Marty Manley on economics, politics, technology, and culture

Reform

Solar Power

There is a natural and healthy tension between politics and markets. The tension is the difference between socially oriented citizens who are often unfamiliar with business and in any case favor the strong, visible hand of government protection and their commercially-oriented brethren who prefer the invisible hand of market competition and generally view government as [...]

Redesigning California

Update: our local public radio station broadcast the two minute version of this post. Listen to it here. Most clichés about California are true: we are both America’s most urban state and its most agricultural. We are home to more national parks, more immigrants, and a better public university than any other state. We have [...]

Will iPhone Skype force Intelligent Net Neutrality?

Net neutrality is one of those terms like "sustainability" that everybody favors because nobody defines. Net neutrality, as argued in a post that has held up reasonably well here, is a general view that network operators should give equal treatment to all the traffic on their networks. In practice, network operators don't do this and [...]

The US Auto Hospice

Today the White House issued its assessment of the GM and Chrysler turnaround plans. To summarize: Chrysler has 30 days to live. It is being given palliative care only and physicians are under medical directive to not revive the patient. Fiat, it's slightly less dead companion, will either marry Chrysler or let it slip into [...]

Employees: Free to Choose?

As befits a vanguard organization. Espresso Workers Local One was ahead of its time. It was a project of the Industrial Workers of the World (the IWW, or Wobblies), a  bunch of colorful commies who took their class struggle fully caffeinated and with a healthy dose of sugar. We organized the local in Santa Cruz [...]

To Win in Afghanistan, Buy the Opium Harvest

The United States is losing two wars — the war on drugs and the war in Afghanistan. The politics of these wars is complex but the economics is simple: the bad guys make a killing on drugs that are highly profitable only because they are illegal. Our solution has been to try to eradicate the [...]

Economics and Politics as Choice Architecture

Some years back, I passed through Schiphol in Amsterdam and realized why some designers consider it the world’s finest airport. Its layout is logical and efficient, public internet terminals are numerous and free, and the stores, including a full 24/7 supermarket, are so attractive that locals come to the airport to shop. But it was [...]

Why Resources Don’t "Run Out"

In April of 2006, oil crossed $70/barrel for the first time. I attended a talk at my kid’s school given by Dan Kammen, a first-rate environmentalist who teaches at UC Berkeley. Noting that oil prices had just hit a new high, Kammen asked the crowd of well-fed East Bay liberals how many of us thought [...]

Poverty in the US is increasingly associated with immigration

Robert Samuelson confirms what a number of people have quietly started to suspect: poverty in the US has been dropping steadily, except for impoverished folks who move here. Writing in today’s Washington Post, he notes that The government last week released its annual statistical report on poverty and household income. As usual, we — meaning [...]

Protect Income, not Industries, Companies, or Jobs

Suppose we tried to improve our economic security and well-being by making it illegal for any employer to fire any employee for any reason. Over time, our strategy would backfire. We would become less secure because we would be less competitive as our companies lost out to foreign businesses with more flexible cost structures. As [...]

Perspective on Global Warming

Each day, humans pump two billion pounds of carbon into earth’s atmosphere — the industrial exhaust from activities that have dramatically improved our lives. The extent to which the earth’s climate is changing more than it would change anyway, how much warming is a valid scientific concern vs. noise in very complex models, the contribution [...]

What are You Led to Believe?

What are you led to believe? The formidable Ann Althouse recently noted how the New York Times used photos to promote the widespread belief in the imminent extinction of polar bears. "How many people look at that picture and think the polar bears were living on some ice and it melted around them and now [...]

Do Guns Increase Violent Crimes or Prevent Them?

Gun advocates have long claimed that crime is caused by criminals and is reduced by NRA-trained citizens packing a convenient sidearm. Gun controllers look at the mayhem of inner cities and figure that reducing weapons can only help reduce crime. On gun control as with many other issues, where you stand depends on where you [...]

All Ballots Secret, All Contributions Anonymous

In corporate and regulatory matters, transparency is regarded as a
universal antiseptic. Worried about crooked managers? Increase
disclosure requirements. Concerned about administrative rulings taken
behind close doors? Require open hearings and allow for public
comment. Want to know who is paying for your Congressman?
Require full disclosure of all campaign contributions. Sunshine Laws are
all based on the belief that in the bright light of day, government and
markets tend to self-regulate. But we don’t always want market behavior
in public life. For example, voting by secret ballot was unheard of until
Tasmania introduced it in 1856. It remained highly controversial for
many decades thereafter and was known in the US as the “Australian
Ballot”. No US President was elected by secret ballot until Grover
Cleveland in 1892. One suspects that our portly President promptly
noticed that nearly every voter he met assured him that “I voted for
you” and learned to take such statements with a grain of salt. Secret
ballots made campaigns fair because they eliminated unsavory market
behavior: the buying of votes with cash. Once votes were secret, vote
buying

Does Outsourcing Increase Income Equality?

Fortune is reporting on a government study that documents the first decreases in US income inequality in a generation. Why? Outsourcing is reducing the “education premium” in the US.