open borders in the atlantic magazine

The Open Borders movement is based around a simple idea – in most cases, people should not be restricted in their movement across borders. This idea was featured this weekend in The Atlantic. The article presents the case and discusses the academics and writers who congregate at the Open Borders blog, which is run by Vipul Naik.

Michael Huemer, a philosopher, boils down the argument with the hypothetical story inspired by the “Starvin’ Marvin” South Park character:

[Marvin] is very hungry and is trying to travel to the marketplace to buy some food. Another person, Sam (Sam has a large number of nephews and nieces, so we’ll call him Uncle Sam), decides to stop Marvin from going to the marketplace using coercion. He goes down there with his M16 and blocks the road. As a result, Marvin can’t trade for food and, as a result, he starves. So then the question is, did Sam kill Marvin? Did he violate his rights? Almost anyone would say yes, Sam acted wrongly. In fact, if Marvin died as a result, then Sam killed him. It wouldn’t be that Sam failed to help Marvin. No, he actively intervened….This is analogous to the U.S. government’s immigration policy. There are people who want to trade in our marketplace, in this case the labor market, and the government effectively prevents them from doing that, through use of force.

I was also cited for discussing open borders strategy:

“Open borders will become a reality when the public stops believing that immigrants are a threat,” sociologist Fabio Rojas recently wrote, comparing the open borders movement to the gay rights movement. “Even if a pro-immigration referendum fails to pass, it will still serve the function of forcing the issue onto the public stage. These actions won’t ­­change the minds of those strongly committed to anti-immigration policy. Instead, they will make immigration seem ‘normal’ to a later generation of people.”

Check it out.

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can you be deported while you are asleep?

Apparently, yes. An article in Talking Points memo reports on a rare, but disturbing, aspect of our immigration laws. Hospitals may pay for undocumented immigrants to be moved to medical facilities in their original nation. They occasionally do this when people start in the emergency room, they stabilize, and then insurance does not pay for long term care:

Hundreds of immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally have taken similar journeys through a little-known removal system run not by the federal government trying to enforce laws but by hospitals seeking to curb high costs. A recent report compiled by immigrant advocacy groups made a rare attempt to determine how many people are sent home, concluding that at least 600 immigrants were removed over a five-year period, though there were likely many more.

To be sure, very uncommon, but it starkly points to a disturbing issue. Current law allows the state and other entities, hospitals in this case, to grossly violate one’s individual freedom if the aren’t a documented migrant. There’s a healthy debate to be had over the degree to which hospitals should provide care for the uninsured, but that doesn’t imply that somebody can be be shipped to another country because they are a non-citizen and it saves the hospital some money.

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boston, nyc, and dc on high alert

Due to the detonations (warning: graphic) at today’s Boston Marathon, Boston, NYC, and DC are now on high alert. For those of you in Boston, please stay safe. We are getting conflicting reports of Boston area cell service being down vs. increased capacity.
- Boston Police Dept. twitter feed is here.
- Looking for someone/have info about someone in Boston? Use Google person finder here.
- No-fly zone over the Boylston St. area of Boston, heightened security expected at Logan airport

religion and immigration rights in the US

Yesterday’s WSJ featured an interesting (gated) front page article on growing support among some evangelical congregations for extending immigration rights to undocumented immigrants. Drawing on the Bible to justify “welcoming the stranger,” leaders have urged outreach efforts and political mobilization for overhauling immigration reform, even though these activities may alienate some congregants and politicians. According to the WSJ, one opposing politician has countered supporters’ assertions with the claim that “The Bible contains numerous passages that do not necessarily support amnesty and instead support the rule of law. The Scriptures clearly indicate that God charges civil authorities with preserving order, protecting citizens and punishing wrongdoers.” Clearly, groups and individuals are tapping logics of religion and the state to offer various rationales for the status quo versus change.

Sociologist Grace Yukich has conducted research on a similar movement for immigration rights among Catholic groups. Her forthcoming book One Family Under God: Religion and Immigration Politics in the New Sanctuary Movement (Oxford) examines how supporters simultaneously engage with a larger social movement at the grassroots level and reshape the composition of their flock. Check out more about Yukich’s work via her blog posts on Mobilizing Ideas and The Immanent Frame.

what political science should learn from the Coburn amendment

A few weeks ago, Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma tried to ban the NSF from supporting political science research. And of course, a lot of folks in the academy voiced their objection. But there’s a broader question for political science: Why is the political science profession so reliant on NSF funding? Repeatedly, people said that a majority of political science projects are funded with NSF funds. Is this true? If so, then it is a precarious state of affairs.

