Running in the Snow, Training in the Winter

Stationary Waves officially "welcomes" the first major snowfall of the year in Ottawa.

Courtesy http://www.parliamenthill.gc.ca/text/camera-eng.html

So it begins. This is the time of year that officially separates the men from the boys, or the little sparkly pink princesses from the real women!

That Ottawa Race Weekend occurs so early in the year is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing, because it provides a good motivational force to drive us through midwinter training; a curse, for more or less the same reason.

Frankly, it's going to be a cold one this year. The wind will hurt. The icy conditions will make running virtually unbearable. Every moment you spend outside in that weather is a moment you can't be sitting on your living room couch with a good book and a hot cup o' joe. At times, it will feel like there is no good reason to keep going.

Well, it's never been easy, and it never will be. If you've been waiting for that magic day on which you become impervious to inclement weather and have an endless font of physical motivation, you have a long wait ahead of you; it will never come.

Lucky for you, I can offer a few suggestions - collected over years of experience - to help you make the most of the slippery training that lies ahead.

Suggestion 1: Make the Morning Workout a Habit

For the better part of a year, I have been extolling the virtues of working out twice-a-day. I know many of you have been resisting this suggestion because you think it is way too hardcore. Really, though, it's not so bad! 

Here's how it works:

First, give yourself between 30 and 45 minutes to wake up, pull on some workout clothes, and find some free floor space somewhere in your house. That's right - it's completely unnecessary to brave the harsh weather over a trip to the gym. Make this easy on yourself. You don't have to climb Kilimanjaro every morning at 5am. Just pull up a piece of floor and get started.

Second, focus on the most effective strength training exercises:

• Push-ups
• Crunches
• Squats
• Lunges
• Pull-ups

These exercises impact almost every major muscle group in your body. If you're looking for a no-brainer, quick-and-easy way to train through the winter, do three sets of each and go eat breakfast. Done and done.

Even if you don't do these five exercises every day, structuring your morning workout around these movements requires no special equipment, no gym  membership, no nothing!

Like I said, make it easy on yourself.

Finally, to really stay committed to your morning workout, pull out the laptop or the newspaper and browse the headlines for 30 seconds between each set. The point is, you don't have to dread your morning workout, you can multi-task and enjoy making it a regular part of your day.

Suggestion 2: Run Anyway

I know, I know - in the winter it gets cold outside, you slip around on the sidewalk, the roads are never adequately ploughed, your nose runs, cars honk at you, you're never quite warm enough, the wind blows, it takes a lot of time to put on all that winter running equipment, and so forth.

It's hard to run in the winter, I get it.

Here's the thing, though: If you somehow manage to pull on all your gear and get outside for just five or ten minutes, you'll find you're over the hump. The rest of the workout is no big deal.

What I'm suggesting is that while your arguments against running outside in the winter are all perfectly valid, their severity disappears if you just go ahead and run anyway.

Human beings are remarkably resilient creatures who have managed to adapt to the conditions of both the Sahara Desert and the Arctic Circle. We're like rats and cockroaches, we are literally everywhere. There probably isn't a rain forest or tundra anywhere on the globe that isn't inhabited by human beings. Granted, given the choice, we would all prefer to live on a pineapple farm near the Equator. Despite that fact, when we find ourselves in Canada during the winter (or whatever), we manage to adapt.

And if you just get out the front door and down the road a little, you'll find that you yourself adapt pretty well, too. 

Suggestion 3: Leave the Record-Setting for Summer

So it's winter and you have a lower-than-normal sense of personal motivation. The shorter days are giving you a mild case of Seasonal Affectedness Disorder and you really just want to stay in bed with an active coffee machine nearby.

Now is not the time to take on every aspect of the universe.

The point is, choose your battles. You have enough to deal with during the winter that you shouldn't feel like you have to keep up your fastest, most ambitious pace. You don't have to get out there and start doing hardcore speed training or hefty fartlek training. Ottawa Race Weekend is still several months away. All you really need to do is keep your endurance base up high enough that you can capitalize on the good weather once it finally returns.

That's it! I mean, if you want to get extra ambitious, feel free. It certainly won't hurt. But the key to winter training is not getting in your best workouts of the year, but simply ensuring that you don't give up entirely and start packing on the seasonal pounds.

Suggestion 4: Be Proud of Yourself

One of the most important (and often-forgotten) aspects of rising to challenges is taking the time to congratulate yourself once you get there. 

