What should you read?

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Back in the Before Times I had two bright HTHS students, after an energetic, thoughtful, interesting and respectful classroom discussion, ask me what they should be reading to help them become more PPE literate. I gave them a couple suggestions but the question has lingered and I wanted to go deeper. So here tis. Pinned and subject to occasional updates.

You can’t go wrong with the Classics (Plato’s Republic, The Federalist Papers, etc.) But we’re usually introduced to those too early and it can be tough to see how they apply. So instead here are a dozen items that are applicable NOW, derivative of those classics, that will hopefully get you started so when you DO hit the old dusty stuff it’s more applicable.

  1. Arnold Kling’s The Three Languages of Politics
  2. Jonathon Haidt’s The Righteous Mind
  3. Max Weber’s Economy and Society: A New Translation
  4. Emile Durkheim On Morality and Society You might wanna follow these two up with Gidden’s Capitalism and Modern Social Theory: An Analysis Of The Writings Of Marx, Durkheim And Max Weber
  5. Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and Return of the Primative
  6. Any of the Lazarus Long novels by Robert A. Heinlein
  7. Virtually anything you can get your hands on by Thomas Sowell
  8. I, Pencil by Leonard Read.
  9. Henry Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson
  10. Frederic Bastiat’s Seen and Unseen
  11. F. A. Hayek’s Road to Serfdom. And then anything else that looks interesting from him. It will be.
  12. John Stuart Mill’s All Minus One. It’s just the second chapter of “On Liberty” but a god bite-sized intro.

After all that you’ll be ready to wade into everybody and anybody else.

Rideshare is a riot

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Business still going well. Uber rides picking up. Eats holding steady. Lot’s of surges last week, many quite significant (over $5.) Lyfy pickups seem to be getting a little shorter but not much. And what with the Uber bonuses I don’t care.

People being overly friendly during the tension. I’ve only had one outward militant in my car – she was triggered when the daily curfew notice was received. Haven’t really been downtown since LAST Sunday and then it was mostly tourists. Have been inconvenienced by occasional small scale protesting but I have no problems with the whole assemble peaceably thing.

Meanwhile in Cali: San Francisco’s Economically Ignorant COVID-19 Response Seems like the entire state constantly treats reality as if it’s optional. Because this too: Coronavirus Has Devastated Uber and Lyft’s Business. Now California Is Suing Them.

Science!

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“Shut up” is NOT a scientific principle. I’ll start with that. A lot of aggregating follows. And I’ll start with the old Hollywood admonition that “Nobody know nuthin'”

Lockdowns Don’t Work THIS oughta fire ’em up

Coronavirus didn’t shut down the economy, government did.

Top-5 U.S. States in Deaths per Million of Population. ” All states under exclusive Republican control come in below the national mean. All 11 states (with DC) above the national mean are under exclusive Democratic control, or have a Democratic legislature, or a Democratic governor.” Maths is a science, is it not?

MASKS IN JANUARY MADE SOME SENSE, CONSIDERING WHAT WE KNEW THEN. CONSIDERING WHAT WE KNOW NOW? MASK WEARING IS DOOM-LARPING:  Your Mask Is Making You Meaner, Dumber, More Afraid & Less Safe.

“Listen to the experts” they say. Flashback: Licking Subway Poles “Probably Fine,” Says Expert.

Still, they shoulda kept Keven Williamson: THE ATLANTIC: Take the Shutdown Skeptics Seriously: This is not a straightforward battle between a pro-human and a pro-economy camp.

I JUST WANT TO REMIND ALL THOSE WHO WEREN’T PAYING ATTENTION THAT THE USSR BILLED ITSELF AS ‘SCIENTIFICALLY GOVERNED.” AT NO TIME DOES ‘SCIENTIFIC’ RULE BY ‘EXPERTS’ END WELL. EVER:  So Much for Specialists?

Stay safe, within your own personal risk factor analysis.

Rona Ride-sharing

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A few more observations from the last 10 weeks.

When waiting for a ride stand in the middle of the driveway so we can’t pull in to pick you up. We LOVE that.

Suggestion for platforms: Program in a 15 second lag after rejecting a ride. If I’m trying to go off line and get a gig, I hit reject but often before I can log off you give me another, and another and another. This hoses my stats artificially.

