a scratch pad for half-formed thoughts by a liberal political junkie who's nobody special. ''Hard Heads, Soft Hearts'' is the title of a book by Princeton economist Alan Blinder, and tends to be a favorite motto of neoliberals, especially liberal economists.
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Paul Gagnon, "What Should Children Learn?", Dec. 1995 Atlantic:

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/95dec/chilearn/chilearn.htm

. . .OF the obstacles reformers confront, the toughest may be our mad utilitarianism. Consider the three aims of schooling -- preparing the worker, the citizen, and the cultivated individual. We put the worker ahead of the other two, as if they had no effect on the nation's economy or the quality of work done. Turning to citizenship, we bypass the substance of history, politics, letters, and ideas and peddle ready-made attitudes. Thus American educators have never had to think consistently about the moral, aesthetic, or intellectual content of public schooling for the masses -- the gifts that academic subjects open for everyone. . .

. . .States will find friends in teachers and citizens who, not overspecialized, have no ideology to press, and who understand that the three purposes of education -- for work, for citizenship, and for private life -- are by their nature distinct, many-sided, requiring different, sometimes opposite, modes of teaching aimed at different, sometimes opposite, results. Schooling for work is a "conservative" function, demanding disciplined mastery of tasks from the world of work as it is, not as we wish it to be, and objective testing of student competence. Schooling for citizenship, in contrast, is a "radical" activity, egalitarian and skeptical in style, mixing the hard study of history and ideas with free-swinging exchange on public issues. The school nurtures both teamwork and thorny individualism, at once the readiness to serve and the readiness to resist, for nobody knows ahead of time which the good citizen may have to do. To educate the private person, the school must detach itself much of the time from the clamor of popular culture. It must be conservative in requiring students to confront the range of arts, letters, and right behavior conceived in the past, toward the liberal end that their choices be informed and thereby free. . .

. . .WITH respect to world history, what should Americans know and teach? What is the main story? It is not the parade of military, technological, and economic "interactions," or the endless comparisons among often incomparable centers of great power, that global studies dwell upon -- although these must, of course, be taken into account. The big story is not the push to modernize but the struggle to civilize, to curb the bestial side of human nature. What students can grasp very well is that this is a common struggle, in which all peoples and races are equal -- equal in our natures, equal in the historical guilt of forebears who pursued war, slavery, and oppression. Black Africans, Anglo-Americans, Europeans, Native Americans, North African and Middle Eastern peoples, Mongols, Chinese, and Japanese -- all have pursued these things when they have had the power to, afflicting one another and weaker neighbors.

For our time, the first lesson to be learned from world history, the most compelling story, is the age-old struggle of people within each culture to limit aggression and greed, to nourish the better side of human nature, to apply morality and law, to keep the peace and render justice. Students can see the glory and agony of this struggle, and how often it has been lost. Because human evil exists, good intent has never been enough. It has taken brains, courage, self-sacrifice, patience, love, and -- always with tragic consequences -- war itself to contain the beast. Against the twin temptations of wishfulness and cynicism, history says that evil and tragedy are real, that civilization has a high price but that it, too, is real, and has been won from time to time. In history we find the ideas, the conditions, and the famous and ordinary men and women making it possible.

All peoples have taken part in the struggle to civilize. An honest look at the past reveals a common human mixture of altruism, malevolence, and indifference, and reasons for all of us to feel both pride and shame. Starting from any other point of view is historically false, and blind to human nature. Historians -- and standard setters -- have a special obligation to be candid. But many popular textbooks are unfailingly pious about other cultures and ultra-critical of our own, preaching a new-style ignorance in reaction against, but just as pernicious as, our older textbook pieties about ourselves and disdain for others. Both are pernicious because both sap the will to civilize. People who are taught to feel specially guilty, or specially victimized, or naturally superior, will not reach out to others as equals; they will not pay the costs in toil, tears, and taxes always imposed by that struggle.

This is not a "conservative" or "liberal" issue but one of trusting children, adolescents, and adults to work with historical truth, however inconvenient or impolite it may seem. History reinforces the rough notion of equality that we learn on the playground and in the street: there are like proportions of admirable and avoidable people in every imaginable human grouping -- by age, class, race, sex, religion, or cultural taste. Individuals are not equal in talent or virtue, and certainly not equally deserving of respect. To teach otherwise is to invite ridicule and resentment. Instead what must repeatedly be taught, because it is not quickly learned -- but is quickly forgotten in hard times -- is that in civilized society it is every person's rights that are equally deserving of respect: rights to free expression, equal protection under law, fair judgment, rigorous education, honest work and pay, an equal chance to pursue the good.

This hard truth we accept, and remember, only with the help of historical insight, which is indispensable in forging a democratic conscience . . .

posted by Anonymous at 7:26 AM

 
Via Yglesias, Everyone should read the New Yorker article by David Grann, about the almost certain innocence of Cameron Willingham, executed for arson-murder in 2004. The arson investigator created a lot of stylized "facts" "proving" arson, which turned out not to be true.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_grann?currentPage=all

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/08/executing-the-innocent.php

However, the arson detective, though he contributed to executing an innocent man, wasn't evil. He believed that he was in posession of the truth. The article was saddening, and angering, but what it ultimately drove home to to me is the importance of doing your best, trying to be as competent and as good as you can, at all levels of society.

. . .Willingham’s mother and father began to cry. “Don’t be sad, Momma,” Willingham said. “In fifty-five minutes, I’m a free man. I’m going home to see my kids.” Earlier, he had confessed to his parents that there was one thing about the day of the fire he had lied about. He said that he had never actually crawled into the children’s room. “I just didn’t want people to think I was a coward,” he said. Hurst [authentic fire expert who reviewed Willingham's case, and proved his innocence] told me, “People who have never been in a fire don’t understand why those who survive often can’t rescue the victims. They have no concept of what a fire is like.” . . .

. . .After his death, his parents were allowed to touch his face for the first time in more than a decade. Later, at Willingham’s request, they cremated his body and secretly spread some of his ashes over his children’s graves. He had told his parents, “Please don’t ever stop fighting to vindicate me.” . . .

. . .Just before Willingham received the lethal injection, he was asked if he had any last words. He said, “The only statement I want to make is that I am an innocent man convicted of a crime I did not commit. I have been persecuted for twelve years for something I did not do. From God’s dust I came and to dust I will return, so the Earth shall become my throne.”

posted by Anonymous at 5:10 PM

 
decided to read James Tobin's Nobel lecture, and in the first section he quotes a Keynes passage I had never read before.

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/1981/tobin-lecture.html

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/1981/tobin-lecture.pdf

"1.3. Macro-Economics and Full General Equilibrium

. . .Were there a full set of simultaneously cleared markets for all commodities, including commodities for future and contingent delivery, there would be no macro-economic problems, no need for money, and no room for fiscal and monetary policies of stabilization. . .

. . .the departure that sets the stage for macro-economic theory and policy, is one emphasized by Keynes. It is the virtual absence of futures markets and of course contingent markets in any commodities other than money itself. As Keynes said (1936, pp. 210-212),

An act of individual saving means - so to speak - a decision not to have dinner today. But it does not necessitate a decision to have dinner or to buy a pair of boots a week hence or a year hence or to consume any specified thing at any specified date. Thus it depresses the business of preparing today’s dinner without stimulating the business of making ready for some future act of consumption. It is not a substitution of future consumption-demand for present consumption-demand, - it is a net diminution of such demand ... If saving consisted not merely in abstaining from present consumption but in placing simultaneously a specific order for future consumption, the effect might indeed be different. For in that case the expectation of some future yield from investment would be improved, and the resources released from preparing for present consumption would be turned over to preparing for the future consumption. The trouble arises, therefore, because the act of saving implies, not a substitution for present consumption of some specific additional consumption which requires for its preparation just as much immediate economic activity as would have been required by present consumption equal in value to the sum saved, but a desire for “wealth” as such, that is for a potentiality of consuming an unspecified article at an unspecified time.

