Henry

This bit from a NYT article on iTunes struck me as a particularly noteworthy example of the regurgitated press-release masquerading as analysis.

bq. Sometime before the end of the year, Microsoft is expected to begin its push into the music download business. Microsoft will attempt to catch up with Apple by deploying its new Windows technology, called Windows Media Digital Rights Management, that will let users more easily transfer song collections from their personal computers to their portable MP3 players.

Freedom is Slavery how are ya. Media DRM 10 has nothing whatsoever to do with making it easier for users to transfer their song collections, and everything to do with making sure that they don’t do things with their song collections that the record companies wouldn’t like them to do. In other words, it’ll make transferring music harder, not easier – if it makes it easier than it already is, then it’s not doing the job that it’s supposed to do. I suppose that you could make some class of a contorted argument that DRM will make record companies happier to flog tunes for portable players etc etc, but that isn’t what the journalist is saying. Sloppy work.

Dan Drezner makes a highly questionable empirical claim.

bq. The worst aspect of science fiction/science fantasy books is their malign neglect of the laws of economics.

Dan just hasn’t been reading the _right_ science fiction/science fantasy books. For starters, there’s Ken MacLeod's ‘Trots in Space’ quartet, Cory Doctorow's and Bruce Sterling's different takes on the reputational economy; and Steven Brust's fantasy about a complicated insurance fraud. And those are just the economics-literate books written by bloggers. Neal Stephenson’s gonzo-libertarian novels are all about the intersection of economics and politics – his most recent set of books (which I’ve blogged here and here) is an extended fantasia centered on the birth of the free market economy. Can’t get much more economistic than that. Unless indeed you want to jump to the other end of the ideological spectrum, and read China Mieville’s Marxist account of mercantile capitalism at its nastiest in The Scar (also blogged here and here on my old blog – enter ‘ok’ for both userid and password if you want to read the entries). China has a freshly minted Ph.D. in international relations from the LSE – he’s a Fred Halliday student. And I haven’t even mentioned Jack Vance, or Iain M. Banks’ Culture novels, or Pohl and Kornbluth’s _The Space Merchants_, or the interesting panel on the economics of abundance that I went to at Torcon last year. Or … or … or … And I don’t even know this stuff that well – I reckon that Brad DeLong could point to many other examples of smart econo-sf if he put his mind to it.

Dan does have a point – yer average Star Trek novelization or ten volume fantasy trilogy about Dark Lords on the rampage probably doesn’t have much in the way of well-thought-out economic underpinnings. Diana Wynne-Jones has some fun with the latter in her cruel, frequently hilarious Tough Guide to Fantasyland. But a fair chunk of the most interesting science fiction of the last few years starts with interesting economic questions and answers them, usually in rather unorthodox ways. It steals as much from game theory and Leontiev matrices as from hard physics. It’s never been a better time to be an academic in the social sciences with a weakness for sf – lots and lots of good, fun literate stuff out there.

Mark Schmitt makes an interesting argument about lawyers and trade unions as functional substitutes for each other in checking corporate power. He notes some evidence suggesting that states with low rates of unionization are “hellhole states” for business, where plaintiff’s lawyers deliver huge amounts for a small number of victims.

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From an editorial in the Washington Post today.

bq. According to the International Red Cross, a number of people apparently in U.S. custody are unaccounted for. Most are believed to be held by the CIA in secret facilities outside the United States. Contrary to the Geneva Conventions, the detainees have never been visited by the Red Cross; contrary to U.S. and international law, some reportedly have been subjected to interrogation techniques that most legal authorities regard as torture.

…

bq. What is known, mostly through leaks to the media, is that several of the CIA’s detainees probably have been tortured — and that a controversial Justice Department opinion defending such abuse was written after the fact to justify the activity. According to reports in The Post, pain medication for Abu Zubaida, who suffered from a gunshot wound in the groin, was manipulated to obtain his cooperation, while Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was subjected to “water boarding,” which causes the sensation of drowning. Notwithstanding the Justice Department opinion, parts of which recently were repudiated by the White House, U.S. personnel responsible for such treatment may be guilty of violating the international Convention Against Torture and U.S. laws related to it.

