I read A Vindication of the Rights of Woman as part of A Year of Feminist Classics.

Don’t read the book like I did though. That is to say, don’t go to Project Gutenberg, download the text, and read that. It’s tempting because it’s free. I discourage this not because it’s stealing from the author. No, I discourage this method because Mary Wollstonecraft wrote this book around 1790. In other words, because of the language and style of writing back then, I had know idea what she was talking about about 2/3 of the time. Sometimes it’s the archaic words, though those can be looked up. Sometimes it’s the context. Much of the text is a response to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whom I haven’t read, for instance. And some of it is just obtuse. I counted fifteen clauses in one sentence.

Do yourself a favor and buy an annotated and footnoted edition. You’ll get a lot more out of it than I did out of this.

Originally, I planned to write something more detailed. Instead, I think I am going to just put in some reactions I had as I read through the text, with just a little bit of context for each.

Introduction. The male pursues, the female yields—this is the law of nature; and it does not appear to be suspended or abrogated in favour of woman. – Wollstonecraft makes lots of scientific pronouncements of fact that just aren’t so. I don’t think it’s unusual for the day and age. The scientific method didn’t become firmly established for another hundred years, was badly implemented often even then, and even intellectuals today get it wrong. Wollstonecraft invokes reason as the basis for modern thought, but reason and science aren’t exactly the same. To me, science should be the basis for knowledge and action, with reason as a supplement. Wollstonecraft’s reason is sometimes imperfect, but especially here it becomes awful because it is based on false premises. What’s more, and what stood out in this and a few other passages was that her false premises work against her ultimate aim, to secure rights for women. I don’t expect perfection from an early work of feminism (or even current ones), but it sure makes me cringe to see her blithely accept some of these things.

from every quarter, I have heard exclamations against masculine women, but where are they to be found? I love this bit. The internet did not spawn concern trolls.

My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces Is that sarcasm? I sure hope so!

The Rights and Duties of Mankind Considered. Consequently the perfection of our nature and capability of happiness, must be estimated by the degree of reason, virtue, and knowledge, that distinguish the individual Wollstonecraft wants to base her vindication on first principles, which she considers to be reason, virtue, and knowledge. Certainly it’s a step up from divine revelation, but there’s a lot of fuzzy wiggle room in there, particularly with virtue. What one person considers to be virtuous is a sin to another. And shortly afterward, Wollstonecraft identifies a flaw in reason…

Men, in general, seem to employ their reason to justify prejudices, which they have imbibed Yup. We still do. In our defense, I think this failing is common to humanity. But it’s particularly dangerous to classes of people that do not have power when those in power do this.

the regal power, in a few generations, introduces idiotism into the noble stem Wollstonecraft has a very anti-authoritarian bent. Through the book, she criticizes kings, men, the military, and parents as their mere exercising of authority makes them stupid. I wonder what level of authority she would have found acceptable.

The Prevailing Opinion of a Sexual Character Discussed. Many are the causes … that contribute to enslave women by cramping their understandings and sharpening their senses. One, perhaps, that does more mischief than all the rest, is their disregard of order. Wollstonecraft is careful to lay the blame for this one women’s education, but her overall frustration with how much women hurt their own causes comes through. She rails over and over against the predominant view that men think and women feel, and that’s the way things are supposed to be.

Youth is the season for love in both sexes, but in those days of thoughtless enjoyment, provision should be made for the more important years of life, when reflection takes the place of sensation. This is another thread that runs throughout the work, that how women are taught to behave isn’t a good basis for a lasting companionship. Being flirty and pretty is good to attract the attention of a man, but it isn’t good to hold it. Wollstonecraft repeatedly praises the value of friendship and respect in marriage. I don’t exactly cotton to her notion that gallant love has little place after the initial attraction has passed, but she’s quite correct that people really need to have something to talk about to make them effective long term.

however convenient [gentleness] may be found in a companion, that companion will ever be considered as an inferior, and only inspire a vapid tenderness, which easily degenerates into contempt. I don’t have anything to say about this one. It just needs quoting.

Let [women's] faculties have room to unfold, and their virtues to gain strength, and then determine where the whole sex must stand in the intellectual scale. One of Wollstonecraft’s arguments seems to be, paraphrased, What have you got to lose? If I’m wrong, women will still be at the place they are intellectually, and it won’t have been imposed on us by fiat. She makes this argument over and over in various ways.

The Same Subject Continued. That a girl, condemned to sit for hours together listening to the idle chat of weak nurses or to attend at her mother’s toiler, will endeavor to join the conversation is, indeed very natural; and that she will imitate her mother or aunts, and muse herself by adorning her lifeless doll, as they do in dressing her, poor innocent babe! is undoubtedly a most natural consequence. Just pointing out that supposedly differences in the sexes don’t occur in a vacuum, so that even the differences that appear early in life aren’t necessarily innate. It’s passages such as this that make me think that Wollstonecraft sometimes uses the word “education” in a broad context, though sometimes she also uses it to refer only to formal teaching.

