(A)live from Bogotá

As we recover from this depression, are we the next 'Greatest Generation'?

2008-12-31T18:37:00.000-08:00

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. encouraged his students to make awful things happen to their characters to show the reader what they’re made of. But this recession—and it will be bad—is not enough to prove our greatness.

First, this will be nothing compared to the Great Depression. Unemployment in some areas reached forty percent and many people were unemployed for nearly a decade—breadlines and soup kitchens marked New York City and malnutrition was a serious concern. But more than that, my grandparent’s generation earned their greatness not simply by becoming wealthy again—but by leaving their depression-afflicted towns to fight in an enormous war and emerging in a world free of fascism as the singular super-power. They unlocked the power of nuclear chain reactions, rebuilt Europe and Japan, and—within a decade—saw the yokes of colonialism collapse. Sure, this was not entirely their doing. They watched historical trends come to fruition. But it was a time of greatness. It’s difficult to fathom the permanent and far-reaching consequences of their lives.

The point is greatness requires more than returning to 3% GDP growth. It is unlikely we will earn our greatness by expanding our geopolitical dominance. We have to offer permanent solutions to big problems and turn pages of history. I can think of a few goals that might enable us to earn our greatness.

First, and perhaps this is obvious, is to make it our national business to pioneer great technological progress. There was a time when the brightest minds and organizations of a generation worked to cure polio or put men on the moon. Now, they trade derivatives. I’ll be the first to argue that trading derivatives has social value up to a point, but only up to a point and maybe this depression will help us draw that line and reconsider the social norm of following all the other bright boys to Wall Street. There are great technological problems to be solved and it will take great-big subsidies, leadership, and creativity to solve them. Alternative energies, disease, climate change, global transportation are proper challenges for us to assert our greatness in a way that has a lasting impact around the world.

Second, our generation is well positioned to earn its greatness bolstering international law. I am weakly optimistic that this will have renewed importance under the Obama administration and as the US finds long-term solutions to our situation in Iraq. The first step to bolstering international law would be obeying it. And the first step there would be closing Guantanamo, which seems like it’s going to happen. The US can hope to reclaim the moral high ground and strengthening international organizations—thinking beyond the pathetic shape of the UN or the IMF—would be an accomplishment we can point to in 60 years.

But I think the most important work Americans can do while we endure this depression is reflect on our lifestyles. We are the wealthiest nation around and we spend it living in great big houses in the suburbs, driving big pieces of steel that weigh thirty times our body weight to run quotidian errands. We support a medieval monarchy to afford this situation but even so it’s not easy to sustain what is probably the greatest misuse of resources in history. This model is being mimicked in the suburbs of Beijing today Bombay tomorrow and Brazzaville the day after that. It isn’t working and we need to admit it. Fixing this problem will require more than a miracle technology. We need to restructure the way we live and accomplish things.

All signs point to major government works under this administration both because we need them and because we need a massive stimulus package. Jason Furman says it will be on the scale of Eisenhower’s interstate highway project. But please, let’s not build more roads.

2008-10-21T14:07:00.000-07:00

NEWS
Argentina's President Cristina Kirchner announced plans to nationalize Argentina's private pension funds. Speculation that the move was imminent sent the country's stocks down 11%. The government said the takeover of the private system aimed to protect investors from losses due to the global market turmoil. Economists speculate that the true motive is to provide the government with about $5 billion in annual pension contributions that it needs to plug a gap in financing next year and avert a debt default.

Yahoo announced another restructuring effort that seeks to cut annual expenses by $400 million, including plans to cut at least 10% of its work force. The Internet giant reported a 64% drop in quarterly profit and revenue that was flat from a year earlier, as the company continues to struggle with slowing demand for online ads and stiffer competition.

The McCain campaign is ceasing campaign activities in three states it heretofore thought it could win: New Mexico, Colorado, and Iowa. The Campaign is re-doubling efforts in Florida, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina. Recent polls show McCain leading only in Florida (where early voting starts today) . Polls suggest Senators McCain and Obama are tied in Ohio. The re-organization makes Nevada's five electoral votes crucial to McCain's strategy. It is unprecedented for a Presidential candidate to announce he will surrender a battle-ground state. That the Republican candidate planned a capaign in traditional battle-ground states only to find that the usual suspects were hard to contest might reflect the reality that this election fractures the electorate in unusual dimensions--or that he simply isn't going to win... or doesn't have enough money.

Walter

2008-10-14T19:03:00.000-07:00

If I understand Walnuts here, this is his recovery plan to help the economy in a time when the economy has, at least, a liquidity crisis that, today, required the Treasury to inject cash into the market to the tune of 250 taxpayer dollars. Walnuts, committed to making up for the untimeliness of this bailout (see below: timing, not a profound lack of regulation, is to blame), wants to allow America's 100mm seniors to pull their cash out of the market and spend it! (presumably on Chevrolets and Metamucil, because taxpayers are going to pick up their mortgage tabs) amid a liquidity crisis whose tardy solution (for which Walnuts voted) is to put astronomical amounts of cash INTO the market--and to spend billions more protecting banks from dangerous runs (exactly the sort of thing that this plan positively encourages). I mean, Jesus Christ, I would have expected such a counter-productive, nihilistic, populist, and profoundly misguided economic proposal from Sarah Palin, but this is John McCain. I will say, it's very maverick.

This is a bald-faced appeal to the basest denominator of scared old people who want to put their cash under their pillows or in completely unproductive resources like gold or depreciating assets like their health (as the government won't be paying for that)--that and gambling. He will amend the tax code to incentivize their runs on banks, requiring young people to bail those banks out so that the world doesn't stop moving and they don't have to cancel The Price is Right… meanwhile every neurotic old person in Florida will sleep with (and, physically on) the comfort of their secure, liquid life savings and the reality that they will die before they pay the cost of the financial ruin begotten by their reckless consumption. Meanwhile, you and I know that, no matter what genius entrepreneurship we engage in in the future, its fruits will be taxed away to payback the cost of our grandparents terrorizing assault on liquidity in America. Wasn't it enough that we thanklessly and without consultation committed to paying for senior's social security? Now this?

I am beginning to wonder whether it is within the charter of the Treasury--and perhaps positively required of it under the bailout plan--that Paulson censor McCain from advocating such prodigious nonsense in public.

To quote the IHT:
In a plan in which most of the benefits would go to older voters, McCain proposed that people 59 and up who withdraw money from IRAs or 401(k) retirement plans in 2008 and 2009 pay a tax rate of 10 percent on the money rather than their higher normal rates. That part of the plan would cost $36 billion, based on the McCain campaign's internal estimates.
...
"So much of this decline in our markets and value destruction was due to the failure of Congress and the Administration to come out with a timely rescue package," -J McCain
(?)
...
"Investors are always responsible for their investment decisions, but the hard-earned savings of Americans should not be penalized by the erratic behavior of politicians." - J McCain
- I think the targeted voter is senior citizen Dick Fuld, demanding that he not be penalized for banking on a federal bailout.
...
This plan is "targeted at people who have been hurt by the recent financial crisis — seniors, savers, workers, people who are trying to get to college." - Douglas Holtz-Eakin
...
McCain also reiterated his plan for the Treasury Department to buy troubled mortgages at face value and give qualified homeowners government-guaranteed, low-interest mortgages based on their residences' reduced value. McCain first said lenders would pay the difference, but subsequently his campaign said taxpayers would.

2008-09-30T13:56:00.000-07:00

This is the way the world ends.
This is the way the world ends.
This is the way the world ends.
Not with a bang but with a whimper.
- T.S. Eliot
"The Hollow Men" (1925)

Milton Friedman Institute, Censorship, University of Chicago: A Rant

2008-07-16T14:16:00.000-07:00

Aff:
"Following Friedman’s lead, the design and evaluation of economic policy requires analyses that respect the incentives of individuals and the essential role of markets in allocating goods and services. As Friedman and others continually demonstrated, design of public policy without regard to market alternatives has adverse social consequences."

-Proposal to establish the Milton Friedman Institute with private funds at a private university in a free country, The University of Chicago, 2008

Neg:
Consider, for instance, the following passage in the Proposal to Establish the Milton Friedman Institute, which construes a certain orthodoxy as the starting point for any discussion:
"Following Friedman’s lead, the design and evaluation of economic policy requires analyses that respect the incentives of individuals and the essential role of markets in allocating goods and services. As Friedman and others continually demonstrated, design of public policy without regard to market alternatives has adverse social consequences."

- 102 would-be censors in a petition to limit free scholarship in the name of equity and balance, The University of Chicago, 2008
For the full text of their letter see Naomi Klein's Blog:
https://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine/resources/faculty-letter-mfi

I am left to assume that the favored starting point for discussion is the alternative, which would either NOT "respect the incentives of individuals and the essential role of markets in allocating goods and services" or perhaps that which would encourage us to "design public policy without regard to market alternatives." It's not that I don't see where they are coming from, I do. But I think this certain orthodoxy is tollerant. This certain orthodoxy merely asks us to "respect the incentives of individuals and the role of market" rather than ignore them. It says incentives and markets matter. And, in fact, I think everyone who signed this letter agrees with that. I think this is not their objection. It is rather a facade to demonize the most important social scientist of the century.

But, as Milton Friedman would argue, you must assume your oppenent is making his argument with only the best intentions. Anything else is pointless. So I'll take them at their word: they disagree with this "certain orthodoxy." And I will give them that it is an orthodoxy, and this insitute will strictly study policy scholarship that considers markets and incentives in its approach.

An orthodoxy that asks us to considers a couple of forces is a weak fucking orthodoxy: the only alternative to considering is ignoring. The only plausable alternative the undersigned might advocate--to ignore markets and incentives--is insane! It would even be insane not to take a side on the issue. It is insnae in the very dangerous way that it is insane not to believe in human nature. As the orthodox neo-conservative Amartya Sen put it "saying you don't believe in markets is, in fact, an insane statment. It's rather like saying you don't believe in conversation between people."

So to be clear, the question is: we can create an institution that, they agree (indeed fear) will attract tens of million of private dollars to fund scholarship of the "orthodoxy" that refuses to exclude markets and institutions from consideration.
They mean to deamonize it becuase this is, apparently, presumptuous and offensive, particularly in the global south. I imagine when they say (in their letter) that they "are forced to defend the university's reputation" that this is happening at high society cocktail parties in communist nations. I ask them only to imagine what those cocktail parties are like for those of us who affiliate with the University of Chicago and indeed approve of Milton Friedman's brand of scholarship. The girls don't always like it. But if someone refuses to take seriously your scholarship because of the University's affiliation with a great economist, I hardly believe it is your university that has the problem.But they go so far as to beg the university not to accept millions of dollars to fund world-class scholarship so that they can be spared the humilation of admitting that they teach at the University of Chicago!

Let us be clear, this is censorship and it is being taken seriously by the likes of 100 faculty members at one of the greatest universities in the world.

The undersigned include over 100 staff or faculty members from all departments, and include professors I rather respect, most notably Professor Emeilo Kouri, who I respect as a historian and social scientist and who disappoints me by joining a movement to improve the world by censoring scholarship.

The list predictably also includes Susan Gzesh, who professionally relies on her faculty seat at a first-rate institution to distinguish herself as a critic of that institution. In her spare time she dabbles in the analytically hollow creed of Human Rights, which, as an academic "discipline" provides an uninsightful description of the present without getting bogged down in the details of moral, legal, or rights theory. Her website suggests she is also interested in economic developmet, which makes more alarming her cry to censor economic research on public policy. She awaits an appointment in a democratic administration that finds itself short on hacks with a prowess for primitive criticism without regard to alternative constructions of the world. Unfortunately for Professor Gzesh, Professor Obama has won the nomination.

Subprimes

2007-09-24T23:22:00.000-07:00

Posted nine months later:

My roommate and i had a long conversation about the subprime 'crisis', how it is misunderstood, and why that misunderstanding enables politicians to pass stupid laws. It demonstrates exactly why Milton Friedman and Thomas Jefferson advocated public education: there are negative externalities associated with uneducated voters.

So first, most people don't understand what the hell this subprime thing is or why it's messing with our economy. I can offer what I believe to be a concise and basically accurate explanation.

First, an brief note on interest rates: An interest rate is a price, it's the price of borrowing money. If a lot of people want to save money, the interest rate will be low. If a lot of people want to borrow money, it will be high. "The interest rate" is usually the return to saving money without risk. When it is low, people are encouraged to invest in risky, productive investments like business ventures and the stock market. when it is high, this is not encouraged. So when the economy is not so hot, and the central bank wants to encourage investments, they lower the risk-free interest rate. It's a floor: any productive investment has to offer higher returns than the risk-free interest rate.

in 2001 the US Economy went a bit sour, the central bank began to lower interest rates. In the summer of 2004, the interest rate was nearly zero and it had been there for nearly a year. It was very cheap to borrow money.

If it's cheap to borrow money, people will borrow a lot of it. A low interest rate encourages, among other things, people to buy not and pay later. The most relevant place this happens is with houses: most people borrow money in the form of mortgages to buy a house.

With everyone buying houses on credit, the price of houses went up.

Two things were pointing toward enabling even poor people with bad credit to buy houses they wouldn't otherwise buy: (1) it was cheap to borrow money to pay now and buy later and (2) housing prices were climbing, so what looked like a bad loan on a bank's books today was probably going to look a little better tomorrow.

But this wasn't enough: we have had low interest rates before, we have had housing bubbles before, but subprime crisies are more rare than that. There was another element: now more than ever financial markets securitize EVERYTHING. In particular, mortgages.

When I say markets securitize mortgages, I mean the originators who interact with a homeowner and sell them a mortgage do not care if that person is actually able to pay the mortgage in the future. They simply care that it looks like they can pay that mortgage so they can sell the rights to the procedes from that mortgage in the form of a bond. For example a mortgage broker like New Century will take 1000 mortgages that look the same in terms of their risk, will create a bond that pays whatever the homeowners pay of their mortgage, and sell it to wall-street.

This is not bad in-and-of itself: this allows people to have access to cheaper mortgages. To see how this lowers the price of selling mortgages, imagine the local mortgage broker who sells mortgages in Albuquerque. If people pay their mortgage, he does well. but if people don't, he is broke. He is exposed to a lot of risks: if the local job-market fails, if there is a regional borrowing crisis, if the local housing market goes bad, his clients may not pay their mortgage.

It's valuable to him to sell the uncertain future payments for a certain dollar today. And he can sell it to someone who can hedge local risks and even housing market risks away, meaning they own enough securities that certainly some will go bad but certainly all won't. Both parties win. If the local mortgage broker doesn't have to worry about a collapse in the local housing market, he can lend more and cheaper.

Somewhere in New York some hedge fund, insurance company, or bank bought a bond, or a contract that pays money if people pay their mortgages. They saw that the return was high and didn't belive it was that risky, in part because bond rating agencies rated these bonds fairly well. Then, somewhat suddenly, people became unable to pay mortgages and it wasn't the people who sold them the mortgage who felt the heat: instead hedge funds, insurances companies, and banks had bonds that were not paying. Many were in big trouble.

This conflict of interest between the homeowner and the mortgage broker is largely the culprit for the debacle: because mortgage brokers securitize their mortgages into bonds that are sold to other people, it is not as importat to them that homeowners can pay. They are simply concerned with the appearance of good credit: many orinators of mortgages helped people file improperly, udnerstating their tax burden, suggesting that housing prices would rise when there was no reason to believe so, and creating new riskier products. Some of these new products were particularly problematic. the most famous subprime mortgage is a 2/28: a mortgage with an interest rate that is fixed for the first two years and which then becomes adjustable and pegged to some index like LIBOR or the Fed funds rate. If someone bought a house in 2004 with such a product, the interest rate at the time was most certainly approximately zero. After two years and 14 interest-rate hikes by the fed, that monthly payment was sure to increase.

Other products that mortgage brokers sold offered homeowners to pay only the interest on their house, so that they never bought any equity in the house. Imagine a case like this one that was in the Wall Street Journal: three years ago (at the height of the housing bubble) a family with a combined income of $90,000/year is told they can actually afford a house priced at $600,000. They will pay only interest on the house for the first three years and after that their payments will increase to slowly pay off the house.

There are (A LOT) of problems here. First, part of the reason someone might suggest this family is credit worthy is that they believe the value of the house will increase so the debt/collateral ratio will be more attractive with time. This would not be true for most houses sold three years ago. Second, three years ago, interest rates were almost zero. It was all to easy for the mortgage broker to say 'you can buy it for a monthly payment of X' where 'X' is some reasonable number. Something can also be said for the psychology of people to believe that in three years they will figure things out and they can pay their mortgage off.

Today, this family is forced to pay (1) much higher interest on their house and (2) start to buy the equity on the house (as in, actually begin to own it). For them, this is totally impossible not for some tragic reason that the economy is bad or they can't get a loan. It is impossible because a family that earns $90,000/year can't afford a house that costs seven times that.

But the tragedy is that, the house was worth $600,000 when they took out their mortgage and bought it, but as the housing market collapsed, so did the value. So they have a $600,000 debt (since they haven't paid any equity yet) and a house that is now worth $400,000. Even if they sell their house, they can't get away from that! (not to mention the problem of finding a new place to live). This is the problem of a housing bubble. And these creative mortgage products which were implemented by mortgage brokers who didn't care if people could actually pay have left some people in dire situations.

There is an obvious solution to this problem which many talking heads have advocated (most famously Jim Cramer): lowering the interest rate. Lowering the interest rates makes mortgages cheaper for banks and thus cheaper for homeowners meaning they are more likely to pay their mortgage, which makes the mortgage-backed bonds in the hands of to hedge funds, insurance companies, and banks wor

Really low interest rates enabled even poor people with bad credit to buy houses.

I Hate Africa Today

2007-08-20T09:58:00.000-07:00

What follows is an e-mail I wrote while I was in a very bad mood. Be warned, it is very whiny.

i'm near the airport. not at the airport, near it, because can't get into the airport until 3 am, that's when people from my airline, Quatar Airways, start work again. I've been here since 3PM, when i was actually in the airport, trying to get on my 5pm flight to Doha. Unfortunately for me, the computer was down. I had an e-ticket. If you've ever been to an airport or are at least familiar with the notion of flying, you know what an e-ticket is. otherwise you can probably guess. it's a ticket that is electronic. e-ticket. it means no paper. when you need paper, it's called a ticket. no e.

I had an e-ticket, so I wasn't worried when my bag containing a paper itinerary was stolen. I printed the exact piece of paper again. no big deal, e-ticket. that was the fucking point.

unfortunately, here at Jomo Kenyata International Airport, the largest airport on this continent which God has most certainly forsaken today, the computer is down. You might expect there is more than one computer, and in fact i saw many. But instead of solve the problem of the computer, the airline printed a list of names that were allowed on the flight, everyone else was told go to home. Within four minutes of being at the airport decisively told that I would not be leaving. I was not told when I would be leaving, nor did anyone seem to believe me that something was wrong in my name was not of the microsoft word document that had been printed. They rather seemed quite glad that my problem was easy to solve: no searching on a computer, not arguing. They had a list. I wasn't on it. It was all very simple, so why was I
upset?

