We've spent the last thirty years mocking the Club of Rome and The Limits to Growth. Some data points, all from today's blog-cull:
1) The Colorado River is losing so much water every year that the Hoover Dam could stop generating electricity by 2017. So long, Las Vegas.
2) Phosphate (key fertilizer ingredient) prices have tripled in a year. According to this paper, the world passed the peak of conventional phosphate production in 1989. There is no substitute for phosphorus (it's a key ingredient in DNA, fer chrissakes) and feeding 6 billion people -- never mind 9 billion! -- requires megatonnes of the stuff. And, because our primary source of phosphate is mined rock, a non-renewable resource, we're running out quickly. As a bonus, most of the stuff is located in Morocco and China. Maybe we can go back to the days of Guano Imperialism.
3) If you haven't heard yet, biofuels are worse than fossil fuels.
4) Oh, and there aren't enough skilled people to build new nuclear plants. Maybe that's why the people of Ontario are getting hosed again.
5) Arctic sea ice loss will be even worse in 2008 than it was in 2007.
This phosphate thing is a new one to me. There is literally zero possibility of substitution -- the likely impact of ever-higher prices is going to be the use of less phosphate. Liebig's Law of the Minimum says that soil productivity declines with the most-scarce resource, meaning that less phospate will be a bottleneck that drags down global food production. Yikes.
But I'm sure glad right-wing economists got to spend decades chortling to themselves about how naive those people worrying about "carrying capacity" were. I'm sure it was worth it.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Why yes, I am a giant nerd. Why do you ask?
It's weird to think that it's only been a week since Super Tuesday... but wow, that was a really bad night for Sen. Clinton. The smallest of Obama's victory margins was... 23%. He won by 50% in DC. Now, he was expected to win in all three states, but let's recall that as recently as December her own campaign was talking about winning Virginia, where she lost handily. Sen. Clinton lost men, she lost women, she lost blacks, she lost latinos, and she just barely eked out a win among whites, and especially white women. As Yglesias says, "basically, everyone voted for Obama."
The scale of Obama's victory is such that some people -- namely my blog-mate Nick Beaudrot, who's been simply fantastic with the data and maps this primary season -- are basically calling the primary as done. Clinton needs to win by unrealistic margins -- indeed, by Obama-like margins -- in the remaining big states, where Obama is likely to keep the delegate count close to even.
You can see that everybody basically senses this -- Obama and McCain's victory speeches were both noteworthy last night because they both attacked each other, not their remaining primary challengers. This, I think, is the most dangerous position for Clinton to be in: if it becomes common sentiment that the primary is over, she lost, and she needs to drop out, we could see a lot of polls change quickly, even in the big states.
No predictions on the horse race, but I will say this: when the books are written, people will say the general election for 2008 began last night, if for no other reason than because McCain seems to have finally put Huckabee to bed.
The scale of Obama's victory is such that some people -- namely my blog-mate Nick Beaudrot, who's been simply fantastic with the data and maps this primary season -- are basically calling the primary as done. Clinton needs to win by unrealistic margins -- indeed, by Obama-like margins -- in the remaining big states, where Obama is likely to keep the delegate count close to even.
You can see that everybody basically senses this -- Obama and McCain's victory speeches were both noteworthy last night because they both attacked each other, not their remaining primary challengers. This, I think, is the most dangerous position for Clinton to be in: if it becomes common sentiment that the primary is over, she lost, and she needs to drop out, we could see a lot of polls change quickly, even in the big states.
No predictions on the horse race, but I will say this: when the books are written, people will say the general election for 2008 began last night, if for no other reason than because McCain seems to have finally put Huckabee to bed.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Clearly, these trees bear no relation to this forest you speak of
Mark Penn, Sen. Clinton's chief campaign strategist, seems to be one of the stupidest people alive. This, at least, would explain how the presumptive front-runner has gone from 20-point leads in most states to being trounced in the primaries tonight. But his memo released today is equal parts hillarious and awful. Let's deal with the awful first:
Now, in fairness, Penn does make some reasonable points -- Obama's numbers, he argues, will go down while Clinton's negatives are already factored in. I disagree, but it's at least debatable. There's some other stuff here. But now, on to the hillarious:
With advice like that, no wonder she's in this mess.
Sen. McCain Will Run on National Security; Hillary Wins That Argument. When it came to national security, "strong and wrong" won out over "right and weak" in the 2002 and 2004 elections. With Hillary, that is not and will not be an issue...Huh? The Democrats who voted for the war but, um, weren't Republicans lost in large numbers in 2002. Kerry voted for the war and lost in 2004. Clinton voted for the war and.... How does Hillary come out as having a stronger foreign policy than John McCain, without questioning the fundamental madness that they both agree on? (If you need a refresher, remember who voted to authorize war with Iran...)
Now, in fairness, Penn does make some reasonable points -- Obama's numbers, he argues, will go down while Clinton's negatives are already factored in. I disagree, but it's at least debatable. There's some other stuff here. But now, on to the hillarious:
Current Poll Numbers Don't Tell the Story of What Will Happen: Sen. Obama Routinely Underperforms While Hillary Overperforms.Er, whuh? I mean, Penn's got a long list of polls he shows prove that Obama routinely gets lower results than his polls suggest. But -- seriously, WTF? Penn's sage advice has turned Clinton from the de facto nominee to someone who basically has to sit out primaries tonight and hope she wins by double-digit margins in Texas and Ohio, and the argument is that Obama has underperformed expectations? As recently as two months ago everyone, everyone expected Clinton to be the nominee, no matter who they actually supported. Now Obama's done so well that tonight's wins could put him ahead of Clinton in the delegate count.
With advice like that, no wonder she's in this mess.
Monday, February 11, 2008
Krugman II
I swear I hadn't read Paul Krugman's latest column this morning when I wrote my last post, but it's kind of relevant. Krugman is showing a side I haven't seen since 2000, when he preferred to address the dirty fucking hippies made of straw in his head.
Remember what I was saying about Krugman's problem with easily-attained evidence? He was attacking anti-globalization protesters when all the evidence shows that the era of the Washington Consensus has been worse for the poor around the globe. Lower wages, lower wage growth, and more debt. Not too hard to find out, but back then Krugman said we were just a bunch of spoiled rich kids who hated the poor.
But back to Obama -- suppose it had been true? What would that prove? Only that Obama is attracting independents and even some Republicans*, who are exactly the kind of people you would expect to say things like "Well if it ain't Obama I'm voting McCain." But no, it can't be that -- it has to be a cult, a scary freaky personality cult like the one they had in the USSR! Even economists should understand Occam's Razor.
Tucker Carlson is a waste of flesh, but he did have one good moment in his life. In 2000, after McCain won New Hampshire against Bush, Carlson was asked if he thought McCain was a maverick. He said "well, I don't know, he does have a day job as a United States Senator." Point being, McCain could only be a maverick by the standards of the US Senate. People who think that Paul Krugman is a leader for liberals need to remember he has a part-time job as a New York Times columnist, and can only be a liberal by the standards of the NYT op-ed page. Which now includes Bill Kristol.
