1.
Captain Will Rogers had scarce little time to respond. Already taking fire from Iranian Bog Hammers, the crew of the USS Vincennes turned its attention to an approaching aircraft. The unidentified aircraft had not responded to repeated warnings from the Vincennes, and appeared to be descending toward the battleship as it passed within 10 kilometers. After repeated entreaties from air-radar operator Scott Lustig, Captain Rogers gave the order to fire.
The military commission that investigated the shootdown of Iran Air flight 655--an Airbus 300 carrying 290 civilians from Bandar Abbas to Dubai--ruled the crew of the Vincennes had acted reasonably given the information at their disposal. A combination of inexperience with the technologies on the ship, multiple "threats" seeming to engage at once and something called "scenario fulfillment"--whereby a crew under mental pressure reverts to behavior learned in training scenarios and ignores sensory information contradicting the conclusion of the practiced scenario--conspired to hamper the crew's decision-making capacity.
To begin with, Iran Air flight 655 had departed half-an-hour late. Moreover, when communications officer Anderson cheked his log of plausible commercial flights out of Bandar Abbas, he did not account for the time difference of a half hour between Bandar Abbas time and Bahrain time-the zone the ship observed, resulting in an hour's cumulative lag between his records and the actual departure time of the flight. Mr. Anderson then made another critical error-he "painted" the Iran Air Airbus 300 with a radar signature while it sat on the tarmac before takeoff--adjacent to an F-14--and did not "refresh" its radar signature. Hence his system was recognizing the F-14's transponder code even while it appeared to track the inbound aircraft.
Seven of the ten warnings the Vincennes issued to flight 655 were broadcast over a military distress channel-a channel the A300's radios could not pick up. The final three went out over the civilian distress channel, but the Vincennes officer read flight 655's groundspeed, not its airspeed, the only velocity that commercial traffic pays attention to. It is unlikely the captain of flight 655 even knew the American voice on his radio was speaking to him.
Finally, most puzzling, Mr.Anderson had relayed to Mr. Lustig that the airplane on his radar screen was beginning to descend as it drew nearer to the Vincennes. A fast-closing, descending aircraft certainly appears threatening, especially to a gunship already engaged in battle. The news sealed Captain Rogers' decision to fire, and flight 655's fate. There was just one problem: the Vincennes instruments never indicated flight 655 was descending. Indeed, technology akin to the "black box" found on airplanes reproduced the VIncennes' instrument readings in the moments before missiles were fired, and those readings indicated, quite accurately, that flight 655 continued to climb through 11,000 feet. It was to exlain this implausible scenario that the commission envoced the "scenario fulfillment" hypothesis. What else, save perjury, could explain the discrepancy?
The crew of the Vincennes returned to SanDiego to a hero's welcome. Several members of the crew, including officer Lustig, received commendations. Throughout the election of 1988 then vice president George HW Bush insisted the U.S. owed Iran no apology.
2.
As Russian troops remain within Georgia in violation of the terms of Nicholas Sarkozy's cease-fire agreement, evidence of attrocities mounts. In the now-lawless capital of Tiblisi, Georgian citizens describe brazen murders committed by Ossetians for the sole purpose of intimidation. Meanwhile reports indicate that the Russian army is beginning to fortify its position by digging trenches and establishing check points.
You might think from watching CNN that Russia's invasion of Georgia is a simple matter of a spurned superpower flexing its newly minted muscle. Russia, mostly destitute during the Yeltsin era in the 1990s, is now brimming with oil money, teeming with anti-Western nationalism, and yearning to return to its cold-war borders. If such were your understanding, you might advocate drawing a line in the sand: promising sanctions, loudly proclaiming solidarity with the Georgian government, and fast-tracking a missle-deffense site in Poland.
If Russia, fed by nought other than naked ambition to empire-build, is testing the resoluteness of Western powers, as John McCain seems to suggest, we'd do well to send an unequivocal affirmation of that resoluteness.
But if that was your only context you'd be ignoring a large part of the story.
Mikheil Saakashvili, who came to be president of Georgia during the Rose Revolution of 20003, had naked ambitions of his own. Charismatic as he is, and popular on the beltway cocktail party circuit, he became fast friends with President Bush. The two spoke about Georgia's democratic ambitions, and Bush eventually gave Saakashwili military equipment and training, and advocated enthusiastically for Georgia's membership in NATO. Convinced he would have the U.S.'s backing should any conflict arise, Saakashvili turned his attention to two territories--Abkhazia and South Ossetia--that had since 1992 insisted on their independence from Georgian rule. On August 7, Saakashvili declared war on the seperatist territories, and began shelling the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali.
The U.S. had no intention of supporting Georgia militarily. It was embroiled in its own battles over the appropriate level of support for Georgia's NATO membership, with "hawks" like Dick Cheney advocating strenuously and "doves" like Condoleza Rice (in private, in this limited case) urging caution. In the end President Bush's need for additional troops in Iraq won out-Georgia agree to double its force in Iraq--to 2000--in early 2007. In exchange for Georgia's ongoing support, the U.S. gave it military equipment and helped to train its special forces. Against the will of Germany and other European nations, George Bush lent his support to Saakashvili's campaign this April to fast-track Georgia's NATO membership.
Russia, on the other hand, perceived Georgia's attempts to join NATO as a direct challenge to its sphere of influence. To make matters worse, the Bush administration was pushing for a new missile defense system in Eastern Europe at practically the same time. Bush insisted the system was intended to defend against a missile strike from Iran, but Putin and his allies saw it as an attempt to shift the balance of power in Eastern Europe. When Georgia--whose claim to South Ossetia Russia disputes--began shelling Tskhinvali, tensions boiled over. Russian troops intervened, in their view, to protect the citizens of South Ossetia and, ostensibly, to "keep the peace."
Understanding the rationale for Russia's continued occupation of Georgia might change your idea of the best options. Atop your list would be seeking to assure Russia the West respects its sovereignty and values it as a partner, all-the-while denouncing its incursion into Georgia and calling for its hasty and complete withdrawl. But, recognizing the U.S.'s culpability in the strained relations, you might do so from a standpoint of international law--or indeed of preserving international stability that could be to Russia's benefit--rather than from a strictly pro-Georgia standpoint.
3.
Casual reflection might lead you to the conclusion that with the luxury of time one would want to learn as much as possible about a problem before positing a solution. Say you're already making 55,000 a year but are planning to attend classes at a local university to get an additional degree. You'd want to know every possible cost, down to the penny. Being forced to make a decision without a key piece of information--say the fact that the school is full-time and you would forfeit two years of your salary in addition to tuition--could be disasterous.
Sometimes, as appeared to occur in the case of the USS Vincennes, a "perfect storm" of arrogance, bad timing and inexperience can conspire ro create misunderstandings that can ultimately start wars. (World War I, which began officially with the assasination of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo but for which the key players would have taken any excuse, is a great example.) But what happens when key pieces of information are not innocently overlooked but deliberately obfuscated? The list of unnecessary wars perpetuated not by misunderstandings but by intentional witholding of information is too long to recite , but includes such classics as the Mexican/American War (really a war of anexation, for which the government cooked up a fake assasination story), the Spanish American War, and Iraq.
In this latest conflagration, many media outlets have covered only the most recent history-since the Russian invasion. (The New York Times, Salon, and Wikipedia have done an admirable job at filling in the gaps.) This may be because the "Russian Bully" narrative plays better on newsstands, allowing the event to be framed in terms of good and evil; east and west. But watch out for overly simplistic prognostications or deliberate omissions from those who should know better-those like John McCain. While it's true few American politicians want open war (or even renewed Cold War) with Russia, don't assume their sabre rattling will stop short of inflaming the situation still further. Just yesterday Secretary Rice traveled to Poland to renew the administration's push for missile defense.
4.
The commission's report on the shootdown of Iran Air 655--the same report that absolved William Rogers and his crew of wrongdoing--was published in 1988 with several redactions. But an independent investigation by Newsweek's John Barry and Roger Charles, published in 1992, uncovered several very large missing pieces of information.
When Captain Rogers had heard reports of Bog Hammers-essentially little more than Iranian speedboats piloted by men with rocket-launchers, were engaging tankers in the narrow Strait of Hormuz, two other American vessles, the Sides and the Elmer Montgomery, were closer than the Vincennes. Nevertheless, captain Rogers radioed his superior, Admiral McKenna, to ask permission to engage.
McKenna denied Rogers' request, judging the situation inappropriate for engagement (which, under the "rules of engagement", requires the American vessle to have been fired upon or believe itself in jeopardy.)
Rogers sent a helicopter, which took fire from the Iranian boats after conducting a low flyover. Even then, McKenna ordered the helicopter to retreat and the Vincennes to continue its southwest-ward course away from the Strait. Instead, Rogers turned his craft and headed into the "battle."
Most damning, Barry and Charles discovered the Vincennes was actually a few kilometers inside Iranian waters when it fired on flight 655, having turned 180 degrees after its forward gun jammed. Had the Vincennes not violated orders to engage in an unnecessary sea battle, it would have had ample time to judge the type of aircraft on its way from Bandar Abbas to Dubai. Had it not maneuvered directly beneath a busy commercial air corridor between the two cities the Airbus A300 would not have seemed to be on an "engagement" course with the Vincennes. Rogers and his men, in other words, were "asking for trouble."
In 1988, after the official report of the incident--damning enough by many standards--was published (but 4 years before Newsweek would reveal the missing piece) George HW Bush gave a speech.
"I'll never apologize for the United States of America, ever," he said. "I don't care what the facts are."
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Close
Last February, an otherwise little-noticed article called Helping People Help Themselves spent a day at the top of the New York Times' most emailed list. The article began by distilling of the science of behavioral economics. People, no matter how intelligent or well-educated, are subject to several well-documented mental catch-22s, among them "status quo bias", "averaging" and the most cocktail-party-ready: "parabolic discounting".
