gavinomicsº

New Blog

2011-04-15T17:11:00.003-06:00

I have another new blog. It is inspired by my senior show. Check it out.
paradigmsandpolitics.com

Benefits of University Tuition Inflation

2010-10-14T12:42:00.003-06:00

University Tuition inflation has been rising dramatically—more than national inflation. Here is one possible benefit:
It drives students away from humanities and other less productive and liberal-leaning majors. It encourages the seeking of more productive and more profitable majors—majors that will have a higher return on their investment such as business, engineering, economics etc.

Great article here:
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2010/10/14/edelstein

New Blog on Design and Innovation

2010-09-15T00:42:00.002-06:00

I have a brand new Blog on design and innovation.

It is at:

gavinomics.com

I want the content to be good and useful. Send me feedback.

You must watch this!

2010-09-04T14:02:00.002-06:00

We are living in exponential times. We need to rethink our education system to prepare our kids for the changes ahead.

Icons and Branding

2010-07-08T20:30:00.018-06:00

Our minds can interpret visual abstractions better than they can interpret written (or typed) words. In an evolutionary explanation, written words are a relatively new technology and there is no reason why our minds would be able to process words easily compared to more useful inputs (more useful concerning survivability for our evolutionary ancestors). Pictures were probably more useful (hence the cave paintings) because the human mind can naturally interpret a 2D image as representing 3D objects in the real world—no clumsy and time-consuming-to-learn alphabet needed. In other words, we are born with picture-reading ability, not with word-reading ability.

In graphic design, icons are little pictures that can supplement written words. Icons can be a powerful part of the visual vocabulary of a brand because they are more (1) more interesting and eye catching, and (2) more easily memorable than words. According to cognitive scientist Steven Pinker, "The two most vivid forms of working memory are mental images, also called a visiospatial sketchpad, and snatches of inner speech".

Above are some icons that I did for a company called BerryPlus. The name of the company is rather bad in my opinion because it lacks clarity. However, based on the icons, can you tell what kind of company it is?

Imagine how much more interesting it is to look at these icons as opposed to written words that describe the company. I can't imagine anything written that would be as eye-catching as icons that communicates as much as the icons do. However, if one does take the time to read written copy, it can be more memorable than icons if the copyrighter engages the imagination by creating a more vivid mental images.

Icons can have great extendability and flexibility in a brand such as in the following pattern:

For Clothes:

And graphic shape:

And Brochure:

And equations:

Beautiful "Lo-Res" images

2010-07-06T21:06:00.010-06:00

A shoe company started by Rem Koolhaas' nephew called United Nude has been manipulating objects with 3d software as a fun side project. I think that the work is beautiful and noteworthy. Check our more pictures here:
http://www.loresproject.com/

"This is a Lamborghini Countach. It was created by taking a hyper-accurate 3-D model of an actual Lamborghini (made up of millions of polygons), then gradually decreasing the resolution of the model with 3-D software until the object is lo-resed down to its stealthy essence." —From Popular Science

I think I like this Panton stacking chair better than the original.

How Apple Inc. is like Frank Lloyd Wright

2010-07-06T12:27:00.001-06:00

Apple has created the iphone 4—It has had the most successful product launch in history. More than 1.7 Million units have been sold in the first 3 days of it being available, but it had some quirks. The iphone 4 was thought to have antenna problems and then Apple realized that the reception indicator was never accurate in the first place. The critics have scrutinized this mistake with as much fervor as the pharisees tried to scrutinize Jesus.

Nevertheless, the iphone 4 is a beautiful piece of craftsmanship. The actual users (accept for the attention-seeking complainers) love the product despite its flaws.

Apple reminds me of the great architect—Frank Lloyd Wright. For art historians and those who appreciate fine art and architecture, many will claim that Frank Lloyd Wright was the greatest architect of the 20th century. However, his buildings were often full of flaws. The Johnson Wax Building had many leaks. Some of his homes had ceilings that were too short for the occupants to stand. His chairs were incredibly uncomfortable. His most famous house, Falling Water, wasn't even structurally sound. Neither was Wright particularly apologetic for these short-comings.

Despite these problems, Frank Llyod Wright was, like Apple Inc., innovative, original, and inspiring.

Libertarians, Independence, and War

2010-07-04T23:46:00.004-06:00

In my experience, Ron Paul style libertarians tend to believe that the US should not engage in any war at all unless it is only for protecting America directly. They say that America should not be involved because "we shouldn't be the policeman of the world". While there may be some scenarios where this philosophy is justified, libertarians tend to apply this philosophy with a blanket approach to any war abroad. They tend to take a categorical stance which seems rather simplistic.

If this philosophy was applied consistently, then no other country should engage in helping other countries with their struggles as well. Therefore, taken to it's logical conclusions, the French should not have aided the Americans in the Revolutionary war. There was little in it for the French. The war damaged France's relations with Austria and other countries. It was very detrimental to France's financial situation. They gained back some territories, but in the end, it is my understanding that they spent more on helping America than they gained.

On this Independence Day, I am grateful that the French were not libertarians.

What can language tell us about Human Nature?

2010-05-28T23:44:00.003-06:00

Human nature is the innate disposition that everyone is born with which seems to significantly influence thoughts, desires, and behavior. Human nature is very interesting to me because beliefs about human nature are the main core assumptions that lead to systems of political beliefs. According to a book that I am currently reading called "The Stuff of Thought", language can shed light onto how the mind works which has implications for human nature.

When a baby listens to language, he automatically starts to associate the words he hears with the objects the words are referring to. It seems that this could not happen unless the baby was born with a mechanism in his brain that allows him to make associations. Therefore, the mind has an innate ability to learn language.

On top of learning words and then memorizing them, babies also analyze language through induction and make generalizations. They do not know that they are using logical induction, but they seem to be born with the natural ability to so. When a child says something like, "Don't tickle me, I'm laughable" or "The kitten is wake-upped" they are not simply parroting something they heard before, because adults do not speak like that. What the talking baby is doing(unknowingly of course) is making assumptions about how the ingredients of language may combine. Through induction they have guessed at the how the rules of suffixes, verbs, etc. work.

In order to learn language, the mind must be constrained to pick out generalizations from the words we hear. In the next few days I will post several examples of how the mind is born to understand language, showing that the mind is not born as a blank slate, but as a device that is prepackaged with constraints that allow us to learn language.

Things to write about in the future

2010-05-25T22:14:00.005-06:00

This blog is the story of my personal intellectual development. I have purchased gavinomics.com to post a more professional looking wordpress blog with other pages to put more permanent ideas and images. Still coming soon...

I have been studying about a lot of things lately that I want to write about on my blog. Do any of these topics sound interesting to you?

1. Economics of natural selection (economic use of nutrients towards evolutionarily useful traits)

2. The benefits of self-deception (how emotions such as love and anger are self-decevieing but involve payoffs)

3. The psychology of art and design (what are the universal tastes in art?...what are the acquired tastes in art?)

4. The assumptions about human nature that have lead to artistic movements such as modernism

5. Nuclear deterrence and conflict strategy (game theory applied to war)

6. General evidences for the fact of biological evolution

7. The evolutionary history of Financial markets

8. What we can learn from the cognitive strengths of autistics (mental ordering and stepping away from thinking in stories)

9. Evolutionary psychology and how it creates/interacts with culture

10. Why people insulate their political opinions from feedback and how to turn the core assumptions that lead to political ideologies into testable scientific hypothesis

11. Male-female differences (how stereotypes of men and women underestimate their actual differences)

12. Language as a window into human nature (and why the rules of language is so crazy)

13. The psychological, economic, and political benefits of charitable giving

14. How Soviet socialism has negatively affected family structure in Russia

15. How Christianity led to the concepts of freedom and the individual which are the underlying assumptions that support capitalism

16. The effects of higher education on inequality.

What I have learned in spite of what my teachers taught me about Graphic Design

2010-04-23T17:29:00.005-06:00

I have just finished my BFA program at BYU. Here are some things that my teachers probably wished that I didn't learn:
THERE IS NO TRUTH IN GRAPHIC DESIGN!

(The following is a response to the speech given by a fellow student at my graduation from the graphic design program at BYU. His speech touched on the issue that beauty and truth are the same thing echoing the sentiments of the teacher)

1. Designing in the sense of adding balance, contrast, cohesion etc. to a composition is pleasing to humans because it pushes the pleasure buttons in our brains. The pleasure is universal to humans because our brains evolved the same way. Designing is no different from adding chemicals together to make cheesecake. Cheesecake pushes the pleasure buttons in our brains too, but there is no truth in cheesecake. This may seem to degrade design in a way because it takes it out of a "divine realm" but it also glorifies design in another way by revealing the awe and complexity of our brains as it reacts to pleasurable designs that contain geometry and decoration.

2. Designing in the sense of communicating is simply a technology for spreading information. There is no inherent truth in technology, though there may be truth in the message it is communicating. If design is communicating something valuable like the gospel, then design can help change the world. But, most designers are too afraid to communicate the gospel through design outright. Designers spend their time designing, which means that they did not use that time to get trained in economics, politics, philosophy, and the law. This tends to make designers who make political statements look silly to those who were trained in those areas just as an economist would look silly if he tried to design something. My critique is that designers are good at invoking emotion but they leave out the logic in their "social commentary".

3. Good design has no inherent truth in it. Good design is simply design that fulfills it's purpose, whatever that purpose may be. There may be objectively good or bad purposes such as spiritual purposes vs. carnal purposes.

4. Design can be pleasurable as it interacts with our innate human nature (our minds). But, it can also be subjective to the viewer as it may invoke different associations or symbols that relate to the unique memories and experiences of the viewer. Basically, although we are born with the same pleasure buttons in our brains, some tastes can be acquired and are therefore subjective (or relative).

5. Design as art is useless to human progress just as cheesecake is practically useless. (Maybe cheesecake is more useful than art because you can eat it). But, useless things, paradoxically, can be highly useful for a certain purpose—appraising the assets of the bearer of useless things. Rich people buy art and inaccessible design to show off their status. Universal tastes that are liked by most people such as realistic decorations of plants and animals, are generally disdained by the elite. As my design teacher says, "It is just fluff...pedestrian...mere decoration... color is nothing but an embellishment.." But, universally, "the masses" prefer decoration, organic embellishment, and color. (Probably because it is reflective of the environment that our ancestors evolved in—the savannah) Most graphic designers in my experience are elitist. Their connoisseurship of difficult and inaccessible works of culture serves as a badge in society's upper strata. Therefore, design as art has done more to fragment people into classes, than to unify them.

New Blog

2010-04-15T23:52:00.003-06:00

Since January I have been promising a new blog. I want to focus my new blog on paradigms. A single paradigm can affect the way we act towards others as well as influence the way that we vote. I want to examine these paradigms both to point out there logical conclusions, but also to scrutinize the paradigms themselves. Examining paradigmatic assumptions concerning human nature will be the main theme of the new blog. COMING SOON!

Intellectuals and Professors

2010-03-14T13:59:00.003-06:00

The type of professor that has been discussed here recently is one subclass of intellectuals. Intellectuals, as defined by Thomas Sowell, are persons whose only profession is the creation of ideas. A brilliant engineer or scientist has intellectual discipline but is not an intellectual in this sense since he actually builds tangible things above and beyond ideas. Intellectuals tend to follow a specific pattern of behavior and ideas that stem from a vision of how they see themselves within relation to the rest of the world.

Most people who become part of the intellectual class seem to start with the vision that man is unconstrained with regard to reason and morality. They then derive from that vision that those with the most reason and intelligence ought to deliberately effect outcomes in society by imposing their goals and crusades on society. Since they are the most intelligent, they believe that they ought to be able their preferences on everyone else.

Hence, the professors that are on a crusade to impose their prepacked political conclusions on their students are like intellectuals or are inspired by intellectuals in that they see their role as deliberately effecting society.

This vision leads intellectuals to want to make things look bad so that they can take the role of savior to everyone else. This vision also leads them to demonize those who disagree with them because their sense of self-worth is at stake.

Higher Education—Conspicuous Waste

2010-02-18T13:22:00.004-07:00

Employers want a way to know which potential employees are good workers or bad workers. But, knowledge is not free. It is too costly to study each applicant carefully enough to know which are good and which are bad. Therefore employers will look for shortcuts and signals that convey some relevant knowledge. One of those signals is a university degree.

Much of the knowledge gained at a university is useless in the real world. I see a university degree as a form of conspicuous waste. In the light of my previous posts, it is an even greater waste when what students take away from the university are prepackaged political conclusions from liberal professors.

When too many people get a bachelors degree, a degree looses its value as a signaling device. Therefore students are pushed into masters programs to signal that they are good employers. One consequence of this inflationary process is that it increases income inequality between the non-university grads and the "good workers" even though the non-university grads are quite likely to have more real-world experience and consequential knowledge than the "special" knowledge of arrogant university grads.

Teacher-Student Relationship

2010-02-12T15:39:00.003-07:00

Students pay professors to teach them, just as they pay for any other service. But teachers give grades to students so the students can't act as if they are paying the teachers for a service. I find the relationship weird and uncomfortable. It is even more uncomfortable when you, like me, had to apply to get into a program. I was chosen along with 15 others or so to enter the Bachelors of Fine Arts program at BYU. Being accepted into the program means that you can get kicked out of the program also. I then have a feeling that I shouldn't upset the professor, instead of the professor worrying about upsetting me who is his customer.

Therefore, it seems that the professor has an innate intimidating power over his students. If the student vocalizes his disagreements against the professors opinions, the teacher might deliberately or perhaps even subconsciously reveal his dislike for the dissenters in the form of lower grades. How can this problem be solved?

Economic Illiteracy

2010-02-09T17:50:00.005-07:00

If an economics professor proposed a new technique in brain surgery or said that he could design your company logo, we would be stupid to listen to him. But when a graphic design or a medical professor talk about how to improve the economy (by talking about trade or the environment), our skepticism stays home. Why is this?

It is because of (1) widespread economic illiteracy and (2) the arrogance of professors who think that because they are competent in one area, they should be competent in other areas as well. Arrogance and ignorance are always found together.

The following video is about real consequences (the conviction of innocent people) of people who give advice outside of their trained competencies:

http://www.ted.com/talks/peter_donnelly_shows_how_stats_fool_juries.html

Sincere Teaching

2010-02-02T16:04:00.010-07:00

I assume that professors who share their opinions in the classroom are sincere. I think that they are insulating students from gaining intelligence, but I have no reason to believe that they are insincere.

