Author: Jordan Zino

Jordan Zino works in investment research in Boston. His undergraduate studies were in finance and economics. He is a believer in the power of markets, ideas, and coffee.

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Secession lagniappe

Apologies for any paywalled links, I’ve tried to double-up sources where that occurs.

Local law enforcement teamed up with the FBI to raid a meeting of The Republic of Texas, a group that believes they never legally joined the union. More here.  And a RT documentary on the group from last year:

 

A group of Southern Tier towns in New York are threatening secession due to their state’s fracking ban.  The Economist picked up the story in its last issue:

The Southern Tier used to be called the “Valley of Opportunity”, with companies like IBM employing thousands. But the area’s big employers left or downsized long ago. The economy is stagnant, with houses for sale everywhere. Windsor cannot afford a police department. Even its funeral homes are long gone. Meanwhile, just yards away in Pennsylvania, Great Bend is thriving. The neighbours have new cars, freshly painted houses and jobs, and all from shale.

In Oregon, a petition to split off East Portland was shot down and “would need to be rewritten.”

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Independence movements are alive and well across Europe, according to Peter Geoghegan at The Irish Times:

European borders have shifted only a handful of times over the last two decades: the dissolution of Serbia and Montenegro; Kosovan independence in 2008; Russia’s annexation of Crimea last year. But the boundaries are unlikely to remain so static.

In Belgium, the divide between French-speaking Wallonia and Dutch-speaking Flanders has long stymied attempts to foster national unity. The largest party in the whole of Belgium is the nationalist New Flemish Alliance (N-VA). The N-VA has previously called for the more prosperous Flanders to leave the Francophone south. With the European Commission in Brussels, the break-up would have EU-wide ramifications.

Independence movements are riding high elsewhere on the continent. At nationalist gatherings from Edinburgh to Barcelona over the last 18 months, I have met gaggles of people carrying the Venetian flag. Last year, 89 per cent of Venetians voted for independence in an online petition.

Spain’s highest court ruled that the Catalan vote in November was unconstitutional, not surprisingly.

Elsewhere in Spain, in a negative development for Podemos, the Catalan Ciudadanos party is rising rapidly. The anti-independence party has already polled at over 18% by some tallies.

As the chances of Grexit recede, will Brexit be the new focus for the EU?

Lithuanians are worried Putin will turn his annexing eye to the Baltics next.  A very interesting Foreign Affairs article explains. The government has diversified energy dependency away from Russia and is attempting to bring back conscription.  Here’s a more in-depth take.

Is autonomous Somaliland making any progress towards formal independence?  Officials are looking to capitalize on its relative stability by attracting tourists.

China is staying busy in the South China Sea.

Rand Paul boldly calls for a Kurdish state.

Secessionist support is enough to get you arrested in Malaysia.

Honduran ZEDEs, debated.

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Patri Friedman likens progressivism to the second law of thermodynamics, which is not a complement:

One of the things life has taught me this decade is the importance of exclusion and boundaries, which are highly relevant to this metaphor. A thermodynamic system with poor borders (less insulation), will have greater thermal conductivity. It may do more work initially, but it will also move at maximum speed towards that final resting state where all energy is evenly distributed. Such a state is peaceful in precisely the same way as death; for without flows of energy, there can be no life (in vivo or in silico – as no computation is possible). I suppose those who think human extinction is fair or just will consider this the state of ultimate fairness. I don’t particularly care for that final solution.

So if you even care about life existing – let alone the infinite diversity possible therein – then (contra Caplan), boundaries (such as national borders) are an absolute necessity. No differences, no energy flow, no (thermodynamic) work, no life. As in the stars, so on the earth: romance flows from polarity; trade from comparative advantage; thermodynamic work from heat differences; evolution from variation; economic competition from competing alternatives. All progress is driven by differences; so to erase differences is (counter-eponymously) to end progress.

Can devolving more power to major cities save fragile states?  The case of Nigeria.

Will Venezuela be the next Ukraine?

Tyler Cowen on where to head if you’d like to vote with your feet.

Status quo bias as the main barrier to border flexibility.

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On borders, status quo bias doesn’t count

Randomly poll American citizens if there are any U.S. states that they believe should combine. You aren’t going to field many offers. Next ask them if there are any states they’d prefer to see broken up. Suggestions are, again, likely to be few and far between. How about states that should see their borders re-drawn? I predict crickets.

The implication is that things are not just O.K., but best the way they are. Not only is fifty the right number of states, but the current layout of those fifty is also the right layout. We are supposed to believe that there can be no materially better outcome from any form of action whatsoever.

Think about that for a second. What is the likelihood that this view is actually correct, that today’s state borders have it just about perfect. I would offer that it’s pretty pretty pretty low.

