Why instant messaging sucks, and email is better for most things

These days, many people default to sending a text message, Telegram, Messenger, WhatsApp, Signal, or some other type of instant message for just about any sort of communication.  Some even consider email to be old-fashioned. 

I think this may be a product of the attention-deficit millennial generation, many of whom have not learned how to focus or manage their time and mental energy well.  Each IM provides a little burst of excitement and instant gratification, which people come to crave.

Here’s why this is wrong.

Why IM sucks

1. My time and attention are a scarce and valuable to me. Instant messaging is interruptive.  If I’m going about my day or focusing on some work and a non-urgent IM chimes my phone or pops up on my computer, chances are it’s going to slow me down and waste my time.  Yeah, I can try to ignore it, but every noise my phone makes saps a little bit of my mental energy and attention from what I’m doing.  Sure, I can silence my phone and the half-dozen apps on my computer, but I shouldn’t have to, and I might miss something that actually is important and time sensitive.  Multiply this by 10s or 100s of times per day and it really makes a difference.
2. Once read, IMs require an immediate response or action, even if it would really be more convenient to do that later.  This is primarily because most IM systems don’t have a good way to mark messages for future follow-up.  If I’m in the middle of writing an essay about the appropriate use of messaging technology and someone texts me and I read that text (just to see if it’s urgent), now I’m stuck having to stop what I’m working on and respond to the message right away or else risk forgetting about it forever. If the same person sent me an email and I wanted to delay my reply, I could just flag it or mark it as unread and know that I’ll see it again the next time I scan my mailbox.  Granted, some apps like Telegram let you flag conversation, but that's not as useful as flagging a specific message.
3. Whenever I come back to my computer after having been away for a while, I triage my email.  I can scan it and respond to the easiest or most urgent things right away, while saving the more difficult or less urgent things for later.  And if there's a long message I want to read that isn't urgent, I can save it as unread and read it later.  This ensures that the use of my time is properly prioritized, yet allows me to deal with everything appropriately, in time.  There is no good way to do this with most IM apps, and totally impossible when using multiple apps.
4. I type quite fluidly on a regular keyboard, but I *hate* typing on my phone. Especially when I’m sitting in front of a computer with a full size keyboard and a large screen, and someone sends me a text message, and then I have to awkwardly peck out a reply on my phone screen. 
5. Sometimes #2 and #4 combine: while I’m out and about, someone sends me an IM which requires a polysyllabic reply, and foolishly I read it.  Now what do I do: a) stop what I’m doing, grimace, and try to peck out a reply on my phone, b) plan on replying later from my computer but know that I’m almost certain to forget?  Often, I opt for c) copy and paste the message into an email to myself so that I’ll see it when I’m at my computer and can reply more comfortably.
6. IMs are not a good way to organize and archive and search for information.  If you email me some info that I’ll need later, I’ll probably be able to find it when I need it with a quick inbox search and scan of subject lines (or maybe I’ll even have flagged it).  If you IM that to me, I’ve got to try to remember what IM platform it was in, then scroll or search through our chat history to find that thing.  It’s not as efficient.
7. Often, when sending a lengthy message via IM, people tend to send it as multiple short messages in a series.  This causes my phone and/or PC to repeatedly solicit my attention, which can be super annoying, especially if I’m busy with something else.  People don’t usually do this with email; they will send one long message which does not interrupt me.
8. IMs in the middle of the night from people in other time zones sometimes wake me up.  Yeah maybe I could silence my phone at night, but then I might miss a call or something that is actually important and time sensitive.

Why email rocks

1. I decide when to look at my email.  Other people do not decide that for me. I check it when I’m switching tasks and it’s convenient for me, or when I sit down at my computer, or when I finish something else, or when I just need a distraction.  I do check my email about 1000000 times a day, so I’m going to see your message pretty quickly.  But this process doesn’t break my flow, distract me from something more important at the moment, or waste my time (as much).
2. It’s multi-threaded.  I can carry on several different conversations with you (and possibly others in a group) simultaneously, at different speeds.  One conversation may progress over the course of hours or minutes, while another may go on for months with only occasional replies.  These conversations do not get mixed up.  I know you can approximate this with things like Telegram chat groups, but it doesn’t work as smoothly.
3. My inbox is my to-do list.  Not the only one, but one of the most important.  If I think of something I want to do later while I’m afk, I just email myself a note.  If I need to get back to someone about a project, I just mark their email as unread or flag it for follow-up.  It’s a very efficient system which ensures that I almost never forget about something that I want to remember to do.  With IMs, these tasks are much more likely to fall into cracks and be forgotten.
4. It’s universal, and interoperable, and even somewhat decentralized.  Everyone has email.  I can choose from many hosted email services, or run my own.  I can choose from many different clients. It’s not a walled garden like most of the IM systems.  And there’s only one email network.  I don’t have to install 5 different apps on every device and constantly switch between them to use it.
5. It’s a chronicle of my life. I have email from 25 years ago that I can still search and read.  Do you think you’ll still have access to your Telegram or Skype chat history 25 years from now?

