First, allow me to clarify a few points about the video below before I start into the meat of the matter.

The video is obviously edited — for what purpose, I do not know. It could have been to cut down its length or to stitch together a narrative that puts the person being interviewed in the worst possible light. Though, admittedly, given his statements, I don’t know how that’s possible.

I understand that people who are put on the spot with a camera in front of their face are going to stammer and search for words. After seeing thousands of these kinds of videos, I’m convinced that people generally do not do well when confronted with on-the-spot interviews. . . . Read more!

Over on Reddit, I stumbled upon this post in the Atheist subreddit:

Idolize Bill Gates, Not Steve Jobs: At the end of his life, Steve Jobs obsessed over his legacy: Apple. Bill Gates stepped away from Microsoft in 2006 and has devoted his genius to solving the world’s biggest problems, despite the fact that solving those problems doesn’t create profit or fame.

I quickly pointed out that it was laughably ironic that this was posted in an atheist forum as it oozes religiosity.

Well, no, actually. This has everything to do with being in the Atheism subreddit because it is religious nonsense. Let me rewrite that for you:

Idolize Bill Gates, Not Steve Jobs: At the end of his life he did not repent his sins and he obsessed over his legacy: Apple. Bill Gates stepped away from sin and is living a life of good works, despite his prior sin.

There are no economic or philosophical arguments here. We are just told whom to admire (idolize) and whom not to admire (idolize) based on a moral judgment, when none is warranted. How many people benefited from the success of Steve Jobs? How many people’s lives are better off because of that success? How many more people have access to free or near free limitless information because of the competitive nature between Apple and Microsoft?

These questions aren’t asked. Don’t admire Steve Jobs because he didn’t rebuke sin on his deathbed. Admire Bill Gates because he has rebuked sin and is now doing good works.

Religiosity is a very hard thing to let go of, apparently.

Edit: It’s not only astounding that this was posted in an Atheist forum without comment on its religious nature, it’s fantastic that my comment is getting down-voted for pointed it out.

I made a few more running comments, but most were down-voted rather quickly.

This is something that has been on my mind for quite a long time, now. That ardent ‘atheists’ recycle this kind of religiosity is amazing to me. The modern atheist movement has developed some of the most effectively devastating rhetorical tools arguing against the case for God that it’s sometimes embarrassing to watch people try to defend against them.

Yet, many are blind to this kind of religious thinking. More ironically, the same arguments are just as effective against it. And still they do not see.

Religiosity and biases are indeed powerful forces in our nature.

I’ve been thinking that I should probably start posting around these parts again on a semi-regular basis. The problem is, I always have a ton of things to write about, but it all seems so laborious when I get down to it.

So, I figured I’d start writing about what I’m reading. Maybe that will get the creative juices flowing. So, for a while, anyway, I’ll be posting about the books that’s I’m reading, as I read them. Fun, huh?

Currently in my hands is, Watching Baseball Smarter. A professional Fan’s Guide for Beginners, Semi-experts, and Deeply Serious Geeks.

Those who know me, know that I’m not much of a sports fan. I have no love for football or hockey. I’ve never been interested in soccer or basketball. But, I do have a history with Baseball, of a sort. Like most kids, I spent a few summers playing the sport in loosely affiliated city leagues. I don’t remember liking it that much. I never have been much of a “team player”, so that’s not too surprising.

I do remember owning a baseball glove well enough. I liked the ritual of oiling it up, shaping it with a baseball and sleeping with it under my pillow. I always liked playing catch with the neighborhood kids, and older family members, if I was lucky. But, for all that, I never followed the sport, apart from watching a few games when the Cardinals are in the World Series.

Which, to be honest, is partly why I picked up this book. If you’ve ever been in an office environment during a home team’s post season play-offs, you know you can look forward to hearing about it, ad nauseum, until the end of the season. Which is what happened. But, I would find myself drawn to these conversations, in spite of my lack of knowledge about the overall game.

The conversations I would get sucked into were all about statistics and strategy based on all sorts of known and unknown variables. How pitching worked. What the probability of hitting a fast ball or a curve ball were based on how many strikes or outs there were, etc…

I find this kind of stuff fascinating. I’ve come to realize that baseball is a game played for and by individuals as much as it is played for or by a team. Individual strategy counts every bit as other factors. When I read the quote by Red Barber that said, “Baseball is dull only to dull minds”, I knew I found a sport I could follow.

So, in anticipation for the beginning of next year’s season, I’m reading as much about the sport as I’m able. And, since I live in St. Louis, I may as well align my tribal allegiances with the Cardinal Nation.

Go Cards!

The rich on Wall Street are demanding more bailouts:

The Demands Working Group of Occupy Wall Street unanimously endorsed and is circulating for discussion the following demand, which will be submitted to the General Assembly of OWS:

Jobs for ALL – A Massive Public Works and Public Service Program

We demand a massive public works and public service program with direct government employment at prevailing (union) wages, paid for by taxing the rich and corporations, by immediately ending all of America’s wars, and by ending all aid to authoritarian regimes to create 25 million new jobs to:

-Expand education: cut class sizes and provide free university for all;
-Expand healthcare and provide free healthcare for all (single payer system);
-Build housing, guarantee decent housing for all;
-Expand mass transit, provided for free;
the infrastructure—bridges, flood control, roads;
-Research and implement clean energy alternatives; and
-Clean up the environment.

Wait, you didn’t think I was talking about corporate bailouts, did you?

No, I’m talking about the rich people who make up the Working Group of Occupy Wall Street.

There is a very inconvenient and awkward question that is not being answered by the OWS crowd, as it pertains to wealth. Even making the assumption that the majority of those protesting are lower-middle class (a very liberal assumption, by anecdotal evidence), that would still mean that they are richer than 80 to 90 percent of the world’s population.

