Apple's much-praised iPod Nano isn't selling that fast, at least in its white version. The black version is apparently outselling its pale partner by 5-to-1. (Via Good Morning Silicon Valley.)
I'm waiting for the iBook Nano--a superlight laptop that uses flash memory rather than a hard drive.
Six years ago, at the Mont Pelerin Society meeting I blogged about recently, Professor Postrel got into a discussion of privatizing Social Security with José Piñera, the charming creator of Chile's privatized program and an indefatigable campaigner for expanding that model internationally. Steve likes the idea, but he's an MIT-trained economist with a critical mind, and he knows the obvious arguments that opponents are bound to make. So he raised them: What about transition costs? What about Peter Diamond's argument that a pay-as-you-go public program makes economic sense? Alas, there was no answer--then, when it didn't matter, or later, when it did. As a reader emails in response to my comments on think tanks:
Social Security is a great example of the practical problems with this model. The conservative think tanks put reform on the map, but it was through a very unsophisticated argument: "Social Security returns 2 percent, stocks return 7 percent, let's make the switch." This made a lot of politicians favor accounts, but it didn't say anything about transition costs or market risk (which reduce/eliminate the benefits of accounts). If you tried to write about those issues you were the skunk at the garden party. The problem is that not writing about these issues doesn't make them go away. They rear their heads when you build policy, so practical reform plans are seen as a bait and switch versus what was originally offered. ("You said the accounts would solve the problem; now we need to cut benefits, maybe raise taxes??") Politicians on the right, as well as the Republican base, weren't prepared for what was really involved with Social Security reform, in large part because no one told them. And we are where we are.
Indeed.
Joseph Vranich, who helped found Amtrak and now wants to get rid of it, blogs his praise of a new report from the Republican Study Commission, which calls for cuts in the budgets for Amtrak and for completely eliminating the Essential Air Service Program.
The RSC noted that travelers have many other modes of transportation available and significant savings could be achieved by ceasing to operate very expensive long-distance routes that serve a limited ridership. Savings: $2.5 billion over ten years ($1.3 billion over five years)....
Note that the savings from cutting back Amtrak are more significant than the complete elimination of an aviation program.
The post includes a link to the report, and the blog has more on transportation policy. Vranich is the author of End of the Line: The Failure of Amtrak Reform and the Future of America's Passenger Trains.
For the two or three regular readers who haven't already bought The Substance of Style, let me note that the supercheap paperback version now selling on Amazon is exactly the same as the regular paperback version except for a "bargain book" sticker on the back. I wouldn't give it as a gift, but for your own reading--or your students!--it's fine. I've seen the books because I ordered 10 for my own supplies.
Reader Joseph Britt, who recently joined Pejman Yousefzadeh's new ChequerBoard group blog, emails some think tank thoughts:
Just a note to say that I read your comments on think tanks the other day, the replies to them on Drezner and other sites, and your replies to the replies. I think you are absolutely right on the substance, and agree that this is a useful conversation to have.
About three years ago when the farm bill was going through Congress I noticed the same kind of thing from the major conservative think tanks that I had noticed years before when I worked in agriculture policy in Congress myself. Heritage and Cato would come up with some quickie analyses and quotes for the Post after the legislation cleared committee, by which time farm bills are pretty much set in concrete; a few Congressmen entirely unacquainted with the subject would quote them in one-minute floor statements; and the legislation would breeze through to enactment as if the think tanks didn't exist. I thought to myself, here I've been gone from Washington for a good decade, and nothing has changed.
For my money -- and I'll grant this was some time ago -- the "think tank" that churned out the most consistently useful papers was the Congressional Research Service. All the others produced such a high ratio of chaff to wheat that, like you, I was strongly tempted to ignore anything they sent me.
The chaff-to-wheat ratio raises an important point. Think tankers can always point to some good work. But what percentage of their output are they actually proud of? What percentage makes a difference, if not in changing immediate policy then in raising new, sophisticated arguments, answering new objections, and swaying public opinion? What percentage is interesting? What percentage will people who really know the issues take seriously?
These are all important, if subjective, judgments that people in think tanks are well-qualified to make (and do make, at least in their own heads). Unfortunately, they are not the criteria rewarded by supporters who, as far as I can tell from their complete lack of response, have absolutely no interest in this discussion.
I'm all for taking pork out of the federal budget, with or without Katrina, but the big money is elsewhere. How about delaying the Medicare prescription drug benefit? (Canceling it is too much to hope for.) I know that pharmacies have been spending big bucks to promote it, but it's not exactly an enthusiatically anticipated program.
Another potential source of bucks, on the revenue side, is the zillions of acres of western land owned by the Bureau of Land Management. Particularly around Las Vegas, which is rapidly running out of land for people, its market value would be quite high. (How high?--ed. That would require research. Do I look like a think tank?) But, of course, the western mining and grazing interests who enjoy subsidized rights today would object mightily to privatization. And while some environmental groups might love a chance to buy and preserve western land, in places like Las Vegas where the land is really valuable, we could expect them to squawk about the evils of sprawl, development, and human habitation.
In honor InstaPundit and N.Z. Bear's Porkbusters campaign, I went looking for local pork that could be zeroed out to fund hurricane recovery. It was certainly easy to find: Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson put out a press release bragging about $60 million for local projects in the highway bill. (I'm highly skeptical that Rep. Johnson, a Democrat, had much to do with actually obtaining the pork.) As I've said many times on this blog, I'd love to have gorgeous Calatrava-designed bridges over the Trinity River, but I just can't see why people in the rest of the country should pay for them.
