via delong

Media Barred From Photographing Romney with Cheney at Fundraiser

Homosexuals are gay.

via kayyymonster

[It is] fallacious [to argue] that what is possible or desirable for individuals one at a time will be equally possible or desirable for all who might wish to do so or for the economy as a whole.

[Such] analysis seems to be based on the assumption that … devoting more resources to one use inevitably detracts from availability for another. This might be justifiable in an economy at chock-full employment…. But under current conditions [1996] such success is neither likely nor desirable.

…

[U]nemployment rates … in the 5 to 6 percent range [are] bad enough merely in terms of the loss of 10 to 15 percent of our potential production … but when it translates into unemployment of 10, 20, and 40 percent among disadvantaged groups, the further damages in terms of poverty, family breakup, school truancy and dropout, illegitimacy, drug use, and crime become serious indeed.

Fallacy 1:

Deficits are considered to represent sinful profligate spending at the expense of future generations who will be left with a smaller endowment of invested capital. This fallacy seems to stem from a false analogy to borrowing by individuals.

Current reality [1996] is almost the exact opposite. Deficits add to the net disposable income of individuals, to the extent that government disbursements that constitute income to recipients exceed that abstracted from disposable income in taxes, fees, and other charges. This added purchasing power, when spent, provides markets for private production, inducing producers to invest in additional plant capacity, which will form part of the real heritage left to the future. This is in addition to whatever public investment takes place in infrastructure, education, research, and the like.

…

[T]he analogy … is faulty. If General Motors, AT&T, and individual households had been required to balance their budgets in the manner being applied to the Federal government, there would be no corporate bonds, no mortgages, no bank loans, and many fewer automobiles, telephones, and houses.

William Vickrey

Map of the United States, resized by electoral-college votes.

Mathematical PS: Every heatmap represents a scalar field. What’s the domain in this case? A 2-cell complex.

(Source: http://www.economist.com/multimedia)

This is the kind of thing I wish I would have learned about in government class. Instead of talking about irrelevant abstractions—the structure of government, utopias, immigration, constitutions, “international affairs”, long-dead pamphleteers, and quaternary sources that collapsed the complexity of historical debates—we should have been talking about stuff that actually matters. On-the-ground facts, money being spent, measurable actions responding to tangible problems. Since leaving school and having to, for business reasons, involve myself in local politics, this has been my strongest new conviction: National political reporting is a sideshow—a drama for entertainment, a game played by newspapers who hire sensational journalists so they can make money. Scandal and op-ed’s have never been relevant to my life (although that hasn’t stopped me from wasting O(1000) hours of my life reading worthless crap). Commentary on national politics hijacks my instincts against my better judgment — inciting my general attitude toward the world rather than rational thoughts, which are only possible about a well-defined issue — along with a scintillating illusion that writing in the comments section of a newspaper website could change anything. The issues are too grandiose, too overgeneralised. My opinion on “small government versus big government” is even more irrelevant than my opinion about some long-dead philosopher whom I never met. The question isn’t actually instantiated—just an ethereal “value question”. However in school I was taught that it’s Important to be able to articulate opinions on such topics. This is relevant, though. Municipal bonds. Yeah. Boring and important. Nine average people who oversee the expenditure of $200 million per year in the county containing a large American state’s capital city. This kind of thing happens in every geographic area. It’s totally possible to involve yourself in local politics and make an actual, visible, tangible difference. Forget protesting symbolic moral failures and turn that activist energy towards incinerators, traffic calming devices, solid waste removal, property valuations, zoning restrictions, public parks, the pay of city employees, firms that have a monopoly on your government’s business in one way or another. Forget sensational newspaper “candy” (screeds, political horse races, murder stories, Gawker). Spend one hour reading your own municipal or county code, or the minutes of one of your local council meetings; I bet you’ll find something interesting. The [trash incinerator] plant was originally constructed to burn garbage and produce steam – some of which was piped to the nearby Bethlehem Steel Corporation plant, but most of which was just vented into the air.In 1985, the city built a turbine at the plant to begin generating electricity from the steam that would otherwise be lost. The plant was profitable until 1990, when Dauphin County (of which Harrisburg is the county seat) adopted a solid waste disposal plan that rerouted garbage produced outside of Harrisburg to various other landfills, which was less expensive than paying the incinerator plant to take the waste. The plant lost millions of dollars of business virtually overnight. —by “Bond Girl” (ha ha; she analyses municipal bonds for a living)

