Self interest and economics

More Virtuous Than We Think : Democracy Journal

Here's an extract from an interesting review:

To be clear, most policymakers probably recognize that people behave
from diverse motives. But standard economic analysis indicates that
policy should normally be based solely on the self-interest assumption.
Bowles’ second assertion is that policies based on the assumption that
people are motivated primarily or entirely by selfish motives often work
poorly and sometimes backfire. Worse, such policies may actually
promote selfishness and amorality.

Put more positively, public and
private policies often work much better if they are designed with the
recognition that people act in part from self-interest and in part from
“social preferences,” which include “altruism, reciprocity, intrinsic
pleasure in helping others, aversion to inequity, ethical commitments,
and other motives that induce people to help people more than is
consistent with maximizing their own wealth or material payoff.”
Furthermore, incentive-based policies may strengthen or weaken these
motivations. Simply put, public policy can promote or erode civic
virtue.

Planes should soon be harder to lose

Satellite tracking could prevent airliner disappearances, developers say ‹ Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion

I hope something like this is taken up.  The cost of lengthy ocean searches would reduce dramatically if it is.

Back to the lesser known adventures of Captain Cook's crew

Remember back in February, I had a series of salacious posts about the 18th century sexual mores of the South Pacific, and the misadventures of Captain Cook's crew with respect to same?  No?  Well, I thought they were a fun read, and here's a link to the one about same sex stuff.

Anyway, here's another incident, this time from the Maori part of the voyage:

Joseph Banks, a scientist on board Cook’s ship the Endeavour, recorded that one of the sailors had been with a Māori family and had paid them to have sexual relations with a young woman. The ‘young woman’ who retired with him turned out to be a boy. He returned and complained and was given another ‘young woman’ who turned out to also be a boy. When he complained again the family laughed at him. Banks was not sure whether this was evidence of homosexuality, or sharp trading.

The website doesn't mention anything about the "gender inversion" males of other parts of the South Pacific, but it does seem that Maori could still shrug their shoulders about men engaging in at least some sexual practices together:

There are a number of recorded examples of new settlers cohabiting in same-sex relationships with Māori. The most well-documented example is the Reverend William Yate, an English missionary, who lived with his male companion for two years in the Māori village of Waimate, before being expelled to England for homosexual behaviour. His relationship seems to have been accepted by the Māori community but it was frowned on by his religious peers. An investigation into allegations that Yate had engaged in sexual acts with Māori youths illustrates that there was a more open attitude by Māori to sexuality. Richard Davis observed that ‘[they] showed no shame. They simply declared that they were unaware of any sinfulness in such practices and that Yate had not initiated them.’³ *

As for Maori heterosexual behaviour (which I had never read anything about before), here's how the same article summarises it:

Māori chiefs would often have more than one wife. Except for puhi (high-born women set aside for a political marriage), sex before marriage carried no stigma. English and French explorers tried to make sense of the culture they saw. For example naturalist Georg Forster, who was on British explorer James Cook’s second voyage, said, ‘Their ideas of female chastity are, in this respect so different from ours, that a girl may favour a number of lovers without any detriment to her character; but if she marries, conjugal fidelity is exacted from her with the greatest rigour.’¹ French explorer Julien Crozet said, ‘[Māori] gave us to understand by signs that we must not touch the married women, but that we might with perfect freedom make advances to the girls.’² Many explorers, sailors and even missionaries had sexual relationships with Māori.
Children born outside marriage were still considered part of their tribe.

* Update:  actually, I see that Rev Yate has turned up in my blog before.   And on reading other accounts of what went wrong for him in New Zealand, I haven't seen mention of him living in a gay relationship in Waimate, so that article might be a bit misleading.  The acts he did get into trouble were not sodomy, which seems to have been a technical point on which he was saved from criminal sanction.

Some important astronomical news

I haven't noticed this in the press yet, but this new paper seems really significant.  It would seem, if I understand it correctly, that galaxy rotation rates may not need a halo of dark matter to explain them after all.  But it might also mean there is something stranger to be learnt from them, too.

Gay love and death: Islamic cultural contradictions

The things that Google can bring to your attention.