In short, the financial and capital markets, are at their best highly imperfect coordinators of saving and investment, an inadequacy which I suspect cannot be remedied by rational expectations. This failure of coordination is a fundamental source of macro-economic instability and of the opportunity for macroeconomic policies of stabilization. Current macro-economic theory perhaps pays too exclusive attention to labor markets, where Keynes also detected failures of competition to coordinate demand and supply. . ."

I'd guess the last sentence is a gentle criticism of the econ 101 catechism that recessions occur because prices, especially wages, are too "sticky" and refuse to fall sufficiently, and therefore the cure for recession is to enable deeper wage cuts. It always struck me as rather thin, now I guess I know why.


posted by Anonymous at 10:24 PM

 
Not sure what Squidoo is, but they have a great page ("lens"), written/compiled/organized by janices7, about Millenium Promise:

http://www.squidoo.com/millenium-promise-end-extreme-povery-tanzania-village

"Millennium Promise - A Proven Way To End Extreme Poverty. . .

. . .My Call To Action - Raise $1.5 Million

After deciding Millennium Promise was the most effective approach to solving this problem, I brainstormed to come up with ways that I could assist the charity. I like to think big! Thinking small means that you will achieve small. With that in mind, I decided that I needed to find a way to raise the $1.5 million. This is the amount necessary to fully fund a Millennium Village of 5,000 people for the initial five years. Of course, I know that it will take a village of people to sponsor a village.

Virtual Millennium Village Poverty Ladder

So to facilitate small business and individual participation, I started what is known as a 'poverty ladder' with an overall goal to raise $1.5 million. The poverty ladder is called the Virtual Millennium Village, Tanzania (since all proceeds will sponsor a village in the Mbola region of Tanzania). Millennium Promise enables folks who start a poverty ladder the ability to track all the funds contributed directly to the ladder.

Partnering with Small Businesses

I am working to find online business and retailers that will sponsor a portion of the overall ladder. For instance, [removed for Google link reasons] has generously set a goal of $200,000 to be raised by the company and their customers. They are asking customers to contribute either $1, $2, $5 or $10 with each gift purchase. And they are matching one for one the funds contributed by their customers. I have also been able to get [removed for Google link reasons] to use the same type of customer contribution and matching system so that they can ask bride's to open their hearts to the Virtual Millennium Village - Tanzania project as well.

Contributing From Squidoo & Social Networking

I am also funding the ladder by contributing my online proceeds from this Squidoo page and other social networking pages that I operate directly to the poverty ladder.

Family - Friend - Public Contributions

Finally, I am asking all my friends and family and all of you to get involved. I know that we can raise the funds! . ."




posted by Anonymous at 11:25 PM

 
re: access to health care & saving and improving lives, Ezra and others are linking to this January 2008 report from the Urban Institute (written by Stan Dorn):

http://www.urban.org/publications/411588.html

http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/411588_uninsured_dying.pdf

"Abstract

The absence of health insurance creates a range of consequences, including lower quality of life, increased morbidity and mortality, and higher financial burdens. This paper focuses on just one aspect of this harm—namely, greater risk of death—and seeks to illustrate its general order of magnitude.

In 2002, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) estimated that 18,000 Americans died in 2000 because they were uninsured. Since then, the number of uninsured has grown. Based on the IOM's methodology and subsequent Census Bureau estimates of insurance coverage, 137,000 people died from 2000 through 2006 because they lacked health insurance, including 22,000 people in 2006."

Related Research

Increasing Health Insurance Coverage for High-Cost Older Adults

How We Can Pay for Health Reform

Ousting Obesity: Strategies from the Tobacco Wars

8/19 update:

Also this paper from Families USA:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/08/10_reasons_to_support_health-c.html

http://www.familiesusa.org/assets/pdfs/health-reform/10-reasons-to-support-reform.pdf

"10 Reasons to Support The Health Care Reform Bills

The health reform debate is in full swing and proposals are taking shape. Even though key decisions are still being made, it is clear we have gained significant ground. There is much to be excited about in these proposals: Millions more people will gain health insurance, coverage will be more affordable, and people will have access to the health services they need. These provisions will improve the lives of millions of Americans and give us the peace of mind that comes with knowing that we have coverage no matter what. But the road ahead will not be easy. We must continue to work for improvements and we must ensure that we do not lose the gains we have made so far—they are worth fighting for. Below are some highlights in the health care reform proposals.

What we’ll get from health reform:

1. A major expansion of Medicaid coverage—fully federally funded—for millions of low-income working families who currently fall through the cracks

2. A regulated marketplace that clamps down on insurance company abuses so people can no longer be denied coverage

3. Requirements that insurance companies spend more of the premium dollars they collect on patient care

4. Sliding-scale subsidies so middle-class, working families can afford the coverage they need to keep their families healthy

5. A strong public plan option that will provide choice, stability, and an honest yardstick to keep costs down

6. Limits on out-of-pocket spending, giving Americans real health security and peace of mind

7. Much-needed relief for small businesses so they can afford to offer coverage to their employees

8. Improvements to Medicare that will help seniors and people with disabilities afford their drugs and their cost-sharing

9. Better access to coverage for uninsured children so they can get the care they need

10. Long overdue steps to modernize the system, improve the quality of care provided, and curb unnecessary spending so our American health care system delivers the best possible care . . ."



posted by Anonymous at 7:44 PM

 
The quote from Sayers' "Problem Picture" essay reminded me of a favorite poem by E.V. Rieu,
about algebra textbook-authors Hall & Knight:

"When he was young his cousins used to say of Mr Knight:
'This boy will write an algebra - or looks as if he might.'
And sure enough, when Mr Knight had grown to be a man,
He purchased pen and paper and an inkpot, and began.

But he very soon discovered that he couldn't write at all,
And his heart was filled with yearnings for a certain Mr Hall;
Till, after many years of doubt, he sent his friend a card:
'Have tried to write an Algebra, but find it very hard.' . . ."

http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/601.html

Also, this chess poem about the Tumbleweed opening:

"In Seattle, last summer, with nothing to do,
I went to the Chess Club, and there met a Jew
From New Orleans, a rabbi—no matter what name—
Perhaps you have met him, or heard of the same;
He's a player of note, and his problems in chess
Get some mighty good players in an awful bad mess. . .

. . .I played P to K's fourth, which he seemed to approve,
And replied with the same; 'twas a very good move. . .

http://www.exeterchessclub.org.uk/Trawl/Poems.html


posted by Anonymous at 3:23 PM

 
re: pick-up artists, what really grates is the lack of empathy. Suppose a PUA was the object of desire, suppose there was a woman, or *gasp* a man, who wanted to sleep with him, who he didn't want to sleep with. Do they really believe there exists some magic strategy or technique that would get the PUA into bed, when he didn't want to go?

re: Nice Guys, it seems worth pointing out that there are plenty of Nice Girls too, women platonic-friends who will sit patiently and make sympathetic noises while Himbo bangs on and on about how he only wanted a fling, but the girl is taking it too damn seriously. I guess the big difference is the sense of entitlement - Nice Girls probably don't lapse into thoughts of revenge, payback, threatening/pleading/cajoling/demanding the object of desire conform to their will, as easily as Nice Guys do.

