Strive for Consistency: Golf Course Edition

So, I need to take this opportunity to show that yes, I argue for liberty even when discussing something as near to my heart as golf.

So in an article today on Yahoo!, the tune and dance goes something like this: "Oh, woe is me! Municipal courses are closing and the big, bad, evil privately owned but opened to the public courses are raising rates. Ohhh, woe!!" Basically, the author is complaining that municipal governments have closed down those "cheap" public courses and so golfers, feeling the economic pinch and trying to escape, have to pay more so some evil "entrepreneur" can make money. No really, I am not putting words in this moron's mouth. Here's a quote:

Courses owned by entrepreneurs, unlike government-subsidized city or state parks departments, are primarily interested in making money. Such is the American way.

Now, because I am interested in truth, let's look at this guy's assumptions. First! The reason why munis are cheaper? Because the golfers get the non-golfers to help pay for it! That is where tax money comes from to run these cheaper courses! Obviously, this bum doesn't see a problem with that. I wonder what the dude would say if I came to his house, put a gun to his head, and said, "Give me your bleeping money; I'm building a (well, kick the cow! What the hell can I say that government hasn't already done? I mean, they have spaceships, libraries, this prick talking about golf courses. What else can I get money to subsidize that the government doesn't already steal to buy?)" Betcha the idiot would call the cops on me. But isn't that essentially what this guy is complaining about? Not enough government guns taking citizen money to run these cheapo courses?

The second assumption is that munis are so much better to play than other public courses. I have played on some crap courses and while I don't think I have ever actually played a muni, that is because for that little bit of extra money that this prick is complaining about, I can get a whole better experience.

Which, leads us to third assumption. These moron assumes that privately-held courses take advantage of golfers. Now, let's just think about that for a sec. This dude has stated that entrepreneurs want to make money. How do they do that? By being better than the other course in some way. Sure, it may be more expensive to play that course, but how much you wanna bet that if you went to the muni, you wouldn't get a tee time? (Once again, basic economics. By being subsidized, more people want the muni than it has capacity for, blah blah blah, less people get to play, supply and demand.)

Anywho, this complete bozo just gave me the opportunity to show that I am a fan of liberty EVEN when I am the supposed beneficiary. Gotta love the opportunity to be consistent. Yes!

(If this post seems a little different from others I have posted, it is because this was taken directly from an away message and so I was forced to go back and really work to take out all the swearing. This guy honestly pisses me off and I was forced to find acceptable names to call him.)

Giving Praise When Due: Global Warming Edition

Okay, how often do people say things like, "You always complain! Can't you ever just praise someone in the mainstream media?" I tend to get that response quite often. So, when I can, I like to point out good articles.

In this case, I will put this in the "almost there" category. Reading this news story from Time magazine, I can still spot the natural, underlying biases of the author. However, there is one section that was just so...unexpected, I have to quote it here.

Some key senators won't even make Monday's vote, including Republican presidential nominee John McCain, who is skipping the debate despite having made strong action on climate change a key part of his pitch to Independents. (Let's not single out McCain - reportedly Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton may miss the vote as well.)

Wow, did I read that right? Did an author in a mainstream magazine just say, "Let's not single out McCain" in that sentence? Just this one phrase made this article that much better. I won't say it was perfectly objective (because there are a few shortcomings), but WOW!

I don't really know who Bryan Walsh is or what his other pieces are like, but at least with this one, I am all for praising the guy. I honestly felt this was the most objective piece of writing I have ever seen from a mainstream media source. Remember, I have no problem if someone like Rush Limbaugh or a writer from The Nation writes a non-objective piece; they say they aren't objective beforehand. Time on the other hand claims to be objective; it just doesn't happen very often.

By the way, in case anyone was wondering what I found wrong with the piece, there were a few issues. Ignoring for the moment the fact that it is the environmentalists who have stated the global warming debate is over (a move taken from the Catholics I believe when it came to Galileo) and its potential for debate - and in this case, I think it is appropriate to grant that exception - the main thing I will focus on is the fact the author quotes only one guy, some dude from an environmentalist group, that has stated not doing anything has a cost. Well, not exactly and let me give you an example. Even better, I will use myself, as far away from an environmentalist wacko as possible.

