Venezuelans are fleeing the country in boats to escape the economic collapse. And as Stephen Green notes, the author of the piece at the NYT can’t be bothered to ascribe the disaster to its cause. Nope, it’s just “bad luck.”
Category Archives: Business
The FCC
Will Trump abolish it?
It would be nice. I can think of a large number of federal agencies that wouldn’t be much missed, except by the rent seekers they support.
“Fake News”
No, the real problem is dumb news:
Media is a product. Firms that provide this product are servicing a need, and we’d only be kidding ourselves to claim news consumers desire only to be informed. This isn’t a matter of simple bias confirmation. News outlets have begun to cater not just to partisans but the minimally informed for whom fleeting and shareable controversies provide a sense of feeling informed. What media consumers reward outlets for are rarely deeply reported stories on matters related to consequential items of public policy. What takes off are emotionally stimulating stories that don’t require of their readers any background knowledge to fully understand them and to opine on them.
This kind of entry-level politics is not a new phenomenon, and its victims are bipartisan. Colin Kaepernick, the Black Lives Matter movement, college-age adults devolving into their childlike selves, or pretentious celebrities politicizing otherwise apolitical events; for the right, these and other similar stories masquerade as and suffice for intellectual stimulation and political engagement. The left is similarly plagued by mock controversies. The faces printed on American currency notes, minority representation in film adaptations of comic books, and astrophysicists insensitive enough to announce feats of human engineering while wearing shirts with cartoon depictions of scantily clad women on them. This isn’t politics but, for many, it’s close enough.
These are emotionally gratifying confirmations of tribal moiety. They provide readers a chance to affirm and demonstrate clannish loyalty. They are attractive to media organizations because they allow them to forgo the five sentences of exposition that are required to understand any subject of objective policy relevance—sentences that, in some cases, news outlets literally cannot afford.
This is a continuing product of our failed public-education system and academia. But then, perhaps it’s not a failure — it might be exactly what people running those institutions have been trying to achieve.
SLS/Orion
This is almost comical, or would be if it wasn’t such a tragic waste:
In an interview this summer, the engineer who oversees the development of SLS and Orion for NASA, Bill Hill, acknowledged that the vehicles were too costly now to be practical. “We’re just way too expensive today,” Hill told Ars. “It’s going to take some different thinking and maybe a little bit more risk taking than what we’re wanting to do today.”
Gee, if only someone had warned them about this. Or if only insane NASA boosters had realized that how much things cost really does matter.
Trump And ObamaCare
No, amending it won’t work. They deliberately designed it to ensure that it wouldn’t.
Allowing people to buy insurance with pre-existing conditions remains as economically insane as when it was first proposed. There are better ways to deal with this than effing up the insurance market. And 26-year olds are supposed to be adults, though that’s just stupid, but not as economically harmful.
[Update a few minutes later]
And yes, live by reconciliation, die by reconciliation. Have it on his desk to sign on his first day.
Science’s Broken Rewards System
A a look into the math and sociology of it.
Counting Calories
These may be the stupidest people in the world:
Based on its menu board, Desmond bought a chorizo burrito at the Chipotle restaurant on San Vicente Boulevard in Los Angeles on Nov. 3 believing that it contained 300 calories, the suit states. But after consuming the product, Desmond “felt excessively full and realized that the burrito couldn’t have been just 300 calories,” according to the complaint.
Two days later, Gurevich bought a chorizo burrito at the Chipotle location on Riverside Drive in Toluca Lake and similarly realized after eating it that had more than the 300 calories advertised, the suit says.
You can’t tell how many calories are in food by how “full” you feel after eating it. Nutritional labeling is part of the general public-health disaster that has been nutrition “science” for decades.
And speaking of which, “researchers” are shocked to discover that kids are healthier, with lower body fat and higher vitamin D levels, on whole milk.
No one should be consuming low-fat dairy products, which are a nutritional abomination. Michelle’s school-lunch program literally constitutes physical child abuse.
Trump And NASA
Eric Berger discusses the possibilities for NASA administrator. I think that going with Scott would be the conventional choice, which would belie Trump’s stated desire to “drain the swamp,” but then, I’ve never believed any of Trump’s promises. I’m a little disturbed by the fact that Bob Walker seems to be no longer involved. I wonder what happened there?
[Update a few minutes later]
@Rand_Simberg I believe Walker is out because of Pence's purge of lobbyists.
— Eric Berger (@SciGuySpace) November 17, 2016
[Update a while later]
More thoughts from Keith Cowing. TL;DR: He thinks Scott would be a better choice than Bridenstine. FWIW.
Risk In Space
A blog post with the European perspective, from Jan Woerner. It’s almost as though he read my book.
Trump, And Climate
Thoughts from Judith Curry. tl;dr He’s not crazy:
In my post Trumping the elites, I stated that Trump’s election provided an opportunity for a more rational energy and climate policy. Many in the blog comments and the twitosphere found this to be an incomprehensible statement.
Here is what I think needs to be done, and I do see opportunities for these in a Trump administration:
- a review of climate science that includes a faithful and transparent representation of uncertainties in 21st century projections of global and regional climate change
- reopening of the ‘endangerment’ issue, as to whether warming is ‘dangerous’
- a do-over on assessing the social cost of carbon, that accounts for full uncertainty in the climate model simulations, the integrated assessment models and their inputs.
- support funding for Earth observing systems (satellite, surface, ocean) and research on natural climate variability.
Even if politics are to ‘trump’ the conclusions of these analyses, it would be clear that the Trump administration has done its due diligence on this issue in terms of gathering and assessing information. If the Trump administration were to accomplish the first 3 items, they might have a scientifically and economically defensible basis for pulling out of the Paris agreement and canceling Obama’s Clean Power Plan.
I noted the other day on Twitter that if Myron is the new EPA administrator, we’ll finally have one who is not a rabid environmentalist, and will follow the law, doing actual cost/benefit analyses. As a bonus, many EPA employees may quit (though it’s unclear if they have any marketable skills outside of government).