My Oft-Repeated Advice -- Hold off on iOS8

There is nothing in the new Apple OS update that is particularly pressing, and even if there were, don't update on the first day.  Wait.  I gave this advice to my family for iOS7 and saved everyone a world of grief.  One would think that Apple would have a way easier time with releases than, say, Android or Windows.  Apple OS runs only on Apple devices, whereas Google and Microsoft have to deal with all sorts of hardware compatibility issues.  Nevertheless, Apple has had many issues with its round-number OS releases such that there is no reason to rush.  I suggest you wait 2 weeks, then Google "iOS8 issues" and "iOS problems" and see what you find.  If nothing scares you, then update.

Here is the problem with Apple - whether it be OSX or iOS or even iTunes - it is almost impossible to roll back.  I hated Windows Vista and Windows 8 (Windows is sort of like original-series Star Trek movies where every other release sucks more than average) but I was able to roll back in both cases.  Short of rooting your iPhone, I am not sure iOS rollbacks are even possible.

IFTTT and Zapier

The other day you may have seen some test posts here on trying to cross-post between blogs.  It turns out there are surprisingly few wordpress apps for this, and those that exist are not being maintained.  I have a ManageWP account where I can simultaneously post to multiple accounts with the same post, but that was not exactly what I was looking for.  So I thought of my IFTTT account, which I had not played around with for a while.

I am not really an expert on this space, but I have used a site / program called "If This Then That" (IFTTT.com) for several years.  What it does is set up simple rules to fire off certain actions based on triggers.  For example, I cannot stand iphoto and the absolute mess of duplicates that icloud and iphoto make, so I now have an IFTTT rule that every time my iphone takes a picture, it automatically puts it in a folder on my Google Drive account.  I have IFTTT rules based on everything from my Nest thermostat at home to highlighting items in my feed reader.

IFTTT is really easy to use, but part of that is that there are limited options.  One limitation is that for each object - eg Twitter account or WordPress Account - you can only have one version.  In other words, if I have 3 WordPress accounts, IFTTT can only recognize one so, obviously, IFTTT is not going to be able to trigger based on a post at one blog and then do something on another blog.  Which is exactly what I wanted to do.  Whenever I make a climate post at Coyote Blog, I wanted to cross-post it at Climate Skeptic.

So I tried a similar site called Zapier.  Zapier allows me to do exactly what I wanted with WordPress accounts, and for each trigger and action it seems to give me, from my limited poking around, a lot more choices than IFTTT.  For example, a lot more different WordPress events can act as a trigger.  So I am now using it to cross-post, and we will see how it works.

Overall, IFTTT is a bit more mature, it has more choices of integrations, and probably most important has both iphone and android apps that give it a lot of integration options with your phone.  The limitation to one instance of each sort of trigger or action is a limitation they have been promising to fix for years, but still have not addressed.   Zapier is more complicated to use, but for the triggers and actions it has, gives a lot more options.  Unfortunately, it does not have much, if any, iphone or android integration which I think is a huge limitation for this type of functionality.

Both are worth checking out.  They are free (up to a point) and you can create a rule without programming in less than five minutes on either, so you can see if it is something you find useful.

Again, I am not an expert on this space and if there is a third, better choice, let me know in the comments.

 

Non-Monetary Job Benefits Example

The other day I wrote about non-monetary job benefits.  Here is an example:

A small-time vintner's use of volunteer workers has put him out of business after the state squeezed him like a late-summer grape for $115,000 in fines -- and sent a chill through the wine industry.

The volunteers, some of them learning to make wine while helping out, were illegally unpaid laborers, and Westover Winery should have been paying them and paying worker taxes, the state Department of Industrial Relations said.

"I didn't know it was illegal to use volunteers at a winery; it's a common practice," said winery owner Bill Smyth.

State law prohibits for-profit businesses from using volunteers.

Before the fine, volunteer labor was common at wineries in the nearby Livermore Valley, said Fenestra Winery owner Lanny Replogle.

...

About half the people the state considered Westover employees were taking a free class at the Palomares Canyon Road winery. Students learned about growing vines, harvesting and blending grapes and marketing the finished product.

"This was an incredible opportunity for me," said Peter Goodwin, a home winemaker from Walnut Creek who said he dreams of opening a winery with some friends. "I got to learn from someone who knows the business."

The winery sometimes asked Goodwin if he wanted to assist in different tasks.

"That's what I wanted, to be as involved as much as possible -- it was all about learning," he said. "I don't understand the state's action. It was my time, and I volunteered."

I have mixed feelings on this.  On the one hand, this demonstrates the appalling violation of individual freedom that minimum wage laws create -- not just for the employer, but for the employee as well.  Minimum wage laws mean that you are not allowed to perform labor for less than that minimum, even if you choose to and get non-monetary benefits that you feel fully compensate you for the time.

On the other hand, you have to be particularly clueless, especially in California, to claim ignorance on this.  I work in an industry that 10 years ago routinely accepted volunteer labor (illegally) and I was never lulled by the "everyone else is doing it in the industry" excuse.  I will say that it is irritating to try to run a business in compliance with the law and to find yourself undercut by folks who are avoiding the more expensive parts of the law.  Years ago there used to be a couple of non-profits who competed against me running campgrounds.  They were really for profit - they just paid their president a large salary rather than dividends - but used the non-profit status** as a dodge to try to accept volunteer labor.  Eventually, they were stopped by several courts from doing so.