Academic disciplines should rely on a diverse group of supporters. If Congress deems social science a worthy effort, then great. But if they don’t, then we should still be ok. Relying on the NSF is analogous to a business having a single wealthy customer. That’s usually a bad business model. Instead, social scientists should actively court different sources of funding ranging from the public sector, non-profits, individuals, and the corporate world. If you look at sociology, you see many important projects funded by all kinds of folks. The General Social Survey is your typical big project funded by the NSF. Ron Burt obtained a lot of his data from private consulting gigs. Merton’s reference group research was done for the Dept of War during WWII. A lot of Columbia sociology in the 50s and 60s was sponsored by for-profit groups in New York.

It is up to each researcher to decide what kind of funding they are willing to pursue. But collectively, we should encourage funding from many sources, or we’ll be at the mercy of the Tom Coburns of the world.

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delegitimization as a new world order

Imagine going to the ATM and discovering you can’t withdraw your money because the ATM is out of cash. Not only that, but the bank is closed because of a national holiday so you can’t use the bank teller to withdraw money, electronic transfers of funds are frozen, and the stores refuse to accept credit cards out of concerns that electronic payments won’t be made. If you are able to get to your money, you learn that 6.75% of your funds (or 9.95% if you are a lucky ducky with over 100K euros in your account) will be converted into bank shares under a compulsory levy intended to prop up the banking system. The mortgage payment that you scheduled, the student loan check that you deposited to pay for your education, the vendors that you need to pay for your small business – all are up in the air.

Even if you are told “nevermind, we’re re-evaluating that policy, back to the drawing board!”, what’s the rational thing to do? Most likely, you as a depositor will lose trust in the banking system and pull out as much as you can. If you are in an adjoining country with a shared currency, the mattress, precious metals, and alternate currencies are looking like more attractive places to keep your money. This is the scenario currently unfolding for residents in Cyprus and those who were parking their money in what seemed like a safe haven.

Less than a year ago, Greece was in a similar situation and is still dealing with the consequences. Now, it’s Cyprus’s turn. These supposedly one-off, “unique” situations involving untested interventions are becoming regularities as banking and governance systems around the world are becoming more tightly coupled together. Although Chick Perrow‘s Normal Accidents: Living with High Risk Technologies discusses nuclear plants and chemical plants, his concept of how reactions, once started, are hard to stop (much less understand) in tightly coupled systems, is a helpful read. Add to his concept the erosion of a shared understanding and belief in institutions for a potent mix – that is, the delegitimization processes of trust in banking and governance that we may be seeing in the EU.

For those of us who have been living under the various rocks of committee work/teaching/research/other commitments, a little background reading: Dealbreaker’s take, with plenty of links to others’ analysis, Reuters,and Zero Hedge’s mordant posts.

time for pope bets

We live in a golden age of papal betting. Within my own lifetime, I will have had at least three opportunities to wager on papal elections (’78, ’05, ’13). Better than bingo. If you need a primer on the possible leaders, click here. Intrade is trading 47% for an Italian pope. For individual cardinal odds, click here. For sociology of Vatican II, check out Melissa Wilde’s ASR article on the topic. Consider this an open thread on the social science (and gaming) of the papacy and/or information markets.

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memory to myth

Tim Carmody of The Verge has written a nice remembrance of the recently deceased Aaron Swartz.  Carmody talks about Aaron’s ideals and his ability to turn beliefs into action. It’s a nice tribute and one that made me think about my own ideals and commitments. I especially liked this section from the essay.

I also keep thinking about a point Aaron’s father made during his eulogy for his son in Chicago, and that Thoughtworks’ Roy Singham reprised in New York. Over and over again, we’ve seen technology companies, whether startups or giants, push the boundaries of the law for their own gain. We celebrate it. We call it “disruption.” The existing commercial powers largely understand its motivations and can deal with it using tools commercial powers understand: civil lawsuits, ad campaigns, market pressure, private agreements, buyouts, and payoffs.

Aaron didn’t play that game. After he sold Reddit, he couldn’t be bought. In fact, he was spending his own money, and his valuable time, on campaigns for the public good, and helping others to do the same. He was a realist about the government, media companies, and Silicon Valley. His experience with all of them made him grow up too soon. But he also never stopped being that not-even-teenager who believed in the utopian possibilities latent in the World Wide Web. He never stopped believing in the power of small groups of people who were willing to devote their attention to small problems and nagging details in order to create the greatest good for the greatest number. Aaron played in that space without resolving its tensions.

That’s a nice description of the kind of mentality that a dedicated activist must have if he or she is to endure the failures they’re likely to experience when pushing against the boundaries of authority and the status quo.  Nevertheless, Aaron’s life is a reminder of just how difficult that struggle can be.

social isolation and school shootings

My colleague Bernice Pescosolido, one of the leading social scientists who studies mental health, has some insightful commentary on violence and social isolation:

Adam Lanza’s mother, Nancy, took him out of Newtown High School and home-schooled him to get his GED. Ryan Lanza said he hadn’t seen his younger brother since 2010, and reports indicate that Adam Lanza hadn’t even left the confines of his home for some time.

