Coyote Blog

I have written a number of times about how I hate public funding of sports stadiums for billionaires.  But, via the Arizona Republic, this is perhaps worse:

Mired in debt, the Insight Bowl is considering leaving downtown Phoenix's Bank One Ballpark unless the postseason college football game receives a public subsidy.

Great - using tax money to fund random college bowl games.  And where does the money go - most of the money does to the participant teams and their conferences which this year are Notre Dame and Oregon State.  Why does Arizona need to subsidize the State of Oregon's athletic programs.  And Notre Dame?  They have one of the largest endowments in the country.  Neither of these teams have any connection to Phoenix or Arizona.

OK, I am being purposefully naive.  The money may go directly to the teams, but the purpose of the subsidy is to get those teams' fans to come to Arizona on the week between Christmas and New Years and buy hotel rooms.  In fact, it is an indirect subsidy of the lodging industry.

Why does the lodging industry have so much power in Phoenix?  People come here anyway, because it is warm - our climate is the best advertising.  And during the week between Christmas and New Years all the hotels are probably full anyway - certainly their rates are the highest of the year, as I have found when family have come to town that week.  And don't even get me started on tax money for this.

If the lodging industry values this stuff, let them pay for it via one of their trade groups.  The city of Phoenix does not advertise my business.  In fact, it does not advertise most of the businesses in town.  Why is lodging the exception?

This weekend, another Heisman Trophy will be awarded, nominally for the "most outstanding college football player".  This is a joke.  The Heisman is in fact the award for "best college football player at an offensive skill position, preferably running back or quarterback, who plays for a nationally ranked program and has gotten plenty of TV exposure".

In the nearly 70 year history of the award, only 1 defensive player (Charles Woodson) ever won the award, and I think Woodson won only because he was a three-way player and scored a couple of dramatic special teams and receiving touchdowns in the last couple of games of the season.  In fact, of the nearly 350 finalists (the top five vote getters each year) only 20 have ever been defensive players.  In the ESPN highlight era (ie the last decade) no defensive player other than Woodson has cracked the top five in any year.  This belies the "best college football player" facade, since, last I checked, defense was about half the football game, and in many cases the more important half.  Heck, more Princeton and Yale players have won the Heisman (3) than defensive players (1).  And don't even ask about Offensive linemen or tight ends.  Even wide receiver is a bit iffy, with only two wins, so really you need to be a quarterback or a running back.

In my previous post, I took a look at the absurdity of the metrics in the NEA's recent schools report.  In that post, I ran out of room to Fisk the NEA's suggested areas of improvement for better school performance (keep scrolling).

Here are their improvement areas with my comments.  I always try to differentiate the NEA as a group from teachers individually.  The rants in this post are aimed at the NEA as a group.  Many teachers as individuals have my fondest regards.  Note I have helpfully put a big green dollar sign by every recommendation that boils down to "spend more money":

Continue reading ‘Fisking the NEA's Improvement Ideas’ »

I have written a number of times that our health care system will never work right until the person making the choices about health care is the same one bearing the costs of those choices.  Today, individuals and doctors make choices but insurance and employers pay the cost.  As a result, neither individuals nor doctors are very price sensitive, and have every incentive to sign up for every expensive diagnostic imaginable, particularly given whats going on in malpractice law.   Insurers who pay the bills are trying to control more of the decision making, but this just pisses everyone off.  Unfortunately, many want to fix this by putting both selection and payment in the governments hands - ughh.  My preference is of course to find a way to let individuals continue to make choices for themselves, but bear more of the cost.  MSA's are one such approach, I am sure there are others.

Marginal Revolution has an interesting post pointing out that the market for college textbooks has a similar disconnect -- professors choose the book but students pay for them, resulting in rapidly rising textbook costs.

Today, on NPR, I heard my state of Arizona getting bashed by some young reporter at the local affiliate based on Arizona's rankings in the latest NEA state rankings.  So, I thought I would check the report out myself.  The cover of the report tells us what we should expect to find:

This report is an update of data from NEA Research's report, Rankings & Estimates: Rankings of the States 2003 and Estimates of School Statistics 2004, based on the latest information provided from state departments of education. NEA Research collects, analyzes, and maintains data on issues and trends affecting the nation's public education systems and their employees.

OK, so lets open the report and see what statistics the NEA thinks are the best measures of public education.  Here are all the stats in the report, in the order they are reported (presumably their importance):

1. How much, on average, did teachers in each state earn per year?
2. How many students were enrolled in each state?
3. How many teachers were working in each state?
4. What was the student"“teacher ratio in each state?
5. How much money, on average, did each state spend per student?
6. How much money did each state spend for operating schools, including salaries, books, heating buildings, and so on?
7. How much money did each state spend in total for schools, including operating expenses, capital outlay, and interest on school debt?
8. How much revenue did school districts receive from state governments?
9. How much revenue did school districts receive from local governments?
10. What were school districts' total revenues?

Thats it.  That is the entire sum total of performance metrics they have for states and their schools.  So, what's missing?  How about any dang measure of student learning or performance!  I know that the NEA wants to criticize every test out there, and in fact resists standardized testing at every turn, but is it too much to think that we might measure the quality of education by the, um, quality of education, and not by how much the employees make? 