Yes, I know this is kind of odd.  You might ask yourself, why are there so many people willing to take their volunteer position when you are offering paid jobs?  It turns out here are a lot of non-monetary benefits to this job such that people will do it for free.  In fact, that huge fountain of hypocrisy that is the Federal Government exempts itself from paying minimum wage and accepts volunteers to run its campgrounds where I must pay them.

 

** the non-profit status helped them in one other way.  We take over operation of recreation areas under concession contract from the government.  Many government employees hate this sort of outsourcing partnership, and really find it - for the lack of a better word - dirty to sully themselves interacting with a profit-making entity.  The non-profit status helped my competitors seem friendlier -- ie less capitalistic -- than I.  California recently passed a law allowing lower cost third party operation of certain parks functions but only if this was performed by a non-profit.   I had a US Forest Service District Ranger in Kentucky tell me once that he was offended that I made money on public lands, providing services in the National Forest.  I answered, "Oh, and you work for free?"  I said that I did not know how much he made but I guessed $80-100 thousand a year.  I said that would be over double what my company made in profit in the same forest operating and paying for hundreds of camp sites.  Why was I dirty for making money in the Forest but he thought he as "clean"?

Testing Blog Cross-Post 2

again

Testing Blog Cross-Post

I couldn't get IFTTT.com to automatically cross-post (it can only recognize one WordPress account at a time) so now I am trying Zapier.com.  I need to use it for a while but despite being a long-time IFTTT fan, Zapier seems to have a going for it.

Thoughts On Campus Speech 2: Why Libertarian Kids Get the Most for their College Money

I hear Conservatives lamenting all the time that their kids can't get a good college education because academia is dominated by Liberals and liberal assumptions.  I think just the opposite is true.  Leftist parents should be asking for their money back.

I have spoken on campus a few times about topics such as climate and regulation.  One thing I have found is that students have often not heard the libertarian point of view from a libertarian.   I have done any number of campus radio station interviews as a climate skeptic, and I have similarly found is that the students I talk to have a very muddled understanding of what skeptics believe.  In most cases, I was the first skeptic they had ever talked to or read - everything they knew previously about skeptics had come from our opposition (e.g. what Bill McKibbon says skeptics believe).  This is roughly equivalent to someone only "knowing" why liberals believe what they do from Rush Limbaugh.   My son encountered a college woman last week who despised the Koch brothers, but actually knew almost nothing about them and had never actually seen their work or read their views.  Harry Reid and others she considered authorities said the Kochs sucked so suck they do.

This is just incredibly unhealthy.  Living in an echo chamber and only encountering opposing or uncomfortable positions as straw men versions propped up to be knocked down.  What a crappy education, but that is what most liberal kids get.

Not so my son the libertarian.  He is forced to encounter and argue against authoritarian ideas with which he disagrees in every class and in every social interaction.   Not just in economics and domestic policy -- there is still a lot of interventionism and authoritarianism taught in foreign policy and even in history.  Name one US president from academic lists of great presidents who did not get us in a war?

Thoughts On Campus Speech 1: Hitler Would Have Been The Most Valuable Campus Speaker

Yesterday,  Yale did not cave to pressure from certain parts of the student body and Ayaan Hirsi Ali spoke on campus.  As with many controversial speakers, mostly consisting of folks not on the political Left, a number of campus groups tried to force Yale to cancel her speech because they expressed themselves offended by her.   Among politically correct colleges, there has been a growing trend towards enforcing a right not to be offended, though this enforcement tends to be asymmetric -- Muslims apparently have a right not to be offended, but Christians do not.  Women have it but men do not.  Greenpeace has it but Exxon does not.

People of prominence who offend us or with whom we violently disagree should not be the least but the most welcome speakers on campus.  I will demonstrate this by using the most extreme of all possible examples:  An imaginary speaking tour by Adolph Hitler, say in December of 1938.  Could there be a more distasteful person, the leader of Nazi Germany just weeks after the Reichskristallnacht?  But I think he would have been the most valuable speaker I could possibly imagine.

If he were honest, which Hitler likely couldn't have stopped himself from being, what valuable insights we could have gained.  The West made numerous mistakes in the late thirties and even into the forties because it just could not believe the full extent of Hitler's objectives and hatreds**.   Perhaps we would have understood sooner and better exactly what we were dealing with.

Even if he were dishonest, and tried to "convert" the office without discussing specific plans, that would still be fascinating.  What arguments did he use?  Could we get insights into why he struck a chord among the German people?  Would his rhetoric be compelling to American audiences?  I despise the guy and almost everything he stood for but I would have loved to have him on campus as a speaker.

I will tell one of my favorite stories about the rise of Hitler.   You have heard the story of Jesse Owens at the Berlin Olympics.   Supposedly this was a slap in the face to Hitler, to have a black man winning medals.  But one of the last events of the games was a four man relay race.  The US was certainly going to win.  But one of the US runners was Jewish and the US pulled the runner from the race and substituted Owens.  The US didn't want to embarrass Hitler by making him hand a medal to a Jew.  This sounds odd to put it this way, but one of the problems we had in really taking the worst of the Holocaust seriously as it was happening is that we were not able to see that Hitler's anti-semitism was so much more dangerous than the ubiquitous and run-of-the-mill anti-semitism that obtained all over Britain and America.  We should always have a policy of letting even the most extreme people talk as much as they like.  We might learn that they have a point and adjust our thinking on something, or we might learn that they are even batshit crazier than we thought.  Either outcome is useful.

