May 2009

[Stolen wholesale from “The Irish Economy”:http://www.irisheconomy.ie/index.php/2009/05/04/dependency-theory-for-the-21st-century/, a very interesting blog, which I recommend to you all].

The last time the world experienced an economic catastrophe on the present scale, governments in Latin America and elsewhere drew the conclusion that reliance on fickle overseas markets was a dangerous thing. World War II only served to reinforce this conclusion.

Similar lessons are being drawn “today”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8031456.stm, with one crucial difference. Back then, the decision was made to artificially decouple national economies from the international economy by developing protected industries that would service the home market. Now, the focus is on lessening export dependence by boosting local demand, which will involve temporary stimulus measures in the short run, but more structural measures in the longer term, for example promoting “social safety nets to give Asian consumers, especially the poor, the confidence to spend”. Moving towards higher wages, a more equal income distribution, and lower savings rates in countries like China, so that more of what is produced there is consumed there, would seem to be among the more benign adjustment scenarios available to the world economy today.

Kevin Drum gives The Black Swan a fairly thumbs-downish review. I had a slightly more favorable reaction myself when I read it recently. I’ll add a comment and a question. Drum is right about the crankishness of the book’s tone. It’s impressive, isn’t it? How well ivory towers work as insanity field-generators? Everyone knows they make their inhabitants go crazy. But it’s also true that they drive everyone outside insane, who comes anywhere near.Those the gods would destroy, they first make really, really annoyed. To live just outside an ivory tower without going all cranky. That’s the trick.

Now, a question. Taleb claims in passing at various points that the modern world is Extremistan, and getting more so all the time. By constrast, our primitive ancestors lived in Mediocristan. As Drum summarizes: “[Taleb] writes about how humans are hardwired to be bad at estimating risks in the modern world.” Extremistan breeds more ‘black swans’: events that are, if I remember rightly, highly unpredictable; highly consequential; retroactively explicable. But it strikes me that animals – our ancestors in particular – probably never lived in Mediocristan. The Pleistocene wasn’t Mediocristan. Our ancestors were just as bad at estimating risks in their environments as we are in ours. Their black swans, the stuff that gave them fairly short lives, were just different. Mediocristan isn’t a time or a place, or a primitive development stage, it’s a projection of a confused form of cognition. It’s a place everyone acts as if they live in, but no one has lived there. Mediocristan is only a state of mind. This is the important thing, for Taleb, so I expect he would respond by saying – yeah, whatever. I didn’t write a history of the Pleistocene. But he does repeatedly imply that it’s a state of mind because, once upon a time, we really lived there. He talks as though it’s an adaptive trait that has become mal-adaptive. But that’s wrong, right?

Elsevier already has an awesomely wonderful reputation as an academic publisher, but even by their standards, “this”:http://www.the-scientist.com/templates/trackable/display/blog.jsp?type=blog&o_url=blog/display/55671&id=55671 (free reg. required) is pretty extraordinary.

Merck paid an undisclosed sum to Elsevier to produce several volumes of a publication that had the look of a peer-reviewed medical journal, but contained only reprinted or summarized articles–most of which presented data favorable to Merck products–that appeared to act solely as marketing tools with no disclosure of company sponsorship.

…The _Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine,_ which was published by Exerpta [HF-sic] Medica, a division of scientific publishing juggernaut Elsevier, is not indexed in the MEDLINE database, and has no website (not even a defunct one).

… In testimony provided at the trial last week, which was obtained by The Scientist, George Jelinek, an Australian physician and long-time member of the World Association of Medical Editors, reviewed four issues of the journal that were published from 2003-2004. An “average reader” (presumably a doctor) could easily mistake the publication for a “genuine” peer reviewed medical journal, he said in his testimony. “Only close inspection of the journals, along with knowledge of medical journals and publishing conventions, enabled me to determine that the Journal was not, in fact, a peer reviewed medical journal, but instead a marketing publication for MSD[A].”

He also stated that four of the 21 articles featured in the first issue he reviewed referred to Fosamax. In the second issue, nine of the 29 articles related to Vioxx, and another 12 to Fosamax. All of these articles presented positive conclusions regarding the MSDA drugs. “I can understand why a pharmaceutical company would collect a number of research papers with results favourable to their products and make these available to doctors,” Jelinek said at the trial. “This is straightforward marketing.”

