How Modern Capitalism Works - A Screed

You see a ton of bloviation at all times online about the market capitalist economic system. People on the left often see it as a necessary evil, or even a villain of sorts. Folks on the right revere it as some sort of God. This stuff gets even worse, devolving into the coarsest sorts of crass propaganda, during elections.

Yet it's not particularly often that you see someone, from blog commenters all the way up to highly paid economics commentators who work for big publications, actually describe how the modern capitalist system works. It's an interesting system, and worth discussing!

The rightist view of the market system is that it's essentially perfect, and they are right. Well, right in a sense. The market system is a perfect model for rational behavior in the market run. What that means is that as long as there aren't any significant externalities (that is, factors that the model doesn't account for) and we're dealing with a sufficiently short run of time, then the market system does its job, without any need for outside intervention.

There was a time, many decades ago, when the government regularly tried to monkey with the price system, and the results were not very encouraging. Even the big success stories of government price manipulation (rent control is an example) had negative consequences that offset at least some of the gains.

Fortunately, it's now quite rare that the government actually tries to intervene in the price system as such. There are certainly crisis moments when things go horribly wrong. During the California blackouts, for example, FedGov should have intervened to fix a price system that had completely failed and was being gamed by a malign actor, Enron. But for the most part, the government now stays out of the price system. And that's good!

Big, modern capitalist countries, however, do have an important role for government. In fact, there are many important roles. The anarcho-libertarian idea that government can just "butt out and let the market handle it" neglects the fact that there are major areas of modern capitalist economies that have nothing to do with the price system. "The market" doesn't apply! Not every store is a supermarket, and not every market is like the market for wheat.

For instance, finance markets have to be tightly regulated. Ron Paul is right in that if you did away with the central bank and went back to the gold standard that you wouldn't need tight regulation of financial markets. Unfortunately that describes an economic system that no longer exists and makes no sense in the modern world. It can't happen. So it's a bit silly to talk about it as if it could.

So in finance you need government for oversight, and also for insurance. That's one of the big, important roles government plays in the economy - the role of bagholder. The idea is that the government is supposed to prevent breakdowns in the financial system. When that oversight fails, the government is left holding the bag. If you didn't have that, the people left holding the bag would be whoever didn't have the power to hand the bag off to someone else (which generally means poor people.)

Right now you see that, of course, with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. These were government entities originally designed to grease the wheels of the mortgage system, and they were privatized on the theory that this would make them run more efficiently. In that sort of situation, if the privatization experiment fails (as it has done) then the government has to step in because you can't allow a giant piece of the finance system to just fail. If you did, it would cause investors (we often say "foreign investors" but really it's all investors; nothing's stopping Merrill Lynch from putting its money into German bonds instead of American ones) to pull capital out of the US economy, further destabilizing the system until it collapsed.

Another important government role, and one that gets a lot less intelligent attention in the press, is that of dynamic technology investor. There is a sort of pleasing myth about market capitalism that it is a "great driver of innovation." Even leftists who are grumbling about the excesses of evil capitalists will often make some basic obeisance to this idea. Unfortunately, it's not really true in the sense that most people seem to mean it.

In a market system, competition for "rents," which is the word economists use for the money you make over and above what you would make if did something else instead of what you're doing now, is fierce. That fierce competition does drive innovation - rent-seeking innovation! In the short run, firms try to position their capital such that they will continue to collect rents and make profits.

The problem is that in the long run, eventually this model of capitalism will run aground. Rent-seeking innovation doesn't create any long-term benefits to the economy. Those long-term benefits have to come from technological innovation.

Advances in technology were why Malthus' predictions of famine and doom never came true. Most people who pay attention to economics know that. What people don't know is that market economies systematically underinvest in long-term technological innovation. Left to its own devices, technology doesn't move fast enough because everyone is using their money to seek rents, and not enough people are using their money to develop new technology.

In the US, we have a couple of dynamic areas where the government plays a big role. One is the university system, in which state governments run big higher education institutions, turning out vastly more scientists and other technological innovators than would otherwise be the case, and then paying some of them to do academic research.

The other is the Pentagon system, which includes DoD but also other high-tech government entities such as NIH and CDC, where the government pays scientists directly (or through the university system, e.g. MIT) to develop technology the government wants, and then grants licenses to private companies to manufacture and market the results.

