Rebane's Ruminations

‘Why the technical stuff?’

George Rebane

I was asked that question recently by a regular RR reader.  He went on to opine that not many of my readers would make the effort to understand all that high falootin’ stuff and just skip over it.  In short, I’m wasting time and effort in offering up such posts.  And, of course, he may be right.  When you’re selling, you never want to discount what a customer tells you.  And make no mistake about it, I am selling my little heart out here on RR.

As I later reflected on the reader’s question, it occurred to me that it’s been some years now since I posted anything on the larger purpose and objective(s) for flogging the keyboard and debating various esoteria with RR commenters.  Being a rewarded lifelong teacher has provided some intrinsic impetus to this enterprise – first in the Army, then with my kids and grandkids (no claims of success there), as a professional engineer/scientist/academic, and now again working with high schoolers.

RR is structured to continuously build on what has been written and discussed before in its pages.  I attempt to back-link all of its pieces to their appropriate ancestors, in addition to the usual outside references.  To the extent that this is successful, RR is an accumulating body of thought offered by me, and subsequently expanded and critiqued by the blog’s commenters.  Relatively few pieces here start out of whole cloth.  I make a considerable and not always successful effort to circle the barn as few times as possible; previous orbits on any given topic are always available by searching RR through its built in function or with an engine like Google (just add ‘rebane’ to the keyword list, and voila!).

Ideologically I am a conservetarian, promoting a careful and hopefully coherent amalgam of conservative and libertarian thought as seen through the Austrian lens.  For good or ill, I am an elitist.  I know I cannot reach everyone with all possible ideas/notions through my heartfelt diatribes, so I just try to target and contend with a small number of interested readers, all of whom should evince that they have at least three solid digits in their IQ.  In that and other things, I am terribly incorrect according to the dominant political perspective of the day as spouted by both Republicans and Democrats.

The Dangerous Sleaze Runneth Over

George Rebane

President Obama is now going after private citizens in a manner not seen since Nixon attempted something that was just a shade of what’s going on right now.  Kimberly Strassel in the 28apr12 WSJ writes in ‘The President has a List’ that  –

He's targeted insurers, oil firms and Wall Street—letting it be known that those who oppose his policies might face political or legislative retribution. He lectured the Supreme Court for giving companies more free speech and (falsely) accused the Chamber of Commerce of using foreign money to bankroll U.S. elections. The White House even ginned up an executive order (yet to be released) to require companies to list political donations as a condition of bidding for government contracts. Companies could bid but lose out for donating to Republicans. Or they could quit donating to the GOP—Mr. Obama's real aim.

The White House has couched its attacks in the language of "disclosure" and the argument that corporations should not have the same speech rights as individuals. But now, says Rory Cooper of the Heritage Foundation, "he's doing the same at the individual level, for anyone who opposes his policies." Any giver, at any level, risks reprisal from the president of the United States.

Socialism ascendant - those who have given to or plan to give to Romney should keep an eye on their six.

Sacramento vs California (updated 28apr12)

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary which was broadcast on 27 April 2012.  I have annotated it with notes and links as appropriate.]

One of the nation’s premier demographers Democrat Joel Kotkin was recently interviewed by the WSJ on his study of ‘The Great California Exodus’, that has been vehemently denied by the state’s progressive pundits and local leftists.  Kotkin reviewed the grand history of the golden state and its downward spiral that is now entering its third decade.  This demographer has been busy for a number of years studying and publishing on our economic and demographic decline.  (for more google ‘joel kotkin, california exodus’)

Among the more recent developments is that the great exodus which started with corporations – no one wants to expand in California – grew to include the well-to-do, and now includes middle class workers who are priced out its real estate markets, and taxed out of their income and ability to save.  Kotkin points out that California ranks at or near the bottom on every important comparison of the states ranging from ‘ease of doing business’ through cost of living to individual liberties.   Along with states like Illinois and New Jersey, we have become the poster child of how not to govern a state.

Where California used to invite the founding of innovative companies such as those which gave us Silicon Valley, today the main product of California, according to Kotkin, is red tape.  He goes on to explain that “part of California's dysfunction … stems from state and local government restrictions on development.”

That “local government” part hits home here in Nevada County.  Our county’s population has been stagnant for the last decade.  Both businesses and developers have been taking a pass on the county for some years now claiming that it is just too hard to get anything done in these foothills.  The leftwing activists, of course, celebrate this as an achievement in their eternal quest for a sustainable stasis.  And our local municipal and county governments have long had a bi-partisan effort to support these prohibitions and delays.  The cynical part of all this is the expressed denial by our electeds as they give lip service to promote yet another business development workshop or public meeting.

TechTest welcomes TechTestJr

George Rebane

TechTest2012, the sixth edition of SESF’s annual merit scholarship exam, was held on 14 April 2012 in the Nevada Union High School’s science lecture hall.  As has become tradition, the exam’s solution key has been posted on the SESF website (here), and the upcoming annual ‘Survivor’s Breakfast’, with the obligatory ‘Where the Elite Compete’ T-shirts, honoring test takers and winners is scheduled for May.  The test is given to high school seniors who are headed for STEM (q.v.) careers as recommended by their science and math teachers.

