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Remembering Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

2008-08-03T18:51:00.000-07:00

The great author, Nobel Prize winner, and defender of freedom in the face of totalitarianism passed away today. Obituaries abound-- here is the International Herald Tribune:

He wrote that while an ordinary brave man was obliged "not to participate in lies," artists had greater responsibilities.

"It is within the power of writers and artists to do much more: to defeat the lie! For in the struggle with lies, art has always triumphed and shall always triumph! Visibly, irrefutably for all! Lies can prevail against much in this world, but never against art." He quoted a Russian proverb: "One word of truth shall outweigh the whole world."

After expulsion from the Soviet Union in 1974, he ended up in Vermont:

His rare public appearances could turn into hectoring jeremiads. Delivering the commencement address at Harvard in 1978, he called the country of his sanctuary spiritually weak and mired in vulgar materialism. Americans, he said, speaking in Russian through a translator, were cowardly. Few were willing to die for their ideals, he said. He condemned both the United States government and American society for its "hasty" capitulation in Vietnam. And he criticized the country's music as intolerable and attacked its unfettered press, accusing it of aggressive violations of privacy. Many in the West didn't know what to make of the man. He was perceived as an undeniably great writer and hero who had been willing to stand up to the leadership of a totalitarian state. Yet he seemed willing to stand up and lash out at everyone else as well, democrats, secularists, capitalists, liberals and consumers.

A brave and complicated human; the Russians greeted him as a hero and potential presidential candidate when he returned in 1994, but he turned his tongue on them as well and eventually receded from the public view.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch is one of the best novels I've read. It says something bleak and profound about the human condition, but most importantly it can be in a couple of sittings. If you haven't read it, consider picking it up this weekend.

More on Section 8 and crime

2008-07-31T08:30:00.000-07:00

The American Prospect rebuts the thesis of Hannah Rosin's article on Section 8 in the July Atlantic, which suggested that the dispersal of Section 8 residents from housing projects caused new crime patterns in Memphis:

There is nothing amazing or surprising going on here. Section 8 voucher holders typically migrate to lower-cost housing, which tends to be concentrated in poor neighborhoods where crime is a serious concern. As University of Texas public policy professor Paul Jargowsky, one of the nation's leading experts on concentrated poverty and crime, says: "If you look at cities throughout the country from 1990 to 2000, you see a consistent pattern of increases in poverty in the inner-ring suburbs, while the central cities had declines. Since poverty and crime are correlated, you would expect that inner-ring suburban crime went up and central city crime went down -- but that's only a statistical artifact of changing neighborhood composition rather than a causal effect of poverty on crime. The correlation of crime and poverty, old news to be sure, is the only thing demonstrated by the map in the article. Nobody likes maps more than me, but sometimes they just confuse correlation and causality."

Memphis's weak economy, unmentioned in The Atlantic, almost certainly bears greater responsibility for the spreading violence in a city that has a long history of high crime rates.

I said it first here.

(ht: Matt Yglesias)

Should we care about public school integration?

2008-07-27T09:26:00.000-07:00

Last week's interesting New York Times Magazine article continues to draw attention. The article examines socioeconomic school integration plans in Louisville, KY and Wake County, NC following the recent Supreme Court ruling against race-based school integration:

Flypaper, a blog of the Fordham Institute (here and here) isn't enthused about "social engineering" through integration, either with (a) diversity as a desired social value, (b) racial integration as a plausible goal in a world of increasingly poor, non-white urban school districts, or even (c) integration as a mechanism to improve outcomes for poor minority students.
Richard Kahlenberg applauds integration and calls for more by superseding "artificial" district boundaries.
Ta-Nehisi likes the principle of class-based integration.
Yglesias appears skeptical, and thinks the answer is housing policy rather than bussing.

I'm not sure we should still care about racial integration for its own sake. The Brown decision was about two things: equal funding and educational quality for black students, and, implicitly, racial mixing for the sake of better understanding and harmony. As to the latter, it seems to me that the fundamental racist structural barriers in our society have largely been dismantled (though the legacy issues persist, as does regular ol' racism), and the vast majority of barriers to social mobility have been economic for quite some time. The racial mix in most urban areas is also significantly more complicated than it was in 1954, when everything could be characterized along a black-white divide. As to the issue of equal facilities, funding doesn't seem to be the problem with many poor urban schools, though outcomes appear to be very different along racial and economic lines. Still, if our focus is on educational outcomes, I'm not convinced that race-based integration should be the primary concern for people worried about the poorest students.

Still, Houston ISD is a decent test case of the "super-district" concept espoused by Kahlenberg and others. It's a huge district with around 30 high schools and encompasses a large and diverse tax base, including super-wealthy neighborhoods in West University, River Oaks, Southampton, and Bellaire, as well as many poor and middle-class neighborhoods around town. Does class or race mixing occur in this district, and if so, does it work? Here are some stats for two large local high schools that are centrally located in the city's core about 4 miles away from each other and share an attendance boundary line:

Lamar High (in the ultra-rich River Oaks area): 28% African-American, 5% Asian, 33% Hispanic, 33% White, 41% free/reduced lunch, 4% limited English, 44% at-risk, 2.1% dropout rate
Yates High (in the historically black 3rd Ward area): 92% African-American, 7% Hispanic, 61% free/reduced lunch, less than 1% limited English, 77% at-risk, 6.7% dropout rate

I don't know enough about the history of Houston integration efforts to contextualize these numbers, but one observation is that Lamar does not reflect the demographics of its neighborhood in any way approximating the way Yates reflects its neighborhood. The obvious hypothesis is that wealthy white neighborhood students attend private schools rather than Lamar. But we can't conclude from this that most students at Yates or Lamar are not receiving a good education since we have no baseline comparison (is a 6.7% dropout rate at Yates good or bad? Can't tell without more information). The most we can say based on this information is that Lamar is clearly more integrated along racial and income lines than its location would warrant, whereas Yates doesn't look much different today than it might have when it opened 80 or so years ago (except that there are probably fewer children of black professionals there today than there might have been when the school started).

Harvard economist Roland Fryer has suggested that black and Hispanic students are more academically motivated in public school environments where they are not minorities:

The evidence indicates that the social disease, whatever its cause, is most prevalent in racially integrated public schools. It’s less of a problem in the private sector and in predominantly black public schools.

I'd like to think that the class mixing at Lamar benefits all students, but I have no way to tell. My experience suggests that it might be good for non-poor students to interact with their less well-off peers from a social perspective, if not from an educational achievement perspective. But that's not really the point of education, is it? Nor should we be most concerned with the non-poor in this situation. Fryer suggests that mixing might not be so good for the poor minority students; good students at heavily black, heavily poor Yates might be more academically inclined than their Lamar counterparts. The Times article would like us to believe that class mixing is good for all students. Perhaps there is a threshold beneath which that's true, as commenter DTM at Yglesias's blog suggests:

I don't think my child's school needs to exclude all poor students for it to be a good school. Rather, I think it likely just needs to be below the relevant concentration threshhold. Which is part of why I support very big districts--it would make it much easier to manage the distribution of poor students such that they were not concentrated above this threshhold level in certain schools.

