... Consider what Adam Smith states early in
Wealth Of Nations about “self-interest”:
"In civilized society he stands at all times in need of the co–operation and
assistance of great multitudes, while his whole life is scarce sufficient to
gain the friendship of a few persons. In almost every other race of animals
each individual, when it is grown up to maturity, is intirely independent, and
in its natural state has occasion for the assistance of no other living
creature. But man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren,
and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only.6 He will be more likely to prevail if he can
interest their self–love in his favour, and shew them that it is for their own
advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a
bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you
shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is
in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those
good offices which we stand in need of. It is not from the benevolence of the
butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their
regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but
to their self–love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their
advantages” (WN I.ii.2: 26-27).
Read the above carefully. To obtain our self-interests of obtaining the ingredients of our dinner (or whatever), we must persuade the “butcher, brewer, and baker” to
supply them to us. Insisting on
our self-interest as imagined by the lonesome image of the Hollywood scriptwriter
would not secure our dinner (or
anything else) for us. We must
persuade them to supply us; not demand they meet our needs. What about their
needs? What do they do? Just say in response: “yes, sir, no
sir, three bags full sir”?
Indeed, Smith underlines that point by insisting that
we must address “their self–love, and never talk to them of our own necessities
but of their advantages”. In
short, we mediate our different self-interests by taking into account the self-interests
of others. This is the exact opposite
of Arturo Cuenllas’s presentation.
An egoistic non-cooperator would soon starve. ...
Yogi Berra once said, "I didn't really say all the things I said." Smith has to be the Yogi Berra of economists. Misunderstanding Adam Smith's ideas about "self-interest" can only be second to misunderstanding his two passing references to an "invisible hand" in The Wealth of Nations.
One of my favorite niche economics blogs is Gavin Kennedys' Adam Smith's Lost Legacy. Many of his posts go after people using Adam Smith's "invisible hand" metaphor. He tirelessly points out that Smith used the metaphor only twice in the Wealth of Nations, and on neither occasion was it used to describe the economics in the way attributed to Smith by economists in the second of half of the Twentieth Century. But his larger concern is rampant illiteracy about Smith, but also about our economic past in general. He recently encountered someone who wants to replace the "invisible hand" with the "invisible heart." Here is part of his response in his post Need for Historical Perspective on Poverty.
... It seems to be another blueprint to save the world from the only
phenomenon called ‘capitalism' that has raised millions from poverty to
standards of living beyond anything achieved in previous millennia, including
the frightful poverty experiences of Soviet-style communism.
Much of the ancient curse of poverty persists
in large geographical spaces of the world affecting billions of people, though
the total numbers living on $1 a day has diminished at an historical high also
by a billion or so since the 1960s.
The poor in the richer countries have lower standards than the very
rich, but those poor are incomparably richer than the richest minority living
in the millennia before the change from agriculture and primitive commercial
markets, including the richest Emperors, Kings, War Lords and Conquerors. I
It would help if those who seek to “tackle the
problem of poverty” for the very best of humanitarian reasons, like Terry
Hallman and Sir Ronald Cohen, and many others, would get some historical
perspectives on the relative scale of human poverty over the last 1,000 years. ...
Jerry Muller is one of my favorite economic historians. I think this piece offers an insightful analysis of inequality in advanced market economies. As I read this piece I kept thinking back to Robert Fogel's (another favorite economic historian) The Fourth Great Awkening and the Future of Egalitarianism, where he makes the case that the economic challenge of this century is going to be focused on human capital. I don't think the ideologies of the left or right have come to grips with this yet. Muller begins:
Inequality is increasing almost everywhere in the post-industrial
capitalist world. Despite what many think, this is not the result of
politics, nor is politics likely to reverse it. The problem is more
deeply rooted and intractable than generally recognized.
Inequality is an inevitable product of capitalist activity, and
expanding equality of opportunity only increases it -- because some
individuals, families, and communities are simply better able than
others to exploit the opportunities for development and advancement that
today's capitalism affords. Some of the very successes of western
capitalist societies in expanding access and opportunity, combined with
recent changes in technology and economics, have contributed to
increasing inequality. And at the nexus of economics and society is the
family, the changing shape and role of which is an often overlooked
factor in the rise of inequality.
Though capitalism has opened up ever more opportunities for the
development of human potential, not everyone has been able to take full
advantage of those opportunities or to progress very far once they have
done so.
Formal or informal barriers to equality of opportunity, for example,
have historically blocked various sectors of the population -- such as
women, minorities, and poor people -- from benefiting fully from all
capitalism offers. But over time, in the advanced capitalist world,
those barriers have gradually been lowered or removed, so that now
opportunity is more equally available than ever before. The inequality
that exists today arguably derives less from the unequal availability of opportunity than it does from the unequal ability to exploit opportunity.
And that unequal ability, in turn, stems from differences in the
inherent human potential that individuals begin with and in the ways
that families and communities enable and encourage that human potential
to flourish. ...
The bolded sentence is my doing. Read the whole thing. Thoughtful stuff.
... Different languages have different ways of talking about the future.
Some languages, such as English, Korean, and Russian, require their
speakers to refer to the future explicitly. Every time English-speakers
talk about the future, they have to use future markers such as “will” or
“going to.” In other languages, such as Mandarin, Japanese, and German,
future markers are not obligatory. The future is often talked about
similar to the way present is talked about and the meaning is understood
from the context. A Mandarin speaker who is going to go to a seminar
might say “Wo qu ting jiangzuo,” which translates to “I go listen
seminar.” Languages such as English constantly remind their speakers
that future events are distant. For speakers of languages such as
Mandarin future feels closer. As a consequence, resisting immediate
impulses and investing for the future is easier for Mandarin speakers. ...
“Capitalism has a purpose beyond just making money. I think the critics of capitalism have got it in this very small box. That it’s all about money. It’s based in being greedy, selfish and exploitative. And yet, I haven’t found it to be that way. Most of the hundreds of entrepreneurs I know and have met did not start their business primarily out of a desire to make money. Not that there’s anything wrong with making money. My body cannot function unless it produces red-blood cells. No red-blood cells and I’m a dead man. But that’s not the purpose of my life.
Similarly, a business cannot exist unless it produces a profit . . . but that’s not the only reason it exists.”
When I was writing a review of Dwight Lee's and Richard McKenzie's excellent book, Getting Rich in America: 8 Simple Rules for Building a Fortune and a Satisfying Life,
I called Dwight to ask a question and we got talking about Rule #5: Get
Married and Stay Married. Dwight pointed out that if you follow the
other 7 rules but don't get married or stay married, you have a
substantial probability of building a fortune and a satisfying life.
But, he said, if you don't get married and stay married, you tend not to
follow at least some of the other 7 rules.
While the upscale college-educated crowd continues to marry at very high rates, marriage rates are plummeting among those further down on the socioeconomic ladder.
... A useful debate about the morality of capitalism must get beyond libertarian nostrums that greed is good, what’s mine is mine and whatever the market produces is fair. It should also acknowledge that there is no moral imperative to redistribute income and opportunity until everyone has secured a berth in a middle class free from economic worries. If our moral obligation is to provide everyone with a reasonable shot at economic success within a market system that, by its nature, thrives on unequal outcomes, then we ought to ask not just whether government is doing too much or too little, but whether it is doing the right things.
Instead, Dr. Butzer argues that Sargon's conquest itself caused
the collapse of trade by destroying cities and disrupting what had
till then been "an inter-networked world-economy, once extending
from the Aegean to the Indus Valley." In other words, as with the
end of the Roman empire, the collapse of trade caused the collapse
of civilization more than the other way around.
A new find suggests farmers in Bible lands built channels for irrigation long before historians thought they did, allowing for cultivated vineyards, olives, wheat and barley.
... “Educational systems could be improved by acknowledging that, in general, boys and girls are different,” said University of Missouri biologist David Geary in their statement. “For example, in trying to close the sex gap in math scores, the reading gap was left behind. Now, our study has found that the difference between girls’ and boys’ reading scores was three times larger than the sex difference in math scores. Girls’ higher scores in reading could lead to advantages in admissions to certain university programs, such as marketing, journalism or literature, and subsequently careers in those fields. Boys lower reading scores could correlate to problems in any career, since reading is essential in most jobs.”
Generally, when conditions are good, the math gap increases and the reading gap decreases and when conditions are bad the math gap decreases and the reading gap increases. This pattern remained consistent within nations as well as among them, according to the work by Geary and Gijsbert Stoet of the University of Leeds that included testing performance data from 1.5 million 15-year-olds in 75 nations. ...
... Two rival reform movements arose to restore the integrity of
Catholicism. Those in the first movement, the Donatists, believed the
church needed to purify itself and return to its core identity. ...
... In the fourth century, another revival movement arose, embraced by
Augustine, who was Bishop of Hippo. The problem with the Donatists,
Augustine argued, is that they are too static. They try to seal off an
ark to ride out the storm, but they end up sealing themselves in. They
cut themselves off from new circumstances and growth.
Augustine, as his magisterial biographer Peter Brown puts it, “was
deeply preoccupied by the idea of the basic unity of the human race.” He
reacted against any effort to divide people between those within the
church and those permanently outside. ....
16. A great piece by someone who considers them unaffiliated with any religion. Every Christian and congregation needs to reflect on the insignificance of the church in this writers life. His tribe is growing: The significant insignificance of religion
Issue 104 examines the impact of automation on Europe and America and the varying responses of the church to the problems that developed. Topics examined are mission work, the rise of the Social Gospel, the impact of papal pronouncements, the Methodist phenomenon, Christian capitalists, attempts at communal living and much more.
"Despite the tough economy, many of the nation’s largest churches are
thriving, with increased offerings and plans to hire more staff, a new
survey shows.
Just 3 percent of churches with 2,000 or more attendance
surveyed by Leadership Network, a Dallas-based church think tank, said
they were affected “very negatively” by the economy in recent years.
Close to half — 47 percent — said they were affected “somewhat
negatively,” but one-third said they were not affected at all. ..."
... It's not surprising that younger entrepreneurial firms are considered more innovative. After all, they are born from a new idea, and survive by finding creative ways to make that idea commercially viable. Larger, well-rooted companies however have just as much motivation to be innovative — and, as Scott Anthony has argued, they have even more resources to invest in new ventures. So why doesn't innovation thrive in mature organizations? ...
... First, he says, the focus of an established firm is to execute an existing business model — to make sure it operates efficiently and satisfies customers. In contrast, the main job of a start-up is to search for a workable business model, to find the right match between customer needs and what the company can profitably offer. In other words in a start-up, innovation is not just about implementing a creative idea, but rather the search for a way to turn some aspect of that idea into something that customers are willing to pay for. ...
... discovering a new business model is inherently risky, and is far more likely to fail than to succeed ...
... Finally, Blank notes that the people who are best suited to search for new business models and conduct iterative experiments usually are not the same managers who succeed at running existing business units. ...
5. A fascinating, if sobering, look at the conflict over islands off the coast of East Asia. Trouble at sea
"President Barack Obama's proposed tilt of U.S. priorities toward the Pacific – and away from the historical link to Europe – represents one of the most encouraging aspects of his foreign policy. Although welcome, we should recognize that this shift comes about three decades too late and that it may miss the rising geopolitical centrality of sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. The emergence of these longtime historically impoverished backwaters has been largely missed as American policy-makers and businesses are now obsessed with the challenges and opportunities posed by the emergence of China and, to a lesser extent, India. Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, over the past decade has produced six of the world's 10 fastest-growing economies. Through 2011-15, according to the International Monetary Fund, seven of the fastest-growing countries will be African, and Africa as a whole will surpass the slowing growth rates in Asia, particularly China.
This growth has caused the region's poverty rates, still unacceptably high, to fall from 56.5 percent in 1990 to 47 percent today. Further growth will likely push poverty levels down further."
8. New Geography also asks, Is the Family Finished? Some interesting thoughts about the impact of declining birthrates in the U.S.
Pew Research Center has compiled key findings from a new analysis of the
nation’s foreign-born population, based on U.S. Census Bureau’s 2011
American Community Survey.
With more than half the population of many U.S. cities who are
multicultural and Hispanics comprising more and more of the
U.S. population, when does it become meaningless and redundant to
execute marketing strategy that is directed to a general market and a
Latino market perceived to be homogenous?
11. Committee on Economic Development has an interesting piece looking at both the ideological and economic aspects underlying the debate about the minimum wage. Raising the Minimum Wage: “Which Side Are You On?”
