Today in [racially segregated] straw armies...

So Kevin Williamson, whom friends of the blog have met before, was tapped by noted white-supremacist rag National Review to deliver the [g]libertarian response to Ta-Nehisi Coates' address on the state of our racial union. Get an umbrella, folks, it's gonna get pissy in here.

We begin in the very first paragraph:

Mr. Coates’s beautifully written monograph is intelligent and sometimes moving, and the moral and political case he makes is not to be discounted lightly, but it is not a persuasive case for converting the liberal Anglo-American tradition of justice into a system of racial apportionment.

Now, if you're like me, you might be scratching your head what the everloving fuck Williamson is talking about. Is he referring to the actual justice system -- a system that in its colorblindness just happens to imprison black men an order of magnitude more frequently than white ones? Or is he referring to some more inchoate tradition of justice, like the one which greeted the returning veterans from World War II with flowers if they were black and federally subsidized mortgages if they were white?

You cannot read Coates' essay and not realize that the Anglo-American tradition has been one of racial apportionment since the 1600s. This is the entire point. Goods of great and lasting value have been apportioned, through private and market-oriented means as well as through public policy, in a racially lopsided way. Now, of course not every lopsided apportionment of goods is a crime, but Williamson can't even seem to get this far.

A little further on, Williamson dances with an actual insight before losing the beat:

The most valuable aspect of Mr. Coates’s essay is as a corrective to the tendency to treat the systematic political and economic repression of black Americans as though it were a matter of distant history and a question that had been for the most part settled at Gettysburg, with a few necessary legislative reforms in the following century. The process of extirpating effective racism did not end in 1868 or in 1964; even assuming a zero racial handicap on a forward-going basis, we would expect it to take decades before the average economic differences between blacks and whites were to disappear. (If, indeed, we should expect them to disappear at all.)

Now, let's take a suggestion from that BBC piece about toilets and go through the thought-experiment of how this works in detail.

Under what conditions would we expect the economic distribution of whites and blacks to converge to each other, assuming that they have formal equality of access? One of the drivers of continued inequality is inherited wealth: if I am wealthy, then on average my children and grandchildren will be wealthy as well. Now, if I am white, what is the expectation that my children and grandchildren will be white? Here is where I think the models underlying Williamson's expectations might not match up with mine. Williamson, I suspect, models U.S. society going forward as a place of heavy racial intermixing, so that between those descendants of today's black people who benefit from hard work and entrepreneurship and those who marry into previously white money, the boundaries between the races blur and the overlapping distributions will coalesce.

I'm less optimistic. While I do see plenty of glorious miscegenation taking place, the drivers of de facto segregation in the U.S. are not gone even if everyone has formal access to the same suite of financial tools. And segregation -- in schools, in neighborhoods, in all these places -- is a countervailing force against this commingling of the descendants.

If segregation remains as powerful a fact as it is today, then we would expect the wealth distributions of white and black people not to converge, but precisely the opposite.

There is probably a vicious circle at work here: Even controlling for income, blacks are financially risk-averse compared with whites, which probably has something to do with the history that Mr. Coates cites; but this risk aversion has the long-term effect of leaving them worse off as they forgo higher returns on their savings

Worse off than what? Higher-return investment strategies are by definition higher-risk -- what Williamson is saying here is a direct denial of even weak forms of the efficient markets hypothesis. Unless he thinks that black people's risk-aversion takes the form of saving in the First People's Bank of Mattress, any approach to personal finance which beats inflation is either just as good as any other or improperly priced.

Hey, wait a minute. It couldn't possibly be the case that the personal-finance game is rigged against people with lower assets, could it?

Blacks probably should extend that skepticism, or even transfer it, to the welfare state. Mr. Coates does not spare the New Dealers, who enacted a raft of progressive policies that were in many cases designed to exclude or disadvantage African Americans. Contrary to the convenient myth related by our contemporary liberals, there was no substantial conflict between Democratic liberals and Democratic segregationists on most of the progressive agenda — the  progressives and the segregationists were, in the main, the same people, and the so-called conservative Democrats in the South were very enthusiastic about federal regulation of businesses, the minimum wage, social insurance, and welfare programs, so long as they could be structured in a way that would not benefit blacks very much. But Mr. Coates does not give much consideration to the possibility that a similar dynamic still is at work among our 21st-century progressives — not in the sense that white progressives see their own interests being in direct competition with those of black Americans, but in the sense that programs run for the theoretical benefit of the poor, who are disproportionately black, are in fact run for the benefit of the largely white upper-middle-class bureaucrats who are employed by them.

I smell piss. Piss, everywhere.

