The proof is in the publisher

The final proof of my textbook is off to the publisher.Huzzah!

AUN

I've seen a sketch of what AUN is going to look like, and it's pretty nice: 20 main campus buildings, bunch of dorms and other facilities. Some people look at it and think it's already there. When they get there, they ask, "Where's the rest of it?"

This is the building with most of the teachers and classrooms. I'll be on the second floor.





Across the way from it is what I'll call the administration building. The library takes up the left half of the bottom floor and there are other admin offices throughout it, but the President's office is in the other building. HR, finance, and other offices are across the street mingled with the international school.

That's about it so far.

There are dorms to house the ~1300 students. There's a cafeteria and a vehicle maintenance shop for the fleet of AUN shuttles to take me to work.









They are building a new library. From one day to the next I could see progress being made on it. I think the next one they are building after this is the real admin building. Each of these will then free up more space in the building I've called the admin building for teachers and classrooms. According to the sketch, both the buildings that are currently up are for classrooms.

Speaking of classrooms, here is one. The current department chair was teaching a review session during the 5/6 week summer term. I was surprised how relieved I am to discover just how casual their business casual is. Here I've been ramping up my wardrobe and getting used to tucking in my shirt and all the rest ... I can wear my Hawaiian shirts to work!

One last look at my future office on the way out. There's this really long driveway to get the gate, another indication of the big plans the Founder (former Nigerian vice-president) and American University have for the campus they hope will become the greatest university in Sub-Saharan Africa.

American Culture and Aid

I don't pop in here too often with my work anymore, but this one deserves sharing to a broader audience. I found a wonderful website today that provokes much thought about how our US culture affects international aid ... and a lot of it could just as well be talking about US Mormons (dunno if German latter-day saints or Chinese latter-day saints or Tongan latter-day saints feel the same.) So over here I'm going to talk religion instead of aid. The three starred links are to the original posts and are well worth reading.

Y'see, our stake president a while back was terminally ill and testified at one point that receiving help was one of the ***hardest things*** he ever had to do. After that, practically everyone confessed their own lack of ability to be served. "Jesus came to serve, not to be served," is the often misunderstood logic of those who forget a Savior who also allowed people to wash His feet or anoint his head as a service. Going back to the book of Pres. Monson stories, how much more often did I think of wanting to be Monson's shoes as the giver rather than the recipient of God's love?

My mother did her dead-level best to keep me from that attitude. Her primary argument, though, was still really about giving: by giving people an opportunity to serve me, I was serving them. Yes, the Lord loveth a cheerful giver, but "what doth it profit a man if a gift is bestowed upon him, and he receive not the gift? Behold, he rejoices not in that which is given unto him, neither rejoices in him who is the giver of the gift." I have to think the Lord loveth a cheerful recipient too.

There is so much about being independent and self-reliant in the US culture (and some of LDS culture) that people feel unclean if they have to accept charity. Charity is even occasionally used as a dirty word. In those cases, that's because they do not see charity as the love of God expressed by the kind gesture of one person who feels love or compassion for another person, but as a statement of moral superiority:

Being able to survive on one’s own strength is almost a moral quality. “She worked hard and took care of her children, despite terrible challenges” = “she is a good person.”
And although we almost never say so directly, needing help is almost, well, immoral. (Which is exactly why, in my opinion, Nicholas Kristof can write with a straight face that boozing and whoring is what keeps Africa poor).

That, and a person's/religion's/country's sense of moral superiority naturally lead to a sense of entitlement, but a very different entitlement than we normally talk about: we're ***entitled*** to give - it's a right - and it is selfish of people to refuse our help. When I read that thought, I realized that was part of what I felt anytime someone had turned down my assistance while blaming it on Jesus.

Confessing my own weakness a little more, there was someone once upon a time who I found really annoying to serve because anytime I did, the person immediately turned around and gave me some trinket so that s/he wouldn't feel indebted to me. I compare that to one of my best friends: we were major supports to each other and both gave and received compassion, meals, time, ears and tears, and a few bucks once or twice, all the time feeling that we were receiving more from the other than we could ever give back. And being thankful for that.