"It is an easy call if you are either (a) a strict libertarian or (b) an
enthusiastic advocate of the less fortunate with limited concern about
the scarcity of resources. (If you belong to both of those groups,
there is little advice that I can offer.) However, in between those
poles of opinion, things become rather murky, rather quickly."
... Comparing the Democrat and Republican participants turned up differences in two brain regions: the right amygdala and the left posterior insula. Republicans showed more activity than Democrats in the right amygdala when making a risky decision. This brain region is important for processing fear, risk and reward.
Meanwhile, Democrats showed more activity in the left posterior insula, a portion of the brain responsible for processing emotions, particularly visceral emotional cues from the body. The particular region of the insula that showed the heightened activity has also been linked with "theory of mind," or the ability to understand what others might be thinking. ...
... The functional differences did mesh well with political beliefs,
however. The researchers were able to predict a person's political
party by looking at their brain function 82.9 percent of the time. In
comparison, knowing the structure of these regions predicts party
correctly 71 percent of the time, and knowing someone's parents'
political affiliation can tell you theirs 69.5 percent of the time, the
researchers wrote. ...
STERLING, Va. - Perched by a computer monitor wedged between shelves of cough drops and the pharmacy in a bustling Walmart, Mohamed Khader taps out answers to questions such as how often he eats vegetables, whether anyone in his family has diabetes and his age.
He tests his eyesight, weighs himself and checks his blood pressure as a middle-aged couple watches at the blue-and-white SoloHealth station advertising "free health screenings." ...
... As Americans gain coverage under the federal health law, putting increased demand on primary care doctors and spurring interest in cheaper, more convenient care, unmanned kiosks like these may be part of what their manufacturer bills as a "self-service healthcare revolution." ...
Recent developments in the field of nanotechnology might give new
meaning to the phrase “nothing gold can stay.” Atoms and bonds developed
not by Mother Nature, but by scientists, are gaining momentum as the
building blocks for cutting-edge materials.
Using nanoparticles as “atoms” and DNA as “bonds,” Chad Mirkin, the
director of Northwestern University’s International Institute for
Nanotechnology, is constructing his very own periodic table. So far Mirkin has built more than 200 distinct crystal structures with 17 different particle arrangements. ...
"The Easterlin paradox suggest that in terms of human happiness -- a
squishy concept to be sure -- there is a limit to economic growth beyond
which there really is just no point in attaining more wealth. Further, a
decoupling between income and happiness at some threshold would imply
that GDP would not be a good measure of welfare, we would need some
other metric.
A recent paper (PDF) by Daniel Sacks, Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers argues that the Easterlin paradox is also wrong. ..."
"Why isn't there more outrage about the president's unilateral targeted assassination program on the left?"
5. Arnold Kling with an interesting piece on the role of Jews in the rise of the modern urbanized economic order. The Unintended Consequences of God
"In those days, most people were farmers, for whom literacy’s costs
generally outweighed its benefits. However, in an urbanized society
with skilled occupations, literacy pays off. As urbanization gradually
increased in the late Middle Ages, Jews came to fill high-skilled
occupations. Botticini and Eckstein argue that literacy, rather than
persecution, is what led Jews into these occupations."
"But while progressives would clearly mock this policy [trickle-down economics], modern day
urbanism often resembles nothing so much as trickle-down economics,
though this time mostly advocated by those who would self-identify as
being from the left. The idea is that through investments catering to
the fickle and mobile educated elite and the high end businesses that
employ and entertain them, cities can be rejuvenated in a way that
somehow magically benefits everybody and is socially fair."
8. Mark Perry excerpts a quote from green libertarian John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market.
“Capitalism is the greatest creation humanity has done for social cooperation. It has lifted humanity out of the dirt. In statistics we discovered when we were researching the book, about 200 years ago when capitalism was created, 85% of the people alive lived on $1 a day. Today, that number is 16%. Still too high, but capitalism is wiping out poverty across the world. 200 years ago illiteracy rates were 90%. Today, they are down to about 14%. 200 years ago the average lifespan was 30. Today it is 68 across the world, 78 in the States, and almost 82 in Japan. This is due to business. This is due to capitalism. And it doesn’t get credit for it. Most of the time, business is portrayed by its enemies as selfish and greedy and exploitative, yet it’s the greatest value creator in the world.”
9. Economist Gavin Kennedy with some interesting thoughts on the relationship between the state and the economy in developing nations:
The problem is to achieve the right balance between a competitive market economy and an effective state: markets where possible; the state where necessary.
11. Great piece about yet another way family life is changing. Yes, I’m a Homemaker
I’m a guy. My wife works. We’ve got no kids. I’m a stay-at-home dude.
"... What a sweet picture this conjures: the stay-at-home dad nurturing his
children, looking after the house and helping support his wife in her
budding career and shelving his own big ambitions for later. Now it gets
a little awkward. There is no adorable kid, nor plans to have one. No
starter home that needs knocking into shape. I'm not just doing this
temporarily until I find something meaningful to do. I’m
actually a full-time homemaker ... not stay-at-home dad but stay-at-home
dude. A conversational pause. Where do you mentally file this guy?
Usually I just change the subject. ..."
A new study shows that high-earning women are more likely to let their houses be messy than to hire a housekeeper or get their husbands and kids to pitch in. ...
... "You can purchase substitutes for your own time, you can get your husband to do more, or you can all just do less," Killewald says. "Whether women outsource housework in particular has less to do with resources, but whether or not paid labor is viewed as an appropriate strategy for undertaking domestic work.
Doing less housework seems to be a popular option. ...
Psychiatrists have
concluded that males take longer to assess facial expressions as their
brains have to work twice as hard to work out whether another person
looks friendly or intelligent.
In particular, researchers found that 40% of people say they would avoid someone who unfriended them on Facebook, while 50% say they would not avoid a person who unfriended them. Women were more likely than men to avoid someone who unfriended them, the researchers found.
... Libraries are responding to the decline of print in a variety of creative ways, trying to remain relevant – especially to younger people – by embracing the new technology. Many, such as New York’s Queens Public Library, are reinventing themselves as centers for classes, job training, and simply hanging out. In one radical example, a new $1.5 million library scheduled to open in San Antonio, Texas, this fall will be completely book-free, with its collection housed exclusively on tablets, laptops, and e-readers. “Think of an Apple store,” the Bexar County judge who is leading the effort told NPR. It’s a flashy and seductive package.
But libraries are about more than just e-readers or any other media, as important as those things are. They are about more than just buildings such as the grand edifices erected by Carnegie money, or the sleek and controversial new design for the New York Public Library’s central branch. They are also about human beings and their relationships, specifically, the relationship between librarians and patrons. And that is the relationship that the foundation created by Microsoft co-founder’s Paul G. Allen is seeking to build in a recent round of grants to libraries in the Pacific Northwest. ...
3-D printers can produce gun parts, aircraft wings, food and a lot more,
but this new 3-D printed product may be the craziest thing yet: human
embryonic stem cells. Using stem cells as the "ink" in a 3-D printer,
researchers in Scotland hope to eventually build 3-D printed organs and
tissues. A team at Heriot-Watt University used a specially designed
valve-based technique to deposit whole, live cells onto a surface in a
specific pattern.
Today is the day our advanced technological culture turns to a cute furry rodent in Pennsylvania for a weather forecast. (The only thing a groundhog foretells in my yard is that I'm probably going to need some new landscaping.) Happy Groundhog Day!
"In the course of our strategic planning work with clients, we've
identified the things that make the difference between visions that fall
flat and those that turn on. Here's a no-nonsense summary of those
elements that you can use as a guide when you develop your strategic
plan."
"In this way a conception of subsidiarity “from below” is focused on the location of sovereignty from the “bottom up” rather than on the delegation of authority from the “top down.” We see these variegated approaches to subsidiarity and sovereignty work out in diverse ways in later centuries. It is with these different lenses of subsidiarity “from above” and “from below” that we can better understand the developments of the Roman Catholic principle of subsidiarity as such and the neo-Calvinist articulation of “sphere sovereignty” in the late nineteenth century and beyond."
"Pally’s essay is framed around the thesis that these evangelicals have “left the right.” But left it for what? What she describes is really another vision of conservatism: church-based charity in lieu of a government safety net; exemptions from government regulation for religious groups; federal funding of religious activities; and persistent sexual puritanism. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say they’ve left the radical right and are in the process of creating a new religious right, stripped of harsh rhetoric but still undergirded by conservative ideology. Which is a movement worth chronicling, but not, as Pally intimates, as the new saviors of civility in our religiously-inflected politics."
"In the past scientists have warned that up to five per cent of species are at risk of dying-out as a result of climate change, deforestation and development.
But a new analysis by the University of New Zealand found that this figure was five times greater than reality because the number of animals living in the wild in the first place had been over estimated."
10. I've written before that fear is not an effective motivator for long term change. This is particularly true for some climate change and environmental activism. You need to make new behaviors fun and engaging. WWF appears to have taken this strategy to heart. (Hard to go wrong with anthropomorphized critters but maybe they should consider the article immediately above.)
From the time of Charles Darwin science has painted a picture of our earliest ancestor in the image of a chimpanzee. Scientific American editor Katherine Harmon explains how new fossil evidence is redrawing the lines of human evolution.
Actually, I think we already know who our first ancestor was.
12. For the most part (with a few exceptions), when it comes to movies, if you can't tell your story in less than two hours, then I think you didn't edit the movie well. Hollywood would apparently beg to differ. Why Movies Today Are Longer Than Ever Before
"The average of the highest-grossing films from 20 years ago is 118.4 minutes compared to this year's 141.6 minutes."
15. Okay purists, Rule Change Eliminates a Fake Pickoff. Pitchers will no longer be able to fake a throw to third before throwing to another base. Good idea or bad?
Our species can’t seem to escape big data. We have more data inputs, storage, and computing resources than ever, so Homo sapiens naturally does what it has always done when given new tools: It goes even bigger, higher, and bolder.
We did it in buildings and now we’re doing it in data. Sure, big data is a powerful lens — some would even argue a liberating one — for looking at our world. Despite its limitations and requirements, crunching big numbers can help us learn a lot about ourselves.
But no matter how big that data is or what insights we glean from it,
it is still just a snapshot: a moment in time. That’s why I think we
need to stop getting stuck only on big data and start thinking about long data.
By “long” data, I mean datasets that have massive historical sweep —
taking you from the dawn of civilization to the present day. The kinds
of datasets you see in Michael Kremer’s “Population growth and technological change: one million BC to 1990,” which provides an economic model tied to the world’s population data for a million years; or in Tertius Chandler’s Four Thousand Years of Urban Growth,
which contains an exhaustive dataset of city populations over
millennia. These datasets can humble us and inspire wonder, but they
also hold tremendous potential for learning about ourselves.
Because as beautiful as a snapshot is, how much richer is a moving
picture, one that allows us to see how processes and interactions unfold
over time? ...
... Why does the time dimension matter if we’re only interested in
current or future phenomena? Because many of the things that affect us
today and will affect us tomorrow have changed slowly over time: sometimes over the course of a single lifetime, and sometimes over generations or even eons.
Datasets of long timescales not only help us understand how the world
is changing, but how we, as humans, are changing it — without this
awareness, we fall victim to shifting baseline
syndrome. This is the tendency to shift our “baseline,” or what is
considered “normal” — blinding us to shifts that occur across
generations (since the generation we are born into is taken to be the
norm). ...
I strongly resonate with this article. Trends and trajectories over extended
periods of time are often far more useful than details of the latest twist or
turn in societal development. It is so easy to get lost in the challenges of
the moment. When you stand back and look at our moment in time from the
standpoint of centuries and millennia, we are living in the most astounding age
of human flourishing in the history of the planet. We are never without
challenges but there is good reason to expect that flourishing will improve in
coming generations.
The two groups I find the most insufferable are youth who believe their latest
insights are the magic solution that brings utopia and grumpy old curmudgeons
who mope about, complaining the world is going to hell in a hand basket.
Neither has a sense of the longue durée. We
need to spend less time with journalists and more time with historians.
A great example of the human impact of math is the financial crisis. Black Scholes, number 17 on this list, is a derivative pricing equation that played a role.
"It’s actually a fairly simple equation, mathematically speaking," Professor Stewart told Business Insider. "What caused trouble was the complexity of the system the mathematics was intended to model."
Numbers have power. In this case, people depended on a theoretical equation too seriously and overreached its assumptions.
Without the equations on this list, we wouldn't have GPS, computers, passenger jets, or countless inventions in between.
What does it mean: You can multiply numbers by adding related numbers.
