tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-62527041074540101912024-03-14T00:59:03.975-07:00The Polinomics AgendaChris M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16726381483623195967noreply@blogger.comBlogger41125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6252704107454010191.post-9651996665180624812012-10-15T06:40:00.000-07:002012-10-15T06:40:03.992-07:00Some Current Economic Considerations Base on Hayek's "The Use of Knowledge in Society"Friedrich Hayek's "The Use of Knowledge in Society" is one of the most cited and read pieces of economics of all time. The piece was advanced as a defense of free markets against centralized planning and,while Hayek has been tentatively adopted by some parts of the political right, it has a depth of thinking that means he cannot be reduced to a "wooden insistence" on the free market above all else. Times have changed and the free market is here to stay. But I wish to revisit his discussion of "special knowledge" in light of income inequality and the environment.
I see the key bit of the piece revolving around "special knowledge of circumstances of the fleeting moment not known to others." This is also expressed as "knowledge of the particular circumstances of time and place." Examples Hayek points to are knowing that a machine is not fully employed and can be put to better use, or that some person has skills that can be better utilized, or knowledge of tramp-steamers that are only partially filled so a few extra goods can be shipped at a good price.
Hayek sees this kind of special knowledge as generally held in disrepute, and seen as slightly unfair or crass. Thus the value of markets, which do a good job of communicating this kind of information to individuals engaged in non-coordinated or decentralized planning, are also disparaged.
Now for my points.
Herbert Simon has noted that ever since Adam Smith (who disparaged all institutions, including Oxford), we have in fact seen a rise in the amount of economic activity that occurs within organizations. 80% of current economic activity occurs within organizations and only 20% outside in what can properly be considered markets. This means a large portion of economic activity is coordinated, organized, and standardized. I suggest that this means all special knowledge is not of the same value. A special knowledge of how a particular machine works will only be of great value if there is something special about that machine. The machine may very likely be replaced, or moved to China. A special knowledge of particular tax codes, and how to use them with your business strategy if you're head of a major corporation, however, may be very valuable. As may a special knowledge of the personalities and bottom lines of a few other CEOs. Thus the relative availability of valuable special knowledge could explain inequality. This would also suggest that it will be very hard to root out such inequality. Broad based simplifying the rules of the game might be a start which Hayek would approve of.
Environmental externalities are well known to not be communicated through markets. They can be dealt with through "command and control" or economic policy instruments, but in both cases intervention of a centralized planner is generally called for to set up the policy regime. Standard setting is an engineering (command and control) task and one that the U.S. EPA has been able to do generally well. But as the costs of meeting standards has risen, interests in economic policy instruments has risen. One solution is to start pricing ecosystem services, i.e. the market value of goods people receive from nature. While I support this effort, I am skeptical that it will yield the rational policy instrument many of its backers hope for.
In many cases the value of a particular environmental feature is tied up in special knowledge. The value of that stream may be partly tied to sediment and nitrogen reduction and flood control. But whether it is valued by someone because it is far away and pristine, or whether it is next to houses and a group of children particularly enjoy wading in it, is very much a case of special knowledge. One with apparently identical characteristics may be viewed as a nuisance. Thus, I would suggest that the ecosystem services work will generally be more useful for educational purposes rather than yielding any strong rational planning framework.
Chris M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16726381483623195967noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6252704107454010191.post-86764448343914143882012-02-01T05:48:00.000-08:002012-02-01T06:26:06.098-08:00Neurath's BoatNeurath's boat metaphor for how we seek and apply knowledge seems popular among pragmatists, I've seen it feature quite prominently in recent defenses of pragmatism by Richard Rorty and Bryan Norton. <br /><br />The basic metaphor is pretty simple (and no doubt they like being able to bring the positivists back into their camp), so there is intuitive appeal to it. We start out with the boat we have, rotting timber and all. And we don't have the luxury of replacing all the planks (which one would think of as propositions with relative degrees of truthfulness corresponding with how "sound" they are as planks), so we have to stand on other planks to replace those that are failing. As one is forced to stand on other planks, one can never start at the beginning, i.e. adopt a position of radical doubt. To not take a pragmatic stance, fix those planks most urgently need or repair while standing on those in ok, but perhaps not ideal condition, is to go into the drink. Given that the whole point of the knowledge boat in the first place is to avoid the drink, Descartes' project, er, founders.<br /><br />My sympathies are with the pragmatists on this one, I mostly agree with Rorty's characterization of radical skeptics as "obsessive" is often apt. But it does seem pretty clear that the selection of the metaphor preselects the pragmatic conclusion. A boat is to keep you out of the water, that's what it's for. Of course it fails as a boat and you fail as a boat operator if you let it go down. Why are you voyaging might be a better question. Is it for pure knowledge and discovery, for conquest, to escape something, for profit, or to catch a tasty fish?<br /><br />Having sailed a little, I also hate to let Neurath know, that most boats are made of fiberglass or steel these days, and if your boat is in trouble, you'll bring it into dock. The decision making will mostly involve which boat you decide to get on in the first place, not which non-existent planks you repair. So boat design actually is the pressing concern. What is it designed for, what tradeoffs has the designer opted for, how does it fit your purpose, how does it compare to othe boats designed for similar purposes.<br /><br />I don't think that picking boats, instead of picking planks is at all problematic to the pragmatist project. How does one pick a boat, one finds a community of practitioners who generally shares the same purpose for boating, and looks at the types of boats they use. As one learns more about that specific area of boating, one may find one particular design suits oneself best, and will take a stance on various design choices. If one gets REALLY into boating, one can design and build a boat of one's own, and build it from the ground up. This might be an exercise in skepticism of current designs, and exercise in learning and understanding them, or simply a way to try one's hand at something new. At the end of the day the design will be judged by how well it performs in accordance to what it was designed for. So skepticism, even radical skepticism is permitted, but the proof is in a very pragmatic pudding.Chris M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16726381483623195967noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6252704107454010191.post-79929573376539906592011-07-27T05:40:00.000-07:002011-07-27T06:18:15.780-07:00The Neuroscientific Case for HeideggerI've been debating Prof. Massimo Pigliucci at <a href="http://www.rationallyspeaking.org/">Rationally Speaking</a> over the usefulness and relevance of Heidegger's work. I am putting the below excerpt from Antonio Damasio's excellent <span style="font-style:italic;">Self Comes to Mind</span> as an example of a situation and behavior I believe to be very difficult to explain without reference to Heidegger's work refuting the substance ontology.<br /><br />Briefly stated, the substance ontology tells us objects exist because they have physical form and we observe that physical form. Intuitively, this is a pretty plausible explanation, which is why it is been more or less unquestioned since Plato. Up until Kant, this led to a problem, one could examine objects (the Empiricists) or one could examine the contents of the mind (the Rationalists) but the two could not be reconciled. Something existed because it was physically there, so it was silly to say it had any relation to the contents of the mind. And yet, the mind felt like the most real thing for the Rationalists, and so we have the axioms of Descartes and Spinoza that start with the mind and then try to make a proof of the external world without any empirical recourse to it.<br /><br />Building on Kant, Husserl created phenomenology, the idea that we can have access to the objects we interact with as well as ourselves by reflecting on the situations in which we interact with the objects. But this was still something taking place in our own heads, we had free reign in our own heads under Husserl, but what relevance did this have to the cold material world outside our heads?<br /><br />Heidegger tells us that phenomenology has relevance outside our heads by taking on the substance ontology. He demonstrates that (as beings that have a stance on our own being) the physical properties of objects are not the primary stuff that make up the world. (There is an important distinction between the World, which has people in it, and the Universe, the realm of science, where this does not apply.) We don't go out and find a hammer, nails, and wood, and discover they have the properties of building a place to live in a certain way. Rather, the place to live in a certain way, connected with our stance on being, preexists and coordinates the use of the hammer, nails, and wood. The hammer doesn't exist primarily as piece of wood with a blob of metal on top, rather it exists primarily as something to build with. And this something to build with is based on our stance on our own being. Without a self, the coordination of these physical objects breaks down. I'm challenging Prof. Pigliucci to come up with a better philosophical explanation for the condition described below. In this case the self is lost, but the mind is perfectly capable of acting in an intentional manner towards objects consistent with the substance ontology.<br /><br /><blockquote>Removing the Self and Keeping the Mind<br /><br />Perhaps the most convincing evidence for a dissociation between the wakefulness and mind, on the one hand, and self, on the other, comes from another neurological condition, epileptic seizures. In such situations, a patient’s behavior is suddenly interrupted for a brief period of time, during which the action freezes altogether; it is then followed by a period, generally brief as well, during which the patient returns to active behavior but gives no evidence of a normal conscious state. The silent patient may move about, but his actions, such as waving goodbye or leaving a room, reveal no overall purpose. The actions may exhibit a “minipurpose,” like picking up a glass of water and drinking from it, but no sign that the purpose is part of a larger context, The patient makes no attempt to communicate with the observer and no reply to the observer’s attempts.