With a Russian frigate closing in and a half-dozen U.S. warships within shouting distance, the pirates holding a tanker off Somalia's coast might appear to have no other choice than to wave the white flag.

But that's not how it works in Somalia...

[...]

How can a bunch of criminals from one of the poorest and most wretched countries on Earth face off with some of the world's richest and well-armed superpowers?

"They have enough guns to fight for another 20 years," Ted Dagne, a Somalia analyst in Washington, told The Associated Press. "And there is no way to win a battle when the other side is in a suicidal mind set."

From Gordon Tullock's "The Edge of the Jungle" in Explorations in the Theory of Anarchy (1972, edited by Tullock as well):

Suppose that there is a quantity of meat and two lions, one larger than the other, who want it. If they fight, the larger has a good chance of winning and the smaller, therefore, will not only get nothing to eat but will probably be quite severly injured. Nevertheless, we do observe occasional fights...

[...]

The smaller lion is rationally designed to engage in irrational behavior. The smaller lion imposes upon the larger lion the prospects of physical injury, even though the prospects of physical injury for the smaller lion are much greater. ... This requires that the smaller lion sometimes fight and fight hard.

Here is one survey from last night that casts doubt on the Median Voter Model, although I admit there may be others with better wording or better samples (please, post them in the comments if you know of any). And while the views of the public may be less libertarian than economists, the survey also indicates that the public has libertarian sympathies. Main findings of the survey:

1. 45% opposed and 30% supported this specific modified rescue plan (rather than a hypothetical modified plan as in earlier surveys).

2. Crucially, 47% were worried that the federal government would do too much in reacting to the current crisis (as opposed to 36% saying "too little").

3. In fairness (and confusion, considering the above), the same survey indicates that 44% of Americans think the rescue plan will help the economy, compared with 23% thinking it will hurt the economy (though if you add in the "no impact" group of 19% the two sides are roughly equal).

Actually we are borrowing money from Japan to buy oil from Canada. Doesn't make for as scary a soundbite.

True, China is the number 2 holder of U.S. Government debt, but non-scary countries the U.K., Brazil, and Luxembourg also rank high on the list. Also true, Saudi Arabia is the number 2 exporter of oil to the U.S. (Mexico is a very close third), but we import more oil from Canada than from all Persian Gulf countries combined. Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands alone account for around 32% of oil imports.

The only other recent ACLU post I can find with more than 10 comments is one on mandatory ultrasound laws, which has 24 comments. This makes sense when you realize that post is from June 26, the day of the Heller decision, and the thread was hijacked to discuss the case. That's right, the ACLU did not even blog about what a presidential candidate that has a working relationship with the ACLU called "one of the Supreme Court’s most important rulings on behalf of liberty" until 5 days after the decision (but they did have 5 blog posts on that date).

I would also be very interested to here the ACLU's definition of a "collective right ," and whether gun rights are the only negative liberty falling into this category. 

But I would like to ask a more fundamental question: How do we even know there was an "outbreak"? It's not as if there had been no cases of salmonella last year or the year before. The CDC tells us that every year there are 40,000 reported cases, but those are only the ones that actually get reported and "the actual number of infections may be thirty or more times greater." So there are possibly at least 1.2 million cases per year, or 100,000 per month. This "outbreak" has involved 869 people in about 2 and a half months. This is an outbreak?

Of course, they will tell you that this is a rare strain of salmonella, which only 3 people were reported to have in 2007. And there were apparently common factors found among those that were ill: 1.) "consumption of raw tomatoes" and 2.) "persons who ate at restaurants." Now seriously, how many of you (at least, before the FDA/CDC generated scare) had ate a raw tomato and ate at a restaurant within the past week? I would guess this group of people is something like half of the U.S. population. And a few hundred people got sick.

My guess is that the effect is actually random, but government agencies and the media like to see patterns where none exist. Fooled by randomness. And once the "outbreak" is announced, I'm sure that more people get tested, thus more reported cases. Some of those around 1 million unreported cases are now getting reported. And the false outbreak scare has cost the food industry at least $100 million (I've seen estimates more than double that).

