Where Fun Comes to Die

USA Today recently reported that the National Guard is cutting back its recruiting efforts after receiving more than enough qualified applicants:

The Guard has already cut some bonuses, stopped accepting convicted felons on special waivers and lowered the maximum age for recruits.

What accounts for the sudden uptick in applicants?  Unemployment is an obvious answer: as more individuals get laid off or have their hours cut back, the Guard is a relatively accessible way to supplement income.  For those savvy would-be Guardsmen, though, the trick is to enlist right before you get fired and avoid unemployment altogether.  How?

Federal law under USERRA prohibits the termination of employees who belong to the United States military for certain military related reasons.  One of these is a broad prohibition on firing anyone who has recently served more than 30 days of active duty without cause:

C.F.R. Sec.  1002.247  Does USERRA provide the employee with protection against discharge?

Yes. If the employee’s most recent period of service in the uniformed services was more than 30 days, he or she must not be discharged except for cause–
(a) For 180 days after the employee’s date of reemployment if his or her most recent period of uniformed service was more than 30 days but less than 181 days; or,
(b) For one year after the date of reemployment if the employee’s most recent period of uniformed service was more than 180 days.

In other words, if you serve for 30 days active duty, the law presumes that if your employer fires you within 180 days, it is because they are discriminating against your military status.  Employers face an uphill battle (and near certain legal challenge) explaining that there was sufficient “cause” to discharge the employee.   Luckily for new Guardsmen, basic training lasts 9 weeks, well into the 30 day requirement.  The result is that after basic training, new Guardsmen are practically guaranteed not to be fired within 180 days of their reemployment.  In an economic downturn as fast as this one, hopefully 6 months from now the Guardsman’s employer would have done all the firing that he needed to do and the Guardsman would be one of the few left standing.

No wonder the National Guard has stopped handing out $20,000 bonuses — people who know they are on their employed days are numbered would join just to avoid being fired.

The Los Angeles Times reports on a new portable home for the homeless:

Until a few weeks ago, he dozed on a thin mattress in the open air. Now he beds down in a snug mobile shelter called an EDAR (short for Everyone Deserves a Roof), a covered contraption that looks like the offspring of a shopping cart and a pop-up camper.

“This is one of the greatest damn gifts you could ever give to anybody,” he says.

Lawyers spoil the party:

Meanwhile, lawyers are sorting out legal issues. Will municipal codes allow users to park their units anywhere? What about constitutional questions and not-in-my-backyard complaints?

Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Irvine School of Law, said police fear the units could constitute dwellings where inhabitants would have a reasonable expectation of privacy. In that scenario, police would need warrants to search EDARs, which could become havens for drug use or prostitution. Chemerinsky maintains that cities could allow the units in designated public places as long as users consented to be searched, much like travelers entering an airport.

Anticipating the economics argument:

Does the EDAR enable homelessness by making it more bearable? No, he insists.  “Why is the EDAR not regressive?” he said. “Because it is not nearly as good as a shelter bed. There’s no pretense it’s as good as permanent or temporary brick-and-mortar housing.” But it is, he says, “infinitely better than a damp cardboard box.”

Actually, EDAR would encourage homelessness at the margins because it improves the quality of homeless life without increasing the costs.  Who would ever choose homelessness just because of EDAR?  People already “choose” homelessness (although many arguably do not) because it is better than their other alternatives: whatever would be considered one step above homelessness.  Because EDAR increases the value of homelessness without increasing the costs, we would expect some people one step above homelessness to go fully homeless.  The argument about EDAR not being as good as a shelter bed ignores its selling points – independence, portability, and a feeling of ownership.

Just because EDAR enables homelessness does not make it undesirable.  If EDAR enables child prostitutes living with their pimps to leave that lifestyle and become “homeless” living in an EDAR, we might feel fine about that.  Also there is no indication that just because EDAR may incentivize people one step above homelessness (child prostitutes) to become fully homeless, it would likewise incentivize people two steps above homelessness (child runaways) to become one step above homeless (child prostitutes).  So EDAR would only increase the number of fully homeless, not increase the number of people at risk to homelessness.

With Bush signing an extension of unemployment benefits, California now compensates the unemployed for up to 59 weeks.  Top wage earners are getting $450 a week to do nothing.  For most of my friend’s facing potential job loss, this is the silverest of possible linings.

