David Friedman Shatters A Myth

Many years ago, I heard someone on television talk about a charity that went into the homes of poor people and showed them how to cook properly. The idea was that the poor suffer from bad nutrition because the cheapest food is also the least expensive. Thus, the poor rely on food from, say McDonald's, rather than taking the time and money required to produce home-cooked meals.

As a poor college student, I myself relied heavily on inexpensive fast food to get me through the years. So, based on my own personal experience, the claim seemed highly credible. Poor people are obese because they are forced to rely on the comparatively poor nutrition offered by the least expensive foods.

All was well with the universe until the excellent David Friedman took time to question the prevailing assumption:

Flour, the main ingredient in home made bread, costs about $.50/lb and has about 2000 calories/lb, so about $.25/1000 calories.

Wonder Bread, the classic example of supermarket bread, has 1100 calories/loaf and cost $1.99/loaf on sale at Walgreens, normally more. So about $1.80/1000 calories, or seven times as expensive.

Comparing lentils to fast food, 1 kilo of lentils has about 3500 calories and costs a little over $2. So about $.60/1000 calories

A McDonalds Quarter Pounder with cheese has 520 calories and costs $3.10.  So about $6.00/1000 calories. For that comparison, fast food costs about ten times as much per calorie.

Not only are the claims wrong, both are wrong by close to an order of magnitude.

To question the claims even further, I would add that - because the obese poor are actually obese - that means they are not engaging in cost minimization. They are eating more than they "need" to (but probably less than they would like to eat - I leave that assumption uncontested).

So if the claims are mathematically nonsensical and logically inconsistent with observed reality, we may have to toss this one out as a myth. But I am open to being persuaded otherwise.

We Need Masculism

Simon Grey points us to an op-ed in USA Today discussing the treatment of boys in the American public school system. The excerpt provided by Grey is perfect, so I am re-quoting it here, however I must point out that this article is an opinion piece, not a news story. The arguments and evidence presented are disputable, although they seem correct to  me.

Stereotyped as "naughty," boys quickly learn that they are thought of as dumber and more trouble than girls. And that has consequences. "When boys aged seven to eight were told that they tend to do worse at school than girls, they scored more poorly in reading, writing and mathematics tests than those who were not primed for failure. And telling children aged six to nine before a test that both sexes were expected to do equally well improved the boys' performance." But the message that boys get is that they're not as smart.

The way boys are treated in K-12 also impacts how they do with regard to college. According to a recent study of male college enrollment, it's not academic performance, but discipline that holds boys back. "Controlling for these non-cognitive behavioral factors can explain virtually the entire female advantage in college attendance for the high school graduating class of 1992, after adjusting for family background, test scores and high school achievement." Boys are disciplined more because teachers -- overwhelmingly female -- find stereotypically male behavior objectionable. Girls are quieter, more orderly, and have better handwriting. The boys get disciplined more, suspended more and are turned off of education earlier.

Female teachers also give boys lower grades, according to research in Britain. Female teachers grade boys more harshly than girls, though, interestingly, male teachers are seen by girls as treating everyone the same regardless of gender. More and more, it's looking like schools are a hostile environment for boys.

In response to this, Grey provides us with what appears to be a rather thoughtful solution:

To elaborate further, there comes a point in a boy’s life where he should be raised and trained by men instead of by women.  It would appear, based on the anecdotal evidence excerpted above, that once boys reach the age of seven or so they should start spending considerably more time with other males instead of with women.  I would hypothesize that by puberty (roughly 11-13), boys should definitely be spending the bulk of their time away from the retarding influence of women, and in the presence of men, especially their father.

Perhaps I would quibble with the word "retarding," but the thrust of it is spot-on. It is a unanimous perception - and probably a scientific fact - that there are differences between males and females. Notwithstanding my belief that people can choose to be whomever they please, the plain fact of the matter is that most boys aspire to manhood while most girls aspire to womanhood.

No one should be made to feel ashamed of their identity, of their existence. If a person's identity is one of womanliness and femininity, treating them poorly for this is morally reprehensible, whether that person is biologically male, female, or whatever. Likewise, if a person's identity is one of manliness and masculininty, that person ought not be made to feel ashamed.

By pure coincidence, I was watching a documentary last night called The Science of Sex Appeal. In it, a variety of scientists discussed what occurs within the body that attracts men to women and women to men. (I suppose same-sex relations were out of scope for the documentary, since they weren't discussed, but the firing of neurons in response to stimuli probably work the same way for same-sex partners, but for the obvious difference.)

An important point made in the course of this documentary was one that we hear routinely from both women's popular publications and the new wave of men's media, such as "the man-o-sphere," blogs about "game" and so forth. That point is: Women are categorically hypergamous, being attracted to males who achieve high social status. The scientists in the documentary studied humans and a variety of other species and discovered that in all cases, females were less concerned with the competition to achieve status than they were with the actual results of the competition.

Now, men (traditionally and contemporally) compete for status in a variety of ways. One obvious way is sports. Of course, there is also the career ladder, political arguments, mathematics, contests, musical virtuosity, and so on. All of these are spheres that are not only traditionally dominated by men, but in which even today we see appeal more to men than women. This is reflective of the researchers' findings that in the realm of status competition, men are interested in the tournament while women are interested in the results.

This may be why women in recent years have excelled so much in management, medicine, government, and business administration. Perhaps these kinds of careers offer women the ability to perform work that they find useful and interesting, without diving too deeply into the actual competition itself.

Naturally, if the competition appeals to women, then I for one welcome them to participate. But with regard to women's actual interests, this has always been more the exception than the rule and I imagine that there are biological reasons for this that are deeply rooted in human evolution and instinct.

Regarding education, boys are often boistrous and disruptive as they compete over anything. So it should not be surprising that they would also be boistrous and disruptive as they create informal competitions over math problems, times tables, vocabulary words, P.E. tests, and so on. I was once a boy, and I remember this behavior full-well. Anti-competitiveness is a more feminine trait in that it is emblematic of those people who find competition uninteresting.

Unfortunately for the anti-competitive, competition is a vital component of the human experience, and more specifically a very important part of being male. We like competition. It's fun. It enriches our lives. It makes us happier people. It fills our bodies with testosterone - and that's healthy. (So strange that the modern media uses the word "testosterone" disparagingly. Men need testosterone to remain healthy.)

I am of the opinion that feminism has been unambiguously good for human society. It is unequivocally a good thing that women have earned a more equal role in society. Perhaps a better way of saying this is that it is an extremely good thing that society as a whole can better recognize the contribution of females than it could in the past. We all win when equality of opportunity prevails.

But the story doesn't simply end there. We can't close the book on gender identity simply because feminism is good and should prevail. We need to take a look at the holes that are opening up in the wake of broader equality. Women have been highly effective at creating an intellectual framework through which they can analyze women-specific issues. What we are seeing today are holes that apply to boys and men in a more modern and gender-equal society.