Why email sucks

1. Security.  We all know that the NSA and probably a bunch of other people have access to your email (unless you use PGP, which is a nightmare).  Not all of the IM systems are better, but some are.
2. When you have an urgent question or time sensitive message, it may not get attention fast enough.  But really, how often is this a problem? 
3. Spam.  It’s annoying.  But spam filters are pretty good these days, and if you are diligent about unsubscribing from the newsletters of every web site you visit, it’s not a problem.

What IM is appropriate for

1. Text messages and the like are perfect for short but time sensitive queries or bits of information, like “I’ll be there in 5 minutes” or “I’m at the store, what kind of milk should I get?”
2. IM is great when you are having a real time (or near real time) conversation with someone, and you are devoting most of your attention to that conversation so you’re not being interrupted by the messages.
3. Prolonged group discussions involving more than 4-5 people

What email is better for

1. Everything else!

LA election once again proves that most voters are complete morons and should not be voting at all

Deciding who or what to vote for in an election is a complicated and difficult task that should not be undertaken lightly.  Many people are not up to the task, and therefore have no business voting at all.  All of the propaganda encouraging people to vote do more harm than good, because it encourages people to go to the polls and check boxes that they really do not understand.

I’m not saying this because I am dissatisfied with the outcome of some election.  I am saying it because I have numerical proof.  In yesterday’s LA city election, one of the initiatives on the ballot was proposition E.  In the voter’s guide, the printed argument in favor of Prop E was: "The official proponents of Initiative Ordinance E have concluded ... there is no longer a need for the voters to support Initiative Ordinance E. Therefore, we have suspended our campaign and no longer seek a yes vote on Ordinance E."

So basically, anyone voting in favor E has not bothered to read the voters’ guide or do any research necessary to make an informed decision.  Yet 41% still voted for it! 

Let’s assume that uninformed voters are split about 50/50 between voting for and voting against it.  There will be uninformed choices on both sides, of course.  That implies that 80% of voters are complete idiots, and are making ill-considered decisions about important issues that everyone.  Their stupidity is determining how the force of government will be applied to other people. 

And this is just a city election with poor turnout.  Presumably the people who vote in a city election are a bit more passionate and informed about politics than the people who vote in a general election. So what does that imply about state and federal elections?

Is this really the best way to decide how tax money should be spent, or how your activities should be regulated?

Cut education spending - it won't hurt the kids!

There is no relationship between public school spending and quality of education. A new study shows just how incredibly wasteful public schools are. They Spend WHAT? The Real Cost of Public Schools

LAUSD actually spends $25,000 per student per year, though they claim it's only $10,000. Can anyone tell me with a straight face that they cannot provide an absolutely top-notch education with that amount of money, or even half of that? Median private school tuition in LA is $8300. Why pay 3 times more for a worse education?

Public schools are wasteful and expensive and ineffective because of the teacher's union and government bureaucracy. Why can't we introduce some competition into the system with school vouchers or tax credits, and let parents decide where the money should be spent?

Is taxation the only way to "spread the wealth"?

A leftish friend recently remarked about how people are inherently selfish, and if we don’t have Big Government social programs and healthcare to take money from some people and give it to others, poor people will start dropping like flies. Or something like that. I hear this sort of thing a lot. I think the reason people think this way is because they haven’t given enough thought to alternatives – softer, less forceful ways of encouraging people to help each other. So I’m going to throw out a few ideas to challenge the conventional wisdom that if Government doesn’t do it, nobody will.

First, we have to understand something about the history of mankind. Thousands of years ago when we were all living in small tribes, everyone knew everyone else. Everyone knew if you hunted a big animal or cultivated a large field. Everyone knew if you were attacked by a cheetah, or got sick because of bad juju. They knew if you were a hard worker or a lazy slacker. They knew if you were careful and forward-thinking, or sloppy and short-sighted. If you were sick or hurt, someone would help you out (if you deserved it). People did not live in relative anonymity as they do today. And because they knew each others' business, the more successful felt some obligation to help the less successful. And the less successful felt an obligation to minimize their drain on the others by acting responsibly and working harder to pull their own weight.