… Lurie, in examining two of the issues for _The Scientist,_ agreed that one particularly strange element of the _Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine_ is that it contains “review” articles that cite just one or two references. “I’ve never seen anything quite like this,” he said. “Reviews are usually swimming in references.”

Elsevier acknowledged that Merck had sponsored the publication, but did not disclose the amount the drug company paid. In a statement emailed to The Scientist, Elsevier said that the company “does not today consider a compilation of reprinted articles a ‘Journal’.”

“Elsevier acknowledges the concern that the journals in question didn’t have the appropriate disclosures,” the statement continued. “It is worth noting that project in question was produced 6 years ago and disclosure protocols have evolved since 2003. Elsevier’s current disclosure policies meet the rigor and requirements of the current publishing environment.”

“Via Summer Johnson”:http://blog.bioethics.net/2009/05/merck-makes-phony-peerreview-journal/.

Welcome to a new Crooked Timber seminar, this one on Steve Teles’ recent book _The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement: The Battle for Control of the Law_ (Amazon, Powells). This has already become a landmark book in the burgeoning literature on American conservatism, charting out the organizational strategies through which economic conservatives and libertarians (as the book notes, it doesn’t have much to say about religious conservatism) sought to respond to the liberal legal culture of 1960s America, and to turn it back. It’s a great story, not least because Teles talks about the mistakes that the conservatives made as well as their successes. There is a tendency on the left to see the conservative movement as an incredibly efficient institutional Borg that adopted a masterplan in the 1960s, implemented it through the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, and then saw it all collapse in the last couple of years. Teles gives this account the lie, showing us the organizational false starts as well as the success stories.

We have a great series of responses to Teles’ book – see below for links to all of them. Those who prefer to read this seminar as a PDF can find it “here”:https://crookedtimber.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/telesfinal2.pdf.

As with other seminars, all the contents are made available under a Creative Commons With Attribution Non-Commercial Sharealike license. To make it easier for people to remix the content as they will, we are making the TeX file for the seminar available “here”:https://crookedtimber.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/telesfinal1.tex.

Our contributors this week:

“Jack Balkin”:http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/jbalkin/ is Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment. He blogs at “Balkinization”:http://balkin.blogspot.com/. His contribution – “What Teles Can Tell Us About Constitutional Change”:https://crookedtimber.org/2009/04/27/what-teles-can-tell-us-about-constitutional-change/.

“Tyler Cowen”:http://www.gmu.edu/jbc/Tyler/ is professor of economics at George Mason University, and author of the forthcoming book “Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity in a Disordered World”:http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0525951237?ie=UTF8&tag=henryfarrell-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0525951237. He blogs at “Marginal Revolution”:http://www.marginalrevolution.com. His contribution – “One Economist’s Perspective on the Law and Economics Movement”:https://crookedtimber.org/2009/04/28/one-economist%E2%80%99s-perspective-on-the-law-and-economics-movement/.

Henry Farrell blogs here. His contribution – “Fabians and Gramscians in Law and Economics”:https://crookedtimber.org/2009/04/30/fabians-and-gramscians-in-law-and-economics/.

“Kimberly Morgan”:http://home.gwu.edu/~kjmorgan/ is associate professor of political science at the George Washington University. She is author of “Working Mothers and the Welfare State: Religion and the Politics of Work-Family Policies in Western Europe and the United States”:http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0804754144?ie=UTF8&tag=henryfarrell-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0804754144. Her contribution – ”
Legal Conservatives as Closet Gramscians”:https://crookedtimber.org/2009/04/29/legal-conservatives-as-closet-gramscians/.

“David Post”:http://www.law.temple.edu/servlet/com.rnci.products.DataModules.RetrievePage?site=TempleLaw&page=N_Faculty_Post_Main is I. Herman Stern Professor of Law at Temple University. He has just written “In Search of Jefferson’s Moose: Notes on the State of Cyberspace”:http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195342895?ie=UTF8&tag=henryfarrell-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0195342895. He blogs at “The Volokh Conspiracy”:http://www.volokh.com. His contribution – “Living Life Forwards”:https://crookedtimber.org/2009/04/29/living-life-forwards/.

