What Are the Costs and Benefitsof Saving the Tasmanian Devil?

Tasmanian devils are very unusual marsupials that live, surprisingly, in Tasmania, an Australian State, a large island south of the rest of Australia. [cf the NYTimes (free registration required); thanks to BenS for the link]

In March and April, males engage in vicious, blood-soaked combat, said Dr. Menna Jones, a wildlife biologist… Females select “big butch dudes,” Dr. Jones said, and allow themselves to be dragged by the scruff of the neck into a burrow. There they scream and fight for several days, mating many times for hours at a time.

Over the past decade, there has been a plague, of sorts, afflicting Tasmanian devils with a sort of facial tumour.

Right now, wildlife experts are struggling to comprehend the nature of the fast moving epidemic. Moving at a rate of 6 to 10 miles a year, it is 100 percent fatal. Only the west coast, isolated by mountain ranges inhospitable to devils, is disease free. Nearly half of the estimated 150,000 devils in Tasmania are now dead.

[digression: try to make sense of that last sentence]

Is it worthwhile trying to save the species? What are the expected costs of doing so? What are the expected benefits? Saving the species will involve opportunity costs — those scarce resources could have been used for something else of value.

The answers to these questions surely involve probabilities about which we have only a vague sense. And yet we [we? well, Tasmanians and Australians and maybe a few others] must make decisions on the basis of these vague probabilities and estimates.

Explicitly or not, we will behave as if we do.

Update. An anonymous comment via e-mail:
Have you posed the right question? Which would we be better off saving (given the same costs), a faculty of , say, 20 socionomologists or 75,000 Tasmanian Devils? How many tourists will spend money to see one or the other?

What Are the Costs and Benefitsof Saving the Tasmanian Devil?

Tasmanian devils are very unusual marsupials that live, surprisingly, in Tasmania, an Australian State, a large island south of the rest of Australia. [cf the NYTimes (free registration required); thanks to BenS for the link]

In March and April, males engage in vicious, blood-soaked combat, said Dr. Menna Jones, a wildlife biologist… Females select “big butch dudes,” Dr. Jones said, and allow themselves to be dragged by the scruff of the neck into a burrow. There they scream and fight for several days, mating many times for hours at a time.

Over the past decade, there has been a plague, of sorts, afflicting Tasmanian devils with a sort of facial tumour.

Right now, wildlife experts are struggling to comprehend the nature of the fast moving epidemic. Moving at a rate of 6 to 10 miles a year, it is 100 percent fatal. Only the west coast, isolated by mountain ranges inhospitable to devils, is disease free. Nearly half of the estimated 150,000 devils in Tasmania are now dead.

[digression: try to make sense of that last sentence]

Is it worthwhile trying to save the species? What are the expected costs of doing so? What are the expected benefits? Saving the species will involve opportunity costs — those scarce resources could have been used for something else of value.

The answers to these questions surely involve probabilities about which we have only a vague sense. And yet we [we? well, Tasmanians and Australians and maybe a few others] must make decisions on the basis of these vague probabilities and estimates.

Explicitly or not, we will behave as if we do.

Update. An anonymous comment via e-mail:
Have you posed the right question? Which would we be better off saving (given the same costs), a faculty of , say, 20 socionomologists or 75,000 Tasmanian Devils? How many tourists will spend money to see one or the other?

What Are the Costs and Benefitsof Saving the Tasmanian Devil?

Tasmanian devils are very unusual marsupials that live, surprisingly, in Tasmania, an Australian State, a large island south of the rest of Australia. [cf the NYTimes (free registration required); thanks to BenS for the link]

In March and April, males engage in vicious, blood-soaked combat, said Dr. Menna Jones, a wildlife biologist… Females select “big butch dudes,” Dr. Jones said, and allow themselves to be dragged by the scruff of the neck into a burrow. There they scream and fight for several days, mating many times for hours at a time.

Over the past decade, there has been a plague, of sorts, afflicting Tasmanian devils with a sort of facial tumour.

Right now, wildlife experts are struggling to comprehend the nature of the fast moving epidemic. Moving at a rate of 6 to 10 miles a year, it is 100 percent fatal. Only the west coast, isolated by mountain ranges inhospitable to devils, is disease free. Nearly half of the estimated 150,000 devils in Tasmania are now dead.

[digression: try to make sense of that last sentence]

Is it worthwhile trying to save the species? What are the expected costs of doing so? What are the expected benefits? Saving the species will involve opportunity costs — those scarce resources could have been used for something else of value.

The answers to these questions surely involve probabilities about which we have only a vague sense. And yet we [we? well, Tasmanians and Australians and maybe a few others] must make decisions on the basis of these vague probabilities and estimates.

Explicitly or not, we will behave as if we do.

Update. An anonymous comment via e-mail:
Have you posed the right question? Which would we be better off saving (given the same costs), a faculty of , say, 20 socionomologists or 75,000 Tasmanian Devils? How many tourists will spend money to see one or the other?