Observations on the State of Degradation to Which Woman is Reduced by Various Causes. I lament that women are systematically degraded by receiving trivial attention, which men think it manly to pay attention to the sex, when, in fact, they are insultingly supporting their own superiority. Again, just needed quoting.

if fear in girls, instead of being cherished, perhaps, created, were treated in the same manner as cowardice in boys, we should quickly see women with more dignified aspects. There are likely underlying emotional differences between women and men due to differences in hormones, but I’m of the firm belief that they are generally minor. I think nearly all of the emotional differences are the result of cultural inculcation.

many girls become the dupes of a sincere affectionate heart, and still more are, as it may emphatically be termed, ruined before they know the difference between virtue and vice: and thus prepared by their education for infamy, they become infamous. Wollstonecraft laments the pernicious effect of what is now commonly called slut-shaming, but being a person of her times, sees the remedy as better education to avoid being a slut, rather than not shaming people. In a later passage, Wollstonecraft seems to be expressing even more dismay at people’s lack of sexual virtue than even those at the time held. There’s a streak of feminism that’s based on a prudish morality. That’s not surprising given that Western society as a whole has been pretty prudish. Feminism, for all it’s radicalness, can’t completely get away from the society from which it comes. The branches that I identify with more will be the ones that celebrate sexuality. Perhaps that’s merely the male gaze in me, but I’ll live with it.

Animadversions on Some of the Writers Who Have Rendered Women Objects of Pity, Bordering on Contempt. As the conduct of a woman is subservient to the public opinion, her faith in matters of religion, should for that very reason, be subject to authority. Every daughter ought to be of the same religion as her mother, and every wife to be of the same religion as her husband … As they are not in a capacity to judge for themselves, they ought to abide by the decision of their fathers and husbands as confidently as by that of the church. What is to be the consequence, if the mother’s and husband’s opinion should chance not to agree? … Indeed, the husband may not have any religion to teach her though in such a situation she will be in great want of a support to her virtue, independent of worldly considerations. First, I had never heard the word “animadversion” before, and I love it. This chapter has Wollstonecraft doing what I’m doing here: quoting other writers on the woman’s place, and giving her comments. First up is Rousseau, who Wollstonecraft rightly calls out for his serious WTFery. If you are prone to religious bullshit, Rousseau’s advice is hideously dangerous to your eternal soul. Here you are going to heaven for your belief, and then you get married and your husband immediately consigns your soul to eternal damnation by making you believe sinful things. Of course, Wollstonecraft’s most dreaded fear is that the husband gives the woman no religion, which I should think would be an improvement over giving you one. Which also makes me wonder, was Deism as popular among Europe’s elite as it was among America’s around the same time?

true grace arises from some kind of independence of mind Quoting the section where she rips a Dr. Fordyce.

Modesty Comprehensively Considered and Not as a Sexual Virtue. What can be more disgusting than that impudent dross of gallantry, thought so manly, which makes many men stare insultingly at every female they meet? Is this respect for the sex? This loose behaviour shows such habitual depravity, such weakness of mind, that it is vain to expect much public or private virtue, till both men and women grow more modest — till men, curbing a sensual fondness for the sex, or and affectation of manly assurance, more properly speaking, impudence, treat each other with respect It would be hypocritical of me to rail against the male gaze because I do love to look at pretty women, but the woman does have a point.

On this account also, I object to [women being cloistered]. They were almost on a par with the double meanings, which shake the convivial table when the glass has circulated freely. But it vain to attempt to keep the heart pure, unless it is furnished with ideas. This is the passage I noted above, where it seems like Wollstonecraft is more prudish than those with whom she associates. They seem to have no problem with using double meanings in their dinner conversation, but it does upset our author.

Morality Undermined by Sexual Notions of the Importance of a Good Reputation. Although I agree with the gist of Wollstonecraft’s criticism that women bear the brunt of bad reputation effects, again her solution is to hold everyone to unreachable standards of sexual morality. Rather, I say, Good Reputation is Undermined by Sexual Notions of Morality. For the most part, people ought not to care about who people are fucking. That’s another time though.

Of the Pernicious Effects Which Arise From the Unnatural Distinctions Established in Society. But what have women to do in society? I may be asked, but to loiter with easy grace, surely you would not condemn them all to suckle fools, and chronicle small beer! No. Women might study the art of healing, and be physicians as well as nurse. And midwifery … They might also study politics … Business of various kinds, they might likewise pursue. Another set of things that just needed quoting.

Would men but generously snap our chains, and be content with rational fellowship, instead of slavish obedience, they would find us more observant daughters, more affectionate sisters, more faithful wives, more reasonable mothers — in a word, better citiznes. Which reminds me I do need to point out that although some of Wollstonecraft’s complaints about sexual prejudice remain relevant today (we still often assume women aren’t good at math), her prescriptions wouldn’t work today. In fact they didn’t really have the effect she thought they would when they were enacted.. She thought educating women would turn them into paragons of virtue. All she had to do was look at educated men to realized that education does not make people behave righteously. It makes them smarter, and able to stand on their own, which are sufficient reason alone. Don’t expect better government or business when women and minorities finally make it to the head of the table in force. They are as fallible as the rest of us in the patriarchy.

On National Education No quote here. This is the meat of Wollstonecraft’s policy prescription. By and large it’s come to pass in Western society. She proposes a government paid for and run system of school that will educate everyone, rich and poor, male and female. She desires for them to be day schools. That is, not boarding schools. Wollstonecraft felt that the approach of vacations made boarding schools a bad choice for education. They would be co-educational; she felt that was the only way to get teachers to treat the sexes equally. That also would allow the students to cross pollinate and develop grand passions for the arts, or politics, or whatever. Whether public schools have had the effect of reducing inequality I’ll leave for the exercises.

Oddly, I made few marks in the last chapter. The only big one is the portion where Wollstonecraft inveighs against novels. These days, novels and the theater are considered cultural. Some day, perhaps, reality television will be considered in the same manner.

No links to other blogs. I read that A Year of Feminist Classics will do some roundup posts, so follow them to see what other people are saying about the tome. I’m going to move on to January’s second book, So Long a letter, by Mariama Bâ. January is going to be a very feminist month. I’m also going to be reading the recent Carl Brandon Parallax Award winning Distances by Vandana Singh. The back cover blurb appears to make it out to be about math.

