Spotify Gripes

I have had a Spotify premium account now for six years, and yet I do not have one iota of the emotional connection with Spotify that I have for my old iPod.  I also have a much smaller Spotify library (thanks to to the 5,000 song cap), yet I know it much less well than the iPod's.

Part of this is because of how I curated the iPod library:  mostly through sharing mp3's in high school and college.  Everyone then tried to limit just how much they individually pirated from Kazaa and Limewire, but if Henry had albums from a dozen new artists he suggested you would like, you didn't ask how he got them.  There is a relevant SMBC comic for my nostalgia, but I think this was just about an ideal music market from a consumption standpoint.  The marginal dollar cost was zero, but the expectations to identify good music and reciprocate to keep participating in the shared economy were high.

I do not see how Spotify can ever recreate this system, but there are other ways it could improve.  There is an information overload with any established artist.  You can either listen to the top five songs, or wade through a dozen random live recordings and greatest hits compilations to find the album you want.  And bless your heart if you want to queue a 1992 recording to follow from 1998.  Everything about Spotify seems to want to recreate a browser experience, and yet it still doesn't have tabs.  Why have so much music (and information about the artists) worth exploring while making it so difficult to explore?  I also do not need to see album art thumbnails or headshots of every artist, and I especially do not need to see them if it makes loading my library take thirty seconds longer.

Brush-up Reading: Organoids

From wikipedia:

An organoid is a miniaturized and simplified version of an organ produced in vitro in three dimensions that shows realistic micro-anatomy. They are derived from one or a few cells from a tissue, embryonic stem cells or induced pluripotent stem cells, which can self-organize in three-dimensional culture owing to their self-renewal and differentiation capacities.  The technique for growing organoids has rapidly improved since the early 2010s, and it was named by The Scientist as one of the biggest scientific advancements of 2013.^[1] Organoids are used by scientists to study disease and treatments in a laboratory.

Organoids were named Nature's Method of the Year 2017.  They have set up a full primer page, though much is gated.  The primary promise is that organoids will provide models of human organs that are more representative than flat tissue simples and are cheaper than mouse models.

Researchers have created organoid models to better understand the functioning (and misfunctioning) of the liver, kidney, lungs, stomach, breasts, and much else.  There is a good presentation on YouTube here.  By far the creepiest research involves chimeric brain organoids.

Review: *Are We Born Racist? New Insights from Neuroscience and Positive Psychology*

This book is a few years old and a quick read.  It has three parts, finely diced (I guess) for easier incorporation as supplementary reading into a not-too-demanding freshman seminar.

The book broadly accepts that people are hard-wired to notice race and counsels multiculturalism over colorblindness.  None of the claims seemed very controversial and I don't have any expertise or reason to disbelieve the conclusions.  However, the book was written before Brian Nosek et al blew open the replication crisis in social psychology and over relies on too many of the types of small-sample studies of college grads that have been unreliable to really back up its claims.

Some nuggets:

• "Affluent and educated African Americans were more likely to report discrimination, while the reverse was true for whites."
• In a simulation, white college students playing the role of police were more likely to shoot unarmed black men than unarmed white men, and were less likely to shoot armed white men than armed black men.  Actual police participating in the same simulation did not shoot unarmed black men at a higher rate, but did take longer to decide not to fire.

Are We Trying to Be Misunderstood?

Being misunderstood is no fun when truly no one understands you.  However, "having been misunderstood" is a sympathetic position.  Think Gregor Samsa versus Boo Radley.

Being attacked is hard when you are singled out.  However, being attacked because of your affiliation with some group can reinforce the bonds between said group and you.

With that, from Jonah Goldberg:

Remember the story about Donald Trump’s Twitter team deliberately misspelling words in his tweets because they concluded that getting attacked for spelling like a “real American” worked for him? 

Some staff members even relish the scoldings Trump gets from elites shocked by the Trumpian language they strive to imitate, thinking that debates over presidential typos fortify the belief within Trump’s base that he has the common touch. 

Last month, I wrote a column speculating that Hillary Clinton’s false tweets about Brett Kavanaugh’s view of birth control — which already had been widely debunked by fact-checkers after Kamala Harris floated the same argument days earlier — was a deliberate attempt to get attacked by the “right people.” Newt Gingrich almost won the 2012 primaries because he brilliantly and unrelentingly turned almost every question against the media (foreshadowing Donald Trump’s tactics to come). Many Republicans loved Newt because he hated the media and the media hated him. 

Similarly, I’ve been told that some political consultants think it is advantageous for Republicans to “accidentally” offer racially tinged “gaffes” — such as Ron DeSantis’s “monkey” comment — not to “dog whistle”at racists, but to goad the media and liberals into unfairly attacking Republican candidates. (Note: There’s no evidence that this was actually DeSantis’s intention; I just use it by way of illustration because that’s exactly what happened with him.) 

I think this is a phenomenon begging for nomenclature, and I'd like to nominate a word that has been begging for a definition: covfefed.  

