Apparently, Congress and pundits favor "bipartisan" legislation, that is, bills you can get members of both parties to sign on to. Rhetorically I ask, but why? Surely we can all dispense with the naïve notion that the best solution, or the one most desired by the people, lies at the mean between the party positions. There are at least three reasons off the top of my head proving the preposterousness of that notion, and you can probably come up with more than me.
Really, bipartisanship is supposed to be a reflection of the value of a bill. The bill's not good because it's bipartisan; rather, the bill's inherently good, so good that people want to publicly support it, even if it's not what their party came up with. A bill might be bipartisan because a priori it's good.
Lack of bipartisanship is generally framed as a negative for the bill's originator: "Obama has failed to deliver on the promise of bipartisanship for his agenda." But there's a perfectly good converse view. If a bill's good, or popular -- the health care public option, for example -- opponents of the bill would be right to fear the lack of bipartisanship. If they're too dumb or stubborn to back what's good, then they're useless to their constituents.
An agenda setter should put good legislation out there, with no compromises solely to garner support from across the aisle. If it's good enough, and popular enough, then all the Congresscritters in vulnerable seats are under pressure to back it. Bipartisanship is an indicator that the bill was good in the first place; but it is only a correlated side-effect, not a necessary (or sufficient) condition for good legislation.
Showing posts with label yglesias. Show all posts
Showing posts with label yglesias. Show all posts
Monday, June 29, 2009
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Economicomics
Regarding this:
I worry a little bit that enough research has been done about this:
I don't follow X-Men religiously anymore, and they sneak things like Spidey's organic webbing past me, so this may have changed, but historically (i.e., in the 80's-90's) it was explicitly established that Storm moves humidity around, but doesn't create it. If she irrigates the midwest, she does it by exacerbating the drought in California. In fact, she was essentially doing this as a local rain goddess when Prof. X recruited her.
My geeky trivium aside, I think it's weird when people complain about an amusing theoretical like this as being tired, overdone, or silly. Superheroes are cartoons -- superhero economics is a cartoon of economics. Most of us aren't economists, and thinking through simplified illustrations (including their shortcomings) makes key concepts clearer. Also, it's fun.
I worry a little bit that enough research has been done about this:
Storm could irrigate the crops of all the suffering farmers in the midwest and California when the droughts of summer are destroying their crops.
I don't follow X-Men religiously anymore, and they sneak things like Spidey's organic webbing past me, so this may have changed, but historically (i.e., in the 80's-90's) it was explicitly established that Storm moves humidity around, but doesn't create it. If she irrigates the midwest, she does it by exacerbating the drought in California. In fact, she was essentially doing this as a local rain goddess when Prof. X recruited her.
My geeky trivium aside, I think it's weird when people complain about an amusing theoretical like this as being tired, overdone, or silly. Superheroes are cartoons -- superhero economics is a cartoon of economics. Most of us aren't economists, and thinking through simplified illustrations (including their shortcomings) makes key concepts clearer. Also, it's fun.
Friday, December 05, 2008
New names for "Soft Power"
In reply to the third in the series of Matt Yglesias talking about the term "soft power":
El Cid's #20 also describes the potential downside to "influence", which otherwise enjoys popularity as being accurate and already used commonly in this context. Influence contrasts with control: it sounds weaker because it implies you _might_ affect behavior, or you might not. "Power" suggests a guarantee of the result you want (if you've got enough).
I'm stunned that "non-military power" and "civilian power" have come up but no one's mentioned "peaceful power" or a variation. Maybe other people think "peace" sounds too weak also, but I think it's got rhetorical weight. No one calls himself a warmonger; no one says they're against peace. Opponents could imply "peaceful" means unwilling to use military force, but I don't see that gaining traction.
I think Matt's second notion -- the "appeal of the brand" -- can be summed up as "Respect". Respect, like "political capital", can be thought of as an element of peaceful power (look! it's catching on!). However, it's a cleric in the Peace Power party: respect doesn't make other nations do what you want directly, but it makes the diplomatic resources, development aid, etc. more effective. (Curse you, pseudonymous in nc at #24, for planting the RPG analogy seed!)
El Cid's #20 also describes the potential downside to "influence", which otherwise enjoys popularity as being accurate and already used commonly in this context. Influence contrasts with control: it sounds weaker because it implies you _might_ affect behavior, or you might not. "Power" suggests a guarantee of the result you want (if you've got enough).
I'm stunned that "non-military power" and "civilian power" have come up but no one's mentioned "peaceful power" or a variation. Maybe other people think "peace" sounds too weak also, but I think it's got rhetorical weight. No one calls himself a warmonger; no one says they're against peace. Opponents could imply "peaceful" means unwilling to use military force, but I don't see that gaining traction.
