One evening, many years ago, I found myself almost alone in a neighborhood bar, talking to the bartender, a friend of mine who was 100% Blackfoot, and a tourist who was half Zuni and half black. As I am a very, very tiny bit Cherokee (or so family legend tells), the conversation turned to people with an Indian heritage, and we discovered that we had all come independently to the same conclusion. Each of us, at some point, had decided that the term "Native American" is worthless. Not just because, technically, anyone born in the Americas is a "native" American, but because it is no more accurate than Indian. All three of us agreed that anyone wanting to be accurate would do better to refer to the specific tribe to which someone belongs, otherwise, the familiar term "Indian" is no more or less insulting and inaccurate than "Native American", so why adopt a new, strange, and somewhat inaccurate term which has no advantage over the older, familiar word?

Since then, I have discovered a PC neologism that is even worse, that being "African American."

Why is this such a bad word?

First, it is often used as a simple substitute for "black", being inserted where black would appear previously. But this does not always work, and, with an inattentive writer, you sometimes end up with silly phrases such as "British African-Americans" to describe blacks from England.

Second, as the phrase above shows, it makes it very hard to describe race when referring to foreigners. Black and white can be applied to any nationality, but, if we must use "African-Americans", how do we describe someone black from England? An "African-Englishman"? And if they are from the continent of Africa are they "African-Africans"?

Third, it wrongly implies that the continent of Africa is entirely populated by blacks, which is simply incorrect. From Arabs in the north to the whites scattered throughout the continent to the many Asians living in former British colonies, there are many non-blacks who have resided in Africa for generations, yet, should they migrate to the US, they would not become "African-Americans".That makes little sense, forcing them to lose their African identity simply because PC dogma dictates the mistaken belief that "African" and "black" are synonyms.

Given all these problems, I just cannot bring myself to use the silly phrase "African-American". Even the clumsy "person of color" which preceded the popularity of African American was a better choice. (Though the closeness to "colored person" made it sound horribly old-fashioned.) At the time, I thought changing "black" to "person of color" was a strange decision, and made most sentences quite awkward and ugly. Now, however, having lived for years with "African-American", I would welcome a return to "person of color".

Better yet, can we just keep "black"? It was not an offensive term, and I never understood the need to abandon it. It is descriptive, it makes a nice parallel to "white" (which is still used), and I don't see how it could possibly offend anyone.(It is no more inaccurate a description of people's complexion than "white" is, and few are offended by being labeled "white".) I know that it is in the nature of PC beliefs to have to change terms every few months, as inevitably someone gets offended by any given existing word and we are forced to adopt a somewhat less offensive replacement (until the next aggrieved party arises), but in this one case, can we get some sort of waiver?

Barring that, can someone at least come up with something less completely silly than "African American"? Almost any alternative has to be better.

I have been saying that Obama will falter once he has to take a stand on issues to win over the center. Well, in his reply to McCain's criticism of his defense policies, we may be seeing the first steps in the Obama collapse:

"I do know that al-Qaida is in Iraq and that's why I have said we should continue to strike al-Qaida targets," he told a rally at Ohio State University in Columbus.

"But I have some news for John McCain," Obama added. "There was no such thing as al-Qaida in Iraq until George Bush and John McCain decided to invade Iraq. . . . They took their eye off the people who were responsible for 9/11 and that would be al-Qaida in Afghanistan, that is stronger now than at any time since 2001."

Obama said he intended to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq "so we actually start going after al-Qaida in Afghanistan and in the hills of Pakistan like we should have been doing in the first place."

As Best of the Web quips:

So let's see if we have this straight. Al Qaeda in Iraq isn't worth fighting because it wouldn't be there if it weren't for Bush and McCain. Obama is going to pull all U.S. troops out of Iraq to go fight in Afghanistan and Pakistan, although he will send them back to Iraq if al Qaeda are there, even though he now wants to withdraw notwithstanding al Qaeda's presence.

Yes, we can!

My point is a bit more serious.

This is the first episode of what I predict will characterize the rest of the general election campaign. Obama made a short, foolish, but relatively innocuous statement (that he would go back to Iraq if al Qaida started organizing), McCain called him on it, and Obama launched into a much longer, and more deeply foolish response.

Not only that, but a response that is sure to appeal to no one. The anti-war crowd will like neither the determination to fight on in Afghanistan, nor the promise to return to Iraq, and the center will not like the harsh cut and run rhetoric, nor the strong strain of Bush hatred. And I doubt promises to invade Pakistan will get much of a positive reception from either group. In other words, in trying to win over everyone, Obama is managing to alienate everyone.

A few more statements in this vein, and I see my prediction coming true, the honeymoon will be over, Obamania will draw to a close, and the left will realize they have John Edwards Mark II as their candidate.
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For more of my on thoughts on Obama in general see here and here.

From time to time I have heard environmentalists say "Even if we allow drilling in the US, it won't matter. We don't have enough reserves to stop importing oil."

Let us deal quickly with the faulty premise of this argument so I can move on to my main point. Even if our reserves were inadequate to fuel the entire US, they would still allow us to reduce imports, lessening our dependence on foreign oil, perhaps allowing us to import only from more friendly nations, and, in any case, making a foreign oil embargo less of a hardship. This argument is almost a classic example of making the perfect the enemy of the good, refusing to drill at all until we have sufficient reserves to stop all imports.

However, that is not my topic for today. Today I want to discuss the US oil reserves in specific, and the misunderstanding many have of oil reserves in general.

First, let me explain what oil reserves are. Most of the time, when one speaks of oil reserves, he is speaking of "known reserves". Known reserves are oil fields where exploratory drilling has been done and the general amount of oil available can be predicted with reasonable accuracy. Sometimes, rather than known reserves, a speaker will take the known reserves and make a projection of total possible reserves. As with any projection from the known to an unknown, these are highly speculative numbers, and unlikely to bear any relation to reality.

Now that we have defined reserves, let me point out a few features of these numbers. First, reserves are dependent on the technology of the day. Wells which were played out in 1950 can be exploited today using new technologies, and oil which is unreachable today may be easily accessible in the future, so any reserve number is dependent on the technology available at the moment. Second, it may be based on a scientific assay of the field, but it is still an estimate, and wells may prove to have more or less oil than projected. Yes, the estimates are usually pretty accurate, and the people making them are experienced and skilled, but the only way any reserve could be measured with absolute accuracy is to remove and measure every drop of oil, any other method of measurement is an estimate. Third, known reserves are the result of exploratory drilling, the more drilling the more fields that will be found. As a result known reserves rise and fall with the amount of money oil companies spend on exploration.

All of which brings me back to my point, that the known reserves in the US do not show what the environmentalists claim. Our present levels of known reserves may only fuel the US for six months or a year, they may only replace a small percentage of imports, but that means nothing.

Let me explain.

The woes of the oil industry began in the Nixon administration. With the signing of the Smithsonian Accords, effectively taking the US off the gold standard, inflation suddenly became a huge concern for the government. Worried that the rapidly falling dollar would cause economic collapse, Nixon imposed wide ranging price controls. Worse still, from the perspective of the oil industry, Nixon imposed strange price controls on domestic oil production, distinguishing between "old" and "new" wells, favoring the former.* Finally, even when he lifted price controls on the rest of the economy, oil remained controlled. As a result, the oil industry virtually stopped exploring. As "new oil" was priced lower there was little incentive to search for it. So, for the entire decade of the 1970's, until Reagan lifted price controls at long last, the oil industry did very little exploration, and known reserves dwindled.

From the 1980's until the present, a second factor has been keeping the known reserves low. That has been environmentalism. As soon as  price controls went away, opening up the possibility of oil companies again exploiting oil fields in the US, environmental groups began to flex their political muscles and shut down exploratory drilling everywhere. As a result, few new fields were added to the already small known reserves.

