Surprising Prediction

Men's Rights Will be Taken Seriously Within the Decade

This is my iffier prediction.

It fundamentally has the same structure as the other predictions: here is an assumption that is widely held without a very logical background. There is increasing tension in the society between the reality and the politically correct, so it is possible to see a sudden flip.

1. In the younger generation, men are the beneficiaries of affirmative action. Without any real data behind this, I think that it in many university campuses, the modal beneficiary of affirmative action is a white male. By this I mean, that if you made a list of all of the people who are only there because of affirmative action (compared to those who would have gotten in on a race-&-gender blind evalution), your list would include more white males than any other group (maybe black males do get a bigger boost on their test scores, but there are just fewer of them).

(If it is true that more white males benefit from affirmative action than any other group, does this change your moral evaluation of affirmative action?).

2. Young single women already make more money that young single men.

3. Mainstream publications have been moving towards paying attention to men's rights for a few years. Slowly, but surely.

The Atlantic is at the forefront of that movement. In the last two years, there was a cover The End of Men and repeated articles about men doing badly. The one classically feminist article that made a splash Why Women Still Can't Have it All was written by someone of an older generation, while the equivalent break-away-article on women problems from a younger female writer was partially a complaint that men are doing badly and so make bad partners.

In the donglegate kerfuffle, I noticed that several writers felt they needed to respond to men rights groups. They did so disparagingly, but they did so. And this is what matters.

4. In personal conversations, I repeatedly observe that people (both men and women) will acknowledge the tension between what they are supposed to say and what they truly observe.

The generation gap is also obvious in this respect.

4. I am not saying that men right movements will be fêted at parties. But neither are feminists!

To their constant amazement, most feminist find that most women are not feminists. Women will say things like "well, I'm not a feminist, but I do think that it is clear that this rule is not good for women and should be changed."

5. "But men's rights movements are just a bunch of sexually deprived emotionally underdeveloped men who are crying that nobody gives them the world on a platter." "Sure, the justice system punishes men more heavily than women: they are the ones who are genetically predisposed to commit crimes. Male rape in prisons, who cares?" "Yes, men drop out of school more than women, but they are not suited for studying."

All of these complaints sound so much like anti-feminist speech that it actually convinces me that they could be the next feminists.

An unrelated subject is whether I think that men's rights groups are right to gripe about men being victims. My answer is mostly focused on American society (I could comment on a few European societies, but I don't think it makes sense to discuss an "European" answer to this question).

I think that men are routinely harmed as men and women are routinely harmed as women. Or did you think that there can only be a group that faces injustice?

In general, my opinion is that in the college-degree class, then men are still favored. A lot. In fact, the higher up you go, the more you see a pro-male bias. In my personal experience, I benefit the most from male privilege in leadership situations: I will often get deferred to as the man if I have to argue my point with a woman in a situation where the decision is mostly about arbitrary preferences. There are other subtler forms of privilege some of which I surely don't even notice, this one is obvious.

The situations where I feel disadvantaged all have to do with children (especially other people's children, they mistrust men much more than women). On the other hand, I also get a big boost every time I do the slightest little thing children-wise, whereas it is expected that women will do 100 time more. Case in point: a few times I stayed with our then-baby daughter while my wife was in another city for work; many people were really impressed with this. Now, my wife stays with our daughter alone 3 or 4 nights a week because our careers are in close-by-but-different cites; everybody thinks it is a convenient compromise for all our interests.

If you're elite, you'll live in a patriarchical society which accepts more women than men in its midst.

In the non-college-degree class, women are, on balanced, favored (college degree being the big distinction between the two classes of American society). In fact, one of the big ways in which men are discriminated against is that the educational system gives them less. Then we socially penalize men with non-elite non-manly jobs. The penal system is harder on men and there are fewer and fewer opportunities to recover from a few youthful mistakes if they resulted in criminal action.

Surprising Prediction

A progressive pro-life movement will emerge in the United States in the generation that are now teenagers

This one is easy:

1. There is little logical relationship between being a progressive and being pro-choice, unless you just define progressive as pro-choice. The link between thinking that labour unions are good idea and that a foetus is not a life with rights is purely incidental.

