Month: December 2013
Things I love about my wife
I love how my wife is ruthlessly honest. She may not always choose to tell me how she’s feeling or what she’s thinking, but when she does it’s the most honest thing in the world.
I love the way my wife cares about people, particularly the outgroups. Groups that don’t have the support or resources that others do. And these aren’t always the groups I would have thought of.
I love that my wife can’t not do something about these groups. Obviously she can’t solve world hunger, or childhood obesity single handedly, She’s not stupid. But what she can do, she does.
I love how my wife doesn’t care about people, particularly the utter bastards. Some people deserve to be smacked in the face. As a committed pacifist she would never actually do it, but she’ll gleefully watch as you face the consequences of your bad behavior. And, if you fall too low into one of the outgroups, she’ll help you get back on track. She’s that kind of woman.
I love my wife’s cooking. Most recently she’s been making a pot pie that, if I’m executed tomorrow, I want for my last meal.
I love my wife’s physical appearance. Enough said, full stop.
I love my wife’s sense of humor. She’s witty and sarcastic. All the overwhelming stupidity in the world becomes small and laughable when you’re with her. It’s also hard to take yourself too seriously for any length of time.
I love being there for her when she’s not feeling like taking on the world today, because there are days like that, and she’s always there for me when life gets me down. Sometimes she’s there for me with a swift kick in the rear, because sometimes I need that, other times she’s there with tea and encouragement. And how she knows when to go which direction I’ll never know but she’s usually right.
I love how my wife “gets me”. As a writer I hate that phrase. It’s vague and cliche. Unfortunately I have no other way to say it. She seems to understand how I think and feel about the world in a way that no one else has been able. I’m terrible at using my words to describe feelings, and states of being, but no matter how terrible I am she seems to get it. She “gets me”.
She hates math and science and that’s rough sometimes since that’s what I do. But she’s always there with some support and encouragement when I try to beat a little of it into the minds of my students. Sometimes, if I’m lucky, I get to trick her into learning a little as well. That’s always fun for me and I love that about her too.
I love how my wife’s problems and afflictions don’t pull her psyche apart. We all have our issues, but she’s always ready confront them.
I love how a good date is spending time in a book store. A great date is a used book store.
I love my wife. She can be fun, frustrating, and fantastic all at the same time. I know I’m still figuring out this husband thing, but it’s the most exciting thought I have is that I have my entire life to work on it. I look forward to spending every moment with her (well, aside from that all important man-time solitude). She’s a wonderful woman and I love her more than I can say.
The Lies We Tell: Part II
By far, the most pervasive lie we tell generally falls into the category of mere social convention. “How are you?” / “I’m fine”. Person 1 isn’t genuinely soliciting information on Person 2’s health and Person 2 isn’t genuinely attempting to convey factual information either. Both are attempting to be polite. Provided each person is aware of the mere adherence to social convention, they can lie to each other with impunity and indefinitely. Why would we engage in such a meaningless exercise? Because that’s the rule and it is vigorously enforced. Your ability to excel in our society is predicated on your mastery of the social conventions. Flout too many for too long and you may find yourself ostracized. Is that fair, justified, or even utilitarian? I have no idea and it’s beside the point. These rules are. They exist independently of mine or anyone’s wishes.
Still in the area of lies pertaining to social conventions, equal to saying things is not saying things. “Grandma’s house smells funny”. We quickly hush Timmy if this little gem should tumble from his lips. But why? Why not say so? is it not the truth? As a matter of fact, it is the truth but we wish to convey the fantasy that there is nothing uncomfortable about fulfilling a guilt-ridden familial obligation. By the way, you’re not supposed to accurately call it that either. It’s all about obeying social conventions. And there’s nothing wrong with this. Social conventions form the foundation of human relationships. If you never get past the superficial interaction mandated by social conventions, you’ll never develop the more meaningful connections which is the whole point of going to Grandma’s house in the first place. <Grandma, if you should ever happen to find this post, keep in mind this is just a metaphor. I’m not sure if you can believe anything in a post called “the lies we tell” but I really do like visiting and I’m trying to come out to California as soon as I can>. Either way, by following a carefully scripted protocol for shallow and uninteresting interaction or by avoiding unpleasant truths, we are attempting to convey a version of reality we know to be false. That, in my opinion, is a lie. This isn’t a Nixon-lie, or a Clinton-lie, this is a social convention-lie.
