If only the Seven Dwarves had ganged up

So, it looks like the Republican Party will get the nominee they all hate: Mitt Romney. For all that “the base” found him repulsive, his enemies could never coalesce around a single candidate capable of beating him. Now, it’s too late. The media may still describe the Republican primary as a race (much as they did with the Obama/Clinton race after Texas and Ohio), but barring scandal, Romney is now the Republican nominee.

Why didn’t the “anyone but Romney” forces gang up? After all, they really really hate the guy.

What we had was a classic collective action problem. Here’s John Nash via Russell Crowe:

Getting the Republican nomination for President, then, is the “blonde.” The Republican nominee not being Mitt Romney is the “friends.”

The refusal of any of the other nominees to leave the race and/or put support behind other candidates (as Michele Bachmann could have done for Rick Perry, had she done it earlier) made it impossible for the “anyone but Romney” forces to align, even though their policy preferences were largely more in line with each other’s than with Romeny’s. Why didn’t they? Because they each thought that with the field so fractured, they actually had a chance to win. Their overconfidence led to Romney’s eventual dominance.

As a result, no one (except Romney) gets what they want.

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Two proposals for college sports

One of the problems with college athletics is their highly secretive nature (as Penn State and Syracuse have revealed). This secrecy is driven by the economic model of college sports — powerful independent organizations parallel to universities with their own cashflow under the banner of “amateur athletics,” with no accountability to anyone except the NCAA, as toothless (and incompetent) a watchdog as there ever was.

How do we solve this? I propose two solutions, each probably equally implausible.

1. The Free-Market Solution: This is the solution pushed by Taylor Branch (among others) in his long-form Atlantic piece. In short, pay the players. College sports operate in a weird cartel system, in which coaches are compensated in the tens of millions, universities make substantial revenue from football and basketball, and players make… well, nothing. Labor is not compensated appropriately for the value put in, and at far lower rates than they would receive on the open market. (Cam Newton’s salary at Auburn? $25,000 (cost of a full academic scholarship with book stipend). Newton’s salary at Carolina? $4 million.) This distorted labor market hurts the players, because they are both replaceable and cheap. If colleges had to compensate players with market wages, players could also unionize in order to demand rights collectively, particularly health benefits. Plenty of students work part-time or full-time as university employees; the players here would be no different.

Yes, players should be getting their degrees and using their scholarships, but you try learning when football practice starts at 5 and ends at 9, beginning in July and ending in May (if ever). The working conditions essentially make it quite difficult to achieve academic success.

2. The Pure Amateur Solution: My beef with the Branch free-market approach is that it further elevates the money and power of the athletics department, which I think still creates a tail-wagging-the-dog problem. Insular and powerful sports teams would still hold outsize power on campus because of their outsize money.

My ideal solution would be a return to truly pure amateurism — no more academic scholarships, and athletics departments folded back into the academic part of the university. Rather than being an independent entity reportable only to the university president (and sometimes not even), they would be collapsed into the basic student activities side. Sports should be a part of the academic experience, but they should not be the dominating one. Consider the Ivy League, which has eliminated all academic scholarships, yet continues to admit excellent athletes (dumb though they may be, see this guy). Even Vanderbilt, toiling away in the SEC, has no athletics department, yet plays the big boys close in football and does quite well in basketball.

Of course, this solution then permits the major sports leagues to start recruiting right out of high school, which I’m actually OK with. At least they’ll get paid, and the university institution won’t become subservient to the sporting one. At the same time, baseball, which already works like this, has plenty of shady practices. (Anyone who saw that scene in Moneyball where Billy Beane forgoes his scholarship for a chance in the bigs knows how cringe-inducing these conversations can be.) I wonder whether the current system (or a free-market system described above) is any better; college players inside the bubble of athletics are no wiser than a high school senior in making major life decisions.

I’m open to ideas, but there can be no moral justification for the status quo, in which college sports are money-makers for universities, coaches, sponsors, and merchandisers, with rabid demanding fanbases, while leaving the actual players as mere meat to be churned through the machine.

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Play him off, Keyboard Cat!