A knotty problem, and one in which the voice of the poor--those who are most likely to be bussed out of their neighborhoods-- is rarely heard. One thing that is clear to me, however, is that more transparency, accountability, and choice-- whether through vouchers, charter schools, or even open registration within large districts-- probably benefits poor parents and students more than any other idea put forward thus far. Must be why there is so much opposition.

Stay classy, GOP

2008-07-23T08:34:00.001-07:00

I wasn't going to discuss the incredibly hilarious t-shirt below, which premiered at last month's Texas state GOP convention, but since this idiot has pushed it back into the blogosphere, I might as well have my say. Whenever people ask me why, as a pro-free trade, pro-free markets, pro-limited government, pro-individual liberty small businessman, I am not a vocal and active Republican... to be honest, nobody bothers to asks me that. The local GOP is clearly stocked with an excessive number of nativist jackasses. Not exactly the place to see and be seen for us dark-skinned folks.

Financial illiteracy and the poor

2008-07-22T07:57:00.001-07:00

I spend a lot of time in the area just north of Houston's blighted Settegast neighborhood, where the 2000 census per capita income was $8,569 (not making it up, had to check twice. 61% of the kids there live in poverty). One of the things that strikes me about this area-- just like every poor neighborhood in which I've spent any time anywhere in this country-- is the abundance of consumer financial services in every retail center: tax prep services, check cashing services, pawn shops, money order places, payday loan outlets and the like, all of which seem to extract more value from consumers than they add-- assuming consumers are economically rational and reasonably well informed, which, of course, many consumers are not.

On the one hand, I have no patience for well-meaning elites who take the existence of such services in poor neighborhoods as evidence of the need for paternalistic intervention. There's no doubt that for many poor people, the peace of mind and personal liquidity that such services provide is worth exactly what they cost.

On the other hand, it's hard to understand why someone should be paid to fill out a 1040EZ or simple 1040 for people with low levels of mostly salary income. Check cashing services seem quaint and a bit ridiculous in an age of cheap, widespread deposit banking. And while I think payday loans fill a valuable niche in the array of available financial products, there's no doubt that the people who need them the most are often the ones who are least able to manage them.

It appears to me that (as with any non-monopoly with economic rent extraction by suppliers) the issue comes down to lack of consumer information rather than maliciousness on the part of the supplier. That intuition was backed by this recent Stephen Dubner interview with Dartmouth professor Annamaria Lusardi on widespread financial illiteracy, and not just among the poor. Lusardi finds that many Americans don't understand basic concepts of compound interest, supply and demand, and assets and liabilities. Of course, given that the former editor-in-chief of The New York Times thinks that Exxon Mobil is a monopoly (as I discussed with all of the withering contempt I could muster here), this shouldn't surprise anyone.

What to do? I agree with Dubner that personal finance is complicated and off-putting even for the well-educated. I have an economics degree and spent much of my career in finance, but getting my first mortgage was still a strange and intimidating experience; I benefited from the advice of a mentor as well as from my then-landlord. So there's room to drastically improve financial education at the most basic level. I think there are essentially three things people need to learn:

1. Basic tools like how to balance a checkbook or fill out a tax form. I agree with Lusardi that this should not be taught in school. At most, perhaps employers should have one sheet they hand to all new employees when they hire them explaining how to do taxes (read instructions, fill out form). These items are exactly like baking cookies-- get a recipe, do it a few times, you'll figure it out. Schools are stretched too far already to waste time on items like this.

2. Financial and business concepts like compound interest, time value of money and coupon rates, calculating rates of return, different types of financial instruments and the fundamentals of the banking system, understanding loan documents and other typical contracts, and, especially, a good understanding of risk and probability. I think these should be integrated into the math curriculum starting as early as sixth grade, and into the social studies curriculum starting in high school at the latest. There's no excuse for any high school graduate in our society not to know about these ideas at least on a preliminary level.

3. Solid understanding of fundamental economic concepts. Supposedly you can't graduate from high school in Texas and several other states without taking a course in economics, but based on the level of economic discussion in this state, students appear to survive the class without much retained knowledge. Either the teaching is poor or the curriculum is poor, or both. Clearly whatever the current system, it's not equipping people to understand things like the current energy debate, as is evidenced by the consistently bad media coverage (here in addition to the above link). Maybe we should focus the one semester in high school in-depth on a few basic ideas, rather than rushing at a superficial level through many important concepts. These basics could include: the relationship between supply, demand, and prices (including the impact of trade!); the idea of willingness to pay and marginal costs of production; the role of incentives; the major institutions that dominate economic policy in this country; and a very few other core ideas, mostly focused on micro-economics. Additionally, perhaps public colleges could make introductory economics for non-majors (conceptual micro and macro, very light on the math) part of the general education requirements, and hopefully private schools will follow suit.

Free college in Kentucky; Houston had one too once

2008-07-21T12:02:00.001-07:00

The New York Times profiles Kentucky's Berea College, which only accepts low-income students and is completely tuition-free due to its large endowment (HT: Chris Blattman):

Actually, what buys that education is Berea’s $1.1 billion endowment, which puts the college among the nation’s wealthiest. But unlike most well-endowed colleges, Berea has no football team, coed dorms, hot tubs or climbing walls. Instead, it has a no-frills budget, with food from the college farm, handmade furniture from the college crafts workshops, and 10-hour-a-week campus jobs for every student.

[...]

With its hilly campus, Georgian president’s mansion and old brick buildings, Berea looks much like any elite New England college. But its operating budget is less than half that of Amherst, which has a $1.7 billion endowment and about 100 more students. Faculty pay is much lower, and the student-faculty ratio higher. With no rich parents and no legacy admission slots, fund-raising is far more difficult at Berea. Lacking tuition, Berea receives 80 percent of its $43 million education and general budget, and about two-thirds of its $55 million operating budget, from the endowment income.

The piece notes the growing pressure on schools with large endowments to justify their high tuition and mostly wealthy student populations. (I note that the old alma mater clocks in with a $17 billion endowment... but we did just build a new football stadium, whaddya want?)

Locally, Rice University was free until about 1966 (and provided an excellent free education all the way through graduate school for, among others, my father-in-law, a miner's son). When I started looking at colleges fifteen-odd years ago, Rice was still considered a "best bargain" for its sterling reputation and relatively low costs, approximately 60% of costs at other top schools. Even if it didn't cater to miners' children anymore, it still seemed to have proportionally more children of teachers, police officers, and other solidly middle-class people (anecdotally, at least).

