The Daily Duck

AF447 -- The Final Report

noreply@blogger.com (Hey Skipper) — Sun, 19 May 2013 07:05:00 +0000

"To an even greater extent than the sea, the sky is incredibly unforgiving of human carelessness, incapacity, or neglect." (Unknown)

With little notice, last year the French Civil Aviation Safety Investigation Authority released the final report on AF447. (I have written about the mishap investigation here and here.)

First, a few words about how crash investigations proceed. They start with an initial report, which primarily serves as an official notice of the accident and known circumstances. Then, depending on the severity of the crash and the complexity of the investigation, there will be one or more interim reports. Their purpose is to provide the accumulated list of facts. The final report, based upon the accumulated evidence, provides a theory of the accident that incorporates the facts, along with recommendations to prevent similar mishaps.

At over 250 pages, the report is definitely not something you would look to for light beach reading. Nor, as I am about to demonstrate, is it a natural fit for a blog post that won't soon remind readers that the internet is indeed big, then shortly thereafter convince them to direct their attention somewhere, anywhere else.

In order to avoid various and tedious means of citation, I will simply preface everything I sourced from the final report with (FR). Text prefaced with (DE) is descriptive for a non-specialist audience. Everything else is in my humble, but very expert, opinion. Since the report follows a specific format, which is organizational rather than narrative, so a great extent this analysis will, too.

For those unwilling to subject themselves to a slog, I'll cut to the chase. I thought the report failed to understand the underlying cause of the mishap, engaged in unwarranted speculation, completely missed a few "wait, what?" moments, and didn't question existing procedures. Now, the slog.

In order to substantiate those criticisms, I'm going to become unavoidably abstruse.

Mishap Summary

While flying through an area with super-cooled water droplets, AF447 lost all airspeed indications due to icing of the ram air pressure sensing devices. The flying pilot (PF) then commanded full nose up, which resulted in the aircraft climbing outside its flight envelope, whereupon it entered an aft-stick stall. Neither the PF nor the monitoring pilot (PM) recognized the stall. The aircraft remained in the aft stick stall until impact.

History Bites

(FR) With respect to the A330, there had been 13 previous incidents sufficiently well documented for analysis and comparison. In all cases, unintended altitude variations were less than 1000 feet. In five cases, crews deliberately descended up to 3500 feet in response to stall warnings; all but one of those warnings was due to a combination of flight control reversion to Alternate Law and turbulence. (Alternate Law is a degraded flight control mode that uses arbitrary values instead of air data inputs to the flight control computer; also, in AL there are no flight envelope protections.) Within that seemingly benign group, though, is one instance where the crew made inappropriate high-amplitude control inputs, sometimes from both pilots, over four minutes. The inputs, although extreme, weren't sustained, the altitude deviations were less than 600 feet.

(FR) None of the affected crews applied the memory items from the unreliable airspeed procedure. They didn't manually disconnect the flight directors, disengage autothrust, or set the pitch attitude to 5º per the procedure.

At this point, someone — heck, everyone — should be raising their hands. What are memory items, and what good are they?

(DE) Memory items are procedural steps to a small number of emergencies considered too time critical for reliance on the Quick Reference Handbook. (The QRH is largely dedicated to abnormal conditions. It also has supplemental checklists for normal but non-routine operations, and tabular performance data.)

While seemingly sensible, memory items disregard human limitations when responding to extremely rare events. If the response is simple, (e.g., loss of cabin pressure, put on the O2 mask) they are unnecessary. Where the required procedure is more extensive, then it is extremely unlikely that the pilots will be able to fly/monitor the airplane while reciting a frequently verbose laundry list during a situation completely hostile to that very thing.

(DE) My previous airline acknowledged that fact by putting a red bordered card on the glare shield containing the immediate action steps for time critical situations. What the pilots were required to memorize was merely which abnormals were on the red border checklist: the flying pilot would direct the monitoring pilot to read the appropriate critical action items, in case the non-flying pilot wasn't already doing so.

The universal failure to apply what was a list of memory items for the A330 should be waving a giant red flag, already clearly visible for those not thoroughly stunned by habit, that history has comprehensively rejected the entire concept. (My current airline is similarly stunned.) If the crew had a red-bordered card with a list of steps to be read in the event of any problem with a primary flight instrument, you probably would never have heard of AF447. The report frequently refers to the "startle effect" such situations create, while simultaneously seeming oblivious to the obvious implications for the very notion of memory items.

When you need a pilot, you don't want an operator

(DE) Stripped to it's essence, piloting an airplane requires three things: continuous and accurate situational awareness; decisions based upon that awareness about what to do with the airplane; and implementing those decisions. A popular term for this is OODA Loop: Observe, Orient, Decide Act. All pretty self evident and, prior to glass cockpit airplanes, more or less essential.

(DE) Enter the FMS and FCC, TLAs for the Flight Management System and the Flight Control Computer. In modern airplanes, the FMS maintains positional "awareness", and calculates the vector required to null the difference between the current and required position and speed. When the autopilot is engaged, the FCC then moves the flight controls and throttles in order to null the difference between the aircraft vector and the FMS commanded vector. [Note: The FMS actually works in mixed modes: following programmed route, altitudes and speeds; various permutations with pilot assigned heading, altitude, and speed; or, solely pilot assigned heading, altitude and speed. Full automation is common during climbout and en route; a combination mixed mode and solely pilot assigned during arrival.]

(DE) From the pilot's point of view, the FMS commands are shown by the Flight Director (FD) vertical and horizontal (fly-to) bars on the Primary Flight Display. Centering the fly-to bars, whether via the FCC or manual flight control input, creates the "nulling" vector.

There are two serious problems here. 1. The FMS and FCC are very good. 2. They are very reliable. Wait. Problems … how?

Yes, that is counterintuitive. But the generally accurate guidance and compliance of modern auto flight systems has meant there is almost no externally imposed incentive to not rely upon them. Moreover, the continual presence of FMS flight guidance, especially when hand flying, has removed the piloting from flying. Remember, part — by far the biggest — of being a pilot requires deciding, continuously and in detail, where the airplane is, what the airplane needs to do, and what it can do. Manipulating the flight controls is the relatively trivial consequence of everything else.

However, as long as the FD is in view, the FMS has taken the OOD out of OODA. Even when hand flying, pilots are merely being self-propelled FCCs, doing what the FMS tells them to do. So long as the FD is working, which is almost always, it makes all the control (attitude, power) and performance (heading, horizontal & vertical speed) instruments practically redundant. Pilots don't decide, for instance, what thrust setting and pitch attitude produces the required horizontal and vertical speeds; instead, they leave speed control to the autothrust system, while centering the FD pitch and roll command bars. The consequence of extensively relying upon the FD means it is easy to for pilots to stop deciding for themselves what the airplane should be doing, which is a long step towards losing sight of what it both must and can do.

When glass cockpit (shorthand for FMS/FCC) airliners first arrived, the operational philosophy — initially — was to always operate them at the highest possible level of automation consistent with the situation. However, what should have been apparent at the outset became more or less quickly, depending on the airline, glaring enough: flying skills were deteriorating. Various airlines addressed this in various ways: scarcely; a fair amount, but not enough; and just right.

Northwest Airlines, where I flew the A320 more than a decade ago, had by then taken the lesson fully on board. The Operations Manual actively encouraged, when conditions were permissive (light traffic, good weather, on your A game), doing the flying version of the full Monty. Not just turning off the autoflight and autothrust systems, but also the FD. Probably half the guys I flew with took the opportunity at least once per trip. The other half either didn't feel the need, or doubted their abilities.

My current employer, where I have been for six and a half years, started near the Air France position, and as the consequence of some painful (but not infamous) experiences, shifted towards the position Northwest had long since adopted. Flight Ops hasn't quite gotten to the point of actively encouraging the full flying Monty, but at least it is no longer prohibited, as it was up until a couple years ago. Most pilots at my base, but, oddly, far fewer at my company's main hub, hand fly from takeoff through about 20,000', and the last ten minutes or so of the flight. In my experience, almost none (one Capt in the last couple years, and yours truly) routinely do the full flying Monty. (Note: glass cockpit airplanes in some respects have higher workloads than their steam gauge predecessors. In the terminal environment, for reasons that don't bear going into, the monitoring pilot's (PM) workload increases significantly if the flying pilot (PF) is hand flying. This means in a busy terminal environment, most pilots will have AFS fully engaged to better distribute tasking.)

Air France (SFAIK, I am speculating a bit here) didn't. Until AF447, their philosophy was always maximum automation. The consequence was an airline staffed by more by operators than pilots. Indeed, a design goal of the A320/330/340/380 (A32+) series was the elimination of pilot skill, to the point that when first writing the A320 flight manuals, Airbus wanted to use the term "flight manager" instead of "pilot". Their flight test department saw that one off, but the underlying assumptions remained.

Nettle, ungrasped

A final report is supposed to contain data pertinent to the mishap, and causal theories that explain the data. They should not engage in speculation, unless there are otherwise unbridgeable gaps in the data; that is not the case with AF447. Yet the report does just that. It invokes something they call "the startle affect", and combines that with an excessive emphasis in training about over-speeding the airplane to produce an explanation of the PF's reactions. Of course the startle effect exists: happens every time something goes bang in the flight. Yet virtually all flights with bangs don't end up in pieces, so this is an explanation that, on its own, explains nothing.

(FR) In fairness to the report, it does go into some detail about how Air France's training with regard to over-speed was, pretty much by definition, excessive: it was wrong. The A32+ aircraft do not have enough power in level flight to overspeed the A32+ airfoil. Additionally, the report found that there was no discussion of stall recognition or recovery in the manual. Since one of the design features of the A32+ is extensive flight envelope protection, it isn't possible to stall the airplane. Clearly, that was at least one presumption too far.

However, it is an unacceptable leap to then explaining the flying pilot's comprehensively incorrect reaction to the loss of airspeed information as being motivated by his conclusion that the airplane was in the process of exceeding its maximum operating mach.

Rather, the proximate cause is a quite simple nettle the Final Report leaves firmly ungrasped. The only explanation for the PF putting the aircraft out of control, and the PM failing to satisfactorily notice and correct that situation is that neither pilot knew how to fly an airplane.

Consequently, the PF was completely incapable of performing the very first step of any abnormal situation: maintain aircraft control. He was unable to correctly identify not just the proper pitch attitude for level flight, but also a pitch attitude wildly inappropriate at cruise altitude.

He compounded this problem, already easily bad enough, by lacking any apparent knowledge of the basic physics of flight. The airplane was in level, unaccelerated, flight when the pitot systems went tango uniform. Therefore, it was not possible for the airplane to stall or overspeed. To non-pilots, the first reaction must be "that's crazy talk". But it's true. If the PF had firewalled the throttles, rather than accelerate, the airplane would have climbed. If he had instead pulled the throttles back, it would have descended. (A simplification, but close enough for this discussion.)

Nearly as appalling, neither pilot had any awareness of the airplane's performance margin at cruise altitude. At the start of the mishap sequence, AF447 was flying at, or very near to, its optimum altitude. That means, among other things, that the difference between cruise thrust and max thrust is very small. That means the aircraft only has enough excess power available to maintain horizontal speed at a vertical speed of roughly 1000' per minute. Consequently when climbing to a new optimum cruise altitude — which typically happens up to a half dozen times during a long flight as the gross weight decreases — the pitch change is a degree and a half, or less. Anything greater than that must result in a loss in airspeed.

