Sunday, June 24, 2018

A need for state-funded journalism? (BBC & North Korea)

An advertisement for natural gas from Chevron:


Advertisements presuppose the existence of competition. Recently, there have been examples of unsubsidized sources of renewable energy underpricing natural gas. These sudden and unexpected harbingers of the obsolescence of natural gas might be the motivation for this elaborate advertisement. Also, natural gas is a fossil fuel that produces greenhouse gases, and is thus vulnerable to public scorn.

It is strange to find an oil company's advertisement disguised as an article in the otherwise liberal New York Times. Perhaps advertising in a conservative venue like the WSJ would be redundant, like preaching to the converted. In any case, beggars can't be choosers in the contemporary world of journalism, and news outlets like the NYT need to sell advertising in order to survive. And liberals always were capitalists.

What would state-funded journalism -- without advertisements -- look like?

The BBC offers a glimpse. (The UK subsidizes the BBC with fees. Anyone with a color television in the UK has to pay a $200 fee to the British government.)


From the BBC News service....

A very long article from last week on what the "soul" is conceived to be in the Western intellectual and religious traditions, and what the implications of Artificial Intelligence are for those traditions:


A long article on the scientific validity of the idea of parallel universes:


On why there could be many identical copies of you in these parallel universes:


This is elite journalism -- not so much for the financial elite who read newspapers like the WSJ, but for the best-educated members of society. 

A pale imitation of this might be found in NPR, the American version of "public" radio (actually, public-private) that relies on donations. 

An even paler imitation of the BBC would be the PBS, which historically has consisted primarily of programming from ... the BBC.

In Europe, substantial public expenditures seem aimed at a segment of the middle class that is very, very educated. 

The US has neither this kind of generous public funding for such things nor an over-educated middle class.

The ultimate policy objective in the US across the political spectrum -- from Bernie Sanders to Donald Trump, and all points between -- is to give people more and MORE STUFF. Not more education, but MORE MATERIAL STUFF. In fact, it is argued that if everyone goes to college, then they can later afford to buy MORE STUFF. (University administrators then use this as an excuse to raise tuition, which burdens students with debt.) MORE STUFF is the ultimate goal and justification of public policy in the US.

America was always like this. The original 13 British colonies were famous for their big carriages pulled by big horses, big houses and big meals with big portions. This love of material bigness is the imprint of the working class on American culture. The US never really had an aristocracy, but neither did it have poor immigrants because they could not afford the journey (the US was the "land of opportunity", and not so much a "refuge"). The characteristics that distinguish American from European life therefore derive largely from the working class and its material aspirations. (In contrast, the European middle classes have an obsession with quality, not with sheer quantity.)

It is often observed that almost all Americans -- from the "upper-middle class" who comprise the top 20% of income earners down to the working class -- have a middle-class identity. Yet if Americans are  (in)famous for their materialism, it is because the character of the US has been much more influenced by the working-class. 

For this reason, it seems inconceivable that there will ever be government subsidies in the US for news services. 

Although this might not bother the ordinary American, something does seem lacking for those who are educated and attentive. For example, the BBC seems to have more in-depth coverage than does the elite media in the US regarding North Korea and its development of nuclear weapons.

A very thorough profile of the North Korean leader:


Experts on North Korea are puzzled why North Korea even wants nuclear weapons. They note that the regime always links the possession of nuclear weapons to "reunification". The implication is that the North wants to utilize its nuclear arsenal to conquer the South. The experts are quick to point out that the notion of a North Korean victory over the South is absurd.

What North Korea means by "reunification", however, might have changed over the years, and may now have little to do with conquest. The model that the North might have in mind might be based on the relationship between China and Taiwan, two countries that have economically integrated while maintaining separate political systems. North Korea now has a market economy because its planned economy collapsed along with the Soviet Union; this market economy would facilitate economic integration with the South. Because the North now has a massive but untrustworthy military and an embittered populace, a nuclear deterrent would be the only guarantee of the regime's survival in the course of economic integration. (In fact, the nuclear arsenal could be used against the North's own population, much as the South African government planned during the apartheid era.)

More evidence for this understanding of North Korea:




One cannot get this kind of insight from American news media.
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College in high schools? (Success Academy)

Success Academy schools are profiled in the New Yorker with the subtitle "Inside Eva Moskowitz's quest to combine rigid discipline with a progressive curriculum."