…

bq. Nor has the CIA’s illegal behavior been limited to senior al Qaeda militants. The agency has been responsible for interrogating suspects in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and it is believed to have held a number in secret detention facilities. According to official reports, the identities of several in Iraq were deliberately concealed from the Red Cross, a violation of the Geneva Conventions. At least two detainees have died while being interrogated by CIA personnel. One CIA contractor has been charged with assault by the Justice Department in the case of one of the deaths, and at least two other cases are reportedly under investigation. But no higher-ranking CIA officials have been held accountable for the abuses or the decisions that led to them, even though it is now known that former CIA director George J. Tenet was directly involved in the “ghost detainee” cases in Iraq.

bq. The Pentagon and Congress are investigating the Army’s handling of foreign detainees; though they are slow and inadequate, these probes contrast with the almost complete absence of scrutiny of the CIA’s activity.

I’m not especially keen on self-righteous denunciations of the “people of political position _x_ are lying hypocrites unless they immediately denounce _y_” variety. Still, like Kieran, I have enormous difficulty in understanding why sincere, committed US libertarians (with some exceptions ) aren’t up in arms about this sort of thing. It seems to me to be an open-and-shut case of the kinds of state tyranny that libertarians should rightly be concerned about. Why is state-organized torture a less topical issue than state-imposed limits on political free speech, or individual ownership of firearms? If someone has a consistently argued libertarian argument for why the state should be allowed to torture individuals, I’d like to hear it. If someone has a libertarian argument, or indeed any argument at all, for why the state should be allowed to do this with no public scrutiny or accountability, I’d like to hear that even more.

John Holbo has an interesting post in his ‘John and Belle’ incarnation on superhero comics and nostalgia. His argument, as I understand it is that the classical superhero story is dead – that the ‘straight’ efforts to resurrect it (Michael Chabon’s ‘Escapist’) and the revisionist (Daniel Clowe, Chris Ware) are more closely related than they seem at first sight. They’re exercises in nostalgia, driven by how the “pain of unachieved adulthood contend[s] with hope for redeemed childish innocence.” If we look through the images around which we construct our identities when we are growing up, they provide luminous refractions of our adult complexities.

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We introduced an innovation a few weeks back and completely forgot to announce it. We’re a group blog which frequently has quite lengthy posts. Thus, when one of us does a post of more than a paragraph or two, it’s usually excerpted on the main page, so that the reader needs to click on “read more” in order to finish reading it. As far as we can tell, most readers prefer this ‘radio edit’ – it means that posts don’t disappear rapidly to the bottom of a very long page. However, some don’t. For the latter, we’ve created the Crooked Timber Extended Play Mix, which publishes each post in its entirety to the Crooked Timber main page (you still have to click for comments). If you prefer not to have to click through to read full posts, you should bookmark this version instead (it’s also available in the left sidebar as ‘full post version’).

Spinning off from the general question of the left and third parties – what are the political consequences of the US left’s failure to create a long lasting set of social institutions independent of government? Colin Crouch, my former Ph.D. co-supervisor, gave an address which touched upon this last week, where he claimed that neither classical liberalism nor classical social democracy had much to say about society, the former obsessing about the market, and the latter obsessing about the state. He did, however, have to acknowledge that the left created a vibrant set of alternative social institutions in many European countries, which provided all sorts of social benefits to ordinary people. Usually, these networks of institutions were set up in competition with rather similiar networks that were run by the Catholic Church and Christian Democratic party. Both networks were intended to shore up political support by providing tangible goods in return. When I lived in Italy in the late 1990’s, there were a few remants of the old Leftist alternative civil society around – the _Casa del Popolo_ (People’s Palace) in Fiesole had some of the best pizza in town, and ran a great May Day festival.