These dynamic innovation investments are really, really expensive, and a lot of them are, depending on your perspective, wasteful. (For example, the new jet fighter the Pentagon developed is completely unnecessary for war fighting.) But the money needs to be spent on something. It's an important part of the economy.

The main argument for serious people to have is how much of the government's innovation bankroll should be spent on what type of innovation. Right now, in my view, we spend way too much on tanks and boats and not enough on creating an engineering infrastructure for switching off of fossil fuels. But my view isn't necessarily correct - we should, like, vote about it or something!

In a functioning public square (unlike the silly TV-driven media environment we have) it would be questions like these that we would have in mind when we were driving to the polls to elect leaders. The long-term impact of who called whom a naughty name is, I would imagine, much less.

Too bad for us.

GOP Predators Take Aim at People in Financial Distress

(via Atrios)

The Republicans in Michigan have announced a bold new strategy for keeping poor people from voting - they are going to challenge the voting rights of people whose homes are in foreclosure.

If experience is any guide, they will do this overwhelmingly to black people.

If you're a Republican reading this, don't worry, I know that you can easily justify this, so save your breath. But if there are any non-Republicans thinking of voting Republican this cycle, just make sure you understand what exactly it is you're voting for.

NFL Parlay Picker

A couple years ago Stevo and I used to try each week to pick a 4-team NFL parlay. A parlay is a bet where if all four of your picks come through, you get a large payout (but not nearly so large that it makes it worth it to actually bet them - the book gets a big premium on parlays.)

As far as I remember, neither of us ever hit one, which means... we're due!

So this year I'm going to give it another go. For the non-handicacppers in the audience, the format of the picks is [winner] [spread] OVER [loser], with the home team in CAPS. Thus if I'm picking the Colts to beat the Browns in Cleveland and cover an eight-point spread, that would be Colts -8 OVER BROWNS.

I'll also give a mini-explanation as to my reasoning for the pick.

Tampa Bay +3 OVER NEW ORLEANS

I like the Tampa bay running attack and their defense.

St. Louis +9.5 OVER PHILLY

Philadelphia is aging and overrated while St. Louis is much healthier than they were last year during their run of misery. 9 1/2 points is too many.

PITTSBURGH -6.5 OVER Houston

The Steelers are ferocious in home openers.

SAN FRANCISCO +1 OVER Arizona

It seems like with a veteran QB and good running game San Fran is put together pretty well to win home games against marginal teams like Arizona.

Baseball Trivia

Since the football season is about to kick off and crowd out my interest in baseball for a while, I thought I'd post a trivia question that concerns one of my favorite odd baseball statistics. I like the stat because it is a record that, among all records in all of sports, has the least chance of ever being broken despite there being no specific practical reason that it can't be broken.

The trivia question is this:

The record for most grand slams in a career by a major league pitcher is held by six men, all of whom hit two grand slams in their career. One of those six men did it in a special way. What is his name, and what was unusual about his grand slams?

Answer tomorrow.

UPDATE: As t mentioned in comments, the man's name is Tony Cloninger, and on July 3rd, 1966 Cloninger hit two grand slams in a single game for the Atlanta Braves. The reason this record will never be broken is that the likelihood of a pitcher hitting three home runs in a single game is miniscule (pitchers rarely come to the plate more than three times in a game, and they can't hit) and since a single-digit percentage of home runs are grand slams, the likelihood that a pitcher will hit three grand slams in a game in the next hundred years is probably somewhere on the order of 10e-5.

The really wild part about Cloninger is that he actually was on deck with two runners on when the #8 batter struck out to end the game. Had the previous batter walked, Cloninger would have had a shot for a third grand slam. `That's probably as close as any pitcher will ever come to three.

Imagine the Possibilities

One thing I think that's happened to us as Democrats in the last 8 years is that we've developed a habit of constantly being on guard for all the slings and arrows that fate (aka Karl Rove) is inevitably going to loose in our general direction.

Far be it from me to discourage anyone from staying vigilant. I'm not predicting anything this election, as my handicapping record for 2002 and 2004 was not particularly good. (In 2006 I was more accurate - it was a good year for optimists.)