There is a perceived link in that progressives tend to be pro-women and there is an idea that pro-choice is pro-women. This is fine as abstract argument, but fails to describe reality: that women tend to be (just barely) more pro-life than men.

2. The historical relationship between progressivism and pro-choice politics is very recent. In the US, it dates from the 1980s, and in South America you can find pro-life progressives.

3. The young in the US are more progressive, but more pro-life as well. There is bound to be an overlap between these two groups.

Notice that I am not predicting that the whole progressive movement will become pro-life, not even a majority, but a significant minority. If you think this is hedging too much, let me predict that a radically pro-choice candidate like Obama will become impossible and that you'll see one primary contender in the democratic party that is both very progressive and pro-life (even if she does not win the nomination).

4. The progressive movement is now accepting of fairly extreme pro-maternity opinions. If you've had a child in the elites in the last few years, you will know that the progressive opinion is at least accepting of attachment parenting (I think this understates my case).

The idea that a mother should sacrifice her interests for those of her child is accepted and celebrated. It is even argued, in progressive circles no less, that the woman should sacrifice her interests without any benefits for the child in order to demonstrate that she really cares (foregoing pain relief during labour would be a prime example of this attitude).

The mommy wars perhaps started as Christian stay-at-home-moms versus progressive working-mothers, but they are no longer broken along these lines. These are progressive civil wars in mommyland.

5. The progressive spirit finds its more natural expression in fighting for change rather than in standing against it. This is doubly true if the change being fought for is put in moral terms about the protection of the weak. It thrives on exposing what really goes on in hidden corners of our society, which the establishment have chosen to not discuss.

I think I do not need to spell out how the pro-life movement can be couched in the terms above. I can imagine an exposé of the abortion industry being marketed as this century's `The Jungle <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle>`__.

(I'm neither a progressive nor pro-life, by the way.)

Surprising Prediction

Over the next 10 to 15 years, Europe will go through a religious revival.

1. Demographics. This argument is simple: religiosity is hereditary (culturally and genetically), religious people tend to have more children than the non-religious, therefore, religion wins in the end. I think this is an important phenomenon and it is now starting to make an impact.

2. Privatized religion. Religion has been privatized in Europe: while 100 years ago, every state had its own church and was heavily involved in suppressing any alternatives; nowadays, it is mostly a free-market. The muslim population had an important role to play here as they were suing to be allowed to open mosques. However, evangelicals can and do take advantage of these openings. Privatized religion is more effective at getting converts than the state-run monopolies: it also gives the consumer a wider choice of practices and beliefs so that each can believe the god that suits them best.

3. Conversion. Most die-hard anti-religion types had a very religious upbringing and rebelled against it (the Monty Python were all very knowledgeable about the Christianity they mocked in Life of Brian). Their children are rebelling by going to Sunday school (or the Madrassa). Even when it does not go that far, it also means that that the young generation has not grown up in an environment with constant fights about religion.

There is also a confusion between being anti-Catholic Church (or Church of Sweden, or whatever the established religion was), anti-religion, or anti-supernatural. In the past, these thinking strands would mesh together. The rationalists would provide ammunition, the priests would be corrupt and anti-reform. Nowadays, they break apart. After all, if your beef with religion was that priests did not practice what they preached, then a more fundamentalist preacher will satisfy you. And the rationalists are actually a much smaller group than they seemed.

There is still a need for spirituality. There are, of course, secular sources of spirituality. New Age quasi-religion is very widespread. The environmentalist movement has a super-natural spiritual element at its core. It is possible to be a non-supernatural environmentalist [I am one], but that will often put you at odds with the environmentalist movement (the environmentalist movement still has not come to grip with the Urea experiment).

And this Environmentalist New Age BS can easily be a gateway drug to religion. It is surprisingly common to find beliefs in other irrational things like reincarnation, predicting the future, energy flows... Some yoga or whatnot instructors easily make the transition to talking about harmony with the energy of the chakras (another bit of irrationality). At some point, it really becomes a matter of definition whether someone who believes in the super-natural, reincarnation, and takes advice from mystics should be called non-religious.

