Tabarrok is pissed a Liberals

Over at Marginal Revolution Alex offers a new line of defense for the President's right to torture and spy.

Liberals are claiming that President Bush has violated constitutional
restrictions on torture and spying on Americans. Don't they understand that the
constitution is a living document that must be reinterpreted in light of new
events and understandings? An originalist reading of the constitution would
throw us back into the primitive past when the minimum wage was
unconstitutional. Fortunately, conservatives know that constitutional
interpretation must change with the times and never more so than now. We live in
a different world. The Founding Fathers may have been great in their time but
they did not face the problems that we face today and we should not be bound by
their 18th century ideas of liberty and executive tyran

My problem with this is not that I think the Constitution should be interpreted strictly and conservatives do not support Bush's wire-tapping because they have some enlighted view of constitutional law. The problem is I don't trust the government to do things without transperancy or at least oversight. We have not yet heard a reason why these particular wire-taps had to be done without FISA court approval. I do not suspect these wiretaps are being grieviously abused. I bet they could have gotten approval from judge for all of the necessary wiretaps, but they just don't see it as necessary.

Great Aritcle by the Undercover Economist

There are currently massive shortages of Xbox 360 systems. Microsoft has priced the system at $300, but it is selling on ebay for up to $700. Why did Microsoft not price the system much higher? This situation isn't unique to Microsoft. Every single year shoppers seem to be frustrated by shortages of the latest "it" item.

Tim Harford provides a plausible non-answer in a column over at The Slate. He takes Microsoft at its word when it says it missed judged demand and is probably sorry for doing so. This explanation assumes that Microsoft determined the price long before launch and has difficulty changing that price once it is set.

I would be interested in knowing how companies go about pricing such a product.

Good News

Voter participation in Iraq was around 70%

ABCNews

Torture

Every since Andrew Sullivan's response to Krauthhammer's arguement in favor of torture I've been wondering if that is the best anyone can do. I have a lot of respect for Sullivan, but I found his essay lacking.

Finally, Michael Kinsley answers with witty deconstruction of the "ticking time-bomb" argument.

Bush: I am Responsible

In the last couple of days Bush has admitted that the number is civilians killed in Iraq by the US Military is up to 30,000, that pre-war intelligence was faulty, and he is responsible for the decision to go to war.

I predict his approval rating is going to turn around fast.

This is all we've wanted since shortly after the war began. Admit the cost is high, admit there were mistakes made, take responsibility. Now we can try move forward.

Bush: 30,000 dead in Iraq

This estimate probably comes from Iraq Body Count. It is based on media reports and counts only civilian deaths.

Aussie, Aussie, Aussie! Oy, Oy, Oy!

Racial riots in Sydney. More on this later.

WTO

Now that the UN conference on climate change has ended another international deliberation is preparing to commence. The cheering crowds in Montreal will be replaced hissing protesters as the WTO meets in Hong Kong.

My initial reaction to the protesters is always one of confusion. The WTO is the international organization governing and promoting free trade. How can anyone oppose trade? But I’m not one to call somebody a stupid hippie and be done with it. At the very least you have to wonder what their objection is. Why do so many people around the world passionately oppose globalization? That they are uninformed is not a sufficient answer.

Part of the answer is environmental concerns. The WTO is a potential threat to environmental regulations passed by developed countries such as the United States. Developing countries have submitted complaints that energy efficiency standards and laws mandating timber be cut from sustainably managed forests are unfair barriers to free trade. If the WTO were to favorably rule on one of these objections (I very much doubt this would happen) a country could be subject to economic sanctions for having such a law.

That is how to get people who celebrate the Kyoto Protocol to panic when it comes to the Doha Round.

Climate Change II

The Guardian:

The White House was forced into a U-turn on climate change yesterday after appearing to misjudge critically the international and domestic mood on its efforts to tackle global warming.

After American delegates walked out of the United Nations climate change conference in Montreal over the wording of a draft statement calling for international co-operation on the issue, they signed a revised version after making only 'trivial' changes.

The move came as 157 other countries agreed separately to extend the Kyoto international agreement aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The US has not joined Kyoto, so it was not involved in the talks on its future.

I have to do some more reading on this but it looks like this is seen as a big defeat for the Bush Administration. None of the American press articles I can find make it look this bad for us. Here is the most recent article on the conference on CNN's website. There is nothing about a U-Turn or "misjudging critically" in the CNN article.

