On this day, 20 years ago, was the most beautiful world event of my life.
I grew up in a world with 11,000 nuclear warheads pointed at my country, raised to think the world would remain forever divided, or at least, divided past my lifetime.
Oh, and there were plenty of people convinced that we weren't actually the ones who would outlast the USSR...that they would outlast *us*...
And that if it ever did end, neither side would give in without a fight.
And then, one morning...
Gone.
My history teacher announced it to the high school at a morning assembly.
Tears were running down his cheeks.
It was like the end of WWII, I guess, except by the time *that* happened, it was a lot cleared that the end was coming.
Yes, there were signs of a thaw-especially that fence thing in Hungary...but we kept waiting for the tanks.
Surely they'd send the tanks in again...they always had before...
And then...The Wall.
It was all so sudden.
There would be no tanks.
The missiles would stand down.
And it woulnd't involve a last gasp war.
And for all those hundreds of millions...
The cage door finally opened.
Forever.
Go here for a nice post and a beautiful video.
"There is something within all people that forever wants to be free," my teacher said at the end of his speech.
To all those, free and unfree...happy 9/11
Monday, November 9, 2009
Monday, November 2, 2009
Ezra Klein blows my little mind.
Just check out these charts. No. Really. Go LOOK AT THEM.
I don't understand the mechanism, but this is really, really important to the price control issue. And, no, it's not the profit motive, you knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing troglodytic sycophants of Karl Marx. That's less than 10%.
Now, given the source (an insurance company CEO, not Mssr. Klein, whom I trust, if often disagree with), I'm a teensy bit skeptical. And I've long suspected that this was true in pharma. But I hadn't realized how universal it was.
I don't understand the mechanism, but this is really, really important to the price control issue. And, no, it's not the profit motive, you knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing troglodytic sycophants of Karl Marx. That's less than 10%.
Now, given the source (an insurance company CEO, not Mssr. Klein, whom I trust, if often disagree with), I'm a teensy bit skeptical. And I've long suspected that this was true in pharma. But I hadn't realized how universal it was.
Friday, October 30, 2009
The Stupid HUUUUUUUUURTS!
I go back and forth between thinking that people who practice alternative medicine are evil con-artists who deserve as special place in hell, and thinking that they are just so unbelievably deluded that they actually believe this crap. This video is actually pretty powerful evidence of the latter. Nobody is this evil; it must be due to stupid.
But it huuuuuuuuuurts! (h/t Lawyers, Guns, and Money)
The level of ignorance of high school levels of science is truly astounding. It just goes to show the power of two things:
1) The Placebo Effect
2) The Ariadnist desire to believe that Modern (and, to finger the most common reason for the discomfort with the Modern--Western) science doesn't have the answers; there is another, truer way that can be found in other traditions, be they homeopathy, traditional Chinese medicine, Indian dietetic practices, or prayer.
Amazingly, however, rejecting science has become so unthinkable in our Minoan society that it cannot be flatly denied. It must be co-opted. We'll ignore biology, but steal terms from Einsteinian (or, more commonly, quantum) physics (and use them in laughably wrong ways) to explain our snake oil treatments. We'll toss post-1950 biology to deny evolution, but rather than denying the scientific method, we'll say the scientists are doing it wrong and are part of a conspiracy. We'll do experiments, but reject double blind studies, and claim that "the establishment" is threatened by the findings.
Rene' Descartes is generally credited with Dualism-the separation of the physical world from the spiritual.
He's often been criticized, and it does seem that the distinction between "mind" and "brain" is a false one. But all of the findings are in the direction that what we have often thought of as "mind" (the non-physical aspects of our noggin) is at least in part, really "brain" (that is, it is governed by material laws of chemistry, physics, and biology), not that a lot of what we thought was "brain" is really "mind". This means that in understanding the body, it's more, not less, important to get the science right and not listen to spiritualist quacks than it was in the day of Descartes.
The Cartesian worldview has its problems. But if you're revising it like this-
You're doing it wrong.
But it huuuuuuuuuurts! (h/t Lawyers, Guns, and Money)
The level of ignorance of high school levels of science is truly astounding. It just goes to show the power of two things:
1) The Placebo Effect
2) The Ariadnist desire to believe that Modern (and, to finger the most common reason for the discomfort with the Modern--Western) science doesn't have the answers; there is another, truer way that can be found in other traditions, be they homeopathy, traditional Chinese medicine, Indian dietetic practices, or prayer.
Amazingly, however, rejecting science has become so unthinkable in our Minoan society that it cannot be flatly denied. It must be co-opted. We'll ignore biology, but steal terms from Einsteinian (or, more commonly, quantum) physics (and use them in laughably wrong ways) to explain our snake oil treatments. We'll toss post-1950 biology to deny evolution, but rather than denying the scientific method, we'll say the scientists are doing it wrong and are part of a conspiracy. We'll do experiments, but reject double blind studies, and claim that "the establishment" is threatened by the findings.
Rene' Descartes is generally credited with Dualism-the separation of the physical world from the spiritual.
He's often been criticized, and it does seem that the distinction between "mind" and "brain" is a false one. But all of the findings are in the direction that what we have often thought of as "mind" (the non-physical aspects of our noggin) is at least in part, really "brain" (that is, it is governed by material laws of chemistry, physics, and biology), not that a lot of what we thought was "brain" is really "mind". This means that in understanding the body, it's more, not less, important to get the science right and not listen to spiritualist quacks than it was in the day of Descartes.