<br /><br />If you visit a physician’s office, your behavior is part of a large context that has to do with the specific goals of the visit, your overall plan for the day, and the wider plans and intentions of your life, at varied time scales, relative to which your visit may be of some significance or not. Everything you do in the “scene” at the office is informed by these multiple contents [contexts?], even if you do not need to hold them all in mind in order to behave coherently. The same happens with the physician, relative to his role in the scene. In a state of diminished consciousness, however, all that background influence is reduced to little or nothing. The behavior is controlled by immediate cues, devoid of any insertion in the wider context. For example, picking up a glas and drinking from it makes sense if you are thirsty, and that action does not need to connect with the broader context.<br /><br />I remember the very first patient I observed with this condition because the behavior was so new to me, so unexpected, and so disquieting. In the middle of our conversation, the patient stopped talking and in fact suspended moving altogether. His face lost expression, and his open eyes looked past me, at the wall behind. He remained motionless for several seconds. He did not fall out of his chair, or fall asleep, or convulse, or twitch. When I spoke his name, there was no reply. When he began to move again, ever so little, he smacked his lips. His eyes shifted about and seemed to focus momentarily on a coffee cup on the table between us. It was empty, but still he picked it up and attempted to drink from it. I spoke to him again and again, but he did not reply. I asked him what was going on , and he did not reply. His face still had no expression, and he didn not look at me. I called his name, and he did not reply. Finally he rose to his feet, turned around, and walked slowly to the door. I called him again. He stopped and looked at me, and a perplexed expression came to his face. I called him again, and he said, “What?”<br /><br />The patient had suffered and absence seizure (a kind of epileptic seizure), followed by a period of automatism. He had been both there and not, awake and behaving, for sure, partly attentive, bodily present, but unaccounted for as a person. Many years later I described the patient as having been “absent without leave,” and that description remains apt.<br /><br />Without questions this man was awake in the full sense of the term. His eyes were open, and his proper muscular tone enabled him to move about. He could unquestionably produce actions, but the actions did not suggest an organized plan. He had no overall purpose and made no acknowledgement of the conditions of the situation, no appropriateness, and his acts were only minimally coherent. Without question his brain was forming mental images, although we cannot vouch for their abundance or coherence. In order to reach for a cup, a pick it up, hold it to one’s lips, and put it back on the table, the brain must form images, quite a lot of them, at the very least visual, kinesthetic, and tactile; otherwise the person cannot execute the movements correctly. But while this speaks for the presence of mind, it gives no evidence of self. The man did not appear to be cognizant of who he was, where he was, who I was, or why he was in front of me.<br /><br />In fact, not only was the evidence of such overt knowledge missing, but there was no indication of covert guidance of his behavior, the sort of nonconscious autopilot that allows us to walk home without consciously focusing on the route. Moreover, there was no sign of emotion in the man’s behavior, a telltale indication of seriously impaired consciousness (emphasis in original).<br /><br /><br />Such cases provide powerful evidence, perhaps the only definitive evidence yet, for a break between two functions that remain available, wakefulness and mind, and another function, self, which by any standard is not available. This man did not have a sense of his own existence and had a defective sense of his surroundings. </blockquote>Chris M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16726381483623195967noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6252704107454010191.post-47348318991122663372011-07-19T12:26:00.000-07:002011-07-22T07:18:15.114-07:00The Pitfalls of Objectivity in Policy DesignWe strive for objectivity in our work, as well we should. The less observations or conclusions are dependent on opinions, biases, or assumptions, the more replicable and generalizable results will be by others, and thus they will be more useful, and more convincing.<br /><br />A prevailing view of objectivity derives from a conception of correctly representing phenomena in the natural sciences. In this view, there is an objective natural reality of objects "out there" and we, if we wish to be good scientists, seek to create representations that are objective to the extent that they replicate the objects in that reality. We must observe the objects to do this, with our sensory perceptions and with apparati, but we are more scientific if we can take the "we" out of the observation. If one wants to objectively characterize a rock "heavy" is a very useful subjective description, but a poor objective one. "25lbs" is a better objective one, but still tied to the context of the planet Earth. "11.33980925 kilograms" is the best objective measure, even if but it loses the subjective component. "Heavy" means the same thing here and on the moon in an experiential sense. 11.33980925 kilograms does not.<br /><br />The reason we don't like "heavy" as a measurement, is it is very closely tied to the observer. A weightlifter and a four year old will have very different observations of what is heavy. The advantage of "heavy" as an observation, is if I do know the observer, I can abstract a lot of subjective information, and infer a lot of objective information from it. If I know you described the rock as heavy, I know that when you describe another item as heavy, you mean something in approximately the same range of mass. I can also know, when you have described a mass (that I also have made a subjective judgement about) as heavy, whether I think you are a weakling or not. <br /><br />Let's call "heavy" and aspect of the rock, and "11.33980925 kilograms" a property of the rock. Both aspects and properties, have their uses. If you tell me someone was hit by a car on the freeway, you've conveyed a lot of information. I don't need the mass or velocity of the vehicle, or a detailed representation of the human body and the effects of force exerted on it, to know this is "bad" news for said individual. My intuitive understanding of human physiology, that cars are "heavy" and move "fast," especially on the freeway, is enough, and is in fact superior for rapidly and fully conveying what occurred, than a formally observed and modeled (attempts at repeated observations might run into some ethical issues) explanation of what happened. <br /><br />That said, maybe there was construction on the freeway (or it just happened to be somewhere in the DC Metro area, or both) so the car was traveling two mph. The car was made up of balsa wood and rice paper and piloted by a midget and the person hit was a 400lb goliath in a suit of armor. Well, the formal representation route would have avoided this mistake, by refusing to take any information from the aspects of the situation and only using the properties, but once again would have been more costly than simply amending the initial statement with the above qualitative description and ensuing subjective judgments. On the other hand, if we wish to talk about general matters of car velocities and the ensuing dangers (though dangerous is an aspect, not a property) we may wish to take more formal <a href="http://http://www.science.org.au/nova/058/058key.htm">routes</a>.<br /><br />Why do we throw out so much perfectly good information when conducting scientific inquiry? In fact we don't, interpretations of what situations are relevant to a theory or other human concern a situation are relevant and should be investigated, and interpretations of the aspects of those situations and the data they produce, are necessary for science to be an intelligible endeavor. This is why science is conducted by scientists, not computers. While computers can represent and analyze all kinds of data, we need a human being to interpret the data for it to be intelligible and intelligent. Even AI, just isn't that <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/From-Technologist-to/128231/">intelligent</a>.<br /><br />Indeed, all statistics must be interpreted. 90% of Pasteur's data on contagion theory is reported to have been ignored by him. We maintain the ideal of astronomy because it attractively avoids the slippery slope where the differences between interpretation, confirmation bias, and pure fabrication, are distinguished by the subjective intent of the <a href="http://evolvingthoughts.net/2011/07/on-hauser/">individual researcher</a>, and thus the research result, difficult to replicate under any circumstances, is very rarely objectively verifiable. Trusting the researcher and his or her reviewing peers is essential and necessary for much of the scientific endeavor.<br /><br />Just trusting someone, a subjective stance (and as we know an often troubling one), is intuitively anathema to how we conceptualize science. Isn't the whole point of science that we can replicate results that are intuitively implausible of people that we don't trust? Isn't that what objectivity really is?<br /><br />Can anyone beat Galileo's work as the <a href="http://www0.hku.hk/philodep/courses/SeniorSeminar/Hacking%20Languag%20Truth%20Reason.htm">style </a>of investigation all scientific work should seek to imitate? Here we have someone take a theory, that is intuitively implausible based on our sense experiences, and confirm it with empirical observations. The theory and linked observations, are so strong, that it stands, despite all the organized political and spiritual powers that be, and despite that the man himself recanted it, as True, and replicable by anyone who wishes to verify it.<br /><br />But there is a danger in idealizing this style of science, particularly when we get into the social sciences. The social sciences are often thought of as soft sciences, perhaps not really sciences at all. Their subjects of study are often so maddeningly hard to pin down, and likely to adapt to circumstances, that the development of formal representational models, that will have any empirical validity, predictive value, and societal relevance, is maddeningly elusive. This is the subject of much gnashing of teeth among social scientists. Who doesn't what to be a real scientist dealing with real hard Galilean Truths?<br /><br />The social scientists that have best positioned themselves as being "real" scientists are economists. We have a lot of formal models based on assumptions that are more or less intuitively plausible, and more or less based on empirical observation. They do a lot of math, come up with a lot of counterintuitive conclusions. What economists have, are prices, employment figures, interest rates, and other such measurements, which mean they can get farther away from the world of subjective interpretation, (what does it mean that 54% of the population voted for this candidate, depends on why the population, who the candidate is, who the population thinks the candidate is, etc., etc.). <br /><br />These numbers are more or less objective, one car argue about methodologies for measuring GDP, whether a black market exists, but at the end of the day, if an apple sold for $1, the apple sold for $1. The perception that economics deals with objective truths has given economists a great deal of power in the policy arena. Predicting the outcomes of various policies is undeniably complicated work so methodologies such as cost benefit analysis can help policymakers and the public get a rough idea of the policy's financial implications and thus whether it is "worth it."