Now Lou Dobbs is one-upping Krugman and calling for Bush's impeachment over this. Seriously? Oh yes, I'm sure if you doubled the FDA and CDC budgets, they could get to the bottom of this, plus prevent all those 1.2 million cases from happening in 2009. Yeah, right. We live in a risky world, much less risky than the past, but still risky. It would be better if we the people, the government, and the media just acknowledged this fact.

First, the "lost tribe" of the Amazon that wasn't so lost (via LRC). They do exist, but the back story was not exactly true:

Far from being unknown, the tribe's existence has been noted since 1910 and the mission to photograph them was undertaken in order to prove that 'uncontacted' tribes still existed in an area endangered by the menace of the logging industry.

The disclosures have been made by the man behind the pictures, José Carlos Meirelles.

Meirelles admitted that the tribe was first known about almost a century ago and that the apparently chance encounter that produced the now famous images was no accident.

Second, the "pregnancy pact" at a Massachusetts high school that might not have been. It appears there is basically no evidence that it existed:

"There was definitely no pact," 17-year-old Lindsey Oliver [one of the pregnant girls] told "Good Morning America" on Tuesday.

Mayor Carolyn Kirk also denied a pact existed after a closed-door meeting with city, school and health leaders on Monday.

Kirk said she and Superintendent Christopher Farmer have been in touch with [Principal] Sullivan [the source of the rumor], and he was "foggy in his memory" about how he came to believe there was a pact.

I would be willing to wager that the retractions got less attention (other than by bloggers) than the original, "shocking" stories.

I have previously speculated that the metric system may be inferior to other measurement systems, because of the possibility of large errors.

The bias also relates to uncertainty regarding coordination of behavior. If a meeting is scheduled to begin at 10:00AM, my experience is that the meeting will not begin at 10. Some people will show up early, thinking the meeting starts at 10 and not wanting to be late. Some will show right at 10. Some will show up late, thinking the meeting starts "around 10."

Speed limits are another coordination problem. If the speed limit is 55, can I be ticketed for going 56? 60? 65? There seem to be vague rules of thumb, I assume occasionally enforced by courts, but it all seems quite arbitrary. Stated simply, the bias is "when numbers are stated in multiples of 5 or 10, the number loses some of its focal point quality."

I have read Nudge, and have lots to say but really do not know where to begin (or where the "review" would eventually go). Overall I think the book is very confused and confusing, above all since the authors are often ambiguous as to whom the advice is directed: individuals, firms, or government (as Mario Rizzo stressed mulitiple times in a discussion with Thaler).  But I do have some "nudges" for the "rounding bias." And just to be clear, these are suggestions for private meeting organizers and owners of private roads (I expect local governments love the revenue generated from the uncertainty).

For starting meetings (or parties), I have occasionally used the trick of starting at "odd" times, such as 3:03PM. Starting 3 minutes past the hour becomes focal (perhaps simply because it is novel), and the repetition of 3 sticks in your mind. This seems to have had some positive effects, but maybe this is just confirmation bias. For speed limits, posting non-round numbers would be a similar nudge, such as this 29 MPH speed limit at the private Valdez Marine Terminal in Alaska (according to this page the Marine Terminal also has speed limits of 11, 16, 21, and 26).

The study found a strong and direct relationship between the RFEI of the area ["bad" food sellers / "good" food sellers] in which someone lives and their likelihood of being obese or having diabetes.

The right way to answer it - causation (seen on MR):

The results find no evidence of a causal link between restaurants and obesity, and the estimates are precise enough to rule out any meaningful effect.

Conclusion: you make yourself fat. Neighborhoods with more obese people have more fast food restaurants because people vote with their dollars.

Class dismissed. 

I only want to comment on a small part of the article, the only fact (or rather, data) where Parker attempts to show that something new, and perhaps worrying is going on with respect to demographic trends:

Meanwhile, immigration trends have shifted drastically in the past 40 years, as growing percentages of Americans are foreign-born. In 1970, just 4.7 percent of the total population was foreign-born - 9.6 million people. By 2000, 11.1 percent, or 31.1 million individuals, were foreign-born, according to the Census.