Sincerity is a most important virtue according to liberals because man is able to and should deliberately affect outcomes. Those who are doing something contrary to the goals of liberalism must therefore be insincere (or stupid) since they did not come to the same conclusions as liberals.

Edmund Burke had a different vision of sincerity, "Man may do the worst of things without being the worst of men." Sincerity is an over-rated virtue. Reality is so complex that 2 men can come to opposite conclusions after examining the same data.

A more important virtue than sincerity is fidelity. Man ought to have fidelity within his own specialization. A professor should see that it is his duty to stay within his own competence and perpetuate a process of learning among his students, even if his students will end up disagreeing with him on political issues. Sincere teaching is meaningless. Even if students are parroting positive opinions from sincere teachers, their long term ability to think for themselves will be inhibited.

Stay tuned for my new blog coming soon...

Teaching Based on Core Assumptions

2010-02-01T18:58:00.007-07:00

In my last blog, I attacked liberalism for its propensity to focus on deliberately affecting the results in teaching instead of relying on the process of teaching students how to think for themselves.

If conservative professors taught their opinions in the classroom, I would be attacking them for the same reason. But my guess is that conservative professors would not be as indoctrinary and masturbatory as liberal professors. Here is why:

Conservatives begin with the underlying core assumption that man is constrained with regards to reason, therefore man is fallible and prone to make mistakes. Therefore, processes such as the rule of law, free-markets and teaching children how to think for themselves produce better results because it is not relying on the wisdom of "the elite" to directly control the outcome.

Since (in my opinion) good teaching is a process-oriented activity instead of a results-oriented activity, conservatives must logically tend to be better teachers. This is because they tend will focus on the process which means that they will withhold their political views from the classroom. Liberals believe in deliberately affecting results, which is why they similarly favor larger government, and more direct involvement of the economy.

I do not have data on whether conservatives actually do preach less in the classroom. But, it is true in my own experience. If there was a "conservative" that was preaching his views, he would be logically inconsistent with the core assumptions of own ideology.

Unconstrained Teaching

2010-01-28T19:08:00.012-07:00

The liberal view starts with the most basic and core assumption that man has no inherent limitations to morality and reason. This is called the unconstrained vision of human nature. The implications of this core assumption are telling. One implication is that man is not inherently (internally) limited, therefore the problems in society come from external institutions (such as poverty or racism). People who have not reached their potential are therefore victims. Fix human nature and institutions and voilá: Utopia.

Another implication of this core assumption is that man is capable, through his own reason, to directly affect outcomes in society. If man truly has no inherent limits on reason, then he can and should use his reason to create utopia by changing human nature and fixing institutions that cause problems. Since some people are prevented from realizing their intellectual potential, it logically follows that those with the most reason should make deliberate decisions on behalf of their benighted counterparts.

Essentially, the unconstrained vision grants those who hold this vision a sense of self-worth. This means that liberals who see themselves in a higher intellectual plane will tend to seek positions of power to influence others deliberately and not through some "uncontrolled" process such as the rule of law and free markets.

Hence we should expect that the position of university professor would attract liberals. I was thinking about this before I came across this graph from the New York Times:

This graph vindicates my vision of liberals and professors. They are less likely to focus on a process whereby the student will analyze arguments and think for themselves. They are more likely to want to use their "reason" to deliberately affect the outcome of the students learning experience. The arrogance of professors leads to ignorance of students—though on both (if the student is successfully indoctrinated) is bestowed an anointed status above the "benighted" masses.

Please Stay tuned for the rebloot of my blog...coming soon...

Unaccountable Teaching

2010-01-27T18:35:00.004-07:00

Still in the process of Reblooting...

Tenure was originally given to teachers to protect academic freedom outside of the classroom. This meant that the beliefs and practices of the teachers outside of the classroom would not be taken into account when deciding to hire or fire a teacher. Academic freedom has since been interpretted to protect the teachers for any activity they do inside the classroom.

Originally, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) stated in their report on tenure that professors should not "take advantage of the student's immaturity by indoctrinating him with the teacher's own opinions before the student has an opportunity to fairly examine other opinions upon the matters in question."

This attitude has changed. A survey in 1969 found that 4 out of 5 professors agreed that "faculty members should be free to present in class any idea that they consider relevant" which includes their opinions.

Markets work when those who provide services are subject to feedback mechanisms in the market. For example, an architect who builds a building that crumbles will lose his profession. But, when a teacher hinders a student from learning how to think for himself, the teacher will carry on as usual. The notion of academic freedom has insulated professors from feedback which is perhaps the main cause of the deterioration of teaching and learning in America.

Unethical Teaching

2010-01-26T09:50:00.005-07:00

I am still in the process of reblooting, but for now, I have been thinking about teaching and ethics.

In my opinion, the best sort of teaching is a process that helps students think for themselves. The best sort of learning is a process whereby one subjects all arguments to the systematic analysis found in various disciplines.

Many professors (such as my design teacher) politicize teaching by sharing their own political views (on war, environment, organic food, economics, etc). This in-vogue method goes directly counter to good teaching for 4 reasons:

1. The professor is not perpetuating a process of learning, but trying to directly affect the outcome of what is learned.
2. Various other arguments are ignored which robs the student of going through the process of analyzing those arguments to learn for himself.
3. The teacher is in a position of authority which influences students to think like him instead of for themselves.
4. Discipline is ignored when the teacher promotes prepackaged conclusions, because by definition he is teaching something outside of his competency by sharing his own value judgements at the expense of systematic analysis.

Teachers who advertising their political beliefs in the classroom are masturbatory and self-righteous. They are arrogant for believing that because they are proficient in one discipline, they are able to speak on any other discipline. Students are not paying the teacher to waste time indulging himself in sharing his political beliefs. If the students want to learn about a certain political subject, they would take a class devoted to that discipline such as economics or ethics. Teachers who focus on the outcome and not the process of teaching are not perpetuators of intelligence, but insulators from it.

2010 Rebloot

2010-01-06T18:23:00.005-07:00

For 2010 I am starting a new blog. My goal is to blog at least twice/week once I get the blog running. My new blog will be examining the most core and usually hidden assumptions that lead to general beliefs and ideas. This idea is important for many reasons. It reveals the logic and the philosophical basis behind most beliefs—beliefs that are political, social, aesthetic etc. And, it makes it easier to reveal why some beliefs last despite discordant feedback.

Please vote for the name of my new blog! Or, give me some suggestions in the comments.

In the meantime feel free to follow my thoughts from day to day on twitter at www.twitter.com/gavinomics

Answer to Previous Question

2009-11-26T23:05:00.002-07:00

Neither coincidence nor conspiracy can explain how each collection evolved. The most reasonable explanation is that each side begins with different premises that naturally lead to a consistent collection of ideas. People on each side of political struggles are unlikely to be able to articulate these premises which are often implicit. Most people are probably not even aware of these unifying premises that define much of what they believe. I am going to call these pre-analytic premises a vision.

Visions are abstractions of reality, our sense of how the world works. Since knowledge about reality is infinitely complex (I will discuss this later), a vision economizes on knowledge by constructing a whole out of smaller parts, or tiny pieces of information. A vision is analogous to a map. Any given map excludes all information except the specific areas it was designed to represent, such as hiking trails, population distributions, and average local temperatures. If it did not exclude and drastically simplify information, it would be just as complex and unintelligible as reality. Hence, any vision must leave many important phenomenon unexplained.

Visions precede theories. Before we construct a theory through systematic reasoning, we have vague feelings or intuitions. The economist and political philosopher, Thomas Sowell, who has written the most sweeping survey of visions, has articulated the role of visions in constructing theories this way:

A vision is a foundation on which theories are built. The final structure depends not only on the foundation, but also on how carefully and consistently the framework of theory is constructed and how well buttressed it is with hard facts. Visions are very subjective, but well constructed theories have clear implications, and facts can test and measure their objective validity. The world learned at Hiroshima that Einstein’s vision of physics was not just Einstein’s vision.

Visions of physics tend to find consensus relatively quickly. When two visions of physics are mutually incompatible, scientific testing and data will provide feedback that will vindicate one vision and discredit the other. Newton’s vision of how the world works gave way to Einstein’s, Einstein’s giving way to Bohr’s, new data providing discordant feedback to old ways of thinking. Ultimately it is not visions of physics that explain political conflicts, but it is social visions that define the unusually long-lasting collection of political beliefs. If social visions acted similarly to visions of physics, then only one vision would survive among competing visions.

Underlying social visions shape our political culture and even our personal lives. What are they? Why have conflicting visions lasted so long despite increasing feedback from data and experience?

Collections of Political Beliefs

2009-11-23T19:30:00.000-07:00

Any observer of western politics (from Europe to America) will notice two consistent collections of contrasting political beliefs. Each collection includes ideas about military spending, monetary policy, taxation, judicial responsibility, drug laws, education, marriage, etc. But, each idea is separate and seemingly unrelated to the other ideas within each collection. For example, imagine that someone tells you of their sympathies toward homeschooling; you could predict with decent accuracy that he also supports religion and lower taxes. Likewise, imagine that someone announces their tolerance for same-sex marriage; you could anticipate that he probably favors pacifism and environmentalism. This aptness is not perfect, nor is it unsound. It seems rather bizarre that people line up on opposite sides of different issues with great consistency, since marriage and military strength, and homeschooling and tax policy do not appear to have any logical connection to each other. Why are these contrasting collections of ideas so neatly organized into two opposing sides?

Bfa Project

2009-11-20T18:47:00.001-07:00

Right now I am working on a very large project. It is my senior project for my BFA. I will post on what I am writing about in the future. Eventually this blog will probably evolve and become more focused on the material I am writing about now. My senior project paper connect and answer the following questions:

Why are conservatives considerably happier and healthier than liberals?
Why conservatives give far more to charity than liberals?
Why religious democrats are 30% more likely than average among all democrats to become a republican and why secular republicans are less likely than average to become democrats?
Why 60% of Mormons are conservatives and only 10% are liberals?
Why is Mormonism the only religion that has a direct relationship to increased academic education and increased religious activity?
Why it is logically impossible for honest truth seekers to “agree to disagree”?
Why conservativism is inherently boring and liberalism is inherently exiting and easier to understand?
What causes the decline and fall of civilizations?
Why equality and the rule of law are mutually incompatible?
Why economists are 3:1 conservative to liberal?
Why chimpanzees are better at predicting political outcomes than highly specialized human experts?
Why you should be skeptical about conspiracy theorists and contrarians?
What does politics have to do with physics?

Verbal Ambiguity and the Ptolemaic View of the Universe

2009-10-01T21:17:00.017-06:00

If one doesn't define his brand, someone else with define it for him. This is how the left seems to define the political landscape:

The left in America define themselves as right(correct) while the "right" has been left(assigned) utterly undefined. This creates a branding void in which the left has driven wedges of negative associations to all who disagree with their views. Anyone opposed to the left is said to be on the right—strongly opposed equates to "far right". This confusion makes it seem as if fascists are more extreme versions of conservatives when state control of the economy(a pretty important theme of fascism) could not be further from the conservative agenda. This vision corresponds to no empirical reality. As Thomas Sowell writes, "The only logic of such a conception is that it allows disparate opponents of the vision of the anointed to be lumped together and dismissed through guilt by association." It is a great tactic used by the left to preempt issues without having to argue them.

If one was to try and fix the abstraction of the political landscape to reflect a more accurate definition of the political right, then it might look something like this:

This is an imperfect model but it kind of works. The right would define themselves as a philosophy of minimizing the role of government in individual's lives, within limits set by a need to avoid anarchy. Fascism was the opposite in philosophy and practice, therefore it would make sense for someone on the right to position fascism on the left side of the scale with others who champion economic centralization as a means to improve society. Logically, the Ku Klux Klan would also be on the left as active supporters of the early progressive platforms. This might explain some of the Klan members(here and here) in the democratic party.

Perhaps this is a more accurate vision of the political landscape:

However, in a world of ambiguous and changing definitions, it will be impossible to get an accurate view of the political landscape. Morality has no consensus meaning across the political divide. What "liberals" are trying to accomplish today seems to be creeping up into the upper left area. Changing definitions is an obstacle to a healthy debate on the issues. Verbal inflation wouldn't be a problem just as monetary inflation wouldn't be a problem if everyone adjusted to the definitions/prices. But, because adjusting accurately requires omniscience, the costs of both are the same—confusion and uncertainty. Unfortunately, some in politics would rather gain points by misrepresenting their enemies rather than facilitating healthy debate for the country.

Inspiration: Vision of the Annointed and Liberal Fascism

Twitter

2009-09-21T19:54:00.003-06:00

Follow me on twitter

I like this medium a lot for my daily thoughts and highlighting the best sentences from my reading.

Fascism and Name Calling

2009-08-21T22:59:00.005-06:00

My past few posts about Fascism have been a reaction to the repeated misuse of the term "Fascist" as being applied to slander and marginalize the political right. Recently the word Nazi has also been used in this manner. It is ignorant to use of the word to describe the political right. If one political vision is closer to Fascistic ideals and practices, it is clearly the modern day left. However I would not call those on the left Fascists. I simply reveal the erroneous associations between Fascism and the modern right and associate what seems to be clear similarities between the modern American left and the Fascism. Clearly the left has evolved since their intellectual roots in Fascism. But, recent Townhall meetings have included people holding up signs of Obama with a Hitler mustache. This is just as immature and misguided as when some on the left showed pictures of George Bush with a Hitler mustache. I wouldn't even accuse the Obama administration of being socialist. I wish that the F-word would not be used, but correctly to make accurate comparisons (so that we can actually learn from history) and not just for slanderous purposes and meaningless ad hominem attacks.

I have one more post about Fascism coming. It will be about global warming and fascism. I want to make it clear in advance that I am not calling the global warming alarmists fascists. I am simply pointing out that they share many similarities with fascists of the past while it is very hard to find meaningful similarities between the modern right and fascism/nazism. I simply intend to use current events to learn something about the often well-meaning fascists of the early 20th century.

President Obama and Fascism—Updated

2009-06-02T20:23:00.019-06:00

Today, the book Liberal Fascism came out in paperback with a new afterward about Barack Obama. Liberal Fascism is a great book which is the cause of my recent interest in Fascism. The hardback edition was given to me as a Christmas gift by my cousin Chris who I consider to be somewhat of a mentor for me in the past few years concerning relevant and important issues in politics.