I think CS Lewis in "The Abolition of Man" hit upon a key feature of the modern world: the dogged, hyper-rational, hyper-efficient pursuit, aided by the most advanced science and technology, of our most irrational, and often transient, impulses. "When all that says `It is good' has been debunked, what says `I want' remains."

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/lewis/abolition3.htm

Checkov, "Uncle Vanya". (also in the movie "Vanya On 42nd Street")

"SONIA. . .[A pause] Tell me, doctor, if I had a friend or a younger sister, and if you knew that she, well--loved you, what would you do?

ASTROFF. [Shrugging his shoulders] I don't know. I don't think I should do anything. I should make her understand that I could not return her love--however, my mind is not bothered about those things now. I must start at once if I am ever to get off. Good-bye, my dear girl. At this rate we shall stand here talking till morning. [He shakes hands with her] I shall go out through the sitting-room, because I am afraid your uncle might detain me. [He goes out.]. . .

. . .[Sonia lays her head on HELENA'S breast.]

HELENA. [Stroking her hair] There, there, that will do. Don't, Sonia.

SONIA. I am ugly!

HELENA. You have lovely hair.

SONIA. Don't say that! [She turns to look at herself in the glass] No, when a woman is ugly they always say she has beautiful hair or eyes. . ."

I love the detail [He shakes hands with her].

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1756/1756.txt

probably my favorite passage from "Murder Must Advertise" (Chapter X)

"`. . .I see,' said Mr. Smayle. `Well, of course, Mr. Hankin doesn't have to try and prove that he's better than me, because he is and we both know it.'

`Better isn't the right word, Smayle.'

`Well, better educated. You know what I mean.'

`Don't worry about it,' said Ingleby. `If I were half as good at my job as you are at yours, I should feel superior to everybody in this tom-fool office.'

Mr. Smayle shook his head, but appeared comforted.

`I do wish they wouldn't start that kind of thing', said Ingleby when he had gone, `I don't know what to say to them.'

`I thought you were a Socialist, Ingleby,' said Bredon, `it oughtn't to embarass you.'

`So I am a Socialist,' said Ingleby, `but I can't stand this stuff about Old Dumbletonians. If everybody has the same State education, these things wouldn't happen.'

`If everybody had the same face,' said Bredon, `there'd be no pretty women.'

Miss Meteyard made a grimace.

`If you go on like that, I shall be getting an inferiority complex too.'

Bredon looked at her gravely.

`I don't think you'd care to be called pretty,' he said, `but if I were a painter I should like to make a portrait of you. You have very interesting bones.'

`Good God!' said Miss Meteyard. `I'm going. Let me know when you've finished with my room.'

There was a mirror in the typists' room, and in this Miss Meteyard curiously studied her face.

`What's the matter, Miss Meteyard?' asked Miss Rossiter. `Got a spot coming?'

`Something of the sort,' said Miss Meteyard, absently. `Interesting bones indeed!'"

Deep Thoughts:

This is really good. Do you have any ketchup?

"Dharma [ethics] can not come very naturally. . .there must be a lot of room for you to grow, a lot of room to express yourself with your choices. Dharma can not come to you by accident, it must be purely deliberate. . .By one’s own initiative, one must discover the value of dharma and place it first."

Swami Dayananda

http://www.avgsatsang.org/hhpsds.html

http://www.avgsatsang.org/hhpsds/pdf/Viveka_What_I_Really_Want.pdf

posted by Anonymous at 12:33 PM

 
I think this quote, from the F. Scott Fitzgerald essay "Ring", speaks to something in every sports fan. It was the quote Bill Bradley chose to open his basketball memoir, "Life On The Run."

"During those years, when most men of promise achieve an adult education, if only in the school of war, Ring moved in the company of a few dozen men playing a boy's game. A boy's game, with no more possibility in it than a boy could master, a game bounded by walls which kept out novelty or danger, change or adventure.

It was never that he was completely sold on athletic virtuosity as the be all and end all of problems. The trouble was that he could conceive of nothing finer. Imagine life conceived as a business of beautiful muscular coordination - an arising, an effort, a good break, a sweat, a bath, a meal, a love, a sleep - imagine it achieved; then imagine trying to apply this standard to the horribly complicated mess of living, where nothing, even the greatest conceptions and workings and achievements, is else but messy, spotty, tortuous - and then one can imagine the confusion that Ring faced on coming out of the park."

Dorothy Sayers wrote an essay "Problem Picture", somewhat related to this, about the tendency to look at life in terms of "problem" and "solution":

http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/dlsayers/mindofmaker/mind.11.htm

"There are four characteristics of the mathematical or detective problem which are absent from the life-problem; but because we are accustomed to find them in the one, we look for them in the other, and experience a sense of frustration and resentment when we do not find them. . .

. . .4. The detective problem is finite; when it is solved, there is an end of it- or, as George Joseph Smith casually observed concerning the brides he had drowned in their baths, "When they are dead, they are done with". The detective problem summons us to the energetic exercise of our wits precisely in order that, when we have read the last page, we may sit back in our chairs and cease thinking. So does the cross-word. So does the chess-problem. So does the problem about A, B, and C building a wall. The struggle is over and finished with and now we may legitimately, if we like, cease upon the midnight with no pain. The problem leaves us feeling like that because it is deliberately designed to do so. Because we can, in this world, achieve so little, and so little perfectly, we are prepared to pay good money in order to acquire a vicarious sensation of achievement. The detective novelist knows this, and so do the setters of puzzles. And the schoolboy, triumphantly scoring a line beneath his finished homework, is thankful that he need not, in the manner so disquietingly outlined by Professor Leacock, inquire into the subsequent history of A, B, and C. . ."

Another Sayers essay I've been thinking of, "Strong Meat":

http://www.gutenberg.ca/ebooks/sayers-strong/sayers-strong-00-h.html

". . .There is a popular school of thought (or, more strictly, of feeling) which violently resents the operation of Time upon the human spirit. It looks upon age as something between a crime and an insult. Its prophets have banished from their savage vocabulary all such words as "adult," "mature," "experienced," "venerable"; they know only snarling and sneering epithets, like "middle-aged," "elderly," "stuffy," "senile" and "decrepit." With these they flagellate that which they themselves are, or must shortly become, as though abuse were an incantation to exorcise the inexorable. Theirs is neither the thoughtless courage that "makes mouths at the invisible event," nor the reasoned courage that foresees the event and endures it; still less is it the ecstatic courage that embraces and subdues the event. It is the vicious and desperate fury of a trapped beast; and it is not a pretty sight.

Such men, finding no value for the world as it is, proclaim very loudly their faith in the future, "which is in the hands of the young." With this flattery, they bind their own burden on the shoulders of the next generation. For their own failures, Time alone is to blame—not Sin, which is expiable, but Time, which is irreparable. From the relentless reality of age they seek escape into a fantasy of youth—their own or other people's. First love, boyhood ideals, childish dreams, the song at the mother's breast, the blind security of the womb—from these they construct a monstrous fabric of pretence, to be their hiding-place from the tempest. Their faith is not really in the future, but in the past. Paradoxical as it may seem, to believe in youth is to look backward; to look forward, we must believe in age. "Except," said Christ, "ye become as little children"—and the words are sometimes quoted to justify the flight into infantilism. Now, children differ in many ways, but they have one thing in common. Peter Pan—if indeed he exists otherwise than in the nostalgic imagination of an adult—is a case for the pathologist. All normal children (however much we discourage them) look forward to growing up. "Except ye become as little children," except you can wake on your fiftieth birthday with the same forward-looking excitement and interest in life that you enjoyed when you were five, "ye cannot see the Kingdom of God." One must not only die daily, but every day one must be born again. . ."

posted by Anonymous at 6:07 PM

 
thoughts on the Pittsburgh gym murders of Heidi Overmier, Jody Billingsley and Elizabeth Gannon.