Status quo bias needs little explanation. (In fact none of these will-my bet is we recognize them instantly in ourselves.) All things being equal human beings will tend to choose the option that requires the least change. Averaging involves the misapplication of simple mathematical models to things like compound interest or geometric growth. It's the whole conundrum of the page folded in half again and again: the human brain is simply not equipped to conceptualize geometric phenomena very efficiently. (That's a broad statement likely to get me in trouble. It's a little like saying, "we're not very agile compared to the cheetah." Sure, Carl Lewis and Randy Moss are apt counterexamples, but...) I experience parabolic discounting every time I pull out the credit card to cover a night out-it's the human tendency to downplay long-term consequences and give too much weight to short term.
The author, Teresa Tritch, went on to argue that the public sector has only recently embraced behavioral economics, putting the science to use for things like anti-smoking campaigns and "opt out" retirement plans. Yet for all its apparent salience, behavioral economics has enjoyed astonishingly little attention this political season, even as we debate things like climate change and tax code.
Last week The Newshour ran a feature on prison reform in the southwest. Arizona, where prison crowding is rife, was experimenting with programs to provide jobs and education to inmates. The program, which offered incentives like greater freedom and the opportunity to learn marketable skills, gave inmates something to "shoot for"-a reason to behave well. It was also-to my delight-largely privately funded.
In explaining to my wife why I thought private funding was a more effective way to solve problems in America than government programs (which basically boiled down to the fact that anything that depends for its funding on voters' whims about tax policy is on shaky ground) I unwittingly sparked a much larger argument. Why, she asked, were Americans not willing to pay for things from which they undoubtedly received long-term benefit? (Low recidivism, lower rates of incarceration, more efficiency in the prison system in this case.)
We returned to a recurring theme in our recent discussions-health care and pensions. Why are Americans unwilling to pay slightly (or even greatly) more taxes for a system that relieves them of their anxiety about health care and retirement? Is the knowledge that the loss of one's job and a medical problem won't cause bankruptcy or destitution not worth a few more dollars out of the paycheck?
I've written elsewhere about my trips to Europe and Taiwan and the difference in the attitudes of the workforce I've observed between other "advanced" countries (relaxed employees who work hard because they're interested in doing the job well) and the US (chronically stressed, working only hard enough to avoid getting fired). Now, my anecdotal observations do not a scientific study make. Moreover, there are doubtless many reasons for the differences in work ethos--a company culture that promotes from within and retains workers for life, a superior work ethic fostered by stable families, an emphasis on and respect for education all but unknown in the US--all contribute. But there's another nagging fact-Taiwan and the vast majority of European Union countries all offer some kind of universal health care and social safety net.
Much has been made this election season about why, with the American economy in a downturn born of irresponsible speculation in the investment banking sector, millions of people being foreclosed from their homes, still more going bankrupt every day because of medical expenses, and large pillars of our infrastructure-bridges, air traffic control-deteriorating, things are still so close. A peek at the declining dollar relative to the Euro ought to inspire envy. A walk through a boarded-up neighborhood in Baltimore or the Southwest or a look at a new-construction home looted for all its metal components and left unsalvagable ought to inspire outrage. Every story we read about someone whose illness caused him to lose a job, which in turn caused loss of health care coverage and financial ruin, ought to scare us. And of course it does. Americans are sufficiently scared, outraged and angry to embrace just about any solution we believed would help us.
Part of the dichotomy, doubtless, is a legitimate difference of opinion on the role the government ought to play. Many who are well aware of the limitations of the free market to protect all but the strongest stakeholders nonetheless believe private citizens, and not the government, are best equipped to look after their interests. But far too little effort has been made to understand how the common traps of human nature-like parabolic discounting-are shaping our national opinions.
Take the debate over offshore drilling. The basic premise-providing short-term relief to people suffering under the pall of high gas prices-is laudable. But economists insist it will provide little long-term benefit: the US has only 3 percent of the world's petroleum reserves but consumes 25 percent of the world's oil. And remember Al Gore? Two summers ago, when gas was cheap, global warming was on the tip of everyone's tongue. Now few dare venture the environmental argument against expanded oil drilling. Put in the context of parabolic discounting, however, it's easy to understand why people would favor a short term solution of dubious merit over any solution that required short term sacrifice but would pay of in the long run. We're talking about the same species that knows smoking will eventually kill us but takes up smoking all the same.
Status quo bias and something called the "endowment effect" (our tendency to "endow" our immediate possessions, like paychecks, with importance disproportionate to their actual worth) work against any attempt to ask people to pay more taxes. If employers can't get their employees to contribute 2 percent of their monthly paycheck toward a 401K why would we expect them to part with far larger sums in order to fund national health care? And few outside the medicare system have experienced universal coverage-it's an unknown. The status quo, however flawed, can still feel "safer", especially to those of us with employer-provided insurance and few (knock on wood) ailments.
Much has been made of the irresponsibility that got Americans into the housing crisis and led us to take on unprecedented levels of personal debt. Relatively little weight, however, has been assigned to parabolic discounting and averaging, or to lenders' astute understanding of human nature. But how else to explain "teaser" interest rates and needlessly complex disclosure literature? By making getting in just a bit easier and understanding what you're getting into just a tad more difficult, credit companies capitalized on the worst of human tendencies.
Finally, why would Americans support the invasion of Iraq when its benefits were so tenuous and long-term risks to both national and economic security so tangible? Viewed through the prism of behavioral economics it's not hard to understand-the desire to do something-anything-to eliminate a perceived threat outweighed any risks down the road.
Tritch's article explained how some agencies could use behavioral economics to make our tendencies work for our long term well being instead of against it. In 2006 congress passed the pension reform law, which changed the "opt in" rule governing pensions to an "opt out" one. By automatically enrolling people in a retirement savings plan but giving them the choice to opt out, you're not denying them freedom, but making status quo bias work in their favor. To curb smoking Tritch proposed requiring a free identification card to buy cigarettes. The card would require no special qualification to smoke besides being of legal age and willingness to apply, so it would not curtail personal liberty. It would, however, add one extra hurdle to lighting up-one familiar to anyone who's ever pondered whether getting up and trudging to the kitchen during the best part of your favorite show is really worth it for that next beer.
Could similar incentives work on larger-scale problems? We don't have "opt out" taxes, and that's probably a good thing. (I'd hate to picture congress levying a tax that I have an opportunity to vote against "whenever I get around to it." That congress wouldn't last very long either.) But an approach to regulating investment banks and the credit industry informed by behavioral economics (realizing, for instance, that the idea that citizens always act in their rational self-interest is demonstrably false)might just prevent the next big financial crisis.
But we need to start having the right conversation. We need to recognize a choice that deliberately plays against our human biases for what it is: a false choice.
Status quo bias needs little explanation. (In fact none of these will-my bet is we recognize them instantly in ourselves.) All things being equal human beings will tend to choose the option that requires the least change. Averaging involves the misapplication of simple mathematical models to things like compound interest or geometric growth. It's the whole conundrum of the page folded in half again and again: the human brain is simply not equipped to conceptualize geometric phenomena very efficiently. (That's a broad statement likely to get me in trouble. It's a little like saying, "we're not very agile compared to the cheetah." Sure, Carl Lewis and Randy Moss are apt counterexamples, but...) I experience parabolic discounting every time I pull out the credit card to cover a night out-it's the human tendency to downplay long-term consequences and give too much weight to short term.
The author, Teresa Tritch, went on to argue that the public sector has only recently embraced behavioral economics, putting the science to use for things like anti-smoking campaigns and "opt out" retirement plans. Yet for all its apparent salience, behavioral economics has enjoyed astonishingly little attention this political season, even as we debate things like climate change and tax code.
Last week The Newshour ran a feature on prison reform in the southwest. Arizona, where prison crowding is rife, was experimenting with programs to provide jobs and education to inmates. The program, which offered incentives like greater freedom and the opportunity to learn marketable skills, gave inmates something to "shoot for"-a reason to behave well. It was also-to my delight-largely privately funded.
In explaining to my wife why I thought private funding was a more effective way to solve problems in America than government programs (which basically boiled down to the fact that anything that depends for its funding on voters' whims about tax policy is on shaky ground) I unwittingly sparked a much larger argument. Why, she asked, were Americans not willing to pay for things from which they undoubtedly received long-term benefit? (Low recidivism, lower rates of incarceration, more efficiency in the prison system in this case.)
We returned to a recurring theme in our recent discussions-health care and pensions. Why are Americans unwilling to pay slightly (or even greatly) more taxes for a system that relieves them of their anxiety about health care and retirement? Is the knowledge that the loss of one's job and a medical problem won't cause bankruptcy or destitution not worth a few more dollars out of the paycheck?
I've written elsewhere about my trips to Europe and Taiwan and the difference in the attitudes of the workforce I've observed between other "advanced" countries (relaxed employees who work hard because they're interested in doing the job well) and the US (chronically stressed, working only hard enough to avoid getting fired). Now, my anecdotal observations do not a scientific study make. Moreover, there are doubtless many reasons for the differences in work ethos--a company culture that promotes from within and retains workers for life, a superior work ethic fostered by stable families, an emphasis on and respect for education all but unknown in the US--all contribute. But there's another nagging fact-Taiwan and the vast majority of European Union countries all offer some kind of universal health care and social safety net.
