Thursday, February 29, 2024

Psychologists and psychics

 From Nine-nine, Season 1, Episode 11.

Gina:  Psychologists are the ones who weren't smart enough to be psychics.

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The virtuousness of blatant misandry

Someone released a report yesterday or today announcing that the October 7th war started by Hamas has led to more than 30,000 deaths of women and children.  I have not paid attention so far because this smacks of propaganda.  An impression amplified by all the antisemitic Hamas supporters trumpeting the report as if it held any epistemic water.

The only thing we know for sure is that the number is not 30,000.  It might be a few more, it is almost certainly factors or magnitudes less.  The IDF are very good, among the best in the world.  They have worked hard to both fight effectively against Hamas terrorists as well as fight in a fashion that minimizes collateral damage in terms of civilian deaths and infrastructure destruction.  

It is a complex and difficult tight rope they are walking.  The greater the care they take with regard to civilians, the more their own losses there will be.  Militarily, operationally, ethically - it is a horrendous hairball.

What has been interesting, though, is the framing of the study.  Everyone is emphasizing the purported deaths of 30,000 women and children.  

Why the misandry?  Where are the civilian men?

There is Hamas and there is a civilian population and that civilian population is made up of men, women, and children.  Yes, I am sure that Hamas troops are taking a beating.  I hope so, as they are the biggest barrier to peace.  

And I am also certain there are many inadvertent civilian deaths.  And I suspect civilian males would be significantly the greatest proportion.  Hamas fights in civilian clothes so all males will likely be assumed to be hostile until evidenced otherwise.  

So what is the estimate of male civilian deaths?  I would use at least a rule of thumb of fifty percent greater.  If there are 30,000 women and children dead, then I would guess that there would have to be about 45,000 civilian men dead as well.  75,000 total civilian dead.  Multiply by three to get to the number of severely wounded and you get 75,000 KIA and 225, 000 WIA.  300,000 total civilian casualties so far.  Out of a total population of 2,400,000.  13% of the Gaza strip population, lost in five months of war.  For comparison, Germany lost 12% of its military and civilian populations during WWII over six and half years.  

It seems pretty clear that we are not witnessing a WWII level of intensity of combat.  It seems pretty clear that we are not witnessing those levels of deaths.  Literally, not seeing them.

Hence, until proven otherwise, this all seems like propaganda on behalf of Hamas who seem to have adopted a strategy of winning by losing.  Or something like that.

But I come back to the framing.  Here is a single example response picked at random.









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Mindless mullets parroting antisemitic barbarian propaganda for strategic gain.  You shall know them by their witlessness.  

And as these celebrities vomit up the propaganda, why is no one concerned about the deaths of civilian men?  Cannot they hear themselves.  All human deaths are a tragedy!  Men are almost certainly as exposed if not substantially more at risk of death in this conflict.  Why are the Hamas supporters not concerned about all civilian deaths?

Again, it sort of answers itself.  This is propaganda intended to sway the heart.  

We can mourn the tragedy of October 7th and can mourn that the initiator of the conflict, Hamas, has chosen not to surrender and not to release its hostages.  And we can mourn that there are an unknown number of dead civilians, men, women and children.  

But let's not pretend that we know the numbers and let's not indulge in misandry.  

And lets acknowledge that it is Hamas who is demanding a ceasefire.  Not humanity. 

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Media and the commercial lee shore

I've seen a number of opinion or analysis pieces over the past eight weeks regarding the layoffs in the mainstream media.  Media outlets everywhere have been battening down the hatches in anticipation of hard times ahead, just as have other companies anticipating choppy economic waters.

But the media fleet, unlike other sectors, are already in shoal waters, with masts and rigging down, some holed hulls, a hard wind from the sea and the prospect of a lee shore.  They were already in peril.  Things are getting worse.

From Cause of Journalism’s Woes? Tech Changes, Yes, But Partisanship Too by Carl M. Cannon.  Fine as far as it goes.    

My interpretation is that there are six major trends which have come together to create this existential crisis of the mainstream media.  Far-and-away, the most wounding has been the displacement of print advertising by internet advertising.  Radio, TV, and newspapers and news magazines were the means to reach customers even twenty years ago.  Not so much anymore.  Internet platforms and services now dominate with better performance and greater effectiveness.  

But the other factors have contributed to the collapse of the industry as well.

1)  Lost advertising revenue - Advertising moved to the internet away from legacy media (TV, Radio, Newspapers and News magazines).  Internet advertising can be more finely targeted, more quickly adjusted, and performance more accurately measured.  