Differences between Millennials and iGen

Some differences, with no implied ranking:

• Members of iGen graduated into an economy at full employment.
• There are many more CompSci majors in iGen (at least at top schools).  (A good just-so dividing line is the break up of the alleged Apple/Google wage cartel in 2014.)
• Memories of the world pre-9/11.  I started the sixth grade in 2001, so don't have the best perspective, but at least have some perspective.
• During my politically formative years (say, 2005 to 2014), the war on terror, the Great Recession, and income inequality dominated conversation.  All of these seem to be much less important to the iGen cohort.  Conversely, race has been much more at the forefront.  Another just-so dividing line could be the killing of Trayvon Martin in 2012, or the founding of BLM the next year.
• Having a smart phone in high school.
• The economics majors I graduated with in 2012 were almost uniformly drawn to the field at least in part because they wanted to understand the financial crisis and Great Recession.  Coursework favored macro and finance.  Econ majors I interview for work now seem unconcerned (sometimes ignorant) about the downturn.  There is much more interest in micro topics, especially IO and labor.

This list is obviously incomplete, but I think all the above reflect more-or-less abrupt differences that affect the character of the average Millennial or iGen member.  The emergence of dating apps is another popular nominee, but that shift seems more superficial to me.  As far as I can tell, the apps are used as often as not to set up old-fashioned dates.  They may lead to more highly sorted marriages, but that would be a continuation of a trend rather than a break.

Sportsball: An Appreciation

In celebration of conference championship week, below are some my favorite things about football:

1. Intellectual Stimulation:  Stoppage of play and eleven-man teams allow for far richer strategies and coordination than any other sport.  Anyone who has ever played the game can happily rewatch a well-executed play six or seven times, looking at different players and parts of the field each time.  Consider some questions for a simple run.  How did the defense line up?  Was it consistent with prior formations?  Did they show blitz?  (Did the offensive line and quarterback read it?  Was an audible warranted?)  How did the offensive line set up?  (Did the defense read it?  A two-point stance may be a tell that a tackle is preparing for a pass rush, or it may be that he is pulling, or it may be that he is on the weak side of a stretch run and too tired to go all the way down.)  Does each member of the offensive line understand their responsibilities (and have faith the rest of the line does too) if any defensive players twist, stunt, or blitz?  Now think about all the other dimensions of the game and the way teams must mask and randomize strategy, and re-evaluate the above.
2. Openness to Boys of All Builds:  Almost any body type is suitable for some position on the football field at the high school level.  Yes, speed and size will give you an advantage and open up more positions.  But most coaches will give a short and stocky kid a chance at nose tackle, or a big and plodding one a shot on the O-line.
3. Big, diverse teams:  Football (for now) has the largest fan base in the country and attracts players of all backgrounds.  Bigger teams inherently allow for more representation and more diverse interaction.  (Baseball similarly benefits from more representative interest and bigger teams.)  Perhaps they are unfair, but other popular high school sports like basketball and lacrosse are saddled with stereotypes for having a certain type of player, a problem that does not affect football as much.

Star Wars, Ep. VIII: The Return of Political Economy

Despite wooden acting and dialog, the prequels shine because they took the visually vivid but one-dimensional narrative of the original trilogy and put it in a galaxy that makes sense economically and politically.  Business and bureaucrats clash while sinecures in the Senate seek little change beyond capturing private rents.  Inequality is high:  the returns to capital are handsome and slavery is common on the fringes.  It really is no wonder that a collection of smaller worlds would vote to leave such a corrupt and stagnant system. 

The Force Awakens rejected socioeconomic world-building.  As has been much hashed, it adhered obnoxiously closely to the formula of A New Hope.  Where political economy surfaced it was nonsensical:  The First Order is a fringe movement that manages to build a superweapon ten times larger than the former Empire's flagship Death Star without being detected by the galactic government?  The pro-Republic military force calls itself "The Resistance"?

In short, the prequels were hard to watch but a lot of fun to think about.  Episode VII was fun to watch and awful if you thought about it.

The Last Jedi at least offers up some ingredients to solve for The Force Awakens' unlikely equilibrium. (Of course none of the below was Disney's conscious intent, but let's have some fun.) Some observations on the new galactic order:

1.  The Resistance and the First Order are both more gang than military

First, the numbers.  When Obi-Wan travels to Kamino in Episode II, he is told the first 200,000 clones are ready for deployment, with a million more soon to follow.  By the beginning of Episode VIII, the entirety of the Resistance can fit on three star cruisers.  By the end, they can fit on a single smugglers' freighter, the equivalent of fitting your Earth army in the back of a long-haul truck.

Second, the scope.  Nobody, nobody in the galaxy cares much what is going on between the Resistance and The First Order.  Sure, some people are aware, the way Americans are aware of, say, the constant fighting between different gangs in Mexico.  But even a Resistance sympathizer like Maz can't be bothered to make some room in her schedule to save the entire Resistance.  Instead, we get, "Sorry, I'm all booked up, but I know a guy.  Give him a ring and he might be able to help.  Good luck, kids."

2.  The galaxy is getting smarter

Particularly, the First Order's understanding of hyperspace appears to have advanced more in a generation than the galaxy's did in the previous thousand years.  (Both Starkiller and the tracking technology on display in TLJ are in part hyperspace technologies.)

3.  The galaxy is getting dumber

In Rogue One we see force shields that can cover entire planets.  In TLJ, we get...big bunker doors.

4.  How to reconcile #2 and #3?

Ask Kevin Drum:

The problem is that the internet does help people who are “sufficiently motivated and clueful,” but that’s never been a big part of the population. And sadly, the internet is probably as bad or worse than Dr. Oz for all the people who don’t know how to do even basic searches and don’t have either the background or the savvy to distinguish between good advice and hogwash. Regular readers will recognize this as a version of my theory that “the internet is now a major driver of the growth of cognitive inequality.” Or in simpler terms, “the internet makes dumb people dumber and smart people smarter.”

