The Recycling Industrial Complex

A common theme of opportunity cost:  if you use more resources to "save" something than it takes to throw it away, that's not saving.

In the North State Journal, my piece claiming that mandatory recycling is a violation of the separation of church and state....here.  It's gated, but you can register for free.

An old lesson....

A shortage is when there is an insufficient amount to satisfy demand at the existing price.

I have lived during shortages.  I knew shortages.  Shortages are something I learned to deal with.  Egg supply shock, you're no shortage.  

Unless we make it one:

you're gonna miss me when I go

That Thing....

Ya know that thing where the woman you have been dating online becomes obsessed with you and tries to get into your house by sliding down the chimney?

Nope, me neither.  But it happened to this guy.

As the article notes....there is MORE to this story, somewhere.

Strangely, this is apparently a thing that you women do....

My Prediction? PAIN!

A group of English PhD students investigate the problems of common pool resources.

What could possibly go wrong?

More details....

Interesting, and Revealing

So, this is an interesting case.  In Wisconsin.  In Madison, WI, in fact.

An excerpt:

Snugglers contend touching helps relieve stress. But Madison officials suspect the business is a front for prostitution and, if it's not, fear snuggling could lead to sexual assault. Not buying the message that the business is all warm and fuzzy, police have talked openly about conducting a sting operation at the business, and city attorneys are drafting a new ordinance to regulate snuggling.

"There's no way that (sexual assault) will not happen," assistant city attorney Jennifer Zilavy said. "No offense to men, but I don't know any man who wants to just snuggle." 

The asst. D.A. doesn't say that there are no men who like to snuggle, she just says she hasn't met any.  Gosh, Jenn.  How's that dating going for you?  Not so well?

UPDATE:  Snuggle house is closed by prudery.

UPDATE II:  Japan is much less uptight about this.

between assad and a hard place

I am really confused, so I thought I'd try to work things out in this post and get some help from our always astute commenters.

Months ago BHO said chemical weapons were a red line and warned Assad not to use them.

Recently, according to BHO, Assad did just that.

Now, virtually everyone I know is going nuts, vociferously objecting to a strike against Assad.

I don't get it. To me, if you are against US military retaliation for the use of chemical weapons, the time to go nuts was months ago when BHO said what he said.

Given that he said it, with no take back, what the hell else is he supposed to do but strike Assad?

Now sure, he's making a complete bollox of it, and it is likely to be militarily weak and ineffective, but really, he has no choice but to do it. What's he supposed to do, say, "LOL, I was just kidding. Gas away, my friend."

So I don't understand why people waited until now to go nuts.

Maybe they think BHO is pulling a Bush-Cheney and fibbing about the use of chemical weapons?

God help me, but I think that's unlikely. BHO clearly doesn't really want to do this, so I think the evidence is likely pretty strong (NB: Jeff Sachs disagrees).

Maybe people think that BHO and by extension US foreign policy already has zero credibility, so it doesn't matter if BHO walks this back?

Certainly many people I know are 140 character mocking the argument that US credibility is at stake. But BHO has also told the ayatollah that a nuclear Iran is unacceptable. If he doesn't follow through with respect to Assad, it certainly won't help his efforts to keep the ayatollah out of Club Nuke, will it? And that's a club we don't want the ayatollah in, do we?

So while I would not have ever gone about it the way BHO has, I do think that chemical weapons use deserves a strong sanction (not necessarily military though), and given where BHO has put us (see post title), I think he has no choice but to strike Assad.

BHO should have had a response prepared for this eventuality before he ever talked about the red line.  He was reckless and arrogant to think his words would not be tested. But it is what it is and we are where we are......

What's your solution? Tell me in the comments.

School Daze: MIT vs. Stanford Culture

MIT has a video to help the geeks figure out how to talk to non-geeks.  An actual video.  Maybe a spoof, maybe not, pretty funny either way.

Stanford, on the other hand, is famous for its band.  And the band has its "Dollies."  They are....well, they are here.

Where would YOU want to go to school, if you were a young man?  I think the answer is....MIT.  There would be no competition.  Of course, you'd have to hack that video, to prevent that valuable info from getting out.

Nod, but no blame, to Kevin Lewis.

Disturbing. But I Can't Stop Watching

Actual video documentation of Angus teaching the section of his
macro course on Keynes.  Insightful!

boo, poo boo, boo, poo boo, boo, poo boo, BOOOOO!

Nod to M. Kaan.

What inaugurations are good for

Pickin' up wimmen, right Bill?

What's your super-power?

Bill Clinton's is the ability to inhabit his wife's body at critical junctures:

Harvard students fight back!

At least some of the 100+ accused cheaters are not taking the heat lying down.

Their main excuses seem to be:

1. the class was supposed to be easy

2. plenty of other people cheated in the past.

Not sure who teaches logic at Harvard, but maybe the powers that be should check the syllabus?

CYA

Interwebs are buzzing over Peter Doyle's IMF resignation letter.

I have to say I'm not too impressed.

I know, I am a huge IMF critic. I know, pretty much everything he says is true.

But people, he took the very remunerative and tax free salary for 20 years!!!.

And then blasts everyone and proclaims himself "ashamed" of the organization.

Did it really take him that long to figure it out?

I'm guessing that, after 20 years of "service", he'll be getting and keeping a nice pension too.

