S&P defense

In a startling approach, S&P seems to be making a claim that their ratings are marketing activities and not a credible estimate of credit-worthiness.  I am going to outsource the obvious conclusion from Matthew Yglesias:

If talk of objectivity is just marketing hype, then the ratings are worthless. It's just a form of paid public relations for security issuers and nobody should take the ratings seriously for a minute.

In case you have trouble imaging this defense, Kevin Drum posted a picture showing the actual text.  What passes imagination is that the US government has written these ratings into law in terms of what pension funds can invest in.  If this is just paid marketing, should we not repeal these laws?  And would that not remove what little is left of the business model?

What am I missing here?

"Don't you cry for me..."

In the recent IP thread (see here, here, here and here to get caught up), Joseph and I have generally been bemoaning regulatory capture and trying to make the case that ludicrously broad patents and endlessly extended copyrights are socially costly. We were not, however, arguing for the other extreme, a world of no intellectual property protection where "information wants to be free." We've seen how how things work in a world where copyrights go unenforced:

Stephen Collins Foster (July 4, 1826 – January 13, 1864), known as the "father of American music", was an American songwriter primarily known for his parlour and minstrel music. Foster wrote over 200 songs; among his best known are "Oh! Susanna", "Camptown Races", "Old Folks at Home", "My Old Kentucky Home", "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair", "Old Black Joe", and "Beautiful Dreamer". Many of his compositions remain popular more than 150 years after he wrote them.
...
Stephen Foster had become impoverished while living at the North American Hotel at 30 Bowery on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York. He was reportedly confined to his bed for days by a persistent fever; Foster tried to call a chambermaid, but collapsed, falling against the washbasin next to his bed and shattering it, which gouged his head. It took three hours to get him to Bellevue Hospital. In an era before transfusions and antibiotics, he succumbed three days after his admittance, aged 37. 

His worn leather wallet contained a scrap of paper that simply said, "Dear friends and gentle hearts," along with 38 cents in Civil War scrip and three pennies.

(According to a music historian I know, the example of Foster was very much on the minds of the people who created ASCAP fifty years later.)

Just so there's no room for confusion, Joseph and I are arguing for the middle ground for IP protection, such as what we saw with American copyrights from 1909 to 1976 (a period that represented a pretty good run).

Intellectual Property and Merit

Mark and I had an offline discussion about how intellectual property law (intended to reward innovators) can often be co-opted by large financial interests who have much more bargaining power.  The classic example is a band signing up for their first record deal -- there is a lot of pressure to sign with a label and the negotiations may be asymmetric unless the group has an amazing agent. 

In the same sense, Chris Dillow has a great piece on how many innovators were too far ahead of their time and never reaped the rewards of their innovation.  The classic example is Doug Engelbert:

Doug Engelbart, who invented the computer mouse, did not make much money from his invention because its patent expired in 1987, before the surge in demand for home comupters. This fact poses a problem for people daft enough to think that markets reward merit - because it's quite common for very meritorious people to fail simply by being ahead of their time.

He goes on to discuss a number of other examples in technology, music, and sports.  That this happens is, I think, quite clear unless the definition of innovation becomes aliased with the definition of marketing; if you do alias innovation with marketing (e.g. making the mouse computer tool popular and/or getting large companies interested in it) then it becomes rather unclear what the compelling government interest is.  Selling good ideas to large companies is its own reward and does not really need a government subsidy to continue to be a rewarding activity.  Creating a new drug or technology, on the other hand, is important and the compelling interest in making these things happen is much clearer. 

Now, this may be a straw man in the sense of market theory (as you can have rich and complex theories about how markets should reward merit and it is hard to easily generalize).  But I think it bears reflection in the sense of intellectual property.  In what sense are we motivating innovation with these laws and what is the right balance to strike.  That is a much more interesting line of discussion. 

Straw Stick Men

You can find about sixty years worth of arguments suggesting that planetary exploration should be deferred until we have addressed some immediate problem (cure cancer, end pollution, etc.). I don't want to defend these arguments -- at least not in their blanket form -- but I do feel obliged to point out that I've never seen anyone that we should wait until we've solved "all our problems."

Weekend blogging -- the surprising overlap between chemistry majors and comic book nerds

OK... maybe not all that surprising.

Here's the description from Freetech4teachers:

The Periodic Table of Comic Books is a project of the chemistry department at the University of Kentucky. The idea is that for every element in the Periodic Table of Elements there is a comic book reference. Clicking on an element in the periodic table displayed on the homepage will take visitors to a list and images of comic book references to that particular element. After looking at the comic book reference if visitors want more information about a particular element they can find it by using the provided link to Web Elements. 