To show what I mean, here is a picture of the MD11 primary flight display at optimum cruise altitude. The A330 display is similar:

(DE) The black dot in the center of the artificial horizon (the aircraft reference) shows the FCC nulling the FMS commands. The aircraft attitude is ~1º right bank and 3º pitch. The black bars on either side are the aircraft wings. Just above them are barbed cyan lines. These are the pitch limit indicator. The lines show the angle of attack remaining — 2º — to stickshaker. The barbs show the AOA remaining to stall, 4º. The aircraft speed is 294 knots (338 mph) indicated, and Mach 0.823, which is about 490 knots true (about 560 mph over the ground in still air). At 294 knots, the airplane is 20 knots above the 1.3G buffet limit, and 18 knots below max operating Mach at 32,960 feet.

(It is perhaps worth noting, although the report doesn't, that the A32+ doesn't have a pitch limit indicator. This is symptomatic of a design philosophy that seems to have pervaded the Airbus fly-by-wire aircraft: because FBW control systems are able to extensively incorporate flight envelope protection, the airplane will always know better than the pilot.)

(DE) In this regime, the airplane is operating in what is sometimes referred to as the "coffin corner". The gap between too fast and too slow is quite small. In your car, it would be like if you let your speed slow to 65 from 70, the doors would fall off; if you accelerated to 75, the wheels would; and if you turned the steering wheel more than a couple degrees, you would end up in a ditch.

(FR) When the pitot system succumbed to icing, the pilot flying (PF) applied full aft stick, pulling the aircraft to well over 10 degrees nose high, a pitch attitude that first caused a gross altitude deviation, then inevitably and fairly quickly, an aft-stick stall.

The excessive nature of the PF's inputs can be explained by the startle effect and the emotional shock at the autopilot disconnection, amplified by the lack of practical training for crews in flight at high altitude, together with the unusual flight control laws.

(FR) The list of explanations are: distraction; unconscious initiation of a previous plan to climb above the weather; the attraction of clear sky (the aircraft was flying at the edge of the cloud layer); task saturation; the turbulence at the time (which was at the upper limit of what is defined as "light"); concern about overspeeding the airplane; setting a pitch attitude appropriate for airspeed failure at low altitude, where avoiding the ground is the highest priority; and responding to contradictory flight director commands.

To do this in the first place is so incomprehensible to me that I can't think of a metaphor, simile or analogy that comes even close to conveying both the required ignorance and ineptitude. The report's list of explanations sidesteps the elephant in the room, which is this: somehow there were two guys on the fight deck who completely lacked basic airmanship. In particular, the PF failed to observe, orient and decide. The combination of a highly automated airplane and a operations culture that emphasized total reliance on the autoflight system produced a pilot who could only act, which is the same as saying he wasn't a pilot at all, but merely an ambulatory stick actuator.

(FR) The PM initially noted the pitch attitude and altitude deviation, but then failed to perform his primary duty — monitoring aircraft performance, announcing deviations the PF, and ensuring the PF corrects the deviations. Any competent PM, when faced with the PF's pitch input, would have dropped everything and directed the PF to the correct pitch attitude and altitude.

Other Issues

(DE) Until the A32+ series, aircraft design required positive longitudinal stability. That is, putting the center of lift (CL) far enough aft of the center of gravity (CG) so that a pitch change in one direction creates a torque around the CG in the other. There are two goals: keeping the airplane from being too sensitive in pitch and, second, to make the airplane speed stable. The distance between the CG and the CL creates an upward vector that, left unbalanced, would pitch the nose down. The horizontal stabilizer, with a downward lift vector, is the balance. However, the cost is the wings having to support both the aircraft weight, and the effective weight of the balancing vector. More weight means more lift required which means more drag which means more fuel burn.

(FR) [In alternate law] the airplane does not have positive longitudinal stability — it is not necessary to make or increase a nose-up input to compensate for a loss of speed while maintaining altitude.

This behavior, even if it may appear contrary to [certification provisions] was judged acceptable by taking into account special conditions and interpretation material. Indeed, the presence of flight envelope protection makes neutral static stability acceptable. The specific consequence of [alternate law is that the airplane will stall if there is insufficient thrust to maintain level flight, without any flight control input]. It appears this absence of positive static stability could have contributed to the PF not identifying the approach to stall.

In other words, the A32+ is designed in such a way that would be unacceptable in a non-FBW airplane. Which is just fine, until your FBW airplane isn't. This isn't to say the A32+ are un-flyable in alternate law; rather, maintaining the proper pitch attitude, which in order to do, one must know in the first place. However, stalling a conventional aircraft requires a concerted effort both to get it, and keep it, there.

(FR) In the absence of speed indications, stall warning consists of only of a synthetic "STALL, STALL" and a an illuminated master caution light, which generally illuminates for many other reasons. The flight manual makes no mention of airframe buffet associated with stall. There is insufficient awareness of the proximity of the stall angle of attack when cruising at high altitude.

This is another sign that Airbus didn't take seriously enough the possibility of ending up in alternate law. Not only do conventional airliners have positive stability, they also have impossible to ignore stick shakers that kick in when airplane approaches stall.

As day to day hands-on-flying goes, the A320 is outstanding, and not just because of FBW. Flying with a stick is far more precise than a yoke. But, as previously noted, one consideration to keep firmly in mind is that without static stability, the airplane will not seek flying speed, which makes intrusive stall warning even more important. Why the designers could get away without adding haptic feedback is a mystery the report never mentions, because it never notes the shortcoming in the first place.

(FR) While on the subject of things bizarre and ignored, the FR noted in explaining the mishap sequence that the stall warning, triggered by the Angle of Attack (AOA) approaching the stall AOA, silenced when the indicated airspeed was less than 60 knots.

Now, while this isn't typically apparent in transport aircraft, there is no direct relationship between airspeed and angle of attack. That is (and I have done this), it is possible to have both zero airspeed, and not be stalled: just get the airplane going straight up. Tying AOA validity to some minimum airspeed value is a silly schoolboy error. Not only does it ignore the physics of flight, it also means that multiple simultaneous airspeed failure also takes away AOA. Which segues nicely to …

Remember where you first read this

The report recommended making angle-of-attack information available: "Only a direct readout of the angle of attack could enable crews to rapidly identify the aerodynamic situation of the airplane and take the actions that may be required. Consequently, the BEA recommends that the EASA and FAA evaluate the relevance of requiring the presence of an angle of attack indicator directly accessible to pilots on board [sic] aeroplanes."

For long time reader-sufferers, I wrote this very thing years ago. (Along with criticizing the lack of flying skills among FMS pilots.)

And it is easy to do. Here is how the logic goes: If true airspeed differs from ground speed plus the wind component (both sensed by the inertial platform) by more than (system tolerance) then replace airspeed on the primary flight display with AOA.

Some parting shots

For those sufficiently geeked out, the AF447 Final Report is very interesting because it lays out the whole process of investigating this tragedy. And, ultimately, it does make some good recommendations in various areas.

However, to my eye those who wrote the report went to amazing, but unconscious, lengths to avoid making eye contact with what was staring them right in the face: Air France has pilots whose flying skills aren't just weak, they are non-existent. Further, that situation is due to a culture that extols planning — no need to think for yourself, flight envelope protection will always be there — while failing to comprehend the possibility of plans failing, even when it had happened numerous times.

It's almost a metaphor.

This needs some 'splainin

noreply@blogger.com (Hey Skipper) — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 00:16:00 +0000

From Fred Kaplan, who, if memory serves, excoriated Bush for giving Saddam the bum's rush, in Slate:

At least five times in the last eight months, President Obama has declared that any such use of chemical weapons would cross “a red line.” These are fighting words, or very close to them. If a president describes a possible action as “crossing a red line,” then does nothing about it, no future declaration of red lines—no threat to respond with force to some horrible action—will be taken seriously by anyone, friend or foe.

So how is it that Assad's (possible) use of chemical weapons crosses a credibility threatening red-line, but Saddam's killing over 5,000 Kurds with chemical weapons did not? On what basis did Obama vote against invading Iraq?

Enquiring minds want to know.

Tilting to the Left. Just a Little.

noreply@blogger.com (Hey Skipper) — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 01:22:00 +0000

My son, a freshman at Washington State University, is taking one of those courses that are the backbone of a university's core mission: to produce broadly educated minds. Or, to say it more concisely, a gen-ed requirement -- History 105, Contemporary Issues.

This the prompt, quoted in full, from his class's most recent assignment:

Some pundits, academics, and politicians often talk about the “unintended consequences” of global capitalism (Joyce Appleby uses this phrase in the final assigned section). Others argue that there is nothing unintended about capitalism’s consequences – that those in power are fully aware of the potential results, including financial crises like the one that shook the global economy in 2008 and continues to plague people’s of all nations (Naomi Klein makes such an argument).

In a succinct, clearly written, three-page double-spaced essay that uses multiple historical examples from not only Appleby but from other readings, lecture notes, and discussion notes, answer the following question:

Why has the capitalism/socialism debate been so divisive?

Use the 2008 financial crisis and the ensuing global recession as a starting point for a discussion of the historical and very contentious “consequences” of and responses to capitalism – arguably one of the most defining historical processes of the modern era.

On taking a look at this, some questions came immediately to mind:

In what universe, no matter how distant in space or time, does Naomi Klein make an actual argument?
Others argue there is nothing unintended about capitalism's consequences. Are there other Others who argue that socialism's bugs are actually features?
Based upon the prompt, what is "arguably one of the most defining defining historical processes of the modern era?"
Again based upon the prompt, why would the students suspect the professor would be able to tell the difference between a succinct, clearly written essay and a pile of fish dead for three days?
Why does leaden, prolix and ungrammatical writing plague the collectivist professor's of all humanities?
What the heck is the question, anyway?
Is that even important to providing the correct answer?

Remember, this is a prompt for a writing assignment. What is the prompt prompting? On the face of it, that is easy — discuss some ways in which the intellectual divide between socialism and capitalism persists. And, for the clairvoyant students, not just the ways, but the whys, too. At some point, our entering arguments become axiomatic. In many cases, there is no proving that a greater degree of individualism is preferable to more collectivism, because the notion of "preferable" itself is also at stake.

So, if the prompt had gone on from the seemingly simple question and focused it by saying "Use the 2008 financial crisis to show why the argument between socialism and capitalism will continue", then the student could take the fundamental tenets of each, and show how the crisis both undermined and substantiated them. (The CRA was an instance of socialism, and, by ignoring risk, destroyed the housing market. The banks, through looking only at personal enrichment, privatized gain while socializing risk.)

But that isn't what the prompt says. Instead, it amounts to a non-sequitor. One might just as well ask "Why are the arguments between Yankee and Red Sox fans so divisive? Using the recent doping scandals in athletics, explain why baseball is bad."

And that is before getting to the ambiguous references. What, arguably, is the most defining historical process of the modern era, the 2008 financial crisis, the responses to it, or capitalism?

Then there is the fundamental viewpoint of the prompter, who really seems to be asking "why, since socialism is so obviously superior, how can there possibly be, absent those possessed of malevolent intent, any capitalists around with whom to argue?"

But wait, there's more. My son got his paper back today — he got a middling B. That's reasonably good, I suppose, unless you are one of those Others who suspects that, in the humanities, A's are already a seriously debased coin of the academic realm.

Here is the content portion of his grade:

Content 17/20 - You do a great job of outlining some of the key differences between the two ideologies and giving modern examples. There are a few key elements that are missing from your essay, however. YOu do not discuss the role of the Cold War and World War II in the assoctaion of socialism with communism and the major propaganda efforts to solidify this idea in the minds of capitalistic nations. You also do not talk about the Great Depression, which is one of the most important events that Socialists point to when condemning Capitalism.

