This too shall pass

FTL neutrinos

2011-09-23T09:07:00.003+02:00

Ok, in addition to my longstanding scientific prediction that the god particle (Higgs boson) does not exist and will therefor never be found: the neutrino speed measurement will turn out to be an experimental error or will disappear with higher-order terms in the theoretical calculations underpinning the interpretation of the result.

Reason for this prediction? Massive photons cannot play a role in QED, and QED is the most accurate theoretical framework we have. The maximum speed could be assumed to be different for particles that interact electrically (photons, neutrons, protons, electrons, ...) and those that only interact through the weak force (like neutrinos). However, some particles interact both ways. It seems messy and ad hoc.

So, at my most cynical, and with excuses to my former colleagues, I call this just PR BS, a way to keep the non-scientific public interested now that the god particle seems to be off the table. It's a good attempt, though, and it might easily drag out for a couple of years. But something better needs to be found.

How serious is the US federal debt

2011-09-06T13:28:00.003+02:00

Based on data from usgovernmentrevenue.com:

Forget all the graphs you've seen. This is the one that matters: it charts the ratio of the federal debt to the federal income. It is easy to see that the debt level only went over 700% in 1932 and in 1940. WWII allowed the US government to double in size (income-wise), which is why the fiscal picture improved.

Note also that the data past 2010 is projected. The 2011 debt number is probably not far off, but the recovery in 2012 is speculative.

A more optimistic view is given by looking at the total government debt - which is dominated by the federal debt - and the total government income - which is dominated by state and local government income. To wit, the total US government debt is 18 trillion, the total US government income is 5.5 trillion (2011 estimates), so the debt is only about 320% of income. Regrettably, local authorities provide only the bare essential services, and are already cutting them to the bone. It's not likely that they can help service the federal debt - in fact the money flows the other way.

An interesting sidenote is that US government income is already 35% of US GDP - twice what it was in 1930. Considering that much of the GDP is not really taxable income (like the 10% of GDP that comes from counting the "rent" that people "pay" to themselves to live in their own houses), it's clear that the US government can't expand all that easily. Certainly it cannot double in size the way it did during WWII - not without nationalizing almost everything.

Ummm, yeah...

2011-08-23T15:17:00.000+02:00

The difficulty of translation

2011-08-22T11:00:00.002+02:00

A catchy tune, created by a Belgian composer, has been translated in 100 languages (at least). Yet many translations miss the most important lines of the original:

L'égalité veut d'autres lois
Pas de droits sans devoirs dit-elle
Egaux, pas de devoirs sans droits.

Freely translated "Equality demands different laws: no rights without duties, no duties without rights". But in translations, the duties seem to go missing. Strange...

Job creation and the deep gap

2011-03-10T09:22:00.003+01:00

In February 2011, 192,000 jobs were added in the US. Most reports say that it's "encouraging" while cautioning that it's going to take several years at this pace to recover the ground lost in the recession.

How long?

Well, in February 2011, 138 million people were employed, whereas three years before there were 144.5 million employed (BLS data, monthly employment level, table A, no seasonal adjustment). The difference is actually 6.457 million.

In the same period (2/2008 to 2/2011), the number of multiple job holders dropped from 7.6 million to 6.9 million. To be exact, 728,000 jobs were lost. Most of these jobs were part-time, though, and counting them as full jobs lost seems excessive. Let's count part-time jobs as half jobs, so 364,000 full job equivalents were lost.

Again over the same period, the number of people working part-time went up from 25 million to 27.4 million. This amounts to 2.4 million people going part-time from full-time. Counting part time jobs for 50%, this amounts to another 1.2 million jobs lost. There is little overlap between these numbers and the numbers of the multiple job holders, I think, as the latter end up being fully employed.

So, my estimate of the number of full-time equivalent jobs lost in the last three years is 8 million.

Moreover, in the same period, the civilian non-institutional population also increased by 6.042 million or 2.6%. Normally a rise in the population should lead to an increase in the labor force. In fact, we should expect the rise in the labor force to be the same, i.e. 2.6%. However, this didn't happen: the labor force rose only by a bit over 100K. The reason for this is that, although there are more people of working age, relatively fewer are actually interested in work at all. If we are to get back to the same employment situation as before the crisis, people will have to be brought back into the labor force. Suppose we should get back to the pre-crisis employment level, the labor force should expand by 2.6% over the 2008 numbers, which amounts to 3.957 million new workers. If we're to keep the same participation rate as in February 2008 (65.5%), this will require the creation of 2.952 million jobs.

So the job gap - the amount of jobs needed to get back to where the work force was in February 2008 - is almost exactly 11 million. This disregards the quality of these jobs, of course, but that is a very different topic.

Now, how long does it take to get 11 million jobs back? Over the past 3 years, keeping up with the growth in the civilian population would have required the creation of 2.952 million jobs. As population growth is slowing, this hurdle will lower, but for the next couple of years an annual addition of 900,000 jobs should probably do. That amounts to monthly job creation of 75,000.

So, only when job creation exceeds 75K we start working on reducing the job gap. That means that a monthly job creation rate of 200K will close the job gap in 88 months - a bit more than 7 years. An average job creation rate of 400K per month can get the gap closed in less than 3 years. The fastest sustained job growth we had in recent history (from 1992 to 2000) saw on average a 200K jobs created per month (all of this is still BLS data).

So there you go: if job creation rivals that of the nineties (200K/month), the job gap will be closed by 2018. It is worth remembering that the growth in the nineties was partly due to the internet bubble, so it's debatable whether this really is a sustainable rate.

In reality, then, it's more likely that some of the changes in the employment situation are permanent: more people will remain part-time employed, more people will stay completely out of the labor force and the participation rate will drop. If we just try to recover the 8 million jobs lost (and keep up with population growth), a 200K/month rate will accomplish this in something like 3 to 5 years. Call it a recovery to a new normal by 2015. Whether this new normal is stable remains to be seen.

Extremely disheartening

2009-02-22T21:00:00.002+01:00

The Great American Hope looks like it was a fleeting dream. Closing Guantanamo but keeping Baghram's prison (10 time larger, same lack of basic rights, same suspicion of torture) open. What the hell does he take us for?

It is increasingly obvious that McCain would have been a better choice for the US. Boy, that hurt.

Making a stimulus a snoozer

2009-02-17T22:02:00.002+01:00

It's not going to do much, this new stimulus bill. It's tiny, compared to the problem. It's slow, compared to the speed at which economic realities change and take hold in the public psyche. It has too many tax breaks, which are not efficient as stimuli, and are obviously temporary, as we all know that this money isn't a gift, it's a loan. Well, I hope we all still believe that the money will be paid back at some point. If that isn't the case, the foundation of the cheap credit that keeps the US running would be destroyed.

Which brings us to California. It's not inconceivable that it actually goes bust - it really is in dire straits and it has very few options. What if it goes under, and people extrapolate? Same scenario - vastly increased borrowing costs for the government. That would be bad, with consequences going from simple government paralysis to loss of essential services.

Pffft. The immediate danger of sudden systemic collapse has passed - probably was over several months ago - but the danger of a slow slide, deflation or permanent stagnation hasn't receded. It has barely diminished.

Sicko

2009-02-17T21:31:00.003+01:00

I'm not a big MM fan, but Sicko was pretty interesting. It's on heavy rotation now on the movie channels here, and I can see why. In general it seems Europeans don't know or perhaps don't believe how the US system actually works - and vice versa. While it certainly is a biased movie, it doesn't seem to actually misrepresent the situation much. The only thing that is just silly is the Cuban stunt at the end. Fine, it hammers down the point, but I don't think it was necessary and its sensationalism damages the movie as a whole.

So was the french doctor right, is it impossible for the US to get a similar system? Well, I had a brief optimistic spell, thinking that the US was perhaps ripe for real progress. I still think that enough Americans are willing to change, even in very drastic ways. But I think it is clear that Obama is not the man to push them along. Is there ever going to be a better time to push for universal health care than now, as part of the rescue package? Hopefully not. So why isn't it in there? It could have been sold as a way to level the playing field for the auto industry, a way to make unemployment checks go longer and a way to improve worker mobility. Surely it can be sold as a way to streamline healthcare, an industry that is dragging down the country by being preposterously inefficient.

The sad truth is that universal healthcare seems to come about only in the wake of a devastating national tragedy (think WWII), during the formation of a new country or as part of a communist revolution. Since neither the dissolution of the USA, nor its reformation as a communist country are very likely in the near future, it seems reasonable to assume that UH can only make it in the US if the economy starts to go really downhill - depression style - or if it just refuses to improve in any fashion for a few years. Maybe Obama will be able to push it through in his second term. I guess that will have to pass for optimism for now.

Small US businesses

2008-10-27T23:50:00.002+01:00

Ok, it's bad for my health, but I can't stop following the news. So I just watched McCain speak. Pretty good stuff, for a Republican. But eventually he throws out a number (Republicans tend to avoid hard facts), and my analytical mind goes nuts.

He said that more than 80% of Americans are employed by small businesses. It made his speech make a lot of sense. But that number sounds very high. So how many Americans are actually working for small businesses?

Short search throws up the following stat - about 50% of non-government employees work for small businesses. Hmmm. How many work for government, then? Well, state and local governments employed 15.4 million Americans in 2002 (http://factfinder.census.gov/jsp/saff/SAFFInfo.jsp?_pageId=tp16_government)
The federal government employs 1.8 million civilians (http://www.bls.gov/oco/cg/cgs041.htm) plus the 600,000 postal workers and 1.4 million soldiers. That's roughly 3.8 million. In total, we're talking something like 20 million people. This is direct employment only.

Ok, I digress. This is the money shot:
http://www.census.gov/epcd/susb/latest/us/US--.HTM
50 % of Americans work for a business that has 500 employees or more. That's NOT small. More than 60% work for a business with at least 100 employees. That's still at least medium sized.

The census number totals 116 million workers in private business. With a labor force of 153 million (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html), that means 37 million people are working for the government or are unemployed. Assuming the previous estimate for the government workforce - about 20 million - there are about 17 million unemployed.

Ok, so clearly McCain was full of it. Again. Small businesses with less than 20 employees (which surely covers almost all plumbers) employ less than 20% of the non-government workforce - a little over 20 million people. That's not much more than the size of the government workforce, if you take the conservative numbers for the size of the government. If you believe the official unemployment rate, there's only 6.1% unemployment. That would mean that more than 27 million Americans work for the government - many more than work for those revered small businesses.

It's okay for Americans to identify with small businessmen. They represent a part of history and perhaps personify a crucial part of the national spirit, just as French farmers and German Mittelstand do in their countries. But you have to put away this nostalgic image when you discuss real policies. The US economy may be strengthened by small businesses and innovative upstarts. But the overwhelming majority of Americans work for large companies.

Credit crunch musings

2008-10-11T23:33:00.003+02:00

I'm happy to reread some of my long-dormant blog. I was worried I had left little proof that I'ld been warning about the bad credit in the US...

The US started living on credit under Reagan. Things got out of control in the early nineties, because there was a feeling that there was no competition for the US system anymore. By 1996, 1997 the economy was well on its way to the stratosphere, with nothing holding it up but faith. This time it's different....

I think that most of what happened after 1996 was a zero sum game for the US, at best. The internet brought new jobs, and high paying ones, but it removed others. Globalisation increased profits in the US, but moved labour costs (income to others) out of the US.

Because of inflation, I figure that the US is 40% ahead of 1996. That means a GDP in the order of a little over 11 trillion. If that is correct, GDP will have to drop by about 3 trillion to get back to realistic values. A 20% drop in the calculated size of the economy is no longer an abnormal prediction. The DJIA would end up in the mid-8000.

So. Time to buy stocks? Not quite. the irrational exuberance that kicked off in the mid nineties ran more than 10 years. Betting on the economy going back to realistic valuations was a fool's game during that time. There's no reason to assume that the irrational pessimism will dissapate faster.

So I expect the market to be undervalued for years. Unfortunately, that brings us to the point where the boomers start to retire. At that point, increasing numbers of investors will structurally move out of growth stocks, to safer stocks, bonds and even more conservative income instruments. This extended and persistent money reallocation will start to weaken markets. As more boomers retire, it will become another selling pressure that will depress the markets.

Time to move into bonds? Well, if you're anywhere near retirement, duh. If you're not near retirement, it probably isn't worth the trouble. Just start allocating a lot of your new savings (you do save, do you?) to your bond funds...

Negotiating without precondition

2008-10-11T23:27:00.001+02:00

North Korea stopped cooperating with the IAEA. It put rockets in place, threatening more long-range testing, or an actual attack.

Are these the preconditions under which Bush is willing to negotiate?

Nah. Under these preconditions, Bush doesn't negotiate. He just gives the North Koreans what they want.

Fortunate son

2008-10-11T23:09:00.002+02:00

Some folks are born made to wave the flag,
Ooh, theyre red, white and blue.
And when the band plays hail to the chief,
Ooh, they point the cannon at you, lord,

It aint me, it aint me, I aint no senators son, son.
It aint me, it aint me; I aint no fortunate one, no,

Yeah!
Some folks are born silver spoon in hand,
Lord, dont they help themselves, oh.
But when the taxman comes to the door,
Lord, the house looks like a rummage sale, yes,

It aint me, it aint me, I aint no millionaires son, no.
It aint me, it aint me; I aint no fortunate one, no.

Some folks inherit star spangled eyes,
Ooh, they send you down to war, lord,
And when you ask them, how much should we give?
Ooh, they only answer more! more! more! yoh,

It aint me, it aint me, I aint no military son, son.
It aint me, it aint me; I aint no fortunate one, one.

It aint me, it aint me, I aint no fortunate one, no no no,
It aint me, it aint me, I aint no fortunate son, no no no,
---

Creedence Clearwater Revival, folks. 40 years ago, and still right on the money.

I think it's almost appropriate that Ayers has become an issue in this election - for the right wing nutters at least. When it really gets down to it, the ideals of the sixties were never realized in the US. At least not to the extent they were in most western countries. The loss of the US's lead in social progress was a bitter pill to swallow for many like Bill Ayers, and clearly they went way overboard in their attempt to stop this. Rejecting progress made the seventies so aimless. Embracing deficits and brainless nationalism in the eighties set the stage for a fake rebound. The nineties were an honest, serious and almost succesful attemp to get the nation back on track without a revolution. But it was flawed, and in 2000 whatever hopes were left, burned.

But perhaps.... perhaps. It's scary to even mention it. Perhaps this is the time to revisit the basics. Perhaps this is the time that the US finally joins the rest of the modern western democracies. Maybe there will be real freedom of religion - even for muslims. Maybe everyone will have a shot at greatness - and not just the fortunate ones. Maybe free speech will really exist - or rather, people will be willing to hear speech they don't like.

Honestly, until about a month or two ago, I believed that having McCain as president would be better. He's a deficit hawk, a dare-devil that likes to take risks he doesn't understand, and someone who is desperate to make a mark on history. I figured that, with a thoroughly democratic congress, he'ld be willing to undertake fairly big reforms that would get the US in line with modern society, and get it into a healthier financial situation.

Okay, fine. I wasn't wild about it. But I did think that Obama would overreach and the popular backlash would stop anything real getting done. Think Clinton before Newt.

But now... perhaps now is the time to reengineer the US's economy and society for the twenty-first century. Not along the socialist lines that the Republicans are advocating right now (or at least Bush and McCain), but along progressive, democratic lines that are well-trodden in western Europe.

Here's hoping...

Genital mutilation okay in Florida

2007-10-27T10:07:00.000+02:00

"A woman who had her 13-year-old daughter's genitalia pierced to make it uncomfortable for her to have sex was acquitted of aggravated child abuse on Thursday.

The girl, now 16, had testified that her mother asked a friend in 2004 to shave the girl's head to make her unattractive to boys and later held her down for the piercing.

A jury deliberated for about three hours before deciding the mother's actions didn't involve punishment or malicious intent, or cause permanent damage or disfigurement.

...

Child welfare officials were called after the girl became infected from the piercing.

Tammy Meredith, 43, who did the piercing in her home, was sentenced to a year in jail for her role. An arrest warrant has been issued for the mother's boyfriend on allegations he had sex with the girl."