To be fair, the NEA does talk about NAEP test data on their web site, to the extent that they point out that some test scores are improving (they don't mention that this is improving off a disastrously low base).  This NEA web site section on student performance reminds me a lot of the environmental protection section on the Dow Chemical web site -- it's there because it's important to public relations but its not really a topic that dominates their priorities. I have a related post here that fisks the ideas for improvement on this NEA page, but if you don't want to read that post suffice it to say that they boil down to 1) spending more money; 2) hiring more teachers; 3) paying teachers more money ; 4) testing less or putting less emphasis on tests and measurable performance; and 5) more certification and protecting the guild.

Look, I don't begrudge the NEA's role as the union and collective-bargaining agent of the teachers, and as such, they should be very concerned with salary levels (more on that in a minute).  However, the NEA and their supporters constantly try to piously position the NEA as not a union - oh no - but as a group primarily interested in the quality of education.  I hope this report and its contents effectively dispels that myth once and for all.  The NEA today as an institution cares no more about the quality of education than the UAW cared about the quality of GM cars in the 70's (by the way, I am careful to say the NEA as an institution-- many individual teachers care a lot).

Continue reading ‘Latest NEA School Report is Absurd’ »

Last week, there were several comments in Carnival of the Capitalists that people would like to see more articles highlighting the benefits of capitalism.  This got me thinking about a conversation I had years ago at the beach:

Hanging out at the beach one day with a distant family member, we got into a discussion about capitalism and socialism.  In particular, we were arguing about whether brute labor, as socialism teaches, is the source of all wealth (which, socialism further argues, is in turn stolen by the capitalist masters).  The young woman, as were most people her age, was taught mainly by the socialists who dominate college academia nowadays.  I was trying to find a way to connect with her, to get her to question her assumptions, but was struggling because she really had not been taught many of the fundamental building blocks of either philosophy or economics, but rather a mish-mash of politically correct points of view that seem to substitute nowadays for both.

One of the reasons I took up writing a blog is that I have never been as snappy or witty in real-time discussions as I would like to be, and I generally think of the perfect comeback or argument minutes or hours too late.  I have always done better with writing, where I have time to think.  However, on this day, I had inspiration from a half-remembered story I had heard before.  I am sure I stole the following argument from someone, but to this day I still can't remember from whom.

I picked up a handful of sand, and said "this is almost pure silicon, virtually identical to what powers a computer.  Take as much labor as you want, and build me a computer with it -- the only limitation is you can only have true manual laborers - no engineers or managers or other capitalist lackeys".

Yeah, I know what you're thinking - beach sand is not pure silicon - it is actually silicon dioxide, SiO2, but if she didn't take any economics she certainly didn't take any chemistry or geology.

She replied that my request was BS, that it took a lot of money to build an electronics plant, and her group of laborers didn't have any and bankers would never lend them any.

All too many defenders of capitalism would have stopped here, and said aha!  So you admit you need more than labor - you need capital too.  But Marx would not have disagreed - he would have said it was the separation of labor and capital that was bad - only when laborers owned the capital, rather than being slaves to the ruling class that now controls the capital, would the world reach nirvana.  So I offered her just that:

I told her - assume for our discussion that I have tons of money, and I will give you and your laborers as much as you need.  The only restriction I put on it is that you may only buy raw materials - steel, land, silicon - in their crudest forms.  It is up to you to assemble these raw materials, with your laborers, to build the factory and make me my computer.

She thought for a few seconds, and responded "but I can't - I don't know how.  I need someone to tell me how to do it"

And that is the heart of socialism's failure.  For the true source of wealth is not brute labor, or even what you might call brute capital, but the mind.  The mind creates new technologies, new products, new business models, new productivity enhancements, in short, everything that creates wealth.  Labor or capital without a mind behind it is useless.

From the year 1000 to the year 1700, the world's wealth, measured as GDP per capita, was virtually unchanged.  Since 1700, the GDP per capita in places like the US has risen, in real terms, over 40 fold.  This is a real increase in total wealth - it is not money stolen or looted or exploited.  Wealthy nations like the US didn't "take" the wealth from somewhere else - it never even existed before.  It was created by the minds of human beings.

How?  What changed?  Historians who really study this stuff would probably point to a jillion things, but in my mind two are important:

1. There was a philosophical and intellectual change where questioning established beliefs and social patterns went from being heresy and unthinkable to being acceptable, and even in vogue.  In other words, men, at first just the elite but soon everyone, were urged to use their mind rather than just relying on established beliefs
2. There were social and political changes that greatly increased the number of people capable of entrepreneurship.  Before this time, the vast vast majority of people were locked into social positions that allowed them no flexibility to act on a good idea, even if they had one.  By starting to create a large and free middle class, first in the Netherlands and England and then in the US, more people had the ability to use their mind to create new wealth.  Whereas before, perhaps 1% or less of any population really had the freedom to truly act on their ideas, after 1700 many more people began to have this freedom. 

