The End of Politics as Normal

Last month the New Republic ran a piece where the author basically said that the best way to punish the GOP for what they've done is to pack the supreme court by expanding the numbers.

That should give a lot of people cause for pause. As much as President Trump isn't my cup of tea, sometimes it's permissible to hold hands with the devil. If Democrats really take such an approach -- and we'll have a pretty good idea of just how vindictive they will be if they take the House in the midterms, then Republicans like myself just won't feel comfortable jumping ship except under the most extreme of circumstances.

Is that really the sort of incentive the Democrats want to create? There's a good chance we'll find out.

The Gardener and the Carpenter: Explore/Exploit

According to economists, life is full of trade offs. One of those trade offs is between exploring and exploiting. Exploring things allows you to discover new ideas, to acquire knowledge, to get your hands messy. Exploiting knowledge lets you pay the bills.

Childhood is an opportunity for children to engage in protracted exploration without worrying about paying the bills.

This links in with the idea of evolv-ability. Certain species have evolved in such a way as to increase variability. Humans are one such species. Epigenetics plays an important role in how each child develops. Inputs from the environment determine which genes are expressed. Furthermore, some research suggests that some individuals are more sensitive to their environment than others.

There are daffodils and orchids Daffodils flourish in most environments. Orchids only flourish in particular environments.

Finally, brain plasticity. The brain is more plastic in the younger years, allowing children to adapt to new needs and environments. To slowly remake society to meet the needs of a coming age. As we age, plasticity decreases as we shift from exploring to exploiting.

At Reggio, instead of speaking about special needs, they speak of special rights. Simply put, we're not equal. If education is about allowing children to flourish, that means providing for those students that need more support -- both support those with learning disabilities and those that are gifted.

Children are not blank slates. They come with the same default settings. Our education system needs to stop treating them as if they do.

Finally, as a society, we have shifted away from exploration to exploitation. Just look at the budget. The vast chunk of our spending is non-discretionary. In the past, government spending was high in war years and lean in peace time. That is no longer the case. Has there been a side effect? Has our rate of technological innovation changed? Probably not. Indeed, if anything, people probably assume that the rate of technological innovation has increased by a lot.

However, there was an EconTalk a while back that said the something like general utility innovations come around once every 100 or so. Something to look up in the future/

Note to readers: this blog is going to be taking one more and more of a common book feel. I want to record readings and sources for future use. I want to also use it as an exercise in recall. This will mean more content, but that content will probably be less interesting or polished. Anyways, that's where things are heading here. You've been warned.   

The Walls of Israel

This morning, on the commute in to work, I dipped into The Walls of Israel. I picked the book not so much for the topic but because of the author. It might not be particularly P.C. but growing up my mother inculcated in me the idea that France and French values were a force for good in the world. And Indochine alway held a particular fascination for her.

Of course, as a child of the 60s, and as someone who identified primarily as an American, her defense of French values wasn't without some ambivalence. Still, while some American boys grew up on the Alamo, for me nothing could quite compare to Dien Bien Phu.

The Walls of Israel is a heartfelt portrait of the Israeli Army, back when it was still undefeated. Reading about the Israeli insistence on the importance of the human element it warfare, one can't help but wonder if America has made a horrible mistake. In a desperate effort to control spending, the military services have prioritized weapons over people.

When I first came to China, flying into Beijing from Inchon, I thought war was impossible but China was the only game in town. The world is now, I genuinely believe, more dangerous than it was a decade ago. A war is, I think, inevitable. The only question is where. Reading The Walls of Israel makes me wonder about the price we'll end up paying when the war finally comes.   

Reading The Gardener and the Carpenter by Alison Gopnik

I'm reading Alison Gopnik's latest, The Gardener and the Carpenter, which is an interesting look at "parenting" and its supposed experts. Unlike many Americans, I have a lot of experience working with children, I've been doing it for eight years. In the course of that work, I've come across other teacher that consider themselves experts. And I've come across teachers that make no claim at expertize, but instead depend on experience.