Ok, mom freaks because her 13 year old is having sex with her own boyfriend, shaves her head and has her genitalia pierced (by an amateur) with the intent of making sex uncomfortable. But that is just fine by the jury? No wonder the US tortures suspects these days.

Why the US should stop coddling terrorists.

2007-10-25T16:22:00.000+02:00

Well, what would you call it? For 4 years the US has sheltered, aided and outfitted an organisation on its own terrorist watchlist. Its highest officials travel to Washington (for sightseeing, no doubt). And now, just in time for thanksgiving, Turkey is really, really just fed up. And Condi has the gall to say that Turkey shouldn't "pre-emptively" attack??? Poppycock.

The new deal on healthcare

2007-10-01T09:31:00.000+02:00

The new deal is about throwing off healthcare costs as an ever-expanding liability for large companies (small companies have been terminating their - already much less generous - plans for years). Details of the deals vary, but boil down to the companies offering a fixed amount of money that they employee can use to cover insurance premiums and offer healthcare costs, in stead of bargaining for health insurance (and paying its costs) themselves. Essentially it removes healthcare as a benefit, reducing it to a small salary raise (of up to 2K$).

Financially, this deal benefits companies such as GM, who can remove huge liabilities from their balance sheets. If you believe the financial calculations, the new deal means that GM replaced a 51 billion liability with a 35 billion pay-out, so GM should be worth 16 billion more now. Don't hold your breath, though, in reality it won't make that much of a difference. Of course, it does mean that companies such as GM no longer have to worry about further rises in healthcare, except to the extent that it will reduce the general health and well-being of their employees. While it may make working at these companies somewhat less attractive, their really aren't that many alternatives for working stiffs to find a better deal, as most of US companies are reducing or shedding healthcare benefits. So yes, it will help US companies by limiting their exposure to rising healthcare costs. If enough companies make the changeover, the only effect on them will be indirect (through poorer and unhealthier employees).

Does this help the union? One could imagine the unions stepping up to the plate and starting to offer healthcare insurance to all its members and becoming a huge player in the healthcare market. It could in principle be a catalyst for a re-unionisation of the workforce, and by pooling so many workers, the unions might be able to negotiate better deals from insurance companies and health organisations. The GM trust fund will be managed by the union, so it's a start for the union along this path.

If unions are re-energized this way, and especially if they pool their resources across several industries, they could create a much stabler basis to fund healthcare - able to survive the demise of big companies and downturns in entire industries. Their newfound riches could make them more powerful lobbying agents in Washington as well. So the deal offers a real opportunity to the unions to claw back from oblivion.

Unfortunately unions aren't the most transparent organizations, anti-union sentiment still runs very high in boardrooms and providing healthcare to all union workers falls far short of universal healthcare. So while this deal is certainly good for the union, and perhaps (if things work out) not bad for unionized workers, it is going to make things really difficult for non-union workers.

So does this at least help union workers? Perhaps. They gain mobility, if unions are able to construct a healthcare package that would be independent of the employer. But pending that, little changes until the money runs out. And run out it will, unless the workers start paying more for their healthcare. In the end, the workers' healthcare is now beholden to the union, which should be better than being beholden to the company. But they will likely have to foot more of the healthcare bill, unless the unions are able to change the healthcare equation completely.

Because in the end, healthcare costs are not going to go down because of deals like this. If anything, it will make them go up faster, as people will go from large corporate plans, administered professionally on both sides of the issue, to individual accounts. Not only is there likely to be more overhead, disputes are more likely to end up in court and care is probably going to get worse. Healthcare is one issue where people rarely are able to make the best decision. Not only because it affects individuals so deeply and so emotionally, but also because even professionals have a hard time figuring out which plan is most appropriate. The industry thrives on obfuscation and fear.

So while the UAW deal is only symptomatic of a larger move by companies towards fixed-value benefits, it is still a milestone. And a pretty grim one at that. Unless unions take the opportunity and step into the void left by dwindling company healthcare benefits, power will shift to the insurance providers, leading to higher healthcare costs. We'll have to hope that the unions take this chance and make the most of it. But even if they give it their best shot, their chances are thin.

Say What?

2007-09-30T11:31:00.000+02:00

Ratio of WIA to KIA: 16. That means that almost 80,000 US soldiers were wounded in the Bush folly (the Pentagon counted 29,000 wounded in combat, the others were not wounded in combat or were wounded lightly). PTSD doesn't require physical injury, of course, hence the much larger 185,000 soldiers that have already broken down strong institutional and cultural barriers and asked for assistance. Of those, 52,000 were actually diagnosed with PTSD.

At which point is this going to be worse than anything a ragtag bunch of terrorists could do to the US? I'm guessing that point was reached a long time ago.

Lost in translation - subtleties

2007-09-26T09:56:00.000+02:00

Western media everywhere are having a good chuckle at the expense of Ahmedinedjad's Bushism "there are no homosexuals in Iran". Ah, funny. The best research available shows something between 1% or 2% of humans everywhere are homosexual, and that it is at least partially genetic in its roots. No reason to believe that this is any different in Iran.

But wait a second. Ahmedinedjad didn't actually say that, did he? He spoke in Farsi, not in English. His words were simultaneously translated. Simultaneous translation is tricky, heck, it's hard to translate if you have time to think about what is being said. So what did he really say? I don't speak Farsi, so beats me. But I've read that he actually said "In Iran we don't have the problem with homosexuality that you have here", or something to that extent, in several places. But that is entirely different. There is no problem with homosexuality in Europe either: it's accepted and the questions are only at the margin. Crucially, it isn't a political hot button, it isn't a cultural touchstone, it does not dominate public life like it does in the US. In the US, the twin issues of abortion and gay rights are crucial distinctions between the only two parties that play a national role. It's a crazy way to run a country, but it is baked into the system for now.

So I'm not even sure whether Ahmedinedjad's answer even qualifies as a Bushism. If he was just prefacing his answer (before being rudely cut off by the audience) by explaining that homosexuality just isn't a political issue in Iran the way it is here, fine. If he was just trying to explain that homosexuality isn't a cultural issue in Iran because it is universally condemned, then he's just pointing out the obvious.

Again, I don't know what he actually said, but simultaneous translation isn't reliable. The crowd reaction may have thrown him for a complete loop, if he was simply trying to explain something about Iranian politics or Iranian culture, on which the audience was simply not knowledgeable. It's hard to take an audience seriously after they react like that, but then again, Bollinger sort of set it up this way. This conversation would have been much interesting if it had been a discussion between Ahmedinedjad and a few Iranian dissenters, in Farsi, with transcripts available afterwards.

Incidentally, homosexuality is illegal in 70 countries, punishable by death in several countries, such as Saudi-Arabia, for instance, as well as Yemen, the UAE, Sudan, Somalia, parts of Nigeria, Chechnya [for repeat offences]. It is punishable by life in prison in Bangladesh, Guyana, India, Maldives, Myanmar/Burma, Pakistan, Qatar, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Uganda. We have a long way to go before the world grows up about sexual preference, although - to be honest - several of these countries didn't criminalize homosexuality until they fell under the British empire (and the infamous section 377 of the penal code).

Keynes was wrong

2007-09-25T12:04:00.000+02:00

You can't just spend your way out of a recession. That was proven conclusively by Japan, which tried to do exactly that. Of course the Japanese were able to test it relatively safely because they had a huge savings rate, so their public debt is held internally. Much of the US public debt is already in foreign hands. The effect of creating more public debt is now a weakening of the dollar, because the additional money has to go oversees. So in the US's case, it's not really an option.

Critical debt levels

2007-09-25T10:15:00.000+02:00

The US needs to start living within its means. What that means is made painfully clear by the French PM this week. With a population (a tad over 60 million) and GDP (around 2 trillion USD) about one fifth of the US, it runs a deficit of around 50 billion USD, a level which the prime minister calls "critical". Of course, the US runs a bare public deficit of 250 billion USD (federally), proportionally the same.

Keep in mind that the US is still at a huge demographic advantage over France, with the baby boomers still being at prime earning potential. So it is obvious that the US national debt is beyond critical. One of the ways that this can be made more apparent is to look at the deficit without the surplus in social security: about 430 billion USD last year. Add to that the fact that the US states run deficits as well (California ALONE ran a 6 to 7 billion USD deficit last year, but it has run deficits as high as 30 billion USD in recent years), as do US households (total consumer debt expanded by about 60 billion USD in 2006, of which 25 billion was run up on credit cards), and you see the extent of the problem. Incidentally, total US household credit runs at well over 90% of GDP (including mortgages and such).

It's fun maxing out on credit while it lasts. And it's a hard habit to break. But how long can it persists?

Blowing bubbles

2007-09-25T09:28:00.000+02:00

Bernanke says the losses in the housing sector are worse than anyone would have thought, and that it's going to take a while to work through it. Indeed, judging by the repercussions of Japan's real estate crisis, at least a decade, with lasting effects on the psyche (and treasury). So that is not really what the Fed is planning to do. Just as with the last bubble deflation, financial policy is geared towards keeping everything moving along. That means, running the nation on credit as there are no untapped reserves of cash (savings) to be spent. But to do that, one can't just deflate an asset bubble - it brings into question the very basis on which credit is extended - another bubble needs to be created. That's how the soft landing after the stock market crash was created - by creating (or at least aggravating) the housing bubble. Except that there really isn't that much else you can create a serious bubble on. Perhaps bonds?

Christian outrage over cartoon of prophet - demand resignation of editor

2007-08-23T22:59:00.000+02:00

Just in case anyone thought it was a muslim thing, cue the christian faithful getting all hopped up over a cartoon of Jesus holding a cigarette and a beer. The editor of the offending paper immediately apologized for what he claims was an honest mistake, i.e. he wasn't trying to prove a point or trying to goad Christians. Yet the bishop doesn't seem inclined to forgive. WTFWJD?

Things that annoy me - part 2

2007-08-19T10:13:00.000+02:00

"Kid Nation". Un-be-lie-va-ble. Take 40 kids, ages 8 to 15, plunk them in a ghost town in the middle of the desert for 40 days to build a city. Working from dawn to dusk, doing anything that needed to be doing, without being shown how, or being supervised. Film it all, reality-TV style and bam, you have a "show". There are some drawbacks, though. Such as:

Several children required medical attention after drinking bleach that had been left in an unmarked soda bottle, according to both the parent and CBS. One 11-year-old girl burned her face with splattered grease while cooking.

Ok. I am not really surprised that CBS tried to do the show. I'm sure they get pitched even more despicable and illegal schemes all the time. But I can't imagine that their legal department let it through. It is simply inconceivable that they didn't know that accidents were very likely. As it is, they got lucky. Well, relatively speaking. And the fact that the parents allowed this is no excuse. Digging up 40 families with more greed than common sense isn't hard.

Oh, yeah, here's the best part: they filmed this thing over 40 days in April and May, i.e. IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SCHOOL YEAR! And no one noticed. Oh, and for legal purposes they declared it a summer camp. Early summer, this year, isn't it?

I understand there are bad parents everywhere, and corporations are by definition immoral. But I don't understand why a nation would allow its children to be exploited and abused. The least they can do is forbid the broadcast, fine CBS and have DCFS review each one of the families that participated. The charges? Child endangerment, child neglect, child abuse and violation of child labor laws.

And get a load of this pearl of wisdom, courtesy of a CBS representative:

Mr. Anschell also said that state labor laws did not apply. “The children were not employed under the legal definition,” he said. “They were not receiving set wages for performing specific tasks or working specific hours.”

Isn' that slavery, then? Well, not really, because Mr. Anschell is lying. The kids received a stipend of 5,000 USD for their participation, and could earn a gold star for each episode, worth 20,000 USD each. The excuse that the kids weren't doing a specific task, just surviving and acting, or that they were not working specific hours, just from dawn to dusk, seems a little thin.

Disagree? Hey, sign up your kids for Kid Nation 2.

Faking your own death for what?

2007-08-19T09:48:00.000+02:00

After reading on a blog that wireless companies would cancel the contracts of deceased customers, "I thought, 'What have I got to lose, besides a cellphone I despise?' " Taylor said. The Chicago consultant fashioned a fake death certificate and had a friend fax it to Verizon Wireless, his carrier. He thought he was in the clear -- until the company caught on.

Ugh. What the heck? How stupid can you be? I do hope he's being sued for fraud as well. Breaking a legally binding contract is a serious offense.

It's rather simple: you pay less for your phone, if you sign a relatively long contract. In some countries, this practice is illegal, but in the US it is common, and I can't imagine that there is anyone that doesn't know why they get a discount. You get a BlackBerry curve from AT&T for 300 if you get a 2 year contract. If you don't want that contract, you pay 450 for the same phone. How hard is this to understand? Of course you pay at least 150 when you break your contract.

Sjeez.

What's NOT wrong with Detroit

2007-08-14T10:55:00.001+02:00

From Kaus's redux of GM's predicament:

"apparently the total labor cost for a GM hourly worker ( including health, pensions etc.) is about $146,000 per year. They're competing against Toyota and Honda who pay $96,000 per year--on equally American workers in American factories. Much of this disparity is in health care costs, something that would be fixed if the government took over that burden. But, according to CNN (citing Harbour-Felex data) $630 per vehicle is for union-negotiated "issues like work rules, line relief and holiday pay," while "paying UAW members for not working when plants are shut costs another $350 per vehicle."

Various calculations put the difference in profit per car on average at 2900 USD.

I agree with Kaus that American cars aren't made of more expensive materials. As Kaus says, if American cars could spend another 1,000 USD per car on better materials, some of their cars might be a bit more attractive. But I don't think that that means that the final cost of the car is due to employee salaries. After all, GM's total expense on wages and healthcare is around 20 billion USD per year, which is only around 10% of its total costs. Since it takes about 30 hours to manufacture a car, an hourly worker making 73 USD an hour (blue collar average pay AND BENEFITS for US carmakers) contributes 2190 USD per car for an American car. At 44 USD an hour (blue collar average pay for Japanese carmakers), it contributes 1320 USD an hour. That's a difference of 870 USD per car that comes from blue collar pay and benefits. So there must be other reasons why GMs cars are so much more expensive to make.

One of the ways to lose money is by operating many brands. Toyota has three brands, worldwide: Toyota, Lexus and Scion. Honda has two: Honda and Acura. GM has 11 brands! Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, GMC, Holden, Hummer, Opel, Pontiac, Saab, Saturn and Vauxhall. With 284,000 core employees worldwide, producing about 9 million cars per year, GM is spreading its engineering talent very thin. Toyota has slightly more core employees (299,000), turning out about the same number of vehicles, but they are centered in only three brands, all of which have relatively small product line-ups.

I believe that the limited number of platforms lies at the root of many other differences between the American and Japanese cars. Less platforms means more time spent engineering them. So the quality can be higher and more thought can go to making production more efficient and cheaper. Newer products come faster, perpetually putting competitors at a disadvantage. Fewer products means less attention to niche markets, which are always expensive to cater to, and more attention to what most people appreciate: quality, longevity, fuel efficiency and price. GM's shotgun approach to marketing simply isn't as efficient as Toyota's sniper attacks.

A direct consequence of spending more time engineering fewer platforms, and of building fewer different platforms, is that it takes less time to build a car. The hard numbers for that are telling. In North-American plants, it takes Toyota 29.93 hours to build a car, whereas GM takes 32.36 hours, 2.43 hours longer. This 8% to edge in productivity goes a long way in explaining the 10% edge in total profit that Toyota has. Oh, and Ford takes 35.10 hours - 17% longer than Toyota. Of course, it could be that Toyota is spending more money on non-labor improvements of its factories. Better automation increases productivity. If the cost of the increased automation is less than the cost of the hours of work saved, it helps profitability. Unfortunately I didn't find capital equipment expense data yet, but I don't think it will matter. Simply looking at capacity utilization points out another place where American manufacturers lose money hand over fist. Toyota runs its plants at 103% utilization, i.e. they work overtime to keep up with demand. The best of the American manufacturers (GM), runs its plants at 93% of capacity. That's 7% of GM's invested capital that is sitting idle, while Toyota's dime is working overtime. Ford sidelines an impressive 23% of its manufacturing capacity. This is a huge cost factor. So while it could be that Toyota buys more automation equipment, or at least uses what it has much better (by, for example, engineering the cars better), all of their equipment is used to more than its capacity.

