Posts Tagged With: Articles & Opinion

Social Networks

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Christopher Beam has an article on Slate about how Facebook may end up becoming far more popular than other big Internet sites, because it has the social network already built in. He also talks about how corporations fail miserably at attracting their own social networks.
Every major corporation, it seems, is trying to add social networking to their core services. Netflix, for example, allows you to keep tabs on what your "friends" are watching. But it makes much more sense to peddle your services on a huge, prebuilt network—no wonder Netflix users can now check their buddies' queues on Facebook. And we're not only talking about businesses: Just look at Barack Obama's campaign. Thousands of users have downloaded the Obama Facebook application since late May, and hundreds of thousands more have joined Obama-themed groups. Compare that to the relatively paltry 70,000 registered users on the candidate's custom-made social network, My.BarackObama.com. Using the Facebook network as a delivery system, it seems, is easier and more productive than creating the system yourself.
In a way, duh. It's much smarter to work through the established network than try to set up your own. Social networks are a lot more valuable if all your friends are already on them. Penn has its own social network called "Pennster." This probably took someone a lot of time to set up, and it will never work, because everyone and their parents (but not mine, yet) have a Facebook. The first thing everyone does when they get their college email is get their Facebook account. Also, social networks organized around corporations are limited in scope. It would feel weird to discuss the ending of the Sopranos, or celebrities, or dating, or anything else on the Barack Obama social network. Although his ringtones are pretty cool.

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Health Care Quote of the Day

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From Judge Richard Posner: "The current concern about the health system, which generates plans such as the Edwards plan, may be misplaced. It is true that health costs are rising faster than the inflation rate. But rising costs, even of "essential" products and services, such as food, health care, and national defense, do not necessarily demonstrate the existence of a problem. Costs may be rising because quality is rising, which is true of health care (new and better therapies and diagnostic tools), or because demand is rising (and average cost is not flat or declining), which is also true; as people live longer, their demand for health care rises because more health care is required to keep people alive and healthy the older they are. In addition, much health care is in fact discretionary (cosmetic surgery is only one example; others are treatment for mild depression and other mild emotional or cognitive problems and treatments designed to enhance athletic ability), and demand for it can be expected to rise if quality rises relative to price. "It is also true that Americans spend much more on health care on average than the people in other wealthy countries do, without greater longevity to show for these expenditures. But health care does much more than extend life; it alleviates pain, discomfort, disfigurement, limited mobility, visual and hearing impairments, and mental suffering, and it is not clear that foreign health systems, which also involve considerable costs in queuing, do these things as well. In addition, the better a nation's health care is, the riskier the population's life style is likely to be, because the cost of obesity and other risk factors for disease is less." The full text is here. When Tyler Cowen and Greg Mankiw wake up I expect they'll link to this article too. In the hysteria of, "We deserve cheap good healthcare," these points are forgotten. Of course there are issues with the current system. I listened Posner talk earlier this year. While he made very good points, he is a more compelling writer than speaker.

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Coulson on Educational Standards

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From the Washington Post Online: "Cementing the coalition, Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) and Rep. Vernon Ehlers (R-Mich.) have recently proposed a bill to create a national curriculum in reading and math. The bill's supporters rightly tell us that by the end of high school, American students have fallen behind their international peers. Dodd and Ehlers use that observation to conclude that we need such a curriculum "to compete in the global economy." "But how exactly would homogenizing our curriculum and testing make us more competitive? "National standards would help propel U.S. economic competitiveness, because they would allow the country to set expectations higher than those of our international competitors," write Rudy Crew and Paul Vallas, the superintendents of the Miami and Philadelphia school districts, in a recent Education Week commentary. ..."But sports and manufacturing are competitive fields, while public schooling currently is not. Standards advocates mistakenly assume that high external standards produce excellence, but in fact it is the competitive pursuit of excellence that produces high standards. "We understand this point implicitly in every field outside of education. We didn't progress from four-inch black-and-white cathode ray tubes to four-foot flat panels because the federal government raised television standards. Apple did not increase the capacity of its iPod from 5 to 80 gigabytes in five years because of some bureaucratic mandate. And the Soviet Union did not collapse because the targets for its five-year plans were insufficiently ambitious."

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We Are Less Violent Than Ever

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From Steven Pinker:
Cruelty as entertainment, human sacrifice to indulge superstition, slavery as a labor-saving device, conquest as the mission statement of government, genocide as a means of acquiring real estate, torture and mutilation as routine punishment, the death penalty for misdemeanors and differences of opinion, assassination as the mechanism of political succession, rape as the spoils of war, pogroms as outlets for frustration, homicide as the major form of conflict resolution—all were unexceptionable features of life for most of human history. But, today, they are rare to nonexistent in the West, far less common elsewhere than they used to be, concealed when they do occur, and widely condemned when they are brought to light.

