Critics of the Stern Review don't think serious action to limit CO2 emissions is justified, because there remains substantial uncertainty about the extent of the costs of global climate change, and because these costs will be incurred far in the future. However, I believe that Stern's fundamental conclusion is justified: we are much better off reducing CO2 emissions substantially than risking the consequences of failing to act, even if, unlike Stern, one heavily discounts uncertainty and the future.

• The IPCC's worst-case predictions have weak foundation, but are much of the argument for doing something "just in case". Further, it is entirely possible that the IPCC underestimates future damages due to CO2, and we will need to find some other tool very quickly. CO2 control only pays off if we are in the narrow band of future uncertainty where damages are high but not too high.
• There is a lot we can do with a trillion dollars. Arrow talks about GDP in percentages, which makes the numbers seem small. If you do the math, though, it adds up to trillions of dollars quickly, and hundreds of trillions per year by 2100. Given that amount of money, if you wanted to save the environment, what would you spend it on? Arrow joins the camp that says we should spend it on incremental removal of CO2, but why not try and find a more efficient way to spend it? For that matter, why not use it for humanity's more pressing problems?
• Technology changes change the whole story. Plants can remove CO2 directly from atmosphere. Can humans learn to emulate this process? Consider one of Dyson's ideas in this direction. If one such idea works out, then the trillions spent on CO2 emissions control will have been wasted.
• The costs of adaptation used in the Stern report are hard to believe. In the developed world, for various reasons, environmental problems have stopped being catastrophes. Deep down, do we expect this to change? How much will it really cost an advanced society to deal with even the worst-case predictions? I have not studied the Stern report myself, but Roger Pielke claims that "the Stern Review uses the Muir-Wood et al. (2006) as the sole basis for projecting future global losses from extreme events (see Table 5.2, p. 138)".

If you are interested in major improvements to how new drugs are created and distributed to the population, then it will not work to snip little pieces around the edges. It is important to think about how the system in general works, which right now is based on patents. The most plausible alternative I know of is to offer prizes. ]]> October 25, 2007 http://www.daublin.org/sulfate.htmlKen Caldeira has posted in favor of one of the few suggestions I hear about global warming that sounds like a cost-effective approach to controlling the climate. His idea is to put sulfate particles into the atmosphere to reverse the greenhouse effect and cool the planet down. The idea is attractive because it has effects within months, and because small numbers of people can make it happen. To contrast, reducing CO2 emissions takes global cooperation, is very expensive, and takes decades to have any effect.

I would count this idea as serious about global warming.

There is some good discussion on Megan McCardle's blog. Arnold Kling, ever the economist, sees uncertainty and thinks of insurance, and so likes the just-in-case aspect of this approach. ]]> October 12, 2007 http://www.daublin.org/gore-for-peace.htmlwon the Nobel Peace prize, for efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change. Two things seem terribly wrong with this selection:

1. The Peace Prize is supposed to be about peace. What does climate change have to do with peace?
2. Gore has knowingly disseminated incorrect information (See also here). He claimed ice core data supports his case, but to make this claim he had to reverse the labels on his graph. Almost as bad, he has denied that the Medieval Warm Period existed.

I cannot feel good about the Nobel Peace Prize. It was bad enough to give it to Yassar Arafat, one of the worst war-mongers in modern history, but the argument there was that Arafat was supposedly really trying. In this case I do not see the argument. Gore has raised consciousness of an issue, but he did it by lying, and the issue is not about peace anyway.

I wish there were a way to dissociate the "Nobel" name from the Peace Prize. The other Nobel prizes seem to go to deserving people. ]]> October 12, 2007 http://www.daublin.org/two-tiers-on-speech.htmlwrote the following, in 2005, in response to federal legislation about what can and cannot be publicly said as an election approaches

These past few weeks, we have been debating whether this media exemption from speech restrictions should be extended to bloggers. At first, I was in favor. Then I was torn. Now, I am pissed. The more I think of it, it is insane that we are creating a 2-tiered system of first amendment rights at all, and I really don't care any more who is in which tier. Given the wording of the Constitution, how do I decide who gets speech and who doesn't - it sounds like everyone is supposed to...

I have come to the conclusion that arguing over who gets the media exemption is like arguing about whether a Native American in 1960's Alabama should use the white or the colored-only bathroom: It is an obscene discussion and is missing the whole point, that the facilities shouldn't be segregated in the first place.

I have not followed this issue, but he claims that new legislation in the same vein is coming up.

I normally try not to pick sides on the hard issues on this blog, because I want readers to see more deeply into issues and even come to appreciate the big problems facing us nowadays. On this issue, though, there is a question of fundamental rights. I see no reason that the press should have different speech protections than anyone else. Do we not have a free press in this country? I believe we do, and should preserve that. A free press means that we are all members of the press. Speech rights are not limited to some Truth Propagation Guild. In the USA, we all get to speak, most especially when an election is coming up. ]]> September 29, 2007 http://www.daublin.org/washer-regs.html...when most technology keeps getting cheaper? The culprit is energy regulations, as described by the Foundation for Economic Education.

The idea is, by making people buy more efficient washing machines, we will save energy, and thus prevent global warming and decrease trade with Evil Countries. On the downside:

1. The people paying the bills for this idea are poorer people who would really rather stick with cheaper appliances. The regulation is meaningless for richer people who already buy the trendy, expensive stuff.
2. Washer makers benefit tremendously, because they now have a captive market. The public is denied, by their own government, from buying the cheap stuff.
3. If people end up running their washing machines twice per load, so that they can get their clothes as clean as before, then we will actually see a net increase of energy usage.

I admit that I believe the minuses are larger than the pluses. Others disagree, but it seems hard to dispute that energy taxes, like Greg Mankiw pushes for, would be better. They would have the same pluses but would eliminate downsides 2 and 3. ]]> September 29, 2007 http://www.daublin.org/mankiw-numbers.htmlGreg Mankiw has posted two interesting numbers and an attack on a third one, all of which are relevant for current political discussions:

• "How the Rich Got Rich". Of the Forbes 400, 74 people inherited their riches and 270 are self-made.
• "Question for Democrats". Each percentage point of new taxes for the top two income brackets yields $6 billion per year for the government. Since the current federal spending on health care and social security is about $400 billion each, the question is: where will the funding come from for any major increase in these programs?
• "How big a problem is lack of health insurance?". Mankiw points out that most of the people not insured in the U.S. either could be, or have so much income that they do not really need it, or are illegal immigrants. The question he asks: what are the real numbers, after you account for these groups?

Believe it or not from these quotes, Mankiw generally favors progressive policies. I appreciate, though, that he is not simply a cheerleader of one party or the other. ]]> September 16, 2007 http://www.daublin.org/surface-temp-attacks.htmlThe surface-temperature record is under two major attacks in the last few months. Surface temperatures are important because they provide direct evidence about global temperature change for the last 100-200 years. The satellite record is more accurate but does not go back but a few decades. If the surface temperature records cannot be salvaged, then only indirect measures of temperature will be available for times earlier than a few decades ago.

If that happens, then, more people will stop gasping about climate-caused disaster and get serious about climate change.

The two attacks are:

• Anthony Watt just released his classification of the conditions of U.S.-based weather stations, which form the bulk of the surface temperature record. He and his volunteers have only surveyed one third of the stations that exist, but it looks bad. Over half of them have installation problems that skew the recorded temperature up by two degrees Celsius or more.
• Steve McIntyre has led a team in auditing NASA's adjustments to the U.S. surface temperature record. These adjustments matter because they are large compared to the directly recorded temperature changes. McIntyre posts updates on his blog. McIntyre, you might recall, has already convinced NASA of one error in their adjustments, even without looking at the original source code.

Stepping back, isn't it interesting that both of these attacks are by geographically dispersed groups. These groups could only be coordinated over the Internet. These Internet-coordinated groups are something new for society, and their influence will have an effect on more than just software. ]]> September 10, 2007 http://www.daublin.org/dyson-on-naturalists.htmlFreemen Dyson has better names than my "tree huggers" and "home builders": naturalists and humanists.

The disagreement about values may be described in an over-simplified way as a disagreement between naturalists and humanists. Naturalists believe that nature knows best. For them the highest value is to respect the natural order of things. Any gross human disruption of the natural environment is evil. Excessive burning of fossil fuels is evil. Changing nature's desert, either the Sahara desert or the ocean desert, into a managed ecosystem where giraffes or tunafish may flourish, is likewise evil. Nature knows best, and anything we do to improve upon Nature will only bring trouble.