Note that there are many ways to measure productivity, some of which are susceptible to outsourcing of body parts, which is something American producers are more prone to doing. Some of those productivity measures have GM running neck-to-neck with Toyota. But that ignores the outsourced parts. The drawback of outsourcing core components shows itself here. In principle GM could play one parts provider against another in order to force them to become leaner and meaner. But there aren't that many parts providers, and having more than one source for the same part is risky (higher variability), and changes in the components are more difficult to manage.

Comparing the salaries is not that simple. First of all, Toyota manufactures in places like Huntsville, Alabama and Blue Springs, Mississippi. Those are cheaper places to live than Detroit, MI, as you can tell from cost of living calculators. Toyota also still imports a larger fraction of its content, which helps as long as the yen remains relatively weak. And GM having many retirees to support is only the tip of the iceberg: being fairly recent, the Japanese plants have a younger workforce, which is obviously cheaper (less seniority, less illness). At least that advantage will become smaller with time.

According to the CNN article that Kaus refers to, the difference in PROFIT is on average about 2900 USD per car between Japanese and American carmakers. With the average price of a new car being 28,400 USD (FTC data), that's about 10% of the price. The article blames healthcare for most of the difference between US and Japanese companies - 1635 USD per car for GM compared to 215 for Toyota. But that pretends that Toyota-US is a fully independent company, which it is not. Toyota pays for healthcare of its workers in Japan through corporate taxes, which run a healthy 40.9%. This year, Toyota is paying 7.6 billion dollars in taxes, whereas GM will pay only 2.8 billion dollars in taxes. That is 533 USD in taxes per car that Toyota pays more.

A closer look to the income statements shows another crucial difference in the way the two corporations operate. GM operates under a vast debt load, run up through chronic mismanagement. This interest alone translates to a whopping 12 billion dollar expense each year. Toyota, frugal all along, only pays less than half a billion in interests. This means that the debt load of GM is adding 1278 USD to the cost of each car.

Toyota has a younger workforce than GM, located in cheap, rural areas, which explains why its workers are cheaper. It only manages three brands, offering a very limited number of vehicles in each class, allowing it the advantage of scale and focus. It utilizes its capital equipment better than GM, and vastly superior to Ford or Chrysler. Most importantly, it carries no debt. All these things help explain why its costs on each car are lower than GM's.

However, this is only half the story. Bigger scale for each model, better management of resources and a better fiscal position explain why Toyota is currently in a difficult to assail position now. But how did it get there? The focus on fewer brands and models, in short. It forced them to focus on the big middle market. And they realized that most consumers don't want choice. At least not choice just for the sake of choice. They want a car that is first of all reliable and cheap to run, not excessive in any aspect. Something that feels solid and quiet, and looks expensive but isn't. With sensible packages of options. Everything else is gravy.

But we're still not at the end of this issue. We're trying to explain a difference in profitability, and we've only discussed costs. If costs were really the only problem, then we could expect costs for a GM car to be higher than for an equivalent Toyota car. But we would expect the GM car to fetch the same price. And it does not, not by a very long shot. For example, the Chevy Malibu is a midsize family sedan, in principle competing against the Honda Accord and the Toyota Camry. I say in principle, since in reality, you can have any Malibu for two to three thousand dollar less than a similar Accord and Camry, and even then they don't sell in nearly the same quantities.

That is the cost of decades of brand neglect. Made in Japan used to be a joke. Right now, it carries a price premium of thousands. And that, unfortunately is the other reason that Japanese car makers are so much more profitable. To reverse that, GM, Ford and the DamnedChrysler need to pull off what Toyota and Honda did in the Eighties: turn their brand name from a joke into a badge of honour. That won't be accomplished by squeezing American workers further, but by producing better products.

Turkey into Iraq

2007-08-06T19:32:00.000+02:00

It was long predicted, and frankly, I have been extremely surprised by the reticence of the Turkish army. They have given the US plenty of time to start tackling the terrorist safe havens in Iraqi Kurdistan. Because, despite all the talk about Kurdistan being the one part of Iraq where things are going well, the Kurdish areas are full of terrorists.

Some background. The Kurdish areas of Iraq have long been staging areas for the PKK, a Kurdish "rebel" organization that mainly fights in Turkey. I am sympathetic to their basic cause, as Kurds have been horribly mistreated by Turkey (and Iraq, and Iran), but they have simply committed too many terrorist acts. They are widely regarded as a terrorist organization, including by the US.

Within Iraq, the Kurdish areas have been ruled by the PUK and the KDP. Those are authoritarian, self-serving parties that have fought each other (and any other comers) for decades to gain control over areas of Iraqi Kurdistan. While their armed forces (peshmerga) generally fought as disciplined guerilla forces, they did resort to kidnapping and other dubious tactics at some points. The KDP worked close enough with the PKK to have its bases in Iraq attacked by Turkey.

In the Iran-Iraq war, both Kurdish forces resorted to complicated and shifting alliances with either side in order to survive, while trying to attack each other at the same time. Towards the end they formed a unified front against Saddam, and it wasn't until the Iran-Iraq war ended that Iraqi forces were able to defeat them. Using the full force of the army, and using chemical weapons honed in the war with Iran, Saddam nearly destroyed the peshmerga as a regular fighting force. The peshmerga reorganised in response, adopting insurgent tactics still being used in Iraq: smaller, independently operating forces targeting infrastructure and ambushing convoys. They further rebuilt under an agreement struck with Saddam during the Gulf war, and were particularly strengthened by defectors from the Iraqi army. They attacked Kirkuk with a force of 100,000 during the uprising following the Gulf War and took it in two days. Unfortunately most of the elite units of Saddam's army escaped the massacre in Kuwait, and when they turned their focus to Kurdistan (after subduing the Shi'a rebellion), they quickly retook the big cities in the plains, and drove the peshmerga into the mountains again. About 1.5 million Kurds fled to refugee camps in Turkey and Iran to escape Saddam's wrath. Again the peshmerga barely survived. The PUK and KDP forces tried to form a unified army, but that wasn't very successful. They actually cooperated in an attack on the PKK, with the help of the Turkish army, in 1992. But they quickly fell out and several rogue commanders (commanding forces as large as 20,000) starting acting as more or less independent warlords. This culminated in the Kurdish civil war (1995-1998). In this civil war, the PUK allied with Syria and Iran, while the KDP was supported by the Iraqi government. Strange bedfellows. The situation got even more complex when an Al-Qaeda inspired terrorist group (Ansar-al-Islam) started operating in PUK-held area. This group was mainly made up by fighters escaping Afghanistan after the US attack there, and it succeeded in unifying the KDP and PUK again. The US attack on Iraq brought the peshmerga the assistance it needed to defeat Ansar-al-Islam.

The peshmerga played an strong role in the defeat of Saddam in 2003. Having essentially liberated themselves, American forces have trodden very lightly in the Kurdish areas. In return, the Kurdish areas have continued to self-police and to cooperate in the fight against Sunni and Shiite insurgents. With the local economy booming (and the result of civil war all too clearly on display in the rest of Iraq, just in case the Kurds should forget their recent past), the iron hold that the PUK and KDP have on the region is not causing much discontent. Indeed, peace and prosperity is giving the Kurds hope that their rotten luck is about to change.

More info here. The crucial point is that the peshmerga forces are extremely nationalistic, very experienced guerilla fighters with no qualms about changing alliances in order to achieve the goal of an independent Kurdistan. The peshmerga captured a large amount of military hardware in the aftermath of the war, leaving them better equipped than at any time in recent history. They continue to embody Kurdish nationalism, newly invigorated by the clear progress they are making, and the idea that they would be disbanded or fully absorbed into an Iraqi army is absurd.

However, the problem for Turkey is that Iraqi Kurdistan is rife with thousands of PKK fighters, and that the PUK and KDP forces have not gone after them. American forces haven't either, because the last thing they need is another large, battle-hardened terrorist organisation to join the insurgency, let alone run the risk that significant fractions of the KDP and PUK would join the fight. The US forces don't even want to take the risk that the peshmerga would stop cooperating with them: they are essential to the US military throughout Iraq, not just as reliable and very capable allies, but also as translators. So instead, the US has tried to pressure the PUK and KDP to attack the PKK. There are estimated to be around 100,000 peshmerga right now, split between PUK and KDP forces. This would seem to be no match to the 3,000 estimated PKK fighters in the Kurdish area. But I believe it is highly unlikely that this fight would ever happen. After all, the three organisations share a common view of a unified Kurdistan that would (far) exceed its current borders. I also think it would be naive to think that the peshmerga forces didn't have a significant number of PKK fighters amongst them.

So where does that leave the situation? Iraqi Kurdistan is a poisoned oyster. It is peaceful and prosperous, but it has strong territorial aspirations, both within Iraq and outside it. It is unlikely to turn on the PKK forces within it, as it shares their ideology and many of their methods (note that many in Iraqi Kurdistan do not see the PKK as terrorists, but freedom fighters). Festering, I guess is what I would call the situation. Not all that unlike the situation Afghanistan was in before the US attack. Turkey may not have a choice but to go after terrorists in Iraq, since the US is unable to. But it will be a bloody mess.

Illegal immigration

2007-08-04T11:25:00.000+02:00

I've been reading up on illegal and legal immigration, on account of some stories I read on Carpentersville, IL. Now I'm just thinking out loud, trying to put some things together.

First of all, clearly illegal immigrants break the law. So does everyone that drives over the speed limit or jaywalks. Some laws are more important to enforce than others, and we don't jail or deport people for jaywalking. So illegality is not the end of the story.

What is the alternative to illegal immigration? Legal immigration, of course. But this process takes years and is expensive. It is also not likely to be successful for poor, uneducated people. Immigration reforms underway are going to make this even worse, by biasing the immigration process towards the rich and educated.

While on the subject of legal immigration, I should say I think that legal immigration, especially when biased towards educated professionals, does a huge disservice to the rest of the world. Importing foreign talent and education reduces those elsewhere. Good for US, not good for them...

Legal immigration of educated professionals also irons over the huge deficiencies in the American education system. The excessive reliance of the US economy on foreign-educated doctors, engineers and professors is a warning sign. Importing education is a stop-gap measure, but unfortunately it masks the urgency of the problem.

Now, back to illegal immigration. How many illegal immigrants are there anyway? The Pew study on the size and characteristics of the "undocumented" population estimated that in march 2004 there were 10.3 million undocumented migrants in the US. At the same time, there are 25.4 million documented migrants (which includes refugees and people on temporary papers). One thing bedevilling a rational debate on the issue is that 57% of the undocumented are Mexican, and 81% are Latin-American. This adds race, religion and language to the mix. It seems unlikely to me that the debate would be quite as visceral if the illegal immigrants were Caucasian, English-speaking and (to a lesser degree) protestant.

Compounding that part of the problem is that illegal immigration is largely a problem in states that have long been culturally ambivalent. California, Texas and Florida receive almost 50% of all illegal immigrants. California was settled by the Spanish, and was a part of Mexico until it was annexed by the US in the Mexican-American war of 1848. Texas was part of Mexico before it gained independence in 1836. Its eventual annexation by the US in 1845 was the root cause of the Mexican-American war. Florida was settled by Spanish and French, and has maintained a strong latin flavour. Both legal and illegal Latin-American immigration has targeted these historically Spanish or Mexican states, reinforcing their dual identities. This provides ample reason for fear amongst the dominant Anglo-Saxon culture, because it is unclear where this process will end. It could end with equality between Spanish and English, or that could just be a milestone along the way. There are many countries where citizens need to be fluent in at least two languages or accept that their employment (and social, and cultural) possibilities will be limited. The US has not had to deal with this for several generations (except, perhaps, in some areas of Florida).

I've read several arguments to the extent that Spanish-speaking immigrants will learn English and assimilate, just as all previous immigration waves have. And indeed, while previous immigration waves have also started out very localised, later generations have tended to spread out and integrate, leaving only small communities that still maintain their ancestral language and culture. But that argument is flawed, for four reasons. First off, technological progress. While it used to be hard to keep in touch with your ancestral culture, this is no longer the case. Personal mobility and communication technology mean that you can maintain links across continents with relative ease. Second, proximity. Latin-American culture is not a continent away. While Swedes, Germans, Italians and Irish had to look across the ocean to find their roots, Latin-American immigrants in the US only have to look across a river. Third, size of the culture. Previous waves of immigrants came from fairly small cultures of less than, say 80 million native speakers. Spanish is different in that there are over 400 million native speakers of it, more than there are native speakers of English. Four, persistence. Because of the proximity of most of the world's 400 million Spanish speakers to the US, the influx of Spanish-speaking immigrants is unlikely to slow unless the underlying causes for the migration are addressed. Whereas previous immigration waves were limited in size and time, there are no such limits foreseeable on Latin-American immigration.

Of course, in stead of addressing the driving forces of migration (poverty, violence, crime, civil wars, drug wars, ...) one could try to stop immigrants and send them back. The Pew center estimates that the population of undocumented immigrants rises by about 700,000 each year (since 2000). Since the ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency) returns about 220,000 people a year (mainly undocumented immigrants, with the occasional US citizen by mistake), that comes close to the ballpark figure of 1 million immigrants arriving each year, which is bandied about quite a bit. So the ICE spends about 8 billion a year, catching less than one quarter of the illegal immigrants, presumably the ones that are easiest to catch. So a ballpark estimate of the cost to catch enough illegal immigrants to offset new arrivals would be anywhere from 40 to 100 billion a year. Clearly, a lot of money, actually much more than illegal immigrants are estimated to cost the tax payer (about 16 billion). As discussed below, this "cost to the tax payer" is due to the fact that the illegals are low-income, not that they are illegal.

One can argue that undocumented immigrants committed a crime, and they should be caught and punished, just on principle. But do they need any more punishment than what they have chosen for themselves? In the end, undocumented workers have to leave the US before they reach retirement age, since they don't qualify for Social Security and cannot survive without working. The statistics bear this out: there are virtually no undocumented immigrants aged 60 and over. While they are in the US, they work very hard without protection from the law (actually, to some degree continuously persecuted by the law), and about 75% of them pay social security taxes and medicare taxes, of which they are not likely to benefit. Other taxes can be evaded as they are not directly deducted by the employer, but those would be very small indeed.

It is important to stress that last point. The Social Security administration tracks the money paid to workers with fake documentation, and puts the total at about 50 to 60 billion a year. There are estimated to be about 3.8 million undocumented households that contribute to payroll taxes, which means that household income is, on average about 15,000 USD per year. No doubt these households also have unreported income, but that is not a problem specific to the undocumented. At the income levels of the undocumented population, social security and medicaid taxes - being regressive taxes - run a healthy 7.65%. Federal tax rates in this bracket are 10%, but with normal deductions, the effective tax rate in this bracket is more like 5%. Of course undocumented immigrants pay sales taxes as well. All in all, even if the undocumented can evade the federal tax, gaining 5%, they still pay the 7.65% flat rate for social programs they cannot use. So they still overpay. As the Center for Immigration Studies puts it:
"If illegal aliens were given amnesty and began to pay taxes and use services like households headed by legal immigrants with the same education levels, the estimated annual net fiscal deficit would increase from $2,700 per household to nearly $7,700, for a total net cost of $29 billion."

The strange conclusion is that if every undocumented worker were suddenly to become documented, the increase in the federal taxes would be more than offset by the increase in federal liabilities in the social security programs. Keeping the undocumented workers undocumented is cheaper for the federal government.

So what about state taxes? Well, depends on the state. States that don't levy an income tax, such as Texas and Florida, would not be affected at all. In California, the state tax rate varies between 1, 2 and 4% for the incomes that undocumented households have. With standard deductions, it is unlikely that these households would pay more than 1% in income, on average about 150$ per year. That would have to pay for all the services they would get if they were fully documented.

So in terms of governmental budgets, the effect of undocumented immigrants is actually positive - they pay more in taxes than they can claim as services - compared to documented workers with the same incomes.

So why all the complaints about undocumented immigrants taking up resources?

Well, they have no health insurance, so medical costs are difficult to recuperate. Some of these costs end up being paid by Medicaid, but that is a program that the undocumented pay into, so they should be entitled to it. More importantly, the vast majority of the uninsured are citizens and residents. Turning the undocumented into documented workers might mean that some would be able to get healthcare insurance, but - at their income levels - this is not a likely outcome (less than 50% of households with incomes under 20,000$ are insured).