In 2008-2009, Rice estimates attendance will cost $43,730; in 2007-2008, Princeton cost $47,375. So Rice no longer appears to be a best bargain (to be fair, Princeton's endowment dollars per student is more than twice that of Rice, and the true cost of educating students is still probably much more than either school charges). Still, it would be interesting to know how Rice's student body has changed as its costs have converged with other elite schools.

On energy company media coverage

2008-07-20T10:42:00.001-07:00

Via Patrick Appel, Howell Raines has a piece about how only energy specialists should cover the oil company beat, because generalists ask the wrong questions. He amply supports his thesis with a non-specialist's profoundly shallow, misleading, and downright ignorant commentary. Here is some of Raines' brilliant dissection of oil company reportage:

Then there’s the problem of letting general-assignment reporters, rather than energy specialists, cover gasoline prices mainly as a story of consumer suffering. About 40 percent of U.S. oil is produced domestically, and Washington has declined to regulate auto fuel as an essential commodity. That’s where the vertical integration of a giant like Exxon Mobil creates market leverage. It owns oil fields, processing plants, and retail outlets, creating some monopoly-like advantages in controlling supply and fixing prices in the U.S. market.

No wonder this guy ran the New York Times; his insight is incredible. The government should regulate auto fuel, as Richard Nixon did so successfully (alternatively, we could let price signals impact consumer behavior, as I've noted here.) Exxon Mobil must fix gasoline prices because of its monopoly-like advantage in the petroleum value chain. After all, only 13 companies in the world produce more oil than Exxon Mobil, so it pretty much operates in an independent market vacuum. And since EM manufactures a commodity fuel with basically no other U.S. competitors except for Citgo, BP, Sunoco, Chevron, Koch, Motiva, Valero, ConocoPhillips, Total, Marathon, Tesoro, Shell, Western Refining, Murphy Oil, and several smaller refiners, it can clearly price gasoline at whatever level it chooses. The fact that EM only owns about 2000 of the 12,000 Exxon Mobil branded stations, and is selling the ones it does own because margins in the business are terrible (as I've discussed here), is not a point worth mentioning.

Alternatively, perhaps Raines doesn't know a crack spread (the price of a barrel of gasoline minus the price of a barrel of oil) from any other type of crack, so the idea that expensive oil is not necessarily good for refiners and retailers may not have occurred to him.

Raines also notes:

Oil-friendly members of Congress like to blame environmental regulation for the lack of refinery capacity. But the oil companies themselves choked supply by closing more than half of their 300 U.S. refineries in the past 25 years. (Business Journalism 201: You can reinvest in manufacturing capacity or ride the demand curve to higher profits.) Studies by Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a respected, oil-friendly consulting firm, indicate that even if all environmental regulations were removed from refinery construction, few would probably be built right away because of a 75 percent rise in construction costs since 2000, largely driven by the increased fuel cost of transporting building materials.

1. Not to burst Raines' bubble, but total U.S. refining capacity has increased by about 4% since 1983. It's true the total number of refineries has decreased from about 300 in 1982 to about 150 in 2008, but then, there were only about 160 operating in 1998 when gasoline was around $1 per gallon (I tanked up for $0.79 per gallon one memorable day in San Antonio). The vast majority of plants that closed were tiny independents who failed after Ronald Reagan revoked small refiner price subsidies, not corporate behemoths monopolistically restricting supply. These small plants were on the order of 2,000-15,000 barrel per day capacity, nothing like Exxon Mobil's massive 562,500 barrel per day Baytown, TX refinery. In fact, the major refiners have invested in increasing capacity in two ways: first by debottlenecking and brownfield expansion of existing plants, and second by investing in extremely expensive capital equipment to make gasoline out of the heavier, more sulfurous crude oil that is available today (instead of the light, sweet crude of earlier years). Even if all of the smaller plants were still operating today, there simply wouldn't be enough light, sweet crude for them to economically make gasoline (light, sweet crude is much more expensive than the benchmark West Texas Intermediate or the heavy Mexican or Venezuelan crudes most of the large Gulf Coast refineries typically process).

2. A company called Arizona Clean Fuels has been trying to build a greenfield refinery in Yuma since the late '90s, only to be stymied by NIMBYism, lawsuits, and permitting issues. Of course, costs have increased dramatically in that time (the latest estimate is $3.7 billion to build a 150,000 bpd refinery; initially costs were around $2 billion), as they have for every major construction project as the price of building materials has spiked along with every other commodity (probably due to Exxon Mobil's monopolistic scheming). But ACF's experience is not exactly encouraging for other investors seeking to build new refineries.

3. Implicit in all of this is that the oil majors schemed to reduce supply in order to raise prices. Even setting aside everything I've stated to the contrary, there's still the fact that $4 gasoline doesn't mean refiners actually make money, as I indicated above. The gasoline crack spread has been extremely thin as oil prices have spiked. Retailers everywhere are bemoaning the worst market environment in decades, as I've noted before. Pity the poor independent gas station owner-- he's probably hurting worse than you, and has to deal with your misplaced anger, to boot.

Raines started his piece by approvingly discussing Dan Bartlett and Jared Steele of TIME, two of the "specialists" Raines seems to like:

[Bartlett noted:] “The most chilling statistic is Exxon Mobil’s. It spent twice as much last year to buy back stock as it did on exploration.”

As for shallow journalism that helps Big Oil, Steele makes the point that the newsrooms that were once staffed by the redistributionist children of the New Deal and the A.F.L.-C.I.O. are now populated with the children of Reaganomics: “Younger reporters come out of a mind-set that the market rules, taxes are evil, and government ought to let these people in the oil industry go about their business.”

It's a common habit of business journalists to tell companies what they should do with their shareholders' money. Of course, Bartlett probably did an exhaustive analysis of Exxon Mobil's current investment options-- all the areas with proven or probable oil reserves, with lifting costs sufficiently below the long-term oil price to cover the company's cost of capital, and that are not controlled by national oil companies or other competitors. He undoubtedly has a clear understanding of how EM will maximize shareholder dollars by investing in these properties rather than retiring outstanding stock (thereby increasing the value of shareholders' equity). However, EM's consolidated capital expenditure has declined from $3.43 per share ($8.4 billion) in 1998 to $2.76 per share ($15.4 billion, with more than double the shares outstanding) last year. During this time the price of oil has spiked ten-fold, from a 1998 low of around $10 per barrel. So shouldn't we criticize them for profligate over-investing in the risky late '90s, when oil was cheap and abundant? What does Bartlett believe is the appropriate level of investment, and how does he decide it? Or possibly, just possibly, EM has a sensible risk assessment program, and when they it doesn't see good uses of company money-- e.g., because the available opportunities with low lifting costs are not plentiful-- it returns money to the shareholders. (Also, just maybe, when a company makes long-term investments with an expectation of sub-$20 oil, it shouldn't surprise anyone that said company makes ridiculous amounts of money when oil spikes to historic highs. I'm not a business journalist or anything, but I'm just saying.)

