The Mercantilist Subsidy

Cafe Hayek is the place to go for tireless education on why trade deficits aren’t anything to worry about.

But another way of looking at them has occurred to me.

One thing that would make a trade deficit sustainable for a country would be if other countries contiually subsidised that country to sustain it.

That sounds a little far-fetched for a country like Britain or America, but I wonder…

I’ve probably mentioned before my amusement that at the peak of the internet and telecoms boom, a huge portion of Britain’s internet and telecom sector was bought by Europeans at inflated prices: one-2-one and Orange to Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom, Freeserve to Wanadoo, most smaller ISPs to Tiscali, and some others.

That’s a bit like a subsidy (because of the exaggerated valuations), but there’s no reason to think it was anything but a one-off fluke.

But it’s when an industry is in the throes of irrational exuberance that political pressure against foreign takeovers is strongest. And while France is the clear leader at resisting the sale of highly-valued companies for political reasons, the Blair administration has shown a very praiseworthy restraint towards such irrationality. Given that, I suspect there is a long-term bias towards overvalued assets being sold by less-protectionist countries like Britain to more protectionist countries like France. There may well have been buyers in Britain wanting to spend too much money on companies from France or Italy, but their governments would have prevented it.

One might conclude that these governments’ bad policies are benefiting Britain, but it’s important to bear in mind that we’re only talking about trade deficits — not about anything really important. The bad effects – spread globally – of protectionist policies reducing efficiency may well outweigh the benefits to people on Britain of having people near them restrained from beggaring themselves in global asset bubbles.

update: A case in point

Is X a Y?

When one is asked, is (something) a (something), the first answer should usually be the same: “Why do we care?”

I brought this up once before, in the context of whether (the situation existing between western countries and Islamist terrorists) is a (war). The first response was “why do we care”, and the next one was “we don’t”. You can call it a war if you want, it doesn’t make any difference either way.

Being more precise, the second answer that time, and in many other cases, should not actually be “we don’t care” — we do care a bit, because we want to make sure we use classifications in such a way as we can communicate efficiently. You can call the tail a leg if you want, but it’s a bad idea, because you’ll be misunderstood.

Another question of this type was “Is Pluto a Planet”. The answer doesn’t matter beyond having useful classifications for efficient communication, and there was much discussion last year as to whether the traditional classification of “planet” should be changed for better efficiency.

The Pluto example was used last year by Geoffrey Pullum of Language Log, and contrasted with the question “Is (the relationship between two people of the same sex which has been marked by some kind of public ceremony) a (marriage)”. As ever, the first response is “why do we care?”, but the secondary response, this time, is different. It is “because many public rules and laws, notably concerning taxation, inheritance, and things like that, treat marriages preferentially or differently from other relationships”. That answer leads only to more questions: What are the features of marriages that makes it a good thing to distinguish them from other relationships in these ways, and are those features shared by same-sex couples or not? Therefore, is it a good thing to treat those same-sex relationships as marriages or not?

Pullum was, rightly, criticising those who attempt to sidestep those substantial questions by appeal to dictionary, avoiding the essential “why do we care”, and jumping straight to “The dictionary says no”.

The only time a substantial question can be resolved by finding the answer to “what does this word mean?”, is when an appeal to authority is being used. This is because authorities are expressed in words. But what matters in that situation is not some arbitrary definition of the word in question, but the actual definition intended by the authority itself. The radical green Christian John Papworth argued, some years ago, that his encouragement of shoplifting from supermarkets could not be answered by appeal to “Thou shalt not steal”, because the meaning of “steal”, and of property generally, is not now what it was when that authority was propogated. To be more specific, it did not then encompass the concept of the joint-stock company. His argument was absolutely correct — while there may be (and in my view, are), good reasons for not stealing from supermarkets, appeal to the Ten Commandments is not among them.

Related to an appeal to authority is an appeal to tradition, but for that there is no reason to worry about definitions. There is no reason to say “We give these assorted benefits only to marriages, and traditionally the word ‘marriage’ has been understood to mean only a relationship between a man and a woman”, because one can equally well say, more simply, “We traditionally give these benefits only to partnerships between a man and a woman”, which is equivalent but bypasses the contentious definition. Appeals to tradition carry different weight to different people, but either way they are not changed by bringing in irrelevant questions of definition.

Any other answer to “why do we care” will come down to real questions about the real world, as opposed to the meaning of words. Those are the questions that matter, and they cannot reasonably be dodged by playing word games.

