It isn't uncommon to see an economic analysis of the benefits of a college education or a high school diploma. Typically, the discount expected lifetime incomes for median people of each education level, and then reduce the advantage for college education by taking into account opportunity costs and the costs of getting the education (tuition, room and board, etc.). But, the advantage of education is probably greater than indicated because education also has a powerful impact on unemployment rates, which is rarely taken into account in such studies.
Unemployment not only reduces earnings, it makes it much harder to accumulated liquid savings and makes it much risker to save through in the form of home equity which can be wiped out due to failure to make a payment in a short term interruption of employment. Also, since unemployment tends to coincide with low financial asset prices, it makes the risk of having to sell market prices financial assets that have the highest average returns for a low price much greater. And, income interruption can lead to missed payments on other debts, which in turn can hurt that person's credit and make it more expensive for them to get credit in the future.
Unemployment can also be a self-fulfilling prophecy by making getting a new job now more important than getting a job with the maximum long term income potential even adjusting for the no income delay required to find a better job and larger economy interest rates.
This is one reason why studies of wealth show that people in moderate income professions with high job stability, like teachers, are so good at accumulating wealth compared to the average. Instability of employment does economic harm to people beyond mere lost income.
The dual income amount and unemployment consequences of education go a long way to explaining class structure in the United States.
08 March 2010
Strikes Without Unions
There is nothing fundamentally union specific about the tactic we know as a strike. Strike behavior can arise any time you have a buyer and seller who are locked into dealing with each other to the exclusion of anyone else.
Disney made the obvious when it shut down its ABC station in New York City for fourteen minutes at the start of last night's Academy Awards as a result of a breakdown in its negotiations with Cablevision, which is required to carry all broadcast stations and probably has a larger market share than the actual broadcast market for television in New York.
As unions capture a smaller and smaller share of the private sector work force, and big business continues to consolidate, expect to see more de facto "strikes" between big businesses than we see between management and labor.
Disney made the obvious when it shut down its ABC station in New York City for fourteen minutes at the start of last night's Academy Awards as a result of a breakdown in its negotiations with Cablevision, which is required to carry all broadcast stations and probably has a larger market share than the actual broadcast market for television in New York.
As unions capture a smaller and smaller share of the private sector work force, and big business continues to consolidate, expect to see more de facto "strikes" between big businesses than we see between management and labor.
The Sahel War Continues In Nigeria
[R]ecent clashes involving Muslim herders and Christian villagers that killed hundreds of people near the central city of Jos.
A security meeting in Abuja is begging held as authorities in Jos bury hundreds of hacked bodies of victims, mostly women and children, in mass graves.
A spokesman for the state government, Gregory Nianlong, says at least 500 people were slaughtered in a night raid on three villages near Jos, capital of Plateau state. . . .
Clashes between rival ethnic and religious groups in January left 320 dead in Jos, according to the police. Religious and human-rights activists put the overall toll at more than 500.
Soldiers have been deployed to the affected area, but some residents have criticized the authorities for doing nothing to prevent the bloodshed.
Sectarian violence in central Nigeria has left thousands dead over the past decade.
From here.
Like genocides in Darfur and Rwanda, the massacres in Nigeria that took place at 3 a.m. last night weren't high tech. They were fought with machetes. About 100 suspects have been arrested, but it is hard to tell how authorities would know who was involved.
As the Sahara is expanding Southward, predominantly Muslim herders are being forced South into the territory of subsistance farmers who are predominantly Christian and animist and having a stuggle to survive as the local climate dries. Sudan will hold an independence vote on the issue in January 2011 likely to result in a South Sudan new contry that mostly includes Christians and animists, along this line, although leaving isolated patches of supporters of Southern Sudan that are North of the line like those of the Nuba Mountains( a territory that size of a large county with five language families most of which are part of the farthest Eastern branch of the Niger-Congo languages). This followed long brutal civil war between Northern Muslims and the Southerners.
The basic conflict repeats itself across the Sahel. This rather than Peak Oil, is likely to spawn some very bloody and ruthless conflicts yet to come.
The conflict isn't purely religious, of course. The Northern Muslims in Nigeria and Sudan, for example, both have a large Fulani component, and in Sudan, Nigeria, Niger, and across the Sahel to the West havea large Hasua component. The divides between these two ethnicities, indeed, traceable to medieval African empires, is fading despite linguistic divides (the Fulania speak of Chadic language associated with Afro-Asiatic languages, while the Hasua speak a Niger-Congo language). Both linguistic groups have more than 20 million speakers.
Chrisitians in Nigeria are mostly Anglicans affiliated with the Church of Nigeria, or Roman Catholics.
Religious violence is also common between majority Sunnis and minority Shi'ites in Sokoto State in Nigeria's far Northwest, both of whom are mostly ethnically Hasua. Yoruban Muslims in Southeast Nigeria came to their faith about five hundred years later than Northern Nigeria via expansion of an empire in Mali. About one in nine linguistically Yoruban people are Muslim, while Islam is a predominant religion in the North.
Suggestions Of West African Roots
From West Africa to India
One of the long standing hypotheses of ancient history is that agriculture (and with it settled civilization) made its way to India from the Fertile Cresent to the Indus River Valley around 7,000 BCE. These people, sometimes called the Harappans, engaged in trade with Sumeria, used the same package of crops (wheat and barley) and domesticated animals as those found in the Near East, and used a language that is lost to us, despite inscriptions that may have been a written language which have not been decoded. This part of the hypothesis remains unshaken.
My bet is that the Harappans may have spoken a language descended from the now extinct languages of Elam (in the mountains East of Sumeria in what is now Iran) or Sumeria (in what is now Shi'ite Iraq). But, we may never know.
Another hypothesis is that Dravidian language speakers had a pre-Iron Age agricultural civilization in India prior to the arrival of Indo-Aryan invaders from the North around 1,500 BCE who were effective horse riding warriors, probably originating in an Indo-European language homeland between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea who brought their religion and language (an early version of Hindu Sanskrit culture) to India. This hypothesis also remains unshaken.
A third hypothesis is that the Indus Valley Civilization provided a parent language and culture for the Dravidian culture that is now found in Southern and Eastern India. This hypothesis is increasingly coming under fire.
It now appears that pre-Iron Age farmers of the Indus Valley Civilization, who were one of the first groups to come into contact with the Indo-Aryan invaders from the North, were linguistically, culturally and agriculturally separate from their contemporaries, the Dravidians.
But, there is little evidence to suggest that the stone age agricultural civilization of the Austroasiatic speakers who migrated into India from Southeast Asia provided a source for Dravidian culture either. They didn't domestic crops that the Dravidians use, their languages are very distinct from Dravidian languages, and the isolated pockets of Austroasiatic speakers today suggest that the bronze age Dravidian farmers conquered once much more widely distributed Austroasiatic stone age farmers.
So where did they come from?
In a story every bit as amazing of the colonization of Madagascar from Indonesia thousands of miles to the East, there is increasing evidence that the Dravidian culture of South India had its source in the Sahel farmers of West Africa, thousands of miles to the West at about the same latitude.
From Wikipedia (citations in the original omitted, written by me).
West African Sahel crops like sorghum and pearl millet which grow relatively warm climates with wet summers, thrive in Southern India, which has a similar climate, and arrive in India during the Southern Neolithic period. In contrast, crops domesticated in the Fertile Cresent, which appear in South Asia much earlier (from 7,000 BCE) in the Indus Valley region, which is further North. The shared game is mancala, a game that my children learned at school.
Harvard linguist Michael Witzel also makes the case that early Rigvedic Sanskrit, associated with the Indo-Aryan entry from the North into South Asia from ca. 1,500 BCE to 1,200 BCE in region that would have overlapped mostly with the Indus Valley Civilization, doesn't show Dravidian linguistic influences, and there is evidence than an isolated pocket of Dravidian speakers in Pakistan has a recent origin rather than reflecting an ancient wide distribution.
North India wouldn't have been an attractive place for farmers adapted to West African style agriculture who hadn't had time for their crops to adjust to a new environment to settle, but may have been more attractive for Indus Valley civilization stone age farmers using a Fertile Cresent agricultural package, and/or stone age Austro-Asiatic farmers ultimately tracing their roots to South China. Also, these two stone age farming populations may have had cultural exchanges that could have influenced the languages spoken at the boundary of the Indus River Valley civilization at the eastern headwaters of the Indus River, where the early Indo-Aryan invaders would have burst onto the scene.
The Southern Neolithic sites also have some copper artifacts, but not artifacts of other metals, consistent with the state of West African metallurgy around 2,500 BC. Sahel farmers may have felt pressure from both the South, as Bantu expansion posed a potential threat, and the North from the expanding Sahara Desert, at the time.
Some of these dots related to crop evidence weren't connected until up and coming archaeobotanist Dorian Q. Fuller made them.
Other Potential West African influences
Another group of linguistic suggestions is also interesting. One of the very distinct and near defining features of the Niger-Congo languages spoken in West Africa is that they have "noun classes". In many more familiar languages to English speakers, like French nouns have to agree in gender and number. In Niger-Congo languages, and a small number of other languages, there are distinctions beyond gender and number that are part of their grammar, like distinctions between living and non-living things.
This distinction is also made in the languages of the Caucuses, which have been fiercely resistant to outside influences, and in the Na-Dene languages which include an almost extinct language family found just to the West of the Bering Strait, many of the indigenous languages of Southern Alaska, and the Navajo language of the Southeast. It is also made in a moribund language of the Aboriginal Australians.
The Caucuses are a not implausible source for ancient Northern Siberian languages and a connection to the languages of the Caucuses had been suggested for the Northern Siberian languages now considered part of the Na-Dene languages before that connection was established. The Caucuses are also near the formative area for the Uralic languages (most famously Finnish) which show some similarity to Dravidian.
The same language of the Aboriginal Australians which has noun classes (like many Australian Aboriginal languages) also has a "mother-in-law language," i.e. a different speech register for use in the presence of mothers-in-law and certain other taboo relatives. There are two other vary notable language families where this is found. One is in some North American indignenous languages. Another is in Bantu, the dominant Niger-Congo language with roots in West Africa (Bantu also has Khoisan substrate language influences, for example incorporating click sounds in some areas).
Aboriginal Australians are believed to have arrived rather directly from Africa via Ethiopia and then a "Southern route" along the Indian ocean coast to Australia in a time period probably between 60,000 years ago and 50,000 years ago, providing a basis for a connection to early West African languages.
A West African linguistic connection to the Caucuses would support the apparent similarities between Dravidian and the Uralic languages (most prominently Finnish), even if the exact connection (from Africa to the Caucuses to the Urals, or from Africa to Southern India to the Caucuses to the Urals, for example) is not known.
Afro-centric educators have been pushing the case for West African cultural influences on the rest of the world for decades, mostly focusing on the often not very solid case of Egypt whose influences are much more strongly Ethiopian and Near Eastern in origin. Ironically, the influences appear to be in places they where far less expected: the place from which we draw the term that is the root for "Caucasian" (the anti-septic English language word for "white"), Finland, Southern India, Australia, Northern Siberia, Alaska, Western Canada, and the Navajo. This connected group of languages may even have been the immediate predecessor to the earliest Sino-Tibetan languages that ultimately gave rise to Chinese.
The linguistic connections other than Dravidian aren't as powerful since the total package of connections doesn't seem as great. But, opening up to the possibility of a West African-Dravidian connection makes the other potential links seem much more plausible than they might otherwise have seemed.
One of the long standing hypotheses of ancient history is that agriculture (and with it settled civilization) made its way to India from the Fertile Cresent to the Indus River Valley around 7,000 BCE. These people, sometimes called the Harappans, engaged in trade with Sumeria, used the same package of crops (wheat and barley) and domesticated animals as those found in the Near East, and used a language that is lost to us, despite inscriptions that may have been a written language which have not been decoded. This part of the hypothesis remains unshaken.
My bet is that the Harappans may have spoken a language descended from the now extinct languages of Elam (in the mountains East of Sumeria in what is now Iran) or Sumeria (in what is now Shi'ite Iraq). But, we may never know.
Another hypothesis is that Dravidian language speakers had a pre-Iron Age agricultural civilization in India prior to the arrival of Indo-Aryan invaders from the North around 1,500 BCE who were effective horse riding warriors, probably originating in an Indo-European language homeland between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea who brought their religion and language (an early version of Hindu Sanskrit culture) to India. This hypothesis also remains unshaken.
A third hypothesis is that the Indus Valley Civilization provided a parent language and culture for the Dravidian culture that is now found in Southern and Eastern India. This hypothesis is increasingly coming under fire.
It now appears that pre-Iron Age farmers of the Indus Valley Civilization, who were one of the first groups to come into contact with the Indo-Aryan invaders from the North, were linguistically, culturally and agriculturally separate from their contemporaries, the Dravidians.
But, there is little evidence to suggest that the stone age agricultural civilization of the Austroasiatic speakers who migrated into India from Southeast Asia provided a source for Dravidian culture either. They didn't domestic crops that the Dravidians use, their languages are very distinct from Dravidian languages, and the isolated pockets of Austroasiatic speakers today suggest that the bronze age Dravidian farmers conquered once much more widely distributed Austroasiatic stone age farmers.
So where did they come from?
In a story every bit as amazing of the colonization of Madagascar from Indonesia thousands of miles to the East, there is increasing evidence that the Dravidian culture of South India had its source in the Sahel farmers of West Africa, thousands of miles to the West at about the same latitude.