But the big news this year is SESF’s launch of TechTestJr (aka ‘son of TechTest’).  TTjr was inaugurated at the request of some Nevada County middle school educators who observed that it was in the 8th grade that students make the decision to pursue a high school curriculum that qualifies them for undertaking STEM college majors.  It is rare for students, who avoid the difficult science and math classes in high school, to then change their minds and enter a make-up program to enable them to pursue STEM majors.  TTjr is designed to be another timely motivator during that critical decision juncture (more here).

TTjr2012 was given last week over a three day period in several Nevada County middle schools and the results are available here.  A press release from the Sierra Economics and Science Foundation on the test reads –

SESF organized and sponsored a successful inaugural TechTestJr2012 exam for Nevada County 8th graders.  Six Nevada County schools participated in the 1st annual TechTestJr fashioned after SESF's very successful Nevada County high school merit based scholarship exam called TechTest.   93 Nevada County students, primarily 8th graders, took the TechTestJr exam. 

The 1 hour exam covered a wide range of math and science related questions.  

The top score was earned by a student of Robert Sharp's at 7 Hills School who scored a whopping 97% on the exam.  4 of the top 5 scores were earned by 7 Hills students.  Magnolia Intermediate School also had a very strong showing with one of the 4 runner-ups coming from Magnolia.  The 4 runner-ups each scored 93% on the exam. 

The top scoring student from each of the 6 school's will be recognized for their achievement.  Grass Valley Charter School's (top score of 90%), Mt. St. Mary's Academy (top score of 87%), Clear Creek (top score of 83%) and Union Hill (top score of 76%) students also participated in the very difficult merit based exam. 

The exam was proctored the week of April 16th in Nevada County.  SESF expects to add additional Nevada County schools to next year's list of participants.  If your school is interested please email mcdanielwealthman@sbcglobal.net. 

The goal of the TechTest series is to encourage continued education (and future vocations) in the technical fields of math and science.

Courtroom Evidence – the Z/M case (updated 28apr12)

George Rebane

Reason and logic have always had a low survival rate in courtrooms, especially where poorly understood evidence of a technical nature is presented by self-serving lawyers to innumerate juries.  In recent memory, the OJ Simpson murder trial may serve as a nationally prominent Exhibit A for this proposition.

Today we have the much examined and touted (for various agendas) Zimmerman/Martin shooting case that will soon be going to trial.   Much effort and focus is put on a piece of recorded audio that appears to have become the evidence by which Zimmerman’s claim of justifiable homicide will stand or fall.  This audio clip is now undergoing forensic analysis by state agencies and private parties having court-acknowledged expertise in matters pertaining to analyzing speech.  Some of these experts have apparently weighed in with some “preliminary findings” which now serve as grist for the media mill and a large gaggle of very opinionated bloggers, commenters, and self-appointed jurists in the blogosphere.

RR has chosen not to join this cohort opining on Zimmerman’s guilt or innocence, instead we wish to use the case to examine the larger questions of ‘stand your ground’ victims’ rights, and in this  piece how to properly look at reported evidence in such cases.  In the following we take a look at a report on the blog of “legal scholar” Professor Jonathan Turley by guest poster Mark Esposito.

I have no idea of Mr Esposito’s qualifications, but simply post his opening paragraph that also happens to be his summa.

The  chair emeritus for the American Board of Recorded Evidence, Tom Owen, and Ed Primeau, a Michigan-based audio engineer and forensics expert, have independently concluded that the furtive pleas for help clearly heard on the 911 tapes are not George Zimmerman’s. Both acknowledged experts used voice enhancing software, but different techniques, to rate the probability of the voice being Zimmerman’s at no more than 48%.  A 90% match is considered scientifically reliable.

So there you have it, the case is seemingly closed.  But not quite.

Agenda21 – drones overhead, black boxes in cars, …

George Rebane

Unmanned surveillance aircraft come in a range of sizes that fit in the palm of your hand to big ones the size of airliners.  The 21apr12 WSJ reports that the smaller ones are being snapped up by stateside governmental agencies ranging from federal bureaus to local police.  Their manifold uses should be obvious to the intelligent reader.  Having been introduced and ‘perfected’ in overseas military operations, this war surplus technology is now finding many cost-saving, capability expanding jobs for those who seek to monitor and control our every move – ‘Look Mommy, there’s a little helicopter outside my window!’  The lightly read will, of course, rejoice that it is all for our collective benefit.

On the ground Big Brother is being aided by one of his Big Sisters – Sen Barbara Boxer, D-CA.  This unabashed socialist has introduced SB1831, aka MAP-21, to require that digital recorders (‘black boxes’) be installed “in all new passenger motor vehicles” starting in 2015.  The recorded data is supposed to belong to the vehicle’s owner, except that there are so many exceptions in which it must be surrendered to the authorities.  In short, it’s the state sticking another monitoring probe between our cheeks (see Sec 31406).