Trend That Is Not A Trend: Rape Culture

From Mark Perry:

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I suppose one could argue that there is some change in reporting rates, since rape is well-know to be an under-reported crime.  However, I would struggle to argue that under-reporting rates are going up (which is what it would take to be the prime driver of the trend above).  If anything, my guess is that reporting rates are rising such that the chart above actually understates the improvement.

PS-  Folks commenting on this post saying that by reporting a declining trend I demonstrate that I don't care about rape or don't treat it seriously are idiots.  I have lived through dozens of data-free media scares and witch hunts  -- global cooling, global warming, the great pre-school sexual abuse witch hunt, about 20 different narcotics related scares (vodka tampons, anyone?).    Data is useful.    In this case, knowing there is improvement means we can look for what is driving the improvement and do more of it (though Kevin Drum would likely attribute it to unleaded gasoline).

"Trend that is not a trend" is an occasional feature on this blog.  I could probably write three stories a day on this topic if I wished.  The media is filled with stories of supposed trends based on single data points or anecdotes rather than, you know, actual trend data.  More stories of this type are here.  It is not unusual to find that the trend data often support a trend in the opposite direction as claimed by media articles.  I have a related category I have started of trends extrapolated from single data points.

Because Money Isn't Everything

One of the mistakes people make in economic analysis, IMO, is that they sometimes miss non-monetary benefits.  A great example is how labor law and the minimum wage is structured -- there are many benefits of a having job to a young, unskilled, unemployed person.  That job may teach valuable industry-related skills and will almost certainly help teach some basic life skills (like how to show up on time every day and how to work with others in an organization toward shared goals).  For my kids when they were 15 or 16, these non-monetary benefits dominated, and I would have been happy if they worked for free in exchange for such skills.  That used to be the whole point of unpaid internships, until the government started essentially banning them.  Unfortunately, the government considers only money in computing the minimum wage, and ignores all these non-monetary benefits.

Mark Perry had what I think is another good example a while back, quoting from the Priceonomics blog:

If you want to dine at State Bird Provisions, you’ll have to get in line. The small restaurant, winner of the James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant (2013) and a Michelin Star, only accepts a few reservations that are snapped up as soon as they are released — at midnight, sixty days in advance. So nearly every day, people line up on Fillmore Street in San Francisco an hour or more before State Bird’s 5:30pm opening time to score a table.

It may seem silly to line up for State Bird Provisions in a city full of renowned restaurants and good food. But as anyone who has eaten brunch in the city knows, San Franciscans view long restaurant lines as social proof more than as a deterrent. Besides, State Bird offers determined diners a relative bargain. While its offerings are not cheap — even without indulging on wine, bills can reach $50 per person — State Bird’s prices are more modest than almost any other local Michelin Star restaurant.

This makes State Bird something of an economic mystery.If economists owned popular restaurants like State Bird, they would take one look at the long lines and raise prices.After all, the overwhelming demand is pretty clear. Or at the very least, given how reservations disappear like Coachella tickets, they would start charging for them. In fact, since restaurants do not do this, a number of startups in San Francisco and New York City have started to sell reservations to users, often by reserving tables and scalping them.

In contrast to the executives who run large restaurant chains, the restaurateurs behind celebrated restaurants and local favorites are often chefs first rather than professional managers. This raises the question: Are restaurants like State Bird Provisions, which seems to resist simple economic analysis, the exception or the norm? And if they are the norm, is that because it is somehow self-defeating to raise prices even at booming restaurants? Or are chef proprietors a unique breed in the business world, immune to supply and demand and content to leave money on the table?

I believe that many of these high-end chefs are not driven entirely by money.  Their personal reward system also depends a lot on prestige and recognition.  Making a good profit in a restaurant gets you no recognition in the the circles where chef's crave it.  Name the three most profitable restaurants in town -- you have no idea, do you?  What get's these chef's recognition is being the hot place to dine that is so in demand it is impossible to get a table.  So one makes the restaurant a little too small and keeps the prices a little too low and one trades a bit of money for something that is more valuable:  prestige.

One can see this same effect among, say, US Senators.  In our current corporate, crony state, US Senators can expect a huge spike in income once they leave Congress, getting paid by some large corporation lobbying firm.  The economically rational decision, then, if one were only interested in money, would be to serve just one term, then leave and make some bank.   But you never see that.  Senators stay and stay, even when it is an enormous hassle to do so.  They are essentially collecting and spending millions every election to keep their income low.  Why?  One big reason is prestige.

Going back to the restaurant example, let's consider a famous chef who pretty clearly does care about money:  Wolfgang Puck.  I have never seen this written, but here is what I observe to be Puck's approach.  He creates a small restaurant and lavishes it with a lot of his personal attention.  These restaurants do not have much seating and become the hot places to dine, leading to long lines and difficult reservations.  The difficulty of getting a table generates an elite buzz around the restaurant.  After some time, Puck will buy a huge new location nearby with many times more seating.  He formula-izes his recipes so he no longer has to be involved, and then shifts the operation onto auto-pilot in the new large location.  Perhaps he even franchises it.  The new location cranks out a bunch of money, while he moves on to create a new elite concept.  He also leverages the original buzz in his personal brand, which is applied to all kinds of other items.  In a sense, he is banking prestige in the early venture and then monetizing it later.

Healthcare Deductibles Rising -- Why This is GOOD News

Things like Obamacare cannot be discussed, it seems, in anything but a political context.  So if you don't like Obamacare, everything that happens has to be bad. But I actually think this is good news, and goes against my fears in advance of Obamacare.  I had been worried that Obamacare would just increase the trends of more and more health care spending being by third-party payers.  And my guess is that this is happening, when you consider how many people have gone from paying cash to having a policy, either a regular policy or expanded Medicaid.