Historical records suggest that the South Dravidian language group had separated from a Proto-Dravidian language no later than 700 BCE, and linguistic evidence suggests that they probably became distinctive around 1,100 BCE, and some scholars using linguistic methods put the deepest divisions in the language group at roughly 3,000 BCE. Russian linguist M.S. Andronov puts the split between Tamil (a written Southern Dravidian language) and Telugu (a written Northern Dravidian language) at 1,500 BCE to 1,000 BCE.
Southworth, identifies late Proto-Dravidian with the Southern Neolithic culture in the lower Godavari River basin of South Central India, which first appeared ca. 2,500 BCE, based upon its agricultural vocabulary, while noting that this "would not preclude the possibility that speakers of an earlier stage of Dravidian entered the subcontinent from western or central Asia, as has often been suggested." . . .
French anthropologist Bernard Sergent, in La Genèse de l'Inde (1997), argued in 1997 that Dravidian language and culture has its roots in West Africa arriving in coastal West India around 2,500 BCE as a culture distinct from and contemporaneous with the Indus Valley Civilization. In this view, Dravidian is an offshoot of the Niger-Congo languages (sometimes called the Niger-Kordofanian) and of the Mande languages sometimes linked with them. In addition to linguistic similarities he points to other cultural connections such as similarities in musical instruments, matrilineal lineages, a shared game, acceptance of cousin marriage, and the use of rounded huts. Upadhyaya and Upadhyaya agree regarding the linguistic connections which they observed as early as 1976, as does C. Winters, on the basis of linguistic, and crop genetics evidence.
From Wikipedia (citations in the original omitted, written by me).
West African Sahel crops like sorghum and pearl millet which grow relatively warm climates with wet summers, thrive in Southern India, which has a similar climate, and arrive in India during the Southern Neolithic period. In contrast, crops domesticated in the Fertile Cresent, which appear in South Asia much earlier (from 7,000 BCE) in the Indus Valley region, which is further North. The shared game is mancala, a game that my children learned at school.
Harvard linguist Michael Witzel also makes the case that early Rigvedic Sanskrit, associated with the Indo-Aryan entry from the North into South Asia from ca. 1,500 BCE to 1,200 BCE in region that would have overlapped mostly with the Indus Valley Civilization, doesn't show Dravidian linguistic influences, and there is evidence than an isolated pocket of Dravidian speakers in Pakistan has a recent origin rather than reflecting an ancient wide distribution.
North India wouldn't have been an attractive place for farmers adapted to West African style agriculture who hadn't had time for their crops to adjust to a new environment to settle, but may have been more attractive for Indus Valley civilization stone age farmers using a Fertile Cresent agricultural package, and/or stone age Austro-Asiatic farmers ultimately tracing their roots to South China. Also, these two stone age farming populations may have had cultural exchanges that could have influenced the languages spoken at the boundary of the Indus River Valley civilization at the eastern headwaters of the Indus River, where the early Indo-Aryan invaders would have burst onto the scene.
The Southern Neolithic sites also have some copper artifacts, but not artifacts of other metals, consistent with the state of West African metallurgy around 2,500 BC. Sahel farmers may have felt pressure from both the South, as Bantu expansion posed a potential threat, and the North from the expanding Sahara Desert, at the time.
Some of these dots related to crop evidence weren't connected until up and coming archaeobotanist Dorian Q. Fuller made them.
Other Potential West African influences
Another group of linguistic suggestions is also interesting. One of the very distinct and near defining features of the Niger-Congo languages spoken in West Africa is that they have "noun classes". In many more familiar languages to English speakers, like French nouns have to agree in gender and number. In Niger-Congo languages, and a small number of other languages, there are distinctions beyond gender and number that are part of their grammar, like distinctions between living and non-living things.
This distinction is also made in the languages of the Caucuses, which have been fiercely resistant to outside influences, and in the Na-Dene languages which include an almost extinct language family found just to the West of the Bering Strait, many of the indigenous languages of Southern Alaska, and the Navajo language of the Southeast. It is also made in a moribund language of the Aboriginal Australians.
The Caucuses are a not implausible source for ancient Northern Siberian languages and a connection to the languages of the Caucuses had been suggested for the Northern Siberian languages now considered part of the Na-Dene languages before that connection was established. The Caucuses are also near the formative area for the Uralic languages (most famously Finnish) which show some similarity to Dravidian.
The same language of the Aboriginal Australians which has noun classes (like many Australian Aboriginal languages) also has a "mother-in-law language," i.e. a different speech register for use in the presence of mothers-in-law and certain other taboo relatives. There are two other vary notable language families where this is found. One is in some North American indignenous languages. Another is in Bantu, the dominant Niger-Congo language with roots in West Africa (Bantu also has Khoisan substrate language influences, for example incorporating click sounds in some areas).
Aboriginal Australians are believed to have arrived rather directly from Africa via Ethiopia and then a "Southern route" along the Indian ocean coast to Australia in a time period probably between 60,000 years ago and 50,000 years ago, providing a basis for a connection to early West African languages.
A West African linguistic connection to the Caucuses would support the apparent similarities between Dravidian and the Uralic languages (most prominently Finnish), even if the exact connection (from Africa to the Caucuses to the Urals, or from Africa to Southern India to the Caucuses to the Urals, for example) is not known.
Afro-centric educators have been pushing the case for West African cultural influences on the rest of the world for decades, mostly focusing on the often not very solid case of Egypt whose influences are much more strongly Ethiopian and Near Eastern in origin. Ironically, the influences appear to be in places they where far less expected: the place from which we draw the term that is the root for "Caucasian" (the anti-septic English language word for "white"), Finland, Southern India, Australia, Northern Siberia, Alaska, Western Canada, and the Navajo. This connected group of languages may even have been the immediate predecessor to the earliest Sino-Tibetan languages that ultimately gave rise to Chinese.
The linguistic connections other than Dravidian aren't as powerful since the total package of connections doesn't seem as great. But, opening up to the possibility of a West African-Dravidian connection makes the other potential links seem much more plausible than they might otherwise have seemed.
05 March 2010
Is A Long Ballot Bad?
A post here explores the pros and cons of giving voters ballots with large numbers of offices to fill, one unique to the United States and Switzerland.
I personally oppose the long ballot for meritocratic positions.
I personally oppose the long ballot for meritocratic positions.
Bloggers More Ethical Than MSM
Bloggers have a better record of not jumping the gun on information in embargoed press releases (i.e. press releases distributed early to blogs and media with a "do not release before X" time and date) than main stream media sources.
Employment Situation Still Dire
The employment situation is still bad. Jobs continue to disappear staying at or near the post-Great Depression low with no sign of a rapid turn around. Unemployment at 9.7% is still very high, and the ranks of the involuntarily part time workers, and long term (more than 26 weeks) unemployment are also at or near record post-Great Depression highs. The employment per population ratio remains near the post-women's liberation low.
Since the financial crisis began in 2007, we've been losing jobs for 26 months, and the number of jobs in the economy is down more than 6% from the peak.
In all but three other post-World War II recessions, all job losses had been replaced by job gains in 26 months.
In the 1981 recession, 3% of jobs had been lost at the low point, but all but payrolls had recovered to 0.5% below peak jobs after 26 months and all jobs were restored by 27-28 months out.
In the far more gentle 1990 recession, peak job loss was 1.4%, and after 26 months, payrolls were about 0.8% below were they were when they started and all jobs were restored by 30 months out.
The 2001 tech bust showed a similar pattern to the current recession. It took 47 months for the jobs lost in that recession to be fully made up and it was still at the bottom of job losses 26 months out. But, it was far less severe. It destroyed 2% of the jobs in the economy, about a third as many as the current financial crisis driven recession.
If the trend lines of past recessions are any indication, it could easily take until late 2011 or early 2012 for the U.S. economy to recover all the jobs it has lost in this recession.
Since the financial crisis began in 2007, we've been losing jobs for 26 months, and the number of jobs in the economy is down more than 6% from the peak.
In all but three other post-World War II recessions, all job losses had been replaced by job gains in 26 months.
In the 1981 recession, 3% of jobs had been lost at the low point, but all but payrolls had recovered to 0.5% below peak jobs after 26 months and all jobs were restored by 27-28 months out.
In the far more gentle 1990 recession, peak job loss was 1.4%, and after 26 months, payrolls were about 0.8% below were they were when they started and all jobs were restored by 30 months out.
The 2001 tech bust showed a similar pattern to the current recession. It took 47 months for the jobs lost in that recession to be fully made up and it was still at the bottom of job losses 26 months out. But, it was far less severe. It destroyed 2% of the jobs in the economy, about a third as many as the current financial crisis driven recession.
If the trend lines of past recessions are any indication, it could easily take until late 2011 or early 2012 for the U.S. economy to recover all the jobs it has lost in this recession.
04 March 2010
The Case Against Small Aircraft Carriers
Aircraft carriers come in basically two sizes. The supercarriers of the United States, and the smaller aircraft carriers that can support only modest numbers of short takeoff, vertical landing aircraft or helicopters, rather than a large contingent of fixed wing fighter aircraft. Smaller aircraft carriers are the variety used by every country other than the United States that has them, and by the United States Marines.
The issue matters now, not only because it is relevant to whether we should build new small aircraft carriers. It is also goes to the question of how badly the United States and its allies need the overbudget, far behind schedule F-35B, which is supposed to replace the aging AV-8B Harrier used by the Marines and most of the nations that own small aircraft carriers.
The following comment from a [purported] Marine at a military policy blog argues that the smaller carriers don't make military sense:
I'm not necessarily convinced that this argument is right. He may be right that they are ill adapted for battles to take control of a "contested airspace" and he may be right that an STOVL fixed wing aircraft doesn't add much on missions where it makes sense to establish expeditionary airfields. But, these aren't the only possible missions for these aircraft. Instead, the right comparison might be whether one would prefer an STOVL F-35B to a helicopter gunship to provide air support to other forces when you do not have "contested airspace."
One of the military roles that the U.S. Marines has filled repeatedly in the past is to provide an off shore base from which to mount a limited military involvement in Third World countries with weak military forces like evacuation of expatriots, or destruction of an isolated military facility that could pose a threat to neighboring nations (like a medium term missile base or chemical weapons factory), or to provide a show of force that discourages the use of military force in the first place.
In this kind of limited, short term or symbolic mission, setting up an "expeditionary airfield" might be impractical or inconsistant with the mission. It isn't wrong to have military capabilities to engage in conflicts other than all out war intended to produce regime changes or gain control of someone else's territory on a prolonged basis.
A small number of F-35B aircraft might provide bombing capacity that helicopters could not, and the fact that these planes might be operating in at least nominally contested airspace, makes their stealth features particularly attractive.
Fixed wing STOVL fighters like the F-35B might also more effective defenses from opposition surface warfare craft or land based artillery or missile units than the alternatives. An F-35B can engage opponents farther away than any naval gun or torpedo, can carry more of a payload and go faster than a helicopter, and provides more flexibility and ability to evaluate potential targets than a cruise missile.
And, of course, nothing prevents the U.S. military from deploying more than one small aircraft carrier to a conflict to increase the number of available aircraft, rather than putting all of our eggs in one basket.
These possibilities still don't necessarily mean that small aircraft carriers make sense. An expeditionary airfield isn't the only one can deliver explosives to targets in in a distant land without STOVL technology. One can use long range bombers like the B-2, unmanned armed drone aircraft, ship or B-52 or submarine based cruise missiles, or ordinary fixed wing aircraft whose range is extended with tanker aircraft.
All of these alternatives have drawbacks. The trouble with the B-2, B-52 or ordinary aircraft whose range is extended with tanker aircraft, is that it takes more advanced planning; these options are less well suited to rapidly reacting to new developments on the ground. The gap isn't as great for helicopters, but helicopters are still slower, fly lower and have smaller bomb and missile payloads than STOVL fixed wing aircraft. Ship or submarine based cruise missiles also have limitations: they are blunt instruments that may be harder to use when your friends and your foes are close together in a rapidly evolving situation on the ground. Meanwhile, armed drone technology isn't quite ready to deliver the capabilities that an F-35B would provide, although it appears that this kind of capability might be available in the near future.
Given this analysis, the question then becomes whether the narrow kind of mission for which the F-35B is optimal is superior enough to the alternatives and important enough to overall U.S. military power to justify its great expense, and how many of them are necessary to adequately provide the capabilities where it is optimal.
For example, it might make sense to make a smaller F-35B buy, on the assumption that small aircraft carriers would use a "just in time" basing approach to them. Rather than assigning a full fleet of F-35B's to every small carrier, air tanker ferrying might be used to deliver F-35Bs to small carriers only when they arrive at destinations where there is a chance that they will be needed. A compliment of F-35Bs can be delivered as quickly as a Fed Ex package, and fresh pilots could be delivered separately so that the exhausted pilots who make the long delivery trip wouldn't have to be ready for action at a moment's notice when they arrived at their destination.
An Outline And Analysis Of A Smaller F-35 Buy
Since the kind of operations where an F-35B would be most useful are rare enough that they wouldn't be necessary in more than two places on the globe at any one time, it might be possible to have ready to go F-35Bs every place they were needed with a fleet of fewer than 40 F-35Bs (assuming that 50% of the fleet would be unavailable for maintenance reasons at any one time). If the Marines made a smaller buy, they would also need to buy a few hundred ordinary fixed wing aircraft for missions that didn't require STOVL capabilities; but while the Marines might not prefer to have two models of fighters to deal with, they currently use a combination of F-18s and AV-8Bs, so it isn't anything that Marines haven't had to deal with already. A mix of F-35As and F-35Bs would be less of a gap to bridge than the current mix for the Marines.
The current plan is for the U.S. to buy about 2,400 F-35s (about 1,760 of the F-35A variety and the remaining 640 of the F-35B and F-35C variety), including about 90 of the F-35B and 45 of the F-35C supercarrier variety in the next four years or so.