At the same time, evangelicals are gaining adherents even in the old continent.

4. Religion is already heavily under-represented in the public sphere. The public sphere in Europe is still dominated by secular types and atheists, but they are not representative of the population as a whole.

In the last few years, there have been religious demonstrations numbering millions of people in European capitals (protesting against gay marriage). This means that a change can actually come abruptly as the tabu of religion is broken.

Or, in this more democratic world, it can come about from outside the establishment (as Fox News did).

This is actually what I mean by religious revival: it will be again acknowledged as part of the public discussion, instead of needing to hide behind euphemisms.

Three surprising predictions

The context of the three posts above was a question by Elidorado on twitter:

I would like to hear everyone’s answer to Tyler’s question: “What is your most surprising prediction?” marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolu…

— Eli Dourado (@elidourado) April 19, 2013

I gave three answers.

I don't think all of them will become true or even that they are very likely, but I think they are all underrated.

1. Over the next 10 to 15 years, Europe will go through a religious revival.
2. A progressive pro-life movement will emerge in the United States in the generation that are now teenagers
3. Men's Rights Will be Taken Seriously Within the Decade

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Beeminder

Below is the number of words on my draft of The Libertarian Welfare State, the book I am writing on free-market-based welfare.

In mid-June 2012, I had a deadline as I was submitting a pitch to present the ideas in a public setting, so I worked hard on a summary. Then, nothing. Then, in November 2012, I start using beeminder. The result is obvious. If you have not heard of Beeminder, but would like to get stuff done, check it out.

My rule for beeminder is that I mark as valid any writing session of at least 5 words. As you can see, most of the time, once I break through the activating energy, I actually write more than 5 words.

The book is still below 10,000 words; while I think that it will end up with 40,000 or so. But, now, I can confidently say progress is being made.

Austerity vs. Austerity

1. One very weak patient walked into a hospital and was submitted to a blood transfusion. He felt better. Another weak patient walked into a hospital and was submitted to blood letting. He did not improve. Conclusion: medicine is unpredictable, unlike physics: when you mess with someone's blood, you never know what's going to happen.

2. The New York Times on Latvian austerity: the government laid off a third of its civil servants with the result that in the second half of 2010, after less than 18 months of painful austerity, Latvia’s economy began to grow again and unemployment has fallen from more than 20 percent in early 2010, but was still 14.2 percent in the third quarter of 2012. This is unlike the case in Portugal and Greece, where austerity has also been tried and growth is lacking and unemployment is still rising. Conclusion: economics is unpredictable, unlike physics: with austerity, you never know what's going to happen.

3. Except that neither Portugal nor Greece laid off a single civil servant. Almost all "austerity" in the PIGS has come from higher taxes (in Portugal, most of the "cuts" to civil servant salaries are in the form of higher taxes also borne by the private sector). The state in Portugal has increased as a share of GDP to the highest level ever, while the Latvian state retreated and left room for the private sector. They are radically different policies, almost opposites. So, if they have different results, we don't need to throw our hands up in the air and say Oh, it's complicated.

4. The NYT is right that Latvia should have devalued its currency. It should have done so in addition to the austerity measures. The Eurozone too should devalue its currency (the Euro). The NYT is silly in suggesting that this option is closed to the 16 countries that form the Euro. Of course, they can devalue. And they should, but have repeatedly chosen not to.

Airlines

I wrote previously that it is sometimes easier to understand Portugal as a very successful third-world country than a poorly working first-world one.

Today the Portuguese government backed down on the idea of privatizing the state-owned airline, TAP. The official statement mentioned technical doubts on the financial structure, but there had been a strong campaign against it, including a strong campaign by Publico, the main Portuguese daily newspaper.