I personally believe that those holes need to be filled with an intellectual framework that functions as a counterpart (not contrast) to feminism. Call it masculism if you like. Men need a framework through which they can analyze what it means to be male. The sorry websites out there devoted to mindless sexual intercourse under the auspices of "Game" are nothing more than a psychopathic knee-jerk reaction to a loss of gender dominance. We don't need to become vapid gigolos. That's not manly, it's immature. It's boyish.

What we rather need is a new understanding of what it means to be a man. Manliness is a world in which competition is important, in which testosterone is healthy, and in which being tough, thick-skinned, physically powerful, unapologetically courageous, and deeply chivalrous are all recognized as the unambiguously positive masculine traits that they are.

Bike Review: Windsor Clockwork Plus (Part 1)

Last Friday, I purchased the Windsor Clockwork Plus from www.BikesDirect.com. Here's a sample picture from the company website:

Although the bike in the above picture is black, with green rims, my bicycle is white with white rims. The other features on the bike are black, giving it a nice, classy look. (Pictures of my bicycle to follow in Part 2 of this review.)

First, I will say a few words about my decision to purchase a bicycle. Then, I'll discuss my decision to purchase a single-speed bicycle more specifically. Finally, I'll provide the initial review of the bicycle itself.

Why We Bike

Finding time to exercise is always a challenge for people like me, who like to keep themselves busily accomplishing as many little things as possible. My morning commute to work, in absence of all traffic, takes about fifteen minutes' driving time. According to Google Maps, however, a bicycle commute to work would only take about thirty minutes - still a perfectly reasonable commute. To sweeten the deal, the gym to which I have a subscribed membership is right next door to work, meaning that I have the ability to shower and dress after my bike ride. After work, if I elect to do so, I can head back to the gym for a strength training workout and a quick ride home. Thus, I will be back to twice-daily workouts without taking much additional time out of my day. In fact, I will have fully incorporated twice-daily workouts into my existing routine. Not bad.

Furthermore, the commute to work is a short one, and I will be able to avoid most heavy traffic. This might mean that a bicycle commute could prove to be safer and more pleasant than my existing drive. The weather here is warm enough to provide bike-friendly conditions all year long. Considering all of the above, there was really no reason not to buy a bicycle and start riding to and from work every day.

Next Question: Why We Single-Speed Bike? 

No, I am not really a hipster. My thinking here involved a few key points that kept playing themselves over and over in my chain of logic.

My history as a biker is not particularly glorious. As a child, my parents purchased me a variety of inexpensive BMX bicycles. I was never much of a trickster; I couldn't really even pop a wheelie. Nonetheless, I was a faithful bike rider. I used my childhood bicycles as a reliable form of transportation to and from school, baseball practice, friends houses, and so on. Occasionally, my family would take leisurely rides together, but that's it.

When I got a little older, bike trends changed from BMX to mountain biking. Like every other kid my age, I wanted a mountain bike, and my parents were happy to acquiesce. They bought me another inexpensive mountain bike, and my friends and I would casually ride them in the foothills looking over the community. Again, though, I never took to mountain biking seriously. I it was fun to ride over smooth trails, twists and turns, and so forth, but my primary interest was in the bicycle's many gears and my ability to get from Point A to Point B at high speeds. Primarily, my mountain bike was a form of transportation.

By my final years of high school, I was riding to school daily, and otherwise not biking at all. After graduation, my older sister - an excellent and avid mountain biker - took me under her wing and introduced me to what might be called more serious mountain biking. It was a lot of fun for a young, active guy just out of high school, and a great way to get outdoors and site-see. Despite that fact, I found the technical demands of mountain biking to be less than pleasant. My uneasy sense of balance kept me out of danger and away from all the best rides. I struggled with the sport for a couple of years before relegating my newer, fancier mountain bike to a more familiar role: transportation.

In college, I very much enjoyed taking my bicycle to school. What I didn't enjoy were the fat tires, small wheels, and squishy suspension of a bike built for mountain climbs, rather than city streets. In fact, this bicycle was a birthday present from my parents, and at the time I had told them that what I really wanted was a road bike. In their defense, the bike they ultimately gave me was a much better bang for the buck and had some very good-quality components, excellent construction, and very appealing cosmetics. But for a rider more interested in transportation, it just wasn't a great fit.

 

Consistently, my bicycle needs have involved personal transportation, on city streets, and with minimal manipulation of gears. My bicycle use has involved almost no off-roading whatsoever. Simply stated, I wanted a road bike because I ride on the road. I wanted a single-speed bike because I only ever use one speed, no matter how many speeds I have access to on a bike. 

 

So when it came time to purchase a new bike, I kept transportation efficiency and limited gears in mind. A single-speed road bike was the obvious choice. When I found the line of bikes offered by BikesDirect.com, I couldn't resist! Finally, I was buying a bicycle I could look forward to riding in exactly the way I wanted to ride it.

Opening The Box: The Initial Review

I picked up my new bike yesterday. I tried to pick it up in my sedan, but the trunk was just barely too small to fit the box in - by about two inches. So I drove home, and returned to the UPS depot with my SUV. That worked much better for transporting a large parcel.

I brought it home, opened the box, took out all the parts, made a quick inventory, and then finished up the assembly.

Bikesdirect.com indicates that the bike comes "90% assembled." What this meant in my case was that I had to install the front wheel, the handlebars (which were already attached to the brakes), the seat, and the pedals. I also took time to tighten all existing connections, but was pleased to find that the only ones that were loose were the ones on the rear wheel.

It is a nice bike, with a few cost-saving components. Most notably, the stem is cheaper than I'd prefer, as are the brake levers. I will probably replace these when the grips on the handlebars wear out. The brakes themselves are okay - not top of the line, but easily in the middle of the pack and should work fine for me. The saddle isn't expensive, but it is much better than I anticipated. It is a little heavy and is more padded than a more serious biker than I would prefer. But this is great news for me, because I wanted something with a bit more cushion anyway.

The wheels seem excellent, which was one of the main selling points. Both wheels seem true to my eyes. I will be able to judge that a little better once I get some air in the tires. The front wheel may need a little minor truing, but it looks fully functional for short rides and is certainly admirably true for a factory-direct shipment. The tires are about average or slightly below, and I look forward to wearing them out so that I can replace them.

One cool thing is that the bike came with the fixie cog. The description on the website said that it came with a flip-flop hub, and that I could add a fixed cog later if I wanted to. No need - it's already there. I can switch to fixie riding as soon as I become more comfortable with the ride.

I don't know a lot about frames, but this one looks good to me. It is light weight. The paint job is mostly good, if a little thin on the under-side.

So far, I am impressed with Bikesdirect.com - they are pretty good if you know what you're getting. I bought a $300 bike and seem to have a high-mid-range bike with a couple of cut corners that are not particularly expensive upgrades. I wonder what their high end bikes are like.

I don't have a strength-training workout tonight, so I'll pick up an air pump on the way home and give it a spin around the neighborhood, ending at the bike shop for a final tune-up.