Uninsured drivers are a problem, and many of the undocumented would not normally be insured. That is a problem that can be tackled by reengineering driver's insurance and healthcare insurance. But crucially, uninsured drivers are not usually undocumented immigrants. The highest percentages of uninsured drivers are in Mississippi, Alabama, California, New Mexico and Arizona. Not only are 4 out of 5 of those states not noted for their undocumented immigrant population, but most importantly, the rate of uninsured drivers is between 22% and 26%. Clearly, the vast majority of the uninsured drivers are citizens and legal residents.

The highest impact of the illegal population on the resources is through their American-born children:
"Many of the costs associated with illegals are due to their American-born children, who are awarded U.S. citizenship at birth. Thus, greater efforts at barring illegals from federal programs will not reduce costs because their citizen children can continue to access them."
This points out why it is hard to reduce the public resources that illegal immigrants do use. A typical undocumented household uses less than half the resources than a similar documented one does.

The complaints about illegal immigrants have many causes, from simple racism and xenophobia to linguistic and cultural concerns. Those can be argued back and forth forever. But when it comes to the economic arguments, the situation is fairly simple. Most undocumented hold jobs and use few government resources. Most pay taxes, and the net fiscal effect of the undocumented is positive, considering their socio-economic situation. The perceived fiscal deficit is caused by the relatively low educational attainment of the undocumented immigrants which confines them to the lowest levels of US society. This is, however, a first-generation only problem - and not all that different from other mass migration waves that the US have seen before. With a decent educational system, the next generation ought to do better economically. So I don't see this as a problem that will continue to get worse.

Fiscally, the problem is the existence of so many low-paying jobs without benefits, which means that hardworking households that use much less public resources than most (about half), still cost the US government tax dollars. Simply removing a subset of the people that hold those jobs leads to a reduction in the quality of the services and/or a raise in salary costs to attract new workers. To keep the quality of services AND the prices stable, one can replace the currently undocumented workforce with a fully documented one. But that will cost the government even more, as the additional taxes will not cover the additional services.

Culturally, the US needs to become less insular, and the addition of a second cultural language should be welcomed, certainly in those states that have strong historical ties to it. In particular the states that used to be part of Mexico, such as California and Texas, it seems only fair that this history is recognized and even honoured.

Legally, I believe that punishing illegal immigrants is useless. The life they have chosen is full of back-breaking work done in fear. It is punishment enough. We would not punish people to become slaves voluntarily, even though slavery is illegal. One could punish those that promise them work, give them work and keep them in their current condition.

So I guess I would be for a kind of amnesty for anyone that has been in the country for a certain amount of time. After all, they have gone through hell. But while it is the right thing to do, it would not solve anything. As long as the jobs are there, and are not paid enough to attract legal residents to them, they will be filled with illegal immigrants. And legalizing the existing workforce would actually cost the government more. To reduce the illegal immigration, here are some simple steps that I think could help:
1. Increase minimum wages and encourage unionization of the jobs that attract the most illegal immigrants. This will make it more attractive for legal residents to fill the jobs.
2. Increase fines on employers that hire undocumented workers. For recidivist corporations, jailtime for white collar top executives should be an option.
3. Introduce national ID cards and link them to social security accounts. No card, no job. This is essential is one wants to crack down on employers. As long as identity is kept vague in the US, employers can argue that they were victims.
4. Deduct all taxes from the salary by default. This won't achieve much more than kill the argument that they're not paying taxes, but that is something.
5. Change citizenship rules. Born in the USA should only confer citizenship if one of the parents is a citizen. It should only confer legal residency if the parents are legal residents. Children born in the US to illegal immigrants should be sent back to their home country with their parents.

I actually think that the last one is too harsh. It would never fly, as it would lead to families being torn apart and women chosing to have their children without any medical assistance. But the other four could be a start.

Nurse pay

2007-07-26T21:11:00.000+02:00

This one is just a brain workout.

Statastic posted an interesting article on the predicted registered nurse (RN) shortfall (link in title). The rundown is that, yes, the RN population is aging, but this isn't a problem since the market has reacted by driving up average RN pay by 12.8% from 2000 to 2004 in real terms (i.e. inflation-adjusted). This should attract more people to the nursing profession, and so the shortfall will not materialize.

Unfortunately, as Statastic points out but does not calculate, an more experienced RN makes more money, so part of the rise in real wages can simply be due to aging. Can this be corrected for? Not easily. Statastic relies on the preliminary findings of the 2oo4 National Sample Survey of RNs. The full findings are now available. The average age of the nursing population went from 45.2 years in 2000 to 46.8 years in 2004. 1.6 years doesn't sound like an awefully big change, but it is about one or two payraises. It is, however, very difficult to translate this added experience into dollar amounts, and I have not found a handle on it yet. It would greatly surprise me if the added experience wouldn't add at least 1% to the average salary. But there are other reasons for the large increase in RN pay.

One reason , which Statastic didn't notice, is that nurses work longer hours. In hospital settings, nurse workweeks went from 42.4 to 43.9 hours, fully 1.5 hours per week longer, a 3.5% increase. Other nursing positions had similar hour changes. So part of the increased earnings is simply due to longer workweeks.

And there is more. Not only is the RN population getting older, it is also getting much better educated. The number of RNs that have a masters or doctor's degree is up 37% from 2000 to 2004, a drastic change. The data show that RNs with a masters degree make on average over 74,000 USD, and those with a doctorate make on average over 80,000. That is 30% over the average RN pay. With 12.8% of RNs now having an advanced degree, this increase of 2.4% over 2000 caused the average pay to increase by about .8% (in real terms).

Between the additional experience, education and longer working hours, I think that about 5 to 6% of the average raise in pay can be explained by real improvement in the service offered. That means that the scarcity of RNs "only" increased their pay about 7% or so. Still nothing to sneeze at. The number of active RNs went up about 10% from 2.2 to 2.4 million between 2000 and 2004. At the same time, the population grew about 5%, so the situation is improving.

Kudos to Statastic, whose article inspired me.

India, China and the lesson

2007-05-08T22:01:00.000+02:00

From Captain's Quarters blog (linked):

"Had [the Chinese government] given the people the opportunity to own their own land and control their own production, they would have never had a problem in feeding the offspring of their populace, and the Chinese would eventually have limited their own growth, just as the Western nations did during and after industrialization"

It's rather unfair to compare China in the 20th century with the US in the 19th. A better comparison is next door - India. India has had private ownership, and democracy, since its creation in 1947. China has been (more or less) communist since it became a state in 1949. In addition, both countries had been highly hierarchical class societies with high regard for children and strong religions.

So, what happened? In 1950, India had a population of 370 million, and China (excluding Taiwan) had about 563 million. 52 years later, India's population stands at 1,034 million, China's at 1.279 million. So, India grew 179% percent, while China grew "only" 127%. So apparently, giving people the land doesn't slow down growth per se...

Incidentally, in the same period, the US grew from 152 million to 288 million, or 89%. So the US population doesn't grow all that much slower than the Chinese...

(source http://www.census.gov/ipc/prod/wp02/tabA-04.pdf )

But at least private ownership of land, political empowerment and the wholesale adoptation of the anglo-saxon legal and commercial system helped grow the economy better in India than in China? Well, not really. China's GDP (in purchase parity dollars) was 240 million USD in 1950, India's was 222 million (for a much smaller population). Right now, China's GDP is around 8.8 trillion USD, while India's is at 3.7 trillion USD.

(sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_by_past_GDP_(PPP)#1950 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP%29)

"Had they given the people the opportunity to own their own land and control their own production, they would have never had a problem in feeding the offspring of their populace" is overly simplistic - it didn't work for India. Let's also not forget that famine and revolution were staples of the western European landscape during the Industrial revolution... Ask the Irish.
Life just isn't that simple. Top-down policy making may have been the only way to break the stranglehold of traditionalist society and religion on the population.

Why don't moderate muslims speak out against violence?

2006-10-30T14:12:00.000+01:00

You've heard that complaint. You may have made it yourself. Well, here's the answer: they DO. But when they speak out, US newspapers don't carry it. US news shows don't mention it. No one cares. If, on the contrary, an imam goes of his rocker in Australia, it's everywhere. At least the incendiary part of his speech, not the fact that he apologized shortly thereafter and was still suspended (don't you just wish they'ld do the same to Ann Coulter or Jerry Falwell or Rush Limbaugh). A friend of his (of the organization "Muslim Doctors Against Violence") wrote an open letter to him asking him to step down. Reported in US papers? Forget it.

The moderate response to the Pope's remarks in Regensburg are worth highlighting, but western media hardly mention it. http://www.islamicamagazine.com/media/pdf/open/b/openletter-8238DA.pdf

History in the making

2006-10-23T21:18:00.000+02:00

MARCH 30, 2003: Donald Rumsfeld:

"We know where [the weapons of mass destruction] are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."

MAY 29, 2003: Bush:

"We found the weapons of mass destruction."

JULY 2, 2003: Bush:

"There are some who feel like — that the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is, bring them on."

MAY 30, 2005: Dick Cheney:

"I think [the Iraqis are] in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency."

FEBRUARY 2, 2006: Rumsfeld:

“Is Iraq going to be a long war? No, I don’t believe it is.”

APRIL 12, 2006: Washington Post:

"On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile “biological laboratories.” He declared, “We have found the weapons of mass destruction.” The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the decision to go to war. But even as Bush spoke, U.S. intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true."

JUNE 20, 2006: Iraqi National Security Adviser:

"We envisage the U.S. troop presence by year’s end to be under 100,000, with most of the remaining troops to return home by the end of 2007"

AUGUST 16, 2006: The US has fought longer in Iraq than it did in WWII against Germany.

Poetry blogging

2006-10-05T21:26:00.000+02:00

A mind worm, I would call it. I don't know why it eats me so, but since I first read it, I can't get it out of my head.

===================

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

-- Robert Frost

Freud or fraud?

2006-10-05T14:37:00.000+02:00

Associated Press made the same mistake. Laugh or cry? Five minutes of silence, please.

Poetry blogging

2006-09-27T20:28:00.000+02:00

It was 1995, and I was spending most of my time in Germany, far away from my Love. It would be late in the morning when I returned from my night shift at the accelerator. I'ld bake up a french bread, spread on butter, slap on a slice of cheese. Then I'ld sit back in our Ikea poang chair, and listen to the glorious sounds of the Carmina Burana. I can honestly say that if it weren't for anything else, I'ld still be happy to understand Latin just because of Orff's genius.

This is one of my favourites:

AESTUANS INTERIUS

Aestuans interius
ira vehementi
in amaritudine
loquor meae menti;
factus de materia,
cinis elementi,
similis sum folio,
de quo ludunt venti.

Cum sit enim proprium
viro sapienti
supra petram ponere
sedem fundamenti,
stultus ego comparor
fluvio labenti
sub eodem tramite
numquam permanenti.

Feror ego veluti
sine nauta navis,
ut per vias aeris
vaga fertur avis;
non me tenent vincula,
non me tenet clavis;
quaero mihi similes,
et adiungor pravis.

Mihi cordis gravitas
res videtur gravis;
iocus est amabilis
dulciorque favis;
quicquid Venus imperat,
labor est suavis,
quae numquam in cordibus
habitat ignavis.

Via lata gradior
more iuventutis,
implicor et vitiis
immemor virtutis,
voluptatis avidus
magis quam salutis,
mortuus in anima
curam gero cutis.

=================== translation (from http://www.tylatin.org/extras/cb11.html)

Burning inwardly with strong anger,
in my bitterness I speak to my soul;
created out of matter, ashes of the earth,
I am like a leaf with which the winds play.

Whereas it is proper for a wise man
to place his foundations on rock,
I, in my folly, am like a flowing river,
never staying on the same course.

I am borne along like a ship without a sailor,
just as a wandering bird is carried along paths of air;
chains do not keep me nor does a key;
I seek men like myself, and I surround myself with rogues.

For me a serious heart is too serious a matter;
a joke is pleasant and sweeter than honeycombs;
whatever Venus orders is pleasant toil;
she never dwells in faint hearts.

I go on the broad way after the manner of youth;
and I entangle myself in vice, forgetful of virtue;
greedy for pleasure more than for salvation,
I, dead in my soul, attend to the needs of my flesh.

Storm in a teacup

2006-09-19T14:20:00.000+02:00

Both sides of the debate over Ratzinger's recent speech seem to completely skip the introductory part, where the subject matter is introduced and his approach to it in this speech is elaborated. The subject matter is the place of reason in faith, and his approach is to use, as a starting point, an obscure tract on theology from the 14th century. By his own admission, the subject of reason in faith only enters at the margin in this tract. But Ratzinger is a theologian, after all, and aims to teach, especially when addressing his Alma Mater. There's no surprise that he would quote from an ancient and little-known theological text, the way American politicos love to quote words from the (slave-owning, misogynistic, genocidal) Founding Fathers. And he probably just read Khoury's book, and wanted to show that he keeps current ;).

While the subject of violent conversion seems to be the centerpoint of Paleologus' (probably largely imaginary) discussion, it isn't a part of the pope's speech. The point he is making is that even in those dark ages, violent conversion was ruled out because it isn't reasonable. From this starting point, his discussion moves far away from the issue of conversion, and goes into the nature of god and reason. He also elaborates on the christian theologians that proposed a concept of god that surpasses reason, which Paleologus would probably condemn as similar to the islamic faith of the 14th century.

The core of Ratzinger's thesis is that Christianity is essentially a Greek cultural concept, much more than a Middle-Eastern one. Personally, I would agree that Catholicism is a western construct, but only because of its continued evolution through the work of western theologians. If you just take the bible, you end up with a largely Middle-Eastern concept of god, especially if you take any part of the old testament seriously, as many protestants do. But in any case, his speech wasn't about violent conversion, nor was it about Protestantism or even about Islam. He didn't defend Paleologus, and only used his words to ground his own discussion on reason and faith. The entire storm about this speech is baseless.

Reflecting on terror

2006-09-11T21:19:00.000+02:00

Interesting editorial in the Washington Post:
Losing the War on Terror. Hard to argue with that. But I prefer the front page article of De Standaard. It too is a review of the war on terror. It starts with a bunch of eye-catching, big-lettered statistics. "75,238 is the number of people that died in the past 5 years in terrorist attacks (of whome 2,973 in the US, 202 in Balid, 191 in Madrid and 52 in London)" The obvious discrepancy in the numbers is immediately turned into the next two statistics "59,600 civilians died in Iraq since may 2003, 2.641 American soldiers died there" and "5,308 civilians died in Afghanistan since October 2001, 477 foreign soldiers died there". The statistics continue, "464 suspected terrorists in jail in the American base at Guantanamo" and "50 billion dollars, the annual rise of the American defense budget since 9/11". Interestingly, the last statistic is "17,000 is the number of children that dies of hunger every day", which I think is a great way of relativating the previous numbers.

Now, these statistics flank a box containing 4 big names, and their fate:

"Osama bin Laden. Still no trace"
"George Bush. Reelected in 2004, still popular with 42 percent of Americans"
"Saddam Hussein. Captured and brought to court."
"Taliban. Driven from power, but not defeated."

I don't know, but I like the presentation. Barely 3500 western civilians have been killed in terrorist attacks, over the last 5 years. About as many western soldiers have died over the same time. But 10 times as many dead Iraqi and Afghani civilians ...

I think that the most important number - with respect to the safety of the US - is the increase in the defense budget. No, not because it secures the US in a military sense. It secures the US because it fulfills the desire of Al-Qaeda. As long as the US spends more than it can afford on its military, there is no need for Al-Qaeda to attack it. Especially if it can continue to kill Americans in other countries.

Americans can rest easy. As long as they keep increasing the defense budget by 50 billion per year, they will be safe. I figure that Al-Qaeda doesn't need to attack the US mainland more than once in a decade in order to keep the US on its self-destructive path. Waddayathink?

Conflicted

2006-09-05T22:35:00.000+02:00

Ok, yes, I read "Dear Prudie" sometimes too. Especially when the title is this provocative.

