Astounding Issue: Kill All Carnivores?

From a Vox interview with philosopher Peter Singer:

Dylan Matthews:How do you think about the suffering of animals in the wild? Jeff McMahan has written a few interesting papers and essays implying that the controlled extinction of carnivorous species might be morally necessary, if it's even ecologically possible. Should we care about improving preyed-upon animals' lives, just as we care about animals in captivity?

Peter Singer: I welcome the discussion of that question. I think it's a good thing that people are taking this seriously and looking at it. What I think should be done about it at the moment is that people should keep thinking and talking about it and doing research into it. I don't think at the moment we've got to the point where we know enough about the suffering of wild animals, and I also don't think there's actually much of a constituency there for doing a lot about it at the moment. So I think that the research and discussion thing is where that issue should be at the moment.

IMHO this is an example of how reasoning without confronting opposing views and stubborn facts can lead to ridiculous ideas (I write "ideas" rather than "conclusions" recognizing that Singer applauds only the process, not endorsing the end.)

The Architect and the Master Bureaucrat

Lots of people attack bureaucracy along the lines of James Scott's "Seeing Like a State", arguing that a master plan, or "scheme" as the Brits would say, is always suspect because it takes no account of local knowledge and local realities.  That line of attack can be persuasive; I'm sometimes tempted to buy it and turn in my liberal's stripes.

But then I read a post like Walter Jeffries and my temptation fades away, which is rather ironic because Walter is a fervent opponent of big bureaucracy and bureaucratic schemes like NAIS (for identifying farm animals). Walter and his family have a farm in Vermont, very energy-efficient. For maybe the last 12-16 months they've been actively engaged in building a butcher shop.  They've got the foundation and walls up, with lots of work yet to go.  Walt's post lists all the complicated factors he has to take into account, ending with the fact that all his design work will end up in concrete so he can't afford a mistake.

Now building a butcher shop is complex, but not nearly as complex as building say the Freedom Tower in lower Manhattan, or any other large building or development.  But we expect architects and building engineers to be able to pull it off, and they do, normally.  So too I expect Walter to pull it off.  The success of architects and Walter renews my faith in the idea that human reason and sweat can actually create things which work, things which can include bureaucracies.

Historical Ironies--Wallace and King Corn

Tom Philpott has a post at Grist on "King Corn" stating the food movement's usual case against " the companies that dominate the global agrichemical, seed, and grain trades: Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, Monsanto, Syngenta, BASF, Dow AgroSciences, Bayer CropSciences, and Dupont’s Pioneer agrichemical/seed business."

The food movement is generally seen as a movement on the left. But ironically, the Pioneer seed business started with the Wallaces of Iowa, notably Henry Wallace, the Secretary of Ag and later Vice President for FDR and the Progressive Party's candidate for President in 1948.  He was a good progressive, meaning he had faith in the ability of human reason to transform the world, just as his hybrid seed corn

One's Belief in Reason Suffers

From a Consumer Reports piece [subscription probably required--emphasis added] on finances:

Retirement-planning strategies encourage investors to diversify beyond safe vehicles such as bonds and CDs. Our respondents who had planned were less conservative, in general, than those who hadn't. Before the meltdown, that approach benefited them, according to our 2007 survey. But it proved punishing during the unusually severe market downturn of recent months. So pre-retirees who had done more planning reported worse losses, on average, than those who hadn't planned.