Today is November 23rd. That means there are five weeks until all the other folks sign up for a new 2012 gym membership and come out in droves under the auspices of a New Year's resolution. When they show up, you will have been there the whole time, driving yourself forward, keeping fit, and overcoming challenges that, frankly, those other guys couldn't hack.

That's not a slight against them, it's reality. If you manage to keep yourself going this winter, allow yourself to be proud for doing what other people couldn't do. It's okay to feel happy and satisfied with yourself for having accomplished more than what the average person could do.

Rewarding yourself with some positive feedback helps reinforce your motivation and gives yourself a reason to be happy about some of the tougher moments you put yourself through. So don't skimp on the personal accolades. ;) 

Things That Used to Be ILLegal

I love being able to link to good news. Here's a story reporting that the Governor of Massachusetts has just signed a state bill that legalizes casino gambling.

I have no moral position on gambling. I consider it a form of entertainment that I, personally, find uninteresting. It does tend to attract people who probably ought to be saving some of the money that they're gambling, but that's hardly justification for making a peaceful activity illegal.

The law is also not as liberal as I would prefer, as it apparently only allows for three licenses for resort-style gambling. I'm a marginalist, though. I note that three licenses are better than zero.

So the world takes a small step in the right direction. Huzzah!

Allow Me to Be the First...

This is destined to become viral in the econo-blogo-sphere. This morning xkcd.com presented a beautiful chart demonstrating the current value of wealth and debt in 2011 dollars. Hold on to this one, folks, because in 20 years we will be surprised at what it shows.

The link is here. The image is below:

What is most interesting to me about this chart is that the value of actual goods and services is absolutely dwarfed by the value of the debts and obligations of the world's governments. If that doesn't prove to everyone in the world that our current governmental spending structures are unsustainable, nothing will.

UPDATE:
The Mises blog posted the graphic.

Introduction to Manliness

By way of The Anti-Gnostic, I came across a blog article entitled "40 Years of Ultimatums." In rather emotionally charged language, the article describes the losing battle men have been fighting for about forty years.

Now, if I quote the article out-of-context, I am afraid the author's point will be lost. Why? Because it is difficult if not impossible for men to be able to engage in this kind of discussion without convincing everyone around them that they are big, chauvinist jerks. Furthermore, the author is obviously disturbed by the forty-year trend, and has allowed his emotions to seep into his writing.

Long story short, I am not going to risk obliterating his point by doing an inadequate job of excerpting it. I recommend you read the whole thing yourself. I can, however, provide comments of my own.

Manliness: A Stationary Waves Introduction
I have been meaning to start writing about this topic for a long time now. This article has really just kick-started the process. This will be a series of Stationary Waves posts, really, or perhaps a recurrent motif.

The key point is this: While women have been actively engaged in redefining what a modern woman is, men have not undertaken the same process. The result is a situation in which men are demonized no matter what their choices are.

Now, just be patient with me here. I'm not arguing against feminism. Equal rights for women is still a long way off, and the end goal is a good one. We should all have equal rights, regardless of gender. I have to be clear about that because when people talk about the impact of feminism on men, they tend to get instantly criticized as being opposed to equal rights. I'm not opposed to equal rights. I support them.

The problem isn't that feminism has given women equal rights - that's a good thing! The problem is that - because men and women are complimentary and need each other - any time one whole gender embarks upon a social process of redefining their place in society without the other gender, it's going to cause a social disruption.

Men have sold themselves short by not engaging in something analogous to the feminist movement. In part, this is because any such movement would have inevitably been a response to feminism, a reaction. In part, this is also because feminists took complete control of the definition of gender roles and excluded (heterosexual) men from the discussion entirely. In part, this is also because the things men tend to be proud of are all those ugly things the feminists decry: hunting, competitiveness, boorishness, overweening, et cetera.

Concluding, For Now
I think it best to wrap up here. I have a much more to say on this subject. Most of what I have to say is about men, not women or feminism. I would like to dedicate some of my blogging time to defining what manliness is and why society needs it; and also why I feel that society is losing it, slowly but surely.

I do not believe that my concept of  manliness is opposed to female equality in any way, shape, or form. My belief is that if men are real men, respectable men, then women only stand to gain from that. Women are just as interested in men being manly as men are.

Nonetheless, the years of feminism have undoubtedly taken a toll on men's unabashed manliness, and it is something that needs to be restored. Look for more posts on this issue in the future.

