Tag: talks

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Protocols of the Elders of Zion

It was the deadliest and one of the most persistent hoaxes in history. You probably have not heard of it & if you did you probably did not believe it, but millions did know about it, did believe it AND acted on their beliefs. Millions more were affected.

Alex and I went to a lecture on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Considering this document is instructive from so many angles. It is obviously a study in hate, but it is perhaps more pragmatically a study in how hoaxes, credulity and the desire to believe in conspiracy shapes events.

Sure, it is all wrong, but it is still all true
The Protocols were debunked almost immediately after they were promulgated in 1902/3. It just made no sense. Supposedly, the protocols recorded a meeting of Jewish leaders sometime around 1897, where they laid out a plan for world domination. From the beginning, the facts just did not make sense. For example, the event is said to take place AROUND 1897. There was no precise date. Where the meeting took place was also left unclear, as well as who attended or how they got there. Presumably, a large meeting of international leaders would be a logistical feat attracting some attention. Nobody ever came forward to claim to have been at the meeting or seen the meeting.

None of this seemed to matter. Some believers just assumed that Jews were so crafty that they could cover their trail so that nobody could find it. More surprisingly, many other believers admitted that the facts were all wrong, but that they somehow represented a greater truth. Sure, it is all wrong, but it is still all true.

Weaponizing lies for an international audience
The Protocols had a long lasting and malicious legacy. It was created to be weaponized as a tool of hate and it worked. Ralph Nurnberger said that this was the single most damaging antisemitic document in history, worse even than “Mein Kampf.” The Protocols built on a long tradition, but they made antisemitism international and gave it the rationale we recognize today. They had a big impact in the Islamic world, where Jews had lived in relative harmony since the Islamic conquests, and in places that did not have any, or many, Jews at all, such as in Japan. It persists in these places. Nurnberger mentioned a recent Cairo bookfair the featured multiple edition of the “Protocols.” When Israeli diplomats complained, they were told that they did not have to attend.

The more facts you bring to debunk, the more we think it is true
As I mentioned above, the “Protocols” were debunked right away and continued to be debunked as different editions showed up in different places. When the “Protocols” came to the USA, the “New York Times” wrote a full-page article pointing out the various problems with the “Protocols.” The “Times of London” has done this earlier. This, ironically, this debunking confirmed the belief for true believers, since the “Protocols” warned that Jews controlled the media and for the believers that fact of the debunking just proved the truth.

This is one reason why conspiracy theories are so persistent. They include within them the antibodies against truth. In fact, the more facts come out against them, the more it confirms the belief.

The “Protocols” are now in their second century. Unfortunately, they are not just history.
This event was sold out and every chair was taken. Good to know that enough people have the intellectual curiosity to be attracted to such events.

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Civil society – the third pillar

These are the best of times
Unemployment is near historical lows, while median income is pushing historical highs. Our air and water are cleaner than any time in living memory. Cancer rates have been dropping for three decades. Crime is down in the same period. Gun violence is down. Even the poor have access to wonderful technologies that the world’s richest people could not have a generation past.

Is everybody happy yet?
Well … no. Despite all this wonderful news, people are dissatisfied and angry. We can dismiss some of this to simple ignorance. Not everybody knows about the low unemployment rates, and most people you ask probably think problems like cancer are on the rise. But it goes well beyond that, because despite the gains in material well-being, many Americans have lost something very valuable. They have lost their places in communities.

The third sector
I went to see Raghuram Rajan talk about his new book, “The Third Pillar: How Markets and the State Leave the Community Behind” (Penguin Press, 2019). I finished the audio-book version during my drives down to the tree farms, so I was primed and interested. In fact, I was primed way before. When I studied for my MBA at University of Minnesota, they had a whole department called “business, government and society” to talk about the interactions. Supporting civil society – the third sector – was a big program goal in my work in post-communist Poland. In Krakow, we sponsored a series of talks called “Habits of the Heart,” explaining that democracy was a lot more than just voting. Civil society, community and habits were like the lubricants in an engine. W/o this, the whole machine would sputter to a halt. One reason I am troubled by apparent decline of community in America is that I believe what we told our Polish friends.

Not new but worth repeating with new variations
What Dr. Rajan said was not new, but I think it needs to be restated. He talked about the three big components of society – the state, the market & community. Of course, you could argue for more divisions, but you must keep it manageable. Each of these sectors complements and balances the others. Government makes rules and exercises power. It needs to be balanced by the power of the market, which is balanced by government and both are balanced and complemented by community.