===================

Dear Prudie,
My partner and I are having our condominium remodeled. We have worked well with one company and asked them to bid a second phase of the job. The person who showed up to bid the job wore a cap with an angry bald eagle on the front with multiple American flags sewn onto the rest of the cap. When I was obviously startled at the hat, he acknowledged, "Guess I should have worn my company hat." I replied, "I would be more comfortable if you had because I can't support much of what the country is doing right now." This led to his reply, "Just so we all support America." My partner and I are gay and feel assaulted by the right wing. We are also horrified by the war in Iraq and so many other issues that our patriotism is very low. That hat was a sickening reminder of my childhood in rural America. I feel that perhaps my money should be spent in a more socially conscious fashion, but I don't relish starting my own campaign of reverse discrimination. Am I making too much of this incident? The company has done a good job for us so far.

—Uneasy Remodeler

Dear Uneasy,
When did an American flag come to mean, "I want to assault gay people"? You know nothing about this man's views except that he feels patriotic. Since you are the one who provoked the discussion, do you really want to require that the person building your breakfast nook pass your political litmus test? (And yes, if I were to get a letter saying, "I went to a potential construction job this morning and the owners of the condo were obviously gay. I think homosexuality is abnormal and I hate the idea of gay marriage. I don't know whether I should go ahead and submit a bid," I would find that letter just as objectionable.) We are lucky to live in a society in which one doesn't have to belong to a government-sanctioned party or avow a list of beliefs in order to make a living. I know too many people who say they could never be friends with people who have different political views from theirs, and that's unfortunate. But the economy will crash if every service person is required to agree with their client's worldview. Do you know how lucky you are to find a remodeling company that does a good job? Let the guy with the American flag cap get to work.

—Prudie
=================================

The monetarization of human interactions can be a good thing. It allows people of completely incompatible ideologies to work together - to some degree. It's at the root of a tolerant society - blindness to the ideological foundations, religious beliefs and sexual behaviour of the "other".

But I also believe that people need to put their money where their mouth is. Apologies to some of my friends, but if you believe Walmart is evil, you can not shop there, at least not with any regularity. If you believe that capital markets tend to reward callous exploitation and myopic greed, you should invest in socially responsible funds, at least partially.

I resent the idea that I can't express my ideals in my acquisitions. I do it all the time, searching out biological food, fair trade products and such.

The issue is, in the end, bloody simple. Contractors have no business advertising any kind of belief beyond their business, if you pardon the pun. If someone decides to embellish their uniform with their beliefs, they must accept that they will lose business because of it. Would Prudie say the same thing if the contractor walked in with a T-Shirt saying "Gays must die"? She gives no reason to think she wouldn't. She is WRONG. The couple should have contacted the company, pointed out the unprofessional behaviour of the contractor and asked for someone else.

A bad day

2006-08-30T20:01:00.000+02:00

Oh, where to start. There's Iran starting to enrich uranium. Well, seems reasonable under the circumstances. If you had US marines in the country next door, wouldn't you wish you had nukes?

Then there's Rummy going for another funnybone. According to him, there's not enough mention in the papers of soldiers getting medals, and too much mentione of soldiers indicted for war crimes. Funny he should mention it, the only officer present at the Haditha massacre was up for a medal. Unrelated medal? No, actually he was up for a medal for his conduct in that engagemenent...

Then there's the census report. For the first time in six (6) years, the median household income is going up. Great. Except that wages are still going down. Quandary? No, it just means that more people work. Doesn't that mean that employment is down? No, just that people that already had a crappy job are now working two or three of them.

Jeezy Creezy.

Polling statistics

2006-08-28T11:23:00.000+02:00

As long as polls are done this badly, no one should be surprised if they turn out wrong. The NPR poll linked to by the title seems to predict a possible victory for Democrats in the House. The poll looked at the top 50 "competitive" districts. The label "competitive" is based on the opinions of pundits, which is not a great start. 10 of these districts are Democratic, and in those, the incumbents seem to have a 2-to-1 advantage. Hardly competitive. But that's not the core point.

The core point is that the poll randomly checked 1000 likely voters in these 50 districts. That's only 20 per district, on average. That's simply too few to say anything per district. And per district is what matters. If in some district the incumbent is an incompetent crook, the fact that his or her constituents are dead-set on dumping his butt means nothing for the other districts. That's a crucial problem.

NPR presumably knows that, and in stead focussed on the total numbers over all the districts. The poll claims that 49% of the voters are likely to vote Democratic, and 43% are likely to vote Republican. Based on the statistical error of 3.2%, this is barely significant. In other words, if there are no systematic errors, the result is still a statistical dead heat, but only barely.

But there are serious systematic problems in the poll. A poll is only reliable if it queries the "average" voter. The respondents in the poll said that they had voted for Bush by a 49-to-46 margin in 2004. However, the districts went for Bush 58-42. That means that the poll SIGNIFICANTLY undercounts those who voted for Bush in 2004.

So, in addition to the poor statistics, add in a large systematic error. Don't get your hopes up yet...

Sensitivity training

2006-08-27T08:26:00.000+02:00

Rumsfeld is predictably quotable, as he tries very hard to be funny. He's not Santa Claus, no kidding, but he tries very hard to be Jerry Lewis. But in this case, a lot of the outrage was focused on the following:

“These people are all volunteers. They all signed up. They all are there doing what they’re doing because they want to do it. They’re proud of what they do. They do it very, very well.”

Some feel this makes US military personnel out to be mercenary, and that that is slanderous. But fighting for pay, benefits or an education technically does make them mercenaries, i.e. willing to fight for personal gain. No doubt some are in the military for purely idealistic reasons, but the majority took to the military because it was a job that was available to them, which offered many benefits and - for a long while - little actual danger (especially in the National Guard). It's a bonus that the job is seen as honorable in the US, despite the fact that it is all about killing other people, the large majority of whom are civilians (a necessary consequence of asymmetrical warfare).

But Rumsfeld didn't actually call them mercenaries, and even he is unlikely to make such a blunder. He merely pointed out that they had a choice when they signed their contracts, and that they were just being held to their words. That's not illegal, or even uncalled for. If one believes in the rule of law, one needs to accept this. The consequence of signing a contract is that you are bound by it...

Of course, this also means that some people in the military will not re-enlist, and that families of kids that want to go in the military will fight harder to stop them. But kids are kids, and the military can count on the impetuousness and sense of immortality of youth to get many of their new recruits. To keep up their enlistment numbers, they merely have to increase their signing bonuses, perhaps their pay and the benefits. This will slightly increase the cost of maintaining the military, reduce the experience levels in it, and further increase the (very large) fraction of the recruits that come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. But none of that is a big problem for any politician, Republican, Democrat or other.

Targeting civilians or combatants?

2006-08-07T21:54:00.000+02:00

Israel targets only suspected terrorists. It makes regrettable mistakes, but it doesn't purposefully target civilians. Hizbollah, on the other hand, targets civilians. That makes them terrorists.

Heard it before? Probably more than a hundred times in the past week, if you're a news junkie. So, how is it possible that Hizbollah has killed 45 Israeli soldiers, and only 36 Israeli civilians, whereas Israel has killed perhaps 250 Hizbullah fighters, but at least 480 Lebanese civilians? This was before the attack on the kibbutz that killed 12 Israeli soldiers, and brought the Hizbollah "error rate" at 39/(57+39), or 40% (there were also 3 civilian deaths that day). The IDF's error rate is 480/(250+480), or 66%. In other words, Israel kills about two civilians for each enemy combatant, Hizbollah kills almost two IDF soldiers for each civilian it kills. Who's targeting civilians?

I know that the problem lies in the armoury. The IDF has so much more firepower, it could kill many more civilians if it didn't try to avoid it. But the end result remains the same: Hizbollah does less collateral damage than the IDF. This is a crucial problem in asymmetric warfare.

Some argue that the Lebanese people are to blame for not having curtailed Hizbollah. Some of those people are in the Israeli government (not to mention its military). By the same token, all Israelis would be fair targets because they support the IDF. Actually, since most Israelis have served in the IDF, and most of the support it, it would be more true.

OMG!

2006-07-26T00:04:00.000+02:00

Unbelievable story (http://msnbc.msn.com/id/14024565/?GT1=8307). Homeless man finds 21,000 USD in bonds while going through thrash. He returns them to the shelter, and they find and return the items to the owner. The owner gives the guy $100!!!!

Yeah, so the community thought that was despiccable too, and rallied to donate about 4,000 up to now, mainly from a few big donors. But the headline reads
"Homeless man finds best reward is honesty". That's stretching things a bit. If he cashed in the bonds, he'ld be 17,000 USD ahead. That's a nice car.

Anyway, I always thought that if someone returns you money, you should give them at least 10% of it. In this case, we're not talking about an accidentally dropped wallet that one might hope to recover, but bonds that were thrown out. How does that bond owner live with himself?

Selfish greed knows no bounds.

Pedophilia - age of consent

2006-07-18T22:28:00.000+02:00

Well, everyone is having a blast with the Dutch judge throwing out the request to bar a pro-pedophile party from running in the elections. Why shouldn't I...

The party advocates lowering the age of consent (AOC), from the current level of 16 to 12. It's not clear from the blurbs whether this is a full age of consent, or whether they would allow for limits on the age difference of the partners.

So here are some thoughts:
1. AOC in Canada is 14, although under some circumstances (largely age of partner), sex over 12 is not a crime. Countries as diverse as Albania, China, Chile, Columbia and Croatia do not criminalise sex if the youngest partner is over 14. Germany also doesn't see sex over 14 as a crime, if the older partner is under 18. Similar in South Carolina, Missouri and Iowa. Countries like Zimbabwe, Uruguay and Syria have even lower ages of consent (12 or 13). Odd countries? Perhaps, but age of consent is also 13 in Spain and South Korea. In Mexico, the laws are complicated but don't necessarily criminalise intercourse over the age of 12 (again depends on age of partner, but also many local laws apply). So when this party advocates lowering the age at which sex is by definition a criminal act to 12, it is not completely beyond the pale.
2. I am at least as appaled by 70-year old businessmen playing at 20-year old waitresses as by 20-year olds hitting on 15-year olds. It may be legal in most places, but it really doesn't seem right. One has to assume that these relationships are unbalanced. And in the end, AOC rules are all about protecting the weak from the powerful, aren't they? Quite a few of these laws take into account relative age differences. That makes a lot of sense to me.
3. What is the point of criminalising any and all sexual behaviour of, say, 13-year olds? It's not like that will stop them from doing it. Or does anyone really believe that people in Tunisia don't have sex until they're 20? If you want to prohibit the 40-year old creep with a penchant for 12-year olds from acting on his impulses, you criminalize it. But you don't need to criminalize all sexual contacts of 12-year olds in order to achieve this. And yeah, I think most 12-year olds don't know what they get into when they start having sex (and they do, unfortunately). I also don't think most 16-year olds have a clue, and a good lot of 20-year olds seem to be barely sentient on the matter. But as with most social laws, you need to be exceedingly careful and target them as accurate a possible.
4. I like the idea of having these guys in a party. At least you know who they are. Probably keeps them on the straight and narrow...

In the end, the judicial ruling was largely on technicalities. Judisprudence, being more than half "prudence" is right to let these guys run. As the judge said, moral outrage is not sufficient grounds to ban a party. I think few parties would survive a moral purge, in the Netherlands or anywhere else... And as long as we're talking about a 3-people party, there's not that much to worry about.

For the record, I don't think that sex under 16 is a good idea, no matter how mature the kid seems. But I don't think that it should be illegal unless there is a good reason for it. Without having made a deep study of the matter, I would peg the first level of AOC at 13, with a progressive limit on the age difference between the partner. Full AOC would be 25. Rental agencies don't let you drive cars without extra insurance until you're 25 either... And sexual relationships with people that are younger than your own children or older than your own parents should be illegal as well.

Just my 2p.

Why the internet rules and stinks.

2006-07-04T00:08:00.000+02:00

In researching the previous post on Obama's speech, I came across "Faithfull Progressive", a blog that claims that Obama was criticizing the Religious Right as much as the Democrats. I don't think that that is correct, although he clearly defines ground rules for a dialogue between conservative christians and progressives that would not please the cynical exploiters that are prominent among the Religious Rights' leadership. But it seems to me that he addresses his two audiences - Democrats and strongly religious people - in a positive manner, urging cooperation. He's not trying to get the Religious Right to change what it's doing...

Fine, that is a disagreement in analysis. But, having just read the speech, I noticed that "Faithful Progressive" (FP) isn't exactly faithful in quoting the speech (which he does link to at the end). He quotes Obama as saying:
"While I've already laid out some of the work that progressives need to do on this, I that the conservative leaders of the Religious Right will need to acknowledge a few things as well."(sic)

The speech that he links to actually says:
"While I've already laid out some of the work that progressive leaders need to do, I want to talk a little bit about what conservative leaders need to do -- some truths they need to acknowledge. "

Now, I don't know what possessed FP to change the quote. Perhaps the transcript on the website changed in stead, since FP's quote is clearly incomplete and was perhaps cleaned up? Without authoritative sources, I can't judge who's right. But from the entire tone of the speech, I sincerely doubt that Obama was attacking the Religious Right, the actual political organisation. He was talking more broadly than that, I think. So I suspect that the transcript on Obama's web is more true to the actual speech.

In any case, it's a good example of why you can't trust what you read. Especially when it's on the internet...

Obama talking sense

2006-07-03T22:03:00.000+02:00

If you haven't heard, Barak Obama (senator of my IL) has summoned the courage to tell Democrats that if you keep ignoring 40-odd % of the electorate, indeed make it a point of pride and test of partisan loyalty to ridicule and offend them, you're going to have a tough time winning elections. Seems like a reasonable point, no? Democrats are keen to take into account the opinions of small minorities, racial, sexual and religious. How can it be controversial to suggest that we should also find common ground with larger groups? Our agenda's aren't that different, in the end.

Well, did that sound like a thousand other blogs you read recently? It could be. While I agree with the analysis, Obama's speech is not that mercenary at all. It's a great speech, one you should read.

In it, Obama discusses his own religious beliefs, in a way that I'm sure will box the ears of some of my atheist friends in Chicago - who worked hard for his campaign:

Faith doesn't mean that you don't have doubts.

You need to come to church in the first place precisely because you are first of this world, not apart from it. You need to embrace Christ precisely because you have sins to wash away - because you are human and need an ally in this difficult journey.

It was because of these newfound understandings that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street in the Southside of Chicago one day and affirm my Christian faith. It came about as a choice, and not an epiphany. I didn't fall out in church. The questions I had didn't magically disappear. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt that I heard God's spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth.

That's a path that has been shared by millions upon millions of Americans - evangelicals, Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims alike; some since birth, others at certain turning points in their lives. It is not something they set apart from the rest of their beliefs and values. In fact, it is often what drives their beliefs and their values.

And that is why that, if we truly hope to speak to people where they're at - to communicate our hopes and values in a way that's relevant to their own - then as progressives, we cannot abandon the field of religious discourse.

Because when we ignore the debate about what it means to be a good Christian or Muslim or Jew; when we discuss religion only in the negative sense of where or how it should not be practiced, rather than in the positive sense of what it tells us about our obligations towards one another; when we shy away from religious venues and religious broadcasts because we assume that we will be unwelcome - others will fill the vacuum, those with the most insular views of faith, or those who cynically use religion to justify partisan ends.

But he goes quite beyond arguing for a more effective rhetoric and a more courageous approach to engaging the American public:

Our failure as progressives to tap into the moral underpinnings of the nation is not just rhetorical, though. Our fear of getting "preachy" may also lead us to discount the role that values and culture play in some of our most urgent social problems.

After all, the problems of poverty and racism, the uninsured and the unemployed, are not simply technical problems in search of the perfect ten point plan. They are rooted in both societal indifference and individual callousness - in the imperfections of man.

And some of it is a (rather more eloquent) version of what I've been saying for years:

But what I am suggesting is this - secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square. Frederick Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, Williams Jennings Bryant, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King - indeed, the majority of great reformers in American history - were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. So to say that men and women should not inject their "personal morality" into public policy debates is a practical absurdity. Our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Moreover, if we progressives shed some of these biases, we might recognize some overlapping values that both religious and secular people share when it comes to the moral and material direction of our country. We might recognize that the call to sacrifice on behalf of the next generation, the need to think in terms of "thou" and not just "I," resonates in religious congregations all across the country. And we might realize that we have the ability to reach out to the evangelical community and engage millions of religious Americans in the larger project of American renewal.

