Some things that I wonder about:
-We are often disgusted by the sight of urban blight, functionally ugly construction, coal and oil smoke, rusting automobiles. It seems like we find old-but-not-yet-outdated technology as the prime example of the ugly and polluting aspects of our urban environment. Shiny new technology is exempt until it's not so new. More interestingly, truly old technology is exempt as well. We consider things like water mills, early machinery, wood stoves and the like quaint. But consider, there was a time when these were cutting-edge technology. There was also, therefore, a time when they were becoming increasingly marginalized technology, but had not yet dissapeared. Were they considered unsightly and polluting? Going further back, was there a time when log cabins were a shiny new technology and mud huts seemed a blight on the landscape? Or is this perspectieve a product of modernity?
-It seems to met that the greatest innovations, the ones the represent real leaps forward rather than incrimental steps, come from the margins of society more than the professional innovators. Apple computers present a very interesting perspective on this. When Steve Jobs and the Woz were putting together machines in their garrage, they were cutting edge, then when Mac's were at the height of their popularity, they ceased to be making much in the way of innovation and then, after nearly failing, they returned to the forefront of innovation. Another way to look at this is that highly chaotic times present the impetus for real novel ideas. The warring states, for example, was a relatively chaotic period in China; it is also when the most formative philosphies took root, including Daoism and Confusionism as well as the ultimately less sucessful Moism, Legalism and some others. This is, of course, all anecdotal; I could very easily be pulling out only the examples that support my thesis. Something worth exploring, although I wonder how that might be done....
-Under the assumption that margins are where the most interesting ideas come from, where are the best places to look for innovation? Here are some that I've been thinking about: the megaslums forming around major cities in the developing world (notably, these will soon hold the majority of the world population), the drug trade, areas struck hard by the AIDS epidemic, failed states, prisons. In some cases, there may be too many externalities, or the situation may be entirely too marginal. In other cases, the innovations may be a little or no practical use outside of the situation in which they arise, or may be destructive in nature. In particular, consdier that terrorism and the manipulation of the UN and the international community represent major innovations in managing conflicts across massive power differentials. Some other things we've heard a lot about, microfinance being a prime example, came out of megaslums. If I were a major investment agency, that is where I'd put a lot of focus.
-Increasingly, the indication seems to be that large groups of people are better at making solutions than elites. Even though those people may individually be idiots, in aggregate, they make better decisions than highly intelligent and educated elites. Maybe. Mom got me a book on this that I haven't had the chance to read yet. My observation: masses of people are better at voting on things indirectly or when there is a clear outcome. For example, buying things is essentially a vote. Another example might be American Idol: zombie Americans with nothing better to do than watch reality TV seem to do a pretty good job of choosing sucessful singers. Then again, this should almost be a truism, because the measure a a singer's sucess is preetty much based on how many peopel like them. But maybe what we need is more direct democracy. Why not run voting issues on TV or internet-based applets that have a panel of experts to help people see the different sides of the issue and then let them decide. One of the major disadvantages, that interested people are more likely to vote, doesn't nessisarily seem like such a disadvantage. Voting fraud might be, but then again, it already is.
Wednesday, December 20
Saturday, December 16
The Sick Ness Monster
Through some combination of illness, laziness, unwilingness and Blogger-not-working...um...ness has lead me to miss two weeks of posting. In the meantime, I'm a year older and wiser (perhaps) and I've had a chance to find at least one more job. It looks like I will be doing an internship at the Philadelphia DA's office, working at ABC and probably selling sandwiches at Panera. I'm planning on helping in Taiko class some more as well, so it should be a pretty full schedule. Oh, I also redid the look of the blog, let me know if you like it.
One of the things that I've been thinking a lot about recently is the possibility that market solutions are actually better at resolving environmental concerns than all the government intervention going on. Clearly there are going to be some environmental problems that are not well addressed with market solutions, but it is interesting to see the degree to which my knee-jerk socialist let-the-government-regulate-it attitude seems very problematic for soem of these concerns. For example, public ownership of forests and fisheries tends to lead to the Tragedy of the Commons. Because the governement owns the land and sells rights to its use for a duration, the incentive is to maximize the profit during that period by clear-cutting as much as possible. On the other hand, private ownership of forest lands gives the lumber interests long-term incentives to maintain the forests for future cutting. In fact, in parts of the world where this model is followed, forests are actually regrowing. Fisheries are more problematic because the issue of fishing rights is more tangled by the simple fact that fish do not have roots.
Other problems, including preservation and restoration of endangered species and supplying clean water to populations in the developing world seem to suggest the feasablity of capitalist solutions. In many cases, regulations and fines are incentives to avoid compliance or avoid the industry all-together where these are problems that really want addressing.
Energy and air pollution (and corresponding ozone damage) are more difficult issues for a variety of reasons. Even solid waste appears to offer the potential for profitable and environmentally friendly businesses. For example, organic waste may be a good potential input for the manufacture of thermal insulation. Imagine the possibility of a company being payed to manage the waste of other industries (and potentially of the residential sector) and turning this into low-cost insulation (subsidised by the industries that produced the waste) which in turn reduces heating and cooling costs. Inorganic waste (especially metals) is profitable to recycle. There is some clear danger of wealthy countries essentially exporting all their garbage to the developing world, but at least there is the potential for clever recyling developments.
The problem with air pollution is that its effect is not recognized in a given local to a strong enough degree to deincentivise a given producer. Compound this with the fact that most of the world's air pollution comes from difficult sources to manage. Some libertarians have theorized a system wherein polluters can buy and sell the right to a certain amount of air pollution. First of all, notice that this still preassumes a certain degree of government control (or control by some other public proxy, such as a business bureau), which creates the same sort of potential for cheating. But even if this solves the big polluter problem to a degree by creating the incentive to pollute less and thereby profit from selling pollution rights, it does not solve the problem of diffuse sources of air pollution, which are the bigger issue to begin with. In most of the world, diffuse sources of air pollution are the source of more pollution than the point sources to begin with. In the developed world, these sources are mostly things like private cars and homes burning oil for heat and power. In the developing and nondeveloping world, these are mostly things like coal and wood burnt for cooking and heating purposes. The role of livestock is not to be underestimated either. Apparently in New Zealand, sheep and cattle farming are among the most significant sources of pollution. Furthermore, the damage to the ozone layer is caused by all these polluters in agrigate, which makes it very hard to incentivise individuals.
In any case, just thought these are some interesting things to think about. Also, Green Wombat is a pretty interesting source of info on these enivirocapitalism trends.
One of the things that I've been thinking a lot about recently is the possibility that market solutions are actually better at resolving environmental concerns than all the government intervention going on. Clearly there are going to be some environmental problems that are not well addressed with market solutions, but it is interesting to see the degree to which my knee-jerk socialist let-the-government-regulate-it attitude seems very problematic for soem of these concerns. For example, public ownership of forests and fisheries tends to lead to the Tragedy of the Commons. Because the governement owns the land and sells rights to its use for a duration, the incentive is to maximize the profit during that period by clear-cutting as much as possible. On the other hand, private ownership of forest lands gives the lumber interests long-term incentives to maintain the forests for future cutting. In fact, in parts of the world where this model is followed, forests are actually regrowing. Fisheries are more problematic because the issue of fishing rights is more tangled by the simple fact that fish do not have roots.
Other problems, including preservation and restoration of endangered species and supplying clean water to populations in the developing world seem to suggest the feasablity of capitalist solutions. In many cases, regulations and fines are incentives to avoid compliance or avoid the industry all-together where these are problems that really want addressing.
Energy and air pollution (and corresponding ozone damage) are more difficult issues for a variety of reasons. Even solid waste appears to offer the potential for profitable and environmentally friendly businesses. For example, organic waste may be a good potential input for the manufacture of thermal insulation. Imagine the possibility of a company being payed to manage the waste of other industries (and potentially of the residential sector) and turning this into low-cost insulation (subsidised by the industries that produced the waste) which in turn reduces heating and cooling costs. Inorganic waste (especially metals) is profitable to recycle. There is some clear danger of wealthy countries essentially exporting all their garbage to the developing world, but at least there is the potential for clever recyling developments.
The problem with air pollution is that its effect is not recognized in a given local to a strong enough degree to deincentivise a given producer. Compound this with the fact that most of the world's air pollution comes from difficult sources to manage. Some libertarians have theorized a system wherein polluters can buy and sell the right to a certain amount of air pollution. First of all, notice that this still preassumes a certain degree of government control (or control by some other public proxy, such as a business bureau), which creates the same sort of potential for cheating. But even if this solves the big polluter problem to a degree by creating the incentive to pollute less and thereby profit from selling pollution rights, it does not solve the problem of diffuse sources of air pollution, which are the bigger issue to begin with. In most of the world, diffuse sources of air pollution are the source of more pollution than the point sources to begin with. In the developed world, these sources are mostly things like private cars and homes burning oil for heat and power. In the developing and nondeveloping world, these are mostly things like coal and wood burnt for cooking and heating purposes. The role of livestock is not to be underestimated either. Apparently in New Zealand, sheep and cattle farming are among the most significant sources of pollution. Furthermore, the damage to the ozone layer is caused by all these polluters in agrigate, which makes it very hard to incentivise individuals.
In any case, just thought these are some interesting things to think about. Also, Green Wombat is a pretty interesting source of info on these enivirocapitalism trends.
Tuesday, November 21
Animal Farm Animals
Perhaps I was a bit too harsh to feminists, products of time as I am of mine. My romantic spleen longs for true groundswells of change, and I am angered by partisan politics and the some at the expense of some. Perhaps if I wax choleric I will prompt responses in kind, and who does not love kind responses and flamewars.
Maybe it is just that my frame of mind is dependant on that impossible blank slate. Bring me an eraser. Oh to be young in a young country! Give me destiny and an open frontier and I'll do my best Jefforson. It is only amidst concrete walls and decay that we must act the Lenins of the world, or the Stalins. If an age of I-beams demands men of steel I should be unsurprised that a copper-wire century creates bronze and calculating change.
The Thanksgiving season is on us. A season for gorging on turkey, tripping on triptophan and falling asleep in front of the football game. Thanksgiving was once the celebration of survival and a fresh chance in a firewashed land. All it took was the accidental genocide of a thousand peoples (and the calculated genocide of a thousand more) to give us two or three centuries of frontier. What is the new frontier? It took less than a decade for the digital prarie to become corn-growing land. Is space that final frontier? I think not in my generation.
The Jefforsonian ideal is predicated on indpendant incomes. The Friedanian ideal is predicated on independant incomes. The difficulty is that we now live in a society with no real frontier, where jobs are the product of amorphous corporates and bureacracy. Working outside the home gives a woman independance from her husband, but not full freedom. Dependance is merely shifted from one employer to another. Under the market economy, we are all dependants on the cheifs of industry; our corporate fathers take home the lions share of the bacon while we are left to clean the slaughterhouse.
At the risk of sounding like a Luddite, perhaps farms are the answer. If vegitarianism was mandated, or at least meat made a luxury, corporate farms would not be so requisite. Less land is needed for crops if they are eaten before being processed through the meat machine. More land could be left fallow for prarie or woodlands. Water rights would be less problematic in the West. We could hunt for pleasure and for the occasional meat, but grow most food on local farms. Urban areas could set up empty lots for community vegetable plots. A small slice of farm is a great fall-back for lean times. At the same time, because we are so connected through the interwaves of the wired aether, we could remain connected and continue the majority of jobs from localities.
This is a dream. We are the products of our time, and this type of sea change would require a generation of pigs who had not known farmers to stand on their hind legs.
Maybe it is just that my frame of mind is dependant on that impossible blank slate. Bring me an eraser. Oh to be young in a young country! Give me destiny and an open frontier and I'll do my best Jefforson. It is only amidst concrete walls and decay that we must act the Lenins of the world, or the Stalins. If an age of I-beams demands men of steel I should be unsurprised that a copper-wire century creates bronze and calculating change.
The Thanksgiving season is on us. A season for gorging on turkey, tripping on triptophan and falling asleep in front of the football game. Thanksgiving was once the celebration of survival and a fresh chance in a firewashed land. All it took was the accidental genocide of a thousand peoples (and the calculated genocide of a thousand more) to give us two or three centuries of frontier. What is the new frontier? It took less than a decade for the digital prarie to become corn-growing land. Is space that final frontier? I think not in my generation.
The Jefforsonian ideal is predicated on indpendant incomes. The Friedanian ideal is predicated on independant incomes. The difficulty is that we now live in a society with no real frontier, where jobs are the product of amorphous corporates and bureacracy. Working outside the home gives a woman independance from her husband, but not full freedom. Dependance is merely shifted from one employer to another. Under the market economy, we are all dependants on the cheifs of industry; our corporate fathers take home the lions share of the bacon while we are left to clean the slaughterhouse.
At the risk of sounding like a Luddite, perhaps farms are the answer. If vegitarianism was mandated, or at least meat made a luxury, corporate farms would not be so requisite. Less land is needed for crops if they are eaten before being processed through the meat machine. More land could be left fallow for prarie or woodlands. Water rights would be less problematic in the West. We could hunt for pleasure and for the occasional meat, but grow most food on local farms. Urban areas could set up empty lots for community vegetable plots. A small slice of farm is a great fall-back for lean times. At the same time, because we are so connected through the interwaves of the wired aether, we could remain connected and continue the majority of jobs from localities.
This is a dream. We are the products of our time, and this type of sea change would require a generation of pigs who had not known farmers to stand on their hind legs.
All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others
For those of you who thought there was something wrong with feminism, it turns out you were right. In the process of making women as a group more equal to men as a group, the feminist movement has added to the growing trend of inequality between social groups. According to the New York Times Magazine article, this is because marriages accross income groups are less common and within highly educated couples, women are increasingly likely to max out their potential education and earnings. What's more, it turns out that marrying up used to be one of the primary means of social advancement. This can be seen in the fact that the increased inequities between socioeconomic groups is mirrored by a decreased rate of social mobility. Hrm. A seemingly correlated trend is that interracial marriage has been on the rise largely because it is no longer as likely to imply interclass marriage. Double hrm.
Now before anyone accuses me of being a masogynist oppressor, let me explain myself. The feminist movement was largely in response to the division of labor which typically placed men in the factory or the office and women in the home. This is clearly an unequal type of situation. The man, through his labor, generated liquid assets (read: cash money) while the woman generated nontransferable goods and services (a clean house, dinner, children). This gave the man much more freedom to spend the returns on his labor while leaving the woman dependant on him. The thing is, this was not the situation from time immemorial. In fact, this division of labor was largely the product of the industrial revolution; as you go back in time, women get more equal to men, not less. Prior to Adam Smith and the division of labor, pretty much everyone (minus a few kings and such) was on pretty much equal footing, the problem was that they were all equally poor. Division of labor created wealth, but it also created more divisions of wealth. Without the industrial revolution and the agricultural revolution, there would not have been such a need for the sexual revolution. Discuss in groups: why do we call it the Enlightenment when it created inequality?
So all the progress of the women's movement, the civil rights movement and so on? Well, they have created equal (or nearly equal) standing under the law. This has allowed some women and minorities to enter the upper classes. Once they are there, they keep their wealth in the family by ensuring that their children get educated and marry well. They probably don't care if their daughter marries a black man, so long as he's a doctor (or for that matter, if their son marries a Puoto Rican, so long as she's an executive). "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife," wrote Jane Austen 200 years ago. Today she would probably write "...in want of a rich wife."
So what has happened to all the unpaid labor that women used to perform. Well, most of it is paid labor now, and gets outsourced. All the housekeeping, laundry and childcare is done primarily by the working poor, mostly, it should be pointed out, by women. The triumph of feminism is to find other women to oppress, and to do it under the justifying auspices of the market.
