Liberals are the People of the Future

My understanding of liberals and conservatives goes like this: Liberals are optimistic about change. Whether it's religious freedom in Rhode Island hundreds of years ago or Civil Rights 50 years ago, it was liberals pushing for change they believed would improve the country. Conservatives on the hand are skeptical of change. Whether it's the fight over the National Bank in the 1800's or FDR's New Deal, it was conservative trying to stop the change they believe would harm country.

Liberals are looking forward to improve the world and conservatives are looking backward. That means, if life is changing then by default, liberals are the people of the future. What was reprehensible in the beginning of the 19th century was the norm by the end of the century (think the train, the lightning rod, and jazz).  What was reprehensible in the beginning of the 20th century was the norm by the end of the century (think the car, birth control, and rock and roll).

But that does not means liberals are always right. The future is not always better. Growing government, shrinking families, stagnant economies are just a few problems of modernity. However, this can help us predict what cultural shifts will become normal. For example, recently in Italy a woman convicted of murdering her sister had her prison sentence reduced based on her abnormal brain scan. Another example is the future option of choosing our children's genetic futures. These ideas make me very uncomfortable, but I'm not sure if they'll make my grandchildren uncomfortable.

My rule of thumb has been to ask myself if once the change is complete, is the world better off or worse off. Ignore the technological and political hurdles required. Ignore the cultural destruction it will cause. Ignore how it makes you feel and try to calculate how it could make you feel. Or, just see what your liberal friends think.

Economic History of Gas Prices

Here's some much needed context:

But in constant 2010 dollars, that 1919 price of gas was $3.14. True, at the moment we’re paying a bit more—about $3.96. However, keep in mind that in 1919 there were 7.58 million motor vehicles on America’s roads. Today, Americans own about 254 million vehicles. That means that gas prices have risen 26 percent since 1919, while US vehicle ownership has risen 3,250 percent. And those vehicles are being driven more intensively than their 1919 counterparts. We now drive 6,800 percent more miles per year than in 1919, while gas prices have stayed pretty much stable.

War is Destruction Not Production

From Tyler Cowen:

Put aside Bob Higgs’s points about restricted consumption, Alexander Field has another angle:

Had trends persisted in the absence of war, employment, TFP, and labor productivity would all likely have been higher in 1942…housing construction was robust and growing in 1939, 1940, and 1941, and when the postwar housing boom emerged with full force in 1946, it took off from where it had been arrested in 1941. Since the failure of residential construction to revive fully was one of the major contributors to the persistence of low private investment spending during the Depression, its signs of revival in the years immediately preceding the war suggest that had peace continued, investment, output, and employment growth would have continued as the economy reapproached capacity.

…There continues to be a popular perception that war is beneficial to an economy, particularly if it does not lead to much physical damaged to the country prosecuting it. The U.S. experience during the Second World War is the typical poster child for this point of view. Detailed research into the effects of armed conflict, however, has usually produced more nuanced interpretations…In that spirit, the research reported in this chapter represents a revisionist approach to the analysis of the Second World War, although one that is not entirely unanticipated.

You can buy Field’s excellent book here and here is my previous post on the work. Here is Kling on Field, very useful.

You can't use scarce resources to blow things up and count that as wealth. Just another reason why GDP isn't the best measure of wealth.

The Dogs of War

U.S. soldier and his dog leap off the ramp of a helicopter

Who would have guessed one of the most interesting stories I came across after the death of Osama bin Laden (great summary) would be about the role of canines in the military:

Dogs have been fighting alongside U.S. soldiers for more than 100 years, seeing combat in the Civil War and World War I. But their service was informal; only in 1942 were canines officially inducted into the U.S. Army. Today, they're a central part of U.S. efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan -- as of early 2010 the U.S. Army had 2,800 active-duty dogs deployed (the largest canine contingent in the world). And these numbers will continue to grow as these dogs become an ever-more-vital military asset.

So it should come as no surprise that among the 79 commandos involved in Operation Neptune Spear that resulted in Osama bin Laden's killing, there was one dog -- the elite of the four-legged variety.

I recommended the who article quoted. It's short, full of great links and more wonderful photographs of humans and their animals.

A World Without Economic Growth

Here's something absent from every single thing I've ever read about predicting the future of our economy: Even if economic growth ends right now (which it most certainly will not), we still be as rich as we are right now.

