Month: May 2014

A reader explains why it’s so much cheaper to buy goods than services:

Three words: Baumol’s. Cost. Disease. The basic idea is that as productivity increases over time (i.e., more widgets built, more burgers flipped), it can’t increase over time for work that is denominated in … time. Hours of child care. Hours of surgery. Hours of psychotherapy. Credit hours in education. You can’t cram more hours into an hour. So as wages rise, the per-hour cost of an hour has to just plain rise, in order to keep up.

His own example:

My wife and I have two small daughters. At present, full-time care for both costs about $1,600 a month. For comparison, our modest apartment costs us $1,800 a month. And the child care is modest, too! It was modest in a preschool until recently, and currently in a home daycare. The preschool was one of the cheaper day-care centers. The home day care is a little on the high side at the same price.

And here’s the rub: daycare workers are badly undervalued, undertrained, and underpaid. And even at that price they’re this expensive! I know a preschool that really pays and trains its teachers well. It costs about twice as much as ours did.

So my position is that good child care is fundamentally unaffordable. In the past, it was subsidized at the cost of women’s futures. Now, it is less and less subsidized – and less and less affordable.

Another reader takes issue with Derek Thompson:

Now consider education, health, and childcare, the blue sectors above where prices are rising considerably faster than average. These are service industries that employ local workers. They are not, to use the economic term, “tradable.”

Wrong! Education does not always employ local workers. I can send you evidence to show that STEM teachers are being imported by the dozen from India. I know them personally, I know the agency, and how it was investigated by DOL. Many years ago, tutoring, or doing your homework for a fee, was off-shored to India.

Healthcare was off-shored even before that: medical transcription, reading radiological reports. That trend reversed a bit because of the quality, but even then that has depleted the economy, rather than create value. I think the right explanation is that electronic consumable and durables become cheaper over time, like generic drugs, because the initial investment has been recouped. It is just economies of scale.

Thailand’s Constitutional Court has ordered Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and nine members of her cabinet to step down:

Lennox Samuels situates the order within what critics call a “rolling silent judicial coup” against the Shinawatras’ political movement:

The ruling comes weeks after the same court nullified the February 2 national election, which Yingluck’s Pheu Thai party was expected to win. The party won the last election, in 2011, routing the opposition Democrat Party. Ever since that 2011 victory, anti-government elements have been agitating to topple Pheu Thai. … “This is a full-blown version of a judicial coup, with long-lasting impact on the balance of powers,” legal expert Verapat Pariyawong tells The Baily Beast. Previous rulings were among the principal reasons that led to the rise of an anti-Thaksin government and the 2010 massacre of the Red Shirts. “One can only hope that the political outcome will be different this time,” said Pariyawong. “But to be realistic, once the rule of law in the chamber is gone, all that is left is probably violence on the street.”

Keating remarks that, for all they are reviled by their opponents, “no party with one of the Shinawatra siblings at the top of the ballot has lost a Thai election” since 2001:

None of this is necessarily to defend the Shinawatras. Thaksin was a populist tycoon with an authoritarian streak who was accused of human rights abuses including extrajudicial killings and detentions during the country’s war on drugs. Yingluck was fairly transparently acting has his proxy by pushing an amnesty bill that would have allowed him to return to the country. A scheme to hoard rice to drive up global prices has been an economic disaster.

But it’s fairly apparent that any time Thai voters are asked, they vote Shinawtra—particularly in the country’s less developed north. But any time one of them or their allies gets into power, the judiciary and the military figure out a way to remove them. The opposition, whose supporters are drawn primarily from the urban middle class, are now advocating that the country’s electoral democracy be replaced with a vaguely defined “People’s Council.” If the Shinawatras are removed from power again, we could also see the return of massive and occasionally deadly street protests of years past.

