A few days ago I finished reading The China Story by Freda Utley. Just last night I finished Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence by Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson. I began the first over a month ago, and the latter when I began my previous post. Part of the difference was that I was reading Utley’s book in pdf form on my computer, and was constantly tempted to look at other stuff on the internet. Another reason is that it’s much more boring. She was personally involved in some of the events discussed, but I did not care to read a chapter focusing on Owen Lattimore. Another blemish in my eyes is that like those she criticizes, she is an idealist with a distaste for self-interested cynical realism. She displayed that in other writings sympathetic to the Palestianians (not unlike several of her comrades of the old right) as well as the defeated Germans after the second world war (this would be sufficient proof of anti-semitism to a modern neo-conservative). Although she had opposed war with Germany (though ironically may bear some responsibility for it, as Japan blamed her for our boycott of them during the Sino-Japanese war) and sought a negotiated peace, in this book she tries to use the ill-repute of the old isolationists to analogize those who were later sympathetic to the Soviet Union and/or Chinese communists. I found that distasteful.

It is enjoyable to read just how wrong so many of the great and good were in their perceptions of the communists, but in hindsight we can see that Utley was wrong about much as well. China did indeed split from the Soviet Union to a degree even greater than Tito. The collapse of the Soviet Union resulted in absolutely no diminishing of the political power of the communist party in China. The most interesting part of the book to me was a question Utley posed but never quite answered: why was our policy in Europe (such as toward Greece and Turkey) so different from the one the same people advanced at the same time in East Asia? Her answer is that Americans were more familiar with Europe and viewed its defects as understandable aberrations given the circumstances, but were more likely to look down on backward, corrupt Chinese government. My hypothesis is that they didn’t really care all that much about China, much as with Africa today. Freda cared, and so did her fellow journalists (some of whom, like her, had some affiliation with the communist party) that stayed in China while the Japanese advanced. Many of them were willing to overlook the dark side of the Chinese communists, just as Freda acknowledged Chiang Kai-Shek’s earlier partnership with the communists as well as the Soviet Union and the defects of his own government but stumped for him anyway (the possible difference in reactions may be due to the fact that while in Russia Utley’s husband was killed on suspicion of Trotskyism). One final note I’d like to make is that most histories I’ve read attribute the result of the civil war to the incohesive nature of the Kuomingtang, which was really a collection of warlords prone to break apart, which isn’t really discussed in the book.

The discussion of the next book goes on for a while with lots of summary and a critique of Mencius Moldbug, so I will put it below the fold.

I finished Demonic Males much quicker than I expected to, because I was planning on leaving enough for later, but whenever I planned on reading one more chapter it ended up being two or three. It’s not a dry science text and even has some good narrative sections. The subtitle says “apes”, but it’s mostly about chimpanzees and how they relate to human nature and history. That is because we are more similar to chimpanzees than any other species. The chimpanzees have a “party-gang” social structure, where males jockey (even to the point of two tearing of the fingers and testicles of a third) for the alpha position, resulting in favorable access to food and females. When the party reaches above a certain size it splits apart so that theere will not be too much competition over food in the area. Males form gangs and engage in raids (not merely in defense or retaliation) on neighboring territory where if they find a lone male or infertile female or a male-female pair they will beat their victim (even if it was a former friend or relative) to the point of crippling (later resulting in death) and in the last case drag the female back to their troop. These raids resemble the very common method of war among primitive peoples engaged in low-intensity agriculture and to a lesser extent hunter-gatherers. Within a troop a chimpanzee male can induce a female to become its consort by waiting until no one is around to defend it and then repeatedly battering it until it follows. Although in some related species the size ratio of males over females is similar or even larger, chimpanzees along with humans stand out for that behavior. Gorillas form large troops where a dominant silverback male protects a harem of females without needing to do violence against them or fight other adult males to the point of death. However, a bachelor gorilla may induce a female to leave her troop and join him by penetrating its defenses and killing her infants. Most female gorillas experience infanticide of one of their children at some point in their lives and perversely this makes the killer more attractive to her, as he has demonstrated that her current protector is not up to the task (lions behave similarly). Orangutans are solitary animals and a large (or flanged) male mates by making loud calls, whereupon a female will come to him and mate. As far as that goes, it seems their relationships are less morally revolting than those among gorillas and chimps. However, rape is rampant among chimpanzees. There is another variant of male which is adult but has the body of a youth, about the size of a female. Because it is not large enough to protect a female by driving away other males, they do not wish to mate with it and avoid it. However, its small size also enables it to chase females and climb trees easily so that it may rape them. Because baboons are solitary, raping is a viable strategy for these males. An alternate theory presented is that the rape is not directly advantageous but is rather a form of sexual coercion (like battery for chimps and infanticide for gorillas) that induces females to be more passive toward that male should she encounter it again, but until some evidence shows that the latter actually occurs, I would say Occam’s Razor suggests that rape is about sex in that instance rather than power.

