Are Zoos Morally Okay?

Over the years zoos have successfully repositioned themselves to be educational and research institutions affiliated with the environmental conservation movement. This is a far cry from their original incarnation as a more carnivalesque freakshow designed to trigger awe, wonder, and even fear.

With the animal rights movement and an increased concern for animal welfare, zoos are put in an awkward position. Imprisoning animals and depriving them of their capability to flourish in settings with limited human interaction is clearly an increasingly challenging thing to justify. Offsetting this morally questionable dimension of zoos are the potential upsides. Now of course, to hardcore animal rights advocates, no amount of social benefit makes zoos morally justifiable. But let's take a look.

Most often you'll hear arguments about protecting endangered species. I'm not too familiar with the effectiveness of zoos in this regard, but it seems unlikely this point is all that effective in the light of massive structural forces like economic growth, habitat destruction, etc. And the types of animals that are deemed worthy of zoo protection aren't necessarily those that are most crucial from an ecological integrity perspective. My suspicion is that much of the conservationist rhetoric surrounding zoos is a marketing strategy designed to maintain the institutional and historic inertia of zoos.

The educational mission of zoos is the strongest argument for a social benefit potentially large enough to offset their moral problems. Showing young children in a directly-experiential way that there exists a larger world out there is a great way to build up cosmopolitan and environmentalist ethics.  Whether the cheapness of air travel, the growth of information on the internet, and the explosion in popularity of nature-themed entertainment like Planet Earth makes this benefit of zoos more replaceable and thus zoos less morally justifiable is an open question.

Is Russia the Most Antifragile State?

This thought is almost a year too late, but with Edward Snowden bubbling up again slightly in the news, it seems relevant. Snowden's decision to exile himself to Russia was driven mostly by short-term necessity--Russia's government had favorable extradition policies, antagonistic political relationships with his enemies, and a strong military. But in the abstract, did he make an optimal decision given he may very well never be able to leave Russia? In other words, if you had to live out your life in just one country, where would you go?

Over a 40ish-year-long time horizon, predicting the conditions in a country becomes really tough. Instead, the best way to answer the question is probably to look at the degree to which living in a country contributes to your overall resilience in lifestyle. So I wouldn't necessarily look at current growth trends and pick China, for example, because its internal risks (political and cultural instability) and external risks (war with the West) are high.

The best answer would seem to be the US--it's big, diverse, historically open to cultural and political reinvention, and with a huge military and economy. But if the US taken off the table, what next? Russia seems like a pretty good option. Given the tremendous uncertainty over the next 40 years, Russia is almost uniquely placed among large countries by having a foot in both Europe and Asia. This means if you're stuck in Russia for the rest of your life, you could reposition to whatever side is doing better in the game of civilization. Add to this the fact that Russia has lots of remote area, perfect for small survivalist communities under various doomsday scenarios (robots, pandemics etc.).

Aging is Wrong

"But we should probably start planning everything in advance. Right now, nobody is going to behave as if it’s going to happen. If you actually managed to do it, one day, society would be completely off-guard."  

"That’s true, but I am not going to tackle each individual problem—pensions, kids, resources—that might arise in a post-ageing society. I prefer to help people focus on the fact that we’ve a problem today, a really rather bad problem. That is that 100,000 people every fucking day are dying of ageing. That’s the important thing, not worrying about hypothetical problems.

Unfortunately, people are programmed to find reasons why it would be a bad idea to defeat ageing. This is mainly because they fear the unknown, since the world would be very different without ageing."

That's from a great interview with gerontologist Aubrey de Grey about aging and life extension. It doesn't delve much into his specific approach the the problem of ageing, but contains some excellent insight into the marketing challenges in his field.

A Few Thoughts on the Sharing Economy

Medium has a pretty interesting article that purports to be a general critique of the new sharing economy concept. A few thoughts:

1. What is the sharing economy? Simply put, it is the increased variabalizeability of services driven by a reduction in transaction costs. This is essentially the service and flow economy described in the seminal book Natural Capitalism.