Some fundamental in the galaxy has changed that benefits the smart and careful (like Snoke) and confounds the reckless (lookin' at you, fly-boy).  Woe to worlds where the former intend ill and the good are the latter.

What is the internet-like change in the Star Wars universe?  Maybe...it's the internet.  We know from Episodes I-VII that there are tremendous stores of knowledge in various archives around the galaxy, but not a lot of off-site access to these databanks.  We also know that the Empire was sinking a lot of cash into R&D to build superstructures.  The need to collaborate and communicate may have led the Empire's scientists to scrap something together that looked a lot like ARPANET.

5.  Business is up!

We get two looks at business in TLJ:  a long side venture to Canto Bight and a quick Skype chat with Maz.

Canto Bight shows us the new wealth in the galaxy in its most concentrated form, and boy-howdy are capitalists raking it in.  Rose dismisses it as a sorry bunch of beings who made it rich selling arms to the First Order, but of course that's what she was going to say.  DJ (Benicio Del Toro's character) quickly abuses Rose's political purism.  While DJ seemed fairly comfortable guessing that the ship he stole belonged to an arm's (and one of flexible loyalties), I can't help but wonder what other industries, if any, were represented at Canto Bight. 

The most telling thing about the trip to Canto Bight is the absolute lack of concern that it may be the Resistance's collective last day alive.  If Canto Bight's denizens were really all lackeys of the First Order, you might expect them to have taken a break from the tables to watch the imminent destruction of rebel scum.  If they all made their money exclusively from war-profiteering, you might expect a little nervousness that a one-sided victory by either force would lead to an end of the gold rush.  Neither of these is true; no one cares one way or the either.  This inclines me to believe that the nouveau riches' fortunes are more diversified than Rose and DJ suggest.  (And, as mentioned above, Maz also puts business first, politics second, so it's not just the 1% who are indifferent.)

6.  Down with business!

As far as I can tell, the raison d'etre for the old Republic and its Jedi mercenaries was to maintain peace.  The Senate did not pass sweeping health care reform, debate universal basic incomes, or even do much to reduce the risk of death during childbirth.  What it did do, and (apparently) did well for a thousand years, was keep worlds from going to war with one another.  If you squint, you can see the politics of the Republic resemble the balancing of powers that has characterized much of European diplomacy's history. 

The Resistance, or at least a faction of the Resistance that Rose belongs to, has grander aims.  It wants to help the poor (especially children), and it wants to punish the rich.  It really wants to punish the rich.  Was "not by fighting what we hate" ever less true than Rose and Finn's destructive fathierback romp through Canto Bight?  You don't have to squint to see the Resistance's real-world parallels:  everything but the hashtag is right there in the name.

7.  What to make of it all?

Should the remnants of the First Order emerge victorious against the Resistance in Episode IX, I'm pretty they would not be able to re-institute an empire.  Similarly, should the Resistance win, the galactic fundamentals don't seem ready to support a New New Republic.  A world (or galaxy) where any small group of vagabonds can band together and create new, unimaginable superweapons does not make for an environment conducive to central government.  (There is, I think, some interesting overlap here with The Dark Forest, but that is for another day.)  Maz's dodge and DJ's cynicism seem most apt:  You don't know who will create tomorrow's Starkiller, so the best thing to do is don't take sides, don't create grudges, and mind your business.

The Distribution of Federal Taxes Paid

Politico has a good article summarizing the difficulties of passing tax cuts a middle-class friendly policy:

[Republicans] are confronting a tax system where the tax burden is increasingly bunched up at the top of the income spectrum, thanks to huge earnings gains by the rich and the fact that the U.S. has one of the most progressive income tax systems in the world.

The top 0.1 percent of earners projected to pay more to the IRS than the bottom 80 percent combined. This year, official government data show, the top 20 percent will pay 95 percent of all income taxes.

The government data cited is from the Treasury's Office of Tax Analysis.  A more detailed look is graphed below.



The Treasury's figures also show that average tax burdens do indeed increase with income. 

From the archives: Rheta Childe Dorr on labor and hour restrictions

In the Progressive Era, a number of state legislatures passed laws (purporting) to protect women in the workplace, primarily by restricting the time of day, number of hours, and types of jobs women were allowed to work.  In a 1925 copy of Good Housekeeping, Rheta Childe Dorr took aim at this paternalism:

About the time this article is published, women's clubs all over the country will be reassembling, and before long, their committee chairmen will be reporting on legislative measures purporting to protect women wage-earners by limiting and restricting their hours of work...

My first protest is against classing grown women with children under the law. Practically all laws limiting hours of work, prohibiting night work, and providing for a minimum wage are enacted for women and minors. I say "practically" just to be on the safe side. As a matter of fact, it is the routine thing to class woman labor with child labor or adolescent boy and girl labor.

The reason given is that the vast majority of "females in gainful occupations" are girls of tender years, temporary invaders of industry, pathetic filters between the schoolroom and the matrimonial altar; I could if I had space quote statistical tables to prove the untruth of these generalizations. Few would read the statistics, and besides, I should rather have Good Housekeeping readers think of working women as human beings, rather than rows of figures. However, I will state that the last census gave the number of women, eighteen and over, in industry as 7,502,700. Nearly two million of these adult women were married. These wage-earners are not children. Why interfere with their rights to earn the highest possible wage by putting them under the police power of the State? All the arguments in favor of such a policy, boil down to one sentimental aphorism. "Women are women." Different from men. Weaker...

