Most People..and Children Above Average

A phrase I picked up a few days ago, I think from a discussion of a study of how people assessed other people in their decision-making is:

"By definition, most people are in the majority." It blew my mind, because it sounds like Garrison Keillor's Lake Woebegon, where all children are above average. But it's really the same logic, reversed. Using a mathematical truth, it states a conclusion that's not obvious.

The discussion (perhaps in the Sunday Post Outlook) was on research into people's behavior in the Prisoner's Dilemma situations (where it's to your self-interest to rat on the other guy, but the best course of action for both is to zip lips). Apparently people are surprisingly apt to adopt the best course, surprisingly at least to economists who have no imagination. An evolutionist would say that, if it's the best course, people would have evolved to figure it out.

The logic of the argument is that people make a decision by looking at themselves, then figuring that other players in the game will be and act like themselves. The scientist said this was rational, because most people will be in the majority most of the time.

Still blows my mind.

In the Future Your Cocoon Goes with You

The NY Times has an interesting story that anticipates the future. With modern technology, particularly the linking of electronic devices, hotels can capture all sorts of information about guests, store it, and use it the next time the guest visits to make their room/environment the way they like it. The same thinking would allow information on desired temperature, favorite stations and music, etc. to be transported from one place (home) to another (car, hotel, place of employment).

Technology Lets High-End Hotels Anticipate Guests' Whims - New York Times: "When regulars like Dr. Laurence Wiener check into the Mandarin Oriental in Manhattan, they get more than a smile from the concierge and a mint on their pillow. Dr. Wiener's hotel room knows how warm he likes it - 68 degrees. It welcomes him with a personal message on his television set. It even loads his most frequently dialed numbers onto the phone."

Class Matters

Sebastian Mallaby in the Post a couple days ago on:

Class Matters: "But in 1980, the top fifth of families earned 7.7 times as much as the bottom fifth; by 2001, that ratio had risen to 11.4. So even though the bottom fifth of households made modest gains, the inequality ratio jumped by almost 50 percent. If you measure inequality by wealth rather than earnings, the results are even more preposterous."

Read the whole thing. He criticizes liberals at the end for concentrating on programs, particularly defending them, rather than broadbased reforms. I think that's right, although the likelihood of big reforms is low.

Filling My Contrarian Quota for Today

Dan Drezner blogs about nonproliferation here .

Most striking are excerpts from an argument that we might have more to fear from democracies than rogue states--sounds reasonable to me. (Look at the list of states with nuclear weapons.) Of course, it could simply reflect the relative democratization of big and wealthy states over the past decades.

Farm Program Payment Limitations--Failure

I haven't paid attention to the farm program payment limitation issue in recent months. Senator Grassley's effort to save money by tighter limitations on farm program payments has failed:

"Grassley said he had difficulty getting a budget savings score from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) from his language to further reduce and modify farm program payment caps because CBO had difficulty tracing gains from generic certificates, as well as separate entities. 'There is no real system in place to track these payments,' Grassley said, adding that he had 'a problem with that' because 'there is no system to show where taxpayer dollars go' even though 'that was mandated in the 2002 Farm Bill.' Grassley said that legislation requires USDA to develop a system of tracking farm subsidy payments to people who benefit from them so there is no excuse. 'I am sending a letter to USDA asking Secretary Johanns to enforce Section 1614 of the farm bill so we know exactly who is benefiting from farm program payments,' Grassley said.

Asked why his latest effort on pay caps was defeated, Grassley acknowledged that farmers are currently getting large Loan Deficiency Payments (LDPs). A Minnesota banker has calculated that it only takes around 800 acres of corn to reach the $75,000 LDP cap this year (but generic certificates would allow producers an effective end around the actual LDP pay cap, but Grassley's proposed language would have repealed the use of generic certificates)."

The implication of the last paragraph is that, because more politicians have more of their constituents who might be hit by tighter rules, rather than just the usual cotton and rice people, it's a tougher fight.

The Same Mom, On the Job or Off

Washington Post has an interesting article from a wife and mother who took a 3 month paid sabbatical and summarizes the experience thus:

The Same Mom, On the Job or Off: "I could no longer bemoan the perfect mothering, and the calm and organized household, that my kids would certainly have if only I were home with them. Because as I discovered, when I was home, I was more or less the mother that I am -- not much better, not much worse. And our household was, more or less, the household it's always been."

I'm struck by it because it fits with my retirement experience. A change of circumstance doesn't necessarily change one's life. You're the same person, your reactions and faults and virtues don't change much, and work expands to fit the time available. (That's Parkinson's Law, which the writer is much too young to recognize.)

Conservatives Dissolving the Social Compact?

Two prominent (conservatives, or maybe more accurately loudmouths) decided this week to read people out of the American community. First, Pat Robertson:

Heeere's Pat!: "On Thursday Mr. Robertson said on his daily television show, 'The 700 Club,' that because all eight Dover school board members up for reelection on Tuesday were voted out of office after trying to impose 'intelligent design' on high school students as an alternative to the theory of evolution, God is not going to show up if there's a disaster in Dover. They'd voted God out of the city, Mr. Robertson said."

Then Bill O'Reilly:

Bill O'Reilly takes aim at San Francisco - Radio - MSNBC.com: "'Listen, citizens of San Francisco, if you vote against military recruiting, you're not going to get another nickel in federal funds. Fine. You want to be your own country? Go right ahead,' O'Reilly said, according to a transcript and audio posted by liberal media watchdog group Media Matters for America, and by the San Francisco Chronicle."

"'And if al-Qaida comes in here and blows you up, we're not going to do anything about it. We're going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead,' O'Reilly continued, referring to the 1933 San Francisco landmark that sits atop Telegraph Hill."