“You suck” vs “your performance so far has failed to meet specific policy objectives”. This is the tactful-lie. The example is inspired from an HR departmental meeting; however, the tactful-lie is more generally broad. It’s any truth designed to be concealed with an abundance of prettier verbiage. The upside to this sort of deception is it tends to work well if its legally mandated. “No no no…” supervisors everywhere are saying. “We need to be specific. ‘You suck’ is too vague”. I can appreciate that there times when telling someone exactly and specifically why they suck is important. But what your really doing, especially outside a professional setting, is trying to cover an unpalatable truth. No matter how much potpourri you bring, you’ll never cover up the stench of a fresh turd. With a tactful-lie, the liar might say at some point, “I don’t want to hurt his feelings”. Why would someone’s feelings be hurt? Because confronting an ugly truth is typically what is motivating the tactful lie. We think if we try to place the truth in some kind of context, that it won’t hurt. But you know, and I know, that it will anyway. We know this to the core of our being but we tell this lie anyway. It’s not surprising. At the heart of all lies is self-deception. (Now there’s a difficult truth for you.) And I promise, if you are the employee getting yelled at, pretty versus brusk won’t change the underlying emotional value of the communication.
Then there’s “I’m fine”. This is not your “I’m fine” social convention-lie (because “I’m fine” really covers so very much territory), this is the “I’m mad at you, you loathsome scum and if I have to really tell you how I feel, your best case scenario has you dying quickly and painlessly and this is not likely.” To be honest, I’m pretty comfortable with this lie. Intense emotion has an extraordinarily deleterious effect on the intellect. Being sane, I’m not about to pressure someone to talk to me if they’re “fine”. Whether it’s your boss, your spouse, children, friends, whatever, what people really need is emotional space. Call it the emotional space lie. Sometimes lying is the best way to accomplish this. This is healthy.
“I will help you”. This lie is my least favorite. I sincerely believe that you may put forth a modicum of effort if I badger you to do so (maybe), but I don’t for a second really believe you mean it. I believe you’re saying this as part of the friendship-lie. You know, it’s ok if we’re not really friends. We can hang out occasionally, trade facebook memes, and work together without being friends. I know it’s hard to imagine not being friends with someone but aside from (max) 4-5 people in your life, you just won’t have that many friends. I understand this. I do. We don’t have to pretend otherwise.
The “good/bad person lie.” The good person lie goes to one’s self-image. I see this a lot. We define ourselves and others through a dichotomous lens. I fault christianity for this one for its imposition of a false dichotomy on the world. Truth: You are not a good person. Nor are others bad people (or vice versa if you’re really screwed up). You are just a person. Good in some ways, needs improvement in others. I’m sorry let me be honest. You’re tolerable some ways and in other you suck. This even applies to real jackasses. It is a defining narrative that colors so much of our interaction with the world and we know, we KNOW, that it’s not true. We know that the guy who just cut us off on the freeway is probably a nice guy most of the time, that his rudeness does not define his existence. That it may not even have been intentional and in fact, probably wasn’t. Doesn’t keep us from hating him until we find new umbrage in our lives. Our heroes are not saints and our antagonists are not villains. However, if it makes the day go a little better than, by all means, indulge in the good person lie.
#Firstworldproblems
On this very merry Christmas I’m thinking about all the problems we have and the United States has a LOT of problems. Our rankings in health and education are abysmal and falling; our economic growth is anemic; our income inequality is skyrocketing; our political processes are bought out by “Special interest groups” (whatever that means); our congress is the worst congress in the history of this country by any objective measure #teaparty; Our infrastructure is crumbling, and our debt is rising (though the deficit is shrinking so that’s good). In short, people are stupid and getting stupider.
The other thing I want to point out is that these are all entirely first world problems. Consider the deficit/debt issue. We’ve had high debt/deficit for years. However, it’s a tribute to our wealth and power that we can get away with it for as long as we have, and, in fact, we can get away with it for a long time to come before we destabilize the global economy. That’s just how awesome we are. No other country could get away with this kind of generational fiscal mismanagement for as long as the US #Greece. And to a lesser degree this is generally true for other western nations as well. The more wealth and power you have, the longer you can maintain your incompetence. So long story short, it sucks to be a developing nation whose fragile economy crashes on the whims of foreign investors and huge international banking consortia. Ok, so I might be exaggerating. A little. Their economic systems usually crash for very good reasons. The point is they don’t have the generational reserves that richer countries do. It’s one thing to look down your nose at a people for incompetence when you don’t face the same consequences for the same mistakes and another to try and build from the wreckage of the last attempt at fixing the economy. And speaking of generational mismanagement. Our economic problems aren’t that difficult to fix. We need a relatively simple overhaul of the tax code and increased infrastructure spending. It’s politically challenging perhaps, but not technically challenging.