Diabetics Are Better-Treated In The United States

Follow The Correct Prognosis
Because my blood sugar readings always trended high in the afternoon, I once asked my Canadian endocrinology team whether it would be a good idea to split my once-a-day Lantus dose into two doses per day. The response was an emphatic "No!" but the explanation was highly ambiguous. The team told me that there were "problems" with doing this, and an increased danger of hypoglycemia. One of them insisted that, because I work out in the afternoons, trending high was basically a good thing because it was preventing me from going low during exercise.

I was a new diabetic. I took their advice at face-value. They were experts, not me. Nevertheless, as the years went by, it became progressively more obvious that a once-daily dose of Lantus wasn't staying in my body for the full 24 hours. When I talked to my Canadian team about this, they readily acknowledged that Lantus' efficacy starts to wane at about twenty hours, give or take. Their solution? I should take my 24-hour dose earlier in the day.

Think about that. Their position was that, because Lantus was only effective for about 20 hours, I should take my dose at 9:00pm instead of 10:00pm. If you're not exactly sure how that helps cover the missing four hours, you're not alone. But the goal of Canadian health care practitioners seems to be getting the patient to stop asking questions and just adhere to their prognosis. I was young, naive, and the tactic worked on me. I am ashamed to say so, but it's true.

Fast-forward to my return to the United States, a decision I made in part to receive better treatment for my diabetes. My US team took one look at my blood sugar pattern and immediately labeled me "an uncontrolled diabetic." I didn't like hearing that, but sometimes it's more important to take care of the body than it is to take care of the ego.

But here's where it gets interesting. The recommendation of my US team was... Split my Lantus dose and take it twice a day! The exact opposite of the Canadian recommendation. When I told my US endocrinologist that the Canadian doctors told me not to do this, she said (in her slightly curt, and politely dismissive way), "Really? We do it all the time." And that was the end of the discussion.

Taking my US doctor's advice, I am now taking Lantus twice a day, and the results are excellent. My blood sugar is in much better control and I feel great. For those of you (type 1 diabetics) considering a twice-daily regimen for your long-acting insulin, I highly recommend it. I can also assure you that there is no "transition period" to worry about. You simply take half your dose, as usual, and then take the other half 12 hours later. Your body doesn't "feel any different" as you make the switch, except insofar as your blood sugar stabilizes.

What's important here is the fact that the Canadian team considered the correct prognosis to be medically dangerous, despite the fact that it is not at all medically dangerous. It is the correct prognosis. I could never have hoped to achieve blood glucose control in Canada so long as I was being advised against following the correct insulin regimen!

But Why Would They Do That?
Now for a little background on why the Canadian team was giving me such bad advice...

Lantus was a major pharmaceutical breakthrough. This product is insulin suspended in crystals. When you inject Lantus, the crystals slowly dissolve over a very long time period, releasing a steady flow of insulin into the blood stream over that time period. In order to demonstrate just how innovative this product is, the manufacturer produced studies and data showing that large quantities of Lantus could remain active in the blood stream for a full 24 hours. As a result of this data, Lantus was approved by the world's various health regulatory agencies as a "twenty-four hour insulin."

Left out of the story, though, was the fact that smaller amounts of Lantus do not remain active in the blood stream for a full twenty-four hour time period. That means type 2 diabetics can enjoy an enormous Lantus injection that lasts 24 hours, but type 1 diabetics who use Lantus find themselves running short of long-acting insulin late in the day. To reap the same kind of benefits Lantus confers on type 2 diabetics, we type 1 diabetics need to inject a smaller amount of insulin, and do so twice per day instead of once.

Using Lantus twice-a-day, though, runs contrary to the regulatory approval Lantus initially received. Basically, because the manufacturer demonstrated 24-hour efficacy, Lantus received approval for once-daily injections, despite the fact that there are other ways to use Lantus. But, to the regulators, the only way to use a product is the way they approve it to be used. Period, end of story.

In the United States, this fact is not very important, because doctors aren't (yet) owned, controlled, and paid by the government. So doctors can simply prescribe the correct dosing regimen, and to hell with what the bureaucrats have "approved." You need Lantus twice a day? You get Lantus twice a day, because that's what works.

But, in Canada, the doctors are completely owned and controlled by the government. To put it succinctly, if a Canadian doctor tells a patient to do something other than what the regulators have "approved," then that doctor has some 'splainin' to do. And no bureaucrat likes having to explain themselves, therefore the only Lantus regimen that can possibly exist in the Canadian universe is the once-daily regimen. Period. Anything else means medical tribunals and heavy-handed regulatory blowback.

Epilogue
One final footnote on this. Yesterday, my US endocrinologist asked me how I approach negative corrections. "Negative corrections?" I asked. "Yes," she said, "do you know about negative corrections?" I told her I had never before heard of them.

She quickly produced a chart of dosing corrections based on blood glucose readings. When your blood sugar tests high at mealtimes, you are supposed to take extra mealtime insulin in order to bring it back under control. That's a "positive correction." A "negative correction" is when you reduce your mealtime bolus based on a blood glucose reading lower than the benchmark. Negative corrections even apply when you are not in a state of hypoglycemia. It's just another level of fine-tuning one's insulin dose.

But it is a level of fine-tuning that my Canadian team never told me about. Add this to the ever-growing list of reasons why the US health care system will always be better than the Canadian system, despite what Paul Krugman and the liberals tell you. You can't take a New York Times op-ed to the bank. Blood glucose readings are something you can.

Case Closed!

Over at The Huffington Post, one Dr. Jonny Bowden provides some much-needed levelheadedness regarding all the recent hype surrounding "the Mediterranean diet." He concludes:

What we can say is this: No diet, ever, in the history of the world, has been higher in sugar and processed carbohydrate junk foods than the one that most people in America consume on a daily basis.

And I believe that no diet is better designed to produce the epidemic of obesity, diabetes and heart disease we are currently witnessing.

My own personal opinion is you could design a dozen diet studies showing the superiority of a dozen different diets (from Atkins to Ornish to the Zone) as long as you compare each of them to the crap we're eating now.

With a bar that low, almost any diet is going to look like a superstar.

This is rather interesting, since it highlights what has long been a feature of pharmaceutical research and health research in general.

The way this racket goes is something like this: The researchers identify their conclusion in advance of the study, because they know what point they wish to make. The point is something relatively mundane, as in this case (diets rich in monounsaturated fats from foods such as nuts and olive oil are good for the body), and is therefore easy to "prove" (since it is practically common knowledge). The researchers then design a "control group" around a piece of behavior that the researchers wish to correct. In this case, the researchers wish to point out that an "American" diet of carbohydrate-rich processed foods and very little "fat" (meaning, saturated fat) is bad and we shouldn't eat that way. Finally, the researchers go through the motions of testing an obviously superior data point to an obviously inferior one, and voila! They prove their point, QED.