Contributing to the growing unease among yesterday's Americans is the failure of the federal government to deal with the illegal immigration fiasco. It isn't necessarily racist or nativist to worry about what these new demographics mean to the larger American story.

Leave aside illegal immigration for the moment, as Parker is concerned with the growth in legal, foreign-born Americans. She is worried about "these new demographics." But are they really new? The data she presents seem to indicate so, with the percentage of the population that is foreign-born growing drastically from 1970 to 2000. But take a look at the full historical series from the same Census bureau that Parker cites.

Parker just happened to choose the low-point (1970) of 150 years of data as her baseline. I can see no logical reason for doing so (maybe someone else can correct me). Not only were there a few years from the early 20th century higher than the percentage in 2000, but every single Census year between 1860 and 1930 had a higher percentage of foreign-born Americans.

Pointing out this fact does not mean that Parker is wrong; their may be a qualitative difference (e.g. willingness to learn English) between past and current foreign-born populations. Maybe. But it can not simply be asserted. Show me the data, then we can have a discussion. Again, data showing qualitative differences does not close the case, as my data does not. But is necessary to start a reasonable discussion.

I understand Caplan's response as consisting of two parts. Part one: even when framed in terms of paying more taxes, the American public still supports bigger government (or at least the status quo). Part two: question variations involve information effects, which can have significant but ambiguous (from a policy interpretation standpoint) results. I see the two parts as intimately linked, and I still maintain that support for libertarian policy changes exists.

Dr. Caplan directs us to the GSS. Yes, the question Caplan refers us to (variable TAXSPEND, for those that want to check) indicates that the public prefers bigger government, but I don't think the implications are what he infers. First, this is not "overall government spending" as Caplan indicates, but social spending (which is perhaps less than half of spending, depending on who you ask). More importantly, the question is very unconstrained. It asks about three categories of spending, in an open-ended way, as well as three (plus) categories of taxes. (I use "open-ended" to refer to interpretation of the question, rather than "fill in the blank" as many surveys do.)

One could just as easily point to the GSS result (variable CUTGOVT) that the median position is "in favor" of cutting government spending as something "the government might do for the economy" (the result is very strong, almost 9:1, if we group favorable vs. non-favorable responses). There appears to be a social intransitivity, with the public favoring both more spending and fewer taxes. But I would direct your attention to the unconstrained nature of Caplan's favored GSS question, especially on the taxation side. As the Mueller article indicates, merely asking individuals to reevaluate their response "if the government had to raise taxes to finance the additional expenditures" achieves a noticeable decline in expressed preference for policies.

To me, this is a huge issue. Can the respondent simply "make up" the method of finance or is she constrained, to some degree, by the question? Dr. Caplan doubts that "the public is that stupid" to not realize that more spending requires more taxes. I agree. But taxes can take many, many forms. I would suspect decreasing support (this is empirically testable) among survey respondents over the following three taxation options for increased government spending: 1. unspecificied (possibly "free" or taxation of the others); 2. taxes (in general) increase; and, 3. your taxes increase. Mueller tests option 1 vs. 2, but alludes to the importance of option 3 (p. 216 fn. 6). Furthermore, I would suspect decreasing support on option 3 for increasing dollar amounts of taxation (probably the same for option 2).

Which option is the accurate one, in terms of what the public (or more simply, an individual) "really" prefers? Is it number 1, 2, 3, or one of the various subsets (2a, 2b, 3a, 3b, ...)? I honestly do not know, but in my very junior estimation, no one knows the correct answer (my hunch is that the most constrained and accurate wording, in terms of actual tax policy, may be best). And how the question is framed can significantly affect the median voter result. Many, many others factors must be considered (preference falsification comes immediately to mind, in a major way), but the question is far from being resolved. I eagerly anticipate the future debate, as to my young mind this (the post title) is the central question of public choice and political science.

