Be fruitful and multiply

I've always wondered why God found it necessary to tell us this.  Or, if you're not a believer, why did a culture find it necessary to exhort its own members to reproduce?  Don't we have a biological imperative?  How did we get here otherwise; why did our ancestors survive?  It's strange to observe that one of the most basic human drives is so vulnerable to collapse, especially once birth control comes into the picture.

David Goldman argues that cultural death causes and is revealed by a collapse in reproduction.  His thesis, focusing on Islamic societies, is that some religions cannot survive the transition from traditional society to modernity.  The hallmark of their failure is that their fertility rate collapses as soon as their women acquire an education. In 1979, before the Iranian revolution, the fertility rate was 7 children per female.  That rate abruptly dropped to 1.6 children per female, just above the disastrous European rate, and an unprecedented "snapping shut of the national womb."  This giant vote of no confidence in the future of the culture induces a frightening social dynamic:

[A] society that suddenly stops having children suffers from cultural despair.  The same cultural despair that curtains off the future for families afflicts policymakers.  Cultural pessimism is a great motivation for strategic adventures.  A nation that fears that it may have no future may be willing to risk everything on the roll of a dice.  Iran has one last big generation of military age men, the ones who were born in the early 1980s before the great weapons.  Nothing but the use of force would stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, with dreadful consequences.  With Iran on the verge of building a nuclear bomb, we have hit crunch-time.  Will the foreign policy establishment connect the dots in time?

This is a sore subject for me, as you can imagine.  I wonder if we've managed the transition well in our own country to a culture in which no one need be fertile unless he or she chooses.  How are the incentives for childbearing different now?  When the choice whether to reproduce or not becomes unconstrained, what makes fathers willing to support their children and their children's mothers?  What makes mothers willing to raise the children?   You'd think it would be obvious, but the demographics tell us it's anything but.  When people acquire choices for the first time, there can be a scary period in which we find out what new motives will operate, and what we have to offer each other to make it all keep working.

Gloria Steinem famously remarked that she had no children because she didn't mate in captivity.  If educating women causes a large fraction of them to adopt this view, what's wrong with the world they've become educated about?  Why should it be necessary to withhold education in order to get them to buy into continuing the race?  We've lost most of our traditional culture and religion.  What is there to replace them with, as a motive for looking to the future in a spirit of sacrifice?

The thinking man's Snopes

I'm enjoying browsing a site called "Skeptics/Stack Exchange," not only because its members try to get a collective handle on interesting disputes of the day, but because they have a filtering system I've never seen used before.  Although newcomers may register freely to use the site, they have to earn "reputation" points before they're allowed to take certain actions.  Apparently anyone may take a stab at posting a question or answering a posted question, and may earn reputation points if the question or answer is admired.  Anyone may also vote on whether a post was helpful, but only people who have accumulated minimum reputation points may vote to approve an answer, or to leave comments addressing whether the question is appropriately stated or the answer is convincing.  (That's a distinction between "helpful" and "substantively appropriate" that I've never seen before.)  There's an elaborate hierarchy of privileges.  It takes a very large number of reputation points to gain the right to close questions.

The effect of linking a good reputation to the right to speak or to control the discussion is to eliminate most flame-throwing and many logical fallacies.  The discussion on climate change managed to include both believers and skeptics in roughly even numbers, with the two sides actually attending somewhat to each others' arguments.  That's a new one for me.

Utah Sheriffs Self-Identify

Their sacrifice will make them easy to round up when the revolution comes, but it does force the Feds to step back and rethink how much they can rely on state and local support if they push too far. The real question, of course, is whether the Feds have any intention of pushing that far.

Pretty strong language in the letter.

Police State (part 43)

Instapundit takes note of this item, from the National Review Online, which encapsulates nicely just what a police state the US is turning into.

