The Adaptability of People

That seems to be today's theme. Here's a NYTimes article on a weird custom in parts of Albania--a woman can choose to live as a man, and apparently it works. I've been intrigued by studies of the importance of peers versus that of parents in forming people. But here's a reminder that, provided society creates a set of roles and norms, people can be very flexible. (In the article, a 20-year old woman all of whose brothers were killed, leaving the family without male leadership, chooses the male/leader role with full acceptance from the society.) I suppose it's similar to people moving from one society to another: some are able to adapt to the new range of roles available and become successful; others drop in status to the more limited roles (taxi drivers, cooks, cleaners).

Everyone who announces a position about people should remember examples like these.

Gardens in Lesotho

Anyone who's skimmed the history of agriculture in different parts of the world won't be surprised by the gardens of Lesotho, as described here. The history is testimony to the ability of people to adapt to different environments, meaning they learn ways to make use of what's available. (Updated: see the nice piece in Slate on gardening.)

The Faceless Bureaucrat

See the picture there.

Feminism Score--Four Stars

The Post and Times have pieces on Lt. Gen. Ann Dunwoody, now nominated to be a four-star general, probably the first one to have graduated from Cortland State (i.e., upstate NY). And apparently a Scotch-Irish background.

A Weak Government and Weak Newspapers Equal No Sports Fanatics

I'm trying to link one of my themes, that, in keeping with Madison and Federalist 10, we have a weak government (despite the fantasies of the conservatives and libertarians), with an observation

Ilya Somin at Volokh Conspiracy contrasts American sports fanaticism with that in Europe, and finds ours lacking (our fans almost never kill each other over games):

Many European and especially Latin American soccer teams are also closely associated with governments. This often allows repressive and corrupt regimes to obtain propaganda benefits from the teams' victories. For example, the repressive Brazilian and Argentinian military governments of the 1970s increased their public support as a result of their national teams' World Cup victories in 1970 and 1978. In Europe, Mussolini, Franco, and the communist government of the Soviet Union derived similar benefits from their teams' successes. On a lesser scale, incompetent or corrupt local governments in Europe sometimes benefit from the victories of local clubs.

In the United States, by contrast, pro sports rivalries are based on geographic divisions that have little or no connection to deeper social antagonisms over race, religion, or political ideology. As a result, even the most heated US sports rivalries, such as the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry, rarely result in violence between fans of opposing teams - and never in the form of the large-scale soccer riots that we sometimes see in Europe, Asia, and Latin America.

Where do newspapers come in? I read a report a few days ago, I think from a newspaper conference in Europe, that's relevant. As I remember it, European newspapers look at US papers and see lots of weak, local papers as compared to their setup where you have fewer, more national papers. For example, in France the Paris newspapers dominate the country; similarly in Britain the London papers are dominant. The closest we come is having USAToday, the Wall Street Journal and NY Times, but even those papers don't have the influence of the Times (of London). So the Euro papers see the problems US papers are having with the Internet and currently don't have the same problems, but anticipate they may down the road.

Potatoes, Co-ops, and Marketing Information

The potato industry has organized itself. Partially facilitated by modern technology, as in the Internet and conference telephone calls, the Idaho potato growers organized a cooperative in 2004. Under the existing law, farmers can organize without violating anti-trust law. The co-op was able to reduce production, in part by running a bid program, as well as coordinating marketing.

Abstract of a paper from SSRN:
High potato price volatility, decreasing demand for fresh potatoes and prices below the cost of production led to a decision of a number of Idaho potato growers to organize the United Fresh Potato Growers of Idaho, a marketing cooperative. The programs and strategies of the cooperative target both production and marketing of fresh potatoes. To evaluate the effectiveness of the programs implemented by the cooperative, we examine the level and volatility of fresh potato prices during two periods: before the cooperative was organized and when the cooperative is in the market. We find empirical evidence suggesting that fresh potato prices were higher and less volatile during the period when the cooperative was in the market.

The whole thing is interesting for those who remember farmers struggles to cooperate over the past 90 years or so.

Medicare and SSN

The NY Times reports that Medicare is resisting changing the Medicare card to remove the SSN.

Ms. Frizzera, the Medicare official, said that issuing new Medicare cards would be “a huge undertaking.” The agency would need three years to plan such a move and eight more years to carry it out, she said.

Medicare officials estimate that it would cost $500 million to change their computer systems if they issued new ID numbers to beneficiaries. Doctors, hospitals and other health care providers use those numbers in filing claims with Medicare, which pays a billion claims a year.

I regard this with the disdain it deserves. The state of Virginia has phased out SSN's as the drivers license number. I recognize that Medicare is not used to issuing new cards every 5 years or so, but I assume they have procedures for replacing lost or stolen cards. And they have procedures for handling erroneous numbers (i.e., if they give out a card with the wrong number they're able to reissue a new card with the right number). Those two capabilities can be the basis for the changeover because they supply the business logic for the change. The third and missing element is a process to generate a unique 9-digit number for Medicare recipients. All they need is a cross-reference file matching their number to the SSN. Match all bills against the file so the provider can bill using either the SSN, if already in the provider's database, or the Medicare number.

The bottom line is, they're going to have to do it someday, might as well do it now.

Two Nations Forever

Sometimes I'm optimistic about the future, but then I read this Post story about a southern Maryland church chorus, trying to bridge religious and racial differences and I conclude there's no way.

With just two weeks until their first performance, Jefferson [chorus leader] jumped into practicing the two songs the choir planned to sing at the concert. For the slow "Lord We Worship You," he told them, imagine a quiet candlelight dinner with God. For the upbeat "Blessed Be the Lord," use "your country voice," he said.

And learn to move, he told them. Clapping was not an option at this point, as past attempts had ended with the black members clapping on the second and fourth beats and white members clapping on the first and third.

But some aren't so easily discouraged:

"It's not in everybody's culture to do the moving, so be sensitive," Jefferson said. "We're a little, how do I say it, challenged in that area. It's going to take awhile. We're going to bridge it together. Bridge the cultures."

Start with baby steps, he instructed. Tap your foot. Or rock back and forth.

"Just try not to laugh at each other."

How Americans Do Things

Haphazardly, because our government is not a strong state. For evidence, read this NYTimes story on the levees along the Mississippi. (Almost wrote "levee system", but it's not a system.) The latest issue of the American Historical Review has an article arguing, unsuccessfully in my view, that the U.S. has a strong state. If the comparison is to France or other European models, I disagree.

Bureaucrat Dies

Well, he may not have been exactly a bureaucrat, but he dealt with people as part of his role in a big bureaucracy--the Fairfax County police force, and he's now dead, prematurely, at the age of 6.

The Monkey Cage picks up the story from the Post.