Others who argue that academia hasn't tilted so far to the left that only its Wiley Coyote ignorance of physics has kept from long ago toppling over should hang their academic head in shame, should such an emotion still be available to them. This is a perfect example of the kind of shameless bias that comes with collectivists' unquestioned — and let's savor the irony here — religious beliefs. Yes, the banking sector stunk the place up. But the ways in which the financial crisis of 2008 continues to plague people’s of all nations, particularly those lashed to the Euro, can hardly be separated from that socialist paradise which is Greece.

At this point, though, I must say there is one particular area where capitalism is inferior.

In socialism, you don't have to pay for reeducation camp.

Nothing was not an Option

noreply@blogger.com (Hey Skipper) — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 08:13:00 +0000

[This should have been entitled "18 Months Later, Tomorrow Comes". I don't know why this took so long to get to — for me, time is no excuse — particularly because this is a subject with which I have some first hand experience]

For those who opposed the war all along, first 9/11/11, then 3/20/13 were causes for fresh waves of nearly onanistic condemnations and toldjasos. Even initially hawkish editorialists, chastened by a decade of bleak experience, have engaged in hand-wringing attempts to explain their misjudgment. NYT Op-Ed page writer and executive editor Bill Keller epitomizes the latter group, and ultimately encompasses the former. Here are some representative (and highly edited for length) pull quotes from his mea culpa:

The question is really two questions: Knowing what we know now, with the glorious advantage of hindsight, was it a mistake to invade and occupy Iraq? And knowing what we knew then, were we wrong to support the war?

Broadly speaking, there were three arguments for invading Iraq: … humanitarian; … [promoting] democracy …; … and [WMD/regional security/explicit and implicit support of terrorism].

For many of us, the monster argument was potent, even if it was not sufficient. … We were, as Andrew Sullivan put it, “enamored of [our] own morality.”

But there are plenty of monstrous regimes that we do not go to the trouble of overthrowing. It should perhaps have caught our attention that Samantha Power, who literally wrote the book on humanitarian intervention (the Pulitzer-winning “A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide”) and who had endorsed armed intervention in Bosnia and Rwanda, and at an earlier time in Iraq, did not support the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

“My criterion for military intervention — with a strong preference for multilateral intervention — is an immediate threat of large-scale loss of life,” explained Power, who now advises President Obama on multilateral affairs and human rights. “That’s a standard that would have been met in Iraq in 1988 but wasn’t in 2003.”

The idea that America could install democracy in Iraq always seemed to me the most wishful of the rationales for war, although some people who knew the region far better than I made that case. … The exiled Iraqi academic Kanan Makiya — a proponent of invasion who later repented — observed that Iraq’s population was so traumatized by decades of abuse that they were unwilling to take initiative or responsibility …

…

The main selling point for war in Iraq, at least for the American public, was that Hussein represented a threat to American security. But what kind of threat, exactly?

The following couple paras contain, more begged questions than there are sentences.

Iraq was not, as Afghanistan had been, the host country and operational base of the new strain of Islamic fascism represented by Al Qaeda. It is true that Hussein hosted some nasty characters, but so did many other dictators hostile to America. At the time, Iraq was one of seven countries designated as sponsors of terrorism by the State Department, and in the other six cases we settled for sanctions as recourse enough. And his conventional military — what was left of it after it was laid waste in the deserts of Kuwait and Iraq in 1991 — was under close supervision.

That leaves the elusive [WMD]. We forget how broad the consensus was that Hussein was hiding the kind of weapons that could rain holocaust on a neighbor or be delivered to America by proxy. He had recently possessed chemical weapons (he used them against the Kurds), and it was only a few years since we had discovered he had an active ambition to acquire nuclear weapons. Inspectors who combed the country after the first gulf war discovered a nuclear program far more advanced than our intelligence agencies had believed; so it is understandable that the next time around the analysts erred on the side of believing the worst.

We now know that the consensus was wrong, and that it was built in part on intelligence that our analysts had good reason to believe was cooked. … A few journalists — notably Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel of Knight Ridder newspapers — emphasized conflicting intelligence that questioned Hussein’s capabilities. But assuming we couldn’t know for sure, what would have been acceptable odds? If there was only a 50-50 chance that Hussein was close to possessing a nuclear weapon, could we live with that? One in five? One in 10?

...

In 1992, after driving the Iraqi army out of Kuwait, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney mused on the calculus of war. Why, he asked an audience in Seattle, had the United States not pursued Hussein’s forces all the way to Baghdad and removed him from power? Because, Cheney said, that would have committed the U.S. to an unacceptable long-term occupation, and it would have meant more American casualties. “The question in my mind is, how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth?” Cheney asked at the time. “And the answer is, not that damned many.”

Of course, Cheney wasn’t so cautious the second time around. Along with the arguments that he and many others made after 9/11 came some insufficiently considered assumptions: that we were competent to invade and occupy Iraq without making an awful mess of it and that we could do it at a cost — in lives and money — that we could live with. In the end, the costs were greater than anyone anticipated because of calamitous mistakes in execution.

Just consider the numbers. In the short-lived first gulf war, 148 Americans died in battle. In the current war, the toll so far is nearly 4,500 American dead and 32,000 wounded. At least 100,000 Iraqis, most of them noncombatants, have been killed. A war and occupation estimated to cost $100 billion over two years has already cost eight times that amount.

...

Our occupation of Iraq has also distracted us from Afghanistan, furnished a propaganda point for Al Qaeda recruiters and limited the credibility of our support for independence movements elsewhere. It is worth mentioning, too, that our moral standing as champions of civil society has been compromised by the abuses of Abu Ghraib and rendition and torture, byproducts of the war that will long remain a blot on our reputation.
Where does this leave me? The world is well rid of Saddam Hussein. But knowing as we now do the exaggeration of Hussein’s threat, the cost in Iraqi and American lives and the fact that none of this great splurge has bought us confidence in Iraq’s future or advanced the cause of freedom elsewhere — I think Operation Iraqi Freedom was a monumental blunder.

Clearly, then an open and shut case that Iraqi Freedom was not only a mistake in hindsight, but in foresight, as well.

Right?

Not so fast. Despite the length of this exercise in self-flagellation, Mr. Keller, who I am using as a proxy for essentially the entire anti-war left, either is incapable of comprehending, or elides, the central, inescapable problem: nothing was not an option.

It was not a matter of Operation Iraqi Freedom or [crickets]. Yet that is precisely the notion Mr. Keller portrays. Despite his seeming expertise, he scarcely spent a moment on the status quo ante, or the various actors involved in it. The decision to depose Saddam did not have a nullity as its alternative.

My goal here is to lay out briefly, yet in sufficient detail, the status quo ante in the hope of demonstrating that, like in so many aspects of international relations, there were no good options. The choice wasn't between deposing Saddam and crickets, but more like having to pick either the devil or the deep blue sea.

The Status Quo Ante

Contra Mr. Keller, there were several reasons the US didn't extend Desert Storm to a full scale invasion of Iraq. Most obvious should be that we could do only what was politically possible, and, given the nature of the coalition, continuing the march to Baghdad probably wasn't. Beyond that, Keller failed to consider the obvious influence on decision makers at the time: it is generally pointless to kill someone who is in the process of committing suicide. Between the considerable political risks and the seeming likelihood that Saddam wouldn't long survive the Kuwaiti debacle, it seemed a fair bet to be satisfied with limited, rather than absolute, objectives.

Unfortunately, Saddam's hold on power was firmer than we imagined. Which left us with:

Southern Watch, the long term, large scale air operation based primarily in Saudi Arabia to stop Saddam's bombing attacks on Shia in Southern Iraq.
Northern Watch, a similar operation to protect the Kurds in Northern Iraq.
Ongoing futile attempts to ensure Saddam's compliance with WMD inspections, which led to a series of UN Security Council resolutions promising severe consequences in the event of continued defiance.
The Oil for Food program (OFF), which was established to stop Saddam from re-establishing his military, while not causing additional suffering among the Iraqis themselves.
The French, Chinese and Russians were actively using OFF to undermine the sanctions.
Massive UN corruption related to OFF was causing what had previously been thought unimaginable: further besmirching the UN's reputation.
Saddam was actively funding Palestinian suicide bombers
Saddam was also routinely shooting at coalition aircraft enforcing the southern and northern no-fly zones.

This list could go on, but it should be sufficient to support this conclusion: the sanctions regime and aerial occupation of the northern and southern thirds of Iraq, which had gone on for a decade, had reached a dead end — something was going to replace it. This is the critical issue that Keller (et al) never grasped: it wasn't a matter of invasion or nothing. Hand wringing over the human and financial costs of deposing Saddam is an empty exercise. Of course it cost more than nothing. Of course the knock-on effects were worse than nothing. But nothing was not an option. Some course of action had to replace the no-fly zones and the sanctions regime. It is against the other possible courses of action that the costs of invading Iraq need to be compared. The choice was binary: either invade, or quit the field. It is against the latter option, and its likely consequences, that we need to weigh Operation Iraqi Freedom. Obviously, there is no rewinding the tape and trying that alternative on for size. But when assessing almost any decision, whether a foreign policy decision or driving to the movies, we have to weigh the pros and cons of what we did against the foreseeable pros and cons of what we didn't. Fully caveated, here are some of the consequences of the only alternative on offer:

Islamist Psychology.
- Shortly after 9/11, bin Laden asserted to his Muslim audience that the West in general, and the U.S. in particular, had a rotten and degenerate culture that no longer had the will to fight for its own survival.
- Similarly, (I can't recall his exact words) he also proclaimed that the Muslim world would follow the strong horse.
- Therefore, we should expect that quitting the field would have had a profound effect on the entire Muslim world. Not only could the US and the West be defeated, the fact of its defeat meant it was ripe for further attack. "Angering the Arab Street" was practically a cliché a decade ago, but, thankfully, is scarcely heard anymore. That, supposedly, recruited terrorists. Possibly, but nothing like our defeat would have done. Also, a reasonable conjecture as to why we no longer hear the "Arab Street" cliche is that the predictions the term entailed never came to pass.

Countries in the region.
- Saddam would have been free to fully reconstitute his military.
- Saudi Arabia would have been further radicalized, and we might very well have had to abandon our bases there.
- All the countries in the region would have had to make some accommodation to the new "correlation of forces" (a term not much heard since the 1970s with respect to communism, but appropriate here). None of those accommodations would have been in our interest, because they would have meant allying themselves with either Iran or Iraq.
- Saddam's Iraq was Iran's mortal enemy. A resurgent Iraq would have guaranteed Iran pursuing a nuclear weapons program as energetically as it possibly could, because Iraq would have been doing so itself.

The only alternative on offer to invading Iraq was bound to carry significant "correlation of forces" costs — the entire region would find itself concluding that Islamism was the strong horse. All the countries around Iraq and Iran would find themselves forced to accommodate one or the other, which would have meant turning their backs on us.

The parade of horribles gets worse. The inevitable military competition between Iran and Iraq, which must be expected to include nuclear weapons, must also have been expected to lead to yet another war. Why do I say inevitable? Because, with the inescapable shift in the correlation of forces, the US's ability to step in would have been severely eroded, if not destroyed altogether. The consequence should be obvious to anyone with the temerity to look: a Hobbesian security dilemma.

It is here where the downside risks really start mounting. Imagine a conflict that closes the Straits of Hormuz for, say, three months. The economic and human costs are almost incalculable. It is that possibility against which Keller et al need to judge whether Operation Iraqi Freedom was worth all its consequences.