The "fairy-tale" endgame of environmentalists is to save the Earth by better managing energy and reducing energy consumption using "dirty" methods. But, does it take Congress to force people to stop using as much energy? Hell no! I am a perfect example. As I type this, I am sweltering in a mini-heat wave where I live. (And before you blame global warming, there were times this past winter where I had to put a dang blanket over my electronics to keep them from getting too cold and breaking.) Because I don't have the money to waste on my electric bill, I am just running a regular old fan, and let me tell you, it isn't working. I could however be using my air conditioning. Except, that costs more money. So you see, Congress hasn't put a gun to my head and said, "STOP using energy, you a-hole!" Nope, I have decided on my own initiative that being too warm is worth the extra money I will have to buy another book. Simply because I value a book over being cooler, I am using less energy. Do I do it to save the planet? Uhh, have you read my writings before? I do it because it is better for me based on what I value.

See, the problem with this article quoting this guy is that Congress doing nothing assumes everybody won't do anything either. But, that just isn't the case! As oil gets more and more expensive, people will do three things. First, they will look for new oil, including old oil fields that weren't profitable using previous methods. Second, people will naturally cut back on some things based on the value they place on it. (Just as a snide aside, the people most likely to use energy now are the rich Hollywood types that jet-set around the world attending premieres and crap, mainly because they can afford to be "wasteful.") Finally, the third thing people will do is invent new energy methods or ways of doing things that reduce energy needs. They will invent these items not to "save humanity," but to make a quick buck. Only because oil is getting expensive do people have a natural profit incentive to find something different. And what is even better, these methods will be profitable WITHOUT any help from Congress! Yep, you heard that, without any need for Congress to do a dang thing.

If you really don't believe me, assume you have some mechanical know-how. If gasoline for your car were to suddenly become $10 a gallon, wouldn't it be worth it for you to spend time in a garage tinkering to find an engine that runs on something else? Environmentalists understand this to an extent, which is why they want to artificially make oil more expensive. The problem becomes that far too many of the powerful environmentalists aren't for the "fairy-tale" reason given for the movement. Rather they are anti-capitalists who just want people to suffer. Think about it. How often have you ever heard a rabid environmentalist agree that we should be thinking about nuclear power generators instead of coal-based? Eh, that foam at the mouth you see when you suggest this idea is where the term rabid comes from. These true nutjobs don't want to help the environment anymore than Communists wanted to help the little people. You know, the standard complaint against capitalists is that they are greedy. But if you really think about it, these elite bastards are the greedy ones. Just look at the former Soviet Union. How many of the higher-ups were living "equally" with the everyday people? Hell no, they were living large. The main difference between those guys and people like Michael Dell or Bill Gates is that to get their fortunes, Dell and Gates had to convince everyday ordinary people that their products would make our lives better somehow. The guys in the Soviet Union had to con Soviet citizens into thinking the Commies would make their lives better all the while the Commies had to act like hell to keep the truth from escaping.

Anywho, this is just something to think about. Even though I did criticize the article, it was more the fact that the guy quoted someone with a personal incentive to lie. If environmentalism wasn't such a huge scare-topic, the guy quoted would be out of a job. Doesn't he face the same incentives that the executives at Enron faced? So how come Enron people were evil and this guy "couldn't be lying, no way?" Just thought I would point it out.

Discussion of Pay-for-Performance Charity Events

Okay, so on the blog Marginal Revolution, there is this post today that asks a reasonable question. Why do public charity events have a per-unit donation? For example, a donation for each time a kid jumps rope or a donation per mile in a charity walk. Tyler Cowen answers that this is done for publicity reasons and that the participants are generally exercisers anyway (or in the case of middle school kids, jumping rope is a required gym activity).

I don't necessarily disagree with this, but I was interested by a few of the comments left in response. A couple people decided to focus on the inefficiency of this system. (What happens if a 5k walk has a real fat guy like me participating? Wouldn't it be easier for people to just make a lump-sum donation so that if need be, I can stop without shame?) A couple people mentioned the opportunity cost involved, but I don't think they fully fleshed out the idea.

See, let me give you an example, something I think is pretty reasonable. Say you have a small law firm, 5 lawyers, where the standard per hour fee charged is a tiny $100 per hour. (Just go with me to make the math easier.) Say the race takes all day, 8 hours, simply because there is the race and all the extra stuff that charities have.

So, how many billable hours were donated to the charity? Well, 5 lawyers for 8 hours at $100 per hour. That would be $4000 donated from the law firm to the charity. Except, wait! The charity doesn't get that money. Instead, it gets money from the donations to the people doing the walking. Now, one argument is that lawyers have rich friends and could pull in high donations. But remember, in our scenario, the opportunity cost per lawyer (walker) is $800. Remember, the opportunity cost is what could have been made had the person not taken the day off to participate.