“Isolation is more deadly than smoking in terms of mortality,” said Pescosolido, an authority on medical sociology and social issues in health, illness, and healing. “People who are not engaged are more predisposed to suicide,” she pointed out. “Those who don’t have a meaningful connection to norms in society are more predisposed to take their own life.”

Recommended.

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why is the democratic party anti-war when democratic presidents start so many wars?

In a comment, August noted that the Democratic party historically has been responsible for a whole lotta wars, so there is no reason to believe that the Democratic party is the natural home of the antiwar crowd. Until Iraq ’03, the GOP hadn’t initiated a major war since 1898, when the McKinley administration fought Spain and followed up with a 10 year colonial war in the Philippines. Until Bush II, GOP wars were small (Lebanon ’56, Iraq ’91, Somalia ’93) or the GOP brought big wars to an end (Korea, Vietnam). Nixon expanded an already massive war, making him sort of an exception.

So why is the antiwar movement associated in the imagination with the Democratic party? Why the shift to the Democratic party in the 1960s? A simple hypothesis: Counter culture. The GOP has consistently been the party of the bourgeoisie and the puritans. Right now, antiwar activists are counter-cultural in their personal style and political rhetoric. Therefore, you can’t have them in the same room with the puritans. Call it long hair dynamics. If one groups fails to honor the norms of another group, then policy doesn’t matter.

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dear democrats: please grow a backbone

There is an article on The Daily Beast website about Susan Rice, who may be the next Secretary of State. Written by Peter Beinart, the article makes a simple point. There is nothing terribly controversial about Susan  Rice. In fact, she embodies a sort of timid and very traditional thinking found within the Democratic Party. She may be the kind of person who will yell at people in the UN, but she’ll quiet down when people call for invading another country. From Beinart’s article:

To understand what’s at stake in Rice’s potential nomination, it’s more useful to listen to a different set of interviews, conducted roughly a decade ago. Between the fall of 2002 and the spring of 2003, NPR’s Tavis Smiley interviewed Rice four times about the Bush administration’s looming war with Iraq. I’ve spent the better part of an afternoon listening to those interviews and I still can’t tell whether Susan Rice supported the war or opposed it. That’s the real scandal, and it says a lot more about Susan Rice, and the entire Democratic foreign-policy class, than anything that happened in Benghazi.

Exactly. When push comes to shove, Democrats become timid on issues of war and peace. If we look at the post-war American history, we see many wars, but few clearly good outcomes. Vietnam cost tens of thousands of lives. Afghanistan still winds along with no end in sight. Iraq cost nearly five thousand American lives and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives, all in response to a threat that turned out to not be there. In the 2000s, we’ve spent an extra trillion dollars on these fights. The argument for war becomes very weak when you count the lives and money. At the beginning of each war, great promises are made, though they rarely pan out.

Yet, decade after decade, the Demcoratic Party acts like a wall flower at the high school dance. Susan Rice, as Beinart writes, is just a symptom. Lot’s of Democrats waffle when the case for war is made. The Democratic Party’s version of being strong on national security is to acquiesce to hot heads, not to be strong in the case of peace. I don’t how they are going to do it, but if they want to be serious about national security they’ll have to grow a backbone and oppose wars where thousands of American men and women will die or be crippled for life.

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back at ron paul headquarters…

Did you guys notice that eerie silence? That’s the sound of Ron Paul not having an impact on the Republican party.

Here’s a flashback. According to some folks, the Republican party was supposed to have been taken over by Mises reading Tea Party fanatics. Ron Paul was the hero to the new crowd of limited government radicals.  Well, yes, there are some folks who claim to read Mises and love Ron Paul. But the last presidential election cycle shows how misguided the prediction of the Tea Party take over. Some evidence:

• The general election simply didn’t focus much on the size of government. It was mainly about Romney’s work at Bain, whether Obama was doing a decent job, and defending healthcare reform.
• A lot of GOP candidates decided to focus on abortion.
• Romney was awfully vague about what was going to get cut if he became president.
• The two hard core libertarian candidates in the GOP primary did not perform well. Paul couldn’t even beat out Herman Cain (!) for the privilege of being the non-Romney of the month. Johnson’s showing was a statistical error.

In other words, the GOP is really a coalition of business interests and social conservatives who like the rhetoric of small government. Those who actually favor a roll back of the the state, such as reducing the military or ending the drug war, don’t get very far.

For the life of the mind: From Black Power/Grad Skool Rulz

the obama victims

Barack Obama’s electoral career is now over and it’s time for the body count. Barack Obama beat the following folks in elections:

• Alice Palmer
• A bunch of Republicans who ran in Hyde Park’s state senate district
• Jack Ryan
• Alan Keyes
• Hillary Clinton
• John McCain
• Mitt Romney

When you lay it out, you see a pattern. The victims tend to come in two categories. First, there are people who, for structural reasons, never had a chance at winning (e.g., Republicans in the South Side). I’ll toss John McCain in this category because no Republican could have won with a major recession and two wars hanging on his neck. Alan Keyes’ candidacy was hopeless because he’s, well, Alan Keyes.