The book went into a lot of history about how each developed. Suffice it to say that community has been ceding power & responsibility to government and the market. This was not always or even usually bad. Community can be great, nurturing and enabling, but it can also be stifling in excluding. The balance from the government and markets was a good thing. Government could reach in and protect oppressed. Markets could give opportunities to go beyond what your parents had or did.

In recent decades, however, community has been atrophying more than is healthy, as both government and the market usurp its functions. Big government and big business are sometimes rivals, but often collaborators. When one gets big, the other does too. What gets squeezed is community. The small and the local are run over by the big and the national. This is Walmart pushing out small hardware stores, or Federal programs displacing local charities. Large banks absorb community bankers.

Why is small & local better?
The answer is that they not always are better. Most goods and services can be better provided by larger or more centrally organized enterprises. Walmart pushes out local stores because it can provide better products at lower prices. Sometimes it is less “fair” than offering lower prices or better services. Regulations like Dodd-Frank helped big banks knock out community banks, since the big guys could more efficiently cope with regulations and reporting requirements. A community banker might base a loan decision on subjective local knowledge and relationship. A report that justifies an action with, “Because I knew the situation” does not do well with Federal regulators.

Small and local has advantages in that it is often more attuned to local nuances. But the biggest advantages might be less evident and paradoxical. The small & local is often less efficient and it might be better for society in the long run precisely because of this fault. It gives more people a “valuable place” and makes our societal interface more human. I know this is intangible and maybe even illogical, but it is human.

I prefer to drink beer that is locally produced – or at least has a local story – even though I cannot tell the taste difference and the local brew often costs more than something more mass produced. I also prefer to drink at a restaurant or brew-pub, even though for a fraction of the cost I can buy a similar quality brew to drink at home. I am celebrating inefficiency, or maybe trading efficiency for community, perceived or real.

Maybe we have become efficient enough
We have largely escaped the poverty trap that ensnared ever generation of humanity until only a few generations ago. We have so much more stuff than they had, but we have lost some of the community that enriched their lives. We are richer in things and poorer in spirit. Can’t we choose to have both more stuff and robust community?

We can all listen to Taylor Swift
We all want to best we can get. It used to be that the best was just okay, to be less charitable we used to be content with mediocrity.

Rajan cites the examples of Elizabeth Billington and Taylor Swift. Elizabeth Billington was the most celebrated singer of her age, the early 19th Century. She made the big bucks, or the prime pounds, since she earned her money in Britain. In 1801, she earned the princely sum of £15,000. This was about $1 million in today’s dollars. Big money. Taylor Swift earns more. She grossed $250 million on a single tour a couple years ago. Does Taylor Swift sing more than 250 times better than Billington?

The difference is technology. Billington could reach only a few hundred people for each performance and she had to show personally in order to be heard. This meant that her fan base was limited by her reach. Only a very small number of people actually heard Billington sing. Most Americans, even those who are not fans, have heard Taylor Swift. She can make money from people how have never shared a concert hall with her and supported by video and amplification she can reach a lot more people per venue.

Superstars displace the ordinary. There used to be a much bigger market for people of medium talent and attractiveness. People are less likely today to pay extra for someone singing one of Taylor Swift’s songs, when for less cash they can listen to a recording of Swift herself.

Superstar hogging = inequality
Superstars hog the work of thousands, maybe millions, and they are compensated vastly for this. They effectively duplicate themselves millions of times, putting no additional time or effort into each rendition after the first. This is the root of inequality.
It gets worse. Superstars also hog the gigs outside their own field of expertise. I heard Oprah narrating a nature show, got information about credit cards from Alec Baldwin and Jenifer Aniston told me what water to drink.

he superstars hollow out the middle. People who are very talented and well-known but not the very top find themselves out of work. It doesn’t do much good to be in the top-hundred or even the top ten. It is much like the Olympics. We know the winner of the gold, might pay some attention to silver, treat the bronze as a bit player and have no idea about anybody below that.

The center cannot hold (a job)
This superstar hogging is not limited to celebrities. They are just easier to see. The same goes for CEOs, investors and even skilled workers. Anything where tech expands reach.
Rajan mentioned accounting. We no longer hire ordinary guys to do our taxes, since Turbo Tax or other programs “know” all the routine things. Superstar accountants do better than ever, and the guys who move paper are still there. The places in the middle are gone.
Inequality affects community, but in a round about way. Inequality does not cause the breakdown of mixed communities, but rather what causes inequality also breaks down mixed community.

