Evidence Of Control

Perich, McNeil, Fenzel, and Lee on Imperial and Mercantilist Economics

Thu, 28 Apr 2011 10:00:05 -0400

Perich, McNeil, Fenzel, and Lee on Imperial and Mercantilist Economics:

… in Star Wars, of course. I think there’s a lot of room to investigate the economics of Star Wars, and this is an interesting starting point.

Anderson Inventing Half-War

Sat, 23 Apr 2011 10:01:06 -0400

Anderson Inventing Half-War:

For a critic of “lawfare”, Kenneth Anderson has constructed the perfect lawfare position: The use of drones to create a situation in which only one side of a war is ever allowed to engage in war.

A side of a war that relies on drones could have zero — zero! — legitimate targets. One could have a war in which one side cannot use violence at all without it being a war crime. The fellows operating the drones from Nevada are not combatants, after all — they are quite unarmed. The folks launching the drones might be, but as more and more drone functions become autonomous and as drones become cheap enough to be semi-disposable that group will shrink. The people building the drones are presumably off-limits as well.

This is quite appealing when one is affiliated with that side, but I have to wonder if Anderson would be so fond of the conclusion if it were the other side that consisted only of non-combatants and civilians.

Caplan and Martin on Fallibilist Pacifism

Thu, 21 Apr 2011 11:27:06 -0400

Caplan and Martin on Fallibilist Pacifism:

What they said.

Caplan tantalizes about Epistocracy

Fri, 15 Apr 2011 10:01:06 -0400

Caplan tantalizes about Epistocracy:

Unfortunately the linked article is behind a $30 paywall, so we will merely content ourselves with speculation beyond the excerpt that Caplan provides.

One is tempted to pass the time with a nice game of killswitch.

UPDATE: ungated version here (.doc format)! No need to immerse ones self in a bleak communist expressionist wholly apocryphal game!

Cowen notes Christianity: Ur doin it rong

Thu, 14 Apr 2011 10:00:06 -0400

Cowen notes Christianity: Ur doin it rong:

The view that the human religious instinct can be harnessed and redirected toward rational thought through the promotion of contemplative or legalistic faiths is manifestly false. That instinct does not revile an irrational and unconsidered view of the world, and it never will.

Kopel notes: Not Much of a Government Shutdown

Sat, 09 Apr 2011 10:00:06 -0400

Kopel notes: Not Much of a Government Shutdown:

In line with Knapp’s post I linked earlier. When the media say “government shutdown” do not imagine that the government is shutting down. The parts of the government responsible for killing, maiming, imprisoning, and stealing remain open; it is only the bits meant to help people that stop working.

I am reminded of the “Operation: Hairshirt” of Yes, Minister fame. The government responds to a budget cut by cutting only those services that serve the people; they will never cut the services that keep them in control.

Huemer states Anarchism in a Nutshell

Fri, 08 Apr 2011 10:01:07 -0400

Huemer states Anarchism in a Nutshell:

You won’t find a simpler description of why anarchism is morally mandatory than this. It’s a somewhat schematic argument, but it neatly frames the question that freedom asks and authority must (and in my view cannot) answer.

“it’s a moral illusion we’re suffering from.”

I continue to think that anarchism has difficult questions of social technology to answer (David Friedman notwithstanding, we are a long way from finishing R&D on the “machinery of freedom”). But this should be viewed as part of the long quest embarked on by the Enlightenment to bring our social means into alignment with our moral ends — the single most morally urgent task that has ever existed.

Oh, hey, look! Sedition!

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 10:00:07 -0400

Oh, hey, look! Sedition!:

Sen. Lindsey Graham (Jackass-SC), seeing his national enemies discomforted, would like to do something about that. If only we had a word for comforting enemies…

And Lysander Spooner’s rejection of the notion of “treason” rather specifically excluded people who really did take oaths to the state…

Worden on Government Cuts from an Anarchist Viewpoint

Mon, 04 Apr 2011 10:00:06 -0400

Worden on Government Cuts from an Anarchist Viewpoint:

Similar to what his colleague Tom Knapp said here (i noted it here).

Government is still government when it makes cuts to programs that it currently monopolizes. The system is still directed by politicians and administered by bureaucrats with vested interests in strengthening their positions. A government budget cut often means that they are going to keep forcing people to do things and keep up legislative and bureaucratic obstacles, but give people less in return.

Libertarians are right to focus on reducing the total spending of government, but remember that spending is one of the least evil things that government does: at least someone gets paid when the government spends. The less costly means of enforcing compliance — the laws, the regulations, the arbitrary police actions — can do far more damage without even the fig-leaf of compensation. Cutting government by starting from the checkbook may make good coalition-building sense, but of the places to cut government it is the least liberty-enhancing, the most likely to disproportionally affect the poor and powerless, and the most likely to pull the rug from under the largest number of people knowingly or unknowingly relying on it.

