Irrational actors

I was a political science grad student at Penn State in the 60s.  Game theory was all the rage at that time.  Mutually assured destruction, or MAD, was one of the “games.”  The U.S. and the U.S.S.R. played this game--each knew that if it launched a first strike with nuclear weapons, it would be destroyed.  The “game” depended on rational actors who knew their self-interest.  The biggest test of the game came during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and both sides behaved with restraint.  Both behaved rationally.

The game of “chicken” is classic game theory.  Two drivers drive their cars toward each other; the first one to veer away is the chicken and loses the game. If one of the drivers is suicidal or crazy, he will win the game.  (I say “he” because women are not stupid enough to play this game.)  

So what we have is one side in the debt ceiling conflict that is crazy.  In the game of chicken, crazy people win.  In MAD, the crazy side provokes the war. The problem is that in the resulting war or the resulting car crash, everybody dies.  In the case of the debt ceiling, the U.S. economy is destroyed.  Unfortunately, we are dealing with crazy people who welcome that outcome.

One way to counter that outcome is to be even more crazy.  So I am ready to put a brick on the accelerator, throw the steering wheel out the window, and brace myself for the crash.  You want Tea Party, you want crazy--bring it on.

Fortunately for the United States and its citizens, I’m just a blogger, not the President.

Things fall apart, the center cannot hold

I’m taking a break.  I’ll be back on Sunday.  For some reason the current crisis reminded me of the poem “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats.  Here it is:

THE SECOND COMING     Turning and turning in the widening gyre     The falcon cannot hear the falconer;     Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;     Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,     The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere     The ceremony of innocence is drowned;     The best lack all conviction, while the worst     Are full of passionate intensity.     Surely some revelation is at hand;     Surely the Second Coming is at hand.     The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out     When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi     Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;     A shape with lion body and the head of a man,     A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,     Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it     Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.     The darkness drops again but now I know     That twenty centuries of stony sleep     Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,     And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,     Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? We are not a third world country.  We are less than that.  We have a tiny minority willing to sell our country down the river to uphold a discredited ideology.  Today’s economic data show that we are not recovering from our economic problems.  Republicans in Congress hope that in 2012 they will win it all.  They may, but look for economic chaos, loss of faith, cynicism run rampant, and a country that I love in an irreversible decline.   I’ll be back on Sunday.

Whitebark Pine

I know the Republican Tea Party members in the House are about to cause economic disruption.  I know raising the debt ceiling is important.  Nevertheless, I want to call your attention to the whitebark pine, a tree that grows in high altitudes in the America and Canadian west.  

It is on the way to extinction.  The mountain pine beetle attacks the whitebark pine, laying its eggs under the bark of the tree.  The tree, however, grows at high altitudes where the beetle has a hard time surviving.  Now, as the earth warms, the beetle is able to survive and attack the tree.  For an account from the Washington Post, go to <http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/whitebark-pine-tree-faces-extinction-threat-agency-says/2011/07/18/gIQA7tMcMI_story.html>.

Canada has already declared the tree species endangered.  Now the Fish and Wildlife Service has officially recognized that climate change is threatening the tree.  We are changing the global ecosystem.  If we recognized the problem and acted in a world-wide concerted effort, we might--might--be able to reverse or at least stabilize the warming.  But we aren’t doing that, are we?

Anarchism, Libertarianism, and Ron Paul

I’ve always been somewhat sympathetic to anarchism.  It is a very old political philosophy that says we can live well without a central government.  Our government would be localized, community-wide, small scale.  Anarchism often is popular in mining towns, lumber camps, and fishing villages--places where people who are interdependent realize they can live without a far-away government telling them what to do.

I stayed one night in Austin, Nevada, 90 miles from the nearest hospital.  Ten percent of the population of Austin, 90 out of 900 people, were certified EMTs.  Austin was the kind of place where anarchism might work.

For anarchism to succeed you need three prerequisites.  The first is a small population.  A large population requires a power grid, turnpikes, sewage plants, what we call infrastructure.  Secondly, you’ll need a simple economy--preferably pre-industrial.  You won’t be trading with China, and you won’t have a Wal-Mart.  Finally, you must have  people who share the same values. People must really like each other for anarchism to work.