Adam Pasick looks ahead:

Niwattumrong Boonsongpaisan, a cabinet minister, was named as acting prime minister, and much of Yingluck’s cabinet will remain in office, preventing the political vacuum that some had feared. But that’s only a stopgap, since the entire government has been in caretaker mode since Yingluck dissolved parliament and called for elections last year. The vote in February was boycotted by the anti-Thaksin (and misleadingly named) Democrat Party and the results voided by—you guessed it—the constitutional court. …

Previous setbacks have resulted in violent street clashes between security forces and Thaksin supporters known as “red shirts,” who have scheduled a protest for May 10 in response to Yingluck’s ouster. The outcome of that rally may determine whether Thai politics are yet again about to swing from absurdity to violence. In any case, chaos seems certain.

The Bloomberg editors slam the Thai opposition, which is still refusing to participate in the upcoming elections:

The courts have now satisfied one of the opposition’s central demands by getting rid of Yingluck. For weeks this spring, the army allowed protesters great leeway as they tried to blockade Bangkok’s streets. Yet neither the judges, the generals nor the king — the third leg of the traditionalist establishment — has stepped in to replace Yingluck’s government, for at least one obvious reason: No undemocratically chosen administration would command legitimacy among a majority of Thais or the international community.

The opposition’s continued refusal to stand in the elections — even with more than two months to prepare — simply cannot be justified. There’s little reason to suspect that the July vote won’t be largely free and fair. If the Democrats and their allies lose again, as they have repeatedly over the past two decades, it will be because they have still not crafted a message that appeals to most of their countrymen, nor built a strong political organization that extends to all parts of the country.

Previous Dish on Thailand here and here.

The debate continues:

Your reader claiming that explicit writing about sex in romances makes those romances porn and then saying the writing about sex is “orthogonal to true art – it suppresses rather than invites reflection” irritates me. Look, for me, violence in television shows, movies, video games, and some books is also “orthogonal to true art.” Nevertheless, reviewers review and discuss violence (such as Jaime Lannister raping his sister Cersei in Game of Thrones) and do so in thoughtful ways, exploring the nuances of the violence, the sex, and their effects. There is no similar, serious, thoughtful writing in quantity about romance novels in the mainstream press. In fact, it’s my belief that the reason a lot of romance has unnecessary or uninspired writing about sex is that there are no sympathetic yet analytical reviews that could have helped shape the skills of writers and the tastes of the audience from the beginning.

Another reader:

Speaking as an erotic romance writer, and an acquisition editor for a romance publisher, I can assure you that erotic romance novels are not at all ONLY pornography. In fact, if you throw the word “porn” into a gathering of romance authors, you’d better get the hell out of there quickly before they eat you for breakfast! Only someone who has not read a well-written romance novel would say something so obviously dismissive and condescending.

I could list the many romance novels I’ve consumed that have influenced my ethics and morality (for the better), but the number is too unwieldy for this email. I’ve learned about racism, miscegenation, rape, slavery, consent, dub-con, homosexuality, ageism, history, polyamory, and most importantly, hope and acceptance, from romance novels. The kind of subject matter some authors routinely tackle is stunning. I’ve also learned how not to write from the badly written romances (just as I have learned that same lesson from crappy literary novels, of which there are many).

Romance is easily one of the most widely-read category of books. As an industry, it is booming. Yet I am continually amazed at the lack of respect these novels receive. Thank you for once again highlighting how little progress we have made in our world when it comes to what we allow women to be – because it’s just not cool to read something romantic, is it? In order to be a real woman, a smart woman, a perfect woman, you can only read The Odyssey.

Oh wait, what was Ulysses trying to do? Get back home to the woman he loved? Hmmm …

Meanwhile, another reader – who is writing a book about the cultural response to romance – puts forth a canon that stretches back hundreds of years:

The word “romance” originally referred to a relatively lengthy, fictional narrative, in poetry or in prose, written in “romanz” – that is, the romance language, which, in this case, was Old French. Romances could treat topics out of classical or French history, but they are most famous nowadays for treating matters of British history, especially the stories of King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table. So, the first “romance novels,” in a sense, are the accounts of the loves Lancelot and Guinevere and Tristan and Iseut in the twelfth century, which are the ancestor of the love stories we know today.

