Minding the Gap (follow-up)

"Anonymous" had a comment on my gap posting. I think it's funny, because I'm pretty sure I know who "anonymous" is. There are really only 3 people who read this blog (as far as I know). Anyway, he says:

My biggest concern about the gap is that it allows the rich to fund injustice.

While I think that this is possible, I'm skeptical that this is a prevalant problem. Can you give me some examples of when the wealthy fund injustice?

Anonymous continues...

That said, I don't have a solution. I don't believe in legislating morality

Personally, I don't have a problem when laws are created that prevent people from infringing on the rights of others. That is exactly the purpose of the government, to protect individual rights. Whether the government is the most effective protector of rights is up for debate. But it's certainly a whole bunch better than what it does most of the time, which is to take money from an unfavored group and give it to a favored group.

Maybe that's the example: the wealthy buy politicians. But I don't consider the problem to be with the wealth gap. I consider that to be a problem with the politicians. I don't think the solution to corrupt politicians is to reduce the size of the wealth gap. To me, that's roughly equivalent to saying that sex should be outlawed because some men aren't faithful.

In my opinion, the problem of corrupt politicians is a problem of a small number of people having too much unchecked power. Politicians wield a gun. You have to follow whatever laws they create or the police come get you. It doesn't matter if the laws are valid or not. The process of fighting corrupt laws is incredibly difficult.

I'd very much like to see the government's power greatly curtailed. But I worry that any such reduction would be a short term thing, only to be reasserted later. That seems to be the way our current government is going.

Given that, I'm curious about the idea of removing all government power, e.g. anarcho-capitalism. I don't know whether or not it would work, and what would prevent anyone w/in that framework from turning around and agreeing to form a government. This would, of course, put us (eventually) right back where we are. Still, it's compelling enough to at least be tried as a small scale experiment. I'd be interested in how it turned out.

Anonymous continues...

and I don't believe in redistributing wealth.

I have no problem with voluntary redistribution of wealth. I have a big problem with it when it's forced.

I've said this before, but I see very little difference between the government forcing me (at the point of a gun) to give up my money to be used for the government's purposes, and a thief forcing me (at the point of a gun) to give up my money to be used for the thief's purposes.

Battle of the Bills

Bill Easterly speaks sense in response to Bill Gates' call for creative capitalism.

The creative capitalism blog is an interesting blog. It's basically a bunch of superstar economists (on both sides of the econo political spectrum) reacting to a speech Bill Gates gave on transforming capitalism to better attack poverty. Apparently they plan on turning this into a book. (HT: Megan McArdle.)

Easterly's comments align well with what I'm hoping to communicate w.r.t. Brian McLaren's views of rich & poor.

The false accusation was that traditional capitalism fails to help the poor. It is certainly true that firms have much more incentive to meet the needs of rich people with money than to meet the needs of poor people without money. What Mr. Gates forgot was that as firms expand their production to meet more of rich people’s needs, they hire more unskilled labor to do so—driving up the incomes of poor people.

Just add this to my list of the ways that the rich, unknowingly help the poor as a result of a gap between the rich and the poor.

Steven Landsburg's comments also resonate:

You can’t end poverty without capitalism. (And indeed, prior to capitalism---more precisely, prior to the Industrial Revolution---the entire world was poor.) ... Bottom line re eradicating poverty: Capitalism is indispensable; health and education measures can help.

Not that I can add anything to something these guys have written, but I would also add that institutions matter, too.

Everything Must Change (Part 1): Minding the gap

My friend posted a review of book that I've been wanting to read. My friend makes this comment:

[Author Brian McLaren] deals with our over consumption of the world’s resources, the growing gap between the rich and poor, our war-prone proclivities, and the failure of the Church (and even other religions) to provide a different “framing story” from which to act upon. Solving this last one is the key to solving the other three.

The book may identify more issues than just these four. And the book may very well give good reasons for why these problems are problems worth solving. But, for the first three, my guess is that it assumes that these problems are agreed upon by the reader. For two of the problems listed, I'm not sure that I think they're problems worth trying to solve. Specifically, I am not worried about:

1. the growing gap between the rich and the poor
2. our overconsumption of the world's resources

I initially started this as a comment directly on his blog. But it quickly got way too long to be a comment. So I'm posting my reply as blog post. In fact, even my reply is too long to be just one blog post. I think I need at least two (maybe three). In this post I'm going to talk about the gap between the rich and the poor. In my next post, I'll share my opinions on overconsumption. But first, minding the gap...

I don't consider the fact that there's a gap between the rich and poor to be a problem worth solving. A "solution" to this problem has a few problems of it's own:

1. It ignores what the real goal of poverty reduction should be.
2. It ignores the benefits that come to the poor as a result of the gap

First, what is the real goal of poverty reduction? Increasing the wealth of the poor. The size of the gap between the rich and the poor is not the source of poverty. Imagine a country in which the poorest person earns $1 million annually, and the richest person earns $100 billion annually. That is a huge gap. The richest person earns 100,000 times as much as the poorest person, or $99.999 billion more per year. But in that country, the poorest person still incredibly wealthy. Now, consider a different country in which the richest person earns $100,000 per year and the poorest person less than $100 per year. The gap is smaller. The richest person earns 1000 times as much as the poorest person, or $99,900 more. The gap between the rich and the poor in the 2nd country is much much smaller. But the poorest person is much worse off in the 2nd country. Reducing the gap does not necessarily make the poor better off.

I think that an assumption in the problem is that the amount of wealth available is a fixed pie, like a pizza. If my slice gets bigger, then someone else's slice must get smaller, and it doesn't matter if my slice is the smallest slice or the largest slice. The goal, if wealth is fixed, is to make sure that everyone gets the same size slice. If there's a gap between the biggest slice and the smallest slice, that's a problem.

But the assumption is wrong. Wealth is not fixed. It can, and does, grow. Here's a thought experiment. Imagine a group of 10 people. And in this group, is a single dollar, and nothing else. The wealth of that group in total is $1. The guy who happens to be lucky enough to be holding the dollar can purchase from others whatever he wants. No one else has any purchasing power. But they have talents. And they can use those talents to create things. Things that sold for the dollar, or bartered for things. But getting the dollar gives them a lot of purchasing power. Much more so than bartering. So they all want the dollar, and use their talents to make things for the dollar.

Eventually someone makes something that the dollar holder will trade for, and does. At this point, what is the wealth of the group? It's risen. It used to be $1. Now it's $2. One guy has a dollar, and another guy has something that's worth $1. Every time anyone makes something worth trading for the dollar, the wealth of the group grows. After 10 trades, that group no longer has to worry about dividing up a $1 pie. The pie has now grown to $10. This is, of course, true in the US, too. Wealth here is not fixed. So when the pie grows, knowing how much the rich have, tells you nothing about how much the poor have. Worrying about the gap ignores the problem: figuring out how to help the poor.

Since I'm no longer worrying about how big the gap is, and only worrying about how the poor are doing. I want to talk about the purpose that the gap serves in making the poor wealthier.

In the early 1800's almost nobody had a flush toilet. Everyone had to figure out a way of dealing with human biological waste. And the mechanisms that were employed were unsanitary, to say the least. Disease was a problem as a result of not being able to easily dispose of waste. Everyone in that world was poorer than everyone in today's world where running water and flush toilets are the norm. But how did we get from there to here? How did we all get richer? The answer is that there was a gap between the rich and the poor.

Initially, running water and flush toilets were exclusive options in only the wealthiest households. And rightly so. Installing the required plumbing system is expensive, especially when the knowledge of how to do it is brand new. Things have to be figured out or the problem that's being solved (dealing with human waste) is replaced with a worse problem (dealing with human waste and leaky plumbing). So, it cost a lot of money to figure those things out. And only the rich could afford to pay for the figuring.