The exception to this pattern, and discussed in the third to last chapter of the book, are bonobos. Wrangham states that there really is another evidence to be confident that they are the “hippie ape” they have been portrayed as, just as Margaret Mead’s Samoans were not. The theory for how they turned out that way is that a drought and absence of mountains in their home long ago exterminated the local gorillas. This freed up a lot of soft herbs that gorillas had been eating for chimps (or a similar sort of proto-chimp from around the time our ancestors branched off by leaving trees and eating roots in a different area) to add as significant feature of their diet rather than focusing on fruits. This in turn enabled significantly larger and more stable parties. As species ranging from honeypot ants to chimpanzees are reluctant to attack with intent to kill without an overwhelming advantage in numbers (making this book not quite the antidote to Randall Collins someone made it out to be), this makes raids less likely among bonobos. Females that spend that much time with each other also bond through what may simply and politely referred to as hoka-hoka (which also enables friendly relations among different parties that encounter one another), and will support one another in the infrequent event of a male acting like an uppity chimp. Females do not have to worry as much about falling behind a few males in search of food while carrying an infant and thereby becoming vulnerable because as mentioned their party size is much larger and like gorillas they have plenty of herbs to munch on. Males do not display the same pattern of jealousy toward females because they appear to be unaware of when females are especially fertile. In that sense they are like the South American muriqui monkey, whose males only engage in sperm competition rather than attempting to prevent any mating. The result is that males and females are co-dominant, with status hierarchies (though associated with much less violence, usually blustering and without premeditated murder) among both sexes that intermingle to the extent that a high-status female may assist a favored male (such as a close relative) in attaining an alpha position. On a final strange note, chimpanzees love to hunt colubus monkeys and eat them, but while bonobos eat meat (such as infant antelopes, as do chimps) and are fully capable of catching colobus monkeys, they show no inclination to eat them, even after accidentally killing them through play. The authors hypothesized a reduced bloodlust and a link between war and hunting.

On a short digression, it should be noted that there are some species that are actually matriarchal. In such cases it is the females that stay in a particular territory and defend it whereas males are more likely to join other parties to avoid incest (under patriarchy it is the reverse). In some species of monkeys such as rhesus macqaues or savanna baboons females form phalanxes and fight each other for territory, though it is non-lethal and the objective is simply to induce the other group to go away. Spotted hyenas are an odd reversal of the usual pattern in that they are among the few species (such as humans, chimps, lions and wolves) where adults deliberately kill other adults, in this case generally both females. The authors emphasize that this exception serves further to illustrate the rule, as these females are significantly masculinized by androgen, with the result that their clitoris (through which they give birth and is thus prone to tear) comes to resemble a penis. The hypothesized reason for that is that they commonly give birth to twins (unless it is their first birth) and that if they are sisters they will almost immediately attempt to kill one another, and this masculinizing serves as a type of camoflage. They are not exactly a mirror image because the result of conquering territory is simply more food. The gestation period prevents females from having the same interest in grabbing extra mating partners from another group, but they can still gain from weakening the other party so that it cannot in turn threaten them.