In fact, the poorest 5 percent of the United States is still richer than 68 percent of the world’s population. When compared to the poorest in India, China, or Afghanistan, the inequality is breathtakingly staggering. That college kid who is 60 grand in debt may as well be Bill Gates to a girl born in parts of rural China or Afghanistan.

Whenever this is brought up, you will inevitably hear this as a riposte:

“The problem is that attitude can be very easily used as an excuse for dismissing the complaints of literally anyone who is not the most oppressed, marginalised, and miserable people in the world.”

In other words, you cannot ignore what is bad here because things are worse elsewhere.

Well, that statement may well have merit, were it argued in another context. In this context, it is meaningless. Here’s why.

The above “demands” have everything to do with trying to bring the classes to a parity rather than fixing the economy. We are constantly barraged with the 99 percent vs. the 1 percent rhetoric. This, in itself is a lie. At worst, the people protesting on Wall Street are the 32 percent. More likely, they are the 20 percent and up.

If there were one shred of intellectual honesty in this movement, the above demands would be much, much different. They would be calling for taxing everyone in America at a much higher rate and redistributing that money to the poor in China and India. As the holders of 20 percent of the world’s wealth, they surely can afford it. After all, there are millions upon millions of people living in soul-crushing, abject poverty at this very moment. A vast number of them can never hope to make more than $1 per day, if that.

Instead, we get demands for free education and free housing for all (well, for all the rich people living in the United States, anyway — everyone else can go get stuffed). This is nothing more than the rich seeking taxpayer money for bailouts through the use of force.

Sound familiar?

I’m not being flippant, here. When it comes to entitlements, tariffs, trade barriers, immigration or where I purchase my goods, I’ve not yet heard a convincing argument for why I should regard a middle-class or working poor American in any higher regard than the absolute poor of other countries.

When I’m told that I should buy American in order to save American jobs, I wonder why a South Korean’s job is of any less importance. When I’m told that I must pay my fair share to help the deserving and undeserving (relatively) poor of this country, I wonder why the absolute poor from other countries shouldn’t get that money first.

But this is what it’s come to, now.

Rich college-age kids asking for taxpayer funded bailouts in order to relieve them of a debt (paid by the taxpayers) that they voluntarily took on with full knowledge that they would have to pay it back. Not only that, the vast majority of them have the means to pay off said debt through hard word and dedication.

Now, tell me again why I should care that a rich kid got a liberal arts degree that didn’t pan out, when tens of millions are living in absolute poverty around the world. Tell me again why rich kids with liberal arts degrees aren’t sacrificing their income, well-being, and happiness to redistribute their wealth to those more in need.

It’s time that we stopped focusing on this murderous idea of “inequality” when we should be thinking instead of relative standards of living over time.

Maybe then we can focus on what’s wrong with our economy rather than just fight about which rich group of people get which bailouts.

[Cross-posted at The Lesson Applied.]

With my previous post, I waded full-on into our ongoing gender war, though that really wasn’t my intention.

After a good bit of discussion with friends and loved ones about the issue, I feel that I should ‘walk back’ some of my comments, clarify others, and expound on the issue as a whole.

My concerns are not with the original incident (man in the elevator) or Ms. Watson’s initial reaction. It’s with her reaction to people questioning her over the incident and then the piling on from P.Z. Myers and Phil Pliat. This I’ve well documented in my previous post.

As I’ve said before, her concerns were with her feeling sexually objectified (which I’ll address downstream), rather than feeling like she was in any danger of being assaulted. The whole specter of rape only came up after P.Z. Myers jumped into the debate; and as far as I can tell, Watson has done nothing to correct that misconception.

Now, allow me to ‘walk back’ or clarify a few points.

Starting from the beginning: That Watson felt uncomfortable is not in question, nor is it really part of the debate. I believe her when she said the incident made her feel uncomfortable. I have no earthly reason not to. However, we are dealing with so many layers of conjecture and speculation here that it’s nearly impossible not to project your own feelings, prejudices, and biases into the discussion. Because of this, I am doing the best I can to look at this without any preconceptions.

Regardless of what Phil Pliat says, the problem was not because a man was in an elevator with a woman late at night. The problem people have is with the solicitation. Had the man never said a word to her, or looked at her during the ride, not a word would have been spoken about this.

Which is interesting to me. A rational person would recognize that a man and a woman alone in an elevator together does not heighten the risk of sexual assault by any degree of certainty. In fact, if we are to extrapolate out for population, it can be assumed that this very scenario occurs hundreds of thousands (if not millions of times) per day around the world and we don’t see internet blogs blowing up about it.

So, at what point does it turn into a “potential sexual assault” in people’s minds?

Where is the line? Is it when he speaks to her? Is it because it’s at 4:00 a.m. instead of 4:00 p.m.? Is it when he says he “finds her interesting?” Or is it only after he utters the words, “would you like to come back to my room for coffee?”

This is a serious question. From where I stand, it seems to me that if the guy had sexual assault on his mind, then the act of solicitation posed no more of a threat than him just being there.

This is where I take extreme issue with people like P.Z. Myers and especially Phil Pliat. That they are blind to the above is a cognitive failure. Do sexual assaults happen on elevators? Yup, of course. But, how statistically prevalent are they? Under what conditions do they occur? How often are the two parties known to each other? What other factors come into play? That these questions are not being asked or addressed by skeptics is distressing to me.