In part thanks to those experiences, I've tried to move my inner reason for letting others serve me towards a notion of expressing love in a way they would accept as love. It's deuced hard to figure out, though, so a lot of people end up with casseroles, lanyards, and ***stuff I don't need anymore*** (file under culture of DI). And then there is the difficulty of being a home teacher who wants to love families who won't let him help with anything when we constantly teach that love is grown through service and vice versa.


Your thoughts? As giver AND receiver?

For more reading: then-CES Commissioner Eyring on the gift of being a good gift giver, where he learned how to give gifts by receiving.

May Pictures 3-1

I'll give you fair warning: I'm in a very economist mood tonight as I write.

Finland



Scenes that caught my eye in Helsinki.















New York City
There are a bunch of vendors in the park line that winds its way to the boats that take you to the Lady. They all sell the exact same pictures. I confess I spent some time during this anniversary pondering their business model. Are they atomistically independent sellers all crowding into the same area or are they all part of the same franchise? What keeps them from differentiating their products even slightly? I didn't see them in other parts of New York where we went. While I'm familiar with Hotelling's theories about why similar businesses cluster, there are other clusters, other "beaches" in New York City. Whether they are multiple businesses or one, I'd have to think one of them could earn higher profits moving to Chinatown

My brother and I also enjoyed discussing the photoshopping in the pics. The Twin Towers are in the first picture, disappear by magic in the second picture, and return in the third; oversized boats appear and disappear; the island to Miss Liberty's right (our left) disappears and reappears at random... all the same angle, variations on coloring to let you know the sunset is Totally fake.... Strange business model.

Okay, enough economics.

We spent a good deal of time in Chinatown after visiting the Lady.


Our ladies were fascinated by the street vendors and the restaurants that wanted to display their meats. We tried to identify them, but with little enough success (another strange business model?). I bought a pound of grapes for a dollar that were delicious, shared them around our party and gave a bunch to a fellow who was hungry.

We wandered the stores, bought very little, and grabbed some dinner from a sit-down restaurant that only took cash. Another strange business model?



One of the billboards in Times Square featured the leader of Iran. I was mildly interested, so took a picture. Those billboard spaces have got to be EXPENSIVE. Does the UANI really believe this is the most cost-effective way and place to advertise? It certainly has the potential to be seen by millions every day - not bad - but it's one of hundreds of flashing, changing signs in a teeming mass.

The real reason this got posted is that when Hyrum saw it, he pointed and said, "Daddy!" I decided that the best way to respond to that would be to revise upward my opinion of his looks and take it as a compliment.



The New Amsterdam Theater where we saw Mary Poppins has some amazing well decorations. No one complained as I filmed them before the show started. Here is Progress.



Corning Glass Museum


Blocks upon blocks of glass, all of them with interesting shapes, bubbles, trees, designs, and patterns.

May Pictures 1

Far too many wonderfully fun, interesting, exciting, picture and note and blog-worthy things have happened in the last month so we've had no time to blog about ANY of them properly. Just a couple pictures of Hyrum to keep the grandparents mollified. ... And I still don't have time to do anything justice (I really wish more people had my problems) so here are some random pictures of our adventures this month. A faster way than trying to remember and comment on everything.

FINLAND - Derrill's work conference, May 14-16




An example of the architectural touches and colors that are everywhere (in the part of the city where I wandered anyway).






In the city hall (where we had dinner one night) is this fascinating interlocking finger statue.







The roof of the dining, exhibition, cultural hall of the city hall. It was actually my least favorite dinner there - too many very unusual spices: I couldn't have more than a bite of the tomato salad and I was with a Hindu friend who couldn't eat the meat (oversalted salmon and beef) so I pondered what a South Beacher does when the only thing he could really enjoy is the bread....

NEW YORK CITY - For our 5th anniversary, Joy and I left Hyrum with Pop and Boo (Thank you!) and joined Steve and Emilee (thank you!) for a day in the Big Apple.



Attraction #1: The Statue. We had a lot of fun in line listening to the steel drum players, the trumpeter with a stereo system for accompaniment, the contortionist, and the proselytizers. Tickets to the crown are sold out months in advance, so we missed out on that. But I got to touch the base of the statue! Look for pictures of everyone posing as The Lady a bit later.




Miss Liberty's Book: July 4, 1776. A pretty good book. Have I mentioned I like my camera's zoom?





