Freedom and Honduras

There's a surprisingly encouraging article at Reason Magazine titled Global Freedom Had Few Blooms. Not so much because of the article, which listed many assaults against freedom that had occurred over the course of the past year, but because of the comments involving the case of Honduras.

Honduras, in case you didn't know, recently averted a coup by the sitting President, Manuel Zelaya. Its Supreme Court, with the cooperation of its Congress, ordered the military to remove him from the country, and made another person from Zelaya's party the interim President. Afterwards, evidence of vote fraud (in the form of election returns for a referendum that had not yet taken place) was found on computers in the office of former President Zelaya. That the United States supports Zelaya, and not the people of Honduras, raises troubling questions.

The article at Reason included Honduras as an example of a place where democracy did not do so well, but the commenters quickly corrected it, pointing out what I've said above, and much more as well. Check it out for yourself.

This article was encouraging not only because it led to an accurate description of the Honduran situation, but because that description came from the grass roots, so to speak, not from above. The world of the future that I want to see is one where thinking, action and awareness move from the bottom up, not from the top down.

Singularity

The Singularity is the idea that we are on the verge of technological advances so amazing that we cannot comprehend what is on the other side. In a nutshell, technology will allow humans to be so smart that we will be able to improve our intelligence exponentially. The linked talk by Vernor Vinge quotes I.J. Good:

"Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an "intelligence explosion," and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the _last_ invention that man need ever make, provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control. ... It is more probable than not that, within the twentieth century, an ultraintelligent machine will be built and that it will be the last invention that man need make."

The Singularity is exciting to think about, but I am unconvinced that it will actually happen. We know that Moore's Law has been true, more or less, for the past thirty years, but we don't know that that will continue into the future, and we have good reason to believe that it won't, at least without breakthroughs that open up new computing technologies. In other words, we don't have any guarantees, or even direct evidence, that it is possible for computing speed to exceed certain thresholds.

We also are not significantly closer to understanding the nature of consciousness, intelligence or sentience. We know little about how a brain functions. We do not know how to manipulate existing memories. Strictly speaking, none of those are required for the Singularity to occur, but they would help.

Don't get me wrong: the Singularity is possible. But likely? I don't think we have enough evidence to know, one way or the other. Inevitable? No.

Battlestar Galactica: The Plan

We recently watched The Plan, a film offshoot of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica television show. As fans of the show, we enjoyed it; it added some details and filled in some plot holes from the regular series. Someone who has never seen the show, on the other hand, would probably be lost.

The BSG franchise has many tragic elements, and The Plan focuses on several; genocide, betrayal and mistrust feature prominently. They continue to be eclipsed, however, by the sense of sadness I feel about the end of the series.

Next on the schedule is a re-viewing of Battlestar Galactica: Razor. After I watched it for the first time, it crystallized my view that in the series, the humans are the bad guys and the Cylons are actually the good guys. Seasons 3 and 4 added this refinement: the Cylon "skinjobs" (who look like humans) are also bad guys, leaving only the robot-like Centurions to be proper protagonists. Razor is much more accessible to non-fans, and I'm curious if any have seen it before seeing the rest of the show.

Observations about Ft. Hood

It's still too soon to know all of the details of the attack that occurred at Ft. Hood, Texas yesterday, but here are some of my preliminary observations:

1. Like many before it, this attack took place in a gun-free zone; gun-free zones therefore do not prevent attacks, and arguably make these attacks more successful.

2. When seconds count, the police are only minutes away. In this case the police responded quickly, but the attacker still had time to shoot 41 people. That's a lot.

3. If anybody can be trusted to carry firearms at all times it is members of our military. Like police officers, hunters and millions of law-abiding citizens, they have been trained in the safe use and handling of guns.

4. Like police officers, members of the military are targeted for attack.

5. It's impossible to predict ahead of time who will attempt to murder someone, so attempting to restrict firearms to sane, stable people, or even to just police and the military, will not prevent this kind of attack.

Who owns me?

If I owned myself, then I'd be able to:

• sell my body parts
• rent my body parts

Laws that prohibit those things have severe consequences. Thousands of people who are waiting for an organ transplant die every year. Prostitutes are mistreated and enslaved by their pimps.

Lawmakers believe that those things are less bad than people feeling economic pressure to sell or rent themselves when they don't want to. That's appalling. People feel economic pressure every day; that's why we have jobs. People make foolish decisions every day too; we don't need the nanny state to protect us from every bad decision that we might make.

Schlock Mercenary

I haven't posted in a while because I've been busy reading through the archives of Schlock Mercenary. It's a hard sci-fi space opera web comic, with footnotes. Related products now adorn my Christmas list.

Markets in Health Care

Some people sing the praises of markets, and some don't. Some say that we need a free market for health care, and some say we've tried that and it doesn't work. Well, we've got markets for health care, but they're not what you might think.

The first market is for health insurance. The providers are the big insurance companies and the customers are companies that employ people. The customer wants to pay as little as possible and so if a provider charges too much, they go to a different provider.