So, when environmentalist say that there are not enough reserves, they are quite mistaken. The reserves about which they are talking are the incredibly small number of known fields, a number kept artificially small by 1970's price controls and subsequent environmental controls. Were conditions to change and exploration to become both easy and profitable in the US, those known reserves would doubtless increase, as the oil companies began to explore once more. Instead of the small quantity of reserves about which critics now complain, we would likely have more than enough as new fields were found and exploited.

In short, by keeping exploration from taking place, environmentalists have created the artificially low reserve numbers which they then use to justify blocking any new exploration or drilling.

Which brings me to one other related topic. In addition to allowing them to decry the futility of drilling in the US, the misuse of known reserves allows environmentalists to continually predict "the end of oil." From the 1960's through the present, environmentalists have again and again made the statement "given today's consumption, we have at most 30 years of oil left." Never mind that they have been saying it for over 30 years, they continue to make this claim. A claim which, again, is based on confusing known reserves with the total amount of oil which will ever be available.

Hopefully my earlier talk will make obvious the error. As known reserves are driven by economic concerns, it should be obvious why we only have about 30 years of "reserves". (And why that number always falls between 25 and 30, no matter if the claim is made in 1969, 1989 or today.) If the oil industry as a whole has about 30 years of known reserves, it tends to put a brake on exploration, as there is not much to gain by finding more reserves at that time. As the reserves are exploited and some are depleted, exploration starts again, until the known reserves go back to about 25 to 30 years of reserves. Only confusion about what known reserves actually mean allows environmentalists to make these claims of impending doom.

Now, of course, there is some finite amount of oil in the earth (unless the abiotic oil theories are true, which I doubt), but that amount is nowhere close to being known. Nor does it really matter. At the moment we have quite a bit of oil readily available, and much more we have yet to discover. Should the environmentalists get out of the way prices will doubtless drop quite significantly. At least until we eventually, quite a while in the future, outrace our own technological advances, and reach a point where we can no longer find enough oil which is easily extracted using current technology. At that point oil prices will rise, consumption will drop, and alternatives will be sought by the private sector, spurred by the huge profits that can be made.

But that day is not today. We are nowhere even close to the moment we need to start moving from oil to alternatives. Only environmental restrictions and the weakened, but still powerful OPEC cartel keep us from having cheap, abundant oil today, even with the increased demands from China and India.  Oddly enough, one of the things which gives the environmentalists such clout, and keeps us from opening up oil exploration, is the environmentalists' refusal to differentiate between total oil in the earth and known reserves.

So, by their own intentional confusion, they create arguments that support restricting exploration, keeping known reserves low, which allows environmentalists to argue that we are running out of oil.  No matter what happens, the environmentalists can claim the world is coming to an end. If the oil companies explore, keeping reserves high, the world is going to end from pollution, and if they do not, allowing known reserves to drop, the environmentalist tell us oil is running out, and we are all headed for destruction. In short, whatever happens, the environmentalists find a way to claim we are headed for a bad end.

And that is the problem with the environmental movement. Though they claim it is a science, it is something else entirely. For some it is a substitute for religion, combining a faith in the sanctity of nature with faith in man's inevitable destruction of the same. For others it is a tool, either for their own personal gain, or to push some other political agenda. But whatever their motive, all environmentalists are alike in their willingness to argue using distortions, appeals to faith, even outright lies, all the while calling their opponents irrational, and claiming their deceptive arguments are actually science.

It is a truly depressing that so many, including scientists and others who should know better, have bought into this party line, granting to the irrational appeals of the environmentalists the status of "science".

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* These price controls also strongly favored imported oil, starting our addiction to foreign oil that would lead, later in that decade, to long gas lines, "odd/even days" and all those other things that made the 1970's so miserable. (Well, I can't blame polyester leisure suits, disco or Jimmy Carter on price controls, so not everything that made the 70's miserable.)

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Note: My apologies to Redhead for stealing his thunder and writing another environmental article after I said I would not be doing any more for some time. I really had no intention of doing so, but the topic of oil reserves came up in the comments to Novak's article, and I have long been annoyed at the willful confusion of known reserves and the actual amount of oil that will ever be available. As I could hardly explain and fall within the word limit, I could not resist one short article.

Now, after getting that out of my system, I can say I have no plans to write any more environmental articles until I at least finish the three other articles I have been promising, and failing to deliver, since the end of last week.

UPDATED 03/04/2008

An interesting article giving an alternate , but still rosy, view on oil reserves. I disagree with the author on the ease with which oil reserves can be estimated, as I think he is placing too much confidence in our ability to predict oil reserve size and placement. Given our relative inexperience in both deep sea exploration and antarctic exploration, I think any estimates today are likely to have a huge margin of error.

In addition I think he greatly discounts economic factors in US peak oil. Had price controls not been enacted, and environmentalists not run the nation after they ended, it is quite possible new reserves would be found and we would realize that we have not yet hit peak oil. Instead, by accepting a decline in production, largely due to political factors, as technological/resource driven event, I think he draws the wrong conclusion. We have not necessarily run out of new reserves, we have been prevented, by political forces, from seeking new reserves. We do not know if we hit peak production in the US or not, as we have not been allowed to do the exploration required to determine what oil remains.

Still, even granting his numbers, the picture he paints is far more rosy than anything you will hear from the media today.

Update (2011/12/14): I made a small mistake in the essay above. It does not change any of the points I made, but to be fair I must state that Reagan is not entirely responsible for the elimination of oil price controls. In truth, Carter began the process, though they were not completely removed until the Reagan administration. As I am so hard on Carter (cf "Memories of Jimmy"), I thought I should be fair and give him credit when he did something right. (Also note the link is to my newer blog, to which I am slowly transferring all my old content. I am trying to use it when citing very old articles to make that transfer go more quickly.)

It is a cliched scene movies have repeated hundreds of time. A man, after a night of boozing, awakens groggy and slightly ill, only to realize he is not alone. With great hesitation, he slowly looks over his shoulder, afraid to see what lies beside him, what nightmare he brought home with him.

It may be a cliche, but I have a feeling it will accurately describe the reaction of many Democrats come the end of the primary season. Right now they are caught up in the euphoria of Obamania, but I have a feeling that, as soon as the primaries end and they roll over to see what they brought home, regret will set in.

I know that for many it is conventional wisdom that Obama will be a "strong competitor". Some have argued that he is certain to beat McCain, and have even produced polls to prove it. But before we dive into another "Dewey beats Truman" moment on the basis of February polls and a general euphoria among left-leaning Democrats, we should ask ourselves why Obama would be a strong competitor, what is his likely appeal to voters, and what, realistically, are his chances of winning.

As I have said before, Obama has managed to build up a strong base among left-leaning Demcorats on the basis of being a non-entity upon which they can project their hopes. In large part, this is fueled by their absolute loathing of the current administration. Just as bad situations can drive  people to seek any possible savior, I think the Democrats' almost pathological hatred of Bush and Cheney has left them open to embrace any slick salesman who seems to promise them a win. They see a young, charismatic man, and immediately seize him as their anointed savior, assuming that the rest of the nation will see what they do.

Unfortunately for them, the Democrats, and more specifically the Democrats caught up in the Obama movement,  do not represent a majority, or even a large enough minority to win the general election. So, instead of riding to a coronation based upon his cult-like worshipers, Obama will need to appeal to the center and even right wing voters if he wants to become president.

Appealing to the center will not be as easy for Obama as his primary run. The independents are, by and large, not as angry with Bush as the Democrats. They may be disappointed, but they are not so enraged that they are looking for a savior. Without anti-Bush anger as a catalyst, I don't think Obama will be able to infuse the middle of the road voters with his Obamania. Without the option of winning votes by being everything to everybody, Obama will need to actually sell himself, taking stands on issues and convincing the voters.