Now, it is entirely possible to disagree with elements of the preceding précis, or specifics of the results, or weigh the possible outcomes differently. However, it is an illuminating exercise in journalistic incompetence and analytical malfeasance to engage in post-hoc hand wringing without once taking on board the strategic situation and the limited options it presented. Moreover, Keller et al never seem to discuss several (albeit almost certainly unintended) positive outcomes of invading Iraq, beyond Saddam's elimination:

Until the surge, Islamists had their run of post-invasion Iraq. Their fundamentalist certainty led them to an orgy of murder that has gone some way to weakening Islamism everywhere.
The internecine warfare between Sunni and Shia (which Saddam's rule had baked in, and would have happened eventually, regardless of our invasion) has had the consequence of reducing the extent of Muslim religious certainty. Considering what the aftermath of 9/11 was supposed to look like, it should be amazing how few, and small, attacks against the West have been. It is too early to declare victory, but there can be no doubting that violent Islamism is on the wane.
The Islamist notion that the US is too decadent to fight is dead, and its passing must have had an impact on Islamist decisions to conduct further attacks against the West.
Gaddafi's ceding Libya's nuclear weapons program

Strikingly, no one (well, excluding the Galloways among us), no matter how fervently they opposed Operation Iraqi Freedom, wishes Saddam still in power.

You would think they might explain in some depth why that is.

Toldja so. I think.

noreply@blogger.com (Hey Skipper) — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 04:23:00 +0000

Some years ago, so my memory could well be, shall we say, inexact, I suggested at Thought Mesh that the 144,000 terawatt hours of annual global energy use could — must — be contributing to the increase in global temperatures.

AOG, whose technical and mathematical skills dwarf my own, was singularly unimpressed. His argument, and it persuaded me, was human energy use was such a small proportion of that coming from the sun that, while true in theory, as a matter of practical fact the effect would be immeasurably small.

Yes, but. According to A New Study:

Researchers using a computer model of the atmosphere found that activities from urban areas can warm the air as far as 1,000 miles away. In some areas, that increase was as much as 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit).

The temperature changes were caused by human behavior in cities, like heating buildings and powering vehicles, rather than natural heat that was captured by paved surfaces. The heat entered the atmosphere directly above cities, the scientists said, but was then dispersed by the natural movements of the global jet stream.

As it happens, Watts Up With That has noticed that many weather measuring stations are poorly cited in ways that must result in systematically biasing temperature readings upwards.

However, if this article says what I think it says, and if The Study is sound, then two things must be true:

Since most weather stations are where people are, and most people are near urban areas, then most even apparently well cited stations are, in fact, irretrievably poorly situated. Consequently, their temperature changes over time are, at least in part, proxies for economic activity.
The magnitude of the urban induced temperature change is very nearly the magnitude of global warming over the last forty years. Therefore, temperature records may be, albeit indirectly, measuring the global urbanization occurring over the same period.

Unsurprisingly, "to better represent the effects of global warming, climate scientists should consider incorporating the effects of urban areas, they concluded." If this sentence says what I think it says, then it means that what has been taken for greenhouse gas induced climate change is, in fair measure, actually a simple consequence of energy usage. Which, in turn, means that climate change must be less disastrous than Warmenists believe, and that the only way to reduce such warming as there has been is to return to the stone age.

Which Warmenists may believe and desire, but will not admit.

Agenda Journalism

noreply@blogger.com (Hey Skipper) — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 03:25:00 +0000

Just as the Sandy Hook tragedy gave a heretofore unexcelled opportunity for gun confiscators to capitalize on hysteria in order to potentially reach ends otherwise unobtainable, it has also shone a light on the intellectual and moral failures of collectivists — the tribe to which all confiscators belong.

These failings are two, and endemic to collectivists: demonizing those who disagree, and agenda journalism. No matter the issue which holds collectivists in thrall of their own intellectual and moral superiority — gun control, global warming, name it — what should be straight, factual, stories are littered with questionable assertions and unsurprising elisions.

A recent WSJ article, Why our Gun Debate Is Off Target raises these points. The author is writing from the perspective of what we now call an embedded reporter.

[At the firing range I] did my best to avoid gun politics, the subject came up constantly. What came through loudest of all was that gun guys feel insulted. The caustic and routine dismissal of "gun culture" is only part of it. Gun guys look at the most strident advocates of gun control and say, "You know nothing about what it means to handle guns, but you presume to make judgments about my ability to do so."

…

A parks-and-recreation worker in Wisconsin told me he was offended by the Democrats' view "that guns are for the unwashed, the yokels." It's hard to think of a better organizing tool for the right than the left's tribal antipathy to guns.

For examples of the confiscators demonizing gun owners, the NYT in the weeks following Sandy Hook is a rich hunting ground. But why go so far as that Fort Knox of unexamined ideas when we have our own Harry Eagar and his Restating the Obvious? In a recent piece, The Infantilization of Firearms, the entire demonization menagerie, so characteristic of collectivist rhetoric, is on display:

Today, you can go to Uncle Jesse's on Maui and buy “tactical” anything. Camo underwear, for example.

How weird is that?

Silly, but a sign of a more profound delusion. Camo underwear is, in fact, the gun nut version of the Batman underwear that 5-year-olds wear.

…

I have not addressed the issue of sexual anxiety. The Bushmaster ads confirm the idea that guns are substitute penises for men who are worried their natural equipment is substandard.

A writer engaging in this kind of invective cannot be trusted to provide rigorous analysis, as the penultimate sentence demonstrates: "… disarming the population would cut out the slaughter of millions of our fellow citizens."

Going with far less antagonism, but no more forgivable for that, is a recent offering from the New York Times, To Reduce Suicide Rates, New Focus Turns to Guns, which turns a truism, guns are good at killing things, into a tendentious conclusion: the U.S. suicide rate is substantially higher than it would be without guns.

Let me demonstrate:

Suicidal acts with guns are fatal in 85 percent of cases, while those with pills are fatal in just 2 percent of cases, according to the Harvard Injury Control Research Center.

…

The national map of suicide lights up in states with the highest gun ownership rates. Wyoming, Montana and Alaska, the states with the three highest suicide rates, are also the top gun-owning states …

This is either intentional deck-stacking, or profound ignorance. How so? There is something completely germane, yet wholly unmentioned throughout this entire article: gender. Males attempt suicide mush less often than females, but are far more frequently successful. Indeed, the second sentence begs examining that possibility. After all, besides guns, the other thing that lights up in states with the highest gun ownership are also the highest Male to Female ratios; the three states listed are among only nine that have more men than women. At 108.5 and 104.1 men per 100 women, Alaska and Wyoming are the two highest, by a fair distance. Beyond that rather glaring omission, the article is also completely silent on how much higher the suicide rates are in those states.

So, the fact that suicide rates are higher in these states must be, at least in part, due solely to one of the myriad differences between men and women. Consequently, the obvious fact that guns are lethal 85% of the time is at least plausibly due to the fact that males, who intend to die, use guns and females, whose intent must be less directed, use pills. Certainly, I doubt anyone would make the case that pills, taken with real intent, are any less fatal than guns.

Nor does this article even attempt to compare and contrast the suicide rates in countries economically similar to the US. As it happens, and is quickly revealed to anyone with the search skills of a grade schooler, the UK has both very stringent hand gun restrictions, and a suicide rate practically indistinguishable from ours.

The glaring absence of these seemingly obvious considerations makes this piece, like Harry's, an unalloyed example of agenda journalism. Although, the sins here are far less forgivable than in Harry's case, because he was engaged more in opinion writing than straight reporting.

Which brings WSJ article back into view. It, too, while posing under the guise of moderation, is yet another agenda item. Granted, since it is an essay, it is bound to have a point of view. However, that is no excuse to simply sidestep the inconvenient.

To the legislatures of 27 states and the District of Columbia, the solution to both problems seems obvious: Require guns to be locked up, trigger-locked, stored separately from their ammunition, or some combination of the three. A lot of gun guys hate these laws. They argue that a gun separated from its ammunition, disabled or locked away is useless in an emergency.

Not true. I keep my handgun loaded in the bedroom, in a metal safe the size of a toaster that pops open the second I punch in a three-digit code. I bought it on eBay for $25. The gun is secure but instantly available—to me only. Many gun guys use such safes. They just don't want to be told to use them.

Neither do they want to be ordered to report a stolen gun to the police. Lots of gun guys consider it tyranny to have to tell the police anything about their guns, and they have kept most jurisdictions from passing stolen-gun laws. Only seven states and the District of Columbia make reporting a stolen gun mandatory.

The problem here is, or at least should be, breathtakingly obvious to even the scarcely sentient. How, exactly, is a requirement to lock guns up supposed to work? How, precisely, are those seven states and DC to enforce their reporting laws?

The answer is simple: either it won't and they can't, or the government must rigorously register and track all guns. And, as we all know, the government will never abuse, or lose, that information. What could possibly go wrong?

By now, the real explanation should be clear. Confiscationists are Progressives, a self-flattering term that should always be replaced with "Collectivists". Much gun violence, and all manner of other mayhem has alcohol as the primary cause. Surely, then, the answer is to eliminate alcohol. But Collectivists will not suggest that for two equally important reasons: it didn't work, and Collectivists like alcohol.

But Collectivists don't like guns, and demonize the "bitter clinger" owners. Therefore, take away the guns.

That it won't work is no deterrent to collectivism.

The Repression Shoe is on the Other Foot

noreply@blogger.com (Hey Skipper) — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 00:22:00 +0000

Having been told more than once that management is engaged in nearly unceasing violence upon angelic unions, which are never thuggish or corrupt, this very nearly used up every bit of gast in my flabber:

PHILADELPHIA — It was several weeks ago when vandals struck the building site, setting fire to a crane, cutting deep gashes in steel columns and loosening the bolts that anchored them. The episode resulted in about $500,000 in damage and was, the authorities believe, apparently an attempt to halt the construction of a Quaker meeting house.

...

Four union members visited the site during the week before the overnight attack on Dec. 20-21, asking questions about who was doing specific construction tasks, said Robert N. Reeves Jr., the president of E. Allen Reeves Inc., the contractor. The company operates an “open shop” that does not employ union members but may work with unionized subcontractors, Mr. Reeves said.

Each of the union members left the site after being told by employees that they could not give out information about the construction, Mr. Reeves said. The fourth told the site manager on Dec. 17 that “I’ll do what I have to do,” said the manager, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Gee, I wonder why.

But wait, there's more:

The episode is the latest in Philadelphia to prompt allegations that trade unions engage in violence and intimidation in an effort to secure work for their members.

In mid-December, an employee of Post Brothers Apartments, a local developer, was attacked with a crowbar by a member of the Ironworkers Union, according to Michael Pestronk, chief executive of the company. Post Brothers is in a dispute with local unions over its refusal to hire all-union labor to work on an apartment building in central Philadelphia

...

Post Brothers initially wanted to hire 40 percent union labor on the project, converting a factory into 163 loft apartments, but is using all nonunion workers after unions withdrew their members in protest at the company’s position, Mr. Pestronk said.

“They told me, ‘If you don’t make this project 100 percent union, we are going to do everything in our power to stop this job,'” Mr. Pestronk said in an interview. Picketing of the Goldtex site began in December 2011 and employees have been harassed and attacked in episodes that have been captured on video and posted on a company Web site, he said.

Remember, look for that union label.

Taxocalypse

noreply@blogger.com (Hey Skipper) — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 01:48:00 +0000

It seems a done deal that the Bush tax cuts will expire. Well, not entirely, but rather for those whose income exceeds $200,000 (filing singly) or $250,000 (filing jointly). [Pre-publication update: Apparently those numbers have gone northward. However, not only does that not change the points I'm trying to make, I put way too much effort into writing this to then bit bin it on a technicality.]

The collectivist justification is that the rich, where richness happens to match numbers that both fall glibly off the tongue, and constitute sufficiently few easily demonized votes to mount an electoral defense, are not paying their "fair share".

Whatever that means.

Like most, I am loathe to discuss personal finances; however, in order to take a whack at what constitutes fair, it is only proper I declare my interest up front: my family income just reaches the upper 2%, about 12% of which comes in the form of military retirement. In 2013 I can expect my tax bill to increase by at least $6,000, on top of the $51,000 I will pay for 2012.

