D&D: "That Evil Game"

Tracy Hickman's Ethics Essays Part 1

ROLE PLAYING? OH, YOU MEAN THAT EVIL GAME?

How many times have you heard it? You just meet someone new -- someone you really would like to get to know. You'd like to invite them into your group of friends. You try to make small talk and mention that you play role playing games.
"Role playing? Oh, you mean that evil game?"
It certainly doesn't only come from new -- or, at least potential -- friends. Maybe its your Aunt Eva or your Uncle Bert frowning whenever they find you reading a new module. Perhaps your Sunday School Teacher or Minister has, with glaring disapproval, lumped your favorite pastime of playing 'that game' with sinful drugs, liquor, smoking, rock-and-roll-back-masking-acid-brain-melting music, nuclear holocaust, swearing, promiscuity and a host of other evils which were designed to destroy your soul.
Now what I have just said either made you angry or laugh. Remember that; it tells you from which side you approach the of the issue of role playing games.
Also, don't get me wrong. Drugs are a stupid and destructive habit which is designed primarily to ruin your life while making the Drug Lords rich. Getting drunk may not be as bad as shooting drugs but it, too, will ruin your life. I also believe that there is something basically screwed up with the idea of pushing promiscuous sex at every turn in American films, books and advertising and then wondering blankly why their is such a large teenage pregnancy problem.
Moreover, what I just listed IS sinful. God didn't make up the rules of life's game just to mess you over. Sin is bad for you. To me, God is the best game designer and referee you can possibly imagine. I know that's true with all my heart.
I am a Christian, which means that I know Christ to be my Savior and my Redeemer. I believe in God and in Christ's Resurrection from the dead. I believe he has atoned for my sins ... and yours, too.
So, what am I doing writing articles about 'that evil game'?
The answer to that may be more complicated than you thought.

GOODNESS AND BADNESS: WHICH IS WHICH?

For a few years, I was a manager of movie theaters. I saw all kinds of movies go through my theater and, sadly, was required to watch every movie which played. Part of it was my duty to the community and part of it was the law.
I saw some very bad movies. Gut-wrenching violent affairs whose message was to solve your problems by killing others. Sleazy skin flicks filled with adolescent giggles whose message was that the thrill of the moment was all that mattered.
Movies are apparently bad.
I also saw some very good movies. 'Ordinary People' was a triumph of personal tragedy and how to cope with tragic loss. 'Empire of the Sun' was a powerful experience. Hey, I still get misty when the prince dances with Aurora in Disney's 'Sleeping Beauty.'
Movies are good?
The Medium or the Message?
The answer, of course, is that 'movies' are neither bad nor good ... they are just ... well, movies! In the parlance of the communication industry, it is the medium (like a channel on your television) over which a message (like a program on your T.V.) is communicated.
This same holds true with all other forms of communication. We would be better off not listening to some of the trashy music which has often passed for 'art' or 'rock'. Yet we are also enriched by other music ranging from 'classical' to 'rock'. Some programs on the T.V. bring new horizons to our view of the world. Some programs drag us down into the gutter and offer nothing in return.
Is T.V. then good or bad? Is music then good or bad?

It isn't What it is but What we do with it.

It seems obvious that it isn't the method of communication ... the medium ... that is either good or bad. Rather, it is what we do with the medium that is good or bad. You can use quarry stones to build a cathedral. You can use the same stones to build a prison.
Gary Gygax, on the infamous 60 Minutes treatment of role playing used the analogy of a chair. In effect, he said that he could use a chair either to sit on or to hit someone over the head with -- but that didn't mean we should ban chairs.
In effect, he was saying that, like movies, television, music, books and any other form of communication you can name, Dungeons & Dragons® is not 'evil' in and of itself. It is simply a medium of communication overwhich any number or types of ideas can be sent.

BLUE IN THE FACE

All of these are very logical answers to the questions of 'evil role playing games.' In fact, I am sure you have used many of these arguments with your Pastor, Bishop, mother/father and friends.
I bet they didn't listen.
The truth is that they may have been listening but they just weren't hearing you. Our biggest problem in the two sides of the role playing issue is that neither side has ever been able to hear what the other side is really saying.
Fortunately, by understanding the problem and how to deal with it, we can do something about bridging this gap.

The Cult and the Occult: The closed society of role playing:

To most people, Cult and Occult are the same thing. The words sound a great deal alike. There just seems to be something wrong with how it sounds. The press, knowing a bit more about the English language than those who read or listen to them, did not help matters any when they began reporting on the "Dungeons & Dragons1 Cult" or the "Fantasy Cult" in role playing.
In a very real sense, role playing became as popular as it did because it was a cult -- in the traditional sense of the word. According to Websters, a 'cult' is "a. a great devotion to a person, idea, or thing exp such devotion regarded as a literary or intellectual fad: b. a usually small circle of persons united by devotion or allegiance to an artistic or intellectual movement or figure." This means that the people who were part of the 'D&D Cult' were a part of a small, closed and internally select group with common interests in an intellectual idea.
That does NOT mean, however, that the Role playing Cult is OCCULT. These are two very like sounding words with very unlike meanings. Websters defines 'occult' in three ways. "1. to hide from sight 2. not revealed: SECRET 3. matters regarded as involving the action or influence of supernatural agencies or some secret knowledge of them -- used with the". While the word more accurately means 'hidden or obscure' it has come to mean in a more traditional sense, the practice of witchcraft or sorcery.
The difference between the words is blurred further when we start speaking of Fantasy Cults. Traditional epic fantasy uses a roughly medieval setting. Such a setting includes wizards and witches, magic and spiritualism. All of these aspects are now associated with the Occult and, as such, are easily branded as Evil, Satanic and Spiritually Dangerous.
Occultism IS Evil, Satanic and Spiritually Dangerous. The practice of witchcraft is debilitating to the soul and ultimately destructive. Occultism is NOT a harmless game .... it is a very real 'religion' which derives its power from darkness.
The Fantasy Role Playing cult is not occult -- but it could be abused. An adventure can be designed to teach everything from Christianity to Zoroastroism. To outsiders looking in, however, we appear to turn our backs on their good intentions toward something they perceive as dark and wrong.

Insiders and Outsiders: Hard looking in, hard to reach out.

Cults are almost by definition closed societies. It is part of the fun of the hobby. When you tell someone that your 'eighth-level MU got his THACO boosted to 6' it is something of a secret challenge to them. If they understand you even marginally, then they are one of those people who have played the game and are therefore 'one of you.' If all you get is a blank stare then the person you have addressed is not part of the 'D&D cult' and therefore 'not one of you.'
It is this very cult system which has, I believe, worked to make role playing such a large hobby. Anyone who read through the 'Dungeon Masters Guide' (a laborious task) had knowledge and understanding of a game which his peers did not. Those who ran the games demonstrated this superior knowledge and were, in varying degrees, looked up to by others in the 'cult.' This elitism bound us all together and made us strong as a group.
However, this very closeness ... and 'closedness' ... has generated great problems for us in communication with others.
The greatest barrier to understanding ... whether that be outsiders trying to understand role playing games or insiders trying to help outsiders understand ... is our own cultism. Our close-knit society of gamers made role playing grow into an international phenomenon. We then circled the wagons when we perceived outsiders beginning to attack our hobby.
It is time we reached out to those who do not understand this game we play. To do so, however, will require some important work on our part. We must learn how to change our own channels so that we can both hear and be heard by others.