The final part of the book (excepting the last chapter as merely an epilogue) imagines an “evolutionary feminism”. Even today humanity is strongly shaped by patriarchy. We display a slight degree of sexual dimorphism and the advent of modern weapons makes that muscular difference even less significant, but women in certain situations still experience anxiety and vulnerability alone in the company of males (as Megan McArdle discussed here in the aftermath of DC vs Heller). Males still form gangs, sometimes in the form of armies and empires, to wield power. The world we live in has been shaped to the advantage of the succesful alpha males (Roy Baumeister discusses the internal differences among males within a patriarchal system like ours here). Females, despite the attempt by feminists to “take back the night”, do not form similar support networks as among bonobos to restrain male power. Furthermore, evolution gives them the same perverse attraction to the demonic male as discussed by Overcoming Bias and Theodore Dalrymple. Though the demonic actions of males are harmful to her interests and therefore cause her anguish, a woman who has sons fathered by an example of that type can expect them to be similarly successful. Most cultures throughout history have accepted polygyny (only some Tibetans practice the reverse of polyandry) and even monagamous societies feature mistresses and serial monogamy. This makes traits associated with the demonic male desirable. An ambitious plan would then be to change the very nature or temperament of both males and females. A widespread eugenics program is explicitly considered, but discounted as impractical, as the most demonic males are the least likely to go gently into that good night. The authors look instead to a process they see as already taking place. That is the depersonalization and institutionalization (and to a lesser degree, centralization) of governance, to the point where power comes from the number of ballots rather than barrels of guns or a striking fist. Women already comprise a majority of the population in many countries, they simply have not come together to advance their interests as women and overturn the system. John Lott has argued that they do have diverging political interests (especially if they are not married) and that the result of female suffrage has been a detectable change in policy, more specifically an increase in the size of governemtn. Wrangham and Peterson instead think of a reduction in imperialism as being the result of female political power. However, like males female voters display a bias toward male politicians, even when females perform well (I’d like to link to the Overcoming Bias post on that which focuses on India, but can’t find it, so here is the original paper I think it discussed). Feminism aims to change that, but it hasn’t accomplished much since the mid 90s when this book was written. The very fact that many people find the bonobo model preferable and would like to move toward it would seem to indicate something significant, but the extremely violent indigenous peoples of South America and New Guinea likewise recognize the undesirable nature of their constant fighting (though the book claims at least one South America tribe abandoned their ways under the influence of a few Protestant missionaries). It is my sin that I am Pushtun!

Both books were recommended to me by Mencius Moldbug, and given the last chapters of the last book I am even more surprised that he has not yet discussed gender issues at his blog. MM opposes institutionalization, whether that means direct democracy or bureaucracies and committees. He likes monarchies, the archetypical personalized patriarchy. The authors use as a contrast the northern and southern italian city states, preferring the more republican ones of the north. MM here takes the opposite side. The stated goal of MM’s ideology of “formalism” is to minimize violence, which at first glance would seem to put him in the same camp as the evolutionary feminists. Yet he is upset at the anti-militarism of modern society and hold special ire for the “post-political” New Deal state and European Union. He argues that a hierarchical structure based on violence is inevitable, with the only question being whether it is formalized and therefore more a nature of omnipresent threat rather than actual struggle. However, the ruling regime doesn’t seem to enact much violence, even when coming to power in the so-called “hippie coup” (can you look at the bodycount and seriously compare it to Weimar Germany?). The hated State Department and university/media complex possess neither the ability nor the inclination to wreak violence on their subject populations, as the military and police forces of numerous authoritarian dictatorships have.

Here I get to a point of contention. According to what I had previously read elsewhere, very long-term homicide rates (including war deaths) show a significant, secular decline and while in the U.S crime spiked in the Great Sixties Freakout, it has steadily declined since the 90s (in the comments there it is noted that violent crime in the UK is also declining). In constrast, Wrangham & Peterson say “as we survey societies from ancient Greece to modern-day nations we can detect no clear pattern in the overall rates of death from intergroup violence, which remain between 5 and 65 per 100,000 per year”*. At the end of that paragraph they worry over the new danger of “automatic rifles, fertilizer bombs, dynamite, nerve gas, Stealth bombers, or nuclear weapons”. I found that odd as the works of military history I’ve read state that even ignoring disease (the major cause of death in war for most of its history) war deaths decreased over time even as technology increased, and not because of better medical care but because the bulk of killings in war occurred during routs and increasingly better organized armies have been able to retreat in a safer fashion.