Much has been made this election season about why, with the American economy in a downturn born of irresponsible speculation in the investment banking sector, millions of people being foreclosed from their homes, still more going bankrupt every day because of medical expenses, and large pillars of our infrastructure-bridges, air traffic control-deteriorating, things are still so close. A peek at the declining dollar relative to the Euro ought to inspire envy. A walk through a boarded-up neighborhood in Baltimore or the Southwest or a look at a new-construction home looted for all its metal components and left unsalvagable ought to inspire outrage. Every story we read about someone whose illness caused him to lose a job, which in turn caused loss of health care coverage and financial ruin, ought to scare us. And of course it does. Americans are sufficiently scared, outraged and angry to embrace just about any solution we believed would help us.
Part of the dichotomy, doubtless, is a legitimate difference of opinion on the role the government ought to play. Many who are well aware of the limitations of the free market to protect all but the strongest stakeholders nonetheless believe private citizens, and not the government, are best equipped to look after their interests. But far too little effort has been made to understand how the common traps of human nature-like parabolic discounting-are shaping our national opinions.
Take the debate over offshore drilling. The basic premise-providing short-term relief to people suffering under the pall of high gas prices-is laudable. But economists insist it will provide little long-term benefit: the US has only 3 percent of the world's petroleum reserves but consumes 25 percent of the world's oil. And remember Al Gore? Two summers ago, when gas was cheap, global warming was on the tip of everyone's tongue. Now few dare venture the environmental argument against expanded oil drilling. Put in the context of parabolic discounting, however, it's easy to understand why people would favor a short term solution of dubious merit over any solution that required short term sacrifice but would pay of in the long run. We're talking about the same species that knows smoking will eventually kill us but takes up smoking all the same.
Status quo bias and something called the "endowment effect" (our tendency to "endow" our immediate possessions, like paychecks, with importance disproportionate to their actual worth) work against any attempt to ask people to pay more taxes. If employers can't get their employees to contribute 2 percent of their monthly paycheck toward a 401K why would we expect them to part with far larger sums in order to fund national health care? And few outside the medicare system have experienced universal coverage-it's an unknown. The status quo, however flawed, can still feel "safer", especially to those of us with employer-provided insurance and few (knock on wood) ailments.
Much has been made of the irresponsibility that got Americans into the housing crisis and led us to take on unprecedented levels of personal debt. Relatively little weight, however, has been assigned to parabolic discounting and averaging, or to lenders' astute understanding of human nature. But how else to explain "teaser" interest rates and needlessly complex disclosure literature? By making getting in just a bit easier and understanding what you're getting into just a tad more difficult, credit companies capitalized on the worst of human tendencies.
Finally, why would Americans support the invasion of Iraq when its benefits were so tenuous and long-term risks to both national and economic security so tangible? Viewed through the prism of behavioral economics it's not hard to understand-the desire to do something-anything-to eliminate a perceived threat outweighed any risks down the road.
Tritch's article explained how some agencies could use behavioral economics to make our tendencies work for our long term well being instead of against it. In 2006 congress passed the pension reform law, which changed the "opt in" rule governing pensions to an "opt out" one. By automatically enrolling people in a retirement savings plan but giving them the choice to opt out, you're not denying them freedom, but making status quo bias work in their favor. To curb smoking Tritch proposed requiring a free identification card to buy cigarettes. The card would require no special qualification to smoke besides being of legal age and willingness to apply, so it would not curtail personal liberty. It would, however, add one extra hurdle to lighting up-one familiar to anyone who's ever pondered whether getting up and trudging to the kitchen during the best part of your favorite show is really worth it for that next beer.
Could similar incentives work on larger-scale problems? We don't have "opt out" taxes, and that's probably a good thing. (I'd hate to picture congress levying a tax that I have an opportunity to vote against "whenever I get around to it." That congress wouldn't last very long either.) But an approach to regulating investment banks and the credit industry informed by behavioral economics (realizing, for instance, that the idea that citizens always act in their rational self-interest is demonstrably false)might just prevent the next big financial crisis.
But we need to start having the right conversation. We need to recognize a choice that deliberately plays against our human biases for what it is: a false choice.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Click To Expand
The price of oil is killing the airlines. Analysts tell us the business models of the industry are predicated upon oil priced at $90 a barrel or below. The airlines earn, on average, $160 per one-way ticket and pay over $120 per passenger for fuel alone. The remainder must cover wages and benefits, landing fees, pensions, and improvements or upgrades to infrastructure. With the exception of Southwest, whose foray into the futures market allowed it to "lock down" a rate of just over $50-a-barrel, the industry is dying on the vine.
No one knows for sure just what a $140-a-barrel airline industry will look like, but the major carriers will have to sustain some fundamental and seismic changes to weather the storm. Though no one likes to talk about it, ticket prices will have to rise. Until 1978, the US government regulated the prices airlines could charge, maintaining a price floor and allowing the carriers to compete on service. Ticket prices in the '70s, adjusted for inflation, were substantially higher than they are today. Deregulation allowed a drop in airfares but its effect was marginal until 2001, when 9/11 and the subsequent rise of discount carriers Southwest and Jet Blue--whose business models were predicated on low fares--sparked a price war. "Legacy" carriers, fearing permanent loss of business, quickly followed suit, dragging ticket prices to levels unsustainable even with oil below $90 a barrel.
As long as oil remained cheap the agile low-fare lines enjoyed a competitive advantage above and beyond their business models: the young age of their fleets and their employees. While the legacy carriers shouldered the burdens of decades-old pension agreements and withstood increasingly hostile confrontations with the pilots' union, Jet Blue and Southwest enjoyed extremely high ratios of active workers to retirees and virtually no union entanglements. (For a dissertation on the often understated effects of an aging workforce, see Malcolm Gladwell's excellent article here.)
But even low cost carriers based their business models on cheap oil. That their albatross effect on fares opened up air travel to millions of Americans, including the author, who might otherwise have driven cars or taken the bus may end up being more detrimental to low-costers than to their rivals. Despite their ungainly workforces and aging fleets, the legacy carriers have at least one advantage: they never expected to make much money from the "cheap seats" in the first place, garnering the vast majority of their profits from first-class cabins and overseas flights. Their relative neglect of "break even at best" coach cabins while emerging from bankruptcies after 9/11 provided the low-fare carriers with their golden opportunity to capture market share. Ironically, if ticket prices rise to sustainable levels low-fare customers will likely be the first to drop out of the market.
But while soaring fuel costs are likely to prove most detrimental to low-cost models the legacy carriers, caught between the need to reduce costs and raise fares and the ever-decreasing ratio of active workers to retirees, are in no position to capitalize on higher ticket prices. In the end the companies with the most visionary leadership and the most flexibility to adapt will probably prove most resilient. Southwest has its superior vision to thank for its temporary supply of cheap oil. And a company with the moxie to think outside the box and invest in the futures market may yet have something else up its sleeve to deal with the fallout of the low-end market. (For now, at least, it can enjoy a windfall of frustrated customers startled by rising fares and the "nickel-and-dime" pricing structures of its rivals.) Others, like Richard Branson's Virgin, are making moves to exculpate themselves from the fossil-fuels market altogether. (Virgin's first "all bio fuel" flight enjoyed great press, but we've yet to see if bio fuel is any more viable in the long term than petroleum.)
For those carriers whose destinies are still tied to the price of a barrel (Jet Blue this means you), the survival of the low-fare market will likely depend on revenue sources other than fares, which means we may soon be seeing more partnerships with advertisers. One oft-overlooked source of potential advertising dollars is on company websites. Carriers looking for advertising revenue but understandably wary about filling their cabins with corporate logos need look no further than the "new media". Sites like Salon.com offer their visitors a choice: see the content free and agree to sit through a few advertisements and to put up with animated sponsor logos on the page, or pony-up a nominal monthly fee to read without ads. Imagine visiting an airline website and having the opportunity to save 20% on your ticket if you agree to watch a 30-second ad or to take a consumer survey (or to pay the regular price and skip the ads). Internet-based low-costs like Jet Blue already enjoy the advantage of a "hip" market segment accustomed to web-business. Just as Ikea does, the company could be very overt in explaining "how we keep your fares low", and let customers decide. (I'd sure watch a land rover commercial for a discount ticket.) If Jet Blue is not willing to go there, the right start up soon will.
No one knows for sure just what a $140-a-barrel airline industry will look like, but the major carriers will have to sustain some fundamental and seismic changes to weather the storm. Though no one likes to talk about it, ticket prices will have to rise. Until 1978, the US government regulated the prices airlines could charge, maintaining a price floor and allowing the carriers to compete on service. Ticket prices in the '70s, adjusted for inflation, were substantially higher than they are today. Deregulation allowed a drop in airfares but its effect was marginal until 2001, when 9/11 and the subsequent rise of discount carriers Southwest and Jet Blue--whose business models were predicated on low fares--sparked a price war. "Legacy" carriers, fearing permanent loss of business, quickly followed suit, dragging ticket prices to levels unsustainable even with oil below $90 a barrel.
As long as oil remained cheap the agile low-fare lines enjoyed a competitive advantage above and beyond their business models: the young age of their fleets and their employees. While the legacy carriers shouldered the burdens of decades-old pension agreements and withstood increasingly hostile confrontations with the pilots' union, Jet Blue and Southwest enjoyed extremely high ratios of active workers to retirees and virtually no union entanglements. (For a dissertation on the often understated effects of an aging workforce, see Malcolm Gladwell's excellent article here.)
But even low cost carriers based their business models on cheap oil. That their albatross effect on fares opened up air travel to millions of Americans, including the author, who might otherwise have driven cars or taken the bus may end up being more detrimental to low-costers than to their rivals. Despite their ungainly workforces and aging fleets, the legacy carriers have at least one advantage: they never expected to make much money from the "cheap seats" in the first place, garnering the vast majority of their profits from first-class cabins and overseas flights. Their relative neglect of "break even at best" coach cabins while emerging from bankruptcies after 9/11 provided the low-fare carriers with their golden opportunity to capture market share. Ironically, if ticket prices rise to sustainable levels low-fare customers will likely be the first to drop out of the market.
