Jim’s Brain Online

Posted by Jim at September 29th, 2005

In reading Ed’s blog today, I ran across a post that raised some issues that I can’t help but respond to.

So let’s think about Graham’s essay. The gist of it seems to be that high taxes on the rich makes start-ups not worth the risk for venture capitalists because they just don’t pay off well enough. Thus we shouldn’t overtax but we should make the use of wealth transparent so that wealth doesn’t result in great power.

I’ll take the second assumption first and make a couple comments. First, the idea of logging all transactions sounds pretty good. It allows a person to see what wealth affects and it’s already in practice in the form of being able to check who gave what donation to which politician. So presumably we’d take this a little further. I’m curious as to how far though, and, who does the watching. The government? Private firms? Also, what’s transparent? Is every ATM transaction open to everyone’s inspection? Is it limited to people with wealth or am I included?

In all honesty, I don’t really think it’d be possible to monitor financial transactions to the point that everything’s transparent. Even if we could, I’m not convinced that living in a society where everything’s transparent is automatically desirable (I’m open to it though).

Even if we could monitor transactions to the point that wealth’s effect could be monitored, I don’t think that we could monitor the connections between wealthy people. As in “Bob” went to college/is related to “Joe” who’s sister is married to a senator or something. That’s the sort of connection that can get people favors. Monitoring that sort of thing would be hard or impossible.

That being said, let’s get back to the first issue then… I think Graham’s right in that if you tax too much, you do discourage investment and you probably do discourage innovation.

However…

What I’m not sure about is what sort of policies he’s imagining when he talks about shifting money from the poor to the rich, or for that matter, what he means by poor. Is it using exorbitant taxation to move all the poor into a better economic bracket? Or is he against paying to move people off the streets and into homeless shelters? Or is it simply any policy that causes taxation of the wealthy to go past some magic number of return on investment?

Just for the record, I tend to think that exhorbitant taxation seems more likely to result from war and natural disasters for the near future. Even if Bush refuses to raise taxes, we’re going to either have to either pay more or spend less to get rid of the debt. Either way, social spending is likely to be less of a priority for a while.

As such, I’d like to balance the thought that exhorbitant taxation on the rich reduces innovation against another thought: Unmet physical needs also reduce innovation.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs posits that people need to met certain minimum physical needs before they can concentrate on education and creative, risky ideas. I think the theory’s likely to be right in its general assumptions even though I might want to quibble with what Maslow regarded to be the highest of human needs.

To my mind what matters is the kind of inequality. Inequality isn’t so bad if it means that Bill Gates is exceptionally wealthy but a large group of “poor” people exist that have enough to eat, have air conditioned apartments and can pay their bills. Inequality is very bad thing if it means that there is a large group of poor people living on the streets, having only emergency room healthcare, or digging through dumpsters for food.

The good news is that our proportion of the former sort of poor people is larger than the latter. The bad news is that the latter sort of poor people still exist.

We lose the potential innovation of all those people scrambling for basic survival as long as their basic needs aren’t met. When they don’t have food on the table, they aren’t coming up with the next innovation in online commerce.

What I wish I knew was how long people typically stay in poverty in the US. Also, what effects does growing up in poverty have on a person’s future ability to think and create?

What I’m saying is that taxes vs. profit is a very narrow window to consider the topic of economic inequality under. It may well be that once a person brings the damage of poverty on a person’s potential into the equation, you might find that higher taxes would be a better choice.

I’m not saying I know the answer, I’m just pointing out that there’s more to be considered than taxes and their effect on venture capitalists.

Posted by Jim at September 24th, 2005

This is more or less where I expected to fit in…

You are a Social Liberal (63% permissive) and an… Economic Moderate (41% permissive) You are best described as a: Centrist Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid

Posted by Jim at September 10th, 2005

Undoubtedly you’ve probably read a few (okay, a lot) of hurricane Katrina related blog entries by now. I’ll just take advantage of this opportunity to make a couple observations.

1. Though the government response wasn’t particularly effective, I don’t feel a need (at this moment) to blame the current leadership of either Louisiana or the US for the problems. It’s not that I believe that either is without fault. It’s just that I don’t really have the necessary information to feel confident of my opinions at the moment.

I did, however, feel somewhat bothered to learn that the reason that New Orleans didn’t have levees that could stand up to level 5 hurricanes was due to politicians feeling that the public probably wouldn’t have wanted to pay for it. They may have been right, but it’s pretty obvious now that we the public didn’t save any money on this deal.