Second, there are what I like to call the “high altitude” candidates. The high altitude candidate is a very wealthy or very prestigious person who has not worked their way up the ladder. These candidates have relatively little political experience. Hillary Clinton, for example, cruised to two very easy Senate wins in New York in 2000 and 2006. She had no serious primary or general election challenge. The second time, the GOP didn’t even bother running a serious opponent. Romney has an almost identical record. Using his large war chest, he easily rolled over all GOP challengers in Massachusetts. He was once spanked by Ted Kennedy and then went on to win the governorship a few years later.*

You know who was *not* an Obama victim? Bobby Rush, who represented District 1 in Illinois. That guy beat Obama in a primary challenge 59% to 29%. So bad was the beating that Obama admitted that he seriously considered dropping out of politics. Why was Rush the only politician to beat Obama? Well, he paid his dues and learned politics the hard way. He founded the Illinois Black Panthers and was a big player in SNCC. He ran for City Council and lost. Then, later, he won election as an Alderman. After that, he ran in 1992 for District 1. By the time Obama showed up, Rush, by my count, had fought at least 6 or 7 very nitty gritty local elections and was deeply rooted in the South Side. No way was he going to be bounced out by a Spider Man comic reading nerd from the University of Chicago.

The lesson I take from this history is that Obama is a truly skilled politician, but he was often lucky and took advantage of candidates who weren’t used to having serious opposition. That’s why he was always underestimated. The Clinton’s and Romney’s of the world are used to just rolling over people and have little experience with intelligent and well organized challengers who can exploit the political system in novel ways. But when confronted with a determined politician who had paid his dues, Obama showed he was as human and fallible as any other politician.

C’mon, buy these books: From Black Power/Grad Skool Rulz

* What about Palmer? She’s a weird case that doesn’t fit either the loser or high altitude category. Obama’s people found that her paperwork was out of order and she was bounced from the ballot. She then decided not to run or contest the disqualification. Sui generis, but et tu BHO.

is defense spending is now undermining the republican party?

Traditionally, national defense was an issue the benefited Republicans. Symbolically, it allowed Republicans to appeal to nationalists who wanted to see America on top. Also, it is a hand out. The bigger the defense budget, the more  contracts and jobs you can give to constituents.

In view of the recent election, I’ve come to believe that we have reached a turning point. Increased defense spending is now slowly eroding the Republican party’s position in national politics. The reason is that “defense” is no longer is limited to what we normally think of as the armed forces – soldiers, tanks, ships, and so forth. Now, defense means a very expansive “homeland security” apparatus.

The new face of defense is a vastly expanded community of contractors, consultants, engineers, and computer programmers. These people do not need to be spread out across the country. Instead, this new bureaucracy is concentrated around Washington, DC and its suburbs in Virginia and Maryland. These people do not always vote Republican. In fact, highly educated scientific types like to vote Democrat.

Of course, the suburbs of Virginia are expanding for many reasons, but one important reason is that massive expansion of “homeland security” and other Washington bureaucracies in the 2000s. This shifts Virginia from being a primarily rural conservative state to a slightly liberal urban state. And without a solid lock on the Southern electoral votes, it is very hard, if not impossible, for Republicans to build their coalition with a monopoly on Southern whites and Midwestern conservatives.

Awesome books: From Black Power/Grad Skool Rulz

election reaction post

In no order:

• Math 1, Republican Pundits 0. As comedian Yakov Smirnov used to say, “the Polish are the most powerful group in America. When politicians say the Poles are wrong, they always lose.”
• Drug legalization: I am not surprised that some states would eventually legalize recreational marijuana. The real question is whether the Federal government will allow this to stand. I am very curious to how the Department of Justice will respond. Will Obama refrain from prohibition enforcement? When this goes to court, because state and federal law conflict, which side will the Obama administration take? Obama has been very careful in distancing himself from this issue, but the referendums in Colorado and Washington put him on a crash course with this issue.
• Immigration reform: People say that immigration reform will be an Obama priority. Not so fast. What can Obama do to actually change things? The House won’t cooperate and the Dems are far from having 60 in the Senate. Reagan was able to enact immigration reform because he was able to peel off enough GOP and Dem votes. Unclear how Obama does this.

Consider this an open thread on yesterday’s election results.

Awesome books: From Black Power/Grad Skool Rulz

last presidential election post!!

Last presidential politics post before Tuesday. A few comments:

• In July, orgtheory readers estimated that Obama will carry about 51%-52% of the vote.
• My hypothesis is that the popular vote is only close because of extreme anti-Obama sentiment in the south.
• The polls are showing a slight Obama tilt nationally, but consistent Obama leads in the important swing states.
• My theory of the election is that Obama will slightly outperform the “fundamentals.” Normally, it’s really, really hard for the incumbent party to win the White House with nearly 8% unemployment. But I think non-Southern voters like Obama and don’t blame him that much for the slow recovery. There’s also Romney’s less than effective campaign (other than debate #1). That’s why he’s doing well outside the South. And in the South, there’s an unusually large drop in Obama support that’s hard to explain.
• As of the evening of November 4, Intrade is at .65 for Obama and the Iowa Market is at 50.7% vote share/72% winner takes all for Obama.

