Apolitical, random, off the freakin' wall rant: Dog Shows!

I love dog shows. I love dogs — other people’s dogs. The problem with dogs is that they have to be walked. I do not walk dogs. Rhiannon understands that if we were ever to have a dog she would have to walk it because I never would, ever! Not surprisingly, we have cats. That’s Obidiah Jones on the left and his brother Burney Blue.

Photo: Carys Jones

But we do love dog shows. In fact, when we were back in New York we went to the granddaddy of them all, the Westminster Dog Show. It was an absolute hoot. One of the great fun things about the Westminster is that you are allowed “back stage.” That is, you’re free to wander about behind the scenes where the dogs and their owners/trainers/handlers are. You can skritch a Papillon’s butterfly ears, get your face washed by a Labrador and talk with the folks who populate this strange world of show dogs and dog shows. And, yes, everything that was parodied in the hysterical movie Best in Show is there. The denizens of this slice of modern society are among the most eccentric you will ever encounter.

So, with all this upbeat feel for dog shows why a rant? Because the so-called purists of the world are a bunch of frauds and hypocrites. They all claim that they are judging these various breeds on the basis of how close they come to their dictated ideal form. If this were what they were actually doing I’d have no beef, but they’re not and all these so-called objective judges walk around with a set of biases that are easily seen in the record.

In the hundred-plus years of Westminster, Terriers have won Best in Show an astonishing 46 times. Working Dogs another 15 and Herders exactly once. You cannot tell me that breeders of Terriers have managed to develop dogs that are close to their ideal while those who work with Herders don’t have a clue. Terriers are cute, bouncy and engaging. Herding dogs are serious and focused. People love Fox Terriers and don’t, unless they grew up on a sheep farm, “get” Border Collies and the judges reflect these cultural biases.

These ideal forms are also supposed to derive from the functions the animals were bred for — and, for the most part, this is true. The sight hounds do indeed show a remarkable ability to spot the target, freeze and point directly at it. Those bred for herding have stunning agility and can herd virtually anything that moves — except, of course, cats. But these lovers of the breeds blatantly make surgical adjustments to these “ideal” forms. Tails are docked on Boxers, Dobermans and many other breeds. The ears are cropped on these and other breeds. The American Kennel Club argues that these procedures were put in place to facilitate the function of the original breeds — docking the tail of a hunting dog reduced the likelihood of it picking up burrs and thorns. There is a measure of truth here but it does not explain why they continue this practice with show dogs. In the UK where many of these working breeds were developed, both cropping and docking are illegal and this includes all dogs, even those whose life is wholly wrapped up in the “show” world. Several dozen other countries also have criminalized these surgical practices — but not the US.

Then there are those damned haircuts! Why do they shave poodles in ways that really should embarrass any self-respecting canine? And why are Portuguese Water Dogs given a hind-quarter trim? And why are no other breeds permitted to do these things? It’s nothing short of arbitrary and idiotic and it has nothing to do with what the breed’s ideal is. You don’t breed with scissors.

Finally, on that “breeding to form” bit…. The supposedly ideal forms that breeders aim for have morphed from function to dysfunction. Bulldogs bred for a stout, powerful jaw and wide-stance, which made sense back when they were “bull” dogs with a dangerous job to do that required stamina and stability, now suffer from hip dysplasia and breathing problems. German Shepherds, for some unfathomable reasons, are now supposed to have a sloping body and lower hind legs. The result, of course, is that many suffer from hip problems. Pekinese bred for short legs, a pushed-in face and rich coat, are now barely able to waddle across the show floor and, like all the other “smashed face” breeds, often have serious dental and respiratory problems. The breeders here have allowed their prized “ideal” forms to drift away from the original functions. They have become fashion accessories.

So let’s get serious guys. No more surgical interventions no more shaving. If you can’t breed for a Doberman with a short tail then let’s enjoy the ones with long tails. If poodles have long, fluffy coats all over their remarkably athletic bodies then let’s admire them without those stupid pom-poms on their flanks.

And stop breeding dogs for human pleasure when the results seriously damage the health, well-being and quality of life of the animals we all love — even those of us who refuse to do “walkies.”

Irony in Anarchy

David Kushner has a brilliant piece in Rolling Stone on Ross Ulbricht, the very strange, fascinating character behind the infamous Silk Road web site.

