adam ricketson's blog

Migration: good for America, good for me

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 04:15:34 -0800

Note: this will be my last contribution for several months, see the end if you want more details.

Good for America:

An earlier post discussed Immigration as Economic Development. This matches nicely with a recent essay in The Economist making the case for why America is so appealing to immigrants and why this is one of America's main strengths. Building a new framework for mythology, this essay was called "A Ponzi scheme that works".

One of the most interesting points from this essay was this:

The stakes are high. Immigration keeps America young, strong and growing. “The populations of Europe, Russia and Japan are declining, and those of China and India are leveling off. The United States alone among great powers will be increasing its share of world population over time,” predicts Michael Lind of the New America Foundation, a think-tank. By 2050, there could be 500m Americans; by 2100, a billion. That means America could remain the pre-eminent nation for longer than many people expect. “Relying on the import of money, workers, and brains,” writes Mr Lind, America is “a Ponzi scheme that works.”

This sums up some of my own disgust with the nativism that often arises in our society. Our flexible sense of national identity is one of our main strengths. I see the rigid nationalism (e.g. xenophobia, religious nationalism) of people like Pat Buchanan as alien to America. Our flexible nationalism is one of the main features that distinguishes us from Europe. If we adopt a rigid nationalism, we'll be just another nation. We will acquire all the worst aspects that our nationalists see in "Old Europe": self-obsession, stagnation, and the loss of influence.

The Economist has several articles in their section on immigration and asylum, one of which discusses how refugees are increasingly likely to live in slums rather than in refugee camps. This reminds me of how regular people can make a difference, by participating in projects to resettle refugees who arrive in America, such as how many Pittsburgh churches came together to help a group of Somali Bantu refugees.

Along these lines, I want to bring up two essays that may be of interest here: How America can Rise Again, and Against Nationalism. The first essay I actually haven't finished reading yet, but it starts with an examination of the role of jeremiads in American political history. The second essay is particularly good for arguing that nationalism cannot provide a coherent basis for human social organization. The author moves on to identify the positive evil caused by nationalist ideology (which, by the way, is so ingrained that its adherents generally consider themselves "non-ideological"). As a communist, he focuses on how nationalism interferes with the development of a brotherhood of man. As an individualist, I'm more concerned with how it blocks consensual associations between individuals of different nations. A web search for "against nationalism" picks up several other essays that are probably good resources for making this critical argument.

Good for me:

I hate to say it, but that's all I have to write just now. I'll have to take a break from blogging (including commenting...though I may respond to a few ongoing discussions) for several months because I've reached a stage in my career where continued advancement requires that I find a new job. I probably won't find this job in Pittsburgh, so I'll have to move to a new city. This is going to require my full attention, so I can't risk getting distracted by the invigorating discussion here.

I've greatly enjoyed the discussions here and have learned a lot. Best wishes to all of you, and I hope that I will be able to return before long.

The President's Day Project

Sun, 03 Jan 2010 07:35:18 -0800

President's day is about a month away (Feb 18), and what better way to commemorate our supreme statesmen (and politicians) than by collecting their most provocative quotes? Kaligula's remark about the hyper-partisans as the true "right-wing" remnds me of George Washington's warning during his farewell address:

All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels and modified by mutual interests.
...
The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.

For all the wisdom of the founders, they must have recognized that their new system was an experiment. It's only future generations, with the benefit of hindsight, that can interpret the results of the experiment and decide whether it is possible for a system to operate in the manner that the founders imagined, and if not, what is the appropriate response.

Washington also warned against "entangling alliances" that would turn the USA towards global military power. This leads nicely into Dwight Eisenhower's farewell speech, in which he warned the people against the influence of the military-industrial complex (video):

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

I faintly remember seeing other good quotes from Presidents, but can't recall them right now (and a quick web search reveals nothing). if you know of any, I would like to collect them here. I think that the best would come from the period after the President held office, adding credibility to any ideas about how the reality of government deviates from our common mythology.