It is a very unusual, rather awkward hybrid of educational styles. The school is relentlessly regimented and micromanaged for both the teachers and the students, and yet there are periods of the day that are (cautiously) dedicated to the kind of unstructured "student-centered learning" that one finds in Montessori schools. It is as if the ancient militarized Spartans had tried to re-create ancient Athenian democracy and philosophy somewhere within the interstices of the harsh Spartan lifestyle, or if Nazi Germany had experimented with anarchism on the weekends. 

Success Academy serves underprivileged students, and this hybrid approach seems to be an effort to get such students up to speed with their wealthier counterparts who already enjoy the best of both worlds -- a safe, structured existence that allows them the opportunity relax and be creative.

Success Academy began in 2006, with a single elementary school in Harlem, and now has forty-six schools, in every borough except Staten Island. The overwhelming majority of the students are black or Latino, and in most of the schools at least two-thirds of them come from poor families. More than fifteen thousand children are enrolled, from kindergarten to twelfth grade. 

But the schools do well by the favored metric of twenty-first-century public education: they get consistently high scores on standardized tests administered by the State of New York. In the most recent available results, ninety-five per cent of Success Academy students achieved proficiency in math, and eighty-four per cent in English Language Arts; citywide, the respective rates were thirty-six and thirty-eight per cent.

This year, a Success high school, on Thirty-third Street, will produce the network’s first graduating class: seventeen students. This pioneering class originated with a cohort of seventy-three first graders.

That is a dreadful dropout rate, but it reflects the impoverished, hardscrabble lives of the students combined with the extreme rigor of the school. 

Again, the disciplined, regimented nature of the school seems to be a response to the underprivileged lives of the students. Without the constant external discipline that the schools impose, the learning environment would descend into mediocrity or even chaos. This seems to be what happened when Success Academy opened its first high school.

The most unusual aspect of Moskowitz’s experiment is not her “Slam the Exam” sloganeering. Rather, it’s her attempt to combine aspects of a very traditional approach—rigid discipline, tracking, countdowns, rigorous accountability—with elements of a highly progressive curriculum. It can be an awkward straddle. “It is very challenging to have a kind of data-driven performance-oriented culture, and to do progressive pedagogy,” Moskowitz acknowledged. “These things don’t naturally, or easily, go together.” She went on, “One of the biggest reasons that teachers have trouble with student-centered learning is that they have to give over a level of control to the kids. And, when you do that, you can have chaos, or you can have high levels of learning. Often, teachers are afraid of the chaos.” It is as if Moskowitz had looked at the traditional/progressive spectrum and, instead of occupying a space along it, had bent its ends toward each other, to see whether they can meet.

The results of this experiment remain unclear. In 2014, Success opened its first high school, the one on East Thirty-third Street. Moskowitz hoped to create a more relaxed and collegiate environment, with seminars led by experts supplanting classes with pre-formulated lesson plans. There was to be a lot more free time, in which students would be the stewards of their own studies.

“It just didn’t work,” Andrew Malone, the school’s current principal, told me. “There wasn’t an intentional enough gradual release of where they were.” Many of the students slacked off academically, and there was a resurgence of behavioral issues, such as lateness to school, that had been eradicated in the younger grades. “There were a lot of sweatpants,” Malone added. Students accustomed to second-by-second vigilance found it difficult to manage their time when left unsupervised. Malone arrived at the high school in its second year, and decided to “re-set” the culture by instituting stricter and clearer rules.
In college, of course, students have to flourish without constant supervision. Although charter students are admitted to college at higher rates than students from comparable public schools, their graduation rates are dispiritingly low. Seventy per cent of charter-school students who enroll in college fail to complete their degrees within six years. While there are many reasons for this problem—most notably, insufficient money for food and housing—charter-school leaders, including those at Success, are also considering the impact of their own teaching precepts. Malone and his colleagues realize that getting students to succeed at standardized tests isn’t enough; they must prepare students for a future in which their professors—and employers—won’t be providing their parents with weekly updates. “College graduation was always the goal,” Malone said. “But only now that we have a high school do I think we are seriously thinking about what the pedagogy should be through the years.” How can a highly supervised child be transformed into an independent learner? Do you allow students the freedom to fail, or do you continue to provide constant hand-holding? “It’s an incredible design tension,” he said.
There is the dilemma. The school is regimented and highly structured in order to help shepherd underprivileged students through the system so that they can finally make it to college. But the students will then be at a disadvantage when they get to college because they will not be prepared for a wide-open, self-directed educational setting.