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Iraq

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"So I visit a rundown zoo and see hyenas in miserable cages, lions in miserable cages, and antelopes in miserable cages. I'm disgusted by their conditions, so I attack the zookeepers and set the animals free. The lions eat the antelopes, the hyenas eat the antelopes (and sometimes the lions, too), and the antelopes run for shelter. Should I feel bad for not having minded my own business? No way, says Charles Krauthammer. Hey, who knew that lions liked to eat antelopes?"

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Pigou Club in the Economist

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Petrol taxes Pigou or NoPigou? Nov 9th 2006 From The Economist print edition An old debate gets a makeover in cyberspace ARTHUR PIGOU, an early-20th-century British economist, might well have shuddered at the thought of Facebook.com, a student networking site. A hermetic academic, awkward in the company of women, he surely would have balked at the dating and the picture uploads. But what would he have made of the “Pigou Club”, which has surfaced on Facebook and is giving him unprecedented—even cultish—exposure? His appearance on the internet is down to a contemporary economist clearly at home in cyberspace: Greg Mankiw of Harvard University. For months, Mr Mankiw, a former adviser to George Bush, has been blogging away in support of “Pigovian taxes” on petrol, believing that a levy of $1 a gallon would not only bring America $100 billion of extra revenue but might also reduce global warming. With his Pigou Club Mr Mankiw has whipped up a following behind an economist whose theories on unemployment came under attack from his colleague, John Maynard Keynes. On Facebook, 600 people have signed up to the Pigou Club. Mostly students, they join other Pigovians such as Larry Summers, Gary Becker, and Kenneth Rogoff. Pigou advocated taxation as a way to combat the negative externalities, or side-effects, associated with certain activities. These have been used to justify levies on cigarettes, alcohol and even traffic congestion. Their advocates argue that they could be used to wean Americans off their dependence on petrol, which degrades the environment, props up unsavoury regimes and clogs traffic. But governments are not perfect arbiters, say opponents of the Pigou Club. In the spirit of Ronald Coase, an intellectual nemesis of Pigou, a NoPigou club has taken shape on the internet, with its own Facebook following (though with only 59 supporters so far). Coase claimed that a Pigovian tax would penalise producers and consumers and might have other undesireable side-effects. People should be able to negotiate among themselves when there are side-effects, he said. Terence Corcoran, editor of Canada's Financial Post, writes a NoPigou blog, arguing that such taxes are blunt instruments and governments have insufficient information about them to wield them properly. Pigou did indeed accept that point, albeit rather late in life, so it is unclear how he would have felt about petrol and global warming. One thing, however, is certain: the reclusive outdoorsman would have found the effects of internet fame decidedly taxing.

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How to Fight Terrorists

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English TV stations have a sensible policy whenever there's a pitch invasion or a streaker or someone running onto the field. Rather than show off the person and glorify their actions, they deliberately show scenes elsewhere, of fans watching the game or of players looking disgusted at the person taking over the field. Bruce Schneier has a smart article on how to respond to terrorism, plots, and attacks. The point he makes, correctly, is that the object of a terrorist attack is symbolic and not really important. One plane going down will not destroy Western Civilization. The fear, panic, grandstanding, increased security, and possible recession because of the attack, or planned attack, are much more devastating. The more everyone in the media, in politics, and in security discusses the attacks, the more scared and hyped-up we feel, which is exactly what the other side wants. I was in Oxford when the July 7 bombings hit. The nation mourned for its fallen, yes, but people mainly carried about their business. No one stood around watching the TV for more news about the attacks. Afterwards, the slogan "We Are Not Afraid" was a perfect reaction. People kept riding the Tube like normal. This is the way you defeat terrorists - don't glorify them, ignore them.

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Touché, Mr. Lessig

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Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture From pages 70 and 71 of Lawrence Lessig's 2004 book Free Culture... "In 2002, the RIAA reported that CD sales had fallen by 8.9 percent, from 882 million to 803 million units; revenues fell 6.7 percent. The RIAA blames Internet piracy for the trend, but there are many other causes that could account for this drop. SoundScan, for example, reports a more than 20 percent drop in the number of CDs released since 1999...But let's assume the RIAA is right, and all of the decline in CD sales is due to Internet sharing. Here's the rub: In the same period that the RIAA estimates that 803 milion CD's were sold, the RIAA estimates that 2.1 billion CD's were downloaded for free. Thus, although 2.6 times the total number of CD's sold were downloaded for free, sales revenue fell by just 6.7 percent." He goes on to conclude that stealing a CD and downloading a song are different things. Otherwise the recording industry would be more than broke. This book is a very good introduction to ideas about property and copyright and ownership. Lessig speaks plainly and comprehensively. I'm enjoying this book so far.

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