OF COURSE THAT SPELL WON'T WORK ON ME!: COMMUNICATION

Several years ago, Dungeons & Dragons generated a lot of concern in a school district near my home. A teacher had been using the game with his gifted students and a woman in the town decided that the schools were, therefore, teaching Satanic rituals to children.
At the school board meeting, one fellow who was associated with TSR stood and, in the course of trying to explain how harmless D&D was asked if anyone in the audience would mind having a spell cast on them. His intent, of course, was to show that 'spells' in the game are just imaginary effects.
A woman stood up and walked boldly to the front of the hall. I really must admire her courage considering that she was sure she was facing very real and very evil powers.
The TSR representative stood and threw some dice. Looking down at the result, he said, "Oh, the spell didn't work."
In a loud voice, clear as her faith, this dear woman said, "Of course it didn't work! I (am filled with) the Holy Ghost!"
These two people were not communicating!
Apples and Oranges: Hearing without Listening
"Why were you so late getting home?"
"Well, there was this guy who has blown his tire by the side of the road and I just stopped to ..."
"You knew that I needed that car for my appointment! You're irresponsible, boy! You must think all I have to do is sit around and wait for you all day."
"Dad, they guy was in real trouble ..."
"Why can't you be more considerate of me and your mother?
"Dad, you just don't understand ..."
The boy is right: Dad doesn't understand. In fact, the way this conversation is going, they might as well not even be talking to each other. Neither of them is hearing what the other has to say even though they are face to face.
Why?
They are talking on different channels. They boy is trying to answer is father's question logically -- trying to tell his dad why it is he is late getting home. Dad, on the other hand is asking an emotional question -- he's mad and wants some emotional satisfaction for all the anger he is feeling. What Dad really wants is an apology and, perhaps, some sense that his son feels guilty for having wronged his father.
Both of these characters are trying to compare apples (the boys logic) and oranges (the fathers feelings). They are not the same thing and often are the primary source for dispute.

The heart or the head?: Emotion vs. reason

When emotion is present in one side of a conversation, you might as well toss logic out the window. People who feel emotional about an issue simply will not hear logical arguments.
Let's replay the previous conversation in a more relevant mode:
"Have you been playing that game again?"
"Dad, there really isn't anything wrong with it -- it's just a game."
"Role Playing games are the devil's work! It's rotting your brain!"
"Nothing bad ever happens, Dad, it's all just make believe ..."
"It's witchcraft, boy! You'll loose your soul in those dark arts! Never mind me! What about your mother?!"
Again, we have apples vs. oranges: The boy is trying to reason with his father with logic. His Dad, on the other hand, is sincerely worried about his son -- an emotional issue for him -- and doesn't want his boy hurt.

Truth or illusion?: Reality vs. appearance

The truth of things is often judged by its appearance. When I was in High School, a Camero body with oversized tires and racing stripes was more important than the fact that the engine was undersized and out of tune. We would polish our cars but never quite get around to fixing the brakes.
The fact is that we all judge by appearances and our fantasy games will be judged in the same way.
Let's face it, if you create a make-believe magical language for the casting of spells and go about the house all day muttering strange incantations, your mother is probably going to call the exorcist. Never mind that your words are meaningless. Never mind that your game referee finds them mostly a bother. Mom will be convinced that you are being drawn into the clutches of Satan.
If you invite your minister over to watch one of your games and he enters a room lit only by candles and filled with incense you KNOW how he is going to react. For that matter, you also know what mood you have just set for your players and it may not be the best.
If you are going to succeed in communicating what your game really is like, then you had best avoid even the appearance of evil.
Telling requires listening
Before you begin talking it is most important that you start by listening -- really listening! It's rather like tuning a radio before you start transmitting. Before you can communicate, you must understand on what channel the other person is speaking and doing their own listening.
An easy technique you can use to understand where the other person is at mentally is called Reflective Listening. This is a way of repeating back to the other person what they just said -- in different words and phrased as a question. It just takes a little practice.
Here's a non-reflective conversations:
"I'm mad at you you!
"I haven't done anything!"
Sound familiar? Both these people will probably come to blows shortly. Let's try it with reflective listening."
"I'm mad at you you."
"Why are you mad at me?"
"Because you didn't come by last weekend?"
"I guess last weekend was pretty important to you, huh?"
"You know it. We were supposed to go hiking!"
Now, at least the listener has learned not only that their friend is emotionally upset but also WHY they are upset. Grovelling apologies and flowers may now be in order.

Opening the channels

You can open the channels with your friends, parents, ministers or anyone else with whom you find yourself in conflict by just starting on the right channel. By countering emotion with emotion (or logic with logic) you will find your conversations bearing a good deal more fruit.
Let's try the role playing conversation one more time. Dad, as usual, starts it off but now we will apply active or reflective listening and try tuning in to his emotional frequency.
"Have you been playing that game again?"
"Dad, you seem to be really worried about this, aren't you?"
"Of course, boy! That stuff will rot your brain!"
"Dad, thanks for worrying about me but there are a lot of good things about the game that I really enjoy."
"Nothing evil will ever make you happy, son."
"I know that, Dad. That's why I wouldn't want to do anything that was evil or bad. I certainly wouldn't want to hurt you. I feel good when I play these games but I know you're worried about it. Would you come and watch us play for a while -- just for half an hour? It would mean a lot to me and maybe you would understand what we're up to when we play."
"I don't know, son."
"It would really make me feel better if you did."
Not only has the boy listened and understood his father's concerns, but has now gotten his father to come and watch a game played. The boy has included his Dad in what he is doing -- something which Dad probably wanted all along.
You can do the same with your own parents. I'm not saying that it will happen the first time out nor that it will be quite as simple as it is shown here. What I can say is that these techniques will work given patience and time.
By the way, these communication techniques also work for other things in your life which are a lot more important than the games you play. If you have trouble getting along with others over anything ... give these a try.

OPENING DOORS REQUIRES RESPONSIBILITY ON WHAT IS INSIDE.

Once you learn how to choose the right channel you will find that others will listen to you. Once you invite them into your circle they will find that there is 'nothing in the dark that isn't there when the lights are on.'
The hard part then comes on your own shoulders: showing them a game that is moral and just. As we have said, role playing games are just tools with which you can create anything -- good or bad. After you have gone to all the trouble of talking to your concerned friends and inviting them to just observe one of your games, you must ask yourself: what is it they will see when they come and watch? Is your adventure a morality-based scenario with clear concepts of good and evil? Is it graphically violent? Does it portray evil as inviting or good as powerless?
When you finally get to show your adventure to skeptics, will they just find their own fear confirmed?
Next time, in the second part of this series, I'll give you a specific example of what you might say to those who have questions concerning the moral issue of Role Playing Games. The third part of this series will then explain what place morality has in your games. I think you may be surprised at what you have been missing.
In the meanwhile, remember that your role playing game will only reflect what you put into it. Your game can forward the concepts of lies or truth ... it is entirely up to you.

1Dungeons & Dragons, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Dragonlance and TSR are trademarks of TSR, Incorporated and are used here without their permission.
Ethics in Fantasy, Part I: That Evil Game? / Copyright 1988 by Tracy Raye Hickman

Seattle’s $15 Minimum Wage Not in Effect, But Already Killing Jobs | Washington Policy Center

Seattle’s $15 Minimum Wage Not in Effect, But Already Killing Jobs | Washington Policy Center

It seems Seattle’s anti-business policies are taking their toll on the city’s small businesses. And while the city’s most controversial policy, a proposed $15 minimum wage, has not been passed yet, it is already having a chilling affect on jobs.

After decades in Seattle, Northwest Caster and Equipment recently made the difficult decision to move the business to unincorporated Lynnwood, according to a report by KOMO news. The owner of the family business blames Seattle’s increasingly difficult business climate for the move: “It just seems like increasingly the city’s become a more difficult place to do business.”

The city’s proposed $15 minimum wage was tops on the list of complaints. “If I’m going to bring someone in on an entry level, I’d prefer to start them out where I’d like to start them out, rather than having that dictated to me.”

A commercial property landlord echoes those concerns about the $15 minimum wage, noting several tenants have signaled they may not renew their leases if it becomes law: “It’s just too expensive to operate in the city.”

And in a story today, KUOW reports that small businesses throughout the city are panicking over the super high minimum wage. Multiple small business owners told KUOW they are holding off on opening new business or expanding their current business in Seattle, while others said they are delaying plans to hire new workers.

One of those business owners is a well-known and active supporter of “progressive” labor policies, including a higher minimum wage. Jody Hall, owner of Cupcake Royale, initially supported a $15 minimum wage. But now Hall admits the proposed policy is, “keeping me up at night like nothing ever has.”