From Wikipedia we can retrieve a list of countries which still have a fully, or almost fully (>90%), state-owned airline:

• Afghanistan
• Algeria
• Angola
• Argentina
• Armenia
• Bahamas
• Belarus
• Bhutan
• Bolivia
• Botswana
• Brunei
• Burundi
• Cambodia
• Cayman Islands
• China
• Costa Rica
• Croatia
• Cuba
• Czech Republic
• Ecuador
• Eritrea
• Estonia
• Ethiopia
• India
• Indonesia
• Iran
• Laos
• Latvia
• Mongolia
• Morocco
• Mozambique
• Myanmar
• Namibia
• Nauru
• Nepal
• North Korea
• Oman
• Pakistan
• Panama
• Papua New Guinea
• Philippines
• Portugal
• Qatar
• Romania
• Serbia
• South Africa
• Sri Lanka
• Sudan
• Suriname
• Tajikistan
• Tanzania
• Trinidad and Tobago
• Venezuela
• Zimbabwe

There are a bunch of previously-communist countries in Eastern Europe, Portugal, and most of the third-world.

Two links on the EU

1. The Eurozone NGDP Catastrophe. Moneyshot: Eurozone NGDP is up only 2.47% since [the second half of] 2008 Not 2.47% per year, rather 2.47% in four years! Insanity.

In the meanwhile, the ECB is not even sure whether it should do something about this Mmmm, inflation at around 1%, unemployment growing... Does this economy need more stimulus or will things get out of contrl? They're not sure. Let me repeat really slowly: inflation is, when properly measured (take out the effects of tax raises), is around 1%, unemployment is growing without bounds. Should there be more stimulus. They're still not sure. Who are these idiots?

2. The EU, overall, has had a good run lately, though. Particularly, when it comes to the less well-off states. We should not forget that either.

Looking at Eurostat data, in 1995, there were several states with a GDP per capita of half or less of the EU average. All of them grew even if compared with 2011:

• Hungary: from 51% to 66%
• Slovakia: from 47% to 73%
• Poland: from 43% to 64%
• Croatia: from 46% to 61%
• Estonia: from 36% to 67%
• Lithuania: from 35% to 66%
• Romania: from 33% to 49%
• Latvia: from 31% to 58%
• Bulgaria: from 32% to 46%

Now, only two states have a GDPpc less than 50% of average: Bulgaria at 46% and Romania at 49%.

Yes, the wealthier nations of the Eurozone did poorly, but the success of the poorer states needs to count for something too.

3. By the way, look at Ireland over the medium-term: from 103% (Italian-levels, in 1995) to 126% just before joining the Euro, to 129% (Dutch levels, in 2011). They fell of the pedestal (147% in 2007), but are still doing pretty OK.

4. Takehome message: EU good, ECB bad.

The EU is great! We should have more EU.

The ECB is a disaster! They should be taken 'round the warehouse and made to listen to Vogon poetry in simultaneous translation.

Tax, Overtax, and the Surtax

At the highest tax bracket in Portugal (over 250k€ for a household), you will be subjected to the tax (48%), the surtax (3.5%) and the overtax (5%)! (In portuguese: a taxa, a sobretaxa e taxa extraordinária). Whatever you think of the total rate (56%—which is after 30% of income tax, for a total of 70%), adding all these surcharges to avoid saying the real value is stupid.

The radio journalist actually said The number of families in this bracket is very small and has been falling despite the recent rate increates. Despite? If the rate increases have any impact on the number of families who declare 250k€ is to make it smaller as people work less, compensate themselves differently (in legal and illegal ways) or move to tax-friendlier regimes.

Most of the tax-emigration, though, I think is happening in the intermediate brackets; households in the 100k€ brackett can almost halve their tax bill by moving and still receive much better public services. Most tax-emigrants do not really think themselves as tax refugees either (and might even deny it).

The Grand Bargain

The Grand Bargain that can be struck in Europe goes something like this:

1. The European Central Bank (ECB) prints five trillion euros or so and promises not to neutralize them.
2. The ECB gives those 5 trillion to the governments of Germany, Holland, and Finland, and France.

That's it. This is the grand bargain where everybody wins and which nobody wants to take. The PIGS gain in step 1, the rest gain in step 2. Win-win.

The PIGS have been getting a few crums from the ECB, which the North finds unfair (and it is completely against the treaties). So, rebalance the system by giving them something as well.

In the meanwhile, everybody wins from the monetary stimulus.