The humanist ethic begins with the belief that humans are an essential part of nature. Through human minds the biosphere has acquired the capacity to steer its own evolution, and now we are in charge. Humans have the right and the duty to reconstruct nature so that humans and biosphere can both survive and prosper. For humanists, the highest value is harmonious coexistence between humans and nature. The greatest evils are poverty, underdevelopment, unemployment, disease and hunger, all the conditions that deprive people of opportunities and limit their freedoms. The humanist ethic accepts an increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as a small price to pay, if world-wide industrial development can alleviate the miseries of the poorer half of humanity. The humanist ethic accepts our responsibility to guide the evolution of the planet.

The sharpest conflict between naturalist and humanist ethics arises in the regulation of genetic engineering. The naturalist ethic condemns genetically modified food-crops and all other genetic engineering projects that might upset the natural ecology. The humanist ethic looks forward to a time not far distant, when genetically engineered food-crops and energy-crops will bring wealth to poor people in tropical countries, and incidentally give us tools to control the growth of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Here I must confess my own bias. Since I was born and brought up in England, I spent my formative years in a land with great beauty and a rich ecology which is almost entirely man-made. The natural ecology of England was uninterrupted and rather boring forest. Humans replaced the forest with an artificial landscape of grassland and moorland, fields and farms, with a much richer variety of plant and animal species. Quite recently, only about a thousand years ago, we introduced rabbits, a non-native species which had a profound effect on the ecology. Rabbits opened glades in the forest where flowering plants now flourish. There is no wilderness in England, and yet there is plenty of room for wild-flowers and birds and butterflies as well as a high density of humans. Perhaps that is why I am a humanist.

Read the whole thing. He's a fun guy. Even if you think he is a heretic, I bet you come away with something interesting and new to think about. ]]> July 28, 2007 http://www.daublin.org/vendetta.htmlI recently enjoyed watching V for Vendetta. It does a wonderful job of portraying an anarchist's view of the world. The government is oppressive, the most random of destruction would improve things, and, of course, everything you have ever heard all goes together through a long chain of connections.

The most impressive part of it, though, is how well the feeling comes across. It really shows what it feels like to be in a mass, counter-cultural movement. You feel like millions of people are with you and just waiting to rise up. It feels good.

I would imagine that a Muslim suicide bomber might feel the same way. They are thinking that they are part of a great wave of humanity rising up to rise Allah to his former glory. Likewise, I could see people feeling like that as they blow up a bridge or a water plant. They, like V, might well say "the people need a symbol more than they need a little water."

On the other hand, I would imagine that assassins feel differently. Their work is too surgical. V's movement was about random destruction. He says he does not know what will come next, but that things are so bad that he wants to roll the dice and start over. It is different for those who assissinate precisely those governors of Anbar who speak out against Al Qaeda. Assassins fight for specific powers, not for any great wave of humanity.

So what are they thinking? Is it some sort of financial arrangement? Do such assassins hope for power in the new regime? I do not know. What do you think?

The little bit of investigation I have done on this is inconclusive. What I found when looking in the past is that even the scholars on the subject have many different views. Thus, asking how they feel or where they come from is interesting, but ultimately not clarifying. It seems more helpful, if you are interested in international politics, to think about the leaders of these groups than what goes on in the followers' heads. For the leaders, the search for power explains things pretty well, and also suggests ways to respond. ]]> July 5, 2007 http://www.daublin.org/sicko.htmlI do not understand why it is as popular as it is for Americans to make fun of their own country. I understand why it has some popularity, but the success of Michael Moore means that making fun is very popular indeed.

Moore's latest movie Sicko interviews sick people in various countries. The Americans he interviews tend to be sick but not, for various reasons, being healed. He then interviews people in Canada, UK, and France who are sick but getting good care. The implication is unavoidable: if you get sick, you do not want to be in the United States!

What bugs me is that he could have made the same movie with the opposite conclusion. He could have interviewed people in foreign countries who suffer on wait lists. He could have included quotes from foreign countries' health ministers saying that their systems were about to financially collapse. He could have interviewed people who were saved by drugs developed in the United States. Heck, he could have talked the universal care that Americans do have once they reach a certain age.

Michael Moore chose for his movie to smear America.

At least his facts check out, unlike in previous movies. However, as much as I am glad that people can legally produce material like this in my country, I am disturbed by the number of people who credulously consume it. ]]> June 21, 2007 http://www.daublin.org/boudreaux-on-enviro-fundis.htmlthe more fanatical environmentalists. In it, he discusses a small Romanian town where a new mine is being opposed by environmentalists.

Their rural way of life -- with chickens scampering along the dirt roads and outhouses rather than indoor plumbing the norm -- was no joy for them. Most of these townspeople welcomed an opportunity to integrate with the modern, industrial, global economy.

The environmental congregation, however, paid no attention. Living in cities far away from Rosia Montana, environmentalists -- against all evidence -- insisted that the townspeople really don't want the industry, jobs and greater prosperity that the mine would bring.

I believe that some environmentalists are on to something. However, many of them seem completely unaware of the actual human stake in whatever they are talking about. At the extreme, many come to think of humans as the problem, and Gaia as an battered victim. Intellectually, it's simply ignorant to ignore the human benefit of an industrialized world. Religiously, I find it abhorrent to dismiss the importance of human well-being. ]]> June 3, 2007 http://www.daublin.org/xenophobia.htmlThe Immigration Bill before the U.S. Congress is 125,000 words long. I deeply wish our parliament was set up to produce law that our citizens could actually read through.

Let me instead step back and talk about a principle, something I fear is too-frequently overlooked in discussion of immigration: diversity gives us strength. Yes, millions of immigrants are currently embarrassing our legal system, making it to be a sham. As we fix this situation, through some combination of enforcement and law changes, I hope we remember that the goal should be to have lots of the world coming to join us, not to put up walls and live like hermits.

We should be proud, in America, that our country is so diverse. Other countries are more xenophobic, more closed in. In France, their immigrants riot all the time. India and Pakistan should have been one country, but their Hindus and Muslims could not live together. Iraq might well follow in their footsteps, dividing into Shea and Sunni portions. All around the world you see countries divided by culture clashes. They cannot get along even inside their own borders.

Not so in America. We are all immigrants here, and immigration has continued since the founding of the country. It is not even particularly high nowadays. The peak was a third higher than now, back in 1890.

There are a number of strengths that come from this diversity. Just as cross-breed animals are healthier than purebreds, our people are stronger when we inherit from a number of cultures. Here are some specific ways:

• Our universities would be much dumber if you kicked out all of the immigrants.
• Our economy would slow down, as we lose the opportunities of having different skills and different styles within those skills.
• Our restaurants and social lives would get bland and identical. Seriously.

I could go on, but let me stop there and allow you to think on it yourself. The practical problems of dealing with foreigners are there, but they seem to me little harder than the practical problems of those born natively. I hope we try. Diversity breeds strength, and tolerance breeds friends. We could use both. ]]> April 25, 2007 http://www.daublin.org/huggers-and-builders.htmlEnvironmentalists come from two points of view: tree huggers, and home builders.

Tree huggers want to protect the environment because they like primitive, natural things. Either they yearn for older, simpler times, or they think the earth is more important than the people who live here. Home builders, in contrast, want humans to have the best possible place to live. People evolved on the Earth that we know, and so it happens that by keeping the Earth the same as it is now, humans will tend to be more comfortable.

Where these groups differ is when there is a stark choice between Earth and humanity. It is only a tendency that they align. Home builders are perfectly happy to clear an acre of forest land and build a house on it. Tree huggers find it horrible, a failure of humanity. In public policy, home builders are happy to entertain nuclear power, so long as they think the power plants are reasonable safe. Tree huggers hate nuclear power as an unnatural abomination.

A home builder recognizes that we can live in deserts or in dome cities, but would prefer not to. However, they do not rule out such futures if there was some compensation. Home builders would, if pressed, choose a life of ease, health, and luxury even if they had to live in a dome. A tree hugger would never consider it. Ease, health, and luxury are human vices, and we should resist them and focus on stewarding the Earth.

Politicians who cater to environmentalists try to appeal to both kinds of environmentalists. So they talk a lot about emission of poisons, which all environmentalists support. They play down the internally divisive issue of nuclear power.