But once it was figured out, it became highly profitable to sell the products of this knowledge. The first guy to have a toilet paid handsomely for it because the guy selling it had to do so much work. But the 2nd installation was a *LOT* more profitable for the seller than the first one., since the seller had already figured some things out. Other people noticed this profit and wanted in on it. So the number of toilet sellers increased. But to win a share of the people who wanted toilets, the toilet sellers had to offer something more. And the easiest way was to cut a bit into their profit margin. A huge profit margin cut by a few percent was still a big profit margin. Multiply by millions of installations and thousands of sellers, and the cost of getting a toilet is now a tiny fraction of what it used to cost. And because toilet sellers and plumbers have been incessantly improving their products over time, what we have now works much better than what they had then. Not only is it dramatically cheaper. It's better. And nearly everyone has at least one. This is just one example of how the poor today are wealthier than than rich of 150 years ago. Compared to 150 years ago, we live in the wealthy world that I mentioned above.

Notice that the toilet, and all of its health benefits, came because it was developed at the exclusive expense of the rich. The rich paid for *all* of the development costs. And the poor paid for none of them. Had there been no rich with sufficient funds to cover the expense, the toilet would never have been developed. No one would do all the figuring out for free. It required that someone be wealthy enough, and have sufficient excess money to fund the development. Had no one been wealthy enough, we'd all today be poorer.

This example is not just true for the toilet. It's true for cars, for televisions, for VCRs, for cell phones, for houses, for aspirin, for computers, and for most of what we take for granted as basic necessities in our modern society. All of those things have made us all a *LOT* wealthier. And *all* of those things exist specifically because there's a gap between the rich and the poor. A gap that allows the rich to fund the R&D of things that competition over time brings to the poor. The gap enriches the poor.

So if you want to help the poor - as I do - try to focus on the poor. Try not to worry about the rich. Wealth is not a pie, such that if one piece is bigger, some other piece must be smaller. Additionally, the gap between the rich and the poor results in a natural, and voluntary wealth redistribution from the rich to the poor. The gap is good news. It's not a problem to try and solve.

In my next post, I'll talk about how to deal with resource constraints. And in a post after that, I hope to talk about how I think that the free market is part of God's plan, not in opposition to it.

Gmail? I'm not scared.

A friend of mine is having spam problems. He commented that he'd consider transferring his email to gmail, but was concerned about the privacy issues associated with gmail. The issue is that gmail uses software to scan your email and provide targeted ads to you. I don't worry about this for many reasons, not the least of which is that I don't currently encrypt my email. As a consequence it's hard to complain about google software scanning my email when it's already scanned by other software to determine where it's going, to determine if it's got a virus, to figure out if I'm reavealing insider information when I use my companies email, etc. None of that stops me from using email. Here's an article that articulates more reasons not to worry about gmail and privacy:

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/4707

But when it comes to the advertising part of gmail, I'm actually quite in favor of it. I *want* google to deliver targeted ads to me... as long as the targeting is good enough. One of the lessons that I've learned from Economics is that division of labor, specialization, and trade makes us all wealthier. So I want to know as many people who are already specializing in things that I want so that I don't have to do (poorly) those things that they are specialists at.

Old media advertising (TV, radio, newspaper, billboard) is generally annoying because 99.9% of the time, it wasn't selling something that I wanted. For example, I will never, ever need tampons. Seeing a tampon commercial in the middle of a program that I like is a waste of my time. Time is a rare resource. Spending it on tampon commercials is annoying. But more broadly, most of TV, radio, newspaper, billboard advertising is annoying because I don't want most of what is advertised. I'm not their target audience. Advertisers have no choice but to create ads that hit a huge population in hopes that some small percentage of that population is in the market for their product. A few people are interested. Most people are annoyed.

Now, there's some targeting with TV commercials. You don't see a lot of tampon commercials during football games. Nor do you see a lot of beer commercials on the Lifetime Network. But these are really crude forms of targeting. Most of the time these ads still miss their mark. If you could increase the effectiveness of the targeting, then advertising becomes beneficial more often for more people.

An example: I am currently in the market for a car that gets better gas mileage than the minivan I drive around. So I take a little bit more interest in any ads that are selling cars. But I take a great deal of interest in ads that are selling small, inexpensive, fuel-efficient cars. If I could only look at those ads, I would seek them out to find out what's available. In fact, that's what I do when I search the web for car deals: I'm seeking out information about people who have something to sell. In other words I'm seeking out advertising. And we all do this. We all, at some point or another, seek out advertising. It's not the advertising that's bad. It's the missed target that is annoying to us.

Now imagine that google could infer what I'm in the market for without me having to tell explicitly them. Then they'd deliver ads to me that I already want. That's not just cool technology, it's efficient technology: I get the same information without having to do the work to find it. It finds me.

So receiving ads from gmail really doesn't bother me. In fact, the fact that someone has already written a program to determine my interests and what I might be in the market for, and go find ads to deliver to me, and is doing it for free, is a big benefit to me. I get the information that I want without having to work for it.

Of course, if google's targeting is bad, then I move back onto the annoyed side of the fence. But google has every incentive to target me correctly. If they don't, then I'm simply freeloading on their service - because I won't buy things that I don't want. If they target me correctly, then they can recover the costs of providing me this free service. And everyone's better off.

Disclaimer: This blog is hosted on a google product. I don't work for google. I interviewed with them once. I'm not trying to push their products. Use them, don't use them. I don't care. I have a gmail account (actually two) that I don't use that much.

How to turn a cell phone into an ATM

This TED talk was pretty interesting. But the part I found most fascinating is how, in the streets of uganda, they've figured out how to create banking services with a cell phone. The part in question is at about the 8 minute mark.



Let me summarize. If you live in rural Uganda, you don't have access to a personal phone. But someone in your village might have one, and set up shop as a phone kiosk. This is done by purchasing a cell phone, and then selling access to the local residents who want to use the phone. Now if you have some money and you want to send it to your home village (which has one of these cell phone kiosks) what you do is buy cell phone airtime and call up the kiosk in your home village. You read off the numbers to the cell phone provider. Say you bought 1000 minutes for $5. The cell phone provider keeps all the thousand minutes (equivalent of $5), takes about 20% and gives $4 to the person you wanted to give money to. The kiosk owner then resells the minutes to make up that $4.

This is simply brilliant. But the part that's most fascinating to me is that it's doing exactly what Grameen Bank is trying to do - namely provide banking services to the extremely poor. The difference is that there's no central controlling authority. The people who have the most interest in it's success will be the ones who determine whether or not it works. The cell phone as ATM system is simple and elegant, and capital unintensive, and yet achieves much of what Grameen Bank is trying to do with a much bigger capital investment.

It never ceases to amaze me how much can be accomplished without central planning. And how it is usually accomplished much more efficiently.

Unexpected Beauty

One of the things that I find amazing is how badly we are at predicting the future. Here's an example, in 1970 the total oil inventory of non-opec oil producers was roughly 200 billion barrels. With a consumption rate of roughly 11 billion barrels per year, you would have expected the non-opec oil producers to have run out of oil in 1988 (200 / 11 = 18). But here's the surprising reality of what happened. Since then, those same countries produced 400 billion barrels of oil, and now have a remaining inventory of 209 billion barrels. (Reference)

How is this possible? By adding 409 billion barrels of new inventory to the 200 billion barrels. Take away 400 billion barrels that were consumed and that leaves 209 billion in inventory. But where did those 409 billion additional barrels come from? One answer is the earth. But that oil was already in the earth in 1970. A better answer is that it came from people.

It was people figuring out new ways to discover new oil. Or people figuring out new extraction techniques for getting at oil they couldn't previously get to. It was people exercising their minds that produced the additional inventory. The results match fairly well with what Julian Simon predicted: natural resources act like they're infinite.

Of course, oil is not infinite. There is a finite supply of it in the world. Reconciling this fact with Julian Simon's prediction riles environmentalists and conservationists. How can Julian Simon predict that resources are infinite? The first answer is that he's not actually predicting that they're infinite. He's predicting that we'll never run out. Which is a very different prediction.