Today's Edition of Portugal Must Leave the Euro

The European Central Bank decided today not to do anything more to stimulate the economy.

Notice the stupidity in this reasoning: Owing to high energy prices and increases in indirect taxes in some euro area countries, inflation is likely to remain above 2 percent for the remainder of 2012, therefore, we do not need to do anything else do help.

Without the tax increases, inflation in Portugal has been around 1% or less for the last few years! We need more.

It should have been 3 or 4 per cent. If it had been so, we might not have needed the tax increases in the first place.

Population

While we are playing austerity, the real issue that will bring down the Portuguese economy is still around the corner. This is not just a Portuguese issue, and it affects Germany as much as the PIGS (not Ireland who, as good Catholics, still have babies).

This (the red line) is an estimate of the population going forward. Data was taken from Pordata and I just project birth and death rates forward assuming that all of the deaths happen in old people. It is a rough estimate, which is why I drew it in this "hand-drawn" style. One particular misestimation is that it assumes forward the average birth rate of the years 2005-2010, which is higher than it was in 2011 (and 2012 will likely be even lower). Still, we can expect that over the next 10 years or so, population will be stable, and then a crash starts, where Portugal loses about 1 million every 10 years (that's 100,000 people, a medium-sized town, per year).

The blue line shows a sort of dependency ratio. This is the number of people over 65 divided by the number in the ages 20-65 (all people in these ages, many of which might not be working). Around 2035, there will be 1 person over 65 for every person in the age group 20-65!

Let me repeat that: if the current trends continue, we can expect that around 2035 (and henceforth, forever), there will be one person over 65 for each person in the age group 20-65.

The migratory balance is probably now a net negative (more people moving out of the country as moving in), so that's another net negative.

Another thing that I actually did not realise is how far back the drop in fertility goes. Here is the curve of births per 1000 from 1960 (the earliest year in Pordata's data) to last year:

(The script to generate these plots is here)

MAS

These are spread around Lisbon. They are from the Movement for a Socialistic Alternative.

I laugh every time I see one. It lists a few "crimes": BPN (a bank which was bailed out after it was found out that previous management had been fraudulent), some public-private partnerships, the expensive submarines that the navy bought, and, finally, the funny part: Madeira's debt.

You see, Madeira is an island and half, which are part of Portugal, but have a good amount of autonomy. Lately, it turned out that through semi-legal chicanery, the local government had accumulated a fairly large debt and wanted the central government to bail them out.

Now, a lot of people in Portugal are unhappy about this. The funny part is the total lack of perspective. A similar Bewegung für eine Sozialistische Alternative, the German version of this leftist movement could very well list Debt of Portugal in its list of complaints against the right-wing German government! In fact, they would even be more right to complain about bailing Portugal out: it's not the same country, they are not a government above the Portuguese government, and they signed a bunch of agreements where Portugal promised never to ask for a bailout.

(As for the BPN, I will just make the same comment I made wrt Bankia. Bailing out banks or any other industry is socialism for the well-connected [is there any other kind], not the free-market. In the free-market, their investors would have lost their money, not been bailed out by daddy state).

A few notes on intrade

1. Intrade is not perfect, which is why I have dabbled in it from time to time. But, remember, the traditional retort to skeptics applies: If you think it is so bad, why aren't you rich trading there?

2. Intrade just "got it wrong" on the SCOTUS and the mandate. They were giving 75% chances to it being struck down. Actually, if they give things 75% chance and they do not go the other way at least 1 in 4, then intrade would be wrong in a much more important sense and you could get rich on intrade. I have not seen any longer term statistics on their predictive power.

3. Every so often, someone looks up intrade and says: Look, it is silly: Obama has 54% and Romney 42%, therefore there is only a 96% that either will be President.

Again, if you think this is so silly, why don't you just buy both Obama and Romney and make that tidy profit? There are two points to consider:

(a) The percentage value that intrade gives you is actually not corrected for the fact that they are holding your money. If you buy both Obama and Romney and one of them does get elected, you are basically lending intrade at about 8~10% a year; not bad, but how's their risk rating, what if they go broke?

