Prediction #1

North Korea's stance will not change with Kim Jong Il's death.

Kim Jong Un, his son, is thought to be just 28, too young and inexperienced to have much legitimacy as the country's leader. He can gain this only by preserving--and likely reinforcing--the policies that keep those at the top of the country's military establishment in power. Were he to propose reform or to reach out to the West for the lifting of sanctions, the threat this would pose to the military, not to mention to China, would likely result in a coup. Either way, North Korea's policies are unlikely to change.

Strange intersections - 22 years of politics and art

My uncle was an actor in Czechosolvakia. After signing Charter 77, the government labeled him a dissident. While he was still permitted to act (and get paid) his name could not appear in any of the play's (or film's) billings and he found it increasingly difficult to get work. He was one of more fortunate.

In 1955 Pete Seeger was called before before the House Un-American Activities Committee, where Senator Joe McCarthy accused him, along with many many others, of being a Communist sympathizer. His record label dropped him.

Both are instances of an artist with views that differed from those of the (then) current regime finding themselves persecuted and their artistic careers being curtailed.


Edward R Murrow, in his regular television program, took issue with McCarthy's activities. He concluded his broadcast:

"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men".

We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn't create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it—and rather successfully".

I wonder, parenthetically, what would Murrow have thought of Fox News?

The IBM 3850 Mass Storage System (MSS), announced in 1974, held, in its largest configuration, some 472GB of data and cost $51,200 a month to rent or $2.3 million to buy. Data was held on tape which was wound onto cartridges which were stowed in the hexagonal rack (left). As data was needed the mechanical arm would pick the appropriate cartridge and read the tape. I never (knowingly) used one, but seek times must have been measured in 10s of seconds rather than milliseconds.    

That's a little less capacity than this Seagate drive (right), which costs $44.99 free and clear. Interestingly however, that's a price performance gain of just 33% a year. Of course, for an R&D team looking into the future, that's a fairly aggressive stretch goal for one year, let alone thirty seven.

One cartridge in the 3850 (left) holds 50 MB of data - on tape!

Man is not free unless government is limited

True. But Reagan didn't say "Man is not free unless government ceases to exist". Reagan wasn't a libertarian. He understood (Tea Party take note) that government did have some role to play in ensuring we didn't live in a Hobbsian  anarchy where the powerful exploited the weak.
   

What price freedom?

China, it was argued 20 years ago, could not become an industrialised country without democracy. History has yet to prove this conjecture. For the moment an alternative proposition seems plausible. Freedom can be bought with a rise in living standards. People may tolerate constraints on free speech and a lack of political influence in exchange for a growing economy and increasing prosperity.

Should growth in China falter, this implicit bargain may collapse and democracy may yet arrive. But for the moment, China is reaping the advantages of an autocratic regime in terms of coherent public policy oriented towards investment in the future; at the same time, Europe and the US seem unable to muster the equivalent political will. 

Democracy and leadership - short-termism

I argued below that leadership and democracy are at odds when everyone votes on all matters of importance. This leads to a lack of leadership which in turn tends to support high discount rates which means future costs are undervalued relative to present sacrifice.

Representative democracy (in which elected representatives make particular policy choices, rather than the voters show choose only between representatives) helps but doesn't fix this problem. Career politicians may take a longer term view but when, as has happened recently, they are turfed out by a disgruntled electorate, and replaced by representatives who have little desire to spend their lives in politics, short term solutions dominate since the shadow of the future has disappeared, at least for those newly elected.

If I stand for election knowing I will not be standing again in 2 years time, I have no extrinsic incentive to ensure that my decisions work for those I represent in the longer term.

Democracy and leadership - a tradoff

"Democracy and leadership are antithetical".

If democracy is conceived of as everyone having a vote on every major issue, then the statement is defensible.

First, the more complicated decision people are asked to make the less attention they can pay and the lower the quality of their analysis.

Second, one sacrifices vertical specialization in Herb Simon's terms. That is by refusing to delegate decision making to elected representatives who have both the time and (supposedly) the cognitive chops to deal handle these kinds of questions, we further reduce the quality of decision making.