History: Attributed to Pythagoras, it isn't certain
that he first proved it. The first clear proof came from Euclid, and it
is possible the concept was known 1000 years before Pythoragas by the
Babylonians.
Importance: The equation is at the core of geometry,
links it with algebra, and is the foundation of trigonometry. Without
it, accurate surveying, mapmaking, and navigation would be impossible.
Modern use: Triangulation is used to this day to pinpoint relative location for GPS navigation.
Martin Luther King Day honors the slain civil rights leader Martin
Luther King Jr. In the 50s and 60s King, a black Southern reverend who
advocated nonviolent, peaceful resistance, became the voice of the civil
rights movement. King was assassinated in 1968, though his legacy
ensured his place in history as an American hero.
In August 2011,
the Martin Luther King Memorial opened in Washington D.C. Along with the
passage the the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968, and the Voting
Rights Act of 1965, the memorial serves as a permanent reminder of
King's work. Test your knowledge of one of America's greatest men in
this quiz.
-
Laura Edwins, Contributor,
Aaron Couch, Contributor
This is a great quiz. I think I got 18 out of 20. See how you do.
"... Although the number of evangelical churches in the United States
declined for many years, the trend reversed in 2006, with more new
churches opening each year since, according to the Leadership Network’s
most recent surveys. This wave of “church planting” has been highest
among nondenominational pastors, free to experiment outside traditional
hierarchies.
“I hear a lot of pastors say, ‘I’m not just trying to be creative and
avant-garde, I think this is maybe the last chance for me,’ ” said Doug Pagitt, the founder of Solomon’s Porch in Minneapolis.
Mr. Pagitt has written several books on church innovations, many of which were first developed in the “emergent” church movement of the last decade or among “missional” churches whose practices focus on life outside the church.
Many of their innovations are being adopted by an increasing number of pastors in the mainstream.
... But in March, unbeknown to Ms. Pu, a critical meeting had occurred between Foxconn’s top executives and a high-ranking Apple official. The companies had committed themselves to a series of wide-ranging reforms. Foxconn, China’s largest private employer, pledged to sharply curtail workers’ hours and significantly increase wages — reforms that, if fully carried out next year as planned, could create a ripple effect that benefits tens of millions of workers across the electronics industry, employment experts say.
Other reforms were more personal. Protective foam sprouted on low stairwell ceilings inside factories. Automatic shut-off devices appeared on whirring machines. Ms. Pu got her chair. This autumn, she even heard that some workers had received cushioned seats.
The changes also extend to California, where Apple is based. Apple, the electronics industry’s behemoth, in the last year has tripled its corporate social responsibility staff, has re-evaluated how it works with manufacturers, has asked competitors to help curb excessive overtime in China and has reached out to advocacy groups it once rebuffed.
Executives at companies like Hewlett-Packard and Intel say those shifts have convinced many electronics companies that they must also overhaul how they interact with foreign plants and workers — often at a cost to their bottom lines, though, analysts say, probably not so much as to affect consumer prices. As Apple and Foxconn became fodder for “Saturday Night Live” and questions during presidential debates, device designers and manufacturers concluded the industry’s reputation was at risk. ...
"...Launched in July, the Seattle-based Egraphs' business model is simple, but pretty clever. Fans can peruse the company website to see if their favorite athlete has partnered up with Egraphs. Each player's section has a number of professionally shot action photographs included, typically priced between $25 and $50. The fan pays and sends the athlete a message through the website, including some personal details or memories.
The athlete then receives that message on his custom iPad app, using the the information provided to write a personalized note and electronic autograph on the selected photo. The photo is then sent electronically to the fan, who can save it digitally, share it on social media or order a physical print. Revenue is split between company and athlete. ..."
8. This month is the 40th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade ruling, legalizing abortion across the country. Time magazine has a feature article about the Pro-Choice movement this week that suggests 1973 may have been the high-water mark for the movement. Unfortunately, the article is behind a pay wall. Here is a short clip summarizing their take.
"...Academic Publishers will tell you that creating modern textbooks is an expensive, labor-intensive process that demands charging high prices. But as Kevin Carey noted in a recent Slate piece, the industry also shares some of the dysfunctions that help drive up the cost of healthcare spending. Just as doctors prescribe prescription drugs they'll never have to pay for, college professors often assign titles with little consideration of cost. Students, like patients worried about their health, don't have much choice to pay up, lest they risk their grades. Meanwhile, Carey illustrates how publishers have done just about everything within their power to prop up their profits, from bundling textbooks with software that forces students to buy new editions instead of cheaper used copies, to suing a low-cost textbook start-ups over flimsy copyright claims. ..."
12. Baseball Pitchers like Phil Niekro, Tim Wakefield, and now, R. A. Dickey did their magic throwing a knuckleball. Pitchers who master usually do very well and it puts less stress on the arm. So why don't more pitchers throw it? Why the Knuckleball Isn’t Thrown by More Pitchers in Major League Baseball
"... The first kind of Christianity avoids reactionary authoritarianism
but is often a therapeutic or vanilla mush that fails to ask anything of
anybody out of fear of giving offense. The second kind of Christianity
offers stern, clear moral directives that attract people seeking the
“specific instruction, even confrontation that calls us to grow in
discipleship” (p. 6), but disastrously embraces right-wing ideology and
baptizes that as the content of Christianity.
Both of these versions of Christianity are so deeply flawed, says
Stassen, that both are contributing to the alarming spread of secularism
in the U.S. The first version of Christianity is so thin as to lack any
particular reason why one would want to get out of bed on Sunday and go
to church; the second is so reactionary as to drive thoughtful people
into an anti-religious posture if they conclude that religion equals
right-wing authoritarianism.
I believe this is a stark but actually quite accurate depiction of
the primary problems afflicting the Protestantisms of the left and of
the right in the current U.S. setting. ..."
"While not exclusive to Latin America, the culture of family, support,
and living a life to spend time with your family, I think, is an
important part of Latin American culture that keeps people positive.
Being with those close to you and finding other friends and partners
that value that way of life is a key part of Latin American culture.
That might be the main reason why people remain positive: they are never
truly alone. Interestingly, many discussions and documentaries about
immigrant groups in the United States
show an internal conflict among many who move to the US and who do not
wish to lose their support systems in a new culture rooted in
individualism. While being motivated and entrepreneurial is valued, a
life being with your family, where you are never truly alone, is the
basis for many cultures in many parts of the world. Many new Americans
frown on the thought that children can detach themselves from their
family at 18 years of age. They believe people can only truly thrive as a
family."
"A Pew Internet Research Center survey released Thursday found that the
percentage of Americans aged 16 and older who read an e-book grew from
16 percent in 2011 to 23 percent this year. Readers of traditional books
dropped from 72 percent to 67 percent. Overall, those reading books of
any kind dropped from 78 percent to 75 percent, a shift Pew called
statistically insignificant."
Puerto Rico, Vermont, and Rhode Island are the only states (and territory) that saw a net decrease in population over the year.
The fastest growing region was the South (1.06% population growth) followed by the West (1.03% population growth).
North Dakota and the District of Columbia had the highest population growth, with 2.5% and 2.3% population growth, respectively. Texas, Wyoming, and Utah also saw major growth.
West Virginia and Maine are the only two states where people are dying faster than they are being born, with 0.93 and 0.99 births for each death.
Utah (3.44) and Alaska (3.33) had the highest birth to death ratio in 2012. That means 3.44 babies were born for each death in Utah.
Domestic migration determines the rate that people leave and enter states to and from other states. Per capita, more natives left New York, Illinois, New Jersey, Connecticut and Rhode Island to move somewhere else than any other states.
On the other hand, people flocked to North Dakota, D.C., Wyoming and South Carolina.
The states that had the highest rates of international migration — that is, the rate of immigrants coming in — were Hawaii, New Jersey, Florida, New York and D.C.
Puerto Rico is seeing a massive exodus — 1% of their population left last year.
15. When we think of transportation in the United States, few of us think about river and costal water transportation. Yet a great many goods and commodities are shipped on our rivers. The Midwest drought is having an impact on a major artery of that transportation network. The Mississippi River's Water Levels Are Dropping, And Could Shut Down Trade Next Week
"In other words, Americans are increasingly likely to have to purchase
and replace these goods some time soon as they get more and more worn
out. That's bullish for spending, jobs, and the economy as a whole."
"... Yet a few differences between the sexes do seem to hold up to scrutiny. One is spatial abilities. If men look at an object, for example, they are slightly faster at guessing what it would look like if it were rotated 180 degrees. There are plenty of women who do better than individual men. But overall there’s a stasticially significant difference in their average performance. This kind of difference carries over from one culture to another. It’s even detectable in babies. ...
... Whenever we reflect on human evolution, it pays to compare our species to other animals. And in the case of spatial abilities, the comparison is fascinating. Almost a century ago, the psychologist Helen Hubbet found that male rats could get through a maze faster than females. The difference can also be found in a number of other species. ...
... Clint and his colleagues propose a different explanation: male spatial ability is not an adaptation so much as a side effect. Males produce testosterone as they develop, and the hormone has a clear benefit in terms of reproduction, increasing male fertility. But testosterone also happens to produce a lot of side effects, including male pattern baldness and an increased chance of developing acne. It would be absurd to say acne was an adaptation favored by natural selection. The same goes for the male edge in spatial ability, Clint and his colleagues argue. They note that when male rats are castrated, they do worse at navigating a maze; when they are given shots of testosterone, they regain their skill. ..."
My 2nd Great Grandfather was William Cotton Holmes (1837-1932). He signed up with Union forces in 1862 and served until the end of the war in 1865. Late in 1862 he was stationed in Washington, DC, where he remained for the rest of the war. His brother Hoarce Holmes (1840-1864) (pictured) also served in the Civil War.
Below is a letter written by Horace to William on December 26, 1862, 150 years ago today. It includes a description of being shot and his experience in a hospital. He died less than two years later of smallpox in a DC hospital. I think the orginal is gone but I've transcribed this from a copy my grandmother typed up from the original years ago. Enjoy.
Foster’s General Hospital.
Newbern, N.C., Dec. 26, 1862
My Dear Brother William:
I think I see you start as you read the heading above. Well I am now
in the hospital with a ball through my left shoulder received at the
battle of Kinston, an account of which and the march prior to it, I will
give briefly. First saying, that I have great cause of thankfulness
that my live was spared. The ball struck the top of my shoulder hitting
the bone and glancing, came out of my back about 6 inches below. So
although you may not think much of a wound in the back, I have one and
in the front too. It is luck that the ball went clear through and
providential that it did not go nearer my neck, for if it had gone one
half inch nearer, it would have shattered my shoulder.
So while you have been sitting in the associations and guarding
depots, I have endured long marches, slept on the soft ground at night,
waded through swaps, drank stagnant water by the road and called it
good, ate hard tack and salt horse with a decided relish. Have seen the
time when I would have paid for a hard bread. Have been in the thickest
of the fight and felt the sting of a rebel bullet, heard the whistling
of 10,000 bullets, the shrieking of shells and the crashing of trees by
solid shot, witnessed the inhumanity of shoulder doctors, enjoyed the
beauty of jolting in a baggage wagon, with a swearing driver, after
being wounded, etc. etc.
Your letters of the 6th and the 18th I am much pleased to
acknowledge, and then state that it was about four o’clock in the
morning of Thursday December 11, when the drums of the 45th aroused the
regiment to prepare for new and untried scenes, securing a cup of coffee
so hastily as to burn our tongues, we stood in line in light marching
order. You know what that is, after a few miles. The moon was looking
kindly down bur soon all nature was warped in a dense fog. The sunrise
gun belched forth its grim welcome, just as we reached the City of
Newbern, the streets of which were filled with baggage wagons and
battery on battery of artillery, showing that the expedition was a big
one. We were delayed sometime near Fort Foster and then the word was
forward and on we went. The sun had now got up and shown pretty hot. The
road led us through swaps and creeks, at one of which we were so long
passing that the right of the regiment got far ahead and the left
straggled all the forenoon. This was very hard marching, as we had to
hurry to try to catch up, and the sun was so hot that it started the
sweat. At noon, the regiment halted for an hour, when we all got
together and ate our dinner, after which the colonel formed us in
sections, with orders to go through everything, and through we went, mud
and water, giving our extremities the benefit of a water bath. I liked
this marching better than in the morning, as it was more regular. Just
after sunset, we caught the first glimpse of the glimmering camp fire of
the advanced and it rejoiced our eyes. We soon filed in, stacked arms,
and after tearing the fence down for our fires, we prepared to rest. We
were tied, I tell you, 20 miles they say. I dried and exchanged my
stockings, soaked my feet, spread my blankets and dropped to sleep quick
and slept well too. Our cavalry had a skirmish here, taking a few
prisoners. In a ravine ahead, the rebels felled large tress to obstruct
our passage, and we can now hear the ring of the axes of the pioneers as
they remove them. The immense filed looks fine with its numerous fires.
