State of the Union response

I am sure that you will read lots of blogs on the speech, so I am going to blog on the response. It is amazing that one group of reasonably intelligent people (democrats) can interpret the speech as mostly (with some exceptions):
1. same old same old
2. it will never work
3. an example of Republican failed ideas

And another group of reasonably intelligent people (republicans)can interpret the speech as mostly (with some exceptions):
1. innovative policy
2. a new vision for America
3. an example of Republican innovation

Either there are so many decision making biases affecting their interpretations (see my human factors blog for more info on that), they are intentionally biasing their comments for political purposes, or the speech was so vague that it could be interpreted however you want. I suspect it was a little of each.

effectiveness v social responsibility

Newsweek received several criticisms when it published an article in which they referred to Hillary Clinton as "Hillary" and Barack Obama as "Obama." The critics felt that using Hillary's first name, but Obama's last name shows more respect for Obama than for Hillary. But there are many famous Clintons. Former president Bill and musician George to name two. So it is actually somewhat easier for readers to use "Hillary." But there are no other famous Obamas, so that is simple. So to use last names for both would be harder for readers to process. When is it better to reduce effectiveness to increase social responsibility?

The same thing can be said for racial profiling. While there is a debate over whether using race is effective, there are many instances in which using race as one of several parameters can be used to increase the effectiveness of a data mining algorithm. But if we believe that it is better for social responsibility NOT to use it, should be sacrifice effectiveness to achieve this goal?

The same thing could be said for minority set asides, affirmative action, and many others.

Which is more important, and how should we resolve tradeoffs when they compete?

lack of ethics v good policy

It seems like it doesn't really matter how much time and effort policymakers put into crafting the best policies. Some unethical SOB out there, whether it is a company or an individual or a special interest, will find an unintentional loophole (or lobby a policymaker into inserting an intentional loophole) that ruins the whole thing. Despite the potential that a policy may actually be good for the country, the people, the economy, the environment, our children, or whatever, this SOB will warp it to his or her own benefit and the expense of whoever.

The inability of the FDA to regulate nutritional supplements, reported in last week's Business Week, is a great example. First, the industry lobbied several administrations over the course of many years to eliminate any vestige of legitimate regulation. And then, even when something helpful comes through the court system, they again find loopholes. For example, Broncho-Dose Ltd was forced to put a disclaimer on its web site stating that its product is not the same as Astra-Zeneca's, nor has it been proven to have the same effect. So what did they do? They wrote it in English on their Spanish web site. Now of course, they know this violates the spirit of the ruling. The whole point of disclosures is to provide potential customers with some information that the court determined they need. But the ruling did not officially state it had to be in any particular language. So they could get around disclosing this information. I am surprised they didn't just go with Maori (or how about Klingon) on all of their web sites. Pathetic!!!

What does the public think they want???

In a survey conducted by Greenberg, Quinian, and Rosner, most Americans don't want government handouts. But they do think the government's role is to level the playing field between the average worker and the greedy, powerful, corporate titans. What does this mean exactly? And quite frankly, does the average worker really have a clue what is best for them? I don't mean that we need to be paternalistic in our attitude towards workers. I just think that they don't know enough about macroeconomics to really know what is best for themselves, let along for the country as an aggregate.

But it is easy for the eco-novice to view all global outsourcing and cheap labor immigration to be direct competition and a drag on their wages. But can they see the complexity of the macroeconomic benefits of global competition and comparative advantage? Probably not.

So ironically, we don't want to set policy based on what the electorate wants. What we need to do is establish a set of core values that the electorate believes in, and then set policy based on the ability of experts to develop programs that maximizes these values, regardless of whether the electorate understands/agrees with the specifics of the program. But while this makes for good policy, it makes for bad politics. There are no soundbites that can overcome the Lou Dobbs rants on CNN every night.

Primary scheduling

There has been a lot of discussion recently about states moving up their primaries to increase their influence on the eventual presidential candidates. Iowa and NH have been at the front for years because there was conventional wisdom that the person who attracts the dems (or repubs) in those states (purple) have a better chance in a country-wide general election than someone who wins a primary in a strongly red or blue state. And since they are relatively small, it is easy to focus on them than say Pennsylvania.

But if you read the fantastic summary Cass Sunstein gives of the research on information and reputation cascades in his 2006 book Infotopia (don't worry, it is a much easier read than the title suggests), you will see how wrong this can be. If the first primary/caucus causes a small error in the second one and they combine to cause slightly larger error in the third one, etc., then you could have a completely non-viable candidate by the time you get to Super Tuesday. The money, support, and good consultants all switch to the winners of these early primaries.

Please read the book. Not only will you get some great insights on this potential problem, but lots of others too. I used up an entire highlighter and a pen writing the margins.

Bush promise to eliminate deficit by 2012

This is a great idea. Make a promise to do something everyone (almost) recognizes as important without discussing the tradeoffs/consequences, how you would achieve it, and using a time table (4 years after his term of office ends) that he will have no responsibility or accountability for.

The funny thing is that from what we know about human decision making (check out my other blog at humanfactors.blogspot.com to learn more) this actually works. Most people support candidates based on their values, not the details of how they will implement specific policies they have "soundbited" (my word).

So in the end, we elect people that either have intentionally misled us or have their heads in the clouds that they can achieve the impossible. Either way, I would prefer to elect someone else and I think we would all be better off that way in the end (and even in the beginning). That is why Social Security, Medicare, global warming, etc will never be dealt with until they truly become emergencies, at which time it will be 10 times as expensive to fix.

Anyone have ideas on how to solve this conundrum?