Now before anyone accuses me of being a masogynist oppressor, let me explain myself. The feminist movement was largely in response to the division of labor which typically placed men in the factory or the office and women in the home. This is clearly an unequal type of situation. The man, through his labor, generated liquid assets (read: cash money) while the woman generated nontransferable goods and services (a clean house, dinner, children). This gave the man much more freedom to spend the returns on his labor while leaving the woman dependant on him. The thing is, this was not the situation from time immemorial. In fact, this division of labor was largely the product of the industrial revolution; as you go back in time, women get more equal to men, not less. Prior to Adam Smith and the division of labor, pretty much everyone (minus a few kings and such) was on pretty much equal footing, the problem was that they were all equally poor. Division of labor created wealth, but it also created more divisions of wealth. Without the industrial revolution and the agricultural revolution, there would not have been such a need for the sexual revolution. Discuss in groups: why do we call it the Enlightenment when it created inequality?
So all the progress of the women's movement, the civil rights movement and so on? Well, they have created equal (or nearly equal) standing under the law. This has allowed some women and minorities to enter the upper classes. Once they are there, they keep their wealth in the family by ensuring that their children get educated and marry well. They probably don't care if their daughter marries a black man, so long as he's a doctor (or for that matter, if their son marries a Puoto Rican, so long as she's an executive). "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife," wrote Jane Austen 200 years ago. Today she would probably write "...in want of a rich wife."
So what has happened to all the unpaid labor that women used to perform. Well, most of it is paid labor now, and gets outsourced. All the housekeeping, laundry and childcare is done primarily by the working poor, mostly, it should be pointed out, by women. The triumph of feminism is to find other women to oppress, and to do it under the justifying auspices of the market.
Wednesday, November 15
The Prescience of Peter Sellers
As you may have gleaned from previous posts, I am a big Peter Sellers fan. This began, unsurprisingly, with an appreciation for the Pink Panther films (which wilipedia tells us are named after the MacGuffin of the first film; cool term btw), especially A Shot in the Dark. I have previously referenced Being There (incidentally, the first DVD I ever purchased) as the origin of my broad use of garden metaphors. Others more famous and well written than I have frequently talked about Dr. Strangelove, especially in reference to the game theory of MAD (a hidden or unstated threat has no utility in strategic bargaining). Today, I'm most interested in The Mouse that Roared, a story about a small country dependant on a single export (Pinot Grand Fenwick) that gets displaced by a cheaper alternative (Pinot Grand Enwick, made in California) and facing the collapse of its markets, declares war on the United States in the hope of being defeated and gaining Marshal Plan style economic assistance. It ends up winning the war by capturing the Q bomb, a WMD, in its invasion of the US. Does any of this sound familiar? It's certainly not like there are any little countries whose economies get overpowered by the big powers or that turn to threatening the US or acquiring WMD to get international attention. The end of the movie results in a coalition of the "small countries of the world" continuing control of the Q Bomb to assure world peace. This sounds like a pretty good idea to me.
But I'm particularly interested in the way the collapse of a traditional industry causes panic in the small country. The specific hilarity of The Mouse that Roared aside, it is surprisingly accurate in its depiction of the responses to economic collapse. Most countries (or regions, or individuals) hurt by the market tend to turn either to government support or to extermism as solutions to their situations. Grand Fenwick effectively turns to both, choosing to attack the US and ultimately steal a WMD in order to get attention and economic assistance. There are clear problems with both of these tactics, extremism destabalizes and causes further economic, social and political problems. Economic assistance often leads to dependence and further collapse of local industry. Welfare, for example, was created as a temporary support for people going through difficult times and unable to find work. For many people, it has turned into a lifestyle, incidentally a lifestyle frequently associated with violence and crime. Idealy, there should be some way to rectify economic collapse without creating the conditions of dependence or further destabalization.
I feel somewhat conflicted about philanthropy, much as I do about welfare and perhaps more so. Welfare is founded on the belief that there should be a social safety net that provides for people who are unable to provide for themselves. I firmly believe in this type of safety net and the it is the government's job to provide one, even if I am somewhat conflicted about the conditions that welfare generates (would these conditions be better off without welfare, almost certainly not, could they be better if welfare worked differently, maybe). But philanthropy bothers me on another level as well. I don't like the idea that it is the job of the rich to provide directly for the less fortunate in large part because it justfies the wealth of the very rich. The standard type of gala-fundraising nonsense feels awfully patronizing; philanthropy tends to target sexy issues rather than particularly needy ones; so much effort is put into fundraising and so comparatively little into action; these are all issues that further concern me. I would prefer to live in a world, or at least a country, where the government provided for nessecities (and niceities, like music and art), and where the class of super-wealthy did not exist. I am increasingly realizing that this is not the case and that the private sector must provide. I am far from the only one who doesn't like the traditional means of giving, however.
As detailed in an extensive section in the New York Times recently, new types of philanthropy are arising to fill the needs of a failing system. Cheif among these are philanthropic entrepreneurship, whereby development ideas are treated like business startups. Groups of the new superwealthy, including the leaders of Virgin, Google, Ebay and other new-market types have been funding ideas that can return profits or at least provide for their own operating expenses. While this at first seems somewhat ethically questionable (especially the potential to make a type of investment tax-break), it makes a great deal of sense. Microfinance has proven itself capable of giving returns on investment that can then be put back into further microloans. These big players have also invested in things like drip irrigation systems that should provide a return but also make a substantial difference in some localities. Other investments, like in renuable energy, have the potential to create newly profitable market segments, but do so in a progressive areas. Still other of these measures have ways to generate revenue for their operating costs to break the fundraising cycle.
For those of us who are not rich enough to privately fund major investments in these types of projects, there are other smaller ways that people are getting involved. I am kinda scheptical about charity-oriented products, but everyone else seems to be really into that. While I like the idea of spending concienciously, this type of effort is still just a new means of fundraising for traditional campaigns. Paying for a new hospital wing is one thing, a kind of one-time major expense; certain other types of giving qualify in similar ways, especially natural disasters like Katrina or the Asian Tsunami of a few years back. But the majority of charitable needs are ongoing, whether they involve food kitchens, job training, famine relief, AIDS research or what have you, locking you into a cycle of fundraising. I am quite doubtful about claims that these types of product sales will do much to relieve this; most of these products are going to be seasonal or faddish type of promotions that will simply be replaced by the next hot charity when the next major retail season rolls around. Their bigger contribution seems to be to rehabilitating the tarnished images of major corporations.
That's not to say that shopping can't be a political experiance, that it can't help build community and social networks and such. I have recently been getting into the idea of buying local products, or at least supporting local businesses to the greatest extent possible. This would seem to create a real trickle-down effect, with local businesspeople more likely to spend their profits locally and support other local businesses. In fact, I'm increasingly convinced that the flaw in supply-side economics is primarily in terms of scale. Increasing savings is a good way of increasing investment. The problem is that national (and international) banks mean that your savings is more likely to be used for investment outside of your locality (maybe outside of your country), when what is really desirable is that your savings become loans for local businesses. This book makes the argument that local currency is a good way of keeping local gains local and spurring local investment (local local). That strikes me as a bit hokey, hard to set up and to keep running. However, the idea of putting money in local banks seems like a cool one.
There are also mutual funds set up for ethical investing (by avoiding war-profiteering companies, oil companies, companies that test on animals or whatever your pet issue might be; also ones that focus on investing in alternative energy, green agriculture, healthy food and in the community). The problem is that these funds don't always do as well as most traditional ones; perhaps the way to look at it is that you are forgoing some level of profits in liu of making profits and giving some of them to charity. It certainly seems more productive than investing in companies that create negative effects and then spending charity money to help reduce those effects.
Basically, I'm becoming more open to some of these different ideas for investing in social development as ways to improve things independant of government. Some ideas, like drip irrigation and microfinance, seem capable of taking off on their own. In other cases, government regulation or lack of regulation stands in the way. France has recently decided to tax imports from countries not in keeping with the Kyoto Pact to help level the playing field, and honestly, protectionism may be benificial for many local industries. And, as I've talked about before, in many cases, standards that make sense for international distribution are prohibitive for local producers in local markets.
But I'm particularly interested in the way the collapse of a traditional industry causes panic in the small country. The specific hilarity of The Mouse that Roared aside, it is surprisingly accurate in its depiction of the responses to economic collapse. Most countries (or regions, or individuals) hurt by the market tend to turn either to government support or to extermism as solutions to their situations. Grand Fenwick effectively turns to both, choosing to attack the US and ultimately steal a WMD in order to get attention and economic assistance. There are clear problems with both of these tactics, extremism destabalizes and causes further economic, social and political problems. Economic assistance often leads to dependence and further collapse of local industry. Welfare, for example, was created as a temporary support for people going through difficult times and unable to find work. For many people, it has turned into a lifestyle, incidentally a lifestyle frequently associated with violence and crime. Idealy, there should be some way to rectify economic collapse without creating the conditions of dependence or further destabalization.
I feel somewhat conflicted about philanthropy, much as I do about welfare and perhaps more so. Welfare is founded on the belief that there should be a social safety net that provides for people who are unable to provide for themselves. I firmly believe in this type of safety net and the it is the government's job to provide one, even if I am somewhat conflicted about the conditions that welfare generates (would these conditions be better off without welfare, almost certainly not, could they be better if welfare worked differently, maybe). But philanthropy bothers me on another level as well. I don't like the idea that it is the job of the rich to provide directly for the less fortunate in large part because it justfies the wealth of the very rich. The standard type of gala-fundraising nonsense feels awfully patronizing; philanthropy tends to target sexy issues rather than particularly needy ones; so much effort is put into fundraising and so comparatively little into action; these are all issues that further concern me. I would prefer to live in a world, or at least a country, where the government provided for nessecities (and niceities, like music and art), and where the class of super-wealthy did not exist. I am increasingly realizing that this is not the case and that the private sector must provide. I am far from the only one who doesn't like the traditional means of giving, however.
As detailed in an extensive section in the New York Times recently, new types of philanthropy are arising to fill the needs of a failing system. Cheif among these are philanthropic entrepreneurship, whereby development ideas are treated like business startups. Groups of the new superwealthy, including the leaders of Virgin, Google, Ebay and other new-market types have been funding ideas that can return profits or at least provide for their own operating expenses. While this at first seems somewhat ethically questionable (especially the potential to make a type of investment tax-break), it makes a great deal of sense. Microfinance has proven itself capable of giving returns on investment that can then be put back into further microloans. These big players have also invested in things like drip irrigation systems that should provide a return but also make a substantial difference in some localities. Other investments, like in renuable energy, have the potential to create newly profitable market segments, but do so in a progressive areas. Still other of these measures have ways to generate revenue for their operating costs to break the fundraising cycle.
For those of us who are not rich enough to privately fund major investments in these types of projects, there are other smaller ways that people are getting involved. I am kinda scheptical about charity-oriented products, but everyone else seems to be really into that. While I like the idea of spending concienciously, this type of effort is still just a new means of fundraising for traditional campaigns. Paying for a new hospital wing is one thing, a kind of one-time major expense; certain other types of giving qualify in similar ways, especially natural disasters like Katrina or the Asian Tsunami of a few years back. But the majority of charitable needs are ongoing, whether they involve food kitchens, job training, famine relief, AIDS research or what have you, locking you into a cycle of fundraising. I am quite doubtful about claims that these types of product sales will do much to relieve this; most of these products are going to be seasonal or faddish type of promotions that will simply be replaced by the next hot charity when the next major retail season rolls around. Their bigger contribution seems to be to rehabilitating the tarnished images of major corporations.
That's not to say that shopping can't be a political experiance, that it can't help build community and social networks and such. I have recently been getting into the idea of buying local products, or at least supporting local businesses to the greatest extent possible. This would seem to create a real trickle-down effect, with local businesspeople more likely to spend their profits locally and support other local businesses. In fact, I'm increasingly convinced that the flaw in supply-side economics is primarily in terms of scale. Increasing savings is a good way of increasing investment. The problem is that national (and international) banks mean that your savings is more likely to be used for investment outside of your locality (maybe outside of your country), when what is really desirable is that your savings become loans for local businesses. This book makes the argument that local currency is a good way of keeping local gains local and spurring local investment (local local). That strikes me as a bit hokey, hard to set up and to keep running. However, the idea of putting money in local banks seems like a cool one.
There are also mutual funds set up for ethical investing (by avoiding war-profiteering companies, oil companies, companies that test on animals or whatever your pet issue might be; also ones that focus on investing in alternative energy, green agriculture, healthy food and in the community). The problem is that these funds don't always do as well as most traditional ones; perhaps the way to look at it is that you are forgoing some level of profits in liu of making profits and giving some of them to charity. It certainly seems more productive than investing in companies that create negative effects and then spending charity money to help reduce those effects.
Basically, I'm becoming more open to some of these different ideas for investing in social development as ways to improve things independant of government. Some ideas, like drip irrigation and microfinance, seem capable of taking off on their own. In other cases, government regulation or lack of regulation stands in the way. France has recently decided to tax imports from countries not in keeping with the Kyoto Pact to help level the playing field, and honestly, protectionism may be benificial for many local industries. And, as I've talked about before, in many cases, standards that make sense for international distribution are prohibitive for local producers in local markets.
Thursday, November 9
Midterm Madness
Well, the midterm elecitons are over, although it remians to be seen what the exact results will be. It looks as if the Democrats have taken control of the House and the Senate will be something very close to an even split (probably a very slight Republican majority). Keep in mind that these counts include plenty of very conservative Democrats, in particular democrats who are conservative on the so-called "moral" issues. What exactly will this mean for American politics in the next two years? I'd like to leave that to the true pundits, although not without a few words first.
It's probably just that I'm a pessimist, but I don't really think that a narrow majority in the house can mean much good for Democrats and especially for real liberals. At this point, the Dems will, at best, likely have enough influence in Washington to stop some of the worst of the administration's proposals. The problem is, it is already too late to do much about some of the truly damaging ones (the war, the patriot act, the war, enviornomental measures, the war oh and did I mention...the war). Even the ability to block depends on strong party discipline, something the Democrats have not been known for recently and that I'm not really sure is such a good thing anyway. Given the fact that many of the Democrats that have been reelected and replaced Repulbicans in battleground districts are really quite conservative, it seems unlikely that they will being doing very much standing fast on very many issues.
Furthermore, the Dems already have a (justified) reputation for not having very much in the way of their own ideas. Many Democrats tend to simply defend old and decaying social support programs and oppose the worst of the conservative agenda. Liberals really need their own progressive agenda if anyone is going to take them seriously in the long run (even though, for individual elections in the current negative campaigning vein, blandness seems to be the supreme virtue). I know that I am looking for real progressives with ideas for positive change and am continually dissapointed by the options the Democrats give me. How long before people like me start looking elsewhere again.
Some pundits may call the election a referendum on Bush, but the fact is, this is not a president who has shown himself to care much about public opinion as long as it does not effect his ability to push his agenda through. Granted, he will have less free reign now than with a Republican majority, particularly as the GOP attempts to disentangle itself from his bloody coat-tails. But generally I expect the country and the world to be disappointed at the lack of change in the wake of the election.
Finally, I tend to be highly skeptical of any reading of history that overstresses individual actors. Sure, we would not have made such bad choices as a country without Bush, but he nevertheless represeted and continues to represent a coalition of big business (espeically big oil and big guns) interests with ultra-conservatives and the conservative Christian interests. Even if there was another individual at the head of this movement, I don't think it would differ that terribly much. What this does point to is some continuing structural problems with American democracy that allow certain types of displined and wealthy minority (albiet significant minority) interests to exert their control over the majority. Our particular variety of federalist system creates a two-party system. In this type of system, minority interests are able to dominate the discourse if they are able to dominate one of the two parties. Then, just add in a segment of the economy built around government contracts and profiteering and you've got a structure that's gonna continue to dictate most of the actualities even if they don't technically control the government.