The Cartesian worldview has its problems. But if you're revising it like this-
You're doing it wrong.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
The Sun President
In most respects, Obama has been a top-shelf president. But in one, which goes to the heart of what separates a president from Louis XIV, he has been alarmingly quick to effectively utter, "L'economie, c'est moi."
From the New York Times (h/t Professor Bainbridge):
Responding to the growing furor over the paychecks of executives at companies that received billions of dollars in the government’s financial rescue, the Obama administration will order the companies that received the most aid to deeply slash the compensation to their highest paid executives, an official involved in the decision said on Wednesday.
Under the plan, which will be announced in the next few days by the Treasury Department, the seven companies that received the most assistance will have to cut the annual salaries of their 25 best-paid executives by an average of about 90 percent from last year. Their total compensation — including bonuses and retirement contributions — will drop, on average, by about 50 percent.
Now, I totally agree that when we sat these companies down over TARP, we were well within our rights to say, "Any compensation which isn't yet spelled out in a contract, including CEO bonuses which have not been explicitly promised, will be reduced to X level, or by Y percent, or will be set by The President at his whim. That's the deal. Take it or leave it."
The banks would very possibly have whined and howled; some might have walked away. But had they signed, the President would have been within his rights to do this.
Instead, we are to treat the TARP bailout as a favor from The Godfather
Somehow, accepting this "favor" then grants the Administration the right, at some later day, to ask a favor in return. This favor is not to be spelled out in advance. It cannot be contractual. It cannot be refused.
Bainbridge is exactly right that:
The basic problem is here is that many (most?) of the compensation deals the Obama administration is shredding were set in employment contracts. Granted, some of those employment contracts were signed after the law setting up pay "czar" Kenneth Feinberg's position and empowering him to review pay packages at TARP firms. But a lot of them are pre-existing contracts and it's those contracts that are the main concern.
Feinberg in fact is trumpeting his success at forcing so-called renegotiation "even for contracts over which he did not have explicit authority."
The bottom line thus is that Obama is having his minion coerce TARP executives and employees into ripping up contracts Obama doesn't like so as to assuage the populist public. In doing so, Obama and his appropriately entitled "czar" are exhibiting a basic lack of respect for the rule of law.
Kim Strassel goes further than me, likening Obama throughout her article to Al Capone, but this piece certainly struck a chord. This is pattern behavior:
The Chamber can at least take comfort in crowds. Who isn't on the business end of the White House's sawed-off shotgun? First up were Chrysler bondholders who—upon balking at a White House deal that rewarded only unions—were privately threatened and then publicly excoriated by the president.
Next, every pharmaceutical, hospital and insurance executive in the nation was held out as a prime obstacle to health-care nirvana. And that was their reward for cooperating. When Humana warned customers about cuts to Medicare under "reform," the White House didn't bother to complain. They went straight for the gag order. When the insurance industry criticized the Baucus health bill, the response was this week's bill to strip them of their federal antitrust immunity.
But this isn't Corleone or Capone. These were common thugs. The difference between thugs and overmighty executives is that the latter do not run a crime family, they run the state. They therefore don't need to use explicit violence to get their way, they threaten legislation. This doesn't affect our tender sensibilities as much, because we are spared the unsightly sporting of sawed off shotguns.
But this is extortion all the same; violation of contract by threats belongs to the annals of Phillip II of Spain and Louis XIV of France, not the First Citizens who answer to "Mr. President" at the manor on the Potomac. In fact, this violates a more fundamental principle.
Mr. Obama should visit the National Archives. It's just down the street, and in a corner (there's not even a line), he can view a document which is on loan to The Republic. It was written in 1215 at Runnymede, and it contains the following timeless phrase:
No freeman shall be taken, imprisoned,...or in any other way destroyed...except by the lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land. To no one will we sell, to none will we deny or delay, right or justice.
Mr. Obama, the might and majesty of your office rests on your acceptance of this phrase. This is why you must close Guantanamo. This is why you must repeal so much of the Patriot Act. And this is why you must recognize the sanctity of contract. This is no national emergency. The survival of the West does not hang on cutting these salaries. This is a cheap political stunt that may gain you a couple of points in the polls for three or four weeks. The Great Charter should not be disregarded for such small beer.
UPDATE:
It should be also noted, as I blogged here (original link is Drezner's post here), that TARP looks like (WOOP!, WOOP! Danger..speculation here!) it will turn a profit. I think this is something which is completely outside the public (and media) perception. This is why the above article (and the common perception) tell this story as if this is Uncle Sam's money...after all, we just gave these banks $700M!!! Well, we didn't. We loaned them $700M, and they seem to be paying it back.
All of this just makes it more ridiculous for the Executive branch to go in and change salaries. Just think about it. If you take out a huge loan from the bank, and you're making the mortgage payments on time, how ridiculous would it be for the bank to try to force you to not buy a brand new car (assuming, of course, the mortgage terms said nothing about a car)? How is "I lent you money once" justification for me to tell you (actually force you...) how to spend your money now?
From the New York Times (h/t Professor Bainbridge):
Responding to the growing furor over the paychecks of executives at companies that received billions of dollars in the government’s financial rescue, the Obama administration will order the companies that received the most aid to deeply slash the compensation to their highest paid executives, an official involved in the decision said on Wednesday.