While Hall has serious concerns with Mayor Ed Murray’s plan to phase in a $15 minimum wage over seven years with a temporary tip credit, her biggest fear is if voters approve the radical charter amendment sponsored by the group 15Now. The charter amendment would force all large employers to begin paying $15 in 2015, and would give small business owners just three years to acclimate to the high wage. And the 15Now proposal would not allow for any tip credit.

If the charter amendment passes, Hall says she would be forced to close half of her seven locations and lay off 50 of her 100 workers.
But beyond the differences between Mayor Murray’s proposal or the more aggressive 15Now proposal, Hall says she now has “serious second thoughts” about a $15 minimum wage in general, especially since Seattle would be “going it alone” with a wage that is significantly higher than any other minimum wage in the nation.

Hall’s second thoughts about a $15 minimum wage have led to second thoughts about expanding her business. She was set to open a new business in Seattle this year, but has tabled the plan until after voters have their say on the charter amendment in the November election. Hall says if she considers any new locations before then, they will be outside the city limits.

Earlier this year a study commissioned by Mayor Murray and the Seattle City Council determined a $15 minimum wage would help low wage workers and reduce poverty, but omitted any estimations on the impact on employment. A subsequent study by a Seattle economist predicted significant job loss.

It would seem the Seattle economist was spot on. The $15 wage is not yet in effect and already it is pushing businesses into neighboring cities and killing jobs as business owners put the brakes on growing their companies and hiring new workers.

GayPatriot » Progressive Left: “On Second Thought, We Actually Do Want Government in the Bedroom.”

GayPatriot » Progressive Left: “On Second Thought, We Actually Do Want Government in the Bedroom.”

In California, natch,

A newly amended bill from a California lawmaker would require college students to stop in the heat of passion and establish verbal or written consent before having sex anywhere on campus, reports L.A. Weekly. SB 967, amended last week by state Sen. Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles), would mandate that college students obtain “an affirmative, unambiguous, and conscious decision by each participant to engage in mutually agreed-upon sexual activity.”

It’s not necessarily a bad idea for a young college horndog to get signed consent before banging college women who’ve been raised on a steady diet of “feminist empowerment” since grade school. Especially, now that rape has redefined to include, “Woman consents to have sex with a guy and then changes her mind days or weeks later, files a sexual assault complaint and destroys his life.” A really smart one will get it notarized. Update: I thought that name was familiar. Kevin de Leon is the same genius progressive hairpiece that a few months ago warned about dangerous assault weapons that fire “30 magazine clips in half a second.” And they should be outlawed, of course.

Advice Goddess Blog

Advice Goddess Blog

A Seattle airport parking lot has added on an 8.25 percent "living wage surcharge" to customers' bills, reports Mark J. Perry at AEI:

...The company that issued the [parking] receipt ... is MasterPark at the Seattle's SeaTac Airport. According to its website, the company now charges a $0.99 per day "living wage surchage." For a 7-day period that would add $6.93 and 8.25% to the base fee of $84. For a 30-day parking fee of $199, the $29.70 "living wage surcharge" would add a tax of almost 15% to the base rate.
A $15 per hour minimum wage might sound good in theory, but ends up having many unintended, secondary, negative consequences in the form of less employment, reduced hours, reduced job and business creation, higher prices for consumers, etc. In the end, and maybe very soon, it will be evident that SeaTac's $15 per hour minimum wage, like all government mandated price controls, are really an "economic death wish."

Law of Self Defense Videocast 001: Stand-Your-Ground

Understanding creationism, II: An insider’s guide by a former young-Earth creationist

2. Variation and adaptationThe majority of modern creation science freely admits the existence of biological variation, adaptation, and speciation. Indeed, the recent-creation model – particularly the belief that all extant life descended from a small group of “kinds” present on Noah’s Ark which diversified into all families on Earth after a global flood – requires enormous adaptive variation and near-constant speciation. Creationists estimate that fewer than 10,000 pairs of land-dwelling, air-breathing animals on the Ark diversified to represent all families alive today. There are around 6.5 million land-dwelling species today, so millions of speciation events would have needed to take place over the past 44 centuries since their global flood.
As a side point: in order to go from 10,000 primordial “kinds” to 6.5 million species in less than 5000 years, the number of species would need to double every 385 years. If the rate of evolutionary development and speciation really were this rapid, few species would endure for more than four or five centuries without undergoing drastic and noticeable adaptation, and we would presently see about 45 new species emerging every single day. To explain this inconsistency, creationists will sometimes imagine an even more rapid period of hyper-evolution immediately following the Flood, after which adaptation and speciation would supposedly stabilize to their presently-observed levels. Apart from being utter special pleading, this explanation is even more problematic: each species would have to undergo a speciation event every few generations.
....
The creationist needs to understand two things. First, he should understand the scientific fact of just how much variation is actually observed in microbiology. There is no “limit” to genetic recombination; chromosomal crossover can take place at any base pair, and this process can alter or transpose or duplicate entire genes without loss of function. A common creationist claim is that any mutation large enough to make a difference will ruin the organism’s chances at survival. But this claim is simply false. First of all, genotype (the information in our DNA) is distinct from phenotype (the expression of traits based on DNA). Each generation has two copies of every chromosome (one from the mother and one from the father), so a given organism can use the maternal gene if the paternal one is scrambled, and vice versa. Moreover, it is not uncommon for chromosomal crossover to duplicate whole genes, so the old gene can retain its original function while the new gene develops a new function. Mendelian recombination can be the source of visible changes from generation to generation, but new genetic combinations are continually being generated within the genome itself.
More fundamentally, the creationist must realize the flaw in his philosophical argument. Our DNA does not contain abstract information, like a book filled with human language. Abstract information almost certainly requires a conscious mind to interpret it, but that is not what DNA represents. Using the idea of a code to represent DNA is our abstraction; the actual function of DNA is purely chemical. There is no interpretation required; the alignment and connection is the same sort of process by which snowflakes form into crystals. The evolution of our genetic code is not driven by some conscious intelligence constantly adding new information, but by the environment, which continually forces life to adapt in order to survive.

Understanding creationism: An insider's guide by a former young-Earth creationist - The Panda's Thumb

Understanding creationism: An insider's guide by a former young-Earth creationist - The Panda's Thumb

In this short series, David MacMillan explains how misinformation and misconceptions allow creationists to maintain their beliefs even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. A former creationist blogger and writer, Mr. MacMillan earned his BS degree in physics from the University of North Alabama and now works as a technical writer when he isn’™t frequenting the PT comment boards. Since leaving creationism, he has written several columns discussing the public dialogue between creation and evolution. This series will outline the core beliefs creationists use as the basis for their reasoning while pointing out the challenges faced in re-educating against creationist misconceptions.

1. Introduction and overview: Philosophy of pseudoscience

During my tenure as an active young-earth creationist, I never once heard other creationists accurately describe what evolutionary theory is or how it is supposed to work. Nor did I understand it myself. Creationists often seem familiar with a lot of scientific terminology, but their understanding is filled with gross misinformation. Thus, a host of misconceptions is believed and taught throughout creationist circles, making it almost impossible for actual evidence to really sink in.

Why Renewables Haven't Destroyed the Grid - Yet! - Pennenergy

Why Renewables Haven't Destroyed the Grid - Yet! - Pennenergy

When I talk to groups about renewable energy I start off with a Youtube video which demonstrates testing the compression strength of a concrete block. For 2 minutes and 40 seconds this is the most boring video you could imagine. The block shows absolutely no sign of stress. At 2:41 the concrete block fails and is utterly destroyed.  As far as I am concerned we are at about 2 minutes and 30 seconds with respect to the electrical grid.

In order to understand what I believe to be the serious risks facing the electrical generation and distribution system it is necessary to review the structure of the system as it was before renewables began to be developed in a significant way. The chart below shows hypothetical load profiles for a peak demand day during the spring/fall, winter and summer as well as a line that represents the overall generating capacity in the system.

It can be observed that the system demand/load varies considerably throughout the day and throughout the year. It is also clear that there is a great deal of excess supply available for most hours on most days. In fact, only on the highest peak demand days of the entire year will the demand come close to the supply. That is by design as every well-managed electrical generation system in the world requires a reserve margin of 8-15% above peak demand.