As for the latter quote: is Steele seriously complaining that a government intervention bias has been replaced by a free market bias in newsrooms, and this is a bad thing? What kind of statement is that? I thought the point was to be even-handed arbiters of truth... but then, I'm not a business journalist.

And just in case it seems that I mindlessly defend oil companies, let me add that they shouldn't be subsidized either; they operate in a ruthless commodity market and should be allowed to succeed or fail within the limits of the law and (especially) environmental regulations. But EM should only work to maximize profits for its shareholders (legally!), and it's been one of the most successful at doing so for over a century. Raines believes oil companies should be investing in alternative energy; if shareholders want to make such investments, let them do so. (I'll wager that the overwhelming majority of institutional investors in every single cleantech and alternative energy investment fund in Silicon Valley also owns stock in one or more major oil companies.) The government should not get a vote, and neither should business journalists.

Watchmen and other items of nerdish interest

2008-07-19T10:47:00.000-07:00

Jordan, ever at the vanguard of pop culture, pointed me to the trailer earlier this week, and now the upcoming Watchmen movie is on the cover of the latest Entertainment Weekly. (Yes, we get more than The Economist and Atlantic in this household. A defense of EW by a serious economist is here-- not that I need to justify it or anything....)

I sincerely hope that the new movie approaches the greatness of the original book, but I don't have high hopes. On the one hand, comic book movies are getting much better. The people who make the movies today grew up reading the increasingly more sophisticated books of the '80s-'90s, after the post-World War II parental crackdown on violent comics led to bland fare in the '50s and '60s (ever wonder about the Comics Code Authority?). Jon Favreau way surpassed my expectations with Iron Man, probably the best Marvel character movie so far (Not Punisher, you say? I know, tough call.) Chris Nolan did a great job with Batman Begins (haven't seen Dark Knight yet, but have heard mostly good things.) While a lot of true believers didn't love Superman Returns, I still thought it was far and away the best of the various Man of Steel screen attempts, with the possible exception of the first Chistopher Reeve flick. (But origin stories are usually the best of any comic book-inspired movie series, Spiderman II possibly excepted.)

On the other hand, the vast majority of comic book movies, even today, lose almost every character nuance or plot complexity of the books in an effort to get a big box office draw. Even the visually interesting Hellboy movies are pretty standard smash 'em up fare with laughably predictable story lines. And Alan Moore, the bearded comic book demi-god author of Watchmen and arguably the most famous and influential comic writer in the modern era, has had very mixed luck with his books turned into movies:

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen reached a new level of awful.
V For Vendetta was okay, but didn't do justice to the sheer awesomeness (comic fan term) of the book. Granted, I saw it in a theater in Indianapolis that serves food and drinks. A waitress taking beer orders in the middle of the movie kind of destroys the attempt to create an atmosphere of an unsettling near-future dystopia.
From Hell-- I didn't see the whole movie, just caught snippets on hotel cable one night. I really like the Hughes Brothers and will even defend Dead Presidents as an interesting, if flawed, addition to their oeuvre. But I didn't enjoy the parts of From Hell I saw and never bothered to watch the rest of it. It's a long and complicated book; difficult to do justice to it in the cinematic medium. Probably better than League (hard to do worse), but not as good as Vendetta.

Doesn't make one too hopeful for Watchmen, which in book form was a multi-layered, morally complicated plot spanning decades of superhero and super-villain history. Unlike the familiar Marvel and DC characters, Watchmen involves a completely new comic universe, so the movie will have multiple origin stories to explain, in addition to the complex main plot. Undoubtedly some of the great subplots from the book will be cut (e.g., I'll be shocked if the pirate book stories make it). Still, better to try now than ten or twenty years ago. I'll still watch it.

There are quite a few innovative modern comic writers who worked outside of the traditional Marvel/DC story lines (and in them as well) whose stories could be interesting movies. Frank Miller is the obvious guy at the top of the pyramid with Moore. The movie version of Sin City turned out way better than I expected, probably as true a reflection of the book as any comic book movie ever made. Same with 300, which managed to capture the visuals of the book almost perfectly. Of course, neither dealt with superheroes. It will be interesting to see if anyone tries to make Miller's Dark Knight Returns into a live action flick (or Ronin-- remember Ronin, fellow nerds?).

Spawn didn't really work as a live action movie, but the animated version was great, especially with Keith David's fantastic voice; given all the commercial success of Spawn, I'm sure Todd McFarlane isn't complaining too much. Meanwhile, I'm very interested to see what will happen with the Neil Gaiman Sandman series. Gaiman is a great writer in both comic form and straight prose, though the adaptation of his engaging Stardust book didn't do too well in movie form. Sandman was one of the most innovative comic universes to be created from whole cloth in recent years, so I'm sure someone is working on a movie somewhere. I'll keep my fingers crossed that it turns out well. My initial thought is that it would have to be animated to have a hope of doing the book justice.

As for Mike Mignola, Hellboy was pretty cool when the comics came out. The movies are just okay. Most unrealistic thing in the latest movie? (SPOILER ALERT!) I can buy that an elf prince is trying to re-animate a goblin-made robot army to wipe out humanity, no problem. Said elf prince brings some sort of spinach-broccoli monster to destroy the son of Satan, currently a U.S. government agent? Okay, go on. But when Hellboy pulls a baby out of the backseat of a car in an obligatory rescue scene, suspension of disbelief goes out the window. Concrete Fingers doesn't have to fumble with a five-point locking child restraint system? Give me a break. Also love that swaddle-- doesn't even flutter through the chase and destruction scenes. Which foolish studio exec okayed such an implausible sequence?

Update: just read the EW piece. Items of note:

Watchmen is directed by Zack Snyder (300) who begs fans to remember that his movie will suck less than any other version of Watchmen that had previously been envisioned. As with 300, he's using relatively unknown actors, which I think is the right way to go. This movie would fail as a vehicle for one or more famous actors or actresses.
As I suspected, the pirate story line won't be in the movie. But it will be a DVD extra.
Alan Moore has completely disavowed the project, erasing himself from the credits and refusing the royalty checks. Wow.
Release date March 2009 (!). Snyder is currently fighting with studio about how to pare it down from its current three-hour length.

By request: surprises of fatherhood

2008-07-17T13:18:00.001-07:00

1. Truly there is no sight more beautiful than the Zen-like calm on your child's face as he enters a state of transcendental relaxation and empties his bladder on your clean shirt.

2. In conversations with childless friends, you find yourself going on about items of relatively limited general interest (i.e., limited to mom, dad, and grandparents) that your kid just did. Even though you just spent decades suffering through the other side of the exact same conversation, you still can't help yourself.