on Dauphin County, Pennsylvania’s bankruptcy filing

via @cmastication Al Gore won the popular vote in the United States’ 2000 presidential election. However due to their voting system, “points” are apportioned in such a way that Gore lost the election to the Great American Cowboy. You might think “It was the electoral college (apportioning system) that made Gore lose” — after all, he won by pure percentage. But, if things had been different — if the United States elected its presidents on the basis of national totals — then everything would have been different. All the campaign strategists would have spent their budgets differently, perhaps recruited donors differently, perhaps even written different speeches. Saying “Gore would have won without the electoral college” would be like looking at a video of a gunfight and saying, “If only Billy the Kidd would have been 100 yards on the other side of Wyatt Earp! Then he would have shot him in the back.” Well, duh—Wyatt Earp was facing Billy the Kidd and would have been turned around, had Billy the Kidd been 100 yards on the other side. You can’t edit the tape that way. Everything is connected. You can’t change one thing (about the past), without changing everything (about the future).

A Lesson in Counterfactuals

Come on, guys, a Death Star isn’t THAT expensive!

Some economics students from Lehigh University made the news a few weeks ago with their estimate that the raw materials (a quadrillion tons of steel) in the Death Star would cost £541,261,000,000,000,000 at today’s prices — a billion, billion dollars.

Of course this is shocking because the entire Earth’s economic output is only 1/13,000 that level. But that’s today. The problem with aggrandising this estimate is that these budding economists aren’t thinking on a truly galactic scale!

For example: remember the Star Forge? From the wookieepedia: 

The Star Forge drew energy and matter from a nearby star which, when combined with the power of the Force, was capable of creating an endless supply of ships, droids, and other war matériel.

Nobody has yet studied the economic benefits of Force Sensitivity, but we learn from canonical sources that the price of robots and ships must have dropped to what would today seem like zero around 30,000 BBY.

Just think about how nuclear fission energy was once called “Energy that’s not worth metreing”— and as a marker of our lack-of-progress compared to the Rakatan Infinite Empire, note that we have sent approximately 1 vessel to explore one path in our local star’s system, nothing like covering the volume of the galaxy.

Consider the Clone Wars, only 2 decades before the construction of the Death Star. The cost of the Clone Wars dwarfs the single-project Death Star, just as the total cost of WWII dwarfs the mere $45bn the US spent on Nimitz class aircraft carriers or paltry $50bn per stealth bomber a few decades later. Again from Wookieepedia, we learn that

What would ultimately become a Separatist army originally began as several immense forces comprised almost exclusively of droids.[1] When merged, these formed a colossal army numbering in the quintillions.[2]

If in fact they outnumber the clones by only 100 to 1, that would mean that there were tens of quadrillions of clones.

Both armies were spending an unimaginable amount of money. But hey, if you want to dominate 400 billion planetary systems, you need to play big.

There were approximately 400 billion stars, and around 180 billion of these had planets that could support life. Ten percent of those planets developed life, while sentient life developed in 1/1,000 of those (about 20 million). … there were 7.1 billion truly habitable stars, … 3.2 billion habitable star systems, with only 69 million systems meeting the requirements for Imperial representation, and 1.75 million planets considered full member worlds. In total, the galaxy was populated by approximately 100 quadrillion different life forms.

(The 100 quadrillion life-forms number is not cited and frankly I don’t believe it includes small stuff like lichens and bacteria. We have ~1 nonillion bacteria on Earth alone [American counting system], so there should be more like a quattuordecillion life-forms in 180 billion habitable planets.

You wonder why Yoda spends so much time meditating on the essential Force?)

We are talking about a war on a truly galactic scale here. Remember that Jedis are people who jump into hyperspace on a whim and travel from one star system to another in an Augenblick. (For reference, it would take us 50,000 years to reach Alpha Centauri with present technology.)

The entire Earth (like Alderaan) might be obliterated in the course of a skirmish and that would only be a minor tragedy because there are so many other battles (300 billion star systems in the Milky Way) to be fought.

Since their galaxy has 400 bn stars, the cost of the Death Star would only be $250 per planetary system. Come on, chip in, guys! This is going to be the Destroyer of Worlds!