This reserve is meant to provide resiliency for the grid to accommodate scheduled maintenance shut-downs at major facilities such as nuclear plants, natural gas-fired and coal-fired plants as well as unscheduled outages due to storms or switching problems or other operational issues.

....

So before we began to develop renewable energy there was plenty of generation capacity within the system.  In fact, many generation facilities were not running at anything close to capacity most of the time.

Because of a public policy decision to reduce the burning of hydro-carbons (and the associated production of CO2 emissions) wind and solar generation sources have been subsidized through a variety of financial instruments including capital grants, tax credits, and feed-in-tariffs.  Renewables have also been given preferential access to the grid in most jurisdictions.

These measures have achieved the stated policy goal.  Wind and solar now make up a significant percentage of generation capacity in a number of jurisdictions and at times provide a large percentage of electrical production.

For example, Germany has developed over 30 GW of solar power and over 30 GW of Wind.  On a blustery spring day in Germany renewables can meet up to 40% of the total electrical demand for a few hours at mid-day.  There are regular announcements of "new records" for both solar and wind generation.  A similar situation exists in Texas with regards to wind and in parts of Hawaii with regards to solar.

Remembering that there was already a surplus of generation capacity in the system before the development of renewables it is obvious that when renewables hit their generation peaks most traditional thermal generation plants are unable to sell electricity.  That would not be a problem if the construction of these plants had not been financed based upon assumptions regarding how often they would be used and what wholesale electricity prices would be.  In fact, the economics of running these plants has deteriorated to the point where many utilities, especially in Europe, are on a "credit watch".

The rational response of companies trying to sell electricity into a market that has a great over-supply would be to decommission some of the oldest and most polluting plants to bring supply and demand into a better balance.  But there is a problem.  Renewable resources cannot be relied upon, particularly at peak demand times. The chart below displays the wind resource available compared to the demand curve for a week in November, 2013 in Texas (this week was not chosen on purpose to make wind look bad. It was literally the first file I found on the ERCOT site when I was starting to write this blog). 

In this situation demand rose throughout the week as a strong high pressure system spread across the state bringing with it colder temperatures while at the same time shorter days required more lighting.  One of the more troublesome realities of meteorology is that large, stable high pressure systems are often responsible for peak electrical demand in both winter and summer because they are associated with clear skies and temperature extremes.  These systems are also commonly characterized by very low winds across a wide area.

As a result while demand continued to climb wind energy faded away to almost nothing.  At this point most of the thermal generation assets available within Texas had to come on-line in order to meet demand.

So it is impossible to decommission even the oldest and least efficient thermal generation plants in the system regardless of how many wind farms have been built and solar panels deployed.  German utility E.on came face-to-face with that reality in the spring of 2013 when they were instructed by the local grid operator to keep an old plant operational even though it would rarely be needed.

GUN WATCH: Justified Homicide in Califonia not Considered Justified by FBI

GUN WATCH: Justified Homicide in Califonia not Considered Justified by FBI

This shooting in California is a good example of why the FBI does not report the vast majority of justified homicides in this country. The robbery was stopped and the robber killed, so no robbery will be reported by the police. What would be the point? From the San Gabriel Valley Tribune:

“Wurtz came to collect some property that our victim was holding,” Coleman said. But after obtaining the agreed-upon property, “(He) wanted more,” the lieutenant said.

Wurtz then tried to rob McCabe, officials said.

“He Tasered our victim,” Coleman said. “The resident fired in self-defense.”

Without a robbery being reported, this justified homicide does not fall under the FBI definition of justified homicide. Here is the requirement for reporting justifiable homicides in the FBI Uniform Crime Reports. From the UCR Handbook:

NOTE: Justifiable homicide, by definition, occurs in conjunction with other offenses. Therefore, the crime being committed when the justifiable homicide took place must be reported as a separate offense. Reporting agencies should take care to ensure that they do not classify a killing as justifiable or excusable solely on the claims of self-defense or on the action of a coroner, prosecutor, grand jury, or court.

The following scenario illustrates an incident known to law enforcement that reporting agencies would not consider Justifiable Homicide:

17. While playing cards, two men got into an argument. The first man attacked the second with a broken bottle. The second man pulled a gun and killed his attacker. The police arrested the shooter; he claimed self-defense.

The scenario quoted is a virtual shorthand for the Progressive Elite model of murder. The UCR even goes so far as to direct reporting agencies *not* to take into account the findings of coroners, prosecutors, grand juries or courts about whether a homicide is justifiable or not; only the FBI's extremely limited definition is to be used.

This explains much of why the UCR reports only a fraction of justifiable homicides in the United States. They simply define the rest out of existence, which naturally flows from the cognitive model used. If homicides occur from a emotional quarrel, with no one really at fault, then justification becomes moot.

Gary Kleck shows that between 5.6 and 13% of reported homicides are justifiable homicides by citizens who are not police.

The rarest, but most serious form of self-defense with a gun is a defensive killing. The FBI does not publish statistics on self-defense killings per se, but it did start publishing counts of civilian justifiable homicides gathered through their Supplementary Homicides Reports program in their 1991 issue. For a variety of reasons, the FBI counts of civilian justifiable homicides represent only a minority of all civilian legal defensive homicides.

I have not found any work that refutes these findings. Those who cling to the Progressive Elite model simply state the FBI numbers as fact.

In 2010, the UCR reported 278 justifiable homicides which are only 1.9 percent of the total criminal homicides (14,748) reported.

©2014 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included. Link to Gun Watch

Why the Best Path to a Low-Carbon Future is Not Wind or Solar Power | Brookings Institution

Why the Best Path to a Low-Carbon Future is Not Wind or Solar Power | Brookings Institution

1. What’s it going to cost me?
This is an important question because energy costs are private and owed by everyday consumers, whereas the benefits of reducing carbon use are shared as a global public good. So, what would it cost you and I to move toward a world where we generate electricity through mostly low-carbon technologies? How would the cost per megawatt hour (MWH) and kilowatt hour (KWH) change?
One of the best scenarios for our proposed low-carbon alternatives would be for each of them to replace the use of coal-fired plants when electricity demand is moderate, which is most of the time, and gas simple cycle plants during shorter periods of peak energy use.

The table above compares the cost per kilowatt-hour (KWH) of each of the five low-carbon technologies compared to the cost per KWH of the high-carbon technologies that it replaces. All of the low carbon technologies save on energy costs compared to coal and simple cycle gas plants: wind, solar and hydro because the energy from wind, sun and water is free; nuclear because uranium is cheaper than coal or gas per unit of energy; and gas combined cycle because it is much more energy efficient than coal or gas simple cycle. Four of the five low-carbon technologies, excluding gas combined cycle, have a much higher net capacity cost—that is, the cost of building and maintaining the low-carbon power plants—because all four are much more costly to build and maintain than a new coal or gas simple cycle plant. A gas combined cycle plant saves on capacity costs mainly because it costs about two-thirds less to build than a coal-fired plant.
Adding up the net energy cost and the net capacity cost of the five low-carbon alternatives, far and away the most expensive is solar. It costs almost 19 cents more per KWH than power from the coal or gas plants that it displaces. Wind power is the second most expensive. It costs nearly 6 cents more per KWH. Gas combined cycle is the least expensive. It does not cost more than the cost of power from the coal or less efficient gas plants that it displaces. Indeed, it costs about 3 cents less per KWH.
To place these additional costs in context, the average cost of electricity to U.S. consumers in 2012 was 9.84 cents per KWH, including the cost of transmission and distribution of electricity. This means a new wind plant could at least cost 50 percent more per KWH to produce electricity, and a new solar plant at least 200 percent more per KWH, than using coal and gas technologies.
2. Are the additional costs of wind and solar justified by the benefits of reduced carbon dioxide emissions?
The additional costs of wind and solar could be worthwhile, provided that the value of the emissions they avoid is great enough. However, as the following table shows, if we value the reduced emissions at $50 per ton of carbon dioxide, the benefits of wind and solar, net of their costs, is less than the other three low-carbon alternatives.