3. In conversations with other parents, the dominant topic relates to various bodily substances emitted from various orifices at various times. It's endlessly fascinating and doesn't even seem strange anymore.

In the beginning

2008-07-14T20:20:00.000-07:00

Russell Roberts previews the latest Joseph Ellis book, American Creation, based on a recent Ellis lecture. Ellis is the author of the excellent Founding Brothers and very good His Excellency: George Washington, both of which are quick and interesting reads that I highly recommend (but if you have to pick one of the recent glut of biographies surrounding the Founding Pantheon, start with Ron Chernow's outstanding Alexander Hamilton).

Roberts notes that Ellis discusses five triumphs and two tragedies surrounding the birth of the nation; one of the tragedies was slavery, of course:

His best insights into slavery were that none of the founders tried to justify slavery as being consistent with the ideals of the founding and that everyone expected the slavery phenomenon to die a natural death to be followed by the expulsion of the Negro. No one foresaw a multiracial coexistence. Ellis argued that the the unforeseen invention of the cotton gin ignited the Southern economy and increased the demand for slaves.

Fascinating. (And did he just use the word "Negro?") Seems hard to believe that Southern plantation owners living side by side with slaves would see a natural path for their expulsion after manumission, given how entrenched they were in Southern life. Interesting, if true.

Roberts also notes:

Ellis opened his talk with the observation that the population of Virginia in colonial times was roughly that of Wilkes-Barre , Pennsylvania today. Virginia gave us Jefferson, Washington, Madison, Henry, and Mason, among others. Remarkable. He implied if I remember correctly that surely the population of Wilkes-Barre hides some remarkable lights under its bushel if the times were right. I don't think so. I think the group of people who made their way to the New World between 1620 and 1775 were quite exceptional.

Don't forget James Monroe! Sounds like that early self-selecting immigrant population was a good thing for this country. It's nice we shut the door before that good thing got wildly excessive.

Developing a framework for creative capitalism

2008-07-14T07:50:00.001-07:00

My initial thoughts on the conversation at the Creative Capitalism blog:

Let’s agree that “creative capitalism,” whatever that means, won’t lift the world out of poverty by itself. Traditional capitalism and democracy will ultimately be the key to poverty alleviation, and private philanthropy and NGOs still have a big role to play. But until that glorious day of worldwide good government and free markets arrives, there is a role for firms operating in the poorest markets to explicitly recognize and acknowledge that they can have a broader impact while working in their own self interest. A framework for creative capitalism should be defined with more rigor than Gates initially provided. To start, we should consider the circumstances under which traditional market approaches are insufficient to meet a clear need.

In general this market failure seems to occur in four cases:

(1) Markets characterized by highly limited information because of extreme poverty and scarce data about consumer needs and preferences.

(2) Markets where governments are unable to provide vital public goods but firms are able to provide such goods because of their resources or experience.

(3) Instances when the capital investment required for a critically needed good is too high given the size of the market, as is the case with tropical disease vaccines.

(4) Societies where firms form the strongest institutions, and their policies can have significant influence on social practices.

1. The first issue—serving markets of extreme poverty—is a clear call for creativity in the traditional market framework, as Prahalad demanded in his book and Gates echoed in his initial speech. A famous case is Hindustan Lever retailing single-use sachets of shampoo for 1 rupee in rural India, massively expanding its market through a packaging and distribution innovation while improving hygiene for a vast swathe of poor people. The firms that do this best are those that operate in markets with both highly talented managers and pockets of extreme poverty. In places like India, China, South Africa and Brazil, companies exist with the expertise and willingness to innovate in order to expand their markets. However, even in these markets, the “bottom of the pyramid” is often a lower priority than growing domestic middle-classes or wealthy export markets. In addition, many smaller countries do not have companies with the resources and know-how to meet the needs of the poorest; established developing economy firms should understand the potential to export their bottom of the pyramid capabilities. There is a role for leaders like Gates to push developing country business leaders to look more closely at bottom of the pyramid opportunities, and to think hard about whether such opportunities could be core to the business rather than peripheral to a domestic middle-class or export strategy. But this isn’t really a new form of capitalism; it is traditional capitalist innovation involving developing economy firms in new market segments. (Western companies will probably play a more limited role due to their relatively limited experience in this market segment vis-a-vis their developing country counterparts.)

2. More radical is the case when public goods are not provided by local governments, and firms have the best capability to provide such goods. Consider the logistics expertise of multinational beverage distributors in sub-Saharan Africa, companies such as Diageo (Guinness brand) or Coca-Cola. They consistently deliver cold products to consumers in some of the worst conditions in the world—bad roads, tangled regulations, civil strife, and corrupt customs practices. In times of natural disaster, such companies are well-positioned to leverage existing infrastructure, contacts, and capabilities to help deliver food or medicine. The question Landsburg raises of who pays in this instance is almost beside the point. Whether firms donate such services (i.e., shareholders pay) or are paid by the UN or Red Cross for services rendered, in the scope of their overall business the cost or profit will be miniscule. Rather the issue is whether the companies should explicitly recognize that they can provide a public good more effectively than any existing government or organization—and that providing such goods does not conflict with the primary business mission. Stricken people receiving food or medicine from a Coca-Cola truck might be inclined to view the brand quite favorably—an intangible but real value enhancer for the company. The same is true for resources extraction companies that provide healthcare and schools around their operating sites. While they need not be concerned with local consumers, local goodwill is still of importance (as violence in the Niger Delta illustrates clearly for oil companies in the region). Since sustaining markets and operating conditions is profit-maximizing in the long-term, even Friedman would be hard-pressed to quibble with this approach. But companies must be explicit about how and when they will (or will not) provide public goods—an ad hoc approach is not good for anyone.

3. The third case, where the market is too small to justify the large capital investment, is very difficult to reconcile with any form of market activity, traditional or creative. Unlike the first case, where a clear profit opportunity is addressed, or the second case, where valuable goodwill is created and long-term markets are sustained, the third case seems to call for pure charity, perhaps with some hope of a faint goodwill impact on consumers in rich countries or company employees. In this case, the intervention of private charities or NGOs is probably the best solution, as the Gates Foundation is trying in forming a buyers’ consortium to guarantee a market for malaria vaccines. In that example, a non-market actor helped organize demand to stimulate traditional capitalist forces. No particular creativity was required from the pharma companies. Happily, outside of drugs and certain types of infrastructure investments, there are probably not many goods where both the capital investment is too large for the market and the good is critical for the market.