Post your last minute comments, predictions, and questions in the comments.

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new york relief

If you would like to help out hurricane victims, you can donate to groups like the Red Cross, which provide help for displaced people. The link takes you to Amazon’s link to the Red Cross Hurricane Sandy relief fund.

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rational romney

Remember a few months ago when a Romney staffer compared election campaigns to an Etch-a-Sketch? Each time, you shake things up and start over. People were appalled, but Romney’s staffer was correct. The reason is that elections are not driven by high information voters with strong opinions. They are driven by low information voters with no opinions. The reason is that people who know politics tend to know what they want. To get 50%, you need to focus on the weakly committed, low information voter. The person who still isn’t sure what they think of an incumbent – after four years!

The result? Once you win the party’s nomination, you can say more or less anything you want. The people who actually remember what you said won’t change their vote, unless you say something that directly and violently attacks a core belief of your base. The people who can be influenced don’t remember much and have a relatively limited knowledge of politics. Say what you want. They won’t remember.

While people may view politicians as evil, I say they are responding to the incentives given to them. If your job depended on pandering to amnesiacs, wouldn’t you keep fishing until you found something they liked?

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it’s the south, stupid!!

The polls are ambiguous these days. First, after trailing by about 2-3% during the entire election cycle, Mitt Romney has now gained a consistent 1/2% to 1% lead in the polls. Second, the Obama campaign is still on track to win the election because he has retained leads in a lot of swing states, including Ohio. The only big swing state to switch to Romney is Florida.

How do we reconcile this split? Here’s my theory of the 2012 election: the South hates Obama a lot, but the rest of the nation is relatively satisfied with a modest economic recovery.  Consider the following cross-tab from a recent mid-October 2012 Gallup poll:

	% Obama
East	52
Midwest	52
South	39
West	53

This chart explains why Obama is trailing in the polls right now. The South really, really hates Obama and the lopsided polls cancel out modest Obama leads in the rest of the country. Also, it explains why Obama is doing well (for now) in the Electoral College. Florida is the only swing state in the South. In other words, if it weren’t for the South, Obama would be cruising to a modest, but easy, victory due to a slowly recovering economy.

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america needs a great republican party

RNC delegates heckling a Puerto Rican speaker. This is unacceptable.

The Republican party has often been a force for good in history. In the 19th century, the party stood strong against slavery. Defending black freedom remained a notable feature of Republican party well into the 20th century. As late as the 1920s, Republican presidents, such as Warren Harding, spoke out against lynching and racial segregation. In the mid-20th century, the Republican party aligned itself with anti-communists, who rightly saw the brutality of Soviet communism.

But the Republican party we have today has not lived up to the standard created by the party’s founders and early leaders. By strongly courting social conservatives and relying on their votes for success, the Republican party has drifted far from its original goal of promoting people’s rights. Instead, we have a party that promotes voter ID laws that undermine black rights that the Republican party won with the blood of American soldiers. It is also a party set firmly against immigration. The mantra is that the party only opposes illegal immigration, but the policy proposals indicate an opposite view. There are many calls for walls, fences, and deportations. There are few demands for an immigration system that makes it easy for people to legally exercise their right to live or work in the place of their choice.

Those who care about civil liberty and individual freedom may recoil, but this is unwarranted. Instead, people who care about the rights of blacks, women, and immigrants should draw upon the Republican’s rich history to bring out the best in the party. This is important because democracies are built on rivalry. Major parties take turns in government. Thus, the Republican party is an essential feature of American government, not an aberration. If the Republican party can return to its roots, and work to make America a place for all, then the Republican party can use its time in office to be  the promoter of freedom that it used to be.

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dystopic visions

Breaking news: The ASA has decided to change next year’s theme to Unreal Dystopias.  The meetings will begin with a randomly chosen member of each section being locked in the grand ballroom, leading to a conference-long struggle for survival and paradigm supremacy. Start stockpiling your survival gear now.

the ncaa and penn state’s history

Ever since the NCAA announced they would sanction Penn State for its cover-up of the Sandusky sex abuse scandal, I’ve been thinking about writing a post related to institutional jurisdictions, authority, and reputation.  I completely understand the NCAA’s response to the scandal, especially in light of the findings of the Freeh report, and I think this was a very predictable response. Was the punishment harsh? Yes. Was it excessively harsh as a condemnation of the crimes of Sandusky? No.  Was the NCAA operating within its jurisdiction and exercising proper use of authority by making these sanctions? That’s debatable (and I’m sure it will be in the months to come).

