Mathematics:Economics = Lotion:Masturbation

It might be fun, but at the end of the day you're not really accomplishing anything.

What Would Occam Do?

If the Tick were asked to comment on the toxic asset repurchase, he would probably say something like this, "For those of you who aren't paying attention, we residents and citizens of the U.S. are about to make a big doo-doo in our diaper of finance."

I understand why injecting liquidity via "toxic asset" purchase may be beneficial. However I anticipate a very large cost of administration and foresee great waste and large missteps in execution.

I believe that there is a much more elegant solution to the banking liquidity crisis. We should temporarily reduce the required reserve ratio, and allow it to slowly climb back over a 3-5 year period.

I believe that India took similar steps last year, to positive effect. This solution immediately adds liquidity. It would cost nothing to taxpayers. It would aid all banks in a fair way, and would not require politicians or bureaucrats to make high-stakes decisions that they did not understand.

For those of you who don't know me, here is a quick background. I am an Economist by education and have worked in this capacity for the IRS, focusing on the analysis of large foreign owned corporations. I have also worked as a tax accountant, and in corporate finance. While this should not make me more qualified to have an opinion than all the "experts", apparently it does.

I would tremendously appreciate responses.

There are two grassy meadows next to each other, hanging out. The first one says, "I think I hear something coming."

Second one says, "Yeah."

First one says, "Look - it is a herd."

A herd of cattle comes tearing through over the second meadow, making a ruckus.

When they are past, the first meadow says, "Hey, are you alright?"

The second meadows replies, "Yeah, they only grazed me."

Fetuses Learn to Play Sports, Bulk Up

I was browsing science news yesterday, when I stumbled upon this gem. It seems that there is company called AmnioTrainer producing “in vivo” sports training products for FETUSES! They don’t have U.S. approval yet and there is a debate about the potential hazards of the products. The company’s current products include AmnioBall Futbol and AmnioShock Strength Trainer.

AmnioBall Futbol measures 1.2 centimeters in diameter when inflated, but is inserted surgically while uninflated. Once in the womb, it is filled with the mother’s amniotic fluid so that the ball does not float or sink. A harmless strain of the E Coli bacteria genetically engineered for bioluminescence gives the ball a faint glow, encouraging the fetus to interact by grasping, punching, and kicking. 3D and 4D ultrasound images and movies posted on the company’s website seem to verify these claims. According to AB, the Futbol product will be available for implantation throughout the U.S. and Europe in mid-2008.

AmnioShock Strength Trainer uses low-current high-voltage technology similar to that used for weight loss and strength training in adults to stimulate fast-twitch muscle fibers, allowing fetuses to develop superior strength and speed without the use of pharmacological agents. The Strength Trainer product will be not be immediately available in the U.S., but is available at several clinics in China and Central America. The delay in primary markets is over concerns that trial data showed a slight increase in pre-term deliveries in the study but not the control group. The “significant but not pronounced” decrease in gestation time should not be a concern, according to the company spokesperson. However, AmnioShock Strength Trainer has provoked strong criticism from a number of groups including Fetal Rights Watch and the Preschool division of the Pan Americas Youth Soccer League.

While AmnioTrainer’s methods are debatable, there seems to be no doubting the results. According to the trial results, which began in Brazil on January 8th, 2005 with 127 second trimester fetuses, the performance of two-year-old children trained with AmnioBall Futbol was on average 12 percentile points higher in kickball and 17 points higher in soccer. Results from AmnioShock were varied but showed an overall average of 34% strength gain across all major muscle groups.

My home is protected by neither Lasers nor Alligators

I was surprised at the magnitude of the resistance to the idea of building a fence on the U.S. border with Mexico. It might be that I skew liberal in my writing and therefore the readers and comments skew left as well. Offhand I’d say that about two thirds of commentators viscerally hate the fence, and a third think it should have automated machine guns and an alligator infested moat.

The predominant anti-fence sentiments are that it would be disrespectful to Mexicans, and that it is unfair to put a fence across the south border and not the north.