We see this in the pharmaceutical industry all the time. The way it goes is that scientists assemble a group of basically untreated sick people as the "control" group, and then they assemble a second group who receive treatment - typically, the pharma company's newest offering. The researchers have tested this product seven ways to Sunday, and usually it isn't very "new" to begin with. Sometimes the chemical they're testing is nothing more than an enantiomer. All they have to do is show that their product performs better than a group of sick, untreated people.

Fortunately for us, this game no longer flies in the pharmaceutical world. Unfortunately for us, it still works with Food God research such as the recent study "on" the Mediterranean diet.

Dr. Bowden provides some additional criticisms that are useful here:

I'm a big fan of the concept of Mediterranean eating, even though I've never seen anyone definitively define what "the Mediterranean diet" actually is. (Check the definitions: Most are squishy and vague with phrases like "higher in vegetables" or "lower in dairy.") We do know that in all styles of Mediterranean eating, there is way less sugar. And there's lots of olive oil, nuts and other good stuff.

And later:

And we still don't have a good definition of the Mediterranean diet. (As my mentor, the great Robert Crayhon once quipped, "People think the "Mediterranean diet" means adding a bunch of olive oil to your corn flakes.") And we still don't know which aspects of the so-called Mediterranean lifestyle are the ones that really produce the results. Is it the olive oil? The nuts? The vegetables? The low level of red meat? The fact that they eat slowly and in the middle of the day? Maybe it's all of those things, maybe it's just some of them...[.]

Adherents to what I call the Food God concept (the idea that society desperately needs to regain its "balance" by hanging out at the farmers' market more often) would desperately like all of us to add piles and piles of vegetables to our diet. And nuts. And quinoa. And wine. For some reason, people who worship Food God believe that becoming a wine-obsessed vegetarian will magically correct a large chunk of society's problems.

Hence, the Mediterranean diet. "Ordinary people" like it because they don't have to be vegetarians. They also like it because it provides a rationalization for heavy wine consumption, long nights at the local "bistro" (another fuzzy concept), snobby dinner parties, and the belief that whatever you're eating is healthy if it is topped with parmesano reggiano (not mere parmesan cheese!). Food Godists like it because it nudges society closer to both veganism and European medieval serfdom (plus bikes!).

And since pure veganism is an obviously tough sell to people who, you know, like to enjoy life, the Mediterranean diet serves as a conceptual apparatus by which we can be pressured into behaving more like Marin County hipsters and less like Dallas debutantes.

Considering all that, it's good to know we have friends like Dr. Jonny Bowden adding some intelligence to the discussion. Sadly, I don't think articles like his have much impact on the world at large - certainly not as great an impact as those extolling the virtues of the wine-and-wheatgrass diet.

But it's better than nothing.

Concert Review: Kelly Clarkson

This past Friday I had the opportunity to purchase discounted tickets to Kelly Clarkson's concert in "Dallas" (actually Grand Prairie), Texas. This was a benefit concert for a local educational non-profit, and thus was a little different from a typical Clarkson concert. Nonetheless, it was a good window into how Clarkson stands up as a music performer.

First, let me write a bit about the venue. The concert was held at Grand Prairie's Verizon Theater. Despite its big name and ample parking, the venue is much smaller than the big arena one might typically expect from a singer of Clarkson's repute. Capacity at the venue was much smaller than what a basketball stadium holds. For that reason, the concert had a significantly more intimate feeling than other big performances I've seen in the past. More importantly for music snobs like me, the Verizon Theater is a true theater, meaning the hall is designed with the preservation of acoustics in mind. The room has excellent acoustic properties, so the details of the instrumentation were perceptible despite the comparatively lower auditory volume. I cannot adequately describe to you how important this is with respect to improving concert quality. Music is best when it doesn't rattle the eardrums, when the audience can hear the finer details of what's going on, and when one can exchange a few words with one's fellow concert-goers. The Verizon Theater delivered a great concert experience, and I hope to attend more concerts at that venue.

The opening act was a local Dallas singer, who apparently had also competed on American Idol. His name eludes me because I found his music largely forgettable. Vocally, he drew heavily on an obvious Coldplay influence, which may be ironic given the fact that Coldplay draws heavily on their own set of influences. When this sort of thing happens in music, it makes for very generic - and in my opinion unpleasant - art. The songs had reasonably well-written melodies, but largely felt as though it could be any decent bar band in the city. And while I don't have any specific criticism for the artist, I did not particularly enjoy his set.

When Clarkson took the stage, I had high hopes. I have long been a fan of her work, despite it being more saccharine and generic than what I typically listen to. Her range is incredible, and she seems to sing effortlessly. All of this was true for Friday's concert as well. Her vocals were spot-on, never faltering for even an instant. I have seen many great vocalists in concert, and all of them have stumbled from time to time. It was impressive that Kelly Clarkson delivered what could easily be termed a flawless performance. Her banter with the crowd appealed mostly to the fact that we were all in Texas. Outside of Texas, I'm not sure it would have gone over as well as it did - but then, we were in Texas, so it was highly appropriate. She was cheerful, witty, and easy in front of the crowd.

On the negative end of the spectrum, nearly all of the songs the band played that night lacked energy. This is a problem that also exists on Clarkson's recordings, but it is less noticeable there, having been aptly corrected for with excellent production techniques. I was disappointed by the fact that the drummer in many cases was simply playing half notes on the bass drum and mid-toms, the rest of the "percussion" being delivered by electronic drums. This lack of real drums can explain at least 50% of the dearth in concert energy and is representative of an industry-wide trend. Robotic drums suck the soul out of concert performances, and I wish artists would stop employing this approach altogether.

The rest of the band consisted of two guitarists, a bassist, a keyboardist, and three back-up singers. With a band that large, it is hard to go wrong. Even so, the arrangements struck me as being problematically simplistic. Why employ an eight-piece band if all anyone is doing is playing chords? Bands that large demand better arrangements. It could be that the complex arrangements were there, and I just couldn't hear them. The stage mix heavily favored Clarkson's voice, of course, but was skewed toward the middle of the sonic spectrum, making the whole concert sound a bit like it was coming out of a telephone receiver. This was disappointing, considering the quality of the room's acoustics. Due to the limited sonic range, many of the instruments overlapped and stepped on each other. There was not adequate sonic space for each instrument to be heard on an individual basis. This fact, too, could have contributed to the lack of energy.

Of course, Kelly Clarkson is to blame for none of these acoustic shortcomings. Her performance was incredible. Considering all of the above, I would rate the concert in the 5-6 out of 10 range. It was a worthwhile evening, but left me with a little something to be desired.

Comments "Moderation"

It appears I've reached the tipping point on unmoderated comments. I removed captchas to facilitate comments from a few of my readers, but I soon discovered that those asking for removal of the captchas seldom leave comments.

I'm not reinstating the captchas, but I am requiring that you be logged into some sort of account. This could be a Google, OpenID, or whatever account. I am not ever going to delete your comments, but I am getting literally hundreds of spam messages per day, and having to clear out dozens of them every day. At first, this was not a big issue, but it looks like we've finally reached a "tipping point" for this kind of traffic.