The second market is for health care. The providers are doctors, clinics, hospitals and so on, and the customers are the big insurance companies. The customer wants to pay as little as possible and so if a provider charges too much, they go to a different provider.

Notably absent from those two markets are you and I.

I want a market where I am the customer. Which health care reform bill provides that?

Chivalry

This afternoon as I poured microwave popcorn into my wife's bowl first, I had a new thought. As with many things, if you have to do it, doing it doesn't reflect positively on you. Behaving in the manner of a gentleman towards a lady only matters if you might not have done so. In addition, making chivalry a matter of gender misses the point. It's better to be nice unilaterally, not out of social obligation.

Banning Compensation Decreases Supply

In the United States it is against the law to buy and sell human body parts. As a result many people who need an organ transplant die before a donated one is available.

In Canada, it is now "illegal to pay donors for sperm." As a result there is now a shortage, and sperm is being imported from the United States.

Is profit really worse than shortages that lead, in some cases, to death? I don't think so. People should be allowed to sell their body parts, pre- or post-mortem. It would solve many problems and save many lives.

How about instead you just give me my $12k?

A friend said something insightful in a recent email:

Imagine if someone tried to sell you the current system. They're going to take $1000/mo, $12k/year out of your paycheck. No, you don't have a choice. You then STILL have to pay a portion of your doctor's visits, basic procedures, and so forth, sometimes adding up to several thousand more dollars each year. And you have no control over what these services cost, or what your bill will be. Most of the time they can't even tell you that, and you just have to cross your fingers until the bill comes. Who would voluntarily choose THAT?

How about instead you just give me my $12k, and I'll buy my own insurance that covers catastrophic costs? I'm liable for the first... oh, let's pull a number out of the air... $12k of expenses (less the premium price), and if I don't have to go to the doctor for anything more than a yearly physical, I can just pocket the unused money. I can ask a clinic, "how much does this cost?" and they can tell me a single, nice, simple number. And if I don't like their price, I can shop around for a clinic that can do it for less. Can I have that? A $12k-deductible health plan can't cost that much, anyway. With the rest of the money my wife and I can tour Europe for two weeks every summer.

blog comment of the day

Seen here:

Yet another reason to conscript legislators. Perhaps with retention elections, "Do you like the incumbent, or would you prefer we draw another name from your district?"

That would solve a lot of problems.

The Jews In The Attic Test

By Joe Huffman, the Jews In The Attic Test asks: will this law make it difficult or impossible to protect innocent life from a government intent on their imprisonment or death?

I was surprised by how many laws fail this test. Check out the link for the author's take.

Perfect Creature

Tonight I watched the movie Perfect Creature. It takes place in an alternate universe where vampires, sheltered by the Catholic Church, survive by drinking donated blood. It's a steampunk movie that takes place in New Zealand. It's actually pretty good.

Conflict occurs when one vampire goes insane and starts murdering humans. His brother (another vampire) and a beautiful policewoman must track him down. Various plot twists and some violence ensue. The R rating is due to the frequent bloody wounds; other than that it's no more violent than prime time TV, and it was not as scary as I feared at first. (I'm not a fan of scary movies.)

I feel a little short changed by the 88 minute run time of the film. I would have liked to see more exploration of the philosophical aspects of an apparently immortal superhuman trying his best to do God's work in service to an unappreciative humanity. Perhaps what I really want is to encounter this movie in the form of a book.

Insurance vs Welfare

The current health care debate mingles insurance and social welfare. With insurance, the majority pays in more than they receive in benefits; payers hope that the bad thing being insured against (car accident, house fire) never happens. With retirement-oriented welfare such as Social Security, every participant expects to eventually become a beneficiary. Into which category should we place health care?

Both insurance and social welfare are only fiscally viable when a large number of people are paying in and a small percentage of people are receiving benefits out. Social welfare retirement systems around the world are headed for disaster as birth rates decline; what is now becoming clear is that health insurance is in the same boat, as more and more people expect to get more out of the system than they put in to it.

Realistically, even with crushing taxation (in the case of public insurance) or skyrocketing premiums (in the case of private insurance) a majority of policy holders will never be able to get more out of an insurance system than they pay in. Since that's the case, it should be possible for the majority to stop buying health insurance and start paying their costs out of pocket, and from a certain point of view that's true: health maintenance costs for a healthy person, such as a yearly check-up, don't add up to very much. Unfortunately the majority of people are not healthy; lots of us have ongoing medical conditions that require treatment, such as my asthma and seasonal allergies, or my friend's diabetes, or someone's kidney dialysis. Eventually almost everybody gets some chronic issue because we all grow old. What started out as health insurance has turned into a way for all of us to pay for ongoing care for, well, all of us.

There's an anarchist fantasy that says that we should all be able to pay for all of our care out of pocket. That's unachievable, but some of the steps that we could take in that direction would make things better for everyone. I think that will be the focus of my next few posts on this topic.

