On Marriage Equality

The Viking Dutchman has many opinions on today’s news. They shall follow after he has time to read through some of the cases. 

Watch this space humble readers!

On Institutions, Culture, and The Land of Oz

I am generally a skeptic of arguments about “culture”, especially when they’re made in politics. Nothing makes me yawn more than being told that Group X has Behavior Y because of Cultural Concept Z. 

Instead, I find most supposedly cultural arguments are really more about people reacting to variations in institutional structure and incentives. Group X has Behavior Y because of Context Z. Group A has Behavior B, because their context is different. 

But I don’t know what to do with this. For those unwilling to click through, here’s the story: 

Early this morning (for those of us living in Eastern Standard Time, otherwise known as “Correct Time”), the Prime Minister of Australia, Julia Gillard, lost control of her party. She has now been replaced as party leader by Kevin Rudd. Mr Rudd, following the rules of the parliamentary system Australian politics operates in, will now go to the Governor General to seek appointment as PM, and will also have to face a confidence vote in the legislature. 

It’s not 100% certain he’ll win, however. Although he needs only a simple majority vote, some members of his own party (Gillard loyalists) might vote against or abstain in protest. Even if all of his party (The center-left Labor Party) did support him, they actually lack a majority in the lower-house. Gillard’s parliamentary majority depends on support from a small clutch of independents: the result of the inconclusive 2010 election, which actually saw Labor and the the right-wing Liberal/National Coalition* get the same number of seats. They may decide against supporting Rudd as well. Either outcome would force an early election, but given the existing one is scheduled for the Fall, “early” is unlikely to make too much of a difference. 

So why did I start all this talking about culture? Because Kevin Rudd has been prime minister before. He was Labor Party leader and PM in 2010, when a young upstart in his party dethroned him just months before a general election. That upstart was Julia Gillard. Since then, Rudd has repeatedly tried to launch counter-revolutionary warfare. Indeed the party coup is something of an Australian tradition. Of the last five Labor Party leaders, three were forced out in party coups, and the other two seem to have resigned hastily to avoid being similarly disgraced. The record for the Coalition is similar. 

Which is strange. In many respects Australian politics behaves exactly how you’d expect it to. For example, the two-party-plus party system for example is broadly consistent with what you’d expect under Duverger’s Law, given the Australian electoral system. But it’s not at all clear to me how to explain why Australian politics are so cut-throat and coup-prone. Australia’s most obvious peer countries, New Zealand, Canada and the UK are much more placid. Heated, sometimes rude, parliamentary debate is not unusual in those countries. regular CSPAN watchers would be shocked at some of the things members sometimes say in the British House of Commons. 

But the petty factionalism, bitter intra-party rivalries, and coup-mania that seems endemic to Australian politics is quite unusual. 

So… Culture?

*For those who don’t know but are interested, here’s a quick primer on Australia’s right-wing Coalition. In parliamentary systems, “coalitions” are usually formed after elections, made up by some alliance of electorally-independent parties that form a post-election agreement to join together to form a parliamentary majority. The Conservative-Liberal coalition government in the UK today is an example. The Australian Coalition is different, though not wholly unusual. It is an enduring alliance of two parties, who share common electoral branding and ballot space. Although the constituent parts, the Liberal Party and the National Party, enjoy substantial internal independence, they operate within a common framework, have for some time, and are likely to continue to into the medium term at least. There is some basic logic to the alliance: both parties are right wing, but one (National) has traditionally represented rural interests (farmers in particular), while the other (The Liberals) represents town and city populations. As Australia has urbanized and the family farm has declined as a force in rural society, the balance of internal power has swung substantially towards The Liberals. The Coalition as such often seems merely a tool of Liberal leadership, with the Nats struggling to hold relevance. This kind of power dynamic is not unusual. So entrenched is the dominance in Germany of Angela Merkel’s CDU over its alliance-partner the Bavarian CSU that you probably didn’t know the latter exists. 

Corrective Of The Week: Cities Aren’t Just for One Percenters

You hear this kind of argument a lot. I’ve been known to make it myself. 

For those unwilling to jump to the first link, here’s the quick version:

1. Now that cities are cool again, rich folk want to live there

2. Rich folk gradually bid up prices till no one else can afford to live there

There’s a lot more to it, and there are some very very important (and true) aspects to the argument. 

