Jon Stewart’s feedback problem

Here’s Jim Treacher on Jon Stewart’s disappointment in the apparent unfolding of government with Obama in charge (via Instapundit). I primarily appreciated this:

…once I saw through his Clown Nose Off/Clown Nose On routine — “You should listen to me because what I’m saying is important, but I’ll brush off your rebuttal by insisting I’m just a comedian” — it was like the optical illusion with the cows. It might take you a minute to see it, but once you do, you can’t unsee it.

The ‘clown nose off/clown nose on’ is an apt description for Stewart. But, why should he engage? He makes enough money putting the clown nose on whenever faced with something that challenges his worldview.

That’s a feedback problem, which I think is why he still believes in government. I always tell my friends that I don’t trust politicians, not even the ones I think I like. It was a lesson I learned at a young age when I realized that it wasn’t worth defending folks I don’t know and hoping they could want to be politicians for noble reasons.

That’s one of the key reasons why I would like to keep the power of government limited. Politicians aren’t noble.

Cans of corn

In the comments to this post, we had what I thought was a good discussion regarding fairness and how government interference usually causes unfairness rather than fixes it.

Wally asked if unfair processes exist outside government. I responded that they do but that there are better feedbacks and choice outside of government to help with that.

Don Boudreaux just wrote a fantastic column, Competitive regulation, in the Pittsburgh Tribune addressing how much better feedbacks and choices, which derive from competition, work in a free market work than the regulations from government.

I particularly love this part:

No one asserts that competitive regulation works perfectly. But perfection isn’t the appropriate standard. The claim, rather, is that competitive regulation works pretty darn well.

Want evidence? Go to the supermarket and then to the mall. You’ll find astonishingly wide offerings of high-quality and affordable goods: food and drink products, detergents, kitchenware, clothing, furniture, consumer electronics and on and on and on. You’ll also find stores manned by clerks and managers who generally would be distraught to lose their jobs.

Nearly none of what you see is the result of government regulation. No regulator ordered Safeway into business. And no regulator tells it what to offer for sale. If Safeway wished, it could — as far as the government is concerned — stock only cans of corn and nothing else. It could refuse to pay any of its workers wages higher than the legislated minimum. It could open for only 15 minutes daily. It could use pencils and paper, rather than electronic scanners or cash registers, to tally its customers’ grocery bills.

But it does none of these things. Competing with Kroger, Wal-Mart and other supermarkets, Safeway voluntarily chooses — for its shareholders’ own good — to spend tens of millions of dollars annually to keep its shelves stocked with a vast assortment of items, to pay most of its employees wages well above the legislated minimum, and to undertake all the other countless activities that it must undertake to turn a profit.

I continually find it amazing how much a part of life these feedbacks and choices are and how little people recognize it.

People simply don’t recognize that free market and competition provides them with so many choices. How often do we complain about not getting what we want with stuff that comes to us by way of generally free markets like restaurants, shoes or deodorants? How often do we complain about things from government?

Sure, there are complaints about products. As Boudreaux says, no one says the market is perfect. But, there are entire TV and radio channels dedicated to complaining about government.

The same people go to Target and to the DMV. I can’t figure out why they never seem to think “I want more of what brought me Target and less of what brought me the DMV”.

Unintended consequences

One unintended benefit of having cameras on so many devices and a way to share those with everybody instantaneously was that speed at which the Boston Marathon bombing suspects were ID’d. That’s one benefit of crowd sourcing.

On the back-end, police took the crowd out of the game by locking everyone down. I can certainly understand the safety concerns, but the trade-off, perhaps, was a longer time to apprehension as the owner of the boat where the “white cap suspect” was hiding said he may have discovered that sooner if he had not followed the lock down orders.

The Hayek and Polyanyi lesson

I learned from this Marginal Revolution post (and its comments) what to call the idea that many successful companies that have emerged in the free market because customers value what they provide would not exist if they had to rely on bureaucrats to approve them.

It’s called the Hayek and Polanyi lesson. Though, this Polanyi is interesting, too.

Signals v Causes: High School Graduate

I often hear folks say that people with a high school diploma today cannot expect to do as well as folks did with high school diplomas in previous generations.

One cause offered to explain this is less opportunity because good manufacturing jobs have gone to machines and foreign competition.

