Defense!

 

Witchcraft

Those fingers in my hair
That sly come hither stare
That strips my conscience bare
It's witchcraft
And I've got no defense for it
The heat is too intense for it

So if you do have a defense, how good is it?

For those of you watching Ted Lasso ( and for those of you who are not, you are missing the best show on Television.  Season 2 Episode 4 is going to be on constant repeat at my home during the holiday season), in Season 2 Episode 6, Assistant Coach Nate Shelby executes  a surprise move in the closing minutes, by calling for a focus on defense rather than on offense when a winning goal is needed. Richmond FC is able to score the winning goal when the opposing FC makes a mistake.  While the media is surprised by Nate’s move, it should not be a surprise to any sports fan who know that, while it may not be exciting,  it is true that it is defense that wins championships.  The best defense is a good offense is exciting, but wrong.  A defensive strategy is also the Minimax strategy from Games Theory,  which is minimizing the maximum score by your opponent.

This is true of any repeating two-player game.  In the two-player game in the US Senate, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell seems to be particularly adept at this strategy ( “100% of my focus is on blocking this administration’s (Biden’s ) agenda”).  This is not necessary the best long-term strategy for society.  That is why there are 100 senators .  They are supposed to not simply play a two-party game but play a 100 Senator Game for the good of all society, not just Republicans.

Flat Tax

 Widow's Mite

"Amen, I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the other contributors to the treasury. For they have all contributed from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had, her whole livelihood." Mark 12:41-44

Is a flat tax a tax on surplus, or a tax on livelihood?

Any flat income tax, a fixed percentage of income, is regressive.  Income can be divided into need, or livelihood, and desire, or surplus.  Desires are met only after need is satisfied.  However there is a maximum amount that will be devoted to needs.  A flat tax is the same on both surplus and livelihood.  A progressive tax is not merely a ramp up to the percentage of that flat tax.  If a lower, or no tax, is imposed on livelihood then the percentage of taxes has to be greater than the flat tax on income that is surplus.

This is basic math. If the revenue from taxes is

Tax Revenue=% Flat Tax * Total Income

and income is divided into income for Livelihood and income for Surplus,

Total Income= Income for Livelihood  + Income for surplus

then to raise the same revenue and also have a smaller tax rate on livelihood,  the percentage tax on the surplus must be greater than the flat tax.  If we call the income for livelihood the standard deduction, on which no taxes are paid, then if the standard deduction is raised, and the tax on surplus is lowered, then mathematically the total tax revenue has to decrease. 

% Effective Tax * Total Income =

                        % Tax on Livelihood * Income for Livelihood + % Tax on Surplus*Income  for Surplus.

Increasing the standard deduction might appeal to those whose share of income for livelihood is larger, and reducing the tax rate for all income, might appeal to those whose share of income for surplus is larger, but it results in a lower total tax revenue from all and a lower effective tax rate.  “Let them eat cake” could be a display of ignorance of how things work.  If there is a shortage of flour then there is a shortage of both bread and cake.  You can correct ignorance with learning, you can’t correct stupid.  Let’s not be stupid.

Change

 

Crown of Creation

Life is change
How it differs from the rocks
I've seen their ways too often for my liking
New worlds to gain
My life is too survive
And be alive for you

If life is change, I may have to accept change, but do I have to like it??

I am old enough, and set enough in my ways,  to understand that some changes may be inevitable, but they are not always welcome.  Changes mostly come from the young, and when elders have complained about the young throughout recorded history they may actually be complaining about change.  But there are different aspects of change.  One aspect is the change itself.  The other aspect is the rate of change.

Liberals and conservatives often differ on how change is considered.  Liberals are often perceived to be more open to change, while conservatives resist change.  But this may be the only magnitude of the change.  What is the probability of the change? How much of a change is it?

Also important is the period over which the change is going to happen.  Some changes happen over geological time, like continental drift, while others appear to be instantaneous, like avalanches or landslides.  If the North American plate is getting farther from the Eurasian plate at a rate of 0.25 inches/year, that is an interesting aspect of continental drift. But if one is planning a trip from North America to Europe that will take less than a month, it probably can be ignored.  On the other hand a landslide is also a change, but it happens over a very short period and is not easily ignored.

Complaints about a change, e.g. the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, should be separated from the rapidity of that change.  We might, or might not, have influence on neither the change, nor the period over which that change occurred.  The only difference between evolution and  revolution is that the first is a gradual change and the second is a rapid change.

One of the three dimensions of the proposed framework for human behavior: Rights (User Optimal) versus Duty (System Optimal) also needs to be considered.  A User has a finite lifetime which is typically much, much shorter than the System’s lifetime.  If the change does not happen in the User’s lifetime, but if it does happen in the System’s lifetime, that does not mean that the change does not happen, just that change might not be considered in the User Optimal. Any costs associated with mitigating that change would be resisted by those who only think of their User Optimal solution.