In any case, you won’t be surprised that Majority Leader Sen Harry Reed (D-NV) is right in there supporting our Barbara on this legislative hernia pack.  And they have a lot of plans for these little technology innovations that entail the lawful and fully taxed future use of what used to be your car.  California will lead again.

Stand Your Ground – Some Thoughts

George Rebane

The shooting of Trayvor Martin has raised a fundamental rights issue that most of us have for long thought was a done deal in a free society – namely, whether a law-abiding citizen is still allowed to defend himself with deadly force should he be the victim of an attack that may leave him dead or maimed.

Before the progressive assault on the law abiding and victim, there was no question that such a permission was a fundamental right of a free citizen.  It is ensconced in the Bastiat Triangle (q.v.) and was interpreted as such by our Founders.  Until recently, ‘stand your ground’ SYG was not even called out per se in our legal codes – it was naturally assumed to be the right and the proper thing to do when criminally assaulted.

Today things are different, and should you find yourself having your brains battered out or about to be stabbed, your instincts to defend are subject to severe post mortem scrutiny by our justice system should you prevail in your defense and in the process the assailant is killed, injured, or suffers some other form of inconvenience.  Amazingly, the first question the victim is supposed to correctly answer is ‘could you have followed some other course than put yourself at the mercy of your alleged assailant?’  In short, justify that you had to be there and then when the low life decided to make his move on you.

More Milestones on our Downward Spiral

George Rebane

This week has seen a lot of dilapidation in our ship of state.  For openers, Peggy Noonan takes an overarching survey of events that reflects on our national character.  From other perspectives we see what it is to be on a careening progressive luge as this administration more fully reveals itself, and what it can accomplish after getting the hang of it during the last three years.  A minimally hopeful sign is that more than a few Democrats are beginning to shake their heads at the excesses of socialist thought.

After all the information sharing between our intelligence services ordained by 9/11, we now hear that the FBI has pulled out of that little daisy chain, and has gone back to its insular ways of doing business.  It seems they weren’t getting that much from other agencies, and their stuff was leaking out.  A correlative to this is that the US seems to have shut down its pursuit of Russian spies on these shores, in spite of professional estimates (including from defectors) that Russia today has more spies in the US than it did during the Cold War, and has declared America to be its number one intelligence target.  The last prosecution of a Russian spy (Robert Hanssen) was in 2001, which case indicated that there was at least one more mole left in the fabric of the DOD.

In the meantime, the Transportation Safety Administration is starting to implement its VIPR program of checkpoints on US highways (google ‘VIPR checkpoints’ for a snootful).  The first ones were being tested in Florida to gauge public reaction to them.  It is, of course, all done for our own safety and to check the terrorist threat.  The counterpart of the policy is a further achievement of Agenda21 goals and objectives.  The checkpoints will spread from commercial transport vehicles to private automobiles in no time.  And, as everything else responding to the terrorist threat, these will remain a permanent fixture of our constantly expanding state that continues to grow 20% faster than our private sector economy.

A couple of years back we were on a bus from Alexandria to Cairo, and shook our heads sadly at what the Egyptians had to live with as we passed checkpoint after checkpoint manned by tough looking guys sporting AK-47s and more sinister stuff.  It can’t happen in America.

Back at the ranch, it seems that harbingers of the Great Divide are already in full swing.  Nationally known demographer and “Truman Democrat” Joel Kotkin writes and extensive peace on ‘The Great California Exodus’ and “what is driving the middle class out of the Golden State” (to loud denials from the loyal looney left).  It used to be only the mobile ‘rich’ who packed their bags and their companies to head to points east (I was going to say more about this, but Russ Steele beat me to it on NC2012).

Adding to the whole picture of our country’s ongoing and growing cross migrations is a report by Art Laffer and Stephen Moore about what impact the states’ income and corporate tax policies have had on states’ revenues and GDPs.  This is in addition to the Mercatus Center report we brought home from their Scottsdale conference last month.

But I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when reading that Elizabeth Warren, running for Congress in Massachusetts, has had at least one epiphany, maybe two.  The border line communist and "liberal heroine", recently on Team Obama, now acknowledges that 1) when you tax something more, you get less of it, and 2) real wealth and jobs are actually created by entrepreneurial private sector companies.  In fact she, along with a growing cohort of Democrats, are daily finding more and more things not to like about the impact this administration’s biggest lie, Obamacare, and faux pas on stopping the Keystone pipeline.  Even Barney Frank (gasp!) has climbed on this wagon.

So that’s a little update on how we are quietly becoming a progressive police state with daily more criminalized behaviors on the books, ever increasing taxes, frantic migrations of people seeking freedom, and a growing government that continues to add bureaus and (monitoring/enforcement) functions employing thousands to sop up the unemployable and increase its cohort of supporters on autopilot.  And then there are the rest of us.