Of course, none of this really ever got going in the US. The only really active set of alternative social institutions in the US isn’t socialist, or even Christian Democratic – it’s the localized networks associated with evangelical Christianity. The Catholic church also plays a role, especially in education, but isn’t anywhere near as important as far as I can tell (I may be wrong). It seems to me as an outsider that this has shaped the US debate on the proper relationship between state and society in important ways. On the one hand, most left-wingers are virulently hostile to the idea that ‘state’ type social services should be delegated to civil society, because they see civil society as composed of religious zealots who will require that anyone who accepts their services also accept Jesus into their hearts. While this may, or may not be true, it seems to me to be associated with a certain lack of imagination on the left, a failure to think beyond the state. On the other, the enthusiasm of the conservative right for outsourcing social services to civil society is equally a product of the social dominance of religious organizations. How many of them would be keen on this, if, say, there was a thriving set of social democratic third sector institutions that could compete with religious groups to provide services (and perhaps smuggle in a bit of indoctrination along the way?) Not many, I imagine.

Megan McArdle responds to my previous post about third parties, suggesting that Barbara Ehrenreich (and I) have “about as tenuous a connection to reality as the folks who brought us Pepsi Clear.” Her counter-argument:

* That ‘first-past-the-post’ voting tends to produce two party systems.
* That presidential systems are much more prone to two-partyism than parliamentary ones.
* That the reason why Ehrenreich’s (or indeed McArdle’s ideas) don’t become policy isn’t because they’re blocked by the system, but because most Americans disagree with them.

* Therefore: third-partyism is an exercise in futility.

These arguments are exactly the sort of thing that we political scientists like to claim that we know something about (I note in passing that Megan’s confident assertion of these empirical relationships sits somewhat awkwardly with her belief that political science doesn't have much to do with falsifiable predictions). On the first of these claims, there’s evidence from the literature to suggest that McArdle is sort of right (but not in a way that really helps her overall argument). On the second, there’s evidence to suggest that she’s fundamentally wrong. On the third, she seems to be on thin ice (if she’s making a limited claim) or falling through into the river beneath (if she’s making a strong general argument).

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There appears to be some problem with our service – new comments are being registered – but are not appearing on the site. We’re trying to figure out what the problem is …

Update: Things seem to be working again.

Brad DeLong tells us that Barbara Ehrenreich’s version of left-wing politics are an ‘infantile disorder.’ In support of this claim, he quotes _in extenso_ from a _Nation_ piece that she wrote in 2000, advocating support for Ralph Nader rather than Al Gore. Brad is being both condescending and obtuse – I have difficulty in seeing any evidence whatsover of infantilism in the piece that he quotes. Ehrenreich has two points to make. First – that if you’re really committed to major reform of the US political system, voting for the Democrats isn’t going to do it. The only way to create a real alternative is to build an alternative social movement – and alternative party – on the ground, which necessarily is going to involve conflict with the institutional interests of the Democratic party. Second – even if we are stuck in a two party system for the foreseeable future, the way for leftists to get their voice heard by the Democrats isn’t to roll over and play nice – it’s to credibly threaten to vote for somebody else unless the Democrats start pushing for the things that you care about.

There are some very good counter-arguments against voting for Nader, and they’re even better in this election than the last one. Because of basic personality flaws, he’s an improbable candidate for real social change (although I should say that I know and like some of the people who work for him). He’d be a bad President. This time around, he doesn’t have the support of the Greens, or much in the way of supporting organizations (apart from the Republicans). Thus, voting for him wouldn’t do anything to help build a viable alternative political movement. Finally, the alternative to a Kerry Presidency is demonstrably too horrible to be contemplated. Still, Ehrenreich is posing a very serious question that Brad doesn’t start to answer. If you believe (as Ehrenreich does, and as I do) that the current two party system in the US is systematically flawed, and produces deeply inequitable results, then why should you vote, year in, year out, for candidates who have no intention of changing things? The ‘lesser of two evils’ argument may cut it this year; it isn’t going to cut it forever.

