Counter-insurgency (COIN)

General Petraeus is nothing short of a genius. I won't bother recounting all his achievements and virtues here; rather I will cut right to the chase.

The new US counter-insurgency strategy (COIN), which Petraeus was instrumental in developing over the last several years, identifies a counter-intuitive, but critically important, strategic issue.

The main idea is that increased short-term risk for American soldiers, tactically, reduces longer-term, strategic risk.

In a traditional, symmetric war, civilian deaths and collateral damage in the short run can shorten the overall war. This is essentially the paradigm of shock & awe pioneered by other brilliant men, such as Colin Powell. The ultimate in shock & awe, and the inspiration for the strategy in many ways, was the atomic bombing of Japan. It killed civilians, but it probably saved lives by shortening the war.

In asymmetric, insurgency/counter-insurgency war, under-reacting and overprotecting civilians, while remaining out and about, allows intelligence gathering and turns civilians against insurgents.

Imagine the alternative. You're out there, trying to pacify terrorists in Iraq. You could easily think, "I'd better keep US troops from dying and find the insurgents." "If I don't keep US troops from dying, public opinion will turn against the war, even if I'm winning." "If I don't find insurgent bombers, I will not be accomplishing my mission or protecting the new nation of Iraq."

But Petraeus argues for exactly the opposite. He argues for a war focused on defense. He argues that such operations to catch terrorists alienate the population. The collateral damage creates more terrorists. This is NOT obvious. It seems obvious, but only if you have never understood the shock&awe strategy in the first place. Traditional thinking is that it's better to over-react and and kill too many civilians at first, because it will decimate the enemy and shorten the war.

Lest you think you understand what I'm saying, think about this... "Did Rumsfeld send too few troops to Iraq?" If you think so, then you think we should have engaged in MORE activities early on. But, that would have made MORE people affected by US troops and probably resulted in MORE collateral damage. Even if you don't realize it, people like Gen. Shinseki and Colin Powell, who have criticized the war, were arguing for THAT. They were saying we should have sent more troops in and been a blunter instrument. We could have stopped the looters and crushed the insurgency early on and we'd be in a better position now. It's the opposite of the strategy Petraeus is advocating. He's advocating that we send more troops NOW, but that we had the right number at the beginning. He's arguing that what we need to do now is go out and put US soldiers in harm's way. We need to tell them to make protecting civilians their priority, even if it results in more US casualties in the short run.

The reason we need to do this is because it will reduce the quantity of terrorists created and turn more of the populace against the terrorists. This will ultimately do more to shorten the war than will hunting down the terrorists.

Don't confuse this argument with the idea that we should simply not be there at all, because then we couldn't alienate people. That is 100% wrong. What Petraeus is arguing is the opposite. We *should* be there, because if we don't protect civilians, then we can't be seen as the better alternative to Al Qaeda. When we abandoned the Afghani rebels and the Shi'ites in the early 90's, we did exactly this - we left them alone. We caused Zero collateral damage, and we earned nothing but the hatred of Iraqis and Afghanis during that time. We said, "We're not helping you; you're on your own." And nobody thanked us for it. Instead, they spent the 90's plotting against us. Understanding that problem is a basic precursor to understanding what's going on in the world today. The terrorism problem we have now built up during the 90's, when Clinton was President and we did little to nothing to stop Al Qaeda or Saddam Hussein.

Thwarted Pirate Attacks

... on Chinese ships, and by Indian Navy, among others...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081218/ap_on_re_af/piracy_13

Rice on Piracy

A quote from Secretary Rice at the UN, speaking about piracy:

"To make piracy costlier and more difficult to undertake, the United States, with the agreement of the Somali Transitional Federal Government, believes that the Security Council’s authorization today that states may pursue pirates into their places of operation on land will have a significant impact. History has demonstrated again and again that maritime operations alone are insufficient to combating piracy."

Pirates!

Piracy has become a problem that's so big it's now almost comical. The problem runs far deeper than the loss of a few ships off the coast of Somalia. There are several reasons why piracy is such a big problem:

1) There are many other areas around Africa where piracy is rampant. There are even more historically active pirate hotspots in and around Indonesia.

2) Piracy is connected to terrorism. It's not that the pirates are terrorists, exactly. But consider this: the people who shot up Mumbai recently came in on boats. In fact, they hijacked a fishing boat somewhere near India, which they used to get into port. This is a colossal problem.

Imagine if a hijacked tanker were blown up at the mouth of the Port of Long Beach. This could disrupt the flow of imports and exports to and from the entire US west of the Mississippi for days or weeks.

Right now, there is a hijacked Ukranian boat in the hands of pirates loaded with tanks and other heavy weapons. There is also an oil tanker. It would be simple to cause an Exxon Valdez-caliber disaster in an incident of eco-terrorism.

Even worse, a large boat makes the perfect mobile weapons laboratory. If kept in the right place, there would be no one who could even legally board/search it.

For all these reasons, and many others, I was excited to see this story today, about how the UN has authorized operations at sea and on land to get at the pirate menace.

3) Piracy creates a need for rapid-reaction forces to interdict sea traffic. India, China, the US, Japan, Great Britain, Australia, and others will obviously need to plan how they will deal with a remote hijacking five thousand miles away. Will pirates be able to hijack Chinese missile shipments near China and then get into Indian waters? If so, will the Chinese try to attack the ships? Will the US be able to push India to board a Chinese flagged ship full of military equipment? The potential for international military and political incidents is immense.

A Bonds Primer

It's time for another super-condensed lesson on bonds...

Bonds are a loan to a company. The traditional type works as follows:
You loan the company $1,000 (you buy the bond). The company pays you interest (the coupon rate, or interest rate) every period. At the end, they pay you back the principle of the bond. In this sense, it is very similar to a CD. You loan the bank $1,000 for 6 months, they pay you a certain amount of interest each month, then they pay you back the $1,000 of principle.

Many variations exist.

Because the bond is tradeable and has a limited duration (for example, 10 years), the prices of bonds can change. You might buy one that has 2004's interest rate, and will only last for an additional 6 years. Someone else collected the first few years' worth of interest and then sold it to you. The YTM (yield-to-maturity) is an attempt to capture the value of the bond that's "left".

The price of a bond varies inversely with the prevailing interest rates. Here's why:
Let's say you buy a 10-year bond in 2005 for $1000 that pays 5% interest per year. Every year it pays $50. Now, let's say it's 2006 and the interest rate has gone down. Today, new bonds are offered for 10 years with a 2.5% interest rate for $1000 (the $1000 is called the face value or par value). If you bought bonds today, and you wanted to get $50/yr in interest, then you'd have to buy TWO of the 2006 bonds, because each one pays only $25/yr. Therefore, your bond from 2005 is now worth TWICE as much as the bonds from 2006. If you sell your 2005 bond on the open market, it will have a price of roughly $2,000 (actually, there are other factors that go into the price, but that's the main idea).

So, you can make money in 2 ways from bonds: 1) the interest payments, or 2) the price of the bond goes up and you sell it. The price of a bond can go below $1,000, but you will still get $1,000 if you hold the bond when it's due (the end of the bond, also called the "call date").

The interest payments for most bonds are paid quarterly, yearly, or twice-yearly. The interest is often taxable, but not always. There are also "zero-coupon" bonds, where instead of receiving interest every year, you buy the bond at a discount and get a larger lump-sum back at the end. It's as if all the interest is lumped together and thrown into the principle. These kinds of bonds have two main differences: 1) they do not generate income in the short-term 2) you do not pay taxes on the interest as regular income every quarter or year.

In general, bonds give you a higher return than cash, but with a higher risk. They will generally give you a lower return than stocks with a lower risk than stocks, because if a company goes bankrupt, bonds are paid off first, before stockholders get anything.

Here is a list of types of bonds, with descriptions of each. I have made a chart that summarizes the main types; and specifically the types in which you might be interested. One key thing to remember is that bonds can be taxable, or tax-free. Mostly only government bonds are tax-free. These tax-free bonds look like they have much lower interest rates (or yields), but they may be better or worse for a given investor, because you don't have to pay taxes on them. How valuable the tax-free bonds are depends on what tax bracket you're likely to be in while collecting the interest and how the rates compare to the taxable bonds.


Here is a chart that explains the bond ratings. The rating is a measure of the risk. The higher the rating (like AAA), the lower the risk. Bonds with ratings of BB+/Ba1 are generally considered speculative, higher-risk (AKA "junk") bonds. This doesn't mean they are bad. It means that they carry more risk and pay higher interest rates than the higher-rated or "investment-grade" bonds. Like with stocks, if you want to buy these higher return bonds, you should probably not pick individual ones, but should pick some kind of junk-bond fund or mixed bond fund. Such a fund might also be called "speculative" or "high-yield."