<br /><br />The tricky thing, is that the apple's valuation at time of sale of $1 is a subjective valuation. I may not actually want the apple later when I initially planned to purchase it, and thus I may have wasted my money. This isn't a terrible problem, one buyer does not a market make (exception monopsony) provided that we <span style="font-style:italic;">trust </span>the market is efficient and most buyers are rational. Similarly an unemployment rate doesn't just reflect the number of people out of work but looking for employment, but also the unemployed's subjective perceptions of whether it is worthwhile to keep looking, and employers' subjective judgements regarding where the economy will go. A full picture of unemployment must reference who the unemployed are, and why they're doing what they're doing, and who the employers are, and why there doing what they're doing. Suddenly we're stuck with subjective judgements in this most scientific of social sciences, no wonder macroeconomic arguments are often so heated. While we can formally represent the unemployment rate in a satisfactory manner, any formal representation of the employers or unemployed is going to be strongly contested.<br /><br />Fortunately as a nation, we do not need to come up with agreed upon formal technical arguments for all political issues. While the American People employ technical experts to advise elected and appointed political representatives, ultimately the sovereign power of this nation resides in The People. <br /><br />Just because the technical experts are let off the hook from finding technical and objective solutions to all of America’s problems does not mean that everything is hunky dory. The power Congress delegates to Executive Branch agencies may enshrine or foster over time a class of experts whose values differ markedly from that of The People. (We will leave who The People are aside for a moment, but needless to say, who they are, and what they want is naturally a contested political issue.) Thus we have practices such as cost benefit analysis that put a “weight” on an agency action that is readily understood by all.<br /><br />How fully this weight describes the action can be complicated. Just as a rock can be described by its weight it will also have chemical and physical properties, texture and a geographical and perhaps even a cultural history. Its weight, just like the measure of economic efficiency that is cost benefit analysis, will capture some of these properties better than others. The numbers of a cost benefit analysis are a worse measure than the weight of the rock, because we aren’t able to weigh the economic efficiency of the action directly, rather we must derive it from technical assumptions that may only be understood by experts. Thus cost benefit analysis, may serve an anti-democratic and anti-transparent function by moving the realm of decision making to technical conflicts between experts inside and outside of government. The situation may be further worsened because decision makers and the public may have very little idea what a cost benefit analysis says and does not say. Just as the weight of a rock might not be its most interesting feature, so the economic efficiency of an agency action may not be what we care most about.<br /><br />The solution is not to throw out cost benefit analysis, or even give up on “objectivity” as an important guidepost for decisionmaking. The key is too make sure that no one thinks they know everything about a rock because of its weight. Introducing more criteria to the analysis such as employment, distributional, indirect, and environmental justice impacts are all moves in this direction. Note that these more or less objective criteria do not bring us closer to an objective decision. A rule that would assign weights to them would be necessary to do that, and even if one were to come up with such an objective rule, it would be the equivalent to describing the rock by its weight again. These additional criteria allow and force the public and decision makers to think more critically about the issue at hand. Thus the veneer of objective decision making is lost, but more critical, engaged, informed, and transparent decision making is fostered.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">In a future post (teaser!) I will discuss a different conceptions of objectivity and how analyses based on it incorporate many of the advantages (but also some pitfalls) of the intuitive understanding of the aspects of objects under investigation.</span>Chris M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16726381483623195967noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6252704107454010191.post-31263687495791335922011-06-30T05:10:00.000-07:002011-06-30T06:14:07.253-07:00An Economic Critique of PragmatismI've been doing a little reading in America's great philosophical tradition, pragmatism, and in general I like what I see. Get to the point people, tell me why it matters. "Monism" or "pluralism," why does it matter? Pretty soon you get to such abstract notions that no one but two old men care one iota. Coincidentally, one of those men suspects that the other intentionally spilled water on his tweed coat during a seminar 30 years ago, and the other that vociferiously denies the allegation, and is quite bitter about it. Angels on dancing on the head of a pin. <br /><br />As an economist, however, I must advance a criticism of the following statement from William James:<br /><br /><blockquote>The great English way of investigating a conception is to ask yourself right off, "What is it <em>known as?</em> In what facts does it result? What is the <em>cash-value</em>, in terms of particular experience? "And what special difference would come into the world according as it were true or false?" (Emphasis in original.)</blockquote><br /><br />What if I were to take a suitcase of $100 bills with me to visit one of those Amazonian tribes just coming in contact with the outside world? What would be the cash value of such a suitcase? It might be worth $1,000,000 when I get on the boat to go up the river, but what it is worth when I get there, is going to depend on whether I can convince the tribe that this paper will be accepted almost anywhere else in the world in exchange for goods and services, that its value will be maintained (hopefully these days!) because it is backed by a economic and military superpower, and that people everywhere basically trust this superpower to pay its obligations and thus maintain the currency. They may trust me, and thus take the cash and create their own dollarized economy, ensuring that I am very well taken care of with my now substantial wealth. They may read the newspaper I brought with me talking about the current debt ceiling negotiations, and put me on the next boat out of town.<br /><br />The point is, cash value doesn't exist unless a standard by which values are measured is established. (One does not explicitly need cash to do this as in a barter economy, but one of the functions of currency is to act as a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Num%C3%A9raire">numeraire</a>.) Biological value is not a bad place to start, I will immediately be concerned about how many dollars I can exchange for a tasty grilled sloth. But, as the massacres over seeminly petty doctrinal issues during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation indicate, our concerns in life are not merely biological. In fact, the current nastiness over the teaching of evolution is, at its core, a fight over whether the biological is primary or the spiritual is primary. Perhaps, if I had a religous restriction on eating grilled sloth, I would be truer to my values by starving instead of eating its devilishly tasty flesh?<br /><br />Does this throw out pragmatism? No, not at all. Pragmatism is a very useful solvent to dissolve issues that are inherently silly because fighting over them obscures implicit agreement on a host of values that are far more consequential. It can help us move past the abstract to issues of significant political, social, and spiritual consequences, which may underlie the abstract debates. A small abstract detail can radically change the standard by which the world and objects and actions in it are valued. We should count ourselves lucky that those abstract details are carried out in irrelevant debates, rather than with tanks and jets.Chris M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16726381483623195967noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6252704107454010191.post-68796148764559435262011-06-22T05:29:00.001-07:002011-06-22T06:18:38.657-07:00A Brief Exercise in Subjectivity for PhilosophyAfter my prior post on what I took to be John Searle's <a href="http://polinomicsagenda.blogspot.com/2011/06/john-searles-illuminating-confusions.html">misreading </a> of Antonio Damasio's new theory that the roots of consciouness are in the primordial mind, I went out and bought Damasio's book. It is, (in my subjective opinion), quite excellent. It lucidly ties together neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and philosophy for an intuitively very plausible (to me) framework for how consciousness arose and how it operates. <br /><br />What makes Damasio's account powerful is that it is rooted in the scientific and objective. But how I ended up reading his account, is an exercise in the power of the subjective. And whether I reduced my search costs for this book enormously with clever shortcuts, or whether I simply found a way to confirm my own biases, is up to the reader to decide.<br /><br />I found Searle's <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/jun/09/mystery-consciousness-continues/?pagination=false">review</a> of Damasio through a posting by blogger/philospher <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/john_s_wilkins">John Wilkins</a>. I recognized Searle's name and found it interesting because Hubert Dreyfus had noted repeated squabbles with him. As I find Dreyfus to be very engaging and insightful, I have an interest in seeing what Searle has to say because Dreyfus is interested in what Searle has to say. (I also have a bit of a bias against Searle because of Dreyfus but you can judge how much that influences me based on my previous post.) <br /><br />The little flag raised by Dreyfus' interest in Searle got me to go back to look for the post after I wasn't able to read it immediately. Three times. Twice on my workstation, where for some reason Twitter malfunctioned, and the post didn't show, and then a third time on my smartphone where I found it. That amount of effort says something, I'm not exactly hard up for information to consume. The little flag had a powerful effect.<br /><br />But how did I even see the post in the first place? I didn't even know who John Wilkins was two weeks ago, and now I'm following him on Twitter, seeing stuff he writes a few times a day. Well, a few weeks ago, Andrew Sullivan, who I find takes novel and well thought out positions on politics and provides a nice mix of philosophy and religion thrown in, posted a link to Massimo Pigliucci's <a href="http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/">blog</a>. The post was interesting, so I started following it and his Twitter account as I figured one post of interest might lead to more posts of interest. A few days later Massimo posted a link to Sean Carroll's article requiring a physically testable hypothesis for the soul. I think this is a silly position, and had some back and forth with Massimo who doesn't believe this is a silly position. At some point, John Wilkins, started following me in Twitter. So I looked his back and forth with Massimo, and his blog post on the subject which I found covered the limits of science in this case, to be technically well done (and I agreed with his conclusions). So I started following John Wilkins on Twitter, and later saw his post on Searle's article.