4. Finally, where firms are among the strongest institutions in a society, they have the opportunity to impact societies through their operating policies. As an example, the people whom firms decide to employ, train, and promote can have profound consequences on the countries in which they operate. Gates cites the case of Buffett’s Iscar, an Israeli company that seeks to employ a significant number of Arabs. The positive externality of such a practice is that members of communities that are in conflict in the larger society are forced to cooperate at work. The experience of workforce racial integration in the U.S. probably suggests that such practices are beneficial to the wider society for at least two reasons: (a) they create “safe zones” for group interaction in the context of a broader conflict and (b) they create more opportunities for wealth in a community that may have been historically repressed. Unfortunately, ethnic and tribal conflicts exist in many of the poorest regions of the world. As long as qualified employees can be found, firms that seek to hire both Hutus and Tutsis, Muslims and Hindus, or Sunnis and Shiites could have a positive impact on the broader society, especially as minorities become part of the management team. The overall search, hiring, training and retention costs of such practices may be slightly higher for companies that practice them. However, in places where firms are the strongest institutions, firms may well benefit from employee diversity, especially in times of active civil strife, when members of all groups will have incentives to protect company property. As important, the positive impact on society will expand profit opportunities in the long-term. Hiring is just one example-- other business practices such as sourcing and distribution will also have a substantially bigger impact in societies where firms are the strongest institutions. Once again, explicit understanding of the firm's role and impact is necessary.

Are there any other cases where traditional capitalism would be insufficient to meet market needs?

Like Neo said

2008-07-13T20:03:00.000-07:00

Whoa. via Jason Kottke, this software slices up video frame by frame and plays it with a slight delay from top down. The best part is around 1:27.

Chronotopic Anamorphosis from Marginalia Project on Vimeo.

Getting the economists' vote

2008-07-13T19:10:00.000-07:00

Greg Mankiw has some eminently sensible suggestions to presidential candidates seeking support from the critical economist voting bloc: support free trade, oppose farm subsidies, leave oil companies and speculators alone, tax energy usage, raise the retirement age, invite more skilled immigrants, liberalize drug policy, and, of course, increase funds for economics research.

All of which (except the last) are core planks in this blog's platform.

Remembering Michael DeBakey

2008-07-13T18:06:00.000-07:00

Houston medical pioneer Michael DeBakey passed away on Friday at the age of 99. DeBakey was instrumental in the growth of the Texas Medical Center, now the largest concentration of medical facilities in the world. He was greatly responsible for the development of Baylor College of Medicine and The Methodist Hospital, two institutions that trained and later employed my wife. As president and then chancellor of BCM from 1969 to 1996 and director of the DeBakey Heart Center at Methodist, it's hard to overstate his impact on Houston, the Med Center, and the broader medical community.

Interestingly, according to Wikipedia, he was born Michael Dabaghi to Lebanese Christian parents in Lake Charles, Louisiana in 1908.

The Chronicle notes:

Partly through his own inventive and surgical talents, and partly due to the longevity of his seven-decade medical career, DeBakey presided over the transformation of medicine from a relatively rudimentary practice into today's highly specialized care.

He helped usher in the era of big surgery — large incisions to reach the uncharted heart, aorta and other vital organs — then practiced medicine long enough to see that phase begin to wane in the face of today's push for minimally invasive surgery.

DeBakey — considered by many to be the greatest surgeon ever — died Friday night at The Methodist Hospital in Houston. He was 99.

Methodist officials said DeBakey died of natural causes.

After coming to Houston in 1948, DeBakey described the state of surgery in this city during an interview with the American Journal of Cardiology. At the time, surgery was just becoming a specialty among doctors, requiring certification and formal training.

"When I first came to Houston, all general practitioners were doing surgery, and often doing it poorly," DeBakey recalled.

"The first time I came here, they had a meeting over at the old Jefferson Davis Hospital, and one of the doctors there presented a paper on a new technique for hernia operation. You know what it was? Removal of the testicle and sewing of the opening. I was so stunned that when they asked me to comment on it, I said 'I don't know what to say about this.' The particular surgeon performed this operation on some patients with bilateral hernias. Think of that!"
[...]
In the next two decades innovation flourished. With DeBakey at the forefront, cardiac surgeons developed the coronary bypass, heart transplants and a host of other surgical techniques still used to treat the heart in modern operating rooms.

Though known mostly as a heart surgeon, DeBakey may have made his greatest surgical contributions as a vascular surgeon, treating the body's main artery. He made the aorta, which carries blood from the heart to the body, a treatable entity. Aneurysms, or blockages, and dissections, tears in the aortic wall, were almost universally fatal in 1950.

His development of Dacron grafts, in conjunction with the heart-lung machine, made vascular surgery possible. Surgeons now could replace sections of the artery. In 1952 DeBakey became the first U.S. surgeon to remove an aneurysm in the aorta near the stomach, and replace it with a Dacron graft. A year later he did so with an aneurysm in the chest, much nearer the heart. Along with local doctors such as Denton Cooley and Stanley Crawford, DeBakey built Houston into a world leader for heart and aortic surgery.

Short break

2008-06-29T11:39:00.000-07:00

Esteemed readers,

The blog will be on hiatus for a while, while I'm helping to usher in and welcome the next generation. Check back in a week or two, or sign up for the daily digest email or RSS feed (at right) to save yourself the trouble. Check out the blogrolls (also at right) for more reading material in the meantime.

Smart growth in Houston

2008-06-27T09:02:00.000-07:00

I skipped last night's Scott Bernstein "smart growth" lecture at the Gulf Coast Institute, but I was pretty sure Tory would catch up me. He did not disappoint:

First, where we agree. Clearly, if a person chooses to live in walkable density close to work and ride transit, they will use less energy and generate less carbon, as well as save money if they can get rid of a car in the household or use a shared car service. And obviously that lower spending on utilities and transportation should be considered when determining credit for a mortgage. No argument there. Clearly a fine and admirable lifestyle choice.

The real question comes down to a city's approach to that lifestyle: allow vs. encourage vs. compel. Some cities can't even get through their zoning regulations and NIMBYs to the 'allow' stage. Fortunately Houston (mostly) avoids that, although we do have regulations (like setbacks and minimum parking) that will need some relaxing (a la the urban corridors initiative). I can see some level of 'encouragement' also making sense - a few incentives here and there (full blown subsidies are probably a bad idea). But 'compel'? That's where they lose me. Active efforts to shut down people who want to live in suburban single-family homes and drive. And requiring mixed-use density around rail stops may well backfire and create stagnant dead zones down each line.

[...]

Bottom line: a smart nice guy with admirable goals, but a weak foundation of arguments for changing Houston's good direction or interfering in people making their own free market choices. Offer the options - and even promote/market/sell the smart growth lifestyle if you like (as Apple has proven: make something seem cool and people will buy it) - but let people weigh up the costs and benefits on their own and pick the lifestyle that's right for them.

Read his whole post, as he details several key areas of disagreement. One area where Tory makes a great point is that it's not helpful to isolate "transportation costs" as some sort of collective measure of a city's livability-- any more than gas costs are a single measure of an individual's overall utility. Just as gas consumption is traded off against other consumption choices (and in the context of overall inflation, often stays at a relatively constant percentage of increasing real wages), people may choose to trade off time and cost of commute for better or cheaper or bigger housing.