Learning that funds that were originally earmarked to improve levees (during the Clinton administration) were diverted for use in Iraq doesn’t make me happy either. It’s worth mentioning that according to the guy involved in planning the improvements, the changes wouldn’t have stopped everything. That being said, it would have been better than the current disaster.

2. I’m sick of hearing people say things like, “New Orleans shouldn’t be rebuilt because it’s mostly under sea level.” Using that logic, you should probably evacuate a large portion of the Netherlands immediately, but yet the Dutch don’t seem to be going anywhere.

In the course of rebuilding the levee system, it might be worth checking out the Dutch system. Apparently one of the problems New Orleans has is that thanks to the levee system, the city is actually lower with respect to sea level than it was before the levees were put in. Before the levees, the place would flood, depositing sediment all over and keeping land at a certain level. Now all the sediment just goes straight into the Gulf of Mexico.

To avoid similar problems, the Dutch apparently constructed two sets of dykes, the outermost of which has an opening when the tides are low (and closes when tides are high). Supposedly, this allows them to keep sediment that might otherwise be lost.

I don’t know how this would be adapted to New Orleans, but it seems like something worth thinking about. New Orleans isn’t the only city in the world under sea level. Hopefully the reconstruction will build on other places’ successful ideas.

I know I said two observations, but I’ll add a third…
3. Race: I’ve heard a lot of people suggest that it would have gone better if the people left behind were largely white rather than black. I don’t have the information necessary for me to be confident in saying that that’s either true or false. That being said, I could imagine race subtlely affecting the process in a number of ways. For example, whites sometimes associate being black with ciminality. This might result in a less trusting attitude toward black New Orleans residents on the part of National guard troops. Similarly, it might cause reporters to view stories of rape and violence with greater credibility than otherwise (and according to some people, some of those stories don’t hold up).

All I know for sure is that race still affects things even if the way it affects things isn’t completely obvious.

So anyway, this is a bit of my jumbled thinking about Katrina. Take it for what it’s worth.

Posted by Jim at August 26th, 2005

With all the recent attention to Pat Robertson’s ability to say mind-bogglingly stupid things on television, I’ve been reminded of his brief, unsuccessful bid for the presidency.

Robertson won some primaries (though George H. W. Bush ultimately won the presidency) and there was a point in the process where he had momentum. I didn’t ever expect that he would win, but, I didn’t expect that he would get as far as he had either. Anything seemed possible.

It was 1987-88. I was in my first year of college. It was not long after the Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggert sex scandals. Nor was it particularly long after Gary Hart’s spectacular flameout in the Democratic primaries (I seem to remember that he dared reporters to follow him in order to show he wasn’t involved in scandal–and they did–catching him with Donna Rice).

One evening, I was up late listening to the college radio station (which in a case of exceptionally bad judgement sometimes allowed me to dejay). Liz, a person I knew through Opus (Hope’s literary magazine), was doing her show.

It was late enough that returns had come in from that night’s primary and she was talking about it. Pat Robertson had won and she was not happy.

“Women,” she said, “someone needs to sleep with that man.”

It seemed a lot funnier to me in that moment then it seems now, but, I still smile a little when I remember it. To judge from the past week, there’s a great deal of joke fodder left in Pat Robertson.

Posted by Jim at July 5th, 2005

With the retirement of Sandra Day O’Connor, people have, as always, begun to speculate about how the next the Supreme Court will affect the legality of abortion.

What I find interesting is that people come to each new Supreme Court nomination as if it would instantly make abortion legal or illegal. I’ll grant you that they have to in order to rally the troops (whichever troops you prefer to rally), but neither the next Supreme Court justice nor even a decision reversing Roe v. Wade will necessarily end the struggle over this issue.

What I mean by this is that first of all, five of the current nine justices have stated that they will vote against attempts to overturn Roe v. Wade–that’s without O’Connor. If that’s true, abortion’s not likely to become illegal anytime soon.

Secondly, the aftereffects of reversing Roe v. Wade don’t necessarily outlaw abortion. The argument just moves over to each individual state, fragmenting the struggle. Some places would instantly outlaw it, others instantly legalize it, and others would undoubtedly struggle for years over the precise circumstances under which abortion is allowed or denied.

In the end, it seems likely that we would have a patchwork of standards. Bearing in mind that people can legally visit any state they want, abortion seems likely to end only at the federal level.