2)  Press release journalism - Once revenues started disappearing, Mainstream Media (MSM) had to make content creation much cheaper.  They have done so primarily by increasing the proportion of Opinion content and decreased Reporting content.  And for reporting, they now overwhelmingly rely on press releases from advocates, agencies, and interested parties instead of doing investigative reporting and independent reporting.  There is no more "speaking truth to power", there is mostly just "speaking for those in power."

3) Urban monoculture - From the 1950s-1980s, journalists were from all classes, levels of education attainment, walks of life, backgrounds, and parts of the country.  Not just from those places in the past, but still reporting from those places.  Now, the preponderance of MSM journalists are in the deep urban areas of a small handful of very large cities characterized by high density, high inequality, high crime, mono-political cultures (Progressive Democrats), high education attainment, middle class and above backgrounds, singular ideological affiliation, etc.  Journalists are reporting about a country they neither see nor experience.  Readers are being asked to consume content that is irrelevant and unreflective of their lives.  

4)  Reduced quality - Mainstream media is slower and more inaccurate than the alternatives.  With any breaking story, there is a better than even chance that you can find the story at all, find it quicker, and it more accurately reported than if you rely on The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, or MSNBC.  More than that, the patterns of error and omission by the MSM are also more and more transparent.  

There are two consequences to the above four primary drivers of the collapse of legacy MSM.  These consequence become, in turn, amplifiers of the above trends. 

5) Collapsed trust - Worse and more unreliable reporting, less accurate reporting, more biased reporting, and more quickly exposed errors in reporting in combination reduce trust.  Both trust in the product and trust in the brand.  Reduced trust further erodes reader or viewership.  Reducing advertising rates.  Reducing financial viability.  Distrust of MSM becomes its own contributor to the downfall of MSM.

6) Reportorial Bias - While this gets a lot more attention in many of the opinion pieces, and is a real issue, I am not certain that it is as contributive to the downfall as some make it out to be.  The bias is real and is important but I think the above factors are even more critical.  

Because there seems little prospect of revenue ever flowing back to MSM in volumes that would permit, better, faster, more accurate reporting, it is my anticipation that the MSM fleet will pile up on the hard shore of commercial reality, leaving flotsam and jetsam and fond memories of a long ago golden era.

What's next?  Anybody's guess.  There is a non-negligible chance it will be better.  Especially once we get through the tumult of change.  

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Silence Mood series by Inge Schuster

Silence Mood series by Inge Schuster























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History

 

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An Insight

 

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I see wonderful things

 

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Offbeat Humor

 

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Data Talks

 

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Data Talks

 

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John Brown, 1939 by John Steuart Curry

John Brown, 1939 by John Steuart Curry































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Wednesday, February 28, 2024

The MSM cocoon

Some years ago, when he was still alive, I looked at NPRs audience size and that of Rush Limbaugh.  I forget the metrics, but they were within spitting distance of one another - a huge government funded enterprise only about as effective as a one man shop.  Astonishing.

Of course, Limbaugh wasn't a one man shop.   But he wasn't pretty tiny compared to NPR.  

That line is a pretty striking testimonial at the urban insularity of the mainstream media.  

Radio is essentially dead aside from NPR.

Which is really just another way of saying, "I, Taylor Lorenz, only listen to NPR on the radio."  True, perhaps but certainly not true that there is nothing else to listen to.  

A simplistic search suggests that NPR's global revenue in 2022 was $317 million.  It is difficult to get to an apples to apples comparison as all radio stations have a different mix of talk shows, news, music, entertainment, etc.  The cleanest comparison is NPRs revenue of $317 to the total radio sector revenue for 2022 of $15.5 billion.  NPR is about 2% of the industry.  Supposedly about 10% of a radio station's revenues are from news programs (not necessarily including talk shows).  If we say all of NPRs revenues are news and only 10% of radio stations revenues are news (not counting talk and opinion shows), then NPR is $317 million of a $1.5 billion market.  20% of it.  That grossly exaggerates but it supports that there is a lot more news choice out there (80%) than Lorenz is listening to.

So, radio is not dead.  In fact most of it is occurring beyond the environs of NPR.  

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History

 

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An Insight

 

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I see wonderful things

 

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Offbeat Humor

 

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Data Talks

 

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Palo Alto Circle, 1943 by Richard Diebenkorn

Palo Alto Circle, 1943 by Richard Diebenkorn



























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Tuesday, February 27, 2024

History

 

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An Insight

 

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An Insight

 

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I see wonderful things

 

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Offbeat Humor

 

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High trust, high productivity and behavior-based affiliative residential choices.