Cannot men and women alike agree that when Phil Pliat jumps right to “potential sexual assault” just because a man and a woman are alone in an elevator demeans the whole conversation? Do people not understand that this goes right to the heart of irrational bigotry? I don’t care what Pliat’s motivations are, here. I care about what he said. If you are going to spend most of your professional career debunking things like astrology, religion, psuedo-science, and general quackery under the umbrella of skepticism, don’t be surprised when people call you on it when you fall for the very same cognitive biases that you attack on a regular basis.

This is why, under the conditions that Watson herself described, I see no reason to fall into the “Oh my God, she could have been raped!” line of thinking.

I also see no reason why one cannot state, in a perfectly civilized tone of voice, that though the fear of being raped on an elevator may be valid for some (given their past histories, experiences, etc.), it is an irrational fear for most people to hold onto.

Given that, I also see no reason why men (or anyone else for that matter) should feel obligated to change their behavior to accommodate those with irrational fears, regardless of the subject matter.

Of course, more empathy is needed from everyone. Never intentionally make someone else uncomfortable, if you can avoid it. To do otherwise is impolite and boorish. But there is no need to kowtow to irrationality as you go about your everyday business.

Onto the matter of the solicitation. This is a bit trickier to tackle, as there are several issues wrapped into one, here. I can easily understand why such a solicitation would creep many women out. However, I can just as easily understand why it would not. I’ve heard excellent arguments from women taking both sides.

To me, that means it’s all situational. Would I proposition a woman on an elevator at 4:00 a.m.? I honestly don’t know. Certainly not if all the right signals were not there. Certainly not out of the blue, like this gentleman apparently did. But what if she were looking at me suggestively? What if our chit-chat was sexually charged in some way? What if we just got done talking for three hours in a group and I felt there was a strong mutual attraction between us? What if, what if, what if.

So, all this talk of “never solicit a woman in an elevator at 4:00 a.m.” may be too ridged. I make this point because there have been dozens of follow-on posts instructing men on “how not to pick up women”, etc. This may very well be good advice to follow, but how do we allow for outliers?

The questions that aren’t being answered or addressed are:

• How many times has this tactic worked on women?
• Would we even hear about them if it did?
• If there is a significant population of women who do not mind being propositioned in such a way under the right circumstances, why should men not attempt such a proposition when they feel they have a chance?
• How many women proposition men in this fashion?
• How many men have said it’s creepy when women do this?

These nuances are exactly what inflames the “gender war” and sends people swirling into orbit with righteous indignation. You have people of both sexes claiming everything from “misogyny” to “potential sexual assault” to “creepy behavior.” Then again, you have people of both sexes insisting that absolutely nothing bad happened in that elevator. That this is a non-issue, to be forgotten and derided.

So, what are we as skeptics to do in this situation?

We need to ask difficult questions and rely on the facts. If something is irrational, we need to point it out. We ask people to show their work. We do not accept emotional overreaction or unfounded conjecture to cloud our judgment. This is an important point as the “skeptic movement” has taken great pains to be a “big tent” organization, inviting people in from differing political ideologies, social strata, genders, race, etc. That there will be conflict when such diversity is present is a given. Feminists and men’s rights activists cannot expect to be immune to people questioning their beliefs any less than skeptics question religiosity, psuedo-science, or quackery. In a skeptical organization, everything is up for debate. Feelings and beliefs do not matter as much as reason and facts.

As stated above, I do not hold any truck with the “potential sexual assault” line of thinking, but I do have sympathies for Watson’s feelings of being objectified, to a point. From what I can tell, this is what Watson’s main complaint is. If so, it’s rather more difficult to pin down any solution.

We can take Watson’s word for it that she gets a great deal of wanted and unwanted attention from men. Obviously, her gender and her looks have a great deal to do with this. But so does the field of interest she’s in and the way she comports herself therein.

If I may clarify, Watson can’t help being a woman anymore than I can help being a man. She can’t help being an attractive woman, anymore than I can help being an average looking man. That people are attracted or disinterested in us for those reasons and those reasons alone are beyond our control. Just because she is a woman means she will attract a good deal of men. Just because she is blessed with good looks means that she will attract even more men (and women). This is basic biology and to deny it would deny the very precepts of biological and social sciences.

So, that’s not the issue, here. The issue is how men (and women) approach her, under what circumstances, under what motivations, etc. I can very well accept the fact that because of her gender and looks, she receives more unwanted attention from men (and women) than an average-looking man would. If this is bothersome, I honestly do not know how to fix it. It depends on the circumstances.

For example, after I wrote my first blog post, my girlfriend and several very close female friends stated to me that I just didn’t understand what it was like to be leered at, ogled over, and approached in an unwanted sexual manner on a near-daily basis for no other reason than being a woman.

They were absolutely correct. I do not know. I have no idea what it’s like, nor do I have any frame of reference on how that would make me feel.

I will not, however, concede the point that this is due to “male privilege.” Just as I would not claim “female privilege” for women who do not understand or have any frame of reference for how men feel in certain situations. This is a conversation-stopper and serves no purpose other than to position yourself as morally superior.

I can only think of one conceivable solution to the problem, and I am open to suggestions.

Anyone at the receiving end of or a witness to such obviously bad social behavior (man or woman), should not hesitate to shame the person/people engaging in such behavior. Do not stand by and allow yourself or other people to be bullied. People (men and women) get away with vile social behavior because people around them allow them to get away with it. I fully understand that a woman might be too intimidated to say something, but this isn’t because of gender. Plenty of men are also afraid to speak up as well. What this says about humanity, I’m not sure. I do recognize that these are social pressures, however. That we turn a blind eye to vile social behavior says more about us as people or a culture than it does about us as men or women.

Watson’s field of interest and how she comports herself are much more under her sphere of control, however. Though many women are beginning to join such organizations, it is still recognizably male dominated. That many more women are joining, however, speaks volumes for the adaptability of such organizations.

