The new Carnival of Tomorrow is up.
In response to my Apple vs. books post, they plug electronic paper, which would certainly be nice. But I'd settle for online access. The problem with telling students that they don't need books is that too many of them already believe that everything important is online, when hardly anything published before 1995 and not in the public domain is in fact available.
Let me use this occasion to again plug Liberty Fund's great Library of Economics and Liberty, featuring searchable, full-text versions of classic works like The Wealth of Nations.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on August 03, 2005 • Comments
Ayn Rand-inspired activist Logan Darrow Clement's anti-Kelo publicity stunt, calling for seizure of David Souter's house for a hotel, got a lot of attention. The LAT's Elizabeth Mehren offers a nice overview. From the sound of it, the legal issues are a slam dunk. The area is "blighted" and the town needs economic development:
The house--with dark brown paint peeling off and frayed window shades pulled down--sits on an unmarked lane off of South Sugar Hill Road. One of the justice's neighbors is the Sugar Hill Speedway, a go-kart track. Chickens wander in and out of nearby home sites. Rusty pickups and creaky farm equipment litter many front yards. Giant greenhead flies eagerly attack visitors.
A local official says, "We just got a Dunkin' Donuts. We don't have a pharmacy. We don't have a dry cleaners. What would we do with a hotel?" She's clearly not thinking like a city planner.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on August 03, 2005 • Comments
I will appear on Penn & Teller's "Bullshit" on Showtime Friday at 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, talking about whether we have too many consumer choices. The interviews were taped months ago and I'd forgotten to check for airtimes. Fortunately reader Jones Hamilton saw an earlier telecast and emailed me. His review: "You were excellent in the role of Perceptive Social Commentator / Comedic Straight Woman!"
Posted by Virginia Postrel on August 03, 2005 • Comments
The new issue of Economics Journal Watch is up, and it includes a particularly interesting article by David Henderson on the role of economists in ending the draft. (These links are not to .pdf files but the article, alas, is in that format.)
The article provides a timely reminder that the draft is extraordinarily expensive, far more costly (not to mention less professional) than an all-volunteer force. The costs are just hidden:
One of the first empirical studies of the economics of the draft and of ending the draft was done by Walter Oi (1967a, 1967b), an economics professor then at the University of Washington and later at the University of Rochester's Graduate School of Management. In his study published in the Sol Tax volume (Oi 1967b), Oi distinguished clearly between the budgetary cost of military manpower and the economic cost. Oi granted the obvious, that a military of given size could be obtained with a lower budgetary cost if the government used the threat of force to get people to join--that is, used the draft. But, he noted, the hidden cost of this was the loss of well-being among draftees and draft-induced volunteers. Using some empirical methods that were sophisticated for their day, Oi estimated the loss to draftees and draft-induced volunteers and found it quite high--between $826 million and $1.134 billion. While this number might seem low today, Oi's data were in mid-1960s dollars. Inflation-adjusted to 2005, the losses would be $4.8 billion to $6.6 billion.
Another passage serves as a nice reminder that the current secretary of defense is especially unlikely to change Pentagon policy and offers a compelling argument against the attack on volunteers as "mercenaries."