Gopnik rightly takes aim at the so-called experts. As a psychologist and philosopher, she knows more about the science of child development than most. Even then, she's no font of divine wisdom. Her own pet theory, theory theory, is hardly settled.

In any case, Gopnik suggests we allow two metaphors guide our thinking about parenting: the Gardener and the Carpenter. The carpenter doesn't like mess or unpredictability. He measures everything twice, works to a plan, builds with a particular function in mind. Indeed, Gopnik doesn't say this, but the carpenter is more like an engineer. He factors in a large factor of ignorance. Both arts and math. Not just one. Books and sports. Ballet and lacrosse. Why by bilingual when you can be trilingual?

I confess. I sympathize with such parents. Take languages for instance. If my wife and I are fortunate enough to have children, I'd like them to be at least semi-confident heritage speakers in all the languages their grandparents speak. That means four different dialects of Chinese--which are better thought of as separate languages, English, and French. Plus, I'd like them to know Latin.

We want to preserve our traditions. This urge is one of the things that make us human. But it's a tall order.

Gardeners, on the other hand, might lay out their garden with a certain plan in mind, but they leave a lot of room for chance and randomness. They know sometimes nature has a way of producing the best effects. Indeed, some gardeners claim to just broadcast their seeds and see what happens.

Gopnik doesn't want us to take such an extreme laissez-faire approach, but she certainly leans on the side of gardeners, not carpenters, which is a position I sympathize with.

I look forward to reading the rest of the book.

Newspapers vs. Magazines

Maybe things are usually hectic under President Trump. Truth be told, they probably are, but I can't be sure. People often chide their fellow citizens for not reading newspapers often enough. Other people say that newspapers stay afloat by peddling nonevents.

I more sympathetic to the second school of thought; I think newspapers pad. Instead of writing one article on the trade tariffs, they write four. Cable news is guilty of the same thing. Hour after hour of shows, all covering the same events, with only slightly different viewpoints.

Why am I ranting about newspapers? Well, I recently took out a trial subscription to the New York Times. I wish I hadn't. Frankly, it sucks away a lot of time from reading more interesting things, books and magazines.

Generally, I find, that I like weekly magazines the most. If I was pressed to name a magazine I truly enjoyed, I'd name The Spectator. I always --  well, almost always -- enjoy reading Taki in High Life. Sometimes he does make you wonder, but I think that's a good think; at least he's being genuine.

David Brooks had a column in the New York Times, talking about how columns used to be the works of individuals, with their idiosyncrasies. Now columnists have become party representatives. If Taki represents any party other than himself -- and maybe Steve Bannon -- I'm not sure what it is. The Same goes for the writers of Low Life and Real Life.

I've been trying out different magazines now for the last month or so. I've yet to find one half as amusing as The Spectator. Columnists that write as individuals make all the difference.

Morning Browse: Congestion Charges

New York is looking at introducing a congestion charge for part of the city. London and Stockholm already use congestion charges to decrease traffic in certain areas, but New York would be the first city to introduce such a system in the United States.

The U.S. does use congestion charges on its toll roads. The purpose is to keep the traffic on toll road flowing at a certain minimum rate. To roads in Northern Virginia aim for an average speed of 65 m.p.h..

The proposals have been attacked by some, saying that congestion charges and toll roads create a separate infrastructure for the haves and leaves the have-nots in traffic. This objection, however, misses the point. The fees raised from congestion charges are used to maintain all infrastructure, not just toll roads.

It reminds me of the economics of airplane tickets. Simply put, if it were few a few people flying in first class, airlines wouldn't be making money on a lot of flights. First class makes transatlantic flights economically feasible.

China also makes extensive use of toll roads for highways. One of the nice perks of a holiday is that sometimes the government does a deal and reduces the tolls, which sort of defeats the purpose. Anyways, thanks for reading.