More likely, K-12 education hasn’t evolved to teach students skills that are valued in today’s economy. I got this idea from Jeffrey Sachs, this week’s guest on EconTalk. I didn’t agree with everything Sachs had to say, but I did agree with this and recommend listening to the podcast.

Also, maybe education has evolved away from teaching such skills as curriculum designers have included things thought to enrich and broaden the students lives, but really just serve the personal preferences of those designers.

When I was truly on my own for the first time, I remember thinking how ill-equipped I was to determine something as practical as how much house I could afford, even though I did know what Keynesian multipliers were. Luckily, I educated myself by turning to personal finance magazine and books and asking friends and family. I wasn’t surprised later when it became clear with the housing crisis that many others also did not have this practical knowledge, either.

I was also annoyed that I learned in school how important it was for me to exercise my right to vote, but there was no mention about doing my homework on the issues and carefully considering who I voted for.

It is also more likely that a high school diploma, once viewed as a reliable indicator of demonstrated mastery in skills, knowledge and behaviors that were of some value to employers, is now viewed as a participation trophy — a mere bauble to add to the recipient’s trophy case — as standards have slipped and the purpose of a high school diploma have changed. 

I believe the purpose of the high school diploma was to reward the folks who tried. Somewhere along they way, however, that got too hard. We didn’t want to tell someone they didn’t deserve something because they didn’t put in the effort or meet the standard. Rather than expect them to rise up to the standard, we lowered it for them.

Signals v Causes: Preschool

Harry Jackson Jr. agrees with me that supporters of universal preschool may be mistaking signals for causes.

Perhaps creators of programs like Head Start did not consider another possible explanation for the reason elementary school performance so accurately predicts later academic achievement. What if children who typically do well in elementary school tend to have attentive parents who read to them, serve them nutritious meals, and limit their time in front of the television? What if these parents also tend to ensure their children get enough sleep, fresh air and exercise?

I also like this H.L. Menken quote that Jackson provides in his piece:

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.

So true.

The universal preschool discussion also reminds me of my government begets more government thread.

Previous government interventions have discouraged family formation and responsible parenting for a portion of the population. That is what is causing under achievement in that portion. Instead of reversing the maligned incentives discouraging good parenting, let’s fix it with the clear, simple and wrong answer: more government in the form of universal preschool.

 

The good ole days

Thanks to John Hawkins for compiling this excellent list of Margaret Thatcher quotes. Here are a few that struck a chord with me.

My policies are based not on some economics theory, but on things I and millions like me were brought up with: an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay; live within your means; put by a nest egg for a rainy day; pay your bills on time; support the police.

If you want to cut your own throat, don’t come to me for a bandage.

I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.

I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand ‘I have a problem, it is the Government’s job to cope with it!’ or ‘I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!’ ‘I am homeless, the Government must house me!’ and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first… There is no such thing as society. There is living tapestry of men and women and people and the beauty of that tapestry and the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves and each of us prepared to turn round and help by our own efforts those who are unfortunate.

…The larger the slice taken by government, the smaller the cake available for everyone.

 

Signals vs Causes: Bacteria

This NY Times article reviews studies that suggest that the makeup of bacteria in your gut may cause you to lose or gain weight (via Instapundit).

Perhaps as likely, the makeup of bacteria in your gut responds to what you eat, how much you eat and your activity levels.

Who’s on the hook?

According to this article, student loan defaults are surging (HT: Instapundit)

Perhaps schools should also be on the hook when their former students aren’t able to repay their student loans.

Crunch and soggy

One of my beliefs is that all problems can be traced to trouble in feedback. Whether you are overweight, work for a company that is losing customers to competitors or in a society that keeps funding a failing policy, there is very likely an explanation that lies somewhere in the feedback.

Some feedback is easier to respond than others. Instapundit links to classic article from the Financial Times written in 2001 by an editor who recently passed away.

In a crunchy system, the feedback is clear. I often use the military as an example of this. In most cases (especially those where a challenge to sovereignty is made), whether the military wins or loses is evident.

In a soggy system, the feedback is not so clear and that can lead to folks misinterpret and respond incorrectly, or not at all, to feedback. For example, government programs is a soggy system that tends to give more weight to intentions than to results. Even the military, when acting beyond its basic purpose of defense can become soggy.

I would publish some good snippets from the article and link to the article, but after reading the Financial Times toddler-like copyright and sharing policy, I thought I’d first laugh and then take a pass on trying too hard to recommend and source their content.