It’s also bad coalition-building. In a corporatist economy, a given government cut will resound throughout the economy, causing displacement and anguish in people previously unaware that they were government clients at all. Until you start cutting laws instead of just spending, you’re building up a large store of fear and resentment for only a small dividend of growth and liberty, spending political capital with no hope of attracting a new constituency.

US Passport Service takes Proudhon as a How-To

Sun, 03 Apr 2011 10:00:06 -0400

US Passport Service takes Proudhon as a How-To:

A note to the US Passport Service: When Proudhon said,

“To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded… noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished… drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed… repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed… mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored.”

he did not mean it as advice. He was against it.

May 21, 6pm, I'll see you all... elsewhere.

Sat, 02 Apr 2011 10:01:06 -0400

May 21, 6pm, I'll see you all... elsewhere.:

Saves some planning time and trouble, that.

"This is how you end up with an unnecessary liver toxin in your narcotic. The government figures it..."

Fri, 01 Apr 2011 10:00:07 -0400

“This is how you end up with an unnecessary liver toxin in your narcotic. The government figures it has a lower potential for abuse because you will be dissuaded from taking enough of it to “get high’ by the potential for hepatotoxicity due to the added acetaminophen!”

- Tylenol and the War on Drugs | Psychology Today

Village Voice calls out the Anti- Sex Trafficking Lobby for Just Making All Their Shit Up

Thu, 31 Mar 2011 10:00:07 -0400

Village Voice calls out the Anti- Sex Trafficking Lobby for Just Making All Their Shit Up:

The “child sex trafficking prevention” lobby exists at such a perfect center of political nonsense that it would have to exist whether or not the underlying problem actually existed; if anything it is surprising to me that they felt the need to have made-up statistics at all.

I always assumed that 90% of the institutions giving press releases and interviews were just anti-immigration front groups, because those are almost always the consequences of their “consciousness raising” — a Baptists-and-Bootleggers coalition without any Baptists. Now it loos like there are some Baptists in there, peddling made-up dogma instead of verifiable reality and making the Bootleggers look good by comparison.

Of course if you mix kids, sex, immigration, money, and new media, you have cable news and political catnip regardless. Don’t expect the Village Voice’s brutal expose to reduce these groups clout one iota; deprived of statistical cover, they will proceed regardless because reality was never the point.

The Unintended Consequences of Intention

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 10:00:07 -0400

Patri “The Craziest Friedman Yet” Friedman recently tossed up a post titled “The San Francisco Bay Area Survival Guide” which, apart from reminding me how happy I am to be in Boston, contained this little gem:

Intention, n. Your purpose, stated at the beginning of any endeavor, in order to free yourself from the responsibility of the consequences.
Example in conversation:
“I let you crash on my couch and you went and slept with my boyfriend and my therapist.”
“That wasn’t my intention.”

This more or less exactly sums up my view of intention, and of the increasingly hilarious notion of “unintended consequences”.

Every time some political time bomb blows up, predictably, from some past policy error, the response is always to characterize the outcome as an “unintended consequence.” There are a number of theoretical problems here (eg, is it even meaningful to speak of the intention of a political process? Surely if Arrow and Chomsky both agree that good intentions are not a property of states, should we not agree with those odd bedfellows? What if different members of a political coalition wanted different things?) that already justify shunning any media outlet that drags out this old trope. But all of that leaves untouched the underlying notion: That it even makes sense to treat a foreseeable outcome of a voluntary action as “unintended”.

In fact, I will be stronger. “A reasonably foreseeable result of a voluntary choice” is the best available definition of “intended consequence”. To say otherwise is to give intention an independent existence apart from actual human conduct that is not merely ridiculous but dangerous.

Moral choice is not an a la carte business. We do not get to choose, “oh, I will intend to take Bob’s laptop, but not intend to steal from Bob.” We do not allow people to say, “I shall detonate a bomb into this neighborhood, but only intend to kill the bad people there.” Is the intent there that the laws of physics should be suspended, or the laws of logic? To treat reasoning without consequences as legitimate intent is to give too much credit by far to self-deluding casuistry.

It is true that there is a substantial specialist literature derived largely from a Catholic doctrine of “double effect” that is based on allowing people to pick which consequences of an act they will intend, and that among other things the laws of war are wholly predicated on this odd little quirk. But specialists will have their own jargons (my speciality, for instance, insists that “architect” and “platform” can be verbs); if they want to use “intent” in a way that allows them to “intend” incomplete, inconsistent, or incoherent worlds, the least they can do is avoid polluting the public discourse with this slavish nonsense.

Kauffman on Financial Sector versus Entrepreneurship

Tue, 29 Mar 2011 10:00:06 -0400

Kauffman on Financial Sector versus Entrepreneurship:

The Kauffman Foundation posits that the growth of the quantitative financial sector has depleted the pool of entrepreneurs while creating demand for financeable companies, leading to a fall in startup quality.

