afuturehead

extraterrestrial life

2007-07-09T09:12:00.001-05:00

first, an apology. i haven't been posting much because i've been studying for the bar exam, which i will be sitting for in two weeks. hooray.

so, i just wanted to let everyone know i'm still alive and thinking, by submitting a theory, for your collective consideration.

it occurs to me that extraterrestrial life, whatever its manifestation, must necessarily be similar to ours in that it requires energy to sustain itself. this should be especially true in the case of anything we would call a "civilization."

also, it appears that nuclear fusion is the most efficient method of energy production possible. but even if nuclear fusion could be sustained without gravity, it could only use light elements, which would be relatively scarce on a planet that can support life. thus, the most abundant and efficient source of energy for a civilization, no matter how technologically advanced, would have to be its star.

that being the case, i would posit that if an alien civilization is significantly advanced, it would have arrived at a point where, in order to sustain its energy needs, it could not rely only on the radiation arriving on the planet, but would have to envelop its sun to capture energy radiating in all directions.

this leads me to wonder whether, in our search for extraterrestrial life, we may be overlooking such a civilization, because shielding would make it difficult to detect.

gene doping

2007-06-04T00:44:00.000-05:00

first off, sorry for the long delay! i've had finals and graduation, and i had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to beautiful southern california for a week, to see my sister graduate -- summa cum laude and phi beta kappa!

anyway, the bulk of this was taken from a paper i wrote for a biotech ethics class, so please excuse me if it sounds like i'm on quaaludes.

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Gene doping adds another layer of controversy to a world of sports already hounded by steroid scandals. What’s more, it only adds fuel to the controversial fire, since gene doping is not only nearly untraceable but safer than steroids. But is there really cause to be up in arms?

First, let me make it clear that cheating is not the issue. The real question is, “Should a sports league allow gene doping?” Before weighing the pros and cons of gene doping, there is the question of whether law should trump private ordering. This is especially relevant in the United States, where some sports leagues have been granted antitrust immunity. But the primary impetus for such legal intervention is a matter of antitrust and labor law, not of ethics. (A related question is whether leagues that choose to disallow gene doping should be audited to make sure they live up to their promises, and here there is a very strong case for some sort of third-party or regulatory oversight.)

Another preliminary question necessary to frame the debate is whether athletic competition is zero-sum, meaning that people are more interested in who wins than how good they are (from an absolute perspective). If this is the case, and if all athletes engage in gene doping, their overall athletic prowess would improve but their rewards would improve only slightly, or not at all. And the prisoner’s dilemma informs us that, without regulation, all athletes will be stuck engaging in this costly activity, which would be inefficient, on the whole. This is the position taken up by Chicago Law Professor Gary Becker, and his post on doping, along with its comments, can be dismantled to show why the argument does not hold.

There is good reason to question the underlying assumption of the zero-sum argument, which is that relative performance trumps absolute performance. As one commenter pointed out, in part, there are countless examples of two leagues with the same amount and distribution of wins and losses, yet one of them is more popular because its athleticism is greater. For example, male sports are more popular than their female counterparts, across the board. Another example is minor versus major leagues, or simply age groups.

The zero-sum argument also fails to explain why world records are more noteworthy than competitive wins. In fact, Becker’s own example of the four minute mile is contradictory. He claims that its notoriety exemplified a “crucial relative aspect,” which is that “no one had done that before.” But if relativism is comparing to everyone who came before, then what is not relative? It can’t be comparison to all athletes, past, present, and future!

The bottom line is that people do want to see athletes run faster, jump higher, etc. These are absolutes, and fans demand their achievement. Although this is a conjecture, it seems natural that there be some causative link between sports’ increasing popularity and the accelerating achievements of participants therein.

Becker also points to other costly enhancers that are regulated supposedly because they are costly but do not improve relative performance, such as equipment specifications or squad size limits. But these rules are in place not because they do nothing to change relative performance, but because they would make games impossible to play.

First, Becker points to equipment limitations, such as the size of golf clubs that can be used in competition, “corked” baseball bats, and the types of tennis rackets permitted. Note that these rules have a common denominator – they limit the distance that a ball can travel, or they limit its velocity, or the velocity of, say, a stock car. These rules are in place because, without them, there are environmental or human constraints that would skew the game and render it dull. If every hit were a home run, or if every volley had the speed of a serve, or if every stroke carried 300 yards, the games would be boring. Moreover, it would be inordinately expensive to correct for these changes. We would have to not only increase the size of every ballpark, golf green, and race track, we would have to make defensive players faster in order for them to cover these increased distances. (Ironically, doping could allow just such changes and, if you believe in the “absolute” argument, the value of sports.)

Other costly enhancers pointed out by Becker are number limits, for example, of players or of golf clubs. Here, allowing unlimited numbers would increase athletic achievements, but the changes would be slight in comparison to, first, their costs (salary and equipment purchases), and second, to other, more productive, enhancements. It may very well be that people would pay more to see sports change these rules, but fans may not be willing to pay enough to cover the huge expense of keeping things interesting. By contrast, gene doping could increase athletic performance by orders of magnitude at very low cost.

Even if we assume the relative position, there is still a strong argument that gene doping should be allowed. We can compare gene doping to other costly enhancers that are not regulated, despite the fact that they lead to the competitive stalemate outlined, above. Examples of these would be exercise, training, and nutrition. The common characteristic among these unregulated enhancers is that they are supposedly beneficial to the athlete. (For the sake of argument, we ignore the fact that these enhancers are just as subject to “pecuniary abuse” as steroids or other “harmful” enhancers. Athletes and their organizations spend millions of dollars on improving their training, technique, nutrition, and equipment.) And while gene doping could be subject to abuse, its proper administration would be no less beneficial than advantages garnered from exercise and nutrition. In fact, it is most likely more beneficial because it is a low-cost solution and increases the effectiveness of the athlete’s other enhancements. And any danger currently inherent in gene doping would be certain to decrease if it were allowed.

Another consideration in this debate is a fairness issue, which is closely tied to the definition of what is “natural.” Many people would think gene doping is “unfair” because it gives recipients an “unnatural” advantage over competitors. But we have good reason to question the contrapositive of this position and ask whether it is “fair” that some people should be prevented from participating in athletics because they do not have an athletic phenotype.

We would also be amiss if we did not discuss the potential scientific benefits. Many enhancements currently in development began as therapies, and there is no reason to think this is a one-way street. This being the case, athletes and organizations could potentially invest billions of dollars into research and development that could benefit society at large.

maryland smoking ban

2007-03-21T07:38:00.000-05:00

let me begin by making it perfectly clear that i hate cigarettes only slightly less than the people who smoke them. they disgust me so much that i can almost see the logic in the maryland legislature’s proposed smoking ban. almost, but not quite.

the bill’s legislative backers will tell you they’re protecting the innocent from the dangers of second-hand smoke. now, i’m fairly certain they’d accept the praises of voters who want unabashed paternalism and are out to ban smoking in all its forms, but let’s take them at face value.

the problem with their argument is that non-smokers do have a choice. it’s a tough choice, but you can always just not hang out in bars. i’m actually selling it a bit short, because there are some bars that don’t allow smoking (even some nice ones like our local “red maple” on charles).

there are clearly benefits to the ban, but i seriously doubt they’d outweigh the costs of trying to legislate it. this law’s impact on overall smoking will most likely be negligible. smokers will smoke outside, at home, in their cars, and pretty much anywhere they want to besides public buildings, bars, and restaurants. at the same time, smokers will spend less money at bars and tip less, which will hurt those business owners. and though smokers will save a little money, they are denied one of their pleasures, making them less well-off.

but perhaps the biggest problem is that after all the sound and fury, things probably won’t change that much. there will inevitably be some exception to the rule, into which all bars and restaurants will crowd.

just look at what happened when virginia tried to shut down all its bars. their law excepted establishments who derived a certain percentage of revenue from food sales, so guess what happened? for every bar that shut down there was a restaurant that added a bar, and the bars that survived just added a restaurant. in fact, some of them run their food operations at a loss, just so that they can meet the revenue requirements and keep their bar running. obviously, the profit on alcohol (which is inflated due to regulation) more than makes up for that loss.

so, the best we can expect to get out of all this hoopla is that every bar will start selling discount tobacco products, and every tobacco shop will open a bar.

well, at least we know that our legislature's trying to nanny us to death, even if they fail at it. and maybe that's not so bad. after all, it's the thought that counts.

backdating: hype, not harm

2007-03-13T21:20:00.000-05:00

the latest scandal du jour is options backdating. judging by the media coverage, you’d think it was enron take two, and leading the charge are the usual suspects: plaintiff’s lawyers, the s.e.c., and the i.r.s. unfortunately, only one of them has good reason to sue. doubly unfortunately, it’s the i.r.s.

plaintiffs’ lawyers and the s.e.c. both claim to represent shareholder interest, but a little help from our old friend economics shows us that shareholders aren’t the least bit affected by options backdating. in fact, they want backdating because it saves them tax money.