After much thought, I have come to the conclusion these comments are just plain stupid. I believe that they are classic examples of knee-jerk herd-minded liberalism that is poisonous to honest intellectual discussion. I imagine a similar flavor to the student communist movements of the mid 20^th century in the developed nations.

We need a fence in the south because there is already a fence in the north. It is called Canada. It is a sparsely populated winter wasteland, inhabited by people that are culturally identical and nearly as wealthy as Americans. There is no superior barrier to illegal immigration than lawfulness and economic equality.

But the massive gradient in wealth, education, and healthcare across the Mexican border absolutely ensures that, absent a hard barrier, large scale and uncontrollable illegal migration will occur continuously. Hundreds of millions of people from Central and South America would prefer to be in the U.S., and it is not in the best interests of Americans to accept this flow of new residents at its naturally occurring rate. The only way to slow it is to create a physical barrier, and to help improve the economies of our neighbors to the south. Improvement to a level sufficient to stem the tides will take many decades. We are left with the current need for a fence.

A nation has the right to determine the sources and pace of immigration. There is absolutely nothing xenophobic about this – it is simply anarchistic to suggest a country should not have the right to make and enforce these decisions.

Likewise, it is intellectually dishonest to compare the southern border to the northern. There is a reason that banks install better security than I have in my house. They have more at risk and a higher probability of incursion.

Dennis Miller said, "What is this 'tat', and how can I get some of it to trade?" In that vein, doesn't the phrase "giving someone lip" sound like it should mean something much more fun than it actually does?

Completely unrelated(ly), my wife thought of the best name ever for a warmongering cat: Hungry Hissinger. Nukes: cats ask for them by name!

Enough comedy for now. I was accepted to write for Damn Interesting a couple of weeks ago. Damn cool site - check it out. Anyway, it takes a lot more time to write for them than it does to blog. I'll try to post here and there, but with 2 kids on the way it is going to be slow going. I have to get off my but and stack up some firewood for the winter too. Or I guess I could always just do what I did last winter: cut/split a few wet pieces at a time and use explosives to get them lit every day. BTW, if you are my insurance agent, I'm just kidding. If you anyone else...seriously. Explosives. Also vegetable oil (in a pinch).

Well, it is 5:30AM and I haven't slept yet. Sorry this post is so short and ditzy. I hope it made you laugh a little.

As Stephen Colbert might say if I was one of his staff writers, “I feel dirty from mucking about in the cottony waters of immigration truthiness.” Before you read this post you might want to go back and read the last two. Or not. Anyway, how do we make it both harder to enter the U.S. illegally and less profitable after illegal entry? Four words: Fence, Enforcement, Fine and Amnesty. Don’t count the ‘and’.

Fence. We make it so that the chance of passing that fence without interception is 9% instead of 90%. If we can do this, it will not make much financial sense to attempt illegal entry. Two chain links separated by sensors and a lot of space. Rapid response teams every few miles. It is totally doable and completely necessary. Arguments that this will increase xenophobia, undermine human rights, or dehumanize latinos or immigrants are specious. Knowing that everyone here came legally will put us all on even footing.

Enforcement. Finding a way to punish employers that hire illegal immigrants is at least as important as making it harder for illegal immigrants to enter the country. Fixing one of these problems without fixing the other will not solve the problem. The fundamental problem in achieving this relates to our previous discussion regarding statutory prohibitions on information sharing between the I.R.S and D.H.S. Also social security numbers are a century old technology that is insanely ineffective. It is time for biometrics, period. This will fix everything. There are obviously privacy issues, but they are solvable by hashing (a non-reversible hash obviously) the biometric data and then encrypting it. The encrypted hash would be passed for verification or embedded on ID cards. If the code was compromised (identity theft), then the citizen could apply for a new hash. Once we have biometric IDs, law enforcement of right to work becomes trivial. If it takes 9 tries to enter the U.S. once successfully, and the average illegal immigrant is caught and deported after a year, it simply will not pay to try to cross the border.