But it’s also worth remembering this: 

1% of 300 million is 3 million. New York City has 8 million inhabitants. They couldn’t have the whole city even if they wanted to. The rest of the world’s elite could help, but they also have a bunch of other cities they’re supposed to be filling, don’t they?

A Few Words on This Century

I really don’t have much to say here, just a quick thought to add to my previous discussion of forecasting

Beware anyone who tries to talk to you about the “twenty-first century”, and what it will bring. A century is a long-time. Lots of things will happen. Before we reach 2100, entire new ideas and systems will be created, and then die. 

Be especially careful about people who try to set policy discussions about the needs of the 21st century. “The 21st Century State”, “The 21st Century Economy”, “The 21st Century City”, etc…

Some people are already ready to prescribe certain things as paradigmatic of a century barely born. 

I read something recently about building a model of governance for the 21st century. 

I couldn’t help wondering: what kind of model might someone in 1913 have built for the 20th?

Density and the Folly of Europhile Urban Planning

This article by Vishaan Chakrabarti captures much of my feeling on European cities, and how vital it is that American urbanists do not try to bring that model here.

An excerpt:

…many [American] urbanists consider European capitals such as Paris and Barcelona as the exemplars of “good density.” And, indeed, with city centers that support mass transit and walkable neighborhoods built at more than 80 units per acre — as is the case in Paris — these are some of the most densely built environments in the world. [2] Since they achieve these densities without, as some would say, ugly skyscrapers built by ugly developers, these cities represent the meritorious urbanity — commonly known as “low rise, high density” —  championed by the design and planning fields.

….

…It is unrealistic and irresponsible for any true urbanist to embrace European capitals as models for future development when they are among the most segregated urban centers on earth and have increasingly unstable finances characterized by debt-driven ‘grands projets’.

Paris may be pretty, but it is also a museum for tourists, a yacht for the rich and a giant tomb for the dead. That makes it far less than the city it ought to be.

Lies Your Friends Might Have Told You, and Other Thoughts on Iran

Well, that was anticlimactic. Four years after a legitimacy-leeching Presidential ‘election’ that saw Mahmoud Ahmadinejad returned to office for another term, Hassan Rouhani, a seemingly fairly decent individual, wins the presidency in a landslide. Indeed, since he won 50% in the first round despite the multi-candidate field, there won’t even have to be a second round. 

Which just completely wrecks my plan to talk about the runoff, or about any civil disorder that might break out from the process (there’s still time, I guess…)

So instead, I thought I’d take a few minutes and give you all a quick primer on Iran, and what this election’s results might mean for our understanding of what happened in 2009. 

Lie Number One: Islamists stole the 1979 Revolution

This one is fairly popular in the West. I suspect it probably derives from our well-documented desire to see all revolutions as “starting well”, and then going awry. The Russian Revolution is the usual example, but the French meets the standard as well. Since we have largely coded “Islamist” and “Anti-American” as bad political traits then, and that is what Iran became after the revolution, then the revolution must have been “stolen” by those groups and they absolutely couldn’t have been at the center of it from the start. 

Which is nonsense of course. Now it is true that the revolutionary groups involved in the revolution were diverse. It is also true Ayatollah Khomeini’s forces muscled out those other factions to establish absolute control of the nascent Islamic Republic. A situation the West made worse by supporting Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran (Woops! I think we’re all supposed to pretend that didn’t happen), an action which allowed the Khomeinists to wrap themselves in the (newly minted) flag. 

But very few of those factions were non-Islamist. Their were Islamist democrats and Islamist-Marxist guerrillas. Their were other folks more extreme than Khomeini. There were lay-organizations who disliked Khomeini’s clerical supremacist beliefs. But they were, by and large, all Islamists. It was never a question of the revolution creating an Islamic of Secular Republic, it was a question of which Islamists would triumph. 

There was the National Front, which was secular, but neither popular nor particularly important. The NF drew its credibility from another organization of the same name (and involving some of the same people) that had existed in the 1950s. That was the old National Front government of George Bluth Mohammed Mossadeq, which the CIA overthrew (on MI6’s behalf, because those guys wussed out) in 1953. 

By the way, Iranians still remember that, and it’s a big reason why they don’t like us. 

All of which is kind of related to:

Lie Number Two: Khomeini Tricked Iran

You hear this sometimes. The argument is usually that in his long exile in France under the Shah of Iran’s tenure (For those who lack even basic Iran knowledge: The Shah was the monarch the 1979 revolution overthrew), Khomeini built a political following among Iranians by lying about exactly what kind of revolution he wanted to have, and what state he wanted to build. 