My colleague Gary Alan Fine, who has thought a lot about scandal and collective memory (e.g., Fine 1997), has offered his thoughts on the sanctions in a New York Times op-ed. Gary questions “history clerks” who attempt to rewrite history as a response to a contemporary event/scandal.

The more significant question is whether rewriting history is the proper answer. And while this is not the first time that game outcomes have been vacated, changing 14 seasons of football history is a unique and  disquieting response. We learn bad things about people all the time, but should we change our history? Should we, like Orwell’s totalitarian Oceania, have a Ministry of Truth that has the authority to scrub the past?  Should our newspapers have to change their back files? And how far should we go?

This is a tricky issue. Everyone can agree that what happened at Penn State was deplorable. However, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to question whether the NCAA made these moves more as an effort to protect its own reputation and to safeguard the purity of college football, rather than as a reasoned response to the institutional crimes committed by Penn State’s decision-making authorities.  This scandal isn’t disappearing anytime soon, and so I expect we’ll hear a lot more about this in the months and years to come.

orgtheory poll: 2012 presidential vote tally

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damnant quodnon intelligunt

Hi, Orgheads!

I am really excited to join the fray again as a guest contributor, and thankful to the team for inviting me. In my other posts I’ll be speaking on behalf of Steven Tepper and Danielle Lindemann (both of Vanderbilt University), my collaborators in the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP). This one’s just me.

We’ve been asked to post on the state of arts graduates and artistic employment and skills in the contemporary U.S. I think the topic is timely and appropriate for this blog as we’ve discussed the value and relevance of an arts or humanities degree in the past. In particular, OrgTheory hosted a discussion in November titled, “why job hungry students choose useless majors.” The gist of Fabio’s argument, I think, is that college students are practical credentialists who want a BA to avoid service sector and manual labor; the least talented of these are drawn to majors that require the least “academic ability,” namely, the arts and humanities.

I won’t comment on the claim that arts and humanities disciplines require less “academic ability” (except to say that I think it’s bonkers), but I do want to remark upon the fiction that a firewall exists between math and science on the one hand, and the arts on the other.

fact vs. fiction

Over the weekend, the public radio show This American Life created quite a stir when they retracted a story that appeared on their show earlier this year. The retracted story was a segment from Mike Daisey’s one-man play, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs.  (I blogged about Daisey’s story when it originally came out, saying “the voices that will remain in your head after the podcast are those of the mistreated workers whose bodies and souls are slowly being sacrificed on the factory line.”)  It appears that Daisey fabricated parts of the story,  like claiming that he met underage employees outside of a Foxconn plant where parts for Apple’s iPad were made.  Many of the most moving parts of the story never actually happened. The story began to unravel when a reporter for another NPR show, Marketplace, realized that some parts of Daisey’s account didn’t sound accurate and began to do some fact-checking and discovered that Daisey’s accomplice in all of this – a translator named Cathy – disagreed about the basic facts. Anyway, it’s a big mess because NPR holds itself to high journalistic standards and they needed to cleanse themselves of Daisey’s fabrications before it all went public in some other forum.  Here’s a full transcript of the retraction episode.

Needless to say, the media is having a field day with Daisey’s debacle, in which he first appeared to contritely apologize and then later defended himself as presenting a truthful representation of factory workers’ experience. For more in-depth coverage, check out these articles posted on the New York Times, The Atlantic, and Slate. Daisey has responded by claiming that his show is a work of art, not journalism, and that the central message he hoped to convey is true – that workers in factories where our precious technologies are employed in inhumane conditions and that this should affect how we feel about consuming these products. From Daisey’s own blog:

I apologized in this week’s episode to anyone who felt betrayed. I stand by that apology. But understand that if you felt something that connected you with where your devices come from—that is not a lie. That is art. That is human empathy, and it is real, and even if you curse my name I hope you’ll recognize that and continue reading, caring, and thinking.

I feel bad for Daisey because I do think that his message is an important one, and I’m glad that he got the message out there. The show was incredibly popular. The radio segment was the most downloaded show ever on This American Life. But I think Daisey created a major mess for himself. His sin is not fabricating a story, but rather it’s presenting that fabrication in the media as if it were journalism. If Daisey had never set foot on the set of public radio this would have never become a problem. Daisey’s theater performance is not the first, nor the last, piece of muckraking to dramatize truth. People have compared his work to that of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, which fictionalized turn-of-the-century factory conditions in Chicago.  I think another apt comparison is the movie, The Social Network. Like Daisey’s play, The Social Network draws on archival material to create a semi-fictionalized account of Mark Zuckerberg and the creation of Facebook. The movie is so compelling because of the emotional moments in the plot, which portrays Zuckerberg as coolly calculating, insensitive, and desperate for recognition. This version of Zuckerberg is the one that the public has come to know. We believe this is the real Zuckerberg. But like Daisey’s play, many (or most) of the scenes in the film are fabricated.  The screenwriter, Aaron Sorkin, gets away with it because everyone knows he’s writing a movie and not a biography. So we let him play fast and loose with the empirical details and we love him anyway. Daisey is doing the same thing in his play. Unfortunately, what he was doing changed when he moved from the theater to the radio studio and began presenting his work as factually true (which he undoubtedly did).  It’s hard to look past this error on his part.