Russ Roberts describes it like a room full of pistachio nuts. Imagine that you're a huge fan of pistachio nuts, and that you suddenly find your self the beneficiary of a large room, filled with pistachios. You can have as many as you want, but there's one rule: you have to leave the shells in the room. At first, all is grand. You go in the room, grab some nuts and you always get shells with nuts in them. And it goes on for a while like this. But eventually, you start finding empty shells. Over time, you find more and more empty shells. Eventually, all you ever find is empty shells. Now you know that there are other nuts still in the room, you just can't find them. The amount of effort that you have to expend is so great that it's just not worth it to you. So, you leave the last nuts in the room, and go on to some other less costly substitute. In that room, even though you are addicted to pistachio nuts, you will never run out of them.

But maybe Julian Simon wasn't just predicting that natural resources act like they're infinite. Maybe he was saying they are actually infinite. How could oil be infinite? Only if we can figure out a way to make more. And it turns out that entrepreneurs are doing just that (HT: Growthology). Not only are they making more oil, but the oil that they're making is carbon neutral: it extracts more carbon from the environment to produce, than it releases as oil. In 1970, who could have predicted this? Who could have predicted that we'd consume twice as much as our supply, and have increased our supply by 5%? Who could have predicted that we'd be this close to synthesizing crude oil?

I find this all incredible and beautiful and utterly amazing. Should this actually work out, we should be careful of getting too proud of ourselves. No single person can take credit for anything other than a small contribution. Perhaps Greg Pal has a bigger claim than anyone else, but it's still insignificant compared to all that he depends on. Mr Pal is dependent on countless other people. Take any of them away and this can't be accomplished. Certainly he's on a team of people that are doing this. Some of them are doing other parts of the science. Some of them are maintaining the books. Some of them are maintaining the facilities. But he also relies on a stable food supply, and reliable transportation, and a housing sector that ensures he can get sufficient rest. He relies on computers to do his calculations, and electricity to power those computers. Heck, he relies on a market that signals the fact that this kind of work would be valuable. There are a myriad of things that he relies on, that if taken away would prevent this from coming to fruition. In deed, no single person can even take credit for the creation of a pencil, much less this.

No one designed this system. No one orchestrated it. This result emerged from individuals following their own incentives, without anyone directing any of it. When Adam Smith looked at this kind of thing, he saw what he called "the invisible hand". When I look at it, I see the hand of God. I think God built us this way. That despite all of our best efforts to try control creativity by putting a person at the top of an org chart, the most effective way is to involve all of us a little bit in something bigger than the sum of the parts. I think God's plan for creation is emergent. And our plan is not. "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways". And when I see emergent phenomena like markets or evolution, I find myself amazed at how beautiful it is.

"Poor countries are poor because..."

"...they lack secure property rights, free markets, the rule of law, and free trade" Or so says an excellent letter in the Wall Street Journal.

The problem for countries like Haiti is not a lack of investment in agriculture but the existence of a predatory public sector facilitated by international institutions like the World Bank and IMF peddling the latest fad. Poor countries are poor because they lack secure property rights, free markets, the rule of law, and free trade. Sorting that out, rather than developing a new Five Year Plan for agriculture, is what will lift their people out of poverty.

Andrew P. Morriss
H. Ross & Helen Workman Professor of Law and Business
University of Illinois

Hat Tip: Cafe Hayak.

The State of AGW Skepticism

I read a few blogs that are skeptical of anthropogenic global warming (AGW = manmade global warming). One of my favorites is Climate Skeptic. But I generally believed that the skeptics were in significant minority. I concluded this because, despite what seems like quite sound criticism, very little of it gets reported in the MSM.

However, the commentary on this article lets me start to think that skepticism is being more widely consumed than what is reported by the MSM. My reason for this is three-fold:

1. Slashdot (where this commentary is hosted) allows a subset it's users to rank the responses - called moderation. Not all users get the ability to moderate, but generally speaking the moderation system seems reflect the general opinion of the average slashdotter. Anyone that diverges from that average opinion, gets repudiated by others who override the moderation. The viewer of slashdot can set a threshold to view comments that have reached a sufficiently high moderation point. This means that the cruft (of which there is a lot) is easily filtered out. In short, I think slashdot does a decent job of tapping into the wisdom of crowds.
   
2. The average slashdotter seems to consume scientific data more than the average person. Any mistakes made in the commentary are quickly refuted, leaving only those who have useful commentary left to survive the moderation filter.
3. I had anticipated that the commentary on this issue would be highly in support of the AGW position. But the commentary that's survived the moderation seems divided amongst critics and supporters. This suggests to me that the average slashdotter is consuming the AGW criticism and finding it convincing.

Of course, I have no way of knowing whether or not the average slashdotter is closer to reality than than anyone else. I also have not tested whether the average slashdotter's opinion is closer to the average scientific opinion of AGW or if it's closer to the average layperson's opinion. These are (I think) empirical questions.

Still without that testing, I suspect that the average slashdotter is closer to average scientist's opinion than the average layperson's opinion. And this gives me hope that the average scientist is consuming the AGW criticism and the average scientific opinion may be swaying as a result.

The Wrong Question

My wife and I recently went on (and thoroughly enjoyed) our first cruise. The picture is of me standing in front of the boat. I found myself totally fascinated by how *big* the thing was. The day our cruise departed, we could see the boat from our hotel room. If you had turned it on it's side, it would have been taller than most of the tallest buildings that were in the area. And our boat (at 855 ft) is not even close to the biggest cruise ship. Not only do these things have all the accoutrements of a resort hotel, but the thing is mobile! Most of the pictures that I took, much to the surprise of my wife, were to capture the awe that I had of that situation.

One accoutrement that we really enjoyed was the attentiveness of the service staff. For long time cruisers, this is not surprising. But for my first time, the fact that our cabin steward remembered my name after my having told it to him only once, and that our wait staff were genuinely friendly was a level of service that my wife and my frugality do not usually encounter. We really liked the different animals that we'd seen on our bed that were constructed from towels.

At some point, my wife and I started to consider the tip that we should be giving to the service staff. The cruise director made some comment that was created for the purpose of encouraging bigger tips. She said that a large proportion of their earnings came from the tips, so tip generously. So we did a little math, and concluded that these people were making significantly less than minimum wage for the amount of work that they did. When we talked to them, we discovered that 14-15 hour days are normal for them. Our assistant waiter, Erix, had been on the boat for 6 months (a standard length of time). During which time, his most recent child was born, whom he had not yet met. He expressed quite a bit of excitement for the current cruise to end because he was going home to meet his child.

For my wife, this was an unforgivable horror. How could the cruise line not allow him to go home to be with his wife during the birth of their child? For me, considering the pittance of wage that they made, it seemed extreme and I was washed over with a pang of guilt. So much work was being done for us, and we were paying almost nothing for it. I confirmed with my wife that she was feeling the same thing. This feeling was strong enough that it made me seriously consider whether or not I would go on another cruise in the future.

Fortunately, I remembered economics, and I realized that we had assumed an answer to a question, but that it was the wrong question. So I asked our head waitress, Chonmila, why she did this job. Why would she submit herself to long work hours, the long stays away from home, etc. Her answer was what I expected but was a complete surprise to my wife: "Because the money is so good." Chonmila went on to say that she's lucky to have the job. The line of people waiting to get the job is really long.

We had fallen prey to viewing the world of the service staff through the lens of living in the wealthiest country in the world. We assumed that pay that was less than the U.S. minimum wage would be grossly insufficient to make ends meet. But we'd ignored two important things in coming to our initial conclusion:

1. The cost of living in the country where the person resided
2. The alternative wages available to each server on the boat

And the 2nd point is the most important. Whatever you think of the U.S. minimum wage for Americans, it's might be a huge salary in some other country. Additionally, if the only other alternative for me is making much less money, then even the minimum wage seems like a great deal.

Now to be certain, there are probably people on the boat who are likely making less money that the people we got to talk to. Perhaps they're making much less than the alternatives available at home, but they're holding out hope for a promotion in order to make much more than their alternatives. Or perhaps they're from a wealthy country, but they take the job that pays them much less because they enjoy taking a day off on a nice sunswept beach. I have no idea why all of them are there. But I'm certain that none of them are their by force. All of them are there because they believe that this is the option that best maximizes the things they want at this point in their lives, be it money, leisure, etc.