Is this "fair"?

Before trying to crack that nut, there is one notion that needs immediate rubbishing: regardless of fairness, that money is not free, a concept much beloved by collectivists but mugged by reality.

The effect on my household serves as a case in point. Since our savings rate approaches 50% (the sum of Social Security, Medicare, 401k, mortgage principle, and positive monthly cash flow) our consumption habits are not going to change. Being both fortunate and thrifty — heck, I drive a car old enough to get into a bar, and wouldn't that bring a whole new slant on DUI — a six-grand hit over a year isn't going to affect how often we de-trouser the wallet.

That still doesn't get collectivists to free. Putting it another way, that $6,000 increase in our tax bill amounts a nearly 20% reduction in our positive cash flow. Regardless, and this is where the whole notion of "free" takes a beating, there will be two very real consequences.

First, that $6,000 means exactly that much less investment next year, and eventual larger reduction in our net-worth.

So, not free.

I will be the first to grant that hardly amounts to a tragedy, but that's not the question, which is fairness. Given that the upper 5% of the income distribution pays something like 40% of federal income taxes, it doesn't appear the fortunate are under taxed. On the other hand, some very wealthy people, while paying a considerable amount, are yielding a far lower amount than they would if taxed at the same rate as less wealthy people. That still doesn't yield much light. Is rate the appropriate criteria, or magnitude? (It is worth noting that collectivists always refer to rate, and never amount, which to me indicates intellectual dishonesty, because it is more of an insult to assume the kind of mental deficits required for pervasive innumeracy.)

At the most superficial level, even the current amount I pay is unfair — as a family, we do not consume $51,000 of federal government services in a year, never mind $57,000. This disconnect becomes particularly glaring for those who are truly wealthy, rather than merely very comfortably situated. However, I understand the moral argument that those who get more, should give more. In any community, there is bound to be some communism. I have no problem with wealthy New Yorkers or Alaskans transferring some income to poor West Virginians. I accept that the bill society charges the unlucky should be much lighter than that presented to those upon whom fortune positively beams.

On balance, then, despite already paying a substantial absolute amount, I think it is within the bounds of arguably fair that my wife and I pay more. In order to keep the federal government's fiscal situation from further deterioration, we must.

It is worth keeping in mind, particularly since collectivists seem not to, that the fiscal problem belongs to everyone, not just the rich. Furthermore, drawing some artificial dividing line between those who are expected to shoulder more of the burden, and those of whom nothing additional need be expected suffers from several serious problems: the appearance — at the very least — of looting, glaring insufficiency, and a strong disincentive. It is hard to say which is worse.

Clearly, for me, an extra six-grand a year will not impose any hardship, and maybe the new old rate is the rate I should have been paying all along (well, for the last several years, when I finally started living in high clover, anyway). I think that in Afghanistan and Iraq, President Bush made two difficult, but strategically necessary decisions. However, it was a profound mistake to cut taxes instead of the ravenous growth of government. Doing the first and exactly the opposite of the second was idiocy of the first order; he in particular, and the GOP congresscritters in general, should hang their heads in shame at the kind of profligacy exceeding even that of a dissolute trust fund baby.

But it isn't looting. Yet. However, a recent NYT opinion piece advocates taxing wealth. Well, isn't that special. Thirty years ago, I decided that demographic trends were going to be very unfriendly to Social Security, and that I better provide for my own retirement. So, despite spending most of my adult life with a far less lofty income than what I now enjoy, I have, through thrift and discipline (see 21 year old car, above) accumulated a certain amount of wealth. Now the looters want it. What's more, collectivists want both to raise the amount of income subjected to Social Security tax, and means test. This is looting, pure and simple.

And there you have it: taking more from a demonized group under the guise of "fairness" quickly gets addictive. Because collectivists can't be pried loose from the word "free" they think it is all theirs for the taking, without consequences of any kind.

Beyond the tendency towards theft, there also lies the inadequacy of the whole enterprise. Even taxed at 400% of gross income, there aren't enough wealthy people around to fix the problem.

Here I shall wave yet another single digit salute in the direction of Saez and Picketty. I mentioned above that for us the upshot of a tax increase will be that we give $6,000 more for government to spend (or redistribute), and we will invest $6,000 less. However, there is another immediate and undeniable consequence: my wife will effectively take an immediate 10% pay cut. It is her income that puts us into the realm of those who would sooner use twenty dollar bills to light cigars than to feed the starving. Heck, as far as we plutocrats go, it would be even better to torch twenties while forcing the starving poor to watch, then making them eat the ashes.

Practically speaking, this won't be enough to cause her to put nursing aside, but anyone who thinks there is no disincentive has stepped off the reality train. This tax increase means she will effectively work an entire month in 2013 without pay. I don't remember S & P, or their analytically challenged sycophants, particularly considering that outcome. Shift too much of the tax take onto the successful, and the outcome will be less success. No one wins if the looting gets to the point where my wife decides inactivity is by far the better option.

Unfortunately, by focusing on the "unfairness" of income and wealth distribution, collectivists are once again guilty of arriving at a conclusion without bothering to make an argument. Yes, the economy has changed. Yes collectivism collapsed in China, effectively dumping 300 million workers onto the world economy nearly overnight. But those weren't the only games in town.

Estimates vary widely, but scholars have said that changes in marriage patterns — as opposed to changes in individual earnings — may account for as much as 40 percent of the growth in certain measures of inequality. Long a nation of economic extremes, the United States is also becoming a society of family haves and family have-nots, with marriage and its rewards evermore confined to the fortunate classes. [where "fortunate" is a strangely passive word that stands in place of what is really going on: commitment and self-discipline.]

From my parochial point of view, I am left wondering why it is fair that, in the name of inequality, I effectively fund those who were selfish or incontinent, and the consequences of their selfish incontinence. Whatever its justifications, one of the fruits of the welfare state has been family breakdown. In taking more, the welfare state needs more. It is the perfect self-licking ice cream cone.

While I think the federal government could spend much less money far better, I also doubt that even with a whole lot of both, the remaining spending still wouldn't be supported by existing taxes. Therefore, I think it necessary that I pay more. However, I don't think it the least bit fair, or adequate, that "more" is confined to a group of people defined by a number pulled out of the collectivist rectal data bank, and all too easily subjected to first demonization then theft.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't think it the least bit difficult to arrive at both necessary, and fair. If I was the Head Dude What's in Charge, I would implement a specific fiscal balancing tax, starting at fractions of a penny for the poorest, and growing exponentially to 4-5% on the wealthy. Obviously, those numbers are notional, but there is an exponential curve, easily calculated by computers, under which is sufficient area to close the gap between spending and taxation. Moreover, this tax, by specifically targeting the deficit, makes it clear to everyone how much the government is spending (unlike corporate taxation, the sole effect of which is to hide political profligacy). It is unfair, and potentially destructive, for 98% of the population to decide how much they are going to take from other 2%.

Having skin in the game matters. It's only fair.

Okay, explain this.

noreply@blogger.com (Hey Skipper) — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 03:29:00 +0000

Katie Roiphe, progressive author and journalism professor at NYU (seems to be a lot of repetition in that sentence), defends single motherhood against moralizing scolds:

I happen to have two children with two different fathers, neither of whom I live with, and both of whom we are close to. I am lucky enough to be living in financially stable, relatively privileged circumstances, and to have had the education that allows me to do so. I am not the “typical” single mother, but then there is no typical single mother any more than there is a typical mother. It is, in fact, our fantasies and crude stereotypes of this “typical single mother” that get in the way of a more rational, open-minded understanding of the variety and richness of different kinds of families.

The structure of my household is messy, bohemian, warm. If there is anything that currently oppresses the children, it is the idea of the way families are “supposed to be,” an idea pushed — in picture books and classrooms and in adults’ casual conversation — on American children at a very early age and with surprising aggressiveness.

A British consumer survey recently released its list of children's most wanted presents this Christmas.

Coming in at number 10: a Dad.

Right to Work

noreply@blogger.com (Hey Skipper) — Sun, 23 Dec 2012 23:10:00 +0000

U.S. Department of Commerce data shows that BMW's Spartanburg, South Carolina, plant is the largest automotive exporter in the country. Since 1994, its first production year, the company has continued to invest and add models to the lineup of vehicles produced there, which now include the X3, X5 and X6 models, and with the $900M expansion underway, will add the new X4 — increasing total production to a whopping 350,000 vehicles per year. The company expects that 70% of the production will be exported to more than 130 markets worldwide. Once the expansion is complete, the plant will cover five-million square feet, employ 8,000 workers, and represent a cumulative $6.3B investment by BMW.

And all that without the UAW.

(article behind BMW Car Club of America pay wall)

Bringing the disgraced into disrepute

noreply@blogger.com (Hey Skipper) — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 05:46:00 +0000

European officials accept Nobel Peace Prize

NATO? NATO who?

Collectivism on Parade

noreply@blogger.com (Hey Skipper) — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 03:13:00 +0000

Youth unemployment in Europe has gone from merely stratospheric to astronomic.

Throughout the European Union, unemployment among those aged 15 to 24 is soaring — 22 percent in France … But those are only percentages among those looking for work. There is another category: those who are “not in employment, education or training,” or NEETs, as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development calls them. And according to a study by the European Union’s research agency, Eurofound, there are as many as 14 million out-of-work and disengaged young Europeans, costing member states an estimated 153 billion euros, or about $200 billion, a year in welfare benefits and lost production — 1.2 percent of the bloc’s gross domestic product.

… In France, it’s 16.7 percent — nearly two million young people …

For the innumerate, that means nearly 39% are doing nothing. (That is nearly three times the comparable the U.S. rate.)

Collectivism's parade of horribles is easy to see:

This is a “floating generation,” made worse by the euro crisis, and its plight is widely seen as a failure of the system: an elitist educational tradition that does not integrate graduates into the work force, a rigid labor market that is hard to enter, and a tax system that makes it expensive for companies to hire full-time employees and both difficult and expensive to lay them off.

...

Ms. Sonnet, the O.E.C.D. economist, said that high youth unemployment is a regular problem in France. Companies are afraid to commit to permanent hiring when economic growth is stagnant and charges for social benefits are so high, and the educational system tends to value liberal arts over technical or industrial expertise.

Nothing could possibly go wrong with any of this; after all, the collective has used its superior knowledge and intellect to ensure social justice.

Right?

Without cost, nothing has value. Their education system is a sinkhole. The real reason the "rigid labor market is hard to enter" has nothing to do with hired, and everything to do with getting fired. Standard collectivist misdirection charges companies for social benefits. It is the perfect way to convince people there is such a thing as "free".

Mysteriously left unmentioned in this NYT article is minimum wage. In France, it is $12.35 per hour, more than 65% higher than in the U.S.

And I'll bet the next NYT editorial advocating an increase our minimum wage will resoundingly fail to note the unmentionable.

Being a collectivist means never having to say you are sorry, because you are immune to the obvious.

I'll bet Adam Smith knew the answer to this problem

noreply@blogger.com (Hey Skipper) — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 02:18:00 +0000

The drug shortages that have disrupted care for critically ill patients show no signs of going away anytime soon.

Safe to say that the NYT is even shorter of clues.

Goose, meet Gander

noreply@blogger.com (Hey Skipper) — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 07:46:00 +0000

Ski Officials to Discuss Lindsey Vonn's Request to Race Against Men

Next up: Ski Officials to Discuss Ted Ligety's Request to Race Against Women

Or if not, why not?

Unknown Knowns

noreply@blogger.com (Hey Skipper) — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 19:05:00 +0000

[Updated to fix some egregious writing errors.]