The same is true of our educational system. We spend about 5% of our GDP on education. Raise that to %8 or %10 and you would revolutionize the educational system. Again, this isn’t technically challenging. We’d have to recruit more teachers. Easy enough. Build a few more schools. Again. Easy enough. Better fund research into best practices, (which we’re already doing, in part, through common core). Better education isn’t terribly challenging for the US. It’s a matter of political will. Our population isn’t starting from a point of severe illiteracy. We aren’t running a critical ongoing shortage of teachers. We don’t lack for colleges and universities to train more. Even our worst schools are better than a mere cement slab and a tin roof because that’s the best some nations can do. What’s worse, our students won’t get shot for just trying to go to that lousy school in the first place. #Malala We certainly have the money if we wanted to spend it on Education. We might have to pull resources through increased taxation or from the military but it’s there if we had the will.
You can even look at the so called corruption in this country. Yeah, I’m not happy about dark money funding think tanks that advocate anti-democratic ideals like funding climate change denier groups or the revolving door between regulators and the industries they’re supposed to be regulating. For any political battle you’ll find hidden anonymous financing and that’s bad. That’s corruption, but that kind of corruption is a first world problem. The best that these groups can do is sway public opinion, that’s not the best that political groups can do in other countries. In other countries they can shoot you. Running attack ads and conflicts of interest among public officials is a far cry from the persistent, pervasive, destructive corruption around the world. I’m not saying there’s no corruption in America or the corruption we do have isn’t a problem; I’m saying that we don’t have a NarcoState like in parts of Central and South America, or an Oligarchy in parts of Asia, or a MafiaState in Russia and the former Soviet Union. You don’t like you’re gay hating congressman and the anonymous financing he gets from where ever? Don’t vote for him. This is a choice you have. All the money in the world can’t change that, as Republicans found out in the last election.
We may have divided congresspeople with entrenched positions refusing compromise with each other, but this country isn’t divided along racial and ethnic tensions to the point of civil war and genetic cleansing from rampant uncontrollable militias. I’m not being dismissive of racism and prejudice in this country, I’m saying that our problems aren’t like the problems in other countries. For example, our black president didn’t just fire our white vice president for threatening a white coup putting our country on the bleeding edge of a civil war. Because that did just happen in the South Sudan. They’re already uncovering mass graves. It’s not white/black but Dinka and Nuer and they’re already killing each other over oil fields and a real or perceived lack of inclusion in the new government. Yeah we’ve got first world problems.
I didn’t write this blog to say that our problems aren’t real or that we don’t have them. I wrote them to put our issues in context within the larger community. Duck Dynasty Phil #IstandwithPhil may be racist and homophobic but we’re not #Uganda. Political and economic inequality is bad, but it can be fixed with relatively simple changes as opposed to the revolution that is going to be necessary in other places like Russia or Saudi Arabia. The desperate struggle for mere survival in huge parts of the world can teach us something going forward. Let’s think better of ourselves and others, forgive the bigots and the jerks, work together, compromise frequently and often, and in the immortal words of Wil Wheaton, “don’t be a dick”. Merry Christmas everyone.
My Goal for the Holiday
My goals for the holiday are a little different this year than years past. In years past the goal has always been survival. I want to get through the holiday with a minimum of fuss, demonstrate some sort of familial feeling, and try to do so on the cheap. Family hasn’t always been a priority for me. During my undergrad years, I saved up every penny I could during the summers in order to fund a little traveling over the holiday vacation. I can only imagine how my family must have felt. Equal parts jealousy and loneliness I suppose. Don’t regret it for a second. In fact, this is a policy I intend to institute the second my standard of living improves enough to allow it. But as I just said this year is a little different than years past. This year I got married. Not only did I get married but the vast majority of my family were not invited. Also something I don’t regret. (I really loved the very small, very intimate wedding). But having excluded most of the family this year I do feel the need to include them in my life this holiday season. This means the Christmas cards, little pictures and notes, and gifts to far flung relatives.