1. Some people can seem born to sweet delight, others to endless night, and it can often be quite sad and pitiable.

2. What is the appropriate emotional response when someone who lives in endless night, either because of objective circumstances, or because they live in a self-imposed prison they refuse to leave, lashes out and tries to take other people down with him/her?

Not sure, but Dorothy Sayers' thoughts on envy seem worth considering:

"Hand in hand with covetousness goes its close companion -- invidia or envy -- which hates to see other men happy. . .It begins by asking, plausibly, "Why should not I enjoy what others enjoy?" and it ends by demanding, "Why should others enjoy what I may not?". . .[envy] is a destroyer; rather than have anybody happier than itself, it will see us all miserable together.

In love, envy is cruel, jealous and possessive. My friend and my marriage partner must be wholly wrapped up in me and must find no interests outside me. That is my right. No person, no work, no hobby must robe me of any part of that right. If we cannot be happy together, we will be unhappy together, but there must be no escape into pleasures that I cannot share. If my husband's work means more to him than I do, I will see him ruined rather than preoccupied; if my wife is so abandoned as to enjoy Beethoven or dancing or anything else that I do not appreciate, I will so nag and insult her that she will no longer be able to indulge those tastes with a mind at ease. If my neighbors are able to take pleasure in intellectual interests that are above my head I will sneer at them and call them by derisive names because they make me feel inferior, and that is a thing I cannot bear. . .Let justice be done to me, though the heavens fall and the earth be shot to pieces.

If avarice is the sin of the haves against the have-nots, envy is the sin of the have-nots against the haves. If we want to see what they look like on a big scale, we may say that avarice has been the sin of the Anglo-Saxon democracies, and envy the sin of Germany. Both are cruel -- the one with a heavy, complacent, and bloodless cruelty; the other with a violent, calculated, and savage cruelty. But Germany only displays in accentuated form an evil of which we have plenty at home.

The difficulty about dealing with envy is precisely that it is the sin of the have-nots, and that, on that account, it can always find support among those who are just and generous minded. . .

. . .The sixth deadly sin is named by the Church acedia or sloth. In the world it calls itself tolerance; but in hell it is called despair. It is the accomplice of the other sins and their worst punishment. It is the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, loves nothing, and remains alive only because there is nothing it would die for. We have known it far too well for many years. The only thing perhaps that we have not known about it is that it is a mortal sin. . .

. . .sloth is in a conspiracy with envy to prevent people from thinking. Sloth persuades us that stupidity is not our sin, but our misfortune; while envy, at the same time, persuades us that intelligence is despicable. . ."

http://gashwingomes.blogspot.com/2008/02/seven-deadlies-envy.html

also a passage from CS Lewis (The Magician's Nephew):

"That is what happens to those who pluck and eat fruits at the wrong time and in the wrong way. The fruit is good, but they loathe it ever after. . .If any Narnian, unbidden, had stolen an apple and planted it here to protect Narnia, it would have protected Narnia. But it would have done so by making Narnia into another strong and cruel empire like Charn, and not the kindly land I mean it to be."

Also two pieces from Swami Dayananda:

Good and Evil

http://www.avgsatsang.org/hhpsds/pdf/Good_and_Evil.pdf

The Need For a Cognitive Change

http://www.avgsatsang.org/hhpsds/pdf/Need_for_Cognitive_Change.pdf

http://www.avgsatsang.org/hhpsds.html
posted by Anonymous at 4:31 PM

 
Gary's interesting post on population densities and feelings about immigration triggered this comment from me:

http://amygdalagf.blogspot.com/2009/08/how-can-we-fit-all-those-illegal.html

". . .For my part, I find the world seems impossibly large, complex and interesting when on foot. When in car, it can all seem rather monotonous, and even a small number of cars leads to parking jams that turn your thoughts toward OverPopulation and being Lord of the Lebensraum."

In other words, perceptions about being crowded are in part because 1-car-per-person, while it can be efficient in terms of time and energy, is inefficient in terms of space.

My semi-curmudgeonly feeling is that, just as it has become fashionable to talk of "developing a healthy fear of obesity", at least a small minority of people will develop a healthy suspicion of the automobile & electricity. Not, of course, to stop using them entirely; but to develop an appreciation for living substantial patches of life on foot and unplugged. As long as that sentiment does not turn fanatical, I think it's a good thing.

Deep Thoughts:

". . .in exploring the physical universe man has made no attempt to explore himself. . .If he recognised this he could use the products of science and industrialism eclectically, applying always the same test: does this make me more human or less human?. . . For man only stays human by preserving large patches of simplicity in his life. . .

Orwell, "Pleasure Spots"

http://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/spots/english/e_spots

". . .The time was not one of hurry or bustle. But bustle has very little to do with business. Men did their work without it; and they got through a deal both of work and of talk. . ."

Tolkien, "Farmer Giles of Ham"

". . .There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the wisdom of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique. . ."

CS Lewis, "The Abolition of Man"

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/lewis/abolition3.htm

"Mr Bredon had been a week with Pym's Publicity, and had learnt a number of things. . .the most convincing copy was always written with the tongue firmly in the cheek, a genuine conviction of the commodity's worth producing - for some reason - poverty and flatness of style;

. . .Mr Copley, an elderly, serious-minded man, who had entered the advertising profession before the modern craze set in for public-school-and-University-trained copy-writers, was remarkable for a tendency to dyspepsia and a perfectly miraculous knack of writing appetizing copy for tinned and packeted foodstuffs. Anything that came out of a tin or a packet was poison to him, and his diet consisted of undercooked beef-steak, fruit and whole-meal bread. The only copy he really enjoyed writing was that for Bunbury's Whole-Meal Flour, and he was perennially depressed when his careful eulogiums, packed with useful medical detail, were scrapped in favor of some light-headed foolishness of Ingleby's, on the story that Bunbury's Whole-Meal Flour took the Ache out of Baking. But on Sardines and Tinned Salmon he was unapproachable.

Ingleby specialized in snobbish copy about Twentyman's Teas ("preferred by Fashion's Favourites"), Whifflets ("in the Royal Enclosure at Ascot, in the Royal Yacht Club at Cowes, you find the discriminating men who smoke Whifflets") and Farley's Footwear ("Whether it's a big shoot or a Hunt Ball, Farley puts you on sound footing"). He lived in Bloomsbury, was communistic in a literary way, and dressed almost exclusively in pull-overs and grey flannels. . .

Miss Meteyard, with a somewhat similar mental makeup, could write about practically anything except women's goods, which were more competently dealt with by Mr. Willis or Mr. Garrett, the former of whom in particular, could handle corsets and face-cream with a peculiar plaintive charm which made him more than worth his salary. . ."

Dorothy Sayers, "Murder Must Advertise" (1933)

"Oh, it is difficult - Man is an animal very delicately balanced. . .He must, perhaps, retain some of the old savagery, but he must not - no definitely he must not - deify it! . . .I believe at least in one of the chief tenets of the Christian faith - contentment with a lowly place. . ."