2. Although the sharing economy might have a cultural and marketing affiliation with anti-capitalists wishing for a "righteous return to human society's true nature of trust and village-building that will save the planet and our souls", the sharing economy is still very much a market by and for massive-scale urban populations.

3. The sharing economy drives resource efficiency on the intensive margin, which probably encourages some level of rebound effect. It seems to me that one of the greatest avenues for a sharp critique of the sharing economy is the potential for the rebound effect magnitudes to outweigh any resource savings in an absolute sense in some socially undesirable service.

4. Another possibly powerful critique (also absent from the article) concerns rent-seeking. The increased ability of owners of service-producing goods to derive income from leasing out their goods might reduce their incentive to engage in economically productive behavior.

5. The resentful undercurrent in the article about how the sharing economy is being driven by poverty and unemployment--and therefore is somehow blameworthy--is totally incoherent.

6. The argument that the sharing economy supports and continues existing institutions and systems of racism, classism, and social inequality--and is therefore bad--is weak. Just because a new technology doesn't solve your particular moral hobbyhorse doesn't say anything about its potential effects in other areas.

7. That said, I suspect the sharing economy would actually help in this regard relative to the current status quo. The market mechanism and competition are powerful tools for eliminating discrimination. The sharing economy, by reducing the transaction costs and fixed costs associated with obtaining and selling services, will probably widen the circle of people and activities participating in markets.

Climate Change Adaptation and Issue Salience

I recently listened to a great On Point podcast with geographer and author Jared Diamond about environmental challenges. He made some interesting points on the topic of climate change that really made me curious about the current academic literature exploring the connection between climate change adaptation as a process and the salience of the issue in the media, policy institutions, and individuals.

Climate change adaptation is basically the process by which social institutions reduce the net human costs of negative climate change effects. This is distinct from mitigation, which tries to reduce the effects themselves, and resilience, which tries to reduce the costs of adaptation by preemptively modifying institutional arrangements.

For a huge number of reasons, significant action by the federal government on the mitigation front is unlikely. The most likely climate change scenario is a somewhat boring adaptation process by which everybody muddles through, with some winners (regions, communities, businesses, and individuals providing solutions to climate change problems) and some minor losers (regions, communities, businesses, and individuals that are insulated from climate change problems) and some big losers (regions, communities, businesses, and individuals that are highly exposed to climate change problems). By and large the last two groups are separated by economic power: access to money and resources makes adaptation easy (buying a new home, paying higher air conditioning bills etc.), while lack of money makes it difficult (and painful).

This leads me to my question: if the climate change adaptation process does little to disrupt existing social cleavages (rich vs poor, educated vs uneducated etc.) and results in little absolute reduction in the wellbeing of social elites, what are the prospects for the issue's salience going forward? We tend to assume that climate change will effect everyone personally, and thus everyone will notice its negative effects and care about the issue. But under very optimistic adaptation scenarios, might there be a dimension of blowback whereby only low-power, low-status groups notice or care about the issue?

I tend to think the concept of environmental inequality is slightly incoherent, and what's really important are the absolute environmental capabilities of those at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. But the interaction between adaptation and issue salience is one potential example of the pattern of environmental capability being important.

Information Nexus

1. Good Blog Post on the Comcast-Time Warner Coupling
2. Very Cool Small-Town Sci-Fi Art
3. Los Angeles Walkability and Building Height/Street Width Ratios
4. Ryan Avent is So Good he really should find a new job that allows him to flourish a bit more.
5. The Human Cost of Environmental Progress (worth it, but still depressing)

Is Small Urban Manufacturing Really Manufacturing?

I often hear vague talk of a new manufacturing renaissance in cities, one driven by technologies like 3D printing and robotics and sometimes grouped with various hipster-bobo artisanal products. But how similar is this new class of manufacturing to traditional categories like automobiles in terms of positive spillover effects? A few thoughts:

1. The stated promise of this new sector is to radically increase productivity in manufactured goods by lowering initial capital expenditures, increasing customizeability (thus increasing potential aggregate market), reducing inventory costs (thus reducing short-term financing demands), increasing responsiveness to changes in market demand, and reducing transportation and infrastructure costs by producing close to market.