The book Liberal Fascism is not extreme although many may think that it is because of the title. It is a well documented history of fascism and connects the intellectual roots of fascism to the intellectual roots of modern American liberalism. I ran to Barnes and Nobles and read through the new afterward. In it, Jonah Goldberg(the author) points out some of the trends in the Obama administration's policies and actions that are comparable to fascist attitudes and policies. In a recent interview Jonah Goldberg said,"I’d guess I’ve received a couple hundred e-mails from readers telling me how they thought the whole book was written with Obama in mind, even though I finished it before he was even ahead in the Democratic primaries." The following are some of the things that he points out in the new afterward:

Obama the Leader: The Obama campaign had a quasi-religious tone to it. All of the glorified photos and t-shirts of him as a sort of messiah that will fix all of our problems is evidence of this. Those who proselytize do so for him, not for his cause, but for him. The Obama Camp political activists were trained to "not talk discuss issues when proselytizing for their leader but to 'testify' about how they 'came to Obama' in the same way that Christians testify about how they came to Jesus. This is exactly the leader that the fascists were seeking in the 20s and 30s. "Obama is the 'consummate leader' as Woodrow Wilson would say, seducing people not with ideas but with Charisma." Some of the youtube videos of Obama supporters are almost worshipful and sometimes just scary.

The Politics of Change: Almost all political movements claim that they are going to bring about meaningful and important change, but Obama talked about change in ways similar to early fascists in talking about fresh starts and throwing out traditions of the past to achieve whatever goals are popular at the time. Utilizing crisis(or shock) as a tool to bring about swift change whether that crisis was real, exaggerated, or manufactured is reminiscent of the early fascists.

Unity: Obama seems to think that unity is the ultimate political virtue defining national unity as Abraham Lincoln did concerning a nation that would either wholly reject or wholly accept slavery. Obama's bipartisanship is bipartisan only if the opposing side bends to his side of the debate.

Corporatism: Mussolini wanted to call Fascism "Corporatism" but not because he wanted to give corporations more power. He wanted a merging of government and corporations and the people that would create "the common good" for the masses. The current government solutions involving GM and various banks are quite fascistic in principle and practice. Concerning GM alone, the Obama administration will have a 60 percent ownership in the new General Motors and the union will have nearly 20 percent. It seems that the Obama administration is using the recession to try to justify what is probably the largest expansion of federal authority in the history of the Republic exerting far too much power in the private sector.

This book is relevant and interesting and I highly recommend that those reading this blog purchase it. Jonah Goldberg is not calling President Obama a genocidal maniac, but he is showing the connections between the actions of the Obama administration and the actions of Fascistic governments in the 20th century. I do not believe that Obama is a terrible person. I believe that he like George W. Bush is very smart and sincerely wants what is best for America. However I believe that he is dangerously mistaken. Liberal Fascism is a valuable book to reference as the Obama administration is seemingly repeating the mistakes of the past.

Fascism—Socialism Evolved, or Devolved

2009-05-25T19:21:00.012-06:00

One of the key philosophies of Marxism was internationalism—a concept of embodied in the phrase, "workers of world, unite." The working class was to unite with the workers of all countries to bring about their common class interest rather than the interest of their own national governments. According to this socialism, workers should have as much empathy and concern for workers of other countries and cultures as their own. This would transfer power from the exploiting rich to the working poor. According to wikipedia:

Early unionists learned that more members meant more power because by joining together the workers gained greater bargaining power. Thus, taken to an international level, it would further increase the power of the working class versus that of their bosses.

There are serious problems with the internationalism in practice, some of which were addressed by National Socialism, also known as Fascism.

1. Collectivism requires community of the masses
2. Communities need similarity to form (foremost in purpose but also in language, culture, and so forth— even differences in food can cause problems. At least this is how it is in my small international family)
3. Similarity becomes a limit to the size of a community(Collectivism, therefore, on a world scale is impossible without a small ruling élite of the world— extreme disparity of power)
4. Several factors strengthen the tendency of collectivism to become particular and exclusive:
a. Individuals with the strongest desire to identify himself with a group are frequently are those who feel most inferior
b. These individuals will only be satisfied if membership in the group confers superiority over outsiders(Mac users come to mind—I am a Mac use so I know)
c. Men tend to justify their actions if they delegate their vices to larger and larger groups(“Fifty million Frenchmen can’t be wrong”)
5. If followed to its logical conclusions, collectivism sees all capital as belonging to humanity and not to the nation of origin. Problems include:
a. It is impossible in practice
b. Richer nations would be unwilling to give “their” capital to poorer nations
c. This is why the socialist intelligentsia were careful never to base their claims on any equalitarian principles but on their pretended superior capacity to organize other peoples. Communist Russia depleted the resources of it’s communist satellites even though some no doubt were much more in want of capital than Russia.

Therefore, fascists either progressed because they realized the flaws in international socialism. Or, they digressed because they gave into the natural flawed propensities of man instead of trying to change human nature to make socialism work.

Inspiration: The Road to Serfdom, Hayek

Fascism and Socialism—Historical Voices

2009-05-07T12:15:00.007-06:00

“Marxism has led to Fascism and National Socialism, because in all essentials, it is Fascism and National Socialism.”
—F.A. Voight(1892-1957) European foreign correspondent

“The complete collapse of the belief in the attainability of freedom and equality through Marxism has forced Russia to travel the same road toward totalitarian, purely negative, non-economic society of unfreedom and equality which Germany has been following. Not that communism and fascism are essentially the same. Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved to be an illusion, and it has proved as much an illusion in Stalinist Russia as in Pre-Hitler Germany.”
—Peter Druker (1905-2005) Author of The End of Economic Man: A study of the new totalitarianism

"The relative ease with which a young communist could be converted into a Nazi or vice versa was generally known in Germany."
"The dominant feature[of the Fascist economic platform repeatedly endorsed by Hitler] is a fierce hatred of anything capitalistic—individualistic profit seeking, large scale enterprise(like Walmart), banks, joint-stock companies, department stores; the abolition of these is described as the (quoting "[indecipherable] of the programme, around which everything else turns" It was to this programme that the masses of the German people, who were already completely under the influence of collectivist ideas, responded so enthusiastically."
—F.A. Hayek (1899-1992) Economist/Political Philosopher Author of The Road to Serfdom

"Liberalism(which is actually means conservatism in this case which means preserving the radical system of perpetuating freedom founded under classical liberalism. In the time this quote was written, those who wanted smaller government were known as liberals which are today's conservatives)...has the distinction of being the doctrine most hated by Hitler."
—Eduard Heinmann (1889-1967) One of the leaders of German religious socialism.

“Instead of being better Stalinism is worse than Fascism more ruthless, barborous, unjust, immoral, anti-democratic, unredeemed by any hope or scruple, and that it is better described as superfascist” , and when we find the same author recognizing that “Stalinism is socialism, in the sense of being an inevitable although unforseen political accompaniement of nationalization and collectivization which he had relied upon as part of his plan of erecting a classless sociality.”
—Max Eastman(1883-1969) Author of Stalin's Russia and the Crisis of Socialism

Color and Fascism

2009-04-27T12:19:00.020-06:00

The prominent color used to represent fascism was red. In the world of branding and advertising, color is an important consideration to represent ideas and invoke emotions. In product design, the right color can influence up to 60% of the sale. It was not by accident that fascists choose red. It wasn't simply the Führers favorite color. Why did the fascists choose red when it was already being used by their communist enemies on the political left? Hitler explained:
“We chose red for our posters after particular and careful consideration . . . as to arouse their (the socialists) attention and tempt them to come to our meetings. The Nazi flag — a black swastika inside a white disk in a sea of red — was explicitly aimed at attracting communists. In red we see the social idea of the movement, in white the nationalistic idea, in the swastika the mission of the struggle of the Aryan man.”
—from Mein Kampf
Here are some more examples of Nazi Posters(Italian posters had similar trends):

Here is one with a typographic exception to normal fascist typography:

Hitler is a self proclaimed right-wing fascist. But there is nothing right wing about socialism which is what the fascists obviously fought for. Why else would their graphic style communicate to socialists unless they shared the same goals? Fascism therefore is more appropriately associated with the political ideology that was clearly left in concept and execution.

Fonts & Fascism

2009-04-23T19:31:00.039-06:00

In my last post I quoted my favorite use of the word fascism being applied to a typeface, namely Helvetica. This quote was made by graphic Designer Paula Scher in a number of places such as on the Documentary on Helvetica and on her TED conference speech. She specifically calls it a fascist typeface—the typeface of the conservative establishment and (jokingly) the cause of the Vietnam and Iraq wars.

Helvetica is the typeface of this blog post. It was developed in Switzerland during a time of emerging grotesque fonts such as the Univers, Frutiger, and Akzidenz Grotesk. Grotesk is a the german word for sans-serif.

The geometric fonts were part of the emerging International Typographic Style in the 20s and 30s. Designers of the early nineteen hundreds were developing an atmosphere of cultural and modernist philosophical changes in the arts. One of the most influential books on typography during this time was Die Neue Typographie(The New Typography 1928) written by Jan Tschichold—a german graphic designer/typographer. Tschichold and the modernist graphic designers believed in sans-serif typefaces, because in them the forms of letters were shorn of inessentials and stripped down to their basic elemental shapes and devoid of any nationalistic tradition that might alienate one nation from another. Sans-serif fonts such as Helvetica represented the international spiritual movement of the day:

“Among all the types that are available, the so-called grotesque or sans-serif …is the only one in spiritual accordance with our time… Fraktur, like gothic…has so little to do with us that it must be totally excluded as a basic type for contemporary work…The emphatically national, exclusive character of fraktur – but also of the equivalent national scripts of other peoples, for example of the Russians or the Chinese – contradicts the present day transnational bonds between people and forces their inevitable elimination. To keep these types is retrograde. Roman(sans-serif) typeface is the international typeface of the future.”

Here is a diagram from Die Neue Typographie:
The Nazi regime actively fought against these "international spiritual movements". When the Nazi's came into power, they halted all activities and philosophies that did not represent German culture and nationalism. Tschichold's philosophy of anti-nationalist design certainly did not fit with the Nazi movement, which wanted everything to be printed in blackletter and old german style typefaces. Tschichold was actually put on house arrest for 6 weeks by the Nazi's because of his graphic style and philosophy.

Typefaces were strategically used to represent the nationalistic symbols in fascism. In almost all Nazi propaganda posters, Fraktur and Blackletter style typefaces were used to represent the national tradition and heritage of germany as in this poster:

and this poster:

Therefore, Helvetica clearly is not a fascist typeface because it had specific international symbolism. Those who used Helvetica were the targets of Fascism, specifically because they were using "Un-National" Symbols. Fractur and Blackletter are the real typefaces used by fascists. Paula Scher is one of the many people confused about fascism who simply use the word to label anything they don't like or agree with.

Fascism and Branding

2009-04-17T17:16:00.025-06:00

Fascism is a word that is poorly defined, but it is most frequently used to connote something sinister and evil. Associating some person or thing with fascism is a branding or labeling tactic which alienates opponents from potential listeners, adherents, or users—it obstructs information and limits diversity of thought, because no one takes fascistic things seriously. My favorite occurrence of this labeling tactic comes from Paula Scher (a graphic design superstar at Pentagram) who labels Helvetica as a fascist typeface. The word is used while the meaning is illusory.

Fascism has been a victim of a labeling tactic itself which further adulterates its meaning and connotation. Stalin labeled fascism as a right wing phenomenon. It was a branding technique similar to how Apple brands PCs as dim and antiquated. Not only businesses, but political movements need to differentiate from competition. According to the book The Brand Gap, "a brand is not what you say it is, it is what they say it is." It just so happened that Hitler embraced the right wing brand and so did the dictionary on my computer: fascism: an authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing authoritarian system of government and social organization.

What is right wing? Our modern distinction between left and right came from the seating arrangements in the french revolutionary assembly. Right wing in American terms, refers to those who wish to preserve the government as it was radically established under "classical" liberalism. While the left are those who wish to preserve the momentum of increasing the type of government centralization associated with the New Deal. We brand the left liberals even though they have no connection to the liberalism of America's founding fathers, and we brand the right conservatives even though there is very little they wish to preserve about the current status quo of increasing centralized government.

So what is right wing about fascism? The American left in the 20s and 30s couldn't figure it out because they embraced fascism. Some leftist intellectuals such as H.G. Wells wanted to brand themselves as "Liberal Fascists". Only when the fascists became genocidal did the American left follow Stalin's example and branded fascism as something inherently right-wing.

Today the left refers to the symbols of fascism such as corporations, obedience to authority, loyalty to ones people, and willingness to fight to connect it to the right, even though the overriding imperatives of fascism were always to control business, with a state that had no respect of law, traditions, institutions, or common decency. Fascism appropriated some of the symbolic aspects of the right without any of the systemic processes which gave them meaning. Therefore, Adherents of the left and right each see fascism as the logical extension of their adversary's vision. To those on the political left fascism is "the far right". Conversely under fascism in Germany which Hitler called "National Socialism" was indeed socialist, centralized, and left in concept and execution according to the right.

So, should fascism be branded according to what the fascists thought and/or advertised that they were, or by what they did? Cop killer "Two-Gun" Crowley wrote a note while he was engaged in one of the most violent shoot-outs with New York City Police. He wrote, "Under this coat is a weary heart, but a kind one — one that would do nobody any harm." It seems to me that branding fascists as even extreme right-wing is similar to branding kind hearts as "Two-Gun" Crowleyesque. As a costumed Bruce Wayne once said, " it's not who you are underneath, it's what you do that defines you."

References: The Brand Gap, Conflict of Visions, Liberal Fascism

Religious Competition and the Law

2009-04-06T18:46:00.021-06:00

I believe that religion is an important factor in providing guidance to families and communities. Countries with a state religion might act like one lethargic monopoly and religious practice may decline in countries like Italy and France. Countries that have separation of church and state seem to have great religious activity because of competition between denominations. Since I believe that religion influences marriage, it seems like a fine enough theory to assume some causal connection between the weak state of marriage in Europe with lethargic religious monopolies and a better state of marriage in America with competition.
However, their may be a better theory which explains religious activity according to each state and European country. This alternate theory assumes that religious activity is not so much affected by competition between congregation A and congregation B, but between congregation A and B against the Mall. When shopping opportunities made themselves available on Sunday after the disintegration of Blue Laws, congregations started to shrink slightly in almost every state according to the time when the Blue Laws were repealed.