Two other interesting notes:
Callable bonds can be "ended" early. Some are callable by the company (seller), and some by the owner (buyer). If you have a long-term bond with a very high interest rate, it might seem like a great investment, but if it can be recalled by the company, you will get your money back, but you may not be able to continue receiving that interest for the life of the bond.

Although there are many choices, they are generally priced very fairly. It hardly matters which you pick because they're all roughly worth the same amount, given that people have bid up or down the prices for you already. The factors that are most important for most people are: 1) taxable or non-taxable, 2) interest-bearing or zero-coupon, 3) risk level (rating) - higher risk, higher reward.

Country Right-Sizing

Have you ever thought about whether it was "fair" not to let the South secede? We seceded from Great Britain. Why shouldn't the South have been allowed to secede from the north? I was thinking about this topic in the context of South Ossetia's and Abkhazia's relationships to Georgia.

These were semi-autonomous provinces, whose autonomy from the Georgian government was encouraged by Russia, which Georgia tried to pacify and re-conquer/re-occupy. Is that fair? Is it right to force someone to be part of your country?

Here, I explore this issue somewhat. A few notes...

A Country of One
The right size for a country, or a nation, is probably not one person. It's probably not just two people, either. Whether defining a nation-state as a collection of ethnically or culturally similar people who live in a common society with shared infrastructure and societal rules and norms, or as a group who individually participate in a social contract for their mutual defense and benefit, there will likely to be many people in the same society.

Why do we Unite?
Whether to manage the use of a pasture or water-supply, or to protect from invasion, the smallest size that makes sense is at least a whole village or town. As communication and transportation have improved, though, the much larger nations, with millions of people spanning multiple thousands of square miles, have made more and more sense.

But what about uniting cultural or ethnic groups? In the old days, there was much more overlap between cultural or ethnic group and mutual defense or common markets than there is now in Western countries. In other parts of the world, though, such as Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia, there are still many who see ethnic or cultural similarity as the primary basis for participation in a common government.

The Case Against Secession Differs
The case against secession differs vastly depending on why you are united in the first place. If you're in a society that unites or conquers for common benefit and mutual defense (much like the 13 original colonies of the United States, or the Roman empire), then a secession that endangers or weakens the whole can be rationally (and perhaps legitimately) resisted. When Benjamin Franklin originally said, "Either we all hang together or we all hang separately" he was quite serious. It was literally untenable for the colonies to secede separately, because they were too small, in comparison to England. Disunity would endanger them.

The case against secession from an ethnic group or a culturally defined body politic, though, is quite different. The argument in that case focuses on two factors:
1) Whether or not people actually represent a distinct group, and
2) Whether being a distinct group entitles a people to self-determinism or autonomy.

The Nation State is a Fairly New Concept
Weird as it may seem, the nation-state is a fairly new concept. Multi-ethnic empires have been around for a very long time. Even the Akkadians and Sumerians were cognizant of the need (real or perceived) to incorporate other cultural groups into their "empires" for strategic (or sometimes just greedy) reasons.

While there were culturally defined groups which also functioned as political entities, these tended toward the city-state size until the 19th Century, when they had really outgrown the feudal model of control. It wasn't even until the late 19th Century that Germany or Italy was united as a single country.

One problem that we have had since about the 19th Century is that the Slavic world, the Caucasian world, and, in general, the entire area from Japan to East Germany, has struggled mightily with the tension between culturally or ethnically defined political entities and political entities defined more by what we might call a "social contract."

So, What Size is the Right Size?
The tension between these two notions of government comes into play when the East and West clash (as well as within the Eastern and Western worlds, separately). When we think about whether South Ossetia is more "Russian" or more "Georgian" what we are really asking, in some ways, is whether or not Georgia is a country based on an ethnicity or based on a compact between individuals for mutual benefit and their common defense. If the latter, we then ask, in which country are these people better off and to what extent are the different parties able to defend such claims?

Russia's position of advocating for South Ossetian and Abhkazian independence is ideologically nearly untenable. If Russia believes these people need to be part of Russia for strategic reasons, or that the benefits accruing from such a relationship outweigh those of unification for the tiny regions with Georgia, then it must complete its own (Russian) takeover to realize such gains. If Russia believes these peoples are ethnically similar to Russians, then they cannot pretend they want these tiny states to function autonomously. If they think that these people are ethnically similar to NEITHER Russians NOR Georgians, then it would make sense to encourage independence, but it would make even more sense to encourage the independence of many others who are currently part of Russia, but are less similar, ethnically.

Which Side Should We Take?
Whereas the American Civil War was largely about the right of self-determinism, state vs. federal control, and the disagreement over the economic and strategic viability of differently sized unions, with most of these issues taking the form of arguments about slavery, the situation in Russia is more of a conflict between a "nation-state" mentality and a "social contract society."

When we ask ourselves whether we should have supported Georgia more or less in the reconquista, we really must ask ourselves, "Are we advocating against the idea of nation-states?" When we compared stopping the ensuing Russian attacks on the Georgian capital to halting the German advance in the 1930's, were we really saying that we feared the (re-)surge(nce) of a Slavic nation-state?

Democracy is more than just self-determinism, because true and complete self-determinism is just anarchy. So, given that democracies limit self-determinism and individual liberties in key ways, we must ask, "for whom are these rights to be protected?" For ethnic groups? Or for societies organized willingly for the common benefit? Answering this question will help us frame our approach to the five-day war in Georgia this August.

Anderson Silva

Remember, Anderson Silva is NOT invincible:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=267i7rKeECA

My Life

I think my life can more or less be summed up as the average of these two pictures:

Yep, that about does it.

Predictions and Predilections

I have lately had the feeling that it was time for alternative rock to make a comeback. Maybe it was a new-Metallica-album induced feeling, or maybe it was Gavin Rossdale's re-emergence. Whatever started it, I can't say.

But, I did just buy several Stabbing Westward albums, a Local H album, a Gravity Kills album, an Oleander album, and a Toadies and a Veruca Salt song.

I don't generally like to go way out on a limb with a hard prediction, but that's exactly what I'm doing right now. It's time for a 90's rock revival.

Here's a link to get you started.

The Origins of Donnie Darko?

For some reason (I can't remember why), I had a 1950 movie called "Harvey" in my Netflix queue. It's one of the movies that Netflix has made available, via Starz, for instant viewing on the Xbox. However, it's only available until Dec. 1st. Noticing this, I moved it to the top of my queue today.

What I found was most surprising. This movie is very good, and it features a 6' 3.5" rabbit that can stop time.

More research shows that Donnie Darko was probably based, in all or part, on the Bunny Man legend of Fairfax County, Virginia.

And the legend is based, I suspect, directly or indirectly, on the movie, "Harvey." Because Donnie Darko was such an important catalyst for me in thinking about time and space, its origins are of particular import. After seeing Harvey, I decided to watch Donnie Darko again. Whether it was intentionally based upon Harvey or not I can't say, but it is clearly closely related, and Donnie Darko makes a whole lot more sense to me this time through.

I am also quickly coming to believe that Donnie Darko was heavily influenced by Dark City.

Asymmetrical Information Warfare

This story, which includes official ackowledgement of something that has been going on for weeks (or maybe months), shows just how prevalent so called "information warfare" tactics are becoming.

The military seems to have adapted to this problem fairly well, but there will be future attacks. It's important to remember, though, that this isn't just a case of the military trying to "catch up with the internet." Information asymmetry and the denial of, or intereference with, communications and signals intelligence is nothing new for the military.

In fact, quite the opposite, much of the technology we take for granted today (wireless, the internet, radar, satellite communications) was developed, at least in part, by the military to address these information warfare issues.

Innovation Nation

I recently finished reading Innovation Nation by John Kao. I actually read most of this book months ago, feverishly and late at night, because I knew I was going to meet Mr. Kao the next day.

First of all, I was very surprised to see a quote from Eric Best, who is, of course, my ex-girlfriend's father.

Secondly, the book was fairly good, and has caused me to slightly tweak my understanding of what constitutes good governance of the economy. Since roughly 1997, when I took economics, learned about Milton Friedman, and read Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, I have been an ardent supporter of free markets. I have never, however, been a market libertarian. It is obvious that government has a role to play in building infrastructure, the common defense, and generally, in addressing externalities, both positive and negative.

My studies in political economy under Beverly Crawford at Cal taught me a lot about how exactly governments have done this, and I became an avid student of Alexander Gerschenkron and what I might dub the modified linear stage theory of economic development. In essence, the modification to the theory is that governments play a keen role in helping nations "skip" stages of development, but only when they start out behind and are catching up.

