This is amazing

http://cafehayek.com/2010/01/keynes-vs-hayek-rap-video.html

Principled Disinterest

I am confused. I got an email Friday from a member of the minyan asking us to "do a mitzvah" before shabbes and support his son's charity that is in the running to receive a grant through the Chase Community Giving project. My sense is, however, that there are lots of really worthy charities out there, and it is rather difficult for me to assess that one is more deserving than another. Furthermore, the money has already been allocated, so my vote won't increase the funds given to charity, only affect the recipient. What then is my ethical incentive for participating?

This seems to be a perfect instance where a specialist might well be a better arbiter than the demos.
UPDATE: If you were to, ex ante, choose between giving microloans to the developing world or find innovative ways to remind women to perform self-exams on their breasts, which would it be? I suspected as much; 14,000 for breasts and 8,000 for microloans. So this is not a question worthy-ness, breast cancer kills more than 40,000 of women every year. But it is unclear that self-exams go very far to prevent those deaths, whereas microfinance won a Nobel Prize for saving the world. I just don't think people are very good at prioritizing when there are no constraints on their decisions.

Shout Out to Josef

Martha Nussbaum likes your channukiah.

Silly Idea

Is it possible that the Tiger Woods hoopla is society performing a passion play, projecting angst regarding its favorite squeaky clean African-American icon onto its second favorite?

Dear Pres. Obama,
Please, please don't cheat. I don't think my tolerance of stupidity can withstand such an assault.

Very Truly Yours.

In other news, Leiberman has defected. Should the Dems play Tit for Tat, Grim Trigger or just suck up their Sucker payoff? I am guessing Reid will go for the latter most.

How to Win the War in Afghanistan and Why it Will Never Happen

How to win the war: legalize smack.
Why it will never happen: an African-American president will get nowhere (politically) by legalizing dope.

Leiberman Redux

Quick thought: Reid's payoff for having Lieberman in the party is n(v)-c where:
n= frequency he votes with the party from 0 to 1
v= value of Lieberman's votes
c= opportunity cost of giving the Homeland Security committee chairmanship to someone else.

As the Democrats approach 60, v increases. At the same time c might be rather small because it is good for the Democrats to have a hawk chairing HS. If v is high and c is low, n can dip and Lieberman will keep his chairmanship.*

I was wrong. He's not nuts. And he gets money from the insurance industry.

* We had a separate argument in the department about the utility Lieberman reaps by keeping his chairmanship. I don't think he needs it as much as others do, and even if he did, he seems to benefit by signaling that he will defect.

Self-radicalized, homegrown nut

Sen. Joe Lieberman has cracked under five years of alienation and pressure. After being turned aside by the Democratic party, feeling alone with no alternatives, he has cracked.

So I am responding to this article about the Ft. Hood shooting (which the FBI has said is not a terrorist incident), but also to his statements about supporting a filibuster against health care reform. CT is a fairly liberal state and all five representatives voted yea on HR 3962. So why would Lieberman not only vote against the bill (which would reduce its margin of victory), but also threaten not to impose cloture? What does he have to gain?

My detached sense (no longer in the DC world) is that he is finished with politics and wants to throw his weight around. I was not upset when he decided to support McCain, as that did not affect his legislative duties to the party. But when he not only doesn't support the party platform, but actively undermines it I just can't see how he can retain his HS chairmanship.

The Ft. Hood thing is just weird. It was a guy that cracked. Case closed. Is it really worth the time of the US Senate to understand why outliers happen?

A Special Shout Out

to Rep. Owens (NY-23) on HR 3962. I will sleep happier tonight knowing that Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck made this vote possible. It would have happened without him, but it still makes me happy. The bill actually passed by 3 votes, one was Owens and another Cao of LA. So Owens's votes might have actually been fairly decisive.

Health & Care

I had a series of shabbes conversations on health care today. What astounds me is the often callus regard physicians have for their patients sentiments. They agree that the highest level of care should be provided to every patient, but that excessive wait times (5 hours in the emergency room) and curt explanations are just a fact of life. Deal with it. Often, doctors claim to be exceedingly busy and unable to spend the necessary time to explain their diagnosis to patients and do general hand holding. My instrumental counterclaim is that more time hand holding will yield fewer malpractice suits. My friend's response was, don't sue so much and your health care premiums won't go up so fast. This is obviously silly, as the the cost of malpractice suits is 1) negligible to the entire cost of health care in America and 2) shouldered far more by doctors than patients. The reply strikes me as exceedingly arrogant, however, and reveals a certain bravado amongst physicians.