Under the plan, which will be announced in the next few days by the Treasury Department, the seven companies that received the most assistance will have to cut the annual salaries of their 25 best-paid executives by an average of about 90 percent from last year. Their total compensation — including bonuses and retirement contributions — will drop, on average, by about 50 percent.
Now, I totally agree that when we sat these companies down over TARP, we were well within our rights to say, "Any compensation which isn't yet spelled out in a contract, including CEO bonuses which have not been explicitly promised, will be reduced to X level, or by Y percent, or will be set by The President at his whim. That's the deal. Take it or leave it."
The banks would very possibly have whined and howled; some might have walked away. But had they signed, the President would have been within his rights to do this.
Instead, we are to treat the TARP bailout as a favor from The Godfather
Somehow, accepting this "favor" then grants the Administration the right, at some later day, to ask a favor in return. This favor is not to be spelled out in advance. It cannot be contractual. It cannot be refused.
Bainbridge is exactly right that:
The basic problem is here is that many (most?) of the compensation deals the Obama administration is shredding were set in employment contracts. Granted, some of those employment contracts were signed after the law setting up pay "czar" Kenneth Feinberg's position and empowering him to review pay packages at TARP firms. But a lot of them are pre-existing contracts and it's those contracts that are the main concern.
Feinberg in fact is trumpeting his success at forcing so-called renegotiation "even for contracts over which he did not have explicit authority."
The bottom line thus is that Obama is having his minion coerce TARP executives and employees into ripping up contracts Obama doesn't like so as to assuage the populist public. In doing so, Obama and his appropriately entitled "czar" are exhibiting a basic lack of respect for the rule of law.
Kim Strassel goes further than me, likening Obama throughout her article to Al Capone, but this piece certainly struck a chord. This is pattern behavior:
The Chamber can at least take comfort in crowds. Who isn't on the business end of the White House's sawed-off shotgun? First up were Chrysler bondholders who—upon balking at a White House deal that rewarded only unions—were privately threatened and then publicly excoriated by the president.
Next, every pharmaceutical, hospital and insurance executive in the nation was held out as a prime obstacle to health-care nirvana. And that was their reward for cooperating. When Humana warned customers about cuts to Medicare under "reform," the White House didn't bother to complain. They went straight for the gag order. When the insurance industry criticized the Baucus health bill, the response was this week's bill to strip them of their federal antitrust immunity.
But this isn't Corleone or Capone. These were common thugs. The difference between thugs and overmighty executives is that the latter do not run a crime family, they run the state. They therefore don't need to use explicit violence to get their way, they threaten legislation. This doesn't affect our tender sensibilities as much, because we are spared the unsightly sporting of sawed off shotguns.
But this is extortion all the same; violation of contract by threats belongs to the annals of Phillip II of Spain and Louis XIV of France, not the First Citizens who answer to "Mr. President" at the manor on the Potomac. In fact, this violates a more fundamental principle.
Mr. Obama should visit the National Archives. It's just down the street, and in a corner (there's not even a line), he can view a document which is on loan to The Republic. It was written in 1215 at Runnymede, and it contains the following timeless phrase:
No freeman shall be taken, imprisoned,...or in any other way destroyed...except by the lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land. To no one will we sell, to none will we deny or delay, right or justice.
Mr. Obama, the might and majesty of your office rests on your acceptance of this phrase. This is why you must close Guantanamo. This is why you must repeal so much of the Patriot Act. And this is why you must recognize the sanctity of contract. This is no national emergency. The survival of the West does not hang on cutting these salaries. This is a cheap political stunt that may gain you a couple of points in the polls for three or four weeks. The Great Charter should not be disregarded for such small beer.
UPDATE:
It should be also noted, as I blogged here (original link is Drezner's post here), that TARP looks like (WOOP!, WOOP! Danger..speculation here!) it will turn a profit. I think this is something which is completely outside the public (and media) perception. This is why the above article (and the common perception) tell this story as if this is Uncle Sam's money...after all, we just gave these banks $700M!!! Well, we didn't. We loaned them $700M, and they seem to be paying it back.
All of this just makes it more ridiculous for the Executive branch to go in and change salaries. Just think about it. If you take out a huge loan from the bank, and you're making the mortgage payments on time, how ridiculous would it be for the bank to try to force you to not buy a brand new car (assuming, of course, the mortgage terms said nothing about a car)? How is "I lent you money once" justification for me to tell you (actually force you...) how to spend your money now?
Friday, October 9, 2009
Adulation for Nothing and your Peace Prize for Free
Maybe I'm just jaded, but doesn't it seem like this was the most nakedly transparent political statement the Nobel Committee has ever made (it's a strong field, I know...I'm thinking of you, President Carter, you Mohammed El Baradei, and you, Senator Gore)?
Okay, I have to say, I'd give the Obama administration very strong marks for their performance today, and I'll up Mencken's compliment of FDR ("a second class intellect but a first class temperament") to say that Obama's first class in both categories. It's certainly a relief to have the adults back at the tiller of the ship of state.
But, um, shouldn't he have done something...substantial...for, say...peace?
His Afghan and Iraq policy look a lot like the second term of the second Bush administration...probably any president would be doing substantially the same thing.