The change I'm now making to this theory, partly inspired by Innovation Nation, is the idea that "infrastructure" extends beyond physical, legal, or organizational things. While I still think that the government should not be in the business of "guessing" which technologies are going to make it and seeding them with massive investments, I have come to believe that there is an aspect to technological infrastructure that I had not previously considered or understood. Governments must explore technology to create a framework for its commercialization. This framework is a combination of trained and accessible labor (and appropriate laws), an intellectual property scheme, and working capital markets willing to invest in high-risk ventures.
The government need not be the investor, but it does have a role in making sure this infrastructure exists, because there is a positive externality to "things" such as The Silicon Valley. The value of the Valley is larger than the sum of the profits enjoyed by its participants and residents.

I am going to write a letter to Mr. Kao and explain my thoughts on this subject. Helping him couch his concepts in more "sound" economics-y language will help lend his ideas credibility.

Ulysses

I am about 1/4 of the way through Ulysses by James Joyce. First, I must praise Joyce. This is perhaps the finest book ever written, and certainly one of the finest of all modern novels.

Second, the obvious influence of this novel is astounding. It's clear to me that Tolkien was influenced by it, as were many other famous 20th-century writers. One might go so far as to say that all of the Sartre-Camus-school existentialist writing is essentially one absurdly thorough interpretation of Leopold Bloom's character, taken to certain logically extreme conclusions.

Obama's Economic Plans

President-elect Obama is pushing a very large stimulus program that's aimed at long-term projects. I was initially very opposed to this sort of program on the theories that:
1) long-term projects don't help the economy in the short run (don't provide 'stimulation');
2) this was just a way of expanding the government's size;
3) these programs were designed to prop up industries such as the construction industry, which don't deserve to be propped up, in my opinion.

However, I am beginning to conditionally support this sort of program, on a couple of conditions:
1) the money should be used for infrastructure building programs such as roads and levees, not for helping the construction industry build houses or office buildings;
2) the provisions of the plan must be temporary in nature. Programs must expire after a few years, not continue indefinitely.

With those conditions, I think this kind of program may be a good idea, because the economic downturn appears it will last at least through 2009, if not into 2010 or 2011.

The President-elect is also saying he'll hold off on raising the taxes of high-income people in this country, which is a very wise choice, because raising taxes now will only stifle the economy further and crowd out business investment and financing.

Yahoo! Fail

Well... mr Yang is out at Yahoo! And not a moment too soon, judging by what my Yahoo! news reader thinks...

Click on the pic to make it bigger.

Housing Prices Must Be Allowed to Fall

The Wall Street Journal ran a story today about how home builders are pleading for $250B in federal aid.

This aid basically comes in the form of huge tax breaks for people who buy houses. This is one of the worst possible things the government could do. The builders are correct that housing prices underlie a lot of the financial woes right now. But, the federal government should be doing three things:
1) Encouraging people to realistically assess their housing situations. Rather than encourage people to buy houses, which is exactly what they were doing too much of the federal government should be helping them get out of their mortgages and move. The government should increase the tax credits for people who relocate between states, and create an extra tax rebate for those who sell houses in which they have negative equity.
2) Actively promoting retraining for housing industry employees and aiding them in moving out of the housing and construction industries.
3) Encouraging banks to move people out of unsustainable loans quickly, instead of waiting while the slow foreclosure process takes its toll on both the homeowners and the mortgage banks.

The faster people accept what their houses are worth (or rather, what they aren't worth), and start making rational decisions, the faster we will "hit bottom," both in terms of housing prices and in terms of asset portfolios based on mortgages. It is only "hitting bottom" and getting these assets re-priced which will, in the long run, allow growth to begin again and allow the gears of finance to start turning.

Proposition 8

I voted 'no' on Prop. 8 (the one about gay marriage). The proposition proposed to amend the California constitution to specifically prohibit marriage between homosexuals. I voted 'no' on this for many reasons, not all of which I will go into at length here. Suffice it to say that I believe this proposition should not have passed, but I don't feel this way because I love gay marriage. I think there were several other reasons why this proposition was bad. I am surprised that the proposition passed, because there are so many good arguments against it.

People in San Francisco (of both the gay and straight varieties) are largely upset that the proposition passed. Many are indignant and convinced that anyone who voted for Prop 8 must be a moron or a homophobe. I disagree with this and I believe that had the "No on Prop 8" organizers been more cognizant of their opponents' points of view, and less smug, they could have defeated the measure.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that the opposition to Prop 8 was wrong-headed and shows exactly what's wrong with the "American Left" even though I, myself, opposed Prop 8, and don't consider myself a part of "the left."

Gay Marriage as a Right

The No on 8 campaign was fixated on the concept of 'marriage as a right,' and of the denial of marriage to homosexuals as a violation of rights. This is completely wrong. There is no such thing as a right of marriage, for homosexuals or heterosexuals, any more than there is a right to do anything which is not specifically prohibited. It's important to wrap your mind around this concept before you continue reading. If you are stuck on the idea that "marriage is a right" you are part of the problem, not the solution. You must first learn what "rights" are, before you can use them as an argument for or against anything. Everything that is "allowed" is not a right. I am allowed to drive in the left lane of the freeway right now, but if they close it for construction tomorrow, that doesn't mean my rights have been violated. There was no prohibition against driving in that lane before, but that doesn't imply that an inalienable right was created.

Why is there no Right of Marriage?

Why would there be one? Marriage is a contract entered into by two parties, with one or two overseeing or governing bodies: religious authority and/or civil institutions, such as city governments. It's not even clear what a right of marriage would be, since almost every other right we think of is an individual thing. I don't have the "right" to marry you without your consent, and if I do have the right to marry you, with your consent, then is marriage, rights-wise, any different than a contract between two private parties?

Historically, without the sanctioning of either the church or the government, all marriages were unofficial. Note, the fact that they are unofficial doesn't mean they aren't valid, it just means that the society doesn't recognize them explicitly. Imagine that the government stopped issuing marriage licenses and the churches stopped performing weddings, for any reason(s). This wouldn't mean that marriage would cease to exist as a concept, but it would essentially mean that all marriage became unofficial. Unofficial marriages could still be contracts between individuals, but there would be no official recognition of marriage's contractual norms by the government or the Church, the two bodies which have historically sanctioned marriages.

The No on 8 Campaign's Mistakes

The No on 8 campaign completely failed to understand what a "right" is when they wrote all their commercials and pamphlets. They also completely failed to respect that, historically, the church has been just as involved in marriage as has been the government. The idea that governments can unilaterally redefine marriage without the consent of the church OR the popular sentiment, while not necessarily wrong, was certainly likely to invite attack, criticism, and opposition, which it did. That people now indignantly assume that anyone who voted 'Yes' on 8 must be crazy or homophobic further proves that the organizers (and many of the supporters) of the No on 8 campaign fundamentally lack respect for religious people and institutions. Without respecting and understanding the other side of the argument, they come across as smug and arrogant. As I learned from a wise man (my father) long ago, it is far easier to argue well against the side you believe in than for it, because when you argue for it, passions confound and circumvent logic and rational consideration.

The City of San Francisco, Mayor Newsom, and all the people now indignant that Prop 8 passed, make this fundamental mistake of arrogance. They assume there is nothing at all which might be correct in the opposition's (Yes on 8's) point of view. This is completely wrong. Of course there are valid points for Prop 8. SF and Newsom assumed that it made no difference what the religious community or even other city governments thought, though, because they didn't adequately consider the arguments against sanctioning gay marriage.

Another example of the arrogance of the 'No on 8' campaign was the education issue. The issue was basically this:
The 'Yes on 8' people were saying that allowing gay marriage meant that 'gay marriage' would be taught in schools. There was a lot of disagreement about whether this was true or not. While it's not fundamentally important that gay marriage be 'taught' in schools, it is fundamentally important to acknowledge this issue. The real issue was: do we want to redefine marriage? Imagine your child asking you, "What does married mean?" And you say, "It means two people love each other and raise children together and have a family." You can no longer say that it's only between men and women, or that the woman will be pregnant and have the baby, or whatever, because the definition of marriage has been broadened. Wrong or right, it's an issue. To pretend that somehow there was no impact on the 'definition' of marriage is non-sensical. In fact, the 'No on 8' campaign should have directly acknowledged that, in fact, they *wanted* to redefine the family and marriage in this way, instead of pretending that there was no 'issue' of redefinition, for which the 'what would be taught in schools' issue was a proxy. Preserving the definitions of words over time IS important.