I think CO2 emission should be a divisive issue of this kind. Tree huggers think the atmosphere should never change, and that is that. If humans are net CO2 emitters, then we should change. Home builders, on the other hand, view the decision more like that of cutting down trees to build a house. They will weigh the benefits of cheap energy and the Industrial Age, versus the costs and risks of a warmer planet.

What kind of environmentalist are you? ]]> April 1, 2007 http://www.daublin.org/higgins-options.htmlPaul Higgins is planning to blog on three general approaches to climate change. Higgins is thus one of the first posters I have found that treats climate change seriously, in that he seems interested in discussing possible responses more than in pushing his favorite policy.

I look forward to reading his article series. ]]> March 19, 2007 http://www.daublin.org/heller-schneider.htmlHere is a good video of two intelligent guys arguing for the Kyoto Protocol: Thomas C. Heller and Stephen H. Schneider speaking at Stanford in January of 2006. Heller is an economist who apparently was involved in the design of the Kyoto Protocol. Schneider is a scientist who is involved with the IPCC. I disagree with them, but they are not unpleasant to listen to. If you are wondering how anyone could like Kyoto but not be a Gaia worshiper, then these are good guys to listen to.

Watch it for yourself if you have the time. Let me just mention a couple of things that interest me about their talks.

First, they both agree that Kyoto is insignificant. They favor Kyoto because of the symbolism, not because of the environmental impact. One of them (I cannot remember which) compared it to getting the camel's nose under the tent flap. I wish more Kyoto proponents would be this open about Kyoto's true effectiveness. The impression I get from the public is they think it would work if only the United States joined in.

Another observation is that they have strong and similar political stances. They were not very shy about putting down George W. Bush throughout their talks, and Heller even jokes about Texas being the anus of the planet. At the same time, they are completely dispassionate and intellectual about China's behavior. There is a lot of political overlap between those who like the Kyoto protocol, and those who have many other leftist political preferences.

Neither of them addressed what I consider the hard questions for Kyoto, which disappoints me. They must have thought about it, and simply not considered their talk slots long enough. But, for example, they never talk about a world where emissions are reduced enough to really matter; they only talk about the "camel's nose under he tent flap". It looks questionable to me to take CO2 reduction seriously enough to really cap the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. Why take one step down a road, if we are not willing to go far enough for it do do any good?

Overall, I come away wishing I could believe in this dream they and other Kyoto proponents share. They are excited, their eyes are wide, and they have this shared hope and dream. They really want global warming to be a bogeyman, and they really want everyone to rise up and fight against it. It would feel really good to join their crusade. ]]> March 17, 2007 http://www.daublin.org/healtholymp-caloric.htmlLife span is an important objective measure in considering health care policy: longer life, other things equal, is better. However, other things generally are not equal.

Recently David Friedman proposed a good mental exercise that points out a limit in this measure: caloric restriction reliably extends life. That is, it seems very likely that restricting caloric intake, to the point where a person is healthy but constantly hungry, would increase human lifespan something like 20%-30%.

Should we take the tradeoff? If you force your citizens to eat less, then they will live longer, and you will even save money on health care by having to feed them less. Caloric restriction alone would probably cause any developed country to leap to first place in the Health Care Olympics. However, who wants to live in such a "gold medalist" country?

It's a good mental experiment. I have long thought about it, and one conclusion I draw is that any humane health care system must include a significant subjective component to health care decisions. Quality of life matters as much as length of life, but in the end only an individual person really knows how well they are off and how much it is worth to sacrifice to be better.

For further reading, you might visit Arnold Kling's good general critique of the Health Care Olympics. For a more amusing read, go check out the Methuselah Mouse Prize, a competition to produce ever longer-lived mice. ]]> February 19, 2007 http://www.daublin.org/blues-and-greens.htmlI read an article this morning proposing a great mental exercise: imagine a completely arbitrary split between two parties. Then, imagine one day that incontrovertible proof arises that one of the parties was right all along. How would people react? How would you react, were you on each side of the fence? Don't be arrogant about it -- at some point everyone is wrong!

The article suggests five or six responses. Here's one, to whet your appetite.

Barron the Green stared incomprehendingly at the chaos of colors for long seconds. Understanding, when it came, drove a pile-driver punch into the pit of his stomach. Tears started from his eyes. Barron thought of the Massacre of Cathay, where a Blue army had massacred every citizen of a Green town, including children; he thought of the ancient Blue general, Annas Rell, who had declared Greens "a pit of disease; a pestilence to be cleansed"; he thought of the glints of hatred he'd seen in Blue eyes and something inside him cracked. "How can you be on their side?" Barron screamed at the sky, and then he began to weep; because he knew, standing under the malevolent blue glare, that the universe had always been a place of evil.

Go read the whole thing. ]]> February 16, 2007 http://www.daublin.org/co2-surprise.htmlThe Kyoto protocol is a simplistic approach to an interesting issue facing today's world: CO₂ bad, so stop generating it. It is a bad idea, as Mark Steyn recently describes. His final assessment:

So, faced with a degree rise in temperature, we could destroy the planet's economy, technology, communications and prosperity. And ruin the lives of millions of people. Or we could do what man does best: adapt. You do the math.

I have long followed Mark's reasoning myself, and wondered why Kyoto is the only response given any political play. Is there anyone who takes this problem seriously?

Arnold Kling takes on a second step from here and tries to consider a more appropriate response. He suggests we focus on a possible bad surprise:

The troublesome possibility is that the models are not pessimistic enough. In fact, Weitzman would argue, and I concur, that the case for doing something today about global warming rests on the fear of the scenario of accelerated near-term climate change -- increases in temperature at a rate that is on the high end of the range being forecast by climate models.

The Kyoto approach does nothing to address the concern of a surprisingly bad change in the environment. To address such a change, we will need to react quickly, not to decrease this or that by 3% over the next 10 years.

Is anyone looking into the questions Kling raises here? Or is it all just politics and a feel-good movement? ]]> January 14, 2007 http://www.daublin.org/new-deal-good.htmlAfter the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) famously promised to give the United States a great "New Deal". The GDP of the country was decreasing, money was inflating madly, and people were frustrated and afraid. Riding on this fear, Roosevelt implemented a large number of federal programs to redesign the American economy and fix all of the problems. Selfish private businessmen had gotten out of control, he said, and needed to be reigned in.

It is a classic tale for democracy and central governance: a problem is there, so we elect the person who says he will change everything around and try to fix things. Enough time has passed now that it is becoming possible to evaluate how it all worked out. Let me just toss out a few aspects that interest me.

First, there is a lot to the New Deal. There is an interesting debate going on right now between EconLog and Brad DeLong on whether the New Deal as a whole caused a net improvement. Arnold Kling of EconLog rightly points out that you should really evaluate the individual programs of the New Deal, because there is just too much of it. I started to try and list a summary here, but even that defies me. The New Deal was truly a vast redesign of the American economy, centralizing many aspects that were previously managed privately. Americans of today grow up under a different culture of governance than 100 years ago; we take it for granted now that the central government is allowed to control anything it wants and, indeed, should attempt to fix any problems we can think of.

To get there, FDR pushed to the limits of what the Constitution allowed. FDR went so far as proposing to increase the number of justices on the Supreme Court, presumably so that he could appoint the new members and swing the judicial branch in his favor. I often wonder how things would have gone without these constitutional limits. Would we have followed Russia's path into outright communism?

Finally, we know now that FDR's justification for the New Deal was incorrect. FDR described the problem as private industry behaving excessively in some way, as if businessmen became greedier during the depression than during periods before and after it. Study since then suggests that the main reasons we had a Great Depression, instead of a normal recession, were deflation of the currency and cut backs in international trade. Maybe the New Deal has been an improvement on its own merits, but there was a simple and direct solution to the stated problem if only the economics had been better understood.

This last point is something I dwell on frequently. The science at the time was undeveloped, but nonetheless we elected people to make sweeping changes to our economy, just to try something. That grand something brought us an inch away from communism, which, while we did not know at the time, we can now through history see is economically fatal. As a legacy, we have a far more intrusive government, and our status as a nation of individual freedom is diminished. I hope we move more carefully in the future, and I hope people remain aware of their bias to "just do something". ]]> January 2, 2007 http://www.daublin.org/minimum-employment.htmlDon Boudreaux recently posted a wonderful article on "Minimum-Workforce" legislation. What I like about this comparison is that minimum workforce has a lot of similar structure minimum wage, but you can consider it with less intellectual baggage.