Never forget (Nixon)

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 08:38:27 -0800

I watched Frost/Nixon last night. It was pretty good drama, but it is more important as a reminder of who Nixon was and what he did. Any time that one of your associates asserts that the abuses of the Bush administration were aberrations, just remind them of Nixon.

Aside from that there is the long sordid history of imperialism, racism, political machines, and corruption (ranging from the local to the Federal governments)...but they will also try to dismiss those acts as ancient history or aberrations in themselves.

Slashdot roundup

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 07:37:24 -0800

Happy New ~~Winter~~ Year!

Lots of interesting stuff at Slashdot. Does intellectual property expire at the new year, or on the actual anniversary of copyright/patenting? Anyway, let's start with IP issues:

What Would Have Entered the Public Domain Tomorrow? Retroactive copyright extensions go back at least to 1976, when the US moved to the silly "Life +" system.
DRM and the Destruction of the Book. I want to own my culture.
USPTO Awards LOL Patent To IBM. Another patent of the obvious.

Other issues:

Why Do So Many Terrorists Have Engineering Degrees. I see this as an investigation of how personality affects both profession and ideology. It's worth remembering next time somebody lays all the world's problems at the feet of liberal arts majors from Brown University.
TSA Subpoenas Bloggers Over New Security Directive: Secrecy for the sake of secrecy?
Quantum Encryption Implementation Broken: Ideally, it's unbreakable, but the world isn't ideal.
The Rise of Machine-Written Journalism : something neat.

Activism: looking in, looking out (libs and climate science)

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 08:46:19 -0800

The main goal of ideological advocacy is expand the influence of a particular ideology among the general public. I define an ideological movement as a group of advocates for an overlapping set of ideologies, who recognize their shared interests. These advocates will frequently look to each other for intellectual and material resources, which aid them in their primary task of expanding the influence of their ideologies. While most of their attention will focus on contrasting their own ideology against others that influence the general public, some of their attention will be focused inwards--evaluating disagreements within the movement.

While there are definitely benefits to some degree of introspection within the movement, I've noticed a tendency for people to go overboard and focus on internal squabbles to the detriment of the original goal of advocacy. There are probably many reasons for such navel-gazing, ranging form a concern with one's own social circle to finding more satisfaction to debating with others who share at least a few common assumptions, but I don't want to get too deep into that speculation. What I want to focus on here is an example of productive introspection, and how a lot of people seemed to miss the point.

Over at the Center for a Stateless Society, Kevin Carson wrote an essay called "Libertarians for Junk Science". I thought it was a very well focused and relevant essay. He starts with the premise that there is a scientifically valid risk of man-made climate change, that will cause major harm in at least a few ways. This has long been the mainstream opinion among scientists, and it has finally become the mainstream opinion among the public. Carson takes a faction of libertarians to task for obsessively denying the science here, accusing them of providing a disservice both to science and libertarianism.

Carson's essay is primarily focused inwards, but it can also provide an outsider with greater respect for libertarianism. Carson asserts that climate-change denialism is driven by the fear that the reality of man-made climate change would invalidate libertarianism, then argues that there is no reason for this fear. This point is of immense importance because if the public believes that climate change invalidates libertarianism, then libertarianism is dead. Even if the greenhouse gas effect turns out to be benign, our ability to modify the climate will only increase in the future and we will eventually have to deal with these sorts of issues. Carson provides an explanation for non-libertarians, and asks libertarians to stop framing the issue in a way that discredits liberty.

Unfortunately, his audience (as represented by the comments) seemed to miss the point. One commenter (Schulman) immediately turns to navel-gazing, debating whether Carson is a real libertarian. Another (Kinsella) ignores Carson's critical introspection, apparently interpreting it as an attack on libertarianism and insisting that statists are much more prone to ideology driven pseudoscience than libertarians are. While this is an interesting issue, it is beyond tangential and it wasn't clear that the commenter recognized it.