We wandered randomly around Chinatown. Each of us took turns choosing which direction to go when we came to an intersection. We explored stores, bought local foods, gave some grapes to a guy who was hungry, and had fun soaking it in for a little bit.




We made our way to Central Park where a family who didn't speak any of the 5 languages we speak took our picture.






Times Square. A more wretched hive of scum and villainy I hope I never meet. But we did explore the M&M store!




To the Subway!

SIX FLAGS
And here's some more fun for Hyrum at Six Flags.

Random Goings-On

Derrill cut Joy's hair. "Yay! I like having cut hair." It's a few inches shorter so it isn't as likely to drag on the ground.

Derrill got a rejection notice on a journal article. He sent it back out the same day to another journal. "Yay, Derrill"

We have broken 4 dishes this month while washing them: three cups and a bowl.

This week, Hyrum met Winnie the Pooh on television. Pooh books are in ascension as a result. Hyrum's Buzz Lightyear stock is down, though it may be making a comeback in heavy playing today. Bob the Builder reigns supreme. "To the point that he has to carry a Bob DVD case everywhere he goes." The Bob the Builder theme song has now had more play time than the Hallelujah Chorus, with "Bob Song" the number 1 two-word request.

Hyrum has begun using the word "more" when he wants more food in combination with the food he wants. Sometimes, though, it's just "m," as in "m Peachy." Today he ate 2-3 ounces of dark chocolate.

We finished books!

• Harry Potter 6 - the family book
• Talking for Two - a romance novel about a shy ventriilogquist who wants to do the Lord's work.
• By Love Restored - a romance novel about a remodeler hooking up with a former beau whose house she is working on.
• Doctrine and Covenants - family scripture study for 2009
• Moving in His Majesty and Power - Elder Neal A. Maxwell's last religious book - finished the manuscript days before he died.
• Finding Light in a Dark World - A collection of Pres. James E. Faust's talks, including some really 'political' material
• The Infinite Atonement - Elder Callister describing many ways in which the Atonement is infinite and has the power to bless our lives
• Mistborn - Brandon Sanderson, a unique fantasy work - unique world, unique magic setup, intriguing characters, minimal reliance on blatant archetypes, very difficult to predict
• Joy is 1 week away from finishing the Old Testament and I'm thirdway to halfway through "Scoop," "Mansfield Park," and Easterly's "The White Man's Burden"

We both decided that we won Facebook's Cafe World and have largely stopped playing them. Joy has also given up on FarmVille and I've abandoned 3-4 FB games as well. I've also been enjoying (once a week) my new Tropico 3 game.

We really enjoy teaching a temple prep class for a couple friends getting married soon. It's fun to spend time with them, it's fun to spend time talking about temples, and I've been learning a lot of new scriptural insights as I answer questions. Our sacrament talks for two weeks and the temple prep classes have really dominated our scripture study lately, Joy notes.

Joy has returned to the Wii My Fitness Coach for exercise, leaving Hyrum to the VeggieTales Dance Dance Revolution or putting him in his playpen for getting impossibly underfoot.

Derrill has been greatly disappointed by the South Beach Diet the last month. We've been on level 1 - the fast weight loss section - for 3 of the last 5 weeks and I've got about nothing to show for it. We're back on level 2 and I'm kind of discouraged. "Joy is not discouraged."

We decided to start adding in-season fruits and vegetables to the diet "so that we might obey the Word of Wisdom more fully" and had three grapefruits. We enjoyed them with a few drops of vanilla and some Sweet and Low. We think the pink grapefruit won out over the white or red, with the red being Joy's least favorite. Tomorrow we will eat fresh beets and beet greens.

Excellence

The question is occasionally asked (such as by Hugh Nibley) where the Mormon excellers are. Where are the Latter-day Saint Nobel winners, the LDS Michaelangelo, the LDS Usain Bolt.....? The concern is then usually expressed that the LDS are too satisfied with kitsch, with mediocrity, etc. The riff then generally abuses some poor popular LDS artist, like Kapp Perry, or Kinkade (who doesn't appear to be LDS but seems to appeal to a lot of members).