Sort-of random thought

If somebody has a lot to say about how to solve quadratic equations, it’s reasonable to deduce that, relatively speaking, they are not knowledgeable about the subject. If they really knew about solving quadratic equations, then all they would need to say about it is the one fairly simple formula that you need to do it. There would be no need to discuss it at great length. At most they would need to prove the formula is correct, which wouldn’t take more than a page.

Liberty is not best defended by sacrificing liberty

David Davis.

Also, Conservatives formally pledge to cancel ID card scheme

As things stand, I think I will be voting for these buggers for the first time.

Well done to the volunteers at No2ID, who have done so well in keeping the profile of this issue high.

Conservatives Formally pledge to cancel ID card scheme

copied from archive.org, 8 July 2024

 NEWS Monday February 5, 2007 Conservatives formally pledge to cancel ID card scheme Conservatives formally pledge to cancel ID card scheme David Davis has written to Cabinet Secretary, Sir Gus O’Donnell, giving formal notice that an incoming Conservative administration would scrap the Government’s costly ID card project.

And the Shadow Home Secretary has warned of the financial dangers of the Government signing contracts to set up the ID card scheme when it faces cancellation if the Conservatives are returned to power at the next election.

In his letter, Mr Davis asked what provision, if any, has been made in the relevant contractual arrangements to protect the Government – and public funds – against the costs that would be incurred as a result of early cancellation of the scheme; with a similar letter fired off to likely major contractors, warning them of the Party’s intentions.

Just hours before the Conservatives launch a web and print based campaign against Labour’s ID Cards proposals, Mr Davis told Sir Gus: “As you will be aware, the Conservative Party has stated publicly that it is our intention to cancel the ID card project immediately on our being elected to government. You are now formally on notice of our position and fully appraised of the contingent risks and associated liabilities arising from the national identity card scheme.”

Referring to the planned roll out of the Government’s national identity card scheme later this year, Mr Davis reminded the Cabinet Secretary of the longstanding convention that one Parliament may not bind a subsequent Parliament.

He wrote: “I urge you to consider very carefully the Government’s position, in advance of the roll-out of the scheme later this year. As a matter of financial prudence, it is incumbent upon you to ensure that public money is not wasted, and contractual obligations are not incurred, investing in a scheme with such a high risk of not being implemented.

“In particular, I would be interested to know what provision, if any, has been made in the relevant contractual arrangements to protect the Government – and public funds – against the costs that would be incurred as a result of early cancellation of the scheme.

Religious Freedom

The obvious question that hits first when looking at the recent furore over whether a church-run adoption agency should be allowed to apply its religious principles in a manner that would be illegal for anyone else, is: Why on earth should a church have special privileges?

It is quite common for governments to allocate privileges to religion. It’s difficult at first to see why this should be. Of course, it might be logical to privilege one specific religion, if that one is believed to be “true”. However, that logic cannot account for generic religious privileges. The lack of underlying logic to the position is exposed by those playing with the boundary of what constitutes a religion (via Volokh.)

Looking at the question historically, the answer is immediately obvious: religions get extra freedoms, because when they don’t, they fight. The lesson of history is, that you can take away all sorts of freedom with impunity, but if you obstruct people observing their religion, you’re risking violent resistance.

If you see politics, as I do, as a compromise between interests (rather than, say, a search for Justice), then this situation is OK. A preference that is held strongly enough to arouse violence is more important than one which is not. (Irrespective of the objective merit of the preference). There is a long-term issue that this attitude is encouraging violence, but that is very long-term in this situation, where the deference to religion in itself has grown over centuries. Responding promptly to violence, such as that of the animal rights movement, would be much more problematic than this slow adaptation to the existence of potentially violent religious movements.

The same incentive problem applies to rolling back the by now time-honoured privileges of religion. If we reason that because the Catholic / gay adoption issue isn’t likely to turn violent, we don’t need to worry, then we’re penalising peaceability. This concern is highlighted by the recent YouTube spat where a prominent atheist who has long published criticisms of Christianity is banned as soon as he starts making similar criticisms of Islam.

On the other hand, if new movements seek to claim the time-honoured status of religion, it is reasonable to ascertain whether they are “real” religions according to the only criterion that matters – whether they are likely to eventually turn violent. Therefore, our new Muslim communities succeed, and the Jedi of Brighton and the Brethren of Georgetown fail.

Security Speedbumps

Software, more than most other things that are designed, tends to be designed by trial and error. That’s because it’s so easy to build a a design to test it. Other engineers have to actually construct a prototype to test, so their time is better spent working out in advance whether the design is good enough.