<br /><br />So how many degrees of subjectivity do we have here? I bought a book because Searle disagrees with the author and Hubert Dreyfus disagrees with Searle. I found out about the book because Sullivan found Massimo's post interesting, then I disagreed with Massimo on a subsequent point and John agreed with me. It ended in an objective act, a $25 purchase on Amazon. And I've got a book I'm happy with, that I wouldn't have found otherwise. Perhaps I'm confirming my biases, but without my biases, how would I have found the book?Chris M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16726381483623195967noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6252704107454010191.post-1553209998631510782011-06-02T06:33:00.000-07:002011-06-03T12:09:12.689-07:00John Searle's Illuminating ConfusionsJohn Searle concisely summarizes what appears to be a very complicated but interesting book, <em>Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain</em> by Antonio Damasio, in the New York Review of Books. The first part of the <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/jun/09/mystery-consciousness-continues/?pagination=false">review</a> itself is worth reading for the significant progress Damasio appears to have made on the problem of where consciousness comes from, notably, by looking at lower level functions of the brain. But Searle brokers confusion and advances a subsequent critique which says more about the baggage that he, and many of the rest of us brought up in the analytic tradition, bring to such problems.<br /><br />First, let us look at Demasio's conception of consciousness and Searle's problem with it.<br /><br />Demasio:<br /><br /><blockquote>The decisive step in the making of consciousness is not the making of images and creating the basics of the mind. The decisive step is <em>making the images ours</em>, making them belong to their rightful owners…. [Italics in original.] </blockquote><br /><br />Searle:<br /><br /><blockquote>Consciousness. In actual practice I think his idea of consciousness is essentially the one stated above. Its essence is qualitative subjectivity. But when Damasio defines it explicitly it comes out a bit differently: it is <em>“a state of mind in which there is knowledge of one’s own existence and of the existence of surroundings”</em> (italics in original). I do not believe this definition is correct. My dog, Gilbert, is plainly conscious, but in what sense does he have knowledge of his own existence? He is certainly aware of his surroundings when he perceives anything. But it is hard to say that when he is dreaming he has knowledge of the existence of his surroundings. It is Damasio’s right to define a word any way he likes, but I think in practice he uses “consciousness,” as I do, to refer to ontologically subjective states such as pains, and does not use it just to describe epistemic states, such as my knowing that I am in Berkeley.<br /></blockquote><br /><br />Searle's, problem and confusion, arises from a quirk in the English language. In English we ask, "Where am I?" and the answer, might be, "Here, in Berkeley." But a Japanese speaker, would see this question as nonsensical. You are <em>always</em> here, indeed, "Wherever you go, that's where you are." The question for a Japanese speaker, is "Where is here?" This conception mirrors Heidegger's Daseins, each of which is its own "here." This formulation of here one Gilbert, Searle's dog (who is "plainly conscious?"), could deal with. Gilbert knows where "he" is. "He" always where "he" is. "He" doesn't have a concept of a "he" that can be placed anywhere else. "He" may be interested in the properties of what currently surrounds him, however, and proceed to sniff about, see if "here" has other dogs about, and foul smelling but delicious items to consume. Where Searle gets himself in trouble is by assuming the statement "I am in Berkeley" is somehow a more objective statement than "My leg hurts." We can see a man in a location called Berkeley on a map, or we can see a bleeding leg, but both these are objective observations of the above statements are predicated on the existence of a John Searle, which is a subjective experience of said John Searle. If John Searle had recently returned to Berkeley from Venice, he could wistfully say "I'm still in Venice," and the statement would make sense. We would understand that John Searle was subjectively still in Venice even though objectively his physical form was in Berkeley. Gilbert the dog, as he has no knowledge of himself, would not be able to make such a statement.<br /><br />The second issue that Searle has is the apparent "circularity" of Damasio's account of consciousness:<br /><br /><blockquote>The problem can be stated succinctly by presenting his account with the following dilemma: Is the self, as he describes it, unconscious or conscious? If it is unconscious then he has nothing to say about how its encounter with a mind results in consciousness. But if you look at the text closely it seems pretty clear that there is no way to understand the sort of self that he describes without supposing that it is already conscious. He frequently uses words like “primordial feeling” and “emotion” to describe the self. It is hard to understand these in a way that does not imply consciousness. This account is therefore circular because we are assuming a conscious self in order to explain the conscious mind, but this uses consciousness to explain consciousness.</blockquote><br /><br />Searle's problem arises from two assumptions 1) he treats consciousness as an objective property and 2) he is trying to encompass completely that objective preexisting property in the individual. The former assumes that just because we are able to label a set of subjective experiences as "consciousness" that this label is sufficiently descriptive of these subjective experiences that it is a valid cognitive concept. The latter assumes, that this property can be fully attributed to the individual.<br /><br />To address Searle's first assumption, let's look at a couple of examples of consciousness. When Jesus says: "Forgive them Father, they know not what they do," what is he saying? Clearly the Romans, the crowd, and Jesus have a fairly good understanding of the objective attributes of the situation. But Jesus and his followers have a very different understanding of the subjective aspects of the situation. Executing the Son of God versus executing a criminal and rabble rouser are subjectively very different things. Each of these things implies a very different concept of self. A self God died for to atone the sins of, a self that relates to the Roman Pantheon and keeps law and order, and a self as part of a people that has a Covenant with God and acts as part of that people by keeping that Covenant. Given that the self is part of Damasio's formulation of consciousness, we can expect these different formulations of self to be the explanation for different experiences of the same event. Thus, "They know not what they do," is fully consistent with Damasio's formulation of consciousness, Jesus is speaking of radically different subjective experiences.<br /><br />Another example of an appeal to consciousness is Shylock's famous monologue:<br /><br /><blockquote>He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million, laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies; and what's his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?<br /><br />If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.</blockquote><br /><br />Here we see an appeal to a common human consciousness based on common experiences, across lines drawn by religion. It is a strong appeal for a new, humanistic consciousness. By my count, we have four different ways a self can be conceived above that each indicate radically different subjective experiences of the world. So while the term consciousness may encompass each of these, it tells us very little about them. By dealing with consciousness as a purely abstract concept, Searle has created a problem for himself.<br /><br />Both of these examples also get to the second of Searle's assumptions, where how an individual becomes conscious. In a religious or other cultural tradition, consciousness is something that is received or cultivated. One's personal story becomes intertwined with that of the religion or tradition through ritual and simply because one's autobiography or self is immersed in the religion and tradition and thus picks up on narratives and habits of mind. It's no coincidence that we see language such as "awakening" and "enlightenment" in descriptions of religious experience. In a our society, our concepts of self are more likely to be tied to who we are as professionals, political actors, or consumers, but our concept of self is still tied to how we define ourselves and are ourselves defined culturally. A baby doesn't have a concept of self anymore than Searle's dog does.Chris M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16726381483623195967noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6252704107454010191.post-45111977408452823902011-04-16T09:53:00.000-07:002011-04-16T10:34:43.610-07:00The Achilles Heel of (Neoclassical) EconomicsEconomic theory is counterintuitive for a lot of people. Many just don't like it and think it's a load of hooey. Not understanding something, or just not liking something is not an excuse for throwing out a set of methodologies, and a body of knowledge, that a lot of really smart people have put a lot of hard work into. Economic theory provides a lot of good insights because it's counterintuitive, and provides a good forum for honest discussion among opposing but honestly held views.<br /><br />But that funny feeling of discomfort can be justifiable. And sometimes economics is the wrong forum for discussion. That won't sit well with anyone who subscribes to a worldview more or less made up of clearing markets, perfect information, and perfectly rational individuals. That's ok, there's no need to accept someone else's views when their ground in what Karl Popper (a neoclassical darling, and smart guy in his own right) would call <a href="http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/popper_falsification.html">metaphysics.</a>. Metaphysics can pose as science, but actually isn't. Scientific propositions can be proven wrong, metaphysical ones, propositions in issues such as identity and moral values, cannot be.<br /><br />Value theory is firmly in the metaphysical camp but it underlies many of the assumptions that allow us to practice economics as we currently do. Sadly, the profession has done little work the implications of these nonscientific assumptions underlying its work. This is partly because there isn't any way to scientifically resolve the issues broached by value theory. This is also because broaching the subject will lead to all types of heated discussion and undermine the scientific legitimacy of the profession in society at large. This is unfortunate, because the profession currently has little insight to offer us on our current "jobless" recovery. In fact, you can't actually understand what an economy is without some understanding of value theory. This <a href="http://ineteconomics.org/sites/inet.civicactions.net/files/BWpaper_FOLEY_040811.pdf">article</a> has a very good primer on the value theory of classical political economists such as Adam Smith in contrast with that of the current day orthodoxy from the "marginalist revolution." You can dig into Phil Mirowski's <span style="font-style:italic;">More Heat Than Light</span> for a more (math!) rigorous exposition on the subject.