I'm not one for comments moderation, but the robots are a little too much to deal with. I apologize for the inconvenience.

Why Is Temperance A Virtue?

Temperance (the ethical concept, not the anti-alcohol movement) is one of the traditional virtues identified by ancient Greek philosophers. One way to think of it is to say that temperance is the belief in not going overboard, or not letting your passions get out of control. We might also call it cool-headedness, or perhaps simply maturity.

I have been reluctant to comment on the situation in Bangladesh for fear of offending some of my regular readers, many of whom are much closer to the situation there than I am. I claim no expertise on that situation.

However, the situation has reached a grim breaking point. At this point, it would be somewhat immoral of me to say nothing about this important situation merely because I am related to Bangladeshis.

What I've Been Able To Figure Out So Far
Some time ago, the Bangladeshi ruling government (Bangladesh has a Parliamentary system) decided to prosecute members of an opposition party for war crimes pertaining to the 1971 Bangladeshi war of independence. By most accounts, the people who were prosecuted were indeed guilty of atrocious war crimes.

Perhaps the country needed to confront the realities of the war crimes committed in 1971, or perhaps this young South Asian country remains significantly politically unstable. After all, for a large part of their recent history as an independent state, they have been ruled by a military dictator, their Parliamentary democracy having been restored only a few years ago. To make matters worse, it is one of the world's most infamously destitute countries, one with a lot of political corruption, crime, religious orthodoxy, over-population, pollution, and...

Well, one can hardly be surprised that reopening the wounds of the 1971 civil war would ignite passions in a country rife with political unrest. The people took to the streets to demand capital punishment for the war criminals.

At first, the "protests" were peaceful. (I have a difficult time calling them protests, since they were really a mass of people calling for the execution of a small number of criminals. There was nothing to protest against, per se. It was more of a public request.) Eventually (and predictably), the civil discord grew into small-scale riots. Some were killed, many were injured, many were arrested.

Throughout the situation, the Bangladeshi people remained united in the idea that this "movement" was about more than capital punishment, that it was a nationalist movement about Bangladeshi pride.

Eventually, the government satisfied the people's demands, but in order to do so, they had to change the Bangladeshi constitution to enable the accused to be sentenced to the death penalty.

Now, supporters of the accused are causing their own batch of civil unrest.

Some Perspectives From Far Away
Critics of the "movement" are saying, according to The New York Times, that "the case brought against [the war criminals] was politically motivated and tainted by judicial irregularities." Analyzing the situation from my armchair here in the United States, I can't help but feel that the movement was incredibly misguided and hasty.

Think about it: If the war criminals were given a fair trial, then why would the government need to make changes to the country's very young constitution? These changes did not pertain to administrative details - they were designed solely to allow the government to claim a power it did not previously have, to allow the government to kill the war criminals... Who, by the way, just happen to be active members of the opposition party.

If the movement wanted to avoid political controversy, they could easily have avoided creating the appearance of political corruption - something that is, in fact, an every-day feature of the Bangladeshi government anyway.

In short, it is difficult for a white man in the United States to consider this "movement" to be anything more than a political tactic waged by the ruling party. From my vantage point, the ruling party stirred-up the old, forgotten passions of Bangladeshi nationalism to dispose of the political opposition.

The problem here is that the accused were, in all likelihood, truly war criminals. Therefore, we are faced with a situation in which "both sides" can claim to be in the right, for precisely the reasons they claim to be.

Back To Temperance
The problem with any mob is that emotions get hot and start to crowd-out patient, rational thought processes.

Logic would suggest that having war crimes tribunals is a necessary step for a healing country, but would also ask: Why now? Why suddenly? Is doing such a thing under this particular set of circumstances the best way to handle the situation?

Logic would suggest that all guilty parties be punished to the full extent of the law, in order to facilitate a general sense of justice, but would also ask: Is a mob of people calling for nothing more than the death of their fellow citizens really in the right headspace to weigh the pros and cons of their actions? Is changing the constitution really the right way to go about dealing punishment?

I feel that if the Bangladeshi people had acted with more restraint then most of the violence could easily have been avoided. And yet, at the same time, what can anyone expect from a process of ripping the bandages off a very young and very deep wound? Sometimes playing with our strongest passions results in very unexpected and unpleasant consequences.

I hold out hope for the Bangladeshi people as they deal with these issues, and I urge them to maintain a strong sense of temperance. Wisdom comes from sober reflection, patience, and analysis. That is not to say that there is no place for the heart in such considerations, but it is the folly of youth to get carried away by our passions.

At all times, people must maintain a sense of temperance to avoid making difficult situations much worse. Haste makes waste, as the saying goes. When confronting life's most difficult problems, we must lean on the strength of our mind, on our resolve and wisdom. In absence of that, we are nothing more than a passionate mob caught in a feedback loop.

Twitter Account Deactivated

Due to some suspicious activity on my Twitter account, I am deactivating it until further notice. I quite enjoyed having a Twitter account, but it's not worth the hassel of dealing with spam-bots and hackers.

Apologies to all my Twitter followers. The internet can be a hazardous place. I don't have the resources to combat hardcore hacking, so I have to pick my battles.

You can still follow me on Google+ and Facebook.

Common-Sense Dieting And Eating More Seafood

I seldom like to discuss diet on my blog because, for one thing, I doubt anyone cares what I eat, and for another thing, I am not too impressed by fad diets in general. I have written about the dangers of paleo dieting, and I hold the general point of view that we as a society have a tendency to over-intellectualize the topic of food and diet to the point that common-sense truths start to disappear. This, to me, is the real danger of modern dietary trends.

For example, the cholesterol scare that popped up in the late 80s and early 90s was good because it got people thinking about the fatty foods they were consuming; but it was bad, because the over-intellectualization of  the topic created the high-carbohydrate dietary trend. This, in turn, subjected people to a lot of bad food advice. Obviously eating a diet comprised primarily of refined carbohydrates comes with its own set of problems.

Of course, paleo dieting is (in my opinion) misguided for the same reason, but in the opposite direction. Eating multiple eggs per day, and large amounts of fatty meats, is not the kind of dietary practice that common sense would indicate. It is not the kind of diet that should be sustained over a long period of time. Ketosis, as I wrote previously, is not a natural condition of the human body.

At a certain point, common sense must kick-in.

As a diabetic, I have had to analyze my food intake "three-ways-to-Sunday." I am required to compare changes in my food intake to changes in my blood sugar. As a result of this, I have a good working knowledge of what seems to work well, at least for diabetics like me. Interestingly enough, "what seems to work well" is common sense.

For example, common sense would suggest that stuffing yourself with pancakes and breakfast sausage in the morning is going to make you feel unhealthy. Sure enough, my experience (and the data I keep) reveals that whenever I eat a lot of rich carbohydrates or fatty meats at breakfast time, my blood sugar rises more than it should. Carrying this trend out for extended periods of time results in a body that simply doesn't feel great.