*Attracting independents and soft GOP in to the Democratic Party has it's own perils, I will readily admit. But seriously, could the Democrats be any more useless? Besides, rather than worry about reddening the Democrats with yokels, I prefer to believe the opportunity here is to get them voting for the right Party, show them that the government can work with them and for them, and cobble together a new coalition. But you need the votes first, then build the tribe.
Why, then, is there so much venom out there?Okay, first of all, Krugman could have looked up some actual numbers here. Because believe it or not, no matter who you are, your email inbox is not a statistical sample. It's the primary season, for fuck's sake, and we're not exactly in the middle of a poll drought. So you could see the exit polls from that distant land of yore, Super Tuesday. Also known as last week. Hilzoy did exactly that, and found that there's almost no difference between Obama and Clinton supporters and their support for the rival candidate.
I won’t try for fake evenhandedness here: most of the venom I see is coming from supporters of Mr. Obama, who want their hero or nobody. I’m not the first to point out that the Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality.
Remember what I was saying about Krugman's problem with easily-attained evidence? He was attacking anti-globalization protesters when all the evidence shows that the era of the Washington Consensus has been worse for the poor around the globe. Lower wages, lower wage growth, and more debt. Not too hard to find out, but back then Krugman said we were just a bunch of spoiled rich kids who hated the poor.
But back to Obama -- suppose it had been true? What would that prove? Only that Obama is attracting independents and even some Republicans*, who are exactly the kind of people you would expect to say things like "Well if it ain't Obama I'm voting McCain." But no, it can't be that -- it has to be a cult, a scary freaky personality cult like the one they had in the USSR! Even economists should understand Occam's Razor.
Tucker Carlson is a waste of flesh, but he did have one good moment in his life. In 2000, after McCain won New Hampshire against Bush, Carlson was asked if he thought McCain was a maverick. He said "well, I don't know, he does have a day job as a United States Senator." Point being, McCain could only be a maverick by the standards of the US Senate. People who think that Paul Krugman is a leader for liberals need to remember he has a part-time job as a New York Times columnist, and can only be a liberal by the standards of the NYT op-ed page. Which now includes Bill Kristol.
*Attracting independents and soft GOP in to the Democratic Party has it's own perils, I will readily admit. But seriously, could the Democrats be any more useless? Besides, rather than worry about reddening the Democrats with yokels, I prefer to believe the opportunity here is to get them voting for the right Party, show them that the government can work with them and for them, and cobble together a new coalition. But you need the votes first, then build the tribe.
My Krugman problem
It's no secret -- if you care about this stuff, that is -- that Paul Krugman, columnist, economist, and maybe the one sane person allowed on television is no fan of Barack Obama. Which is fine: I'm almost as unenthusiastic about Obama as I am about Sen. Clinton. I'm very excited about watching the primaries, but that's because I'm a huge nerd and enjoy the horse-race.
What concerns me is a number of people I've seen (Ian Welsh here as one example) who basically anoint Krugman as the definition of liberalism and progressivism. If Krugman doesn't like Obama, they write, then clearly Obama's got something wrong with him.
Well, see, I remember this other Paul Krugman. Before the war, before Bush was even the GOP candidate, I remember the Paul Krugman who inaugurated his NY Times gig by proclaiming that anti-globalization protesters were all about "denying opportunity to third-world workers", a claim that was about as accurate as the people who claimed Krugman himself advised the Malaysian government in '97 because he hated the Jews. If you'll cast your mind back to the hallowed days of 1999, you'll recall that the actual claims made by the Seattle movement were that the Washington Consensus was bad for the poor and working class in all countries, bad for the Planet, and reflected the demands of the wealthy and powerful, not the needs of the developing world. Over and over and over, the spokespeople for the movement said their beef was not with globalization per se, but with the policies of the Washington Consensus. Yet people like Krugman continued to caricature activists as simple-minded if not actually malicious.
Contrast what Professor Krugman was writing in 2000 with what, say, the CEPR was putting out in 1999, eschewing theory and using things like "evidence" and "history" to guide their assessment of globalization. It's no exaggeration to say that the intervening years have been much, much kinder to Baker, Weisbrot, and the others at CEPR than they have been to Krugman's assessment of globalization. Indeed, not quite a decade later, this is all basically so uncontroversial that even Krugman was forced to abandon the IMF after the Argentina disaster. Hell, the WTO is currently in disarray because the rich countries refuse to accept even the most timid demands of the poor ones. The IMF is totally discredited after the pillaging of Argentina, and the World Bank is running on empty as country after country opts out of the Bretton Woods institutions, in favour of the number of alternatives that have sprung up since 2000 -- China, Mercosur, or others.
My point is that Krugman isn't a leftist in any sense of the word. And that's really okay, I don't expect liberal economists to quote Chomsky. But, to put it bluntly, I don't "trust" him the way Mr. Welsh seems to. I was shrill before Mr. Krugman was, and back then he was on the other side.
What concerns me is a number of people I've seen (Ian Welsh here as one example) who basically anoint Krugman as the definition of liberalism and progressivism. If Krugman doesn't like Obama, they write, then clearly Obama's got something wrong with him.
Well, see, I remember this other Paul Krugman. Before the war, before Bush was even the GOP candidate, I remember the Paul Krugman who inaugurated his NY Times gig by proclaiming that anti-globalization protesters were all about "denying opportunity to third-world workers", a claim that was about as accurate as the people who claimed Krugman himself advised the Malaysian government in '97 because he hated the Jews. If you'll cast your mind back to the hallowed days of 1999, you'll recall that the actual claims made by the Seattle movement were that the Washington Consensus was bad for the poor and working class in all countries, bad for the Planet, and reflected the demands of the wealthy and powerful, not the needs of the developing world. Over and over and over, the spokespeople for the movement said their beef was not with globalization per se, but with the policies of the Washington Consensus. Yet people like Krugman continued to caricature activists as simple-minded if not actually malicious.
Contrast what Professor Krugman was writing in 2000 with what, say, the CEPR was putting out in 1999, eschewing theory and using things like "evidence" and "history" to guide their assessment of globalization. It's no exaggeration to say that the intervening years have been much, much kinder to Baker, Weisbrot, and the others at CEPR than they have been to Krugman's assessment of globalization. Indeed, not quite a decade later, this is all basically so uncontroversial that even Krugman was forced to abandon the IMF after the Argentina disaster. Hell, the WTO is currently in disarray because the rich countries refuse to accept even the most timid demands of the poor ones. The IMF is totally discredited after the pillaging of Argentina, and the World Bank is running on empty as country after country opts out of the Bretton Woods institutions, in favour of the number of alternatives that have sprung up since 2000 -- China, Mercosur, or others.
My point is that Krugman isn't a leftist in any sense of the word. And that's really okay, I don't expect liberal economists to quote Chomsky. But, to put it bluntly, I don't "trust" him the way Mr. Welsh seems to. I was shrill before Mr. Krugman was, and back then he was on the other side.