But though city governments should avoid distorting market incentives through intervention, we can still recognize that there are certain intelligent investments in urban development can help people make choices with fewer negative externalities such as pollution. These include good schools in the urban core and sensible public transit systems. And if we must build more freeways to the exurbs, we should probably toll more of them.

McCain cops my style

2008-06-24T15:49:00.000-07:00

McCain wants to offer a prize for a better car battery. I'm not saying he copied the idea directly from me. But below is an unpublished op-ed I sent to The New York Times back in February 2006, after the President's State of the Union speech (remember when we were "addicted to oil?" Man, things are so much better now thanks to the decisive energy policies of Congress and the Administration).

My main beef with the McCain approach is that it focuses on the input (a battery) rather than the output I lay out so elegantly below. This is often the main problem with government intervention in markets-- rather than focusing on the final objective (in this case, fuel-efficient cars), they focus on the means (ethanol, and now this battery). What if algal biodiesel is the right answer? Be wary when governments pick technologies.

Quitting the Habit

In his State of the Union speech, President Bush warned about America's "addiction to oil" and suggested the need for new technology to reduce our oil dependence. Whatever the President's specific proposals, it's difficult to argue the necessity of innovation. New technology will be a key component of America's energy security solution, especially in automotive power. But how do we get there? Specifically, how do we develop stylish, affordable, low-emission, 100 mile-per-gallon (or better) passenger vehicles within the next ten years?

Such innovation is unlikely to come from an auto industry wracked by problems of overcapacity. With Detroit on the verge of crisis, the primary focus of domestic automakers is on sales and marketing rather than research and development. Foreign automakers continue to incrementally improve hybrid vehicles, but they have little incentive to bring significantly more fuel-efficient cars to market. Traditional venture capitalists typically shy away from investments in the auto industry, and (absent government incentives) will not fund radical new ideas in this area. Meanwhile, a regulatory push seems unlikely: no realistic fuel standard will force the industry to shatter technical barriers, as is required for a step-change in fuel-efficiency.

One answer is a Challenge: a race to develop low-emission, ultra-fuel-efficient vehicles, with a large cash prize to the winner. Recent history has shown how powerful such contests can be in spurring innovation. In 1996, the Ansari X Prize offered $10 million for the first vehicle capable of carrying three people into near-orbit twice in two weeks. Twenty-six contestants registered and the prize was claimed in 2004. More importantly, at least three companies developed a launch-ready vehicle, making near-orbit commercial flight a closer reality—and inventing an entire industry in the span of eight years.

Even if they don't immediately succeed, such contests can be a dynamic force for innovation. In 2004, DARPA, a government agency, sponsored a contest for unmanned robotic vehicles to navigate a 200km course through the Mojave Desert. Thirteen vehicles entered the race; not one made it past the 12km mark. Merely eighteen months later, twenty-three contestants entered a second race and five vehicles completed the course. The winner, a Stanford University team, earned $2 million.

A similar Challenge is needed for conventional passenger vehicles. Scientists and industry experts should establish a high bar for entry, but minimum requirements might include vehicles that can carry four passengers 400 miles on four or less gallons of conventional petroleum product. The vehicles would be able to refuel at a cost comparable to filling a 16-gallon gasoline tank. The Challenge would specify maximum emissions levels as well. Since power and speed are important to consumers, the Challenge would involve a ground race for qualifying vehicles, each of which would need to sustain speeds of at least 75mph. A first race could take place as early as 2008, with subsequent races focusing on technical and economic refinements, thereby making mass production more likely. A separate contest must deal with trucks and larger freight vehicles, which are popular but have seen limited fuel-efficiency improvement.

The solutions might come from fuel cell, hybrid or other engine technologies; new fuel sources such as cheap ethanol or biodiesel; or perhaps some entirely new idea. The technology may not be that far away. Available hybrid cars claim up to 61 miles-per-gallon; in Europe, new prototypes claim up to 83 mpg. In India, a zero-emission electric car is available—but it can only travel short distances. In Brazil, ethanol from sugar cane is a conventional fuel source for many vehicles. With proper incentives, innovators will build on today's technology to create clean, powerful and ultra-fuel-efficient vehicles.

Who should fund this Challenge? Sponsors could include private or public sources with an interest in radically re-shaping the industry for a relatively small amount of money. Philanthropists or government agencies could certainly attract existing automakers, research scientists, and garage entrepreneurs to generate new ideas. Private investors or even an industry consortium could do the same thing, with the potential benefit of investment rights in Challenge participants. However, absent immediate government support, private charity is the most likely candidate to sponsor such a Challenge.

The argument for status quo is always that it costs too much to change. In the case of America's oil consumption, the costs of status quo are all too clear. There are many aspects to the solution—conservation, legislation, and new sources of supply. Underlying of all of this is an urgent need for new technology. A Challenge may be the cheapest way to harness innovation and break out of our current consumption habit, into a clean and sober future.

More good press

2008-06-24T10:41:00.001-07:00

Kuffner notes that the MSM is firmly on the Houston bandwagon with three recent articles in Newsweek, Chicago Trib, and WaPo. (Newsweek and the Tribune also manage to make clever references to NASA in their headlines. Where do they get such creativity I wonder?)

What's behind all the good pub? Apparently someone noticed that during the biggest energy boom in history, the energy capital of the world ain't such a bad place to be.

No doubt Houstonians everywhere are shuddering at the prospect of an invasion of New Yorkers and Angelenos seeking the good life.

Defining Obama

2008-06-24T09:17:00.001-07:00

Not to dip too much into the Presidential horse race, but one can't help but enjoy the difficulty Obama's attackers are having in figuring out how to portray him, as Democracy in America points out from a commenter at Ben Smith's blog:

Is he a Muslim, a Christian with a crazy pastor or a Communist atheist with a hippie mom?

Is he ruthless and overly ambitious or naive and weak?

Is he an outsider who is "foreign" to our values or the country club goer?

Is he too South Side, too "black" or too Hyde Park and elitist? Does he resent white people or is he part of the elite that sneers at blue-collars?

Does he not care about "little people" or is he a socialist who will redistribute hard-earned money to everyone?

One imagines the one-time swiftboaters' heads spinning and smoking as they try to compute a logical course of attack. Poor Karl Rove.