Title: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Author: Mary Wollstonecraft
Imprint / publisher: Project Gutenberg
Format: Electronic book
Length: approximately 120 p.
Publication date: September 2002

Why can’t Africa get its shit together? That’s a question I’ve had for a while. Economically many of it’s countries rank near the bottom of the scale. I don’t subscribe to the racist notion that Africans genetically are predisposed to this. It’s certainly possible that there’s a cultural reason for it, much like the U.S. has been culturally prone to electing jingo-istic right-wing politicians for the last half century. For instance, because of tribal differences, it’s difficult for an African country to agree on a political system. Though India made many inroads to solving that problem. But it’s certainly possible it’s behind Africa’s problems.

Is racism a factor? Yes. Centuries of slave raids and colonialism doesn’t leave Africa in a good position. But it doesn’t explain everything. India, China, Latin America, and other places have been subject to racism as well, and they are doing better than Africa. Perhaps less racism, or less enduring, however. Haiti, populated by African descendants, also sits near the bottom of most economic rankings. I do think European and American racism works in somewhat of a ranked fashion, so I’m sure it plays a part.

More likely there’s a big economic reason. Economics posits that people choose an option that makes the optimum allocation of resources for themselves. Of course, over the decades the profession has discovered lots of exceptions to that rule, but the general rule explains a lot of human behavior.

One economic explanation for Africa’s chronic problems is that being resource rich is a war and corruption magnet, and so saddles Africa with the likes of Mobuto Sese Seko and Samuel Doe. These despots steal the bulk of the money and leave their citizens in a worse position than ever. But Africa is not homogeneously resource rich, so there’s still something missing from the equation.

Another possible economic reason is the lack of the rule of law and functioning government prevents economic development. While certainly true, Africa has had 60 years to develop these systems. Failure to develop them is more likely a symptom though. Asia has done it. South America has too. So what’s the underlying economic reason?

Dambisa Moyo proposes in Dead Aid that the underlying economic reason is the abundance of unaccountable international aid is the key to Africa’s failure. She’s a Harvard and Oxford educated economist who’s worked on African issues for the World Bank and Goldman Sachs. She’s Zambian by birth as well, which I’m sure is a major reason why her critique of aid has gotten some traction where others have failed to get notice for similar criticisms.

Her argument says that aid works like easy resources, giving corrupt governments and businesses the opportunity and reason to steal the money, and crowds out other sources of economic growth as well. In other words, the developed world doesn’t make anyone truly accountable for the money, so of course it’s taken. To have aid work, at a minimum either we’d need to run the aid ourselves, or we have to have anti-corruption conditions and the spigot turned off when they aren’t met. Moyo doesn’t think the former is a good idea (paternalistic, among other things) and the latter isn’t credible.

In other words, not only is aid not helping, it’s actually the cause of Africa’s economic problems. I don’t know how to evaluate the claim. Aid certainly hasn’t moved Africa on a par with other regions. But it could be ameliorating a real underlying cause. Economics doesn’t often allow for controlled experiments that would solve that confusion. Aid certainly hasn’t all gone to waste, either.

Moyo proposes four alternative sources of financing for development. First, international bonds. Second, foreign direct investment. Third, international trade. And fourth, micro-loans, remittances, and other banking improvements tailored for the poor. If, in fact, aid is the underlying cause of Africa’s problems, these might have some hope of changing the game. But I am skeptical. First, that these methods won’t have the same problems that aid does. And second, that they don’t have their own problems. And lastly, even if they won’t cause the same problems, I see no incentive for the African powerful to switch, if indeed their money-grubbing ways are the mechanism through which aid fails.

International bonds would work according to Moyo because lenders wouldn’t lend money in a second round if they didn’t get their funds repaid in a first round. Aid continues to be sent even if earlier rounds are squandered. This proposal I don’t understand. Here’s why I don’t think it would work. A bond issue gets stolen by a corrupt leader. No one is willing to issue bonds to the country again, and we are back to the point where we are now: either people starve or we send aid.

Her second proposal is foreign direct investment (F.D.I.). In other words, foreign companies buying shares of projects in African countries. I think this has a better chance of success, but I don’t think it will really make much difference. In order to secure scarce opportunities, these companies will need to kick back to corrupt political leaders. There’s no guarantee that the benefits will accrue to citizens of an African country. Look at Nigeria, where foreign oil companies are causing far more damage environmentally than they are benefiting locals economically. And there’s also the problem of nationalization, where the government, for corrupt or not corrupt reasons, simply takes over a foreign companies ownership. Without strong legal protections, this can happen easily. Without addressing those problems, I don’t see F.D.I. being the driver of economic growth. But it has potential benefits and may be a piece of the solution.

The third proposal is increased international trade. Comparative advantage results in large surpluses than benefit the citizenry. I see this as the best opportunity. However, as Moyo notes, there are many barriers to this. The first world would need to drop punitive tariffs. There’s more incentive for African countries to reduce barriers to each other, but there are more jurisdictions involved and they have much smaller economies. It’ll be a lot of diplomatic work to get that established there, and the benefits aren’t huge for each one. But if first world countries get in the act, it could have a huge effect. If.

Lastly, Moyo pushing banking services for the poor. Micro-loans. Removing barriers to remittances. Forms of deposit accounts geared toward small depositors to get local money moving through the economy instead of being hidden under mattresses. Again, while this has great potential, it has high transaction costs. In other words, since individual deposits and loans are small, it takes a lot of them to make a difference. And that takes a lot of bankers to make it work, who cost money and take time.