Daisey isn’t the only person to tread the thin line between factual reporting and fiction. Recently John D’Agata and Jim Fingal wrote a book about this issue called, The Lifespan of a Fact, which relays exchanges between a writer and his fact-checker (here is a review of the book by Jennifer McDonald at the New York Times). The writer, D’Agata, wrote an essay about a 16-year old boy who committed suicide by jumping from Las Vegas’s Stratosphere casino. In fact-checking the essay Fingal found over a hundred inaccuracies. D’Agata defended the inaccuracies, claiming that they helped him to artistically convey the truth of the story he was trying to tell.  The fabrications, he argued, helped to uncover the basic truths the piece was about. Is this what Daisey believes he was doing? If so, why not allow people to decide for themselves by revealing the inaccuracies up front? Of course, regular listeners of This American Life know that not every story appearing on the program is factually true. They regularly present short stories or memoir-like accounts told at The Moth, none of which I assume are fact-checked. Listeners would not be dismayed to learn that a humorous anecdote from one of these storytellers was not completely factually correct. People writing memoirs, after all, remember a distorted version of the past. Psychologists tell us that memories are malleable. Novelists are professional liars.  We praise them for their ability to make their fabrications believable. Occasionally, they reveal truths in the process of fabricating. We live in a subjective world, and so we’re comfortable intermingling fact and fiction. We just need better labels to tell us how to process it.

gop primary reality check

You’ll see the media hype the GOP primary. They’ll point to the upcoming Southern primaries as evidence that the race isn’t over. Let’s do a reality check:

1. 23 states have already voted.
2. Delegates: Romney has 415 confirmed delegates. Other candidates have about 328 – combined.
3. Raw vote totals: Romney has about 3.1 million total votes. Santorum has about 1.9 million.
4. States won: 14 Romney, 9 for the rest combined.

Romney has some big winner take all/nearly all states coming up like California and New York. As long as he avoids blow outs in all the remaining big Southern and Midwest states, he’ll continue padding his lead in delegates, vote count, and states. The only question is when and how Santorum will end the race.

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did ron paul just save the republican party from self-destruction?

The results are in. Romney averted disaster by winning the Michigan primary. Santorum’s surge will soon come to a grueling end. The next contest is Washington, which should be Romney friendly. Then, a split on Super Tuesday would still leave Romney ahead in states won, total vote count, and delegates. Not a knock out victory, but enough to guarantee that a long slog will leave him ahead at the end of the day. Santorum’s money will dry up sooner or later.

So how does Ron Paul fit into this? There’s some evidence that Paul pulled his punches w/Romney and focused on the non-Romneys, especially Santorum. Paul’s campaign ran anti-Santorum adds in Michigan, a state where he’s clearly not a factor. Paul may have helped Romney get the extra points that he needed to get a win and close Santorum’s window of opportunity.

The reasons may be unclear, but the effect is not. By attacking Santorum, Paul has ensured that the next nominee will *not* be a guy who is opposed to birth control, thinks Satan runs our colleges, and trashes well regarded dead presidents. If the economy is improving, any Republican candidate will have a tough time. But Paul’s attacks on Santorum in Michigan may have saved the Republican party from a disaster of Goldwater proportions.

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failing beauchamp’s test

Over at the Andrew Sullivan blog, Zack Beauchamp picks up on my post about Ron Paul’s failure to significantly transform the Republican Party. He thinks that Paul doesn’t represent the best of libertarian face. Paul is tainted by state’s rights fanaticism, association with racists, and homophobia:

The real test for libertarianism will be when it gets a champion equipped to stand up for the ideology’s social views as well its economic and international ones.

Actually, there was one politician who might be considered a test of Beauchamp’s hypothesis – former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson. He’s pretty much a hard core libertarian who is both an economic and social liberal. He’s anti-tax, pro-gay rights, drug decriminalization, and has never dabbled in the race mongering that tainted Paul. The result? Johnson did worse than Huntsman. Barely topping 2% on polls, Johnson dropped out in November and bought a ticket to Irrelevant Land by running for the Libertarian Party nomination.

This evening, Santorum is enjoying a second surge, upsetting Romney in Minnesota and possibly Colorado. Paul’s best showing is second place in Minnesota, but still not winning a single state. Paul barely broke single digits in the other states. The message is loud and clear from the GOP primary electorate. The Wall Street republican, the anti-abortion crusader, and the hot head all get a thumbs up. Libertarians need not apply.