Listen, Kevin. We've been over this. It is impossible to be both a progressive and a segregationist, at least in the sense(s) the word "progressive" has been used in the post-Civil-War political context. Yes, the New Deal was a pretty raw deal for black people. The rising tide eventually lifted some nonwhite boats, but it's quite true that in order to get the damn thing on the books and in force, FDR needed the votes of his southern Democratic caucus.

But I can't figure why you are making this bait-and-switch to talk about how conservative Dems in the 1930s didn't hew close to the shibboleths of the modern conservative movement. Federal regulation of business, minimum wage, social insurance, and welfare programs can be net positives for a state economy. Now, conservatives love to accuse the latter three of these of impoverishing their nominal beneficiaries, but that case falls apart every time. (Hence the fallback position of "well, it inculcates a culture of poverty", which is both false and paternalistic bullshit. When there are jobs to be worked which pay better than welfare, people work them if they can get them.) But that's not even the case you're making here, since you pivot to "bureaucrats" without even the courtesy of telling us which programs you're imagining the bureaucrats are occupying, sucking up our precious bodily fluids.

Well, that's not quite true. Right after the last excerpt, you mention teachers' unions and how they're fighting school reform. Now, it's not clear what teachers' unions and bureaucrats have to do with each other, and it's very very unclear that turning the Washington D.C. school system over to Michelle Rhee was in the interests of anybody except Michelle Rhee and a whole bunch of fly-by-night charter schools. But seriously: what the hell point are you trying to make here? It's an incoherent mess.

We're almost done:

Blacks are disproportionately poor, and policies that encourage economic growth and robust employment, which is the only meaningful long-term anti-poverty program, should benefit blacks with roughly the same disproportion.

This is just simple mathematics: absent any structural amelioration of the reasons that some discrete subgroup of the population is disadvantaged, just growing the economy preserves disadvantage. A color-blind approach like this is both naive and counterproductive.

And this is, again, the whole case being made: that the assaults against black people in the U.S. have been public, sustained, and not racially neutral. It defies logic to think that a racially-neutral response could possibly work to counter this history.

Usage peeve

Dear internet and beyond:

The following is incorrect:

"Bob was reticent to discuss his benefits package."

What you meant there was

"Bob was reluctant to discuss his benefits package."

"Reticent" means "silent" or "disinclined to talk much". I suppose you could make a case for saying "Bob was reticent on the subject of his benefits package", though in my experience the word refers more to a broad character trait (think the strong, silent type) than it does to any particular decision to talk or not.

Thank you, have a wonderful holiday, and get off my lawn.

Don't stop! I yield!

Riffing on the topic I touched on a few weeks ago, of questions on high-pressure exams, I wanted to share some thoughts about a fun programming problem that I'm not sure makes a great interview question -- but maybe that's an argument for why it does.

The problem was mentioned in a thread about programming interview questions.

Consider the digits 123456789, in that order. Now consider the value of the expression resulting from inserting + or * between some of those digits: for example, you could insert + after 2 and 4 and * after 1 and 8, resulting in

>>> 1*2+34+5678*9
<<<   51148

or insert + after 3, 6, and 8, resulting in

>>> 123+456+78+9
<<<   666

Write a program which prints out all the expressions of this kind which evaluate to 2003. (Hint: there are exactly four.)

Matt Walsh Project I: Homeschooling

I'm going to start this series off light: responding to a post where my disagreements aren't with the main thrust, but with side (snide) comments.

In The Two Absolutely Worst Arguments Against Homeschooling, Walsh actually goes over ground that formed my very, very first paper in undergrad. Yes, Virginia, we've really been having the same damn arguments since the early oughts -- actually longer, since I think all the research that I cited in that paper was from the nineties and before. (Full disclosure: I was homeschooled for part of my K-12 career.)

Nostalgia aside, here are the two arguments he's referring to, in response to a reader email:

2. Homeschooled kids aren't properly socialized.

This one was known to be false very early on. I mean, yes, we've all known someone who was homeschooled and turned out -- weird. It's even possible that ordinary schooling (whether of the public or private variety) might have helped that person turn out a lot less weird (as it probably did for me). This, however, is not actually data in support of the contention. This is what is known as "availability bias": weird people stick out, whereas people who are well-socialized don't. You'd never ask someone who didn't stick out how they got to be that way: it's just the default that you interact fluently with people.

And it was known all the way back in the nineties that adults who came from a homeschooling background looked pretty similar to adults who'd come up through regular schooling. If I'm recalling correctly, some of the studies noticed a measurable trend that children in homeschooling, and adults who had been homeschooled, were more comfortable dealing with people who were older than them than with those their own age. I don't remember if that effect was robust over time, but it makes sense. (In regular school, you're mostly being socialized by people your own age; you take your cues from them, you adapt your language to theirs, etc. In a homeschooling situation, cues come from your parents and the other parents in the clique as much as or more than others your own age.)

