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“Dynamism Has Been Leached From Our System,” But Not from Our Brains or Our Hearts

Sometimes one of Peggy Noonan’s columns reminds us that she was once one of Ronald Reagan’s best speech writers:

(p. A11) I heard a man named Nathan Myhrvold speak of a thing called Microsoft. I saw a young man named Steve Jobs prowl a New York stage and unveil a computer that then we thought tiny and today we’d call huge. A man named Steve Wozniak became a household god as my son reported his visionary ways. It was a time so full of genius and dynamism that it went beyond words like “breakthrough” and summoned words like “revolution.” If you were paying attention, if you understood you were witnessing something great, the invention of a new age, the computer age, it caught at your throat. It was like hearing great music. People literally said what had been said in the age of Thomas Edison: “What will they think of next?” What a buoyant era.
. . .
And for a moment, as I sent and received my first airborne Wi-Fi emails, I was back there. And I was moved because I realized how much I missed it, how much we all do, that “There are no walls” feeling. “Think different.” “On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like ‘1984.’ ” That was 25 years ago. The world was on fire.
It has cooled. And the essential problem with the crash we’re in is no one can imagine quite feeling that way again. People can remember it, but they can’t quite resummon it.
. . .
I end with a hunch that is not an unhappy one. Dynamism has been leached from our system for now, but not from the human brain or heart. Just as our political regeneration will happen locally, in counties and states that learn how to control themselves and demonstrate how to govern effectively in a time of limits, so will our economic regeneration. That will begin in someone’s garage, somebody’s kitchen, as it did in the case of Messrs. Jobs and Wozniak. The comeback will be from the ground up and will start with innovation. No one trusts big anymore. In the future everything will be local. That’s where the magic will be. And no amount of pessimism will stop it once it starts.

For the full commentary, see:
PEGGY NOONAN. “Remembering the Dawn of the Age of Abundance; Times are hard, but dynamism isn’t dead.” Wall Street Journal (Sat., Feb. 21, 2009): A11.
(Note: ellipses added.)

Gladwell Misses His Own Central Message: Long Hard Work Matters Most

Source of book image: http://bharatkhetan.com/akanksha/?p=19

Malcolm Gladwell is on a roll. His three recent books have been best-sellers: The Tipping Point, Blink, and now Outliers. All three books are well-written, and deal with important issues.
I suspect that sometimes Gladwell over-simplifies and over-generalizes. But he often makes plausible, thought-provoking claims, and he presents academic research in a clear, painless way.
In the Outliers book, I enjoyed his examples: the NHL hockey players who are overwhelmingly born in the same three months, the entrepreneurial immigrant Jews entering the clothing business, silicon valley superstars having access to computers at an early age.
To Gladwell, the main point of the book is that over-achievers owe their success to lucky circumstances. But to me, the main point was a different one: in case after case, the successful put in a huge number of hours (about 10,000) of practice to achieve the mastery of their activities.
To use the memorable analogy from Collins’ Good to Great: hour after hour, day after day, year after year, they all kept “pushing the flywheel” to reach the threshold of excellence.

The reference for Outliers is:
Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers: The Story of Success. New York, NY: Little, Brown, and Co., 2008.

The reference for Collins’ book is:
Collins, Jim. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap. And Others Don’t. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 2001.

In the United States “Innovation” Became a Positive Word

(p. 198) “All advances in science were proscribed as innovations.” Jefferson is using the older, negative sense of the word “innovation” here: a new development that threatened the existing order in a detrimental way. (The change in the valence of the word over the next century is one measure of society’s shifting relationship to progress.) But that regressive age was now over, and Priestley–the most forward-thinking mind of his generation–could now consider himself fully at home:

Our countrymen have recovered from the alarm into which art and industry had thrown them: science and honesty are replaced on their high ground, and you, my dear Sir, as their great apostle, are on its pinnacle. It is with heartfelt satisfaction that in the first moments of my public action, I can hail you with welcome to our land, tender to you the homage of its respect and esteem, cover you under the protection of those laws which were made for the wise and good like you, and disdain the legitimacy of that libel on legislation which under the form of a law was for some time placed among them.