But not really. Khomeini was fairly upfront about Velayat-e faqih, governance by Shia Islamic Clerical Authority, in his dealings with Iranians. What Khomeini did do was lie to WESTERNERS, who he regularly mislead into believing he had liberal-democratic intentions. 

We probably should have listened to all those cassette tapes he was always sending to Iran. 

So, right, Islamic Revolution happens, war with Iraq, Khomeini dies, replaced by Khamenei (Thanks Iran, those names aren’t difficult to distinguish AT ALL), blah blah blah blah. 

Then we get to everyone’s favorite drooling idiot, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He wins a (seemingly fair) election 2005, defeating a former President, Rafsanjani, who had  served between 1989 and 1997, but could run again because Iran only prohibits having more than two consecutive terms. 

While we’re here, let’s clear a few things up: 

Lie Number Three: Ahmadinejad said He Would Wipe Israel Off The Map

You’ve probably heard your favorite politician suggest this, and you may even remember the original news story about it from almost a decade ago. 

Except it was a miss-translation. 

In the original Farsi, Ahmadinejad expressed his belief that Israel would cease to exist, not any determination to actually make that happen himself. It was a predictive statement, not one of intent. 

However,

That thing where he convened his own Holocaust denial conference is completely true. 

Lie Number Four: Ahmadinejad’s opinion on nuclear enrichment mattered

It doesn’t. The Nuclear program is under the purview of Supreme Leader Khamenei. As is much of Iran’s foreign policy, by the way. Khamenei’s just better about not saying stupid things that end up the Western press, so it’s less fun for the MSM to talk about him. 

Then we get to 2009. 

In case you were too busy following the Michael Jackson death story at the time, 2009 witnessed a fraudulent election in Iran. Well, most observers think it was fraudulent. (These guys disagree). To tell the story quickly, Ahmadinejad came out suspiciously ahead of opposition candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi. There was a massive protest movement, the Green Movement, made up of supporters of Mousavi and another opposition candidate, Mehdi Karroubi. The protests got a lot of Westerners excited, myself included. It was a big deal on social media, especially The Twitters. Apparently we all failed to notice how many of those tweets were in English, and thus how unlikely it was that the movement on the ground could sustain mass appeal. It did eventually wind down, after the government had killed a few hundred people for good measure. 

So what the hell happened with this election?

Good question! It does seem a little strange that the establishment would have gone to such lengths to protect Ahmadinejad’s presidency in 2009, and yet just let Rouhani, the “reformist” candidate, walk to a landslide. 

Lie Number Five: Rouhani is a Reformist

“Reformist” has a very particular political meaning in Iran. It chiefly refers to the Presidency and supporters of Mohammed Khatami, president of Iran from 1997 to 2005. It draws its ideological ancestry from the Islamic Democratic movements and Islamic Leftists that briefly enjoyed some share of relevance in the early years after the Revolution, but which were gradually pushed aside by Khomeini and rather less gradually by Khamenei. They generally support greater flexibility in religious teachings, a more tolerant cultural policy, better relations with the West, and a strengthening of the “Republic” part of “Islamic Republic”. They are not Secularists. Indeed secularism is essentially banned from Iranian politics. That said, many of their public supporters are Secularists, and the movement likely includes some crypto-Secularists, who might reveal their true stripes if they thought it wouldn’t get them killed. 

Mousavi and Karroubi were reformists. 

Rouhani is not. He did receive Khatami’s endorsement, and the endorsements of most leading reformists. However he managed this only because none of the actual reformists made it through the (Supreme Leader organized) candidate vetting process. 

Rouhani is what we used to call a Conservative in Iran, though the meaning of the label has shifted of late. The word used to refer to the socially/culturally moderate, economy-focused political followers of old man Rafsanjani, the guy Ahmadinejad beat in 2005. As the clerical establishment has grown more hardline over the last decade, the Conservatives have gradually moved closer to the Reform movement, but the distinction remains real enough. Ideologically, Rouhani is much closer to the establishment than Mousavi or the other reformists. 