Read it and decide for yourself. What is your intuition about "minimum workforce"? ]]> November 13, 2006 http://www.daublin.org/discrimination-privatelife.htmlI just read Craig's List's FAQ on the California Fair Housing Act. Apparently, it is now illegal in California to advertise personal preferences about who you would room with.

I do not know the logic that led to this act. Is it illegal to choose a roommate based on personal preferences? That is, no matter how much they smell, no matter how annoying they are, no matter that you argue with them all the time, no matter that your religions each damn the other to hell? If you meet the perfect person that you just click with, are you not allowed to prefer them? In a word, when it comes to who you live with, why not let people discriminate?

Perhaps, instead, it is legal to choose based on such preferences, but not to advertise them. But then the law makes no sense. Why require people not to state what they are asking for?

I imagine that this law is simply the logical extreme of some other policy. Either that, or voters saw the word "discriminate" in the act and voted against it. I would be interested in what exactly the logic was, and where it broke down. I am also interested in how such a thing came to become law. Did no one think about the implications? Do Californians just not have roommates ? ]]> November 7, 2006 http://www.daublin.org/saddam-reactions.htmlHealing Iraq has posted a large number of reactions by Iraq bloggers. ]]> October 31, 2006 http://www.daublin.org/janegalt-co2-and-efficiency.htmlI was just pointed to an article by Jane Galt from 1998 which puts some numbers into the discussion on CO2 reduction. This analysis should be required reading for anyone who is interested in CO2 growth since the industrial revolution.

I have linked before that it appears unlikely to achieve less than twice our current CO2 level in 2100, even if we aggressively try to curb emissions. Galt does the calculation the other way around: suppose the U.S. tried to go to 1950's levels of emissions (which, by the way, is still substantial). How much would GDP have to go down, assuming current efficiency levels?

The answer is in the following table:

That's right: it requires a reduction to 47% of the 1998 level of GDP per person, which is equivalent to the 1963 GDP per person. To go further and get to 1900's emission levels -- which she says is still a net positive -- you have to go down to 12%, which is 1913's standard of living.

Go read the whole article from the archives. The linked page has multiple articles; skip to the second one, the one that starts with "Demosthenes". ]]> October 20, 2006 http://www.daublin.org/pigou-tax.htmlIf you want to reduce a country's usage of gasoline, then a great starting point is to add a tax to it, as described by Prof. N. Gregory Mankiw. Mankiw feels so strongly about this strategy that he has made it a regular feature on his blog: whenever he reads a public official backing this plan, he enthusiastically marks them as new members of the "Pigou Club".

Personally, I remain unconvinced that we should try at all to cut gasoline usage. Energy is a key part of our wondrous modern world, from computers to factories to transportation to interior climate control. The economic argument against gasoline use does not convince me, because as soon as gas becomes scarce, it will become expensive all by itself. I do not buy the environmental argument because it is simply impractical to stop CO₂ growth in that way. I do not buy the national security argument, but rather its opposite: I believe we should eagerly embrace international trade in order to tie the world together more closely.

Nonetheless, if the policy goal is to cut gas usage, then a Pigovian tax is the place to start. It makes the costs obvious as a tax, instead of hidden in regulatory costs and economic inefficiencies. It lets individuals work out the details, instead of trying to find economic geniuses in Congress to act as master planners -- SUV's, anyone? ]]> October 18, 2006 http://www.daublin.org/ai-on-lancet.htmlLancet is about to publish a study on the number of deaths in Iraq, attempting to compare the number of deaths before and after Saddam Hussein's overthrow. The study claims that there have been 650,000 "excess deaths" in the post-war period compared to business-as-usual under Saddam Hussein. Search Google News for "Lancet" and you will find plenty of information.

The study is under intense scrutiny. Asymmetrical Information has done an excellent enumeration of several legitimate criticisms and illegitimate criticisms of the study that have so far emerged so far. I will not repeat them here; go read for yourself.

I would really like to see the authors release their raw survey data. It sounds like the weakest part of the paper's argument is the data collection itself. For example, what if the interviewers simply faked a lot of the data? If the data is made public, then it can be statistically tested to see if it was made up.

Anyway, if nothing else, the study opens tantalizing possibilities for studies of the future. I would love to see the study repeated using the improvements that have come to light, e.g. comparison with official figures, recording demographic information, and releasing the raw data immediately. ]]> October 16, 2006 http://www.daublin.org/co2-concentration.htmlgetting perspective is to dig up the actual numbers. Roger Pielke discusses the actual numbers gathered by The Economist for current, past, and predicted future concentrations of CO₂ in the Earth's atmosphere:

• 380 ppm: current CO₂ concentration
• 280 ppm: CO₂ concentration before the Industrial Revolution
• 800 ppm: CO₂ concentration in 2100, under business as usual
• 550-970 ppm: forseeable concentrations in 2100, if we change our policy and/or technology

These last two numbers are speculative, of course. Pielke goes on to discuss the prospects for the low end of that range, 550 ppm. It turns out that 550 ppm is only "conceivable" if you are willing to make drastic changes to human life. Driving a hybrid and switching to energy-efficient light bulbs does nothing for a change of that magnitude.

Politicians are widely mischaracterizing this situation. First, no matter what anyone says, the CO₂ concentration has already gone up, and is slated to go up a lot further. Second, even the most ambitious of efforts only holds us at a 50% increase by 2100. Thus, whatever else we do, we need to get ready for increased CO₂.

Pielke's suggestion is the most reasonable I have read: change our focus. Specifically, they need to stop focussing exclusively on prevention of change, which appears to be impossible. Decreasing the change is worthwhile, but change is coming nonetheless.

Overall, it is actually a fascinating policy problem if you scratch beneath the surface. To do so, however, you have to be willing to step away from the public brawl over, e.g., the effect of CO₂ on temperature. ]]> July 20, 2006 http://www.daublin.org/health-margin.html"Half the country can't afford health care." -Thomas L. Friedman

A great old article on Cafe Hayek takes on this old idea that you either have or do not have health care, that you either can or cannot afford it. There is health care and there is health care. Every extra dollar gets you a little bit more. This principle is crucial if you are interested in health-care policy. ]]> June 30, 2006 http://www.daublin.org/gaymarriage-miron.htmlnails my analysis of same-sex marriage practically word for word. He scores some good points about the decision process:

1. The courts should not decide this question. It is too contentious.
2. Civil unions are a good compromise that everyone should consider.
3. Should the government really define marriage, anyway?

If you are interested in this issue, go read the whole piece. There is more to it than a tug-of-war over which side you are on. ]]> April 23, 2006 http://www.daublin.org/pielke-aircapture.htmla straightforward theory for why mitigation is not widely discussed in global-warming policy discussions:

Currently air capture of CO2 is a political third rail of climate policy. Here is why:

For most of those people opposed to greenhouse gas regulation advocating air capture would require first admitting that greenhouse gases ought to be reduced in the first place, an admission that most on this side of the debate have avoided. [...]

For most of those people who support greenhouse gas regulations, even admitting the possibility of air capture is anathema, because it would undercut the entire structure of the contemporary climate enterprise. Consider that the Kyoto Protocol and all of its complex mechanisms would largely be rendered irrelevant. So too would be most research on carbon sequestration (though point source sequestration would likely remain of interest) and management, as well as much of research on reducing emissions in autos, homes, cities, etc.. As well, because among many much of the motivation for climate mitigation lies in changing peoples lifestyles, securing advantages in international economics, and changing energy policies, air capture represents a tremendous threat to such agendas.

If we interpret this debate as a proxy for other political issues, then its character becomes obvious. Personally, I wonder if we should not treat Mother Earth a little more kindly? We should care for her, not use her as a pawn on the political chess board. ]]> April 20, 2006 http://www.daublin.org/benford-mitigation.htmlAha! after watching for months, I found someone talking about responses to global warming other than somehow stopping industrial progress. Back in November 1997, Gregory Benford wrote about "mitigation" options to actively cool the earth.

Philosophically, we must come to grips with the fact that humanity changes the earth and has for a long time. It is well and good to try and have a gentle touch on the earth, but we need to remember that simple farming already causes dramatic effects. Unless we want to go back to hunting and gathering, we need to find a way to live in an industrial world. In a time where most of the world's population is depressingly poor, we should not rush to abandon our best technique to bring them wellbeing. ]]> April 20, 2006 http://www.daublin.org/kling-on-gw.htmlArnold Kling has taken a look a global warming and on reasonable responses. Among other things, he is exploring an interesting parallel between climate models and macroeconometric models.