Update: for a different defence of Ehrenreich, see Kevin Drum.

Update2: It seems that Brad wasn’t being quite as condescending as I thought – his ‘infantile disorder’ jibe is a nod to Lenin. I still reckon that he doesn’t establish much of a case that Ehrenreich is in fact being infantile.

I’ve spent the last couple of days at the annual meeting of SASE, the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics. Cass Sunstein gave one of the keynote speeches – a summary of his much blogged book on Roosevelt’s ‘Second Bill of Rights.’ There was one interesting aside in his talk. While talking about Roosevelt’s talent for speaking plainly and directly to the interests of ordinary Americans, Sunstein claimed that Roosevelt’s modern rhetorical heir was John Edwards. I’m not entirely convinced – I’ve an inherent suspicion of anyone whom the _Economist_ keeps on talking up. Still, even if Edwards proves to be a disappointment in office (insofar as Vice-Presidents are ever successes), he’s already made an important contribution to US public discourse. By finding a language to express the class divisions in US society – and avoiding, somehow, the usual, tired accusations of ‘class warfare’ – he’s done us all a real service.

Ted says

bq. There ought to be a word for these kinds of arguments, in which one simultaneously displays and condemns hypocrisy. They happen a lot.

There should be a word too for the kind of self-deconstructing display of bad faith that Charles Krauthammer treats us to in his latest piece of hackwork, entitled “Blixful Amnesia.” If someone other than Krauthammer were involved, you might imagine that a post thus entitled would be an apology for repeated assertions that Hans Blix was a craven, incompetent fool for not finding WMDs in Iraq. Instead it’s yet another incoherent harangue; this time against a recent talk given by Blix in Vienna. Blix’s speech begins with an aside – that hundreds of millions of people are more directly threatened by hunger than by weapons of mass destruction – and then launches into a detailed and lengthy discussion of non-proliferation, Krauthammer, who doesn’t appear to have read beyond the opening paragraphs, sees this as telling evidence of the failure of the “decadent European left” to face up to the problems of proliferation of nuclear weapons. In fact, Blix offers a series of proposals for addressing proliferation – starting with a real commitment by the existing nuclear powers to stop producing nuclear weapons material.

There’s something rather odd about Krauthammer’s continued obsession with Blix. My suspicion is that it’s because Blix’s credibility (at least with regard to the most recent round of weapons inspections) has increased over time, while Krauthammer’s has evaporated. In Krauthammer’s own words fifteen months ago.

bq. Hans Blix had five months to find weapons. He found nothing. We’ve had five weeks. Come back to me in five months. If we haven’t found any, we will have a credibility problem.

Indeed. It’s high time that the Washington Post took him at his word, and dealt with his continuing “credibility problem” by suggesting that he seek employment elsewhere.

The New York Times tells us today about some bloke who’s playing golf across Mongolia, treating the entire country as a course, and dividing it into eighteen holes. Par is 11,880.

Sounds impressive – until you consider the Surrealist Golf Course in Maurice Richardson’s The Exploits of Engelbrecht (previously discussed in this post). According to Richardson

bq. To start with, a surrealist golf course has only one hole. But don’t get the idea that it’s any easier on that account. … Par is reckoned at 818181, but anything under 100,000 is considered a hot score. The hazards are desperate, so desperate that at the clubhouse bar you always see some pretty ravaged faces and shaky hands turning down an empty glass for the missing members.

These hazards include Sairpents, Vultures, the Valley of Dry Bones, Muezzins and Butlins Holiday Camp. In comparison, the Gobi Desert sounds like a cakewalk.

Matt Yglesias gives us a “long philosophical rant” about the inconsistencies in Spiderman 2. More power to him, I say – but he’s still very likely wrong. Spiderman is not only a really, really good movie, it’s not necessarily making the claims that Matt suggests it does. Warning: spoilers follow.

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