Gibbering terror II
via Gristmill, I read this report put out by Carbon Equity last week, and it basically scared the piss right out of me. More than anything, the first section is a terrifying summary of the latest science of climate change, including some of James Hansen's work as recent as last December. Specifically, they point out something that should be clear by now, especially to Canadians: the effects we're seeing today, not 50 years from now but today, mean that the current concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is already "dangerous climate change". Basically, scientists didn't have good models for a lot of processes -- most especially ice sheet breakup -- and so they assumed that processes would occur in a roughly linear fashion. Or rather, the IPCC process wouldn't accept non-linear models, due to lack of consensus, so the public debate among policymakers assumed, for example, that we had decades before we needed to worry about an ice-free arctic. Instead, we've seen a non-linear collapse of ice in the arctic, driven by albedo-flipping and moulin-tunneling. I showed this picture once before:
And what's noteworthy there is not just the fact that sea ice loss is way outside the predictions, but how quickly it's turned.
Or, we could just go with historical data: the last time CO2 concentrations in Earth's atmosphere were as high as they are today, it was 3 million years ago, sea levels were 25 meters higher, and birch forests grew in Antarctica while a small number of austrolopithecines experimented with a radical new idea -- walking on two legs. The idea that human civilization has ever faced a climate change like the one that's in the pipeline is simply false.
If nothing else, the sea level rise implied in our current CO2 concentration means we need to stop emitting carbon, now, and we need to rapidly draw carbon out of the atmosphere by any means necessary. James Hansen, who has been a geoengineering skeptic, now seems to be arguing that a limited amount of sulphate injection may be the only way to stop the total collapse of the Greenland ice sheet.
But probably the most valuable thing to take away from Hansen's work, and that of Carbon Equity, is that time is of the essence. Too many people, I believe, think that solving the climate crisis will be easier in the future -- because of new technologies, better understanding, or generally more wealth. I believe this misunderstanding will, if it continues, doom most of the planet to a hungry death. Even people who understand what the phrase "tipping points" means don't actually seem to have internalized it: at a certain point, it will be beyond our capacities to control climate change. You can talk about space mirrors lowering insolation or whatever other magical ability that free-market pixie dust will grant us, but the reality is once we pass that threshold, there's no going back. Seeing as we don't know where the point of no return is, but we do know we're approaching it at speed, the only sane course is to stop and turn around.
We've already warmed the Earth 0.8 degrees celsius. There's another guaranteed 0.6 in the pipe, meaning that if we eliminated CO2 emissions tomorrow, we're still going to see 1.4 degrees of warming relative to pre-industrial times. James Hansen esimates the "point of no return" at 1.7 degrees. If the melting of the arctic isn't arrested and reversed, we could see as much as a 0.3 degree warming from the albedo effect. And, it's possible that already-thawing permafrost will add more than another 0.3 degrees. Add it all up and it means that if James Hansen is right (and he's got an excellent track record) we need to stop CO2 emissions, now, because if we push it any further we will be well and truly over the cliff. And we may be already.
But of course, this isn't realistic. Cars, coal, and concrete in China alone are going to keep CO2 emissions climbing, with the US doing way more than its share and everyone else tagging along. Canada has, in effect, decided that the allure of tar sands wealth and a newly-opened arctic shore is too much to sacrifice. The fact that millions will die seems to be unmentionable in polite company. You would think that at the very least our own lives and treasure would be worth something. Play around with this map, which models sea-level rise at various heights, and tell me what you think about the idea of Vancouver Intl. Airport being underwater, with a 1m rise. Or all of Richmond, B.C. being underwater at 5m. Amusingly, Halifax and St. John's are relatively okay at 5m, but the flooding of the St. Lawrence leaves parts of Quebec City and Montreal scrambling. At 5m, the grounds of the Pentagon and Ronald Reagan airport in DC are both flooded. That's about the only saving grace in all of this -- rich, white America would know what it's like to rely on the levee-building skills of the Army Corps of Engineer for their safety and security.
Do I see any hope? Well, not today I don't. I keep up with new technologies, and the improving politics of climate change as much as anyone else (and more than most) but the report from Carbon Equity makes it clear that, in effect, the policy makers of the Earth are aiming for a plateau of CO2 concentrations at or even above 450 ppm, despite the clear evidence, outside of Carbon Equity's references, that this would be disastrous. And this "goal" of 450 ppm of CO2 is, like everything else we've done so far, basically a phony war: commitment in rhetoric only.
Carbon Equity's report ends with a number of ideas, most interestingly an individual carbon ration to make as rapid as possible a change to a carbon-negative society. It's not actually that radical, unless you've drank too much of the economist's kool-aid. Not only is rationing a natural response in a crisis (which I hope you can see we're in) but it has the benefit of being at least potentially sell-able. Cap-and-trade systems or a carbon tax are both going to raise costs that the poor and middle class will revolt against, but a ration could potentially be more equitable.
And if you think this is an unwarranted expansion of the power of the state in to our daily lives, all I can say is this: It wouldn't be necessary in the first place if we hadn't listened to small-government, anti-environmentalist types for the last 30 years. If we'd started this transition away from fossil fuels back then, it would have been easier and more painless on top of being early enough to avoid the current crisis. Now, we face the worst of both worlds: the massive expansion of state power to contain the crisis, and the possibility that it will still be too late to avoid the crisis.
And what's noteworthy there is not just the fact that sea ice loss is way outside the predictions, but how quickly it's turned.
Or, we could just go with historical data: the last time CO2 concentrations in Earth's atmosphere were as high as they are today, it was 3 million years ago, sea levels were 25 meters higher, and birch forests grew in Antarctica while a small number of austrolopithecines experimented with a radical new idea -- walking on two legs. The idea that human civilization has ever faced a climate change like the one that's in the pipeline is simply false.
If nothing else, the sea level rise implied in our current CO2 concentration means we need to stop emitting carbon, now, and we need to rapidly draw carbon out of the atmosphere by any means necessary. James Hansen, who has been a geoengineering skeptic, now seems to be arguing that a limited amount of sulphate injection may be the only way to stop the total collapse of the Greenland ice sheet.
But probably the most valuable thing to take away from Hansen's work, and that of Carbon Equity, is that time is of the essence. Too many people, I believe, think that solving the climate crisis will be easier in the future -- because of new technologies, better understanding, or generally more wealth. I believe this misunderstanding will, if it continues, doom most of the planet to a hungry death. Even people who understand what the phrase "tipping points" means don't actually seem to have internalized it: at a certain point, it will be beyond our capacities to control climate change. You can talk about space mirrors lowering insolation or whatever other magical ability that free-market pixie dust will grant us, but the reality is once we pass that threshold, there's no going back. Seeing as we don't know where the point of no return is, but we do know we're approaching it at speed, the only sane course is to stop and turn around.
We've already warmed the Earth 0.8 degrees celsius. There's another guaranteed 0.6 in the pipe, meaning that if we eliminated CO2 emissions tomorrow, we're still going to see 1.4 degrees of warming relative to pre-industrial times. James Hansen esimates the "point of no return" at 1.7 degrees. If the melting of the arctic isn't arrested and reversed, we could see as much as a 0.3 degree warming from the albedo effect. And, it's possible that already-thawing permafrost will add more than another 0.3 degrees. Add it all up and it means that if James Hansen is right (and he's got an excellent track record) we need to stop CO2 emissions, now, because if we push it any further we will be well and truly over the cliff. And we may be already.