But while soaring fuel costs are likely to prove most detrimental to low-cost models the legacy carriers, caught between the need to reduce costs and raise fares and the ever-decreasing ratio of active workers to retirees, are in no position to capitalize on higher ticket prices. In the end the companies with the most visionary leadership and the most flexibility to adapt will probably prove most resilient. Southwest has its superior vision to thank for its temporary supply of cheap oil. And a company with the moxie to think outside the box and invest in the futures market may yet have something else up its sleeve to deal with the fallout of the low-end market. (For now, at least, it can enjoy a windfall of frustrated customers startled by rising fares and the "nickel-and-dime" pricing structures of its rivals.) Others, like Richard Branson's Virgin, are making moves to exculpate themselves from the fossil-fuels market altogether. (Virgin's first "all bio fuel" flight enjoyed great press, but we've yet to see if bio fuel is any more viable in the long term than petroleum.)
For those carriers whose destinies are still tied to the price of a barrel (Jet Blue this means you), the survival of the low-fare market will likely depend on revenue sources other than fares, which means we may soon be seeing more partnerships with advertisers. One oft-overlooked source of potential advertising dollars is on company websites. Carriers looking for advertising revenue but understandably wary about filling their cabins with corporate logos need look no further than the "new media". Sites like Salon.com offer their visitors a choice: see the content free and agree to sit through a few advertisements and to put up with animated sponsor logos on the page, or pony-up a nominal monthly fee to read without ads. Imagine visiting an airline website and having the opportunity to save 20% on your ticket if you agree to watch a 30-second ad or to take a consumer survey (or to pay the regular price and skip the ads). Internet-based low-costs like Jet Blue already enjoy the advantage of a "hip" market segment accustomed to web-business. Just as Ikea does, the company could be very overt in explaining "how we keep your fares low", and let customers decide. (I'd sure watch a land rover commercial for a discount ticket.) If Jet Blue is not willing to go there, the right start up soon will.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Animal Magnetism
You don't have to hang around music clubs for too long these days to overhear a conversation about finance or marketing. For today's musician, fluency with business concepts has become the new "chops". Many view the recording industry, turned inside-out by the internet, as a sort of Wild West-a power vacuum ripe for the next big idea: Recording Industry 2.0.
One of the more popular small ideas I've come across is the obsolescence of records as finished product. Many artists now see them as either a means to an end (building fans, marketing themselves to clubs or promoters) or as fringe benefits to fans. Many also see the importance of physical CDs as diminishing. To be marketable CDs require professional cover art and design and the all-important bar code, both of which in turn require either a substantial investment of money or willingness to partner with a label (and often to relinquish some proprietary rights); hardly worth it unless they can net substantial revenue. If you view a CD as nothing more than a delivery system for your sound to a fan's ear, the MP3 rendered it obsolete 10 years ago.
Some go still further, viewing the music itself as fringe to the business. The most important activity of your enterprise, they say, is to sell. Time spent perfecting the "product" that doesn't translate directly into return on investment is time wasted. I'll call it the "membership model": instead of buying CDs, fans pay a "membership fee" for exclusive access to the artist-unreleased bootlegs, video diaries, first crack at concert tickets, "private" events. Certain artists, like ‘Lil Wayne, have used the membership model with remarkable success. Artists with small record sales to begin with are, the thinking goes, in a better position to capture market share than signed artists dependent on high-volume sales. You recruit a corps of devotees, all paying a menial monthly fee (or maybe a one-time membership fee), in exchange for which they get exclusive access to...you. Those membership fees, in turn, finance everything else.
All of which begs the question, does it work?
Let me digress. This week I curated a bill of four bands at a Brooklyn music club. Since jazz has a smaller audience than rock, folk, klezmer, and apparently traditional Irish music (one such band, playing next door, was a hit with patrons), it often makes sense to pool your audience: 50 combined fans who stay for the whole night look just as good to owners as 4 different groups of 50 who rotate in and out throughout the evening. As curator, I sat through all four sets. You can learn a lot about the business of music by observing how various groups sound, how they're managed, and what sort of crowds they draw.
The bands differed markedly in their presentation. Some had used online promotion, others word-of-mouth. Some had CDs out, others not. But one band brought the lion’s share of the fans and enticed the greatest number of “regulars” to stick around. The combination that triumphed had little to do with the media used for the group's promotion and nothing whatsoever to do with their time slot. The factors that counted ended up being the quality of the music and the charisma of the band leader. Hardly rocket science. You're friends with somebody who hangs out frequently, then you check out his band and the music makes you excited. In one fell swoop he's ignited the rare alchemy of endorphins that causes fans to swoon.
What does this have to do with online fan clubs and the decline of the recording industry? That depends why you think Lil Wayne fans or Radiohead fans are so fanatically devoted to their bands. Do millions of people go to the websites, download and forward the bootlegs, read the tour diaries and wait in line for days for concert tickets for the privilege of being a fan? Sure: It's "cool" to be a Radiohead follower! But that’s not enough.
Something attracted you to the band in the first place.
Bottom line-website or physical CD, we're still selling a product. People will flock to Jamba Juice because of a nuanced combination of the taste of the drink and the way being a customer of the company makes them feel, but they won't go simply to be there. And jazz musicians are in the unique position of depending on our products more than average companies for two reasons: Number one, we're often starting from virtual "unknown" status with every potential customer (unlike, say, J. Crew, we can't create buzz about an offshoot product by dropping unspecific "hints"-people have no context by which to judge our credibility). Number two, our fans are far more discerning than average-quickly deciding whether a group has "got it" or not.
Buzz percolates from the bottom up in the jazz world. The groups I've seen succeed, small or large, are powerful evidence that the most potent marketing tools are still a great product and word-of-mouth. But jazz musicians-and local musicians in general-can and do benefit from online marketing and music sales. For us, the internet is most effective as a tool for broadening the impact of the product. It can also help to retain new fans your music attracted in the first-an announcement from stage after a particularly killing set generates sales of Myspace MP3s like little else. (Conversely, the frustration when I hear a great group and can’t download their music anywhere is palpable.) In the end, many musicians have either one half or the other: There are clever marketers with inferior products and great artists no one will ever hear. In the proverbial Wild West, those with ability to produce memorable performances and the savvy to spread the impact enough to sell songs and swell the ranks of fans, are a precious commodity.
One of the more popular small ideas I've come across is the obsolescence of records as finished product. Many artists now see them as either a means to an end (building fans, marketing themselves to clubs or promoters) or as fringe benefits to fans. Many also see the importance of physical CDs as diminishing. To be marketable CDs require professional cover art and design and the all-important bar code, both of which in turn require either a substantial investment of money or willingness to partner with a label (and often to relinquish some proprietary rights); hardly worth it unless they can net substantial revenue. If you view a CD as nothing more than a delivery system for your sound to a fan's ear, the MP3 rendered it obsolete 10 years ago.
Some go still further, viewing the music itself as fringe to the business. The most important activity of your enterprise, they say, is to sell. Time spent perfecting the "product" that doesn't translate directly into return on investment is time wasted. I'll call it the "membership model": instead of buying CDs, fans pay a "membership fee" for exclusive access to the artist-unreleased bootlegs, video diaries, first crack at concert tickets, "private" events. Certain artists, like ‘Lil Wayne, have used the membership model with remarkable success. Artists with small record sales to begin with are, the thinking goes, in a better position to capture market share than signed artists dependent on high-volume sales. You recruit a corps of devotees, all paying a menial monthly fee (or maybe a one-time membership fee), in exchange for which they get exclusive access to...you. Those membership fees, in turn, finance everything else.
All of which begs the question, does it work?
Let me digress. This week I curated a bill of four bands at a Brooklyn music club. Since jazz has a smaller audience than rock, folk, klezmer, and apparently traditional Irish music (one such band, playing next door, was a hit with patrons), it often makes sense to pool your audience: 50 combined fans who stay for the whole night look just as good to owners as 4 different groups of 50 who rotate in and out throughout the evening. As curator, I sat through all four sets. You can learn a lot about the business of music by observing how various groups sound, how they're managed, and what sort of crowds they draw.
The bands differed markedly in their presentation. Some had used online promotion, others word-of-mouth. Some had CDs out, others not. But one band brought the lion’s share of the fans and enticed the greatest number of “regulars” to stick around. The combination that triumphed had little to do with the media used for the group's promotion and nothing whatsoever to do with their time slot. The factors that counted ended up being the quality of the music and the charisma of the band leader. Hardly rocket science. You're friends with somebody who hangs out frequently, then you check out his band and the music makes you excited. In one fell swoop he's ignited the rare alchemy of endorphins that causes fans to swoon.
What does this have to do with online fan clubs and the decline of the recording industry? That depends why you think Lil Wayne fans or Radiohead fans are so fanatically devoted to their bands. Do millions of people go to the websites, download and forward the bootlegs, read the tour diaries and wait in line for days for concert tickets for the privilege of being a fan? Sure: It's "cool" to be a Radiohead follower! But that’s not enough.
Something attracted you to the band in the first place.
Bottom line-website or physical CD, we're still selling a product. People will flock to Jamba Juice because of a nuanced combination of the taste of the drink and the way being a customer of the company makes them feel, but they won't go simply to be there. And jazz musicians are in the unique position of depending on our products more than average companies for two reasons: Number one, we're often starting from virtual "unknown" status with every potential customer (unlike, say, J. Crew, we can't create buzz about an offshoot product by dropping unspecific "hints"-people have no context by which to judge our credibility). Number two, our fans are far more discerning than average-quickly deciding whether a group has "got it" or not.