Another suggestion: allow those of us doing Uber Eats to opt out of certain locations. Starbucks, McDonalds and Popeyes are ALWAYS slow and I reject them out of hand. Would be nice if I could just opt out of THOSE.

Lyft riders seem to believe that we don’t really exist until they request a ride. We then materialize outside their door after a random number of minutes. If they don’t show up we de-materialize back into dust.

Uber is now requiring a pic verifying that I’m wearing a mask. Needless to say it’s pretty easily fooled. AND they want us to narc on passengers who aren’t participating in the virtue signaling. I won’t do it. But I’ve heard tales of drivers who have wrapped their cars in plastic wrap and installed plexiglass shields. We each have our own risk tolerance, but some folks are just whackadoodle.

Lyft – Uber pays us for remote pickups. Under the circumstances you should too. Nobody likes driving 20 minutes for a $3 fare. That’s why I’m refusing/cancelling so many of your rides.

It’s been a good ten weeks. I usually start between 9-10 am. I usually hit my daily target by 5 or 6. A few days I’ve gone until 7 or 8 and I’m occasionally done by 4. Still loving the flexibility. Friends have occasionally referred to me as Travis Bickle but I’m feeling a little more like Ernest Borgnine in Escape From New York.

We are NOT all in this together

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Started writing this in my head 7-10 days ago. Figured I’d better get it down in pixels.

Decades ago I worked as a summer camp counselor. Learned a LOT of lessons but two in particular that apply. First – you don’t have to win over the entire group. You only need to win over the leader. Failing that, replace the leader with one of your own. Second – never make a rule that you have no intention or ability to enforce.

Both of those lessons have served me well as a classroom substitute teacher, especially the second. I’ve seen many subs lose a classroom due to being, in the words of Marv Levy, an over-officious jerk. A significant number of students in many a large urban or metropolitan high school is not a participating member in the civil society. Treating them like one is like trying to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and angers the pig.

Our civil society depends, in large part, upon voluntary compliance. It’s the basis for our system of taxation. There was an old joke in the Soviet Union – we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us. Here the government pretends to lead and we pretend to follow. But it’s only because we’re all in on the game. And if either side stops playing along, chaos ensues. Which is where we are now. Many states (thankfully not Ohio) are governed by Levy’s over-officious jerks. They’re making rules they have no intention or ability to enforce. And the enforcement arm of those Governors are looking the other way. And this is leading to a LOT of Irish Democracy. It’s reaching that point in Lord of the Flies wherein Piggies glasses are broken and no-one is paying attention to the conch anymore. And one wonders what the next steps will be in those states. I’m looking at you Michigan, Oregon and New York.

The death knell of national prohibition came when states began repealing their own prohibition statutes. Freed from enforcing state or local statutes, law enforcement agencies no longer had to cooperate with the Federal Revenuers, who lacked the man-power to enforce the 18th Amendment on their own. Thus ended prohibition.

It remains to be seen how the current pandemic-induced governing over-reach will. Hoping Piggy makes it through to the end this time.

School’s out … Forever?

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No It just kinda feels that way. Lots of folks complaining about how it’s not warming up fast enough. When I remind them that just because kids have been out of school for two months doesn’t mean it’s mid-summer. It’s still mid-spring. They do a V-8 head slap.

One of my biggest gripes when teaching at certain schools is: why is MY speech restricted but that student’s speech is not. Race-Based Speech Restrictions

When folks complain about me being a grammar Nazi: Babb v. Wilkie Shows the Grammar of Free Self-Government

Free college for everyone? ‘Liberal Arts Degrees’ Renamed ‘Non-Essential Worker Degrees’

Murder by Expert

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another collection of posts, with comments. Wanna know what I REALLY think of Government experts? Go review the last 50-60 years of nutrition advice coming out of DC, then sk me again.

When Suddenly Everyone Is a Technocratic Epistocrat with special guest appearance of Dr. Lockdown.

Not Covid-19 related, but adjacent. MODELS WORK BEST WHEN YOU HAVE PERFECT DATA AND A COMPLETE UNDERSTANDING OF THE PROCESSES INVOLVED, …

After Repeated Failures, It’s Time To Permanently Dump Epidemic Models. However, these models haven’t been especially useful. The thing is, to model things accurately you need reliable data and an accurate understanding of the underlying processes. We have neither of those, so models mostly just generate attractive graphs to conceal the uncertainties.

and a final one … Rules of Thumb for Evaluating Statistical Models

Champ or Chump?