He actually went ahead and laid out the ground rules for conservative christians to engage with the political system:

Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God's will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.

And further:
Politics depends on our ability to persuade each other of common aims based on a common reality. It involves the compromise, the art of what's possible. At some fundamental level, religion does not allow for compromise. It's the art of the impossible. If God has spoken, then followers are expected to live up to God's edicts, regardless of the consequences. To base one's life on such uncompromising commitments may be sublime, but to base our policy making on such commitments would be a dangerous thing.

Now, the following passage deserves to be committed to memory by most progressives, which Obama uses to illustrate the previous point:
We all know the story of Abraham and Isaac. Abraham is ordered by God to offer up his only son, and without argument, he takes Isaac to the mountaintop, binds him to an altar, and raises his knife, prepared to act as God has commanded.

Of course, in the end God sends down an angel to intercede at the very last minute, and Abraham passes God's test of devotion.

But it's fair to say that if any of us leaving this church saw Abraham on a roof of a building raising his knife, we would, at the very least, call the police and expect the Department of Children and Family Services to take Isaac away from Abraham. We would do so because we do not hear what Abraham hears, do not see what Abraham sees, true as those experiences may be. So the best we can do is act in accordance with those things that we all see, and that we all hear, be it common laws or basic reason.

Anyway, you should read the speech, if you haven't already.

Nutcases

2006-07-03T21:54:00.000+02:00

I used to read whatreallyhappened daily. I also read Coulter's column back then. In both cases, my interest was in the little gems that you could find there - a bit of information you hadn't heard, a perspective you might have missed, a flash of humour (intended or not). I stopped reading both of them since they became grating, repetitive, shrill. Freak shows are like that. But even now, whenever I feel too sure that there is nothing nuttier than what the Republicans are saying these days, a quick jaunt over to whatreallyhappened is enough to put things back in perspective. Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right...

Memories

2006-06-29T11:20:00.000+02:00

Yesterday, I saw a deer, a gold finch and - for the first time in years - the Milky Way. Everything else went in the bit bucket. Or should.

Was the election stolen?

2006-06-25T22:13:00.000+02:00

Rolling Stone, last bastion of freedom (apparently), published "Was the 2004 election stolen". In it, RFK Jr. expounds all the argument in favour of it. Most of it relates to statistical analysis of the results, and the exit polls. The analysis generally overstates the case based on the numbers (or rather, doesn't clarify the assumptions made). But some results do seem unlikely to be random.

But what does that mean? In case of the analysis of the results, not random means that there are unidentified processes at work that drive down Democratic turnout and/or boost the Republican one. In case of the exit polls, it means that Democratic voters are more likely to speak to a pollster (or fill out the form) than Republican voters.

And of course, there is certainly a good case that there was some voter fraud - as you can expect in an antiquated system with no national rules or regulations. In some cases the fraud was blatant. But much of the discrepancies can be due to two observations:
1) The Democratic base is livid, and very verbose about its disgust of the party in power. That explains why they speak out more. RFK Jr. briefly addresses the point, but not convincingly. The Republican base, however, was already holding its nose and voting Bush. They might have run home to wash their hands.
2) Democrats, more than Republicans, believe that the voting system is rigged. Hence, fewer of them bother to vote.

Now, it certainly is tempting to believe that there was voter fraud, because the alternative is hard to accept. Bush won with a comfortable margin, as the Iraq disaster was unfolding, and the deficits were growing. It's hard to believe that Bush represented, at that time, exactly what most of the US voters wanted.

But let's say that RFK Jr is correct, and that Bush's margin over Kerry in the popular vote was smaller, and that Kerry won the electorate. That simply proves that the electoral system is still a sham and needs to be refitted. If the candidate with the most votes, nationwide, would win the election, Al Gore would have been in the White House. But Bush would still have won over Kerry in 2004. Nothing can change the fact that about half of the voters really do vote Republican, even after Iraq, the deficits, and what not.

Of course, a choice between two parties means very little. It is hard to tell whether someone voted for Bush because they believe he is the Son of God, or because they want more tax cuts, or because they believe that abortion is murder, or because they hate Kerry's guts, or because they hate Democrats in general, or because they thought the economy was doing great, or because they thought that under Kerry the economy would do even worse. No way to tell. The same is true for Democrats. How many voted for Kerry ONLY because the alternative was Bush?

It's no way to run a country.

How many commandments do you know?

2006-06-21T20:18:00.000+02:00

Colbert's interview with Westmoreland is positively hysterical. This guy is just not with it...

Now, clearly Westmoreland doesn't know the ten commandments. Do you? Seriously? Exodus actually has a godzillion commandments, one of the most important (repeated several times) is that you can't work on sunday, on penalty of death. Don't see too many religious Americans asking Walmart to close on sundays.

Anyway, just for your handy reference, here they are:

1. Exodus 20.3 "you shall have no other gods before me". A corrolary to this one is explained a bit later: you shall not make a covenant with the inhabitants of the (promised) land. Which means, to keep the religion pure, you have to kick all non-believers out of Israel, you can't marry them, trade with them or even be at peace with them. If you wonder why the Jewish-Palestinian conflict just keeps going on, remember that one side is religiously obliged to keep fighting.

2. Exodus 20.4 No false idols. Reason given: "for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents,to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me."

3. Exodus 20.7. Don't take the name of the Lord in vain. Remember, you can cuss as much as you like, as long as you don't drag God into it. "Dog-shit Taco" is a perfectly acceptable turn of speech. Religiously speaking.

4. Exodus 20.8. "Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy". Even the slaves aren't allowed to work (hear that, Walmart?), and alien residents can't work either. Next time you see a Christian shop on sunday, ask him why he is angering God. If he says he's not Christian, say that you are and repeat the question. Pick people that don't look like they're armed.

5. Exodus 20.12. "Honor your parents."

6. Exodus 20.13. "You shall not murder."

7. Exodus 20.14. "You shall not commit adultery." Polygamy was allowed though. For future research: when was polygamy no longer acceptable. Was polyandry really ruled out?

8. Exodus 20.15. "You shall not steal." See .here for complications with that one.

9. Exodus 20.16. "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour". This is NOT the same as "don't lie". It only pertains to judiciary proceedings. You can lie your ass off unless you're under oath.

10. Exodus 20.17. "You shall not covet your neighbor's house, wife, male or female slave, ox, donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor". What? Can't even covet the slaves?

Now, the only thing that is special about these 10 commandments is that they were written in stone. But Exodus is positively piled with commandments, all straight from God. I don't see why we would forget the others? Some of them are quite amusing, such as Exodus 22.2. Some are positively scary (Exodus 22.28). But there are some really great ideas too. My favourites: Exodus 22.21 ("You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt") and Exodus 22.25 ("If you lend money to my people, to the poor among you, you shall not deal with them as a creditor; you shall not enact interest from them").

All in all, Exodus shows that modern interpretation of the Bible is highly selective. It shows that religious people do feel that they can pick and chose what they believe, at least if they lend any credence to the Torah. Religion is very malleable.

evolution

2006-06-20T19:33:00.000+02:00

Good grief. I don't understand why otherwise rational people are so unreasonable when things turn to the theory of evolution. And I don't mean those who want to teach ID alongside it. I mean perfectly reasonable, progressive people, that somehow feel so vested in the theory of unguided evolution that they feel themselves compelled to put it on some pedestal. They can actually bring themselves to write or say that it is more than a theory. I don't get that, did they all of a sudden forget how science works? We don't do any better than theories. Ever.

And the worst is that they always try to pull the rest of our scientific endeavours into the fray, either by comparing unguided evolution to the theory of gravity, or by saying that it is studied with the same means and rigour as physics, or chemistry. In the pantheon of science, evolution is a very long way away from physics, my friends. It ain't even in the same building.

Why do progressives accept the battleground that others have chosen, and bet all of science on it? Unguided evolution is a great theory, built on the basis of a very sketchy record of the past, and on an enormous and ungoing study of the life on this planet. But it is incomplete.

You know, comparing it to Newton's laws of gravity may not be a bad idea after all. Newton's laws stood for centuries as absolutely perfect. Tested over and over again, leading to numerous inventions and seriously changing the nature of our societies. Tested much, much better than the theory of evolution, one might add (after all, it's a tad easier to measure the speed of a falling item than it is to get a species to grow a new sensory organ. Or lose one...). And yet, Newton's laws are wrong. Not by much, mind you, when tested in everyday applications. Not much at all, for most practical uses. And yet, it is fundamentally, spectacularly wrong. Einstein's universe is drastically, qualitatively different than Newton's. And you can't tell them apart unless you have really accurate instruments measuring very reproducible experimental results.

Let them teach ID. Like its opponents say, there's not much to it, so it won't take much time in the curriculum. And, as the polls below show, generations of teaching ONLY unguided evolution has lead to a population that simply does not believe in it. Since 1982, the number of Americans that believe in unguided evolution has been stable and below 14%. So, allow ID in the schools, and move on to something that matters. The US lost this battle. Ages ago. ID won't harm science, in any serious way. Opposing it does.

http://www.pollingreport.com/science.htm

Filter-free reporting from Iraq

2006-06-19T12:41:00.000+02:00

Click on the title or cut and paste:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/opinions/graphics/iraqdocs_061606.pdf

No such thing as bad publicity

2006-06-15T01:47:00.000+02:00

I stronly suspect that Coulter's book is bought mainly by Democrats. For Republicans, it is either a guilty indulgence or an outright embarassment. It's not a book they will leave on their coffee tables. They might borrow someone else's copy, or get it at the library, just for a good lark.
But for Democrats, it's a great read, a gift that keeps on giving. It is a source of handy quotes, a reference work to fuel their distaste (or hate?) of the extreme right-wing of the Republican party.
Democrats must be the ones buying it. That is why Coulter goes on these talk shows, trying to paint as bad a picture as possible of it. She doesn't try to defend it, really, she wants to get the most outrageous quotes out.
Just as with shock-jocks like Howard Stern, her loyal public consists mainly of people that hate her.

Paper blogging

2006-06-13T21:03:00.001+02:00

New concept in performance art. I'm reading a Flemish paper and am going to write about the articles that strike my fancy as I read them. Yeah, a bit derivative, but what are you paying to see it? Exactly.

Page 2.
EU and Turkey are talking about Turkey's entry. About 10 or 15 years overdue, in my opinion, but it looks like it's still in time. It's not looking like it will be easy anyway, but at least things are moving a bit.
Belgian government needs to find 4.5 billion euro to get to its (rather ambitious) fiscal goals for 2007. Actually, this is pretty decent news, but there's still a long way to go - national debt is still 89% of the BNP.

Page 3:
Belgians not watching the WC that much because of the heat. Well, I ain't buying that. The Dutch look religiously. Probably more because Belgium isn't in the finals. I actually prefer the first round matches, since they involve so many teams you will not hear about again... Makes for more interesting, unpredictable matches.

Page 4:
1400 train passengers stranded in Belgium because the heat busted a powerline on the track. Maybe it IS getting too hot here. I guess I've been through those blasted Illinois summers too long...

Skipping depressing story about missing children. Perhaps in another post.

Page 11:
Three teachers at a mosque are in jail on suspicion of beating students there. Not much details. Looks good though - the kids complained, action was taken. Now start looking at the credentials of those teachers...

Page 13:
Bickering between Flanders and the francophone community. Somehow the latter managed to stop the new legislation regulating social housing in Flanders. The problem is that the Flemish community wants to demand that people living in subsidized housing should either speak Dutch or be in the process of learning it. Seems like a fair thing to ask. After all, they are living on flemish tax dollars. All they need to do is enroll in some class teaching Dutch, which will be available in the bigger cities (where social housing is generally located). There are fairly low-effort courses available that last years. So even if they don't plan to learn Dutch, they can pretend to do so with a small effort.

Page 15:
German paper (Frankfurter Allgemeine) claims that Menachim Begin was behind the failed assassination attempt on Adenauer. Begin went on to become the prime minister of Israel. Apparently he wanted to try to stop the "Wiedergutmachung" process, which was a dialogue between Germany and Israel to discuss reparations for Nazi crimes. Begin and his fellow extremists didn't want anything of the sort. Hm. Terrorist extremist makes it to president. Why did Israel refuse to talk to Arafat again?

Page 16:
Angela Cannings - see previous post - this is the woman that was erroneously convicted for murdering her infants. Looks like I remembered reasonably correctly. Horrible story. Every parents nightmare, twice over: you lose a child, then get blamed for it...

Military expenditures reached another record high in 2005. Fully 48% of it was done by the US.

Page 20:
Full page article, titled "What would you do after four years in hell?". Rather raw and no-holds-barred opinion piece on Gitmo. Written by the lawyer for one of the prisoners in Gitmo, a kid that was 14 when arrested in a mosque in Pakistan (!!). This kid has already tried to commit suicide twice this year! And then there's the forgotten prison in Bagram too...

Page 21:
Article defending the Center for equal opportunity and fight against racism, which is being targeted by the Belgian wing of the Republican party. Well written. I'm starting to like the Green! party. I'm not sure of the polemics surrounding this issue, but I plan to look into it.

Great article by attachees of the Danish Cultural Institute. Some liberal (which here means "free marketeer") used the Danish model to deal with unemployment as an example for Belgium. They said they were thrilled that people in Belgium look at Denmark to learn, but that they need to look at the broader picture. The unemployment system in Denmark has indeed some rather "liberal" characteristics: maximum assistance is limited in time (4 years) and if you refuse a job offer that is in line with your qualifications twice, you get completely dropped from the system. But as they point out, this only works in a super-social system, where the labour market is relatively unregulated (easy to hire, easy to fire), healthcare is completely free for all and sunder, students get paid between 600 and 700 euros per month (!) to study, retraining courses are paid for by the state, etc... As they put it: Denmark practices neoliberalism with a super-social safety net.

Page 28:
FABULOUS picture. It's got a kid painted in Old Glory with a big red-white-blue hat holding a sign "World cup tickets: $271 - Airfare and hotel: $2000 - Bouncing the Crechs: priceless". The US got creamed 3-0. I wonder whether he'll be at the next game holding a sign "Participating is more important than winning".

From the business section:
Belgium needs to start building more nuclear reactors. Hell yeah. Not like we have a choice.

From the culture section:
Cleese is retiring. Damn.

Oh well. Boring post. Par for the course.

Tidbits that burned into my mind...

2006-06-13T20:27:00.000+02:00

The UK is going to start taxing garbage. About blooming time. Apparently Flanders is the region with the highest percentage of recycling - about 71% of its thrash is sorted and recycled. This percentage is apparently still rising. At the very least it shows it can be done. Granted, they have put containers on every other corner, and most cities have their own recycling parks. Quite handy, since pickup from the door follows a labyrinthine schedule.

In the gross miscarriage of justice section - straight from the UK - two items. One, the big raid this month in London, where 250 police and MI5 officers raided a house in search of a chemical weapon, during which they accidentally shot someone, whome they then (afterwards!) beat up and dragged down the stairs (head banging the steps). Yeah, that one. Big oopsie. Both guys that were arrested have now been released without charges. Two, in a case I recall with horror, a woman that had killed three of her children as infants, has been released. Well, actually she was released a while back, and she just wrote about the ordeal. See, apparently, all three of these children died of SIDS. She was convicted because the experts said it couldn't happen. Four years in jail, where she received plenty of abuse (including burn wounds from hot coffee) due to the nature of her alleged crime. No one has apologized to her, least of all the expert whose testimony landed her in jail.

Words fail. I can't imagine losing a child to SIDS (not really). But then be accused of having murdered them? Good grief.

Disclaimer: all this was regurgitated from memory from the BBC news radio I listened to today. No time to factcheck, Brasil is about to play....

Hot blogging

2006-06-11T19:02:00.000+02:00

Well, finally summer here. A bit before schedule. Three days of high-twenties in a row. Very nice. On the bad side of things, I'm 1.5 for 7 in world cup matches, if I get to watch this game out. No, not in predicting the winner, just in getting to watch the games.