But of course, this isn't realistic. Cars, coal, and concrete in China alone are going to keep CO2 emissions climbing, with the US doing way more than its share and everyone else tagging along. Canada has, in effect, decided that the allure of tar sands wealth and a newly-opened arctic shore is too much to sacrifice. The fact that millions will die seems to be unmentionable in polite company. You would think that at the very least our own lives and treasure would be worth something. Play around with this map, which models sea-level rise at various heights, and tell me what you think about the idea of Vancouver Intl. Airport being underwater, with a 1m rise. Or all of Richmond, B.C. being underwater at 5m. Amusingly, Halifax and St. John's are relatively okay at 5m, but the flooding of the St. Lawrence leaves parts of Quebec City and Montreal scrambling. At 5m, the grounds of the Pentagon and Ronald Reagan airport in DC are both flooded. That's about the only saving grace in all of this -- rich, white America would know what it's like to rely on the levee-building skills of the Army Corps of Engineer for their safety and security.
Do I see any hope? Well, not today I don't. I keep up with new technologies, and the improving politics of climate change as much as anyone else (and more than most) but the report from Carbon Equity makes it clear that, in effect, the policy makers of the Earth are aiming for a plateau of CO2 concentrations at or even above 450 ppm, despite the clear evidence, outside of Carbon Equity's references, that this would be disastrous. And this "goal" of 450 ppm of CO2 is, like everything else we've done so far, basically a phony war: commitment in rhetoric only.
Carbon Equity's report ends with a number of ideas, most interestingly an individual carbon ration to make as rapid as possible a change to a carbon-negative society. It's not actually that radical, unless you've drank too much of the economist's kool-aid. Not only is rationing a natural response in a crisis (which I hope you can see we're in) but it has the benefit of being at least potentially sell-able. Cap-and-trade systems or a carbon tax are both going to raise costs that the poor and middle class will revolt against, but a ration could potentially be more equitable.
And if you think this is an unwarranted expansion of the power of the state in to our daily lives, all I can say is this: It wouldn't be necessary in the first place if we hadn't listened to small-government, anti-environmentalist types for the last 30 years. If we'd started this transition away from fossil fuels back then, it would have been easier and more painless on top of being early enough to avoid the current crisis. Now, we face the worst of both worlds: the massive expansion of state power to contain the crisis, and the possibility that it will still be too late to avoid the crisis.
Inhumanity watch
Tony Snow, who says that four-fifths of Bush's advisors were against the surge:
“Everybody was telling him, ‘You’re crazy, don’t do this,’” Snow said. “You get the chills. He’s really unafraid to take the hits if he thinks he’s doing the right thing.”So, to the poor GI from Ohio or Kansas, bleeding out in the wreckage of a burning Stryker -- don't worry, George Bush is taking that hit for you.
Lies and the lying liars, pt. MMCXVI
Another day, another left-wing talking point confirmed by the Pentagon.
See, I've always said that people who supported this war were idiots. Not misguided, not well-intentioned-but-wrong, just plain dumb. Especially Michael Ignatieff. The reasons are numerous, but one of the important ones was that it was clear before the war even started that the US would go in with too few troops and too few resources to adequately secure the country post-invasion. This really wasn't up for debate: anyone who had any knowledge of the history of successful occupations and peacekeeping knew that the so-called "coalition" would have too few troops on the ground to secure, well, anything.
Why was this the case? Again, simple. If you need to invest the kind of lives and resources that a proper occupation requires, you can't prepare the public for that kind of cost when the main reason people support your wars is because it's going to be cheap and easy. So the Bush administration lied about the threat, lied about the costs, and got itself and the whole world in a mess of trouble.
(This, btw, is the strongest evidence that Bush never learned the lessons of his addictions: addicts lie all the time, to everyone, to themselves, and they frequently don't even realize they're lying. And in some cases, the lying continues after the addiction has been controlled. I'm not the first to compare Bush to a Dry Drunk, but seriously -- go read these symptoms here, and tell me they don't fit to a T.)
Anyway, the NY Times reports today that those long-haired hippy weirdos at the Rand Corporation wrote a report in 2005 which said Iraq is a disaster and it's all Bush's fault. (More or less.) But I noticed this bit right away:
This is a short must-read.
See, I've always said that people who supported this war were idiots. Not misguided, not well-intentioned-but-wrong, just plain dumb. Especially Michael Ignatieff. The reasons are numerous, but one of the important ones was that it was clear before the war even started that the US would go in with too few troops and too few resources to adequately secure the country post-invasion. This really wasn't up for debate: anyone who had any knowledge of the history of successful occupations and peacekeeping knew that the so-called "coalition" would have too few troops on the ground to secure, well, anything.
Why was this the case? Again, simple. If you need to invest the kind of lives and resources that a proper occupation requires, you can't prepare the public for that kind of cost when the main reason people support your wars is because it's going to be cheap and easy. So the Bush administration lied about the threat, lied about the costs, and got itself and the whole world in a mess of trouble.
(This, btw, is the strongest evidence that Bush never learned the lessons of his addictions: addicts lie all the time, to everyone, to themselves, and they frequently don't even realize they're lying. And in some cases, the lying continues after the addiction has been controlled. I'm not the first to compare Bush to a Dry Drunk, but seriously -- go read these symptoms here, and tell me they don't fit to a T.)
Anyway, the NY Times reports today that those long-haired hippy weirdos at the Rand Corporation wrote a report in 2005 which said Iraq is a disaster and it's all Bush's fault. (More or less.) But I noticed this bit right away:
“Building public support for any pre-emptive or preventative war is inherently challenging, since by definition, action is being taken before the threat has fully manifested itself,” it said. “Any serious discussion of the costs and challenges of reconstruction might undermine efforts to build that support.”Can't discuss costs or consequences before something like a war -- it might get in the way of the war!
This is a short must-read.
The notoriously anti-semitic left strikes again!
Or, you know, not.
Faking a death camp tattoo? Not to undermine the broader point, but if that's the best holocaust joke she can come up with, she's clearly never met any actual Jews. Certainly no Israeli ones.
Oh, and congratulations to Warren Kinsella for seeing the light and leaving the National Post.
Faking a death camp tattoo? Not to undermine the broader point, but if that's the best holocaust joke she can come up with, she's clearly never met any actual Jews. Certainly no Israeli ones.
Oh, and congratulations to Warren Kinsella for seeing the light and leaving the National Post.
Friday, February 08, 2008
The wisdom of the ancients
Watch as scientists explain the dangers of global warming -- in 1958:via Greyflcn.
Abandoned, cont.
Ooh, this is a good one too - the 2nd condition (after pulling 1000 foreign troops from our arses) for staying in Afghanistan:
Better deconstruction from Mr. Sinister.
to better ensure the safety and effectiveness of the Canadian contingent, the government secure medium helicopter lift capacity and high performance Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance before February 2009.See, this is what happens when you let the interns write motions. Governments -- functioning, mature governments, unlike Canada's -- don't "secure" military equipment unless it's the enemy's. They "procure" it, and some governments are very good at it. Here's a wild idea. If we think staying in Afghanistan is necessary, and we need 1,000 troops, helicopters, and UAVs to do so, then hire the soldiers, and buy the equipment your own damn self. But no, can't have that. We're afraid our penises would shrink if we left or something, so we have to a) stay there, not accomplishing much worth the cost in lives, but b) keep whining until someone sends 1,000 more soldiers and a whole mess of really expensive equipment or we threaten to leave.