So today's wealth, and everything that goes with it (from shorter work hours to longer life spans) is the result of more people using their minds more freely.

Look around the world - for any country, ask yourself if the average person in that country has the open intellectual climate that encourages people to think for themselves, and the open political and economic climate that allows people to act on the insights their minds provide and to keep the fruits of their effort.  Where you can answer yes to both, you will find wealth and growth.  Where you answer no to both, you will find poverty and misery. 

UPDATE

While it is not exactly a direct follow-on to this article, see my post Progressives are too Conservative to Like Capitalism for an analysis of some of capitalism's detractors.  For yet another way to explain capitalism, at least libertarian philosophy, here is a new-agy approach that is actually pretty good.  Finally, Spontaneous Order has an interesting post comparing religious creationism in the physical world with progressives' statism in the economic/social realms.

Update #2:  Here is my more recent statement covering similar ground, focusing on the mistaken assumption that economics are all zero-sum.

Cool article in Reason about the similarities between the Incredibles and Any Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

Now I definitely have to see this movie.  As a side note, I actually met Mr. Incredible today at Disney World (OK, I "met" a twenty-something underpaid college student in an uncomfortable costume today).  Disney World trip roundup coming soon...

For a variety of reasons, my wife and I, who usually get along swimmingly, get into fights when I am trying to help her with the computer.  She has never developed a high comfort level with computers, while I have been using them since I was about 15, programming assembly language on S-100 bus CP/M computers (and yes, I have used punch cards too -- I am just old enough to have had that experience).

I realized today what the problem is.  She called me on my cell, trying to elicit from me the set of commands to do something-or-other in Word.  I kept saying I don't know and she got mad at me because she knew I had done it before, and she thought I was just blowing her off.

In truth, the difference is in how we have both learned to use the computer, and maybe even a fundamental difference in how each of us learns anything.  My wife is a memorizer and note taker.  If I explain to her how to, say, embed an image in a word document, she will carefully write down each step in a notebook she has.  She will never ask me again or falter at the task of adding an image to Word, because she now has either memorized how to do it, or she can look in up in The Book.

I, on the other hand, am nearly incapable of memorizing anything, and the sum total of the notes I took in college probably would not fill a single spiral notebook.  In fact, I suspect I switched from chemical engineering to mechanical engineering in college because, at least at my University, chemical engineering had a ton of memorization (can you say, Isomer?) while mechanical engineering was all about open book problem solving.

When I sit down to a computer, I just sort of figure things out.  When I had my old S-100 bus computer, that was essential, because there was no manual.  Today, its just how I am.  The disadvantage is that every time I insert a graphic in Word, I may have to fiddle around in the menus to figure out, for the 100th time, how to do it.  The advantage is that, if I am suddenly required to insert a spreadsheet rather than a graphic, I am not thrown for a loop - I just follow my usual process of poking around through the menus.

So, I have explained to my wife that to help her, I need to be at the computer.  Once I figure out how to do something, she can then document it in The Book. 

I have had friends who work like me try to insist that my approach is better than my wife's.  I don't think it is - just different.  Take driving directions.  I have no problem trying to find someplace I don't have clear directions for, because I have a good sense of direction and can usually get there by visual reckoning.  As a result, though, I sometimes cannot give street names to get to places I have been as many as 10 or 20 times.  Since I navigate visually and by real-time reckoning, any knowledge I have gained in my successful exploration is very difficult to pass on, just like I have difficulty passing on my computer knowledge.  If the world was all like me, technological society would end after this generation, because no one could pass our knowledge on.

In fact, as I write this, I am getting an epiphany about myself and why I did not do so well as a consultant at McKinsey & Co. (the reader is welcome to stop at this point, because what follows will likely be real-time self analysis rather than of general interest).  I was very very good at analysis, and quickly getting to a sort of 70% confidence level as to conclusions, and then I would hit a wall.  I had little tolerance for continuing to build evidence and analysis and the perfect polished presentation once I thought I "got it", and I had absolutely no tolerance for sitting down and writing a white paper or other published article about our experiences.  This profile probably makes me perfect for running my own business - I wish I had figured it out about 10 years earlier.

Since most knowledgeable people who always try to predict the election are refusing to predict this one because it is too close to call, I will take a shot at it (since I never have predicted elections before):

I predict a situation the reverse of 2000. Bush wins popular vote by a percent or two but loses electoral college. States mostly break the same as in 2000 but Ohio goes to Kerry.

I heard Dick Morris recommending that you can watch Pennsylvania tomorrow night for an early clue. In 2000, Pennsylvania broke 51-46 Gore. He suggested that Bush will win if doing getter in Penn, and will lose if doing worse. You can find how all the states went in 2000 here

The absolute best part of this election is that my kids are really pumped up to sit up and watch it. Part of that is that they are really clever about finding ways to evade bed time. But part is that they are generally interested. My 10-year-old son spent over an hour with my wife going over and trying to understand her absentee ballot.

UPDATE

Well, I was wrong but not way wrong. Bush did win the popular vote and Ohio was indeed close but broke for Bush. Well, I won't quit my day job but I will say that I was as close as any of those folks paid the big money to make predictions.