Silk Road, for those who haven’t followed this saga, was the first of the semi-secret Deep Web sites buried in the underground levels of the Internet to deal in illegal, criminal operations. The Deep Web is actually huge and contains enormous amounts of information (libraries, medical records, police files, military information, court records, government files, security sites, etc.) that lies outside the reach of regular browsers. You can’t get there with Firefox, Google or Explorer; you need the specially designed browser Tor which you can, if you wish, learn about here. Even Tor won’t get you past the firewalls that most of these Deep sites have but it has one big advantage. It allows you to cover your tracks in cyberspace with doubly-encrypted layers. The url used for a cocaine retailer’s site you visited won’t work the next time you try to get there because it is erased as soon as you leave the site to be replaced with a new one that only can be found with Tor. Similarly, your cyber-identity is encrypted so those you contacted cannot trace you. Tor has, of course, legitimate uses in that it keeps annoying robot-sites from finding you, tracking your activity, sharing data on you and, of course, cramming your inbox with ads. The anonymity makes it perfect for those who, like Ulbricht, wish to engage in activities that governments and other authorities frown upon.

Silk Road trafficked mainly in drugs, weapons, forged documents like fake passports and Social Security cards and “for-hire” folks if you wanted some nasty deeds done. It was, till the feds shut it down, rather like eBay or Amazon where you merely clicked on the desired product which was promptly deposited in your cart. Payment at the checkout was in Bitcoins, the cyber-currency famous for anonymity and untraceability, and delivery was straight to your home or business in the classic, plain brown envelope or box.

Ulbricht, as Kushner explains, was driven by many motives, some rational and others truly screwy. At the core, however, was a commitment to a pure, Randian-style Libertarian vision of society. Accordingly, Kushner describes Ulbricht as sticking to individualism, rugged selfishness and a disdain for those who disagree or who have not gained a foothold in the strange, unempathic Atlas Shrugged world.

But as the article progresses slowly ironic notes leak in. As Ulbricht’s dealings become more complex he finds he needs help. He has to hire others, make contacts with dealers, managers, money-launderers, hit-men, agents of various kinds. And, of course, he finds that he now cannot operate in full anarchistic mode. He needs rules, regulations, guidelines for the business. He has to build a cultural code by which to operate. In short, he begins to create a mini-government with him at the head!

The whole thing is wonderfully ironic and he doesn’t have a clue. In fact, no Libertarian I have ever talked with about these issues has a clue. Government isn’t some monstrosity that bleeds away the creative life force. There is nothing inherently bad about government. In fact, as Barney Frank put it, government is merely what people do when you get a bunch of them together. Governments are natural agencies that must emerge whenever groups become too large or complex to function without a well-articulated structure. Even the most ardent Libertarian, the most devoted anarchist, cannot operate without some regulatory scaffold.

Whether you judge government to be good or bad isn’t a position about principle; it’s about process. Whether you believe that governments should be small or large isn’t a matter of theory; it’s an empirical question. Are the regulations set up reasonable? Are the conditions sensible? Are they workable? Are the tax codes fair? Is property protected? Are the rights of others in balance with the rights of owners? How many agencies do you need to accomplish these goals? These are the questions that matter.

So let’s stop the nonsense. Stop pretending that the small government gang — the ones who, in Grover Norquist’s terms, want to shrink government to the point where it can be drowned in a bathtub — have anything sensible to say. They don’t and until they think through these issues with just a smidgen of intellectual dispassion they never will.

Spike's* pork, leek and parsnip in cream sauce

Time for a foodie blog. Frankly, I’m a bit strung out on politics and nothing interesting has happened (to me) in the poker world other than getting knocked out of last week’s tournament three spots from the money so on to another of my passions.