Better deconstruction from Mr. Sinister.
Abandoned! Abandoned, I say!
Oh goody. The Conservatives have tabled their motion to protect the women, puppies, and rainbows of Afghanistan from perfidious, uh, voters, who might want to stop seeing Canadian soldiers come home in body bags ad infinitum. This part, I love:
2500/40000 * 100 = 6.25%
of ISAF's current force level. So, even if we just pack up and go home, NATO will be left with... 93.75% of its current force levels.
"Abandoned". Yup, we'd sure be leaving them in the lurch, we would.
Two things to draw here: One, and yes I'll keep writing it until Jim Travers does, we aren't that fucking important. Canada's contribution to ISAF is so minimal, compared to the numbers needed, that we could disappear entirely and the Americans and British would only notice because Christie Blatchford wouldn't be around as much. The only conceivable reason that Canadians think we matter is because other NATO countries are contributing even less. But think -- if our allies refuse to contribute to a war of occupation in Asia, what does that say about the war?
Two, if the disappearance of 5-6% of your combat force is the dividing line between victory and defeat, absent heroic measures you've already lost. And "doing exactly the same thing in exactly the same place" doesn't count as a heroic measure, people. To use an example, Iraq didn't become a shithole because the Spanish, the Poles, the Koreans, or anyone else in the coalition of the marginal departed. It was a shithole from the beginning, and there was never any other likely outcome.
So, if Canada's departure means that the Taliban will win, then Canada's persistence can only mean that the Taliban will still win, but they and we will kill a lot more people in the process.
the House does not believe that Canada should simply abandon the people of Afghanistan after February 2009.Canada is contribution roughly 2,500 soldiers out of roughly 40,000 in all of ISAF. To put it another way, Canada makes up:
2500/40000 * 100 = 6.25%
of ISAF's current force level. So, even if we just pack up and go home, NATO will be left with... 93.75% of its current force levels.
"Abandoned". Yup, we'd sure be leaving them in the lurch, we would.
Two things to draw here: One, and yes I'll keep writing it until Jim Travers does, we aren't that fucking important. Canada's contribution to ISAF is so minimal, compared to the numbers needed, that we could disappear entirely and the Americans and British would only notice because Christie Blatchford wouldn't be around as much. The only conceivable reason that Canadians think we matter is because other NATO countries are contributing even less. But think -- if our allies refuse to contribute to a war of occupation in Asia, what does that say about the war?
Two, if the disappearance of 5-6% of your combat force is the dividing line between victory and defeat, absent heroic measures you've already lost. And "doing exactly the same thing in exactly the same place" doesn't count as a heroic measure, people. To use an example, Iraq didn't become a shithole because the Spanish, the Poles, the Koreans, or anyone else in the coalition of the marginal departed. It was a shithole from the beginning, and there was never any other likely outcome.
So, if Canada's departure means that the Taliban will win, then Canada's persistence can only mean that the Taliban will still win, but they and we will kill a lot more people in the process.
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
I'm filled with gibbering terror
Housing prices are insane in Toronto, but while I've been basically pessimistic about the market (these kinds of market obey gravity, inevitably) I wasn't in an outright panic, mostly because a) I don't own a house, and b) don't have the means to buy one for the forseeable future.
But: In the newest issue of Toronto Life, there's an article by Rachel Giese that convinces me that we're fucking doomed. Not because of any pessimism on the writer's part, but because it reads exactly like something written in SoCal about three years ago. We even get this choice bit:
The other problem with the article is that it focuses on people buying houses, when the real bubble in Toronto, the one that has the potential to pop in a really nasty way, is condos. Eventually, people will stop paying semi-detached prices for a two-bedroom shoebox. (Not that I oppose shoeboxery, I intend to be a big fan of condo living some time in the future...)
The Toronto Life article is not online, sadly, but I'd recommend picking it up and glancing at the article, which is actually very good on its own merits -- pointing out the growing class of house-rich, money-poor yuppies in Toronto. Which are, of course, exactly TL's prized demographic. Sympathetic or no, Gliese sums up their predicament nicely. Also, she gets major points for pointing out that no, it does not always and everywhere make sense to own vs. renting. In fact, if you click on the Baker PDF link above, you'll see that for the entirety of the post-war period, it's been cheaper to rent than to own.
But: In the newest issue of Toronto Life, there's an article by Rachel Giese that convinces me that we're fucking doomed. Not because of any pessimism on the writer's part, but because it reads exactly like something written in SoCal about three years ago. We even get this choice bit:
A more likely scenario is that the housing market will plateau.Right, a "soft landing". We've, uh, heard this before, and recently. While Giese is quick enough to realize that this will hurt people who are borrowing against their home's equity, she doesn't seem to connect the dots with what has just happened in the US. First, the most marginal cases are hurt, and they sell their houses below-market to get their asses out of the sling as quick as possible. This is the start of the snowball -- as the price of homes stops increasing as quickly, the market reverses direction. People who have homes and were thinking about selling, start doing so in greater numbers to get out at the top of the market. This puts a glut of houses on the market, and presto. Dean Baker explained this very basic reality about five and a half years ago (PDF), and was warning people about the housing bubble ever since. This isn't, really, the kind of thing you can solve with better regulation, nor is unscrupulous realtors: the article points out in every example, the realtor recommended an "agressive" overbidding to secure the house, but neglects to mention the realtor gets a percentage of the sale -- the bigger the final sale price, the more the realtor makes. Kind of an obvious point here: the people who are the key players in a pretty opaque market have a direct financial interest in driving prices ever-higher. If you're thinking auditing firms, circa Enron, 2001...
The other problem with the article is that it focuses on people buying houses, when the real bubble in Toronto, the one that has the potential to pop in a really nasty way, is condos. Eventually, people will stop paying semi-detached prices for a two-bedroom shoebox. (Not that I oppose shoeboxery, I intend to be a big fan of condo living some time in the future...)
The Toronto Life article is not online, sadly, but I'd recommend picking it up and glancing at the article, which is actually very good on its own merits -- pointing out the growing class of house-rich, money-poor yuppies in Toronto. Which are, of course, exactly TL's prized demographic. Sympathetic or no, Gliese sums up their predicament nicely. Also, she gets major points for pointing out that no, it does not always and everywhere make sense to own vs. renting. In fact, if you click on the Baker PDF link above, you'll see that for the entirety of the post-war period, it's been cheaper to rent than to own.
Jason Cherniak helps his party win the next election
Verbatim Liberal blogger extraordinaire:
1) I don't believe this is as much the case as Jason claims. She's largely run on the "qualifications" of being first lady, about which I simply won't write any more, and being Senator for a whopping 4 years longer than Obama -- during which time she accomplished little of note (being in the Minority) except to endorse the Iraq War. The rest of her career is of dubious value. Being on the board of Wal-Mart, which has been sued repeatedly for being the worst offender of women's and visible minority rights?
Given that people (though not the Senator herself) were talking up a Hillary campaign during the last cycle, when Clinton had been a Senator for exactly as long as Obama has been today, I don't see why Obama's "inexperience" is a game-ender.
