Paul M. Jones

The knock-down argument against the 1-2-3 studies of happiness comes from the philosopher’s (and the physicist’s) toolbox: a thought experiment. “Happiness” viewed as a self-reported mood is surely not the purpose of a fully human life, because, if you were given, in some brave new world, a drug like Aldous Huxley’s imagined “soma,” you would report a happiness of 3.0 [on a 1-2-3 scale] to the researcher every time. Dopamine, an aptly named neurotransmitter in the brain, makes one “happy.” Get more of it, right? Something is deeply awry.

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One of the proponents of happiness studies, the eminent British economist Richard Layard, is fond of noting that “happiness has not risen since the ’50s in the U.S. or Britain or (over a shorter period) in western Germany.” Such an allegation casts doubt on the relevance of the “happiness” so measured. No one who lived in the United States or Britain in the ’50s (I leave judgments on West Germany in the ’70s to others) could possibly believe that the age of Catcher in the Rye or The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner was more fulfilling than recent times.

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In 2004, there appeared a gratifyingly sensible compendium of positive psychology, closely edited by two leaders in the field, Seligman and Christopher Peterson, Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification. In 664 large pages, 40 scientists from clinical and social psychology and related fields present a “manual of the sanities.” The conclusion? The same as Groundhog Day: People are happier when they perform the virtues, in fact the very seven virtues of the Western tradition (found also in the literature and philosophy of the East and South and no doubt the North): prudence (the virtue beloved of economists), justice, temperance, courage, faith (as identity), hope (as purpose), and love.

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The result is that while income growth makes it possible for people better to attain their aspirations, they are not happier because their aspirations, too, have risen.”

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Hedonics has become a branch of the century-old campaign by the American clerisy against “consumerism”--that is, the getting of the silly stuff to which the non-clerisy are so enslaved, unlike our own refined consumption of opera tickets and adventure holidays.

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“Consumerism,” such as the extra-caloric value of a meal of rabbit meat shared over the campfire by beloved fellow Bushmen in German East Africa in 1900 or of beer and chips shared over a dollar-limit poker table with beloved colleagues in Hyde Park in 1980, characterizes all human cultures. Sneers at “consumerism,” or the hedonics now used to back the sneers, are scientifically and politically unjustified.

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And, if seen through history rather than through Hellenistic pastoralism or German Romanticism, the gemeinschaft of olden times looks not so nice. The murder rate in villages in thirteenth-century England was higher than the worst police districts now. Medieval English peasants were in fact mobile geographically, “fragmenting” their lives. The imagined extended family of “traditional” life never existed in England. The Russian mir was not egalitarian, and its ancientness was a figment of the German Romantic imagination. The once-idealized Vietnamese peasants of the ’60s did not live in tranquil, closed corporate communities. The sweet American family of “I Remember Mama” or “Father Knows Best” must have occurred from time to time. But most were more like Long Day’s Journey Into Night or Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. As the feminist economist Nancy Folbre remarks, “We cannot base our critique of impersonal market-based society on some romantic version of a past society as one big happy family. In that family, Big Daddy was usually in control.”

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The descendent in today’s Glasgow of the dairy maid or the cook, in whom the old intelligence shines, is richer because the society in which she lives has moved from $3 to $125 a day. She has hugely greater scope, capabilities, potential, real personal income for what Wilhelm von Humboldt described in 1792 as Bildung, “self-culture,” “self-development,” life plans, the second-order preferences fulfilled that make for inner and outer success in life. She leads a life in full--fuller in work, travel, education, health, acquaintance, imagination.

via Deirdre N. McCloskey: Happyism | The New Republic.

The Second Amendment is Obsolete, some say.  The idea that the United States could ever turn tyrannical is pure paranoia, some say.

Well, let's look at that.

Rounding up people and sending them to concentration camps (whether called "reservations" or "relocation centers"). Check. (Treatment of Native Americans.  Japanese-American "Relocation Centers" during World War II).

Illegal medical experiments involving infecting people with diseases, not treating them, and observing the effects done on people without their knowledge or consent. Check. (Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment--and particularly interesting how that was "explained" to the victims as they were getting free health care from the US Government.)

Arbitrary searches of American citizens' households aimed at the seizure of property without either probable cause or any kind of warrant. Check. (post-Katrina gun Confiscation)

Laws passed allowing the indefinite detention of American Citizens without due process of law. Check. (NDAA 2012)

American citizens going about their daily business being stopped and searched again without probable cause or any kind of warrant (or even the "reasonably articulable suspicion" for a "Terry Stop"). Check. (TSA, not just at Airports, but at bus terminals, rail and subway terminals, highways, even High School Proms.)

"Can't happen here?" It has and is happening here.

via coldservings - "It can't happen here.".

Gun Free Zones are supposed to protect our children, and some politicians wish to strip us of our right to keep and bear arms. Those same politicians and their families are currently under the protection of armed Secret Service agents. If Gun Free Zones are sufficient protection for our children, then Gun Free Zones should be good enough for politicians.

via Eliminate armed guards for the President, Vice-President, and their families, and establish Gun Free Zones around them | We the People: Your Voice in Our Government.