Unemployment benefits were first introduced by the United States by Wisconsin in 1932, and went nationwide shortly after.  Before that, people just starved to death or debt collectors were left holding the bag, as depicted in this 1837 comic:

“I have no money and cannot get work”  “Father can’t I have a piece of bread?”  “I’m so hungry.”  “My dear, cannot you contrive to get some food for the children.  I don’t care for myself.”  And the rent collectors, “I say Sam, I wonder where we are to get our costs.”

Nowadays no one in the United States ever need worry about starving to death, and if you play your cards right, it can be quite the opposite.

The virtues of unemployment benefits were recently extolled in the television show, “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.”  A brother and sister leave their job and the sister signs them up for unemployment benefits.  The brother poo poos this at first claiming unemployment benefits are for “deadbeats”:

We can do anything we want if we put our minds to it . . . This is America, we’re going to go for it, we’re going to work hard, we’re going to reach for the stars.

But when they discover they qualify for $400 a week, they not only stay on unemployment, they start taking crack so they can qualify for welfare when the unemployment runs out.  I don’t know if you have to be a crackhead to qualify for welfare, but Californians don’t need to worry about that for at least 59 weeks.

What about the stigma of unemployment?  With the high quality of the recently unemployed (bankers, lawyers, businessmen, journalists) and unemployment rates hitting 8.2% in California and climbing, unemployment is going to be the new elite status symbol.  Pretty soon people will question why you are still employed — is your employer not dynamic and formerly profitable enough to have not taken a hit in this economy?  Do you work for the government?  Even the language of unemployment suggests legitimacy: benefits, compensation, payments.

Already in Los Angeles, the unemployed elite are envied and admired.  If you’re worried about losing your job, don’t.  In fact, in a few months if you’re still going to work, I bet you’re going to feel like a sucker.

And for those of you who work for the government and are gloating about your job security, ask yourself what will happen when millions of people stop writing checks to the government and start collecting them. Maybe everyone should be a little worried when our nation’s top earners view unemployment as a welcome respite.

Dieting has become a staple of American culture, as central to daily life as going to work or driving a car.  If the American dieter can choose from a veritable garden of diet options, from Atkins to Hot Zone to South Beach, the yo-yo diet is often perceived as the dreaded weed.  Yo-yo dieting, also known as weight cycling, describes the process in which one repeatedly loses and gains weight.  Even with its bad reputation, it has remained wildly popular as the dieting option in which you can have your cake and eat it too.

There are two common criticisms about yo-yo dieting that have made it the traditional villain of the dieting world: (1) it is unhealthy and (2) it is a result of low self control.  However, recent studies suggest that yo-yo dieting may not deserve the bad rep it’s gotten after all.  These studies show that yo-yo dieting alone does not present a significant health risk.  In fact, studies have shown that remaining overweight can be much worse for your health than losing and gaining weight.

Nor can we blame yo-yo dieting on the weak-willed.  In recent years, yo-yo dieting has been negatively compared to “life change” dieting, in which a dieter loses weight and keeps it off by maintaining a stable eating lifestyle.  Life change dieters are perceived as the ones who have the ability to stay on the wagon, while yo-yo dieters are the ones who just can’t muster the discipline to stay on.

Consider the possibility that yo-yo dieters aren’t falling off the wagon; instead, they’re intentionally leaping off for the thrill of it.  Perhaps some dieters actually prefer to lose and gain weight in cycles rather than to maintain a consistent weight, whether they realize it or not.  It may not be for everyone, but it may be the “right” choice for some based on their individual preferences.

People are strange creatures.  Some people like country music, some even like Ford automobiles.  Bizarre or self-destructive behavior for one person may be a rational choice for another.  Rational decision makers don’t always make the best choices, especially when we have incomplete information.  But as rational decision makers, we make the best choices for us given our preferences and the information we have.  Because we typically make the best choice for us, examining our behavior can give us insight into what we truly prefer when forced to make a choice.

Both the yo-yo dieter and the life change dieter have plenty of incentives to jump on the dieting bandwagon.  Committing to a diet can give the dieter a sense of control.  Although denying herself pleasures from food, she may gain other pleasures from dieting, such as seeing a lower number on the scale or fitting into smaller clothing.  Once her weight and appearance match what is on her driver’s license, she can stop dreading airport security ID checks.  She may revel in compliments from coworkers and family members.  She may even find herself the victim of construction site catcalls.  Apart from having a sense of accomplishment that she has set a goal and achieved it, she will feel moral superiority over those who are heftier than she.  Cost of special meals?  $120 a month.  Subscription to Weight Watchers?  $80 a month.  Gym membership?  $60 a month.  Looking scornfully at the fat person spilling out of the seat next to you-priceless.