let’s start, as per usual, with the basics. companies like to grant options rather than giving stock outright because their value is tied more closely to the future than the past. an option only has value only if the stock value goes up, whereas granting stock outright would reward the employee even if the stock price goes down. backdating occurs when the company gives employees the right to purchase stock at a price from the past that is lower than the current market price. for example, an option grant that allows you to buy ten shares of stock for $10 when the shares are trading for $10 would be worth nothing. however, if we chose a past price, say $5, the options would immediately be worth $50, since the employee could buy them for $50 and instantly sell them for $100. such options are called “in the money,” for obvious reasons.

but we all know that money doesn’t grow on trees, so where does it come from? two out of three plaintiffs answer “shareholders,” but is this really true?

back to basics. a stock’s value comes from two parts, present and future assets and dividends, which are simply what the company owns and earns. when an in-the-money option issues, two economically relevant things happen.

first, the pool of assets and dividends gets split more ways. for example, let’s say there are 100 shares of that $10 stock outstanding, so that the company is worth $1,000. when the employee exercises his $5 options, the company gets $50, but there are now 10 more shares, so each one is worth $1,050 ÷ 110, which is about $9.55, for a loss of 45 cents. now, before you scream bloody murder, think about the fact that this is public information. shareholders knew full well that the company could hand out authorized shares at any time, and they fully expected it to do so in order to reward its employees. so, whatever price they paid for their stock included a tiny discount to reflect this possibility. so much for that supposed rip-off.

second, we have to “account” for the fact that the company is forgoing the full market price for its shares. again, though, you have to ask whether this really matters to shareholders. sure, the company could have gotten another $50 from its employee, which would have kept things even-stevens at $10 a share. but in reality, forgoing $50 is exactly the same as paying $50 in salary.

some people are all riled up over the fact that companies are restating earnings to reflect these options grants as salary expenses, but any savvy investor knows that those entries are just for bookkeeping purposes. without getting into the merits of options expensing, leave it to say that your money managers get paid to weed out those entries from what really matters.

once you cut through all the hype, options turn out to be an investor’s best friend, since they’re taxed as capital gains at 15%, rather than income at an undoubtedly higher price. this means that the company can save on payroll and create extra shareholder value.

so, in the end, the only one getting bilked here is the tax man. no wonder they’re getting persecuted.

by the numbers: the “wal-mart law”

2007-02-13T16:07:00.000-05:00

the day before governor o’malley’s inauguration, the fourth circuit struck down the “fair share act,” which would have forced all employers with 10,000 or more maryland employees to spend at least 8% of their payroll on health insurance.

the act is also known, affectionately, as the “wal-mart law,” because its namesake comprises one-half of the companies it covers (which – if you didn’t catch that – number all of two). that, and everyone hates wal-mart.

our new governor has taken up a firm “waffle” position, his spokesman going only so far as to say, “we continue to believe that fairness is critical to making health care more affordable.” attorney general doug gansler has until april to appeal the decision, and my bet is that he’ll ride it for all its worth.

the act’s momentum owes itself to the popular sentiment that wal-mart is in some sense “at fault” for swelling medicaid rolls, because it “forces” employees onto subsidized health insurance, foisting insurance costs onto taxpayers.

but consider this: if our legislature suddenly decided to give everyone $100,000 a year, would you really blame employers for cutting salaries across the board? of course you wouldn’t – but that’s precisely what’s happening, here. our government is giving away health care, and yet it’s somehow the employer’s fault for not buying something that’s free.

you have to understand that benefits like health insurance are just a slice of the compensation pie that employees could cash out, if given the option. let’s say wal-mart is willing to pay someone $20,000 annually. it would then be equally willing to foot the bill for $5,000 of insurance and pay $15,000 in cash. but when paying that much for insurance, it would be crazy to pay anything more than $15,000 in cash, since that would bust the $20,000 cap. wal-mart’s only decision is how to divide the $20,000 pie, and if it can get a good deal on insurance, it will offer it because it can cut labor costs and increase profits.

the underlying problem at work, here, is that medicaid is a good deal, even when a better healthcare plan is available. let’s say wal-mart offers a plan worth $5,000, whereas medicaid is only worth $3,000. the employee will nevertheless want to take medicaid’s $3,000 and pocket the $5,000 in healthcare “savings.” and since the cost is no longer coming out of wal-mart’s pocket, it can pay out the full $20,000, bringing the employee’s total compensation to $23,000 of cash plus medicaid, rather than the $20,000 salary that includes private healthcare. the same holds true even if the group policy has cheaper rates – which it probably would – simply because it has rates, whereas medicaid is always free.

things work the same way when we zoom out. wal-mart may be willing to spend $1 million on payroll for all employees, who will then receive $150,000 in medicaid. all the “fair share act” would do – by forcing healthcare spending up to 8% – is reduce wages to $926,000 and benefits to $74,000. and even if there is a minimum wage, the act would just cause wal-mart to switch away from investments in labor, to investments that replace labor with robots.

leaving its employees on medicaid is just wal-mart doing what it does best – finding a cheaper product and passing on the savings.

so what’s really great about the “fair share act” is that it actually makes poor people poorer, by putting tax dollars back in your pockets and forcing them to buy health insurance they don’t want.

who saw that one coming?

sea farming

2007-01-02T14:12:00.000-05:00

the world’s population is exploding. at our current world growth rate of 1.14%, the earth’s population will double every 50 years. and even if growth slows, we still have to figure out how to feed everyone.

this could be a slight problem.

first, of the earth’s 57million square miles of land, only about 12million (20%) are arable. land may be useless for many reasons that are, effectively, impossible to fix: too hot (desert), too cold (arctic), too rocky, too mountainous, too salty, too rainy, or too snowy. we do have control over some reasons for loss – such as development, pollution, and nutrient depletion – but the thorn in our collective side is water. i’ve written about water in a previous post, so i’ll skip the political economy in this one. for now, just note that 40% of our irrigation comes from ground water (i.e. not rain or “surface water”) and that we are using our ground water at 125% of its replacement rate.

the second problem is the income effect on food demand. as people get wealthier – which technology is making possible despite our burgeoning population – they don’t simply consume more food, they consume better food. they will demand food with large amounts of protein, sugar, fat, and oil; food like fruits, nuts, and meat. this effect makes sense because, from the individual’s standpoint, they are getting more efficient food that contains more energy and nutrition per pound than simple stuff like grains. but, like all things, this comes at a cost, which is that it takes more effort and resources to get the same amount of energy into these rich foods than into simpler foods like grains. to a certain extent, the animals we eat are actually competing with us for land, eating just as much grain as the human population. hence, the strain on resources will increase faster than we would expect from population growth, alone.

the upshot of all this – and the subject of this post – is our inevitable shift in food production to sea farming. right now, it’s a nascent industry, but i’m confident that it will soon become a major source of food for reasons that parallel the problems, above. first, because it does not require fresh water, and second, because fish – unlike land animals – don’t compete with us for arable land.

one of the major obstacles i foresee is that, as the industry expands, it will move farther and farther off-shore, and most likely into international waters. this, in turn, could spur a large increase in maritime activity - both good and bad.

newfound wealth at sea will require protection and dispute resolution, further down the line. in the meantime, i’m trying to find a way to invest in these guys.

the housing crash

2006-12-21T07:35:00.000-05:00

last may, i cried “bubble" and was promptly ridiculed as housing continued to boom.

“just wait,” i would say, “until 2007.”

now, home prices are dropping and interest rates are rising, along with defaults. and yet, there remain steadfast believers in a swift recovery. some are self-delusional investors; others are the realtors and mortgage brokers whose livelihoods depend on public perception. most unfortunately, though, even many lenders and analysts cannot see the forest for the trees, each intensely studying a tiny piece of an enormous system without fully grasping that the entire mechanism is on the verge of collapse. a quote from AmeriCredit Corp. c.f.o. Chris Choate (in an a.p. article) sums it up: “Unless you can draw some correlation between those [defaults] and what is going to happen to the consumer's job, we really don't see that that would have a direct impact on our portfolio.” well, lurking below their radar is just such a correlation – an economic feedback loop that threatens to turn otherwise isolated incidents into a systemic shock. this phenomenon was explored by Yale economist Robert Schilling in his excellent book, “Irrational Exuberance” (whose title is a tongue-in-cheek homage to former Federal Reserve chief, Alan Greenspan).

to understand why the housing collapse will soon reverberate through our economy, we should start at the beginning. housing began its meteoric rise when the fed dropped interest rates to historic lows, cushioning the dot-com collapse. cheap credit and novel mortgages brought new buyers into the market, making low up-front payments and believing that they could afford higher future payments thanks to rising wages or – better yet – by simply refinancing when their home value rises, as appeared inevitable. some buyers took this to extreme, financing 100% to purchase multiple homes on speculation. and even those on the sidelines were cashing out with junior mortgages, liquefying half of all appreciation over the last five years.

the end result was over $10 trillion in outstanding mortgages (less the approximately 20% paid to financiers) -- not an alarming number, in and of itself. what should concern us is that more than $2 trillion are adjustable-rate mortgages that reset in 2006 and 2007.