It's bad enough that majority rule often leaves 49% of the population without a voice, but when one wing of a party is able to dominate, it gets even worse. Consider if a special interest is able to control 10% or 20% of a party. A large portion of the rest of the party consists of faithful who will vote for the party pretty much regardless and another significant block who consider the party a lesser evil. Then all that group needs to do is connect a soapbox issue that is central to another 20% voting block of swing voters to bring the party into power. Then, once the party is in power, gerymandering, strategic politics and the like can help them continue their dominance. In this way, you can have something more like 10% of a party which constitutes 50% of the actual voters who constitute 40% of the actual population dictating policy. That comes out to 4% of the country making policy. Doesn't sound much like democracy to me, but all it takes is a two-party system, a disciplined voting block and a soapbox issue.
Soapbox issues are what I call issues that inflame public opinion in excess of their social importance. I think I've mentioned these before. They tend to be issues that people dont' like to hear called trivial, and they are not really trivial issues, but they are issues that are not as important for themselves as for the role they play in voting (and/or public opnion). Abortion and gay marriage are big ones in this country. Both are issues that I (like most people) have pretty strong opinions on. However, they are not issues that have huge impacts on the everyday lives of most people, unlike, for instance, foreign policy, social services and taxation which people tend to ignore or misunderstand except when there is a major crisis. I was massively depressed to hear important voting blocs inerviewed on the radio say essentially "who cares about the war as long as taxes stay low and gays can't marry." In what world are gay marriage and an ongoing and terrible conflict even close to the same importance?!?!
One idea I've been batting around is to try to disentangle these issues from eachother. To a certain extent, all issues are inter-related because they all have some financial component to them. However, it seems to me if we were able to fairly well disentangle, say, "moral" issues from foreign policy ones and fiscal policy from environmental problems and create partially seperate voting bodies to decide on these issues, it might help matters a bit. The way things are now, we elect representatives to vote for us on all issues, but what if were were to elect a seperate representative for "moral" issues, social services, domestic issues, foreign policy and fiscal policy. There would need to be some way of connecting the decision-making, particularly the ever-important ability to tax, but this seems like a good start to making politics a little more about the real issues and less about soapbox ones. As much as I am for gay marriage and pro-choice, I would willingly let these rights fall by the wayside if it meant I could get my more central concerns with broader-reaching concequences heard (especially since I think most people would tend to agree with me on some of these issues...) I dunno.
Here's a cool new way to make bread. I'm looking forward to trying it out.
Another cooking thing I've been into recently: using cinnamon and nutmeg as savory spices.
Cumin, cinnamon, hot peppers and tomato is apparently a Persian thing. It makes really really good omlettes.
Today, I tried roasting cauliflower with black pepper, garlic, olive oil, nutmeg and cinnamon. Really delicious.
It's probably just that I'm a pessimist, but I don't really think that a narrow majority in the house can mean much good for Democrats and especially for real liberals. At this point, the Dems will, at best, likely have enough influence in Washington to stop some of the worst of the administration's proposals. The problem is, it is already too late to do much about some of the truly damaging ones (the war, the patriot act, the war, enviornomental measures, the war oh and did I mention...the war). Even the ability to block depends on strong party discipline, something the Democrats have not been known for recently and that I'm not really sure is such a good thing anyway. Given the fact that many of the Democrats that have been reelected and replaced Repulbicans in battleground districts are really quite conservative, it seems unlikely that they will being doing very much standing fast on very many issues.
Furthermore, the Dems already have a (justified) reputation for not having very much in the way of their own ideas. Many Democrats tend to simply defend old and decaying social support programs and oppose the worst of the conservative agenda. Liberals really need their own progressive agenda if anyone is going to take them seriously in the long run (even though, for individual elections in the current negative campaigning vein, blandness seems to be the supreme virtue). I know that I am looking for real progressives with ideas for positive change and am continually dissapointed by the options the Democrats give me. How long before people like me start looking elsewhere again.
Some pundits may call the election a referendum on Bush, but the fact is, this is not a president who has shown himself to care much about public opinion as long as it does not effect his ability to push his agenda through. Granted, he will have less free reign now than with a Republican majority, particularly as the GOP attempts to disentangle itself from his bloody coat-tails. But generally I expect the country and the world to be disappointed at the lack of change in the wake of the election.
Finally, I tend to be highly skeptical of any reading of history that overstresses individual actors. Sure, we would not have made such bad choices as a country without Bush, but he nevertheless represeted and continues to represent a coalition of big business (espeically big oil and big guns) interests with ultra-conservatives and the conservative Christian interests. Even if there was another individual at the head of this movement, I don't think it would differ that terribly much. What this does point to is some continuing structural problems with American democracy that allow certain types of displined and wealthy minority (albiet significant minority) interests to exert their control over the majority. Our particular variety of federalist system creates a two-party system. In this type of system, minority interests are able to dominate the discourse if they are able to dominate one of the two parties. Then, just add in a segment of the economy built around government contracts and profiteering and you've got a structure that's gonna continue to dictate most of the actualities even if they don't technically control the government.
It's bad enough that majority rule often leaves 49% of the population without a voice, but when one wing of a party is able to dominate, it gets even worse. Consider if a special interest is able to control 10% or 20% of a party. A large portion of the rest of the party consists of faithful who will vote for the party pretty much regardless and another significant block who consider the party a lesser evil. Then all that group needs to do is connect a soapbox issue that is central to another 20% voting block of swing voters to bring the party into power. Then, once the party is in power, gerymandering, strategic politics and the like can help them continue their dominance. In this way, you can have something more like 10% of a party which constitutes 50% of the actual voters who constitute 40% of the actual population dictating policy. That comes out to 4% of the country making policy. Doesn't sound much like democracy to me, but all it takes is a two-party system, a disciplined voting block and a soapbox issue.
Soapbox issues are what I call issues that inflame public opinion in excess of their social importance. I think I've mentioned these before. They tend to be issues that people dont' like to hear called trivial, and they are not really trivial issues, but they are issues that are not as important for themselves as for the role they play in voting (and/or public opnion). Abortion and gay marriage are big ones in this country. Both are issues that I (like most people) have pretty strong opinions on. However, they are not issues that have huge impacts on the everyday lives of most people, unlike, for instance, foreign policy, social services and taxation which people tend to ignore or misunderstand except when there is a major crisis. I was massively depressed to hear important voting blocs inerviewed on the radio say essentially "who cares about the war as long as taxes stay low and gays can't marry." In what world are gay marriage and an ongoing and terrible conflict even close to the same importance?!?!
One idea I've been batting around is to try to disentangle these issues from eachother. To a certain extent, all issues are inter-related because they all have some financial component to them. However, it seems to me if we were able to fairly well disentangle, say, "moral" issues from foreign policy ones and fiscal policy from environmental problems and create partially seperate voting bodies to decide on these issues, it might help matters a bit. The way things are now, we elect representatives to vote for us on all issues, but what if were were to elect a seperate representative for "moral" issues, social services, domestic issues, foreign policy and fiscal policy. There would need to be some way of connecting the decision-making, particularly the ever-important ability to tax, but this seems like a good start to making politics a little more about the real issues and less about soapbox ones. As much as I am for gay marriage and pro-choice, I would willingly let these rights fall by the wayside if it meant I could get my more central concerns with broader-reaching concequences heard (especially since I think most people would tend to agree with me on some of these issues...) I dunno.
Here's a cool new way to make bread. I'm looking forward to trying it out.
Another cooking thing I've been into recently: using cinnamon and nutmeg as savory spices.
Cumin, cinnamon, hot peppers and tomato is apparently a Persian thing. It makes really really good omlettes.
Today, I tried roasting cauliflower with black pepper, garlic, olive oil, nutmeg and cinnamon. Really delicious.
Tuesday, October 31
Fiction
A few years ago at a panel discussion on Iraq or some such thing, I was intrigued by one of the speakers, who mentioned the need for more progressive standpoint in the media. This is, of course, a dead horse, but he further pointed out the need for an emphasis on non-violent conflict resolution, not only in the the factual media (and I use that term loosely), but in entertainment as well. Far too many TV shows, movies and video games emphasize violent solutions to problems, even if and when they target "the right problems." This is, of course, when they even bother to address the problems in the first place. Video game companies, movie studios and so on typically respond that they make what sells. And if you think about it, what sells is conflict. Without conflict, there is not much of a story to tell. From when I used to play Dungeons and Dragons, I remember thinking about how to come up with different conflicts for the players. I came up with four major categories of problems for heroes to overcome. These were:
1. Environmental chalenges. A mountain to climb, an earthquake, a flood, these are all challenges whose source is totally external to the heroes and generally not subject to much in the way of manipulation. The challenge pretty much must be met or avoided.
2. Logistical issues. Boring as this sounds, these are a major meat-and-potato standby of a lot of role-playing and adventure games, including the infamous "fetch and carry" quests. There is too much of something or not enough of something or things are in the wrong places and need to be moved around. A lot of real life seems to be related to this type of issue.
3. Inter-group conflicts. Countries at war, companies competing or even species fighting over resources. These conflicts give much more room for nuance because they have underlying causes that can be targeted as well as effects that can be addressed.
4. Interpersonal conflicts. Arguments, fights and the like between individuals where groups are not typically involved. In this category you also might include conflicts between an individual and a group of which he is a member.
To these five, you might also add
5. Internal or psychological problems.
In any case, I think that most interesting stories can be seen as addressing one or more conflicts that fits into one or more of these categories. In this framework, I would argue that there are really three problems with most forms of popular entertainment. The first problem is that most of it tends to focus on type 3 and 4 conflicts while paying minimal if any attention to types 1, 2 and 5. The second is that a narrow range of usually violent solutions to these conflicts are presented as the only options. The third is that realistic outcomes and concequences are glossed over.
Take, for example, your standard action movie. This is usually presented as an un-vs.-them type 3 conflict. There are terrorists attacking the White House, we need to kill them or they will kill us. This type 3 conflict is not only very unlikely compared to others, but it is oversimplified to a very black and white type of conflict, a zero-sum game if you will. The possibility of intranecine disagreement, the origins of the group dynamics and the underlying causes of the conflict are all given short shrift. Because of this very topical treatment of the causes of the problem, it is unsurprising that only one solution (kill the terrorists) really occurs to the heros and that minimal concequences are portrayed.
So what is the solution? It is three-fold. First, we need more games, movies and shows that address environmental and logistical problems in a way that is interesting. There have been some notable sucesses, but they are notable more for being the exception than the rule: The Day After Tomorrow potrayed unlikely but exciting heroism in the face of abrupt climate change rather than unlikely but exciting heroism in the face of terrorists, the cult hit series of Harvest Moon video games challenged players to make a farm run instead of killing anonymous monsters. The second step is to provide more options for alternative (i.e. non-violent) solutions to the problems presented in many video games and to show these options in TV shows and movies. This should ideally go a step beyond the vigelante hero arresting the baddies instead of killing them. For this second step to be sucessful, what is really needed is a more complex view of the causes and effects. Some producers seem to think that kids are unable to handle anything but the most simplistic of story-lines, but the sucess of some pretty good shows, movies and games seems to indicate the contrary. There seems to be a positive trend in this respect:
Batman Begins is a little more complex, albeit a bit heavy-handed, in dealing with the causes of crime than many previous Batman movies, and it was a much better film as a result (well, and also because Christian Bale is a much more convincing Batman than Val Kilmer, let alone George Clooney)
Bully is a surprisingly complex treatment of the complexities of adolescent life. While the game does include its fair share of punching out rival gangs, its really a narrative about fitting in and helping kids. Certainly a step in the right direction from the producers of Vice City, a very, very entertaining game whose focus is the violent takeover of a drug empire. The fact that Bully is almost as fun as that blockbuster hit (and one of its biggest shortcomings is the lack of such a thrilling 80s soundtrack) is a good thing. Now they have started showing more complexity in their treatment of the causes of problems, they do need a little more realism in the outcomes.
On TV, my favorite show right now is Avatar. Its meticulously reserached pan-Asian feel reminds me a lot of Initiate Brother: the four (or five) elements are based on Hindu cosmogony by way of Buddhism; they have a kung-fu master on hand to help them choreograph the four different styles (based rather convincingly on Tai Chi, Ba Gua, Shaolin Kungfu and Hung Gar); the costumes (I use the word loosely for an animated show) of the four nations are very reminicent of Tibetan or Mongolian, Northern Chinese and Korean, Japanese and Inuit clothing; they have a caligripher to do the seal-script for them and so on. It also presents a more balanced view of group conflict (the prince of the Fire nation comes to disagree with his warmongering family) and of conflict resolution, which is often non-violent. And the animation is pretty nice.
Of course for every good show like Avatar, there is a steaming pile of crap like this one that couldn't even bother to use the proper English spelling of Shaolin. (Although even in this case, there are those who are convinced that this show is a clever spoof). But this really shows the difficulty in creating better programing. I am not at a point where I am willing to censor violent games like Grand Theft Auto (although in this case, I tend to love how well done the games are and consider them almost art), or even total drivel like Xiaolin Showdown. But there is only so much good progrmaing out there. It takes a lot more effort to create something original and showing depth of thought than it does to make a cheap knockoff. Perhaps the point that I'm trying to make, which it seems is already being made by others, is that complex, meaningful work can sell, especially when it is packaged as a kung-fu adventure romp.
And we definately can create more that addresses environmental issues and the like. I've mentioned before the idea of a national-defense push for sustainable energy. I'm sure that the space race fueled a lot of sixties-wave science fiction, and computers definately inspired cyber-punk, so it's not hard to imagine that a major national energy intiative might impress the next generation of science fiction writers.
1. Environmental chalenges. A mountain to climb, an earthquake, a flood, these are all challenges whose source is totally external to the heroes and generally not subject to much in the way of manipulation. The challenge pretty much must be met or avoided.
2. Logistical issues. Boring as this sounds, these are a major meat-and-potato standby of a lot of role-playing and adventure games, including the infamous "fetch and carry" quests. There is too much of something or not enough of something or things are in the wrong places and need to be moved around. A lot of real life seems to be related to this type of issue.
3. Inter-group conflicts. Countries at war, companies competing or even species fighting over resources. These conflicts give much more room for nuance because they have underlying causes that can be targeted as well as effects that can be addressed.
4. Interpersonal conflicts. Arguments, fights and the like between individuals where groups are not typically involved. In this category you also might include conflicts between an individual and a group of which he is a member.
To these five, you might also add
5. Internal or psychological problems.
In any case, I think that most interesting stories can be seen as addressing one or more conflicts that fits into one or more of these categories. In this framework, I would argue that there are really three problems with most forms of popular entertainment. The first problem is that most of it tends to focus on type 3 and 4 conflicts while paying minimal if any attention to types 1, 2 and 5. The second is that a narrow range of usually violent solutions to these conflicts are presented as the only options. The third is that realistic outcomes and concequences are glossed over.
Take, for example, your standard action movie. This is usually presented as an un-vs.-them type 3 conflict. There are terrorists attacking the White House, we need to kill them or they will kill us. This type 3 conflict is not only very unlikely compared to others, but it is oversimplified to a very black and white type of conflict, a zero-sum game if you will. The possibility of intranecine disagreement, the origins of the group dynamics and the underlying causes of the conflict are all given short shrift. Because of this very topical treatment of the causes of the problem, it is unsurprising that only one solution (kill the terrorists) really occurs to the heros and that minimal concequences are portrayed.
