Posted by Marc Hodak on August 20, 2008 under Irrationality | 
There may be some rational arguments for not lowering the drinking age below 21, but Mayor Richard Daley goes off on the proposal with none of them. His most coherent argument:
I’m sorry, you have enough time to drink the rest of your life. I believe in that.
Given the incoherence of the rest of his statement, that point is well taken. His other points sounded like this:
You pay an awful lot of money. You look at the salaries that people get at universities. You pay a lot of money. I’m sorry, they have a legal and moral responsibility when your child goes to [get] an education, what type of environment is set on that university…
And this response to maybe lowering the drinking age to 18:
I think that’s a bad message. I think they better really look at that. Because what, are they going to drop it down to 18 or 17 or 16? I mean, think of that.
…before he starts to sound like the stumbling frat rat holding up an empty plastic cup:
We should not be so whimsical that universities can think they drop the drinking age. You think the president of the university is going to open a beer hall in his house?
What I don’t get is the complete lack of irony with which this tirade was reported.
Posted by Marc Hodak on August 19, 2008 under Collectivist instinct |
That was pretty much exactly what Minneapolis police told this doctor.
Posted by Marc Hodak on August 17, 2008 under Revealed preference |
Americans love a hero. The guy who can grab victory from the jaws of defeat. The person who can come from behind to win the title. Wow.
But the hero fetish can be a bit perverted. I was reminded of this by an article today about Michael Phelps where ESPN ranked his eight gold medals in order of “most impressive” based on a poll of readers. Setting aside the inherent silliness of such a ranking, the poll results said something interesting about people.
The victory voted “most impressive” by 60 percent of the readers was Phelps’ win in the 100m butterfly. This was the race he almost lost; the only one where he didn’t break a world record. Getting almost a quarter of the vote was the other come-from-behind victory in the 400m freestyle relay anchored by Jason Lezak. None of the other races where he or his team won convincingly by shattering world records got as much as four percent of the votes. Maybe it’s just me, but I would consider the races he dominated as pretty impressive. In sports, though, excitement often means the last second save.
The infatuation of the press and public with the “last second save” is understandable in sports, but it doesn’t translate well to business. For my money, too many American companies are built upon what I would call the “heroic management” model. They would never invest in better management systems when things are going well; they see their success as evidence that they don’t need them. When things turn south, they can’t afford advice about systems; they need (and prefer) to invest in heroic measures. If they pull out of the dive, their faith in heroics is reinforced; a company of heroes doesn’t need better systems. That’s how they think.
My attitude is that any system that depends upon heroics to succeed is a system that is designed to fail. In fact, most of the companies I work with regard “heroic management” as a retarded model. They see the need for heroics as a failure in some management process.
My first experience with this alternative model was at Toyota, when I went through their manufacturing training program at their plants in Fremont and Lexington. Toyota as a company, just like their auto manufacturing, is designed for continuous improvement. I have since seen and implemented similar systems at other firms that, from the outside, don’t look much different from their peers, until you see the results over many years at a time.
Still, I can see why the “heroic management” model remains so popular. Steady performance and continuous improvement are BORING. It doesn’t get you on the cover of Business Week. Bold strategies get you there, win or lose–with the shareholders often being the losers.
Posted by Marc Hodak on August 16, 2008 under Politics |
U.S. Constitution:
nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb… nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law
Pennsylvania state Sen. Jeffrey Piccola has said
he plans to introduce legislation that would allow authorities to keep potentially dangerous sex offenders in prison after they have finished serving their sentences.
Posted by Marc Hodak on August 14, 2008 under Unintended consequences |
Today I saw two stories that illustrate that people pay more attention to behavior than words.
Both stories had to do with illegal immigrants. Most Americans debate immigration policy as if the government is to be considered a trustworthy rational actor in a complicated scheme. In fact, while each agent of the government might be individually rational with respect to their personal incentives and constraints, anyone dealing with the government’s regulatory or enforcement machinery know they are up against a frighteningly irrational and amoral, if not retarded creature.
Illegal immigrants, especially, feel like they have been screwed so much for so long in their dealings with ICE that it’s laughable to consider any program that depends upon their trust and cooperation.
The first story recounts a familiar tale of someone in ICE custody:
In April, Mr. Ng began complaining of excruciating back pain. By mid-July, he could no longer walk or stand. And last Wednesday, two days after his 34th birthday, he died in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in a Rhode Island hospital, his spine fractured and his body riddled with cancer that had gone undiagnosed and untreated for months.
What the story left out was that the behavior of the authorities, while cruel, was exactly what the system required of them. Yet, the ICE authorities who set up that system act truly surprised when plans that depend on the trust of illegal immigrants work out like this:
A program to induce illegal immigrants to turn themselves in to U.S. federal authorities for a “scheduled” deportation has failed to attract substantial interest. Eight days into the scheme, only six people have surrendered, out of thousands who are eligible.
Posted by Marc Hodak on August 13, 2008 under Patterns without intention |
I don’t understand. How can all this be happening without the government telling us what to do?