And that is where Obama is likely to falter. As I also said, a big part of his ability to create such a fanatical following was his ability to say nothing, allowing his followers to see in him whatever they wanted. If the general election forces him to take a stand, not only will his far left politics alienate much of the independent vote, but just by virtue of taking a stand he risks alienating some of those who are now his most ardent followers. Once they are confronted with a flesh and blood politician, who takes stands and sometimes does not agree with them, the love affair will end, the Obama bliss will fade, and they will be left with nothing but a young, eloquent, but extremely left-wing candidate. In short, they will realize they are stuck with a slightly better looking, slightly more eloquent John Edwards.

Of course this goes against the recent polls, but the polls are far too early to mean anything. Obama is still romancing his party, he has not yet had to take a stand, so his numbers run high. Once he faces political reality, once he is forced to stop campaigning without taking a position, I think those numbers will change quickly. There just seems no way he can maintain the fanatical devotion of his current base while also offering positions that will win over the middle. One or the other, or perhaps both, will have to be sacrificed, and, without both groups, I just see no way Obama can win.

Then again, perhaps Obama will surprise me. Perhaps he can remain a mirror to his loyal followers while winning over independents, or maybe the left won't abandon him after he takes a stand that will appeal to centrists, but I doubt it. No matter what has become conventional wisdom, I just don't see Obama making a strong showing in November.

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NOTE: For more thoughts along the same line, check out Best of the Web (third item from the top) and  Commentary. Both provide interesting alternate perspectives on Obama's general election campaign and the problems he is likely to encounter.

I just learned that William F. Buckley died today.

I did not always agree with Mr. Buckley (with whom have I ever agreed completely?), but I could always count on the man to give a well reasoned argument for his position. His assumptions may have puzzled me at times, but how he got from those assumptions to his conclusions was always quite clear.

I will miss reading his essays and the conservative movement is a little bit weaker for his loss.

Does anyone else recall the "Murphy Brown" brouhaha? Does anyone else recall the way the pundits all laughed and pretended that Vice President Quayle thought Murphy Brown was a real person? Or else laughed at him for taking fiction too seriously? And do any of those laughing pundits look back and realize that Quayle was completely right and Murphy Brown's pregnancy was just a portent of the societal decay which was to come?

I know of late I have been writing on a number of topics which most would characterize as "libertarian", such as removing the state from marriage or eliminating medical licensing and prescription requirements, and that most think it no accident that "libertarian" and "libertine" sound so much alike, but I am, in my heart, quite a conservative fellow. Yes, I believe the government should stay out of our lives, but I also think those lives are much better when we follow some traditional rules. Life is just much easier and better for all concerned if we get married, wait until marriage to have children, remain married to the parent of our children, and so on. There are good reasons that those rules have stood the test of millenia, and I see no reason to dispose of them just because I believe in minimal government.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying that I am quite distressed by the current state of our society. Between out of wedlock births and teenage pregnancy, we seem to be setting our children up to fail right from the moment they enter the world. If you spend your first year of life in day care while your mother is finishing 9th grade, not sure of who your father is, there seems little likelihood you will make it very far in life. There are exceptions, but far too few. It takes a truly exceptional individual to overcome such odds, and, as the word suggests, exceptional individuals are rare. The average child just cannot overcome having the odds stacked so heavily against him.

So, what brought us to this state? It has obviously been building for some time, as Vice President Quayle's warning was almost two decades ago, so this is not a new phenomenon. We may have reached a new low in the collapse of societal norms, but we have been slowly crumbling for some time. How did we get here?

To begin, perhaps it would be best to go all the way back to the 1950's. Now, as those on the left so often remind us, the 1950's was not the idyllic era of peaceful normalcy we like to think, but considering it from the degraded society in which we live, it does look pretty peaceful and normal. Yes, there was still illegitimacy, especially among the poor, but it was lower among the poor than it is today for any socio-economic bracket¹. Among the poor illegitimacy was not the companion of poverty that it was to become in the 1970's and 1980's. There were problems in the 50's, and the lot of blacks in many states was far from ideal, but in terms of social norms concerning marriage and procreation, as well as general standards of behavior, the 1950's really were idyllic.

Enter The Great Society. With Johnson's implementation of his grand vision of a welfare state, everything began to change. By the end of the 1960's we can see among the poor the pattern which would continue to today. Illegitimacy soared², marriages became the exception rather than the rule, social norms in general began to break down. Why? That is easy to answer. Not only did the welfare state remove all consequences from bad decisions, it also actively encouraged certain ones. As babies were subsidized by welfare, we ended up with more babies. As marriage was discouraged by welfare, we had fewer marriages. In short, the perverse incentives of welfare produced the obvious outcomes. Rather than providing a safety net for a few charity cases, welfare created its own way of life, and changed the poor from generally responsible people into irresponsible child factories.

Of course, none of this explains why the rest of society started to follow the same path sometime in the 1980's. Welfare explains why social values collapsed among the poor, but why would everyone else follow suit?

To understand the spread of this collapse one must recall the social environment of the 1980's. This was the first era when poverty became actively "cool". Yes, the 1960's had venerated criminals, the impoverished and the "outsider", but in a condescending way. None of the trust fund baby revolutionaries of the 1960's really wanted to become the poor people they said they admired. They might have slummed for a while in a commune, but when all was said and done, they wanted to still summer in the Hamptons. Just look at where they are today and you can see the truth of this. How many of those "revolutionaries" of the 1960's sit on the board of the NYSE? How many have full tenure? How many are full partners in law firms? The revolutionaries of the 1960's were dilettantes dabbling in poverty.

The 1980's were different. With the first gasps of what would become gangsta rap, along with lesser influences such as punk rock and the late 80's hippy revival³, the image of poverty, especially urban black poverty, became cool.⁴ The 1980's saw the birth of a new phenomenon, middle and upper class children who not only aped the poor kids, but really meant it. It took another decade before they had fully integrated the entire social mores of the poor, for example out of wedlock births didn't take off among the middle class until the 1990's, but it began in the 1980's.

Of course, other influences also helped this along. The feminist ideal of the professional woman who did not need a man was behind the Murphy Brown episodes that VP Quayle attacked, for example. There was also the general "avant garde" veneration of anything "transgressive", anything which broke with societal norms, that also helped to push us away from those things that our ancestors considered important, and pushed us towards a worship of the least admirable. Then there was the semi-Marxist view that the "working man" represented the ideal, which the left somehow perverted into a cult of victimhood, making heroes of the least admirable, and turning any tale of woe into a badge of honor, which also paved the way to turning the poor into role models.

The last two were probably precursors to the whole "poverty chic" movement of the 80's, and the avant garde worship of criminals and other "transgressives" definitely played a role in turning pimps and drug dealers into icons, but it was the "poverty chic" movement itself, the simple worship of the traits of the lower class, the belief that anything arising from the lower classes was inherently "cool", which was the greatest influence in the decay of our culture.

One need only look around to see the ways it has changed our society. Besides the collapse of marriage and the explosion of illegitimate children and teenage parenthood, the other signs are unmistakable. The easy way we accept cursing, the way that pop music has been largely replaced with rap, hip hop, etc. The acceptance of provocative clothing on not just adult women but even young girls. Even the easy acceptance of pornography and casual sex in society at large⁵. All of these would have once been considered offensive and "lower class", but today they pass almost without notice. We have completely integrated the mores of the multi-generational welfare class into mainstream America.

I am sure at this point some will have started to write comments in their head, many of which probably contain the word "racist", so I should probably take a moment to explain. This has nothing to do with race. It is an unfortunate reality that at the time the Great Society locked the poor into a cycle of dependence a high percentage of black families were poor, creating a disproportionate number of poor families among black Americans. It is also unfortunate that many of those who claimed to help black Americans actually forced them more deeply into dependence on the government and allowed them fewer opportunities to better themselves. All of this means that when one speaks of poverty, especially urban poverty, black Americans will be frequently mentioned. Still, I think my readers would be mistaken to think that what I decry as "welfare mores" is entirely drawn from blacks. For example, the excessively revealing clothing I decried above may be common among certain black teens today, but I would argue it actually originated more in the white "redneck" tradition of poverty than among blacks. In the 1980's, while "white trash" girls were in hot pants and tube tops, black girls were covered in Starter jackets, jeans and K-Swiss⁶. So, while black influences may be strong in this poverty ethos, the influences come from all over the spectrum of races.