The urge to put those with whom you disagree outside the pale is common. It's how we get wars and oppression. I think in America it's more usual for the right to put their opponents outside of American society, the left tends to put their opponents as outside humanity (i.e., heartless plutocrats).
(See here for a dissection of the

Althouse and France--Diversity and Political System

Ann Althouse poses this question in referring to a NYTimes article: "Should France's policy of not taking account of race, ethnicity, and religion, in light of the recent rioting, make us look more favorably on our own attention to such things?"

I had a different question when I read the article--why the difference in the two democracies? The pattern in the US seems to be that political conflict tends to cause people to build coalitions of interest, trying to attract the last few votes to put them over the top. Perhaps that's at least a major reason why the US and France differ: they are a multiparty parliamentary system while the US is a two party system. In a multiparty system I guess maybe you appeal first to your base, and then negotiate with the leaders of the other parties to attain power.

I Accept Bribes/ Barbara Ehrenreich's Bait and Switch

Am I being bribed? I mentioned Barbara Ehrenreich's new book, "Bait and Switch" in an earlier blog and a representative of her publisher sent me a free copy.

Is it a bribe? I think there's enough moral fiber inherited from my Presbyterian minister forebears that I'd reject money, but free books are another thing entirely. I guess the logic is: read it, blog it, all publicity is good. If that's so, I'm corrupt, because I have read it and am now commenting on it. If you don't want to compromise your own integrity, browse another site.

Economists, particularly conservatives, talk of "creative destruction" as characteristic of the free market system. Capitalism allocates money and labor to where they can be best used, which means cutting off inefficient units and encouraging efficient ones. When Ehrenreich and I were young, Ma Bell was the biggest company and Bethlehem Steel, New York Central, Westinghouse, and Univac were all big names in the economy. Telephone operators and secretaries were big occupations and blue collar manufacturing was unionized and paid well, while retailing was dominated by local stores and regional chains. Today those companies are gone; those occupations are gone or diminished. Instead we've Microsoft and Intel, Fed Ex, McDonalds, and Walmart and everyone is her or his own secretary and phone operator.

In evaluating such changes:

• Conservatives focus on the "creative" side, all the wonderful advances in living standards over the years and the elevation of people from poverty in the East Asian countries. They tend to use absolute standards, saying that anyone with a large screen TV and indoor plumbing can't be "poor". They look at all the Microsoft millionaires and say life is grand.
  
• Liberals tend to focus on the "destructive" side, all the psychic harm suffered by those not empowered by capitalism. They tend to relative standards, saying that anyone whose life is insecure is poor. They look at all the people who lost their jobs at Enron and ATT, who lost their guaranteed pensions, and who have no health insurance and say something must be done.
  

Ehrenreich is definitely liberal, as a matter of fact she's a member of Democratic Socialists of America, not that there's anything wrong with that. However she never admits her age (according to Wikipedia a tad younger than I--i.e., 64) in the book. (Why she would want to move from Charlottesville, a town rated the most livable in the country, she never says.)

Ehrenreich is an interesting writer and this is an interesting, though frustrating, book. She says her purpose was to look at the world of the middle-class, white collar America, having documented the struggles of the low wage employees (cleaners, Walmart sales, etc.) in her previous best seller, "Nickel and Dimed". Her strategy was to make up a fake resume as a PR freelancer and proceed through the world of job searchers documenting the weird flora and fauna she found there.

In short, she fails in her quest, but the journey is interesting. She gets some opportunities in sales, but fails to get the $50K job with health benefits she desired. She encounters both the jobless and those seeking to change jobs or occupations, but the more entertaining are the entrepreneurs (French for "shark") who navigate these waters. People losing jobs and seeking jobs create their own market, a market for tests and advice, counseling and contacts, support groups and mailing lists, all sorts of supposed solutions. The whole thing reminds me of the anthropologist who wrote on the function of "magic" in "primitive" societies. Another parallel is a book called "The Witch Doctors"which discussed the gurus who try to sell solutions to management (management is as gullible as some of the people Ehrenreich runs into). It seems any time people run into a risky situation with no clear solution, magic comes to the fore, whether it is the hapless white collar job seeker, or the corporate boss. (Ehrenreich recognizes that, if she were searching for real, rather than as a subject for a book, she would feel much more desperate and, perhaps, therefore more open to some of the nostrums being peddled.)

She has great fun in mocking the people she meets and refuses to take herself too seriously. I would have preferred more open discussion of the age issue. But admitting her age would have changed the subject to age discrimination, not her topic. As I said in my earlier blog, she criticizes advisors who say a job seeker should change herself to meet the company's needs instead of joining others to change the company. But that focus on the individual goes way back in America--Ben Franklin tried to make himself acceptable to the gentry of Philadelphia when he arrived there, he didn't organize the apprentices to go on strike.

The irony is that, despite herself, Ehrenreich's book shows the genius of capitalism. There's no doubt that she's a much better and more interesting writer pointing out the faults of American society than she would have been writing corporate press releases. So, the bottom line is that capitalism is making the best and highest use of her many talents.

Fearsome Government, Part II, France

The reporting on the riots in France is interesting, but lacking context. (That's always a safe sentence to lead with.)

France is different than the US, being a unitary, not federal state. The only politicians getting in news with respect to the riots are the mayors of Paris and other cities and the national government. No state governors to interpose their authority, to decide to request (or not request) national aid, federal troops, etc. Further, the national government could invoke a national policy of curfews with no question of its authority.

For those of us who remember the urban riots of the 60's, it's a vast difference. Once again, it points up the weakness of the U.S. national government compared to those of some other countries.