I can’t help but be curious about the likely political consequences. I’ve often thought that the Republican party’s pro-life stance has bought it many votes it might not have otherwise gotten. If there’s no Roe v. Wade to point to, it becomes harder to argue that voting for a Democratic presidential candidate is a vote for abortion rights. In my more cynical moments, I’ve often thought that it was in the Republican party’s best interest to constantly work for outlawing abortion, but to never actually succeed in doing so.

Indeed the main point of the article I linked to earlier is that success on abortion could cause major problems for the Republican party. I think it goes a little overboard on the negative consequences, but it definitely seems likely to require some restructuring afterwards.

Whatever happens, I don’t think anybody is going to get exactly what they want. Thus I write this little essay in the hopes of deflating both people’s hopes and fears in this area.

Posted by Jim at June 25th, 2005

So after writing a blog entry on how I try to avoid trouble as a result of my blog, I’m going to write a blog entry on one of the more divisive issues of our time.

I do not claim consistency as one of my strongest traits.

Worse, I tend to come at it from a perspective that seems unlikely to make anyone on the left or right particularly happy. My views could be summarized as:

1. Against Invasion
2. For continued occupation (if done well)
3. Fear it’s being handled badly

This doesn’t seem like a particularly consistent view either, but here’s how it comes about.

The RAND Study
There’s a study by the RAND Corporation (a think tank originally formed by the US government to study military issues) that apparently considers the success and failure of occupations in terms of building up a stable (possibly even democratic) society by the end.

Success is greatly determined by the ratio of troops to the population and how long they stay. Apparently a more correct number of troops by their ratio would be something like 500,000 instead of the 135,000 we currently have in there. In terms of years we should be staying at least 5 years or so, possibly as many as 10.

Casualties supposedly go down greatly with an appropriate number of troops.

The RAND study is at the core of my views on the situation and I haven’t seen anything that causes its conclusions to be greatly questioned. Thus, I’ll assume it’s accurate for the rest of this post.

Why I was Against Invasion
I was against the invasion for a few reasons. The strongest for me was simply that the administration wasn’t talking about the occupation that would have to follow. I remember some administration officials claiming we would be met with celebrations, but no one seemed to be saying, “We’re going into Iraq now and we’re going to be there for quite some time.” That made me nervous though I can see why they wouldn’t mention it. Considering the probable results of invasion might have made people less likely to invade.

The lack of international participation in terms of troop deployment also bothered me. When the previous George Bush went against Saddam Hussein, he started working for international support months previous to the actual action. The current administration didn’t.

Finally, as you might guess, the fact that we were sending in 120,000 troops rather than 300,000 plus bothered me. I’ll grant you that we couldn’t have gotten that many troops because the maximum we have available throughout the world for this sort of action is around 450,000–and we aren’t going to pull people out of all our bases everywhere. In theory, international troops could have solved that problem.

The point for me that I decided I was more against than for the war was Colin Powell’s speech to the UN. After that speech, it seemed unlikely to me that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Continued Occupation
Despite the current difficulties there, I’m inclined to believe that getting out soon is a bad idea. If we leave now, we leave an Iraqi army/police force that doesn’t yet have the training or numbers to keep order.

If the RAND study accurately reflects reality, we need to be there for a while and we need to recognize the reality that there will be a constant, climbing body count while we are there. That’s the nature of occupation.

On the bright side, if we stay there long enough (and handle things well), things will eventually get better.

My Fears
Of course, things might not get better. The core problem with having less troops than one ought to isn’t just a climbing body count. The point of putting 300,000+ troops out there isn’t just causing less people to die (though that’s important).

The core problem with having less troops than one ought to is the things that don’t get done. A large amount of money that was allocated for rebuilding Iraq simply hasn’t been used. They’re waiting for things to calm down before trying to rebuild certain areas. Other money for rebuilding Iraq has been used for security instead.

In the meantime, basic infrastructure (water, electricity) remains worse than it was under Saddam Hussein. Beyond the question of insurgents, there are people who make a habit of kidnapping wealthy people or their children and holding them for ransom. And then there’s employment… Despite the bombing of new recruits for the police or army, people still get in long lines to sign up–in part because it’s a job that’s actually available.

It strikes me as an environment that feeds insurgency.

Thus my fear is that because we haven’t committed enough resources to this that at some point the situation will go out of control and we won’t pull out. Some people believe that point is already past. I’m not one of them, but, I think it’s worth asking when we pull out. Under what conditions is failure more likely than success?