There may be a solution of sorts provided by the model of the mid-20th century British school system. In the 1950s, students in British public schools typically graduated when they were 16 years old, and they would then be directed into the world of employment. The junior and senior years of high school were referred to as "college", and reserved for the best students.

What charter schools could do is hire their graduates as school teachers and tutors. These teachers would then take online college courses for credit, and then use this instruction to teach and tutor the high school students. No one learns more than the teacher, and these teachers would still be enmeshed in structured environment even as they transitioned to self-directed learning. 

The grand concept is that eventually high schools could become colleges. High school students could graduate and yet remain at the high school for another two years, taking college courses online, but without suffering the disengagement that online learning often entails (IIRC, the attrition for online degree programs is often 90%). 

This would be a form of disruptive innovation, in which an inferior, less expensive form of technology finds a niche, improves over time, and becomes the dominant technology. 



Online learning by itself would not constitute disruptive innovation. Rather, disruptive innovation in education would happen when online learning was coupled with institutional modification of current secondary education. (Also, rather than paying college tuition and potentially racking up student debt, these college students would be getting paid for teaching and tutoring.)
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Thursday, June 21, 2018

Revisiting the voting age? (brain development and age)

The human brain does not fully mature until the age of 25 years. The prefrontal cortex, which governs much of impulse control and rational thought, is the last region of the brain to mature. 

This might have legal implications.

The age of majority is when individuals become legal adults. In most countries, it is set at 18 years. In Japan, New Zealand and Taiwan, the age of majority is 20 years; in Singapore, it is 21 years. These countries might be more in line with the realities of human physiological and mental development than other countries, where the age of majority is based on tradition (in Iran, it is nine years for females, and 15 years for males).


By this logic, the age of majority might be raised to 25 years. 

The voting age might likewise be raised.

The voting age is largely based on the youngest permitted age of military service. In 1971, the voting age in the US was lowered from 21 to 18 years because the age of 18 years was the earliest for military conscription (during the Vietnam conflict). It is as if the American Revolution's slogan "No taxation without representation" had been applied to the ideal of the citizen solder: No compulsory military service without a citizen's right to vote. 


President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in his 1954 State of the Union address, became the first president to publicly state his support for prohibiting age-based denials of suffrage for those 18 and older.[5] During the 1960s, both Congress and the state legislatures came under increasing pressure to lower the minimum voting age from 21 to 18. This was in large part due to the Vietnam War, in which many young men who were ineligible to vote were conscripted to fight in the war, thus lacking any means to influence the people sending them off to risk their lives. "Old enough to fight, old enough to vote," was a common slogan used by proponents of lowering the voting age. The slogan traced its roots to World War II, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt lowered the military draft age to eighteen.

This may be politically compelling, but it makes little sense in terms of human physiology, cognitive development and the capacity for citizenship. The voting age should be raised to 25 years.

This insight might also apply to juvenile law. Individuals are tried and sentenced as adults beginning at the age of 18 years. Perhaps there could be an intermediate stage of legal culpability between 18 and 25 years, a legal status more strict than that for juveniles but less strict than that for adults. 

This would apply only to crimes of an impulsive, non-malicious nature under the assumption that an underdeveloped brain is not as culpable. If young people get drunk and steal a car and crash it, that is indeed a serious crime, but it would be what one might expect from normal young people with a diminished capacity for reason based on an immature brain. This would be quite different from crimes that are premeditated and sadistic.

Here are a couple of case studies of bad eggs...

The bank robber John Dillinger was a bully and a troublemaker from an early age, despite coming from a respectable home.


The cult leader Charles Manson was born to an unintelligent, neglectful, impoverished prostitute and spent much of his youth in abusive institutions. From an early age he seems to have engaged in all sorts of serious, dangerous and cruel crimes.


These men might have been shaped by their environments, but their remorselessness and the premeditated nature of their crimes reveals their true criminal nature. If they had been born into the elite, they would have been just as evil, but they would have been able to hide it better and get away with it. Evil in some form was their destiny.

So there needs to be a distinction made between spontaneous, irresponsible, non-malicious crimes versus planned, sadistic crimes. 

But it could be that judges and juries cannot make that distinction. Ideology and culture render humans unable to make such fine distinctions. There seems to be a tendency for many or most people to look at youthful offenders and either 
1) pity them as liberals so often do, regardless of the horrific nature of their crimes, or else 
2) condemn them as hopelessly evil as conservatives so often do, even if the young offenders did not mean to hurt anyone. 

Ideological blinders simplify policy.

For example, liberals seek to lower the voting age to 16 years. 