I said, you don't understand it's an e-ticket. I speak to a manager who is busy tearing pieces of paper at right angles and gluing them to other pieces of paper. Not a particularly reassuring task.. I explain my situation, Mark listens, he asks for my passport, and then looks at the list. He says I'm not on the flight. The only ONLY ONLY way he had to see if anyone could get on that flight was a list of names printed in Microsoft Word. I wasn't on it. that was decisive. No computer, nothing.

I thought he was sort of a prick, but i realize his favor is probably sort of critical to getting out of Nairobi. I ask him when the computer will work. He shrugs. I ask him if he can call someone. He says the office in Nairobi is closed today.

I asked when I could get to Doha, he said he didn't know, and that I needed a ticket. He said i couldn't prove I had a ticket, which would require my proving that I was on a list i'm not on. I asked him where the names on the list came from, he said he didn't know, and that I needed a ticket.I reminded him of the e-ticket. He said it was still a ticket, and I should know that. I feel a bit condescending, and ask him what the term 'e-ticket' means to him.

He gets sort of angry and asks the paper part had gone. I said it was stolen. He has the audacity to ask for a police report. had the patience not to punch him in the face. Of course I didn't have a police report! I was in Africa.Because I was really very angry, I told him that police in Africa are good for fuck all, and that there was no reason to file a police report. HE says without the police report he shouldn't believe me. HE says I am probably just making this all up
and that I haven't bought at ticket at all!! I told him to wait there and I would come back with a police report in ten minutes from Nairobi. He admitted that the police report didn't matter.

I asked, again, what to do. now he says I should go to town (Nairobi). I asked him if the office in town was open on a Sunday, as I thought he said it was closed and that's why he wouldn't call. he said i was right.. I asked why he told me to go to town, he said the office would open tomorrow. I reminded him that the flight leaves in an hour. .

I asked if the telephone worked, and if maybe someone else in Quatar Airways also had a telephone that worked in Doha or Cairo or New York or someplace where someone might even have a working computer. he said the phone worked. I told him to call, he said that wasn't good
enough because it's not usually done. Then he said it was expensive. I told him my airfare was also pretty expensive.

I told him i thought it should be done, and he asked why I was so insistent. I told him i didn't care to go spend another fucking day in Nairobi. He told me I was "Making excuses." I asked him if he thought I came to the airport without a ticket and thought making up a story would be a good way to get out of Africa; if I had spent a thousand dollars to come to Africa and not really had a plan to leave. He said he thought I was lying to him. That's when I told him to fuck off. My demonstration of maturity proved unfortunate, because he left
the room.

By now it was 4:30. I've been arguing with him for an hour and a half, and he still won't pick up a phone to call someone else in his GLOBAL AIRLINE. I sit in his office, fuming. I go to the public phone to call my travel agent in San Francisco. The phone doesn't work. the internet doesn't work. I'm at the larget airport in Africa, after all. I actually wanted to fight Mark right then.

It's now 5:01, my flight is the only flight in all of Nairobi that has left on time. I walk around the airport, I find mark. I decide that I could probably beat him up, but that it would not end in my getting on a flight soon. With very little bearings left, I keep my eye on the prize: leaving. After shouting for five minutes in which i said somethings I would later regret ('people like you are why i hate this fucking city, you are not doing anything helpful' and 'do your job and pick up the phone') we go to the office. I don't feel very mature anymore. He takes me to an office where five bored bureaucrats are playing with scissors and glue and ticket stubs. We are going to use
the phone, i think.

After telling me that the call was expensive, and me telling him that my ticket was expensive, he calls Doha. Immediately, they tell him i have a ticket. He looks kind of disappointed, but tells he that I do have a ticket. I tell him i already fucking know that. then they tell him that he should put me on the next flight out, he tells me this, I ask when it is, he says it's on TUESDAY. it's SUNDAY. I tell him that wont work. he tells me the flight which leaves at 4am is full.
I ask mark for the phone. While he is thinking about giving me the phone, I grab it. I talk to a nice woman in Doha. And once, hers is the most helpful voice in Africa. five minutes later I had a first class flight to Bangkok. It was so easy it was frustrating. my flight had left 30 minutes earlier. I had 11 hours of waiting in a parking lot ahead of me.

My flight leaves at 6 am. it's now 9 pm. It's not worth the 40 dollars to go do nothing in Nairobi. I've been drinking whiskey and cursing Africa with a UN worker at the bar down the street for the last two hours. I can't get in to the airport until 2 AM. I am going to spend the rest of the night drinking, since it's costing a whole ten shillings a minute to use the internet.

In the taxi to the airport, I had been sort of sad to leave Africa but now I can't wait. Something happens when you are traveling where you blame entire nations or continents for problems caused by a few people. I don't think Mark was the only reason i'm not sitting on an
airplane right now, after all, nothing else in the airport worked. But it's probably not all of Africa's fault. It would have been stupid not to expect traveling in Africa to be complicated and tiring on the patience, but I was really looking forward to leaving. I hate this
place right now, and i want to go to Thailand. I'm going to go walk around the parking lot.

Kilimanjaro: Glorified Hill

2007-08-20T09:56:00.000-07:00

I am currently in Arusha, the most over-touristed city in Tanzania. As you may know, I came to Tanzania to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, what I expected to be an over-glorified snow-capped hill in Africa. iTo my surprise and to my lungs dismay, it's actually a real mountain standing almost 20,000 ft. Tall. when you are six kilometers above the ocean, the air is both cold and oxygen-poor. Because we are fearless American travelers, my sister and I were not deterred by mere facts. We pressed up the mountain in only four days. Becuase we are from the mountains of New Mexico, we have exception anatomies which enable us to breathe the airs of the stratosphere. And because we have been hardened by the fierce winters of Chicago, we did not
complain about he bitter cold, even when we could not move our hands. We met Swedish Mountaineers who suffered frostbite days after the climb, but the only thing we found objectionable about our circumstances was the bitterly cold water we brought up the mountain.

On the third day of our climb, we reached Kibo Hut, the final base camp before summiting. We were advised to go to sleep at six PM, which despite our greatest efforts, was impossible. We woke up at Ten PM in the Arctic tundra, drank a cup of tea and started to climb. At three
we were at 18000 feet, where I first thought about vomiting. At four we were at 18500 feet, where I realized that I was going to vomit. By Six AM we had climbed five thousand feet to see the Sun Rise over the curvature of the earth, visible from Uhuru Peak. And it was not until I was coming down from the mountain, at 8:00, with Acute Mountain Sickness, which I would compare to the worst hangover you can imagine, that I actually vomited. And then I felt much better. So I have been to and vomited at 6000 Meters.

Really, in all seriousness, from the top of the mountain I could see that the earth is most certainly round. I could see down the Great Rift Valley to the Serengetti. While I am told they are receding, the glaciers on the top were bigger than I know how to describe. If one was not careful, you could fall hundreds of meters in the crevasses of the Ice. The Volcanic crater was enormous, as I guess I should have expected of the tallest standing volcano on Earth.

WAS IT HARD?
Now, you might wonder why, I, and individual of indestructible constitution, fell ill while others did not: It was in the name of Science. I was doing an EXPERIMENT. While everyone else who attempts to climb Kilimanjaro takes altitude medicine (Diamox), I joined the control group. So I can now confirm, though with a large confidence interval, Diamox works. If you don't take it, you will vomit after prolonged exposure to altitudes above 19,500 feet.

Coming down was a whole other story. I still had the worlds worst hangover (unique to the Diamox control group), and now I had to walk 15 miles with a big ass bag on my back down an enormous, icy hill.

I made it back, and I have restored feeling in all parts of my body. It was an incredible climb, and now I'm going to zanzibar, where I will sit on the beach of hte Indian Ocean for a few days. I think, after that, if I can afford it, I'm going to Rwanda.

Oh, and I had wacky dreams on top of the mountain. Here are some shoutouts:

John Saxton: in the dream that was by far the most debased from reality, I dreamed that I was at your WEDDING! Not only was I there, Jordan and I were trying to break up the wedding. They say that dreams on Mt. Kilimanjaro show you the truth, so if you know what's good for you, you will not marry that Asian girl you thought was cute at Jimmy's when we were playing Erotic Photo Hunt with Eric.

Bonnie Doyle: I haven't seen you in YEARS, but I had a dream that you and I were arguing with each other on television in Atlanta, and then somehow ended up in New Hampshire where your sister was baking chocolate cake. I don't think I've ever met your sister, but I did REALLY want chocolate cake. The dream reminded me that you promised to reveal your spies after I graduate..

Arrival in Nairobi, Kenya

2007-08-20T09:53:00.000-07:00

I'm alive... in Nairobi. It's a big city, we spent the morning
looking for vegetarian food (poor Anisha has come to a place where
mocking vegetarianism is a national sport). Nairobi is big and...
well big. And as it turns out, if you're white like me, everyone you
meet can sell you a Safari! Anyway, we have a hotel for the day, we
are going to take a bus to Mombasa (which goes through the Tsavo
(home of man-eating lions)) and then make our way along the coast to
the Lamu Archipelago).

We were in Kenya for five minutes before we saw a Giraffe. I
was looking out the taxi window thinking "huh, Kenya kind looks like
New Mexico" and then the driver pointed to the tree that was moving
and eating another tree and said "do you know what that is?".

Oh, and Dad, you'll be glad to know: In our five hour layover in
Paris, Anisha and I irresponsibly took a train into the city (which
takes an hour) saw Notre Dame and then returned to the Airport. I have
photos, I've been to Paris, now i don't have to go back. check.

The flight was interesting, we flew over Karthoum, Darfur,
Lybia and all kinds of other places to which we can't travel. And as
a good show of African humor, the only films playing on the Kenya
Airways flight were "Blood Diamond," "Hotel Rwanda," and "Last King of Scotland". I
don't think "You're Going To Die When the Plane Lands" is out on DVD
yet.

We are fine. Don't worry. Africa is cool! more later.

Here's a Bad Idea: Destroy Rare Hides to Save Animals

2007-05-28T22:16:00.001-07:00

Next week, I will graduate from college so it was nice to feel today that my very expensive college education has made me smarter: this article showed me that common sense is, indeed, not so common. In Kashmir, to crack down on poaching, law enforcement experts have decided to compensate merchants for a large quantity of rare and illegal furs and destroy them. I can see how someone would thik this was an efective--or more likely a 'fair'--policy, but this plan of action will do nothing but further endanger endangered species. Here is why: demand curves are downward sloping. As you reduce the quantity of a good, all else equal it's market value will increase. When you burn tiger hides, a tiger hides become more valuable. Unfortunately, jaguar hides only come from one place: dead tigers. The more hides they burn, the more money is in killing tigers.

I'm thinking about ways that this might reduce poaching, and I can think of a few. By introducing uncertainty in the lives of merchants, the governemnt could make selling illicit furs a riskier occupation (though they aren't even hurting the people who sell these furs! They are PURCHASING them).

If this was a way of changing peoples' preferences for rare furs, then it might have meaningful, positive long-term implications but I don't think that will happen or that this is their intention. I don't know why does buy tiger furs ( I would love to know!), but I don't imagine they will feel very differently about tiger furs after they have been destroyed. If anything, they may become more of a 'status symbol' as they will certainly cost more.

In a rigorous economic model, there are two ways to reduce the number of tigers being slain for fur: reduce either supply of demand. Someone will ask, why doesn't burning hides reduce the supply? Becuase supply and quantity are not the same thing. A supply curve describes how many hides can be supplied at any given price. Burning hides does not change that. To reduce the supply one would have to make it harder or more expensive to poach or trade poached furs.

Why does criminalization reduce supply? Poaching is different from hunting only in that it is illegal. Being illegal means that there is a risk associated with working as a poacher, traficker, of trader of an illegal hide. Just as people who wash the windows of skyscrapers are paid more than people who wash the windows of flats, people who hunt illegally are paid more than people who hunt legally (even ignoring the fact that you'd have to pay me a lot to hunt a TIGER). This works like a tax: you have to pay people more, so it costs more to produce a poached fur. That cost gets passed on to consumers, and a smaller quantity will sell.

I wonder if the criminilization of hunting tigers makes tiger fur expensive or if the criminalization is so ineffective that the sheer scarcity of tigers makes them expensive. I would guess the latter, but if you wanted to be sure one would look at the decline in the tiger population over time and how much harder it has become to catch a tiger. The problem with this research method remains: endangered status is not exogenous, it is determined by how many species have been killed. You could compare the wages of poachers in India versus in Myanmar or Buthan or someplace that has better or worse law-enforcement. This would be a very interesting paper and I'm quite sure someone with the right data could publish a great paper!

Laws can also reduce demand for an illegal good. I suppose when someone purchases a tiger fur, they want to display it (??). If laws make it more difficult to display my fur, and I can only enjoy it privately, it may be worth less too me. I am not willing to pay as much. By the same token, if I risk spending five years in an Afghan prison for my ownership of a tiger hide, I'm likely to settle for a nice rug. Unfortunately, I suspect the punishment is usually both unlikely and trivial to the offender: a fine (or bribe) at worst.

Mosquitoes

2007-05-27T19:25:00.000-07:00

So I have blogged extensively about mosquitoes and disease, probably more than almost anyone on the intra-web Yet I am by no means a mosquito or disease expert, I know very little. But there is something I'm really pained to understand. Malaria used to be a big problem in the United States from Louisiana to Maine but then they drained swamps and killed misquotes. Yet I get bit by mosquitoes all the damn time (midnight soccer is especially dangerous). Why don't I worry about Malaria?

I know Malaria is not carried by most species of Mosquitoes, but why were we able to eradicate particular species in the United States? Why haven't they returned? WTF?

Fertility

2007-05-26T23:03:00.000-07:00

Thomas Malthus earned his title as the first economist in human history for forecasting that because the resources of the earth were finite an agency problem called the “Tragedy of the Commons” fated man to live on the margins of survival. The Tragedy of the Commons is that parents decide how many children to have based on the the private cost (or benefit) of raising children and not the greater social cost of adding another member to society. This led to overpopulation because while everyone desired fewer people, they were not willing to settle for fewer children themselves (“too much of you, just enough of me”).

Because we yield diminishing returns from natural resources, the finite resources of Earth limited population to mere subsitence. This limitation fated all humans to live on the margins of survival, for if we experience an increase in our standards of living (more food and resources) we squander it in the form of more children. You might ask, “why would we squander an increase in wealth on more children?” and the answer is that “if you don’t, surely someone else will.” Since you will return to your impoversed state of marginal survival in any case, it is worth it to try to return with another child if you like having children at all.

Shortly after Malthus died, the Industrial Revolution ushered an era of the highest levels of human consumption in our history; middle classes today live better than the Royalty of the Middle Ages. It would shock Malthus that as our real wealth increased, we do not have more but have substantially fewer children than we did before. Why did this happen?

The modern economy is different from the medieval economy in many ways, but most importantly because it is marked by social mobility because it offers returns to human capital. Is it true that the important difference between the modern economy and the pervious economy is that there is a quality of children, measured in human capital. There are investments we can make in our children to make them more or less wealthy… social mobility didn’t exist.

The decline in fertility in response to our newfound wealth tells us something critically important about parents: they are willing to sacrifice the quantity for the quality of their children. In other words, parents are altruistic toward their children, and a child’s welfare contributes to a parent’s happiness. Insofar as a child’s welfare is a function of how much they can consume, parents are happier to have fewer children consuming more than a lot of children who consume less. If you don’t believe this, realize that virtually anyone in a developed nation could certainly afford another child in the sense that they could afford to feed one more child (without reducing the parent’s consumption) but prefers not to because they would not be able to give that child enough nourishment, toys, education, and attention. In otherwords, they prefer the higher quality child.

So as we got wealthier, we have preferred to substitute the number of children for higher quality children. Yet, in most developed nations poor families have more children than wealthy families. Why is this?

• There are a few explanations. First is that poor and wealthy families may face different prices. Since there is typically geographic separation between classes, particularly between urban and rural areas, it could be the case that in rural areas where food and housing are cheaper, the cost of having another child is cheaper. If the price of children falls, the quantity should increase. This will be magnified if, as in many rural communities, children in rural families contribute productively to the family’s income at younger ages, effectively lower the price of children for poor, rural parents.

Second, it is also true that an increase in an individual’s wage rate increases the value of their time. Time spent with children is one of the largest costs that parents pay when they have more children, thus an increase in the wage rate may increase the cost of having more children as well. The parent may substitute in the direction of having more educated children as well.

Finally, even if the other effects don’t hold to be true, the parent may elect to have higher-quality, better educated children when his or her income rises, even if other prices remain constant. As a property of convex preferences, parents will optimize when they invest equally in all children (since we assume they are identical). Thus, when the parent invests more in the quality of children, they invest more in the quality of every child. Since this creates a budget constraint that is itself convex, not linear the decision to invest more in a child’s human capital requires that parents do the same for each child and effectively raises the price of children.

This convex budget constraint is important: The number of children affects the price of children. IF the price of children was constant, having one child fewer would save you the cost of his education. If the price of children increases, you would want to substitute toward having fewer children of greater quality. But there is also a second order effect: having higher quality children raises the cost of having children again, since you must improve the human capital of all your children. This further encourages you to reduce the number of children you have.

The revelation about preferences, that humans trade quality for quantity, seems to come in the face of evolutionary theory, which suggests that most species are interested only in maximizing the quantity of their offspring. Over time, the people with preferences that populate the earth become "us." This is why we like sex. But why do we worry about having too many children? (it's interesting to realize that aside from having children out of wedlock or at an age when it was dangerous to the mother, or when people were afraid their child wouldn't survive, there was never concern for having too many kids, or that kids might 'accidentally' result from sex. It is only now that we have to be concerned about how much time and resources we can give to each child to increase their happiness that we are worried about having too many children).

I have two thoughs on this: First, in some basic level, the quantity quality trade-off increseas survivorship, but this is surely a very basic level, a Malthusian level. Second, preferences about these trade-offs were unimportant for most of human history, so natural selection has not impacted our sentiments. This feels like a bad argument...

2007-05-05T14:51:00.000-07:00

Anisha is so pretty!

We went to the Projects! that is Cabrini Green in the background, this is a place called 'death valley'. A former cop and resident was telling us about occasions where snipers had stood on the top of this and killed people. "he was good," we were told.

This is where I play soccer.

Cabrini Green

2007-05-05T13:57:00.000-07:00

Please note the bus: "White Transportation".

Spring!

2007-04-29T10:28:00.000-07:00

It's a beautiful day outside, but I, unfortunately, have to work on my thesis. I thought, though, that I would put up some pictures from my new camera, something I have gone too long without doing. I took this while taking a half-hour to walk to a movie yesterday. Yesterday, I met some friends to see the Last King of Scotland, a great movie about Idi Amin's reign over Uganda. On the way, I took some forty photos, mostly of flowers. I've found that chicago is not otherwise terribly photogenic.

Here is another photo I took in Chicago the day (night) I got my camera. It's a little blurry as it was taken without a tripod.