What really bothered me, however, was my inability to give a non-instrumental argument as to why health CARE is important. Why am I owed an explanation? I come in which a life threatening illness that almost kills me. Doctor enters, grunts, writes a prescription, and leaves. Five days later I am totally healthy but without a whit of understanding as to why. Has the doctor shirked her responsibility? Is she blameworthy? I feel like I could offer some souped-up Kantian 'respect' argument, but somehow that feels forced. Are we entitled to care, above and beyond health?

11221, you are so predictable like that

Netflix has this cool feature that lets you see the top 100 movie rentals across the country. Of course shlock like "The Pursuit of Happiness" and "The Bucket List" are on it. But then you can get a list of the top 25 rentals in your area. Ann Arbor is a bit more posh than the rest of the country so we get Season 5 of "The Office" and "Annie Hall." I know those titles, though. Where are they uber-hip, where do all the cool kids hang out? So I googled "Williamsburg, NY zip code" pulled 11221 and punched up the list. What do I get? A documentary of Hasidic Jews, a 1983 PBS documentary on Style, "Masculine/Feminine" and nine foreign titles (two of which are Ingmar Bergman).

Oh 11221, it's good to know that you so are predictably trendy.

I want to see any movie

which, according to the NYT, is rated R for, "drug use, swearing and the repeated violation of Commandments 3, 5 and 7 to 10."

It would be funny if the MPAA characterized moral breaches in movies according to the Rambam's minyan hamitzvot. That would be a very Coen brothers thing to do.

Kinda Annoyed

Here is Obama's Rosh Hashana message:



Here is his Nowruz message:



I just don't appreciate that he uses the same tone to address the (unfortunate) Palestinian problem as the Iranian dictatorship. As if I am not perfectly aware of the suffering that the Palestinians endure. I just don't believe that if only we, the Jewish people, looked back on our cherished heritage* and our outspoken condemnation of oppression that somehow the Palestinian problem would be solved. It takes two to tango. Harumph.

* I think it is possible that the first Jewish intellectual to give the line from Yishaya "or lagoyim" discursive currency was Jesus. See Matt. 5.14 "You are a light unto the world. A city built on a hill." I find it weird when people quote that line as distinctively Jewish.

Trust

Why do Republicans not trust government to promote social welfare, but defer to the government on matters of security and law & order? Why do Democrats trust government to promote social welfare, but mistrustful of the government on matters of security and law & order?

Security and order is a matter of trust. There exists a local power differential and the body on the low end must trust that the superior will not take advantage of its position. The police officer can pull me over, rip me from my car, beat me like a nag, and arrest me for resisting arrest. It is going to be difficult for me to make a sufficiently persuasive claim to seek recompense--the burden is on me. I just have to trust the officer and the government in turn. Now you might have a good story as to why that trust is warranted (bureaucrats want to retain power, elected officials don't want to lose office, the gov't primary role is to maintain security, not meddling in health care), but we can talk about trust in that context.

Health care, however, is not an issue of trust. The government might screw up, because that is what big bureaucracies are wont to do, but it is not a failure of trust, it is a feature of institutional design. That is why I find it so odd that the language of trust is bandied about regarding health care, it just seems out of place.

Fifth Annual Zev Day. 7/28. Be There.

Well, I guess Zev Day has a much longer history, but I have only been aware of the festivities for five years.

What's the deal with organ trafficking anyway?

I had a good spat with (R.) Dan and Shmuel over facebook about the uses and disadvantages of organ trafficking. They raise important concerns regarding a persons ability to consent (well, that might be putting words in their mouths), lowering of costs of organs and generally saving people's lives. I worry about people's ability to consent and exploitation of the poor.

If people are 'fairly' compensated for their organs, why shouldn't they be allowed to sell them on the market?

