Dead Seriously.

A fair amount of attention is given to the college football situation in Los Angeles. Because I attended Craptastic State University (during football season, anyway), I don’t pay as much attention as some, but I’ve nevertheless become a strong USC hater and a mild UCLA fan. Some of my friends and coworkers attended USC, so I have to put up with their constant smugness during the fall. Some weeks are worse than others.

This is definitely one of those weeks. Perhaps the only thing in the college sports world I like less than USC is BYU. This is no coincidence–fans from both schools are among the most obnoxious, arrogant, and insufferable in the world. So what happens when my local team, UCLA loses 59-0 to BYU? I get the following statements from my colleagues:

“The combined loss margin in all of USC’s losses since Pete Carroll became coach is probably less than that!*,”

Followed by,

“You could make a strong argument that USC is statstically undefeated since Pete Carroll arrived.”

*Actually, I did a quick check, and this is NOT true. Actually, the combined point differential in all of USC’s losses since 2001 is…wait for it…wait for it…59.

Giving out DVDs in lieu of showing up at the GOP Convention?

I need to get my own copy of Kindergarten Cop. Seriously.

Today in my office, I indicated that I thought it was lame that LA doesn’t have a professional football team.

Says my colleague, a USC-graduate, responds:

“What are you talking about? We have a darn fine professional team downtown*.”

See, it’s exactly this sort of smug comment from you USC folks that irks the rest of us. (I haven’t brought this topic up previously, so I suppose this is as good a time as any to make clear that USC is not my team of choice. No sir. Far from it. Go Bruins!)

*This narrowly beat out a comment from someone on a post by David Sundwall: “I will vote for Sarah Palin, no matter what her religion is. She has a ‘Heart of Service’”.

Holy crap.

Via Orange Punch–Yesterday morning, Arnold said this:

“We are combining it [sales tax hike] with an economic stimulus package, so therefore it will not have any impact at all. Because I think the idea is to have an economic stimulus package that stimulates the economy, then to have a temporary sales tax increase that then becomes actually a decrease and in the long run it will actually be an overall decrease of sales tax.”

This begs a couple of big questions:

1. If “it will not have any impact at all”, then why are you doing it, stupid?
2. An increase in the sales tax rate can also be a decrease in the sales tax rate? How?

Me no get it.

I said this:

“…stating your position immediately results in being labeled either a dogmatic, mindless follower (those who support the LDS Church leadership on this issue) or a faithless apostate (those who think the Church should stay out of it and refuse to participate in campaigns)”

What I should have said afterward, however, is that a VAST majority of Mormons do not participate at all in such silliness.

The problem is, the few who do tend to be the most vocal and visible.

A judge just ruled that UC has the right to deny credit for courses based on certain religious texts (as opposed to “scientific” texts). Ultimately the issue here is creationism vs. evolution, although the ruling may impact other courses outside of biological/physical science.

As long as this policy is well publicized and made clear to college applicants and parents, I am completely on board with UC here. That may be surprising or seem inconsistent, since my last two posts were largely a defense of parents–often religiously motivated–to home school their kids. The reality is that freedom and the separation of religion from state are intimately linked. Sadly, my experience as a very religious person is that it’s easy to love this separation when the door swings in my favor and hate it when it doesn’t. That would be inconsistent.

My argument here is closely related to that in the previous post: The fact is, most of the people screaming at UC now are Christians, like myself. We believe in the Bible and think it sucks when people tell us that it’s not true or discount our educational quality because we believe in our scriptures. However, I seriously doubt that all–or even many, really–of these same folks would stand up and protest UC’s decision to discount the merits of applicants who were trained in courses based on some heretofore-unknown religion that professes a belief incompatible with something they take as a given.*

As before, when a policy at a government institution is made, it must apply equally to all parties. This sucks, but it’s part of government, folks. If you want Christian principles to be accepted wholeheartedly in the government, then you must wholeheartedly accept all other possible religious beliefs–even as-yet-unknown ones–on equal footing. This would also require equal footing for a religion that believes in easy science courses, completely void of the rigor needed to prepare a student for university classes. Silly, right? Yep.

The end result is the only fair one: admissions/credit decisions are based on the same material for all applicants. The rigor with which this material is taught will vary, but the material will not. Because it would be completely inappropriate in a church-state-separated society to choose this single criteria from among competing religious factions, non-religious science wins the day.**

All hope is not lost for religious students and parents: Apply to Notre Dame, BYU, Oral Roberts, or one of the other hundreds of quality religious schools. If this policy is enacted in a widespread fashion throughout the country, then I would expect an adjustment in the market for high quality students (as though who apply to UC are) among universities–essentially, they’ll find a way to let the best and the brightest in. Alternatively, be super-awesome at basketball or tennis. Universities love great tennis players.

*Just like a vast majority of the scientific community (and many of us religious folks, too) take evolution as a given.

**Unless, of course, you think that atheism is a religion, which many people do.

I said in my previous post that I think parents should have the right to determine what form the education of their children takes. This naturally raises questions about the right of children to not be taught by illiterate parents. In other words, does the government have a right (or obligation) to intervene in families where children are being “educated” by illiterate* parents?

My answer to this is simply that, no, they don’t.

The problem here is that the nature of government requires laws to apply equally to all citizens**. In a perfect world, a governing authority would be able to look at the particular circumstances of each family. However, such a thorough examination would require compulsory invasions of privacy into the lives of all members of society; such a quest would be so costly–both in terms of time, money, and human rights–that it’s beyond the realm of political feasibility.