I was going to note that even the Dallas Morning News recognized the porkbarrel nature of those bridges in an editorial yesterday, suggesting that funding might at least be delayed to help pay for Katrina recovery. But in today's paper, the editorial board took that back. Today's mea culpa said the bridges "and the Trinity Project will be a huge economic engine for the revitalization of downtown, which supplies the oxygen for much of the rest of North Texas. They are critical to resolving this area's transportation challenges and to enhancing our most important waterway." Of course, even if that argument is true, it has nothing to do with the national interest. I guess Belo higher-ups, conscious of the value of their downtown real estate, objected.
One good thing think tanks do is offer forums for authors and other public intellectuals, like this Cato event next Wednesday, with Ron Bailey and others discussing his new book, Liberation Biology. Of course, the value of the think tank forum depends almost entirely on whether it grabs the attention of C-Span and other media. Even a large think tank auditorium only holds 100 or so people.
Like my earlier feature on American leather, my latest NYT feature looks at how a new company used innovative technology and sophisticated marketing to grow and flourish in a struggling industry. By improving the look and feel of upholstery in hospitals and high-traffic public places, Hi-Tex Inc.'s Crypton fabric technology both furthers and helps satisfy today's aesthetic imperative. My story looks at some of the operational challenges behind the good looks.
If I were writing the story as an economics column, rather than a small business feature, I would have taken a different tack. This is a classic tale of vertical integration, raising interesting Coase-Williamson questions. Why, for instance, does a company need to own the factory and machines in order to pick the people who'll run them? Does it matter that these people are employees? Or, as I suspect, simply that they take pride in their work?
Dan Drezner has more, including an on-target comment about TV booking from Bruce Bartlett. Arnold Kling weighs in here, with numerous reader comments. Tim Sandefur, like other readers, defends think tanks on the grounds that they're no worse, and perhaps better, than "intellectuals in government institutions, or in overwhelmingly government-supported universities."
I'm not asking think tanks to be universities. I'm asking them to do what they say they're trying to do. Think tanks--or at least the kind we're talking about--say they're about changing minds and affecting policy. To that end, think tank research should be able to pass scholarly scrutiny, if only because the arguments won't otherwise convince anyone but the already convinced. For the same reason, think tanks should seek not simply to repeat the same arguments but to advance the debate by responding to new critiques and new circumstances.
The problem is that think tanks face enormous incentives to do the easy job of making their supporters (moral or financial) feel good, rather than the hard job of persuading the unpersuaded or figuring out how to move policy, rather than simply to complain about it.
Take a recent example, Cato's news release purporting to offer "$62 billion in spending cuts that would offset Katrina relief in the short-term and create savings to reduce the federal deficit over the long-term." The release was great p.r., even garnering an Instalanche. It made a terrific soundbite: Tom DeLay is wrong. It's easy to find $62 billion of waste in the budget.
Unfortunately, anyone who looks at the release, even someone like me who agrees with the cuts, can tell the release is not serious. For starters, all the important details are missing. How exactly do you propose cutting farm subsidies in half? Ditto NASA? What specific programs are you going to zero out? Or how are you going to restructure allocations? How are you going to manage the politics? Do you have some reverse logroll in mind? How do you propose to cut the Army Corps of Engineers budget at a time when people are complaining about too little money for shoring up levees? These are not easy cuts, made even more justifiable by the Katrina crisis. They are a standard libertarian wish list in a new context. The release does nothing convince the typical reader that these programs are wasteful. It's just a publicity stunt--and an effective one--that makes ideological supporters feel good but does nothing to change short-term policy or long-term attitudes.
I'm not against think tanks. To the contrary, I believe they can fill a role no other institution fills. I appreciate the hard work and talent of the people who staff think tanks. My quarrel is less with them than with their short-sighted supporters. When faced with Dan Drezner's original question of why these organizations don't take on the difficult issues of the day, I come back to the same answer: because they need money to fund that research and donors, especially individuals, don't want to pay for it.
I am particularly skeptical of the one-stop-ideological shop, funded by individuals who care mostly about hearing their beliefs repeated in public. These organizations have almost no incentive to take on new or difficult questions or to work on the hard, unglamorous, long-term process of moving specialist opinion. (Unlike many think tank critics, I do not think corporate and foundation donors are usually a big problem, for the simple reason that their specialized program officers tend to be far more sophisticated about the state of debate and don't want their side to lose by making unpersuasive arguments.) I have more confidence in the effectiveness of organizations that focus on a specific discipline or policy area, because they tend to attract staffers with independent reputations in their field and to reward them for tackling the hot questions of the day, even if they don't know the answers in advance. Or maybe I just don't know enough about specialized organizations to see their problems.
As for the critique that there are many kinds of think tanks, not just the portmanteau ideological variety discussed in Dan's original post, all I can say is that Vogue is undeniably part of the mainstream media, but nobody thinks we're talking about fashion magazines when we examine news coverage.
Finally, on a positive note, I think the Manhattan Institute does a good job of funding smart, intellectually curious people and turning them loose to do in-depth research on topics they care about. But then, as its name suggests, this think tank isn't in Washington.