2) If qualifications actually mattered in a general election, then Bill Richardson would be the nominee. To replace President Gore. Now, obviously, I think living in that reality would be preferable to living in this one. But it simply isn't the case that "the best qualified candidate" should win. The press is incredibly lazy, and hates nothing so much as an actual policy debate. Paul Krugman wailed and gnashed his teeth as much as he could, and still couldn't get the media to understand, in 2000, that 2+2=4.
But suppose Clinton wins on the strength of her qualifications -- who's more qualified, Clinton or McCain? McCain's been a Senator for decades, is better-versed in defense and foreign policy, and has way more legislative accomplishments of note. Now, he's also wacko to my eyes. But if you were looking at their resumes without the names, party affiliation, or ages, of the candidates, I think McCain would be the objective choice on "qualifications".
Or, to put it in a domestic vein, when will Cherniak endorse the unquestionably-better qualified (by now) Conservative government?
I've never understood the concept of the young, attractive, charismatic politician....Not to be too snarky, I'll at least try to engage one of the few substantive arguments that Cherniak makes: that qualifications and experience matter, and Clinton is clearly better qualified.
"Change"? "Hope"? That's all meaningless clap trap.
1) I don't believe this is as much the case as Jason claims. She's largely run on the "qualifications" of being first lady, about which I simply won't write any more, and being Senator for a whopping 4 years longer than Obama -- during which time she accomplished little of note (being in the Minority) except to endorse the Iraq War. The rest of her career is of dubious value. Being on the board of Wal-Mart, which has been sued repeatedly for being the worst offender of women's and visible minority rights?
Given that people (though not the Senator herself) were talking up a Hillary campaign during the last cycle, when Clinton had been a Senator for exactly as long as Obama has been today, I don't see why Obama's "inexperience" is a game-ender.
2) If qualifications actually mattered in a general election, then Bill Richardson would be the nominee. To replace President Gore. Now, obviously, I think living in that reality would be preferable to living in this one. But it simply isn't the case that "the best qualified candidate" should win. The press is incredibly lazy, and hates nothing so much as an actual policy debate. Paul Krugman wailed and gnashed his teeth as much as he could, and still couldn't get the media to understand, in 2000, that 2+2=4.
But suppose Clinton wins on the strength of her qualifications -- who's more qualified, Clinton or McCain? McCain's been a Senator for decades, is better-versed in defense and foreign policy, and has way more legislative accomplishments of note. Now, he's also wacko to my eyes. But if you were looking at their resumes without the names, party affiliation, or ages, of the candidates, I think McCain would be the objective choice on "qualifications".
Or, to put it in a domestic vein, when will Cherniak endorse the unquestionably-better qualified (by now) Conservative government?
NSFW video sharing
I had this song stuck in my head all day yesterday, which made for an interesting conversation with my manager...
And while we're at it, check out the preview for Forgetting Sarah Marshall. It seems Judd Apatow is trying to corner the "writing movies about how being a dopey man-child is really lame" market.
And while we're at it, check out the preview for Forgetting Sarah Marshall. It seems Judd Apatow is trying to corner the "writing movies about how being a dopey man-child is really lame" market.
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Obligatory Super Tuesday post
I am actually very sympathetic to women who argue that Hillary's defeat, if it comes, will be due in large part to the ever-present sexism in US society. But there's a bunch of different ways that August is right here -- Hillary needs to be protected from her own supporters. Especially those who make the argument that the only way to support women's rights in this election is to vote Clinton. I think it's obvious on this count that the only way to support women's rights in the election is to vote Democrat, but that the daylight between the two remaining contenders is slim indeed on this. Finally, I think those of us who didn't line up with Hillary need to check our arguments twice -- so many of them, including mine, sometimes sound like "I support a women President in theory, just not one who can win."
I'm also sympathetic to Paul Krugman, who is rapidly approaching Sullivan-esque levels of obsession, if not derangement, with his anti-Obama posts. The root of this is not because Krugman thinks Obama is the reincarnation of Ronald Reagan, but because health care is Krugman's red line issue, as he wrote yesterday:
Meanwhile, to coin a phrase, don't you know there's a war on? A war which, aside from costing thousands of US lives and hundreds of billions of dollars, was conceived in deceit, nurtured with lies, and midwifed by stone cold killers. That, unsurprisingly, is my red line issue. Hillary was, is, and will be on the wrong side of that issue for the foreseeable future, if her performance at the latest State of the Union is any indication. This is really as simple as it gets. Paul Krugman wants health care, fine: where's the money going to come from if we keep throwing money in the fire of burning MRAPs? Hillary's supporters say she's only "running" as the hawk candidate because, as a woman, she has to. But play that out -- she needs to win the general election, too, meaning that she'll have to out-hawk McCain. (If possible!) Then she'll need to run for re-election, so she'll actually have to be a hawk President, if she wins. Then her VP will need to win, too, so the hawkiness continues.
Or, you can choose not to play the game at all -- repudiate this war, and all wars of aggression. As Ackerman says:
I'm also sympathetic to Paul Krugman, who is rapidly approaching Sullivan-esque levels of obsession, if not derangement, with his anti-Obama posts. The root of this is not because Krugman thinks Obama is the reincarnation of Ronald Reagan, but because health care is Krugman's red line issue, as he wrote yesterday:
I believe that universal health care has to be THE central item in a progressive agenda — not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because of its political economy implications. As I explain in Conscience of a Liberal, Republicans went all-out in 1993 to block health reform because they feared that success would reinvigorate the progressive agenda. And they were right.To me, this is a silly issue to draw a red line on, frankly. The American poor have had 40+ million uninsured citizens for quite some time, including much of the time that Sen. Clinton was first lady -- the time she claims she was learning valuable things as co-President or something. The US has gotten used to this stain on the nation, and they don't particularly care much anymore. More than that, both Democratic proposals are so confounded that I simply cannot believe that even if they succeeded totally and immediately before Feburary 1, 2009, the American electorate would pave the street with rose petals for the Democrats. The proposals on the table aren't game-changing programs like social security, or medicare -- they aren't even Amtrak. Good health care proposals could absolutely, I think, rebuild the Democratic majority. But neither candidate has brought something like that forward.
Meanwhile, to coin a phrase, don't you know there's a war on? A war which, aside from costing thousands of US lives and hundreds of billions of dollars, was conceived in deceit, nurtured with lies, and midwifed by stone cold killers. That, unsurprisingly, is my red line issue. Hillary was, is, and will be on the wrong side of that issue for the foreseeable future, if her performance at the latest State of the Union is any indication. This is really as simple as it gets. Paul Krugman wants health care, fine: where's the money going to come from if we keep throwing money in the fire of burning MRAPs? Hillary's supporters say she's only "running" as the hawk candidate because, as a woman, she has to. But play that out -- she needs to win the general election, too, meaning that she'll have to out-hawk McCain. (If possible!) Then she'll need to run for re-election, so she'll actually have to be a hawk President, if she wins. Then her VP will need to win, too, so the hawkiness continues.
Or, you can choose not to play the game at all -- repudiate this war, and all wars of aggression. As Ackerman says:
Obama is the only candidate the marry strength and justice and wisdom. His foreign policy starts with ending the most disastrous national-security mistake in recent American history; and then it proceeds to undo its deep-seated ideological foundations. When faced with that prospect, especially from the most electable candidate in the race, nothing else will do.I agree with Krugman's arguments that Obama has actually undermined the case for some needed reforms, and I wish he hadn't. But there are some issues bigger than health care, and the war is one if there ever was. If it ends, progress on health care, the environment, the economy all becomes possible. Keep it going, or start new ones, and we'll be stuck where we are, forever.