Climate Change

ABCNews:

Explaining that stand earlier in the week, U.S. delegation chief Paula
Dobriansky said the Americans "believe firmly that negotiations will not reap
progress, as indicated, because there are differing perspectives."
Instead,
the U.S. delegation said it favors voluntary efforts and bilateral and regional
arrangements to tackle climate change. It repeatedly pointed to U.S. government
spending on research and development of energy-saving technologies as a
demonstration of U.S. efforts on climate.

Why does the Bush administration think that the public sphere is the best place for these innovations and not the private market. I think its pretty clear why the market is a better place to pick technological advances than the government. You cannot shift to command and control when it comes to technology. The place of government should be set goals and provide incentives that offset the market externalities such as climate change.

Further, I'd like to find out what exactly these programs are and how much funding goes into them. I wouldn't be surprised if many of these funds are being handed-off to energy companies.

Sudoku

I have recently taken up an interest in Sudoku and I it made me wonder about the mathematics of the game. How many possible Sudoku games are possible in the standard 9x9 grid? How many squares must be given to ensure at unique solution? Is there always a unique solution in the games usually published? How are the difficulty rankings determined? How hard would it be to write a program to solve Sudoku puzzles?

I found a good article with some of the answers. Its amazing that we don't know the answers to some of these questions. For example, with a 9x9 grid we know that with less than 8 (3^2-1)given numbers their must be at least 2 solutions. But that doesn't answer the question. If you have 10 given numbers must there be a unique solution? The answer is we don't know. One researcher is guessing that the magic number is 17, but he hasn't been able to prove it yet.

Good stuff.

I noticed something weird over at Foxnews.com. They have an Associated Press article about Clinton's speech at the Montreal climate change conference under 2 different headlines. Here are the headlines:

Clinton: Bush 'Flat Wrong' About Global Warming
Clinton: Bush 'Flat Wrong' About Greenhouse-Gas Emissions

The article, as far as I can tell, is identical under both headlines. Clinton said that Bush is "flat-wrong" that reducing greenhouse-gas emissions would harm the US economy. A quick Google search pulls up the same article on a number of other sites. The headlines vary from 'Flat Wrong' about Climate Change to 'Flat Wrong' about Kyoto. All of those headlines seem to accurately reflect the story.

I found it strange that Fox would have the article twice though.

Playing Poker

I went over to Harrah's and played some $3-6 last night and had a great time. Friday nights at the 3-6 table just seems like the perfect time to go. Throughout the night I would say half of the people at my table really knew what they were doing. For the other half it was probably their first time playing live poker, or if it wasn't they have some serious issues. That is a typical Friday night, but the great thing was most of the newbies were sitting on one side of the table and most of the good players were sitting on the other. This formed a kind of "us against them" feeling and everyone was very friendly. I don't think a single person on my side of the table was down at the end of the night except sunglasses boy. We'll get to him in a second. Let me tell you about the characters at this table.

The guy sitting next to me always ask how much it was to call when he was in a hand--every time. He had trouble seeing the cards in the middle of the table and I swear he was partially def as well. There was another guy who looked like a disgusting Santa Claus. He was big and fat and had a bushy white beard. The disgusting thing was he took is coat off and had only white sleeveless t-shirt.

We had a sunglasses guy at our table. He was straight from the NL tables and raising just about every pot early on. I broke a rule with myself not to get involved in large pots with players like this and I lost a top pair to a bottom 2 pair. I have serious troubles with players like this because I continuously underestimate their hands.

There was also an old lady at the table for a while. Old ladys are great to play against because if they are betting you KNOW they have a good hand and if they are raising...duck and cover. Most of the time they are content to let other people bet their hands because they are scared. This lady raised pre-flop once the entire night. I think she had one caller and he folded right after the flop.

I have to tell you about one more character at this table because I had the great read on him. I'll call him happy-young-guy. He was drinking beer and had a buddy at the table. The great thing about this guy is he would try bluff but had the most obvious tell. He would put his hand over this mouth and get this mischievious look. I started calling it "that twinkle in his eye". I never got a chance to exploit this read but the guy sitting next to me once called him down with a pair of fours to win the pot.

I did find an opportunity to bluff a pot at one time during the 6 hours I was there. I had K-8 of diaminds and decided to raise pre-flop. The reason was several people were already in the pot, I was in good position, and I had an extremely tight image at this point. I wanted to build the pot in case I flopped a good draw, and I wanted to loosen up my image a little bit.

