Are Japanese people just saner than us?

[context: someone claimed that the US's high incarceration rate might be a product of more effective law enforcement]

That's an interesting theory. It kinda sounds sensible, and you can make a theoretical argument for it. After all, as one of the richest countries on the planet, wouldn't we be able to afford more security than other countries, in the form of better law enforcement and lower crime rates?

Let's test it, insofar as we can, by comparing it with other countries. If our superior incarceration rate is a sign of excellent law enforcement, then we should also see America as having a surprisingly low rate of violent crime.

Let's pick Japan.* According to Wikipedia, the US has 743 prisoners per 100,000 of population. Japan holds only 58 per 100,000.

If you think about it, the theory is already starting to come apart. US law enforcement might be better at catching criminals than Japanese law enforcement. But nearly thirteen times better? Sounds fishy. Law enforcement's ability to find people to incarcerate can't be the sole difference.

Now let's turn to crime statistics. The United States has a homicide rate of 4.8/100,000 (2010, according to Wikipedia ). That's really safe compared to some third world and developing countries (Honduras is #1 with 78/100,000), but you don't see any European Union countries beating us (Sweden 3.5, Ireland 1.25, Germany 0.84).

So we're middle of the pack worldwide, and practically the bottom of the pack of relatively well-off nations.

Where is Japan? 0.83/100,000. And they are unique in that their statistics count murder attempts and "planned murders" along with actual murders. Their real homicide rate is significantly lower.

The US has an only slightly larger police force**, not nearly enough to explain anything.
So it's not that our law enforcement is better, and it's not that we chose to buy more safety. Japan seems to simply have way fewer murderers, whether inside or outside the prison system.

So here are the possibilities I can think of:

• Japanese people are just better, more moral people.
• The Japanese invoke the death penalty far more often than we do. (Okay, I checked, and they don't. Since 1993, they've only been executing 1-7 people per year. Before that, they were executing people at a pretty good clip, though.)
• Something about American society breeds violence.

I vote for option 3. For more details, here's a blog post I wrote about a book called "The Spirit Level."


* not at random, mind you... I'm making a point here, though other countries like Finland and Iceland could be used to make the same point.

** 233 officers/100,000 vs. 197 officers/100,000 in Japan. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... It's not really significant when trying to explain the US's 13 times higher incarceration rate and nearly six times higher homicide rate.

*** Seems to be the case. Japan

Occupy Mayor Becker's inbox

Update: The Mayor (or a designated representative) responds below.


Occupy Salt Lake is being kicked out of Pioneer Park in the wake of the death of a (probably) homeless man in their camp. I disagree with the decision, so I wrote the Mayor's office.

Mister Mayor,

A man died. I understand that, and I take this tragedy seriously, just as you do. But Chief Burbank appears to be casting the blame on the Occupy Salt Lake encampment, before the results of the autopsy have even been released to the public. The decision to disperse the camp is wrong.

I haven't camped overnight, but I've spent a lot of time in the encampment during the evenings and gone on several marches. I've donated food and helped people set up tents and other facilities. My impression has always been that the homeless people there are happy that the encampment allows them one place in the city where they can safely and legally set up a tent and spend the night.

Source:



Chief Burbank says we're "affecting" the city's ability to provide services, even though he admits that the homeless services of Salt Lake are inadequate to meet the needs of the population they're trying to serve. He claims that nobody has died in Pioneer Park in his memory, and that were it not for the encampment, nobody would have died there this year. He ignores the fact that fifty-plus people have died from homelessness in each of the last two years. So why would he expect that this death would have been prevented, rather than simply moved to some quiet, out of the way freeway bypass or Jordan River encampment? By the same logic, thousands of people die at the University Hospital each year...

He also seemed to claim in the video that the new, stricter anti-panhandling ordinances have somehow benefited the homeless population. I fail to see how; it may reduce the number of complaints against homeless people, but it does so only by driving them back into the shadows. We have criminalized homelessness in this city, which angers me and breaks my heart.