Here's a chapter (link to a .pdf) from a book published in 1997 entitled "Islamic Homosexualities: Culture: History and Literature".  The chapter title is "Male Love and Islamic Law in Arab Spain", although the points it makes apply more broadly than just to the left end of the Mediterranean.  I have to say, it's a really intriguing read about the deep contradiction in a range of Islamic national cultures where everyone could talk openly about how men could feel romantic love for men, but still be adamant that acting upon it sexually deserved punishment up to death.

Most interestingly, a large part of the explanation is said to go back to a "curious" hadith ascribed to Mohammad himself.  After describing the severe, hadith derived, punishments imposed on the actual practice of homosexuality, the chapter notes:

When we look at other aspects of Islamic culture, however, the indices are strikingly contradictory. Popular attitudes appear much less hostile than in Christendom, and European visitors to Muslim lands were repeatedly shocked by the relaxed tolerance of Arabs, Turks, and Persians who seemed to find nothing unnatural in relations between men and boys (Greenberg 1988:178-81; Crompton 1985:111-18). One measure of this important cultural difference is a vein of ardent romanticism in medieval Arab treatises on love. For Arab writers this "emotional intoxication," as it has been called, springs not just from the love of women, as with the troubadours, but also from the love of boys and other men.

Arab enthusiasts were concerned to establish that romantic love was an experience meaningful and valuable for its own sake. But how were they to reconcile such a view with their faith? They did this did by appealing to a curious hadlth ascribed to Muhammad himself-"He who loves and remains chaste and conceals his secret and dies, dies a martyr" (Giffen 1971:99). The Iraqi essayist Jahiz, who wrote extensively on the subject of love, had laid down the rule that 'ishq-or passionate love---could exist only between a man and a woman. But Ibn Da'ud, who was born the year Jahiz died (868), extended the possibility to love between males in his Book of the flower, and this view seems to have prevailed in Arab culture subsequently (Giffen 1971:86). Ibn Da'ud was a learned jurisprudent as well as a literary man: according to an account frequently mentioned in Arab writings on love, his passion for his friend Muhammad ibn JamI (to whom his book was dedicated) made him a "martyr of love."

Here's the description of how Ibn Da'ud was an example of this:

I went to see [Ibn Da'ud] during the illness in which he died and I said to him, "How do you feel?" He said to me, "Love of you-know-who has brought upon me what you see!" So I said to him, "What prevents you from enjoying him, as long as you have the power to do so?" He said, "Enjoyment has two aspects: One of them is the permitted gaze and the other is the forbidden pleasure. As for the permitted gaze, it has brought upon me the condition that you see, and as for the forbidden pleasure, something my father told me has kept me from it. He said ... "the Prophet said ... 'He who loves passionately and conceals his secret and remains chaste and patient, God will forgive him and make him enter Paradise,'" ... and he died that very night or perhaps it was the next day. (Giffen 1971:10-11)

Now look, long time readers know that I would generally wish that there was more sexual restraint in the modern West rather than less; but I have to say,  there's something that seems oddly immature in this elevation of hidden passion as something especially pleasing to God.  A bit like something an adolescent school girl might write in her diary:  "It's so romantic, the way he smiled at me today, all the time not knowing how much I love him."

I don't think it's the same as traditional Christian emphasis on the purity of virginity: it's like arguing that virgins are especially favoured for not just resisting sexual feelings, but for keeping all emotion a secret. (OK, well, I suppose in some situations this is the moral thing to do - for example, if your wannabe lover is already married and you don't want to risk upsetting that apple cart.  But really, this old Islamic principle seems much broader in intent.)

Anyway, the whole chapter is well written and an easy read.  It includes this apparent bit of history, which put me in mind of the old "girl has to pretend she's a boy" story plots, but I don't think we'll see this one turn up in a Disney movie any time soon:

New Zealand and economic mono-cultures

John Quiggin  - New Zealand’s zombie miracle

JQ has an interesting post about the current Australian Right wing fanbase that the New Zealand economy has.  (It's all a beat up, how good it's economy is supposed to be, argues the Professor.)

One thing that I have been meaning to say in a post for a long time - my impression, although it stands to be corrected - is that small countries under a strong sway of free market, business friendly policies, often seem to end up as economic mono-cultures, with most of their sudden, relatively good economic improvement coming disproportionately off just one sector.  In New Zealand's case, it's dairy (which is even a subset of one sector); in many other countries, it seems to be financial services, or corporate services of one kind or another.  (Hey global companies, pretend your sales all come from here, and minimise your tax.)