Regardless of which group originated which specific feature, it is easy to see that we now live in a culture we would have deplored only 20 years ago.  Can anyone imagine watching television in 1988 and hearing the obscenities one hears today? Or seeing the amount of flesh one does? Can you imagine anyone in 1988 accepting illegitimate children as blandly as they do today? Or viewing the revelation of a celebrity sex tape with the boredom we do now?⁷ In short, if someone from 1988 were to be transported to the world of today, would he be just as shocked by our culture as someone from several centuries ago? And would his awe at the changes in technology be anywhere close to his revulsion at the decay of our culture?

I am not arguing for a return of censorship, or even a voluntary return to greater decency (though I would not object to the latter), instead I am using this to make a point, we have completely adopted the standards of the welfare class as the norms of our culture as a whole. We have so lowered the bar that Bono saying "f***" can pass with little notice and songs about pimps and drug dealing win our highest honors. We treat the birth of illegitimate children to celebrities, and even to our friends and neighbors, as unimportant, and many enter into marriages almost anticipating that divorce will follow. We have turned our culture into the culture of the slums circa 1975, complete with teenage girls expecting their third child, unwed mothers chasing support payments from three or four fathers, and shiftless men doing their best to avoid the women they have been with and impregnate the ones they have not. We accept nudity, cursing, violence, everything shocking and grotesque and demeaning as the normal state of affairs.

In terms of cultural standards, personal ethics, and general demeanor, we have become a crass, callous, degraded society. And I ask myself: Is this middle-class adoption of the poverty ethos really the best our society can do? Is there not something more?

I continue to hope that this is just a fad, that poverty chic will vanish one day and our culture will aim a bit higher once more. But after 20 years, I am starting to lose hope.
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1. Illegitimacy rose from 4.0% in 1950 to 10.7% in 1970. . In addition, teen pregnancy rose from 13% in 1950 to nearly 30% in 1970.
2. Illegitimacy rates rose from 4% in 1950 to 10% in 1969, reaching 20.3% in 1983, and 30.1% in 1992. It has not dropped significantly since.
3. It is easy to see why punk rock, with its adoration of squalor, would feed into the pro-poverty culture. The hippy revival is a bit less obvious, as the first iteration of the hippy movement did not bring about a similar change. The difference being that, unlike their predecessors in the 1960's, the neo-hippies of the 1980's took their rhetoric seriously, and really did admire the poor people, rather than adopting the earlier hippies' condescending attitude.
4. Though the "cool" nature of poverty first started with black cultural trends such as rap, there have been other influences as well, white and hispanic poverty culture have both had a turn at driving society as well. In some ways the recent fondness for "redneck" culture is a white variation on this.
5. This is usually blamed on the internet, but I don't think the internet alone would explain it. If we had a different culture, even with the internet, I do not see the same easy acceptance of pornography. There is definitely a cultural factor behind it, technology alone did not drive us to our obsession with pornography.
6. I worked at an athletic goods store in the late 1980's, hence all the brand names. I am not normally  interested in what young girls wear, I just happen to have sold it during the time in question.(To be honest, I am not sure when the Starter jacket trend started, I think it was in the late 1980's, but I could be guilty of anachronism here.)
7. Before you dismiss me as exaggerating the difference only 20 years make, think about the shock people felt in the 1990's having to explain Bill Clinton's testimony to their children. Today we dismiss as commonplace stories about the prevalence of oral sex among quite young teenagers. Similarly, think about how shocking the testimony in the Clarence Thomas hearing seemed then, and how tame it would sound today.
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Postscript: After writing this, I realized I have officially become an old man, telling all the youngsters about how their culture has declined from the one I once knew. I also realized that I don't care that I have become an old man. It is much better to admit that "being on the cutting edge" often means destroying some very important things and there really are very good reasons behind a lot of those traditions that the young and "hip" mock. It is just a shame that most people (including myself) need to become old men and women before they appreciate how precious those traditions are.

I know that it is conventional wisdom that we are in a "housing crisis" because house prices have fallen recently, but has no one noticed that this relatively modest drop came after a much greater inflation?

After hearing the newscasters repeatedly telling me how there was a "dramatic" 9% drop in housing prices last year, I started asking myself, "exactly how much did housing prices rise in the past 10 years?" I seem to recall that houses in my area ran between $100,000 and $300,000 in the late 1990's, and now, even after the "crash" are running between $500,000 and $900,000, and appear to still be selling, though at a reduced rate*. So, I asked myself, if there is such a crisis, how much did a home buyer lose?

Well,a bit of quick research showed me that it all depends on when you bought. If a home buyer picked up a house in the past year, it appears he lost, depending on his location, up to 13% of the house's value. On the other hand, some areas actually saw an increase of as much as 23%. So, even for those who bought houses recently there were some who did not suffer a "crisis".

If we push out the time horizon more, we see even less of a crisis. In the nearly 400 metro regions for which I have numbers, there was not one showing a loss over 3 or 5 years. Yes, the heady double digit appreciation of the past is gone, but people who bought and held properties still made a decent, if not spectacular, profit.

So, why all the talk of crisis? I think there are four major reasons for the talk of crisis. (One other less obvious reason will be discussed later.)

First, the drop in values, like the prior inflation of prices, struck particularly strongly in the Washington, New York, and LA areas, in other words, in those places inhabited by the media trend setters. And, as we well know, any crisis which strikes LA, NYC, or DC will become a "nationwide crisis" in the news. So, location definitely has something to do with it.

Second, a crisis sells better than a minor adjustment. Papers and ad time are not sold with bland tales, so the news has a habit of exaggerating every tale of woe, if only to grab a few more ratings points. The housing crisis is just an extension of the old "if it bleeds, it leads" rule to economic matters.

Third, we have all become used to having constant housing inflation. Whole industries sprung up centered on "flipping houses", most of which benefit more from constant price inflation rather than from the cosmetic repairs done. Many are also used to being able to take out ever increasing home equity loans, extracting value as the paper value of their house increases. In short, continual housing inflation had become a part of our lives, and we were not ready for it to end.

Last, we must recognize that the party in the White House has a small role in this "crisis". Just as Bush had unemployment "soar to 5%" while Clinton "reduced unemployment to a record 5%", I have doubts that this would be quite as much of a "crisis" were a different occupant in the White House.

Now, none of this is to say that there is no problem. Some people did suffer from the drop in housing prices. A few suffered simply by choosing, through no fault of their own, to buy a house at the wrong time. Far more suffered by banking on the continued inflation of housing prices, that is, they bet and lost. And still others suffered because they were foolish enough to bank on both low rates and high prices continuing forever, locking themselves into ARMs and other bad schemes.

Whatever the cause for the suffering some have experienced, I only want to point out that they remain a minority, and a small one at that.  Provided you did not purchase a house in the last year and did not try to take out home equity loans close to the full value of your house, you may never have noticed this "crisis" but for the constant howling of the media**. Most people have exercised fiscal restraint, have not swapped houses every year or two, have not over-extended themselves through home equity loans, and did not gamble on risky ARMs for financing. Yes a few otherwise prudent people also got harmed, but, again, that does not make a crisis. A few sad tales is a shame, but not a crisis. And certainly not a reason for the government to get involved.

