Objective Government

What would Ayn Rand do?

Several months ago, my best friend called to ask if I could bring him the Emergency Room; he’d smacked his head hard after his bike tires got caught in railroad tracks.

Though Rand never wrote about bicycles in her several thousand pages of fiction, presumably she would have left my buddy lying dazed by the tracks. Helping him, she’d say, would only prevent him from taking responsibility for his own acts, dampening his ability to learn to avoid train crossings.

Some Rand followers would object to such a cold interpretation, but refusal to help others is the essence of her Objectivism philosophy, summed up by hero John Galt in Atlas Shrugged: “Do not cry that you need us. We do not consider ‘need’ a claim.”

Many say it less bluntly as, “Help others by helping yourself,” but however you phrase it, it has an appealing core. Be selfish! When you go after what you want, that’s also best for other people. Helping others hurts them, so don’t bother; just get what’s yours.

Does that sound too extreme? Former chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan now suggests it is, a change of heart that Objectivists label “cowardly,” and “traitorous.” After decades of following Rand (she nicknamed him “the undertaker” because of his gloomy disposition), Greenspan admitted that unregulated derivative trading hurt markets in ways he hadn’t expected:

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) pressed him to clarify his words. “In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right, it was not working,”

“Absolutely, precisely,” Greenspan replied. “You know, that’s precisely the reason I was shocked, because I have been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well.”

It was going well until there was a crisis, as is true for many people’s lives. You may not often need medical malpractice laws, or environmental regulation, or a vibrant support system, but when you do, they prove their worth.

I don’t want a government dictating our every move. You should be free to bike where you want, for instance. But for those rare times you take a fall, it’s good to know that there’s a hand ready to help you get back on your feet.

Words are Terroristical

Surprise! Barack Obama is a fascist, say GOP commentators, bloggers, and even politicians, including ex-presidential candidate Ron Paul.

Unless, of course, Obama is a socialist, as claimed by many of the same people, including Ron Paul and other folks at the first link above. Saul Anuzis, a contender for GOP party chair, explains that party supporters weren't getting enough traction from 'socialist,' so they're trying the new 'fascist' tag.

'We've so overused the word 'socialism' that it no longer has the bad connotation it had 20 years ago, or even 10,' says Anuzis. 'Fascism - everybody still thinks that's a bad thing.'

Or maybe President Obama is a Communist - people still hate Communists, right?

That link, like the previous one, comes from FreeRepublic.com, which used to be my favorite amusing conservative site until they kicked me off for offering opposing views. (Really! That's why you'll never read a dissenting opinion there. They don't allow them.)

Even if you can't ignore such trash (the above article states a KGB agent admits Obama is a secret Communist), you can use your head. Can he be all three at once?

Remember that it was the Communists who fought the Fascist government in Spain, and that makes sense. They're at opposite ends of the political spectrum; they combine no better than the Yankees and the Red Sox. Those pundits are just spouting play-yard taunts, and they might as well call Obama a 'poopy-head.'

We've seen this before, most recently with abuse of the word 'terrorism,' which has devolved into meaning only, 'something you don't like.' As you know, 'war is terrorism,' as is ignorance. Hate is terrorism, as are global warming, and of course - of course! - taxes.

Such word-napping aside, it's actually useful to have a word that describes the deliberate targeting of civilians. War is awful, of course, but there's a moral chasm between shooting an armed assailant and planting a bomb on a school bus. Equating the two elides an important distinction, and when we muddy the words, we cloud our thinking.

So don't believe the name-callers when they toss around the 'fascist' label, nor the 'socialist' one. You know the difference, or if you don't, you still know there is one.

After all, you're no poopy-head.

Microsoft Hobbles the Fun

Microsoft plans to limit your use of its next operating system, if you own a netbook.

Windows 7 may see limited release as early as this week. See my blog from earlier this month on why you may not get too excited, especially given its continued incompatibility with the tens of thousands of programs written for XP.

And now there's a new twist: Windows 7 will come hobbled for use on netbooks and other inexpensive computers, allowing use of only three applications at a time.

It's easy to get up to three applications at once, as I'm doing right now (my browser, a text editor, and Microsoft Word). If I go to site that opens Windows Media, I'd need to close one of the others, as I would to listen to music in the background, or to use a calculator, or open Excel tables or a Outlook/Mail.