At any rate, during MM’s idealized ancien regime of monarchical Europe, there were a good number of wars and a whole lot of people died. Yet he claims that the epidemic of crime indicates that the status quo is doomed within his lifetime, and people will be clamoring for the return of the Stuarts. He frames the crime issue as one in which largely black and hispanic Dalits wage an ethnic/racial war against white Vaisyas on behalf of the ruling Brahmins (a cosmopolitan bunch also largely white). This is complicated by the fact that the real interracial violence committed by gangs seems to be black vs hispanic, though this is in turn dwarfed by intra-racial violence which is still largely directed at other criminals, and that criminals do not distinguish between Vaisyas and Brahmins (who as a more urban caste are more likely to live nearby). Being white, female and/or without a criminal record results in a negligible possibility of being victimized. The primary hit whites and asians seem to take is in paying taxes to house criminals once they have been apprehended (a cost primarily borne by the upper class and/or blue state residents), a cost that MM indicates he will expand rather than reduce. One might also argue that they shell out more to real-estate agents as demographics move.

It is arguable that there have been larger shifts in the role of gender in our society the past century than race. Contraceptive technologies have separated sex from reproduction and changing social mores permitted large numbers of women to enter higher education and the workforce (though they are unlikely to ever be equally represented in many areas). At Gene Expression it has been argued that our society has been returning to the relative (and I emphasize that word as opposed to “absolute”) gender-egalitarianism of hunter-gatherers. Emulating Burnham or Strauss, one might then claim an esoteric message behind Unqualified Reservations. He seeks a return of patriarchy, though one of the relatively civilized Optimates of the past rather than the more backward one natural selection would give us if current trends continue. This will not result in a reduction of violence, but more likely an increase. However, that would only seem bad to the feminized, emasculated men of the modern era. The best life is one of plunder by force of arms. The problem with Western civilization in the past that led it on the trajectory toward pacifism is Christianity. There was always the germ of a radical social doctrine preached by a madman that has inspired “progressivie” movements throughout time. Liberalism, even (or especially) in its atheistic form is a sect of Christianity. Unlike many self-proclaimed right-wingers, MM has not sought to disassociate himself from the Nazi regime and Hitler. He insists that Hitler was a genuine reactionary and any progressive or “revolutionary” indicators he gave off were bogus. Right-wingers that seek to disassociate themselves from Hitler (Spengler in his various forms in particular) emphasize his paganism and hostility to Christianity. Some also point out that he stated he wished Germany’s religion had been Islam or Shintoism. There is Mencius’ goal. Our society must be converted away from Christianity, and as Shinto holds limited appeal and has a short track record, the answer is Islam. Islam converted some nomadic Arabs with negligible impact on history to a world-spanning empire. Someone or other has mentioned that a society devoid of liberalism, or Christianity or feminine values is essentially one like that of the Islamic world. Islam only ran aground on the wealth and technology of the West, but it has sustained its faith despite that setback and embraced fundamentalism rather than liberalism as the Japanese did to a significant extent. Converting the West to Islam will turn the obstacle of the faith to an ally. This new civilization will both be militarily strong, technologically and economically advanced as well as reactionary and patriarchal, resistant to liberalism. The big question that then occurs to you is how this civilization deals with a rising China. MM has frequently pointed to China and other East Asian countries as models, and this is to emphasize their illiberalism. Without the germ of liberalism they do not represent the constant threat to Islam that neocons did to Iraq and Wilson did to the Second Reich. The Romans and other European powers were long able to live at peace with the Chinese, content as they were with the Middle Kingdom and uninterested in exploration. So it will be with WestIslam. Onward to outer space!

*This appears in the chapter Taming the Demon and cites footnote 19: “Sorokin (1962: 295-341) presents death rates from international war, averaged by century, for Greece (fifth to second century B.C.), Rome (fourth century B.C. to the third century A.D.) and for Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Small and Singer (1983 118 and 252) present annual death rates from wars for 176 states between 1816 and 1980″. The works cited are, respectively, “Social and Cultural Dynamics, vol. 3″ and “Resort to Arms: International and Civil Wars, 1816-1980″.