Now, as I mentioned, some of Walsh's side comments are less reasonable:

Sure, you can probably tell me about a homeschooled kid you met once who was totally weird and awkward and stuff, but I could see your anecdote and raise you school shooters, the bullying epidemic, youth suicide rates, a youth culture utterly dominated by cliques, fads, and trends, and then this:

[beerbong.jpg]

Well adjusted adults?

Go to a college campus — any college campus — and tell me again how these public schooled ladies and gentlemen are such well adjusted adults.

For God’s sake, Dan, they literally cannot socialize without inhaling a barrel of urine-flavored light beer ahead of time.

I’m not claiming that homeschoolers don’t use smart phones or beer bongs, but I am saying that an overwhelming preponderance of our society has been exclusively public schooled, and if public school helped ‘socialize’ us, you’d think we’d see SOME positive results SOMEWHERE.

Look, you'll get no disagreement from me that Natty Light is terrible stuff. But note how Walsh moves the goalposts from "well socialized" to "well adjusted adults"? Anyone who claims that most college students, from whatever background, are well adjusted adults needs their head examined, but that's not the claim here. In college, one has a few years to learn that, even if no one's looking over one's shoulder, there are limits to what a person can do. The hangover doesn't care whether you have an exam tomorrow. That paper isn't going to write itself. No one's going to crack the whip over your head -- and parental whip-cracking isn't just done by homeschooling parents.

Those students in [beerbong.jpg] don't look poorly socialized to me. They look like they've socially sorted themselves into a social group that is reinforcing their behavior. There are plenty of other students on that campus who are partying in a more sane manner, and some who aren't partying at all, no matter when that picture was taken.

One becomes a well-adjusted adult by learning one's own limits, taking responsibility for what one is responsible for, and finding answers to the existential questions and insecurities that plague every teenager with a brain. Some people do that with four years of college. Some people flunk out, or make a baby they didn't intend to and find out the hard way that they don't offer baby loans like they do student loans. Some people forego college altogether (although the expected value of that decision ain't so hot these days). But the only way to become an adult is to practice being an adult, out from the supervision of parents and guardians, and neither homeschooling nor regular schooling can offer that. (Don't talk about boarding school. That's a whole 'nother conversation.)

1. We should keep our kids in public school in order to help ‘the system.’

This was the proposition that I was writing that first undergrad paper in response to. Well, more precisely, I was arguing against an improved statement, something like "Homeschooling is unacceptable because it undercuts the role of the school in producing good citizens."

I'm not at all sympathetic to the proposition in the form Walsh quotes it: take it away, Matt:

Is this really a priority for parents? When my wife and I make a decision for our family, should we stop first and ask, “wait, but will this help the system?”

Would you REALLY put the welfare of ‘the system’ over that of your own children?

I’d hope that you wouldn’t, and I’d hope that this line of logic is unique to you, but I know that it isn’t. I’ve heard it before. I’ve heard it so often, in fact, that I’m starting to think I’m the strange one for having absolutely no desire to make my children martyrs for some bureaucratic machine.

I'm opposed to the argument even in the modified form I gave above. I do think that it's an important role of the school to instill shared values -- school, in other words, is not just about academics. Homeschoolers agree with me: overwhelmingly, they're not choosing to homeschool because the public school is academically weak, but because it's teaching evolution, or sex ed, or won't burn the copies of Harry Potter in the school library. Homeschooling is all about whose values get passed on to kids; and part of being a free society is that, if one feels strongly enough that the values embodied by some social institution are antithetical to one's own, one generally doesn't have to interact with or take advantage of that social institution.

(There are a few exceptions, of course. One can't simply decline to interact with the judicial system because one has problems with the values of that system. I have a deep problem with the lower value placed on black people's lives and welfare by the judicial system, but I can't just not show up to court when subpoenaed, even if I think the prosecution is unjust. One can't simply decline to interact with the IRS because one's values place a high premium on not paying taxes.)

Thinking that "the system" is unjust is a core right in a democracy [1]. Declining to abet an unjust system is a corollary right.

That all being said: society still has the right to set its own parameters of acceptable speech and ideas. Not that one who transgresses these parameters should be formally sanctioned under the power of the state, but there is plenty of room for people to exclude and privately sanction those who hold, say, bigoted views. One of the big goals of public school is training students what society now views as beyond the pale -- especially when they might not get it at home.

What I'm saying here is, don't dismiss too quickly the notion that the public may have an interest in students not being homeschooled, since those who are may be out of step with what society at large sees as the ideas one can or cannot hold while still being a full member in good standing.