Agatha Christie, Appointment with Death (1938)

http://www.bookfree.com.cn/yingwen/agch-appoin/006.htm

"Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it."

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mohandas_Karamchand_Gandhi

Wiki says, about this quote "No contemporaneous citations. Widespread attribution to Gandhi begins in post-1990 inspirational books.", but my dim impression is that it comes from a letter Gandhiji had written to someone.



posted by Anonymous at 1:28 AM

 
How many lives will access to quality affordable health care for all Americans save? How many lives will it improve?

In 2004, the IOM (Institute of Medicine of the National Academies) released a report asserting that "lack of health insurance causes roughly 18,000 unnecessary deaths every year in the United States". I gather some people think that estimate was too high, but what is the right estimate?

http://www.iom.edu/?id=19175

We've heard alot about scoring in terms of money, but what about scoring in terms of lives, lives saved and lives improved? How many lives will the current health care bills being debated save? How many will they improve?

posted by Anonymous at 11:24 PM

 
Creamy Olde England

So 6 months ago I sent for a UK book "Tom Cartwright - The Flame Still Burns", because I had read the Cricinfo piece "The D'Oliveira Affair", and was intrigued by Cartwright's role. (Basically, he pulled out of the tour, partly because of a shoulder injury, partly because of moral qualms, leading to a cricket boycott of South Africa which lasted till the end of apartheid.)

http://content.cricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/356092.html

Anyway after months of dipping into the book, reading a few pages at a a time, I've grown really fond of it. Tom Cartwright seems to me a player & coach well worth knowing about, so I want to post some of my favorite excerpts from the book. Here is the first, Tom Cartwright on his formative years and the importance of rhythm (p. 44):

"May 1953. . .It was a time of hope. There was full-employment, little inflation, a new National Health Service and a wide-scale programme of house-building. The war had been won, rationing was nearing its end and people were mostly happy to have returned to lives of routine.

"There was much more of a rhythm of life then. A rhythm of going to work and coming home at the same time each day, a rhythm of learning a trade and progressing with it, a rhythm even in people's leisure pursuits, and it gave people good manners and a consideration for others. People had settled lives. They did things which were within their reach - going out into the country, doing the garden, spending a day at cricket. Now people are striving for things they can't attain, the structures break down and the natural rhythm is lost."

The post-war surge in attendance at county cricket matches was dying away, but the game retained its familiar patterns and Tom could grow and develop within a structure that had a reassuring feeling of permanence.

County cricket. A four-month round of two three-day matches a week. A championship that captured the public imagination. The averages every week in the papers. And the cream at the top rising to the England team, an England team that would go more than seven years without losing a Test series.

"There was a rhythm of introducing young cricketers into the game, a rhythm that was constant. You joined a county club, you went about learning your job and in time, when somebody was injured or went off to play for England, you got your chance. By playing six days a week you got into form and, if you did well, there was an inevitability that your performances would be noted by writers and selectors. The fixture list wasn't disjointed, the counties didn't look for an overseas player whenever there was a vacancy, the selectors didn't make their minds up in April who was going to be in the England squad and who wasn't. The whole thing had a rhythm, an unbroken rhythm, and it provided a depth of quality, an intensity of competition between bat and ball in the county game"

Deep in the heart of Wales Tom works hard to help the young cricketers of today to progress in the game: to learn its manners, to develop its skills, to experience its pleasures. But he is not sure that the structures around him make that progress as easy as it was for him in the 1950's. "I'm a great believer in rhythm. When things are good, you get a good rhythm."

Tom Cartwright's Cricinfo page:

http://content.cricinfo.com/england/content/player/10679.html

The book's website, with another extract on Cartwright coaching Ian Botham

http://www.fairfieldbooks.org.uk/Tom/the_flame_still_burns.htm

Deep Thought:

I hadn't realized until fairly recently that "Gimme Hope Jo'anna" was a song protesting apartheid and the Jo'burg power elite, and not a song about scoring with Joanna.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimme_Hope_Jo%27anna

posted by Anonymous at 10:59 PM

 
Jeffrey Sach's testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Commitee, "Reforming US Foreign Assistance for a New Era":

http://www.millenniumpromise.org/site/DocServer/SachsTestimony090722p.pdf?docID=2261

". . .Third, the US should reorganize a considerable amount of its development efforts around a few strategic programs linked to sustainable economic development, including:

Agricultural productivity in low-income, food-deficit countries
Primary health care and disease control
Education for all
Sustainable energy
Sustainable water
Basic infrastructure (roads, power grid, ports, airports, rail, connectivity)
Integrated rural development
Promotion of sustainable businesses
Climate change adaptation

In each of these areas, the US should champion a rigorous, scaled, multilateral effort consistent with achieving the Millennium Development Goals, the Climate Change objectives, and the other globally agreed development objectives. . ."

via Millenium Promise

http://www.millenniumpromise.org/site/PageServer?pagename=home

Deep Thoughts:

I feel the need to change the name of this blog from "Hard Heads, Soft Hearts" to "Gorgeous Georgist".

"He was one of the great humanitarian French freethinkers; and the only thing wrong with them is that they make mercy even colder than justice." - GK Chesterton, "The Secret Garden".

posted by Anonymous at 2:38 PM

 
I'm rather suprised how much economics scribbling I've done lately.

The Real American Economic Metaphor Real Americans Have Been Waiting For

With all the talk of green shoots, glimmers,etc. the metaphor I come back to when thinking about the downturn is the old NASCAR phenomenon of "racing back to the caution flag"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racing_back_to_the_caution

i.e. the old economic model of asset bubbles, leverage, rising inequality, stagnant wages, union-busting and salvation through stock-market seems to have run its course, and no one knows what will replace it (inflation? deflation? punitive taxes? higher taxes? lower taxes caused by tax backlash? etc.).

It's a good bet that that things are really going to change, but at this time it's not at all clear what that change will consist of, or when it will occur. In other words, there's been an accident, but the caution flag has not yet come out. So people are semi-desperately trying to accumulate cash/ secure their place before the caution flag comes out, and the rules change.

Racing back to the caution is tempting but anti-social and dangerous behavior, which is why NASCAR eventually banned it. I don't think merely cutting back/trying to accumulate cash counts as being anti-social, but if you're simultaneously cutting back *and* opposing government programs for people who need a paycheck and can't get one, I think that qualifies you as a Robby Gordon-style asshole, because you're setting up a game of musical chairs which is inevitably going to leave some people out in the cold.

. . .Lester Thurow wrote a book in the seventies, in which he hypothesized that there might be a trade-off between static and dynamic efficiency. e.g. tenure, you tolerate the static inefficiencies of tenure, in order to get other advantages you can't get without tenure. Lately, when looking at real-world situations, it seems to me that the trade-off between static and dynamic efficiency is a very relevant concept, which people don't really seem to talk about. Eg. Circuit City's decision to fire its experienced workers, pursuing static efficiency, not realizing they were harming their dynamic efficiency.

IIRC, the book was: "Generating inequality : mechanisms of distribution in the U.S. economy" written in 1975.