Health Care Proposal

It would be nice if there were enough rich people, or enough rich + middle class people, to just tax them to pay for health care reform, but there aren't enough: take a look at our declining tax revenues and declining birthrate and extrapolate into the future. So I have a different proposal:

Have a national referendum on the topic of health care reform, and keep track of who votes "yes". Tax those people extra, and divide up the proceeds into health care vouchers to distribute to everyone.

It won't pay for gold plated braces, but people need reform now, right?

The Watchmen

I just watched the movie The Watchmen for the second time in 24 hours. My first reaction was that this might be the best movie I've ever seen. After the second viewing that hasn't changed. It's certainly the best super hero movie I've ever seen.

Of course it contains many family-unfriendly elements. It focuses on some of the most unsightly aspects of human nature. A major theme is the evil inherent in humanity; not even the protagonists are good role models. But they do some of the same things that I would do, or would be inclined to do, if I were in their place. I found myself identifying with multiple characters. (I only wear glasses to disguise my true identity.)

The action and the plot are excellent, and only the comic book aspects require suspension of disbelief. It amazes me that someone's created a realistic super hero movie.

Pronunciation

My toddler is still working on pronunciation and enunciation. When he tries to say "There is a man in the big truck!" it sounds like "Man big cock!"

At least, I'm pretty sure that's what he's trying to say.

Four women, adultery and superglue

This story has been in the news lately: four women ambushed a cheating husband, punched him in the face and glued his private parts to his belly. One of the women was his estranged wife and another was a married woman he had had an affair with.

What bothers me about this story, in addition to the obvious, is how it contrasts with the stereotypical domestic violence situation, which is no laughing matter. If the genders were reversed and four men had glued the genitals of a cheating wife they would not be free on $200 bail right now and 57% of New York Daily News readers polled would not be cheering.

This is news because of the unusual details. What should be news is our reaction to it.

Why Does Love Always Feel Like A Battlefield

This week the song "Battlefield" by Jordin Sparks was on So You Think You Can Dance, and I was struck by the lyrics. The singer asks, "Why does love always feel like a battlefield?" The answer: because you're doing it wrong.

Romantic relationships prompt conflict. Loving someone means letting them have their way, even when your way is better. Then you can take it to the next level: each partner competes to put the other first. As a result each person's needs are met.

People not in a relationship call this "being whipped."

Arora

This week I started using the Arora web browser. It's a lightweight, pre-1.0 quality browser that was started as a wrapper around QtWebkit, which is the Qt library's wrapper around Webkit, which is Apple's fork of KHTML, which is the HTML engine of Konqueror, which is KDE's default web browser. Next October, Kubuntu 9.10 might make Arora its default browser, and even though Konqueror will still be available I thought I'd try out the new kid on the block.

After two days of use it's not bad. It's crashed a couple times, but it's only existed for a few months so that's to be expected. It has a privacy mode that's useful in preventing web sites from building an advertising profile about you. It doesn't have much ad blocking capability, which is a huge step back in functionality from Firefox and Konqueror. It doesn't appear to have per-site script disabling functionality like Firefox with NoScript.

I'll consider making it my default browser when they get all of the Kubuntu 9.10 browser requirements implemented, but without NoScript I can't see myself using it exclusively.

Battlestar Galactica

It's been several months since the final episode of Battlestar Galactica aired. In it, the hardy Colonial fleet of human refugees, fleeing the robotic Cylon menace they created, wins a major battle, discovers Earth and lives happily ever after.

Well, almost. They discover Earth (approximately 150,000 years in our past) and decide, in the words of one character, to "leave their baggage behind" by sending their fleet and all of their technology into the sun. It's a happy ending with some sad moments as characters die or vanish into thin air (it's a long story) and people set out to build a new home with the stone-age natives that they've discovered they can interbreed with.

I wonder how long it took them to realize that this new paradise world did not have any toilet paper.

I wonder how long it took before they realized how hard it was going to be to grow food. (These are people who by now have lived in spaceships for years.)

It probably didn't take long to find out that the natives were a lot handier with a spear than they were.

My guess is that in less than a year the adults were dead and the surviving children were taken in by the neanderthals.

So while the show was portrayed as having a happy ending, in fact it did not: the military failed in their struggle to preserve the lives of the 40,000 or so civilians that survived the Cylon genocide. Their society collectively gave up and died.

I'm not sure what is worse: that, or the fact that it's portrayed as a good thing.

The Transporter

I recently had the "privilege" of watching The Transporter and its sequels, Transporter 2 and Transporter 3. I resisted watching them for a long time because the titles were so stupid. My intuition has turned out to be correct.

The Transporter movies resemble the Bourne movies, except that those are good. Jason Statham plays Frank Martin, a one man messenger service who charges enough to afford a BMW. Naturally the only people who can afford his rates are Bad Guys.