Lately I’ve been playing around with some very ordinary ingredients looking for interesting ways to combine them. I came up with this one the other night. It was one of those ‘holy shit why am I awake?’ moments where your eyeballs are open and your mind’s cranking away at 3 AM for no obvious reason.  My favorite trick for getting back to sleep is to take a wander through my mental ‘fridge to see what’s there. What was in mine that night was:

3 strips bacon — fried, broken into small bits (use thick cut, it’s so much better)

2 pork chops, bone in or out, 1” thick — brine for 3-4 hours

1 leek (just a bit of green) — sliced thin

1 parsnip — julienned

2 scallions — sliced thin

1/4 lb shitake mushrooms — sliced

bunch of herbs — parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme (pace P. Simon), oregano

2 cloves garlic — smashed, chopped

1 T flour

1/2 c cream

1/4 c chick broth

And when I played around with these I found a neat way to combine them. Like my ‘shroom and pasta dish, I’m wary of claiming I’ve found something new, but here’s what worked:

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fry bacon, set aside, leave the fat in the pan

grill pork (gas grill if you have one, oven or pan fry will work), set aside

sauté leek, parsnips, scallions, garlic and mushrooms in bacon fat (add butter or olive oil if needed)

add flour, continue cooking for a couple of minutes

add herbs, cream and chick broth

return pork and bacon

cover and simmer for half-hour

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A tossed salad and roast potatoes and it’s a pretty nice way to clear out some of the stuff in the fridge.

A word on brining: pork has become an almost tasteless meat, no fat and dry and boring. The best way to rescue it is brining. The standard brine of 1 T of kosher salt for 1 gallon of water works fine. Let the pork chops or loin slices sit for a couple of hours in the brine in the ‘fridge. dry off and do the s & p thing before grilling.

*Back when I played poker online my screen name was Spike the Cat.

Why "Deficit" is a Four-letter Word

Paul Krugman has an interesting column in today’s NY Times. It reiterates a point that he’s made oh, maybe, three hundred or so times in the past couple of years. Heck … maybe more. It’s the classic Keynesian position that, despite the random howlings of the few deluded austerity hawks remaining, just happens to be right. In a recession, deficits be damned; throw money at the economy.

What’s interesting from the psychologist’s perspective isn’t the truth of this principle. It’s like an earlier column on the Libertarian approach to economics, why it is so hard to get certain ideas across to people, especially those with a rightward political tilt? So let’s take a look at what there is about human thinking that makes Keynes hard to grasp.

First, there is a principle in the field of “behavioral economics” that is far more important than most realize: the ± asymmetry of money. One reason why this principle goes unheralded is because most don’t even realize that it exists let alone grasp its import. When we say money is ± asymmetrical we mean that, psychologically speaking, losses tend to be more meaningful than equivalent gains. Losing $1,000 feels more negative than winning $1,000 feels positive. And this principle operates in the abstract. That is, merely contemplating these kinds of losses and gains produces these emotional reactions — though, of course, they are much more dramatic when real money is involved.

This principle tends to make people risk-averse. That is, they get twitchy when confronted with the possibility of a significant financial move in the negative direction — and this “twitchiness” is greater than the pleasure felt when contemplating the possibility of significant gain.

When the government throws money at the economy to stimulate growth the immediate impact is an increase in the deficit and an increase in total government debt. Keynes showed, unambiguously, that the long-term impact of a “stimulus package” is positive because the money put into the economy is spent and goods are purchased which results in manufacturers needing to produce more which results in hiring which gives more people money to spend which results in …. The economy grows, personal income increases, corporate profits go up. The result is an increase in tax revenue which eliminates the deficits. But, because of the asymmetry principle, the emotional negative experience of the immediate loss overwhelms the contemplation of ultimate improvement in the economy. Hence, Keynes’s approach makes people feel uncomfortable and they tend to dismiss the theory without thinking it through.

Second, timing counts — which, of course, is implied in the above. When you increase the size of the deficit it has an immediate negative impact. The government has to borrow which increases debt. That long-term gain that Keynes’s model predicts is long-term; it’s going to occur in the future. The further off, temporally speaking, an outcome is the less tangible it is and the less influence it has on current beliefs and actions. So people have this sense that if government spends it goes into debt now, immediately. And even if Keynes is correct and things will be better later, there’s that lingering feeling that well …. hmmm … like maybe it won’t because the ineffable future is harder to grasp than the current reality.

Third, Keynesian economics has counter-intuitive elements largely because people confuse personal finances with government finances. They are made unhappy when they see their government not balancing the budget. They point out that they can’t do this. They can’t spend more than they make because to do so would invite financial ruin. So, the argument goes, the same holds (or should hold) for governments.