This brings me to my next point: "What is the harm in allowing only domestic unions instead of marriages between gay people?" The American Bar Association (and the state bars) decides who can call themself a lawyer, and I can't call myself a lawyer. It makes no difference how much I know about the law, how other people feel about it, etc... They don't allow me to sell myself as an attorney, because they feel like a societal purpose is solved by defining the word carefully and restricting many people from using the term. Does this violate my "right" to be a lawyer? Not really, because anyone can be a lawyer if they meet the criteria, which are there to promote a societal purpose (that lawyers be trained and in good standing with their peers). If there is an expectation that marriage is about procreation, then it is entirely logical to define marriage in a heterosexual way. Am I saying it "should" be defined that way? No, I'm not. But it's completely arrogant to assume that somehow you have the sole right to define what marriage means, against the will of the church, the majority of civic governments, or the will of the majority. It may be that society "defined" marriage in a heterosexual way for a reason, and that reason must be addressed before the term (or the concept) can be redefined. Gay people have every opportunity to get married today, just not to people of the same sex. Is that weird? It's no weirder than the idea that I have every opportunity to go to UC Berkeley if I meet their acceptance criteria.

If we allow gay marriage, do we have to allow polygamous marriage? Why not? These slippery slope arguments are tough, because everything is a step in a direction, and sometimes we have to be in the middle, not on one edge, but, if that's the case, then the 'No on 8' people should have been advocating that this was the "right" compromise now, or should have been arguing that all forms of marriage are acceptable. If they are arguing that this is the "right" compromise now (allowing gay marriage but still prohibiting other things, like polygamy), it must be based on some of the same utilitarian principles which justify the government sanctioning of marriage in the first place. Gay marriage advocates need to make the argument NOT that gay marriage is a right (because then, why isn't having 5 wives, one of which is a sheep, a 'right', too?), but that gay marriage is actually good for society, just like straight marriage, is, and should therefore be encouraged.

Why does the concept of marriage still exist at all? If two men, who might be celibate, decide to call themselves a gay couple, and be married, then they have the ability to check off different boxes on forms. If this is important, and we want to allow people to do this outside the government-sanctioned marriage rules, why don't we simply allow anyone to choose one person to share tax breaks with? If, on the other hand, marriage does serve a very specific societal purpose (promoting a certain family structure) and we value that, then it's entirely logical that we can't expand its definition arbitrarily. So, if we can't expand it arbitrarily, then we have to have some criteria to use for expanding it. This criteria might be about the reduction in promiscuity. It might be about promoting "love" bonds as a concept. It might be about creating "two-parent" families for children.

The Paternalism Problem

There is a logical discontinuity in the literature of gay rights activists. They often take the approach that the government shouldn't decide what goes on in the bedroom. That's fine, and a perfectly reasonable position. They are saying, "it's not the government's role" to decide whether I should be gay or straight. If that's the case, though, then the role is left to the people. If the role is left to the people, then why is the City of San Francisco saying that gay people are going to be married "whether you like it or not?" You can't be a progressive and not believe in paternalism. The whole point of the progressive movement is that the government must actively lead the way, sometimes against popular sentiment, to foster change. That means the government IS in the business of deciding things, like what should go on in the bedroom. You can't have the government be "hands off" when you disagree with them, but actively legislate for change when you agree with them. That's just called selfishness (and a complete disregard for other people).

The logical conclusion of the anti-paternalism argument is that all official marriage should be abolished, not that marriage should be redefined in an unpopular way.

Reasons Why 8 Should Have Failed That Have Nothing to do With Sexuality

1) The courts had already decided. Every time we overrule the courts, especially without a more substantial process than getting 50.1% of the (mostly uninformed)voters to say 'yes' one time, on one ballot, we lessen the grip of the rule of law and slide closer to the anarchistic populism that has signaled the end, historically, of many fleeting attempts at democracy.

2) We can't put propositions on the state ballot to decide every issue. It is City Governments that issue marriage licenses, and so by putting this on the state ballot, we have taken that power away from local governments. San Francisco is allowed to have different laws than other places, and we shouldn't limit that allowance for local independence.

3) Amending the constitution is generally undesirable. We shouldn't amend the constitution to solve problems. This argument is related to number 1, but is slightly different. Not only do we lessen the power of the judicial and legislative branches by amending the constitution by ballot proposition, but we also imply that amending the constitution is appropriate redress for grievances. In general, it should not be.

How Should the 'No on 8' People have Made their Case?

First of all, they should have stressed the constitutional, rule of law, and anti-populism points I mentioned above, but they should also have taken a different tack on the 'social' issues.

The commercials should have shown an orphan being played with by two lesbians. They should have said, "The courts have already decided. Do you want to take these loving guardians away from this child or force her to be told that her parents are not married? Would you rather put her in a foster home or allow these people to simply continue their loving family?" The, the commercial should have shown a dumpy looking foster home or a statistic about how bad foster parents are on average. That argument directly addresses the societal benefit of marriage and explains it. Will it appeal to everyone? No, of course not. But, it might appeal to one in 20 people, which would have been enough to defeat the proposition.

The 'No on 8' campaign should have had an Episcopal, Anglican, or Presbyterian Bishop on TV saying the proposition was bad. He should have been saying that marriage is about commitment and protects people from the sins of promiscuity and helps stabilize families. He may represent only one voice of the church, but the idea that the church is divided, and potentially transforming itself, is important. Rather than pretend the church has nothing to do with marriage (which is absurd), those people within the church who advocate for gay marriage should have been highlighted.

The 'No on 8' campaign should have admitted that they are progressive paternalists. They should have said, "Society has changed. It's time to lead the way by redefining marriage for our society. Let's stop promiscuity, discrimination, and single-parenting. Let's allow loving couples to raise children in two-parent families regardless of what gender they are. Besides, the courts have already decided, so if you respect the American system, you should accept the ruling of our judicial branch. What if 51% of the people thought you should move to a different town one day. Do you want to live under the tyranny of the majority? Or the rule of law? The law has spoken. The law has redefined marriage in a way that helps society. Respect it."

I think those arguments would have swayed 3%, or so, of the people in the middle, and that would have been enough. That argument isn't arrogant, because it doesn't say, "I'm right and you're wrong." It says, "There are good things about two parent families, equality, marriage, and the rule of law." Do you want to be the one to take those things away?

Expectations for the President-elect

President Elect Obama must quickly act to reset expectations, or a new Newt Gingrich will sweet the Republicans back into a majority in the Senate in 2010.

Here is what I recommend, issue-by-issue:

On Iraq:
Obama should keep Gates as his Secretary of Defense. Not only is the man capable, but he's been one of the masterminds of the strategy that is currently working. Obama should push to have some of the US troops there as long as needed, probably until some time in 2012 or so. He should then request that a small contingent remain to fight terrorism and support the Iraqi government. I imagine this being a base of about 20,000-30,000 soldiers, similar to what we used to have in Saudi Arabia. Part of the point of this whole war, after all, was to move our permanent bases out of Saudi Arabia.

On Afghanistan:
Obama should immediately confer with General Petraeus and craft an aggressive plan for pacifying Afghanistan. Much as we will have spent three quarters of a trillion dollars in Iraq, we should now be prepared to spend several hundred billion dollars to clean up and rebuild Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan.

On the Economy:
Obama must avoid the temptation to over-regulate the economy, and the banking industry in particular. We don't need safeguards to keep people from borrowing or lending money. We need regulations that ensure that transactions are transparent and understandable, and that the risk level of securities can be assessed and insured correctly. We need markets for all securitizable entities, so that things like collateral debt swaps don't get traded "off the market" in one-to-one exchanges, which provide no information to the broader market. Yes, this is a form of regulation, but moving things out into the open is the regulation we need; simply restricting what people can do is not what we need. Too much restriction and businesses will turn against Obama.

On Taxes:
Obama needs to start being honest with people about how taxes are going to rise. The net tax paid by most people will go up under Obama, not down. The "tax cuts for 95%" are misleading, because half of those people pay little federal income tax, and even if the taxes are raised on, say, businesses for their part of health care insurance, this ultimately affects employees. They either get higher payroll taxes, lower salaries, or fewer jobs. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Obama needs to explain how raising taxes could help the economy. If he doesn't, then he will come under harsh criticism for taking money out of circulation precisely when the economy is sputtering. If the total federal tax receipts go up as a result of policy, during a rough economic time, Obama will appear to be doing the opposite of what Keynes suggested.

On Energy:
A cap&trade system, or anything that puts the burden correctly on polluters, is good. The alternative energy and green fuel subsidies he's proposed are probably a bad idea because: a) they are distortive and b) they don't help the economy enough to justify them as "stimulus" measures.