Here are a couple of the items you'll find under Platinum.

(apparently we have made some progress in gender attitudes in the past fifty years.)

The real issue

Frances Woolley gets to the heart of the problem with citibike that Mark and I have been discussing:

The biggest losers from a carbon tax are people like my cousins in the exurbs. The map above, taken from a paper by VandeWeghe and Kennedy, highlights the parts of Toronto with the highest per capita carbon consumption in red. These are place where people live in reasonably large houses, and commute long distances to work, generating whopping carbon footprints. The whole purpose of a carbon tax is to discourage this type of lifestyle. But I can see why people are reluctant to give it up. Except for the commute, it's great. The streets are quiet, clean and friendly, and there's lots of green space near by. For a person who wants a garden and ample living space, the alternative housing options in the same price range are clearly less desirable: a small, unrenovated bungalow in Scarborough, say, or a downtown condo.

This is really what is going to be the core issue of carbon reform.  Right now we subsidize the exurbs and the large living space ideal.  If you don't believe me, just think of what the response would be to a plan to stop keeping commuter roads in place in order to save money.   Or to just banning cars in NYC, as they are clearly inefficient relative to alternatives.  It'd be brutal.  Yet nobody has an equivalent problem with massive cuts to public transit. 

So the biggest problem is that there just isn't a consensus on dealing with this problem.  At the margins, a carbon tax would be purely good news.  It would raise revenue and that would be a good thing in a low tax country (kind of like cigarette and alcohol taxes being very positive revenue generators).  But even a "revenue neutral tax" can be opposed over fears that it might end up generating additional tax revenue.   In what other context would this be rational?  Would we be worried about accepting employment because there might be a pay raise?  Is it not good for the central government to have as many different levers as possible to collect revenue? 

In that context, citibike is an interesting flash point because it illustrates just how entrenched the opposition to meaningful change is (i.e. even when the change is trivial it brings forth strong emotions).  Yet we need to develop meaningful alternatives to the status quo at some point, even if it is just when all of the oil is consumed. 

 

A very different perspective on the NYC bike share program

Check here to get up to speed on the discussion.

At least for me, big posts tend to bring a lot of little posts in their wake. In the course of fact checking and looking up background, interesting facts pop up that make for brief, freestanding posts. Since these are quick to write, they usually get posted before the piece that inspired them (thus somewhat mixing the wake metaphor). Sometimes the big posts never get finished, leaving the smaller ones with something of a non sequitur quality.

In the case of the recent bike share thread, the main topic I wanted to address was the way New York City's bike share program has been covered (particularly the environmental aspect) and how that coverage compares to other recent environmental stories.

Citi Bike has turned into a major national story. Here are some of the reasons I think it does not merit that level of attention:

More bicycles are not going to be a big part of the solution to our environmental and transportation problems. This is a cheap, reliable, and well-established technology that everybody knows about. As a result, most of the benefits of the technology have been realized. We can, of course, get still more by making cities more bike-friendly and bikes cheaper and more convenient, but there's not a lot of low hanging fruit here, particularly when compared to steps like fixing rail choke points and shifting over to more plug in hybrids and electric vehicles;

Bike share programs can only play a limited role in promoting cycling. Bikes are already cheap and easily stored and transported, thus limiting the incremental value. Furthermore, sharing programs work best in the same high density areas where public transportation is generally most plentiful;

The New York City example is likely to have little impact on the future of bike share programs. We're talking about an extraordinarily unrepresentative place, expensive, densely populated, compact with so little available space that even bike parking is an issue, and served by an exceptional public transportation system. It's going to be difficult to widely generalize from that experience.  

This is not to say that the NYC program and ride sharing in general aren't admirable and worthwhile programs -- give me an initiative, I'll vote for it -- but they remain a small part of a small part of the solution.

By comparison, a major international reduction in the use of coal might well be the most important thing we can do to address global warming and ocean acidification. It is also a story with huge economic implications and a long list of winners and losers.

By any reasonable standard, the Obama administration's recent proposed policy changes surrounding coal are a couple of orders of journalistic magnitude bigger than a bike share program in a single city, but that certainly doesn't seem to be reflected in the levels of coverage we've seen.