Fine and Amnesty. We’ve talked stick – here is the carrot. The U.S. economy obviously depends on its current illegal workers. Deporting them all, even over a long period of time, would not be in our best interest. This is an understatement…it would cause horrific inflation and would make it difficult for most businesses to operate profitably. Think colossal blunder. So if we can’t remove the current illegal workers, but they got here, well…illegally, then what should we do? Here is my answer.

After Fence and Enforcement are up and running, we publish the following plan and then implement it, making it clear that all steps will be followed:

Step 1: All illegal immigrants must register with the D.H.S. within 12 months. Failure to do so will result in missing the opportunity to apply for a Conversion Visa. There will be no exceptions – if you are an illegal immigrant in the U.S., and you do not register in 12 months you will permanently lose the opportunity to obtain this visa. This will mean certain deportation.

Step 2: Those illegal immigrants registering and passing a criminal background check are issued a Conversion Visa. The terms of the Conversion Visa are as follows:

a. Within 2 years of obtaining a Conversion Visa, the visa holder must return to his or her country for at least a week. The purpose of this element is trust building. If the visa holder does not return within this period, the visa will expire and the holder will be permanently unwelcome.

b. After travel back to the home country and then return to the U.S., the trip will be verified by inspection of the Customs stamp in his/her passport. Upon return to the U.S., the Conversion Visa will become a “Yellow Card”. A Yellow Card confers permanent right to work and residence in much the same way as a “Green Card”, with the following exceptions:

1. Yellow Card holders may apply for U.S. citizenship after a period of 10 years. This long period is in deference to the millions of foreigners that are legally waiting to immigrate to the U.S..

2. Yellow Card holders (even after they obtain U.S. citizenship) permanently forfeit their right to collect Social Security retirement benefits, but they must continue to pay Social Security Tax. However they are eligible for Medicare/Medicaid. The lifetime forfeiture of Social Security benefits is a substantial fine – paid to the U.S. government for having broken the law.

That’s it. Fair compromise, full citizenship eventually. S’up?

PS...A lefty would (did) say (yeah that’s right I’m talking to you Greg Becerra) that making Mexico’s economy stronger will help solve the problem. No. Even if that were to happen the problem would cascade and there would be just as many illegal immigrants coming through Mexico from Guatemala, Honduras, etc. Any weak economy in the world is going to create this problem. To boot, even though Mexico’s economy has gotten much stronger over the past decade the disparity is still huge. According to the CIA world factbook, in 2006 Mexico’s per-capita income is a fourth that of the U.S. 20 years ago in 1987, it was a sixth. The actual numbers for 1987 are $26,668 vs. $4,656 in real 2000 U.S. dollars (reference here). Illegal Immigration from Mexico is at least as large of a problem today as it was 20 years ago. It will continue to be a problem for at least several decades. And that is just Mexico.

The Smartest Compromise Possible in the Ongoing U.S. Illegal Immigration Debate: Part II

This is part two of my last post. There will be at least one more part as well. Here is a quick recap of the liberal and conservative main points in case you didn’t read Part I:

On the right:

1. People should not be rewarded for breaking U.S. law.
2. People who followed the law and are going through the immigration process legally should not be penalized.
3. It is meaningless to discuss amnesty if new workers without visas will flood in after reform.
4. Illegal immigrants do not pay taxes but consume/use costly services and infrastructure.
5. Not having English as a national language spoken by all destabilizes society and divides us.
6. Illegal immigrants repress wages for Americans.
7. Unsecured borders are a real threat to the policing of terrorist threats.

On the left:

1. Not providing a path to citizenship for people who have lived and worked here for a significant time might create a permanent underclass that does not feel ownership in their country. This could undermine our culture and divide us.
2. Expelling a large number of workers in a short period of time could seriously damage the U.S. economy.
3. The current situation is not unprecedented. Historically, the U.S. has had a higher % of immigrants before.
4. Many families may be split up by an aggressive policy of expulsion.
5. Demonizing “illegal” workers may cause racism to worsen.
6. Illegal immigrants largely do the work that U.S. workers are unwilling to do.
7. Children of illegal workers, many born in the U.S., will be greatly harmed by the expulsion of their parents.

