Sprawl - Today's Bee Letter

12/10/23 re: “Sacramento has an ugly addiction to sprawl” p.D13

The Bee correctly decries Sacramento's addiction to sprawl. Sprawl is not just a polluting mess, it’s an unhealthy, regressive “tax”–every driving age adult must own a car to shop or get to work. Seniors who can’t drive and children are, in effect, second-class citizens.

As someone who protested this for literally decades both in a Community Planning Advisory Committee and as a private citizen, government’s tone-deaf response has been beyond frustrating. My best guess is that land speculators (i.e. "developers") are firmly in command, and their proxies in government have difficulty understanding that alternatives exist since their paycheck is conditioned on them not understanding. The late Grantland Johnson once said that it's widely acknowledged that, in all of California, the Sacramento region is the most in the hip pocket of development interests. That's not a contest anyone would want to win.

Meanwhile, the region has 20 years of unbuilt infill.

Money incentives' effectiveness pales in comparison to social pressure

From Mike Norman Economics:

"The study’s findings were striking in their similarity to [Soloman] Asch’s original results. In the non-incentivized group, the average error rate in the line judgment task was 33%, closely mirroring Asch’s findings. However, in the incentivized group, the error rate dropped to 25%. This suggests that while financial rewards can reduce the impact of group pressure, they do not eliminate it. [emphasis added]

“When we started the study, we could not imagine to be able to replicate the original findings as close as it turned out,” Franzen and Mader told PsyPost. “We thought Asch’s findings were overstated. We also believed that providing incentives for correct answers would wipe out the conformity effect. Both did not happen. The replication turned out to be very close to the original results and providing monetary incentives did not eliminate the effect of social pressure.”

The conclusion is also of interest to contrarianism.

Regarding what people should take away from the findings, the researchers remarked: “Here we like to cite Mark Twain, ‘Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.'”

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My observation of local political clubs aligns perfectly with the above. Such clubs are far more interested in social cohesion, rubbing their hands together as they huddle around some political bonfire ("Isn't Trump awful!" "Aren't those Democrats corrupt!") than in discussing public policy alternatives that might extinguish the fires.

It's essentially "My tribe is better than other tribes" ... which degenerates into a game called "Ain't it awful." It's the essence of inside-the-box thinking...or not thinking at all.

This is a shame not only because it means the public remains uninformed--they are too busy huddling with their homies--but because political inertia, not sensible thinking, rules the land. These are nice people, but, as Abe Lincoln said, good intentions are a second-rate virtue.

The insistence on adhering to one's own (and typically one's parents' own) ideology is a quasi-religious phenomenon. Persecuting heretics is part of that particular tendency. 

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A little bit of the consequences of tribal loyalty rather than clear thinking driving public policy:

1. Sacramento County just voted to postpone any climate mitigation actions for 15 years. (Meanwhile, a tree fell on my house, thanks to a powerful windstorm in early 2023...it was bad enough that my homeowners' policy was canceled. But hey, that global warming is a hoax.)

2. Sacramento County just paused it, but they previously voted to spend $1 billion to enlarge the jail. 

3. The Federal reserve says 40% of the US population can't handle a $400 emergency without selling something or borrowing.  Around 60% of wage earners live paycheck-to-paycheck. An estimated 65% of seniors only have Medicare and Social Security to fund their retirement. Congress is moving to consider reducing those social safety nets, though, and can get away with that because the tribes are at odds.

 

The wisdom of Lord Salisbury

No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you never should trust experts. If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. They all require to have their strong wine diluted by a very large admixture of insipid common sense.
 

letter to Lord Lytton, 15 June 1877; in Lady Gwendolen Cecil Life of Robert, Marquis of Salisbury (1921–32) vol. 2

A reminder the seemingly impossible remains possible

 

This is incredible

This is Nick Brett threading a ball through an incredibly narrow gap to reach the target ball
pic.twitter.com/8gpGf4EDQS

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) December 7, 2023

The State of COVID

by Mark Dempsey

First, here's a handy graph of your odds of getting exposed to COVID according to the size of gathering you attend:

 

That's put together for a county in Georgia, but I'd suggest it applies wherever you are.