If you still think the subsidies are a good idea, think about the ethanol/corn subsidies of the last few years. Not only has ethanol not made the hoped-for major strides as an alternative, but the government has spent TONS of money promoting it, raising corn prices, which has raised many food product prices worldwide. Lest you think that was just "the wrong specific thing to push" ethanol seemed very logical. Corn was cheap and abundant a few years ago. The US can produce lots of ethanol. Many cars on the road could already use E85 (which is 15% gasoline and 85% ethanol) and making more cars that could run on ethanol required only minor engine modifications. Just because something seems like a good idea, doesn't mean that it is. The market is much better at deciding which ideas are truly valuable. Obama should use it.

The Champ is Here!

Tuesday is the last day I will have a Google badge. It's slightly sad, although not very sad, since my new job is so much better.

#1 highlight from my time at Google:

Getting to meet Muhammad Ali. I'll never forget this. It was in 2006, and, of course, he could barely move or walk.

I didn't know he was coming until the day he was there, and I wasn't part of the group meeting and eating with him. But, I hung around, watched, and waited. I kept hearing him say, "The champ is here!" in my mind, over and over.

At one point, his eyes became fixed on me. Whether or what he was thinking about me, I will never know, but there was still a fire in the eyes of that man that burned me.

He was the only person who has ever intimidated me by his gaze alone.

Junior Bonner

Steve McQueen as Junior Bonner is totally badass. And he gets Barbara Leigh:




This movie also has really weird pseudo-montage scenes, and is far better than people appear to give it credit for being. This is one of Sam Peckinpah's last attempts at a subtle drama.

Incoming Freshmen

Entering freshmen in the top 10% of their high school class:
Berkeley: 98%
MIT: 97%
Harvard: 95%
Stanford: 89%

They say it's a bear market right now. Luckily, I was well trained for a bear market. Go bears!

Partisan Politics as Usual

One troubling thing about Obama's candidacy was his choice of Joe Biden as his Vice President. Biden is a very partisan Democrat, almost never, in the senate, voting out of line with the Democratic party platform.

Biden has always received large contributions from big unions and never votes for anything that the unions wouldn't like.

I didn't pay much attention to this, but in light of the choice of Emanuel as Obama's chief of staff, I begin to wonder if there is a pattern.

Since the election, the two biggest things the Democrats have done are:
1) The installation of Emanuel, known more as a political pugilist than a compromiser or for any ideological or intellectual gifts.
2) Attack Lieberman and begin trying to remove him from influential committees in the Senate, presumably because of his support for McCain.

Now, politics goes on all the time, and both sides are equally bad. But, I have to wonder, are the Democrats afraid that the Republicans are planning to simply try to filibuster every bill that goes through, and they are gearing up to combat the Republicans at every turn; now that they have them down, to keep them down?

Or, are the Democrats thinking, "We've been out of favor for 28 years and the country has been ruined, so now we're taking over?" The problem with this is, if that's what they were thinking, they should be focusing on some new ideological promise, not on simply punishing the Republicans. No Senate Republicans tried to cause a recession, so I'm not sure what point punishing them serves.

More generally, if the country needs a significant ideological shift (which I do not think it does), then the Democrats should be trying to provide it. They, the Democrats, have been an ideologically bankrupt party for at least the last 10 years, and really since Reagan gained the White House. If the country doesn't need a significant ideological shift, then the Democrats should be focused on how to pass compromise legislation that everyone can support.

Who's (Not) Building Datacenters?

The recent economic climate has put many datacenter construction projects on hold. I know of several, major, South Bay-area projects (totaling approximately 700,000 square feet) which have recently been scrapped or delayed indefinitely. Those that are being built are also facing rising energy costs (a major component of the price of operating a datacenter).

What will these delays and rising costs mean to businesses? For large businesses, these factors might delay datacenter buildouts, which can impede or delay IT equipment purchases. A 10,000 square foot datacenter might hold 7,000 servers. At a price of $4K each, this would be $28,000,000 worth of servers. A rough guesstimate might place the IT equipment value that those 700,000 square feet of datacenters could hold at roughly $2B. That's a lot of Silicon Valley business for Dell, Rackable, IBM, HP, Sun, Cisco, Juniper, and others that can't be fulfilled until there is a place to put those servers and power to power them.

Another possible impact to business is that rising costs and declining datacenter availability might help propel SaaS offerings (think Salesforce.com) and cloud computing platform providers (think Amazon EC2). Perhaps the tradeoffs between an SAP-based CRM module and Salesforce.com will tilt a little more in Salesforce's direction when there's no datacenter floor space to hold new servers.

Russia Tries to Bully the President-elect

I did not think Obama's first test would come quite so quickly...

(All quotes from this article):

Russia has decided to place new missiles near Poland. In the same speech where Medvedev argued for greater powers for Russia's president (a dangerous move in a place where democracy is daily falling by the wayside), he also stated that Russia was deploying these new missiles. But, he went two steps further.

1) In addition to deploying their own missiles, Russia also said this, "Equipment to electronically hamper the operation of prospective U.S. missile defense facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic will be deployed, he said."

2) He specifically linked this action to Obama:

"He announced deployment of the short-range missiles as a military response to U.S. plans to deploy missile-defense facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic — former Soviet satellites that are now NATO members.

Speaking just hours after Obama was declared the victor in the U.S. presidential election, Medvedev said he hoped the incoming administration will take steps to improve badly damaged U.S. ties with Russia. He suggested it is up to the U.S. — not the Kremlin — to seek to improve relations."

The President-elect should be tough on Russia. He should explain that it is *not* the fault of the US that Russia feels threatened. Russia is threatened because its nearest neighbors, former Soviet republics, do not want to be under a Russia umbrella. They choose to pursue NATO membership because it benefits them. Further, the US needs to deploy missile defenses in Eastern Europe and Central Asia because renegate republics (such as Iran), which derive some support from Russia, have been allowed to menace the world.

Finally, Obama should take a lesson from Bush. Bush genuinely tried to be a friend to the Russians in his first several years in office. In this, he was betrayed. Obama should not make the same mistake. With oil prices down right now, Russia's strategic position in the world is weakened. The US should not let up on its pressure.

The Obama Era

The future looks bright. We have a good President-elect, to whom I donated my money (if not my vote), and I anticipate he will make great enchancements to our national esteem and prosperity.

Literary Audiophile

I have always been a lover of books, and I am a good aural learner, but today I have embarked on a journey unlike any before. Having nearly finished, and greatly enjoyed, the McCullough biography of John Adams, I have decided to take on even more ambitious audiobooks. Today, I purchased Don Quixote which will fill 35 CDs, and Ulysses, which will fill 44.

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."

The Devaluation of Intellect

From my soapbox, it so often appears that movies, pop-culture, conversation, politics, or our society in general is trending toward an anti-intellectualism. It seems like populism, political correctness, hedonism, and so many other substitutes for genuine rational reasoning have become the norm. But, maybe they have ever been the norm. Maybe Epicurus, Cicero, Spinoza, and Newton felt the men of their times were opponents of reason and friends of simplistic passion.

Having said all this, though, I am coming to another realization. While intellectualism still seems important, raw intellect, itself, seems to be of less value than I once thought. I know a great many intelligent people who do no more in service to their species, community, or universe than does the mentally handicapped guy who tears my ticket at the movie theater. In fact, in some ways these intelligent pretenders to importance do even less for the world, because they have not even the virtue of inspiring by their very incapacity.

Western Civilization and American History

I join with the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (http://www.goacta.org/) and the National Association of Scholars (http://www.nas.org/who.cfm) in calling for more education in the classics, Western Civilization, and American History.

Despite having had a great public education myself, it is glaringly obvious that I was somewhat shortchanged on these very important topics. Except for 2 or 3 classes in high school and then several good professors at Cal, I didn't get a sufficient dose of the real philosophical and historical underpinnings of Western Civilization. I don't know why these topics are so out of favor. Almost nothing could be more important for the learned American mind.

Mr. Petraeus Goes to Islamabad

General Petraeus should be arriving in Pakistan right about now. I think it's very good timing. The man who seems to be the most able and intelligent US strategist is now in charge of US Central Command, and has launched a review of military posture and strategy regarding Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan.

The timing of the General's review could not be better. Whatever changes he proposed can be claimed by the new President-elect, and thereby, hopefully, gain political support.

It is time for the US to ratchet up the pressure on Pakistan and Iran significantly. One of the best ways to do this is to successfuly deny bases of operation in Afghanistan to the Taliban, al Qaeda, and others.

The timing could not be better, because the new Pakistani government needs to make its "with us or against us" choice right now, and Ahmadinejad looks like he may have some trouble to contend with in the next Iranian elections.

The Seal of the President of the United States

Here are (clockwise from top left): The Great Seal, the Seal of the President, The Great Seal of Barack, displayed at some of his campaign speaking engagements, and the Seal of the Vice President.

