Black Swans and Just Plain Errors

I just revised my post of yesterday to observe that it's difficult to predict the future. 

Obviously the tendency is to project trends of the present into the future: in 1960 South Korea is a dependency of the US, in 2020 South Korea will be a dependency of the US; in 1950 the Red Chinese were a horde of indistinguishable people wearing Mao jackets; in 2020 the Chinese will continue to have no individuality and dress alike; in 1950 Japan makes cheap children's toys (still remember a metal airplane toy which made a noise when you pushed it along the floor; in 2020 Japan will still be behind the curve of technology.

Mr. Taleb of "Black Swan" fame has a theory of why we fail; a theory I forget the content of.  It's possible we just err.  Or it's possible we like the comfort of the known and dislike Rumsfeld's "unknown unknows".

It would be an error, I think, to assume that President Trump is doomed to be as unpopular on election day 2020 as he is today.  Things may happen, or they may not. 

This Kind of War

This Kind of War is by T.R.Fehrenbach.  The Kindle version was on special the other day, so I bought it.  The Korean War was the first war I experienced, through the newspapers, the newsreels, and magazine articles.  The book was written in 1963, long enough after the war's end for some perspective, long enough ago to offer some insights.  (Fehrenbach was an officer in the 2nd Division, a unit which features prominently in the book, but he doesn't cite his experience explicitly.) I've read something about the war since, especially a bio of the general commanding the 1st Marine Division focused on the battle of the Chosin Reservoir.

He alternates between a focus on individual battles and individuals and a broad general picture of the war.  It's still recommended by figures like Sen. McCain and Gen. Mattis.

Some things which struck me:

• the learning curves of the various militaries involved. The North Koreans, Chinese, South Koreans and US all came into the war with different backgrounds; the first three were able to learn  from the experience while the US was handicapped by the rotation policy.
• the writer's surprise at the ability of Japan to rehabilitate American equipment, a reminder of how far Japan has come since my boyhood when they made cheap toys.
• serious omens for our experience in Vietnam.
• [updated: the author's prediction South Korea would forever be a basket case dependent on US, although that's more definitive than his actual words--a reminder of how limited our vision of the future can be]

NYTimes Articles

Today the Times had one article on projections of world population.  The projection for max population is lower than before because of falling birth rates.

The Times also had an article on research into new crops, which said it was very important because of the "rapidly growing population." 

I find it a bit inconsistent.

What was interesting in the second article was scientists finding ways to plant and harvest multiple times during the year, up to 6 plant/harvest cycles for wheat.  That permits more rapid development of  new varieties.  Norm Borlaug, father of the Green Revolution, was a pioneer in this, moving to Mexico where he could do two crops of wheat a year. 

The Effect of (Some) Government Programs

From the Rural Blog's post on tobacco, specifically moves raising the minimum age to buy cigarettes from 18 to 21:

"The [tobacco] industry has shrunk since the federal program of production quotas and price supports ended in 2004, and consolidated into larger farms. Pratt estimated the number of burley growers has plummeted from 175,000 to 3,000. And that has reduced the political influence of the crop that once had a powerful hold on Congress and state legislatures."

In other words, in 15 years the number of farmers has dropped to 2 percent of its starting level.

Side comments:  there's still the meme on the left that farm programs help the big guys, which drastically oversimplifies by lumping all farm programs together.

Gains in Government Productivity?

Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution has a series of posts on the increased cost of higher education and health services in the US over the past years.  On first reading they're convincing. 

Briefly it's Baumol's  disease--it's hard to raise productivity in service industries because it requires people's time--the time for musicians to play a live performance, a doctor to examine a patient, a surgeon to do an operation, etc.

So how about government?  That's a question I'll try to get back to.

Now and Then: Watergate Remembered--Profanity

While I've never set up a label "Watergate", I find I have referred to it several times in the context of Trump's actions.

One thing which hurt President Nixon was the revelation of the contents of the tapes.  What he said harmed his cause;eventually it sunk it when the "smoking gun" tape showing he planned the coverup. Another aspect diminished his reputation and support: profanity.

Remember in 1973-4 standards were crumbling under the determined attack of the baby boomers.  By standards I mean definitions of "propriety".  (A google ngram for the word shows its usage had been fairly steady for 40 years or so, but dipped significantly in the 70's.)  Nixon represented the people who still believed in propriety, who upheld standards of decorum, who were stiff in public.

So it was a shock to his supporters to find he actually swore in private.  And it's revealing that in the transcripts, his words were replaced by "expletive deleted".

Those were the days.

No Impeachment in Second Term

Query: imagining the worst, if President Trump wins reelection there's no way to impeach him?

The argument would be that all his faults were known to the voters in 2020 (which is what Fred Hiatt argued in the Post recently, except with reference to 2016). 

I think it's possible that something could happen after 2020, or some revelation about events before then (recordings of him conspiring with Putin or taking money from Russia during 2016 perhaps) which might change the situation, but you'd have to regard any impeachment as very unlikely.

What that means for people like me who support Pelosi's stand on impeachment is we have to work even harder to defeat Trump in 2020.  The people who support impeachment can logically, if mistakenly in my opinion, say they have two bites at the apple--impeach and if the Senate doesn't convict defeat him in 2020.

Animal Identification and Traceability

Years ago, two administrations ago, Walt Jeffries of Sugar Mountain Farm was active in a fight against an animal identification scheme.  The opposition echoed some of the standard American memes: anti-big government, pro-local, anti-technology,anti-big boys, pro . They were successful in killing the birth to dead ID plans, called NAIS.

The other day I saw a picture of a cow in a tweer.  The cow had tags in both ears, plus an RFID device hung around her neck.  I expressed some surprise; the owner explained the reasons, including "traceability", which led me to google the term.  That led to this article in Beef Magazine, which brought me up to date.

Apparently the stopgap compromise solution was to identify for those animals crossing state lines the start point and the destination point.  But now they're looking again at a more sophisticated  plan.

Walt Jeffries is no longer actively blogging so I don't know what his take on this is.

Did Trump Shoot Himself in the Foot

I wonder whether President Trump didn't shoot himself in the foot on immigration.  This Post article has this graph of apprehensions., showing the big surge in 2019, going back to the apprehensions in the GWBush administration.

The difference between now and then is Bush saw an influx of people aiming to work; Trump is seeing an influx of families claiming refugee status.  Because claimed refugees surrender to the first US official they see, Trump's wall is a case of fighting the last war.

But why the surge?  I'd blame it on Trump.  He came into office having made a big deal out of immigration and his wall.  For a while the apprehensions ran about the same level as in the Obama era; Obama having made a big deal out of discouraging immigration as well.  But Trump couldn't get support for his wall.  Doing what he is so very good at, he generated lots of publicity by attacking "migrant caravans".  That was counter-productive.

By publicizing migrant caravans Tump informed Central American citizens that they didn't have to pay a coyote to smuggle them into the U.S. and incur the risk of dying in the desert; they could travel as a family and claim refugee status.  That changes the whole cost-benefit calculus.  Trump might as well have advertised--"here's the loophole by which you can live in the U.S. for years, and maybe even become legal." 

Now no doubt if Trump had never mentioned immigration people would have learned to take more advantage of the refugee rules, and there would have been a transition to it as well as an increase in net apprehensions.  But while Trump's bluster about immigration early in his administration may have discouraged some migrants, it's now created a crisis.

Bloomberg on Dairy

I found this Bloomberg article on the dairy industry to be a good overview of recent trends.