Rational Behavior and Tony Snow

I posted the other day citing Tony Snow as a case in which rational people didn't behave rationally in signing up for a 401K. I got an email (accidentally deleted) suggesting a wider context to his behavior, which is fair. I should have, I guess, admitted that I myself failed to sign up for the government equivalent of a 401K when it was first made available in the mid-80's. Took me about 4 years to do so.

All of which reminds me of a paper on "paternalistic libertarianism" by Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler, the idea being that society can structure choices in a paternalistic way. For example, in my case if the government had setup the TSP (Thrift Savings Plan = 401K) with all old civil service employees contributing 5 percent of salary as the default position, but with the option to opt out, I would have benefited.

Which leads me to something I saw this morning (via Marginal Revolution) in a discussion of the minimum wage (very against raising it) here, summarizing research in New Jersey that seemed to show that raising the wage might not cause loss of jobs: "“Turnover costs, imperfect information, search frictions, commuting costs, and inertia generate short-run, and possibly long-run, monopsony power for individual firms.” This is not exactly a simple condition, likely to apply uniformly across a huge, diverse country. " To me, "inertia" applies across all human beings I've met. Maybe someone like Bill Gates is relentlessly rational in allocating his time and efforts, but the rest of the species seems to have a little of the couch potato in them, at least metaphorically.

Bottom line--I don't think humans are all that rational, certainly not in maximizing short-term returns. (How much of a pay cut did Tony Snow take to serve his country and a President he admires?)

Typefaces in Baghdad

For some reason, perhaps because they published the image of it, the Post didn't put up a URL to a fascinating story--a memo from the embassy in Baghdad recording the problems and concerns faced by Iraqi employees. (The most disturbing bit--most don't even tell their families who they work for.) You can see the image here--washingtonpost.com: Outlook Image.

As a sidenote, I found it interesting that the memo is not in a proportional spaced typeface, like Times Roman. Despite the fact that a proportional spaced font is easier to read and comprehend, and thousands are available for any PC, for some reason the State Department sticks to the past. (It may be because something like Courier used to scan better than more modern typefaces and that was the way they got typed material into a database before they got halfway modern. Or it may just be inertia.)

Silly Little Errors--NYTimes

Sometimes writers make silly little errors, just because they aren't thinking. Paul Greenbury in today's NYTimes Magazine on the rise of fish farming--Green to the Gills:

"As anyone who has flown over the monocultured American heartland will attest, we have carried out a policy of biological purification with the organisms we eat — an elimination of the random in favor of the predictable. The vast majority of the world's land area has been repurposed to cultivate the several dozen creatures we like."

But the CIA World Factbook says that 13.31 percent of the world's land acrea is arable, with another 4.71 percent devoted to permanent crops. Even in the U.S., the percentage is 18.01.

What he presumably was trying to say is all the arable land is devoted to support of creatures we like, but that's sort of redundant.

Criticism of US Policy on Torture

I found this editorial from the Jewish Week a bit surprising:

"With its extraordinary and tragic experience as a target of terrorism, the Jewish state nonetheless adheres to legal rulings barring torture and the inhumane treatment of terror suspects.

The same cannot be said for the United States, which seeks to spread democracy and its core values around the world and yet refuses to rule out torture in the treatment of foreign detainees."

You Can't Trust People To Do Right

Brad DeLong writes in TomPaine.com - What Ownership Society?
about this rule--seems that Tony Snow failed to sign up for a 401k at Fox--which calls into question the idea of relying on people following their enlightened self-interest as the basis for all social institutions.

Undermining Dual-Nationality Fears

I blogged here about concerns that dual nationality for immigrants would lead to a lesser commitment to the U.S. because they would feel a greater commitment to their home country. But the Post today had this article:

In Mexico, Migration Issue Gets No Traction: "Expectations that huge numbers of Mexicans living in the United States would register to vote went unmet. After 1 million absentee ballots were printed, only 40,800 of an estimated 4 million eligible Mexicans living in the United States registered."

Top Military Are Good Bureaucrats

Today's NYTimes reports on the new Army manual on interrogations that being developed. Some, like Cheney, want two sets of methods: one published in the manual, one kept secret so that our adversaries can't train to counter the methods. But Congress and the top generals are resisting:

Pentagon Rethinking Manual With Interrogation Methods - New York Times:

"In addition to the lawmakers' complaints, some senior generals also objected. At a recent meeting of the nation's top worldwide commanders, Gen. John P. Abizaid, the head of the Central Command, and Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, said the new interrogation techniques had to be clear and unambiguous 'so our corporals in the field can understand them,' said a military officer briefed on the remarks."

That's the mark of a good bureaucrat. KISS for the field operatives. It's a long chain of command from HQ to the field and the simpler you can keep instructions, the better.