. . .So I was wondering, when it comes to health insurance, whether there's any evidence that "mutual insurance" companies work any better than publicly-held insurance companies. To quote Wikipedia,

"Mutual insurance is a type of insurance where those protected by the insurance (policyholders) also have certain "ownership" rights in the organization. . .Historically, insurance began in the USA through a mutual (or cooperative) structure. Recently, some insurance companies have gone through demutualization and become public companies in an effort, among other things, to improve their ability to acquire capital. . ."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_insurance

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demutualization

. . .as opposed to publicly held insurers which are normal joint-stock companies.The reason I ask, is that it seems to me that, in theory, health insurance would be a good fit for mutual insurance, since if health care costs decrease, policy-holders should, in theory, see an immediate difference in their premiums.

But is there any truth in practice? Are there any mutual-insurance health-care plans which have a reputation for working well?

A quick google search turned up this paper on the subject:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=513690

Pure Versus Mutual Health Insurance: Evidence from Swedish Historical Data
Journal of Risk and Insurance, March 2004
Lena Nekby

. . .re: Gordon Brown, I think one big difference between Canada and the US/UK is that Canada has a perceived abundance of natural resources, while the US/UK don't, which made a difference to the asset bubble, and I think made a difference to the political fallout of the bubble bursting. Also I think one thing you might have mentioned is that Brown is one of the world leaders most committed to fighting global poverty, and global warming.

Frankly I find the parallels between David Cameron and Bush, who both rose to popularity by proposing big cuts in the inheritance tax, to be eerie, and wonder why more people don't make the comparison. To elaborate, the same compassionate conservatism, the same promise to "restore" values, character, leadership, common sense, the same massive chip on their shoulder about book-learning & intellectual snobbery, the same promise to preserve all the popular middle-class programs whilst cutting taxes, the same desire to make national politics more like high-school politics, the same lack of coherent thought, the same Uriah Heepish sentimentality, etc. etc.

. . .So I'm listening to Krugman's first Robbins lecture and it seems to me the key concept of a recession is the fallacy of composition, or as Krugman has written before, the difference between a closed system and an open system. That is, people want to increase their economic security by accumulating cash, but while an individual person can do that, society as a whole cannot increase its economic security merely by accumulating cash, it can only do so by producing real economic output.

Perhaps one of the causes of a recession is cash suddenly becomes much more attractive as a store of value, because other stores of value have suddenly become much less attractive?

And it seems to me that one important phenomenon of the late 20-th century is the perception that land & other natural resources are going to become scarcer over time, and therefore the important thing to do to become an economic winner is to position yourself to be a rentier, rather than a renter/worker.

So it seems to me that one of the automatic stabilizers that might be worth considering is to sort of tip the scales in the other direction, to make being a rentier less desirable, and to make being a renter/worker more desirable, especially during a down economy.

So suppose you had a "modest wealth tax", as Edward Wolff once proposed & you wrote about. Has any economist discussed linking a George-ist style wealth tax to the unemployment rate/ employment performance of an economy?

So in boom times of low unemployment, the wealth tax goes down, to reward the wealthy for doing a good job of employing people. While in times of high unemployment, the wealth tax goes up, to give the wealthy an incentive to bring unemployment down as quickly as possible?

For other taxes, you don't want to raise them during a recession, but it seems to me that the situation might be different for a wealth tax. It seems to me that low wealth tax rates during boom times and higher taxes during bust might actually be stabilizing, as the wealthy might accept that it's not possible to escape economic pain by beggaring thy neighbor.

. . .So I'm listening to Krugman's second Robbins lecture, and the question that comes to my mind is if all these people were wrecking their balance sheets with excessive consumption, how come that didn't result in more inflation?

One possible answer is that it did result in inflation, but not inflation of things measured under the CPI. In this vein, I'm sort of intrigued by Kevin Drum's post about the The 6th Street Viaduct, adjusted for inflation, costing 10 times more than in 1932.

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2009/02/6th-street-viaduct

Is William Baumol still around? I'd be interested in his analysis of the economic crisis, and where the recovery comes from.

. . .In Chris Hayes's article "The Compensation Hustle", he wrote:

"Bloated CEO salaries aren't exactly new, but why they persist is harder to explain than you might think. Every dollar paid to an executive above his or her actual worth comes from the pockets of the shareholders. And while workers may be too beaten down to fight back, investors aren't exactly a powerless class in America. Why, then, do they allow clubby compensation committees and consultants to pick their pockets? "

It's a good question, and the answer that makes sense to me is that most small shareholders don't seem to buy stocks for the dividends, they buy them for the rise in the stock price. And it seems to me that management encourages this, encouraging shareholders to view their company's stock *not* as a stream of dividends but as a "rapid grower".

There was an interesting little illustration of this recently, it seems to me. GE's stock was getting hammered, and was so low that, if the company kept it's annual dividend, it represented a really good deal. Instead of saying "well, we think the stock price is too low, but paying dividends is what we're here for" the CEO cut the dividend, not on grounds that GE couldn't afford to pay the dividend, but simply because he preferred not to give common stockholders that rich a deal. I found it illuminating: clearly management does not view the purpose of their jobs as earning dividends, but views a dividend as a necessary evil, something that has to be managed, like ordinary worker wages. And the CEO was Jeff Immelt, someone who I think is more honest and honorable than most CEOs.

Kevin Drum recently ran two comment threads, with the questions

1) Why is the modern financial system so profitable? Shouldn't it actually be getting less profitable over time?

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2009/03/question

2) So what has financial innovation gotten us, aside from massive profits for clever bankers?

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2009/04/financial-innovation

The whole threads are probably worth reading, but here where my guesses:

1)Decline in interest rates

I'd second the people who are fingering the decline in interest rates. In the long term lower-interest rates should reduce the income of the wealthy. And in the long-term interest rates should decrease in first-world countries, as capital becomes more and more abundant. But it turns out that in the short-term (i.e. since 1982) , the decline in interest rates has been great for the wealthy, as an asset yielding the same amount of interest or dividend or rental income has doubled or tripled or quadrupled in price. And rising asset values triggered a bubble mentality, leading to people investing based on the greater-fool theory, rather than for the underlying interest or dividends or rent.

2) When did we start to ignore old-fashioned belief in dividends?

Actually, I think the main problem re:the asset bubbles is not financial innovation per se, but the widespread belief that stocks have some mystical ability to be worth much more than the dividends that they pay out. Somewhere along the line, management managed to convince investors that dividends are nasty, filthy things; you have to pay taxes on them, management can reinvest your money much better for you than you can do for yourself, etc. Those things are often true, nevertheless the only fundamental point of owning a stock is to collect dividends. Without dividends, a stock is just a worthless piece of paper.

I was skimming a book on Buffett & acounting, and read one point that seemed true to me. There is one day a year where you can get an accurate number for a company's profits: the day they pay taxes. So the lesson was to be careful of a company that has large reported profits, for which it pays little in taxes. If a company pays little in taxes, it's possible that its real profits are also little, and that it's reported profits are a mirage.

Similarly, it seems to me that the small investor needs to be careful of a richly valued stock that pays little in dividends. Especially keep in mind that most corporations have a lifecycle, so if a company doesn't pay out dividends when its profits and growth are fat, there's a non-remote possibility that those profits will never be distributed to shareholders - rather, they will be eaten up if/when the company enters its period of decline, overtaken by new competitors/technologies.

Google and Microsoft, for example, are great *companies*, to be sure, great organizations, run by honest and good managements, for the most part. But is there any reason to believe Google and Microsoft are good stocks?

. . .Evil thought: mark-to-tax mortgaging. Was thinking about Prop. 13, and had a thought about one way California might have prevented the worst of the bubble burst - to not allow homeowners to assess their house, for morgage purposes, for any more than they assess their house for property-tax purposes. Too late now, but it does indicate that, in general, allowing people to borrow against rapidly appreciating assets should be something policymakers keep an eye on.