Everyone calls the raise and the flop comes all low cards with 2 hearts and a diamond. Everyone checks to me so I thought I'd take a shot at it. A bunch of people fold and its down to me and 2 other guys. The turn is diamond. Now I actually have a draw. At this point, even before they checked to me I could tell the other guys weren't really interested in this pot. They check and I bet again. One of them folds. When the other guy called something told me he had a heart draw. It wasn't really his betting pattern because I would have expected this guy to bet the flop with 4 to a flush. Then again, I had raised pre-flop so he probably knew I would bet the flop for him. And if he had bet it he was thinking I would have raised him on the flop and that would have knocked out all of the other players diminishing his profits if he actually hit the flush. All of that flashed through my head between the time he called and the dealer threw the river out there which was a black card-total blank. He checks and I fire another bet with my King high. He actually thinks about it for a second making me think he had a pair, but then he folds.

Now, technically this wasn't the greatest bluff in the world. I probably had the best hand with King high, but I was a situation where I used my table image to take in a decent sized pot.

Another great thing about the table was that the newbies would go crazy with obviously beaten hands. For example in this one pot I had AK. The flop brings an ace and 2 low cards. I bet, sweaty-guy raises, I re-raise and he calls. I bet the turn and he raises. At this point I'm pretty sure I'm beat. He's got to have 2-pair right? I call and call him on the river. To my amazement he flips over A5. He had nothing but a pair of aces on the flop with a 5 kicker and he turned a gut-shot straight draw.

This sweaty-guy was a real character as well. He sat down at the table with his fresh rack of $100 and could barely stack his chips because his hands were shaking so much, and he literally had beads of sweat on his forehead. He won a couple of big pots right away and settled down a bit.

One more guy I have to mention. He was only at my table for 30 minutes or so before he moved over the $4-8, but he made an impression. This guy would not shutup. It didn't matter if he was in hands or not the running commentary continued. It was literally hard to think or pay attention to any player besides him the whole time he was there. He was teasingly asking our dealer if she would give him a ride home when she got off work.

"Come on, please...I need to go see my buddy who is in prison."

"At 11 o'clock at night?"

"No, I mean I'd spend the night with you and then go see him in the morning."

"Ummmm..."

"No? It's probably because I'm black right?" He pulls a wad of cash out of his pocket. "Look at this,"I've even got a bunch of money and she won't have anything to do with me."

Then the best comment of the night: The dealer says "Those are all 1's. You probably just came from the strip club."

You just can't experience this stuff playing online. I've written a lot now and I still haven't told you about half the people at the table or very many of my interesting hands. This is why I love live poker so much and I can't bring myself to start playing online. Playing with real people is a fun evening of entertainment.

Delay

Judge Upholds Most Serious Charges Against DeLay
and
DeLay's Money Laundering Charges Upheld

News for Free?

Why do news organizations give news away for free?

There would be a couple of components to this answer. First of all, game theory. I'm thinking of a prisoner's dilema where all news providers would be better off if no one offered news for free. But each individually sees a benefit to free news. The huge traffic to their website would increase their advertising revenue greatly. But if one newspaper provides free online news all organizations find it in their interests to follow.

Actually setting this up to require understanding the trade-offs between online advertising, print advertising, and subscription fees.

Competitive Journalism II

This is a continuation of the previous post.

What is the optimal amount of resources devoted to news in a society? Do we expect a free market to naturally achieve this level? This is impossible to answer. We'd need to know the value to society of investigative reporting on the government. And what is the value of that reporting? What was the benefit to the US of Watergate? Once we figure out the value of this reporting we'd need to know the marginal contribution of resources to this reporting. For example if spending on investigative reporting rose 15% how many more stories would be reported? Of course this value is dependent on how corrupt the government is.

One model could look like this: The first several units of investigative reporting are immensely valuable to society. Large indescretions by the government and corporations are discovered first. The assumption is that the most costly corruption is reported first. After some level each additional unit of investigative reporting has greater difficult finding a story and the stories they do find are of less benefit to society because they are uncovering less costly corruption. So we have diminishing marginal benefits to investigative reporting.

Some people might argue the marginal costs of investigative reporting include damage to society for uncovering corruption. Or they might say the marginal benefits are less because uncovering corruption doesn't necessarilty lead to better government.

This model could be augmented with party affiliation. For example: Some members of society get a benefit when the party they oppose is exposed on some charge regurdless if society at large benefits. Members of the other party experience some costs regardless if the corruption was actually damaging to society.

Under this model it is likely that each side would devote resources to exposing the other side and perhaps resources to defending their own side from being exposed.