If the F-35C model were scrapped entirely in lieu of the still in production F-18, and the domestic F-35B model buy were reduced to perhaps 80 (40 for the Marines and 40 to add to the mix of aircraft available to Navy carriers), then the only one of the F-35 models being produced solely for U.S. consumption could be discontinued, and the share of the total buy allocated to the least technology risky, least expensive of the three types of F-35s could be increased. The total domestic buy of the more expensive B and C models would be reduced from 640 to 80, with less expensive F-35As and F-18s making up the remaining 560 aircraft buy.
Also, while the F-35A is clearly necessary to replace the aging F-16 fleet, it isn't obvious that we really need 1,760 F-35As for the Air Force and 560 combined F-35As and F-18s for the Navy and Marines. Given the dramatic improvement that have been made in bombing run accuracy, we may not need 2,320 new top of the line jet fighter aircraft (plus 180 or so F-22s) to replace the existing fleet of F-15s, F-16 and F-18s. Those numbers assume close to 1 to 1 replacement of existing aircraft. But, it is already common for U.S. supercarriers to be deployed only half full of aircraft (and the just in time approach suggested for small carriers could also be used for large carriers). Some roles proposed for the F-35A by the Air Force (like homeland defense and close air support) could probably be filled just as well by less expensive aircraft that don't suffer from the F-35's feature bloat. And, it may not be necessary to replace old planes with new planes at a 1-1 ratio in a post-Cold War era in light of improved bombing accuracy and stealth technology.
It certainly wouldn't be unreasonable to think that the Air Force, Marines and Navy combined could be adequately operated with 80 F-35Bs, a couple hundred new F-18s, and 1,420 F-35As (perhaps 1,100 for the Air Force and 320 for the Marines). This 900 plane reduction in the total F-35 buy (offset by a couple hundred more F-18s than planned and perhaps four hundred less expensive existing design, narrower capability Air Force aircraft at $30 million each) might reduce the total cost of aircraft purchases by $60 billion or more. These freed up funds could be used partially for other more pressing defense budget purposes and partially to reduce overall defense spending.
Certainly, this would leave the U.S. military with a smaller aircraft fleet than it has requested. But, this would still provide:
* An Air Force with 180 F-22s, 1,100 new F-35As, and 400 less capable new planes designed for homeland defense or close air support in environments where we control the air space and potential foes don't have radar. Also, perhaps 200 of our newest F-15s and F-16s would be retained until the end of their useful lives.
This would also probably reduce the size of the active duty Air Force by at least several thousand airmen.
* A Marine Corps with 320 new F-35As and 40 new F-35Bs. The F-35Bs would be deployed on a just in time basis.
* A Navy with 200 new F-18s and 40 new F-35Bs. Perhaps 160 existing F-18s would be retained. A significant share of carrier based aircraft would be deployed on a just in time basis.
How Would This Force Measure Up?
A combined U.S. military fighter fleet with 2,640 fighters would still be the largest in the world in raw numbers, and would be particularly powerful considering how advanced these fighters would be technologically compared to many of its potential opposition forces. China, for example, has about 1,420 fighter aircraft, many of which are old and technologically inferior. Russia has about 1,520 fighter aircraft, which while more advanced than the Chinese fleet, is still not as advanced as the U.S. fighter force would be after even a scaled back F-35 buy.
It is also almost inconceivable that the U.S. would start an air war requiring almost all of its fighter resources without supplementation from allies who also have numerous fighter aircraft. Taiwan, for example, has about 440 fighter aircraft, Japan has about 260, South Korea has about 470, Germany has about 265, Italy has about 190, the U.K. has more than 300.
Combined with likely allies in foreseeable conflicts, the smaller buy would still be large enough to outnumber either Chinese or Russian fighter forces by a 2-1 margin with the larger force also being technologically superior, something that the U.S. people were told when they were purchased would provide a decisive advantage in their military missions.
Savings from cuts to the F-35 program (also also to some planned U.S. Navy acquisitions) could free up considerable funds for other urgent military procurement needs, even if only half of the funds freed up were retained by the Department of Defense.
The issue matters now, not only because it is relevant to whether we should build new small aircraft carriers. It is also goes to the question of how badly the United States and its allies need the overbudget, far behind schedule F-35B, which is supposed to replace the aging AV-8B Harrier used by the Marines and most of the nations that own small aircraft carriers.
The following comment from a [purported] Marine at a military policy blog argues that the smaller carriers don't make military sense:
I'm a Marine and a firm believer that the USMC does not need VTOL or VSTOL as currently engineered. It gives us too little firepower for greater risk and price and reduced performance in every metric. We lay down expeditionary airfields everywhere we stay for any length of time - we can support fixed wing from there just fine. We don't need stovl for the amphibious ships, because there isn't enough space to carry enough aircraft to perform any contested airspace mission, and if it is contested airspace, we will have joint and carrier support as well. Again, once we are ashore, we can support normal fixed wing from EAFs we build.
I'm not necessarily convinced that this argument is right. He may be right that they are ill adapted for battles to take control of a "contested airspace" and he may be right that an STOVL fixed wing aircraft doesn't add much on missions where it makes sense to establish expeditionary airfields. But, these aren't the only possible missions for these aircraft. Instead, the right comparison might be whether one would prefer an STOVL F-35B to a helicopter gunship to provide air support to other forces when you do not have "contested airspace."
One of the military roles that the U.S. Marines has filled repeatedly in the past is to provide an off shore base from which to mount a limited military involvement in Third World countries with weak military forces like evacuation of expatriots, or destruction of an isolated military facility that could pose a threat to neighboring nations (like a medium term missile base or chemical weapons factory), or to provide a show of force that discourages the use of military force in the first place.
In this kind of limited, short term or symbolic mission, setting up an "expeditionary airfield" might be impractical or inconsistant with the mission. It isn't wrong to have military capabilities to engage in conflicts other than all out war intended to produce regime changes or gain control of someone else's territory on a prolonged basis.
A small number of F-35B aircraft might provide bombing capacity that helicopters could not, and the fact that these planes might be operating in at least nominally contested airspace, makes their stealth features particularly attractive.
Fixed wing STOVL fighters like the F-35B might also more effective defenses from opposition surface warfare craft or land based artillery or missile units than the alternatives. An F-35B can engage opponents farther away than any naval gun or torpedo, can carry more of a payload and go faster than a helicopter, and provides more flexibility and ability to evaluate potential targets than a cruise missile.
And, of course, nothing prevents the U.S. military from deploying more than one small aircraft carrier to a conflict to increase the number of available aircraft, rather than putting all of our eggs in one basket.
These possibilities still don't necessarily mean that small aircraft carriers make sense. An expeditionary airfield isn't the only one can deliver explosives to targets in in a distant land without STOVL technology. One can use long range bombers like the B-2, unmanned armed drone aircraft, ship or B-52 or submarine based cruise missiles, or ordinary fixed wing aircraft whose range is extended with tanker aircraft.
All of these alternatives have drawbacks. The trouble with the B-2, B-52 or ordinary aircraft whose range is extended with tanker aircraft, is that it takes more advanced planning; these options are less well suited to rapidly reacting to new developments on the ground. The gap isn't as great for helicopters, but helicopters are still slower, fly lower and have smaller bomb and missile payloads than STOVL fixed wing aircraft. Ship or submarine based cruise missiles also have limitations: they are blunt instruments that may be harder to use when your friends and your foes are close together in a rapidly evolving situation on the ground. Meanwhile, armed drone technology isn't quite ready to deliver the capabilities that an F-35B would provide, although it appears that this kind of capability might be available in the near future.
Given this analysis, the question then becomes whether the narrow kind of mission for which the F-35B is optimal is superior enough to the alternatives and important enough to overall U.S. military power to justify its great expense, and how many of them are necessary to adequately provide the capabilities where it is optimal.
For example, it might make sense to make a smaller F-35B buy, on the assumption that small aircraft carriers would use a "just in time" basing approach to them. Rather than assigning a full fleet of F-35B's to every small carrier, air tanker ferrying might be used to deliver F-35Bs to small carriers only when they arrive at destinations where there is a chance that they will be needed. A compliment of F-35Bs can be delivered as quickly as a Fed Ex package, and fresh pilots could be delivered separately so that the exhausted pilots who make the long delivery trip wouldn't have to be ready for action at a moment's notice when they arrived at their destination.
An Outline And Analysis Of A Smaller F-35 Buy
Since the kind of operations where an F-35B would be most useful are rare enough that they wouldn't be necessary in more than two places on the globe at any one time, it might be possible to have ready to go F-35Bs every place they were needed with a fleet of fewer than 40 F-35Bs (assuming that 50% of the fleet would be unavailable for maintenance reasons at any one time). If the Marines made a smaller buy, they would also need to buy a few hundred ordinary fixed wing aircraft for missions that didn't require STOVL capabilities; but while the Marines might not prefer to have two models of fighters to deal with, they currently use a combination of F-18s and AV-8Bs, so it isn't anything that Marines haven't had to deal with already. A mix of F-35As and F-35Bs would be less of a gap to bridge than the current mix for the Marines.
The current plan is for the U.S. to buy about 2,400 F-35s (about 1,760 of the F-35A variety and the remaining 640 of the F-35B and F-35C variety), including about 90 of the F-35B and 45 of the F-35C supercarrier variety in the next four years or so.
If the F-35C model were scrapped entirely in lieu of the still in production F-18, and the domestic F-35B model buy were reduced to perhaps 80 (40 for the Marines and 40 to add to the mix of aircraft available to Navy carriers), then the only one of the F-35 models being produced solely for U.S. consumption could be discontinued, and the share of the total buy allocated to the least technology risky, least expensive of the three types of F-35s could be increased. The total domestic buy of the more expensive B and C models would be reduced from 640 to 80, with less expensive F-35As and F-18s making up the remaining 560 aircraft buy.
Also, while the F-35A is clearly necessary to replace the aging F-16 fleet, it isn't obvious that we really need 1,760 F-35As for the Air Force and 560 combined F-35As and F-18s for the Navy and Marines. Given the dramatic improvement that have been made in bombing run accuracy, we may not need 2,320 new top of the line jet fighter aircraft (plus 180 or so F-22s) to replace the existing fleet of F-15s, F-16 and F-18s. Those numbers assume close to 1 to 1 replacement of existing aircraft. But, it is already common for U.S. supercarriers to be deployed only half full of aircraft (and the just in time approach suggested for small carriers could also be used for large carriers). Some roles proposed for the F-35A by the Air Force (like homeland defense and close air support) could probably be filled just as well by less expensive aircraft that don't suffer from the F-35's feature bloat. And, it may not be necessary to replace old planes with new planes at a 1-1 ratio in a post-Cold War era in light of improved bombing accuracy and stealth technology.
It certainly wouldn't be unreasonable to think that the Air Force, Marines and Navy combined could be adequately operated with 80 F-35Bs, a couple hundred new F-18s, and 1,420 F-35As (perhaps 1,100 for the Air Force and 320 for the Marines). This 900 plane reduction in the total F-35 buy (offset by a couple hundred more F-18s than planned and perhaps four hundred less expensive existing design, narrower capability Air Force aircraft at $30 million each) might reduce the total cost of aircraft purchases by $60 billion or more. These freed up funds could be used partially for other more pressing defense budget purposes and partially to reduce overall defense spending.
Certainly, this would leave the U.S. military with a smaller aircraft fleet than it has requested. But, this would still provide:
* An Air Force with 180 F-22s, 1,100 new F-35As, and 400 less capable new planes designed for homeland defense or close air support in environments where we control the air space and potential foes don't have radar. Also, perhaps 200 of our newest F-15s and F-16s would be retained until the end of their useful lives.
This would also probably reduce the size of the active duty Air Force by at least several thousand airmen.
* A Marine Corps with 320 new F-35As and 40 new F-35Bs. The F-35Bs would be deployed on a just in time basis.
* A Navy with 200 new F-18s and 40 new F-35Bs. Perhaps 160 existing F-18s would be retained. A significant share of carrier based aircraft would be deployed on a just in time basis.
How Would This Force Measure Up?
A combined U.S. military fighter fleet with 2,640 fighters would still be the largest in the world in raw numbers, and would be particularly powerful considering how advanced these fighters would be technologically compared to many of its potential opposition forces. China, for example, has about 1,420 fighter aircraft, many of which are old and technologically inferior. Russia has about 1,520 fighter aircraft, which while more advanced than the Chinese fleet, is still not as advanced as the U.S. fighter force would be after even a scaled back F-35 buy.
It is also almost inconceivable that the U.S. would start an air war requiring almost all of its fighter resources without supplementation from allies who also have numerous fighter aircraft. Taiwan, for example, has about 440 fighter aircraft, Japan has about 260, South Korea has about 470, Germany has about 265, Italy has about 190, the U.K. has more than 300.
Combined with likely allies in foreseeable conflicts, the smaller buy would still be large enough to outnumber either Chinese or Russian fighter forces by a 2-1 margin with the larger force also being technologically superior, something that the U.S. people were told when they were purchased would provide a decisive advantage in their military missions.
Savings from cuts to the F-35 program (also also to some planned U.S. Navy acquisitions) could free up considerable funds for other urgent military procurement needs, even if only half of the funds freed up were retained by the Department of Defense.
Housing Credit Inefficient As Stimulus
[T]he extension and expansion of the home buyer tax credit will probably cost taxpayers over $100,000 for each additional home sold.
From here.
Used judiciously, tax law can nudge people in the right direction. But, tax law, and government intervention generally, is profoundly ineffectual in counteracting powerful market trends. Government efforts to "shove" people towards an outcome that markets don't favor work, in practice, more like transfer payments or pork spending than they do like mere economic incentives that change market outcomes.