High school, said Joshua A. Douglas, a law professor at the University of Kentucky College of Law who has studied this issue, provides a more supportive environment, especially when twinned with improvements in civic education. He said there is no difference between the cognitive brain development of a 16-year-old and an 18-year-old; they are both capable of the reasoned, deliberate decision-making involved in voting.

But liberals also want to go easy when it comes to criminal sentencing for youthful offenders because "children" supposedly are less capable of rational decision-making. But the basic premises of these two policies are contradictory. Such policies are ultimately based on ideological blinders and on the desire to be generous, not on coherent reasoning. Liberals want to be Santa Claus, conservatives want to be The Grinch. 

It could be that other species such as chimpanzees are more intelligent in this respect. Unconstrained by cultural learning and the requisite sense of authority, including adherence to ideology, they are less warped in their thinking.

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Tuesday, June 19, 2018

Three kinds of politician? (patrons, statesmen, fixers)

Alexis de Tocqueville claimed that democracies tend to be averse to having persons of talent in positions of political leadership. The citizens of a democracy are more often fired with personal ambition than are people in non-democracies because the path to success is less impeded for them, and for this reason they tend to look with jealous disapproval on those who are more talented and successful than themselves. Also, the smartest people loath and avoid politics anyway, and in a democracy they can flee from their political obligations more easily than they can in traditional societies.


Moreover, democracy not only lacks that soundness of judgment which is necessary to select men really deserving of their confidence, but often have not the desire or the inclination to find them out. It cannot be denied that democratic institutions strongly tend to promote the feeling of envy in the human heart; not so much because they afford to everyone the means of rising to the same level with others as because those means perpetually disappoint the persons who employ them. Democratic institutions awaken and foster a passion for equality which they can never entirely satisfy. This complete equality eludes the grasp of the people at the very moment when they think they have grasped it, and "flies," as Pascal says, "with an eternal flight; the people are excited in the pursuit of an advantage, which is more precious because it is not sufficiently remote to be unknown or sufficiently near to be enjoyed. The lower orders are agitated by the chance of success, they are irritated by its uncertainty; and they pass from the enthusiasm of pursuit to the exhaustion of ill success, and lastly to the acrimony of disappointment. Whatever transcends their own limitations appears to be an obstacle to their desires, and there is no superiority, however legitimate it may be, which is not irksome in their sight.

It has been supposed that the secret instinct which leads the lower orders to remove their superiors as much as possible from the direction of public affairs is peculiar to France. This is an error, however; the instinct to which I allude is not French, it is democratic; it may have been heightened by peculiar political circumstances, but it owes its origin to a higher cause.

In the United States the people do not hate the higher classes of society, but are not favorably inclined towards them and carefully exclude them from the exercise of authority. They do not fear distinguished talents, but are rarely fond of them. In general, everyone who rises without their aid seldom obtains their favor.

While the natural instincts of democracy induce the people to reject distinguished citizens as their rulers, an instinct not less strong induces able men to retire from the political arena, in which it is so difficult to retain their independence, or to advance without becoming servile. This opinion has been candidly expressed by Chancellor Kent, who says, in speaking with high praise of that part of the Constitution which empowers the executive to nominate the judges: "It is indeed probable that the men who are best fitted to discharge the duties of this high office would have too much reserve in their manners, and too much austerity in their principles, for them to be returned by the majority at an election where universal suffrage is adopted."1 Such were the opinions which were printed without contradiction in America in the year 1830!

I hold it to be sufficiently demonstrated that universal suffrage is by no means a guarantee of the wisdom of the popular choice. Whatever its advantages may be, this is not one of them.    
Tocqueville visited the US Congress and later wrote that in the US Senate one finds the noblest and wisest men, whereas the US House is populated by the least talented men. Tocqueville claims that the Senate contains excellent men because they were in his day selected not by the popular vote but by state legislatures. Not mentioned here is the observation that the populist House (direct democracy) is identified with patronage because members are required to run for office every two years and their constituents pay heed to federal funding, whereas the elitist Senate (representative democracy, or a republic) is linked with rational discussion and debate over the "big picture" issues of the day because their elections are less frequent and less contested, affording them the luxury of careful deliberation. 


In New England, where education and liberty are the daughters of morality and religion, where society has acquired age and stability enough to enable it to form principles and hold fixed habits, the common people are accustomed to respect intellectual and moral superiority and to submit to it without complaint, although they set at naught all those privileges which wealth and birth have introduced among mankind. In New England, consequently, the democracy makes a more judicious choice than it does elsewhere.