Up to this point, both the yo-yo dieter and the consistent “life change” dieter experience similar benefits.  Unfortunately for the life change dieter, this is where the pleasure stops.  Variety is the spice of life, and although the first few catcalls may induce a perversely novel pleasure for our dieter, they’ll grow old quickly, as will her walking shoes from her extended construction-site-avoiding commute.  She’ll forget the fear she ever felt regarding her driver’s license weight and friends will stop complimenting her.  As she tires of her newfound pleasures, the law of diminishing returns suggests that the benefits from her weight loss will exponentially decay to almost nothing.  Moreover, negative effects from the weight reduction may develop, such as jealousy from friends and irritability from hunger.  The life change dieter will start out feeling healthier and happier from the weight loss, but after a short while, her happiness will level off or even decline.

In contrast, once the novelty of losing weight diminishes the yo-yo dieter moves on to greener pastures.  The law of diminishing returns works both ways, so while the value of losing weight goes down for the yo-yo dieter, the value of French fries goes up.  At first it does not take much of a “cheat” from the diet to give the dieter a great deal of pleasure.  After a month with no French fries, one or two may be titillating enough to satisfy her cravings.  Like a drug addict returning to her pharmaceutical mistress, however, the dieter will eventually need to indulge more and more to gain the same high as the initial cheat.  A few French fries turns into a basket of French fries, then some chili cheese fries, and then a chocolate dipped French fry fudge sundae with crème fraiche.  Not only does the dieter stop dieting, she gains back the weight in a flourish of saturated fat calories.  But eventually the dieter will realize that fudge and French fry sundaes are disgusting, and the junk food binges will have lost their novelty.  Meanwhile the benefits of dieting have regained their novelty, and so the cycle of dieting starts over.

Unlike the life change dieter, the yo-yo dieter gets a great deal of utility from both ends of the cycle.  From the weight loss, she gains the pleasure of taking control of her life and receiving compliments from friends and loved ones.  When those pleasures lose their sheen, she switches her attentions to the pleasures of indulging and splurging.  Without gaining the weight, she would never have gained the pleasure of losing the weight; without losing it, she would never have gained the pleasure of gaining it all back.  By alternating between the two, she has created a perpetual motion machine of constant pleasure.

The value of yo-yo dieting should not be a surprise, as these same principles apply to most of our activities.  Human beings do not like maintenance.  Most of us do not vacuum and dust our homes everyday, nor do we keep up to date on world affairs, maintain our foreign language skills, or practice the multiplication tables.  We have limited time and resources and there is simply not enough value involved with maintenance to warrant the effort involved.  Our lives thrive on variety and yo-yo dieters get exactly that.

If yo-yo dieting is so great, why doesn’t everyone do it?  The answer is that everyone does engage in a bit of yo-yo dieting, for example, when we splurge during the holidays and then make New Year’s resolutions to cut back.  If yo-yo dieting can be analogized to alcohol, most of us can happily and healthily imbibe in moderation.  But there is also the dieter’s equivalent of the alcoholic, those with diabetes or a heart condition that can’t tolerate weight fluctuation.  Others may need to maintain a certain weight for their profession, such as models and sumo wrestlers.  There are a myriad of reasons for an individual to decide that yo-yo dieting is the bad choice for him or her.

If you find yourself in that situation, there is no reason you can’t have any fun.  You might apply the lessons learned from yo-yo dieting about the power of preferences and incentives to find some pleasure in weight loss activities.  Even if you hate to run by yourself, you may find it fun to run with a friend.  Biking along the beach might be appealing to you, whereas biking on a treadmill in a gym is not.  If you are a people pleaser, joining a weight-loss support group would give you the added benefit of winning people’s approval in exchange for losing weight.  If you have a green streak, you could focus on ways to save both the planet and your waistline, for instance by eating whole foods.  Signing up for your favorite co-ed sport could give you a competition high that may be stronger and last longer than a normal runner’s high.  You could even make some money off your efforts by winning a bet with a friend to lose weight.  By examining your personal compulsions and preferences and setting up an incentive program linking those to diet and exercise, you can construct your own proverbial spoon-full-of-sugar that will help you better enjoy losing or maintaining weight.

The silver lining to all of that weight loss is that the more you lose, the more you can gain back.  After all, there must be a reason why plump people are so jolly.