The next morning, Friday, at four, we were called up and after
breakfast we were soon in line loading and capping our rifles, which the
boys thought indicated work. At sunrise we started and soon passed
through the swamp where the rebs tried but failed to stop us. There is
not scenery here. It is all swap and pines. This morning we passed a few
houses bearing the white flag. Nothing like a village through the whole
march. The houses are near a mile apart. Towards noon we passed a few
rebels prisoners, and further on one dead. They are cadaverous looking
fellows in gray. Our cavalry had a skirmish with the rebs ahead routing
them. At noon we stopped for dinner, where it occurred, and where lay a
dead horse. We had a fine rest here and I turned swapped my socks and
greased my feet and then fell in and marched along. Skirmishes are
thrown out on either side, and we passed [Page 2] through prisoners and
houses. The roads are bad and the artillery gets stuck giving us
frequent rests, sometimes stopping us in the middle of a huge mud
puddle. But when we march we go fast through the blackest swap. At night
we were stopped for an hour in the midst of a huge swap. It was a place
where we might have been slaughtered like sheep, but no foe was near
and soon we heard the welcome forward and we went at an astonishing
pace. It was dark as Eqypt and we splashed along through the mire, tired
Oh! It was near ten o’clock when we got to camp, and just as we entered
we heard several picket shots and feared we should be disturbed, but
no. I was glad to make my bed and sleep.
Saturday stiff and tired, I joined the line (Ah, you imagine me at
the rear of the company, do you?) No sir, not an inch have I lost
through the whole march. The road was ever wet and muddy. About ten, we
were resting, when we were started by the report of the cannon, which
brought every man to his feet and we pushed on rapidly. Soon after the
orders came "Open right and left", and the heavy artillery of the rear
came thundering by. We could still hear the firing. It was splendid to
see the rush of the artillery as they dashed along. At last the firing
ceased, and about noon, we were file in battle array in a large open
filed. My heart jumped as I was certain of a fight. We remained sometime
and I got a nap. We were very tired as we had marched rapidly. Soon the
order came for us to camp and we were glad. The firing was occasioned
by the rebs placing a battery in one corner of the field, and our folks
shelled them out, capturing their guns. We rested here all the P.M. and
Eve. Our rations were low but soon the quartermaster came up and we here
supplied with three days rations of hard tack and coffee and I made a
very good pot of the latter and it relished well. We were furnished with
20 extra pounds of ammunition to lighten us, you know. There has been a
great deal of straggling in the march, more from the old regiments,
however, than the new. Sunday morning found us in line. Sad scenes that
sun will look upon and today usually so quite is to be disturbed by the
roar of battle. We were soon on the march with roads bas as ever and
marched very rapidly. We passed a cannon taken from the rebs and the
dead by the road side. It was sad. Along side of the road there was
large quantities of brush out as though the Rebs intended to plant
batteries, but had no time.
After a rapid and fatiguing march we were resting in a huge puddle of
water, when at 10 of 10 we heard the first gun of the battle of
Kingston. The boys were speaking and comparing the scenes with that at
home. It was a most peaceful morning and all nature seemed in repose.
The firing still continued and we were pushed rapidly forward, and were
halted about a mile from the battle field near a house which was
afterwards used as a hospital and where I spent some weary hours. While
here, the firing in the front kept up vigorously and the artillery from
the rear came thundering by while squads of prisoners were carried to
the side. Soon we were ordered forward and soon we were to see what
stuff we were made of. No one flinched but on we went to find the enemy,
who were posted in a large house and entrechments in the rear of the
thickest of swaps in which they had some troops, but when we drove out,
we, the 45th, were filed from the road into the open field where our
batteries were posted, then through the wood, thence into the swamp, and
such a swamp, so thick with briars, and mud, up to our middle every
step. The shot and shell were flying thick around us killing some poor
fellows at the first entrance. We marched to the right flank, our
company being the third from the left. As soon as we got in, we deployed
as well as possible to the left. The bullets now fell like hail, but we
could not see a Reb as we were in a hollow in the water. Often we were
ordered to lie down in the face of the Rebs’ fire where the woods were
not quite so thick. The bullets whistled fearfully above, around and
over us every where. I had fired several times and was just raising my
rifle for another when I felt a sensation in my shoulder and my rifle
and myself [Page 3] went earthward. I fell to the rear in doing which I
was a little fearful of a shot in the back. I had one bullet hit the top
of my cap, leaving a dent. Hailing one of my comrades, helped me out
without any casualty. Our boys fought well and drove the rebels from
their position and across the bridge which they tried to burn, but we
were too quick and stopped them. The 10th Co. charged upon them and
drove them like sheep. We occupied Kinston that night and recrossed the
river, burning the bridge and going on to Goldsboro I limped away
towards the hospital which I at last reached. It was already quite full
with sufferers and a number were constantly arriving. It was painful to
hear their groans. After waiting about 2 hours, the doctor came and
cutting away my clothes, found that the ball had entered the top of my
shoulder and come out of my back about six inches below. It was a very
narrow escape and the Dr. assured me that I had just saved my bacon. I
have a great cause to be thankful that it is no worse. Wet and weary I
waited until night fall, when I was conducted to a bed of corn husks on
the floor of the chamber. There were 12 of us in the room, and there was
pain there. I was glad to get my wet things off and try to sleep and
think of home. The house is owned by an old Reb who is bitter against
the use of his home. We stayed there until Friday noon as comfortable as
could be expected. The Dr. Mason was very kind and did much for our
comfort. Friday noon we were put aboard a baggage wagon and jolted six
miles to take the gun boat. Our army had done its work and was returning
and the boat was to take the wounded. When we got there, they wouldn’t
let us go aboard because we could use our legs. We were told to join the
column in the baggage wagon. We were put aboard with a swearing kind of
a fellow, who cared not for God or man. This was tough and I was heart
sick, but there was no help and on I went. Till far into the eve we
drove and not very slow and every rough place going through me. At last
we reached camp and no place to sleep. The driver swore that we should
not sleep in the wagon, and those that were only sore on foot get out,
and I and another with a ball in his arm made special pleading and
remained, but it was a hard cold bed with nothing under us and a light
quilt over us. Oh, so cold. At four o’clock next morning, we commenced
our ride and all day we jolted until 8½ in the evening, when I arrived
at Newbern. Arriving I searched for a hospital and lighted on this one,
where I was well taken care of. Beds were good that night. This is a
very good hospital and I am getting on first rate and can thank God that
I have been preserved. In battle I felt no fear. I put my trust in God,
and was calm. You will see from accounts what our forces did, being all
victories. I shall never spoil for a fight and do not wish to see
another one. I am sorry for Mother. How she will worry! I sent a letter
by the first mail and one since. Strange rumors reach us from
Washington. Is it strange that soldiers are discouraged? But pluck it. I
remain your brother, Horace.
The
horrific massacre in Newton, Connecticut, is to sparking debate about
guns and violence, as well it should. As the discussion gets underway, I
think it is helpful to get a sense of where we stand in the flow of history as
it relates to violence in the United States. Here are a few
things to consider.
Below is data
from the most recent FBI Uniform Crime Report (UCR). The annual report compiles
reported crimes. It strength is the use of hard data. Its biggest weakness is the
absence of unreported crime. The willingness of people to report crime varies
by type of crime and their willingness to report may change over time. Also, law enforcement’s diligence with
different types of crime may change over time. Tougher enforcement can lead to fewer
incidents of actual crime, even as incidents
of reported crime rise. Nevertheless,
the UCR is an important measure.
Crimes
are grouped in two categories:
Violent - murder and non-negligent manslaughter,
forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault.
Property - burglary,
larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson.
Violent
crime is at a forty year low.
A second
measure is the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). Twice a year, surveys ask members of households if they have been victims of particular crimes, reported or
not. The strength of the survey is that it captures unreported crime. A
weakness may be that some crimes, like domestic violence, are underreported.
The NCVS
is also broken into two categories:
Violent - rape, robbery, and assault.
Property
- burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft.
(A
different methodology was used in 2006 that makes it incomparable with other
years. Also, 2011 data has been published and shows an uptick in crime.
However, the 2002 and 2010 data in the recent report, used as comparison points, do
not match earlier publications and I have yet to determine why. I chose not to
include it here until I have a better understanding.)
An
interesting question: Was there truly less crime fifty years ago or were people
simply less likely to report crimes? I doubt there is a definitive answer. Murder
is sometimes used as a proxy for overall violence in society. Here is the United States murder
rate per 100,000 population:
Additionally,
there is this estimation of the murder rate over the last 300 years. (Source: The Public
Intellectual)
The
lowest murder rate ever was 4.6 in 1963. It was 4.7 in 2011.
It can conclusively
be said that that violence in American society is not spiraling out of control.
We are living in one of the least violent eras in
American history. But this is not the
whole story.
(Go to
the source linked above for info about individual countries.)
The 4.7
homicide rate for the United States is a near record low but it is still two or
three times the rate of other Organization for Economic Co-operation and
Development nations. Guns are a big part of this difference. The good news is
the precipitous decline in aggravated deaths. The bad news is how much more violence there is in
the United States compared to other nations, even at all-time lows.
… And
yet those who study mass shootings say they are not becoming more common.
"There
is no pattern, there is no increase," says criminologist James Allen Fox
of Boston's Northeastern University, who has been studying the subject since
the 1980s, spurred by a rash of mass shootings in post offices.
The
random mass shootings that get the most media attention are the rarest, Fox
says. Most people who die of bullet wounds knew the identity of their killer. …
… Grant
Duwe, a criminologist with the Minnesota Department of Corrections who has
written a history of mass murders in America, said that while mass shootings
rose between the 1960s and the 1990s, they actually dropped in the 2000s. And
mass killings actually reached their peak in 1929, according to his data. He
estimates that there were 32 in the 1980s, 42 in the 1990s and 26 in the first
decade of the century.
Chances
of being killed in a mass shooting, he says, are probably no greater than being
struck by lightning.
Still,
he understands the public perception - and extensive media coverage - when mass
shootings occur in places like malls and schools. "There is this feeling
that could have been me. It makes it so much more frightening." …
(I realize
that does not seem to square with the statement about mass shootings peaking in 1929. I suspect a typo and "1999" was what was intended.)
This
data was reported in March of 2010. According to a recent Los Angeles Times
article, Deadliest
U.S. mass shootings, there have been nine mass shootings in the United
States in the first three years of this decade. That projects out to thirty for this decade. But there have been five mass shootings in the last five months.
There clearly has been an uptick in mass shootings over the past year.
On
a final note, the Sandy Hook massacre involved young children at school. Over
the past twenty years, the number of children 5-18 years old murdered at school
has ranged from a low of 14 (school years ending in 2000 and in 2001) and a
high of 34 (schools years ending 1993 and in 1998.) (Source: Indicators of School Safety: 2011) According to an article in the Guardian, Mass
shootings at schools and universities in the US – timeline, over the last fifty years there have been
six school mass shootings (including Sandy Hook) that have taken the lives of
children 5-18. Three of the mass shootings were at primary schools (Stockton, CA,
in 1989; Nickel Mines, PA, 2006; and now Sandy Hook.)
So
here are a few observations and comments:
The United States has an excessively violent culture.
Violence has lessened significantly in recent years. We are not spiraling into
chaos.
Guns are an important factor in the excessive homicide rates. I don't know why citizens need to own semi-automatic weapons. But there is more
than access to these guns that needs to be addressed here.
While a case can be made that mass murders have been declining in the long run,
the sudden frequency of them in recent months is alarming (five in five months).
Nothing that is said above should take away from our outrage at the senseless
death of innocent children and their teachers. But Friday’s shooting should not
send us into despair that things are spiraling out of control. Friday’s
shooting should motivate us to ask anew how we can accelerate our march toward
becoming a less violent society.
The digitisation of the world’s books reveals how the popularity of English words and phrases has evolved since the 16th century. And the Top 100 lists for each year are now free to browse online.
The digitisation of the world’s books reveals how the popularity of
English words and phrases has evolved since the 16th century. And the
database is now freely browsable online.