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I’ve written this half a dozen time in my head but this version will be scrambled as I attempt to pull several threads together.

First thread. As a result of being a substitute teacher here in Ohio the ODJFS has advised me that I’m eligible to collect $160/week in unemployment due to da Rona. As an independent contractor (still – NOT in Cali. more on that in a subsequent post) I can collect a similar approximate amount. And due to the largess of our current Congress-critters I can get an additional $600/week. That makes about $900 per week. But if I’m driving (which I AM) I can’t get ANY of that. Fine. No worries. My driving schedule is designed to maintain my weekly earning at a point I have calculated meets my living expenses plus a little. I COULD drive an additional 10-20 hours per week (getting into the 70 hours per week jobs against which AOC rails) but it would cost me happiness, qualys and mental health. So by driving a sustainable amount I’m foregoing up to $300 per week in income.

Second thread. Dad died a year and a half ago. I still haven’t “mourned.” And I’ve severely bitched at myself over and over because my father WAS a huge part of civil society in our hometown. He was one of the people who either started or maintained a lot of the local traditions. Parades, festivals, social events. And those people’s ranks are thinning at an alarming rate. And rather than become a PART of that family tradition I selfishly chose to live my own life in a completely different manner (although I WAS a part of it for the first half of my life (currently.)

Third thread. During the ’16 Republican primary debates there was a discussion about a US base on the moon. The then-governor of Texas gave a two part contribution to the discussion. First, he thought that under current circumstances it was a TERRIBLE idea. I think he was in the majority there. But then he went on …. and said IF the US does this he would work to see that Texas materials were used, Texas technologies were implemented and Texas worker were employed in it. In my formulation – I think it would be STUPID for the US government to pass out $100 bills in my neighborhood. But if they DO, aren’t I an idiot for not taking one or two?

The twining. I reached out to several people whose opinion I respect and asked them if I was a champ or a chump. They KNEW the answer I wanted – that I was doing the right thing – but couldn’t give it to me because it was irrational. My background in PPE makes reaching the solution I WANT very difficult. Then I asked my sister. And she nailed it. “Your father would be FURIOUS if you stopped working.”

So that’s what I’m taking as my refuge. I’m both. I’m a champ because I’m still working, carrying on the work ethic my parents (and other family members) instilled in me. The farm boy from flyover country carries on. Because that’s what we deplorables do during difficult times. We work. And I’m a chump. Because … math.

Thoughts?

3/2/10. Remembering the Tea Party

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What was I posting about ten years ago?

Timothy McVeigh. He WASN’T a Tea Partier … Tiny minds are having trouble grasping the concept but Ilya Somin does a nice job trying to explain it to them using short, succinct Anglo-Saxon words.

And then there was this from the Prexy: OBAMA MAKES racial appeal for votes. Kinda exclusionary to white males. I haven’t heard any prominent “tea partier” make anything remotely resembling this blatant appeal to racial demography, courtesy of President Obama, in which he told activists that “it will be up to you to make sure that the young people, African-Americans, Latinos, and women who powered our victory in 2008 stand together once again.”

Nope. Hope and change!

GIGO part n

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From Sara Hoyt: I think part of this is a hold over in people about 10 years older than I who thought of computers as “smart.” These are people who can barely navigate email or social media, and for whom computers are somehow, mysteriously, infallible. If someone can’t get Garbage In Garbage Out across to them, then we’ll just have to hit them with metaphorical two by fours when they go off half-cocked on some models. Because otherwise they will destroy us.

THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU GIVE STATES AND HOSPITALS INCENTIVE FOR FUDGING THE NUMBERS BY HAVING THE FEDS PAY FOR WINNIE THE FLU CASES:  Literally no one has any idea how many people COVID-19 has killed.

and … NYC Officials Now Counting Deaths of Those Who ‘Never Tested Positive’ in Coronavirus Totals.

Here’s How Much Downstate New York Is Skewing the United States’ Coronavirus Numbers. TLDNR: If NYC was treated as a separate country it would lead the world in per capita Rona cases and Rona deaths. And the balance of the US would drop out of the top 10!

Also … If Half the Country’s COVID Deaths Were in Montana, Would New York Shut Down?