By contrast, it is almost impossible (but not completely impossible) to make myself feel bad by eating a large amount of vegetables. Certain very rich vegetables - cucumbers, tomatoes, squash, potatoes, and the like - can and do take their toll. But common sense tells us that "the healthy vegetables," things like spinach, kale, chard, cabbage, broccoli, and so on, will almost never impact our bodies in an adverse way. My personal experience - supported by my data collection - confirms common sense in this case. There may indeed be an unhealthy quantity of broccoli, but most people would have to try very hard to consume that much.

One final note I'll add here pertains to seafood. Seafood makes up a large part of the so-called "Mediterranean Diet," and also a large part of diets in the Far East. Basically, wherever there is saltwater, there prevails diets rich in seafood. For the past couple of weeks, I have tried to replace traditionally "North American" protein sources (chicken, beef, and pork) with seafood. This undertaking has been a smashing success. I have felt pure and energetic. Over this past week, however, I have been travelling, and therefore unable to pursue my typical seafood regimen. What I have noticed is that my body really misses the seafood, and is not responding particularly well to the chicken and turkey with which I have replaced it.

So, it seems to me that a diet rich in seafood - which may or may not be supported by "common sense" - yields very good results for me. Whether or not you are diabetic, I recommend giving a seafood diet a try. All you have to do is eat normally, but restrict your protein consumption to eggs, dairy, seafood, and vegetable sources. Try it for a week and see how you feel. Then give your old diet a week and compare notes. I'm certain you'll reach the same conclusion I have.

Trade Makes Life Better

This morning's particularly excellent Cafe Hayek post from Donald Boudreaux is a glorious exposition on what it means to succeed in the export business. It really got my gears cranking, as Boudreaux's posts tend to do. Here is a small sampling (all emphases in the original):

Fifth scenario: American producers employ labor, capital goods, and raw materials to produce goods that are routinely loaded onto big cargo ships.  These ships sail safely to foreign ports.  The American-made goods are unloaded, and in exchange Americans receive money – Australian dollars, euros, yuan, yen, rubles, you name it.  When this money is sent to America, Americans eventually spend it in Australia, Europe, China, Japan, Russia, you name the foreign location.  The more Americans export, the more Americans can import.  And that – the ability to import – is the point of trade.  In the ability to import lies the purpose and value of exporting.

So when, for example, historian Chris Wickham writes that some late-empire-period economies ”depended substantially on exports for their prosperity,” what he must mean (whether he knows it or not) is that those economies depended substantially on trade for their prosperity.  Trade, not exports.  Mr. Wickham could just as accurately – indeed, more accurately – have written about these economies that they “depended substantial on imports for their prosperity.”  To the extent that exports played an important role in creating prosperity for denizens of those economies, exports played that role only insofar as exports enabled the denizens of those economies to enjoy more imports.  The prosperity is found in the increased consumption made possible by greater imports.

Exporting isn't good because "we" are selling "them" stuff. Exporting isn't good because "they" are buying "our" stuff. Exporting is good because people are engaging in trade.

Why is trade good? Because when you trade, you get more of what you want. Period, end of story. There is no such thing as "fair" trade versus "free" trade. There is only trade. Trade is a voluntary (emphasis on the voluntary part) exchange of X for Y, made by two or more parties. By definition (i.e., not by supposition or by conjecture or by philosophical assumption), all parties who engage in trade walk away with more of what they want.

We can argue all day about whether $4 per gallon of gasoline is a "fair" price, but in the end, the only thing that matters is whether you bought it willingly from a willing seller. If this fact is true, then (again, by definition), you end up with more of what you want, and so does the seller.

In the abstract, this all seems so terribly obvious: "Of course, of course! Everyone knows that free trade enriches both parties to the transaction! We all know how it works in textbooks!" But allow me to demonstrate how some of you are not quite following along...

What if I were to say, "Rob over-payed on a gold ring by $500!" Most people would not be particularly impacted by a statement like this. Gold rings can be $2000 or more dollars, and they are a luxury. Anyone who over-pays by $500 is still getting an expensive chunk of gold.

Now, consider this alternative statement: "Monique over-payed on her hospital charges by $500!" Suddenly, people are of the opinion that a tragedy has befallen poor Monique. Like a gold ring her hospital charges can be $2000 or more dollars. And yet, because it is "health care," then suddenly everyone believes that Monique "ought" to pay very little money. Because, after all, isn't health care a noble good and a human right?

People who fall for this kind of rhetoric are unaware of the fact that Rob and Monique both walked away from their situations with more of what they wanted. Rob wanted a gold ring more than he wanted the $500; had he not, he never would have paid. Monique wanted whatever treatment she received at the hospital more than she wanted the $500; had she not, she never would have paid.

Trade always results in a surplus for both parties. This is because trade is voluntary. Unless someone sets his mind on undermining his own interests, he will always be made better off from trade.

It is an unavoidable fact.

The Individual, Part III

Previous installments of my series on individuality can be found here and here.

Part Three, Some Specific Conflicts Between Individualism And Collectivism
Previously, I discussed the idea that collectivism is closely tied to our sense of morality, while individualism is closely tied to our sense of existence. In that sense, human beings are both collectivist, social animals and individualist, existentialist ones.

Next, I spent some time elaborating on the value of individualism in that it provides our lives with a deep sense of meaning and fulfillment. The social/individual duality of human nature means that our more collectivist pursuits satisfy important needs we have, but that the same is true for our individualist pursuits. The reason I felt the need to spend time establishing that fact is that, in this day and age, individuality is a less-emphasized aspect of human nature.

It may be that the absence of individualism in society has been filled with an over-emphasis on collectivism - and there are those who make that case. But it may also be that the absence of individuality in society has not been filled by anything at all. Perhaps it is just a gap. Whichever the case, this series on individuality is my attempt to provide some balance, to remind my readers of the value of individualist existentialism, and to perhaps win over some to "the cause." But please bear in mind that "the cause" is not so much about individualism ahead of collectivism as it is about individualism in balance with collectivism.

The truth is, there are plenty of times in life when we feel a very real conflict between our social/collective obligations and our personal/individual ones. Today, I'd like to discuss those conflicts.

Most often, this conflict is explored from the standpoint of an implied preference toward collectivism. The child who complains that someone else is playing with his toys is admonished for being selfish and encouraged to share. The employee who objects to the way business is being handled is reprimanded for "not being a team player." The Uncle Scrooge is criticized for letting his ambition get in the way of his personal relationships. We are all very familiar with these situations. They are a part of our culture, which means that they are part-and-parcel to our social nature. Obviously, we would expect this to be the case - these situations reflect a preference for collectivism over individualism.

Less familiar to us are tales and descriptions of "the other side" of these same stories, the individualistic side.