The services we provide to our homeless citizens are inadequate, especially for those who -- for various reasons that we probably shouldn't pass judgment on -- choose not to use the shelters. This death -- in fact, the death of any homeless person -- ought to be used as an opportunity to point out this inadequacy and lobby for more comprehensive services. Instead, I feel like the city has closed ranks and scapegoated the encampment, thereby throwing the problematic corpse in the unshowered hippies' backyard. In doing so, you're forcing a needless confrontation with a group of people who are merely exercising their constitutional right to peaceably assemble.

Dozens of homeless people are going to die this winter, if past is indeed prologue. Leave the camp open. Perhaps the services being provided by Occupy Salt Lake down at Pioneer Park will help prevent a few of those deaths. Perhaps it will bring the realities of homelessness out of the shadows. Like all of us, the homeless need more than food and shelter: they need a feeling of community, a place to belong. Giving them a place where they can come together to legally live, and keep their meager belongings without fear of having the police confiscate their campsite, could mean the world.

I'm sure you're getting a lot of flack from the angry Right. Just know that, if you choose to support us, a lot of Salt Lake residents have your back. That goes double for anything you can do from the Mayor's office to create more comprehensive and compassionate services for our homeless residents.

Bryce Anderson

http://neonderbycars.blogspot.com
http://twitter.com/darth_schmoo


May you live in exponential times.

Update: Mayor Becker's response.

Dear Bryce:

I appreciate your inquiry regarding Occupy Salt Lake City, and I hope this information is helpful, please let me know if you have any additional questions once you’ve had a chance to review. I am also including an earlier statement from Friday/November 11th which you may have already seen.

The fact is I am absolutely supportive of the right to protest and for the Occupy movement to be in Salt Lake City. This is not a “shut down” of the Occupy Salt Lake City it is simply a rescinding of the exception for camping in parks.

We continue to work with organizers to figure out how they can have a continuous physical presence to occupy both Pioneer Park and the Gallivan entrance Main Street while not actually camping overnight and we are very optimistic that we can work this out.

Sincerely,

Ralph Becker

Mayor





November 11th Statement:

Mayor Ralph Becker and Salt Lake City Police Chief Chris Burbank reiterate their commitment to ensuring and protecting the essential rights of all residents of the City to peacefully assemble, protest and exercise free speech.

The decision to discontinue allowing overnight camping on public property was precipitated by much more than the tragic death late Thursday night at the Occupy SLC encampment at Pioneer Park.

Since the onset of camping at Pioneer Park, local law enforcement has responded to a dramatically increased amount of criminal activity in the park, and has made over 90 arrests in the area since early October. In addition, a melee involving over 30 people the night before the fatality led to four arrests and marked, along with the elevated criminal activity, an indication that public safety in and around the encampment has become increasingly questionable. Additionally, the amount of human and animal waste, as well as drug paraphernalia, is an escalating public health concern.

Local social service providers and advocates for Salt Lake City’s homeless population have decried the contention made by Occupy SLC that the group is somehow providing services not already available in the area. On Friday, Pamela Atkinson, an advocate for Utah’s homeless population, addressed the group on this issue.

“Many of our homeless friends have great need, but meeting those needs takes a certain amount of training, education and expertise,” Atkinson said. “We need to take care of our homeless friends in the proper way, with the most expert care that we have and this kind of tent city is not the kind of environment that helps people. You may provide food here and a caring kind of attitude, but that is not sufficient.”

A Salt Lake Tribune story (see it here), published later on Friday, included statements from shelter operators that confirmed Atkinson’s assurance that shelters and social service providers in the area of the Pioneer Park encampment were under capacity and available to provide accommodations and meals.

Salt Lake City works closely with individuals and agencies that provide services to the homeless community. Mayor Becker formed the Committee on Homelessness last year to address the concerns of those who are homeless in Salt Lake City. The committee is comprised of local, county and state representatives, as well as community advocates, and meets regularly with the Mayor.

The City, through allocation of federal dollars, appropriates funding for Emergency Shelter Grants, the HOME Investment Partnerships Program, and the Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program. These programs aid those who are homeless those who are at risk of being homeless, and low-income families.

Net Neutrality

@jasoninthehouse (Jason Chaffetz, R-UT3) has finally blocked me. Enjoy your impermeable echo chamber, sir.