So what is the solution? It is three-fold. First, we need more games, movies and shows that address environmental and logistical problems in a way that is interesting. There have been some notable sucesses, but they are notable more for being the exception than the rule: The Day After Tomorrow potrayed unlikely but exciting heroism in the face of abrupt climate change rather than unlikely but exciting heroism in the face of terrorists, the cult hit series of Harvest Moon video games challenged players to make a farm run instead of killing anonymous monsters. The second step is to provide more options for alternative (i.e. non-violent) solutions to the problems presented in many video games and to show these options in TV shows and movies. This should ideally go a step beyond the vigelante hero arresting the baddies instead of killing them. For this second step to be sucessful, what is really needed is a more complex view of the causes and effects. Some producers seem to think that kids are unable to handle anything but the most simplistic of story-lines, but the sucess of some pretty good shows, movies and games seems to indicate the contrary. There seems to be a positive trend in this respect:
Batman Begins is a little more complex, albeit a bit heavy-handed, in dealing with the causes of crime than many previous Batman movies, and it was a much better film as a result (well, and also because Christian Bale is a much more convincing Batman than Val Kilmer, let alone George Clooney)
Bully is a surprisingly complex treatment of the complexities of adolescent life. While the game does include its fair share of punching out rival gangs, its really a narrative about fitting in and helping kids. Certainly a step in the right direction from the producers of Vice City, a very, very entertaining game whose focus is the violent takeover of a drug empire. The fact that Bully is almost as fun as that blockbuster hit (and one of its biggest shortcomings is the lack of such a thrilling 80s soundtrack) is a good thing. Now they have started showing more complexity in their treatment of the causes of problems, they do need a little more realism in the outcomes.
On TV, my favorite show right now is Avatar. Its meticulously reserached pan-Asian feel reminds me a lot of Initiate Brother: the four (or five) elements are based on Hindu cosmogony by way of Buddhism; they have a kung-fu master on hand to help them choreograph the four different styles (based rather convincingly on Tai Chi, Ba Gua, Shaolin Kungfu and Hung Gar); the costumes (I use the word loosely for an animated show) of the four nations are very reminicent of Tibetan or Mongolian, Northern Chinese and Korean, Japanese and Inuit clothing; they have a caligripher to do the seal-script for them and so on. It also presents a more balanced view of group conflict (the prince of the Fire nation comes to disagree with his warmongering family) and of conflict resolution, which is often non-violent. And the animation is pretty nice.
Of course for every good show like Avatar, there is a steaming pile of crap like this one that couldn't even bother to use the proper English spelling of Shaolin. (Although even in this case, there are those who are convinced that this show is a clever spoof). But this really shows the difficulty in creating better programing. I am not at a point where I am willing to censor violent games like Grand Theft Auto (although in this case, I tend to love how well done the games are and consider them almost art), or even total drivel like Xiaolin Showdown. But there is only so much good progrmaing out there. It takes a lot more effort to create something original and showing depth of thought than it does to make a cheap knockoff. Perhaps the point that I'm trying to make, which it seems is already being made by others, is that complex, meaningful work can sell, especially when it is packaged as a kung-fu adventure romp.
And we definately can create more that addresses environmental issues and the like. I've mentioned before the idea of a national-defense push for sustainable energy. I'm sure that the space race fueled a lot of sixties-wave science fiction, and computers definately inspired cyber-punk, so it's not hard to imagine that a major national energy intiative might impress the next generation of science fiction writers.
Wednesday, October 25
Free market follies
What with all the silly little essays I've been writing for grad school apps and all, I've been thinking more about some of the paradoxes I saw when I was in China. In general terms, the biggest one is the incredible divide between the relatively stong concern for economic justice, at least in political discourse if not in actual policy, as juxtiposed against the very bad record on social justice type concerns. Many Chinese reformers are scheptical about democracy as a means of acheiving social justice. This is a position that I tend to agree with, consider that many democratic countries in the world have poor records of social and economic justice, consider as well that our policy of imposing democracy on formerly authoritarian regimes seems to lead almost universally to instability, terrorism or demogogery. Marx thought that socialism must first pass through a borgeouis phase, Kang Youwei thought that states need to pass through phases of authoritarianism and limited democracy before they will be able to function as a full democracy. Outside of the developed world, democracies tend to be very unstable, even in the developed world, democracy often gives way to demagoges and perpetuates economic injustice. On balance, I tend to think that economic justice is more important than social justice, although idealy you want both and stuff like this is just silly.
Anyway, here's another big paradox. Apparently, despite experiancing 9% annual growth recenlty, China would actually be loosing manufacturing jobs if not for jobs gained from the West, due largely to a 17% annual increase in productivity. And this is a continuing increase. This is just echoing changes around the world. There is much talk these days about the outsourcing of American jobs. This problem is in fact getting much and much worse, we are not only outsourcing manufacturing and other blue-collar jobs but high-tech jobs as well. My Macintosh laptop says on the back that it was designed in America and made in China. Twenty years ago, it's pretty likely it would have been made in America as well. Ten years from now, it will have been designed in China. But the really paradoxical thing is that the exporting of American jobs to places like China and India does not seem to be doing much to improve the job markets there.
So who exactly is being helped by the free markets that are billed as the solution to all our ills. Pretty much only the financeers in rich countries (especially the US), and to a lesser degree, a compradore class in the developing world. Historically, the damage from free markets has been creeping up the economic pyramid from the lowest-level producers to the highest level. First the farmers, miners and other first-order factors of production were hurt by the opening of global grain markets in the decades following the first world war. Disposessed farmers were a major source of Nazi recruiting in the 20s and 30s, falling rice prices lead to tax problems and unrest in French Indochina while French farmers were loosing out at home due to the falling price of wheat. The booming 20s in America was a time of great investment gains for city-dwellers due in part to newly opened markets, but American farmers were already getting hurt a decade before the stock market crash and the great depression
Starting after the second world war, manufacturing began to move overseas and "made in Japan" became the first "made in China" which is now becoming "made in Bangladesh" and the like. In Japan, this started with cheap consumer goods and then moved to cheap electronics and cars. Electronics have barely been produced in America for the past decade, and US Automakers are going the same way. Korea is following in Japan's footsteps, with their electronics (especially mobile phones and other handhelds) beginning to overtake even the Japanese, and their cars catching up. Are Chinese cars next? Maybe not for another decade, but you'd better believe they're coming.
And we're beginning to see service jobs move overseas as well. Sure, it's starting with telephone helplines and the like, but Indian businesses are beginning to take over more and more sophisticated service jobs (India has a big advantage over China in this regard because it has a major English-speaking population). Soon, engineering, marketing and other glamour service jobs will be based largely overseas, leaving only non-movable service jobs (like house cleaning and sales) in America. How is this happening? Basically, the US has become more important as a consumer than as a producer. Look for this to start to happen to the rest of the world as well as we become more and more efficient at making things with fewer human factors of production.
According to these two sources, this tendency originates from Nixon ending the gold standard in 1971, as well as two misconceptualizations: that we live in a state of scarcity and that free markets will lead to gains through comparative advantage. Here is how these combine to form the strange leviathan that is our current state of globalization:
Scarcity
-The belief in scarcity leads us to seek to maximize production, largely through improving efficiency. If goods are scarce, it is reasonable to believe that increased production will find a captive market.
-But we don't live in a state of scarcity, rather one of overproduction. This means that producers must find or make markets for their goods. An increasing percentage of the workforce is employed in trying to find or make these markets as less and less of the workforce needs to be employed in actually producing it.
-Think about it this way: how many people do you know involved in producing a real good? Now how many people do you know involved in sales, marketing, distribution, packaging, patenting, protecting patents, etc. I bet for most people, the second group is much bigger. And I bet that fifty years ago, the first group would have been bigger.
-Or let's put it another way. Think about people you know. Do you think they are more important as a producer or as a consumer. You can even include goods and services in this, but don't consider the price, consider the time. I bet most people in America consume an order of magnitude more than they produce in terms of person-hours of services and person-hours poot into production and delivery of goods.
-That's right! Americans are more important as consumers than as producers. We can see this in many other ways but especially in the fact that most are employed in finding consumers for excess production, most consume more hours of work than they produce and even the fact that most are fat.
Free trade and comparative advantage
-Ok, so we already know that we are hyper-efficient at production to the point where most people are employed in finding markets for excess goods (if they are employed at all). So we don't really need more production gains through comparative advantage.
-Also, comparative advantage only works under the assumption of total employment. If there is not total employment, the open market will replace a worker with a lower-paid one rather than one who is nessisarily better-suited to the job.
-The world does not have anywhere near total employment. In fact, vast agricultural surplusses are causing a whole lot of un- or underemployed agricultural workers to seek other employment because they cannot find a market for their goods.
-So free trade agreements only serves to send jobs to countries with low labor costs. But it doesn't even help those countries because the dumping of the outside word's agricultural surplusses destroys local agriculture, creating...that's right...more unemployment everywhere!!
-We do gain lower prices. So I guess that's a good thing.
-Except that opening the markets drives down wages, so many wage-laborers actually have reduced purchasing power, even under falling prices (and things might be worse outside consumer goods markets in the US, see below). This is kinda like the opposite of Fordism
-So someone has to be making a profit, right? You can't have higher production and less jobs and lower labor costs without profits going up.
-That's right! Financeers are making the money off the back of workers. Henry Liu (second source above) estimates that every new millionare in China requires the loss of 100,000 Chinese manufacturing jobs. Wow.
The gold standard
-When the US came off the gold standard, it meant that the American dollar was no longer based on any hard exchange. Instead, it is now based in some sense of trust in the American government.
-Because the world currency system is based on the American dollar, it means that the American government can essentially disregard debt. All it needs to do is print more money. Printing money is essentially the US Government extending credit to itself.
-This dollar is then used to spur investment and consumption worldwide. Essentially the US is able to obtain capital based on some sense of trust in the dollar.
-Other economies are forever seeking dollars because dollars can reliably be exchanged for other currency or good like oil.
-The basis of the dollar now basically depends on the US ability to enforce it, i.e. the American military.
We are left with a situation where real jobs of pretty much any kind are being washed out by market forces pretty much everywhere. Is there a solution to this? Protectionism or totally closing off a market basically just leaves it to stagnate where it is for lack of investment dollars and other means of trying to skew the market in one country's favor (subsidies, currency control) tend to just send resources elsewhere (in the case of weak economies) or contribute to destroying weak economies while simultaneously costing jobs (in the case of strong economies). Are there other options? I need to read more. I'm still confused by this gold standard stuff in particular.
Finally, this video of a cellist playing a whole bunch of different parts is kinda cool.
Anyway, here's another big paradox. Apparently, despite experiancing 9% annual growth recenlty, China would actually be loosing manufacturing jobs if not for jobs gained from the West, due largely to a 17% annual increase in productivity. And this is a continuing increase. This is just echoing changes around the world. There is much talk these days about the outsourcing of American jobs. This problem is in fact getting much and much worse, we are not only outsourcing manufacturing and other blue-collar jobs but high-tech jobs as well. My Macintosh laptop says on the back that it was designed in America and made in China. Twenty years ago, it's pretty likely it would have been made in America as well. Ten years from now, it will have been designed in China. But the really paradoxical thing is that the exporting of American jobs to places like China and India does not seem to be doing much to improve the job markets there.
So who exactly is being helped by the free markets that are billed as the solution to all our ills. Pretty much only the financeers in rich countries (especially the US), and to a lesser degree, a compradore class in the developing world. Historically, the damage from free markets has been creeping up the economic pyramid from the lowest-level producers to the highest level. First the farmers, miners and other first-order factors of production were hurt by the opening of global grain markets in the decades following the first world war. Disposessed farmers were a major source of Nazi recruiting in the 20s and 30s, falling rice prices lead to tax problems and unrest in French Indochina while French farmers were loosing out at home due to the falling price of wheat. The booming 20s in America was a time of great investment gains for city-dwellers due in part to newly opened markets, but American farmers were already getting hurt a decade before the stock market crash and the great depression
Starting after the second world war, manufacturing began to move overseas and "made in Japan" became the first "made in China" which is now becoming "made in Bangladesh" and the like. In Japan, this started with cheap consumer goods and then moved to cheap electronics and cars. Electronics have barely been produced in America for the past decade, and US Automakers are going the same way. Korea is following in Japan's footsteps, with their electronics (especially mobile phones and other handhelds) beginning to overtake even the Japanese, and their cars catching up. Are Chinese cars next? Maybe not for another decade, but you'd better believe they're coming.
And we're beginning to see service jobs move overseas as well. Sure, it's starting with telephone helplines and the like, but Indian businesses are beginning to take over more and more sophisticated service jobs (India has a big advantage over China in this regard because it has a major English-speaking population). Soon, engineering, marketing and other glamour service jobs will be based largely overseas, leaving only non-movable service jobs (like house cleaning and sales) in America. How is this happening? Basically, the US has become more important as a consumer than as a producer. Look for this to start to happen to the rest of the world as well as we become more and more efficient at making things with fewer human factors of production.
According to these two sources, this tendency originates from Nixon ending the gold standard in 1971, as well as two misconceptualizations: that we live in a state of scarcity and that free markets will lead to gains through comparative advantage. Here is how these combine to form the strange leviathan that is our current state of globalization:
Scarcity
-The belief in scarcity leads us to seek to maximize production, largely through improving efficiency. If goods are scarce, it is reasonable to believe that increased production will find a captive market.
-But we don't live in a state of scarcity, rather one of overproduction. This means that producers must find or make markets for their goods. An increasing percentage of the workforce is employed in trying to find or make these markets as less and less of the workforce needs to be employed in actually producing it.
-Think about it this way: how many people do you know involved in producing a real good? Now how many people do you know involved in sales, marketing, distribution, packaging, patenting, protecting patents, etc. I bet for most people, the second group is much bigger. And I bet that fifty years ago, the first group would have been bigger.
-Or let's put it another way. Think about people you know. Do you think they are more important as a producer or as a consumer. You can even include goods and services in this, but don't consider the price, consider the time. I bet most people in America consume an order of magnitude more than they produce in terms of person-hours of services and person-hours poot into production and delivery of goods.
-That's right! Americans are more important as consumers than as producers. We can see this in many other ways but especially in the fact that most are employed in finding consumers for excess production, most consume more hours of work than they produce and even the fact that most are fat.
Free trade and comparative advantage
-Ok, so we already know that we are hyper-efficient at production to the point where most people are employed in finding markets for excess goods (if they are employed at all). So we don't really need more production gains through comparative advantage.
-Also, comparative advantage only works under the assumption of total employment. If there is not total employment, the open market will replace a worker with a lower-paid one rather than one who is nessisarily better-suited to the job.
-The world does not have anywhere near total employment. In fact, vast agricultural surplusses are causing a whole lot of un- or underemployed agricultural workers to seek other employment because they cannot find a market for their goods.
-So free trade agreements only serves to send jobs to countries with low labor costs. But it doesn't even help those countries because the dumping of the outside word's agricultural surplusses destroys local agriculture, creating...that's right...more unemployment everywhere!!
-We do gain lower prices. So I guess that's a good thing.
-Except that opening the markets drives down wages, so many wage-laborers actually have reduced purchasing power, even under falling prices (and things might be worse outside consumer goods markets in the US, see below). This is kinda like the opposite of Fordism
-So someone has to be making a profit, right? You can't have higher production and less jobs and lower labor costs without profits going up.
-That's right! Financeers are making the money off the back of workers. Henry Liu (second source above) estimates that every new millionare in China requires the loss of 100,000 Chinese manufacturing jobs. Wow.
The gold standard
-When the US came off the gold standard, it meant that the American dollar was no longer based on any hard exchange. Instead, it is now based in some sense of trust in the American government.
-Because the world currency system is based on the American dollar, it means that the American government can essentially disregard debt. All it needs to do is print more money. Printing money is essentially the US Government extending credit to itself.
-This dollar is then used to spur investment and consumption worldwide. Essentially the US is able to obtain capital based on some sense of trust in the dollar.
-Other economies are forever seeking dollars because dollars can reliably be exchanged for other currency or good like oil.
-The basis of the dollar now basically depends on the US ability to enforce it, i.e. the American military.