Lastly, there’s the problem of making the switch to these new methods. Why would a corrupt leader pick a high cost bond with conditions over low cost aid that he can steal easily? Or give up control in F.D.I. when there’s low cost money in aid? And a non-corrupt government would be taking on a lot of risk to use high cost bonds for projects that don’t result in easy ways to pay them off. The only way the switch can happen is if aid is cut off on the other side. But that would entail an ugly period of transition, and it’s hard to watch people suffer in the mean time and do nothing. Moyo recognizes this to a certain extent. Her book’s intended audience (according to the last chapter) is actually the western world’s public. She thinks the only way to change the aid paradigm is by pressure from the West. Which seems pretty paternalistic to me, and that’s something she criticizes. But aside from that, the limit of our influence would be to cut off aid, if we could do that at all. We have little power with investors who would be needed to set up bonds, F.D.I. or micro-banking.

The short version of all this is I think Moyo might very well be on to something here. She’s not the first to make these proposals and I’m sure there’s some very serious study going on about them. But I don’t think her case is convincing, and definitely not convincing enough to make wholesale changes yet. Yet. I’m a big fan of controlled capitalism and using markets to steer the world to good ends. These very well could work, if someone works out the problems with them. You’ll need far more than a 150 page polemic to convince the people who need convincing.

A few other blogged reviews:

• Africa Can … End Poverty
• State of the Planet
• Zambian Economist
• Amy Reads
• Grumpy the Penguin

Title: Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is A Better Way For Africa
Author: Dambisa Moyo
Imprint / publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux / Macmillan
Format: Hardcover
Length: 154 p.
Publication date: 2009
ISBN-10: 0-374-13956-3
ISBN-13: 978-0-374-13956-8

Spin-Free Economics isn’t.

That’s the short version of this review. Sorry, I couldn’t resist being clever. Probably more than a few other people thought of that little witticism too. So maybe I’m not really being that clever.

Behravesh’s premise is that politics has captured the public economic intellectuals. There is now a need for an impartial economist to arbitrate and determine which side is right on the key economics questions of today. That person is Nariman Behravesh!

There’s several problems with putting Behravesh into that position though. First, his economics have no creativity. This book is all about pushing the conventional wisdom of the economics profession. Indeed, early on he notes that economists are in largely in agreement on all the issues he notes in the book. Which would be well and good if agreement meant that these people were right. If economists are so smart, how did they as a profession miss the housing bubble? Some economists saw it, but by and large the group did not. So much for conventional wisdom. In some matters, such as on free trade generally, they are undoubtedly right. But on others, the jury is still out.

Second, Behravesh argues his cases very poorly. The book shows lots of correlations but very rarely demonstrates causation. Asia has adopted technology. Asia’s economies do well. Africa has not adopted technology. Africa’s economies don’t do well. Therefore Africa needs to adopted technology in order for it’s economies to do well. While that has a certain logical appeal, that’s correlation, not causation. Both items may be symptoms of something else, or completely random. The things he writes make sense but making sense doesn’t mean they are true.

Third, Behravesh documents his arguments and positions poorly. There are no footnotes or endnotes. Behravesh simply includes a list of sources in the back for each chapter with some short discussion of what can be found at each source. But he doesn’t tie together his actual claims with specific sources.

Fourth, some of Behravesh’s claims didn’t match up with what I found. For instance, he claimed the Canadian health care system is plagued by long unacceptable waits, worse than the U.S. But that doesn’t match up with what I found in this report from Statistics Canada or this study in the New England Journal of Medicine. Longer waits, but not unacceptably longer, generally.

Bottom line: don’t rely on Spin-Free Economics for unbiased truth. Like everyone, Behravesh has his prejudices, and they affect what he writes.

Title: Spin-Free Economics: A No-Nonsense, Nonpartisan Guide to Today’s Global Economic Debates
Author: Nariman Behravesh
Imprint / publisher:
Format: McGraw-Hill
Length: 334 p.
Publication date: 2009
ISBN-10: 0-07-154903-X
ISBN-13: 978-0-07-154903-5
Subject: International economic relations
Subject: International finance
Subject: Globalization — Economic aspects
Subject: Economic development
LC classification: HF1359 .B42 2009

The Myth of the Rational Voter is partially a book explaining economist Bryan Caplan’s economic model for voting, and partially it’s a polemic arguing for elitist views regarding the intelligence of the average U.S. citizen. As a super-smart citizen with just enough information to be dangerous, I’m partial to the argument. Caplan’s model and argument are internally consistent, but I don’t think he’s founded his erector set theory on as firm a ground as he describes. Whether it’s all true or not can only be seen by further research or events.

The model that Caplan espouses is fairly simple actually. Belief should be considered economically like any good such as leisure time or oranges. Belief, or irrationality, is the acceptance of suppositions as fact without reasonable evidence for so doing. Beliefs may be correct (e.g., one should not defy the law of gravity), or immaterial economically (e.g., god is a trinity). As the cost of being irrational goes up, people will consume less irrationality. If the cost of oranges goes up, I’ll buy fewer oranges. Since one vote has so little chance of affecting an election, a voter will consume as much irrationality as makes him comfortable with his view of the world. Because so much of a person’s beliefs aren’t true, particularly economically, we are getting economic programs that run contrary to established economic theory. In other words, we have shitty government because we vote stupidly, and we vote stupidly because a vote has little chance of affecting the outcome.

The polemic is a typical elitist libertarian one. Economists are smarter than your average bear. People vote anti-economist. We get bad economic policies because we don’t follow what the economists tell us to. Therefore we should take power out of the hands of people to some degree. Institute a poll tax. Institute education requirements. Reduce voter turnout. Or at the very least, remove as much of business and economic policy from political control as is possible. Let people’s individual choices be paramount and the market will move us to a socially optimal outcome.