So stopping cruising is the wrong thing to do. If all of the customers felt guilty enough to stop cruising, every single person on the boat would have to go get a job that was less than this option for them. We would, in fact, be appeasing our moral sensibilities at the expense of their jobs. We'd be limiting their freedom in order to feel better about ourselves.

There's no rational reason to feel guilty about cruising. I'll gladly do it again... as soon as I save up enough money to afford it.

Update: Hankerin'

In a previous post, I said:

I think God still thinks that all of our governments are unnecessary.

I later thought the statement may have been too strong. But after re-discovering Greg Boyd, it turns out that I'm not alone in my thoughts about government. And it may, in fact, be biblical:

So far I've tried to establish that, according to the Bible, earthly governments are premised on mistrust of the rule of God (I Sam. 8). It was not part of God's original plan for humans, but rather exists as a way of God accommodating himself to human sin. I've also tried to establish that, from God's perspective, all governments are "less than nothing" (Isa 40:15-17). Since our trust is exclusively in this God, the "ruler of the nations," we should adopt this same perspective. To live under the reign of God is to live solely under the reign of God and to therefore regard earthly government as insignificant.

What I now want to argue is that all human governments are not only premised on mistrust: they are actually ruled by Satan. In Luke 4:5-7 Satan offered Jesus all the authority of the governments of the world, for he claimed to own all this authority and claimed that he could give it to whoever he wanted. What's amazing is that Jesus does not dispute his claim. He granted that Satan owned this authority and thus could give it to whoever he wanted. But he refused to put himself under Satan's rule to acquire governmental authority.

What he's describing is something called "Christian Anarchy". I had no idea such a thing existed. But, after my first skim of it, it sounds pretty good to me. (I'm not ready to totally jump on board yet. I may end up disagreeing with it as I learn more about it.)

American Poverty

I am a Crown Financial small group leader at my church. That means that I periodically lead a class where people learn God's plan for the use of money. I say that I lead the class, rather than teach it, because I'm involved mainly because I need to keep the ideas fresh in my mind. In other words, I'm re-learning these ideas every time I participate in the class. I just happen to have done it before so it's beneficial to have me lead the class.

In any case, one section in the class is on giving. And it talks about two general topics: giving to the church, and giving to the poor. And invariably I am in a minority in the class when I report that I simply can't get myself worked up about poverty in the U.S. My claim is that the poor here live like kings when compared to where real poverty exists. Here are some facts about poverty in the U.S:

The following are facts about persons defined as "poor" by the Census Bureau, taken from various gov­ernment reports:

• Forty-three percent of all poor households actu­ally own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and a porch or patio.
  
  
• Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, in 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.
  
  
• Only 6 percent of poor households are over­crowded. More than two-thirds have more than two rooms per person.
  
  
• The average poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)
  
  
• Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 31 percent own two or more cars.
  
  
• Ninety-seven percent of poor households have a color television; over half own two or more color televisions.
  
  
• Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception.
  
  
• Eighty-nine percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a stereo, and more than a third have an automatic dishwasher.

As a group, America's poor are far from being chronically undernourished. The average consump­tion of protein, vitamins, and minerals is virtually the same for poor and middle-class children and, in most cases, is well above recommended norms.

Now, of course, that doesn't mean that poverty doesn't exist in the US. The above are averages. And there certainly are poeple here who fall below those averages. But compare that with developing nations. And what do you find that's different? Poverty in places like Africa and China is killing people. Here, almost no one dies of starvation. Instead the focus is on increasing access of "the poor" to middle class goods and services.

So what's the difference? Here, we've actually done something about poverty. And what have we done? We have a government that protects liberty better than anywhere else in the world. That liberty allows for innovation which drags the entire country out of poverty. Yes the rich get richer. But by every measurable account, so do the poor. The things we've done here should be the model for attacking poverty throughout the world.

But I find it increasingly difficult to find an organization who's willing to actually teach the world to fish! Now, I give to those programs even though I think they're not helping in the long run, because people's lives are at stake. I'm happy to argue about the most effective way to fix it in the long run as long as we're keeping people from dieing in the short run. But almost no one is talking about how to fix the main thing that keeps poor countries poor: bad government. For example, consider Africa, as reported by this African:



The amount that the developed nations give to Africa creates an incentive for the African governments to dedicate *MOST* of their time collecting more handouts instead of using the generosity to produce an economy that works without handouts.

I'm anxious to read Shane Claiborne's book but before I even crack it, I'm skeptical that it's really going to do much to increase focus on long-run solutions to poverty. Which is where the real gains are. I don't mean to say that we should diminish any short run solutions. I just wish that there was *some* support for long-run solutions.

What happens when...

...a brain scientist has a stroke

Prepared to be wrong

I have yet to see a video of a talk from TED that hasn't been really good. And this is no exception. The quote I like, "If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original."

Books I like

Just this morning, I realized one aspect of why I like Blue Like Jazz. It reads like a blog. Each chapter is a separate story that can stand on it's own. But reading all of them, you get a bigger picture of the author and what the author thinks. This is true of Velvet Elvis, too.

Or it's possible (but highly unlikely) that since most of my reading of late has been blogs instead of books, I'm just justifying my preferences and trying to equate blog reading with book reading... Yeah, right! Glad that thought was so easy to dismiss.

Quote of the Day

For, in the abstract, we may envision an Olympian perfection of perfect beings in Washington doing the business of their employers, the people, but any of us who has ever been at a zoning meeting with our property at stake is aware of the urge to cut through all the pernicious bullshit and go straight to firearms.

Here's the rest of the article.

UPDATE: I hadn't finished reading the article when I submitted this post. I like this quote even better.

What about the role of government? Well, in the abstract, coming from my time and background, I thought it was a rather good thing, but tallying up the ledger in those things which affect me and in those things I observe, I am hard-pressed to see an instance where the intervention of the government led to much beyond sorrow.

Hankerin' 2

At church tonight, my pastor talked politics. There were a number of things that he said that directly opposed something I said in my previous post:

I think God still thinks that all of our governments are unnecessary.

That may have been a bit strong. He was specifically talking about the role that a Christian should play with politics. He was explicitly *NOT* telling anyone how to vote. But he did make two points that that I want to comment on:

1. The power that the government has is delegated to it by God.
   
2. We should get out and vote.
   

First things first. I agree with point 1. I obey the laws of this country and do not plan on doing otherwise. However, I think that the government that we have in this country is a shell of it's original intentions. The system of government that we have is, by far, the most free system of government in the world. But I think it's been in a slow and steady decline. And I don't see much hope for improvement. Our government was borne out of the concept of freedom. Yet, we have a the Kelo decision, and all of its successors. We're supposed to have equal protection under the law, yet if you're a bank, you can get special legislation that gives you immunity from patent law. If you are unlucky enough to have bought a piece of land that the government decides has an endangered species on it, you lose whatever property rights you had.

What is the commonality of all these things? These decisions all hinged on miscarriage of government power. In all of these cases, the government granted special permissions to a few at the expense of others. In one case to gain more tax revenue (increasing the size of the government). In another case, it was to have access to a very wealthy industry (allowing encumbants to remain in power). And in the last case, it was pandering to a group of socialists to override private property rights (helping to fulfill the socialist dream of the government running absolutely everything). IMHO, we have a government run amok.

And not a single one of the options left to us for president has any hope of making it better. Two of them want to socialize medicine, and the other one is proud of having severely restricted freedom of speech, and now vows to further restrict freedom of association. In fact, they all seem to be racing to "do more", and in doing so reducing the basic individual liberties that this country was founded on. Those individual liberties are the source of the wealth of this country. If you're serious about battling poverty, you can't be sanguine about the restriction of liberty.

Frankly, I can scarcely see any significant differences in the two major parties any more. For decades the democrats have been saying one thing then doing another. The biggest example that I think of is the unintended consequences that have come out of FDRs new deal and LBJs great society. But more recently, Bush proved that republicans are not immune to this disease. Whatever happened to permanent tax reform? What about spending control? How about social security reform as promised? Instead we got an government entitlement program - from the "small government" party.

