China and Farmland

 Once again people are getting upset by the idea of citizens of a rising Asian power buying American farmland. See this and this.

As I blogged previously, this is an old story. Back in the 1970's Congress passed  AFIDA, but back then it wasn't China which was the perceived threat.  China was a poor backwards country struggling under communism.  Instead it was Japan, which was selling us cars, not electronics, and using a few of the dollars they got to buy real estate, some agricultural land, some urban properties including Rockefeller Center.

In the long run who owns what is determined by economics.  Japan's star has faded, China's risen.  In the next 30 years it may be India or Nigeria which has the money to buy some land.  

Nation Building--Napoleon, Ataturk, Kagame, Petraeus

 Reading "The Fourth Star" by David Cloud and Greg Jaffe, which deals with the interwining careers of Generals Casey, Abizaid, Chiarelli, and Petraeus, who all were associated with the Iraq war.  So far I'm up to roughly 2004, when Petraeus has left the 101st Airborne for the States, then returned to Iraq to train the new Iraqi army.  During the division's occupation of Mosul in the north of Iraq Petraeus was a forceful presence in nation-building, or at least patching together a semi-operational local government.  

We all know the results of our involvement there.  

I got to thinking about leaders who were successful in nation-building: Napoleon's imprint on France is present today, as is Ataturk's on Turkey. Kagame's rule of Rwanda has now lasted longer than either of the foregoing and looks to be as impactful.

As best I can tell, Petraeus has a comparable big personality and intelligence as the other three, so what accounts for his failure and the success of the other three?

The obvious thing is longevity, which points to a big weakness in American nation-building efforts: rotation.  As a democracy we don't feel able to tell our generals and our troops you're in for the duration. We rotate them out after a year or so.  I wonder what would have happened if the troops who had 3 to 5 tours of duty in Afghanistan or Iraq had instead spent 3 years (with R&R) in the same area. Perhaps more importantly, if our generals had spent that time.

I'm reminded of a lesson Bob Reynolds, who was then the deputy director of the Administrative Services Division, ASCS gave me when I screwed up. It was to the effect that people, employees, cared more about consistency than charm; you can figure out how to deal with someone who's the same asshole every day, but dealing with someone who's different every day is much more difficult.

I think that's true with nation building.  Petraeus may not have had the right ideas, but he was forceful.  Reminds me of old corncob pipe Dougie, our near-fascist general, Douglas MacArthur,  who lasted 6 years in a nation building exercise which was very successful, much as I hate to admit it.

Continuums

"most things that we think of as categorical are really continuous"

That's a line in this post, What Is a Woman? at Statistical Modeling.  A lot of what they post is over my head, but enough isn't to make for rewarding reading.  The phrase captures a belief I've had. It goes along with believing that most generalizations could be rephrased statistically, as in "Americans believe..." There's a statistical phrasing for "Americans"--is it "the average American", "the young American", "white Americans", "living Americans" etc. etc.  And what they believe can also be rephrased.

The Premonition I

 About a third of the way into Michael Lewis's "The Premonition", which so far describes the development of the pandemic plan in the Bush administration, through the linking of people from different government agencies and a high schooler's science project.

On page 78 he writes:

"Inside the United States government were all these little boxes.  The boxes had been created to address specific problems as they arose.  'How to ensure our food is safe to eat,' for instance, or how to avoid a run on banks'..."  He goes on to describe the people inside the boxes as knowledgeable and talented, developing a culture around the box, but frozen inside the box with little interest in other boxes.  

For me the "box" is a "silo", which includes the "stakeholders" in Congress and NGO's as well as the civil servatns, but the description otherwise rings true. 

Changes in Society--Religion

 As I've mentioned, my paternal grandfather was a Presbyterian minister.  Recently I've been doing a little research using the newspapers.com archive of old newspapers. Before that I'd done a handful of searches in the NYTimes archive. 