This article on a legal auction of government ivory got me thinking about the unintended consequences of the ivory ban. I don’t think government prohibition ever works nearly as well as planned, but it seems to me that there’s an especially perverse incentive created when the government bans luxury goods. After all, what’s the point of a luxury good except to show off your ability to get things other people can’t have?

Ivory is a little bit useless. You can’t eat it, you can’t live inside of it, and (as I learned through a disastrous youthful experiment with an antique billiard ball) it cannot be crushed and snorted. It’s so valuable because it’s a status symbol, and it’s a status symbol because it’s so hard to get. This is why men are willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars to eat an animal that is the last of its species, even if the meat is gamey and improperly seasoned.

An outright ban will never be completely successful in stomping out the ivory trade, because there will always be some rich jackass who’s willing to break the law in order to prove that he’s a cool guy who can buy forbidden wares. No, the only way to stomp out the ivory trade is to make ivory uncool.

Instead of auctioning off its ivory willy-nilly to any passing elephant-hater with a fistful of yen, Namibia should have given it to undesirables. What better way to ensure the safety of the African elephant than by ensuring that Amy Winehouse shows up at rehab wearing ivory jewelry? Michael Jackson could be given a fine ivory mask to hide his wretched face, and Stephen Hawking could receive a beautiful ivory wheelchair. Elephant bone aficionados may risk a fine in order to get ahold of precious ivory, but they will not risk being in the company of yard-sleepers, famed perverts and nerds.

The phrase was coined by a series of sketches in Monty Python’s Flying Circus, parodying the actual Spanish Inquisition.  In these sketches, a character would exclaim in frustration, “I didn’t expect the Spanish Inquisition!” at which point the Inquisition cardinals would burst onto the scene shouting, “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!”

“Spanish Inquisition” type events are unexpected because they are singular.  But as we stand on the brink of another singular event, one that the Bank of England Deputy Governor Charles Bean referred to on Friday as “a once in a lifetime crisis, and possibly the largest financial crisis of its kind in human history,” one wonders whether it might not be a good idea to start regularly factoring in the possibility of a Spanish Inquisition after all.  But if so, how?

Is it smart to factor in the possibility of a Spanish Inquisition type event?  On the one hand, even a very small chance of a great calamity can be significant.  On the other hand, they are infrequent and difficult/impossible to predict.  Of course, Nobel winning economist Paul Krugman has been praised for predicting the current housing-bubble crisis.  But as fellow Chicago grad Megan McArdle pointed out, “If you keep predicting a recession, eventually you will be right.”  Still, expecting calamity can be profitable.  I know a guy who has been shorting the market since late 2007.  When I spoke with him in April, he felt certain that the market would continue to decline through December when most of his puts expired.  I questioned his judgment then, but can only imagine how much money he has made this month.  Anecdotally, it seems smart to expect a Spanish Inquisition event, but so does playing the lottery.

Still, many suggest that we could and should plan for such calamities.  The problem is, how?  If these calamities result from systemic failures, could we rely on the same system to predict and prevent them?  Regulation may work when the problem is confined to a few power players and firms, but in something like the current financial crisis, the problem extends past that small group and spreads to the general populace.  Like a typical zombie movie, the infection spreads until all succumb and become part of the problem.  At that point, might it be better to let the disease run its course?  The weak may die, but the strong will be inoculated against another similar calamity, as was arguably the case with the Great Depression generation.  Anything else we could do would not be a cure, but rather just an attempt to alleviate symptoms.  Until we discover a vaccine, we may have to live with the occasional Spanish Inquisition.

So the Monty Python boys were mainly right: no one expects a Spanish Inquisition, except the people who always expect a Spanish Inquisition (useless) and those who have lived through a similar calamity before (inoculated).  Once someone expects it, they would be hypervigilant to prevent it, which involves its own problems including (wasted?) energy, effort, risk averseness, paranoia, and being a cantankerous grandparent.  The more accurate phrase then is perhaps “The Spanish Inquisition only occurs when not expected, but expecting it can be its own version of torture.”  But, that’s decidedly less catchy.

This is an interesting article about how promoters of the “Prosperity Gospel,” whose followers believe and advocate that God blesses the faithful with material wealth, may have contributed to the mortgage crisis:

While researching a book on black televangelism, says Jonathan Walton, a religion professor at the University of California Riverside, he realized that Prosperity’s central promise — that God would “make a way” for poor people to enjoy the better things in life — had developed an additional, toxic expression during sub-prime boom. Walton says that this encouraged congregants who got dicey mortgages to believe “God caused the bank to ignore my credit score and blessed me with my first house.” The results, he says, “were disastrous, because they pretty much turned parishioners into prey for greedy brokers.”