the chips are down, and struggling homeowners are counting on rising wages or home prices to come through. but as in any bubble, speculative prices were mistaken for real demand, and the resultant oversupply is sending prices even lower. if prices fall far enough, even another round of rate cuts won’t make refinancing a winning proposition.

the other hope is that wages will increase, but our economy is dangerously dependent on consumer optimism, and we have no reason to keep spending! we’ve already bought everything we need for the next five years – homes, cars, appliances – all paid for not with more or higher wages, but thanks to (highly questionable) asset appreciation. in fact, last year, americans spent more than they made for the first time since the great depression! and to the extent that income has increased, most of it has been in real estate and the new “service economy.” naturally, as housing deflates, realtors and construction workers will be fired in droves. and the service economy is highly dependent on discretionary spending, but we can’t keep spending, even if we wanted to. with home prices falling, we’re losing access to consumer credit, which recently fell by the largest amount since 1992.

meanwhile, wall street seems little concerned, with markets rising on great expectations for consumer spending. and so, the last five years of investment in capital and labor have assumed that home price appreciation would translate into permanent wealth. there go our best-laid plans.

add all of this together, and you see the downward spiral we face. mortgages reset and, lacking the collateral to refinance, the least creditworthy enter default. this puts more houses on the market, further depressing prices. as credit falls and real estate suffers, expectations and consumer spending wither, hurting the economy and employment. at this point, the trend doubles back onto itself, sending more people into default and putting more houses on the market, ad (nigh) infinitum.

elsewhere, stocks will falter, but the brunt of this contraction will be felt by hedge funds that bought mortgage-backed securities without regard to risk.

but i still have my eye on the biggest hedge funds of all, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. they cannot legally diversify their investments, so they have leveraged mortgages into the trillion-dollar range using nothing but other mortgages to “hedge” their risk, if you can even call it a hedge. if homeowners refinance in the next year, the twins will be left unable to cover their liabilities.

the scariest thing i've ever heard was when a Freddie employee told me, last year, that "as long as real estate prices don't go down, we're fine."

all this, and we haven't even mentioned the dollar. throw in the fact that china may not need our purchasing power anymore, and their release of foreign reserves could force the dollar to unforeseeable lows, bringing the twin deficits home to roost.

i just hope we'll learn that we're no exception to the rule of command economies. they just don't work.

hold on to your hats.

by the numbers: biofuel

2006-11-05T11:13:00.000-05:00

if you haven’t heard of biofuel, you’re an utter loser and you obviously don’t watch enough television. they’re going to wean us from opec’s teat, save the american farmer, stop global warming, bring peace to the holy land, and solve the jonbenét ramsey murder-mystery, all by next summer. the catholic church recently canonized biofuel based on these three miracles. everyone wants to get in on biofuel. john kerry is considering ethanol as his running-mate for 2008, and george bush recently betrothed his eldest daughter to bio-diesel (although this may simply have been a mix-up with the actor, “vin diesel,” of whom the president is a huge fan).

some things in the last paragraph are exaggerations (i’ll leave it to the reader weed them out), but they capture the spirit of the moment. i think – and i might be all alone on this – but i think that maybe, just maybe, all the biofuel hype warrants some scrutiny.

if for no other reason, we should be suspicious because republicans are on the bandwagon. does anyone really buy a 180° turn within the last year? of course, there is now a (much) stronger argument for independence from foreign oil, but the war was never about oil… at least we’re not supposed to think so.

sadly, the reason that biofuels have political support is that they are effectively massive farming subsidies – political chocolate covered by a thin, environmentally-sound shell.

witness the fact that we’re supporting what are pretty much the worst possible crops for biofuel production: wheat, soy, and corn. the best crops are sugar beet, sugarcane, cassava, and sorghum. unfortunately for us, they come from, respectively, france, brazil, nigeria, and india, none of which is likely to win out over middle-america, in the foreseeable future.

i certainly don’t mean to imply that any of this is new. we’ve been standing in the way of international agricultural trade since the 1930’s. it’s just different, now that politicians can hide behind the mask of environmentalism.

rhetoric aside, what people really want, and need, to know is, are biofuels cheap, and are they clean?

biofuel cleanliness is debatable, but supporters probably have it right. on the upside, their net effect on carbon levels is definitely low because plants take carbon out of the atmosphere as they make biofuel material. on the downside biodiesel currently releases many times the nitrous emissions that gasoline does, but technological improvements can help to bring that down, and other biofuels don’t share that problem.

what does merit close scrutiny is the question of whether biofuels are “cheap” – in the economic sense, as opposed to the price sense.

people are usually only concerned with energy conservation and want to make sure we’re getting more energy out than we’re putting in. but given our propensity for massive resource depletion, we should consider the material resources used in biofuel production.

on a yearly basis, current technology can extract 6 tons of biomass (the stuff biofuels are made of) out of an acre of arable land, which can then be converted into about 400 gallons of biofuel. unfortunately, biofuels will only ever be about 70% as effective as gasoline, turning 400 gallons of biofuel into about 280 gallons of gasoline.

so, all you need to feed our gasoline habit is about 497.5 million acres of land. unfortunately, that’s 108% of the arable land in the united states. so much for self-sufficiency.

i must admit that i’m being a bit pessimistic. if you believe the optimists, we can quadruple the biomass yield and cut our fuel needs in half, taking the amount of land down to 37.9 million acres, or 8% of the nation’s arable land.

i’m a man of science, and i think that productivity miracles can happen, but they aren’t easy. unfortunately, biofuel faces more than an uphill struggle, it’s an uphill struggle in the rain with people jumping on its back and throwing stuff at it.

there are other things that require arable land, like 300 million mouths, a number that keeps growing. oh, and we haven’t mentioned the fact that most parts of the nation are depleting their aquifers at a rate that will halve current irrigated acreage by 2030.

there’s just no getting around the fact that oil is about a billion years of biofuel production, distilled into sweet, sticky alkanes. our energy demand is a rather high hurdle, and the first step to clearing it must be an apolitical, economical approach that weighs the realities of all alternatives. eliminate the subsidies and the barriers to trade, let people decide how scarce oil is and will be, and let entrepreneurs meet demand. that’s what we do best.

fire, brimstone, and global warming

2006-09-20T10:45:00.000-05:00

i have a confession to make. i have not seen "an inconvenient truth," and i probably never will. if you think this means i shouldn’t critique the film, rest assured that all evidence presented is on the internet, and that i have seen it.

i refuse to go because i don't like propaganda films, even if packaged and sold by the manifestation of bland that is al gore. i say propaganda because i think the chances of finding objective truth in a movie theatre are about the same as finding a fortune cookie that actually forecasts my life.

speaking of forecasts, i should get down to what this article is really about: global warming.

and intelligent design.

what does global warming have to do with i.d.? well, it depends on what you mean by "global warming." if we take it to mean that the earth's average temperature has risen as of late, and nothing more, then global warming and i.d. have very little to do with each other. but that simple definition of global warming is like the part of intelligent design that says, "look, there are humans!" -- no real controversy, there.

what ties global warming to intelligent design is the way we fill in the gaps.

nietzsche said it best: "nature has installed man in the midst of illusion." somewhat counter-intuitively, this is not a statement about the world around us. rather, his brilliant observation is that the human mind imposes order upon its surroundings -- even when there is none.

and order is just a hop, skip, and a jump from intelligence.

consider the snowflake. each is unique, a variation on a theme whose exquisite structure might lead us to believe that every flake is hand-crafted by the likes of jack frost. but we know better. random gusts of wind interact with water's molecular geometry to render crystalline structures in unmistakable – and beautiful – hexagonal patterns.

characters like jack frost are omnipresent in human history. this is because we have a strong tendency towards anthropomorphism, the attribution of human characteristics to non-human phenomena. and such bias makes sense, but only as a cognitive convenience. it took hundreds of years of experimentation and deduction before we could say anything about snowflakes. in the meantime, how much easier was it to just chalk them up to some deity or mythical character?

but here's why it’s really great; we innately know how to influence human behavior, making personification even easier when the phenomenon is frightening -- when we desperately want to change it.

anthropomorphism is what lies behind ancient rituals of sacrifice. early humans thought that their local volcano erupted because it was "angry," and so concluded that a gift would calm it down.

now, let's tie this all together, with a little help from our friend, math. for the sake of argument, we’ll assume the worst-case temperature reconstruction (the infamous “hockey stick”).

what you have to remember is that whenever someone makes a claim about atmospheric cause-and-effect, it is supported only by their model of how the atmosphere works.

the problem is that our atmosphere is what is called a "nonlinear, dynamical system." this is a fancy way of saying that its features -- temperature, humidity, cloud cover, etc. -- do not follow neat lines and curves, and they are subject to wild fluctuations, putting it in the same class of systems as the stock market. both are breathtakingly complex and have thousands or millions of influences (variables, in mathspeak).

these systems can barely be captured by today's greatest mathematicians and our most powerful supercomputers, much less by al gore.

