Thursday, November 25, 2010

Why we should consider eliminating the TSA altogether

I think this article sums up the inherent problem with organizations like the TSA.

These are structural issues - you can't change your management or your strategy to address it; it is built-in to the very notion of what the TSA (or other security agencies) is about.

How much terrorism is acceptable? None, of course. We should never accept any. But that's actually not the right question. The question is "how much effort and money is it worth relative to the threat posed?" We answer this question every day with our police force and military and find a reasonable balance (or else we adjust). With the TSA, as the article above points out, the question simply cannot be answered. They are tasked with providing 100% security, and there is no balancing mandate to say when they have gone too far.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

China and the Nobel Peace Prize

This week Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and the Chinese government, not surprisingly, responded like a petulant child, throwing a tantrum.

Perhaps it was a dumb decision by the Nobel committee - after all, last year, they proved that they do in fact make some pretty stupid, clearly political selections. But not in this case.

China is claiming that Liu is a convicted criminal and thus the prize is a politically motivated sham. This is rich, considering that Liu's crime is purely political (and technically not even illegal, as if that matters in modern China). If Liu were a terrorist or otherwise guilty of violence or other true crimes with victims, this argument might carry some weight, but he won the prize for precisely the fact that he was advocating for human rights in a peaceful way, and the Chinese government, by convicting and jailing him, has clearly demonstrated that why he deserved the prize.

China is now taking out its nationalistic anger on Norway, this politicizing the prize in retribution for it being...politicized. That's irony, especially since the peace prize is by its very nature fundamentally political. The Chinese regime is also claiming that the prize is proof that the world does not want to see a rising China, and in doing so is displaying exactly the sort of belligerent, petty, insecure, and immature China that we in the rest of the world do not in fact wish to see. I can't quite decide if this is more irony, or if it is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The Chinese government tolerates no criticism from within its borders, but it obviously does not tolerate it from outside either. This is not how civilized countries behave. China demands to be treated with respect on the world stage, yet throwing a temper tantrum like a child because others in the world express disapproval of their policies shows that China has not yet earned the respect it seeks.

My advice to the Chinese government: Get over it and grow up, you damned crybabies. Maybe if you didn't mistreat your own people and walk all over your own constitution (which guarantees freedom of expression) and jail people for speaking their minds, then the Nobel committee wouldn't feel it necessary to reward your victims.

Monday, October 11, 2010

Deficit, Stimulus, and the Political Parties

The conventional wisdom is that Democrats believe in the Keynesian philosophy of using increased government spending as a means of stimulating the economy, whereas Republicans believe that "stimulus" is not the answer (and will balloon the deficit), but rather that burdensome taxes are a drag on the economy, and thus reducing taxes will let the economy flourish. (Feel free to substitute "liberal" for Democrat and "conservative" for Republican, if you like.) I recognize that these are broad generalizations of positions, but they're largely true, and they sound like they are quite far apart.

I am not a sufficiently trained economist to be able to comment wisely on which theory is more accurate, but I think it is worth pointing out that the two models are actually almost exactly the same on all but one count.

First of all, for all of the conservative bashing of "stimulus spending", both plans are all about stimulus. In the liberal model, government spending provides demand that the economy is missing. In the conservative model, people keep more of their money and are thus able to provide more of the demand that the economy is missing (or, alternatively, more money is left in the private sector where it can be invested.) But in both cases, the claim is that it is essentially that the economy benefits because the policy leads to more economic activity.

The theories are actually the same on the deficit as well. Conservatives like to bash liberals for ballooning deficits that result from stimulus spending, but the irony here is that these same conservatives typically advocate large tax cuts. Deficits, however, are indifferent to spending or revenues; a deficit only cares about the gap between the two, and a tax cut of $100 Billion increases the deficit (at least in the short term) but exactly the same amount that a spending increase of $100 Billion does, all else being equal.

Of course, the Democrats defend the deficit-busting spending by pointing out that if it rescues the economy, the economy will grow and generate new revenues which would otherwise be lost to the recession, and these new revenues will ultimately pay for the increased spending. And Republicans make a similar argument, namely that reduced taxes cause the economy to grow, which generates the income necessary to pay for the tax cuts. (Republicans also make the argument that reduced taxes help to "tame the spending beast," which would be great if it were actually true. Unfortunately, empirical evidence strongly suggests that this benefit does not materialize.) In any case, the theories essentially make the exact same argument that their particular form of stimulus ultimately pays for itself (or is, at least, cheaper than not doing it).