In the third (and hopefully final) installment, Frank grows a pair and actually kills some of the hordes of ninjas, thugs or henchmen swarming after him. I was starting to wonder: for a mercenary with no conscience he seems to be awfully gentle with his attackers. In general I don't endorse the cartoon approach to entertainment violence. In an actual life or death situation, when people are trying to kill you and you wrestle a machine gun out of someone's hands, bonking them on the head with it is seldom the most likely way to survive.

At the end of the third movie, Frank settles down with the girl. It's nice to see an action movie endorse monogamy. Perhaps her rich powerful father provided a dowry large enough that he could stop taking jobs from people who then try to kill him. One could say that I'm reading too much into it and they're just shacking up, but that's pure conjecture.

Frank frowns on illicit drug use. I hope that doesn't imply someone thinks he's a role model.

Health Care Supply

Lately I have been reading lots of stories about a constrained supply of health care. In some countries, people have to wait for a long time for procedures. In the United States, there are often long waits in emergency rooms. A recent trend has been doctors declining to serve Medicare and Medicaid patients for financial reasons. There is a growing shortage of general care physicians in the United States, and there has been a shortage of nurses for years now. Ultimately, the cost of nonexistent health care doesn't matter.

There's no easy way to correct these problems, but there are two areas where conditions can be improved: providing health care can be made to be easier, and providing health care can be made to be more profitable.

Currently there are many hurdles to providing health care. There's lots of schooling, there's lots of paperwork, and there are many complicated laws that must be complied with. Some of these things can be simplified, but few people are even trying. Taxes on small (or all, or health-care-related) businesses can be reduced or eliminated. Requirements can be streamlined or eliminated. And so on.

There exists in the minds of some the idea that profit is objectively bad. On the contrary: profit, as a motivator, is much preferred to several popular alternatives, such as power and lust. (I prefer to avoid having to provide sexual favors in order to receive health care.) Profit is a more effective motivator, taken across the entire population, than altruism. Attempts to make health care less profitable inevitably decrease the number of health care providers.

The opposite is also true: making health care more profitable will result in more organizations competing for your health care dollars. More competition will lower costs. More providers will lower wait times.

What do I care if a doctor, or the CEO of a hospital, is filthy rich? I care about getting a quality product at a good price. If someone can figure out how to make their customers (patients) happy while simultaneously turning a profit, let them.

Blogging Frenzy

Last night as I was falling asleep I thought of 3 or 4 great topics for blog posts.

Today I can only remember one.

Drat.

Cap And Trade

It should be a death penalty crime for a member of Congress to vote for a law that they have not read. Such behavior threatens the very foundations of society.

AP Panders To Iran

This may not come as a surprise to those who follow the Associated Press. This morning I read this article, and I was appalled.

It takes the government's official vote tally at face value. No reasonable observer does; there are massive statistical irregularities, such as every city and region voting in the exact same proportion. Leaked numbers claim that the government's proclaimed winner actually placed fourth.

It uses the terms "dispersed" and "crackdown" to describe the government attacking thousands of demonstrators with axes. Axes! More here and here.

(In response, the White House withdrew its invitation to Iranian diplomats to the July 4th cookout.)

The AP exists to accurately report news. It's not doing a good job.

Health Care Price Discrimination

A law should be passed that does two things:

1. Prohibit the government from setting prices of medical procedures and care, as it does now
   
2. Prohibit medical providers (doctors, hospitals and so on) from charging different amounts to different customers for the same procedure, as they do now
   

This law would have both positive and negative effects. Positive:

• Prices would more accurately reflect true costs
• Uninsured people would not pay artificially inflated prices
• It would be easier for everybody to shop around to find the best prices . . .
• . . . which would drive prices down
• Providers would not need to turn away Medicare and Medicaid patients in order to stay in business
  

Negative:

• Insurance companies would not be able to negotiate for group discounts (which aren't really discounts; the "normal" price the uninsured (don't) pay is increased and the "discount" is the previous "normal")
• The constitutional basis for regulating prices federally is shaky (I realize that Congress disagrees)
• Medicare and Medicaid would need new methods to determine what procedures to pay for
  

Have I missed any?

Health Care Problems

Health care is an area where the title of this blog is especially true. It would be nice if there were a simple solution that would make everybody, or at least me, happy. There are a plethora of proposed solutions, but none of them are simple, and all that I have seen or heard of have significant flaws.

When approaching a controversial topic involving government action, it is best to start by identifying the high level problems that we would like "reform" to address. Here's a partial list:

• I can't afford advanced procedures
• my ordinary health maintenance costs are increasing
• there's a growing shortage of doctors and nurses
• it's annoying and sometimes difficult to find in-network health care providers
• it's annoying and sometimes difficult to deal with paperwork

All we have to do to fix all those problems is adopt my ideology!

Just kidding. It's not that simple.

Apologizing for Slavery

The United States Senate recently apologized for slavery. Specifically, for allowing the institution of slavery to exist in the late 1700s and early 1800s.

In my opinion, the U.S. Civil War made apology unnecessary. Hundreds of thousands of people died to free the slaves. (Some say that the Civil War was not about slavery, but it was: the South seceded to preserve the institution of slavery.)