What This Means

There are a plethora of reports alleging election fraud in Iran. The best I have read thus far comes from Juan Cole, whom I do not normally agree with. Al Jazeera is being really weird and anti-liberal in its coverage, generally maintaining a neutral to skeptical tone regarding the fraud.

The election indicates is that there is distance between the policies of the government and Ayatollah and the wishes of the people, but the fact that the results will likely stand demonstrates that the people are still unable to affect that policies of the Iranian government. Despite the media frenzy over the protests, comparisons to Tiananmen and all, the scale appears to be on the order of thousands, a relatively small showing for protests in the Middle East. The result is not a tragedy because the delegate to the office of the presidency will or will not change, but because of what it indicates about the willingness of Iran's oligarchy to change its policy, even on something as small as a figure head (let alone it's nuclear program). Given that policy change, let alone regime change, appears unlikely Israel will likely bomb Iran*. This is a disaster...

Update (6/15): OK, NYT is reporting protests of ~half a million. That's a real, ol' timey, Mid-East protest. None of this "thousands in the street" crap. I have no idea what's going to happen from here, but at least it shows some spunk.



*Again, this is a descriptive not a prescriptive claim.

Three Questions

Whenever reading political theory always ask three questions:
1. What is the premise?
2. What is the account/mechanism?
3. What is the payoff?

So for Hobbes it would be something like:
1. People have a projectivist epistemology which causes acrimony. We must solve that by bringing people together under one rule.
2. Consent is employed to transfer 'natural rights' to one body.
3. A perfectly consensual and represented politics.

There are still some bugs in this and my account of Hobbes might not be perfect, but I think it is a good rubric. A surprising number of articles do a hack job of #2 and don't address #3 at all. So, for instance, if you ever read something that outlines a problem and resolves it by magic pixie dust, dragon fire or power excised by the industrial bourgeoisie always be skeptical.

Kol Yisrael Arevim

I post this because it is getting some traction in the blogosphere, and because it finely articulates why I struggle with Zionism and kol yisrael arevim.



For a moment I will engage my mother, who will no doubt respond along these lines: So they are stupid?! There are lots of stupid people in the world. Why let stupid people alter your identity?! The problem is that according to normative religious/cultural principles I actually share a community with these people. Why can't I construct a community which cleaves along the lines of smart/stupid as opposed to Jewish/non-Jewish (granted my life is far more heavily weighted the former already)? Why would I want to share anything with bigots?

The best rebuttal I can offer at this moment is that maybe God wants us to take responsibility for stupid people. Maybe that's the point of community. Living together in a diverse environment in order to understand the baseness and transcendence of the human spirit. I think it was St. Thomas who argues this, but how can we appreciate the beautiful without the ugly?

Gogol the Optimist

I am working on a proposal to write a paper about Emerson and Gogol. I mentioned this to my dad and told me a story illustrating how nuts Gogol was. Apparently, he was obsessed with the numbers 2 and 4 resulting in his suicide at the age of 42.

I burst out laughing--I always sensed he was a glass half full kind of guy. A true Russian optimist.

Can One Appeal to Merit?

I attended a workshop over the last month with one of the professors here where we discussed her forthcoming book which articulates a non-ideal philosophical argument for racial integration, specifically affirmative action. Throughout the seminar I was confused as to why she did not address the question of merit head on--if one works hard and excels (those are two different items) isn't one entitled to a position at an Ivy or elite firm (or at least more entitled than someone without that merit)? How do the values of integration (democratic norms along with social justice ones) address the claims of merit?

Turns out she doesn't really think such an appeal exists, at least to a strong version of the claim. Sure, she concedes, you are going to have a hard time remaining an elite school if you open up enrollment to a lottery, but merit, in itself does not really constitute a claim. Merit will excel on its own, but it is not a ethical value by itself; an instrumental not a deontic value (that might be stating it a bit too strongly--she did intimate that at a large firm passing up someone more qualified for a cousin of yours might be an ill). So if you don't believe that merit is an appropriate claim, anti-affirmative action arguments really fall down.

Just prima facie, there seems to be some appeal to justice wrapped up in merit, something like Aristotle's equals to equals where one's capacity ought to equal the challenge of the position, but I am not sure. Furthermore, it would be hard to argue that every promotion ensures a correspondence between merit and responsibility. Anyhow, it was kind of a mind blowing moment.