Chaffetz doesn't understand the Internet. But because he's a knee-jerk conservative, he knows exactly how to regulate it: not at all.

In other words, given the choice of putting a corporation between citizens and the communication they want to access, and putting the government between corporations and the pile of protection money they'll earn from their privileged position, Chaffetz sided with the corporations.

The thing is, the Internet doesn't work. So far, the U.S. has adopted a "business-friendly" low-regulation approach, as opposed to the market-unfriendly, "Internet as a public utility" approach of other industrialized nations. According to Chaffetz' free-marketeering*, our foresight should give us the best Internet on the planet. Not one on par with Estonia's. We pay more money for less speed than just about anyone in the industrialized world.

Quick note for anyone new to Net Neutrality: It's the idea that Internet providers shouldn't be able to create toll lanes for the Internet or prioritize the traffic of some services over others. For example, Microsoft shouldn't be able to sign a deal with Comcast to make their search page load faster than Google, nor should they be allowed to throttle traffic from Hulu in order to make it a worse customer experience and drive people to their own video on demand services.

Or, to be more apocalyptic: here's the worst case scenario if we don't have Net Neutrality.

Or, to put it in terms that even Jason Chaffetz can understand: Imagine if George Soros bought out Comcast, and issued a directive to block customer access to a boatload of right wing sites like Heritage, Cato, FoxNews, RedState, WND, etc., while providing a fast lane straight to Rachael Maddow and Keith Olbermann. Nothing so dramatic has happened in the real world, but there have been plenty of cases of Internet carriers blocking access to information they didn't like, including pro-union sites and information critical of their business practices. Also, at the moment, Comcast is trying to extract money out of Netflix by threatening to charge them punitive

I'm not surprised that yet another Republican has sided with the right of corporations to make fistfuls of cash, and against an open and democratic society. But I'm disappointed.



* Which is similar to mouseketeering in both enthusiasm and lack of substance.

Is Obama or Palin more authoritarian? Facebook has the answer.

Both released their obligatory "Hanukkah is awesome" greeting to Facebook this morning (Obama, Palin). The comment sections beneath the two highlights one very important difference between them.

In real life, both politicians have an active, engaged, inflamed group of citizens who hate everything about them. But if Facebook were your guide, you would think that Sarah Palin had an approval rating hovering near 100%. The only hint of an opposition comes from the fact that any time a negative comment gets through, five or six of her devoted followers post a quick STFU HATER before it gets taken down.

I know from firsthand experience that posting any hint of disagreement to Palin's notes on Facebook lead to immediate banning. I was polite, respectful, and cited my sources. Didn't matter. I only got two posts off before being banned. I still get to be counted among her "fans" and can still access to her deep thoughts on economic and foreign policy, but I must suffer them in silence.

Obama has to be censoring the most inflammatory commentors. But you can still see lots of comments that question his patriotism, criticize him for specific acts, and generally remind us that there are people out there who really, really hate him.

Being the President, it's hard to imagine that Obama just doesn't have the staff to police his Facebook activities effectively. The continued existence of the negative comments must stem from an outlook that values freedom of expression and the views of political opponents far more than Palin does.

One more data point in support of my belief that Obama wants to be President of the Whole United States, while Palin is running for President of "Real" (read: Rural) America.

I read it on WikiLeaks

This is just collection of summaries of the WikiLeaks cables I've randomly stumbled into.  For a full explanation of what "WikiLeaks cables" are, go here:

2008/09/08ANKARA1643 : A Turkish trade minister meets with London investors, tells them to ditch their stock in a Turkish media company that has been criticizing elected officials.  Minister claims that the company will be gone soon.  Too soon to tell, but smells like insider trading.

2008/10/08STATE116392 : Condie's "What we'd like to know about Palestine" Christmas list.  Includes requests for Internet handles, credit card numbers, and frequent flyer account numbers for prominent and influential Palestinians.  Also looking for military readiness, opinions on the peace process, etc.  If you have any such information, please forward it to cia.gov.