My pastor made the point that it's possible for government to go beyond the authority that has been delegated to it. I tend to think that our government has done that and it's only going to get worse. So while I respect the authority of our government, and like David (the old testament dude), comply with it's authority, I still think that there is huge change required, and most of it in the reduction of government. In other words, getting back to a government that is aligned with the power that God has delegated. Which means forcing the government to give up a huge amount of what it's usurped.

As to point #2, at this point I can't see myself actually voting in the presidential election. I am so disappointed with the candidates that we have available that my non-vote has got to speak at least as loudly as my vote. Now, I will certainly remain engaged in what I think is rational policy. And I'm much more prone to vote in local elections. But the choice of remaining presidential candidates stinks so badly that I can't muster the nerve to associate my vote with any of them. People died so I could have the right to vote. I really don't think that any of the lot remaining are worthy of that sacrifice.

Hankerin' for an Argument

A friend of mine lent me a book that he really enjoyed. I've been wanting to read it for two reasons: First, I saw the author give a talk at an event and it was mind blowing. It took me weeks of pondering it before I felt normal again. Second, my friend who lent it to me is someone for whom I have a great deal of respect. If he liked it, it's gotta be good.

And it's good.

The book is Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. It's somewhere between a memior and really good explanation of Christianity. I'm half way through and I'm finding it hard to put down.

Of course, I'm a little surprised that I like it as much as I do. Because the author appears to be pretty far on the left side of the political spectrum. In one section he said:

"Satan, who I believe exists as much as I believe Jesus exists, wants us to believe meaninless things for meaningless reasons. Can you imagine if Christians actually believed that God was trying to rescue us from the pit of our own self-addiction? Can you imagine? Can you imagine what Americans would do if they understood over half the world was living in poverty? Do you think they would change the way they live, the products they purchase, and the politicians they elect? If we believed the right things, the true things, there wouldn't be very many problems on earth."

I get his main point. That we believe trivial things for trivial purposes and that leads to weird results. I agree with this. But I'm bothered by the underlying assumptions. The assumption that poverty can be fixed by the actions of the wealthy. That if Americans were more "in tune" with what's really going on we'd behave differently and that would cure the world of it's ills.

I'm guessing, but I think his prescription is this: the wealthy sharing their wealth with the poor solves the poverty problem. I think that usually makes the poverty problem worse.

I don't have any idea what Americans would do if we believed less trivial things. But what I actually think would do a better job of fixing the poverty problem would be exporting the liberties we have here to everywhere and making everywhere less encumbered by stupid human rules. How much poverty exists becuase of liberty crushing government? How much are those governments propped up by the good intentions of wealthy people who send their money to the dictators?

I wish I could have a discussion with Donald Miller. I wish I could convince him that some of us in the non-left camp are very concerned with world poverty. But as for me, I happen to believe that the best way to achieve it lies not with the modern liberal bent, but with the promotion of freedom. I want to convince him that the source of wealth, in this broken world, is something entirely unexpected. I'd like to try and convince him that emergent phenomena are God's pre-programming in us to get something that He wants. And that wealth is created out of an emergent phenomenon.

I'd try to convince him that if you really want to help the poor, it's a good idea to look at what has actually worked and what hasn't. I think God is a bigger believer in the power of freedom than I am. He made us free despite the fact that he knew it'd cause all this pain and suffering. And He's constantly talking about the evils of bondage and the promise of freedom. So I happen to think that when He's in charge, it will look almost exactly like the libertarian utopia... except it'll have God in it reminding us not to impose any other rules than his. It was, after all, the Israelites who demanded a King, despite protestations from God that it wasn't necessary. I think God still thinks that all of our governments are unnecessary. And I agree.

All of this being said, I might be wrong about the assumptions that I'm reading into the author. But I see them all over the place in this book, and it drives me crazy.

And I still can't put it down for how much I'm enjoying it.

Tassels

I suggested "Velvet Elvis" as material for study to my men's group.
I'm re-reading it. These are my (completely raw) thoughts on
Chapter 4: Tassels

Failure: 097
One of my favorite motivators is not being afraid to fail. I love
this concept. I try to live by it. Of course, there's two types
of failure. One that is neutral to your relationship w/God and
one that is negative to your relationship to God. An example of a
neutral failure might be making a career change that was a bad idea.
I really don't think God cares what career we have so long as we
keep Him in it. An example of a negative failure would be breaking
one of His commandments. I've become convinced that a huge fear
of neutral failures keeps me from experiencing God's glory in the
successes that might arise.

And it's everywhere. My former boss, the one who recently laid
me off, could not move forward on a project unless it was 100%
planned out before the start. What drives this is a fear of
failure. But, the problem is that on a project you're lucky if
you can anticipate 80% of the solution that you're trying to build.
So you have to leap. You have to take a stab at the 80% and hope
that you'll figure out the remaining 20% on the way. If you insist
on any where close to 100% at the beginning, you'll end up paralyzed.

Honest & Raw: 101
"The more honest and raw we made it the more people loved it."
How is this concept different than this concept, "The more we just
teach the Bible, the more people love it." Or, "Our success is
based on the fact that we just teach the Bible." Same thing with,
"All we cared about was trying to teach and live the way of Jesus."

Salvation Now: 108
"God wants us to be the people he originally intended us to be."
Accepting Christ is only the very first, small step in that
transformation. So how am I doing? I see different changes.
I see some things that are good. But there are incessant struggles.
So what defines me? Is it the struggles or the good?

And the answer is both. I've managed to compartmentalize myself.
On the one hand, I do appreciate the changes that have happened in
my life. I rejoice in them. I allow them to define me. But I
also curse the struggles with sin that have not been overcome.
I believe that God's transformation in me is both true and false
at the same time. These changes in me are not a result of me.
Yet these other things that haven't changed are evidence that I'm
not responding to God's transformation.

It's easy to cling to the idea that the latter is just Satan
whispering condemnation in my ear. That's what I want to believe.
It's comforting. But I don't know if it's true. I don't know which
is true: that I'm saying to God, "Thy will be done" or that God is
saying to me, "Thy will be done".

Superwhatever: 116
What is my superwhatever? Do I have one? What impossible image
am I trying to live up to? My first instinct is my wife's father.
I really can't live up to the subtle expectations that my wife has
of me that I be just like her father. But is that a cop out?
Am I just being lazy?

Which gets us to...

Sabbath: 117
I love the concept of Sabbath. I was eavesdropping on someone last
week telling a story about the differences between men and women.
Men have boxes. None of the boxes touch each other. And one
of the very important boxes, for men, is the empty one. The one
with nothing. "Nothing time" is a very important time in my life.
I need some of it... weekly.

But the story doesn't end with just men's perceptions. Women don't
have boxes. In fact in women's world, there's a humongous web.
And every point on the web is connected to every other point on
the web. There is no nothing. Any attempt to isolate yourself
has ripple effects on everything else. Nothingness is a negative.

So, how do I reconcile my need for nothingness? Am I right in
needing it. The Bible seems to support this. But the Bible
was written by men. How would it have been written if women took
their perspective to it? But more importantly, how do I work in my
nothingness time without causing a huge ripple effect on my wife's
highly connected web? No matter what happens, one of us suffers.
Either I give up my nothingness, or I create a negative ripple on
my wife's web. Maybe she's right. Maybe I really am supposed to
be superdad.

This yoke is not always easy.

I love this idea: Sabbath is a day to remind myself that I did not
make the world and that it will continue to exist w/out my efforts.
It never ceases to amaze me how arrogant I can become about my
efforts. As if the whole fabric of society will be at a loss
w/out me.

Maybe I don't have to be superdad. My father certainly wasn't
and yet here I am working hard and humbly to figure out how to be
better than I currently am. And I *know* that it involves God.
More than anything, I wish that for my children. To be able to
assess their lives, and involve God in whatever changes are needed.
So if my father wasn't superdad, how much am I required to be
superdad for that to happen?

And yet I'm still haunted by the ripple effects that this might
have on my wife's web. I don't know which is right.