Average vs Mean

 

Average Guy

I ain't no Christian or no born again saint
I ain't no cowboy or Marxist D.A.
I ain't no criminal or Reverend Cripple from the right
I am just your average guy, trying to do what's right

What is the average?

Humans have an innate ability to solve complex mathematics.  That however is not exceptional.  The spiral of sunflower seeds follows a Fibonacci sequence.  A lifeless coastline follows the fractal pattern of a Mandelbrot set.  If plants and lifeless coastlines follow mathematical rules, then maybe humans are not so exceptional.  It may be only the language and symbols of mathematics that are intimating and confusing.

Mathematics uses words that may seem familiar but may have more nuances than the conventional usage.  In mathematics, average means the centrality of the normal.  

Humor is often found in the conflict between what is said and what is meant.  Two jokes illustrate the difference between average in common usage and in mathematics.

A once popular radio show popularized the Lake Wobegon effect, where “all the children are above average”.  The joke being that the average is the centrality of the normal.  If everyone is above average, then that is no longer the centrality and it is time to compute a new average.

Another joke is that a  statistician who has his head in an oven and feet in ice is supposed to say that on average his body temperature is at room temperature, and that is “normal”.  The problem is that what is considered normal to most people, is a Gaussian distribution to a statistician.  This distribution has a centrality of zero AND a variance of 1.  Room temperature is a normal distribution. The variance of having your feet in ice and head in an oven is much greater than  1, the variance of a normal distribution and no statistician would make the statement in the joke.

When people say average, it is often assumed that they intend the mean.  The mean is easier to compute.  It requires the ratio of only two numbers, the total of the observations and the number of the observations.  The median is harder to compute.  It requires identifying the point at which 50% of the observations are above, and 50% of the observations are below. You can calculate the mean from the totals.  You need to sort each observation to compute the median.

A perfect uniform normal distribution has a mean, median, and mode of zero. That is not terribly useful, but if the mean is added to every observation, the coordinate system is translated to a new origin, which is the mean and not zero.  If the median still equals this mean AND the variance is 1, then, and only then, this is a coordinate translation of the “normal” distribution.   If the mean and median are not equal, then the observations are NOT “normal”.

A Gaussian distribution is commonly called “normal” because nature appears to favor this distribution .  People judge themselves against the average, the centrality of the normal. A problem may be that the “normal” is confused with the mean, because the median may be the harder to compute. The mean and median income, or wealth, in the United States are very different.  A statistician would say that is not “normal”. Nature, or humans, might not do all of the computation that a mathematician does, but you only to do those computations to prove that it is normal. Humans, and nature, can apparently do those computations innately to tell if it is normal.

Average is the centrality of a normal distribution.  If the mean and median are very different from each other, then the distribution is not normal. When the distribution is not normal, the average might be the median, and not the mean.

Anonymity

 You Don’t Know Me

You give your hand to me
And then you say "Goodbye"
And I watched you walk away
Beside the lucky guy
Oh, you'll never ever know
The one who loved you so
No, you don't know me

When we ask to be anonymous, how hard is it to know us?

Recently a right-wing Catholic newsletter unmasked a high ranking priest as using the Grindr App, despite its promise to be anonymous.  Can any App promise to be anonymous?

Any App, or site, that tracks your location, as many smartphone Apps do, can never be anonymous.  At best it can mask your identity, but with enough inductive reasoning it is possible to unmask you.

While the app may not record identifying information, your location may be used to unmask your identity.  If there are certain locations that only you can be, and those location are stored, then if a site observes that you are at that location, then you are not anonymous to someone who also knows who can be at that  location.  If your location has been tracked over many days, it may be assumed that between the hours of 2 AM and 6 AM that the location where you are most frequently observed is your home, and that the location on weekdays where you are most frequently observed between Noon and 4 PM is your work.  Tax assessor, employment, voting and any other public information can be combined with this location information to unmask you.  A site can promise to mask you.  It can make peering behind that mask very difficult.  It can’t promise that no one will ever peer behind  that mask.

Sovereignity

 

Her Majesty

I wanna tell her that I love her a lot
But I gotta get a bellyful of wine
Her majesty's a pretty nice girl
Someday I'm going to make her mine, oh, yeah
Someday I'm going to make her mine

Queen Elizabeth is the sovereign of the United Kingdom and several other countries. 
Who is the sovereign of the US?

Queen Elizabeth is the sovereign of the United Kingdom, (and Canada, Australia and several other Commonwealth countries).  All property not owned by individuals, or corporations, is owned by the sovereign.  You don’t have to travel to the United Kingdom to experience this first hand.  You can travel north to Canada where you will travel on the Queen’s Highway or visit the Queen’s Parks.  The ships of the Navy of the United Kingdom have HMS, Her Majesty’s Ship, before the name.  But the sovereign needs a government to administer that sovereignty.  The United Kingdom’s Parliament administers the government on behalf of the Queen .  The United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy where there is a sovereign, the monarch, but the powers of the sovereign are constrained by a constitution. 

