I'm disinclined to reprint them here, but the gist is this: sex work is different from ordinary market labor because penetration is categorically different from, say, clerical work. Paying women to perform such degrading acts is exploitative due to both the sacred-violating nature of the work and the lack of decent alternative options.<br />
<br />
Bullets penetrate. The bodily effects of combat are visible and often gruesome. The mental health effects can be devastating. Yet, Soldiers earn wage premiums for being stationed in combat theaters. Is hostile fire pay similarly exploitative? Why or why not?Samuel Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16635024719984640919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698599151422542939.post-15015634277195168162015-11-30T12:56:00.001-05:002015-11-30T12:56:42.495-05:00Reducing DisparitiesFile under: doctrine of unintended consequences.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/799">S.799 - Protecting Our Infants Act of 2015</a>
<br />
<br />
Whitman's Sampler:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
HHS must publish a report that includes: <ul>
<li>an assessment of existing research on neonatal abstinence syndrome;
an evaluation of the causes, and barriers to treatment, of opioid use disorders among women of reproductive age and recommendations on preventing opioid use disorders in these women; </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>an evaluation of, and recommendations on, treatment for pregnant women with opioid use disorders and the effects of prenatal opioid use on infants; and </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>an evaluation of the differences in prenatal opioid use between demographic groups and <b>recommendations on reducing disparities </b>[emphasis added].</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<br />
<div>
A curious approach to legislation. Mandated demographic discrimination. I'm sure this will proceed swimmingly.</div>
Samuel Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16635024719984640919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698599151422542939.post-56030708596502221422015-11-19T10:54:00.000-05:002015-11-19T11:08:59.681-05:00Klingon BastardsOn Twitter:<br />
1)<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en">
<div dir="ltr" lang="en">
.<a href="https://twitter.com/GarettJones">@GarettJones</a> Banking crises are not new, so how can we stop history repeating itself?
<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/PalgraveChat?src=hash">#PalgraveChat</a></div>
— Palgrave Economics (@PalgraveEcon) <a href="https://twitter.com/PalgraveEcon/status/667358342885613569">November 19, 2015</a></blockquote>
2)<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en">
<div dir="ltr" lang="en">
><a href="https://twitter.com/PalgraveEcon">@PalgraveEcon</a> Worst case scenario is we have to live with crises: Humans are faddish, bubble-prone. (1/2) <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/PalgraveChat?src=hash">#PalgraveChat</a></div>
— Garett Jones (@GarettJones) <a href="https://twitter.com/GarettJones/status/667358765025501184">November 19, 2015</a></blockquote>
3)<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en">
<div dir="ltr" lang="en">
><a href="https://twitter.com/PalgraveEcon">@PalgraveEcon</a> Best case scenario is that we can make the financial system (not just banks!) more robust to shocks. (2/2) <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/PalgraveChat?src=hash">#PalgraveChat</a></div>
— Garett Jones (@GarettJones) <a href="https://twitter.com/GarettJones/status/667358885527863296">November 19, 2015</a></blockquote>
4)<br />
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Good trick, if you can pull it off.
<a href="https://t.co/J20VO9t6qg">https://t.co/J20VO9t6qg</a></div>
— Cold November Duck (@Spivonomist) <a href="https://twitter.com/Spivonomist/status/667359152776339456">November 19, 2015</a></blockquote>
5)<br />
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><a href="https://twitter.com/Spivonomist">@Spivonomist</a> Indeed, good policy is hard to pull off, between policy commitment issues, lags, and knowledge problems. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/PalgraveChat?src=hash">#PalgraveChat</a></div>
— Garett Jones (@GarettJones) <a href="https://twitter.com/GarettJones/status/667359533338075138">November 19, 2015</a></blockquote>
6)<br />
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Good thing we enjoy a high-IQ society. If anyone can get the job done, it's bright people working in functioning institutions.