As an admittedly crude way of attaching some numbers to this I did the following Google news searches and noted the number of hits I got for certain phrases (no quotes). The actual numbers jumped around but the first position seems to remain the same

new york city bike share

About 65,000 results


obama climate change speech

About 57,500 results


obama climate change coal

41,700 results


I take a couple of things away from this. the first is the way that the culture of journalism affects what we see and read. The second is our ability to have the kind of discussion needed to solve big problems.

I've been making the point for a while now that the press corps has a problem with homogeneity and insularity. If you look at truly influential journalists and opinion makers, you will see certain groups highly over-represented (such as New Yorkers). It's only natural that stories which affect those groups tend to get noticed. What's less excusable is the apparent lack of awareness on the subject. There's nothing wrong with being an upper-middle to upper class, ivy-league educated professional who lives and/or works in NYC or DC. The is something wrong with assuming that most people share those circumstances, particularly if part of your job is providing a balanced account of things. The NYC bike share program has a disproportionate effect on important members of the press corps so it's not surprising that it receives disproportionate coverage. A similar dynamic tends to amplify the coverage of high end electronics and dampen coverage of items predominantly used by the lower-middle and lower classes like over the air TV (though that demographic is changing).

But the far bigger issue is our apparent inability to maintain the sense of prospective necessary for the kind of prioritized discussions that lead to solutions of big problems. I'm not saying there's no room for smaller matters but there needs to be some sense of proportionality. Important issues like coal policy, ocean acidification, CAFE standards and the future of nuclear power are often pushed to the back pages. Others, like rail choke points, receive almost no attention at all.

Obviously public discourse is not a zero sum game. The time we spend talking about bike sharing doesn't have to come out of the time we would have spent talking about fuel efficiency, but there are limits to our bandwidth and until we start giving appropriate attention to environmental issues, we simply won't have time for the small stuff.

A perspective on bike culture

One point that I wanted to add to the discussion with Mark about bicycles is the importance of having a plan.  In a lot of ways, I prefer a bad plan to no plan at all.  Mostly because hard decisions made in the face of crisis tend to be sub-optimal.  One question that really needs to be addressed in any discussion of trying to avoid climate change or creating a greener world is what will replace the current sources of greenhouse gas and/or pollution.

It may be the case that some things can be discontinued.  But we need electricity for computers and we will always need to be able to travel from place to place.  Walking has significant limitations. 

What the bicycle crowd has is an option that might well work to replace short and medium length commutes.  It has a lot of downsides and disadvantages.  In a lot of ways I almost prefer golf carts, although given that golf carts mix well with bicycles this isn't a major problem. 

This might be the wrong way forward -- I don't know.  But I think that proposing a plan is a good forward step.  Sure, it might be the case that the plan isn't going to survive scrutiny.  But I would like to see alternative proposed that are not "we can keep the status quo forever" unless these plans address issues like peak oil and pollution thoughtfully.

So I like the conversation starting as that is so much better than pretending that there isn't going to be a problem.

Five... Four... Three... Two...

A side note on Joseph's climate change post...

Particularly the part where he discusses Miami and its grim-looking future. Of the coastal cities in North America, Miami is certainly among the most vulnerable to rising sea levels. Here, via Wikipedia, are some elevations:

Miami    Elevation 6 ft (2 m)

New York City Elevation 33 ft (10 m)

Los Angeles   Elevation 233 (city hall) ft (71 m)
(Ours is a rugged shore)

Even before rising sea level was a concern, building a major city in an area routinely hit by hurricanes (often accompanied by large storm surges) on a patch of land with an elevation of six feet was a questionable idea.

Consider the Miami Hurricane of 1926:

Most of the coastal inhabitants had not evacuated, partly because of short warning (a hurricane warning was issued just a few hours before landfall) and partly because the "young" city's population knew little about the danger a major hurricane posed. A 15-foot (4.6 m) storm surge inundated the area, causing massive property damage and some fatalities. As the eye of the hurricane crossed over Miami Beach and downtown Miami, many people believed the storm had passed. Some tried to leave the barrier islands, only to be swept off the bridges by the rear eyewall. "The lull lasted 35 minutes, and during that time the streets of the city became crowded with people," wrote Richard Gray, the local weather chief. "As a result, many lives were lost during the second phase of the storm."

Inland, Lake Okeechobee experienced a high storm surge that broke a portion of the dikes, flooding the town of Moore Haven and killing many. This was just a prelude to the deadly 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane, which would cause a massive number of fatalities estimated at 2,500 around the lake. 