I think we see it in Australia to a degree too, with free marketeers all poo-pooing any manufacturing support of any kind whatsoever.

It's supposed to be all about economic efficiency - letting countries that do something particularly well corner a large part of the global market for it, and we're all better off.

But there must be a risk to the way economies can swing in these mono-cultures, surely.   In New Zealand's case, there's an upheaval going on in dairy globally at the moment - how badly can that affect the country?   Quite a lot, by the sounds:

In its global dairy update for June, Fonterra said the country's milk production is continuing to decline as farmers respond to low prices.

Until recently, dairy was the backbone of New Zealand's economy, representing around 25 percent of exports. But prices have tumbled by more than half since early 2014, hurt by China's
economic slowdown and global oversupply.

In the season that ended May 31 milk production fell 3 percent on the previous 2014-15 season.

"Lower milk collections were largely a result of the low milk price environment, with farmers reducing stocking rates and supplementary feeding to reduce costs," Fonterra said.


Weak dairy prices have put significant pressure on New Zealand farmers. More than 85 percent of dairy farmers are estimated to be running at a loss.

 So, while understanding the benefits of global trade and economic efficiencies, isn't it reasonable to say that governments can play a positive role in ensuring that their economies do not end up putting all eggs in one basket?   Ultimately, doesn't a degree of government support for different sectors help ensure that wild swings in markets and economic circumstances are smoothed out, so to speak, and have reduced potential to cause too much damage?

What do small government, free-market-is-always-best, economists say about that, because it seems to me to be just a sensible position I'm suggesting.

Yet I heard ABC News repeating them word for word

Christian Porter's welfare figures are designed to shock. Pay them no respect | Greg Jericho | Business | The Guardian

Of interest

Why Panpsychism Is Probably Wrong - The Atlantic

Sounds fanciful

Productivity Commission calls to privatise public health and housing | Australia news | The Guardian: Social housing, public dental services and public hospitals could soon be opened to more market competition.

The Productivity Commission has said they are among six “priority areas” in the human services sector where the quality of services could be greatly improved if people are given a greater say over how they use them.

They cite services to remote communities, too, as an area where more privatisation can help.  All very improbable sounding, if you ask me...

The Late Night pushback was inevitable

Clinton’s Samantha Bee Problem - The New York Times

Douthat's column here reads too much like an Andrew Bolt bleat against media (in this case, TV comedy) bias.  A bit of recognition is surely deserved that it is the Republicans and Fox News that have moved to so many hyperbolic exaggerations and ridiculous positions (on everything from economics, to conspiracy belief about Obama, guns and climate change) that they thoroughly deserve being the object of ridicule.

But it is true - American youth would be very silly not to vote for Clinton for her not being sufficiently pure of heart in her Left wing policy positions.

Two coming science fiction films that aren't superhero guff - Hoorah

First:



Frankly, I'm not entirely sure about this.  Sure, likeable leads, but remember:  the ridiculous oversize clean splendour of the interiors of the spaceship in The Martian really, really bothered me (as did the gargantuan one in Sunshine, too, to a degree).   So can the lush enormity of the convention centre sized rooms in the interstellar ship in this one be forgiven if it's set sufficiently far in the future?  Yeah, maybe.  We'll see. 

And then there is this one,  of which I read favourable comments after it was shown at the recent Toronto Film Festival:



May be quite OK, by the looks.

For gluttons for journalistic punishment...

....try reading Andrew Sullivan's tedious explanation as to why he had to (and how he did) de-tox himself from the internet; but if that's not enough, go to Australia's writer who put the "self" into self indulgent political/social commentary to such an extraordinary degree she's unreadable* - Helen Razor on the Lionel Shriver/identity politics debate.

* unless you've done an Arts degree in Left Wing Verbosity for Obscurity's sake, I suppose

A research suggestion

Paramedics in need of support instead face bullying in NSW Ambulance service

This article about a paramedic who found that one particularly gruesome job sent him into PTSD made me wonder:   will there any detectable de-sensitising effect on younger paramedics who come to the job already used to playing the most gruesome computer games?