I think Matt's second notion -- the "appeal of the brand" -- can be summed up as "Respect". Respect, like "political capital", can be thought of as an element of peaceful power (look! it's catching on!). However, it's a cleric in the Peace Power party: respect doesn't make other nations do what you want directly, but it makes the diplomatic resources, development aid, etc. more effective. (Curse you, pseudonymous in nc at #24, for planting the RPG analogy seed!)
Sunday, November 02, 2008
In a comment to this Matt Yglesias post:
It's like the song says: you've got to be carefully taught.
Hearing that ("You've Got to be Carefully Taught") from the Wee Kids on the Kid Power album is surely before Matt's time. (To be fair, I never saw the show on television, since it was a little before _my_ time too. Still have the album though.)
And that seems like a harsh reminder that progress is won only inch by inch. The same sentiment that was an indictment of racism in 1949, and bore repeating in 1974, is equally appropriate regarding homophobia in 2008.
The more things change, the more ... we must fight for change.
It's like the song says: you've got to be carefully taught.
Hearing that ("You've Got to be Carefully Taught") from the Wee Kids on the Kid Power album is surely before Matt's time. (To be fair, I never saw the show on television, since it was a little before _my_ time too. Still have the album though.)
And that seems like a harsh reminder that progress is won only inch by inch. The same sentiment that was an indictment of racism in 1949, and bore repeating in 1974, is equally appropriate regarding homophobia in 2008.
The more things change, the more ... we must fight for change.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
What Bob does when he should be working
Feel free to follow along with Bob's websurfing -- it's almost like being there!
As you know, I follow Matt Yglesias (who has a new bloghome), and he posted this reference/comment on university education, in which he notes that Brad DeLong, in this "excellent post on the origins of the large lecture course",
So I went and read DeLong's whole post, which is deliciously concise, which doesn't make for really effect procrastinating, so I read on and found my ego vicariously mollified in this comment:
The rest of the websurf into the blogshore is less interesting -- Googling "is iTunes evil?" convinced me that it was, but not so much that I shouldn't install it to hear a (presumably free) podcast of Carl. But I'm not currently logged in with privileges enough to install it, and so then I figured I'd blog my experience for you to share.
The "large lecture" issue doesn't come up at my place o'business, but it does at Rebecca's. But the general concern of "is this the way to teach?" is the Pressing Issue of Our Time. Feel free to put your random thoughts or suggestions in the comments, and maybe you will start a voyage of webby discovery for some other slacker!
As you know, I follow Matt Yglesias (who has a new bloghome), and he posted this reference/comment on university education, in which he notes that Brad DeLong, in this "excellent post on the origins of the large lecture course",
observes that large lectures had a compelling logic in the pre-Gutenberg universe....Modern practice, by contrast, is a bit puzzling.
So I went and read DeLong's whole post, which is deliciously concise, which doesn't make for really effect procrastinating, so I read on and found my ego vicariously mollified in this comment:
Brad, if you are seriously interested in this, you should speak to Carl Wieman....The comment goes on to summarize Carl's take on university ed, and suggests you can hear it direct from him:
You can hear him discuss what he is on about here:This link, it turns out, is on iTunes, which I don't have installed, at least on this machine.
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=95882746&s=143441&i=1556149
The rest of the websurf into the blogshore is less interesting -- Googling "is iTunes evil?" convinced me that it was, but not so much that I shouldn't install it to hear a (presumably free) podcast of Carl. But I'm not currently logged in with privileges enough to install it, and so then I figured I'd blog my experience for you to share.
The "large lecture" issue doesn't come up at my place o'business, but it does at Rebecca's. But the general concern of "is this the way to teach?" is the Pressing Issue of Our Time. Feel free to put your random thoughts or suggestions in the comments, and maybe you will start a voyage of webby discovery for some other slacker!
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Fashion Police
via Mr. Yglesias:
"Flint, Michigan Battles Crack Epidemic" is actually about a new law in Flint specifying how you're not supposed wear your pants. Check it out -- the graphic is fantastic.
"Flint, Michigan Battles Crack Epidemic" is actually about a new law in Flint specifying how you're not supposed wear your pants. Check it out -- the graphic is fantastic.
Thursday, July 03, 2008
Matthew Yglesias describes my own puzzlement as well.
My mostly unhelpful take, which echoes some of the comments on Matt's page (especially mine), is that the counterpoint to the conventional wisdom about Watergate ("it's not the crime that brings you down, it's the coverup"), the unconventional wisdom if you will, is that you can get away with murder if you really stick to the coverup story.
