Muh Roads

By coincidence, two different issues about free markets and roads came up this morning. I'd like to cover them both.

Snow Plowing Is A Deadweight Loss

This morning, while browsing social media, I encountered a "meme" that you have likely seen making the rounds:

The idea here is that, were it not for public snow removal, snow would not be removed at all.

There are, of course, a number of problems with this meme. First of all, it isn't true: I won't deign to link you to the dozens of news stories about people who voluntarily shovel or plow snow from public roads, but the stories do exist. Second of all, the scene in the picture above likely depicts a public road. What you're seeing is probably the result of socialized snow removal, not capitalism. Third of all, notice that the citizens in the picture are disincentivized from plowing more than their own personal driveways because they now believe that the public street is "the government's responsibility," even though leaving it to government is probably even less convenient for those who need to use the street. Fourth, many municipalities already use the libertarian solution: private snow plow contractors, who compete with each other to plow the roads. Even scary socialist Canada does this.

But so what? It's just a joke. I had to laugh at how so many libertarians "responded" in social media to what is obviously just a joke. Jokes aren't knock-down arguments for ideology, they're jokes. Maybe I'm the only libertarian who got a chuckle out of this.

The other thing I laughed about what the fact that no one I know on social media pointed out the real problem with public snow removal: It's wasteful. A good number of people who live on that street don't need to drive to work at all. They can telecommute.

Telecommuting is the real, emergent, anarcho-capitalist, libertarian solution to snow removal, because it represents the spontaneous order of a solution to the real problem with snow: getting somewhere. This solution is not the one that planners and leftists "expect" to see from being snowed in. They point to libertarianism as being impracticable because, to them, the problem is "snow on the streets." But the only problem capitalism sees is "I can't get to work." And capitalism has already solved that problem.

Naturally, this isn't true for everyone who lives on that street, but it's true for a significant, non-zero number of them. Thus, any amount of money those people have to spend - via taxes - on snow removal is a total deadweight loss for them. The city is "over-spending" on snow removal by removing some snow that need not be removed.

That's the "trick" to understanding free markets: First, you have to be able to see beyond the obvious - it's not a snow problem, it's a get to work problem. Second, you have to be able to see marginal costs - while plowing everything might benefit many, it is also wasteful for many others.

Bridges To Nowhere

While today was exceptionally bad for me in terms of a long morning commute, the scene below, which I tweeted, is a near-daily occurrence:

Millions of dollars wasted in stalled traffic as Texas builds endless bridges to nowhere. #muhroads pic.twitter.com/a2cbkABJvo

— RP Long (@RPLongSW) January 25, 2016

Stalled motorists, as far as the eye can see. The cause was neither a traffic incident nor any other unexpected event. It was the result of road construction on the highway, which has been going on in this same area for the past three years.

You can ask "but who will build the roads?" but the thing is, building a road isn't free. In fact, the cost of building a road isn't just the taxpayer money that gets transferred to the contractors who build the roads, plus the cost of government administration and oversight thereof.

It's also the additional cost of increased traffic incidents suffered by motorists - including deaths. It's the cost of additional law enforcement and traffic enforcement over the region. And, it's the cost of sitting in traffic, burning gasoline in an idle vehicle, for an extra thirty minutes every day, multiplied by tens of thousands of motorists.

It's impossible to provide an accurate accounting of these costs, but if you consider that the roads themselves cost millions to build and maintain, and the hit to local GDP is many more millions lost to the factors listed above, and I haven't even provided an exhaustive list of such expenditures, then the problem starts to present itself in clearer terms.

One possible market solution? Telecommuting. Another? Flying cars - which, by the way, largely haven't happened due to the regulatory burden involved in getting them to market and up into the skies.

Quote Of The Day

From Cracked.com:

He's what babies see when you can't figure out why they're crying.

Quote Of The Day

From someone called "khodge:"

Where did you find a machine that can compose and post an article that doesn't have a calculator buried somewhere in the system files?

Heh.