The biggest driver of your lackluster hypothetical poll responses probably won’t be reason or logic either, but inertia, or more specifically, status quo bias. Not to be confused with a formulated argument that favors the current state of affairs in the end, this bias manifests itself in the form of no particular argument at all.  Change is inherently bad according to this preference.  You ask somebody “why?” and they respond “just because.” There is some incomplete information here to be sure, as people might respond more (or less) favorably if they were properly informed. Yet the point stands.

For whatever reason, talk of changing borders in any capacity seems to be an uber-trigger for status quo bias in mainstream American politics. It springs forth with staggering speed and force.   Set against an increasingly polarized political landscape, the bipartisan nature of the condemnation is especially impressive, indeed, few issues match it.

Nevertheless, the colonies cut loose their British shackles a mere 240 years or so ago and continued to draw (and re-draw) more borders than a cartographer over the next century and a half. If it strikes you as strange that such unanimous agreement on current borders grew up against this historical backdrop, then I think you might be on to something.

As an example, the state of California happens to be really big. Clocking in at just under forty million inhabitants makes it the most populous U.S. state by a healthy margin. It has over ½ the population of Turkey, is on par with Poland, and eclipses Canada. You can’t drive its north-south length without blocking out at least twelve hours from your schedule.

Pristine governance however, doesn’t seem to be its strong suit. The Golden State came in at 30th in the most recent 24/7 Wall Street survey of the best and worst-run states, up from 2013’s last place finish. Cali sports a solid 7.0% unemployment rate as of December according to BLS, which is good for 49th in the country. It ranks 35th in terms of poverty rates and dead-last when geographically adjusted. This is hardly a bulletproof case for carving up California like a piece of meat, but it seems like a damn good start.  Centralization’s downsides become more apparent when viewed through the lens of scale.

Yet there are assuredly reasonable arguments to the contrary.  Perhaps even winning arguments.  So let’s hear them.   Philosophical, economic, cultural, what have you: bring them all out. But whatever you do, ye lover of border inertia, do not write off those with arguments while bringing none of your own. Do not marginalize the issue by invoking terms like “radical” and “dangerous” while falling back on an unconscious cognitive error. In reality, there is perhaps nothing more dangerous than the view that if X exists then X is the best we can do, supported by no critical thought at all. So leave the status quo bias at the door; otherwise, it’s always open.

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Rand Paul and judicial activism

In a recent piece here at The Mitrailleuse, Robert Mariani writes the following crucial sentences:

“Words are useful insofar as they have publicly agreed upon definitions. From definitions, we can have discourse that leads to some sort of useful truth.”

Amen to that.

At the Heritage Foundation’s recent Conservative Policy Summit Senator Rand Paul made the case that conservatives should abandon their preference for “judicial restraint” and embrace a more “activist” Supreme Court. George Washington University Law professor Orin Kerr helpfully attempted to delineate the different meanings people ascribe to the loaded term “judicial activism” a few years ago. He conjures up five distinct possibilities. So what, exactly, does Dr. Paul mean when he implores conservatives to think twice about restrained courts? What definition is he operating on?

First, let me humbly offer mine.

I propose that the charge of judicial activism can be levied wherever judges operate outside of their proper job description. If courts exist to know, interpret, and apply law, then any decision not resulting strictly from a process of interpretation involving general good will toward getting that interpretation correct is an “activist” decision. This does not mean any decision passed under the guise of subjective interpretation counts as whole and good, rather that interpretation had to be deliberated in good faith and free of inappropriate influences.

This may be labeled a procedural definition of activism as opposed to one that focuses on outcome. Professor Kerr offers that a decision itself (to strike down or leave intact a law), its implications for the scope of judicial power, its consistency with precedents, and its subjective accuracy (right/wrong) are all potential reasons people see a ruling as activist. These are outcome-based definitions as they focus on how the decision and its contingent effects help define restraint or activism, and I ultimately see Kerr’s lone remaining explanation (“the decision was motivated by the Justices’ personal policy preferences or was result-oriented.”) as the closest to a true procedural characteristic. 

Outcome-based definitions are inadequate in my view because we require information on how that verdict was reached. Seeing if a decision passes some static test is not enough. Court deliberation is a process and it is here that dubious motivations enter, not after the fact. Noting that a court decision cut against precedent tells us nothing of why it did so and it does nothing to illuminate the purity of intent, or lack thereof, of those deciding. (Admittedly it is in this view of activism as ignoring precedent where my narrow focus on process is most likely to falter, as one may view the application of previous law, regardless of subjective opinion, as part of a court’s “job description” I invoke above.)

It is true that an outcome-oriented definition may simply function as a signaling device for the process itself. For example, if the decision expands judicial power we may condemn it because we infer perverse reasons for why it was reached. But this would only mean these activist definitions collapse into a proper procedural view, however helpful they may be on their own.