But as we descend towards the South, to those states in which the constitution of society is more recent and less strong, where instruction is less general and the principles of morality, religion, and liberty are less happily combined, we perceive that talents and virtues become more rare among those who are in authority.

Lastly, when we arrive at the new Southwestern states, in which the constitution of society dates but from yesterday and presents only an agglomeration of adventurers and speculators, we are amazed at the persons who are invested with public authority, and we are led to ask by what force, independent of legislation and of the men who direct it, the state can be protected and society be made to flourish.

There are certain laws of a democratic nature which contribute, nevertheless, to correct in some measure these dangerous tendencies of democracy. On entering the House of Representatives at Washington, one is struck by the vulgar demeanor of that great assembly. Often there is not a distinguished man in the whole number. Its members are almost all obscure individuals, whose names bring no associations to mind. They are mostly village lawyers, men in trade, or even persons belonging to the lower classes of society. In a country in which education is very general, it is said that the representatives of the people do not always know how to write correctly.

At a few yards' distance is the door of the Senate, which contains within a small space a large proportion of the celebrated men of America. Scarcely an individual is to be seen in it who has not had an active and illustrious career: the Senate is composed of eloquent advocates, distinguished generals, wise magistrates, and statesmen of note, whose arguments would do honor to the most remarkable parliamentary debates of Europe.

How comes this strange contrast, and why are the ablest citizens found in one assembly rather than in the other? Why is the former body remarkable for its vulgar elements, while the latter seems to enjoy a monopoly of intelligence and talent? Both of these assemblies emanate from the people; both are chosen by universal suffrage; and no voice has hitherto been heard to assert in America that the Senate is hostile to the interests of the people. From what cause, then, does so startling a difference arise? The only reason which appears to me adequately to account for it is that the House of Representatives is elected by the people directly, while the Senate is elected by elected bodies. The whole body of the citizens name the legislature of each state, and the Federal Constitution converts these legislatures into so many electoral bodies, which return the members of the Senate. The Senators are elected by an indirect application of the popular vote; for the legislatures which appoint them are not aristocratic or privileged bodies, that elect in their own right, but they are chosen by the totality of the citizens; they are generally elected every year, and enough new members may be chosen every year to determine the senatorial appointments. But this transmission of the popular authority through an assembly of chosen men operates an important change in it by refining its discretion and improving its choice. Men who are chosen in this manner accurately represent the majority of the nation which governs them; but they represent only the elevated thoughts that are current in the community and the generous propensities that prompt its nobler actions rather than the petty passions that disturb or the vices that disgrace it.

The time must come when the American republics will be obliged more frequently to introduce the plan of election by an elected body into their system of representation or run the risk of perishing miserably among the shoals of democracy. 

Here is a snippet of the 1854 memoir of US Senator Thomas Hart Benton that objects to Tocqueville's perspective, the author defending the ideal of direct democracy that is embodied in the House. Benton points out that the Senate was mostly comprised of former members of the House, so there is no real demographic difference between the two chambers aside from age. Benton's is a populist perspective, and very typical of the rural southeastern US.


Perhaps both perspectives are valid. There does seem to be a difference in character between the two chambers that reflects a dichotomy in what is meant by "democracy" -- the ideal of public rational discourse on public decision-making versus the reality of patronage and the "tyranny of the majority". But actual politicians are mixed in character. For example, the Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt both manifested the populist image of the frontiersman, but their political agendas represented a repudiation of populism.

The most intelligent president in American history might have been John Quincy Adams, and he supposedly played a crucial role in early American history. But he is not a greatly loved or even widely known figure because he was perhaps too smart for Americans (and too principled). Hence the fate of Al Gore, always the bridesmaid but never the bride. He always sounded like he was giving a lecture, and most people prefer entertainment.

The typical congressman probably exhibits a mixed record of patronage and principled legislation. There might be the occasional outlier like Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens, who was seemingly exclusively interested in patronage for his state or in legislation concerning his state, without any greater concern for or understanding of policy. To be fair, mid-century politicians like Stevens and Bob Dole saw themselves not in ideological terms, but as professionals who, like civil servants, engaged in the scutwork of making the government function; the ideological aspect of party affiliation during this time was largely illusory.

The Rural Working Class in particular, despite their resentment of government, might be drawn to a revered warrior patriarch who promises to protect them and shower them with patronage. Hence the paradox of Trump's strongest supporters, who loath entitlements and government largess -- yet demand precisely that for themselves.