There is a Japanese Anime series called "Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex" that takes place in the usual dystopian future--although the fictional Japan depicted isn't quite as bad as the Lost Angeles of "Blade Runner". But a plot point in the series involves conflict between intergovernmental agencies and their armed SWAT teams. Literally, one group is the "Health Ministry Commandos".

I chuckled at that when I first watched it, but I'm not laughing anymore, because that's pretty much what we got here now, when some farmer gets raided by armed agents for selling unpasteurized milk.

Health Ministry Commandos.

The Pope Resigns

Apparently this is the day that everyone decided to run their pre-written obituaries, rather than wait for the man to die. They read a little strangely, given that his ministry doesn't actually end until the end of the month.

I won't presume to judge a man of such accomplishments, but it is clear that he is doing what he thinks is right. We can only hope the College of Cardinals will choose as well again.

Hugo Chavezitis

Walter Russell Mead pokes some gentle fun at David Rothkopf, who fears that the shale boom will distract the country from its real work, like a shot of morphine that "hides the pain" and "clouds the vision":

America, once doomed because it had no more oil, is now even more doomed because it has too much:

It looks like the United States is showing the early symptoms of a particularly nasty case of the Resource Curse.  The dreaded syndrome, also known as Hugo Chávezitis, tends to strike countries when they tap into large finds of oil, gas, or other valuable natural resources.  Although such bonanzas clearly have their advantages, the influx of new wealth often leads countries to neglect real underlying problems or the requirements of long-term growth simply because they can spend their newfound riches to paper over their troubles.

And what are the "real underlying problems" the country needs to be solving?  The usual: "building human capital and promoting sustainable economic growth." The "other drivers of long-term prosperity, such as education and infrastructure."  (Ah, infrastructure:  code for "turn over all your money for boondoggles and pork.")  What's more, although it will be wonderful to convert oil- and coal-burning plants to clean shale gas, that will only make people lose interest in climate change without eliminating enough CO2 to save the world.

The dire warning about Chavez should make the reader stop and consider how our two countries might approach a resource boom differently.  Chavez, no doubt, would love to blather about"building human capital" and promoting "sustainable economic growth," while driving long-term prosperity with "education" and "infrastructure," if only he could commandeer the proceeds of the boom and administer it all through a tight clique of central planners who know best.  Here in the benighted old U.S.A., we haven't quite reached the point where our wise leaders will have the sole power to direct the use of the new resources.   It is to be hoped, therefore, that the private sector will put a lot of them to use driving long-term prosperity with old-fashioned things like widely dispersed business and jobs.

We've got some Hugo Chavezitis going on here, that's for sure, but it doesn't take the form of a shale boom.  It's personified in President Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi, and its primary symptom is the belief that confiscation is a substitute for production, as long as you have progressive ideas for how to spend the loot.

"Because we can, OK?"

Love this very short video, from House of Eratosthenes.  Our curious monkey brain.

Part Time DMV

We knew that corporations would do this -- probably almost all of them, and to the greatest degree they possibly can -- but apparently state governments can also stop employing people full-time to avoid Obamacare.

I remember when the French started cutting to a 35 hour workweek in the hope of creating more jobs. At the time we mocked them, but we've apparently found a way to create a 29 hour limit.

According to My Back of the Envelope Calculation...

A friend of mine with environmentalist leanings directed me to this site tonight. It's opposed to Palm Oil manufacture. It begins:

Borneo and Sumatra are two of the most bio-diverse regions of the world, yet they have the longest list of endangered species.

"Yet"? That's just what you'd expect, isn't it?

A Brilliant Idea

The garish similarities between Look’s 1960 piece and Esquire’s 2013 profile reveal a disheartening lack of progress in between. Male writers have had decades to remedy themselves, but still write jejunely about women, accentuating one isolated, exploitable trait (attractive, rebellious, sweet, rude, slutty, rich) for the sake of producing more easily understood subject matter. Until they learn (or at least try to learn) how to write about female subjects in a way that does not purposefully weave paternalistic generalizations into every paragraph, I propose a moratorium on this stagnant approach to literary writing. Let’s allow women to write about women for a little while. Maybe then we can swap the prevalent illusions of femininity for realistic portraits of women as complex human characters.

