Ezra Klein thinks it’s because, unlike other purchases, you can’t say “no” to either:
You might want a television, but you don’t actually need one. That gives you the upper hand. When push comes to shove, producers need to meet the demands of consumers.
But you can’t walk out on medical care for your spouse or education for your child. In the case of medical care, your spouse might die. In the case of college, you’re just throwing away your kid’s future (or so goes the conventional wisdom). Consequently, medical care and higher education are the two purchases that families will mortgage everything to make. They need to find a way to say “yes.” In these markets, when push comes to shove, consumers meet the demands of producers.
The result, in both cases, is similar: skyrocketing costs for a product of uncertain quality.
[H]ow do we explain health care and college cost inflation? Well, health care economist David Cutler once offered me the following observation: In health care, as in education, the output is very important, and impossible to measure accurately. Two 65-year-olds check into two hospitals with pneumonia; one lives, one dies. Was the difference in the medical care, or their constitutions, or the bacteria that infected them? There is a correct answer to that question, but it’s unlikely we’ll ever know what it was.
Similarly, two students go to different colleges; one flunks out, while the other gets a Rhodes Scholarship. Is one school better, or is one student? You can’t even answer these questions by aggregating data; better schools may attract better students. Even when you control for income and parental education, you’re left with what researchers call “omitted variable bias” — a better school may attract more motivated and education-oriented parents to enroll their kids there.
So on the one hand, we have two inelastic goods with a high perceived need; and on the other hand, you have no way to measure quality of output. The result is that we keep increasing the inputs: the expensive professors and doctors and research and facilities.
Legal scholar Sarah Swan considers the argument that spectators should be held responsible for certain types of crimes:
One interesting student note [pdf] I encountered while researching this article [pdf] identifies a category of “audience-oriented crimes,” in which the presence of the audience profoundly affects the wrong, and thus participation through spectating may attract criminal liability or other penalties. For these audience-oriented wrongs, the “presence and reaction of the spectators” is a “motivating factor” that encourages the underlying activity. The author argues that drag racing and dog-fighting already fall into this category, and that gang rape or group sexual assaults should be included as well.
One Canadian province is taking the principle one step further – to the Internet, in the form of cyberbullying:
In the province of Alberta, new legislation [pdf] dictates that students must “refrain from, report, and not tolerate bullying or bullying behavior directed towards others in the school, whether or not it occurs within the school building, during the school day or by electronic means.” Failure to perform these obligations may result in penalties like suspension or expulsion. Currently, the “duty to report” piece of this legislation has received much critical attention, as has the fact that the legislation clearly extends to things that happen off school grounds and outside of school hours. But the duty to “not tolerate bullying” is pretty remarkable, too. Arguably, spectating is a form of tolerating, meaning that in addition to a duty to report, the legislation may also target the wrong of watching the bullying.
“It’s essentially saying that as adults, we’ve left the playground, and that it’s up to kids to police bullies on behalf of the school and parents,” says Peter Jon Mitchell [of the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada], the report’s author. “Certainly there might be room for bystanders’ (involvement), but I hope we’re not passing the buck to kids and saying, ‘Solve your own problems.'” …
Brenda Morrison, associate professor of criminology at Simon Fraser University, says the misstep with the new legislation is that it threatens students into reporting bullying rather than empowering them to do so – a strategy she believes exacerbates the problem. “These heavy sanctions actually create more of a culture of fear in schools,” says Morrison, a bullying expert. “We want kids to voluntarily step up for all the right reasons, because they’re good citizens.”
Reuters found that only 9 percent of Americans support using force against Syria. Nate Cohn claims that “it’s far too early to draw conclusions about public opinion on a hypothetical strike on Syria”:
The public isn’t fully informed about Syria’s behavior, and the administration and its senate allies haven’t made the case for strikes. Given that well-regarded polls have shown that the use of chemical weapons could sway public opinion, it wouldn’t be wise to discount the possibility that a plurality or majority of Americans might ultimately support some sort of military operation.
But support for striking Syria compares badly to previous wars. Joshua Keating digs up polling on past conflicts:
47 percent of Americans supported the U.S. intervention in Libya in 2011, which Talking Points Memo noted at the time was the “lowest level of support for an American military campaign in at least 30 years.” Seventy-six percent of American initially supported the Iraq War, and 90 percent supported U.S. action in Afghanistan in 2001.