The only meaningful difference I can see here is who does the spending, the government or the taxpayers. With the spend-to-stimulate model, you can clearly see that the money is being spent, but there are legitimate questions as to the efficiency and efficacy of such spending. With the cut-taxes-to-stimulate model, the money may not go into economic activity (for example, people may save it or pay down debt), but one can make a strong argument both that people in aggregate are smarter about where to allocate their money than the government is, as well as that allowing people to make these decisions rather than their government is the "right" thing to do.

As I said above, I'm not enough of an economist as to decide this question, but I think this is really the core question that separates the two major parties. Despite all of the rhetoric and other issues around it, it's not actually all that significant of a philosophical difference.

Thursday, September 30, 2010

Regulatory Capture and Washington DC taxicabs

I flew to Washington DC's Dulles airport a few days ago. The airport is something like 30 miles outside of the city, and there is no metro service to/from the airport, so taxis and shuttles are pretty much the only choices for getting into the city if you don't rent a car. I took a taxi, and realized that the system serving Dulles is truly messed up.

Specifically, for regulatory reasons, only one company is allowed to pick up at Dulles airport, and that company is not allowed to pick up in DC city limits.

The airport actually highlight the fact that only this one company is allowed to provide taxi services, as if it's some sort of benefit to the traveling public. But this seems to me to be a total scam.

After all, these rules mean that each fare from the airport to DC must return empty to the airport, and each fare from DC to the airport must return empty to the city. As a result, taxis are consuming twice the necessary fuel for each passenger, are losing revenue-generating opportunities while dead-heading (it takes more than a half an hour to get between the airport and the city if there is any traffic), and are making traffic that much worse by the fact that twice as many taxis are on the road as are truly necessary to serve the round-trip passenger traffic. Fares, as a result, are undoubtedly higher than they need to be to compensate for these expenses and inefficiencies.

What we have here is a case of regulatory capture, which usually at least serves the interests of the industry that provides the relevant service. (See another example of this in Louisianna, where regulatory capture protects the funeral business.) But here, it seems to serve nobody's interests, since this cannot possibly be good even for the taxi drivers who must dead-head one-way for every Dulles passenger.

I wonder why this insane policy continues at Dulles.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

What's the matter with "Elite?"

One of the clearest signs of populism and demagoguery that I've noticed is using "elite" as a dismissive term for an amorphous group of people who think they're better than "us" or who otherwise are not sufficiently tuned in to what is happening in the real world. This happens often when people deride politicians in Washington DC, or scholars in their ivory towers at universities. The follow-on is invariably that we need "folks like us" in office, because only "folks like us" understand us. Just listen to Sarah Palin and you'll see outright disdain for "elitism."

I think this is a shame. Obviously, to the degree that people are disconnected from reality or behave as if they're superior to everyone else, that's a problem and should not be tolerated. But very few politicians or academics (or other members of the otherwise-not-well-defined "elite") are actually guilty of either of these sins.

Rather, they're guilty of either (a) being part of a governmental body that is empowered to do something that affects "us" from a distance, or (b) being smart and well educated.

Being part of a governmental body is not a sin of the participant, it merely makes one a bureaucrat. But it makes little sense to blame the bureaucrat; if we want to change policy to bring more things local, our system has ways to affect such changes.

But it's the "being smart" part of "elitism" that I think is really problematic: we create an atmosphere where intellectualism is a sin (see again Sarah Palin - compelling in many ways, but not an intellectual heavyweight). The irony here is that this slur on "elitism" typically comes from people who consider themselves hard working, and who feel that ivory-tower "elitists" don't have to work hard like they do. And yet, we (and they!) value truly "elite" people like Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett and so forth - people who are an "elite" group by any reasonable definition of the word.

We should all aspire to be the smart, educated (even if they don't have college degrees) intellectuals that these elite people have. That's the best hope for our country, I think.

Tuesday, July 06, 2010

A defense of "spreading the wealth around?"

I just finished reading The End of the Free Market by Ian Bremer. Great book (and fairly quick read), describing the differing approaches to market based capitalism in the West, which has a fairly free-market approach to the economy, and in other nations, most notably China, which use capitalism and markets but have a much heavier government hand in them.

The central thesis of the book - which makes sense to me - is that there are two main models for capitalism (across a broad and continuous spectrum). In the "free market" model, exemplified to varying degrees by the US, Japan, and most of Europe, the goal is economic growth. In the "state capitalist" model, best exemplified by China and Russia, markets are used primarily to preserve and strengthen political power; wealth creation is not an end unto itself, but rather a means of keeping stability.