As much as I like the ideas, there’s a lot of picking apart to do. First off, the premise that people are voting irrationally is not necessarily true. Caplan’s evidence is that the general public disagrees with economists on economic policies such as trade, foreign aid, and the like. For the general public to be irrational, the economists have to be right. Caplan’s evidence that the economists are right is a large chapter highlighting data from a survey. Caplan manipulates the data to remove the bias from such things as economic class from economists positions. After adjustment, the position is closer to the economist position rather than the position of the general public. Therefore, the economists must be more right than the public. Ta-da!

What’s obviously missing is whether or not the economists are right. The problem is that a lot of economics isn’t testable or at least not tested with the rigor that one would find in physics. Merely removing bias does not prove correctness. I can think of at least one recent item where the economic profession generally got it wrong: the existence of a housing bubble in the United States from 1998 through 2006/2007. So pardon me if I’m not convinced that that because economists say that protectionism is bad that it is bad. I’m generally pro-free-trade, but I need better convincing than that logic.

Secondly, I’m confused about his model. His model explanation is essentially that people’s irrationality during voting when graphed looks like a demand curve. In other words, if it costs someone money to be irrational they are likely to be more rational. We can treat a person’s preferences over his beliefs as if they were his preferences over consumption goods. The graphs look alike, so the underlying functions are the same. And because there’s no cost in voting, we’re really irrational. What bothers me about this analysis is that these aren’t scarce goods. When using scarce goods (or things like entertainment that can be translated into the scarce good time), the individuals must economize because they only have so much. The costs are a function of scarcity. But there’s an infinite supply of belief. The costs in this case are not a function of scarcity. I’m not sure this makes a difference, but it could. The known plotted points in the two graphs resemble each other, but because I’m not sure the underlying cost functions are the same, I’m not sure things hold at the edges. Like where the cost is zero as in voting.

There’s also no data to back up this model. It occurs to me that some implications of this idea ought to be testable. Closer elections have higher cost should result in better economic policies because the chances of having an effect are greater. Also, places where education (corresponding to rationality) is greater should have better economic policies. Randomly, there should be places where there is more rational voting and thus better policies. Caplan presents no such data. So I have to assume he didn’t find it at the time he wrote this book. Without empirical data, implementing his policy prescriptions in the hopes that it will improve things seems premature.

The thing that bothers me most about the whole book is it really feels to me like Caplan latched onto the model because it supported his libertarian tendency. Not consciously of course. It could easily be something that he believes because it fits his comfortable worldview, much as he accuses his irrational voters of the same thing. I have no idea where that meta road could take this and it hurts my head to go that way.

All that nit-picking aside, I have no evidence to counter any of this. I just have questions. The model seems cogent to me. One of the things that I glom onto is using prices as indicators, which this does with regard to voting. I understand things like determining how scarce drugs are by watching whether street prices for drugs are going up or down. Attaching a cost to voting and using that to evaluate resonates with me.

As for Caplan’s writing, I am not really sure what his intended audience is. Occasionally he drops into a wonkish mode where I got glassy-eyed. In plenty of spots he seems to be targeting other economists, admonishing them that they are irrationally assuming voting rationality. He writes non-technically enough that I can follow most of he argument. This is not the latest in the popular economics genre, however. Political economy is squarely within the realm of established economics.

Other blogged reviews:

• Obstinate Observations
• Walter Block (from the Caplan isn’t libertarian enough camp)
• Marginal Revolution (from a colleague of Caplan, so take it with some salt)
• Bibliographing

Title: The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies
Author: Bryan Caplan
Cover creator: Frank Mahood
Imprint / publisher: Princeton University Press
Format: Hardcover
Length: 276 p. (includes 70 pages of endnotes, references and index)
Publication date: 2007
ISBN-10: 0-691-12942-8
ISBN-13: 978-0-691-12942-6
Subject: Economic policy
Subject: Democracy
Subject: Political sociology
Subject: Representative government and representation
Subject: Rationalism
LC classification: HD87.C36 2006

If I had to characterize Raja Shehadeh based only on his book Palestinian Walks, I would say he is a bitter, defeated person. If what he writes about in the book is true, he has good reason to be. Shehadeh writes of six journeys he’s taken through the Palestinian countryside, ostensibly to describe the land and ecology he loves. That’s the impression one would get from reading the blurbs Scribner put on the back cover of the book. Instead, Shehadeh uses his walks as a starting point for expressing suppressed rage at the takeover of the occupied Palestinian territories by Israel settlers, disappointment in the Palestinian Authority for failing to curb Israel’s usurpation, and his own failure to effect meaningful change in anything.

Shehadeh is no militant. Thank god for that. However, reading the book one can understand why the more violent and temperamental of the Palestinians continue to use their methods in futile resistance. There little that I could imagine would justify the indiscriminate suicide bombing or shelling that many have used against Israelis. But reading through this one can’t help understanding the rage they feel under the Israeli boot, and this book doesn’t even touch on the large number of Palestinians killed by Israel.

Restrictions on travel form much of Shehadeh’s narrative. But this isn’t like telling me I can’t go to California from my home in Washington. The area of the occupied territories is smaller than western Washington, and is criss-crossed by roads. Roads Palestinians are forbidden to use, and in many cases to even cross. Hundreds of military checkpoints throughout, where they must wait for hours while men with guns arbitrarily decide whether to let them through. Land expropriated by Israel from Palestinians for the exclusive use of Israeli Jews. Expropriated meaning legally stolen, similar to eminent domain, except with nothing given in return.