Iran and Mexico still tied. Awesome. Go Iran. Best thing to happen would be if they could move to the next round. They're nuts for soccer, so they can't be all that religious. Just look at the US, they're religious, so they don't care for soccer. There can be only one.... One altar, that is, and I guess that when it really gets down to it, I prefer nations that pray for their soccer players, rather than their soldiers

To all of you who are going to Hell,

2006-06-08T17:07:00.000+02:00

meet me at HellBucks in Dis while you pass through (the one at the NW corner of Bush Street and Hitler Avenue, not the ones on the NE or the SW corner, they are for Born-Agains only - check out the sign, it's simply righteous). Grande fat-free Coulterino for both of us? It's their special: bones, broken glass and ice.

Hell or high water

2006-06-08T08:58:00.000+02:00

Well, below is my result, but ignore the header. I've talked it over with Minos, and I've decided to go to Dis in stead. Yeah, I know, it's actually deeper in Hell. But the scores were tied, and I really am a city boy. I just can't imagine having to haul my bones to Dis from the second level every time I want a cup of Hellbucks, watch a Hellywood movie or shop at HelMart. Especially with the traffic jams around the bridge over the Styx in the fifth level. Ever since Coulter arrived there, the gapers' delay has been out of control.

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Second Level of Hell!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Moderate
Level 2 (Lustful)	Very High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	High
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Moderate
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very High
Level 7 (Violent)	High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	High
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	High

Take the Dante's Inferno Hell Test

GREAT IDEA

2006-06-06T12:46:00.000+02:00

Sorry, not so creative today. Found the following online diary worth reading, while trying to find a site I was one yesterday: http://irregulartimes.com

What really made me laugh was a comment on the site, from Ralph:

So when are liberals going to wake up? It’s time to tell it like it is: Republican policies are attempting to turn tomorrow’s United States into yesterday’s Soviet Union. Here’s the text of the anti-Republican ad for 2006 and 2008:
“Under the Soviet Union, the Communist government had unlimited power to spy on its own people.”
(Scenes of military march through Red Square, overlay headlines of Bush wiretapping)
“It established a system of secret prisons, where people were held indefinitely and brutalized outside of the rule of law.”
(Some scenes from the Soviet gulag, some headlines on Guantanamo torture, scenes of the cages at Guantanamo)
“It suppressed all knowledge that contradicted the ideology of the ruling party.”
(Red hammer and sickle, and Headlines: Bush censors science.)
“It used propaganda disguised as news to deceive its own people.”
(Headlines: Bush pays for propaganda disguised as news.)
“These policies spelled disaster for the Soviet Union. So why has the Republican party introduced them in the United States?”
(Catchphrase) “Republican policy: Bad for the Soviet Union. Bad for America.”

No comment

2006-06-06T12:32:00.000+02:00

Ok, I suspect it's a joke (grabbed it from a right-wing blog (http://right-mind.us/blogs/blog_0/archive/2006/04/02/42697.aspx)), but it's interesting to see what they think is funny...

===============================================

To: All Commands
Subject: Inappropriate T-Shirts
Ref: ComMidEastFor Inst 16134//24 K

1. The following T-shirts are no longer to be worn on or off base by any military or civilian personnel serving in the Middle East:

* “Eat Pork Or Die” [both English and Arabic versions]
* “Shrine Busters” [Various. Show burning minarets or bomb/artillery shells impacting Islamic shrines. Some with unit logos.]
* “Napalm, Sticks Like Crazy” [Both English and Arabic versions]
* “Goat - it isn’t just for breakfast any more.” [Both English and Arabic versions]
* “The road to Paradise begins with me.” [Mostly Arabic versions but some in English. Some show sniper scope cross-hairs]
* “Guns don’t kill people. I kill people.” [Both Arabic and English versions]
* “Pork. The other white meat.” [Arabic version]
* “Infidel” [English, Arabic and other coalition force languages.]

2. The above T-shirts are to be removed from Post Exchanges upon receipt of this directive.

3. The following signs are to be removed upon receipt of this message:

* “Islamic Religious Services Will Be Held at the Firing Range at 0800 Daily.”
* “Do we really need ’smart bombs’ to drop on these dumb bastards?”

4. All commands are instructed to implement sensitivity training upon receipt.

Why pushing for gay marriage isn't a good move.

2006-06-05T21:05:00.000+02:00

It's not a popular position in the progressive circles I roam, but I don't think that pushing for gay marriage in the US is a good idea. It would be better to first get the government out of the marriage business entirely.

No, hear me out, it's not crazy. At its root, the problem comes from the government meddling in a religious institution. You may want to argue that marriage shouldn't be a religious institution, but you'ld be fighting centuries of history there. Not smart. It is much more sensible to argue that the government should limit itself to the nuptial contract - the secular aspect of marriage. It can limit what is allowed in the contract, specify things that have to be in there, approve it, file it and enforce it.

Here in Belgium, things go something like this:

1) You get hitched "for the law", which consists of signing your marriage contract in front of a city official, who will first read you your rights and your duties under the law, and provide you with a nice leatherbound Cliff notes version of the applicable laws. Of course, before that you need to have the contract prepared and verified by a credentialed professional, who will also go into the details of what the hell you're getting into.

2) If you want to, you can go to a church and have them perform another ceremony, which will establish your married status according to that churches' rules. Or you can go to a local bar, and have the bartender douse you in martinis, and thereby declare yourself married to your community of drinking buddies. Or dance naked in a circle on the wet grass and jump over a broom. Sky's the limit.

That's how things are here, in Belgium. And in the Netherlands. In Spain, you can get married in church only, and bring the certificate to the registry, but you can also just get married in the civil ceremony. And in all those countries, same-sex marriage is legally recognized.

Separating the legal aspects of marriage from the religious aspects has many benefits:
1) It makes it perfectly clear that, for the government, you're simply in a contractual agreement. A very specific one, to be sure, but one that translates into clear legal obligations, that are spelled out to you.
2) It makes all legal benefits (and drawbacks) available to those who are allowed to legally marry. The decision to allow people to enter into this type of contract is now a purely secular one.
3) Religious people can see these legal unions as different from their own kind of marriages. So they don't need to get worked up about them. This means that extending the legal benefits to same-sex couples now becomes much easier.
4) It reinforces the separation between religion and state.

Of course, you don't get to piss off religious people with this approach, which I'm sure will disappoint some. But it is the best way to achieve a lasting status for gay marriage in the US. The push to legalize gay marriage without first separating the religious and secular aspects of it is simply bound to generate a backlash.

Why every progressive American (and most progressive Europeans) NEED to read the bible

2006-06-05T17:18:00.000+02:00

Because otherwise, you might think that the person wielding this sign has some kind of argument. In actuality, the verses they quote have NOTHING to do with gay marriage. Read it. READ IT! Okay, you're still reading this post in stead, but really, you should READ IT. Jesus is answering a very specific question on divorce. "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause?".

So, if these people want to ban divorce, they can quote Jesus here. Although, even then, they'ld really be a bit selective. Because Jesus says that you can divorce for reason of "unchastity". So, none of that "no fault" stuff, okay. So if these people want to ban divorce, except in case of adultery, they can quote Jesus. Although, even then, they're still not quite right. Because Jesus breaks down under questioning by his disciples (Matthew 19:10-12). Because the disciples thought that if you can't get a divorce just for fun, getting married would just not be worth it. So Jesus says that "Not everyone can accept this teaching, but only to those to whom it is given." That, my friends, means that if you, personally, accept the teachings of Jesus, you can't get a divorce (except in case of adultery (of your partner, you twit)). If you can't accept these teachings, more's the pity. Jesus does not condemn those who do not follow this path. In particular, he says that some people aren't born to be married (born "eunuchs"), a reference to those born gay, impotent or terminally nerdy. He does not advocate gay sex, or gay marriage, which would have been unthinkable in those times, but does say that some people are just born different, which has to be accepted. This was considerably more advanced than the times....

So, read the bible. If those who oppose gay marriage quote this passage, ask them whether they know what it is about. If they do know that this passage is about divorce, ask them whether they know Jesus' position on lying... Then ask them their position on divorce, and whether they know what Jesus DID say about gay marriage...

Youth apathy - where is the outrage?

2006-06-05T00:05:00.000+02:00

Thanks to "Is America Burning", a great blog, for bringing this issue up in an article titled "Did Student Protest End With Viet Nam?"

I agree that it is disheartening to see this level of apathy in the face of the scandalous behaviour of the US government. Let me venture the following explanations:
1) Americans are very busy, especially those most adversely affected by the scandalous policies of the US government. It is very hard to survive at the bottom.
2) It IS very hard to get anything done in the US political system. With only 1.5 parties, there are no national political organization with a vested interest in challenging the system at its roots.

On the particular issue of foreign wars, though, there is another reason why the kids in the Sixties were more motivated to participate: the draft. No explanation necessary, is there? If there was still a draft army, there would be street riots in every town in the country by now.

If I would let my cynicism run free, I would add that political activism in the Sixties had a whole lot more "fringe benefits" than it does now. Free sex and free drugs beat free pizza (and even free beer) in getting the young 'uns to attend to a rally...

I'm sorry if it sounds a bit bitter or dejected. But the US never developed a functioning democracy, and is now paying the price. I just don't see any way to structurally improve the situation in a two-party system. It simply cannot work. Somehow, long-lasting, "full-service" third and fourth parties need to appear. Where can they come from?

1) Labour unions traditionally form the core support of a socialist party. But the US unions are weak and corrupt, and many Americans seem to be culturally allergic to socialism. Decades of indoctrination, no doubt, but hard to reverse.

2) Churches can form the core support for both leftist and rightist parties. But the US churches seem reasonably happy with the current situation. It is possible that dissatisfaction with Bush's poor results on conservative issues will lead to a break between the Religious Right and the Republican party. Perhaps the RR will then go on to start its own party.

3) Either the Democratic party or the Republican party can split apart in a centrist and one or two other parties.

Unfortunately, however a third party would be formed, it would still be faced with the fact that the entire electoral system is set up against its success.

So there you have it. There will be no lasting progress until there are more parties. There will not be more parties until the electoral system changes. And there will have to be a revolution in order to have the parties in power agree to change the electoral system ...

Hypothetically, what needs to be changed in the electoral system, you ask? Well, mainly the following:
1) Compulsory voting.
2) Proportional representation.

Chances that that will happen peacefully? Zero. The US will remain subject to yo-yo power politics in the legislative branch, leaving the real power in the hands of the executive branch.

Um, no, following Washington's advice would be a disaster

2006-06-04T22:52:00.000+02:00

As the article states, Washington advocated armed neutrality. But using the Swiss as an example is rather unfortunate. The Swiss stayed out of the world wars, but that wasn't because Germany was afraid of their army. It was because they collaborated, both economically and politically, by doing such "neutral" things as turning back Jews at their border.

Would Washington have sat idly by while Germany and the USSR battled for Europe? The US would be at peace, perhaps, but it wouldn't be prosperous. The US prospers because the world economy is currently working in its favour. That is not a coincidence, but a result of its military and political preeminence since WWII. For instance, if the world starts trading in another currency than the dollar, the US will suffer. Not quickly, not drastically, but systematically, and forever. It will start the long process of leveling the playing field between the US economy and the rest of the world's.

While neutrality might have at least achieved peace at the expense of prosperity (and peace of mind), Washington's prescription of trading with everyone, no matter what, is simply horrible. Would Washington really have been selling tanks and supplies to both Britain, Germany and the USSR in WWII? Would he at least have let private US firms do it? Reagan did something similar in the Iran-Iraq war, supplying both sides, incidentally one of the great reasons that the US will never be trusted in either of these countries. Contrary to what the article states, Washington would not only send tankers and tourists to the Middle East, but also nuclear reactors, land mines, tanks, missiles, planes and cluster bombs. Delivered to anyone with money - Saddam as much as Sharon, Ahmedinedjad as much as Musharraf.

It is true that it would be unlikely that international terrorists would target the US if the US followed Washington's advice. After all, there would be no reason to, and why kill the goose that lays the golden eggs? Of course the US would sell weapons to terrorists, right? One man's terrorists are another mans freedom fighters, and - as Washington knew very well - todays ragtag rebel army can be tomorrow's government. Why pick sides? That would be interfering.

And of course, Washington would have been strongly in favor of encouraging religion in the US. With public money, if needed, since he believed that the Republic couldn't exist without virtuous people, and virtuous people are most easily created by supporting religion. Faith-based initiatives? Try witch hunts.

No, Washington would be an isolationist, unscrupulously commercial, religious-right republican if he were alive today. The fact that even he would probably not have agreed with much of Bush's actions does not mean that anti-Bush forces should promote his ideology.

Things that annoy me - number II

2006-06-03T22:13:00.000+02:00

On NPR yesterday, a Marine complains that you can't see your attackers when you are attacked with an IED. Huh? Did the US stop dropping 500 lb bombs over suspected terrorist hideouts?

Also on NPR yesterday, continuous moaning about the demise of the Big Three, prompted by sharp downturn in auto sales in May, which was claimed to be a consequence of high gas prices.
Things wrong with it:
1) There are no "Big Three" US car companies. There's only Ford and GM. Daimler-Chrysler is a European car company with a lot of US factories (and in the process of remedying that disadvantage).
2) While sales were down for F, GM and C, they were up for Toyota and Honda, both having record months. So people didn't stop buying cars, they just bought better cars. It's not like there are no frugal GM cars around, it's that they are crappy compared to what T and H produce.
3) Gas prices continue to be ludicrously low in the US. People who worry about what they will have to shell out for gas are not buying new cars. They buy used cars.

Internet hunting ... who knew?

2006-06-03T22:06:00.000+02:00

Putting paid to the idea that the US is leading the world in finding uses for the internet. You gotta read this story.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/03/world/asia/03china.html

Elaborating on Haditha

2006-06-03T21:11:00.000+02:00

I don't think that the problem is that these Marines came to see the Iraqis as subhuman.

I think modern soldiers are trained to look at the enemy as subhuman, or at least as vastly inferior. They must have that mindset, in order to be able to kill people they do not know at all, at a distance, with the push of a button or the pull of a trigger.

The problem is that this mindset clashes with reality, when the war keeps dragging on, things don't improve, and the soldiers keep losing friends and colleagues every day to an enemy that has learned to fight them. It is humiliating, to be killed by (insert your favourite expletive), and you rarely get to actually fight your attackers.

In addition, Americans (like many modern armies) believe that they are occupying countries "for their own good". That makes it even harder for the soldiers to understand their situation - why would people you try to help, try to kill you?

Putting people in such a cognitive dissonant situation is bound to do serious psychological damage.

According to Rice and co, 99% of the US soldiers behave perfectly every day. According to the top general in Iraq, it's 99.9%. Well, that means that between 130 and 1,300 US soldiers currently in Iraq sometimes wake up in a psychopatic babykilling mood. That sounds like it could be right, but it's not encouraging. It that rate holds up, the US has gained between a few hundred and a few thousand psychopaths over the past few years. People like McVeigh. Good luck...

Haditha - duh...

2006-05-31T20:33:00.000+02:00

I can't believe some of the commentary about Haditha. One has to be appaled, disgusted even, by what went on. But one can't be surprised. This is war. Humans have been waging war for millenia, and its effect on the warriors participating in it has always been the same. Any conflict that carries on long enough will lead to very human, very primal and very violent episodes such as these. From the bloodsoaked sea at Napoleon's Jaffa to the rape of Nanking, the fall of Berlin and the betraying churches of Rwanda flows a continuous scream of human anger, bloodthirst, fear, pain and death. The people that stood proudly behind these armies thought themselves on the right side of history, considered themselves generous benefactors, bringing culture, material progress, civilization, or righteous avengers for previous atrocities. They thought their soldiers heroes.

When put in life-threatening danger for prolonged periods, humans revert to their core being: animals that protect their own hides first. At any cost. Haditha wasn't the first of these gratuitous killings in the conquest of Iraq - there have been too many reports like that already - but it is the first that got noticed in the US. If you want to be surprised, be surprised that this one may actually be prosecuted. Don't be surprised that it happened.

No rights without duties...

2006-05-26T08:04:00.000+02:00

When normality isn't normal

2006-05-25T20:20:00.000+02:00

I biked to get Chinese takeout this evening. When I was halfway there, I realised how normal this felt. It briefly occured to me to take the car, because it was a little chilly, and my daughter had a last-minute desire to come along. But it was a very brief moment. It's simply not practical to take the car. How wonderful.