There is a third kind of politician -- the fixer. One might think of the Chicago alderman who knows how to pull strings behind the scenes, but this figure is not necessarily an elected official, but rather a political operative who works in the shadows. This role was highlighted in the 2012 movie "Lincoln". Lincoln wanted to ban slavery just before the Civil War came to a close, so he mobilized fixers who would bribe congressmen with the promise of future federal jobs if they voted to abolish slavery. A contemporary image of a classic fixer is the TV character Ray Donovan, a man with roots in east-coast organized crime who thrives in California as a law firm's operative solving the secret problems of the rich and famous. 

It would be strange to have a fixer as a congressman or governor, but it might happen now and then. Richard Nixon always seemed more like a shadowy fixer ("tricky Dick") than either a patron or an esteemed statesman, although he later presented himself as the latter. 
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Monday, June 18, 2018

Population decline as disruptive innovation?

Two related news articles from May 2018.

Why many rural Americans will stay put even when the local economy declines.

As population growth slows in the developed world (population growth everywhere is negative, except in Africa), nations turn to nationalism and populism. This is especially true in rural areas, where populations are shrinking.

There is one obvious contradiction between the two articles. The former article insists that rural people will not move when their economies fail, while the latter article points to the decline in rural populations. However, the first article does point out that the brightest young people are leaving rural areas, never to return. 

Now for something that might seem completely different, but which is relevant....

The first animal welfare societies were created in the 19th century mainly to look after draft animals like horses, which were often left abandoned or which died in the streets. At the beginning of the 20th century, these societies began to turn their attention to smaller companion animals like cats and dogs.

When the Hawaiian Humane Society was established in 1883, its mandate included the care of widows, orphans and the mentally ill, functions that passed to the government by the 1930s.

What these articles do not explicitly mention is that humane institutions began to focus on pets because draft animals were becoming obsolete. 

Also, if the Humane Society eventuality abdicated its mission to care for widows and orphans to the State, one reason was that there were fewer widows and orphans. 

Once Upon A Time, people were constantly dying, and not just old people. Today, we have movies like "Four Weddings and a Funeral", but not so long ago it would have been more like Four Weddings and Four Funerals. Young widows and widowers were not so uncommon. Everyone was constantly dying and people were constantly getting remarried. (Hence, perhaps, the evil stepmother as a staple of fairy tales, who would have been a reality in daily life. Also, hence the high divorce rate found in developed societies today, which mirrors the previous high death rate; "Until death do us part" once referred to a period of years, not necessarily decades.) 

Orphans have also become less common. In affluent countries, there is an orphan shortage, with Americans turning to Asian societies (South Korea, China) or Eastern Europe for a supply of adoptable children. As almost all societies have developed, the pool of eligible orphans has dried up. 

Westerners have consequently had to turn to adopting extremely damaged orphans in their own countries, children who would have otherwise spent their entire lives within institutions. In prosperous democracies, there is a governing notion that everyone should have an "ideal" life in a nuclear family living in the suburbs, and that any deviation from the norm is a total failure on the part of society. But that notion seems like a delusion as the number of normal children available for adoption shrinks.

This provides a glimpse into the future of animal welfare societies. One future "problem" for them may be their success. The number of animals being euthanized seems to have dramatically declined in the past generation thanks to spay/neuter programs. 

The happy problem for shelters is that in the future there may not be any animals entering the shelters. The number of cats and dogs will diminish the way the number of horses and widows and orphans shrank in the past. These organizations will have to reinvent themselves.

How could they reinvent themselves?

One must look to other trends to make an educated guess.

An animal control worker once wrote that up until the 1980s, on the edge of every suburb in the USA there would be a somewhat troublesome pack of roaming dogs, either several large dogs or a half-dozen smaller, terrier-type dogs. In the 1980s, he claimed, those dog packs suddenly disappeared, and for no known reason. One explanation might be that even prior to the spay-neuter efforts of the 21st century, Americans in the suburbs were beginning to keep their pets indoors -- a practice at odds with almost all other societies. For example, the 2011 movie "The Tree of Life" illustrates life in 1950s suburban Texas, with kids and dogs roaming all over the streets. This is so different from today, where even the kids are either indoors or getting chauffeured. Back in the 1950s, people who lived in the suburbs were often from more rural areas, and, importantly, they perceived themselves as living in a rural area. Only later did the suburbs become more refined and tame. 