Plus he was not exactly a low level drone. He was high enough up to be considered part of the problem in my opinion.

It's the economics version of a deathbed conversion;  work for the devil for 20 years and then see the light at the very end.

Nice job, Pete. You have a future in politics for sure.

Jeff Sachs never gives up

Sachs has taken it on the chin recently with his Lancet piece being widely attacked and partially retracted. But he's not been humbled. Check out segments of this recent interview:


Q: Well, do you have evidence the approach is working? 


 JS: It depends what you mean by evidence. Some of my critics say we need to do these ‘randomized controlled trials’ (aka RCTs) as if what we’re doing is testing a red pill against a blue pill. What we’re doing has nothing to do with anything like that. It cannot be reduced down to such a simple and narrow test. We have been working with these communities for years to figure out how best to improve food production, get more kids in school, deliver clean drinking water, build infrastructure and encourage business development. This is not a randomized controlled trial; it’s a learning process.

Nice Bill Clinton (it depends on what you mean by "is") there Jeffrey!

Also an impressive summary of how RCTs work. They are science fiction, right out of the Matrix.

People, you know there's more:

Living it up at the Hamptons

So, the feds prosecuted former Senator John Edwards.  FAIL.

And the feds are going after Douglas Hampton, really hard.

But former Senator Ensign gets a free pass.

Even though Hampton cooperated with the Justice Department, and gave the lawyers PLENTLY to hammer Ensign with.  There is actually a case against Ensign.  He should go to jail.  But.... nothing.

A deal?  Ensign may know something about Democratic Senator..... Anonyman wants to know.

Someone else calls out Mr. Burns

From another perspective, here's some great invective about Christine Lagarde's tender feelings for the children of Niger.

The Thin Black Comb

There's a fun WSJ op-ed this morning on dialing down occupational licensure requirements for professions like barber, auctioneer, interior designer, and others.

Here's how the "director of a barbering school in Michigan" responded to a proposal to eliminate licensing for barbers:

"I'm not saying we are as important as doctors, but we are the closest you can get. We are turning this into the Wild, Wild West."

Yikes!

I was not aware that licensed barbers are the thin line between life as we know it and the zombie apocalypse.

I guess there are few things more scary than the prospect of a haircut not sanctioned by your government.

Baffle them with bulls**t

Oh my.  Jeff Sachs has a piece in The Lancet, extolling the accomplishments of his Millenium Village Project, that is, shall we say, weak.

Let's concentrate on child mortality, described in the Lancet piece as the "primary study outcome".

Sachs et. al. claim that, "Mortality rates in children younger than 5 years of age decreased by 22% in Millennium Village sites relative to baseline (absolute decrease 25 deaths per 1000 livebirths, p=0·015) and 32% relative to matched comparison sites (30 deaths per 1000 livebirths, p=0·033)."

They present this evidence in a table (page 7 of the article, the last row of the results there) comparing the change from year zero to year 3 in the MVs and in the comparison villages.

So far, so good, right? Well, what if I told you that, in the words of Sachs et. al., "Local comparison village sites were introduced in the third study year to enhance the plausibility that recorded changes were the result of intervention exposure."

In other words, the comparison villages were added ex-post! So how then can they report the change in child mortality in the comparison villages over a time period that started before they started to study those villages?

"Year-0 value is based on recall items in the year 3 survey (eg, women’s reproductive histories)."

YIKES!!

So in year three, they asked women how many children they had under 5 that died in year zero and compared that to the actual numbers they measured in year 3, while the MV change was computed from measurements (not surveys) in both years.

Why does this matter? Well according to the table in the Sachs et. al. article, child mortality is RISING in the comparison villages. This "result" is driving the whole claim quoted above. In the MV case, child mortality falls from 113 to 88.7 over the time period, while in the comparison villages the rate rises from 90 to 96!

So if that comparison is no good what can we use? Well, the total percentage decline in child mortality in the MVs was around 22% which is pretty much right in line with the overall figures the World Bank is reporting for many Sub-Saharan African countries!

I am by far not the first one to point this out. Here's an article from Nature, quoting Michael Clemens than makes many of the same points.. Here's the Roving Bandit pointing out other statistical silliness in the Lancet paper. Here's more from Aid Thoughts about the overall decline of child mortality in Africa.

I really don't understand why a well published PhD economist would bend good practice to this extent, no matter how noble his ultimate goals.

Development links

World Bank says they are doing an excellent job.

More Lant Pritchett on schooling vs. education in developing countries.

Michael Clemens tries to reconcile the conflict between development goals and impact evaluation.

Grantland!

My latest piece with LeBron is up at Grantland.com.

In it we tackle the problem of asymmetric information when purchasing sports experiences. The idea for the piece came from a very nice paper by J. Zinman and E. Zitzewitz at Dartmouth, for which we thank them.

Here's a lovely bit:

The biggest issue is that our own desire for thrills often works against our better judgment. As a species, we derive pleasure from thinking about what will come — how nice that powdery snow on the slopes is going to be. So we turn off our critical faculties at the worst possible moment in hopes of maximizing the value of the anticipation and getting a bigger buzz. This is particularly bad when it comes to sports experiences, which are rife with "asymmetric information" — when the seller knows something you don't. Your best defense, of course, is to be aware of your vulnerability and maximize your information, as any smart shopper does when in the market for a used car. But when it comes to shopping for experiences, emotions all too often rule.