Here are the results shown in this paper done by Daniel Hungerman(who recently gave a visiting lecture that I attended) about some of the unintended consequences that happened when Blue Laws were repealed:

This economic paper concludes that religion really does have an affect on people's behavior after all—A message which common sense has preached for years.

Marriage, Family, and Priorities PART 5—UPDATED

2009-03-27T13:50:00.007-06:00

This is part 5 in a 5 part series of posts concerning marriage and priorities. – The progress of marriage in America and final random thoughts .

To put things in perspective, there are some signs of improvement and reason for optimism. Sexual crimes are down, since 1991, fewer teens are having sexual relations. The abortion rate is also at its lowest point in 30 years. The divorce rate is at its lowest point in four decades and Proposition 8 passed in California—a place where in San Francisco for example voted 90% against Prop 8.

Despite these improvements, their is a crack in the system that some are using to drive a wedge in to break legally recognized marriage as only between a man and a women. Judicial activism assumes a rule of men and not a rule of law. Judges who may be sincere in their motives are dangerously mistaken pertaining to the role of government in marriage. Judges who legislate from the bench believe that it is perfectly appropriate and necessary to change law ad hoc since they assume that they have more knowledge now compared to when the law was written. Even if they did have more knowledge, the founders clearly wanted a rule of law even in an imperfect system where trade offs were better than absolute "solutions".

We seem to be on a slippery slope that is being greased in the courtroom. 2 other states have legalized same-sex marriage without a vote from the people. I expect battles to be fought all the way to the Supreme Court. Some think that the legalization of same-sex marriage is inevitable. Studies have shown that a bad economy does not increase divorce. We perhaps ought to worry more about the leaks called Judicial activism before we are distracted by cyclical ups and downs.Everything else is of little value unless the family unit is strong and that we should hold it as our highest priority both on personal, spiritual, and national level.

fín...

Marriage, Family, and Priorities PART 4

2009-03-13T13:48:00.005-06:00

This is part 4 in a 5 part series of posts concerning marriage and priorities. – Marriage as a priority from a Mormon perspective and the justification of legal constraints on marriage.

Marriage is not only important in spiritual matters but also in temporal arrangements on this earth. Cicero, a Roman statesman who lived before Christ, said that, “the first bond of society is marriage.” Gordon B. Hinckley said, “God-sanctioned marriage between a man and a woman has been the basis of civilization for thousands of years...and that the strength of a nation cannot rise above it’s individual homes.” Stable marriages promote stable parents; stable parents are better able to rear stable children; stable children have a better chance of becoming stable adults; and stable adults are more likely to have stable marriages thus completing the cycle (”Marriage is ordained of God” —Brent Barlow) and ensuring good citizenship. Governments cannot create stable children and therefore rely on parents to produce children that will follow the law out of a sense that it is simply the right thing to do. No matter how well a law is enforced, law alone cannot scare people into obedience and righteousness. (On the Moral purposes of Law and Government—Robert P. George) The family is one of the most important systemic processes whereby vital information and incentives is transferred to children. We see what happens in areas where marriages are particularly weak or non-existent. Poverty abounds, education suffers, gang activity and violence are high, children have lower health and higher rates of psychological distress and mental illness, suicide is high, and there is a greater risk of child abuse. Can spending money on things such as education, and safety, and the environment really give us much benefit without first strengthening marriage? It seems to me that healthy functional families are even more important to a nation than a healthy economy. Marriage between a man and a woman is not only essential to the LDS perspective of God’s eternal plan, but it is a necessary condition for promoting a stable nation. Should we not be involved not only spiritually, but also civilly in the cause to strengthen and protect marriage?

continued tomorrow...

Marriage, Family, and Priorities PART 3

2009-03-11T13:12:00.007-06:00

This is part 3 in a 5 part series of posts concerning marriage and priorities. –Alternate Ways to Prioritizate and Get Information from a Mormon Perspective.

From a Mormon perspective, there are hidden costs that scientists cannot quantify. One problem with calculating priorities is that it is very difficult to quantify spiritual costs and benefits because they are so personalized and many do not realize when they are blessed for obedience or punished for sin until much later, after the actions have been done. Only God has understanding and wisdom enough to make these calculations for Mormons believe that God is omniscient. Man alone will never be capable of making perfect choices because perfect choices require perfect information of which our minds cannot comprehend(1 Cor 13). Only spiritual guidance from a Higher Power can help people perfectly prioritize what we must focus on first individually. Mormons believe that a prophet gives them priorities for the church as a whole through direct revelation from God.

Without this revelation we cannot prioritize our problems perfectly because we lack perfect information. Even if we did have perfect information we would not be motivated by it without the spiritual guidance.(3 Ne 6:18). Without constant spiritual guidance, we may easily become susceptible to temptations of Satan which cause confusion. One of Satan’s greatest tempting devices is prevent us from prioritizing our lives. C.S. Lewis explained it best in the Screwtape letters wherein a devil training his nephew about how to tempt humans reveals a very powerful method for confusing and overcoming their victims. The devil says, "We direct the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of which it is least in danger and fix its approval on the virtue nearest to that vice which we are trying to make endemic. The game is to have them running about with fire extinguishers whenever there is a flood."

In 1998, the president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Gordon B. Hinckley said concerning strengthening the family, “that there is no greater thing that (Latter-day Saints) can do.” Without having to do the rigorous research and analysis based on incomplete information we have been given our first priority for this era. The number one priority of our day is to strengthen the family. Gordon B. Hinckley also said that the disintegration of the family...”is a greater problem than any of us can solve with our own wisdom. It is a problem for which we need inspiration and spiritual guidance. The things of God are understood by the spirit of God, and I submit that what is needed is that motivating and powerful spiritual inspiration which is real and can come into the lives of those who seek it.”

continued tomorrow...

Marriage, Family, and Priorities PART 2

2009-03-10T09:58:00.013-06:00

This is part 2 in a 5 part series of posts concerning marriage and priorities. –Problems with Prioritizing.

People get distracted very easily from focusing on priorities. One reasons is that people are very visual. We naturally notice more often, things that are different because they stand out to us. When we see a plane crash on television, it is big news. We don’t see every car crash on the news. Because of this unequal coverage, more people die because they were afraid of fly and decide to drive instead. The same thing happens with lottery tickets. We see interviews of all of the winners on television which causes excitement and encourages people to buy tickets, but we rarely see interviews of the losers. If all the 100 million people who played in the last lottery were given a 30 second interview each, it would take about 9 1/2 years of non stop watching to get through all those losers to see the one winner. Such fair coverage would surely encourage a better prioritization towards financial habits.

When random people were asked to guess(black) how many deaths per year were caused by the following accidents, these were the results of what people thought but the real amount(red) of deaths was quite different:

People vastly overestimate deaths by tornado and fireworks, because we hear about almost every death ad injury from these causes on the news. But, we underestimate asthma and drowning because it is so common that it is not "newsworthy". Relying too much on media is a big problem in obtaining the necessary information needed to prioritize.

continued tomorrow...

Marriage, Family, and Priorities PART 1

2009-03-09T09:56:00.004-06:00

This is part 1 in a 5 part series of posts concerning marriage and priorities. —How to Prioritize

There are many problems in the world. If we had unlimited time and resources we would solve them all but we don’t. Since we cannot solve all problems, we must prioritize and find out which problems to solve first. Prioritizing which problems to tackle first is not easy. One must weigh all of costs and benefits and organize not based on the size of the problem, but based on the effectiveness of the solutions. If you cannot do anything about a problem, it doesn’t matter how big it is, we should focus on what we can do first. There is an non-partisan organization in Denmark called the Copenhagen Consensus which gathers a few dozen of the world’s top economics including several Nobel Laureates to prioritize which of all the problems we should solve first to maximize our benefit. They believe that the challenge with the solution that will maximize our benefit the most, or in other words the best investment that the world could make is providing micronutrient supplements for children in developing countries. They believe that this will do the most good at a relatively low cost and save the most people. Second their data suggests that increasing free trade will provide the most good and help the world’s poor. At the bottom of their list was Global Warming. Using the data from the United Nations they conclude that investing in this challenge would only bring $.30 return for every dollar spent. My purpose here is not to say if the above organization got their conclusions right, but this is the only organization I know of that the does any applied prioritization. After all, this organization relies on available information and their paradigm surely will change when new information is discovered.

continued tomorrow...

Know thyself and thine enemy

2009-03-07T23:51:00.006-07:00

Hasty Generalization is one of my pet peeves. Many people that I talk to generalize their political opponents without being able to give any specific names or facts that support their assumptions. Sometimes generalizations are justified, but lately I have heard these generalizations given with emotion and no justification.

For example, I was at a Wendell Berry book signing at Ken Saunder's Rare Books the other day and I heard someone behind me say, "I can't believe that anyone would still call themselves a conservative." As this person continued it was apparent that he was believed that self proclaimed conservatives were simply evil and they ruined the country. When glancing at one of Berry's books, he implied that conservatives desire to make money off other people more than they want to live or spread their own values without any facts or figures. I also often hear certain members of my own family make remarks such as, "all liberals want to poke needles into the heads of unborn babies", or ,"liberals are anti-God and anti-religion and anti-freedom and big government marxists."

Generalized remarks are common and seem to me to represent very strong assumptions and visions based on limited and wholly unarticulated information. The more information one has about the clear desires and opinions of their own political parties and political opponents, the less emotional they seem to be. In my own experience, these people are calmer, more confident, and very clear in articulating their point of view. Milton Friedman is a good example of this, when in a debate he can get passionate but his emotions are usually quite calmer than his opponents and never out of control. He never seems to loose a debate.

As Sun Tsu wrote in the Art of War, He who knows himself will win half of the time, but he who knows himself and his enemy will never be defeated. Avoiding the temptation to generalize without facts and proper information is one step in understanding one's enemy. Perhaps culture wars would not be so damaging and polarizing to communities if these generalized assumptions were not believed without first obtaining the facts. Or, perhaps the culture wars would be even more vigorous, but more specific than they are now.

Paradox of Choice

2009-01-10T00:15:00.004-07:00

Barry Schwartz is a psychologist and wrote the book The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less. I listened to him give a talk at TED. His general thesis is that more choice doesn't mean better options or greater satisfaction. For example we are less satisfied with a purchase of jeans when we worry about the missed opportunity of buying a different pair of jeans. Another example is that when employees are given fewer investment options they participate more, but when they have more options they are "paralyzed" by choices and procrastinate and never end up choosing an investment plan. In my own experience, during this holiday season, my family was choosing between 2 movies to see—Valkyrie or Bedtime Stories. We were stuck trying to choose which one to see. When we found out that Valkyrie was sold out, everyone was relieved because we didn't have to make that choice anymore.
It seems like Schwartz's general thesis makes sense psychologically. But, his policy conclusions fail common sense economically. He immediately looked to the state regulation. He believed that wealth redistribution would not only help the poor, but it would also benefit the rich by narrowing their choices and improving social relations. I strongly oppose this reaction. It not only forgets that the state will never be able to digest enough information to actually make good policy decisions for millions of people, but it assumes that the state is able to make better decisions than private citizens. A recent BYU study showed that married couples are happier than average when one of the the spouses is handicapped. Should the government go around breaking knees to increase marital happiness? By letting the state impose even more in our lives, we are offering to the state more choices? Is the government magically immune from the same paradox of choice?

Protecting Children From Marketing

2009-01-06T20:09:00.003-07:00

All parents are rightfully concerned about their children being exposed certain types of marketing. However, those who are most concerned and perhaps overconcerned generally seem to be liberal. Their concerns against marketing in general probably stems from their automatic reaction to label corporations as evil and greedy enterprises who would be willing to brainwash anyone for profit. Yet liberals market politics to young children through public schools—a place where children are the most captive and susceptible to being brainwashed. Repeatedly showing the global warming film, An Inconvenient Truth and reading books in class such as Heather Has Two Mommies are some examples. Conservative parents are much more concerned about the political marketing and people should recognize this problem as a higher priority than product marketing.

Political marketing to youngsters in public schools comes at the expense of learning and developing the ability to reason and thinking. In order for learning to take place opposition or contrast must be present. This way children can choose for themselves and be agents to act and not be acted upon. Political marketing to kids can also distance the children from the family and can create contention in the home and/or confuse the children.

Using schools for political marketing was common in fascist Germany and communist Russia. Even the radical American left during the New Deal echoed youth fascist movements and believed that schools should be laboratories for social change.

There is a better conclusion coming soon, but I need my book Capitalism and Freedom for an idea that Milton Friedman wrote about liberals. I am trying to track it down. I think I might have lent it to someone but I can't remember who. If it is you let me know.

Just Say No To Keynesian Leaky Bucket Economics

2008-12-15T22:42:00.003-07:00

In the video above, Cato Institute's Dan Mitchell explains why Keynesian economics sounds good but is fundamentally flawed, and why bigger government cannot stimulate the economy. Reason: Before government can inject money/spending into the economy, it first must take money out of the economy (borrow or tax), so the net result can never be anything more than an inefficient redistribution, shifting and transfer of income/spending from one group to another. Kind of like transferring water from Group A to Group B, but with a leaky bucket (see picture below).

Source: Carpe Diem

New Links

2008-11-23T13:02:00.003-07:00

I have added 2 new links.

I should have added Randomly Selected a long time ago. It is written by my cousin and it is very smart and witty. He has an wonderful writing style and I often read his posts and come away entertained and enlightened.

Today, I just found another great blog called Heroes of Capitalism. The founder, Ann Zerkle takes figures that history usually demonizes such as the "Robber Barons"and shows how they should be honored for making all of our lives richer and easier. It is fun, controversial, and very interesting.

Intersection of Design and Politics

2008-10-29T00:47:00.001-06:00

If diversity of thought is healthy, then the art and design world is severely handicapped. The art/design world is homogeneous. I dissent. I am the minority because I believe in freedom over equality. Dissent has positioned me as a different brand than my beloved professor, Adrian Pulfur. Today my design class, Adrian had the students read some very liberal ideas out loud together. He praised the material. He is in a position of authority as our teacher and has the job of teaching and instructing us in things pertaining to design. But, teaching is an interaction which requires presenting both sides and letting the students decide for themselves which ideas are closest to the truth. When only one side is given, teaching ceases and advertising begins. My professor was advertising a particular political view. This is a symptom of the art/design problem that has developed in the 2oth century.