In 1919 the welfare advocate pushed through the Legislature a fifty hour law and a prohibition against night work for the transportation workers. Ninety percent of the nearly 1000 women in New York immediately lost their jobs, only a small number of ticket sellers escaped the general slaughter.

"They told us the fifty-four hour law would put us on Easy Street." I heard one woman say. "Well, it put us on the street all right!"

Excerpts can't give the article justice.  Each paragraph is brilliant, and Dorr's humor is evident despite her frustration.  Read the full thing here. 

Though I would not dare admit as much around polite society, I owe this find to Rehabilitating Lochner, David E. Bernstein's new revisionist history of the titular case.

From the Archives: Redneck Minstrelsy, Dan Whitney’s Assumption of the Southern Good Ol’ Boy “Larry the Cable Guy”

Note: The below (eh-hem) "essay" was written for the MUSL 151 course I took in 2012, the spring of my senior year.  I decided to dig it up after reading Kevin Williamson's recent "The White-Minstrel Show."

Minstrelsy was the most popular and influential form of 19th century American entertainment; it was the progenitor of popular music, vaudeville, musicals, and stand-up comedy. Overtly racist, actors (originally white but later black as well) in blackface relied upon and perpetuated stereotypes of Southern slaves to coerce laughs from their well-to-do white audience members. The minstrelsy tradition eventually extended its reach overseas and troupes toured in Europe and South Africa. With roots so strong, the offshoots of minstrelsy have survived to affect how America markets and consumes entertainment today. Flavor of Love with Flava Flav, The Simple Life with heiresses Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie, and the Jersey Shore each bring aspects of the minstrelsy tradition to modern culture. This paper will focus on the act of a Nebraskan who moved to Florida as a teenager and, with a trove of fart jokes and an intuitive sense of Southern white indignation with political correctness, became America’s favorite redneck.

Larry the Cable Guy’s meteoric rise from floundering radio host in the Florida panhandle to comedy super star hit critical mass seven years ago when he featured as the fourth act among Jeff Foxworthy, Bill Engvall, and Ron White on the Blue Collar Comedy Tour. The movie born of the tour flopped in theaters but was resurrected on Wal-mart shelves, selling over four million, and cable TV, becoming one of the highest rated programs in Comedy Central’s history. The success spurred two additional movies and a television show. Though each of the comedians did extremely well by the franchise, the unsophisticated humor of Larry the Cable Guy, which stood in sharp contrast to the more satirical humor of Foxworthy, Engvall, and White, carried his voice the furthest. Larry went on to star in three films, Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector (2006), Delta Farce (2007), and Witless Protection (2008), as well as lend his distinct accent and grammar to the extremely popular character Mater the tow-truck in Pixar's Cars series. In addition to touring, Larry now produces and hosts the television show Only in America with Larry the Cable Guy. In its second season, episodes have included “Naked Cowboys & Reptile Wrangling,” “Larry & the Superpig,” and “Larry Breeds Mules.” After earning $20 million dollars in the previous tax year, Forbes named Larry to its list of “The World’s 100 Most Powerful Celebrities” in May 2011.

Larry’s humor largely consists of one-liners and offers a simplistic commentary on culture as seen through Larry’s slightly twisted and unfiltered middle-American lenses. On stage and television, he appears in boots, blue jeans, baseball cap, and signature plaid shirts cut off at the shoulder that show a distinct farmer’s tan (which, how he maintains given his aversion to sleeves, is a question best not asked). The Official Larry the Cable Guy Website offers a great encapsulation of the comedian. Upon loading, a digitized Larry manning -- the gas grill on a lawn littered with garden gnomes and air darts --welcomes you to his website, and, to be sure,

“it’s a good un ... chock full of fart jokes and titty jokes and stuff that makes the world go ‘round. And if you don’t like that, then you’re probably just one of those uptight, white, politically correct dickweeds, and we don’t want to deal with you anyways.”

Not surprisingly, the website’s primary theme is a glorification of the redneck culture for which Larry has humbly become the unofficial ambassador, including a flash game to whack Larry’s sister’s dermatological moles.

That a fictional character, essentially the classic “country bumpkin” with a few more dirty jokes, could become one of today’s most influential celebrities says as much about the audience’s view of the world as it does the ability of Daniel Lawrence Whitney, the creator, voice, and face of Larry the Cable Guy, to so thoroughly adopt it. Parts of Whitney’s biography closely identify with those of Larry; Whitney is from a rural state and grew up on a pig farm. However, it might surprise his fans to learn that despite Larry’s thick Southern accent and rejection of proper subject-verb agreement, Whitney’s home state is Nebraska, he is the son of a preacher (farming was not the family’s main source of income), and he received a private high school education. At age 16 the Whitney’s moved to Florida, and Whitney made a conscious effort to hone his Southern accent, the first development in the creation of Larry the Cable Guy, based on the speech of his college roommates in Georgia.