<a href="https://twitter.com/GarettJones">@GarettJones</a></div>
— Cold November Duck (@Spivonomist) <a href="https://twitter.com/Spivonomist/status/667359928080859136">November 19, 2015</a></blockquote>
7)<br />
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<a href="https://twitter.com/Spivonomist">@Spivonomist</a> All options are bad, it's a matter of degree: It's the Kobayashi Maru all the way down! <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/PalgraveChat?src=hash">#PalgraveChat</a> <a href="https://t.co/GS7Pwwt9Vu">pic.twitter.com/GS7Pwwt9Vu</a></div>
— Garett Jones (@GarettJones) <a href="https://twitter.com/GarettJones/status/667360496245465088">November 19, 2015</a></blockquote>
8)<br />
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<a href="https://twitter.com/GarettJones">@GarettJones</a> I still wonder how meta that simulation is meant to be in-universe.</div>
— Cold November Duck (@Spivonomist) <a href="https://twitter.com/Spivonomist/status/667360708544364544">November 19, 2015</a></blockquote>
That last tweet of mine there (I'm Spivonomist) demands a little explanation.<br />
<br />
In case you aren't a Trek fan, the <i>Kobayashi Maru</i> is a computer simulation given to last-year Starfleet officer candidates. With the original programming, it is an unwinnable scenario. Your ship receives a distress call from an allied vessel. If you choose to respond, you are quickly ambushed and destroyed. If you ignore the call, your ally is annihilated. There is no classic Pareto-enhancing victory strategy.<br />
<br />
Except to cheat.<br />
<br />
That's what Kirk did: cheated. Both in the original Roddenberry film and in the Abrams reboot, James Tiberius Kirk surreptitiously rewrote the code for the simulation and emerged victorious over the Klingon (presumably Romulan after the Khitomer Accords were signed) foes. In the Abrams reboot, I think the screenplay suggested that the cheating itself was part of the test. Or if not, by the time Picard's crew was tooling around, it surely would be.<br />
<br />
If this test is as meta as I hope, it checks for lateral thinking and a willingness to bend the rules. In 1982, when Wrath of Khan introduced the test, Kirk's cheating came across as sincere cheating. In 2009, the cheating seemed part of the game. If the metaphor was meant to extend to the nexus of politics and financial markets, Jones is right on the money. Even Hollywood sees that the Commanding Heights are big-time cheaters, and so long as the consequences are still beneficial, the audience should be okay with it.<br />
<br />
I think Roddenberry [ed. Adam Gurri reminds me that it was Nick Meier, not Gene Roddenberry who wrote and directed Wrath of Khan. Thank you, Adam. ed. add.: via GJ Jack Sowards <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_B._Sowards">coined</a> the term Kobaysahi Maru after his neighbors] would have been appalled. There's a certain type for whom the rules are sacrosanct. Cheat not lest ye be cheated. Tinkering with the architecture of big-time institutions is risky on scales I think even pretty well educated people probably don't comprehend very well. And our political and commercial elites have been tinkering for many decades, with no plan to stop. If Jones is right, and I see no good reason to dispute his point, the real trick is to make sure any further tinkering is done with the grave lessons of good public choice economics in mind.<br />
<br />
And like I tweeted, this is a very good trick if you can pull it off.Samuel Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16635024719984640919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698599151422542939.post-59035913063623407252015-11-10T09:14:00.000-05:002015-11-10T09:32:37.077-05:00High Hermeneutics<div class="tr_bq">
When you read the word "satire," tell me: what springs to mind? Do you imagine the aroma of freshly-roasted Irish baby? Do you recall that four legs are good, yet two legs are better? Do images of Dorian Gray fill your memory? Would it offend you if I claimed that Swift, Orwell, and Wilde were plebeian satirists, that if you want the good stuff, you have to look a little deeper?</div>
<br />
Middle-tier satire will still be eminently accessible to the pedestrian reader. A pusillanimous high school student is quite capable of recognizing that Inferno is much less an ecstatic religious treatise than it is a savage condemnation of 13th century Italian aristocracy. Mediocre college sophomores are more than adroit enough to grasp that Niccolò Machiavelli wrote The Prince not as actual advice to the Medici family, but rather to mock an entirely different cohort of corrupt Italian aristocrats two centuries after they failed to take Dante's hint. Same goes for Chaucer: if the Knight's tale doesn't convince you he's taking the piss out of Feudal notions of propriety, the Reeve's Tale surely will.<br />
<br />
But top-shelf satire? That rarefied spirit? That hermeneutic philosopher's stone? That ambrosial bathtub gin nearly impossible to brew without a pint of divine genius? That stuff is hard to find. It's harder yet for most folks to enjoy properly. I confess without great embarrassment that a great deal of the finer satire the world of literature has to offer will often escape me. I occasionally see some double meaning in Coleridge or Wordsworth. Milton was so peerless in concealing his savage condemnation of the Stuarts to the extent that even an attentive reader might mistake Paradise Lost for an actual account of Lucifer's fall. And Joyce? Impenetrable. Half the time I read Finnegan's Wake, I imagine it's a fever dream brought on by whiskey and tuberculosis. The other half, I think he's playing a great practical joke on the popular press and his peers. Of course, these interpretations are far from mutually exclusive, which makes him one of the rare masters of the form.<br />