The emission benefits of four of the five low-carbon alternatives per KWH are roughly the same, about five cents per KWH. The benefits of wind and solar, minus their additional costs, are negative. The net benefits of the other three alternatives are positive and substantially higher. Gas combined cycle ranks number one in terms of net benefits while hydro and nuclear rank two and three.
A carbon dioxide price of $50 per metric ton places quite a high value on reducing carbon dioxide emissions. For example, the price for carbon dioxide emissions in the European Trading System reached a high of about 30 euros in 2006 and was trading around 5 euros at the end of 2013. Recent prices in trading systems in California have been around $12 and in several eastern U.S. states around $2 per ton.
3. Why are the costs per KWH of wind and solar so much higher, and the benefits not much different, than the other three low-carbon alternatives?
Costs are much higher for three reasons. First, the cost per MW of capacity to build a wind or solar plant is quite high (and much greater than that of a gas-fired plant). The cost per MW of solar capacity is especially high. Reductions in the cost of solar-voltaic panels have reduced the cost of building a solar plant by 22 percent between 2010 and 2012, but further reductions are likely to have a lesser effect because the cost of solar panels is only a fraction of the total cost of a utility-scale solar plant.
Second, a wind or solar plant operates at full capacity only a fraction of the time, when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining. For example, a typical solar plant in the United States operates at only about 15 percent of full capacity and a wind plant only about 25 percent of full capacity, while a coal plant can operate 90 percent of full capacity on a year-round basis. Thus it takes six solar plants and almost four wind plants to produce the same amount of electricity as a single coal-fired plant.
Third, the output of wind and solar plants is highly variable—year by year, month by month, day by day and hour by hour—compared to a coal-fired plant, which can operate at full capacity about 90 percent of the time. Thus more than six solar plants and four wind plants are required to produce the same output with the same degree of reliability as a coal-fired plant of the same capacity. In the paper we estimate that at least 7.3 solar plants and 4.3 wind plants are required to produce the same amount of power with the same reliability as a coal-fired plant.
By way of contrast, a new low-carbon gas combined cycle or nuclear plant can operate also at 90 percent of full capacity and can replace a coal-fired plant on a one-to-one basis. A hydro plant with storage can operate at 100 percent capacity during peak periods and more than 40 percent during non-peak periods. In dollar terms, it takes a $29 million investment in solar capacity, and $10 million in wind capacity, to produce the same amount of electricity with the same reliability as a $1 million investment in gas combined cycle capacity.
The benefits of reduced emissions from wind and solar are limited because they operate at peak capacity only a fraction of the time. A nuclear or gas combined cycle plant avoids far more emissions per MW of capacity than wind or solar because it can operate at 90 percent of full capacity. Limited benefits and higher costs make wind and solar socially less valuable than nuclear, hydro, and combined cycle gas.
4. How can we be sure that a new low-carbon plant will replace a high-carbon coal plant rather than some other low-carbon plant?
We cannot be sure. If electricity producers do not have to pay a price for the carbon dioxide they emit, the likelihood is great than a new low-carbon plant will replace an existing, low-carbon gas combined cycle plant. The cost of running an existing coal plant is typically much less than running an existing combined cycle plant and the combined cycle plant will be shut down before the coal plant. The reduction in emissions will be far less than if the coal plant is shut down because a coal plant emits about three times as much carbon dioxide as a gas combined cycle plant.
However, if electricity producers have to pay a high enough price for the carbon dioxide they emit, then a coal plant will be shut down before a gas combined cycle plant. The price of carbon dioxide emissions required to tip the balance between shutting down coal and shutting down gas depends on the price of gas relative to that of coal. It also depends on whether we are talking about the short-term choice of running an existing gas plant rather than an existing coal plant or the longer term choice of investing in a new combined cycle gas plant rather than a new coal plant.
In the United States, where the price of natural gas is low compared to most other countries, the price for CO2 emissions had to be about $5 or more in 2013 in order to tip the short-term balance in favor of shutting down coal. At current U.S. gas prices, investment in new gas combined cycle is more profitable than an investment in a coal plant even without any price penalty attached to CO2 emissions.
In Europe, where the price of natural gas is much higher than in the United States, a CO2 emission price of $65 to $85 per metric ton is required to tip the short-term balance in favor of shutting down coal, far higher than the current price of CO2 emissions in the European Trading System. However, the price of CO2 emissions need only be about $12 to $22 per metric ton to tip the longer-term balance in favor of investing in a new gas combined cycle plant rather than a new coal plant.
5. What does this paper have for policymakers interested in reducing carbon dioxide emissions at a reasonable cost?
First, renewable incentives that are biased in favor of wind and solar and biased against large-scale hydro, nuclear and gas combined cycle are a very expensive and inefficient way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
Second, renewable incentives in the absence of a suitably high carbon dioxide price are even less effective, because without a carbon price renewable energy will replace low-carbon gas plants rather than high-carbon coal plants.
Third, renewable incentives should be based not on output of renewable energy but on the reduction in CO2 emissions by renewable energy. They are not the same thing.
Fourth, a carbon price is far more effective in reducing carbon emissions precisely because it is not biased toward any one technology but rewards any technology that reduces emissions at a reasonable cost.
Fifth, the benefits of a natural gas combined cycle plant are not dependent on the natural gas fracking revolution in the United States. Combined cycle plants are highly beneficial even in Europe, where natural gas prices are higher and fracking more limited. The problem in Europe is that the price of CO2 emissions in the European Trading System is far too low to encourage production of electricity by gas rather than coal.
Sixth, even though the electricity sector accounts for only 40 percent of worldwide carbon emissions, cleaner electricity can reduce CO2 emissions in other sectors, for example by reducing the carbon footprint of electric vehicles and home heating.
Finally, the electricity sector offers one of the simplest and most cost effective ways of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Simply replacing all high-carbon U.S. coal plants with any of the five low-carbon alternatives can reduce U.S. CO2 emissions in the electricity sector by 50 to 70 percent. The potential reductions in other countries, such as China where coal is more important, are even greater.

The Militia Myth: Understanding the Language of the 2nd Amendment | Somewhat Reasonable

The Militia Myth: Understanding the Language of the 2nd Amendment | Somewhat Reasonable

The first argument often rolled out by gun-grabbers is a textual one, claiming that the Second Amendment itself does not actually defend individuals’ right to keep and bear arms, but instead outlines the need for an armed “well-regulated militia.” According to progressives, that first phrase, “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state,” indicates that the purpose of the amendment is to establish and maintain a regulated militia whose purpose is to defend the state. On this interpretation, the amendment does not secure the right of individuals to own weapons as individuals.

There are two counters to this claim that demonstrate how facile it is. The first argument is simply a matter of understanding the grammar of the actual text of the Second Amendment. The first phrase is under proper grammar, and as confirmed by the United States Supreme Court, a prefatory phrase. It is not a statement of the sole purpose of the right to bear arms, but is an understanding of the way in which the right would be used in the defense of the state.

Furthermore, the Second Amendment clearly identifies right as belonging to ‘the people.’ This identification clearly shows to whom the right belongs. As Justice Antonin Scalia pointed out in one of his most magisterial opinions:

“Nowhere else in the Constitution does a ‘right’ attributed to ‘the people’ refer to anything other than an individual right. What is more, in all six other provisions of the Constitution that mention ‘the people,’ the term unambiguously refers to all members of the political community, not an unspecified subset.”

If “the people” does not apply to all the individual citizens in the Second Amendment, then how can it do so for those other amendments? The meaning of the statement is clear, despite the obfuscation of progressive activism.

The second counterargument relies on examining what the framers of the Constitution meant. Fortunately for supporters of the right to bear arms, and unfortunately for their opponents, many of the people who wrote the Constitution wrote elsewhere about its meaning. Many of the founding fathers, including Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Samuel Adams all explicitly endorsed individual ownership of arms. Even Alexander Hamilton, the founder most in favor of big government and a standing army, agreed that private citizens ought to be allowed to own weapons.