Lie Number Six: Ahmadinejad is Khamenei’s Man

To be fair, it seemed to have started this way! Ahmadinejad played good lap-dog throughout his first term and for a bit in his second. Then not so much. Tensions have actually built up significantly between the two over the last few years. A succession of Ahmadinejad’s top advisors have failed afoul of the Supreme Leader, there have been multiple clashes over cabinet appointments, and Ahmadinejad has occasionally indulged folk-religious traditions that make the Supreme Leader deeply uncomfortable. There have been worrying concerns about Ahmadinejad’s personal authority over certain state-backed paramilitary organizations, in which he had himself served during the Iran-Iraq wars. They feuded over the 2012 legislative elections, and by now we can all safely say that the establishment will be glad to see the little man go. 

Which brings me to my big theory for what’s going on:

Are disagreeable family members better than like-minded friends?

Rouhani, while he may have some views the clerical establishment finds uncomfortable, he seems much less likely to truly rock the boat. For one thing, he’s part of the clerical establishment. He’s a cleric, a former student in exile of Khomeini, and has all the right clerical pedigrees. While he’s cultivated ties to the Reformists in the last few years, he also has impeccable relations with the establishment. He was Khamenei’s representative on the Supreme National Security Council for 16 years. He was appointed to the Expediency Discernment Council, a government oversight body. He was an active participant in the revolution. 

Increasingly, I wonder if in 2009, the Clerical elite tried to pull off what I like to think of as the “Hindenburg Gamble”: Where an un-elected elite tries to use a populist politician as a front for their own plans, only to have that blow up in their faces. So named (by me) because the most infamous example is the cabal of German elites who thought they could control Hitler, and convinced President Hindenburg to put him in power. Now in Iran, the establishment managed to keep enough control of the situation that they were able to get rid of Ahmadinejad again. 

But they’re risk-averse folks, and having savagely hurt their own political legitimacy to protect him 2009, and then struggled to keep him under control for four years, they’ve learned a vital lesson: Better to sacrifice matters of policy, than empower someone who might burn the whole house down. 

By the time those German reactionaries worked that one out, power had shifted so far that many of them paid for their folly with their own lives. 

Incidentally, I wrote about this idea for the Penn Political Review a few years ago, which you should all go read.

Forecasting Is A Silly Man’s Game

Once upon a time, when the Viking Dutchman was a younger warthog, he took a class on econometric forecasting. Which is to say forecasting data using econometrics, statistics’ vaguely silly cousin. The thing that really impressed me about the class, was how open the Professor was about how difficult a process forecasting data really is. Most statistically sound forecasting models end up with margins of error so large that its very difficult to tell much useful from them. Never read the precise number (or “point estimate”) given by a forecast: they are largely meaningless.

Remember that the next time you read an economic forecast. 

To my mind, the easiest way to expose the problem with forecasting is to go back in time and read forecasts of the present. If someone says that unemployment will be 5% in 2023, well see if you can go back to 2003 and see what they thought it would be today. 

Ah, but is that fair? After all there have been extenuating circumstances since 2003, that could not have been predicted! True. But there could also be extenuating circumstances between now and 2023. 

Which brings me to this, a UN report brought to my attention by the good folks over at Next City. It’s basically a bunch of 2050 and 2100 projections for population on a global scale, and by country. It has some eye-catching details, like rapid growth in Africa’s share of global population, and in particular the prospect of Nigeria overtaking the US population by 2050 and challenging China by the end of the century for number 2. 

The general thrust of the idea is almost certainly true. Africa is growing faster than the rest of the world, and is likely to continue to do so in the medium term. Nigeria is large and fast growing, and really might challenge the US for the number 3 position in the coming decades. 

But lets think backwards, shall we? These are essentially 40 and 90 year projections. So let’s consider the world in 1970 and 1920. What kind of things might projections from those years have missed? A demographer in 1970 might have projected a much higher 2013 population for a (then still Maoist) China, ignorant as they would be to the coming one-child policy. They also probably would have miss-estimated the impact of women’s lib on family size, failed to predict the post-soviet collapse of Russian fertility rates, and had some silly ideas about Malthusian growth limits in the third world. The 1920’s forecast would have been even worse, especially since it probably would have missed that spot of violence in the 40s that radically shifted the demographic trajectory of a lot of Europe. 

We shouldn’t expect our 40 or 90 year forecasts to be any different. A lot can happen in those kind of time frames. And at least some of it is going to mess with population dynamics. 

The UN’s projection is one future. One possibly future. But remember the margin of error.

Dystopia Is A Choice

Over at io9, there’s an interesting piece about a dystopia predicted by Paul Krugman back in a 1996 article for the NYTimes. 

And by interesting, I do mean irritating. 