<br />
Masters which now include one "Jencey Paz."<br />
<br />
Writing at <i>The Yale Herald</i>, <a href="http://yaleherald.com/op-eds/hurt-at-home/">this lugubrious essay</a> manages to accomplish in a mere ten paragraphs what it takes Ann Coulter an entire novel-length book to achieve [ed.: the link appears to be broken, excerpts are as-is. Apologies for the inconvenience]. What Paz appears at first glance to deride is the shrinking violet sensibility recently popular on college campuses:<br />
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Today, when a group of us, organized originally by the Black Student Alliance at Yale, spoke with Christakis in the Silliman Courtyard, his response once again disappointed many of us. When students tried to tell him about their painful personal experiences as students of color on campus, he responded by making more arguments for free speech. It’s unacceptable when the Master of your college is dismissive of your experiences. The Silliman Master’s role is not only to provide intellectual stimulation, but also to make Silliman a safe space that all students can come home to. His responsibility is to make it a place where your experiences are a valid concern to the administration and where you can feel free to talk with them about your pain without worrying that the conversation will turn into an argument every single time. We are supposed to feel encouraged to go to our Master and Associate Master with our concerns and feel that our opinions will be respected and heard.</blockquote>
Good stuff so far. Middle-tier, if you will. But what elevates <i>Hurt at Home</i> to TOP KEK-grade satire is that it has the audacity to take on a pernicious, yet cherished political metaphor: that of organization-or-nation-as-family. Witness:<br />
<blockquote>
My dad is a really stubborn man. We debate all the time, and I understand the value of hearing differing opinions. But there have been times when I have come to my father crying, when I was emotionally upset, and he heard me regardless of whether or not he agreed with me. He taught me that there is a time for debate, and there is a time for just hearing and acknowledging someone’s pain.<br />
<br />
I have had to watch my friends defend their right to this institution. This email and the subsequent reaction to it have interrupted their lives. I have friends who are not going to class, who are not doing their homework, who are losing sleep, who are skipping meals, and who are having breakdowns. I feel drained. And through it all, Christakis has shown that he does not consider us a priority.</blockquote>
Whatever else you might believe about the Ivy League institutions, you have to appreciate any school that can produce students who can produce such sublime satire. I aver here and now, my beloved readers, that I have with my own two ears heard Very Serious Thinkers fall prey to the bizarre assertion that the family is different only in scale to the state, that the relationships that blood kin share are only a matter of scope difference to the anonymous community. I have seen with my own two eyes words written by Humans to be Taken Seriously that the nation is basically just an extended family. That parents must expunge the fallacy that their children belong to them. And as the little child proclaimed the emperor has no clothes, a Yale student has unceremoniously mooned the great nattering mass of aspirant despots who seek dominion with sleazy appeals to faux kinship.<br />
<br />
And the best part? Otherwise bright people appear to have fallen for the ruse. Cervantes at his best couldn't have hoped for more success. I doff my cap, Jencey Paz. You are a modern virtuoso of satire. Please, for the sake of the art, continue to write. The world is richer for having you in it.<br />
<br />
It's been fun watching some of the campus conflict from afar. Viewed as unstructured negotiation, it's obvious that there are some pretty severe strategic lapses on both sides. The transaction of higher education services appear to be less and less euvoluntary over time, at least on the aggrieved margin.Samuel Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16635024719984640919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698599151422542939.post-73103588278914800082015-11-09T09:53:00.001-05:002015-11-09T10:02:43.665-05:00Free to Negotiate"Choice" is unilateral. "Negotiation" is multilateral. One of the astonishing accomplishments of the modern agora was to modify a negotiated transaction to something that more resembled unilateral choice. I don't have to argue price with a grocery store clerk when I decide to purchase a can of tuna. The benefits of impersonal, anonymous exchange are obvious and many. Sparing customers the hassle of the haggle frees both customers and producers to concentrate on doing whatever it is they do best. In my case, if today's breakfast is to be believed, it is preparing the finest buttermilk and apple pancakes this side of the Pecos. I'm only half kidding. If you're ever in the Northern Virginia area, hit me up and I'll ruin the pancake experience for you forever. You may never eat another pancake that can live up to what I am able to deliver. I've even discovered the secret of putting pomegranates in flapjacks. What the even?!?<br />
