Liberalization in China

For many years, as China rushed through a process of industrialization in a third of the time it took Britain, Europe and America, it was commonly held that an inevitable corollary of this would be increasing pressure for, and moves toward, democracy.

The logic, I assume, ran that industrialization could not be achieved without education and with a more educated populous, demands for freedom of expression and democracy would necessarily follow.  

What this argument misses is as old as the Roman Empire; "Bread and Circuses". Industrialization has forged ahead, and education too; but while standards of living have been rising people are willing to trade freedom for increasing prosperity.

Demands for political reform can be held in abeyance as long as prosperity continues to grow. When that stops, expect trouble.

A Sense of Identity

The recent upsurge in populism, coupled with the loss of trust in government, has been linked to the collapse of the socio-economic bargain made in the 1980s that promised prosperity in return for globalization. 

While clearly an important contributing factor, one aspect has been completely ignored; identity. To the extent that we have historically seen our identity constructed around what we do, and in particular what we do for a living, our identities are being assaulted by upheaval in the labor market.

When careers in a clearly defined field that lasted a lifetime are being replaced by jobs in a swirling, ever-changing gig-economy, identity can no longer be constructed from what we do for a living. And so in addition to a failed social contract, we have a broad swathes of society experiencing an identity crisis.

(And a testable proposition that follows from this is that in areas where old stable jobs are disappearing faster, opioid addition will be higher). 

Less Autonomous Vehicles

Autonomous vehicles (self driving cars) are supposed to be arriving in about 2 years. There are safety concerns of course, as highlighted by the unfortunate death of a pedestrian in Arizona last week. But until legislation arrives their progress and roll out will continue unabated.

Safety features are of course critical to their deployment; it has been suggested that because so many accidents are caused by errors in human judgement, self driving cars will actually made the roads safer.

Ultimately that's likely to be true but in the phase in which self driving cars and human-driven cars coexist on the same roads, autonomous vehicles will need an over-abundance of safety devices to cope with unpredictable humans in their environment.

In time human driven cars may become rare enough that autonomous vehicles will be far more likley to be surrounded by other self driving cars then their traditional predecessors. Coordination between cars - a network of vehicles talking to one another - might then provide information about road and traffic conditions as well as the ability to 'flock' (as in for example, computer simulations of flying geese).   

At that point, autonomous vehicles may be a misnomer; while today's cars are tightly coupled to their drivers but autonomous from other cars on the road, self-driving cars will be autonomous from their occupants but closely coupled to other cars, road furniture and other highway features. 

Market volatility

After the 2016 election, markets climbed in anticipation of the GOP tax cuts. The more certain they became the more the market priced them in. Naturally that climb stopped when they were enacted. 

Now they are being moved by the uncertainty generated by this administrations somewhat schizophrenic trade policy; the GOP stands for free trade (good for markets) and Trump for protectionism, trade barriers and tariffs (bad for markets). 

When it becomes clearer which side will prevail will might seem some stability returning. If it is protectionism, expect the markets to fall further. 

Just don't expect Trump to own it on the way down like he did on the way up.

The Heller Decision

I'm re-reading the Heller Decision, written for SCOTUS by Antonin Scalia. He makes the argument that the first ('prefatory') clause does not limit the scope of the second ('operative') clause to 'well organised militias'. I'm not as swayed by this argument as I was when I first read the opinion, but something else came to mind.

He concludes his analysis of the operative clause noting "we find that they guarantee the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation". One rather odd aspect to this interpretation is the addition of the notion of confrontation. That in itself seems to limit the scope of the Amendment, and begs the question" does this right not exist in the absence of confrontation? If a confrontation is simply an argument or a disagreement, is one justified in carrying a weapon to any setting in which differences opinion are to be expected?

That is the first puzzle of the majority's ruling. The second is the notion of "arms". Scalia frequently uses weapons as a modern day synonym for arms. Note that the constitution does not refer specifically to firearms, which it could have done given that they did exist at the time of its drafting, but to arms in general. Knives must surely therefore be considered a subset of arms in general.

However there are numerous state regulations limiting the carrying of knives. For example this website summarizes the rules relating to the carrying of knives: "Carry laws forbid an individual from carrying, concealed or open, certain knives. For example, some states forbid an individual from conceal carry of knives over a certain length but open carry of that same knife is legal. Other states forbid the carry, concealed and open, of certain knives. Most knives that are barred from carry are ones deemed by society to have no utility uses and, therefore, their only use is as weapons".

That knives whose sole use is as a weapon are regulated. In New York State, for example, it is illegal to carry "a dirk, dagger, or stiletto with the intent to use it as a weapon against another". It might be argued that this permits the carrying of knives if the bearer is not intending to use it as a weapon, but that seems inconsistent with Scalia's addition that the Second Amendment applies "in case of confrontation".

Moreover, some types of knives are barred from being "kept" (owned) at all. As the "Knife Up" website notes: "Ownership laws forbid individuals from owning certain types of knives that society has deemed “deadly weapons” or “dangerous.” Most of the time, these knives were once associated with unlawful people such as gangs, the mob, and outlaws. It is for this reason that the Bowie knife has been outlawed in so many states".

So it appears that both the ownership and the carrying of knives are quite heavily regulated at the State level, but ought to be covered by the Second Amendment in the same way as guns are. So either the NRA is wrong about the limits to regulation the Second Amendment affords, or the States have on their books a raft of unconstitutional restrictions on the owning and carrying of knives. 

Keep 'em guessing

Anyone who is concerned that Trump means what he says (or tweets) is either not listening or delusional. Commentators were in a tizzy this week when he said he'd raise the legal minimum age for purchasing firearms, legislate universal background checks, and allow law enforcement to confiscate weapons from people who they consider a danger to themselves or others, prior to any legal process.

The NRA was, not surprisingly, furious: But they need not worry. Trump has said many things on the spur of the moment only to contradict himself only hours later. He lives in the moment, saying whatever he things will please his current audience, and has no intention of being good to his word.