While netbooks and small laptops have limited computing power, that's not the trouble here. Though Windows 7 is still bloated (using about the same memory as Vista. The 'improvement' is that it uses no more), it's still capable of running more than three applications, or at least it was, until Microsoft introduced this lock.

Why the change? Microsoft says it has a narrow profit margin on netbook operating systems, and while I have a hard time picturing it being as small as the $15 they claim, I do believe they should make money on their sales. We're used to demanding things for free - free shipping, free upgrades - but Microsoft has to pay developers to make a new OS, and by paying for our purchases, we support those improvements.

But it's one thing to offer additional features for a cost, like a modest charge for improved releases, and another to disable features that already exist. Apple's Quicktime is a good example of the former: the basic program comes free with a computer, and advanced users can buy and download expanded editing tools.

Running multiple applications isn't an improved feature; it's a basic offering for any current operating system, and paying more to get it feels like a shakedown.

Saving More Gas than a Prius

Hybrids are popular, hybrids are hip. A Toyota Prius can get an impressive 50 m.p.g., prompting California to give them special driving exemptions: they can use the carpool lane with nothing more than the driver.

But that's not the road to big savings in gasoline.

It sounds like it - 50 mpg is double that of most passenger cars - but the measurement itself is misleading, as you can see from this little quiz:

     Which saves more gas?

• Replacing a 10 mpg S.U.V. with a 20 mpg station wagon?

or

• Replacing a 20 mpg sedan with a 50 mpg hybrid?

Surprise! It's the first option.

The S.U.V. uses 10 gallons to go 100 miles, while the station wagon (and sedan) use 5. The hybrid uses just 2, but that's a smaller savings than replacing the S.U.V.. If you drive a 200 miles a week, moving from the S.U.V. to the station wagon saves you 10 gallons, while moving from the sedan to the hybrid saves you 6 gallons.

It's the low mileage vehicles that add up. Moving from 10 mpg to 20 mpg saves a lot more than from 20 mpg to 40 mpg or even 50 mpg.

This would be easier to see, argue authors Richard Larrick and Jack Soll, if we replaced mpg with "gallons per mile," a measure that better shows the cost and savings of improved efficiency. You can read more about their idea or try a mini-quiz on the topic.

Next week's blog will address Microsoft's newly announced strategy for Windows 7: Microsoft Hobbles Your Fun.

Microsoft: No Worse than Before

From the headline reviews of the forthcoming Windows 7, you'd think Microsoft has a hit.

Walter Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal titled his preview 'Even in Test Form, Windows 7 Leaves Vista in the Dust.' He found it 'very promising' and 'a pleasure to use.' Could Microsoft have turned the corner?

Hold that thought.

Look more closely, and you see we have the same giant company with the same huge problems. 

What were those problems with Vista? Mossberg sums them up for us: an operating system that required huge amounts of memory, one that wasn't really compatible with the countless programs written for Windows XP.

How does Windows 7 compare? It uses the same amount of memory and also lacks compatibility with Windows XP.

What Microsoft proclaims, and Mossberg accepts, is that Windows 7 is no worse than Vista. Microsoft proudly touts that this operating system upgrade is fully compatible with the previous one, the one everyone hates, but it doesn't actually expand compatibility as hoped.

Nor does it reduce the memory costs. It doesn't make them any worse, says David Pogue of the New York Times, who calls Windows 7, 'Vista, Fixed.'

But what does it actually fix? None of the problems that Pogue notes made users 'beg, plead, and sign petitions to bring back the previous version of the product.' It just doesn't make matters worse.

Same system requirements. No improved compatibility with XP programs. And, like Vista, it will apparently be sold in six confusing versions, rather than a single, simple package.

That's progress?

This post is going up early, as I'll be away on Monday. Next week will go up as usual, and it will be on The Modern Gas Mileage Mystery.

Copyrights, Music, and 100 Percent of Nothing

Is Apple now the biggest music retailer on earth?

A memo leaked this week suggests they may have passed Wal-Mart in global music sales, and whether or not that's so, they earn quite a lot from MP3s, even as the music industry screams about declining sales.

There's a lesson there about the danger of over-zealous guarding of copyrights.

The music industry so jealously combats anything that might lead to copyright infringement that they missed the biggest source of music revenue in the world today. When Napster introduced the ability to trade songs, it quickly attracted millions of users, and instead of seeing this as a potential source of revenue, music labels fought to shut it down.