Fast-forward to today, where each of us is surrounded by millions of others. We can’t possibly know them, or what they’re up to, or if they need help, and why, and if they deserve it. So most people’s reaction is to use the force of government – robbery at gunpoint – to take money from some people and spread it around. But there are problems with this. The people who are robbed feel resentful – they don’t know where their money is going, and they know a lot of it is wasted, a lot of it goes to pork projects, and a lot of it goes to leeches. The people who get the money don’t feel grateful or even obligated to pull their own weight – they’re just gaming the system. And Government in the middle has no real incentive to use your money wisely or efficiently, or in ways that you agree with.

It seems to me that the solution, or part of it, is to bring back the personal connections and peer pressure that encourage people to do what’s right in smaller communities. Here are some ideas to that effect. I’m not necessarily in favor of all of them, just throwing out ideas to get people thinking and to challenge assumptions.

1. Give people a choice of either paying their taxes, or publishing a detailed statement of their income, wealth, expenditures and charitable donations on the internet.

2. Require everyone to publish a detailed statement of their income, taxes, wealth, expenditures and charitable donations on the internet.

3. Let people decide how their tax money is spent. The overall level of taxes would be fixed. Government departments would put in requests, but the actual allocation of money would be determined by the taxpayers. If people don’t like subsidizing corn farmers or overseas wars, then corn farmers won’t get subsidized and wars won't get funded.

4. Increase the tax deduction for charitable contributions to nearly 100%. If you don’t like giving your money to government beaurocracy, you can give it to charity instead, and not be penalized (or not much).

5. Change welfare from a many-to-many system to a one-to-one system. Tell a rich guy that he is personally responsible for this poor person, and see if he ignores them. Allow (or require) both of them to publish comments about each other on a web site. I wrote about something like this a while ago.

6. Social networking is in its infancy. If you think Facebook is cool now, just wait 10 years. The Internet and social networking will shrink the world in many ways, and allow us to keep closer tabs on each other. Reputation-based networking is barely more than an idea now, but soon it will enable us to extend our reputations that are built on personal interaction to people who don’t even know us. Right now your personal acquaintances may know if you’re generous or trustworthy or lazy or a cheater; but when that knowledge is available to everyone, the world will be more like it was 10,000 years ago.

7. In Down and Out in The Magic Kingdom, Cory Doctorow wrote about a future in which everyone has a net-connected brain implant which enables them to instantly identify everyone they see and to know that person’s wealth in “whuffie”, a sort of social currency. The wealthy are greatly respected, because they earned their social currency by doing things that others found admirable or useful. Whuffie can be exchanged with a few mental “clicks”. This may be a bit futuristic, but in a world where everyone has an Internet connected smartphone, it’s not that unrealistic. I think that the combination of mobile internet and social networking can and will play a role in shrinking the world, and bringing back personal connections and responsibility.

8. Over the last several decades, government power in the US has become more and more centralized. This is the wrong way to go; we should move toward less centralized, more localized government. One cannot expect someone in a massive beaurocracy 3000 miles away to understand and attend to local needs and preferences. And centralized, homogenized government makes it impossible for different states or cities to try new ideas and really find out what works best.

Whatever your political persuasion, there’s one thing I’m pretty sure we can agree on: our present form of government is not the optimal one. It seems to me that we need some fresh ideas and freedom to try them out.

For further reading on this topic, I recommend The Origins of Virtue.

And I'd love to hear your ideas.

Stupid warning labels... one of the reasons I hate lawyers

I copied these warning labels from a bottle of sand (the stuff you roll around in at the beach) and a bottle of salt (same stuff that's in the salt shaker on your table) sold by a chemical supply company. Obviously this is all CYA jargon thought up by a paranoid lawyer. But this is harmful. When even completely innocuous products are plastered with dire warnings, we become desensitized to warning labels, and tend to ignore them even when something really is dangerous. I blame it on lawyers.