Finally, there is the problem of collective action when decisions are difficult and require sacrifice is exacerbated. Most of us will gladly accept collective sacrifice if someone else is paying, but balk when it's our turn to pay.

An elected representative should in theory balance the wishes of all those she represents and arrive at a compromise that is less skewed than a solution voted on by all, which is generally the "lowest common denominator" and therefore likely to be insufficient in scope.

When everyone has a vote, no one wants to lead in making a sacrifice (the collective action problem). Another way of thinking about this is as a big prisoner's dilemma with 34 million players (i.e. voters); the equilibrium is "defect".

And that's the problem with California's ballot measure procedure and by extension with the state's finances.    

The right stuff

Heather "Lucky" Penney now commands the D.C. Air National Guard. Ten years ago, as a newly minted F-16 pilot, she flew a number of sorties on 911; first to intercept Flight 93 and then to clear the skies of planes that might be part of the 911 terrorist attack.

In an interview with Steven Scully on C-SPAN, Penney, who 10 years ago had just completed her basic training on F-16s, talked quietly about the way her day unfolded. This was about as compelling an interview as I've seen in years.

Her sober delivery was laced with disarming levity: "We are very deliberate about who has the authority to authorize whether or not we hit the pickle button and the missile comes off the plane." and "We all kind of laughed, like 'what kind of bozo porked his instrument approach going into New York'?". The language clearly signaled membership of the small elite group of fighter pilots, yet it didn't come across as affected, no did her humor indicate a lack of appreciation for the seriousness of her job.

Her account of the day was both straightforward and fascinating.

Scully: "How did you prepare for something like this? How did you personally prepare prior to 911?

Penney: "Er, yeah, I didn't. [laughs] Because that was not one of our doctrinal taskings, there was no alert training for me as a wing-man. My job was to learn how to go to war, My job wasn't learn how to sit alert, and there were no rules of engagement. We hadn't even thought about what that kind of mission might be like on American soil".

But it was her description of how she planned to bring down a hijacked plane without any weapons on her F-16 that was (forgive the hyperbole) so completely mind-blowing.

In the short time it took for her to gather her flight gear, she had thought through some different scenarios and their implications for collateral damage and concluded that to minimize the debris field meant breaking off the plane's tail section. Without any hint of bravado, she calmly explained that taking off the tail meant ramming her plane into the airliner.

Scully: "Potentially you have to bring down a plane. In the light of everything that was happening, did you give any thought as to how you would have done that - if it was over the city?"

Penney: "For the lager aircraft, it would simply be taking off the tail which would be... I would essentially be a Kamikaze and ram my aircraft in to the tail of the aircraft. I gave some thought to: would I have time to eject? but I would need to ensure... [laughs] ...I mean, you only get one chance. You don't want to eject and then have missed, right? You've got to be able to stick with it the whole way".

Scully: "So you were prepared to take your own life, if necessary, to bring down that plane."

Penney: "Of course".

This last line was delivered quietly, almost dispassionately, yet it was clear that it wasn't because of a lack of emotion. Nor was it empty rhetoric, but came, I think, from deep sense of duty, combined with iron self-discipline and self-control. Penney is exactly the kind of person I'd want defending this country. Intelligent and thoughtful (not to mention articulate), she is indeed "the right stuff".

Watch the video. Believe, me, it will be an hour well spent.

Supply and demand - 2

The Economist noted last week that "co-operation was in short supply" in American politics. When something is in short supply, its price rises. And the Tea Party's asking price for co-operation is far to high for many Democrats. 

Supply and demand - 1

Tracy, CA, is now charging for 911 calls. Just as many people choose not to buy medical insurance, many will likely choose not to pay the $48 annual 911 fee. Then, if they need emergency services, they face a $300 per-call fee. If more people choose both to opt out, and, because of the call-out fee, decide not to call 911, not only will Tracy be a less safe place to live, but the cost of 911 services will continue to rise as fixed costs have to be spread over ever smaller numbers of annual contributions and one time fees.