Back to my thesis... which is getting complicated right now. Maybe I'll write about what I'm doing... that often makes the problem more clear for me.

Leo Messi: Greatest Soccer Talent on Earth

2007-04-28T12:18:00.000-07:00

You might know that I watch a lot of soccer, and I watch most of it on Youtube. Youtube has contributed to my life in a lot of ways, but easily the tmost importat way is that it allows me, and other soccer fans, to watch--over and over again--great goals of soccer history, and compare them trying forever to decide which is the greatest. I might have a new favorite.

In 2000, FIFA held a vote on the greatest goal of the century. The winner: Diego Maradona playing for Argentina's national team against Englad in the World Cup. The goal is famous for a few reasons: first, it's a really great goal. But it also came five minutes after the world's mot imfamous goal, the so-called 'hand of god' goal, an illegal point where Maradona hit the ball with his hand over England's goal keeper, but from the angle of the officials, it looked like a header (which would be impressive, since Maradona was quite short, and the English keeper allowed to use his hands). The officials counted the point, but millions of instant replays have showed that it was unambigously a handball. The english were quite upset.

Fair for them to be upset about that point, but five minutes later Maradona scored this goal. I won't describe it but to say two things: (1) recall that he is playing against the best defenders in all of England and (2) this has been voted the greatest goal of the century.

A few weeks ago, Leo Messi, my favorite contemporary soccer player, scored this goal. It is impossible not to compare it to Maradonas goal. Even before this, the comparisons were around, (Maradona himself has suggested that Messi will one day be as great as him). Also, the damn kid is 18 years old, which makes me feel bad.
Now watch this:

Kill a Mosquito: It's national Malaria Awareness day

2007-04-25T12:13:00.000-07:00

Malaria infects somewhere between 350 and 500 million people every year, and only a small, small number of them are well-equipped, healthy adults from developed countries where we have access to great medicine. In many societies it is the leading cause of death, and especially death among young people. We spend a lot of money trying to prevent deaths that are hard to prevent--like cancer among very old people--but very little money trying to prevent deaths that are the easiest to save. This is a very bad way to save lives, and I'm glad that in the last few years (really, since I got Malaria), our willingness to deal with the Malaria issue has changed profoundly. Aid has ramped up significantly: President Bush Pledged 1.2 Billion dollars to prevent Malaria in 15 African nations over five years. Without question, this is the the cheapest way his administration has committed itself to saving lives.

In Gary Becker's human capital class, we talked about the statistical value of a human life, a discussion that I think most people can apprecaite, but which may also inspire violence against economists. Here is a descriptive way to imagine the world: people have two goods in the world, consumption and liesure, that they prefer more of both at any point in time, but that they enjoy both goods at a diminishing rate (the nth hour of liesure was not as nice as the n-1th hour of liesure). Imagine that they live for M number of years, and that this number of years can be increased if they give up some consumption and spend it on healthcare. They seek to maximize their utility over all period, so clearly they would spend all their money on healthcare, becuase they they woudln't enjoy life very much and it wouldn't be worth living. But now ask yourself: why do they spend any money on healthcare? Why not live for one period and consume EVERYTHING? Why would you give up some money to live longer and poorer. The ONLY reason you do this, is because you get diminishing marginal utility from your consumpion and your liesure: If I gave you a box of oranges on an island, you would not eat them all today and starve tomorrow. you would drag out the process of death. And you would drag out the process because by the time you get to the last orange in the box, it won't be nearly as good as the first orange. you would rather each orange be the first orange of a different day.

This has a few implications: we can now say how much a person is willing to pay to extend their life (and it isn't a function strictly of income!): The more oranges you have, the longer you will want to live. (Read: rich people are more interested in extending their lives than poor people, even if you ignore the fact that they buy more of everything. Wealthy people will spend a larger share of their income on healthcare so more of their oranges can be the 'first orange' rather than the last orange of the day. poor people.... only eat one orange a day.).

Second, our legal system has long valued a human life as the discounted presentvalue of future wages (in wrongful death suits). But since you get utility from consumption and liesure, it is not accurate to value people's lifes as simply the present value of future income. This is especially true for people who don't work much. Since the wage rate is, by definition, equal to your willingness to substitute liesure for consumption (to see why, imagine it wasn't! if you were willing to pay seven dollars for an hour of liesure, and you worked for five dollars an hour, you should just work less. If you were willing to give up an hour of liesure for four dollars of consumption, you would work more!). So an non-work is worth at least as much as an hour of no work. If you consider that most people spend 2/3s of their time not working, you will see that most of the value of a person's life is liesure (unless your a U of C student!).

So how does this relate to Malaria? well, first you'll see that most people would be willing to pay a whole lot relative to their wages or assets for their life. That is to say, if I am poor and in Uganda and I have Malaria, I would be willing to pay the present value of all my earings and all my liesure for the rest of my life (and more based on how concave my utility function is... this is the part about spreading oranges out over time), for my life. Now, I don't know, but let's say I earn one dollar each day, which is accurate in rural uganda. I might spend 1/3 of my time working... so 8 hours/day. The other 16 hours a day are liesure. Since my wage is only the dollar value of the working hours, the value of a day is, at a minimum, three times that since i value liesure just as much as consumption each day, and since i consume twice as much liesure. so 8hours = 1 dollar => 24 hours = 3 dollars. To me, one year is worth 3*365, or about one thousand dollars. Say I have twenty such years of life ahead of me, if I survive Malaria now (this would be ignoring the fact that I might have to try to survive Malaria again, which would change the calculation drastically--consider that i would live with certainty). If I discount at five percent/year, the present value of this time is approximately 1000/.05 = 20,000 (actually this is the value of a 1000 perpetuity, but it's going to be very similar because 20 years is a pretty long time). So I value my next twenty years of life at at least twenty thousand dollars. Now consider the degree of concavity: the amount that I am interested in extending my life simply so that I can consume more 'first' oranges and less 'nth' oranges. Some estimates suggest taht we should multiply by 2 to account for this. so now, we get $40,000 as the value of life for someone who makes $1 a day. (if you do this with an American, you get around 5 million dollars).

Absolutely, the implication is that a rural Ugandan should be willing to pay $40,000 to save his life with certainty. Now, someone who makes a dollar a day is exceedingly unlikely to have access to forty thousand dollars (he will never earn that much money in his life, unless he has to pay a debt). It's unlikely that any Malaria treatment costs anything near this price, but even if it was one tenth of this, he would be GLAD to do it and pay off the debt. So why do middle class Americans manage to come up with 5 million dollars for a life-saving medical treatment but Ugandans can't? Because Americans can borrow in good credit markets. And they do. They have houses as collateral, and access to efficient credit markets. Rural Uganda simply does not have banks that will do this. And even if they did, laws against slavery and indentured servantry would prevent this person from using his human capital (his labor) as collateral in a loan for life-saving treatment. It's also usually impossible for him to pass on this debt to his children, which even they might prefer to being raised with no father. If Uganda had better access to capital markets, and if they could borrow against their human capital, they would invest in life-saving treatment more often. Malaria would kill fewer people. Uganda would get to experience high-class problems like heart disease, obesity, and cancer (a disease that is fundamentally what happens to your body when nothing else kills it and your cells get tired of replicating).

My other point is that it's SO much harder to save somone's life from cancer than from Malaria. This is, in fact, part of the reason we spend so much on Cancer: it costs a lot to treat. Another lesson from the human capital model was more years you have ahead of you, the more you would be willing to pay to extend your life, if you have a perfect capital market. If you are twenty years old and expect to live to forty (like our Ugandan), you are more willing than if you are 88 years old and expect to live to ninety. But this is only true if you have perfect capital markets. In reality, old people spend a ton of money on health care (treating things like cancer) often because they can't consume anything else (vacations, wine, leisure) until they don't have cancer--even if they know they are unlikely to survive. In other words: a huge share of the money this country spends on medical treatment is unlikely to extend a single life. In terms of human life, it would be far more useful spent saving people in Uganda.

In what I thought was an interesting approach to solving a problem that is clearly hard to solve, Magnum Photos has partnered with the non-profit Malaria No More with the objective of drawing the public's attention to Malaria. They have sent photographer Chien-Chi Chang to document the malaria crisis and efforts to confront it. You can see his photo blog here: http://blog.magnumphotos.com/2007/04/magnum_on_malaria.html

The President has declared today National Malaria Awareness Day in part of the President's Malaria Initiative, which is the only part of his Presidency I am optimistic about. I hope you will consider donating ten dollars to buy a malaria net for Uganda. If not, kill a misquito: they are fuckers.
https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?aid=17186

A Conversation with Jennifer

2007-04-09T09:52:00.000-07:00

me: so

how do you feel about the news?

Jenny: what do you mean?

tv news?

me: no

Jenny: something in particular?

me: brinn baker is Engaged

Jenny: oh, i didn't know

me: the girl i had a crush on in 4th grade.

to be married

Jenny: it doesn't affect me

me: the girl whom, three years later, while i still kind of had a crush on her despite dating a different girl, played my shakesperian lover in a midsummer night's dream

Jenny: oh my god

me: F A T E,, no?

but i'm dealing with ti pretty well.

Jenny: you're totally putting meaning and emotion back where it wasn't

when's the last time you talked to brinn baker?

me: are you telling me i'm projecting?

Jenny: you don't know her

me: in your house, actually.

Jenny: you liked her when you were in FOURTH GRADE

me: becuase cheryl owyoung was there.

Jenny: get over it, we're old

our friends are getting married

me: she was the first girl i had a crush on!

don't dismiss this.

Jenny: ok, ok

i realize this is incredibly significant for you

me: i have, probably subscosciously, evaluated every other girl since then based on the scale of Brinn.

Jenny: PLEASE!

me: She was the first girl who made me feel bad about myslef becuas she was so PERFECT

Jenny: puh-lease

me: I had bad handwriting

and bad spelling

Brinn had flawless spelling

Jenny: oh my god, i can't listen to this male shit

anymore

me: and loopy handwriting.

And

Jenny: i'm so sick of sympathizing with you assholes

i have to go read to kindergarteners

me: i used these off-white notebooks in Ms. Zinc's class

they were from recycled paper

Jenny: I DON'T CARE

me: hers were pure as... paper made from old-growth forests.

Jenny: EVERYONE'S SELF CONSCIOUS

THE WORLD'S BIGGER THAN YOU AND YOUR ISSUES WITH GIRLS

me: NOT BY MUCH

Jenny: THAT'S WHAT EVERYONE THINKS

THAT'S WHY THE WORLD IS CRAPPY

AND WHY YOU FEEL GOOD WHEN YOU'RE OUT IN THE DESERT OR ON TOP OF A MOUNTAIN

seriously, i have to go do more important things

bye.

me: More important things!

Jennifer

you can't ignore me like that! I'm the first important boy you ever dated!

i will not be cast to the relm of 'unimportant things'

Jenny: you are not unimportant

this current bs is

me: In a midsummer nights dream I played Demitrus and she played Helena

do you remember the play?

Jenny: and less important than me feeding myself before going to a local public school to volunteer my time to teach read to kindergarteners

me: at first Demetrius DOES NOT LOVE Helena

Jenny: not that i'm being self-important or anything

me: he loves herme

Jenny: yes, i remember the play

my brother was in it

i saw the ballet

a midsummer night's dream is a a COMEDY, not a DRAMA

dufus

me: but then, Puck rights what is wrong, and makes it so that demetrius loves HELENA and not HERME

Jenny: your troubles induce LAUGHTER

me: and EVERYONE IS HAPPY

Jenny: HAHAHAHA

and you cause all the real sorrow in the world

so don't ask me to feel sorry for you

understand, empathize ,whatever

sympathize, never!

(i'm practicing for my show)

BUCK UP, GROW SOME BALLS, AND BE A MAN

me: you're useless

no one could ever love you!

Jenny: EVERYONE LOVES ME

that's a lie

TO KNOW ME IS TO LOVE ME, WALTER LAMBERSON

me: i need to go take a shower

have fun with the kids, hope you have a good day. i assume it's also cold there?

Jenny: yup

bye

Sent at 11:48 AM on Monday

it's been a long time

2007-02-03T11:46:00.000-08:00

Increasingly, I have wanted to write on this more. I went so far as to purchase walterlamberson.com (which I think is a good idea even if you don't use yourname.com just to ensure no one can slander you in the future). My desire to write more on this is motivated, mostly, by the realization that I will graduate in five months. After that, it will be a real challenge to keep up with people.

Anyway, there is a paper I read last night which I would like to write about here. Finnis Welch is an economist at Texas A&M (and founder of the STATA Corporation, if you're a nerd). He has co-authored many papers on wage inequality with Kevin Murphy, of whom I am a big fan. Last night I read "In Defense of Inequality." As you can tell by the title, it's sort of a provocative piece.

The paper is brilliant because Welch breaks down inequality to the forces that cause it, and argues that don't want those forces to work any other way. He begins with Jacob Mincer's equation, which is probably the most frequently regressed equation in the social sciences. The equation relates wage to an individual's years of education and experience. If education becomes more valuable, inequality increases. If years of experience become more valuable, inequality increases.

Think about the years of education. If the coefficient on education in the equation increases, people with fewer-than-average years of education loose relative to the mean. But everyone else, including future generation who have not yet left school stand to have more social mobility--assuming they have a choice about how much education they receive. Consider the alternative: if education became less important there would be less inequality, but it would mean there is much less social mobility. In fact, if education were uncorrelated with wage, your education wouldn't affect how much you earn relative to the mean.

Now consider experience. If this coefficient increases, the observed inequality increases. Young people have fewer than average years of experience, so they would loose income relative to the mean. But young people turn into old people. They will make up for what they don't earn now in the future. It's tough to argue that this is bad.

The only thing that is left in the equation is the residual. The residual is everything the difference between what you actually earn, and what your years of education and experience predict you will earn. If the variance of the residual increases, then inequality increases. A high variance means that education and experience alone do not explain wage very well. To Welch, this is good: if we have a high residual, there are a lot of random effects that determine one's income. Again, consider the alternative; if the variance of the residual were zero, then income would depend only on school and age. The only decisions you would ever make is when to leave school. From there, the clock would tick and your wage would increase. A variance, even a high one, is a good thing.

And that's it. Welch, that quickly, dealt with everything that explains inequality. If you agree that increases in the returns to education, increases in the effect of experience, increases in the variance of the residual are good, or that they are not bad, then you don't have a problem with inequality. It's a powerful argument, and one worth thinking about.

In a big way, it relies on the higher-level idea suggested by Milton Friedman that wage and income are not the same. Wage is how much you happen to earn at a certain point in time. Income, however, is what you will earn or could earn over your entire lifetime. It's well documented that wage inequality had increased over the last forty years. Personally, I would fee very different about this increase if I knew it was the same people consistently earning low wages throughout their lives, than i I thought poor people are only poor for a while, and with time they move up.

Imagine a society characterized by its great social mobility. Great social mobility means hard work opens doors. "Hard work" is difficult to measure, but for most people I know, the amount of education you endure is a good proxy. Most people would agree that for society to have great social mobility, people who get educated can succeed, regardless of where they've come from.

This society would have enormous inequality. Well educated people, whatever their background, would earn well above average, and those with less than average educations would earn far less.

In the last forty years--the same forty years in which American saw a sharp rise in wage inequality--we moved much closer to the society characterized by its social mobility. Education is a much better determinant of how much money you will earn than it ever has been before.

The problem, to me, is not that education is more valuable, it's that education is not available to everyone. For people who decry inequality: the problem is not that education is more valuable than it ever has been and society doesn't pay low-skill workers in Detroit what it used to. The problem is that we are still creating so many low skill workers. The problem is not that McDonalds pays an "unfair" wage to kids from the ghetto, the problem is that so many kids from the ghetto don't have an education, and can't do anything else. Raising the minimum wage and subsidizing domestic auto manufacturers are often suggested as solutions to the inequality problem (and suggested by the political party I, ostensibly, belong to). But they are band-aids. These solutions try to reduce inequality by making a fundamental lack in skills less important in an individuals' earning potential. They reduce social mobility.

The underlying problem, and the one no politician wants to touch, is that the schools in much of America fail to teach anything valuable. When kids don't learn anything valuable in school, they don't stay. I don't blame them. The very high dropout rate in the inner city is often lamented, but this is misdirected. I used to tutor at a public high school on the south side of Chicago. I have never spent one second wishing that the kids who dropped out would stay: the environment was insulting to their intelligence. Spending ten years in an inner-city high school couldn't make you better off. If anything, leaving school and working might give some people some kind of opportunity to lean something valuable.

Inner-city schools do suck, but the problem with inner city schools is more complicated than one we can throw money at... though that would help. There was a major change in the early 80s in the demographic composition of the "ghetto". Formerly, the ghetto was diverse: a place where working, middle class families lived along side single mothers and out-of-work fathers. In the 80s, working families migrated out en masse. Today, most adults in inner cities do not work in a typical week.* For a child, growing up in the presence of working adults is very different from growing up in their absence. An impoverished neighborhood where adults work fosters a work ethic, education ethic, and set of capabilities that do not prevail where adults do not work. This is an enormous problem which inner-city schools are asked to overcome. It is not surprising that these schools regularly fail.

These social obstacles make public education as we attempt it impossible. No one can honestly say that everyone has an opportunity to receive the same education. This education deficit is the greatest threat to social mobility. Inequality, low wages, labor rights, and globalization are not the problem. They are symptoms of a lack of educational opportunity for millions of people. This imbalance of educational opportunities is worthy of its own civil rights movement. Based on what I have read, it is fixable, but it would require the effort of going to the moon ten times.

What to do about this is a more complicated question, and maybe one I will write about later.

Prevent Homelessness

2006-05-20T14:05:00.000-07:00

This is my problem: Next monday, I move to New York City. As per now, I have no where to live. No one wants to sublet to someone they can't meet who is living in Bogotá, Colombia.

If you want to sublet an apartment in New York City for a few months or a few weeks, please contact me!

I don't expect this to work, but I am surprised by some of the people who read this. I was invited to speak on a pannel on immigration reform in Ohio... or 'Prof. Lamberson' was invited.

That's what I've got,
Walter

America, What ARE You Doing?

2006-05-19T19:14:00.000-07:00

In Colombia, people expect me to provide insight into American current events and offer an explaination for our doings. They ask me how Americans like a game as boring as baseball Baseball. I explain that we agree that it's boring but it is a good excuse to drink beer. They get it. I am able to give them some cohesive understanding for the world.

But sometimes I am at a loss. For example, the immigration bill. Apparently, since I left you have decided that English was the 'National' language as well as the 'Common and unifying language' and then decided to build a big wall along the Mexican border and in fact deployed troops to the border. People here ask me if Americans are really that scared or angry and if there are really that many immigrants. I don't know what to say. I don't remember anyone giving a damn when I left. I am truly unable to imagine what things are like at home. It seems like you're all crazed, making much ado about nothing. (Link thanks to Dan Miller)
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/05/19/senate.english.ap/index.html

I was pleased to see that Senator Domenici of my home state, New Mexico, was the only Republican to vote against having a national language on the grounds that, as the article says, "his state's constitution prohibits discrimination based on inability to speak, read or write English or Spanish." It does not mention that the state's constitution was written in Spanish (As was California's).

