Happy Planet Index

Human Development and quality of life most often comes at the price of environmental destruction. The New Economics Foundation's HPI makes a fair attempt to rank different countries on the basis of human quality of life or happy human years per environmental footprint. Vanuatu has the highest HPI. Maximising measures such as these rather than artificial production or velocity measures such as GDP should be the aim of economists and policymakers.

Wealth and Efficiency at the Cost of Privacy

The Economist has an article about the coming wireless revolution. Gradually, wireless-enabled microchips will be embedded in almost everything that is manufactured turning our cities into giant sensor nets. The benefits of this will be unprecedented, but so will the ability for even the average person to spy on almost anything. It is Little Brother rather than Big Brother who will be the menace of the 21st Century. I believe that no matter what the laws are, in future privacy will be all but eliminated. People will do well to live their lives with this in mind.

Debating the Future

This BBC article concerns a debate being held by London's Science Museum regarding the future impact robotics will play in our lives and how liability for robot behaviour and mistakes will be determined. Addressing future technological impact in a mature way is healthy for our society. It allows us to look forward, to consider and shape the world and society in which we actually want to live. Rather than Anna Nicole's baby daddy, at such a critical point in human evolution, society should be considering privacy rights, reproductive regulation, genetic engineering, and particularly environmental protection. Simply put: long term welfare.

Theoretical Physicist, Michio Kaku, concluding 'Parallel Worlds':

The generation now alive is perhaps the most important generation of humans ever to walk the Earth. Unlike previous generations, we hold in our hands the future destiny of our species, whether we soar into fulfilling our promise as a type I civilization or fall into the abyss of chaos, pollution, and war. Decisions made by us will reverberate throughout this century. How we resolve global wars, proliferating nuclear weapons, and sectarian and ethnic strife will either lay or destroy the foundations of a type I civilization. Perhaps the purpose and meaning of the current generation are to make sure that the transition to a type I civilization is a smooth one. The choice is ours. This is the legacy of the generation now alive. This is our destiny.

Personally, I have no fear of robotics, though I expect to be held completely liable for any damages my machines may one day cause. I welcome the day that machines exceed my own intelligence and the day that people merge themselves with intelligent or even spiritual machines.

Social Choice and Voting Systems

The Economist's blog, Free Exchange, has a post relating the characteristics of the French election to Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, (pdf proof) from Kenneth Arrow's 'A Difficulty in the Concept of Social Welfare,' The Journal of Political Economy, Volume 58, Issue 4 (August, 1950), pp. 328–346. This and his more comprehensive book 'Social Choice and Individual Values' won him the Nobel Prize in 1972. The theorem explains the inefficiency of voting systems with more than two candidates and more than one voter in determining the one candidate who is the social optimum. It can be shown that in some voting scenarios, the aggregate outcome can produce a result which is below the social optimum. In the case of France, François Bayrou was the clear social optimum, but in only a two round election system, the results were polarised in the first round between Ségozy and Sarkolène as Jean-Marie Le Pen called them. The United States also has a particularly inefficient selection system where geographic area and party affiliation vote on a candidate in the primaries, then geographic areas vote again for a president who is elected then by several hundred members of the Electoral College. For example, Albert Gore won the popular election but ultimately lost the election in the Electoral College. The inefficiency of voting systems can also be exacerbated or exploited as in Tom Delay's infamous Tejas redistricting of 2003.

It should be stated that a voting system based on modern information technology could easily be far superior to all of the 18th Century systems currently in use.

Quantifiable Advantages of a Large City

An article in Scientific American pointed me to an interesting article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. From SciAm:

"This is a fascinating paper that quantitatively explores the complex interactions between urbanization, sustainability and social innovation...Insights, such as those presented in this paper, will help guide our collective choices as the pace of socioecological change accelerates."

-Thomas Parris

Privatised Currency

Introductory Economics teaches that there are 3 fundamental properties of money: divisibility, transferability, and storing of value. Traditionally, various commodities which were rare, small, and relatively indestructible such as precious metals were the dominant currency or at least backed the value of dominant currencies. As governments became more stable and dominant in people's lives in the last two centuries, they were able to abandon all commodity backing of their treasury notes whilst letting currencies stand on their own merit as stores of value. This served to further governments grip over its populace by permitting enormous macroscopic control over wealth, interest rates, and inflation in the economy for good or ill.