News flash.. I'm a nerd. Who knew?

Something frightening...

My friend Justin loves to tell stories of his mom, Maureen. Maureen is little quirky in about the same way that a desert is a little dry. Her quirkiness is very entertaining to her 4 sons. When they get together, one will eventually ask about any new "Maureen stories". And, of course, all the brothers know that this is not an occasion to describe her general status or well being. It's a time to marvel at, and be amused by the ways in which Marueen sees and interacts with the world.

One example is an incident where she tells Justin to be very careful with people named Mark. Maureen was, at the time, employed alongside someone called Mark, and that guy was not someone to be trifled with. "As if," Justin would recount, "the very name of Mark conveys danger about the person who had the bad luck of receiving that name."

Justin's least favorite Maureen stories had to do with her concern over his bodily well being. Even when Justin was a fully grown adult, Maureen would regail him to put on a jacket because she was cold. It didn't matter that Justin might say, "But, mom, *I* am NOT cold." The fact that she was cold was sufficient evidence to decide the matter.

Maureen eventually developed an obsession with the amount of fluids that Justin consumed. "You don't urinate enough," she would claim. "You need to drink more fluids so you urinate more." This concern developed quite unexpectedly after Justin was in college. And while it was probably irritating to not be believed about his own assessment of his thirst, it was nevertheless a gem of a "Maureen story". To be saved for later and retold. Which is, of course, how I heard it.

Which brings me to my frightening experience.

I was on my way to bed tonight and I found a stuffed pokemon toy that belonged to my 2nd son (6 years old, 2nd of 4 sons). Earlier, when I was putting him to bed, I had asked him where "Turtwig" was - yes, I know the names of their pokemon toys, but that's not the frightening part. My son said that he had recently lost that one. So I felt pretty good about finding it for him and went to deliver it to him while he slept. I was hoping it would result in a happy surprise when he woke up

When I went in there, he had kicked off his covers. And in my head, I did a quick analysis. He's kicked off his covers - that would suggest that he's warm. But he's balled up really tightly in the fetal position. That would suggest he's cold. How do I break this tie? Well I'm a little chilly. He's probably a little cold. So I covered him back up.

On the way out the door, it hit me: I'm turning into Maureen.

I comfort myself with the thought that it's a disease that has a much higher incidence among parents. And I, like Maureen, have 4 sons. I wonder if this is a risk factor. I haven't been very concerned with their fluid intake. But still. It's 1:45 am. And I can't sleep. The comforting part isn't very.

:)

The right table

Here's the tables that I should have put in the last post.  I think they do a better job of making my point.

The point that Jon was making:

Couple	Intention	Preventing	Consequences
Tom & Sue	Trying	No Prevention	Baby
Joe & Amy	Not Trying	No Prevention	Baby
Bill & Jane	Trying Not To	No Prevention	Baby

Jon's point is that the difference in the intention column doesn't have any impact on the consequence.  Thus all three of the things in the Intention column are equivalent.   While differences in the Preventing column will have statistically significant difference in the consequence column.  Jon's real point: don't talk about trying or not trying or trying not to if you're not actively doing anything about it.

The point that I was making is this:

Couple	Intention	Preventing	Consequences
Tom & Sue	Trying	No Prevention	Baby Definitely Happy
Joe & Amy	Not Trying	No Prevention	Baby Could be happy or sad
Bill & Jane	Trying Not To	No Prevention	Baby Definitely Sad

My point is that there is a difference in the consequences.  The lines are not the same.  Hence, trying, not trying, and trying not to are different, even if all those people are not actively exercising prevention. 

Where I can agree with Jon is that the practical impact of "intention" on consequences is much less than the impact of active prevention on the consequences.  The road to hell is paved with good intentions.  This point should absolutely be emphasized to anyone who is sexually active and does not want, or is incapable of caring for a child.

Trying

My friend Jon and I got into a debate about what "trying" means. Another friend commented that he and his wife were not being careful about getting pregnant, but that they "weren't trying". Jon commented that if you're not actively preventing it, and you know what the consequences are, then you are, in fact, trying. The crux of Jon's argument is that there's an action that happens (sex) which has a probability of a consequence (baby). These actions and consequences are exactly the same when you're trying and when you're not actively preventing. Hence trying and not preventing are the same thing.

I disagreed, but I couldn't seem to dissuade Jon from this point of view. I argued that he was talking about responsibility, and that intent and responsibility were not linked. If two couples are both not actively preventing pregnancy, and one is trying while the other is not trying, both couples will be equally responsible if they produce a baby. If we're talking about responsibility, I completely agree with Jon. But I thought we were talking about "trying", which I don't think is the same thing.

Unfortunately, as is often the case, I came up with a much better response after the discussion was long over. When someone says "trying" they usually mean that they have a goal they wish to achieve. So if someone is "trying" to do something (including get pregnant) they are sad if they fail. When someone is "not trying" they're not sad if they fail. Imagine two couples:

Couple	Intentions	Results	Are they sad about this?
Tom & Sue	Trying	Get pregnant	No
Joe & Amy	Not trying	Get pregnant	Yes
Tom & Sue	Trying	Did not get pregnant	Yes
Joe & Amy	Not trying	Did not get pregnant	No

Look at the couples who are trying. They're satisfaction with the result is exactly the opposite of those who are not trying. So, there are differences in the results. The actions and the consequences are not exactly the same. And I think this is what our friend was trying to say. When he said, "we're not trying" I think he meant that if they don't get pregnant, they won't be sad.(*)

I understand why Jon, as a highschool teacher, makes this argument. It's meant to shock teenagers from some stupid excuse. It's meant to say that if they're not actively preventing pregnancy, they might as well be trying to get pregnant. I understand that stance. Its useful as a tool to dissuade teens who might become sexually active, or worse, become sexually active without any attempts to prevent a baby -- for which they will struggle to provide care. But I don't think that "trying" is the same thing as "not preventing". I think that's a redefinition of what most people mean when they say "trying".

(*) Ironically, when our friend asked his wife if they were "trying", she pretty much said yes. But I think my point stands despite the specific circumstances of our friends' lives.

Update:
I've added a new entry with a much better set of tables that explains what I was thinking.

Monogomous wives?

Steve Landsburg has published a book called "More Sex is Safe Sex". I found out about this from econlog. Back in January 2005, I read the article that Landsburg wrote with the same title. That article no longer appears to be available. In any case, I had some questions for him, so I sent him this email:

I just your article titled "MORE SEX IS SAFER SEX". This has produced a series of questions that I have been unable to resolve on my own, and was wondering if you could provide some insite.

In your "monogamous wives" parable you mention that all the men demand two sexual partners and all the women demand one. As a consequence, prostitution starts up, and the prostitutes end up being the source of HIV for most of the men. Basically, if any one person in this country is infected, the prostitutes turn into the transmission point to ensure that everyone in the country becomes infected.

You argue that if the women were to take another partner, then prostitution will die, and most everyone will not be infected.

1. Question 1: Doesn't this assume that the prostitutes are the source of the disease?
   

   
   As example, I offer the following image, where men are represented by letters and women are represented by numbers. A & 1 are married, B & 2 are married, etc. A line indicates that they're having sex.
   

   
   A B C D E F G H
   | | | | | | | |
   1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
   

   
   If we assume that each woman's additional partner will be the husband of her neighbor to the right, then we end up with this:
   

   
   A B C D E F G H A
   |/|/|/|/|/|/|/|/
   1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
   

   
   Now as soon as any one of them gets infected, all of them will get infected. There's two ways that this isn't true. The first is if one of the infected people dies before they can propagate the infection. With the effectiveness of drugs at prolonging life with HIV, that seems like a bad assumption. The second way this isn't true is if the prostitutes are the original source of the infection. At which point everyone's demands are being met and there's no impetous for an external source of infection.