Bremer obviously goes into a lot more detail about the consequences of this, and I recommend the book, but it got me thinking about a slightly different issue.

Back in the campaign, Obama got flack for saying that we need to "spread the wealth around." And I realized that there are two ways that this phrase could be interpreted.

If one assumes that Obama is an unrepentent leftist/socialist/communist, one could reasonably interpret "spread the wealth around" to be a Robin Hood call to take from the wealthy and give to the poor. If that's what he meant, then I condemn the statement on just about every level as being a bad and immoral idea. For just a few examples of failures to "spread the wealth" in this way, look no further than the Soviet Union of a hundred years ago, or Zimbabwe of ten years ago.

But there's another, far more benign interpretation of what he said. (And while I believe this interpretation is what he meant, I'll leave it to you to decide which he meant.) That interpretation is that we need to make sure that the opportunities for wealth creation are broadly available. I.e., we want to have a dynamic, broadly diversified economy, which makes it possible for anybody who is willing to work hard to do well for themselves.

I've blogged before about how I don't think that the income gap is a problem per-se, rather it's a symptom of a concentration of economic opportunity, and that likely is a problem. After all, the United States is wealthy and stable today in large part because it has done well at creating this broad base of opportunity. One need only look at other countries where the economy is highly concentrated in just a few sectors (such as, say, oil) to see that concentration of economic activity is almost always a bad thing.

And it makes sense that it would be a curse: after all, if the government is reliant upon a single industry for the majority of its revenues, then one should not be surprised when that government nationalizes the industry, or when it ignores or mistreats the bulk of its people (from whom it generates no meaningful revenue) in order to satisfy the goals of the cash-cow industry. After all, the old adage of "he who pays the piper calls the tune" applies - it's only natural that governments will become corrupted by dependency on concentrated economic power.

This is why an income tax or a VAT, or something like that is actually a good thing. I don't mean that as a defense of high-taxes; I don't advocate high taxes at all (merely sufficient taxes to pay for the spending and debts we incur.) But the beauty of these sorts of taxes - when not overly burdensome - is that they are broad-based. This means that the government must be responsive to the population as a whole because they are the source of its revenues. And it gives people some "skin in the game" - they can hold their government accountable because they are paying the bills.

In other words, if you want to "spread the wealth around" as a way of directly treating the symptom of a wide income gap by punishing the rich to give to the poor, you are asking for trouble. But if you want to "spread the wealth around" by making sure that we have a strong, broad-based economy with lots of opportunities, which will have as a side-effect the growth of the middle class (and a corresponding narrowing of the income gap - which is absolutely a form of "spreading the wealth around"), then I think this is something to which we should all aspire.

Tuesday, June 08, 2010

Religion vs. Science

I've never quite understood the perennial conflict between religion and science. I've commented indirectly on this in the past, but I think it's worth addressing the issue head-on.

Science and religion are fundamentally different things. I'd use the common analogy that comparing them is like comparing "apples and oranges", except that those are at least both fruits. In this case it's more like apples and screwdrivers. An apple is a tasty and nutritious fruit, and the fact that it sucks as a fastening tool doesn't diminish its value at all. Similarly, one doesn't worry about the taste and vitamin content of a screwdriver.

Yet we seem to treat science and religion as if they actually encroach each other's turf. I think we get confused when we see such encroachment.

As I see it, religion (whether formal and organized, or informal spirituality) provides 3 specific roles in human life: it provides a moral/ethical framework, it provides a cultural framework (traditions and norms of behavior), and it provides meaning. And faith is an integral aspect to each of these, as it must be: while I suppose one can make utilitarian arguments to suggest that one moral position has a net human benefit, no moral system is strictly utilitarian. And one certainly cannot "prove" that one cultural tradition, or one interpretation of the meaning of our existence, is "correct." Ultimately, one's embrace of a particular culture, understanding of meaning, and moral system must be based on faith.

Science addresses none of those three areas. Sometimes science is viewed as answering "why" (as in "why does the world behave the way it does?"), which arguably encroaches on the "meaning" attribute of religion. But I think it is more accurate to say that science helps us answer not "why" but rather "how." For example, Newton's theory of gravity says how the apple falls from the tree to the ground. But it doesn't actually answer anything as to why the world is set up such that gravity works that way.

In answering questions of "how," science is fundamentally based on direct evidence, predictability, repeatability, and constant revision/refinement. None of these are attributes of religion. But that's precisely my point: since science doesn't do the things that religion does, and religion doesn't do the things that science does, it seems to me that there is no reason for these two areas of human life to come into conflict.