The United States of America is just that, States in America that have chosen to be United.  Before the adoption of the US Constitution, each state was sovereign.  By ratifying the Constitution each state agreed to have as its sovereign, as established in that document, the People.  Thus the People of the United States are the sovereign.  But that does not mean that each person is a co-equal as sovereign.  Think of the United States as a corporation, which owns property. An individual shareholder does not have the right to property of the corporation.  Even though I am a shareholder of Disney, I still pay the entrance fee to use the property at Disneyland.  I understand that have no claim to ownership of Disneyland despite the fact that I own Disney stock.

The head of the executive branch of government, the president, stands in for the sovereign when circumstances require the presence of a person, such as state dinners, weddings, coronations, funerals, etc.  But the fact that the President is standing in for the sovereign in no way makes him the sovereign.  The officers of the United States swear an oath to uphold the Constitution.  As such it is the People’s Supreme Court, not the Justices appointed by the president.  It is the People’s Justice Department, not the President’s Justice Department.  It is the People’s Capitol and those who enter it acting as if they are the sovereign are correct that they are persons and the people are the sovereign, but they do NOT have joint ownership of the Capitol or any other sovereign property.  Just like I expect to be arrested if I trespass on Disney property despite being  a Disney shareholder, if I violate the rules of the sovereign on any public, sovereign, property I should expect to be arrested.  The People are the sovereign, but that does not make each person the sovereign.  The President is not a sovereign, and an election only makes him head of the executive branch of government, but it does not make him a sovereign.

Trust II

 

Trust In Me

Trust in me, baby, give me time, gimme time, um gimme time
I heard somebody say, oh, "The older the grape
Sweeter the wine, sweeter the wine"

Whom should you trust?

The least trustworthy politicians during my lifetime have been Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump. ( with honorable mentions to Newt Gingrich and Henry Kissinger). Yes, I realize that they are all Republicans.  Barry Goldwater dishonestly said that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice!” and “moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!”. Richard Nixon is famously remembered as “Tricky Dick” who resigned as a result of “Watergate”.  Ronald Reagan said that government is the problem and then went on to “prove” this by leading the government that gave us Iran Contra among others.  And Donald Trump?  His misdeeds are too numerous to list.  Newt Gingrich rose to fame speaking on C-SPAN to what on the other, unseen, side of the camera was an empty Congressional chamber.  Henry Kissinger was a proponent of the Realpolitik which proposes that the enemy of my enemy is my fiend, which is a provably false statement. I am not including Warren Harding and others, only because, even though I am 70, they died before I was born.

But Republicans have also given us  Abraham “Honest Abe” Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt. Elliot Richardson was  a Republican who opposed Richard Nixon in the Saturday Night Massacre. Gerald Ford and John McCain were exemplary men of integrity.  One of the largest political conflicts in the late 19^th Century was an intra-party fight between traditional Republicans and  Mugwumps, the anti-corruption Republicans .  I include myself among Republicans as well.  While an independent, I was appointed to a political office by a Republican Governor, and I have voted for Massachusetts Republican Governors.  IMO, some Republicans are not worthy of trust, but that does mean that all Republicans are not worthy of trust.  Trust is not a Republican or Democratic characteristic. It is a human characteristic.  However trust is very hard to re-earn once it has been lost. Perhaps our motto should not be “Trust everyone, but always cut the cards", or “Trust everyone, but carry a big stick”, but “Trust everyone, until they lose our trust."

Afghanistan

 

Shelter From the Storm

I've heard newborn babies wailin' like a mournin' dove
And old men with broken teeth stranded without love
Do I understand your question, man, is it hopeless and forlorn
Come in, she said
I'll give ya shelter from the storm

The greatest gift we can offer is to give shelter from the storm.

The images from Afghanistan are tragic, but they are hardly surprising.  Is it any different than a domestic violence situation?  We can provide shelters and support for victims of domestic violence. But those victims need to leave the sovereignty of their home, which they may share with their abuser, and enter spaces over which the rest of society has sovereignty, standing.  If the victim refuses to leave their abusers, welcomes their abuser into their home, there is little that we can do that is proactive.  We can punish domestic violence after it has occurred, but we can only be reactive. Unfortunately we can’t know the future.  We can react to events that have happened, but we can’t react to events that have not yet happened, even if we have an abiding fear that they will happen.

Afghanistan is very similar to a domestic violence situation.  Are women, children and innocents being abused?  Can we stop this abuse? 20 years have told us that in their country, over which we have no sovereignty, we can hope that violence will not occur, we can provide an example, we can provide institutions to try and prevent the worst, but we can only lead that horse to water, we can not make him drink.