Worth Reading

Richard Posner has written an excellent critique of the OWS mob. Unlike the typical analyses you'll find in the mainstream media - or on blogs like mine - Posner does a good job of summarizing the movement and its critics and manages to draw some effective conclusions.

Many of his views parallel mine. For example, Posner believes that the police should never have kicked the protesters out. He writes:

The police I think made a tactical mistake in routing the “Occupiers” from Zuccotti Park near Wall Street. That is the lesson of the 1960s. Arrests, whacking demonstrators with billy clubs, dragging screaming women to paddy wagons, and other police just create anger, martyrdom complexes, and sympathy for the demonstrators. 

Posner also believes that OWS would have self-destructed, anyway. (Gee, where have you heard that before?) He supports this claim by citing an example from an old protest at the University of Chicago:

In January 1969, student radicals occupied the Administration building of the University of Chicago. The police were not summoned, and after two weeks the radicals abandoned the building; almost 100 were then expelled or suspended from the university. The university was largely spared the turmoil that continued for years at other major universities.

Posner sums up the financial industry saying something I believe, but have never written about. He says that what was observed in the financial sector in the wake of the "deregulation" that occurred is natural and "Darwinian." They took risks because they had to, competition required them to do it.

Unlike Posner, though, I would add that this is precisely why I see the financial sector as victims in all of this. They never would have engaged in that kind of behavior were it not for the inflationary policies of the Federal Reserve. When currency is perpetually being debased, the financial sector has no choice but to engage in ever-riskier market choices in seek of the highest returns possible.

We cannot exactly fault people for doing the best that they can subject to the current state of the universe. Everyone does that. It's not "corporate greed," it's human behavior. Should we suddenly expect everyone to sell themselves short so that a bunch of dirty college students don't slap the "greed" tag on them? Get real. Life is about making the most of oneself and one's situation. If any federal agency decides to distort our ability to reliably plan and calculate economically, then we are all victims, including the people who appeared to "profit."

A victim who mitigates against bad circumstances is still a victim. That other people could not mitigate does not mean they are "even more victimer."

Zero Marginal Product of Labor?

Bryan Caplan and Arnold Kling have been going back-and-forth on the concept of "zero marginal product of labor." Today Caplan summarizes his main objections to the idea.

My observations:

1. Caplan's arguments seem to hinge on the idea that once someone's MP(L) is zero, it's zero forever, which basically misses the whole point of Kling's PSST theory. (It's sort of like saying, "Assume PSST is false. Ergo, PSST is false!" But of course I have blogged about this kind of assumption before.)
2. Caplan seems unwilling to approach the problem from the standpoint of microeconomic models, which I think resolve the whole issue.

My Defense of PSST

Here's my disclaimer: I know very little about PSST, other than what I have read on EconLog. So take this "defense" with a grain of salt. But if I understand the theory correctly, then the idea is pretty simple and frankly inarguable.

Consider the following story:

Once upon a time there were a group of economic consultants and a Chief Statistician who produced statistical models for a niche market. One day, company management hit upon the idea that they could make more money by offering one, comprehensive online statistical model to all of their clients for a subscription fee, rather than paying junior economists to develop labor-intensive spreadsheets every time their clients had a question.

So the Chief Statistician developed the model and translated it into an online, Javascript-based platform. The company fired all its economic consultants, retained the Chief Statistician to maintain the model, and revolutionized the consulting industry by offering online models developed by a great statistician, rather than expensive custom models developed by consultants.

Meanwhile, the fired consultants found that every other company had moved to online models, too. It took them some time, but eventually they brushed up on their Javascript coding skills, and found jobs with firms who were willing to hire them to program the models or conduct business analysis (or both).

What we see in the above story is the following:

• A sectoral shift toward more efficient, less labor-intensive technology
• A group of employees whose MP(L) goes from quite high to effectively zero
• Approximately no change in real output
• A group of employees who must acquire new skills to remain competitive in the job market and to engage in a sustainable pattern of production

Now, the above story is a real-world example (I'll let you guess who one such "economic consultant" was.)

Caplan seems to believe that the economic consultants in my story "didn't have ZMP because they found other jobs." But of course their MP(L) was zero at their old employer, and only became positive again when they realigned to new labor market conditions. The process took some time. This is fully consistent with Kling's theory.

As Kling noted a few days ago, Caplan may score some debate points by maintaining that the consultants' MP(L) never really dropped to zero, subject to Caplan's assumptions. But doesn't that miss the whole point of Kling's theory?