“Rick Perlstein”:http://www.rickperlstein.net is author of _Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus_ and _Nixonland_, which has “just come out in paperback”:http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/074324303X?ie=UTF8&tag=henryfarrell-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=074324303X. His contribution – “What Liberals Shouldn’t Learn from Conservatives”:https://crookedtimber.org/2009/04/27/what-liberals-shouldnt-learn-from-conservatives/.

“Fabio Rojas”:http://mypage.iu.edu/~frojas/index.html is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Indiana University. He blogs at “OrgTheory”:http://www.orgtheory.net. He is author of “From Black Power to Black Studies: How a Radical Social Movement Became an Academic Discipline”:http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0801886198?ie=UTF8&tag=henryfarrell-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0801886198. His contribution – “The Failed Conservative Revolution”:https://crookedtimber.org/2009/04/30/the-failed-conservative-revolution/.

“Mark Schmitt”:http://www.newamerica.net/people/mark_schmitt is executive editor of _The American Prospect._ He previously has been a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, Director of Policy and Research at the Open Society Institute, and a speechwriter for Senator Bill Bradley. He was also the author of much-missed blog, _The Decembrist._ His contribution – “Bunglers, Egos, and Law vs. Politics”:https://crookedtimber.org/2009/04/28/bunglers-egos-and-law-vs-politics/.

“Aaron Swartz”:http://www.aaronsw.com/ co-founded Reddit, and is now an activist, writer and hacker. He is involved or has been involved in Change Congress, the Open Library project, the Sunlight Foundation’s Open Congress project, and other stuff too multitudinous to list. He blogs at “Raw Thoughts”:http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/. His contribution – “Political Entrepreneurs and Lunatics with Money”:https://crookedtimber.org/2009/05/01/political-entrepreneurs-and-lunatics-with-money/.

“Steve Teles”:http://www.newamerica.net/people/steven_teles is associate professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University. He is also a fellow at the New America Foundation. His response to all the above is “here”:https://crookedtimber.org/2009/05/01/response-4/.

I’ve been following discussions of solar energy on-and-off for quite a while, and it has always seemed as if it would be quite a long time, even assuming an emissions trading scheme or carbon tax, before solar photovoltaics could be a cost-competitive source of electricity without special support such as capital subsidies or feed-in tariffs set above market prices.

But looking at the issue again today, I’m finding lots of claims that this “grid parity” will be achieved in the next few years, and even one company, First Solar, that claims to be already at grid parity with a 12 MW plant in Nevada completed last year. Obviously, Nevada is a particularly favorable location, and there is plenty of room for judgement in cost estimates. Still, looking at a lot of different reports, it seems clear that, with a carbon price of say $50/tonne (about 5 cents/kwh for black coal and 7 cents/kwh for brown coal), solar will be cost-competitive with coal for most places in Australia without any need for fundamental technical improvements.
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Just thought I’d mention it. If you want free comics today without walking into the comics store nearest you, you might check these out. Free, copyright-cleared Golden Age stuff. Some of the best, worst stuff you’ll find anywhere. (You are probably going to need Comical, as a free reader, if you don’t have it.)

Or you could just check out my free Squid and Owl stuff. (Just in case you haven’t noticed.) Also, happy 1st 100 days to the Obama administration. Many happy returns of the day and all that. (Guess I missed it by a few days.)

Chapter One of The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement opens with a quote from Stephen Skowronek, which I think sums up much of what I was trying to argue in the book: “Whether a given state changes or fails to change, the form and timing of the change, and the governing potential in the change—of these turn on a struggle for political power and institutional position, a struggle defined and mediated by the organization of the preestablished state.” In writing this book, Skowronek’s words haunted my own attempt to make sense of what was going on so many decades later. As Skowronek so powerfully argued, politics never starts from zero—it always starts somewhere . In order to make sense of what conservatives did, therefore, I needed to start with “the organization of the preestablished state.” [click to continue…]

One of the interesting things about capitalism is that, if you have money, people seem to just magically appear to meet your needs. When it rains in New York City, vendors materialize to sell me an umbrella. When I was walking to the inauguration, the streets were lined with people selling hats and handwarmers. I certainly didn’t ask anyone to bring me a hat; I didn’t even realize I would want one, or I would have brought it myself — but people predicted that I would and brought it for me.

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