Consumers are buying fewer sport-utility vehicles and more energy-saving washing machines. Some trucking companies have rejiggered their engines to max out at lower speeds. Gridlock is easing in California. Americans drove 9.66 billion fewer miles in May than they did a year earlier, a 3.7% decline, according to the Transportation Department.
With shipping costs surging, companies are rethinking overseas production, slimming down packaging and retooling distribution networks. Yogurt maker Stonyfield Farm is only sending out fully loaded delivery trucks. Procter & Gamble Co. is filling smaller bottles with more-powerful laundry detergent. Locally made products, from beets to beer, are becoming a more attractive choice.
I must have missed the big rallies where these solutions were laid out by our dear leaders.
Posted by Marc Hodak on August 9, 2008 under Politics |
Thomas Frank can’t even argue well against a faux conservative.
What chance would he have against a real one?
Posted by Marc Hodak on August 6, 2008 under Scandal |
Ivin’s suicide has been viewed from two distinct perspectives. The government stenographers posing as a free press, dutifully typing up the selected FBI leaks provided by their sources would have us all breathing a sigh of relief; the FBI cracked this case, and saved us from the domestic terrorist. The inquisitive, skeptical press would have us reserve judgment, which is what civilized people do, even if the government hadn’t given us every possible reason to be skeptical of their claims.
The FBI says they will release the evidence shortly. I’ll believe it when I see it. Or not.
Update: WaPo is finally allowing some expression of skepticism. Touch a hot stove enough times, you start to get the idea, I guess.
Posted by Marc Hodak on August 4, 2008 under Revealed preference |
In case you haven’t heard this before, it’s the serious, bona fide position of the Animal Liberation Front, a group that is legitimately referred to as domestic terrorists.
They or their compatriots firebombed the home of a UCSC researcher while he, his wife, and two children were asleep. The family had to escape from an upstairs window. The Mercury News picks up from here:
While a spokesman said he didn’t know who committed the act, the Woodland Hills-based Animal Liberation Front called the attacks a “necessary” act, just like those who fought against civil rights injustices. Spokesman Dr. Jerry Vlasak showed no remorse for the family or children who were targeted.
“If their father is willing to continue risking his livelihood in order to continue chopping up animals in a laboratory than his children are old enough to recognize the consequences,” said Vlasak, a former animal researcher who is now a trauma surgeon. “This guy knows what he is doing. He knows that every day that he goes into the laboratory and hurts animals that it is unreasonable not to expect consequences.”
The article then captures the appropriate response to such a rant:
Clark, the Santa Cruz police captain, said it was “unconscionable” for anyone to defend such acts: “To put this on par with any of the human rights issues is an absolute insult to the integrity of the people who fought and went through the human rights movement. This is what people do when they have an inability to articulate their point in any constructive way. They resort to primal acts of violence. Any reasonable person would need a logic transplant to begin to understand this level of degraded thinking.”
I’m with the police on this one.
The media, on the other hand, are due for a correction. This person they generously refer to in the present tense as a “trauma surgeon” is no such thing. He has apparently not been employable as any kind of doctor since 1998. Even the PCRM, a fairly radical, but non-violent, animal rights group, distances itself from Vlasak.
Posted by Marc Hodak on August 2, 2008 under Economics |
There’s a lot of clucking about GM’s $15.5 billion loss. (That may sound like a lot of golf balls, but it understates the true level of value destruction when one accounts for the opportunity cost of equity.) There seems to be two big questions being debated about all this: (a) whose fault is it? and (b) will GM survive?
Easy one first: GM will fail. It’s not 50% in 10 years. It’s 100% in less than five. In fact, GM has been economically bankrupt for nearly a decade, with liabilities far exceeding productive assets; it simply hasn’t run out of cash yet. Yet.
As to fault, the press seems to be geared entirely as if their readers want to know who to blame. Well, the leading contenders for villain in this game are management and the unions, primarily the UAW. And the correct answer is…
Both. Unions were the irrational response to irrational management in the late 1930s. Once in, the unions steadily undermined GM’s productivity–and their profits–especially, once they were faced with essentially non-union competition. Reduced profits meant cost cutting. Cost cutting meant reduced quality. No, I don’t mean just “Monday morning cars,” although that didn’t help. I mean lower quality everything, including management. GM eventually reached a point where it wasn’t exactly attracting the best and the brightest. Their retarded management was constrained by their retarding union, and the problem became self-reinforcing. GM became an idiocracy.
What we are seeing today is the logical end of a union that didn’t give a damn about the future of the company that hired them. Management, who was charged with fighting for the shareholders, had their weapons taken away from them by the Wagner Act, and replaced with squirt guns and rubber knives. At a point, management simply said, “Screw it. It ain’t worth it.” What became a pointless fight with shareholders in the cross-hairs ended up as a murder-suicide. Once the trajectory became clear, the shareholders bailed out. There was no one left to hurt but future managers and workers. Incumbents on both sides agreed on all kinds of promises that couldn’t be met.
Here we are.