Part of me thinks there is a legitimate point to be made on the behalf of the 'common and unifying' crowd in congress, which is that nations have a right to an identity and boarders. I said in a previous post I would think about argument about cultural differences we determining who should be a citizen of a certain nation. I have thought about it, and I believe that is fair.

Cultural differences are good, and should be protected, but I don't know how you protect a culture with a law. The absence of laws does quite well. I have been looking out the window for fifteen minutes trying to think of an example of a cultural practice codified into law that I wouldn't like to see repealed. I don't believe women anywhere should be legally required to wear headscarves, nor that they should be banned from it (as they are in French schools) and I think the US would be a better place if the drinking age was lower. The only example I can think of is polygamy, which should be illegal as it is in almost all nations. I don't think of this so much as a cultural practice that our laws need to protect us from as much as a crime that hurts people. (There is a very good book that really convinced me that polygamy is not just 'different' but really abusive and terrible. it's called 'under the banner of heaven' and is about the Fundamentalist Chruch of Christ of Latter Day Saints. It's not about normal mormans, they don't practice polygamy either). But I concede that Immigration law protects culture in a very different way.

One one hand, this is a problem that a law can solve. There are a lot of Americans in Costa Rica. When Americans move to Costa Rica they internalize the cost of buying land and building a house in Costa Rica etc, but whether or not Costaricans want them there does not affect their decision to go. There are a lot of Costaricans who want fewer Americans in the country--or fewer english speakers or fewer retired people etc. For one reason or another, they would be happier if Americans left. If you believe Costaricans have a right to want Costarica more Costarican fewer Americans, or English speakers. perhaps it should be harder to move to Costa Rica to account for upsetting all those Costa Ricans. Is that a good argument?

Here is a similar arguemnt that was popular fifty years ago: there are too many black people in northern cities like Chicago, it displeases white people when they come to their neighborhoods because it makes them feel unsafe and uncomfortable, thus white people should have the right to make it more difficult for blacks to enter their community. Regardless of whether or not blacks were actually more dangerous than whites, they certainly made white people more uncomfortable. To be sure, few people agree with the legitimacy with this line of reasoning, and I have trouble diferentiating the two.

Sometimes something upsets people and they don't have a right to be upset. In a case like that, no one has an obligation to placate them. Congress, however, is well on its way.

In practice, there is no good way to apply laws to protect culture. I live in New Mexico. There are a lot of Texans in New Mexico and there are plenty of people who don't want them there: (at the risk of offending my Texas family, I'll continue) They speak bad spanish, they drive big, dangerous cars, they don't eat the same food, they take jobs away from the native population, and I won't even mention the way they ski. The cultural differences between Texas and New Mexico (or Kansas and New Mexico) are far greater than those between Mexicans and New Mexicans. But there will never be a law preventing Texans from entering New Mexico and changing our culture. Such a law would be unconstituitonal.

There is a more important point, about what constitutes a culture and why 'our' culture is our culture, how it became our culture, and the difficulty of arguing that it can be 'ruined' and not changed. I had an frustrating conversation with an American about his fear that immigrants would come and try to destroy American culture. He said that these immigrants were not willing to adopt american customs. I am confused as to how a culture can be 'ruined'.

I have never heard any story of any group of immigrants being particularly willing or able to adopt 'American culture'. Early Irish immigrants in America were persecuted for being Catholic in a Protestant nation but they didn't convert, the nation became one without denomination. I want to say that the nation is the better for it. I don't invest in normative judgements of cultures, but that I think open cultures are better than closed cultures. When I read that the US is building a big wall with another country, I get scared.

I am not scared because I think the wall will make American a white, english-speaking, protestant, fully-employed country. It won't. I am scared because of what it means. Things like this wall, political things, are not about the consequences: it can't possibly be worth anyone's time or effort to build a wall, no one will materially benefit from it and there are no doubt better uses for the troops along the border. Likewise, no one will be very negatively effected: I have full faith that a wall that spans 4,000 miles will not matter when there is the amount of traffic between the two countries that there is.

Maybe illegal immigration will reduce slightly, is it worth the cost of building a big wall? That isn't the real question; the point is that no one has ASKED that question. The material consequences of the wall don't matter to anyone for the reason all the things that politicians argue about don't matter and for the reason people's political opinion's don't matter: it's not woth anyone's time to care what the actual results are. The wall is a symbol that will provide angry people with comfort, not security.

Yesterday, there was a big concert close to where I live on la Plazuela de Los Periodistas. A presidential Candidate spoke and rallied a large group of students in front of a big sign that said NO TLC (a free trade agreement with Latin America and the US that this candidate opposes). He didn't give reasons for his opposition but to say that Colombia is for everyone, that the youth were with him, and that hunger is a problem--not trade. Then the band played and the students cheared, waved flags, and danced.

I don't know what this candidate will do if elected, and I am confident that they do not either. But they don't care. There is no reason for them to take their vote seriously: the probability of a single vote changing the outcome of an election is approximately zero. So if you weigh the unlikely probability of your vote inacting good economic policies against the certainty of enjoying a concernt with a lot of other students, it's an obvious choice: go shout with everyone else about voting for the NO TLC guy becuase he's more fun, who cares what would happen if he were elected: you can't affect that.

And it IS a lot more fun to say 'hunger is bad' and dance. For this reason political identity is a lot less like thinking and a lot more like chearing for the Yankees. It's more about an image than an opinion, becuase your opinions don't matter.

And that's why I don't like the wall. It's not becuase of the consequences, but the causes. It doesn't matter if you build it, immigrants will come. But it is a symbol that you are upset about them coming. You're at the rally dancing and screaming NO MEXICANS, but you don't care what the outcome is. And it might be fun to say it 'enhances national security' or 'will create jobs' or will 'make everyone speak english', but this isn't the reason you shout. You don't have to believe it to shout it, and it certainly doesn't matter whether it is true. No one cares about the material consequences of the wall. They care about immigrants and they care about dancing, and that wall is one great big dance and immigrants are not invited.

So I'm against the wall.

But I can't wait to be home. The best part of coming home on an international flight after a long stay abroad is when the customs officer says 'welcome home'. It happens Saturday night.

Also, I like Texas

Happy Mothers' Day

2006-05-14T11:35:00.000-07:00

Bush Unpopular, Chavez Super Popular, Gas Prices Hit $0.14 in Caracas

2006-05-10T13:59:00.000-07:00

The top story on the New York Times today says that President Bush is extremely unpopular, especially among adults aged 18-72 (who else is there?). I guess I'm not surprised to see the news, in light of the war with a country that didn't have weapons of mass destruction, the prospect of another country with which we are not yet at war obtaining such weapons for real, high gas prices and a weak dollar. I hear he's also bad at other things like maintaing a staff. While the news that less than one in three Americans approve of the job that he is doing is shocking, I don't buy the conclusion that he is doing any worse than usual. As a president, I would think he has done a lot better than about nine months ago when he ignored a great big hurricane that wiped out a major American city. But I don't think approval ratings by the public are a good indication of how good a president he is.

Don't get me wrong, I didn't vote for him, don't like him, and wouldn't eat barbacue with him even if it were free. I think he's dumb. But approcal ratings are not a good indicator of anything. If you click the link below you can see the approval ratings of previous American presidents, including the most recent polls concerning Pres. Bush. They don't correspond with much other than the purchasing power of the dollar (A guess based on the data). 41% of Americans in the poll approve of his handling of the war on terror and only 13% approve of his 'handling' of the issue of gas prices.

Americans take the issue of gas seriously, but blaming the president for a high gas price doesn't make sense. He's messed up a lot of things, and deserves a lot of blame, but the price of gas is not one of them. Gas is not more expensive becuase he is the president and would not be cheaper if he were not the president. Arab and Latin American nations are not restricting oil output becuase of him, they are pumping oil as fast as they can to take advantage of the price. Gas is expensive becuase places like China and India finally have money to buy some. The way to know that a change in demand and not supply explains the high price of gas is to observe that since four years ago, when gas was much cheaper, the quantity produced glboally is almost 15% greater.

President Bush was the second president in American history to finsh his first term with a higher price of oil than the price at the beginning of the term and still win reelection. Americans are in a place to be hit hard when oil prices rise because it's the most variable cost that takes up any sizeable portion of the average family's spending (coffee and produce are also variable, but account for a much smaller portion of our spending). Not only do we spend a lot of money on Gas, but it is not easily substituted away from so we pay for it when the price rises, especially in the short run. Right now oil prices are somewhere around $75 a barell, and adusted for inflation that makes them higher than any time since 1981, the end of the oil crisis. That sounds bad, because in 1981 people were very seriously affected, the government rationed gas with lines and tickets, Presidents (Carter) were removed from office, and federal laws changed the speed limmit to conserve fuel. Today, Americans are much better off even if the price is comprable. That's because the figure doesn't take into account how much wealthier most people are today. In 1981 the average American family spent almost 10% of their income on fuel. That isn't even almost the case for most americans today. As a share of their income, an American family of four spends an average of 3% of their income on fuel--and there is a huge standard deviation because the number varies grately depending on whether you live in a city or a suburb. Some people-commuters and suburban families with big SUVs that they bought when gas was cheap-are more hard hit, but on average Americans are in a much better place to deal with a high gas price. At the end of the day, especially in the short run, people will pay A LOT of money for a liquid with which they may drive several miles on only a few ounces. Europeans have been doing it for a long time.

Nonetheless, people are upset and blame the president. But I don't think the President can or should do anything in response to the price because I believe fuel should be rationed by the market. Let me explain: if the President would do something, most people would probably hope he would subsidize gas prices, open the reserves (which is the same), reduce the tax on gassoline, or allow drilling in the ANWAR. These are all terrible ideas.

Subsidies and gas prices are the most popular ideas, and in my mind almost as dangerous as drilling in Anwar. The market for gassoline works well becuase price allows people to allocate gas between time periods. By making gas expensive when gas is scarce sends people the correct signal that gas is valuable and should be used responsibly. It should not be wasted driving a military vehicle through the suburbs unless you REALLY like to be seen driving said vehicle. And if you really like it, and it really makes you happy, it should cost you a lot. Making the price articificually low allows people to continue to waste gas, not change their lifestyles, and continue to driver irresponsibly large trucks.

Part of me likes it when gas costs a lot becuase it makes me optimistic that it will someday be worth someone's time to invent something that can move a person from one place to another with much less gassoline. Because the investment in the research for such a product would have to be so great for the project to have a reasonable probability of producing a new vehicle, it will only be made if the production of such a vehicle is profitable after the investment. Even now that gas prices have risen almost 35% in the last three years, an individual who used to spend $100 each month putting gas in his car spends a total of 1200 each year, and with the new gas prices, he is spending $420 more each year (assuming he does not drive any less). at an interest rate of ten percent, he would be willing to pay $4200 (420/ 0.1)dollars to secure the old gas prices forever, assuming he would use his car the same amout for the rest of time.

Imagine a techonology that allowed a driver to drive twice as many miles with each gallon of gas--something like a new car or a magical potion you put in your gassoline. Assume that the model driver does not drive more or less with the pill (or that his demand is perfectly inelastic, a completely unrealistic assumption in the long run). How much would the driver be willing to pay for the pill? if he spends 1650 dollars on gas now, he can driver the same amount for $825 each year, saving the other $825 a year. At an interest rate of ten percent, this technology is worth about $8250 dollars to someone who plans to live forever. Say there are 100 million such drivers in the U.S., then the techonology is worth aroud 800 billion dollars. It looks like a lot, but it's less than the U.S. military's budget for two years. Morever, that is the reward IF you can invent the technology and I'm guessing that it is extremely difficult and extremely risky to to produce this technology. Say it cost 400 billion to have a fifty-fifty chance of producing the magical pill that doubles gas mileage. You would be crazy to take what seems like a fair bet with that sum of money. No one would ever do it.

But this technology would probably be worth more if we assume everyone buys the magical potion, and everyone drives the exact same distance, because in that situation the US uses half as much gassoline. It seems fair to assume that it costs less than half as much money to produce half as much gassoline, or that the cost of producing a gallon of gas increases the more gas you produce. The millionth gallon of gas is probably more expensive than the first and, thus, if you reduce by half the amout of gas the U.S. consumes, you would probably also lower the price of a gallon of gassoline (this is the same as saying that the supply curve is upward sloping). So aside from making people need less gas, the cost of gas would be lower, so they would be willing to pay more for it (and more for the technology the more widely used it was, since the more widely used it is the cheaper gas gets).

But this all assumes that people don't drive any more when it costs half as much to drive a mile. Since people don't seem to drive much less when it costs more to drive a mile, this is maybe a reasonable assumption in the short run, but in the long run it is certainly not.

Many environmentalists believe that inventing something that that can double gas mileage is the solution to our problems with air polution. This is incorrect. If we consider that in the long run, people will adjust their driving habits to the reality that they can drive twice as far for the same cost it could well be the case that people use MORE gas in the future than they do at present, making the price of gas increase and not decrease. That would be a net increase in pollution if we assume that burning a gallong of gas always creates the same amout of pollution.

This seems impossible to imagine in the short term, but in the long run I don't have trouble imagining the ways people would change their behavior if driving a mile cost half as much. We would fly in airplaines much less, we shipt things by car more, ship more things, we would have less of a reason to take the subway, and would take a lot more road trips and vacations. This is not to mention the new investments that would be made in making cars faster: if people drive more, then a technology that makes a car drive the same distance with the same amout of gas at a faster speed is a more valuable techonology. This way cars could really compete with air travel and trains even over long distances. I do not have trouble believing that the long-run demand for driving is elastic, which is to say that reducing the cost of driving one mile by one-half would cause people to drive, in the long run, to drive more than twice as much. It would be necessary to test the conclusion, but I would not be surprised if that has happened in the past.

So I believe that oil should be expensive to reflect the fact that a lot of people want it. Hugo Chavez and I disagree on this point and Venezuela heavily subsidizes oil within its own country and also to some extent to the rest of the world. A gallon of gassoline costs U.S. $0.14. (I'm not kidding, less than fifteen cents for a gallon of gassoline. see here; http://money.cnn.com/pf/features/lists/global_gasprices/price.html). This is a problem, and I think it is representative of the sort of problems that arise when politicians abuse power over the market. In Caracas, the streets smell of gassoline (I am told), because oil is so cheap it is wasted. The vehicles get terrible gas mileage and pollute at levels you can't imagine. The rivers are unsafe because of the amount of petroleum drained into them. At the colombian boarder there is a military station and a mountain of gas canisters used to illegally traffic fuel from Venezuela, where it is artifically cheap, to Colombia and the rest of the world where politicians do not interfere with the market so grotesquely. When gas is artificially cheap people use it badly becuase they live in an artificial reality where gassoline is cheaper than bottled water (true! they actually do.). On the margin they use gas very badly: it is not worth the cost to make even very cheap repairs to their cars and busses that would double their gas-mileage. The value of gas, on the margin, at thirty cents a gallon. There are plenty of people in venezuela who would like to trade a gallong of gassoline for thirtry-one cents of food or medicine and plenty of people in the rest of the world would be willing to pay them far more than that. This is a mutually beneficial transaction that is illegal becuase of Venezuelan law, and the world is a worse place because of it. (The law that sets the price at $.14 a gallon must be accompanied by a law that bans its export at that price or people would expore gas until it cost the market price in Venezuela).

This is a good example of people in Latin America exploiting their country's wealth to win elections. Hugo Chavez does this better than anyone else. He is wasting that country's wealth and selling those peoples' oil to gain immediate popularity. He's a meglomaniac and that will cost his country grately in the long run. I believe the extremely high price of oil is what has allowed Chavez to come to such prominence in the international community. His nation's windfall profits have made government spending incredibly important in Venezuela and allowed him to buy votes in his own nation by subsidizing things like gasoline and funding other public programs for the poor. He has also bought respect abroad by buying two billion dollars in argentine treasury notes, which gives him ENORMOUS sway over the Argentine economy, for if he decided to sell all of them at once the Argentine interest rate would have to rise so quickly almost all foreign investment would flee and even that would probably not prevent governmental default. He also did a one billion dollar contract with Iran for defense technologies, built a one billion dollar oil refinary in Brazil, and finances campaigns in Bolivia, Peru, Panama, and Colombia.

Evo Morales in Bolivia, of whom Chavez is an outspoken ally, has recently followed in Chavez's footstepts and nationalized the oil industry there. This is the same sort of policy that is dangrous for the reason that they are scaring foriegn investors away by the bunches, as well as creating abusively powerful governments. They scare investors away becuase of the fear that your capital will be nationalized; there is clearly a much greater risk that your company will be nationalized and prifits seized now that Morales is in power, as such the country and people should expect much less foreign investment and much higher interest rates. This is bad if you are middle class and would like to build a store, shuch as a restaurant, which requires borrowing money. And if it is harder for one person to build a business it is twenty-million times harder for twenty-million people to build an economy.

There is also a long-evidenced trend for countries with great mineral and peroleum deposits to have hugely corrupt governments and as a result, terrible economies. There are a few reasons for this, but the most important is that, since these reserves tend to be owned by the state, the government is in a position to spend a huge amoung of money relative to average incomes and thus the role of president is endowed with an enormous amount of power not different from a dictator. Goverments have a tendency to distort incentives in favor of not working since this is what gets them elected (if they have elections, and interestingly this isn't the case in places like Saudi Arabia, where there are no elections). Moreover, when there is one source of revenue that has one owner and can be auctioned to a private company leaders become particularly corruptible. Becuase exonnmobile is willing to pay so much to access the oil reserves, the value of changing a politicians mind is high, and thus there are plenty of mutually agreeable transactions that constitute corruption (twenty million dollars in campaign contributions for a vote for the right to Nigerian oil reserves, say). Some people call this the curse of oil.

So I don't think oil is too expensive, and I don't think President Bush should do any more, but that doesn't mean that I think he is doing everything right with respect to oil. IF anything, oil is too cheap. Since the American opinion responds to readily to oil prices, the President has every reason to lower them today and no reason to care how much oil costs in the future. He would be happy to get Saudi Arabia to pump all the oil they will pump for the next twenty years during the duration of his presidency, and make the price as low as it is in Venezuela. Americans would be happy, for the next two years. But it's a bad idea, becuase after that the price of oil would get EXTREMELY expensive, far more than it is now (even with less extreme examples). Saudi Arabia doesn't have a reason to do it becuase they would do better to save that oil and sell it later than sell a lot of oil now at a low price. If the market were effeciet we would assume this is what they do, save oil in periods of plenty for the time that it is scarce. But there are good reasons to believe that this does not happen and that Saudi Arabia does not make profit-maxamizing decisions (like Venezuela), but makes political decisions. The US has enormous clout in Saudi politics and no doubt pressures Saudi Arabia and other oil producing nations to producing more, even more than is profit-maximizing, becuase George Bush has no interest in long term oil solvency.