On a related subject, the intrade interface is slightly misleading: you want to buy when you think that the event is more likely than the current price, even if you still think it will not occur. So, if the current estimate is ~5% and you think it actually will occur 1 in 10 times, then you should buy.

(b) A 5% chance for an election is a once-in-a-century-event. Thinking that one of the candidates will be unavailable (dead, very ill, victim of a scandal so big that their party switches the candidate at the last minute so they can "spend more time with their families") is such a remote possibility that it will not happen even once in a century.

4. Again, if intrade is so bad, why aren't you rich?

Leaving the Euro

1. What Portugal and Greece need are a more stimulative monetary policy.
2. Ideally, the European Central Bank would step up to the task.
3. Since, it does not, they are best off leaving the Euro zone and pursuing an independent monetary policy.
4. Or they can do nothing and blame Germany for everything.

Missing the Point in Greece

Whatever government wins in Greece will either (1) take the country out of the Euro or (2) stay. They will also do a bunch of other unimportant things on the labour market, regulation, etc.

If they choose option 1, the country will have a little economic boom and they will reap the credit from all the unimportant things. It they choose option 2, the quagmire will continue and it will just go to show that all the unimportant things were wrong.

Bankia and the Free Market

The Spanish government is bailing out Bankia at the tune of 19 billion euros. For some reason, this massive state intrusion in the economy is being touted by some as a failure of the free market.

There is nothing free-market about bailouts.

"Capitalism without bankruptcy is as Christianity without Hell."

—Frank Borman

Whoever lent Bankia money should lose (at least part of) it. It is in society's interest that such affairs be solved quickly, but there are other solutions other than bailing everybody out 100%. Here is one: just auction off Bankia next week. Whatever money is raised is distributed by the creditors (in order of priority) and the new owner assumes responsibility for making the bank a going concern.

There is no reason why this cannot be done in a few days.

Libertarian Welfare State

For the last few years, I have been thinking about something. For the last six months, I have been working on a book about it. For the last weeks, I have started discussing it with friends. Today, I am talking about it publicly.

My book will be called The Libertarian Welfare State. The major thesis is explained in the following quote from Hayek:

There is little reason why the government should not also play some role, or even take the intiative, in such areas as social insurance and education, or temporarily subsidize certain experimental developments. Our problem here is not so much the aims as the methods of government action.

It argues that a libertarian welfare state is not only more efficient, but morally superior as it treats the beneficiaries with greater respect.

It can be seen as a liberaltarian project, if you wish, but I rather just call it straight libertarian. Or we can start calling Hayek and Milton Friedman liberaltarians.

I will be using the twitter moniker @libwelfare for this project (in case you do not care to follow my other ramblings).

I have written a few pages long-hand and made several notes, but when I start typing, this will show up on my github account. Ignore this if you don't know what github is.

(I know that R. Frank almost wrote a book with the same name. I think I had the name before he did [according to google, I have references going back to 2009]. At least, I independently came up with it. Also, I think this is a better name for my book and Darwin Economy is a better book for his).

Ideology

Reporters frequently refer to items in the Portugal/Troika Memorandum as impositions, even if they were agreed to by two different Portuguese governments after the Portuguese government asked for and received foreign aid.

They are impositions like a restaurant imposes that I pay my meal after I walked in, ordered, and ate.

Still today, the government could refuse to take the money and the impositions. It could even take the country out of the Euro.

Same thing goes for Greece (and, there, the government should have taken the country out of the Euro months ago---that they continue to not do so is almost negligent).

Paragraph of the Day

Paragraph of the day:

A century or so ago, German sociologist Max Weber observed that Protestant countries in northern Europe tended to outperform the Catholic and Orthodox countries in the south of the continent. Weber believed that the northerners had a stronger work ethic, were thriftier, and possessed more of what is today called “social capital.” Though Weber attributed these differences to Protestantism itself, we should note that countries did not randomly convert to Protestantism. The roots for the cultural differences might very well go even deeper.

Tino Sanandaji

Germany

I am getting tired of listening people on the radio drone on and on about European solidarity, shared European responsibility, the joint construction of the European project, investment in European growth and other ways of saying that Germany should pay for everything.