Of course, THAT is the real reason for all the talk of crisis, more than any of the four reasons I gave above. The reason underneath all of the talk of crisis is that it is an election year and something bad happened. Never missing a chance to buy votes at the expense of tax payers, politicians at every level have latched on to the recent drop in prices and come forward with scheme after scheme to bail out everyone who suffered even the smallest inconvenience. To hear them talk, they will be giving us all limitless wealth if only they can have our vote. Again and again they shout "crisis" and then argue about how many dollars to throw at the problem.

All of which provides me with a convenient definition of a crisis: A crisis is an event which would otherwise pass unnoticed, but which occurs during an election year when a Republican sits in the White House***.

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* Admittedly, this is anecdotal evidence. Still, I doubt anyone can argue that houses today, even after the "crash" are selling for anything close to as low as the prices in 2000 or 2001.

** In fact, I have been involved as both buyer and seller in the housing market very recently, yet, as I have avoided ARMs and other bad financing decisions, I have not seen any harm (other than slightly more realistic prices) from the ongoing "crisis".

*** This difference between a crisis and an economic adjustment is similar to the difference between a "scandal" and a "witch hunt". I leave it to the reader to figure which party goes with which description.

I know I have been harping on this topic for some time, but I have one final argument for those who are considering sitting out the election.

Agreed that McCain is pretty far to the left for a Republican, and he has shown that he will often make decisions that go against the beliefs of his constituents, but we also need to remember one other important factor: He is still a Republican candidate for president.

McCain may want to move left, he may want to enact Kyoto and open the gates at Guantanamo and stop all political speech which doesn't end "I am John McCain and I approve this message", but he is still running on the Republican ticket, and he needs our votes.

As long as he thinks he can get votes from the conservatives in the party, he will moderate his natural left-leaning tendencies, and adopt a more conservative line. We have already seen this on immigration, where he has moved away from his earlier pro-amnesty position, and I predict many of his environmental positions will similarly moderate as the campaign progresses. I don't think he will ever embrace waterboarding, but he may stop pressing for granting so many rights to detainees in Guantanamo. In short, as long as he thinks the conservatives may be won over, he will continue to move to the right, especially as Obama has sewn up the left so well, leaving him little hope of winning by running to the left of the party.

But all of these opportunities to move him to the right are lost if conservatives promise to sit out the election. If we say we are not even open to voting for McCain there is no reason for him to move right. He may not have a lot of hope of pulling in left-leaning moderates, but if conservatives are completely out of the picture, running left is all that is left. So, by sitting it out, we not only lose any chance of moving him right, but we also push him a little to the left, making our choice even less appealing.

Of course some out there will respond by saying "Oh, he will parrot conservative positions during the election, but he won't deliver." To them I say that they need to remember this is his first term, and, as we live in the age of perpetual campaign, I just don't see him wooing conservatives before the election, winning with that support, and then abandoning them and risking his second term on the left lining up behind him. Yes, if it were his second term, he might be more tempted to move to the left, but during his first term, never. And, as far as his second term is concerned, we can cross that bridge when we get to it, but I somehow doubt, if he has done well enough to run for another term by sticking to conservative principles, he will be that tempted to revert to his old media-pleasing "maverick" persona.

I know it is not the most thrilling reason to vote, the hope that we can move a liberal Republican somewhat to the right, but as the alternative is to sit it out and watch Hillary or Obama run the nation into the ground for four years, I will take a slim hope over no hope at all.

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UPDATED 02/28/2008

It appears I am doing well as an amateur Cassandra. In his column today, Robert Novak mentioned a conversation between McCain and Republican governors, which seems to agree with my prediction of McCain softening on environmental issues, as he tries to win over conservatives:

They made clear that energy was a major issue and that they hoped McCain would be sensitive to energy producers. By all accounts, the prospective presidential nominee was receptive.

Now, Novak is not always entirely reliable when breaking news from outside the beltway, but he is usually pretty trustworthy when reporting on DC insider horse trading, so I think that, only two days later, we have received confirmation of my prediction.

All of which convinces me that I was right, that keeping conservative votes in play, rather than promising absolutely to sit out the general election, will begin to move McCain right. Leading me to say, one final time, please, please, do not sit this one out. McCain is far from ideal, but there is still time to make him a much better president than either Obama or Hillary.

Recently I have run across post after post accusing McCain of "wanting to give health care to Mexico". Now, obviously, this is intended to throw red meat to the conservative audience, and try to pry votes away from McCain for Huckabee's faltering campaign, but I have to ask, is this really a big issue?

Yes, McCain has sponsored legislation to improve health care in Mexico. Our current president has thrown tons of money at AIDS in Africa. It is a constant that every president in recent memory has sponsored "humanitarian" aid for various nations. Nor has congress been reluctant to get into the game. Sponsoring legislation to throw our money at overseas health issues is nothing new.

Of course, since it involves Mexico, I am sure the anti-McCain crowd will paint this as being somehow weak on immigration, but it really seems to be nothing more than the usual humanitarian waste of tax monies, and pursuing it now smacks of desperation.

Please do not think I am in favor of such foreign aid programs. I think throwing money away on health initiatives in foreign nations is a very bad idea, but I don't hear Huckabee coming out in favor of eliminating the US Agency for International Development, or the World Bank subsidies, or any other foreign aid boondoggle, so I just don't see how he can seize the moral high ground on this. (Yes, Ron Paul probably has come out against USAID and the rest, but he has enough other problems that he isn't going to convince me with opposition to foreign aid.)

Admittedly the headlines will draw some reaction from those who see red whenever the word "Mexico" appears, and, as McCain has been weak on immigration it may make a small splash for a few days, but, unless there is more substance to this story than a senator supporting a generic foreign aid bill, I just don't see it gaining much momentum.

I know I have promised three articles, but something happened that was interesting enough I have to break from my planned schedule to add this short article.

I was talking to my wife after work one day, when she mentioned a co-worker's opinion on Iraq. It seems her co-worker had drawn the conclusion, promoted strongly by the anti-war crowd, that the Iraqis were "warlike" and "just not ready for democracy"*.

Of course, I could not let this pass. I started with my historical corrections, pointing out that the middle east had been no more subject to warfare than the rest of the globe for most of known history, that during the middle ages they would have, rightly, looked down on us as barbarians, while mesopotamia and the maghreb were preserving the Greek philosophical and scientific traditions, as well as maintaining libraries of classical books without any equal in the of the world. I did agree that in modern times the middle east had seen a severe decline, but that was largely the result of the chaos from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, followed by a combination of fundamentalist and socialist-nationalist governments. The people themselves, in general, were no more or less barbaric than those living in poor, tyrranical states elsewhere. Yes, Wahabbi extremism had infected some in recent decades, and that caused problems, but other militant philosophies, such as communism, religious fanaticism, ethnic bigotry, or racism filled a similar role elsewhere, so the middle east was not unique in having a minority of angry, irrational militants. It was no more violent or unprepared for democracy when we invaded than, say, Nicaragua in the late 20th century**.

None of that was what inspired me to write however. It was my wife's subsequent reply which seemed so important that I had to write about it.

Accepting, to a degree, that there was nothing inherently warlike about the middle east, my wife replied "But, if they want reforms, why aren't they helping us? Why don't they help drive out the terrorists?"

As I have said before, my wife is a normal person, not a political junkie like those on Townhall, so she gets most of her news from the media (though she favors Fox over the MSM), and doesn't obsessively follow political issues the way I do. So, in this case, her impression of the war in Iraq is probably characteristic of the man (or woman) on the street. What she understands is probably what the vast majority of Americans understand to be the truth. Which is why I was so shocked.

I admit, when we first arrived, after the initial euphoria of liberation wore off, the Iraqis, by and large, were pretty passive. They, quite sensibly, were reluctant to assist us, as they remembered all too clearly how we had abandoned the marsh Arabs and Kurds after the last war. But, to think today that the Iraqis are not helping us is surprising. But understandable. The media has completely blacked out progress in recruiting tribal leaders in Anbar, the assistance we receive from citizens throughout the nation, the declines in terrorist recruiting, the elimination of many top "insurgent" leaders, every bit of progress. Except for the running tally of US dead, the media seems to have no interest in news from Iraq. Unless they can attach a body, they can't report about it.