Making Medical Decisions

George Rebane

[This introduction to modern medical decision making is intended as the first of a series of such essays on RR.  Subsequent pieces will cover simplifying nomograms (to avoid the arithmetic), personal utility (always subjective), and planning sequential diagnostics and treatments.  The aim here is to prepare the intelligent healthcare customer to communicate effectively with the healthcare industry and make prudent decisions for his own benefit.  A related background tutorial by the author for this piece is 'Hello Bayes Theorem!']

The healthcare industry woefully lags in many areas, but helping patients make correct decisions about their individual healthcare is where healthcare providers, led by attending physicians, are pathetically behind the times.  Let me explain.

Singularity Signposts - The Coming Virtual Cloud

George Rebane

Today it is very difficult to reconfigure networks because you have to deal with hardwired components like routers, switches, and servers which have been manufactured by network suppliers like Cisco and Juniper to handle the stream of data packets in their own specific ways.  Modifying a network is a nightmare of hardware reconfiguration and clumsy/limited system programming.  Today network hardware operators are a highly paid group of technicians doing such things that few people understand.

The response to this growing friction in developing new networks with expanded capabilities comes from a Silicon Valley company called Nicira.  The company is built on the technology out of the 2007 PhD dissertation of its CTO Martin Casado.  Dr Casado invented a better way to ‘program networks’ on existing or cobbled together cheaper hardware.   These new architectures will be virtual networks operating virtual servers and using virtual storage on arbitrary and/or existing hardware configurations within an enterprise or out in the internet cloud.

The big deal is that the virtual networks - their configuration and operation - are totally under software control, and that means they can be quickly reconfigured (on the fly); and with even more smarts built in, they can reconfigure themselves to improve performance, be more facile in managing data, and interfacing with all kinds of other systems on the periphery of the network.  The online Wired has a good article on all this here.  Nicira is already working with some very big outfits in implementing this next phase of network technology.

To me the excitement here is that such reprogrammable virtual networks take us a giant step closer to what I believe is the most likely candidate for the Singularity event that I have described before in these pages.  And that is when the cloud spontaneously ‘wakes up’ and becomes sentient.  Dynamic reprogramming of networks to implement new processing algorithms, new data handling techniques, and whole new computing paradigms (mimicking human brain structures?) is a required capability for this event to happen.  Virtualizing networks will hasten the day when it says, ‘I’m here.’

Scattershots – 17apr12

George Rebane

The Financial Times reports (here) that Spain’s central government is looking to federalize financially distressed regions of the country.  (Greece essentially succumbed to such central control early on so as to avoid the rush.)  RR has anticipated a similar fate for California and states like Illinois, New Jersey, … under equally astute financial management by their state governments.  It’s all part of the European model that Team Obama is forging for us.

On another and more earth-shaking note, artificial intelligence may be at the threshold of passing the Turing Test (q.v.).  The new direction taken in AI recently depends on being able to manage ‘big data’.  That is, being able to organize and draw cross connections and correlations similar to what humans are able to do, and to do this much better than IBM’s Watson (q.v.).  the 12apr12 issue of Wired reports (here) that “there is reason to believe that code kernels for the first Turing-intelligent machine have already been written.”

The anticipated breakout is due to “Two revolutionary advances in information technology (which) may bring the Turing test out of retirement,” wrote Robert French, a cognitive scientist at the French National Center for Scientific Research, in a 12apr12 Science essay. “The first is the ready availability of vast amounts of raw data — from video feeds to complete sound environments, and from casual conversations to technical documents on every conceivable subject. The second is the advent of sophisticated techniques for collecting, organizing, and processing this rich collection of data.”  The pre-Singularity threshold for hiring human workers continues to inch upward.

Meanwhile the Senate Democrats failed in their attempt to pass the ‘Buffett Rule’ tax increase.  This much ballyhooed piece of snowball’s-chance-in-hell legislation is the centerpiece of Obama’s campaign initiative sold to the sheeple under the rubric of “fairness” in solving our debt and deficit  problems in coming years.  But without even going into the examination of ‘fairness’, the Buffet Rule tax will accomplish none of this, and serve only as the transom to massive tax increases on the middle class (some history here).  The Heritage Foundation covers more detail on this.

The facts of the Buffett Rule are simple. The President wants millionaires (and small businesses taxed as individuals) to pay a minimum tax of 30 percent. For all of his rhetoric that the measure would "stabilize our debt and deficits for the next decade," the Buffett Rule would bring in only $47 billion in revenue in ten years. To put those numbers in context, President Obama's budget calls for adding $6.7 trillion to the national debt. So the Buffett Rule would cover just 0.007% of all of Obama's debt and .001% of Obama's spending.

We shudder to contemplate that there are millions of Democrats with sufficient deficits as to make such election year demogauging a profitable enterprise for their progressive elite.  No one doubts that they know their constiuents.