The founders were also clear about what they meant by the term militia. Richard Henry Leestated it very succinctly: “A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves… and include all men capable of bearing arms.” In other words, whether a militia is the proper holder of arms or the people is irrelevant, because they are one and the same. Only by ignoring the words of the founders, as well as the basic rules of grammar, can the progressives’ case even appear valid. Once the ignorance is cured, their case crumbles to dust.

Some progressives pursue a different tack and argue that the defensive purpose of the Second Amendment has been made obsolete by the establishment of a standing army. There are two critical problems with this line of reasoning. First, the presence of standing army was exactly the sort of overbearing and asymmetric power the Second Amendment was meant to be a defense against, so it seems to make little sense that the right would somehow be invalidated by this.

Second, Americans are now more than ever subject to the possibility of being “called up” to military service. Conscription was not even considered by the founders as a means of raising troops. Today most citizens are required to be registered in the Selective Service system. The pressures of over-mighty government and the possibility of being drafted serve as joint forces in favor of the maintenance of the Second Amendment rights as they are now understood.

Another bizarre argument wheeled out in recent years that has a similar line of reasoning is the claim that the right is moot with regard to overthrowing domestic tyrants or oppressors because the federal government is so asymmetrically powerful that any such resistance would be quickly dealt with. This argument is laughable for two reasons. First, it seems to suggest that the force discrepancy is so asymmetric that people ought to just give up the weapons they have. Yet that could only further diminish the capacity of citizens to defend themselves, both against criminals and a potentially aggressive government.

Second, the idea that asymmetries of power render a group militarily helpless is little better than a joke. The lessons of Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan ought to be enough to put to rest the idea that a smaller, less well-armed force cannot put up a lasting resistance to a mighty military.

In the end, it is important to realize that the Second Amendment is just as relevant today as it ever was. Human nature has hardly changed in 200 years, and the rights we possess are no less inalienable or self-evident. Anyone trying to erode our constitutionally-enshrined rights should be immediately held suspect. If we do not protect our own rights, who will?

Why income inequality is really very good for us indeed | Adam Smith Institute

Why income inequality is really very good for us indeed | Adam Smith Institute

It's much the thing to be talking about these days. How income inequality is rising, wealth inequality is going ballistic and it's all a jolly bad thing. However, let us ponder this point of wisdom from Don Boudreaux:

Would you prefer to live in a society in which people compete for high status by earning lots of money through the creation, production, and sale of better mousetraps, or in a society in which people compete for high status by being indifferent to money but focused intently on conquering foreign territories or accumulating terrifying amounts of political power?

Assume, as we must, that human beings are status seeking animals. Most certainly for the male of the species this has always been true: higher status males have more children which is the point and aim of the entire game. And in various different societies status has been gained in many different ways.

As best we know, from the study of the remnant hunter gatherer groups, for most of our existence status has been gained by being a good hunter: both of prey and of other adult males. Yes, as far as we can tell, in socieities like that of the Yamomani murderers have more children than non-murderers. And in some such societies we've recorded murder as cause of death for as much as 40% of the male population.

We've also assigned status to people in other ways over the millenia of recorded history. Who was your Mum (and presumably there being a connection between that and who was your father) has often been popular. We've never quite done it but plenty of other places (the Fascists and communists come to mind) assigned status according to ideological purity: the Soviets even to the second or third generations. We in Britain have seen religious fanaticism used as a mark of status: difficult to understand the Commonwealth without that. The feudal period nominally ran on bloodlines but in reality on the male skill at crushing the skulls of the enemy.

And class and status have never, in Britian, been entirely about money. Even today they're not. But given the alternative sets of status markers that have been used over the centuries, aristocracy, theocracy, race (useful in discussing the Saxons, Danes and Celts) wouldn't we all start to prefer that they were? That one can gain status by having proven that you are producing something that a lot of others would like to have? For that's what this capitalism lark is at root about. You can only accumulate if you're performing a community service. Which sounds like a pretty good method of assigning social status to us.

Of course, we might always hope that humans will stop seeking status. But then at that point we'd not be describing the actions of the same species that we're currently studying, would we?

I added a comment:

Writing as a physicist, I note that inequality is what drives everything in the universe. Inequality in heat content drives energy flow, without which no work would be possible. Inequality in chemical levels drive metabolism, without which there would be no life. Ultimately, the goal of perfect equality everywhere will be reached. This optimal state is known as "the heat death of the universe".

Supply-Side Economics in One Lesson : The Freeman : Foundation for Economic Education

Supply-Side Economics in One Lesson : The Freeman : Foundation for Economic Education

As I explain in my course on macroeconomics, the term “supply-side” was intended to differentiate an economic way of thinking that did not depend on the Keynesian obsession with controlling aggregate demand. Supply-siders insisted that while there may be policy effects on the demand side, one cannot ignore the consequences of the changes such policies make to the incentives of suppliers and entrepreneurs.

For example, changes in marginal tax rates affect cooperation between suppliers and buyers. So increasing tax rates on “the rich” to transfer the same amount to “the poor” would have no effect in the Keynesian aggregate framework, because it does not change net taxes or disposable income in the household sector as a whole. But supply-siders know such policies change the incentives facing both groups—resulting in negative outcomes. Higher tax rates for “the rich” and unearned income for the poor—both reduce incentives to create additional effort or to be more productive.

In essence, supply-side economists hold that “supply matters, too,” whereas the dominant Keynesian approach ignores this aspect of the economy.

Supply-side economics also grew out of classical economists’ longer-term view of growth, because altering incentives now changes behavior, which changes economic growth potential. Whatever Keynes thought, in the long run, real economic growth is the prime determinant of well-being. But in the public discussion (or distortion) of supply-side economics, Keynesians largely bypass such issues and violate Hazlitt’s lesson, which he offers in the opening chapter of Economics in One Lesson:

The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any action or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.

Supply-side economics has built on this insight. But many economists today, following Keynes, fail to look carefully at Keynesianism’s long-term effects—not to mention immediate effects—such as the perverse consequences to all affected groups. Supply-side economics adds a corollary to Hazlitt’s definition, tracing not just the impact on all groups, but the impact over the many margins of choice that will be affected.

In Hazlitt’s opening chapter, he also points to an important reason why such basic principles are so often violated in politics:

Bad economists [who ignore his lesson] rationalize this intellectual debility and laziness by assuring the audience that it need not even attempt to follow the reasoning or judge it on its merits, because it is only “classicism” or “laissez-faire” or “capitalist apologetics” or whatever other term of abuse may happen to strike them as effective.

It’s the same story with supply-side economics, because the commonly used pejoratives—“trickle-down economics,” “tax giveaways for the rich,” and “voodoo economics” (and its “deja voodoo economics” variant)—reveal ways in which its opponents failed, often intentionally, to heed Hazlitt’s lesson.

And yet they have mastered the lesson that bad economics is often good politics. (One need only read The New York Times’s favorite economist to see why.)

Take the term “trickle-down economics,” which no supply-side economist ever used. The false assumption is that taxing high-income earners less only benefits those earners, except of course when the rich spend some of that income to buy goods and services from the rest of us. It also assumes a zero-sum trade-off out of total measured income: more for “the rich” has to be taken from everyone else. That narrative gets support from snapshot income-distribution figures in which a higher share of income to “the rich” is used to suggest they benefitted themselves at others’ expense.

When people, however rich or poor, get richer through voluntary arrangements, they do not hurt anyone except the envious. Everyone is better off. They benefit each other—as is the nature of market arrangements. And changes in the measured “percentage distribution” of income do not accurately represent the consequences to any given group.

If I create a massively successful software program, my measured real income will be greater, but all the buyers will also be better off because they face better options than before (using my cool software, which might even make everyone more productive long term). This holds true even if, at any point in time after buying the program, their share of total income is lower.

So redistribution fans’ campaigns to punish the rich by exploiting envy moves the debate away from the central question—are others helped or hurt? Worsening the productive incentives of high-income people induces them to do less for others, making people worse off than they might otherwise have been. On the other hand, if a rich person gets richer by rigging the political process—say by getting stimulus funds to build a boondoggle—that is certainly objectionable. But it is not a market failure at all. In fact, it’s Keynesian economics par excellence. And the solution is to get the government out of the theft-and-transfer business. (Using perceived unfairness as an excuse to tax high-income earners more heavily just glosses over the bad fiscal policies that make all the cronyism possible.)