There are some - the more extreme second amendment crowd - who think that we should all be carrying guns and looking out for ourselves anyway. With this additional (regressive) tax for public safety services, there may come a point when people who had been happy to rely on the police to keep order may find the case for arming themselves in self defense too economically compelling to ignore. Even at today's rates, one call-out costs almost exactly the same as a Remington 12 gauge shotgun - which you can use as many time as you need.  

At that point, we'd be back in the Wild West of 150 years ago. Some see that kind of "rugged individualism" and self reliance as a romantic idyl. To me, it's my worst nightmare.

A new narrative

I hadn't heard this one before which may mean I'm deaf; or it could be that it's taken three years and the associated fading memories to concoct.

The cause of the debt crisis 

Greedy home owners and Democrat ideologues were jointly to blame for the financial meltdown. Here's why:

The former took out mortgages, of their own volition and with no encouragement from anyone else, that they knew (being the financial sages and visionaries they are) they couldn't afford.

They were aided and abetted in this by Democrats who "forced" the banks to write unsound mortgages which they would never have done otherwise¹. The banks were therefore obligated, simply out of a fiduciary duty to shareholders, to defray the risk they were being blackmailed into taking on. They did this by packaging these risky loans and selling them on to counter-parties who should have known what they were buying - caveat emptor². So it wasn't the fault of the companies selling arsenic-laced CDOs and CDSs.

Conclusion: the banks are actually innocent victims in a socialist plot cooked up by the people in the lowest income segments of society and their Democratic "enablers", and to add insult to injury, Wall street is now suffering unjustified and vindictive reprisals from the AGs and other regulatory agencies.

My goodness - isn't that a great story? A+ for creativity. All the more reason to worry about 1) who writes the history and 2) who controls choice of history books kids are told to buy. This one is right up there with creationism. 

^{1 - The Democrats controlled both houses and the executive branch for only 2 years in the quarter century preceding the crisis while in the 4 years immediately leading up to the financial meltdown, Republicans held the executive and both chambers.
2 - Since the counter-parties to these transactions were themselves banks, if the seller is not responsible for the ensuing mess, then the buyer must be. Either way banks as buyers or sellers are implicated and regulation is clearly need to prevent these systemically damaging transactions from being made.}

Another long tale

This afternoon I was organizing and cataloguing my record collection (mostly vinyl). It's nothing spectacular; about 170 rock and jazz albums and about 40 classical. In the process I discovered that in the rock/jazz group, just four artists (Pink Floyd, Steely Dan, The Beatles, and Led Zeppelin) account for a quarter of the entire collection. Add to that David Bowie (a hangover from university), Dire Straits, Genesis, Judy Tzuke, Miles Davis, Rush, Al Stewart, Donald Fagan and Joan Armatrading, just 13 artists in all, and that's half the collection.  The other 83 discs are divided fairly evenly between 66 different artists with only one example of 50 artists work. The modal average release year is 1975 and the median 1979. The most recent album was Continuum (John Mayer) released in 2006. Over half were recorded between 1969 and 1980. Clearly my listening tastes got stuck in the 70s. It's at this point you might rightly suggest that I need to get out more.

Trajectories

My paternal grandparents owned a textile shop and a small factory. They had a chauffeur, a cook and a live-in maid. My maternal grandfather worked in the city - he was company secretary of a marine cable-laying firm. My mother's parents had a cook and a maid.

My parents didn't have live-in staff, but someone came in twice a week to help my mother clean the house and help with the laundry and the ironing. They also had a gardener, a retired policeman called Mr Fullagar, who came once a week.

We have no staff, no one cleans and the house is perceptually messy, and the garden is a jungle.

Given this trajectory, it's a good job we don't have children.

Role reversal

Britain, the country of the village bobby, where policemen carried truncheons not firearms, and relied on social capital to maintain order, is turning to Bill Bratton, an American, who hails from a society in which there is often a hostile relationship between the public and law enforcement, to provide advice on community policing. What an ironic reversal of roles.
In the same vein, perhaps the Brits might return the favor by offering some suggestions for reforming the American political system?