The big-bang theory provides an explanation for how the universe came to be (perhaps correct, likely to be revised/refined), but doesn't say anything about why it came to be. The creation story from the Bible doesn't explain how God created the universe, but pretty clearly provides a statement of why we're here.

Religion does a truly lousy job of answering "how." Creationism simply doesn't cut it as an explanation for how we got here (nor does "Intelligent Design," for that matter). Nobody ever successfully predicted the weather or created a new medical treatment or designed a car using the Bible or Koran as their guide. And science does an equally lousy job of explaining why young children die of disease or whether stem-cell research or abortion are ever appropriate or under which circumstances.

One of them is an apple, the other is a screwdriver. I leave it to the reader to decide which is which.

Sunday, April 04, 2010

Tea Party - Good or Bad?

OK, I gave this a loaded title. Loaded in the sense that it implies that the Tea Party - like almost any political party - can be labeled "good" or "bad" (despite what Glenn Beck thinks).

I think the simplest way to sum up my attitude toward the Tea Party folks is this: right concerns, wrong approach.

One of the biggest Tea Party concerns is deficit spending, and I have to say I completely agree. This could well be the biggest threat to our long-term economic future, and we need to get our debt in order, no doubt. I understand that we just came through a very nasty recession and I don't know enough about economics to say whether or not Keynes was full of crap for his prescriptions on what to do during a recession. But we're emerging now, so whether or not Keynes was right, his prescriptions for stimulus spending no longer apply, so getting our national balance sheet in order should be priority one.

And I also agree that what makes our country the greatest on earth - and what has made it so successful economically and with so much innovation - is the freedom we all enjoy. Cripple that with government mandates, heavy-handed meddling, stupid regulations, etc., and you are killing the goose that keeps laying golden eggs.

My main point of disagreement with on political grounds with Tea Party folks is on the "TEA" part - i.e., "taxed enough already." While nobody likes paying taxes, I think it's hard to make the case rationally that Americans are substantially over-taxed relative to the benefits they receive from their federal government. This is, of course, a subjective view, and it's hard to argue that government couldn't be more efficient and thus get more done with fewer tax dollars, but I'll go out on a limb and say that our federal government does a reasonable job. Not a great job, but a reasonable one.

So I actually mostly agree with the Tea Party on basic philosophy.

But I could never join a tea party rally because I think the Tea Party methods miss the mark in 3 critical ways.

First, the Tea Party movement is so blatantly partisan that it is hypocritical, which completely undermines its credibility and appeal. Under George W. Bush, TARP was passed and we bailed out AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac. A few grumblings from the right, but the phrase "tea party" had not even yet been invented. There were no mass protests. Then Obama got elected and essentially continued the policies started under Bush: he signed a huge stimulus bill and bailed out GM and Chrysler. These were not novel moves, they were a continuation of a trajectory started under Bush, but he got labeled a socialist for doing so, despite the fact that it was different in no meaningful way from what Bush had done. These actions are either socialist tyranny or they aren't; the political party of the actor doesn't change it. Those who cry "tyranny" about the behavior of one leader but forgive that same behavior of another have obviously lost sight of the fact that tyranny knows no political party.

Secondly, the movement offers lots of complaints but few constructive solutions and policy proposals. I know what they oppose, but I actually don't know what they support. They complain loudly about many things - taxes, "loss of freedom", "socialism", but I have yet to hear something that an elected official could do that they would approve of that would actually solve the problem, other than the ever vague "cut spending" (which always has the subtext of cutting "somebody else's spending.") I think the shouts of "keep your government hands off of my medicare" last summer pretty sell summed up the schizophrenic issues here.

The other "policy" here I think can be described as "starving the beast:" the classic approach of controlling government spending by limiting revenues (i.e., limiting taxes). Great idea, except that the past 30 years have shown pretty decisively that starving the beast does nothing to rein in spending, and therefore only exacerbates debt and deficits. I.e., despite all of the theory, all of the actual data suggests that starving the beast simply doesn't work as a tactic. Oops.

Finally, while the movement has a commendable focus on freedoms, it is very confused as to which are real and meaningful threats to those freedoms as opposed to abstract or imagined freedoms.

For example, the movement focuses on real but mostly abstract freedoms like the right not to carry insurance (ignoring the fact that this "freedom" imposes very real - and expensive - costs on other taxpayers) and on imagined threats to freedom like gun rights being taken away (ignoring the fact that gun rights have - so far - actually expanded under Obama). And yet there has been silence from these quarters on very real, tangible, and significant erosions of our freedoms such as increased restrictions on our ability to fly (no fly lists with no due process or appeals process, restrictions on our ability to carry our personal belongings on-board aircraft), or warrantless wiretapping, etc.

