Inertia and Conservatism

 Many people find the easiest course of action is just to do what they did yesterday. Doing something different has downsides:

• it may mean breaking a habit. My wife and I joke about my driving on autopilot. If it's Friday I turn right, turn right, turn right, then turn left and we're at the glass recycle place. Varying the pattern means a conscious effort to decide to make a different turn.
• it may require a decision, and the decision may require researching an issue and getting information.
• it may mean risks, unknown risks. Doing what you do you're very familiar with the risks you run, and you're comfortable with them.  Doing something different means you're less familiar with the risks, which can mean you become nervous and tense, not something one likes.
• there may be unintended consequences.

So one part of conservatism is just an extrapolation of our habits.

The Long Slow Progress of Direct Deposit

Been 25 years or more since FSA started pushing direct deposit (it was just starting back in the mid 90's before I retired)  According to the notice about 82 percent are now direct deposit/ Since I retired they've come up with a waiver provision, presumably for hardship, but only 5 percent of the paper check people have a current waiver on file.  

It seems that it's still the producer's option--she "invokes" the waiver for one of the three permissible reasons, there's no burden on the FSA to determine the validity. I'm curious whether compliance with the requirement is greater among the other agencies which issue payments to the public. Somehow I expect farmers to be more resistant to the change.

Might have helped to sell the idea to note that having direct deposit makes it easier and more foolproof to get benefits issued by IRS, as has happened now several times this century.

Of course the answer is for everyone to get a basic bank account with fees paid by the government, but that would be against the American individualistic ethic, so a nonstarter.

Modern Farmer Is Confused

Modern Farmer has a post on the new loan program intended to help in establishing title to heir property.  It has some problems, and I feel nitpicky today so I've bolded the errors I find:

"For instance, if a land owner died without a will, that land would be divided up among the owner’s heirs. Once they passed on, the land would be further divided among their heirs. While property might be in a single family’s control for generations, they don’t have legal title or claim to the land. That means they cannot easily sell the land or consolidate fractured acreages...."  [My comment: usually it's the father dying intestate, with the children inheriting the land in common, not divided. When a child dies, her ownership share is inherited by her children, and so on. One of the owners can appeal to the court to force a sale of the land and divide the proceeds among the heirs. That is a way whites have used to buy land cheaply: forced sales. Even when there's no forced sale, the person farming on the land doesn't have clear title, a prerequisite to mortgaging the land.]

"After the Civil War, the federal Homestead Act gave Black families land, mainly across the South, and many of them became land holders for the first time.... [The Homestead Act and  the Southern Homestead Act weren't effective in getting black farmers land. "Gave" is wrong--the charge was $50 for 40 acres, which was a significant sum in 1866 (perhaps $700 to 12,000 in todays money). I know of no statistics or study showing the relative importance of the different ways in which blacks accumulated land, but my impression is that hard work, scrimping, and good relations with selected white owners were key.]

"That became a bigger problem after President John F. Kennedy’s 1961 Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Services came into effect. At the time, the USDA established a loan program to help farmers..." [ASCS had nothing to do with the loan program, which had originated in the New Deal, and was by 1961 administered by the Farmers Home Administration. The current day Farm Service Agency is the successor to ASCS and to the farmer loan programs of FmHA.]

 I don't trust the rest of the writer's facts, based on her errors in these portions. 

Past Olympics

Someone on twitter asked about our focus in the Olympics on gymnastics.  That caused me to recall Olga Korbut. In 1972 she turned us on to gymnastics.  At 4'11'', one inch taller than my sister, she was both a daring gymnast and charismatic.  Watch her ups and downs here.

Bob Somerby recalls the "greatest track meet" , not an Olympic event but a US-USSR standoff in 1962, which reminds me of how fierce the athletic rivalry was between the two powers in the 16 years before then, peaking in the Olympics.  In the 50's it seemed American supremacy was under challenge; if we weren't the best in everything, what were we?

Reading "Useful Delusions" and Trump as Fighting Hero

 Anne Applebaum has a piece on Mr. Lindell at the Atlantic, which happens to tie in with my reading of Vedantam's Useful Illusions.

Vedantam analyzes the possible usefulness of illusions using evolutionary arguments. Because you can find illusions throughout human history, there must be a evolutionary reason humans are prone to such illusions.  He argues it's useful to form social links, whether in religion or nationalism, whether in fraternities or tribal conflicts, etc.

So why "Trump as Hero"? Possibly part of the illusion surrounding the Trump phenomena is heroism.  Trump is, or presents himself, as the embattled warrior, fighting against all odds, against the media, the Democrats, the bad people in the world such as immigrants or China, sometimes victorious, sometimes just surviving to fight another day, surrounded by dragons but always stalwart, wielding his magic sword of bluster and venom.  And his supporters, what of them?  They're critical to his battle, whether through their cheers or donations, a part of the grand effort.  By identifying with his fight and following his efforts they participate in a narrative of our time, one which rises above the humdrum. 