The Israel/Palestine thing? Well, we're talking sense on settlements, but as near as I can tell, our special envoy has been told to dry out in Haifa drinking Turkish coffee until the President has this whole economy and health care thing straightened out. We're not exactly working the problem.
Iran? His handling has been good, but we have neither a Grand Bargain, a peaceful democratic overthrow of the mullahs, a new modus vivendi with the regime wherein we accept nuclear weapons, nor a deal under which they stop building them.
The drug war in Latin America blazes on, Africa is still in flames, and China and India are being handled well, if not any differently from the Bush years.
There's just no there there. I'm sure there are many deserving people around the world, but if you absolutely felt you must give it to a U.S. President, I can name two who are far more deserving:
George H. W. Bush brought the Cold War to a peaceful close. Almost not a shot was fired. The Warsaw Pact dissolved of its own volition, as did the USSR. The USSR signed the marriage papers of a reunified Germany (in NATO!), as did an equally opposed France and Britain. Panama was a textbook example of minimalist use of force to preserve a democratic state and rapid return to normalcy for that nation. The First Gulf War was the most international and internationally sanctioned war since the Korean War (and unlike that war, was done with the USSR and the PRC supporting). Granted, the post-war sanctions were a disaster, but the international community would not have stood for going to Baghdad in 1991. Even Tienanmen Square, and his handling of China, looks wise in retrospect. Rather than China imitating Germany ca. 1890, it seems to be imitating the USA from the same period, in part because of how Bush handled our relations with "Peacefully Rising China". It would even be a little mud in the eye to give it to GHWB as a way of canonizing him as "the good Bush", if the Committee felt they must make a political point while giving it to an accomplished president.
William J. Clinton brought peace to Ireland for the first time since Oliver Cromwell. 'Nuff Said (Granted, Hume and Trimble were already recognized for this). He did far more than Bush ever did to encourage China to become a partner rather than a new Cold War rival. He helped to build an international regime so peaceful that someone could write a book called "The End of History" and people would actually buy it. Close relations between the US and virtually every nation on Earth became a reality for the first time in our history. The Dayton Accords brought a great deal of peace to South Central Europe, and the aftermath of the Kosovo War has stabilized the Balkans, hopefully forever. We came closer than we ever have to a solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, and all sides are agreed that the Clinton Administration was the driving force that almost got us there-he worked harder for Middle Eastern peace than any President ever has.
I really think I'll be able to write a paragraph for two-term president Barrack Obama in 2017, as he makes way for the new president that is equally glowing. I really do. And if he were awarded a Peace Prize for these sorts of accomplishments, I would find it well deserved.
Right now, however, the paragraph is very short.
Barrack Obama was elected in 2008, and by 2009 it was clear that he was a better president than G. W. Bush.
Nice going, Sweden. How about letting IKEA do the awards next year? They're at least pretty good at their job.
Okay, I have to say, I'd give the Obama administration very strong marks for their performance today, and I'll up Mencken's compliment of FDR ("a second class intellect but a first class temperament") to say that Obama's first class in both categories. It's certainly a relief to have the adults back at the tiller of the ship of state.
But, um, shouldn't he have done something...substantial...for, say...peace?
His Afghan and Iraq policy look a lot like the second term of the second Bush administration...probably any president would be doing substantially the same thing.
The Israel/Palestine thing? Well, we're talking sense on settlements, but as near as I can tell, our special envoy has been told to dry out in Haifa drinking Turkish coffee until the President has this whole economy and health care thing straightened out. We're not exactly working the problem.
Iran? His handling has been good, but we have neither a Grand Bargain, a peaceful democratic overthrow of the mullahs, a new modus vivendi with the regime wherein we accept nuclear weapons, nor a deal under which they stop building them.
The drug war in Latin America blazes on, Africa is still in flames, and China and India are being handled well, if not any differently from the Bush years.
There's just no there there. I'm sure there are many deserving people around the world, but if you absolutely felt you must give it to a U.S. President, I can name two who are far more deserving:
George H. W. Bush brought the Cold War to a peaceful close. Almost not a shot was fired. The Warsaw Pact dissolved of its own volition, as did the USSR. The USSR signed the marriage papers of a reunified Germany (in NATO!), as did an equally opposed France and Britain. Panama was a textbook example of minimalist use of force to preserve a democratic state and rapid return to normalcy for that nation. The First Gulf War was the most international and internationally sanctioned war since the Korean War (and unlike that war, was done with the USSR and the PRC supporting). Granted, the post-war sanctions were a disaster, but the international community would not have stood for going to Baghdad in 1991. Even Tienanmen Square, and his handling of China, looks wise in retrospect. Rather than China imitating Germany ca. 1890, it seems to be imitating the USA from the same period, in part because of how Bush handled our relations with "Peacefully Rising China". It would even be a little mud in the eye to give it to GHWB as a way of canonizing him as "the good Bush", if the Committee felt they must make a political point while giving it to an accomplished president.
William J. Clinton brought peace to Ireland for the first time since Oliver Cromwell. 'Nuff Said (Granted, Hume and Trimble were already recognized for this). He did far more than Bush ever did to encourage China to become a partner rather than a new Cold War rival. He helped to build an international regime so peaceful that someone could write a book called "The End of History" and people would actually buy it. Close relations between the US and virtually every nation on Earth became a reality for the first time in our history. The Dayton Accords brought a great deal of peace to South Central Europe, and the aftermath of the Kosovo War has stabilized the Balkans, hopefully forever. We came closer than we ever have to a solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, and all sides are agreed that the Clinton Administration was the driving force that almost got us there-he worked harder for Middle Eastern peace than any President ever has.