How she comports herself is something completely under her control, and it’s a point that is most likely to be misunderstood and attacked. It is not unreasonable to state that if you play the “sexy skeptic” role to your advantage by way of pin-up calendars, sexual innuendo, sexually charged conversations, sexually charged blog posts, semi-naked pictures, whatever, you cannot expect some men (or women) not to approach you as a sexual object. As I stated before, it is not liberating for a woman to talk about sex, but objectifying for a man to talk to a woman about sex. That’s an obvious double standard.

It’s also not unreasonable to point out that double standard when you make the claim of objectification, whether right or wrong.

This is where I’ll be attacked for saying “she was asking for it.” Of course, this is not the case. I’ve been very clear. Every man and woman has the right to express their sexuality without fear of harm or the need to apologize for it. What every man and woman does not have the right of, however, is to not accept the consequences for their actions. If that means that more people view you as a sexual object, then that’s what that means. It does not give a pass to anyone to engage in bad social behavior (leering, ogling, foul language, a repeated unwanted sexual advance) without censure. It does not give anyone the right to initiate force against you (physical contact, herding, etc.) without the the law becoming involved.

A single, unwanted sexual advance does not necessarily equate to “objectification.” I think an argument can be made in this case, taking the entire evening into context, that it could be, but I’m still not sure why anyone should feel overly offended by it. Certainly not to the point of Watson’s actions after the event.

I’m going to deviate a bit from the skeptic point of view, here, and wade into some gender issues that I’ve been thinking about.

A good friend of mine brought this point up when commenting on my original blog post:

Phil Pliat = pre-crime? Your reworking is brilliant by the way, because it underscores the essential challenge of equalization of society. We all approve of setting a disenfranchised group apart in order to provide some uplift and legislation to assure them that the dice cast of all lives are not twisted and turned unfairly by the powers that be. However, who really is willing to draw the line and say – ok, we’re done here. Even steven. I have yet to see that happen. No one who achieves a victory just goes home. I don’t believe it is a slippery slope – I believe it is more like gambling. When you are winning, you don’t leave the table.

First, let me say, I am not a men’s rights advocate anymore than I am a women’s rights advocate. As I have clearly laid out on this blog, I stand up for human rights. Nobody should get special treatment under the law, regardless of their gender, race or, creed.

Women certainly have been cruelly oppressed throughout history. It is my belief that the strides in equality that have been made have much more to do with democratization, industrialization, free trade, and our over-all shunning of religious dogma rather than the feminist movement. Indeed, it is only because of the liberalization of our society that feminism even exists. I believe this is empirically demonstrated by comparing western, First World societies to Third World dictatorships and fiefdoms (which was Dawkins’s whole point when he spoke up).

As we come ever closer to a parity between the sexes, the differences become more stark, and more trivial.

It is not unreasonable to point out that there have been some severe societal over-reactions in our attempt to achieve parity.

It is also not unreasonable to point out that men have serious negative issues relating to their gender, just as women do.

Men are overwhelmingly the victim of more assaults and murders than women, for example. Men are more likely to commit suicide than women. They are more likely to be diagnosed with depression or schizophrenia. Though there are more men on top of the IQ spectrum, there are more on the bottom end, as well.

Diseases like colon or prostate cancer are just as deadly and more prevalent than breast cancer, but they do not receive anywhere near the amount of attention.

Men are more likely to die on the job than women.

Men have shorter life-spans.

Men are more likely to suffer from PTSD.

If a man does not sign up for the draft when turns 18, for whatever reason, he is automatically shut out of all opportunities that would include federal or state funds (college) or any government job. Can women say the same? If this were really an issue for women (as I’ve been told it is) it would have certainly been fixed by now, as women make up at least 50% of the voting block.

Men will overwhelmingly lose custody of their children in a divorce case. Divorce laws around the country are so unfairly biased towards women that it borders on a civil rights issue.

I accept that you are leered at, ogled over, and sexually propositioned more than you care to be. Will women accept that I am also stared at, pointed at, or angrily talked about in a passive-aggressive way by women who see me holding my daughter’s hand out in public?

As a woman, can you imagine any scenario where you would be under immediate suspicion were you walking by yourself in a park where children were present? What if you were out taking pictures?

Do women understand that because of our socialization, men are expected to approach women when they are interested in them, thereby putting themselves in a position to accept all the rejection? Do women face the same social pressures? Must they face the same amount of rejection throughout their lives?

This is a very serious question, because I believe it goes right to the very core of this whole issue. Rebecca Watson is just a much a victim of how women act in the dating world as of how men treat her. If you can imagine a society where both genders take an equal amount of risk when it comes to rejection, I think you would find the incidences of men approaching you would drop somewhat.

Men and women each have their own problems because of their gender. This is where so many people fail when entering this discussion. Some men are every bit as dismissive of those problems as women are. However, feminists cannot expect to be taken seriously by many men until they are willing to at least concede that these problems exist.

Feminists also cannot expect to be taken seriously until they concede that many of the problems listed above (on both sides) are, for the most part, First World problems.

Finally, a point about Richard Dawkins’s statement in all of this. I’ve read hundreds of comments lambasting him for being an “asshole” and “insensitive” for making those comments.

First, not very many people in the atheist movement were very concerned when Dawkins was being an “asshole” or “insensitive” about religion. I don’t know how you can deride him when he attacks something else that he finds equally as irrational in the same manner.

Second, Dawkins repeatedly asked people to explain to him why what he said was wrong. He asked for clarification and intimated that if he were wrong, he would change his statement. Can the same be said about Phil Pliat, P.Z. Myers, or Rebecca Watson?