2. Question 2: What if the prostitutes aren't the source of the disease?
   

   
   Using my notation above, and assuming that the prostitutes aren't the source of the disease, I can construct a similar graph which optimally limits the spread of the disease and meets the assumption of 2 partners per person:
   

   
   A B C D E F G H
   |x| |x| |x| |x|
   1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
   

   
   This additionally assumes that there's an even number of couples. In this case, the best solution is a fixed "wife-swapping" scenario. Now if any one of them gets infected, the infection will spread to only 3 other people (4 total)


3. Question 3: But if that's good, then why isn't monogamy even better?
   

   
   A B C D E F G H
   | | | | | | | |
   1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
   

   
   If any one of the people get infected, then the spread is limited to only one other person. Yes, in order for this to work, men need to be monogamous, which violates the assumption that all men demand at least 2 partners. But doesn't this demonstrate that such a demand is part of the problem, and that monogamy is more effective at limiting the spread of the disease?


4. Question 4: What about other complications, like having children?
   

   
   Looking at my graph from Question 1 we get:
   

   
   A B C D E F G H A
   |/|/|/|/|/|/|/|/
   1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
   

   
   Assume 16 children. The bigamist scenario is on the left and the monogamous scenario is on the right.
   

   
   A1 => boy(A1)   A1 => boy(A1)
   B1 => girl(B1)  A1 => girl(A1)
   B2 => boy(B2)   B2 => boy(B2)
   C2 => girl      B2 => girl(B2)
   C3 => boy       C3 => boy(C3)
   D3 => girl      C3 => girl(C3)
   D4 => boy       D4 => boy(D4)
   E4 => girl      D4 => girl(D4)
   E5 => boy       E5 => boy(E5)
   F5 => girl      E5 => girl(E5)
   F6 => boy       F6 => boy(F6)
   G6 => girl      F6 => girl(F6)
   G7 => boy       G7 => boy(G7)
   H7 => girl      G7 => girl(G7)
   H8 => boy       H8 => boy(H8)
   A8 => girl      H8 => girl(H8)
   

   
   Unfortunately, this bigamist scenariol creates a problem becuase the next generation has genetically close ties to more people than would be if each monogamous couple had two children, increasing the risk of birth defects in the 3rd generation. In the monogamous situation, a girl would avoid genetic problems if she avoided bearing the child of one person: her brother. But in this bigamist scenario, girl(B1) has boy(A1) as a half brother whom she has to avoid, and boy(B2) as a half brother whom she also has to avoid. Bigamy has doubled the riskiness factor for birth defects for the next generation.


5. Question 5: If we follow this through successive generations, don't we end up with a population of people who only have one safe mate in order to produce offspring? In other words, don't we end up right back at monogamy?


6. Question 6: Have I missed something fundamental that is keeping me from understanding what you're paper is saying?

I appreciate any clarity you'd be willing to provide.

Thanks,
mjh

He wrote back. He said:

Unlike some of the other arguments in the essay, the "monogamous wives" example is not meant to be terribly realistic but just to indicate, in the context of a very simple model, that certain things are logically possible.

In your question 1, the disease dies as soon as one person fails to pass it on, either through death or by missing an assignation. With the prostitutes, that's not true. And with the prostitutes, it doesn't matter where the disease starts; it still gets passed on to everyone pretty quickly.

The only point you've missed was that this particular example can yield a great variety of conclusions depending on your auxiliary assumptions (as you've shown), but the only point I was making with it was that certain conclusions are *possible*, not that they're *necessary*.

Of course other parts of the essay do make points that should hold in any model; in particular, when there are positive externalities to sexual activity, there can't be enough sexual activity without subsidies.

Perhaps I didn't understand his response, but I found it to be unsatisfactory. It seems to me that his model is unrealistic. Who cares if something is possible in a given model? If that model doesn't match reality then there's little value to the recommendations that come as a result of that model? What are the set of assumptions that are realistic? If my assumptions are closer to reality, then doesn't the recommendation that "More Sex is Safer Sex" actually hold false?

Abolish Highschool

I read an article in Education Week calling for changes to how teenagers are treated in society.

although it’s efficient to cram all apparently essential knowledge into the first two decades of life, the main thing we teach most students with this approach is to hate school. In today’s fast-paced world, education needs to be spread out over a lifetime, and the main thing we need to teach our young people is to love the process of learning.

...Are young people really inherently incompetent and irresponsible? The research I conducted with my colleague Diane Dumas suggests that teenagers are as competent as adults across a wide range of adult abilities, and other research has long shown that they are actually superior to adults on tests of memory, intelligence, and perception. The assertion that teenagers have an “immature” brain that necessarily causes turmoil is completely invalidated when we look at anthropological research from around the world. Anthropologists have identified more than 100 contemporary societies in which teenage turmoil is completely absent; most of these societies don’t even have terms for adolescence. Even more compelling, long-term anthropological studies initiated at Harvard in the 1980s show that teenage turmoil begins to appear in societies within a few years after those societies adopt Western schooling practices and are exposed to Western media. Finally, a wealth of data shows that when young people are given meaningful responsibility and meaningful contact with adults, they quickly rise to the challenge, and their “inner adult” emerges.

...We produce such turmoil by infantilizing our young and isolating them from adults. Modern schooling and restrictions on youth labor are remnants of the Industrial Revolution that are no longer appropriate for today’s world; the exploitative factories are long gone, and we have the ability now to provide mass education on an individual basis.

Teenagers are inherently highly capable young adults; to undo the damage we have done, we need to establish competency-based systems that give these young people opportunities and incentives to join the adult world as rapidly as possible.

Making the assumption that the research is true, I have two reactions to this.

1. This is appealing because
1. It's a pretty strong case for homeschooling, or in the worst case, ensuring that the schooling that your teen receives is introducing them to adulthood instead of confining them in childhood.
2. It seems to agree with Love & Logic which suggests that parental control needs to steadily decrease throughout the entire child's life and be replaced with an expectation of adult behavior.  Most people do it exactly the opposite, too little control for infants and toddlers and increasing control as the desire for independance grows.
3. It appeals to my distrust of government provided education and of government provision in general.
   
2. But it's also unappealing because I don't want to introduce my children to adult issues before it's time.  This author is arguing that the time is earlier than we think.  My immediate reaction is that we already push our kids into adulthood too early as it is, although I don't really have any supporting data that comes to mind for why I think this.
   

I think I'm going to purchase the book and read it.  I don't have a teenager but it's only a few years away.  This is the kind of thing that I want to mull over for a while before I decide whether or not I want to try and integrate it into my parenting.

Penn & Teller

Showtime has a program that I very much enjoy. It's the magician team of Penn & Teller running around debunking things that they view as wrong. It's called "Penn & Teller: Bullsh*t". I really enjoy it. It's not for the faint of heart, though. Penn Jillette is a connoisseur of profanity. Don't watch it with the kids around.

But I'm in a quandary. In 2004, they did an episode on the Bible. They presented testimony of inconsistencies and historical inaccuracies. And for the most part I can just interpret away the problems that they came up with. By this, I mean that they took a rather narrow interpretation and poked holes in it. A broader interpretation is harder to poke holes in. For example, the two creation stories in Genesis. I don't happen to believe in creationism. I happen to fall on the side of evolution as the mechanism of creation. Theistic evolution does a really good job of explaining my position. So the "conflicting" views in Genesis 1 & 2 are not that big of a problem. The main message of Genesis is that God did it. I don't seriously take the Genesis accounts as a reliable physical description of what happened.

And then there's the horror that Penn expresses when he retells the story of God killing all the first born sons in Egypt. Of course, that's a horrific event if you're convinced that this life is the only thing. It's also horrific if you think that the children are victims. But it's not so horrific if you believe that God loves those children more than their parents do. It's also not so horrific if you believe that God can call home any human at any time he pleases and that in doing so, God will treat them justly, fairly, and compassionately. Death is only the worst possible thing in the world if this is the only world there is.

I'm also reminded of Rob Bell's description of how to interpret the Bible, and what a "yoke" is. And of how we're to constantly re-evaluate the meaning of the Bible. We're to constantly say, "Hey, maybe I had that interpretation wrong." Especially when we're confronted with new truths that are blatant. All truth is God's truth. So if we see truth in the world that apparently conflicts with the Bible, it might just be that we didn't correctly interpret the Bible. It might also be that we didn't correctly evaluate the truth in the world. Nevertheless, it's freeing to realize that we're not forced to stick with Biblical interpretations that don't make sense. This is a somewhat controversial position amongst some Christians, but it really resonates with me. As a result, many of the inconsistencies presented by Penn & Teller fall under the umbrella of "You've heard it said, but I tell you..." new yoke interpretation.