The selling point of suburban life was that it provided the amenities and conveniences of the city, but the wholesomeness and distance of the countryside. In fact, the suburbs were perceived in the 1950s as actually existing in the countryside. Middle-class Americans in the new suburbs were seen to be enjoying the life of the rural gentry -- in a down-sized fashion. 

Suburban life was once the equivalent of today's Tiny House Movement. The suburban house was seen as the tiny version of the rural manor -- much the way DIY wooden mobile homes are today seen as smallish houses. 

This might suggest that the suburbs are an example of disruptive innovation, in which a cheaper, inferior technology finds a niche, improves over time, then comes to dominate the market (at least at the mid-range, not at the high-end). (This explains the simple, cheap, flimsy nature of the new mass produced houses of the 1950s.)

This kind of disruptive innovation might be evident in certain trends regarding companion animals.

-Animal "rescue" has taken on the sense of purpose and virtue that owning a purebreed dog once had (as opposed to owning a "mutt", which was commonly seen as a sign of irresponsibility). 
-Young women are more inclined to get a dog than have a child.
-Small dogs are becoming more popular than large dogs.
-Cats are becoming more popular than dogs.
-Sony has come out with a new model of their robot dog "Aibo".

Following this logic, in the distant future, animal welfare groups may have to branch out into the repair and disposal of companion robots because there will be fewer companion animals, especially dogs. That might sound funny now, but everything changes. (The average household size in Manhattan is 2.1 persons.)

All of these trends signify not only the future decline of companion animal populations, but also a steep decline in the human population and in resource consumption. This would entail a decline in real estate prices.

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Thursday, June 14, 2018

Electric buses as disruptive innovation?

Electric buses were once seen as a joke, but they have become mainstream in places like cities in China.


A more specific example is the city of Shenzhen. 


What is intriguing is the question of when the buses will be charged. If the buses are most active during peak traffic periods, they can be recharged during the day using solar PV-derived electricity for the evening commute; this would presumably help soak up mid-day peak solar PV production in places that have adopted solar. But for the morning commute, the buses would probably be charged at night using fossil fuels (or wind or nuclear). 

Another intriguing question is if this is an example of "disruptive innovation", in which a cheaper, inferior technology finds a niche, improves over time, and then unexpectedly becomes the dominant technology. If everyone is laughing at a technology like electric buses, it might be worth investing in it before it takes off. 

In any case, the emergences of the electric bus as a viable mode of transport comes as a surprise.

Another issue with regard to the new viability of electric buses might be the relative irrelevance of the USA in the 21st century in terms of promoting innovation through public policy. For example, solar PV prices have fallen precipitously because the German government subsidized the purchase of solar panels and the Chinese government in turn subsidized the production of solar panels. Thus, the USA was not a central player in the solar PV price decline. The emerging viability of electric buses has likewise resulted from public policy in urban China, not the USA.

On another note....

As a thought experiment, what might have been the role of buses in American society if the USA had not engaged in building the federal highway system? 

The Federal Highway Act of 1956 was initiated by President Eisenhower as a military policy to help enable the US military move across the country in an emergency and to enable civilians to retreat from cities during a nuclear attack. It was not primarily intended for civilian transportation or commuting. 


The highways contributed greatly to the mushrooming of suburbs in the postwar period. There were also other factors, like new technology that made suburban homes quick and easy to build (developers like the Toll Brothers could build one house a day in this period, for example). This helped to address two decades of pent up demand for housing, as little had been built during the 1930s and 1940s. 

In an alternate reality -- without the Great Depression or without WW2 or without the Cold War -- the highways and the suburbs might not have been built on the scale that they were. In this case, what might have happened instead would have been the expansion of cities and the important role therein of high capacity transit systems in high-density areas. But that might not have resonated with what the public wanted (and still wants), which was (and is) suburban life. 

Another example of how the developmental path of the USA could have been different might be found in the work of the urban planner Donald Shoup. One of the consequences of reliance on the automobile in the postwar period was that providing private, on-site parking was mandated by law for occupants of buildings such as businesses and apartments -- a requirement that seems perfectly reasonable on the face of it. According to Shoup, however, this requirement only reinforced the commuting dyad (suburbs & automobiles) at the expense of the urban dyad (high-density development & mass transit). This requirement of private parking ironically resulted in promoting rather than alleviating traffic congestion.