Rajan places a lot of the motivation to create communities of like-minded people on the quality of schools. Parents want the best schools possible for their kids because they know that little differences in kind will produce big differences in outcomes, as above. What is important in school is NOT how much money is spent or the quality of teaching, although both these things go with good schools. The key factor are the students themselves and their parents. Kids are trained, socialized and motivated by their peers. Not only are you judged by the company you keep, you are also shaped by your friends. Parents are pushing this for their kids.

I was waiting to hear about possible solution to the dilemma of community. There was no “silver bullet” in this case. Community is about relationships and relationships take effort to build and sustain. So, the solutions are that it takes work and constant attention. We need to encourage civil society and community when the opportunity arises. This is not satisfying.

In the book, where Rajan has more space to expound than he did in a short talk, he talks about inclusive localism and dispersing authority to lower levels. I do not recall him using the term subsidiarity (might have missed it) but that is clearly what he is talking about. I kept on thinking that he was reinventing the ideal of Tocqueville’s America. We have a lot to work with. Our land grant universities did a great job of elevating American. Our community colleges today can help in that role. It might be good to have some sort of national service. That is a great equalizer. America adapted before and we will again. That is vague, but I do think it is true.

The third pillar: ‘Inclusive localism’ as the key to rebuilding American communities – AEI2

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The new dynamics of global energy and climate: A conversation with Exelon CEO Chris Crane

America was plunged into an energy crisis soon after I graduated from HS, so besides drinking way too much beer as a freshman at University of Wisconsin Stevens Point, I was occupied with forestry and energy. I try to go to energy related programs at Brookings, AEI or Wilson and so I went today to “The new dynamics of global energy and climate: A conversation with Exelon CEO Chris Crane.” Exelon is the largest electric parent company in the United States by revenue, the largest regulated utility in the United States with approximately 10 million customers, and the largest operator of nuclear power plants in the United States.

Mr. Crane talked about his firm’s vision which includes providing reliable power and cutting carbon emissions. He said that you can believe in climate change or not, but that firms like his have to adapt to it because it is happening. To stave off the worst of climate change the USA will need to drop carbon emissions by 80% by 2050. This is a tall order. The electrical sector is off to a good start. We are down 25% based on 1990 figures, but it may get harder to do. This was done largely by substituting natural gas for much dirtier coal. Nobody really anticipated the big supply of cleaner and cheaper natural gas. We cannot count on that sort of good luck again.

Renewables like solar & wind are coming along very well, but they do not supply the base loads.
There are times when the wind doesn’t blow, and the sun doesn’t show. Base loads for the time being can be supplied only by fossil fuels, hydro or nuclear. Exelon is the largest operator of nuclear power plants. The nuclear power plants are losing money. They cannot compete with cheap natural gas, but they have a big advantage in that they do not emit CO2. If these plants went off line, CO2 emissions would necessarily rise. This is what happened in Germany. In their rush to be green, they shut down nukes and dirty coal plants took up the base-load task. There is currently a social benefit to keeping the nukes in business.

As a result, German CO2 emissions actually went up not in spite of but BECAUSE of their green movement.

Carbon taxes – the good, the bad & the unlikely
Exelon supports carbon taxes, specifically the Baker-Shultz plan (I have written about this on other occasions). Crane thinks that only market driven plans have a real chance for success. We should look to outcomes, rather than back any particular technology and let various techniques compete. We do not know which will be best, or maybe what combination will be most effective.

Challenges include developing better electrical storage and connecting pipelines and power lines. New England is at risk, for example, because activists have opposed and effectively shut down construction of electric transmission lines that could bring Canadian hydro-power and gas pipeline expansion to bring abundant American natural gas to the region. Ironically, Exelon power plants in New England that use natural gas need to import LNG, and these imports come from Russia.

Hydrogen economy  – perpetually five years in the future

The talk ended on a hopeful note. Crane talked about the hydrogen economy. This is not a new idea, but its accomplishment seems always to be five years away. Hydrogen is a perfect fuel. It burns cleanly, with the only emission being water vapor. The problem is that hydrogen really is not a fuel source, but more a storage medium. Hydrogen exists nowhere in nature in a pure form. It must be made. The most ecological method would be to divide it from oxygen in water. H2O is made of hydrogen and oxygen and it the most common thing on the earth’s surface. But separating the H from the O takes lots of energy. A process might be to use solar to make hydrogen when the sun is shining and then to use this hydrogen in fuel cells to make energy when it is dark.