Just a little while ago I got back from the wedding of a friend. He’s roughly the same age as me, which I would of course consider much too young. I wouldn’t consider it an instance of a rash decision by younguns that will surely backfire on them, as they had it planned out years ago and seem to know what they’re doing. My friend is something of a screwup and from a screwed up family, but his now-wife is the smart, level-headed and responsible type. I only worry that her very Christian Social Gospel aspects will rub off on him. I was pretty lousy as a friend back in high school, believing he was the jolliest person around up until he overdosed on anti-depressants I didn’t even know he was taking. Apparently the signs were obvious to all but the oblivious. At my current rate of progress I’ll reach that life stage around never. Perhaps its because I’ve been so much better off that in complacency I neglect to seek happiness through others. Ludwig von Mises said something or other about that.

Of course the big news in libertarian circles and elsewhere is D.C vs Heller. I’m conflicted about it for decentralist reasons, as discussed by Stephan Kinsella and Kevin Gutzman. The District is the most local authority, so it has the responsibility to pass laws against things like murder that are beyond Congress. However, not being part of a state it has no state constitution to enumerate its powers and add any extra limitations on those powers. I don’t expect in an antifederalist future that rural areas will have the same gun laws as urban areas, and think that residents of the latter would be more comfortable with lax laws in the former if they needed interfere with their own way of doing things. There has been lots of interesting commentary on it at places like Volokh, though speaking as a layman Scalia’s opinion can be taken straight (D.C’s quasi-state status was not at issue). The case for an individual right not limited to service in any organized militia appears convincing, but perhaps I’m not the best judge since I believed that in the first place. Breyer’s argument for “interest balancing” strikes me as ridiculous for a judge to be engaged in and renders any right moot. It’s fun to laugh at what appears to be his hypocrisy depending on which side of the culture wars a law stands on. I admit though that I didn’t read all of Stevens and Breyers’ dissents, as it was past 3 in the morning and I had to get up early for an aforementioned reason. I might get to them later, but now I have a new distraction. UPDATE: I don’t normally link to Arthur Silber because his posts are long, drama-queen ethical pornography and every once in a while I’ll even disagree with his main point! However, on Heller I’ll make an exception.

Right after I got back I found that Demonic Males had arrived. Though at least co-authored by a scientist and describing some of their own research, judging by the first chapter it’s not at all dry. Though the subtitle specifies only “apes”, it has already let out that only chimpanzees and humans display that level of aggression, offering as a contrast the chimp’s close cousin: the bonobo. I recalled reading a New Yorker article on whether the bonobos are really hippies, but I guess I’ll to wait until much later in the book for Wrangham and Peterson to discuss it. I’ve heard that when brought together in captivity the chimps beat up the bonobos, so I wonder why these doves haven’t been replaced by hawks yet. Just this morning I brought the book to the attention of Mark Crovelli after reading his Austrian-inspired a priori theory of international relations. His theory is that tax collecting and legislation enacting states are the cause of war, with democratic states especially likely to engage in it. Like Pinker I think there is good evidence that war and violence were endemic in pre-state society, but perhaps that evidence will mean little to someone who rejects a posteori reasoning when it comes to human action. That book was recommend to me by Mencius Moldbug, who also rejects positivist “social science”. We argued about that in the comments to this GNXP post about the decline of violence.

On an unrelated note, Odessa Syndicate seems to have dissappeared and have been replaced with Occidental Dissent. I have to say I miss the allusions to Stalinist/Nazi authoritarianism and the dystopian society from the film Equilibrium. Also, I have now updated the previous post about my ban from EconLog with a message from Lauren Landsburg.

UPDATE: Scroll to the bottom of this post for what Lauren Landsburg has to say.

I’ve been temporarily banned a number of times, but this one was the last straw. In this thread about James Hansen’s call for putting global warming denying oil executives on trial I assuaged Arnold Kling’s fears for his freedom by saying “The difference between oil executives and Kling is that Kling doesn’t matter. Also, he has less money.” This was ruled ad hominem, and since it was directed at the host and I had been repeatedly warned, I was banished forever.

I don’t see how noting that Kling has less money than an oil executive would merit that, as he has discussed high CEO pay and oil company profits on his blog. So the ad hominem part was that oil company executives matter and Kling does not. If carbon emissions cause warming, then the work oil executives do has a large impact on that warming. These executives have also been in the spotlight when Congress feels it ought to Do Something and they provide funding to people that spread their desired message. So we can say they matter. Does Arnold Kling matter on this issue? Is James Hansen aware of his existence? If he was, would it be worth his time to concern himself with Kling? My guess is no.