Last year, the
Google Books team released some 4 per cent of all the books ever written
as a corpus of digitised text, an event that has triggered something of
a revolution in the study of trends in human thought. The corpus
consists of 5 million books and over 500 billion words (361 billion in
English) dating from the 1500s to the present day.
In a single
stroke, this data gives researchers a way to examine a whole range of
hitherto inaccessible phenomena. Since then a steady stream of new
results has emerged on everything from the evolution of grammar and the
adoption of technology to the pursuit of fame and the role of
censorship. ...
Doc Holiday uses an expression "I'm your Huckleberry," in the movie Tombstone. Basically he was saying, "I'm game." I had never heard that expression befor the movie. I entered that term at the first mention in the books appears to be in 1880. The events depicted in the movie were in 1881. Interesting!
I expect I may end up wasting too much time at this site. ;-)
"... Drawing on data from the [Harvard] university's library collections, the animation
below maps the number and location of printed works by year. Watch it
full screen in HD to see cities light up as the years scroll by in the
lower left corner. ..."
4. There is a U-shaped happiness curve, consistent across cultures, that shows happiness declines from childhood until about our mid-forties and then begins to improve as me grow old. It appears it may hold true in primates as well. Our ability to discount bad news, even when we shouldn't, follows the same U-shaped curve. Our brains and experience are optimal for discerning bad news in middle-age. Turns out that ignorance (or maybe denial) truly is bliss. Viewpoint: How happiness changes with age. On a related note, it appears that Elderly Brains Have Trouble Recognizing Untrustworthy Faces.
5. The holiday season is in full swing and many people falsely believe this a time of elevated suicide rates. Actually, spring and summer have the highest rates and Nov - Jan have the lowest. In 2010, July was highest and December was lowest. Holiday suicide myth persists, research says
"Michael" was in the top 3 names for boys from 1953-2010. It dropped to sixth last year. Want to know how your name ranks for each year since 1880? Go to the Social Security Online's Popular Baby Names. The Baby Name Wizard is also pretty cool.
"For the first time in Barbie’s more than 50-year history, Mattel
is introducing a Barbie construction set that underscores a huge shift
in the marketplace. Fathers are doing more of the family shopping just
as girls are being encouraged more than ever by hypervigilant parents to
play with toys (as boys already do) that develop math and science
skills early on.
It’s a combination that not only has Barbie building luxury mansions —
they are pink, of course — but Lego promoting a line of pastel
construction toys called Friends that is an early Christmas season hit.
The Mega Bloks Barbie Build ’n Style line, available next week, has both
girls — and their fathers — in mind.
“Once it’s in the home, dads would very much be able to join in this
play that otherwise they might feel is not their territory,” said Dr.
Maureen O’Brien, a psychologist who consulted on the new Barbie set...."
And this reminds me of last year, or the year before, when cooking sets were becoming big with boys. They've been watching Emeril Lagasse on the Food Network. "Bam!" New merchandising angle.
11. Love them or hate them, the Koch brothers are intriguing. Many political junkies know of them but few others seem to know about them. Forbes has an interesting feature article in the most recent issue on the Koch empire and its influence: Inside The Koch Empire: How The Brothers Plan To Reshape America
14. "Data-driven healthcare won't replace physicians entirely, but it will help those receptive to technology perform their jobs better." Technology will replace 80% of what doctors do
"Scientists have designed an energy-efficient light of plastic packed with nanomaterials that glow. The shatterproof FIPEL technology can be molded into almost any shape, but still needs to prove it's commercially viable."
"... Last month, at the first ever conference of the Sustainable
Nanotechnology Organization in Washington DC, Michail Roco of the
National Science Foundation, and architect of the U.S. National
Nanotechnology Initiative provided a response. He said, “every
industrial sector is unsustainable…and nanotechnology holds the promise
of making every one of them sustainable.”
It’s my belief that that is true: nanotechnology, or the ability to
manipulate matter at a scale of one billionth of a meter, has
far-reaching implications for the improvement of sustainable technology,
industry and society.
Already, it is being used widely to enable more sustainable
practices. Safer manufacturing, less waste generation, reusable
materials, more efficient energy technologies, better water
purification, lower toxicity and environmental impacts from chemotherapy
agents to marine paints are all current applications of nanotechnology.
There is no reason for this technology to develop in an unsustainable
manner.
In the past, a lack of foresight has resulted in costs to society – people, businesses, and governments, and—
that could have been avoided by proactive efforts to manage risks.
Today, the tools to develop safer technologies and less harmful products
exist. Let us not miss this opportunity. ..."
"It used be that news of death spread through phone calls, and before
that, letters and house calls. The departed were publicly remembered via
memorials on street corners, newspaper obituaries and flowers at grave
sites. To some degree, this is still the case. But increasingly, the
announcements and subsequent mourning occur on social media. Facebook,
with 1 billion detailed, self-submitted user profiles, was created to
connect the living. But it has become the world's largest site of
memorials for the dead."
20. From the "That's just not right!" file. Harvard Economics Department does their version of "Call me maybe."
"What if all objects were interconnected and started to sense their
surroundings and communicate with each other? The Internet of Things
(IoT) will have that sort of ubiquitous machine-to-machine (M2M)
connectivity. Since there are estimates that between 50 billion to 500 billion devices will have a mobile connection to the cloud by 2020, here’s a glimpse of our possible future.
Your alarm clock signals the lights to come on in your bedroom; the
lights tell the heated tiles in your bathroom to kick on so your feet
are not cold when you go to shower. The shower tells your coffee pot to
start brewing. Your smartphone checks the weather and tells you to wear
your gray suit since RFID tags on your clothes confirm that your
favorite black suit is not in your closet but at the dry cleaners. After
you pour a cup of java, the mug alerts your medication that you have a
drink in-hand and your pill bottle begins to glow and beep as a reminder.
Your pill bottle confirms that you took your medicine and wirelessly
adds this info to your medical file at the doctor’s office; it will also
text the pharmacy for a refill if you are running low.
Your smart TV
automatically comes on with your favorite news channel while you eat
breakfast and browse your tablet for online news. After you’ve eaten,
while you are brushing your teeth, your dishwasher texts your smartphone
to fire up your vehicle via the remote start. Because your “smart” car can talk to other cars and the road, it knows what streets to avoid due to early morning traffic jams. Your phone notifies you
that your route to work has been changed to save you time. And you no
longer need to look for a place to park, since your smartphone reserved
one of the RFID parking spaces marked as "open" and available in the cloud.
Don’t worry about your smart house because as you exited it, the doors
locked, the lights went off, and the temperature was adjusted to save
energy and money.
Does it sound too farfetched for 2020? It shouldn’t since a good part of that is in the works now. ..."
4. Speaking of computers, technology lovers will appreciate that the World’s Oldest Computer Gets a Reboot.
"The Congressional Budget Office has a new study
of effective federal marginal tax rates for low and moderate income
workers (those below 450 percent of the poverty line). The study looks
at the effects of income taxes, payroll taxes, and SNAP (the program
formerly known as Food Stamps). The bottom line is that the
average household now faces an effective marginal tax rate of 30
percent. In 2014, after various temporary tax provisions have expired
and the newly passed health insurance subsidies go into effect,
the average effective marginal tax rate will rise to 35 percent.
What struck me is how close these marginal tax rates are to the marginal
tax rates at the top of the income distribution. This means that we
could repeal all these taxes and transfer programs, replace them with a
flat tax along with a universal lump-sum grant, and achieve
approximately the same overall degree of progressivity."
7. What are the conservative streams and thinkers that are likely to influence the evolving future of conservatism in the United States. David Brooks has some interesting insights into The Conservative Future.
Paul Solman: It being Thanksgiving, we give today's post to Governor William Bradford of the Plymouth Colony, built by pious Protestant purists backed by profit-seeking investors.
Bradford tells the story of the tough Massachusetts winter of 1623 and how the colony barely survived, unable to raise enough food to sustain themselves. One reason he gave: the rules of the colony, as laid down by the investors, specified that the colonists should till their land in common, as was the case in the England from which they migrated.
But the colony, perhaps desperate, seems to have changed the rules in order to jack up productivity, allowing individual families to tend plots on their own, an early instance of the benefits of pursuing self-interest as opposed to communalism.
I am on record: successful economic grand strategy entails a balance between cooperation and self-interest. Extremes in one direction or the other are unsustainable. According to Governor Bradford, extreme communalism wasn't doing the job in Plymouth, Massachusetts ca. 1623. ...
The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.
In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and provoke their aggressions, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict; while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.
Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battlefield, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.
No human counsel hath devised, nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.
It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people. I do, therefore, invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a Day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that, while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation, and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union.
In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United Stated States to be affixed.
Done at the city of Washington, this third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty-eighth.
In
a national online longitudinal survey, participants reported their
attitudes and behaviors in response to the recently implemented metered
paywall by the New York Times. Previously free online content now
requires a digital subscription to access beyond a small free monthly
allotment. Participants were surveyed shortly after the paywall was
announced and again 11 weeks after it was implemented to understand how
they would react and adapt to this change. Most readers planned not to
pay and ultimately did not. Instead, they devalued the newspaper,
visited its Web site less frequently, and used loopholes, particularly
those who thought the paywall would lead to inequality. Results of an
experimental justification manipulation revealed that framing the
paywall in terms of financial necessity moderately increased support and
willingness to pay. Framing the paywall in terms of a profit motive
proved to be a noncompelling justification, sharply decreasing both
support and willingness to pay. Results suggest that people react
negatively to paying for previously free content, but change can be
facilitated with compelling justifications that emphasize fairness.
... Beyond the United States, global statistics point undeniably toward
progress in achieving greater peace and stability. There are fewer wars
now than at any time in decades. The number of people killed as a result
of armed violence worldwide is plunging as well — down to about 526,000
in 2011 from about 740,000 in 2008, according to the United Nations. ...
... Most top Pentagon officials say the statistics showing that the world is
safer are irrelevant and don’t reflect the magnitude of the risks. The
result is what Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, has dubbed a “security paradox.” The world may seem safer,
Dempsey says, but the potential for global catastrophe has grown as the
planet has become more interconnected and potential enemies have greater
access to more powerful weapons and technology. ...
9. How much difference is there in the coming of age experience between Baby Boomers and Millennials? Mother and daughter team Robin Marantz Henig and Samantha Henig are interviewed about their new book: What’s the Matter With Millennials?
"The online startup Kaggle assembles
a diverse group of people from around the world to work on tough
problems submitted by organizations. The company runs data science
competitions, where the goal is to arrive at a better prediction than
the submitting organization's starting 'baseline' prediction. Results
from these contests are striking in a couple ways. For one thing,
improvements over the baseline are usually substantial. In one case,
Allstate submitted a dataset of vehicle characteristics and asked the
Kaggle community to predict which of them would have later personal
liability claims filed against them. The contest lasted approximately
three months, and drew in more than 100 contestants. The winning
prediction was more than 270% better than the insurance company's
baseline.
Another interesting fact is that the majority of Kaggle contests are
won by people who are marginal to the domain of the challenge — who, for
example, made the best prediction about hospital readmission rates
despite having no experience in health care — and so would not have been
consulted as part of any traditional search for solutions. In many
cases, these demonstrably capable and successful data scientists
acquired their expertise in new and decidedly digital ways"
4. Inhabitat reports on The World's First Commercial Vertical Farm Opens in Singapore. "The dense metropolis of Singapore is now home to the world’s first commercial vertical farm! Built by Sky Greens Farms, the rising steel structure will help the city grow more food locally, reducing dependence on imported produce. The new farm is able to produce 1 ton of fresh veggies every other day, which are sold in local supermarkets."
5. The New Republic has a very lengthy article The Mormon Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. It offers some interesting insights in to Mormonism's road from communalism to economic individualism, a trajectory followed by many Protestant sectarian movements. Jackson Lears writes:
"Mormons embraced economic individualism and hierarchical communalism;
they distrusted government interventions in business life but not in
moral life; they used their personal morality to underwrite their
monetary success. They celebrated endless progress through Promethean
striving. They paid little attention to introspection and much to
correct behavior. And their fundamental scripture confirmed that America
was God’s New Israel and the Mormons His Chosen People. It would be
hard to find an outlook more suited to the political culture of the
post–Reagan Republican Party."
"A number of students asked foreign policy questions, and then a young woman asked me about the responses I have received to my Atlantic cover story from this past summer, "Why Women Still Can't Have It All."
I answered, and several other young women followed up. After ten
minutes or so, I saw that the roughly 50 percent guys in the room had
gone completely silent. When I commented on the suddenly one-sided
nature of the conversation, one young man volunteered that he "had been
raised in a strong feminist household" and considered himself to be
fully supportive of male-female equality, but he was reluctant to say
anything for fear he would be misunderstood. A number of the other guys
around the table nodded in agreement."