I understand that these things are done in the name of national security, but these are very real limitations to our freedoms for a theoretical improvement in security. And that's a very slippery slope. Given the choice between a mandate to carry health insurance (wow, that sounds almost as controversial as a mandate to brush my teeth - it may be a mandate, but at least it's for something that I actually want!) and having a government spook access my email or telephone conversations, I'll take health insurance, thank-you very much. Yeah, in the abstract, I don't want government telling me to buy health insurance, but in the real world, I would want to buy it anyhow.

So I think my conclusion with regard tot he tea party movement is best summed up as: "right issues (mostly), wrong battles."

Thursday, March 11, 2010

When is terrorism not terrorism?

When is terrorism not terrorism? When it would be politically bad to speak of it as such. Janet Napolitano recently declared that when Joe Stack flew his airplane into the IRS building, it was not an act of terrorism.

I can see that the definitions of terrorism are controversial and subjective enough that one can come to different points of view. But her logic is twisted. Specifically, she says this:

"To our belief, he was a lone wolf. He used a terrorist tactic, but an individual who uses a terrorist tactic doesn't necessarily mean they are part of an organized group attempting an attack on the United States"
Fair enough - there is indeed no reason to think Stack was part of an organized group. But look at what she says here: "he used a terrorist tactic." The definition of terrorism may be a bit squishy, but I would think that the one thing we'd all agree on is that the use of a "terrorist tactic" (however squishy that is to define) would make one a terrorist. After all, for whatever definition you have of "terrorist tactic," if you don't use a tactic that meets that definition, you're not a terrorist, and if you do, then you are.

A big learning of the past decade, I thought, was that we are not at war with "terrorism," that we are at war with "terrorists." And this distinction is driven entirely by the fact that "terrorism" is a set of tactics, and terrorists are those who employ those tactics.

Joe Stack was not part of an organized group. Good. He also thankfully did not cause nearly the harm that he could have, also good! He's not foreign, you can decide whether that's good or bad. But since when have we ever included organization, competency, or nationality as a criteria for whether or not one is guilty of terrorism?

Napolitano went on to justify this characterization, saying that "lone wolf" actors like stack is not where DHS should be focusing its resources. This is a perfectly fair argument to make. But she shouldn't take the cowardly approach of defining it away from being terrorism to support this position.

Monday, March 08, 2010

Am I a liberal? Or a conservative?

While I have a great disdain for ideology, that doesn’t mean I don’t have principles that guide my points of view on various issues. I think the key word here is "guide."

One can usually do a pros and cons analysis for any given approach, and rarely are both of these columns completely empty. The rational thing to do, it seems to me, is to look at the pros and the cons and make a judgment (and it is inevitably a judgment, with all of the human subjectivity that implies!) as to which side outweighs the other.

The problem with ideology is that it turns gray issues into black-and-white: it says that the presence of something in one of the two columns (pros or cons) completely negates everything on the other side. The trouble is, the world is gray, and being gray does not preclude making smart policy decision.

Anyhow, here are some of the principles that guide my political thinking. I'll leave it to you to decide whether I'm a conservative or a liberal.