in closing, i’d like to address one last point and remind everyone that government funding does not put research on the moral high ground. nazi-era eugenics arose without any sort of governmental directive. german scientists simply knew that they could get easy money if their research was in line with popular opinion. how popular? so much so that its supporters included theodore roosevelt, woodrow wilson, winston churchill, oliver wendell holmes, louis brandeis, alexander graham bell, leland stanford, h. g. wells, george bernard shaw, the carnegie and rockefeller foundations, the cold springs harbor institute, and researchers at harvard, yale, princeton, stanford and johns hopkins. even some nobel prize-winners lent their support.

now, all of this is not to say that humans should be definitively ruled out as global warming's root cause. we could very well be exactly that. the point is that we should take it all with a grain of salt and not rely on anecdotal evidence (another nasty human tendency). we should be focus our efforts on saving the world from more definite threats, like war, death, near-earth objects, and supervolcanoes.

let’s not lose our heads just because it's easiest to blame ourselves.

nonprofit ≠ not profitable

2006-04-21T17:42:00.000-05:00

without a doubt, the biggest scam in america is the entire concept of “nonprofit” organizations. and these guys are making a mint.

this quote is from a baltimore sun article:

Seven of the state's 501(c)(3) organizations - charities, the most common nonprofits - paid more than $1 million in salary and benefits to at least one official during their 2003 fiscal year, according to the most recent Internal Revenue Service data consistently available. Thirty shelled out more than $500,000, a Sun analysis found.

granted, the number and complexity of these monstrosities are expanding at an alarming rate, so we should expect to see higher salaries.

but you need to understand that the biggest secret of all about these “nonprofits” is that the only difference between them and a regular company is that they don’t have shareholders. (there are other restrictions, but they amount to little more regulation than any for-profit company is subject to.)

but if shareholders aren’t keeping an eye on the board as it sets executive compensation, who is?

effectively, no one.

non-profits are subject only to pressure from decreased donations, be they government aid or private donors.

but with non-profits reporting – rather conservatively, and according to generally lax rules – millions of dollars spent lobbying every year, why spoil the party? if you think for one second that a politician would say “no” to spending your tax money on a non-profit in exchange for campaign money, you should have your children and small animals taken from you.

and then there’s you, the donor. how are you supposed to know that when you donate the national federation for the blind, only 20% of your donation will go directly to helping the blind?

so what is there to do?

remove the politicians and make charities compete.

the bums go on strike... from other people's jobs

2006-04-21T12:51:00.000-05:00

i first encountered this phenomenon when, in a truly surreal moment, i watched dick butkus
stand in front of walgreens and lead a black chorus in a negro spiritual.

well, it wasn’t a negro spiritual, per se. but i had the definite sense that someone was capitalizing on a struggle in which he played no part. (or, at least, no constructive part.)

our worst fears have been realized, and the vicious subcontracting cycle has finally reached the bottom rung of the economic ladder. it is now common practice for labor organizers to hire homeless people to do their protesting for them.

“…the union carpenters couldn't afford to put aside their work and join the protest.”

however, it seems that they can afford to 1) hire organizers who 2) pay protesters to march around and sing in front of 3) giant, inflatable rats.

i’m not saying there’s anything wrong with asking for a raise. i’m just saying that there’s got to be a better way to go about it than hiring one of bill swerski’s superfans to give out money so a bunch of addicts can get back on the nod a.s.a.p.

let firms hire mediators, arbitrators, counselors. almost anything would be better than the n.l.r.b. and their political driveling.

myth & property

2006-04-21T10:57:00.000-05:00

last summer, i went to hawai’i to visit my girlfriend, who was there to study law and surfing (but not the law of surfing). to kill time before her meeting with a state senator, we took a tour of the state capitol.

usually i hate tours, but a hawai’i boasts one of the most interesting public buildings i’ve ever seen. also making it easier was the fact that our guide was a very nice local woman who served double-duty as some sort of secretary. she told us all about the island and the building, and local customs and culture.

not surprisingly, the locals are still a bit peeved that the doles and various other dead, white people came and brought with them their western concept of “property.” now, without delving into the history and politics of the bayonet constitution, i will say that somewhere along the line, someone got a raw deal.

but what amazed me was her concept of hawai’ian society before westernization. “you see,” she explained, “before the europeans came, no one ‘owned’ the land. the islanders were custodians of the land, and it belonged to the gods. we just took care of it.”

and all i could think was, whoever came up with that lie was effing brilliant.

so, to commemorate this shining moment in history, i composed this one-act play.

i’m now proud to present :

“talk to the gods”
by: afuturehead

hawai’i, circa a really long time ago. a peon farmer cowers before his mighty king.

“hey, king?”

“yes, peon farmer?”

“let’s say there’s this guy, right? we’ll call him… leon. yeah, leon farmer. and he – for some crazy reason that i literally cannot even grasp with my tiny, not-royal mind – he questions your legitimacy and doesn’t see why all the land should be yours and why we can’t own it. what would you say to this person who is obviously insane and definitely not me?”

“ummm… lemme think. because… uh… oh wait, i know! you see, peon farmer, we all know that you don't own the land. you're much too stupid and smelly for that. but you see, neither do i -- this land belongs to the gods! we’re just taking care of it for them. and in order for us to take care of it, i have to tell you what to do, and you have to give me half of your food in return.”

“ahhhh! ok. good to know. i thought that was all just because your dedication to violence afforded you the most power. gosh, thanks for clearing all that up! well, i better get back to doing what you tell me to, then giving you half of my stuff. thanks, king!”

“no problem.”

[exit peon]

(king, to guard) “have that peon farmer burned alive. also, find leon farmer and have him burned alive.”

and then, the monarch sold everyone’s land to the europeans and got really, really rich.

fin.

high and tight

2006-04-20T09:32:00.000-05:00

i love france. i love my family there. i love the food. i love the art and the music. i love the fact that they have produced the likes of robert pires, thierry henry, and zinedine zidane.

but mostly i love france because it's the only place in the world where a footballer can dedicate a goal to his hairdresser and not a single person will make fun of him.

euthanasia

2006-04-11T12:22:00.000-05:00

activists -- especially students -- are drawn to anything caught between a rock and a hard place. how could one not be moved to act when healthcare and pharmaceutical costs are now so high that senior citizens are forced to choose between food and medicine?

and so we join, in throngs, the battle against evil healthcare corporations.

alas, we are all too quick to blame industry and the spectre of capitalism for driving costs through the roof and robbing us of our “right” to healthcare. for few who point to the aforementioned hobson’s choice seem to have considered the fact that thirty years ago, this decision was not so difficult for our octogenarians: they ate their food, and they died.

we didn’t even have a treatment for parkinson’s, much less a bevy of erectile dysfunction medication, until within the last decade.

what has changed between then and now is not that healthcare costs so much today, it is that we now have the ability to purchase, and thus spend, so much more on curing our various ailments. high prices are simply a byproduct of dedicating to medicine an amount of resources unparalleled in history.

this notion rarely elicits a meaningful reply. the typical, bewildered response is to ask how we could possibly question our legal and ethical obligations to care for our own. unwavering proponents of natural rights declare that the value of human life transcends all other considerations and unites americans with even a shred of moral fabric, left and right, blue- and red-state.

besides the question of our practical abilities, do-gooders have overlooked what is really at stake in this controversy over physician-assisted suicide: our freedom to choose.

we have yet to come to an understanding as to precisely what sort of life we seek to protect, so doctors are stuck in the default position of being ethically bound to protect all life. in doing so, we force our society to spend exorbitant amounts of money prolonging the part of life that many find the least fulfilling.

these obligations have led us to some quite irrational legal results. a physician may withhold “heroic” measures if they are already being administered, but cannot otherwise bring life to an end. any act that brings peace is deemed criminal unless the life is wholly dependent upon medical wizardry.

now, there is good reason to prohibit assisted suicide in certain problematic situations, but the existing distinction turns solely on the physician’s actions and utterly ignores the patient’s needs and desires.

meanwhile, we hinder any and all actions that might shorten one’s life but bring greater overall happiness (except alcohol, the boorish drug for the boorish nation).

some of this obstruction is accounted for by what i would call “torts of regret” -- lawsuits that blame others for deliberate tradeoffs made earlier in one’s life. (“surgeon general? never heard of him. *cough* *hack*”) but these efforts should not surprise us, given our society’s unhealthy fixation on benchmarks, be they stock prices, income, or our average life expectancy.

the baby boom is retiring, and laws designed to protect life are set to become manacles on our generation. social security and medicare/medicaid reform will not be enough. what we need, in order to free our future generations from a crushing burden, is to establish the individual right to terminate his or her own life.

of course, many will see this as an impossible proposition, one that debases life.

but might we not also see it as a tribute? our forefathers risked, and many sacrificed, their lives so that we could live – and die – in peace.

perhaps, instead of forcing our doctors’ blind adherence to the hippocratic oath, we should allow individuals to improve their quality of life as seen fit. for some people, this will mean bringing it to a peaceful and deliberate conclusion.