This line of thought is wrong on several counts. For one, the average family doesn’t act this way at all. They routinely spend more than they make. Credit card debt is at an all-time high. They take out mortgages on homes, buy cars on time and run up debt in manifold ways. What counts here isn’t the absolute size of the debt but the debt relative to income or, in the case of government, the GDP. The psychological element here is an old one. Most folks have rather poor sense of themselves and a feeble grasp on what they actually do. As behavioral economists continue to point out, most decision-making isn’t rational and it often is made without regard to self-interest.

And there’s another big difference: governments can print money. They have to take care not to print too much or it will encourage inflation but they sure as hell can print it. They also can control the value of the currency, set interest rates and modulate the cost of borrowing. In fact, when they are prevented from doing these things or have these kinds of flexible financial moves restricted it can be catastrophic. If Greece (and to a lesser extent Italy and Spain) weren’t tied to the Euro and able to modify their currency they would not be in anywhere near the economic mess they’re currently in. Canada has, in just the last few weeks, been devaluing the Canadian dollar. The weaker dollar is making it easier for Canadian goods to be exported, discouraging Canadians from going into the US to make purchases and encouraging Americans to visit — all of which will increase Canadian productivity and give the economy a kick. It’s worth noting that these moves are being made by a Conservative government.

What’s the answer here? I don’t know. I spent a half-century trying to get complex, subtle ideas across to college students. One of the more effective ways, I discovered, was to keep saying the same thing over and over. So Professor Krugman, keep it up. We can use another 300 or so repetitions of the classic Keynesian principles and maybe, just maybe, they’ll get through to the austerity crowd.

The Psychology in Economics

I was in a poker game last night when a conversation with a Libertarian broke out — you do meet the most interesting people at poker tables. He made some crack about how the only sensible thing these days was to hoard gold and that essentially all his expendable cash was going into bullion.

“Ah,” I thought. “A ‘gold-bug’.” These guys are usually fans of Rand Paul, cleave to the Austrian School of economics (e.g., Hayek and Mises), hate Keynes and despise Paul Krugman.

Turned out, during a break, that I was right on all counts — and he was wrong on all economic issues. The reasons why he/Paul/Hayek are wrong and Keynes/Krugman are right has everything to do with psychology for without the psychological elements, economics becomes an empty play of mathematical models with no hope of describing what actually goes on. Here’s why:

1. Money v. Currency: Libertarians like to challenge folks on the left by asking, “Do you even know the difference between money and currency?” It’s a line that goes back to the Austrians (in particular Mises) and, since most liberals don’t, they immediately find themselves on the defensive. So, of course, these were the first words out of my new friend’s mouth. The difference, in case you care, is that money is supposed to be abstract and unreal while currency is some physical entity (gold or paper) that people use in exchanges for products. Since some physical currencies (like gold) have what is called “intrinsic value” (people like it independent of any government) they are to be preferred over other physical currencies (paper) where there is no “intrinsic” value but only that provided by the government that printed it. Since Libertarians think the US economy is doomed and the dollar headed into the crapper any day now they hate that the government prints money, hate that the Fed controls interest rates and the money supply — in fact, they hate the Fed and would, if they had their way, do away with it in a New York minute and return to the gold standard.

Okay, so what’s wrong with this? Well, almost everything because it neglects psychological factors. Nothing has intrinsic value. No object, be it a naturally occurring one like a mineral or a manufactured one like a Euro, has any value other than what people endow it with. Gold is convenient because of various properties including that there’s just the right amount of it around and, well, it is kinda pretty. But in the end, all value is psychological. People need to believe that others believe in the currency in use, as the recent bitcoin fuss shows. Psychologically, you don’t want to diss the dollar; you want to prop up belief. Fortunately, those who embrace the US dollar and respect the Fed have been winning this argument. The US dollar is still the world’s currency and there’s no sign of the run-away inflation and soaring interest rates the Austrians predicted. This is good for everyone, including my friend who, in case he hasn’t noticed, has had his portfolio thumped recently as gold has taken a nose dive.

2. The Silent Hand: After I bamboozled him with this stuff he shifted to the next Paulist talking point: the market is controlled by the silent hand which will ensure that, left unencumbered by nasty governments sticking their noses in, things will go just fine. This argument is based on a simple assumption: human beings are rational decision-makers and so long as all bartering and exchanges are made using principles of maximizing self-interest (what the Austrians call “purposeful actions”) the system will function and the economy will grow. This argument is a fascinating one and it gets very complicated very quickly as modelers developed complex mathematical systems to try to explain how this happens and why it works best when the system is left to its own devices — i.e., the “free market.”