What we can do is provide relief from disasters, whether it is physical, natural, economic, etc.  Should we have negotiated with the abusers without the victims and given those abusers status and recognition? If we lie down with dogs won’t we get fleas?  What should our response to those fleeing disasters be?  Should it be, “Stay away, no more room here” or should it be “Come in, I’ll give you shelter from the storm”.

 

Economics II

 

You’re The Man

Don't give us no peace sign
Turn around, rob the people blind
Ah, economics, who is the issue
Do you have a plan with you?
'Cause, if you've got a master plan
(Got the vote for you)
You're the man.

Is economics the key to the master plan?

Economics is often called the dismal science.  This is a reflection that economics often throws cold water, reality, on what we want to do, because we can’t afford it.  This is true of ALL sciences.  Science is about discovering rules on how things actually work, which is often not how we wish they would work.  “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” 

The three laws of thermodynamics can be humorously,  but dismally, expressed as:

You can’t win.  (energy can not be created or destroyed in an isolated system.)

You can’t break even. (the entropy of any isolated system always increases.)

You can’t quit the game. (the entropy of a system approaches a constant value as the temperature approaches absolute zero.)

Economics is often interpreted as setting a price so that there is a profit.  It actually is much more than that.  It is about setting a price that allocates resources, even when there is no profit.  Hear that Postmaster General DeJoy?  The US Post Office is a government SERVICE that is not supposed to make a profit.  Minimizing a loss is NOT the same as ensuring a profit.  If you want to be the man, learn the rules.

Certainty II

 

Rock Of Ages

Rock of ages cleft for me
Let me hide myself in Thee
Let the water and the blood
From Thy wounded side which fload
Thee of sin the double cure
Save from raft and make me pure.

Why can’t scientists be pure, i.e. 100% certain?

Ivory Soap is 99 and 44/100 percent pure.  The best test result in science is 5-sigma, (99.99994% confidence).  The Moderna COVID-19 vaccine is reported by the CDC to be 94.1% effective.  These are considered to be standards that are good, but why can’t science ever be pure, i.e. 100% certain.

A portion of the population prefers purity.  It interprets science as being 100% certain, rounding a 99.99994% certainty to 100%.  No scientist will ever say that he is 100% certain. ( if someone claiming to be a scientist does say that he is 100% certain, you can be certain that he is not a scientist).  A vaccination can’t be 100% effective, but we can say that it is better than being 0% effective.  Saying that a vaccine is 94.1% effective also means that it is 5.9% ineffective.  This means that if exposed to the corona virus, there is a 5.9% chance that a person vaccinated with the Moderna vaccine will be infected with the corona virus. This should be applied to whatever the chance that an unvaccinated person will be infected with the virus.  Which is why even those who are vaccinated do not wish to be exposed to the virus. The odds can be increased, but that is all that can be done.  There is a difference between improbable and impossible.

Einstein famously opposed quantum theory and its Heisenberg Uncertainty principle with his phrase “God does not play dice with the universe”.  A person of faith might say that his God constructed the universe so that no human, including the most educated scientist, could ever be 100% certain.  Purity is reserved for the divine.  We can seek to increase our certainty and act accordingly, but it does not appear that we can ever be 100% certain, pure.

Reaganomics

 

Won’t Get Fooled Again

Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again.

Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me.

Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore had the nerve to publish an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal on August 13, 2021 with the subtitle “Forty years after the 1981 tax cuts, America needs to relearn the lessons of the supply-side revolution.” Really? Really?  I hope that we don't have to relearn anything, that we have wised up, learned our lessons well, and will never forget. 

In 1981 America embarked on an economic experiment by changing its tax code to lower taxes, especially for upper incomes, and cut government spending on common resources.  It was sold as a supply side stimulus, which was an alternative to a Keynesian demand side stimulus. We were told that those increases to the investment class would trickle down to benefit all through increased growth.

After 40 years, the growth has been much lower than the period before those tax cuts.  Very little has trickled down.  In fact the US has been one of only two countries, the other being the United Kingdom, where difference between mean and median income increased since the 1980s.  The United Kingdom wised up and stopped the destructive practices of Margaret Thatcher and has at least reached stability, but the US experiment has continued to this day. 

Government spending increases common resources and regulates those common resources so that we won’t have a Tragedy of the Commons. Stimulating labor may increase production.  What was sold as supply side stimulus was really only an investment stimulus.  What is particularly ironic is that the reason to adopt these draconian measures was “stagflation” that in retrospect was most probably caused by the Nixon Shock of 1971.  So Republican Ronald Reagan  “saved” the US  from the problem caused by Republican Richard Nixon.  Talk about killing your parents and appealing for mercy because you are now an orphan.  It took Sam Brownback only five years to ruin the economy of Kansas with "supply side" economics, so there is some small advantage that voodoo economics was not totally embraced and it could have been worse.  But we won’t get fooled again.