On the eve of NATO military action in Kosovo in 1999, Gallup described public support as “tepid” at 46 percent. By contrast, 81 percent of Americans thought that George H.W. Bush was “doing the right thing” prior to the beginning of Operation Restore Hope in Somalia. Fifty-three percent initially supported in the invasion of Grenada. Even at their worst points, support for the wars in Iraq and Vietnam hovered around 30 percent.
I recognize there’s always a Rally ‘Round the Flag Effect and the level of support for action in Syria could change once the cruise missiles start flying and Americans feel the need to support the military action out of patriotism, but the baseline here is still pretty dismal.
Even if support spikes after America launches its missiles, that support is unlikely to be particularly solid. Support for intervention in Libya fell from 47 percent at the beginning of the conflict to 39 percent a few months later. And that was before the Benghazi attack.
What do we have to go on? Boxy architecture, A/C units, and radio towers as far as the eye can see. So it’s a warm climate that’s not very affluent, but still forward enough that people can afford air conditioning. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess a suburb of Jakarta. (I’m probably completely wrong and this is Venezuela or some other Central or South American country, which was my other instinctual reaction.)
Another:
Post-Soviet concrete, plus lots of antennae and cisterns – and an abundance of balcony foliage and reckless power lines. I’d put this somewhere in Anatolia, Turkey. And since Syria might be getting some more public attention this week, I’ll say it’s Gaziantep.
Another:
This has to be Japan, and somewhere reasonably north, judging by the winter sky and vegetation. There’s no other clues to its location other than the large number of masts in the background. It looks like Tokyo, and there’s a US communications station in Fuchu, so I’m going to guess there.
Another:
Isn’t it the dream city at the end of Inception? I think the buildings are about to fall …
Another:
I have no idea what city this week’s VFYW shows, but I am just glad I don’t live there.
Another:
A tough one with not much to go on. I can’t wait to find out what city it is and if anyone can guess the actual window. I’m guessing Barcelona, Spain. And since I’m guessing, and it’s a big city, I’m going with the Ciutat Vella neighbourhood. The only things I had to go on: 1) I thought the city had a vaguely European or possibly South American feel – based on the flower boxes and some architectural clues. 2) It obviously has weather extremes, as there are lots of chimneys and A/C units. 3) It appears to have water issues, as there are several water tanks visible. With that little bit of information I deduced Barcelona, but for the life of me couldn’t find the right view. I found a few that were close but missing the cell phone tower (and a map of cell phone towers for Barcelona didn’t help, as there are well over 100).
Another reader:
Arrgh!
I’ve gone from Albania to Romania to Moldova to Lebanon … I think I’m settling on Athens, Greece. I’ve been, but not long enough to have a solid memory of this kind of vantage point. It’s the only place I’ve found with windows that look right on buildings that are densely packed enough, along with the stair-shaped buildings. Pictures of Athens seem to feature more awnings over apartment balconies than I see in the contest picture, but I am drained. Athens! The window is a needle in a haystack, but if I had to guess I’d say somewhere in the Zografou area.
Another:
I know this is Beirut – it just has to be! There aren’t any discernible clues to my eyes in the photo – so it COULD be somewhere like Istanbul or even somewhere in Eastern Europe. And one has to consider, if you did Amman last week, why would you choose another neighboring city in the region like Beirut. But I know the city skyline in Beirut, and a considerable portion of it (especially in the suburbs) looks like that. The difficulty is pinpointing an area of the city. I’m going to guess Hamra Stree area in downtown Beirut just because some of the apartments in this photo look pretty nice and upscale – which is typical of this area. This is only the second VFYW that I have entered and I’m finding it a challenge!
Another gets in the right area:
I’m pretty sure this is São Paulo, Brazil because I live there. Looks like a decent neighborhood, but I don’t know more specifically.
Another nails the right country and city:
The photo shouted out Latin America, and closer inspection gives clues that this is Buenos Aires, Argentina (BA). Aside from the traditional and heavily built-up urban aesthetic, the barren vines on the lot-line wall on the left indicate this this is their comparatively mild winter. The balconies at the high-rise to the right are installed right up to the corner – a Latin-American speciality – while the location of several ACs in through-wall sleeves at the center-right building is a particularly New York City approach that harks back to the first buildings retrofitted with air-conditioners, something only likely in a city that was already highly urbanized in the ’50s. Finally, I recall from my youth reading National Geographic that BA is a city spiked with these funny sorts of television towers spaced at odd intervals, and recent photos confirm that this is still the case.