2009/11/09MANAMA642 : This is just silly.  Bahrain lobbies Gen. Petraeus to encourage Americans to participate in the Bahrain air show.  A more relevant tidbit: Bahrain's King Hasam supports stopping Iran's nuclear program "by any means necessary."


2009/03/09TELAVIV654 : Qatar, UAE concerned about Iran, pushing for progress on Israel-Palestine peace process.  Point out that it would make things easier on Israel diplomatically.

1972/02/72TEHRAN1164  : This tastes a bit stale.  The Shah of Iran would like a squadron of F4-E's ASAP.  I guess this one got lost in a filing cabinet somewhere. :)

1979/08/79TEHRAN8980 : PERHAPS THE SINGLE DOMINANT ASPECT OF THE PERSIAN PSYCHE IS AN OVERRIDING EGOISM. [...] THE PRACTICAL EFFECT OF IT IS AN ALMOST TOTAL PERSIAN PREOCCUPATION WITH SELF AND LEAVES LITTLE ROOM FOR UNDERSTANDING POINTS OF VIEW OTHER THAN ONE'S OWN. [...] COUPLED WITH THESE PSYCHOLOGICAL LIMITATIONS IS A
GENERAL INCOMPREHENSION OF CASUALITY.

No worries. It was okay to be racist back in 1979, right? I wonder what they would have to say about the "psychological limitations" of the Americans who (a few short years earlier) thought they had a right to decide who ran their country.

Five down, over 200 to go, and that's just the first batch. There will be a quarter million documents in this puppy when all is said and done. Most of the documents are fairly uninteresting, and it's going to take a lot of eyeballs to find the most relevant stuff. Go to cablegate.wikileaks.org, and hope they can build some better tools for interacting with the data.

Will Sarah Palin be the next chair of the Federal Reserve?

The best part of this whole financial meltdown has to be watching Sarah Palin try to pretend that she has valuable insights on monetary policy.  It's kind of cute, really, like watching a four year old sitting in front of a chess board, moving the pieces around at random.

Not that I'm a grandmaster, by any means.  I know just enough to recognize when someone is playing well and when someone is bouncing the knight all over the board and making whinnying noises.  Krugman is putting grandmaster level stuff on his blog.  Palin doesn't know how the pieces move.

Palin fears runaway inflation -- in fact claims it's already occurring -- even though the last two years have had such tame inflation that we didn't need to increase Social Security payments to keep pace.  Which, if you've been watching FOX News' ongoing quest to terrify the elderly, is All Obama's Fault. 

When the non-inflation was pointed out to her, she lashed out at the messengers, because someone at their very own newspaper -- don't you guys read your own newspaper? -- ran a story explaining that food prices were, well, very low but starting to creep up again.  1.4% inflation is ridiculously low by historical standards, and by any objective measure, Palin was just plain wrong.

In a second Facebook broadside, she blames our slow economy entirely on burdensome government regulation, high taxes, and businesses living in fear of Obama's next major initiative.

Which is pure idiocy.  If it were Obamaphobia keeping businesses from expanding and hiring, their terror would have been assuage the moment CNN declared that the Republicans had retaken the House.  Obama won't be passing any major government-expanding initiatives or oppressive, burdensome government regulations anytime soon, so by Palin-logic (as opposed to the real sort) those mountains of cash that corporations are sitting on should be on their way.

Maybe she should start listening to the actual economists, who are pointing out the blindingly obvious: companies aren't hiring because they don't see much demand for their products.

Taxes are already absurdly low.  They're low as a percentage of GDP, when compared to the rest of the industrialized world.  They're low by historical standards; we've paid much more in the past.  We paid much more during the Clinton years, which were years of spectacular growth for people of all incomes.  Bush cut taxes, and gave us a decade of anemic growth, the largesse of which went almost entirely to the wealthiest 5%.  Oh, and need I mention that all that anemic growth was followed by the collapse of the whole economy?

Lastly, it shouldn't even have to be argued that more "burdensome government regulation" would have prevented much of the recent economic collapse.  The fact that supposedly serious people can claim otherwise is a testament to the power of the right-wing noise machine.