Buzz percolates from the bottom up in the jazz world. The groups I've seen succeed, small or large, are powerful evidence that the most potent marketing tools are still a great product and word-of-mouth. But jazz musicians-and local musicians in general-can and do benefit from online marketing and music sales. For us, the internet is most effective as a tool for broadening the impact of the product. It can also help to retain new fans your music attracted in the first-an announcement from stage after a particularly killing set generates sales of Myspace MP3s like little else. (Conversely, the frustration when I hear a great group and can’t download their music anywhere is palpable.) In the end, many musicians have either one half or the other: There are clever marketers with inferior products and great artists no one will ever hear. In the proverbial Wild West, those with ability to produce memorable performances and the savvy to spread the impact enough to sell songs and swell the ranks of fans, are a precious commodity.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Elitism
Early this week Barack Obama gave a town hall speech to a mostly black audience in Georgia. After telling the kids they probably weren't as good at basketball or rap as they thought, he went on to profess his desire that Americans become more proficient in foreign languages.
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has been calling for a price floor for oil since early 2004, but the current "crisis" has spurred investment in alternative energies in quantities unheard of in the 1990s. Amid the cries for more offshore drilling, leasing more Alaskan lands and crackdowns on speculation, a steady chorus in favor of the opposite idea-that prices need to be kept as high as possible-has emerged. A price floor means that the national government establishes a minimum price-per-barrel-say $100-and implements a tax that makes up the difference should the market price fall below that floor. In 2001 some economists and green energy enthusiasts were calling for a $50 price floor-laughable by today's standards. The conventional wisdom goes that large-scale investment in a new technology won't occur until it can be offered at prices competitive with existing technologies.
If Friedman has had his eye on long-term investment in global infrastructure, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg made two famous failed attempts to initiate fundamental change at the local level with his now infamous congestion pricing. Bloomberg's idea was a simple one: make it so expensive to drive a car into Manhattan that public transportation or carpooling becomes a more realistic option. Like peak train fares, congestion pricing-in its conception-was designed to encourage people to think twice before driving their cars.
60 Minutes aired a broadcast last fall featuring a compelling debate: to keep or to divest of the U.S.'s lowest monetary common denominator, the penny. On the side of axing the penny were an economist who argued its uselessness and inconvenience, and...well an economics student at MIT pointing out the economic catch-22 of minting pennies: they cost far more to create than they're worth.
So what is elitism? By and large it's a catch-phrase we hear tossed around during political seasons, usually on Lou Dobbs or Fox News. (Though David Brooks, I suspect out of guilt more than anything else, has been know to use it on occasion.) Colloquially "elitism" is understood to mean values held by a segment of the population more educated, liberal, and light-in-the-loafers than-say-the followers of NASCAR. Dobbs, for his part, went to work on Obama after the "foreign languages" speech, calling it elitist and asking citizens to demand of their congressman that English be made the official language of the U.S.
Who are elitists? One imagines a littany akin to "you might be a redneck if..."-an elitist acid test, and indeed the genesis and popularity of websites like "stuff white people like" indicates the label might not be totally undeserved. (Do you brag about not owning a television? Does your dream home include at least one piece of modernist furniture?) Complicating things somewhat is the fact that most modern purveyors of the term, almost to a one, seem to fit the definition (see: Brooks, David or Coulter, Ann). David Brooks may well be a special case, devoting some columns to assailing elitism (Obama's bowling, that salad bar at the Applebees) and just as many participating in it (the rise of the educated class/education as the new cultural wedge, rich people's kids are better at interacting in the world, modern rich work harder than modern poor). By simultaneously participating in and criticizing a culture, he's engaging in "post modernism" and as such likely deserves accolades from the elitists.
So we can go to work on the term with a pickaxe, as Thomas Frank, Paul Krugman and many others have done-dissecting the real makeup of our culture: The fact that the upper class is more likely to vote according to its religious views than the working class. The cars/houses/dress/salary of the people making money by selling us "red America." (And in so doing we'd be engaging in "posthumous cultural meta-analysis", which doubtless would bump us a couple of notches in the elitist book.) But just have a look at Stuff White People Like and tell me some of this stuff isn't a dead-ringer.
But I'd like to propose a more street-level concept of elitism, and an argument about why it may be important in some cases. As somebody with enough education to get a job that allows him to sit indoors at a computer all day and recieve a paycheck by direct deposit I'm isolated from a certain segment of the population. I can afford to live in New York, where I don't have to drive a car to work and where I'm already buying "high end" foods at the grocery store (so I'm less afflicted than some by the rise in food prices). I own a computer, take for-granted a passing familiarity with its applications, and make enough money to pay for high-speed internet. I've got a health plan through my employer and access to credit that all but ensures my liquidity will stay shy of desperate, even in tight months. I've got an entertainment budget liberal enough that there's room to pare things down if I have to pay off the IRS or something. I've got in laws wealthy enough and generous enough to fund occasional international travel.
And yet here I sit, decreeing that Americans should learn foreign languages, that the high price of oil is a good thing because it will wean us off foreign oil-and hopefully reduce our dependence on fossil fuels in general, that congestion pricing was a good thing, and that maybe we should get rid of the penny. My point is, what standing have I to say? Or, less delicately, where do I get off?
Indeed, anyone who purports to know what's best for someone whose hardships he's never had to share ought to think twice, and at the very least ought not to object to a degree of resentment. "Obama wants me to learn foreign languages? What's next-I have to learn the languages of every immigrant group moving into my town? Has he ever had to support a family of four by working at Wallmart?" "You want to keep gas expensive? Half my monthly paycheck's going to gas so I can get my kids to school and get to my job." You get the picture.
Sheldon Silver, the stodgy state assembly Democratic leader who eventually defeated congestion pricing in committee, summed up his opposition in two sentences. Bloomberg's not going to charge limos. People who ride in limos will be exempt from a "tax" my working-class constituents will have to pay. Opponents of losing the penny point to studies of other countries that experienced price adjustments to the next-largest currency upon eliminating their smallest. Those adjustments were always up. So what if it's just a few cents to you? The poor and working-class will get hit in the wallets. (Penny proponents: fear not. There is little chance of eliminating the penny in the near future.)
So it's elitist. Now the crux: does that make it wrong?
For issues like price floors on oil and congestion pricing, I leave it up to debate. Climate scientists will tell you we have to reduce our CO2 output
substantially and fast, otherwise the consequences will be far more dire for the planet than a higher pricetag at the pump. And global warming will-of course-affect the poor disproportionately, as natural phenomena usually do. Perhaps people like Friedman and Bloomberg would have done better to engage their opponents and display an understanding of the fears-legitimate or not-lower income citizens have about sweeping environmental regulations. A compromise-any compromise-is better than nothing, which is precisely what we've got.
What about requiring Americans to learn foreign languages? I would go one step further and ask, "by our new definition, is that really 'elitist'?" Was Obama deigning to proclaim, to people whose shoes he'd never walked in, that they should follow a course of action for which he would reap the benefits but incur none of the risks? I say no. On the contrary, most of the manufacturing base that used to be America's bread and butter has been gutted by globalization. And the loss of manufacturing jobs has turned vast numbers of former members of the middle class into the poor. Whether you favor free-trade or tarrifs-whether you favor outsourcing or not (or hell, whether you think it's reversible), there is but one approach universally agreed to improve our prospects accross the economic spectrum and that is education. We've all read the statistics about American students falling behind in test scores (they've since made up some ground, but progress is uneven). We've all seen the surveys of appallingly small numbers of Americans able to idenfity well-known foreign countries on a map. Yet we persist in harboring attitudes toward education that border on hostile. Indeed, the most successful politician in the last decade is one who learned to speak "beneath his IQ"-with a Texas stutter belying his Ivy League education.
So let's practice a little less elitism in the way we talk about elitism, and a little more in evaluating our competitiveness in the world.
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has been calling for a price floor for oil since early 2004, but the current "crisis" has spurred investment in alternative energies in quantities unheard of in the 1990s. Amid the cries for more offshore drilling, leasing more Alaskan lands and crackdowns on speculation, a steady chorus in favor of the opposite idea-that prices need to be kept as high as possible-has emerged. A price floor means that the national government establishes a minimum price-per-barrel-say $100-and implements a tax that makes up the difference should the market price fall below that floor. In 2001 some economists and green energy enthusiasts were calling for a $50 price floor-laughable by today's standards. The conventional wisdom goes that large-scale investment in a new technology won't occur until it can be offered at prices competitive with existing technologies.
If Friedman has had his eye on long-term investment in global infrastructure, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg made two famous failed attempts to initiate fundamental change at the local level with his now infamous congestion pricing. Bloomberg's idea was a simple one: make it so expensive to drive a car into Manhattan that public transportation or carpooling becomes a more realistic option. Like peak train fares, congestion pricing-in its conception-was designed to encourage people to think twice before driving their cars.
60 Minutes aired a broadcast last fall featuring a compelling debate: to keep or to divest of the U.S.'s lowest monetary common denominator, the penny. On the side of axing the penny were an economist who argued its uselessness and inconvenience, and...well an economics student at MIT pointing out the economic catch-22 of minting pennies: they cost far more to create than they're worth.
So what is elitism? By and large it's a catch-phrase we hear tossed around during political seasons, usually on Lou Dobbs or Fox News. (Though David Brooks, I suspect out of guilt more than anything else, has been know to use it on occasion.) Colloquially "elitism" is understood to mean values held by a segment of the population more educated, liberal, and light-in-the-loafers than-say-the followers of NASCAR. Dobbs, for his part, went to work on Obama after the "foreign languages" speech, calling it elitist and asking citizens to demand of their congressman that English be made the official language of the U.S.