There are several problems with Obama's seal:
1) It is arguably illegal to create something this alike to the Seal of the President of the United States. Probably nobody cares about enforcing this rule, but still, technically, it's a rule.
2) It has as its slogan, in place of "E pluribus unum," "Vero possumus" which roughly translates to "Yes, we can." There are many problems with this slogan as Obama's selling point:

• It was suggested by someone else and Obama initially objected to it. His commitment to its message is questionable.
• It is not a logical slogan for a balanced country. It is a progressive slogan only.
• It detracts from the overall point of the seal because it does not relate to the Eagle, arrows, or olive branch in any obvious way.

3) It does not include the snake in the mouth of the eagle. Why omit this symbol? Typically, this symbol is interpreted in one of two ways

• The eagle will root out corruption (the snakes amongst us or who tempt us).
• The eagle will confront its enemies.

Also, the animal is an eagle. Eagles are known to be keen-eyed and far-sighted animals. The snake, an enemy from within or without, was seen at great distance. Displaying the snake is part of the way the eagle shows its capability. It is able to use its arrows, at a great distance, because of its keen eyesight. The snake helps prove this is still a vital, competent eagle, not simply a show piece. Why would this be omitted? Does Obama not plan to root out corruption or to confront our enemies? I suspect that, regardless of what he intends, the desire not to 'make enemies' or 'seem warlike' is exactly the reason this was omitted. Somebody in the campaign said, "let's de-emphasize the confrontational or violent parts."

Too bad for us that they thought marketing was more important than the richly historied philosophy and symbolism.

Iraq and Afghanistan

The mainstream media (NY Times, CNN, Fox News, CBS, ABC, etc...) has utterly and completely failed to understand Iraq and Afghanistan. Despite a closer correspondence between reality and their reporting, now, I still have absolutely no confidence that the media will adequately report on what's occurring in these critical regions of the world. Their level of incompetence has cost the American people money and lives. Their incompetence is even more reprehensible given that they have now had so much time to figure things out.

From initially allowing General Clark to use CNN as a podium from which to run for President, to utterly failing to explain or understand the complex relationship between Afghanistan and Pakistan, to Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper's mindless biases against McCain, Bush, the Republicans, and the Iraq War in general, to the completely inadequate coverage of China and Russia's involvement in the Middle East, the mainstream media has been abysmally bad.

I actually think that, while they are biased, it is the media's incompetence, more than bias, that has caused me such agony.

An example:
Once, in about 2004, on a mainstream national TV network, I heard a story which appeared to describe an Iraqi in Kirkuk lamenting the fact that Americans were "killing Arabs" and ranting about how much the Arabs "feared the Americans." I remember being struck by the man's facial expressions; he seemed almost to be delighting in describing the alleged carnage. Then, I started listening more closely to his voice (which was nearly inaudible, because of the voice-over translation). When I did succeed in picking out the original speaker's voice, I realized - he wasn't speaking Arabic! He was a Kurd, and he was speaking Kurdish (which sounds more like Farsi). The story that was allegedly about an Iraqi man lamenting the killing of his own kind was actually about a Iraqi Kurd nearly rejoicing in the restoration of parts of Kirkuk to the Kurds after years of a policy of genocidal arabization at the hands of Sunni Arabs.

Completely apart from the veracity of the report (which I doubt) or the motivations of the interviewee (of which I am suspicious), the most troubling thing was that the big cable network, with its legion of analysts and reporters and producers and translators, had no idea what it was reporting. Sadly, this is not an isolated incident. I have heard so many cases of ignorant reporting that confuses who lives where, who gets along with whom, and who did what to whom when, that I see no point in watching the mainstream TV media's coverage of the Iraq War.

Why does it matter that the media is so bad? It matters because it results in the deaths of Americans, unnecessary expenditures from the American coffers, and damage to the prestige of the United States abroad.

Rather than ignoring the Iraq War now, as both the domestic and foreign media are doing, they should be evaluating why they were so wrong. The answers are quite obvious, but they are nonetheless failing to do so. The media's expectations that the war would be over quickly were largely created by... the media themselves. Did you know that the term Shock & Awe was misapplied by the media? Not only was the media reffering to the Iraq campaign as a shock & awe campaign inaccurately, because it wasn't one, but nobody in the military really said it was. There is a scant amount of evidence that, once, an anonmymous government official said that the strategy to be employed was "based on" schock & awe, but that's it. In fact, General McKiernan's christening of the 3rd Army's plan "Cobra II" directly disputes the idea that the campaign was planned as a "shock & awe" campaign. Anyone who knows any military history understands that Operation Cobra was not about shock & awe, even in an abstract or metaphorical sense.

If the media had, from the outset, recognized how far we were from "winning" the war in Afghanistan (which, early on, the media seemed happy to declare finished), and also had realistic expectations for how long it takes to occupy and rebuild a country (Iraq), the US government would not have been so paralyzed. All the comparisons of Iraq to Vietnam tied the US Government's hands. Sending more troops to Iraq, exactly what was needed in about 2004/2005, but was not accomplished until 2007, was seem as political suicide because the media had portrayed such a strategy as an admission of defeat and similarity to Vietnam, which it was not, and would not have been. In fact, even though that strategy has worked, it's delay by and portrayal in the media until the last few months, cost President Bush dearly and will quite possibly have cost McCain the election in a few more days. I do blame Bush, to some extent, for not simply doing it anyway, sooner, even though the media, and therefore the country, was likely to completely misinterpret it.

McCain, however, championed it from the beginning. Obama, for his part, still seems unaware that it has worked, why it worked, or what should follow.

Had the media correctly assessed Afghanistan to be more like Vietnam (which is so obviously within their grasp because in the 80s the very same American media referred to the Soviet's troubles there as the USSR's Vietnam), people around the world would be conceding that the US was right on Iraq all along and would be fretting about what to do in Afghanistan. Instead, most of the people in this country and around the world are still complaining about Iraq and ignoring Afghanistan. While all you spoon-fed CNN lovers have been sitting around gobbling up the ignorance, did you realize that more American soldiers died this month in Afghanistan than in Iraq?

Don't delay another day. Start admitting, right now, that you were wrong about Iraq. It may have taken longer than it could have. It did not go as smoothly as it could have. Too many people died. But, the strategy, eventually, started to work. What you should have been spending your time complaining about, all along, was the failure in the strategy employed in Afghanistan. But, you wasted your time, and now we're JUST STARTING, as a nation, to understand what's happening in Afghanistan. Your ignorance, much like the media's, is responsible, to some degree, for the number of American soldiers dying in Afghanistan today and the lack of support for that war by the Europeans.

It's the Economy, Stupid (and your vote)

I think one could argue that the economy is the #1 issue in this election. I would then add that the #1 problem to be addressed in the economy is what role the government will play in "fixing" it.

Government will certainly play a role, and they certainly should, but what role they should play is neither obvious nor clear.

It is important to remember where blame should be placed for the problems that are going on.
#1: Consumers - People who borrowed too much money, for houses and on credit cards, who don't save enough, and who bet that "real estate prices can't go down" bear the largest responsibilities.
#2: Banks - Banks should share almost equally in the blame. It takes two to tango. Banks made bad loans and they are now paying for it. Unfortunately, we're paying for them paying for it, too.
#3: Regulators and Government - In some ways, the regulation scheme failed (see my earlier post about debt swaps, for example). Also, the "ownership society" President Bush promoted is partly responsible for the eagerness to buy homes (and to qualify people for home loans).

Government has 2 roles to play in the recovery:
A) Changes to regulatory schemes and rules.
B) Fiscal and monetary policy, in terms of interest rates, bailouts, stimulus packages, and general macroeconomic policy.

(A) is going to happen. The banking industry will be largely re-regulated. We should solve problem #3, above, through government regulation. We should *NOT* solve problems #1 and #2 above. Doing so is called socialism. If the government starts deciding how consumers should spend their money or how banks should offer their products, then it is encroaching on personal liberties and on capitalism. The government can effectively update the rules for banks without having to become so large and invasive so as to *be* the banking industry.

(B) is also going to happen. Interest rates will be lowered. Stimulus packages may be passed. Measures like this are great because they're temporary. They take effect soon, and that matters to the economy now, and then they end, which is good.

The concern with Obama is along both (A) and (B).

Along line (A): Obama is far more likely than McCain to see the current crisis as an opportunity for government to get more involved in figuring out how poor people finance their houses, for example. This, however, would be a huge mistake. It would be the same form of market distorting government policy that Bush's "ownership society" was, which is a part of what got us into this mess in the first place.