. . .Is there any data on how much of their reported profits publicly traded corporations were retaining, and how much they were paying out in dividends, and whether the retained-profits number increased during the bubble years?

. . .Thinking about this crisis, I think a key phenemenon was that as the bubble went on, we were increasingly counting our chickens before they hatched. Of course we have do this to value financial streams of payments, but it seems to me that not only we did it, but we did it to a greater and greater extent, e.g. the rotten idea to privatize the state lottery, getting a one time payment for the state in exchange for 20 years of lottery profits.

There was even a cant financial industry phrase that justified this increased chicken-counting: "debts are easy to manage, but be careful about liabilities". That piece of wisdom implied that you should take an organization, fire as many employees as possible(reducing liabilities, and accounting for future savings immediately), then load it with debt (because "debt is easy to manage").

. . .I've been thinking about the Bastiat quote:

"Everyone wants to live off the state. They forget that the state lives off of everyone."

It seems to me the statement is true & important, but a converse statement is also true & important:

"Everyone wants to live off investments. They forget that investments live off of everyone."

That is, a socialist economy is bad for economic performance, but a rentier economy is *also* bad for performance, and it seems to me there is less awareness/appreciation of this among mainstream economists.

Delong once pointed to Vickrey-Mirlees as the originators of this kind of "sweet-spot" thinking, where policy tries to find the optimal middle ground between socialism and rentierism. Who are the the current economists who carrying on the Vickrey-Mirlees ideas?

. . .I have a question on the 1982 recession, which seems to me a good example of a recession which had a strong, fast, reasonably sustained recovery.

My question is, what were the total levels of combined stimulus for that recession, especially in the key years 1982-1984? That is, if you add the fiscal stimulus, plus the monetary stimulus, plus maybe the implicit stimulus of a falling dollar, plus maybe the implicit stimulus of asset prices which had hit rock bottom and had nowhere to go but up, what does that combined number come to, in terms of GDP or constant dollars?

In general, I have seen lots of discussion of the size of fiscal stimulus in terms of GDP, but I have not seen many attempts to equate monetary stimulus with fiscal stimulus, by discussing historical episodes of monetary stimulus in terms of their size in GDP.

The other question I have on stimulus is how to analyze whether passing guaranteed affordable health care, and other economic security-type programs, will have any effect on people's willingness to spend.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/07/todays_chat_transcript.html

Reading Ezra's chat transcript, and was struck by the person who says "Sorry I don't care about the 45 million Americans without health insurance".

One response, ala the Simpsons, is "Oh I know, despite your protestations, that you really do care for the uninsured, you big softie."

But even assuming genuine indifference, I think a self-interested voter is still better off voting for a politician who cares at least a bit about the uninsured. After all, electing a politician who claims not to care for the uninsured is a good way, if you think about it, to elect a corrupt sociopath who will have no qualms denying health care to the uninsured, and also no qualms stealing your taxes, raiding your IRA, outsourcing your job for kickbacks, etc. etc.

It's a real dilemna for the purely self-interested voter. If you vote for a politician with the platform "I'll benefit you by screwing over someone else", how do you stop that politican from screwing you over, at the first opportunity? As American voters have learnt the hard way over the last few years, you can't.

And no, a 5% tax increase on someone making a $1 million a year does not count as screwing over someone, certainly not compared to denying someone basic health care.

This is related to a point John Quiggin made about the problem with buying stock in a company run by management that claims to be interested soley in maximizing profits for shareholders:

http://crookedtimber.org/2008/07/31/putting-the-creativity-back-in-creative-capitalism/#more-7267

". . .So, more than in the past, it makes sense for corporations to cultivate diffuse goodwill. . .Richard Posner recognises much of this but argues that corporate managers should instead adopt a hypocritical pose of general concern. . .then exploit it to maximise profits. . .[But] if the managers of a company are chosen to be capable of successfully conning the public in the interests of shareholders, why would anyone expect them to forgo the chance to enrich themselves at shareholders’ expense?"

And this is the Simpsons quote I was referring to:

http://www.snpp.com/episodes/8F06.html

"Bart: Hey, how come Lisa gets a pony?

Homer: Because she stopped loving me.

Bart: I don't love you either, so give me a moped.

Homer: Too bad, boy, I can see the love in your eyes, so you don't get squat. Hee hee hee.

Bart: [looks depressed] Dohh. . ."

In other words, I think most people claiming not to love the uninsured are doing so not because they're sociopaths, but because they think it will get them a moped. Or a pony.

posted by Anonymous at 8:50 PM

 
Was reading a blog post today that reminded me of this passage from The Magician's Nephew:

". . .She gave it to me and made me promise that as soon as she was dead I would burn it, unopened, with certain ceremonies. That promise I did not keep."

"Well, then, it was jolly rotten of you," said Digory.

"Rotten?", said Uncle Andrew with a puzzled look. "Oh, I see. You mean that little boys ought to keep their promises. Very true: most right and proper, I'm sure, and I'm very glad you have been taught to do it. But of course you must understand that rules of that sort, however excellent they may be for little boys - and servants - and women - and even people in general, can't possibly be expected to apply to profound students and great thinkers and sages. No, Digory. Men like me, who posess hidden wisdom, are freed from common rules just as we are cut off from common pleasures. Ours, my boy, is a high and lonely destiny."

As he said this he sighed and looked so grave and noble and mysterious that for a second Digory really thought he was saying something rather fine. But then he remembered the ugly look he had seen on his Uncle's face the moment before Polly had vanished: and all at once he saw through Uncle Andrew's grand words. "All it means", he said to himself, "is that he thinks he can do anything he likes to get anything he wants."

. . ."I am the great scholar, the magician, the adept, who is doing the experiment. Of course I need subjects to do it on. . .the idea of going myself is ridiculous. It's like asking a general to fight as a common soldier."

. . .Some of the actions of the more vehement anti-Dem protestors call to mind this December 2000 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette column by Gene Lyons:

". . .In many ways, the dispute between Al Gore and George W. Bush supporters has come to resemble the desperate tension inside what therapists call a "dysfunctional family" dominated by the whims of an alcoholic husband. From Nov. 7 until quite recently, Democrats have been acting like the classic "enabler"of therapeutic literature: tiptoeing around, speaking quietly of fairness, democratic process and law, and trying hard not to give GOP hard-liners an excuse to get drunk, pitch the TV through a window, beat the children and set fire to the family cat."

posted by Anonymous at 2:18 PM

 
Donate $10 or more to HCAN (Health Care For America Now), get access to a quality, affordable t-shirt in one of six sizes: S, M, L, XL, XXL, XXXL

Via Donkeylicious

http://www.donkeylicious.com/2009/07/donate-to-hcan-get-shirt.html

https://secure.healthcareforamericanow.org/page/contribute/april

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/

posted by Anonymous at 6:00 PM

 
The WWW is kind of awesome. I was fairly sure that the Aldous Huxley essay "Comfort" would not be on the web, as it's pretty obscure, I only read it in a 1943 anthology edited by Somerset Maugham. But sure enough, one person has posted it on their blog, and it's about the only bit of English writing on their site, the rest is in an Asian script I don't know. I'm guessing, because the front picture shows first-world prosperity, that it's Japanese or Korean. Other than the Huxley essay, the other English on the site is a link to a J. Krishnamurti biography, a link to the The Road Less Traveled, and a quote from Walden. Also, there are many posts about Maslow and the Hierarchy of Needs. Rather than read the blog, it's almost more fun to look at the pictures and speculate what's going on inside this Japanese(?) blogger's head.

http://maslow.wordpress.com/2007/10/12/comfort-by-aldous-huxley/

Another Deep Thought:

" if Sloth overtakes Love, Beatrice is lost in the Siren, the romantic Image in the pseudo-romantic mirage" - Charles Williams, via Dorothy Sayers, "Dante and Charles Williams".
posted by Anonymous at 1:08 PM

 
Thinking about Josh Marshall's post about rent-seeking & the public option, and his link to the Wikipedia page,

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2009/06/bottom_line_on_public_option.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking

I think my core complaint with mainstream economics is that there seems to be a careless, unspoken assumption that

1) Rent-seeking usually occurs because of too much government, and not too little.