From the Wikipedia article on Sylvester Graham:

Graham was also inspired by the temperance movement and preached that a vegetarian diet was a cure for alcoholism, and, more importantly, sexual urges. The main thrust of his teachings was to curb lust. While alcohol had useful medicinal qualities, it should never be abused by social drinking. For Graham, an unhealthy diet stimulated excessive sexual desire which irritated the body and caused disease. While Graham developed a significant following known as Grahamites, he was also ridiculed by the media and the public for his unwavering zealotry. According to newspaper records,[which?] many women fainted at his lectures when he aired opinions both on sexual relations and the wearing of corsets.

The main thrust of his teachings, you say? To curb lust, you say?

That had to be a joke.

Why Are Americans So Filthy?

I.
Rebecca Schuman's review of the new German movie Wetlands contains the following quote:

The film is one that even the sexually laid-back Germans watch with half-covered eyes (“Nothing was spared,” said one of my German friends who’s seen it). So I’ll be interested to see how American audiences—stereotypically both prudish and hygiene-obsessed—receive it.

Reading this, I couldn't help but remember a passage from Jack Kerouac's Big Sur:

But Dave Wain that lean rangy red head Welchman with his penchant for going off in Willie to fish in the Rogue River up in Oregon where he knows an abandoned mining camp, or for blattin around the desert roads, for suddenly reappearing in town to get drunk, and a marvelous poet himself, has that certain something that young hip teenagers probably wanta imitate -- For one thing is one of the world's best talkers, and funny too -- As I'll show -- It was he and George Baso who hit on the fantastically simple truth that everybody in America was walking around with a dirty behind, but everybody, because the ancient ritual of washing with water after the toilet had not occurred in all the modern antisepticism -- Says Dave "People in America have all these racks of dry-cleaned clothes like you say on their trips, they spatter Eau de Cologne all over themselves, they wear Ban and Aid or whatever it is under their armpits, they get aghast to see a spot on a shirt or a dress, they probably change underwear and socks maybe even twice a day, they go around all puffed up and insolent thinking themselves the cleanest people on earth and they're walkin around with dirty azzoles -- Isnt that amazing? 

give me a little nip on that tit" he says reaching for my drink so I order two more, I've been engrossed, Dave can order all the drinks he wants anytime, "The President of the United States, the big ministers of state, the great bishops and shmishops and big shots everywhere, down to the lowest factory worker with all his fierce pride, movie stars, executives and great engineers and presidents of law firms and advertising firms with silk shirts and neckties and great expensive traveling cases in which they place these various expensive English imported hair brushes and shaving gear and pomades and perfumes are all walking around with dirty azzoles! All you gotta do is simply wash yourself with soap and water! it hasnt occurred to anybody in America at all! it's one of the funniest things I've ever heard of! dont you think it's marvelous that we're being called filthy unwashed beatniks but we're the only ones walkin around with clean azzoles? " -- The whole azzole shot in fact had spread swiftly and everybody I knew and Dave knew from coast to coast had embarked on this great crusade which I must say is a good one -- In fact in Big Sur I'd instituted a shelf in Monsanto's outhouse where the soap must be kept and everyone had to bring a can of water there on each trip -- Monsanto hadn't heard about it yet, "Do you realize that until we tell poor Lorenzo Monsanto the famous writer that he is walking around with a dirty azzole he will be doing just that? " -- "Let's go tell him right now! " -- "Why of course if we wait another minute

    ... and besides do you know what it does to people to walk around with a dirty azzole? it leaves a great yawning guilt that they cant understand all day, they go to work all cleaned up in the morning and you can smell all that freshly laundered clothes and Eau de Cologne in the commute train yet there's something gnawing at them, something's wrong, they know something's wrong they don't know just what! "

 II.
Now, I was born and raised here in America, so I can sympathize with my shocked American readers who shift a little bit in their (now filthy) seats at the prospect of washing yourself after using the toilet. But one day while we were dating, my wife - who is from Bangladesh - gently suggested that the next time I use the toilet, I ought to wash myself with the little pot she kept in the bathroom specifically for that purpose.