The Eternal Debate with Collectivists (updated 16apr12)

George Rebane

For the benefit of the undecided reader who is truly puzzled as to the nature and fate of collectivist vs (classical) liberal forms of governance, we will take another lap around the barn.  The examination and critique of public policy always circles back to the fundamental arguments between the eternally contending measures of liberty and equality.  Equality is easy to attain and maintain, all it takes is ignorance and the gun.  Liberty is the more difficult to achieve and keep intact.  And that is because 'equality' is always arbitrarily defined by the central imposing agency; the definition of liberty is distributed and requires broad consensus among those who are free.

That all forms of collectivism have an intrinsic tendency toward autocracy is an historical truth that is rejected only by the collectivist, no matter what particular mantle – socialist, Marxist, communist, fascist, … - he wears.  A favorite argument that works on light thinkers is that liberty and the capitalistic free market societies it gives rise to are only theories that have yet to work anywhere in the real world.

Today Michael Moore and his minions are effective teachers of this thought.  Their ancestors would have made the same arguments to our Founders in the aftermath of our Revolution – ‘That man can govern himself is nothing but a theory, show me where in the world we see such form of governance working.’  The intellectual pinnacle of the collectivist seems to be that liberal maxims cannot be trusted to work since nowhere do we see their perfect application, therefore we must only hew to and expand collectivist forms of governance that are observably unsustainable.

In my readings and studies, I find that all successful liberal societies must base their form of governance on the explicit statement and maintenance of the minimum triangle of rights collected by Frederic Bastiat in his ‘The Law’ (1849).  These consist of the rights to private property, security in your person, and individual liberty (see also the Bastiat Triangle).   One of the fundamental and minimal functions of the state is to uniformly guarantee these rights, for the weakening of any one of them immediately weakens the other two.  And it is upon this stable structure of rights that all other legitimate rights can be constructed into a larger and still stable structure of social governance.  Our Constitution prescribes such a structure.

On the sorry road to Stockton (updated 16apr12)

George Rebane

[This is the submitted form of my April column that appeared in the online (with figure omitted) and printed versions of the 14apr12 Union.]

By now most of us have heard of Stockton, the next California city teetering on the edge of bankruptcy as a result of a fiscal history that “has eerie similarities to a Ponzi scheme” according to its city manager Bob Deis.  The story is common to thousands of cities and counties across the land, and the core of each is years of lavish wage and pension benefits promised and delivered to the public sector employees in all the afflicted jurisdictions.

So now Stockton has already “suspended some payments to bondholders and is negotiating with creditors and unions”.  But Stockton, unlike many municipalities still drinking their koolaid, is open about its shortcomings.  A recent (1apr12) WSJ article reports that “Stockton admitted that its biggest problem has been a lack of transparency resulting in a host of ‘hidden costs’ in labor agreements for ‘obligations that are often difficult for citizens to identify or understand.’ ”

On the national scale the problem has been most recently researched and reported in the Cato Institute’s ‘State and Local Pension Plans’ by Jagadeesh Gokhale.  There we find that the financial health of most plans nosedived during the 2001 to 2009 interval.  What kept the apparent ponzi schemes going was that plan managers were allowed by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) to discount calculation of future plan liabilities at literally any interest rates which barely allowed them to keep a straight face.

California’s ponzi is still being foisted on the basis of the giant California Public Employees Retirement System projecting payouts and liabilities on the basis of their portfolio earning a now reduced (yes, indeed) rate of 7.5% annually, and that while Governor Moonbeam is going to raise taxes again to rebuild the state’s economy.  You can’t make this stuff up.

Every Commons ends in Tragedy

"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery."  Winston Churchill

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular bi-weekly KVMR radio commentary broadcast on 13 April 2012.]

Years ago when our kids were in early grade school, mom would bake a big batch of delicious chocolate chip cookies every Sunday evening for the kids’ lunches in the coming week.  The cookies went into a big cookie jar that lived on the white-tiled kitchen counter.  The Monday lunches always got their full complement of cookies and so did the Tuesday lunches.  But mysteriously by Tuesday evening the cookie jar was empty.  Well, it wasn’t a mystery at all, each kid took every opportunity to reach in the jar and grab a few when going through the kitchen.

What to do to make the cookies last the whole week?  I had just finished reading an essay by a college professor named Garrett Hardin titled ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’, and the solution came like a flash.  It turns out that we had made the cookie jar into a commons, and as the good professor made clear, all commons are destroyed by their consumers.  All we had to do was to divide up the cookies into bags with each kid’s name on it, and each could do what they wanted with their own stash.  Miraculously the cookies lasted the whole week as each managed their own supply – they even used the cookies to barter for things like trading chores.  The main thing was that on Sunday nights the cookies immediately had owners who managed them through the week to their own benefit.

Dr Hardin was a renowned social scientist whose ideas were variously embraced and vilified by both the right and the left.  He formalized the idea of a commons as a commonly held and consumed resource like the pasture land of a village in which the local inhabitants would let their milk cows graze (think of the Boston commons).  The bad part of a commons is that the incremental cost of consuming an increased share of the commons is not paid by that consumer.