Perhaps inspired by the legendary optimism of Priestley himself, Jefferson then added some of the most stirringly hopeful words that he ever put to paper:

(p. 199) As the storm is now subsiding, and the horizon becoming serene, it is pleasant to consider the phenomenon with attention. We can no longer say there is nothing new under the sun. For this whole chapter in the history of man is new. The great extent of our Republic is new. Its sparse habitation is new. The mighty wave of public opinion which has rolled over it is new. But the most pleasing novelty is, it’s so quietly subsiding over such an extent of surface to its true level again. The order and good sense displayed in this recovery from delusion, and in the momentous crisis which lately arose, really bespeak a strength of character in our nation which augurs well for the duration of our Republic; and I am much better satisfied now of it’s stability than I was before it was tried.

Source:
Johnson, Steven. The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America. New York: Riverhead Books, 2008.

Global Warming Environmentalists Propose to Tax Sheep Emissions

“. . . , researchers rustle up sheep behind the lab in Palmerston North, New Zealand, . . . ” Source of photo and caption: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A1) PALMERSTON NORTH, New Zealand — On a typical day, researchers in this college town coax hungry sheep into metal carts. They wheel the fluffy beasts into sealed chambers and feed them grass, then wait for them to burp.

The exercise is part of a global effort to keep sheep, deer, cows and other livestock from belching methane when they eat and regurgitate grass. Methane is among the most potent greenhouse gases, and researchers now believe livestock industries are a major contributor to climate change, responsible for more greenhouse-gas emissions than cars are, according to the United Nations.
Plenty of people, including farmers, think the problem of sheep burps is so much hot air. But governments are coming under pressure to put a cork in it, and many farmers fear that new livestock regulations could follow. They worry that environmentalists will someday persuade the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to seek to tax bovine belches. Some activists are urging consumers to stop buying meat and thus slow climate change.
All of which is breathing new life into the study of sheep stomachs. Researchers have tried just about everything, from changing the animals’ diets to breeding new sheep they hope will be less gassy. They’ve concocted (p. A9) cocktails of clover, garlic and cottonseed oil to try to curb methane. They have even tried feeding the animals chloroform, which can stymie the production of gas if it doesn’t kill the animal.
But sure as grass grows, livestock keep producing methane.
. . .
. . . , roughly 48% of New Zealand’s greenhouse gases come from agriculture, compared with less than 10% in such large, developed economies as the U.S. Agricultural leaders fear their livestock-heavy economy could be at risk if there’s an international move to tighten rules on animal emissions.
Kiwis tried to get a leg up on the problem in 2003, when politicians proposed an emissions tax on livestock. Farmers thought they were getting fleeced and attacked what they called a “fart tax.” The idea was tabled.

For the full story, see:
PATRICK BARTA. “Silencing the Lambs: Scientists Target Sheep Belching to Cut Methane; Reducing Gas in Livestock Could Help World Breathe Sigh of Relief Over Global Warming.” Wall Street Journal (Thurs., FEBRUARY 26, 2009): A1 & A9.
(Note: ellipses added.)

[Researchers place sheep] “in a cart to be wheeled into sealed chambers to measure levels of the greenhouse gas methane the animals burp up.”

Source of photos and caption: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited above.

Government’s Terrible Track Record Running Businesses

John Steele Gordon, the author of the sagacious commentary below, has also written a wonderful book called A Thread Across the Atlantic, which tells the story of how entrepreneur Cyrus Field persevered in his attempts to lay telegraphic cable across the Atlantic Ocean.

(p. A17) The Obama administration is bent on becoming a major player in — if not taking over entirely — America’s health-care, automobile and banking industries. Before that happens, it might be a good idea to look at the government’s track record in running economic enterprises. It is terrible.

