All Things in Moderation

My maiden blog post. We’ll see if it generates any interest. . .

I’ve been thinking about gerrymandering and redistricting a lot lately; here in Utah we’re picking up a fourth congressional district and so, in addition to the normal horseplay that goes on (see what happened last time they redistricted and tried to gerrymander our lone Democrat out of office: http://tinyurl.com/5uj4p44. Jim Matheson is the rep for the second district, that one pin-pointed in SLC and then winding around to the east and south), they’re trying to decide whether or not to concede that the urban Wasatch front (centered on Salt Lake City) votes differently than the majority of the rest of the state and set up the new CDs in such a way that we’ll have a pretty reliably Democratic CD, with the other three being solidly Republican, or whether to try to gerrymander four Republican districts out of the state and leave Democrats twisting in the wind again. They’ve even set up a website seeking input from residents (http://tinyurl.com/64z8czp).

This also ties in with the thinking that I’ve been doing about Pennsylvania’s move to try to change the way their Electoral College votes are allocated in order to make the state less reliably blue in presidential elections (which Nate Silver isn’t at all sure would work out for Republicans in the end: http://tinyurl.com/3ow8zfn)

So here’s my question: why do we gerrymander? I understand that politics is a contact sport, and both sides try their best to tip the scales in their favor, but does that actually give us the best government for our money? One of the perennial problems here in Utah is that, because districts from state legislative on up have been so gerrymandered that one party or the other is a virtual shoe-in for the election, voter turnout is traditionally very low. This also leads to the fact that incumbents win re-election something like 90% of the time (nationwide), whether they’re really doing good work for their electorate or not. Why not create non-partisan committees in every state to do the re-districting in a geographically coherent manner? Does designing a district in such a way that it votes reliably for your candidate, regardless of the needs of the individual voters in disparate parts of the district, make for good governance?

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This is launched off some of Shrink’s points about China. Hi, Shrink!

I’ve pointed to this video by Hans Rosling before. Yes, I’m doing it again.I love this quote early on from the video: “The world view that my students had corresponded to the state of the world the year their teachers were born.”

The point being, I would still argue that, broadly, the developed world is dragging the developing world into the 21st century (over years, not news cycles) and that the big data points support this view. Or you could say the developing world is joining the developed world, whether or not we’re doing anything to make it happen.

Whichever way you look at it, things are much better than they were, and are likely to become much better still.

Okay, and this is tangential to my main point, but since I can’t embed videos in comments, I’m going to do it here. Hans Rosling talks about how ending poverty is crucial to controlling population growth. And it’s true: the best birth control in the world is not laughter, it’s money.

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Thought I’d go ahead and put up the daily post for suggestions and questions since I’m here. I think if we try to keep them consolidated into one post per day, they’ll be easier to track. /okie ocd

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A man dies and goes to hell. There he discovers that he has a choice: he can go to capitalist hell or to communist hell. Naturally, he wants to compare the two, so he goes over to capitalist hell. There outside the door is the devil, who looks a bit like Ronald Reagan. “What’s it like in there?” asks the visitor. “Well,” the devil replies, “in capitalist hell, they flay you alive, then they boil you in oil and then they cut you up into small pieces with sharp knives.”

“That’s terrible!” he gasps. “I’m going to check out communist hell!” He goes over to communist hell, where he discovers a huge queue of people waiting to get in. He waits in line. Eventually he gets to the front and there at the door to communist hell is a little old man who looks a bit like Karl Marx. “I’m still in the free world, Karl,” he says, “and before I come in, I want to know what it’s like in there.”

“In communist hell,” says Marx impatiently, “they flay you alive, then they boil you in oil, and then they cut you up into small pieces with sharp knives.”

“But… but that’s the same as capitalist hell!” protests the visitor, “Why such a long queue?”

“Well,” sighs Marx, “Sometimes we’re out of oil, sometimes we don’t have knives, sometimes no hot water.”

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An open thread to end the day. Please use it to catch up with others and feel free to post whatever suits your fancy. Just so you know I’ll put this up tomorrow as a scheduled post and any of you “We’re all Administrators Now” can drop a link or comment in prior to posting.