Why be concerned if only one person has spread-able COVID?

 

For more about Sacramento County COVID and flu positivity, the best current public health policy has is this website/dashboard. It's only updated weekly, and not at all during holidays.

American healthcare ranks 37th in the world in outcomes like life expectancy, vaccination rates, infant mortality, etc. according to a study by the World Health Organization, between Slovenia and Costa Rica. The Sacramento Bee said "It's as though we have the healthcare of Costa Rica and pay six times more"...double what most single-payer countries pay, and single-payer ranks highest in that study.

Meanwhile, with 5% of the world's population, the US has experienced 22% of its COVID deaths.

If you're interested in more medical information about COVID and medicine in general, the Ground Truths blog is a good place to start.

Update: Here's the blog Ground Truth's COVID update.

 

The Chamber of Commerce’s Same Old Tired Prescription...Again!

© by Mark Dempsey


Loren Kay, from a Chamber of Commerce “think” tank, and Republican State Senator Ted Gaines write that (surprise!) California must lower taxes and reduce regulation to “spread the wealth,” despite all the evidence of the past two generations that such policies concentrate wealth at the very top of the income distribution.

Since 1972, deregulation and tax reduction have been tried and tried again, yet since 1972, the bottom 90% of incomes have experienced median, inflation-adjusted gains of only $59 a year. The rest of the gains--and productivity increases made enormous real income gains possible--have gone to the top 10%, and the top tenth percent. Investigative reporter David Cay Johnston says that if that $59 were an inch on a bar graph, the bar for the top 10% would be 141 feet tall, and the bar for the top 0.1% would be five miles high.

Kay’s and Gaines’ editorials ignore any positive contribution of government research. For one example, most of the iPhone’s innovations are based on government-funded research into transistors, integrated circuits, the internet, GPS, etc. Government-funded research produces seventy-five percent of pharmaceutical innovation.

Besides the tired narrative that the government contributes nothing but hassles, Mr. Kay believes deregulated builders and developers will provide adequate affordable housing. Yet most nations without such acute housing problems understand subsidies are what really support affordability.

Unfortunately, America’s subsidies--like the mortgage interest deduction--do not support low-cost housing. Add the rest of Kay’s prescription--like the deregulation of the private sector mortgage banking that gave us the subprime mortgage/derivatives meltdown--and you’ll see new housing starts ground to a halt, demonstrating yet another of those “miracles” of the market in action.

Kay also believes whatever is cheapest is always best when it comes to energy--never mind the climate consequences of continued petroleum dependence. So...drill baby, drill!

The confidence that markets are always right in setting prices is an article of religious faith. God has an invisible hand, and markets always price in the long-term consequences, is what that religion believes. Sure, global warming means hurricanes are stronger than ever, and going to unfamiliar places like Vermont, but we can ignore the climate to save a few nickels on our electric or gas bill.

It’s sad that any mature human being could continue to promote this short-sightedness as beneficial.

If all of this pseudo-foresight manages to look like prescribing a sledgehammer to cure a headache, well that’s about what it is. Gaines’ and Kay’s cluelessness resembles nothing so much as a hypnotic trance that allows them to ignore anything that does not serve their corporate masters. We’ve had this for the last few decades, and we can see the result: the headlines proclaim that more than 60% of Americans don’t even have enough savings to handle a $500 emergency.

The big question is how long Americans are going to play the sucker in this particular game of three-card Monte.

12 Steps to Jail

(c) by Mark Dempsey

Thomas Franks’ "Too Smart to Fail" essay explains the way we delude ourselves with "expert" opinion. As one wag says: "An ex is a 'has-been' and a spurt is a drip under pressure." Anyway, Franks documents in excruciating detail the way Americans are more interested in "pretend and extend" than genuine change.