Monday, February 04, 2008
Listen carefully
America does not have "defense spending." If it did, I wouldn't be reading article like this:
Unsustainability doesn't just mean coal.
The U.S. military is not prepared to meet catastrophic threats at home, and it is suffering from an "appalling gap" in forces able to respond to chemical, biological and nuclear strikes on U.S. soil, according to a congressional commission report released yesterday.So no, America doesn't have a $500 billion "defense" budget. Defense implies actually defending something. What America has is a war budget. A killing other people in other places budget. America spends on offense -- killing people overseas. And, as the numbers in the last link show, the US spends big at killing foreigners. It has a half-trillion dollar "we think losing one war at a time is for pussies" budget. It has an Apollo-times-four "Muslims should expect to have their shit fucked up" budget. America has a Manhattan-project-times-twenty-five-sized "threats come from anywhere, so we need to be everywhere" budget.
Unsustainability doesn't just mean coal.
What's going on?
via Atrios, the Clinton people are pre-emptively talking down the results from tomorrow. A bad sign for them, if you ask me. All the most recent polls show national momentum for Obama, and many of the statewide ones as well. Add to that this evaluation from Kos, and we could see not only a perceived "win" tomorrow, but a string of wins over the next month putting Obama solidly in the front-runner position. Finally, this note -- that Clinton could be having relative fundraising woes -- and it starts looking better and better for Obama.
Unless it doesn't. This race has been sounpredictable exciting! that I'm going to stay out of the predictions game for now.
Except for this: if, as expected, McCain knocks Romney out of the running tomorrow, it's certain that the next President of the United States will be the first one in 48 years to have had no experience as President, Vice-President, or Governor of a State. McCain, Clinton, and Obama: Senators, all of them, and none of them with direct executive experience. (Sit down, Clinton supporters...) Admittedly, Ford was only Veep for about 8 months, but it counts as much as anything... Truman was only Veep for 4 months, after all.
Unless it doesn't. This race has been so
Except for this: if, as expected, McCain knocks Romney out of the running tomorrow, it's certain that the next President of the United States will be the first one in 48 years to have had no experience as President, Vice-President, or Governor of a State. McCain, Clinton, and Obama: Senators, all of them, and none of them with direct executive experience. (Sit down, Clinton supporters...) Admittedly, Ford was only Veep for about 8 months, but it counts as much as anything... Truman was only Veep for 4 months, after all.
Are markets darwinian machines?
Mike at Rational Reasons has an interesting book he recommends: Schermer's The Mind of the Market. Apparently, Schermer argues that evolution and free-market economics both operate on the same fundamental principles. Right away, however, Schermer loses points by putting up this strawman in the Prologue to his book.
Now, it's true that there has been resistance to all of these ideas, but there is resistance to any new scientific theory, regardless of content. People resisted plate tectonics for decades both because it was revolutionary and, in the US, because prominent scientists had made their names espousing opposite views. Still, with the exceptions noted, resistance to new ideas is a good thing. Absent rigorous analysis and debate, there's the danger of accepting unworthy ideas too soon. We should probably not, for example, dump all of our current energy spending in the hands of a few anneutronic fusion advocates who may or may not have stumbled on Nobel-worthy discoveries. That isn't science, that's called credulity. So right away, I'm not disposed to take Schermer's arguments charitably -- straw men, constructed so early in a book and so egregiously, do not put me in a charitable mood. There's the additional note that Schermer is explicitly trying to equate the natural, proven, processes of science with the fervent know-nothingism of the anti-science crowd, which is so clearly false and cheap that it pisses me right off.
But there's the additional part that, after reading his Scientific American article and the prologue to his book, I still have no idea what his argument actually amounts to. Or, to put it another way, I don't know what his argument would prescribe:
Indeed, if I were accepting this kind of argument, I think Mike actually has a better stand: the state will always have a major, and sometimes determinative role, in shaping the market so long as it exists. (See ethanol.) States are not competitive actors domestically, so if you want to see a genuinely unconstrained, competitive market you should, as Mike does, argue for the exit of the state.
But this line of argument is actually very suspect to me (surprise!) because like I said I'm not sure it means what we think it means. And here it's worth looking at the most successful examples of natural selection, and what it would mean in an economic sense. What are the most successful examples of natural selection? If our unit of analysis is the organism (is this a "firm" in the biosphere?) then surely the most successful life forms are unicellular microbes who have made only marginal changes in the last few billion years? In the multicellular world, we could look at beetles, ants, or other insects who have endured millions of years without substantial evolutionary change. Sharks and crocodiles are called living dinosaurs because of their evoloutionary histories. In the plant kingdom, we can look at the forests, where fundamental change is actually quite rare -- the Redwoods of California were thousands of years old during the Fall of Rome.
My point, in all this, is that successful ecologies and life forms do not, by their nature, show a lot of change. Indeed, life changes in nature because of failure, not success. Change is manifested by the death of unsuccessful life. Successful organisms and ecologies show a lot of stasis, in fact, and redundancy -- the opposite of what we usually call an efficient market. A forest might occasionally burn to the ground, but this is part of the process -- the system is built with enormous redundancy to accomodate that, and soon the same tree species will be back. The US financial system is in the process of burning to the ground, and instead of being something the system is meant to accomodate, even normally even-keeled people like Paul Krugman are (politely) scared witless. You rarely see an ecosystem collapse like this, absent a massive exogenous shock -- climate change, or more likely an invasive species: disease, predator, or good ol' homo sapiens.
Now there's an analogy I can get behind. All cultures, throughout human history, have had some mix of market and non-market forces in their economies. (And let's all remember that the "market" is distinct from the economy.) But the market-centered approach was spread across the planet, usually accompanied by fire and the sword. (See Westphalia, above.) More recently, it's been IMF conditionality packages, but the process has been the same -- marketization and globalization have been processes of the powerful, against the weak. See also Power and Plenty. Now maybe this proves Schermer's argument better than he intended: armies march only as far as the wallets of their sovereigns, after all.
But I don't think so. You cannot simultaneously argue that markets are an emergent, synergistic system that require no creator if you also acknowledge the historical fact that the global market has only been created by explicit use of political violence.
Finally -- and this post has gone on too long -- I would ask how Schermer would explain development states: those miracle economies that were explicitly created by the heavy use of government powers. The best example might be South Korea, which in 1963 had a lower per capita GDP than Ghana, and today belongs to the OECD. Again, a contrast: the best example of economic growth has shown incredible dynamism and massive change in just over half one human lifespan, while the most successful organisms change little to none over millions of years.
To anyone who thinks the Korean miracle was done with liberal, laissez-faire policies, I can only say, read a book. Specifically, this one. Unlike Dr. Schermer, Chang's PhD is in economics, which I think gives him some credibility to speak on the matter. Chang is also South Korean by birth, and has a number of moving pasages describing what it was like living in the Korean economy during the miracle years.