Recently, things have been busy at work, so I'll be putting out just one or two posts a day.

Evening Browse: Monks, Christian Zionists, and Sarkozy

The New York Times did a piece on a Trappist monastery in South Carolina. If memory serves, at its height it had fifty brothers. Today it has around 10. To try and bolster its numbers, it is introducing month long and year long "vows", even allowing nonreligious individuals to take part in the program. The program sort of reminds me of Neal Stephenson's book Anathem, where people take vows for 1 year, ten years one-hundred years or even longer. It is an interesting read.

Abbeys are close to my heart. I did my undergraduate degree at a Benedictine abbey. It was an interesting experience. That said, I do wish I'd taken part more in the monastic side of things. I've been meaning to read the Benedict Option for a while now. One way to save communities like this Trappist monastery is making them more family friendly -- like a Christian kibbutz.

Sarkozy has been charged. He was picked up for questioning yesterday. He's accused of accepting 50 million Euro's worth of campaign money from Libya. If you want to get an idea for how the French legal system operates, I suggest Engrenages. It is sort of like a French version of The Wire.

Refugees and Immigrants

The New Republic and the Atlantic  both have interesting stories about immigration and refugees. The story in the New Republic is about extra-continentals, which are basically immigrants the Middle East and Asia that fly into Brazil -- visas are easy to get -- and then hike their way to Mexico. Once in Mexico, the Mexican government gives them around a week or so to try and make it across the border into America. Why are the coming from so far away? Well the number of extra-continentals crossing into the U.S. has been increasing since 2010, but a lot of the immigrants say they're doing this because it's too hard to gain status in Germany.

Over at the Atlantic they show us how Germany is attempting to screen their refugees. Simply put, they think a lot of applicants for asylum are trying to game the system.

Anyways, read together, I think the articles provide an interesting perspective.

French Consular Official Accused of Arms Trafficking in Israel

Romain Franck, a French official working as a driver at the French Consulate in Jerusalem, has been accused of trafficking arms into the Gaza Strip.

Mr. Franck, 23 years old, was on a year long contract, designed to give young people an opportunity to work overseas.

According to Shin Beth, the Israel Military Intelligence Service, Mr. Franck was motivated by money, not political belief.

More at Paris Match and RFI.

Russians Pushing Cambridge Analytica Story

According to the German Marshall Fund, Russian trolls are pushing the Cambridge Analytica story for all its worth. The German Marshall Fund's Securing Democracy program conducts a real-time analysis of 600 accounts linked to Russian influencing operations.

Here's the stories these accounts are pushing at the moment.

Does this mean the story is fake? Of course not! This is a serious story that merits attention. Do read up on it.

Trust but verify.

25% of @MassAGO Followers are Fake

As I mention in a previous post, when investigating the #CambridgeAnalytica, I noticed that a lot of @MassAGO's followers weren't active. Here is some follow up:

Twitter Audit says 25% of @MassAGO's followers are fake.

According to Twitter, at least 5% of Twitter users are bots. And roughly 15% of users involved in political discussions are bots. So it looks like her numbers are a little higher than usual. Anyways, all of this is still preliminary.

If you know a better way of doing this, please let me know.

Observatory of Social Media: Cambridge Analytica

Looks like the Cambridge Analytica story is gaining traction. Here is some data from the Observatory of Social Media.

This is what people are tweeting about when they tweet about Cambridge Analytica. Mostly Facebook. Bannon also is on there. Trumprussia and impeachtrump. This was just tweets for the last few days. You can explore the graph here.

There has been a huge up tick in tweets about #cambridgeanalytica. 

These are the people that are tweeting about it. Examine the graph here.

Finally, who are these people? Using Botometer, we can see if these accounts or bots or not. One of the weaknesses of this approach is that organizational accounts often have quite high scores.