Another thing that happened this year is, after getting married, I moved. Through sheer happenstance my sister also moved not far. It brings a little stability to my life that has been chaotic. So it’s a little more important than the norm to spend time with family. My wife also has family issues that need to be addressed. Her needs must always come first and this is not always easy. Before Kat can host her family we’ve got some chores that need to be done. Tomorrow morning I’m going to do some laundry. Tonight I’m going to clean the bathroom.
I love conservativism… hate conservatives.
I love conservative ideology. I really do. The states rights, the small government, the low taxes, the active military, all of it. I just can’t stand conservatives. I hate them more than any other member of a political ideology. Mostly because they are intent on being deliberately stupid and spreading this stupidity like a plague. Eventually they’ll run their course but not before making life difficult for everyone else. This Duck Dynasty Phil is a wonderful case in point.
Conservatives are rallying to this banner in the name of free speech and family values. #IstandwithPhil. Phil screwed up. He said something gross (really gross) and stupid and offensive. I honest don’t know if he knew how offensive he was being. Maybe these attitudes are just so common among backwards rednecks that no one thinks anything of it, but conservatives, you’re smarter than this. You know in your heart of hearts he’s being gross, stupid, and offensive and he doesn’t deserve your support. You’re going to give it to him anyway aren’t you. You’re outraged that his right to free speech has been suppressed in some way. Except, it hasn’t. The government hasn’t swept through with federal agents to jail him for his speech crimes. The government doesn’t care and that’s the limit to your right of free speech. It doesn’t protect you from getting fired from your job. It doesn’t protect your employer from outraged citizens boycotting businesses and expressing their outrage. It just keeps the government off your back. You know this, but you’re going to vent about your free speech issues anyway no matter how willfully, intentionally, stupid it might be.
Many of you claim to be Christians. Can you imagine Jesus saying anything like this? If Jesus ever expressed an opinion on homosexuality it isn’t recorded in the Bible. But if he did I imagine he’d have given the same treatment to gays that he gave to the woman caught in adultery. I don’t think he’d go on a rant about the wonders of the vagina and it’s superiority to the male anus. Or suggest that gay people are inherently propelled into bestiality. Whatever Jesus was, he was never foul; he was never crude; and he’d be ashamed of the way you treat people. I’m all for family values. Private family values. Going back to the Jesus thing, he told people that public prayers were worthless. So much so that when I was a kid, I thought I was supposed to literally pray in my closet. Jesus intentionally separated secular/political spending and religious spending. He drove the bankers out of the temple. There is simply no mechanism that Jesus would support for mixing public and religious life. Yet we see the constant insertion of religiosity into the public and political sphere. My family values are different than your family values. They’re unique to me. I live in a country that values that individuality. What this means is in an increasingly crowded society you need to pull in your elbows a bit to make room for others. Specifically this means your public display of religiosity needs to be carefully orchestrated so it doesn’t crowd out my religiosity or lack thereof. Where’s the line? Easy. Ask yourself, is it appropriate for a muslim, pagan, hindu, or any other religious leader to be involved in a religious display? Then it’s appropriate for you. If you don’t want an imam to lead a Fajr prayer service in a public school, or have a witch cast a blessing spell then you can’t lead your own prayer service. It’s either that or be confined to closets when praying (which I’m ok with).
I get tired of the selfish, unending hatred of anyone who doesn’t see your point of view. This is America, the home of political pluralism, or so we like to think. Embrace your intellect, fight for your values. But make the fight mean something. Don’t throw your energy defending some gross ignorant redneck from the wilds of Louisiana. Fight the battles that matter. Seek out real injustice, true corruption and genuine abuse of power. Root out waste, fraud, and inefficiency. Build a nation that respects a plurality of beliefs and rigorously defend, not the beliefs, but the plurality. Create a government that is nimbler, more efficient, and more honest so that it can better respond to the needs of the people. It won’t solve every problem, but it’ll lay the groundwork for the compromises that will. And don’t be stupid. That’s all I’m saying. Don’t be stupid.
Darwinism destroyed in 5 minutes… or not.
Evolution is not a theory
The fossil record is “just bizzare”
Evolution is not a testable theory
We can’t do computer simulations
We don’t see evolution in a lab.