Of course, given all that, our progress is still slow, but I think it has nothing to do with an Iraqi incapacity for democracy or an inherent violence endemic to either middle eastern people or moslems. No, we are hampered by both the past and the future. As I said, the Iraqis remember how we abandoned them in the past, and so are still reluctant to join us in taking back their nation, for fear of us pulling up stakes and leaving them at the mercy of the terrorists, the Syrians, and the Iranians. In addition, they are aware that US governments are not like the dictators they see around them. Saddam could make a promise good for his lifetime, Bush cannot. They know that come January 2009, all promises are void, and the next office holder can still cut and run and leave them on their own, and the Democrats are giving every sign that this is their official position. That alone would be enough to make most Iraqis reluctant to provide us with aid, even without the memories of past abandonment. Both of these factors hamper our attempts to find Iraqi support, but they are also slowly waning. Provided we can manage to hold on the White House in 2008, I am sure that the Iraqis will begin to show a much greater willingness to side with the US, rather than sitting it out and waiting for one side or the other to win.

Of course, our chances of keeping a pro-defense president in the White House depend on people seeing that we need to, and, more importantly, that we can win in Iraq. But even there, we still have some hope, despite the MSM's news blackout.

Yes, my wife may have been unknowingly seen Iraq through the prism of MSM propaganda, as do most people I know, but once she heard the rest of the story, she could easily see that, far from a failure, Iraq had a lot of potential for success. So, rather than simply sit back and cry about MSM distortions, we would do much better to just bring the truth to those around us. It is not dramatic, it won't make headlines, but if each of us can bring the message to just one or two others, we can create a huge number of people not only aware of the truth, but also eager to hear more. If we can bring enough pressure for accurate reporting on Iraq, eventually the media will not be able to ignore it. Remember, though they may be incredibly biased, the media is also made up of businesses, and, whatever their bias, they cannot ignore the bottom line forever. Enough pressure to start reporting on successes in Iraq and they will have no choice; a few may hold out, but the bulk of the media will give in and follow the money.

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* Am I the only one who sees the contradiction in the multicultural, racially enlightened left pushing the line that Arab moslems are "warlike" and "not ready for Democracy"? What is someone in the 1980's had said South Africa was "not ready" for racial equality? Or souther blacks in the 1960's were "not ready" to vote? Or that the violence in Darfur is just because of an inherent "warlike nature" of the Sudanese? Yet somehow the left has no problem pushing the line that poor benighted Arabs aren't ready for democracy and were much better off being oppressed and massacred by Saddam, as they are just not worthy of any better government?
 
** I have one more question for those on the left pushing the "not ready for democracy" line. If the Iraqis are not ready to rule themselves, how can the same people explain pushing for an independent Palestinian state? The Palestinians are quite similar in ethnic and religious traditions to the Iraqis, so, if the Iraqis are not ready, how can the Palestinians be? Many have also worried about a supposed "terrorist haven" we created in Iraq. If they are so concerned about an imaginary terrorist haven in Iraq, how can they argue for creating a very real haven for terrorists in the west bank and Gaza strip?

Apologies to my handful of regular readers, but events have kept me from writing as much as I intended. So, I am afraid I will have to push back my schedule slightly from the one I announced on Thursday. Also, as I have raised a whole new issue with a recent post, I need to add one more essay to my "to do" list.

Given the extra essay and the demands of work and home, I can only promise that the following essays will be completed sometime during the coming week:

1. An explanation of why I think there is no need for government licensing of doctors and other medical professionals, nor a need for prescription drugs laws. I hope to show that our current system does not provide the safety benefits promised, that it can actually result in harmful outcomes, and that a free market solution, akin to the systems used in many other fields, will work better and save money. Since it provides a neat analogy, being an area that has long been regulated and one most people think "needs" regulation, I may also examine the multitude of food safety laws and show how they also could be better handled by competing private inspection groups and consumer choice, rather than by monolithic government decree. (I expect to hear a lot of disagreement in the responses to this essay, but I still have to set forth my case.)

2. As mentioned below, I plan to write an essay explaining where government goes wrong. Obviously, the first essay is just a single specific case, so this essay can be viewed as a more general take on the theme. As I stated earlier, I will also explain where government does a good job, so we can figure out what is and is not a proper function of the state, and maybe develop a few general rules to help figure out when the state should get involved and when it should stand by and let things sort themselves out.

3. Finally, I will, at long last, put together my essay on federalism I have been promising. I have described this often enough in the past that I won't bother to describe it again.

I know I just wrote a very similar brief note a few days ago, and I haven't broken much new ground in this one, but I did want to let everyone know that I am aware I am falling behind schedule, and give some idea of when they can expect the essays since my earlier schedule obviously no longer applies.

I promise this is the last post of this nature for a while. I don't have many other works in progress about which I would need to update anyone, so no need to worry that every fourth post will just be a list of anticipated projects. Once the three mentioned above are finished, I still have a few other idea that may eventually become essays, but they are not yet that far along, so I shall be back to writing on current events.

UPDATED 02/25/2008

After I wrote this last night, I realized that the same theme pervades all of these.

My recent explanation of the primary benefit of federalism is that it allows for more decisions, which increases the chances that any given decision will be right. The same applies to my view of regulation. With a single, monolithic federal regulatory body, we get a single decision, and everyone suffers from any mistakes it makes. On the other hand, with competing private certifying bodies we get more decisions and the chance that at least one will avoid any given mistake increases.

Of course there are other benefits as well, once quasi-governmental power is removed from the process. Once it becomes certification rather than regulation a lot of the worst effects simply vanish, as it is the power to exclude from the field that makes regulatory agencies so burdensome and prone to abuse. But I will have to wait to write about those specific details later.

I do enjoy it when I manage to apply a single theme to so many topics. Perhaps my writing won't be so difficult if I can tie them all together. In any case, I will do my best to get them finished this week.

I was preparing some notes for the two essays I hope to write this weekend (which may run a bit late), and I was reminded of one of those topics which has bothered me for some time.

I know that I am not in the Republican mainstream on many issues, especially when I begin to argue on medical matters. Many people are so used to the government meddling in medicine that they cannot conceive of how a fully free market medical system would work. When I say we should do away with licensing of doctors, even die-hard conservatives often gasp and ask me if I am mad. The same when I argue that we should not require prescriptions for any drugs. Oddly enough, even those who want to legalize illicit drugs often seem to think that penicillin and sterile water* should require a prescription, while heroin and cocaine should be sold over the counter.

However, I do think I have one specific topic where even those who disagree with me on the abolition of prescriptions would support me. It is  the argument often advanced by doctors for requiring a prescription for birth control, and, though it is wrapped in a mantle of concern for the patient, it is nothing short of blatant self-interest.

Before I start, let me say that other doctors have suggested that the prescription requirement is there because some women have adverse reactions to birth control pills, but that seems a dubious justification. Doctors preform no tests before prescribing the pill, so what safety is gained by having it prescribed versus just buying it OTC? Some people react badly to shrimp or peanuts, yet we require no prescription for those. If a woman reacted badly to birth control pills, she would either go to her doctor or the ER, whether or not there had been a prescription requirement, so I don't see how requiring a prescription helps make it more safe.

That is not the argument that troubles me though. The argument that worries me is the statement I have heard many times that women need to get a prescription for birth control pills because they "should" see their gynecologist every six months, and the prescription requirement forces them to do so.

Has anyone ever heard a more blatant self-serving statement? In other words, doctors require a prescription because it guarantees them business every six months. Yes, it is worded as being for "their own good", but that is just the pretense. The truth is it is all about repeat business.

