So, Scrooge was right after all

Economists seem to always view people in isolation, much as a biologist often only looks at 1 protein. But biology is much more complex than that (as we are really beginning to see) and economics is also. Because economics derives from the interaction of human beings who will often take a small lose in economic power in order to strengthen the social fabric of the group. becuase humans are, and never were, solitary animals. We are social creatures and the needs for gifts most likely resides from social needs. It is much easier to control a social group by the judicious use of gifts than by constant battle. Alliances come easily when gifts are used. Gifts help remind everyone of the social bonds, explaining why we do not get gifts for everyone but only for those we care about. Many economists think too much like Scrooge, looking only at man by himself. No one is that rational.

Fri, 26 Dec 2003 21:00:53 GMT

Sorry. With the holidays and my wife’s return fomr the Galapagos and Peru after almost 3 weeks, I have been spending some time on other things than writing. I hope to rectify that.

Fri, 19 Dec 2003 05:30:27 GMT

MoveOn on the Ground. MoveOn.org’s campaign against the omnibus spending bill is a fine example of grassroots activism. [AlterNet]

Omnibus spending bills are an abomination, in my opinion, and a sign of just how weak and spineless so many legislators are. They like it because they can add so much pork ut bear no responsibility. ‘Sorry. We had to pass it , no matter what, because the govenment would shut down otherwise.’ There is so much unnecessary stuff in this bill that it will be an example of what is wrong with the process when historians evaluate this time in our history. It is a perfect example of how monied interests and political machines are so much more important than grassroots and the average voter. No money for unemployment or overtime benefits but plenty to fix pools. This view will change shortly, because networking increases the speed and nimbleness of grassoots, while simply confusing the old politicos. Like the inhabitants of Flatland, they are two-dimensional personalities in a suddenly 3-D world.

Fri, 19 Dec 2003 05:16:33 GMT

Does it come down to Clark v. Dean?. I think Josh Marshall is among our sharpest political analysts. I think that especially strongly when he’s saying what I want to hear. His bet is that the Democratic race comes down to Dean and Clark, and that Dean doesn’t… [Mark A. R. Kleiman]

I firmly believe that it will be a Dean-Clark ticket. dean has the fire and Clark has the South. The DLC still has a hand in the pot, hoping that it can manipulate and work at Dean. If this plays out, and Dean does make it to the White House ( a very BIG If) I would not be surprised to see some real changes in the party. Because I think it likely that Dean would have some coattails in this scenario, with people more loyal to him than the DLC. Clark, a smart man, would also see where the wind blew, leaving the DLC and its machine out in the cold. Hey, it is a totally unlikely possibility but it sure would be juicy.

Fri, 19 Dec 2003 05:10:26 GMT

The Dallas police fake-drug scandal. If I hadn’t lent my car to someone who switch from the CD player to the radio and left it tuned to NPR, I probably never would have heard about the Dallas police fake-drug scandal. Googling it, I find no… [Mark A. R. Kleiman]

Another example of how a police department will abuse its privileges if there is no oversight. We have many of the ammendments in the Bill of rights to prevent this sort of mayhem against innocent people but we too often let justice lapse. The fact that this was done to minorities rather than rich white folk is one reason I am sure that the cops get acquitted for doing such things. Framing Hispanics with chalk and calling it cocaine. What a racket! In combination with the Tulia scandal, it certainly seems to be an indictment of Texas justice, where more people are sent to their deaths by the state than anywhere else. The lukeward investigation of the new scandal by civil authorities does not bode well. It seems that the public servants in Dallas are paridly forgetting wo they are beholden to. But if the public really thinks that cops faking evidence is fine, as long as it gets immigrants out of their hair, what will they say when the next scandal hits? How badly do the poor and the weak of the community have to be abused before anyone really cares?

DC primary ballot lacking candidates

What kind of campaign are these guys running? Joe Lieberman, John Edwards, John Kerry, Richard Gephardt, or Wesley Clark all ASK to have their names taken off the DC ballot. Because they were afraid that Iowa would get upset. Dean did not, so it seems likely that the week before the ‘real’ primaries, dean will get an easy ‘win’, one that looks good for the media, allowing him to get a lot of hype without having to pay any money.