When most people hear and use the the word theory they imagine something flimsy. “My theory is the cat secretly hates me but loves my cat food”. This sort of flimsy definition is true in science as well. “My theory is that a virus stimulates immune activating chemicals in order to produce a large, but disordered immune response to infection.” The second example might be more sophisticated but it still amounts to an educated guess on the part of the scientist. Depending on how technical you want to get, this second example could also be considered a hypothesis. Theory though has a second larger meaning. It’s closer to what other people consider a paradigm. For example the Theory of Gravity, the Cell Theory, the Atomic Theory, and so on. A paradigm for which there is such overwhelming evidence that it represents the foundation for any scientific discourse. To describe the Theory of Evolution as a collection of anecdotes or a series of hunches is exceedingly disingenuous. The Theory of Evolution is nothing less than the foundation of biology. Everything in biology in some way relates to and supports the Theory of Evolution.
His assertion that the fossil record is “just bizarre” speaks to nothing except his own ignorance. I’m mystified that he would claim that it has no order, or no predictive value when there are libraries and textbooks on the subject. There are numerous well known examples in the fossil revealing detailed evolutionary processes. The horse is a well known example, whales are another. Plants are a third. Not only does the fossil record have descriptive value but it has predictive value as well. We can use the fossil record to line up important geological or biological events against other known historical markers such as coding in the DNA, changes in climate, radiological dating, sedimentary information, ice cores and more. When you have multiple independent lines of research in agreement then you typically say that they hypothesis is supported. The theory is valid. Are we discovering new things in the fossil record? absolutely. There’s no one that said that the process of discovery is finished. But here’s the rub. Every time we discover a new fossil it solidifies our understanding of the fossil record and evolutionary history. If it was mere chaos as Mr. Berlinski claim then it would generate more chaos. For example, the evolution of flight. It was a mystery for a long time. We knew roughly when and how flight might have developed but it wasn’t until the last few years that we discovered the fossils of early flying creatures and feathers that we got to see a picture of what early flight evolution looked like. It was consistent with what we knew before and it added to our understanding of evolution. Subsequent discoveries have also been consistent. Instead of random data points or anecdotes it points to a clear consistent picture.
I was also amused at his next example of Newton’s Theory of Gravity as a quintessential moment in science. Newton was famously wrong. Sure his theory was close. His theory works on a very superficial level but it’s been superseded by the theory of relativity for almost 100 years, and even that one is insufficient. It’s a good demonstration at how our understanding of the universe evolves. Even the theory of evolution is not a static thing but undergoes constant revision as we acquire and assimilate new data. But more importantly biologists do have equations to describe evolution. The simplest one is the Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium. We teach that one in freshman bio. It describes the allelic frequency of a population. Further statistical analysis is done with varying degrees of complexity the further along you get. We’ve even got supercomputers running some of them. I can’t tell you how many in silico experiments have been done using computers. Numerous experiments and observations about how complexity arises have been published. He’s right in one small area. Complexity isn’t generated from Natural Selection. The theory only states that the organism that can best adapt to it’s environment will replicate the most. Complexity doesn’t come into it. If a simpler organism can replicate the best then that set of genes will propagate the most. Complexity arises independent of natural selection and there are numerous ways that this can happen. His confusion on this fact indicates that he is probably not qualified to discuss evolution in a meaningful fashion.
His next two issues are gobbledygook. I’m not even sure how to interpret the question he’s asking. If I cared about being more polite I would say that this was an ill-formed question. How come we can’t model evolution on the computer? We can. Google “genetic algorithms”. There are many any number of algorithms and they can all model fairly simple genetic processes pretty easily. However, biology is unimaginably complex, programing “evolution” into a computer (whatever that means) will also be unimaginably complex. It’s not something that either our programing languages or our computers can realistically handle at the moment. But I’m still not clear what his primary objection is to evolution based on this line of reasoning. Is he asking us to take a primordial string of DNA and turn it into all the DNA we see around us? That’s not possible given our current understanding of biology and technological development. Is he asking how we can derive different phenotypes based on changes to the genetic code. Well we do that all the time. He keeps saying things are very simple. What things? simple how? I’m flummoxed by this notion that we can “program general relativity and quantum mechanics into a computer and see the consequences”. We can? since when? The initial experimental and theoretical parameters are only now just being developed. I’m not saying that he’s wrong here, only that he’s so vague that piecing together what he means is impossible for me. I believe him when he says that he can’t program anything on his own, but given his level of understanding of biology this doesn’t surprise me.