Based on what I'm seeing on weather.com's radar map, I think a lot of us blue folk are sitting inside riding out a rainstorm this morning. So allow me to suggest that for as long as this storm lasts we forget about all the terrible things that could derail the Obama/Biden ticket and just sit inside and listen to that calm place inside us that can see things the way they ought to go and just... imagine the possibilities.

That is all.

Deep Thought of the Day

Anarchy is the foundation of all government.

McSpeech

Not much to say about the speech that hasn't already been said. The parts about his war record were pretty inspiring, even to someone like me who's disinclined to be too impressed by warrior stuff. His description of those experiences was heartfelt and quite moving.

Everything else was serviceable but weak and artless. The Maurice Morris of speeches. Overall I give it a C+; in part because my expectations were quite low going in and I felt he could get a C as long as the wheels didn't come off.

The wheels didn't come off. That's about all there was to it.

Big McSamey Ad Bombs

Following up on the earlier post "Poll Drollery," here's a new ad from the Obama campaign (via Atrios:)

McSame

It's not an awesome ad, but I like the part with McCain bragging about voting with Bush over 90% of the time. And of course I approve of the direction of the attack. More please!

John McCain, Backup QB

There's an old principle in football that the most popular guy among fans on any team is almost always the backup quarterback. Almost no matter how successful the starter is, there is always a large and vocal contingent of fans who think the backup should be starting. If the starter ever gets hurt in a game, these fans will cheer at the sight of the second-stringer entering.

Unfortunately for the hopes and dreams of these folks, there are usually good reasons that the backup is the backup and the starter is the starter. After a few games with the #2 guy at the helm, those reasons start to surface, and people realize things were not so bad under the top guy. It can be easy to get used to tight spirals and laser-beam medium-range throws to the point where you sort of forget why those skills are important.

It doesn't take too many quarters of watching a noodle-armed backup throwing two-yard square-ins to the tight end to remember that, while pluck and derringdo are laudable characteristics, it's often nice to have a skilled professional at the helm, somebody with a big arm who knows how to use it.

For all John McCain's positive qualities, there's a reason the guy lost to George W. Bush. He's got backup-quality skills. He's fun to root for! But you know deep down you don't really want him running the team.

Cynicism

One thing that I find interesting is that in our culture, we have an accusation that gets flung around a great deal both on the national stage (generally, journalists accusing politicians, or each other) and in interpersonal relationships "down here."

That accusation is that of "cynicism."

What's interesting and even humorous is that I'd bet if you polled 100 people who regularly use the word, very few (single digits would be my guess) could give a particularly useful or informed definition of the word.

I say that not at all as a "people are stupid" sort of observation - indeed, what prompted this post was that I read an article that contained an accusation of cynicism and I wondered "what does that actually mean?" I had to look it up on Wikipedia.

Equally interesting is the stuff about the Greek philosophical school called "the Cynics." Read about it, but remember that often modern history tends to record information about philosophical schools that reflects degenerated forms that came after the original teacher's school had disbanded.

Poll Drollery

I'm normally loathe to play the "this poll shows that X voting block is a crucial battleground" game because just about any poll, including a poll of people's favorite breakfast cereals, can be overlaid on a two-way presidential race and made to seem significant.

However, I do think that this particular poll concerning overall voter attitudes gives a good idea of what the task is for Obama in this race.

via ThinkProgress.org

Basically, 64% of people are concerned that McCain will pursue policies similar to Bush's. That's a large enough chunk that you have to figure things are looking good for Obama. However, when you break it out into "very concerned" and "somewhat concerned," the "very concerned" number is under 50%.

Obama's campaign should be focused more or less exclusively on getting those 17% of people who are "somewhat concerned" over into the "very concerned" category.

The nice part about this strategy tactically is that these people are almost by definition predisposed to the idea that McCain is like Bush. After all, they are "somewhat concerned" about it already. A big McSamey ad-bomb should sway at least a few of them who might be wondering if their concerns are enough to push them to vote for Obama.

Brilliant!*

I'm always at a bit of a loss to know how to react when a candidate I'm supporting does exactly what I think he should do. On the one hand, hey! Great! I think it's a good idea!

On the other hand, after all, it's me! I'm an idiot! What does it say if Obama's strategists have the same ideas I do?

In any case, I love this ad from the Obama camp, sort of reacting-by-way-of-not-reacting to the Palin pick.