<br /><br />So if an economist seems like he's being a jerk, it may be because you don't understand what he's saying. Maybe you're the jerk. Or maybe he just is a jerk, and he doesn't understand what he's saying. But at any rate, it pays to know whether the issue at hand can be objectively resolved, or whether you should be discussing legitimate moral and ethical values that underly the disagreement.Chris M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16726381483623195967noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6252704107454010191.post-32953338985100066032011-04-13T05:03:00.000-07:002011-04-13T05:09:25.269-07:00Placeholder Post: The Role of Metaphysics in Organizing KnowledgeThe role of metaphysics in Popper's writing is that of a pseudoscience. But positive science science has not provided us clear guides to how to live our lives, or even how to interpret most knowledge in human terms. I will discuss role of humility, such as that of Orwell, in making metaphysical assertions that cannot be tied to objective truths.Chris M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16726381483623195967noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6252704107454010191.post-36428431280228535882011-04-07T09:49:00.001-07:002011-04-07T09:50:23.254-07:00Tension and CollapseWorking on a post on why tensions, paradoxes, and ultimate irreducibility of a system makes for an ultimately stronger, more robust system.Chris M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16726381483623195967noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6252704107454010191.post-67571309670449221332011-04-04T06:16:00.000-07:002011-04-04T06:58:27.009-07:00Evaluating the Concept of Political Positions Through the Frame of SportsSports and politics both use the term position quite a bit. In both it brings to mind a point in some frame of reference, in sports the field of play, in politics some sort of spectrum of ideas organized ideologically. In both, we get the picture of someone standing at some specific location or general area either on a field or in idealized political space. Stance and posture are also applicable, reflecting tendencies or dispositions of individuals or teams in the respective spheres.<br /><br />In some ways, it’s incredibly odd that we apply physical analogies directly to politics. In the West, we don’t tend to seamlessly traffic between the physical and the ideal (and even if we do, there is no commonly accepted framework on how to do it). Yes, it’s intuitively a good way to convey information since we all have an understanding of position and stance are from our day to day lives. But it promotes sloppy thinking, partly because politics inhabits more dimensions than a sports field, and partly because our understanding of these physical analogies in sports is far superior to our understanding in politics, simply because the applications of physical analogies take place right before our eyes and are easy to communicate what happened in a specific case and thus build more sophisticated understandings of what the general physical analogies mean.<br /><br />Political space at first seems very intuitive, a line running from left to right and various positions on issues marked on that line. But then we have to account for libertarians and more populist consevativism a la Huckabee and we now have two dimensions, socially liberal-socially conservative, fiscally liberal-fiscally conservative. We can put women’s rights in the socially liberal box, and restrictive positions on abortion in the socially conservative box. Animal rights and environmentalism in the socially liberal boxes (but maybe pull ‘em out of the fiscally conservative one) and gun rights over in the socially conservative. But how do you represent duck hunters, who are pro gun rights, but also want their hunting grounds protected. What local food movements and their general anti-regulatory/anti corporate postions? What about the migration of political positions such as those espoused by neo-conservatism from being generally left wing positions to being right wing ones? I’ve lost track of how many dimensions we have now. And even if we could sort them out, the political space and the positions issues occupy within the space are no longer intuitive.<br /><br />Our political space is now volatized, and revealed for what it is. A quick way of lumping very complicated issues into simple categories. How we lump depends a lot more on the immediate political environment and our emotional and ideological prejudices, than any inherent content or interrelation of the issues or ideas themselves.<br /><br />And even if we are able to find a way to adequately represent political space, knowing the position a person takes, tells us very little about the person, and may not tell us anything about their general political stance. Are they there because of how it relates to their core belief system? Is it a position they inherited uncritically from others? Are they there because they are seeking political gain and they think other people will like it? Are they there because they’re stupid and have no real clue how the world works and are ignoring all the evidence staring them in their face. Idiot.<br /><br />Anyway, it’s very hard to know without a personal knowledge of the person and the process by which they came about that position. And since you tend to treat positions that you don’t agree with more critically, it’s not always easy to evaluate the validity of your own position on said issue. What you can evaluate, is consistency, which acts as a proxy for whether that position is connected to a coherent core belief system, i.e. they’re principled, or they’re stubborn or stupid, but at any rate you can’t rule out principled. If they seem to move around a lot, they may be confused, not really have thought things through, or be trying to maneuver to get themselves out of uncomfortable positions or just create conflict for no good reason. So we tend to associate consistency with being principled. Given the issues raised above, this is another short-cut, and given that political actors will try to appear consistent so they appear to be principled, another distortion and promoter of sloppy thinking, the old hobgoblin of small minds.<br /><br />So let’s go back to sports. I play a fair amount of pick-up soccer, so I’m going to use it for my analogies out of familiarity. We have position used in terms of the general area on the field each player occupies. We also have position used in terms of where ball is on the field. The amount of time that the ball spends on one side of the field gives us a general, but not a definite metric, of which team is pushing more aggressively against the other. Of course, this doesn’t tell us definitively who is doing better, because the team with the ball on its side of the field the most may have a vicious counterattack and so may be up on the one metric that matters, how many times it positions the ball in the other team’s net. At any rate, we have a nice consistent two dimensional field to work with.<br /><br />There are non-instrumental aspects of the game, just as there are non-instrumental aspects to politics. Who puts the ball in the goal matters, whether individual players or the coach get credit or blame for the win or loss matters, whether fair play was followed matters, and general style preferences and personal rivalries and egos also matter. But let’s set those aside and agree for now that, all things being equal, the team wants to put as many goals in the opponent’s goal as it can, while minimizing those scored on it.<br /><br />So we have our players in their respective "fixed" positions, and generally, we want to recover the ball from the opponent and put it upfield and take a shot on the goal. For the team to be effective the forwards need to stay up, the defenders back, and the defenders will recover the ball from the opponent. If everyone is in their correct positions as organized at the beginning of the game we can get some quick passes up the field and take a shot on goal. Maybe it goes in, maybe it doesn’t, but the opponent then counterattacks, sending quick passes up the field to his players in their respective positions, takes a shot and misses or scores.<br /><br />Well, this is kinda a silly game. And you feel like you can do better, so you let your players move around a little to block your opponent’s passing lanes. Your opponent adapts and does the same thing and now no one is getting really close to the goals. But by chance or astute observation you start notice, that your opponent’s defensive formations admit certain weaknesses against certain attacks. Maybe a chip over the defense by a midfielder to a sprinting forward creates an opening far up field in front to the goal. Maybe a give and go by the midfielder to the forward allows the midfielder a space he can run into to take a shot on goal. <br /><br />Maybe the other team starts looking for the chip over the defenders? Well that might open up opportunities for the give and go and vice versa. A good dribble might open up a new line of attack as might a quick and accurate pass. The players positions become less defined, we start expecting them to display judgement, to make opportunities and be creative. The coach’s role becomes less to tell the players exactly what to do, but rather find ways to exploit and maximize their talents for the benefit of the team. What becomes more important are "relational" principles such maintaining good shape in regards to teammates and opponents, maintaining ball control, and creating space in the opponent’s position that can be exploited. The players gain a lot of flexibility in how they move around the field, and can create a lot of vulnerabilities in the opponent’s position, provide they can hue to these principles. But this flexibility is premised on players looking at their relations to other players, as opposed to their fixed position in regards to the field.<br /><br />So a show boating but inpredictable player such as business might have a place on the team. Yeah, he may be erratic, and lose the ball trying to do what cannot be done, but the bursts of brilliance may rescue a lost game. An unflashy, slow, but predictable workhorse such as government may also have a place feeding balls to old business. Replication and predictability can pay big dividends in the midfield and backfield. But we’ve got to make sure they keep their egos out of it, ‘cause they’ve got very different styles.<br /><br />This added flexibility may go wrong and lead to vulnerabilities. In trying to innovate players may leave their established positions, and if other players don’t or can’t cover for them, the team is very vulnerable. Under the old, fixed system, the responsibilities of the players were clear, stay in your positions. But with more flexibility, the problem may not be that the player left the position, but that no one else covered for him, or he didn’t get the pass he made the run for. At the same time, if he stays in his position, he may not be making the run, or covering for another player. So when someone is “out of position” in the old, inflexible system we know who bears the responsibility. In the new system, the fixed and the flexible are not necessarily distinguishable. The team bears responsibility for the success or failures on the field. Flexibility can lead to brilliance as it innovates on and even discovers new principles and fundamentals, or it can become a mess, a collapse into chaos as players each try out their own ideas with total lack of coordination.<br /><br />Fundamentalisms (of which I hold Libertarianism to be one) are the ideologies and theologies of such a collapse. They grow out of a collapse in faith in the team in the above case or in our modern world, our political, economic, and ethical systems. They find what they take to be an absolute truth (“government is bad,” “abortion is murder”) that they believe can be fully extricated from the noise of the old, multidimensional order and try to build a new ethical and social order on it. This new order is pure and true because it is built on these absolute ethical precepts. We know the role of God, we know the role of men and women, we know the role of business, we know the role of government. Agency is only given to those worthy of it. For Christian fundamentalists, there is no positive agency that the individual can have, the individual can only be a moral agent as he does God’s work. For Libertarians, government can have no positive agency, anything the government does that is not narrowly prescribed is defined as necessarily bad by the ideology.