In some ways this reminds me of conversations I repeatedly have with Mencius Moldbug and Hopefully Anonymous. The former is talking about overthrowing the current system of government throughout the First World, a plan which now involves restoring the Stuarts. The latter wants to minimize existential risk and discover how to attain immortality, or something close to it. What I tell them is that you don’t matter, I don’t matter, and all the time we spend on the blogosphere will have no effect on the achievement of your goals. The latter at least will learn a few tips about common health and accident risks, but he’s not going to get a new Dr. Ishii cloning massive numbers of Aubrey de Grey and Nick Bostrum.

REPLY FROM LANDSBURG: I sent an e-mail when I found my comment was still up, here is the reply.

Hi, TGGP.

> When I checked it out I saw that the comment I was
> banned for was up.

Is that a question? a complaint? a reminder?

Yes, we left the comment up.  Usually it isn't necessary to remove a
comment altogether, even if it's the last straw or the final cause for
permanently banning someone who has been warned repeatedly for crossing
the line.  A comment has to be exceptionally crude or disruptive to be
removed.

It was possible to interpret your EconLog comment in various ways, so
taking it down didn't seem necessary.  In fact, someone pointed out
yesterday to me that you argue on your own blog that you intended it as
illustrative.  That argument seems perfectly reasonable.  I probably
picked the wrong comment of yours over which to ban you; but frankly,
you've been gunning for getting banned for a long time.  You've managed
to drive your benefit/cost ratio for EconLog well below 1.

Having to waste my time moderating someone does not exactly endear him
to me. After someone receives multiple warnings, bans, and
reinstatements, even a semblance of an infraction is enough to make it
no longer worth my time to sort it out.

Were you an iota as articulate and respectable on EconLog as you are on
your own blog, almost surely you'd never have gotten moderated, much
less banned.

However, that's all water under the bridge. In your case, banning you
doesn't mean I don't respect you as a thinker or as a writer.  Quite the
opposite, in fact.  However, it does mean that you've not cottoned to
EconLog's standards and style--not even after receiving two reprieves
more than we give most commenters who violate the rules here.

I look forward to continuing to enjoy reading your blog entries, as I
have in the past.

Best regards,

Lauren

I am a huge fan of Richard Matheson’s horror story “I Am Legend”. The best part of it is the ending. It’s so old it won’t be a terrible spoiler to tell you that the “vampires” have evolved to a point where they have their own civilization which is not simply insanely murderous, though this is unkown to protagonist Robert Neville who goes on merrily murdering them in their sleep. He comes to be regarded as a monstrous figure to the new humanity, just as the vampires of myth were long ago. He is apprehended and executed for his crimes. Shortly after the book was written Vincent Price starred in “The Last Man on Earth”, which took the initial premise but made it into a generic zombie movie. Same thing for Charlton Heston in the Omega Man. The title doesn’t make a damn lick of sense unless you keep the original ending, so I was psyched when I heard about the latest version with Will Smith. The beginning stayed pretty faithful, but the ending just went the same old route and completely pissed me off. The question  nagged me, “Why did they use the original title and stay true to the original in the beginning?”. Now via Cracked, I know. They first filmed a completely different ending, but test audiences received it negatively, so they refilmed the lame ending we saw in theaters. The original “controversial” ending is on the dvd, and also google video (it didn’t work at the Cracked website, so I’ve got a different one below). It’s not quite as good as the book, where the vampires can actually pass as human (there is no human woman to befriend Neville, she turns out to be a vampire) but it’s an improvement.

Pre-order it! It doesn’t really have any details other than the cover right now, those will be added when the Nine Banded Books site adds a page for it. The Hoover Hog has put up plenty of info on the book and the other stuff in it, like an updated version of Lucifer’s Lexicon (think something Ambrose Pierce would have passed around but not published). I don’t have any special info about the rest, but Chip Smith’s editing of my intro has been fantastic and as far as I’m concerned responsible for the bulk of its quality. It’s like a literary version of the philosopher’s stone, turning quickly hacked out page-filler into gold. I’ve only seen the original version of Rollins’ titular essay, but the writing there was good enough that it wouldn’t require much improvement. It’s a shame that someone of Rollins’ talents languishes in obscurity when Ayn Rand attained demigod status among libertarians, but not unprecedented considering that Crazy Frog topped the billboard charts in numerous European countries (which is not even to say that what it replaced was any good). In case some other publisher is reading this, Rollins and his pen are available with a wit as sharp as ever, though what he lacks is an e-mail address for you to contact him at. E-mail Chip from 9BB instead.

