Fist bump

I thought at first the subject line was a typo and it was "fist pump" that was intended, but no, apparently I have missed, until receiving an email from a colleague, the very important news that the Saint Obama and his charming wife have had a public fist bump. I actually had to do a google to find out a fist bump might be. Sad to be so out of touch.

According to the NY Daily News:

The affectionate 11-second exchange before Obama claimed victory as the democratic presidential nominee Tuesday emphasized Obama's youth and ability to transcend the stereotyped political gestures of campaigns past, experts said.

"I would imagine to a young voter, this was another sign that these people are one of us," said psychologist Drew Westen, author of "The Political Brain: The Role Of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation."

Am I the only one who finds this digital transendance just a bit sick-making?

Oh, and Mr. Westen ought to give his Ph.D. back and head to intellectual rehab.

Addendum: The article includes a picture of Al and Tipper making out. Best not to click through if you've just eaten.

Addednum 2: As I write this my high school friend Erik Oswald is on the TV telling me about research at ExxonMobil. Talk about odd.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend

So it comes to this. Washington has not won a football game in over a year. They are soon to have their fifth coach in a decade. I am watching the Civil War and cheering for Oregon State over Oregon. A wins sends Oregon State to their first Rose Bowl since I was three years old.

If you had described this scenario to me back in college when Washington was regularly visiting the Rose Bowl and Oregon State was winning one or two games a year, I would have said you were reading science fiction.

When will our long national nightmare come to an end?

Helping people can be harder than it seems

Thai brothel workers list their reasons for not wanting to be "rescued" by outsiders seeking to do good.

Hat tip: Kerry Howley

On libertarian feminism (and broader related issues)

I had a discussion with Jim Heckman many years ago in which he described a disagreement he had had with Richard Epstein at Chicago about separating out state oppression of blacks from what might be called social oppression of blacks. In the post-bellum south, he had argued, the two were largely one in the same and thus both difficult to separate and perhaps also not that useful to separate.

Along those lines, I think it is a narrow view indeed to assume that the best society can be obtained simply by figuring out how to restrain the state to the provision of public goods combined with thoughtful redistribution. Surely this would help, but it would not be enough. A society with such a modest state could still be a distinctly illiberal state, depending on what was happening with its culture. Social actions can be oppressive just like the over-armed agents of the state; that this oppression takes somewhat different forms makes it no less real. This, to me, is part of the appeal of thinking of myself as a classical liberal rather than a libertarian, as classical liberal thought extends its purview well beyond just questions of governmental size and scope.

I was reminded of this line of thinking by reading this piece by Reason's Kerry Howley on the relationship between libertarianism and feminism. Here's a taste:

Libertarians spend an enormous amount of time telling people that they are, in fact, oppressed. We don’t call it “consciousness raising” when we explain why you ought to be able to shoot up while selling your kidney to a sex worker, but that’s what it is.

Hat tip: Julian Sanchez

A shocking doctrine?

A nice, quick all-you-need-to-know rebuttal of Naomi Klein and the Shock Doctrine here.

Atlas Shrugged humor

This Atlas Shrugged parody had me laughing out loud many times (which seemed to greatly puzzle little Elizabeth, who is the only other person at home right now).

Teaser:

She sat across the desk from him. She appeared casual but confident, a slim body with rounded shoulders like an exquisitely engineered truss. How he hated his debased need for her, he who loathed self-sacrifice but would give up everything he valued to get in her pants ... Did she know?

Pun intended. We are a bit pun-deprived here at Michigan with Jim Hines on leave this year.

Hat tip: marginal revolution

Burtless on the Bailing out the Big Three

Gary Burtless of Brookings offers his views here. He favors a bailout with tough conditions rather than some form of bankruptcy, whether guided or not. Some of the arguments are familiar and, I think, weak. These have to do with reductions in demand due to bankruptcy. These issues are, of course, empirical questions. It would be nice to see some evidence on them from either side of the debate. Absent that, it seems clear that auto companies can offer third-party warranties and that a parts market will continue to exist as long as willing buyers exist. In terms of the parts market, the situation is no different from someone buying a model that is being replaced just prior to its replacement. A simple analysis of, for example, the effect of the elimination of the Buick brand on the resale price of Buicks would add a lot of value here.

The argument Gary makes about the government having already bailed out AIG and other financial institutions is a complete red herring, as Gary, being quite a smart fellow in my experiences with him, surely knows. The industries are different, the problems with the firms are different and "equal treatment" is not a good basis for policy in this area.

Gary seems to assign a much higher probability to the Big Three firms disappearing under bankruptcy than I do. This is odd, because it suggests that he has a more negative view about the firms' long term economic viability than I do. If the firms are not viable, they should go under. I suspect they are viable with new labor contracts and with their pension obligations partly offloaded on the government and partly reduced through cuts. The necessary trimming seems to me more likely to occur in a bankruptcy court, which is not subject to lobbying, than in Congress where the setting of ostensibly tough conditions is likely to fall victim to lobbying by the firms themselves and their friends in the UAW. That is part of what the private jets are for, after all. The counterargument on this score is the Chrysler experience, where conditions were imposed that apparently aided firm viability. More empirical evidence on this score would be useful as well, to sort out the effects of the conditions applied as part of the bailout from general economic improvements.