The suggestion was mildly embarrassing, but it only took one experience to learn that using the pot is much more hygienic than not using it. When I visited Bangladesh, I discovered that there they use a separate hose and spigot. Using the hose and spigot is more hygienic than using the pot

Of course, as my income has risen over time and I've had the opportunity to do even more world travelling, I have been exposed to facilities that included a separate bidet. This is the most hygienic option of all.

A couple of months ago, I installed bidets in every bathroom in my household. If this sounds luxurious to you, you're wrong. The total cost was $60 USD. Each individual bidet unit was about twenty dollars and installed on my existing toilet in minutes, using only a wrench. My bathrooms are now the most hygienic bathrooms in the entire neighborhood.

Once you've come over to the clean side on this issue, if you're anything like me, then you start to get a little squeamish. I have to consciously put the matter out of my mind when I shake hands with people. I know they wash their hands, but their hands still get dirtier than they need to. And all it costs to prevent this from happening is $20-$40 and a little swallowed pride.

III.
My question is the same as that of Jack Kerouac's friend, Dave Wain. The United States of America is the largest economy in the world. We have some of the world's highest incomes, not by a little, but by leaps and bounds. Compared specifically to Bangladesh, we Americans live like kings. So, the question is why are bidets not installed in every bathroom in the entire country?

But if cultural biases prevent you from driving over to Home Depot to spend less on a device that will keep you clean than you likely spend on beer in a week, then I will make the question slightly weaker: Why are bidets not standard-equipment in every hospital in America? How about standard-issue for the staff bathrooms only? Why are our medical professionals walking around in a state of compromised hygienics?

Grab The Popcorn

Over at Bleeding Heart Libertarians, one Andrew Cohen has just proposed mandatory licensing for becoming a parent. There is a blossoming smack-down going on in the comments section that currently well worth reading, and sure to become more so as the day progresses.

Libertarian-economics-blog-comments-section mainstay Morgan Warstler currently has the comment of the hour.

Do pull up a seat and get comfortable.

Nature Will Always Be More Powerful Than Mankind

A JetBlue flight made an emergency landing at JFK after the plane slammed into a seagull, which blew a hole in the nose of the aircraft upon takeoff from Westchester Airport Friday morning, authorities said. 

The FAA said the Airbus A320 bound for West Palm Beach, Fla. with 142 passengers declared an emergency at about 9:30 a.m. 

"On departure we hit numerous seagulls, one took a direct hit right on the nose, just below the windshield," the pilot said on air traffic recordings posted by LIVEATC.net. 

The bird remained stuck in the nose of the plane. 

"The way I'm looking at it right now, I don't think we can carry on to West Palm, because it does look like we have some damage to the nose here," the pilot said, adding that the damage appeared to be "part of the pressurization capsule."

NBC News has the scoop.

Too Soon?

It has now been 36 days since The New Republic published this article about the "comedic sweet spot" for jokes that make light of tragedies.

I consider the New Republic article to be a bit of a tragedy.

Hence, this blog post will perhaps be better-received today than on any other day in time.

Kimmel On The ACA

I don't watch television. In fact, I don't even own one. I'm usually pretty far out of the loop in terms of what's hip on the airwaves. Thankfully I have access to people like Mungowitz to point me in the right direction. This morning, he points me in this direction:

What I Shoulda Said Was...

My father never wants for a snappy come-back. In fact, he once lent me a book published by MAD Magazine, entitled "Snappy Answers To Stupid Questions." It's a great book for those of us so inclined, and my father is a master of such things.

One of the most supportive things he used to do when I was growing up was, when I would come home from school complaining about something bad someone had said to me, he'd start laughing. Pretty soon, we'd all be laughing, because he'd provide an endless list of, "You should have said..." and then he'd fill in the blank with the greatest, wittiest come-back ever. Boy, if only I had thought of that at the time! I would have said it. That would have shut 'em up!

We all occasionally end up in situations thinking - long after the fact - "What I shoulda said was...!" We imagine a hundred thousand glorious ways we could have put somebody in their place, had we only been seized with the force of such a rapier wit at the time.

