iPhones and Broken Windows

Yesterday Apple announced their fancy new iPhone 5. Earlier in the week there was speculation about whether or not the rush of new iPhone sales would actually be enough to noticeably stimulate the economy. Paul Krugman says that’s just another version of the broken window theory, “in which destroying some capital can actually be a good thing under depression conditions.”

Continue reading iPhones and Broken Windows

Wednesday Links

1. Wired had an awesome article yesterday about the legacy of 9/11 and its impact on national security policy. It pretty much encapsulates all of my beliefs about the “gigantic, expensive, counterproductive National Security State,” that the risk of a major terrorist attack is generally overstated but the eventual inevitability of a minor one keeps either major party from daring to reduce our bloated defense budget due to the “political risk” of being blamed for it.

2. Wired had another awesome article (I’ve been stumbling on a lot of these lately) about a teenager who tricked employees at nearly every major tech company into helping him hack into various accounts, including Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Paypal, and Netflix. Much could be said about human nature regarding how this kind of thing is so easy yet doesn’t happen very often, or about why it is happening, but I also think it’s good for libertarian-ish types to be reminded about people who ruthlessly take advantage of things like this. It gives some insight into why law enforcement types tend to be nervous about alternative Internet currencies and anonymity and the like, even though I would continue to assert that there’s nothing inherently wrong with them.

3. Yesterday Gary Johnson, the Libertarian presidential candidate, did an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit similar to the one Obama did a couple weeks ago, although he answered quite a few more questions.

4. The Chicago teacher strike is getting vicious.

Reasons For Optimism 23-29

23. Weather forecasts are becoming more accurate. No, seriously. “In 1972, the service’s high-temperature forecast missed by an average of six degrees when made three days in advance. Now it’s down to three degrees… Just 25 years ago, when the National Hurricane Center tried to predict where a hurricane would hit three days in advance of landfall, it missed by an average of 350 miles… Now the average miss is only about 100 miles.” Better forecasting means fewer cancelled trips and plans and wasted time and money, and – more importantly – fewer injuries and deaths from sudden storms (the chance of an American being killed by lightning is apparently down over 95% since 1940). The National Weather Service has always been one of my favorite parts of the federal government, and as technology improves along with their own experience, they’re more accurate and more useful than ever.

Continue reading Reasons For Optimism 23-29

Reasons For Pessimism 4-8

4. TSA Moves From Your Underwear To Your Starbucks. Wired reports: “Not content with fondling your privates and banning liquids from entering the concourse, the Transportation Security Administration is apparently now also screening liquids bought by passengers after they’ve already gone through regular security screening…” Because, you know, if you’re putting something you bought from the airport into your own mouth, there’s a chance you might have added explosives to it. Supposedly it’s nothing new, just “part of random screening techniques” that have been going on since 2007. Sounds to me like yet another example of overbroad TSA policies resulting in ridiculous real-world applications that protect against nothing while further expanding the citizen’s right to be harassed.
Silver Lining? The more coverage this stuff gets -> the greater demand for change -> the greater the chance of change.

Continue reading Reasons For Pessimism 4-8

Correlations In Job Creation and Political Parties

Last night at the Democratic National Convention, Bill Clinton said, “Since 1961, the Republicans have held the White House 28 years, the Democrats 24. In those 52 years, our economy produced 66 million private sector jobs. What’s the jobs score? Republicans 24 million, Democrats 42 million.”

The fact-checkers have said it’s a fact, end of story. But I’m feeling especially wonky tonight, so I dug a little deeper. First, I pulled up the BLS data to see if I could duplicate the stats. I couldn’t figure out how to separate private jobs from government jobs, but I analyzed the full data and found 32 million jobs during Republican years and 48 million during Democratic years. If you add the private and public numbers from the Bloomberg article, that gets you there, and when you calculate the average per month, it looks pretty good for Democratic presidents. (The number in parentheses after the party initial indicates how many years of data are in that sample size)

jobs-added-president-party-1961-2012But I wondered if 1961 was a cherry-picked starting point, so I went all the way back to the beginning of the BLS data in 1939:

Continue reading Correlations In Job Creation and Political Parties

Another Reason To Vote Libertarian

Last week the Republican establishment wanted to change some rules to make it harder for grassroots candidates like Ron Paul to gain traction in future campaigns. The power grab was stark enough to anger delegates who weren’t even Paul supporters, and the “Nays” drowned the “Ayes” on the voice vote. Nevertheless, the chair ruled “The Ayes have it” without doing an official count.

The Democratic establishment played the same game last night. Earlier this week the party had voted to remove references to God and Jerusalem from their party platform. I’m not sure whether it was the conservative heckling or the threat of losing rich Jewish donors, but the establishment realized it was a dumb move that risked alienating independent voters, so they tried to put it back in. Unfortunately, they had to break their own rules to reverse course. The chair ruled “The Ayes have it,” clearly without a two-thirds majority, resulting in Booing (about the power grab, not about God).

Reason has the relevant video clips. Both parties claim to desire the will of the people but are more than willing to subvert that when it threatens their grip on power. For all we know, this sort of arbitrary voice counting happens all the time in these parties, preserving the illusion of democracy while the leaders really call the shots (I’ve even personally experienced a fraudulent “The Ayes have it” at a local caucus). It just reinforces the notion that the establishment of both parties are corrupt, caring more about preserving their power, whether it’s closing the doors on candidates they don’t like or overriding platform decisions. If the party leaders don’t care about their own delegates’ voices, what makes you think they care any more about yours?

Continue reading Another Reason To Vote Libertarian

Why I Don’t Watch Party Convention Speeches

The primary reason I don’t watch party convention speeches is that there are a lot of them and the opportunity cost is too high for me. There have been a few occasions where the opportunity cost was low enough (for instance, I happened to be in my car and the speeches were on public radio) that I’ve given a few minutes to a few lucky speechers, and those speeches generally remind me why I don’t watch the rest of them: I don’t like most of the things they say.

Continue reading Why I Don’t Watch Party Convention Speeches