Read the whole thing. His conclusion:

The choice that we face on global warming is not "either-or." It is not, "either we believe in global warming and rescue the planet or we all die." It is a largely a choice between how much action we do pro-actively now and how much we do in response to climate change in forthcoming decades.

I think that there is time to have a reasonable discussion and to make rational decisions. If that's the way people want to approach the issue, that is.

It is nice seeing someone step back and try to really understand the situation and find workable policies. I run into all too many people who have a "with us or against us" approach, who seem to care far more about political brawls than about understanding the situation and looking for answers. ]]> April 8, 2006 http://www.daublin.org/pollan-salon.htmlnice interview with Michael Pollan about healthy foods and about various food industries in the U.S. It is an enjoyable read for anyone who likes food (and, come on, food is great!). My only wish is that, instead of seeking legislation, he would go into business.

When asked about how to improve the quality of food that Americans eat, Pollan's only answer is:

Interviewer: How would you do that?
I'm not exactly sure, but we need to create a set of rules so that the produce aisle would be competitive with the junk food aisle. That's the beginning of the solution. People living on junk food aren't stupid. If you go into the supermarket with little money, you're going to buy the most calories you can get for a dollar. And a dollar will buy you a couple thousands calories' worth of potato chips, but only a few calories worth of carrots. So the decision to eat badly is rational in that those are the calories we subsidize. Our food policy is geared toward the overproduction of corn and soybeans in order to keep raw materials cheap for the likes of ADM, Cargill, Coca-Cola and General Mills, who happen to exert an enormous control over the farm bill.

Pollan's ideas for farm bills are interesting, but here's an idea that does not need force from the Hill: Pollan should go into business! Instead of "organic" and "free range", we could have food that he approves of being labelled "Pollan's Picks"!

Americans are smart, even if, in our specialized society, we do not all have time to become experts on food. Further, we are clearly willing to pay more for food that appears to be healthier, enough so that we grasp at every straw for a "healthy" label. Pollan is unimpressed with food labelled "organic" or "free range". He could use his good judgement to back a new "Pollan's Picks" label.

This approach is well suited for a free, individualistic society. If Pollan is as accurate as he sounds, then people will love his choices, he will become rich, and the rest of us will all have better food to eat. If, despite his noble efforts, he is wrong, then his label will fail but the rest of us would avoid some truly regrettable legislation. ]]> March 29, 2006 http://www.daublin.org/bush-lowering-gas.htmlOne conspiracy theory popular nowadays is that Bush is in league with oil companies. Maybe it is true, but he does not seem to particularly act like it. Most strikingly, his most famous action will, if it works, result in Iraq selling oil on the world market and thus lowering world oil prices.

But more straightforwardly, why did Bush act to reduce oil prices just after Hurricane Katrina? If he had simply done nothing, oil and gas prices would have risen even more than they did, to the benefit of oil companies that were still active after the hurricane hit. Instead, he immediately acted to sell 30 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Reserve.

Do not take me wrong--politicians respond to all kinds of special interests, and I am sure Bush does, too. But why do so many people choose oil? If Bush is really giving favors to oil companies, why did he lower gas prices after Hurricane Katrina? ]]> March 4, 2006 http://www.daublin.org/peakcopper.htmlAndrew Leonard recently posted on Salon about peak oil. I like Leonard's articles a lot. His is a rare progressive blog, whose arguments generally seem to go together instead of being heart-felt but mind-devoid beseechings. I recommend it especially for progressives wanting to know more of the economy. (I would further recommend Arnold Kling, but only if you can tolerate his libertarian conclusions.)

While this particular article has generally sound economics (I just ignore the obligatory progressive attacks on a large corporation), the shift at the end is jarring. There is no lead in to the following vociferous attack:

Demand for oil is increasing every day, and production is just barely keeping up, right now. It is in the best interest of the planet, the global economy, and every living creature that we devote all available resources to conservation, energy efficiency, and the development of alternative sources of energy and conservation.

I'll leave aside the question of what "all available resources" means (should I quit my job, then?). My first reaction to the article was to recall an article I had read earlier about Paul Ehrlich's predictions of shortages of metals. Paul Ehrlich took a bet with Julian Simon that over the next ten years (1980-1990, in this case), the price of metals would increase. Ehrlich picked (Simon let Ehrlich make the choice!) copper, chrome, nickel, tin and tungsten. Ten years later, all five of them had actually decreased in price -- i.e., they became less scarce. It is a good case to ponder for people who believe that scarcity is disastrous. (Or, for that matter, that Ehrlich makes good predictions.)

In fact, Leonard posted about "peak copper" on the same day, with the same conclusions as a market economist: changes in scarcity causes changes in prices causes shifts in what market participants use. That is, when one thing gets scarce, prices induce people to use less scarce alternatives. This all happens without needing any big movement, much less government intervention.

After a little thought, though, it's not Leonard's conclusion itself that most bothers me, but that he preceded it with a eulogy on just how much he does believe in price signals:

And we have a lot of sympathy for the almighty power of the price mechanism. Simple economics suggest that new technologies for extracting more oil from already existing fields and new oil from Canada's oil sands and the Rockies' oil shale will eventually become feasible....

Something must give. I have no doubt that sometimes price signals are incorrect. However, if as he says they work for oil, then why should "we" (a topic for another day) nonetheless ignore what oil prices are telling us? If oil is as scarce as he fears, then why has the price not already shot up?

Does he think oil companies are not greedy? ]]> February 11, 2006 http://www.daublin.org/bastiat.htmlI keep running into people who do not even understand how free commerce could ever work, how it could even possibly be a good idea. If you let businessmen do whatever they want, then they will charge wildly high prices and pay wildly low wages. For that matter, there is an implicit assumption that businessmen are some other kind of person, born into some other class. Many of these people who are happy to embrace social freedoms, but they scoff at economic freedoms.

Given this backdrop, it was a pleasure for me to read "What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen" by Frédéric Bastiat. Bastiat was a lonely capitalist in 19th century France. In this piece, he systematically analyzes the opportunity cost of a variety of statist policies. Progressives, don't run too fast -- Bastiat freely admits, all throughout, that individual statist policies can very well have benefits worth their cost. What he argues with, systematically, is the economic arguments for such policies. It is good reading if you want a deeper understanding of how free commerce works, of what is sacrificed when we spend money via the state instead of spending it directly ourselves. ]]> February 2, 2006 http://www.daublin.org/startuphours.htmlThere are people whose jobs are bad deals, and one of the ways a job can be a bad deal is that it consumes too much of your time. A reasonable effort to protect against this is to impose laws against jobs that consume too much time, in order to protect people's quality of life. France has gone particularly far in that direction with its 35-hour limit on the work week.

Such laws do not work by simply improving everyone's job whose work level is beyond the threshold. That's impossible in a free society. Instead, what they do is make the above-threshold jobs illegal. Continuing to work at them then becomes a crime, and over-threshold people instantly lose their jobs. The hope, often fulfilled, is that those jobs are replaced by new ones that have lower hours with, perhaps, lower pay. The dark side, though, is that some of those jobs don't come back at all. Further, some businesses collapse entirely.

An poignant example to consider is startup companies. Paul Graham has a great blog, largely about about computer startups, and he writes of them:

Economically, you can think of a startup as a way to compress your whole working life into a few years. Instead of working at a low intensity for forty years, you work as hard as you possibly can for four. This pays especially well in technology, where you earn a premium for working fast.

The question I am left with is: should these guys be allowed to work horrendous hours? Workers at startups voluntarily choose to work at horrendous intensity because they want a chance at huge payoffs.

I think yes, surely, these guys should be allowed to choose long hours if they want. They want that life, and they are providing a tremendous good to the rest of us. Disallowing it would make them grumpy and the rest of us poorer.

If one says yes, here, however, how can one ever draw the line about what jobs are allowed to have long hours and what ones not? It seems that if one says yes here, then one says yes always: you can always work long hours if you want. (I find it pleasing when put this way. Whose business is it but mine how hard I work?)

Nevertheless, there is still room for protective legislation here, even if we do not impose an outright ban. We could follow the lead of questionable medical procedures: require people to sign extra documents before they agree to long-hour jobs. The required document would read something like, "I have been informed that this job requires more effort than the U.S. Department of Good Living recommends." This way, people can choose however they wish, and they can avoid being tricked by the fine print into working too long.