I've never enjoyed this motif much. I have a slightly different theory that was well expressed recently by Steve Sailer who was answering a question of Tyler Cowen's: what are the odds that the most talented basketball player is actually playing the sport? Among his response, he writes:

Then there’s the question of whether being a screw-up in most of the rest of your life might be considered a talent. Would Bobby Fischer have been Bobby Fischer if he was good at other things? As an exercise, consider Vladimir Nabokov, who for a number of years was crazy about chess (or at least chess problems). Nabokov had the energy, determination, intelligence, ability to hold many things in his head at once (think of the architecture of Pale Fire), competitive streak, and so forth to be a top chess player. But he had other things to do with his life, such as entomological research and writing great novels. Fischer didn’t.

As I've blogged earlier, the Church puts a lot of emphasis on balance. It has to - living the religion adds a LOT of extra stuff a person's life and if we don't learn how to balance competing demands, we go crazy. And what do Church authorities say? "No other success can compensate for failure in the home" and "The most important work you do will be within the walls of your own home" are some of the better-known quotes. Pres. Hinckley reminded folks that this is not an excuse to short-change your employer, but that the long-run priority of responsibility is 1) family; 2) work; 3) church; 4) self.

To be Bobby Fischer or Michaelangelo or any of a number of other truly outstanding people in their fields requires sacrifices in the other areas of a person's life. With the lack of balance and the excessive focus on self promoted by the modern corporate-artistic structure (ooooh, look at the economist try to sound like a sociologist!), it's little wonder so many turn to self-destructive behaviors. It's also little wonder that people who have achieved some level of balance in their lives and put first things first don't end up spending the 100 hours a week at work that it takes to become top.

Yes, we should seek to excel. Elder L. Tom Perry said to BYU students: "I hope that you do not plan to be just common but that you plan to excel. There is no place in this world for mediocrity; we need to strive for perfection." We also need to have a more balanced, holistic, inclusive definition of what excelling is.

[I haven't run this by Joy, but I can guess her response to the motif would be slightly different: our criticism of the heartfelt, Spirit-inspired work of others can prevent us from feeling His influence in our lives and closes the doors to our own inspiration while we are so busy judging other people.]

It's up

My work blog is now up at econwatson.blogspot.com also known as, "Economics, my dear Watson". So now I'll be moving the posts about my work over there and leaving most of it off this blog.

The Amazing Spiderman Should be Mormon

I mentioned in my last post that I was watching Spiderman 2 for the first time. I finished it last night and really liked it. The first movie did a fine job introducing Spidey, okay. This one touched me deeply and talked about a number of issues that I've been struggling with too.

But I'm not here to talk about them. I'm here to talk about Peter Parker's issues. His main internal conflict deals with finding balance: how can he be a college student, a part-time photographer, hold down a second job, keep up with a social life (maybe even date), and, oh yes, be a hero? The stress of it all is just too much to that point that he really can't do any of it effectively. Not for the first 15 minutes of the movie anyway.

After watching the first part, I was convinced that Peter Parker needs a couple LDS missionaries to knock on his door, convert him to the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, and get this boy a calling in the church. Y'see, from the LDS/Mormon point of view, all of us are called to be "saviors on mount Zion" (Obadiah 1:21) - to assist the Savior in His work. (It's ... kind of like being expected to be a superhero without tights or powers - unless you're the guy on the left - just a faith that somehow God will magnify our feeble efforts to reach out, that the Holy Ghost will touch people's hearts, and the Atonement change us all.)

And there are a lot of things that assisting in God's work calls on a member of the Church to do. This goes way beyond 10% tithing and not smoking or drinking. One of our speakers in stake conference, a state trooper, referred to this as the "Marine Corps of churches."

• Visiting several families monthly and looking after their spiritual and temporal needs;
  
• serving in any capacity where asked - in my case an extra 10ish hours on top of the 3 hour Sunday meetings every week, plus priesthood meetings, and that's all just so that the branch president doesn't have to spend that time too on top of the who-knows-how-much extra he voluntarily does; [don't get me wrong: I love my calling and have loved all my other ones]
  
• driving up to the temple 1:45 away as often as you can to do vicarious work for the dead [picture right is of the angel Moroni statue on the Hill Cumorah near our local temple, who, incidentally, was modeled by two of Joy's ancestors];
  
• taking opportunities to talk to people about the gospel;
• dropping most anything most anytime when someone calls and needs help;
• moving 10 families out or around every May and another 10 in or around every September;
• feeding the missionaries a couple times a month;
• reserving every Monday night for family time;
• teach your kids the gospel;
• make home a temple;
• daily personal scripture study, prayer, journal writing;
• search out information about your ancestors so you can do their work in the temple too;
• filling random service projects and assignments as they come up, usually with little warning;
  
• keep up and rotate food storage;
• get out of debt and make sure you have several months' worth of money for emergencies [which they said long before the current recession]...
  