And, what it demonstrates to me is that the other candidates just do not have what it takes to lead this country. As President, you are going to piss off a lot of people, ALL the time. That is the nature of the game. I may not care for how this administration does its job, but it does not sit around getting to worried about whether some people do not like what they have done. The message Dean sends is that he is trying to win the campaign and he will use every outlet. If he can not convince Iowans to vote for him, even if the DC primary happens first, then what sort of candidate is he? The other candidates demonstrate their belief that they can not do this, that their campaigns are so tenuous that getting a few people in Iowa ticked off could lose it all for them.

So mush of politics is perception. Only Dean has been running a along with the perception that he CAN win. All the others have had the view: ‘PLEASE let me win in Iowa and New Hampshire. Or at least come in second. Then maybe I can build a campaign that will get me the nomination. Then I can build a campaign that will …’ what. Not be as bad as McGovern? The media has made a lot about Dean being angry. that is why he is getting popular. I believe that it is deeper than that. He is the only one who REALLY believes he can beat Bush now and in 2004. The others just hope they can be allowed to debate Bush. Dean knows he will debate and knows he will win.

In politics, perception often trumps reality. I knew that Clark was in real trouble when he decided to forego Iowa. He was afraid of losing. That is what so many of the Democrat candidates possess. They are more concerned about losing than about winning. Clark would have done better to stay in, to demonstrate that he is not afraid of losing one battle in order to lead the fight for the nomination. He has enough money from the political machines to keep going but I have not been impressed with his political choices.

Dean has been flaunting conventional wisdom for some time. Everyone said to avoid the Washington primary because the people in Iowa would be pissed. Dean ignored conventional wisdom, is now on the DC primary and has not been hurt in Iowa. Why? Because most of the voters in Iowa care about the candidate, not that Iowa is first. Only the political machines in Iowa and New Hampshire really care.

I like the meme that Dean is actually running a third party campaign but has found a way to maintain the Democrat brand. In every other third party campaign I have seen, the candidate had to go outside the party because the political machine would not support what the candidate wanted. No support, no candidate. Dean has used the Internet to get himself a huge amount of support WITHOUT much at all from the machine. He has more money, more key endorsements and more momentum than any machine anointed candidate, all without having to go begging for money from the major political interests. They have tried to stop and belittle him. Yet he keeps on going. He may very well require the Democratic party to chose a candidate who is not 100% beholden to the big money backers of the DNC.

Finally, there was a lot of hooey about Gore’s endorsement of Dean, that it was not allowing the people to vote. But what have the very candidates done in DC? They have not allowed the people to vote. In reality, Gore and Dean did not take away anyone’s right to vote. But in DC, Joe Lieberman, John Edwards, John Kerry, Richard Gephardt, and Wesley Clark all did. Which is why I do not expect any of them to be running for President next fall.

Update:There was a nice point brought up by Jennifer in the discussions at Daily Kos’s site. Besides being a nice ‘perception moment’ with some good tactical play, if Dean wins in DC, it is a very good strategical play. He can then go to African-Americans in the South and (1) say that he won the primary in one of the highest proportion African-American areas of the country helping get his message across that he is not just an effete Northerner but someone who can resonate with minority voters, and (2) none of the other candidates bothered to run there, demonstrating that they simply do not care about minority voters.

Wed, 17 Dec 2003 15:28:43 GMT

Morons in the News: Bungee-jumping Without the “Bungee”. Man jumps without a rope after staff refuses to let him jump [Morons Dot Org]

It was into a river. Apparently he survived and was airlifted to a hospital!

Wed, 17 Dec 2003 06:41:54 GMT

Fax Technology Refuses To Die. Despite the rapid rise of digital technologies for communicating, the fax machine is still a major part of business communications. I still have a fax machine next to my desk. It’s still easier for handling documents that require signatures and it’s a one-step process rather than the two steps of “scan and email” that the article suggest is a better process. If scanners include an “email this to” function that somehow communicates with your email client, then I could finally stop using the fax machine. However, many companies still give out fax numbers rather than an email address you can send a document to. In fact, as the article points out, fax numbers still receive prominent placement on corporate documents and business cards.

[Techdirt]

Ahh, I use OS 10.3 fro my faxes. I can receive faxs simply by hooking the phone line up to my modem and using system preferences to tell it how many rings before picking up and where to store the fax. I have the alternate rig tone optin on my phone, so I use that number for my fax #. I can send faxes from the print dialogue. It allows me to format and send faxes instead of printing them. So I just use word or pdf document or whatever. I could fax this page if i wanted. No need for any fax machine, I believe. And, when I receive a fax, it is already on my computer ready for me to manipulate or print. Saves on paper supplies.