Sea Sand
WASHED

CAUTION! MAY BE HARMFUL IF INHALED. MAY CAUSE IRRITATION. INHALATION MAY PRODUCE IRRITATION, COUGHING AND ACUTE PNEUMOCONIOSIS FROM OVERWHELMING EXPOSURE TO SILICA DUST. MAY CAUSE A RAPIDLY DEVELOPING PULMONARY INSUFFICIENCY, LABORED BREATHING, TACHYPNEA AND CYANOSIS FOLLOWED BY COR PULMONALE AND A SHORT SURVIVAL TIME. MORE FREQUENTLY, AFTER 10-25 YEARS EXPOSURE, LABORED BREATHING, DRY COUGH, CHEST PAIN, DECREASED VITAL CAPACITY, AND DIMINISHED CHEST EXPANSION MAY OCCUR AND PROGRESS TO MARKED FATIUE, EXTREME LABORED BREATHING AND CYANOSIS, ANROREXIA, COUGH WITH STRINGMY MUCOUS, PLEAURATIC PAIN AND INCAPACITY TO WORK. DEATH MAY RESULT FROM CARDIAC FAILURE OR DESTRUCTION OF LUNG TISSUE WITH RESULTANT ANOREXIA. HAS CAUSED TUMORIGENCI EFFECTS IN LABORATORY ANIMALS. SKIN CONTACT MAY CAUSE IRRITATION AND DERMATITIS. EYE CONTACT MAY CAUSE REDNESS, IRRITATION, AND CONJUNCTIVITIS.
TARGET ORGANS AFFECTED: Eyes, Skin and Mucous Membranes. Provide local exhaust ventilation and/or general dilution ventilation to meet published limits, or use of recommended NIOSH respirators listed in Material Safety Data Sheet.
FIRST AID - INHALATION - Remove from exposure area to fresh air immediately. If breathing has stopped, perform artificial respiration. Keep person warm and at rest. Get medical attention immediately. SKIN - Remove contaminated clothing and shoes immediately. Wash affected area with soap or mild detergent and large amounts of water (approximately 15-20 minutes). Get medical attention. EYES - Wash eyes immediately with large amounts of water, occasionally lifting upper and lower lids (approximately 15-20 minutes). Get medical attention.

Sodium Chloride
CERTIFIED A.C.S. CRYSTAL

CAUTION! MAY CAUSE IRRITATION. INGESTION OF LARGE AMOUNTS MAY CAUSE SYSTEMIC TOXICITY.
TARGET ORGANS: None
FIRST AID - EYES - Flush eyes with plenty of water, occasionally lifting the upper and lower lids. Get medical aid. SKIN - Flush skin with plenty of soap and water. Get medical aid if irritation persists. INHALATION - Remove from exposure and move to fresh air immediately. If not breathing, give artificial respiration. If breathing is difficult, give oxygen. Get medical aid immediately. INGESTION - Give 2-4 cupfuls of milk or water, then induce vomiting by giving syrup of Ipecac. Get medical aid.
PRECAUTIONS: Use with adequate ventilation. Keep container closed. In case of spill, sweep up, then place into a suitable container for disposal.

Why raising taxes on the wealthy is a bad idea

An article that every Californian should read right now, given our state's financial problems...

Soak the Rich, Lose the Rich

Americans know how to use the moving van to escape high taxes.

By ARTHUR LAFFER and STEPHEN MOORE

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124260067214828295.html

With states facing nearly $100 billion in combined budget deficits this year, we're seeing more governors than ever proposing the Barack Obama solution to balancing the budget: Soak the rich. Lawmakers in California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York and Oregon want to raise income tax rates on the top 1% or 2% or 5% of their citizens. New Illinois Gov. Patrick Quinn wants a 50% increase in the income tax rate on the wealthy because this is the "fair" way to close his state's gaping deficit.

Mr. Quinn and other tax-raising governors have been emboldened by recent studies by left-wing groups like the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities that suggest that "tax increases, particularly tax increases on higher-income families, may be the best available option." A recent letter to New York Gov. David Paterson signed by 100 economists advises the Empire State to "raise tax rates for high income families right away."

Here's the problem for states that want to pry more money out of the wallets of rich people. It never works because people, investment capital and businesses are mobile: They can leave tax-unfriendly states and move to tax-friendly states.

And the evidence that we discovered in our new study for the American Legislative Exchange Council, "Rich States, Poor States," published in March, shows that Americans are more sensitive to high taxes than ever before. The tax differential between low-tax and high-tax states is widening, meaning that a relocation from high-tax California or Ohio, to no-income tax Texas or Tennessee, is all the more financially profitable both in terms of lower tax bills and more job opportunities.

Updating some research from Richard Vedder of Ohio University, we found that from 1998 to 2007, more than 1,100 people every day including Sundays and holidays moved from the nine highest income-tax states such as California, New Jersey, New York and Ohio and relocated mostly to the nine tax-haven states with no income tax, including Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire and Texas. We also found that over these same years the no-income tax states created 89% more jobs and had 32% faster personal income growth than their high-tax counterparts.