The problem with most modern art has 2 sides, either the art means nothing and the art exists for art's sake alone, or its meaning is too narrow and is presented in a way that violates the viewer's experience and does not allow 2-way interaction with the viewer. The message is shoved down the throat of the viewer and the parameters are narrowed so that the viewer cannot create his own experience. Good art like most renaissance art has meaning but does not force the meaning upon the viewer. The art was like good religion in that it was an offering to the viewer. The problem is manifested in shock art and pornography for the viewer cannot choose his experience as it is forced upon him and literally forces damaging chemical reactions upon the mind and body.

Freedom to choose experience was important to the renaissance artists and it was important to Adrian Pulfur in his design. Today he showed us his work for the SLC Olympics. He fought committees to leave his design pure and not put in big letters "Salt Lake City" on the case of his beautifully designed book for the Salt Lake City Olympics, so that those who received the book could experience the book in a way that allowed the viewer to be interested and persuaded that the book was valuable and worth opening. The message was offered without violating experience by blatantly advertising Salt Lake City. However, the ideas shared in his class undermine the freedom to choose in the political realm.

The rhetoric he shared with us consisted of classic anti-free trade arguments. What is free trade? Free trade is when governments do not intervene with people making mutually agreeable arrangements. Obviously something must be done about negative externalities that come from some of these arrangements, but mostly people trading together of their own free will and choice only makes the 2 parties better off. It is 3rd party outsiders with limited information that would be opposed to such arrangements. For example these 3rd party observers may see inequality, or poor work conditions and think that people making mutually agreeable arrangements is not good enough. Without perspective and proper information, these people turn to government to intervene. They do not believe in freedom, and therefore wish to create bigger government to control people's choices based on their own preferences. Although perhaps well intentioned, these ideas almost always create the exact opposite of the intended objective. For example, in Louisiana, a person can be fined for giving interior design advice without a license. The government as a 3rd party believes that it can make better interior design choices than the average citizen and therefore requires licensure for designers. This will only deter designers at the margin to give up design because they won't want to jump through the government hoops to get a license. Basically, this licensure law will actually decrease design instead of promote it. Another example: If one wants other people to be more self-sufficient, what should he do? Should he call upon government to force people to be self sufficient or should he allow them to be free to choose? The government cannot make people to be self sufficient without taking away their freedom to deal with their fellowmen of any nationality in the way that they see fit for themselves. Our current government as a 3rd party with limited information tried to give more homes to poor people by encouraging banking institutions through organizations like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and through the community reinvestment act to give out loans to unqualified people. If the government did not interfere with people's dealings with their fellowmen, the financial crisis would not be as bad as it is today. It was Milton Friedman who won the Nobel Prize for showing that the great depression would have only been a small burp, if government did not intervene in the market by diminishing the money supply. The Great Depression and the current financial crisis are the children of a government that does not believe in freedom. But, these same liberals in government who blame the free-market for our problems are the ones who supported Fannie and Freddie and voted in the community reinvestment act. They blame Bush and the republicans for decreasing regulation when the republicans tried to regulate the housing industry over 12 times in the past 5 years.

These liberal ideas are dangerous to freedom and they rely on rhetoric and conspiracy theories instead of facts. My professor even quoted Presidents of the LDS church to support his ideas. He quoted them as advocates of self sufficiency but used that to mean that trading with other nations is bad. But, the prophets have not counseled us to be isolationist. They clearly mean self sufficient in our families and individual lives. Otherwise, they would not encourage us to get an education and specialize so that we can trade our specialized skills for money. In fact even Harold B. Lee said that the united order would be more capitalistic in nature than any other political system and many presidents such as Ezra Taft Benson have been very pro-capitalism and for free trade.I know that facts do not convert people as well as ideas convert people. I hope that I did not marginalize myself from my peers by presenting the other side of the story that my professor was sharing because I love my peers and I love my professor. But, in my opinion, the professor was doing too much advertising and not enough teaching and I felt that both sides ought to be offered as to not violate the classroom experience.

2008-09-14T12:06:00.002-06:00

Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. Joe Biden released 10 years of tax returns Friday...The Bidens' joint gross income hovered between $215,000 and $320,000 a year during this period...The amount they gave to charity during this period never exceeded one-half of 1% of their annual income. The Bidens never gave more than $995 to charity in any of the tax years, and usually gave much less.

Compare Biden's behavior to that of a typical American:
The IRS reports that those who itemize deductions on their income tax returns have claimed, since 1975, that between 1.6 percent and 2.16 percent of their income went to charitable concerns.
This contrast is an example of a broader phenomenon:

Conservatives who practice religion, live in traditional nuclear families and reject the notion that the government should engage in income redistribution are the most generous Americans, by any measure. Conversely, secular liberals who believe fervently in government entitlement programs give far less to charity. They want everyone's tax dollars to support charitable causes and are reluctant to write checks to those causes.

Source: Greg Mankiw

More Reasons to love Wal-Mart

2008-09-11T21:29:00.003-06:00

My design teacher hates Wal-Mart. I am sure to hear much more anti-Wal-Mart opinions in his class. Today I read that Wal-Mart reduces obesity. No, the argument is not that Wal-Mart is so big that you have to exercise to buy things; the argument is that Wal-Mart provides healthy food for an affordable price.

Wal-Mart probably is more eligible to receive the Nobel Peace Prize than most candidates. Is there any other organization in the world that has reduced poverty more than Wal-Mart?

Amateurs Outdoing Professionals

2008-08-20T23:59:00.002-06:00

When amateurs outperform professionals, there is something wrong with that profession.

If ordinary people, with no medical training, could perform surgery in their kitchens with steak knives, and get results that were better than those of surgeons in hospital operating rooms, the whole medical profession would be discredited.

Yet it is common for ordinary parents, with no training in education, to homeschool their children and consistently produce better academic results than those of children educated by teachers with Master's degrees and in schools spending upwards of $10,000 a year per student-- which is to say, more than a million dollars to educate ten kids from K through 12.

—Thomas Sowell

British Humor about School Choice

2008-08-18T21:58:00.002-06:00

Policy Suggestions Concerning Immigration

2008-08-17T02:43:00.007-06:00

Generally, I see only 2 valid reasons why we should regulate immigration—protection against terrorists and criminals and protection against welfare abusers.

The following policy could greatly solve the welfare abuser problem:

If people want to come to America, they could simply sign a contract waiving their right to receive government welfare and require a fingerprint to apply for welfare to prevent people from changing their name. Or, even better we could get rid of the welfare assistance and go back to relying on private charity, which I in my opinion works much better than government welfare.

As for terrorism, It seems that privatization of immigration regulation would better ensure our safety. The government has a bad record in enforcing safety—for example the Department of Homeland Security sends fake bombs through airports and it monitors how many they can catch. LAX only caught 20% of the bombs and SFC caught over 80%. The difference was that LAX is run by the government and SFC is run by a private business. Private business not only has more incentive to catch the bad guys, but it has greater accountability because it can go out of business for bad practices or poor performance more easily than a government establishment.

Under a privatized system, custom packages could be offered to those who need immigration visas. For those who are willing to wait, a cheaper package could be given, for those who need to expedite their visa, a high premium could be offered. I would have been willing to pay over $5000 to expedite my fiancé's visa. I spend more than that on airplane tickets and living expenses just to be with her in Cambodia.

On a side note,

Bad arguments for regulation include keeping out competition and racism. It seems to me that some people believe that they are more entitled in their job than other children of God, so they want to keep competition out so that they can keep employment at high wages.

Big Leaders, Low Confidence

2008-08-06T23:08:00.005-06:00

The local Cambodia Daily reports that the "Constitutional Council" upholds decision to fine Sam Rainsy—the opposition leader in Cambodia. Sam Rainsy was fined $2,500 for "Insulting" the Cambodia People's Party(led by Hun Sen). Hun Sen's pictures are everywhere in Cambodia reminiscent of Sadam Hussein images in Iraq. Sam Rainsy pointed one of his pictures which had 2 other CPP members and said,"I see three people. The person in the middle is the worst." If this is an "insult" then Sam Rainsy broke article 75 of Election Law, which states that "political parties or candidates must not use violence or insult of individuals...while campaigning."
The law is ridiculous, but the fact that Sam Rainsy was brought to court is even more ridiculous. Why would the CPP be so insecure? Freedom of Speech is a very powerful check and balance against government. It is a necessary condition for freedom.
Barack Obama seems to have this same fear of criticism as Hun Sen. He whines whenever he is criticized for his foreign policy, and after his wife was criticized when he put her on the front lines to speak for him.
I have never seen George W. Bush give any attention to the biting and horrible criticism that he receives accept for a chuckle when Hugo Chavez called him El Diablo.

Perhaps this quote from Brigham Young reveals the character of those who are offended by insults and criticism, "He who is offended when offense is not intended, is a fool; he who is offended when offense is intended, is a greater fool."

Is it right to pressure people into voting?

2008-08-04T03:51:00.004-06:00

Here is a picture of my beautiful wife to be(Vanny) right after she voted.
Cambodians have a very strong desire to vote. However, they say 2 different things about voting; They say that they vote to get a good leader, but they also say that they know that Hun Sen(the current leader) will always win. Some of the people in the provinces vote for Hun Sen out of fear of persecution. Some vote just to get a purple finger—no purple finger is looked down upon. Dipping the finger in ink is not just a way of keeping track of who voted(Sam Rainsy demonstrated that it could be washed off), but it is used as social pressure to vote. According to Vanny, “local leaders are more willing to help families when they are involved in their community such as in voting. One person who had a problem with his land received no help from his local official because the official looked in the records and saw that he never voted—he was ignored by justice and lost his house and his land. I have never had a problem in my family because we always vote.”

In America we see ads depicting a grave of soldiers with a tag-line, "They died so that you could vote." We are made to feel guilty if we don't fulfill our "civic duty". Is it right to pressure people into voting? The following is from cafehayek.com:

In November, voters will be able to express his or her preference order, but not his or her preference intensity. This fact is important. Suppose John McCain wins with 51 percent of the vote. Would he truly be the most-preferred candidate if the great majority of persons who vote for him prefer him over Barack Obama only very slightly, while the great majority of persons who vote for Obama fiercely and deeply loathe the prospect of a McCain presidency?

Because the intensity with which each of us prefers one thing to another is as much a part of our preferences as is the ordering of those preferences, casting ballots in elections does less than we typically suppose to reveal the inherently elusive 'will of the people.'

Our freedom to vote or not to vote provides some mechanism for registering the intensity of voters' preferences. This fact, in turn, is an argument against mandatory voting, or even against efforts to instill in citizens a sense that voting is a civic duty. Mandatory voting, or a widespread sense of civic obligation to vote, takes away from the voting process whatever ability it has to register voters' preference intensities.

Cambodian Elections

2008-07-31T07:45:00.003-06:00

Many were nervous approaching the elections here in Cambodia. In the previous election people died during riots and Hun Sen using his military to push voters his way. What amazed me was that everyone went to vote. Voters here must dip their index finger in a purple ink which lasts for at least a week. There are only a few un-inked index fingers, but that doesn't mean that they didn't vote. Upon going to the polls they found that their names were not in that district. Some would go to other districts, but very few ever found their names. Cambodia lacks "public organization" and one could understand why a few of the names were misplaced except that 200,000 names were "accidentally" misplaced and they all happened to be voters who last year voted for the opposition party(Sam Rainsy Party). My fiancé's district, which is known for being pro-Sam Rainsy had 10,000 misplaced names.

Most people in the provinces believe that there is a super computer that can tell how they are going to vote and who will vote for which candidate. Since they know people who have been killed and/or persecuted for accepting donations from opposition parties, they will vote for Hun Sen who won about 90 out of the 123 seats in the senate this election. Hun Sen says that he will be Prime Minister of Cambodia until he is 90 years old.
No wonder Cambodia is number 162 out of 173 in the corrupt countries index. At least there was no violence.

Democracies are just as bad as totalitarian governments if they lack checks and balances.

Worldwide Confusion about Race in America

2008-07-27T21:20:00.005-06:00

Everyone here in Cambodia knows the name of Obama, but no one knows the name of McCain. When I am asked about who I will vote for I say McCain. The question that always follows is, "You won't vote for Obama because he is black, right?" I have heard this question here in Cambodia from a German, a Philippina, and Cambodians. It is quite annoying. Does the world really believe that Americans are a bunch of backwards racists?
At least this question gives me a chance to educate people about the American political situation and explain why Obama is not a very good candidate for America.

Ignorance Begets Confidence

2008-06-25T08:46:00.004-06:00

One of the things that is very annoying in facebook groups is that almost everyone that posts is so confident about their point of view. They will argue so much and spontaneously site random facts about things they may or may not understand. The readers know that everyone posting is just looking at websites that support their views and then citing them as if they were truth(rarely does anyone cite books. The confidence is ridiculous. I suppose that those who really know something spend their time in better ways than debating in facebook groups(or maybe even blogging).

I find that many people, especially politicians are this way. The more fierce, emotional, and confident they are, the less informed they seem to be in general. I admit that I used to be this way and still have to inoculate myself a some healthy skepticism about what I believe about what I hear. I have been thinking a lot about this lately and stumbled across this quote today:

"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge."
—Charles Darwin

More Cool Animated Data

2008-06-16T21:59:00.003-06:00

Check out Baby Wizard to see cool graphs and animated data all about Baby names.

Also, incase you missed it, check out all the other cool animated data about the world on gapminder.

Cool Animated Data

2008-06-04T21:57:00.002-06:00

Okay, I know that I have just revealed that I am nerd by calling data "cool", but this is a great way of seeing where the world is really heading in regards to financial equality. The poor are not getting poorer. They are getting richer and we are seeing huge expansion in the middle class in many countries worldwide. Click here to view.

Capitalism and Freedom

2008-06-03T19:55:00.002-06:00

In a recent conversation, a friend told me that the "throw-away mentality" was one of his pet peeves. He criticized the free market for not providing more durable and high quality products. William Morris also criticized the cheap products made in the industrial revolution. He started the Kelmscott Press and made high quality tapestries and paintings. It didn't last long though because his hand made products were too expensive. As a designer, my preferences echo that of William Morris. But, I will never enforce my preferences upon others. The free market gives the people what they would like to buy at reasonable prices. Now that our economy is so large, even the poor can afford quality goods from places like IKEA. I thought of the previous conversation as I read this paragraph in Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom:

"So Long as effective freedom of exchange is maintained, the central feature of the market organization of economic activity is that it prevents one person from interfering with another in respect to most of his activities. The consumer is protected from coercion by the seller because of the presence of other sellers with whom he can deal. The seller is protected from coercion by consumers because of other consumers to whom he can sell. The employee is protected from coercion by the employer because of other employers for whom he can work, and so on. And the market does this impersonally and without centralized authority.