I want to start off with Right 4. It turns out that this is factually incorrect. About 75% of illegal immigrants do pay taxes (Income, Social Security, and Medicare). Stephen C. Goss of the Social Security Administration (SSA) has been quoted as saying the SSA puts the number at 75%. Of course this isn’t true of the guy hanging out at Home Depot, but it turns out that most illegal immigrants are actually employees, and when they are hired they present fake or stolen social security cards. As a result they pay in not only Income Tax, but also Social Security and Medicare taxes for benefits that they will probably never collect. If you want to do your own research, check it out. You can actually get direct sources from the SSA on this, but here is a good article here. So anyway, ixnay to Right 4.

Let’s move on to Left 1, Left 5, and Right 5. Point taken. I accept that it is fundamentally un-American to reinvent indentured servitude. The U.S. has the right to decide that illegal immigrants may stay or go, but there must be a path to citizenship for those who stay. However, this leads to Right 1 and Right 2.

It is very hard to disagree with Right 1 and Right 2. Hundreds of millions of people worldwide want to immigrate to America. Even the best of them should wait to enter legally. The U.S. cannot send a signal that coming illegally is superior. There are also millions of already in queue to enter legally, primarily on family visas. I suggest that as a solution, we agree that any path to legal residence and eventually citizenship for those who came illegally must be sufficiently long to ensure that there was no benefit to them for having jumped in line. Based on an examination of the longest average waiting times for family resident visa applications, I would suggest a minimum waiting period of 11 years before a person who is a current illegal immigrant in the U.S. could become a permanent legal resident. In the mean time if they are allowed to stay or to leave and re-enter, it will have to be on a work visa.

A lefty might suggest that this violates Left 1 and Left 5 – but it does not. The average American lives to 77, and 11 years is only 14% of a lifetime. Paying a substantial price for having committed an illegal act will lead current citizens and legal residents to be less angry. In the end, this will lessen xenophobia, not increase it.

I’m going to assume that so far you reasonable lefties and righties are on board so far. In the interest of agreement, let’s throw each other a bone. Left 3 is more or less true. In 1910 14% of the population was immigrant (legal and illegal). In 2005 it was 11%. This fact shouldn’t change policy, but it is good to keep in mind that we aren’t in unprecedented territory here. There was also extraordinary economic growth in the U.S. in the 1910s. We all like that.

On Left 4 and Left 7 however, not so much. Although many illegal immigrants do have children who are U.S. citizens…it is certainly the right of the deported parents to take their children back home with them. Mexico is not Sudan folks. If parents make the decision to leave their children with other caregivers in the U.S., that is their right as well. As responsible parents they will make the decision that is in the best interest of their family. But it is not the responsibility of the U.S. to be force-fed new citizens based on the qualification that they are able to sneak across the border. This demeans the process, the concept of citizenship, and most importantly is horribly unfair to the millions of relatives, students, professionals, and diversity lottery recipients waiting patiently to enter legally. I am sure that on this we can agree. Uh-huh.

But enough agreement – let’s move onto something more polarizing. Good ‘ol Right 3. I cannot see an argument against this one. In fact, recent U.S. history has proven that if we don’t put some real teeth into a reform bill, a wave of new illegal immigrants will rush in to fill the void created by legalizing the current ones. This exact thing happened after 1986, when President Regan signed a sweeping immigration amnesty bill into law. There was no effective enforcement method available of preventing new illegal immigrants rushing in to fill the economic ecological niche vacated by the new amenstees. So rush in they did, and the law was a disaster. Even Fox News says so here.

So fool us once – shame on us. Fool us twice… We can’t make the same mistake again. Not only is there no point talking about comprehensive Immigration reform without enforcement, but it would effectively increase illegal immigration to attempt it. So if we want reform (and we all do), we are going to have to address enforcement in a post-reform world. Okay? Okay.