Filibusters II

 

Everybody’s Talkin' 

Everybody's talking at me.
I don't hear a word they're saying,
Only the echoes of my mind.

Can the filibuster be preserved without it just being talking at me?

If the infrastructure bill had been defeated by a filibuster, given the support for infrastructure improvements, it would have probably doomed the filibuster.  Thus if the infrastructure bill passes, one of the consequences is that the filibuster may also be retained.  The filibuster was originally intended as a process to preserve debate.  A super majority of US Senators ( which is currently 60 Senators) is needed to end debate and bring a bill to the floor for a vote.  Before the 1970s, Senate rules required talking filibusters, e.g. debate could continue but that debate had to be active.  This led to the talking filibusters made famous in the movie Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but filibusters have also been used by Southern Senators to stop civil rights legislation.  That led to “debate” being reading from the phone book or reading recipes that had nothing to contribute to the bill being offered, but merely delayed  ending debate and bringing a bill to a vote.  As the self-styled World’s Greatest Deliberative Body, the Senate was justifiably embarrassed by such behavior, feared for its members health, ended the taking filibuster and instituted today's version of the filibuster.

A vote to end debate, to bring a bill to the floor, is currently a public vote.  Thus it is also publicly known whether you voted with, or against, your party.  If your party choses to retaliate, then it is probable that some votes to continue debate are made only out of fear of retaliation. Thus a multiplayer game of 100 Senators devolves into a two-player game of Democrats versus Republicans

Fear of reprisal because of a vote is why general elections are by secret ballot.   If secret ballots were required to end debate and advance a bill, it could preserve the filibuster, but make the filibuster follow its original intent, to preserve debate and let the minority be heard, without letting that minority block any action that does not also have 60 senate votes. Then talking serves a purpose and is not just talking at me.

America's Pastime

 

Take Me Out to the Ballgame

Take me out to the ball game,
Take me out with the crowd;
Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack.
I don't care if I never get back.

Is football America’s pastime?

I love football. I give directions to my house, which is less than 10 miles from Gillette Stadium, the home of the New England Patriots, relative to that stadium.  My dog’s name is Brady, I wonder why?  But if I was asked what is America’s pastime, I would say it should be baseball.

There are 162 games in a baseball season.  Typically each team is expected to win or lose 60 games.  It is what happens in the other 42 games that determines the success of a season. The best teams are not the ones that achieves a plurality, over a .500 record, but the one that achieves a super majority, wins over 100 games.  Baseball playoffs are not one-and-done, but a series recognizing that losses will happen.  The sweetest victory I have even seen was in 2004 when the Red Sox overcame a 0-3 game deficit against the Yankees to win 4-3 and go on to win the World Series. The best batters are those who makes a hit 30% of the time.

I could go on but two clips say it best.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SB16il97yw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIkqNiBASfI

Come home America.  Be safe.

Supply Side Economics?

 Break on Through

You know the day destroys the night

Night divides the day

Tried to run

Tried to hide

Break on through to the other side

So what is supply side economics?

Supply side economics assumes that increasing the supply of goods can stimulate the economy.  This is the opposite from a demand side economics, also known as Keynesian, stimulus which seeks to  increase  the demand for goods, by increasing the purchasing ability of buyers. 

To properly execute this supply side policy, it is necessary to properly define the production equation of suppliers.  The production  equation is traditionally thought to be a function of only capital and labor. However capital is not only investment but also supplying the raw materials, goods, needed to produce a product.  Economists classify goods not simply as free and priced.  Economists use an additional attribute besides price, exclusivity.  A good is exclusive if it can not be used by more than one person at a time. For example my eating a piece of bread means that you can not also eat that piece of bread, i.e. it is exclusive. By contrast, my watching a movie does not prevent you from also watching that same movie, i.e. it is Non-exclusive.

This leads to not just two classes of goods, Private and Public, but four classes of goods. These include Priced and Exclusive, which are Private goods, and  Non-priced and Non‑exclusive, which are Public goods. But it also includes Natural Monopolies: Priced and Non-exclusive; and Common Resources: Non-priced and Exclusive. Suppliers acknowledge natural monopolies, e.g. a cable TV company.  My watching cable TV does not prevent my neighbor from also watching cable TV, but both of us separately pay the cable TV provider.  ( if you have cut the cord like I have, substitute Disney+ or any streaming provider in this example.) The initial cost of Natural Monopolies  is often high, thus society offers protections, e.g. an exclusive franchise to offer cable, to industries to encourage then to make that initial investment.  Industry seems less inclined to acknowledge  Common Resources.  Fishing stocks are a common resource.  It is exclusive. If I eat a fish, then you can not eat that same fish. That fish might be free and the stock may seem vast but it is really has a limit.  Just as it is in society’s interest to encourage industries to invest in natural monopolies, society may spend to increase, or regulate in order to protect, those common resources.  Fishing stocks are regulated to prevent overfishing.  An educated workforce may be necessary for suppliers, but education is a common resource and society invests in education to provide this work force.  Just because a good does not have a price does not mean that society can’t regulate, or spend, to ensure that this common resource will continue to exist, and might even increase.