The child who will not share is, after all, a child. If we accept the premise that children are not born with a perfect understanding of themselves, and with a need to self-actualize and get along with others, then we must not conclude that the child is simply being wicked and greedy. The truth is, the child is not yet mature enough to understand our concepts of private property and social inclusion. It takes experience and parental guidance for that child to understand that his toy still belongs to him, even when he shares it with others. It is incumbent upon us to teach our children that sharing is a kind gesture offered to others that helps others understand that we value their friendship, and to set a precedent for further cooperation between us in the future. Therefore, we should think about the child's potential confusion before we chastise him for "failing" to share. Private property and cooperation are concepts that many adults do not understand; a child's confusion should be understood and forgiven. When we correct such behavior, we should do so with that confusion in mind.

Many books could be - and have been - written on the topic of office politics. I certainly claim no expertise on that subject, although I can claim some experience. Perhaps, in days gone by, the workplace was an easier environment to navigate because both roles and job descriptions were much better-defined. In a factory or on a construction site, for example, work is often divided according to specific tasks: the inspector inspects, the drywall hanger hangs drywall, the framer frames, the foreman oversees, the estimator estimates, and so on. Each employee knows his or her specific task to complete, and knows precisely to whom he or she can escalate difficulties. There is not a lot of room for complex office politics in more "traditional" forms of employment precisely because responsibilities and obligations are all very well-established.

We can contrast this sort of organization to a modern, service-industry organization, such as a consulting firm. A consulting firm contains a team of people who all share a roughly homogeneous skill set. To the extent that each consultant performs a different task, this determination is made by the project manager, whose own skills are roughly the same as those of his or her team members. Each individual team member, given sufficient time (and authority), would be able to perform all of a project's associated tasks himself or herself. The reason a project is performed by a team instead of an individual is not due to any individual's shortcomings, but rather due to the fact that it is more efficient for tasks to be divided up and worked on simultaneously. And yet, there is an extensive organizational hierarchy in any consulting firm: the employees exist on a totem pole with "junior analysts" at the bottom, performing "grunt work," while "consultants" or "senior consultants" perform mid-level tasks; most of the organization and planning is performed by "principle consultants" or "project managers." This all seems fine enough in theory, but in practice, when do we know we are performing "grunt work," versus "mid-level" tasks? When do we know we have sufficient "experience" to act as a "senior consultant" versus a simple "consultant?" To a great extent, these determinations are arbitrary. Someone does, in fact, determine what is what, but that determination is made according to that person's own ideas, and only justified after the fact. The employees in this latter kind of organizational structure are, therefore, confused about who has authority over them, who has the responsibility of training them and assigning work to them, who is their direct point of escalation when things go wrong, and when they can even say that they have finished the job that has been asked of them.

All that is to say, in the more traditional, old-fashioned workplaces, someone who complained too loudly or disagreed with the work plan probably was indeed being a bump-on-a-log in most cases, because work was well-defined and the hierarchy well-established. Today's workplaces are entirely different. Authority is often claimed, rather than earned. The team's decisions are often a rather fuzzy consensus, as opposed to being a foreman's work schedule. A junior employee may never gain a promotion simply due to the fact that he or she never moves to claim authority. Others may act to claim it, but somehow rub the rest of the team the wrong way. All such conflicts create "office politics." It is not exactly clear that someone with strong and divergent opinions really lacks for team spirit. The next time you encounter these conflicts in your own office, you may want to take a step back and consider whether the problem really is an absence of teamwork, or whether the odd-one-out does indeed have a point.

The most abstract of the three conflicts I have mentioned so far is the one involving an individual's own, private ambitions, and the way these ambitions affect that person's relationships with other people. If that person's ambitions are professional, then everything I have just described about office politics also applies. Still, the conflicts associated with personal ambition must be disambiguated from office politics.

A person's circumstances play an important role in how their lives unfold. Two people may behave almost identically in two highly comparable situations, and that behavior may affect success for one person and failure for the other. It should come as no surprise, then, that many people become envious of people close to them when they observe similar behavior resulting in good success for their friends, but not for themselves.

It is only natural. It's our sense of justice at work. Justice means that good things come to good people who do good things, while bad things come to bad people who do bad things. When the cake of life is distributed unequally, it tastes bitter.

To unravel this conflict, we need to remember the duality between our collectivist nature and our individualist nature. Where there is moral conflict, there is existential hope. Where there is existential conflict, there is moral hope.

Knowing that a good friend or colleague has succeeded reflects well on us. Our sense of empathy and our respect for our friendship inspires us to feel happy for the successes enjoyed by others. Where we would be inclined to feel an existential disappointment with the failure of our own good deeds to result in personal success, our moral and social sentiments - our collectivist nature - suffices to soothe us. We may also keep in mind that friends in higher places confer social benefits to us ourselves. On the other side of things, the person who enjoys some success must keep in mind the many other, similar people around them who engaged in near-identical behavior, but whose circumstances did not provide the unique opportunities that lead to success. This is a fancy way of saying that "success is when hard work meets good luck." But keeping this in mind will prevent us from believing that it was solely our own genius that produced our success, and therefore prevent us from believing incorrectly that we are morally superior (remember: collectively, socially) than those around us.

Thus we see that an existential issue is resolved by keeping some moral/collectivist perspective.

On the other hand, the conflict can cut the other way. Personal success can mean that the group reacts harshly and resentfully against an individual. Even worse, a group can conspire against a potentially successful individual, preventing him or her from achieving any measure of success at all. This, in contrast to what I said above, is a moral conflict that can only be resolved existentially. Individually,  a person must decide whether his or her relationship with the group at large confers as many benefits for him or her as it does for the group. Unfortunately, in cases when the group is excessively invasive on a person's individuality, an individual's existential needs must outweigh the value of group membership. The individual must sever ties with a bad group and search for a healthier one. That individual must continue to hold a high sense of self-esteem and put his or her ambitions ahead of cloying clutches of a group that can only be described as negative.

Naturally, wherever there are mentally healthy individuals engaged in healthy social interaction, all of the above conflicts will exist in harmony and balance, and we will be able to easily navigate through all situations without hurting each other.

Minimum Wage: Facts Versus Ethics

This morning, over at Cafe Hayek, Donald Boudreaux points to a Wall Street Journal editorial on minimum wage versus unpaid internships for members of Congress.

Boudreaux writes about

...the hypocrisy of politicians who, in one breath, boast of the great benefits that their offices’ unpaid internships offer to young men and women, and who then, in their next breath, pontificate self-righteously about how their support for a higher legislated minimum-wage is evidence of their special concern and care for low-skilled workers.

He then continues:

How gratifying that Ms. Waters is among those who “feel better” about themselves for forcibly shrinking the range of employment options open to low-paid workers.  It’s public-policy as puerile theater-therapy for the ego-greedy elite.

Meanwhile, Dwight Lee's WSJ editorial makes similar points:

Internships at the White House, on Capitol Hill and elsewhere in Washington introduce thousands of young people to working in government and to the discipline and industry needed to function in any workplace. Yet these unpaid positions are almost by definition reserved for the offspring of the well-to-do who are least in need of such an advantage.