When Steve Sailer posts and re-posts the same quotes over and over, months apart, with no new information other than what he imagines to be "a great come-back, man," I get to thinking of all the sad sacks I've ever met, who are found shaking their fists and muttering, "What I shoulda said was..."

"It Doesn't Make Sense, But It's The Truth"

Robert Murphy posts theistic musings on most Sunday's. It's an interesting feature that you won't find on other economics blogs. As one might expect, I seldom agree with what he writes on Sundays, but I also seldom feel moved to comment on it. Religion is mostly a private matter.

But sometimes I just can't help myself, and yesterday's post at Free Advice is one such time. Here's Murphy:

My pastor at church today said as much (though I don’t know if he’d endorse the way I phrased it above) when he said something like (I’m paraphrasing slightly): 

“It’s not that God made creation, it was good, then there was the Fall, and He had to turn to Plan B. No, He’s God, He never lost control for a moment. God made all of creation, and that was good and illustrated His glory, but only through the Fall, Redemption of Christ, and the coming re-creation when Christ returns, will God fully demonstrate His glory. The re-creation will be more glorious than the initial creation.” 

Then he went on to say (I really like this guy, by the way) that he doesn’t understand how that can be, and it doesn’t make sense, but: “It’s the truth.”

Most of the people leaving comments on Murphy's blog jumped at that last part. Indeed, it's problematic that the pastor accepts something as truth without being able to make sense of it, but he's not the first person to do that, and no one gets into religion due to a passionate commitment to rationality.

Leaving that point aside, though, the pastor's description of god's will makes me chuckle a little. The way he tells it makes it sound like all this colossal suffering in the world is part of a great, cosmic wind-up and god is about to knock it out of the park. Sort of like god is setting himself up for the ultimate comeback. "Ha! Ha! You thought I was cruel and imperfect, but that's just because you haven't seen the Second Coming!" It's God Part II: The Revenge.

Let me put it in as humorous a way as I know how: Remember how Guns 'N Roses had been working on Chinese Democracy for like 20 years? The longer this went on, the more storied the album became, like it was going to be the greatest rock album ever recorded. Those who caught snippets of it went on record insisting that it was every bit as revolutionary as it was purported to be. But then the album eventually came out a couple of years ago, and it was not awful, but nothing like it was made out to be.

Granted, I'd hope the Almighty is capable of a follow-up better than Chinese Democracy, but considering all the human suffering that has occurred over the last two thousand years, god sure does have a lot of 'splainin' to do.

Some Links

It's been a while since I've done one of these! Let's get to it.

• According to Slate.com, complaining about how early Christmas shopping starts is a bit of a Christmas tradition.
• Robert Murphy reacts to Paul Krugman admitting that higher taxes and death panels are exactly what health care reformers have in mind.
• Via Marginal Revolution, Avik Roy suggests that people in the US have the best life expectancy in the world, if we exclude deaths resulting from injury. Or if we start counting from the point of medical intervention. That is, for deadly things that can actually be treated by health care, US has the best outcomes in the entire world.
• David Henderson directs our attention to an article about walking versus driving. This should not come as a surprise to anyone who has ever understood that the reason you can't solve electricity problems in Africa by distributing hand-crank electric generators is because people just become hungrier. Surprise, surprise, you can't out-smart the Law of Conservation of Energy.
• If you're not familiar with the Canadian news landscape, you need to read this BBC article about Toronto mayor Rob "I smoked crack on video" Ford. Bear in mind that Ford smoked crack on video while in office. 

Why Do People Read Stationary Waves?

Blogger's back office user interface gives me access to certain statistics. For example, I can see a breakdown of how many hits I receive, by country, or by web browser, etc. I can see what link was followed to arrive at my website, and so on. All the typical stuff. (I assume most people know this about website analytics, but some of you might not, so forgive the pedantic explanation.)