It is also very unclear about what he’s talking about when he talks about an inability to replicate evolution in a laboratory. “Dogs have always been dogs no matter how far back you look” And how far back are you looking? Because even a cursory glance into this reveals that Dogs go back about 500,000 years before they turn into wolves, and wolves go back further and further, until you get to the earliest mammals. Part of his problem may be that he’s ignoring the part of the “bizarre” fossil record that conveys this information. Is suggesting we try to turn dogs into something else? Same with bacteria. “And when we look at bacteria no matter what we do they stay bugs”. What are you imagining them to be? Dogs? Bacteria go through some pretty intense evolution in the lab. They can generate radically new metabolic pathways, sensory apparatuses, resistance genes, environmental adaptations, they’ve even evolved bacteria from single celled to a multicellular organism. Recently came out that they discovered some fungi that uses a common pigment to eat radiation. Deinococcus radiodurans is famous for living inside nuclear reactors. So it’s unclear exactly what his objection is. It’s very vaguely worded and hard to refute or acknowledge.
I guess that’s in it a nutshell. How to we evaluate people like Berlinski? Well do they have clear testable objections? No. “We should have far more plasticity far more flexibility in the lab and in nature”. How much more? what constitutes “plasticity” in a laboratory situation? and how would you measure it? Are they ignoring data? yes. “Small, cyclical, highly banded variation. Like Finch beaks in the Galapagos islands”. Really? This is the only example of variation that you can imagine? Not the trillions upon trillions of birds, and fish, and animals, and insects, that display huge variations? His statement is absolutely correct if you have a sufficiently narrow view to only those few birds in the Galapagos Islands. Are they appealing to their own ignorance? absolutely. “The fossil record is just bizarre”. Just because he can’t understand it doesn’t mean that no one can understand it, and truth be told, I’m not sure he’s trying very hard. Are they alleging conspiracy? you bet. “These are evidentiary points that need to be stressed openly and honestly but they never are, of course.” These are points that were openly and honestly discussed in the 1850s. The conversation has moved on.
Deciding between choice and freedom
Total freedom is a wonderful fantastic thing and it’s rarely obtainable in this life among the teeming throngs of individuals colliding with each other in everyday society. Complete and utter freedom isn’t difficult obtain; it’s just undesirable. If you want every choice to be solely directed by you alone, all you have to do is to walk into the woods and never talk to a single human ever again. Perfect. Total. Freedom. The minute you bring someone into your wilderness paradise your choices become necessarily constrained. At first, it’s not typically a big deal. The constraints one person places on you are not onerous and the advantages more than make up for the inconvenience. If not, then there’d be no such thing as family. But this is also true writ large. What is gained by the association with one person is multiplied many times over the more people you have in your society. Why does the US have the largest most sophisticated military in the world? because we are the world’s third largest country by population. We have a tax base of over 300million people in our country to support the military without having to resort to draconian measures that would be destructive over the long term. The same is true for our scientific endeavors, our roads, waters, electricity, and other infrastructure, education, and every other human achievement is accomplished by this synergy of effort. Fine. No one’s suggesting that there aren’t clear advantages to collective effort, but could be argued that in a free society such as ours, I should be able to choose my level of participation. That’s true. It should work like that, but it doesn’t. It wasn’t happenstance that the US was the first nation to develop nuclear power, the space race, and other achievements of science and technology. Your participation in all of these programs was compulsory via your tax dollars. So it’s true that cooperation is highly efficacious. No one really argues this, but what does this mean for choice?
It means you have a great deal more freedom, but fewer choices. For example, my ability to speed down the freeway as fast as I can is highly constrained. In fact, when it comes to highway travel my choices are exceedingly limited. But within those limits, my freedoms are hugely expanded above that of a freeway system governed by lawless anarchy. My freedom to travel is greatly enhanced because of the freeway system, but the freeway system demands an abridgement of my own personal behavior. If I choose not to travel anywhere except on foot, then my choices are unlimited. I just can’t go very far. Again, what works in a microcosm works in the macrocosm. As our society develops, new freedoms are invented. Like this webpage. This represents an expanded freedom of expression for me. With new freedoms come new choices, and new limits on those choices. Usually, these are not in conflict. This written work is the result of my choices and freedoms, but it is not unlimited. I must abide by reasonable restrictions, such as the terms of service from wordpress, my ISP, copyright law, and other conditions. The restrictions of choice and the expansion of freedom are in such sync that expounding on them approaches the absurd. However, this is not always the case and off the top of my head I can think of three.