I feel like Caplan is just prodding Kling a little on a technicality. But this is very much an absurd technicality. MP(L) can be zero if profit is zero, regardless of quantity-produced-per-hour. MP(L) can also be zero during periods of time in which the employee produces nothing (like vacation, or sabbatical, or unemployment, or...).

My point is that everyone knows that there is only real and permanent ZMP for invalids and corpses. Kling's PSST model doesn't claim that an employee's marginal productivity is zero now and forever, and they are screwed. Kling's theory suggests that when the macroeconomy experiences a bubble, a whole lot of people are engaged in activities that aren't very productive or profitable; and when the bubble bursts, these folks will have to find more sustainable employment elsewhere.

So what can Caplan really object to?

Question to Market Monetarists

This post is an edited version of a comment submitted to Scott Sumner on his blog.

My assumptions:

1. My salary does not increase by anything close to 5% per year
2. Market Monetarists like Scott Sumner prefer a world of ~5% NGDP targeting
3. In such a world, NGDP would increase by ~5% per year

My question: Why does this gap between inflation and my salary not hurt me in the long run?

Can this question be answered without the cop-out of suggesting that "I am asking for is constant real wages?” 

The point is that a world of perpetual inflation is a world in which my real income is perpetually diminishing. That sort of works against the NGDP-targeting-for-better-growth hypothesis.

Let’s accept the tenet of sticky wages and assume my expectations are spot-on. There still exist periods in which I am unable to respond to my own inflation expectations (if there were not, wages would not be sticky). How will I ever make up the difference between the inflation I know/expect and the income I am capable of earning?

Now I understand the response to this: A Market Monetarist might suggest that “on average” there is growth, i.e. that the income growth for the beneficiaries of venture capital is a greater total sum than the losses accrued by the rest of us… Okay, but why should “the rest of us” go for that?

In other words, why should I care about a policy that promotes growth to people other than myself, at significant loss to myself?

Give me a practical reason why I should go for that.

Brain Freeze

I have been struggling with a bit of writer's block for the past week or two. Bear with me here. I am trying, but all my attempts wind up as drafts, not full-blown blog posts. Please accept my deepest apologies.

It Would Be Sad

It would be, if it weren't for all that violence. The "Occupy" mob comes to this:

NEW YORK — About a dozen Occupy Wall Street protesters are in Zuccotti Park, talking and trying to stay awake.They are sitting on the park's marble benches, occasionally chanting "We are the 99 percent" and other protest slogans.About 30 police officers are looking on.

So the stragglers are almost ready to throw in the towel, and all it really took was an effort to clean the park. 

What's interesting about this is that - despite my claim yesterday - there is some sort of philosophical victory here. The mob intended to "occupy" the park until they instigated change. They could continue to protest for the rest of time, they just can't camp overnight, thereby undermining their whole "occupy" methodology.

What good is a sit in if you have to go home to bed every day?

Still, I can't help but wonder what would have happened if this mob would have chosen a more rational protest methodology. Short-sightedness abounds.

Landsburg Hits On a Great Point

Great words over at The Big Questions this morning:

If your household is over budget, you can address that problem either by spending less or by earning more income. It is tempting to fall into the trap of thinking that by analogy, the government can address its budget problems either by spending less or by raising taxes. But the analogy fails because raising taxes is not like earning more income; it’s more like visiting the ATM.

It's Over

Too many links out there to supply any one in particular, but it appears that most of the major cities across North America have de-occupied the Occupy mobs.

As I pointed out earlier, these kinds of tactics were wholly unnecessary. There was no need to forcibly oust what was destined to implode in the first place. A far better approach would have been to give the mob just enough rope to hang itself, thereby claiming a philosophical victory.

Then again, I guess there aren't too many people out there who care about philosophical victories anymore. Viewing the comments on CBC's news webpages this morning anecdotally confirms this. That's problematic, though, because ousting the mob gives the mob a philosophical victory, which is pretty much the last thing anyone wants at this point.

At least I can take solace in the fact that within a couple of days, no one will really remember any of this.

Here We Go...

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Supreme Court will rule on the constitutionality of the so-called "Obamacare" law. This is arguably the most important Supreme Court case of my lifetime. The outcome of this trial will shape US domestic policy for the remainder of my lifetime.

Faithful Stationary Waves readers will know that I am adamantly opposed to this piece of legislation. My heart absolutely sank when it was passed. I had a sick feeling for days. I am hoping that I have already suffered enough of the blow that the Supreme Court's ruling in favor of "Obamacare" will not hurt quite so badly.