One problem with Shoup's research is that although his counterintuitive insights make for refreshing reading, the average person neither understands the theory nor desires the outcome. (For example, one might logically deduce that all street parking should be metered and that this would solve myriad problems, but explaining that to the public is like arguing with a two-year-old child.) 
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Wednesday, June 13, 2018

Gambling for children? (zoning issues)

A new issue: "loot boxes" in video games.

A loot box refers to certain things that one can purchase (with real money) in a video game, such as points for greater health or for better weaponry -- and these items can be exchanged for a "mystery prize" or "mystery box" containing unknown items. 

This randomization is very addictive.


In video games, a loot box (sometimes loot crate or prize crate, among other names) is a consumable virtual item which can be redeemed to receive a randomised selection of further virtual items, ranging from simple customization options for a player's avatar or character, to game-changing equipment such as weapons and armor. A loot box is typically a form of monetisation, with players either buying the boxes directly or receiving the boxes during play and later buying "keys" with which to redeem them.
This is a big issue in Europe, where gambling itself is not illegal. In Europe, the regulations on gambling revolve around games of pure chance, which are addictive. For example, poker is controversial in Europe because it is somewhere between a game of pure skill and a game of pure chance, and so European governments are uncertain how to regulate it. In any case, the "loot box" is essentially a montetarized game of pure chance -- for children. 

The rise of the loot box seems to derive from the inevitable increase in computing power. It now costs more to develop elaborate video games, even though the price of video games has remained flat because of competition (many video games are free, but involve "in app" purchases such as for new weapons or better health, etc.). So video game developers are looking for new ways to bring in money. Subjecting children to gambling addiction might be the result.

This is reminiscent of the "Opium Wars" in China. Foreigners have always dreamed of making a fortune in trade with China, but this has always proved to be a fantasy because it was the Chinese who would make money off of them. The only way the British could balance their trade deficits with China was to sell opium to the Chinese. In the future, perhaps the only way to make money in dealing with China might be ... online gambling for Chinese children. 


Another thing that this reminded me of was your post on gambling in the suburbs, in particular, the gambling den on Waialae Avenue.


One thing to realize is that there is plenty of gambling in the suburbs today -- online. That might be a bigger problem than gambling dens.

Even for games of skill, online gambling is particularly addictive because the gambler can persist at it for long, uninterrupted periods.

Here is a story on a woman who became a successful professional gambler -- until she left the casinos behind and got addicted to online gambling. 


She would go to a casino at midnight and gamble until 8 a.m. Having to sit in a casino is exhausting, and that helps to avoid the temptation of gambling too much. When a gambler is on a losing streak, they will keep playing in a panicked effort to recoup their losses; if they are on a winning streak, they will keep gambling until their luck changes and they lose everything. Whether she was winning or losing, by 8 a.m. she was tired and hungry and would have to leave the casino. The problem was when she started gambling online at home. She would gamble for 24 hours straight. At that point, she lost her life savings and became addicted to gambling.

This brings us to the issue of zoning. and its problematic nature in the Age of the Internet.

The first zoning laws in the US were passed in San Francisco, banning tanneries from residential neighborhoods; the second place to enforce zoning was New Orleans, when brothels were banned from neighborhoods. So there are environmental and cultural issues at the heart of zoning. 

But so much of zoning laws may not be rational at this point in history. Emotionally, people want their neighborhoods to be pristine, and they don't want businesses in residential areas, even small bodegas or corner stores that might be convenient for them. Urban planners talk about "mixed use development", but at an emotional level almost no one wants that in their own area because it feels like a form of contamination. People dream of domestic bliss, and they are willing to pay a fortune for it. 

The idea of brothels and gambling dens in the suburbs is understandably a nightmare for the average parent who pays a premium to live in the hermetically safe environment of the suburbs.

But what they don't seems to understand is that some of their children are up in their bedrooms in the suburbs essentially engaging in  gambling and all sorts of stuff on the internet (sometimes as customers, sometimes as workers).

The point is that much of current zoning law might be based on emotion -- in particular, on a utopian dream of the suburbs as pristine (which is itself a kind of addiction). 

What would different set of regulations entail?

One concept is to relax height restrictions on buildings. Instead, regulations would impose restrictions on resource consumption of buildings, so that buildings would be "autonomous" in terms of energy and water.

Here's an example of where that concept went wrong. It's the Public Utilities Commission building in San Francisco, which was designed to be autonomous.


Nevertheless, autonomous buildings could be the way of the future. As such, this particular building is emblematic of the role of California in contemporary American history. California is dysfunctional yet creative, and what California attempts to do may fail today but it is a glimpse into California's long-term success and the world's future.
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