Smug Bastard Cabal

On TSA Body Scanning and "Enhanced" Pat-Downs

The justification cited for the TSA's implementation of body scanning and "enhanced" pat-downs of air travellers is last year's attempted act of terrorism by the so-called underwear bomber. Both defenders of the new policy and the TSA cite the criticism the TSA and the administration faced last year over the incident as evidence of bad faith on the part of the new procedures' critics. However, there is a very, very, important point to note here. The criticism both faced as a result of the incident was not in response to the TSA's failure to sufficiently rub Mr. Abdulmutallab 's testicles. It was a result of the fact that the DHS had received prior warnings about Mr. Abdulmutallab's intent from the British and from Mr. Abdulmutallab 's own father regarding his intentions and had failed to act to prevent him or even attempt to prevent him from bringing these plans to fruition. It's not at all clear to me that these problems with intelligence distribution and implementation have been corrected. Instead, the government seems to consider random crotch-groping a more efficient response.

On Food Appreciation

Glenn Reynolds excerpts from this imbecillic Newsweek piece about food and class in America. Frankly, I'll note that the author strikes me as sort of the epitome of the pretentious social climber with more money than good sense or good taste. And frankly I find her opining on the elite superiority of her pretensions tiresome. But it strikes me that Ms. Miller's blatherings speak to the presumptions of our "elite" class. Fist though, let me quote from the opening paragraph of her piece.

For breakfast, I usually have a cappuccino—espresso made in an Alessi pot
and mixed with organic milk, which has been gently heated and hand-fluffed by my
husband. I eat two slices of imported cheese—Dutch Parrano, the label says, “the
hippest cheese in New York” (no joke)—on homemade bread with butter. I am what
you might call a food snob. My nutritionist neighbor drinks a protein shake
while her 5-year-old son eats quinoa porridge sweetened with applesauce and
laced with kale flakes. She is what you might call a health nut. On a recent
morning, my neighbor’s friend Alexandra Ferguson sipped politically correct
Nicaraguan coffee in her comfy kitchen while her two young boys chose from among
an assortment of organic cereals. As we sat, the six chickens Ferguson and her
husband, Dave, keep for eggs in a backyard coop peered indoors from the stoop.
The Fergusons are known as locavores.

Does anyone want care to place a wager that Ms. Miller and her friends wouldn't have a clue if I replaced their espresso with something from Starbucks, their coffee with Maxwell House or their cheese with second rate Edam?

To my thinking, there are, to my thinking, roughly three categories of food afficianados. I'm not talking about someone who enjoys a good meal. That describes a good portion of humanity. I'm talking about people for whom good food is a passion. I'm talking about people who will go out of their way for food.

* Gastronomes - This is probably how I would classify myself. A gastronome is someone whose appreciation of food is a sensual experience. The look, the taste, the texture are the center of the gastronome's attention. The actual "type" of food is not really relevant. They are inclined to evaluate the food as food. They focus on the sensual experience of the food they are eating and whether the food is good for what it is. A gastronome can be as easily impressed with a wonderfully made pizza of Philly cheesesteak as Lobster Thermidore or steak tartare.
* Gourmets - Gourmets share the gastronome's appreciation of food as a sensual experience. However, their focus is more focused on haute cuisine. A gourmet tends to view food appreciaton as a luxury experience and focuses their demands on high end dining experiences. Often a gourmet's appreciation of good food will be more refined than a gastronome's. However, it will also be more narrow. Personally, I like gourmets, but I find their insistance on on haute cuisine a little limiting. A brilliantly prepared meal is no less because it is "comfort food".
* Foodies - I don't like foodies. I consider Ms. Miller and her friends foodies. Foodies are people for whom food is a status symbol. The actual experience of eating a food is secondary to the description of the food. Hence, for a foodie, where the food is from, how it is made, how the food is viewed, it's cost, etc. are of supreme importance. The actual taste, texture, smell, appearance at the time of eating are almost an afterthought. This is the reverse of the thought process that a gastronome or a gourmet would engage in. For them, where the food is from, how it is made, etc. are only means to an end. And, as for the legitimacy of that end, well, the proof is in the eating. Only a foodie would consider "the hippest cheese in New York" an unqualified endorsement. For the gastronome or the gourmet, the thrill isn't in being hip, but in the food itself. If anything, owing to its inceased availability, a gastronome or the gourmet would probably prefer their taste's remain unpopular.

You Tell'em Penn Jillette

Great story from Penn Jillette on his response to treatment from the TSA. It's pretty clear that the TSA is essentially overpaid rent-a-cops. Their entire operation is designed as an assembly line with jobs broken down to simple repetitive tasks that require little judgement or thought on the part of those doing them. As long as that is the case, the TSA will not accomplish much in the way of preventing terrorism and will accomplish a whole lot in terms of insulting and harassing air passengers.