From my own (progressive) position, for example, someone who literally wants to replace the separation of church and state with established state religion cannot be a member of American society in full good standing. It's just not possible. Likewise someone who advocates for child labor, or someone who wants to undo gender equality of the franchise. I don't want the government taking any action against holders of such ideas -- but I absolutely want them to be treated by their fellow citizens as objects of public distrust and scorn. I absolutely want them to be unelectable, unworthy of public trust.

In other words, while I don't think Argument 1 represents any kind of case for a public policy banning homeschooling, I do think that there's a case implicitly for the following: If you are considering homeschooling on the grounds that the values embodied in the public schools are incompatible with your own, you must be thereby ready for others, who do subscribe to those values that you dislike, to treat you as withdrawing from your own full membership in the shared social project that they are undertaking. Homeschooling is an "exit" strategy, with a (possible, implicit) future "voice" strategy to be undertaken by the former child after they are grown. And exit strategies  are not how democracy is designed to operate. Exit strategies are a business-world response to disagreements.

OK, this response has gone on long enough, so I'll skip over the silliness at the beginning of Walsh's post about teacher's unions. (As always is my response to someone who ignorantly complains about being "unable to fire" union members: why you you hate the free market? It took two parties to sign that contract, and now you want to go back on it? That ain't how this shit works.)

[1] I'm using "democracy" in the broad sense here: a system of government in which those in power derive that power from the people; and are accountable to the people for its use; and can be removed from office for abuse of that power, either through ordinary means (elections) or other (extraordinary, but spelled out in law) means. There's also a narrow sense of the word (in which every decision is put to general vote by the people) which obviously doesn't apply to the U.S. Both meanings are correct. Get over it.

Introducing the Matt Walsh Project

I have conservative friends. This should not be a surprise, but it can be anyway -- it's one of the ways that the Internet imitates modern life, that we are able to sequester ourselves into little enclaves (more on this in the next post). And it's also true that the overlap between self-identified conservatives and horrible (racist, sexist/gay-bashing/trans*-bashing, nativist, warmongering, etc.) people is nontrivial. When people in my life cross those lines too far or too often, they don't stay in my life, but simply self-identifying as conservative doesn't cut you off on its own. (Neither does being an idiot -- I'm dumb plenty often myself, and even more often don't have the relevant facts at my disposal.)

All of which is to say, that I have some conservative friends, despite the fact that I'm about as far away from being a conservative as one can be and still have real representation in the American political system. And many of those friends are on Facebook. And they share things.

Frequently, very stupid things. (Conservative imagememes are... well, they're embarrassingly dumb.)

Occasionally, less stupid things.

Very occasionally, things that are wrong, but deserve an answer.

And I've noticed one blog that people link to, that has an abnormally high incidence of the last category. And, oddly enough, this is a blog that doesn't seem to get picked up by (for example) Memeorandum, or to be on the radar of the liberal blogosphere, even though clearly conservatives share it around.

(It's really not all that odd that Walsh doesn't get much Memeorandum love -- Memeorandum's algorithm values people glomming onto existing stories, and it doesn't look like that's how he blogs. I'm not sure, since I don't have his RSS in my feedly or anything, and it's not relevant.) I'm not even really sure who Walsh is, aside from a blogger; his site banner has a picture of him in a radio studio, but his bio doesn't link to any radio show. Regardless: his words speak for themselves, and who he is in real life isn't really my problem.

Anyway: I'm setting myself the project of writing responses to Walsh's posts, when (a) they float across my own social networks (I'm not going to go looking for them), and (b) they've got enough wrong in them to warrant my time.

(NB: my time fluctuates in value. This month, it ain't worth much, so marginal wrong might get my time.)

I've got two to start with. One is a bit old, but the wrong factor is high, and it's on a topic that I have strong feelings about. The other got posted this week, and its level of wrong is actually pretty low; it was just enough to get my lazy ass writing about it.

Black metal is good for the nonsoul

This is absolutely a bookmark (h/t Heavy Blog Is Heavy):


I'll be too busy watching hockey tonight to listen to this, but it sounds right up my alley.

Evan Soltas on the gender pay gap

Soltas:

"Look, I understand why Perry and Biggs have to respond to me and... I would agree with them that the 23-percent number reflects more than discrimination. But if they are going to try to explain away the pay gap, they're going to need to try a bit harder than this... When I actually ran the numbers, I found a persistent pay gap on the order of 4 percent to 10 percent, accounting for a battery of things -- frankly, everything that I could think of, and everything labor economists usually consider -- occupation, work experience, education, race, marital status, children, union membership, geographic location, and weekly hours.