Sensitivity to game violence seems to be an age related thing - I know I find clips of it I see on Good Game or elsewhere disturbing enough, and just don't understand why people aren't repulsed by it;  but young people just seem to take it in their stride.

If there is anything to it have a desensitising effect, then one would think it might show up in young people (men particularly) who are becoming paramedics now.

Go to it, psychologists.  (Even if we don't really expect the first study to be replicated!)

Just saying...

Interesting to read last week about new estimates of the number of legally married gay couples in the US.

As explained in the New York Times, it's actually not as easy as you might think to know the number of married gay couples across the nation:

One reason it’s hard to get a fix on the marriages is that detailed marriage records are not tracked at the federal level. They’re managed by counties and states, which report the count of marriages and not much else. The Census Bureau isn’t always a lot of help either. Methodological problems like sample size and false positives have long plagued census estimates of this relatively small group.

But a new research paper published by the Treasury Department on Monday has found an interesting way around these problems: tax records.

By linking the tax returns of same-sex couples who filed jointly in 2014 with their Social Security records, researchers are able to give us the most accurate picture of same-sex marriages to date. And their estimate is this: In 2014 there were 183,280 same-sex marriages in America, roughly a third of 1 percent of all marriages.

Of course, implicit in this estimate is the assumption that all married couples file their returns jointly. But as a proxy for that, it’s pretty good. The Treasury Department estimates that 97.5 percent of married couples who file taxes file them jointly.

The article goes on to note a reason why it might be a bit of an underestimate.  On the other hand, Census estimates are likely to be way over.   (This report from last year says survey and census date indicated 390,000 married gay couples - a very big difference.)

Another report from 2014 said census date indicated 252,000.

And the LA Times, confusingly, said last year that:

About 780,000 Americans were married to same-sex partners before the high court's decision, according to Gary J. Gates of the Williams Institute, who analyzed the Gallup data. That number has now risen to about 972,000.

Even if you say that you divide that number by two to get the number of gay marriages, that would be about 480,000!

In fact, the tax estimate now seems to be thought to be pretty accurate, so the real figure might be much closer to 200,000.

As to what percentage that represents of gay cohabiting couples:  well, who knows how accurate the estimate for that figure is.   One of the links above says there were 1.2 million adults living in same sex domestic partnerships (that's all? - out of 242 million adults?).  So if that means 600,000 "partnerships", does that mean 1 in 3 chose to marry?

But, going forward, you would have to allow for the initial rush that legalising gay marriage causes, when old couples who have wanted to marry finally do.   Taking that into account, I think it still seems a fair guess that clear majority of cohabiting gay couples are not going to marry.

While I'm sure people will say "so what?  - that's not reason to not allow those who want to", but as my post title says, I'm just saying.... that people seem to be often overestimating the number of gay couples who do want to go through with marriage.

And as for the effect of gay marriage on gay mental health - it seems mean spirited to point it out, but sorry,  there's not exactly strong reason to believe it will be remove higher rates of suicide amongst gay and lesbians.  This report, from the Netherlands, with its 12 years of gay marriage and famously liberal attitudes to sex education, euthanasia laws and soft drug use, still indicates high rates of suicidal thoughts amongst gay youth.   Anti gay marriage sites like to point out studies like this one from Sweden, where gay married men still seem to have a 3 times higher suicide rate.  Again, this seems mean spirited, but when an argument is based a lot on anticipated emotional reaction to a legal change, facts are still worthy of consideration, aren't they?  

Gay marriage activists make the obvious point that the symbolism of legal recognition of gay marriage can only help with societal and family acceptance of gay folk, and thereby reduce suicide;  but honestly, I think they're overestimating the extent of likely positives outcomes.  It seems to me that the process over the last 20 or 30 years of recognizing gay partnerships as civil unions (either by being registered as such, or those jurisdictions which have simply allowed them to be treated the same as a de facto heterosexual marriages), legislating  against workplace discrimination, and high profile media, sporting and other personalities coming out as gay, have collectively had a much greater chance of modifying gay suicide rates than the final step of gay marriage.


Update:   part of the reason for this post is that my 13 year old daughter recently told me that her favourite high school teachers are all gay (3 male teachers - although one or more of them I think are not her permanent teachers.)    This led to her asking what I thought of gay marriage, and her obvious annoyance when I said I did not support it.