(Caplan's suggestion of a dissertation on this topic is absolutely awesome, but unfortunately I will not pursue it. I have now locked-in to my dissertation topic: an economic analysis of the origins and consequences of voting rights expansions, with an historical application to the early 19th century U.S. [much, much more to come, I promise!]. However, this is a great topic which I intend to further research and eventually write about. Someone should definitely claim as their own for a dissertation).

But wait. It turns out that the American Kennel Club, who is one of the largest potential "bootleggers" in this story, has been actively opposing the law. It appears that voter (and representative) irrationality beats out special interest explanations (unless, of course, there is a bigger special interest I am missing). Score one for Bryan Caplan.

Using geographic variation in local and state smoke-free bar laws in the US, we observe an increase in fatal accidents involving alcohol following bans on smoking in bars that is not observed in places without bans. Although an increased accident risk might seem surprising at first, two strands of literature on consumer behavior suggest potential explanations — smokers driving longer distances to a bordering jurisdiction that allows smoking in bars and smokers driving longer distances within their jurisdiction to bars that still allow smoking, perhaps through non-compliance or outdoor seating. We find evidence consistent with both explanations. The increased miles driven by drivers wishing to smoke and drink offsets any reduction in driving from smokers choosing to stay home following a ban, resulting in increased alcohol-related accidents. This result proves durable, as we subject it to an extensive battery of robustness checks.

No doubt there may be follow-up studies countering the claim, but I'm sure there will also be armchair dismissals by journalists and bloggers. I'll buy a beer for the first person to spot someone claiming that the authors didn't consider the effect of people staying at home following a ban, even though they mention this fact right in the abstract. In fact, the same authors have another paper showing that smoking bans do reduce bar patronage (people stay home to drink), but this newer paper shows that the effect is weaker than the "drive to other jurisdictions" effect.

UPDATE (after 2/5):   If anyone meets around the watercooler on plain-ol' Wednesday, ask each other how it is that 20+ Democratic primaries and caucuses could lead to a whole 1-point movement in the prices of the Obama and Clinton nomination contracts at Intrade.   P-Shock's home state of Virginia is next week, but (with the exception of Pennsylvania) Intrade didn't even bother to set up contracts on any post-Super Tuesday primaries.

UPDATE (2/6 11pm):  You know the drill...Intrade prediction markets: Obama now favorite for nomination!

UPDATE (2/7):  Intrade now has markets for the next week's states, with Obama leading them all.  The Washington Post says the battle is coming home to us.

Consider, say, a fireman on an old train.  His job involved setting fire to a bunch of coal, thus soiling the skies.  Did people blame him for this air pollution?   Or did they think:  "Hey, that's just his job.  It's the result of the choices of many people that we have trains."

In these examples and others I can think of, we tend to hold individuals less accountable for actions that are inextricably bound up with the successful completion of job-related tasks.  Perhaps the most classic example is that of the soldier following orders; yes, we often tend to think a soldier should listen to his conscience, but we also often leave way for the explanation that the soldier accepts the moral authority of his superiors.

GMU economics professor Don Boudreaux has recently inveighed against politicians -- practically all of them -- on moral grounds:

I challenge anyone to argue that the behavior of any of the major candidates (with the exceptions of Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich) is admirable.  Everyone knows that each serious candidate trims, waffles, is duplicitous, has his or her finger in the winds blown by polls, and wants to be President not because of any burning itch to help fellow human beings but because the job comes with all the trappings, and much of the power, of royalty.

I see two distinct complaints here:  (1) politicians play games with words, and (2) politicians act from self-interest.  I feel that any self-respecting economist should dismiss the latter complaint out of hand; there's nothing wrong with acting primarily out of self-interest.  That leaves us with the first complaint, that politicians are tricksters.

What if it is the case that we live in a world where there are some serious interpersonal conflicts that cannot be resolved via honest back-and-forth discussion to mutual agreement?  For the means to bring about the necessary resolutions, then, we are left with second-best choices such as violence and duplicity.  I would venture to guess that many of us would choose duplicity over violence as a means of resolving a dispute.  And if these sorts of conflicts are unavoidable, and if "politician" is the occupation held by those who resolve these conflicts under a division of labor, then I find it unacceptable for those of us in other professions to consider ourselves morally superior to politicians.  Can we call on them to minimize their duplicity to the extent possible?  Without a doubt.  Can we also recognize that it is an intrinsic part of their work?  I would like to say, "Yes, we can."