And even that doesn't cover all of repenting, "putting off the natural man," and striving to become more like Jesus. At various points, church leaders have reminded us to be politely politically engaged, to plant vegetable gardens, you name it. It is, quite literally, more than any one person can do at one time, particularly when you add family, work, social life, and maybe some me time into the equation, and all of which are assigned important roles this grand, eternal plan we get to participate in.

I think Peter Parker would relate. I think he would gain a lot by associating with a bunch of mere mortals trying to be superheroes. I think that in the process of talking - as our branch does a couple times every semester - about how to balance it all without being overloaded, he would learn to find more of a center in his life.

At a church meeting I was at tonight, one of the speakers mentioned that when Jesus was on the earth, He didn't go around to heal every person around the globe. He didn't even heal everyone in all Israel. He healed those around Him who had faith. I gather there were a lot of sick people at the pool of Bethesda, but only one person healed. As He said to the Pharasees, there were many widows in Israel, but Elijah was sent to just one.

Yes, Pete, you are a superhero. You have a responsibility. "Where much is given, much is required" is how your LDS Uncle Ben would've said it. But you aren't required to give more than you have. None of us has enough to give and do all of it. None. That's one of the reasons we need the Atonement. We do all we can, and we leave the residual in God's hands. With great power comes great responsibility, but not all responsibility. You don't have all power. Don't take on all responsibility.

Prof. Stephen E. Robinson likened it to weight-lifting: you keep adding weights until you can't do anymore, and you lift that weight until it becomes easier and then you can add some more. Your schooling, Peter, your jobs, and even some down time, are essential parts to making you a more effective Spiderman later. [My parents are probably reading this and thinking, "Oh good, the boy was paying attention to something we said."]

I know [oh yeah, from your vast experience playing City of Heroes, I suppose? Pfft.]... Okay, I imagine it's hard to justify seeing Mary Jane's play when there's someone out there who needs you. People need Peter too, not just Spiderman. Sometimes you can delegate the crime fighting to the boys in blue, who really do a good job in the real world. It takes faith and prayer and serious thought to know when to do what - that I do know from experience. I also know from experience something I learned by applying what Brigham Young taught: if you give God the time He needs, He will give you the time you need. I've found that to be true again and again.

Do all you can. Do the best you can. Leave the rest in the Lord's hands "and [He] will give you rest."

A new day dawning?

I'm thinking more and more about breaking this bugger into two blogs: one for work to discuss economics, development, politics, and some religion to a broader world and one just for the more familial concerns. While I can believe that some of you who are here for the pictures of the baby are also interested in the economics and politics, I think there are some pretty separate audiences here ... and that it might be a good idea to keep some of the audience separate. I'll let you know when the new blog is up.

A good start on: child and slave labor

The US Department of Labor just finished a major piece of work identifying 122 products in 58 countries made with child and/or forced (=slave) labor. This is a good start, but far from done:
1) At 194 pages, it's more than the casual reader wants to go through.
2) Though they can give a list of suspect products, there is no 'guarantee' that the specific Christmas decoration you see on the shelf labeled Made in China was actually made with slave labor.
3) This doesn't identify the conditions under which children worked if in fact children were used as laborers in the process, which is salient to me if not to everyone. (I'm more concerned about hard labor and harsh conditions than about after school jobs or some menial housework that keeps the family from starving.)