I wouldn’t think so, certainly not from her “rich, white, male, heterosexual” statements. How does this add to the discussion? How can Watson expect to be taken seriously from this point forward?

Lastly, I’ve run up against the “privileged white male” statement a number of times over the past few days. Please understand that when confronted with such inanity, I will be more than happy to repay you in the same coin by referring to you as a “spoiled brat.”

And, until further discussion arises, I guess that’s all I have to say about that.

I just stumbled across a cache of old email, from the heady days of POP boxes and MBX files, and found this old rant about antitrust and technology that I have no memory of writing. It looks like I actually sent it to Orrin Hatch, though.

Dated June 29, 1998:

An Open Letter to Orrin Hatch

Dear Sen. Hatch,
Although I am no longer a constituent, I lived in Utah for several years while attending school at BYU, so I hope this letter reaches you.

I have a few comments regarding the position you’ve taken in the Justice Department’s suit against Microsoft. According to a press report, you recently said of Microsoft:

“I find it rather surprising that any one company would, rather than seeking to prevail on the merits, instead have the hubris to try and use the appropriations process to ‘go on the offensive’ and seek to restrain a federal law enforcement agency that has an obligation to enforce the laws, as was recently reported.”

In fact, it’s companies like Netscape and Novell who decided to use the blunt force of government to get for them what they could not get for themselves. Upon finding they were not successful competitors to Microsoft’s valuable and popular products, they cried foul.

For years, Microsoft and other software firms had gone about the business of making quality products and letting consumers decide which ones they wanted to buy. But now that Microsoft is proving to be a better competitor than they anticipated, Netscape and Novell have decided to go on the offensive — instead of attempting to “prevail on the merits.” It is odd that you should seem so surprised that Microsoft is attempting to fight back by using techniques resembling the ones that Netscape and Novell pioneered. It is you and the companies you’re trying to “protect” that drove Microsoft to have to concern itself with the political climate. Before then, it was able to focus on what it does best: creating and selling software that people want to use.

I applaud the court’s recent decision that recognizes the value in integrated products. What’s disturbing is that Microsoft should have been required to demonstrate this at all. Are the Justice Dept. and the Judiciary so unfamiliar with basic economics that you don’t realize that when consumers receive more products at a higher quality for a lower price, this is beneficial?

At the crux of this public debate is whether Microsoft should be allowed to include Internet Explorer in its Windows operating system. Of course they should! Windows was created by Microsoft and Windows is owned by Microsoft — not the public, not the government, not Netscape. As property of Microsoft, Windows can and should contain whatever Microsoft wants to integrate with it. And we shouldn’t forget, without Microsoft’s successful Windows operating system, Netscape wouldn’t be in millions of homes today; it would still be just a toy used by computer science majors. Netscape owes much of its success to Microsoft, and it returns the favor by asking its Big Brother to beat it up.

Antitrust law is a vague, broad umbrella under which a company can be charged for almost anything. If prices are too high, you’re gouging. If prices are too low, you’re dumping. If prices are the same, you must be in collusion. Antitrust laws can be wielded as a weapon against anyone who’s successful, for whatever reason the government dreams up, and envy of the success of others is a prime motivator in antitrust cases. Those who can’t win in civil competition instead turn to government force to take the bounty for them. And you should be ashamed for helping them. There may be government laws against vague antritrust considerations, but there’s a higher law against coveting your neighbor’s wealth.

I don’t work for Microsoft, and I’m not affiliated with them in any way. My only reason for writing this is my concern that justice be served. Sen. Hatch, if you’re truly interested in justice you should lead an effort to stop the attack of Microsoft. Your current position has no merit, and harms the consumers you purport to help.

Doing freelance work for a living presents the opportunity to tackle a wide range of problems. Although I’m no programmer, one recent gig called for me to figure out a way to protect website content for a limited period of time, each article becoming accessible to the general public at exactly 6:00 a.m. after it’s posted. That way, paying subscribers have a limited window in which to use content themselves while its timeliness still holds premium value, but the site overall contains a wealth of content to attract everyone else.

It’s easy enough to protect content in WordPress, in any number of ways, so it’s only available to users of your choosing. It only took minutes to figure out how to set an expiration duration for that protection — a piece designated as being in the “Subscribers” category becomes openly accessible, say, 24 hours after being posted. But the details of this challenge initially had me stumped. How to set the exact same expiration time for protection on all new “Subscribers” content, regardless of when during the prior 24 hours it was posted? As far as I could tell, no existing plugin performs this function.

My eventual solution was to call the current time into a variable, then set up an obscene array of variations on it, truncating and adding to some, and transforming some of those modifications back and forth between date strings and Unix timestamps, until I could create the right set of conditional statements using mathematically comparable timestamps.

Here’s the result as applied to the site theme’s single.php template: . . . Read more!

Public choice article of the day, from The Atlantic:

Roughly 70 percent of all antibiotics used in the United States are given to healthy farm animals to foster rapid growth and make up for unhygienic living conditions. Many bacteria that live on animals adapt and transfer to humans, spreading superbugs that are often resistant to treatment.

For more than 35 years, the FDA has recognized that giving antibiotics to farm animals poses a risk to human health, yet the agency has done almost nothing to stop it. Indeed, it has mastered the art of making inaction look like action. Last May, NRDC and our partners sued the FDA to prompt it to take action. Instead, the agency retrenched.

It started by claiming the livestock industry could police itself. In our lawsuit, we asked the FDA to finally rule on two citizen petitions — one filed 12 years ago, the other six years ago — urging the agency to stop the use of antibiotics in healthy animals. In November, the FDA announced that although it shares concerns that the use of antibiotics to make animals grow faster is dangerous for humans, it would deny the petition because it was pursuing an alternative strategy.