Did the greater prosperity in low-tax states happen by chance? Is it coincidence that the two highest tax-rate states in the nation, California and New York, have the biggest fiscal holes to repair? No. Dozens of academic studies -- old and new -- have found clear and irrefutable statistical evidence that high state and local taxes repel jobs and businesses.

Martin Feldstein, Harvard economist and former president of the National Bureau of Economic Research, co-authored a famous study in 1998 called "Can State Taxes Redistribute Income?" This should be required reading for today's state legislators. It concludes: "Since individuals can avoid unfavorable taxes by migrating to jurisdictions that offer more favorable tax conditions, a relatively unfavorable tax will cause gross wages to adjust. . . . A more progressive tax thus induces firms to hire fewer high skilled employees and to hire more low skilled employees."

More recently, Barry W. Poulson of the University of Colorado last year examined many factors that explain why some states grew richer than others from 1964 to 2004 and found "a significant negative impact of higher marginal tax rates on state economic growth." In other words, soaking the rich doesn't work. To the contrary, middle-class workers end up taking the hit.

Finally, there is the issue of whether high-income people move away from states that have high income-tax rates. Examining IRS tax return data by state, E.J. McMahon, a fiscal expert at the Manhattan Institute, measured the impact of large income-tax rate increases on the rich ($200,000 income or more) in Connecticut, which raised its tax rate in 2003 to 5% from 4.5%; in New Jersey, which raised its rate in 2004 to 8.97% from 6.35%; and in New York, which raised its tax rate in 2003 to 7.7% from 6.85%. Over the period 2002-2005, in each of these states the "soak the rich" tax hike was followed by a significant reduction in the number of rich people paying taxes in these states relative to the national average. Amazingly, these three states ranked 46th, 49th and 50th among all states in the percentage increase in wealthy tax filers in the years after they tried to soak the rich.

This result was all the more remarkable given that these were years when the stock market boomed and Wall Street gains were in the trillions of dollars. Examining data from a 2008 Princeton study on the New Jersey tax hike on the wealthy, we found that there were 4,000 missing half-millionaires in New Jersey after that tax took effect. New Jersey now has one of the largest budget deficits in the nation.

We believe there are three unintended consequences from states raising tax rates on the rich. First, some rich residents sell their homes and leave the state; second, those who stay in the state report less taxable income on their tax returns; and third, some rich people choose not to locate in a high-tax state. Since many rich people also tend to be successful business owners, jobs leave with them or they never arrive in the first place. This is why high income-tax states have such a tough time creating net new jobs for low-income residents and college graduates.

Those who disapprove of tax competition complain that lower state taxes only create a zero-sum competition where states "race to the bottom" and cut services to the poor as taxes fall to zero. They say that tax cutting inevitably means lower quality schools and police protection as lower tax rates mean starvation of public services.

They're wrong, and New Hampshire is our favorite illustration. The Live Free or Die State has no income or sales tax, yet it has high-quality schools and excellent public services. Students in New Hampshire public schools achieve the fourth-highest test scores in the nation -- even though the state spends about $1,000 a year less per resident on state and local government than the average state and, incredibly, $5,000 less per person than New York. And on the other side of the ledger, California in 2007 had the highest-paid classroom teachers in the nation, and yet the Golden State had the second-lowest test scores.

Or consider the fiasco of New Jersey. In the early 1960s, the state had no state income tax and no state sales tax. It was a rapidly growing state attracting people from everywhere and running budget surpluses. Today its income and sales taxes are among the highest in the nation yet it suffers from perpetual deficits and its schools rank among the worst in the nation -- much worse than those in New Hampshire. Most of the massive infusion of tax dollars over the past 40 years has simply enriched the public-employee unions in the Garden State. People are fleeing the state in droves.

One last point: States aren't simply competing with each other. As Texas Gov. Rick Perry recently told us, "Our state is competing with Germany, France, Japan and China for business. We'd better have a pro-growth tax system or those American jobs will be out-sourced." Gov. Perry and Texas have the jobs and prosperity model exactly right. Texas created more new jobs in 2008 than all other 49 states combined. And Texas is the only state other than Georgia and North Dakota that is cutting taxes this year.

The Texas economic model makes a whole lot more sense than the New Jersey model, and we hope the politicians in California, Delaware, Illinois, Minnesota and New York realize this before it's too late.

Ooooh smack! This is too good to be true!