Unfortunately, it gets harder to interpret away the heart of Christianity: the death and resurrection of Jesus. If that one didn't happen, then Christians everywhere can cry in their beers and go home. If Christ didn't rise, then how can we say that God defeated death? If God didn't defeat death, then how can Jesus be a savior who can take on for himself the wages of sin? How is he anything more than just a man? How can I be any better believing in his salvation for my life? In fact, if he's just a man, then I'm remarkably worse off believing this. I'll act like my eternal position is resolved when it's not.

The show does not do very much to debunk the resurrection. It simply says, that it's hard to prove. It doesn't provide any counter evidence to suggest that it's demonstrably false. But it does tell an analogous story about how, less than 3 decades after the death of Elvis, there are people insisting that they've seen him alive. And if the gospels in the Bible are all written 60-70 years after the death of Christ, it's pretty easy to see how this might just be part of the human condition that afflicts devotees of a hero.

On the other hand, I don't see any Elvis followers sticking with their stories so much so that they're willing to be executed instead of recanting, whereas most of the most influential early Christians did just that when it came to Jesus' resurrection. I also don't see anyone demanding the execution of the "Elvis lives" crowd. In any case, the Elvis analogy can only go so far.

Before I watched the episode, I whipped off a quick prayer: "Lord protect me from what might be coming. I want to watch this because I believe that all truth is your truth. Keep me focused on the truth and give me answers to Satan's intellectual temptations that I will almost certainly experience." I think He's done a pretty good job of answering that prayer. Most of this blog reports the answers that I got. But I'm still a little shaken by the experience. I find myself resonating with the comment Penn made that it's really not fair to pick and choose what you want to believe from the Bible. I wonder if all of my "interpretations" above are just fancy ways of doing that.

Still, the thought of returning to atheism holds only a minor pull with me. That pull being this: maybe it's true. The pull is slightly stronger now than it was before. But it's not nearly as strong as the pull of the community in which I now reside. It's not as strong as the realization of how much better my life is as a Christ follower than not. And that truth seems much more real to me than the possibility that atheism is true.

Witness

I had a discussion with a friend recently. I was trying to make the point that, depending on your point of view, some things that seem irrational might make sense. I don't recall the context, but the example that I came up with was the fact that I was fairly concerned about his not being a Christian.

"If you really believed in Hell, that would almost certainly motivate your behavior towards those friends of yours who you think might be headed there. Which reminds me, that I'm pretty concerned about you."

"It doesn't concern me. It doesn't match my world view."

"Which is what?"

"That there's insufficient evidence to conclude that there's god or hell or anything after you die."

"Ok. But you believe lots of things that don't rely on proof, don't you?"

"Like what?"

"Imagine this scenario: you're in New York, and you look out your hotel window and witness a murder. This particular murderer is very thorough and manages to very effectively conceal what had happened. But nevertheless you are completely convinced that what you saw was a murder... but you can't prove it. You're sure it's true, but the murderer was so thorough that you can find no trace. Moreover, you didn't get a good enough look at the victim or the suspect to really identify them. In this scenario, would you attest that what you saw was true, even if you couldn't prove it?"

My friend changed the subject, "Eye witness accounts are incredibly inaccurate. This has been thoroughly documented and tested."

"That's not the point. The point is that there are things you believe but can't prove."

He conceded the point and we went on to discuss other things. But I've been thinking about his response. I don't think it's a very good one. Ok. Sure, eye witness accounts are incredibly inaccurate. But they're not so inaccurate as to cause us to not trust anything we witness. For example, I hand someone a fork and they take it. Their intial reaction is not to distrust the fact that there's a fork there. We act like the things we see are real. We act like it all day long and react accordingly. Our reactions tell us what we really need to know about our beliefs about the validity of witness.

Does that make eye witness testimony entirely thorough? No, of course not. Do I trust entirely my experience of God? Could I be wrong? Yep. There it is. I could be wrong. But I don't think I am. I could be wrong that I'm typing into a computer right now. I could be imagining it. But I don't think I am. I act like it's real. Similarly, even though I could be wrong about God, I don't think I am.

There is some part of me that feels a pull to doubt God's existence. I've decided to actively ignore that pull. My friend hasn't. I remember being on his side of that decision. I'm sure he's convinced that I'm deluding myself. Which is ironic, because I would now say that he's deluding himself into ignoring the obvious. We're both in reciprical situations. He's unwilling to experiment with Christianity. He's convinced it's not worth anything. I'm also unwilling to experiment with non-Chrsitianity for the same reason. I would say that I've already run that experiment and it failed. Of course, he'd say the exact same thing.

I don't have a whole lot of hope that he's going to change his mind. The good news for me is that it's not entirely my responsibility to change it.

Ranting Waiter

I've been really enjoying waiterrant.net. The author is a fantastic writer. I find myself needing to rethink how I'm going to contribute to this blog as a result.

Ain't irony great?

I can't help but laugh at this from the AP (HT: Cafe Hayek):

A North Pole expedition meant to bring attention to global warming was called off after one of the explorers got frostbite.

Of course, Russ Roberts does a much better job of fisking the entire article than I could, so I'll let well enough alone. I just think it's hilarious.

UPDATE: Updated link to working link.

Exposed!

I shared the fact that I have a blog with some friends last night. One of the reactions was to the name of my blog: dullgeek. It got me thinking about why I called my blog that.

Of course, the first reason is that I don't really think I'm all that particularly interesting. Amongst this group of friends, I'm viewed as the nerdy one with an obsession for "The Lord of the Rings". I enjoy this reputation, even though it's entirely unfounded. I did make one reference to LoTR (notice the ubergeeky acronym?) but that single reference was it. And if you use this blog as a guide to what I'm thinking about, I think that this entry is the first time in the couple of years that I've had this blog where I even mentioned LoTR. It's hard to see an obsession with that data.

Of course, I find the things that I write about to be terribly interesting. I have no such illusions, however, that anyone else will be interested. Hence the dull portion was prescient. The interest level (as demonstrated by the comments) is tragically low. I know of at least two other people who have read it. And I think it's fair to say that in this case, it's also "at most" two other people who've read it. I'm not offended by this lack of interest, nor are my feelings hurt. In fact, I'm more likely to be proud of the fact that I made an accurate prediction.

But another reason that I chose that label is that I know that I'm not as sharp as some of the authors of blogs that I read regularly. See my links section. I hope to sharpen myself through this endeavor. But I will always be relatively dull compared to others. I'm ok with that, too.

Those Nasty Credit Card Users!

This article drives me a little batty. 

In most instances today, it would be silly to pay an annual fee for a credit card simply because most cards don't have them anymore. But in a Senate Banking Committee hearing examining credit card practices this week, one consumer advocate suggested those who pay their balances in full every month (about half of all cardholders) should pay a small annual fee to credit card companies.

Why? To pay their fair share.

To pay my fair share?  Three questions:

1. If I'm agreeing with the terms of my credit card statement, how am I not already upholding my end of the bargain?  Most products are more expensive because they include the cost of the transaction fee that the credit card companies receive on every transaction I make.
   
2. If someone else is NOT paying their full balance off, and as a consequence is paying exhorbitant interest fees, how should that be my problem?
3. Why, oh why is it necessary for some third party to interfere in my agreemeent with the credit card company?
   

The credit card companies will hate this legislation.  What will happen is that they will lose the transaction fees of all "deadbeats".  The incentive that I have to use a credit card is the rewards programs and the free 30 day loan they give me every month.  But if all of that is offset by mandatory annual fees, I'll just switch to a debit card which does not have such fees.

So I doubt very much that this will happen.  But why is it necessary to even propose such meddling?  Why is it necessary for the goverment to have its finger on absolutely everything that I do?