From Self-checkouts are disappearing from retailers. Here’s why by Pete Wilgoren.  

It’s the not-so-secret secret: retail chains are doing away with these lanes, and many do not want to talk about it.

In December, SFGATE.com reported that Target quietly removed self-checkouts in San Francisco, calling it “a trend in ‘defensive retailing’ that may soon spread across the city.”

Other reports say Target, when it does allow self-checkout, is only doing so for customers with ten items or less. No more big carts full of items.

Other chains, including Costco, have been dealing with the issue, saying that “shrink,” or the measure by which chains track retail theft, has increased in part due to the rollout of self-checkout.

Reading the article the implication is that self-check out is cheaper and more convenient for customers but that it facilitates theft.  

Stephen Green on Instapundit observes:

You can’t enjoy high-trust conveniences in low-trust societies.

In a free society where people have agency and accountability, there is a strong tendency for settlement patterns to emerge which might be described as homophilic segregation based on value compatibility.  Birds of a behavioral feather, flock together.

I have frequently commented that high-trust societies are almost always high productivity societies.  High trust communities are a delight to live and work.  But only where there is some minimum degree of consistency in terms of trust.  

An admixture of low trust actions and behaviors are highly detrimental to quality of life and to productivity.  This seems to be a case study demonstrating that there are tactics and processes (self-checkout) which can only work in high trust communities. If you want the efficiency and convenience, it can only occur with the compatible behaviors.

Two thoughts.

First - This feels like the sociological equivalent of Gresham's  Law.

In economics, Gresham's law is a monetary principle stating that "bad money drives out good". For example, if there are two forms of commodity money in circulation, which are accepted by law as having similar face value, the more valuable commodity will gradually disappear from circulation.

Bad money drives out good seems related to Low trust behaviors drive out high trust behaviors.

Second - This is not dissimilar to the Bush and Obama fiasco where it was assumed that if you subsidized people into home ownership they would adopt middle class behaviors and demonstrate middle class productivity.  Naively hopeful and well intentioned, it created an economic catastrophe.  

Middle class behaviors (thrift, work ethic, diligence, self-discipline, self-control, etc.) create the productivity which affords homeownership.  The home ownership does not create the behaviors.

You get self-checkout where there are high-trust behaviors.  Self-checkout does not otherwise make people more trustworthy.

It would be interesting to create a leading indicator of change based on the presence or disappearance of high-trust behaviors.  What are some of the other manifest and measurable high-trust tactics and processes which are associated with high productivity?  Self-checkout is one.  What are others?  

Sort of ties to the old joke, "This is why we can't have nice things . . . "

This line of thought suggests yet another.

We usually think of violence and property theft as conditions against which people react atavistically.  The crimes is sufficient unto itself to be rejected.  

But what if people react negatively to property crime for yet further reasons.  In other words, perhaps they witness low trust behaviors and not only consider a rise in crime but also consider a fall in productivity.  

Rising crime might be driving signals in terms of fear of loss of property and/or physical danger.  But it might also be simultaneously signaling longer term productivity decline as a separate issue.

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Data Talks

 

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Motions - sun, water, wind, light

Admission
by A.R. Ammons

The wind high along the headland, 
mosquitoes keep low: it's 
good to be out: 
schools of occurring whitecaps 
come into the bay, 
leap, and dive:
gulls stroll 
long strides down the shore wind:
every tree shudders utterance: 
motions-sun, water, wind, light— 
intersect, merge: here possibly 
from the crest of the right moment
one might break away from the final room.

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Listening to the Orchard Oriole by Frederick Childe Hassam (American, 1859-1935)

Listening to the Orchard Oriole by Frederick Childe Hassam (American, 1859-1935)



























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Monday, February 26, 2024

History

 

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An Insight

 

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I see wonderful things

 

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Offbeat Humor

 

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Data Talks

 

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Bay Windows, 1929 by Martin Lewis

Bay Windows, 1929 by Martin Lewis































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Sunday, February 25, 2024

History

 

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An Insight

 

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I see wonderful things

 

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Offbeat Humor

 

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Data Talks

 

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Unknown title by Elton Bennett

Unknown title by Elton Bennett

















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Saturday, February 24, 2024

History

 

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An Insight

 

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Intellectual yet idiot. When fanatical beliefs override simple facts.

An interesting little dust-up on Twitter which is revealing.  First up is Roman Sheremata, an economics professor at the Case Western Reserve University.  A reasonably strong academic powerhouse.  His self-description:




















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Looks like a reasonable amount of intellectual horsepower there even though there may be some reaching.  He made the following post:

























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OK.  He hates Trump.  But is the claim that Russia defeated the Nazis self-evidently wrong?  