my father likes to quote garrison keillor, who might have said it best:

“the death of an old man is not a tragedy.”

water, water everywhere

2006-04-11T09:15:00.000-05:00

early last summer, i was lucky enough to spend two weeks in southern california. but i was unlucky because its blisteringly hot days found me in the shade and, for the most part, alone thanks to my pasty, east-coast complexion, inapposite among the bronzed locals.

to maintain my dignity, i had to make lemonade from an otherwise sour situation. so, i took it upon myself to ponder the divide between our nation’s coasts (aside from the swath of red states lying between them). but the thought of lemonade made me thirsty, and being surrounded by flowing water made it so much worse.

funny, i thought, how in the heat of summer and in the dry air of the california desert, people would just let water run. it gushed from sprinklers and fountains everywhere, joining streams in the streets and emptying into storm drains. it made islands in the road literally so as it poured out of haphazard pipes, for no apparent reason other than flooding tiny patches of soil (i can only assume that the grass died from over-watering).

this made me think that with a little elbow grease, i could turn a tidy profit collecting all this water and selling it. but no, surely someone would already have thought to do that. and moreover, why wouldn’t everyone do what amounts to the same thing by reducing their water consumption and saving on their water bill?

later that day i erupted in archimedean euphoria at the sight of a banner for water conservation. when i was finished, i found my friends – who had stolen away – and explained my euphoria. if the city were really concerned about conservation, they would just raise prices. but here’s the genius part: they could give what’s saved to those who value it more – even in other areas – and then return that value to the consumer as a discount on his bill. that way, no one would lose.

the problem is that california, like most places, lacks an efficient water property system and allocates water rights by use. this means that if the city stops using the water, it can’t direct who gets it, and there cannot be a mutual gain. what’s worse, there is actually incentive to waste water, just to preserve one’s rights therein.

this system of political control does not incorporate the opportunity cost of the water, which is how much outsiders would value it and, hence, what they would pay for it. the key to efficient use – or “conservation” – is to let people capitalize on the situation through a free market.

of course, the slightest hint of commoditization raises alarms (alienation!!!!!), especially in california. but there need not be an evil water conglomerate; all that is needed is a central authority to enforce a few simple rules, monitor “accounts,” and keep track of private bargains – in other words, a bank. the rest could be left to competition. furthermore, there could, and should, be competition between those banks.

and those who fear unbridled consumption must be blind to the fact that people are currently wasting water precisely because they are not paying for it. the best way to conserve is to let people save money by reducing consumption, and the best way to preserve is to let owners invest to protect these resources for the future.

to each according to his need is a great idea. but when allocating a scarce resource – which is any resource – pricing by a valid market provides the best way to include others in their consumption choices and, thus, balance competing interests. with the state of today’s science, an open market can preserve and conserve better than any government.

idiotmatic

2006-04-11T08:59:00.000-05:00

it’s amazing how easy it is to end up saying absolutely nothing when you don’t understand the idiom you’re using. witness this comment from one of my law school's professors, which was -- regrettably -- chosen as a pull-quote in the school paper:

“we really need to start training students in the uses and pitfalls of film in the courtroom. law schools are way behind the 8-ball” [emphasis added].

of course, if she meant that, being way behind the eight ball and therefore unlikely to scratch, law schools are on top of things, my point is moot. but who am i kidding?

a new anarcho-capitalist paradigm

2006-04-05T09:39:00.000-05:00

this is something i posted in the anarcho-capitalist forum. check out the wikipedia page if you need a primer.

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i was thinking hard about intellectual property a few days ago and as my mind wandered onto grander things, i had a small ephiphany and saw a new agenda for anarcho-capitalists. i'll try to convey my thought process as best i can.

i began by trying to answer this question: what is the value of i.p. law? i know we usually talk about incentives, etc., but i was trying to look at it another way: from a perfect contracting perspective (since laws can properly be considered pre-fab contracts).

putting aside higher-order issues such as simultaneous invention and authorship, i focused on copyright and piracy. the question i had was, when and why would one consent to laws such as the d.m.c.a.?

the answer i struck upon was this: given our potential for opportunistic behavior, it could very well be pareto-optimal to consent to some sort of punishment regime and thereby lend credibility to your side of the bargain. that way, rather than force the musician to hire an encryption expert, you can just say: "look, if i'm caught by this auditing agency [the government, in this case], i'll get punished and you know i don't want that."

in an anarcho-capitalist society, i believe things would work out roughly the same, but as a more efficient manifestation. for example, i could choose the auditing agency i want, and musicians could choose their consumers, rather than have them allocated by geography and inheritance. also, chances are that my auditing agency would do some due diligence and adjust my punishment according to the tenets of marginalism.

if the potential for opportunistic behavior can pave the way for pareto-optimal consent to punishment (now known as law), this has some surprisingly broad implications. first, in an anarcho-capitalist society, people would voluntarily choose to join groups that invade their privacy in the name of full disclosure. what's more, people would even volunteer to be part of a punishment regime.

importantly, i believe that this latter point supports the anarcho-capitalist critique of classic anarchism. classic anarchists are likely to say that withdrawing consent at any time violates our "free will" or "natural rights," or somesuch nonsense. thus, one could change one's mind at any time, paving the way for opportunistic behavior. crucially, i believe that this forms the basis of their mistaken belief that capitalism requires the state. the more accurate thesis is that it is not "the state" which is necessary for capitalism to benefit a society, it is merely enforcement, which can be provided in the absence of the usual statist voting regimes, geographical fixation, and nationalism.

i also believe that fully incorporating the utility of credibility can help make ours a positivist philosophy, rather than have us come off as simply nihilistic anarchists. to me, the most important question is always, "well, then what?" so we get rid of government, how do we build a better society? i submit that the study of how people would choose credibility-providers in the absence of the state helps fill this theoretical void, while remaining within the bounds of economic theory.

additionally, i think it may help to counter statist critiques of anarcho-capitalism. namely, if efficiency and its analogues are based on choice, and (assuming) people chose governments, how can they be inefficient? furthermore, how do you explain the indisputable success of capitalist nations?

with all this in mind, i think we might help refine anarcho-capitalism and put some distance between it and classic anarchism (and its failings) by focusing our critique on populism, geography, and the nationalist mythology.

"consumer protection"

2006-04-05T09:36:00.000-05:00

so the better business bureau of greater maryland issued a consumer protection bulletin regarding psychics, called "Psychics and Clairvoyant Counselors Are You a Believer?"

you might think it would contain warnings such as "don't be a fuckwit," or "if you're even considering it while sober, please sterilize yourself."

sadly, you'd be wrong.

my favorite tips are:

"Get a referral. Ask a friend or contact a reputable organization, such as a psychic research center or alternative bookstore."

and,

"Be cautious if an advisor indicates that you have a curse, hex, etc. which will require frequent returns in order to remove."

eurotrash

2005-11-05T12:33:00.000-05:00

i wish we were more cultured, like the europeans, cuz like, then everyone wouldn’t hate us and stuff.

ah yes, the american college student. (s)he strives to sounds as educated as possible at any given moment – and so (s)he should! after all, a $100,000 diploma doesn’t go as far as it used to. when you’re the 30th psychology major in line waiting to interview for a management position at abercrombie & fitch, you need to set yourself apart from the crowd. and what better way is there to impress a crack team of twenty-something managers (college grads themselves) than to impress upon them your knowledge of world culture? whether it’s an interview, a cocktail party or a funeral, people will always be impressed with words like “multilateralism” and “france.”

but not me. i’m consistently bemused – and somewhat disturbed – by the knee-jerk praise slathered on europeans by american “elites.”

to these multi-degree-wielding sophists, europe embodies what our society once had in its diversity and intersection of cultures, but lost in its national narcissism. americans don’t speak foreign languages; we don’t travel to different countries; and a disturbing number of us can’t point to our own continent on a color-coded map.

of course this country has its weak points, but it does not follow that europeans are necessarily more culturally sensitive or worldly than americans.

do these people mean to say that because we don’t have to dodge castles on the way to the uniprix, we lack a sense of history? true, we may not have the trappings of an ancient society, but what is it that the europeans see that we don’t? there are no monuments to the collapse of the british empire. germany is devoid of tributes to its great, failed socialist experiment. and the french... well, the french just like to smoke and talk about the infinite nature of nothingness. our freedom of expression ensures that we are highly critical of ourselves and appreciate even the pain of our history.

so i highly doubt that there’s any significant difference between their public appreciation of history and ours. moreover, i doubt there’s anything particularly enlightening about a language change on a trip that’s the same distance as baltimore to florida. come to think of it, we already do change languages – even when we’re all supposedly speaking english. and if you don’t think there’s a culture change between states, you should take a drive to oklahoma.

nevertheless, many will give the europeans the benefit of the doubt. but should we?

dutch filmmaker theo van gogh, said to be related to the artist vincent, was a prickly character, to say the least. van gogh was notorious for inflammatory writing that defied social taboos. quips like, “hey, it smells like caramel – they must be burning jewish diabetics,” make one wonder how he even made it to forty-seven.