Then they offered half-baked 'rental' schemes through monthly subscriptions, and relatively few people took the bait. It wasn't until Apple offered the right to buy a song for around a dollar that online music stores became viable. Sales rose even further when Apple offered the songs without DRM copyright protection.

DRM protection is a hassle, requiring computer confirmation at best and phone-in verification at worst (as with the maligned DRM scheme for the popular game 'Spore'). Since the whole point of MP3s is convenience - they don't sound better than CD's, but they're easier to use - anything that complicates their use is unwelcome.

So here's a plea to the music industry: please, just let us buy the songs and leave your electronic policemen out of our homes.

Posts this month are on technology and society. We'll return to economics in May.

If you think the music industry is out-of-touch, please see next week's post on Microsoft: No Worse than Before.

Dump the Political Clowns

What's wrong with being smart?

Republicans used to like smart people, back when they offered effective leaders. Even Ronald Reagan gave insightful radio addresses while governor of California, and he wasn't afraid to work with strong intellects.

But the previous administration had such a severe anti-intellectual bent that presidential advisor Karen Hughes  "rarely read books and distrusted people who had," bemoans the Economist. Speechwriter David Frum noted that 'conspicuous intelligence seemed actively unwelcome in the Bush White House.'

We may be glad that president is gone, but have we left him behind?

We're still holding up GOP candidates who drop their g's and tout their down-home qualities. I don't mind a politician of the people, whether a boy from a log cabin or a peanut-farmer, and 'rural' doesn't mean 'dumb.'

So why do we support the yokels in dunce hats? Do we really want only one party in America to offer intelligent candidates?

Glenn Beck, a rising star for FOX News, recently asked aloud if disaster relief agency FEMA was setting up concentration camps, calling it a rumor he was unable to debunk. That's the oldest, lamest journalistic trick of all, applicable to any stupid statement you wish to make. I, for instance, am unable to dispel rumors that Glenn Beck is French.

He's full of nutty comments. Take the recent one that 'the U.S. is on the road to socialism,' and compare that to your feeling about Wall Street bailouts.  Would you describe a president who hands money to investment banks as 'socialist'?

Comedian Dennis Miller noted when Ann Coulter says such things, she's acting like a dunk tank clown 'trying to sell more baseballs.' The goal isn't to inform or instruct, but just to incite.

We have enough clowns. Give us thinkers, too. Please.

In April, each Monday's post will be about society and technology. We'll return to economic issues in May, with Who Pays the Taxes?

The Guilt-Free Stimulus

Do we really build debt when we move to increase spending?

In my column in today's Washington Post,  'Stimulating our Inner Consumer,'  I propose that we can use human nature to encourage consumer demand, easing the loss of jobs until longer-term stimulus projects take root.

If people find it easy to spend with a $2000 prepaid American Gift Card, we're likely to see such a boost, as convenience is hard to resist. People are likely to eat more when seated by a bowl full of chips, and many diners wave away bread to remove that very temptation.

But some people still wonder how much new spending a gift card would encourage. What if consumers ended up buying the same groceries as usual and saving more of their paychecks?

The answer is: that's fine. Doing so costs nothing, and it doesn't build real debt.

If you save the equivalent $2000 then repay it through taxes years from now, there's no cost to you or the government.

Even interest on the debt goes to you and back. When the government borrows money, it issues Treasury bills mainly to Americans; only one in six is held abroad. That means it borrows from you before loaning that same money back. If you save all the money, the result is exactly the same as if you got a $2000 IOU and then returned it a few years later.

In such a case, issuing the Gift Card truly does cost nothing (save administrative costs, which have tended to be low for past rebate checks), as it does nothing.

Fortunately, such absolute saving is unlikely, and we can expect real results. If you hand $2000 to the man on the street, he'll have a strong incentive to spend at least a portion more than usual. The 'marginal propensity to consume' varies with income - a gift card may have less influence on Bill Gates than on me - but it's always more than zero.

We really can encourage more consumer demand, just as surely as people will eat from a bowl of chips.

What Science Offers Politics

Can science help us make decisions?

While science does not tell us what we should do, it can help us gauge the impact of our choices by looking at existing data. But it can do so only if we understand how science works, and too few Americans do.