No.  In fact, it is well settled historical fact that the Allies (Britain, China, France, USA, and USSR) defeated the Axis (Germany, Italy, etc.) and that Britain, China, USA and the USSR were the indispensable core of the alliance.  

It is also well recognized that the bulk of German losses were in the East to the Soviet Union and that the Soviet Union in turn suffered the great majority of combat and civilian losses among the allies.  

As always, what is the most generous interpretation of the argument one can make?  How can we reverse engineer into an interpretation that makes Sheremeta's position at least comprehendible.  

Sheremeta's argument seems to be that Russia did not defeat Hitler and that Trump is stupid for believing this.  

I see three lines of possible redemption. 

Maybe he is arguing that Russia did not defeat Germany alone.

Maybe he is arguing that because Hitler committed suicide (with Soviet troops knocking at the outskirts of Berlin) that Russia did not defeat Hitler. 

Maybe he is making a distinction between Russia versus the then USSR (of which Russia was the primary component).  

But none of these possible interpretations is inconsistent with Trump's "Russia is a war machine" argument which make's these lines improbable.

But that's all I've got.  To be more tidily precise, it is reasonably indisputable that the USSR was an indispensable member of the Alliance which defeated Germany, Naziism, and Hitler and that the USSR both inflicted the greatest damage and suffered the greatest proportion of losses among the Alliance members (other than China in the Pacific theater.)  Sheremeta's argument that Russia did not defeat Hitler is hard to defend other than at the margin in terms of wanting more precise language.

Fortunately, from an argument making perspective, Sheremeta doubles down once he sees the ratioing he is getting on Twitter.  OK, on X.  He posts a follow-up with a thread justifying his position




















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The Argument as presented is:

My post about Trump’s ignorant and stupid comment that “russia defeated Hitler” went viral. One thing that surprised me is how many brainwashed people still believe in this myth. No, it was not russia who defeated Hitler.

1/ First, the Soviet Union included, not only russia, but another 14 countries. Ukraine alone lost over 8 million people in WW2. As a percentage of population, Belorussia lost 25% and Ukraine 16% of its population, while russia only 12%.

2/ Second, just because the Soviet Union had the  most causalities, doesn’t mean that they won the war. The reason Soviets had such large casualties is because they used people as cannon folder. Something russia is still doing today.

3/ Third, the Red Army was poorly equipped and heavily relied on the US support. Through the lendlease, the US has provided over 400,000 trucks, 14,000 airplanes, 13,000 tanks, and more.

4/ Forth, Nazis were defeated only after the second front was open. Nazis had to fight against the US, UK, and all their allies.

So, it is plain stupid to attribute victory over Hitler to russia.

Stripping out the vitriol, invective, ad hominem, no-true-scotsman, and non sequiturs fallacies and you aren't left with much.  

Sheremeta seems to acknowledge that the USSR played a critical role but wants to downplay Russia's role within the USSR.  Historically and empirically, that's very weak tea.

Sheremeta seems to want to downplay the contribution of USSR by highlighting the material support provided by the UK and USA.  Again, historically and empirically, that's very weak tea.  FDR and Roosevelt were desperate to appease Stalin with material aid because they depended so heavily on the USSR meat grinder on the Eastern Front.  They understood what Sheremeta denies.  

Finally, Sheremeta seems to want to make the distinction that because it was an Allied victory, it must mean the Russia did not defeat Hitler.  

Woof.  The hole is deep and Sheremeta keeps digging.  There is a little of the Salena Zeno point in Taking Trump Seriously, Not Literally.

It’s a familiar split. When he makes claims like this, the press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.

Except in this case, Trump's argument is facially well established - The Allies defeated Germany, Naziism and Hitler.  The USSR was an indispensable element of the Alliance.  Russia was an indispensable element of the USSR.  Sheremeta is working hard at trying to take him literally (Russia as distinct from USSR, Russia as opposed to the Allies, etc.)  

Sheremeta's argument is fundamentally indefensible and his conclusion that Trump was stupid to make the argument that Russia was a war machine is also indefensible.  

I am not sure how anyone can make Sheremeta's argument work.  

This feels like another example of the weakness of experts as highlighted by Philip Tetlock's work.  They can be smart and deeply knowledgeable in their domain but they often lack context.  Or rather, sometimes their strongest opinions are about things well beyond their knowledge domain.  