Along line (B): Obama has promised massive government spending which will likely worsen the deficit. McCain has much more of a history of rejecting wasteful government spending and trying to keep the budget deficits in line. Also, Obama has promosed long-term infrastructure projects as a form of economic stimulus. Not only does the research show that this doesn't work (it doesn't take effect quickly enough), but in reality, it's just an expansion of government programs. It just makes the goverment more directly involved in long-term attempts to "build" things.

McCain is exactly the right kind of person for the current economic climate, because he's a pragmatist and willing to compromise, in the short run, but there is little danger of him allowing any slow drift toward a more socialized state, in the long run.

This is the most powerful argument for McCain and against Obama, right now, and it's probably the most important issue in this election (and ironically, it wasn't an issue until about the last 2 weeks).

Multiple Sclerosis

There is a branch of engineering/business/computer science that deals with very complex systems and their failure modes. Systems that are so complex that we can't really measure every part of them or understand every interaction can generally be described along two dimensions:
1) Complex systems - these are systems where there are simply many different processes or participants
2) Tightly coupled systems - these are systems in which actions are linked in long chains, meaning that a small change in one place might affect something else, far away.

A university might be a complex but loosely coupled system. There are many complicated interactions going on in different classrooms, but they are more or less independent of one another.

The Berlin Airlift, for example, was both complex and tightly coupled.

The body is generally a very complex, but fairly loosely coupled system. It is very redundant. Typically a problem in one cell doesn't affect too many other cells. One problem with MS is that it attacks one of the points within the system-that-is-the-human-body in which the coupling is tighter. The nerve cells affect many other things directly and without as much redundancy.

Maybe, like cancer or so many other conditions, everyone "has MS" to some extent. Maybe everyone has a natural balance between the reactions which, when unchecked, cause the destruction of the myelin sheathing around nerve cells. The basic problem is that some people have a biochemistry, or DNA, or a lifestyle, or whatever, that makes these reactions more common or likely. So, why do women in the 20's get MS 4x as often as men in their 20's?

Perhaps another dimension to the problem is that people have variable levels of coupling of the immune system and the nerve tissue. Maybe something about being a women ties the immune system more closely to the nerve cells. There is a precedent for women's bodies ability to differentiate between foreign and normal cells being quite different than mens'. It might make sense that women's immune systems "mature" faster than men's. If there is a tighter coupling between their immune systems and the MS-like problems, perhaps they, with the same natural change in biochemistry or rate of nerve tissue development, or a host of other factors, are more likley to exhibit the problems.

Essentially, I am proposing that things are easier to "mask" when they are loosely coupled. Loosely coupled things don't manifest themselves until they are very common. One doesn't refer to a college as a "Spanish-speaking" college until many of the interactions which go on inside it independently start happening in Spanish. But what if you were playing a huge game of telephone on campus? Then, you would expect that once a critical mass of people started speaking Spanish, the whole chain might happen in Spanish.

My dad said that he thought he had read that pregnancy triggered the onset of MS in young women. Maybe pregnancy is the key difference that increases the tightness of coupling of the changes in body chemistry to the immune system to the nerve cells to the MS condition.

Re-Regulation

The most important consequence that I foresee coming from the current financial crisis is the "re-regulation" of the banking industry. As I have written before, although regulation is sometimes good and necessary, less regulation is better than more regulation, all other things being equal.

There is a great danger in my mind that the US will over-regulate the banking industry again. Why? Two reasons:

1) The majority of the problems right now are not due to faulty regulation. They are due to speculation by businesses and irrational behavior by consumers. Should regulations help avoid catastrophes that result from these things? Yes. But, should a lack of regulations be seen as the sole or even primary cause of these problems? Certainly not. If that's what we see when we look at the situation, we are missing the point and failing to learn the most valuable lessons of all, here. The most fundamental cause of the problems going on right now is consumers running up too much debt, especially in real estate. The other major cause is banks making wildly speculative investments. The third, and smaller, though still important, cause is genuine fraud, deception, or uncertainty resulting from unclear, unenforceable, or out-of-date rules and regulations on financial instruments, institutions, and securities.

2) Re-regulating is "popular" right now. It is easy to see the next president succumbing to the cries for regulation. I think, probably, with a Democratic Congress, and being a Republican, McCain is less likely to heed these execratory howls.

Leaving the Ranks of the Undecided

I have left the ranks of the undecided today, and decided to vote for McCain. I still like both candidates and think both would make fine presidents.

I can explain my basic reasons for voting for McCain in a nutshell:
1) I like lower taxes better than higher taxes. In all likelihood, taxes will be lower under McCain. McCain is still more of a small government guy. Obama is more of a big government guy. In general, I think government is inefficient at doing things. So, I generally side with small government-types.
2) McCain is willing to buck his own party. Obama has voted with his party 96% of the time (and Biden is even worse). Take immigration-- would Obama compromise and build a fence in order to also rationalize immigration policy? I don't know. He voted as if he wouldn't. Would McCain compromise and allow some "amnesty" in order to secure the borders? Yes, he championed just such compromise legislation, which was ultimately defeated by both Republicans and Democrats. Also, with Democrats controlling the Congress and White House, the Government deficit would likely soar. Finally, both Obama and Biden take huge amounts of money from public sector unions such as the Teachers' Unions. These unions are unfair to their members, violate the spirit of the campaign finance reform McCain championed, and are obstacles to reform in schools. I trust McCain and Palin more to fix education than Obama and Biden, because they're not beholden to these unions for money and votes.
3) McCain has done tons of things in the Senate. Can you name one thing Obama has done since becoming a Senator other than run for President?

In the end, Obama is an inspiring figure, but more so personally than politically. Politically, he's basically positioning himself as a tax-and-spend liberal. To be fair, he might not be, but he hasn't shown anything else, yet. McCain is committed to bettering this country while maintaining his Republican principles. Yet, he's not a bigot, a xenophobe, a pedant, or a proselytizer. What more could I ask for?

Why are the Polls so Crazy?

Why do John Zogby's polls swing so violently? Why are they so volatile? First, it is clear that the pollsters suck (witness the inaccuracy of exit polling in 2000). Second, I think that there is another reason why the polls are swinging so wildly.

I think that in this election, there are a lot more people who are "undecided" than there are people who admit to being undecided. I think this for several reasons:
1) Amongst intelligent voters, there is no obvious choice. Both candidates have real appeal.
2) This campaign season has NOT been about the stereotypical "issues." Neither candidate is talking about abortion, crime, education, or any of the other typical hot-button issues very much, because their positions on these things hardly differ. The only issue that has come up repeatedly is tax. McCain is on the populist side of this issue (he's generally for lower taxes than is Obama).
3) Neither candidate has positioned himself as "the religious choice" which means that people who just vote for or against such candidates don't have a straightforward way to choose.
4) Much of Obama's support is from young people and other groups whose turnout is very uncertain.
5) Much of McCain's support is from religious people who don't particularly like him and may not turn out, either.

I have seen Obama with leads anywhere from 4% (statistically, barely significant) to 15% (which would be the biggest landslide in recent history) in the course of about 2 weeks. That seems weird to me. Nothing interesting enough has happened to actually change peoples' minds that much, unless their minds weren't really made up in the first place.

Any lead of less than about 8% or so for Obama could still end up being very close, due both to the Bradley effect and to the uncertainty of turnout.

I suspect that this election will be far closer than people think. If I had to bet, I would still bet that Obama wins, mostly because of people casting their votes "against" the party in power, whom they blame for the current economic conditions. The irony of this is that it would give the democrats both the Congress and the White House, which is generally the worst possible recipe for government spending and deficits.

The (First) Invisible Hand

I recently learned that Machiavelli actually used the term "invisible hand" in The Discourses. He refers not to an invisible hand of economics, though, but an invisible hand of politics. Turning what was accepted thought at the time on its head, he argued against the Florentine Humanism School's belief in the primacy of unity.

Machiavelli thought, far from making stamping out disunity and dissension a priority, contemporary princes should try to emulate the trials and tribulations the Romans faced in sorting out the disagreements between "the rich" and "the masses." Machiavelli, though he would not have used these terms, was essentially saying that a process of dispute and dissension between the "people" and the "aristocrats" has a lower transaction cost than does the combination of methods required to attain total unity, punctuated by periodic government-shattering upheaval.

Funny Shirts

I just saw two grandmotherly looking women at Starbucks. One had a pink shirt that said, "MOM upside-down is WOW." The other, slightly older looking one, had a shirt that said, "I only date musicians."

Renaissance Man and the Classics

Do people still value the Renaissance Man? I think that the Renaissance Man is undervalued. Knowing about, or how to do, a very wide range of things is worth more than just the sum of the disparate subjects-- it is only by this great variety of learnedness that a person can be created for whom new, uncategorized situations are tolerable and even "straightforward."