We don’t need to look at the models to know that this position is embraced by capitalists. We also don’t need to look at the models to know that it is wrong. Really wrong, utterly deadly, fundamentally wrong. As wrong as any model can be and for the simplest of reasons. The core assumption is wrong. People are not rational and they do not make decisions based on self-interest. When your core assumption is wrong the whole edifice collapses — like the economy did in ‘08 because nonrational decision-making was rampant. That little shocker even brought Greenspan to his senses as he admitted that he had vastly over-estimated the role of rationality.

In recent decades psychologists Herb Simon and Daniel Kahneman have won the Nobel Prize in Economics. Simon showed that it just wasn’t possible to make rational choices in real-world settings because there were too many factors to unpack. Instead, people try to narrow the scope and make “bounded rational” decisions. But, of course, these too will ultimately be arational because the decisions about what not to include cannot be made rationally for the very same reasons: the system is too complex to be handled. Left unfettered the system will collapse.

Kahneman showed (along with Amos Tversky, his long-time collaborator, who died in 1996) that human decision-making is driven by factors that call on emotions, cognitive biases, misplaced values, fears and other messy things and that no one makes anything like rational choices. A simple example: money is gain/loss asymmetric. That is, a loss of some amount (say $1000) hurts more than an equivalent gain feels good. People are mostly risk-averse and, hence, decision-making will be biased. Kahneman and Tversky found dozens of these kinds of biases, all of which corrupt rational decision-making.

In recent years economists have begun embracing Behavioral Economics where these kinds of psychological elements are an integral part of the field. Slowly they are beginning to make sense of economic systems and getting a better understanding of how markets really work. Libertarians hate these guys because their research shows just how naked the Austrian economic emperors are.

3. Debt: Thwarted again, he shifted to the next topic: “We are so far in debt as a nation that future generations will be devastated because they will have to pay it off.” This, of course, is nonsense. Debt isn’t some raw figure; debt has to be seen in the context of the overall economy, the GDP. Homeowners and businesses incur debt in the form of mortgages or loans. But these debts aren’t a problem so long as the value of the house or the business exceeds that of the debt. The government will “pay off the trillions” of debt like a business will “pay off” the loans — and, no, your children won’t pay it in any form other than normal taxation. In fact, you can continue to refinance your house and stay in debt forever just like the government can keep borrowing and stay in debt forever. And when interest rates are low this is precisely what should be done. Ironically, Austrians who cling to their old models show how prevalent nonrational thinking is.

For a time the Paulists were citing a research paper by economists Reinhart and Rogoff that seemed to show that if the debt got too high, specifically if it reached 90% of the GDP, then the economy would falter. This infamous paper was found (by a graduate student of all people) to have basic flaws in it, including a failure to include all the data from recent analyses. Put the data back and, guess what? No crashing or burning of the economy. It is true that growth slows somewhat as debt closes in on equalling the GDP but this slowing is a horse of a very different color from economic collapse.

4. Deficits: Okay, he realized he wasn’t going to win the debt game so he shifted to deficits. “Spending has to be cut. It’s the only way to reduce the deficit.” Well, of course, that’s just silly. You can cut the deficit by increasing revenues but that means having a progressive tax code and we know where Libertarians are on that subject. “Actually,” I said in my most professorial voice, “the best way to reduce the deficit is to make dramatic increases in it by shoveling money at the economy.” When the color returned to his face I said, “The reason the recovery has been slow is because the stimulus package was too small and not enough went to big projects to improve the infrastructure. Moreover, if you want to boost things right now, increase the minimum wage and extend unemployment insurance. In a recession, austerity kills economies.”

His eyes narrowed and he looked at me … “You’re a Keynesean.”

“Of course,” I said. “Keynes was the first economist to think psychologically.”

“You believe that crap? That stuff that Krugman writes?”

“Krugman is, in the words of the Berkeley economist Brad DeLong, ‘the man who is always right.’”

“I think we need to go back to the poker table,” he said.

And we did and I was glad to because he wasn’t a very good poker player either.