While classical culture knew erotic love, such as the passion of Dido for Aeneas, it is often argued that “romantic” love as we know it – with its emphasis upon the lovers’ suffering and their exaltation through suffering – originated in these “romanz.” The “canonical” works of this genre would include Chrétien de Troyes’ Lancelot; Béroul’s, Thomas’, and Gottfried von Strassburg’s romances of Tristan; Marie de France’s Lais; and the lengthy Vulgate and Post-Vulgate Cycles, with their compendia of Arthurian lore.

Medieval romance is followed by Renaissance romance epic. I would recommend Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, which contains enough bodice-ripping to satisfy any Harlequin reader, and Torquato Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered.

While the English made a distinction between medieval “romance” and the modern “novel” (which they claim to have invented in the eighteenth century), most other Europeans use the same term (“roman,” “romanzo,” “Roman,” etc.) for the two genres. Even in England, Gothic novels were often subtitled “A Romance,” in order to link them with the earlier, medieval tradition. I can’t speak to modern romances, but I suspect one can’t do much better than Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights.

While there is very much a “romance canon,” it is also true that, from the 12th century to the present day, the genre has been criticized for suggesting that amorous relationships should be passionate and, typically, outside the boundaries of marriage. Emma Bovary reads too many romances, and we see what happens to her …

A reader says the call for a kinder, gentler atheism is long overdue:

Bill Maher, Richard Dawkins, and other New Atheists are like gay dudes in assless chaps dancing on a dildo float. They put their atheism in everybody’s face and make no apologies. While I understand why New Atheists do that (I sometimes metaphorically put them on when faced with the worst in religious lunacy), they aren’t changing minds with their tactics. It will be the mundane atheists who live across the street or work in accounting or coach your kids’ soccer team who will eventually make the religious realize that there is nothing amoral or sinister about people who don’t concern themselves with deities. It’s hard to fear somebody when you know they have to buy toilet paper and cornflakes just like everybody else.

Another sets a good example:

I know people who have been through grievous life events – the loss of a child, loss of a parent at a young age – and according to their belief system, they will see that person again some day. My grandmother lost a son to a drowning at a young age, and she would always say that when she got to heaven, she would at last understand why he had been taken.

Why would I want to aggressively go around telling people that none of that is likely to happen, that their loved one is just as dead as a squirrel on the road? That may be my belief, but I don’t know it to be a fact. Life is difficult enough – why take away a source of comfort to some? It’s not my goal to convert other people to my beliefs any more than it’s your goal to convert other people to being gay. All I would like is acceptance.

But another argues that society needs both pleasant and pissed-off atheists:

Religious leaders have slandered atheists for centuries as being evil incarnate, and we need quiet kind atheists to show that one can not only be good without God, but also the sweetest, most inoffensive person on the planet. But you need in-your-face New Atheists as well. You need these people to challenge the posting of the 10 Commandments in schools, courthouses, and town halls. You need these people to point out that U.S. law is based on English Common Law, which in turn is based on pagan Roman law. You need these people to expose people to the arguments against religion so it isn’t accepted fact that the supernatural is real or that Christianity was born in its current form straight from Jesus.

I’d also like to challenge the notion that nobody was converted to Atheism by the New Atheists. It was the works of Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins that provided the final push for me on my journey from a skeptical Christian to a loud, proud atheist. Now I suspect that your reader is right that their works will fail to convince a devout Christian. Heck, I’ve seen you, Andrew, acknowledge historical and scientific truths that directly contradict your beliefs, only to brush them aside to claim a “higher truth” that cannot be proven. The ultra-rationalist New Atheists will never win you or other devoted believers over. However, they can and do win over people who are already skeptical of their beliefs.

Previous Dish on the need for atheists to come out here, here and here.

Yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed that Russian forces had withdrawn from the Ukrainian border and urged separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk to postpone a referendum on autonomy scheduled for Sunday (a call they rejected today). Marc Champion is cautiously optimistic that Putin is starting to see reason:

Here is what I hope his statement signifies: First, that Putin doesn’t want to invade Ukraine. It has always seemed unlikely that invasion was his goal, but with forces ready on the border, it could never be ruled out. (Indeed, although Putin said today that Russian troops had withdrawn from the border, NATO officials said they had not.) …

I hope, secondly, that having decided not to invade Ukraine, Putin also doesn’t want to trigger a civil war there. Putin will be well aware that a disputed status referendum can act as a trigger for conflict. The spark for the war in Bosnia, for example, was a 1992 referendum on independence from Yugoslavia that Bosnian Serbs were bound to lose, because they were less numerous than Bosnian Muslims and Croats.