My first picture is from Brookings. The program was from 2-3:30. This makes a difference to me. I ride my bike down, but I prefer to take the Metro back, since it is uphill and I am tired. I can take the Metro before 3 or after 7, so I had to hang around until 7. Fortunately, there are nice places to hang. The next picture and the video show the Botanical Garden, a great place to hang around. Notice the longleaf and lobolly pines. After that are some elm trees near the old USIA and last shows the kiosk at McDonald’s. You order electronically and then they bring your order.

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Story of English

Chrissy & I went down to Smithsonian to unlock the wordhoard in a day-long program by Professor Anne Curzan, a linguist from University of Michigan. The real title was English Words: Etymologies and Curiosities. I just liked “wordhoard”. It is the old English for vocabulary. “He dipped into his wordhoard and said …” Another interesting phrase was “ban hus” or bone house. That means body. Professor Curzon read from old English. It is clearly a foreign language, but if you listen very hard you can perceive it is your language down deep.
There never was a pure English (or any other language) but English has a birth year – AD 449. That is the tradition date when the Anglo-Saxons crossed over to what would become England. Of course, they brought with them their Germanic language and it did change immediately when they crossed the water, but the separation began.

The Romans abandoned the province of Britannia. They just could not hang on, as barbarians streamed across the imperial borders and when in 410 the Visigoths sacked Rome, the emperor decided to cut Britannia loose. The Britons were not very warlike after nearly 400 years of Roman protection. W/o the Roman legions they could not defend their borders against barbarians and pirates who raided the coasts. So, they made the unwise choice of inviting German mercenaries to do their fighting for them, these were the Angles, Saxons and Jutes from what is now northern Germany and Denmark. They did a decent job dispatching the local threats, but they decided that they liked Britannia so much they would keep it. They send word back to their cousins that the land was good and the inhabitants weak. So began England (land of the Angles) and the English language.
This was the start of a long process that is not finished. English is truly a promiscuous language. The first English mixed liberally with Norse, brought by the Vikings. The Vikings raided and burned, but then they settled in large numbers. At that time Norse and English were still somewhat mutually intelligible. Much of England became bilingual and a kind of blended language. Norse contributed lots of words to English and caused the grammar to become simpler

as the non-native speakers dispensed with some of the more arcane forms.

England after around 800 was more a part of Scandinavia, culturally and linguistically, than it was western Europe. This changed in 1066 with the Norman Conquest. The Normans (as the name implies) were themselves of Viking stock, but they were by that time French speaking. French became the prestige language in England for the next four centuries. There were never very many Normans in England, but the ran the place and their language ruled too.

The interesting illustration shows the subordination of English. In the field, where they peasants work, the big grazing animal is a cow (English). When it comes into the castle it becomes beef (French). In the pen, it is a pig. When it comes into the castle it becomes pork. Same goes for sheep and mutton. In fact, you can see it in lots of words. An English peasant might live in a house. The Norman rich guy lived in a mansion. When it got really classy, it became a domicile. Domicile shows the other influence – Latin.

Latin came into the language all through its history, as it was the language of the Church and of educated elites, but there was a big jump following the 15th Century. Writers and others wanted to “improve” English, so they coined new words. You can see this happening in Chaucer and Shakespeare later.

I have gone on a little too much with the history. She also talked about how we develop slang and how the language changes and continues to change. Word meanings change, sometimes even turning around. We all have our peeves about particular words, but it can be a losing fight.

I personally dislike it when people use the word utilize. There is almost no case where simple use is not a better choice, but people think the longer word is more sophisticated. Professor Curzan mentioned the differences between among and between and said that the difference between imply and infer is lost for the masses. Young people are starting to use because as a preposition. Language changes.

Great living in Washington because there are so many programs like this.

My pictures are from Smithsonian. The last one is just me on the Mall. I know it looks like an old west stance. It is the hat that does it. Since I became “hair denied” I began to wear hats. Now I feel naked w/o one. The brimmed hat is great, keeps the sun out of your eyes and the rain off your face and neck. You can see why they invented them. But the risk is looking like an old west guy. I can stand that, but I will avoid standing like that in pictures.

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Brookings: Improving water infrastructure and promoting a more inclusive economy

Rode down to Brookings for a program on the water workforce, see below. Getting my bike fixed and some of the parts replaced saves at least ten minutes of ride-time, as the energy formerly turned into friction heat and sideways wobbling gets converted to forward motion. It took me a little less than an hour and ten minutes to get all the way from my house to Brookings.

Program was worth the trip and was especially appropriate given my recent visit to the Milwaukee sewage plant.

Key points are that the labor force in the water industry, including sewage, drinking water and related functions like plumbers, is relatively old, 50+% are eligible to retire and it is hard to replace them with suitable workers.