Sadly, author Michael Crichton is not one of them. After his death earlier this month,  the Wall Street Journal offered an excerpt of his speech("Aliens Cause Global Warming") about the "hoax" of global warming, the premise of one of his final books.

In it, Crichton fails to understand how science deals with uncertainty. To him, any admission of uncertainty is tantamount to "mere guesswork," and research filled with uncertainty, like the search for extraterrestrial life, is "unquestionably religion."

He may be a doctor, but he's no scientist.

The kind of "proof" he seeks isn't available to science at all. Proof is reserved for the rarefied world of mathematics, and the best we can ask for in science is evidence.

Is there evidence for global warming? Sure, but that's not the point. If he wanted to argue against the evidence, fine. He could say, for instance, that deep-sea temperature data isn't reliable, or we need to include additional data from such-and-such a source. But to say that because we can't prove a link between cause and effect is to misunderstand the nature of science. Toss it away, and we lose an invaluable tool.

This affects our world in important ways, every day. Here are a couple of rulings that affect what you can buy and the land you live on.

On December 21, 2004, the U.S.  Department of Health and Human Services recommended against allowing the import of prescription drugs from Canada because it  “could not be sure” that the imported drugs would be safe.

The next day, the Forest Service eliminated its policy for preparing Environmental Impact Statements, as well as the requirement for logging to protect all viable species in the National Forests, since such statements could not say "with certainty" what sort of harm would follow logging and development.

The above observations, from a brilliant  paper by Freudenberg, Gramling, and Davidson,  reflect opposing uses of scientific uncertainty for political ends. In the first case, uncertainty prohibited an action that couldn't be proven safe and on the other one that couldn't be proven unsafe.

Science doesn't offer proof. Neither does politics, and to ignore the science altogether is to suggest that politicians and interest groups can make decisions with certainty even when scientists cannot.

What science offers us is evidence, and it can help us answer questions like "If the earth were warming significantly, what would we see?" and "Given our current understanding, which stars in the sky are most likely to have planets in orbit, and which planets are best suited to retaining an atmosphere?" Science can tell us, "These drugs can be easily checked for safety, and these cannot. These drugs are easy to counterfeit and these are not." Science can tell us if you allow x amount of pollutant to a river, y fish are likely to survive.

Science won't decide what is right or wrong. But it can ensure that when we make our choices, we aren't doing it on the basis of "mere guesswork."

San Francisco Gets Health Care Backwards

Who needs health care coverage?

People without it,  and preferably those least able to afford it. That's what makes San Francisco's recent moves on health care all the more perplexing.

When the city fought in court to charge businesses for employee health care coverage, it turned the whole program upside-down, placing the burden on those at the bottom of the economic ladder.

No, not businesses, who are only the most visible contributors. I'm talking about employees, especially the ones in need of health care.

They'll be hit hard by the foolish flat-rate payment to the city. The nearly $2/hr charge is minor only for those with large salaries. For the poorest employees, it's a significant portion, more than 20% of San Francisco's substantial ($9.36/hr) minimum wage.

 The employees at your nearest retail store, and the dishwasher at your favorite restaurant, the gal who stocks the shelves at the corner grocery and the guy who hangs your dry-cleaning -  they're all earning minimum wage, and now each of their employers sees labor costs leap 20 percent.

Guess what happens to the price of milk at the corner store.

And to the cost of your dry cleaning, and your meals out, and everything else you buy. Those price increases may not matter much to the wealthiest, who already have health care, but they will to the very people who need the new  coverage.

Yes, businesses with fewer than 20 employees are exempt, but that hardly helps. They often need health care options anyway - I do, at my own business - and companies just over the limit face a terrible set of choices. Any company with 30 employees that sees its labor costs leap has got to consider layoffs, and that's the worst kind of coverage of all.

Far better is the Massachusetts plan: spread the cost through all participants, subsidize for the poorest, and make sure the burden doesn't break the very people you're trying to help.

the Hidden Vaccine Debate

If you're a parent of small children, you've heard the usual vaccine debate: one side claims vaccines have suspicious links to autism, while the other claims vaccines are safe. I've never met anyone in the middle.

But the middle is home of the real debate, one hidden from the current yelling about autism. The real question is, 'How much do parents know about the ingredients and effects of vaccines used for their children?'

The answer is: not much. We deserve a debate that asks whether we're adequately weighing risk vs reward, regardless of whether or not a given vaccine contains mercury.