I want to take Left 6 and Right 6 together because they are both obviously true. However, let’s add some nuance. American workers aren’t unwilling to do these jobs – they are either unwilling to do them at crappy wages, or unwilling to buy expensive machines that do them when illegal labor will do them cheaply. On the other hand, the huge number of migrants that come in legally on farm work visas seems to invalidate the Right 6 argument. No one really whines about farm work visas. Not so much.

Now here is an important point. According to the SSA about 75% of illegal immigrants pay taxes. That means they had to show a Social Security Card to become an employee. Which means they used a fake card with a real number (meaning they stole the number), or just used a fake number. So we can fix this right? No, not really. The IRS is not allowed to share information with the DHS/SSA in a way that is sufficient to determine who is using a fake number. I delved deeply into this issue. The bureaucrats have tried many times to setup an information sharing system that allows employers to check if their new hires are legal or not. Not only have all attempts at creating this system failed horribly, but it is the opinion of most of the people involved that statutory prohibitions on information sharing due to privacy issues make it effectively impossible to fix the problem.

In other words, a social security number is the only way to see if someone is legal, but the government organizations that have the best answers to the “Is he/she legal to work?” question are not allowed to answer the question. And because the quality of the answers from the organizations that *are* permitted to respond is so poor, there is no way to require employers to use the reply at all. The cackef**kedly botched prosecution of Tyson Foods for hiring many illegal immigrants showed this unambiguously. If you read my source here, note the only important sentence: “On March 26, 2003, Tyson Foods was acquitted of all charges in the case brought against them by the U.S. Government.”

So let’s review. As per 1986 – if we have a general amnesty, then we will have an immediate new wave of illegal entrants rushing in. This is because we have no border control.

Our employers don’t know who is legal anyway, because the majority of illegal immigrants use fake or stolen social security numbers and U.S. privacy laws prohibit the IRS and DHS from talking to each other. We could fix this problem with biometric-based ID for all U.S. citizens and residents, but privacy laws prevent that also.

We are f****d guys.

We are not willing to include biometrics in all ID, which is nice because that is an actual solution that would magically disappear the entire problem. So given that we will not do this – all we can do is cut a deal with those who are currently here illegally while at the same time making it harder to get here for new would-be illegal immigrants. And that brings us to Right 7: border security.

Fencing is one of the touchiest subjects in this discussion, and I have no idea why. I have heard equally intelligent, equally well-informed people say, “There has to be a fence” and “A fence is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. To solve this one we need to think outside the box a bit. Better yet, we need to build a massive, multilayered, high-tech, roboticized, sensor-laden fence around the box. By the way, Microsoft Word thinks that ‘roboticized’ is a misspelling of “Robotic Zed”. F**k it – let’s hire Robotic Zed to patrol that f***er too.

The fundamental problem is one of economic disparity. A skilled laborer from Mexico can make 3 or 4 times more doing the same work by moving north. That is a heck of an incentive. We here in the North do not want that skilled laborer to come here illegally, but it is clearly in his best interest to do so. There are not many ways to make it less likely that he will come. We can either make it less easy for him to get here, or less profitable for him to be here.

So far I’ve tried to address everyone’s concerns. BJeezus I’m tired. If you feel strongly about something I didn't mention in the Left/Right list, please post a comment. I'll try to address it. Tomorrow I will actually propose a practical solution.

“Pay It Forward” and “Born in East L.A.” both seemed like good titles, but I couldn't choose. So instead, I’m going to call it “The Smartest Compromise Possible in the Ongoing U.S. Illegal Immigration Debate: Part I”

My last article was an appetizer, but this one is the meat course. It is an entire churrascaria in one dish. It is the essay equivalent of a sautéed scallop wrapped in fried bacon, popped into a roasted chicken, stuffed in a deep fried duck, inserted lovingly into a broiled turkey and then finally placed into a spit-roasted butter-basted capybara (the pork of the rodent order). Anyway, now that I have tortured my meaty analogy and it has died on the grill, down to business. This article is about immigration policy.