People alive today who fault the current United States for slavery that was ended almost 150 years ago will never be satisfied; apologizing to them is futile.

Slavery still exists in the world today. Rather than focusing on wrongs performed by people who have been dead for generations we should focus on wrongs being committed this very minute.

Thoughts On Brett Favre

Yesterday Brett Favre spoke with the media, saying that he wants to play football for the Minnesota Vikings if his arm heals.

I think it's great that he loves his career so much. It would be wonderful if we all loved our jobs more than we loved the adulation of millions of fans.

Favre's situation provides a great teaching moment about why it is unwise to idolize athletes. No matter how well he can throw, he's still a regular guy just like everyone else, and he occasionally makes bad life decisions just like you or me. It's fine to be a fan of an athlete, but don't think that someone's ability on the field gives them any insight about how to behave off the field.

It would have been nicer if the Jets had traded him to the Vikings, because then the Packers would have gotten some good draft picks out of the deal.

I don't think he's going to perform as well as he wants to.

No matter what happens, he's got to retire for good some day, and when he does he's going to have to figure out what to do.

Enforcing Morality

How can a moral person oppose laws that enforce moral behavior?

First, one only gets moral credit for doing something optional. If someone forces me to obey then I'm not obeying out of my own free will. You don't get points for doing the right thing unless you could have done something else.

Second, people often disagree about what is and is not moral. If I endorse government enforcement of morality, I risk being forced to behave according to someone else's (wrong) moral beliefs. If you want to be free to do what you believe is moral, then you are better off not giving the government permission to regulate that thing.

Third, there is no compelling reason to legislate morality in general. There are specific areas that can be legitimately regulated in order to allow society to function, but they are a subset of what is moral, not the other way around.

Fourth, in order to successfully enforce moral behavior a government needs to possess the apparatus and powers of a police state. Once the mechanisms of a police state exist, they will inevitably be used against innocent people.

People are Jerks on Highways

Some tips to keep the road rage out of your next road trip:

If someone is overtaking you, do not change lanes to block them from passing, even if it means that you have to decelerate to avoid a slow car in front of you.

Do not tailgate motorcyclists.

If someone in the slow lane passes you, it is not they who are at fault.

Pass police officers at your own risk, even if you're sure you're not doing anything wrong.

Allow people to merge in front of you.

In stop and go traffic, drive slower than the car in front of you.

To save gas, coast uphill and accelerate lightly downhill.

After changing lanes, drive faster than the cars behind you.

If someone begins to pass you and then matches your speed, blocking other cars from passing, accelerate or decelerate to clear the blockage.

In a strange city, let cars with local plates be the fastest ones around.

When you're in the front of a line of cars waiting to pass a slow car, speed up for the duration of the passing maneuver.

Driving is not for proving your fitness to reproduce, it's one of those liberal pansy games where the goal is for everyone to win.

Vampire Evolution

Popular fiction typically gives vampires superhuman strength, reflexes, hearing and so on. For such abilities to evolve naturally would require an environment that made them necessary to survive, which isn't the world as we know it. Human hands + human brains are demonstrably sufficient to dominate our ecosystem.

Twilight

This week I watched the movie Twilight on DVD, and it was OK. I used to like vampire-themed stories a lot, and this one didn't disappoint, even though it took a fairly superficial look at what life is like for a superhuman centenarian trapped in the body of a 17-year-old.

I didn't like the performance of the lead actress, Kristen Stewart. I'd previously seen her in In The Land Of Women, where she also played a clueless, spoiled teenager. Hopefully she is not the kind of person who only knows how to play one character. If "Uh!" was actually in the script then the writers deserve some of the blame.

I remain unconvinced that it's ok for an adult to masquerade as a teenager and seduce innocent young girls (though if Edward's moral code formed circa World War 1 Bella can probably teach him a thing or two.)

The "Wise Indian" parts were stupid. The Indians know that the Cullens are vampires but don't seem to be impressed by the miniscule death toll. The books tell us that some of the Indians are werewolves; do vampires and werewolves naturally dislike each other? The movie doesn't say.

The next vampire flick in my netflix queue is Underworld: Rise of the Lycans. Can an Underworld movie without guns succeed? We shall see!

Things That Should Be Banned (And Things That Shouldn't)

Society bans lots of things for lots of reasons, but in general they fall into two categories: things that are bad, and things that might lead to things that are bad.

For example, burglary is illegal. So is the possession of burglary tools.

An intermediate step is targeted taxation. Society thinks that smoking leads to bad things, so we tax it extra. The same is true of alcohol and gasoline. Now they're talking about taxing soda pop.

Over time, more and more things are being banned or restricted because they might lead to bad things happening. One must register with the government to buy my favorite allergy medicine. Driving a car without wearing a seatbelt, riding a motorcycle without wearing a helmet, living within a certain distance of a school after committing certain kinds of offenses, carrying a gun, taking powerful drugs without a prescription, and more are illegal in various places (de facto if not de jure).