As a serial startup guy (and one who knows a few folks from the financial bubble industry), I find this view fascinating if a bit simplistic. This paper is one to watch and come back to in a couple of years when we can put a first derivative on its trend lines.

It’s worth noting that most early-stage startups are ultimately financed by mortgages, so it may be that this is just a rebalancing — if there were more clever people than the existing financing regime could support, reallocating some to create liquidity would obviously be efficient. So we shouldn’t call this theory a slam-dunk.

Wilkinson uses Haidt to get something out of Inglehart and Maslow

Mon, 28 Mar 2011 10:00:07 -0400

Wilkinson uses Haidt to get something out of Inglehart and Maslow:

Will Wilkinson, reliably interesting, is interesting again. I am absolutely fascinated by all things Haidt, and the “default” view Wilkinson is investigating is one of the most important abstract questions of our time.

Even if you like me believe that the moral intuition is a useful but flawed tool which we must recalibrate though philosophical reflection, and that its “default” setting is largely morally uninteresting, knowing more about that default will help us know which areas of moral reasoning will be easier or harder to drum into our moral intuitions.

Torvalds delivers a perfect putdown

Sat, 26 Mar 2011 10:00:06 -0400

Torvalds delivers a perfect putdown:

Another beautiful milestone in the art of the perfect put-down.

Malka et al. on Conservatism, Religious Belief, and Political Engagement

Fri, 25 Mar 2011 10:00:06 -0400

Malka et al. on Conservatism, Religious Belief, and Political Engagement:

Malka et al. find that religious people are conservative only when they are politically engaged; among people who don’t follow politics or consume media, religious believers actually tend slightly liberal.

All three possible causation chains here are fascinating:

politically engaged, religious Americans watch the news and listen to political commentaries and this leads them to shift towards more conservative values.

politically engaged, conservative folk watch the news and listen to the commentaries, and this encourages them towards religion

when people’s politics and religion don’t match, they choose to disengage from politics

Knowing the relative weight of these three phenomena, and particularly the extent to which these phenomena appear in other cultures, would be limitlessly fascinating.

Libya, Telescopic Philanthropy, and Justification

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 10:00:06 -0400

Julian Sanchez deploys his cruise-missile analytic skill to impose a no-fly zone on a particularly tedious piece by Jonathan Chait:

Since Chait thinks Americans aren’t sufficiently willing to risk lives and money on behalf of foreigners as a general matter, but will occasionally go along with an insanely expensive intervention in particular stirring cases, he’d rather not have to generalize explicitly, because the ad hoc approach gets us closer to the level of assistance he thinks is morally required than any politically viable neutral rule.

This basically comes down to the old “telescopic philanthropy” problem:

There is always a more serious problem abroad, there is always a more headline-grabbing problem at home, and the serious and sober consideration of resource costs and long-term benefits will always seem heartless. Chait is trying unsuccessfully to avoid being drawn into the telescopic philanthropy trap by arguing an unconstrained vision (Libya is about Libya! There is no need to consider alternate uses of resources because we have plenty!); Sanchez is trying to pull him back to a more radical theoretical and more restrained practical position, but unfortunately the alternative to telescopic philanthropy often reads a lot like nihilism so I doubt Sanchez will make many converts.

The reason that ballistically donating high explosive muntions at Libya seems a better way to spend $300M than spending the same amount on antimalarials or deficit reduction or haircuts is that it has a natural political coalition and so is more politically feasible. The real question we should be asking is why it has more of a coalition than, eg, building a library in every rural village in India.

The answer, I think, goes to another discussion that we all should be following: the rather heated consideration of neoconservatism over at Cato Unbound, where C. Bradley Thompson makes the point that conservative nationalism — a tendency that I think motivates all of the political establishment, not just the right — tends to regard nations, not individuals, as the fundamental unit of moral analysis. From this perspective the question we must ask of any act of international philanthropy (to the extend that state action is ever “philanthropy”; let’s ignore that definitional thicket for now) is whether it improves the state of a nation. Insecticidal bed-nets may save lives, but they do not transform nations; bombs may cost lives, but they change the fate of important entities like “Libya” and “Afghanistan” rather than actual messy humans. If you can shift the subject of analysis from individuals to nations, you can see easily why a Libyan intervention looks like an easy choice to the political class.

As a sidenote, I think it is a reasonable claim that nations should concern themselves with nations, leaving thorny questions of individual well-being to individuals. In particular, it would help tremendously with disposing of nations.

Wash on Folk Models of Computer Security

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 10:00:07 -0400

Wash on Folk Models of Computer Security:

Via Scheier, a fascinating paper on how naive users perceive security threats. Everyone in the software industry should read this and think about it; understanding how users model the operation of software is crucial to enabling least-surprise.

Folk understanding of complex phenomena is a really interesting area, and underlies a lot of what seems initially like strange or foolish decision making. I wonder if there is a similar study on economics or financial crises.