There is an organization that claims to have good evidence that this happens, and is wide spread and oil is too cheap now (despite monopoly powers exercised by OPEC). I cannot find their website at present, but I ment the founder of the PAC at (of all places) a career fair (she used to be an investment banker). She was extremely interesting and has dedicated her time to solving this important problem, trying to get markets and not politics to ration oil over time. Apparently the movie Syriana concerns this (I bought a pirated version, but have not yet watched it).

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/politics/20060509_POLL_RESULTS.pdf

My Favorite Laws in Colombia

2006-05-09T18:04:00.000-07:00

I have two. The first is the law that bans the use of motorcycle helmets. It is not becuase there is a volitile group of hell's angles here but because helmets give the driver anonymity, and in a place where the motorcycle is widely associated with assasins anonymity is dangerous. More dangerous than the motorcycle. So they banned helmets.

The second law is the law that says that if you put bullets in someone else, even a lot of other people, you are not a fellon UNLESS one of the people in whom you put bullets spends more than two weeks in the hospital. If they spend less than two weeks in the hospital, no matter how many people you shoot, you have not attempted to commit murder and do not face real prison time.

I learned this when a friend of mine told me that he was in a club in March when the guy standing next to him pulled out a gun and shot seven people in the legs. The good news was that no one died and in fact, everyone was out of the hospital by the end of the week. The bad news: the police let the shooter out of jail the same day.

Interview with John Kenneth Galbraith

2006-05-09T13:12:00.000-07:00

John Kenneth Galbraith dided last week, and I feel like most people know his name and little else about him. He was, at least nominally, an economist but more accurately remembered as a politican who worked for five US Presidents, serving as the Head of Wartime Price Controls during World War II and JFK's ambassador to India. He was the social planner that other economists only write about. The first quasi-economics book I ever read was The Affluent Society, which is not great economics but it is good social commentary critical of the role of material goods in American society. He believed that new levels of wealth among Americans would not make us happier (this was in the 50s). He worried that the role of the public sector was underrated, and that the obsession with building products like the biggest, fastest automobile corroded at American life by creating ''private opulence and public squalor.'' His willingness to criticize peoples' ability to make decisions for themselves won him more disdain in Economics departments accross the country than any other economist will ever boast.

He was appreciated not becuse he was a brilliant theoretical economist, but an economist with great insight into the American political system, a system from which most economists--by choice or circumstance--are ostricized. He was unusually popular for an ambassador, and Salman Rushdie explains that, "the period that John Kenneth Galbraith was ambassador to India, back in the 60s, was one in which intelligent people still wanted to be involved in politics." I can wholeheartedly reccomend a more obscure book of his, The Triumph, a piece of satire about the State Department's clumbsy efforts to develop the ficticious banana republic, Puerto Santos.

Here is an interview he gave in, yes, Esquire:

A good rule of conversation is never answer a foolish question.

Giving an opinion that people don't want to hear can work both ways. If it's a person you like, it can be very hard. If it's a person for whom you have a major distaste, it can be extremely enjoyable.

My mother died when I was very young, and my father was the dominant force in the family. In southern Ontario, he would have been called a political boss. In good Galbraith fashion, he took his eminence for granted. The most important lesson I received from him was that the Galbraiths had a natural commitment to political adventure.

I would hope I laugh quite a few times a day. I don't seek to add to the solemnity of life.

For any sensible person, money is two things: a major liberating force and a great convenience. It's devastating to those who have in mind nothing else.

Modesty is an overrated virtue.

One of the characteristic features of John E Kennedy was his wonderful commitment to the truth. We had breakfast together on the day I left to be ambassador to India in 1961. The New York Times was on the table and there was a story on the front page about the new ambassador to India. Kennedy pointed to it and said, "What did you think of that story?" which, needless to say, I had read. It wasn't unfavorable. I said I liked it all right but I didn't see why they had to call me arrogant. Kennedy said, "I don't see why not. Everybody else does."

I have no capacity to cook. It's a field of ignorance which I have carefully cultivated.

Franklin D. Roosevelt was good on great issues or small. A great war. A great depression. He presided over both. No question about it--he's the person who most impressed me. In my life, he had no close competitor.
I met Winston Churchill once. I went to a gathering that he assembled one night for a discussion on European union. I was principally impressed by the way his wife grabbed his arm every time he reached for another drink.

I've always thought that true good sense requires one to see and comment upon the ridiculous.

Kitty and I were married in 1937. No question--there is a secret to maintaining a marriage over time: Each partner must systematically subordinate himself or herself to the other. That is the only formula for a happy marriage.

Is it good to have friends whom you don't agree with? Temporarily. But it has always been my purpose to get them to change their minds.

I have managed most of my life to exclude religious speculation from my mode of thought. I've found that, on the whole, it adds very little to economics.

The terrible truth with which we must all contend is that the day may come when nuclear arms fall under the control of some idiot someplace in the world. And that will be the day of reckoning.

I've long been an admirer of Adam Smith, who's greatly praised by conservatives--who unfortunately have never read him. They would be shocked to find some of the things Smith advocates.

Strong government, to some extent, is in response to huge problems.

In richer countries such as ours, I want to see everybody assured of a basic income.

Kennedy sent me to Vietnam in 1961, and I concluded from that visit that this was a hopeless enterprise. The jungle was something with which we could not contend.

I saw John Kennedy on the Cape a few weeks before his death. We spent a day together. Much of that was on a) that he was going to get out of Vietnam, and b) the pressures that he was under from the military.
LBJ and I were both from rural backgrounds--he in Texas and I in Canada. That was the origin of a closer relationship than if I had spent my life as a Harvard elite. We'd been friends for many years, back when he was in Congress. It was very sad that we clashed on Vietnam, but it was an overriding issue. Johnson had one answer which was not entirely unpersuasive. I recall his exact words: "Ken, if you knew what I have to do to contend with the military, you would be glad for what I do." The pressures of the military were very powerful. More powerful than most of us then realized.

If I had to pick out perhaps the greatest achievement that I've seen in all my years, it is in the diminishing role of race and discrimination. We have made greater progress there than I ever anticipated.

A shield against nuclear weapons is foolish. It owes much to the fact that the people advocating it are the people who would be benefiting from the effort.

How much money should a man carry in his wallet when he goes out of the house? I never thought of that.

http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=FB0F15FE3A5B0C738FDDAD0894DE404482

http://www.esquire.com/features/learned/060501_mwi_galbraith.html

Iranian Letter To United States

2006-05-09T12:55:00.000-07:00

It's pretty interesting. I wish our president could write pointed, informed, insincere letters like this.

http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-727571,36-769886,0.html

Work

2006-05-08T08:51:00.000-07:00

So the firm I will work with this summer is putting together some kind of picture book or yearbook for firm members so we don't have to wear nametags when the whole company (some 150 people) goes to Key Byscane next month. I'm really grateful that they are bringing summer associates (me), but I just recieved an e-mail asking some questions for picture-book related program activities, and I'm confused. Some of the questions are a bit cheasy, but it's better than nametags. More concerning is that I do not have honest answers to the questions. Maybe someone else can help me make up answers. Here they are:

1. If you could go back in time to any era, what date would you choose and why?
2. What future discovery do you anticipate the most and why?
3. What storyteller has been most influential in your life? What story is most vivid to you?
4. If someone made a movie of your life, what genre would the film fall under (e.g. comedy, drama, science fiction, etc) and who would play the leading role?
5. What restaurant in your home-office city have you enjoyed the best meal?

Also, Jennifer Lee sent me an interesting news article. Mexico is well on its way to decriminalizing consumer-quantities of even 'hard' drugs like cocaine and heroin. The intention of the legislation was to allow law enforcement to focus on drug narcotraficos. I don't know how I feel about it. It is good for Mexico becuase it's a step in the right direction, but I generally favor consistent public policies. I they are begining to legalize the demand side but continue to criminalise the supply of drugs. If this law increases the demand for drugs, it will only make the drug trade more profitable and thus more violent and corrupt. A big step for Fox though, whose party is (unfortunately) not likely to win in the next election.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=1903350

A Bogotá Emergency Room, Immigration

2006-05-06T17:05:00.000-07:00

I haven't written anything meaningful on this thing in a long time but I wanted to write about a few things. I am still in Bogotá and feeling much better. I even went out last night. This is a significant improvement since Tuesday, which I spent in a Bogotá emergency room. Any day about which you can say, 'I spent 13 hours in a Bogotá Emergency Room´is a bad day. Tuesday was not bad because I was sick, though I was quite sick with the Malaria making me insane and dizzy, but the day was really ruined by all of the blood and needles and waiting that were involved. Those are three of my least favorite things in the world (and if you add cockroaches, I would go ahead and say they are my four least favorite things on earth). I sent Anisha, who, again, shares all of my fears, a pretty graphic e-mail about it. I don't care to relieve the memory so I'll copy and paste:

I went to the hospital to get blood tests and they took a vile of blood with a needle and did a test for hemoparasites which came back negative (big surprise since malaria is a hemoparasite). An hour later a doctor told me to go to the emergency room. So i waited in a Bogotá emergency room for five hours and before I saw a doctor who said, 'you seem like you have malaria, let's do that test again.' And then we're going to do another test to see if you have other tropical illnesses like dengue. And so they took TWO MORE viles of BLOOD with BIGGER viles and LONGER NEEDLES. And THEN both of those tests were negative, which indicated that I am fine, except that I was clearly not. SO THEN they put an IV in. I never realized how good american hospitals are until I got an IV in a colombian hospital.

The first thing you need to understand is that I have ENORMOUS veins. The second thing you need to understand is that I have a pathological fear of hypodermic needles. I've had IVs twice before when I had surgery, and it was EASY for them to stick the thing in my HUGE VEINS. But this nurse messed up FOUR TIMES putting an HUGE needle in me but missed the vein. (I'm shaking just writing about it). Thank god the FIFTH time she got it, but even when the needle was in, it was the worst IV ever. I had to spend THREE HOURS with a HUGE NEEDLE in my hand that was taped very badly and it made me shake and it was like living the squeemishness that you have when they draw blood and you don't want to look, except it was like doing that for THREE HOURS. IT WAS TORTURE. THEN THEY WANTED TO KEEP ME OVER NIGHT BECASE IT WAS LATE.
I said 'NO!' 'NO WAY AM I STAYING HERE SIMPLY BECAUSE IT'S LATE. TAKE THIS BIG NEEDLE OUT OF ME AND LET ME GO'. and THEY WOULDN'T TAKE THE NEEDLE OUT OF ME. AND I WAS MAD AND SQEEMISH and at one point I just started laughing hysterically and that hurt like hell because every time I moved I was shaking the needle in my vein and that made me squeem more and that hurt moree. IT was a vicious cycle or a Catch-22. I hated it.

So the nutrients they were putting into me drained after an hour of needle-in-hand terror, but I waited through TWO MORE HOURS before I removed the IV MYSELF. And then I left the hospital after quite the bureaucratic ordeal, an argument with a nurse, signing papers that said I was leaving despite their reccomendation not to (becase it was late), and paying my 30 dollar bill.

The ER was really sad. The waiting room was about 200 mothers crying about the condition of their babies and some people with very serious problems. I felt pretty terrible but the realization that there was a good chance that some of the children in the room would not live until tomorrow made me feel a lot... worse. At about 9 PM the gun shot wounds started to come in. While gunshot happen everywhere, I was shocked by how quotidian it was here. On the form you fill out explaining why you are in the ER you can check a box to indicate that you were hurt in a terrorist attack.

So here is what the doctor's opinion on what happened to me is: I had malaria that I must have contracted the day I got to Leticia and I treated it really early (saturday night) with anti-hemoparastics which explain why it doesn't show up on blood tests. There is no other explanation of the symptoms of the fact that the anti-hemoparastics work so well (unless it was Dengue, which has similar symptoms and is also a blood parastie). Because it was treated early, I am going to be fine. The intravenious nutrients, while painfull and I certailny would not have admitted it at the time, did help. I feel fine now.

This is the last time I want to write about my health.

In other news, I gave a lecture last thursday (moved because of the night I spent in the hospital). I talked about immigration, as this is in the news in the US and concerns Colombians in no small way (Miami being the third largest Colombian city in the world).

I don't know which reform I do support with respect to immigration law, but I can criticize all of them. From what I can tell, the problem people in American have is a problem with ILLEGAL immigrants, who number 11.5 million and account for 4.5% of the labor force. I am stealing a summary from Gary Becker here, But it seems there are six different approachs one could take toward the problem of illegal immigration. It's important to distinguish these proposals from ways to address the IMMIGRATION issue. As long as the US is not legally open to everyone, there will be people illegally entering. These problems propose to deal only with them :

1) The US can continue its current policy of beefing up border security, and sending apprehended illegal immigrants back to Mexico, or wherever else they came from. Meanwhile undocumented workers who are not caught remain eligible for various kinds of health care, schooling for their children, and other benefits.
2) Illegal immigration could be discouraged by giving apprehended aliens jail sentences before sending them back to where they came from.
3) Employers could be punished for hiring illegal workers.
4) Illegal immigrants could be allowed to come, but would be ineligible for government transfers, such as health benefits or schooling (read: legally codified second-class citizenship)
5) Illegal immigrants could come and be eligible for all the public benefits available to other residents.
6) Illegal immigrants could be allowed to remain for a certain number of years if they have jobs, but then they would have to go back after their time expires, whether or not they are still employed.

Becuase I think none of these solutions 'work' (what it means to 'work' I don't know), I propose that the only thing that will reduce the number of illegal immigrants is that the United States complete the annexation of Mexico. By this I mean to say, nothing that is feasible will reduce the number of illegal immigrants:

1) The present policy of sending back apprehended aliens is not effective in deterring illegal immigration since many of them simply turn around and cross the border again. Various studies show that it is easy with enough persistence to come across from Mexico, guided by "coyotes" who do not charge very much relative to what immigrants would be willing to pay. I doubt whether the recent tightening up of border patrols will do much to raise the cost of crossing illegally. It is commong to read about people putting themselves in shipping containers for months at a time and risking their lives with very dangerous ploys to get into the country. This makes me believe that it is, on the margin, very costly to prevent one more person from entering the country, and ery unlikely that, once sent back, they will not try again.

2) It's both unpopular and cruel to give significant jail sentences to illegal aliens whose only crime is that they want to come to the US, usually seeking higher wages and better working consditions. Without such a punishment, immigrants will continue to cross the border in large numbers, attracted to earning that are greater by a factor between five and ten. Since a punishment is the only thing that really could deter them, and since that punishment seems both cruel and costly (locking someone up in a country before making them leave), illegal immigration is going to be a reality so long as the US remains a realtively better place to live.

3) The 1986 immigration law barred employers from hiring illegal immigrants, but it did not help employers determine when potential employees had forged documents. It is cheap to buy forged social security cards, green cards, and anything else that would certify an employee is in this country legally. Unless that defect is overcome, and it will not be easy, the courts will continue to be reluctant to punish employers for hiring workers who turn out to be here illegally.

4) As for allowing immigrants to come and work but denying them government services like education and mandatory legal protection, I think this would be a perhaps acceptable solution if I would convinced that immigrants were a costly burden in terms of the services they use, but when you consider that most of them pay social security tax and are ineligiable for benefits, they are probably a net wash (though the effect is disproportionate, becuase education is the burden of local governments and social security taxes are paid to the federal government). Given what I think is a pretty negligable cost, I don't think it is in any way acceptable to have second class citizens who cannot attend public schools and are not afforded mandatory legal protections on the basis that they were born south of the Rio Grande. This is the kind of solution that is easy to talk about before the fact, but when there are groups of children not in school and sick people unable to go to hospitals, we realize it was not a very desireable solution. That said, even if we did this there are plenty of people who would be happier in the United States without government services than in their native countries.

6) Finally the president's proposal. In 2006 he said:

"I propose a new temporary worker program that will match willing foreign workers with willing American employers, when no Americans can be found to fill the jobs. All who participate in the temporary worker program must have a job, or, if not living in the United States, a job offer. The legal status granted by this program will last three years and will be renewable -- but it will have an end. Participants who do not remain employed, who do not follow the rules of the program, or who break the law will not be eligible for continued participation and will be required to return to their home.

Employers who extend job offers must first make every reasonable effort to find an American worker for the job at hand. Employers must not hire undocumented aliens or temporary workers whose legal status has expired. All participants will be issued a temporary worker card that will allow them to travel back and forth between their home and the United States without fear of being denied re-entry into our country.

This program expects temporary workers to return permanently to their home countries after their period of work in the United States has expired. Some temporary workers will make the decision to pursue American citizenship. They will not be given unfair advantage over people who have followed legal procedures from the start. I oppose amnesty, placing undocumented workers on the automatic path to citizenship. Granting amnesty encourages the violation of our laws, and perpetuates illegal immigration. America is a welcoming country, but citizenship must not be the automatic reward for violating the laws of America.'

If a good idea is an idea that solves the problems it seeks to solve, then this is not a good idea. You cannot solve the problem of illegal immigration by calling them legal immigrants for six years. That creates a bigger problem for a different president. There is no reason to believe someone who is illegal today will willfully leave after working in the US for six years. I'll go a bit further and say that there is every reason to believe that they won't. I can imagine the news stories in six years about the millions of well established, hard working, property owning families being forced to leave the country where their children are in school and leave the job they have been performing for the last six years.

Second, a long term policy of occasionally affording legal status to illegal immigrants only makes illegal immigration more attractive. Making illegal immigration exceptionally attractive is not heplful to someone who wants fewer illegal immigrants.

Assume for a moment we are sure that we want fewer illegal immigrants (I don't think this is at all clear): short of annexing Mexico, there are two things that will reduce the number of illegal imigrants in the country: making illegal immigration harder and making legal immigration from the home-countries of most illegal immigrants easier . I mentioned why I don't think making illegal immigration harder is going to be very worthwile so we are left with making immigration easier, which I personally support.

It is a usefull question then, what the cost to the United States is of allowing one more immigrant in legally? I believe it is a net gain becuase I believe that the bigger and freer the market for labor is the more likely it is that labor will be allocated to its most productive location. Why should anyone care if labor is allocated to its most productive location? Becuase this is what makes the economy effecient, or producing the most output with the least effort. It makes the most of everyone's skils. It is the same reason we like the division of labor in the first place, and don't like being self-sufficient in the absence of markets. In short, it is why people like markets.

But since it makes the most of everyone's skills, free flow of labor is unattractive to people who lack skills but live in places where skills are common. There are many Mexicans who would like to work in the US becuase it pays better (because the work is more productive) and there are many employers who would like to hire them at that higher wage. This is a mutually agreeable transaction. Unfortunately, there are also a lot of people who perform jobs that require little skill and that a lot of people can do. These people had the good fortune of being born in the United States where low skill labor pays relatively well (Now, I'm not saying these people are lucky people, they are generally poor high school dropouts in the US with no shortage of other problems aside from their lack of human capital).

So the problem is, while immigration is a net gain, there are people who immediately loose. This is the same problem faced when reduced tariffs allow the outsourcing of jobs. I also believe strongly that outsorcing or globalization are in the general long-term interest of society, but the same group of people will feel the burn. But it is not obvious that even the least skilled native-born Americans loose.