Palin is a card-carrying member of that noise machine.  Gears in that machine don't get held accountable for anything.  Their proposals don't have to make sense, so long as the person doing the proposing sounds confident.  That's why Palin can talk about how we need to be serious about paying off our national debt in one paragraph, and then demand huge tax cuts for the wealthy in the next.  Actual economists know that tax cuts have never come close to "paying for themselves," and that in a situation like ours where there are mountains of cash lying idle, adding more to the pile is an ineffective way to stimulate the economy.*

Her last mistake is to imply that inflation is bad for most Americans.  Actually, moderate inflation is good for just about anyone who has a mortgage.  Their debts become worth less as the years go by.  If you owe as much on your house as you have set aside in your 401K, inflation is robbing Peter, paying Paul, and then telling Paul to write Peter a check.  As Paul Krugman pointed out (for which the Nobel-prizewinning economist received a tongue lashing from our girl Sarah) inflation did a lot to make our post-WWII debt more manageable.

Who does inflation hurt the most?  People who have grotesque sums of cash lying around.  Which I believe is why, even though the economy would be generally better off if the Fed targeted lower unemployment and higher inflation, they continue to choke off inflation.  The Fed is run by rich people and people who hang out with rich people.  The only thing that makes QE2 palatable to them is the fact that the new money will go straight to banks.  If the plan were to print new money and sending it to people who would actually spend it (you and me and people poorer than you and me), they'd be screaming bloody murder.

The point is, Sarah Palin really sucks at this, and I pity the people who mistake her semi-coherent, ghostwritten Facebook posts for genuine economic thought.

* That actually *is* a problem with QE.  But it's just about the only weapon the Fed has left.  Normally it would be lowering interest rates to juice the economy, but they can't lower it below zero, because it rips a hole in the fabric of spacetime.  We don't want that.

Barack Obama, Small Spender

Repost of something I put on Morgan Philpot's site, replying to this story:

There is a lot of myth to the "big spending Obama/big spending Democrats" meme. 
TARP was a holdover from the Bush era, and the funds we loaned out are thankfully mostly being paid back with interest.  Admittedly, it had more support from congressional Democrats than congressional Republicans.

The stimulus bill mostly went to 1) tax cuts designed to garner Republican support (which never came), and 2) shoring up state and local government budgets, so that they wouldn't have to lay off teachers, policemen, firefighters, etc., which would have caused unemployment to skyrocket and worsened the recession.  Only a small fraction was left over for infrastructure investments.  Read Paul Krugman's column, "Hey, Small Spender" for details.

Health Care Reform is a big-ticket item, but as the expensive parts don't kick in until 2014, it has absolutely nothing to do with the current deficit levels.  Also, HCR generates a lot of direct and indirect savings that will offset the costs of the program.  It will reduce Medicare costs, promote efficiency by getting medical records online, and give insurance companies less incentive to develop giant bureaucracies designed to stand between you and your doctor.  According to the CBO estimate (which Republicans consider the gold standard when the numbers work out in their favor) Health Care Reform will knock $130B off the deficit over the next decade, and $1.2T off it in the subsequent decade.

The biggest area of government spending growth hasn't been in new programs, but in expansions of the existing programs that are helping people through these rough economic times:  unemployment insurance, food stamps, Medicaid, etc.  These programs are designed to help people who are in trouble, so it's no surprise that they would go up when more people needed them.  Again, reference Krugman; see his blog from Oct. 16.

On a related note, why is Philpot criticizing Matheson for raising the ceiling on the national debt?  The national debt is a long-term problem that requires a long-term solution.  "Solving" it by just letting it hit the ceiling is like solving the problem of "my car is going the wrong direction" by slamming it into a brick wall.  Consider what would happen to the economy if the government hit a financial crisis where it had to suddenly cut millions of workers from its payroll.  [It would also require a sudden, dramatic scaling back of vital government services that people actually want, like food, water, and occupational safety, education, scientific research, oversight of industry, etc. -B]

I was a soldier training at Fort Sam Houston, TX in 1995, when Newt Gingritch and Co. shut down the government in order to try and get Clinton to agree to spending cuts in Medicare.  One day I woke up, took my weekly stroll out to the base library, and found the doors locked.  At that point, I was a hard-core Rush Limbaugh fan.  But Newt had taken away my books.  The books I was using to make myself a smarter, better-informed citizen and soldier.  I would gladly have agreed to a massive tax increase to get my books back.  :)

That anecdote represents one of the least-consequential aspects of a government shutdown, the sort of shutdown that candidate Philpot is demanding when he criticizes Matheson for raising the ceiling on the debt.