One problem is the general labor shortage. With unemployment so low, it is just hard to find people. Making it worse, the work is semi-skilled, so people cannot just do it right out of the box. There is also a security aspect. Water is a sensitive industry. Workers must pass drug tests and it is sometimes hard for ex-cons to get a clearance, more on that below. It is also getting hard just to find guys who will show up on time every day.

The water industry jobs pay above average wages. The woman at the Milwaukee sewage plant told me that starting wages are $30-35 an hour. However, they still have trouble getting qualified help. It is often a dirty job, sometimes out in the elements in stinky places, and many people prefer to work in comfortable offices and complain about their low pay.
We heard from Louisiana Congressman Garret Graves. He said that we spend way too much money reacting to disasters and way too little anticipating and mitigating them. Hurricane Katrina, for example, was largely a man-made disaster. Nature provided the wind and water, but Louisiana and New Orleans were not properly prepared and that made it a disaster.

He talked about the need to build infrastructure – human and physical, grey and green – but not just dump money in an inefficient system. In Louisiana, for example, they were able to get jobs done for half or a third of the supposed cost by making contracts more open and specifications better.

Some of the best infrastructure is green. Coastal forests and mangroves are some of the best defense against storms and they filter the water between events.
Next came a panel including Kishia Powell, Commissioner, Department of Watershed Management – City of Atlanta, GA, Andrew Kricun, Executive Director and Chief Engineer – Camden County Municipal Utilities Authority (NJ) & Katie Spiker, Senior Federal Policy Analyst – National Skills Coalition.

Andrew Kricun talked about the paradox that unemployment in Camden is more than 10%, but he cannot get enough people to do the jobs in his water facilities. They are addressing that by outreach and training. They understand that much of the training will not directly benefit the water works, since people will find jobs elsewhere, but he talked of the triple bottom line – economy, environment and social good.

Kisa Powell agreed and went on that in Atlanta they were trying to hold onto some of their older workers longer and going to non-traditional places to find new ones. For example, they have a program with the local prisons to train convicts while still in the joint for jobs they may take when they get out. This is another instance of a social benefit.Ex-cons can have trouble finding work and can too easily slip back into the ways that got them in jail in the first place. A steady and demanding job can help keep them on the straight and narrow.
They all emphasized that it is better to anticipate and avoid than to react to crisis. Emergency repairs can cost 3-5 times as much as fixing it in time.

They also touted the benefits of preparation and green infrastructure. Rain gardens, for example, can avoid overflows at the sewage plants. The water still finds its way back into the rivers, but slowly and usefully.

Everybody talked about the problem of just finding out what is going on. There are lots of good ideas, but they need more connectors. I have thought about this a lot myself. Connectors are very important, but they get no respect. Everybody thinks they are just talking to people and traveling and too many think that either communication happens by itself or that there can be some kind of centralized system that does it all.

Notes on earlier water program.

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Building a More Dynamic and Competitive Economy

Just concluded an interesting program at Brookings, see linked.
Steve Case, founder of AOL, talked about bringing businesses away from the coasts and into the heartland. He has a embarked on a project to help this. The idea is that there is a lot of talent outside the places where all the money drops. I earlier watched a series of his talks re on The Great Courses Series “The Third Wave”
(https://www.thegreatcourses.com/…/the-third-wave-the-future…)
I recommend it.

Most interesting was the last panel that featured our former Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe. He is a very dynamic guy. I have always enjoyed encounters with him. (He was a good friend to forestry in the Commonwealth. His first lady even set a small prescribed fire and encouraged longleaf restoration). If I sum up his method for encouraging businesses to come and grow in Virginia, it would be energetic engagement. He and the other panelists advised against big money incentives. They are usually not worth it. This is hard to do, especially for the more out-of-the-way places.

He said that Virginia is lucky in that we do not need to incentivize too much, since the business climate is very good. A potential problem is labor. We are at near full employment and firms might not come because they cannot find the right labor. We should make long-term investments in education rather than short term wins by giving out incentives.

Link to the program

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Ancient DNA

After I am long dead, I hope that anthropologist discover my fossil remains and do whatever future scientists will do to figure help understand humanity. Never know what that might be.

I went to a lecture today at Smithsonian about ancient DNA. The speaker was David Reich who wrote a book, “Who We Are & How We Got Here,” about the subject. The field is been revolutionized in the last few years, so much of what we thought we knew has been overtaken by events. In the last ten years, testing DNA has become 100,000 times cheaper. Scientist can now test DNA from ancient human remains and compare them with other ancient and modern populations.