Why I’m a liberal:
  • I believe that freedoms are not absolute, that it is OK under certain circumstances to give up some freedom for the sake of a better society. For example, I hope even conservatives can agree with: I give up my right to drive anywhere I want in the road because the convention of everyone driving on the right side (here in America) keeps everyone safer. This is admittedly a trivial example; the disputes obviously come as the degree of freedom encroachment increases as to where to draw the line. (I think, for example, that the burden imposed on flying by the TSA is too much).
  • I believe people should be allowed to unionize, although I think it’s almost always a bad idea to do so.
  • I believe that markets are often imperfect, and that reasonable and smart regulations enhance them. They key word here is "smart." Regulations are not inherently bad; unfortunately, it's very easy to create bad regulations or regulations with unintended consequences. In any case, markets need a level playing field, consumers and investors need transparency, and externalities (such as environmental issues) need to be accounted for.
  • I am an environmentalist and a conservationist. See above about externalities, but the bigger issue is that market forces usually do not account for harm to the environment, nor do they typically provide sufficient reward to conserve species or enhance the environment; this requires the public sector.
  • I believe there are some things that government is best at. I suppose this isn't controversial - even conservatives admit that things like national defense are properly the realm of the government.
  • I think it's OK for the government to try to ensure that it's people get educated and that there is a sufficient safety net that job market liquidity is maintained.
  • I dislike guns, and I suspect that on balance gun owners are no safer than the rest of the population. I support sensible regulations on them.
  • I believe that taxes and other revenue should support the level of spending that we choose (via democracy) to have.
  • I supported the bailout because I believe (although I cannot prove) that the economic recession would have been far worse otherwise; increasing the deficit, I fear, was the lesser of two evils.
  • I believe that the 1st amendment unambiguously requires a separation between church and state.
  • I support the ACLU.
Why I’m a conservative:
  • With freedom comes responsibility. The government shouldn't come to save you, shouldn't be the one to create a job for you.
  • I believe in a strong national defense.
  • I have an instinctive bias against unions; while there may be a few exceptions, most have long since outlasted the purpose for which they were created and now are an impediment to innovation, improved productivity, and economic growth. I think they're almost always counterproductive for their members. That said, I support the right to form/join one; I just think it's almost always a bad idea.
  • I am not impressed with our public school system. A few examples: I have little sympathy for teacher complaints about low pay. If you don’t like it, quit. When schools can’t hire enough teachers, pay will go up. I think teachers unions are a huge impediment to improving education. I think charter schools and other innovations should be tried more broadly.
  • I believe that government should only do those things that are worth doing and that only government can do.
  • Bad regulations are a huge problem and should be modified or eliminated.
  • I believe markets as the best way to solve most things and market-based solutions should be preferred before government-based solutions unless there is strong evidence that they will not work. Even for environmental problems. For example, this is one reason why I favor a carbon market rather than a carbon tax (a government-based solution); I think the market would inherently adjust more quickly and accurately than a tax would.
  • I support the right of people to arm themselves to defend themselves (even if I don't think that's a particularly wise approach in general).
  • I believe that taxes should be as low as possible.
  • I believe government spending should be as low as possible.
  • I do not believe it is appropriate to deliberately attempt income redistribution.
  • Our deficit and national debt are out of control and are a huge problem. I believe that budgets should be balanced except under extraordinary circumstances, or at least the national debt should be no more than about 10% of GDP.
  • I believe in the first amendment, allowing people unfettered ability to speak their minds and to practice any religion they choose.
  • I support the ACLU because I believe in the personal freedoms that they defend. Yes, I list this as a conservative point of view because I think the ACLU actually supports conservative values and limits on government intrusion.
I could probably list more, but these are the ones that come to mind right now.

Monday, February 22, 2010

Our anti-gun president?

One of the things that I've noticed in the virulent anti-Obama rhetoric is the notion that, as a liberal, he wants to take away all of our guns.

I'm sure he's no NRA member and he probably does support gun control laws, but today I noticed that the first piece of gun-related legislation to pass and take effect under his administration expands gun rights by allowing loaded guns in national parks. Not exactly the action a rabid-anti-gun fanatic would take.

The thing that annoys me the most about partisan politics is the habit of starting from a conclusion and filtering facts based on that, rather than vice-versa. Nobody would ever mistake Obama for a conservative, but it's pretty clear that at least on some fronts (like gun rights), he's not the communist/socialist monster he's portrayed to be either.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Terrorism or not?

Today a guy crashed his single-engine plane into the IRS building in Austin Texas because he was angry with the government and its tax policies.

Horrible tragedy, and I worry that it will lead to more senseless and ineffective restrictions on our freedoms (particularly freedom to fly), but what caught my attention here was something more academic.

Officials took pains to stress that this was a criminal act and by and large studiously avoided the "T" word - "Terrorism." Interesting that they should do so. I wonder why? This looks and feels like domestic terrorism to me.

The word "terrorism" is notoriously difficult to define. I've always used as a basic sniff-test definition any act of violence that is specifically targeted against civilians or non-combatants for the purpose of making a political statement.

By that definition, I can't see any semantic distinction between what Joe Stack apparently did today and what 19 Saudis did on Sept 11 2001.

Perhaps my definition is inadequate? I've tried on a number of variations of the term, but I have found none that classifies 9/11 as "terrorism" yet excludes today's event and still works for other "obvious" examples of terrorism.

For example, if one insists on the presence of religion, which does distinguish 9/11 from today, then one must conclude that Timothy McVeigh and the Unabomber were not terrorists.

Today's events do appear to be more out of personal revenge than to advance a broader cause, but even that feels more like a matter of degree, not a fundamental distinction. And after all, crashing a plane into a building with hundreds of people inside sends a very broad message of intimidation and fear regardless of whether that was explicitly intended.