“Supply side” economics, as it is currently practiced, stimulates the economy by encouraging INVESTMENT.  If the production equation did not require any common resources, including public education and public highways, as raw materials, then neglecting measures to stimulate labor, encouraging investment should increase supply in the long run.  However if the production equation relies on common resources, eliminating regulations on, and decreasing expenditures for, common resources will in the long run DECREASE supply.  Thus the so-called “Supply side” policies have seemed to serve only to reward investment. It provides no reward for labor and reduced common resources.  Truly supply-side economics would also ensure that common goods, as regulated and/or provided by society, increase. Supply side stimulus might be an alternative to demand side stimulus, but what had been practiced has NOT been supply side economics, even if it is called supply side economics.  It is more properly “Investment”  economics at the  expense of Labor and Common Resources.

Is Boston Racist?

 

This Is Me

When the sharpest words wanna cut me down
I'm gonna send a flood, gonna drown 'em out
I'm gonna send a flood
Gonna drown 'em out
Oh
This is me

Recently The Daily Show had an Instagram post concerning a piece it did on "Is Boston Racist"?

Boston, my hometown, is not a racist city.  It is far, far worse.  It is racist, and anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, and nativist, and sexist, and….. well you get the idea.  Isabel Wilkerson proposed combining all of these forms of discrimination in one word, Caste. The ancient Aryans divided the people of India into four castes ( five if you consider Untouchables who have no caste) based only on their ancestors, even though caste members spoke the same language, practiced the same religion, lived in the same country, and otherwise seemed exactly the same as those in other castes.  Nazis were not shy about adopting this system of Caste, in fact they proudly proclaimed themselves to be Aryans. 

But as Isabel Wilkerson also reported, Nazis did not only borrow from the Aryans,  they borrowed from America, especially the Jim Crow laws of the South .  Slavery and the Jim Crow laws of the Old South were not the only example of Caste in American.  The North might have opposed slavery but it proudly embraced Caste.  The drinking toast in Boston goes.

Here’s to Dear old Boston,
The land of the bean and the cod,
Where the Lowells talk only to Cabots,
And the Cabots talk only to God.

Slavery was an extreme from of Racism.  But Racism is only one form of class/caste.  So if the question is Boston a Racist city, the answer will be no.  But that is only because Boston embraces a rigid system of Caste and race is only one of the lowest levels of that Caste system. Does South Boston look down on Roxbury? Of course, but as South Bostonians will tell you that is because Beacon Hill looks down on South Boston,  and South Bostonians think that this is perfectly proper. South Boston does not look down on Roxbury because it is predominantly Black.  It looks down on Roxbury because is residents are a lower caste, and South Boston has accepted their place in the caste system.  Just because this is how things have always been, is not a valid reason for how things will be. For all of us, including Boston, please be you.

Olympic Medal Count

 

My Dog's Bigger Than Your Dog

My dog's bigger than your dog,
My dog's bigger than yours,
My dog's bigger
And he chases mailmen
My dog's bigger than yours.

Do the Olympics “prove” that my country is better than yours?

The Olympic medal count can be viewed in numerous ways.  Countries should not be ranked by medal count, but its is hard to prevent that.  I remember when my sons were first playing Little League, score was not kept in any game, but if you wanted to know the “score” just ask any of the Little Leaguers who were playing.

If countries are to be ranked, there are a variety of ways by which score can be kept by country.  One way is to count the number of Gold Medals.  By that tally, as of the morning of August 5^th, the People’s Republic of China was in first place with 34 Gold medal to second place United States of America with 29 medals.  However the United States ranks by total medals: Gold, Silver and Bronze, and by that count the United States ranks first with 91 medals compared to China’s 74 medals.  However Gold Medals are worth more than Silver or Bronze medals.  If  Gold Medals are worth 3 points, Silver Medals are worth 2 points and Bronze Medals are worth 1 point, then the United States is in first place with 184 and China is in second place with 166 points.

 However the number of “points” you receive is dependent on the number of chances you had to win “points”.  Some countries did not compete for certain medals so their points are low.   I can’t find the number of medals that could have been earned by country, but it seems fairer to rank countries by their efficiency, how many points they won compared to the potential points they could have won.  The problem with efficiency is that a country may have only competed in events it was likely to win, and that would would unfairly boost the country’s efficiency.