7. French and Spanish legal documents from colonial Louisiana are being digitized, opening up a new window on colonial history in that part of the world. Colonial La. records shed new light on US history
8. People who know me personally know I tend to use sarcasm and double entendre in spoken communication. One of my biggest blogging challenges is editing most of this out of posts. Emoticons can help but some of the biggest misunderstandings I have had came from people not being able to see my wink or big grin as I write certain things. For that reason, I found this interesting: The Strange Science Of Translating Sarcasm Online
"In their new book "Religion and AIDS in Africa" (Oxford University Press), sociologists Jenny Trinitapoli and Alexander Weinreb seek to challenge the widespread view that religious beliefs and communities have unwittingly assisted in the spread of the disease through their resistance to preventative sex education. They also show that not only have religious groups had a largely positive role in AIDS prevention, but also how the epidemic has shaped religious beliefs in unexpected ways."
Each week I spend considerable time scanning headlines as I look for stories to blog about at the Kruse Kronicle. I clip them into an Evernote Notebook and usually twice a day I select one or two to link and discuss. A number of interesting stories never make it on to the blog.
So this week I'm beginning what I hope will be a regular Saturday feature. Each Saturday I will post links I did not use the previous week. For now I will call it "Saturday Links." Happy clicking!
3. Icon of the American Libertarian movement, Murray Rothbard, once asked, "Why won't the left acknowledge the difference between deserving poor and
undeserving poor. Why support the feckless, lazy & irresponsible?" Chris Dillow gives a libertarian response affirming the need to Support the undeserving poor.
"I can easily imagine my graph in a Julian Simon or Steven Pinker chapter
on human progress and the decline in violence. Even though I have no
philosophical objection to the death penalty, it's hard not to interpret
this 400-year pattern as a strong sign of human betterment."
On average, the Biblical world sees a startling new discovery of
allegedly cosmic significance every four or five years. Most recently,
we had Jesus's Wife, with the Gospel of Judas not long before that, and
no great powers of prophecy are needed to tell that other similar finds
will shortly be upon us.
In themselves, the finds are usually interesting (if they happen to
be authentic), but where the media always go wrong in reporting them is
in vastly exaggerating just how novel and ground-breaking they are.
So powerful are such claims, and so consistent, that it sometimes
seems as if nobody before the 1970s (say) could have known about the
multiple alternative Christianities that flourished in the first
centuries of Christianity. Surely, we think, earlier generations could
never have imagined the world revealed by such ancient texts as the Gospel of Thomas,
and the Gnostic documents that turned up at Nag Hammadi. Lacking such
evidence, how could older scholars have dreamed what we know to be true
today: the vision of Jesus as a Zen-like mystic teacher, or perhaps a
Buddhist-style enlightener, who expounded secret doctrines to leading
female disciples, and who may even have been sexually involved with one
or more of them? Today, for the first time, we hear the heretics
speaking in their own voices!
But here's the problem. Virtually nothing in that model would have
surprised a reasonably well-informed reader in 1930, or even in 1900,
never mind in later years. In order to make their finds more appealing,
more marketable, scholars and journalists have to work systematically to
obscure that earlier knowledge, to pretend that it never existed. In
order to create the maximum impact, the media depend on a constructed
amnesia, a wholly fictitious picture of the supposed ignorance of
earlier decades. ...
... People being what they are, I know that situation won't change any
time soon. But can I at least make a minimum demand? If you are going to
claim a new gospel fragment as a revolutionary scholarly breakthrough,
can you at least demonstrate that it significantly advances the state of
knowledge beyond what existed in the era of Herbert Hoover?
A few themes jump out from looking at the data in this way:
1) If the Great Recession is measured according to how far the economy
had fallen below potential GDP, it is actually quite similar to the
effects of the double-dip recession in the early 1980s.
2) If the Great Recession is measured by the size of the drop, relative
to potential GDP, it is about 9 percentage points of GDP (from an actual
GDP 1 percent above potential GDP to an actual GDP that is 8 percent
below potential GDP). The total size of this drop isn't all that
different--although the timing is different--from the years around the
double-dip recession of the 1980s, the years around the recession of
1973-75, and the recession of 1969-1970.
3) The recovery from the early 1980s recessions was V-shaped, while the
recovery from the Great Recession is more gradual. But this change isn't
new. The recoveries from all the recessions before the early 1980s were
reasonably V-shapes, and the recoveries after the 1990-91 and 2001
recessions were more U-shaped, as well.
Here's a finding that would have made for great occupy sign last
year: American income inequality may be more severe today than it was
way back in 1774 -- even if you factor in slavery.
That stat's not
actually as crazy (or demoralizing) as it sounds, but it might upend
some of the old wisdom about our country's economic heritage. The
conclusion comes to us from an newly updated study by
professors Peter Lindert of the University of California - Davis and
Jeffrey Williamson of Harvard. Scraping together data from an array of
historical resources, the duo have written a fascinating exploration of
early American incomes, arguing that, on the eve of the Revolutionary
War, wealth was distributed more evenly across the 13 colonies than
anywhere else in the world that we have record of.
Suffice to say, times have changed. ...
... We are much richer nation, and much better
off today, than 240 years ago. In the 1770s, America was a heavily
agrarian country of yeoman farmers, merchants, and tradesmen, with an
economy that accounted to just a few billion dollars in present values.
Like India or Russia today,
both of which technically enjoy more income equality than the United
States, early Americans were relatively poor compared to us. They were
just relatively poor together. The first wave of industrialization in
the 19th century increased living standards, but also offered bigger
rewards to factory owners than their workers. That pattern neatly fits
our classic understanding of what's supposed to happen when economies
move from farming to manufacturing. And by now, we've gone through
several epic rounds of economic upheaval that have left us with a vast
gulf between the rich and the rest, as well as a welfare state that
tries to mitigate some of the side effects of that difference.
So,
awful as it might sound, the fact that the United States is less
economically egalitarian than during its rural, slave-society ancestors
is not inherently a reason to fret. ...
Gavin Kennedy offers observations in response to a piece by Peter Foster in the Financial Times about Smith's two famous uses of the "invisible hand" metaphor, once in the Theory of Moral Sentiments and in the Wealth of Nations. Read Kennedy's whole post for more context.
... In Moral
Sentiments, Smith was not glibly crediting “the rich” with “spread[ing] the
wealth despite themselves”. The
plain fact was that the “proud and unfeeling landlords” had absolutely no
choice but to share their crops with the landless labourers as their sole source
of basic subsistence because without food neither the labourers nor their families would survive a week
– they had no other source of sustenance – and without food the labourers could
not work and their families would not grow up to replace them, and the
landlords would also starve. It was this dependence on their labourers which
“led” them to order that they be fed, metaphorically expressed as the landlords
being led by an invisible hand”. Moreover, given that agriculture, upon which
societies depended and had done so since it was introduced 11,000 years ago as
humans left the forests, their distributions of food, which had continued
through many regimes, mostly tyrannical, were managed by the landlords’
overseers, not noted for their humanity.
Of the accumulated wealth of the rich – basic conveniences and dressage
of their castles – next to nothing was shared with the poor.
In Wealth Of
Nations, the blanket term, “businessmen” also hides an important point made by
Smith, namely the fact that he was referring to the specific case of some, but
not all merchants, who were characterised by their felt insecurity for the fate
of their capital if they sent it abroad.
Instead, this sub-set of all businessmen, were “led” by that insecurity,
metaphorically expressed as “an invisible hand” – insecurity in the man’s head
could not be seen, i.e., it was “invisible” – to do what they chose to do out
of their fears. By so doing,
unintentionally they were led to add to the arithmetical size of national
“revenue and employment”, which was a public good.
In both cases, the
immediate cause of their doing a public good (the propagation of the species
and an addition to the arithmetical total of “revenue and employment”) was
metaphorically described by Smith as them being “led by an invisible
hand”. He made no claims to nosense
that there was an actual “invisible hand” present and working miraculously in
“markets”, through “supply and demand”, the “price system”, “general
equilibrium”, or any of the other nonsense wromgly in his name. ...
... Smith also taught
how self-interested individuals could act in disregard of the consequences of
their actions, for which he gives over 80 examples in Wealth Of Nations, which
did not add to the public good.
Self-interest also led merchants to favour tariffs, prohibitions, and
‘jealousy of trade’ ...
Nima Sanandaji has written an interesting paper about Sweden.
It largely points to the same historical facts that I have mentioned in
my previous writings, namely that Sweden during its most free market
oriented era, from 1870 to 1950, had the highest rate of per capita
economic growth in the world. After massive tax and spending increases
during the 1950s and 1960s, Sweden stopped outperforming other
countries, and after a dramatic leftist shift in economic policies
implemented by Socialist Olof Palme
after he became prime minister in 1969, Sweden started to seriously
lagg other countries. However, free market reforms implemented in the
1990s, and in recent years, have enabled Sweden to once again outperform
other Western countries in growth.
He also discusses possible cultural factors, and also points out that
Sweden in 1920 had a relatively low level of economic inequality,
despite the fact that government spending and taxation at that time was
only 10% of GDP.
Scandinavian societies have developed a unique culture with a strong work ethic and strong ethical attitudes regarding the claiming of welfare benefits. There are also high levels of trust and social cohesion. This social capital, which was built up before the advent of the modern welfare state, has played an important role in the success of Scandinavian countries.
For many decades, this pre-existing culture, allowed countries such as Sweden to have extensive welfare systems without the social difficulties, rise in worklessness and other effects that many would have predicted. Scandinavian countries have also reaped the rewards of relatively free market policies in some areas of economic life to reach impressive levels of wealth creation.
To characterise the Swedish model either as a social democratic utopia or a failed socialist experiment is a mistake. Sweden is a successful country in terms of having a low poverty rate and long life expectancy. However, these factors have much to do with non-government facets of Swedish society that pre-existed the welfare state.
As Milton Friedman has previously noted, the millions of US residents of Swedish descent also display low rates of poverty. They combine this with a living standard that is significantly better compared with Swedes living in Sweden. The transformation of Sweden from an impoverished agrarian society to a modern industrialised nation is a rarely mentioned, but quite significant, example of the role of free markets in lifting a country out of poverty and into prosperity. Low levels of inequality and low levels of government spending characterised this period of economic transformation. The golden age of Swedish entrepreneurship - when one successful firm after another was founded in this small country and gained international renown – occurred at a time when taxes and the scope of government were quite limited.
Sweden shifted to radical social democratic policies in the 1960s and 1970s, with a gradual reversal beginning in the mid 1980s. The social democratic period was not successful, as it led to much lower entrepreneurship, the crowding out of private sector job production and an erosion of previously strong work and benefit norms. The move towards high taxes, relatively generous government benefits and a regulated labour market preceded a situation in which Swedish society has had difficulty integrating even highly-educated immigrants, and where a fifth of the population of working age are supported by various forms of government welfare payments.
It is also important to remember that Sweden, like other Scandinavian nations, has compensated for policies of high taxes and welfare benefits by improving economic liberty in other fields. Some reforms, such as the partial privatisation of the mandatory pensions system and voucher systems in schools and healthcare surpass reforms in most developed nations. Since these reforms, and the reduction in taxes from the very-high levels of the 1970s to mid 1980s, Swedish relative economic performance has improved.
Swedish society is not necessarily moving away from the idea of a welfare state, but continual reforms are being implemented that increase economic liberty and incentives for work within the scope of the welfare system. Such trends are also visible in Finland and Denmark, with only oil-rich Norway being an exception.
Well,
why are Americans so gloomy, fearful and even panicked about the
current economic slump? U.S. consumers seem suddenly disillusioned with
the American Dream of rising prosperity. Hard times are forcing some
people to turn their back on the American Dream.
"Whining"
hardly captures the extent of the gloom Americans feel as the current
downturn. The slump is the longest, if not the deepest, since the Great
Depression. Traumatized by layoffs that have cost million of jobs during
the slump, U.S. consumers have fallen into their deepest funk in
years.
While
some economists have described the current slump as a near depression,
that phrase overstates the case if it is taken as a comparison with the
period 1929-33, when the U.S. economy contracted by nearly a third. The D
word becomes more valid, especially with a small d, when it is used to
compare the growth rate of the 1930s, which averaged 0.5% a year, with
the expected sluggishness of the next decade, which some economists
predict will see an average growth rate of 2%.