Indeed, a major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it does this task so well. It gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself."

Bjorn Lomborg-Facts and Myths about the Environment

2008-05-30T21:33:00.004-06:00

This is the first video in the series that I linked to in the previous post. There are six videos total which are linked after the first one ended. Please watch this video and realize the myths we have about the environment.

Other Values Besides Economics?

2008-05-30T20:01:00.005-06:00

When talking about social problems, I use economic thinking to make my point. More than once, my friends have said, "There are other things besides economics." However during the conversation they themselves use economics to make their points as well. Economics is the study of scarce resources which have alternative uses. Recently, while talking about oil my friend said that we are going to run out because the greedy oil companies aren't looking to the future. He believed the government needed to save us from the disaster that is going to happen when oil runs out. He essentially supported government intervention in the market to fund research and create new forms of cars to make the transition easier. Arguing that a lack of resources will lead to catastrophes is an idea came from the economist Thomas Malthus. Therefore my friend was using economics(unknowingly) to support his views.

I argued that we are not running out of oil and that even if oil was running out it wouldn't justify government intervention. Predictions of oil scarcity have had a long history. In 1919 the director of the U.S. Bureau of Mines predicted that "within the next two to five years the oil fields of this country will reach their maximum production, and from that time on we will face an ever-increasing decline." Many other such predictions have been made since the 1800's and all have turned out to be wrong. It seems that the more we use, the more we have left over. Most likely we have over 5000 years of oil left at increasing consumption rates. Watch this Video.

Upon summarizing this to my friend he basically stated, "There are other things besides economics" and then changed the subject.

This attitude assumes that economics is a value in and of itself. Economics is not a value, but a way of weighing values against one another. It is like speaking logically with another person and then having that other person say, "There are other things besides logic."

Capitalism Makes the World Cleaner

2008-04-23T19:34:00.001-06:00

McDonald's makes the world a cleaner place. So concludes Wharton's Adrian E. Tschoegl in his 2007 paper "McDonald's -- Much Maligned, But an Engine of Economic Development." Here's the relevant passage (from page 12):

McDonald’s emphasis on cleanliness, including or especially in restrooms, has led its competitors to upgrade their facilities. Before the first McDonald’s opened up in 1975, restrooms in Hong Kong’s restaurants were notoriously dirty (Watson 1997). Over time, competitors felt compelled to meet McDonald’s cleanliness standards. The same thing appears to be occurring in China (Watson 2000). In Korea, McDonald’s introduced the practice of lining up in an orderly fashion to order food; traditional practice was simply to crowd the counter, with success in ordering accruing to the most aggressive (Watson 2000). In the Philippines, Jollibee mimics McDonald's clean and well-lighted look.

Here's yet another small way that capitalism makes humans' environment safer and more pleasant.

Source: Cafe Hayek

Reflections on Marriage

2008-04-05T01:16:00.003-06:00

This latest article from the American Thinker entitled "Reflections on Marriage" is a breath of fresh air. Here is an excerpt:

Without the energizing presence and wealth of relational networks that marriages foster, community life can never achieve full development. An army platoon, a ball team, a symphony orchestra: all can produce coordinated, organized activity, wonderful camaraderie, even strong bonds of friendship and affection, but they do not have the life-generating capacity of a community comprised of couples engaged in the elemental business of building marriages, raising and educating children, gathering together to worship and give thanks, and uniting in the sharing of communal meals of celebration. Nothing else comes close to generating the array of connections as do families living in communities, the end product of couples working at the essential, irreplaceable task of building marriages and families.

Benefits of Marriage: 21 Conclusions from Social Sciences

2008-03-31T23:50:00.007-06:00

Family

1. Marriage increases the likelihood that fathers have good relationships with their children.
2. Cohabitation is not the functional equivalent of marriage.
3. Growing up outside an intact marriage increases the likelihood that children will themselves divorce or become unwed parents.
4. Marriage is a virtually universal human institution.

Economics

5. Divorce and unmarried childbearing increase poverty for both children and mothers.
6. Married couples seem to build more wealth than singles or cohabiting couples.
7. Married men earn more money than do single men with similar education and job histories.
8. Parental divorce (or failure to marry) appears to increase children’s risk of school failure.
9. Parental divorce reduces the likelihood that children will graduate from college and achieve high-status jobs.

Physical Health and Longevity

10. Children who live with their own two married parents enjoy better physical health, on average, than do children in other family forms.
11. Parental marriage is associated with a sharply lower risk of infant mortality.
12. Marriage is associated with reduced rates of alcohol and substance abuse for both adults and teenage children.
13. Married people, especially married men, have longer life expectancies than do otherwise similar singles.
14. Marriage is associated with better health and lower rates of injury, illness, and disability for both men and women.

Mental Health and Emotional Well-Being

15. Children whose parents divorce have higher rates of psychological distress and mental illness.
16. Divorce appears significantly to increase the risk of suicide among both adults and their adolescent children.
17. Married mothers have lower rates of depression than do single or cohabiting mothers.

Crime and Domestic Violence

18. Boys raised in single-parent families are more likely to engage in delinquent and criminal behavior.
19. Marriage appears to reduce the risk that adults will be either perpetrators or victims of crime.
20. Married women appear to have a lower risk of experiencing domestic violence than do cohabiting or dating women.
21. A child who is not living with his or her own two married parents is at greater risk of child abuse.

Project cosponsored by Center of the American Experiment; the Coalition for Marriage, Family, and Couples Education; and the Institute for American Values. See online report in archives, Feb. 14, 2002, at http://www.americanvalues.org.

When a nation devalues marriage, it incurs high costs such as crime and poverty. Politicians try to decrease these costs without focusing on marriage. This is trying to treat the symptoms while ignoring the disease.

Case for Walmart to Receive Nobel Peace Prize

2008-03-24T12:34:00.007-06:00

Intention V. Results

To me one of the biggest problems in practical politics is looking at the intention and not the results. The proclaimed intention of socialists is to bring about equality through government intervention. They have enacted social security, minimum wages, price controls, and "free" health care. These programs have accomplished exactly the opposite of what the well-intentioned politicians desired.
Walmart on the other hand exists for the purpose of creating wealth and increasing profit. Its intentions are self interested. But, looking at the results reveals more net improvement in society than any politician could hope to achieve in my opinion. Walmart:

- Provides employment to 1.9 million people; the best defence against poverty is a job.
- Creates thousands of job opportunities for people in developing countries like China and India; this keeps hunger at bay in many households.
- Doles out hundreds of millions of dollars each year in dividends that help fund the retirement of millions of people; the company had sales in excess of $348 billion and a net profit of $11.3 billion in 2007.
- Sells food, clothing and other necessities to Canadians, Americans and others at prices that are 15 to 25 per cent below what other supermarkets charge; this helps millions of low-income families stretch their dollars.
- Pushes the inflation rate down and helps keep interest rates low; this comes in handy for millions of families when borrowing to buy a house or household appliances.
- Disburses $415 million in cash and in-kind merchandise annually to 100,000 charitable organizations around the world.

It seems that this organization is much more deserving of the Nobel Peace prize than Al Gore ever was.

More on Hybrid V. Hummer

2008-03-20T14:16:00.004-06:00

Average, all 2005 vehicles sold in the U.S.: $2.28 per mile

Top 5 most energy efficient 2005 vehicles, over their lifetimes:
1. Scion xB: $0.48 per mile
2. Ford Escort: $0.57 per mile
3. Jeep Wrangler: $0.60 per mile
4. Chevrolet Tracker: $0.69 per mile
5. Toyota Echo: $0.70 per mile

Top 5 least energy efficient 2005 vehicles, over their lifetimes:
1. Mercedes Benz produced Maybach: $11.58 per mile
2. Volkswagen Phaeton: $11.21 per mile
3. Rolls-Royce: $10.66 per mile
4. Bentley: $10.56 per mile
5. Audi Allroad Quattro: $5.59 per mile

2005 Hybrid Vehicle energy efficiency over their lifetimes:
1. Honda Insight: $2.94 per mile
2. Ford Escape Hybrid: $3.18 per mile
3. Honda Civic Hybrid: $3.24 per mile
4. Toyota Prius: $3.25 per mile
5. Honda Accord Hybrid: $3.30 per mile

2005 Hummer H3: $1.949 per mile

From the study "Dust to Dust: The Energy Cost of New Vehicles From Concept to Disposal" by CNW Research.

More Driving is better for the Environment?

2008-03-20T14:05:00.003-06:00

When it comes to saving the environment, things are often not as simple as they seem at first blush.
Take, for instance, the debate about paper bags vs. plastic bags. For a number of years, anyone who opted for plastic bags at the grocery store risked the scorn of environmentalists. Now, it seems that the consensus has swung the other direction — once a more careful cost accounting is done.
The same sort of uncertainty hangs over the choice of disposable diapers vs. cloth diapers.
At least some choices are beyond reproach environmentally. It is clearly better for the environment to walk to the corner store rather than to drive there. Right?
Now even this seemingly obvious conclusion is being called into question by Chris Goodall via John Tierney’s blog. And Chris Goodall is no right-wing nut; he is an environmentalist and author of the book How to Live a Low-Carbon Life.

Tierney writes:
If you walk 1.5 miles, Mr. Goodall calculates, and replace those calories by drinking about a cup of milk, the greenhouse emissions connected with that milk (like methane from the dairy farm and carbon dioxide from the delivery truck) are just about equal to the emissions from a typical car making the same trip. And if there were two of you making the trip, then the car would definitely be the more planet-friendly way to go.

If CO2 is really as bad as environmentalists say, then Exercise is bad for the environment - playing recreational sports, going for hikes in the mountains, riding a bike on a warm sunny day - all bad for the environment. Whenever we partake in unnecessary physical activity of any sort, we are burning calories. Calories which must be replaced if we are to maintain the same body mass.
There is no such thing as a free lunch: If you burn extra calories through exercise, then you must replace those calories through increased food intake. The only way around this is if your exercise causes you to permanently lose weight. Anyone who is maintaining a constant body mass whilst engaging in unnecessary exercise must replace that spent energy with increased caloric intake.
Maybe in the future going on a nice bike ride will be socially equivalent to driving a Hummer.

Source: Freakonomics

Free-Market Health Care: Only Idea That Will Work

2008-03-17T10:05:00.002-06:00

While government's role in health care has expanded — one out of two health care dollars is now spent by the government — health care has become more expensive, less efficient, and less accessible. Health insurance premiums have nearly doubled since 2000 while inflation grew at 18% and wages grew by 20%. Meanwhile, the percentage of employers offering coverage has dropped 8% during the same period.

Convincing consumers that government is the problem obviously will require more than statistics or sound policy, but an appeal to their gut level expectations. The fact is Americans expect choice, freedom, and security in every area of their lives except for two: health care and education. This dynamic represents both a challenge and an opportunity.

The challenge is that low expectations and widespread frustration has made consumers vulnerable to the seduction of socialized medicine. The opportunity is in helping consumers see that if the government-imposed barriers in the health care market were erected anywhere else in our economy they would revolt.

A market-based system that would unleash the power of innovation and competition in health care is within reach. A key reform would involve transferring health care tax benefits to individuals rather than employers. Free-market health care isn't merely a good idea that ought to be attempted; it is the only idea that will work.

~Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn, M.D., writing in today's NY Sun

Comment: Now that's double breath of fresh air: both a politician and a physician calling for free-market health care. Any nationalization of health care is evil.

Family is Nation's Number 1 Priority

2008-03-14T17:23:00.009-06:00

Thinking about my upcoming marriage has created an awareness of what truly matters. I have realized today that I have not spent enough time on the most important topic in the world when it comes to creating security, efficiency, prosperity, and ultimate happiness. The most important topic is the family. This is the topic that I should be addressing more frequently.
Economists prioritize with great care and calculation, this then should be understood that theThe strength of a nation cannot rise above the strength of it's individual families. Every idea or concept that I write should be looked through the lens of "how does this effect the family?" Expect a new trend in my blog towards adding more posts which focus on family ideas and principles.

Disturbing Videos on the Decline of US Math

2008-03-14T15:12:00.004-06:00

One important point in this video is that math jobs are increasingly going to foreigners who have been taught with high standards. This is what I wish to comment on.
Liberals who wish to force public or "free" education on our children want the government to step in and protect our jobs, but they are not willing to allow for necessary changes in the school system(such as privatization or alternate curriculum or rearrangement of priorities) to improve test scores. It is ironic. The idea is as follows: Large government can organize the market better that freedom can, therefore when there is a problem with a government program, we need more government programs to solve for the weaknesses of the first program. Individuals then give up responsibility and depend on government to solve problems while losing freedom and incentive for self reliance.
The whole of citizens know more information collectively than the government of a few does, therefore placing the decision making in the hands of a few people in government instead of many people in society is wholly unwise and foolish.

Here is another film

Taxonomy of Political Ideas

2008-03-13T19:28:00.006-06:00

Awhile ago I asked on facebook if anyone knew the difference between a conservative and a liberal and no one that answered knew what to say. Here is one explanation at least in modern American usage.
Political differences are generally determined by a combination of 2 main beliefs concerning the following:
1. Appropriate level of government intervention in the market
2. Appropriate level of government intervention for moral reasons

Here are the 4 categories of political thought as defined in modern terms.

Populist: Intervene in the market; Intervene for moral reasons
Liberal: Intervene in the market; No intervention for moral reasons
Conservative: No intervention in the market; Intervene for moral reasons
Libertarian: No intervention in the market; No intervention for moral reasons

On the left we group Liberals and Populists.
On the right we group Libertarians and Conservatives.

But there are some problems with these definitions since fascism is termed as right wing and communist is left wing. Fascism ought to go on the left with Liberals and Populists since it involves high intervention in the market like communism. On the right should be anarcho-capitalim since Libertarians and Conservatives want no intervention in the market.

Another problem is that the word conservative means to preserve the past. The whole world at any 1 time or location has mostly if not all lived under large governments. Which means that the vast majority of humanity has lived under liberal or populist idealogy. No conservative wants to preserve this. Freedom has been the exception. Conservatives want to fight the natural trend that mankind has towards large governments and therefore should be called Liberal.
What we call Liberals today want to preserve the past. They want to preserve the New Deal and large government and follow down the path that every other nation in the world has followed which is bigger government. They should be called conservative.