A report out today puts numbers behind what hit many workers when they signed up for health insurance during open enrollment last year: deductible shock.

Premiums for employer-paid insurance are up 3% this year, but deductibles are up nearly 50% since 2009, the report by the Kaiser Family Foundation shows.

The average deductible this year is $1,217, up from $826 five years ago, Nearly 20% of workers overall have to pay at least $2,000 before their insurance kicks in, while workers at firms with 199 or fewer employees are feeling the pain of out-of-pocket costs even more: A third of these employees at small companies pay at least $2,000 deductibles.

“Skin-in-the-game insurance” is becoming the norm,says Kaiser Family Foundation CEO Drew Altman, referring to the higher percentage of health care costs employees have to share.

Honestly, this is good news, sort of.  I don't like the coercion and lack of choice, but the main problem with health care is that the person receiving the benefits is not the person paying the bills, which means there is no incentive to shop or make care tradeoffs.  Higher deductibles mean more people are going to be actively shopping and caring what health services cost, and that is a good thing for prices and health care inflation.

Prices, Paul Krugman, and Consistency

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Gender-Neutral Third Person Pronoun

I am with Kevin Drum.  I got tired of using "his or her" or some other such kluge some time back.  I am using "their" until someone defines a better third person possessive pronoun that is gender-neutral (ditto "them" for "him or her").  After all, unlike French, English is a bottom-up language defined by common use rather than unchanging top-down rules.  So if enough of us use "their", it will become correct.

For those of you too young to remember, the invention of "Ms." as a generic women's prefix was one of the greatest improvements in the English language in my lifetime.  If you despair sometimes in looking down a list of names and trying to guess if the person is a "Mr." or "Ms." (remember "Pat" on Saturday Night Live), you wouldn't believe what a pain in the rear it was to figure out if one should use "Miss" or "Mrs."  for a given female.

Feminists and Disarming the Victim and a Modest Proposal

I have just been flabbergasted at the feminist reaction against efforts to teach women to be more difficult targets for sexual predators (e.g. communicating the dangers of binge drinking, nail polish that detects date rape drugs, etc).  Nobody thinks that encouraging people to buy burglar alarms or lock their doors is somehow shifting blame for robbery to the victim.  But that is exactly the argument feminists are making vis a vis sexual assault on campus.  They argue that any effort to teach victims to be a tougher target is an insult to women and must be avoided.

This is just stupid.  So stupid that I wonder if there is an ulterior motive.  There is no way you ever are going to get rid of bad people doing bad things.  Our historic messaging on things like date rape may have been confused or insufficiently pointed, but we have always been clear on, say, murder and there is still plenty of that which goes on.  I almost wonder if feminists want women to continue to be victims so they can continue to be relevant and have influence.  It's a sick thought but what other explanation can there be for purposely disarming victims?

So I was jogging the other night through a university (Vanderbilt) and saw all those little blue light emergency phones that are so prevalent on campus.   In most cases, the ubiquity of those emergency phones is a result of the growing female population on campus and are there primarily to make women (and perhaps more importantly, their parents who write the checks) be safer feel more comfortable.  Women's groups were big supporters of these investments.  But why?  Isn't that inconsistent?  Shouldn't we consider investment in such emergency devices as wrong-headed attempts to avoid fixing the root cause, which is some inherent flaw in males?

If you say no, that it would be dumb to rip out the emergency phones, then why is it dumb to teach Freshman women some basic safety skills that may prevent them from being victims?   I have taken numerous campus tours with my kids and in almost every one they point out the blue light phones and in almost every case say, "I have never heard of these being used, but they are there."  I guarantee 30 minutes helping women understand how to avoid particularly risky situations would have a higher return than the phones.

I say this with some experience.  I was in a business for a while that required international travel and in which there was some history of executives getting attacked or kidnapped in foreign cities.  The company gave us a one-day risk-identification as well as beginner escape and evasion course.  It was some of the most useful training I have ever had.  And not for a single second did I think anyone was trying to blame me for street crime in foreign cities.

Airplane Seats and the Prisoner's Dilemma

I suppose I should weigh in on the great airplane seat lean back or not kerfuffle.  A number of tall people like Megan McArdle have argued for leaning seats back.  I am in the opposite camp, despite being 6-4 and even taller than Ms. McArdle.  And the reason is sort of ironic, given McArdle's old blog title and twitter handle:  the benefits for leaning a seat back are not symmetric.   When the person in front of me leans their seat back, two things happen:  1:  my knees get scrunched and 2.  I can't use my laptop any more because the screen will not raise (given the position of the table and angle of the seat).  Leaning my seat back does not fully relieve either of these.  In other words, I gain less knee room leaning back than I lose from the person in front of me leaning back.  It is a form of the prisoner's dilemma where looking at only my choices, I  am always better off leaning back.  But I am worse off if everyone leans back.  My gut feeling is that everyone must experience the same thing.  Which is why there has grown up an unspoken agreement among most frequent flyers not to lean seats back, just as the solution to the prisoner's dilemma is for the prisoners to collude and keep their mouths shut.  I greatly appreciate McArdle's work and she is one of my favorite writers, but on airplanes she is the prisoner that cheats.