Despite my schadenfreude at the hilarious Perry implosion at the “debate” last night, I want to point out that Perry is being lambasted for forgetting which three agencies he wanted to destroy, but he should have been disqualified for wanting to simply eliminate three federal agencies at all!

Instead, the whole Republican field is so far to the right that Perry’s position to eliminate federal agencies was downright moderate.

Rather than knocking Perry (or Cain) out for his awful policies and crazy ideas, it looks like the Republicans will probably just oust him for being a boob.

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Forget class warfare: where’s the generational warfare?

As Linus and I have stated before, most problems in America are the baby boomers’ fault, and they have left them to the younger generation to solve.

The new data on wealth for different ages only makes this clearer:

A perfect storm of economic forces has caused the net worth of of people under 35 to fall by 68 percent between 1984 and 2009 according to the Pew Research Center. It’s a bitter pill to swallow for the young and depraved given that the nation’s olds (people 65 or older) saw a net worth increase of 42 percent in the same period.

And yet, the main fiscal issues of the day are not how to help America’s youth, but how to keep Social Security and Medicare afloat and how to keep pensions from bankrupting states. I’m not saying that we should weaken any of these programs, but the focus on the boomers (and their unwillingness to pay taxes, vote for progressive candidates, or support general social improvement such as interracial same-sex relationships) is basically ruining the future of America.

We should just change the motto from “Out of many, one” to “Fuck you, I’ve got mine.”

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Why incentives matter

This viral video (Not Safe For Life… seriously, fairly disturbing) of a Chinese toddler getting run over by a van has been making the rounds. Most infuriating, the video shows many bystanders passing the toddler and refusing to help. This has led to substantial discussion about how cold-hearted the Chinese are, as well as other cultural stereotypes.

But one thing worth noting here is that many cultural differences stem from the incentives developed in default rules.

Consider this quote from the driver of the van:

According to reports the van driver had just split up from his girlfriend and was talking on his mobile phone when he hit the girl.

“If she is dead, I may pay only about 20,000 yuan ($3,125). But if she is injured, it may cost me hundreds of thousands yuan,” said the driver over the phone to the media, before he gave himself up to the police.

This sounds like absolutely vile cost-benefit analysis bordering on straight-up murder, but the way that costs are distributed in accidents changes our behavior before and during accidents. Vile though it may be, were the costs shifted differently, and the costs of death higher than the costs of injury, perhaps the driver would have behaved differently.

Similarly, much outrage has been directed towards the “cold-hearted” bystanders who watched for seven minutes before a rag collector moved the girl to the curb. Why a rag-collector and not one of the middle-class shopkeepers and shoppers? China does not have a Good Samaritan law that protects bystanders who help in an accident. As a result, there are cases picked up in the media like this one:

In November of 2006, an elderly woman surnamed Xu in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, suffered two fractures after falling at a bus station. She later successfully sued a man named Peng Yu, who claimed to have voluntarily helped her.

Despite a lack of evidence, a local court ruled that Peng was guilty and ordered him to pay compensation of over 40,000 yuan ($6,184) to the woman. The verdict was based on the “logical thinking” that it was highly possible that Peng had knocked the woman down, otherwise he would not have helped her to hospital. The case was eventually settled out of court with mediation from provincial officials.

Since then, the name “Peng Yu” has become a label for such cases, leading many to believe that helping out an old lady might not be the best idea.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. The reason you would get out of your car to help someone injured in the road has nothing to do with your legal liability. Because of the kind of person you are, you would risk your life, financial standing, etc. to help a person in need.

But we live in a society where that background norm is enforced through Good Samaritan laws, and a strong presumption in favor of the person coming to aid. If the background norm were different, you might behave differently. And if the incentives moved in the other direction, one might expect many fewer Good Samaritans.

Consider a final example. The Japanese famously return stolen and found goods to the authorities (most notably after the recent earthquake and tsunami). Many chalk this up to a cultural norm that the Japanese have of honor, duty, and communal strength. Yet, it is also a reflection of a legal regime that strongly encourages finders to return stolen goods and encourages police to return goods to owners. Police boxes dot Japan for people to place found goods, and finders get a small reward for found property. Furthermore, keeping the found goods counts as embezzlement with a substantial fine. Japan also has firmer policies in place regarding police return of stolen goods. (As James May puts it on Top Gear, “I would have obeyed the speed limit, officer, but frankly, the police never found the TV that was stolen from me.”)