Anyways, a lot of the users don't have high bot scores, but some do. Like MassAGO, which is the official account of the Massachusetts Attorney General, Maura Healey. So I decided to go through her followers looking for bots. Why? Because the data above was a bit boring. She was one of the more interesting hits. Here is a list of followers with a bot score 60% or higher. There are also interesting examples of followers with no tweets. Has she paid a service to inflate her follower numbers? I'll save that for another time. Here are the first 30 potential bots discovered. 

In coming posts, I will attempt to examine some of these users in more detail.

Thoughts on Xi and Trump

This week Xi was officially renamed President of the People's Republic, hardly surprising. I'm not sure people really care. I know some netizens do, but the average man on the street probably doesn't. I don't really get a chance to hear the views of common people all that often. A few years ago, on slow train to Chengdu, I had a conversation with two men, roughly my own age. They admired Putin greatly. They liked strong leaders. And they found Obama somewhat lacking.

We were told, after Obama's election, that his apotheosis would restore faith in the American system. Hardly. The image might be inspiring to some, but America's pathetic attempt at virtue signaling is drowned out by the images pumped out by Hollywood and the media. Indeed, the Atlantic has an interesting piece, explaining why a lot of Trump's Chinese supporters like him. Quite a few of them studied in the U.S. where they found themselves caught in the middle of our culture war, and they didn't like it one bit.

I sometimes wonder why Xi is doing it? Does he hope to turn the Chinese State into his private property -- in the manner of an African dictator? According to selectorate theory, motivation is assumed. Every leader, whether they lead a democracy or a tyranny, wants to remain in power. They do so by bribing the people that matter.

In a country with a large selectorate, leaders are forced to bribe the selectorate with public goods: infrastructure, schools, health care. In a country with a small selectorate, it's cheaper to bribe the selectorate with private goods: women, private jets, Swiss bank accounts.

So how is Xi staying in power? Is he bribing people with private goods or public goods? And what about Trump?

With Trump, the bribes are clearly public so far: tax cuts, infrastructure spending, increased defense spending. For example, I don't much care about infrastructure spending or tax cuts. Living overseas, I don't use the infrastructure and I don't pay taxes unless my income exceeds a certain level. But being the son of an arms manufacturer, I'm all for increased defense spending. I think it happens to be sound policy, but I have to admit, I'm not a disinterested observer.

One thing Xi has done is increased pensions. This seems to suggest that Xi is relying on bribing people with public goods, but is he. Pensions are interesting. Corporate employees pay part of their income into pension funds, 8%. Government employees don't pay anything into the pension funds. In other words, the pension scheme can be seen as redistributing money from private sector employees to public sector employees.

Ask yourself this, who is more likely to be part of the Chinese selectorate? A mid-level civil servant or a mid-level wage worker in the private sector? I'd know who I'd bother bribing.

Which brings me back to Trump. Liberals like to portray Trump's attack on officials as an attack on the rule of law. But in fact what his attacks are indicative of is this: in America the electorate is still the selectorate; his power isn't dependent on some cabal of civil servants.

A Hollow Navy

When the Cold War ended. the U.S. Navy consisted of 594 ships. By 9/11 the U.S. Navy consisted of only 316 ships. According to the Naval Fleet Register, the U.S. Navy consists of 282 ships, of which 242 are active in commission. Despite the shrinking size of the U.S. Navy, it is being called upon to deploy more frequently than ever before. 

Since the cold war, the Navy has been cut in half, but the number of ships deployed overseas has remained almost unchanged: 100. That means less time for crews to train and more wear and tear on the ships themselves. In 2014 the average sailor spent 108 hours a week standing duty. Is it any wonder that the Navy has started wreaking ships into things? 

I think not.

Seablindness, judging by the sample, is an excellent book that tackles this important subject and more. I look forward to reading it in the coming weeks.