One surprising finding is that modern populations often are not much related to the “original” inhabitants of their regions. People have always moved and they have always mixed. This brings us to another truth. Groups as we define them just did not exist in the past. The mixing and moving has created our modern populations and they are never permanent. To take the dust to dust analogy, people and our ethnicity are based on dust. They come together for a short time but are recreated again and again each time in different ways.

We know a lot more about European populations than others because the science has been concentrated in Europe. In “deep time” – 5000 – 6000 years ago – there are four identifiable groups. Back then, these groups were more different from each other than East Asians are different from Western Europeans are today. The four groups from what is now Iran, Levant, Western European hunters and gatherers and people of the steppe north of the Black Sea. These groups mixed and matched to produce today’s European populations. Genetic diversity has been declining as people mix.

An interesting finding was that Western European populations are related to American native populations. Did they cross the Atlantic? Probably not. Rather both Native Americans and Western Europeans had common ancestors in a “ghost population.” This was a population in what is now Russia that is no longer extant as a population, but has left its genes in populations in America and Europe.

When you talk about genetics, somebody will bring up race. Reich was questioned about why he did not use the term. He explained that the term is meaninglessly imprecise but loaded with imputed meaning. Genetically, there is no such thing as a race, at least as we define it. He mentioned categories like “Hispanic” as especially meaningless from a genetic point of view.

The more we learn about genetics, the more we see that all human categories are impermanent. I like this idea, since it fits my historical conception. My belief is that when anything passes from living memory, it become the common heritage of humanity – good, bad or neutral, we are all one people.

My first picture is the lecture, held at the Smithsonian Indian Museum. Next two pictures are the Museum of the American Indian and last is the White House.

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Think Tanks: What Are They Good For

Think tanks, what are they good for?  This was the theme of the discussion I attended at Wilson Center yesterday (January 27).  Their title was a bit longer than mine above, “Why Think Tanks Matter to Policy Makers and the Public in the US: Research with Rigor, Relevance and Reach.”   Jane Harman, Director, President and CEO, introduced the program and then turned it over to James McGann, Director, Tank and Civil Societies Program, University of Pennsylvania, Editor, Global Go To Index.   The event featured a panel of think tank representative to explain how they work and what they do.

McGann explained the birth of the think tank global index and its evolution since 2006.   He said that he just saw a need and filled it.  At first the index was just in alphabetical order, but the think tanks and customers found that unsatisfying.  People like ratings.  It gives the impression of some sort of competition and implies that think tanks are accountable and can improve their position.  Some of this is true, McGann said, but with such a diversity of think tanks and myriad missions, reducing them to a ranking is not entirely appropriate.  Rankings, nevertheless, will persist driven by popular demand and because it gets lots of people interested in involved.  4,677 journalists, policy makers, think tanks and public and private donors from 143 countries participated in this year’s ranking process and there are now 47,000 individuals that follow the annual ranking process.   It is the Oscars for think tanks. The main use of the index, however, remains that it lists and briefly describes think tanks.  Last year’s edition of the Global Go To Think Tank Index Report was downloaded over 175,000 times.  He didn’t give figures on how many just search or refer online.

I have written in other places about what think tanks should do and here will just report some of the comments.   In general, as they talked about the marketplace of ideas, I thought about how apt the analogy with other markets.  It is easy to criticize individual think tanks or scholars, since they are often wrong in details but rarely in doubt.  But as in market, the individual is not the most useful focus of attention.  Rather it is the relationship and flow of information among them that makes a difference.   It is hard to determine where an idea originates since ideas mutate and recombine when passing through various minds (the “virus” theory of ideas) and people addressing similar situations often come up with similar ideas independently.    This is like the market in that ordinary people like us can ride the wave w/o having to know the details of the debates.  Put another way, we get to eat the sausage w/o having to watch it being made.  It is like buying an index fund to represent the stock market.   Anyway, back to my story.

The panel included:  Heather Conley, Senior Vice President for Europe, Eurasia, and the Arctic, and Director, Europe Program;  Ivo Daalder, President, The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, former US Permanent Representative to NATO;  Ted Gayer, Vice President of Economic Studies, Brookings Institution;  Spencer Overton, President, Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies;  Erika Poethig, Institute Fellow and Director of Urban Policy Initiatives, Urban Institute;  and Kenneth Weinstein, President and Chief Executive Officer, Hudson Institute.