"I'm
worried if my kids can earn a decent living and buy a house," says Tony
Lentini, vice president of Mitchell Energy in Houston. "I wonder if
this will be the first generation that didn't do better than their
parents. There's a genuine feeling that the country has gotten way off
track, and neither political party has any answers. Americans don't see
any solutions."
The
deeper tremors emanate from the kind of change that occurs only once
every few decades. America is going through a historic transition from a
heedless borrow-and-spend society to one that stresses savings and
investment. When this recession is over, America will not simply go back
to business as usual.
The
underlying change in the way American consumers and business leaders
think about saving and spending will make the recovery one of the
slowest in history and the next decade one of lowered expectations. Many
economists agree that the U.S. will face at least several years of very
modest growth as consumers and companies work off the vast debt they
assumed in the last decade. ...
By the way, the date of this article? January 13, 1992! ;-)
This website is soooo cool! Here is a description of their work.
In 1943, four local newspapers published a New York City Market Analysis. Largely forgotten in the 70 years since, the document provides an amazing window into New York's neighborhoods of that era.
The 250-page Market Analysis provides hundreds of photos & color-coded maps, statistics, and short narratives about neighborhoods across the city. The statistics and maps are based on the 1940 Census, providing a rich complement to the individual 1940 Census records that are available online.
The Center for Urban Research at the CUNY Graduate Center is making the 1943 profiles available to provide context for the 1940 Census records and to offer a research aid to historians and anyone else interested in learning more about New York from the 1940s. Read our announcement for more info.
Our Welcome to 1940s New York website displays a map of New York divided into the 116 neighborhoods that are covered in the 1943 Market Analysis. You can:
move your mouse over the map to highlight the 1940 neighborhood names compared with current areas;
click on the map to display a high-resolution scanned version of each neighborhood profile;
select any of the scanned pages from the 1943 document (including city- and boro-wide maps) listed in the left-hand panel; and
zoom in on the photos and color-coded neighborhood map to see the images in great detail.
We have also analyzed some of the demographic changes in New York City between 1940 and 2010. Please visit CUR's website for more info.
This website is soooo cool! Here is a description of their work.
In 1943, four local newspapers published a New York City Market Analysis. Largely forgotten in the 70 years since, the document provides an amazing window into New York's neighborhoods of that era.
The 250-page Market Analysis provides hundreds of photos & color-coded maps, statistics, and short narratives about neighborhoods across the city. The statistics and maps are based on the 1940 Census, providing a rich complement to the individual 1940 Census records that are available online.
The Center for Urban Research at the CUNY Graduate Center is making the 1943 profiles available to provide context for the 1940 Census records and to offer a research aid to historians and anyone else interested in learning more about New York from the 1940s. Read our announcement for more info.
Our Welcome to 1940s New York website displays a map of New York divided into the 116 neighborhoods that are covered in the 1943 Market Analysis. You can:
move your mouse over the map to highlight the 1940 neighborhood names compared with current areas;
click on the map to display a high-resolution scanned version of each neighborhood profile;
select any of the scanned pages from the 1943 document (including city- and boro-wide maps) listed in the left-hand panel; and
zoom in on the photos and color-coded neighborhood map to see the images in great detail.
We have also analyzed some of the demographic changes in New York City between 1940 and 2010. Please visit CUR's website for more info.
The European country where Skype was born made a conscious decision to embrace the web after shaking off Soviet shackles.
... In a tiny (population: 1.4 million) and newly independent country like Estonia, politicians realised computers could help quickly compensate for both a minuscule workforce and a chronic lack of physical infrastructure.
Seventeen years on, the internet has done more than just help. It is now tightly entwined with Estonia's identity. "For other countries, the internet is just another service, like tap water, or clean streets," said Linnar Viik, a lecturer at the Estonian IT College, a government adviser and a man almost synonymous in Estonia with the rise of the web.
"But for young Estonians, the internet is a manifestation of something more than a service – it's a symbol of democracy and freedom."
To see why, you just have to go outside. Free Wi-Fi is everywhere, and has been for a decade.
Viik says you could walk 100 miles – from the pastel-coloured turrets here in medieval Tallinn to the university spires of Tartu – and never lose internet connection.
"We realised that if the government was going to use the internet, the internet had to be available to everybody," Viik said. "So we built a huge network of public internet access points for people who couldn't afford them at home."
The country took a similar approach to education. By 1997, thanks to a campaign led in part by Ilves, a staggering 97% of Estonian schools already had internet. Now 42 Estonian services are now managed mainly through the internet. Last year, 94% of tax returns were made online, usually within five minutes. You can vote on your laptop (at the last election, Ilves did it from Macedonia) and sign legal documents on a smartphone. Cabinet meetings have been paperless since 2000.
Doctors only issue prescriptions electronically, while in the main cities you can pay by text for bus tickets, parking, and – in some cases – a pint of beer. Not bad for country where, two decades ago, half the population had no phone line. ...
... To a British audience, the ID card will have a whiff of Big Brother. But many Estonians argue the opposite: that it allows them to keep tabs on the state, rather than the other way round.
"You'd think, given our history, we'd have a problem with it," said Ilves, in an oblique reference to the days when the KGB had an office down a cobbled street in central Tallinn.
"But I feel much more secure with a digital ID. If anyone goes into my files, they're flagged. Whereas if my files – which would exist anyway – were made of paper, no one would know who was looking at them."
Every Estonian can see who has visited their data, and they can challenge any suspicious behaviour. In one famous case, a policewoman was caught accessing information about her boyfriend. ...
The story mentions Mart Laar, the first Estonian Prime Minister after Russian occupation. He was 32 at the time. I had the privilege of having dinner with him a few years ago at an Acton Institute event. What an amazing story. Then I had an opportunity to see a screening of the documentary The Singing Revolution with the director present. If you have never seen the documentary you need to get it on your list. One of the most amazing stories of hope and reconciliation in the face incredible threats. I hope to visit Estonia someday. Here is a trailer for the documentary.
Could any real country have an economy like Panem’s? Actually, yes.
At first glance, the economic landscape depicted in Suzanne Collins’ best-selling Hunger Games trilogy doesn’t make much sense. Despite its post-apocalyptic condition, the fictional nation of Panem is quite technologically advanced. It has high-speed trains, hovercrafts, extraordinary genetic engineering capabilities, and the ability to create extremely advanced weapons. And yet Panem is also a society of tremendous economic inequality, with clear examples of absolute economic deprivation and even famine.
Economic theory teaches us that over the long term, prosperity is driven by two factors—capital accumulation and the “Solow residual” of technology—and that of the two elements the technology is more important. Perhaps the best example comes to us from the experience of Germany and Japan around World War II. These were, before the war began, prosperous, technologically advanced societies rich in industrial capital. They had the capacity, in other words, to build the tanks and bombs and aircraft carriers one would need to mount a successful effort at global conquest. But during the course of the war, the capital stock of both countries was run down to almost nothing by massive Allied bombing. In the very short-term, this impoverished both countries, but they bounced back remarkably quickly. Knowing how to build a prosperous society, in other words, was more important than actually having the physical stuff.
So how can Panem, more than 70 years after the conclusion of its last major battle, be so poor and yet so rich in knowledge?...
... District 12 is a quintessential extractive economy. It’s oriented around a coal mine, the kind of facility where unskilled labor can be highly productive in light of the value of the underlying commodity. In a free society, market competition for labor and union organizing would drive wages up. But instead the Capitol imposes a single purchaser of mine labor and offers subsistence wages. Emigration to other districts in search of better opportunities is banned, as is exploitation of the apparently bountiful resources of the surrounding forest. With the mass of Seam workers unable to earn a decent wage, even relatively privileged townsfolk have modest living standards. If mineworkers earned more money, the Mellark family bakery would have more customers and more incentive to invest in expanded operations. A growing service economy would grow up around the mine. But the extractive institutions keep the entire District in a state of poverty, despite the availability of advanced technology in the Capitol.
Similar conditions would apply to the plantation agriculture we briefly see portrayed in District 8, and presumably other commodity-oriented Districts such as 7 (lumber), 10 (livestock), and 9 (grain). On the other hand, Collins wisely avoids going into detail about what life is supposed to be like in Districts specializing in luxury goods or electronics. It’s difficult to have a thriving economy in electronics production without a competitive market featuring multiple buyers and multiple sellers.
Absent market competition, personal computers never would have disrupted the mainframe market and the iPhone and Android never would have revolutionized telecommunications. Entrenched monopolists have no interest in developing new technologies that shake things up. It’s difficult to get real innovation-oriented competitive markets without secure property rights, and exceedingly difficult to have secure property rights without some diffusion of political power. That needn’t mean real democratic equality—a standard the United States and Europe didn’t meet until relatively recently—but it does mean fairly broad power-sharing, as the U.S. has had from the beginning.
But Collins is right in line with the most depressing conclusion offered by Acemoglu and Robinson, namely that once extractive institutions are established they’re hard to get rid of. Africa’s modern states, they note, were created by European colonialists who set out to create extractive institutions to exploit the local population. The injustice of the situation led eventually to African mass resistance and the overthrow of colonial rule. But in almost every case, the new elite simply started running the same extractive institutions for their own benefit. The real battle turned out to have been over who ran the machinery of extraction, not its existence. And this, precisely, is the moral of Collins’ trilogy. [Spoiler alert: Ignore rest of this story if you haven’t finished the trilogy.] To defeat the Capitol’s authoritarian power requires the construction of a tightly regimented, extremely disciplined society in District 13. That District’s leaders are able to mobilize mass discontent with the Capitol into a rebellion, but this leads not to the destruction of the system but its decapitation. Despite the sincere best efforts of ordinary people to better their circumstances, the deep logic of extractive institutions is difficult to overcome, whether in contemporary Nigeria or in Panem.
... By analyzing satellite imagery, archaeologist Jason Ur and computer scientist Bjoern Menze have identified thousands of settlement sites in one section of the Fertile Crescent. They've mapped more than 14,000 settlement sites in a 23,000-square-kilometer region in northeastern Syria, and they suggest that their method can be used to map the entire region. Their work appears in this month's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Ur and Menze trained a computer program to analyze the satellite imagery's pixels to detect large concentrations of "anthropogenic sediments" – the remains of buildings and settlements now turned to dust, mounding up from the alluvial basin of this part of Syria, and detectable through radiation from the near infrared and infrared spectrum.
"One of the conclusions that we've drawn – and this won't be a terrible shocker – is settlements that were closer to perennial water sources or in areas of higher rainfall tended to have longer life histories, they tended to be larger in volume," says Ur. ...
... This new map also challenges previous ideas that the earliest cities were official constructs, created by kings or rulers. Ur says that places like Tell Brak show that early urbanization developed organically.
"We're talking about 6,000 years of urban development in one place. And cities change through time. This is one thing that’s really emerging from intensive research that’s been done in the last ten years: there's no one model for the city," says Ur. "There are any number of different approaches."
Yes, according to Dr. Daniel Wallace. He has recently revealed what he believes to be a manuscript of the Gospel of Mark that comes from the first century A.D.
... Until now, the oldest existing manuscript of Mark’s Gospel is p45, which was copied around 200 A.D. Though scholars believe that this manuscript faithfully reproduces most of what was in the autograph (original copy) of Mark, the new fragment would offer fresh and powerful evidence for or against this thesis. According to Wallace, the newly discovered fragment confirms what text critical scholars believe to be the authentic text of Mark. In other words, the fragment supports scholarly confidence that we have access to almost everything originally written by the author of Mark.
Unfortunately, however, the new fragment has not been published. Apparently, it will be published by Brill in a year or so. Wallace is not free to discuss the details of the text. So we have no way to evaluate his claims, apart from our sense of Wallace’s own trustworthiness.
New Testament scholar Larry Hurtado adds a little more information about the source of the new manuscript in his blog:
The fragment in question seems to be part of a collection of papyri that are part of the Green Collection (http://explorepassages.com/collection). The key figure listed as the guiding expert for the Greek Collection is Scott Carroll. One of the recent postings lists putative early fragments of several NT writings (including copies of some Pauline letters allegedly dated to the second century CE). According to Wallace, a formal scholarly publication of these items is in the works, scheduled to appear next year sometime. ...
... So, if we do have a first-century fragment of Mark, we will have a slightly stronger argument for the authenticity of the text of the New Testament. This will be helpful, but will not significantly impact our faith. It will make it harder for extreme skeptics, like Bart Ehrman, to defend their point of view.
For many people, Apple‘s iPad is a magical device that appeared out of thin air. The iPad, however, is the culmination of decades of advancements in a variety of technologies. Come along as we take a look at some of the milestones in the evolution of the best selling tech gadget in history.