I didn't try to launch into a detailed explanation - but there is no doubt that most teenagers and supporters see this through an emotional prism that is not very interested in numbers and an independent look at the psychology of the issue.

And, as usual, part of the problem with not supporting it is that it is embarrassing to sound aligned with those who really do take the opportunity to insult and demean homosexuals per se - such as many of the losers who comment at Catallaxy.

But I'll still try to stake out a position that I think is reasonable....

Update 2:   But I have to admit, the re-framing of the question of gay marriage to one of "marriage equality" has been brilliant marketing.  

Right wing paranoia is surely part of the explanation

Gun inequality: US study charts rise of hardcore super owners | US news | The Guardian

New survey, part of most definitive portrait of gun ownership in
decades, shows just 3% of American adults own half of guns in the US.

Good news, I guess, is that the percentage of owners (per population) overall has dropped a little.  Bad news:  some of the remaining owners are massively paranoid.

Public transport success

Gold Coast light rail study helps put a figure on value capture's funding potential

Interesting to see here a study quantifying an increase in land values after the opening of the quite successful Gold Coast light rail.  But this idea of financing transport (or other infrastructure) projects via extra taxes on adjacent land which receives its benefit just seems very fanciful, if you ask me.  Ken Parish at Club Troppo wrote a couple of lengthy posts about it (in a positive light) with respect to a Sydney/Canberra/Melbourne high speed rail.  Apparently, the idea goes, lots of people will be happy to move to the middle of the countryside, known to be hotter in summer and colder in winter than the coast, as long as they can hop on a high speed train and be in a big city within an hour.  Just seems silly to me...

As to how to get money out of the increased value on properties if they are lucky to have a good rail system built near them, the article above suggests a simple way would be to levy land tax on them at a low rate, and removing the exemption on "owner occupied" real estate.   That would be an ongoing impost.  I wonder if an  simpler way would be to levy an excess on stamp duty on purchases in the area.  Or how about estate duties, no exemptions, but at a low rate hardly anyone would object to?   Has anyone looked at the effect of no exemption 1% death tax on every single inheritance.   (OK, lets say ones with a value over $100,000.)?

Anyway, the Gold Coast rail seems a bit of a blow to the pro-road infrastructure obsession of many small government types. 

Nice and clear explanation from Gavin

Why We Don’t Know If It Will Be Sunny Next Month But We Know It’ll Be Hot All Year | FiveThirtyEight

They just do?

Why Do Some People Hate Poetry? - The Atlantic

Never been particularly interested in, or partial to, poetry.   I also doubt that this is all that worthy of much analysis.  It's a contrived style of writing/communication that just misses the mark, for me.  Some people can listen to classical music, even the most "pop" pieces, and not be moved a bit.  Meh.   

Can't please all the viewers all the time

ABC's John Howard on Robert Menzies documentary dismissed as 'propaganda'

If you're watching a documentary hosted by Howard about his political hero Menzies, and with a stated aim to put a more positive spin on the era than is common in most Left influenced commentary, it seems a bit silly to complain about it.

I found it better than I expected:  I think it gave a reasonably good (if brief) treatment of the issue of how Communism faired in Australia at the time, which I found particularly interesting. 

I also liked how clear much of the archival film was.  (Digitally restored, I would assume.)

As I have noted before, when you're watching historical film in colour instead of black and white, it really does seem to make the past seem not as distant as it otherwise can feel. 

A very complicated issue

Child sex abuse doesn't create paedophiles

I think one of the most useful things in this article is the acknowledgement of the difficulty of conducting research in this area:

Our current understanding of the victim-offender cycle in child
sexual abuse comes from studies based on interviews with incarcerated
sex offenders or those in treatment programs, or self-report measures.
These are inherently unreliable methods, which fail to get to the bottom
of a sex offender’s victimisation history.

Another problem with these studies lies not with the offenders
themselves, but with the researchers’ “expectancy biases”. Those
interviewing sex offenders, for instance, may ask about childhood sexual
abuse and note its presumed significance to the offender’s criminal
history. They may end up putting more emphasis on this link than other
(perhaps more causative) factors.

Given the recent controversy about the difficulty of reproducing almost any study in psychology, it is good to see this acknowledged...