I've blogged about this from time to time. For example, way back in 2011, I noticed an increase in web traffic after I made a casual reference to bombshell movie star Halle Berry. I remember logging into Blogger and noticing this big spike in web traffic on the graph that shows hits per day, and thinking to myself, "What the...?" So I looked at the traffic sources, and noticed a bunch of traffic coming from Google searches for Halle Berry. I hope those folks learned a thing or two when they arrived at Stationary Waves.

So, aside from occasional hilarity such as this, sometimes I see some pretty interesting concepts come up from the top-ten Google searches that direct traffic here. Sometimes those searches actually do pertain to things about which I've written; I often get traffic from people using the search string "Tom Morello hypocrite." But some of the other search strings are even more interesting, revealing concepts I've never considered.

Today, for example, I got some web traffic from someone looking for "stationary waves on a trombone." That sounds fantastic! I should buy a trombone for my next Rhesus piece.

The other day, someone arrived here looking for "is pacifism intellectually dishonest". What a fascinating question. I've never blogged about that, but I very well should have. Perhaps I shall dedicate a future post to answering that question.

Many people come looking for a review of the Windsor Clockwork bicycle. (You can find parts 1 and 2 here and here, respectively.) But isn't it fascinating that these hits are typically coming from China?

I also get a lot of hits from people seeking information on male psychology (i.e. the psychology of men, why do men think the way they think), and also information about people who are very demanding. I've blogged about both of these topics, but the frequency of web traffic I get from these searches suggests that I should probably spend more time looking into both ideas.

My album and concert reviews are always a big hit, and generate a lot of web traffic for months and even years after they're written. I enjoy writing them, and this traffic is a strong incentive for me to continue doing so.

Well, keep the good ideas coming, folks. I'm happy to do a little crowd-pleasing with my blogging, so long as our interests intersect. Look for your next websearch on the pages of Stationary Waves in the near future!

Some Links

The only time Steve Sailer likes Richard Dawkins is when he's making criticisms that uphold Sailer's cultural supremacy theories. Also, guess when Sailer likes federal mandates. If you guessed, "Whenever they satisfy his racial supremacy theories," you're absolutely right!

Robin Hanson discusses the fact that people value visual performance more highly than the actual music. (Any progressive rock fan could have told you this.)

When it first popped up, I did not fully appreciate Stephen Williamson's "Anti-Paul-Krugman" concept. But I was an idiot. It's genius.

Kurt Schuler tells a story about Bretton-Woods, as "compared to what?" Along the way, he manages to convince me that once a change exists for a generation or two, the conditions prior to the change are no longer the relevant comparator. That is, in the wake of WWII, society didn't return to the conditions that existed prior to WWI because those conditions were already long gone.

Speaking of "compared to what?" Steven Landsburg scratches his head over Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson.

XKCD and Jeffrey Tucker are on the same page today.

Serious Relationship Advice

The following appears in today's installment of Dear Prudence:

Dear Prudence,My girlfriend and I are having a disagreement. I posed to her the following hypothetical situation: Would you rescue from fire and certain destruction the last surviving copy on earth of the complete works of Shakespeare or a single puppy? My girlfriend says that she would rescue the puppy because the puppy is a fellow living being. She is highly educated and claims to have great respect for Shakespeare. But I think my girlfriend’s choice is the wrong one. I would rescue the Shakespeare, not just because of the aesthetic enjoyment we get from his work but also because of all the moral insight it provides us (including possibly the insight that enables the concept of animal rights in the first place). We’ve argued a lot about this. I cannot take her answer seriously, but I find it rather disturbing nonetheless. She never rejected the hypothetical question out of hand or said that the two things aren’t even comparable. She says that preserving a living conscious thing is more valuable than preserving Shakespeare. My girlfriend loves animals, especially her poodle, and is a die-hard vegetarian. I am, on the other hand, obsessed with Shakespeare and rather neutral toward animals. What is the best way for us to diffuse this situation?

I present this letter without further commentary. 

1996

Remember when Tyra Banks looked like this?

...and when Oprah Winfrey looked like this?

And isn't it a shame that they now both look identical?