Freedom from Risk:Explaining the Election Outcome in Mongolia

Last week voters in Mongolia cast 53% of their votes in favour of presidential candidate Nambaryn Enkhbayar of Mongolia’s former communist ruling party. Economic growth in Mongolia has averaged over 10% per year during the past few years, but many voters did not like the chaos that existed under the Democratic Party coalition from 1996 – 2000.

For most of her 53 years, she has lived as a nomadic herder under Mongolia’s wide blue skies, raising nine children, surviving snowstorms and drought, and hauling the family’s white felt tent to a new site each season in search of grass for their sheep. But never did Tsahiriin Daariimaa think life would be as hard as it is now, on the eve of Sunday’s presidential elections.

With the end of communism in Mongolia 15 years ago, Daariimaa said she and her husband are no longer guaranteed monthly wages from a government farm, but must sell their wool in a market of fluctuating prices and nervy Chinese traders.

Under communism, “everyone worked for the collective farm,” Daariimaa said. Today, none of her children has a steady job.

“Communism was much better,” she said.

… When the country was under Russia’s influence, all schoolchildren learned Russian, and Soviet aid made up as much as one-third of Mongolia’s gross domestic product. That aid disappeared overnight with the Soviet Union’s collapse, and Mongolians miss it.

“In the old times, the government took better care of us ordinary people,” [shepherd] Choijav said. “Now, the government is very far away from us, especially if you live in the countryside and take care of sheep.”

These views represent human sentiments that explain a great deal about what is happening in North America. Many of us do not want to take risks of loss to our future welfare; we do not want (or are unable) to learn how to use the market to hedge these risks; we want others (via the gubmnt) to insure us against these detrimental risks; and yet we feel fully entitled to the upside (or beneficial) risks.

As a result, we vote for more and more gubmnt intervention in the marketplace. The conservative revolution of the 1980s may have slowed the growth of gubmnt interventionist policies, but it did not reverse this tendency.

If we do not learn how to explain that more risk with a bigger pie is better, even for the unlucky, than interventionist policies, we will have a much smaller pie in the future. Doing this is not easy, if it is even possible.

And now I understand one of my motivations for all this blogging.

Freedom from Risk:Explaining the Election Outcome in Mongolia

Last week voters in Mongolia cast 53% of their votes in favour of presidential candidate Nambaryn Enkhbayar of Mongolia’s former communist ruling party. Economic growth in Mongolia has averaged over 10% per year during the past few years, but many voters did not like the chaos that existed under the Democratic Party coalition from 1996 – 2000.

For most of her 53 years, she has lived as a nomadic herder under Mongolia’s wide blue skies, raising nine children, surviving snowstorms and drought, and hauling the family’s white felt tent to a new site each season in search of grass for their sheep. But never did Tsahiriin Daariimaa think life would be as hard as it is now, on the eve of Sunday’s presidential elections.

With the end of communism in Mongolia 15 years ago, Daariimaa said she and her husband are no longer guaranteed monthly wages from a government farm, but must sell their wool in a market of fluctuating prices and nervy Chinese traders.

Under communism, “everyone worked for the collective farm,” Daariimaa said. Today, none of her children has a steady job.

“Communism was much better,” she said.

… When the country was under Russia’s influence, all schoolchildren learned Russian, and Soviet aid made up as much as one-third of Mongolia’s gross domestic product. That aid disappeared overnight with the Soviet Union’s collapse, and Mongolians miss it.

“In the old times, the government took better care of us ordinary people,” [shepherd] Choijav said. “Now, the government is very far away from us, especially if you live in the countryside and take care of sheep.”

These views represent human sentiments that explain a great deal about what is happening in North America. Many of us do not want to take risks of loss to our future welfare; we do not want (or are unable) to learn how to use the market to hedge these risks; we want others (via the gubmnt) to insure us against these detrimental risks; and yet we feel fully entitled to the upside (or beneficial) risks.

As a result, we vote for more and more gubmnt intervention in the marketplace. The conservative revolution of the 1980s may have slowed the growth of gubmnt interventionist policies, but it did not reverse this tendency.

If we do not learn how to explain that more risk with a bigger pie is better, even for the unlucky, than interventionist policies, we will have a much smaller pie in the future. Doing this is not easy, if it is even possible.

And now I understand one of my motivations for all this blogging.

Freedom from Risk:Explaining the Election Outcome in Mongolia

Last week voters in Mongolia cast 53% of their votes in favour of presidential candidate Nambaryn Enkhbayar of Mongolia’s former communist ruling party. Economic growth in Mongolia has averaged over 10% per year during the past few years, but many voters did not like the chaos that existed under the Democratic Party coalition from 1996 – 2000.

For most of her 53 years, she has lived as a nomadic herder under Mongolia’s wide blue skies, raising nine children, surviving snowstorms and drought, and hauling the family’s white felt tent to a new site each season in search of grass for their sheep. But never did Tsahiriin Daariimaa think life would be as hard as it is now, on the eve of Sunday’s presidential elections.

With the end of communism in Mongolia 15 years ago, Daariimaa said she and her husband are no longer guaranteed monthly wages from a government farm, but must sell their wool in a market of fluctuating prices and nervy Chinese traders.