The specifics of the scenario posited by Krugman are not particularly important. The dystopian setting is placed in 2096, a hundred years ahead at the time it was written. The general idea is that an developments in information technology have devastated the demand for white color jobs, and brought an end to the middle class. 

I’ll give Krugman his due: he’s an advocate for particular kinds of public policy and the article is more about that than it is about truly outlining a looming state of affairs. It’s the io9 article that really grinds my gears, because it more or less takes the matter at face value, particularly the community response in the comments below. 

This is my least favorite kind of dystopia: one where technological change/productivity growth has somehow immiserated the bulk of us. 

Why? Because these kinds of dystopias are a choice. One we do not have to make. 

Econ 101, the Introduction to Microeconomics, is for my money the most evil course ever created. Why? because far too many people take it and then never learn anything else about economics. Which is bad because Econ 101 basically sets you up with a particular highly idealized theoretical model for the economy. Just about every other class you might take in Economics, is about tearing that model apart. 

By contrast, I’ve always thought an introduction to Macroeconomics, Econ 102 if you will, can be a very useful way of taking certain economic problems back to first principles. 

Consider the Classic Production Function, which looks something like this:

Y = F(K,L)

Where Y = income, K = capital, L = Labor, and F is some function of which K and L are inputs. Exactly how F works, how it transforms K and L into Y, more or less represents technology, efficiency, and all that jazz. 

This is a highly simplified model, of course, but it will do for our purposes. We can think of the entire economy in these terms. We have some amount of capital, some amount of labor, and we can use our technology to convert that into some amount of output/income. Have more labor? Output goes up. Thus larger countries have larger economies, all else being equal. Have more capital? Output goes up. Technological improvement though, is something of a holy grail of economic development, since it allows you to produce more output with the SAME level of labor and capital.

Just think about it. If we can increase the efficiency with which we convert our resources into  output, then we could also reallocate some of those resources to other things without hurting our existing standard of living! We could invest in colonizing Mars. We could support a larger population of stand-up comedians. We could make a sixth season of Angel, ratings be damned! We could even decide that actually, we don’t want any new stuff at all: we just want to take these efficiency gains, preserve our existing standard of living, and everyone will get to take longer vacations and work less each weak. 

But Krugman’s dystopia suggests we won’t do that. Instead increasing productivity and efficiency will simply destroy large sectors of the economy, and render most of us impoverished. Which leaves two problems: 

Firstly, if technological change was going to destroy all our jobs, it would have done it hundreds of years ago. We always seem to find new things for people to do, and there’s no reason to suggest we won’t continue to. 

Secondly, is that this can only happen if we let it. Dystopia, in this instance, really is a choice. Yes, in the short run, technological change benefits certain classes of people and hurts others. That cannot be avoided, and it would be bad policy even to try. We have to let the system breathe and move and adapt. 

But in general, and in the longer run, technological change promises substantial benefits to society, and it is a choice how we allocate them. We can let them accrue solely to a small minority of conveniently placed individuals, who become fabulously wealthy while the rest of us tread water. This is more or less what we’ve actually chosen to do in America since about the Ford era. Or we can choose to develop the market, regulatory and tax structures to ensure that we all benefit from a more prosperous, advanced and successful society. 

Which won’t be easy. It will require careful policy experimentation, a prodigious amount of political will, and probably some terrible yet educational failures. We need to build a public policy framework that opens opportunities for everyone while maintaining incentives to grow and develop. We must resist the urge to strangle the goose that lays the golden egg, irregardless of how delicious we suspect braised goose thighs may be. Sky-high taxes and a choking mass of regulatory constrictions probably aren’t the answer. 

But neither is going nothing. 

Dystopia is a choice. Let’s try not to make it.

Hello World!

Welcome to The Viking Dutchman!

I hope to start putting out some real content in the next couple of days, but consider this my staking the ground, obnoxiously posting a work-notice on your front doors before I even start building.

Who IS The Viking Dutchman? He graduated from The University of Pennsylvania with a degree in Political Science and Economics, worked for a time for a large consulting company, and has since passed the days working freelance jobs in a similar field. But his passion is reporting on current affairs and thus this blog was born.

He also makes a great chocolate chip pancake and a killer pot of crawfish etouffee.

Not that you asked.

I hope to make this a place where people can stop by, learn a few things, curse at me a little, and generally improve their understanding of politics, economics, society, culture, urban development, and whatever else I feel like talking about.

So please, read a few posts, leave a few comments, and do tell your friends.