Another way to rank countries is by dividing the points earned by the country’s size.  But what do you use for size?  Population?   On that basis San Marino with 1 Silver and 2 Bronze Medal with a population of only 33,731 would be first.  GDP? On that basis San Marino would also rank first because its GDP is only $1.6 trillion. But fielding an Olympic Team is from surplus wealth not from necessity.  Points per mean or median wealth?  On that basis Russia would rank first according to the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Data Book, but to be fair a number of counties with medals are not included in the Global Wealth Data Book.

How should countries that are part of other countries be ranked?  E.g. China Taipei (Taiwan)? Puerto Rico?  How should countries which are banned from competing, like Russia, be ranked?

Since the focus of the Olympics is supposed to be the competitors not their country, maybe keeping score by country is NOT in keeping with the spirit of the Olympics.

Vaccines

 

I Can’t Make You Love Me

'Cuz I can't make you love me
If you don't.
You can't make your heart feel
Something it won't.

Can I make you do something you won’t?

The reluctance to get the COVID-19 vaccine is a classic case of a User Optimal versus a System Optimal solution.  The System Optimal solution is for enough of the population, around 70%,  to get the vaccine in order to achieve herd immunity.  Since in the United States, the vaccine has not been approved for those under 12 years old, it requires that those over 12 years of age have more than a 70% vaccination rate.   The vaccination  rate is currently 64% and  moving slowly.  Those who accept the System Optimal solution have probably already gotten the vaccine.  But the User Optimal solution is to NOT get the vaccine.  If you place no value on others, not yourself, getting COVID, and there is a real probability of a reaction to the vaccine and a long term possibility of side effects of the vaccine, then not getting the vaccine is a valid User Optimal solution. 

Arguing that those not getting the vaccine are being selfish will not change that User Optimal solution.  Paying to get the vaccine might work, but only if that payment is more than the cost perceived for the immediate reaction and the long-term side effects.  Additionally the necessary payment will vary for each individual.   Finding a value that achieves the desired herd immunity is difficult.  Since this is a System Optimal solution, prohibiting Users from participating in desirable system events, say concerts, sporting events, travel, etc. may be the only way to change the User Optimal solution.  Will those who have opposed getting a vaccine complain loudly?  You bet.  But  they may not otherwise choose the System Optimal solution, and the shadow payment of getting them to adopt that System Optimal solution is not known. Making those Users pay a price for not getting the vaccine may be the only way to get them to choose the System Optimal solution.  Society, i.e. the System, just has to ignore the complaints coming from those who are reluctant to getting vaccinated. After all murder, theft, lies, etc. are all User Optimal solutions.  But no murder, no theft, no lies are System Optimal solutions.  If a cost is imposed to make Users choose what society has determined to be a System Optimal solution, then it seems like a small price to pay.  If society is  willing to impose a death penalty to prevent murder, then imposing a vaccine requirement to prevent further COVID outbreaks seems like a small imposition.

Money

 

Money (That's What I Want)

The best things in life are free
But you can keep them for the birds and bees
Now give me money, (That's what I want)
That's what I want

But what is money?

Webster defines money as “something generally accepted as a medium of exchange, a measure of value, or a means of payment.”  To prevent the need to barter, which requires that I have a good that I can exchange for your good, people have historically accepted gold as a medium of exchange.  The problem with gold as  medium of exchange, is that is bulky and heavy.  Paper money began when that gold was stored somewhere and a paper note that represented that gold was used as the medium of exchange.  A problem with this is that it required trust that the paper note was true.  The paper US Dollar might say “In God we trust”, but in fact we trust that the paper dollar is not a counterfeit and does represent something of value.

In addition to trusting that a note is something of value, in order for an economy to grow that medium has to also grow.  Gold can not grow. The frenzy around gold rushes is because the amount of gold on earth is fixed and can not be increased.  This is also true with one of most successful digital currencies, Bitcoin.  There is a limit to the number of Bitcoins that can be created, 21 million, and when all Bitcoins have been created, it can not be grown.

To accommodate growth banks lend the money which is deposited with them.  However, if that money is lent, then it can not be immediately returned to their depositors.  That is why historically there were runs on banks.  The creation of a national bank was a way to spread that problem among the entire nation and not just a few banks.

A popular idea in economics in Modern Monetary Theory, is that the state can create money by increasing the supply of money.  This is hardly modern.  William Jennings Bryan campaigned for silver coinage to increase the supply of money so that “mankind would not be crucified on a cross of gold”. The Weimar republic printed, increased the supply of, money so fast that a loaf of bread in Berlin that cost around 160 Marks at the end of 1922 cost 200,000,000,000 Marks by late 1923.  Increasing the supply of money works only if we can trust those creating money.  They are not really printing money. They are increasing the medium of exchange.  Printing money that exceeds the need for that medium of exchange creates hyperinflation.