Now that we have models...is there reason to expect our society achieves a sub-optimal level of investigative reporting? Now the question is can any of this be measured and studied?

On that note, here is some investigative reporting. What is the value to society of this reporting? Is there damage to society from this article? Who is benefiting? Who is bearing the costs? Might one side feel the press is biased if they support these activities and get caught?

Competitive Journalism

In the spirit of this blog being a recording of various issues I am concerned about and not a finished product for general consumption I am going to make more of an effort to throw out more questions and ideas I am unsure of as opposed to my own opinions or simply linking to the news. I very much doubt I will find the time to research these issues and report on them further. So my first question...

How do journalists compete? Or rather how to media organizations compete and how does that affect reporters and editors and ultimately, readers?

What is the strategy of one media business to grow market share and advertising revenues over other media businesses? How have these strategies changed in recdent years with the proliferation of 24 hour news networks and the growing influence of the Internet?

How important are quality reporters and editors to the bottom line? What is the value of a scoop?

How does the Washington Post grow its brand and reputation? I think most people would agree that www.washingtonpost.com and www.nytimes.com and www.latimes.com offer extremely similar experiences. You won't find news on one that you wouldn't find on the others. The only differences perhaps the layout and the feeling that reader have for that particular media organization. Is USAToday a name you trust?

How does being considered biased affect your paper? Many conservative wing-nuts believe the NYTimes is a liberal-biased media organization. How does this affect the NYTimes brand image? How does it affect their revenues? My initial feeling is that it may hurt the NYTimes but help Foxnews. Does it help an organization to be considered liberal or conservative?

How do subscription fees for content affect revenues? How do they affect the brand? The NYTimes recently put some of its content behind a subscription fee. They did not put their "news of the day" content behind this subscription. Obviously with many competitors offering almost identical services on the web for free it would be surprising if they could increase profits by doing that. Presumably some hardcore NYTimes readers would pay a fee for that subscription but it seems likely that a vast majority of readers would simply move over to the WaPost or other "national" paper. Lost advertising revenues would more than offset any subscription revenues.

But the NYTimes did place a subscription on its editoral content. How will this affect the revenue and the brand? One clear distinction is that editoral content can not be easily copied by other papers. The columnist work exclusively for the NYTimes and they obviously felt these people were not easily copied by other news organizations. Note, I can go to other news sites for opinion so there can be substitution here. In fact, that is probably what most NYTimes readers did. So the NYTimes feels that revenues from a subscription for its editorial content will more than offset the lost traffic of people visiting its site specifically for this content. It will be interesting to see what becomes of these fees...some people predict they will have a negative effect.

What if advertising prices go up?

This is a very interesting topic to me.

Congrats Tucker Carlson...

...you seem to have won a debate on your show with a guy who is in favor of human exinction. Good job, we can all rest easy tonight.

I like Tucker Carlson, but I just can't stand his new show on MSNBC because, like some other commentator shows of this kind, he invites guests who have radical opinions and then debates them. The goal of the show is not to have a good discussion though, it is for the host of the show to win. You will never hear someone say "Hmmm, well, that's a good point. I hadn't thought of that before." No, the show is based on a contention between guest and host.

I think the only people who can stand to watch these shows for longer than 20 seconds are people who are probably cheering, "Yes, he defeated guest #2 tonight!" Our democracy is safe for another night.

The Propoganda War

From the NYTimes:

Titled "The Sands Are Blowing Toward a Democratic Iraq,"
an article written this week for publication in the Iraqi press was scornful of
outsiders' pessimism about the country's future.
"Western press and
frequently those self-styled 'objective' observers of Iraq are often critics of
how we, the people of Iraq, are proceeding down the path in determining what is
best for our nation," the article began. Quoting the Prophet Muhammad, it
pleaded for unity and nonviolence.
But far from
being the heartfelt opinion of an Iraqi writer, as its language implied, the
article was prepared by the United States military as part of a
multimillion-dollar covert campaign to plant paid propaganda in the Iraqi news
media and pay friendly Iraqi journalists monthly stipends, military contractors
and officials said.

This is how the Pentagon defended this practice in the Washington Post:

"This is a military program to help get factual information about ongoing
operations into Iraqi news," said Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a military spokesman
in Baghdad. "Because this is part of our ongoing operations and an important
part of countering misinformation in the news by insurgents, I can't provide
details of what that entails. I want to emphasize that all information used for
marketing these stories is completely factual."