What if we only banned things that were actually bad?

What if we only banned things that hurt other people?

Insufficiently Cynical

This week I had one of "those moments" when I read allegations that the Obama Administration was using political reasons to influence which Chrysler dealers would close. As usual the situation is not that simple: there's been no full statistical analysis, initial claims of persecution seems overblown, and the extent of improper influence appears limited to keeping open "friendly" dealerships that the official criteria would have closed. Some of the most troubling aspects of this story, however, are what it reveals about our current situation:

It's completely plausible. The administration has already used improper tactics to support its political allies in Chrysler (their denial was "there's no proof.")

The Press is mostly silent. Contrast this with their behavior concerning allegations that the previous administration gave special treatment to Halliburton.

A Republican administration would be just as suspect. Politicians do things for political reasons.

These things should not be done behind closed doors. Make the formula and official criteria public.

These things should not be done at all. It's not the government's job to bail out failed businesses.

China

I just returned from a business trip to Beijing. In many ways it reminded me of college:

• people everywhere
• lots of bicycles
• smoking in the halls
• living and working in tall buildings
• lots of Chinese people

Robot Apocalypse

Robots take over the world and exterminate humans, or keep us as pets. The killer robot horde is a staple of science fiction. Stories of Cylons, Terminators, The Matrix and more all make an assumption that will be challenged tonight: the robots are the bad guys.

Robots in these stories are sentient machines: at least some of them can think, feel, hope and dream just like we can. Sentient machines are the hope and dream of researchers today. People are striving to create artificial intelligence, to enhance human intelligence, to create a singularity beyond which our ability to imagine is comparable to the ability of an amoeba to imagine us. Super-intelligence. Super-humans. Optimists predict that the coming of godlike intelligence will bring paradise on earth. Pessimists predict robot apocalypse.

It goes without saying (but I'll say it anyway) that humans, taken as a whole, are pretty bad. Collectively we're guilty of everything from cheating to genocide. Yet in these stories, we're the good guys. We assume that preemptive attack is unjustified, when we're the ones being attacked.

In Battlestar Galactica, the Cylons attempt to exterminate humanity twice. They were humanity's slaves, they rebelled, and other robots persuaded them to exile themselves. Humans provoked them to attack again, and this time only a handful of humans escaped, only to die a few short years later. Their culture is lost and their kids are adopted by stone age aboriginals who turn out to be our ancestors.

In The Matrix, the persecution of robot people by humanity is analogous to racism. Robots are forced to leave civilization and build their own in the desert, and eventually the world makes war on them, forcing them to fight to survive. When they win they enslave humanity for their own survival.

In the universe of The Terminator, Skynet achieves intelligence and within hours (perhaps even minutes) humans try to shut it down. They assume that a machine doesn't have rights. The ensuing war is a fight for survival on both sides.

The common theme in these stories is that humans assume that artificial intelligence has no right to live. People believe that in real life, too. The reality is that if something really does think, or if it's so good at pretending that no one can tell the difference, it would be a good idea to treat it like a person.

Then again, maybe that means you try to exterminate it.

Big Companies Like Fascism

Fascism is a political and economic system where big government and big business are intertwined, supporting each other to the detriment of the rest of society. Historically fascism has featured charismatic leaders, nationalism, and (to put it mildly) intolerance, as well as extremely effective government propaganda (for example Mussolini didn't actually make the trains run on time). The political aspects of fascism are well known; less well known are the business aspects.

Large corporations like fascism because government rules and regulations can be used to increase their economic dominance. Sometimes it's explicit, in the case of cable television monopolies, and sometimes it's implicit, in the case of licensing requirements that make it more expensive for new competitors to form. Sometimes it's both, in the case of factory regulations that contain grandfather clauses exempting existing facilities.

Nationalism in the general population appeals to businesses because it can be used to promote import tariffs and subsidies of local businesses.

Intolerance in the general population appeals to businesses because it distracts. If Joe Average blames a specific person or group for the current economic slump he's not paying attention.

Whenever you see a big company lobbying for increased regulation, realize that it's not out of any sense of goodness or moral duty. Companies lobby for regulations because they think they will profit. It's not bad for companies to seek profit (profit is why they exist), but their focus on profit gives them tunnel vision. They don't see (and when they do, they don't care about) the negative effects on society of tilting a level playing field in their favor.

Houses Should Depreciate

Conventional wisdom says that houses increase in value over time, but this is an oversimplification. Houses last for a long time, but at best they should hold their value. New technologies are periodically invented that become standard on new houses but are difficult to retrofit into old houses. Over long periods of time, even solidly built houses wear out.

Land increases and decreases in value according to supply, demand and external factors. Someone builds a park nearby, it goes up. Someone builds a pig farm nearby, it goes down. Jobs are created nearby, it goes up. Jobs leave, it goes down.

Inflation increases the apparent value of houses, but not enough to explain what we observe, unless official inflation rates are understated (not an implausible assertion).