A Different Perspective--Rebanks

 James Rebanks is a skilled writer whose book I enjoyed.  He's got a new book for sale, already released in the UK and now in the US on August 3.

I haven't read the new book, but anticipate I will, likely from the library. Civil Eats has an excerpt from it, describing his visit to Wendell Berry in Kentucky and to Iowa.

While he calls Iowa farmers the "best farmers that ever lived", he doesn't like our production agriculture, mourning the transition we've made over the last 60 years or so.

I agree with him there have been big tradeoffs, but I'm not as negative as he is about current agriculture.  I don't know how well his sheep farm could support his family without, I'm guessing, significant support from his writing.  

But he's worth reading. 

Missing Somethings in Schelling: Reston Verus Prince George

Thomas Schelling was a great economist, who won the Nobel.  One book had this: In 1969 and 1971, Schelling published widely cited articles dealing with racial dynamics and what he termed "a general theory of tipping."^[21] In these papers he showed that a preference that one's neighbors be of the same color, or even a preference for a mixture "up to some limit," could lead to total segregation,

I think generally it was taken as explaining why "block-busting" in the 60's led to a change from lily-white ownership to all-black ownership--whites had a preference for living among whites. But when you look at what he said, at least as summarized in Wikipedia, it's race-blind.  In other words, blacks could have a preference for living among blacks, which could also affect housing patterns.  That point was, I think, missed because we didn't have a real world example. 

One factor in the discussion is the starting point.  In the 1960's you had areas which were inhabited by one race. Another factor is whether you think it's a "preference", or whether it's an emergent property from network effects: you buy where a friend has bought first, "Networks" has become a new buzzword for analysis.  And these days we're more familiar with "chain" immigration, where a neighborhood in the US is peopled mostly by immigrants from one town in Mexico, or wherever. .  

I bought in Reston in the mid-70's, partly because it was founded from the beginning as equal opportunity housing.  I was part of an outflow of people from DC moving out to the suburbs.  As it turned out, despite Reston's open appeal, it didn't attract a lot of blacks--I don't think it's ever gotten much over 10 percent blacks--; most blacks moving from the District went to Prince George County, which is now majority black.  These patterns fit Schelling's analysis, but how much of the underlying cause is preference, and how much is network effects is still unknown. 

Seat Belts and Air Bags

 To me the argument for using seat belts in an air bag equipped car is the same as for using a face mask when vacinated. 

Carbon Credits and Bureaucracy

 A number of articles on the issue of carbon credits--Politico, Civil Eats Modern Farmer, and others.  Apparently the Biden administration is moving towards a system of establishing credits for farmers to capture carbon in the soil as part of the effort to minimize climate change.  There's questions about definitions, about recognizing existing practices which capture carbon, etc. etc.

What strikes me is the likely impact on the USDA bureaucracy.  I assume NRCS will be the lead agency in determining whether a given practice captures carbon, etc. and that data relating to credits will be tied into the GIS system.

I've not studied the issue, but I'm assuming the credits will have monetary value, small at first but increasing.  I assume there might be a tie to existing farm programs.  Consider the sod/swamp provisions which initiated in the 1985 farm bill with some programs over the years requiring compliance with the provisions as a condition of eligibility for payments.  It's easy enough to imagine a requirement for some minimum of carbon capture being added to sod/swamp. I'm not sure these days how the FSA-NRCS collaboration on sod/swamp is working, but carbon capture might put new strains on the relationship, as well as the joint management of GIS data.

During my time NRCS had programs with their responsibilities under sod/swamp because they weren't used to being the "bad guy", making decisions which hurt farmers.  The agency's culture was always being the good guy, teaching and helping farmers to do better.  Will NRCS be up for carbon capture decisions?

A final concern is fraud.  We like to believe producers are honest, and most are.  But some aren't, and it's easy enough to imagine a fraudulent collaboration between a farmer and a USDA employee.

[Updated to add a link.]

FSA and the Last Mile Problem

 Sec. Vilsack is announcing additional programs to aid producers impacted by the pandemic.

My impression of the various programs which have authorized spending in response to the pandemic and its effect is that several of them have had big problems in getting the money out the door.  Some of the programs have struggled to get the money out; others have perhaps been vulnerable to fraud.  

Those are impressions only.  Meanwhile I'm following the FSA employee group on Facebook. I likely suffer from the old-timer's presumption that the newcomers have it easier, but I try to resist that snap judgment.  On the one hand, I'm very impressed by the variety of programs, some directed to people FSA has long served, some directed to new groups, which the counties have had to deal with.  On the other hand I remember PIK in 1983 and particulary the disaster program in 1986 (IIRC) which hit in the midst of the System/36 automation. 

I hope someday somebody, GAO or Congress, does a high level review of the government's operations, their speed, efficiency, and weaknesses.  My expectation and hope is that FSA would do well in such a review, largely because of a long history in dealing with crash programs and, most importantly, the county offices deal directly with the people, a big contrast with most of the rest of government which has to try to operate through state and county government agencies, and/or NGOs.