Heather Conley started off.  She said that think tanks are important because they contribute ideas to policy makers.   Drawing on her own experience at State (DAS in the Bureau for European and Eurasian Affairs) she averred that people actually in government are too busy with the urgent aspect of their jobs to come up with new ideas.  It is time pressure, not lack of desire or intelligence, but no matter the cause, ideas almost always have to come from the outside.   I didn’t get the exact quote, but it went something like, bureaucracies take old ideas and complicate them with process.

Ivo Daalder was next.   He said it is hard to explain what think tanks do because much of it is thinking and meeting which produces nothing you can see.  His kids, he said, “Don’t know what I do and when they think they do know they disagree.”  This sums up the world of think tanks, and probably applies to most of us at State too.  He also referred to think tanks as participants and creators in the marketplace of ideas and added the important roles think tanks play as conveners and educators.  We may ridicule the endless conferences in Washington and elsewhere, but this is where people meet and hash through ideas.   If we did not have them, we would have to invent them.

Mr. Daalder represents the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and he commented on the challenge to be heard faced non-Washington-based think tanks.   Outside the beltway ideas are important, but it is hard to get them into the discussion.  One strategy is to discuss topics perhaps more appropriate outside the capital.   A specialty of the Chicago Council is international connections beyond the central governments.   For example, much political and economic decision-making goes on in large cities and there are increasing connections at the subnational level.  States have their own sort of foreign policies and agreements and cities are members of leagues and commissions.  Washington is a bit narcissistic and may not pay sufficient attention to these connections.

Kenneth Weinstein explained the importance of think tanks in term of framing questions as much as supplying information.   “The answers you get depend on the questions you ask,” he said.  He went on to characterize the think tank environment as a dynamic mix of competition and cooperation.   Think tanks are often vying for the finite attention of decision-makers and competing for the limited pecuniary largess of donors, funders and foundations.

It is not a zero-sum game, however.   Think tanks often cooperation and benefit from the complementary strengths of others. Sometimes this complementary nature is political.  It is good to pair mostly liberal think tanks with mostly conservative ones, giving them greater credibility and presumably creating synergy and greater useful truth from their dynamic tension.  Brookings has been working with AEI for a long time, for example.
I start to feel a little sorry for panel members who come later in the lineup, as all the good lines and ideas are taken.  You can only repeat “marketplace of ideas” or “convener of conferences” so many times before it gets a little old.   Besides the marketplace of ideas meme, everyone agreed on the importance of relationships.   Successful think tanks devote considerable time and energy to cultivating officials and leaders.   You may have the most wonderful and sublime research, but if it does not get into the right hands, it may go nowhere.

Spencer Overton, President, Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, took us in a little different direction, since his think tank has a mission a little different from the others.   The Joint Center is more of an advocacy group than the other think tanks earlier discussed.   It was founded in 1970 to help and advise black political leaders at all levels.   Although most black elected leaders tend to be Democrats, the Joint Center is non-partisan.  For example, Mr. Overton mentioned a recent study that found little diversity among Senate staffers.   They reported no significant difference between Democrats and Republicans; in fact they found that Democrats did a little worse.

After appropriate genuflection before the marketplace of ideas idol, Ted Gayer from Brookings talked about where think tanks like his could have specific impact.   He said, for example, they can study the impact and effect of regulations.   It is easy to talk about the benefits if you don’t consider the null hypothesis, i.e. would you achieve similar or greater benefits by doing nothing.  It is hard to assess counterfactuals, but think tanks can at least make the attempt that most proponents of programs prefer to avoid.

(NB – I didn’t get a chance to ask and nobody brought it up, but an exciting new area of inquiry is policy issues is the “random controlled trial” (RCT).  These are revealing information about the results or lack of them in very popular programs by taking into account the null hypothesis in ways previously ignored.)

Erika Poethig from urban institute has the misfortune of coming last and there was little left to say that could be said in a few minutes, so she mostly talked about Urban Institute.   It was founded in 1968 to “understand the problems facing America’s cities and assess the programs of the War on Poverty.”

There was time for only one question from the audience and that provoked a discussion about how to package products.  Mr. Weinstein lamented that the day of the think tank book is over; you really cannot get people to sit down and read a long exposition on policy.   Besides that, the research takes too long. By the time the book comes out it is often overtaken by events.   Everyone agreed that they are going with shorter pieces that can be produced and read quicker.  Mr. Gayer spoke to the need to reach wider audiences who may not even read the few page reports.   There is increasing reliance on blogs and even twitter.  The blog need not be inferior to the book, although it often is.   The key to judgment is to know the author.   W/o peer review, there is a kind of crowd review.  People will comment and critique and some of those discussions can be useful.  Twitter is great for the one liner, but almost nothing a think tank does can be summed up in 140 characters.  Twitter is good as a sign post to something more.