PS-  Brian Lowder argues we should go back to dressing up when we travel.  Yeah, we used to put on coats and ties to fly when I was little.  Well, I'll go back to dressing up when airplane travel goes back to being romantic again.  But that ship, not to mix metaphors, has already sailed.  The odds are that in a given week, at 6 feet 4 tall, my four hours on an airplane are the least comfortable four hours I spend all week.  I am not going to make it worse by putting on a coat and tie.  I dress in the most comfortable clothes I can, which means baggy cargo shorts and a polo shirt.

 

Missed This When It Came Out, But Very Cool

It is Historically Unusual for China NOT to be the Largest Economy on Earth

A couple of quick thoughts on this map from this Vox article edited by Matt Yglesias

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  1. I hate to diss my old cohorts at McKinsey, but isn't this entirely arbitrary to how you draw the map?  If you made the map break in, say, the Atlantic Ocean with the Ivory Coast on the far left of the map and Newfoundland on the far right, won't this look different?
  2. People seem to want to get freaked out about China passing the US in terms of the size of its economy.  But in the history of Civilization there have probably been barely 200 years in the last 4000 that China hasn't been the largest economy in the world.  It probably only lost that title in the early 19th century and is just now getting it back.  We are in some senses ending an unusual period, not starting one.

What Is It About California Shepherds?

I saw this by accident on the California FAQ on the state minimum wage.

1. Q. What is the minimum wage?
A. Effective January 1, 2008, the minimum wage in California is $8.00 per hour. It will increase to $9.00 per hour effective July 1, 2014, and to $10.00 per hour effective January 1, 2016.

For sheepherders, however, effective July 1, 2002, the minimum wage was set at $1,200.00 per month. On January 1, 2007, this wage increased to a minimum monthly salary of $1,333.20, and on January 1, 2008, it increased again to a minimum monthly salary of $1,422.52. Effective July 1, 2014, the minimum monthly salary for sheepherders will be $1600.34. Effective January 1, 2016, the minimum monthly salary for sheepherders will be $1777.98. Wages paid to sheepherders may not be offset by meals or lodging provided by the employer. Instead, there are provisions in IWC Order 14-2007, Sections 10(F), (G) and (H) that apply to sheepherders with respect to monthly meal and lodging benefits required to be provided by the employer.

 

What the hell?  The new minimum wage is absolutely appropriate to every industry in California except sheepherding?  It would be interesting to see the political process that led to this one narrow special rule.  The state Speaker of the House's brother-in-law is probably in the sheep business.

This kind of crap is frustrating as hell for me.  We have a labor model that is generally not even considered when politicians are setting labor law, and thus compliance causes us fits.  I would love special labor exemptions for my workers as well, but I don't have any pull in Sacramento.

Postscript:  While most folks think of the minimum wage as a restriction on employers, it is just as much a restriction on workers as well.  I am glad to see the California site acknowledge this:

3. Q. May an employee agree to work for less than the minimum wage?
A. No.

So In The End, The VA Was Rewarded, Not Punished

Remember the whole VA thing?  It has mostly been forgotten, though we will all remember it again, or more accurately get to experience it ourselves, once the Democrats manage to get single payer passed.

People talk about government employees being motivated by "public service" but in fact very few government agencies have any tangible performance metrics linked to public service, and when they do (as in the case of the VA wait times) they just game them.   At the end of the day, nothing enforces fidelity to the public good like competition and consumer choice, two things no government agency allows.

I will admit that government employees in agencies may have some interest in public welfare, but in the hierarchy of needs, the following three things dominate above any concerns for the public:

  • Keeping the agency in existence
  • Maintaining employment levels, and if that is achieved, increasing employment levels
  • Getting more budget

But look at the VA response in this context:

  • The agency remains in existence and most proposals to privatize certain parts were beaten back
  • No one was fired and employment levels remain the same
  • The agency was rewarded with a big bump in its budget

The VA won!  Whereas a private company with that kind of negative publicity about how customers were treated would have as a minimum seen a huge revenue and market share loss, and might have faced bankruptcy, the VA was given more money.

Murry Rothbard via Bryan Caplan:

On the free market, in short, the consumer is king, and any business firm that wants to make profits and avoid losses tries its best to serve the consumer as efficiently and at as low a cost as possible. In a government operation, in contrast, everything changes. Inherent in all government operation is a grave and fatal split between service and payment, between the providing of a service and the payment for receiving it. The government bureau does not get its income as does the private firm, from serving the consumer well or from consumer purchases of its products exceeding its costs of operation. No, the government bureau acquires its income from mulcting the long-suffering taxpayer. Its operations therefore become inefficient, and costs zoom, since government bureaus need not worry about losses or bankruptcy; they can make up their losses by additional extractions from the public till. Furthermore, the consumer, instead of being courted and wooed for his favor, becomes a mere annoyance to the government someone who is "wasting" the government's scarce resources. In government operations, the consumer is treated like an unwelcome intruder, an interference in the quiet enjoyment by the bureaucrat of his steady income.

There Seems to Be No Limit to Politicians' Hypocrisy

Obama, 2008:  "I taught constitutional law for ten years. I take the Constitution very seriously. The biggest problems that we're facing right now have to do with George Bush trying to bring more and more power into the executive branch and not go through Congress at all, and that's what I intend to reverse when I'm president of the United States of America." (Townhall in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, March 31, 2008).

They all suck.  Every one of them.  This man was the great hope of more than half the nation and look what a loser he is.  We should stop talking about whether we are going to hand power to the Coke or the Pepsi party and start talking about limiting the power of these jerks.