National Determinants Of Financial Crisis Impact
What factors impact how badly hit a country was by the global financial crisis?
The data point to several factors:
1. The single most important policy factor was the nature of their foreign exchange rate system. Countries with flexible foreign exchange rates set in a currency market did much better than countries whose exchange rates were pegged to another currency. Exchange rate flexibility buffered the impact of the economic shock created by the financial crisis.
2. The financial crisis hit countries "with more leveraged domestic financial systems and more rapid growth in lending to the private sector" harder than those with less leveraged domestic financial systems and less rapid growth in lending to the private sector. This factor was particularly important in "emerging markets."
3. In the case of a large set of "non-emerging market" developing countries, "countries exporting advanced manufacturing goods [were] more affected than those exporting food."
The following countries were classified as "emerging markets":
The data point to several factors:
1. The single most important policy factor was the nature of their foreign exchange rate system. Countries with flexible foreign exchange rates set in a currency market did much better than countries whose exchange rates were pegged to another currency. Exchange rate flexibility buffered the impact of the economic shock created by the financial crisis.
2. The financial crisis hit countries "with more leveraged domestic financial systems and more rapid growth in lending to the private sector" harder than those with less leveraged domestic financial systems and less rapid growth in lending to the private sector. This factor was particularly important in "emerging markets."
3. In the case of a large set of "non-emerging market" developing countries, "countries exporting advanced manufacturing goods [were] more affected than those exporting food."
[F]or the emerging market countries, the main avenue of transmission of the shock appears to have been financial channels, particularly through rapid credit growth and high leverage, with the damage aggravated by pegged exchange rates. Leverage explains virtually all of the growth revision for the least affected countries in the sample, roughly two thirds of the revision for the average country, and slightly more than half of the revision for those countries most affected by the crisis. Credit growth explains a significant share of the growth revision for the average country as well as those most affected. None of the least affected countries in the sample had a pegged exchange rate, while limited exchange rate flexibility explains a significant share of the growth revision of the most affected countries.
The following countries were classified as "emerging markets":
Albania Croatia Lithuania Romania
Argentina Czech Republic Malaysia Russia
Azerbaijan, Rep. of Ecuador Mexico Saudi Arabia
Belarus Egypt Moldova Slovak Republic
Bolivia Estonia Nigeria Slovenia
Brazil Georgia Pakistan South Africa
Bulgaria Hungary Panama Thailand
Chile India Paraguay Turkey
China,P.R.: Mainland Indonesia Peru Ukraine
Colombia Kazakhstan Philippines Uruguay
Costa Rica Latvia Poland
Nuance On Useage Rules
This post makes the important observation that even a descriptivist approach to proper useage, i.e. an approach based on actual practice by educated writers in edited work, acknowledges that in practice there are many clear and binding rules of language useage.
While descriptivists acknowledge as valid based on empirical evidedence about how people who know what they are doing use language, many uses that are rejected as incorrect by prescriptivists because they do not not fit certain theoretical rules of grammar, the gray area that separates the two approaches to evaluating the correctness of language useage are fairly modest.
While descriptivists acknowledge as valid based on empirical evidedence about how people who know what they are doing use language, many uses that are rejected as incorrect by prescriptivists because they do not not fit certain theoretical rules of grammar, the gray area that separates the two approaches to evaluating the correctness of language useage are fairly modest.
Billboard Luddites In Denver
A group called Scenic Colorado has organized in Denver mostly, it seems, to push for a ban on electronic billboards that the City and County of Denver is considering acting as an ordinance.
Earlier this week, I got a flyer for them, warning me that without my action, billboards everywhere could be replaced with electric ones.
My reaction? "So what?"
There is an electric billboard right outside my Cherry Creek office. It isn't any more or less noticeable than the non-electric one that was there before, except that the advertising changes more often, so it isn't as boring. Presumably, it also puts some people in business of printing overside billboard posters and the people who put them up on polls out of work. But, I really see no way to care one way or the other and simply do not see what is so noxious about this new technology.
Their FAQ is singularly unconvincing.
There may be an argument for limiting the locations where billboards can be put, but there is no legitimate reasons to prevent billboards from being electronic in places where ordinary billboards once went.
Earlier this week, I got a flyer for them, warning me that without my action, billboards everywhere could be replaced with electric ones.
My reaction? "So what?"
There is an electric billboard right outside my Cherry Creek office. It isn't any more or less noticeable than the non-electric one that was there before, except that the advertising changes more often, so it isn't as boring. Presumably, it also puts some people in business of printing overside billboard posters and the people who put them up on polls out of work. But, I really see no way to care one way or the other and simply do not see what is so noxious about this new technology.
Their FAQ is singularly unconvincing.
There may be an argument for limiting the locations where billboards can be put, but there is no legitimate reasons to prevent billboards from being electronic in places where ordinary billboards once went.
03 March 2010
Federal Anti-SLAPP Law In Works
SLAPP stands for "Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation" and many states have laws to discourage such suits, although at least twenty do not. H.R.4364 titled the Citizen Participation Act of 2009 would provide a federal floor of protection.
The scheme is similar to the one involved in a claim of governmental immunity.
The important parts of the Bill's language are below:
Hat Tip to Eric Goldman's Technology and Marketing blog.
Goldman favors further legislation targeted at unsupported cease and desist letters.
The scheme is similar to the one involved in a claim of governmental immunity.
The important parts of the Bill's language are below:
SEC. 3. IMMUNITY FOR PETITION ACTIVITY.
(a) Immunity- Any act of petitioning the government made without knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard of falsity shall be immune from civil liability.
(b) Burden and Standard of Proof- A plaintiff must prove knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard of falsity by clear and convincing evidence.
SEC. 4. PROTECTION FOR PETITION AND SPEECH ACTIVITY.
Any act in furtherance of the constitutional right of petition or free speech shall be entitled to the procedural protections provided in this Act.
SEC. 5. SPECIAL MOTION TO DISMISS.
(a) In General- A party may file a special motion to dismiss any claim arising from an act or alleged act in furtherance of the constitutional right of petition or free speech within 45 days after service of the claim if the claim was filed in Federal court or, if the claim was removed to Federal court pursuant to section 6 of this Act, within 15 days after removal.
(b) Burdens of the Parties- A party filing a special motion to dismiss under this Act has the initial burden of making a prima facie showing that the claim at issue arises from an act in furtherance of the constitutional right of petition or free speech. If the moving party meets this burden, the burden shifts to the responding party to demonstrate that the claim is both legally sufficient and supported by a sufficient prima facie showing of facts to sustain a favorable judgment.
(c) Stay of Discovery- Upon the filing of a special motion to dismiss, discovery proceedings in the action shall be stayed until notice of entry of an order disposing of the motion, except that the court, on noticed motion and for good cause shown, may order that specified discovery be conducted.
(d) Expedited Hearing- The court shall hold an expedited hearing on the special motion to dismiss, and issue a ruling as soon as practicable after the hearing. The parties may submit the pleadings and affidavits stating the facts upon which the liability or defense is based. The court shall explain the reasons for its grant or denial of the motion in a statement for the record. If the special motion to dismiss is granted, dismissal shall be with prejudice.
(e) Immediate Appeal- The defendant shall have a right of immediate appeal from a district court order denying a special motion to dismiss in whole or in part.
SEC. 6. FEDERAL REMOVAL JURISDICTION.
(a) In General- A civil action commenced in a State court against any person who asserts as a defense the immunity provided for in section 3 of this Act, or asserts that the action arises from an act in furtherance of the constitutional right of petition or free speech, may be removed by the defendant to the district court of the United States for the district and division embracing the place wherein it is pending.
(b) Remand of Remaining Claims- A court exercising jurisdiction under this section shall remand any claims against which the special motion to dismiss has been denied, as well as any remaining claims against which a special motion to dismiss was not brought, to the State court from which it was removed.
(c) Timing- A court exercising jurisdiction under this section shall remand an action if a special motion to dismiss is not filed within 15 days after removal.
SEC. 7. SPECIAL MOTION TO QUASH.
(a) In General- A person whose personally identifying information is sought in connection with an action pending in Federal court arising from an act in furtherance of the constitutional right of petition or free speech may make a special motion to quash the discovery order, request or subpoena.
(b) Burdens of the Parties- The person bringing a special motion to quash under this section must make a prima facie showing that the underlying claim arises from an act in furtherance of the constitutional right of petition or free speech. If this burden is met, the burden shifts to the plaintiff in the underlying action to demonstrate that the underlying claim is both legally sufficient and supported by a sufficient prima facie showing of facts to sustain a favorable judgment. This standard shall apply only to a special motion to quash brought under this section.
SEC. 8. FEES AND COSTS.
(a) Attorney’s Fees- The court shall award a moving party who prevails on a special motion to dismiss or quash the costs of litigation, including a reasonable attorney’s fee.
(b) Frivolous Motions and Removal- If the court finds that a special motion to dismiss, special motion to quash, or the removal of a claim under this Act is frivolous or is solely intended to cause unnecessary delay, the court may award a reasonable attorney’s fees and costs to the responding party.
(c) Government Entities- A government entity may not recover fees pursuant to this section.
SEC. 9. BANKRUPTCY NONDISCHARGABILITY OF FEES AND COSTS.
Fees or costs awarded against a party by a court for the prosecution of any claim finally dismissed pursuant to this Act, or any subpoena or discovery order quashed pursuant to this Act, or any claim finally dismissed pursuant to a State anti-SLAPP law, shall not be dischargeable in bankruptcy under section 1328 or section 523 of title 11, United States Code.
SEC. 10. EXEMPTIONS.
(a) Public Enforcement- Sections 4 through 8 of this Act shall not be available in any action brought solely on behalf of the public or solely to enforce an important right affecting the public interest.
(b) Commercial Speech- This Act shall not apply to any claim for relief brought against a person primarily engaged in the business of selling or leasing goods or services, if the statement or conduct from which the claim arises is a representation of fact made for the purpose of promoting, securing or completing sales or leases of, or commercial transactions in, the person’s goods or services, and the intended audience is an actual or potential buyer or customer.
(c) ‘SLAPP-back’ Suits- This Act shall not be available to dismiss any action or claim arising from a claim that has been dismissed pursuant to this Act or to a State anti-SLAPP law.
SEC. 11. DEFINITIONS.
In this Act:
(1) ACT IN FURTHERANCE OF THE RIGHT OF FREE SPEECH- The term ‘act in furtherance of the right of free speech’ includes but is not limited to--
(A) any written or oral statement made in connection with an issue under consideration or review by a legislative, executive, or judicial body, or any other official proceeding authorized by law;
(B) any written or oral statement made in a place open to the public or a public forum in connection with an issue of public interest; or
(C) any other conduct in furtherance of the exercise of the constitutional right of petition or the constitutional right of free speech in connection with an issue of public interest.
(2) ACT OF PETITIONING THE GOVERNMENT- The term ‘act of petitioning the government’ includes but is not limited to any written or oral statement--
(A) made or submitted before a legislative, executive, or judicial body, or any other official proceeding authorized by law; or
(B) any written or oral statement encouraging a statement before a legislative, executive, or judicial body, or any other official proceeding authorized by law.
(3) CLAIM- The term ‘claim’ includes any civil lawsuit, claim, complaint, cause of action, cross-claim, counterclaim, or other judicial pleading or filing requesting relief.
(4) GOVERNMENT ENTITY- The term ‘government entity’ includes the United States, a branch, department, agency, State, or subdivision of a State, or other public authority.
(5) ISSUE OF PUBLIC INTEREST- The term ‘issue of public interest’ includes an issue related to health or safety; environmental, economic or community well-being; the government; a public figure; or a good, product or service in the market place. ‘Issue of public interest’ shall not be construed to include private interests, such as statements directed primarily toward protecting the speaker’s business interests rather than toward commenting on or sharing information about a matter of public significance.
(6) PERSONALLY IDENTIFYING INFORMATION- The term ‘personally identifying information’ means first and last name or last name only; home or other physical address including temporary shelter or housing and including a street name or ZIP Code; full date of birth; email address or other online contact information; telephone number; social security number; Internet protocol address or host name that identifies an individual, or any other information that would serve to identify an individual.
(7) STATE- The term ‘State’ means each of the several States, the District of Columbia, and any commonwealth, territory, or possession of the United States. . . .
SEC. 13. RELATIONSHIP TO OTHER LAWS.
Nothing in this Act shall preempt or supersede any Federal, State, constitutional, case or common law that provides the equivalent or greater protection for persons engaging in activities in furtherance of the rights of petition or free speech.
Hat Tip to Eric Goldman's Technology and Marketing blog.
Goldman favors further legislation targeted at unsupported cease and desist letters.
02 March 2010
Same Sex Marriages To Come To D.C.
A law allowing same sex marriage in the District of Columbia has survived an effort to postpone its effective date pending a referrendum, which lost its last ditch request for injunctive relief made to the U.S. Supreme Court and decided by the Chief Justice in his role as circuit justice, and a potential Congressional veto.
Opponents can offer up a Proposition 8 style initiative to overturn the law after it has taken effect, but some same sex marriages will take place in the District of Columbia before that can happen, and once they have taken place, there are constitutional issues involved in undoing a legal marriage without the consent of the parties.
Opponents can offer up a Proposition 8 style initiative to overturn the law after it has taken effect, but some same sex marriages will take place in the District of Columbia before that can happen, and once they have taken place, there are constitutional issues involved in undoing a legal marriage without the consent of the parties.
February Car Sales 2010
How did major automobile maker's sales in February 2010 compare to those in February 2009, the bottom of the market?