Franks says public policy is too often insane, doing the same thing repeatedly, expecting a different outcome. Making sanity, not “extend and pretend,” and not a financial advantage, a foundation for public policy is what’s desperately needed. Taking that next step to share sanity with a larger community is not trivial, either.

Twelve-step programs are one example of an institution designed to bring sanity to addicts and their families. Nevertheless, if you're familiar with these programs, you'll know that one of their traditions specifically forbids the organization from taking public policy stands. They humbly admit they're too crazy to handle the turbulence that comes from going public.

Giving up taking any public policy stand has some pretty dramatic repercussions too. These programs spend an awful lot of time educating members that addiction is not a moral failing, it’s a disease. That means addicts should be treated, not punished. But what is public policy?

Primarily because of the "drug war," the U.S. incarcerates, per-capita, five times more people than the world average. America jails seven times more than the Canadians. How effective is it? Even though U.S. and Canadian demographics are similar, crime rates between the two countries have differed insignificantly for 40 years--essentially since Reagan put the drug war on steroids.

This is a very big problem, suppresses a significant portion of the population, wastes an enormous amount of resources. Medical treatment for addiction and mental health problems is one-seventh as expensive as incarceration. The Swiss de-criminalized even heroin and found crime around its clinics declined 85%.

Worse still, incarceration continues the racism that preceded the Civil Rights era. More black men are in jail now than were enslaved in 1850. Even though whites and blacks use and sell drugs in roughly the same proportion, by a wide margin people of color are disproportionately targeted to harass, prosecute and jail. So while it's illegal to discriminate based on skin color now, once someone has a felony record, discrimination is perfectly legal in housing and employment. Some states disenfranchise felons, eliminating their rights to privacy, forbidding them from using public housing. See Michelle Alexander's book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness for details.

So can we persuade the public to set aside their animosity toward felons, and their racism toward people of color, to make society more humane? Twelve steppers are silent, by design, about this.

My sister suggests I’m missing the point. Twelve-step programs are practically Buddhist in their detachment (and in fact promote “detaching”), and are not suitable places for social action, she says. Besides, their precepts forbid them from endorsing public policy measures.

But don’t these people use the infrastructure and human capital our public policies maintain and support? Are we to believe that the formerly robust public participation of the American public is to devolve into a bunch of powerless drones hypnotized by TV screens?

Boy, I hope not.

Suggested Flyer for 12-steppers:

Let’s Stop Punishing Addicts, Really

Twelve-step meetings educate attendees that addiction is an illness, not a moral failing. The Open Letter from the Alcoholic often read in such meetings says “Don't lecture, blame or scold me. You wouldn't be angry with me for having cancer or diabetes. Alcoholism is a disease, too.”

Yet punishing rather than healing addicts is what official U.S. public policy does now. Currently, U.S. prisons are full to overflowing with people arrested in the drug war. The U.S. is tops in the world in incarceration at 756 per 100,000 population. The world average is 150 per 100,000.

Canada imprisons 111 per 100,000. Its demographics are similar to the U.S., and its crime and U.S. crime have differed only insignificantly for more than 40 years.

Furthermore, treating addiction rather than punishing it is more effective and cheaper. It costs one-seventh as much to treat as to incarcerate. Imagine jailing diabetics...or burning witches. About the same thing, really.

Worst of all, even though the evidence is that all races consume drugs in equal proportions, people of color suffer disproportionately in the drug war. They are many times more likely to be harassed, arrested and jailed than whites. It may be illegal to discriminate because of skin color, but it is not illegal to discriminate against felons. They often cannot even vote, nor use public housing.

Action Items:

1. Let your state, local and federal representatives know you disapprove of this policy of incarceration.

2. Work to repeal three strikes and determinate sentencing laws. (fcnl.org is one organization doing this)

3. Let your 12-step program’s reps know that ordinarily taking stands on public policy is not this organization’s role, but this case is an exception.