I hadn't realized there was a ban on women writing about women. I assume the suggestion is really that only women should write about women. (Especially when a magazine's readership is as obviously interested in complex human portraits as that of Esquire!)

Since we wouldn't want to put male writers out of work, I presume this means that an equal number of women writers for women's magazines will swap jobs with them. I can't wait for the next issue of Cosmopolitan. "Remember all those articles about sex positions we broadcast to everyone in line at the grocery store? Starting this issue, those articles are all written by men. Time to find out what they really want!"

Why, the idea is so brilliant I can't imagine why the magazine publishers haven't adopted it already. Think how much happier their customers will be when we give them what we think they need, instead of what they want.

Of course, it's possible consumers might react badly to being told they have to behave. No problem -- we have a mechanism for forcing good behavior now. We'll just have HHS issue a memo that requires your employer to make sure you are provided with complex human portraits, at absolutely no charge.

Seriously: the people who write articles like the one being complained about are dogs. I get it. Women should be treated with respect, even those disadvantaged by celebrity or tremendous wealth. I agree. This is why I do not read Esquire. Also, though, I think all the celebrity profiles the author cites as shining examples of how women do it better are still a complete waste of your time and energy. Instead of having women write more of them, why not stop writing them entirely?

Never read about a celebrity ever again. Read about math, or history, or musical theory, or astronomy, or something else that interests you. Read the journals of thought, or the great literature of old.

If you do that, you'll be a complex human character. If anyone ever decides to write about you, they'll find they have something to say.

Now I See Why They Translated These Into Chinese

A collection of Firefly Chinese curses, along with partial pronunciation guides. (I say partial because they don't give you the tones, which is a critical part of Mandarin pronunciation.) These are rather colorful!

Pornography Changes People

I have long suspected a link of this type, given how quickly social attitudes have been changing on this point. The authors of the study clearly approve of this trend, given their explanation:

"Our study suggests that the more heterosexual men, especially less educated heterosexual men, watch pornography, the more supportive they become of same-sex marriage," Indiana University Assistant Professor Paul Wright told Secrets.

Explaining the findings of the analysis published in the authoritative Communication Research journal, Wright said, "Pornography adopts an individualistic, nonjudgmental stance on all kinds of nontraditional sexual behaviors and same-sex marriage attitudes are strongly linked to attitudes about same-sex sex. If people think individuals should be able to decide for themselves whether to have same-sex sex, they will also think that individuals should be able to decide for themselves whether to get married to a partner of the same-sex."

On this argument, then, rampant use of pornography = increasing social justice. One can, of course, frame the same facts about how pornography is changing our society in a rather different light -- but that would be "judgmental," I suppose.

(By the way, did you hear about Hitler? I wonder why that report was kept covered up -- it's the sort of thing you'd have thought American propagandists would have been only too delighted to put out after the war. Maybe they thought the Germans had suffered enough.)

Government Can Do Everything (Except What It Should)!

One thing that isn't clear to me is why progressives are eager to have the government assume more responsibility for our lives. We should increase Social Security payments by 20%, but we can't pay to fix the roads. We should make states take on new health care exchange bureaucracies, but they can't afford to test prisoners for STDs before releasing them into the prison's general population. I thought prevention was supposed to be cheaper than treatment, but apparently we've decided to subject our prisoners not only to rape but to resulting serious illness. (Influential nongovernmental organizations are somewhat out to sea on this issue as well. Human Rights Watch has done good work in pressuring the government to address prison rape, but for some reason is celebrating a ruling that it is wrongful to quarantine -- they use the word "segregate" -- people with HIV from the rest of the prison population.)

In addition to being broke, which is a practical objection to increasing the size and scope of government, there are reasons to question the competence of the government to execute its basic functions. Foreign policy and budgetary policy are the two most obvious. We have F-16s to sell to the Egyptian government now that they are no longer an ally, but not to Taiwan, which really is one. We can't pass a budget, and hearings suggest the President is not leading even times of national emergency.