The characterization of Whitney’s act as minstrelsy is not perfect. Whitney does do a deadpan job of imitating the worst stereotypes of the Southern redneck. However, his media is marketed as much to the audience he imitates as it is to anybody outside of it. Nineteenth century blackface minstrelsy was a way for whites to dehumanize and to distance themselves from blacks and the tortures they suffered under slavery. There is no real reason to believe that Southern blacks, Northern whites, or Southwestern Hispanics watch Larry’s comedy for any more value than the slapstick jokes. If there is a cultural identification that occurs, it is by Southern, conservative, blue-collar whites whose median incomes have soared in recent decades towards parity with the traditionally richer Northern and Western for the first time since Reconstruction. The new wealth brought with it a search for a means of asserting an independent, tough-minded culture that could succeed without surrendering to political correctness or losing touch with its rural, unpolished roots. A native Mississippian, I worry what it means for the region’s educational aspirations when every other Southern high school male student’s 4x4 pick-up sports a “git-r-dun” bumper sticker. Long the home of the country’s most important and original contributions to music and literature, I believe Southerners can find a more authentic Southern figure to rally around than a Nebraskan with a learned accent.

Corporate Tax Rate Reading List

1. White House CEA Report: "Corporate Tax Reform and Wages – Theory and Evidence" 
2. Larry Summers: "Hassett’s flawed analysis of Trump tax plan"
3. Greg Mankiw provides a simplified model.  Casey Mulligan and John Cochrane provide additional algebra.
4. Paul Krugman opts for a more graphical exploration, but the substance of the math is much the same.  Elsewhere, Krugman takes a more polemic approach.
5. Larry Summers responds.  Might as well check out Vox (no, not that Vox) and Angry Bear, too.
6. For longer primary source reading, try Summers (1981) and Gravelle (2011), both referenced throughout the above.

The key dispute here is (a) left-leaning economists believe tax reform is just tax cuts for the wealthy and (b) right-leaning economists think tax reform will boost wages.  If you read that and said, "But those are not really directly opposing views; how can you call that a dispute?," welcome to the blogosphere!  It's good to have it back.

Lunch atop the Amalfi Coast

The hike from Positano's ferry was a bother and a half: 4.5 miles, 2,500 ft change in elevation, and blaring sunshine.  But the restaurant at La Ginestra was worth it.

 

Pushing through the dusty and exposed final few hundred yards uphill is rewarded with a stop at Chiesa Santa Maria del Castello, an earthy pungence from unseen cattle, and, more importantly, a water spigot.  Mind the bees, though.  An iron spiral stairwell provides access to the church roof.  I'm not sure if you should climb it, but I do know no one will stop you.

The air here feels about 20 degrees cooler than the base of the mountain.  Cool off a bit, and walk the last stretch of blessedly gentle asphalt to La Ginestra.  Unlike in Positano's twisting alleys and stairwells, Google can find you and point the way here.

 

La Ginestra may appear empty.  Is this yet another establishment closed for the tipico August vacation?  No.  Simply wander a bit, calling "Ciao" and "Hello" until a short sexagenarian woman appears.  She only speaks Italian, but has a good ear for Spanglish.  Ask for a seat outside (pointing suffices) to enjoy the breeze and the view of Naples bay.

Like any Michelin rated restaurant, there is no menu.  You will enjoy what the chef prepares.  I had an antipasto of mozzarella, soft white bread, eggplant, fried green beans, prosciutto, and a lovely fried dumpling whose name I never caught.  Next course was a sumptuous eggplant pasta in alfredo, sprinkled with basil and Parmesan.

 

Google translates the style "contadina" as "peasant," yet it is the epitome of pleasant.

Whose Impeachment Is It Anyway?

Some of you might think the country is in an impeachin' mood.  Some of you might think the lyin' media is out to sully your president by any means possible.  Add to the ever-growing mound of evidence of partisanship the popularity of googling "impeachment" by Trump's margin of victory in each state.

Time may be the final judge, but the House of Representatives is the more immediate authority.  Not to dwell on the obvious, but it is worth recalling that the Democrats controlled the House during the Watergate investigation, and the GOP during Bill Clinton's impeachment hearing.  Last week, Justin Amash (R-MI) became the first Republican Congressman to endorse an independent investigation between the administration's ties to Russia (WaPo).  Michigan also happens to be the state where Trump's victory was narrowest, and among those where "impeachment" searches are most popular of states Trump won.  Democrats would do well to pressure Representatives in similarly placed states like Arizona and Pennsylvania.

The March for Science

On Saturday tens of thousands of people who couldn't score a two if they took the AP Chemistry exam tomorrow and haven't read an NEJM article in their lifetimes gathered to denounce their political opposites as anti-science.  Over at Slate, FOAMcast's Jeremy Faust (who moonlights as a physician at Brigham and Women's) summed it up nicely:

Being “pro-science” has become a bizarre cultural phenomenon in which liberals (and other members of the cultural elite) engage in public displays of self-reckoned intelligence as a kind of performance art, while demonstrating zero evidence to justify it. 

It's tempting to read both too much and too little into any one march or protest.  I'll limit my observation to this: the March for Science is the clearest sign yet that the peak of American progressivism as an intellectual movement is behind us.

There have been hints of this in recent years, such as when Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century became a top-selling book, with vanishingly few purchasers making it past page 70 of 700.  I'd venture those who are among the "seriously, I'm going to finish when I have more free time," group were disproportionately represented at the March for Science, where the burdens of hefty white papers could be brushed aside in favor of hefting white posterboard.