For those of us fighting for our traditional rights, the US 2nd Amendment is a rare light in an ever darkening room. Governments will use the excuse of trying to protect the people from maniacs and crime, but are in reality, it is the bureaucrats protecting their power and position. In all cases where guns are banned, gun crime continues and often increases. As for maniacs, be it nuts with cars (NYC, Chapel Hill NC), swords (Japan), knives (China) or home made bombs (everywhere), insane people strike. They throw acid (Pakistan, UK), they throw fire bombs (France), they attack. What is worse, is, that the best way to stop a maniac is not psychology or jail or "talking to them", it is a bullet in the head, that is why they are a maniac, because they are incapable of living in reality or stopping themselves.

The excuse that people will start shooting each other is also plain and silly. So it is our politicians saying that our society is full of incapable adolescents who can never be trusted? Then, please explain how we can trust them or the police, who themselves grew up and came from the same culture?

No it is about power and a total power over the people. There is a lot of desire to bad mouth the Tsar, particularly by the Communists, who claim he was a tyrant, and yet under him we were armed and under the progressives disarmed. Do not be fooled by a belief that progressives, leftists hate guns. Oh, no, they do not. What they hate is guns in the hands of those who are not marching in lock step of their ideology. They hate guns in the hands of those who think for themselves and do not obey without question. They hate guns in those whom they have slated for a barrel to the back of the ear.

So, do not fall for the false promises and do not extinguish the light that is left to allow humanity a measure of self respect.

via Americans never give up your guns - English pravda.ru.

... I learned a lesson that has no doubt been absorbed by many political leaders in recent years. If you're going to lie about the fact that there is an elephant in the room, do it while you're standing right next to the thing. If you try to hide the critter or distract people's gaze from it, they will immediately know that you are lying. But if you come right up to it and give it a pat on the shoulder, they'll start to think maybe the elephant is lying.

-- Matthew Stewart, "The Management Myth"

Most analysts had thought that American's frequent flier program became moot as soon as Delta and the other airlines copied it. But in fact, the authors argue, the effect of such programs is that customers are less likely to switch from their preferred airline to another in response to a price cut. Thus, thanks to American's AAdvantage program, Delta has less incentive to lower its fares; thanks to Delta's SkyMilers, American is less likely to lower its fares. And, still more joy, both airlines can even start to raise fares, knowing that customers are less likely to leave in the event of a price increase. In essence, by atomizing individual consumers, loyalty programs create soft, micromonopolies on the market to individuals. The result for the airlines is "greater price stability," the authors say, by which they mean higher faires. They happily chalk it up as a "win-win" for American and Delta -- never mind the fact that, according to their own analysis, consumers collectively end up paying more in exchange for having expressed their individual loyalties.

Of course, as every business traveler knows, the airpline programs work in no small measure because businesses pay the fares while travelers collect the miles. "So are bosses the losers?" the game theorists ask. "Not necessarily. Frequent-flyer miles are a tax-free way for companies to comepensate employees who undertake a lot of business travel." Thus, according to experts, in the profoundly unlikely event that an extra tens of thousands of dollars in business class fares is your company's way of gifting you a once-a-year trip to Hawaii, then it is the taxpayer who foots the bill! So it's a win-win all around -- except for those who pay taxes.

-- Matthew Stewart, "The Management Myth," p 232-233

Gold standard as a restraint on inflation, anyone? Guest Post: Inflation Since The American Revolution | Zero Hedge.

Taylor confused the logical proposition that planning and doing are distinct functions with the empirical claim that these two functions are always best performed by two distinct classes of people endowed with distinct educational pedigrees, clothing styles, and patterns of speech. The one is nonfalsifiable; the other is simply false. Cutting up your food and eating it are distinct functions too, but it is not the case that they are always best performed by two different people. In manufacturing businesses, separateing planner from doers sometimes makes sense; but, as Japanese carmakers proved to the dismay of their American rivals, getting the doers involved in the planning can result in higher-quality products and lower costs.

— Matthew Stewart, “The Management Myth”, p 55-56

I see a lesson here for software product managers: if you get the developers involved in the product planning process, you may end up with higher-quality products. The developers are not mere tools that serve the ends of your planning process; they can be very useful in helping you devise and define that product, espeically since they are the ones that have to actually build the thing.

Implicit in Taylor’s approach is the idea that management always aims at the single goal of effciency (understood as labor productivity). But efficiency is just one of several possible competing goals that management might pursue. Profitability, customer satisfaction, or maintaining good community relations can always conceivably outweigh the goal of efficiency. Later management theorists have argued that Taylor’s obsession with efficiency came at the expense of the goal of quality.

— Matthew Stewart, “The Management Myth,” p 54

I cannot help but read that paragraph and think of software development practices. We want efficiency of algorithms, but the quality of the code (understood as its comprehensibility and maintainability by other programmers) is an equally important goal.

Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is dying of cancer in Havana, in a live demonstration of Cuba's vaunted socialized medical care. He went there instead of Brazil because he wanted to make a political statement. What irony.

As party cronies hover at his bedside, Cuban officials bark orders to the government in Caracas, and red-shirted Chavistas hold vigils, all signs are pointing to an imminent exit for the Venezuelan leader who controls a huge part of the world's oil.

He's going out exactly as he wouldn't have liked -- helpless and at the mercy of doctors, a far cry from the blaze of heroic socialist glory he might have preferred.

Most galling for him: It didn't have to happen this way.

His expected demise will be entirely due to his gullibility to leftist propaganda and bad choices that came of it.

via Venezuela's Hugo Chavez Sinks On Credulity In Cuban Health Care - Investors.com.