We are left with a situation where real jobs of pretty much any kind are being washed out by market forces pretty much everywhere. Is there a solution to this? Protectionism or totally closing off a market basically just leaves it to stagnate where it is for lack of investment dollars and other means of trying to skew the market in one country's favor (subsidies, currency control) tend to just send resources elsewhere (in the case of weak economies) or contribute to destroying weak economies while simultaneously costing jobs (in the case of strong economies). Are there other options? I need to read more. I'm still confused by this gold standard stuff in particular.
Finally, this video of a cellist playing a whole bunch of different parts is kinda cool.
Wednesday, October 18
Homeland security
Once again I'm a day late, although I doubt anyone has noticed.
First: this relates only slightly to my primary topic, but this is what Alex and I spent the majority of Iowa discussing.
I discovered this weekend that I'm not the only one concerned with the implications of factory farming practices. I can understand that most people don't care that much about how their food makes it too the table as long as it's easy. I can see how local foodies and slow foodies can easily be perceived as strange and elitist. I mean, even vegans can find mass-produced food comparatively easily, and local food is often more expensive and harder to find than the more commercial varieties. The thing is, local, organic, vegan-food eating, Prius-driving, train-taking pacifists are stronger on security than gun-toting pickup-driving hawks. Let me show you how.
First lets talk about local food. I've made arguments before about how this is largely because of subsidies, both on agricultural products themselves, and on fuel, thereby making transport cheaper (apparently the average transport distance of "fresh food" is 5,000 miles for that bought in England and over 1,000 miles in America). One of the main arguments against local food campaigns is that they hurt developing economies that rely on crop exports, but it seems to me that these developing economies are often more hurt by subsidies. This seems to me to be a case of rhetoric used to defend a failing system. For example, we are unafraid to slap a huge tariff on Vietnamese catfish to protect American catfish farmers but tend to dump our own exports on developing markets, decrying oposition to NAFTA or the WTO as anti-liberal. The solution may be food sovereignty. This is good not only for the developing world, but for the US as well.
See here's the thing. Our own reliance on commercial food is making us unhealthy in a number of ways. First, the cheapness and availability of corn derivatives makes processed junk food cheaper than healthier, simpler alternatives. Second, factory farming is subjecting us to mutated bacteria (and see my previous entry). But what Michael Pollan brings up is that we are also subjecting ourselves to terrorist attacks on our food. He tells us that "80 percent of America’s beef is slaughtered by four companies, 75 percent of the precut salads are processed by two and 30 percent of the milk by just one company." We have a very centralized supply train not to the military, but to the entire country! And clearly it's not a very secure one, given that weapons-grade E. coli is already a threat without external sources and that it took the investigation into the contamination a long time to figure out the origin of the problem.
The Department of Homeland Security is aware of this threat. It even puts out guidlines for keeping food from becoming contaminated (for example, pork products). Of course, this is treating the desease rather than preventing it. The mutant E. coli only develops in the stomachs of feedlot cattle, a peculiarity that is almost unique to the US. But instead of advising against keeping cattle in feedlots, or reducing the economic incentives to keep cattle in feedlots (i.e. corn subsidies), they come up with elaborate inspection and irradiation routines to destroy the bacteria that shouldn't have been there in the first place. These requirement, in turn, make it very difficult for small-scale producers to compete, despite the fact that they tend to be naturally safer than the large-scale producers. The price difference between small-scale, local meat and commerically produced meat is due to additional cost of producing graze-fed meat and the additional cost of processing in local plants (offset by the additional costs to ship commerical meat, which is, of course, subsidised to the point of being minimal). Because local meat plants have to meet the same requirements as much larger ones, but without the economies of scale, this is the single greatest factor in increasing the price of local food.
So local food is generally considered elitist because it tends to be more expensive and harder to get. It is more expensive largely due to FDA regulations which do not scale down well. These regulations are largely based on the dangers posed by factory farms and which are not present on smaller-scale and more natural operations. Factory farms are price-effective largely because they can use feedlots, which are based on subsidised grain, and transport cheaply, based on subsidised oil. Oil, of course, is subsidised not only in the immidiate sense, but also through our foreign policy, which tends to increase terror. So subsidies make the world a much more dangerous place. We need to end the subsidies and start rethinking the way we do agriculture. In fact, it may be benificial to think of agricultural products as something in between a tradeable good and a non-tradeable service.
Or maybe tariffs make more sense. On this otherwise objetionable site is an interesting analysis of how comparative advantage doesn't justify a lof of the free trade stuff that it is used to justify. In particular, exporting jobs to countries with nearly endless supplies of labor and unclear commitments to the market (i.e. China) doesn't seem to gain us much (although Paul Craig Roberts seems to ignore the fact that exporting manufacturing jobs overseas does net us cheaper goods). I am very scheptical what nativism and autarchy can net us as a country, but in some sectors, it does make sense to keep it local. I dont' care that much if consumer gadgets are being made in Shenzhen and phone help-lines are being run out of Bangalore. However, the loss of blue-collare jobs in America is a big, big problem.
So here is one suggestion. I don't care that much about industries that can be clearly grouped as consumer luxuries. But things like the automotive industry are a little different (and a bigger factor in job losses). Oil dependance is another major way in which our country is making itself much less secure. Again, through both domestica nd foreign policy, the government tends to do things that make it worse. If oil prices were not subsidised, if they were stabalized and taxed, this would provide and incentive for citizens to become less dependant on oil. This in turn would create a strong impetus to investigate alternative fuel sources. This strikes me as one way in which we could return some strength to the American economy, including both technical and manufacturing jobs. Consider, for instance, taking advantage of the existing military-industrial complex to fund research and development of wind and solar power and hydrogen fuel cells. Consider using public funds to build and subsidise more and better public transportation, ranging from alternative-fuel busses to better train service. Car travel is effectively subsidised by the tax-payer not only through oil subsidies, but also road construction and maintenance. And putting money into R&D and construciton of new power and transportation alternatives will provide jobs. The construction, at the very least, is nessisarily local, and if we consider alternative fuels to be a national defense objective, that will give us reason to keep it domestic, helping to provide more tech and blue collar jobs.
This has become kinda uncentered, so I wanted to conclude by demonstrating a central focus. Certain types of liberals: conservationists, pacifists, vegitarians and the like, have difficulty attracting wider followings because the foci of their creeds tend to be ascetic. It is hard to convince everyday people to give up conveniance, style, taste and the like with no provided alternative. What has been convincingly demonstrated to me is that these goals are not individual goals, but collective ones. Furthermore, they are not centered around vague notions of what is better for our children's children, but ones of what makes us safe now. Agricultural subsidies and factory farming makes us unsafe. Local farming makes us safer. Dependence on oil makes us unsafe. Alternative technologies make us safer. These can be centered as well around what provides jobs right now. Small farms keep money in the hands of local, middle-class people. Commercial agriculture puts money in the hands of big plutocrats and migrant laborers. Alternative fuel development can provide tech and blue-collar jobs in America. Oil puts money in the hands of Texas fat-cats and international despots. It is time that liberals get serious and claim that they are strong on security because of their environmentalism.
First: this relates only slightly to my primary topic, but this is what Alex and I spent the majority of Iowa discussing.
I discovered this weekend that I'm not the only one concerned with the implications of factory farming practices. I can understand that most people don't care that much about how their food makes it too the table as long as it's easy. I can see how local foodies and slow foodies can easily be perceived as strange and elitist. I mean, even vegans can find mass-produced food comparatively easily, and local food is often more expensive and harder to find than the more commercial varieties. The thing is, local, organic, vegan-food eating, Prius-driving, train-taking pacifists are stronger on security than gun-toting pickup-driving hawks. Let me show you how.
First lets talk about local food. I've made arguments before about how this is largely because of subsidies, both on agricultural products themselves, and on fuel, thereby making transport cheaper (apparently the average transport distance of "fresh food" is 5,000 miles for that bought in England and over 1,000 miles in America). One of the main arguments against local food campaigns is that they hurt developing economies that rely on crop exports, but it seems to me that these developing economies are often more hurt by subsidies. This seems to me to be a case of rhetoric used to defend a failing system. For example, we are unafraid to slap a huge tariff on Vietnamese catfish to protect American catfish farmers but tend to dump our own exports on developing markets, decrying oposition to NAFTA or the WTO as anti-liberal. The solution may be food sovereignty. This is good not only for the developing world, but for the US as well.
See here's the thing. Our own reliance on commercial food is making us unhealthy in a number of ways. First, the cheapness and availability of corn derivatives makes processed junk food cheaper than healthier, simpler alternatives. Second, factory farming is subjecting us to mutated bacteria (and see my previous entry). But what Michael Pollan brings up is that we are also subjecting ourselves to terrorist attacks on our food. He tells us that "80 percent of America’s beef is slaughtered by four companies, 75 percent of the precut salads are processed by two and 30 percent of the milk by just one company." We have a very centralized supply train not to the military, but to the entire country! And clearly it's not a very secure one, given that weapons-grade E. coli is already a threat without external sources and that it took the investigation into the contamination a long time to figure out the origin of the problem.
The Department of Homeland Security is aware of this threat. It even puts out guidlines for keeping food from becoming contaminated (for example, pork products). Of course, this is treating the desease rather than preventing it. The mutant E. coli only develops in the stomachs of feedlot cattle, a peculiarity that is almost unique to the US. But instead of advising against keeping cattle in feedlots, or reducing the economic incentives to keep cattle in feedlots (i.e. corn subsidies), they come up with elaborate inspection and irradiation routines to destroy the bacteria that shouldn't have been there in the first place. These requirement, in turn, make it very difficult for small-scale producers to compete, despite the fact that they tend to be naturally safer than the large-scale producers. The price difference between small-scale, local meat and commerically produced meat is due to additional cost of producing graze-fed meat and the additional cost of processing in local plants (offset by the additional costs to ship commerical meat, which is, of course, subsidised to the point of being minimal). Because local meat plants have to meet the same requirements as much larger ones, but without the economies of scale, this is the single greatest factor in increasing the price of local food.
So local food is generally considered elitist because it tends to be more expensive and harder to get. It is more expensive largely due to FDA regulations which do not scale down well. These regulations are largely based on the dangers posed by factory farms and which are not present on smaller-scale and more natural operations. Factory farms are price-effective largely because they can use feedlots, which are based on subsidised grain, and transport cheaply, based on subsidised oil. Oil, of course, is subsidised not only in the immidiate sense, but also through our foreign policy, which tends to increase terror. So subsidies make the world a much more dangerous place. We need to end the subsidies and start rethinking the way we do agriculture. In fact, it may be benificial to think of agricultural products as something in between a tradeable good and a non-tradeable service.
Or maybe tariffs make more sense. On this otherwise objetionable site is an interesting analysis of how comparative advantage doesn't justify a lof of the free trade stuff that it is used to justify. In particular, exporting jobs to countries with nearly endless supplies of labor and unclear commitments to the market (i.e. China) doesn't seem to gain us much (although Paul Craig Roberts seems to ignore the fact that exporting manufacturing jobs overseas does net us cheaper goods). I am very scheptical what nativism and autarchy can net us as a country, but in some sectors, it does make sense to keep it local. I dont' care that much if consumer gadgets are being made in Shenzhen and phone help-lines are being run out of Bangalore. However, the loss of blue-collare jobs in America is a big, big problem.
So here is one suggestion. I don't care that much about industries that can be clearly grouped as consumer luxuries. But things like the automotive industry are a little different (and a bigger factor in job losses). Oil dependance is another major way in which our country is making itself much less secure. Again, through both domestica nd foreign policy, the government tends to do things that make it worse. If oil prices were not subsidised, if they were stabalized and taxed, this would provide and incentive for citizens to become less dependant on oil. This in turn would create a strong impetus to investigate alternative fuel sources. This strikes me as one way in which we could return some strength to the American economy, including both technical and manufacturing jobs. Consider, for instance, taking advantage of the existing military-industrial complex to fund research and development of wind and solar power and hydrogen fuel cells. Consider using public funds to build and subsidise more and better public transportation, ranging from alternative-fuel busses to better train service. Car travel is effectively subsidised by the tax-payer not only through oil subsidies, but also road construction and maintenance. And putting money into R&D and construciton of new power and transportation alternatives will provide jobs. The construction, at the very least, is nessisarily local, and if we consider alternative fuels to be a national defense objective, that will give us reason to keep it domestic, helping to provide more tech and blue collar jobs.
This has become kinda uncentered, so I wanted to conclude by demonstrating a central focus. Certain types of liberals: conservationists, pacifists, vegitarians and the like, have difficulty attracting wider followings because the foci of their creeds tend to be ascetic. It is hard to convince everyday people to give up conveniance, style, taste and the like with no provided alternative. What has been convincingly demonstrated to me is that these goals are not individual goals, but collective ones. Furthermore, they are not centered around vague notions of what is better for our children's children, but ones of what makes us safe now. Agricultural subsidies and factory farming makes us unsafe. Local farming makes us safer. Dependence on oil makes us unsafe. Alternative technologies make us safer. These can be centered as well around what provides jobs right now. Small farms keep money in the hands of local, middle-class people. Commercial agriculture puts money in the hands of big plutocrats and migrant laborers. Alternative fuel development can provide tech and blue-collar jobs in America. Oil puts money in the hands of Texas fat-cats and international despots. It is time that liberals get serious and claim that they are strong on security because of their environmentalism.
Homeland security
Once again I'm a day late, although I doubt anyone has noticed.
First: this relates only slightly to my primary topic, but this is what Alex and I spent the majority of Iowa discussing.
I discovered this weekend that I'm not the only one concerned with the implications of factory farming practices. I can understand that most people don't care that much about how their food makes it too the table as long as it's easy. I can see how local foodies and slow foodies can easily be perceived as strange and elitist. I mean, even vegans can find mass-produced food comparatively easily, and local food is often more expensive and harder to find than the more commercial varieties. The thing is, local, organic, vegan-food eating, Prius-driving, train-taking pacifists are stronger on security than gun-toting pickup-driving hawks. Let me show you how.
First lets talk about local food. I've made arguments before about how this is largely because of subsidies, both on agricultural products themselves, and on fuel, thereby making transport cheaper (apparently the average transport distance of "fresh food" is 5,000 miles for that bought in England and over 1,000 miles in America). One of the main arguments against local food campaigns is that they hurt developing economies that rely on crop exports, but it seems to me that these developing economies are often more hurt by subsidies. This seems to me to be a case of rhetoric used to defend a failing system. For example, we are unafraid to slap a huge tariff on Vietnamese catfish to protect American catfish farmers but tend to dump our own exports on developing markets, decrying oposition to NAFTA or the WTO as anti-liberal. The solution may be food sovereignty. This is good not only for the developing world, but for the US as well.
See here's the thing. Our own reliance on commercial food is making us unhealthy in a number of ways. First, the cheapness and availability of corn derivatives makes processed junk food cheaper than healthier, simpler alternatives. Second, factory farming is subjecting us to mutated bacteria (and see my previous entry). But what Michael Pollan brings up is that we are also subjecting ourselves to terrorist attacks on our food. He tells us that "80 percent of America’s beef is slaughtered by four companies, 75 percent of the precut salads are processed by two and 30 percent of the milk by just one company." We have a very centralized supply train not to the military, but to the entire country! And clearly it's not a very secure one, given that weapons-grade E. coli is already a threat without external sources and that it took the investigation into the contamination a long time to figure out the origin of the problem.