Now as soon as Google gets around to driving their Streetview vehicles around BA’s streets, uploads and stitch together all of the views and includes it in their maps, I’ll be able to tell you where exactly this is. Unfortunately, since my lovely wife isn’t patient enough to have me look through the thousands of user-submitted Google photos of BA (apparently this thing called “dinner” is calling), the best I can do today is look at the wide expanse of city in the background, observe the shadows from the sun in the north, and conclude the view is taken in the southern part of the city; I’m guessing the neighborhood of Constitucion.
Am I close?
Very close. Another guess:
The balconies full of plants make me think of Buenos Aires. I lived there for seven months and that is one of the strongest lasting visual impressions I have of the city: green in every balcony. The lack of Victorian-era architecture makes me think it’s the outskirts as opposed to the city center. The prevalence of air conditioners would put it at one of the richer suburbs. Shot in the dark: Ramos Mejia.
Another gets the right neighborhood:
I believe this is Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Argentina. I know because I am here right now on vacation and it is sunny and cold, and this sort of all-floor apartment building architecture is very common.
Another:
I’m fairly certain this is Buenos Aires, though I suspect identifying the precise window will be fairly difficult even for your most skillful VFYW maniacs. The entire central part of the city has a skyline that looks very similar. I’m leaving from LA to Buenos Aires on Monday. When I arrive there Tuesday I’ll look for the exact location.
One of the earliest winners of the window contest – #9 from Sarajevo – nearly gets the exact location:
I haven’t entered one of these in a couple of years, but I wanted to write because I recognized it in about 5 seconds. This is a view from relatively high up in a building in the lower 1600 block of calle Montevideo in Recoleta, Buenos Aires between Guido and Quintana, looking North-East. (Unfortunately, Google Streetview has not made it to Argentina, so I can’t identify the exact number.)
Last November, my husband and I stayed at the Algodon Mansions, a couple of doors down the street, during our honeymoon. It was fabulous. Best memory is probably lingering over a sublime steak at a parrilla in San Telmo before stumbling on one of the local gay clubs on the way home and stopping by to demonstrate Gangnam Style to some rather befuddled locals, staying out to 6am – first time in about a decade!
The clear winner this week:
I’ve never submitted to a VFYW competition and I’m amazed by the investigative powers (and time commitment) of your readers who do. But I had to submit this time, because this picture is clearly Buenos Aires. I’m from New York, but I live in BA part-time for work. The architecture, strung cable lines from building to building, the nature of the sky – they all scream Buenos Aires. I also pretty quickly guessed Recoleta, given the architecture (I myself live in Palermo Soho, and it doesn’t look like this).
Having narrowed it down substantially, how does one go about getting an address and even perhaps a window location? There are not a lot of landmarks to go by – a couple of cell phone towers. I’ve been through the experience of living in temporary apartment rentals here, researching the apartments online. They often have shots out the window or from a terrace that I thought might help orient me against those landmarks. Scanning a Google images search on Recoleta apartment rentals, I somewhat quickly came across an airbnb apartment rental picture that I thought might have the same cell tower in the background. Clicking through to the actual ad on airbnb, I realized I got luckier than I thought:
A bit of scrolling through the pictures – the 11th photo specifically – revealed nearly the exact same view, although possibly one or two floors above the VFYW window. There isn’t the plant near the window of the airbnb ad, so I don’t think this is precisely the same apartment – but clearly in the same vertical line. The building is the Concord Callao, Avenida Callao, 1234. The view is western – toward Riobamba and away from Callao. The view is out the living room window. I would guess about the 10th floor.
That was fun!
From the submitter:
Evidence that I’m a hardcore Dishhead (or that I just don’t get out much): I was hugely gratified when I saw you’d used my photo! It’s evidence of the limitations of photography, as well, because the actual view out that window is much prettier than what you see here. I couldn’t get the lens to see what my eyes saw.
I’ll be surprised if people get this one, as it’s an internal/courtyard view. The apartment building is 1234 Callao, in the part of Buenos Aires where Recoleta meets Barrio Norte (not too far from Palermo, not too far from Once) but the apartment (1210) is on the back side of the building. I spent a wonderful month here, researching a new book project and eating too much bitter-chocolate ice cream. (Unfortunately, Buenos Aires’ three main ice cream chains, Persicco, Freddo, and Volta, all have outposts within a block of this building.)