This “alternative strategy” turns out to be just another name for the status quo. Instead of banning the use of antibiotics in healthy animals, the FDA is allowing the livestock industry to follow a voluntary approach. But we already know voluntary doesn’t work. The FDA has been operating under that model since 1977, yet the practice has expanded exponentially over the years. Talk about the fox guarding the hen house.

In December, the FDA tried to further justify its inaction by erasing the historic record. Back in 1977, the agency proposed to withdraw approval for the use of several antibiotics in animal feed based on findings published in two notices posted in the Federal Register. The notices containing the findings have been listed in the Federal Register for more than three decades. But just before Christmas a few weeks ago, the FDA pulled the notices. Soon after it buried its 35-year-old proposal, the agency tried to have it both ways. On January 5, it proposed banning off-label uses of a class of antibiotics known as cephalosporins on healthy livestock.

To be clear, although I’d like to avoid the consumption of antibiotic-treated livestock as much as possible, I don’t think the FDA should ban it — a clear overreach of government power.

The lesson here, though, is that when a government agency is tasked with protecting the public interest, public-sector incentives make it a near certainty that the agency will eventually instead collude with special interests in working against the public interest. Instead of serving the one function that is clearly useful for industry oversight — education and advice to consumers who can then make a more informed choice — the FDA has become a legal arbiter of illusory safety.

If the FDA allows a product or practice, the public at large regards it as safe. If the FDA disallows something, society assumes danger. But instituting a top-down decision-making process to centralize the level of risk that consumers should be allowed to take leads to a system that serves nobody well. Life-saving drugs are barred from being used by people who are more than willing to accept their potential hazards. The sale of healthy food is criminalized because of the mere possibility that it could make somebody sick, despite the fact that people can and do get sick from the FDA-approved alternative. And, as shown in The Atlantic, because people trust that D.C. paternalists are looking out for them, they carelessly consume anything that the FDA has let slip through its otherwise iron grip.

A bureaucratic overlord is incapable of choosing the correct balance between risk and reward even for the people in his neighborhood, let alone for more than 300 million strangers scattered throughout the country. There is, however, an alternative, as Larry Van Heerden noted in The Freemam:

The first step to correct these problems is to abolish the FDA, stripping the government of the power to approve drugs (and medical devices) for the market or to remove them from the market. Any rule-making for disclosure and lawsuits for fraud should be devolved to the states.

Even if the FDA were omniscient, objective, and impervious to outside influence, it would be wrong to give it the power to withhold drugs from the market. The proper function of government is to protect individual rights and guard against fraud, not to restrict freedom of choice to protect people from their own ignorance. In fact, the FDA has shown itself to be imperious, subject to prevailing political winds, and indifferent to the thousands of deaths and injuries it has caused.

[...] Forcing all consumers to live by rules that cater to the least responsible individuals imposes huge costs on everyone else and ultimately fails to protect even the willfully ignorant.

[Cross-posted at The Lesson Applied.]

When I was a kid, I loved watching “Happy Days,” even at its shark jumpiest. A big part of the appeal was the adolescent power fantasy of Arthur Fonzarelli, a disco-era caricature of a 1950s motorcycle hoodlum-with-a-heart-of-gold. As the series progressed, Fonzie developed an almost mystical aura, becoming somebody who could make almost anything happen through the sheer power of his cool.

The Fonz could knock down doors with a slap of his hand, summon any girl with a snap, and most often on the show displayed his classic power of fixing the jukebox by banging on it. It’s a seductive fantasy that one might be able to fix a complex piece of machinery through an application of blunt force, without having to worry about the intricate mechanisms that actually allow the machine to work.

Unfortunately, this is the mentality that has reigned for decades in applied public policy.

Is the economy broken? Bang on it. That’ll get it chugging along again. Wait, that didn’t work? You didn’t bang it hard enough. Or maybe your leather jacket needs to be a little cooler next time. At any rate, it’s your fault. If you’d only smacked the economy the way that Fonzie showed you, it totally would have worked.

Economic prescriptions thereby stem from a non-falsifiable tenet of faith in a grown-up power fantasy.

This kind of magical thinking convinces many because it is accompanied by a veneer of rigorous thought. There are even equations! Surely, equations are scientific! But as economist Don Boudreaux pointed out at Cafe Hayek:

The ability to write letters on a board in the form of an equation, to give those letters names that seem to correspond to some imaginable economic things, and to assemble quantitative data on those things, is not necessarily good science.

Keynesian macroeconomic variables lump heterogeneous goods and services into undifferentiated masses, no longer to be understood as the complex workings of a dynamic system of social cooperation. But just because you can gather a bunch of statistics and aggregate them into a variable doesn’t mean that the variable has a meaningful application to the real economy.

If you want to fix a jukebox in real life, a mechanic might be able to get the job done by tinkering with the machinery until each piece once again functions correctly. It’s easy for people who have a facility with physical forms of engineering to take a similar view of the economy, thinking that if only the right people were in charge, they could tweak policy here and there to ensure successful outcomes for everyone. Adam Smith explained why the economy can’t be successfully engineered in such a way:

The man of system, on the contrary, is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might chuse to impress upon it. If those two principles coincide and act in the same direction, the game of human society will go on easily and harmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and successful. If they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably, and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder.

Even though an economy can’t be planned, or even tailored, successfully from on high, that form of scientism is at least understandable. It at least takes into account a small measure of the complexity of decentralized economic activity, even if it doesn’t — indeed, can’t — consider the rest. Keynesian macroeconomics is far worse, shunning even the scientistic attempt to grapple with at least some heterogeneous microeconomic factors as being the causal source of economywide trends. Instead, they insist that policymakers expropriate as much cash as humanly possible and wallop the economy with it as hard as they can.