There are many who say that immigrants steal american jobs. This succumbs to the falacy that there are a fixed number of jobs in the economy. Immediately, the argument seems to make sense (And people like the Minutemen love to explain it in economic terms!): You have more people willing to perform a job so the price of labor goes down ('Supply and Demand!' they exclaim) and Americans are unwilling to work for low wages so immigrants do the work.

But if the price of labor goes down, opperating any business becomes more profitable. If I own a restaurant and my labor costs are, say, cut in half and let's say labor is half of my total cost, my resturant (and all other potential restaurants) could be as much as 25% more profitable (not a small 'raise'). The raise makes me or other investors want to build more restaurants or farms or Home Depots or whatever. What anti-immigration advocates don't realize is that the wage depends not only on the supply of labor but on the capital stock. Of course, this takes time. So you should have a lower wage, yes, but also more restaurants, and if you have a lower wage still, restaurant food or farm products or consumer services that employ immigrants will be cheaper, which means people will have money left over to spend elsewhere, creating new opportunities for employment and increasing the demand for labor. This is progress, and the theory would predict that, in the long run, there is no effect on the wages of native born workers, but that there are more good produced. And if there is complementarity between their jobs, both groups could expect to earn more because the total productivity of the workforce would improve.

The total effect of immigration on the wages of a native worker depends on the capital stock and the substutability of labor. If you have a college degree, immigration is probably not a threat to you since it tends to be low skilled. Immigrants compose 11 percent of the total work force but 24 percent of the workforce of high school dropouts. There is a greater degree of substutability, so these are the peole who stand to loose. (But I suspect the degree of substability is still small, based on what I imagine is a pretty strong preference for native born workers, all else equal).

One way to test this is to look at cities with a large percentage of immigrants and compare them with cities with few immigrants. According to David Card, an economist at Berkeley, the relative number of immigrants doesn't make a difference in the wages, even for low skilled workers. But there is a problem with this: If it did make a difference, and wages at Wal-Mart were higher in Indianapolis than in Los Angeles because of the relative number of immigrants, the market would correct that and workers would leave LA to work in Indianapolis. There doesn't however, seem to be much evidence for this, especially since there is no obvious reason immigrants wouldn't go to where wages pay the most.

Another approach is that of George Borjas at Harvard. He tries to tease out the effect of immigration from national wage statistics. Borjas divides people into categories, according to their education and work experience. He assumes that workers of different types are not easily substitutable for each other, but that immigrants and natives within each category are (strong assumptions, I think). By comparing wage trends in categories with lots of immigrants against those in groups with only a few, he derives an estimate of immigration's effect.

In English: using regression analysis, he estimatees the value of a year of education and how well it explains (predicts) income, assuming years of education effect income linearly (each extra year increases income by the same amount). He can therefore estimate how much of a category's wealth is explained by their education level, but sees that education alone does not explain the difference in income. He observes that high school dropouts and people with no college experience earn less than more educated people, but they earn TOO MUCH less. Then he factors in the percentage of immigrants in each group and concludes that the percentage of immigrants in each group negatively affects wage even when holding for education (This was much harder to explain in spanish!).

His headline conclusion is that, between 1980 and 2000, immigration caused average wages to be some 3% lower than they would otherwise have been. Wages for high-school drop-outs were dragged down by around 8%.

There are a couple problems with this study too. He assumed that workers within the same category were perfectly substutable. That is, he assumed the only thing that explains the difference between the wage of a native worker and an immigrant are education levels, an assumption that would overstate the effect of immigration.

The much larger problem is that these numbers do not take into accunt the re-allocation of capital. He did not consider that people invest and build new factories because of immigration, and thus immigration's effect on wages could only be negative. The number of jobs increased because of immigration, which he ignores. When he adjusts for this, the effect of the overall average wages is zero and the effect on high school dropouts is less than five percent.

There is a tendency to want to have an bianary opinion: Immigration is either good or bad for America. But it's hard to talk about what's good for a nation of 300 million people. At the end of the day, I believe more immigration is not very bad for anyone and for most people it is are very good (a more efficient economy produces more stuff with greater ease). This kind of cost-benefit analysis does not take into account the real winners from immigration: immigrants. When I consider how much better many peoples' lives are because they have come to the United States it becomes very clear to me that in general there are not engouh legal immigrants in the United Satates. I think in general the conversation about immigration in the US ignores the effect on immigrants, which if we are concerned about the general welfare of the world, matters very much. The optimal number of immigrants in the United States depends on the extent to which they increase productivity, decrease wages, increase purchasing power, but also on the amount by which their own lives improve.

For this reason, I believe we probably have too many immigrants from Mexico and too few from Sudan. Assume that the first people who will break the law and risk their lives to get into the United States are the most desperate, or the people with the worst opportunities outside the US (this is partly why we have more illegal immigrants from poor countries than rich countries, it's also much easier to immigrate). Then the easier it is to immigrate from a nation, the less desperate the immigrants from that nation will be. Becuase it is easier to be an illegal immigrant from Mexico than any other country, the marginal immigrant (the person indifferent between illgealy immigrating and staying in Mexico) is probably in a much better situation than the marginal illegal immigrant in Sudan, who probably takes a much more serious risk when he tries to illegally immigrate.

That said, because I think the marginal Mexican immigrant is still improving his or her situation grately and is not a burden on society, I think more immigration from every nation is ideal. But it is a problem that, becuase illegal immigration (as opposed to legal immigration) is a common means of immigration into the US, people from Central America have an undeserved advantage over immigrants from Africa, Asia, or Eastern Europe. If we legalized more immigration we could make better decisions about who can come to the United States (that is not to say that allowing more Sudanese in will reduce illegal immigration from Mexico!).

There is something that should be said about the burden immigrants impose on society. The New York Times ran a story that said immigrants, even illiegal immigrants, do not commit any more crime than native born citizens. The Minutemen criticize this statistic citing a the fact that the latino population has an incarceration rate much higher than the anglo population. I think this is profound racism in practice: when discussing immigration, we are not considering an anglo nation versus a latin population. The native-born, legal residents of this country are 15% latino and 15% black and 4% asian. They have ignored 34% of the country because they are not white. This supports my opinion that the minutemen are not motivated by rational economic motives but are a bunch of racists.

I don't know if i believe that illegal immigrants commit less crime or more crime. On the one hand, as an illegal immigrant, the cost of commiting a crime is high becuase it's very likely that you will be deported for even misdemeanors. On the other hand, when you are an illegal immigrant, you have no legal recourse in settling disputes and become an ideal target for crime, thus it makes sense that they would live in societies where crime is more abundant. One thing I am sure of, though, is that legal immigrants commit significantly fewer crimes than legal residents since the stakes are high and they do have access to the law and protection from the police.

If you believe that the only way to stop illegal immigration is to develop the nations from which illegal immigrants emigrate, it is important that immigration (legal and illegal) has a negative effect on the countries which immigrants leave. Immigrants, legal and illegal, tend to be exceptional. The type of person who leaves the land where he was born is not an ordinary person, but someone willing to take risks and accept large changes in their life. They are the sort of person a developing country like Mexico needs in their economy, becuase they tend to be entrupenurial. I remember hearing Carlos Salinas (former Mexican President/Caudillo) speak in Chicago; he finished his speach with a very moving appeal for Mexican emigrants to consider coming back.

This is why you see so many immigrants driving taxis or owning small businesses in big citties relative to their share of the population. There is no shortage of people able to drive a cab, but there is a shortage of people willing to take out at huge loan and invest $200k in a taxi medallion. The reason you don't see the same percentage of native born citizens driving taxis and building restaurants or their own grocery stores is because most people with that kind of work ethic or ambition who were born in the United States got an education and does something else. I have no trouble believing that most of the Cab drivers in Chicago would not be driving cabs if they had been giving a good public education in America. In countries where an education is not allocated to those most willing to work for it, (but allocated by something arbitrary like parent's wealth) you find abmitious people with little formal training. In my opinion, immigrants are exactly the sort of people most Americnas should want in their country and the fact that it is a nation composed almost wholly of immigrants explains why it is the most productive economy in the world.

Finally, I want to say something unrelated to economic effeciency, and that is that people born south of the 42 parallel and north of the Rio Grande river don't, for any reason I can explain, deserve more based on that merrit. Even the poorest people in the United States live with standards of health, security, and comfort unknown to more than a billion people in the world. (the second income percentile, the second poorest 3 million Americans, have a life expectancy that is at least fifteen years longer than some one billion people in the world). I simply cannot think of an ethical reason for disallowing desperate people who want to work in this country from doing so. I know a lot of people regard culture as being at risk when immigration is discussed. I do not know how I feel about such arguments, but maybe I'll think about it and write more later.

I also wanted to mention a solution that a lot of economists find attractive and that is the market solution, selling immigration rights in the U.S. If you had effecient capital markets, this would ensure that spots in the States were rationed to those most willing to work or who wanted to enter the most. These immigrants would be younger than older, as a young adult would have more years of a higher income to gain from the purchase. They would also tend to be more skillful workers, as these workers tend to gain the most from immigrating (read: doctors driving taxis in Iran). People who intended to leave the country after a few years would be discouraged.

If the government could pick a number of immigrants they wanted, they would simply fix the price so that the market cleared at that quantity. Say the U.S. charged sixty thousand dollars for the right to immigrate. If we assumed people are not capital constrained, the pay-back period for most immigrants of a sixty thousand dollar or higher entrance fee would generally be short-less than the usual pay-back period of a typical university education. For example, if skilled individuals could earn $10 an hour in a country like India or Iran, and $40 an hour in the United States, by moving they would gain $60,000 a year (no taxes and assuming 2000 hours of work per year). The higher earnings from immigrating would cover the fee in about a year. It would take not much more than four years to earn this fee even for an unskilled person who earns $1 an hour in his native country, and could earn $8 an hour in the U.S. On top of that, if one million people immigrate in a year, the U.S. will see 50 billion dollars in revenue.

I don't know how I feel about this. For one thing, I believe most people are rather capital constrained and the apparent fairness would be lost. Secondly, I think other constraints, like refugee status, make a more selective program desirable.

I Am Still Okay

2006-05-05T17:20:00.000-07:00

More later... Really.

God Parts Clouds, I Make It To Bogotá

2006-05-01T21:10:00.000-07:00

Apparently, some people were worried I died or something. I am in Bogotá, I'm just late because my flight was five hours late. It's also may first, the international labor day (and the day the statue in from of Pick Hall at the U of C is supposed to cast a hammer and sickle shadow, but no doubt it was cloudy), which is a holiday in all places not the US. So every internet cafe was closed and every telephone booth was closed. I had to come to a hostel I'm not staying in to send a few e-mails. I should go, but worry not, I am alive. I also feel much better. more later.

I Can't Get Out of The Jungle!

2006-04-30T13:01:00.000-07:00

Aside from making me cranky and tired and sore the malaria has made me stupid. I should not be in Leticia right now. I should be descending onto Bogotá like my bags are. But, no, I am in Leticia, and in Leticia with no clothes.

I went the the airport, arrived early, got my ticket, got it stamped by the police and I was ready to leave. I even made sure they put my spear on the plane carefully. So then I walked down the hall and sat down at a table where I saw a lot of people waiting around a window through which I could see my airplane. I started to read but really just spaced out for a while. I looked up, saw more and more people in the group waiting to board the plane, and looked back down and tried to read. Eventually I looked at my watch and realized it was about fifteen minutes before the flight was supposed to leave. I got up and walked through the tiny airport to where I had checked my bags. I asked a guard where I was supposed to board the plane. He said `oh, it's too late, you missed it'. I said, 'no!' and I pointed out the windown to the plane. I said 'I can see the plane. it's right there. He said, 'yeah, but you've missed it. they have already boarded.' I turned to the agent who checked my bags and she said 'what happened?' and I said I was waiting to board the plane. I thought I was supposed to bored over there.' she said, 'no, that's a restaurant'. i said, uselessly, 'then why are there so many people waiting in there'. She didn't know either, but she said it was too late. I said I really needed to get to bogotá, she said I would have to leave tomorrow. I had the same conversation four more times before everyone decided I was totally stupid.

They were right, it was clearly written out that the boarding area was in one place. If I had been in a mood for reading I would have seen that I was in a restaurant. I think two things happened. First, I assumed the airport was so damn small any group of people waiting must be the waiting area. Second, I was completely out of it. And now I was out of it and angry. I was furious in the way that people are furious when something goes wrong and it is no one's fault but their own. I asked them to call bogotá to make sure my bags would be safe and they did. Then, because I was mad, I asked if they thought it was a safe practice to load bags onto an airplane when the owner is not on the same airplane. I told them this was not done in other countries. They were sort of offended becuase no colombian likes to be suspected of not taking security precautions seriously. I apologized becuase I think I had really crossed the line. Then I left the airport.

I was sad because I knew I would have to spend another night with malaria in the same hotel in the same heat and this time I wouldn't have clean clothes. And when you are in this kind of mood it is the appropriate kind of defiance to refuse to take a cab and, in fact, to tell the cab driver who keeps offering you a ride to go away and that you can walk to the city. It was childish, yes, but I had nothing else to do but walk. While I was walking I looked at my watch to see that it was 12:30, the time my flight was going to leave. Then I heard a loud noise, I looked up and saw my flight leave with may bags that contain everything I have in colombia minus my passport, some cash, a book, and a camera. Everything else is in Bogotá, which is, i suppose, in another hemisphere.

I found a peruvian restaurant and I ate lunch and a nice peruvian woman talked to me and we have a nice conversation. I told her my story and she thought it was funny. I was relieved to discover that tomorrow is a holiday and that I don't have school. She told me she had a daughter who studies in Bogotá and she gave me her phone number and told me to call her and that she would cook me peruvian food.

As I left, I saw the same cab driver who took me to the airport. He laughed. He picked me up and took me the rest of the way to the city for free. He offered to take me to a bar but that was obviously a bad idea.

So now I have nothing to do. It is a sunday and I can't even buy a pair of shorts in this small, small town. I've elected to pass the time by drinking three litres of water (The largest bottle you can buy on a sunday in leticia) and reading about Malaria.

So I Have Malaria

2006-04-30T07:26:00.000-07:00

So when my friend said 'you'll know' when you get malaria, he was right. I have Malaria and I know it.

I hope that I don't spend a night as uncomfortable as last night for a very long time. When I got off the boat I went straight back to my cheap, bad, seven dollar amazonian hotel and put my bags down. I was pretty tired, but I made myself go buy a bottle of water and a spear. I ate something and realized I didn't feel so good. I drank a lot of gatorade and went to an internet cafe where I tried to write an e-mail just as the power went out (this happens a lot). I left and stopped by a pharmacy which was the only store with a power generator and bought another bottle of water and as I was leaving to stumble through the dark streets to find my hotel I realized that it would be a good idea to pick up some kind of medicine in case I do actually have malaria. I asked the pharmacist what kind of medicine people take when they have malaria and he looked at me sort of scared. I told him I thought my friend had malaria, then he was polite and handed me two kinds of pills and said my friend should take them every eight hours.

I found my hotel room in the dark and realized that this was going to be a very bad night. My 'hotel' is really a large house for a small family that has a long of small rectangles of rooms that have a block of cement in the shape of a bed on which there are some cushions. There is a window with no screen, a fan and a light. Because the power was out, there was no light and there was no fan. I found my flashlight after a nauseating frustration that made me want to cry. I turned it on to discover that my room was full of cockroaches. There were probably ten in avery small room. But the worst part was, they were not all on the floor, they were on the ceiling and on the walls and as I would later discovcer, they could fly. If you know how much I hate cockroaches, and if you know how big Amazonian cockroaches are, and you've had malaria in 100 degree weather with no fan, you can imagine how I felt. It was not long after that that I felt so dizzy and feverish that I KNEW I had malaria. I had be humming the same damn Juanes song (the one that starts out 'cuando me dices por media voz...') for hours and all I could think about was the proof that pi is irrational. The thoughts were repeating themselves. I was sweating and shivering at once. I was dizzy and I didn't want to stand up. I had been worried earlier about not having a screen on the window because of the bugs but at this point I didn't care. I had a fever and I was cold and I really disliked thinking about the cockroaches so I did the only thing one can do and turned off my flashlight so I didn't have to see them, took my pills and tried to go to sleep.

I kept thinking about cockroaches and that juanes song, not much math anymore. I woke up in the middle of the night becuase I was really hot and thirsty. I turned on my flashlight to find that the bottle of watter I had set on the table was covered with the same big amazonian cockroaches. I turned it back of and tried to go back to sleep.

I woke up at six am to find all the cockroaches gone. I went to go take a shower and realized that the family who owns the hotel has a pet monkey in the washroom which is right next to the bathroom. It was all I could do to brush my teeth. I wanted to shave, but it was too much work. I'm pretty gross right now and I think I'm going to go to the airport or something. I came here to read about the symptoms of malaria.

I won't describe it, but if you want to know how I feel, you can read this:
http://www.emedicinehealth.com/malaria/page3_em.htm

Also, I think this article by Malcolm Gladwell, of whom I am a big fan, is pretty interesting about wy malaria is such a problem in some places and about a great Malaria warrior, Fred Soper. I've revised some of my opinions about malaria and i'll have mroe to say about that, probably when I feel more like writing.
http://www.gladwell.com/2001/2001_07_02_a_ddt.htm

Anyway, I'm pretty sure this is malaria and it sucks. I'll be in bogotá soon.

Walter Lamberson Can Survive in The Jungle OR The Amazon Is Incredible!

2006-04-29T14:48:00.000-07:00

I lived! Seeing the Amazon was one of the most incrediable experiences in my life. Spending five days in the Amazon should be some kind of minimal requirement for having strong opinions on enviornmental degredation, sustainable development, the assimilation of indigenous cultures, how dirty you can be, and how big cockroaches can get.

I wish I could aptly describe the Amazon. If I could put pictures online that would help, but I don't know where the start. Wikipeida says that one square kilometre of Amazon rainforest can contain about 90,000 tons of living plants. That is meaningless to most people who are reading this because it in units of kilometers and 'tons of living plants'. But it sounds like a whole lot. It's unfathomably diverse. After five days I needed not do more than open my eyes to find vegetation I had never seen before. It's a weird way to feel. I have some expectation of pattern recognition that had to go unfulfilled. However, in selva segundaria (rainforest that is not virgin, or has been deforested in the past (read: used to be a farm)) the biodiversity is much, much less.

Among the things that shocked me was how much of the forst had been deforested around this area. Most of the forest that was on 'dry' land was formerly a farm. Starting in the late 1800s people went nuts to farm the Amazon. IT's a good farm for a few reasons: stuff grows quickly and it is functionally an international port (I didn't realize that ocean-going ships can take the Amazon up to Iquitos, Peru--it's that big). The farm land is rather poor as it is not the minerals in the soil that allow the Amazon to host all that it hosts. The amazon is such a forest because of the abundance of fresh water from the Andes and the sunlght present near the equator at a low elevation. Evolution acts quickly in such an environment. In the absence of trees falling and rotting all the time, there is nothign to fertalize crops and after one or two years the farms are basically infertile.