Ford +43%
GM +12%
Kia Sales up
Honda Sales up
Chrysler up less than 0.5%
Toyota -9%
For Ford: "Ford brand sales up 46 percent versus year ago, Lincoln up 19 percent and Mercury up 24 percent Cars up 54 percent versus year ago, utilities up 39 percent and trucks up 36 percent. Ford's U.S. market share for February estimated at 17 percent, up 3 percentage points versus a year ago."
At GM the numbers are even better when abandoned brands are disregarded: "GM's sales of its Buick, Chevrolet, Cadillac and GMC brands climbed 32 percent. GM plans to keep those four brands and is phasing out Pontiac, Saturn and Hummer. It has sold Saab."
Corporate fleet sales were key to improved performance for Ford and GM: "Retail sales for GM's four core brands edged up 7 percent. Ford had expected sales to climb from last February, when U.S. sales plummeted in the midst of the recession. Its car sales climbed 54 percent as consumers continued to shop for more fuel-efficient vehicles. Like GM, Ford saw renewed demand from corporate fleet customers, which are buying again after weak sales in 2009. Ford's fleet sales surged 74 percent over February of last year, while GM's jumped 114 percent."
Within Chrysler: "car sales which rose 38% to 25,884. . . truck sales slumped 10% to 58,565." It doesn't appear that Chrysler has seen the fleet sales rebounds that Ford and GM have experienced. Chrysler seems on track to slowly fade away to nothing. The decade long trend for Chrysler sales is as follows:
1999--2,638,561
2000--2,522,695 ▼4.4%
2001--2,273,208 ▼9.9%
2002--2,205,446 ▼3%
2003 2,127,451 ▼3.5%
2004--2,206,024 ▲3.7%
2005--2,304,833 ▲4.5%
2006--2,142,505 ▼7%
2007--2,076,650 ▼3.1%
2008--1,453,122 ▼30%
2009--931,402 ▼36%
The 2009 sales at Chrysler were down 59.6% from 2005 and down 66.7% from 1999.
So far (January-February) in 2010, Chrysler's sales are down compared to year to date through February 2009, despite the fact that this was Chrysler's worst year ever.
Equally troubling, despite its partnership with Fiat and ability to shed legacy debt in its bankruptcy, Chrysler doesn't seem to have nearly as solid a plan as GM does to take bold moves that could turn it around. The future doesn't look bright for its 58,000 employees.
Ford +43%
GM +12%
Kia Sales up
Honda Sales up
Chrysler up less than 0.5%
Toyota -9%
For Ford: "Ford brand sales up 46 percent versus year ago, Lincoln up 19 percent and Mercury up 24 percent Cars up 54 percent versus year ago, utilities up 39 percent and trucks up 36 percent. Ford's U.S. market share for February estimated at 17 percent, up 3 percentage points versus a year ago."
At GM the numbers are even better when abandoned brands are disregarded: "GM's sales of its Buick, Chevrolet, Cadillac and GMC brands climbed 32 percent. GM plans to keep those four brands and is phasing out Pontiac, Saturn and Hummer. It has sold Saab."
Corporate fleet sales were key to improved performance for Ford and GM: "Retail sales for GM's four core brands edged up 7 percent. Ford had expected sales to climb from last February, when U.S. sales plummeted in the midst of the recession. Its car sales climbed 54 percent as consumers continued to shop for more fuel-efficient vehicles. Like GM, Ford saw renewed demand from corporate fleet customers, which are buying again after weak sales in 2009. Ford's fleet sales surged 74 percent over February of last year, while GM's jumped 114 percent."
Within Chrysler: "car sales which rose 38% to 25,884. . . truck sales slumped 10% to 58,565." It doesn't appear that Chrysler has seen the fleet sales rebounds that Ford and GM have experienced. Chrysler seems on track to slowly fade away to nothing. The decade long trend for Chrysler sales is as follows:
1999--2,638,561
2000--2,522,695 ▼4.4%
2001--2,273,208 ▼9.9%
2002--2,205,446 ▼3%
2003 2,127,451 ▼3.5%
2004--2,206,024 ▲3.7%
2005--2,304,833 ▲4.5%
2006--2,142,505 ▼7%
2007--2,076,650 ▼3.1%
2008--1,453,122 ▼30%
2009--931,402 ▼36%
The 2009 sales at Chrysler were down 59.6% from 2005 and down 66.7% from 1999.
So far (January-February) in 2010, Chrysler's sales are down compared to year to date through February 2009, despite the fact that this was Chrysler's worst year ever.
Equally troubling, despite its partnership with Fiat and ability to shed legacy debt in its bankruptcy, Chrysler doesn't seem to have nearly as solid a plan as GM does to take bold moves that could turn it around. The future doesn't look bright for its 58,000 employees.
SCOTUS Considers 2nd Amendment Incorporation
The U.S. Supreme Court's oral arguments appear to indicate that it is likely to hold that the 2nd Amendment's individual right to bear arms for self-defense is applicable to state and local governments, as well as the federal government, i.e. that it is incorporated, reversing reconstruction era precedents to the contrary. (Oral argument transcript here).
The incorporation of the Second Amendment is likely to be accomplished through the due process clause of the 14th Amendment, like other parts of the Bill of Rights. Oral arguments made clear incorporated the Second Amendment through the privileges and immunities clause instead is precluded by the Slaughter House cases decided in 1873 (gutting the Privileges and Immunities Clause), which are still good law.
There is division among the Justices over how broadly the right to bear arms should be defined and how much regulation of that right should be permitted.
The Court already established in the Heller case which established that the Second Amendment includes an individual right vis the federal government to bear arms for self-defense that almost all current federal restrictions on gun ownership other than the municipal ordinances of the District of Columbia are permitted by the Second Amendment. The need to define the scope of the right is more intense now that myriad state and local regulations must be reviewed.
Regular readers of this blog will know that I believe that this is the wrong call. But, it looks like the writing is on the wall.
UPDATED WITH MORE REPORTING FROM THE SAME SOURCE ON EXTENT OF THE RIGHT:
FWIW, Feldman's argument about "ordered liberty" is entirely a legitimate one. Some federal rights are not incorporated because they are not necessary to ordered liberty, even though they are important federal rights and Heller really doesn't squarely address the issue. But, the court seems to have decided the issue of incorporation already, so this is probably a lost cause.
How Far Should The Right Go?
So, how should be define the scope of the Second Amendment?
The strongest argument for making the Second Amendment an indvidual right which I articulated pre-Heller was that the Second Amendment is fundamentally designed to serve as a check on deliberate government failure to address, often for political reasons, private violence. This explains why the right should be fundmental and part of our political charter, in a way that does not give legality to armed insurrection, and by providing a theory for the right, illuminates when restrictions by government on the right are, or are not, reasonable regulations of the right.
This isn't necessarily how the law will turn out. But, without an illuminating theory such as this one, it is hard to see how a consistent Second Amdendment jurisprudence that does anything more than validate gun ownership in vary narrow circumstances (like ownership of a handgun by a non-felon possessed in his own home for self-defense, the situation in Heller) can emerge.
Implications For Total Incorporation
This also moves us one step closer to "total incorporation" of the Bill of Rights. Now, there are a few provisions of the Bill of Rights that do not apply to the states:
Thus, the main practical impacts of total incorporation would be to require grand juries to commence criminal cases for "capital or infamous crime" (something not required in about half of the states), to make civil juries available in most cases in Louisiana, and to require unanimous verdicts on criminal juries in Oregon and Louisiana.
Appellate litigation over what constitutes a capital or infamous crime has largely been forestalled by Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 7(a) which provides that every felony punishable by death or one or more years of imprisonment must be prosecuted by indictment. But, it isn't obvious that the term "infamous crime" is synonomous with "felony" and if it is not, states might limit the right to a grand jury indictment prior to prosecution to a narrower class of offenses.
The official notes on Rule 7(a) state:
The later case also makes clear that: "It is what sentence can be imposed under the law, not what was imposed, that is the material consideration. When an accused is in danger of an infamous punishment if convicted, he has a right to insist that he be not put upon trial except on the accusation of a grand jury."
The complete misdemeanor exclusion is justified with reference to Duke v. United States, 301 U.S. 492 (1937) (under prior law punishment of more than six months and a $500 fine had been subject to the indictment requirement).
But, the courts haven't dealt with what constitutes infamy for 73 years, and since the term could have a cultural component, it is conceivable the only more serious offenses might be subject to the indictment requirement.
The incorporation of the Second Amendment is likely to be accomplished through the due process clause of the 14th Amendment, like other parts of the Bill of Rights. Oral arguments made clear incorporated the Second Amendment through the privileges and immunities clause instead is precluded by the Slaughter House cases decided in 1873 (gutting the Privileges and Immunities Clause), which are still good law.
There is division among the Justices over how broadly the right to bear arms should be defined and how much regulation of that right should be permitted.
The Court already established in the Heller case which established that the Second Amendment includes an individual right vis the federal government to bear arms for self-defense that almost all current federal restrictions on gun ownership other than the municipal ordinances of the District of Columbia are permitted by the Second Amendment. The need to define the scope of the right is more intense now that myriad state and local regulations must be reviewed.
[T]he focus of debate will be how extensive a “right to keep and bear arms” should be spelled out: would it be only some “core right” to have a gun for personal safety, or would it include every variation of that right that could emerge in the future as courts decide specific cases? The liberal wing of the Court appeared to be making a determined effort to hold the expanded Amendment in check, but even the conservatives open to applying the Second Amendment to states, counties and cities seemed ready to concede some — but perhaps fewer — limitations.
Regular readers of this blog will know that I believe that this is the wrong call. But, it looks like the writing is on the wall.
UPDATED WITH MORE REPORTING FROM THE SAME SOURCE ON EXTENT OF THE RIGHT:
Justice John Paul Stevens explored whether such an extension would “apply to all of the Second Amendment” — including any court interpretations that ensued — or only “a homeowner’s right to protect against intruders in the home” — the specific right that Heller recognized. Gura responded that the Second Amendment “was not so limited.” Stevens then asked whether the right would include “a right to parade around in the streets with a gun.” Gura said that the states and cities would have to obey a right that was fully equal to all rights embraced by the right to keep and bear arms.
Justice Kennedy soon joined in that exchange, and asked whether “incorporation” would embrace “all of the refinements” that courts would make in interpreting the right, or “just the core of the right.” . . .
The remainder of Gura’s time was spent amid an exchange between Breyer and Scalia over whether courts should give the Second Amendment lesser scope based on statistics about the social cost that would result in people killed from others’ use of gun rights. . . . it was during Clement’s time at the podium that the Court’s liberal bloc began making a case — which Clement essentially resisted — to limit the “incorporated” right to, at most, some core guarantee, without all of the variations that would later develop. Clement noted that there were “not a lot” of variations of the gun right yet, since Heller was the only precedent so far, and that was limited to gun rights for self-defense in the home.
Clement, however, said that the Court should allow a “carryover” into the 14th Amendment of all of the jurisprudence that develops on the Second Amendment’s scope. There should not be a Second Amendment right and then a mere “shadow” of it that applied to state and local government, he argued. He did concede, though, that constitutional gun rights might be allowed to develop differently at the state and local level than at the federal level. But that, he said, is different from creating only a “shadow” right applied to state and local laws. . . .
Feldman, the lawyer for the two cities involved in the case. . . . almost immediately frustrated Kennedy by arguing that gun rights were not an essential attribute of “ordered liberty,” thus questioning whether such rights qualify as fundamental. If they are not, Kennedy shot back, then the Heller decision was wrongly decided. And Chief Justice Roberts told Feldman that there was no way to read the Heller opinion to make the Second Amendment seem a less important right. . . . the Chief Justice commented that “we haven’t said anything about what the content of the Second Amendment is,” so that, over time, it may develop that state and local governments may well be allowed to impose restrictions, such as bans on carrying concealed weapons. And Scalia reminded Feldman that the Court in the Heller decision had left room for some regulation of guns even though the Second Amendment now embraced a personal right to have a gun. Kennedy also noted that “there are provisions of the Constitution” that allow states to have “significant latitude” in regulating what those provisions seek to protect.
Feldman . . . also scored no points with a complaint that “incorporation” of the Second Amendment would go a long way toward establishing a national constitutional right of “self-defense,” which he said the Court has never mandated and should not now. For 200 years, he said, it has been up to state and local government to sort out when self-defense was justified. No member of the Court seemed persuaded that that was now at stake in the Second Amendment context.
FWIW, Feldman's argument about "ordered liberty" is entirely a legitimate one. Some federal rights are not incorporated because they are not necessary to ordered liberty, even though they are important federal rights and Heller really doesn't squarely address the issue. But, the court seems to have decided the issue of incorporation already, so this is probably a lost cause.
How Far Should The Right Go?
So, how should be define the scope of the Second Amendment?
The strongest argument for making the Second Amendment an indvidual right which I articulated pre-Heller was that the Second Amendment is fundamentally designed to serve as a check on deliberate government failure to address, often for political reasons, private violence. This explains why the right should be fundmental and part of our political charter, in a way that does not give legality to armed insurrection, and by providing a theory for the right, illuminates when restrictions by government on the right are, or are not, reasonable regulations of the right.
The most compelling arguments for an individual right to bear arms in self-defense, in my view, are the mirror image of the fact that there is no individually enforceable right to receive protection from violence through governmental law enforcement authorities.
The government has no obligation to help you even when informed through proper channels and court certified determinations, in no uncertain terms, of a known and imminent deadly threat to your personal safety which would be possible for law enforcement officers to respond to if the responsible government manager chose to do so. This proposition is settled law enunciated by the U.S. Supreme Court in a case out of Castle Rock, Colorado. . . .
