January 2009

I tried to run away from home once, when I was 7. I was not at all unhappy, I had just spent a lot of time reading Alison Uttley’s Little Grey Rabbit books, in which one character wandered around with all his belongings wrapped in a hanky on the end of a stick that he carried over his shoulder. I wanted to be like that. My mother, remarkably, helped me wrap up the belongings. It now occurs to me that she was probably reasonably confident that, in the middle of a massive thunderstorm, I wouldn’t get very far. I spend a very cheerful hour eating whatever she’d packed while sitting in a stream of water under a rather large table in the playground of the school, the schoolhouse of which we inhabited at the time. Then I returned home, defeated, cold, sodden, but full and happy.

But I never thought of eloping.

I’ve a piece in the current issue of the _American Prospect_, which is “now available”:http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=can_partisanship_save_citizenship on their website. The argument, in a nutshell, is that there is likely to be a clash between Obama style post-partisan politics (which builds on a general anti-party sentiment in American political thought and in recent arguments from Putnam, Fishkin etc about civic renewal), and the quite partisan electoral machine that he built in order to win the election.

The rebirth of civic participation this year is not a product of experiments in deliberative democracy or a new interest in league bowling. Rather, it is based on party politics, coupled with and accelerated by new opportunities provided by the Internet. Skocpol’s claim that “conflict and competition have always been the mother’s milk of American democracy” tells part of the story.

The one regret I have is that I hadn’t read Nancy Rosenblum’s _On the Side of the Angels_ (Powells, Amazon) before writing it. Rosenblum’s new book is the first serious political theoretic defense of partisanship that I’ve ever read. More on that when I work my way through the other items on my queue …

“An excellent column by Jo Wolff in today’s Guardian”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/jan/06/wolff-philosophy-academicsworking-habits . Personally, I have two methods of getting things written. The first was prompted by reading an obituary of Anthony Burgess which revealed that he used to write 1000 words every day and then retire to a cafe for a martini. Though I skip the martini part, this works well as a way of making progress on a project over a longish period during which there are other demands on time. Sometimes, though, deadlines loom and you just have to get something written fast. For this, 45 minutes interspersed with 15 minute breaks is the way, totting up the virtual football matches I’ve thereby accumulated. I keep my trousers on. Usually,

David Velleman (NYU, Philosophy) observes (in an email to me) that CNN is describing the Israeli killing of civilians in Gaza as “unintentional” (he didn’t give me a link, but I believe him, and no doubt one of you will supply it). He continues:

As a philosopher of action, I say that this description
is false.

The Israelis knew that they would would cause civilian casualties vastly
disproportionate to the Israeli civilian casualties that they are trying
to prevent. They have accepted those Palestinian deaths as a cost of
pursuing their ends, and hence as part of a “package deal,” all of which
is intentional on their part.

I know that the Catholic doctrine of “double effect” would excuse these
killings as unintentional. But the doctrine of double effect is bad
philosophy.

Look at it this way. The Israeli authorities are not trying to get their
own soldiers killed; they are trying to minimize harm to Israeli forces.
But should it turn out (god forbid) that their incursion results in
disproportionate Israeli losses, and that they antecedently knew it
would, they will rightly be held responsible for having struck a bad
bargain, intentionally incurring costs too great for the anticipated
benefits. In such a case, they would not dare to plead “double effect”.

So it is with killing of Gazan civilians, which is clearly intentional.

I’m not a philosopher of action, and I’m also not the kind of philosopher that gives common sense much weight in trying to discern the philosophical truth. But the doctrine of double effect has always seemed to me to be one of those things which is deeply counterintuitive to common sense, for reasons illustrated in Velleman’s email, and is a case where philosophers ignore that unease that common sense suggests at their peril.

Many CT readers will be familiar with the work of Tom Geoghegan. We’ve often talked about his book, _Which Side Are You On_ which is a simply wonderful piece of political writing – brilliant, complicated, beautifully written, arguing with itself the whole way through. Now, he’s running for the Democratic nomination in Rahm Emanuel’s old district. I’m usually a bit chary when intellectuals run for office – they (we¹) are usually not very good at all at dealing with the day-to-day grind and compromise of politics. But Geoghegan, as “James Fallows says”:http://jamesfallows.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/01/tom_geoghegan_for_congress.php is different.