Think about it this way: I "should" take my car to the mechanic every 10,000 miles, so should the state only sell me gas if I have a prescription from my mechanic? I "should" see a nutritionist, so should I only be able to buy food if I have a prescription from my dietician? If you say no to either of those, then how do you justify forcing women to see their gynecologist every 6 months just to get birth control pills?

Let us be honest, doctors may pretend it is for the good of the woman, but this particular restriction is nothing but a self-serving law. Even if some gynecologists are sincere, and are not doing it just for the money, it still is a needlessly intrusive law. Who is to say that the gynecologist's judgment of what a woman needs is more valid than her own?** Or, whatever the relative validity, that the gynecologist's judgment should have the force of law?

Now, I do not intend to say that all regulations are similarly self-serving. In fact, the notes I was writing were about the way even honest, well meaning laws often lead to negative outcomes. But, then again, the fact that the prescription laws can be perverted so easily to be used as "make work" for doctors, and that the general public will mindlessly accept even such transparent justifications shows me that the prescription laws, and much of government regulation in general, is quite dangerous. If regulations can be perverted so simply we should be very cautious in providing such opportunities, and should keep our regulations to a minimum.

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* I cannot say whether or not it is still the case, but about a decade ago I suffered second and third degree burns to my hand. The emergency room prescribed a topical antibiotic and suggested I wash it with sterile water after a certain number of days. However, when I asked a pharmacist for sterile water, I was told it was a prescription drug. I cannot attest to the truth or falsehood of this, but the very fact that he could plausibly make such a claim suggests to me that we really need to reconsider the whole prescription drug system.

** Our society seems to have lost sight of a lot of truths in the area of medicine. For example, we often forget that the patient employs the doctor. Many times it appears that the doctor thinks he is in charge, rather than the reverse. Just having greater knowledge does not make anyone any less of an employee. An auto mechanic knows more than his customer, yet we would never give him the power we give doctors.  Some of this is because we have given so many quasi-governmental powers to doctors, from the ability to commit patients to control of access to medications, we have changed doctors from people we pay to heal us to quasi-bureaucrats who we still pay, but then must also appease.

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UPDATED 02/24/2008

This morning I was toying with the idea of moving this article to the "draft" category, until I saw it had garnered one comment. Not that I think it is a particularly bad article, but I was considering whether I really wanted to open the whole subject of prescriptions, medical licensing, and (as it logically follows on this argument) drug legalization. But, as I have already received comments, I suppose I have committed myself, so, rather than post an extensive addendum to this article, I will postpone my two promised articles and write up my rather lengthy (and I am sure controversial) essay on those topics.

I suppose I should add a disclosure to this article as well. My ill health had little to do with my opinion on these matters. I have believed that requiring a prescription for drugs has little safety benefit for some time. The fact that the powers conferred on doctors by prescription laws made my life miserable for quite some time only serves to reinforce this belief. (See my earlier article for a description of my medical experiences.)

Two final points, before I cut myself off so I don't write the entire article in this addendum:

First, I am not abandoning my dedication to federalist solutions. When I say we should eliminate licensing, it is an ideal, not something I would enforce at a federal level. Instead, I would be quite happy to see prescription and licensing laws operate on a state level with NO federal involvement. However, I would fight on a state level to eliminate the licensing and prescription laws, for reasons I will explain above. And, yes, I know some of this is done on the state level now, but, with so much federal control over the states it is far from a state solution, the states often simply enact a model that has proven acceptable to the federal regulators in another state.

Second, just to cut off a possible argument to my brief summary of my next article: Yes, I know doctors can do great harm and provide needed services, but that does not mean we need to have a single, government mandated licensing body. Auto mechanics can kills us as easily as doctors, and provided a needed service, yet we rely upon private certification bodies and trust our own judgment on which mechanic to use. Nor has licensing really worked well in another area, home improvement contractors. In my home state they are HEAVILY regulated and licensed, yet home improvement scams abound, even by licensed contractors, and shoddy building has not been reduced. So, again, it is not obvious that a single governmental (or a government sanctioned private body like the AMA) improves quality at all, and I can show that it is likely to actually prevent some services from being delivered.

Well, as I said, I won't write the entire essay here in the addendum. So please come back in a day or two and read my more complete explanation.

As I have picked up several new readers, I figure it is time to formally state the rules by which I write my blog. I have mentioned them before in passing, but never officially stated the promises I made to my readers. So, for the first time, here are the promises I made when I started this blog:

1. I promise to respond to every comment as soon as I read it. I will try my best to make every response substantial, though, should I not understand your point, I will say so. Provided I can follow your point, I will do my best to reply in as intelligent a manner as possible.

2. I promise to thank every reader for their comments, as I really do appreciate anyone who takes the time to read my writing, and especially those who bother to tell me their reaction. Positive or negative, every comment will get my thanks.

3. I promise to keep my writing as close to the topic as possible. Very rarely I will stray a bit and write something off  topic, such as my early "Spelling Nazi" essay, but in general I will do my best to write on matters political and cultural and leave the other topics for other fora*.

4. I promise at least one post a week. In the past few months I have exceeded that greatly, but, should my pace slow, I still promise at least one a week.

Those are the promises with which I started writing, and I have done my best to keep them. Hopefully I will continue to do so. And if I don't, let me know so I can better follow my own rules.

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* High school Latin scars you for life. I know many write "forums" and no one bats an eye, but I just can't do it. The plural of "forum" is "fora", I just can't write it any other way. (I have endless arguments with other software developers, as I just cannot believe that we threw away the perfectly good word "indices" for the abomination "indexes". And the fact that "modern" dictionaries and Microsoft spell-check hate "indices" and love "indexes" does not convince me otherwise. Even now as I write this Firefox is drawing a little red squiggle under the real word and doing nothing to the horrible neologism. Unbelievable.)

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UPDATED 02/22/2008

If this, or any other article, mysteriously disappears, blame my three year old son. He is a bit too fascinated by consumer electronics and has a habit of clicking on any links he sees on my computer. He just flagged this article as offensive (the second of my articles he has so flagged), and I am certain at some point he will manage to accidentally delete one of my essays.

I know I have said I hate disclosing personal details, but I just wanted to make clear that there is a possibility articles may simply vanish form time to time, and explain that it is nothing intentional on my part, just one of the many random events brought about by living with a child just turned three.

I don't quite understand environmentalists. That applies to any number of issues, of course, almost nothing that environmentalists do makes sense to me. But, as I have only limited time and space, let me pick just one area to question: the endangered species laws.

As I understand it, and at the risk of over simplifying, evolutionary theory states that traits arise by random mutation within a given species. If a trait proves to increase the number of offspring, either by increasing the number of young or by increasing lifespan and allowing one to produce more young, then that trait will become more common. If it does the opposite, it will become less common, or disappear. And if it has no impact on reproduction the outcome is unknown, it could disappear, decrease or increase, with no way to predict which will happen.

So, if there is no human intervention, evolution would work as follows: A member of species A develops a particular trait which proves to enhance survival, allowing him to have more offspring. These offspring all have this new trait, eventually forming subspecies A1. At some point while A1 is increasing in numbers, another beneficial trait appears, giving rise to subspecies A2. Between the competition with A1 and the competition with A2, both more effective at breeding, the original species A begins to decline in numbers, leaving more food, room and resources for species A1 and A2 who eventually take over the region form the now extinct species A.

If that is the natural outcome, how can environmentalists say that we should preserve "endangered species"? If a species of creatures is so uncommon that they are in danger of vanishing, does that not suggest that they have failed to adapt? Would not the most "natural" outcome be to allow them to follow dinosaurs, neanderthals and other outdated branches of the evolutionary tree into oblivion? Also, by preserving these evolutionary losers, aren't they reducing the resources available to the more evolved and successful species who would fill the vacuum left by the dying species? Aren't they actually acting as a brake on evolution and trying to hold time still?