I really think I'll be able to write a paragraph for two-term president Barrack Obama in 2017, as he makes way for the new president that is equally glowing. I really do. And if he were awarded a Peace Prize for these sorts of accomplishments, I would find it well deserved.
Right now, however, the paragraph is very short.
Barrack Obama was elected in 2008, and by 2009 it was clear that he was a better president than G. W. Bush.
Nice going, Sweden. How about letting IKEA do the awards next year? They're at least pretty good at their job.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
It Seems I was Mistaken
So, way back in 2008, I opined that the whole TARP deal was a bad idea, and I didn't like it.
Dan Drezner suggests it's actually going to pay for itself.
If so, I was 180 degrees wrong. Not only was it not a bad idea, but if the taxpayer made a profit on it while simultaneously decreasing the chance of a meltdown (whatever that chance may have been), it was a manifestly good idea.
I mostly opposed it because I (in my defense, like almost everyone else) thought the toxic assets of low worth (I thought some fraction would be paid back, and said as much), and that the banks were insolvent, not illiquid.
Well, turns out those assets were worth more than the $700B list value at the time of TARP (or, at least, this is looking likely, according to Drezner). The banks (most of 'em) were illiquid, and we're going to make a profit on the deal.
Maybe we should keep Bernake on....
Dan Drezner suggests it's actually going to pay for itself.
If so, I was 180 degrees wrong. Not only was it not a bad idea, but if the taxpayer made a profit on it while simultaneously decreasing the chance of a meltdown (whatever that chance may have been), it was a manifestly good idea.
I mostly opposed it because I (in my defense, like almost everyone else) thought the toxic assets of low worth (I thought some fraction would be paid back, and said as much), and that the banks were insolvent, not illiquid.
Well, turns out those assets were worth more than the $700B list value at the time of TARP (or, at least, this is looking likely, according to Drezner). The banks (most of 'em) were illiquid, and we're going to make a profit on the deal.
Maybe we should keep Bernake on....
Friday, September 4, 2009
I have neither the time nor the effort...
...to deal with the crazies of the right. Suffice to say, they're out in force. I remember them from the Clinton years. For some perspective, I still like the Five Laws of the Crazy Tree.
My Kind of Guy
And to think this CEO is the target of the ire of progressive health care reformers. Sheesh.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Lifelong Learning
So far, I am thoroughly enjoying Brad DeLong's podcasts of his economic history course. The first three classes are here, here, and here, and he will hopefully be putting the rest of them on his blog through the term.
It's already given me a Big Thought, which I must blog, but this must wait until I am less sleepy.
UPDATE: Being less sleepy, I may as well have at it. The caveat here is that I'm a chemist, not an economist, and so this is the ravings of a pure amateur trying to make sense of the broad sweep of history later in life. As I've argued in this long series (especially in this post), in my definition of the Liberal Triad, and elsewhere on this blog, I typically date the beginning of the "Post-Malthusian Era" at the 17th century.
In other words from the days of the Sumerian city states to the 17th century, everyone on earth (with the exceptions of a small elite class of priests and nobles, and in the Chinese case, a larger caste of bureaucrats) was living at the Malthusian Limit. That is, their entire economic output was just enough to fill their and their children's bellies with the right number of calories to stay on this side of the dirt, a level of output I call "1M", "M" standing for a "Malthus unit". We in modern America are at ca. 100M. Modern economic history is the story of where those two orders of magnitude come from (different measures will give you different ratios of weal, but whether it's a factor of 15, 100, or 10,000, it's enormous, and needs explaining).
Because of my interest in the United Provinces, the 17th century, and what seems to me to be the critical set of changes (in short, McCloskey's "Bourgeois Dignity", or respect for a mercantile life, the institutions of capitalism, the rise of representative government, the universalization of printing and cheap shipping, and the profound shift in the approach to knowledge that accompanies the scientific revolution), I have fixated on this time and place.
I was, therefore, quite surprised to see the statistics in Professor DeLong's lecture which showed London day laborers faring so poorly until the 1870s. The general numbers (see here for one such set) I've seen are that by 1600, the Dutch are living at somewhere around 3-4M, and at least 5M by 1700. The Brits are a bit behind, but catch up not long after the Glorious Revolution, and are doing quite handsomely, thank you, by the end of the Napoleonic Wars, and it's all up, up, up from there, sitting at about 8M by the time of DeLong's takeoff in 1870 (the curious case of declining incomes in the United Provinces in the 18th century and their crash with the Napoleonic Wars and foundation of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is another story).
So what gives? Why do the Dutch and Brits seem to be doing so well in the 17th, 18th, and first two thirds of the 19th century according to one set of statistics, and so poorly in another (see this post for another graph I stole from DeLong some time ago on the same topic)? Well, one possibility is that one set of stats is poorly constructed or wrong. Not having the background in economics or history to make that judgement, I'll assume that's not the case until someone can show me differently.
The more intriguing possibility is this: by looking at the average weal of society, and by looking at urban unskilled labored wages, we're seeing two very different slices of society. Just because in my lifetime there's been a decent correlation doesn't mean that this is true of the 17th-19th centuries.