Hardin told the story of a commons that had a carrying capacity of ten cows, each one belonging to a different family.  Soon one of them decided to get a little extra income by introducing another cow.  So now eleven cows ate the grass and each one got a little less but that didn’t matter in the scheme of things – yet.  Soon another family saw the benefit of an extra cow and added theirs.  This was rapidly picked up by the other families, and twenty skinnier cows were eating less grass and giving less milk.  It didn’t take long for the third cows to be added in the attempt to make up for the poor milk production.  And you can see, that before long, the commons was bare of grass, the cows didn’t give milk and had to be sold or slaughtered, and everyone lost.

But while the game went on, if you decided to be a good citizen and not add another cow, you immediately got penalized.  That is what Hardin was trying to tell people, altruistic behavior doesn’t work in sustaining a commons, especially when it is consumed at near its carrying capacity.  And so the commons are eventually destroyed.  And again we have the problem of what to do.

The obvious answer is to police the commons.  Put in place a bureaucracy with regulatory and policing powers that sets and enforces the standards.  This is how we have come to deal with commons such as our air, publicly owned lands, rivers, and also social services.   The problem with the consumption policing is that it is expensive and its expense becomes unaffordable over time.  And it is very often totally ineffective, sometimes even accelerating the destruction of the commons.  Here we all know which commons we are talking about – think of Medicare and Medicaid, think of the various welfare programs which compel school dropouts and unemployment, think of public service employee pension agreements.

These are all commons that have broken their cost-to-consumer feedback mechanisms as taught by Hardin.  Voters and politicians each consume these government commons for their own purposes.  And each one takes a bit more benefit for himself without having to bear the cost of that increment, and thereby leaves the commons more depleted for the next round of consumers, until finally it becomes untenable to maintain, and it is destroyed.

Socialism is a form of governance based on an entire society unsustainably consuming from diverse commons set up to provide every possible benefit from cradle to grave.  But somehow it always leads to a tragic end when that personal responsibility link is replaced with the expectation of altruism or the police.

My name is Rebane, and I also expand on these and other themes in my Union columns, and on georgerebane.com where this transcript appears.  These opinions are not necessarily shared by KVMR.  Thank you for listening.

A Cut at 'Rational Optimism'

George Rebane

A friend and correspondent who shares many of my worldviews sent me a link to science writer Matt Ridley's hopeful piece on "seventeen reasons to be cheerful".  RR readers of these pages know that I am of the opinion that the western world is now beyond the tipping point, that we are headed for a gut-wrenching redirection of civilization at the rapidly approaching confluence of dysfunctional political ideologies, accelerating technology, and wholesale popular 'dumbth' (q.v.).  Ignoring many substantiating facets of this argument, Ridley gives us a salutary view of how we got here, and a very optimistic look into our future.  While definitely blindered, the seventeen reasons will nevertheless  bring cheer to some readers who judge my glass to be excessively dark.  Enjoy.

Ruminations - 10apr12

“In a truly free society, public affairs are not confined to the affairs of government.”  F.A. Hayek

George Rebane

Tea Party Patriots co-founder Mark Meckler will be on Fox Business’ John Stossel at 6pm PDT on 12 April.  No doubt he will be talking about the new structure of the tea party movement, and how it will comport with political parties during this election year.

We know that all kinds of Indian 'nations' have been coming out of the woodwork to take advantage of the ‘casino mentality’ of instant cash from the palefaces.  But today the progress of Indian sovereignty is gaining momentum (the Iroquois have even started issuing their own passports), and the map of Indian reservations in the US is a harbinger of embedded nation-states in the North American landmass, similar to the Monte Carlos and Luxembourgs of Europe.  These tribes are another set of players militating for the Great Divide in order to implement self-determination of culturally cohesive peoples.  The Bureau of Indian Affairs has already achieved troglodyte status in the federal government.

Obama has now made it clear in word and deed that pushing ‘fairness’ instead of improving the economy is the way to win over the so-called minds of his core constituency during this election year.  On the economy he has nothing to offer, either in his record or his plan forward.  The only thing left to sell is the perceived fairness of pushing through the Buffett Rule of ‘taxing the rich’, which at best will raise an extra $4B a year against predicted deficits that accrue at more than that in a single day.  However, Obama knows that his minions are not smart enough to understand the impact on job creation of taxing owners of Sub-S enterprises such as local merchants, auto dealers, and small manufactories.  If we can just slip it to the hated ‘1%’, then it doesn’t matter if we get to work for a living or not – after all, what’s a socially just government, if not for a check in the mail (easy street on the Obama Plantation)?

Freely set and visible prices communicate many things in a marketplace.  Among them is the relative value to the consumer of competing products and services.  But have you noticed that when you go to your healthcare provider, there is no ready availability of prices for the various consultations (office visit, minor surgery, annual physical) or the prescribed tests, specialists, and drugs.  Moreover, you have a better chance of pulling hen’s teeth than to find out any real information about your potential malady, the reliability of its diagnosis pursuant to testing, or the prognosis after going through some standard of care.