The case in California that started this rambling illustrates my point perfectly:
A single judge determined that a two parents were not allowed to control their kids’ education because they didn’t have a teaching credential. The parents in question may have been the worst teachers/parents on the planet–I don’t know. Would the children be better off in a public school if such was the case? Undoubtedly. The point, however, is that such a decision has collateral damage because of the nature of government mentioned above: Laws have to apply to all citizens equally. If one set of parents can’t teach without a credential, then fairness and equality dictates that no set of parents can, regardless of their literacy or competence.***

With this framework in place, the debate on this issue is broken down into an extremely clear policy choice: Do I want a government that can intervene in ALL families, or do I want a government that can intervene in NO families? Stated differently: Do I want, as a parent to have TOTAL control over what my kids learn, or do I want NO control over what my kids learn?

To me, this is a very easy question to answer.

If all governments adopted my stance, will some children suffer a poor education at the hands of their parents? Yes. If the polar opposite stance is adopted, will some children suffer a poor education at the hands of the State? Yes. To me, the potential for tyranny and political oppression that is born out of complete governmental control of all people far outweighs the benefits of guaranteeing a minimum standard of literacy for all people.****

This is an opinion, not a theorem, so I welcome any debate or criticism…I’ve certainly left many things out that coulda/shoulda be addressed, but I’ll let that suffice.

*I’ll assume for the sake of argument that we can all agree on a definition of literacy, but this is actually a super-duper big time complication to addressing this question. There is a wide range of opinions in society about what constitutes literacy–do we mean, literally the ability to read? Or do we really mean “competency” when we say literacy? There is a tendency (I think) in society these days to deem anyone who disagrees with our opinion as ignorant and/or narrow-minded…and it’s just a hop, skip, and a jump from there to being labeled incompetent (or ” illiterate as pertaining to all things proper and worth knowing”). Under this (frightening) scenario, if literacy is the requirement, then we may find that political winds and popular societal trends will determine what parents are required to know in order to teach their children. If we assume that (unlikely as it may be) we can all agree on a definition of illiteracy, then we can move forward.

**Yes, I am aware of the fact that some folks get welfare and other don’t, because the govt looks at their “circumstances”; however, this is only a single classification–once a person is “qualified” for food stamps, for example, there is no distinction between “poor” and “really poor” in terms of how many food stamps are given. The ability to price/policy discriminate in the marketplace is one of the greatest virtues of private enterprise–a private seller can set different prices for different people (insurance based on riskiness, movie tickets based on age, etc…).

***Another example of this type of policy is the Patriot Act: Many people are all about catching bad guys, even if they have to bend the rules (on wiretapping…I personally disagree, but…). However, fairness requires that the law apply to ALL citizens–not just “suspected terrorists”.

****The best thing about my opinion, of course, is that it still allows folks who disagree with me to get together and form a little club for people who want to meddle in each others’ lives. They just can’t impose their silliness on me.

The California 2nd District Court of Appeals decided that parents are still allowed to home school their kids without a teaching credential.

This is an important ruling, folks. Parents know best. Well, maybe not best, but certainly better than a bunch of group-thinkers in Sacramento or a panel of judges.

The fast food ban has caught the attention of the folks at The Onion. See it here.

Two days ago, the LA city council passed a new law. While that statement alone is enough to incite fear and cynicism in the heart of yours truly, the actual law that was passed truly defies all principles of economics, logic, and liberty. In short, the LA City Council banned new fast food joints from being opened in a certain low-income area of LA.

The reason is that, apparently, in the government’s opinion, poor people are fat and stupid in need of help with their diets. Logically, then, the government doesn’t think rich people are fat or stupid in need of such help.

One of the city council members, a Jan Perry, had this to say of the new law:

“This ordinance is in no way attempting to tell people what to eat but rather responding to the need to attract sit-down restaurants, full service grocery stores, and healthy food alternatives. Ultimately, this ordinance is about providing choices—something that is currently lacking in our community.”

Wow. The lies and logical contradictions content of that statement simply confuses my poor, southern-Idaho-raised mind.

Here is the LA Times article reporting the story. Commentary on the stupidity of this at Marginal Revolution. The scariest thing is that, according to another article about the law at Slate, leaders from other cities are calling LA to get copies of the legislation for their own unsuspecting citizenry.

I was driving in a car and didn’t feel a thing.
I’m so disappointed. However, my wife seemed to get a thrill out of it–her text message to me:

“I just experienced my first earthquake! I think we should get earthquake insurance for our stuff.”

Hmm. According to the article linked above, there is a 5% chance of a “Big One” coming in the next 24 hours. I’ll pass on the insurance, but keep my fingers cross for getting to feel an earthquake.

With regards to my last post, I attempted to bully my stance onto my brother, a fellow economist who lives in Raleigh, NC. He responded with this. I fought back with this. The reality, as my bro pointed out, is that “best” lists (work, take a vacation, be grumpy, etc…) are kind of stupid.

The Tiebout Model asserts that the “basket of goods” in a community–cultural makeup, labor market, recreation ops, etc– are a function of the preferences of residents of that community. Thus, individuals either select into those communities that reflect their own preferences, or attempt to alter their current environment in order to bring it closer to the ideal. What this means, essentially, is that it’s wrongheaded to assert that any one particular place is “The Best”, because if it were truly “The Best”, then everyone would be moving there. Likewise, it’s absurd to state say, “I hate my job!” or “I hate living here!”, because in reality, if you hated such things, you’d have quit/moved.

Of course, this line of thinking assumes a couple of things–chiefly, labor mobility. The fact is, job search and moving costs can be prohibitive, and many areas have significant income barriers that prevent setting up shop in a place that, ceteris paribus, closely matches your preferences. In the case of Irvine, the freak-nasty cost of housing (and living generally) are a prime example of this.

But I like it anyway.

I’m so proud.