2. Manufacturing has historically been advantageous in growth and development because using machines to make stuff has allowed big productivity gains without big education and skill gains. Factories can employ low-skill/low-education workers, and teach them how to operate equipment. 


3. But much of the hot new manufacturing in rich cities is more like the service or tech sectors--it requires high existing levels of skills and education (creativity, computer skills, etc.). This makes me very skeptical about claims regarding the race/class/employment benefits of any urban manufacturing renaissance. These businesses will draw their workforce away from existing high-skill/high-education jobs instead of hiring from low-skill/low-education labor pools. In fact, fast food restaurant jobs share more similarities to the urban manufacturing/factory jobs of old in terms of skill requirements and advancement opportunities.


4. These new industries aren't geared as much around trading. That's one of the biggest advantages of traditional capital-intensive manufacturing: the barriers to trade are low compared to other sectors like services. Focusing more towards home markets reduces the need for firms to develop flexible marketing and supply-chain systems, limiting knowledge learning and the ability to scale up.


5. I worry that if local urban manufacturing really takes off the reduced demand for imported goods will put developing nations at a disadvantage because they won't be able to rely as much on manufacturing for export as a development path.


6. The fact that expensive high-rent cities like New York have so much primo land (on the water, near retail hubs, etc.) still devoted to comically-low-value uses like warehouse storage and parking is a sad reflection of how screwed-up the land market is (zoning restrictions, excessive veto power over new construction by local residents etc.). Maybe the urban manufacturing renaissance can use these spaces and get the land closer to its highest and best use. This to me seems like the most undervalued benefit of small urban manufacturing. But never forget, these low-productivity spaces shouldn't even be there any more! By far a more optimal use would be to change zoning and building restrictions to allow developers to just demolish all the warehouses and old blighted factories and build housing and office towers and stuff.

Milk is Doomed

Via @Coreycore, the dairy industry has dropped it's "Got Milk" marketing in favor of a new "Milk Life" ad campaign emphasizing nutritional benefits over humor. Despite the fact that the new ad is terrible and just a little gross, I see a deeper reason why the re-brand will probably fail to convert new "milk lifers".

Milk has lost popularity in part because people think it's high in fat and calories, which mainstream nutrition tells us is unhealthy (it's not). The dairy industry seeks to confront this nutrition-based aversion head-on by trumpeting the protein found in milk. But by focusing so heavily on the nutritional dimension of milk (rather than, say, cultural heritage or taste) the industry is locking themselves into a justification scheme that will eventually turn on them.

Nutrition science is slowly undergoing a paradigm shift where the key drivers of unhealth and obesity aren't fat and calories but instead things like low-fiber carbohydrates and sugar--anything that spikes your insulin levels. As this framework becomes more publicly available and sugar becomes increasingly demonized for its adverse health effects, the fact that lactose is just sugar will become an increasingly burdensome marketing handicap. Training consumers to evaluate milk using a nutrition-and-health frame will become a disadvantage, not a clever opportunity.

Lingua Terra

Why can't we all just speak my language?
Photo Credit: memory-alpha.org

The Economist recently had an interesting article reporting on the state of English as the lingua franca among global firms. This got me thinking about the old futurist idea of a world that operates on a single, global language (eliminating all others). What would be the costs and benefits of such a system?

Clearly the network efficiencies of a single language would be huge. There'd be radically less friction in all sorts of interactions, greatly reducing transaction costs. This would have an effect of bringing people into the global social, cultural, and economic marketplace who's current contributions aren't big enough to warrant translation. There's surely a lot of great minds and ideas in isolated communities that, given the opportunity, would flourish globally.

Usually when n=1 resilience concerns are apparent, and language is no different. Less language diversity would mean less experimentation, and a reduced quantity of different cognitive perspectives (we know language affects how people view the world).

A single language would have much less modularity, and be extremely sensitive to changes--good or bad. Some really disgusting new word (yolo!) would have few barriers preventing its global spread. This isn't a trivial concern: unjust cultural biases ingrained in language systems certainly exist. Putting all your eggs in one basket usually carries hidden tail risks.

