The Safety of Crowds

I've often thought but never posted that our (ordinary citizen) safety in the US is that of being in a crowd. But this post, via Volokh shows that others can feel safety in a crowd:

"The Volokh Conspiracy - -: "AP reports on some incidents, and quotes Houston Police Capt. Dwayne Ready, who makes a good point — in a way obvious, but perhaps not entirely clear to every one:

“I think the key element in looting is the fact that those who would not otherwise engage themselves in criminal activity (join in) and believe they will be able to hide in the crowd,” Ready said. “It’s the difference between an unlawful assembly and a riot. Essentially (looting) is theft but I think its when the crowd believes they can hide against the anonymity of a large crowd engaged in the same kind of conduct.”"

New York Times Is NOT PC

From yesterday's Times comes this:

The Case of the Servant With the Fur Collar - New York Times:

"Why was she wearing fur?

That was one of the first questions experts asked when they began studying a 17th-century portrait of a woman who had the unmistakably stolid face of a servant but was decked out in a sumptuous fur collar. And why did the light on her face appear to be reflected off the dark surface of that collar when it should be absorbed by it?"

Do the editors of the Times really believe you can identify who is a servant by looking at faces? (It's possible the reporter was simply transmitting the views of one or more art experts.) I'm sure they don't, so this is just an example of how easy it is for people to slip into stereotypes.

Have Americans Usually Supported Their Wars?

I was surprised by the part of this article describing the contemporaneous WWII Gallup polls. My faint memories include saving tin cans and gas (my grandfather's big yellow car parked in our garage for the duration) and clothing made from flour sacks. Even so, the questioning of the war was more evident than I would have thought. Of course, Feb. 44 was before D-Day. The allies were bogged down in Italian mud and MacArthur was a long way from returning.

Have Americans Usually Supported Their Wars?: "In the twentieth century, as Hazel Erskine demonstrated in her widely cited 1970 article, 'Was War a Mistake?' (Public Opinion Quarterly), 'the American public has never been sold on the validity of any war but World War II.' She noted that as of 1969--a year after the Tet Offensive and the brief invasion of the American embassy in Saigon--'in spite of the current anti-war fervor, dissent against Vietnam has not yet reached the peaks of dissatisfaction attained by either World War I or the Korean War.'"

Bureaucrats Vindicated?

The Washington Post Federal Page reports on some research here: "It turns out that the career managers, on average, do a better job of running federal agencies than the political appointees do. So says a 41-page study by political scientist David E. Lewis of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs."

It compares OMB's ratings of programs run by career bureaucrats versus those run by political appointees and finds the former do better. (Trigger the fireworks, let's celebrate.)

However, as an ever-cautious bureaucrat, some skepticism is in order--Dr. Lewis may be comparing apples and oranges. For example, in USDA circa 1970, the Soil Conservation Service was run by careerists, Farmers Home administration was run by politicos. But the programs were different--SCS was more "scientific" and less controversial than the loan-making functions of FmHA. I'd guess that there's a high correlation between "careerist" managers and "scientific" (i.e., not politically controversial) programs. That raises the issue of whether it's easier in some sense to run a program where the outcomes are more knowable and can be judged by clearer criteria. The question answers itself.

Political appointees run agencies that the public as a whole does not trust. The decline of trust in government over the past 40 years has been paralleled by an increase in the number of politically led agencies.

So while the work of Dr. Lewis is welcome, I'm going to save my fireworks.

Comment on Comments

Occasional visitors post comments. At least one recent one suggested swapping URL's (which may have been a scam). All comments are welcome, but please remember the comment facility hides your true e-mail address, so the only way I have to respond is in another comment. Likely I should work more on blogging's intricacies, but I haven't yet.

Where's the Fire Wardens?

When we had fire drills, both in school and working for the federal government, we had fire wardens whose job was to go to all the rooms and see that everyone was out. Such officials were notably lacking in New Orleans.

My impression is that both the USSR and China had the equivalent--in USSR each apartment building had one or more designated watchers, at least according to Le Carre, who could have served a fire warden function. In China, society was divided into "tens" and "hundreds", again providing the government with control down to the last individual.

I doubt the U.S. would ever have such a network, even though it would save work and lives. The Brits did have fire wardens during the London air raids in WWII. But absent such a repetitive threat, we just don't trust the government enough to let it create such a network. Socially, we opt for freedom and death rather than life.

Seizing Straws

This from MSNBC's Bagdad diary--the major is mainly concerned with the importance of superstition, but includes this bit of news:

"Route Irish, according to this threat-briefing, which represents our best guess at the situation before we locked and loaded and headed down the trail, has not been seriously hit in weeks. That was news. Some rifle and light machine-gun fire, sure, but nothing heavy. No Rocket-Propelled Grenades, no VBIEDs, not even any IEDs…nothing, for weeks. Things have changed on that road. An Iraqi brigade is sitting there on both sides of the highway, and they have taken some hits, to be sure. But the Iraqis made the road safer than I have known it to be before."

Of course, my picking up on this is akin to the major's superstition--we both latch onto one bit of information and ride the hell out of it (his superstition was that no vehicle in which a particular piece of music was playing has ever (in his experience) been hit). That's a human habit that may have saved us from lions in the bushes but doesn't always serve us well, particularly now when there are so many pieces of information available.

Best of Bureaucrats

This apparently from a volunteer helping in Katrina:

"Apparently being a bureaucrat, like riding a bicycle, is something you don't forget. The initial uneasiness that I feel in any new situation vanished the moment I started filing. I became involved in the game. Could I file faster than the person next to me? Could I keep ahead of the in-box? Could I find the case that was misfiled under the girlfriend's last name? I'm always trying for my personal best. I can throw myself into the mundane with enthusiam that's not faked. In the larger scheme of things, maybe filing papers isn't that important. But to the people sitting in line hour after hour, anything that can shorten the time spent waiting helps."

Bureaucracy makes things into routines, which is bad and good. There's some good advice about working within a bureaucracy as well.

SSN on Medicare Cards

The LATimes had an article a couple days ago pointing out that while states and counties were removing Social security numbers from drivers licenses and similar documents, Medicare (and DOD) still uses it as the identifier on their cards:

"Spokesman Peter Ashkenaz said that Medicare officials were aware of the concerns involving use of the numbers and that alternatives had been discussed. But so far, he said, there were no plans to issue cards with different numbers, which would probably cost $100 million and require retooling the agency's computer systems.
"
IMHO, the number on the card serves these purposes in the medicare computer system:

• show to the clerk that the person already has a record in the system, as opposed to enrolling the person for the first time.
  
• provide a quick, fast way to access the record--typing in 9 digits is probably a bit faster than typing in "Harshaw", "William", and then deciding that the one living in Reston, not nearby Oakton, is the correct one. Of course, "bharshaw [at] hotmial.com" is quick and sure.
  

What's unfortunate is that neither the Medicare bureaucrat nor the LATimes writer is aware of the work being done on IDs in government. It's another example of the "silo" complex.

No, No, No to Carter-Baker Panel

Dan Balz has an article in the Post on the Jimmy Carter/James Baker panel recommending fixes to our electoral system. I've no problem with most of the items, but I continue to believe we should phase out the Social Security number.

"The panel recommended that the U.S. Election Assistance Commission oversee a system to allow easy sharing of state voter databases as well as requiring the use of a uniform identifier -- the voter's Social Security number -- to help eliminate duplicate registrations."

See the recent LATimes article on ID theft for the problems we run into when we use SSN. See this previous blog on the subject.