Who are elitists? One imagines a littany akin to "you might be a redneck if..."-an elitist acid test, and indeed the genesis and popularity of websites like "stuff white people like" indicates the label might not be totally undeserved. (Do you brag about not owning a television? Does your dream home include at least one piece of modernist furniture?) Complicating things somewhat is the fact that most modern purveyors of the term, almost to a one, seem to fit the definition (see: Brooks, David or Coulter, Ann). David Brooks may well be a special case, devoting some columns to assailing elitism (Obama's bowling, that salad bar at the Applebees) and just as many participating in it (the rise of the educated class/education as the new cultural wedge, rich people's kids are better at interacting in the world, modern rich work harder than modern poor). By simultaneously participating in and criticizing a culture, he's engaging in "post modernism" and as such likely deserves accolades from the elitists.
So we can go to work on the term with a pickaxe, as Thomas Frank, Paul Krugman and many others have done-dissecting the real makeup of our culture: The fact that the upper class is more likely to vote according to its religious views than the working class. The cars/houses/dress/salary of the people making money by selling us "red America." (And in so doing we'd be engaging in "posthumous cultural meta-analysis", which doubtless would bump us a couple of notches in the elitist book.) But just have a look at Stuff White People Like and tell me some of this stuff isn't a dead-ringer.
But I'd like to propose a more street-level concept of elitism, and an argument about why it may be important in some cases. As somebody with enough education to get a job that allows him to sit indoors at a computer all day and recieve a paycheck by direct deposit I'm isolated from a certain segment of the population. I can afford to live in New York, where I don't have to drive a car to work and where I'm already buying "high end" foods at the grocery store (so I'm less afflicted than some by the rise in food prices). I own a computer, take for-granted a passing familiarity with its applications, and make enough money to pay for high-speed internet. I've got a health plan through my employer and access to credit that all but ensures my liquidity will stay shy of desperate, even in tight months. I've got an entertainment budget liberal enough that there's room to pare things down if I have to pay off the IRS or something. I've got in laws wealthy enough and generous enough to fund occasional international travel.
And yet here I sit, decreeing that Americans should learn foreign languages, that the high price of oil is a good thing because it will wean us off foreign oil-and hopefully reduce our dependence on fossil fuels in general, that congestion pricing was a good thing, and that maybe we should get rid of the penny. My point is, what standing have I to say? Or, less delicately, where do I get off?
Indeed, anyone who purports to know what's best for someone whose hardships he's never had to share ought to think twice, and at the very least ought not to object to a degree of resentment. "Obama wants me to learn foreign languages? What's next-I have to learn the languages of every immigrant group moving into my town? Has he ever had to support a family of four by working at Wallmart?" "You want to keep gas expensive? Half my monthly paycheck's going to gas so I can get my kids to school and get to my job." You get the picture.
Sheldon Silver, the stodgy state assembly Democratic leader who eventually defeated congestion pricing in committee, summed up his opposition in two sentences. Bloomberg's not going to charge limos. People who ride in limos will be exempt from a "tax" my working-class constituents will have to pay. Opponents of losing the penny point to studies of other countries that experienced price adjustments to the next-largest currency upon eliminating their smallest. Those adjustments were always up. So what if it's just a few cents to you? The poor and working-class will get hit in the wallets. (Penny proponents: fear not. There is little chance of eliminating the penny in the near future.)
So it's elitist. Now the crux: does that make it wrong?
For issues like price floors on oil and congestion pricing, I leave it up to debate. Climate scientists will tell you we have to reduce our CO2 output
substantially and fast, otherwise the consequences will be far more dire for the planet than a higher pricetag at the pump. And global warming will-of course-affect the poor disproportionately, as natural phenomena usually do. Perhaps people like Friedman and Bloomberg would have done better to engage their opponents and display an understanding of the fears-legitimate or not-lower income citizens have about sweeping environmental regulations. A compromise-any compromise-is better than nothing, which is precisely what we've got.
What about requiring Americans to learn foreign languages? I would go one step further and ask, "by our new definition, is that really 'elitist'?" Was Obama deigning to proclaim, to people whose shoes he'd never walked in, that they should follow a course of action for which he would reap the benefits but incur none of the risks? I say no. On the contrary, most of the manufacturing base that used to be America's bread and butter has been gutted by globalization. And the loss of manufacturing jobs has turned vast numbers of former members of the middle class into the poor. Whether you favor free-trade or tarrifs-whether you favor outsourcing or not (or hell, whether you think it's reversible), there is but one approach universally agreed to improve our prospects accross the economic spectrum and that is education. We've all read the statistics about American students falling behind in test scores (they've since made up some ground, but progress is uneven). We've all seen the surveys of appallingly small numbers of Americans able to idenfity well-known foreign countries on a map. Yet we persist in harboring attitudes toward education that border on hostile. Indeed, the most successful politician in the last decade is one who learned to speak "beneath his IQ"-with a Texas stutter belying his Ivy League education.
So let's practice a little less elitism in the way we talk about elitism, and a little more in evaluating our competitiveness in the world.
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Prolifism or Proliferation
I'm challenging myself to write something new every day, even if it's inconsequential. I think that's the only way to eliminate the last throes of writer's block.
Such a paradox, this artist's continuum between stagefright and vanity. Fellow performance artists will know what I'm talking about. Others might be like, "huh?" In the same way effective writing requires first that you abandon all inhibition about what you write, then later narrow the scope with "taste", so performance requires you to shed your fear of looking bad, but later to look good anyway. Actually socializing's a little like that, too. At first you choose your words carefully out of fear of embarrassment. Later, often mid-college-career and fueled by a couple of drinks you say anything that comes to mind, which can be liberating. You think you're being cool because you're being "straight." Finally, you again choose your words carefully, not because you're afraid of what people will think but because you're sensitive to the needs of people around you.
Hah. Ideally at least. In my case it depends heavily on context, how much sleep I've had the previous night, how much I've had to drink, etc.
But the idea of the "overshare" in blogs is compelling. People who want to put every detail of themselves out there because it's somehow liberating. To me that smacks of the "undergrad college" thing - you're reacting against having to hold your tongue for the first quarter of your life. But oversharing is different than compelling writing, for one key reason: oversharing is by definition about the author. Just like that girl you dared yourself to ask for her number the summer between freshman and sophomore year it's really not about the recipient of your writings-it's about YOU. And a great many blog readers might be willing to humor us while we work out our angst via diary pages open to anyone with a computer, and good for them. What good writing seems to have is ubiquity. A focus turned outward-something that touches a chord in the reader where he/she can say "that's me." When I read great writing it can be self referential, but the author is viewing him/herself in a larger context.
Performance, for me, seems to follow a very similar arc. (And once again it's not like a 12-step program.) From straight up stage fright one progresses to a general ease "being him/herself" in front of the audience. In my case early on that meant a comfort level with showcasing myself-a pretty selfish way of being. Finally, one hopes to achieve a more selfless stage presence where the wall between the performer and audience disappears (or so we pretend) and the entire thing becomes more interactive. That's the goal.
Recognizing that to get to that Shangri-La the artist has to have built up a comfort level being essentially naked in front of the audience goes a long way to explaining the psychology though. It requires a little-not too much-narcicism-a greater than usual willingness to allow people to see aspects of yourself you think are flaws, and finally a willingness to laugh at oneself. So you'll find me weekly onstage at the Needle, practicing the performance end, and-depending on how long I keep it up-daily here on the old blog.
Such a paradox, this artist's continuum between stagefright and vanity. Fellow performance artists will know what I'm talking about. Others might be like, "huh?" In the same way effective writing requires first that you abandon all inhibition about what you write, then later narrow the scope with "taste", so performance requires you to shed your fear of looking bad, but later to look good anyway. Actually socializing's a little like that, too. At first you choose your words carefully out of fear of embarrassment. Later, often mid-college-career and fueled by a couple of drinks you say anything that comes to mind, which can be liberating. You think you're being cool because you're being "straight." Finally, you again choose your words carefully, not because you're afraid of what people will think but because you're sensitive to the needs of people around you.
Hah. Ideally at least. In my case it depends heavily on context, how much sleep I've had the previous night, how much I've had to drink, etc.
But the idea of the "overshare" in blogs is compelling. People who want to put every detail of themselves out there because it's somehow liberating. To me that smacks of the "undergrad college" thing - you're reacting against having to hold your tongue for the first quarter of your life. But oversharing is different than compelling writing, for one key reason: oversharing is by definition about the author. Just like that girl you dared yourself to ask for her number the summer between freshman and sophomore year it's really not about the recipient of your writings-it's about YOU. And a great many blog readers might be willing to humor us while we work out our angst via diary pages open to anyone with a computer, and good for them. What good writing seems to have is ubiquity. A focus turned outward-something that touches a chord in the reader where he/she can say "that's me." When I read great writing it can be self referential, but the author is viewing him/herself in a larger context.
Performance, for me, seems to follow a very similar arc. (And once again it's not like a 12-step program.) From straight up stage fright one progresses to a general ease "being him/herself" in front of the audience. In my case early on that meant a comfort level with showcasing myself-a pretty selfish way of being. Finally, one hopes to achieve a more selfless stage presence where the wall between the performer and audience disappears (or so we pretend) and the entire thing becomes more interactive. That's the goal.
Recognizing that to get to that Shangri-La the artist has to have built up a comfort level being essentially naked in front of the audience goes a long way to explaining the psychology though. It requires a little-not too much-narcicism-a greater than usual willingness to allow people to see aspects of yourself you think are flaws, and finally a willingness to laugh at oneself. So you'll find me weekly onstage at the Needle, practicing the performance end, and-depending on how long I keep it up-daily here on the old blog.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Tierd as What? My Homage to Sleep Deprivation
I decided to leave that truly unintentional misspelling of "tired" up there as a testament to its own self-evidence. God that sentence was exhausting to write.