I think if I had to sum up the proper approach to Palin for the Obama campaign (and particularly for Biden) it would be summed up in these few words:

Pretend She Isn't There

This ad does a good job with that. In the end, Palin's main upside for McCain is that she makes a somewhat tricky attack target. If McCain were winning the race, and the Dems were hungry for weak points to attack, that would be a problem. But that's not the situation we're in. In strategic thinking, one of the most fundamental axioms that people violate again and again (often to their great detriment) is "When the plan is working, stick to the plan." That applies here.

The thing to keep in mind, from a strategic point of view, is that aside from all the specific problems with Palin the VP candidate, this is a fundamentally weak pick. It's not, as some have analogized, a hail mary pass. John McCain is not down five with ten seconds left. It's more like a well-known type of mistake in poker where, early in a big, long tournament, a beginner will get dealt a strong hand and crazily push all his chips into the middle. The downside of getting called down by an even stronger hand is big, but that's not the real problem (risk is part of poker, after all) - the real problem is, even if the move works, you're really not in THAT great of shape.

McCain is gambling at the wrong time, in the wrong way, on the wrong cards. The best move for the Obama camp is to just... let him.

Chickenshit Republicans

ThinkProgress links to a Washington Post report alleging via anonymous sources that US Congressman Walter Jones (R-NC) is a big fan of Vincent Bugliosi's arguments that George W. Bush should be prosecuted for murder.

The reason that this is coming via anonymous sources is that Jones wants to "lay low" until after the 2008 elections. This is just a great example of the cowardice and fecklessness of the Republican Party. If it is indeed true that Walter Jones believes that the President of the United States of America should be tried for treason but that this idea should not be promoted during election season because it might have an impact on the vote... What exactly is it that Walter Jones believes elections are for?

In fact I think we can draw a further and in a way more disgusting conclusion here. Jones probably doesn't even view calling for the prosecution of a sitting president as a particularly grave matter. Basically, he used to like Bush, but now he thinks Bush sucks, so... Prosecute!!! There is never a sense with Republicans that they recognize that certain decisions are serious and should only be arrived at after careful reflection, and even then with great reluctance and with a heavy heart.

George W. Bush SHOULD be impeached, for any number of crimes. But beware of flighty, opportunistic lightweights like Walter Jones - just because Jones calls for Bush's impeachment doesn't mean he's not still a complete ass. He is.

The Friedman-ization of Obama

Matthew Yglesias points us to a very interesting discussion between Fareed Zakaria and Barack Obama where they touch on a lot of broad ideas about foreign policy that are discussed less often than they should be.

Unfortunately unlike Matt I think the overall impression I get from Obama during the interview is basically negative; I think he's undergoing a process in which he's getting "briefed" by staff on foreign policy doctrine and he's essentially becoming converted to the Beltway consensus on a lot of these issues.

A lot of people on the antiwar left (and yes, that describes me) are going to get really upset about this, and accuse Obama of selling out. But I want to explain, by way of a baseball analogy, why I am not going to get too upset about a lot of this stuff.

Imagine if you were toiling away in some minor-league player personnel office in some second-rate city when you got a call from a major-league club asking you to come in for an interview. And when you get there you find that there's a lot of other candidates there who are far more likely than you to get the job, and you sort of accept that things aren't going to work out but you're excited just to have the opportunity.

Then you nail the interview, a couple of the top candidates for the job wind up dropping out for personal reasons, and before you know it you're reporting for duty as a GM in the major leagues. It's so far beyond your expectations you've got permasmile, even though you're managing the roster of a small-market team with very little money and no real shot to win the title.

At the end of the season, your phone rings again. It's the Yankees. They want to get you out to New York City because you're on the short list to take over as General Manager of the most storied franchise in American sports.

You get the job and you show up during the offseason to hit the books and learn about the players, the contracts, the facilities, all the little details you need to know to run a baseball operation. While you're at it, a lot of the other guys in the organization show up to brief you on various aspects of the Yankees' franchise.

What you find in these little informal bull sessions shocks you. All the mistakes you learned to avoid coming up, these guys are making, and then some. The organization is bloated with waste, shot through with inexact, sloppy procedures and intellectually bankrupt ideas. You're too polite to tell anybody yet, but you realize once you take over things are seriously going to have to change.