All ammunition for the resentment of millions of Palestinians who must feel as if they are in concentration camps. In Shehadeh’s case the resentment expresses itself as fatalistic writing. I couldn’t read this without palpably feeling his despair. The author has no answers beyond wishfully hoping that Israeli settlers pull up stakes and cross back over the Green Line to internationally recognized Israel. Which is something that they obviously aren’t prepared to do, leaving Shehadeh no option except writing his depressing polemic.

Other blogged reviews:

• Levantine Dreamhouse

Title: Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing Landscape
Author: Raja Shehadeh
Cover creator: John Tordai (cover photographer)
Imprint / publisher: Scribner / Simon & Schuster
Format: Paperback
Length: 198 p.
Publication date: June 2008
ISBN-10: 1-4165-6966-9
ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-6966-4
Subject: Arab-Israeli conflict
Subject: West Bank — History
Subject: Gaza Strip — History
Subject: West Bank — Description and travel
Subject: Gaza Strip — Description and travel
LC classification: DS119.7 .S4672 2008

I’ve been reading Dean Baker’s stuff for a long time, first when he wrote Economic Reporting Review and Beat the Press since he moved to a blog format. He’s an economist with a liberal economics think tank. This book is less an economics treatise than a political polemic with an economic bent.

Baker’s premise for the book is that conservatives have characterized the political economy debates in the United States as government versus the market, with conservatives be pro-market and liberals being pro-government. This characterization puts liberals on their heels in the political arena. Baker’s argument is that the conservative vision depends as much or more on government intervention in the market than the liberal vision does.

The book is pretty convincing in making that argument. Examples include deliberate trade policy geared toward the wealthy, small business incentives, and intellectual property laws that create property rights out of thin air. Baker does a bang-up job poking holes in the conservative myths as well as pointing out many of the problems with our governments economic policies.

Where he falls down somewhat is in his arguments for alternatives. Perhaps this is just a little bit of the devil you do know versus the devil you don’t in my case. For instance, one of his proposed changes to copyright law includes a voucher system. Give everyone in the U.S. a $75 voucher to be used toward the support of an artist, provided the artist’s work is placed in the public domain. Baker’s argument is that a flood of creativity would ensue. The first thing that comes to my mind though is a large number of non-artists gaming the system. For instance, my buddy loses his job so my circle of friends bands together and send our vouchers my buddy’s way, despite his lack of artistic creation. Baker is certainly right to want reform of the system, and his ideas might even form the basis for the way to do it. But I’m not entirely convinced.

Lastly, I wish he had titled the book differently. It’s an attempt to change the debate. The issue I have is that the nanny state means something fairly particular as used by most intellectual conservatives. It means the government acting as a nanny to protect a person from themselves. Hence blocking the sale of trans-fats because people would become obese. In the book the term is used more generally to indicate government action. Some of the items in the book are in fact instances of the government protecting the rich from the own stupidity (the chapter on bankruptcy for instance). A lot of them are just actions of big government geared to benefit the friend of conservative, not necessarily to protect them from their own bad decisions.

Will Baker succeed in changing the debate? I doubt it. To do so he needs to get someone with media exposure to start espousing his ideas. That’s at the minimum. I haven’t seen the Democratic Party really have that kind of chutzpah.

Title: The conservative nanny state: how the wealthy use the government to stay rich and get richer
Author: Dean Baker
Imprint / publisher: Center for Economic and Policy Research
Format: Electronic book
Length: 113 p.
Publication date: 2006
ISBN-13: 978-1-4116-9395-1

Sometime yesterday between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. a nasty allergen hit my right eye. By 6 p.m., it was itching and watering. By 7 p.m., despite eye drops, diphenhydramine HCL, and flushing with water, the whites of my eyes were red and swollen. I don’t mean swelling around the eyes; my eyeballs themselves were swollen. A most unpleasant experience. This has happened to me once before, when I was maybe twelve years old. At that time, the eyeball got so large I couldn’t close my eyes. Not wanting to sleep with my eyes open, I took a trip to the emergency room in Bellingham.

What’s all that have to do with Charles Brooks’ Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year? Knowing I would likely be in the waiting room for some time, but not wanting to try to read small print with a swollen and irritated eye, I brought this. Last week I found a stack of this series in the free pile at Michael’s Books, covering 1988 through 1994.

What strikes me quite a bit about a lot of the cartoons is that they didn’t last. I don’t expect editorial cartoons on issues from 1988 to have much relevance today. But a lot of the issues are things I wouldn’t remember 1988 for. For instance, quite a number espoused the view that Nancy Reagan was the brains behind the Reagan presidency. (Remember the flap about her consulting an astrologer?) Even then we all knew that despite Ronald being a dim-bulb, that Nancy didn’t hold any real power. Contrast that with the Clinton years, when we know Hillary had quite a bit of influence on Bill.

The other thing that struck me was how utterly non-subtle many of them are. By that I mean that they don’t make use of the visual element much at all. For instance, one included cartoon by Wiley from the San Francisco Examiner has all the punch in the text. It would be just as effective if there were no drawing in it at all. Or another from Lou Bloss of the Alexandria Daily Town Talk. It includes three drawing of places. Auschwitz is labeled fascism’s atrocity. Siberian Prion No. 13 is labeled Communism’s atrocity. And Bloss labels the West Side Abortion Clinic as democracy’s atrocity. Again, all the commentary is in the words, with the artwork illustrative but superfluous.

On the other hand, there are some really great cartoons as well. The 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning went to Berke Breathed for Bloom County. I don’t know if that prize goes for the body of work during the year, a subset of that, or a single cartoon. The single cartoon included shows Rosebud the basselope high-centered on a fence. Milo and Opus make several attempts to get Rosebud off but fail, then walk away saying it’s all a metaphor for U.S. power. While there is a certain amount of commentary in that description right there, there’s also some pointed commentary in the drawing as well. Which you’d have to look at to get. Which I can’t include because of copyright issues.