Maybe the Japanese return goods because they are naturally honest and communatarian. Maybe the Chinese commit hit-and-runs and ignore injured toddlers because they are naturally cold-hearted.

Or maybe cultural differences have as much to do with legal incentive structures as with innate culture.

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Rush Limbaugh aligns himself with a group that abducts children, turns them into soldiers, and forces them to murder their parents

Blind, partisan hatred has become an easy way to describe the entire Republican party. The joke goes that if Obama supports puppies and rainbows, the GOP opposes it. So reflexive is the anti-Obama instinct among them, that for whatever X he proposes, they simply must adopt not-X. It’s a simplistic analysis, but… it’s true almost all the time, isn’t it?

Case in point; the Lord’s Resistance Army now enjoys the support of the figurehead of the GOP: Rush Limbaugh. Of course, I’ve long known that Limbaugh is a fucking prick deserving no attention whatsoever. And so I will not give him a link to his site. But if I were to, you would see that he opposes Obama’s recent decision to send 100 troops into Uganda to combat the LRA. Ok, fine. Reasonable people can disagree about whether it is wise to send troops into yet another country to get involved in yet another local conflict.

But Limbaugh does not stop there. He titles his entry, “Obama invades Uganda, targets Christians.” You see, the LRA describes itself as Christian, and this therefore represents an irresistible opportunity for Limbaugh to cast this as an example of Obama – the secret Muslim – getting involved in Africa to target Christians. Because Obama, after all, represents a threat to the real American way of life. It’s a Holy War, and Obama wants the Christians to lose.

Limbaugh further reads LRA propaganda about their alleged goals of bringing peace and security to Uganda. He ignores the fact that:

They force abducted children to become soldiers and kill their parents.

They slaughter hundreds of civilians, sparing not the men, women, or children.

They force children soldiers to murder other children who try to escape.

Again, reasonable people can disagree over whether the United States should get involved. But for Limbaugh to take the LRA’s side, ignore their depraved mass murders, and cast this as an example of Obama attacking Christians is a new low, even for Limbaugh. Fuck him. But when your reflexive Obama-hatred motivates every political position you take, this is the logical conclusion.

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Snobbery for whatever reason is still snobbery

Sometimes it’s good to have a voice pushing back at the critical commentariat that push boomer favorites like Bob Dylan and The Godfather as the “greatest of all time.” Unfortunately, articles like this one by Natasha Vargas-Cooper are going too far in the wrong direction:

History does not inform the value of a film; you need never see a stylized Godard flick or Cary Grant comedy to understand the enthralling power of Fargo or Independence Day. Movies are a mass art and everyone should have opinions on them regardless of if they’ve seen The Deer Hunter or not. We are a generation weaned on television and movies, we were moviesgoers before we were citizens, it’s too long to wait until the purists die off to talk about the accomplishments and missteps of Paul Thomas Anderson in a serious way. So let’s plow our cart over the bones of the dead and take stock of our new frontier.

First, Independence Day? Don’t get me wrong, I did think it was the greatest film ever made when I was 11, but still.

More importantly, though, I don’t think cinephiles that have watched The Deer Hunter necessarily dislike Paul Thomas Anderson movies (or Independence Day, for that matter). In fact, watching more movies gives you more perspective on the movies you have seen, are seeing, and will see, in the same way that reading more books or meeting more people informs the books/people that you encounter.

This reminds me of Sarah Palin’s “Real America” snobbery. Refusing to read Foucault or listen to Puccini because of the reputations of the people who do such things (“non-Real-Americans”) is exactly as snobbish as refusing to read Guns & Ammo or listen to Brooks & Dunn because it’s beneath your station. I can’t even believe that someone would voluntarily choose not to experience something and then use that experience as a source of pride:

The rules of the game (Ha! That’s the name of a classic movie I have never seen. Eat it ,1939!): Both low and highbrow movies are allowed in.