of course, van gogh’s attacks were not limited to any particular faith, and he had recently enraged the islamic community with his display of passages from the koran on naked women. the piece was part of a larger critique of the sometimes-violent scripture.

so the surprise of the european community to his shooting and attempted decapitation is itself somewhat surprising.

but van gogh is not the focus of this article. what i’d like americans to appreciate is that the next day a bomb blew off the door of a local muslim school and that more than 20 arsons at mosques and churches throughout the netherlands ensued. i want americans to know about the monkey noises that spanish soccer fans shouted at english players of african descent at their international “friendly” last weekend, jeers repeated at a subsequent under-21 match.* i'd love to meet just one person who saw paolo dicanio raise a facist salute (or, if you're grand-daughter of the late dictator and far-right politician alessandra mussolini, a "nice roman salute") to the throngs of lazio fans in rome.

this acclaim by default is by no means limited to the social and cultural spheres. by the aforementioned logic, europe’s leaders must, of necessity, be better statesmen and diplomats than our own. the call for submission to international standards typically rest on the assumption that america is, to quote johnny depp, “like a puppy.” we’re a young nation that needs to be watched. we’re isolated, we’re inexperienced, and we’re naïve. democracy is a dangerous tool in the hands of hicks and cowboys.

so i wish that americans knew that france’s “liberal” socialist party joined with its extreme right-wing party in banning muslim headscarves in government buildings and attempting the same in schools. (note: the latter party’s candidate considered the holocaust “a detail of history” and finished second in their 2002 presidential race.) i wish americans were told that since britain’s 1995 gun ban, violent crime per capita has more than doubled. i wish that americans could appreciate europe’s damoclean sword, its public pension system. i wish that newspapers across the nation blared from their front pages that u.n.’s oil-for-food scheme has been linked to the french and russian governments, and that significant portions of saddam’s $21.3 billion was funneled into financial pools for international terrorists.

meanwhile, americans should take a certain amount of pride in the fact that that 45.9% of our “poor” own their homes, 72.8% have a car and almost 77% have air conditioning, a luxury in most of western europe. plus, even the poor have adequate space to store these trappings in their average 1,200 square feet of living space, compared to europe’s average of 1,000 square feet for both the poor and the rich, alike.

it’s delightfully ironic that if elitists were to take their own advice, they just might find out that europe’s not everything it’s cracked up to be.

------------------------------------

*although i do not condone retaliation, english fans deserve credit for their characteristically pithy response, chanting: “one armada and no world cups!”

all roads lead to home

2005-06-13T21:35:00.000-05:00

when i delve into the forgotten depths of my memory and recall my grade school days, i'm assaulted by waves of youthful elation and bitter disappointment. and every so often i stumble across a golden nugget of wisdom gained in my youth.

i can still recall the first time that i learned something in class and had a "eureka" moment. i believe it was in third grade, when we were learning our first lessons in roman history. i remember struggling a bit as i read stories of epic battles and bloodsport, the great circuses and deadly chariot races.

we would later come to learn that while these distractions occupied the masses, the rich pursued an orgiastic existence of opulence and excess. and i can remember thinking, "hm. that sounds familiar."

those stories stuck with me throughout my youth, alongside that uncanny feeling.

i was brought immediately to that place in my mind when i read a commentary piece written by john tierney and featured in the june 11th ny times, entitled "the circus maximus syndrome." he described its pathology as follows:

"The victims of this urban-planning syndrome believe, like some Roman emperors, that a leader's prime civic responsibility is to build entertainment palaces for the masses....

They imagine drawing hordes of out-of-towners to the new convention center, and when the visitors don't materialize, the mayors' solution is to build an even bigger convention center with a subsidized hotel next door."

witness, oriole park at camden yards, the m&t bank stadium, and the baltimore convention center. we'll see how our neighbors in washington do with their $400mil home for the washington nationals.

mayors promise billions upon billions of dollars in revenue, based on feats of accounting that would earn a seat on the board at enron. a classic economic example highlights their fallacious thinking. a vandal smashes a shop window; the shop gets insurance money; the insurance money pays a contractor to fix the window. thus, his employment adds to productivity. but this reasoning ignores the opportunity cost of the labor. the contractor could have been fixing something else, or learning, or teaching -- anything more productive than needlessly fixing a broken window.

the government doesn't answer any questions by adding up how much money will be spent on a project. what truly counts is what could have been done with all those resources.

also, it might help your political comprehension if you conceptualize the relationship between politicians and consultants: picture marlon brando hiring michael moore as his fitness consultant. see, if the consultant doesn't write a jackpot report, the project stalls. if the project stalls, the mayor doesn't get cash from the usual suspects --"real estate developers, construction workers, bond traders, [and] owners of hotels and sports teams." and if the mayor doesn't get the campaign contributions, the consultant doesn't get paid.

what's more,

"aside from the thanks of these groups, politicians also get a pleasant distraction from their mundane duties. It's more fun to pose next to a model of a model of a new stadium than a new water main."

again, we can take baltimore as an example. i have a lot of time to think as i'm trotting along in my car over the undulating asphalt and endless minefields of potholes. these "roads" take me through what i'm told was once a vibrant city, before the new-new-deal of the 1960's.

now, i'm surrounded by heroin addicts and new, low-rise public housing just waiting to be abused and abandoned. these faux-suburban townhomes stand in stark contrast to their high-rise surroundings, but their design should come as no surprise. d.c.-metro area "planners" and developers funded and staffed the previous state administration.

and they had the nerve to complain about urban sprawl. amazing.*

having momentarily swept things under the a rug of new, aluminum siding, baltimore has been able to capitalize by handing out special-interest tax-breaks and condemning properties for transfer to the baltimore development corporation.**

it's sad to think that perhaps the only upshot of all this is our abundant supply of failed athletes and racecar drivers, who make great soldiers and mechanics.

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*if you're wondering what members of the former administration are doing now, they're helping developers get the zoning they want by making the right donations and "consulting," i.e. telling them how to navigate the "smart growth" laws they pushed through the legislature.

** the b.d.c. is itself an interesting case, and it may have backed itself into a corner recently. it loves its status as a private corporation because it's sheltered from the public information act. but its status may raise some interesting complications if the supreme court disallows eminent domain transfers to private corporations.

bubble.gov

2005-06-12T11:32:00.000-05:00

this post relates to an op-ed i wrote, which appeared in the baltimore sun on may 9th. fortunately, i think it snuck in right before the recent bubble in bubble articles. (the word "bubble" just lost all meaning to me.) the piece is sort of anecdotal, and while i'd prefer to have written something objective, i think it works, nonetheless.

my only regret is having missed the opportunity to illuminate the dangerous (and, i suspect, ultimately disastrous) role of the federal government in creating and sustaining this bubble.

the main driving force of this bubble is too much credit. not too much in terms of raw borrower numbers and amounts, but too much by way of interest-rate only and adjustable mortgages that have precariously shifted interest-rate risk to unsophisticated homeowners and/or speculators.

in a natural setting, no sane lender would make these kinds of loans. the risk would either scare off the lender or drive up rates to accurately reflect default risk. but in the real world, the federal government underwrites every mortgage, unwittingly insured by the taxpaying population. so, when the baltimore sun asked one banker why anyone would make such loans, he gave them the typical response:

"'The customers are demanding it,' he says. 'We do them because the market is driving them. That's what the competition is doing.'"

that covers the demand, but what's left out of his response is the supply, and that no one would be competing in the first place if not for the fact that fannie mae and the federal government will purchase any mortgage up to around $300,000 (and, therefore, accept its default risk) with naught but a bare-bones credit check.

no one is actually sitting down to figure out whether or how borrowers will be able to pay.

quasi-governmental bankers will tell you that the loan is securitized, and that in the event of default, they can seize the house and sell it. sensibly, then, the amount of the loan is limited by the house's value, and all is well and good as long as the creditor can sell it off and minimize losses. but if everyone gets hit at the same time and the market dries up, the mortgage-backed securities will turn to junk bonds - utterly worthless.

meanwhile, fannie and freddie have worked out deals and created new and complicated derivative instruments that have them leveraged into the trillion-dollar range. given their due-diligence track record, i have some serious doubts about their ability to manage risk. my guess is that their worst-case financial scenarios, which they would use to paint a picture for government "insurers," assume rather generous salvage prices for properties in default.

the most pressing question is, how can those of us who survived the burst make money on the other side?

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here's an update: as part of the "reform" legislation that was originally conceived to reign in fannie mae, it now has permission to purchase mortgages up to $500,000. if that won't help the poor afford housing, i don't know what will.

treatise envy

2005-04-11T11:19:00.000-05:00

originally published in the april 2005 copy of the u.m.d. law student paper, "the raven"

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This April 1st, I was reminded of a 1994 Michigan Law Review article that would have been the best – and probably only – April fool’s joke in law review history. “Chix Nix Bundle-o-ticks: A Feminist Critique of the Disaggregation of Property,” by Professor Jeanne L. Schroeder, was an incisive commentary on the fatuous and ethereal subject matter of much modern legal theory. In it, she undertook a neofeminist deconstructionist critique of the phallocentric implications of the “bundle of sticks” metaphor, familiar to students of property. The article cut to the core of post-modern legal studies, laying bare their rather perverse foundations and often ridiculous products.