Meghan Neal finds that “Facebook is officially the bad habit of internetting – that fixation you can’t seem to kick, feel really guilty about, but sneak it anyway at night while no one’s looking.” But now there’s a new system to shame users off social media:
[A] couple of PhD students at MIT—finding themselves too addicted [to Facebook] to do their actual research—developed a system that tracks your online activity and zaps you with a painful shock if it sees you’re spending too much time on Facebook. They’re calling it the Pavlov Poke, after 19th-century Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov …
However, after electrocuting themselves several times in the name of science, the pair decided the shocks were a bit too unpleasant, and decided to try a different approach: peer ridicule. They enlisted Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and paid strangers $1.40 to call them up and yell at them for wasting too much time Facebooking. The callers read from pre-written scripts: “Hey, stop using Facebook! What the hell is wrong with you? You lazy piece of garbage. You’re a dumb freaking idiot, you know that? Get it together!”
On the other hand, Janet Kornblum, after having spent several months off Facebook, delivers an impassioned defense of the site:
You know, unplugging. It’s all the rage. And it was. For a while. I felt like I was reminded of my real life, right here, right now: the dog wanting to go for a walk, me needing to go for a walk, talking on the phone with my mom, eating—all the real-life stuff.
Then I realized – I kind of missed it. I missed my friends telling me what they were doing. I missed one friend’s daily pictures of her baby. I missed a guy I hardly know who always posts beautiful pictures of his garden, which looks like Eden. I even missed the goofy advice postings like, “Life is a spiritual journey!” that I thought I hated. I do hate them. But I kind of missed them. Oh, irony. Facebook is real life, too. So I came back.
Facebook is a place where stuff happens. Hopefully it is stuff you care about, because it’s about and by your friends, people who are sometimes your Friends and sometimes just friends. In a way, Facebook is a place in the way that countries are places. It’s big and vast and maybe your neighborhood knows a little bit of what’s going on.
Declassified documents reveal that Saddam “relied on U.S. satellite imagery, maps, and other intelligence” when he deployed mustard gas and sarin during the Iran-Iraq war:
“The Iraqis never told us that they intended to use nerve gas. They didn’t have to. We already knew,” [retired Air Force Col. Rick Francona] told Foreign Policy.
According to recently declassified CIA documents and interviews with former intelligence officials like Francona, the U.S. had firm evidence of Iraqi chemical attacks beginning in 1983. At the time, Iran was publicly alleging that illegal chemical attacks were carried out on its forces, and was building a case to present to the United Nations. But it lacked the evidence implicating Iraq, much of which was contained in top secret reports and memoranda sent to the most senior intelligence officials in the U.S. government. The CIA declined to comment for this story.
The disclosure obviously has relevance to our current moral posture on chemical warfare inside Syria:
If, as is looking increasingly likely, the U.S. does conduct a military intervention in Syria it is worth remembering that the U.S., while condemning the use of chemical weapons now, once supported a dictator knowing that he intended to use chemical weapons on his enemies, another example of how policy makers too often justify ugly and obscene policies in order to pursue what are considered desirable ends.
Chotiner insists our dirty hands in Iraq shouldn’t prevent action against Assad:
If anything, America’s previous support for Saddam Hussein made it more imperative that the country take some action to remove him. I certainly don’t think this was a sufficient reason to support a disastrous war, but it gives ammunition to the opposite case than the one that anti-war activists were making. The same argument cropped up when Mubarak lost United States support in 2011. Would it have been better to go on supporting him? …
This time around [with Syria], look for a similar focus. Haven’t we looked the other way during previous atrocities? Didn’t we previously reach out to Assad and try to make deals with him? And, given the latest revelations, how can America condemn the use of chemical weapons when we aided Saddam Hussein’s crimes? For these questions to have any merit, someone needs to explain why having previously aided an atrocity is a reason for ignoring the next one.
Meanwhile, Friedersdorf understands our assistance to Saddam as a lesson about government secrecy:
Most people in the Reagan Administration would’ve been mortified to stand in front of TV cameras and say, “I decided that we should help Saddam Hussein to kill Iranians with chemical weapons.” Forced to embrace that approach openly or not at all, policy may have been different.