There was a brief reception after the talk, but participants disperse quickly.  McGann and his acolytes had to catch the train back to Philadelphia.   They praised Washington’s snow removal success.  Evidently it was worse in Philadelphia.

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Emotional investing – talk at Charles Schwab office May 20

Your own emotion is your biggest enemy in making smart investment decisions, that was the big take-away from a talk I attended by a financial advisor Jay Mooreland, who runs blog called “the Emotional Investor,” link below. He based a lot of his presentation on concepts of behavior economic and bounded rationality.

I am not sure that I learned anything I did not know before, but I know that I need to keep up. One of the traps you learn about when you study bounded rationality is the trap of knowledge. It usually refers to the problem that you assume that everybody knows the things you already know. It means that you do not sufficiently explain the background to others. (I am doing that here with bounded rationality. I am not explaining the concept, but I figure in this case anybody who wants to know can google it.) But another trap is that you think you knew what you did not know. If you attend a lecture, for example, and hear a fact or concept that makes sense to you, you often think you knew it before. This is a challenge for consultants. Once they reveal their solution, the client thinks he knew it already. That is one reason to ask up-front to determine what people know and do not know. This is my long explanation to say that I probably did learn, or at least confirm, more than I now believe. A man’s gotta know his limitation.

Knowing your limitation is probably the most important part of successful decision-making, especially in financial decisions. People make bad decisions when they overestimate their knowledge. NOBODY can anticipate all the movements in stock markets. Market are rational in the long run but (as Keynes said) they can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. So your strategy involves making generally sound decisions from the point of view of your goals and portfolio diversity but not be rattled by changes – easier said than done.

Active investors usually do worse than more passive ones, but activity feels good. You can play the games and take credit if you are on the lucky upside. The problem is emotion. Moorland gave the example of CGN Focus Fund. It was one of the best funds to own over that last five years, returning something like 18% a year (my numbers are approximate. I am writing from memory, but general magnitudes are okay). How much did actual investors make over this period? Average investor LOST money, and they lost big money – about 33%. How? It is not Wall Street dishonesty. The fault lies with investor emotion. CGN Focus fund has a narrow focus (as the name implies) and so is volatile. The trend is strongly up, but there are lots of downs. What do emotional investors do? When it drops like a stone, they panic and sell. When it is growing like a beanstalk, they pile their money in. In other words, the buy high and sell low. They are hurting themselves by their activity. Those who just sat on their hands did very well. Lazy wins.

I think the general lesson goes beyond investing. It is better to stand still than to run very rapidly in the wrong direction. Anyway, I enjoyed the presentation. I don’t know how it will change my behavior. I am already a lazy investor and cannot get much lazier.
http://www.theemotionalinvestor.org

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Carbon Taxes

Please refer to the link for reference – Pricing energy right is crucial and maybe a carbon tax can reduce taxes on things we think are good, such as labor and capital. If we want to reduce CO2, we can do that through regulation or through a carbon tax.
Regulation is a type of tax, it just is not very efficient. It appeals to people who just like to tell others what to do, but it is always more complex and does not – unlike a carbon tax – raise revenue. A carbon tax is relatively easy to administer, harder to cheat and it permits individuals and firms to plan. By making carbon a clear cost, firms can target reductions. – Vítor Gaspar, International Monetary Fund.
This elegant tax also have the advantage of focusing intelligence on reducing CO2. If you regulate, the best minds try to figure out ways to avoid regulation. If you make carbon a cost, those same smart guys figure out ways to reduce the cost.
Next up was John Delaney, US House of Representatives (D-MD). He talked about his new bill to tax pollution not profits. He proposes a carbon tax with proceeds to lower corporate taxes (American corporate taxes are highest in the world) and target some to help displaced coal workers and the poor. He said that these are not all optimal places to put the money, but in politics you need to compromise.
Even if you think climate change is a low probability event, the potential costs are high enough to take action now. This action is the most effective. He quoted Wayne Gretzky, the hockey great who explained that you have to go where the puck is going, not where it has been. Regulation tends to be backward looking.
Finally we had Bob Inglis, Energy and Enterprise Initiative. He spent most of his time praising Delaney, who had to leave for a vote. He thought the carbon tax would come, it would go from impossible to inevitable w/o pausing at probable. Both sides need to give. Conservatives need to give on the idea of the tax. Liberals need to make it sweeter by agreeing to reduce corporate taxes. It depends how important they really think climate change is.
These are good events. One of the great things about Washington is that you can continue your education in these ways. And you often get a free lunch.