But there were two problems. First, it was November. Second, she wasn’t joking.

No, the good professor was completely serious when she suggested that all of us unwittingly perpetuate this undercurrent of sexism. If you think I’m exaggerating, here it is from the horse’s mouth: “I argue that property as both thing and right is described, not in terms of just any physicalist imagery, but in terms of phallic imagery. That is, property is metaphorically identified with seeing, holding, and wielding the male organ or controlling, protecting, and entering the female body.”

You may ask yourself, “Self, how could such academic prattle wind its way into a journal published by one of the top law schools in the nation?” And you should explain to yourself that it does so in the same fashion that it enters courts through law clerks, and into legislation through legislative aids. It’s because of us – the MTV generation.

Publication can make or break a professor’s career. And who better to decide whether an article will make a meaningful contribution to the legal profession than a bunch of kids? At respected institutions across the nation, students just like you and me, and that dude that spent Friday night trying take two Tri-delts home with him, are rolling out of bed, heating up last week’s pad thai and poring over law review submissions.

To be fair, it does take some work to get onto a law review board. Applicants are screened for mechanics and style. But making bluebook skills the paramount criterion does little to help the board make informed decisions about what articles will help the evolution of legal theory.

You may be surprised to see this article lambasting legal academia, yet supporting the evolution of legal theory. But even a hardened pragmatist or utilitarian will admit that legal theory should not be insulated from outside influence. The law cannot be self-contained, and academic incest can only cause problems for our profession. But there must be some lines drawn between, say, sociology or economics on the one hand and pseudo-Freudian and Derridian psychoanalytic deconstructionism on the other.

Maybe it would help if we sought the help of professionals when selecting articles. But that would appear antithetical to the very nature of journals. Ours, like many others, proudly announces on our school’s website: “No longer is there an Advisory Editorial Board. Rather, faculty exercise virtually no control over the Law Review, and cooperation with the local bar associations ended in 1972.”

In today’s market for teachers, publication can mean the difference between tenure track at Harvard and an adjunct slot at a non-ABA school, and we’ve made students responsible for the primary indicator of a professor’s worth. Tell academicians in any other profession that our journals are edited by students and I guarantee they’ll laugh.

The inmates are running the asylum. So in the end, it might not be such a bad thing that only professors read law reviews.

An Astounding Crime: He Didn't Get a Permit (wsj letter)

2004-10-06T11:25:00.000-05:00

this is a letter of mine that the wsj published, both in response to an earlier letter from a Senior Policy Adviser of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality.

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Mr. Richards's letter encapsulates the regulatory mess we've made. Although disregard for the law should not be excused, neither should we condone the law's mindless expansion. Mr. Richards offers no real answer to the crucial question: Why should the Army Corps of Engineers regulate wetlands in the first place?

That the words "commerce clause" would enter the purview of the court deciding this case gives good reason to be skeptical of even the best regulatory intentions. When the courts refuse to draw a sensible line that limits the corps' power, what's to stop it from regulating everything, including the kitchen sink?

The idea that political institutions will necessarily safeguard our natural resources goes hand-in-hand with the belief that we could not benefit from a market economy's influence thereupon. Neither has proved true. What we new environmentalists propose is that our federal and local governments recognize the limited benefits of regulation and create a system of private water rights, enabling free-market, least-cost resource preservation.

Fred Smalkin
Baltimore

west side story

2004-10-03T11:12:00.000-05:00

originally published in the u.m.d. law student newspaper, "the raven."
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So over winter break, a 7-11 opened up as part of the “Westside Development,” and from all the hype, you’d think O’Malley tripped on his way down Eutaw and found the biggest gold vein this side of the Mississip’.

City officials have trumpeted the success of their revitalization plans. And I must say that I appreciate the effort, if only out of respect for their masterful command of buzzwords and catchphrases.

“The West Side vision is to create a dynamic, predominantly residential, urban [sic] mixed-use neighborhood that connects adjacent neighborhoods and sub-districts.”

Wow.

“The West Side strategic plan details sustainable benefits for the City of Baltimore and the State of Maryland.”

Hello, state and federal funds.

“Complete implementation of the strategic plan will yield approximately 7,000 permanent direct jobs and 4,000 spin-off jobs.”

The question is, “Who wouldn’t vote for this?” – and the answer is “no one.”

And just when I thought I was impressed, I had what could only be described as a religious experience. Or, maybe it was an aneurism. (Whichever it was, everything smelled like flowers and I had a hell of a hangover.)

Before I explain what triggered my revelation, let’s take a quick look at the history and modern mechanics of government plans for “economic redevelopment.”

Eminent Domain gives our government the power to commandeer private land, with an important caveat: the land-grab must be for “public use.” Historically, this power was used as an absolute last resort, and the “public uses” were governmental endeavors that garnered overwhelming political support, such as mass transit, public schools, and functional government buildings.

Condemnation used to be referred to as “governmental taking,” but the concept goes down much better if our politburo frames its plan as “governmental giving” – breathing new economic life into areas that are currently “under-utilized.”

Jeff Finkle is president of the International Economic Development Council. His organization is a trade association representing development and redevelopment organizations and agencies. They are proponents of Eminent Domain – weird. They, and others, would argue that it is an essential tool because costs of negotiating with myriad landowners will often be too high (in their minds, too high even for experienced developers like Baltimore's Angelos or Paterakis) and because landowners will be tempted to hold-out for an unreasonably high price, ruining the opportunity for collective gain. So, they argue, the government should be able to act as a final arbiter to make sure that our economic engine runs smoothly.

Leaving aside arguments against government enterprise in general and game-theory research that casts serious doubt on the prevalence of hold-outs, there is almost universal support for condemning buildings that are “blighted” or present a danger to public health.

But even Eminent Domain’s advocates cannot defend its recent incarnation. In Reason magazine, Finkle said that its exercise “should be the last possible tool. If negotiations fail, if the bully pulpit fails, then you go to a takings case.”

Instead, local governments around the country are acting more and more like small real-estate venture-capital firms. Recent abuses of eminent domain include:
--New London, Connecticut – removing an entire neighborhood and condemning homes for a privately owned and operated office park and other, unspecified uses to complement a nearby Pfizer facility.
--Riviera Beach, Florida – approving the condemnation of more than 1,700 buildings and the dislocation of more than 5,000 residents for private commercial and industrial development.
--Merriam, Kansas – replacing a less-expensive car dealership with a BMW dealership.
--Canton, Mississippi – seizing the homes of elderly homeowners for transfer to Nissan for a car manufacturing plant, despite the fact that Nissan is willing to build even without these 28 acres on the south end of 1,400.

The knee-jerk political response dismisses these takings as no different from the pillaging that goes on in the private sector, and this misconception is precisely what the geniuses at City Hall have tried to take advantage of.

Here’s where I fainted:

“The West Side Strategic plan will… represent over eight hundred million dollars ($800,000,000) of private sector investment, leveraged by one hundred million dollars ($100,000,000) of public sector investment, over a six year build-out period.” [Emphasis added.]

Why the epiphany, you ask? Let me explain.

You see, normally, “leverage” refers to a business deal where an investor borrows money in order to increase his or her return on an investment. For those of you who haven’t yet covered the concept, here’s an example. If I can get my hands on a Ripken (Cal, obviously) rookie card for, say, $20 and then resell it for $60, I’ll have forty new bucks from my twenty – a 200% return. That’s a pretty durn good return. But what if I borrow $10 from Dino the loan shark? Even if I repay him with 50% interest – an awfully steep $5 – I’ll still make $35 out of $60 ($60 - $10 - $10 - $5 = $35). That’s a 350% return on my $10. What’s more, I can use that extra $10 burning a hole in my pocket to buy another card and make another profit, then treat a lady friend to a nice steak dinner. Note, however, that leverage implies that I will pay Dino back, lest he break my thumbs.

Leverage requires that the debtor put cash back into the pocket of his investors. The debt is secure, and there will be consequences if he defaults. The creditor investigates the debtor’s finances and knows that he is solvent, or at least he is willing to gamble that is so. In this way, should the investments go completely south, the creditor can still recover from the debtor’s other assets.

On the other side of the investment coin, a real, live businessman that goes to get a loan presents his case to a group of investors. These professionals scrutinize the market data and the probable returns, and they deal with things like future interest rates and discounted valuation. They want to be as certain as possible that their investment will pay off. Why would anyone go through all that trouble? – Because they’re putting money on it. If their gamble doesn’t pay off, they’re probably out of a job.

Securitization and leverage, like Dino’s thumb-breaking clause, combine to create accountability, both on the part of the investor and the debtor.

“Ack-own-tuh-bill-ee-tee?” Our simple, down-home politician scratches his head. He doesn’t know how to make fancy business talk like the bankers.