In 1913, for instance, thinking it was being overcharged by the steel companies for armor plate for warships, the federal government decided to build its own plant. It estimated that a plant with a 10,000-ton annual capacity could produce armor plate for only 70% of what the steel companies charged.
When the plant was finally finished, however — three years after World War I had ended — it was millions over budget and able to produce armor plate only at twice what the steel companies charged. It produced one batch and then shut down, never to reopen.
Or take Medicare. Other than the source of its premiums, Medicare is no different, economically, than a regular health-insurance company. But unlike, say, UnitedHealthcare, it is a bureaucracy-beclotted nightmare, riven with waste and fraud. Last year the Government Accountability Office estimated that no less than one-third of all Medicare disbursements for durable medical equipment, such as wheelchairs and hospital beds, were improper or fraudulent. Medicare was so lax in its oversight that it was approving orthopedic shoes for amputees.
. . .
It is government’s job to make and enforce the rules that allow a civilized society to flourish. But it has a dismal record of regulating itself. Imagine, for instance, if a corporation, seeking to make its bottom line look better, transferred employee contributions from the company pension fund to its own accounts, replaced the money with general obligation corporate bonds, and called the money it expropriated income. We all know what would happen: The company accountants would refuse to certify the books and management would likely — and rightly — end up in jail.
But that is exactly what the federal government (which, unlike corporations, decides how to keep its own books) does with Social Security. In the late 1990s, the government was running what it — and a largely unquestioning Washington press corps — called budget “surpluses.” But the national debt still increased in every single one of those years because the government was borrowing money to create the “surpluses.”
Capitalism isn’t perfect. Indeed, to paraphrase Winston Churchill’s famous description of democracy, it’s the worst economic system except for all the others. But the inescapable fact is that only the profit motive and competition keep enterprises lean, efficient, innovative and customer-oriented.

For the full commentary, see:
JOHN STEELE GORDON. “Why Government Can’t Run a Business; Politicians need headlines. Executives need profits.” Wall Street Journal (Weds., MAY 21, 2009): A17.
(Note: ellipsis added.)

The wonderful book, I mentioned, is:
Gordon, John Steele. A Thread across the Ocean: The Heroic Story of the Transatlantic Cable. New York: Walker & Co., 2002.

OSHA Did Not Make the Workplace Safer

Source of image of graph: http://www.econ.canterbury.ac.nz/personal_pages/bob_reed/econ3003/book/chap26a.gif (Original source of graph: Viscusi, W. Kip, John M. Vernon, and Joseph E. Harrington, Jr. Economics of Regulation and Antitrust. 2nd ed. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Company, 1992, page 714.)

The graph above, from a leading textbook on the economics of regulation, strikingly shows that OSHA had no discernible effect on reducing workplace accidents.
(Note: I am grateful to Susan Dudley who mentioned this graph in one of the Association of Private Enterprise Education sessions in Guatemala City, and who graciously elaborated the source in conversation afterwards.)

Mary Priestley Praises the Middle Class

(p. 86) Joseph and Mary had not exactly entered English high society, but for the first time in their lives, they were down the hall from it. Mary was largely unimpressed by her firsthand view of the upper classes. One story has Shelburne arriving to welcome them at their new house in Calne, and finding Mary on a ladder, industriously papering the walls. Joseph apologized for their not providing a more gracious welcome, but Mary quickly dismissed her husband’s proprieties. “Lord Shelburne is a statesman,” she said, “and knows that people are best employed in doing their duty.” Later she would observe candidly to (p. 87) Shelburne, “I find the conduct of the upper so exactly like that of the lower classes that I am thankful I was born in the middle.”

Source:
Johnson, Steven. The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America. New York: Riverhead Books, 2008.

Economic Freedom Map

Source of image: http://divisionoflabour.com/archives/EFWposter.JPG

I heard a useful presentation by John Morton on the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom Map at the April 2009 Association of Private Enterprise Education meetings in Guatemala City. Using data developed by Jim Gwartney, Robert Lawson, and their associates, the map provides striking visual evidence of the relationship between economic freedom and economic growth.