<br /><br />Whether fundamentalism is necessary depends on whether the systems of the current order are indeed headed towards collapse, a subject I will address in future posts. But make no mistake, by denying agency to many potential actors a fundamentalist system is far less adaptable and effective than a highly functioning flexible system. Fundamentalist systems are also uniquely unsuited to deal with other fundamentalist systems, though they can derive substantial strength and certainty from the conflict generated. We will see in the coming decades whether our institutions can deal with the fundamentalist challenge and address the systemic issues that gave rise to the challenge.Chris M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16726381483623195967noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6252704107454010191.post-39459369198280146632011-01-14T05:55:00.000-08:002011-01-14T05:56:57.515-08:00Methodological IndividualismSometimes I don't give Tyler Cowen enough credit, he clearly spends time thinking about the <a href="http://http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/marginalrevolution/hCQh/~3/vtIs04JJd0U/one-further-note-on-foucault.html">boundaries of economics</a>.Chris M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16726381483623195967noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6252704107454010191.post-87848526737315186162010-12-30T12:04:00.000-08:002010-12-30T15:39:36.403-08:00Libertarianism as Liberal FundamentalismThis <a href="http://nymag.com/print/?/news/politics/70282/index1.html">NY Magazine piece</a> on the nature of libertarianism has been stirring up some commentary on the Internet and I couldn't help but be pulled in.<br /><br />Overall, I found the article interesting and insightful and appreciated that it brought up that there is a lot of agreement between left and right wing libertarians on principles, if not always in politics. My take is that fundamentally both have a deep distrust of aggregate power, but vary on which aggregated power their are most concerned with be it government or business. <br /><br />Something struck me wrong about this statement however:<br /><br /><blockquote>Yet there’s no idea more fundamental to our country’s history. Every political group claims the Founders as its own, but libertarians have more purchase than most. The American Revolution was a libertarian movement, rejecting overweening government power. The Constitution was a libertarian document that limited the role of the state to society’s most basic needs, like a legislature to pass laws, a court system to interpret them, and a military to protect them. (Though some Founders, like John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, wanted to centralize power.) All the government-run trappings that came after—the Fed, highways, public schools, a $1.5 trillion-a-year entitlement system— were arguably departures from our country’s hard libertarian core.</blockquote><br /><br />A quick look at the Wikipedia entry for Liberalism demonstrates quite clearly that the American Revolution was the first Liberal revolution. Not Liberal in the sense that it is used in modern US politics, but in the Classical Liberal tradition of the Enlightenment and most notably Locke which is basically summed up as individual liberty and equal rights. It's exhilarating to skim the history of Liberalism from the English Civil War, to its explosion throughout Europe in the late 18th and 19th centuries, to its triumph in the Cold War. In mainstream modern American politics, there is virtually no one who does not operate within the Liberal tradition, it's more of a matter of how they deal with the tension between liberty and equal rights which determines whether they heave closer to Classical Liberalism (our Conservatives) or Welfare Liberalism (our Liberals).<br /><br />But Libertarianism is from what I can tell a distinctly modern, and I will argue fundamentalist, movement and a break from the Liberal tradition. It chooses individual liberty over equal rights (or somehow conflates them) and thus relieves itself of the tension between the two. This gives it a consistency and an appeal the Liberal tradition with all its messy compromises and qualifiers cannot replicate, particularly in the modern media environment.<br /><br />But why fundamentalist? I borrow from Karen Armstrong's understanding of fundamentalist religious movements as inherently modern. You can't be a fundamentalist in a traditional society because that society will encompass your entire world. Yes, you will have important practices and beliefs but these will be integrated into your day to day economic, social, political, and economic relationships so the idea of selecting which of them is fundamental is ridiculous. You won't have enough sustained contact with any other way of thinking or behaving to conceive of living differently. But in a modern, global economy, you may have to choose and if you're going to have to find a way to integrate your values with your changing world (but this may lead to dissipation or relativism) or preserving them by selecting and maintaining your fundamental practices and beliefs.<br /><br />What is lost in this assertion of fundamentals are the tensions and paradoxes that were incorporated in the tradition. You avoid relativism and gain a powerful absolutist voice, but in exchange for certainty, you lose nuance and flexibility.<br /><br />Now, I ask any of my libertarian friends who have read this far. Is this accurate? Is libertarianism in fact a break with Liberal tradition? If so, is such a break necessary? I by no means hold that assertive movements that break with current practice are always undesirable. Liberalism was a break too.Chris M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16726381483623195967noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6252704107454010191.post-3102149355396654572008-06-03T15:49:00.000-07:002008-06-04T08:45:08.973-07:00Economic Policy Institute's Health PlanSometime during the Democratic Primary's Health Care Mandate <a href="http://polinomicsagenda.blogspot.com/2008/01/universal-health-care-mandates.html">food fight</a> the <a href="http://www.epi.org/">Economic Policy Institute</a> (EPI) released a health care plan authored by <a href="http://www.yale.edu/polisci/people/jhacker.html">Jacob Hacker</a>. So, as the Democratic primary winds to an end, let's spend a minute reviewing a little of the substantive policy we missed during the madness and compare it to the Wyden-Bennett/Committee for Economic Development <a href="http://polinomicsagenda.blogspot.com/2007/11/breakthrough-policy-on-healthcare.html">plan</a> that I have already written about fairly extensively.<br /><br />The Health Care for America Plan is made up of three central elements:<br /><br /> <blockquote>1. An extension of Medicare to every legal U.S. resident who is not covered by their workplace.<br /><br /> 2. All employers will be required to provide their workers with coverage equivalent or better than the Health Care for America plan or pay 6% of payroll to fund coverage for their employees.<br /><br />3. A requirement (the good old mandate) that all Americans buy into Health Care for America Plan or purchase private coverage.</blockquote><br /><br />Of course, there is a lot more to it than that. But those are the basics and who has time for nuance anymore? So let's get into some analysis.<br /><br />To begin, both plans have mandates. So, not much to compare here. If you still aren't sure what these are about and why there was such a food fight about them, feel free to leave a comment asking for a briefing and I will oblige. So both come down on the side of universality and guarantee (and require) that every American have a health plan.<br /><br />The more interesting differences come in how each tries to cut costs. Both believe that there is substantial waste in the current system and tries to create incentives to reduce it. Wyden-Bennett does this through competition, requiring that insurance companies compete to offer a basic plan that is risk adjusted for the type of people who enter their plan. (I.e they get paid extra to cover people at higher risk of getting sick.) This will presumably reduce administrative costs of insurers as they compete to be leaner and hopefully make consumers price conscious as they will be able to select a plan to cover their specific medical needs. The hope will also be that insurers will form long term relationships with customers and so will be incentivized to provide preventative care.<br /><br />EPI's plan uses the bargaining power of the government to negotiate for lower prices with drug companies and providers and the administrative efficiencies of having a single large insurer to further reduce costs. Furthermore, as the government will necessarily have a long term relationship with many of its customers, it will encourage preventative care to reduce its costs. <br /><br />How will these different approaches to cost cutting succeed? It is impossible to say with an certainty, but I will point to the difficulties that each will face which hopefully will give the reader some guidance on which one he or she sees as more plausible. <br /><br />Wyden-Bennett plan counts on the government being able to properly price the cost of various health risks in populations across the U.S. Given how many types of health conditions there are, and how much regional variation there is when it comes to intervention this is a very difficult problem. If you don't get it right, you will have insurers either making over-sized profits or going out of business at an alarming rate leading to substandard care. Either scenario could be very expensive. Yes the "Dutch" model that Wyden-Bennett has seen some success in the Netherlands, but we are dealing with a far more heterogeneous population here. I think the argument that would be advanced by the EPI folks would be that many of the insurers under this system would be too small to negotiated significant price concessions from drug companies and providers.<br /><br />The big problem EPI's plan will face will be the rationing of health care through mechanisms other than prices. As has happened in single payer countries, consumers will not be price conscious and so will demand more of certain types of coverage than the government's reimbursement schedule will supply. So it is likely that health care will be rationed by systems such as wait lists, mechanisms that will increase the cost of overall care.<br /><br />Which of these problems one finds the most intractable, will go a long way to deciding which health care plan one prefers.Chris M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16726381483623195967noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6252704107454010191.post-76261560771909662562008-05-13T03:39:00.000-07:002008-05-13T04:05:15.899-07:00Universal Health Care for Free!The Congressional Budget Office has <a href="http://cboblog.cbo.gov/?p=91">scored</a> the <a href="http://www.standtallforamerica.com/page/s/careyoukeep?gclid=CPfgy_Gko5MCFQFIGgod5RkwoQ">Healthy Americans Act</a> as budget neutral. Politically speaking, this is a very exciting development and bound to get a lot of attention if publicized properly. No matter how much money we throw down the drain in the current system, it's very difficult to get Congress to invest in a policy with a large up front price tag no matter how much it saves in the long term. But who can turn down free universal coverage? <br /><br />Unfortunately, this positive calculation comes partly because of a cap on government spending. After a certain year (2014 I believe) Federal spending will be capped at GDP growth. This cap may very well scare a number of groups that are concerned that a cap will lead to a decline in overall care or the particular disease or medical technique they advocate for. As I covered in a previous <a href="http://polinomicsagenda.blogspot.com/2007/11/breakthrough-policy-on-healthcare.html">post</a> that focuses mostly on a similar policy from the Committee for Economic Development, cost cutting should come from increased competition between insurance companies and preventative care. The Healthy Americans Act is similar enough to the Committee for Economic Development plan that the cap is probably unnecessary.