Recently, the WSJ's motoring correspondent, Dan Neil, made the case that we will cede control of our cars to the cloud sooner rather than later, and for the better. He starts by vividly demonstrating that a car can, in fact, pilot itself under demanding conditions:

The Mazda Raceway at Laguna Seca is a 2.2-mile asphalt roller coaster plunging and soaring across California's tawny Monterey highlands. The most famous section, the Corkscrew, requires drivers storming up a long hill to slam the brakes and take a hard left into what seems to be thin air. The car goes momentarily weightless, and when the track materializes beneath you—always a pleasant surprise—it's going downhill like a ski jump—and, oh yeah, heading hard right.

…

Except that I wasn't really driving. While I was indeed in the driver's seat, my hands and feet were weirdly unoccupied.

The car was driving itself, digitally duplicating a lap driven earlier by a professional driver—a man now sitting on the pit wall, watching the car and me come and go. All I had to do was sit there, with the car dancing on the edge of control under me, manfully freaking out.

BMW's TrackTrainer—an experimental 330i sedan bristling with machine-vision equipment—uses GPS, track maps and telemetry recorded during a professional driver's model lap to negotiate a racecourse.

In Mr. Neil's view, these autonomous driving systems (ADSs) "have long since passed the point of mere driving competence to arrive at something like expert status."

Therefore, it is only a matter of time before we hand over the controls, and the autonomy that implies, to these digital uberdrivers. After all, because ADSs will be able to predict rather than merely react, they would make the stop-and-go traffic jams a thing of the past. Highway carrying capacity will increase, because that same predictive ability will reduce following distances. Having pre-programmed the route, turbulence caused by lane changes will go away, and so will the need for almost all traffic control devices.

In contrast, human controlled vehicles will be outliers, the risk carriers. One of these days, we will be banned from driving on our own roads.

The danger will come not from auto-piloted vehicles but from the holdouts, those drivers who for whatever reason rely on the faulty, flimsy wetware between their ears. What will be normative? Should manually operated vehicles be the ones to give way? Or should autopilot cars (with special running lights) be especially deferential to their inferior human counterparts?

Despite being something of an gear head, I can see his point. But because I am a gear head, I find it disturbing that in some not too distant future, driving will be a lost skill. While that might seem an extreme conclusion, remember this: what was once taken for granted has already nearly vanished -- virtually no one under the age of 30 can drive a three pedaled car. That's a reduction of almost 100% within a couple generations.

Why? Because essentially no one among that group that makes almost all car buying decisions — women — enjoys telling the transmission what to do (full disclosure, both my cars are manuals). Similarly, hardly anyone views driving as any less a chore than vacuuming.

So we will, a few atavistic double-declutching stick rowers notwithstanding, happily cede the right of way to our digital overlords.

Left unanswered, though, is something of a conceptual problem. Granting that autonomously operated vehicles are the future, how do we get there from here?

There are two problems Mr. Neil doesn't address. First, AI should be re-branded as IDS: impenetrable digital stupidity. Despite decades of effort, as good as all things digital are at computation, they are completely sucktastic at learning.

That means ADSs are relying essentially on two things: vehicle positions and pre-programmed rules.

It is that last thing that is a bother. In driving, we know all sorts of "rules" — traffic rules, for instance. However, if asked how we drive, we couldn't fully articulate the process, because the are far more things we know about driving than we know we know (including how to juggle competing rules), and would even have a hard time articulating much of what we know we know.

Now, in the two dimensional driving space, perhaps that can be overcome to a sufficient degree. But then we get to another pothole: driver out-of-the-loop. This has been a perplexing problem as aircraft have become increasingly automated, to the point where (IMHO) most incidents and accidents are caused at least in part by pilot out-of-the-loop (e.g., AF447).

How can ADSs deal with unforeseen events outside their rule space, or when, for whatever reason, a car goes "off the reservation"? Obviously, by handing the controls back to the driver. Who may well be reading a book, or asleep, or …

So, I agree with Mr. Neil that ADSs will happen, but I doubt they will predominate in my lifetime, because these things only know what they have been told, which is less than what we need to tell them, and they are, and will remain, completely incapable of learning.

Some side notes:

I think fully APSs (autonomous piloting systems) are much further off. Operating in three dimensions is several orders of magnitude more difficult than driving, which means the problem of unknown knowns is worse. Further, going off the reservation will be both more likely, and consequential.

A couple personal examples. Very shorty after takeoff a couple years ago, the autothrust system pulled the power to idle without any warnings. Last year, on getting tight vectors to final, the flight management system turned the wrong way to intercept the instrument approach course. Absent in the loop pilots both those examples would have turned out very badly .

Another issue is complexity. The flight manuals for airplanes with flight management systems are roughly three times as heavy as for those who rely upon time honored, well worn, hand-tooled flying skills. That's one thing for pilots who are on the recieving end of extensive and expensive training. But what about those for whom having an iPhone in hand is to flirt with apoplexy (yes, TOSWIPIAW, I am looking at you)?

Remember, you heard it first at TDD

noreply@blogger.com (Hey Skipper) — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 06:37:00 +0000

Three years ago, the next ice age started.

How do I know? Compare these two photos:

The first is from a display at the Eagle River Nature Center, the purpose of which is to help people identify various peaks, their names, and the dates of (recorded) first ascent. It was taken sometime after 1998 (the latest summit date on the image), and was prior to the first snowfall.

Below that is a picture I took from the same spot, somewhat grainy, because the iPhone 4 camera is lame to begin with, and cropping to make it the same size as the display only further stressed those poor pixels.

My timing was a bit off, but that isn't my fault. In an era of global warming, how was I to expect the first snow (not quite correct, since there has been snowfall on these mountains every month since the end of winter ...) with summer still having a couple weeks to run.

What you are supposed to notice, comparing the two, is a large ice field towards the left that was scarcely there 12-ish years ago, plus considerable expansion in all the other fields.

This caught my attention as the summer of 2009 drew to a close, and has become more obvious at the end of the three succeeding summers.

I hate to be the harbinger of bad news. Global Warming, we can adjust to. Another Ice Age, we are toast.

So, when you finally heave your snowblower aside as completely inadequate to the task, and start running for Costa Rica, remember: TDD toldjyaso.

S/he-it

noreply@blogger.com (Hey Skipper) — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 01:43:00 +0000

[rant]

Now that that women are viewed, in the West anyway, as fully fledged – at the very least – members of the human race, linguistic conventions are clearly outdated. This, by the way, is not unique to English. Every known language deprecates and subsumes women. (See Robin Lakoff, Language and Women's Place, probably not available anywhere.) In fact, English, being one of the few genderless languages, is rather less guilty of perpetuating patriarchal hetero-normativity than the rest.

For this blog's mother tongue, the most egregious offense, aside from the obvious affronts presented by "history" and "women", is the dual-purposing of masculine pronouns, as they have always been used to refer to both men and people. Consequently, writers have been torturing both themselves and readers in circumlocutions tendentious, ungrammatical, or, frequently, both.

In a recent newspaper article about how GPS is changing, well, everything, one sentence referring to flying used "pilot ... she". As a practical matter, of course there are women pilots. Just not very many; statistically, the writer should have deferred to the masculine, and might well have done, except for the near-certainty of style sheets demanding a certain ratio of female pronouns.

Even James Taranto, who is the gold standard for direct, telegraphic, and economical writing, falls into this trap. In today's Best of the Web, regarding the GOP convention, he had this to say about Ann Romney's speech:

Which reminds us of something we found mildly vexing about last night's big speeches, namely the feminist pandering. Gov. Christie did it by using poor grammar: "Mitt Romney," he declared, "will tell us the hard truths we need to hear to end the debacle of putting the world's greatest health care system in the hands of federal bureaucrats and putting those bureaucrats between an American citizen and her doctor."

In English, masculine pronouns double as neutral ones. "An American citizen and his doctor" would have been the correct way of referring to a generic patient who could be of either sex. Make it ". . . her or his doctor" and you say the same thing, albeit with two excess words. But if you take Christie's words literally, ObamaCare is a problem only inasmuch as it harms women. The death panels can have at the guys.

I happily grant that my criticizing Mr. Taranto on his writing is scarcely less hubristic than diagnosing shortcomings in Ted William's swing. Nonetheless, he has this wrong, as do all the other scribblers agonizing over the repression inherent in the language.

I contend you can always, or close as darnnit, recast any sentence to avoid grinding women under the heel of grammatical repression. Hint: if the subject is inherently collective, it is also inherently plural.

Try this instead: "... putting those bureaucrats between American citizens and their doctors." Or, better yet, since, with regard to healthcare, companion animals are not yet the beneficiaries of government largesse, how about "... Americans and their doctors."

Try it, works every time.

Besides it will forestall, perhaps indefinitely, the imposition of s/he.

Oh, while I'm on a roll, we are beset by the clanking of gender neutrality right where it is least necessary. To wit, every article on "parenting" is written by women, about women. So, how about leaving us guys out of that cat-fight? "Mothering" is a perfectly good word.

[/rant]

No, wait ...

[rant back on]

The progenitors of "You've got mail" and "America's got talent" to name just two examples, should be rewarded with a sound whack upside the head with "Elements of Style".

No, you feckless, language trashing morons. "You have mail". "America has talent".

Yes, the former is no longer any more prominent in the lexicon than AOL, which is now much more closely associated with "Who?". But they are to blame for the spread of that particular grrrrammatical abomination.

As for the latter, a more thoroughly self-refuting statement would be difficult to find, even given time and alcohol.

[/rant]

Tick. Tock.

noreply@blogger.com (Hey Skipper) — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 01:07:00 +0000

As of two weeks ago, Chez Skipper is an empty nest. Both the woman and man children are now at Washington State University.

For the last half year or so, if I stopped what I was doing, I could hear the ethereal pendulum of an invisible clock swinging remorselessly, slightly louder with each descent. Of course, time is marking off for all of us always, but some events, rubicons, whose approach is sufficiently obvious, particularly tune our ears to its relentless march.

When the other SWIPIAW and I headed for the airport, the rest of their lives, and ours, started.

As portentous as all that is, in all senses of the term, over the months my mind couldn't help but wander away from the universe's escapement mechanism. Frequently, it ended up in the financial morass we call higher education.

I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, a collectivist. I'll leave that to those whose visions are without constraint. Yet I can't help but apply that collectivist term "fairness" to the ravenous monetary maw college educations have become: $26,000 per year, not including books, travel, or incidentals. It is worth noting that we picked WSU for its proximity and cost. It is the closest suitable college to Alaska that is only four times as expensive as it should be, instead of ten. And while the Skipper sprogs are no doubt exemplars of their kind, I don't doubt there are many every bit as meritorious, but whose choice of parental units was less fortunate. For them, even a decidedly middling college is either out of reach, or attainable only through the prospect of years laboring out from underneath debt.

The questions are, or at least should be, obvious. Colleges impart no more education now -- leaving aside for the moment the intrinsic value of what higher education pedagogy hurls from its podia -- yet the cost to purchase it has skyrocketed.

Consider a microcosm of the college experience, textbooks.

When it comes to economics, one the nice things about books is that once invented, they have scarcely changed, making the concept of inflation far easier to apply. Over the last forty years, without any adjustment, the number of dollars required to purchase a hard back book has roughly tripled. Over that same period, the unadjusted cost of college textbooks has increased over seven times. As for the wider picture, I'll bet the average college budget top line is an order of magnitude greater. Why?

Two reasons, probably. Just as the CRA created the housing bubble, government attempts to ameliorate unfairness have just made the problem worse. James Taranto has also theorized that court decisions eliminating aptitude tests with racially disparate outcomes has caused companies to look elsewhere for talent proxies: college diplomas have become de rigueur where they once were beside the point.