Our constitutional scheme is largely not designed to protect people from non-state actors; private law is largely the province of the states and of statutory federal law. Civil rights violations, for example, by definition, involve acts by state actors under color of law.
Similarly, in American law (unlike the law of most European countries where there is a duty to prosecute crimes subject to certain limitations), prosecutors likewise have the absolute right not to pursue a prosecution even in the face of irrefutable proof that a crime has been committed at a time when the prosecutor's office has sufficient resources to take on the case. This right [to not prosecute], called prosecutorial discretion, is rarely systemically abused . . . . But, this doctrine has the potential to allow violent private actors empowered by an indifferent prosecutor to commit crimes against innocent citizens with impunity in circumstances where the rest of the government, motivated by majoritarian political motives, isn't offended enough by this act to remove the prosector from office.
Thus, an individual right to bear arms may be the only available recourse available to someone who needs to secure their personal safety from private violence. Viewed in this manner, the universal privilege to use deadly force in self-defense in some circumstances is reinforced by the right to bear arms, and both recognize the inability or unwillingness of the government to provide adequate protection to everyone.
This most compelling justification has lost some of its currency in the popular mind, because it rarely manifests itself in modern urban life which is were most voters live their lives. Cases like the one in Castle Rock are a notable product of unusual incompetence, lack of leadership and a bueaucratic bad attitude, more than they are a product of any active malice. The modern urban reality is that it is rare for law enforcement to show deliberate disregard for the safety of the general public. Also, while law enforcement responses are never instantaneous, in violent emergencies, police in the vast majority of the territory of most modern urban areas can usually be counted upon to arrive in a matter of minutes.
But, like cell phone coverage, the quality and good faith of police protection varies from place to place.
In low density urban areas, particularly in the early days of the Republic when muscle power was the only way to travel overland, but even now in remote areas, the ability of law enforcement to mount a prompt response to violent actors was negligible. In places like the pre-civil rights era rural South, law enforcement often deliberately refused to protect citizens from lynch mobs. In a deeply distressed urban ghetto, the kind often called a "war zone," police are often not effective at securing minimal personal protection for residents. A temporary interlude of lost law enforcement authority can arise when a large criminal motorcycle gang sudden drives into town outnumbering local law enforcement officers ten to one or more. In natural disasters, the police may be to overwhelmed to act or unable to reach you and protect you. Calling the cops isn't a viable options if your cell phone battery is dead, the landline is down or has been cut, and you are out of earshot from potentially helpful neighbors. Use your imagination and you can conjure up similar situations.
While some of the individuals have only a passing and transitory need for armed self-defense, and one would expect a majoritarian government to make reasonable laws governing when to allow people to arm themselves for these kinds of eventualities, there is another class of cases in these examples that is systemic and political in nature, without being revolutionary. An individual Second Amendment right to bear arms becomes political when the government chooses to refrain from providing a minimal level of personal protection from private violence to members of some unpopular minority group.
Perhaps that group consists of Korean storekeepers in a large Los Angeles neighborhoods who have dealt sharply with local residents in areas so beset by riots by angry African-Americans protesting an unjust judicial verdict that majority white police are incapable of protecting them or disinclined to risk their own lives to do so. Perhaps that group consists of blacks in a neighborhood beset by private KKK violence that local sheriff's choose to ignore. Perhaps that group consists of lawfully striking union members attacked by goons employed by their employers. Perhaps that group consists of Muslim women targeted for honor killings, or police informants targeted for gang or organized crime hits, whose killings are notoriously difficult to solve. Perhaps the group consists of Jews targeted by private Nazi organizations, in a Warsaw ghetto type situation. As Rwanda illustrated, collective violence even by crowds armed only with machettes and torches from a basically disarmed population can be the ulimate genocidal weapon of a majority unimpeded by governmental authority, against an unpopular minority. . . .
[T]yrants, either majoritarian or minoritarian, can act tyanically simply by letting private actors disregard the rule of law. Inaction can be as much of a force for tyrany as active governmental action in a world with organized private actors willing to take advantage of the license that the tyrant grants to them. Quite a bit of the violence in Iraq under U.S. occupation can be explained through that model.
Of course, the ability of members of a group to buy and own guns when they anticipate a legitimate reason to fear the combination of law enforcement indifference and organized private violence against them, might discourage the use of private violence as a political weapon generally, protecting minority political and personal rights from partisan political violence . . . even if the government is inclined to overlook it. It discourages headlines like the one in the New York Times after Pakistan's most recent election that proclaimed the election mostly orderly because "only 15 people" were murdered in election related violence.
A lens that sees an individual right to bear arms as a backstop against failures of the government to adequately secure public safety for some individuals whom it may lack poltical incentives to protect comes closest to outlining what sort of reasonable regulation of the right makes sense, while recognizing that the Second Amendment does have a political character.
This view fits comfortably into a legal regime that does not legitimatize the right of individuals to decide for themselves to carry out treason against the existing state, because they personally see it as illegitimate, which is the usual tyrrany argument.
Seen as a tool to use to enforce the democratically enacted criminal laws when the government fails to do so, so that one may protect the individual rights that the criminal law is a device to ensure, when a lawsuit would be unavailing, an individual right to bear arms seems less threatening to public safety, and develops a framework within which it is possible to assess what regulations of the right are reasonable, and which are not.
This isn't necessarily how the law will turn out. But, without an illuminating theory such as this one, it is hard to see how a consistent Second Amdendment jurisprudence that does anything more than validate gun ownership in vary narrow circumstances (like ownership of a handgun by a non-felon possessed in his own home for self-defense, the situation in Heller) can emerge.
Implications For Total Incorporation
This also moves us one step closer to "total incorporation" of the Bill of Rights. Now, there are a few provisions of the Bill of Rights that do not apply to the states:
The rights (other than the Second Amendment) which do not apply to the states are the 5th Amendment right to be indicted by a grand jury, the 6th Amendment requirement that juries have twelve member and be unanimous, the 7th Amendment right to a civil jury trial, and the 8th Amendment protections against excessive bail and excessive fines (although there is some dispute as to this point and over the applicability to states of the 3rd Amendment (quartering soldiers)).
In practice, the 3rd Amendment almost never comes up and would be no great burden (it has been held incorporated one of the U.S. Courts of Appeals), the 6th Amendment unanimity requirement is violated in only two states (Oregon and Louisiana, a stance that the court refused to revisit in an October 2008 death penalty appeal), the 7th Amendment's protections are honored in fact in every state but Louisiana (with some possible narrow exceptions), and state constitutions in every states already protect the 8th Amendment prohibitions against excessive bails and excessive fines (a 2008 U.S. Supreme Court ruling even suggested that they were incorporated).
Thus, the main practical impacts of total incorporation would be to require grand juries to commence criminal cases for "capital or infamous crime" (something not required in about half of the states), to make civil juries available in most cases in Louisiana, and to require unanimous verdicts on criminal juries in Oregon and Louisiana.
Appellate litigation over what constitutes a capital or infamous crime has largely been forestalled by Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 7(a) which provides that every felony punishable by death or one or more years of imprisonment must be prosecuted by indictment. But, it isn't obvious that the term "infamous crime" is synonomous with "felony" and if it is not, states might limit the right to a grand jury indictment prior to prosecution to a narrower class of offenses.
The official notes on Rule 7(a) state:
An infamous crime has been defined as a crime punishable by death or by imprisonment in a penitentiary or at hard labor, Ex parte Wilson, 114 U.S. 417, 427; United States v. Moreland, 258 U.S. 433 (1922).
Any sentence of imprisonment for a term of over one year may be served in a penitentiary, if so directed by the Attorney General, 18 U.S.C. 753f (now 4082, 4083) (Commitment of persons by any court of the United States and the juvenile court of the District of Columbia; place of confinement; transfers). Consequently any offense punishable by imprisonment for a term of over one year is an infamous crime.
The later case also makes clear that: "It is what sentence can be imposed under the law, not what was imposed, that is the material consideration. When an accused is in danger of an infamous punishment if convicted, he has a right to insist that he be not put upon trial except on the accusation of a grand jury."
The complete misdemeanor exclusion is justified with reference to Duke v. United States, 301 U.S. 492 (1937) (under prior law punishment of more than six months and a $500 fine had been subject to the indictment requirement).
But, the courts haven't dealt with what constitutes infamy for 73 years, and since the term could have a cultural component, it is conceivable the only more serious offenses might be subject to the indictment requirement.
Consumer Finance Protection Agency To Be In Fed
It looks like the Consumer Finance Protection Agency that the President urged as a response to the financial crisis will be located in the Federal Reserve. Early verions of the plan had envisioned an independent agency or a home in the Treasury department. It appears that the Fed would also get powers similar to those of the FDIC over non-bank financial firms.
Senators Christopher Dodd (D., Conn.) and Bob Corker (R. Tenn.) are close to a deal to create a new consumer-protection agency within the U.S. Federal Reserve, which is now chaired by controversial reappointeed Ben S. Bernanke.
The bill would also create but regulate the power of the Fed to take over non-bank financial firms in a manner similar to the way that the FDIC takes over failed banks now:
While the consumer protection choice is bureaucratically and politically odd, the Fed does have consumer protection responsibilities (most notably it regulates the check payment system, handles one piece of the regulations prohibiting lenders from taking non-purchase money liens in certain household property, and is the regulator for a small class of firms that don't fit well into other regulatory slots, like AIG prior to its collapse).
Senators Christopher Dodd (D., Conn.) and Bob Corker (R. Tenn.) are close to a deal to create a new consumer-protection agency within the U.S. Federal Reserve, which is now chaired by controversial reappointeed Ben S. Bernanke.
This has been a contentious point due to heavy criticism of the Fed's past handling of its consumer-protection powers. . . .
Agreements on these details are expected to shape a bill that Sen. Dodd, chairman of the Banking Committee, plans to introduce in the Senate. The House of Representatives passed a bill overhauling financial-market rules in December. Differences between the two packages would have to be reconciled before any final agreement could be signed into law by President Barack Obama. . . .
Mr. Dodd . . .has been one of the Fed's biggest critics and routinely blasted the central bank for failing to enforce the consumer-protection powers it already has. . . . Mr. Dodd could introduce his bill later this week and potentially hold a vote in his committee later in the month. If other lawmakers balk at agreements between Messrs. Dodd and Corker, it could make it tougher for them to pass legislation this year. . . .
[A] new division within the Fed. . . would be led by a White House appointee, have the ability to write and enforce rules, and have a separate budget. It would also give the Fed a more direct mandate to focus on consumer-protection issues.
This could dramatically reshape the focus of the Federal Reserve. For years, it has primarily been focused on monetary policy over bank supervision and often made consumer protection an afterthought.
The bill would also create but regulate the power of the Fed to take over non-bank financial firms in a manner similar to the way that the FDIC takes over failed banks now:
White House and Treasury officials . . . have complained that the government was handcuffed during the 2008 bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the near-collapse of American International Group Inc. Existing law lets the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. take over failing banks, but its powers don't extend to other types of financial companies.
Sen. Mark Warner (D., Va.) and Sen. Corker agreed to details of that arrangement on Feb. 23 after months of meetings, but details of the deal hadn't been announced.
The new arrangement, if adopted into law, would create a type of bankruptcy process for failing financial companies that aren't banks, such as bank-holding companies or bank subsidiaries that don't have insured deposits. Regulators would have the option to force any financial company into an FDIC-controlled dissolution if they believed market chaos required such an extreme step.
Under the proposal, this step could take place only after the agreement of the Federal Reserve's board, a council of regulators, and the Treasury secretary, in consultation with the president.
Messrs. Warner and Corker have said they wanted to create a process that was so painful for investors and management that no one would intentionally steer their company toward such a break-up and the government wouldn't be seen as a fail-safe for reckless behavior.
The new deal would wipe out shareholders and give the FDIC the power to remove management. Creditors would be guaranteed only the liquidation value of their claims in bankruptcy, though they could receive more under some circumstances.
Lawmakers debated for months how to pay for such a system. Treasury officials argued the government should be able to provide a bridge loan to unwind the company. Critics of that arrangement said it equated to a taxpayer-funded bailout.
While the consumer protection choice is bureaucratically and politically odd, the Fed does have consumer protection responsibilities (most notably it regulates the check payment system, handles one piece of the regulations prohibiting lenders from taking non-purchase money liens in certain household property, and is the regulator for a small class of firms that don't fit well into other regulatory slots, like AIG prior to its collapse).
01 March 2010
When Did We Start Electing Judges?
Almost ninety percent of state judges today face some kind of popular election. This peculiar institution emerged in a sudden burst from 1846 to 1853, when twenty states adopted judicial elections.
The modern perception is that judicial elections, then and now, weaken judges and the rule of law. Indeed, some critics of judicial power in the early republic supported judicial elections for precisely those reasons, but instead, they focused on other more direct attacks on the courts.
Judicial elections swept the country in the late 1840s and 1850s and the key was a new movement to limit legislative power, to increase judicial power, and to strengthen judicial review. Over time, judicial appointments had become more a tool of party patronage and cronyism. Legislative overspending on internal improvements and an economic depression in the early 1840s together had plunged the states into crippling debt. A wave of nineteen states called constitutional conventions from 1844 to 1853, and in addition to direct limits on legislative power, these conventions adopted judicial elections. Many delegates stated that their purpose was to strengthen the separation of powers and to empower courts to use judicial review.
The reformers got results: elected judges in the 1850s struck down many more state laws than their appointed predecessors had in any other decade. These elected judges played a role in the shift from active state involvement in economic growth to laissez-faire constitutionalism. Oddly, the first generation of elected judges were the first to justify judicial review in countermajoritarian terms, in the defense of individual and minority rights against abusive majorities and the “evils” of democracy.