A good way to pass the time in the E.R. waiting room.

Title: Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year: 1988 Edition
Editor: Charles Brooks
Cover artist: David Horsey
Series: Best Editorial Cartoon of the Year
Imprint / publisher: Pelican Publishing
Format: Paperback
Length: 160 p. (includes index)
ISBN-10: 0-88289-687-3
Subject: United States — Politics and Government — Caricatures and Cartoons — Periodicals
LC classification: E839.5B45

Early Sunday morning I couldn’t get to sleep, so I lounged around on the couch and read Joe Conason’s Big Lies until about 3:30 a.m. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t expecting a whole lot from the book. Perhaps a regurgitation of the information I already had from my extensive blog reading. But what this center-left reader found was disappointing. See, I really want to find the political book that really will make a difference. This isn’t it. I suppose I should have known that because it is five years old and it didn’t make a difference during the last presidential election.

The political discourse at the national level is dominated by narrative. In other words, stories. It’s not dominated by issues. What you hear about generally in the news and other places about politics is not about health care, or foreign trade, or even social issues like gay marriage. When I do hear things about them they are just short talking points. Instead, what we get is infinite parsing of candidates’ and politicians’ and their associates’ statements, looking for some insight into their character. And by character, it generally turns out to be looking for ways to twist those statements into evidence for a pundit’s ingrained view of the politician’s character. Thus is born stories like Al Gore said he invented the Internet. What a liar! Never mind that he never said anything like that.

The idea behind Big Lies is that Conason would debunk ten of the major narratives and expose them to be lies. While I think he picked his targets well, his writing leaves something to be desired. He jumps around from anecdote to anecdote and the result is something less than convincing. I want a systematic and thorough evisceration that leaves little room for countering. This will convince the already convinced.

A lot of the arguments aren’t so much here’s why the Democrats are better as throwing more dirt up about the Republicans’ many inadequacies. For instance, on the lie that Republicans are the party of family values, Conason trots out a litany of failed Republican marriages, Republican affairs, and Republican closeted gays. Rather than examine their policies and effect on families and compare it to the Democrats’ and how the latter is better. The defense of the Democrats is limited to noting that the Clintons’ marriage has lasted decades despite problems, and that they offer pro-family policies. But Conason never explains and compares those policies.

Disappointing.

Of course, I’m not really out scouring for the books that do what I want. Mostly I’m just reading the ones that I come across cheap (in this case free). So it’s probably more my fault, in light of Sturgeon’s Law.

Title: Big lies: the right-wing propaganda machine and how it distorts the truth
Author: Joe Conason
Imprint / publisher: Thomas Dunne / St. Martin’s / Holtzbrinck
Format: Paperback
Length: 245 p. (includes index and lots of end material)
Publication date: September 2003
ISBN-10: 0-965-12241-7
Subject: United States — Politics and government — 2001-
Subject: United States — Politics and government — 1993-2001
Subject: Propaganda, American
Subject: Conservatism — United States
Subject: Right and left (Political science)
LC classification: E902.C365 2003

My Sunday Salon reading this week is Lani Guinier’s Lift Every Voice. But I started off the day updating this site to run on WordPress 2.5. I like a lot of the new features, but a few things are kind of annoying. In the middle of my upgrade work, I participated in this week’s episode of the Wordsy Podcast, where Hans Dekker, Erik Hare and I discussed a few of the top literature stories on Wordsy. Hans doesn’t have the episode posted yet, but it won’t be long unless he runs into technical difficulties. This is the third time I’ve appeared on the show, but it’s the first time I didn’t think I sucked afterward.

Now, on to a discussion of my reading.

I realize this might be ancient history, so here’s the quick background. Lani Guinier was nominated for an Assistant Attorney General position in charge of civil rights by Bill Clinton in 1993, shortly after he took office. Nearly immediately, the nomination became controversial. After a firestorm of criticism, Clinton withdrew the nomination. I was not fully cognizant of the issues at the time, but I did follow the story. Guinier was tagged by several right-wing pundits as the Quota Queen for her advocacy of alternative voting systems, particularly that of cumulative voting. I never understood how that translated into advocacy for quotas (and Guinier in this book vehemently disputes that she did so), but I was uncomfortable with the idea of messing with majority rule. Not that I was against changing the system; I just didn’t understand enough about it and the alternatives to get past my resistance to change.

Guinier discusses a number of topics in this book:

• her nomination,
• her childhood,
• her experience as a civil rights litigator, and
• her ideas for promoting more inclusiveness in government.

The book is most interesting when she writes about the last topic. Unfortunately, that doesn’t really come until the last couple of chapters. And she jumps around quite a bit between the first three topics, much diminishing how they affected me. Although she claims this book is not about settling scores, she comes across to me as very aggrieved and personally hurt by the withdrawal of the nomination. Given her take on it, I agree with her. She was wronged. Nevertheless, as she writes several times, people don’t want to hear a litany of complaints from a victim. And to me that’s what a lot of this reads like.

While undoubtedly there are things that the Clinton administration should have done differently, from reading this book I would not want Guinier as a co-worker. Sometimes a person has to take one for the team. But she didn’t see herself as part of the Clinton team. She saw herself as part of the civil rights team. Throughout the book she tries to draw many connections between civil rights pioneers and herself, usually pretty ineffectively. My reaction in reading most of these parts was that Guinier had an over-inflated sense of her own worth, particularly in connection with the Clinton administration. She wanted them to fight for her, and they did not. She saw that as a betrayal of civil rights. There are dozens of people who could have been nominated and still not betrayed the cause of civil rights. In fact, the eventual person to fill the job was Deval Patrick, a fellow litigator with Guinier (and I believe now the governor of Massachusetts).