The Flypaper Strategy
The flypaper strategy refers to the idea that Iraq will suck terrorists and potential terrorists into Iraq where they will likely be destroyed, saving us from having them attack the United States.

The first time I heard this idea, I thought it might have some merit, but later I decided it was probably a very bad idea. I’m hoping it’s just a justification as opposed to something intentional.

Here’s why:
When you place people into a situation, people learn skills. They generate new ideas about how to adapt to their environment. When you attract terrorists and enthusiastic new recruits to someplace like Iraq, they learn skills related to guerilla warfare and how to fight the US military.

I’m confident that our armed forces will kill a lot of them, but I’m quite sure they won’t kill them all. Someday, some percentage of them will come home. They will come home with the knowlege of how to fight us and possibly with the will.

That’s kind of how Osama Bin Laden got his start after all. He went to Afganistan to fight the Soviets and eventually became a leader in Al Queda. Ironically, of course, we supported him against the Soviets–something that raises another point… People who learn warfare in Iraq may not attack the United States. They may attack governments in other countries. I do not see that as likely to spread democracy.

Similarly, the flypaper strategy (if it really exists as a policy) may work against the goal of having a stable Iraq. Having foriegn and local insurgents fighting the US may create a culture of opposition to government that might survive our occupation by many years.

I spent a lot of time taking courses in sociology. One interesting thing I learned was that the universities which were active in political movements 30 some years ago often continued to be active later. Despite the constant four year turnover of students, a culture of political opposition had formed. I can’t help but think that could happen in a situation in which people stayed in the same community.

A possible example: When we occupied the Phillipines, our soldiers fought against Muslim insurgents. Currently (more than 100 years later), the Phillipine government still has problems with Muslim terrorists. I can’t help but wonder whether that’s connected.

Conclusion
By writing all this, I don’t claim to know whether ultimately our invasion of Iraq will do more harm than good. I ultimately believe that the real test is looking at Iraq in 10 or 20 years. Do we have a democracy there? Does it last? Or do we have another dictator? And if we do, do we go back in to straighten things out or are there better ways to solve the problem?

At core though, I’m bothered both by the “pull people out immediately” crowd and by the “put the troops in but not nearly enough of them and stay no matter what” government policy. I think it’s possible that things will work out despite the way things currently appear, but, I can’t help but think that it will require more cleverness in foriegn relations than I’ve so far seen from this administration.

Posted by Jim at June 4th, 2005

Having come across the phrase “air blogging” on Nate’s blog, I’ve got to admit that that’s exactly what I’ve been doing lately. I’ve been thinking about lots of things that I could blog, but haven’t actually been writing much. From a 3 to 4 per week schedule, things have slipped to twice a week. That’s better than a few weeks earlier this year in which I managed to write absolutely nothing, but not as good as I’d like.

In particular, I’d like to be writing more reviews of things that I’ve found cool or interesting (webcomics, kid’s programs/movies, software, ethnic foods/restaurants). I’d also love to be writing more about religion. I spent a few years of my life getting a B.A. in religion as well as a couple years in seminary and often feel an urge to write about all that, but haven’t so far.

In lieu of writing something interesting, I’ll just give a quick rundown of some things I wanted to write about:

Master’s Project:
I haven’t done a thing on it in the month. I’m not sure why. I imagine I needed a rest from it bearing in mind that it was the source of much stress for me in April. Basically, if I hadn’t gotten an extension on that project, I would have had to finish it at a very unsatisfactory point in it’s development or simply take my master’s project hours over again. That would have been a massive waste since those hours are all I need to finish the program.

Gaming:
I really want to do more role playing games, possibly even run a campaign. At this moment I’m tryng to figure out some basic rules for conflict resolution and character creation. Then I’ll be ready to playtest things. Ed… I may need to bounce some ideas off you with regards to mechanics.

Novel:
Again, I haven’t done much with this since beginning my master’s in Information Systems. Masters degrees tend to kill what spare time you have.

Computers:
Basically I’ve got a pile of stuff to write about here. I’ve recently installed FreeBSD 5.4 on my FreeBSD box. It’s less convenient to install that the 4.x series. In the 4.x series, you could pick your window manager and install Xfree86 as part of the install process. In 5.4, you install X.org and the window manager as packages (or ports) after you’ve installed the basic system. There’s some sort of patch necessary to make gdm work that I still have to research and install. Once I get that going, I’ll be able to get back to things like my soundcard, cd-rw, flash, java, cvs, usb 2.0 (it works in 5.4…), and all the other programs I like have running on Freebsd.