This approach makes sense in a free society. It adds paperwork, and it adds administrative and enforcement officials, but it leaves the ultimate choices up to the people involved. Personally, I find this approach distasteful--I can read a contract, and I think my countrymen had better learn to, as well. Nevertheless, if we must have the nanny legislation, let's do it in a sensible way. The approach in the last paragraph accomplishes the main achievable goal--avoiding tricks--while ultimately leaving individuals free to choose how they live their own life. ]]> February 1, 2006 http://www.daublin.org/absolute-wealth.htmlA lot of policy discussions mix up absolute versus relative wealth and costs. It is important to focus on the one you care about, or you can make weird decisions. A few examples of places it shows up:

• Overall income. Folks often talk about a relative income level ("middle class", "bottom fifth") as opposed to absolute income levels ("under $30,000", "millionaire").
• Poverty itself. In fact, poverty is often discussed in relative terms. Sometimes poverty is defined in terms of the ability to provide for basic needs, while other times it is defined in terms of relative income, e.g. half the median income.
• Cost of living. Many folks talk about a "cost of living" that is a moving target. They then talk about income as compared to this cost of living. In many discussions, it would make better sense to talk about an absolute cost of living, e.g. what it takes to buy enough food and shelter and so on to live. The moving cost of living is more about the cost that average folks are spending, but as income goes up that spending goes up as well.
• Health care. Often people write about "health care costs" or "the cost of health care". When they do so, they invariably use a moving target for "health care" just as the folks who talk about "cost of living". I would love to see at least a few people talk about "absolute health care" just like "absolute poverty". There ought to be a "health price index" to parallel the Consumer Price Index.

It also shows up when comparing different countries against each other. I enjoyed reading Robert E. Lucas, Jr.'s article about the relative versus absolute wealth around the world over the last few thousand years. Before the industrial revolution, every country was poor but every country was close to equally poor. Nowadays, wealth is highly inequal. Countries vary by a factor of 20 or 30. On the other hand, practically all individual countries have become wealthier, including those at the bottom!

These two measures of wealth matter because they frequently appear in policy discussions. Which one prefer depends on your values. Relative wealth in many ways produces societies that are pretty to look at. For example, nomadic native Americans lived a very romantic life, from the outside. On the other hand, absolute wealth helps the people themselves. Those living on a reserve today may well be poor in a relative sense (I don't know), but they no longer face starvation if the hunt goes poorly one year.

I fall in the "absolute" camp. I think most native Americans would prefer the security of an absolutely wealthy life, to the romance of impoverished nomadic life. I know that that's the choice I prefer myself. It's deeply wrong to improve a "society" at the expense of the people who live in it. In my book, it's the people that matter. ]]> January 28, 2006 http://www.daublin.org/kling.htmlEconLog and TCS Daily. A few essays that particularly enlightened me were:

• The Escalation of Income
• You Call This Health Insurance?
• Oil Econ 101

It's hard to pick any single quote to pull out, because the essay is short and full of productive insights. Here's one that's most relevant for policy enthusiasts:

There is a fact still more astounding: the absence of a master mind, of anyone dictating or forcibly directing these countless actions which bring me into being. No trace of such a person can be found. Instead, we find the Invisible Hand at work. This is the mystery to which I earlier referred.

For those of a humanist persuasion, I direct your attention here:

Here is an astounding fact: Neither the worker in the oil field nor the chemist nor the digger of graphite or clay nor any who mans or makes the ships or trains or trucks nor the one who runs the machine that does the knurling on my bit of metal nor the president of the company performs his singular task because he wants me. Each one wants me less, perhaps, than does a child in the first grade. Indeed, there are some among this vast multitude who never saw a pencil nor would they know how to use one. Their motivation is other than me. Perhaps it is something like this: Each of these millions sees that he can thus exchange his tiny know-how for the goods and services he needs or wants. I may or may not be among these items.

So long as people are forced to play nice with each other, it doesn't matter that they are greedy and self-interested and could care less about pencils, per se, much less good, cheap pencils.

Go check it out if you haven't already.]]> December 27th, 2005 http://www.daublin.org/freewill-evolution.htmlEvolution is nothing more nor less than making new stuff out of old stuff. "Growing" is another good word for it. It's the way people create things, and it's the way a lot of the things we see in the world appear to have been made. No one sat out and arranged all the different rubber companies and lumber companies and factories and factory-machine suppliers and on and on that result in the modern 10-pack of pencils you can buy in a store for $1. It just emerged over time as people in various parts of the process gradually made themselves more efficient. People just can't design something of this scale. They can only grow it, not plan it.

Thus, evolution is another kind of cause. Difficult. We have asked for centuries -- millennia? -- what does free will mean, when God can do everything? It seems to mean nothing, but then, can any healthy person really believe their decisions don't matter? Likewise, who causes evolutionary results to come to pass? No person is in charge and planning it out, but in many of them God does not appear to step in and perform miracles, either. Difficult indeed.

It makes my head hurt to think too much about it! But my takes so far are (1) God gave us a sense of free will, and he wants us to feel like we are using it. What murky record we have of his wishes consistently imply that our choices, especially our choices regarding him, make a difference. (2) God is interested in processes as well as results. He gave us a world where spiders and economies and cultures and many other things grow from old versions into new ones. The growth itself is part of his plan.

At any rate, evolution appears to happen. It is a pity that evolution has been tied up with the question of the original of the human animal (although, if God did grow the human animal in that way, isn't that just more evidence of his grandeur?). The concept is helpful in many other areas. Art, economy, culture, science, scholarship, and even engineering all are grown, not designed from scratch.

I don't know the answers here, but I know that evolution is a powerful tool and a powerful explainer. Ignoring evolution means both that we set aside a useful tool, and that we blindfold ourselves to an aspect of the creation we dwell in. While an evolving, growing world seems very weird, it seems to be what we have. Surely God wants us to study his creation that we dwell in. Surely he wants us to learn to thrive in it.

But it most certainly is a challenge. Thinking about evolution hurts the head, and it hurts it in the same way as thinking about free will. ]]> December 21st, 2005 http://www.daublin.org/safety-tyranny.htmlThe power of the federal government can accomplish a great deal, and thus it is tempting to try and steer that power and -- when it is steered where you want -- to increase that power. Natural disasters? Call in the feds to rescue everyone. Health problems? Call in the feds to force people to live healthier. Don't like your local state government? Call in the feds to overrule them.

But what about when the government is not in your favor? What protection do people have against the leviathan becoming a harmful tyranny?

The best formula I know is the combination of democracy and written law. Democracy means that at least the majority of the people can be satisfied. If the goverenment ever gets completely out of touch with the people, the people can change to a different government. Written law, judged by independent courts, means that what the government decides is what counts. Even a senator cannot commit murder and walk away, and even the most unpopular of minorities is entitled to their day in court.

This formula is the most important policy issue to me. While I care about a number of individual policy issues, this one trumps them all. So long as we are democratic and follow written law, the individual issues can be worked out peacefully over time. If tyranny takes hold, there is no way back but violent revolt. ]]> December 5, 2005 http://www.daublin.org/globwarm-options.htmlI have never understood the fear that many people have over the Earth potentially growing a few degrees warmer, 100 years from now. Those who are legitimately worried about this, however--especially the technically savvy--must surely be looking for solutions to this problem.

Roger Pielke, who writes at the Prometheus blog, mentions this issue on occasion as part of the blog's larger focus on improving the impact of science on public policy. I must admit, the only solution I have heard of is one also agreed to be ineffective even by its proponents: the famous Kyoto Protocol.

A quick google search on "stopping global warming" does not enlighten me further. Of the front 10 pages, 9 of them implicitly assume that the only road to decreasing the Earth's temperature is the Kyoto strategy of reducing energy use. Only one page of those ten has any alternative specified: a giant solar shield in orbit around the Earth.

Perhaps the UN's Framework Convention on Climate Change can provide an answer? Well, they at least provide one alternative, only to immediately dismiss it: increase the coverage of forest area. That's an interesting idea -- I wonder why they do not mention other plant forms such as sea plankton as a potential way to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? Or, of course, other mechanisms that don't rely on reducing carbon dioxide at all?

Is this all that our scientists and technological leaders have come up with? Has no one tried, for example, to develop an environmentally friendly compound that could be added to the atmosphere to reduce the greenhouse effect? Do any techies actually take this problem seriously?