Why do I mention this opportunity cost? Well, suppose this walker is able to only get donations (both flat-sum and per-kilometer) of a nice $600. Okay, so the opportunity cost was $800 compared with the $600 that the charity received. (Just as an aside, remember also that to put on the event had some cost to the charity, though for a single-walker, maybe it wasn't that much. In this analysis, assume that the charity charges each walker a fee for dinner and a shirt and what-not that will offset any marginal costs related to that walker.)

Now that I have two different costs, we can do analysis. Well, think about it. What is the end goal of a charity drive? To raise funds right? Well, taking Prof. Cowen's remarks, maybe they are also hoping for publicity. So is this the optimal method to accomplish those two goals? Well, no, it isn't. Instead, imagine this scenario. The lawyer hires his next door neighbor's kid to walk for him, working for minimum wage (assume $5 an hour). Now, because the charity wants to raise the most money, the lawyer decides to work for clients and donate the billable hours. So, instead of taking time off and raising $600, the lawyer can donate $800, less the time paid to the kid to walk (at most 8 hours, the kid cost $40). So, in this case, the charity actually raises $760, unless of course the lawyer pays for the kid directly and gives the full $800 to the charity.

Well, there is another slight issue to point out. What if the lawyer can't walk 5k? Maybe they need to train to survive it. (This is easy to imagine if you think of the stereotypical fat lawyers who can barely make it through a round of golf using a golf cart.) If the lawyer has to spend any time training or gaining experience to complete the walk, say if it is a 10 or 20k instead, that will add to the opportunity cost and also affect the analysis.

Of course, there are a few other concerns to point out. Part of the joy for the lawyer is the socializing. In that case, the lawyer needs to figure out how many hours will be spent walking vs. socializing. The optimal solution also depends on how successful the lawyer is in getting donations. Let me give a more complicated example. Suppose the lawyer wants to spend 3 hours socializing, maybe for a dinner afterwards. (To add flair, the charity also has an after-dinner auction, not all that crazy of an assumption.) So, suppose the lawyer will only donate 5 hours, or $500 of time. Well, what happens if the lawyer is a workaholic and doesn't have people who will donate. (For instance, suppose the lawyer's friends are all the other lawyers in the office, each of whom is also walking from my original example.) Now, taking out the 5 hours of time for the kid, $25, the charity gets $475. As long as the lawyer can't raise that much, it is better for the charity to do this arrangement rather than have the lawyer spend all day walking.

Now, let's go back to my original example of looking at the whole law firm. Why have 5 lawyers each take off a whole day to walk? Take that $4000 and just donate it and have a firm party.

Then again, to really make things easier, just have the walk on a weekend, which actually, is something most charities have gone with to avoid the issues raised. However, even then, it might be easier for the lawyer to donate time working rather than raising donations and walking personally.

Now, let's take a slightly different charity and really see why opportunity costs is important. One charity in particular is famous for building houses. Well, because there is an actual output, I am going to introduce something that I purposely skipped in the prior example of the 5k walk, different relevant skills. Let's take an accounting firm with 20 employees with billable hours of $100 again to make things easier. Now, 20 people can build a house in pretty good time so let us assume that the house will take a total of 10 hours to complete. (Once again, just to make the numbers easier to work with.) Now, what is the opportunity cost of building this house for the accounting firm? Well, 20 people working 10 hours at $100 per hour, or $20,000. (Boy! Didn't think it would be that much, did ya?) So, for that 20 grand, what exactly does the charity get? A bunch of accountants trying to hammer nails and put up walls. What skills are involved in driving nails? Eh, one would be the correct answer. Honestly, the only skill a person needs is the knowledge of WHERE to drive the nail. Remember, building a house is the goal, not working without tools. Instead of having 5 people with hammers, have one person with a power nail gun. No point being Amish if we don't have to be.

So, here's my question to you. You are a home-builder, volunteering your time as a contractor to run this home construction. Which would you rather have, a bunch of accountants pale from being in the office all day OR hired laborers used to building things and working with their hands? Ding Ding Ding! Tell 'em what they won! Of course the hired laborers would be better! So, let's figure out how the charity could best benefit using hired laborers instead of accountants.

Well, assume for sake of argument that a hired laborer works for a $20 an hour wage. Well, that means each accountant actually costs the charity 5 laborers. So, first off, which is better when building a house, 1 (totally unprepared) person OR 5 (reasonably expert) people? Sorry, no prize this time. So, now we know that it is cheaper to hire people. So, now we face the next bit of savings. If it takes 10 hours for 20 people to build a house this way and we switch laborers for accountants, we now have 100 skilled people working on the house. Do we need that many? Remember, we said 20 unskilled people took 10 hours. What if we said 20 skilled people took 5 hours or that to build a house in 10 hours, it took 10 skilled workers? How would that change the charity's decision?