Or they do that leftist thing of pointing out how people are hurting and how Germany has all this money, implying that we should be able to just take it.

Here's the thing: Germany will not simply pay for PIGS deficits. It doesn't really matter how good your moral arguments that they should pay, they won't. The German voter does not want to pay any money to the Portuguese state or the Greek state.

Also, calling Germans Nazis, however subtly, is not a good negociation tactic (anymore, it used to work with a previous German generation). You are probably better off calling them the callous rich, but it won't work either.

I have repeatedly argued that the ECB is at fault and should push for monetary expansion (money is way too tight). But this need not, should not, involve transfers from Germany to the PIGS. In fact, I think the solution probably involves the ECB buying a whole lot of German Bunds (and whatever the Dutch call their bonds) with newly printed money.

Criminosos

Diz a ministra da Justiça:

A opção comercial de exposição de produtos ao público não pode deixar de ser acompanhada pela adopção, de quem faz essa escolha, dos meios necessários e adequados à sua vigilância e salvaguarda.

citada pelo Público, ao tornar os pequenos furtos crimes privados.

Isto trata-se mesmo de resolver o problema errado. Se o problema era que os custos com pequenos furtos custavam demasiado, ora a solução era torná-los mais simples e baratos de resolver. Não havia, na maioria dos casos que vieram na comunicação social, razão nenhuma para não terem sido resolvidos por um juiz, oralmente, em poucos minutos, sem perda de direitos para ninguém porque não parecia que os acusados contestassem sequer a acusação.

E sem o Estado desistir de fazer cumprir a lei. Porque assim parece que quem expõe produtos ao público é que é culpado. Não quem rouba.

Sentence of the Day

Sentence of the day:

John Tuld, who appears to be the villain of the movie [...],does exactly the opposite of what his model, Dick Fuld, one of the widely-recognized and vilified villains of the actual financial crisis, did in real life.

Noah Millman

America & Europe

From the ongoing series things I repeat all the time:

David Brooks:

We Americans cherish our myths. One myth is that there is more social mobility in the United States than in Europe. That's false. Another myth is that the government is smaller here than in Europe. That's largely false, too.

...

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development recently calculated how much each affluent country spends on social programs. When you include both direct spending and tax expenditures, the U.S. has one of the biggest welfare states in the world. We rank behind Sweden and ahead of Italy, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark, Finland and Canada. Social spending in the US is far above the organization's average.

Note that the reverse is true too: Europeans like to think that they have a bigger social net than the US, which is not true. Some EU states do have a better social net (not all), but it is not bigger.

Once you look beyond rhetoric and into policy, the US is a Northern European economy (if anything, it's on track to being less free-market than Nordic Europe as they become more free-market and the US becomes less so).

Unplugged

Maybe Malcom Gladwell should write this book:

(Image from Kris Carillo, under CC-BY license).

Link of the Day

Link of the day.

Portugal has the same economy it had in 2002. I'd say it has been a lost decade, but I don't want to be overly optimistic.

China Outsources to Europe

China is outsourcing to the EU.

I think this is horrible. Europeans should not be taking jobs away from the Chinese worker just because they are willing to work for very little money.

HT: Tyler Cowen

ECB Tightens Policy

This is the most important economic news of the week:

ECB Tightens Policy

Banana Republic

From the ongoing series is this Cuba yet?

Military officers threaten the defense minister on radio and television. They say that they see no reason to be submissive.

In a decent country, these gentlemen would now be out of a job.

What a fucking Banana Republic!

Agreement

In the US, political players are in broad agreement, therefore disagreements can be vicious. In EU, there are fundamental disagreements, therefore it becomes necessary to repeat that we all agree.

Frase do Dia/Sentence of the Day

"L'inflation n'est pas le problème, c'est la solution"

Paul Krugman

Startup Incubator Incubator

Are you up for reelection next year and need to look trendy? Does your company have too much money and want to be invited to the right parties? All your friends went to Davos and you can't even get a date on Friday?