From here.
Other interesting points:
* The election of judges swept the nation after three serious recessions in five years in the United States that were poorly handled politically and led to widespread loss of credibility for the executive branch and legislative branch officials then in office. It was something of a conspiracy of the political extremes (the Radical Democrats and Whigs) against the middle.
* The 90% of judges face election in the United States figure is somewhat deceptive as it includes unopposed retention elections like those in Colorado, which produce removals in practice only slightly more often than legislative impeachment, as opposed to true contested elections. Trial court judges are more likely to be elected than appellate court judges.
* Election of justices of the peace, and many state and county executive branch officials (e.g. county clerks) happened mostly in the 1810s and 1820s, not as I have often assumed, in the Progressive era.
* The percentage of the population who voted more than doubled from 1824 to 1828, mostly due to an expanding franchise.
* Georgia started to elect inferior court judges in 1812, Indiana started to elect some trial court judges in 1816 and for higher courts in 1835, and Mississippi was the first to have an elected state supreme court (in 1832). Michigan started to elect some trial court judges in 1836 and Iowa did so in 1844. The nature of the appointment process and judicial term lengths varied considerably from state to state. Once electing judges gained popularity, the practice did not have a strongly regional character (despite the fact that regional tensions were very high at this point in U.S. history).
* The only other significant examples of elected judges outside the state and local courts of the United States are:
(1) Switzerland, which elects lay judges on some of its canton courts (lay judges are a hybrid between jurors and judges not trained as judges). Notably Switzerland adopted its constitution in 1848, contemporaneously with the adoption of judicial elections in the United States, and has only one federal court with limited jurisdiction. Switzerland's 20 full cantons and 6 half cantons have considerably more autonomy than U.S. states despite the fact that the country as a whole has just 7.6 million people, and Switzerland is known for its remarkably high level of direct democracy. Swiss cantons are the size of U.S. counties in area and population, despite having more autonomy than U.S. states. See, e.g., here.
(2) Japan, which has a Colorado style retention election system for its high court (roughly equivalent to a U.S. general jurisdiction trial court), and
(3) France, which has elected judges in its commercial and labor courts. In France, the elective judges "lack formal judicial (and usually legal) training of any kind and are elected mid-career to serve temporary terms of office. Those thus elected to office belong to the particular professional (and social) groups whose disputes they will resolve and which, in turn, are responsible for electing them. As a result, such judges are expected to have the substantive expertise (and social and political legitimacy) necessary effectively to resolve disputes among group members." French elected judges appear comparable to professional regulation board and labor arbitration panel members in the United States (e.g. bar association leaders in integrated state bars) and are elected by what amount to guilds, rather than by the general public.
Thus, elected judges are just about as rare as civil jury trials outside the United States.
CACI still hates unions
The Colorado Association of Commerce and Industry is Colorado's main big business lobby and a perennial source of lobbying opposition to union power. Not surprisingly, it's representatives are in Washington D.C. now lobbying against the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill designed to remove opportunities for businesses to harass workers as the workers consider unionizing.
I-70 Contraflow Considered In Colorado
The Colorado General Assembly is seriously considering a bill that would use "zipper lanes" on I-70 for a fifteen mile stretch of road from Georgetown to the Central City Parkway in the mountains to change it from a two lane in each direction system, to a three lanes in one direction and one lane in the other direction, during ski resort weekend driven periods of uneven traffic flow.
State Senator Chris Romer (D-Denver) is a major sponsor of the bill, as is State Senator Dan Gibbs, D-Silverthorne.
Traffic engineers studying the project have been lukewarm on this idea that is common sense to anyone stuck in this traffic, similar to the HOV lane approach used on parts of I-25 and US 36 between Denver and Boulder, but with a different implementation method. But, my bet is that Senator Romer is right on this one.
The mountains make any infrastructure change to the I-70 corridor exceedingly expensive, whether the soultion is some form of rail transporation, more lanes or some other solution, but the real problem is really limited to the one that this proposal identifies.
The cost would be modest:
In contrast, other solutions designed to address essentially the same problem cost around $1,000 million to $10,000 million and carry with them comparable or larger maintenance costs, or involve unpleasant tolls to fund "highway capacity expansion" that received bipartisan support.
State Senator Chris Romer (D-Denver) is a major sponsor of the bill, as is State Senator Dan Gibbs, D-Silverthorne.
Traffic engineers studying the project have been lukewarm on this idea that is common sense to anyone stuck in this traffic, similar to the HOV lane approach used on parts of I-25 and US 36 between Denver and Boulder, but with a different implementation method. But, my bet is that Senator Romer is right on this one.
The mountains make any infrastructure change to the I-70 corridor exceedingly expensive, whether the soultion is some form of rail transporation, more lanes or some other solution, but the real problem is really limited to the one that this proposal identifies.
The cost would be modest:
A more permanent zipper-lane project in Massachusetts costs $1.2 million annually to operate twice a day, five days a week along a 6-mile stretch of Boston's Southeast Expressway. Barrier Systems president Chris Sanders estimated the annual cost to Colorado would be much less and that upfront costs would range from $20 million to $40 million.
In contrast, other solutions designed to address essentially the same problem cost around $1,000 million to $10,000 million and carry with them comparable or larger maintenance costs, or involve unpleasant tolls to fund "highway capacity expansion" that received bipartisan support.
Media Bias Measured
An empirical analysis of media bias based on content analysis (focusing on word choices relevant to politically charged subjects) confirms intuitions about which newspapers are more or less conservative, with some notable outliers like the Detroit News, viewed by many as conservative but appearing quite liberal in a content analysis.
International Trade Theory
Some of the notable developments in the economic theory of international trade are that:
(1) Starting to export involves a major one time start up cost.
(2) High productivity domestic firms are more likely to start to export.
(3) The entry of high productivity firms into the export market tends to put low productivity firms serving only the domestic market out of business.
(4) In high skill economies, lowering the start up costs associated with exporting in high skill industries can greatly increase the proportion of firms that export.
Older models look mostly at comparative advantage in terms of labor costs per unit produced.
Where does all this lead politically?
First, it lend to support for Obama administration proposals to reduce one export business start up costs, if you care about total economic welfare, because it makes aid to companies trying to get started in exporting look less like corporate welfare, and more like a one time investment in alleviating government created costs that will give rise to an economic engine that will create jobs in the long term.
Compared to the long term revenue costs associated with pervasive incentives to favor unearned income (i.e. "to invest") in the tax code, helping companies beat the red tape involved in getting started in exporting looks like chump change with much bigger rewards.
Second, "a commitment to an open trading system requires more than 'just say no' to protectionist measures. It also requires establishing the policy bases for mitigating protectionist pressures. This in turn . . . requires ensuring that the benefits of higher productivity and lower prices are also shared by those that experience the effects of competition from foreign producers."
In other words, if you want to be able to politically sell free trade over the increasingly popular notion of a mechantalist/protectionist approach for international trade, you have to be able to mute the objections of the less productive domestic market firms that get hammered by it.
Against Productivity
Low productivity domestic businesses can be very sympathetic. Look at the staying power that liquor stores have had in continuing to exclude grocery stores and convenience stores in Colorado from selling full strength beer, wine and liquor. Bit by bit this domestic protectionist wall is starting to show chinks. But, everyone involved in the debate assumes that grocery stores and convenience stores would decimate liquor stores if all of them were allowed to sell all alcoholic beverages on an equal basis. In this debate, the presumably original arguments for liquor stores which is that grocery stores or convenience stores would be less effective at policing alcohol control laws have almost no currency. The liquor store lobby's argument is pretty much purely the concern large numbers of small, neighborhood, often family run businesses would be put out of business if grocery stores and convenience stores were allowed to compete with them on a level playing field.
The blog post I link at Econbrower also points out that "productivity is not the be all or end all" without really getting what that means in the way, for example, that Jared Diamond did in a second edition epilogue to his groundbreaking book "Guns, Germs and Steel."
A market with lots of domestic oriented low productivity firms (and I think that the empirical evidence would show that scale is as important a factor as good business management in the gains that exports make when they start exporting), often have higher quality and product diversity that confers intangible benefits that a narrow productivity measure would suggest.
A good example of a domestic oriented, low productivity, small scale industry is German beer making. There are large numbers of small brewpubs, and nothing approximating national high productivity, large volume products like Budweiser in this market. This is good for people who want to have high quality craft brews available to them. It is bad for people who want consistent, low cost beer.
Family restaurants are domestic oriented low productivity businesses. McDonald's is a high productivity business that operates on a large scale.
Quaint local main street shops are low productivity businesses. Wal-mart is a high productivity business.
Favoring high productivity, export oriented businesses does not mean favoring the "best" businesses in the marketplace, because productivity isn't as universally a good thing as economists assume.
Globalist leaning economists tend to have a productivity is everything approach and think that opponents to globalism are simply irrational. But, once you realize that undo attention to favoring productivity itself comes with serious costs of its own, and usually hurts local, small scale businesses that have other benefits that they bring to the table, the vigorous anti-globalist movement looks far less irrationally reactionary and purely selfish.
(1) Starting to export involves a major one time start up cost.
(2) High productivity domestic firms are more likely to start to export.
(3) The entry of high productivity firms into the export market tends to put low productivity firms serving only the domestic market out of business.
(4) In high skill economies, lowering the start up costs associated with exporting in high skill industries can greatly increase the proportion of firms that export.
Older models look mostly at comparative advantage in terms of labor costs per unit produced.
[M]ost firms do not engage in trade, but those that do are on average more productive and pay higher wages. . . . [W]hen a country opens to trade, more productive firms grow relative to less productive firms . . . shifting labor and other resources to the better organized firms and increasing overall productivity. Even if workers do not switch industries, they move from firms that are either poorly managed or that use less advanced technology and production processes toward the more productive firms. Thus, firm-level evidence demonstrates that trade allows not only economy-wide advances through resource allocation, but also allows within-industry productivity advances through reallocation of resources across firms. This shift has clear welfare-enhancing impacts[.]
Where does all this lead politically?
First, it lend to support for Obama administration proposals to reduce one export business start up costs, if you care about total economic welfare, because it makes aid to companies trying to get started in exporting look less like corporate welfare, and more like a one time investment in alleviating government created costs that will give rise to an economic engine that will create jobs in the long term.
Compared to the long term revenue costs associated with pervasive incentives to favor unearned income (i.e. "to invest") in the tax code, helping companies beat the red tape involved in getting started in exporting looks like chump change with much bigger rewards.
Second, "a commitment to an open trading system requires more than 'just say no' to protectionist measures. It also requires establishing the policy bases for mitigating protectionist pressures. This in turn . . . requires ensuring that the benefits of higher productivity and lower prices are also shared by those that experience the effects of competition from foreign producers."
In other words, if you want to be able to politically sell free trade over the increasingly popular notion of a mechantalist/protectionist approach for international trade, you have to be able to mute the objections of the less productive domestic market firms that get hammered by it.
Against Productivity
Low productivity domestic businesses can be very sympathetic. Look at the staying power that liquor stores have had in continuing to exclude grocery stores and convenience stores in Colorado from selling full strength beer, wine and liquor. Bit by bit this domestic protectionist wall is starting to show chinks. But, everyone involved in the debate assumes that grocery stores and convenience stores would decimate liquor stores if all of them were allowed to sell all alcoholic beverages on an equal basis. In this debate, the presumably original arguments for liquor stores which is that grocery stores or convenience stores would be less effective at policing alcohol control laws have almost no currency. The liquor store lobby's argument is pretty much purely the concern large numbers of small, neighborhood, often family run businesses would be put out of business if grocery stores and convenience stores were allowed to compete with them on a level playing field.
The blog post I link at Econbrower also points out that "productivity is not the be all or end all" without really getting what that means in the way, for example, that Jared Diamond did in a second edition epilogue to his groundbreaking book "Guns, Germs and Steel."
A market with lots of domestic oriented low productivity firms (and I think that the empirical evidence would show that scale is as important a factor as good business management in the gains that exports make when they start exporting), often have higher quality and product diversity that confers intangible benefits that a narrow productivity measure would suggest.
A good example of a domestic oriented, low productivity, small scale industry is German beer making. There are large numbers of small brewpubs, and nothing approximating national high productivity, large volume products like Budweiser in this market. This is good for people who want to have high quality craft brews available to them. It is bad for people who want consistent, low cost beer.
Family restaurants are domestic oriented low productivity businesses. McDonald's is a high productivity business that operates on a large scale.
Quaint local main street shops are low productivity businesses. Wal-mart is a high productivity business.
Favoring high productivity, export oriented businesses does not mean favoring the "best" businesses in the marketplace, because productivity isn't as universally a good thing as economists assume.
Globalist leaning economists tend to have a productivity is everything approach and think that opponents to globalism are simply irrational. But, once you realize that undo attention to favoring productivity itself comes with serious costs of its own, and usually hurts local, small scale businesses that have other benefits that they bring to the table, the vigorous anti-globalist movement looks far less irrationally reactionary and purely selfish.
My Grandchildren's World Part II: Water and Peak Oil
One of the safer predictions one can make is that during the lives of my children and grandchildren, the price of oil will, on average, rise.
The supply of fossil fuels is finite. Our economic system systemically depletes easier to access supplies of fossil fuels before harder to access supplies of fossil fuels. Countries outside the developed world are rapidly increasing their demand for fossil fuels at a pace that is outstripping the capacity of the developed world to maintain its standard of living and become more efficient in using fossil fuels.
Peak oil is the concept that at some point, annual production of oil is going to go down, rather than up. There is considerable empirical evidence that we are closing in on this point. There is no evidence, however, that demand will go down. If supply can't grow as fast as demand does (something necessarily true if supply is falling), then prices will increase.