In December 1966, various prominent and less-prominent academics, politicians, and activists were invited to a four-day conference at the University of Chicago. Papers were commissioned and the people who wrote them gave summaries, after which the discussion was open to all. Fortunately, the discussion was transcribed. The papers and discussions appear in the Sol Tax volume referenced earlier, which came out the following year. The invitees included two young anti-draft Congressmen, Robert Kastenmeier (D-Wisconsin) and Donald Rumsfeld (R-Illinois), and one pro-draft Senator, Edward Kennedy (D-Massachusetts). Also attending were pro-draft anthropologist Margaret Mead and anti-draft economists Milton Friedman and Walter Oi. Friedman gave the general economic and philosophical case for a voluntary military in his presentation, "Why Not a Voluntary Army?" Reading through the whole Sol Tax volume, with all the papers and transcripts of the discussion, I had the sense that there was a coalescing of views over the four-day conference, as people from various parts of the ideological spectrum found that they shared a strong antipathy to the draft and that the economists had a surprisingly strong economic case against it. Friedman's speech and his various comments at the conference still make compelling reading. One of his best rhetorical flourishes was his criticism of the charge that those who advocate ending the draft are advocating a "mercenary" army. Friedman said:
Now, when anybody starts talking about this [an allvolunteer force] he immediately shifts language. My army is "volunteer," your army is "professional," and the enemy's army is "mercenary." All these three words mean exactly the same thing. I am a volunteer professor, I am a mercenary professor, and I am a professional professor. And all you people around here are mercenary professional people. And I trust you realize that. It's always a puzzle to me why people should think that the term "mercenary" somehow has a negative connotation. I remind you of that wonderful quotation of Adam Smith when he said, "You do not owe your daily bread to the benevolence of the baker, but to his proper regard for his own interest." And this is much more broadly based. In fact, I think mercenary motives are among the least unattractive that we have.
Click here to download the file.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on August 03, 2005 • Comments
What has Congress accomplished? A pork-filled highway bill (Is there any other kind?) and an energy bill that's all subsidies plus Daylight Saving Time--everything for which there was an actual policy debate was removed as "controversial." Who, after all, can be against giving money to constituents?
The WaPost wrapup gives a good summary of what constitutes victory--and effectiveness--in Washington:
Shackled for months by a familiar brand of Washington gridlock, President Bush and the Republican leaders in Congress last week suddenly found a key. A long-stalled energy bill, an international trade accord and a massive highway appropriations measure all moved to passage -- handing big victories to business interests and quieting talk that a second-term president was bereft of influence.
This surprising midsummer rush of legislating made clear that the reality of Washington's current balance of power is more complicated than surface appearances. On the most highly charged ideological issues -- the proposed restructuring of Social Security, chief among them -- a unified Democratic opposition has stymied Bush, creating an impression of GOP impotence. On less partisan measures backed by powerful economic interests, Republicans have benefited from enough Democratic support to advance their agenda in expensive and far-reaching ways....
Still, Allan J. Lichtman, a professor of political history at American University, said that while the country has been preoccupied with the "flash and show" over social issues, Republicans are reshaping the policy landscape in favor of a certain brand of big-spending conservatism. "It's an absolutely remarkable performance by Republicans," he said.
Contrary to Lichtman, big-spending Republicanism isn't an alternative to social issues. It's a complement--and one that (I hope) may eventually backfire. By jetisoning any pretense to free-market principles, the GOP is defining itself entirely as the party of the religious right. The subsidies to friends are simply business as usual for whatever party is in power, a tool for fundraising but not for defining party identity.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on July 31, 2005 • Comments
The LAT's Alex Pham reports on how "traditionally geeky manufacturers are embracing their sensitive side to develop products that evoke feelings, including joy, desire, comfort and nostalgia." Among the examples:
That's what Hannspree Inc. concluded three years ago when the Taiwanese display manufacturer decided to make its own branded TVs. But instead of churning out cheap LCD screens, Hannspree took a different tack. Last year, it launched a line of 100 TVs, each aimed at different emotional targets. One is shaped like a plush puppy, another like a baseball that is actually made of hand-stitched leather.
"If you saw a TV that looked like a baseball, you'd think it's fun," said Michael Galvin, a marketing manager for Hannspree. "And you'd know it's a gimmick. But when you touch it, it's both surprising and reassuring. You don't expect it to be the real thing. But it is, and you remember what it felt like when you held a baseball, you remember when you went to a ballpark. You connect it with whatever baseball means to you. The TV is both visual and tactile, so it's a much stronger impact."