This But Not That

In a recent article David Brooks asks "Why are important projects now unaffordable?". In large part, Brooks lays the blame squarely on the public employees unions. He suggests that they've become such resource hogs that the funding for other needs and goals has to suffer. I agree with Brooks that the public employees unions have become a problem. I'll agree with him that something's got to give and the resouce commitments for public sector workers has to be trimmed back.

But, I think he's missing something here. The public employees unions represent an ongoing expense of government. They are a flow. A cost of doing business that has become too high. However, the great projects Brooks seems to express such nostalgia for (the Space Program, the Interstate Highway System, NJ's cancelled rail tunnel) are capital projects, one-time expenditures that generate a capital asset. Once it's done, you have only to pay for whatever upkeep and maintenance the project requires once completed. As a result, excessive demands from public sector unions would logically represent a less significant factor in decision-making. The fixed asset is paid for over many years and countless uses. Labor costs are capitalized and then amortized over the life of the asset. Excessive labor costs, then , only represent a portion of the skyrocketing costs of completing public projects.

The real problem is that the goal of most projects is rarely the only, or even overriding objective of most projects. When we built the Interstates, we did so because we wanted a cool set of highways. When we launched the space program, we did so to go to the moon. With most projects, today, we attempt to satisfy every want, wish, need or demand. As a result, projects sit in limbo for years, as the concerns of environmentalists about the project's effects on the mating habits of the freckled-penised snail darter are studied and addressed. And, by all means, we can't proceed without the acceptance of the project's aesthetic and historical/cultural effects on the wider community has gotten the okay from a team of urban planners and architects. And that's just in the planning stages. We then have to actually get the project up and running. In that case, welcome to the wonderful world of negotiating with local residents. Want to build a new stadium? Well, maybe you can. If you give them a new park, a new community center, grants for the schools, and guarantee a number of jobs for local residents. But, at last we can get started. Now, we go on to face the fact that we have to pay union scale to the entire labor force, we have to allot a significant portion of our construction to historically disadvantaged contractors, oh, and can't forget the sensibilities of local residents with all that banging and dust and stuff.

But, the thing is, these are all understandable and, to some extent, legitimate wants needs and desires. Would Brooks say "Screw the freckled-penised snail darter"? Is he prepared to say that workers shouldn't get union scale? Does he want ugly public works? Doesn't he want to give the little guy a chance? Does he want construction keeping people awake at all hours and choking them with dust? Is he in favor of leaving ghettos as they are? Somehow, I think the answer is no. Yes, at some point we have to say "This but not that". The thing is, it's not just the unions demanding this and that. It's everyone who looks at the government as the distributor of all good things.

Aren't These People Supposed to Write Well?
Hat Tip: James Taranto

Anne Applebaum has a cringeworthy piece in today's Washington Post. Most of it is the sort of self-congratulatory drivel we've come to expect from the political class. But there's one bit that really, really sticks in my craw:

these modern meritocrats are clearly not admired, or at least not for their upward mobility, by many Americans. On the contrary -- and as Bell might have predicted -- they are resented as "elitist." Which is at some level strange: To study hard, to do well, to improve yourself -- isn't that the American dream? The backlash against graduates of "elite" universities seems particularly odd given that the most elite American universities have in the past two decades made the greatest effort to broaden their student bodies.

"Elite" and "elitist" are not interchangeable. They have different meanings. One can be part of an elite and not be an elitist. And one can be an elitist, yet still not qualify as part of an elite. An elite is something or someone of exceptional worth or merit. Elitism is the belief in rule by a select group. The distinction between these two concepts renders Applebaum's entire thesis a failure. Objection to someone's presumption to rule hardly negates a valid recognition of their accomplishments.

A second point also needs mentioning, however. Ms. Applebaum seems to toss around the term "meritocracy" quite liberally in her column. However, the only distinction Ms. Applebaum treats as at all relevant for her discussion is the receipt of a top-tier education. Are we to accept, then, that the sign of a meritocracy is that people are judged by their alma mater? Are we to suppose then, that the pinnacle of human achievement are between the ages of 16 and 24?

Words, Ms. Applebaum, have meanings. Just because two terms seem kinda' sorta' alike, does not mean that they are the same thing. When you fail to draw distinctions in the meaning of terms, you fail to distinguish between their underlying concepts. I'm not sure what they call this phenomenon at Yale, but in the rest of the known world, it is called "sloppy, sloppy thinking".