Specifically, one part of being a Renaissance Man that is now thoroughly ignored is study of the classics. The totality of modern (since the Renaissance) learning is still perhaps only equal, in scope and value, to the learnings recorded between about 500BC and 500AD.

I should really credit Matt Ward with recognizing the value of the classics, however obsessed with the pharmacon and the bad festival he may be.

There can be no Afghanistan without Pakistan

We need to get our Afghanistan strategy under control.

The US has just signed a big deal with India, Karzai went to school in India, and the Taliban has trained terrorists that fight against India in the Kashmir. To protect itself, Pakistan cultivates a common "Islamic" identity with Afghanistan. It is no wonder that Pakistan is not entirely committed to getting terrorists out of the treacherous mountain areas on its border with Afghanistan.

The US must provide a combination of good enough carrots and big enough sticks to entice Pakistan to help more. This should simply be charged as a cost of doing business with India. It's worth it, though, because doing what we have to to be friends with India and Pakistan is the way that we protect ourselves from terrorists in Afghanistan and from China. If we allow ourselves to be sucked back into the India v. Pakistan conflict (and if we don't keep that conflict from growing), we will find ourselves battling with Islamists and with China for influence in the region.

No, the other Longoria

Yes, yes, occasionally a Sportscenter anchor will make some quip about Desperate Housewives or Tony Parker while recapping a Rays game, but seriously, how can I be the only one who finds it so remarkable how similar Eva Longoria Parker and Evan Longoria's names are?

They are not related. Can you think of a single other Longoria? It's not as if their names were Michael Smith and Michelle Smith.

I mean, that's really weird. At almost exactly the same time that Eva Longoria was becoming a household name, Evan Longoria emerged as a budding baseball superstar.

Offers of Assistance

I hereby offer my assistance in the following subjects to any and all takers:
1) Financial Planning
2) Business and Commerce
3) Calculus
4) History
5) The Liberal Arts
6) Literature
7) Ethics
8) Computer Science

Upon request, I will help craft a reading list and/or study plan, and will personally tutor in any or all of these subjects.

Talent vs. Hard Work

For a long time, I basically believed that the less talent a person had, the harder they had to work to achieve the same thing. I still think this basic premise is true, but I have come to see how short-sighted it is as a concept.

Those who have talent should, in fact, work even harder than those who do not. Those who have talent have a comparative advantage in activity. To NOT work hard, for them, wastes more than does lazyness by the talentless.

Pandit Nehru, John Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Bejamin Franklin, Isaac Newton, Julius Caesar, Winston Churchill, and many of the other great men I have studied, had unfathomable natural gifts, AND worked harder than everyone else around them.

When I think about what makes them great, it seems to be equal parts natural ability and hard work.

Perhaps greatness amongst men is only greatness when the great minds of men are put into motion to aid mankind.

Founding Mythologies

I concur with David McCullough, when he says (in the biography of John Adams) something to the effect of:

"It's not clear whether Franklin actually said, 'We must all hang together or we will all hang separately' or whether John Hancock actually signed his name in oversized letters so that 'King George could read it without his spectacles,' but it doesn't really matter; these legends have endured because they are in character."

Bullying

There are many types of bully. Some people bully physically. Some bully emotionally (I will withhold love, respect, or attention from you unless you do what I want). Some bully socially (I will put you in positions of subordination publicly). Some even bully intellectually (I will thrash you with facts and the implication that if you don't agree with me, you must be unintelligent).

Recently, I have become aware of a new kind of bullying - bullying by flattery. Someone is actually bullying someone else I know by flattering her. By constantly building her up and complimenting her, he is creating an intolerate expectation for her performance. He is then using this expectation level to govern her behavior and to prevent her from exerting any control over the work they are doing together. Subsequently, he feels himself powerful (like all bullies, he has subconscious (and perhaps even conscious) doubts about his potency).

I have recently become more involved in the project they are working on, and I intend to break him of his bullying ways.

Cicero, The Roman Empire, and the Supreme Court

"The ministers of the law are its magistrates; the interpreters of the law are the judges; we are therefore all slaves of the Laws, that we may enjoy freedom." - Cicero

Looking for causes of the Roman Empire's downfall is nothing new, and I don't offer the following so much as a tally mark in the column of this or that particular cause, but rather I offer it as a testament to two things:
1) The greatness of the founding fathers and the constitution of the United States, and
2) The interconnection between the Roman Republic's downfall, and the drafting of the constitution of the United States.

When Hannibal threatened Rome, the Senate realized it must invest greater and greater power in a military executive in order that the Republic survive. This tension, between parliament and absolute monarch, republican senate and president, or Presbyterian kirk and glorious revolutionary, has plagued nations ever since. Although 220 years is not enough time to be sure, it appears the United States may have solved this problem. The three branch government, with its independent judiciary and the supremacy of the rule of law which our constitution implies and our courts protect, has resolved this dilemma perhaps better than any other attempt in history.

Marbury v. Madison, United States v. Nixon, FDR's attempts to pack the court, and even Bush v. Gore have tested the separation of powers, and in each of these (and most other) cases, the court (and thereby the rule of law) has triumphed.

If the Romans had had a Supreme Court that established powers of judicial review and independence, perhaps we'd all be speaking Latin today.

Blame the Bankers and the Bankees

I would like to point out that, while it's fun to rail against the greed of Wall Street, we should also rail against the irrationality and stupidity of Main Street.

It takes two to tango. 50% of the problems we're experiencing right now are because American consumers borrowed too much money. They paid too much money for houses, borrowed too much on credit cards, etc... I can't tell you how many people told me that Bay Area housing prices couldn't go down. Even though prices have already gone down, they still tell me that Bay Area prices can never go down as much as other places. OF COURSE THEY CAN. Get your heads out of the sand.

The other 50% of the problems we're having should be blamed on the bankers. Everyone from individual mortgage bankers all the way up to commercial bankers and investment bankers made mad loans. You wrote bad loans -- now you have to eat them. Lucky for you the US taxpayers (like me) are going to partially bail you out. I expect thank you notes from all the people who overpaid for houses or are mortgage bankers. You're welcome for continuing to pay taxes (actually paying even more taxes this year) which will largely go toward bailing you idiots out over the next few years.

Everyone who thinks that spending hundreds of $B on the war in Iraq, which, by the way, fraught as it may be with problems, is actually accomplishing something, should seriously check themselves. If they also went out and borrowed a bunch of money to bid up the price of a house somewhere, and are now irrationally sitting on that house (even though they should probably just be selling it at a loss), then they are part of the reason that *I* now have to pay back a share of the $700B the government is about to eat up so *your* stupid loans won't wreck the economy and cost *you* even more money.

And by "you idiots" I mean 'all you people who overpaid for houses, encouraged people to buy houses, think that renting is "wasting money," think housing prices can't go down, etc...' All that kind of talk is idiot-speak.

Renting is often good for the economy. It keeps people mobile and reduces their liability to interest rates. Please mail the thank-you notes right away.

You're welcome,
Andy

Failed States

Somalia is unquestionably a failed state. In fact, it has failed catastrophically. With no real, functioning government, it is lawless and anarchic at best. Al-Qaeda and/or other Islamists use it as a base to the extent they can, pirates and bandits run rampant there, and violence is widespread.

It failed in 1991, and after that time, was a humanitarian disaster. While at least 5 different militia-backed factions fought for control, several hundred thousand people died. Most of the relief food that was sent was stolen and sold. Finally, the US, Pakistan, Malaysia, and others attempted to subdue one of the most aggressive and confrontational of the factions, the SNA, led by Mohammed Aidid. The Blackhawk Down incident, and the ensuing "Battle of Mogadishu" constitute the pivotal chapter in this attempt, after which the attempt was abandoned.

After being attacked by these militias, which Bin Laden has claimed he trained and supported (although these claims are difficult to verify), the US withdrew from Somalia. Since that time, Somalia has remained contested and lawless. In 2006, the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) attempted to control and suppress all the people of Somalia, but was opposed by Ethiopia and Eritrea, with some American support. It has really not gotten much better since that time.

Failed states are dangerous. While casualties are difficult to swallow, and the US clearly made several military and political miscalculations in 1993, they should have remained in Mogadishu to straighted things out. Instead, after perhaps alienating more civilians by fighting in the streets of Mogadishu, the US withdrew, leaving the people, already bitter at the United States, to suffer even more.

Even today, the ICU attempts to control the country to impose such Draconian policies as the outlawing of public sports viewing or movie watching. Somalia remains a haven for Al-Qaeda and related groups. As in Sudan, the United States should intervene directly to support improved stability, personal liberties, women's rights, and democratic institutions in Somalia, as well as to aggressively disrupt and destroy the terrorist networks operating from Somalia.