There's a big contrast of course between newspapers in the 1890's through 1920's and now.  One hundred years makes a big difference. In terms of religion, the daily newspapers in Wilkes Barre and West Pittston paid a lot more attention to religious events than they do today. As you might expect the Times paid less attention than the smaller cities, but still there was considerable coverage, particularly on a controversy within the Presbyterian church over whether a minister was too liberal. There was also coverage in the PA cities of significant events: the dedicating of a church after its debt was paid off, an address by a minister returned from a visit to the "Holy Land", the departure of a minister for a church in Minneapolis.

These days I can't think of much in religious affairs which is covered in the media, except for religious leaders joining one side or another in political controversies, or splits over issues like the place of homosexuality in the church or the role of women priests.

Times have changed.

Surprising (to Me) Views on Heritability

 Below is the text of a recent tweet.  I found the data in the table surprising, since I had the impression that professors were generally disdainful of the possible influence of genes. I didn't dig into the details of the poll, so the sample might have been small and/or skewed, or maybe sociologists differ from professors in other fields.

I mean you can do the obvious, boring thing and check polls.
For example, this one from 2014, with 81.2% of sociologists granting some heritability to intellectual potentialhttps://t.co/kz0ESPest0 https://t.co/2NJQ7noBFV pic.twitter.com/xc2ahfvHWD

— Siberian Fox📎 (@SilverVVulpes) July 14, 2021

 

Pancho's Life

 In a NYTimes story on the use of a brain implant to convert thoughts into speech. 

Before his stroke, Pancho [who lost his speech because of a stroke after an accident] had attended school only up to sixth grade in his native Mexico. With remarkable determination, he has since earned a high school diploma, taken college classes, received a web developer certificate and begun studying French.

“I think the car wreck got me to be a better person, and smarter too,” he emailed.

Sometimes it seems we have too much choice, too many abilities, and being forced to concentrate can help.  Or maybe that's my Pollyanna streak.  

 

Is Email Effective?

 It turns out a researcher at Illinois State University did a survey in 2019 of Illinois FSA personnel (CED's, DD's, etc.) which concluded:

The USDA Farm Service Agency replaced paper mailings with GovDelivery electronic communication in order to increase efficiency and reduce costs. This case study presents evidence from one state indicating a perception among local FSA officials that GovDelivery does not allow them to effectively serve their constituents. A gap in reliable rural Internet service and low usage of smartphones in place of rural broadband may contribute to the extremely low open rates for GovDelivery email notifications. Findings suggest that electronic-only communication does not allow the agency to effectively engage with farm owners, operators, and managers.

Boerngen, Maria A. “Efficiencyfectiveness of Paperless Communication from the USDA Farm Service Agency.” Journal of ASFMRA, 2019, pp. 27–32. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26872597. Accessed 13 July 2021.

LBJ Was a Great If Flawed President

 Noah Smith discusses the "War on Poverty"

It's obvious to me that LBJ was the greatest domestic president of my lifetime, excluding FDR since I wasn't aware of him.  

I suspect future historians will decrease the weight they give to Vietnam so he'll rise in their assessment.

Racism and Sex

 The Times had a graphic 3 years ago showing the results of analyzing the earnings of black and white men and women.  The top graphic compared the results for lifetime earnings of men who grew up in the top 20 percent considering parental wealth and neighborhoods.  It showed that such black men were about half as likely to maintain their status.

"Black boys raised in America, even in the wealthiest families and living in some of the most well-to-do neighborhoods, still earn less in adulthood than white boys with similar backgrounds, according to a sweeping new study that traced the lives of millions of children."

What's strangely interesting is that black women maintain their status, doing as well as white women.  That simple fact undermines explanations on both the left and right:

• the right can't argue that blacks are less intelligent when black women do as well as white women
• the left can't argue that simple racism, prejudice against blacks, is the cause.

I hasten to add a couple points:

• black men have always been seen as more threatening than black women, so it makes sense that prejudice against them is stronger.  That's just one factor to consider.
• While the study matched the black and white samples on money and neighborhood, that doesn't mean they weren't comparing apples and oranges. Some things to consider--how many generations of wealth did the whites have behind them, as opposed to the blacks.  They might have compared nouveaux riche to established wealth. They also might have compared the children of black professionals who thrived in the old segregated society but who had to compete in the integrated society following the civil rights movement.