By the way, it is near impossible to be serious with a 15 pound cat sleeping on your head and occasionally licking your eye. But I vow to do my best. Immigration Policy.

There are about 10 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. right now. Their lives, and the lives of American citizens and legal residents will be hugely impacted by how America chooses to handle the immigration status of those who are not currently in the country legally.

If you think this is an exaggeration, let me throw a fact at you. Experts estimate that between $6 and $8 billion dollars are paid into Medicare and Social Security every year by illegal immigrants using fake or stolen social security numbers. The Social Security Administration is aware of this, and not only includes this income in its budget, but makes the assumption that it will never have to repay these funds to their (illegal) contributors. From what I have read, I estimate that by the time Social Security goes bankrupt, it will have collected $130 billion USD of funds from illegal immigrants.

Whether you are liberal or conservative on this issue, it makes no sense to advocate a policy that will fail just because it seems correct. So I generally fall into this camp: if you are here illegally, you cut in line. You don’t get rewarded for that. Without a doubt there are a billion people in the world that would like to legally immigrate to the U.S. The majority of them are deterred by the hellish bureaucracy, cost, and tiny probability of acceptance. Did you know that the average waiting time for a foreign sibling of a U.S. citizen to receive an immigrant visa is 11 years? Check it out here.

Before I tip my hand and you figure out where I stand on this horribly divisive issue, let’s enjoy the fleeting possibility that you and I might agree. And since we might agree, let’s take a minute to civilly discuss the major Immigration-related issues on both the right and the left.

On the right:

1. People should not be rewarded for breaking U.S. law.
2. People who followed the law and are going through the immigration process legally should not be penalized.
3. It is meaningless to discuss amnesty if new workers without visas will flood in after reform.
4. Illegal immigrants do not pay taxes but consume/use costly services and infrastructure.
5. Not having English as a national language spoken by all destabilizes society and divides us.
6. Illegal immigrants repress wages for Americans.
7. Unsecured borders are a real threat to the policing of terrorist threats.

On the left:

1. Not providing a path to citizenship for people who have lived and worked here for a significant time might create a permanent underclass that does not feel ownership in their country. This could undermine our culture and divide us.
2. Expelling a large number of workers in a short period of time could seriously damage the U.S. economy.
3. The current situation is not unprecedented. Historically, the U.S. has had a higher % of immigrants before.
4. Many families may be split up by an aggressive policy of expulsion.
5. Demonizing “illegal” workers may cause racism to worsen.
6. Illegal immigrants largely do the work that U.S. workers are unwilling to do.
7. Children of illegal workers, many born in the U.S., will be greatly harmed by the expulsion of their parents.

I’m not taking sides yet. Let’s just agree for now that this is a fair representation of the points made by each extreme. If it is, then a good compromise should address all 14. Surprisingly, it isn’t really hard to do.

But it takes a long, loooooong time. This article is 12 pages long now, and even though it is finished I’m going to split it up into parts. Consider this the end of Part I. Night!

Ps…anyone know a detergent that will get cat drool out?

This Article Is an Appetizer and a High Colonic

Yeah. How many other bloggers feed you and clean you out (uh...intellectually speaking) before dinner, eh? One, that's how many.

Several years ago, I met a young man in Shanghai who was living a very dangerous life. I’ll call him ‘Deuce’. He was American, and two years before he had been a student at an Ivy League school. Deuce went to Beijing during his junior year abroad. He never went back home. He dropped out of school and worked as a laborer in a noodle making factory in northern China for several months before eventually becoming a drug addict, a gigolo, and a pimp. If you think that perhaps he was just a liar - I can vouch firsthand for two of the three items on his C.V. after spending only 3 hours with him and his friends. I met him 6 years ago. By now he has become less of a memory and more of a story for me. But I remember one thing he said: “I won’t take an AIDS test. I don’t want to know.” He spent most of the night talking about how much better it was being a pimp than a gigolo.

