The Worst Jobs in History

From Lapham's Quarterly:

Quote of the Week

"There is a long history of public discussion across the world. Even the all-conquering Alexander was treated to a good example of public criticism as he roamed around in northwest India around 325 B.C.  When Alexander asked a group of Jain philosophers why they were neglecting to pay any attention to the great conqueror (Alexander was clearly disappointed by these Indian philosophers' lack of interest in him), he received the following forceful reply:

'King Alexander, every man can posses only so much of the earth's surface as this we are standing on. You are but human like the rest of us, save that you are always busy and up to no good, traveling so many miles from your home, a nuisance to yourself and to others! . . . You will soon be dead, and then you will own just as much of the earth as will suffice to bury you.' "

From Identity and Violence by Amartya Sen (who quotes from Alexander of Macedon, 356-323 B.C.: A Historical Biography by Peter Green)

Quote of the Week

"In more recent decades, dissidence has been closely associated with intellectuals; a class of person first identified with late-19th century protests against the abuse of state power but in our  own time better known for speaking and writing against the grain of public opinion.  Sadly, contemporary intellectuals have shown remarkably little informed interest in the nitty-gritty of public policy, preferring to intervene or protest on ethically-defined topics where the choices seem clearer.  This has left debates on the way we ought to govern ourselves to policy specialists and 'think tanks', were unconventional opinion rarely finds a place and the public are largely excluded."

--Tony Judt, Ill Fares the Land 

Why History Matters

Political scientist Sven Steinmo has a pretty concise list:

"There are at least three important ways in which history matters.  First, political events happen within a historical context, which has a direct consequence for the decisions or events.  An early example of this is the seminal work of Alexander Gershenkron who argued that when a country industrializes necessarily affects how it industrializes.  He shows us why late-comers cannot go through the same long trial-and-error process followed by early developers.  In other words the process of industrialization is essentially different for late developers than for early developers.  This is a huge insight that is easily missed in large-scale quantitative, cross-national comparisons, which very often pool data across continents and time periods and treat the time/place as inconsequential (or assume that it will 'wash out' of the analysis)."  

"The second reason history matters is that actors or agents can learn from experience.  Historical institutionalists understand that behavior, attitudes and strategic choices take place inside a particular social, political, economic and even cultural contexts.  Rather than treating all political action as if fundamentally the same irrespective of time, place or context, historical institutionalists explicitly and intentionally attempt to situate their variables in the appropriate context."

"Finally ... expectations are also moulded by the past.  While some might point to America's adventure in Iraq as a simple product of power politics and/or the demand for oil, a historical institutionalist would more likely look to the patterns of past wars for an understanding of why this country reacted in the way it did to the 9/11 bombings.  Certainly they were mistaken, but there should be little doubt that America's past successes in Germany and Japan -- to say nothing of their perceived victory over Communism at century's end -- led policy-makers in the Administration to believe that they could assert American power and bring successful capitalism and democracy to a former dictatorship."

Economics And Models

David Brooks has an incoherent column today about the death of economics.  All approaches and methodologies for generating knowledge have strengths and limitations, yet Brooks seems unwilling to view economics through a context of trade-offs.  He observes that economics has been trending towards more complexity and asserts that this process will continue until the field of study becomes something akin to Zen Buddhism in eschewing all forms of simplification.  Just kidding.

Economics is best understood as a model-building discipline.  Models are essentially simplified versions of reality: their goal is to make sense of the world by sorting important details from unimportant ones.  They should be simple, fit well with reality, and identify some sort of causal mechanism.  There tends to exist a trade-off between a model's simplicity and its ability to fit well with reality (what we observe in the real world), and this is often the source of conflict: what is the optimal balance between simplicity and empirical validity?  At one extreme, if we add too much complexity into our model, it may become nearly as complex as the reality it seeks to model, telling us very little about any causal relationships.  Conversely, too much simplification might leave out important elements.

Brooks praises the study of history, viewing it as economics' final evolutionary destination.  This prediction betrays a serious lack of understanding about each discipline's goals.  History, for the most part, is not interested in model-building.  It is all about context and details; there is no rigorous attempt to simplify things down into a causal mechanism.  Of course the best description of a rare and influential event must include idiosyncratic details, but that sort of "rich, thick" description of a single case necessarily limits the ability to generalize, compare, and most of all predict. 

The addition of new complexities into economics is indeed a positive change---incorporating psychology better aligns assumptions with real-world observations---yet we must recognize that its models have reduced strength and analytical precision.  The addition and subtraction of complexity should be a careful, incremental process governed by empirical testing and changing methodological constraints.  The idea that economics will wildly careen towards history and philosophy, its simplifying assumptions flying off into the abyss, is foolish and misunderstands the purpose of social science.

Norway's Cultural Cocktail

David Brooks must have been sipping some sort of cocktail himself when he thought up today's bizarre column about a survivalist gruesomely traversing occupied Norway.  This isn't the first time Brooks' analysis has been 'outside the box.'

Politics of Europe

Washington Post domestic policy guru Ezra Klein has a great series on his blog exploring the political systems of various European countries:

                                                            1. Great Britain

                                                            2. France

                                                            3. Germany