“Tax giveaways to the rich” was another denigrating description of supply-side economics. That term emphasizes looking only at the short run, which is of course where politicians’ incentives all lie. Economic growth, however, is the most important variable in long-run determinants of well-being. To get robust economic growth, you need to improve productivity. To do that, you need to establish good incentives for rich and poor alike—and to improve incentives wherever possible.

Supply-siders focus on making productive incentives permanently better for everyone, and reducing tax rates and regulatory burdens does the most good for incentives. The immediate benefits will, it’s true, go to the people who own the assets affected by those changes. Present and anticipated gains will be capitalized into those assets’ prices. Those owners are mostly going to be wealthy people. But treating that fact as solely a “tax giveaway to the rich” ignores that what is primarily rewarded is doing more that others value, making those others better off. The greater economic output that results will benefit everyone. But the effects often take some time to come to fruition. That should be fine: Sound economics is always about wisely and productively creating the future. Living for the now is like thinking your credit card has no limit and you’re going to die tomorrow. Unfortunately, legislating for now, despite adverse consequences for the future, is often a good way to get votes.

Then there’s another term that suggests supply-siders don’t live in the real world. “Voodoo economics” implies that the analysis involves some bogus “magical” assumptions that could not possibly be true. This term was used to imply that lowering tax rates on those who are heavily taxed cannot possibly increase the tax revenue from them.

In particular, critics emphasize that estimates of labor supply elasticities (how much more people work in response to changes in take-home wages) are far too low to support large supply-side effects. But those estimates look only at the short run and do not incorporate the longer-term effects of permanently improved incentives on upward mobility, investment, formal and informal education, tax evasion and cheating, and other choices that will change.
Looking at long-term labor supply responses to incentives generates a very different picture than that for a smaller time slice. Nobel Prize-winning economist Edward Prescott found that long-term labor responses are far greater. With regard to supply-side incentives, he says: “I find it remarkable that virtually all of the large [nearly 30%] difference in labor supply between France and the United States is due to differences in tax systems.”

Further, supply-side opponents dramatically misrepresent the effects of reducing tax rates by focusing on near-term labor supply as if it is the only relevant variable. Behavior will change at other margins. Permanently lower tax rates might not produce great changes in the current year. But the lower rates mean workers who acquire higher-margin returns keep more of those gains than before. So they have a stronger incentive to invest and acquire those skills (through education, on-the-job training, etc.), increasing overall human capital. In parallel, employers can make capital investments to increase worker productivity. Better incentives will increase how many secondary workers there will be in households and how much they will work. And workers may have incentives to delay retirement, expanding the lifetime labor supply.

The lower rates, in short, reduce disincentives to engage in productive risk-taking by shrinking the tax penalty on those risks that pay off. They reduce the incentive for people to choose things they might desire less, simply because of tax deductibility—distortions which are greater the higher the tax rate. Lower tax rates also reduce tax evasion and tax cheating. They can even cause the in-migration of productive people from less-friendly tax and regulatory climates. Recognizing all the dimensions at which people’s actions will be affected paints a very different picture than the far more blinkered view supply-side opponents take. In addition to underestimating the effects of supply-side policies, this narrow view understates the costs of interventionist policies. When government policy distorts people’s choices, it causes a welfare cost to society—the difference between what people really want and what the distorted incentives created by government intervention led them to choose instead.

One cannot honestly prove that improvements in incentives do not expand productive behavior, benefitting others, because that contradicts one of the most basic economic realities. The embellished version of Hazlitt’s lesson (examine the effects of a policy on all groups… over all margins of choice that will be affected) suggests a basic test that should be applied to every political proposal, not just those related to supply-side economics.

In other words, whenever you see the truth being distorted or effects being ignored to “sell” you some political proposal, its backers either don’t know enough to competently evaluate their own positions or they are lying to you. And since the best way to demonstrate that a truly good idea advances the “general welfare” is to accurately present the whole truth, both possibilities tell you not to “buy” the political line that is being sold.

Seattle Minimum Wage Hike Already Hurting Businesses

Seattle Minimum Wage Hike Already Hurting Businesses

SeaTac, a suburb of Seattle, recently decided to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour and United Liberty tells us that employers in SeaTac have had to cut employee benefits to stay in business after the dramatic raise. In an interview with a publisher from Northwestern Asian Weekly, one employee describes how her company had to cut her benefits to counter the skyrocketing cost of wages: “I lost my 401k, health insurance, paid holiday, and vacation,” she responded. “No more free food,” she added. The wage hike is already hurting Seattle businesses, even though it has not been implemented yet.

The Washington Policy Center chimes in as well, showing how the minimum wage hike has discouraged small business expansion and kept small business owners from opening new businesses or hiring new workers.The Seattle Times also notes, “At the Clarion Hotel off International Boulevard, a sit-down restaurant has been shuttered, though it might soon be replaced by a less-labor-intensive cafe.”
Interestingly enough, Amy Martinez starts the article off by declaring that, “For all the political uproar it caused, SeaTac’s closely watched experiment with a $15 minimum wage has not created a large chain reaction of lost jobs and higher prices…”

She justifies this dubious claim by noting that, while a small sit-down restaurant has closed, “…the nearby Cedarbrook Lodge…is undergoing a $16 million expansion.”

And therein lies the rub.

The Cedarbrook Lodge is 4.5 star luxury hotel and a minimum wage hike affects a 4.5 star luxury hotel very differently than a little mom and pop restaurant. This fact represents one of the strongest cases against raising the minimum wage: big businesses can shrug off minimum wage hikes. Mom and pop shops? Not so much. The argument can even be made that a minimum wage hike is an indirect form of corporate welfare, since it cuts into the competitive ability of big businesses’ smaller competitors.

The Sacred Cow Slaughterhouse » WE NEED TO REGULATE CARS THE WAY WE REGULATE GUNS

The Sacred Cow Slaughterhouse » WE NEED TO REGULATE CARS THE WAY WE REGULATE GUNS

A year and a half old, but evergreen.

I keep hearing people say they want to regulate guns the way we regulate cars. They don't really mean that, of course. What they mean is they want to make it acceptable to find more ways to intrude on the right to keep and bear arms.

I propose instead, we regulate cars the way we regulate guns. Let's start:

To buy or operate a standard car, one will have to be 18 years old. Under that age, adult supervision will be mandatory. This means the adult must be in the vehicle with the underage driver.

To buy a sports car, you will have to be 21. A "Sports car" will be defined as any combination of any two of the following: 2 doors instead of 4, spoked rims not requiring hubcaps, aerodynamic effects such as spoilers or air dams, a wheelbase under 100 inches, a manual transmission, a curb weight under 3000 lbs, fiberglass or other non-metal construction, or painted logos.

For every purchase, you will have to fill out a questionnaire confirming you're a US citizen, do not use drugs or abuse alcohol, have never had a conviction for alcohol related incidents or reckless driving. Lying on this form will be punishable by 10 years in prison and/or a $10,000 fine.

New cars will only be purchased from Federal Automobile Licensees who must provide fingerprints, proof of character, secure storage for all vehicles, and who must call the Federal Bureau of Motor Vehicles to verify your information before purchase. They may approve or decline or delay the sale. If they decline, you may appeal the decision in writing to a review board. If they delay, it becomes an approval automatically after 10 days. However, the dealer may decline to complete such a sale in case of later problems.

Additionally, the purchase of more than two cars in a given year will require signing an understanding that buying cars in order to resell them without a license is a crime. There is an 11% federal excise tax on all new vehicles, plus any state or local tax.

Federal Automobile Licensees must agree to submit to 24/7/365, unannounced, unscheduled searches of their entire homes, businesses and any relates properties and personal effects to be named later.

