Author: Andrew Sullivan

Jonathan Bernstein points to a hole in our understanding:

In my view, political scientists haven't done a very good job at all of sorting through the concept of ambition.  The literature talks about ambition for office, which is fine as far as it goes (and is basically what I used in my post the other day), but I don't think it really goes very far.  Think, for example, about Dick Cheney.

It's true that as Veep he didn't have "progressive ambition" — he didn't run for president, and as far as we know really didn't have any intention of running for president.  And as Seth says, that had real consequences.  Yet I think it would be a real mistake to say that he had no ambition at all; it's just that his ambitions were devoted (apparently) towards amassing influence during the Bush presidency, not towards having a presidency of his own.  Overall, I just think we collectively don't quite have a handle on ambition. 

Jeffrey Gettleman warns that the pirates are winning:

Somali pirates will strike anything: one-thousand-foot-long oil tankers; tiny sailboats with three people on board; old-fashioned, crescent-sailed Arab dhows; freighters crammed with emergency food; freighters crammed with weapons; a tanker carrying extremely flammable benzene that American authorities worried could be converted into an enormous, floating bomb. The pirates have even attacked navy ships, apparently by mistake.

No one knows exactly how much they have netted in the past few years in ransoms but it is safe to assume at least $100 million. Often the booty makes them giddy. After a parachute packed with $3 million drifted down to the deck of the Sirius Star, a Saudi supertanker that a band of young Somali pirates hijacked in late 2008, the pirates divvied up the cash and impetuously sped away in their dinghies, in the middle of a squall. Several capsized and drowned. One dead pirate washed up on the beach with more than $150,000 in his pockets.

This excess has created a budding pirate culture. Pirate weddings are elaborate two- or three-day affairs, stretching deep into the night, with bands—and brides—flown in from outside Somalia and convoys of expensive 4×4 trucks. The prettiest young women in pirate towns dream of a pirate groom; little boys can hardly wait until they are old enough to sling an AK-47 over their shoulder and head out to sea. In these places, the entire local economy revolves around hijacking ships, with hundreds of men, women, and children employed as guards, scouts, cooks, deckhands, mechanics, skiff-builders, accountants, and tea-makers.

Over at TNC's place, Cynic marvels at the American education system's perverse incentives:

We want teachers who demonstrate perseverance coupled with ambition, steady improvement over time, and achievement, without succumbing to complacence. Our school systems, on the other hand, are bastions of stability. They extend the promise of steady employment in a volatile world, substantial job security, and for those who stick it out for long enough, an enormous deferred payoff in the form of benefits and pensions. If we'd designed it from scratch, we would have struggled to produce a system more perfectly designed to attract young people who value stability, or to repel and grind down those who seek constant change.

…Work environments hospitable to continual innovation tend to have relatively low barriers to entry, and relatively low barriers to exit. Schools invert that. Many have extensive up-front credentialing requirements, forcing novice teachers to invest substantial time and money at the beginning of their careers, before they can even decide whether they are indeed well-suited for the job. Early career teachers tend to get the least desirable assignments, and to be paid barely enough on which to live. On the other hand, most compensation packages are grossly back-loaded, offering lock-step seniority raises and substantial retirement benefits. So it's tough to get in the door, and once you do, leaving entails abandoning the rewards for which you've already labored before you can enjoy them. That's crazy.

And the teachers unions are fighting to preserve it.

A reader writes:

As a liberal, I don't have any problem acknowledging that many of the wealthy people in our society have worked hard to earn what they have. What I question is whether their financial rewards are proportionate to their work, given that the creation of wealth is the product of collaborative efforts far more often than it is the product of individual acts of genius. What I also question is why conservatives so often forget that many people of ability work very hard and do not accrue such wealth. If it is a question of hard work, tell me Andrew – who works harder than a single mother employed at Wal-Mart?