Education. It’s long been assumed that private education with all of it’s lovely choice, adherence to free market principles, innovation, and private funding is superior to public education. It turns out that it’s not. What private schools have going for them are wealthy families and wealthy neighborhoods which bring their own advantage and privilege. Once you account for your population bias, private schools underperform relative to public schools. Why? Because of market forces. I know it’s counter intuitive. Typically we think of market forces as generating a superior product. It’s not always true. A private school isn’t required to follow best practices. In fact there’s tremendous pressure on private schools to follow ‘traditional’ teaching practices that are ineffective and outdated. Public schools aren’t given that choice. The close public scrutiny that private schools escape creates a very demanding environment for public schools. Districts that promote “school choice” programs do not necessarily do better than districts that do not. Charter schools do no better on average than public schools. More school choices, more freedom, should work better. It doesn’t. In part because of uncorrectable distortions in the market, human perception, and the difficulty of making rational choices, and imperfect information. Consider that in 20 states it is still legal to hit a student in public school, and only two states have made it illegal for private schools. This runs counter to 100 years of education and psychological research not to mention your own basic humanity. It is unimaginably harmful for students. Yet there’s pressure (largely in the south. No surprise) among an uninformed population to maintain this practice. If we define freedom for students as getting the best education available this will involve restricting choices at the level of parents, states, and school districts.
Healthcare. This is a big one for a lot of people. Once we decided that it was in our national self-interest to maintain a healthy citizenry, it became mandatory that people get healthcare. At the moment the big debate is Obamacare and the individual mandate. Should we require people to purchase health insurance? Yes. Absolutely. One of the many many unstated goals of Obamacare is to move healthcare from a service industry to an infrastructure. That means that like the roads, they need to be supported by everyone. Freedom in this case is access to healthcare when you need it. Healthcare economics dictate that you have to pay for it when you don’t need it if you’re going to have access to it when you do. That’s just the way it works. Should a person be able to walk into a hospital and clinic and pay for the services that he or she needs no more no less. Absolutely. Alas that’s not the way the world works. If you want efficient hospitals and clinics you need a plan.
More importantly there’s another, quieter, revolution happening in medicine. It’s called “evidence based medicine”. Sounds wonderful, who doesn’t want their medicine to be based on evidence. It turns out that it’s pretty much everyone. Classic example is a parent demanding antibiotics for a child’s cold. The antibiotics don’t work on colds, they’ll, in fact, cause antibiotic resistance which is harmful and deadly but the parent will get them anyway because they are free to demand it, and the doctors are free to prescribe any damn thing they like for just about any reason they like. Another great example is breast screenings. A study came out a few years ago that said women shouldn’t be getting as many breast exams as they were currently getting. It sounds good, no one likes breast exams, but it caused unholy outrage among women’s groups who feared they would all now die of cancer. The extra screenings were causing problems and weren’t as effective as researchers initially thought. Plus they knew a lot more about cancer now than when they first started screenings. Does that matter to patients? nope. But they’re going to demand the extra screenings and doctors will give it to them despite the fact that it’s wasteful and prone to creating expensive complications. The medical field is full of this kind of stuff.
Charity. Finally, there is a belief common among the conservatives that antipoverty efforts are best left to the private sector, especially churches. Never mind the fact that churches don’t have resources to manage their own debts let alone take on a new antipoverty measure, never mind the fact that charitable giving doesn’t come close to what is necessary, or that the giving that is done isn’t necessarily effective at fighting poverty, or the hateful, idiotic, dangerous, inept, self-servicing, unabashedly evil argument that public charity creates dependency, they believe that the role of the federal government should be completely absent. Why should we care about the poor? From a completely selfish perspective, why bother? Because I believe in freedom. For me. But I recognize that the accomplishments of this country are drawn from collective effort. By disenfranchising a segment of the population we can not obtain our next expansion in freedoms. Indeed they risk shrinking. Wealth in this country is generated not by the super wealthy (although I’m sure they like to think so), but by the middle class. The bigger and stronger the middle class is, the wealthier and better off everyone will be. And by everyone I mean me. The private sector does important work; I don’t want to dismiss it. But effective anti-poverty efforts can only be done at the state and federal level. This will necessarily abrogate a little choice for Joe Taxpayer. In return he will obtain freedom.
In defense of the two party system
Everyone hates the two party system. How come there’s never been a viable third party system is either a tragedy or a the result of a massive malicious conspiracy. I’m here to say the two party system with all of its flaws is closest ideal to a government that democracy has. Let me be the first to admit that the two party system has it’s flaws. I’m well aware of this. More than most. However the reason a third party has never risen to national prominence isn’t conspiratorial or a tragedy, it’s just not very efficient.