The Amish could do it.  They meet all three criteria, and they would hardly notice if the federal or state government disappeared.  The problem is, of course, most of us don’t want to live like the Amish.  We like our electricity, our cars, our imported wines, and our cities.

Libertarianism has no relationship to anarchism.  Libertarianism emphasizes the individual over the community.  It preaches that any person can do what he or she wants just as long as that doesn’t interfere with someone else.  If you make more than a million a year, Libertarianism may be the political philosophy for you, since you don’t need public schools, public housing, health care, social security, national parks, police protection, or any of the many other services government provides.  You can pay for them yourself.

Why ordinary middle class people would support a Libertarian candidate is beyond me.  Ron Paul is not an anarchist who advocates community government.  He is a Libertarian who supports a society where the rich live the high life and live in comfort, while the rest of us fight for the scraps.  The fact that he has raised millions of dollars, and his son, a U.S. Senator, preaches the same doctrine, are both illustrations that the U.S. is hurtling over the precipice.

Setting Barletta straight

My congressman Lou Barletta was quoted in today’s Morning Call saying everyone he talked to encouraged him to vote against raising the debt ceiling. I write to Rep. Barletta fairly often, and I don’t want to be one of those cranks who are constantly writing letters, but I couldn’t let a comment like that go by unanswered.  Here is a copy of my letter to Mr. Barletta.

Dear Congressman Barletta:

The Morning Call quoted you this morning as saying, “I have not had anyone come up and disagree with what we’re doing.”  I find that hard to believe--what you are doing with the budget and the debt ceiling is not only bad economics, it is a danger to our country’s security.  

Seldom has there been such a disconnect between a representative and his constituents.  You represent a district with high unemployment, a large number of retirees, and a stagnant economy, yet your main interests seem to be attacking immigrants and protecting the wealthy.  

Drive around your district and talk to some people.  I think you will find quite a few who disagree with you.  Please start representing us and not the Tea Party and Grover Norquist.

I’m guessing this letter will be ignored.  All the others were.

ALEC

The American Legislative Exchange Council provides model bills for Republican legislators on such topics as “the Capital Gains Elimination Act,” privatization, anti-public sector bargaining, keeping the single payer health care option off the table, and restrictive laws on voting (under the guise of “voter fraud” prevention).

The group, formed in 1973 by conservative activists, has 2000 legislative members and 300 corporate members.  It is funded mostly by corporate donations, including the Koch Brothers.  

Through a leak The Nation obtained more than 800 documents from the group.  The reach of the group is impressive, and it helps to explain, for example, why Republican-dominated state governments all introduce the same legislative agenda at the same time.  (I do not know if my own state legislators Argall and Heffley are members--the group does not make its membership list public).  

The August 1/8 double issue of The Nation contains a number of articles on ALEC.  You can find information at <http://www.thenation.com/search/apachesolr_search/ALEC>.  How do the liberals even begin to counter this kind of influence?

Air Conditioning

We don’t have it, and I have good arguments against it:

•  Literally billions of people in hotter climates than ours live without it. Apartment buildings in Singapore and Mumbai may be air conditioned, but most of the people on the Indian subcontinent, sub-Saharan Africa, and tropical Latin America do without air conditioning.

•  It wastes precious energy resources just to keep us comfortable.  Now PPL is giving economic incentives to people who agree to turn it off during peak periods.  It’s even better not to use it at all.

•  We need to get accustomed to higher temperatures.  The Republicans may deny the very concept of global warming, but it is here, it will get worse, and we need to adjust.

•  Running a fan is a chap alternative.  One problem with the heat is that you sweat and it doesn’t dry.  A fan doesn’t really cool you, but it evaporates the sweat, so your body is cooler.  

Having said that, we saw two rather lousy matinees this weekend (“Friends with Benefits” and “Captain America”) in part because the theaters were air conditioned.  

Here’s a tip to deal with the heat.  Don’t drink beer.  It has calories, and calories will make you feel warmer.  Try ice water.  Alternatively, drink enough beer so that you don’t  care about the heat.