These could all be stated as probabilities or odds (‘One in thirty-two chance that you have the dreaded disease if the test comes back positive, and one in seven chance of it coming back positive even if you don’t have the disease.  The test costs $5,000, do you want to go ahead with it?’), numbers that would give you a better handle on how to spend your money.  But then again, if it’s not your money then who the hell cares about all that malarkey?  Do the test!

Super-Turing Computation is Coming

George Rebane

Kurzweil reports that computer scientist Dr Hava Siegelmann (Univ of Mass, Amherst) “is translating her 1993 discovery of what she has dubbed 'super-Turing' computation into an adaptable computational system that learns and evolves, using input from the environment in a way much more like our brains do than classic Turing-type computers."

"This model is inspired by the brain.  It is a mathematical formulation of the brain’s neural networks with their adaptive abilities. The authors show that when the model is installed in an environment offering constant sensory stimuli like the real world, and when all stimulus-response pairs are considered over the machine’s lifetime, the Super Turing model yields an exponentially greater repertoire of behaviors than the classical computer or Turing model. They demonstrate that the Super-Turing model is superior for human-like tasks and learning.”  (my italics)

This presumably is the next iteration to brain-like machines like those based temporal hierarchical memory (THM, pdf) modules that were introduced by Jeff Hawkins (here) and now under development.  The key ingredient to both machines is their ability to learn from data and their environment, and then solve problems and/or act on what they have learned.  Both super-Turing and THM computation promise quantum leaps in performance beyond IBM’s impressive Watson genre of super-computers (here)

The introduction and application of such machines is just the next step toward the Singularity event itself.  It will be of great interest to see toward what applications these new AIs will be directed.  The only sure thing is that more educated humans will feel their pressure and presence in the workplace.

HE IS RISEN!

George Rebane

Hearing that strong assertion, the Christian answers joyfully, ‘He is risen indeed!’

For us, Christmas is the promise, and Easter its fulfillment.  The summation of all Christianity is Christ’s covenant in the promised transcendence of Man, all concentrated into one simple declaration – ‘He is risen!’  Without this, our faith is a fraud; with it, Christianity promises Man to become an unending part of God’s love of all of Creation.

The Muddled Middle

George Rebane

Surfing Bob Crabb’s blog, I tarried on his 6apr12 post ‘The haunting question’ which invites the reader to abandon their left/right extremes and seek the political middle ground.  Bob is a master cartoonist of the soci-political genre and an astute observer of the Human Foible.  His graphic talents are augmented by his able lexicographic fare.  Mr Crabb has long made his cache the careful threading of that illusive center of American politics.  In this IMHO he succeeds more often than most.  But when the really turbulent issues require him to lean this way more than that, it seems he does take greater comfort from a tack to port.

Upon reflection, what intrigued me about his 6apr12 post was the now obligatory standard for characterizing both ‘extremes’ that he used to summarize the political poles.  The American Left as “environmentalists, …, tree-hugging, frog loving communists” whose unifying goals are “gutting the Constitution and surrendering to UN authority”.  The American Right are predictably “property rights people and greedy opportunists” who desire to “pave every acre of (an) earth” that is to be ruled by multi-national corporations and the almighty dollar”.

The illuminating part of this oft-imbibed screed is that the Left freely admits to its goals in its many publications/speeches that call for a re-interpretation of the Constitution so that it is not seen (per Obama) as a “document of negative liberties”, of restrictions and inhibitions on the role and power of government.  And the Left’s public promotion of a global government that does away with sovereign nation-states and equitably redistributes wealth across the globe is now over a century old.

On the Right we find no one who wants to “pave every acre of earth” or to have a government by hegemony of global multi-nationals to rule over us.  (In capitalistic free markets competing corporations can only profit and prosper by growing the wealth of their customers and the economies in which they live.)  So the Left’s characterization of the Right continues to require ridiculous hyperbole that may catch an anecdotal extreme here and there.

And that is the nature of the debate that those seeking the center-line regurgitate to both sides.  But those who think, on either side, will reject such kumbayahs to the middle.  Even President Obama, who wants to make FDR look like a raving capitalist, this week cemented his stand on the futility of leaving his progressive pole.

Peggy Noonan in the 7apr12 WSJ reports on Obama’s polar outing last Tuesday to the nation’s mainstream media editors who are his constant supporters and long-acknowledged friends –

And yet the president rapped their knuckles for insufficient support. In the Q-and-A he offered criticism that "bears on your reporting": "I think that there is oftentimes the impulse to suggest that if the two parties are disagreeing, then they're equally at fault and the truth lies somewhere in the middle." An "equivalence is presented" that is unfortunate. It "reinforces . . . cynicism." But the current debate is not "one of those situations where there's an equivalence." Journalists are failing to "put the current debate in some historical context."  That "context," as he sees it, is that Democrats are doing the right thing, Republicans the wrong thing, Democrats are serious, Republicans are "not serious."