Strange bed-fellows, '08 edition

2008-06-24T08:51:00.000-07:00

Most people by now are familiar with the "Obamacon" movement-- the conservative pundits and commentators who, for a variety of reasons, are enamored with Barack Obama. The three most common reasons articulated by conservatives are Obama's opposition to the Iraq war, his personal character traits, and a desire to punish the incumbent party for its transgressions in the name of conservatism. Andrew Sullivan, unapologetic Reaganite and Thatcherite (and author of this excellent book on conservatism), continues to swoon:

What Obama is doing is to ratchet back the bad use of faith in the public square, while insisting on the validity of people of faith in the public square. He's still too willing to invoke faith himself - his own version - to justify public policy. But this pushback against the extreme of the right is an enormously important project - central to Obama's promise to get us past the hideous cultural deadlock of the past two decades. Obama is as productive to this debate as Bush was toxic. And what Obama is doing - whether he intends to or not - is to open space within conservatism for the kind of reasoned, limited government, pragmatic conservatism that we badly need to revive.

My bet is that this kind of discourse will also be very appealing to younger evangelicals. Classic Obama, in other words: vital, elevating debate, with an undercurrent of political self-interest.

Part of the love-in has to be from the fact that core goals of Goldwater-era conservatives have been mostly accomplished: deregulation rolled back, communism vanquished, free market capitalism firmly established in most of the world, as George Packer noted in his recent New Yorker piece (linked from this post). All of the squabbling about marginal tax rates and regulation is (mostly) around the edges. As I've said before, Obama appears to be to the right of Richard Nixon on taxation, regulation, and government intervention. Hopefully on free trade too.

Cheap non-electric refrigeration

2008-06-24T08:10:00.000-07:00

Here is a refrigeration device that doesn't use electricity and aims to be mass produced for $25. It also requires a thermal source like a cooking fire and 3 gallon enclosed vessel. If it works, it could revolutionize food and medicine storage in the developing world.

HT: TED

Houston-Galveston Area Council rail proposal

2008-06-22T16:51:00.001-07:00

Christof Spieler dissects the proposal to build a 5-spoke commuter rail system to connect the Houston hinterlands (Hempstead, Tomball, Galveston, Alvin, and Fort Bend County) to the four major employment centers (Downtown, Med Center, Greenway Plaza, and the Galleria). As with anything, the cost-benefit analysis of the proposal depends on a host of assumptions.

One of the key issues is how a capital-intensive, route-inflexible, schedule-limited rail system will compare to an existing, relatively cheap, schedule-flexible bus system. There are legitimate trade-offs-- relative convenience and commute time of bus vs. rail; neighborhood impact of new rail construction; pollution and traffic congestion from additional buses; and the possible necessity of more freeway growth without rail.

Rail is not the obvious slam-dunk some people assume it should be, given Houston's sprawl and land-use flexibility. But having lived and worked in the high-density Boston metro area, served by excellent transit systems, I think commuter rail is probably on balance going to be a good thing for Houston. Over time the city will adapt to the rail system (in fact, it will likely spur development along its routes), so I'm less worried about rail route inflexibility. In the short-term, at least the Houston-Clear Lake (NASA)-Galveston line is probably a winner, given both the existing density along that route, as well as the two-way and weekend commute patterns of business and tourism traffic.

But we'll have to explore further to make a good judgment on all of it. Tom Kirkendall already hates the idea here. Check out the full proposal here.

On affirmative action

2008-06-22T12:01:00.001-07:00

I get some pub at Ta-Nehisi's site. The conversation originated at his interesting thread on political beliefs, here.

Gang incentives in prison versus the street

2008-06-21T16:01:00.000-07:00

It seems I've been writing a lot about socio-economic issues lately, so I have a strange yearning to discourse about the latest in the energy debate. But I had to report one interesting thing I learned about this week: a new type of prison gang in Texas.

On Wednesday, my partner and I attended a talk at an area police station by a representative of the City of Houston Mayor's Anti-Gang Office (MAGO) on recent trends in youth gang activity. One of the most serious local developments has been the growth of "Tango Blast," a prison gang not yet officially recognized by Texas Department of Corrections. Tango Blast apparently has branches in four major Texas cities (FW, Austin, SA, and Houston), and the local branch is called "Houstone."

According to the MAGO, TDC recognizes two "system threat" prison gangs: the Mexican Mafia ("Le Eme") and the Texas Syndicate. These gangs have two primary features: protection while in prison and membership for life on the outside. Because of their TDC recognition, known members are segregated from each other and the general population. But apparently they continue to manage activities outside of the prison.

Tango Blast, by contrast, is a looser affiliation that provides protection in prison (and, presumably, non-aggression from co-members) but allows membership to re-affiliate with local street gangs on the outside. Since it's not recognized by TDC, members may interact with each other with relatively more ease than members of La Eme or TS. However, the affiliation appears to continue in some voluntary street cooperation among Houstone TB members, to the consternation of both Houston Police and MAGO.

It seems pretty obvious why a prison gang duopoly might evolve. On the outside, street gangs grew from protection of geographic territory to the management of criminal activities. On the inside, there aren't enough members of any one street gang to provide sufficient protection in a very violent (allegedly) prison economy, so there is strong incentive to gravitate to a core group. As one group grows large enough to become predatory/dominant in the prison economy, some people are necessarily excluded due to inherent conflicts. These form a new group, and a counterbalancing force develops. (Theoretically anyway, without having studied the issue at all [so nice to blog rather than do actual investigative research]).

What's interesting about TB is that the incentive to keep it primarily as a "prison-only" affiliation without mandatory spillover into the streets doesn't appear to exist. One would assume that if TDC segregation practices have left a power vacuum formerly occupied by TS or Le Eme, whatever new gang evolved would be substantially similar in terms of structure. Gang economies appear to be run on strict loyalty and criminal payouts, so one would think there would be sufficient cause for "dues" to be owed while in prison that gang members could demand payback-- in form of criminal participation-- once outside.

So far that hasn't been the case-- no leadership hierarchy appears to have taken strong control of either Houstone Tango Blast or Tango Blast throughout the Texas penal system. But membership appears to be growing, and folks who monitor the situation are worried. It seems reasonable that it may evolve into a more structured gang as it grows.

Why expensive gas is good

2008-06-19T10:52:00.001-07:00

I had a conversation with someone a couple of weeks ago who simultaneously wanted cheap gasoline-- to help the poor and middle-class-- and a whole new alternative fuel infrastructure, ideally by tomorrow. (He also thought gas tax holidays and taxes on oil company profits make good policy sense.) As I told him then, there is no painless solution, but without $4 gasoline we're not even having this conversation; the only sad thing is that we're paying the excess to foreign national oil companies rather than to ourselves (e.g., via a high carbon tax). The latest political response has been uninspiring, unsurprisingly-- both timid and reflexive. As I've mentioned before, we need a portfolio of approaches, and we need to go big in many of them.

Keith Johnson rounds up the latest debates here, but I'll cut to the meat of the whole thing:

Expensive gas is doing the impossible, reports the NYT, as American drivers abandon big cars in droves and cut down on miles travelled.

What an utter surprise. Can we have a conversation about a higher gas tax now?

Update: Greg Mankiw points to 5 reasons to love $4 gas.