Payscales and Pitchforks

Shocked, disappointed, disgusted. See e.g., Claire McCaskill and President Obama. Those are the responses to news of exhorbitant bonuses and astronomical compensation packages, for CEO’s, executives, and others in anti-government, anti-tax, anti-regulation corporations that are gorging mind-numbing amounts of taxpayer funds from the bailout trough. Wronged, self-exculpatory, defensive. See e.g., John Thain and Rudy Giuliani. Those are the responses to the criticisms of the McCaskills and Obamas.

And yet, in retrospect, none of this is surprising. The principal fiction underlying the obscene compensation of those “masters of the universe” is that the market determines their compensation based purely and irreducibly on their value. This fiction becomes, has become, deeply rooted and self-fulfilling (for a time). In their minds, the cause-effect relationship between value and compensation has been conveniently stripped of every other factor: externalities, structural effects, market inefficiencies, morality, finite resources, personal biases, etc., etc. Stripped of these considerations the compensation logic is unassailable, albeit circular.

Why is their compensation so high? Because of their value! How do we know they are so valuable? Because they require such high compensation! Such simple positive feedback systems eventually consume all available resources destroying themselves in the process. But from their vantage, and applying this impeccable logic, it appears to the masters, for the time being, that the excesses are those of the mere rabble. How dare they question the value of their economic aristocracy?! The unfortunate history of the world has repeatedly demonstrated that when aristrocracy becomes insensitive to the rabble in this way, their breakthrough understanding is delivered through pitchforks, either real or metaphorical. My advice? Invest in pitchforks.

The "Obama Effect"

The study has not yet completed peer review, BUT...

Take a look at the plot that is shown as evidence here. (Vanderbilt University press release on Ray Friedman research.)

Then review the critique of graphical analysis here. (Taibbi critique of Thomas Friedman.)

Finally consider the rich irony that both plotters are Friedmans.

I propose a new phenomenon: "Friedman napkin" - a plot of arbitrarily selected parameters with either real or imaginary data used to reach a wildly inappropriate conclusion.

(Note: Both "Friedman plot" and "Friedman graph" already have specific meanings in math and science, hence the slightly more pejorative term "Friedman napkin." On the other hand, the number of syllables is nicely consistent with "Friedman unit."

You heard it here first.

The trouble with global warming skeptics

In a NOVA piece on global climate change, “What’s up with the weather?”, James Trefil observed:

If you sat down and said, "I'm going to design a public issue that is the absolute worst nightmare of every scientist, of every communicator in the world," you couldn't do better than the greenhouse effect. You're dealing with something that's very complicated. You're dealing with something where there's legitimate uncertainty in the science. It's not that people are trying to pull the wool over anybody's eyes. There's legitimate uncertainty. You're dealingwith something that has enormous consequences for people. And you're dealing with something whose effects will happen 30 years down the road, you know, when they happen. And then you say- you give people this and say, "Okay, do something about it."

For context.

The Crystal Vase: A one act play in three scenes.

Cast, in order of appearance:
Futzinfarb
Futzinfarb’s spouse
Millie, an orbital forcing cat
Trouble, an AGW monkey
Antimarx, a pet store clerk


Scene 1: A cozy living room, two chairs arranged around a fireplace

Futzinfarb: I sure do like that expensive crystal vase you gave me.
Fuzinfarb’s spouse: You’re welcome dear.
Futzinfarb: And it looks so nice on the mantelpiece.
Futzinfarb’s spouse: Indeed.
Millie: Meow!
Futzinfarb: Oh look, isn’t that cute? Millie likes the vase also. She’s rubbing against it….. Oh, oh no, it’s starting to tip! Millie! Stop! No! Bad cat!
Futzinfarb’s spouse: Oops, there it goes!
(Sound of vase smashing to bits.)
Futzinfarb: Fudge.
Futzinfarb’s spouse: Double fudge.
Millie: Meow!

Scene 2: The same living room, the next morning.

Futzinfarb: Oh look, honey – we won the ebay auction for the vase! It will be a perfect replacement for the one that Millie tipped off the mantel last night.
Futzinfarb’s spouse: I’ll go get my credit card. You’d better figure out what to do about Millie before the replacement vase gets here.
Millie: Meow!

Scene 3: A pet store, later that afternoon.

