Entries from September 2008 ↓

From the ongoing series utilitarianism leads to strange conclusions:

A 2004 study by Frank Sloan and Jan Ostermann at Duke University found that heavy drinkers contribute slightly more to Social Security, through their higher average lifetime earnings, than nondrinkers do. What’s more, since alcohol abusers tend to die sooner than moderate or nondrinkers, they draw less money, over time, from the Social Security trust fund.

Their conclusion: the elimination of heavy drinking (three or more drinks a day) from each successive group of American 25-year-olds would cost the Social Security trust fund $3 billion over the cohort’s lifetime.

(in freakonomics blog via free exchange)

Should we have heavy drinking campaigns? Binge drinking is patriotic (maybe binge drinking better than paying taxes).

It’s not uncommon for health improvements to have bad impacts on social security. Smoking also seems to be good for the health of the state. Dying young is patriotic.

From the on-going series small-c conservatism does not always argue for traditional values:

The day after the California Court decision to legalise Gay Marriage, I heard what sounded like an older woman on NPR saying something to the effect of Marriage should be between a man and a woman. It’s the Law of the land!

A remarkably large number of people take moral clues from legislation. As I see it, legislation can be downstream from morality, but never upstream from it (i.e., legislation derives from morality, which may cause them to be similar; but one should never derive morality from legislation).

In this particular case, it was extra curious because the ruling had just changed the law. If anything, the woman should be shouting Marriage is between two people of any sex. It’s the Law of the land!

In general, the “law=morality” heuristic (“heuristic” is a fancy word for “rule of thumb”) has the effect of adding a lot of inertia to political systems, which is most often not a bad thing. In this particular case, it is arguing for gay marriage.

Therefore, it doesn’t surprise me that support for Proposition 8, which would over-ride this ruling and deny gays the right to marry, is waning. People are taking their cues from the law, acting small-c conservatively, and accepting gay marriage.

From the ongoing series I like to disagree with Libertarians by quoting Hayek to them:

Bob Barr, the Libertarian Party’s nominee for president, has filed a lawsuit in Texas demanding Senators John McCain and Barack Obama be removed from the ballot after they missed the official filing deadline.

[...]

Texas election code §192.031 requires that the “written certification” of the “party’s nominees” be delivered “before 5 p.m. of the 70th day before election day.” Because neither candidate had been nominated by the official filing deadline, the Barr campaign argues it was impossible for the candidates to file under state law.

[...]

“The facts of the case are not in dispute,” says Russell Verney, manager of the Barr campaign. “Republicans and Democrats missed the deadline, but were still allowed on the ballot. Third parties are not allowed on the ballot for missing deadlines, as was the case for our campaign in West Virginia, yet the Texas secretary of state’s office believes Republicans and Democrats to be above the law.”

Funny people, these Libertarians.

If they read some Hayek, they would perhaps appreciate that there is a fundamental difference between legislation (that which is written and passed by legislatures) and Law (that which one is expected to follow). While legislation certainly posits that all parties are equal and may even mandated that both major parties be taken of the ballot, the law is that the two major parties are different and will never be taken off the ballot.

They are, of course, correct in complaining that the Law (and often, the legislation) is discriminatory against third parties. This lawsuit is about showing this discrimination more than anything else.

However, such tactics rely on their being some amount of grass-roots outrage that the Libertarian Party (or the Constitution Party or some other Guns-and-Bitterness Party) was taken off the ballot. There isn’t any. This is no more than amusement.

This was asked to Slate’s Dear Prudence:

I was raped by an unknown person and as a result have a lovely daughter who is now 10. My family and close friends know all about her origins. She has always asked about her father, but when she was younger I could deflect the topic. Now I feel that she needs to know something, but I don’t know what to say. I’ve asked my family: My mom is at a loss, and my dad and siblings think I should just tell her that her father died.

It’s a hard question. Whoever asked it, I wish her good luck.

Maybe, instead, we should just accept that the Universe is a Tragic place where people who cannot afford to purchase homes, cannot afford to purchase homes.

Winterspeak

From the ongoing series heard around the office:

“Are you on the web-site team?”

“It’s not a team, it’s a committee. A team is a group of people who actually do something.”

The price of gas is spiking in the South (I just filled up at 3.59 in PA, so no problems here). I wonder if this isn’t going to push Obama back into the race in states like Florida, which had been running away from him.

People in Nordic countries view a holiday as a necessity, whereas Brazilians seem happier to stay at home.

The Economist.

So what is the “key difference” between the parties? Rhetoric. When Republicans advocate a small contraction of the welfare state, Democrats claim that Republicans totally oppose the welfare state. And many Republicans oblige them by standing up for “liberty” and “responsibility.” Similarly, when Democrats advocate a small expansion in the welfare state, Republican claim that Democrats oppose free markets. And many Democrats oblige them by saying things like “markets only benefit the rich.”

This rhetorical illusion is so powerful that when a Democrat like Clinton adopts many pro-market reforms, Republicans still hate him as a 60s radical. And when Bush II sharply expands the welfare state, Democrats still hate him as a billionaire’s lackey.

Bryan Caplan

I have wondered about this myself. If Clinton was the best Republican president since the war (as Greenspan said), then Bush personified many of the things that Republicans say they fear from a Democratic administration: he expanded the entitlements of the welfare state (the biggest expansion for decades), he bust the budget (which Clinton had sent into surplus), he increased the national debt, and he expanded the bureaucracy of the Department of Education to meddle into the affairs of local school. He did all of this with encouragement from a Republican Congress. The same Republican Congress passed the highly anti-business and meddlesome Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Yet, Republicans can still claim with a straight face to stand for smaller government and not be laughed out of the room.

Frankly, I don’t fully understand it.

On intrade, McCain passed the 50% mark: the betting markets now think it more likely that he, rather than Barack Obama, will win the Presidential election.