Great article. I think the first tablet device I had was a PalmPilot in the late 90's.
... Members of the administration have now dropped the New Deal parallels. But they have started making analogies between this era and the progressive era around the turn of the 20th century. ...
...First, the underlying economic situations are very different. A century ago, the American economy was a vibrant jobs machine. Industrialization was volatile and cruel, but it produced millions of new jobs, sucking labor in from the countryside and from overseas.
Today’s economy is not a jobs machine and lacks that bursting vibrancy. The rate of new business start-ups was declining even before the 2008 financial crisis. Companies are finding that they can get by with fewer workers. As President Obama has observed, factories that used to employ 1,000 workers can now be even more productive with less than 100.
Moreover, the information economy widens inequality for deep and varied reasons that were unknown a century ago. Inequality is growing in nearly every developed country. According to a report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, over the past 30 years, inequality in Sweden, Germany, Israel, Finland and New Zealand has grown as fast or faster than inequality in the United States, even though these countries have very different welfare systems.
In the progressive era, the economy was in its adolescence and the task was to control it. Today the economy is middle-aged; the task is to rejuvenate it.
Second, the governmental challenge is very different today than it was in the progressive era. Back then, government was small and there were few worker safety regulations. The problem was a lack of institutions. Today, government is large, and there is a thicket of regulations, torts and legal encumbrances. The problem is not a lack of institutions; it’s a lack of institutional effectiveness. ...
... Third, the moral culture of the nation is very different. The progressive era still had a Victorian culture, with its rectitude and restrictions. Back then, there was a moral horror at the thought of debt. No matter how bad the economic problems became, progressive-era politicians did not impose huge debt burdens on their children. That ethos is clearly gone.
In the progressive era, there was an understanding that men who impregnated women should marry them. It didn’t always work in practice, but that was the strong social norm. Today, that norm has dissolved. Forty percent of American children are born out of wedlock. This sentences the U.S. to another generation of widening inequality and slower human capital development.
One hundred years ago, we had libertarian economics but conservative values. Today we have oligarchic economics and libertarian moral values — a bad combination.
In sum, in the progressive era, the country was young and vibrant. The job was to impose economic order. Today, the country is middle-aged but self-indulgent. Bad habits have accumulated. Interest groups have emerged to protect the status quo. The job is to restore old disciplines, strip away decaying structures and reform the welfare state. The country needs a productive midlife crisis.
The progressive era is not a model; it is a foil. It provides a contrast and shows us what we really need to do.
THE gap between rich and poor has grown ever wider in wealthy countries over the past three decades. A new report by the OECD has reams of data on this phenomenon and is well worth looking at. The Gini coefficient, a measure of inequality in which zero corresponds to everyone having the same income and one means the richest person has all the income, increased by almost 10% from 0.29 in 1985 to 0.32 in 2008, for working-age people in OECD countries. The trend is caused by earnings: the pay of the richest 10% of employees has increased at a far greater rate than that of the poorest 10% of employees. Within the upper echelons, the top 1% have reaped the greatest gains. Technology has disproportionately benefited high-earning workers, who also spend far longer at work than do low-earners. High earners marry other high earners. And governments are doing less to redistribute wealth than they have done in the past. So far, so familiar. But the report also argues that globalisation is not a significant cause of inequality, and that one of the many reasons for the rise in income inequality is that more people are in work now (or at least they were before the financial crisis hit) compared with the 1970s.
An ancient bone with a projectile point lodged within it appears to up-end - once and for all - a long-held idea of how the Americas were first populated.
The rib, from a tusked beast known as a mastodon, has been dated precisely to 13,800 years ago.
This places it before the so-called Clovis hunters, who many academics had argued were the North American continent's original inhabitants.
In truth, the "Clovis first" model, which holds to the idea that America's original human population swept across a land-bridge from Siberia some 13,000 years ago, has looked untenable for some time.
A succession of archaeological finds right across the United States and northern Mexico have indicated there was human activity much earlier than this - perhaps as early as 15-16,000 years ago. ...
A MATHEMATICALLY illiterate look at the ups and downs of stockmarkets in the 20th century suggests that gains made during the three great bull markets vastly outweighed the losses made during the bear markets. That is not necessarily the case. It is impossible for returns to fall by more than 100%—the rather frequent drops of around 50% represent huge destructions of paper wealth. If this is gloomy thought to ponder while markets are closed over the weekend, you can cheer yourself up by reading our cheering briefing on asset markets.
This post is rather long but it offers a fascinating discussion of the emergence of early economies. The standard line is that societies formed as barter economies and then moved on to money economies. Graeber offers some very interesting observations. Here are just a few snippets:
... a. The great flaw of the economic model is that it assumed spot transactions. I have arrowheads, you have beaver pelts, if you don’t need arrowheads right now, no deal. But even if we presume that neighbors in a small community are exchanging items in some way, why on earth would they limit themselves to spot transactions? If your neighbor doesn’t need your arrowheads right now, he probably will at some point in the future, and even if he won’t, you’re his neighbor—you will undoubtedly have something he wants, or be able to do some sort of favor for him, eventually. But without assuming the spot trade, there’s no double coincidence of wants problem, and therefore, no need to invent money.
b. What anthropologists have in fact observed where money is not used is not a system of explicit lending and borrowing, but a very broad system of non-enumerated credits and debts. In most such societies, if a neighbor wants some possession of yours, it usually suffices simply to praise it (“what a magnificent pig!”); the response is to immediately hand it over, accompanied by much insistence that this is a gift and the donor certainly would never want anything in return. In fact, the recipient now owes him a favor. Now, he might well just sit on the favor, since it’s nice to have others beholden to you, or he might demand something of an explicitly non-material kind (“you know, my son is in love with your daughter…”) He might ask for another pig, or something he considers roughly equivalent in kind. But it’s almost impossible to see how any of this would lead to a system whereby it’s possible to measure proportional values. After all, even if, as sometimes happens, the party owing one favor heads you off by presenting you with some unwanted present, and one considers it inadequate—a few chickens, for example—one might mock him as a cheapskate, but one is unlikely to feel the need to come up with a mathematical formula to measure just how cheap you consider him to be. As a result, as Chris Gregory observed, what you ordinarily find in such ‘gift economies’ is a broad ranking of different types of goods—canoes are roughly the same as heirloom necklaces, both are superior to pigs and whale teeth, which are superior to chickens, etc—but no system whereby you can measure how many pigs equal one canoe. [3] ...
And ...
... As I remarked above, occasional, irregular exchange between strangers will not generate a money system—since irregular, occasional exchange will not produce any kind of system. In ancient times, if you do see regular exchange between strangers, it’s because there are specific goods that each side knows they want or need. One has to bear in mind that under ancient conditions, long-distance trade was extremely dangerous. You don’t cross mountains, deserts, and oceans, risking death in a dozen different ways, so as to show up with a collection of goods you think someone might want, in order to see if they happen to have something you might want too. You show up because you know there are people who have always wanted woolens and who have always had lapis lazuli. As noted above, logically, what such a situation would lead to is a series of conventional equivalences—so many woolens for so many pieces of lapis lazuli—equivalences which are likely to be maintained despite contingencies of supply and demand, because all parties need to reduce risk in order to be able to continue to the trade at all. And once again, what logic would predict is precisely what we find. Even in periods of human history where money and markets did already exist, merchants often continue to conduct high-risk long distance trade through a system of conventional equivalents, or if money is used, administered prices, between specific commodities they know will be available, or in demand, at certain pre-established locations....
And ...
... The actual evidence is that in Mesopotamia—the first case we know anything about—these more widespread pricing systems in fact emerged as a side-effect of non-state bureaucracies. Again, non-state bureaucracies are a phenomenon that no economic model would even have anticipated existing. It’s off the map of economic theory. But look at the historical record and there they are. Sumerian Temples (and even many of the early Palace complexes that imitated them) were not states, did not extract taxes or maintain a monopoly of force, but did contain thousands of people engaged in agriculture, industry, fishing, and herding, people who had to be fed and provisioned, their inputs and outputs measured. All evidence that exists points to money emerging as a series of fixed equivalent between silver—the stuff used to measure fixed equivalents in long distance trade, and conveniently stockpiled in the temples themselves where it was used to make images of gods, etc.—and grain, the stuff used to pay the most important rations from temple stockpiles to its workers. Hence, as economist and Naked Capitalism contributor Michael Hudson has so brilliantly demonstrated [6], a silver shekel was fixed as the amount of silver equivalent to the numbers of bushels of barley that could provide two meals a day for a temple worker over the course of a month. Obviously such a ration system would be of no interest to a merchant.
So even if some sort of rough system of fixed equivalences, measured by silver, might have emerged in the process of trade (note again: not a system of actual silver currency emerging from barter), it was the Temple bureaucracies that actually had some reason to extend the system from a unit used to compare the value of a limited number of rare items traded long distance, used almost exclusively by members of the political or administrative elite, to something that could be used to compare the values of everyday items. The development of local markets within cities, in turn, came as a side effect of these systems, and all evidence shows they too operated primarily through credit. For instance, Sumerians, though they had the technological means to do so, never produced scales accurate enough to weigh out the tiny amounts of silver that would have been required to buy a single cask of beer, or a woolen tunic, or a hammer—the clearest indication that even once money did exist, it was not used as a medium of exchange for minor transactions, but rather as a means of keeping track of transactions made on credit.
In many times and places, one sees a similar arrangement: two sorts of money, one, a common long-distance trade item, the other, a common subsistence item—cattle, grain—that’s stockpiled, but never traded. Still, Temple bureaucracies and their ilk are something of a rarity. In their absence, how else might a system of pricing, of proportional equivalents between the values of any and all objects, potentially arise? Here again, anthropology and history both provide one compelling answer, one that again, falls off the radar of just about all economists who have ever written on the subject. That is: legal systems.
If someone makes an inadequate return you will merely mock him as a cheapskate. If you do so when he is drunk and he responds by poking your eye out, you are much more likely to demand exact compensation. And that is, again, exactly what we find. Anthropology is full of examples of societies without markets or money, but with elaborate systems of penalties for various forms of injuries or slights. And it is when someone has killed your brother, or severed your finger, that one is most likely to stickle, and say, “The law says 27 heifers of the finest quality and if they’re not of the finest quality, this means war!” It’s also the situation where there is most likely to be a need to establish proportional values: if the culprit does not have heifers, but wishes to substitute silver plates, the victim is very likely to insist that the equivalent be exact. (There is a reason the word ‘pay’ comes from a root that means ‘to pacify’.) ...
And ...
The persistence of the barter myth is curious. It originally goes back to Adam Smith. Other elements of Smith’s argument have long since been abandoned by mainstream economists—the labor theory of value being only the most famous example. Why in this one case are there so many desperately trying to concoct imaginary times and places where something like this must have happened, despite the overwhelming evidence that it did not?
It seems to me because it goes back precisely to this notion of rationality that Adam Smith too embraced: that human beings are rational, calculating exchangers seeking material advantage, and that therefore it is possible to construct a scientific field that studies such behavior. The problem is that the real world seems to contradict this assumption at every turn. Thus we find that in actual villages, rather than thinking only about getting the best deal in swapping one material good for another with their neighbors, people are much more interested in who they love, who they hate, who they want to bail out of difficulties, who they want to embarrass and humiliate, etc.—not to mention the need to head off feuds.
And ...
Economists always ask us to ‘imagine’ how things must have worked before the advent of money. What such examples bring home more than anything else is just how limited their imaginations really are. When one is dealing with a world unfamiliar with money and markets, even on those rare occasions when strangers did meet explicitly in order to exchange goods, they are rarely thinking exclusively about the value of the goods. This not only demonstrates that the Homo Oeconomicus which lies at the basis of all the theorems and equations that purports to render economics a science, is not only an almost impossibly boring person—basically, a monomaniacal sociopath who can wander through an orgy thinking only about marginal rates of return—but that what economists are basically doing in telling the myth of barter, is taking a kind of behavior that is only really possible after the invention of money and markets and then projecting it backwards as the purported reason for the invention of money and markets themselves. Logically, this makes about as much sense as saying that the game of chess was invented to allow people to fulfill a pre-existing desire to checkmate their opponent’s king.
In all fairness, the economists I've met don't take a radical Homo Oeconomicus approach. They see issues of status and moral compass as part of what players figure into the calculation of the relative value of various alternatives. Still, Graeber offers some fascinating historical perspective.
" takes a close look at some of the most important equations of all time.
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