Change.org has kindly created a convenient list of "some of the worst offenders for forced labor or slavery specifically:

* Bolivia: nuts, cattle, corn, and sugar

* Burma: bamboo, beans, bricks, jade, nuts, rice rubber, rubies, sesame, shrimp, sugarcane, sunflowers, and teak

* China: artificial flowers, bricks, Christmas decorations, coal, cotton, electronics, garments, footwear, fireworks, nails, and toys

* India: bricks, carpets, cottonseed, textiles, and garments

* Nepal: bricks, carpets, textiles, and stones

* North Korea: bricks, cement, coal, gold, iron, and textiles

* Pakistan: bricks, carpet, coal, cotton, sugar, and wheat"

Hopefully next steps will identify specific companies who are involved in this and shipping to a store near you so that people can, if you choose, vote with your dollars to not support slave-produced goods. Hat tip to Texas in Africa.

What Does Your Daddy Do?

"My Daddy is a post-doc."
What's a post-doc?
"I dunno. Daddy, what do you do?"
I'm writing a book on food policy. Here are the wordles from three of the chapters so you have a better idea.

Chapter 7

Chapter 9
Chapter 11

What I'm Reading

It took me a year and a half, but I finally finished Fire in the Bones, the biography of William Tyndale, the fellow who translated 90% or so of the King James Bible. It's written by an LDS author, so there are numerous comparisons to the language of the Book of Mormon and how Joseph Smith was influenced by Tyndale's work and life. One quote from Tyndale rings out particularly strongly in that regard as he complained to the clergy:

Morover, seeing that one of you ever preacheth contrary to another; and when two of you meet, the one disputeth and brawleth with the other, as it were two scolds; and forasmuch as one holdeth this doctor, and another that ... so that if thou hadst but of every author one book, thou couldst not pile them up in any warehouse in London, and every author is contrary unto another. In this great diversity of spirits, how shall I know who lieth, and who sayeth truth? Whereby shall I try and judge them? Verily by God's word, which only is true. But how shall I that do, when thou wilt not let me see scripture?

Joseph writes similarly about the contentions in his day even with the scripture in the common tongue, learning from James 1:5 that the one place we can find such answers is from God Himself in prayer. Fire in the Bones is really an outstanding work and strengthened my testimony of the Bible.

Now I'm seeing about getting through Neal A. Maxwell's last book, enjoying some religious poetry, maybe renew my Nibley studies. Without Friday Forum to prepare for, I may have a bit more latitude to play around.

--- ECONOMICS ---

For my birthday, my parents got me Paul Collier's The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About it? (2007) I've read the first 50 pages or so [a quick read] and am impressed by one of the viewpoints he tries to establish. Rather than seeing the world as 1 billion rich and 5 billion poor, he divides the world as 1 billion rich, 4 billion getting there, and 1 billion stuck in poverty. He then describes four of the reasons a country might get its people stuck there (conflict, natural resource curse, landlocked, and I haven't gotten to #4 yet) and promises to cover a bit on how to get out. He does a good job of not sticking too firmly to his one hobby horse thesis, puts in a lot of good caveats, and has surprisingly nice things to say about different factions in the development industry. It's backed by a long list of impressive research (cogent caveats by Easterly here and here.)

Frederic Bastiat's Economic Sophisms (1845) isn't about putting forward new economic ideas, but playing economic journalist to some that were old back in the 1800's when he wrote. He casts trade protectionism as pursuing the theory that scarcity is wealth. And it is - for sellers. As buyers, we want everything to be plentiful, easy to find and purchase, and cheap. As producers, we want all our inputs to be plentiful, easy to find and purchase, and cheap. As sellers, we want the thing we sell to be scarce and as expensive as possible. Any trade protectionist argument is based on one form or another of the notion that restricting production and purchasing is good: fostering us vs. them mentalities, protecting the environment by scarcity, preventing a very poor person (or multiple of the same) from having a job in order to preserve a middle-class job of "ours"... .

Frederich von Hayek's The Road to Serfdom (1944) was written from a unique perspective: someone who lived through the Nazification of Germany saw the same signs in England and wrote to warn that the growing tendency toward central planning was the start of the road to totalitarianism, whether fascist or Marxist. I'm planning a future summary of his better points in another post ... once I've finished it. It seems highly topical given renewed efforts to put our financial, auto, and health industries under government control. Speaking of which, I finished Milton Friedman's Free to Choose and have been meaning to get some of his points out here also. Have to get to that.