I don't deny that. But if an entrepreneur works just as hard but because he's smarter or more driven or more innovative, I think he deserves as much of his rewards as is compatible with a basic safety net and core public goods. After all, he is the person whose success makes taxation possible at all – or rather far more successful than if there were only Wal-Mart workers. But I am content with inequality as the price of freedom, and do not believe the government should punish people for being successful. Another writes:

While I agree that liberals should give more credit to the value of hard work in becoming successful, more conservatives should give more credit to the myriad other factors that either enable or detract from success.

The obvious one that most liberals point out is cultural/societal influences, but the one I would highlight is the conditions put in place by a developed country’s government. The rich are able to make their money, whether it’s from inheritance or hard work, because of the security, infrastructure, research, education, patent enforcement, etc. that the government provides, and they should be responsible for providing funding for these services in the future if they are deriving the vast majority of the benefits from their provision.

No less a conservative figure than Ben Stein has highlighted this. In a column in the NYT a few years ago, he wrote, in reference to raising taxes during wartime:

But if they are superrich, they derive special benefits from life in the United States that the nonrich don't. For one thing, they can make the money in a safe environment, which is not true for the rich in many countries. It is just common decency that they should pay much higher income taxes than they do. Taxes for the rich are lower than they have been since at least World War II — that is to say, in 60 years.

This makes no sense in a world at war, in a nation with so many unmet social needs, in a nation with so many people without health care, in a nation running immense and endless deficits.

But I agree! I favor a return to Clinton era tax rates for the successful because we need to find some money somewhere and the hike is not that bad, given the debt we face. I'd like tax simplification and an end to the myriad loopholes and deductions in the tax code that the rich pay lawyers to exploit. I believe in an estate tax, in order to reward work not nepotism. I've made the same point about paying for the wars and supported the health insurance reform. I just think that wealthy seniors should pay more for Medicare and that social security could easily be means-tested and that the retirement age be raised. Not because I hate the old, but because we have to do something, or go into default. The successful already pay the bulk of the taxes. I just don't see why tax hikes should be framed as some kind of revenge on them, or long-overdue comeuppance. It's a necessary evil for the common good. And many liberals would fare better if they made their case that way, as, I might add, Obama generally does.

Humans at play:

Tim Knoll BMX from tim knoll on Vimeo.

Theodore Dalrymple says that in this case modern media culture helped its subjects:

For once, media attention was wholly beneficial in its effects. The miners were in the eye of the world. They knew that what they did, how they acted, would be known to untold millions… Here, then, is an illustration of the evident but often forgotten fact that social pressure is conducive to virtue as well as to vice. We generally imagine that so-called peer pressure leads only to such activities as taking drugs and vandalism; but it also leads, or rather can lead, to emulation of virtue, self-respect and decent pride. No man but an out-and-out psychopath wants to appear worse than his fellows in the eyes of the world; and the miners' (justified) pride in appearing brave and self-composed helped them to survive their ordeal.

And then many reverted to being disloyal money-grubbers.

It's a kind of a lawn dart that touched many lives – and taunted the nanny state:

Long live the 3:1 ratio of boys to girls with “penetrating lawn dart injuries” that led to the ban.

Long live the box copy reading, mostly chronologically: “an outdoor game,” “a missile game,” “an exciting outdoor game of skill for the whole family,” “fun for the entire family.”

Long live the amended copy: “an outdoor skill game for adults,” “a skillful sport for adults,” or “a competition rated adult lawn dart game.”

Long live the end of the jart.

Long live the end of childhood.

Long live the culture of protection.

And on it goes.

(Hat tip: Will Wilkinson, who illustrated the essay.)

Chris Good asks Richard Lee, the man behind Prop 19:  "how many counties do you think will go ahead in the next couple years and allow for commercial sale" of marijuana should Prop 19 pass? Lee's answer:

There's about nine cities that have already put adult cannabis tax referendums on their local ballots to be ready when Prop. 19 passes. Six cities passed adult legalization initiatives or resolutions back in 2006 or so. I think there's a number of places that will move ahead.