This principle is responsible for the relative shoddyness of software.

It has been observed that this approach doesn’t work for security purposes, as there you’re not concerned to how your design responds to specific, or even random stimuli, but in whether some stimiuli can be constructed that will cause a misbehaviour. This is the concept of Programming Satan’s Computer, coined by Ross Anderson.

But software isn’t the only thing designed by trial and error. Any system that can evolve over time will basically be constrained by the requirement that it must appear to work. That constraint will keep most errors out, but not security flaws, just as conventional software testing keeps out most errors, but not security flaws.

There’s an unrelated concept in security of the “speedbump”. A speedbump is something that discourages people from doing something the designer doesn’t want them to do, by forcing them to undertake some procedure which shows unambiguously that they are doing what they’re not supposed to – like breaking an easily-breakable lock, or something. It doesn’t actually stop them from being able to do it, but it stops them pretending – even to themselves – that they’re not really doing anything they’re not supposed to.

Putting these two concepts together, a real-world security process that is preventing something virtually nobody really wants to do, and is evolving over time, will tend to end up as a speedbump. If it becomes less than a speedbump, it will no longer appear to work, so that won’t happen. But because the speedbump deters casual attackers, and virtually all attackers are casual, it will appear to work.

The one kind of person who shows up this kind of security speedbump is the person who, usually under the influence of alcohol, is too oblivious to be deterred by the speedbump. Back in the 1991 Gulf War, a man I knew slightly walked into the Ministry of Defence in London, wandered round some corridors, went into a random office and asked in alcohol-slurred cockney “What is this Gulf War all about then?”. Similar, via Schneier, this story of a drunk man climbing over the perimiter fence and boarding a plane at Raleigh-Durham International Airport.

The fence is supposed to stop people from being able to board aircraft without passing through the proper security channels. It appeared to work, but only because nobody wanted to do it badly enough to actually climb the fence. The fence is a speedbump: entirely effective, except against terrorists and eccentric drunks.

This speedbump phenomenon is not the same as “Security Theatre”. Security theatre is generally a new measure introduced for show, which, while possibly effective against a narrowly-defined threat, is easily bypassed and not effective against a broader, more realistic range of threats. These speedbumps are more likely to be long-standing security measures, which are assumed because of their long standing to be working effectively.

The complaint is that if a decision is made that security must be improved, searching out and rectifying security speedbumps is likely to be less visible and obvious than installing new, showy, security theatre, even though it could be much more productive.

Therefore we are dependent on the eccentric drunks finding our speedbumps.

HDTV and Freeview

boingboing suggests that HDTV will flop and looks admiringly at the UK’s Freeview system.

Cory Doctorow overstates the case slightly:

1. Freeview is “standard definition”, but it is standard definition PAL, which is higher definition than the US and Canada’s NTSC. On paper the difference isn’t that huge, but subjectively to me it’s a very significant one – NTSC looks as much worse than normal as HDTV is better. Thus there is likely to be a bigger push for HDTV in NTSC countries than PAL ones.

2. Freeview exists by accident, as the original infrastructure was built as a subscription service by ITV Digital, which then went bust. Left with the infrastructure and proof that people weren’t willing to pay subscriptions for it, converting it to a free service made sense.

3. Freeview’s terrestrial broadcast signals don’t have 100% coverage – some remote areas are not covered. By British standards, probably 20% of the US population live in remote areas – the UK is smaller than Oregon.

Significant update: Further to point 3, I recently tried to pick up Freeview myself, as an alternative to my subscription-based cable service. What I found is that Luton is basically not covered. Luton is a town of 200,000 people, 35 miles or 30 minutes from central London, and I can’t pick up a signal. Asking around, quite a few people have tried, and given up and got cable or satellite. If I spend the equivalent of two years’ cable subscription on installing an antenna on a tall pole on top of the house, there is a chance I might be able to get a decent signal — but only a chance; there are two hills directly between the town and the nearest transmitter 22 miles away.

Insignificant update 14 years later: changed underscores to hyphens in the boingboing URL because why would a tech blog preserve link validity?

Newcomb, Voting, and Moist Robots

Patri Friedman points out in a comment that, since “correlation is not causation”, using the correlation between my vote and those of others to estimate an amplified effect for my vote is bogus.

Oh yes, so it is.

That almost disposes of the question. But my thought experiment about identical robots all voting the same way is still valid, I believe. And while I and some other voter I pick out are not robots and not identical, we are phenomena in a physical universe with some strong mechanical resemblances.