Now we’re talking about the right spatial scale (a galaxy far, far away) but that’s only one source of the colossal difference between the Galactic Empire and us. The other is time scale (a long time ago—with an even longer time before that). 

Think about this: $1,000,000,000 trillion might sound like a lot now – but world GDP today stands at $62 trillion, which is only 14 doubling times away from being $1,000,000 trillion.

And by the Rule of 70, you can guesstimate how many years a doubling time takes. (thanks Editable Encyclopedia)

Let’s forget about the Hutt Empire and all of the space exploration that took place before the Galactic Republic—all of the journeys on the way to becoming a technologically mature society—and just talk about economic growth during the 25,000 years of the Galactic Republic. 

If US economic growth continued apace at 2% per annum for 25,000 years, then at the end the yearly value-added output would sum to $168 431 066 142 340 489 288 772 439 940 909 449 861 672 253 867 865 451 003 067 724 266 746 627 767 325 863 071 680 952 201 001 185 103 141 091 302 401 283 052 766 211 655 121 625 725 615 234 621 406 099 740 792 533 291 787 226 249 702 943 690 122 429 739 360 449 918 371 508 258 213 270 051 trillion. (A 225-digit number = ten septillion googol googol = one trevigintillion quinquagintillion = one quattuorseptuagintillion 2012 dollars.) Each year.

And again, this doesn’t count trade with “developing planets” (In Praise of Cheap Labour, meet the Orvax system!) or simply planets with different resources, cultures, and technologies. I’m just talking about an exogenous Solow constant of 1.02—very modest, I’m sure you’ll agree, when you look at growth rates in the poorer of Earth’s political factions.

And how long do you think it might take us to colonise not just nearby star systems, but to have republics and trade federations that stretch all the way across 120k × 1k light-years of the Milky Way?

If the Earth’s denizens grew the economy at 2%/year for 25,000 years (just from inception to conclusion of the Galactic Republic, none of the precursors) then the world GDP would reach $140 359 221 785 283 741 073 977 033 284 091 208 218 060 211 556 554 542 502 556 436 888 955 523 139 438 219 226 400 793 500 834 320 919 284 242 752 001 069 210 638 509 712 601 354 771 346 028 851 171 749 783 993 777 743 156 021 874 752 453 075 102 024 782 800 374 931 976 256 881 844 391 709.238 trillion!

And that’s not even counting the gains from galactic trade! Just intraplanetary growth.

These numbers may be too large to comprehend, so just think about this one. The GDP of Cambodia today stands at $32 bn or $2500 [PPP] per capita, less than a percent of the world’s output. Cambodia’s economic growth has jittered and started between 4.5% and 9% during the last couple decades. But let’s just assume 3% future growth to be conservative.

If Cambodia’s economy grew at 3% per year for only the amount of time that Yoda was a Jedi master (800 years) then Cambodia would be producing $955,724,857.68 trillion per year, in other words in very short order a few million life-forms occupying .12% of one planet’s land mass could buy a few Death Stars every year and still have enough money left over for food and beverage.

Again this is just a miniature of the changes in economics and warship financing we could expect to see as Earthlings expand their demand curves out into the galaxy over future millennia.

Back to the Wookieepedia, of course you remember the Banking Clan is on the Separatist side — how else to finance these quadrillion droids? The Separatists (and, following Episode III, the Galactic Empire) included some of the wealthiest players in the galaxy. So that’s another possible reason the Droid Army is feasible. (I can imagine how one wouldn’t join an insurrection without some serious money behind the defence effort—a nice bit of economic logic.)

This droid army drew upon of the battle droids of the Trade Federation[3], the Techno Union[4], the Commerce Guild[5], the InterGalactic Banking Clan[3], the Corporate Alliance[1], and other independent Separatist factions. These groups were subtly manipulated by Darth Sidious to expand their forces … Under his orders, these corporate giants began to purchase huge orders of battle droids from the millions of factories controlled by companies such as Baktoid Combat Automata, Colicoid Creation Nest, and Haor Chall Engineering over a decade before the start of the Clone Wars.[7] … Count Dooku deployed over a million B1 battle droids, one hundred thousand B2 super battle droids, and three thousand droidekas, plus many other types, at the Battle of Geonosis in 22 BBY…the Clone Wars had begun.[8]

(22 BBY is 22 years Before the Battle of Yavin, in which the Death Star was destroyed. Everything has a weak point. Many Bothans died to find out what it was.)
 