But then, a funny thing happens. Something is eating at you. This is The Yankees. Surely they can't be doing everything wrong? A lot of these guys were around for the last run of greatness the franchise had - they have to know something. The more you think about it, the more some of the things these guys are telling you start to make sense.

By the time you start your first season, all of the things that made you a great GM for the Blue Jays are gone, replaced by the Yankee values that have produced a recent run of disappointing teams.

At some point, there will come a moment of realization that in order to fulfill your destiny, you have to get back to what made you right for the top job in the first place.

We're far, far away from that moment for Obama. It's likely to come in 2010 or 2011, when things in Iraq have gone seriously to hell and he has to decide whether to double down (what his people will be urging him to do) or get the hell out (what he should do - and eventually will have to do anyway), but it's certainly not going to come during the campaign.

For now, we watch him channel Tom Friedman, bite our tongues, and win this thing. We can talk in January about how to influence him during his moment of crisis, when it comes.

Obama, Iraq, and the Left

I love moments like this when the real politics of foreign policy can be discussed openly by the Democrats because we aren't at each other's throats all the time about which is or is not ON THE SIDE OF EVIL!!!

That's why I have to echo Yglesias' point:

As best I can tell, it's wrong to assume that there's a real fact of the matter as to what it is Obama is planning to do about Iraq when he becomes president. At the moment, he's running for president and would like as wide a swathe as possible of people to believe that he agrees with them.

Of course this very thing is what a lot of people despise about politics - that candidates don't honestly elucidate their positions during the campaign. But that's politics and it isn't going to change just because we might want it to, or because we get angry about it. There are real reasons politicians don't do this - if they did, they would lose. Too bad.

What political thought requires of an informed voter is not just a factual knowledge of what a candidate says and does, but also the ability to think through the factors that might be influencing a candidate when and if he or she eventually does take office.

That goes beyond just looking at who will be advising the candidate in office to thinking about what the actual facts of the situation will be when Obama takes office.

If Obama comes into the White House in January, he is of course going to find an Iraqi system that is far, far more screwed up than has been acknowledged publicly by the Bush Administration. One of the things that will be the most screwed up is the record-keeping - Obama and his people will simply have no reliable way to quickly construct an accurate picture of what is happening in the war zone, especially since Republican operatives are famously unwilling to pass along information and analysis to Democrats when the Dems are taking over from the GOP.

In such a situation, an Obama administration that had committed to having all troops out of Iraq by such-and-such a date would almost certainly immediately begin walking the deadline farther and farther into the future with the explanation that "we didn't realize how far gone the place really was." In other words, the promise would be one that could, under most foreseeable circumstances, be quickly broken by Obama.

Now there is a subtle point that very few people have discussed so far in this election. The Iraq War is currently viewed in the media as primarily an issue for the Democratic base, and that Obama thus should use his position on the war to rally his supporters. But that's backwards. Currently a huge, huge majority of the country opposes the current US campaign in Iraq and wants it to end. However, many of these people are not leftist or even particularly antiwar - they just rightly don't see the point of continuing to fight in Iraq.

When Iraq comes up in the campaign, remember that it is primarily these right-leaning war opponents Obama will be speaking to. We lefties have every right to demand our red meat in this campaign, but we need to be realistic about the fact that it's going to come primarily in the context of other issues.

South Korea and Iraq

Dick Morris is Stupid.

That fairly unadventurous point aside, I'd like to make a quick point or two about Korea.

The history of the Korean War is not particularly well known, but neither is it particularly hard to grasp. After World War II, The United States and Soviet Union set up competing regimes in the southern and northern ends of Korea, respectively, with the goal of eventually reuniting the country under a single government.

For various reasons, the reunion never happened and the North (backed by the Soviets) attacked the South (backed by the US) in open war in 1950. By 1951 the war was an unresolvable stalemate, and after lots of people died for no good reason, eventually the Soviet client regime and the US client regime had to be maintained more or less forever.

Figures of great stature on the right,including 2008 GOP nominee John McCain, frequently cite Korea as a favorable example of the possibilities of US power in Iraq, despite the following facts:

1) The circumstances surrounding the Korean War are in no sense similar in any way to the circumstances surrounding the Iraq invasion;
2) The outcome of the Korean War was a famously bad outcome and remains a gigantic blemish on the resume of an American president (Truman) whose record has come to be viewed more favorably in recent decades than it was at the time;
and
3) No outcome resembling that of the Korean War could ever come about in Iraq in any way that anyone could possibly imagine, unless they were very drunk and possibly high on crystal meth.