Sheremeta hates Trump and make an insultingly hostile argument that is also facially wrong.  Trump was correct that Russia was an indispensable element in the defeat of Germany, Nazism and Hitler.  Sheremeta then repeats his insults and advances some statements which are true but do not refute Trumps argument.

It is both a vitriolic and unpleasant little spat but also valuable.  The internet is highlighting and refuting error even in domains (such as academia) which are especially susceptible to suppressing error and consequences.  

It is a great example of the value of free speech - especially when dealing with those prone to fanaticism.  

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I see wonderful things

 

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Offbeat Humor

 

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From Beckers theory and evidence, racial discrimination in America is on life-support and it is Government and its race based discriminatory policies which is the life-support.

When I was young, the world was full of facts to be discovered.  

As I grew older, there were facts to be categorized - more or less reliably true.

At some point I reached a tipping point where insights about the assemblage of facts became the new frontier of discovery.  I knew the facts, I just had not thought about them together in that way before.

As I grow older still, I am discovering a new phase.  I knew the facts.  I was reasonably attuned to the certainty with which we understood the facts.  I had a pretty good insight on interpreting the fact.  

In the past couple of years I more frequently encounter instances where I knew all these rudiments and what I now discover is that the conclusion I reached was to some degree undermined (made weaker or stronger) simply because I underweighted an insight I already knew.  

I suppose it is a process of increasing nuance or sophistication but it is frustratingly humbling.

From How Gary Becker Saw the Scourge of Discrimination by Kevin M. Murphy.  The subtitle is Becker’s analysis would extend the reach of economics, and completely reshape the field—and social-science research in general, but it took decades to do so. 

In particular:

Becker’s work suggested that an incentive existed for nondiscriminating employers to hire black workers: they could increase profits by hiring black workers rather than whites. Since black workers were paid less than white workers in equilibrium, if enough nondiscriminating employers entered the market—to hire a relatively cheap source of labor—they could even eliminate the wage differential between races.

Becker therefore thought that greater competition would act as a strong force in reducing labor-market discrimination. 

Because of Becker, the above has been reasonably well known for three decades or more.  The freer and more competitive a market, the less discrimination.  There is plenty of evidence to support this insight now and we have moved on to a different stage of understanding.  What we once considered race discrimination now is seen more clearly as discrimination based on behaviors and decision-making habits (a product of education/knowledge and of risk sensitivities).  Behaviors and decision-making are far more correlated with class, culture and religion than they are race.

Academics and Marxist derivative ideologies (Social Justice, Intersectionality, Affirmative Action, Gender Theory, Critical Theory, Critical Race Theory, Deconstructionism, Postmodernism, etc.)  still want to insist on fighting the simple moral battles of race discrimination of the 1960s even though we now understand that this is not a moral battle and it is not about racial discrimination.  We are now grappling with the fact that in a free and competitive market with few barriers to entry, outcomes will be determined largely by individual attributes and that there are patterns of attributes which vary by groups such as class, religion and culture.  

That is a tough reality to confront.

As I say, this is all reasonably well known and evidenced outside the clusters of ideological fanatics and central planners.  

For some reason, though, the above passage brought home to me a second order implication I had not before considered and which I have not seen discussed.  

To some degree, government has been seeking to increase competition in markets as a fairly standard policy since the 1930's principally in terms of anti-monopoly regulatory and legal decisions.  It is a heavy handed strategy and not especially effective, but it does establish at least the basics of a preference for competition.

On the other hand, government loves itself some discrimination.  Virtually all regulatory decisions are discriminatory in some fashion and in the past ten or fifteen years there has been a strong Federal Government disposition to discriminate based on race.  For Blacks, against Whites and Asians, and with Hispanics in an ambiguous place where they are both benefited and discriminated against at the same time.  

As everyone keeps saying, the best way to get rid of discrimination based on race is to stop discriminating based on race.  But the Federal Government just can't bare to let that go.  You can centrally plan discriminatory laws (affirmative action, quotas, DEI, etc.), you can't centrally plan the actions of a free market.  

The government wants less racial discrimination.  It knows that the more competitive you make a market, the less discrimination there will be (of whatever sort, race, sex, religion, class, etc.).  

On the other hand, for a range of reasons, the government simultaneously relies ever more heavily on central planning, regulatory rule making, structuring incentives based on taxes and subsidies.  The government wants to use all the tools available to discriminate and choose winners and losers, to effectively get rid of competition and emergent order.

Just because the government wants things does not mean that they achieve them or execute well.  The dismal track record of poor execution and failure is overwhelming and much remarked.  Hardly any social policies or centrally planned economic policies work (in terms of outcomes achieved, costs incurred, schedules kept, and unexpected negative consequences encountered.)