So if this hypothesis is right, what are the implications? If all this appearance of modernity did so much to raise average wages, but did so little for those on the bottom until 1870, what does this mean? Should I care about the "good news" from 1600-1870 if it didn't reach the working class? Is this just the "rich getting richer"?
I don't think so, but this still affects my thinking about the beginnings of growth in a remarkable way. Perhaps the distinctive feature of the culture of Holland (not so much in the inland provinces of the U.P.) in the 17th Century is the emergence of the brede middenstand, a term which literally means "broad middle stand" or "broad middle class" more figuratively. In other words, the towns of Holland were not merely characterized by the regenten, or merchant princes growing fabulously wealthy. It was not the nobles, priests, and first families grabbing all this wealth. The wealth created, for the first time, a huge middle class that was well above the Malthusian limit. What DeLong's stats tell me, however, is that the increased wages of the poor could only keep pace with the rising prices of bread in Amsterdam. And yet, an economy in which large numbers of the poor are entering an emergent middle class is still cause for celebration. It just means, for those who failed to become weavers, the floor doesn't rise until the end of the 19th century in Holland, and the mid-to-late 19th century in Britain.
I don't know to what extent this was also the case in Britain, or whether day laborer wages looked different in Manchester than London, or to what degree wages in Britain were held down by truly colossal migrations to the cities in the 18th and 19th centuries (in the United Provinces, migrations to the cities were large, but nowhere on the scale of British rural-to-urban migration in this era), so I need to learn more about the period of the First Industrial Revolution.
It's probably very significant that the pace of economic growth, about 0.5% in the 1600-1850 era in the North Sea economies shoots up in the late 19th century. Perhaps it is this explosion of growth that allows not only the brede middenstand, but also the working classes, to capture the Embarrassment of Riches produced in this later era.
It's already given me a Big Thought, which I must blog, but this must wait until I am less sleepy.
UPDATE: Being less sleepy, I may as well have at it. The caveat here is that I'm a chemist, not an economist, and so this is the ravings of a pure amateur trying to make sense of the broad sweep of history later in life. As I've argued in this long series (especially in this post), in my definition of the Liberal Triad, and elsewhere on this blog, I typically date the beginning of the "Post-Malthusian Era" at the 17th century.
In other words from the days of the Sumerian city states to the 17th century, everyone on earth (with the exceptions of a small elite class of priests and nobles, and in the Chinese case, a larger caste of bureaucrats) was living at the Malthusian Limit. That is, their entire economic output was just enough to fill their and their children's bellies with the right number of calories to stay on this side of the dirt, a level of output I call "1M", "M" standing for a "Malthus unit". We in modern America are at ca. 100M. Modern economic history is the story of where those two orders of magnitude come from (different measures will give you different ratios of weal, but whether it's a factor of 15, 100, or 10,000, it's enormous, and needs explaining).
Because of my interest in the United Provinces, the 17th century, and what seems to me to be the critical set of changes (in short, McCloskey's "Bourgeois Dignity", or respect for a mercantile life, the institutions of capitalism, the rise of representative government, the universalization of printing and cheap shipping, and the profound shift in the approach to knowledge that accompanies the scientific revolution), I have fixated on this time and place.
I was, therefore, quite surprised to see the statistics in Professor DeLong's lecture which showed London day laborers faring so poorly until the 1870s. The general numbers (see here for one such set) I've seen are that by 1600, the Dutch are living at somewhere around 3-4M, and at least 5M by 1700. The Brits are a bit behind, but catch up not long after the Glorious Revolution, and are doing quite handsomely, thank you, by the end of the Napoleonic Wars, and it's all up, up, up from there, sitting at about 8M by the time of DeLong's takeoff in 1870 (the curious case of declining incomes in the United Provinces in the 18th century and their crash with the Napoleonic Wars and foundation of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is another story).
So what gives? Why do the Dutch and Brits seem to be doing so well in the 17th, 18th, and first two thirds of the 19th century according to one set of statistics, and so poorly in another (see this post for another graph I stole from DeLong some time ago on the same topic)? Well, one possibility is that one set of stats is poorly constructed or wrong. Not having the background in economics or history to make that judgement, I'll assume that's not the case until someone can show me differently.
The more intriguing possibility is this: by looking at the average weal of society, and by looking at urban unskilled labored wages, we're seeing two very different slices of society. Just because in my lifetime there's been a decent correlation doesn't mean that this is true of the 17th-19th centuries.
So if this hypothesis is right, what are the implications? If all this appearance of modernity did so much to raise average wages, but did so little for those on the bottom until 1870, what does this mean? Should I care about the "good news" from 1600-1870 if it didn't reach the working class? Is this just the "rich getting richer"?
I don't think so, but this still affects my thinking about the beginnings of growth in a remarkable way. Perhaps the distinctive feature of the culture of Holland (not so much in the inland provinces of the U.P.) in the 17th Century is the emergence of the brede middenstand, a term which literally means "broad middle stand" or "broad middle class" more figuratively. In other words, the towns of Holland were not merely characterized by the regenten, or merchant princes growing fabulously wealthy. It was not the nobles, priests, and first families grabbing all this wealth. The wealth created, for the first time, a huge middle class that was well above the Malthusian limit. What DeLong's stats tell me, however, is that the increased wages of the poor could only keep pace with the rising prices of bread in Amsterdam. And yet, an economy in which large numbers of the poor are entering an emergent middle class is still cause for celebration. It just means, for those who failed to become weavers, the floor doesn't rise until the end of the 19th century in Holland, and the mid-to-late 19th century in Britain.