Most of the land which is dry year-round had been deforested at some point, and after a while I got good at identifying selva segundaria. It is not as diverse, the trees are smaller and all of about the same height and, interstingly, the trees are straighter as opposed to curved. The curvature of the trees in selva primaria is incredible becuase the dense canopy of trees makes it very difficult for new trees to find sunlight so they grow in the direction where it is present, making them interesting, curvy things. The selva segundaria had very few Ceibas, my favorite tree in the forest (everyone's favorite tree in the forst) because of it's enormous size (they can get to be 150' tall). They are so large they host an ecosystem of their own. Trees grow within them, mamals and birds nest in their branches, and there is an infinitude of insects that live in and under their bark and roots. They are, quite simply, the grandest trees in the world. They are rather endagered. I climbed one with rock climbing equipment. It was one of best things I've ver done. I can't wait to see the pictures I took from above the canopy of the forest. (you might remember these trees from the Sean Connery film 'Medicine Man'. I believe in that movie they cure cancer.).

About 25 years ago the Colombian government started buying a lot of farms from the indigenous (for, and I asked some indians, very low prices). They allowed these to grow back into rainforest. So there are few farms now, but there is a lot of selva segundaria wherever there is dry land.

Fortunately, there is not much dry land. Or not much land that is dry year-round (including this month). I had a notion that the Amazon Rain Forest was something through which one could walk. I did not do as much walking as I expected but I did a lot more paddling. Along most of the river one would have to paddle ten Km in either direction to reach actual dry land. How there the place where the river ends is not the river bank, and how there are islands that are not made of land is hard to explain. There is dense, dense forest (think swamp) whose base is underwater for most of the year. The land that is 'inundable' was impossible to farm because, well, it spends most of the year under water. So it's virgin forest. Only in the summer when the water levels drop can one walk through any of it. Here you can see what the land used to look like. It is incredible.

My guide, who is really more of a nice guy with a boat than a professional tour guide, is from an indegenous village called Moncagua about four hours by slow boat from Leticia. This is where I spent two nights. I say it is indigenous for the reason that the people who live there are of indigenous ancestory. I don't know what else makes it indigenous. Most of them speak spanish, and they live, while in relative poverty, in the same way many mestizos in Leticia do. They have some electricity (sometimes), access to cities like Leticia and they work to sustain themselves each day by catching fish, picking bannanas, and growing some crops (yuca). They use currency to the extent that they have to (not much considering there is no real division of labor) but many possessions are the property of the community as a whole. I thought this was interesting. The community owns cows and there is a Curaca (a word I was surprised to hear and remember from Latin American civ class) who regulates community labor, which each family (there are about 50) must provide. Only males must perform community labor. I was very glad to have stayed in Moncagua.

People like the 400 residents of Moncagua, whom I like very much, constitute a significant threat to the Amazon. There are laws to protect the Amazon and in most of the seven countries where it florishes they are quite strong. The problem is with enforcement. Laws are good at protecting the Amazon from multinational corporations--paper mills etc--because it is realatively easy to enforce such laws. It is much more difficult to prosecute a tribe of indigenous people who farm the land to grow food, especially when these people live in abject poverty relative to most Colombians or Brazilians. They are not starving, most of them and right now. But there are things they want that can get by cutting down rain forest, like Yuca, a big root food that is very important to them. I watched a community labor force led by the Curaca of the puelo destroy about an acre of rainforest in under an hour. I don't know how I feel about this.

For a lot of people, their poverty justifies the descruction of the forest. And they are poor but it's hard to know how poor one must be to destroy the rainforest. First, because there is a very misleading notion of a 'minimum standard of living' in conversations about such things. There is no such thing as a bare minimum of food or money or calories that allow people to live below which they will die. There are degrees to which people aproach life and approach death all the time. More food improve peoples quality of life and it's absence degrades it, but nature did not do us the service of deliniating a line below which man cannot survive. Some of the people go to sleep hungry and little have any money at all but some of them have televisions. Almost none of them have medical service or cars (or roads) or pluming or bread but some of them have DVD players and all most of them have plentiful access to fish. (I have eaten nothing but fish and fruit for the last three days).

So it's complicated. And I don't know how I feel. But I have a few thoughts. The first is that the American environmental movement is really quite misguided. The forests of North America are beautiful and we should dedicate resources to protecting them by paying people not to farm them, pollute them, log them or hunt in them. But they are not the only forests that need protection. The Amazon is one of the most beautiful things in the world and no one dedicates nearly enough to protecting it (I don't have any numbers at all, can you tell?). I would guess that that acre of Amazon we spend well under one-onehundredth on environmental protection that we spend protecting each acre of National Forest in the U.S. We should not spend anymore protecting some of the more banal national forests of Missouri, but rather reallocate to protect something that is beautiful and in dire need of protection. I say this not only because I think the Amazon is more beautiful than Missouri but we spend more protecting Missouri, but also becaust it would be SO EASY to protect the Amazon. I watched twenty boys destroy an acre of forest in an hour with Machetes to grow Yuca (a crop that really has no U.S. equal) for two years before they have to destroy more to grow more. I don't know much about Yuca, but I'm going to guess that the amount 400 people use in two years is a pretty small price to pay for an acre of Amazon.

My second thought involves the Ceiba and how few of them there were in the selva segundaria (none) relative to how many there are in the Primavaria. They were cut down for wood. It's pulp, like the pulp of many trees, can be used to make paper. Not fancy furniture. Paper. And there were a lot of them--according to Estaban's father--until forty years ago. Forty years ago they were sudenly able to import electrical saws to cut them down. They cut them all down very quickly. He said back then paper was very cheap.

There are a couple of problems that allowed people to destroy the Ceibas. It reminds me of the Buffalo that no longer live in North America. They disappeared when settlers and railroad workers came through, killing them for their hides and leaving the meat to rot. The price of hides was low but people shot buffalo because, first, if they didn't someone else would (there were no property rights over buffalo) and second, because they could make more money doing it than not doing it. The second part would not have been true if people had access to credit. At any reasonable interest rate people could have done better borrowing money, buying buffalo, and saving them for later when the hide or meat was more in demand (how much would people pay for one buffalo today?). But settlers had no access to credit, just like the people in Moncagua. So they do not buy trees and wait for a true shortage of trees or timber. They cut them down and sell them or whatever they can get.

Anyway, enough of that. There were a lot of comments about insect repellent and there is more to the story! When I met Esteban on Tuesday he told me to buy a certain kind of insect repellent, a wax which he said worked better than anything else. It was, the box said, super strength. (Colombians are really into maximums, supers, and ultras. There are lots of ultra-marts, super-tiendas, and mega-bodegas). So I bought it. I go into the jungle armed with an array of insect repellents. My battery includes Nopix, a self-purported super wax, and that maximum-repellant from the Bogotá airportm Nopter I think it was called.

I did what anyone truly curious would do and set up a controlled experiment. I applied one to the left side of my body and one to the right. The repellent burned like hell and the wax primed me for skin cancer under the equatorial sun. I figured after one night in the Amazon, even under an misquito net, I would know which was the best. I would count the stings on the left side of my body and then count those on the right. I even made an effort to put both sides and similar risks for stings, keeping both near the water equally and making sure to roll both sleves equally. Simple.

When I woke up I was excited to know the results of my controlled experiment. I looked at my left arm and I had a hell of a lot of misquito bites. Then I looked at my right arm, where I also had a hell of a lot of misquito bites. I looked at my legs and they told the same story. Both Maximum and Super strengh insect repellents do the same crap job in the Amazon. It didn't matter though becase when I saw the size of Amazon bugs I was not so worried about them biting me as I was them stealing my wallet.

Before I left Anisha, who shares all my fears, tactfcully e-mailed me to let me know that cockroaches in the Amazon can get to be more than 15" long. She was not wrong. I don't think I saw any that were 15¨ long but I did see one that was as long as my forearm (I'm going to say that's about one foot). This was pretty traumatic. But after a while you get so muddy, wet, bug bitten, and smelly that you feel like nothing else can happen to you that you would really care about. This indifference is comforting becasue it means you don't care if you fall into the mud or the river. You stop giving a damn about rain and getting out of it. Being dry is unimportant. It's the only way to enjoy the amazon or the outdoors more generally. There is nothing pretty about it, but it's very comfortable.

Speaking of which, I think I might have malaria. My malaria medicine made me very tired, but now I feel sort of loopy like thoughts are repeating in my mind and I'm quite cold despite the fact that leticia is hot as hell. I'm not sure what I have but I have something and it came from the jungle. I would say it's malaria but for a conversaton I had about Malaria with someone from South Africa who had Malaria four times. I asked him 'how do you know if you have malaria' and he said 'you'll know'. And that's the thing, I don't know. So I'm not sure what to do except drink water.

I Fulfill a Childhood, Forge Legal Documents, and Eat an Insect

2006-04-25T18:57:00.000-07:00

Last night, I was told that the University where I lecture will be closed for wednesday, so I won't have to give a lecture. Realizing that I had several days free, I went to a travel agency and asked if I could fly to Leticia in the morning. They said sure, 'but do you have a yellow fever vaccine'. Claro. 'Do you have your document of proof?' Pinche.

First: I did get a yellow fever vaccine about two months ago in the University Hospital. The document I forged--a MS Word document in English with some U of C Hospital clip art slapped on it and a fake doctor's name with a signature to match--wasn't really a lie. I had the vaccine that the law requires I have to enter the southern state of Amazonas. I just didn't have the card. In my mind, they are splitting hairs.

I printed out my shot-record/letter-type-thing at six PM, went to dinner, studied, and then hung out with some brazilians who were in the hostel. I fell asleep around two AM after a far-too-intense attempt at religious conversion by a peruvian. I woke up at Six AM, packed my goods, checked out of the hostel, and went to the airport. I didn't know if it would work, but I bought a ticket, and got in line to go through security where the military police were asking for proof of immunization. I pulled it out, handed it to them, they took it, held it up into the light, turned over the other side to find nothing, pretended to read it for a second, handed it back to me and said 'listo'. I was good.

Then I realized I had forgotten to buy either malaria medicine or insect repellent. The pharmacy at the airport had insect repellent but no malaria meds. I was surprised the airport had a pharmacy. I had an overpriced can of 'off' in my hands when the woman at the register said that there was a better insect repellent. It was 'maximum strengh' she said and it cost five times as much. I was sold. I want the dosage of insecticide that would kill me, minus epsilon as epsilon gets small. When all you know abut the place you are going is that it is the Amazon Rainforest and it's the most virgin rainforest that we have in the world and the most diverse biocosm in the known universe, you are really a sucker for words like 'maximum strengh'. This is a male thing. All I can't tell if the maximum strength bug spray works, all I know is it burns like hell.

I guess I'm used to pilots mentioning points of interest as we fly by them in the US. The grand canyon and Niagara Falls say. So I thought it was novel when the pilot pointed out the equator (I'm in the souther hemisphere). But as the started to descend, the pilot mentioned that, 'we will soon be flying over land controled by the government of the republic of Colombia.' When I think about it, It's good news. I'm glad we did descend on to the area controled by paramilataries, but I really didn't want to be reminded of it.

Descending down on Leticia is incredible. I am the sort of kid who always gets a window seat, and it was well worth it. As you come down the only thing you notice is that EVERYTHING is green everywhere. There is nothing but Extremely thick forest. As you get closer to the pueblo, there are some houses carved out of the selva. And then, all the sudden, there is a rectangle that has no trees. That's the airport.

It differs from an air strip in it's bureacratic structure. the plane lands on the approximation of pavement that constitutes the only runway. It seems like an airstrip. But then there is a guy with the most boring job on earth (if he wasn't a volunteer), who has a stick painted red which he uses to guide the one plane from the one runway to--no, not the gate, there are no gates, but the parking lot. He was putting on his headphones as the plane landed and he dropped his stick not long there after.

Your first reaction when you get off the plane is that it's hot as hell and where can you put your sweter. Your second reaction is 'wholly shit, that's the amazon, right there!'. And your third reaction is, 'who are those people in police uniforms playing the keyboards and singing?'. Those are the Tourist Police of Leticia de Amazonas and that's what they do when the daily flight from Bogotá lands. Three officers in uniform play the keyboard and sing songs-I think three of them-about the Amazon. I don't think they wrote any of the songs, but I'm not sure.

After the worlds most rubber-stamped security check, you are free to go. too..... and there is no one there. There are about 25 people on the flight, and either their families or their pre-arranged tour groups pick them up. If you are like me, you don't have any family or any reservations. You get to walk to the city.

Ultimately, I found a 'taxi' which was a motorcycle (there are very few cars here since there are no roads in or out of the city). He tooke me to the city center. I walked to the River and I sad Wholly Shit Godamn. and I sat around for a while and watched wodden canoes loaded to the brim with Bananas come into the city. This is where your bananas come from.

Later I realized I wanted to take my pants off, and outside of L.A. that means you need a hotel. I don't have a guide book because someone borrowed it and left in another part of Bogotá last night. So I don't know where to stay. I stopped by the pharmacy and bought malaria drugs, and then asked a cab driver if he knew where I could rent a boat to go up the river. We talked for a while, he told me about offers which, he later admitted, were really a rip-off. Then he told me his name was WALTER. And I was all ýo tambien and he was all, sí? and I was all, claro.

And we were basically BFF after that. He said he had some friends who might be able to do it. He made some phone calls, drove me to some peoples houses, and after an hour of looking for his cousin at various bars and billiard clubs in Leticia we found him at his uncle's house in Brazil. (Leticia and the Brazilian city of Tartagomana are seperated by, well, nothin. There is a street that is an international boarder between the two countries. There is a house with an address that is in both countries.) After finding him, we talked about where we would go. He said I needed to rent him a boat and he would take me. I leave tomorrow morning. I will be canoeing and hiking the Amazon and it's tributaries sleeping in some indigenous villages and in no place in particular. I should be back on Saturday.

This is much better, I think, than being an illegal immigrant in brazil for the good reason that when you're in a hammock in a barge down the river you can't really see the rainforest. You see the riverbank. This on the other hand, while a little last minute and unprepared, will have me traveling way up the small tributaries where you might be able to see Wild Beasts. That's what it came down to for me: wild beasts.

I spent the rest of the day walking around in three countries and taking pictures of kids. Some old guy tried to be nice to me and get me to pay him for taking pictures of me. I bought him and his friends two rounds of beer while he told me about how much he hated peruvians and how much money americans have. I didn't really disagree. He liked me because I gave him alcohol. I don't think I really did like him, but I felt bad for him because he was old and because he was poor. He gave me something called chuchuraza, which is an amazonian spirit that tastes like a mix of whiskey and ass. I told him I liked it. He told me he drinks it because he is poor. I don't think he's wrong, but I think alcoholism is probably also part of the reason he drinks it (he said he can drink a bottle in a day). I don't say that to relieve myself from thinking about his poverty. His alcoholism and his poverty are surely related.

Living in the Amazon isn't the carefree paradise that I might hope it is. It's really hard. It's an extremeley poor place. People make a living carying boatloads of bananas from the tops of trees, down the river in boats, to a market where they are sold for lots less than the minimal price we pay for them in the U.S. The peruvian island in the middle is a lot poorer than either the Brazilian or Colombian parts.

Anyway, I came into this internet cafe to get out of the most serious rain I've ever seen in my life. I need to go try to buy ziplock bags before the electricity is turned off at midnight.

So someone who is not me knows: I am going with only the guide west toward puerto narino and the parque amaracuryaca tomorrow. we will go north on some tributary, i don't remember which. I should be in leticia saturday becuase I just bought a sunday flight to Bogotá. Someone should hear from me by Sunday night at the latest. If not, maybe someone could think about that.

The Peruvian Embassy to the United States

2006-04-24T14:11:00.000-07:00

http://www.peruemb.org/

Cokeheads are Bad at Soccer, I´m Bad at Buying Sox

2006-04-23T15:01:00.000-07:00

Last night was my first night in the Hostel in downtown Bogotá, right off the Plazuela de Simón Bolivar. About half the people there are foreigners, Swiss, Swedes, Argentines, a South African, some Brazillians, lots of Venezuelans, a contengent of Israelis, and one other American--the others are colombians. The spoken language is a definate Spanglish. They all went to a club, I went to a coffee shop with a colombian friend where I had mediocre coffee and really good chocolate (Colombian coffee in Colombia = not very good). I came back to the hostel and talked to people until about 4 AM while they ALL did line after line of Cocaine. I "just said no."

A few observations about cocaine abuse: I was surprised by how unaffected most people were (though there was the swiss guy who was really quite affected). The Israelis said they had come to Colombia for the Coke. The American girl who was there was very much someone who had not done coke before coming to Colombia. Small quantities are legal in the city, which is interesting because large quantities are so violently illegal. It's basically an export product that few colombians use. Many visitors do. When I am around foreigners or speaking english I am often offered Cocaine. It was novel and funny at first, now I'm just used to it.

In the US people are very afraid of drug dealers and many of my friends think are or would be mildly traumatized if offered Cocaine in Chicago or New York. That's becasue in the US the law is so strictly enforced and the penalty so large. Drug dealers have good reason to be violent people. Because it's easy to aviod the law, cocaine is cheap. And because it is cheap it's not worth fighting over. In Colombia, certainly many of them have violent friends, but 'would you like some cocaine?' is asked with the same intonation as 'Chicle! Chicle! ¿Quien quieres chicle?'. In Colombia, cocaine costs about 1/20th of the price here as in the States, according to the Venezuelans. It is, I am told, very cheap and very pure.

It has been a long time since I've watched people do coke, but my thoughts today are that most Americans would be surprised by how functional its users are. Some of these people were pretty heavy users (they came to Colombia for it) but looked better than some drunks. Addiction is another thing.

I went to bed and woke up. Some of them were still awake others were waking up. I got everyone in the hostel to go play fútbol after breafast. The people who were still high on cocaine were the worst soccer players I've ever seen. Even the Latin American ones. Our team won, mostly thaks to a couple of sober brazilians and a colombian. I am comparatively bad at soccer here and definately benefited from the cocaine handicap the other team endured. I scored two goals.

Afterward I went to some museums, for a long walk, and I talked to a family of indians for a long time. They were neat. They showed me pictures and taught me words in Quecha.

I need to buy more socks. I tried to today but it didn't work. I know where to buy fake watches, pirated DVDs, Cocaine, good Mexican food, green tea (really hard to find), and Native American art but I can't figure out sox.

I have school tomorrow. I´m going to go to the library.

I Give In: I Finally Bought Malaria Medicine

2006-04-22T15:18:00.000-07:00

Today, I moved. I am much happier in my new residence, a student hostel next the La Universidad de Los Andes. It's the best hostel I have ever seen. In a place like Colombia the people who come and stay in hostels are very intersting, but it is also very well run. Free coffe, Hammocks, patios, and balconies in a very old colonial building. I can see the kitchen below me through the spaces betwen the old planks of wood on the floor. It's also directly downtown in the colonial district, much better than the boring but safe suburb I was in. I think this was a good decision.