Economist Steven Horwitz summed up the real prescription for economic recovery:

Being too focused on Keynes’s aggregates can also mislead us as to the best ways to get out of the recession once we’re in it. It may look as if all we need more is investment or more jobs. But once we understand that the “fundamental mechanisms of change” have to do with the boom’s microeconomic misallocation of capital and labor, we see that what is needed is a reallocation of resources not just more of them. Capital needs to move out of unproductive lines and back toward productive ones, and the same is true of labor.

Stimulus spending, bailouts, and extension of unemployment benefits only prevent the fundamental mechanisms of change from doing their work in unwinding the errors of the last decade. The cure for macroeconomic discoordination is freeing up the entrepreneurial market process to reallocate and coordinate resources. But 80 years after Hayek first made the point, the fascination by economists and politicians with Keynes’s aggregates continues to conceal the fundamental mechanisms of change, and in so doing, also continues to block the processes through which a sustainable recovery can take place.

In the end, the economy is not a jukebox, and neither a mechanic nor Ben Bernanke in the coolest leather jacket ever made can save it from its turmoils. Instead, the economy is made up of hundreds of millions of people with billions of plans, many of which fail but some of which succeed. Nobody knows for sure which plans will pan out in advance — not the citizens making them, and certainly not their public officials.

Only by letting individuals, alone or in voluntary association with others, respond to local conditions with unique knowledge can the best plans be discovered, expanded, and replicated. That process is made much more difficult when they face continual interference from central planners who only pretend they can know what’s best.

[Cross-posted at The Lesson Applied.]

Cafe Hayek‘s Russ Roberts tells the House Oversight Committee that he wants his country back. Highlights of his testimony:

We are what we do — not what we wish to be, not what we say we are — but what we do. And what we do here in Washington is rescue large companies, large financial institutions, and rich people from the consequences of their mistakes. When mistakes don’t cost you anything, you do more of them. When your teenager drives drunk and wrecks the car, you keep giving him a do-over, repairing the car and handing him his keys, he’ll keep driving drunk. Washington keeps giving bad banks and Wall Street firms a do-over: ‘Here are the keys; keep driving!’ The story always ends with a crash.

And:

We need to stop trying to imagine we can design housing markets, mortgage markets, financial markets, and compensation.

Watch the whole thing: . . . Read more!

Here’s a great cartoon from Completely Serious Comics published earlier this year, currently being passed around on Facebook by critics of Keynesian stimulus: . . . Read more!

Not moving the entire blog, that is, but moving a discussion from elsewhere to here.

The other day, Andrew Hanson posted a blog entry recounting a series of Tweets between us. I would have been happy to make additional conversational headway in the comment section there, but I seem to have been blocked from posting additional comments.

Andrew quoted four of our Tweets; I’ll quote them all, for context. I almost never go to Twitter, so I don’t see other people’s Tweets unless I get an email notification. Some of the Tweets in the series below are therefore responding directly to a non-adjacent Tweet in the conversation, having lagged behind an email delay.

arhanson Andrew Hanson
@ericddixon RT @ModeledBehavior Arnold Kling: a conservative economist against teacher merit pay news.heartland.org/newspaper-arti…

ericddixon Eric D. Dixon
@arhanson Kling doesn’t oppose merit pay at all; he thinks test scores are a lousy measure. And whaddaya know, I’ve always thought that too

arhanson Andrew Hanson
@ericddixon “A government-run system of teacher compensation, based on test scores, would in some ways be the worst of all worlds.”

arhanson Andrew Hanson
@ericddixon seems to oppose merit-pay systems based on test scores, e.g., NY and DC. Do you oppose them as well?

ericddixon Eric D. Dixon
@arhanson Govt is incompetent, and test scores are a lousy measure of teacher success. I’m not sure what part of this is supposed to be new.

ericddixon Eric D. Dixon
@arhanson I oppose public schools. Details of their implementation will never be better than second-best.

ericddixon Eric D. Dixon
Why do people have conversations via Twitter? #pointless

arhanson Andrew Hanson
@ericddixon Doesn’t really answer whether you agree w/ Kling on “worst of all worlds”; difference between second-best and least-best

ericddixon Eric D. Dixon
@arhanson Try speaking for yourself in the future.

arhanson Andrew Hanson
@ericddixon See my twitter feed/blog/policymic articles for personal thoughts: amateurphilosophy.wordpress.com policymic.com/profile/show?i…

arhanson Andrew Hanson
@ericddixon just thought you’d find the piece interesting, not trying to start a twitter arg, no hard feelings

ericddixon Eric D. Dixon
@arhanson Maybe someday I will, if I have reason to believe you’ll say something worthwhile.

arhanson Andrew Hanson
@ericddixon Not all of us can be as intelligent as you, sir.

arhanson Andrew Hanson
@ericddixon Also, it’s unbecoming to give orders to people who aren’t your children or subordinates.

ericddixon Eric D. Dixon
@arhanson seems to think it’s OK to put words in others’ mouths in a public forum w/ faint qualification, pretending it’s all friendly convo

arhanson Andrew Hanson
@ericddixon has ruined my Twitterverse reputation!

In his blog entry, Andrew quoted four of those Tweets, following it with another quote by Arnold Kling, and Andrew’s own summation pointing out that he was correctly characterizing Kling, and I was not:

Arnold Kling on EconLog:

Against Merit Pay for Teachers (title)

That would be my position.

I guess me retweeting Modeled Behavior representing Kling as “a conservative economist against merit pay” whose self-titled blogpost is Against Merit Pay and says that’s his position counts as “putting words in others’ mouths”.