The Black Plague and Nazi Holocaust

When the Black Death hit Europe in 1348-50, killing between one third and one half of the population, its cause was unknown. Many contemporaries blamed the Jews. Cities all over Germany witnessed mass killings of their Jewish population. At the same time, numerous Jewish communities were spared these horrors. We use plague pogroms as an indicator for medieval anti-Semitism. Pogroms during the Black Death are a strong and robust predictor of violence against Jews in the 1920s, and of votes for the Nazi Party. In addition, cities that saw medieval anti-Semitic violence also had higher deportation rates for Jews after 1933, were more likely to see synagogues damaged or destroyed in the Night of Broken Glass in 1938, and their inhabitants wrote more anti-Jewish letters to the editor of the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer.

Via The Browser.

Economics of Polygamy

Polygamy acted as husbandly insurance against an individual wife’s barrenness, as well as high child mortality rates, and made ill or aging wives less burdensome. If it was taboo to have sex with pregnant and lactating women (which increased a nursing child’s chances of survival), new fathers suffered neither sexual privation nor a waiting period to produce another child. And with so many children, polygamists had plenty of sons to work the land or contribute to their commercial ventures; in militaristic societies, these sons were prized as military recruits. Daughters, less valued, were still useful for domestic work, or to be advantageously married off to polygamous men.

That's from a wonderful article on the possibility of legalizing polygamy in Canada. A concern this article raised, but didn't answer, is how the culture of polygamy, like illegal drugs, might change if it was raised out of the legal shadows.

Making Students More Honest

Cheating is a big problem for educators. Almost all students has cheated in some way. Worse, many are able to convince themselves it's either not that bad or not cheating at all. This is specifically a problem for my AP US History class debates where students asked be unbiased jury members. That's why, along with a jury selection method, I've come up with a very specific way to remind them of my integrity standards. Before each debate we
read this aloud:

I, insert your name, promise to judge the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me insert the name of your favorite president.

As I've suggested in the past, it helps:

In Experiment 1, 108 youngsters, aged 8-16 years, were left alone in the room and asked not to peek at the answers to a test. The majority of participants peeked at the test answers and then lied about their transgression. More importantly, participants were eight times more likely to change their response from a lie to the truth after promising to tell the truth. Experiment 2 confirmed that the results of Experiment 1 were not solely due to repeated questioning or the moral discussion of truth- and lie-telling. These results suggest that, while promising to tell the truth influences the truth-telling behaviors of adolescents, a moral discussion of truth and lies does not.

Via Eric Barker.

The Future is Unknown For Everyone

Whether it's the growing food crisis or the recent Japanese nuclear accident, the news is full of predictions. Few of them fare better than a random guess. Here's the research from a the new book Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Are Next to Worthless, And You Can Do Better:

In Future Babble, Gardner acknowledges his debt to political scientist Phililp Tetlock, who set up a 20-year experiment in which he enrolled nearly 300 experts in politics. Tetlock then solicited thousands of predictions about the fates of scores of countries and later checked how well they did. Not so well. Tetlock concluded that most of his experts would have been beaten by “a dart-throwing chimpanzee.” Tetlock found that the experts wearing rose-tinted glasses “assigned probabilities of 65 percent to rosy scenarios that materialized only 15 percent of the time.” Doomsters did even worse: “They assigned probabilities of 70 percent to bleak scenarios that materialized only 12 percent of the time.”

Not to say predictions are bad, after all that's what makes economics so great. This is why people should be forced to back up their predictions financially, like they are at Intrade. I suggest finding a trusted observationalist and ignore most other people. I suggest reading the whole article quoted above to remember just how many times the experts have been wrong.

Emptying the Bottle: Mid-April '11 Links

Here is a list of the worthwhile sites I've Bookmarked recently:

• How trademark law is being abused to the detriment of consumers.
• One way to understand other cultures is to eat at McDonalds [video].
• The first female congressman was the only to vote against WWI and WWII.
• When your favorite TV show gets canceled, it feels like a break-up (earlier).
• Past, present, and future of Fannie Mae And Freddie Mac [audio].
• Romanticism is not predictive relationship length (earlier).
• NPR's Planet Money on federal funding of NPR.
• Respect from the audience comes from a respect for the audience [graph].
• The best songs are ones you can "gently tap your thigh, and go crazy".
• Interesting discussion of the science and politics of addiction [audio].
• Upside to war is that female, black, young, and gay Americans are helped.
• A thought on why American politicians lie (hint: they're all the same).
• Coupons are used to price discriminate (long version) [audio].
• Workplace fatalities were decreasing before progressivism [chart].

As always, feel free to email me anything interesting you come across.

Declaration of War, What is it Good For?

