Book Reviews: Evil Genes

Oakley, Barbara. Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed, and My Sister Stole My Mother's Boyfriend. Amherst, NY; Prometheus Books, 2008.

Other than the eye-catching title--I plucked this book off the shelf when walking by it in the library--and being a quick read, I can't recommend this book.

Her research can be summed up in two statements:

(a) There are evil people in the world.
(b) Evil people don't think that they're evil.

Though I can't fault her research, the conclusions she derives are banal:

Q: What causes evil people?

A: A combination of genetics and environment.

(No, really?)

Q. How should we deal with evil people?

A. Be aware that they exist.

(I never would have thought of that.)

The one really interesting concept is that everyone is convinced that they are good people, and what they do is good. Machiavellian personalities simply have such a high concept of themselves that they never question whether they are doing the right thing. The acme of moral clarity is evil.

What it all boils down to is that the best defense is a good offense, as in: "He may be a S.O.B., but he's our S.O.B."

Me Disagreeing with Paul Krugman

Paul Krugman opines:

Here’s how the fallacy works: if some subset of the work force accepts lower wages, it can gain jobs. If workers in the widget industry take a pay cut, this will lead to lower prices of widgets relative to other things, so people will buy more widgets, hence more employment.

But if everyone takes a pay cut, that logic no longer applies. The only way a general cut in wages can increase employment is if it leads people to buy more across the board. And why should it do that?

Maybe if everyone in the world agreed to a pay cut that would make sense. In a globalized economy, American workers taking a pay cut would reduce the comparative advantage of foreign workers, making their imports less competitive, and American exports more competitive. Thus more employment.

So there.

Secularism

Secularism is dying.

It is losing the war of ideas against Creationism.

It is losing a literal war against militant Islam.

Christianity was the core, the foundation, of the Enlightenment. When the secularists usurped it, claiming that Christianity was just another superstition, they lost the critical mass and philosophical underpinnings needed to sustain it.

Just as Greek philosophy was maintained by Christianity, the Enlightenment will be maintained by Christianity, but just like Greek philosophy, those who base their thought on it will pass away.

How to create artificial inflation

What do you do if you've used all your monetary policy, but want to nip a deflationary spiral in the bud? You create some artificial inflation. I've read some very silly proposals about how to do this (by putting expiration dates on money, for example), but the solution needn't be silly. Here's how:

You make an announcement that, starting next month, there will be a 0.1% Federal sales tax on everything. The following month, the rate would increase to 0.2%, then 0.3%, and so on. It's providing the same rising price impact of inflation, but it helps the budget and doesn't lend itself to bubbles in a variety of things, as monetary policy is wont to do.

As a side bonus, a universal sales tax would provide effective devaluation, as imports would pay the tax but exports wouldn't, making you more competitive precisely when you were trying to avoid deflation and a rising currency.

Book Reviews: Inside Rebellion

Weinstein, Jeremy. Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence. New York; Cambridge University Press, 2007.

In my grade school days, I resisted the demand that I show my work. Surely the right answer was proof I had performed the math problem correctly? All showing my work meant was that I was good at wasting paper (funny how green I am when it means less work for me).

Anyway, this book is a two-page article with 348 pages (not counting appendices) of "showing his work." In a single sentence: the resource curse affects insurgencies too.

An insurgency which has resources readily available--either the usual extractive industry wealth, or outside financial support--will not bother with the difficult, and time-consuming, process of creating an economic tax base. They buy and hire what they need.

This approach leads to violence, in his analysis, due to the two time-frames of insurgents. The long-term, "true believers", who will be dedicated and disciplined, and the short-term soldiers of fortune who are trying to get what they can while the getting's good. The short-term soldiers only sign on if there are resources available, and they are also prone to exploit the civilian population to get even more.

Interestingly, a country suffering from the resource curse is more likely to be corrupt and abusive--and much more prone to insurgency than one without. So the resource curse strikes both ways. Resources make the state abusive, which leads to insurgencies (both as a reaction and because the resource reduces barriers to entry), which are in turn abusive. Even if they are not abusive originally, any insurgent group or faction which adopts short-term goals will dominate the available resources, and drive out the others.

There was also an interesting perspective on page 127: "The fact that poorly paid men, recruited by a government and sent to some distant land to fight against an unknown foe, manage to hold their positions, stay in their units, and march on toward battle is a testament to the power of organization."

This book did not change my theory of the proper political approach to insurgency: win a victory, address a grievance, win a victory, address a grievance. Insurgency is political and military. If you advance on only one front, you can still lose the war.

Duped Dads

Who Knew I was Not the Father?

The very long article above is about guys who find out years later that the kids they thought were their own aren't, yet are still made to pay child support.

All through the article the elephant in the room was, well, the real problem is adultery, it's just that adultery normally doesn't leave much evidence.

However, here's my two cents.

I think that the courts should make a distinction between the "father", who is biological, and the "daddy" who is relational. They are usually one and the same, but in this instance they are not. The father, in my mind, should bear physical responsibility--and thus the obligation of child support. The daddy should bear emotional responsibility--and the attendant rights to custody, visitation, etc.

You can be a daddy without being the father, as many an adoptive family has proven.

Book Reviews; Already Gone

In retrospect, the conclusion of this book is obvious from my own experience. That kids leave the church at young ages should have been obvious, as I was a preteen when I went through the questioning phase. There was one portion of Scripture that sprang to my mind at that time:

John 6:66-8. "⁶⁶From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him. ⁶⁷"You do not want to leave too, do you?" Jesus asked the Twelve. ⁶⁸Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life."

These three verses led me to the obvious next thought: if I am not a Christian, what then do I believe? Answers in Genesis, and Ken Ham's work in particular, was the guiding light at this point in my life. I knew, from their work, that any religion that did not have a global flood could not explain the evidence we had around us. That left evolution, Judaism, and Islam.

Judaism I rejected because the prophecy had failed. The prophecy that David would always have a descendant on the throne of Israel had to have been fulfilled in the time of Christ or not at all.

Islam failed for me on what I've referred to as the doctrine of Groucho Marx. Groucho said he would not join a club which would accept him as a member. I would not worship any god for whom I was good enough.

That left evolution. I had read enough from Answers in Genesis to know that historical evolution is not, and can not be, science. I then had two choices in terms of belief. One was filled with hope and love. One was filled with pain, death, and chaos. The choice was then easy to make, but it would not have been made had the way I did had I not been taught to defend the faith.

The secondary conclusion of the book, that what is missing is a deep understanding of Scripture, rings true to me, as it was that understanding which preserved me.

I also thought that a sub-point on hypocrisy--which is the number one reason people give for leaving the church--was telling as well: many of the hypocrites in the church do not live the faith for the simple reason that they have not been taught the faith. I think Scripture bears this out as well, because of the reactions, at various points, when the Scripture was rediscovered and read to the people, and they were ashamed of how they lived.

I'm going to pass this book on to a few people, since the parts on Sunday School are particularly important.