Not unrelatedly, the March for Science speaks to the influence reddit (or whatever site succeeds it as the internets staple open forum) can have on the future of progressivism.  The idea and momentum for the March, after all, were both begotten on reddit.  In this form, the new progressivism consists of sharing headlines that affirm important ideological tenants.  Anecdotal affirmation and pithy quips ensue, with the best being upvoted in the comments.  Links to the underlying articles are appreciated. Clicking through, however, is really not necessary.  It is in this disposition that the semi-official mission of the March for Science referenced the importance of scientific inclusiveness twice as often as science eduction, and the best coverage of the March were photo albums of the cleverest posters and profiles of science celebrities.

I doubt many progressives would take kindly to my interpretation, but it could be seen as the consequence of an otherwise healthy evolution that the home base of progressivism is becoming more accessible as it becomes more popular.  While Brookings blogs wane, Bernie bros wax.  Young college grads crowding into gentrified neighborhoods seem more and more than willing to put their faith in designated technocrats with thousand page rulebooks as their preferred form of government.  The Trump administration will push more into that camp, without exactly necessitating any deeply intellectual opposition.  Facades of intellectual detachment will increase in value as a tribal countersignal to Trump's unconvincing embrace of hokey Americana.  Intellectualism itself will be championed, in spirit, from afar.

Cash and Stranger Lives Stated versus Revealed Preferences

My roommate recently posed a hypothetical dilemma: Imagine I am a mischievous powerful alien, or if realism helps, a social scientist at a university with the world's worst IRB process.

I offer you $100,000 with the following condition: one (randomly chosen person) will die upon your taking custody of the cash.  Do you take it?

To emphasize: the person is chosen at random from the entire global population.  A twenty-something Indian is more likely than a nonagenarian Norwegian, but no guarantees either way.  Given an average of 150,000 deaths everyday, you would only be increasing that by 0.0007 percent, but that 0.0007 percent is on you and your $100,000.

What do you do?

Go ahead and think before you read on.  I'm going to do a few spacer paragraphs so your eye doesn't jump ahead to my thoughts and bias you.

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Ready?  Need a few minutes?  No rush here.

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More spacing ...

Okay, here we go.

I've repeated the question a few times in conversation, and so far no one has said they would take the cash.  Yet consider this: a number of highly-effective non-profits have estimated their marginal costs of saving a life to be a few thousand dollars.  (Granted, taking non-profits' word for it is not objection-free, and there is some thorniness to measuring what's known as a Quality-adjusted Life Year in the academic lit, but I don't think the numbers wildly attached from reality.)

I find this remarkable.  Why might it be someone would turn down $100,000 they don't have to save a life (in theory), but aren't willing to part with $5,000 they do have to do the same (in practice)?

1.  We're not as altruistic as we would like (others?) to think we are, and we really would take the $100,000 if the offer were credible.
2.  It's psychologically easier to opt out of committing an evil act than is to commit to an altruistic one.
3. It's psychologically easier to part with money never owned than money previously earned.
4. People don't have good information on the costs of saving a life, overestimating them by a few orders of magnitude.

These aren't mutually exclusive, but I'd like to think #4 is both important and easily correctable.  With that in mind, I'll make a plug  for the effective altruism movement, which encourages people to give more money specifically to effective charities.  The website The Life You Can Save points to several.  Unsurprisingly, these cluster in health care in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

From the archives: Executive intimidation of the judiciary

Among John Podesta's leaked emails was exchange re: King v Burwell from Neera Tanden, President of the Center for American Progress (a progressive think tank whose work I enjoy):

I mentioned this to John some time back, but think it's a bit more current now.

It is most likely that this decision has already been made by the Court, but on the off chance that history is repeating itself, then it's possible they are still deciding (last time, seems like Roberts went from striking the mandate to supporting it in the weeks before). As Jennifer will remember, it was pretty critical that the President threw the gauntlet down last time on the Court, warning them in the first case that it would politicize the role of the Court for them to rule against the ACA. As a close reader of the case, I honestly believe that was vital to scaring Roberts off.

In this case, I'm not arguing that Hillary spend a lot of time attacking the Court. I do think it would be very helpful to all of our interest in a decision affirming the law, for Roberts and perhaps Kennedy to see negative political consequences to ruling against the government.
Therefore, I think it would be helpful to have a story of how progressives and Hillary would make the Supreme Court an election issue (which would be a ready argument for liberals) if the Court rules against the government. It's not that you wish that happens. But that would be the necessary consequence of a negative decision...the Court itself would become a hugely important political issue.

At CAP Action, we can get that story started. But kinda rests on you guys to make it stick.

What do you think? If you want to proceed, we should move soon.

Let me know thoughts. And I'm happy to discuss.

Why Did the Klan So Ardently Support Public Schools?

[note: below contains citations from KKK publications and references to anti-Catholicism]

School choice debates occurred in days of yore, too:

In 1869 the religious issue in New York City escalated when Tammany Hall, with its large Catholic base, sought and obtained $1.5 million in state money for Catholic schools. (Wikipedia)

This being the days of yore, the "religious issue" here is not Christian v. secular, but the older feud of Protestants v. Catholics.  Here is more context:

Following the conclusion of the civil war Catholics began challenging the religious practices common in the public schools.  Catholics, seeing the obvious evangelical Protestant overtones to public education, set up parochial schools and sought shares of the common school fund or exemptions from taxation.  Additionally, Catholics challenged the practice of hymn singing, praying, and reading from the King James Bible in the public schools. 