For additional information, and to purchase a copy of the map, visit: http://www.freetheworld.com/ef_map.html

Bacon Died Experimenting and Hegel Died Contradicting Himself

(p. C32) The philosopher Francis Bacon, that great champion of the empirical method, died of his own philosophy: in an effort to observe the effects of refrigeration, on a freezing cold day he stuffed a chicken with snow and caught pneumonia.

As a philosopher dies, so he has lived and believed. And from the manner of his dying we can understand his thinking, or so the philosopher Simon Critchley seems to be saying in his cheekily titled “Book of Dead Philosophers.”
. . .
Mr. Critchley recounts that Voltaire, after decades of denouncing the Roman Catholic Church, announced on his deathbed that he wanted to die a Catholic. But the shocked parish priest kept asking him, “Do you believe in the divinity of Christ?” Voltaire begged, “In the name of God, Monsieur, don’t speak to me any more of that man and let me die in peace.”
Hegel, who, as much as any philosopher, Mr. Critchley says, saw philosophy as an abstraction, while he was dying of cholera, moaned, “Only one man ever understood me … and he didn’t understand me.”

For the full review, see:

DINITIA SMITH. “Books of The Times – Dying and Death: When You Sort It Out, What’s It All About, Diogenes?” The New York Times (Fri., January 30, 2009): C32.
(Note: ellipsis between paragraphs was added; ellipsis in Hegel quote was in original.)

The reference to Critchley’s book, is:
Critchley, Simon. The Book of Dead Philosophers. New York: Vintage Books, 2009.

Greenmarket Rules Are “Cumbersome, Confusing and Contradictory”

“Dante Hesse, . . . , of Milk Thistle Farm, thinks Greenmarket rules are too hard on dairies.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below. (Note: ellipsis in caption added.)

(p. D4) The basic aim of the producer-only rules is to ensure that all foods sold at market originate entirely or mostly on family farms within a half day’s drive from New York City. The 10-page document detailing these rules, however, is anything but clear.

“Cumbersome, confusing and contradictory,” was the assessment of Michael Hurwitz, the director of Greenmarket, which operates 45 markets in the five boroughs.
Pickle makers can sell preserved foods such as peppers in vinegar, but not processed foods such as hot sauce. Farmers, on the other hand, can sell processed hot sauce if it is made with their peppers. Dairies may purchase a higher percentage of their milk for cheese if the cheese is made from one type of milk rather than two milks, such as cow and sheep. Cider makers can buy 40 percent of the apples they press from local farmers, whereas wheatgrass juice sellers must grow all their wheatgrass.

For the full story, see:
INDRANI SEN. “Greenmarket Sellers Debate Maze of Producer-Only Rules.” The New York Times (Weds., August 6, 2008): D4.

Joe Biden’s “First Principle of Life”: “Get Up!”

(p. xxii) To me this is the first principle of life, the foundational principle, and a lesson you can’t learn at the feet of any wise man: Get up! The art of living is simply getting up after you’ve been knocked down. It’s a lesson taught by example and learned in the doing. I got that lesson every day while growing up in a nondescript split-level house in the suburbs of Wilmington, Delaware. My dad, Joseph Robinette Biden Sr., was a man of few words. What I learned from him. I learned from watching. He’d been knocked down hard as a young man, lost something he knew he could never get back. But he never stopped trying. He was the first one up in our house every morning, clean-shaven, elegantly dressed, putting on the coffee, getting ready to go to the car dealership, to a job he never really liked. My brother Jim said most mornings he could hear our dad singing in the kitchen. My dad had grace. He never, ever gave up, and he never complained. The world doesn’t owe you a living, Joey,” he used to say, but without rancor. He had no time for self-pity. He didn’t judge a man by how many times he got knocked down but by how fast he got up.

Get up! That was his phrase, and it has echoed through my life. The world dropped you on your head? My dad would say, Get up! You’re lying in bed feeling sorry for yourself? Get up! You got knocked on your ass on the football field? Get up! Bad grade? Get up! The girl’s parents won’t let her go out with a Catholic boy? Get up!

Source:
Biden, Joe. Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics. New York: Random House, 2007.
(Note: the italics in the quoted passage are in the original.)