I am a liberal in the sense that I believe in escaping the past trends of larger government, but in modern terms I am more conservative since I believe that government intervention in the market is evil since it takes away freedom. And, I believe that intervention for moral purposes is virtuous since it protects freedom and life.

Liberal War Against Homeschooling

2008-03-12T19:38:00.004-06:00

Parents have the right to teach their own children in the manner they believe is best! Parents have the responsibility and not the government. I am appalled that parents can believe that government can provide better education than the private market and therefore vote against vouchers. But, I am terrified when any government decides to ban a much successful and needed form of private education—Homeschooling.
A California state appellate court recently ruled that it is illegal for California parents to home-school their children unless the parent has state credentials to teach students at that particular age. This means that, for all practical purposes, home schooling is not a legal option for California families.

Even the liberal ninth circuit court ruled that, "parents have a right to inform their children as they wish on the subject of sex. However they have no constitutional right to prevent a public school from providing its students with whatever information it wishes to provide, sexual or otherwise, when and as the school determines it is appropriate to do so."
So not just sex but anything. Anything! The Sixth Circuit held that parents do not have the fundamental right generally to direct how a public school teaches their child.
I believe that it is truly evil and wholly unconstitutional to force parents to pay for other children's schooling when they send their children to private schools or homeschool, but it is Satanic to believe that the State knows better than the parent when it comes to education thereby overruling parental responsibility. The government has no right to come between me and my children.

Glenn Beck pointed out these important points this morning about this story:

The Nazis, the communists, they recognized right off the bat: You control education, you can control the future. Leaders of the Nazi party from the very beginning stressed the primary importance of education in popularizing the new state, in creating habits and attitudes conductive of, quote, loyalty to the state. They asked the minister of education in Nazi, Germany. He admitted, quote: The whole function of education is to create a Nazi, end quote. Now, that's clearly, we're not trying to create Nazis here in America but we are trying to -- we are doing our damnedest to promote somebody who understands world government. The United Nations, how great it is. How great Progressives are. How bad our founding fathers are. What a racist country we are. We're doing our damnedest to create the idea that the new deal saved the country.
Karl Marx said in his manifesto, free education for all children in public schools. One sentence later he added that education should be combined with industrial production. Why turn the youth into assets for the state? He said it was the intention to destroy the most hallowed of relations and have it replaced with education by the social classes of government. This was necessary to Marx, to destroy the most important, most hallowed of relations and that is the relations of the parent, replace them with the relations of the state.

I pray that America will wake up from its carnal security and reverse the evil trends in this great country. Go to citizenlink.org to sign a petition for the Home School Legal Defense commission.

The Wonderful Gains of Trade

2008-03-10T11:33:00.000-06:00

Report: Many U.S. Parents Outsourcing Child Care Overseas

Is Global Warming Hype Comparable to USSR Propaganda?

2008-03-09T20:23:00.003-06:00

I don't know anything about the reliability of the Czech president, but I like what he has to say. His background is in economics. He has written a book called "What is Endangered: Climate or Freedom?" He makes some great points concerning money and climate.

Which Consensus Do You Adhere To?

2008-03-09T19:50:00.006-06:00

I thank the blogger who commented on my last post informing me of a very impressive list of global warming believers. Here is another less comprehensive list representing over 200 scientists from all around the world who dispute global warming who gathered last week at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change in New York.

Lists or consensus' do not settle scientific fact. The reason why the believer list might be bigger than the skeptic list is because there are clear monetary incentives given by the UN and the US government and other interest groups to perpetuate extreme claims. Many businesses have large incentives to promote "greenness" by receiving government subsidies. My friend's father received such subsidies in construction which benefitted him at the expensive of the taxpayer.

The global warming believers usually do not take into account the benefits of global warming. They weigh their arguments heavily toward extreme costs. For example they point out that warming will cause 2000 more heat deaths a year. But, they do not mention the 20,000 fewer cold deaths per year. Also, the UN claims that the ocean level will rise 1 foot in the next 100 years. Al Gore claimed in his film that the ocean would rise 20 feet. The last century alone we saw the sea level rise about a foot and we hardly noticed it. Even if global warming causes a foot of ocean rise, it seems that Al Gore is still libel for fraud for exaggerating his claims to pump money into his cause.

Sue Al Gore for Financial Fraud!

2008-03-05T23:26:00.004-07:00

The Founder of the Weather Channel John Coleman seeks legal action against Al Gore for financial fraud!

"The whole backbone of the global warming "science" is what they called CO2 forcing. This is carbon dioxide, and they say that this little trace compound in the atmosphere -- 38 molecules of carbon dioxide out of a hundred thousand molecules in our atmosphere, they say this little trace element -- puts the carbon in the air that forces the water vapor to create this uncontrollable global warming. It's gonna bring this climatic catastrophe.
I see absolutely no evidence that CO2, carbon dioxide, is causing any warm-up in temperatures. I don't think it's happening. I'm asking the question: If Al Gore knows that CO2 forcing is invalid -- isn't really happening -- and he goes ahead and sells these carbon credits for millions of dollars, is he committing financial fraud? That is the question.
If the lawyers will take the case – sue the people who sell carbon credits. That includes Al Gore. That lawsuit would get so much publicity, so much media attention. And as the experts went to the [witness] stand to testify, I feel like that could become the vehicle to finally put some light on the fraud of global warming.”

Link

I would love to see Al Gore be sued for fraud. I never believed in Global Warming. It truly is a false fire in the time of flood.

The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change

2008-03-05T15:05:00.005-07:00

Here are some of the highlights of the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change sponsored by The Heartland Institute.

A 2003 survey of 530 climate scientists in 27 countries, conducted by Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch at the GKSS Institute of Coastal Research in Germany, found

82 percent said global warming is happening, but only
56 percent said it’s mostly the result of human causes, and only
35 percent said models can accurately predict future climate conditions.

Only 27 percent believed “the current state of scientific knowledge is able to provide reasonable predictions of climate variability on time scales of 100 years.”

These questions go to the heart of the issue: Is global warming a crisis, as we are so often told by media, politicians, and environmental activists? Or is it moderate, mostly natural, and unstoppable, as we are told by many distinguished scientists?

George Will, in an October Newsweek column commenting on Al Gore’s Nobel Peace Prize, wrote that if nations impose the reductions in energy use that Al Gore and the folks at RealClimate call for, they will cause “more preventable death and suffering than was caused in the last century by Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot combined.”

The claim that global warming is a “crisis” is itself a theory. It can be falsified by scientific fact, just as the claim that there is a “consensus” that global warming is man-made and will be a catastrophe has been dis-proven by the fact that this conference is taking place.

It is my hope, and the reason The Heartland Institute organized this conference, that public policies that impose enormous costs on millions of people, in the U.S. and also around the world, will not be passed into law before the fake “consensus” on global warming collapses.

Once passed, taxes and regulations are often hard to repeal. Once lost, freedoms are often very difficult to retrieve.

Problems Equal Prosperity — Less Equals More

2008-03-02T00:57:00.003-07:00

Economist Julian Simon foresaw the falling natural resource prices, increased world oil supply, and decline in farmland prices. His view of population economics is unique and persuasive. In this 6-part series now available on YouTube, Julian Simon discusses resources, environment, population growth and his analytical methods. Watch Part 1 above.

Is Drug Legalization Better Than Prohibition?

2008-02-28T22:25:00.002-07:00

This video Is a wonderful example of how an economist thinks. It considers things that ought to be considered when making a decision on public policy.

When do tax cuts pay for themselves?

2008-02-28T09:19:00.002-07:00

Watch this!

Smoking Bans: Bad for non-smoker health

2008-02-26T09:37:00.002-07:00

This is a perfect article explaining the law of unintended consequences. The inability to think beyond stage one in policy making creates policies which can do more harm than good.

A rigorous statistical examination has found that smoking bans increase drunken-driving fatalities. One might expect that a ban on smoking in bars would deter some people from showing up, thereby reducing the number of people driving home drunk. But jurisdictions with smoking bans often border jurisdictions without bans, and some bars may skirt the ban, so that smokers can bypass the ban with extra driving. There is also a large overlap between the smoker and alcoholic populations, which would exacerbate the danger from extra driving. The authors estimate that smoking bans increase fatal drunken-driving accidents by about 13%, or about 2.5 such accidents per year for a typical county. The increased miles driven by drivers wishing to smoke and drink offsets any reduction in driving from smokers choosing to stay home following a ban, resulting in increased alcohol-related accidents.
Assuming a smoking ban is still worth it, the results suggest the need for a more aggressive approach to drunken driving - or a nationwide smoking ban.

Link to Full Article

I don't smoke. I believe that smoking is gross, and stupid. But, I believe that as long as it is legal, people should be allowed to choose their own risk in private locations.

C.S. Lewis' Insight

2008-02-23T22:32:00.002-07:00

"We direct the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of which it is least in danger and fix its approval on the virtue nearest to that vice which we are trying to make endemic. The game is to have them running about with fire extinguishers whenever there is a flood." —The Devil (Screwtape Letters)

What are the fashionable outcries and false fires?
Global Warming
Free Health Care
Military Corruption
Secularism
Free Market Weaknesses

What are the floods?
Islamic Jihadists
Moral degradation
Failing Schools due to a government monopoly
Disintegration of the family
Growing Federal Government and Government Spending

What could you add to these lists?

The Ugly Side of Protectionism

2008-02-20T12:31:00.002-07:00

Protectionism is a lot like racism especially if you have the perspective that we are all brothers and sisters as children of God. Does the idea that our government should protect American interests justify stealing jobs from poor countries to give them to Americans? Protectionism is justified by calling it "Fair Trade". What is fair about stealing poor peoples jobs just because they have the wrong nationality?

(Exception=Wartime)

Barack Obama's Stupid Speech

2008-02-20T12:03:00.002-07:00

Nobody really knows what Barack Obama really believes. He believes that NAFTA is a bad thing, but yesterday he gave a speech in Texas where he said that he liked the Free Market and the entrepreneurial spirit of Texas. Immediately after these words, he said that it was unfair that CEO's make more money in 10 minutes than some people make in a year. He said that he wouldn't just raise minimum wage every 10 years but according to the rises in inflation. He also said that he would lower the taxes for the poor and raise the taxes for the rich.

Translation: I like the Free Market, but only if I can control it

Now, I am not so concerned that he said this, I am only concerned if he will make this into a reality. More than ever do we need separation of state and economics!

Drew Carey on Teacher's Unions

2008-02-19T19:23:00.003-07:00

Teacher's Unions are crazy! It is the largest monopoly in the world and they have the most power. I dropped out of high school, but I am a straight A student in college. I want my public education money back!

The Morality of Money

2008-02-15T22:35:00.004-07:00

Why was money invented? Money was invented to solve the "double coincidence of wants" problem. The "double coincidence of wants" problem is the dilemma that comes between 2 people when person A wants something from person B, but B does not want or need what person A has to offer for exchange. Without money 2 people can only trade if they both have something the other wants at the same time. A world without money would look like this: Einstein needs a root canal and looks for a local dentist. Since money hasn't been invented, Einstein would have to find a dentist that wanted to trade a physics lesson for a root canal. If the dentist did not want a physics lesson, but wanted a Swedish massage instead, then Einstein would have to find a 3rd party that simultaneously wanted a physics lesson and could provide the dentist with a Swedish Massage. Money solves these problematic transaction costs.

So what is money? If money is honestly earned, it simply represents the amount service that you have given to others. Einstein can now use his time more wisely because he can give service in exchange for notes that represent the amount of labor he has done for others. Now he can give this note directly to the dentist. Anything can be money. The earliest form of money was red ochre in Aboriginal Australia. Ancient Mesopotamia traded in wheat. Marco Polo records that spices were used as money in the east. Today, we use paper money. We could agree on anything. It doesn't matter what we use. It only matters that we accept it. Prisoners use cigarettes as money. The amount of money in an economy changes prices which affects behavior which is why a Federal Reserve is needed...

Since money(legal and honest money) is a representation of the value of the service we give to others then just simply buying something expensive cannot be immoral in and of itself even I that thing were $1 billion dollars. If I were to buy an expensive piece of artwork, it would not be immoral ceteris paribus(latin for "all things being equal"). If it was immoral then that would mean that the painter was immoral for producing something so valuable to me that would cause me to buy it. The term "obscene profits" is inaccurate unless the CEO who received those profits did something "obscene" to get receive it. Liberals like Hillary Clinton condemn those who make high profits as obscene because they have a medieval understanding of money. They believe that in order to make money, you must take it from someone else. The truth is that they really do know the truth, but pander to those who don't understand in order to get elected and take power.

Buying expensive things only becomes immoral when it becomes waste and/or conflicts with higher value. If I buy something that will give me only $1 worth of satisfaction, and I pay $2, then this is waste. But if I buy something for $1,000,000 and it gives me $1,000,001 worth of satisfaction or benefit, this is moral ceteris paribus. But, it is also immoral if I could have bought something that would have given me $1,000,002 worth of benefit instead and I chose not to buy it.

What we need to figure out is what matters most in life. Understanding that which has the most value will give us the greatest satisfaction of all when we work to obtain it.

Global Warming and Unintended Consequences

2008-02-15T00:17:00.003-07:00

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
- Henry Louis Mencken

Green companies have every reason and incentive to keep the populace alarmed about global warming. This way they can sell their green products regardless of its actual "greenness".

This from Freakonomics

A worldwide movement to cut emissions and halt what a growing number of scientists call a massive global crisis. Except it all hit a roadblock last week, when two newly-released studies reported that the net environmental effect of using biofuels may be even more harmful than burning the gasoline they were created to replace.

...The second study, led by Joseph Fargione, a scientist at the Nature Conservancy, found that by switching to biofuels, we could essentially be worsening climate change for the next 93 years, in that “[t]he clearance of grassland releases 93 times the amount of greenhouse gas that would be saved by the fuel made annually on that land,” according to the Times. Not to mention the fact that, by switching to growing corn, U.S. farmers have turned away from growing other crops, such as soy. As a result, Fargione told the Times, “‘Brazilian farmers are planting more of the world’s soybeans — and they’re deforesting the Amazon to do it.’”