This doesn't mean that we will simply run out of oil. It will be possible to buy gasoline for uses where it is worth $25 a gallon for a long time. Instead, what you will see is that people make increasingly dramatic decisions to reduce their oil consumption in favor of substitutes, as the price of oil rises.
At some price, people will favor more fuel efficient vehicles over less fuel efficient vehicles. At a higher price, public transportation and freight rail (which are more fuel efficient than any low occupancy/small freight load vehicle) will see much higher use. At some price, electric and natural gas powered vehicles will make more sense than gasoline powered vehicles. At some price, biofuels and liquid and gaseous products of coal will make more sense that petroleum source fuels. At some fuel price, living in a central city makes more economic sense than commuting. At some oil price, organic agriculture makes more sense than agriculture based on petroleum based fertilizers, pesticides and farm machinery.
European and Japanese economies, whose tax structure produces fuel prices roughly double what they are in the United States, provide us with a sneak preview of what kinds of choices will be made when rising oil prices drive up the price of oil based fuels.
The task of predicting the impact of peak oil is simplified by the fact that it is overwhelmingly used in a small number of ways: for cars and trucks, for heating oil in the Northeast, for trains and planes, for farm machinery and boats, to power industrial processes, for plastics, and for fertilizers and other chemicals.
Non-petroleum fuels for home heating and industrial processes are already widely used, so the way heating oil and industrial process power needs will adapt to higher oil prices is easy to predict. Natural gas (and cousins like propane) and electricity can easily step in to replace them. Trains, planes, farm machinery, boats, plastics, fertilizers and other chemicals are high value, low volume uses compared to cars and trucks and have few good substitutes apart from organic farming, so high prices for oil are likely simply to make the associated goods and services more expensive without greatly restructuring these industries other than encouraging organic farming.
The big, complex part of understanding peak oil really boils down to what changes will happen to motor vehicle use and activities that flow from motor vehicle use as gasoline and diesel prices rise. In the analysis I've conducted before, a critical cutoff, with current technology, is the likely transition from gasoline based cars and trucks to electric cars and trucks, at least for local transportation where rail is not practical, at about $8-$16 a gallon (compared to about $2.50 a gallon in the U.S. today).
Bio-oils can be good substitutes for petroleum, but require different fuel crops, a great deal of land, and are sensitive in usefulness to the agricultural methods used (i.e. need to be produced in low energy ways to produce net energy outputs).
Note that peak oil does not meaningfully impact anything that currently runs on natural gas or electricity, except to the extent that natural gas and electricity supplies are diverted to transportation needs. Outside Alaska and Hawaii, very little electricity is generated with petroleum, and Hawaii uses far less petroleum in transportation than the rest of the nation.
One way to understand the Industrial Revolution is as the point at which we transitioned from non-fossil fuels to a coal based economy. In this view, there was then a second phase of the Industrial Revolution when we transitioned from a coal based economy to one in which petroleum played a major part. In any energy based view of our economic history, the next stage in our economy is a post-petroleum economy.
In this energy based view of modern economic eras, one of the big challenges facing my children and grandchildren will be to find a way to sustain a decent standard of high technology living in an economic environment where petroleum is far more expensive than it is today. The race is one to develop technologies and production capacity for those technologies to allow us to transition relatively painlessly to a more sustainable energy infrastructure and energy price influenced economy. If gasoline prices went to $16 a gallon tomorrow, our economy would be in a crisis. If this happens in fifteen years, after we've put lots of plug in electric vehicles on the roads and have the capacity to build or convert more quickly, it might not be a big deal.
This hope is not an impossible one. Our capacity to produce electricity with coal, nuclear power and renewable energy sources like hydroelectric, wind, and solar sources has advanced immensely from where it was sixty years ago. These sources are now capable of producing far more energy at a far more reasonable price than they could in the pre-petroleum era.
We have also learned to be profoundly more efficient in how we use energy in areas from lighting to superconducting materials to insulation to water heating to regenerative braking on vehicles to low energy ways to recycle raw materials rather than producing new ones.
Some of our strides in conservation as a concept have allowed us to heat water and to heat our homes with less energy. This together with an increased recognition of the immense waste that is involved in buring off natural gas from oil wells, and improved natural gas storage and transportation technologies, may postpone "peak natural gas" (due sometime later than peak oil) as well. And, at some price, it makes economic sense to produce natural gas substitutes from coal, which we have a supply of for the foreseeable future (subject to concerns about global climate change and other downsides of pollution intrinsically linked with fossil fuel consumption).
The lessons we've learned about doing what we need to have done with less energy have been paralleled in our understanding of new ways to conserve water. We've learned about the importance of xeriscaping and drip irrigation in arid areas. We've learned to do everything from washing clothes to washing dishes to washing cars to flushing toilets with less water. We've discovered ways to cycle water faster with gray water technologies, and ways to turn unuseable water into useable water with new desalinization and water purification technologies.
The worlds that Steam Punk culture have been envisioning are, in part, visualizations of what post-petroleum worlds might look like. They would have some echos of the pre-petroleum technological order (which would not be a complete collapse of modern civilization) modified by alternative technologies that have developed with the cheap oil glut we enjoyed in the 20th century. Modern windmills and nuclear power plants, in particular, are game changers limiting our tendency to regress without cheap oil.
Another big impact of peak oil will be on how the economic development of developing world and Third World is colored by rising oil prices. Countries like China and India (those two alone make up more than a third of the world's population) are just on the brink of transitioning to much higher gasoline powered automobile use, and to greater use of petroleum fueled industrial processes (from coal) and rising oil prices will impact what choices those countries make in the process of developing (e.g. more passenger rail v. more roads) and how fast they develop. The demise of cheap oil is likely to bias the development choices made everywhere and to slow economic development in many places that are currently moving in a petroleum dependent direction.
Then again, countries that develop in the first place on the assumption of expensive oil make experience less economic trauma as oil prices rise than those that were reliant on petroleum and have to be weaned from it.
Yet another impact of peak oil is the likely collapse of economies reliant on oil production as their supplies run out, one by one, with some countries seeing dramatically declining oil production much more quickly than the world oil markets as a whole do, and others experiencing it later. Countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Sudan, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Venezula, and Nigeria, to name just a few, could be particularly impacted, as could U.S. States like Texas and Alaska. Pressure will also mount to sacrifice the environment to allow oil production where it had not been previously permitted as prices rise.
Many of these countries are non-democratic, and the capacity of leaders to sustain a non-democratic regime has a lot to do with the ability of leaders to secure economic ends without mass cooperation, something that ceases to be possible when oil supplies wane and taxes must be imposed on the general economy to pay for public services.
The supply of fossil fuels is finite. Our economic system systemically depletes easier to access supplies of fossil fuels before harder to access supplies of fossil fuels. Countries outside the developed world are rapidly increasing their demand for fossil fuels at a pace that is outstripping the capacity of the developed world to maintain its standard of living and become more efficient in using fossil fuels.
Peak oil is the concept that at some point, annual production of oil is going to go down, rather than up. There is considerable empirical evidence that we are closing in on this point. There is no evidence, however, that demand will go down. If supply can't grow as fast as demand does (something necessarily true if supply is falling), then prices will increase.
This doesn't mean that we will simply run out of oil. It will be possible to buy gasoline for uses where it is worth $25 a gallon for a long time. Instead, what you will see is that people make increasingly dramatic decisions to reduce their oil consumption in favor of substitutes, as the price of oil rises.
At some price, people will favor more fuel efficient vehicles over less fuel efficient vehicles. At a higher price, public transportation and freight rail (which are more fuel efficient than any low occupancy/small freight load vehicle) will see much higher use. At some price, electric and natural gas powered vehicles will make more sense than gasoline powered vehicles. At some price, biofuels and liquid and gaseous products of coal will make more sense that petroleum source fuels. At some fuel price, living in a central city makes more economic sense than commuting. At some oil price, organic agriculture makes more sense than agriculture based on petroleum based fertilizers, pesticides and farm machinery.
European and Japanese economies, whose tax structure produces fuel prices roughly double what they are in the United States, provide us with a sneak preview of what kinds of choices will be made when rising oil prices drive up the price of oil based fuels.
The task of predicting the impact of peak oil is simplified by the fact that it is overwhelmingly used in a small number of ways: for cars and trucks, for heating oil in the Northeast, for trains and planes, for farm machinery and boats, to power industrial processes, for plastics, and for fertilizers and other chemicals.
Non-petroleum fuels for home heating and industrial processes are already widely used, so the way heating oil and industrial process power needs will adapt to higher oil prices is easy to predict. Natural gas (and cousins like propane) and electricity can easily step in to replace them. Trains, planes, farm machinery, boats, plastics, fertilizers and other chemicals are high value, low volume uses compared to cars and trucks and have few good substitutes apart from organic farming, so high prices for oil are likely simply to make the associated goods and services more expensive without greatly restructuring these industries other than encouraging organic farming.
The big, complex part of understanding peak oil really boils down to what changes will happen to motor vehicle use and activities that flow from motor vehicle use as gasoline and diesel prices rise. In the analysis I've conducted before, a critical cutoff, with current technology, is the likely transition from gasoline based cars and trucks to electric cars and trucks, at least for local transportation where rail is not practical, at about $8-$16 a gallon (compared to about $2.50 a gallon in the U.S. today).
Bio-oils can be good substitutes for petroleum, but require different fuel crops, a great deal of land, and are sensitive in usefulness to the agricultural methods used (i.e. need to be produced in low energy ways to produce net energy outputs).
Note that peak oil does not meaningfully impact anything that currently runs on natural gas or electricity, except to the extent that natural gas and electricity supplies are diverted to transportation needs. Outside Alaska and Hawaii, very little electricity is generated with petroleum, and Hawaii uses far less petroleum in transportation than the rest of the nation.
One way to understand the Industrial Revolution is as the point at which we transitioned from non-fossil fuels to a coal based economy. In this view, there was then a second phase of the Industrial Revolution when we transitioned from a coal based economy to one in which petroleum played a major part. In any energy based view of our economic history, the next stage in our economy is a post-petroleum economy.
In this energy based view of modern economic eras, one of the big challenges facing my children and grandchildren will be to find a way to sustain a decent standard of high technology living in an economic environment where petroleum is far more expensive than it is today. The race is one to develop technologies and production capacity for those technologies to allow us to transition relatively painlessly to a more sustainable energy infrastructure and energy price influenced economy. If gasoline prices went to $16 a gallon tomorrow, our economy would be in a crisis. If this happens in fifteen years, after we've put lots of plug in electric vehicles on the roads and have the capacity to build or convert more quickly, it might not be a big deal.
This hope is not an impossible one. Our capacity to produce electricity with coal, nuclear power and renewable energy sources like hydroelectric, wind, and solar sources has advanced immensely from where it was sixty years ago. These sources are now capable of producing far more energy at a far more reasonable price than they could in the pre-petroleum era.
We have also learned to be profoundly more efficient in how we use energy in areas from lighting to superconducting materials to insulation to water heating to regenerative braking on vehicles to low energy ways to recycle raw materials rather than producing new ones.
Some of our strides in conservation as a concept have allowed us to heat water and to heat our homes with less energy. This together with an increased recognition of the immense waste that is involved in buring off natural gas from oil wells, and improved natural gas storage and transportation technologies, may postpone "peak natural gas" (due sometime later than peak oil) as well. And, at some price, it makes economic sense to produce natural gas substitutes from coal, which we have a supply of for the foreseeable future (subject to concerns about global climate change and other downsides of pollution intrinsically linked with fossil fuel consumption).
The lessons we've learned about doing what we need to have done with less energy have been paralleled in our understanding of new ways to conserve water. We've learned about the importance of xeriscaping and drip irrigation in arid areas. We've learned to do everything from washing clothes to washing dishes to washing cars to flushing toilets with less water. We've discovered ways to cycle water faster with gray water technologies, and ways to turn unuseable water into useable water with new desalinization and water purification technologies.
The worlds that Steam Punk culture have been envisioning are, in part, visualizations of what post-petroleum worlds might look like. They would have some echos of the pre-petroleum technological order (which would not be a complete collapse of modern civilization) modified by alternative technologies that have developed with the cheap oil glut we enjoyed in the 20th century. Modern windmills and nuclear power plants, in particular, are game changers limiting our tendency to regress without cheap oil.
Another big impact of peak oil will be on how the economic development of developing world and Third World is colored by rising oil prices. Countries like China and India (those two alone make up more than a third of the world's population) are just on the brink of transitioning to much higher gasoline powered automobile use, and to greater use of petroleum fueled industrial processes (from coal) and rising oil prices will impact what choices those countries make in the process of developing (e.g. more passenger rail v. more roads) and how fast they develop. The demise of cheap oil is likely to bias the development choices made everywhere and to slow economic development in many places that are currently moving in a petroleum dependent direction.
Then again, countries that develop in the first place on the assumption of expensive oil make experience less economic trauma as oil prices rise than those that were reliant on petroleum and have to be weaned from it.
Yet another impact of peak oil is the likely collapse of economies reliant on oil production as their supplies run out, one by one, with some countries seeing dramatically declining oil production much more quickly than the world oil markets as a whole do, and others experiencing it later. Countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Sudan, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Venezula, and Nigeria, to name just a few, could be particularly impacted, as could U.S. States like Texas and Alaska. Pressure will also mount to sacrifice the environment to allow oil production where it had not been previously permitted as prices rise.
Many of these countries are non-democratic, and the capacity of leaders to sustain a non-democratic regime has a lot to do with the ability of leaders to secure economic ends without mass cooperation, something that ceases to be possible when oil supplies wane and taxes must be imposed on the general economy to pay for public services.
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