LDS Apostle Boyd K. Packer battles the pink menace

I try to stay away from "Mormon stuff" these days.  But sometimes the temptation is just too much. Sometimes I hear that siren song, that sexy, gravelly voice beckoning from over that distant pulpit, saying things that are so hurtful, so distant from human decency, that unnatural desires swell within me, and I have to... blog the living daylights out of some old geezer.

In about a half hour, there is a protest near Temple Square in reaction to some things Boyd Packer said during General Conference last week.   A bunch of my friends are attending, and I'm with them in spirit if not in person.  I think that a protest is just what this situation calls for.  Why?  Because when tens of millions of people all over the world -- including by my estimation about 5600* gay LDS teens -- look to you for spiritual and moral guidance, you sort of have a responsibility to not damage them.

When you elevate a few abstract principles, such as "God will not tempt you more than you can bear," or "the Church does not change its moral positions" above the experiences of those who struggle valiantly to be true to themselves and also to the Church, you cause them agony.  Because you have never had to try and deny some fundamental part of yourself to be a part of your faith, you assume that it must be easy.  The lack of empathy and imagination, coming from someone I myself once revered as a spiritual leader, is saddening (if not surprising).

There is hope on the horizon.  Young Latter-day Saints views on homosexuality are, if not exactly progressive, then at least nuanced.  I know a handful who are even accepting of the idea of gay marriage.  They see that those who want to commit their lives to each other should be allowed to do so, and that laws that separate people from those they care about most are inhumane.


So my message to the young LDS people, gay or straight, who listened to Packer's speech and found themselves concerned is this:  Despite Packer's claims, the Mormon Church changes.  Not quickly, not painlessly, not without struggle and courage.  But one day the leaders wake up and find the ground beneath their feet has moved.  They find that their membership expects that blacks will be granted the priesthood soon, that women no longer expect to submit to their husbands or sacrifice their careers for their children, that the survivalist mentality they brought across the plains has been replaced by more cosmopolitan aspirations, and that most of their members were actually relieved to set aside the practice of polygamy.



The Church has long been the master of changing its mind and then pretending that the new way is the way it was always intended to be.  Just ask any bishop being confronted with an angrily highlighted copy of the Journal of Discourses: sometimes, even across the pulpit, LDS leaders speak their own opinions, not those of God.


I believe -- no, I am convinced -- that what he said last week has nothing of the inspiration of God, and everything of the cranky griping of an old man who doesn't understand the world anymore, and therefore thinks it's all going to hell.  I'm also willing to bet that, before I see my 70th birthday, the Mormons will be sealing men to other men and women to other women "for time and all eternity," and the words of President Packer will be viewed as an odd relic of an earlier, more barbaric time in Church history.








Full transcript (stolen from here):

We raise an alarm and warn members of the Church to wake up and understand what’s going on. Parents be alert, ever watchful, that this wickedness might threaten your family circle. We teach a standard of moral conduct that will protect us from Satan’s many substitutes and counterfeits for marriage. We must understand that any persuasion to enter into any relationship that is not in harmony with the principles of the Gospel must be wrong. In the Book of Mormon we learn that “wickedness never was happiness.” Some suppose that they were “pre-set” and cannot overcome what they feel are inborn tendencies toward the impure and the unnatural. Not so. Why would our Heavenly Father do that to anyone? Remember, He is our Father.

Paul promised, “God will not suffer you to be tempted above what ye are able, but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.” You can if you will, break the habits and conquer the addiction and come away from that which is not worthy of any member of the church. As Alma cautioned, we must “watch and pray continually.” Isaiah warned, “Wo unto them that call evil good and good evil, that put darkness for light and light for darkness, that put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.”