But the policy never had to be explained to the American people or the world. The American personnel who carried it out never needed to defend their actions to a critical press or the public. Some people believe America did right back then. The rest of us should reflect on the lessons to take from our wrongs. Taking sides in a war like Iraq versus Iran almost inevitably meant sullying ourselves. Acting in secret all but guaranteed questionable actions would be carried out in our names. And hindsight hasn’t been kind to those who claimed our morally dubious acts were necessary.
(Photo: Victims of Iraq’s attacks on Sardasht with chemical weapons from Wikimedia Commons)
Fisher identifies the administration’s primary objective in Syria – discouraging the future use of chemical weapons:
The idea is that, when the next civilian or military leader locked in a difficult war looks back on what happened in Syria, that leader will be more likely to conclude that the use of chemical weapons isn’t worth the risk.
If the Obama administration follows through on strikes, it’s fine to argue that America’s aim should be to force Assad from power, as many surely will. And it’s fine to argue that cruise missile strikes will or will not be effective at changing Assad’s calculus on chemical weapons, or that of future military leaders. But we should at least be clear, before it gets lost in the inevitable, worthy debates, that the United States has set a specific goal with its response to what Kerry called Syria’s “undeniable” use of chemical weapons, and it’s not winning the war.
I think a nation’s credibility is important, but alone it is not enough to justify an intervention. In this case, what’s at stake is America’s willingness to enforce an international norm that is of benefit to the entire world.
If you think the U.S. should intervene militarily in even more places than we have already in the past dozen years, then please don’t hide behind the false threat or unique evil of chemical weapons.
The Assad regime is every bit as evil and rotten as the Hussein regime was. Instead of drawing lines in the sand over WMDs and all that, plead your case on the grounds that superpowers should try to stop the slaughter of innocents. I think that case is ultimately difficult to prove (or rather, it’s difficult to explain how American intervention will not ultimately lead to more problems than it might solve). But don’t rely on unexamined premises that one sort of weapon underwrites a response more than carnage itself.
Proponents of action argue that the U.S. must intervene to defend the norm against chemical weapons. Using nerve agents like sarin is illegal under international law, but they are not true “weapons of mass destruction.” Because they are hard to use in most battlefield situations, chemical weapons are usually less lethal than non-taboo weapons like high explosive. Ironically we would therefore be defending a norm against weapons that are less deadly than the bombs we would use if we intervene. This justification would also be more convincing if the U.S. government had not ignored international law whenever it got in the way of something Washington wanted to do.
Stephen Walt complains that the Obama administration “never bothered to lay out a clear strategic framework that explains why they are acting as they are” with regards to the Arab Spring and other foreign policy issues:
The problem with this ad hoc approach to policy formation is it leaves the administration perennially buffeted by events and vulnerable to pressure from all those factions, interest groups, GOP politicians, and ambitious policy wonks who think they know what ought to be done. If you don’t explain what you are trying to do and why it makes sense, it is hard for anyone to get behind the policy or see the common thread behind each separate decision.
By failing to lay out a clear set of principles — which in this case means explaining to the American people the basic points that Friedman made and why it doesn’t make sense for the US to toss a lot of resources into these various struggles — Obama & Co. end up looking inconsistent, confused, and indecisive.
By the way, laying out a clear set of strategic principles wouldn’t force the country into a rigid political straightjacket. Sometimes broad goals have to adapt to particular circumstances, and foreign policymakers often have to accept what is possible rather than what is ideal. But if you don’t explain what your underlying objectives are, why those objectives are the right ones, and how your polices are on balance going to move us in the right direction, then you are giving your political opponents a free gift and your supporters little with which to defend you.
Ben Minteer, Leah Gerber, Christopher Costello and Steven Gaines have called for a new and properly regulated market in whales. Set a sustainable worldwide quota, they say, and allow fishermen, scientists and conservationists alike to bid for catch rights. Then watch the system that saved other fish species set whaling right.
The idea outrages many environmentalists. Putting a price on whales, they argue, moves even further away from conservationist principles than the current ban, however ineffective. They’re wrong. “The arguments that whales should not be hunted, whatever their merits, have not been winning where it counts — that is, as measured by the size of the whale population,”says economist Timothy Taylor, editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives.
already knew,” [retired Air Force Col. Rick Francona] told Foreign Policy.
The Dish 