Another Business Idea

I have been working out regularly for nearly a quarter-century now. I started young, quickly became familiar with the local coaches and fitness experts, and I've been driving myself hard ever since. Let there be no doubt about it: It feels great.

Not once, however, have I ever felt like the person in this and similar pictures:

Photo courtesy my Google+ feed

Okay, so I'm also not female, but that's not really the point. When you look at pictures like this, you suddenly have the impression that fit people experience this zen sensation of being able to demand anything physical from their bodies and, with concentration, deliver.

Come to think of it, it's a lot like old kung fu movies, in which we see the protagonist preparing to punch through a brick wall or something. He pauses to collect his chi, inhales deeply, and for a moment reaches a level of mental zen that mere brown-belts can only dream of. Then, at the zenith of his mental bliss, he powerfully drives his fist through any obstacle in its path.

Like I say, I've never felt anything like that before, not even close. The truth is, no one feels like this, not even Olympic athletes. It's just a picture.

But what a picture! The person in this picture - or any such picture - is just like that kung fu master punching through a brick wall, or a Buddhist monk achieving Nirvana, combined with a prize fighter whose personal Nirvana is some kind of medicine ball push-up. Wouldn't it be great if we could all feel that way?

So that's my business idea: Combine a well-equipped elite gym with personal training and... personal photography. As an added membership service, photographers would work with the gym's clients and develop a series of social media photos like the above, fit for use as profile photos, cover photos, photo albums, mobile uploads, or however else you may wish to express your fitness zen!

Some Links

Somehow, I knew this would happen.

I’d thought he was saying that if a pregnancy occurs, God must have wanted it, which would seem to be an instance of the general principle that if anything occurs, God must have wanted it. Now we’re told that there is no such general principle — from which I am left to conclude that the only way to tell what God wants is to ask Richard Mourdock.

- Steven Landsburg elucidates the Mourdock platform.

Sonic Charmer sure has been on a roll lately! Here he is on racism and protest. Here he is on the practicality of open borders immigration policy. And here he is on Trump's pending Obama revelation.

Meanwhile, in the real world...

Another reason why it's more about fitness than it is about diet.

In very few words, and one amazing picture, Sean Burch shows us the dividends of being a hyper-fit adventurer.

I can't think of a better place to eat a second breakfast.

Will Wilkinson: Football Critic Extraordinaire

I confess that I am not a football fan. I never have been, and I never will be. I have nothing against the game, I just prefer spectator sports of a slightly different stripe. So, with all the rigamorole over NFL referees, it's not surprising that I haven't really been following along, and don't intend to start now. Stationary Waves is not a place to get your football fix.

I would anticipate the same would be true for Will Wilkinson's Twitter feed. Not so! This morning I inexplicablly discovered that I have somehow managed to "follow" Wilkinson on Twitter. I didn't realize this, until I saw this tweet from last night:

...followed by this tweet:

...followed by this one:

Willy, you rascal, you've really put your finger on the pulse this time!

My Strange Sense Of Humor

One of my favorite books is the 1988 precursor to Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, otherwise known to more discriminating readers as Foucault's Pendulum, by Umberto Eco.

Foucault's Pendulum tells the fascinating story of a group of intellectuals who - for the sake of pure entertainment value - begin re-writing the history of the world by making a few simple assumptions about a lost crypt carving uncovered by an eccentric explorer.

I won't spoil the end for you, but the book is largely about how different the world looks if you make a few different assumptions about the things you think you know. Fascinating.

On a related note, I have found myself engaging in jokes with friends and family in which I start from a flawed assumption about what's been said, and I quickly construct an alternative universe that reconciles the false assumption, resulting in a patently ridiculous view of whatever situation we happen to be talking about.

If I pull this off in total deadpan, people really think I'm being serious, which actually sweetens the joke for me. More commonly, though, people know I'm pulling their leg, but they can't put their finger on where the joke ends.

Either way, this kind of joke ends up being funnier for me than for others. It just makes me laugh - I'm not sure why. Try it out on your friends and see if it works for you, too.