Futzinfarb: I want to complain about Millie, this cat that you sold me last week.
Millie: Meow!
Trouble: Ee, ee, ee. Ooh, ooh!
Futzinfarb: She rubbed up against an expensive crystal vase that we had on our mantel last night. It rocked and then tipped off the mantel and smashed to bits.
Futzinfarb’s spouse (wandering away, distracted): Cool! A tarantula!
Millie: Meow!
Trouble: Ee, ee, ee. Ooh, ooh!
Futzinfarb (ignoring Futzinfarb’s spouse, who is sticking one hand into a tarantula cage): We bought a replacement vase, but what do you suggest we should we do about Millie’s bad behavior?
Antimarx: No problem! We’ll happily trade in your cat Millie for this monkey, Trouble. Since Millie is the one that tipped your vase off the mantel last night, you’ll have nothing to worry about with Trouble.
Millie: Meow!
Futzinfarb’s spouse: Ouch!
Trouble: Ee, ee, ee. Ooh, ooh!

Curtain falls.

Update: It has a name.

He Kept Us Safe, Redux

In these crisis filled waning days of the Bush 43 administration, among the manifold efforts to assess his legacy are a dwindling number of brave little recruits in his willful ignorance army sifting the debris of his multiple catastrophes for a few scraps of anything that could even remotely be considered positive.

One of the shiny nuggets they have turned up and repeatedly pointed out is that “he kept us safe.” It’s trivial to point out, as many have done, that this claim is a grossly misleading interpretation of his record. In fact it is a baldfaced lie: one of the considerations that the responses to the “he kept us safe” chorus fail to point out strongly enough is that as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, a title he and his disciples seem to have fetishized without absorbing its implications, he is responsible for placing U.S. troops in harms way and for the casualties suffered by those troops (in Iraq alone, over 4200 dead and over 43,000 wounded, with no official tally for civilian contractors).

It has been vigorously argued, of course, that those casualties prevented much worse consequences, an argument slipping ever deeper into solipsism and fantasy as the harsh reality and colossal scale of the Iraq debacle solidifies. Nevertheless, as Commander in Chief, he is responsible for the safety of those he leads - that is the nature of the military chain of command, its ultimate meaning, its special hell (for those with a conscience), the reason for those salutes as he struts down the tarmac.

Bush elected to place those troops in harms way, many of them young and idealistic, and with limited background to judge the virtues and shortcomings of the orders they followed, and they died or were wounded under his command. He (presumably) considered the costs and benefits and chose to risk their lives.

They were boys and girls and husbands and wives and mothers and fathers and sons and daughters and brothers and sisters and most of them would have fit right in on the 90th floor of the World Trade Center. They were Americans. They were us. I am sickened at the apparent willingness to consider the issue of their safety as somehow deeply discounted because they had 18 weeks of training, or deposited a signing bonus, or knew the ins and outs of an armored Humvee, or were gung-ho. Their military commitment especially obligated their military chain of command: “I will trust you with my safety so that, in turn, those that I protect will be safe”. They were Americans and their commander knowingly put them in harms way and whatever else you say about him and his motivations, whatever history eventually says about him and the quality of his decisions, they were us and he did NOT keep them safe.

Is PEOTUS Obama THAT Smart?

What I see as one of the brilliant and remarkable accomplishments of Republicans, picking up momentum with Ronald Reagan and extending at least through the election of George W. Bush and a Republican dominated legislature in 2004 and the continued reddening of a swath of the deep south in the 2008 election, is persuading an enormous sector of the electorate to, demonstrably, vote against their own interests.

Republicans did this in many ways including standard outright misrepresentation of their policies (lying), but I would suggest also primarily by methodically establishing a misleading (a charitable assessment) kneejerk association between a series of social icons and symbols and their party and candidates. In essence, many Republican candidates were campaigning with an invisible twin (e.g., the white baby Jesus driving a 4WD pickup truck loaded with stacks of tax-free cash, swaddled in the American flag, cradling a handgun in His lap, and reciting the pledge of allegiance – you get the idea). In the voting booth, it was the twin for whom the lever was pulled (now that’s an anachronistic metaphor, eh?).

How does one change this situation in which much of the electorate has become comfortable with and habituated to voting against their own interests, in which this type of voting has become structural? The evidence of the past 30 years unfortunately and perversely strongly suggests that it cannot be addressed effectively by simply developing, articulating, and running on a platform that is in the interest of the majority of the electorate. I think it is an enormous understatement to say that PEOTUS Obama is very smart, but in the face of the unprecedented array of converging long-term crises and disasters that the Bush administration is bequeathing him, a big part of his job has to be to convince a majority of the electorate to vote in their own interests over the short term while these crises and disasters play out. As obvious as this sounds, those structural iconic and symbolic associations by much of the electorate will make it extraordinarily difficult to achieve.