Yes, as I have just implied, I believe that Obamacare is now inevitable. That has been one of the major, most important reasons I have been a vocal critic of Obamacare. Once these things pop up, they are never destroyed. Government is the great juggernaut, the immovable object which, once seen, cannot be unseen. I believe the only real hope the United States has is a Supreme Court ruling against Obamacare. Barring that, we plunge headlong into a European-style welfare state, never to return.

I will, furthermore, take a ruling in favor of Obamacare as my signal to start buying gold at virtually any price.

There are many different issues wrapped up in this. Americans for the most part have no idea how good their health care system is. They genuinely believe that they have a terrible health care system. They have no experience with foreign systems. Unless the Supreme Court does the impossible, Americans are about to get a rude awakening. Sadly, however, they won't be aware of their rude awakening - their health care industry will simply deteriorate until it looks more or less the same as it does elsewhere in the world. What they have given up will never be regained, and will not be as obvious as the big line at the bottom of every paycheck or tax return that demark's the government's cut.

Another issue is the notion of sustainable government. At the very moment when so many large countries are crumbling under the weight of outstanding debts, the United States has taken on what will eventually become the single largest entitlement program the world has ever seen. The United States already carries a wholly unaffordable debt. Therefore, the reason I will take the Supreme Court's pro-Obamacare ruling as a signal to purchase gold is because as the US dollar goes, so goes the global economy.

In fact, as a wise investor, I should actually start purchasing gold now, in anticipation of the increase it will experience in the wake of the ruling.

Of course, the most important issue here is free trade and personal liberty (which is the same thing). But no one really cares about that one, do they.

La Carrera

Here's another instrumental number my band plays every time we get the chance. Hope you enjoy it.

Extremism and the Double-Standard

Yesterday Tyler Cowen blogged about an article in The National Review Online in which a claim is made that leftist books have been more policy-oriented, while rightist books have been more ideology-oriented in recent years. Because this pertains almost entirely to ideologies I oppose, I don't really have a comment on this matter.

However, Cowen's excerpting of the following passage from the article stood out to me:

People on the right classify themselves as libertarians, neoconservatives, social conservatives, traditional conservatives, and the like, and spill oceans of ink defining, debating, and further subdividing these schools of thought.

What bothers me about this is the claim that libertarianism is a form of conservatism. Those familiar with libertarianism know this to be patently false, and I commented accordingly on Cowen's blog:

Classifying libertarians as “a type of conservative” is an act of leftist propaganda, as far as I’m concerned. Leftists know that libertarianism blows a gaping hole in their entire set of ideologies *and* policies. Their only ability to respond to libertarian criticism is to engage in the ad hominem lie that libertarians are “conservative extremists.” 

Someone writing under the pseudonym "question the question" responded, in part, as follows:

My response to libertarianism is that it is ideological in the extreme and that any policy recommendations (such that they are, most are wildly overarching and short on details) are suited not for the real world but for some utopian fantasy.

Okay, Folks. This is Important.
What a double-standard that is! "Question the question" has just exposed one of the many "shabby secrets" Ayn Rand used to refer to in her nonfiction works.

The implication here is that when a libertarian proposes to eliminate, oh I don't know, the FDA, that's "extreme" and part of "some utopian fantasy." But when a leftist or a rightist suggests the creation of a new federal agency, that's not extreme at all!

We have grown so accustomed to hearing calls for new federal departments, agencies, committees, and so forth, that we no longer consider such calls for regulation to be "extreme." Yet if someone calls for the direct logical counterpoint, that person is labeled an extremist. Why?

Think about it. The opposite of painting your garage door black is not painting it at all. Why is painting it black "normal," but choosing not to paint it is part of "some utopian fantasy?"

Or perhaps the opposite of painting the garage door black is stripping all of the paint off so that it is the color of plain aluminum. You and I might disagree as to whether such a door is visually appealing, but what we cannot do is suggest that one is more "extreme" than the other. All-black is just as extreme as not-at-all-black. This is an indisputable fact of logic.

Logically speaking, the set of all real numbers from negative-infinity to positive-infinity is just as extreme as the empty set. They are nothing more than opposite concepts. If one is extreme, so is the other. If one is not extreme, then neither is the other.

The truth is, libertarians are no more extreme than anyone else. The only relevant difference is that everyone else has claimed ethics, ideology, and pragmatism as their own, and denied it to libertarians by default. We must not stand for this.