Under communism, “everyone worked for the collective farm,” Daariimaa said. Today, none of her children has a steady job.

“Communism was much better,” she said.

… When the country was under Russia’s influence, all schoolchildren learned Russian, and Soviet aid made up as much as one-third of Mongolia’s gross domestic product. That aid disappeared overnight with the Soviet Union’s collapse, and Mongolians miss it.

“In the old times, the government took better care of us ordinary people,” [shepherd] Choijav said. “Now, the government is very far away from us, especially if you live in the countryside and take care of sheep.”

These views represent human sentiments that explain a great deal about what is happening in North America. Many of us do not want to take risks of loss to our future welfare; we do not want (or are unable) to learn how to use the market to hedge these risks; we want others (via the gubmnt) to insure us against these detrimental risks; and yet we feel fully entitled to the upside (or beneficial) risks.

As a result, we vote for more and more gubmnt intervention in the marketplace. The conservative revolution of the 1980s may have slowed the growth of gubmnt interventionist policies, but it did not reverse this tendency.

If we do not learn how to explain that more risk with a bigger pie is better, even for the unlucky, than interventionist policies, we will have a much smaller pie in the future. Doing this is not easy, if it is even possible.

And now I understand one of my motivations for all this blogging.

Political Philosophy

As an undergraduate, I took several courses in political philosophy. I also ran across political philosophy in several other courses, in addition to some of the work I did before I dropped out of theological seminary.

To tell the truth, I never much cared about who said what and when.
And nowadays, I am much more interested in “positive” analysis as opposed to “normative” or ethical or moral imperatives or what-not.

In fact, the political analysis I find most compelling is this quotation from Yossarian:

“[T]hey have the right to do anything we can’t stop them from doing,” which is a very nice Machiavellian summary of the economics of political choice.

The quotation is from Joseph Heller’s classic, Catch-22 about WWII, which I highly recommend.

Fourteen Things about the Chinese Economy

This list was posted some time ago at the Raw Prawn. It is both informative and provocative, as are the additional links provided there.

1. China’s economy is much larger than the official numbers show.
2. The growth of China’s economy has no equal in modern history.
3. China is winning the global competition for investment capital.
4. China can be a bully.
5. China’s economy is an entrepreneurial economy.
6. The most daunting thing about China is not its ability to make cheap consumer goods.
7. China is closing the research and development gap — fast.
8. China now sets the global benchmark for prices.
9. China’s growth is making raw materials more expensive.
10. No company has embraced China’s potential more vigorously than Wal-Mart.
11. There are hidden costs associated with doing business in China.
12. Piracy is a problem.
13. China’s heavy buying of U.S. debt has lowered the cost of money in the U.S.
14. Americans and Chinese have become reliant on each other’s most controversial habits.

#13 will continue to be very important as the U.S. and China wrangle over China’s pegged exchange rate.

Wonky Krugman

A week or so ago, I was talking with our department chair. She asked why I was so negative about Paul Krugman. My response was,

I think he’s gone a bit wonky, especially since he started writing editorials for the New York Times.

It turns out that, in more precise terms, Daniel Okrent, his [now former] editor, agreed with me:

“Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults.

“…some of Krugman’s enemies are every bit as ideological (and consequently unfair) as he is. But that doesn’t mean that their boss, publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., shouldn’t hold his columnists to higher standards.”

This quote is reproduced (and linked to) by Krugman nemisis, Donald Luskin, who adds,

To be sure, Okrent could have gone much, much further in blowing the whistle on America’s most dangerous liberal pundit. He could have cited the dozens upon dozens of Paul Krugman’s partisan distortions, uncorrected errors, deliberate misquotations and flat-out lies that we’ve caught over the years. For that matter he could have said what N. Gregory Mankiw, the universally respected former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, told Fortune in a recent interview — that Krugman “just make[s] stuff up.”

Luskin has much more, including how Krugman claims Okrent has “lost his marbles” and been under “constant pressure from conservatives”.

Wonky.

Congratulations to the London Knights:Winners of the Memorial Cup

The London Knights won the Canadian Hockey League championship series to win the Memorial Cup with a 4-0 victory over the Rimouski Oceanic.

LONDON, Ont. (CP) – The London Knights were ranked No. 1 in the Canadian Hockey League all season, and they finished in that position by winning the Memorial Cup with a 4-0 victory over the Rimouski Oceanic on Sunday.

The Knights, both the host team and the Ontario Hockey League champions, won the franchise’s first Memorial Cup in its 40-year history.

They did it with balanced, hard-working and talented squad that concluded a record-setting campiagn [sic] by shutting down the highest-scoring major junior team in the country.

The London Knights earlier this season had a 31-game undefeated streak, which likely would have been even longer had several of their players not been away, helping the Canadian junior team win the World Junior Championship.

What impressed Ms. Eclectic and me, in addition to the phenomenal talent and balance of the London Knights, was the patience of the players and their unwillingness to retaliate when Rimouski players hit them with cheap shots.

It was very impressive hockey by a very impressive team.