I'm curious if any of my readers have a definition of terrorism that yields a positive match results for "obvious" terrorism cases like 9/11 or Timothy McVeigh, yet yields a negative for today's sad events.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Personal mandates to buy insurance

One of the many controversial pieces of the health care legislation being discussed in congress (perhaps ready to be eulogized?) is a requirement that people purchase health insurance. Some have raised a question as to whether this is constitutional, as it appears to be the first time the government has required a citizen to purchase a product simply for existing in the country.

Not being a lawyer, I have no idea whether or not this argument has legal merit. But I will offer the observation that we do have precedent for something like this in our requirement to educate our children. This obviously does not apply to every citizen, but to the citizens who choose to have kids, we tell them "you must get them educated."

We actually go a step further, in a way that is analogous to the healthcare bill: we offer a government "public option" (public school), which you can opt out of (private school or home school). In fact, the education scenario is actually harsher than the health-care scenario, since the health-care proposal doesn't have a public option. And with education, if you choose to send your kids to a private school, you still have to pay your pro-rata share of taxes towards public education.

There are actually other existing analogous mandates as well. We require drivers to wear seatbelts and to carry insurance because of the burden that an unbuckled and/or uninsured driver can place on society if they are in an accident. If we were willing to turn away uninsured drivers from emergency rooms after an accident (which we aren't), or had some way that the victims of accidents could be compensated without the driver carrying insurance, then it could make sense to relax these requirements. But until we do, the damage a driver can potentially do is sufficient to justify the imposition of a purchase requirement for insurance.

Health insurance is quite similar in this regard. If we were willing to say that only people who can pay out of pocket or who have insurance could get treated at the emergency room, then there'd be an argument against a personal insurance mandate. But as long as people can carry the risk of being a big health-care cost to the system, then it seems reasonable to require them to mitigate that risk by carrying insurance.

I don't mean this as an argument in favor of the health care bill, just as a reason that we shouldn't freak out about the notion of the government requiring citizens to purchase some form of insurance.

Are teachers professionals or auto workers?

Last night I saw a great talk by Geoffrey Canada, who is an educator who has spent his career trying to change the culture in Harlem to one where education is valued and where kids realize they have opportunities beyond the streets. It was a good talk, with something of a church revival feel (lots of people in the audience obviously were already true believers).

He had a few choice things to say about teachers, though. First was the obligatory point that if we want success in education, we need to treat them like the professionals that they are, and that it's hard to attract talented professionals if you don't pay them like professionals.

But then he made a number of points that I suspect would make many teachers - particularly unionized teachers - uncomfortable. For example, that they need to work really hard (i.e., he makes no apologies for the fact that his schools run from labor day to the first week in August). Or that they need to be open to change, to experimentation, to measurement. He decried how difficult it is to make change, and called out the unions as one (but by no means the only) source of this resistance.

It got me thinking: teachers need to make a decision. Are they professionals or are they blue-collar workers? While there are certainly some professional unions, most of them - and in particular the ones which tend to impose the most innovation-resisting work rules - tend to be the domain of the blue-collar space.

If they want to be treated as professionals, who must live and die by their merits, then perhaps unionized teachers should think about how to act like professionals.

Monday, January 25, 2010

A good definition of "independents"

Or at least I think this Newsweek article about Obama's relationship with independents defines them in a way that describes my attitudes pretty well:

They yearn for "good government"—government that is open, fair, efficient, free of special interests' domination, and nonpartisan or bipartisan in spirit. They find no glory in ideological combat; they see it as destructive. They search for leaders who exhibit a sense of good will. They tend to fret about deficits and debt, but not in a reflexively antigovernmental way. They are not against social programs, but want them administered with old-school thrift. They are not "centrists" in the sense that they exist in some mathematical middle ground between "left" and "right." Nor are they necessarily angry "populists," eternally resenting and distrusting anyone with any power. They are outsiders who wish Washington were a better place

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Brown victory in Massachusetts

So Massachusetts elected a conservative Republican to succeed Ted Kennedy. I'm not a fan of many of his positions. For example, I do not support waterboarding (I think it undermines our values and is not terribly useful), I support some form of cap-and-trade, and I think our health care system is flawed (although I don't claim to know enough to accurately judge whether the Democrats' proposed overhaul would make things better or worse).