Like Newcomb’s paradox, it comes down to the nature of human choice. The traditional view is that each person is an independent entity that can make uncaused choices at any point in time.

That traditional view is implicit in the question, “what difference does it make whether I vote or not?”. The assumption is that, in imagination at least, we can hold the whole world constant and consider it with or without me voting.

As I have implied by talking about robots, the traditional view is not true. My mind is part of the world, and you cannot “hold the world constant” without holding my decision also.

One response to the problem is to say that the whole question is invalid, humans do not make choices, they are “moist robots” (as Scott Adams would say) following their predetermined programs.

But the question clearly is valid. We maybe cannot hold the world constant in every last detail while varying my decision, but surely we can come close enough for the question still to make sense. We will just have to assume some small changes to the world to be consistent with my decision being changed.

Now if we vary, for instance, how much of an idiot the candidate is, we will get an answer to my question very much greater than one. But that’s silly. Whatever the question really means (because I’ve demonstrated it’s not quite as unambiguous as it looks), it doesn’t mean that. Facts we have observed must be held constant.

It would be a more sensible interpretation of the question to, for instance, hold the universe outside my skin constant, while varying the inside as far as necessary to be physically consistent with different votes.

If we do that, then the answer we will come up with is that my vote makes exactly one vote of difference – the whole argument I made in the first place is wrong.

But varying my brain is not straightforward, even in principle, because it breaks continuity over time. In order to be imagining a physically possible universe, that nonetheless is consistent with the history we have observed. I might have to vary unobserved facts that extend beyond my brain and body. Those facts may even extend into other voters’ brains and bodies, possibly giving me the >1 answer I wanted. This is what was nagging at me in the first place: the notion that “my mind” is not quite something that can have a neat boundary drawn around it, that it is some kind of extended phenotype. In the identical robots examle, there is only really one mind, that is duplicated or distributed in space, which is why one decision produces many votes. As Dennett says in Freedom Evolves, “if you make yourself very large, you can internalize anything”. In order to internalize the decision to vote, that is, to be able to describe it as something I have done, might I need to make myself large enough that I overlap with others?

That is a coherent possibility, but it seems much more likely that to create the hypothetical implied by the original question, we could vary my vote without varying past observed facts by merely varying quantum randomness in my brain between now and when I vote, or, failing that, that varying unobserved facts in my brain back to my birth would be sufficient. In either case, 1 is a reasonable answer to the question “How many votes of difference does my decision to vote make”

Summary

The question is: How many more votes will my candidate get if I vote for him than if I don’t?

The question is too vague to give an absolutely rigorous answer – changing my vote requires, in order that physics be consistent, that other things (by implication, things that are too small for us to have observed) are changed also. Depending on which other things are changed, the answer possibly could vary.

However, there is a large probability that the most straightforward possible answer to the question is, one vote, meaning that unnoticeable changes inside my body are enough to change my vote without being inconsistent with the observed past.

I’m slightly disappointed (I liked the idea of getting free extra votes), but, on the other hand, the answer is the one that is consistent with “free will”, so if you’re insecure about whether you have free will, the answer is good news for you.

And I’m pretty sure I’m close to having a good answer to Newcomb’s paradox, which is the same kind of question. It’s an attempt to turn the question of free will into a motivated question. Asking about things like free will in the abstract tends to degenerate into arguing what the words mean, and unless there’s some reason to care, then one meaning is as good as another. Taking both boxes is an assertion that you have independent free will, and that you are not just a cog in a machine, but at the same time it’s a choice that matters and could cost you money if you’re wrong.

Job Losses

This is something that always irritates me:

Minister to fight for Alcoa jobs

Talks to save 298 jobs at the Alcoa aluminium plant in Swansea are under way following an announcement that the plant is to close in March.

298 jobs in 4 months time.

According to national STaTiSTiCS (sic) (and sick), 56,000 extra people entered employment over the last quarter.

Therefore, about 1000 new jobs were created per working day.

Also, that’s net of job losses. I don’t have a source for how many job losses there were per day over the quarter – all I can say is that there were a thousand more jobs created than were lost, per day on average.

And a government minister is spending effort on trying to do something about 298 of them. On current trends 70,000 new net jobs will be created between now and the time these 298 are laid off – is there nothing that could be done that might make that 70,500, swamping the effect of this one event? Some regulation that could be removed that might have that

Quote of the day

I am passionate about this! cried Tessa Jowell as she gave evidence on the London Olympics to MPs yesterday. And I thought, oh no, give me politicians who are not passionate; give me politicians who can add up.

Alice Miles in The Times