Coastal regions between Mobile and Pensacola, Florida also suffered heavy damage from wind, rain, and storm surge, but this paled beside the news of the destruction in Miami. According to the Red Cross there were 373 fatalities. Other estimates vary, since there were a large number of people listed as "missing". Between 25,000 and 50,000 people were left homeless, mostly in the Miami area. 

The damage from the storm was immense; few buildings in Miami or Miami Beach were left intact. The toll for the storm was $100 million ($1.3 billion 2013 USD). It is estimated that if an identical storm hit in the year 2005, with modern development and prices, the storm would have caused $140–157 billion in damage.

$157 billion (adjusted for inflation) also happened to be the total cost of the hurricane. (from the same source):

Costliest U.S. Atlantic hurricanes 1900–2005
Total estimated property damage, adjusted for wealth normalization[4]
Rank Hurricane Season Cost (2005 USD)
1 "Miami" 1926 $157 billion
2 "Galveston" 1900 $99.4 billion
3 Katrina 2005 $81.0 billion
4 "Galveston" 1915 $68.0 billion
5 Andrew 1992 $55.8 billion
6 "New England" 1938 $39.2 billion
7 "Cuba–Florida" 1944 $38.7 billion
8 "Okeechobee" 1928 $33.6 billion
9 Donna 1960 $26.8 billion
10 Camille 1969 $21.2 billion

All of which got me wondering if this seemingly inexplicable piece of bad urban planning could be traced back to Florida's long and colorful history of real estate bubbles. People, pretty much by definition, act irrationally during bubbles and you'd be hard pressed to find a state more associated with them than Florida.

This association is so long standing that buying Florida swamp land was a reliable punchline all the way back in the Twenties.

The Cocoanuts was written for the Marx Brothers after the success of their Broadway hit I'll Say She Is (1924). The Cocoanuts is set against the backdrop of the 1920s Florida Land Boom, which was followed by the inevitable bust. Groucho is a hotel proprietor, land impresario, and con man, assisted and hampered by two inept grifters, Chico and Harpo, and the ultra-rational hotel assistant, Zeppo. Groucho pursues a wealthy dowager ripe for a swindle, played by the dignified Margaret Dumont.

If Florida didn't have such a history of scams and bubbles, would it still look so much like a Marx Brothers movie today?

Corporate term of the day -- FUBAR Promotions

Sometimes a major initiative will blow up so badly that the careers of everyone associated will take a major, possibly fatal hit. As far as I can tell, though, that seems to be the exception, driven as much by company politics and poor spin control as by the actual magnitude of the screw-up.

I can't recall personally seeing a heads-will-roll disaster but I've seen quite a few either scapegoated or rebranded ones. Scapegoating goes about like you would expect. A mid-level person (preferably one who actually did screw something up) is fired and the remaining people line up behind the story that the project would have been a huge success if not for that one idiot. This often results in a de facto posthumous promotion: the departed financial analyst not only underestimated the cost; he was also responsible for the disastrous marketing campaign.

There are a couple of problems with the scapegoating approach to spin control. First, unless there's been a recent change in upper management, it raises the problematic why'd-you-hire-the-guy question. Second, disseminating that particular narrative on a company wide scale can be tricky. Corporate communications are much better suited at putting a positive spin on things. That's where rebranding comes in.

The somewhat Orwellian process goes like this: first, the goalposts are moved (project objectives are rewritten so that relatively minor improvements and largely cosmetic changes qualify as objectives); second, the accomplishments of the project are depicted as positively as possible internally and externally with emails, announcements, recognition at meetings and press releases; third, everyone prominently associated with the project receives a career bump through excellent evaluations, bonuses and promotions.

The other nice thing about the rebranding approach is that it can be done on a massive scale. The worst corporate disaster I've ever seen first hand resulted in dozens of promotions, even though the people in the know were privately describing the project as an almost complete failure.

I wonder how many dysfunctional corporate cultures can be partially attributed to FUBAR promotions. Who knows... that might even explain the post-Zucker NBC.

More on climate change

You might wonder why I was strident about Mark's piece on citi-bike and why I am getting worried about climate change.  This piece in Rolling Stone about the future of Miami is a good example of the sort of issue that is worrying me.  Part of where I am coming from is I am a huge technological optimist, which is really not a position that makes sense given my other preferences.  But I have a firm belief that a) people prefer not to work hard and b) when there are incentives then a group of dreamers are likely to find ways to make things work better. 

The current car culture is already in decline.  There are a couple of ways we can respond to this shift in cultural values.  We can be paralyzed by fear and do everything that we can to prevent this shift away from cars.  Exhibit A comes from the Wall Street journal editorial board.  Or we can try and adapt to a new and different world. 