Others think he may be right. Says Anthea Butler, an expert in pentecostalism at the University of Rochester in New York state, “The pastor’s not gonna say ‘go down to Wachovia and get a loan’ but I have heard, ‘even if you have a poor credit rating God can still bless you — if you put some faith out there [that is, make a big donation to the church], you’ll get that house, or that car or that apartment.’” Adds J. Lee Grady, editor of the magazine Charisma, “It definitely goes on, that a preacher might say, ‘if you give this offering, God will give you a house. And if they did get the house, people did think that it was an answer to prayer, when in fact it was really bad banking policy.”

The reaction to foreclosure can be understandably devasting to those whose faith allowed them to assume that they had earned their largess by being in God’s good graces.  Some have again thrown themselves on the mercy of God.  One Believer wrote the following note to his pastor:

“Last Sunday,” it read, “You said if anyone needed a miracle to come up. So I did. I was receiving foreclosure papers, so I asked you to anoint a picture of my home and you did and your wife joined with you in prayer as I cried. I went home feeling something good was going to happen. On Friday the 5th of September I got a phone call from my mortgage company and they came up with a new payment for the next 3 months of only $200. My mortgage is usually $1020. Praise God for his Mercy & Grace.”

Others are throwing themselves on the mercy of Fannie Mae, who ended up forgiving the loan of a 90-year-old woman who shot herself twice in the chest as sheriff’s deputies attempted to evict her from her foreclosed home.    A spokesman for Fannie Mae commented:

“We’re going to forgive whatever outstanding balance she had on the loan and give her the house.  Given the circumstances, we think it’s appropriate.”

Sure, for her, but what about the next 10,000 people who are willing to shoot themselves in the chest for a free house?  Are these people paying their own medical bills?  Talk about putting the “perverse” back in “perverse incentive.”

Maybe I’m just seeing the connections here because of the whole bailout debate, but this article seems to describe what we can now label as an epidemic of people trying to pass off toxic debt to the government, whether in the form of bad mortgages or badly-behaved teenagers.  The article describes Nebraskan parents who are taking advantage of the American taxpayer by offloading their low-valued troubled youths at hospitals and police stations under a law that was meant to allow parents to hand over their very valuable newborns.  If Nebraskan officials continue to accept these children, will it set bad precedent for all other citizens considering the possibility of a parenthood bailout?

Torture may be bad. It may be inefficient, it may be politically unpopular, it may be morally wrong. Nations having a policy of torture, however – that may be good for both the torturer and the torturee.

Imagine the following hypothetical: you are a spy with valuable state secrets. You get captured. You know you will give up these state secrets, and with very dire consequences (e.g. the injury or death of thousands of people). Would you rather be tricked into divulging these secrets, or tortured? An informal poll suggested that most people would rather be tricked. Why? Because torture is painful and they did not want to endure the pain of torture. Fair enough.

Follow up question: when you return home, would you tell your superiors that you were tricked or tortured? Disclosing state secrets is serious business. Because there is a huge financial incentive to sell state secrets, your home country officials will naturally be suspicious. How can you prove that you disclosed the secrets against your will? Wouldn’t it be just as likely that you sold the secrets and lied about being tricked? If you end up being tortured, on the other hand, you can console yourself with the thought that the more horrible the torture, the more evidence there is that you disclosed the secrets against your will. Torture may be painful, but death by a firing squad could be worse.

Even if a nation is morally opposed to torture, having a policy of torture can actually encourage efficient disclosure. Spies will be reluctant to disclose secrets if it means death for treason. When a nation has a policy of torture, spies can sell secrets, give themselves a black eye and some burn marks, and have a relatively credible lie about being tortured. In a nation that is categorically opposed to torture, spies would not have this option so the cost of disclosure (firing squad) would be greater. Of course, a spy could always defect or otherwise not return to his home country, but as would-be mob informants know, living life as a known rat can be dangerous. In any case, the higher the cost of disclosure, the more spies will fight to keep secrets and the more aggressive the capturing country will need to be to elicit secrets. Giving people the credible excuse of torture decreases the possible costs of disclosure.

Torturees might like the option/excuse of torture so they could reveal state secrets when it suits them. Having torturees freer to divulge secrets is better for the capturing country because they could get more secrets faster. Trickery, torture, why not at least have options? Even if the country does not torture or does not torture frequently, having a policy of torture benefits both the torturer and the torturee.