We're fighting another war. The United States Nations is paying for it. The Republicans are ironically weary. This is my favorite related statement:

Question: In what circumstances, if any, would the president have constitutional authority to bomb Iran without seeking a use-of-force authorization from Congress? (Specifically, what about the strategic bombing of suspected nuclear sites — a situation that does not involve stopping an IMMINENT threat?) 

Answer: The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation. 

As Commander-in-Chief, the President does have a duty to protect and defend the United States. In instances of self-defense, the President would be within his constitutional authority to act before advising Congress or seeking its consent. History has shown us time and again, however, that military action is most successful when it is authorized and supported by the Legislative branch. It is always preferable to have the informed consent of Congress prior to any military action.

That's from now President Obama in 2007. I'm not surprised that Obama acted like every war president of the last 65 years, fighting without a formal declaration of war, but I do blame him for not being different.

Music in the Classroom

While my students work on their individual work (usually previewing the content I am about to lecture), I play music. Mostly from my own personal collection, which means there's a lot of rock and roll. Here's a justification for it:

Results indicated that state positive affect and quality-of-work were lowest with no music, while time-on-task was longest when music was removed. Narrative responses revealed the value of music listening for positive mood change and enhanced perception on design while working.

For my US History classes I have an end goal of having a collection of music throughout history so they can listen to the music of the time period they are studying. For one, it will give them a richer understanding of history. I also think it will help me convince them that life (and also music) has only been getting better.

Learning by Teaching: The 1918 Spanish Flu

In light of the events in Japan, this may be the most under-learned natural disaster in history:

The pandemic lasted from June 1917 to December 1920, spreading even to the Arctic and remote Pacific islands. Between 50 and 100 million died, making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history. Even using the lower estimate of 50 million people, 3% of the world's population (1.8 billion at the time), died of the disease. Some 500 million, or 28% (≈1/4) were infected.

Compare that to the 9 million that died in WWI, the largest war in Western history at that time.

Emptying the Bottle: Late-March '11 Links

Here is a list of the worthwhile sites I've Bookmarked recently:

• Clumping history together: The Beatles in the year 3000 [video].
• The correlation of big government and immigration limits.
• "Life's too short to do the wrong job" [ads].
• Will the Japanese disaster help Japan reorganize (earlier).
• Why economists aren't very convincing [cartoon].
• Despite obesity, life expectancy is still rising (earlier).
• Diet may help ADHD kids more than drugs (thanks Cheryl).
• From the Diplomat blog: Exposé: James Scott Farrin Commercials.
• Lack of sleep makes you less ethical (earlier and earlierer).
• Is the phone call dying? If so, I feel old.
• Citizens in Switzerland are given a gun for national defense.

As always, feel free to email me anything interesting you come across.

Worst Thing a Leader Can Do

We've all heard of Yuri Gagarin, the first human to reach outer space. But few have heard about his best friend, fellow cosmonaut, Vladimir Kamarov, who died literally crashing into Earth. The most horrifying part of his death, recently covered in NPR's science blog, was that most of the Russian staff knew the ship had serious problems. But, as was true in most of the Soviet Union, no one was willing to be the messenger to tell Russian leadership.

This reminded me of something I shared years ago; a video critique of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. The main reason given for the tragedy that became the Star Wars prequels, was that no one was willing to challenge George Lucas. He was the after all the creator of not only the Star Wars, but also Indiana Jones, American Graffiti, and THX 1138. Those accomplishments limited his ability to receive feedback from those around him. That's why I think he and Spielberg made such a good team. When Lucas suggested calling the most recent Indiana Jones film Indiana Jones and the Flying Saucer people, Steven said no.

The more responsibility I get at my school or at the theater, the more I realize that what makes a good leader is the people they lead. A good boss hires good people and then lets them succeed. The worst thing a leader can do is separate themselves from those that they lead. We must embrace that we all make mistakes, and rely on those around us to limit them. So as this great blog posts describes, if you are a prominent leader (whether you're a dictator or famed movie director), be sure to realize that your cult of personality only signals support if people are over-supporting you.

Non-Math Classes Shouldn't Give Homework

One of the classroom issues I've always wrestled with is homework. For one, I find it very difficult to prevent cheating when students are not in my classroom. Also, at least half of my regular students do not do homework. Ever. That's certainly not a reason to abandon homework, but it is a major drain on student grades (and a hassle for teachers). Lastly, most students have huge time commitments outside of school like sports, work, and family. So, should I give homework? Here's a study:

Following an identification strategy that allows us to largely eliminate unobserved student and teacher traits, we examine the effect of homework on math, science, English and history test scores for eighth grade students in the United States. Noting that failure to control for these effects yields selection biases on the estimated effect of homework, we find that math homework has a large and statistically meaningful effect on math test scores throughout our sample. However, additional homework in science, English and history are shown to have little to no impact on their respective test scores.