The remarkable thing is that in Geoghegan’s case writing has been a sideline. Day by day for several decades he has been a lawyer in a small Chicago law firm representing steel workers, truckers, nurses, and other employees whose travails are the reality covered by abstractions like “the polarization of America” and “the disappearing middle class.” Geoghegan’s skills as a writer and an intellectual are assets but in themselves might not recommend him for a Congressional job. His consistent and canny record of organizing, representing, and defending people who are the natural Democratic (and American) base is the relevant point. The people of Chicago would have to look elsewhere for Blago-style ethics entertainment. Tom Geoghegan is honest and almost ascetic. Because it’s an important part of his makeup, I mention too that he is a serious, Jesuit-trained Catholic.

This is a purely personal endorsement; as a general rule, we don’t take collective positions on issues or people at CT. But I can’t imagine anyone more likely to contribute more to American political life than Geoghegan. I’ve contributed money to his campaign – if you want to do so too, you can do it easily “here”:http://www.actblue.com/entity/fundraisers/21621. There’s a Facebook group “here”:http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/group.php?gid=51249306795 (with a good bio attached).

¹ In case it’s not clear, the term ‘intellectual’ here doesn’t refer either positively or negatively to intellectual worth, but to social position.

This is the second in a planned series of posts assessing the implications of the global financial crisis for the economic ideas and policies that have been dominant for the past few decades. The large-scale privatisation of publicly-owned enterprises both in capitalist countries like the UK and Australia and in formerly communist countries after 1989 played a big role in promoting the kind of triumphalism that characterised much commentary about free-market capitalism in the 1990s and (to a somewhat lesser extent) in the years leading up to the crisis. How well do arguments for privatisation stand up in the light of the financial crisis.

The case for privatisation had two main elements. First, there was the fiscal argument for privatisation, namely, that governments could improve their financial position by selling government business enterprises. This argument assumed that privately owned firms would have higher levels of operating efficiency, and therefore that the value of those firms would be increased by privatisation. The second argument was a dynamic one, that the allocation of capital between alternative investments would be improved if governments were not involved in the process. Both of these arguments have been fatally undermined by the collapse of the efficient markets hypothesis.

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Much of the blogospheric chatter about “proportionality” in warfare has been characterized by disinformation of a rather systematic kind. That was the case in the recent Lebanon war, and it is happening again during the current Israeli operation in Gaza. At Opinio Juris, Kevin Jon Heller does an excellent job of explaining the legal issues by way of what it would be absurdly ironic (in this context) to call a thorough “Fisking” of Alan Dershowitz. As Brian Leiter (via whom) points out, the moral issues are also significant.

Update: I found “this BBC article”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7811386.stm about who is legally entitled the benefit of the principle of noncombatant immunity quite useful.

via “Andrew Sullivan”:http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/ .

Over on the Edge of the American West, Eric has been working up some graphs on what the WPA spent its money on. Data visualization nerdery is below the fold. The rest of you can go back to your pie charts, whether in honest ignorance or a spirit of desperate contrarianism.

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Microsoft Zune music players stopped working on New Years Day because of a software bug, raising the inevitable comparisons with the Y2K fiasco. The way in which the largely spurious Y2K problem was handled raises some interesting comparisons with the all too real problem of climate change. Although many billions of dollars were spent on making systems Y2K-compliant, there was no serious scientific study of the problem and its implications. The big decisions were made on the basis of anecdotal evidence, and reports from consultants with an obvious axe to grind. Even the simplest objections were never answered (for example, many organisations started their fiscal 2000 year in April or July 1999, well before remediation was completed, and none had any serious problems). There was nothing remotely resembling the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, let alone the vast scientific literature that needs to be summarised and synthesised for an understanding of climate change.

Thus, anyone who took a genuinely sceptical attitude to the evidence could safely predict that 1 January 2000 would pass without any more serious incidents than usual, even for the many countries and businesses that had ignored the problem. The retrospective evaluations of the policy were even more embarrassingly skimpy. I analysed some of the factors involved in this paper in the Australian Journal of Public Administration.