Here’s my comment for tonight.

There has been much discussion of Social Security over the past several months and in particular the last few weeks. I think it’s appropriate at some point to remember why it was enacted in the first place and a quote from FDR seems appropriate.

We can never insure one hundred percent of the population against one hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age.

I hope you’re all working on conversation starting posts for tomorrow.

I put this in early tonight since no one seemed to have a post going. Come on you guys, we need commentary to comment on, lol.

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*crickets*

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I’m often prone to say there are lies, damned lies, statistics, and predictions. So, of course, I enjoyed this episode of the Freakonomics podcast:

Joe Namath, pension fund managers, Romanian witches, psychic grandmothers, the Farmer’s Almanac, Mad Money, Barney Frank, Donald Rumsfeld . . . good stuff.

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/07/freakonomics-the-folly-of-prediction/

“It’s impossible to predict the future, but humans can’t help themselves. From the economy to the presidency to the Super Bowl, educated and intelligent people promise insight and repeatedly fail by wide margins. These mistakes and misses go unpunished, both publicly and in our brain, which has become trained to ignore the record of those who make them.“


If you don’t already know, you’ll discover I’m a big fan of Freakonomics, TED Talks, the Ricochet podcast, and No Agenda. I will quote them often. You have been warned.

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Do you ever follow links that lead to other links and then even more links, I do. Hence, I came across this piece today, an anthropological study of bankers being conducted by a Danish anthropologist. He’s even launched a blog to discuss his findings. As a matter of fact it just went live today (link to blog at the end of the article). I took a couple of anthropology courses in college and they were two of my favorite classes, probably because I preferred anything to math or biology, but still.

Here are a couple of excerpts from the piece. We probably don’t need another blog to visit but you never know.

Another banker who would talk but declined to sit for a portrait, compared his work to that of a GP: “You spend many hours memorising terms (body parts, diseases, treatments) and learning to recognise patterns. Then you put in very long hours and collect a nice salary, while employing your jargon to intimidate outsiders.”

That’s the sort of thing I’ve been talking to bankers about, and why I am beginning to be captivated by them. Beneath the layers of lingo there are subcultures and dress codes and ways of speech, their mutual stereotypes, conventions, taboos and of course jokes: “Every economist knows that there are three kinds of economists; there are those who know how to count, and there are those who don’t.”

Now for the blog. Here’s the idea. You have the internet and today’s technology. You have the classic techniques of narrative journalism and anthropological fieldwork. And you have this enormously important yet devilishly complex thing called the world of finance.

Like most anthropologists he worries he’ll get too close to his subjects but,

Still the bankers are getting under my skin. If there’s one thing that has suddenly begun to annoy me no end it is categorical statements about “the banks” or “bankers”. I have learned by now that such generalisations obscure just how different many of the activities across the financial sector are. If you are angry about “the banks”, you need to specify which parts. Otherwise you are like somebody who blames the BBC for what happened at News of the World; they are all the media, aren’t they?

And here, a discussion with a lawyer friend, after observing a room full of lawyers, he compares their dress code to that of Merger & Acquisition bankers. Funny but interesting if you believe that bankers are people too.

He then proceeded to compare this to the outfit of an M&A banker. These may dress in a very flashy way and drive very expensive cars. The reason is, they are selling companies for their clients, making these clients very rich. If an M&A banker radiates wealth and success, potential new clients will not think: am I paying too much? Potential clients will think: this guy has made other people very rich, he must be very good, I am going to hire him so he can make me very rich too.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/14/bankers-anthropological-study-joris-luyendijk

The obvious conclusion of course is that none of us should demonize entire swaths of either an industry, political party or any identified group of people.

*Administrative note: I’ll be publishing an open thread this evening (not too early) so we can all discuss the days events, the Plumline (just kidding), our blog or whatever suits your fancy. I thought we’d try it and see if everyone likes it. I think I’ll call it Go To Bed (not really) unless anyone has a better idea.

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