Knowing that I’m going to spend hours configuring my machine is the sort of thing that makes me run screaming toward the Mac OS X or Windows XP. Which reminds me…

My iBook no longer recognizes my router to be a wireless access point. I’m pretty sure that the router’s the problem as the laptop works just fine at Kava House, detecting something like 4 available networks the last time I was in.

Politics:
Remembering the previous President Bush’s visit to Hope College while I was attending, I was interested to watch the whole mess at Calvin College a couple weeks ago. One thing irked me though…

Dr. Jelks appeared on Hannity and Colmes. In the course of the conversation, Hannity said the following to Dr. Jelks:

“HANNITY: I find this fairly amazing coming from — you know, you’re upset about the president’s position on the issue of a war and the last resort. And you believe the administration launched an unjust war, et cetera.

You say that his environmental policies have harmed creation as part of this letter.

Do you know what bothers me about your position? This is for both of you professors. If both of you had your way, those mass graves would still be being filled. I have yet to see a letter to Saddam Hussein (search) from either one of you.

If you guys had your way, the torture chambers and the rape rooms would exist. You two obviously haven’t looked at the pictures of dead babies laying in the street because Saddam launched weapons against them.

Where’s your letter against Saddam? Because it would still continue if you had your way.”

This sort of thing annoys me immensely. There are good arguments for going into Iraq with force just as there are good arguments for using other means to remove Saddam Hussein from power. This sort of attitude toward other people’s views makes talking through an issue and coming to some sort of workable agreement impossible.

That I’ll write more on that sort of thing is more or less inevitable. It’s admittedly pointless since extreme views probably make better television than careful, nuanced views, but I just can’t think that that sort of speech helps anyone either on the right or the left.

Posted by Jim at March 15th, 2005

I don’t regard myself to be a liberal (or conservative), but I definitely don’t regard liberalism to be the source of all evil (or good).

While looking for something else, I ran across a website that appears to list cities, rating them on their friendliness (or lack thereof) to liberal ideas.

Reading the entries makes me think that most of them are at least 4 years old and overstate the level of hostility. In the most recent presidential election, Kent County swung Democratic, something that made a friend of mine (who’s on the executive committee of Kent County’s Democratic party) very happy. He’s hoping to make it a trend.

Whatever the case, though I’m willing to entertain ideas from both the right and the left, I’m not particularly wild about websites that make the other side sound evil. Pointing out the other side’s faults is fine, but I tend to draw the line at generalizations about a large group’s personal qualities.

Whether the Grand Rapids entry commits that particular error is something I leave up to the reader.

Posted by Jim at November 21st, 2004

One thing I found particularly interesting in sociology and anthropology was looking at the relationship between a group’s available resources and their ways of thinking about the world.

Thus it’s been rather amusing to watch the Republicans and Democrats “discover the wisdom” of the other party’s beliefs on particular issues. For example, the Republican party isn’t pushing term limits quite so hard now that it’s the party of the incumbents. Then, of course, there’s also deficit spending. As the party in power, deficit spending is awfully tempting when you’ve got something to accomplish and you don’t have the will to either

a) cut spending, or
b) raise taxes.

Another area of amusement for me is the change in the area of ethics. When the Republicans came to power, they decided to hold their leaders to a higher standard–one that they’ve just repealed. Now Tom DeLay can be indicted, but, still keep a leadership position–just like the Democrats could have.

Democrats in turn have discovered that deficit spending is a bad thing and according to Salon Democrats will have to turn to state’s rights arguments to allow Democratic policies that differ from federal (Republican) policies.

I’ll be curious to watch these changes continue. Will the Republicans become the party of big government? Will the Democrats suddenly become big on defense spending?

While I don’t believe that people’s circumstances entirely dictate their belief system, I do think that the amount of power a party has affects their ideology. For example, being against deficits gives you extra leverage when the other party proposes something you don’t like. Not only is that thing bad, but you can tell people that we just can’t afford it.

Whatever the case, we’ll get to see just how strongly the parties hold to what some people regard as unchangeable characteristics of each party.

Posted by Jim at November 19th, 2004

Just another electoral map. This one uses county election data, mixing red (Republican), blue (Democrat) and green (other) to decide the color of the spot.

A more accurate way to view things (I think) than the big blocks of blue and red we all saw on election night.