I don't know to what extent this was also the case in Britain, or whether day laborer wages looked different in Manchester than London, or to what degree wages in Britain were held down by truly colossal migrations to the cities in the 18th and 19th centuries (in the United Provinces, migrations to the cities were large, but nowhere on the scale of British rural-to-urban migration in this era), so I need to learn more about the period of the First Industrial Revolution.
It's probably very significant that the pace of economic growth, about 0.5% in the 1600-1850 era in the North Sea economies shoots up in the late 19th century. Perhaps it is this explosion of growth that allows not only the brede middenstand, but also the working classes, to capture the Embarrassment of Riches produced in this later era.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
A combo of which I never could have concieved
And yet, it happened. Tom Jones and Janis Joplin in 1968 (h/t Lexington Green @ Chicago Boys). Damn but those two can dance.
I assume y'all know Janis. Most of you prolly know Tom Jones, but for those who don't, here's a more recent one of his.
Nope...never would have picked him for teaming up with Joplin. Yet-they're good together.
As I watched the latter Tom Jones, I thought, "Wow-there's an asymmetry. It's hard to imagine a frankly middle aged woman expressing sexuality in a video the way that Tom Jones does here." Then I thought, "You're an idiot. Tina Turner."
Granted, she's not moving as fast as she did here (yes, Ike was a *(#$, but the man could sing):
But compare the early Muddy Waters (1960):
With the later (1978):
(I love the line, "I make the moon...come up two hours late")
We all slow down a little...(in both clips, Muddy doesn't dance until nearly the end.)
I assume y'all know Janis. Most of you prolly know Tom Jones, but for those who don't, here's a more recent one of his.
Nope...never would have picked him for teaming up with Joplin. Yet-they're good together.
As I watched the latter Tom Jones, I thought, "Wow-there's an asymmetry. It's hard to imagine a frankly middle aged woman expressing sexuality in a video the way that Tom Jones does here." Then I thought, "You're an idiot. Tina Turner."
Granted, she's not moving as fast as she did here (yes, Ike was a *(#$, but the man could sing):
But compare the early Muddy Waters (1960):
With the later (1978):
(I love the line, "I make the moon...come up two hours late")
We all slow down a little...(in both clips, Muddy doesn't dance until nearly the end.)
Saturday, August 29, 2009
The Minotaur and his Detractors
The Onion has a very cute video lampooning the torture debate by imagining debating the Minotaur, Asterion, in the Labyrinth. As it turns out, this showed up on three of the blogs I try to follow daily today. The last of these entitled her post, "Minoan Cretinism", and the combination of that with the content of the video made me think I should try to make a serious point out of the joke.
Is Using A Minotaur To Gore Detainees A Form Of Torture?
You know, as it turns out, we get our story of the Minotaur via the Greeks through the eyes of their Mycenaean forebearers, specifically those of Theseus. It's not a flattering picture. From the perspective of the Minoans of Kahptor, the Leviathan aspect of their Thassalocracy brought a Pax Minoica, a peace among nations, making the seas safe for trade and prosperity.
To those sympathizing with the Myceneans, both what I call the Theseanists, the Mycenaeans who chafed at Minoan power and culture, and the Ariadnists, the fellow travelers in the Minoan society who rebel, as Ariadne did, against their cultural tradition and embraced the Mycenaean view, the Minoan Thassalocracy was a rapacious empire, which exacted tribute from its satellites. All of their claims of furthering the cause of peace, prosperity, trade, and liberty are hypocrisy. They aren't true, and they're just a cover for the relentless striving for gain, for the expansion of Minoan power and hegemony.
Moral equivalence is the favorite game of those who wish to denigrate the Minoans. Yes, we Mycenaeans may have our brutalities, but what about your Minotaur? Minoan defenders justify the Minotaur both by saying that some brutality is necessary to compete with those horrid Mycenaeans, and by saying that at least our brutality isn't as bad as theirs. The key moment in the video is when the talking head describes the terrorists use of gryphons for torture, to which the other responds, "we could use gryphons, but we don't, and that's the difference between us and them."
Walter Russell Mead, in God and Gold, uses the metaphor of The Walrus and the Carpenter (who he uses as the metaphorical Minoans, America and Britain), who lead along the oysters (the rest of the world's nations) with tales of how they will do noble things, like sweep the beaches of their sand. Alas, the task proves to big for the well meaning mammals, and they end up just eating the oysters instead. In short, the noble aims of the Minoans are all talk. The Minoans end up fat and happy, the Mycenaeans end up eaten, and the beaches are as sandy as ever.
I think Mead has it right to say that they're not entirely wrong, in the sense that the Minoans do end up fat and happy, the Mycenaeans do end up eaten, and our beaches still have sand. What's more, to pull these strained metaphors together, the mammalian methods can be brutal (though the post-modern tendency to describe the Anglo-Americans as uniquely brutal is unfounded; after all, the Mycenaeans do have their gryphons), but the key thing missing from the story is that an oyster can undergo a metamorphosis into a mammal.