Let me explain. I live in Belgium, near the center of a small city. My daughter's school is less than half a mile from our apartment, butcher, baker and frituur are less than 100 meter away. We have a great little coffeehouse two doors down. The Chinese restaurant was at the other side of the town square - less than a mile away.

So I don't drive a car all that much (except for work). We even have two large supermarkets less than a mile away. So why did it strike me as strange that "not driving" felt normal?

Well, because I lived almost all my adult life in the US. In one of the most liveable cities in the US, actually: Naperville, Illinois. In our last apartment there, we had an almost perfect setup. It was about 2 miles to the city center, but there was a sidewalk all the way there. There was a small mall right across the street, with a supermarket, a Starbucks and some small restaurants. I used to walk there too. But it never, ever, felt normal. Part of it is that no one else is doing it. Outside the city center, you'll see very few people walking. If they are, they're simply taking a stroll around the neighbourhood (very rare) or exercising (reasonably frequent). Going shopping without a car? Why?

As a consequence (and reason, the way these vicious circles work), the infrastructure for walking is simply horrendous. I mentioned that there was a sidewalk from our apartment, all the way to the city center. That's rare. It was one of the reasons we took the apartment. Sidewalks often simply disappear for a few hundred yards, making them completely useless. And they're all in disrepair. Our trek to the city went over some seriously cracked concrete plates, and part of it went over a red brick path, with numerous holes in it. Twisted ankles, anyone?

Since driveways intersect the sidewalks, invariably there would be a half dozen houses where the driver decided to put their car across the sidewalk. Sometimes because the entire driveways was full of cars (and no, that doesn't mean they were throwing a party) or junk (you sometimes have to see it to believe it), but sometimes just because they couldn't care less that some people actually do use sidewalks.

Even the little jaunt to the mall across the road was never "normal". The road to cross was a 4-lane major road (#34), but with turn lanes at each side, so that you actually had to cross 6 lanes. The light was short, so you really need to get getting. And then there is this moronic "turn right on red" rule in the US, which allows you to turn right at a red light, after checking that there are no cars coming. Cars being the operative word. Many people DO NOT check for pedestrians, at least not when they're outside of the center. Certainly not when they were in a hurry.

No, walking around in Naperville was often quite pleasant. But it never felt normal. So it takes me aback how fast life without a car can feel normal. Not pleasant, not morally better, not less stressful. Just normal. Like it should be.

Shallow hagiographies

2006-05-20T21:55:00.000+02:00

Good grief. Everywhere you turn in mainstream media, you find someone or other writing a hagiography of Ayaan Hirsi Ali. If you haven't read them, there is probably no point to reading this post, but here is an example:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/19/opinion/eddutch.php

All these articles seem content to perpetuate the idea that Ms. Ali put some inconsequential lies on her visum application, for which she was disproportionally punished. But the issue with Ms. Ali's visum application is that she pretended to come from a humanitarian disaster area (Somalia), in order to profit from the fast-track immigration status that this afforded her. In reality, she left Somalia when she was 6, and had been living in Kenia for over a decade before going to Europe to visit some family members in Germany. It is then that she decided to use the crisis in Somalia in order to immigrate to the Netherlands. In doing that, she callously abused the immigration system, doing a huge disservice to those who actually are in desperate need of help. The issue came to the foreground now because she chose to stress it in a recent interview, acknowledging that she was an economic refugee, thereby mocking her own party's anti-immigration platform.

And Ms. Ali has indeed claimed that she ran from her family because they wanted her to marry a Canadian man that she had never met. This is strongly denied by her family, and is highly unlikely, considering she got help from her family in her visum application in the Netherlands. In view of her previous deceit, it stands to reason that she lied about this too.

No one doubts Ms. Ali's passion, her intelligence and her charisma, but it is hard to take someone seriously who has gone from supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, to joining an atheist pro-immigration socialist party, only to then become an anti-immigration free-marketeer. Ms. Ali may be a prominent thinker, but her thoughts are changing very rapidly, and very drastically. I don’t think she’s any less sincere when she is preaching for forced integration of targeted minorities than when she was arguing that immigration policies should not prefer educated immigrants over uneducated ones. And her support for free market capitalism now is probably as heart-felt as her support for socialism used to be. But they don’t seem to be part of her core beliefs. The only constant in her political career seems to be a willingness to sacrifice principles for political gain, and to stoke the fires of controversy and hatred. Taking a position at the neo-conservative AEI, which she did well before any of this happened, seems very fitting.

Very often, hagiographies such as this claim that Ms. Ali's departure is a victory for intolerance. I do think that that is true. A strong voice for intolerance has escaped the verdict of the voters, and the consequence of her actions, in stead being rewarded with a higher pay, and a bigger platform from which to spread her hatred. What a pity.

Thou shalt not steal. Sort of.

2006-05-17T22:24:00.000+02:00

If you are hungry, and cannot afford food, taking it isn't stealing. You are just correcting an oversight on the part of the owner of the bread, who should have given it to you upon hearing of your plight.

Socialist claptrap? Not exactly. This was helpfully explained by Danneels, a Belgian cardinal. And this isn't really new. Bishop Muskens said the same thing publicly 10 years ago (http://www.sdnl.nl/muskens4.htm) and after all, it is part of the catholic moral teachings.

This goes to show how malleable religion really is. There are few things in the bible that are easy to interpret, but the ten commandments do seem to be rather straightforward. Apparently not.

This I believe - part I

2006-05-10T21:30:00.000+02:00

There is no such thing as a Sin. That means there is no redemption or absolution, either. Live with the consequences of what you did, and try better next time.

There is no such thing as Evil. People aren't compelled by external forces to do what they do, whatever horrible things they end up doing. This isn't to say that they are necessarily responsible for everything they do. Human minds are fragile, and very susceptible to outside factors when we grow up. Nothing mystical about it, just biology.

God is not Good. While I am agnostic with respect to the existence of a deity, I feel that there is nothing less real, less human about sadness and pain, than about happiness and extacy. It's all part of life. If there is a divine plan, it's got both good and bad parts in it. Kali and Parvati as equally divine. Hinduism not your cup of tea? Think of the Nordic Gods and the Giants they continuously fight as equally essential to understanding and appreciating reality. Really want it to be in Christian terms? Think of the devil and god as two actors in the world. You may like one better than the other, but both are a part of this world. Wouldn't it make more sense if christian soldiers invoked the assistance of the devil when heading into a fight? Isn't he the one that's supposed to be in charge of that part of reality?

There are limited areas of knowledge where we can define correct answers. Scientific research is one, if we define correctness as leading to verifiable predictions, and rank correctness based on the accuracy of the agreement between theory and reality. The most impressive theory we have is QED. Nothing else comes even close. Determining the correctness of theories becomes murkier as one moves away from the hard sciences.

The Seven Mistakes

2006-05-05T18:27:00.000+02:00

Wealth without Work
Pleasure without Conscience
Knowledge without Character
Commerce without Morality
Science without Humanity
Worship without Sacrifice
Politics without Principle

Half truth

2006-05-03T19:40:00.000+02:00

People are healthier longer, so they should work longer. Not only are people able to perform physically demanding jobs later in life, fewer people have jobs that actually are physically demanding. Hands up if you've heard this one. If you haven't, check this example out:

http://www.slate.com/id/2113883/

What's wrong with this? Well, the fun thing is that this kind of rant advertises its own irrelevance, yet people insist on rehashing it. Yes, less people have physically demanding jobs. We've moved from heavy industry and farming, to clerking and bagging groceries. And it makes sense that someone that bags groceries is going to be able to continue doing so until much later in life than someone that works the field with a horse-drawn plough. At least on average. But that's clearly irrelevant, since people don't bag groceries all their life. There are less people performing physically demanding jobs, so physical problems associated with aging are less important. Most people work themselves up from the physically demanding jobs they do when they are young, to more mentally demanding jobs when they are old. And because of the change in western economies, increasing numbers of workers start off in cubicle jobs, where the physical readiness requirement amounts to the ability to get to the water cooler. And the bath room.

So the real question is no longer about physical ability, but mental acuity. When does mental alertness, ability to learn new fields, mental flexibility, start to decline to a point where wisdom and experience no longer compensate for it? This is the issue we need to face, when discussing retirement age. The simple solution - and one that does occur in practice - is to have people in mentally demanding jobs, go start bagging groceries when they no longer perform. But our entire culture is geared towards pushing people "up the ladder", away from the physical workout towards the mental one. Reverting would be damn hard on anyone's psyche. Is that why luminaries such as Saletan completely ignore this issue?

Why is the US complaining about gas prices?

2006-05-02T20:00:00.000+02:00

Because if it had to pay the same prices as Europe ($6 and up), it would have the same anemic growth. Actually, since it has been built on dirt-cheap energy, it wouldn't grow at all, it would be too desperate trying to rebuild and reorganize to produce anything.

Democracy is about not getting what you want, and how we all deal with that.

2006-05-01T21:45:00.000+02:00

Democratic governments do not execute the will of the people. They can't.

First of all, it would only work if everyone can vote for a party they completely agree with. That's not possible. In extreme cases, such as the one-and-a-half party system in the US's, it is absolutely impossible, but even with 5 or 10 major parties, it simply cannot work perfectly. So, every voter has to compromise to some extent - deciding which party he or she has more in common with.

Secondly, most parties have more than one issue to deal with. Not only do they need to prioritize between their issues, they also become susceptible to horse-trading - getting one of their ideas accepted, in exchange for dropping another. The people supporting the party may not have the same sense of priority, or may consider the deal unfair. So, while a ruling coalition may have a majority, any of its decisions may represent only a minority view of the voting public.

A democracy that closely mirrors the will of the people needs to have several major ("full-service") party. Its health is probably mirrored in the regularity with which single-issue parties participate and gain seats at the table. People need to learn to pick parties based on the degree to which their platform coincides with their own priorities, and realise that they will be disappointed, time and again. Perhaps most importantly, everyone needs to be able to distinguish between normal horse-trading and the betrayal of fundamental principles or specifics of the party platform.

The political structures to create a succesfull democracy are clearly debatable. I think that in most cases, a system of proportional representation is needed to create at least 3 or 4 viable, "full-service", longlasting parties. It's also crucial to make single-issue parties attractive without destroying the long-term stability of the system: they can get a few seats and change the focus of the main parties. I also think that in countries where democracy is unstable, or new, voting needs to be a civic duty, i.e. compulsory.

But it seems to me that the actual implementation is less important than the public's political savvy, and it's ability to compromise. A country that doesn't actively promote moderation and compromise, will have a hard time hanging on to democracy.

Things that annoy me - part 1

2006-04-07T20:35:00.000+02:00

It greatly annoys me that people pretend that suicide bombers are incomprehensible fanatics or a recent development. All nations have had decorated war heroes that took actions that put their own life in danger, sometimes against ludicrous odds, to achieve some military goal, save someone's life or take someone else's. Did everyone forget about kamikaze bombers? How about the Alamo, Gettysburg, the beaches of Normandy or the trenches of Verdun? People doing things that are suicidal, just because they are ordered to, or because they believe that they are fighting for some worthy ideal, certainly isn't a recent phenomenom, and we have lauded them if they fought for things we believed in, and vilified them if we didn't.

Perhaps suicide attacks are more wide-spread than before, but that is explainable by the simple fact that so many aggrieved people face vastly superior military forces these days. Let's be frank, attacking a well-equiped, modern military is pretty much suicide with the tools at the disposal of most second-tier armies, let alone what a rag-tag rebel group can assemble. The suicide bomber is a rational solution to the increasingly common military problem of immense asymmetry in military force.

Of course, this tool is very blunt, and many unnecessary casualties fall. The British used to shrug and call this "the fortunes of war". The allied bombings of Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were considered justified at the time, and no one has been put on trial for them, even though they almost exclusively targeted civilian populations. It's tempting to say that we should outgrow this barbarism, that we should move on. But that is easy to say when the military might is at your side.

Freedom of speech.

2006-03-28T22:15:00.000+02:00

What is the purpose of the western concept of “freedom of speech”? Some people seem to think that it means that anything can be said, at least in principle. But certainly in practice, there are limits to what can be said, depending on the circumstances. One can’t falsely advertise, can’t libel, can’t yell “fire” in a crowded theatre, etcetera. And of course, many other things just aren't done. Despite their ardent defense of free speech, no major US paper reprinted the Danish cartoons.

There are also clearly limits to what the legal implications are of this freedom of speech. Generally speaking, it only protects one from government censure. There is no freedom from other consequences, no matter how irrational, of your decision to speak your mind. For example, one has the freedom to tell one's spouse that he or she needs to get in shape, but one cannot expect protection from the argument that is likely to follow. One has the freedom to say something stupid in public, but that does not mean one can expect to escape the ridicule following from it.

Now, I believe that freedom of political speech is a pre-requisite to democracy – one should be able to discuss all realistically feasible solutions to societal problems, and be able to bring attention to almost every perceived problem in society – as well as in public figures. The latter is because the character of the person working for the public good may affect their judgement. Hence a discussion of background, education, family friends and investments are fair game. In particular, criticism of the ruling majority, and the status quo has to be especially protected, as it is essential to the workings of a real democracy.

An important part of modern Western culture is the broad public discourse on all kinds of societal subjects, which aren't always strictly political. To facilitate a societal debate on various matters, participants need to be protected to a certain degree from the consequences of speaking their mind. In particular, as long as they don’t advocate illegal actions and speak the truth (a difficult assessment), they need to be certain that the government shall not take action against them. As a matter of course, one can expect that the state shall protect speakers from illegal actions by others, but not from legal actions.

But there is no reason why the state, or the society as a whole, should protect people from the consequences of speaking their mind. If you insult a race, one shouldn’t be surprised when those insulted decide to boycott your store, or even picket in front of it. If you insult a religion, one shouldn't be surprised if its adherents take action against you - as long as those actions remain legal. One should expect protection from illegal actions - always - and from actions by the government. When people deliberately provoke others, they must understand that there can be consequences, in terms of broken friendships, uncomfortable situations, hostile reactions and outright criticism. And in particular instances, legal action can and should be forthcoming against the offender.

To complicate matters, protection should be granted to the weak, more than the strong. In a Christian nation, criticism of Christianity should be protected more than criticism of minority religions. This isn’t unfair, it simply acknowledges the balance of power. It is possible for a dominating group to legally suppress dissenting opinion. This must be guarded against.

Most important is that hate speech and purely offensive public speech do not need to be protected. On the contrary, society should actively condemn those who deliberately offend or spread hateful ideas, because they do not constructively participate in the public discourse. While no amount of offensive speech can excuse an illegal response, there is a longstanding legal concept of “mitigating circumstances”, which allows for human nature in the reaction to particularly vile or offensive speech, when determining the punishment for illegal actions. This indicates an acceptance of the loss of self-control that can result from exposure to particularly offensive speech. Society doesn't win from allowing this to happen. Ultimately, a society where hate speech is tolerated runs the risks of becoming polarized, and, paradoxically, less free. When the public discourse is angry, heated and offensive, people in the middle become blocked out from the discourse. The unwillingness to become hateful and aggressive dooms rational, composed speakers to the fringe. A society that doesn't fight hateful speech because it wants to keep all speech free, will end up with a polarized, hateful discussion that will exclude many opinions.

It is of course crucial to realise that everyone can be offended, and that some people are offended by minute things. Modern societies have so much communication of ideas, that it is almost impossible not to be offended by a good lot of it. As a matter of fact, if you're not offended by what you read, see and hear, you probably need to broaden your horizons a bit. It is therefor essential that people need to learn to deal graciously with offensive behaviour, and there is no merit in trying to avoid offense entirely. But it is in everyone’s interest to minimize the offense that is dealt to others. This is why legal limits on speech and societal conventions that achieve the same, are acceptable. Moving the boundaries of what is allowed is a slow process, that does not progress in a straight line. But this process should be reflected to some degree in the legal domain - with lawmakers and judges attempting to strike the balance. Again and again.

The simple part of freedom of speech, for the government, is not to act against political speech. The more difficult part is to act against offensive, polarising speech. Both are necessary to keep the public discourse open and free.