<br />
Focusing on "choice" as a rhetorical device appeals to folks' inherited intuitions about the wonders of the market. Look at this guy and tell me he isn't impressed by choice:<br />
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<br />
Of course, that's just what's seen. What's unseen is the enormous tacit negotiation that has to take place to put all those different varieties of butter and cheese in that display case. You don't see the supply chain, the individual dairy farmers, the commodities traders, the accountants, or the managers. To a customer, it looks like choice. To an economist, it looks like negotiation, albeit tacit, ex ante, and by proxy.<br />
<br />
The rise of the matching* economy exposes the tacit negotiation of the marketplace to the customer. Airbnb isn't just a matter of booking a reservation at a property held by limited-liability corporate entity. It's someone's home. Uber isn't an infinitely-replaceable convenience livery selection. It's someone's car. There's an explicit negotiation there, even if it's conducted quickly and painlessly with the assistance of software. But make no mistake, that negotiation is embedded in each exchange opportunity anyone pursues. Perhaps our rhetoric might benefit from acknowledging that negotiation. Particularly so when one party's "freedom to choose" abuts another's.<br />
<br />
Then again, perhaps such a rhetorical shift is to the disadvantage of people with an ideological axe to grind. Changing "school choice" to "school negotiation" runs the risk of recognizing that education professionals have a stake in the learning process. "Women's health negotiation" might inadvertently acknowledge that more than just one person could be affected by reproductive decisions. I suppose I can see the peril in my proposal. Taken far enough, this could be a real mindkiller.<br />
<br />
Exercise caution, you guys.<br />
<br />
*The phrase "sharing economy" is misleading, even if the term comports with lessons taught in Kindergarten. It's less "sharing" and more "quickly and cheaply finding mutually beneficial pairwise exchange opportunities." I quibble because I care, people.Samuel Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16635024719984640919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698599151422542939.post-16828858037592513572015-11-05T12:40:00.002-05:002015-11-05T12:40:40.526-05:00Loud and VociferousWith apologies to Murray Rothbard, It is no crime to be ignorant of firearm safety, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be the purview of police and the soldiery. But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on firearm subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.<br />
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Kaili Joy Gray evidently <a href="http://wonkette.com/595637/ted-cruz-doesnt-care-if-he-accidentally-blows-off-someones-head-with-a-shotgun-2">cannot be bothered</a> to learn even rudimentary mechanics of how a sidearm operates. As even a complete novice to a range might tell you, the only way a break-action weapon might discharge with an open breech is for a foreign object to strike the primer with accuracy and force mimicking the firing pin. This is a sufficiently unlikely occurrence that should it occur, the direction the muzzle of the shotgun is pointed is of distant concern. Again, this is painfully, dismally obvious to anyone with even a rushed afternoon's introduction to the operation and care of sidearms.<br />
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It is an oddity then that someone plainly demonstrating such obdurate ignorance about firearms should retain a loud and vociferous opinion about their handling and accessibility.<br />
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Then again, this is America, where we let law professors who lie about their ethnicity establish national-scale regulatory agencies aimed at curtailing poor citizens' access to retail credit markets, so who's to say Gray isn't keeping in the highest traditions of our fair nation?<br />
<br />
Firearm irresponsibility is a serious issue and each negligent death is a senseless tragedy. But using a cartoonishly buffoonish example to illustrate the problem saps the discussion of the vigor it deserves. Nincompoopery has a place, but it is not here.Samuel Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16635024719984640919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698599151422542939.post-56076514684783002822015-11-02T08:00:00.001-05:002015-11-02T08:00:45.286-05:00Cold, Hard CashMicrowaves thaw faster than stovetops.<br />
<br />
Negative interest rates (or the threat thereof) are encouraging Swedes to <a href="http://business.financialpost.com/business-insider/people-in-sweden-are-hiding-cash-in-their-microwaves-because-of-a-fascinating-and-terrifying-economic-experiment">hoard cash</a>. Curious.<br />
<br />
It's my impression that most ordinary folks don't pay very close attention to the deliberations of central bankers. Only when inflation runs amok or oddities like negative interest rates show up will the casual observer take note. Stuffing currency into mattresses or switching to barter systems are gentle revolts against the monetary authority. I occasionally wonder what the 21st century version of torches and pitchforks would resemble.<br />
<br />
Perhaps we'll find out in Viking country.<br />
<br />Samuel Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16635024719984640919noreply@blogger.com0