Then start a startup incubator! And the Rabbit Startup Incubator Incubator will help you do that.

Hugo Chavez

Evolution of caviar-left speech on Hugo Chavez

1. Isn't it wonderful what he is doing? Your skepticism is hidden fear that he'll actually succeed and make capitalism look bad.
2. I don't support everything he's doing, of course; but overall it's a big step towards an alternative model.
3. Yes, there are bad things in his regime, but he is not a dictator (you right-wing people always use the word dictator for men of the people). He is doing some good things too. On balance good.
4. All I'm saying is that not everything is bad in Venezuela.
5. How dare you bring up Hugo Chavez? I have always denounced him as a dictator. He is not at all what I defend.

We are now between 4 and 5.

Free Milk

Some evil religious organisation has been giving milk to poor people.

Don't they know that it's illegal (Portuguese supermarkets were fined for selling milk too cheaply)? Someone should stop this!

Modern World

Two great articles on modern manufacturing:

• Making it in America
• How the US lost out on iPhone work

I do find it a bit grating that none of the articles found a need to address the underlying moral question of why we should accept policies that make the $13/hour American worker better off and hurt the $2/hr Chinese worker. At $13/hr, you are in the top 10% worldwide.

(Note to Portuguese readers: we often have an anti-China speech imported from the US or France, but Portugal is much closer to $2 than to $13 for unskilled labour).

Moving in an Ikea Age

Here's how you get furniture from point A to point B:

1. While at A, get rid of your things (sell, donate, trash...)
2. Move from A to B.
3. Once you get to B, buy exactly the same things you had.

Teaching Webcraft to Free Range Students, Task I

I am taking Greg Wilson's online course on How to Teach Webcraft and Programming to Free-Range Students.

The first task is to relate the recommendations in this education study guide to our experience (as teachers and students).

I will talk about what I did for my Programming for scientists course and how it relates to the recommendations.

Space learning over time. I did a good job with the programming part of the course where Python examples kept coming up and being reviewed, but a lousy one with other aspects. In particular, some of the tools that I wanted the students to learn (the shell and version control) were only mentioned in their respective sections.

Interleave worked example solutions with problem-solving exercises I think I did some of this, going through code examples. I also used to review the homeworks (after they were due) in class and go through the solutions. The major reason was for efficiency, but it might get me some cookie points here.

Combine graphics with verbal descriptions I would like to have done a bit more slides (if I had the time), but I did most of the verbal communication orally.

Connect and integrate abstract and concrete representations of concepts I certainly tried to do this, but I am going to refrain from evaluating whether I did it well. I had a lecture class and a practical class. They had the same format (lecture), but I tried to do more worked-out examples in the practical and more concepts in the lecture.

Use quizzing to promote learning There was a multiple choice homework every week (plus a single long-answer question or coding problem) and at the end of the first module (which was an introduction to Python), I had a full in-class quizz. This was done by show of hands, ungraded, with discussions. I mostly did this for expediency as the class was not worth enough credits for me to assign time-consuming homeworks, but I think it worked out very well.

Use pre-questions to introduce a new topic Other than as rhetorical devices, I did none of this.

Use quizzes to re-expose students to key content As I said, I did a lot of short quizzes as homework. I could have been a bit more pro-active in class, though.

Help students allocate study time efficiently Nope, I did none of this.

Ask deep explanatory questions Unfortunately, I refrained from assigning questions that were too deep as homework as it was a low-credit class. In this context, it might be programming that is most important, in the sense that I want the students to be better programmers (i.e., a skill) and not verbal or conceptual knowledge (I'm sure that there are educational science words for these concepts, but I don't know what they are).

Not in Portugal

Marxists did lose a big argument, one we now know as "the 20th century."

-- Will Wilkinson

In Portugal, they are still taken seriously.

Precaridade

If this were to become law (that after 18 months a temporary employment contract needs to become a permanent one), how many people would be fired after 18 months?

People who have more specialised jobs would probably make the transition to a permanent position, people which are more easily replaceable would be easily replaced.

By Paying

If I don't pay for my food, I don't eat; I'll die. I'm not even 70 years old.

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