In other words, John McCain and Dick Morris' bright idea about Iraq is nonsensical, undesirable, and impossible.

Don't forget though, McCain is Very Strong on Foreign Policy.

Free Will Blogging

As I've become integrated into Mom Culture over the past 8 months and I've started to develop some friendships, I have started to get into some substantive discussions about people's fundamental views of the world.

One topic that tends to come up a lot when you discuss philosophy is the idea of "free will." People will always take one of two positions on this topic, either that free will exists or that it doesn't. Invariably the rationale behind the person's POV on the topic rests on a series of busts to the alternative idea - that is, a person who believes free will doesn't exist will give examples of human behavior that cannot comfortably be explained by free choice, and vice versa.

It's always been interesting to me that it breaks down like that, since "free will" is not actually a thing that can exist or not exist in a binary sense. "Free will" is a name we give to a certain type of model of human behavior, and thus it "exists" to whatever degree it is useful as such a model.

Put another way, free will is not actually something you have but something you do.

So how do we make use of free will? Well, the human brain is capable of understanding and mastering the forces that induce it to behave in programmed, conditioned ways. A person who can't help drinking too much can, through a variety of techniques, learn not to drink at all, or to drink less, or to make less risky choices when drinking, etc.

The recovering drunk is not then "free" in the sense of having limitless options as to how to act - a drunk who goes out to a bar with his old drinking buddies is likely to revert to past conditioned behaviors and drink too much, for example.

At the same time, personal experience of human consciousness renders absurd the argument that human beings cannot everchoose between one set of behaviors and another. People do, at certain times, consciously weigh the risks and benefits of multiple options, choose to go down one path or another, and then face the results. The idea that this experience is some sort of illusion is difficult to defend without a spiraling into generalities and unfounded claims.

Human behavior cannot be explained by one particular static model as if the brain were just a very sophisticated sort of abacus. At the same time, the biology of the nervous system shows plainly that much day-to-day behavior is controlled by essentially programmed responses that are never processed by the brain's higher reasoning centers.

In other words, human beings can behave in ways that could be usefully described as "free" - under certain conditions. Maximizing the number and quality of the moments in which a person is truly free to choose her path is a matter of preparation, and practice.

In the East, particularly in the Muslim world, the idea that conditioned behaviors exist and can be integrated with the "free" mind through study and mental exercise has been discussed by scholars both secular and religious for many hundreds of years, and the amount of research on the subject is vast.

Yet in the West we still make little study of this idea, preferring instead to argue about which dead philosopher is right about his antiquated, binary view of how the mind functions.

Your Liberal Media

Atrios had a post up yesterday that was both intentionally AND unintentionally snarky.

The intentional snark had to do with the hiring, by the supposedly center-left Atlantic Monthly, of unrepentant war propagandist Jeffrey Goldberg" (that link also via Atrios) as their newest blogger. And indeed, the hiring of the fantastically discredited Goldberg is odious beyond measure for ANY publication, let alone a supposedly liberal-leaning one.

But the last sentence of the post caught my eye and got me to thinking. Atrios says "Still I look forward to to a lively discussion with fellow Atlantic blogger Yglesias."

Now, I like Matt Yglesias and I read his blog every day. But it's worth noting that Yglesias ALSO advocated for a war that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. He's since repented, but he supported the war more or less unreservedly at the time.

In fact, if we look down the list of bloggers that are employed by the Atlantic, we find:

Andrew Sullivan, who supported the war but has since softened and is now an advocate of withdrawal (though he never really reversed himself on the original question of the Iraq invasion, relying primarily on what Yglesias and others have called "The Incompetence Dodge.")

Ross Douthat, who supported the war VERY enthusiastically and continues, as far as I know, to support it, but who has sort of forgotten that Iraq exists in recent months.

Megan McArdle, who supported the war very enthusiastically and continues, AFAIK, to support it, but who has sort of forgotten that Iraq exists in recent months.

Marc Ambinder, who supported the war but who has no clear position on it now that I can tell.

Clive Crook, who wrote for the Economist at the time and thus wasn't signing his work, but seems to be a former war supporter who has since repented.