A final note on the comment thread, is that it was full of standard denialist rhetoric (I've become familiar with it from the evolution/creation debates). The core of this rhetoric was misrepresentation of scientific opinion. Understandably, it is hard for a layman to get a good grasp of the issues, since they don't have the time that a professional has and they are often getting their information second-hand from reporters and activists who don't have a great understanding themselves. One consequence of this misunderstanding is the "magic bullet" refutation -- acting as though one inconsistency is sufficient to demolish a body of theory that has been built by hundreds if not thousands of research projects (and often that apparent inconsistency has already been addressed). I also got the impression that some commentators have spent more time reading fringe opinions (both for and against climate change legislation) than they have spent reading the opinions of mainstream scientists or policymakers. They seem unable to distinguish between the ideas of opposing ideological advocates, such as radical environmentalists, and those of the mainstream scientists and technocrats whose ideas form the solid foundation of public debate.

Geo-engineering update

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 06:32:36 -0800

It seems that Russia is taking the lead in the development of technologies that actively modify local climate and protect the global climate.

Moscow attempts to have a snow-free winter (but misses the mark). I do not know how much they managed to reduce snowfall.
The Russian space agency plans to divert an asteroid that has a small risk of hitting Earth.

Global warming is just the beginning of how our technologies will enable us to influence our environments on an ever grander scale.

Philosophy for the day: Bakunin's socialist liberty

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 07:23:21 -0800

Sunday Funnies

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 16:01:24 -0800

A poetic rant on the nature of evidence from Tim Minchin. Warning: strong language. (tip to Respectful Insolence):

Politicization of Climate Sciences

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 06:23:11 -0800

In the wake of Climategate, climate researcher Mike Hulme has articulated the ideal role of science in public discourse. Basically, he declares that scientific debates should be kept separate from ethical debates (leaving aside bias inherent in hypothesis generation and choice of research directions), while still informing our actions. This is a nice ideal, but ignores the fact that people will enter scientific debates with ulterior motives and it can be hard for the layman to distinguish between the sincere scientist and these charlatans.

In contrast to Mike Hulme's call for the separation of science and politics, we have his colleague James Hansen (head of NASA's Goddard) who is quite happy to transform his scientific prestige into a platform for political moralizing. In reviewing Hansen's new book for DailyKos, DarkSyde introduces him in this manner:

To be a top climate scientist today means being up to speed in graduate level physics, advanced mathematics, planetary astronomy, meteorology, paleontology, oceanography, bio and geo-chemistry, dealing with programmers and constantly shifting computer architectures, and now on top of everything else, you have to be a tireless political activist and media celebrity.(emphasis mine)

No, you don't have to be a political activist...at least not in Hulme's model of science and politics. The scientific method strives for consensus, while the political method strives for domination; If Hansen and DarkSyde want to make politicians out of scientists, then they should expect politicized resistance and deal with it as a political dispute.

When Hansen compares carbon emission credits to the Indulgences that sparked the reformation, he just sounds like a moralizing fool (even to someone like me who agrees with his preference for a carbon tax, in this case).

There is no necessary connection between doing research and political advocacy. A scientist does have a responsibility to communicate his findings to the public, and when his findings have urgent implications, there is not time to allow the knowledge to percolate through the formal education system (i.e. inform other researchers, who inform their students at university, who become teachers in the primary and secondary schools). So there is an imperative for some member of the field to directly communicate the field's findings to the general public, which probably means being "a media celebrity". However, this is an issue for all academic disciplines, and it is not a requirement for everyone in the field--certain individuals naturally distinguish themselves within the field as communicators and politicians (often taking jobs such as heading major research institutions), and these individuals are the natural public spokespersons of the field.