On a global scale, eliminating translation and the ability to employ multiple languages would greatly reduce feedback. How would you know that a language institutionalizes certain cultural biases or cognitive styles without meta-reflection?

No doubt the optimal outcome is some multilingual mixture, which allows for the benefits of a global lingua franca while preserving some consolidated language diversity. Where the equilibrium settles with respect to minor languages--Icelandic has few speakers but seems durable--is an interesting question for computational linguistics.

Baby Steps Towards Restroom Reform

A new startup is planning a pay-for-access washroom in Manhattan that basically sounds like a capsule hotel. As I've previously noted, the supply of public restrooms in most big US cities is pathetically low. Many cities, such as Tokyo, have publicly-funded restrooms. Other cities have privately-supplied restrooms that charge small fees. The US has neither, with most public restrooms provided as a complementary service by private businesses selling other stuff. This system worked okay because overuse of these free restrooms was curbed by norms--polite "for customers only" signs etc.

For whatever reason these norms are breaking down and businesses are decreasing the quantity and accessibility of their restrooms. This Manhattan experiment is nice because it can help shift the way people think about restrooms: as a valuable good that people should be willing to pay for. Smuggling this idea into a business model that bundles a bunch of products together (storage lockers, showers, a quiet space, etc.) is both clever and disappointing. It's clever because it emphasizes the positional value of the package by appealing to rich folks. It's disappointing because it fails to target the low-value customers, like tourists, who's willingness-to-pay for a public restroom might fall below the membership fee. 

Websites I've Been Enjoying Lately

1. Project Syndicate: Mostly economics essays by experts in the field.

2. Quartz: Fantastic community blog about business with nice buzzfeedy hooks.

3. The Atlantic Cities: Most of the best urbanism blogs are clearly aimed at people working in the field, but this one is very accessible.

4. Aeon: Longform essays with a philosophical/scientific orientation. Of the ideas and concepts that have stuck with me lately, most have come from this site. They have a nice video section also.

5. The Umlaut: Community blog loosely focusing on political philosophy and the liberal arts. One writer, Adam Gurri, is a Nassim Taleb acolyte, who applies that unique analytical frame to novel topics.

6. Yale Environment 360: Most environmental news blogs and sites sacrifice quality in order to post regularly and often. But environmental developments don't really fit with our frenetic news system, and don't require daily analysis. This site posts more infrequently, but with greater depth and agenda-setting power.

7. TechWire: Simply the best aggregator of news and analysis about technology and technology policy.

Bandwidth Discriminators Must Be Cautious

With the recent destruction of the FCC's net neutrality rule, it's theoretically open-season for potential bandwidth discriminators. Quartz cleverly identified one big loser from the decision: Netflix, which currently consumes a massive amount of bandwidth and could be priced out of business by newly-enabled ISPs.

The internet has recently taken great delight in analyzing the various reasons why Netflix's business model doesn't add much value and must either change or collapse. Although I agree that Netflix faces various existential threats, bandwidth discrimination doesn't seem like a big one to me.

The reason is basically that powerful and important people in government and journalism love Netflix, and thus are highly sensitive to its well-being. Elite DC was obsessed with House of Cards for a while. If some over-eager ISP decides to crush Netflix with rate hikes, forcing sudden service and pricing changes, the town will freak out. Similar to the sequester debacle, when Congress acted only when their own creature comforts were threatened, Netflix commands a special prominence within the policymaking elite (and their interns).

My advice for ISPs searching for new profit opportunities created by the ruling is to cautiously test pricing models in areas unlikely to galvanize politically-powerful groups. Even better would be to employ a 'bootlegger and baptist' maneuver and ally with moralizing groups already opposing some internet region. Surely nobody would defend a 'bandwidth sin tax' on streaming pornographic videos or the websites of Colorado marijuana dispensaries, right?