Let’s start with there are dozens if not hundreds of “third parties” out there. The green party was pretty big at one point. The bull moose comes to mind if only humorously so. The Libertarians are probably the most viable third party out there. The trouble with most third party is that they’re single issue parties. Take the Green Party. Their single issue is is good. We need people to advocate and agitate for the environment, but what is their stance on education, science funding, national infrastructure, taxes, job creation, transparency, national security, foreign relations etc? There are huge numbers of issues that need voter attention. We need a party that isn’t so focused on a single issue. Environmental causes are near and dear to my heart, but they aren’t the only issues I’m worried about if for no other reason than because environmental issues are interrelated to everything else in the country.
One suggestion is that business want two parties for their own reasons and thus support only two. Not really true. Any number of third parties have been able to get corporate financing, and there’s enough private donation to support a cause even on the national level. The Tea Party, a defacto third party, and Libertarians have both gotten enormous amounts of corporate financing in addition to large amounts of individual donations. Small parties won’t be as well funded and as organized as large parties obviously, but that doesn’t mean that with a compelling message they can’t rise to national attention. I give you the Occupy movement. Huge participation, great media coverage. They really had potential to become a viable third party or at least become a recognizable wing of the Democratic party. But they lacked a coherent objective, platform, leadership, spokespeople. The whole thing had tremendous energy but they were pretty vague on what they wanted to accomplish. So it is possible for third parties to achieve national attention but without a means for accomplishment it’ll die off eventually. The tea party did much better since it wasn’t truly a grassroots movement. Their corporate sponsors did much better at organizing them, but their failings are very much the same failings as the Occupy Wallstreet movement. No clear agenda or leadership. What leaders they do have are woefully unprepared and laughably ignorant, they also picked the wrong battles, refused to negotiate, and as a result they’re starting to die off in interparty purges. Eventually they’ll just be reabsorbed into the GOP party.
Of course that brings us to the downside of a third party. Gridlock. The gridlock in the US can be traced directly to the Libertarian and Tea Party wing of the Republican party. By “standing on principle”, they are allowing party purists to dictate policies that Democrats won’t tolerate. Taxes as an example. Democrats are willing to cut spending on any number of their priorities provided that we can institute a fairer tax code. There are a number of ways to do this, but any taxes at all are an anathema to Norquist acolytes. Since the margin of success will be narrow given the potential controversy a large enough voting block can destroy the negotiations which has happened so often that this congress will be the least productive congress in modern history. Before you say, “aha, but if we had a multiparty system this wouldn’t happen”. You might have a point if multiparty systems didn’t already exist to plague Europe. IF you think our system is prone to gridlock you should see theirs. If your third party is viable and obstinate enough it can bring down the government. Multiparty democracies are even more prone to this.
The other advantages are the nature of the debate. Admittedly in recent election cycle the debate has gotten pretty unhealthy, but that’s another issue. Typically advocates of third party systems go around with signs saying “Hey! My ideas are being ignored”. Typically their ideas are being ignored for really good reasons. You want to go back to the gold standard and abolish the EPA? ooookay then. Moving along. Same goes for nationalizing the banks, raising the minimum wage to 50$/hr or abolishing it completely and yes these are all ideas I’ve heard from third party candidates. I like to imagine the two party system as a courtroom with the dominant party acting as prosecutor and the minority party acting as defense. Voters in the Jury box. The majority party wants to advance an idea. The Minority having a different ideology will try to poke as many holes in the idea as it can. Some of those holes will get patched up, other ideas will have to take their place. If the idea is too bad then it’ll fail. In theory and so long as the majority party isn’t homogeneous (Which would be disastrous for long term policy implications.) You want a minority party to aggressively challenge the majority party’s ideas in order to make them better. Typically you don’t have that with a multiparty system. You have too many people clamoring for their ideas. It can work provided everyone’s being collegial, but if collegiality fails you need a large enough voting bloc to push through an agenda or nothing gets done. There’s no guarantee you get it in a two party system but I think your chances are better in a more adversarial environment.
The other problem with third parties, and this not a general criticism of third parties, just the ones in existence. Is the sophistication of their politics. They’re typically very bad at formulating a clear agenda and then working across party lines and compromising their goals for the sake of small progress. Individual lobbying groups like the NRA and the Sierra Club tend to be far more effective at pushing through an agenda than third parties. People who feel a desperate need for a third party might instead consider joining one of the lobbies. your odds of success might be better at accomplishing whatever it is you want.
My Wife Calls Me A Neocon 