<br /><br />Still, I think this is an overall win for the Healthy Americans Act. From what I've seen Sen. Wyden is a savvy political player and probably knew what he was doing when he put in the cap on Federal expenditures. Without the cap, the CBO would not be able to issue an estimate so soon because of the complexities involved in seeing whether the incentives generated by the bill will create true cost cutting. This estimate generate a lot of publicity, and even if it gets people quibbling over details, at the very least they'll be talking about it as a new president enters the White House.Chris M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16726381483623195967noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6252704107454010191.post-32613693463026327372008-04-30T10:22:00.000-07:002008-04-30T11:24:39.071-07:00Prof. Larry Bartels on Unequal Democracy<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_XOdEUHHzkvxWHgzmMpAbeoiIzItHTssrOn5Fv0twfx67E_PbKS29rER5EHamnbJoOzj5kjf9B-1Jt2212vhNCzraO40qoG4HdVTPiAbcmf4XAI0dPfAwWRVUzISMIL_qCKfyLHbBhPIo/s1600-h/clip_image002%5B21%5D_thumb.gif"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_XOdEUHHzkvxWHgzmMpAbeoiIzItHTssrOn5Fv0twfx67E_PbKS29rER5EHamnbJoOzj5kjf9B-1Jt2212vhNCzraO40qoG4HdVTPiAbcmf4XAI0dPfAwWRVUzISMIL_qCKfyLHbBhPIo/s320/clip_image002%5B21%5D_thumb.gif" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5195099329114393970" /></a><br />Larry Bartels of Princeton delivered a talk on his new book <span style="font-style:italic;">Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age</span> on Monday. The talk was interesting in that a respected academic came to a data driven but very partisan conclusion: if you're concerned about income inequality, elect Democrats.<br /><br />You can see his most startling graph on the right. It clearly states that income growth is higher for all groups under Democratic presidencies than under Republican presidencies and that this growth is much more equal. A number of objections immediately jump to mind but from what I've seen so far this conclusion is robust, Prof. Bartels provides a response to some of the criticisms at Dani Rodrik's <a href="http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2008/04/larry-bartels-r.html">blog</a>.<br /><br />Why would voter's continue to vote for Republican presidents against their own economic interests? Prof. Bartels believes that they do vote with their economic interests, but only for the last year. The structure of Republican policies Bartels finds is that they lead to lower growth in earlier years of the presidency as spending and programs are cut. But this leads to higher growth towards the end of the term (and the upcoming election) as the economy rebounds from its bitter medicine. Democrats, however, unleash spending and new programs at the beginning of their term. By the time the end of their term has rolled around, the economy has begun to slow as the effects of the stimulus wear out and inflation kicks in.<br /><br />Unfortunately for Democrats, according to Bartels (with support from Brookings' William Galston and Thomas Mann and over the objections of someone from Pew) voters only really remember the last year when assessing their economic fortunes. Thus, Democrats lose and Republicans win.<br /><br />A couple of other interesting facts and figures:<br /><br />1. Low income voters are more likely to support Democrats. It's high income voters in "red" states that swing them to Republicans.<br /><br />2. Information matters: the more information self-identified liberal voters consume the more likely they are to correctly identify that it has increased in the United States.<br /><br />3. Information distorts: the more information self-identified conservative voters consume the more likely they are to incorrectly deny that income inequality has increase in the United States.<br /><br />4. Information doesn't matter: No matter ideological preference and amount of information consumed and preferences regarding income inequality, about 2/3rds of Americans oppose the inheritance tax.Chris M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16726381483623195967noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6252704107454010191.post-71534024799800114392008-04-17T14:22:00.000-07:002008-04-17T14:25:08.954-07:00Yet More Health Care Humor...An entertaining clip in support of the <a href="http://polinomicsagenda.blogspot.com/2007/11/breakthrough-policy-on-healthcare.html">Health Americans Act</a>:<br /><br /><object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/oCHIuAShX8A&hl=en"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/oCHIuAShX8A&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>Chris M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16726381483623195967noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6252704107454010191.post-18965591924813197792008-04-10T11:54:00.000-07:002008-04-10T12:39:00.285-07:00"Predictably Irrational"I've been meaning to link to this <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2008/02/25/080225crbo_books_kolbert">review</a><br />of a couple of books on behavioral economics. "Predictably Irrational," a new book by Dan Ariely at MIT sounds like it has some particularly interesting experiments.<br /><br />In one study, he asked students to look at the last two digits of their social security numbers and then bid on various items. Their social security numbers had marked effects on their bids.<br /><br /><blockquote>The students whose Social Security number ended with the lowest figures—00 to 19—were the lowest bidders. For all the items combined, they were willing to offer, on average, sixty-seven dollars. The students in the second-lowest group—20 to 39—were somewhat more free-spending, offering, on average, a hundred and two dollars. The pattern continued up to the highest group—80 to 99—whose members were willing to spend an average of a hundred and ninety-eight dollars, or three times as much as those in the lowest group, for the same items.</blockquote><br /><br />This effect, which Ariely calls "anchoring," and which retailers such as Tiffany's have been acquainted with for decades (and probably longer) blows conventional economics out of the water. Clean downward sloping demand curves a la Econ. 101 assume rationality on the part of consumers, that they trade off the benefit of consuming the good against the benefit of the other goods they could consume for the same price. If they aren't cold calculators all the time, companies can rely on tricks such as putting other high numbers in the store to set the customer's "anchor" and engine of the free market economy is reduced to a sputter.<br /><br />This is, however, more of a problem for a lot of academic economists than anyone else. The big money today isn't made on trying to produce commodities that consumers examine with steely eyes and then make a decision based on price. The game is to find a niche demographic and tailor your product to fit their needs. I didn't buy my Mac based on processing power, I bought it because my wife has one, sleek marketing, and because it doesn't feel (and perform) like a hunk of junk.<br /><br />The key is differentiation, a good businessman doesn't just compete on price. That means that all those pretty supply and demand curves that we were all taught in Econ. 101 are virtually non-existent (they're also pretty damn hard to examine empirically too.) Perhaps this is why economists don't run the world but rather tell others how to?Chris M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16726381483623195967noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6252704107454010191.post-53048860892167157462008-03-26T06:57:00.000-07:002008-03-26T06:59:25.004-07:00Faith Based EconomicsFrom <a href="http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2008/03/faith-based-eco.html">Dani Rodrik</a>:<br /><br />Kevin Hassett, economics advisor to John McCain, is quoted today as saying:<br /><br /> What really happens is that the economy grows more vigorously when you lower tax rates... It is beyond the reach of economic science to explain precisely why that happens, but it does.<br /><br />Now you can be excused for thinking that the first of these statements is true, if you have an economically sound reason for it. But if you don't, you shouldn't. <br /><br />Let's call it no longer supply-side economics. It is faith-based economics.Chris M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16726381483623195967noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6252704107454010191.post-74161062466192580062008-03-11T06:53:00.000-07:002008-03-11T07:48:32.466-07:00Health Care HumorThe Committee for Economic Development (CED) held a briefing on the Hill yesterday to promote its healthcare plan. As I have written on the <a href="http://polinomicsagenda.blogspot.com/2007_11_01_archive.html">plan</a> previously I will not rehash the details but rather share with you the comic stylings of Dr. Alain Enthoven.<br /><br />For those of you unfamiliar with Dr. Enthoven, (I certainly was before I started tracking healthcare issues) he is a professor emeritus at Stanford and a very respected figure in health policy. He was integral in formulating CED's health plan and his support is equally integral to promoting it to a wide audience.<br /><br />Dr. Enthoven got his start in public policy as the leader of Robert McNamara's "Whiz Kids," doing quantitative heavy lifting on nuclear proliferation and the war in <br />Vietnam. He spent a year pushing his conclusion, based on body counts, that the U.S. <br />could not win the war through attrition.<br /><br />Despite his incredible stature (but reputation and physically too, he must be 6'3") he is incredible down to earth. Following the talk yesterday, he stuck around for a serious and engaged conversation with the youthful members of the CED, this blogger and the 23 year old American Prospect superstar Ezra Klein. Given this context, I would like to share a couple of his jokes dryly inserted into a very serious policy discussion. The humor of course, is bitter-sweet, given these problems have some very tragic consequences for the people dealing with them.<br /><br />A Bad Pun:<br /><br />Because people switch doctors so frequently because switching jobs means switching health plans and because medical information technology is nowhere where it should be, doctors often aren't aware of their patients' full medical history. This, Dr. Enthoven says with a straight face as his colleagues cringe, is "connectile disfunction." He uses this joke at every presentation and from what I hear, even in meetings with U.S. Senators.<br /><br />Another Bad Pun:<br /><br />Economists have a term "job lock" that refers to the case where people are prevented from leaving a position because of some sort of market failure. In the case of healthcare, because their plan isn't portable they are unable to be entrepreneurial <br />or take another job if the new employer doesn't offer the same plan. As many people get their health plan through their spouse's employer, there is another case to be considered. Dr. Enthoven spoke of a woman who was unable to leave her husband because she needed his healthcare insurance. "It brings new meaning to the term wedlock," he deadpanned.Chris M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16726381483623195967noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6252704107454010191.post-10110811448391473122008-02-28T18:48:00.000-08:002008-02-28T19:31:40.595-08:00Brick by BrickI saw an interesting documentary on the desegregation battle in Yonkers New York tonight. It's easy to get lulled into the sense that the battles for civil rights were something fought and won long ago. <span style="font-style:italic;">Brick by Brick</span> is a fresh reminder that these fights go on to this very day.