Eventually, people will stop discovering this trend, and it will just be part of the background.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on July 31, 2005 • Comments
Assuming the president signs the dreadful energy bill, extended Daylight Saving Time is a fait accompli, but reader Michael McDowell made a worthwhile point in an email:
I find it interesting in the debate over extending daylight savings time, how most people feel that their preference is the self-evident correct course of action. I'm over here in neighboring Fort Worth and when I heard of the proposal my reaction was the opposite of yours. My thought was "who would be against that?" Another month of extended daylight after work allows a few more weeks of squeezing in a little golf or a bike ride after 5:00. Personally, I wouldn't mind if it didn't get light until noon and dark at midnight, but I have a co-worker who absolutely hates the morning commute when it's still dark and has a hard time getting her kids awake and off to school when it is still dark.
I'm sure he's right about preferences. If I had to bet, I'd guess that the public is divided 50/50. The policy question is whether the switch will, as advertised, save any energy. Since air conditioning is such a big drain and since the "evidence" is so skimpy, I doubt it.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on July 31, 2005 • Comments
Just in case there are any students who still read books, the Apple Store wants them to know that paper technology is obsolete. After all, if it's not online, it's not important. Right?
Those "bookcases" behind the laptops are just photo flats.
There's another photo and more commentary here, on the amazing photo-sharing site Flickr.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on July 27, 2005 • Comments
As part of the energy bill, Congress is barreling ahead with a plan to extend Daylight Saving Time for a month, despite protests from the airlines, which argue that the switch would cost millions and put their international schedules out of whack. The change would also generate lots of software updates, a further hidden cost.
The source of this bright idea is, not surprisingly, the ever-meddlesome Ed Markey, who calls the bill "a huge victory for sunshine lovers." As a certified sunshine lover, I'd say it looks more like Massachusetts's revenge on Texas (and the rest of the Sunbelt) for George Bush's victory over John Kerry. There are some places--and Dallas is definitely one of them--that need just the opposite: shorter sunny evening hours. Once the sun goes down and the temperature falls to the high 80s, you can actually enjoy sitting outside.
The ostensible goal of the bill is energy saving, but the evidence is weak. Reports Daniel Engber on Slate:
Springing forward has its trade-offs. When you set your clocks forward, you exchange morning daylight for a later sunset. Later sunsets tend to get people out of the house more in the evenings, which could lead to an increase in driving (and gasoline use) and a reduction in the use of household appliances. And if daylight time extended too far into the winter, more people would wake up before sunrise and turn on the lights. Government research from the 1970s suggests that extended daylight-saving time produces a modest but significant energy savings of about 1 percent. A British experiment with extended daylight time in the late 1960s failed to produce much corroborating evidence.
Oddly missed even in fairly thorough accounts is any consideration of the extension's most obvious cost: More demand for energy-eating air conditioning in the fast-growing, very hot Sunbelt. A lot more people live down here than did back during the Nixon administration.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on July 26, 2005 • Comments
It may not be the most important, but the Wright Amendment gets my vote for the most irritating federal law. Passed to protect then-fledgling DFW Airport, it limits flights from Love Field, the smaller in-town airport where Southwest is headquartered, to contiguous states plus (thanks to a later amendment) Alabama, Mississippi, and Kansas. Thanks to this protectionist legislation, I live 15 minutes from Love Field and get to use it once a year if I'm lucky.
After years of "passionate neutrality," Southwest is campaigning to repeal the Wright Amendment, and there are bills in both houses of Congress to do just that. Southwest is a Dallas-based company and Love Field is inside the Dallas city limits. You'd think city officials, who never miss a chance to campaign for downtown development, would be working hard for repeal. But, thanks to American Airlines' clout, they're silent.
In hopes of rousing their interest, my latest local column, a guest editorial in D Magazine, makes the parochial case against the Wright Amendment. The Future and Its Enemies makes the global case.
The Dallas Morning News' extensive coverage of the issue is here. I wrote a related NYT column in December.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on July 25, 2005 • Comments