Years ago, I visited a school in Albuquerque. The teacher told me about a youngster who brought a kitten to class. As you can imagine, that disrupted everything. She had him hold up the kitten in front of the children. It went well until one of the children asked, “Is it a boy kitty or a girl kitty?” Not wanting to get into that lesson, the teacher said, “It doesn’t matter, it’s just a kitty.” But they persisted. Finally one boy raised his hand and said, “I know how you can tell.” Resigned to face it, the teacher said, “How can you tell?” And the student answered, “You can vote on it.”

You may laugh at the story. But, if we’re not alert, there are those today who not only tolerate but advocate voting to change lives that would legalize immorality. As if a vote would somehow alter the designs of God’s laws of nature. A law against nature would be impossible to enforce. For instance, what good would the law against – a vote against – the law of gravity do?

There are both moral and physical laws irrevocably decreed in Heaven before the foundation of the world that cannot be changed. History demonstrates over and over again that moral standards cannot be changed by battle and cannot be changed by ballot. To legalize that which is basically wrong or evil will not prevent the pain and penalties that will follow as surely as night follows day.

Regardless of the opposition, we are determined to stay on course. We will hold to the principles and laws and ordinances of the Gospel. If they are misunderstood, either innocently or willfully, so be it. We cannot change, we will not change the moral standards. We quickly lose our way when we disobey the laws of God.

* Oh, fine. 14,000,000 Mormons, 20% activity rate, 10% of which are teens, and (lowballing it) 5% of those are gay, and 40% of those were watching Conference. The math is very rough.

Reaganomics punches me in the face

So I got beat up by a biker gang last night. Granted, the "beat up" was limited to two punches to the face, and the "biker gang" was really just two guys on motorcycles. Hell, one of them was just standing there ready to back his friend up. But I'm tired, my jaw hurts, and I feel I'm entitled to a bit of artistic license here.

The facts were these: I was on my bike, when two guys came the opposite direction, zipping down the Jordan River Parkway on motorcycles (illegal) with their headlights off (illegal and stupid). I yelled at them. They turned around and came back after me. One rolled up next to me as I pedaled. A conversation ensued, the most eloquent snippets being, "What the hell are you doing?" and "You don't know me!" The conversation concluded with him sideswiping my bike, me grabbing onto him, and both of us tumbling to the ground.

I got up, ready for a fight. He punched me in the face, and I no longer wanted to fight. He punched me again, and I no longer wanted to stand up. He asked me if I wanted any more. I did not. Satisfied that his point had been made, he and his friend took off, leaving me to limp home.

Like I said, my jaw still hurts, and my lower teeth feel a bit wrong. But my pride is more wounded than anything. I've always wondered how I'd do in a fight. This may be the Universe trying to tell me to embrace pacifism.

I joke now. I've got the safety of distance, and the big picture realization that I was facing a couple of kids trying to blow off steam, not hardened, merciless slayers of men. But I remember the thought that went through my head right after the second punch landed. "So, this is how I die. God, I'm an idiot." That was some scary, scary stuff, and while I'm still a bit angry, I'm grateful as hell to them for not taking it further than they did.

They say a conservative is just a liberal who got mugged. I'll admit that, comparatively puny as this experience was, I can feel the urge to rescind my trust in the general goodwill of humankind. Part of me wants to embrace the idea that there are people like me and there are people who are not like me, and that the proper role of society is to protect the former from the latter. But I'm not giving up on society. I'm not even giving up on the guy who attacked me. He's right: I don't know him.

Why do I blame Reaganomics? If you remember my post on The Spirit Level, societies with greater income inequality have higher murder rates. That correlation is clear and powerful. Less extreme forms of violence are more difficult to compare, simply because there is more variation in reporting and measurement. But I strongly suspect that if those things could be properly controlled, a correlation would pop out there as well.

So, Reaganomics basically says that people are on their own. Government won't protect them from the hard times, or help you when you're down. It won't tell your employer that they have to pay you more.

If you're rich, though, Reaganomics will do whatever it can to help you. It will keep taxes low and regulations light. You owe nothing to society beyond that which you freely choose to give back.