This goes along with my current classroom expectations. I give a closing question that requires a large paragraph to answer. Half of the students finish it in class, a fourth of them do it at home, and about a fourth don't do it at all. That is for non-honors/AP classes (I give extensive reading and questions for my AP Microeconomics and AP US classes). It seems like a healthy compromise and since homework only seems to help students learn technical content like math, I'll stick with it for now. Though I'm not sure if economics is more of a math or more social science.

Takeaways from The Great Stagnation

As I described in an earlier post, I recently finished Tyler Cowen's ebook The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All The Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History,Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better. You can read more at his blog Marginal Revolution. Here are my takeaways that didn't make it into the original post:

Things are still great, but paying off debt will be very difficult. In the past it's been useful to have a divided government, it's hard to pass bad laws. But now that we've set things into motion that need to be stopped (Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, war), something needs to be done. Sadly, what our debt has done is actually encourage us to spend more (perceived price of government is down because it's all borrowed). The "low hanging fruit" mentioned in the subtitle is divided into three categories:

*Land: initially America had a lot cheap western and and easily accessible natural resources.

*Labor: in the beginnings of American education, there were huge gains to be had. Educating the brightest and hardest working can lead to huge innovation. Today, we educate everyone. The gains from and time needed to educate all will result in less gains.

*Technology: the technology created initially after the Industrial Revolution were more valuable than the inventions created later.

The difference the technologies that have been created recently is that they lead to a lot of private good, not public good. Think about how many spillover benefits there we to the invention of the printing press or running water. But most of the inventions recently, like smart phones and heart surgery, have seen the benefits centralized on the upper half of society.

The thesis only applies to the Western world and those that have already gone through industrialization. For the next century global growth will continue to surge under the "low hanging fruit" from the rest of the world. Hopefully by the time they are done we will be out of our innovative plateau (I'm hoping for teleportation).

One of the reasons innovation has slowed is because it has become more and more difficult for science to be done by amatuers (like for example Gregor Mendel and Thomas Edison).

The exception to this is the internet. From the accuracy of Wikipedia to the great things open source has created, the internet is the last place for smart nonprofessionals to leave their mark. But, as Cowen notes, the internet has not greatly increased GDP nor does it increase median wages. Though some claim it is worth at least a couple thousand dollars.

Cowen cites specific industries that he believes still have some "low hanging fruit" to be had: health care, education, financial, and government services. Each of these are full of inefficiency and often bad rule writing. Sadly, they are all also becoming bigger parts of our economy. Cowen wisely notes that as technology made large corporations possible, it also made big government possible. Could you imagine a welfare state without computers or even the printing press?

Here are his solutions to the stagnation: 1) shrink/improve government (easier said than done), improve science by making scientists rock stars (from the Onion), 2) look forward to and beware of the next big time of economic growth (after all the industrial revolution brought better technology in the form of medicine and weapons).

The Past Wasn't Completely Impoverished

In the first post my series against self-verification, I'd like to try and balance an argument I make regularly. Though like was significantly worse before the Industrial Revolution, in some places it wasn't as bad as I thought:

In the first, with Joseph Cummins and Brock Smith, he shows that England was surprisingly rich before the Industrial Revolution. This assertion is based on the fact the a small share of the population was engaged in farming. The primary sector accounted for 52% in 1817, and even 60% in 1560. These measurements are based on the occupations listed in men's wills and indicate that a substantial fraction of people living in rural areas were in fact not engaged in farming. Thus measuring the urban population share can be misleading in this respect.

In the second, Gregory Clark shows that there has been relatively little growth over these centuries, which means that way back in 1381, England was much richer than we thought. At that date, only 55% of the population was engaged in farming, based on records of the Poll Tax. This is very close to the number quoted above for 1817. Thus standards of living were not that different four and a half centuries apart.

I think I've also been guilty of ignoring the importance of intimate relationships when it comes to measuring wealth. Having enjoyable conversations with friends is one of many things that won't show up in GDP. And let's not forget, that like me, plenty of ancient cultures had time for games.

History of US Energy Production

That's from the US Energy Information Administration. So what do we expect for the future? A combination of more nuclear, more solar, more oil, maybe more geothermal, hopefully less corn and all at about the same price.

The Curveball That Led the US to Iraq