New nativist groups, such as the Order of American Union, the Alpha Association, and the American Protective Association, arose to do battle against the growing Catholic-immigrant menace.  Not surprisingly, Congressmen and Senators found themselves subject to the attitudes and pressures of the times.  One of the several measures proposed to deal with this controversy was the Blaine Amendment.  (Green, 1992)

Despite the Blaine Amendments, the Catholic Church continued to operate affordable, quality parochial schools.  The Ku Klux Klan probably reached its peak in national influence and membership about fifty years later.  By that time, the hot-button issue had moved from state funding of overtly religious schools to whether anti-Catholic majorities would allow parochial schools to continue to exist.  Anti-Catholics condemned what they saw as demoralizing criticism of public (read: predominantly Protestant) public schools as an attempt by Catholics to poach students.  Here is one commentary:

In Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indian, Ohio and Pennsylvania the schoolhouses and equipment were found to be twenty-five to fifty years behind the times.  In some of the buildings it would be impossible for the children to keep warm in cold weather as there was nothing between the ground and the floors to keep the wind out.  The homes near these schools were often modern structures, up to date in every way.  One can readily see how parents living in such homes are often induced to send their children to parochial schools, and why Rome is making such a desperate fight to discredit our public schools and to prevent any appropriation of money for their upkeep and advancement.

An enemy to public school is an enemy to the Constitution.  We are thankful that a white-robed army has arisen, a might host that will put the Bible in the schoolroom and forbid the lecherous hand of popery to interfere with our free institutions. (Klansmen: Guardians of Liberty)

The fascinatingly ignominious author of that opinion was Alma Bridwell White, who could add racist, antisemitic, feminist, first female American Methodist bishop, and Klan sympathizer to her anti-Catholic credentials.

Modern Questions

If the left is so worried about Trump abusing office, why are Congressional Democrats resisting their Republican peers' efforts to claw back executive authority?

If you think Russian hacking during the election was (a) pernicious, (b) effective, and (c) part of a clear trend of election meddling, why haven't I seen an op-ed in a major news publication questioning whether President Obama might be a nincompoop for letting it happen?

Speaking of, if you find disturbing PEOTUS's fondness for an authoritarian regime that scorns liberal values, that helps prop up the Syrian government, and that sponsors proxy wars via militias on its neighbors' soil, how do you feel about rapprochement with Iran?

If men won't take the pink-collar jobs in health care because masculine egos preclude women's work, why are there a quarter million vacancies in construction and trucking?

Do you still think monied interests determine election outcomes?  If not, do you miss those times you thought they did?

Post-Election Predictions

Trigger warning: some of the below predicts that "Trump will be bad differently than you expect" or "Trump will be bad in some ways that we prefer not to acknowledge Obama was bad."

A little late to market here, but I wanted to get some predictions of what the Trump presidency might bring before the end of the year.

1. The market for individual health insurance will sputter over the next two years.  [Of course, that was true to some degree no matter who won the election.  Insurance companies largely have not been able to turn a profit on the Obamacare exchanges, and the expiration of the reinsurance and risk corridor programs was always going to lead to a larger price hike in 2017.]
2. Trump will deport fewer people in his first term than President Obama did in his first.
3. Fewer Americans will be targeted and assassinated by drone strike under Trump's first term than under Obama's.
4. The media will continue to focus on Trump's personality and antics, but there will be even more focus on the personality and antics of Trump advisers. 
5. There will be a recession in the next four years.  [If we avoid a recession in the next four years, then the 2009 - 2020 expansion would be the longest expansion of the post-war era.  My current guess is a strong dollar triggers financial distress among foreign issuers of dollar-denominated corporate debt, but who knows for sure?]
6. The Fed will lose some independence.  [Consider this: the FOMC has already raised the target rate as many times since Trump was elected as it did for the entire eight-year period of November 2008 to November 2016.  Obviously that's a spurious correlation, but you try coming up with an equally simple statement rebutting the notion the Fed may be playing favorites.  I'm pessimistic here because the easy evidence will lend itself to Trump supporters' biases.]
7. No one will say that the Fed has lost some independence.  [Instead, the Fed will sacrifice a little this time around to this president to sidestep outright politicization.  We'll widen our confidence intervals for rate changes with a bias towards undershooting.  Rates will go up, but they will come in on the low end of the newly widened expected ranges.   Herculean efforts will be made to justify the undershooting as really quite intellectually sound, and not at all affected by Trumpian bluster.  A few people will note we've seen this movie before.]

Climate Skepticism

Mexico City is far from Mumbai: 15,644 km separate the two.

Alternatively put: Mexico City lies 15,595 km to west and 50 km to the north of Mumbai. Mexico City is far from Mumbai.

Both statements show Mumbai is, in fact, far from Mexico City.  However, the west/north breakdown seems a bit unnecessary, no?

Now consider this from David Romer, the Herman Royer Professor of Political Economy at UC Berkeley:

Nordhaus (2008) concludes that a reasonable estimate is that the overall welfare effect as of 2100 is likely to be slightly negative--the equivalent of a reduction in GDP of 2 to 3 percent.  This corresponds to a reduction in average annual growth of only about 0.003 percentage points.  Not surprisingly, Nordhaus finds that drastic measures to combat global warming, such as policies that would largely halt further warming by cutting emissions of greenhouse gasses to less than half their 1990 levels, would be much more harmful than simply doing nothing.