We are now entering the information age where anyone may be able to create their own effective "virtual" currencies through modern technology. This soon will allow encrypted and anonymous transactions which will effectively transfer value beneath the radar of government. Governments will try to suppress this activity, but ultimately currency simply represents information and the preservation of information is a law of physics. With satellite internet available in a wristwatch, who will possibly be able to destroy the flow of information? Currency is an important example of the gradual inevitable decline in power and authority of governments and the rise of the multinational corporations as the dominant world powers of the future. After all, the modern system of Nation-States is an idea less than 200 years old, having been created at the Congress of Vienna. It will pass, like all previous forms of rule and diplomacy, into mere history texts.

The currencies of the near future will be varied, exchangeable, customised to individual financial needs and desires, and backed by a tradable basket of securities. To buy a haircut, you could be paying with shares of IBM and GOOG whilst the barber is receiving credit towards his new telescreen and futures contracts on organic wheat. I must thank David Friedman for first sharing this revelation with me in his book 'The Machinery of Freedom.'

This post was prompted by this WSJ article describing the current "virtual" currency, QQ, now being suppressed in Zhong Guo for doing just what I have described, undermining the legitimacy of the Yuan. As with other forms of information oppression, Zhong Guo is doomed to fail.

Adam Curtis Documentaries

Adam Curtis, creator of 'The Power of Nightmares' has produced several documentary series about the political, economic, and psychological forces driving Western society. UKNova has a torrent for a collection of his series. His new series, 'The Trap: What Happened to our Dreams of Freedom' is currently airing in the UK. It can be accessed on MVGroup.

Designer Babies

Assuming humanity is not destroyed by its own poor decisions nor by a cosmic event, the human species will flourish, become far more varied, and eventually speciate into unrecognisable multifarious forms most beautiful and wonderful, to borrow from Darwin. This process would occur naturally, but humanity's knowledge about its own genetic makeup will greatly accelerate the process. What starts with "Designer Babies" now to eliminate disease from the population, will certainly expand into mere cosmetic engineering, life extension, and superhuman abilities. When in vitro fertilisation was developed, many ignorant reactionaries even questioned if the children born of this would have a soul (while of course assuming that the rest of us do). Now that your best friend could be a test tube baby, the mob has for the most part come to terms with in vitro fertilisation and often see it as a necessity and a right for couples with fertility difficulties. Being a proponent of adoption, I discourage test tube babies for environmental and social reasons. Nonetheless, I do not have an inherent problem with the technology. Similarly, genetically engineered people are as inevitable as genetically engineered crops. You may wish to stay organic, but that will not stop anyone else from moving forward towards greater health, prosperity, and complexity. I instead would call for further research and development and government sponsorship of this technology and its implementation. After all, it is in society's best interests.

The position of the Roman Catholic Church in this matter prompted these thoughts.

Software Disapproval

I cannot say for Windows at this point, but the new Mac version of Firefox 2.0 has crashed on me 5 times or so in the last 24 hours during normal use. While the recovery of a session with tabs compensates for this slightly, it does not bring back, for example, the text in the box in which I am typing this. I almost lost a gmail as well were it not for gmail's excellent autosave draft feature.

Indeed, I did lose a nice post I wrote yesterday in Spanish concerning Bush's backstabbing of North Americans with his signing of an order to build the Wall. The thrust was that his alleged pro-immigration position was the last shred of dignity the man had left which he has now utterly demolished.

Back to Firefox, I approve of the built in spell checker, which mostly eliminates my need for the google toolbar plugin.

The Economic Burden of Reproduction in a Wealthy Society

This article in the LA Times laments the fact that families and children place a difficult burden on most families. It concludes:

Forming a family and having kids is the most personal of decisions. Yet it's a decision that has profound benefits for society as a whole. Americans do need to make the right choices for their families. But they shouldn't have to choose between economic security and getting married and having kids.

Oh YES they should! The increased cost of having children in a wealthy society is the only thing keeping population in those societies at bay. It is arguably the best reason to support economic development in poor nations.

If a ravaged planet and Malthusian population crash is what you seek, then the socialistic reproductive subsidies suggested by the normally sensible Mark Toma are policies you should seek. It is far more sensible to strive for the population growth rate of China, Europe, or even the US than that of India for economic, humanitarian, and environmental reasons.

Toma is correct in calling for more educational subsidies, but for the average prospective parent, any new subsidies should be offset by additional taxes or penalties to having more children.

Do not Abuse Your Children

In the West, the tendency has been moving away from parents beating their children. While this is a positive step in a civilised society which has lost touch with the harsh realities of survival in the wilderness, many parents have substituted verbal and mental chastisement and abuse for physical punishment. While no marks are left and the effect is more subtle than a corporal attack, mental scars do result such as impaired verbal, speech, and brain development.