It is clear that when the brass knuckles come out in this election year, this man wants no compromise about where the both sides should meet to do battle.  This is not to be hand-to-hand, close quarters combat in the middle, but a long range artillery exchange fought from both extremes of the political landscape.  And guess what, I think that both sides are right on the mark on their stance.

Nothing will make it more clear to the dimly lit electorate than highlighting the differences as much as possible.  Everyone knows that the so-called center of the road is where the business-as-usual takes place which has gotten us to where we are, where all principle winds up as putrid roadkill.  And in taking these clear positions Bob Crabb’s haunting question, ‘What if both sides are right?’ is already answered – no mushy, muddling middle for voters in 2012.

A Postscript for the IRS

George Rebane

In my long career I have experienced uncounted communications with the IRS in the corporate world, through the non-profits seeking to do good, and on personal tax matters.  Now, it’s no secret that the IRS is populated with some of the dimmest and nastiest bulbs in the federal firmament who have no idea how the wealth is created that keeps the nation’s wheels turning, including those big wheels of the federal government they unwittingly serve (and these numbers are about to be increased by thousands more to enforce the diktats of Obamacare).

I suggest that, to help draw attention to the damage these bureaucrats cause to the body politic and the public weal, every communication with the IRS should end with a postscript that summarizes and draws attention to the gratuitous and punishing costs they impose on us and our economic enterprises.  A suggested draft could be worded as follows –

‘P.S.  The work to complete and transmit this reply has cost me/organization xx staff hours in deciphering your original request, researching information required for reply, consulting with tax professionals, filling the appropriate forms, and returning them to you.  The direct dollar cost of just this one unproductive effort is approximately $xx, a sum which could have been used for more profitable purposes in furthering my/organization’s objectives, and securing the jobs this company provides.’

Socialism’s trail of tears, long time coming

George Rebane

A reader sent me this little blast from the past, published in the year I first set foot on these shores.  The ode below was composed as it became clear that the nation’s flirtation with communism in the Great Depression had not been fully purged by Truman’s partial efforts to sunset some of the more egregious New Deal programs after WW2.

As taught by many economists and political philosophers of the classical liberal persuasion and Austrian schools (Mises, Hayek, Hazlitt, Friedman, …), socialism is a cancer of democracy.  Any trace that is left, inevitably begins throwing out shoots and growing again.  There is little hope of eradicating it, only assiduously nipping it in the bud before it begins its inevitable road to metastasizing the body politic.

And we have not nipped it in the bud.  Instead our public schools have now graduated two successive generations of citizens who are either collectivists or don’t know the difference between collectivism and a freshly painted corral post.  But we cannot claim to have not been warned, and are now arrived at the end of the long road which for both ourselves and the Europeans is turning into a trail of tears.

The President’s gullible base re-acknowledged (#2 update 3apr12)

George Rebane

Memo to file:  The President again denigrated his base constituencies today when he lectured them on how SCOTUS must deal with Obamacare.  The former Harvard constitutional law professor solemnly informed his supporters that it would be unprecedented and the worst form of judicial activism for SCOTUS to overturn Obamcare’s individual mandate.  After all, this piece of legislation is one that had been passed by majorities in both houses of Congress, presuming that other such legislation becomes law without the support of Congressional majorities.  Therefore overturning a law with such a compelling provenance would be epochally improper.

And with little risk of embarrassment, all this was delivered to his stalwart, yet butt stupid, supporters in the most serious terms in the Rose Garden as the Canadian prime minister and Mexican president looked on.  More educated commentators were a little stunned when later asked to properly frame these remarks.  But everyone seemed to agree that the statement was indeed directed correctly to the politically receptive and established aggregate capacities of those that have always characterized his base, in spite of the remarks being totally devoid of factual content.

From Human Obsolescence to Technology Ebooks and Climate Models

"... of shoes and ships and sealing wax/ of cabbages and kings.",  Lewis Carroll

George Rebane

(Written 31mar12; no time to write today Sunday, I'm pulling my scheduled club duty as rangemaster at the local rifle/pistol range.)

On this blustery and wet Saturday morning I gathered together a few of the piles of notes I make while reading the stuff that arrives across the (virtual and real) transom here on our Nevada County ridge.  They seemed to have a common thread if you don’t put too fine a point on it.

For openers, I enjoyed the latest contribution from Lucille Lovestedt in today’s Other Voices column of The Union (paywalled online).   That lady is a keen observer of the human condition, and a practiced friend of the written word.  Among other things on her mind these days is her more frequent run-ins in the news with the concept of Singularity (q.v. 'Singularity Signposts' category), which she interprets as the harbinger of human “obsolescence” if not outright “extinction”.  Of course, as readers here know, she has a point on both counts.  One of the Singularity preparations of this soon-to-be great-great-grandmother is to update her will accordingly to at least account for the ‘obsolescence’ scenario, which is already in full swing in the developed nations’ labor markets.  I would dearly like to know some of the particulars of her revised will; that would be a worthy read from this well-read and wise woman who has enjoyed many birthdays.