Really? Eat it, 1939? Of all the film snobs I know, none of them would say “Eat it, 2011!” as if no good films worth discussing were released this year. They might lament about overall quality, or complain about 3-D, but no one would write off a whole year.

Being a snob is not any better if you’re just a snob about lowbrow/recent culture.

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In defense of: Hank Williams Jr.

After Hank Williams Jr.’s comparison of President Barack Obama to Hitler (which, honestly, was less idiotic than the things he said afterwards to justify it), his contract with ESPN to open Monday Night Football ended. He promptly complained about his First Amendment rights, and was promptly ridiculed by various commentators.

Steve Benen sums up the overall sentiment:

In a statement, Williams said the network stepped on his First Amendment rights, apparently confusing the right to free speech with the right to an ESPN contract.

Yet, this is more complicated than the immediate facts suggest. Consider the response of country music’s establishment to the Dixie Chicks’ famous “ashamed” comments about George W. Bush. There was a massive concerted effort to crush their success, including radio stations that refused to play the Dixie Chicks’ music and assorted boycotts. The Dixie Chicks lost some endorsements, but not their jobs. And yet, the scrutiny and criticism they received definitely chilled the willingness of others to engage in free speech at a time when it was desperately needed.

Obviously, everyone was well within their rights to do this: endorsers had no obligation to sponsor the Dixie Chicks, and consumers had no obligation to buy their product. But employment rights in particular can often be an important hurdle to active political speech, and the fact that at-will termination exists for almost any job for any speech, no matter the content, creates chilling effects on free speech. If your employer can terminate you for your speech or associations outside of the workplace, even if done privately, you probably won’t feel like expressing certain views. For example, if your employer told you that your attendance of the “Occupy Wall Street” rallies would result in the loss of your job, would you do still attend? There are limited free speech exceptions to the at-will doctrine (notably whistleblower protections), but these are definitely the exception rather than the rule. Your employer in that situation would be almost completely protected. Even without state action, your company’s statement certainly curtails the kind of speech you feel free exercising.

The spirit of the First Amendment right to free speech and association is clear, but its application will always be muddy (the Supreme Court’s wacky jurisprudence on the First Amendment suggests as much). Maybe Hank Williams’s termination is just an example of the hard elbows in the marketplace of ideas. And Williams’s position was somewhat different — he was an independent contractor, and his role as entertainer theoretically put him in a kind of PR role for ESPN that he clearly bungled. But there’s no denying that the threat of loss of employment for one’s constitutional speech outside of the workplace setting can be damaging to the spirit of free speech.

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Republican faith in government (the parts they like, anyways)

Dahlia Lithwick — official Unpersons hero — has a new piece up today about Republicans’ lack of faith in government… except in the case of the death penalty. While all other functions of government in Republicans’ eyes are bureaucratic nightmares of erroneous decision-making and inefficient backlogs, the death penalty and the criminal justice system are never wrong:

These same Republicans who are dubious of government’s ability to do anything right have an apparently bottomless faith in the capital-justice system. Everything is broken in America, they claim—except the machinery of death.

I would point out, though, that this is not restricted to the death penalty.

The Republican party line wants the government to butt out of doctors’ decisions… except when it comes to abortion, death-with-dignity, or medical marijuana.

The Republican party can reject the government’s fact-finding… except when the military says it has evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

The Republican party dislikes government intrusion in private life, unless it concerns listening in on phone calls, censoring the internet, or policing private, consensual sex between adults.

My point is that the Republican hypocrisy about “big government” is nothing new, nor is it limited to criminal law and capital punishment.

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Whatever you do, don’t resign

If you are a craven politician, just don’t resign. “Surviving” a scandal is pretty easy if all you want is to “survive.”

Scandal-plagued people who refuse to resign (David Vitter, Larry Craig, Charlie Rangel, Maxine Waters, et al.) keep their jobs. Furthermore, despite impropriety that the rest of the country dislikes, their constituents don’t seem to mind.

Additionally, party members should not force you to resign, because it actually costs them in the long run. They are much less likely to win the seat after you’ve resigned (see William Jefferson, Chris Lee, and now Anthony Weiner).

Voters reward stubbornness and craven lying. Live up to your reputations, politicians!

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