Then you will be eligible to take your drivers' license test to determine your eligibility to operate on the street. Rules will vary by state, with some states requiring proof of need to own a vehicle for business purposes, and up to 40 hours of professional education. Also, not all states will accept all licenses. You will need to keep track of this information. Additionally, speed limits will not be posted. It is your responsibility to research the driving laws in each area you wish to travel through. Some communities may not allow out of state vehicles, sports cars, or even any vehicles at all. Violation of these laws will result in confiscation and destruction of your vehicle by crushing.

To have a turbocharger, supercharger (External Engine Compression Devices) or a muffler will require an application to the Federal Bureau of Motor Vehicles. A $2000 tax stamp will be required for these High Performance Vehicles. Your request must also be signed by the local chief law enforcement officer, and you must provide fingerprints. If approved in 10-16 weeks, you will be responsible for keeping your High Performance Vehicle in secure storage, and request permission in writing to take it out of state. You will need to carry this documentation with you. There are 13 states that do not allow possession of High Performance Vehicles. Be sure you are aware of those laws before planning your trips. (But really, what do you need such a vehicle for anyway? Who really needs to drive that fast? You must willingly accept and adhere to the socially accepted idea that you are inherently evil for merely possessing such a fast, high powered automobile.)

Additionally, superchargers and turbochargers must be manufactured before June 1, 1986. They may be sold and refitted by a FAL who also has a Special Occupational Tax license authorizing him to work on these. New superchargers, however, are a violation of federal law, except for use by the police or military, or specific government contractors. Expect to pay $15-$30,000 each for these items. Mufflers will only cost from $250-$1000, plus the $2000 stamp. However, once the muffler is damaged, it must be disposed of by cutting it into three pieces. Failure to do this may result in your family going through the next decade only knowing you in a prison jumpsuit and all your bank accounts seized and never replenished.

Imported sports cars will be prohibited. You may purchase other items from foreign manufacturers, but your automobile is in a special class of prohibition due to its inherently evil and sinister nature. The frames may be imported, cut into three pieces, and reassembled with US made engines and suspensions, as long as 60% of the parts are American. Shortly, though, the Transmission Loophole will be closed. The purpose of allowing imports is for spare parts, not to build more destructive "race vehicles.” Transmissions will have to be US made.

Repairs may only be conducted by a licensed FAL, who will send a truck to retrieve your vehicle. It must be a flatbed type truck, winch/dolly trucks are not allowed, under 10/$10,000 penalty. You may work on your own vehicle, but any repair that exceeds emission or performance standards will be subject to federal criminal charges. And violation of this reasonable regulation could result in not only your imprisonment and the confiscation of your assets but imprisonment of any employee or family member who was insane enough to repair your “race car” for you.

Be aware that an existing HPV may have multiple HP Features. A new HPV will require a license for each feature you wish to add to it—one each for muffler or external engine compression device. And you must request and receive, in writing, permission from the federal, state and local governing authorities prior to making such modifications.

Converting a standard car to a sports car will require payment of a $2000 tax, even if no HP features are added. However, if an FAL/SOT does the conversion on a new frame before the vehicle leaves their premises, it will only be a $50 tax. You will need to carry this documentation in the glove box at all times, the mere failure of which alone can result in an arrest and possible conviction.

There is discussion of closing the Car Dealer Loophole, through which private individuals sell cars to friends without going through an FAL. It is important we have these background checks. Surveys show criminals prefer to buy unlicensed to get around their legal liabilities so they can commit crimes in stolen vehicles, which evidence has proven for many years to be true.

Some vehicle law convictions will result in loss of your driving privileges forever. This includes reckless operation, drunk driving, an incorrect bumper height or attachment, or the wrong type of exhaust. Collisions may also result in permanent loss of driving, if injury occurs and negligence is proven. In addition, any felony conviction of any kind--even tax evasion--will mean permanent loss of your driving privileges. In these cases, it will even be illegal to ride or sit in a friend's car.

There is also discussion of prohibiting brightly colored vehicles. Vehicles are transportation, not toys, and should not be marketed in a way that suggests they are intended for casual use. It is important that everyone be aware of the dangerous nature of cars.

In the future, we may have to consider large displacement engines (anything over 2.5 liters) and transmissions with more than three speeds as being High Performance Items to be added to the federal registry. There will be a window during which you can register your items for $2000 each, provided you meet the background check. Otherwise, you will have to immediately surrender them to an FAL/SOT to dispose of on your behalf. Operating an unlicensed HPV after this date will result in confiscation and destruction of the vehicle, and the 10/$10,000 punishment.

These laws and regulations are due to drunk drivers, reckless drivers and other criminals. The automobile community should be glad it is allowed to exist at all, given all the deaths and environmental damage caused by these vehicles.

The president said today that he strongly supports your right to own and drive basic, standard vehicles for farm use and carpooling. But he and many other people have made it clear that eventually – maybe this month – we need to cease all manufacturing of such high powered automobiles for the civilian market.

Eventually, we need to move away from the notion that owning and operating a vehicle is a right and entitlement, and limit it to people with a proven, bona fide professional need. There are plenty of trains and buses for normal people. This is how most civilized nations are moving and is not a violation of your right to travel.

©2013 by Michael Z. Williamson www.MichaelZWilliamson.com Permission to share granted for non profit purposes as long as this notice is included.

Here Come the Lawsuits over Sex Hearings:Accused Males Take on Columbia and Drew

Here Come the Lawsuits over Sex Hearings:Accused Males Take on Columbia and Drew

Colleges and universities almost certainly face a deluge of lawsuits from accused males over the mishandling of sexual misconduct hearings. Columbia and Drew, for instance, have joined the ranks of universities sued by male students claiming that unfair processes led to disciplinary action against them.

At first blush, the Drew case involves a typical he-said-she-said situation, but in fact there were several twists. The accused student, Kevin Parisi, suggests that his accuser, Kai Boulware, had a motive to lie about the consensual nature of their one-time intercourse--to protect her relationship with her boyfriend, Jacob Levy. Parisi claimed that Boulware told him that her boyfriend pressured her to make the complaint, and that she had told another acquaintance the intercourse was consensual. (The acquaintance subsequently confirmed this in a conversation with a private investigator.) The complaint also alleges that Boulware refused to cooperate with a police investigation of the case.

The twist in this case is that the evidence was so weak--indeed, the acquaintance's testimony wholly undermined Boulware's portrayal of events--that Drew found Parisi not culpable. But this occurred after a three-month process (during most of which Drew did no investigation, including, the complaint alleges, not looking into Parisi's assertion that Boulware had contacted him in violation of a university-demanded no contact order). For that period, Drew ordered Parisi to remain off campus, including staying away from his dorm room, except for attending class.

....

, consider Columbia's extraordinarily broad definition of "sexual assault," which goes far beyond anything in the criminal justice system, in two respects.

First, the university defines sexual assault as not only rape, as understood in the criminal justice system, but also "any intentional sexual touching, however slight, with any object without a person's consent. Intentional sexual contact includes contact with the breasts, buttocks, groin, or touching another with any of these body parts, or making another person touch any of these body parts; any intentional bodily contact in a sexual manner." How many people would consider such behavior--while indefensible--to constitute rape? To Columbia, however, forcible sexual penetration and nonconsensual "sexual touching, however slight" are both "sexual assault." And the fliers suggest that the message has been received.

Second, while the university notes that sexual assault, by definition, comes without consent, it modifies this provision in a critical way: "Alcohol and other drugs can lower inhibitions and create an atmosphere of confusion over whether consent is freely and affirmatively given." Taken literally, then, any alcohol use by the female party to sexual intercourse could call into question whether a Columbia tribunal will subsequently brand a male student a rapist, since even if the female gave consent, the university claim non-consensual contact on grounds of "confusion over whether consent is freely and affirmatively given."

In this atmosphere, accused students appear to be guilty until proven innocent, even as Title IX claims suggesting that the definitions above (coupled with procedures that deny accused students the right to counsel) unlawfully act against the rights of accusers.

As colleges adopt a de facto presumption of guilt in undertaking investigations for which they are in no way competent, they will be hit with more and more of these kinds of lawsuits. And it's fair to say that the presidents and administrators of these institutions are bringing it on themselves.