Few childhood vaccines now contain mercury (a very few do, including flu shots), but they do contain other ingredients worth asking about.

The recommended course of childhood vaccines often include about 1875 micrograms of aluminum, for example - astounding in light of the the FDA recommendation that premature babies get no more than 10 to 25 micrograms a day.

Are non-premature babies at risk? We don't know, but we do know aluminum builds in the brain for neurologic damage.

Aluminum is just one ingredient with effects worthy of study. Formaldehyde in vaccines is common, as are odd animal derivatives (like the fetal cow's blood and monkey kidney cells in the rotavirus vaccine).

That doesn't mean vaccines are bad. My kids are vaccinated. Robert Sears recommends vaccines in his excellent Vaccine Book, the most informative and debate-neutral book I've found.

But we do deserve to know more about the ingredients of injectables for our children, and both parents and the medical community deserve a thoughtful debate.

Yelling, 'Vaccines are autism potions!' or shouting, 'Vaccines are perfectly safe!' reduces the discussion to mere bleating. Neither is quite true.

Vaccines offer terrific benefits to children, but they do carry some risks.

Shouldn't parents be well informed about both?

Goodbye, at Last, to David Foster Wallace

Though David Foster Wallace surely meant people to take notice last week, when he hanged himself where his wife would find him, the sentiment is nothing new.

He's always been the center of his writing, and perhaps that's reason enough to move on. Newspapers have been littered with paeans to the lost post-modernist, calling him not just 'brilliant' but 'the best mind of his generation.'

While Wallace was indeed smart,  he was always the center of his own spotlight, a light he held steady with obsessive focus. Instead of using his intellectual gifts to illuminate the outside world - and he wrote on many subjects, from lobsters to infomercials - he compulsively returned to himself, so that all of his books deserved not just the byline but the title 'David Foster Wallace.'

Fans rave about how smart he was, how facile and erudite. But they don't talk about what they as readers gain from him. The whole intellectual exercise, from start to finish, is about the maker of the puzzle. It's a game of see-how-smart-I-am hidden behind literary screens, ever protected by the ready response of 'you-don't-see-after-all?'

Let's look at the passage the New York Times selected as 'exemplary':

“3d. Narr intrusion, expo on Jeni Roberts [same flat & pedantic tone as ¶s 3, 4 of ‘A.W.(I)’ PT. 3]: While following F.L.’s teal/aqua Probe down xprswy, J. hadn’t ‘changed mind’ about having secret adulterous sex w/F.L., rather merely ‘...realized it was unnecessary.’ Understands that she has had life-changing epiphany, has ‘...bec[o]me a woman as well as a wife’ & c. & c."

At first glance, it's incomprehensible, a miniature display of literary fireworks that threaten to burn you if you come too close. Taken slowly, it's not so daunting.

Read as a writer's notepad entry, it gains its thickness through abbreviation, like an unfamiliar text messaging that gradually makes sense.  'Narrative intrusion: exposition on Jeni Roberts, in the same flat and pedantic tone as in paragraphs three and four.' 

Fans would tell you that the passage gets ironic heft from its content, since Wallace is writing about a life-changing realization, but one that is here reduced to a near-laundry list notation, giving as much weight to the color of her car as to the details of her epiphany. According to Wallace, stories are 'falsies': what you see is not what you get.

He's entitled to the view, as is Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Barth, Pynchon, Borges, Nabokov, and a whole generation of English departments. It's not a new perspective.

What's different is its unrelenting focus on the writer, this particular writer, so that instead of musings on how our minds work, we get still more on how David Foster Wallace's mind works.

It's a sharp mind, and an observant one, but for all its acclaimed ability, it was rarely brave enough to venture far from its own home, its flesh-and-bone encasing of personal anxiety and guilty condescension.

It's time to give that, and him, a rest.

Talk then Drive

More and more data show the danger of chatting on the phone while driving, but it's a hard societal habit to break. It's convenient, and the danger isn't immediately apparent.

Yet society has moved beyond other convenient behaviors in the past. Spitting on the street was once common, as was relieving oneself on the side of a building. That still happens here and there, but it's not generally seen on every block each day.

In many areas, public bathrooms reduce trouble on the street. Would more frequent rest-stops or cell-phone side-lots encourage people to talk, then drive?