A New Variation of the Stealing the Election Meme

Democrats love to claim we stole the election. The Supreme Court stole it for Bush. The Electoral College stole it for Trump. The Russians stole it for Trump. Now Cambridge Analytica stole it from Trump. Republicans don't play fair.

The New York Times and the Observer have published articles claiming that Cambridge Analytica, via a subcontractor, stole the personal data of roughly a quarter of America's registered voters. They then used this data, harvested via Facebook, to deliver individually tailored ad campaigns. More from Reuters.

This all happened before Trump. And it appears Cambridge Analytica had already settled everything with Facebook. This originally happened in 2015. And Facebook was satisfied with how the issue was resolved. Now people are claiming Cambridge Analytica lied about deleting the data. And Facebook have banned them from the site.

I imagine this will be spun into the newest conspiracy theory of the left. It sounds plausible and it touches a raw nerve, unlike Russia. It's the sort of scandal Millennials can understand. I guess it will only take a few days to see if this thing has legs. 

Thoughts on Food: A Kantian Diet?

Read an interesting article in the Atlantic today. It was an excerpt from The Wizard and the Prophet by Charles C. Mann, depicting the life and work of Norman Borlaug and William Vogt. William Vogt's in his book The Road to Survival introduced the concept of carrying capacity, arguing that with the aide of modern technology man was exceeding the carrying capacity of the natural environment. Norman Borlaug was one of those technologists helping man live in excess. He helped develop dwarf wheat among other things.

Growing up, one of my friends was heavily influenced by William Vogt and the work of his disciples. He was, in many ways, a conservative. He ate lower on the food chain, foregoing meat, dairy, and eggs and advocated others do so, but he wasn't militant about it -- except when calling out the hypocrisy of liberals.

I often think of him when confronted by so called liberals stuffing their face with whatever the latest fad demands. They talk about how everyone should give of carbohydrates or the like. Billions of people couldn't afford to do so, and if they could, we'd all suffer. I know it's strange to object to a diet on the grounds of Kantian ethics, but I do.

Despite all that, I have always been more on the side of Borlaug. If it weren't for the Haber-Bosch process for artificially fixing nitrogen, three billion people would die. The only possible way to sustain our current population is to embrace technological change and development. Switching from wheat to potatoes or cassava isn't going to do it.

In any case, I've been toying with the idea of limiting my expenses to $42 a week, which is the weekly unemployment benefit it Puerto Rico. I don't think it would be all that challenging at all in China. In point of fact, I've been living off 200 RMB, roughly $32, a week for the last two weeks now. This week I'm toying with the idea of halving that amount to $16. Evidently, 80% of mankind lives on less than $10 a day, and something like half the world lives on $3 a day.

I'll be eating a lot of potatoes if I decide to follow through. I suppose I ought to -- it being Lent and all.
    

Democratic Infighting vs. The Trojan Lamb

If the Democrats pick up 24 seat, Republicans lose the house. In a midterm election, the president's party -- that's us -- usually loses seats. There's different theories explaining why this happens but we'll just say it has to do with turnout. More people vote in presidential elections. Also, people tend to be a little bit more motivated by negative emotions. So people with a grievance are more likely to show.

In the special election in Pennsylvania. the Democrats got their act together and ran a socially conservative candidate, thereby successfully cherry-picking the district, which was considered safe. So safe the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decided to redistrict the state, practically on its own initiative, apparently applying a criterion --partisan balance-- which has never been applied before.

The Democrats barely won, but they did. So the question on everyone's mind is, can the Democrats do it again? Neo-neocon thinks they can. She believes a bunch of Democrats will run as social conservatives -- or at least moderates -- and then switch tunes upon achieving office. Yes, that could happen, and might happen in some district, but I don't think it can be a widespread phenomena. 

Progressives are already angry at few social conservatives that do remain in the Democratic Party. So angry that they're challenging them, and outside organizations are funding the challengers. I think we're going to see more of this. The Democratic primaries will force candidates to lean left. In the general election, when they lean back towards the center, they'll catch flak from both sides.