Empirically, Bush & company saw this work with Iran-Contra (which gave birth to "plausible deniability"), and just took that ball and ran with it.
More abstractly, the whole idea of adversarial debate (political parties, litigation, etc.) is that there's some arbiter that'll decide that one side or the other has the better argument, or makes the valid point. In politics, this role might be filled by the rationality of the opponent (who concedes the point), or the media (the journalists report the point with supporting facts), or the elites (the pundits concede the point), or "the people" (the opinion polls convince the politicians to concede the point).
If all those potential arbiters are impugned, indecisive, or unwise, whoever's in power can do whatever they want. Any outcry or opposition can be met with sheer stubbornness, and there's no authority to make you submit to reason or punish your transgressions.
The first and last potential arbiters (the opponent's fair thinking and the public) are pretty idealistic concepts, and have been ignored routinely by politicians throughout history, usually without repercussion. (Note, however, that even though he knew it would be disastrous, Nixon <i&gt;didn't&lt;/i&gt; burn the tapes. Maybe even <i&gt;his&lt;/i&gt; understanding that there <i&gt;was&lt;/i&gt; the rule of law, or at least no justifiable reason not to turn over the tapes, was what led to the truth coming out and the requisite consequences. Have some politicians concluded from this that they need to ignore their reason in the pursuit of power?)
In my opinion, a large part of the "difference" between 1974 and now is due to the failures of the other two arbiters (reporters and pundits). If every news network were running McClatchy's stories, and Broder and his peers were agitating for impeachment...
The failures of the media (reportage and commentary) are ample fodder for the blogosphere, but my notions about <i&gt;why&lt;/i&gt; they're failing so spectacularly <i&gt;now&lt;/i&gt; are ill-formed and naive. Clearly the qualification process for punditry (and journalism) has broken down, and most importantly, wrongheaded thinking and/or meaningless coverage isn't resulting in loss of audience, at least not enough to provide economic pressure to get rid of lousy news & opinion.
But I don't know why that is, or why it hasn't been such a problem until now. Maybe James Watt put stupid juice in the water supply under Reagan, and their brilliant plan has finally come to fruition. (I did say "ill-formed and naive", right?)
My mostly unhelpful take, which echoes some of the comments on Matt's page (especially mine), is that the counterpoint to the conventional wisdom about Watergate ("it's not the crime that brings you down, it's the coverup"), the unconventional wisdom if you will, is that you can get away with murder if you really stick to the coverup story.
Empirically, Bush & company saw this work with Iran-Contra (which gave birth to "plausible deniability"), and just took that ball and ran with it.
More abstractly, the whole idea of adversarial debate (political parties, litigation, etc.) is that there's some arbiter that'll decide that one side or the other has the better argument, or makes the valid point. In politics, this role might be filled by the rationality of the opponent (who concedes the point), or the media (the journalists report the point with supporting facts), or the elites (the pundits concede the point), or "the people" (the opinion polls convince the politicians to concede the point).
If all those potential arbiters are impugned, indecisive, or unwise, whoever's in power can do whatever they want. Any outcry or opposition can be met with sheer stubbornness, and there's no authority to make you submit to reason or punish your transgressions.
The first and last potential arbiters (the opponent's fair thinking and the public) are pretty idealistic concepts, and have been ignored routinely by politicians throughout history, usually without repercussion. (Note, however, that even though he knew it would be disastrous, Nixon <i&gt;didn't&lt;/i&gt; burn the tapes. Maybe even <i&gt;his&lt;/i&gt; understanding that there <i&gt;was&lt;/i&gt; the rule of law, or at least no justifiable reason not to turn over the tapes, was what led to the truth coming out and the requisite consequences. Have some politicians concluded from this that they need to ignore their reason in the pursuit of power?)
In my opinion, a large part of the "difference" between 1974 and now is due to the failures of the other two arbiters (reporters and pundits). If every news network were running McClatchy's stories, and Broder and his peers were agitating for impeachment...
The failures of the media (reportage and commentary) are ample fodder for the blogosphere, but my notions about <i&gt;why&lt;/i&gt; they're failing so spectacularly <i&gt;now&lt;/i&gt; are ill-formed and naive. Clearly the qualification process for punditry (and journalism) has broken down, and most importantly, wrongheaded thinking and/or meaningless coverage isn't resulting in loss of audience, at least not enough to provide economic pressure to get rid of lousy news & opinion.
But I don't know why that is, or why it hasn't been such a problem until now. Maybe James Watt put stupid juice in the water supply under Reagan, and their brilliant plan has finally come to fruition. (I did say "ill-formed and naive", right?)
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