I've also been poking around in Joseph Schumpeter's Capitalism, Democracy, and Socialism (1942), which is interesting in that it is written to socialists, starting with a quite flattering discussion of Marx (that's as far as I've read). To borrow the summation from Wiki: "Schumpeter's theory is that the success of capitalism will lead to a form of corporatism and a fostering of values hostile to capitalism, especially among intellectuals. The intellectual and social climate needed to allow entrepreneurship to thrive will not exist in advanced capitalism; it will be replaced by socialism in some form. There will not be a revolution, but merely a trend in parliaments to elect social democratic parties of one stripe or another. He argued that capitalism's collapse from within will come about as democratic majorities vote for the creation of a welfare state and place restrictions upon entrepreneurship that will burden and eventually destroy the capitalist structure. Schumpeter emphasizes throughout this book that he is analyzing trends, not engaging in political advocacy. “If a doctor predicts that his patient will die presently,” he wrote, “this does not mean that he desires it."" Sound about right so far, anyone?

--- FUN ---
The family book these days is Harry Potter 5. It's fun introducing these to Joy. As we drove to Connecticut and back, we made it through 150 pages or so. Reading it immediately after #4 helped me see Harry in a much more sympathetic light. The first time through, Harry's perpetual outbursts of anger bothered me and made it my least favorite of the 7. Now it makes perfect sense: the boy needs a therapist, bad. Not because he's crazy, but a lot has happened and he needs a place to talk it out with someone who isn't about to start yelling "Heir of Slytherin!" "Half-blood!" "Kill him!" Poor kid.

After the disappointing movie of Mansfield Park, I picked up the book to rejoice in Ms. Austen's writing. Every night for a while I would regale Joy with another superbly crafted paragraph the movie had butchered. But then I started in on White Banner by Lloyd C. Douglas, the fellow who brought me such joy (and a talent show act) with his autobiography, Time to Remember. I haven't gotten very far, but it's very thought-provoking.

Oh yeah, and I'm reading cookbooks to find some more recipes we can make on the South Beach Diet. So far, we've added succulent fried eggplant (Emeril) and fried zucchini (Low-carb cookbook Joy got me for my birthday), ginger chicken (SBD book), and New New Orleans pasta (Emeril). You really need a bunch of cookbooks. The SBD cookbook is mostly about salads: make this chicken, serve in a bed of lettuce; fry the eggplant, serve on another lettuce.... The low-carb cookbook is all about eggs and frittatas (never tried those before - Joy loves em, and they're simple and flavorful). Emeril uses more seafood than we do, but if we cut the BAM down by half, the creole seasoning is magnificent for cooking anything....

Next up: The Candy Shop War by ... that guy who does Fablehaven. [google google] That's it, Brandon Mull. Eat a sweet, get a superpower. Sounds like fun.

This in from ... China: A Tale of Two Provinces

The inimitable Scott Sumner was preparing for a trip to China. In discussing just how big and diverse it is and how we rarely recognize that fact (because we focus on countries instead of on people, as a forthcoming article of mine discusses), he turns to a fascinating retelling of the Chinese miracle that has happened since 1978.

In the standard version, the Chinese government, led by the heroic Deng Xioaping [left], gave farmers some limited property rights and began letting price mechanisms decide some food production choices. The agrarian economy transformed and hundreds of millions of starving people could now be fed. This brought support for further reforms as the coastal (non-ag) areas received the blessings of the market system and grew much faster than the relatively neglected inland regions. Today the primary concern of developmentalists seems to be much more on the inequality between coastal/inland and urban/rural rather than on absolute living standards.

To VERY briefly summarize Prof. Sumner (a less brief version quoting parts of his blog is below), Jiangsu Province was the 3rd richest agrarian province in 1978 and Zhejiang 7th. They are marked in red on the map. Both are next door to Shanghai, China's New York City, both were relatively open to trade, and after 1978 were required to grant foreigners the same levels of property protection for foreigners. Domestic protection levels varied, however, with Zhejiang being more market-friendly to natives.