Fortunately, our boy doesn’t have to deal with the trifling details of business and finance when handing out free money. Their idea of leverage is to dole out a hundred mil in subsidies, sit back and relax while the taxes come rollin’ in. (At this point, you should picture a cartoon character smoking a cigar while his get-rich-quick scheme goes horribly awry.) Ask them and they’ll guarantee you that their investment will pay off a hundred-fold in taxes alone, not to mention money in local pockets.

If politicians inhabited a world that in any way resembled reality, they would be totally screwed and utterly unemployed. Fortunately, time smiles on our city officials. By the time anyone figures out what a bust the project was, they can blame it on any sort of exogenous variable they want (most likely the lack of state support) and continue their drive to the White House.

Even better, their buddies are in a win-win situation. They get government subsidies poured into their projects and tax breaks on their returns. But we haven’t even gotten to the best part.

Young Cho is a Korean immigrant who saved for 15 years just so that she could have her own business. Her successful beauty salon has been condemned by our omniscient city council. She will now have to go before an elected judge and fight a developer that has real-estate appraisers out the wazoo, just to show why she should get the price she’d ask for, instead of what the developer wants to offer.

And this is where the plan really gets brilliant – because the subsidies that developers gain from governmental takings don’t even show up on balance sheets at all. The $100,000,000 that the city admits is a direct subsidy doesn’t even include the discounts that developers are getting with the strong-arm of the government. Every dollar per square-foot below what the developer would have to pay without condemnation is a dollar in the developer’s pocket.

Now, some of you might ask why I’m so down on the government’s chances. I’d invite you to do one of two things: 1) go to the library windows and check out the crack-heads dancing (sans music) up and down Paca Street; or 2) go to Potsdamer Platz in East Berlin. The urban center was developed by “public-private partnerships” that aimed to create a cultural and economic center. Fifteen years later, the residential vacancy is so high that many builders are contemplating demolition to save maintenance costs, and even heavily subsidized business can’t turn a profit – this, without the social problems that face Baltimore’s Westside. Another eastern district, Mitte, has thrived despite (or because of) having been almost untouched by urban planners.

The 1700 block of North Charles stands in contrast to the West Side in the same way that Mitte compares to Potsdamer Platz. Starting in the 1990’s, entrepreneurs collected the resources to turn the block into a thriving mini-district with a popular art-house theatre and restaurants cropping up all around. They succeeded in the face of blight and crime, and without government subsidy.

All I know is, I’m getting out of Fayette Square. Good thing I didn’t buy.

das artikel

2004-04-08T12:03:00.000-05:00

originally published in the declaration, april 8, 2004.

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And now, an excerpt from Karl Marx's unpublished personal journal:

[Editor's note: We have tried our best to translate Marx's ramblings into English verbatim, in order to render comprehension of the passage as difficult as possible.]

[Editor's note: To be read as a heavily German-accented interior monologue.]

March 15th, 1844 --Paris, France

I thought that with my wife at home, tending to our first child, who has fallen ill, I could finally delve into the flaws of the capitalist economy, exposing the very roots of society's oppression and violence, providing a theory for the proletariat that will carry them through a socialist revolution into a communist utopia.
Instead, Engels has moved into my living room. I told him he could sleep on my chaise lounge because his wife kicked him out of their flat after she found him smoking opium with two street urchins he befriended during an extended absinthe hallucination.1

I asked him why he would not simply travel to one of his several estates to weather the proverbial storm, and all he gave by way of explanation was that he "didn't want to be alone."

April 5th, 1844 -- Paris, France

It has been nearly three weeks since Engels moved in. He has proved himself a constant hindrance to my work [Arbeit] and, consequently, to the advancement and enlightenment of mankind. His utter inanity almost makes me question the ability of the proletariat to ever liberate itself.

Just yesterday I was totally in the zone, critiquing the hell out of Hegel's Doctrine of the State, when he yells from the bathroom:

"Hey Karl, come check out this dump."

So I said, "Sure thing, Fred, just let me finish the most exhausting and insightful work in the history of political and social theory, then I'll come 'check it out.' On second thought, why don't you take a tintype, it'll last longer. Maybe it'll wind up in the Marx-Engels museum." He just laughed and flushed the toilet.2

I knew it would only be a matter of time before he showed his true bourgeois colors.

Earlier tonight, I'd just returned from giving a four-hour lecture on Proudhon at la Sorbonne,3 and all I wanted was a nice sandwich and a glass of milk before I retired for the evening. I was drifting into the loveliest dream, in which I was eating the entire Black Forest because it was no longer private property—and it was made out of cake—when I was wrenched from my slumber, and the following exchange took place:

"Karl, you ate all the peanut butter, you a-hole."

"Fred, it's not your peanut butter, dammit."

"Yes it is, I wrote my name on it, see: 'Fred's peanut butter'."

"Well that's fantastic, looks like I was wrong when I thought we were on the same page about sharing everything. Remember communism?"

"Don't be a jerk, Karl. I appreciate you letting me crash here and everything, but I don't take your food without at least asking, first."

"Don't you see, Fred—that's what's holding us back. If I must ask your permission before I can eat your peanutbutter, I'd have had to wait around until you got back from wherever the hell you were—and I'm not even going to get into that4—or else I would have gone to bed hungry. It's not like I wasn't going to tell you and buy you some more tomorrow."

"Well then why did you only eat out of the middle so it looked like it was still full? Tell you what, let's just ignore that for a moment.5 I think that if we just stick to a few simple rules, it'll make things a lot easier."

"Listen to me, it's not just about the peanut butter . . . "

"You're damn right it's not just about the peanut butter. That was my milk, too."

"Will you just listen to me for a minute? We need to transcend [aufhebung] the entire idea of your peanut butter and my peanut butter.6 There should simply be peanut butter that is there to satisfy our needs."

"Tell you what, Karl. Why don't I transcend [aufhebung] my peanut butter and then you can eat my shit [meine Scheiße essen]."

Fearing violence,7 I agreed to replace "his" peanut butter and promised to ask him the next time I wanted some of his food.
I really hope that bitch8 takes him back soon.

May 10th, 1844 -- Juan-les-Pins, France

I have been forced to take a vacation from what was supposed to be my sabbatical. Engels has made it nearly impossible for me to do any work at all. He remains encamped in my foyer and has long overstayed his welcome and my generous invitation; meanwhile, he continues to contribute nothing to the maintenance of our environment. The dustbin is overflowing, there are no clean dishes, and we're out of toilet paper. What's worse, he doesn't even lift the toilet seat to pee, leaving little drops of dried urine all over it. Why can he not simply do his fair share of the work?9

May 17th, 1844 -- Paris, France

I was dumbstruck upon my return home. From what I could reconstruct, Engels had invited Rousseau over, for I found him unconscious, with a dunce cap made from the phonograph's cone placed on his head.

However innocently it may have begun (discourse concerning the place of art as universal communication, a means for social change, etc.), it evidently ended with thirty-seven bottles of wine, a wheelbarrow full of cheese,10 three prostitutes, two buckets full of vomit and a mural of a pan-like creature in mid-coitus with what appears to be some sort of pudendal steam engine.

This is the last straw. It is time for me to break the ties that have bound me to this unbearable obligation. First thing tomorrow, I'm going to march straight into his room and leave a sternly worded and scathingly brilliant letter for him to read while I'm at the market [Markt].

May 23rd, 1844 -- Paris, France

Life has returned to relative normality now that Freddy is gone. I get up, I clean, I find the inherent contradiction in the existing order so as to synthesize the objective and subjective, thereby ending man's alienation from his full species-potential. And yet, I find myself spending nearly as much time thinking about all the fun we had as the hours I wasted fighting with him while we cohabitated. There were good times, there were bad times, but as much as he made the good times bad, he made the bad times equally good.

(Footnotes)
1 This was the same trip during which he tried to trade his copy of the Communist Manifesto for a knockwurst sandwich.
2 I don't think he even comprehended my sarcasm.
3 En français, bien sûr.
4 It turns out that he was back at his house, doing laundry and banging the housemaid. He'd been wearing my undergarments for the past week.
[Note in margin:] I hope he washed my banged-in underpants [Shtuptrausers].
5 I only did this because I have a weird thing [Ding] about not eating the food that touches the inside of the jar, but I didn't have time to explain myself; Fred was getting really angry.
6 By this point I had said the word "peanut butter" so many times that it had lost all meaning, but I pressed on in my argument.
7 Engels had played four years of A-side rugby at university.
8 Here, I use the word "bitch" because she always tells women about my wife when I'm alone at parties, even though I'm wearing my ring and am obviously merely engaged in superficial conversation therewith.
9 If I do it for him, he will never learn how to a) take care of himself and b) be a good roommate.
10 Although this is a contemporary German idiom, we see it used here in its original form, when—in the latter half of the nineteenth century—it was common for cheese to be delivered in a wheelbarrow.
Fred Smalkin is a fourth-year economics major who hopes Allan Megill will give him an A on his Marxism paper, seeing as he wrote this article instead.
© 2004 The Declaration. All rights reserved.