Enter the current brouhaha over PEOTUS Obama’s selection of Pastor Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration. Now as a lifelong devout agnostic I admit I have a visceral negative reaction to Pastor Warren and his noxious brand of evangelism. And many others also have very good reason to find Pastor Warren an appalling choice for this role. I suspect that you’ll now see where I am going with this: what I wonder is whether that very smart PEOTUS Obama is cleverly and strategically working to coopt some of that iconic and symbolic association, to put it into the service of having the electorate vote in their own interests again. Is he THAT smart?

In Which I Channel Malthus

It might be relatively easy to dismiss mockery of President George W. Bush, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and their ilk for episodes of apparent “airborne fact finding” (or aff as I prefer to call it) as simply taking these events out of context for either political or comedy fodder. (The archetypes of making an aff of oneself are Bush’s flyover of New Orleans, and Rumsfeld’s August 2006 take on the Iraq security situation). I can’t help but wonder, however, whether there is more to this than isolated incidents, or even broader evidence of a flyover presidency. Rather, I am beginning to suspect that there is a wholesale willful ignorance afoot here, mixed with a dim recognition that the common experience of aircraft vistas can serve as a useful means to transmit hollow messages brimming with naught but ideology. Exhibit B is Linda Chavez’ stunningly moronic AFF-based analysis of population statistics on Weekend America in December 2007.

A more recent example that seems to me to be consistent with aff analysis is advanced by Michael Anissimov and bolstered by Tsteel. Basically these arguments, arguments that I have seen in nearly limitless and infuriating permutations, are little more than, “whoa, look out the window of my plane, all that empty land, all that sunlight. Dude, it’s all cool!” Tsteels agreement with Anissimov’s claim that concern about overpopulation is a selection effect based on people living in crowded cities, is patently and quantitatively unsupported by his aff argument. Showing that there are regions of this country where population density is higher and regions where it is lower, imagining that somehow all the population might be spread out so that both yellow and blue regions turn green, and from that sunnily concluding that there are enough resources on this finite planet to support six billion, rushing headlong to ten billion, people is sophomoric at best.

Randomly selected from among a vast list of issues this conclusion ignores are the additional resource impacts of those formerly yellow regions turned green (shouldn’t our experience with the suburbanization and exurbanization of America have at least a bit of a role in considering how this might work out?), studies showing that dense urban areas can be more resource efficient in many ways than less dense communities, and a quantitative and scientifically/technologically grounded consideration of the many, many parameters beyond map colors that determine the population carrying capacity of the earth and the quality of life of its inhabitants.

Technology, ah yes technology. It has been a wonder at, for instance, delivering porn to your desktop, engineering Segway scooters to search for a problem, developing Humvees that can lay siege to nearly any landscape, and distributing obscenely large high definition television screens to homes across our great nation. At reducing the consumption of finite resources, um, not so much. In my own view, this is only partly due to the market failures that many other commenters have identified. It is also due in large part to the second law of thermodynamics – an inviolable principle that so many of the technology pollyannas have chosen to ignore, the brick wall to end all brick walls, dead in the path of all those schemes that propose to replace, joule-for-joule, the extraordinarily low entropy and high energy density, and efficient and easy to transport energy source of fossil fuel with high entropy and low energy density, low efficiency and difficult to transport energy alternatives. It’s all so reminiscent of that long ago watershed, when a president came before a nation in crisis and asked, not for sacrifice, but shopping. Our resource pollyannas tell us that we’ll be able to shop ourselves out of this one as well, that we can plan on consuming in the same gluttonous way we have for the past century, that by buying more we’re saving more, that we live in a Wal-Mart biosphere whose shelves will be miraculously stocked and pennies knocked off the price while we sleep, a more absurd and fundamentally flawed prospect than President Bush’s own prescription.

The elephant in the room as the Hubbert peak passes, as ocean fish stocks collapse, as fresh water becomes a battleground, as media and corporate interests design, spread and buttress a culture of consumption even for the impoverished, as ugly anitbiotic resistant strains of microrganisms multiply, as atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations relentlessly exponentiate, as the global arms market continues to boom, as extinctions accelerate, as the economics of global food supplies continue to undermine the meager foundation that has kept many millions just this side of starvation (not to mention the many millions it has abandoned to that horrific fate) really IS becoming how many people is too many? As the most extraordinarily successful large life form that has ever existed on the planet, we had better start asking the very painful question whether it is possible to be too successful. I still remember what I learned over the course of a few days from a little jar of nematodes and pablum with a tight fitting lid, a failed science project from many years ago: the problem with biological systems and finite resources is that they always ask that question about success – and then answer it - if someone else doesn’t ask it first.

AUMF

A modest proposal: let's name the Wall Street bailout legislation in a more illuminating fashion. I think a good fit is "Abandonment of the US to Monetary Fraud", or AUMF for short. It really is all of a piece now isn't it, just bookends on eight years that have unravelled a country?