Deuce came to mind because I was thinking about Soccer Moms and the recent recall by Mattel of 9.5 million toys. Same damned thing. We humans would rather focus on trivial or insignificant problems that face the panic that rises in us when we attempt to address real ones that affect us at the core. When we are angry we would rather kick our toys than face the schoolyard bully. But we have anger and fear for a reason. They can provide us with the energy to change our environment in both large and small ways. Kicking the toys is like whitewash, masturbation, and painkillers. It doesn’t change the rotten fence, or the fact that you are alone, or your sadistic boss. It just lets you survive another day without addressing your problems.

If you want something, if you are afraid of something, or if something makes you mad, declare your own personal “No B.S. Day” and on that day try directing your fear and frustration at the problem. See what happens. If you don’t like it you can always go back to being dysfunctional. My personal "No B.S. Day" is the coming Tuesday, August 21st and I'm going to use it to talk about Immigration Reform. I have this idea that lefties think is horrifying and righties thing is too harsh - but everyone in the middle seems to like it. Weird eh? Tuesday.

Tug of War

What a funny name. It could be a hand-job that you get when you are on R&R, or that feeling that young people get when they think about joining the Army. Of course the other tug-of-war is where two teams hold on to a rope and pull as hard as they can in opposite directions. Ideally there is a mud pit in the middle. With or without mud pit, this is the one I’m thinking of today.

Now if you were expecting a segue from the mud pit tug-of-war to whatever is coming next, give it up. I promise I’ll connect back to it later. For now, get ready for a jolt. *Jolt* Ever since 9/11 I’ve been thinking a lot about the Big Ideas that divide my culture. Scientific Thought vs. Religious Dogma. Consumption vs. Conservation. Pacifism vs. Aggression. Globalization vs. Protectionism. Multiculturalism vs. Xenophobia. Security vs. Civil Rights. There are plenty more but those are some of the big ones.

Something I have noticed is that at any given point in time, each individual seems to come down squarely on one side or another of each of these spectra. Now because it is late, and I’m full of caffeine, and I am feeling particularly imbalanced from the fact that there is deodorant only under my left arm, I’m going to take a detour here. It has no deodorant because my cat licked it off while I was trying to write. For some reason my oldest cat considers licking the deodorant out of my right armpit one of the greatest pleasures in life. Eating deodorant can’t be good for him, but damned if it isn’t hard to write and fight him off at the same time. I guess that means that I’m going to use the TV as a babysitter later in life. I wonder if you can use the V-chip to block everything that isn’t R- or NC-17 rated. I clockwork-O my kids to make up for how my little sister raises hers. We could average out to normal. Or not. Maybe I could just stick with the armpit theme, smear honey under both arms and let the kids go to town while I enjoy the quiet and concentrate on my writing. I’m an optimist, obviously.

Okay, break’s over. So why do we not just take – but also actively encourage such polarized views? We even have sayings that glorify this. One of the most oft-repeated is “You either stand for something, or you stand for nothing.” Something or nothing? With me or against me? Check out this one from ol’ Teddy Roosevelt: “The pacifist is as surely a traitor to his country and to humanity as is the most brutal wrongdoer.”

Yargh. We are not only extremely polarized, but we kind of hate people that aren’t. Why would this be? And that is when I started to think of tug of war. And I remembered something my brother-in-law said about group estimates being particularly accurate. Here is what I think. Our crazy penchant for extreme views is by design. It is an evolved and probably very efficient way of reaching stable equilibria given the restrictions in the way we think and act. But forget that for a bit.

Let’s look at some other facts. Young humans are great at absorbing large amounts of data. That is kind of stage 1. We always learn from our direct experiences, but when we are very young we also pay a lot of attention to what our caregivers believe. In the absence of strong personal experiences young people typically draw their learning from primary caregivers. As we get a bit older - probably starting at 7 and ending around 11 or 12 we do a 180 degree turn and we focus our learning on our peers and social network. Almost obsessively. This starts to ebb for most people by age 17 or so. We then begin to formulate a largely persistent worldview. It can take up to 10 years or so but rarely takes longer. The timeline varies for each individual, but the order is the same for most. First we learn from our family, then we learn from our friends. All the while we learn directly from our environment. At the end of the primary learning we decide what makes sense give the set of direct and indirect learning, and there we tend to stay. An elephant never forgets.