But what if the research findings have implications for economic policy? If the spokesperson ignored those implications, they would be neglectful in their communication to the public, but taking a position politicizes the field of study. Following Hulme's model, I suggest that that the scientist make a point of contacting political activists, informing them of the situation, and allowing them to advocate for policy changes. This may even include sitting down with them for a public Q&A, where the scientist acts as a resource on which they draw as they suggest policy responses. This could be either a live discussion, or a book where the first chapter describes the scientific situation and the subsequent chapters are written by activists/politicians who explore the implications.

I'm not saying that scientists should avoid politics all together, just that they shouldn't use their prestige as a practicing scientist to gain exceptional authority in their political advocacy (at least until they have retired).

Arlen Specter opposes the troop surge

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 18:36:51 -0800

Senator Specter of PA has written an opinion piece in the Philadelphia Daily News outlining his opposition to the troop surge. His basic argument: pacifying Afghanistan will do little to reduce the terrorist threat and our allies (from NATO, to Pakistan, to Kharzai) aren't committed to a winnable strategy.

The next generation of Internet activism

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 17:48:16 -0800

Google has recently released a preview of a new service called Wave, which they describe as what email would be if it were invented today (Web 2.0). Ben Parr at Mashable thinks that Wave is a "game changer". My biggest concern with Google's expanding suite of communication tools is with privacy and the potential risks of "Total Information Awareness", but according to Parr, Wave is Open Software that can be run on your own server, mitigating those concerns (though I don't know that servers can interact with each other the same way that email servers can).

Having read Kevin Carson's recent essays about the networked activism, I've gotten kinda excited about what these innovations could mean for those of us interested in decentralized, peer-to-peer problem solving. Wave has features that remind me of Facebook and blogging, but with a level of access control similar to email. One of the exciting features is the ability to have a conversation and then bring others in and quickly bring them up to speed on the history of the conversation. They've also made the structure extensible (think of Firefox addons), so I expect a constant stream of new features.

Right now, the system is just a "preview" and obviously lacks its standard features, but it still shows noticeable improvements for these activities:

Collaborative editing of documents
File sharing
Multi-person email (which acts like real-time chat)

I'll be looking forward to the new forms of networking enabled by systems like this.

Acoustic Thrash Metal

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 16:12:59 -0800

Just some music I thought you guys might enjoy:

Rodrigo y Gabriela – Orion
by wiredset

Obama's weasel words on Afghanistan

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 14:37:43 -0800

...and allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011.

Despite all the hand-wringing from Republicans, especially John "100 year occupation" McCain, Obama's plan does not provide any sort of meaningful time-line for the withdrawal of troops form Afghanistan. At most, it can be interpreted as meaning that he will not send more soldiers to Afghanistan after this deployment of 30,000 troops (of course, that may change if conditions change, which they will).

By saying that he will order the army "to begin to transfer", he isn't even committing to a return to current troop levels in Afghanistan, let alone anything resembling withdrawal. The only good thing I see in this timeline is that it helps to keep our options open in the future, so that if we quit Afghanistan in 18 months, at least the President can say "this is all going according to plan".

"Causes celebre" in the gay marriage culture wars

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 11:14:19 -0800

The culture wars surrounding gay marriage are dragging on, and each side has a new anecdote showing how they are the victim of injustice.

First well take a well known injustice from the gay marriage proponents, the risk of being prohibited from visiting one's partner in the hospital:

...after the 39-year-old was rushed by ambulance to a Florida medical center, she fought for her life alone.
Her partner of 18 years, Janice Langbehn, said she was not allowed to see Pond for eight hours as she lay dying, and their children were never given the chance to say goodbye.

A libertarian radical may want to avoid the issue of state recognition of marriage and look at what gives a hospital the right to turn away visitors, or what gives visitors the right to demand access to a patient...but such investigations would be largely academic and as a practical issue, we need to recognize (as the commentators here do) that the state has no business granting special privileges to people who adhere to a particular lifestyle or ideology. Any two people should be able to enter into a partnership with all of the rights and privileges typically associated with marriage.