On the subject of books, my order for On Power was cancelled because it was out of stock. I should have knwon the $12 price was too good to be true. I bought a gift card with the exact amount ($16.72 due to taxes and shipping) specifically for that purpose, which means Borders still has my money and perhaps due to loss-aversion I feel I ought to get something out of it. I just have a sneaking feeling that if I shell out a little more to order one of the vast majority of worthwhile books priced higher than $12 it will get canceled again and I’ll have gotten sucked out of yet a little more. I guess I could have avoided that possibility if I used credit cards, but whenever I get offers in the mail I throw it out as soon as they mention an annual fee. I know retailers send kickbacks to the credit card companies, who are also standing ready to suck my blood should I miss a payment. I don’t feel like sending them yearly tribute for the privilege.

I recently discussed Pinker on violence and earlier made some references to Foucault. Googling for that link I came upon this idiotic trashing of Pinker. It is asserted that Pinker’s graphs are “biased” without explaining how and accuses him of ignoring Foucault’s point about the importance of threats “institutionalizing” (or preventing) violence, when Pinker advances the same Hobbesian Leviathan hypothesis I discussed here. On the plus side this person claims Pinker has finished a new book soon to come out called “A History of Violence”. If that actually is the case, I look forward to it.

In a list of religious people put up by Walter Block I noticed the inclusion of Pete Boettke. I don’t recall Boettke mentioning religion before and was under the impression he was an atheist. In Brian Doherty’s book Radicals for Capitalism on page 437 Boettke recalls the good old days saying “The typical young IHS turk in the 1980s believed in the three A’s: anarchism, Austrianism, and atheism.” While a few of his peers have dropped the first two, Pete is still proudly Austrian (hence his blog, journal and courses) and perhaps less proudly anarchist. So I wonder about his C.S. Lewis moment. Bryan Caplan’s dissent from Austrianism has received a number of replies (not surprising given the Austrian penchant for argument), but his strident atheism is only even indirectly argued against by Larry Iannoccone. So my question to Pete is, if you were an atheist like your peers, what led you to that and what later made you decide against it?

That’s how fundamentalist Christian libertarian Vox Day describes the Supreme Court’s Boumedienne decision. As extreme an originalist (meaning, not intent) as I am for rule of law reasons disgusted by judges simply making up stuff as if there were a silly law clause in the Constitution, I am sympathetic to that view. It was really the denial of habeas corpus to U.S citizens captured in America (like Padilla) that got my goat the most, and apparently the Supreme Court already prohibited that though I must have forgotten about it. I’m not averse to the use of military courts for some purposes, but the problem administration never got around to setting them up, even preferring to release huge numbers of prisoners without trial (the one person who was convicted of anything is living free in Australia) as even they realize that many have little reason for being there. The President appears to have been fundamentally uninterested in how to resolve the issue and dismissive of the idea that there are supposed to be some constraints on his authority (the Padilla case really did represent a discarding of our fundamental freedoms dating back to the Magna Carta or earlier). John Roberts was right to point out that the Court doesn’t actually specify a clear way forward, which is perhaps a legacy of muddled living-constitutionalism and deference to authorities that fit poorly with an administration that wasn’t even trying to pretend very well. I guess they had a lot on their plate, being busy suckered by a below-average Burger King employee.

I had some good news that day I wanted to share with Vox, but unfortunately his comment section is too popular not to expect it get buried and remained unnoticed. Contrary to his gloomy prognostications, the newest generations are better behaved than their parents. A series has started at Gene Expression titled Previous Generations Were More Depraved. It promises to provide data showing that on a wide variety of measures of social dysfunction things are improving from the bad old days of the Boomers. The first entry is on sluttiness, and brought a smile to this prude’s face. If we look at things from an even larger time scale we may conclude with Stephen Pinker that the Great Sixties Freakout really was an aberration in the long decline of violence. I’m interested in what Randall Colins says about that in his Violence: A Micro-sociological Theory but it will probably be in paperback by the time I get around to it.