Expecting a treatise on insomnia? Here it is: try to get enough sleep. Consistently. People will tell you you can acclimate to six or seven hours a night but studies tell a different story. (Though it may be true a consistent six hours for five days and the inevitable deficit reduction over the weekend is more healthy than a 72 hour bender followed by three consecutive nights of twelve hours.)
To me nothing reveals the fragility of the human sleep cycle as vividly as jet lag. Think you can adapt your patterns on a whim? Try traveling halfway around the world. You'll lose weight because you've got no appetite at the times your body thinks it's supposed to be asleep. For the first few days 3 or 4 in the afternoon will roll around and you'll feel a fatigue comparable to completing a 16-hour shift at the coalmine and half a bottle of Robitussin. You adjust after a week or so, but only partly. Your body's need to rejuvenate has joined forces with the hormone-generating effects of sunlight to give you something resembling a sleep cycle. But you'll still feel inexplicably groggy mid-afternoon and have zero appetite between 9am and 6 all the while visibly losing weight.
Those are the effects to those of us with the luxury to sit back and observe them-that is those of us on leisure travel. To business people and diplomats such physical phenomena are par for the course. Studies have shown that people deprived of deep sleep (but otherwise sleeping a healthy amount of time per night) for a week can end up in a pre-diabetic state. But those guys are doing it for a living.
Today I have no such excuses. Last night I got to bed at a reasonable hour. Our bedroom was a comfortable temperature. Sheets changed recently, giving off the comforting detergent scent I remember from childhood. Dark. There was no caffeine buzz working its way through my system giving rise to racing heartbeat even as eyes grew heavy. There was just utter indifference to sleep.
Lately I feel like I'm navigating the workaday world in a half-conscious haze. One of the most interesting things about sleep deprivation is that anything requiring more rumination than a yes/no decision becomes a daunting mental puzzle. And any physical task more demanding than walking down the street without falling over may as well be jumping hurdles in roller skates. Deft ascension of the escalators in the 53rd St E train station wearing a bag and carrying a paper and your lunch? Throw in a corps of other commuters whose desire to get in front of you by any means necessary apparently exceeds by orders of magnitude their need to continue their quick pace once they do. The funniest part is they're all giving you about the same look you're giving them. Something like, "I just made it up 13 steps in this sticky heat before colliding with you and now I'm supposed to summon the energy to say 'sorry?'"
To make matters still more entertaining sleep dep apparently affects my warm-weather practice of street jogging in much the way it affects wary drivers. I collided this morning with a bald man in a black polo shirt who had been taking a tight tack around a blind corner. He managed to push me away and glare-I managed a mumbled "sorry." I sometimes wonder about the cost/benefit of urban jogging-It probably exercises your heart but with the fight-or-flight stress responses flaring up every time a baby carriage gets in your way at a bottleneck its effect on stress reduction is debatable. The only reason I started street running again in the first place was that I was falling asleep on the treadmill and needed motivation-like changing scenery and the compelling need to avoid being hit by a bus-to stay awake and finish the run.
Finally, two truisms about sleep dep that are always helpful to remember the next time you're getting zombie eyes waiting for your computer to retrieve a file or...finish...booting up (hee hee). One--those mind-bending effects of the four hours you got Thursday night--the fatigue that had you drifting off in the boardroom--seems to melt precipitously away with the arrival of happy hour. Which may suggest the mind's ability to subvert the body is greater than we realise. Second...I can't remember second.
Expecting a treatise on insomnia? Here it is: try to get enough sleep. Consistently. People will tell you you can acclimate to six or seven hours a night but studies tell a different story. (Though it may be true a consistent six hours for five days and the inevitable deficit reduction over the weekend is more healthy than a 72 hour bender followed by three consecutive nights of twelve hours.)
To me nothing reveals the fragility of the human sleep cycle as vividly as jet lag. Think you can adapt your patterns on a whim? Try traveling halfway around the world. You'll lose weight because you've got no appetite at the times your body thinks it's supposed to be asleep. For the first few days 3 or 4 in the afternoon will roll around and you'll feel a fatigue comparable to completing a 16-hour shift at the coalmine and half a bottle of Robitussin. You adjust after a week or so, but only partly. Your body's need to rejuvenate has joined forces with the hormone-generating effects of sunlight to give you something resembling a sleep cycle. But you'll still feel inexplicably groggy mid-afternoon and have zero appetite between 9am and 6 all the while visibly losing weight.
Those are the effects to those of us with the luxury to sit back and observe them-that is those of us on leisure travel. To business people and diplomats such physical phenomena are par for the course. Studies have shown that people deprived of deep sleep (but otherwise sleeping a healthy amount of time per night) for a week can end up in a pre-diabetic state. But those guys are doing it for a living.
Today I have no such excuses. Last night I got to bed at a reasonable hour. Our bedroom was a comfortable temperature. Sheets changed recently, giving off the comforting detergent scent I remember from childhood. Dark. There was no caffeine buzz working its way through my system giving rise to racing heartbeat even as eyes grew heavy. There was just utter indifference to sleep.
Lately I feel like I'm navigating the workaday world in a half-conscious haze. One of the most interesting things about sleep deprivation is that anything requiring more rumination than a yes/no decision becomes a daunting mental puzzle. And any physical task more demanding than walking down the street without falling over may as well be jumping hurdles in roller skates. Deft ascension of the escalators in the 53rd St E train station wearing a bag and carrying a paper and your lunch? Throw in a corps of other commuters whose desire to get in front of you by any means necessary apparently exceeds by orders of magnitude their need to continue their quick pace once they do. The funniest part is they're all giving you about the same look you're giving them. Something like, "I just made it up 13 steps in this sticky heat before colliding with you and now I'm supposed to summon the energy to say 'sorry?'"
To make matters still more entertaining sleep dep apparently affects my warm-weather practice of street jogging in much the way it affects wary drivers. I collided this morning with a bald man in a black polo shirt who had been taking a tight tack around a blind corner. He managed to push me away and glare-I managed a mumbled "sorry." I sometimes wonder about the cost/benefit of urban jogging-It probably exercises your heart but with the fight-or-flight stress responses flaring up every time a baby carriage gets in your way at a bottleneck its effect on stress reduction is debatable. The only reason I started street running again in the first place was that I was falling asleep on the treadmill and needed motivation-like changing scenery and the compelling need to avoid being hit by a bus-to stay awake and finish the run.
Finally, two truisms about sleep dep that are always helpful to remember the next time you're getting zombie eyes waiting for your computer to retrieve a file or...finish...booting up (hee hee). One--those mind-bending effects of the four hours you got Thursday night--the fatigue that had you drifting off in the boardroom--seems to melt precipitously away with the arrival of happy hour. Which may suggest the mind's ability to subvert the body is greater than we realise. Second...I can't remember second.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
China and the Credibility Gap
I originally posted the following on April 17. Since then two big events have occurred: The American Censorship incident, and Grace Wang. Both change the terms of the debate a little, but in my view maintain the essential balance. I'll update soon.
I also wish to make a correction-in the 9th paragraph I imply that many Chinese citizens under 20 are not aware of the full scope of events that occurred at Tiananmen in 1989. My source was the PBS documentary The Tank Man. After reading accounts of Grace Wang's persecution I'm now convinced my belief was naive, and that most Chinese of any age know exactly what happened at Tiananmen. I acknowledge that it undermines my argument somewhat. As I've said, expect updates soon.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I can be silent no longer about the China/Tibet issue. (So allow me to "broadcast" it to the world on my blog, which gets 1 view on good days.)
Today I read an article in the Times that a prominent Tibetan pop star and news reporter was led away by plain-clothes police and not heard from by her husband for weeks after that.
A few weeks ago, Nick Kristof solicited the opinions of Chinese readers about the ongoing crisis in Tibet and its effect on the Olympic torch relay. A slough of writers answered him on quite frank terms. Many Chinese believe Tibet has always been theirs, that the Tibetan people lived as feudal slaves before the Communist Party liberated them in 1950, and that the Dalai Lama secretly organized the protests-protests they believe wreaked havoc on Lhasa and resulted in many deaths and untold damage. Many also believe that the west continues to harbor ulterior motives in discrediting China-ever since the open-door policy, they say, we've stopped at nothing to undermine them. Among the more troubling allegations was that that CNN played a years-old video reel of a crackdown in India as it relayed the "west's version" of events in Lhasa. (CNN has never been a particularly credible source, but if this is true it undermines them substantially.)
Other legitimate "push backs" included the U.S. government's under-the-table complicity with China (who is basically financing our national debt right now) and "equally" dirty hands with respect to human rights. Such comments were stinging to read, as I have no response save shame. It was, after all, Yahoo that cooperated with Chinese authorities to make the cyber-censorship we Americans so love to complain about possible. An American-Chinese New York Times journalist is in jail right now-arguably because of information the US telecoms provided to Beijing.
Account after account continues to surface about the treatment of detainees at the hands of the US government. Nat Hentoff's brilliant column in yesterday's Village Voice detailed the plight of a German citizen who was detained after a trip to Afghanistan and rendered first to a black site, then to Guantanamo. It's hard to know where to begin-the guy was obviously beaten and tortured. The US Gov had evidence indicating his innocence as early as 2002 but he was kept in prison for 3 more years. The US Gov has apparently constructed a "dummy" prison at Gitmo that has nothing to do with the place real detainees are kept-it's purely for tours and photography by the media.
American immigrants within our borders are not safe either. Last week the Times broke a story about legal immigrants who could have stayed in the US for life had they not applied for citizenship, and who are now facing deportation because of minor crimes in their past and broad-brush application by an overburdened USCIS. What's more, any legal immigrant with a crime in his past who has the misfortune to be picked up by the cops may face years in Abu-Ghraib-like conditions before finally being deported, as NPR reported in 2005.