No, Mr. President, I like dogs.

Why is the Recovery So Slow Coming?

In linking to an Atlantic article on economic doomsday scenarios Glenn Reynolds comments,

I don’t think doomsday is coming, but I don’t think we’ll see substantial job growth or recovery until people are convinced the government won’t shaft them.

I think this is substantially right. And it is a cause for significant concern. NYU Stern (full disclosure, my MBA alma mater) developed a framework for considering economic development called "The Diamond of Sustainable Growth", or more colloquially, the growth diamond. The growth diamond is roughly analguous to a baseball diamond, with each of the developments or stages corresponding to one of the bases. The stages of the growth diamond are as follows:

Non-Predatory Government -> Robust Financial Systems and Innovation -> Entrepreneurship -> Professional Management

The first of those deserves special mention because it is the most important and it may well be the source of much of our troubles. Non-predatory government is the sine qua non of economic development. Without it, economic actors cannot have a reasonable expectation that their efforts, even if duly rewarded in the marketplace, will be theirs to enjoy. There's no sense in saving for the future, building a business, hiring workers to help you generate more profit, or sacrificing for long-term plans if you think the state (or rulers) will merely confiscate the fruits of all that hard work. And you don't do these things if you think you won't have a system of law and government protecting these things from private predators. Putting it most simply, you don't work like a dog to get something if you think someone else is going to come and bonk you on the head and take it away. Instead it makes much more sense to ingratiate yourself with the predators to gain some portion of the predated wealth. If you can't do that, your best bet is to keep your head down and generate enough wealth to get by till tomorrow.

Through much of human history and in much of the world today, genuinely non-predatory government is the exception, rather than the rule. The extent of the predation no doubt varied and the extent of economic growth beyond bare subsistence with it. But, economic actors had no way of expecting non-predatory government on a sustained basis and economic development remained pitiful as a result. In much of the world today, its easy enough to find places in abject squallor that are blessed with abundant natural resources, gifted with intelligent and hard-working (particularly when removed from those places) people, and struggling in abject squallor because their economies will not develop without non-predatory government.

Now, there's something that I think it's very important to make clear. If you've noticed, I've focused more on the consequences of predation for economic actors' behavior than I have on the consequences of the predation itself. There's a reason for this. The drag on growth from the predation itself is eclipsed by the consequence on its victims' behavior. Relatively modest changes in the behavior of economic actors yield vast changes in the amount of wealth produced. And, while any actor may not know that he will be the victim of predation, the threat alone will produce that change in behavior. But, that raises another important point. Since it is the effect on the behavior of economic actors that is important, the actual predation is less important than the perception of predation. It is because economic actors perceive the government as predatory that they change their behavior. In theory, a massively predatory government could exert little drag on economic growth if it were discrete enough about it. Of course, I don't think I'd be terribly inclined to bet on the discretion of a predatory government. This centrality of perception means that the beneficiaries of the predation are largely beside the point. The perception and behavior is shaped by the interaction of the actor and the predator, not by the actor and beneficiary. As a result, whether the predated wealth is sent to the leader's Swiss bank account, is put at the disposal of a foreign company or state, or is redistributed to the disadvantaged will play little role in perception of predation.

My concern is that this perception of predation has risen substantially in recent years. From a TARP that raised indisputable questions of moral hazard on the part of the banks, to revelations that some of the participants may have been coerced to participate in the program, to the bailouts of the auto companies that discarded longstanding bankruptcy procedures to the benefit of the UAW, to a stimulus that seemed more about rewarding political constituencies than stimulating economic activity, to revelations of corruption within the administration and Congress, to strongarm tactics by the administration and its supporters in dealing with private businesses, economic actors have increasingly had ample reason to suspect that the government is acting less a disinterested arbiter of economic actors than as an agent of some actors at the expense of others, in short as a predator. (And lest one thinks I'm picking on the Obama administration, revelations of no-bid contracts to Halliburton or the appointment of the children of political allies to run the Baghdad Stock Exchange during the Bush administration certainly added to the public's perception of predation.) Add to that the fact that only 21% of people believe the government has the consent of the governed and you have a recipe for economic actors to conclude that the government is increasingly predatory.

The growth diamond was invented to discuss the development of economies at the lower stages of development. Obviously, there will be some uncertainties when translating its lessons to the health and well-being of developed economies. However, its lessons are not irrelevant for developed economies. Prior to the rise of Peron, Argentina was among the world's ten richest countries. The pattern of predation Peron launched stunted its development in ways the Argentines have still to overcome. Should the current trend in perceived predation continue here, I cannot help but wonder if it might well lead to the same conclusion.