The story of the last 400 years is the story of society after society undergoing a Mycenaean to Minoan shift, just as the pattern played out before from Prehistoric to Historic (writing, cities, metallurgy) and Mesolithic to Neolithic (domestication and agriculture). It is absolutely true that societies which attempt to remain too traditional in this Minoan world will have a hard time of it. Ask the Boxers, the Bourbons, and the Bedouin. But today, visit Shanghai, Marseilles, or Dubai, and you will find that the voyage from Piraeus to Iraklion can be navigated with a little skill, a little luck, and a little determination. What's more, the beaches are getting less sandy.
Is Using A Minotaur To Gore Detainees A Form Of Torture?
You know, as it turns out, we get our story of the Minotaur via the Greeks through the eyes of their Mycenaean forebearers, specifically those of Theseus. It's not a flattering picture. From the perspective of the Minoans of Kahptor, the Leviathan aspect of their Thassalocracy brought a Pax Minoica, a peace among nations, making the seas safe for trade and prosperity.
To those sympathizing with the Myceneans, both what I call the Theseanists, the Mycenaeans who chafed at Minoan power and culture, and the Ariadnists, the fellow travelers in the Minoan society who rebel, as Ariadne did, against their cultural tradition and embraced the Mycenaean view, the Minoan Thassalocracy was a rapacious empire, which exacted tribute from its satellites. All of their claims of furthering the cause of peace, prosperity, trade, and liberty are hypocrisy. They aren't true, and they're just a cover for the relentless striving for gain, for the expansion of Minoan power and hegemony.
Moral equivalence is the favorite game of those who wish to denigrate the Minoans. Yes, we Mycenaeans may have our brutalities, but what about your Minotaur? Minoan defenders justify the Minotaur both by saying that some brutality is necessary to compete with those horrid Mycenaeans, and by saying that at least our brutality isn't as bad as theirs. The key moment in the video is when the talking head describes the terrorists use of gryphons for torture, to which the other responds, "we could use gryphons, but we don't, and that's the difference between us and them."
Walter Russell Mead, in God and Gold, uses the metaphor of The Walrus and the Carpenter (who he uses as the metaphorical Minoans, America and Britain), who lead along the oysters (the rest of the world's nations) with tales of how they will do noble things, like sweep the beaches of their sand. Alas, the task proves to big for the well meaning mammals, and they end up just eating the oysters instead. In short, the noble aims of the Minoans are all talk. The Minoans end up fat and happy, the Mycenaeans end up eaten, and the beaches are as sandy as ever.
I think Mead has it right to say that they're not entirely wrong, in the sense that the Minoans do end up fat and happy, the Mycenaeans do end up eaten, and our beaches still have sand. What's more, to pull these strained metaphors together, the mammalian methods can be brutal (though the post-modern tendency to describe the Anglo-Americans as uniquely brutal is unfounded; after all, the Mycenaeans do have their gryphons), but the key thing missing from the story is that an oyster can undergo a metamorphosis into a mammal.
The story of the last 400 years is the story of society after society undergoing a Mycenaean to Minoan shift, just as the pattern played out before from Prehistoric to Historic (writing, cities, metallurgy) and Mesolithic to Neolithic (domestication and agriculture). It is absolutely true that societies which attempt to remain too traditional in this Minoan world will have a hard time of it. Ask the Boxers, the Bourbons, and the Bedouin. But today, visit Shanghai, Marseilles, or Dubai, and you will find that the voyage from Piraeus to Iraklion can be navigated with a little skill, a little luck, and a little determination. What's more, the beaches are getting less sandy.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
I Want the Old Paul Krugman Back
Actually, I'm still a fan in the sense of "I'm glad there's a Paul Krugman up at the NYT making his kinds of arguments." We're all better off when smart people are arguing different points of view from well informed bases.
And yet. I miss his cutting mind being put to use for such noble purposes as spreading the word on Ricardo's Difficult Idea: Comparative Advantage.
It's an old story, but a good one.
Nobel-winning economist Paul Samuelson, arguably the single biggest influence behind the mathematization of economics in the 20th century, was once challenged by the mathematician Stanislaw Ulam, who was skeptical of the value of social science, to name a single social scientific proposition which is both true and non-trivial. Samuelson couldn’t think of anything on the spot, but years later he realized what, in his mind, is the correct response: comparative advantage (see wikipedia).
Regarding comparative advantage, Samuelson said:
That it is logically true need not be argued before a mathematician; that it is not trivial is attested by the thousands of important and intelligent men who have never been able to grasp the doctrine for themselves or to believe it after it was explained to them.
And yet. I miss his cutting mind being put to use for such noble purposes as spreading the word on Ricardo's Difficult Idea: Comparative Advantage.
It's an old story, but a good one.
Nobel-winning economist Paul Samuelson, arguably the single biggest influence behind the mathematization of economics in the 20th century, was once challenged by the mathematician Stanislaw Ulam, who was skeptical of the value of social science, to name a single social scientific proposition which is both true and non-trivial. Samuelson couldn’t think of anything on the spot, but years later he realized what, in his mind, is the correct response: comparative advantage (see wikipedia).
Regarding comparative advantage, Samuelson said:
That it is logically true need not be argued before a mathematician; that it is not trivial is attested by the thousands of important and intelligent men who have never been able to grasp the doctrine for themselves or to believe it after it was explained to them.
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