The Department of Homeland Security is aware of this threat. It even puts out guidlines for keeping food from becoming contaminated (for example, pork products). Of course, this is treating the desease rather than preventing it. The mutant E. coli only develops in the stomachs of feedlot cattle, a peculiarity that is almost unique to the US. But instead of advising against keeping cattle in feedlots, or reducing the economic incentives to keep cattle in feedlots (i.e. corn subsidies), they come up with elaborate inspection and irradiation routines to destroy the bacteria that shouldn't have been there in the first place. These requirement, in turn, make it very difficult for small-scale producers to compete, despite the fact that they tend to be naturally safer than the large-scale producers. The price difference between small-scale, local meat and commerically produced meat is due to additional cost of producing graze-fed meat and the additional cost of processing in local plants (offset by the additional costs to ship commerical meat, which is, of course, subsidised to the point of being minimal). Because local meat plants have to meet the same requirements as much larger ones, but without the economies of scale, this is the single greatest factor in increasing the price of local food.
So local food is generally considered elitist because it tends to be more expensive and harder to get. It is more expensive largely due to FDA regulations which do not scale down well. These regulations are largely based on the dangers posed by factory farms and which are not present on smaller-scale and more natural operations. Factory farms are price-effective largely because they can use feedlots, which are based on subsidised grain, and transport cheaply, based on subsidised oil. Oil, of course, is subsidised not only in the immidiate sense, but also through our foreign policy, which tends to increase terror. So subsidies make the world a much more dangerous place. We need to end the subsidies and start rethinking the way we do agriculture. In fact, it may be benificial to think of agricultural products as something in between a tradeable good and a non-tradeable service.
Or maybe tariffs make more sense. On this otherwise objetionable site is an interesting analysis of how comparative advantage doesn't justify a lof of the free trade stuff that it is used to justify. In particular, exporting jobs to countries with nearly endless supplies of labor and unclear commitments to the market (i.e. China) doesn't seem to gain us much (although Paul Craig Roberts seems to ignore the fact that exporting manufacturing jobs overseas does net us cheaper goods). I am very scheptical what nativism and autarchy can net us as a country, but in some sectors, it does make sense to keep it local. I dont' care that much if consumer gadgets are being made in Shenzhen and phone help-lines are being run out of Bangalore. However, the loss of blue-collare jobs in America is a big, big problem.
So here is one suggestion. I don't care that much about industries that can be clearly grouped as consumer luxuries. But things like the automotive industry are a little different (and a bigger factor in job losses). Oil dependance is another major way in which our country is making itself much less secure. Again, through both domestica nd foreign policy, the government tends to do things that make it worse. If oil prices were not subsidised, if they were stabalized and taxed, this would provide and incentive for citizens to become less dependant on oil. This in turn would create a strong impetus to investigate alternative fuel sources. This strikes me as one way in which we could return some strength to the American economy, including both technical and manufacturing jobs. Consider, for instance, taking advantage of the existing military-industrial complex to fund research and development of wind and solar power and hydrogen fuel cells. Consider using public funds to build and subsidise more and better public transportation, ranging from alternative-fuel busses to better train service. Car travel is effectively subsidised by the tax-payer not only through oil subsidies, but also road construction and maintenance. And putting money into R&D and construciton of new power and transportation alternatives will provide jobs. The construction, at the very least, is nessisarily local, and if we consider alternative fuels to be a national defense objective, that will give us reason to keep it domestic, helping to provide more tech and blue collar jobs.
This has become kinda uncentered, so I wanted to conclude by demonstrating a central focus. Certain types of liberals: conservationists, pacifists, vegitarians and the like, have difficulty attracting wider followings because the foci of their creeds tend to be ascetic. It is hard to convince everyday people to give up conveniance, style, taste and the like with no provided alternative. What has been convincingly demonstrated to me is that these goals are not individual goals, but collective ones. Furthermore, they are not centered around vague notions of what is better for our children's children, but ones of what makes us safe now. Agricultural subsidies and factory farming makes us unsafe. Local farming makes us safer. Dependence on oil makes us unsafe. Alternative technologies make us safer. These can be centered as well around what provides jobs right now. Small farms keep money in the hands of local, middle-class people. Commercial agriculture puts money in the hands of big plutocrats and migrant laborers. Alternative fuel development can provide tech and blue-collar jobs in America. Oil puts money in the hands of Texas fat-cats and international despots. It is time that liberals get serious and claim that they are strong on security because of their environmentalism.
First: this relates only slightly to my primary topic, but this is what Alex and I spent the majority of Iowa discussing.
I discovered this weekend that I'm not the only one concerned with the implications of factory farming practices. I can understand that most people don't care that much about how their food makes it too the table as long as it's easy. I can see how local foodies and slow foodies can easily be perceived as strange and elitist. I mean, even vegans can find mass-produced food comparatively easily, and local food is often more expensive and harder to find than the more commercial varieties. The thing is, local, organic, vegan-food eating, Prius-driving, train-taking pacifists are stronger on security than gun-toting pickup-driving hawks. Let me show you how.
First lets talk about local food. I've made arguments before about how this is largely because of subsidies, both on agricultural products themselves, and on fuel, thereby making transport cheaper (apparently the average transport distance of "fresh food" is 5,000 miles for that bought in England and over 1,000 miles in America). One of the main arguments against local food campaigns is that they hurt developing economies that rely on crop exports, but it seems to me that these developing economies are often more hurt by subsidies. This seems to me to be a case of rhetoric used to defend a failing system. For example, we are unafraid to slap a huge tariff on Vietnamese catfish to protect American catfish farmers but tend to dump our own exports on developing markets, decrying oposition to NAFTA or the WTO as anti-liberal. The solution may be food sovereignty. This is good not only for the developing world, but for the US as well.
See here's the thing. Our own reliance on commercial food is making us unhealthy in a number of ways. First, the cheapness and availability of corn derivatives makes processed junk food cheaper than healthier, simpler alternatives. Second, factory farming is subjecting us to mutated bacteria (and see my previous entry). But what Michael Pollan brings up is that we are also subjecting ourselves to terrorist attacks on our food. He tells us that "80 percent of America’s beef is slaughtered by four companies, 75 percent of the precut salads are processed by two and 30 percent of the milk by just one company." We have a very centralized supply train not to the military, but to the entire country! And clearly it's not a very secure one, given that weapons-grade E. coli is already a threat without external sources and that it took the investigation into the contamination a long time to figure out the origin of the problem.
The Department of Homeland Security is aware of this threat. It even puts out guidlines for keeping food from becoming contaminated (for example, pork products). Of course, this is treating the desease rather than preventing it. The mutant E. coli only develops in the stomachs of feedlot cattle, a peculiarity that is almost unique to the US. But instead of advising against keeping cattle in feedlots, or reducing the economic incentives to keep cattle in feedlots (i.e. corn subsidies), they come up with elaborate inspection and irradiation routines to destroy the bacteria that shouldn't have been there in the first place. These requirement, in turn, make it very difficult for small-scale producers to compete, despite the fact that they tend to be naturally safer than the large-scale producers. The price difference between small-scale, local meat and commerically produced meat is due to additional cost of producing graze-fed meat and the additional cost of processing in local plants (offset by the additional costs to ship commerical meat, which is, of course, subsidised to the point of being minimal). Because local meat plants have to meet the same requirements as much larger ones, but without the economies of scale, this is the single greatest factor in increasing the price of local food.
So local food is generally considered elitist because it tends to be more expensive and harder to get. It is more expensive largely due to FDA regulations which do not scale down well. These regulations are largely based on the dangers posed by factory farms and which are not present on smaller-scale and more natural operations. Factory farms are price-effective largely because they can use feedlots, which are based on subsidised grain, and transport cheaply, based on subsidised oil. Oil, of course, is subsidised not only in the immidiate sense, but also through our foreign policy, which tends to increase terror. So subsidies make the world a much more dangerous place. We need to end the subsidies and start rethinking the way we do agriculture. In fact, it may be benificial to think of agricultural products as something in between a tradeable good and a non-tradeable service.
Or maybe tariffs make more sense. On this otherwise objetionable site is an interesting analysis of how comparative advantage doesn't justify a lof of the free trade stuff that it is used to justify. In particular, exporting jobs to countries with nearly endless supplies of labor and unclear commitments to the market (i.e. China) doesn't seem to gain us much (although Paul Craig Roberts seems to ignore the fact that exporting manufacturing jobs overseas does net us cheaper goods). I am very scheptical what nativism and autarchy can net us as a country, but in some sectors, it does make sense to keep it local. I dont' care that much if consumer gadgets are being made in Shenzhen and phone help-lines are being run out of Bangalore. However, the loss of blue-collare jobs in America is a big, big problem.
So here is one suggestion. I don't care that much about industries that can be clearly grouped as consumer luxuries. But things like the automotive industry are a little different (and a bigger factor in job losses). Oil dependance is another major way in which our country is making itself much less secure. Again, through both domestica nd foreign policy, the government tends to do things that make it worse. If oil prices were not subsidised, if they were stabalized and taxed, this would provide and incentive for citizens to become less dependant on oil. This in turn would create a strong impetus to investigate alternative fuel sources. This strikes me as one way in which we could return some strength to the American economy, including both technical and manufacturing jobs. Consider, for instance, taking advantage of the existing military-industrial complex to fund research and development of wind and solar power and hydrogen fuel cells. Consider using public funds to build and subsidise more and better public transportation, ranging from alternative-fuel busses to better train service. Car travel is effectively subsidised by the tax-payer not only through oil subsidies, but also road construction and maintenance. And putting money into R&D and construciton of new power and transportation alternatives will provide jobs. The construction, at the very least, is nessisarily local, and if we consider alternative fuels to be a national defense objective, that will give us reason to keep it domestic, helping to provide more tech and blue collar jobs.
This has become kinda uncentered, so I wanted to conclude by demonstrating a central focus. Certain types of liberals: conservationists, pacifists, vegitarians and the like, have difficulty attracting wider followings because the foci of their creeds tend to be ascetic. It is hard to convince everyday people to give up conveniance, style, taste and the like with no provided alternative. What has been convincingly demonstrated to me is that these goals are not individual goals, but collective ones. Furthermore, they are not centered around vague notions of what is better for our children's children, but ones of what makes us safe now. Agricultural subsidies and factory farming makes us unsafe. Local farming makes us safer. Dependence on oil makes us unsafe. Alternative technologies make us safer. These can be centered as well around what provides jobs right now. Small farms keep money in the hands of local, middle-class people. Commercial agriculture puts money in the hands of big plutocrats and migrant laborers. Alternative fuel development can provide tech and blue-collar jobs in America. Oil puts money in the hands of Texas fat-cats and international despots. It is time that liberals get serious and claim that they are strong on security because of their environmentalism.
Wednesday, October 11
Incomplete thoughts
Since I'm already writing late and between periods at work, I'm not gonna manage anything like a consistant line of argument today, let alone something backed up with extensive sources. Instead, some random thoughts that I've been having.
First, re: the North Korea nuke test, I think that we are playing precisely into their hands by reacting strongly and potentially forcing more sanctions. I don't like sanctions (as you may have read in a previous post) and our current regime of sanctions doesn't seem to be doing very much anyway. This situation seems vaguely analagous to a petulant child breaking things while on timeout and forcing his parents to come up with a harsher punishment that they are actually willing to carry out. North Korea is already an incredibly poor country moving backwards (if anything) in pretty much every respect but its nuclear program. This gives them a reduced set of options that looks more and more like capitulation or something drastic with nothing in between. We should not be surprised that a cornered and starving animal is going to do something drastic.
And I wouldn't count on China to get us out of this. The Chinese government is very good at keeping up the appearance of helping us out on this type of international issue, but it is probable that they like having North Korea as their proxy irrantant. If the US overreacts, they can take a moral high ground; if the Koreans overreach, they can deny involvement and play mediator. The Chinese street is pretty anti-American right now, and the North Korea status quo lets the Chinese leaders play both sides.
Another thing I've been thinking about is the need for positive role models. I wrote a few entries ago about the absence of such models for a lot of inner-city blacks, but it goes much beyond that. When violence breaks out, especially in suburban communities, people are quick to offer as scapegoats violent movies, music and other pop culture. And also to call for stiffer gun laws and stronger enforcement. The latter I can strongly agree with. As to the former, a convincing and fun alternative is nessisary to draw the audience away from violent media. An abstinance model does not work, whether you are talking about sex, violence, drugs or other such behaviors. An alternative is what is nessisary. In other words, we need to come up with books, movies, tv shows, video games and such that are non-violent (or show realistic and balanced outcomes of violence) but are still fun. This is not an easy task. THe reason video game makers make violent games is because they sell. With the major exception of the Sims type games, the big sellers are always violent or sports-related games. Given the latters' tendency to further the cult of sports, I would count them as negative as well. So what can we offer that will sell as well?
Time for class.
First, re: the North Korea nuke test, I think that we are playing precisely into their hands by reacting strongly and potentially forcing more sanctions. I don't like sanctions (as you may have read in a previous post) and our current regime of sanctions doesn't seem to be doing very much anyway. This situation seems vaguely analagous to a petulant child breaking things while on timeout and forcing his parents to come up with a harsher punishment that they are actually willing to carry out. North Korea is already an incredibly poor country moving backwards (if anything) in pretty much every respect but its nuclear program. This gives them a reduced set of options that looks more and more like capitulation or something drastic with nothing in between. We should not be surprised that a cornered and starving animal is going to do something drastic.
And I wouldn't count on China to get us out of this. The Chinese government is very good at keeping up the appearance of helping us out on this type of international issue, but it is probable that they like having North Korea as their proxy irrantant. If the US overreacts, they can take a moral high ground; if the Koreans overreach, they can deny involvement and play mediator. The Chinese street is pretty anti-American right now, and the North Korea status quo lets the Chinese leaders play both sides.
Another thing I've been thinking about is the need for positive role models. I wrote a few entries ago about the absence of such models for a lot of inner-city blacks, but it goes much beyond that. When violence breaks out, especially in suburban communities, people are quick to offer as scapegoats violent movies, music and other pop culture. And also to call for stiffer gun laws and stronger enforcement. The latter I can strongly agree with. As to the former, a convincing and fun alternative is nessisary to draw the audience away from violent media. An abstinance model does not work, whether you are talking about sex, violence, drugs or other such behaviors. An alternative is what is nessisary. In other words, we need to come up with books, movies, tv shows, video games and such that are non-violent (or show realistic and balanced outcomes of violence) but are still fun. This is not an easy task. THe reason video game makers make violent games is because they sell. With the major exception of the Sims type games, the big sellers are always violent or sports-related games. Given the latters' tendency to further the cult of sports, I would count them as negative as well. So what can we offer that will sell as well?
Time for class.
Tuesday, October 3
The United States of Michael Vick or Taking Stock of Options' Futures
We'll see if I can keep this flowing and logical. I've been meaning to write about sanctions for a while, but I've been having some difficulty keeping a coherent argument.
First, to be clear, I don't like sanctions, and I don't think that they work. If you look at this list of current and recent sanctions, only Yugoslavia stands out as a country where sanctions may have done any good. Advocates of sanctions love to point out the popular ouster of Milosevic as an example of the way they are supposed to work: everyday people get fed up with the treatment they receive from their government and as a result of their government, so they get rid of it. Most importantly, sanctions are supposed to provide a middle ground of punishment, between doing nothing and instituting a bombing campaign, for example. But looking at the list again, it's not entirely clear what this middle option gains us: many of the countries now or previously under US sanctions have been invaded anyway (c.f. various Balkan states, Iraq, Afghanistan), and others have been threatened with this possibility of military intervention (Iran, North Korea, Sudan).
Game theorists tell us (for example in The Strategy of Conflict) that there are strategic advantages in bargaining to be gained by withholding or disallowing a middle option. Let's posit a situation in which sanctions are disallowed by official US policy. If Evil Dictator is faced with an ultimatum like "stop ethnic cleansing or we'll invade and remove you from power," and if this threat is credible, they have a reduced set of choices: concede or prepare for war. Given the power of the American military, the former seems more likely. Now consider this threat with sanctions a clear option; Evil Dictator is faced with a spectrum of possibilities. They often choose the hardest line that is unlikely to trigger immidiate invasion (*cough* Iran *cough*). Especially given the pressures of the international community, the US is unlikely to immidiately follow up on an ultimatum because they have a less harsh punishment available. A punishment that happens to target the wrong people at the wrong time and in the process give our Evil Dictator some great propaganda fodder.