But I'm actually happy that he won. Why? Because regardless of how I feel about his individual positions, I am a fan of competition. Having one party which is able to exert its will unchecked seems to me to be far more dangerous than any particular particular issue going some way that I don't like. Competition is good in the marketplace, and it's good in government because it reins in the worst excesses of either side. Compromises in legislation and policy are ugly sausage making, but nevertheless it's necessary to get any sausage at all, much less sausage that is edible.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Punishing banks

Today the Obama administration is proposing hefty new taxes on large banks, including ones that never took TARP money or have paid it back.

This has "bad idea" written all over it. It is nakedly vindictive and punishing people and companies for the sin of bad business practices. (And where the greater sin of actual fraud took place, tax policy in place of judicial action simply makes no sense, especially since it punishes the honest as well as the guilty.)

I don't mean to diminish the emotional appeal of the proposal. All taxpayers are (or should be) justifiably angry that they had to bail out the industry, and it is absolutely unseemly to see those very banks handing out huge bonuses to their executives. Alas, emotion and smart policy are rarely connected, and today's proposal from Obama is populist pandering at its worst.

But if we calm down for a moment and look at the situation, we see that we had banks that were teetering on the brink. We held our noses and gave them billions of dollars with the express goal of stabilizing them so that they could live another day to make another loan. They did, and in fact have been making profits (which is precisely the key ingredient to the very stability we wanted) and those banks that have been making profits have been paying back the TARP money. Wasn't that precisely our best-case scenario?

In the case of one of the banks most vilified for bonuses, Goldman Sachs, they paid it back in full (and my understanding is that they never wanted the money in the first place). In other words, they did exactly what we asked them to do, more quickly than we expected, and now we want to punish them for it?

There are many good reasons for reforming the financial industry. In particular, we need to ensure that no company is "too big to fail" (as I've posted before, this is not a statement of size per se but rather a statement of systemic risk posed by a company) so that we can let companies that make bad bets fail without worrying that they will bring down the entire economy with them.

This tax proposal from the administration is nothing more than a feel-good measure that punishes the banks for playing by the rules of the environment in which they found themselves. The only word I can think of for this is "stupid." If there was fraud, prosecute it. But if you just didn't like the way that banks responded to the incentives of the environment in which they operated, don't blame the banks - fix the incentives and regulations.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

A great article on our response to terrorist threats

As usual, Fareed Zakaria pretty well captures my thinking about how we should (and should not) respond to terrorist threats.

I think he nails it that having us spend billions of dollars making travel miserable for millions of innocent non-terrorists and diverting planes and scrambling swat teams whenever somebody crosses into a secure area that wouldn't have been secure if not for the threat of terrorism seems like doing the terrorists jobs for them (admittedly, and thankfully, minus the bloodshed). But to the critical point: it doesn't make us any safer, it is a huge drain on our economy, and it perpetuates the very fear and tension that the terrorist seeks to create. How is that possibly justifiable as "defeating terrorism?"

Tuesday, January 05, 2010

The Israeli model for the US?

I've seen a number of posts such as this one since the failed Christmas bombing attempt about whether or not it's time for the TSA to adopt more Israeli-style security methodologies.

I completely agree that the TSA seems to be a bureaucrat's idea of security rather than an actual security mechanism. While I'm sure that it actually does prevent the casual/amateur/copycat/wannabe terrorist (and that's a good thing), I think that the harm it does in terms of false positives (i.e., people getting busted not because they actually are a security threat but because they break security-related rules, resulting in a security scare) and overall expense and hassle far outweighs the benefit. And as the Christmas attempt shows, any halfway trained professional can get through TSA-style security.

The Christmas attempt also shows that fellow passengers are among the best security mechanisms available. They stopped Richard Reid, they stopped this guy.

In other words, we are spending billions of dollars and untold delays and hassles for the appearance of security, without actually providing significantly improved security. And I would argue that appearance of security is worse than actual security, because it diverts attention and resources from finding true threats.

Which goes to prove the next point, which is that the folks advocating Israeli-style security for the US are on the ball when it comes to the fact that it is not about x-rays and removing shoes, it's about behavior. While I'm not wild about the intrusiveness of this approach, it's certainly a lot more effective and a lot more efficient.

My main concerns with Israeli-style security are twofold: scalability - we have dramatically greater numbers of air passengers, and the necessary intrusiveness which violates both our explicit constitutional protections and implicit expectations with respect to the degree to which we have to prove to our government that we have the right to travel before we are allowed to do so.

Nevertheless, I think we could learn a lot from Israel in this space and adjust our procedures to focus more on what works rather than on what "looks" secure. I suspect that we can both improve our security and lesson the burden, if only we were to take a data-driven approach to the problem.