Actually, Chang makes an argument that is relevant here: he says the market, like my description of a mature ecology, tends towards the status quo. This makes the market an efficient allocator of resources, but a shitty mechanism for actual development -- defined, for these purposes, as the transition from agrarian poverty to industrial wealth.
So let's see: the most successful economies do have effective creators, successful organisms and ecologies tend to exactly the opposite behaviour of healthy economies, and the social sciences have been mixing it up with darwinian ideas since the very beginning. Have I left anything out?
...most scientists — especially social scientists — have resisted with the emotional intensity of a creationist any attempts to apply evolutionary thinking to psychology, sociology, and economics.This is simply false, and a ridiculous straw man for someone who bills themself as a scholar of the history of science to put up. There's been a constant mixing of evolutionary thought and economics from the very beginning -- Malthus and Smith were enormously influential on Charles Darwin, for just one example. More recently, A Farewell to Alms by Greg Clark, a book that makes an explicit argument that natural selection culled out the poor, has been one of the most talked-about economic books of the year. In political science, it's hardly a new theory that the Westphalian state system spread around the world not because of some inherent virture or efficiency, but because it excelled at using selective pressures to create war-capable states. Evolutionary psychology has been around for years.
Now, it's true that there has been resistance to all of these ideas, but there is resistance to any new scientific theory, regardless of content. People resisted plate tectonics for decades both because it was revolutionary and, in the US, because prominent scientists had made their names espousing opposite views. Still, with the exceptions noted, resistance to new ideas is a good thing. Absent rigorous analysis and debate, there's the danger of accepting unworthy ideas too soon. We should probably not, for example, dump all of our current energy spending in the hands of a few anneutronic fusion advocates who may or may not have stumbled on Nobel-worthy discoveries. That isn't science, that's called credulity. So right away, I'm not disposed to take Schermer's arguments charitably -- straw men, constructed so early in a book and so egregiously, do not put me in a charitable mood. There's the additional note that Schermer is explicitly trying to equate the natural, proven, processes of science with the fervent know-nothingism of the anti-science crowd, which is so clearly false and cheap that it pisses me right off.
But there's the additional part that, after reading his Scientific American article and the prologue to his book, I still have no idea what his argument actually amounts to. Or, to put it another way, I don't know what his argument would prescribe:
In biological evolution, nature selects from the variation produced by random genetic mutations and the mixing of parental genes. Out of that process of cumulative selection emerges complexity and diversity. In economic evolution, our material economy proceeds through the production and selection of numerous permutations of countless products. ... Those that are purchased “survive” and “reproduce” into the future through repetitive use and remanufacturing.Now, he explicitly rules out prescribing "nothing" with respect to the economy -- he says the state is necessary, and even this is too much for Mike! But Schermer, here, has a point -- competition and diversity in the natural world occurs within bounded conditions (i.e., the capacity of a forest to absorb sunlight, the weight of krill a whale is able to ingest) but I kind of think that if you're going to buy the "markets are like nature" argument you should be on Mike's side -- the market and nature share the same planet, in case you hadn't noticed, so the same pressures that apply to nature automatically apply to market actors.
As with living organisms and ecosystems, the economy looks designed—so just as humans naturally deduce the existence of a top-down intelligent designer, humans also (understandably) infer that a top-down government designer is needed in nearly every aspect of the economy. But just as living organisms are shaped from the bottom up by natural selection, the economy is molded from the bottom up by the invisible hand.
The correspondence between evolution and economics is not perfect, because some top-down institutional rules and laws are needed to provide a structure within which free and fair trade can occur. But too much top-down interference into the marketplace makes trade neither free nor fair. When such attempts have been made in the past, they have failed—because markets are far too complex, interactive and autocatalytic to be designed from the top down.
Indeed, if I were accepting this kind of argument, I think Mike actually has a better stand: the state will always have a major, and sometimes determinative role, in shaping the market so long as it exists. (See ethanol.) States are not competitive actors domestically, so if you want to see a genuinely unconstrained, competitive market you should, as Mike does, argue for the exit of the state.
But this line of argument is actually very suspect to me (surprise!) because like I said I'm not sure it means what we think it means. And here it's worth looking at the most successful examples of natural selection, and what it would mean in an economic sense. What are the most successful examples of natural selection? If our unit of analysis is the organism (is this a "firm" in the biosphere?) then surely the most successful life forms are unicellular microbes who have made only marginal changes in the last few billion years? In the multicellular world, we could look at beetles, ants, or other insects who have endured millions of years without substantial evolutionary change. Sharks and crocodiles are called living dinosaurs because of their evoloutionary histories. In the plant kingdom, we can look at the forests, where fundamental change is actually quite rare -- the Redwoods of California were thousands of years old during the Fall of Rome.
My point, in all this, is that successful ecologies and life forms do not, by their nature, show a lot of change. Indeed, life changes in nature because of failure, not success. Change is manifested by the death of unsuccessful life. Successful organisms and ecologies show a lot of stasis, in fact, and redundancy -- the opposite of what we usually call an efficient market. A forest might occasionally burn to the ground, but this is part of the process -- the system is built with enormous redundancy to accomodate that, and soon the same tree species will be back. The US financial system is in the process of burning to the ground, and instead of being something the system is meant to accomodate, even normally even-keeled people like Paul Krugman are (politely) scared witless. You rarely see an ecosystem collapse like this, absent a massive exogenous shock -- climate change, or more likely an invasive species: disease, predator, or good ol' homo sapiens.
Now there's an analogy I can get behind. All cultures, throughout human history, have had some mix of market and non-market forces in their economies. (And let's all remember that the "market" is distinct from the economy.) But the market-centered approach was spread across the planet, usually accompanied by fire and the sword. (See Westphalia, above.) More recently, it's been IMF conditionality packages, but the process has been the same -- marketization and globalization have been processes of the powerful, against the weak. See also Power and Plenty. Now maybe this proves Schermer's argument better than he intended: armies march only as far as the wallets of their sovereigns, after all.
But I don't think so. You cannot simultaneously argue that markets are an emergent, synergistic system that require no creator if you also acknowledge the historical fact that the global market has only been created by explicit use of political violence.
Finally -- and this post has gone on too long -- I would ask how Schermer would explain development states: those miracle economies that were explicitly created by the heavy use of government powers. The best example might be South Korea, which in 1963 had a lower per capita GDP than Ghana, and today belongs to the OECD. Again, a contrast: the best example of economic growth has shown incredible dynamism and massive change in just over half one human lifespan, while the most successful organisms change little to none over millions of years.
To anyone who thinks the Korean miracle was done with liberal, laissez-faire policies, I can only say, read a book. Specifically, this one. Unlike Dr. Schermer, Chang's PhD is in economics, which I think gives him some credibility to speak on the matter. Chang is also South Korean by birth, and has a number of moving pasages describing what it was like living in the Korean economy during the miracle years.
Actually, Chang makes an argument that is relevant here: he says the market, like my description of a mature ecology, tends towards the status quo. This makes the market an efficient allocator of resources, but a shitty mechanism for actual development -- defined, for these purposes, as the transition from agrarian poverty to industrial wealth.
So let's see: the most successful economies do have effective creators, successful organisms and ecologies tend to exactly the opposite behaviour of healthy economies, and the social sciences have been mixing it up with darwinian ideas since the very beginning. Have I left anything out?
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