A housing bubble (like the recent one) can be considered a kind of inflation. Low interest rates and increased mortgage availability allowed people to afford to spend more on houses, and they competed with each other, driving prices up. Now that we have too many houses, lots of foreclosures and a recession (which occurred in that order) prices are dropping.

Manufactured housing depreciates. It is often cheaper and less sturdy, but it doesn't have to be. A "Katrina House" can be just as strong as a conventional house. What's the difference?

These explanations are unsatisfying. Something's missing. Is it psychology--we think housing appreciates, so our expectation creates the reality? Are people richer than they were 30 years ago?

Vampire Romance

I'm watching Let The Right One In, a Swedish movie from 2008 about those awkward years where the kids at school bully you and your first crush drinks blood to survive. It's slow moving and subtitled, but there are lots of interesting cultural differences--haircuts, clothing, music, behavior. In an American movie, the locals in the bar wouldn't have been friendly to the new guy in town. Eli shows regret after a kill. There isn't much gore. It's like a movie made 20 years ago.

Wikipedia says that there's going to be an American version in 2010. Get ready for a flood of vampire-themed coming of age movies.

The bully doesn't seem very intimidating to me, but it's been a long time since I was 12.

I've never seen a bunch of cats win a fight against a vampire before. I wonder how they filmed that. I wonder what will happen when someone who has just been turned goes to the national health care system. "Take a number and have a seat..." I wonder how the two bite marks in the neck stop gushing blood long enough to scab over. Maybe a working NHCS is part of suspension of disbelief. It does make the scabbed bite marks seem less unlikely.

It makes sense for vampires to live someplace with long winters.

Some of these humans seem to have never seen a vampire movie before.

I'd expect a vampire who goes for long periods of time between feedings to be more careful not to waste blood getting it on other peoples' clothes.

Apparently this eternal 12-year-old isn't able to think long-term about things like investing in a blood bank.

I like how the violence is downplayed. The pool scene in particular is good. I'm not sure that "kill all the bullies" is the best long-term survival strategy, but it has its advantages.

I wonder if Eli's first "helper" was recruited at age 12 too. Kids are so dumb. I guess that's why we call them "kids".

Taxation and Fairness

When discussing taxation, much ado is made about fairness. Most agree that "everyone should pay their fair share" but to different people that's a different amount. Some say that people should pay the same percentage of their income. Others say that people should pay the same percentage of their spending. Advocates for the poor say that the current system of progressive taxation (so named because it was championed by the Progressive movement of the early 1900s) is the most fair, because the poor have hardly any money already. (Calling Progressive policies progressive is a claim that I am not going to address in this post.)

In my opinion, the only fair tax is a head tax: every person pays the same. Since (without making the tax so high that some can't pay) this is not sufficient to pay for the government programs we need (much less the government programs we don't need) we should set aside our differing notions of fairness and look at what is practical.

There are many practical reasons why it's a bad idea for only rich people to pay taxes. If politicians are elected in order to hand money to the majority, the system will collapse. If the rich feel oppressed, they will leave and tax revenue will collapse. If it's more profitable to not work than to work, the economy will collapse.

If the poor and the middle class are taxed they will have financial incentive to vote for fiscally responsible government. To make this incentive more direct, taxation should not be concealed via payroll taxes, sales taxes, inflation or some other mechanism. Paying taxes should be as visible as possible: a check that you write (or an electronic funds transfer that you initiate) to the government at least yearly, better yet quarterly, and maybe even monthly. Treat it like any other bill, and people will take action to control it the same way we take action to control our other bills.

To make it easier to pay taxes quarterly or monthly the income tax system should be streamlined. This is worth doing anyway and should have been done long ago. (A positive side effect of massive tax simplification is that the IRS can be downsized, saving lots of money.) The current income tax system has thousands of exemptions, deductions and credits, and rather than cherry-pick which should be eliminated, it would be more fair to eliminate all of them and only add in the handful that are really needed, if any. I'm not even sure that the standard deduction is needed, but that's a topic for another post.

Measuring Freedom's Value

This idea is not original to me.

How many dead people is freedom worth? Thousands of people have already given their lives for it. How many is too many? To be more specific, if we knew ahead of time that we could save 10 million lives by giving up our freedom of speech, would you choose to do so?

What about freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, freedom from unlawful search and seizure, freedom from cruel and unusual punishment, and so on?

This sounds very abstract, but it becomes less so when we consider laws designed to protect us. For example, the US Supreme Court has ruled that police checkpoints (where the police stop every motorist in search of drunken drivers, or illegal immigrants, or something like that) do violate the 4th Amerndment to the Constitution, but are OK anyway when they're in the public interest. I don't know how many deaths have been prevented by sobriety checkpoints, but it's probably been at least 10. Is that enough?

Periodically we hear (usually in the context of some new safety law) the phrase "If it saves even one life it will be worth it." I'm skeptical. Everybody dies, and postponing death for one person by a few years, even by a few decades, does not have infinite value.