A really interesting point here is the fact that, in the leadup to 1 January 2000, self-described global warming sceptics, for the most part, went along with the crowd. If any of them rallied to the support of those of us who called for a “fix on failure” approach, I didn’t notice it. Of course, I’m open to correction here. I’d be very interested if anyone could point to a piece published before 2000 taking a sceptical line both Y2K and AGW.

Over at my blog, I’ve started a series of posts on economic doctrines and policy proposals that have been refuted or rendered obsolete by the financial crisis. There will be a bit of repetition of material I’ve already posted and I’ll probably edit the posts in response to points raised in discussion. I’m crossposting here in the hope of getting more discussion, but readers who aren’t interested in econowonk stuff may want to skip this series.

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I’m sorry to say that longtime Dublin independent TD, Tony Gregory, has died. Apparently, he’d had cancer for some time. Despite being a thorn in the side of practically every other politician and civil servant he encountered, Tony Gregory is universally and warmly praised by them in today’s reports.

Gregory’s extravagant pork-barreling in the early 80s was much vindicated by his decades long commitment to one of the poorest parts of Dublin. My generation probably remembers him best as the man who refused to wear a tie in Dail Eireann. Obliging little conformist that I am, I remember my ten year old self wishing he’d just wear a tie so he could get on and do things for his constituency. Later, I realised that it was precisely because Tony Gregory refused to roll over and play nicely that he was able to get things done and command voter loyalty for decades in one of the most alienated parts of the country.

I never make New Year’s resolutions. If I want to do something then I’ll just start doing it. (This explains why I started recording my steps with a pedometer on April 4, 2007 and why I started photo Project 365 on October 24, 2006.) If I’m not really committed to doing something then it certainly won’t make a difference to start it on January 1.

But yesterday, I got some resolutions handed to me nonetheless. I was at a New Year’s Eve party and everyone was asked to write down their resolutions and put them in a hat. Then we went around and drew resolutions.

Here is what I got:

Eat More Green things (and by green, I don’t mean moldy)
Make more stuff

I get the first one and I’m happy to give it a go. I’ve already had some edamame today to comply.

But what does the second one mean? Does writing a book count as making stuff? Or should I be setting up shop at Etsy?

I’m curious, those of you who make New Year’s resolutions, what’s the longest you’ve managed to stay on track? Anyone go a whole year? Any unusual attempts this time around?

Obituary “here”:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/02/books/02westlake.html?_r=1&hp. I’m very sorry to hear this – he was one of my favourite writers, both under his own name and his Richard Stark pseudonym. A few of his Dortmunder novels were perfect, in the same way that P.G. Wodehouse’s best Jeeves and Blandings novels were perfect – beautifully made confections of style, wit and adept plotting.

Update: This “post”:http://www.tor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=blog&id=11124 from Jo Walton puts it much better than I could.

He was a writer that writers like. I have often been in a conversation with writers about writing and someone will bring up Westlake and everyone else will nod and agree. Westlake’s books have wonderful characters, complicated evolving plots, they’re tightly paced and incredibly readable. When he’s funny, he’s genuinely funny with humour arising unforced out of situations. Characters are always themselves, they act the way you know they would act. They’re acutely observed and like like people. Yet his plots are clockwork masterpieces—he winds them up and off they go, not just ticking away but producing wonderful pyrotechnics. He could be gentle and he could be as hard as steel. I’ve often recommended that beginning writers study his books if they want to see how to do these things right. They’re hard to study though, because they suck you right in. There’s a quality of writing there isn’t really a word for except “unputdownable” and Westlake had it in spades.

If you haven’t read him before, I’d suggest starting with What’s the Worst That Could Happen, because that’s where I started. It’s the story of how the thief Dortmunder has his ring stolen, and how he tries to get it back, pulling off more and more complicated heists on the same person, who thoroughly deserves it. The series actually starts with The Hot Rock where Dortmunder and his friends steal the same jewel over and over. He has one more Dortmunder novel coming out in July, Get Real, so that’s something to look forward to.