Well, essentially, that means by switching to skilled workers, we can build 2 houses instead, be it all 20 workers building 1 house in half the time times 2 or splitting the workers into 2 teams each building a house. But wait! I only accounted for 20 skilled workers. Remember, I showed early that 20 accountants equals 100 skilled workers. What this means is that the capacity is there to be 10 houses with the skilled labor.

So, you are a charity, which would you like, an office of accountants building one house OR an office of accountants spending a day filling out tax forms, donating the money to the charity, and the charity hiring skilled laborers to build 10 houses? Hmmm...that's a tough one, eh?

Now, someone might say, "Wait! Why would the accounting firm donate all that money to the charity? Maybe it is the group experience the firm wants." Well, that is a good point. However, the way I set up my assumptions, the obvious answer would be from the charity, "See, you guys can help us build one house with your building it or you can give us the money you would have made with that time and help us build 10 houses. Is the physical labor REALLY going to help your employee morale or bring the company together? Wouldn't it be easier just to make that donation day a special day? Maybe put up a banner saying, 'Doing taxes to build a house' and getting clients to help donate too?" (Mind you, I must put one caveat in. If an accounting firm decided that physical labor from building a house as a team or office bonding thing, the most likely outcome would be the accountants bonding to say hell no to anymore building projects. Remember, the complaints from taking people from a comfortable environment and putting them in a strenuous one are also one drawback for the accounting firm.) I would imagine that a charity that laid out the case as I have done, with all the relevant numbers calculated, would be better prepared to increase donations.

Ultimately, it comes down to this fact. What is the point of the charity? If in the first case it is to raise money and awareness, what would be the best way to accomplish that feat? If it is the second example to build houses, what is the point of having unskilled people, some of whom are probably not totally committed to building a house, out there trying to accomplish a task that would be more optimally performed by skilled laborers? Just something to think about. Just because it is obvious to see that a whole firm can take a day off and build a house doesn't mean that the charity would be helped the most through that action.

News Organization PROVES It Doesn't Know Statistics

Okay, so the AP commissioned a study (article here) to look into how younger people digest news. Only one problem. They only looked at 18 people over 6 cities in 3 countries. To pile on nonsense, these groups were ethnically diverse as well.

(Take some time. Try to draw up what this group looks like. I am thinking 3 people per city, 2 cities per country. Now remember, ethnically diverse. So for example, take City A in the United States. 3 people in that city so what? A Black, a white, and a Latino? Maybe one city might have an Asian. Try to fit the aggregate 18 people in 6 cities in 3 countries. Now that you have that in mind, let's move on.)

Okay, now that we have an idea what the sample looks like, how about some statistics. Only one problem. Generally, samples must have 30 members to make the math easier, potentially eliminate outlier types. (For example, sample 30 people out of a population and you might find 20 percent are racist. But what if you only sampled 5 people? We saw that there were 6 of 30 people in the first sample that were racist. What if instead of doing that original sample, we only took the smaller 5 member sample. What happens if 5 of the 6 racists end up in the smaller group?) See, because the AP is trying for diversity, they might end up with 3 or 4, at most 6 people of the same race, but spread out over three countries. Can we really say that a British white person is the same as an American white person? What about an American Asian? Are they the same as an Asian from India?

Many complaints about statistics online, say in political polls, is that 1000 people don't represent the population, even though if done correctly, those polls are accurate to whatever their chosen limit is. But there is no way that someone could reasonably read the conclusions of this AP study and draw anything from it! Imagine if I was in the sample. I barely skim headlines and I don't waste time reading past the first paragraph of news stories that are blatantly biased. But do I represent any of the population? Who knows? That is the point of gathering a large enough sample. I won't argue that a 15 person sample cannot be used because with the right techniques, it can. But, that isn't the case here. A 15 person sample would need to be done for each city and probably for each ethnicity. Here there are 18 people total! We can't break down people into separate groups without ending up with 1 person per group.

Now, to show I actually read to the end in this article, there were 4 U.S. cities, 2 in Britain, and 1 in India. Also, the findings that the researchers did find are valuable; just not scientific. There is nothing wrong with finding that young people tend to do other stuff while reading news (I think that is probably the least controversial finding) and then adjusting news accordingly. But there is no way that this study can prove it with any reasonable level of certainty (most often 95%). If news organizations want to appeal to younger readers, there is nothing wrong with asking random younger readers what changes they want to see. I just don't think this study is really random enough.