The Consequence of Mary Poppins

I was dragged, last night, to the Broadway production of Mary Poppins. While I can't complain too much -- it was all, or rather mostly, good, nostalgic, fun -- its financial/economic teachings are insipid.

The financial/economic teaching, of the classic movie appear mostly harmless. Bankers extolling the virtues of disciplined long term investing, and responsibly building credit, are mocked, but not central to the plot -- Mr Banks loses his job because he puts it before his family, and regains it when he shifts priorities.

The musical attempts to be sharper in its financial commentary. The central plot element illustrates that smart investing stems from focus on the human aspect and not the strength of the idea, or plan. The character of "the Holy Terror" is introduced (or rather resurrected from the books) to cast rigor and discipline as a traditional Disney villain.

The musical is consistent with the under-informed liberal narrative of the current financial crisis caused, to this view, by a self-involved financial world, wrapped in paper profits and complex derivatives, that lost touch with the real, "human" world around it.

The reality, of course, is that the most direct cause -- government policies promoting the illusion of home ownership by encouraging loose lending -- was a focus on the narrow human aspect at the expense of the rigor of the plan.

More fundamentally, I have previously posted my view:

In the end, the strength of an economy boils down to the aggregate willingness and ability of people to do things valued by other people. And underneath all the awful decisions made by all sorts of economic actors, lies a culture that increasingly devalues the painstaking work that goes with ordinary productivity.

This devaluation is something the writers of musical -- and to a somewhat lesser degree the movie -- strangely sought to encourage.

The good news is that there does appear to be some growing recognition, that parents hurt their children when they withhold discipline.

Opposite Marriage on Trial

In his opening statement, Ted Olson promised to prove:

1. The importance of marriage.
2. The "grievous harm" worked by denying the right to marry.
3. There is "no good reason" to deny homosexuals this right.

The first two items are red herrings. Whatever the tangible benefits of marriage, they certainly come far more from the commitment of the couple than the tax implications. The notion -- suggested by Olson -- that a couple cannot fully "share their dreams" with each other without state sanction is silly (and mildly ironic given his backers).

The true injury caused by Prop 8 is symbolic. As well described by Olson:

All it does is label gay and lesbian persons as different, inferior, unequal, and disfavored. And it brands their relationships as not the same, and less-approved than those enjoyed by opposite sex couples. It stigmatizes gays and lesbians, classifies them as outcasts, and causes needless pain, isolation and humiliation.

On the other hand, state sanctioning of gay marriage causes similar symbolic injury (stigmatization) to adherents of traditional religion. Decision via judicial rather than political process aggravates the injury as one's voice is, at least, more fully heard in a political process.

Reading Olson's statement more carefully, the injury he describes is inflicted less by the denial of state sanction as much as by the societal mores that support the status quo. The majority of Americans, as expressed by their votes, consider homosexual "relationships inferior and less-deserving of respect and dignity," a view that, if Roe v Wade is any guide, judicial interference will only harden. In the end, then, what plaintiffs seek is not to remedy their injury as much as the compensatory satisfaction of asserting their political power over the majority that dis-respect them.

In a prior post, I expressed agreement in principle with the third item. Or rather, that there appears no rational reason to oppose sanctioning gay marriage. Opposition is rooted in accepted tradition.

What is on trial, then, appears to be whether or not, in the eyes of the law, traditional values constitute a "good reason".

The Ladies and the Tiger

Tiger "mistress", Jaimee Grubbs is not without a conscience. In a conversation with extra TV, she "couldn't describe how remorseful" she was to have hurt Elin the children. None-the-less, she does not feel all that bad as, she says, "If it wasn't me, it was going to be other girls."

Traditional teachers advanced standards of behavior -- classical virtue, religious righteousness -- to be adhered to for their own sake. Von Hayek observes that this traditionally morality is everywhere being replaced by "social conscience" -- being guided by awareness of the effect of our actions on others.

Von Hayek critiques this new thinking on its own terms. He argues that traditional moral rules are, themselves, social phenomenon -- evolving societal understandings, required as people cannot possibly fully understand the complex consequences flowing from their own actions. To Von Hayek, true social conscience demands respect for traditional rules.

Pragmatically -- as illustrated by the Prisoner's Dilemma -- any consequence-driven social morality seems unlikely to be ultimately upheld. In the end, whatever we do, other people will pollute, deal arms, sell predatory mortgages, mislead on their mortgage applications, separate fools and their money, sleep with married billionaires, etc, so why should we abstain? The Obama Administration has, in fact, played to this lesser angel, in the stimulus debate, suggesting critics opt out.

Tiger, of course, has no similar excuse for his choices. He has, thankfully, not yet attempted to justify them. That said, it is hard for us to simply condemn him, knowing that few men could withstand the temptations he faced. By some measure, his sin, so to speak, was not being a saint. Or, perhaps, his true mistake, given his place in life, was aspiring to-, thinking he could-, be a father and a husband.

Avatar

Avatar is being billed must-see as the most expensive movie ever made.

As the actual production costs are not, for the genre, unusually excessive, it appears -- if the billing it to be believed -- that it is the marketing budget that broke records.

One wonders why with a film promising a revolutionarily magical viewing experience and fawningly reviewed by the best critics requires record-setting marketing.

Not all the buzz has been positive. Following South Park, many have derided the film as "Dances With Smurfs". The Independant sees the film as an "allegory of US adventurism in the Middle East". One conservative blogger crudely, labels the film "Liberal Porn of Doe-eyed nature lovers killing Marines," another simply questions "drawing the audience to cheer the brutal deaths of Americans."

Avatar's opening weekend -- hurt by an east coast snow storm -- appears to roughly track that of the awfully reviewed 2012, with relatively mediocre domestic revenue supplemented by strong performance overseas (where, presumably, fewer people have qualms cheering the brutal deaths of Americans).