So in a matter of days, biofuels go from a celebrated fossil fuels alternative to a rainforest-killing disaster, with scientists already calling for government reform on biofuel policies. If anything, this provides a window into how little we actually know about this issue, and the wide lengths left to go in reaching a viable solution.

Like I have said before If environmental extremists really cared about the environment, they would research the economics of their policies before imposing them on others.

The Case for Child Labor (The Suicidal Evil)

2008-02-13T15:03:00.010-07:00

Most reasonable people would agree that Child Labor is sub-optimal. Let's examine why it exists and how to prevent it.

Child labor exists in countries with limited production such as Cambodia for example. Prices are determined by supply and demand. Therefore wages in a low-producing country would be low since demand for labor is low. Since demand for labor is low, most people have to farm, or grow their own food to survive. The food they receive is essentially their wage(benefits) for their work and the harsh conditions are their costs...

What are wages?

Real wages = nominal value (+/-) conditions and benefits/price index.

A price index is a way of determining average prices in an economy. If your nominal wages stay the same, and prices fall, then your real wages have increased because you have more buying power. Saying that $1/hour is a low wage is meaningless unless you are comparing it to prices in an economy.

Real wages also include conditions and benefits. Supply and demand determine prices, therefore wages stay the same regardless of how much money or benefits get traded off. Unsafe conditions are a cost. If you get paid $10 with unsafe conditions than you can bargain with your boss to lower your pay and increase safety (or the cost of unsafe conditions.)

No one will accept a job unless they believe that it will increase their standard of living and/or decrease their costs. Most children in poor countries are performing labor that is worse than sweat shops and factories. They are performing work, without pay under the tyranny of their parents. Is this work really a better alternative to factory work? When a Nike sweat shop enters Bangledesh, the people are happy because now they have more choices to have better working conditions. These conditions are terrible compared to American standards, but they are better than all previous available opportunities and alternatives.

As countries experience economic growth, driven by technological progress, a market system, and a culture of entrepreneurship, the demand for labor grows, and workers achieve better wages and working conditions. It turns out that the fastest way to kill child labor is to let it Kill itself through an increase in productivity and competitive wages.

When a country adopts a policy against child labor, it is actually prolonging child labor. When child labor becomes illegal the supply of labor goes down, which decreases productivity. When productivity is low, jobs can't be provided which keeps that nation poor!

But, even though these policies decrease some child labor, it cannot effectively abolish child labor.
Since parents want to send their kids to work in the factory instead of the farm, they will lie about the age of the child. Cambodians have more than one birthday because of this. They lie about their birthday in order to start work earlier in life or go to school younger. My sister-in-law went on an LDS mission to Fresno, Ca when she was 19 because she used the wrong birthday (For those of you who are not LDS, it is against church rules to be a female missionary before 21). Poor countries have child labor, because they are poor. Families cannot survive or hope to prosper without the additional income form the child. Child labor only really dissappears when an economy becomes rich enough to dispense without it, and countries become rich when they trade freely.

Some may say that the richest countries benefitted from child labor laws. This is not true. Singapore, Hong Kong, England, and America all had child labor. But, the economic development because of free trade abolished the need for child labor before those labor laws took effect. Many poor countries are still poor because they did not develop sufficiently before the laws were made.

I watched an episode of Lost where John Locke was explaining to Charlie about a moth. "The moth needs to struggle to get out of its cocoon", he says, "If you help it, it won't be strong enough to survive." Poor countries must be allowed to go through the same early struggles as rich countries if we ever expect them to escape poverty.

I consider it humanitarian to buy goods from poor countries with child labor, because I know that I am improving the welfare of the poor!

The Strong Middle Class with Drew Carey

2008-02-05T18:38:00.000-07:00

Demagoguery concerning the middle-class by the media and liberal politicians is pervasive. People seem to naturally gravitate toward bad news. America's obsession for gossip and negativity and the habit of playing victim is cause of much failure and lack of motivating power to arise above mediocrity.

More on School Vouchers (Chicago)

2008-02-02T01:52:00.000-07:00

Chicago is gearing up for another round of tumult from the closing of possibly more than a half dozen failing schools. Whatever the Chicago Public Schools administration does to solve this problem, the parents of students have no choice but to cope.
Middle-class families exercise school choice by loading up a moving van and relocating to a suburb with good schools. The rich can afford private schools. Only the poor -- often minorities in inner cities with under-performing schools -- are stuck with little or no choice.

President Bush tossed out an idea Monday to open up choice for poor kids but, as usual, it was rejected out of hand by Democrats and teacher unions. The $300 million Pell Grants for Kids proposed by the president in his State of the Union message is modeled on the popular Pell Grant program that helps poor kids go to college. Basically, the Bush plan would turn over tax dollars to parents to send their children to private schools.

In other words, vouchers.

Bush's proposal was shouted down by Democratic lawmakers and unions with the usual complaint that vouchers pull resources away from urban schools.

This argument has been rebutted by studies, many of them compiled online by the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice. No school district that has adopted choice has had its budget reduced, the foundation says. For example, it reports that in Milwaukee, per-pupil spending jumped from $6,316 in 1990-91, when its program began, to $10,375 by the 2003-04 school year. Other studies show vouchers improve student performance. Milwaukee recorded better graduation rates, and Harvard studies of privately funded voucher programs in New York and Dayton, Ohio, revealed better math and reading scores for African-American students. What's more, research shows competition from vouchers improves public schools.

Vouchers remain an appealing idea with the public. A just-released poll done for the Friedman Foundation, the Illinois Policy Institute and seven other groups finds 51 percent of people in Illinois favor vouchers and the number was 73 percent when the aid is limited to low-income families or kids in failing schools.

So why doesn't the voucher movement find traction?

For one thing, there's opposition from unions supported by their allies in the Democratic Party and civil rights movement. Conservatives believe in the sovereignty of the individual and trust in his or her ability to make the right decisions. Liberals believe individuals need help from government in confronting big challenges or, especially, big interests like business. There's some truth in that. But in this case, liberals are aligned with the big interests -- teacher unions and the education monopoly. Yes, teachers and school administrators are committed to educating children. Still, their position is complicated by self interest, i.e. unions putting job security first.

Unions poured $3 million into Utah last year to defeat a voucher referendum. Yet union opposition alone can't explain why this conservative idea went down in defeat in a very conservative state.

The Illinois poll offers a clue. Despite support for vouchers, 60 percent of respondents also said vouchers take money from public schools or hurt public education in poor areas. The simple truth may be the middle class, comfortable with its choice, isn't willing to take a chance with a program it thinks -- despite the evidence otherwise -- might harm the schools it chooses for its kids.

And with liberals and civil rights leaders opposed to school choice even for the poor, it's hard to be optimistic about the future of vouchers.

The poor are once again left out in the cold.

A Market for Everything — Space Travel

2008-01-25T06:26:00.000-07:00

Within a few years a handful of rich tourists may be blasting into space in a craft that combines the aesthetics of the space shuttle and a corporate jet.

British billionaire Richard Branson and aerospace designer Burt Rutan unveiled a model Wednesday of SpaceShipTwo, the vehicle they hope will take passengers on suborbital joy rides.
"Breathtakingly beautiful," was Branson's assessment of the ship, which is now under construction at a hangar in the Mojave Desert and which may begin test flights as soon as this year.

Speaking to reporters at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, Branson and Rutan also showed off a model of the four-engine jet that will help launch the craft into space.

The twin-fuselage airplane, called the White Knight Two, will carry SpaceShipTwo high into the sky beneath a single 140-foot (43-meter) wing.

The spacecraft will then separate from the plane and rocket into suborbital space, where as many as six passengers and two crew members could unbuckle themselves and experience weightlessness and an unparalleled view before gliding back to Earth.

Passengers would get about 4.5 minutes of zero-gravity time, floating in a ship roughly the size of a Falcon 900 executive jet, before returning to their seats.

About 200 prospective passengers from 30 countries have made reservations, shelling out $200,000 (U.S.) apiece. Many were in attendance for Wednesday's presentation, including Ken Baxter, 58, of Las Vegas.

Environmentalists Destroy What They Claim to Protect

2008-01-19T16:55:00.000-07:00

The Endangered Species Act is one of the most controversial U.S. laws ever passed. A paper by the economists Dean Lueck and Jeffrey Michael, “Preemptive Habitat Destruction Under the Endangered Species Act,” argues that the E.S.A. has actually hurt the plight of the red-cockaded woodpecker by incentivizing property owners to make their land uninhabitable to the bird. More recently, the economists John List, Michael Margolis, and Daniel Osgood found a similar dynamic in their working paper, “Is the Endangered Species Act Endangering Species?” Their animal of concern was the cactus ferruginous pygmy owl.

Source: Freakonomics

If Environmentalists really cared about the environment they would research the consequences of their legislation before they try to make themselves feel good!

Why do you have holes in your Jeans?

2008-01-10T20:07:00.000-07:00

Jeans with holes in them can serve some functional purposes. You can do heavy work or paint in them without worrying about ruining them or you can slip them on around the house to preserve your nicer jeans. Other than those reasons, holes in jeans have no functional value. It is what Gordon B. Hinckley calls “sloppy”. Holey jeans seem to communicate "non-conformity" when worn as a fashion statement. This should be a good thing for me because that means that I could sell my used trashy-looking jeans to those who value them. But, I predict that no one would buy them. Even though stores like Abercrombie and Fitch have been successful at marketing these jeans and convincing people that they have value, I probably would not be able to sell my own used jeans because they don't have the Abercrombie and Fitch logo. Wanting brand name things is an attitude of conformity which contradicts the ideas of non-conformity. The more the form of clothing dominates its function, the more ridiculous it looks.
Fortunately it looks like scruffy jeans are going out of style.

Government does not equal Parent

2008-01-05T23:33:00.000-07:00

Not only does policy change behavior by decreasing the inner government of the masses as explained in the previous post, overbearing parental style policy can stimulate rebellion and distain for authority. Just as a child rebels when a parent forces them to eat their vegetables so do citizens rebel under too much rule. It reminds me of the Princess Leia in Star Wars, "The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."

Policy Changes Behavior

2008-01-04T13:43:00.000-07:00

One thing that people don't seem to understand about economics is that it studies how behavior changes according to social structure. I was speaking with a dear relative about car safety. She believes that anyone who opposes forced seatbelt laws or forced helmet laws doesn't understand the importance or cost of safety.
I oppose helmet and seatbelt laws because I understand the importance of safety. This is because I understand that policy changes behavior. In her mind all cars need to be have safer and stricter regulations to save peoples lives so that insurance rates will go down. It just so happens that mandating car safety kills lives, because people's behavior changes when they feel safer. They become less responsible and less cautious under their false sense of security and history proves this.
When I was driving with this person she even said, "If I had a big tank, I'd run over all these stupid drivers." I am very glad that she does not have a big safe car. Her behavior would change if she did.

Milton Friedman on Greed

2007-12-31T23:17:00.000-07:00

Liberals always intermix greed and self interest.

More Confusion Equals Safer Driving

2007-12-25T20:18:00.000-07:00

When people are more confused or less safe, they are more cautious and alert. Driving is no exception.
Gordon Tullock famously remarked that the best way for government to reduce the number of traffic fatalities is for it to mandate that a sharp steel dagger be mounted on the steering column of each vehicle and pointed directly at each driver's heart. Forget about all other regulations and mandates; that dagger will ensure safe driving. European towns are experimenting with this. Although no daggers are involved, these towns are taking down street lights and traffic signals to decrease the high amount of pedestrian deaths.

In Haren, the Netherlands, for example, the number of accidents at one intersection dropped by 95 percent, from 200 a year to about 10 after seriously deregulating traffic laws.
Read the Washington Post story here.

Milton Friedman has a day now

2007-12-24T23:17:00.000-07:00

Milton Friedman is such an inspiration that he deserves a day on my blog. Milton Mondays will be filled with videos and fun facts about this one economist who most defined conservatism in the 20th century. To start out here is a fun movie of the Milton Friedman choir singing about corporations.

The Ant and the Grasshopper

2007-12-19T15:27:00.000-07:00

OLD VERSION:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself!

-------------------------------------------
MODERN VERSION:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the shivering grass shopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.
CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast.
How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper, and everybody cries when they sing, "It's Not Easy Being Green."
Jesse Jackson stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the group singing, "We shall overcome." Jesse then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's sake.
Nancy Pelosi & John Kerry exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.
Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government. Hillary gets her old law firm to represent the grasshopper in a defamation suit against the ant, and the case is tried before a panel
of federal judges that Bill Clinton appointed from a list of single-parent welfare recipients. The ant loses the case. The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he is in (which just happens to be the ant's old house), crumbles around him because he doesn't maintain it. The ant has disappeared in the snow. The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Don't give your responsibility to the government!

Religious Cult of the Environment

2007-12-17T11:11:00.000-07:00

In my studies of Art I find that the majority of graphic designers and artists are extremely liberal. I don't know what these people lean to the left accept that artists generally have this strange need to be different (you can see it by the way many of them dress) and someone told the lie that liberalism was progressive and unconventional. But, the left wants bigger government. It sure doesn't seem like more government is progressive. It sounds more like going backwards into a state of communism and serfdom.

It is amazing how religious these people are. In my Graphic design class we branded a logo for a Hybrid car. One girl was told by the teacher that she could not use plastic because it was damaging to the environment. Everyone was encouraged to use recycled paper and biodegradable materials. Spray mount was called "Satan's Can of Satan" because it was damaging to the environment and other things. No thought was given to logic and economics.

There is an inverse relationship to recycled paper and trees. The more paper we recycle, the less trees we grow. Loggers own the land they log and they have incentive to replenish their resources by planting more trees. When we recycle paper, they lose business and re-plant fewer trees. Environmentalists want more trees, but they accomplish the opposite by recycling which is the way they claim will save trees. They think that somehow recycling companies are more virtuous than other corporations when they are just as self interested.

My teacher was also praising a BYU student who spearheaded the alternative graduation last year because Dick Cheney was speaking. She got Ralph Nader to speak. I wanted to laugh. The first presidency and the presidency of BYU invited a Dick Cheney to speak to us and he gave an incredible uplifting speech. Liberals in general call Cheney a murderer but, Ralph Nader has arguably caused thousands of unnecessary deaths due to a spike in car accidents in the 80's because of his influence on policy. The softness of his heart by way of good intention went to his head, just like many environmentalists out there. If they truly cared about the environment they would research the results of their "well intentioned" actions. They strain at a gnat and swallow a camel.

We need more economy when discussing our sacred ecology.