THE woman in question became a lawyer after some years as a community organizer, married a corporate lawyer and is the mother of two little girls, ages 9 and 6. Herself the daughter of a white American mother and a black African father — in this race-conscious country, she is considered black — she served as a state legislator for eight years, and became an inspirational voice for national unity.

Be honest: Do you think this is the biography of someone who could be elected to the United States Senate?

Well, I'm a white male, and I'm not even an expert on national politics, and Gloria says honestly so I'm really not supposed to argue, but, dammit, YES, I know it is possible.  See, I used to live in Illinois, so I quickly come up with the example of Carol Moseley Braun.  She was an attorney for four years after law school, then she was a state legislator for eight years, then a county Recorder of Deeds for four years, and then she was...uhm, elected to the U.S. Senate.  And this was SIXTEEN YEARS AGO.  And yes: Carol Moseley Braun is and was a mother, too. 

(Please pardon my yelling; may I admit to being a little fired up and ready to go?)

So here's Gloria Steinem, piping up on the day of the New Hampshire primary to demand that we Be Honest and Admit What We All Know Isn't Possible, ignoring that the What is now so utterly possible that it has already happened for real.  And on whose behalf does Ms. Steinem pull this stunt?  Why, it's a self-made woman named Hillary Rodham, a lawyer and longtime activist who had never held political office but, immediately after having moved to a new state, was elected as its U.S. Senator.  Likely story!  If only it were true...

Then I saw what "college life" is really like at UCLA. I regret not taking that cheap shot.

I could incorporate this into my general case against sports. But this seems to be only tangentially related.

I could give the typical libertarian economist answer that the water should be privatized, or at the least the government should price the resource properly. I could tie in the annoying flashing electronic signs in Fairfax telling me to "Remember to Conserve Water!" I could mention that no private company has asked me to stop purchasing a product from them. But the public choice economist in me cautions against those sorts of cheap remarks.

I could mock the coach's claim that she's "as green as anybody" because "I drive a hybrid, and I recycle." If humanity were to, by some idiotic central-planning scheme, completely run out of fresh water, global warming and landfills would be the least of our concerns. But that's just too obvious.

Alas, I can't think of anything to say in terms of a positive recommendation to improve the situation. The rules of the game have been set up and everyone is playing by them ("The universities are not breaking any rules"). There are winners, and there are losers. Whatever is, must be efficient. I'm sure it all emerged from social interaction somehow. And we should all just deal with it.

The laboratory results for humans do not yield what the theory would predict. First players give amounts great than epsilon, and second players reject offers. However, while the chimps did not behave perfectly rationally, they did better than humans, both offering and accepting smaller amounts. Various behavioral explanations have been offered for the human results, like fairness, guilt, etc. I would like to offer an alternative explanation. First, a personal story.

Last year I played the dictator game in a laboratory setting (similar to ultimatum, but player 2 has to take whatever is given). I choose to give 10% instead of pocketing all the cash. At the time and since then I and others have offered possible explanations for my behavior, but none have been satisfying (even to me). This is because I really have no idea why I did what I did. I still don't.

Here is a speculative story. Human beings are the most advanced civilization because they are willing to act in ways that do not serve their own self-interest when the gains are small. The easiest example involves respecting property rights as we move through our daily lives, but I believe it is broader than this (or: respect for property rights is a symptom of this fact).

I believe this is different from "altruism" as we typically define it, but I am also hesitant to simply lump it under "rationality." Originally it may have been an evolutionary defect, but over time it allowed individuals to participate in civil society. Chimps never had this "defect," and that is why they are still chimps and not a parallel human species.

Keep in mind, again, this is highly speculative on my part, and someone else has probably already said it better. Plus I am generally skeptical of evolutionary psychology explanations. Anyway... chimps are more rational than humans, but that's why they are still chimps. And the implication is: don't go out of your way to be altruistic or make others feel guilty, just do what comes naturally.