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links and ironies of anonymous and megaupload

Here are some more Anonymous links:

• The group has big plans for 2012, here’s the announcement (watch the video).
• You can follow Anonymous on twitter, @Anon_Central.
• There’s a new documentary, We are legion: the story of hacktivists (it’s now playing at Slamdance Film Festival, the alternative to Sundance).

Also, Anonymous has recently retaliated against the shutdown of the filesharing site Megaupload (wiki site here) and the arrest of its Finnish-German hacker-founder Kim DotCom.  Here’s the NYT story about the arrest.  This fella is a piece of work: he was arrested at his $30 million dollar mansion in New Zealand (yes, with Finnish flag flying), and apparently about $6 million worth of vehicles were also confiscated.  Yes, he made his money via illegal filesharing (of music, movies etc) – about 50 million people visited the site daily.  Anonymous retaliated by hacking various sites, including the DOJ, MPAA, Universal. Interesting issue: free filesharing, important to the Anonymous ethos, has now created the type of concentration of wealth that the movement is fighting against.  Robin Hood got rich.

Kim Dotcom managed, just last month, to get some music celebs (Will.i.am, Alicia Keys, Kanye West, etc) to endorse Megaupload:

Needless to say, Universal did not like the song or video.

wikipedia blackout and SOPA

Despite its many problems, I use wikipedia, a lot.  Too much.  Sure enough, just now I tried to dig something up – and got the wikipedia blackout page.  Given the blackout-  where will we quickly read up on SOPA (or whatever else)?

The SOPA thing is a complicated matter – a fascinating tension between protecting intellectual property and free speech.  At the extreme – should online sites like Pirate Bay (free movies, music and books) be allowed to operate freely?  Few people say “yes” to that one (including Jimmy Wales), so the questions emerge in the gray areas. But SOPA itself is a mess, no question.

the huntsman lesson

According to the NY Times, Jim Huntsman will drop out soon. Some might say that being moderate sank him, even though he’s fairly conservative. My lesson is different and much simpler: candidates who refuse to seriously run in the first primary and reject the base’s rhetoric do badly. Unless the first state is going to be won by a local, you must try. See also: Rudy, Fred.

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where your iphone comes from

The latest episode of This American Life is a breathtaking first-person account of a Mac aficionado’s visit to an electronics manufacturing plant in Shenzhen, China. Here he meets some of the workers who put iPhones together and discovers that the entire manufacturing process is done by hand! He learns of the incredible toll this process of constructing little electronics goods has on their health and lives. The account, partly due to Mike Daisey’s engaging monologue style, is really unforgettable and disturbing. One of my favorite lines from Daisy’s account:

How often do we wish more things were hand-made? Oh, we talk about that all the time, don’t we? I wish it was like the old days. I wish things had that human touch. But that’s not true. There are more hand-made things now than there have ever been in the history of the world. Everything is hand-made. I know, I have been there. I have seen the workers laying in parts thinner than human hair, one after another after another. Everything is hand-made.

In typical TAL style, they try to get the other side of the story and the last ten minutes of the episode really grapple with the effects of sweatshop labor on economic mobility. Still, the voices that will remain in your head after the podcast are those of the mistreated workers whose bodies are souls are slowly being sacrificed on the factory line.

steve jobs at work

For Apple fan boyz and girlz, a short television feature from 1988 focusing on Jobs as new CEO of NEXT. HT: Ben Casnocha.

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#ows, the human microphone and hand signals

I’m sort of intrigued by the various innovations emerging from the Occupy Wallstreet Movement (I posted at strategyprofs about some of the tech ones, specifically apps).

One of the cooler, more low-tech innovations (ok, ok, these have been around for a long time – but still) is the use of the “human microphone” – note that the wiki entry was initiated just two weeks ago.  Occupy also has its own hand signals (and, check out the hand signals for consensus decision-making).  Cool.  Twinkles.

Here’s a hand signal tutorial:

vertical or horizontal, general assembly and occupy wall street

I’ve just finished that BusinessWeek piece on Graeber and Occupy (David Graeber: the Anti-Leader of Occupy Wall Street) and it features many interesting, organizational details.  (Well, assuming they have captured everything correctly.  Based on the rhetoric of #OWS, the piece may impute far too much to a couple, key people and organizations: Graeber and his friends, AdBusters, etc.)

Readers might already know all of this – but apparently there was a competing protest or rally already set up before the current form of the Occupy Wall Street protest emerged.  Specifically, there was a call for a “People’s General Assembly” on August 2nd to discuss a possible Wall Street occupation – but when Graeber and his friends showed up, there was a traditional rally already taking place.   The rally was run by “verticals,” existing organizations that already had a list of demands.  Graeber and Co set up an insurgent, “horizontal” general assembly nearby, which people and the existing organizations joined – eventually.  The Occupy Wall Street protest was then planned for the following month and a half.

I’m really interested in organizational initial conditions, aggregation and path-dependence – the Occupy Wall Street movement is an interesting case study on all these issues.

Anyways – read the rest of the story in the article.