The government, were it seriously committed to eliminating discrimination, would avidly pursue policies which make it easier and cheaper to form companies and for those companies to compete on a level playing field based on rule of law.  Basically, the Federal Government would double down on policies which enhance freedom and individual agency.

By doing so, the government would be the catalyst to drive discrimination out of the market. 

Instead, the government chooses in the past fifteen years to insert itself and its central planning (via agencies) by erecting an ever more cumbersome infrastructure of regulatory costs, burdens, delays, and preferences which reduce competition and make discrimination much easier.

The second order insight is that when forced to choose between reducing discrimination by encouraging market freedom (and the emergent order and variant outcomes that come with that), and choosing to foster discrimination by increasing market interventions and control, the Federal Government has chosen to foster discrimination.  

Many others have reached the same conclusion but I am not sure I have ever seen the conclusion reached via Becker principles.  

I would go further and argue that for most people in most activities in America, consciously bigoted actions are vestigially small (based on race, religion, sex, class.)  Where they do occur I would say that the prevalence is Class then Culture then Sex then Religion then Race.  And that it is a steep gradient down from the most frequent discrimination based on Class to the least frequent based on Race.  

Basically, racial discrimination in America is on life-support and it is Government and its race based discriminatory policies which is the life-support.  

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Data Talks

 

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Pythagoreans celebrate sunrise, 1869 by Fyodor Bronnikov (1827–1902)

Pythagoreans celebrate sunrise, 1869 by Fyodor Bronnikov (1827–1902)
















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Friday, February 23, 2024

History

 

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An Insight

 

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I see wonderful things

 

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History

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Offbeat Humor

 

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Data Talks

 

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The Circlet of White Flowers by Elizabeth Sonrel (1874-1953)

 The Circlet of White Flowers by Elizabeth Sonrel (1874-1953)



































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Thursday, February 22, 2024

History

 

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An Insight

 

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I see wonderful things

 

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Expert knowledge is contingent and useful forecasting constrained by the interplay of complex systems

I recognize but am dubious of the use of government power to prevent the emergence of monopoly markets.  I am fine with regulations but am unconvinced of the ability of the government to either understand or effectively forecast, plan and manage markets, especially rapidly evolving markets.

This skepticism about anti-monopoly actions is closely related to my skepticism of "experts".  There are certainly experts with narrow and deep domains of knowledge but almost all complex problems are a function of the interaction of multiple loosely coupled evolving non-linear chaotic systems.  Single domain expertise is insufficient and multi-domain expertise domains rare or non-existent.  

As illustrated in this reporting from T-Mobile Proves That Mergers Can Benefit Consumers by Thomas W. Hazlett.  The subheading is That should give pause to today’s overzealous antitrust enforcers.  

The government has become increasingly suspicious of major mergers over the past decade, under both political parties. The Justice Department under Donald Trump sued to prevent AT&T from buying Time Warner. The Federal Trade Commission under President Biden is continuing a case the Trump administration initiated against Meta, parent of Facebook, to force the firm to cough up Instagram and WhatsApp, which it swallowed during the Obama years. In January JetBlue Airways’ plans to merge with Spirit Airlines and Amazon’s plans to acquire iRobot were deterred under regulatory pressure.

In April 2020, however, T-Mobile and Sprint managed to sneak past regulators, merging to reduce the number of major U.S. mobile networks from four to three.

[snip]

T-Mobile’s takeover of Sprint was controversial among analysts. “If this merger is not anticompetitive,” Eleanor Fox, a trade regulation and antitrust law professor at New York University, told reporters in 2020, “it is hard to know what is.” Yale economist and antitrust scholar Fiona Scott Morton delivered her verdict on the deal in a co-authored 2021 article: “The era of aggressive price competition in wireless is over.” The authors predicted that the wireless industry, whittled down to a big three, would “nestle into a cozy triopoly.”

Respectable and credentialed experts from the most prestigious institutions made forecasts which could be validated.  

And they were wrong.

The prediction proved wrong. Average monthly mobile subscription fees dropped sharply. In the three years before the merger, according to government price data, mobile charges declined in real terms by about 8%. In the three years following the merger, the real price decline has been nearly 12%.

These trends were even more impressive given dramatically improving network performance. Before the merger, the top four U.S. carriers delivered data download speeds averaging about 26 megabits per second, nearly all via 3G or 4G. By early 2023, with 5G deployments spreading, Verizon and AT&T data flowed 24% to 39% faster, while T-Mobile was more than three times as fast as before. T-Mobile’s high-speed coverage had also expanded; half of its connections were via 5G by January 2023, against just 10% to 20% for its rivals.