Apparently, Corporations Are Not Investing Because They Are Not "Socially Engaged"

Paul Roberts has an editorial in the LA Times that sortof, kindof mirrors my post the other day that observed that corporate stock buybacks (and investments to reduce tax rates) were likely signs of a bad investment climate.  Until he starts talking about solutions

Roberts begins in a similar manner

Here's a depressing statistic: Last year, U.S. companies spent a whopping $598 billion — not to develop new technologies, open new markets or to hire new workers but to buy up their own shares. By removing shares from circulation, companies made remaining shares pricier, thus creating the impression of a healthier business without the risks of actual business activity.

Share buybacks aren't illegal, and, to be fair, they make sense when companies truly don't have something better to reinvest their profits in. But U.S. companies do have something better: They could be reinvesting in the U.S. economy in ways that spur growth and generate jobs. The fact that they're not explains a lot about the weakness of the job market and the sliding prospects of the American middle class.

I suppose I would dispute him in his implication that there is something unseemly about buybacks.  They are actually a great mechanism for economic efficiency.  If companies do not have good investment prospects, we WANT them returning the cash to their shareholders, rather than doing things like the boneheaded diversification of the 1960's and 1970's (that made investment bankers so rich unwinding in the 1980's).  That way, individuals can redeploy capital in more promising places.  The lack of investment opportunities and return of capital to shareholders is a bad sign for investment prospects of large companies, but it is not at all a bad sign for the ethics of corporate management.   I would argue this is the most ethical possible thing for corporations to do if they honestly do not feel they have a productive use for their cash.

The bigger story here is what might be called the Great Narrowing of the Corporate Mind: the growing willingness by business to pursue an agenda separate from, and even entirely at odds with, the broader goals of society. We saw this before the 2008 crash, when top U.S. banks used dodgy financial tools to score quick profits while shoving the risk onto taxpayers. We're seeing it again as U.S. companies reincorporate overseas to avoid paying U.S. taxes. This narrow mind-set is also evident in the way companies slash spending, not just on staffing but also on socially essential activities, such as long-term research or maintenance, to hit earnings targets and to keep share prices up....

It wasn't always like this. From the 1920s to the early 1970s, American business was far more in step with the larger social enterprise. Corporations were just as hungry for profits, but more of those profits were reinvested in new plants, new technologies and new, better-trained workers — "assets" whose returns benefited not only corporations but the broader society.

Yes, much of that corporate oblige was coerced: After the excesses of the Roaring '20s, regulators kept a rein on business, even as powerful unions exploited tight labor markets to win concessions. But companies also saw that investing in workers, communities and other stakeholders was key to sustainable profits. That such enlightened corporate self-interest corresponds with the long postwar period of broadly based prosperity is hardly a coincidence....

Without a more socially engaged corporate culture, the U.S. economy will continue to lose the capacity to generate long-term prosperity, compete globally or solve complicated economic challenges, such as climate change. We need to restore a broader sense of the corporation as a social citizen — no less focused on profit but far more cognizant of the fact that, in an interconnected economic world, there is no such thing as narrow self-interest.

There is so much crap here it is hard to know where to start.  Since I work for a living rather than write editorials, I will just pound out some quick thoughts

  • As is so typical with Leftist nostalgia for the 1950's, his view is entirely focused on large corporations.  But the innovation model has changed in a lot of industries.  Small companies and entrepreneurs are doing innovation, then get bought by large corporations with access to markets and capital needed to expanded (the drug industry increasingly works this way).  Corporate buybacks return capital to the hands of individuals and potential entrepreneurs and funding angels.
  • But the Left is working hard to kill innovation and entrepreneurship and solidify the position of large corporations.  Large corporations increasingly have the scale to manage regulatory compliance that chokes smaller companies.  And for areas that Mr. Roberts mentions, like climate and green energy, the government manages that whole sector as a crony enterprise, giving capital to political donors and people who can afford lobbyists and ignoring everyone else.  "Socially engaged" investing is nearly always managed like this, as cronyism where the politician you held a fundraiser for is more important than your technology or business plan.  *cough* Solyndra *cough*
  • One enormous reason that companies are buying back their own stock is the Federal Reserve's quantitative easing program, which I would bet anything Mr. Roberts fully supports.  This program concentrates capital in the hands of a few large banks and corporations, and encourages low-risk financial investments of capital over operational investments
  • All those "Social engagement" folks on the Left seem to spend more time stopping investment rather than encouraging it.  They fight tooth and nail the single most productive investment area in the US right now (fracking), they fight new construction in many places (e.g. most all places in California), they fight for workers in entrenched competitors against new business models like Lyft and Uber, they fight every urban Wal-Mart that attempts to get built.  I would argue one large reason for the lack of operational investment is that the Left blocks and/or makes more expensive the investments corporations want to make, offering for alternatives only crap like green energy which doesn't work as an investment unless it is subsidized and you can't count on the subsidies unless you held an Obama fundraiser lately.
  • If corporations make bad investments and tick off their workers and do all the things he suggests, they get run out of business.  And incredibly, he even acknowledges this:  "And here is the paradox. Companies are so obsessed with short-term performance that they are undermining their long-term self-interest. Employees have been demoralized by constant cutbacks. Investment in equipment upgrades, worker training and research — all essential to long-term profitability and competitiveness — is falling."  So fine, the problem corrects itself over time.  
  • He even acknowledges that corporations that are following his preferred investment strategy exist and are prospering -- he points to Google.   Google is a great example of exactly what he is missing. Search engines and Internet functionality that Google thrives on were not developed in corporate R&D departments.  I don't get how he can write so fondly about Google and simultaneously write that he wishes, say, US Steel, were investing more in R&D.  I would think having dinosaur corporations eschew trying to invest in these new areas, and having them return the money to their shareholders, and then having those individuals invest the money in startups like Google would be a good thing.  But like many Leftists he just can't get around the 1950's model.  At the end of the day, entrepreneurship is too chaotic -- the Left wants large corporations that it can easily see and control.