See, the problem is that sanctions are not a clear punishment. Operant conditioning theory tells us that punishment (or reinforcement) should meet four conditions to be effective - it needs to be satiating, immidiate, contingent and sizeable. Sanctions tend to fail on several or even all of these lines. In the case of a country that is already poor, removing trade will simply make reductions in an already low standard of living. If sanctions are not universally imposed by a country's trading partners, it will simply substitute other options and see little real decline. It is only when sanctions will drop a country below a line of comfort or subsitance (and do we really want to do the latter?) that it meets the criterion of satation (or in the case of this type of negative punishment, whatever the removal of satiation is called). On the second point, sanctions are rarely imposed quickly enough to meet any sort of standard of immidiacy; sanctions usually follow substantial debate in national or international decision-making apperati. Furthermore, the effects of sanctions tend to aggregate over time, making them feel like cruelty or discrimination, rather than a contingent punishment. Really, sanctions are not contingent at all. Usually the people who feel the worst initial squeeze are small and medium businesses and consumers, while the higher-ups who make the real decisions are usually able to maintain their own living standards through personal connections and the black market. And finally, as addressed before, sanctions, espcially to those higher-ups, will not feel like a sizeable punishment, espeically given the threat of worse. Sanctions punish the wrong people for things their leaders did, generally with poor control over the size of the impact. A punishment lacking contingency and immidiacy is cruel and unusual and unsurprisingly ineffective.
Furthermore,reinforcement has been shown to be more effective when it is done over varied ratios. This means it is more effective to give a dog a treat on average every five times he sits (sometimes after two sits, sometimes after eight, sometimes after five...) than it is to reward him exactly every five times he sits. It is even more effective to reward a dog on average every five times than every time. This is why gambling is so addictive: lets see...I don't know about satiating (I guess that depends on how much you need the money), but the reward is immidiate, contingent, generally substantial and on a variable ratio schedule (if you bet at 5 to 1 odds, you don't know for sure that you will win every five times, but you will average a win every five times). Sanctions are on a fixed ratio because presumably a relatively fixed proportion of trade will be shut down. Again, not a very effective schedule of reinforcement.
Of course, sanctions are a punishment, not a reward, so they're a little different than sitting for a treat or betting on football. But punishments work a similar way. As I've mentioned before, the Gestapo were very effective because they used what is, in essence, a varied ratio punishment scheme. Not everyone got punished every time they did something wrong, but there was enough visibility of punishment with a fairly uniform, if random, distribution to make punishment an effective deterent. And of course the size of punishment was substantial. This is why Gestapo tactics were pretty effective at keeping the population under control but speeding tickets are not very effective at preventing speeding: the size of the fine is not a very effective deterent for most people, at least given their likelyhood of being pulled over. Of course, by the lines I have been arguing earlier, the possibility that a cop will let you off with a warning or a ticket for not buckling your seatbelt (a middle option, right Mike?) rather than a speeding ticket makes their bargaining position and their threat less tenable. And, as speeding tickets help us demonstrate, punishments tend to, at best, stop negative behavior rather than promoting positive behavior; at worst they just make people avoid getting caught. Even in animals, punishment is much more likely to create non-reinforced behavior. And again, speeding tickets and Gestapo arrests are contingent, immidiate and on a variable ratio schedule, making them that much more effective than sanctions.
So what am I proposing? Quite simply to take sanctions off the table. Cancel all existing sanctions and make a real commitment to not using them in the future, complete with a convincing mechanism to avoid opting out of the commitment. By limiting our bargaining position in terms of threats, we actually make it stronger. One of the (few) advantages of the Bush presidency, at least with respect to this, is that he has repeatedly made credible his threats to invade. If we remove our potential middle-ground, these threats gain more power. Of course the problem is that our military is already overtaxed and threats alone are not a very conveniant or friendly way to do foreign policy.
That's why we need more development aid. As Senator Shumer has stated with respect to Afghanistan, especially the opium poppy-Taliban connection, we need to give an alternative to negative behavior. Terror, the drug trade and street crime all thrive in environments where there are few opportunities. In Freakanomics we see that most drug dealers would much rather be janitors. Certainly poppy farmers would rather be almost anything else. So we need to give that opportunity. Investing in infrastructure, weather in the inner city or in Palestine or Afghanistan, gives people something better to do. It just makes sense to give replacement opportunities. When people become vegitarian, a common first step is to simply make the same meals while replacing meat. There exist dozens of different stop-smoking aids that replace cigarettes with another source of nicotine or another oral fixation. My best attempt to end my late-night snacking has been to replace it with late-night stretching. Replace poppies with another crop, replace black-market jobs with legitimate ones, replace terrorist-funded schools and hospitals.
So how does this all fit together? It's all about options. More positive options, less negative ones. Fewer options for punishment makes the threat of other punishments more credible. More options for development makes the possibility of change more real.
And a preview of next time, maybe: while we're replacing things: we need to stop thinking about world politics as a game for leaders. One of the fallacious roots of sanction theory is that citizens make a good proxy for their leaders. This is a bad assumption in a democracy and a worse one anywhere else. Whipping boys are not a good punishment for leaders lacking in compassion. And what's worse, by invoking sanctions, we fall into the leader's trap, we conflate him with the country. This is nothing more than a cult of personality. If we do want another punishment option, maybe this one makes sense: instead of sanctions (starving the whipping boy) or war (killing the whipping boy), why don't we ever consdier assassination? If we truly believe a leader singularly responsible for his country's ills, why not just take him out? If this doesn't make sense to you, maybe the assumption of leader as pied piper is a flawed one. Anyway, more on the leader/people fallicy next time, maybe...
First, to be clear, I don't like sanctions, and I don't think that they work. If you look at this list of current and recent sanctions, only Yugoslavia stands out as a country where sanctions may have done any good. Advocates of sanctions love to point out the popular ouster of Milosevic as an example of the way they are supposed to work: everyday people get fed up with the treatment they receive from their government and as a result of their government, so they get rid of it. Most importantly, sanctions are supposed to provide a middle ground of punishment, between doing nothing and instituting a bombing campaign, for example. But looking at the list again, it's not entirely clear what this middle option gains us: many of the countries now or previously under US sanctions have been invaded anyway (c.f. various Balkan states, Iraq, Afghanistan), and others have been threatened with this possibility of military intervention (Iran, North Korea, Sudan).
Game theorists tell us (for example in The Strategy of Conflict) that there are strategic advantages in bargaining to be gained by withholding or disallowing a middle option. Let's posit a situation in which sanctions are disallowed by official US policy. If Evil Dictator is faced with an ultimatum like "stop ethnic cleansing or we'll invade and remove you from power," and if this threat is credible, they have a reduced set of choices: concede or prepare for war. Given the power of the American military, the former seems more likely. Now consider this threat with sanctions a clear option; Evil Dictator is faced with a spectrum of possibilities. They often choose the hardest line that is unlikely to trigger immidiate invasion (*cough* Iran *cough*). Especially given the pressures of the international community, the US is unlikely to immidiately follow up on an ultimatum because they have a less harsh punishment available. A punishment that happens to target the wrong people at the wrong time and in the process give our Evil Dictator some great propaganda fodder.
See, the problem is that sanctions are not a clear punishment. Operant conditioning theory tells us that punishment (or reinforcement) should meet four conditions to be effective - it needs to be satiating, immidiate, contingent and sizeable. Sanctions tend to fail on several or even all of these lines. In the case of a country that is already poor, removing trade will simply make reductions in an already low standard of living. If sanctions are not universally imposed by a country's trading partners, it will simply substitute other options and see little real decline. It is only when sanctions will drop a country below a line of comfort or subsitance (and do we really want to do the latter?) that it meets the criterion of satation (or in the case of this type of negative punishment, whatever the removal of satiation is called). On the second point, sanctions are rarely imposed quickly enough to meet any sort of standard of immidiacy; sanctions usually follow substantial debate in national or international decision-making apperati. Furthermore, the effects of sanctions tend to aggregate over time, making them feel like cruelty or discrimination, rather than a contingent punishment. Really, sanctions are not contingent at all. Usually the people who feel the worst initial squeeze are small and medium businesses and consumers, while the higher-ups who make the real decisions are usually able to maintain their own living standards through personal connections and the black market. And finally, as addressed before, sanctions, espcially to those higher-ups, will not feel like a sizeable punishment, espeically given the threat of worse. Sanctions punish the wrong people for things their leaders did, generally with poor control over the size of the impact. A punishment lacking contingency and immidiacy is cruel and unusual and unsurprisingly ineffective.
Furthermore,reinforcement has been shown to be more effective when it is done over varied ratios. This means it is more effective to give a dog a treat on average every five times he sits (sometimes after two sits, sometimes after eight, sometimes after five...) than it is to reward him exactly every five times he sits. It is even more effective to reward a dog on average every five times than every time. This is why gambling is so addictive: lets see...I don't know about satiating (I guess that depends on how much you need the money), but the reward is immidiate, contingent, generally substantial and on a variable ratio schedule (if you bet at 5 to 1 odds, you don't know for sure that you will win every five times, but you will average a win every five times). Sanctions are on a fixed ratio because presumably a relatively fixed proportion of trade will be shut down. Again, not a very effective schedule of reinforcement.
Of course, sanctions are a punishment, not a reward, so they're a little different than sitting for a treat or betting on football. But punishments work a similar way. As I've mentioned before, the Gestapo were very effective because they used what is, in essence, a varied ratio punishment scheme. Not everyone got punished every time they did something wrong, but there was enough visibility of punishment with a fairly uniform, if random, distribution to make punishment an effective deterent. And of course the size of punishment was substantial. This is why Gestapo tactics were pretty effective at keeping the population under control but speeding tickets are not very effective at preventing speeding: the size of the fine is not a very effective deterent for most people, at least given their likelyhood of being pulled over. Of course, by the lines I have been arguing earlier, the possibility that a cop will let you off with a warning or a ticket for not buckling your seatbelt (a middle option, right Mike?) rather than a speeding ticket makes their bargaining position and their threat less tenable. And, as speeding tickets help us demonstrate, punishments tend to, at best, stop negative behavior rather than promoting positive behavior; at worst they just make people avoid getting caught. Even in animals, punishment is much more likely to create non-reinforced behavior. And again, speeding tickets and Gestapo arrests are contingent, immidiate and on a variable ratio schedule, making them that much more effective than sanctions.
So what am I proposing? Quite simply to take sanctions off the table. Cancel all existing sanctions and make a real commitment to not using them in the future, complete with a convincing mechanism to avoid opting out of the commitment. By limiting our bargaining position in terms of threats, we actually make it stronger. One of the (few) advantages of the Bush presidency, at least with respect to this, is that he has repeatedly made credible his threats to invade. If we remove our potential middle-ground, these threats gain more power. Of course the problem is that our military is already overtaxed and threats alone are not a very conveniant or friendly way to do foreign policy.
That's why we need more development aid. As Senator Shumer has stated with respect to Afghanistan, especially the opium poppy-Taliban connection, we need to give an alternative to negative behavior. Terror, the drug trade and street crime all thrive in environments where there are few opportunities. In Freakanomics we see that most drug dealers would much rather be janitors. Certainly poppy farmers would rather be almost anything else. So we need to give that opportunity. Investing in infrastructure, weather in the inner city or in Palestine or Afghanistan, gives people something better to do. It just makes sense to give replacement opportunities. When people become vegitarian, a common first step is to simply make the same meals while replacing meat. There exist dozens of different stop-smoking aids that replace cigarettes with another source of nicotine or another oral fixation. My best attempt to end my late-night snacking has been to replace it with late-night stretching. Replace poppies with another crop, replace black-market jobs with legitimate ones, replace terrorist-funded schools and hospitals.
So how does this all fit together? It's all about options. More positive options, less negative ones. Fewer options for punishment makes the threat of other punishments more credible. More options for development makes the possibility of change more real.
And a preview of next time, maybe: while we're replacing things: we need to stop thinking about world politics as a game for leaders. One of the fallacious roots of sanction theory is that citizens make a good proxy for their leaders. This is a bad assumption in a democracy and a worse one anywhere else. Whipping boys are not a good punishment for leaders lacking in compassion. And what's worse, by invoking sanctions, we fall into the leader's trap, we conflate him with the country. This is nothing more than a cult of personality. If we do want another punishment option, maybe this one makes sense: instead of sanctions (starving the whipping boy) or war (killing the whipping boy), why don't we ever consdier assassination? If we truly believe a leader singularly responsible for his country's ills, why not just take him out? If this doesn't make sense to you, maybe the assumption of leader as pied piper is a flawed one. Anyway, more on the leader/people fallicy next time, maybe...
Wednesday, September 27
The Paradox of Sport
I watched the New Orleans - Atlanta game last night. Like a majority of viewers, I couldn't help rooting for the Saints, whether because of Reggie Bush or Drew Brees (who I have long considered a very underrated, undersized quarterback) or the triumphant return to the Superdome. I also couldn't help being majorly irritated by all the nonsense about football helping to rebuild New Orleans. Ok, fine, there are football players (notably Warrick Dunn of the Falcons, another of my favorite undersized players) who have raised money, given time, etc to the rebuilding efforts. But I really don't buy into all this crap about the football team (or the NO Hornets for that matter) rebuilding the city. I thought the best summation was when Spike Lee said the game at least gave the people of New Orleans "a few hours away from their FEMA trailers."
So this morning, as I went for my run, I was thinking about class relations (this is not a total non sequitor, just wait, you'll see the connection). I was thinking about how there are some people to whom you actually talk, in whose lives you develop active interest, and then there are some people who act more as tools or barriers. In no place was this more apparent to me than in China (big surprise) where the language barrier was even worse with common laborers than it was with shopkeepers, and where the true upper class often spoke English. But it was not just a language barrier. I generally had no interest in talking to the construction workers, and they likewise avoided me; shopkeepers were an obstacle to get past in order to make a purchase; but the upper class actively went out of their way to talk to me, and I to them. Why? We had more in common to discuss, both interests (economics, politics) and experiences (travel) and a common language in which to speak (English, or at least proper Mandarin). This is not so different in America. When is the last time you had a real conversation with a construction worker or the guy at the deli counter? And I bet you're more likely (as I am) to strike up a conversation with stranger on the train if he's wearing a collared shirt than if he's in coveralls. But I'll talk to anyone about sports.
This, to me, is the greatest redeeming feature of professional sports. More than anything else (except maybe the weather, with pop culture coming in third), it is easy to talk to just about anyone, from just about any walk of life, about sports. So does that make sports the great unifier, the one segment of society where everyone can relate? I'm not so sure about that.
See, sports plays a fundamentally different role in different communities. To most of us, sports is primarily entertainment. But to certain communities, espcially poor ones and especially black ones, sports is the only real hope for the future. And the reason that sports is able to cut across class barriers is that it exists in a comfort zone. For the upper and middle classes, sports truly is a diversion, something to do after school or watch after work or play on the weekends to break up a busy and sucessful career as a lawyer or doctor or businesman. If you're from a rich, white suburb and you're good enough to make the NFL or the NBA or the Olympics, great! If not, you're still looking forward to a sucessful career and the propect of raising your own kids in the rich, white suburbs to have the same choices you had. We are not threatened by the poor and minorities in sports (or music, or film) because this is a diversion for us. For many poor black kids (and many poor white kids as well), a football scholarship is their great hope to get out of the ghetto or the coal town or off the farm. It's not entertainment, it's a job; it's not a diversion, it's life.