What I take away from the Star Wars allegory is that we had better spend an equal amount of research studying the political economy as we do on space exploration technology. After all, scientists don’t control how their technology is used—they merely generate power. (Just ask Oppenheimer.)

Let’s say we built a Star Forge and the price of robots dropped effectively to zero. Then we would be incredibly f*$#ed without an incentive structure that prevents even a sleuthy, sly, slick Sith Lord from destroying life on the colossal galactic scale.

Think about how security threats were multiplied by the invention of atomic weapons — the same will happen if we take care of science only, disregarding political economy.

Is it possible to describe Human Beings with Mathematics?

isomorphisms: I hope that one day people will figure out the “perfect formula” for a constitution (balanced incentives / structure).
gsx002: I doubt it. Formulas belong to the math and logic realm.
isomorphisms: There is some logic to human interactions.
gsx002: That’s using the word loosely. 🙂
isomorphisms: The promise of using maths to describe people is what got me interested in economics. I also do mathpsych.
isomorphisms: This is why I have high hopes for Acemoglu stuff. Also spatial voting theory, game theory, applications to constitutional design.
gsx002: I so have to follow these things more…I used to once upon a time.
gsx002: It’s always fascinated me, but I still haven’t met a really good Bayesian…and Newcomb’s paradox is still tricky for me.
isomorphisms: I’m not saying a currently existing model [like Bayesian rationality]. Just that in theory a correct mathematical model of human behaviour seems (to me) possible.
isomorphisms: Not saying it would be super specific either. The difficulty in convincing people to my point of view is that few people know how loose abstract mathematics is. Cobordisms, homology, homotopy, topology are all very loose. Results in category theory are also quite loose.
isomorphisms: You can construct huge equivalence classes of things. Then you don’t distinguish between very different things (famously, a coffee mug and a donut have the same topological equivalence class).
isomorphisms: Some abstract maths (like coalgebras) is actually criticised because “There are no calculations!”
gsx002: Hmm. . . i’d take the opposite bet . . . that there’s a proof that there isn’t or that there can’t be such a model #Gödel
isomorphisms: Gödel is off-topic. His result was about pure maths.
isomorphisms: Even Arrow’s Theorem has things fairly nailed down.
gsx002: Tarski then?
isomorphisms: Tarski also unrelated. Says ℝ is fuktup. I agree: especially for economics.
isomorphisms: I actually got Stan Wagon (a Tarski ball scholar) into a discussion on how ℝ is inappropriate for econ.
gsx002: ok, you forced me to bring out the big guns: sartre and camus! “we refuse to be modeled,” or something like that 🙂
isomorphisms: They didn’t know how loose abstract mathematics is either. =)
isomorphisms: Lacan thought there were applications of topology to psychoanalysis. Also there’s a postmodernist at Ball State who says topology may be an appropriate tool for cultural analysis.
gsx002: I was talking about Tarski’s Truth paradox.
isomorphisms: Oh. That’s a linguistic problem. We don’t have natural language logically figured out yet. However that’s not a problem for behavioural modelling.

The place where [Satan] was, in my mind, the most successful and first — first successful was in academia. He understood pride of smart people. He attacked them at their weakest.

They were in fact smarter than everybody else and could come up with something new and different — pursue new truths, deny the existence of truth, play with it because they’re smart. And so academia a long time ago fell.

Rick Santorum

A Perfect Formula for Constitutions

moiracathleen: People today think there is a one size fits all constitution. This is perhaps the greatest tragedy to constitutionalism in history.
isomorphisms: How many sizes do you think there are?
moiracathleen: The Constitution is not to be used to impose a particular form of government, but rather expresses boundaries between the Government and the People.
moiracathleen: Those boundaries ought be drawn by the people living under the Constitution; rather than people from other countries.
isomorphisms: I hope that one day people will figure out the “perfect formula” for a constitution (balanced incentives / structure).
isomorphisms: Which is not to say that particular instantiations wouldn’t vary.
isomorphisms: Like a line bundle.
isomorphisms: The lines in the bundle vary from point to point. The ideal constitution, according to a formula, could also vary from place to place (and time to time and history to history and people to people).