At least in the strange world of Internet arguments.

An exchange in his blog’s comment section ensued:

Eric D. Dixon Says:
October 13, 2011 at 12:23 am
So, now that I’ve seen this blog entry, and Justin’s comment on Facebook explaining an alternate interpretation of your comment that I had not previously considered, I think that I should make myself perfectly clear.

The Heartland article that you originally Tweeted at me had Arnold Kling arguing against a very specific type of merit pay — based on test scores within public schools. He says in that same piece that “I believe good teachers should be rewarded,” a view that would entail support for some form of merit compensation, if not in public schools, and if not based on test scores. Hence my contention that “Kling doesn’t oppose merit pay at all; he thinks test scores are a lousy measure.”

So, later, you pointed to another post at a different location titled “Against Merit Pay for Teachers,” stating that this is, indeed, his position. But he also follows that statement with additional text placing his position in a very specific context — merit pay based on test scores in public schools. Although the title of this post elides his opinion that “I believe good teachers should be rewarded,” the entry itself doesn’t contradict his view that he would favor merit compensation of some form in something other than public schools.

You also didn’t mention Kling’s full conclusion, which includes his suggestion that the public school system should be discontinued in order to achieve real student gains.

When you Tweeted this follow-up, leaving out the word “Kling” before the word “seems,” I assumed you were disingenuously trying to sum up my own unstated opinion to score unearned rhetorical points:

@ericddixon seems to oppose merit-pay systems based on test scores, e.g., NY and DC. Do you oppose them as well?

I see now that I was incorrect, but I still think it’s a reasonable reading of what you wrote — the obvious reading, even — so I objected to you putting words in my mouth.

This brings me back to my own Tweet from the other day, which most accurately sums up my take on this mess:

Why do people have conversations via Twitter? #pointless

Andrew R. Hanson Says:
October 13, 2011 at 10:33 am
As I told Justin’s friend Billy, I don’t really have any interest in discussing politics or philosophy with someone who can’t do it civilly without throwing out personal insults. For the record, I wasn’t looking for an argument, I just read the piece and remembered you and I had discussed merit pay earlier and that you respect Arnold Kling, so I tagged you on the retweet. I’ve had many discussions via Twitter with libertarians and other adversaries and never had an issue with someone insulting my personal integrity, let alone people I know and have hung out with.

Eric D. Dixon Says:
October 13, 2011 at 1:27 pm
Agreed, which is why I was so stunned to see from you what appeared to be clear, shameless trolling designed to provoke.

Eric D. Dixon Says:
October 13, 2011 at 2:23 pm
I also missed the part where I insulted your “personal integrity.”

Anonymous Says:
October 13, 2011 at 2:32 pm
Dude, get over it. Not everything is as dramatic as you seem to think. You’ve written your nine-paragraph essay. Move on. I won’t send you hyperlinks in the future. Lesson learned.

For the record, I did find the link interesting, even if I wasn’t immediately ready to draw the same lesson from it that Andrew was. I didn’t object until it appeared that he was trying to put words in my mouth, not Kling’s, in a public forum, summing up an opinion that I had not stated. Although his Tweet still clearly reads that way to me, he says that’s not what he meant, and I take him at his word. If he had meant it the way it reads, though, I would indeed consider it a purposeful misrepresentation, and therefore a breach of personal integrity — certainly worthy of rude dismissal, even if that’s not a particularly effective rhetorical strategy. I’m glad that’s not the case.

And although I wish I hadn’t jumped to that conclusion based on the obvious reading of what he wrote, I don’t think it was an unreasonable conclusion. Glib tweaking, if not outright trolling, has been at least an occasional feature of Andrew’s debating style the entire time I’ve known him. For instance, one time Andrew altered a Wikipedia article during the course of a Facebook debate to define a term the way he wanted, using my own out-of-context words as the text of that definition. I immediately changed it back and added a note to the discussion page for that entry. It was a joke on Andrew’s part — perhaps even a good joke — but I have trouble humoring people who are glib about serious ideas, especially in a public forum.

Still, although I may have handled the Twitter situation rudely in response to what I viewed as a clear personal slight, a rude dismissal is not the same as insulting personal integrity. Andrew deleted a Facebook comment in which I called him a “nice guy with terrible ideas,” which is also not an insult of his personal integrity. I’m not a fan of Andrew’s ideas, it’s true, in the same way that I think that Paul Krugman has terrible ideas, Cass Sunstein has terrible ideas, and John Maynard Keynes had terrible ideas, ones that make the world a markedly worse place the more they’re heeded by people in positions of power. That’s why I argue against those ideas whenever I have time and inclination. Still, I know that Andrew is sincere in believing his ideas to be as careful and beneficial as he can make them. That sincerity is a marker of his integrity, whether or not I agree with his conclusions — which I do indeed believe to be largely terrible.

It also seems that Andrew thinks that I and other libertarians have terrible ideas, else why would he argue against them so frequently? He might not use the word “terrible” — perhaps “misguided” or “ill-conceived.” But, really, is there a huge difference? We’ve vastly disagreed on almost every policy issue we’ve ever discussed, immigration being one notable exception. I don’t mind being thought of by others as woefully wrongheaded, though, and have never considered it a personal insult. Validation from others is nice, I guess, but largely irrelevant to my personal values.

At any rate, no, I don’t make a habit of reading Andrew’s blog entries, and will almost certainly continue that aversion in the future. This is the first one that I’ve read in more than a year. This doesn’t mean that I think Andrew’s a bad guy, or even that I couldn’t learn from his thought process, conclusions aside. Life is short, though, so I spend my reading time elsewhere. It’s not Rotten Tomatoes, but it’s a system that has worked for me so far.