The performance of Sherlock Holmes, which opens this friday, may provide a rough baseline to calculate how much 20th Century Fox and James Cameron cost themselves by injecting divisive politics into their blockbuster movie.

Fourth and Two

Bill Belichek widely admired (or, depending on one’s perspective, reviled) as a cold-hearted football coaching genius, was widely attacked for, against conventional wisdom, choosing to go for a fourth and two from his own 29 and losing the game. Two New York Times blogs (here and here) defend the decision, calculating that he made the statistically correct decision for the team, if not for his career. Bill Simmons undermines that statistical argument by noting that the assumed odds of making a fourth and two are meaningfully different than converting a two point conversion.

Given the ultimate fuzziness of the statistical argument, whether one condemns or defends Belichek’s choice would seem to reduce, more or less, to whether one prefers to defer to, or align with, the genius coach or the accepted practice.

It is worth understanding that beneath the presented alternatives lie divergent sets of values. The accepted practice, in the end, argues that the Patriots should not have beaten themselves. If Indy was able to drive seventy yards in two minutes for the touchdown, they deserved the win. To this way of thinking, the job of a coach is not as much to directly give his team the best chance of winning, as it is to put the best team on the field. Belichek supporters disregard the testimony of former players – since, to some degree, supported by the Patriots subsequent performance -- that Belichek’s choice came at the expense of the product-on-the-field.

In the end, Belicheck likely did not have finely tuned statistical analysis on hand. The call more likely came from his gut. As he described it, he saw a chance to win and took it.

2012

The political foolishness of the common Conservative tendency to tar anyone to one's left with a common brush is more and more apparent.

While we do seem to have on the right a more defined topology of competing views -- witness the more idealogical difference between, for example, McCain and Huckabee, compared to that between Obama and Hillary -- there does appear to be at least one increasingly sharp division on the left.

The root of this division is the natural tendency of power to seek more power, which in politics results in the governing party seeking to expand the power of government. The greatest example of this is how the party of Ronald Reagan became the party of W Bush.

For all the efforts made, big government conservatism was always ill fitting and mostly shucked once Republicans lost power.

On the left, however, there is a strong core -- perhaps up to 15% of the electorate -- of, for lack of a better label, Socialists, who ideologically support an ever-expanding government. In the other corner of the left are -- again, for lack of a better label -- Liberals who believe that Government ought be part of the solution to national problems, but who also share, to some degree, with conservatives, belief in the traditional classically liberal American values.

With Obama's election, the "Socialists" are in now power and the "Liberals" appear to be slowly getting squeamish.

The earliest manifestation of this was, perhaps, Joe Lieberman's excommunication. Lieberman, who volunteered for Bobby Kennedy and freedom summer, remains very much a traditional Liberal. In his principled opposition to the current push for socialized medicine he expressed a very Liberal creed: "Sometimes the private sector does things that are wrong, and when they do, you regulate—sometimes you litigate, But never in the history of America ... have we tried to keep one industry honest by having government go into that business to compete with the industry."

Another illustration is Jon Stewart's antipathy towards the groupthink that increasingly appears to be part of global warming science -- intellectual integrity and independence is a core value of the Liberal, but not Socialist, left.

In an editorial today, the Times stated unambiguously its common-sense position that a bank that is too big too fail ought not be allowed to exist. The Socialists in power prefer, instead, to expand the power of government further by entrenching and controlling the largest firms.

In the 2012 elections, Republicans will have the option of nominating a staunch conservative who in the best of circumstances could win less than 55% of the vote. Democrats, then, would likely continue to respond with (stealth) Socialist candidates and our politics would continue to be played in the red zone.

I pray -- though am not optimistic -- that Republicans will find the wisdom to choose a principled moderate who can remind Liberals of our shared values. Such a candidate could hope to win upwards 60% of the vote, with meaningful coattails, presenting Democrats with the choice of marginalizing their Socialists or facing political irrelevance.

Shared Intentionality

From the Science Times: We May Be Born With an Urge to Help

The article opens by claiming biologists are overturning dour traditional -- that of philosophers, theologians, and parents -- notions of human nature. They have found that human children are naturally more helpful, co-operative and social than chimpanzees.

The article centers on a book by a Dr Tomasello who teaches that children develop "shared intentionality", described as the propensity to abide by, and enforce, social norms, which he believes parents ought reinforce. To Dr Tomasello -- a co-director of an institute for evolutionary anthropology -- shared intentionality evolved very early on -- it is handy when hunting -- and is a foundation of human culture.

The article then quotes one Dr. de Waal, a primatologist, who teaches that humans are naturally empathetic -- only psychopaths are not -- and therefore the humaneness of societies is, thankfully, ground in biology, not "the whims of politics, culture or religion."

The article notes (in an apparent non sequitur) that "experiments have shown that people will reject unfair distributions of money even it means they receive nothing" and, more relevantly, is fair enough to acknowledge that social norms may, in part, be enforced negatively and that warfare is also an expression of this human capacity for co-operation. It concludes with one final lesson from Dr. Tomasello that "we are both selfish and altruistic at the same time."

This final lesson is, of course, very consistent with the traditional teachings that the article claimed biologists were overturning.

Above all, the article is wonderfully self-referencing. Enforced social norms apply as much to thought as to behavior. Without them, those who easily imagine the roots of human nature as adapted to prehistoric lifestyles would have less difficulty understating how our traditional political, cultural and religious structures might be adapted to human nature (and, in turn, human nature to them). More-over, if there is, here, a new way of thinking upending previously established norms, it is brought about by people raised to rebel against any naturally developed shared intentionality.