Beinart's Over-Simplified History

Peter Beinart oversimplifies history here--Why Clintonism worked:

"In reality, the Democratic Party didn't lose the confidence of its convictions when Clinton became president; it lost them when he was in graduate school. From Harry Truman through Lyndon Johnson, Democrats stood for three basic things: enlightened anti-communism, an expanding welfare state, and racial integration. Between 1968 and 1972, under pressure from Vietnam and racial conflict, two of those three collapsed. By 1972, George McGovern was urging the virtual abandonment of anticommunism and advocating racial quotas. Then, in 1976, Democrats nominated a relative economic conservative, Jimmy Carter, who showed little interest in extending Johnson's Great Society largesse. And, poof--there went principle number three. "

During the 50's integration wasn't a big deal for most Democrats--Stevenson was not notable for his leadership here. Southern Democrats were simply too important in the party. Even when JFK came to office, it took a while for him to act on anything, even the "stroke of the pen" to sign an executive order on discrimination (in federally financed housing, if memory serves) that he had used as campaign fodder. The positions of the parties didn't fully solidify until LBJ pushed through the civil rights legislation and the Republicans followed Goldwater in going south.

Much of politics works that way--the "ins" take a position and the "outs" criticize, assuming the position has problems, regardless of what their past history and principles might seem to dictate. Just look at Keynesianism. That was the Dems position from the 1930's to 1980. A very successful one, even converting Nixon. Then Reagan used the Laffer Curve to steal their clothing and now Dems believe in responsible budgeting.

Virginia Liberal's Dilemma--Miller or Webb?

Tuesday I've got to cast my vote in the Democrat primary in VA for a candidate to oppose Sen. George Allen. As I told the phone surveyer for Webb, my priority is to beat Allen. And that's the message former Rep. Leslie Byrne is pushing in her radio ads for Webb--he's the guy to beat Allen.

Webb is a Naval Academy graduate, decorated Marine vet of Vietnam, fiction writer--an impressive resume. But he's also a former Republican and a Secretary of Navy under Reagan, he supported Allen in 2000, and famously opposed women in the Academy in the 70's. He's Scots-Irish, having written a book that interwove his family's history with that of the Scots-Irish in America (Born Fighting) that suffers from over-romanticizing them (I'm half Scots-Irish myself). His major platform and the motivation for switching parties seems to be opposition to the Iraq war.

His opponent, Harris Miller, is a lobbyist for the IT industry, but rather than being a turncoat Republican he has a long history of Democratic activism, serving as a Congressional aide and in the Carter admin.

As I analyze my choice: Webb seems to be someone who today would have a good chance to beat Allen. He can't be painted as a flaming liberal and has the background that will appeal to downstate Republicans, while the Dem establishment will push him in No. Virginia. But it's 5 months to election day. Will Iraq look as bad then as it did the end of May? If it doesn't, Webb seems a single issue candidate who'd have problems adjusting gears. On the other hand, if it gets worse or if there's new terror attacks in the U.S. Webb would do better than Miller. Will Webb wear well? He doesn't seem to have impressed the media with his campaigning abilities. Webb seems to be go-it-alone-Joe, perhaps too stubborn and self-righteous (prime S-I vices) to be good on the stump.

On the other hand, Allen is probably salivating at the idea of Miller--he can be painted as liberal, and a lobbyist, and opposed to the working man. (Miller's pushed strongly for free trade on behalf of IT, so several unions are against him.) He's also Jewish, which won't play well downstate and aggravates the image problem. He's made a little better impression on the media, which always likes wonkish types. (ex-Gov Mark Warner was an IT wonk, and he had to lose once before he came back to win.) I agree with Miller much more on issues. In terms of changing situations over the next 5 months, he probably would be less affected by good news from Iraq than Webb. (On the other hand, the public may have come to a final view of Iraq--that it was mismanaged so that lives and money were wasted, even if it works out over the next 5 years.) And if the Republican base stays dispirited, maybe a liberal can win.

But if Webb gets in, after Iraq fades will he find himself reverting to the Republicans? But if we can't defeat Allen this year, we probably can't beat him ever. He's been fairly impressive for the Republicans, enough so he's dreaming of the White House, so we can't tar him as another Roman Hruska. Darn, I don't like Allen.

Damned if I know who I'll vote for.

Robin Williams Jr., -- RIP

Professor Robin Williams Jr., ("Robin M. Williams Jr., a noted sociologist and a former president of the American Sociological Association who offered insights into racism and the behavior of men in war, died here on June 3.") was a teacher of mine back in 1962-3. He wasn't the greatest lecturer I had, but he was interesting and gave me some insights into American society I still use. The course was on American society, which was also the title of a book of his. It's no longer in print but I recommend it.

What I remember--the observation that we pass laws and act in symbolic ways to reaffirm norms, like the law against prostitution with the periodic crackdowns--the actions don't really attack prostitution, they say that we "good people" don't approve of it. That's true today, though I've learned over the years that symbols do matter perhaps more than I got from his class.

Another observation fit in with my future career--the idea that the New Deal delegated governmental power partially in an attempt to co-opt groups, as giving farm programs to an agency run in part by locally elected committees, the agency I ended up working for later. Local control became big during the War on Poverty, but it's gradually faded. Even the Republicans have abandoned it during the Bush administration