T-Mobile’s aggressive deployment of the Sprint spectrum rights it had purchased paid dividends in enhanced services for customers. It was also a boon for shareholders. As T-Mobile pulled market share from its rivals, its stock soared. Between 2018 and 2023, T-Mobile shares outperformed the S&P 500 Index by 50%.

Further evidence that the merger of T-Mobile and Sprint was pro-competitive was seen with Verizon and AT&T share prices. From 2018 to 2023, Verizon and AT&T stock prices declined sharply, losing more than a third of their real value. The postmerger marketplace was a great victory for T-Mobile but a blow for its rivals. The cozy-cartel thesis collapsed.

It might have turned out otherwise.  The future is hard to predict.

Which is pretty much the point.  Experts ought to be adjudged and assessed based on the utility of their knowledge as reflected in their capacity to accurately make forecasts.  If they are not able to accurately forecast, it is not necessarily an indictment of their narrow domain of knowledge.  It merely suggests that the larger set of systems are so complex that the narrow domain is insufficient.

The real lesson is not so much that experts are uselss.  The real lesson is that all knowledge is contingent and that forecasts of complex systems are almost certainly going to be wrong and that passionate conviction or even shared consensus has little to do with actual measured reality.

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Offbeat Humor

 

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Data Talks

 

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Corporate suicide

When a new company introduces a novel and unique capability successfully to the market, it can often appear that they will end up with a natural monopoly and that there will be no conceivable way for an unregulated free market to break that natural monopoly.  

Such was the view of Google in its early days.  It quickly crowded out competitors, and locked in enormous revenue streams.  It has spent two decades investing in refinements and in strategic investments to find the next big deal.

There have been some occasional alternate search platform competitors in the intervening years but largely at the fringe.

The fear of a natural monopoly has a natural basis but reality is that most of what appear to be natural monopolies merely entail patience.  The monopoly turns out not to be natural.  Patents expire.  Demand changes.  Competitors come up with better alternatives.  The market works, just not always on the timeline that people might want for their own reasons.

And sometimes, companies just commit suicide (ex.  Bud Light).  This appears to be the chosen route of Google.  A monolithic search monopoly with an unassailable market position.  Particularly in the past five years there have been increasing complaints about the efficacy and accuracy of its search engine but there has been no compelling alternative.

Then they decided to commit corporate suicide.  

The release of its Gemini (Google AI) has been a troubled launch on its own but it also raises further concerns about the base search engine business.  There is a feeling that Gemini is making obvious what was only suspected about the increasing bias and inaccuracy of Google Search.  

Three examples I have seen in the past day or so:
Strike 1 - catering to the sensibilities of a totalitarian regime which is a major economic and military threat to the nation.  

Strike 2 - catering to antisemites everywhere. 

Strike 3 - a rejection of Age of Enlightenment empiricism, scientific method, and epistemic curiosity and openness.  

Perhaps this is not a death blow.  Perhaps they have only shot themselves in the foot and not the heart.  But at best, they clearly are not practicing basic gun safety.  

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Farmhouse Shadows by Jim Holland

Farmhouse Shadows by Jim Holland


















Click to enlarge.

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Wednesday, February 21, 2024

History

 

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An Insight

 

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I see wonderful things

 

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Offbeat Humor

 


















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The tyranny of the mediocre matched with a surplus of stupid

I have seen shades of both these thoughts in a variety of forms over the past couple of weeks.  Regardless of the implied argument, it is just interesting that the ideas seem to be gaining circulation

The tyranny of the mediocre (almost always related to government functions and project implementation)

A surplus of stupid (split 2:1 between criticisms of the products of universities and criticisms of government policy ideas.)

As categories, they are both deep and wide.  

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Data Talks

 

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Where the Evening Splits in Half by Nigel Van Wieck

Where the Evening Splits in Half by Nigel Van Wieck


















Click to enlarge.

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The ultra-citified are islands of insanity in an America that is still a sea of reasonableness.

An excellent column, Elite? Or Ultra-Citified? by Arnold Kling.  The subheading is A buzzy poll does not survey who it claims to survey.  

In recent weeks, you probably have seen articles about a Rasmussen poll (actually conducted last September) showing that elites do not want the rest of us to eat meat, cook with gas, engage in “unnecessary air travel,” and so on. Before piling onto this poll with my own commentary, I first wanted to look at the way it was conducted. Polls, like documentaries, can easily be used to construct a narrative rather than provide objective information.