Finally there's James Fallows, who opposed the Iraq invasion from the beginning, and of course Goldberg.

At this point the American population can be divided more or less into thirds on the question of the Iraq war. One third of Americans opposed the war from the beginning and still oppose it. One third of Americans supported the war at the time but have since changed their minds (or at least started advocating withdrawal) and one third supported the invasion but still support it.

So if they were trying to track with the attitudes the general population, the Atlantic's blog editors would fire Goldberg and Sullivan and replace them both with wooly-headed leftists. That's not going to happen, clearly.

One obvious (and shopworn, certainly) way of looking at this is just to note that it tells you something about the "liberal media" in the US that an actual liberal publication like the Atlantic is substantially to the right of the American population on this issue. But since economic status plays a big role in shaping political opinions, it's unavoidable that you elite opinion is going to be to the right of the general population, and that what's "centrist" to elites is actually pretty conservative to the electorate as a whole.

What's more peculiar to me is this. Where on the political commentary spectrum would you find a publication that actually tracks closely with US public opinion on Iraq? What publication is a third war opponents, a third supporters, and a third "regretful supporters?"

That publication, as far as I can tell, doesn't exist. You basically go straight from center-right establishment pubs like The Atlantic and The New Republic to true publications of the left such as Harper's, The Nation and Z Magazine.

It seems strange that the "publish opinions that apppeal to the widest possible readership" niche would be one that would be more or less vacant in the political commentary market.

I unfortunately have no substantive analysis to offer on this point other than to note that it is, in fact, odd.

Sixteen Percent!!!

There's an AP report out today (via Google's recommend frame) that says, among other things, that terror attacks were up sixteen percent in Afghanistan in 2007. I'm seeing a lot of commentary, especially on TV, about how this means that the war in Afghanistan, and by extension the war on terror, is not working.

Now, I hate to spend time throwing cold water on a report like this, since it appears to lend support to a position - that the war in Afghanistan is neither as successful nor as obviously correct as is generally believed - that I subscribe to.

But this is a pretty stupid way to measure success in a war. Indeed, latching on to one statistic or even a set of statistics and trumpeting movement one way or the other as evidence of a strategy's success or failure is almost never useful in any context, and least of all perhaps in the context of a counterinsurgency campaign, whose aims are primarily political and thus difficult to measure.

A version of this idea (as it pertains to big-city police work) was explored with some grace and eloquence by the television show The Wire, particularly in the fourth and (from what I'm told - I am still waiting for the DVD) fifth seasons.

The dilemma for the press, in a nutshell, is that it's very difficult to do hard reporting on complex topics without resorting to just writing up rundowns of various statistics. So even a well-meaning, professional press is going to fall back on this kind of thing some of the time.

Unfortunately, public institutions are necessarily run by people whose livelihoods depend on favorable depictions in the press, which leads those people (and by extension, the institutions) to focus on the short-term improvement of various benchmarks at the expense of serious long-term strategic thinking about how to actually fix systemic problems.

As failed counterinsurgency wars rage on and on, this sort of perverse incentive structure gets expanded to the point of absurdity. In the beginning of 2008, for example, Iraq war supporters were trumpeting statistics showing a decline in violence lasting several months as evidence that "The Surge Is Working!"

Looking only at the six-month trend in question, one could be forgiven for ascribing some credibility to this interpretation, but looking at it in a wider context the whole thing can be seen to be rather silly. The idea, apparently, is that by inserting more soldiers into Iraq, the US will be able to reduce violence to the point that it can start... reducing the number of soldiers in Iraq.

The Afghanistan narrative we see here is the other side of that coin. In Afghanistan, a fairly small detachment of US forces (around 25,000) is working to protect government officials while also patrolling the country engaging various terror groups. Although an uptick in terrorist violence certainly isn't a sign that this strategy is working, it would hardly be cause for celebration if such patrols result in a reduction in terrorist violence in 2008.

After all, in both Afghanistan and Iraq the ostensible goal of the US mission is to eventually be able to leave. To do that without just admitting defeat, the systemic problems preventing political unity and pluralism in those countries must be fixed.

But since no one has any idea how, when, or why that would ever happen, we just watch the numbers, shake our heads, and continue the slaughter.

Because I Can

I'm reviving The Ape Man. Stay tuned.

APS