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The rise of the mega-title: How gratuitous, list-filled names optimized books for Internet age sales, conquered the market, and made titles more boring

An interesting trend has developed in the world of books over the last fifty years. The emergence of the excessively long and overly informative book title has been swift and decisive. Once a rare style of titling, it now fills best-seller lists and Amazon search pages like sand fills a bucket. It took no prisoners. It came, it saw, it search engine-optimized.

Complete with a colon marking the break between the work’s main title and a subtitle attempting to indicate its content, the trend of the new literary mega-title isn’t going away anytime soon. If you’re someone who even occasionally shops for new books, then surely you know what I’m talking about.

Here are a few examples from current popular titles:

Gridlock U.S.A.: How America’s Traffic Problems Damage our Health and Wealth

Please and Thank You: Why Manners Matter More in a Digital World

Have you read or heard of either these books? Probably not, because I just made them up, as you might (or might not) be able to tell. It took me all of ten seconds. They were the first things that came to mind. Yet if you saw them prominently displayed on a Barnes & Noble shelf tomorrow they’d fit right in. Book titles seem to be getting longer and simultaneously worse.

Lest you think I am overreacting, or that I am whining about some imaginary trend in book naming (although I certainly am whining), I took a look at New York Times bestseller lists over the years. In the nonfiction category, which is particularly at risk for this type of title mumbo-jumbo, 80 percent, or 12 out of 15 selections in the most recent hardcover list, are of the mega-title variety. They total a whopping 137 words altogether, or just over nine each.

Going back twenty-five years and taking a peek at the nonfiction NYT list from December 1989, I find seven out of fifteen names, or 47 percent using colons for a grand total of 120 words, equal to eight words per title. There’s a trend emerging.

Turning the dial back yet another twenty-five years, the December 1964 nonfiction list yields ten winners with only three containing subtitles. The entire group clocks in at thirty-one words, a paltry three per book. Moreover, two of the three titles with colons pertain to biographies along the lines of Harlow: An Intimate Biography by Irving Shulman, which made the cut at a mere four words. (the NYT lists used can be found here.)

Three words per title is how you get it done. It’s simple and classy and doesn’t jam some garbled condensed summary onto the cover. The 1964 list contains such mouthfuls as Markings, Reminiscences, and The Kennedy Wit while 2014 boasts the quick and efficient Killing Patton: The Strange Death of World War Two’s Most Audacious General and You Can’t Make This Up: Miracles, Memories, and the Perfect Marriage of Sports and Television. Doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, does it?

These are not book titles, they are short essays. Fifty years ago, two-part titles functioned merely to stylishly identify what category of book you were actually looking at. Today we get full-blown sentences worthy of a third grade English exercise following the colon (e.g. Walter Isaacson’s The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution.) A book title is not the appropriate place to demonstrate your command of comma use.

So why did this trend emerge in the first place and why has it become so dominant, so fast?
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Nozick’s experience machine in the age of the Oculus Rift

The year is 1974. Harvard philosophy professor Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia has just hit the shelves. A few dozen pages in, Nozick prods you to consider a simple thought experiment: Imagine you had a choice between everyday reality and a fabricated, alternative existence provided by what he called “the experience machine.”

This apparatus, invented by neuroscientists, could be set in advance to provide you the feeling of all your desired experiences over the course of your life. Nozick assures us that this simulated existence would seem entirely real, although you’d merely be floating in a tank, attached to electrodes.

Hedonism is the view that pleasure (sometimes also labeled “happiness”) is the chief good humans strive for. If hedonism holds, then, by definition, all human action would be strictly a means to that end. When prompted with the opportunity to pre-program a lifetime of pleasurable experiences, hedonists would rejoice: they would strap into the experience machine. However, most people, feeling a deep unease even contemplating the choice, indicate they would decline the offer. From this we are left to conclude that people value more in life than felt experience alone. Nozick’s clever hypothetical is generally viewed as convincing among contemporary philosophers as a robust challenge to hedonism and utilitarian theories in moral and political philosophy based on it.

Now let’s flash forward forty years from the thought experiment’s formal philosophical introduction and have a look at the current state of affairs. Does the experience machine, or something like it, exist?

The world we live in is digitized and connected like never before and it just so happens that a lot of people spend a lot of time taking advantage of that. Some of today’s widely used technologies can feel like low-level experience machines, although none come close to being a proxy for Nozick’s. That is all about to change. Oculus, a kickstarter-launched company has created what might be the next screen to claim its place in the pixilated lineage of groundbreaking electronic devices. Its virtual reality (VR) headset, dubbed the Rift, provides an immersive first-person sensory experience that will have a wide range of applications in the future. Facebook executives thought so highly of the technology that they speculated it could become the globe’s “next major computing platform” and promptly coughed up two billion dollars to make it their own.

While virtual reality has been around for quite some time in various forms, this recent innovation represents a large shift towards real-life experience machines. Call it Nozick’s axis:

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While the Rift is impressive, any possibility of realizing Nozick’s famous thought experiment depends on how well VR matches up against certain characteristics of the conceptual machine.

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