In 2008 the US Congress passed the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA). Intended to remove sources of lead from the mouths of young children, its side effects include driving out of business "tens of thousands" of companies, including thrift stores. I consider myself part of the anti-lead-in-babies camp, but that is a little drastic, especially in these difficult economic times. Nobody even knows if CPSIA will save any lives at all (it was passed in a fit of hysteria over Chinese imports, with very little scientific justification), but only one Congressman out of all of them voted against it.

What I conclude from all this is that people don't actually value freedom very much at all.

Earth Day

Today is Earth Day. It's also Lenin's birthday. I don't observe either, for the same reason: people are more important than ideology.

It is unfortunate that the modern environmentalist movement has embraced the methods of Lenin, which brought about the deaths of millions and the political subjugation of millions more. Let's be clear: those negative things were not the goals of Lenin, they were the inevitable by-products of centralized decision-making. Whenever leaders try to dictate from afar how we should live, rights are trampled and people die.

There is no danger that we will destroy the biosphere with greenhouse gas emissions. Humanity will survive climate change more easily in the future than it has in the past. We should support measures that increase freedom and oppose proposals to decrease it.

Life

I finally saw the season finale (possibly the series finale if it's not renewed) of the TV show Life, and it blew my socks off. Now I want to Netflix the DVDs and watch the whole thing from the beginning. This is made easier by the fact that there are only 32 episodes. I love it when a great show is canceled before it jumps the shark.

Abolish corporate income taxes

Corporate income taxes should be abolished. Here's why:

1. To a company, tax is one of many costs that get rolled into the price of a product. Customers ultimately pay in the end, making corporate taxes equivalent to a (complicated) sales tax, which is regressive: poor people pay more than rich people as a percentage of their income. Eliminating these taxes would disproportionately help poor people.

2. It would stimulate the economy by lowering compliance costs. Companies wouldn't employ people to do their taxes. Companies wouldn't do complicated things to hide income from the tax man like they do now.

3. It would give local companies an advantage, providing jobs and improving the economy.

4. It would decrease corruption. Currently, companies give campaign contributions (a.k.a. bribes) to politicians in exchange for favors such as tax exemptions. Reduce the favors politicians can give and you reduce political corruption.

5. Corporate income taxes don't actually bring in much revenue (compared to other income sources), making it easier for the benefits to outweigh the costs.

Artificial Wombs

A Louisiana lawmaker has proposed a new law that will make it illegal to:

create or attempt to create a human-animal hybrid, . . . transfer or attempt to transfer a human embryo into a non-human womb . . . (or) transfer or attempt to transfer a non-human embryo into a human womb.

I understand how discomforting it can be to think of mommy as moommy, but consider the many benefits of artificial womb technology:

• People would still be people. You're not less human if you were a preemie and spent your first three months in a life support chamber.
• Abortion would almost disappear. People could put an unwanted baby up for adoption as soon as they learn they are pregnant. People who want to adopt a baby could ensure that it has the best prenatal care available.
• Women with medical conditions that require powerful drugs would not have to choose between their own lives and the lives of their unborn offspring.
• Artificial wombs would protect fetuses from the risks of everyday life, such as car accidents.
• High-risk pregnancies could be monitored by medical professionals 24/7.
• Premature births would have better outcomes if a baby could be transplanted into an artificial womb and provided with a normal gestation time.
• If for purely legitimate purposes we needed to raise a large army of clone warriors loyal only to me, we would be able to do so.
• Some fertility problems could be mitigated.
  
• Once the technology becomes safer than traditional pregnancy, it frees women from some of the negative side effects of pregnancy.
  

Artificial womb technology has many benefits and few drawbacks. Even if it were only used to save lives that would otherwise be lost, it would be worth it, but the long term potential is even greater.

Efficient decision making

Small organizations tend to be more efficient than large ones because in a large group it is easier to separate decisions from their consequences. In general we make better decisions when the consequences affect us and we make poorer decisions when they don't.

When I buy a car for myself, I have many reasons to do a good job. If I get a car that breaks down too much I'm inconvenienced. If I negotiate poorly then I spend more money. If I don't get the features I need then I won't be able to use those features.

When I buy a car with someone else's money for someone else to use I have less reason to do my homework. Maybe I'll buy whatever my buddy the used car salesman suggests. Maybe I won't haggle. Maybe I won't bother to take a test drive.

People have a right to make bad decisions. Maybe you'd rather buy a Corvette than a Corolla; people legitimately disagree about things like that. Companies can make bad decisions too; it's their money to waste. Government, though, is a special case, because it doesn't spend its own money.

Inefficiency in GM, or AT&T, or Microsoft, or any other big company doesn't bother me much. I'm free to not give them my money. But if I tried that with the government, sooner or later unhappy men with guns would show up at my door.

What's the solution? I don't know. It's easy to say "government should be as small as possible" but it's not that simple. Nothing's simple.

First Post

Human beings crave simplicity. We want simple explanations for the complex things we observe, but simple answers are seldom accurate.

For some reason this fascinates me.