So you could argue the US has little credibility questioning China's practices toward either the Tibetans or its own. The US government, that is. I've personally never rendered anybody. I didn't vote for this administration. I raise my voice in protest every time I have a chance-I can't believe the people in charge don't see just how much they've undermined America's standing in the world. At the most popular moments of the Bush administration, a little more than 50% of the population supported what they saw as cracking down on known terrorists to protect us from another attack. Now that most of us know the gory details-and have been forced to confront our denial of the basic facts-it's more like 30%.
Which brings me back to the central point. Nancy Pelosi came out early in support of Tibetans. Since then Gordon Brown and Angela Merkl have said they would not attend the opening ceremony of the Olympics. Meanwhile one poll suggested 90% of Chinese people support the crackdown in Tibet. And it's more complicated than simply that their media is being censored. Many are indeed able to access western media reports on the incident. Many, in fact, live in the US!
So why would so large a percentage support an action that-if true-is a deplorable stain on China's already dismal human rights record? Replace the word "China" with America and you'll see what I mean. People are easily swept up into a patriotic frenzy that can be used to justify almost any atrocity. In the US we allegedly have a "free" media, and yet Bush was elected twice (or once, depending on whose account of 2000 you believe). How can I as an American citizen-even one not complicit in the policies of my government-claim to have any ground from which to criticize China?
The same reason PBS is a more legitimate journalistic source than Fox News. In 1989, depending on whose account you believe, either (1) hundreds of pro-democracy protesters were machine-gunned, run over by tanks and escorted off by secret police never to be seen again, or (2) some criminals and hooligans with no purpose higher than destroying the Mother Country incited violence that the Army responded to with remarkable restraint. Ask Chinese citizens under 20 which account they believe? What do you mean account-the second version is fact. There has never been an alternate account.
Visit Youtube, type in the phrase "tibet part of China" and you'll see the official State version of the narrative (as above-feudalism and slavery until "liberation", lots of maps, etc.). The anti-Tibet comments I've read from nationalistic Chinese citizens differ little from the offial Party narrative. My question is-if you're such an independent thinker, how come all your talking points come from the Communist Party?
In the end it's all a gray area, but unlike Fox News, PBS generally subjects both sides of a story to journalistic scrutiny, soliciting comment from anyone involved. (I say "generally" because the coverage of the Iraq war has of late been laughably deficient.) Here in the US I can get a group of 100 Chilean widows together in Unioin Square and protest the overthrow of Salvador Allende and subsequent installment of Agosto Pinochet (acts of our own CIA, thanks very much), and as long as I apply for the proper permits I don't have to worry I'll go to jail. (Though many from Nixon to Cheney would probably like to change that.) When the story broke about the "torture memos" that was all over the airwaves. How many journalists got thrown in jail? Not many.
It's hard for me to flatly state I've had access to more viewpoints than someone else, and thus that I'm entitled to more credibility. I was surprised to learn three weeks ago that the version of events in Iraq those of us inside the US have been getting is at best limited and at worst willfully inaccurate-in some cases 180 degrees inaccurate. So I'll issue a challenge-I went through 3 weeks wondering if maybe every bit of "official" information I recieved on Tibet from US sources-from its history to the role of the Dalai Lama to the details of the present "crackdown"-was questionable. I challenge somebody from the other side of the divide to take the same ride-I dare you to assume nothing you've heard from the state news sources is true. (I guess this is for those of you with access to foreign media sources.) Pretend you've never heard of Tibet of China, and read everything you can get your hands on from sources outside of China.
If you still believe the Party's account verbatim, we'll talk.
I also wish to make a correction-in the 9th paragraph I imply that many Chinese citizens under 20 are not aware of the full scope of events that occurred at Tiananmen in 1989. My source was the PBS documentary The Tank Man. After reading accounts of Grace Wang's persecution I'm now convinced my belief was naive, and that most Chinese of any age know exactly what happened at Tiananmen. I acknowledge that it undermines my argument somewhat. As I've said, expect updates soon.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I can be silent no longer about the China/Tibet issue. (So allow me to "broadcast" it to the world on my blog, which gets 1 view on good days.)
Today I read an article in the Times that a prominent Tibetan pop star and news reporter was led away by plain-clothes police and not heard from by her husband for weeks after that.
A few weeks ago, Nick Kristof solicited the opinions of Chinese readers about the ongoing crisis in Tibet and its effect on the Olympic torch relay. A slough of writers answered him on quite frank terms. Many Chinese believe Tibet has always been theirs, that the Tibetan people lived as feudal slaves before the Communist Party liberated them in 1950, and that the Dalai Lama secretly organized the protests-protests they believe wreaked havoc on Lhasa and resulted in many deaths and untold damage. Many also believe that the west continues to harbor ulterior motives in discrediting China-ever since the open-door policy, they say, we've stopped at nothing to undermine them. Among the more troubling allegations was that that CNN played a years-old video reel of a crackdown in India as it relayed the "west's version" of events in Lhasa. (CNN has never been a particularly credible source, but if this is true it undermines them substantially.)
Other legitimate "push backs" included the U.S. government's under-the-table complicity with China (who is basically financing our national debt right now) and "equally" dirty hands with respect to human rights. Such comments were stinging to read, as I have no response save shame. It was, after all, Yahoo that cooperated with Chinese authorities to make the cyber-censorship we Americans so love to complain about possible. An American-Chinese New York Times journalist is in jail right now-arguably because of information the US telecoms provided to Beijing.
Account after account continues to surface about the treatment of detainees at the hands of the US government. Nat Hentoff's brilliant column in yesterday's Village Voice detailed the plight of a German citizen who was detained after a trip to Afghanistan and rendered first to a black site, then to Guantanamo. It's hard to know where to begin-the guy was obviously beaten and tortured. The US Gov had evidence indicating his innocence as early as 2002 but he was kept in prison for 3 more years. The US Gov has apparently constructed a "dummy" prison at Gitmo that has nothing to do with the place real detainees are kept-it's purely for tours and photography by the media.
American immigrants within our borders are not safe either. Last week the Times broke a story about legal immigrants who could have stayed in the US for life had they not applied for citizenship, and who are now facing deportation because of minor crimes in their past and broad-brush application by an overburdened USCIS. What's more, any legal immigrant with a crime in his past who has the misfortune to be picked up by the cops may face years in Abu-Ghraib-like conditions before finally being deported, as NPR reported in 2005.
So you could argue the US has little credibility questioning China's practices toward either the Tibetans or its own. The US government, that is. I've personally never rendered anybody. I didn't vote for this administration. I raise my voice in protest every time I have a chance-I can't believe the people in charge don't see just how much they've undermined America's standing in the world. At the most popular moments of the Bush administration, a little more than 50% of the population supported what they saw as cracking down on known terrorists to protect us from another attack. Now that most of us know the gory details-and have been forced to confront our denial of the basic facts-it's more like 30%.
Which brings me back to the central point. Nancy Pelosi came out early in support of Tibetans. Since then Gordon Brown and Angela Merkl have said they would not attend the opening ceremony of the Olympics. Meanwhile one poll suggested 90% of Chinese people support the crackdown in Tibet. And it's more complicated than simply that their media is being censored. Many are indeed able to access western media reports on the incident. Many, in fact, live in the US!
So why would so large a percentage support an action that-if true-is a deplorable stain on China's already dismal human rights record? Replace the word "China" with America and you'll see what I mean. People are easily swept up into a patriotic frenzy that can be used to justify almost any atrocity. In the US we allegedly have a "free" media, and yet Bush was elected twice (or once, depending on whose account of 2000 you believe). How can I as an American citizen-even one not complicit in the policies of my government-claim to have any ground from which to criticize China?
The same reason PBS is a more legitimate journalistic source than Fox News. In 1989, depending on whose account you believe, either (1) hundreds of pro-democracy protesters were machine-gunned, run over by tanks and escorted off by secret police never to be seen again, or (2) some criminals and hooligans with no purpose higher than destroying the Mother Country incited violence that the Army responded to with remarkable restraint. Ask Chinese citizens under 20 which account they believe? What do you mean account-the second version is fact. There has never been an alternate account.
Visit Youtube, type in the phrase "tibet part of China" and you'll see the official State version of the narrative (as above-feudalism and slavery until "liberation", lots of maps, etc.). The anti-Tibet comments I've read from nationalistic Chinese citizens differ little from the offial Party narrative. My question is-if you're such an independent thinker, how come all your talking points come from the Communist Party?
In the end it's all a gray area, but unlike Fox News, PBS generally subjects both sides of a story to journalistic scrutiny, soliciting comment from anyone involved. (I say "generally" because the coverage of the Iraq war has of late been laughably deficient.) Here in the US I can get a group of 100 Chilean widows together in Unioin Square and protest the overthrow of Salvador Allende and subsequent installment of Agosto Pinochet (acts of our own CIA, thanks very much), and as long as I apply for the proper permits I don't have to worry I'll go to jail. (Though many from Nixon to Cheney would probably like to change that.) When the story broke about the "torture memos" that was all over the airwaves. How many journalists got thrown in jail? Not many.
It's hard for me to flatly state I've had access to more viewpoints than someone else, and thus that I'm entitled to more credibility. I was surprised to learn three weeks ago that the version of events in Iraq those of us inside the US have been getting is at best limited and at worst willfully inaccurate-in some cases 180 degrees inaccurate. So I'll issue a challenge-I went through 3 weeks wondering if maybe every bit of "official" information I recieved on Tibet from US sources-from its history to the role of the Dalai Lama to the details of the present "crackdown"-was questionable. I challenge somebody from the other side of the divide to take the same ride-I dare you to assume nothing you've heard from the state news sources is true. (I guess this is for those of you with access to foreign media sources.) Pretend you've never heard of Tibet of China, and read everything you can get your hands on from sources outside of China.
If you still believe the Party's account verbatim, we'll talk.
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