From the point of view of social equilibrium, we learn to pick some tug-of-war games to focus on, and then we pick a side. Once we pick a side we rarely switch, and we tend to resent those that do. Look up the word traitor. But it is okay, because the game is constantly held in balance by new deciders choosing a team.

Now here is where my analogy gets muddy. The mud pit kind of represents the optimal societal equilibrium, because if the game is balanced to benefit us, the center of the rope is over the mud pit. But over time, the center has to move. For example, at one point in time peace is good (say in 1918), and at another war is good (1941). At other times, it is not clear at all (1971). So in 53 years the location of the mud pit shifts around, and the rope has to be pulled harder by one side or the other to keep the center of the rope above it.

It is 5:10AM, and even in my sleep deprived, catlicked, coffee-addled state of mind I can attack what I have written from several angles. But I’m going to finish anyway. I am now at my main point, which is an examination of this question: Why do we “decide” to structure the game of maintaining our society on tug-of-war games? The answer is that strong opposed forces not only balance each other, but they render relatively weak the influences of radicals.

If most people weren’t really interested in playing the Pacifism vs. Aggression game, for example, then one maniacal individual would have a much greater influence when he rushed up, grabbed the rope, and with a PCP-inspired intensity pulled until he dislocated both shoulders. But when there are 100 million people on each side it only takes a miniscule effort on the other side to counterbalance even a group of maniacs.

While individuals are trivial, individual leaders can be very important, because leaders convince other people to act in unison. In this model, some obvious exceptions to the trivial importance of non-leader individuals are creators of ideas, and assassins. Depending on the place and time, we can idealize or hate both idea-creators and assassins. An idea-creator can quickly or slowly change the balance of a game, or even break up a game – in effect he or she changes the model. An assassin interrupts the program that is running on the “computer” that is society by removing a leader. A leader is an important mechanism of computation in determining equilibrium.

It is late. I’ve barely supported a thing I’ve said, but light = late = done. I hope it made you think at least.

A Beautiful Fall

But it is Spring, you say. Yes, but I'm not talking about that kind of Fall. I am talking about the other kind - where a head hits a desk. They say that it is wrong to speak ill of the dead, and I generally agree. But in this case they are wrong, and today I speak ill.

When I hear the word 'bastard', I think of Jerry Falwell. He was the kind of knee-jerk, opportunistic, anti-intellectual egomaniac that embodies the worst in humanity. If you don't understand the depth of his poisonous effect on American culture (and you enjoyed your lunch but don't relish tasting it again) then don't bother trying to learn about this man.

He was a deceptive, racist sycophant and people like him catalyze the most vicious atrocities that humans are capable of visiting upon one another. He perverted the best tenements of his religion and contorted the words of its text into inhumane positions, taking great pleasure in using these perversions to advocate positions that would - how should I say this - make baby Jesus cry.

He tortured a beautiful philosophy until it cried "Do it to Julia". He was a pimp and a pusher. He was the Stalin to the Lenin. He spun lies from half-truths, knit them into a monstrous evil, and then sold it to the masses. He did as much to harm Christianity as any single man has ever done. He is the reason that atheists and agnostics cringe and scoff when they think of religion. He was the Christian equivalent of a lazy Bin Laden in a fat suit, only more charismatic, dumber, and with a less consistent morality.

If Jerry had been right that there was a hell, he would be in it now. Unfortunately he was probably not, and I will have to accept the fact that rather than suffering for all eternity, he is just gone. Sadly he leaves a legacy of judgementalism and ignorance, and has done a harm to the world that it will take generations of great leaders to undo. Jerry, if you are out there somewhere, burn baby.