In other news, I still have a headache that is the result of staying at various salsa clubs until 7 am. Colombians can dance. Well. And for a long time. When I woke up this morning (afternoon?) I tried to calculate how many beers I must have hade in the 10 hours I was out last night. For a variety of reasons I could not even estimate.

I still don't have an apartment in New York. If anyone is reading this and has an apartment that they don't want, LET ME KNOW.

I was reading The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber--decidedly my favorite Ernest Hemmingway short story and the only reading in English I have with me--and found a quote I rather like that I think about a lot in Colombia. In general it's a good world view, to realize that the worst thing that can happen to you is death. It's Shakespeare, I think from King Henry IV:

"By my troth, I care not; a man can die but once; we owe God a death and let it go which way it will, he that dies this year is quit for the next."
It's a helpful way to think about a world where you need to have firm opinions on taking risks.
Speaking of which, I am going to the Amazonian town of Letcia soon. I don't know when. But it's a tiny town on the borders with Brazil and Peru. I'm going to go to the Brazilian embassy first to present FINGER PRINTS to get a visa to visit Brazil. Americans have to do this. Brazil made this law after America required the same of Brazillians. I think it's pretty funny, but I'm sort of upset that it's so hard to get a visa. If I do get one in time, I am going to rent a hammock on a boat that runs down and through the Amazon from Leticia to Manaus. I think it will be sweet. I´m actually going to buy malaria pills.
As you may know, I think malaria pills are a scam. Doctors and, mostly, pharmasutical companies, advise you take them everyday if you leave the euro-american bubble. In the states, due to the monopoly rights that patents grant, you pay an ENORMOUS amount for them. When we went to India last summer my friends paid upwards of $200 (After the Insurance contribution) for drugs that they were told to take the entire time we were in India. First, the same drugs in India cost no less than ten dollars for a months supply.
More importantly, there are a billion people living in India, almost none of whom take malaria medication regularly. Most are fine--or at least malaria is the least of their problems. They are not somehow imune to the illness, they have the same suceptability that anyone else does. It's just, in most places, exceedingly unlikely you will get malaria. You have to be bitten by a female member of a very specific and uncommon species of misquito that is only active for an hour a day (sundown) and lives in swamps. Yet almost all doctors, the AMA, and the US Department of Health advise good idea to take anti-malarials in Bombay, Bogotá, or other enormous, poor city.
In my mind, there are two reasons for this, both are incentives problems. The first is that, you Doctor, the AMA, and the Department of Health only care about your health, not about you more generally. That means, they have nothing to gain from saving you two hundred dollars and taking a very minor risk. But they would be in a bad place if they advised you not to take an anti-malarial and you got malaria. In many places, people would be better of spending the same $200 taking other safety measures (like flying instead of taking a bus through Colombia). Gurillas are a much greater threat than Malaria in the country at large.
The second reason is that drug companies are a very organized group with clear incentives. They want you to take drugs, and they can easily target your doctor or the health department trying to get them to advocate your case. There is no organized group of people in whose interest it is that you not take malaria drugs when they are not necessary. By saving some $200 and spending it somewhere else, you certainly help people. But you help commerce in general and no single industry can expect to see a big difference in their profits if they save you $200 every time you go on vacation. It's not worth any one persons time to tell doctors and the health department when anti-malarials are not worthwile investments.
I don't want to make it sound like Malaria is not a problem in the world. It's a big problem for a lot of people. Most of these people live in impoverished, rural places where a misquito net is an absolute necesity that many cannot afford. For these people, unlike tourists with the means to travel to the third-world, Malaria is fatal. For wealthy tourists it is certainly unplesant and inconvenient and can be fatal if not treated, but because they have access to superior medical care, the disease is almost never deadly.
But tourists are seldom infected even in the absence of anti-malarials because they tend to travel to cities, and it has never been a very good idea to build large cities in places with serious malaria problems. The better way to think about this is that malaria investations have always prevented towns from becoming large cities.
And on top of tourists having a small risk of contracting a disease that is, to them, not very dangerous, malaria medicine doesn't work very well at all. To give you an idea, the most popular anti-malarial in Latin America, Chloroquine, is as effective as a heavy regemine of gin and tonic as quinine is the active ingredient in both. (though modern tonic water does not contain nearly enough quinine. But you can, evidently, put Cinchona bark in brandy for a few hours to make a drink that has about two grams of quinine, the same a Chloroquine. says this website: http://www.thetraveldoctor.com.au/gin_tonic.html)
But for the first time, I am going somewhere (the rural Amazon) where malaria medicine is a good idea and people should take it. I give in.
Oh, but the line about 'you should never trust drugs from other countries' that my doctor read to me from a script that I presume Pfizer provides is complete nonesense. The United States is a net importer of pharmaceuticals where as India is a next exporter. http://www.piribo.com/publications/country/usa_canada/usa/usa_intell.html

I Like This Poem

2006-04-20T17:06:00.000-07:00

Mi vida entera
Jorge Luis Borges

Aqui otra vez, los labios memorables, único y semejante a vosotros.
Soy esa torpe intensidad que es un alma.
He persistido en la aproximación de la dicha y en la privanza del pesar.
He atravesado el mar.
He conocido muchas tierras; he visto una mujer y dos o tres hombres.
He querido a una nina altiva y blanca y de una hispánica quietud.
He visto un arrabal infinito donde se cumple una insaciada inmortalidad de ponientes.
He paladeado numerosas palabras.
Creo profundamente que eso es todo y que ni veré ni ejecutaré cosas nuevas.
Creo que mis jornadas y mis noches se igualan en pobreza y en riqueza a las de Dios y a las de todos los hombres.

Here once again the memorable lips, unique and like yours.
I kept getting close to happiness and have stood in the shadow of suffering.
I have crossed the sea.
I have known many lands; I have seen one woman and two or three men.
I have loved a girl who was fair and proud, with a Spanish quietness.
I have seen the city's edge, an endless sprawl where the sun goes downtirelessly, over and over.
I have relished many words.
I believe deeply that this is all and that I will neither see nor accomplishnew things.
I believe that my days and my nights in their poverty and their riches arethe equal of God's and of all men's.

Economics of the Drug War

2006-04-20T11:52:00.000-07:00

So last night I gave my first lecture at la Universidad Nacional de Colombia. I presented a great paper by some of the best economists around, Gary Becker, Kevin Murphy, and Michael Grossman. The paper, The Market for Illegal Goods: The Case of Drugs, is a hell of a paper to talk about in Colombia. I think it basically begins to explain two thirds of the problems in this country. (On the note of problems, it’s been raining a lot and there was a serious thunderstorm two days ago. When there is unexpectedly loud thunder, people duck out of habit.)

Here is the paper´s abstract: This paper considers the costs of reducing consumption of a good by making its production illegal and punishing apprehended illegal producers. We use illegal drugs as a prominent example. We show that the more inelastic is either demand or supply for a good, the greater is the increase in social cost from further reducing its production by greater enforcement efforts. So optimal public expenditures on apprehension and conviction of illegal suppliers depend not only on the difference between the social and private values from consumption, but also on these elasticities. When demand and supply are not too elastic, it does not pay to enforce any prohibition unless the social value is negative. We also show that a monetary tax could cause a greater reduction in output and increase in price than would optimal enforcement against the same good if it is illegal, even though some producers may go underground to avoid a monetary tax. When enforcement is costly, excise taxes and quantity restrictions are not equivalent.

It´s strange to read about coca production and the destruction of coca fields on the front page of the paper every day. On any given day El Tiempo has two articles about Coca on the front page and another three inside. One thing I´ve learned is that it’s really easy to make cocaine. Coffee, difficult; bananas, difficult; exotic Amazonian fruits and nuts, very difficult. Coca and cocaine, easy. it’s a leaf treated with some chemicals. The plant grows like a weed, unlike coffee or bananas, which you have to irrigate and tend to aggressively. And there is a virtually endless supply of farmers in the mountains willing to grow it at any price, because it’s much easier to grow that their alternatives.

In the context of the paper I presented, the supply of cocaine is extremely inelastic. The price could fall drastically or raise drastically and you would see a similar number of farmers growing coca. 145 k hectares in Colombia are dedicated to growing coca (about 2% of the land in the country). That number could not be much larger if it were legal.

The idea from which the paper procedes is this: the way a regime of criminalization reduces the quantity of cocaine is by raising the price paid by those who demand it. There are two kinds of prices: pecuniary prices, which the law increases by making drugs cost more money, and non-pecuniary risks, which is how you think about the chance that you might get shot when you buy drugs, or that they might be poisonous. The government raises the price by making it hard to get drugs from point A (let´s call it Colombia), to point B (Chicago). Because cocaine is illegal everywhere in between, you have to take serious risks to traffic cocaine into the US. For smugglers, narcos and drug mules to do this work, they must be paid more than the simple compensation for transporting from one point to another (more than say, someone shipping coffee), they have to be compensated for both their efforts to avoid detection and the risk of being caught. The stronger the penalty or the more likely detection the greater the risk and thus the compensation which results in a higher price of the final product. More police or more jail time raises the price of drugs. This is the reason a kilo of Cocaine in Chicago costs more than a Kilo of Coffee. In Bogotá, it doesn’t.

The conclusion of the paper shows that, because Cocaine is so easy to produce, and producers of coca and cocaine respond minimally to changes in price (even if the price fell considerably, it would remain the most lucrative crop considering the small amount of work involved) its demand is inelastic. If you increase or decrease the price of Cocaine by 10%, you won’t change the quantity of cocaine much at all--so people will try to break the law even if it is harsh, and the harsher the law the greater the social cost incurred by those who break it.

One social cost in this situation is any wasted effort or unnecessary risk. For instance, balloons hidden in the orifices of a smugglers is, among other things, inefficient. A bad way to transport anything anywhere. If we transported Coffee from Colombia in this way it would be extremely expensive.

More important social costs are the cost of enforcement: Colombia spends some 5% of it’s GDP fighting narcos and rebels, The US poisons the countryside to kill crops (not just coca), millions of people die in the war with drug dealers, millions more are put in prisons thought the Americas at no small cost where they can neither work nor raise children, and there are millions of people who do not have access to civil services because they must remain outside the bounds of the law.

The last one is important. It’s why drug dealers are violent and Starbucks is not. Starbucks might be able to make a good thing out of taking up arms against Duncan Doughnuts, but they don’t for the obvious reason that it’s illegal. Duncan Doughnuts is protected by laws. Drug dealers aren’t. Gangs fight for turf and clientele and monopoly power just as Starbucks and Duncan Doughnuts do but since they have no legal recourse, their competition is a very violent one. Drug dealers get killed a mugged often because they carry cash and can’t call the cops. Lots of people die. More are killed on both sides in a war between police and drug dealers, gangs, and cartels.

The final topic, and the students in lecture really objected to this one, is the role of the drug trade and legislation in corrupting the government. Laws against a popular, easily produced crop in high demand can do a lot to explain Latin America´s problems with corruption (and I don’t mean to absolve the US (see: Noriega)). When you make a large portion of the population criminal, and you have to dedicate another large portion of the population to enforcing the laws against them, there are plenty of mutually beneficial transactions that are possible, from the police officer who finds drugs in a car to the president whose government spends an enormous amount of resources fighting a cartel that exports something very profitable. Criminalization makes drugs so profitable that drug traffickers have, in the past, offered to pay enormous sums of money to the government if they would stop enforcing their laws.

In Colombia, a cartel offered to pay off the country’s 3 billion dollar national debt if they would cease their war. After a long national debate, the government rejected to idea and entered the most brutal phase of violence in recent history. This was in 1988. Another former president was revealed, in a scandal compared to Watergate, for having taken some 6 million dollars from the leader of the Calí drug cartel to finance his campaign. Pablo Escobar, of the Medilliean cartel, donated several million to the poor of Colombia’s second largest city, building ten thousand new houses, new schools, and providing running water where it was previously unavailable. His two billion dollar drug-fortune financed it. This was another attempt to buy legaslative change.

Drug dealers pay so much to corrupt the government at the highest levels because of the profit in the trade, which only exists in a state of criminalization. If drugs were legalized, there would not be the opportunity for profits. You would expect fair compensation. If a trade, like coffee production, compensated people excessively they would enter the trade. In class a student objected to this assessment. I asked him, I thought cleverly, why he didn’t enter the coffee industry if he thought it was so profitable. He told me his family owns many hectares of coffee plantations. I was the ass. But the point remains. Anyone can grow coffee so there is no “real” profit if the market is efficient. He conceded his family would make more if they grew coca on the same farm.

The other reason the social cost of criminalization is so high is because demand is inelastic. Americans will pay a whole lot for coke. This was pointed out to me at a Bogotá club two days ago. I was talking to some people and a guy came to our table, pulled out a bag of Cocaine, and asked if we wanted to buy some. He saw that I was both (1) surprised and thus (2) an American, tossed the (large) bag toward me and said, nicely, "yeah, it’s cocaine. people use it. no big deal. the only reason it’s a problem is because you people pay so much for it." He understood the problem better than any of the econ students at Uni. Nacional.

The real lesson of the paper is that since the laws reduce the quantity of drugs by raising the price, we could achieve the same result through taxation. That is not to say that if the completive market price of cocaine is 10 dollars a kilo and the street price in Chicago is 1000 that we need to tax cocaine to cost 1000 dollars a kilo and should expect the same results. That is clearly not true. If legal markets provide consistent quality and a safe transaction, the price would have to be greater than $1000/kilo. The current quantity of drugs in Chicago reflects the pecuniary price, but also the risks involved. Legal markets can get rid of those risks by taking the violence out of the industry. The point is, sending people to prison for producing something is expensive, inefficient, and unjust.

We would be better off taxing people. you can read the paper here: http://gsbwww.uchicago.edu/fac/kevin.murphy/teaching/Market%20for%20Illegal%20Goods-JPE.pdf

La Ciudad Bolivar

2006-04-18T14:51:00.000-07:00

First: all that stuff I wrote about Bogotá being the land of milk and honey was true. In some places it’s a nice place most of the time and in most places it’s a nice place some of the time. But in some places, it isn’t ever nice at all. One of those places is la Ciudad Bolivar. This is the largest informal settlement in Colombia, an infamous shanty town on the western outskirts of Bogotá. I went there today.

Colombia has, to be sure, a lot of problems. The biggest by far is the violence. In every war-torn country there is a chicken-or-egg problem: does the poverty cause the violence, or the violence, the poverty. After one week, I believe it’s the latter. Colombians are far too educated, work far too much, suffer from far too many diseases, and have far too many natural resources to be poor in the absence of conflict. It is not inspired by poverty. As a Colombian told me, the war is very much an ideological one deeply rooted in the colonial history, foreign intervention, and the nation’s unfortunate proclivity for growing coca.

The most important consequence of the violence--aside from the obvious problems of war--is the displacement of some 3 million people (says the Economist). Called desplazados, they are a huge population that has fled the country side to come to the cities. Primarily they have abandon lives as farmers and now struggle to survive in and around all of Colombia´s major cities. As such, almost none have any formal education and no opportunity to use skills as farmers. As they have fled a war, many are wounded and cannot work. For reasons I do not understand, most of them are children and many are orphans.In some countries, people leave the city to come to the country seeking opportunities in booming industrial centers. South Korea went from being 80% rural to 80% urban after 30 years of economic development. That was good for everyone. In Colombia they are fleeing a violent war and the destruction of their coca fields, which cover some 144 thousand hectares of the nation.

La Ciudad Bolivar is the largest settlement of desplazados and urban poor in the country. Here they live with almost no public services, including electricity, running water, trash disposal, or police protection. In la Ciudad Bolivar there is one police station for every 100,000 people. The streets are full of trash that, I’m told, they dispose of when the rain comes and floods their settlements. Perhaps the rampant criminality is because of the lack of policing, but it’s also clear that the police are scared of the place and stay away.

While I was there I saw: two fights, one gang of Indians chasing a black boy, a mother cooking over a burning pile of trash, teenagers sniffing chemicals, sewage in the street, naked children walking in the same street, and a the body of an old man who had recently died. Most people have never seen a dead person lying in the place where he died. It’s a hard thing to do. I didn’t like it. And I didn’t like seeing the naked children with no shoes in the same street as the man who was dead. I wonder what they thought.
Most of the people had shoes, but none of the children did. Everyone was very young. In retrospect, the dead man was the oldest person I saw.

I would have liked to take pictures but I did not bring anything with me more than the fare for the cab. I did get out of the cab. Not for long. The driver who took me there was the forth driver I asked to take me. He said the only other time he had been there it was to look for his old cab, which has been stolen. He said there are chop shops that dismantle all of Bogotá`s stolen cars. He said they can take one apart in a half hour. He came looking for his, but he only found the license plate.

I have made Ciudad Bolivar sound very sad, but the children playing in the streets were laughing and the family eating a diner cooked over burning trash was not hungry. La Ciudad Bolivar was very sad to anyone who has known a lifestyle marked by material comforts and stability. The saddest part is that this is better than the places they have fled.

While I was there I saw: two fights, one gang of Indians chasing a black boy, a mother cooking over a burning pile of trash, teenagers sniffing chemicals, sewage in the street, naked children walking in the same street, and a the body of an old man who had recently died. Most people have never seen a dead person lying in the place where he died. It’s a hard thing to do. I didn’t like it. And I didn’t like seeing the naked children with no shoes in the same street as the man who was dead. I wonder what they thought.

Most of the people had shoes, but none of the children did. Everyone was very young. In retrospect, the dead man was the oldest person I saw.

I would have liked to take pictures but I did not bring anything with me more than the fare for the cab. I did get out of the cab. Not for long. The driver who took me there was the forth driver I asked to take me. He said the only other time he had been there it was to look for his old cab, which has been stolen. He said there are chop shops that dismantle all of Bogotá`s stolen cars. He said they can take one apart in a half hour. He came looking for his, but he only found the license plate.

I have made Ciudad Bolivar sound very sad, but the children playing in the streets were laughing and the family eating a diner cooked over burning trash was not hungry. La Ciudad Bolivar was very sad to anyone who has known a lifestyle marked by material comforts and stability. The saddest part is that this is better than the places they have fled.

Here is a website that discusses the rather remarkable urban planning in Bogotà. I have been really impressed by the ingenuity and successes of the municipal government in dealing with the circus that is this city. Given the difficulty of the task, I think Bogotá must be the best governed city in the world. I’ll write about it’s public transit later.http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2004/03.11/01-mockus.html

I Have Created A Blog!

2006-04-17T17:25:00.000-07:00

I´ve done a lot of things in my life, but I always thought a blog was below me. I was wrong.

Anyway, I am here, in Bogotá, alive and happy. I hope this blog will serve two functions: it will be the button I press peridocally to let people (mike) know that I´m not dead. It is also less typing than individual e-mails, and it won´t fill your inbox.

So if anyone is still reading this, Bogotá is beautiful, rainy, stable, happy, and sort of cold at night. I think my first surprise was what a non-fucked-up place Bogotá is. large parts of Bogotá are wealther than large parts of, say, Chicago. There is something between seven and twelve million people here, and most of them live a lot more like americans than I would have thought. The north side of the city, where I am currently staying, is almost boring in it´s stability.