I have seen numerous opinion pieces, articles and tweets stemming from this study.  And have read none of them.  The noise and chatter strike me as manufactured.  If there is something interesting, it will still be being discussed in six months.  If it is the manufactured fluff it seems, no one will remember in six months.  

Kling does the legwork that justifies my jaundiced perspective.  

The most comprehensive description I can find is a report by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, which commissioned the poll. The first thing I noted was the criteria for selecting the “elite.”

The Elites are defined as those having a postgraduate degree, a household income of more than $150,000 annually, and living in a zip code with more than 10,000 people per square mile. Approximately 1% of the total U.S. population meets these criteria.

The requirement of having a postgraduate degree and a household income more than $150,000 strikes me as not very strict. Google tells me that fourteen percent of Americans have a postgraduate degree, and twenty percent of U.S. households meet the income threshold. Even if there were zero correlation between income and education, almost 3 percent of the population would meet the criteria. But because the correlation between income and education is pretty high, a conservative estimate is that between 5 and 10 percent of the population is “elite” by those standards.

I can infer that the requirement to be “living in a zip code with more than 10,000 people per square mile” is doing a significant amount of work here in whittling the “elite” down to one percent. This is confirmed by checking out various zip codes with which I am familiar. My oldest daughter lives in a zip code in tony Newton, Massachusetts, where many households meet the elite income and education thresholds. But the population density there is less than half of what is needed to qualify for the Rasmussen survey. The same is true for many of the affluent zip codes near me.

In practice, a population density of more than 10,000 per square mile almost assures that high-rise buildings will supply a big share of housing. You are pretty much selecting for large northern cities, like New York, Chicago, and Boston. And you are selecting against some of the most affluent suburbs near those cities. Wealthy residents of large homes in Beverly Hills, California or Potomac, Maryland are going to be excluded from the sample.

In the United States, the typical person living in a zip code with at least 10,000 people per square mile is poor. I would bet that a large fraction of the zip codes with that much density are slums.

When you think of the elite, you think of the most affluent, highly-educated Americans. You think of what Charles Murray says is represented by Belmont. Residents of Belmont are not in the Rasmussen poll because Belmont fails to meet the density requirement.

Instead, what this sample is picking is people who are indeed well above average in terms income and education, but whose most distinguishing characteristic is choosing to live in crowded sections of older cities. The best label I can come up for this demographic is Ultra-Citified Upper Middle Class, or ultra-citified for short.

You know who else this looks like?  The natural environment of the remnant journalists from the legacy mainstream media.  My longstanding plaint has been part of the disconnect of the Mainstream Media has been that they are bunkered in half a dozen unrepresentative cities sharing few of the conditions and concerns of the average American.

If you live and breathe center city New York, Chicago, LA, Washington, D.C. and San Francisco, of course you are concerned about race relations, inequality, urban decline, immigration, social justice, poverty, homelessness, etc.  Those are important issues in those cities.  And mostly, primarily in those cities.  

Elsewhere, not so much.

Kling is indirectly pointing out that the survey design, intentionally or not, has been designed to pick up not the actual movers and shakers of America but rather the wealthy and educated of a few zip codes in a few cities.  

This an example of the Millionaire Next Door problem.  Who you consider a mover and shaker is a matter of definition.  Most definitions are colloquial and loose.  Once you get specific and tight, the movers and shakers are quite different than you expected.

Kling is point out that the survey is of little value because it has effectively chosen, through its density requirement, to only survey rich educated people in a handful of urban zip codes who are already known to be disproportionately left leaning.  

Had they surveyed wealth and educated alone or any other proxy for power and influence (wealth, income, education, social status, etc.) they would have gotten dramatically different answers.  And probably much less remarkable answers and therefore a much less noteworthy survey.  And who wants to conduct an expensive survey that merely affirms that which is already known or believed?

I agree with Kling's conclusion.

But if you were to study more broadly the affluent and highly-educated portion of the American public, you would find a diverse set of values and beliefs. It is not just “the deplorables” living in small towns that are alienated by the ultra-citified. It is not just the working-class urban neighborhoods that Murray symbolizes with Fishtown. The ultra-citified also alienate much of Belmont.

The ultra-citified are islands of insanity in an America that is still a sea of reasonableness. At a national level, the ultra-citified are destined to lose most of the political battles.

As I have pointed out in the past, our legacy mainstream media beacons shine from ultra-citified zip codes.  What undermines this survey is what also undermines legacy mainstream media reporting.  It is unrepresentative and substantially irrelevant.  

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