UPDATE: A concurring opinion from a Magna Cum Lousy graduate of the I Can Read The Constitution School of Law admitted to bar at pretty much any place he can afford to buy a round.

I’m back from the Upper Peninsula and have access to the internet again. Woo-hoo! Unaware of events going on around me I neglected to raise a pint in memory of Raymond Crotty. I don’t take pride in my own Irish ancestry and don’t think much of those who do, but in this case I’ll make an exception. Hurrah for unanimity rule!

The requirement of unanimity (or rather the absence of any final authority that can say “yes”) is held responsible for many of the ills we ascribe to “bureaucracy” in James Q Wilson’s book, which I have just finished. Wilson is interested in the constraints placed upon government agencies and though he recognizes that those constraints exist for a reason would like to reduce them on the margin. As one who would prefer that they [EDIT: by which I am referring to the agencies, not constraints] not exist at all I consider that a second best outcome. I do think they are given too many goals by the political system that the rationalist economist in me would prefer to be dealt with through a sort of lump-sum transfer payment disentangled from the functions of these agencies, but that is unfortunately politically infeasible.

Wilson tries to point out the good work government agencies do and seems to hark back to the turn of the century when forceful executives created and shaped elite agencies like the Forest Service, Army Corps of Engineers and FBI though he also recognizes (not often enough) that the imprint folks like J. Edgar Hoover left was not always benign and often hindered their agency’s ability to accomplish some tasks. When a government agency’s performance is looked at favorably, it is usually relative to another government agency (Steve Horwitz stifles his inner libertarian to do likewise for the Coast Guard here) as private organizations are noted at the end to almost universally deliver equivalent outputs with lower costs (the exception between power generation, perhaps due to economies of scale or breaks given by other government officials). The short segment at the end comparing the market to the government really lacked imagination in considering what can be privatized (he unfortunately neglects to distinguish privatization/mutualization from contracting, saying “We could have a small, minimalist government dear to the heart of the strictest libertarian that nevertheless conducted its business entirely through public bureaucracies. Conversely we could have a large, activist government with great powers and vast revenues that hired private firms to exercise those powers and dispense those funds”). I recommend reading this book along with Bruce Benson’s excellent Enterprise of Law, which points out how privately provided legal and security services are not only feasible but have a fairly long and satisfactory track record. Another reason the two books are good to read alongside each other is that Benson rather vigorously pushes the traditional Public Choice analysis of government favored by “economic imperialists”, which Wilson explicitly rejects and provides a decent amount of evidence why we should at least rethink it. Dain provides more here, and notes that Jeffrey Friedman (to which I and Jeff would both add Bryan Caplan) has greatly critiqued the old view of Bureaucratic Imperialism resulting in something I might call New New Institutionalism. An Austrian-Virginian (both schools Friedman happens to reject) history of Public Choice and its mistakes is here.

I’m afraid my own interests are going to give you a warped sense of the focus of the book, which really is about “What government agencies do and why they do it”. It discusses the different kinds of tasks and ways of monitoring performance, the actual employees who implement policy as well as the managers and executives and try to mold their behavior, the environment (Congress and its committees, the White House, interest groups, the press, peers within the profession) that shapes how they operate and more. It explores how different our presidential system is from parliamentary ones and how our “pro-business” government adopts a more adversarial approach toward industry than its Swedish counterpart. All in all a good book I recommend. I’ll leave you with a quote I found amusing

Wilson recently (perhaps its still going, I’m out of the internet loop) made a series of posts on Volokh, gathered together here. Now that I’ve finished his book I’m reading Freda Utley’s China Story. On Power is on order and when it arrives for me to start transcribing and/if I take the job in Wisconsin I’ll likely have less extra time to fritter away on the blogosphere. So heads up and sorry in advance.

Check it out.

OB thread on it here. I thought Horgan did a poor job, but I’ve always preferred George Johnson on Science Saturday to him anyway.

Or are you just an idiot for thinking the latter is not a subset of the former?