I would like to see basic competence from the government at its existing tasks before we talk about expanding its reach.

UPDATE: By the way, haven't you noticed lately that your groceries aren't nearly expensive enough? The government is here to help!

If It's Going to be a Police State...

...At least it could be a competent police state. And as Glenn Reynolds notes:
"An armed civilian who made this mistake would be tried for every possible crime a prosecutor could imagine. How likely do you think that is here?"

Not very likely. 

Nothing in his life became him like the leaving of it

Bookworm Room has an entertaining post about how differently the Reformation, and everything else in Western History, might have turned out if Richard III had defeated Henry Tudor at Bosworth.

Sentences we never finished reading

WordRake generates an entertaining periodic email warning against legalese tomfoolery.  Today's contribution:

Two Ways to Tell a Judge You Have No Case: 

First, ask for an extension, the more pages the better. . . .  

Second, write something snide, hyperbolic, condescending, or obsequious.   Or all four  . . . .

[This case] is the stuff of which Turow best sellers and other works of "legal fiction" are made, and by which no jurist, either de jure or de facto, would wish to be remembered, but as to which the current chapter is about to be written by the august members of this select Panel -- albeit in a strangly oxymoronic, yet altogether predictable, "unpublished" fashion the very nature of which . . . ." Castillo v. Koppes-Conway, 148 P. 3d 298 (2006).

You get the point.

Joseph Schumpeter Is Looking At You, Atrios

For those of you who may have followed our recent debate on economics all the way to the end, here is a Ph.D. in economics whose plan to save retirement is to raise Social Security benefits, while taxing existing retirement savings in 401ks. There's kind of an interesting logic here.

First, the problem:

Let me be alarmist for a moment, because the fact is the numbers are truly alarming. We should be worried that large numbers of people nearing retirement will be unable to keep their homes or continue to pay their rent.

So obviously the solution is that government must give these people enough money that this does not happen. However:

There are good proposals out there for improving the private aspect of our retirement system.... [b]ut none of these ideas will help people who are nearing retirement. Only the possibility of several decades of compound returns make the personal financing of retirement a realistic idea for most people....

Even if we do find ways to improve the framework for self-funding retirement, how, exactly, do we expect younger workers, who might benefit from these improvements, to start saving significantly for their retirement? Soaring tuition and fees at universities, combined with the associated soaring student loan borrowing, have led many people to start their working lives already deeply in debt.

So, we have a huge government benefit, Social Security, that -- in spite of being one of the largest expenditures of the United States already -- isn't capable of meeting the minimum standard that Dr. Black would set for it (i.e., no one loses their home). The solution is to increase spending by 20%. However, no one can pay for this spending! The about-to-retire can't do it because they already don't have enough money. The not-quite-about-to-retire need to be saving like bandits to avoid being in this trap themselves. And the young can't do it because the cost of a college education is through the roof, and so they are starting their lives in a hole. They'll have to work twice as hard to get out of the hole, and then have to save for this burden we call retirement.

Now, Social Security is a kind of generational insurance program (or, if you like, Ponzi scheme). The idea is that the current retirees draw benefits paid for by younger generations, in return for the promise (or, if you like, forlorn hope) that similar benefits will be paid to them in their turn.

We have just learned that this program fails the current generation about to retire, but increases cannot be supported by the next generation in line, nor the younger generation either.

I would take this as an argument that Social Security has failed, and needs to be replaced. Dr. Black takes it for an argument for its expansion.

This is why our system is dying. Black isn't a bad guy. He has charitable interests at heart. He's very well educated, and even in the subject matter under discussion. Joseph Schumpeter was exactly right about him.


(A further critique is here.)