What I want to avoid is the Megan McArdle position where we look at all of the costs and none of the benefits.  Or where we don't see the costs as challenges to be met.  I am very interested in the potential of alternative energy -- including wind and especially solar power.  True, we may end up having to run our dishwashers during daylight hours.  Now if only somebody could invent a timer that could be put on a dishwasher to have it run during non-peak times.  Curiously, I remember such timers as a child and see absolutely no reason why they could not come back. 

So I think we should look with interest on the small cases because they define the legal, intellectual and cultural context for the big battles.  I would like to bet on the sort of American innovation that changes the world last century.  Because I think it remains the best way forward. 

Note to Blogger -- today is not the sixth of July -- updated

Blogger,

When I schedule a post for July 6th, I want you not just to label it "SATURDAY, JULY 6, 2013" but to actually post it on that day. I apologize if that wasn't clear. My lighthearted weekend blogging features simply work better if they appear, you know, on the weekend.

While we're on the subject, it would be great if readers, particularly those who follow the blog, could see their comments appear in the comment section or at least go to the spam filter where I can recover them. Having them disappear for no reason creates bad feelings.

We'll talk more later.

Mark

UPDATE -- I thought about leaving the post from the future up just for the weirdness factor, but Blogger was putting all of the new posts (like this) under it and I didn't want to leave people with the impression that we weren't updating. 

Drilling down in the Citi-Bike topic

"I think comparing to the cost of a bike kinda misses the point. I often get around with my bike, but I'd love to pay for the additional option. "

comment on "A quick note on Citi-Bike" eaten by Blogger.

This is still off the main point I want to make, but based on the reaction to my last post, in which I pointed out that you could buy a new bike for less than a one year pass for the NYC bike share program, I thought I ought to spell out a couple of points.

What is Citi Bike selling and whom are they selling it to?

What they aren't selling is a general substitute for a bike, at least not for purposes of leisure, exercise or long trips. The people at Citi Bike are explicit on this point, "If you would like to use a bike for an extended period of time, we encourage you to rent a bike at a local bike shop or rental business."

Instead, the product offers a quick and convenient way of making short trips assuming clement weather and appropriate start and end points. It's important to note that the places you can go on these trips is almost entirely a small subset of the places you can go  with public transportation. The logistics of bike sharing simply do not favor the out-of-the-way destination.

If we think in terms of functionality (which, if you search on 'ddulite,' you'll see is a bit of a hobbyhorse of mine), the service looks like less an alternative to owning a bike and more like a quicker and more pleasant alternative to mass transit. This raises some interesting policy questions. If the purpose of Citi Bike is to make urban living more inviting, it makes a great deal of sense; if the purpose is to reduce congestion and carbon emissions, the case is considerably weaker.

That's what. Now how about who? Here's how I see the target market:

Urban;

Relatively fit;

Financially stable and reasonably upscale;

Willing to pay a premium for convenience;

Bike owner.

I know that last one seems a bit strange but we're looking at people who like cycling and are comfortable paying $95 up front for a service. Most of those people will own a bike. There will be exceptions, such as the extremely space constrained or those heavily into a just-in-time lifestyle (who will seek out other rental options for long rides) but for the most part I see typical customers as having a bike (and sometimes a very nice one), but often not having it with them when they need it.

For this target market, Citi Bike is an excellent service and a good value. My concern is that we've gotten confused about what the program is supposed to accomplish and that the demographics of the target audience is muddling the discussion.

But more on that later.

A defense of the media coverage of citi-bike

I think this piece by Mike the Mad Biologist helps explain what is going on with the reaction to Mark's Citi-bike piece.  The issue is not that this program has a lot of potential to change the climate -- it is a small step in the right direction that can, at most, have marginal benefits.  What is remarkable is that such a small program can not only achieve such a strong reaction but that there is actually legal moves afoot to remove these stations from high end neighborhoods. 

It is this piece, the degree of reaction to a small change, that really is newsworthy (even if the lede often seems to be deeply buried).  In a real sense, this story is directly linked to President Obama's climate change speech.  Because if the law can be used as a weapon to remove bike stations then why would we not expect it to be used against the EPA? 

The law and the environment is a very unfortunate combination.  On one hand, environmental review seems to be linked to delays in critically needed infrastructure.  But it has a decidedly mixed record on tackling issues like coal use that have broad external costs that are not borne by the industry. 

So, in this sense, citi-bike is a canary in the coal mine for how the larger drama may well play out.