Being a Trojan Lamb is hard, especially when some of the Greeks are doing their utmost to burn you to the ground.  

Defense on the Cheap: Off-Shore Balancing

According to many, the United States is an off-shore balancer. It plays regional powers off one another, preventing any one power becoming a regional hegemon. America dislikes regional hegemons, believing them to be the only powers capable of successfully challenging American sea power.

American proponents of Off-shore balancing generally believe that only hegemons arising in Northeast Asia, the Persian Gulf, or Western Europe pose a threat to American power. This is why we spend so much of our time worrying about China's influence in Northeast Asia, Russia's influence in Western Europe, and the growing influence of Iran in the Persian Gulf. 

The United States is planning to spend $686 billion on the DoD in FY 2019. Furthermore, the Department of Energy is performing life extension work on 5 types of nuclear warheads, and developing Columbia-class nuclear reactors for the Navy.

As mentioned a few days ago, the Air Force is short 2,000 pilots, most of those unfilled billets being for fighter pilots. 

China is increasing it's military budget, shrinking our relative advantage. Iran is applying increase pressure, and the DPRK has threatened to test its nuclear warheads in the atmosphere. 

In other words, it hardly seems like the time to cut defense spending. What we need to do, however, is keep defense spending from increasing. This means focusing on essentials: Northeast Asia and the Persian Gulf. Europe needs to pull more of its own weight. Yes, Russia is quite frightening--which is all the more reason why Europe ought to be spending more on it's own defense. 

We need to make the Pivot to Asia more than just a rhetorical shield for American absenteeism. The best way for America to save money is by embracing a strategy and stop winging it.

After ISIS: Dealing with Foreign Fighters

I've been reading through the testimony of Gen. Votel, Commander of Central Command, before the Senate Armed Forces Committee. Lots of things on his plate. Amazing success fighting ISIS. As a consequence, we need to deal with foreign fighters being captured.

According to Gen. Votel's written statement (page 21):

A significant challenge we face as we complete the defeat of ISIS is the repatriation of hundreds of foreign fighters to their home countries. The SDF and ISF are both holding several hundred fighters from a number of different countries in prisons or temporary detention facilities, with no clear process for prosecution or repatriation. The longer these fighters remain in detention together, the greater danger they pose as they form new connections, share lessons learned, and prepare to re-establish networks upon their release or escape. This urgent problem requires a concerted international effort involving law enforcement, intelligence sharing, and diplomatic agreements.

A little while ago, Rory Stewart, a junior minister in Britain, said that the best solution was to give no quarter, to do our utmost to kill them on the battlefield. He said that in October. He received a lot of flak for his remark.

Gavin Williamson, the British defence secretary, has also expressed similar views. As I mentioned in a previous post, according to the Spectator, more Muslim Britons have flocked to ISIS's standard than serve in the British Armed Forces.

What are we going to do about this? The longer we wait, the more dangerous these foreign fighters become.

Corruption in the Middle East at all time high

 According to a statement by General Joseph L. Votel, Commander of U.S. Central Command, 90% of countries in the Middle East receive a failing grade from Transparency International Corruption Index and corruption is at an all time high.

Global Security lists 22 countries as falling within Central Command's area of responsibility. Here they are in ranked order. From most corrupt to least:

Syria (178)
Afghanistan (177)
Yemen (175)
Iraq (169)
Turkmenistan (167)
Tajikistan (161)
Uzbekistan (157)
Lebanon (143)
Kyrgyzstan (135)
Iran (130)
Kazakhstan (122)
Djibouti (122)
Pakistan (117)
Egypt (117)
Bahrain (103)
Kuwait (85)
Oman (68)
Jordan (59)
Saudi Arabia (57)
Seychelles (36)
Qatar (29)
United Arab Emirates (21)