2) The main problem with rent-seeking is in the seeking of rent, and not in the rent itself, and its distribution.

I first started thinking on these George-ist type issues after reading this article by by Dan Sullivan, via someone in the comments on Dean Baker's blog:

"Are you a Real Libertarian, or a ROYAL Libertarian?"

http://geolib.pair.com/essays/sullivan.dan/royallib.html


Two more Deep Thoughts:

When a large portion of the nation's elite adopts the mindset "make my pile quickly and retire early", bad things happen.

Orwell: "It is easier — even quicker, once you have the habit — to say `In my opinion it is not an unjustifiable assumption that' than to say `I think'."
posted by Anonymous at 7:07 PM

 
More Deep Thoughts:

The basic lesson of this financial crisis: Don't count your chickens before they are hatched.

Crate & Barrel sells neither Crates nor Barrels.

Frédéric Bastiat: "Everyone wants to live off the state. They forget that the state lives off of everyone."

Me: Everyone wants to live off investments. They forget that investments live off of everyone.

PG Wodehouse: "The Glow Worm always sold well, principally because of the personal nature of its contents. If the average mortal is told that there is something about him in a paper, he will buy that paper at your own price." (The Pothunters)

The nut grafs of Part One of Wigan Pier (which actually appear in Part Two):

". . .So long as it is merely a question of ameliorating the worker’s lot, every decent person is agreed. Take a coal-miner, for example. Everyone, barring fools and scoundrels, would like to see the miner better off. If, for instance, the miner could ride to the coal face in a comfortable trolley instead of crawling on his hands and knees, if he could work a three-hour shift instead of seven and a half hours, if he could live in a decent house with five bedrooms and a bath-room and have ten pounds a week wages—splendid! Moreover, anyone who uses his brain knows perfectly well that this is within the range of possibility. The world, potentially at least, is immensely rich; develop it as it might be developed, and we could all live like princes, supposing that we wanted to. . .The world is a raft sailing through space with, potentially, plenty of provisions for everybody; the idea that we must all cooperate and see to it that every-one does his fair share of the work and gets his fair share of the provisions seems so blatantly obvious that one would say that no one could possibly fail to accept it unless he had some corrupt motive for clinging to the present system."

I'm not sure that Orwell is right on this, but I'm also not sure that he's wrong.

Dorothy Sayers: "Every time we expect, as is said, our money to work for us, we are expecting other people to work for us; an when we expect it to bring in more money in a year than honest work could produce in that time, we are expecting it to cheat and steal on our behalf. . .The virtue of which covetousness is the perversion is something more positive and warm-hearted than thrift. It is the love of the real values, of which the material world has only two: the fruits of the earth and the labor of the people." (The Other Six Deadly Sins)
posted by Anonymous at 11:01 PM

 
book/paper I want to read: "The life-cycle of corporations and long-term equity/debt returns for the small passive investor". Who has written it? If no one, who has written the best book/paper on "The life-cycle of corporations: historical data and theoretical models"? Also interested in discussions comparing the life-cycle of publicly traded corporations versus the life-cycle of private corporations/proprietorships/partnerships.
posted by Anonymous at 8:07 PM

 
I like Deep Thoughts, and probably think one of the big blogs should have an open thread for them, if they don't already. Here are 2 of mine, followed by a (really) deep thought:

Deep Thought: Living off the capital feels a lot like living off the income.

Deep Thought: You can't mix sambar with ketchup.

Deep Thought: "Patriotism is not enough, I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Cavell

And it seems to me that for "patriotism" you can substitute "ideals" or "dreams".
posted by Anonymous at 2:04 PM

 
KPS Gill is not a saint, he may have committed human rights abuses for all that I know of. Nevertheless, I think he makes an important point here, in this internat chat:

http://im.rediff.com/chat/kpschat.htm

Buddy (Wed Jun 11 1997 21:12 IST)
MR. GILL I HAVE HEARD THAT YOU DIDN'T SPARE EVEN AN FRIEND OF TERRORIST OR A PERSON WHO EVEN ONCE MET THAT TERRORIST..WOULD U PLS. COMMENT....

K P S Gill (Wed Jun 11 1997 21:18 IST)
Buddy: What you have heard is a calumny. When we found that quite a number of terrorists were continuing to engage us in gun fights, we took a conscious policy by telling them: Come and surrender before and we shall take a lenient view of what has happened. Thousands surrendered. These were active terrorists, not their friends. Although there are certain text books on terrorism which advise this course of action, fortunately I did not learn my work on the anti-terrorist front from any text book. The death of terrorists caused me as much anguish as the death of my policemen and officers.

swami (Wed Jun 11 1997 21:19 IST)
What is wrong with killing a terrorist before he kills more innocent people? Is killing in self defense considered extra judicial killing?

K P S Gill (Wed Jun 11 1997 21:22 IST)
Swamy: Our law on self defence envisages a situation in which there is an eminent danger to the life of the person exercising the right of self defence, and he has no means of escape. If he has a means of escape, he has no right of self defence. So the thesis that you kill a terrorist because if you don't kill him before his kills many others is not tenable under the Indian law.

I've been thinking, In the wake of the Israeli killing in Gaza, that the idea that the difference between good and bad is that bad intentionally kills civilians, while good does not, has been shown to be a rotten, corrupting idea. The difference between good & bad, has to be that good dislikes killing, will search for alternatives, and will do it only as a last resort, and with reluctance. Fascism is nothing more and nothing less than killing without mercy, remorse or empathy.

We frequently see the phrase "religious fanaticism", and it is a scary, horrifying phenomenon. What we are now seeing is cold-blooded, coldly rational fanaticism. And it just might be the scariest phenomenon of all.

Less hysterically, we see some people saying that Israel inflicting a 1000-1 casualty ratio on Gaza, while perhaps a tad excessive, nevertheless will eventually accomplish the goal of making Palestinians think twice before firing primitive rockets and disturbing the quiet and serenity of their Israeli neighbors. What they are overlooking is that Palestinians, and Palestinian-sympathizers, are not always going to have merely primitive rockets. There will come a day when they achieve military parity, or near-parity, or near-enough parity, with their potential adversaries. What then?

What Israel is doing right now is analogous to threatening nuclear war in order to get your way on a small issue. Yes, you might get your way on the small issue, but only by greatly increasing the chance of a huge catastrophe in the future. And the moral and intellectual corruption caused by playing ever more extravagant games of chicken tends to degrade your society in other ways as well. The people who are apologizing for the sickening and unjustifiable events in Gaza are not friends of Israel, whatever they might believe.
posted by Anonymous at 6:30 PM