Of course, it is possible that this reading of the scientific evidence or this effort to estimate welfare effects is far from the mark.  It is also possible that considering horizons longer than the 50 to 100 years usually examined in such studies would change the conclusions substantially.  But the fact remains that most economists who have studied environmental issues seriously, even ones whose initial positions were sympathetic to environmental concerns, have concluded that the likely impact of environmental problems on growth is at most moderate.

Professor Romer also happens to be the husband and frequent co-author of President Obama's first Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, Christina Romer.  He is not a person lacking intelligence or good progressive influences.  And yet.

Now consider:

Healthy debate is the lifeblood of American democracy, and global warming has inspired one of the major policy debates of our time. That debate is far from settled. Scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind. That debate should be encouraged — in classrooms, public forums, and the halls of Congress.

That is from Scott Pruitt, President-elect Trump's nominee to head the EPA.  Because of this position, he has been called a climate change skeptic and denier by the New York Times, WaPo, and CNN.  Scientific American, to their credit, only opted to quote a Democratic opponent's hypothetical in their headline ("A candidate who doesn't believe in science would be 'a very dangerous person to pick'") and kept a pretty honest assessment a few paragraphs down ("Pruitt focuses on the legality of climate regulations, rather than questioning climate science").

Personally, I am generally for policies to combat global warming, though this stems more from risk averse instincts rather than informed opinion.  I especially like these policies when they are coupled with broader green goals of cutting unhealthy pollutants and preserving natural habitats.  However, climate science and economic forecasting are both hard.  I find it entirely reasonable (i.e., consistent with an honest interpretation of the partial information available) to think that there is uncertainty regarding the magnitude of effects when changing inputs (like CO2 emissions) in a chaotic system (like global climate).  I also find it entirely reasonable to dispute how much, if any, economic resources should be sunk into cutting emissions.  Who am I to dismiss outright someone much more informed like David Romer?

I'm not sympathetic to skepticism to the Pruitt's bit that the anthropogenic roots of climate change are still in doubt.  I don't much care that there may be the rogue scientist or three arguing something other than industrialization's role is in doubt.  However, this to me is like pointing out Mexico City sits on a latitude fifty miles north of Mumbai.  It's a trivial point in the assessment that Mexico City is very far from Mumbai.  Similarly, there is debate left to be had on the absolute magnitude and economic consequences of climate change.  Dismissing anyone who says otherwise outright as a denialist is not likely to get us far.

Chimps are not persons for purposes of habeas corpus relief in New York

Source: Wikimedia Commons

... in case you were curious.  The case was brought by an attorney for the Nonhuman Rights Project.  This decision was released on Thursday by a New York appeals court:

In support, petitioner submitted the affidavits of several experts in an effort to establish that, in general, chimpanzees have attributes sufficient to consider them "persons" for the
purposes of their interest in personal autonomy and freedom from unlawful detention. Collectively, these submissions maintain that chimpanzees exhibit highly complex cognitive functions – such as autonomy, self-awareness and self-determination, among others – similar to those possessed by human beings. Following an ex parte hearing, Supreme Court found that the term "person" under CPLR article 70 did not include chimpanzees and issued a judgment refusing to sign an order to show cause. Petitioner appeals.
…
While petitioner proffers various justifications for affording chimpanzees, such as Tommy, the liberty rights protected by such writ, the ascription of rights has historically been connected with the imposition of societal obligations and duties. Reciprocity between rights and responsibilities stems from principles of social contract, which inspired the ideals of freedom and democracy at the core of our system of government. Under this view, society extends rights in exchange for an express or implied agreement from its members to submit to social responsibilities. In other words, "rights [are] connected to moral agency and the ability to accept societal responsibility in exchange for [those] rights.

Regrettably, the Guardian story linked above omits the context of the not-a-person decision.  At issue was only the limited right to claim habeas corpus relief as a person.  But should we want legal criteria which extend rights based solely on personhood?  I think not.  For the reasons spelled out by the judges above (among others), it makes more sense to have a sliding scale of responsibilities and protections reflecting various levels of sentience.  With a more continuous spectrum, the designation of personhood seems less fundamental and more arbitrarily semantic.  And lest we fear, the judges continue:

Our rejection of a rights paradigm for animals does not, however, leave them defenseless. The Legislature has extended significant protections to animals, subject to criminal penalties, such as prohibiting the torture or unjustifiable killing of animals (see Agriculture and Markets Law § 353), the abandonment of animals in a public place (see Agriculture and Markets Law § 355), the transportation of animals in cruel or inhuman manners (see Agriculture and Markets Law § 359 [1]) or by railroad without periodically allowing them out for rest and sustenance (see Agriculture and Markets Law § 359 [2]), and the impounding of animals and then failing to provide them sustenance (see Agriculture and Markets Law § 356). Notably, and although subject to certain express exceptions, New Yorkers may not possess primates as pets (see ECL 11-0103 [6] [e] [1]; 11-0512).  Thus, while petitioner has failed to establish that common-law relief in the nature of habeas corpus is appropriate here, it is fully able to importune the Legislature to extend further legal protections to chimpanzees.

(Note: I've deleted some citations from the above quotations for the sake of readability.  If you are bothered by that type of thing, then I'd doubly recommend reading the full decision.)

The Scale of Economies