Mon, 15 Dec 2003 04:45:50 GMT

Dem Candidates’ Reaction to Saddam’s Capture. The Democratic contenders for President had varied reactions to Saddam’s capture. Some are now siding with Bush and criticizing Dean–dumb… [TalkLeft: The Politics of Crime]

Almost all the candidates used the news to further their own political agendas, such as ging after Dean. Except for Dean. Dean’s reply was something that a front-runner can afford to be – stateman-like:

He deflected questions about the Democratic presidential race. ‘President Bush deserves a day of celebration,’ Dean said. ‘We have our policy differences but we won’t be discussing those today.’

Mon, 15 Dec 2003 04:32:30 GMT

The Power to Tax is the Power to Destroy Update. The Power to Tax is the Power to Destroy Update – Developments in the Corner Comics case I wrote about… [Unqualified Offerings]

The Power to Tax is the Power to Destroy, Continued. The Power to Tax is the Power to Destroy, Continued – Laura “Tegan” Gjovaag reports on IRS abuse of her… [Unqualified Offerings]

Government intimidation will become more and more prevalent since our Congress has seen fit to provide the Executive branch anything it wants. Taxation is just the most noticeable. Seems like Caesar and the Senate all over again.

Mon, 15 Dec 2003 04:27:35 GMT

Mike Clough: “The Gore endorsement may spur the party’s ardent centrists to rally more openly behind Wesley Clark, the candidate who most closely matches the centrists’ profile of an electable candidate: a strong-on-defense, progressive Southerner. This is especially likely if, as many observers believe, Clark is the preferred choice of the party’s chief centrist, former President Bill Clinton.” [Scripting News]

More fodder for my Gore-Dean vs. Clark-Clinton thoughts. But I think that any article that discusses political observers, pundits, polls, what have you are going to miss what is happening because it is under the radar. It will be interesting. But this campaign will not turn on visions of the past as much as it turns on hopes for the future. I, for one, hope for a future where we stop acting like a bully and start assuming a more adult role in the worldwide community.

PowerPoint Makes You Dumb

But we all know that. Aldus Persuasion was the best. Keynote comes cloes. But so many people try to make them look like Powerpoint Presentations. I used to loath seeing those slides with the awful yellow letters on a blue background. Why could MS not have come up with a better default template? Because they did not have to.

Mon, 15 Dec 2003 03:55:18 GMT

Okay, this may…. Okay, this may call for what, back in the old days, we used to call reporting. Yesterday, President Bush said that if Halliburton’s overcharged then they’ve gotta pay up. “I appreciate the Pentagon looking out after the taxpayers’ money,” the… [Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall]

Awfully hard to audit those Iraqi matters if the office in charge is not allowed to.

Mon, 15 Dec 2003 03:50:16 GMT

Dean’s campaign considered as a coordination problem (Clay Shirky). Fascinating Everett Erlich piece on Howard Dean’s candidacy considered as a coordination problem. Erlich’s idea is that Coase’s theory about firms being information gathering machines applies to political parties as well, and that what Dean is doing is using the… [Many-to-Many]

This comes close to explaining what is unique about Dean’s campaign. His organization is working WITH the technology rather than trying to make the technology work FOR the organization. The quote about Dean actually running a 3rd party campaign but wanting to capture the Democratic ‘brand’ is any interesting perspective.

Mon, 15 Dec 2003 03:46:47 GMT

More on the UK inquiry. Nick Hasell, Larger capitalisation shares – Reed Elsevier, Reuters, mm02, London Times, December 13, 2003. Excerpt: “Reed Elsevier [stock] fell to a nine-month low on concerns over an impending House of Commons investigation into the science publishing market and the increasing support for ‘open access’ journals….Meg Geldens, a highly rated media analyst in Investec Securities, highlighted these two issues yesterday [the UK inquiry and the rise of open access journals] as she repeated her cautious ‘hold’ advice on Reed. She also highlighted recent moves by high-profile university libraries –such as Cornell, Harvard, University of California and University of North Carolina– not to renew their bundled journal subscription contracts with Reed in their present form.” [Open Access News]

More Elsevier problems. For-profit journals are in danger. I was doing a literature search and found what looked to be a nice review article. The for-profit publisher wanted $115 to read the paper, non-refundable if I fond out the paper was not really very good. that is a problem when charging for access. Why in the world am I going to pay money for something without knowing if there is ANY value to the content? Things willchange.