Don't Believe Anything The EPA Says Unless It is Under Oath

That is the only conclusion I can reach based on this story on the Center for Biological Diversity challenging the EPA over ocean acidification.

In all of the EPA's public relations and political documents, its position is that man-made CO2 is causing ocean acidification  (higher levels of atmospheric CO2 causes more CO2 to get dissolved in ocean water which lowers the PH).  One can find thousands of examples but here is just one, from their web site.  This is a public briefing paper by the EPA on the general topic of ocean acidity.  Here is a screenshot of the top of the first page:

click to enlarge

Lets read that first bullet point in the purple section labelled "key points".  It says

  • Measurements made over the last few decades have demonstrated that ocean carbon dioxide levels have risen in response to increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, leading to an increase in acidity (that is, a decrease in pH) (see Figure 1)

This is a typical man-is-screwing-up-the-climate EPA statement made to affect government opinion.  It sounds official.  If I were to publicly challenge it, they would likely label me as anti-science.

The enlightening part of our story occurs when the Center for Biological Diversity took the EPA at their fear-mongering word and said, "well, then you should have an endangerment finding on the Pacific Ocean."

The Lawsuit, launched by the Center for Biological Diversity, seeks to impose enhanced clean water act protection upon the Pacific Coast. The suit argues that protection is necessary because, according to the EPA’s own climate narrative, ocean acidification is severely damaging the marine ecosystem.

According to the CBD;

“The CBD points out that the EPA has acknowledged that ocean acidification has killed billions of oyster larvae in the Pacific Northwest but still would not classify the waters as imperilled.”

http://www.law360.com/articles/568751/epa-seeks-to-sink-green-group-s-ocean-acidification-suit

The EPA had dozens of references to acidification in its endangerment findings, such as this example: (p. 137)

According to the IPCC, climate change (very high confidence) and ocean acidification (see Box 14.1) due to the direct effects of elevated CO2 concentrations (medium confidence) will impair a wide range of planktonic and other marine organisms that use aragonite to make their shells or skeletons (Fischlin et al., 2007).

So now the EPA is in court and supposedly subject to perjury charges.  And wham, their story changes in a flash:

The EPA’s response is that there is insufficient evidence to support an endangerment finding – an apparent contradiction of their own previous climate narrative.

“There were no in situ field studies documenting adverse effects on the health of aquatic life populations in either state,” the EPA’s motion says. “Nor was there any other information documenting effects on indigenous populations of aquatic life in state waters indicating stressors attributable to ocean acidification. The only information available regarding aquatic life in ambient waters under natural conditions was inconclusive.”

The EPA's position is that there is no evidence, but it is a huge problem we should have every confidence exists.  If you don't believe me, look at this passage from an EPA 2010 memorandum on the issue.  Ignore the gobbledygook in the middle, just read it with the parts I have bolded.

This Memorandum recognizes the seriousness of aquatic life impacts associated with OA [ocean acidification] and describes how States can move forward, where OA information exists, to address OA during the 303(d) 2012 listing cycle using the current 303(d) Integrated Reporting (IR) framework. At the same time, this Memorandum also acknowledges and recognizes that in the case of OA, information is largely absent or limited at this point in time to support the listing of waters for OA in many States.

We are really really sure it is a problem although the science is largely absent.

PS- By the way, no one thinks the ocean will turn to acid.  "Acidification" is one of those scare words that work better as PR than science.  The ocean is alkaline and will alkaline even under the most catastrophic forecasts.  The issue is with its becoming less alkaline.

"Ban the Box" And Corporate Liability -- When A Company Can Be Sued Both for Doing A and Not A.

New York City has instituted a draconian "ban the box" law that makes it extremely difficult for employers to avoid hiring people with criminal records  (via Overlawyered)

The bill, which is likely to become law in some form, would prohibit the commonly used "check boxes" on job applications that ask about past convictions. It also would forbid employers from asking questions about an applicant's criminal history until a conditional job offer has been tendered....

The bigger concern is lawsuits from job seekers. To be able to reject an applicant because of a past conviction, employers would have to go through a rigorous process that, if not followed, would result in the presumption that a business owner engaged in unlawful discrimination, Mr. Goldstein said.

“I think you’d see some increases in litigation, and this is not exactly a well-settled area of law,” he said.

Proponents say the bill would simply offer a clearer way for businesses to follow state law requiring employers to go through a multistep test to determine if an applicant's past criminal behavior correlates with the position being sought.

Additionally, the City Council bill would allow an applicant rejected because of a past crime seven days to respond. The job would have to be held open during that time.

An employer's failure to adhere to the process could lead to a fine of at least $1,000. In the bill's current form, the business would bear the burden of proof in any resulting lawsuit by the job applicant, Mr. Goldstein said.

“Rather than the normal context, we have the burden here shifting,” he said. “It would be on the employer to present clear and convincing evidence that it had not engaged in unlawful discrimination.”

Given that the burden of proof seems to be on businesses in employee lawsuits even when the playing field is supposed to be level, I shudder to think what a statutory burden of proof would mean.  Likely an automatic win for any employee.