The culture and legal system currently dictate that one may not physically abuse their children, but unusual deference is otherwise given to the parents in raising their child. Most natural families are not nuclear, but are more tribal, with extended family having at least as much to do with raising the children as the biological parents. Therefore in natural families, children tend to be more protected from the excesses of their parents than modern families whose dominance has resulted from advances in transportation and housing technology and the economic drive to migrate to maximise buying power.

I therefore reject this modern notion of "Don't tell me how to raise my kids!" Nobody is perfect and we all make mistakes, most often without realising them. Qualified reproduction may be a human right, but abusing your progeny is not.

Bottom Line: Neither physically nor verbally abuse your children.

(I do not nor would I suggest a legal mechanism to enforce restraint in verbally abusing one's children. I aim simply to educate.)

Talent and Meritocracy

The latest issue of the Economist has a survey of Talent. I recommend 'The Battle for Brainpower' and 'Meritocracy and its discontents'

David Friedman

David Friedman, son of legendary economist Milton Friedman, has a blog.(feed) He does not post very frequently, but they are usually very thoughtful. I think it is fair to label him a libertarian anarchist, but that really does not say much. I was introduced to him originally through reading his book "The Machinery of Freedom" which imagines how an anarcho-libertarian society could be possible. Though it is not reality based in my view, it is thought provoking. He is not afraid to question anything. This recent post well illustates the type of thinker he is. His questions and ideas have very important social relevance and should not be seen merely as "on the fringe." I admire too the way this established author is composing a modern text.

Neuroeconomics Again

Will Wilkinson (good alliterative name) of the CATO Institute writes a poignant article on the topic of Neuroeconomics. It suggests that a Paternalistic System would correct irrational behaviour of individuals at little cost to rational actors, and therefore significantly increase social welfare. He cogently argues that despite the scientific evidence, a laissez-faire approach is still preferable given the technology and political structures which exist. I believe Wilkinson is correct, but I am open to the possibility that continued improvement of technology will enable changes in human organisational structure and physiological monitoring such that laissez-faire will no longer be a social optimum.

This came to me via Tyler Cowen's reaction to Hare's work on psychopathy upon which I have commented. This controversial post is also relevant.

Psychos

This article in wired argues that psychopathy deserves more respect and sympathy as is currently granted other mental disorders such as schizophrenia. I have known a few psychopaths in my day, and have witnessed how quickly the rest of society will shun them once the word gets out about their condition. Indeed, we all know how "psycho" is used in common parlance as a derogatory term.

However, let us not forget that psychopathy, which implies a lack of empathy for other people, can make a person potentially dangerous. Unfortunately, many such people also tend to rise quickly in corporate or political situations and so their destructive potential can be multiplied. Organisations should put significant effort into preventing people with such untreated conditions from gaining positions of authority over others.

Basing Laws on Science

This article in the FT considers research at the University College London which explores neurological development and the neurological basis for behaviour.

The study has implications for the use of anti- social behaviour orders for juveniles and in determining at what age we should be criminally responsible.

In a broader sense, this type of research should have implications into the stage at which a person should be considered self-sufficient and independent. To have an age arbitrarily set at 16,18, or 21 above which one's parents are no longer responsible nor legally authoritative is potentially dangerous. For example, the age of sexual consent in Canada is 14. Rights and privileges ought to be based on some sort of merit, neurological or otherwise.

Perhaps the argument works both ways. Above the age of 18, it is well known that mental acuity starts to decline. This may explain why older voters are more likely to vote for war criminals like Cheney and Bush. Perhaps such people should lose their voting rights.

The Economic blogsphere is currently enamoured with this New Yorker article about neurology and risk behaviour.

Zhong Guo's Population Control

China is the only place that has taken the radical yet necessary steps to halt population growth. Through the one China policy, China is now below the replacement rate of fertility, common in Europe, but phenomenal for a developing country. Unfortunately, given cultural biases, female children are less common than male owing to deliberate abortions or neglect by parents disappointed by a daughter and inwardly hoping to try again for a boy. Statistics are examined in a new study by Qu Jiang Ding and Therese Hesketh in a recent British Medical Journal article (full pdf)

The male:female ratio in Zhong Guo is now 1.23, the highest anywhere. The female-devaluing cultural problem exists elsewhere in Asia. From the article:

"[M]any other Asian countries that have declining birth rates and traditional preferences for male babies are seeing serious sex imbalances: 1.19 for Taiwan, 1.18 for Singapore, 1.12 for South Korea, and 1.20 for parts of northern India."

Any discussion of population control is controversial especially among religious fundamentalists, but I would propose that governments contending with such issues should impose progressive taxation on children born, with higher rates for males. Without doing a thorough welfare analysis, such a system could allow for determined parents to have more than one child while controlling population and mitigating sex ratio imbalances. Age old cultural preferences are a bit harder to change.