<br /><br />This fight started in the 1980s and the city council is dragging its feet on a Supreme Court ordered housing desegregation plan and undermining school integration to this day. But the truly insane thing to watch is how rabidly the anti-integration forces fought. The yelling mobs, a city council willing to bankrupt the city by keeping it in contempt of court over 200 low-income townhomes in a city of 200,000. <br /><br />Truly a spectacle to behold and a striking reminder that high-minded national policies are very difficult to put into practice without engaged local-level support.Chris M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16726381483623195967noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6252704107454010191.post-70688031237310445732008-02-14T17:53:00.000-08:002008-02-14T20:04:58.558-08:00Rise of the LionsI know I'm not the only one who finds the overwhelming majority of election analysis to be stultifyingly shallow. Beyond the polls, the deepest concept we deal with is "momentum," an amorphous concept that implies that a candidate will keep winning until he/she doesn't in which case the "momentum" has been lost. Basically, momentum can stand in for any number of other explanatory variables but it saves us all from the difficult task of defining them or being wrong when they fail to predict an election.<br /><br />So, in honor of my first intellectual love (after a fling with psychology and a torrid affair with philosophy) I would like to recount a bit of political theory for my readers.<br /><br />Vilfredo Pareto (for you economists, yes the efficient one), introduced a theory of political cycles in his 1901 work "An Application of Sociological Theory," which outlines a theory of the circulation of political elites. He sees the political elite as composed of a mix of two types of individuals, "lions" and "foxes."<br /><br />The "lions" are strong-willed and rule in a forthright manner, relying on tradition and "group persistence." The "foxes" are devious and chip away at the "lions'" power through cunning and deceit. Eventually rule by the lions gives way to rule by the foxes who outmaneuver and undercut the traditions that gird the lions power. Eventually, however, the foxes in all their maneuvering end up in a position so far away from the underlying traditions, that they are exposed and upended by resurgent lions who bring the political culture back to its underpinning traditions in a direct manner.<br /><br />The qualified application of this theory to this election would be this. The two "fox" candidates who maneuvered through positions, votes, and transactional politics to take their respective party nominations, Romney and Clinton, have fallen (or are falling) by the wayside. This is not because of their intrinsic failings, but rather after 15 years of Clinton I's triangulation followed by Tony Snow style press conferences, forthrightness is favored over political cunning. <br /><br />The corollary to this, is that the "lions," Obama and McCain, have overcome a politically inevitable opponent and shown that predictions of their political death were "greatly exaggerated." Obama, a far-sighted cub, offers to renew the tradition of "communitarianism," while McCain, wizened member of the pride, offers us a return to pre-Conservative Republicanism.<br /><br />Ironically, an election focused on change may really be about bringing us back to long-held traditions.Chris M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16726381483623195967noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6252704107454010191.post-79166939724151792702008-02-13T17:23:00.000-08:002008-02-13T18:02:39.952-08:00Rethinking Development Through Bashing Thomas FriedmanThere has a been a bit of buzz about a talk given by award winning Cambridge economist and CEPR fellow Ha-Joong Chong, at the New America Foundation on his new book <span style="font-style:italic;">Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism</span>.<br /><br />He begins with an example of a small cheap car introduced by Toyota to the U.S. in 1958, essentially an “ashtray on four wheels.” The car bombed and was pulled from the market as critics chided Toyota for trying to go against Japan’s comparative advantage. Japan had lots of labor and not much capital in 1958 so it should have stuck to producing silk. Toyota could not complain that it hadn't gotten help, it had already had 25 years of protection and government subsidies. But the subsidies and protection continued.<br /><br />Toyota’s Lexus now has been made an icon of free market development by Thomas Friedman who argues that developing countries should put on neo-liberal (privatization, deregulation, reducing trade barriers) “golden straight-jacket,” in his view, the only model of development available. If they would only don the straightjacket they developing countries could produced similar products. (Mr. Friedman seems to find himself in the position of being a punching bag for many an academic.) Mr. Chang believes that using the Lexus as a model for development by free trade is “like writing book on self made man and having the first chapter on Henry Ford II.”<br /><br />He goes on to point out that Alexander Hamilton applied the idea of protecting small economies before opening to free trade to the U.S. Hamilton was in direct opposition to Adam Smith who argued against the U.S. developing manufacturing in <span style="font-style:italic;">The Wealth of Nations</span>. <br /><br />By the 1830s U.S. was most protectionist economy in world, it heavily regulated foreign investment and had virtually no intellectual property protections. But the U.S. wasn’t the first to use this model, in fact, Hamilton got his model from Britain’s economic development during the 1700s. Chang believes this model this model has been pursued by all other developed countries with only Netherlands and Switzerland pursuing development through free trade.<br /><br />This goes to the most fundamental disagreement between the economists of developing and developed countries. This debate raged over the drivers of East Asian growth and causes of the East Asian financial crises in the late 90s. Did East Asia grow because of its governments’ industrial policies or despite of them? And was the crisis cause by imbalances created by these policies or because of the ‘herd mentality’ of investors?<br /><br />The truth is, macro-issues such as this are impossible to test in any kind of rigorous scientific manner. But Mr. Chang levels a very powerful charge at the supporters of the Washington Consensus and the structural adjustment (i.e. pro-liberalization) programs from the IMF, the charge of hypocrisy.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/T5-ojv5-b3U&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/T5-ojv5-b3U&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>Chris M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16726381483623195967noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6252704107454010191.post-45944221507193173922008-01-26T11:41:00.000-08:002008-01-29T16:05:44.648-08:00Internet Effect in '08?The internet was supposed to transform the political landscape in '04 after it propelled Howard Dean to the front of the Democratic Primary pack through small donations and passionately organized young people. As Dean imploded in Iowa and his volunteer army melted away or was absorbed by the Kerry campaign, the internet failed did not transform the general election. The most remarkable media event of the campaign was the Swift Boat Veterans for truth, which was more of a comment on campaign finance reform than changes in media. <br /><br />According to <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22708300/">MSNBC</a>, of the top tier candidates McCain, Obama and Edwards are the biggest beneficiaries of donations under $200 with 31% of their total coming from the types of donors candidates most hope to reach online. Clinton, along with Romney and Giuliani has received less than 15% of her donations in amounts smaller than $200. That makes Obama the biggest winner in raw dollars, not even counting the alleged $500k he took in in one hour on the night of his SC win.<br /><br />The most telling test of the internet's supposed transformative power may come in the next week. The big question, as put forward by a <a href="http://www.coldheartedtruth.com/index.php/main/2008/01/27/the_clinton_spin">posting</a><br />on the Coldheartedtruth blog is will the Clintons' latest round of tactics pay off on Super-Duper Tuesday or are they playing with an outdated playbook which does not take into account a new demographic of high-information voters? That is, are we going go find out that the "Clintons still a step ahead, or have they fallen a step behind?"<br /><br />Pew MediaSources has a very good study on the role of the internet in this election. 24% of Americans now say that the regularly learn something about the campaign from the internet, as compared to 13% in 2004. This growing participation is particularly significant when matched with Nielsen/Netratings data from the 2000 election which found that 86% of the online audience is registered to vote as compared to 70% of the U.S. population.<br /><br />Perhaps unsurprisingly, young people are particularly active online with 42% of those 18-29 using the internet for campaign related information. The Obama campaign has shown eagerness to tap this demographic by setting up its own social networking software and given that almost 50% of 18-29 year olds voted for him in SC, his investment in this demographic is paying off.<br /><br />But does it give him a chance at cracking new demographics given that internet usage is much lower among older demographics? Clearly, this is a problem particularly given that he trails significantly among both men and women over 65 (see below post.) A study from the University of Maryland tells us that women are also less likely to use the internet than men and usage declines with income which will make it particularly difficult to get to low income women where he trails significantly.<br /><br />That said, there is room for expansion beyond his current base through the internet. While 18-24 year olds are very pro-Obama there is still significant support fo Clinton in the 25-29 demographic. Also according to the University of Maryland Latinos use the internet at a higher rate than all whites. Finally, women use the internet for communication (email) almost as much as men.<br /><br />So despite some major blindspots (the over 65 set and low income women) the internet could offer a change of the rules that could eat into major Clinton constituencies. The next week may offer a test of whether they have taken it into their calculations.Chris M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16726381483623195967noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6252704107454010191.post-72611141231154091642008-01-26T10:50:00.000-08:002008-01-29T16:07:42.805-08:00Muddling the "Gender Gap"Margie Omero at pollster.com has interesting <a href="http://www.pollster.com/blogs/the_gender_gap_vanishing_act.php">analysis</a> on how the "gender gap" between Obama and Clinton is muddled by other demographic variables. Her analysis is based on a recent Pew poll that finds that Clinton leads among all voters over 50 (+26 among older women and +21 among older men) but the gender gap only really shows among younger voters where she leads by +17 among women and trails by -9 among younger men.<br /><br />But the far more important predictors of support for Clinton are socioeconomic status and ideology. Men and women in households earning over $50,000 a year both favor Clinton to Obama by 41% to 36%. Clinton among all educated voters, by -3 among women and -9 among men.<br /><br />Obama leads by +5 with liberal women but trails by -15 among liberal men. Clinton leads by +37 among non-liberal women but ties with Obama among non-liberal men.<br /><br />So the picture is definitely too muddled to be simply summed up with "gender gap." But some of the sub-narratives do hold up. Hillary is strongest among women in households with less than $50,000 a year (+36) and is stronger among older voters. Meanwhile, youth, higher income, and higher education all play in Obama's favor. I can't say that I can make sense of the interaction between ideology and gender.Chris M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16726381483623195967noreply@blogger.com2