Given this, here is a question for you:  Imagine that I hired a convicted felon who then committed a crime against one of my customers.    Would I be shielded from liability because I had limited ability to screen out candidates who posed dangers to customers?  HA!  No way.  The plaintiff's attorney for the customer would be in front of the jury making me look like Attila the Hun for not screening felons from my applicant pool, even as the government made that task effectively impossible.

That is the key to this law -- that proponents can claim that one can screen out felons "if appropriate to the job" but in fact the law makes it effectively impossible to do so without imposing staggering litigation costs on me.  So we get the Leftist ideal - I can be sued by employees for screening out felons and I can simultaneously be sued by customers for not screening out felons.

Should Government Contractors Do Business in California?

Hans Bader of the CEI takes my post the other day on Obama's Executive Order 13673 and runs with it much further.  I had written

Government contractors would be insane to operate in California (and perhaps other regulatory hell-holes, but I am familiar with California).  California has a myriad of arcane labor laws (like break laws and heat stress laws) that are difficult to comply with, combined with a legislature that shifts the laws every year to make it hard to keep up, combined with a regulatory and judicial culture that assumes businesses are guilty until proven innocent.  If state labor violations or suits lead to loss of business at the national level, why the hell would a contractor ever want to have employees in California?

Bader provides the numbers:

Whether a large company is sued for discrimination or labor law violations often has more to do with its location than whether it violated the law. A recent study shows that “California has the most frequent incidences of [employment-practices] charges in the country, with a 42 percent higher chance of being sued by an employee for establishments . . . over the national average. Other states and jurisdictions where employers are at a high risk of employee suits include the District of Columbia (32% above the national average) [and] Illinois (26%).” It’s because of their location, not because California employers are more racist or anti-union than employers in other states (indeed, California employers spend more time and money on compliance mechanisms than employers elsewhere).

He goes on to discuss what I think is actually is a bigger issue than differential penalties, which is the criminalization of things in California that are perfectly legal in other places.  The best example is lunch breaks.  Companies don't just have to provide lunch breaks, they have an affirmative responsibility to make sure an employee takes a non-working lunch.  An employee who voluntarily does some work while taking a lunch break (e.g. answers a question from a customer that might walk up to her) makes the company liable for a penalty.  I kid you not.  That is why California corporations have sometimes made it a firing offense to be caught doing work at lunch, because it makes the company liable under the law.

Thanks Popehat, for Throwing Cold Water on My Outrage

I read this in my feed today, and was all ready to vent some outrage at how we business owners were screwed over by the tort system

The owner of the Aurora movie theater that was the site of a deadly 2012 attack could have reasonably enough foreseen the danger of such an attack to be held liable for it, a federal judge ruled Friday.

Noting "the grim history of mass shootings and mass killings that have occurred in more recent times," U.S. District Court Judge R. Brooke Jackson ruled that Cinemark — owner of the Century Aurora 16 theater — could have predicted that movie patrons might be targeted for an attack. Jackson's ruling allows 20 lawsuits filed by survivors of the attack or relatives of those killed to proceed toward trial.

"Although theaters had theretofore been spared a mass shooting incident, the patrons of a movie theater are, perhaps even more than students in a school or shoppers in a mall, 'sitting ducks,' " Jackson wrote.

The about 6 spots down in my feed reader I found this from Ken White at Popehat:

The court said:

None of these facts, even when taken together, compels the conclusion that Cinemark knew or should have known of the danger that the patrons of Auditorium 9 faced. I reiterate that this Court is in no way holding as a matter of law that Cinemark should have known of the danger of someone entering one of its theaters through the back door and randomly shooting innocent patrons. I hold only that a court cannot grant summary judgment on what is normally a question of fact under Colorado law unless the facts so overwhelmingly and inarguably point in Cinemark’s favor that it cannot be said that a reasonable jury could possibly side with the plaintiffs on that question. I am not convinced. Plaintiffs have come forward with enough – and it does not have to be more than just enough – to show that there is a genuine dispute of material fact. A genuine fact dispute must be resolved by the trier of fact, not by a court’s granting summary judgment. Whether the jury will resolve this issue in the plaintiffs’ favor is a different matter entirely.

In other words, the court did not find that the shooting was foreseeable. The court found that if a jury believed the plaintiffs' experts and evidence, the jury could conceivably find that the shooting was foreseeable.

Wow, thanks for jamming a stick in to the spokes of my accelerating rage bicycle.  Ken seems to be making an implicit argument here for carefully understanding the facts first before haring off in a fever of righteousness over an inaccurate and perhaps purposefully inflammatory headline.  Boy, I don't think he understands the Internet at all.

PS-  I must agree with one of Ken's commenters -- while this may be absolutely correct as a matter of law, there is something wrong with a legal system that is going to subject Cinemark to a jury decision on whether the actions of a madman, perpetrating a crime that was by all measures unprecedented, were "foreseeable".  There has got to be some safe harbor against being responsible for bad outcomes that occur in the general vicinity of someone with deep pockets.  Juries strike me as a terrible vehicle for making this kind of determination.  Their decision is more likely to be made based on how sympathetic the plaintiff is and how rich and faceless the defendant corporation is, and not whether it is really justice to hammer a movie theater for not being prepared for crazed shooters.

Sign We Are Posting Today in Minnesota

"Due to increases in the Minnesota minimum wage, daily camping rates will increase by $2 in 2015 and an additional $1 in 2016."