But why hasn’t it been getting any press? It’s good to know I’m not the only one who thinks this way. Maybe Texas will lead the revolution.

http://governor.state.tx.us/news/press-release/12227/

Gov. Perry Backs Resolution Affirming Texas’ Sovereignty Under 10th Amendment HCR 50 Reiterates Texas’ Rights Over Powers Not Otherwise Granted to Federal Government
April 09, 2009

AUSTIN – Gov. Rick Perry today joined state Rep. Brandon Creighton and sponsors of House Concurrent Resolution (HCR) 50 in support of states’ rights under the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

“I believe that our federal government has become oppressive in its size, its intrusion into the lives of our citizens, and its interference with the affairs of our state,” Gov. Perry said. “That is why I am here today to express my unwavering support for efforts all across our country to reaffirm the states’ rights affirmed by the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. I believe that returning to the letter and spirit of the U.S. Constitution and its essential 10th Amendment will free our state from undue regulations, and ultimately strengthen our Union.”

A number of recent federal proposals are not within the scope of the federal government’s constitutionally designated powers and impede the states’ right to govern themselves. HCR 50 affirms that Texas claims sovereignty under the 10th Amendment over all powers not otherwise granted to the federal government.

It also designates that all compulsory federal legislation that requires states to comply under threat of civil or criminal penalties, or that requires states to pass legislation or lose federal funding, be prohibited or repealed.

HCR 50 is authored by Representatives Brandon Creighton, Leo Berman, Bryan Hughes, Dan Gattis and Ryan Guillen.

To view the full text of the resolution, please visit:
http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/tlodocs/81R/billtext/html/HC00050I.htm

So now we can't criticize government because Obama is black

"Rev. Al Sharpton, black leaders planning boycott of New York Post over controversial chimp cartoon"

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2009/02/19/2009-02-19_rev_al_sharpton_black_leaders_planning_b.html

Al Sharpton needs to take a big bottle of chill pills. Perhaps he doesn't realize that Congress wrote and mangled most of this bill, not the president.

Why software engineers are Libertarians

Software engineers are probably the most libertarian people around. More than half of the software engineers I know are libertarian, or libertarian-leaning. Why? They are super smart, rational people who understand how complex systems work. Law is software, it just runs on a different platform. Software engineers see all the bugs in our system, and how much of our legal software is ineffective, outdated, and counterproductive. They understand that the best software designs are simple and elegant, like our constitution, but that the various upgrades and features we have added over the last 100 years have caused our system to become bloated and inefficient. They have experience with complex interactions between different parts of a system, and know how common unexpected interactions are and how harmful they can be. And they can see that the solution is decentralization of power and emphasis on personal choice and freedom, rather than top-down control.

What kind of people do you want running your government?

Who do I want to run my government? CEOs and economists. CEOs, because they know how to manage large organizations, they know how things work in the real world, and they know how to get things done. Economists, because they understand how our economy works and how policy changes are likely to impact it. And they are more likely to use objective data to measure the impact of such changes, in order to tweak or reverse them if they are ineffective.

However, almost half of our congresscriters are lawyers. This is unfortunate, because I think that their mindset actually contributes to our problems. Lawyers like laws. They make their living around laws. They want more of them, because they think more laws will solve more problems. But I disagree. We have to damn many laws already. Also, lawyers are paid to advocate on behalf of someone or some cause, even if they personally disagree. Thus, their votes are more likely to be swayed by contributions and lobbyists. Most of our legislators have no experience running a business in the real world, and have little understanding of economics. What a shame.

The biggest problem in the world

Hunger. Poverty. Resource depletion. Environmental pollution. Climate change. Traffic congestion. Species extinction. There is one major factor underlying all of these problems: overpopulation.

There are too many people in the world competing for a finite amount of resources. Reduce the world’s population and all of these problems become far easier to deal with. Increase the population, and they become intractable. I think it is futile to attempt to solve these problems without addressing the major underlying cause.

Year - Population
1800 - 1 billion
1900 - 1.6 billion
2000 - 6 billion
2100 - 9 billion

Anyone see a problem here? Why doesn’t anybody want to talk about it, or even acknowledge it? I think people tend to be blind to it for a variety of reasons: the problem seems too large and intractable, they don’t see any solutions, various religions encourage large families and discourage birth control, various cultures value large families, it’s politically incorrect to pick on the poor countries where population growth is greatest, the problem is “over there”, etc.

The solution is simple, in concept: if each couple has less than 2.3 children, the overall population will decline. All we need to do is reduce birth rates. This will occur through cultural change; as a people (particularly women) become better educated, they tend to have fewer children. But we also need to get it into people’s heads that it is simply not ok to have 14 children. As great as children are, having more than two doesn’t do the rest of us any good.