Today Zhejiang is not only the richest province (Jiangsu still 3rd), despite Jiangsu getting more foreign direct investment (FDI), but the average income of the people there is roughly equivalent to its production while Jiangsu's inhabitants own only a third of their production (the rest goes back to foreigners). Zhejiang also scores very highly in terms of human development (health and education). So the inequality problem may be too little free market rather than the oft-supposed too much (alternatively, too little equality under the law). The rest of the post is worth a read if you have a minute:
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To give you a sense of how complicated China is, ... [Prof. Huang of MIT] observed that both [provinces] had similar histories of being relatively prosperous and open to trade. ... In the 1980s, however, the provincial leaders in Zhejiang province were much more encouraging of private business. Although we think of the economic reforms starting in 1978, a huge ocean liner turns very slowly. The government of China does not just wave a magic wand and order changes, rather change often bubbles up from the bottom. So the leaders of Zhejiang province, and even more so the early entrepreneurial pioneers in business, were risking their lives. Just imagine if China had decided to abandon the economic reforms and go back to the Cultural Revolution.

BTW, a brief digression that libertarian readers might find inspiring. The rural reforms began in late 1978 in a single village in Anhui province [some members of which are pictured right]. Each family in the commune was assigned their own plot of land. This decision was incredibly risky, so everyone took a blood oath to secrecy. Gradually other villages started to copy them. When the government saw that the reforms were successful, they eventually gave them their blessing. But it was not the sort of top-down change that is often portrayed in the West. It was the Chinese people that took the lead, and the leaders followed. In an earlier post I called this agricultural reform the single best thing that has ever happened in world history. [I'd put it top 10 non-religious.]

Yasheng Huang points out that the 1980s have been widely misunderstood. The industrial revolution occurred mainly in the countryside, where free enterprise was encouraged. ... These reforms actually led to a reduction in income inequality in the 1980s, not the increase many Westerners assume occurred. Why? Because the growth was fastest in rural areas that had been much poorer than the cities. Of course since 1990 the cities have grown faster, and income inequality has indeed worsened. Huang argues that that is because government policy favored the cities after 1990.

Back to Zhejiang [pictured right. Jiangsu is pictured left]. After the party leaders adopted a business-friendly policy, economic development in Zhejiang province took off. Since 1978 Zhejiang has gone from 7th to 1st in per capita provincial GDP, while Jiangsu, which has also grown fast, stayed at 3rd. But the most interesting part of Huang’s argument concerned foreign investment. Which province do you think attracted the most foreign investment? Surprisingly it was Jiangsu, the slower growing province. The reason was that after the economic reforms began the central government provided secure property rights for foreign investors in all of China’s provinces. In contrast, property rights for local business was much more iffy. ... [Huang then uses a clever comparative advantage argument that this really isn't surprising at all: If both provinces are equally accommodating to foreigners, but one does a better job attracting domestic talent, the domestics will tend to work in one province and the foreigners in the other.]

... We found that the difference between Jiangsu and Zhejiang was even more dramatic if you looked at personal income, rather than GDP per capita. In relatively market-oriented cities in Zhejiang province, such as Wenzhou [right], the firms are mostly owned by locals, and GDP per person is only slightly higher than the personal income per person. In contrast, in a Jiangsu city like Suzhou, much of the industry is foreign-owned and GDP per person is roughly 3 times higher than personal income per person. The people in Suzhou produce a lot of output, but much of the income flows out of the country to the owners of the foreign enterprises. So even in two seemingly similar coastal provinces, there are vast differences in the economic structure. ...

Professor Huang argues that many of the Chinese problems that are blamed on free market reforms are actually caused by a lack of free markets. ... In my view the social indicators in China would look better, not worse, if market reforms had occurred at a faster pace. And once again I think Zhejiang province is the best example. Not only did their incomes grow much faster than in neighboring Jiangsu, despite all the foreign investment flowing into Jiangsu, but their Human Development Index score is now highest among all non-urban Chinese provinces. If market reforms were really the cause of China’s social problems, you wouldn’t expect the social indicators in Zhejiang to be so good. ... [Zhejiang Normal University pictured right, another Jiangsu shot on the left]

I often think about the little village in poor Anhui that started it all. Wouldn’t the secret pact of Mr. Hongchang and the other 12 families of Xiaogang village make an inspiring Hollywood story? Don’t hold your breath, there’s still more films to be made glorifying Che Guevara. Of course Che would have preferred China’s pre-reform agricultural policy. The one that led to mass famine. The one that the brave peasants of Anhui rebelled against.