The rapid inflation in the 1970s, and the continuous low, but pervasive, inflation of today can arguably be tied to one event, the Nixon Shock of 1971.  Before that event, international trade used the US Dollar backed by gold as its medium of exchange.  When it was no longer backed by gold there was a surplus of international dollars but no comparable increase in the existing supply of goods.  The initial shock resulted in the rapid US inflation in the late 1970s.  The continued growth of the global economy, without increasing the US money supply to consider this growth, has arguably resulted in today’s low but persistent inflation.

When I was a young engineer, I was given advice by an older colleague that a good rule of thumb is that growth should be considered to be 2% per year.  Inflation has been averaging about 2% per year.  A coincidence? I would suggest not.  Should the supply of money be increased, as Modern Monetary Theory suggests? In my opinion yes, but heeding that old advice, it should be limited to about 2% per year.

Olympics

 

Try 

Yeah, yeah, you better try, try, try, try a little more
You ain't never gonna get any man if that's the sort of thing you can do
Shit, there's lot more talent around than that man
Try, try, try, try try try
You've gotta try, try, try, try 

Congratulations to MyKayla Skinner and all of the Olympians, especially those who were NOT gold medal winners.

“And the word was much better for this.  That one man scorned and covered with scars.”

“A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s  a heaven for.”

“They also serve who only stand and wait."

I hope that we have all learned some lessons from watching these Olympics.  Second place is not first loser.  Katy Ledecky's most impressive race was not her Gold Medal performances.  It was the Silver Medal in the women’s 4 x 200m relay where she showed her heart and did not count her team out or let it down.  Great Britain Jesse Knight’s  Olympics did not end in heartbreak when she tripped in the heat of the women’s 400m hurdles. Jordan Rainey did not even get to travel to Tokyo because she was the last person cut from the women’s US Women’s Water Polo team. MyKayla Skinner won a Silver Medal in the Women’s Vault but only got a chance to compete after  Simone Biles dropped out.  Simone Biles may not have won a single medal but her courage and sportsmanship in admitting that she was not her best has been the story of this Olympics.

Winning is not the only thing.  It is the effort that counts.  We can be entertained and celebrate the winners of the competition.  But there would be no competition if you all did not try and try your best.  Thank you all for trying.  If this last year has taught us anything it is how fragile and temporary everything is and how important the effort is.  Stay safe and thank you all.

Fantasy

 

Pure Imagination

There is no life I know
To compare with pure imagination
Living there you'll be free
If you truly wish to be

Is truth always better than fantasy?

In a previous blog post I proposed a framework for human behavior https://dbeagan.blogspot.com/2021/06/truth-justice-and-american-way.html, that included an attribute of Truth vs. Fiction.  I stand by that attribute, but it is not meant to be judgmental.

Being at an extreme for truth might mean reading only works of non‑fiction, watching only documentaries, and viewing a suspension of disbelief as a waste to time.  You can enjoy fiction without abandoning the truth.  Much of the humor in cartoons comes from the knowledge that the reality does not act that way.  If Wil E. Coyote runs off a cliff and doesn’t begin to fall until he realizes that he is running on air, or  the Road Runner enters a tunnel painted on a rock, the humor is that this is contrary to the way things work.  Superheroes smash and destroy buildings without injuring anyone but showing the probable injury might evoke horror instead of the intended excitement. We willingly suspend our belief and accept the conventions of fantasy.  If you read Harry Potter, watch Star Wars, Star Trek or Game of Thrones, you can accept the rules of the story even if those are not the laws of physics.

Believing in something that is not true does not mean that your other contributions are not valuable.  Isaac Newton developed calculus, the law of gravity, optics, etc., but he also wasted his time pursuing  alchemy and occultism and trying to find an elixir to turn lead into gold.

Being able to do stage magic, practicing the art of deception, can be useful in telling stories. Some of the most famous storytellers and performers (e.g. Charles Dickens, Walt Disney, J.J. Abrams, Arsenio Hall, Johnny Carson, etc.) were amateur magicians.  That does not mean that using the tricks of stage magic for deceit or swindling is not wrong. In fact some of the most famous debunkers of the occult were themselves stage magicians, e.g. Harry Houdini, The Great Randi, Penn Jillette).  They better than anyone understand that there is a difference between fantasy and reality.

Believing in fantasy despite facts to the contrary is an extreme that is just as problematic as denying all fiction.  I believe that people who believe in ancient astronauts, UFOs, astrology, a flat Earth, etc. despite facts to the contrary are to be pitied.  But those who swindle, lie, or deceive those who have those beliefs are to be condemned.  There is a difference between believing in fantasy ( e.g. “the WWE is real”) and being entertained by fantasy ( e.g. “I enjoy watching the WWE”).  Some of the greatest advances have come because people adapted ideas from their fantasies.  It is good to have an imagination. It is only bad if you start believing your imagination.