We also need better and more widely available contraceptive technology. A few billion dollars invested in birth control in the countries where population growth is highest and in developing new technology could in the long term save trillions in aid and environmental damage, and prevent untold misery (but the politician who first proposes this had better be wearing an asbestos suit).

How to get the solution into practice? I have no idea.

Real stimulus

Our congressmen are bickering about whether the stimulus bill should be $879 billion or $921 billion (or something like that). Does it really matter? The whole thing is completely insane. It is a futile attempt to treat the symptom of a much deeper disease, like taking an aspirin to treat cancer.

But nobody wants to talk about the cancer. We have to "do something", as if "something" is always better than nothing. In fact, the somethings that are done hurriedly in emergency situations are often much worse than nothing, because people tend not to make rational decisions in a panic.

Let me summarize my objections to the stimulus plan:

1. There is considerable evidence that Keynesian style stimulus doesn't work, and very little evidence that it does work. It didn’t work for Japan. Bush’s stimulus did a big fat nothing.

2. It will cost almost a trillion dollars. It is immoral to spend money you don’t have and then force someone else to pay for it later.

3. This money has to come from somewhere. It will be taken out of the economy by selling government bonds. The money would probably do more good if it was left in the hands of investors and consumers, to spend invest more prudently in productive enterprise. Taking money from one pocket and putting it in the other pocket doesn’t really get us anywhere.

4. The bill is full of pork and spending that would have been quite controversial and heavily debated if it were not part of the “emergency stimulus”. The democrats are just throwing all their pet projects in a pile and calling it an emergency bill that must be passed or else.

5. Related to #3 and #4, government spending is inherently less efficient and less beneficial to the economy than private spending. There are several reasons for this. One always makes more careful decisions about spending one’s own money than someone else’s. Government has almost no incentive to conserve or spend wisely and put resources where they will be most useful, while individuals and businesses do. Politicians almost always rewarded (with votes) for handing out the goodies, not for being stingy.

So what else can we do to help the economy? A lot! Cutting taxes has been proven over and over as one of the most effective ways to stimulate economic growth. The tax cuts must be permanent to be effective; studies show that short term cuts have little impact because people and business plan their spending based on future earnings. To get the most impact, we should permanently eliminate corporate income tax. I can hear the gasping and groaning already. “But we need the money.” “We should stick it greedy corporations even harder.” Wrong. Here’s what’s wrong with corporate income taxes:

1. The US has the second highest corporate income tax in the world (Japan’s is slightly higher). This makes our companies less competitive both at home and abroad. This costs jobs and hurts our economy.

2. Corporations don’t pay taxes, people do. 100% of corporate income tax is passed on to consumers as higher cost of goods, or to shareholders as reduced return on investment. The idea that a corporation is or should be a taxpayer is misguided.

3. Corporate profits go to the shareholders. Contrary to public perception, most corporations are owned by the mutual funds making up grandma’s pension plan and dad’s 401(k) retirement account, not by some greedy fat cat. Taxing corporations is taxing grandma.

4. Corporate taxation is double taxation. First the corporation’s income is taxed, then what’s left is distributed to the shareholders and taxed again as income tax. This makes no sense.

5. Corporations spend hundreds of billions of dollars every year complying with tens of thousands of pages of complex tax law. This is wasted time and money which could be better spent growing business and creating jobs.

6. Corporations organize themselves and their business in convoluted contortionist ways and perform absurd gyrations in order to minimize the taxes they pay. This is a drag on efficiency and productivity. I know, I’ve been through it several times.

The bottom line: corporate income tax creates friction and sucks money out of the system, which hurts economic growth and costs jobs. Eliminating it would likely create more jobs and growth than Obama's stimulus plan.

“But we need the money!” Not exactly. Eliminating corporate income tax would only reduce the government’s take by around $350 billion per year; 1/3 of the stimulus bill. Yet the tax cuts would lead increased economic activity. This in turn would generate more tax revenue for the government (increased personal income tax revenue). It might even generate enough increased revenue to pay for itself. And it would stimulate economic growth more than any government spending plan. But even if no additional tax revenue were generated by the increased economic activity, we would still be better off eliminating corporate taxes and increasing personal taxes to compensate.

So why is nobody talking about this? Because sticking it to corporations is politically popular; because most people (including most politicians) have never run a business or studied economics and really don’t understand this stuff.