Is that truly the most "environmentally friendly" outcome? To try to hold back change and stand in the way of the natural progress of species?

Now, I know many will argue, "those species aren't dying because of competitors, but because of man!" But that is an absurd argument for so many reasons.

First, man is a part of nature, so to say anything man does is "not natural" is absurd. If man is not a part of nature, where did we arise? Are environmentalists siding with biblical literalists and saying we are lower than angels but higher than beasts? I thought that environmentalists were of the "man as another ape" school. If man is a part of nature, what he does is not "unnatural" and so even being driven to extinction by man is still a part "of nature" and should not be opposed by the environmentalists.

Second, many species have adapted quite well to man and managed to survive. If they cannot adapt to the changes man has wrought, it does prove that a species is too fragile to survive. Just as changes in climate or rainfall can drive species to extinction, so can changes wrought by man. To call one natural and one unnatural is to draw artificial lines. Either a species can adapt to whatever changes it encounters or it can't. That man caused the changes does not change that fact. To keep a species alive simply because we say man is to blame is still to try to preserve a species which would otherwise have gone extinct. It is still to try to stand in the way of natural selection.

Third, there are few species facing extinction which were not in a very shaky position long before man caused any problems. A quick look through the endangered species list shows a huge number of beasts confined to VERY limited geographical areas, or huge predators whose numbers were never very great as they required extensive hunting grounds. If a species existed in only one field in Oregon, it did not take man to bring it to extinction, a good drought or forest fire could have done the same. The species the environmentalists are trying to protect are very rarely ones which would be robust but for man, they are most often borderline species which were well along the way to disappearing before man was even aware they existed.

Now, please, do not take this to mean that I think we should not make efforts to preserve species. I am a fan of zoological parks, and I would be quite sad to see the big cats or bears or eagles or even species of fish or frogs or beetles vanish form the earth. But I think we should admit that all of this protection of species is simply the result of human benevolence, and is not in any way "preserving nature". If nature were left untouched by man, many, many species would vanish, so please do not pretend keeping these species alive is somehow more "natural", maintaining species is every bit as unnatural as building a skyscraper. Nature is brutal and unfeeling, it is human kindness that is preserving these species, not any sort of love of nature, nor is the preservation of every species more "natural" than simply allowing them to die off, in fact, it is less natural, and we will be better off if we recognize that fact.

Why?

Because as soon as we realize preserving species is a luxury, and not a noble calling, we can begin to balance out species preservation against other human actions. Rather than sacrificing all progress to the sacred need to maintain a pristine nature, we can say that we have desires to preserve species and to build factories, and we can decide which matters more in any given circumstance, rather than one side winning every time by claiming greater "nobility".

Instead, those who wish to preserve a species can freely participate in the market, either purchasing and protecting that land, as did many bird sanctuaries of the early 20th century, or they can try some other private option, such as relocation, breeding programs, zoos, or any other privately funded and managed scheme. Once we remove the argument that somehow those preserving species are doing something more important, that they are standing in as a proxy for "holy mother earth", we will be able to approach the question sensibly, and the cost of preserving species can be borne more fairly, with those who value preservation picking up the costs of doing so.

None of this means I wish to see species dying off, but I also do not think that preserving every last tiny subspecies should be seen as the ultimate goal of human existence. Man is as much a part of nature as any of the species others seek to preserve, and I think perhaps it is time we showed a bit of favoritism to that tiny part of nature which is our own species.

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UPDATED 02/28/2008

In replying to comments on this post, I found myself recommending two older books which provided me with a lot of useful information. Though I ordered both in either the late 1980's or very early 1990's, they have stood the test of time, and continue to be favorites. For those who do not read comments, I am reproducing my recommendations here:

1. The Ultimate Resource (Julian Simon) - This book makes two useful arguments:  That zero population growth schemes make us poorer, not richer and that we are not in danger of running out of "finite" resources, so long as we allow market forces and human ingenuity to work.

2. Rational Readings on Environmental Concerns (Jay Lehr ed.) It is a collection of many, many essays on a range of environmentalist arguments. The interesting part is how relevant a set of essays from the late 1980's still proves today. The arguments have changed little, and this book still provides a number of great refutations, ranging from DDT to carcinogenesis to media bias to global warming. It has helped me argue with environmentalists for nearly two decades now.

For a nice, short read, along the lines of Simon's book, I would also recommend The Doomsday Myth (Charles Maurice and Charles Smithson). It recounts a number of shortages throughout history where economic forces caused both economization and substitution, effectively ending the shortage. It isn't exactly a scholarly tome, but it does provide some startling examples of places where events we consider progress were actually reactions to prior "crises", for example the change to petrochemicals being spurred by a shortage of whale oil for lighting and lubrication, or the change to coal (and the subsequent technological innovations) coming about as a result of wood shortages. It is a great source of examples for those who often argue with the economically ignorant.

These may be out of print now, but if you can find copies, I highly recommend all three.

As so often happens lately, arguing politics with my very liberal mother has inspired me to write another short essay.

We were discussing a number of topics when she accused me of "taking everything so literally". As I expected she claimed that literal meaning is the "lowest" way of interpreting statements. At first I simply responded that without a literal meaning words cannot convey anything, that unless we have an agreed upon literal meaning, we can't talk, that concepts such as logic are based entirely upon an inflexible, consistent meaning existing for all the terms used, that if we simply make of words whatever we want, then anyone can say anything and the listeners will each draw their own meaning, and no real communication will take place.

And then it struck me. "That's why you like Obama!"

Thus did I find the answer to a question that had troubled me, why would people, liberal though they may be, be so easily taken in by such shallow platitudes and meaningless phrases. While they may be swayed by appeals to emotions or arguments that something is "just the right thing to do", the left has still not shown an inclination to buy into a candidate who had NO platform, and nothing to offer but a smile and platitudes. It is truly frightening to see the cult-like adoration that so many shower on Obama.

But my mother's aversion to literal meaning showed me the reason.

Obama's followers don't actually hear his meaningless platitudes. When he starts speaking about "hope" and "change" his followers no longer hear his words, instead they project upon him whatever they wish to hear. For some reason they choose to not hear Obama as he really is, but they create the Obama of their dreams, an idealized candidate of their own making.

That also explains how Obama can get away with taking no stand on most issues, while the few stands he has taken are either idiotic in the extreme (invading Pakistan) or contradictory (the 2d amendment creates an individual right, but states may restrict it as much as they want). For any other candidate a lack of position, or contradictory positions, would be a cause for alarm, or at least open him to criticism, but it is a strength for Obama. By saying nothing, or by taking every position, Obama allows his followers to read into his generic statements whatever they want to hear. It allows him to literally be all things to all people.

I still have no idea why Obama has become this sort of living inkblot*, a blank slate upon which cult-like followers project their hopes, but at least I think I now understand why he gets away with saying so little. He MUST say little for his trick to work. If he takes a stand he will be tied to a specific belief and some of his followers will have to confront the reality that he is a flesh and blood being with whom they sometimes disagree. So he must say nothing, to allow his followers to make of him what they will.

It is frightening that so many feel the need for a secular savior upon whom they can project their own beliefs. Of course, it is even MORE frightening that such a huckster has come so close to becoming the president of the United States.

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* I know some liberal adoration of Obama has to do with their obsession with "racial healing", but that is no explanation. No one is seeing a savior in Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton. Nor is it enough that he is a good speaker, as many great speakers have held no such appeal. Nor is it that many find him attractive, as most handsome men do not gain such a following. I think the most likely explanation is that, in addition to being a handsome man and a good speaker, all while promising liberals some sort of racial catharsis, he is also willing to be a nothing. He is willing to remain silent on absolutely every topic, precisely because it allows people to see in him what they want. In short, I think he has carefully crafted this "inkblot" persona as a tool to advance his career. And that may be the most frightening idea of all. Does anyone want such a manipulator to hold the highest office in the land?