Politicians Need More Procedural Freedom

David Plotz yesterday had an excellent column defending the general principle behind Chris Christie's underhanded tactics in the bridge scandal:

"But excessive hygiene is rampant in Washington. The controlling conservative wing of the Republican Party is addicted to principle. If politics is the art of compromise, we have a huge number of elected officials who are not politicians at all but rather zealots animated by ideology. This consistency, so admirable in a campaign ad, makes governing and legislation nearly impossible."

What he's really getting at is how our modern forms of intensive political journalism emphasize process over outcomes. The shift in political incentives away from deliberation has direct consequences for government effectiveness. Politics isn't merely the process of adding up the static policy preferences of lawmakers. Deliberation, strategy, logrolling, etc. all help to enable compromise legislation.

Another worrisome effect of process journalism punishing lawmakers for bad procedure instead of bad policy concerns the talent pool. In other electoral systems (and previously in the US) politicians were mostly judged on election day for their accomplishments. These days, however, politicians are evaluated constantly, and any tiny deviation from party orthodoxy is identified and punished. This may lead to a selection effect where most of our politicians are those who happen to have identities and policy preferences best fit to the current popular demands, instead of possessing intrinsic characteristics beneficial for governing. A snapshot analysis might suggest that super-responsive politicians are great (that's democracy, right?), but in a deeper, longer-term way these types might be less effective.

Information Nexus

1. Longform: The Obesity Era
2. Prediction Algorithm: Identify Your Geographic Heritage Using Dialect Keywords
3. Article: A Balanced Take on the Urbanist Buzzwords of 2013 also this
4. Interview: MIT computer scientist Scott Aaronson on Quantum Computing
5. Blog Post: Bozeman, Montana is Not Quite Paradise

Does Dynamic Pricing Have a Speed Limit? Should It?

On the heels of the big Uber flap over its dynamic pricing model, and Matt Yglesias exploring alternatives to explicit dynamic pricing schemes in the restaurant industry, there's been a lot of discussion over the variability of prices lately. The reasons are pretty clear: technology and the internet have crashed the costs associated with setting up transactions down to essentially zero. A corollary of this is that with an algorithm (or the click of a button) you can change prices constantly. Input commodities have had rapidly-changing prices for a long time, but front-end dynamic pricing has been limited in the customer service domain (hotels, lobster shacks, etc.) Clearly we're seeing the conflict that arises when people's norms and expectations don't keep pace with technological change.

Dynamic pricing seems to be mostly a good thing. It uses resources more efficiently (along the intensive margin), allows more price discrimination (charging people what they're willing to pay), and incentivizes new supply during peak times. But in some areas there are probably limits to the social gains to be had from ever-faster price changes. The best example of this is high-speed trading in financial markets, which now operate at speeds far exceeding what their supposed capital-allocation function requires.

As parts of the economy become more "service-and-flow"-oriented (also called the "sharing economy") and less ownership-based, the moral implications of constantly-shifting prices become apparent. If few people own cars and simply order the service of road transportation (from self-driving cars, or cheap ride-sharing programs), everyone becomes very exposed the uncertainty of changing prices. Certain groups (like those with money!) will be better able to cope with the added uncertainty. If you can't say for certain how much your parking meter is going to cost before you leave the house, maybe you'll just stay home.

Perhaps everyone will simply adapt and routinize price-checking in the morning alongside their coffee and newspaper, but for people who's mental bandwidth is already stretched this could be a problem. Lifestyle complexity is regressive. From this perspective, certain forms of regulation can be justified on the grounds of limiting the adoption of dynamic pricing. I've tended to be a big supporter of eliminating building and rental/housing restrictions, but imagine what a truly efficient housing sector would mean in sellers-market conditions: would renters have to pay different amounts every month? Every week?

We're already seeing business trying to reduce the stickiness of their labor costs by rebalancing to more part-time and temporary workers. While the macroeconomic effects of this trend might be nice (for GDP growth at least, not so much for unemployment), more and more dynamic pricing in key sectors could also have worrying pro-cyclical implications. The effects of demand shortfalls could more easily (and more quickly) ripple through previously isolated areas of the economy. How these competing effects of faster price changes actually compare in the data is a underexplored topic for researchers.