How To Prove Your Intelligence

There's two ways to prove one's intelligence:

• Point out all the problems with a position or proposal, all the reasons it won't work and nothing should be done.
• Figure out how to do something, particularly something that someone else says can't be done. Do so even if it requires a Rube Goldbergian contraption.

I'm particularly fond of the second strategy myself.

My Two Selves

This article by Shankar Vedantam outlines research on our two selves. He leads off with the paradoxes, including that of Sen. Vitter with prostitutes at the same time he was pushing bills on abstinence.

Studies have found that, for some reason, an enormous mental gulf separates "cold" emotional states from "hot" emotional states. When we are not hungry or thirsty or sexually aroused, we find it difficult to understand what effects those factors can have on our behavior. Similarly, when we are excited or angry, it is difficult to think about the consequences of our behavior -- outcomes that are glaringly obvious when we are in a cold emotional state.

Rings true for me. Even though my addictions in life have dwindled, get between me and my Starbucks and I'm pure emotion. I often think the same applies for sports and politics--we become irrationally attached to our team, our positions, and can't apply reason. I know the Redskins won't reach the Super Bowl this year, but I'll still believe. I know George W. is a worthy person (but I immediately ask: "worthy of what?") I hope I'm mostly "cold" on this blog.

Bureaucracies and Their Customers

Who polices the police? Or, more broadly, how does a big bureaucracy keep all its operatives on the same page?

The short answer: they don't, at least not in a nation as big as the U.S. An example, which I ran into while working at USDA, is the US Postal Service (and which I was reminded of while reading the NASCOE negotiation notes). USPS has written directives for its local post offices, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the local postmaster in Podunk, Iowa (why do we pick on Iowa?) has read, understands, and follows it.

When you bring two big bureaucracies together, like USPS and the Farm Service Agency, you reveal discrepancies. If FSA and USPS in DC reach an understanding of what directive A means, FSA tells its field offices to do X, Y, and Z based on that understanding. But when the field office operative reaches the local postmaster, he or she may have a different understanding. Result: confusion and inefficiency.

Mixed Signals on FSA Office Closings

The House seems to be giving mixed signals on closing USDA offices. On the one hand, this provision is included in the appropriations bill (search through Thomas):

Provided further, That none of the funds made available by this Act may be used to pay the salary or expenses of any officer or employee of the Department of Agriculture to close or relocate any county or field office of the Farm Service Agency (other than a county or field office that had zero employees as of February 7, 2007), or to develop, submit, consider, or approve any plan for any such closure or relocation before the expiration of the six month period following the date of the enactment of an omnibus authorization law to provide for the continuation of agricultural programs for fiscal years after 2007 [NOTE: I take this to mean either a new farm bill or a 1-year extension of current farm programs--they're trying to cover the bases]: Provided further, That after the expiration of the six month period following the date of the enactment of an omnibus authorization law to provide for the continuation of agricultural programs for fiscal years after 2007 none of the funds made available by this Act may be used to pay the salaries or expenses of any officer or employee of the Department of Agriculture to close any local or county office of the Farm Service Agency unless the Secretary of Agriculture, not later than 30 days after the date on which the Secretary proposed the closure, holds a public meeting about the proposed closure in the county in which the local or county office is located, and, after the public meeting but not later than 120 days before the date on which the Secretary approves the closure, notifies the Committee on Agriculture and the Committee on Appropriations of the House of Representatives and the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry and the Committee on Appropriations of the Senate, and the members of Congress from the State in which the local or county office is located of the proposed closure. [This is the procedure that USDA seems to have been following until this, so presumably the idea is, Congress does a new farm bill, we wait 6 months to close offices. If the farm bill causes lots of work, there's an opportunity to reconsider. If it doesn't, then the Reps can say they tried.]

But from the Report on the bill (this isn't binding on USDA, but it explains intent):

Further, we are concerned about the restrictive FSA office closure language included in the bill. In many cases, the USDA has completed required steps to close certain offices under provisions set forth in fiscal year 2006, and again in the Continuing Resolution that agencies are operating under this fiscal year. Members are urged to consider these facts: there are 58 FSA offices that have no staff; 139 offices that have one employee; 338 that have two employees; and 515 offices that have three employees.

It is also worth noting that the funding level included in the bill for FSA salaries and expenses is $102 million below the President's budget request. As a result, the Democrat majority has significantly cut the appropriation below the request while prohibiting the FSA from closing unneeded offices. There are many States that, while not necessarily happy with proposals to close some offices, are willing to work with the FSA to close offices that should no longer be open. The minority worked with Chairwoman DeLauro to modify the language in the bill in order to continue making progress on this issue. Ranking Member Kingston offered an amendment that would allow FSA to close those offices that have zero employees, and the amendment was adopted by the full committee. People often ask why government can't run more efficiently. Closing FSA offices provides a good example. It's hard to run an agency with 435 managers second-guessing all decisions.