I'll post anything I find, but it looks like slim pickings. The political brawl is drowning out the voices of anyone legitimately trying to help. ]]> November 27th, 2005 http://www.daublin.org/legislators-abortion.htmlI read an interesting challenge in one of Jane Galt's posts regarding abortion policy: What would happen if Roe v. Wade were overturned, and the question thus ended up back in the legislatures?

...I am amazed that half the chattering classes really purport to believe that the single most important issue facing the courts is whether or not ten or so low-population states will, or will not, be allowed to outlaw abortion. More important than civil liberties? More important than towns condemning any old house they feel like it to build a strip mall?

She believes that abortion would largely remain legal. Is it true? If legislators were given the chance, would they largely leave abortion alone?

Polls can be used to answer this question. A little web trawling turns up that Harris finds the following result on the main question:

"In general, do you favor permitting a woman who wants one to have an abortion in all circumstances, some circumstances or no circumstances?"

all	23%
some	55%
none	21%
not sure	1

In a legislature elected by this particular population, it looks like moderation would carry the day. Surely no legislator could take either extreme stance and still get reelected. I wonder what the results are like in various areas of the country?

Now, personally, I fear both extreme positions on this question more than any moderate position, so I take great comfort in these poll results. I'm worried, though, about a question that Harris asks later in the same poll:

"[....] In general, do you favor or oppose this part of the U.S. Supreme Court decision making abortions up to three months of pregnancy legal?"