Bettis Rifles

In the War of the Rebellion, better but erroneously known as the Civil War, Confederate forces famously had less access to industrial goods. This is one reason that Confederate model firearms often feature brass where Union ones use steel, creating a highly attractive design out of what was really a necessity.

In addition, though, they could tap local gunsmiths who had long been supplying local hunters and farmers with hand-made rifles. The local newspaper where I grew up has a story about one such individual in the paper this week.

According to Bettis, his ancestor’s production operation likely was the first manufacturing facility in the county, although a far cry from what modern Americans think of when they hear the term.

The process consisted of just Bettis, a forge, handheld tools and perhaps some of his five children helping him.... Bettis rifles always also feature a silver sight, created from a coin cut in half.

I have a hand-made musket from around this period that belonged to my great-great grandfather. It's from the highlands of Appalachia, big-bore and smooth barrel. It's a percussion cap like these, but sadly it did not come to me in as well-preserved a condition.

Cuteness-Recognizing is Predatory Behavior

For a while now, I've had a theory that cross-species emotional bonds somehow relates to predatory instincts in mammals. We bond with cats, dogs, and horses. Of the three, cats and dogs are predators; horses really aren't, but over our thousands of years together they have begun to be able to learn to actualize predatory behavior. A cutting horse, for example, is doing something that is more properly predatory than would be natural to a wild horse. It may be that in training them to think like a predator, we've been teaching them to relate emotionally across species.

Popular Science has a story about "Why do we want to squeeze cute things?" that demonstrates something like a predatory connection to cuteness:

But for the sake of thoroughness, researchers did a second experiment to test whether the aggression was simply verbal, or whether people really did want to act out in response to wide-eyed kittens and cherubic babies. Volunteers were given bubble wrap and told they could pop as much of it as they wanted.

When faced with a slideshow of cute animals, people popped 120 bubbles, whereas people watching the funny and neutral slideshows popped 80 and 100 bubbles respectively.

(H/t: InstaPundit.)

Now they posit a couple of theories about this that point in other directions. Still, I think I'm right: there is something about the kind of mind you need as a mammalian predator, as a predator who hunts by thought rather than by pure instinct, that gives rise to this.

Consider further anecdotal evidence:





Now why is that, I wonder? But I think it is.

So What?

The New York Times reports that boys get worse grades exclusively because teachers are prejudiced against troublemakers.

No previous study, to my knowledge, has demonstrated that the well-known gender gap in school grades begins so early and is almost entirely attributable to differences in behavior. The researchers found that teachers rated boys as less proficient even when the boys did just as well as the girls on tests of reading, math and science. (The teachers did not know the test scores in advance.) If the teachers had not accounted for classroom behavior, the boys’ grades, like the girls’, would have matched their test scores.

I suppose one could make an argument that there's a problem here. Teachers of primary and secondary schools are almost exclusively female, after all; perhaps there's some sexist preference for well-comported girls over unruly boys. However, my guess would be that male teachers mostly like well-behaved students also.

Rather, we have a kind of sorting going on whereby people who are good at sitting still and learning to speak (and think) in an approved way go into certain kinds of jobs, and people who are uncomfortable with that find other ways to make a living. In terms of the long-term happiness of everyone involved, that's a good thing.

It happens to be true that one class of such jobs pays better than the other class, but that's an artifact of the present moment. As the article itself points out, it didn't used to be true: and as technology continues to change, more and more options open up for people who just aren't very well adjusted to the 'sit-still, be-quiet, watch-what-you-say' environment that predominates in the schoolhouse and the New Model Office. It's a pretty oppressive and unpleasant environment, as unpleasant as any factory to those who chafe at it.

So yes: boys are more unruly. It's very important to try to teach them to obey the rules and show respect. But on the final analysis, their happiness as adults doesn't depend on learning to sit down and only say things considered polite. It depends more on them finding a way of life that comports with who they are. The economy won't stay like it is forever, and the office won't be the dominant mode of economic life forever.

Besides, if you're really unruly you can go into politics. We need a whole new political class anyway.