Reaganomics isn't heartless. It's distrustful of government, and it believes that huge income gaps are both a natural result of a free market and an incentive for hard work and innovation. It's also deaf to pleas of class envy, because hey, it's only your own sorry ass keeping you from achieving whatever level of success you covet. Right?

But the downsides of this plan are enormous. People struggle more. They fear losing what they've won. People feel alienated, hopeless, dissatisfied, and angry. The marks of societal rank become more apparent, and worse they begin serving as a mark of personal worth. The social cohesion that allows members of society to accept and trust one another begins to fray.

The Spirit Level mentioned a plausible mechanism, a sort of evolutionary context that links violence and alienation. When a person -- especially a young male -- is on the outskirts of society, with little hope of getting back in, reckless behavior can create reproductive opportunities that quiet resignation never would.

It rings true. If you have a lot to lose, you don't go picking fights with anyone who cusses you out. In fact, you don't go speeding down a pedestrian/bike path in the dead of night.

Shame and humiliation are powerful social emotions. The Reagonomics people make a huge mistake by pretending that their economic shaming plan can drive only one response: a redoubling of the person's efforts in pursuit of legal, socially responsible economic increase.

I honestly believe that, if America's wealth distribution were as narrow as, say, Finland's, my jaw would feel just fine right now thankyouverymuch. So, soak the rich, raise the minimum wage, and smile at a stranger.

P.S.: Happy Read a Qu'ran Day.

Rough thoughts on unemployment and socialism

[Modified from something I tried to post on 538, but there were technical difficulties.]

The belief that new jobs will always replace old jobs is misguided in many ways.

First, unemployment is much higher than the official figures let on, and the true surplus of non-working, potentially productive people has been rising for decades. People spend more of their lives in college. People spend more of their lives in retirement. We have more people on government disability, more people in prison, more part time workers, and more people leaving the job market entirely.

Those jobs that disappeared didn't all come back.

Second, when you automate all the manual labor jobs out of existence, and replace them with more mentally taxing work, there are going to be millions of people who were perfectly capable of holding the old jobs, who can no longer provide the engines of capitalism with any service it's willing to pay for.

What is the free market answer to their plight?

1) They should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. Start your own business! Be dynamic and innovative! Reach for your dreams! Or failing that...

2) Die. Survival of the fittest, you know.

If you don't have a better answer than that, then you cede that capitalism + technological progress can bring great misery and suffering to those made obsolete by technology.

We've reached a point in our technological climb that is somewhat analogous to the situation we have with oil reserves. New reserves of jobs are being found, but the old jobs are being depleted at a much faster rate.

Take the precarious position of my bro. His job at the postal service is to sit in front of a computer all day, looking at pictures of individual pieces of mail, and routing them appropriately. There are thousands of people similarly employed at routing stations across the country.

Or, at least, there were. As the Post Office's handwriting recognition software has improve, the volume of mail that needs manual routing has fallen dramatically, and center after routing center has been closed, their employees released into the wild to make their ways as best they can. Now only two or three centers are left.

Nor is it just repetitive tasks that are being obsoleted. Software development and deployment has gotten easier in a variety of ways, driving down the costs of bringing new ideas to market. A web app that might have taken a team of a hundred people a year to deploy back in 2000 could be done by a team of three people in a couple of months today. Even Facebook (a site with hundreds of millions of active users) only employs about 800 people.*

I'm not sure where the next big "growth industries" are, the ones that are going to absorb all the medical transcriptionists, all the long haul truckers, all the taxi drivers, all the delivery people, all the tech support and customer service representatives, all the janitors, all the airline reservation people, who are going to be made obsolete over the next few decades.

I see the march of technological progress as a good thing. Nobody is asking that we halt the march of technology to save jobs. But unless we find some way to "spread the wealth," to ensure that everyone can have some claim on the products of a highly automated economy, then we really will hit the crisis point that Marx predicted.

A compromise between socialism and capitalism could be forged in several ways. Guaranteed income floor, make-work jobs, wage subsidies, etc. Right wingers will fight all these measures, right up until the moment that their own jobs go on the chopping block. Then they'll see the benefits of "institutionalized theft."




* It would be 400, but they have trouble keeping their employees from goofing off on Facebook.