And later:

Increasing the minimum wage would make this path to a better financial future harder than it needs to be for the young people who already face the most difficulty. These are the young who don't have the advantages of a stable family life, parental role models at home, and teachers in good private or public schools instilling in them the joy of learning.

These young people don't have the financial security to go to a university right out of high school and then continue on for a professional degree. And they can't afford to take unpaid internships, whether in Washington or with nonprofit organizations.

For these young people, the first jobs they find are seldom those in which they start out being productive enough to be worth even the current minimum wage of $7.25. The teenage unemployment rate reported in January was 23.4%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. One wonders how much higher it has to go before Washington wakes up.

As we can see, these statements are emotionally charged appeals to our greater sense of morality. In the same sense as I have been frequently discussing here on my own blog (here and here), there is an inherent collectivism about these sorts of emotional appeals. They are intended to demonstrate that there are significant moral problems with raising the minimum wage, and that doing so will result in powerful negative consequences on the more vulnerable members of "our" society. By implication, "our" society is made better when "everyone" is allowed to find a job.

But, of course, this is not so very different than the equally collectivist claims made by minimum wage advocates. For that group, we may simply replace the phrase "find a job" with "draw a living wage." In any case, they are appealing to our collectivist desires to ensure that everyone in "our" society is adequately provided for.

Perhaps libertarian economists like Boudreaux (I will not speak to Lee's ideology because I am not aware of it) are so inclined to make the ethical case for the abolition of minimum wage laws precisely because their political opposites are making the same kind of claims in favor of minimum wage. Perhaps the intention is to highlight that morality need not always favor socialism or the state. Perhaps the idea is to demonstrate that the socialists do not have a monopoly on ethics.

If so, such exposition is unlikely to win over new converts. The reason for this is that those who favor higher minimum wages view the world unlike economists. Economists see the world as an array of competing resource allocation schemes. Scarcity exists, therefore nobody can have all that they want, therefore schemes that maximize resource allocation and minimize deadweight loss are preferable.

Unlike the economists, socialists view resource allocation through a lens of competing class interests. They believe that the only reason the poor do not draw higher wages is because the rich people are taking a larger share for themselves. They also believe that the reason many people are unemployed is because the rich refuses to hire them. (The argument is that hiring more workers who must be paid "fairly" cuts into the profits [notably, not revenue] of the rich.)

As such, Boudreaux's remarks miss the mark. Luckily, Mr. Lee's editorial has another side to it, which we would not know about, were we to rely solely on the excerpts provided by Boudreaux. Lee also makes the existential case in favor of lower-than-minimum-wage work (emphasis added):

The president and other champions of a higher minimum wage clearly recognize the value of entry-level work. Washington interns do much of the phone-answering and mail-processing chores that await first-time jobholders in offices across the land. An entry-level job is much more important for many young people than making a little summer money. It is the best opportunity they have for getting the training to develop skills they need to earn a good income later in life when they will have more financial obligations.

As Lee rightly points out, there are clear, non-monetary benefits to working an unpaid internship with the US federal government. With regard to internships, almost no one disagrees. The "hypocrisy" of the minimum-wage advocates is not that they cruelly wish to deprive the poor of work, but rather that they themselves understand full well that some work confers important benefits beyond the mere monetary value of it.

This fact is impressively encapsulated by the "server's wage" earned by waitstaff, which is much lower than the minimum wage. Servers earn this lower wage because everyone understands that being a waiter or waitress comes with the important non-wage benefit of exposure to gratuity. A server can earn much more than minimum wage - much more than even some well-paying non-service-industry jobs - solely by virtue of the fact that they have access to gratiuties.

The existential case against minimum wage is the simple fact that not all job compensation is monetary in nature. Sometimes having the flexibility of working, say, a 10-hour work week is more important than earning another $2 per hour. Under a minimum wage regime, many such employment opportunities are lost because 10 hours per week at minimum wage is too costly for the employer to justify, but 10 hours per week at a slightly lower wage might in fact make a lot of sense.

So flexibility, access to gratuity, access to high-profile experience, and so on, constitute important non-wage benefits that can be had in a world without minimum wage legislation. To a lesser extent, these opportunities still exist. The existential reason to abolish minimum wage, however, is that opening up the job market to more such opportunities would confer important economic benefits on low-skill, or low-wage, or even just entry-level employees.

What Direction Are We Heading?

I am happy to know that - at the very minimum - I am not the only one who has the very uneasy feeling that American society is progressing in the wrong direction.

Over at Spootville, Tim asks, "Why Do You Watch The News?"

There could be a concentration camp in this country.  Maybe if there is we will hear about it, maybe we won't.  Do you think that the media would report anything of the sort if it had a direct link to our President?

If our President shot a republican, would the media claim that the president should be removed from office, or would they claim that the republican had it coming?

It all reminds me of a conversation I once had with good friend and faithful Stationary Waves reader TR, about life in the former Soviet Union. TR told me that people were curious about what was going on within the country, that much of the protests and the desire to change things in the government came - not from an ideological desire to overthrow communism and replace it with capitalism - but rather a simple desire to know WTF was going on out there. Could they trust the government numbers? Could they trust the news? They heard the stories, but what was really happening?

Meanwhile, Oscar Pistorius is being prosecuted for murder while the lead investigator building the case against Pistorius "has been replaced after it was revealed that he himself faces murder charges." Correction: Make that seven counts of attempted murder, including opening fire at a tour bus. Botha - the investigator and alleged murderer - has been replaced a day after falsely stating that he had discovered steroids in Pistorius' home, and admitting that the police possessed absolutely no evidence contradicting Pistorius' account of the night in question.

Now, I have no idea who is guilty and who is innocent in this vain charade. But as the details of the case against Pistorius have emerged over the last few days, I have found myself in the dubious position of not believing the police investigators at all.

Why not? Because police officers right here in the United States shot up a large chunk of the West Coast in pursuit of a man who they eventually burned alive; no evidence, no case, no trial. The police tell us that Dorner murdered other people. They then launched a small army of police officers and some unmanned drones to hunt Dorner down and kill him.

I ask you, which is more terrifying: An accused murderer on the run, or an army of police officers who can unleash hellfire and fury, and killer drones, hunt a man down, and kill him in cold blood without a fair trial?

There are those of you who will certainly suggest that the LAPD would never have done this if they did not have adequate evidence against Dorner. You will claim that the LAPD would never lie about such a thing. How horribly naive you are.

The media's stunning silence on the failures of the state are one item on the list. The murderous police state that can do anything it pleases is another item on the list. The occupation of several sovereign Middle Eastern nations is another item on the list.

My friends, I ask you, is this the direction we want to move as a country? Is this the kind of power we want to allow the state to have? Does it honestly fill you with a sense of national pride? Does it make you happy when you stop to think that every four years we elect a man to a position we readily describe as, and believe to be, "the most powerful man in the world?"

It is a mark of true cowardice to watch these events pass by and say nothing. How despicable, then, is it to make excuses for what the state has become, and how low to actually voice support for such madness? Wake up, America.