This is frustrating to me, because the two chapters where she discusses her ideas on reforming our system are quite good. One chapter discusses voting systems in a fair amount of depth. Things like cumulative voting, proportional representation, preference voting, and other alternatives to the 50% plus one system we generally have now. I think we would do well do adopt some of these systems for many of our elections.

The last chapter is Guinier’s call to have a national conversation on race. I’ve heard this phrase used quite a bit and I usually cringe when I do. I associate it with people sitting around on Oprah-like talk shows discussing how race affects them. I cringe because I tend to be action-oriented and an airing of grievances usually polarizes. But Guinier is looking at something different. It is more of a series of local focus groups set up to make changes to local issues that have racial implications, but conducted across the country. She has pretty detailed ideas on how this could work, and I tend to think she’s correct in her assessment of their efficacy.

If you come across the book, my recommendation is to skip to the last two chapters. Or at least read them first so if your reaction to the personal stuff is like mine, it won’t color your perception of her ideas.

Title: Lift every voice
Author: Lani Guinier
Imprint / publisher: Simon & Schuster
Format: Hardcover
Length: 336 p. (includes index)
Publication date: 1998
ISBN-10: 0-684-81145-6
Subject: Guinier, Lani
Subject: Afro-American women civil rights workers — Biography
Subject: Civil rights workers — Biography
Subject: United States — Politics and government — 1993-
Subject: Clinton, Bill, 1946-
Subject: Civil rights movements — United States — History — 20th century
LC classification: E185.97G94G85 1998

When this book came out last year, there was a lot of controversy. Some people said it was sloppy. Some folks said it was anti-Semitic. Several Carter Center employees resigned. I heartily subscribe to the belief that the Palestinians get a raw deal. There is periodic unacceptable violence against Israelis. Comparatively speaking though, Israel’s citizens live in peace and security compared to the Palestinians. That hasn’t always been the case. Through the 1970s, Israel fought multiple wars against its Arab neighbors, winning all of them. But winning doesn’t mean lack of danger. Attacks since then have been sporadic and perpetrated by insurgent groups rather than by state actors. At the risk of further reinforcing my own beliefs rather than test and confront them, I picked up the book because I had to know just what was so bad about the book.

If you are uninformed about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the bulk of this book will be of use to you. Carter covers the history of governments and people involved, and touches on some of the personalities. All of this is filtered through the lens of his personal experience and contacts. These are numerous because he is a former President of the U.S. He included a lot of tidbits about things I did not know. For instance, I had read that Yassir Arafat had rejected a very good peace proposal put forward by Ehud Barak in 2000. However, according to Carter, the proposal was actually from Bill Clinton, not Barak. In addition, Barak, while not rejecting the proposal had 20 pages of reservations. Yet, it was Arafat who was portrayed in the media as blocking the proposal.

Another item about which I was unaware is Israeli conditions on the Roadmap peace proposal that has been the lynchpin of George W. Bush’s limited diplomacy regarding the conflict. According to Carter, the Palestinians have accepted the proposal. Israel has accepted it, but with 14 reservations and changes that gut it. Carter includes the statement of these changes in an appendix.

Ultimately though, I don’t know how much weight to put on any of this. Carter states that land-for-peace is the only possible operative solution to the conflict. There is so much well-placed mistrust on both sides that I don’t know if either side can really believe it will work. Israel can’t trust that Palestinian violence will drop to something acceptable. Palestinians can’t trust that Israel will allow them a viable state. The alternative solutions suck in major ways. Annexing the territories and creating a single state will put Arabs in a near majority and Israel doesn’t want that. Containing the territories in bantustans as they are currently doing is going to be a humanitarian nightmare and eventually Israel will be completely isolated by the civilized nations. Neither will they receive much support for expelling the Palestinians to Jordan, Eqypt, Syrian, and Lebanon. There aren’t really any other options.

I didn’t find the book to be particularly weighty or studied. There actually isn’t much that’s controversial in the text. No one denies that the Palestinians have a rough time. What is in dispute is whether or not each side’s actions are justified. Carter doesn’t delve into that. About the only thing controversial is that he labels the situation as akin to South Africa’s reviled apartheid system. He isn’t the first. It’s only noteworthy because he’s a Nobel Peace laureate and a former President, which gives extra oomph to the characterization.

In any case, unless you are a Middle East news and opinion junkie, I would skip the book. It isn’t bad. Quite good in fact. Just repetitive of the current news. You won’t find the controversy in the book that the controversy in the news implied. You’ll be just as informed about that if you don’t read it. There’s some value in the detail Carter provides on the various negotiations, but I’m not sure it will even cause anyone to question their assumptions or conclusions.

Title: Palestine peace not apartheid
Author: Jimmy Carter
Imprint / publisher: Simon & Schuster
Format: Hardcover
Length: 264 p. (includes appendices and index)
Publication date: November 2006
ISBN-10: 0-7432-8502-6
ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-8502-5
Subject: Carter, Jimmy, 1924-
Subject: Arab-Israeli conflict — 1973-1993
Subject: Arab-Israeli conflict — 1993- — Peace
Subject: Palestinian Arabs — Politics and government — 1973-1993
Subject: Palestinian Arabs — Politics and government — 1993-
Subject: United States — Foreign relations — Middle East
Subject: Middle East — Foreign relations — United States
Subject: Israel — Politics and government — 1973-1993
Subject: Israel — Politics and government — 1993-
LC classification: DS119.7 .C3583 2006