No matter. Despite being an admission against interest, the sooner this government fueled and fortified fleecing collapses, the better for all of us.

This Enquiring Mind Wants to Know ...

noreply@blogger.com (Hey Skipper) — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 21:00:00 +0000

A recent post at Volokh about consensus economic policies included this:

One: Eliminate the mortgage tax deduction, which lets homeowners deduct the interest they pay on their mortgages. Gone. After all, big houses get bigger tax breaks, driving up prices for everyone. Why distort the housing market and subsidize people buying expensive houses?

There are really two issues here: market distortion and subsidy; it is the latter which puzzles me.

First, if it is a subsidy, who is subsidizing whom?

Second, why eliminate it only for homeowners, but not rentiers?

(Full disclosure: I am an owner/occupier.)

Catch-29 Million

noreply@blogger.com (Hey Skipper) — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 12:07:00 +0000

Post Stockton, post Solyndra, post GM, you'd think we had pretty much plumbed the depths of rapacious government.

Sorry, but no. From today's International Herald Tribune:

What is the fair market value of an object that cannot be sold?

The question may sound like a Zen koan, but it is one that lawyers for the heirs of the New York art dealer Ileana Sonnabend and the Internal Revenue Service are set to debate when they meet in Washington next month.

The object under discussion is “Canyon,” a masterwork of 20th-century art created by Robert Rauschenberg that Mrs. Sonnabend’s children inherited when she died in 2007.

Because the work, a sculptural combine, includes a stuffed bald eagle, a bird under federal protection, the heirs would be committing a felony if they ever tried to sell it. So their appraisers have valued the work at zero.

But the Internal Revenue Service takes a different view. It has appraised “Canyon” at $65 million and is demanding that the owners pay $29.2 million in taxes.

Lemme see if I have this right. Its purported value is $65M, but it is worthless, so cough up $29M. Which, presuming my précis is correct, makes me feel somewhat delusional, despite being completely sober and compos mentis.

But wait, there's more. This, err, valuation comes despite "IRS guidelines [saying] that in figuring an item's fair market value, taxpayers should 'include any restrictions, understandings, or covenants limiting the use or disposition of the property.'"

In this instance, the 1940 Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act and the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act make it a crime to possess, sell, purchase, barter, transport, import or export any bald eagle — alive or dead. Indeed, the only reason Mrs. Sonnabend was able to hold onto “Canyon,” Mr. Lerner said, was due to an informal nod from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service in 1981.

Now, as it happens, the heirs probably fuel their hot-tub with mounds of crispy Benjamins whilst pondering how best to grind the lower orders under the diamond studded soles of their Maniks.

But let's change the facts a little. Let's say I did something particularly noteworthy for Mrs. Sonnabend -- whatever that might be I'll leave to the reader as an exercise -- and I inherited this thing.

I couldn't sell it, and I couldn't afford to keep it.

Framed in this way, the solution practically hurls itself onto the page. Perhaps my artistic values are somehow wanting, or the picture doesn't do the work justice, but if that thing showed up on my yard, I'd burn it.

That would be a win-win. First, it would provide the perfect opportunity to very publicly present the single-digit salute to the IRS. But wait, there's more. By getting away with not paying my taxes, I could for once, and that's about the limit for a lifetime, prove AOG wrong.

Excuses, Excuses

noreply@blogger.com (Hey Skipper) — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 09:30:00 +0000

Even beyond my perplexing and exasperating writer’s block, this summer has been particularly antagonistic to the annals of the not so Daily Duck.

Just to be clear, I am in no way claiming the kind of busy that afflicts AOG. Quite the opposite, actually. So while it is true that I have been flying more than usual, I have developed quite the talent for relentlessly wasting entire days in hotel rooms. (Example: reading the comments thread attached to an NYT article about the Boy Scouts reaffirming their ban on openly gay scouts. Even my dog, more anon, wouldn’t require that much time to conclude that the paper had completely, and their readers nearly universally, had managed to completely miss the point at hand.)

But stuff beyond that kind of heroic dithering has been actually been going on. Following are the highlights, aided by visual aids to help hide unhappy lapses in content, organization, and writing skill.

We Build a Fence

I grew up in Southern California, where everyone’s back yard is fenced in. The other SWIPIAW grew up in the northeast, where yards are never fenced. I have no idea why this is.

When we moved to our current neck of the woods, hardly a yard was fenced. Now most are, and TOSWIPIAW decided that we would join that trend. Not that there is anything particularly, or even slightly, earth shaking about a fence. But we (I) decided to build the thing, rather than write a check to someone else.

I think this runs afoul of Bret’s observation that by doing so, I am trespassing upon specialization. (We did pay to have the posts put in: the boulder laced glacial till upon which we sit is absolutely antagonistic to any digging means I would even be remotely qualified to employ.) Perhaps this is so, but after it was all said and done, we saved $1200 after material costs, which worked out to about $20 per family person hour. The man-child, who was quite taken by his high school Econ class, asserted that our DIY approach, we were hurting the economy. To which I replied “Son, there are two women in this family. That money is already spent.” After a gratifyingly brief moment, I could see the light come on. “Oh, I get it. No GDPs were harmed in the making of this fence.”

TOSWIPIAW Getting Started

Worker and credible supervisor

There is some backstory. Rusty the Alaskan Wilderness Adventure Dog (RAWAD) thinks he is supervising; in that role, he was as good as most. However, RAWAD is the genesis of our enclosure. He is a doggy role model: doesn’t bark, dig, chew, jump on people or the furniture. Unfortunately, he is not quite at the apex of houndom. The AKC papers say he is a Golden Retriever. I really must get around to correcting them on this point, as in practice he is a resolute Won’t Retriever. Also, he very occasionally goes walkabout, nearly always when I’m gone. This is a problem in the winter, because between snow and darkness, he is impossible to see when out doing his constitutionals.

This came to a head last Christmas eve. He went out, but didn’t return. A half hour later, we got a phone call from a house a street over and down. They had very kindly collared him for us. When the man-child went over to get him, he learned that RAWAD had scarfed a half dozen créme brulees cooling on their back deck.

Which I learned about the next day, in great detail, and with some vehemence.

Unfortunately, there is no way to really recover from this sort of thing, but I cherish the hope that by personally delivering a couple of $40 bottles of wine I at least successfully acknowledged the depth of our shame.

You would think that something as mundane tossing up a fence so simple as to be within easy reach of any but the most mentally idle. Okay, granted, it isn’t rocket building. Yet to avoid attaching the terms “ramshackle” and “temporary” to its every mention, there are a surprising number of things for a fence neophyte to ponder: accounting for slope; how the various elements align and attach; keeping the gap between boards and the positioning of screws (necessary, without a nail gun) uniform.

I could go on, but not usefully. And this is where Bret would step in with the specialization toldjyaso. Okay, point taken. But half the fun of this sort of thing is the head scratching that goes into it. On second thought, that must be all the fun because, as I explained to my son above, I didn’t save a penny doing it myself.

I could go on, but not usefully. And this is where Bret would step in with the specialization toldjyaso. Okay, point taken. But half the fun of this sort of thing is the head scratching that goes into it. On second thought, that must be all the fun because, as I explained to my son above, I didn’t save a penny doing it myself.

I have OCD issues that, like the hair on my ears, are getting worse with time. This fence needed a gate that, at 6’ wide, isn’t small. Gates sag. A sagging gate is not a straight gate. I hate sagging gates. I have never built a gate. I would hate myself if my gate sagged. Must not build saggy gate.

You can see how this will fill an entire day with an hour-long task. Obviously, it needs a diagonal brace. Lap joints would make it stronger. And screws. And glue. So would a diagonal guy wire. And 3/4” ply gussets at each corner with their own lap joints and screws and glue. And measuring the thing to a fare thee well, so even if it preferred sagging, it couldn’t, because when closed it would rest against the house.

Some people are belt and suspenders types. According to SWIPIAW I raise that to at least the third power.

Man-child, RAWAD, and so far not sagging gate

In the Conch Republic with a Retrograde Pack of Bigots

Well, according to the NYT, anyway.

Eight Scouts, one being the man-child, and four dads, one being your humble and obedient servant, went down to the Florida Keys to get open water SCUBA certifications, then spend a week doing a live aboard dive trip.

Our certification dives happened as TS Debby was passing by roughly a 150 miles to the west. The conditions weren’t exactly Victory at Sea, but no one was about to confuse them with a mill pond. At the end of our first day's dive, we surfaced in the midst of a violent thunderstorm and six foot waves. Getting back aboard was quite the adventure.

The next day didn’t threaten rain, but by then there was a cross sea running that provoked a pitching cork-screw motion that had more than half the divers (of which our contingent was only a part), including YHAOS, in prolonged conversations with Davy Jones. Some conversations were sufficiently voluminous to keep their conversants, not including YHAOS, completely out of the water. On this dive, there was a fish-feeding, which must be quite famous in that district. It is interesting enough to be mobbed by sea kittens, but the boys were particularly thrilled with petting sharks.

The Man Child

We slept under the stars

Between the visuals and a cup of coffee, not a bad way to wake up.

Between dives

During our live aboard portion of the trip, we did 15 dives, one at night, all of which introduced the scouts to a world completely alien to their own. They learned to function as part of a crew on the sea, and to watch out for each other under it.

I’m not sure what any of that has to do with sex of any kind, but the NYT editorial board assures me it does, so it must.

It has been a heck of a ride

I got back from Florida just in time to go back to work, and got back from work just in time to go on a trip, this time to celebrate twenty immeasurably lucky years of being married to the other SWIPIAW. As it happens, she likes to travel, and is not particularly conventional in her choice of destinations.

So within an hour after walking in from a red eye, we were on our way to Kennecott, Alaska. As vacation destinations go, it is more than average remote. You can drive there, but the last 60 miles are on a dirt road.

WiFi Hotspotless

Not much changed since 1911. The building, that is.

Re-kindling our love affair and our appreciation of asphalt.

Flightseeing. Glaciers make a hash of scale, but the smallest chunk of ice is about the size of a car.

More flightseeing

Abandoned mine works

We spent one day with a guide on the Root Glacier:

Spot the tourists

The view from inside

Just a few words about glaciers. They are fascinating and beautiful. Also virtually devoid of life; even bacteria largely shun the things. They are mercilessly destructive, reducing mountains to rubble fields that nature requires centuries to remediate. Thanks to global warming, they have been receding for the last forty years. Just as they had done for at least the preceding couple hundred years, thanks to some other thing entirely.

Okay, the whinging is over.

Now maybe I can ~~spend~~ burn less time reading NYT (and Volokh, Lileks, etc) comment threads and get back to more regularly scheduled programming.

Why would we want to be Bretless?

noreply@blogger.com (Hey Skipper) — Tue, 08 May 2012 06:37:00 +0000

In my previous post I suggested that a study purporting the advisability of extortionate tax rates on the wealthy was an empty exercise in mathematical bling, concocted without any apparent reference to the real world, or any consideration of consequences therein.

Last week, the NYT carried a pre-publication review of “Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You’ve Been Told About the Economy Is Wrong", written by Bain venture capitalist Edward Conard. Who, since he is not just the 1%, but the 0.1%, clearly wants to make everyone except himself poor so they are free to sleep under bridges.