Professional sports represent the greatest success of the modern segregation paradigm. In Friday Night Lights (a true story), the (effectively) white high school in the rich part of Odessa is finally willing to submit to desegregation when it realizes that it can manipulate this to get most of the black running backs and dominate their cross-town rivals. Booby Miles is the "next great black hope" until he blows out his ACL, at which point he returns to being "just another nigger." While we liberal coastals are above such language, we are equally dismissive of athletes from poor backgrounds who fail to perform. And we are scared enough of what this means about us that we took most of the elements of class and racial conflict out of the movie version. Sports give us a safe ground to praise sucessful poor and/or minority atheletes and ignore all the failures.
In the meantime, sports (and popular culture) are reeking havoc on black communities. Yes, failing schools are a problem. Yes, drugs are a problem. And absent parents, and poverty and so on. But studies show that poor blacks in poor black schools perform even worse than poor blacks in poor white schools and much worse than poor blacks in rich white schools. This means that the failure is at least partially one that can be attributed to the community, not just to socio-economic and racial factors. Many black pundits, including Bill Cosby, think that drugs, sports and pop culture (i.e. rap music) are to blame.
Whites, even poor whites, grow up with multiple white role models (on TV if nowhere else), including plenty of presidents, doctors and such as well as musicians and athletes. On the other hand, the primary role models of poor blacks in poor black communities are almost exclusively basketball and football players, rap musicians and drug dealers. The meteoric rise of professional sports and the black athlete has coopted many of the most upwardly mobile individuals in the black community. Before the rise of the black athelete, the main role models were, by default, church leaders, businessmen and other financially sucessful individuals. The collapse of the blue-collar industries that had fed a black renaissance was simultaneous with the ascent of cocaine, rap and professional sports. One brand role model was taken away and replaced with another one.
And what do athletes, drug dealers and musicians have in common? Plenty, actually. All three career paths are typified by a massive reward for a very small percentage of participants. Most drug dealers are poor (see Freakanomics), but a very few are very rich. Likewise, most high school athletes don't get recruited by colleges, and most college athletes don't get drafted, but the few who do get rich, and the few who become superstars get very, very rich. And musicians will make next to nothing without a record contract, or even with a record contract, but a few will go plantinum, get on MTV, buy big houses and get on MTV Cribs. For businesmen or lawyers, there are similarly a very few who get very rich. But unlike musicians or athletes, most lawyers make plenty of money, even if they're not millionaires. However, in the absence of lawyer role models and any percieved likelyhood of attending law schools, most poor blacks make the obvious choice, the high stakes crap shoot, the trade in drugs or beats or running backs.
The other thing that musicians, athletes and drug dealers have in common is that they tend to give very little back to the community (or even take away from the community). By simply setting up business in their home community, professionals will help to boost the community as a whole. Even if they don't, they are more likely to live in or near the community where they grew up, and so their consumption dollars are more likely to end up in community pockets and their charity dollars in local churches and community centers. On the other hand, drug dealers depress entire communities by scaring away legitimate businesses and attracting and creating addicts. Athletes, for their part, divert money that might be spent on teachers or books to buy pads and charter busses. They're just a different kind of parasite.
So this is the great paradox of sport in America. It is something that we can all talk about. But that very fact makes in the only thing we really have to talk about. Maybe it would be better if we talked about the real problems of race and class with the people who are across those divides. And if athletes made a little less money and teachers a little more, maybe that would change career choices in a way that benifited poor communities and not just a few poor individuals.
So this morning, as I went for my run, I was thinking about class relations (this is not a total non sequitor, just wait, you'll see the connection). I was thinking about how there are some people to whom you actually talk, in whose lives you develop active interest, and then there are some people who act more as tools or barriers. In no place was this more apparent to me than in China (big surprise) where the language barrier was even worse with common laborers than it was with shopkeepers, and where the true upper class often spoke English. But it was not just a language barrier. I generally had no interest in talking to the construction workers, and they likewise avoided me; shopkeepers were an obstacle to get past in order to make a purchase; but the upper class actively went out of their way to talk to me, and I to them. Why? We had more in common to discuss, both interests (economics, politics) and experiences (travel) and a common language in which to speak (English, or at least proper Mandarin). This is not so different in America. When is the last time you had a real conversation with a construction worker or the guy at the deli counter? And I bet you're more likely (as I am) to strike up a conversation with stranger on the train if he's wearing a collared shirt than if he's in coveralls. But I'll talk to anyone about sports.
This, to me, is the greatest redeeming feature of professional sports. More than anything else (except maybe the weather, with pop culture coming in third), it is easy to talk to just about anyone, from just about any walk of life, about sports. So does that make sports the great unifier, the one segment of society where everyone can relate? I'm not so sure about that.
See, sports plays a fundamentally different role in different communities. To most of us, sports is primarily entertainment. But to certain communities, espcially poor ones and especially black ones, sports is the only real hope for the future. And the reason that sports is able to cut across class barriers is that it exists in a comfort zone. For the upper and middle classes, sports truly is a diversion, something to do after school or watch after work or play on the weekends to break up a busy and sucessful career as a lawyer or doctor or businesman. If you're from a rich, white suburb and you're good enough to make the NFL or the NBA or the Olympics, great! If not, you're still looking forward to a sucessful career and the propect of raising your own kids in the rich, white suburbs to have the same choices you had. We are not threatened by the poor and minorities in sports (or music, or film) because this is a diversion for us. For many poor black kids (and many poor white kids as well), a football scholarship is their great hope to get out of the ghetto or the coal town or off the farm. It's not entertainment, it's a job; it's not a diversion, it's life.
Professional sports represent the greatest success of the modern segregation paradigm. In Friday Night Lights (a true story), the (effectively) white high school in the rich part of Odessa is finally willing to submit to desegregation when it realizes that it can manipulate this to get most of the black running backs and dominate their cross-town rivals. Booby Miles is the "next great black hope" until he blows out his ACL, at which point he returns to being "just another nigger." While we liberal coastals are above such language, we are equally dismissive of athletes from poor backgrounds who fail to perform. And we are scared enough of what this means about us that we took most of the elements of class and racial conflict out of the movie version. Sports give us a safe ground to praise sucessful poor and/or minority atheletes and ignore all the failures.
In the meantime, sports (and popular culture) are reeking havoc on black communities. Yes, failing schools are a problem. Yes, drugs are a problem. And absent parents, and poverty and so on. But studies show that poor blacks in poor black schools perform even worse than poor blacks in poor white schools and much worse than poor blacks in rich white schools. This means that the failure is at least partially one that can be attributed to the community, not just to socio-economic and racial factors. Many black pundits, including Bill Cosby, think that drugs, sports and pop culture (i.e. rap music) are to blame.
Whites, even poor whites, grow up with multiple white role models (on TV if nowhere else), including plenty of presidents, doctors and such as well as musicians and athletes. On the other hand, the primary role models of poor blacks in poor black communities are almost exclusively basketball and football players, rap musicians and drug dealers. The meteoric rise of professional sports and the black athlete has coopted many of the most upwardly mobile individuals in the black community. Before the rise of the black athelete, the main role models were, by default, church leaders, businessmen and other financially sucessful individuals. The collapse of the blue-collar industries that had fed a black renaissance was simultaneous with the ascent of cocaine, rap and professional sports. One brand role model was taken away and replaced with another one.
And what do athletes, drug dealers and musicians have in common? Plenty, actually. All three career paths are typified by a massive reward for a very small percentage of participants. Most drug dealers are poor (see Freakanomics), but a very few are very rich. Likewise, most high school athletes don't get recruited by colleges, and most college athletes don't get drafted, but the few who do get rich, and the few who become superstars get very, very rich. And musicians will make next to nothing without a record contract, or even with a record contract, but a few will go plantinum, get on MTV, buy big houses and get on MTV Cribs. For businesmen or lawyers, there are similarly a very few who get very rich. But unlike musicians or athletes, most lawyers make plenty of money, even if they're not millionaires. However, in the absence of lawyer role models and any percieved likelyhood of attending law schools, most poor blacks make the obvious choice, the high stakes crap shoot, the trade in drugs or beats or running backs.
The other thing that musicians, athletes and drug dealers have in common is that they tend to give very little back to the community (or even take away from the community). By simply setting up business in their home community, professionals will help to boost the community as a whole. Even if they don't, they are more likely to live in or near the community where they grew up, and so their consumption dollars are more likely to end up in community pockets and their charity dollars in local churches and community centers. On the other hand, drug dealers depress entire communities by scaring away legitimate businesses and attracting and creating addicts. Athletes, for their part, divert money that might be spent on teachers or books to buy pads and charter busses. They're just a different kind of parasite.
So this is the great paradox of sport in America. It is something that we can all talk about. But that very fact makes in the only thing we really have to talk about. Maybe it would be better if we talked about the real problems of race and class with the people who are across those divides. And if athletes made a little less money and teachers a little more, maybe that would change career choices in a way that benifited poor communities and not just a few poor individuals.
Thursday, September 21
Corny spinach and E. coli
So you're a vegitarian, maybe even a vegan. If it's important for the general population to eat enough leafy greens, it's even more so for you because you don't have as many dietary sources of iron and calcium. You head to the store, take a look at the kale and chard but ultimately decide that you feel like spinach this week. You even do the environmentally responsible thing and buy organic. After heading home, you make a spinach salad with walnuts and some of those pears that are just coming into season. Soon after, toxins flood your digestive tract and your kidneys fail. The culprit, E. coli.
Now here's the crazy thing: this particularly toxic strain of E. coli occurs almost exclusively in the diatary tracts of cows. You may have even given up meat to avoid exposure to this type of bacteria, in addition to the other health benifits of a meatless diet. It gets worse. Although the government is not exactly forthcoming with these specifics, this particular strain of E. coli, O157: H7, occurs almost exclusively in the gut of grain-fed cattle.
Now I'm not usually a big fan of vegitarians who proseletise, and I feel that I, as an on-and-off flexiblitarian, have even less high ground from which to criticize. Do I wish that people ate less meat? Sure, but as long as it is a choice that primarily affects their own health, I don't have a big issue with the choice to eat meat. The concerns that have made me an occasional vegitarian have always been health and environmental ones. And what this latest E. coli outbreak makes clear to me is that people can be hurt by second-hand meat as much as they can by second-hand smoke. The problem in this case was not one of contaminated meat or dairy, it was one of contaminated vegitables. This is apparently not that uncommon. It looks as if the spinach-growers and -packers are not particularly at fault for their handling practices; the culprit is a strain of bacteria that is expecially resistant to washing, acidic environments and antibiotics.
See, O157: H7 is a strain of E. coli that has mutated in the particular conditions of grain-fed livestock. Cattle in particular are not built to eat grain on a regular basis, they are built to eat grass. In grass-fed cattle, the levels of O157: H7 drop to almost nothing. So the spinach industry fell victim to being downstream from heards of living petrie dishes perfectly designed to grow resistant, toxogenic bacteria. But that's not even the end. Why are cattle being fed grain in the first place? Doesn't it seem like it should be cheaper and easier to feed them on grass and hay (as is the predominant practice in every other country in the world)? It would be, if it were not for subsudies for grain, especially corn farmers.
These subsudies make corn the cheapest way to do just about everything. Processed foods are often cheaper than real food because of cheap corn oil and corn syrup, and this is making us fat. Cattle are fed grain, which they are not built to handle in large quantities. It raises the acidity of their stomaches, giving them ulcers, which in turn nessisitates the use of massive quantities of antibiotics (I read somewhere that 70% of antibiotics used in the US go to agriculture). This, in turn, creates the perfect environment to grow military-grade biological weapons. Now corn is the top priority in ethanol-fuel development, despite the fact that you loose energy in making it (as opposed to switchgrass and sugar-cane based fuel which gain energy).
The point is, factory farming has gone beyond the point where I can simply let it be someone else's business. Cattle ranches and dairy farms are massive polluters of groundwater and in some places are even leading emitters of ozone-destroying gasses (I recall reading this about New Zealand, but I can't find a source...clearly in America there are much bigger air polluters, but cattle are still a major source of groundwater pollution). They are the biggest culprits in overuse of diminishing water supplies (espcially in the American West and many places in the developing world). Subsudies to the big grain growers have been making us fat and are making us sick. The spinach outbreak is the perfect case in point: even people who don't eat meat, avoid processed goods and otherwise supporting the big farm-factories can get sick from eating organic spinach.
Of course, people on the East Coast should be eating local spinach anyway. New Jersey spinach has not been connected with the outbreak, as Senator Menendez mentioned even while campaigning for reelections. Farm subsidies don't work the way they are supposed to. Labling of agricultural goods for point of origin would help consumers even more amidst this sort of scare. Appologies for the rant, but this is important stuff.
Now here's the crazy thing: this particularly toxic strain of E. coli occurs almost exclusively in the diatary tracts of cows. You may have even given up meat to avoid exposure to this type of bacteria, in addition to the other health benifits of a meatless diet. It gets worse. Although the government is not exactly forthcoming with these specifics, this particular strain of E. coli, O157: H7, occurs almost exclusively in the gut of grain-fed cattle.
Now I'm not usually a big fan of vegitarians who proseletise, and I feel that I, as an on-and-off flexiblitarian, have even less high ground from which to criticize. Do I wish that people ate less meat? Sure, but as long as it is a choice that primarily affects their own health, I don't have a big issue with the choice to eat meat. The concerns that have made me an occasional vegitarian have always been health and environmental ones. And what this latest E. coli outbreak makes clear to me is that people can be hurt by second-hand meat as much as they can by second-hand smoke. The problem in this case was not one of contaminated meat or dairy, it was one of contaminated vegitables. This is apparently not that uncommon. It looks as if the spinach-growers and -packers are not particularly at fault for their handling practices; the culprit is a strain of bacteria that is expecially resistant to washing, acidic environments and antibiotics.
See, O157: H7 is a strain of E. coli that has mutated in the particular conditions of grain-fed livestock. Cattle in particular are not built to eat grain on a regular basis, they are built to eat grass. In grass-fed cattle, the levels of O157: H7 drop to almost nothing. So the spinach industry fell victim to being downstream from heards of living petrie dishes perfectly designed to grow resistant, toxogenic bacteria. But that's not even the end. Why are cattle being fed grain in the first place? Doesn't it seem like it should be cheaper and easier to feed them on grass and hay (as is the predominant practice in every other country in the world)? It would be, if it were not for subsudies for grain, especially corn farmers.
These subsudies make corn the cheapest way to do just about everything. Processed foods are often cheaper than real food because of cheap corn oil and corn syrup, and this is making us fat. Cattle are fed grain, which they are not built to handle in large quantities. It raises the acidity of their stomaches, giving them ulcers, which in turn nessisitates the use of massive quantities of antibiotics (I read somewhere that 70% of antibiotics used in the US go to agriculture). This, in turn, creates the perfect environment to grow military-grade biological weapons. Now corn is the top priority in ethanol-fuel development, despite the fact that you loose energy in making it (as opposed to switchgrass and sugar-cane based fuel which gain energy).
The point is, factory farming has gone beyond the point where I can simply let it be someone else's business. Cattle ranches and dairy farms are massive polluters of groundwater and in some places are even leading emitters of ozone-destroying gasses (I recall reading this about New Zealand, but I can't find a source...clearly in America there are much bigger air polluters, but cattle are still a major source of groundwater pollution). They are the biggest culprits in overuse of diminishing water supplies (espcially in the American West and many places in the developing world). Subsudies to the big grain growers have been making us fat and are making us sick. The spinach outbreak is the perfect case in point: even people who don't eat meat, avoid processed goods and otherwise supporting the big farm-factories can get sick from eating organic spinach.
Of course, people on the East Coast should be eating local spinach anyway. New Jersey spinach has not been connected with the outbreak, as Senator Menendez mentioned even while campaigning for reelections. Farm subsidies don't work the way they are supposed to. Labling of agricultural goods for point of origin would help consumers even more amidst this sort of scare. Appologies for the rant, but this is important stuff.
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