The other story supports the contention of gay marriage opponents that the recognition of gay marriage will result in everyone being forced to express approval of gay marriages. This is basically the communitarian position that our lives cannot be coherently partitioned into public and private aspects. In this particular case, we are dealing with the social pressure to acknowledge major events in the lives of our co-workers and sympathize with their feelings regarding these events--our economic lives cannot be separated from our social and family relationships. A Massachusetts man claims that he was fired for refusing to express support for his coworker's same-sex marriage.

Vadala claims the woman...mentioned four times that she had married her partner. He said he then left the store briefly to visit the airport's chapel before returning.

"I found it offensive that she repeatedly brought it up," Vadala said. "By the fourth time she mentioned it, I felt God wanted me to express how I felt about the matter, so I did. But my tone was downright apologetic. I said, 'Regarding your homosexuality, I think that's bad stuff.'"

The woman, according to Vadala, then said, "Human resources, buddy — keep your opinions to yourself," before exiting the store.

Two days later, Vadala, who had been employed for just a matter of weeks, received a termination letter citing the company's zero-tolerance policy regarding "harassment" and "inappropriate and unprofessional" comments.

This story lends some credibility to the assertion that state recognition of gay marriage will essentially force everyone to kowtow to the idea that a gay marriage is just as valuable to a heterosexual marriage. I would normally consider that argument to be pure paranoia, but even with the example before me I have little sympathy for that concern. First, if these people are concerned about employers using their influence to silence their employees, then they shouldn't be fussing over gay marriage, they should be objecting to the fact that employment can typically be terminated without cause. Gays have to live with this reality every day when they hide their romantic lives from their employers out of fear of being fired for being gay. At least this guy got fired because of how he interacted with his coworker. Second, their "solution" is actually a more extreme version of the "problem": for fear of ideological conformity being imposed in the workplace, they want to impose an ideological conformity on the entire society. Funk that.

Talking to kids about taxes

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 04:35:13 -0800

A child in my extended family recently asked his father "what are taxes?" (or something to that effect). Based on the father's response and how Americans typically talk about taxes, I imagine that most responses embody partisanship and ideology, covering the range from supportive to antagonistic:

"taxes pay for public services such as roads and defense" (and gratuitously killing foreigners and jailing Americans).
"the money is just wasted by giving it to special interest groups such as stupid lazy poor people"

I would like to have a response that is simply factual and describes the essential features of taxation. My favorite approach to discussing the state is to look at the evolution of the institution, and its actual functioning, so here are two ways that I may handle the question:

Long ago, a man called the king would beat up anyone who didn't give him money on a regular basis. We called this taxation. We had a revolution and decided to elect our king every four years and include more people in the decision about taxes.
Every few years, we elect people to government, and then they decide how much money each person has to pay them. They spend the money as they see fit (often telling us how they spend it) and at the next election we decide if the government should stay.

My responses are probably not going to be satisfying, because I refuse to provide any moral evaluation of whether taxes are good in general, and whether they tend to get spent on good things. But if the kid wants to ask more questions, that's a good thing.

My responses also embody some ideological ideas that I dislike, such as "the will of the people"; but on the issue of taxes it addresses the two essential points that taxes are coercive and that only our elected government can levy taxes. Without those facts, taxes are indistinguishable from either donations or regular theft.

For those who resent taxes and how they are spent, a sensitive issue here is that most adults don't want to expose kids (8-10 years old) to the full ugliness of the world, especially when faced with apparent contradiction that this ugliness is embodied in a major (if not the major) institution in our society, yet the kid is growing up in a pretty safe and prosperous world (if he is a middle class American).

A kid may have a hard time understanding that we don't always need to chase off thieves with a stick. Sometimes we just constrain their actions, and get on with our lives as best we can with a parasite hanging on us.