But Ioffe doesn’t buy it:

Putin isn’t really hiding a very good reason for postponing the referendum.

He asked “representatives of southeast Ukraine and supporters of federalization to hold off the referendum scheduled for May 11, in order to give this dialogue the conditions it needs to have a chance.” (emphasis mine) Because eastern and southern Ukraine is not Crimea, and it is not at all clear that, were a referendum held in just four days, the results would come out in Russia’s favor. The unpopularity of the new government in Kiev here has not translated to favoring he idea of independence or joining up with Russia. Polls put the number at just 30 percent of people in the region supporting annexation. To get the right result, Russia would have to pull off a stupendous amount of fraud, thereby risking a massive backlash—and further violence—in these regions.

New numbers from Pew back her up:

The poll, from Pew Research’s Global Attitudes Project, shows that a vast majority — 77 percent — of those polled want the country to remain united, compared to only 14 percent who want to allow regions of the country to secede. The split between attitudes in the east of the country, where most of the Russian-speaking population resides and has faced unrest from pro-Russian separatists for the last two months, and the Kyiv-backing west are readily apparent in the breakdown of the question: 93 percent of western Ukrainians want to keep the country together, compared to 70 percent in the east. That number dips lower to 58 percent when Russian speakers are split out, but still constitutes a majority.

Daniel Berman suspects Putin is actually trying to call attention to the referendum:

[D]espite having specifically scheduled their own referendum for May 11th, two weeks before national elections, neither Western governments, nor the media have taken the bait. The obsession has remained on Ukraine’s own elections on the 25th; accusations against Putin have focused on his efforts to disrupt those elections. No one seems to have expected much from this Sunday’s vote, or feared much from its aftermath. The idea that a 99% or so vote for union with Russia would immediately be followed by annexation has not seriously been raised. In such a circumstance, Russians troops following up such a vote with an occupation of the Oblast would be seen as an invasion, no different than a move on Kiev.

Clearly therefore the referendum gambit was not working for Putin, and this explains his request for a delay. At best, not only does Putin come across as a reasonable figure working towards a settlement; rescheduling the referendum will provide another opportunity, along with additional time to build up expectations about its significance. In the worst case, if he fails to achieve the delay, he has still refocused international attention on it, increasing its importance, and hopefully its significance.

Bershidsky doubts the separatists will be able to pull off a credible vote anyway:

The referendum, and a similar one planned in the neighboring region of Lugansk, was a ridiculous idea from the start. The rebels do not have the skills, the numbers or the control necessary to organize a real vote. All they have managed to do is to print some highly ornamented ballots. With the Ukrainian military, police and national guard conducting a bumbling “anti-terrorist operation” in the rebellious regions, not even the semblance of peaceful balloting is feasible. Russia recognized the farcical secession referendum in Crimea in April, because a high degree of local support was there for all to see. In Donetsk and Lugansk, the referendum is such a bad idea that even Russia won’t touch it with a barge pole. …

Putin’s move is not being offered as a trade for concessions. His gambit is, more likely, meant to open an important line of questioning about what exactly the West needs from him if Russia is to avoid serious economic sanctions.

Keating downplays the other part of Putin’s statement, about moving the Russian troops away from the border:

[G]iven that the existence of these troops, where exactly they’re located, and what they’re doing have been matters of dispute throughout this crisis, Putin’s latest assurance may not mean very much. It would also seem to contradict earlier statements suggesting that the military units in the area had already returned to base or hadn’t been there in the first place, though all of these statements have been somewhat ambiguously worded.

I’m not sure how much the location and composition of these troops will really matter. Russian may not need to actually use them—at least in the short term—given that pro-Russian separatists likely assisted by Russian special operations forces seem to be doing a perfectly fine job resisting Ukrainian government efforts to regain control over the country’s southeast.