	Total	Pro-Life	Pro-Choice
Favor	52	15	83
Oppose	47	84	15
Not sure/Refused	1	1	1 It looks like the vast majority of people want the courts to decide in their favored direction, apparently without regard to what is in the constitution and in federal law. Is this true? Do people really want the courts to act as just another source of power, rather than following their constitution-appointed role of judging the constitution and the law? If so, there is a disturbing breakdown in American attitudes about the three-branch system, or really, written law in general. ]]> October 31st, 2005 http://www.daublin.org/under-pension.htmlRoger Lowenstein has written a good piece overviewing pension plans of all kinds (private, public, social security, 401(k)) and how quite a few of them are promising beyond their funding. Part of the issue is that it's tempting to make promises that don't have to be dealt with for decades. A particularly nauseating part of the problem is when it is legislatures making the decisions. I often hear people complaining that congress critters "vote themselves raises", but the general public does it all too often. Lowenstein explains this tendency as follows: Because public pension benefits are legally inviolable, default is not an option. Sooner or later, taxpayers will be required to put up the money (or governments will be forced to borrow the money and tax a later generation to pay the interest). Thus, unions can bargain for virtually any level of benefits without regard to the state's ability, or its willingness, to fund them. This creates moral hazard indeed. At least in the private sphere, there are rules - ineffectual rules maybe, but rules - that require companies to fund. In the public sector, legislatures wary of raising taxes to pay for the benefits that they legislate can simply pass the buck to the future. This explains how the West Virginia Teachers Retirement System has, embarrassingly, only 22 percent of the assets needed to meet its expected liabilities. It also explains how Illinois, a low-tax state, is underfunded by some $38 billion, or $3,000 per every man, woman and child in the state. San Diego, meanwhile, is particularly screwed up: As bad as that sounds, the problem of state and local government pensions is even worse. Public pensions, which are paid by taxpayers and thus enjoy an implicit form of insurance, are underfunded by a total of at least $300 billion and arguably much more. While governments have been winking at these deficits for years, they are now becoming intolerable burdens for taxpayers. In San Diego, pension abuse has effectively bankrupted the city. Thanks to a history of granting sweeter and sweeter pension deals that it has neglected to fund, the city has been forced to allocate $160 million, or 8 percent of the municipal budget, to the San Diego City Employees Retirement System this year, with similar allocations expected for years to come. San Diego has tabled plans for a downtown library, cut back the hours on swimming pools, gutted the parks and recreation budget, canceled needed water and sewer projects and fallen behind on potholes. This situation is approaching for the U.S. national government as well. There are many ways forward, but at any rate U.S. citizens should surely be demanding that our representatives work to fix this situation. The medicine may be bitter, but it is worse to look the other way and leave a situation where the next generation has a much higher tax burden than us because we promised ourselves so many benefits. It seems to me that one way to move forward is to disentagle retirement security from retirement savings. Retirement savings plans practically always have some risk of going bad. If nothing else, you never know if you will get injured and have to stop working before you have. Thus, there is certainly a need for some sort of safety net for retirement security. But there is no need to make the safety net look like a savings program, which is how the federal social security program works right now: benefits are proportional to what you "save". That's silly for a safety net. For example, you would never think of paying unemployment benefits that is proportional to what the person made while working; you'd pay them fixed amount sufficient to survive while hunting down the next job. Oh, and of course, let's disentangle retirement plans from the employers, too. Most people don't work for just one employer throughout their careers, nowadays, and so it is increasingly silly to rely on a system that assumes people do. Just two ideas. I have my favorite approach to social security, but at any rate we should all demand that our representatives work to put this situation in balance. It is fun to laugh at San Diego right now. Let's try to learn from their experience and not be San Diego. ]]> October 11th, 2005 http://www.daublin.org/iraq-oilration.htmlI wrote earlier about all the wiggles that American politicians made after hurricane Katrina hit. Here's a worst-case example of what happens when politicians do more than wiggle and start getting serious about price controls: Petrol Rationing Creates Black Market in Iraqi Kurdistan Another article on the topic claims that the price controls go as low as 5 cents per gallon--fully 1/60th of the current market price inthe US: For Iraq's Motorists, It's Abundance by the Drop Iraq, one of the most oil-rich countries in the world, has been price-controlling their domestic gasoline. The current natural market price is now higher than the price cap, and as a result the local gas supplies are running out. Why should suppliers sell locally when they can sell internationally and get a better price? To counteract the shortages, Iraq is now employing rationing. In turn, people respond to the rationing by selling their allotments to each other in a black market. Read the article for more -- it paints a good picture. In addition to being a lesson that keeps getting learned the hard way--price controls lead to shortages lead to rationing--I find it fascinating that the first cited article above doesn't even mention the possibility that price controls are the root cause. I also find it fascinating that it lays out the developing black market in detail but stops short of the conclusion that, in this case at least, markets (a) are effective and (b) what people want to do. The result right now is that there is a lot of government and police involvement, but people on the street are using a plain old market and getting plain old market prices anyway, only doing so illegally. Iraq needs to go either forward or backwards with its price controls. To go forward, Iraq will need to further tune its rationing scheme and further improve its enforcement forces. This means a substantial increase in the government's involvement in people's lives, but that's what price controls ultimately entail if they are to be effective. To go backwards, they could open the market up like in the US and simply allow the gas prices to float to a higher level -- along the way, providing a monetary encouragement to those in the domestic oil industry to improve their capacity. For completeness, there is also the horrible possibility of stalling in the status quo. Iraq could simply leave its black market alive and make occasional token raids on it, thus setting up a situation like the recreational drug markets in the US. Surely this is the worst choice, however. In addition to not solving the original problem of gas shortages, it makes large segments of the population into criminals, thus allowing the police and those who control them to target citizens selectively. I hope that Iraq moves either forward or backward on its energy price controls: either more control to stamp out the offenders, or more freedom to allow people to legally work out this problem for themselves. Bryan Caplan has a good blog entry on this. Sadly, news.google.com has almost nothing at all. ]]> October 6th, 2005 http://www.daublin.org/deathometer.htmlEvery ended life is tragic, but when policy issues arise, often there are thousands of lives in the balance. How can one begin to think about such immense numbers? It is not enough to knee-jerk respond that any death must be absolutely avoided, because frequently no such choice is available. What to do, other than throw one's hands up and say it is a crazy, incomprehensible world? What I do is carry around a few counts that I somewhat have a grasp of, and then use them to rank body counts when I hear of some new tragedy. So I can say things like, "this is about as bad as the tsunami in Indonesia". Here are the numbers I keep handy, along with links to sources for the numbers: deaths from motor vehicle accidents in the US: 40,000/year Hitler's Holocaust: 10,000,000 US soldiers lost in the Vietnam War: 58,000 2004 tsunami in Indonesia: 55,000 Yes, these numbers are exciting largely for Americans. I put these up just as examples; you should pick your own big events and research what the numbers are. Each of these numbers is poignant to me. The deaths from car accidents in the US are interesting because they represent a risk that the general public has decided is acceptable. When one person says they are going to drive to the supermarket, their friends do not scream at them and say they are stepping into a death trap. While the risk is palpably present, it is low enough to be acceptable. Yet, cars kill over 40,000 people a year in the US. Hitler's Holocaust turns out to be an end-point on the spectrum of human loss of life. It's not just a cliche -- that man literally killed off millions of people. And he did it all for a crazy idealistic search for a more perfect strain of humanity. The Vietnam War is interesting to Americans whenever warfare comes up in policy decisions. Over the years of that quagmire we lost about 50% more than we lose in one year from car accidents. Finally, the tsunami is interesting just as one datum on how powerful Mother Nature is when she strikes an area that is undeveloped by today's standards. Given these calibration points, it then becomes possible to get a grasp of body counts in other recent events. I will close by listing a few from the top of my head, without comment, that have been relevant in US current events and policy debates. Hopefully this helps you put things in perspective, the same way it helps me. toll from hurricane Andrew: 23 toll from hurricane Katrina: 1000 Coalition deaths in Iraq: 2,000 world trade center collapse in 2001: 3,000 Kurds buried in Saddam's mass graves: 300,000 ]]> September 13th, 2005 http://www.daublin.org/oilwriggles.htmlAs gas prices return to almost pre-Katrina levels, we get one more reminder that oil is a world market and local shocks have temporary, local effects. It doesn't matter that the southeastern U.S. states import their oil from the Gulf of Mexico region while the western states import from elsewhere. Oil is oil--consumers can import from the cheapest provider, and suppliers can export to the most generous buyer. The world-wide price changes hit everyone. And after the initial shock from Katrina hitting and causing massive but (on a world scole) local destruction, the world-wide price have adjusted precisely due to supply and demand. Given the extra supply from the US opening its oil reserves, prices on the world market (and thus all free-market locales) have even decreased below pre-Katrina levels. The post-Katrina oil market is also an example where the market itself was the best solution to an economic problem, not regulation of the market. For example, reas that had a temporary shortage of gas experienced temporary spike in prices, which is precisely the moral and effective response that is desired: most people should buy less gas in a time of shortage, but some people need that gas a lot, and a great way to cause that to happen is to let people vote with their wallets. If they really need gas during the crisis, then they should be willing to pay for it. Nevertheless, politicians have been quick to prey on people's belief in authority, their hope that someone Up There can solve problems, and stepped up in various ways to try and improve things: Price controls and anti-gouging restrictions. Gouging sounds evil on first blush, but the particulars matter a lot. If the seller is trying to trick a buyer into paying too much, then I have no sympathy. However, many gas retailers who raised their prices were either passing on their expected price, or simply wanted to ensure that their stocks were not exhausted. Whether this was due to greed is beside the point, because it is precisely what should have been done during a crisis shortage. Price controls run the risk of harming this natural, beneficial market mechanism and either (a) running suppliers out of stock or (b) reducing profits to negative and forcing retailers out of business. The only way for price controls to be effective is to also start government rationing, thus stacking up even more regulations, having the government officials reaching tentacles further into the lives of citizens, and making the economy increasingly similar to that of the old U.S.S.R. -- presumably with similar results. Tax Removal. Removing taxes on gas simply means that the taxes have to reappear somewhere else, so it is unclear whether it makes things better or worse. Reserve Openings. This government response actually has effect. It is already working to lower the world price of oil. Whether it should be done is a different question; it has a delayed effect that can easily be longer than the effect of the post-Katrina shock, and reserves can only be left open for so long. Lifting of region-specific mix restrictions. It's a rant for another day, but region-specific mix restrictions shoot the locals in the foot to such an extent that it is strange they have stayed in force at all. I suppose it is because the restrictions are described as a way to help the environment, and so no politico wants to move to remove them. Nevertheless, the lifting of such restrictions should eventually give those regions lower prices, much like free trade agreements tend to give lower prices to participants, but the effect may well take longer than the effect of the post-Katrina shock was absorbed by market-driven responses anyway. All in all, free commerce seems to be a wonderful mechanism for solving the economic problems caused by the post-Katrina oil shock, but that's no fun for politicians. No public official wants to come out and say, "the best thing to do is nothing special, and that's precisely what my office will do--absolutely nothing." Nevertheless, "nothing" is just what they should have done in this case. Focus on those directly hit by the tragedy, and leave the market to do its job of sorting out those who are indirectly affected. Related articles of interest: "Here's Some Good That Pols Can Do", James Glassman What is truly amazing is the relative equanimity with which the United States has endured a quick doubling of oil prices plus a calamity in its prime energy region. Markets adjust and, so ultimately, will the glorious city of New Orleans -- though the human cost of this tragedy can never be calculated. "The Reality of Markets", Russell Roberts But reality is not optional. You cannot have a sudden reduction [in] gasoline available to the market and low prices at the same time. There is no dial for gasoline prices. The result of these threats is easily predicted-suppliers are already rationing. Drivers are worried about shortages and in the face of threats to punish 'gougers' they are right to worry. As a result, lines are forming in some cities, and gasoline retailers are closing early in the day, out of gasoline, the same results we saw when explicit rather than implicit price controls were put in place in the 1970s. Barking about gas, Jeff Jacoby What is it about the price of gasoline that turns seemingly normal politicians into barking economic demagogues? When Jill puts her house on the market for $450,000 -- triple what she paid 10 years ago, but the going price in her neighborhood today -- the politicos understand that the 200 percent markup is the result of supply and demand in the real estate market. Senators don't call press conferences to denounce Jill as a profiteer. Attorneys general don't threaten to prosecute her. Governors don't compare her to looters. ]]> September 5th, 2005 http://www.daublin.org/post-katrina.htmlI have been highly impressed by the response to hurricane Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans. The town was evacuated ahead of time. Before the hurricane hit ground, the Red Cross had people gathered around New Orleans waiting to help. After the town flooded, helicopters were in the air rescuing people who stayed and were stranded on rooftops. The tragedy of hurricane Katrina reminds us not only of Nature's power, but also what a marvelous age we live in that we can respond so adeptly and in such numbers. True, the relief effort could have been done better, and many people are already discussing possible improvements. I'd like to remind those who focus on improvements, however, that you be careful about the claims you throw around. Here are a few links that remind us of how much has been done: Hurricane Katrina: What Government Is Doing "American Red Cross Response to Hurricane Katrina" "FEMA, other agencies respond to Katrina" (dated August 29) Some of the complaints about the emergency response have gone over the top. There is much discussion about how much preparation there should have been, but let's remember that there was quite a lot of preparation even if, in hindsight, more would have helped: "National Guard Responds to Hurricane Katrina" There have also been complaints that rescue operations started too slowly... Yet, rescue commenced immediately, before the hurricane had even passed: "Coast Guard Rescues At Least 1,200 Stranded Victims" It is hardly like people were left abandoned while the outside world fumbled around. There were people on the scene immediately. Such positive facts tend to get airbrushed over by commentators intent on using this crisis as political football. For example, Paul Krugman spins the hurricane as a way to attack the current president, and in doing so he does not shy away from deeply insulting those relief efforts that did occur. Here's one typical comment: "As many people have noticed, the failed response to Katrina shows that we are less ready to cope with a terrorist attack today than we were four years ago." -Paul Krugman, "Killed by Contempt" Failed? It is one thing to say things could have been better, but the vast majority of people that were not killed instantly have indeed been helped at this point. In dollar counts, the federal contribution to Katrina relief will likely surpass the entire yearly budget of Louisiana. (Louisiana takes in $16 billion per year, whereas an emergency session of congress just authorized $10 billion of federal spending on top of the resources already poured into FEMA.) The feds, whatever else you say, have made a massive and very helpful response. Even more insulting are commentators who compare the situation to disasters in third world countries. Here's a typical example: A country that prides itself on its achievements in space, its high-tech weaponry and its ability to pulverize nations has by all accounts delivered a third world response to alleviate the painful suffering of its own people. -"Katrina and America's tipping point" This is absurd in a number of ways. Just to begin with, the body counts in third-world countries' disasters tend to be ten or more times larger: "Tsunami death toll tops 56,000" Overall, let's not focus so much on how things could, in hindsight, have been done better, that we forget the massive relief that has occurred. Let's remember that even though a catastrophic natural disaster has wasted an entire city, most of the city's populace has survived, and people around the world have reached out to help at enough of a level to reaffirm one's faith in humanity. The people of New Orleans are not alone. ]]>