The idea that society benefits when investors compete successfully is pretty widely accepted. Dean Baker, a prominent progressive economist with the Center for Economic and Policy Research, says that most economists believe society often benefits from investments by the wealthy. Baker estimates the ratio is 5 to 1, meaning that for every dollar an investor earns, the public receives the equivalent of $5 of value. The Google founder Sergey Brin might be very rich, but the world is far richer than he is because of Google. Conard said Baker was undercounting the social benefits of investment. He looks, in particular, at agriculture, where, since the 1940s, the cost of food has steadily fallen because of a constant stream of innovations. While the businesses that profit from that innovation — like seed companies and fast-food restaurants — have made their owners rich, the average U.S. consumer has benefited far more. Conard concludes that for every dollar an investor gets, the public reaps up to $20 in value. This is crucial to his argument: he thinks it proves that we should all appreciate the vast wealth of others more, because we’re benefiting, proportionally, from it.

As it happens, Bret Wallach, one of The Great Guys is an entrepreneur: his company is engaged in designing a robot smart enough to automate pruning grape vines. In order to solve that very non-trivial problem, beyond a daunting amount of knowledge and talent, he needs two things: financial incentive to forego certain income now for more, but less certain, income later. That, and investors who see enough potential reward to make the risk worthwhile.

In other words, to make our society wealthy, we must allow people to become rich.

But never mind that. After all, equality is far better than having to suffer the success of the Brets and Conards.

Just ask the Cubans. Or the North Koreans. Or the Europeans.

Giving Guidance to the Angels means never having to say you are sorry

noreply@blogger.com (Hey Skipper) — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 07:23:00 +0000

Yesterday, the NYT, in its news pages, presented a glowing article about a pair of French economists, Emmanual Saez and Thomas Piketty, whose seminal ground breaking research shows that income inequality is a very bad thing indeed, and that, therefore, we need a 90% marginal tax rate on top earners. Their main points:

Income inequality has become morally offensive
This inequality is correlated with a steep reduction in marginal labor tax rates for high earners
The increase in inequality is particularly pronounced in the Anglosphere
The so-called Buffet rule, which would invoke a 30% tax rate on incomes above $1 million, "... would do little to reverse the rich's gains."

Therefore, according to Mr. Saez, "Absent drastic policy changes, I doubt that income inequality will decline on its own."

Previous income inequality studies had a fairly short timeline: direct data had only been collected since 1970. Saez and Piketty extended that horizon by researching income tax archives all the way back to 1913. According to their research, inequality dropped after WWII, and remained relatively low until the 1970s, when it started to increase. "From 2000 to 2007, incomes for the bottom 90% of earners rose only about 4%, once adjusted for inflation. For the top 0.1%, incomes climbed about 94%. ... In 2010, the top 10% of earners took about half of overall income."

That has led the two economists to renew their calls for higher rates on the rich. Along with Peter Diamond, an emeritus professor at MIT and a Nobel laureate, Mr. Saez has estimated the "optimal" tax rates for the wealthy -- getting the most revenue from those most able to surrender it -- to be between 45% and 70%."

According to Mr. Diamond, "... whom [President] Obama nominated to the Federal reserve and Republicans blocked[,] 'Our finding is that the debate should be between the pre-1986 Reagan tax rate, which was 50%, and the rates that existed from Johnson to Reagan, which were higher." [Note: by "higher" the reporter, whose job description apparently excludes even superficial research, meant to say 91%.]

Since I am not a reporter, I am not at risk of betraying the profession by, well, reading the actual study. Also, as merely a glorified heavy equipment operator, and not an intellectual, I am not in the business of providing guidance to the angels, and therefore perhaps less willing to mistake my policy preferences for objective truth.

So, despite my lack of reportorial professionalism and academic credentials, I am going to take on the anointed elite to see if Saez and Piketty's argument is vulnerable to the predations of the hoi polloi.

From the introduction (citations omitted; edited slightly for wordiness; emphasis mine):

While there have been many discussions both in the academic literature and the public debate about the causes of the surge in top incomes, there is not a fully compelling explanation. Most explanations can be classified into market driven changes vs. institution driven changes. The market driven stories posit that technological progress has been skilled-biased and has favored top earners relative to average earners for CEOs as well as Winner-Take-All theories for superstars. [These] pure market explanations ... cannot account for the fact that top income shares have only increased modestly in advanced countries such as Japan or Germany or France which are also subject to the same technological forces. The institution driven stories posit that changes in institutions, defined to include labor and financial market regulations, Union policies, tax policy, and also more broadly social norms regarding pay disparity and in particular tolerance for executive pay, have played a key role in the evolution of inequality. Simply put, under that view, the Reagan and Thatcher revolutions ushered new eras in the United States and United Kingdom that favored the rich and significantly increased their bargaining power while other countries were less affected.

Whether you call it "reason", "science", or "rational inquiry", analytical thinking is abundantly effective at organizing systematic observations into an overarching schema. However, there are two significant limitations to that approach. First, and most obvious, not all phenomena are amenable to systematic observation: art, for instance. That doesn't mean art doesn't exist; rather, it means that definitive statements about art, which is primarily subjective, are essentially impossible.

Second, and less readily apparent, all analytical thinking aims to create a model of reality. Since the model is not reality itself, analysis must make decisions about which phenomena to include, and which to exclude. We all do this whenever trying to solve any problem: if I am trying to discover the source of a noise in the front end of my car, I am not going to spend much time observing the seat belts. Consequently, the challenge of useful analytical thinking is to include all phenomena that can have a "significant" impact on the analyses.

Now, one would think that such esteemed intellectuals as Saez and Picketty would understand this and, furthermore, that they would provide some indication that they had considered, and excluded, certain phenomena that might, just might, have some impact on their findings.

In the highlighted sentence above, the market explanation is seemingly shown as inadequate because of the contrasting inequality between the US and England on one hand, and the obviously more enlightened European-socialist economies on the other. Since they are alike in all other respects, then the explanation for greater income inequality within the Anglosphere must be down to that one area: tax rates and other policies which put Progressives on the side of the angels.

Not so fast. Even before flipping to the second page, they have not considered two factors which probably go well beyond the realm of the merely salient.

There is one thing, besides a hatred of the poor that only Satan could love, that the US and England share, which the other advanced economies do not: English. So What? S&P might ask. As it happens, English happens to be the language for the vast majority of the world's various entertainment offerings. Best selling books, blockbuster movies, popular music, are all far more likely to come from the Anglosphere than the rest of the world, combined. I think the fancy economics term for this is "network effect", and it is non-trivial: think Microsoft.

And by ignoring, whether blithely or otherwise, network effect, S&P then compound the problem by confusing a group characteristic for its composition. The characteristic is wealth. Upon that characteristic, they impose a presumed composition of the group sharing that characteristic, and it is that composition upon which their analysis rests: the wealthy are CEO-ish. Their whole notion of economic responses to confiscatory taxation presumes that essentially everyone who is wealthy is someone who is paid for some sort of executive position.

But thanks to the network effect, that is nonsense. Confining ourselves to that voracious beast, the top 1%, at any given moment, a substantial number of them are athletes and entertainers (which is really two words for the same thing). There are at least as many of those as there are Fortune Top 500 CEOs. Moreover, even understanding that the composition of that top 1% is far from monolithic doesn't go far enough. Most entertainers lucky enough to hit it big don't do so for long. The subset of the category "wealthy" that is composed of entertainers is fairly constant over time, but the members of that subset do not.

Speaking of time. While I am not going to quibble over whether top executives take home a higher multiple of average wage earner pay than they once did, homogenizing the category "wealthy" into one easily demonized group ensures that S&P, as well as all other Progressives, ignore the certainty that no small amount of that multiple is due to the far higher compensation of entertainers now than, say, the 1970s.

So, even before getting to the meat of this seminal groundbreaking study, there are two good reasons to suspect that, through ignoring what very much needs attention, S&P have produced a result that, regardless of the mathematical ornamentation, should be rejected out of hand.

Similarly missing, or, perhaps more accurately, waved away is the notion of opportunity cost. S&P insist that a uniform tax system (i.e., all income treated the same, regardless of source or nature) sufficiently ruthlessly imposed, will so reduce the gains from high salaries or elaborate fringe benefits that people will not go to the bother of bargaining for higher pay. VOILA! equality.

Glaring in its absence is what must happen instead. The wealthy, just like the rest of us, can do only two things with money: spend or save it. By engaging in ruthless taxation, the economic value of the talents of high wage earners accrues to the government, rather than the individuals themselves. That, in turn, must mean that essentially all of the spending and investing that the wealthy would have done instead becomes government spending. All of those employed as a direct consequence of the rich spending their ill-gotten gains must lose their jobs, never mind the knock-on effects.

I could go on, but this has already long gotten past the cut-to-the-comments point. In a recent Thought Mesh thread, I suggested that the sine qua non of Progressivism (the presumption of sufficient knowledge to conclude that their policy preferences are equivalent to how the world should and will work) means that Progressives must more frequently, and thoroughly, purvey ideas that are either divorced from reality, as here, or completely fraudulent (Gleick, Rather, Group of 88, et al).

But to everyone who is not a Progressive, that presumption of knowledge is the disease of self-appointed intellectuals who might have extensive and well founded knowledge within their own specialty, and from that conclude their temperamental preferences are equivalent to social imperatives.

Note the emphasis on "might." At the risk of throwing my shoulder out of whack due to unjustifiably vigorous self congratulation, I think my assessment of S&P's seminal groundbreaking paper shows that they can reach their conclusion only by ignoring every element of reality that might contradict The Narrative.

Just so here. Behind a cloak of flashy, but trite, mathematical formalism, S&P produce a seminal groundbreaking result that flatters the self-regard of Progressives without putting themselves through the bother of properly identifying global cultural trends, understanding the nature some particular group, or the opportunity costs of replacing the monetary decisions of individuals with the tender mercies of an increasingly bloated government.

But it must be OK. After all, it the NYT thought it was just fine, and so does the Obama administration.

Why?

Symptomatic

noreply@blogger.com (Hey Skipper) — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 03:22:00 +0000

A few days ago I happened to be listening to "Marketplace"* on PBS. In particular, the segment was on demand-driven publishing: digitizing content means that printers can nearly as efficiently print one copy of a book as a whole run. That, in turn, means a few good things: far less wastage, greatly tightening the supply chain, and the ability to satisfy demand, no matter how small.

One of the examples given was the consequences of a recent Glen Beck program, touting " ... an obscure economics text ... ": there was a sudden demand for copies, which these demand-driven printing companies were easily and quickly able to satisfy.

The name of that "obscure economics text"? Road to Serfdom.

*Any program that features Robert Reich as a commentator, or considers Road to Serfdom obscure, and calls itself "Marketplace", must be utterly immune to irony.

Ringside Seats

noreply@blogger.com (Hey Skipper) — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 05:17:00 +0000

Early Friday morning I was en route from Oakland to Anchorage, over the Gulf of Alaska.

As luck would have it, that gave the two of us what were the best seats in the house for the aurora that followed last week's solar eruption.

Over the hour and a half or so before the descent into Anchorage we approached, then flew directly under, the most active area within probably 600 miles. It was such an alien sight that mere words, or at least any I am capable of writing, cannot possibly suffice.

From a distance, initially 500 miles, it looked like a curtain with a particularly bright fringe at the bottom. As we got closer, it became more like a a green waterfall going the wrong direction, with lots of waves and pulses. Ultimately, we flew right under it, where it seemed what being inside a flame must look like.

Without any sense of scale, distance is devilishly difficult to estimate. But, given a look angle of about 60 degrees, and the opposite side of the triangle being about 50 miles (disregarding our altitude of 6 miles), then the base of our personal aurora was roughly 20-30 miles away. The apparent motion against the background stars seemed consistent with that guesstimate.

It sure looked nearer, though. At our closest approach, we could see field line details that, frustatingly, a camera couldn't possibly capture, and two thirds of the atmosphere couldn't get in the way of. When I leaned over until my head hit the side window, I could see the streaks, torrents, and waves vaulting over the plane out into space.

And it was a show put on just for the two of us.