I interpret the Report language as saying--we recognize that Representatives want to protect their offices, but: be real--we can't keep all the offices open.

As a final note, there's no specific restriction on closing NRCS offices (except for generic restrictions elsewhere about not closing offices unless you notify Congress). So, if I'm reading it right, in New York where both FSA and NRCS offices are scheduled for closing, the one will be delayed, but the other could go through right away.

Your political system at work.

Katrina Cottages

It's intriguing that Lowes has developed a series of plans for "Katrina cottages". They'll sell the plans, you get the land and permits, and they'll sell the materials. See here for the smallest cottage plan. When I think that my great grandfather and family lived in a house smaller than this (as did all our ancestors, down to relatively recent times, it's amazing.

How Do You Make a Bureaucrat Honest?

That's the challenge in China. So they ( news story) created a computer game:

The Disciplinary Commission of the Communist Party in the well-off city of Ningbo in the province of Zhejiang financed the development of the game which stands at the vanguard of its campaign against corruption.

The hero is an 'honest and upright civil servant' who kills corrupt officials, their children and bikini-clad lovers with weapons, torture and even magic.

The children appear as monsters with names like 'son of corrupt official' or 'daughter of corrupt official.'

With each dead dirty civil servant, the player wins points that improve his or her abilities in areas like moral character and ethics.

The aim of the game is an 'honest paradise free from corruption.'

What Happens After a Farm Program Ends? II

I blogged the other day about what might happen if farm programs were ended. Today's NYTimes has an article on what happened in New Zealand to the dairy farmers when their subsidies were ended.

It's mostly positive, though between the lines you see that there was consolidation--more large farms, fewer small (opponents of US farm programs say that the program helps large farmers, but the free market may be more helpful) and there would have been a lot of bankruptcies when the program ended if the banks hadn't given relief.

Because New Zealand dairy is mostly export, it's hard to do a real comparison. Nor does the article discuss any fluctuations in the 20+ years since the program was ended. My guess is that NZ may, in part, be "free-riding" on the dairy programs in the rest of the world--there would be more volatility in price if the world dairy market was entirely free, and volatility in price leads to humans hurting.

Aerial Photos from the Past

I'm guessing, but this story from the Post mentions aerial photos from 1937 (link to comparison shots) as part of a national agricultural surveying effort. Whether that related to the Agricultural Adjustment Administration I don't know, but in general this reminds us that data created by one bureaucracy can become useful in unexpected ways.

The contrast between the mostly farms of 1937 and the development now (this is well inside the Beltway) is striking.

Two Views on Terrorism

Mitt Romney wants to redo the DHS to focus on intelligence and attack prevention, rather than recovery from attacks.

This is from Princeton's blurb for a new book:

Many popular ideas about terrorists and why they seek to harm us are fueled by falsehoods and misinformation. Leading politicians and scholars have argued that poverty and lack of education breed terrorism, despite the wealth of evidence showing that most terrorists come from middle-class, and often college-educated, backgrounds. In What Makes a Terrorist, Alan Krueger argues that if we are to correctly assess the root causes of terrorism and successfully address the threat, we must think more like economists do.

Krueger is an influential economist who has applied rigorous statistical analysis to a range of tough issues, from the minimum wage and education to the occurrence of hate crimes. In this book, he explains why our tactics in the fight against terrorism must be based on more than anecdote and speculation. Krueger closely examines the factors that motivate individuals to participate in terrorism, drawing inferences from terrorists' own backgrounds and the economic, social, and political conditions in the societies from which they come. He describes which countries are the most likely breeding grounds for terrorists, and which ones are most likely to be their targets. Krueger addresses the economic and psychological consequences of terrorism. He puts the terrorist threat squarely into perspective, revealing how our nation's sizeable economy is diverse and resilient enough to withstand the comparatively limited effects of most terrorist strikes. And he calls on the media to be more responsible in reporting on terrorism.

The egghead seems to me to have much the better argument. The US may be attacked by terrorists once for every 10 attacks on EU nations and 1 in 10,000 attacks in Iraq. While some attacks may be scary, and some damaging, we have much more to fear from mother nature. Our general policy should be to do intelligence and defense reasonably well, but respond to disaster very well.

Changing Times

Things I could not have imagined at some point in my past (relevant time specified in parens):

• Chinese plagiarizing and imitating Harry Potter (1999)
• Afghans watching TV (2003)
• Israel supporting Fatah (1990)