This article explains the argument better than I have: http://www.reason.com/news/show/131556.html

The democrats have been claiming that economists all agree that we need this stimulus bill. That's a lie. The Cato institute recently published an ad in the NYT and Washington Post, signed by 200 prominent economists including 3 Nobel laureates, who disagree. http://www.cato.org/special/stimulus09/cato_stimulus.pdf

So there’s a real stimulus. But why do we need one in the first place? What about the cancer? The cancer is the fundamental structure of our monetary and banking system. Fractional reserve banking (which is inherently fraudulent but rarely questioned), fiat money, and inflationary monetary policy are what got us into that mess. I’ve written a bit about that before here, but I’ll save the rest of that rant for another day.

Obama's economic stimulus plan is insane

Throwing "government money" (there really is no such thing) at the slouching economy isn't going to make it better. It's been done before, and it rarely helps. At best, we might get a temporary spike in economic activity as a result of the spending, but like the high from a hit of crack, it will not be sustained, it will not be "real" economic activity, and when the spending stops we'll have a nasty hangover.

This WSJ article explains it nicely.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122938932478509075.html

The best thing government can do to help the situation is to get out of the way, untie the hands of businesses, lower taxes, and allow private companies and individuals to go about the process of creating wealth. Government cannot create wealth, it can only destroy it.

Towards responsible use of cognitive-enhancing drugs by the healthy

A new article in Nature: "Towards responsible use of cognitive-enhancing drugs by the healthy"

Society must respond to the growing demand for cognitive enhancement. That response must start by rejecting the idea that 'enhancement' is a dirty word, argue Henry Greely and colleagues.

Holy cow, a sensible attitude toward drugs from one of the most respected science journals! Dare I hope that this attitude may eventually spread to include other drugs?

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/456702a.html

The Cause of the Crisis

It is popular to blame the current economic crisis on the free market, and to turn to government for the solution. However, I believe that the opposite is true: the root cause of the crisis is government policies, and more government intervention is likely to exacerbate our problems in the long term, rather than to solve them.

Let me be clear that I do not think that financial markets should be entirely unregulated. Some regulations are appropriate. But I do not think that any sort of regulations would have completely prevented this crisis, nor was lack of them the cause.

There was a huge bubble in real estate. The bubble burst. The existence of the bubble was the problem.

Sub prime mortgages, credit default swaps, and all that may have been the straw that broke the camel's back, or the manner in which more fundamental problems manifested, but they were not the root cause of our trouble.

The root cause of our trouble, the reason why there was a bubble in the first place, is the Federal Reserve system, fiat money, and to a lesser extent, our system of fractional reserve banking.

Since its creation in 1913, the Fed has continually inflated the money supply, creating new money which enables government to spend more without directly taxing people, but taxing them indirectly through inflation. Inflationary monetary policy is also the cause of economic boom-bust cycles. In the most recent case, the Fed pushed interest rates down to an artificially low level from 2002-2005. This caused excess liquidity to flow into our economy, and all that money had to go somewhere. Much of it went into real estate, creating a bubble which, as all bubbles, would eventually burst.

The Japanese government contributed to this as well. For nearly a decade, they pushed real interest rates to near zero. Investors borrowed billions of dollars for nearly no cost from Japanese banks, and invested the money in US markets, where they could earn a reasonable rate of return, and pocket the difference in interest as profit. Outcome: bubble.

All of this is possible for one reason: fiat money. Before the creation of the Fed, US money was tied to gold. The government could not arbitrarily create more of it, because it could not create more gold. This kept the money supply in check, and prevented government manipulation of interest rates. While on the gold standard, there were few booms and busts; growth was steadier, and inflation was very low. Since then, our money is not tied to anything of intrinsic value; there are no limits on how much of it government can print. And since then, we have suffered from one depression/recession after another, with bubbles in between, and constant inflation which saps money from the middle class and transfers it to government and those who suckle from its tit.

I can name perhaps a dozen other factors which led or contributed to the financial crisis, and government is to blame for many of them as well. But we will never stop this from happening again as long as we ignore the root of the problem. The idea that government should control our money supply, should have a monopoly on legal tender, and should be allowed to manipulate interest rates, is the fundamental flaw in our thinking. Until we correct it, we will continue to lurch from bubble to crisis.

These are not my ideas. These are the ideas of the Austrian school of economists. They are widely ignored by the media, but actively promoted by leaders such as Ron Paul, the Cato institute, the Meises institute, Lew Rockwell, and others. And they not only explain, but actually predicted our economic crisis.

http://mises.org/
http://www.lewrockwell.com/
http://www.campaignforliberty.com/
http://cato.org/