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Imitation Competence

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Economics, Government.

As his legions of fans never stop reminding everyone, our current PM Mark Carney was the central banker for two G7 countries.

The implication being – we’re in good hands here in Canada. At least when it comes to, you know, financy-type things.

Or not.

A headline from the G and M on April 27:

Politics Insider: Canada will launch sovereign wealth fund, Carney says

Then the first two sentences of the article:

Prime Minister Mark Carney says Canada will launch its first ever national sovereign wealth fund, an investment vehicle he says will ensure all Canadians reap the rewards of government support for major new projects.

The Canada Strong Fund will begin with an initial endowment of $25-billion, Carney told a news conference in Ottawa today.

According to the dictionary, an ‘endowment’ is Funds or property donated to an institution, individual, or group as a source of income.

So, Canada has found a sugar-daddy….er, donor?

Cool. I wonder who it is?

Before getting further into this Carney idea, I did a little research on sovereign wealth funds in general.

First, there are many.

The United Arab Emirates has a sovereign wealth fund, called Emirates Investment Authority. According to Business Chief, it has $US87B in funds currently, putting it well down the list of Middle East sovereign wealth funds. The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority has almost 10 times that.

Who was EIA’s sugar daddy? Or Abu Dhabi’s?

It’s hard to find that out. According to Wikipedia, which should not be taken too seriously regarding anything serious, ADIA’s goal was to invest the Abu Dhabi government’s surpluses across various asset classes, with low risk.

Government surpluses? Now there’s a concept. Canada has not had a federal government budget surplus since 2007, with Stephen Harper as PM.

Norway has an SWF, too. According to its own website:

Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global holds the title of the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world, in terms of total assets under management. Recently, the fund’s assets have surpassed USD $1.6 trillion, a staggering amount.

This monumental size is a result of decades of careful saving and investment of surplus revenues from the country’s oil and gas sector.

There’s that word ‘surplus’ again.

Closer to home, the province of Alberta has The Alberta Heritage Savings Trust fund, established in 1976 under former premier Peter Lougheed. Norway didn’t start theirs until 1990. Yay Alberta.

Here’s a look at how the amount in the fund has changed over time.

It grew nicely for the first 10 years, but since…..kinda flat, eh? I don’t think this is inflation-adjusted, either.

This was created initially by a transfer of $1.5 billion from the Province’s General Revenues (i.e, from Alberta taxpayers) but they then committed that 30 per cent of the province’s annual non-renewable resource revenue would go into the fund.

No sign of the word ‘surplus’ there, just a commitment to put 30% of non-renewable resource revenues into it. I’m pretty sure all those Middle East sovereign wealth funds also received funding from oil sector revenues, too.

So, Norway and the Middle Eastern countries, along with Alberta (if somewhat ineptly), found themselves earning greatly increased revenues from their petroleum sectors way back when. They decided to create glorified savings accounts in which to place some or all of those revenues, so the funds in those accounts could then be invested to create even bigger funds. Norway’s fund indicates it invests in bonds, stocks, real estate, you name it. What I don’t get is – what do these SWFs do with all this accumulated wealth, other than re-invest it?

My pension fund looked much the same as these funds, if much smaller. However, it’s sole purpose was very clear – to provide me with income in my days as a wastrel retiree.  I can find nothing concrete regarding a purpose for any of these SWFs, just virtuous phrases like these:

‘We work to safeguard and build financial wealth for future generations.’ (Norway)

‘Our main objective is to advance the UAE and its citizens. We will invest the country’s income in pursuit of this goal and, in doing so, successfully build our nation.’ (Abu Dhabi)

‘EIA is mandated to strategically invest funds allocated by the Federal Government to create long-term value for the UAE and contribute to the future prosperity of the country.’ (UAE)

Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund invested in a new golf league that offered professional golfers huge paydays even if they didn’t win any tournaments. That experiment just ended, with the fund pulling funding and the league likely shutting down. Did that investment benefit the citizens of Saudi Arabia?

If these are ‘rainy day’ funds, what counts as a rainy day? You can be sure it is not the citizens of the various countries with these funds that get to decide when or what the money is spent on. The most positive statement I can find about this is that Norway’s fund is called The Government Pension Fund of Norway. Does that mean it pays for pensions for all Norwegians? That would be a nice benefit, if so, but nowhere is that explicitly said.

So I admit I find the general idea of a sovereign wealth fund dubious. It is an accumulation of – let’s call them ‘unanticipated revenues’ – which are then re-invested in various ways to get the SWF to grow even larger. That they actually benefit the typical citizen of any of the countries that have them is not at all clear, unless they really are being used to fund universal pensions or a healthcare system or such. That they are so used is not clearly stated by any of them.

Given that, back to the question the above Globe article first put in my head: why and how is Carney getting into this game? In Canada resource revenues belong to provinces, so the federal government has no petroleum sector revenues to put into such a fund. What then is to fund this entity, which he says he wants to call The Canada Strong Fund? I don’t really believe Mr. Carney had an anonymous donor come along and offer us $25 large to get it going. If that initial $25B is coming from government revenues, then Carney is going to borrow it in the bond market, because the feds are running a deficit already.

Alternatively, here’s a line from a later Globe story: ‘Federal Transport Minister Steven MacKinnon said Ottawa’s efforts to potentially monetize airports are in the early stages, in response to questions about vague references in this week’s fiscal update that linked such options to a proposed new sovereign wealth fund.’

Oh.

For those of you who have never been a central banker, ‘monetize’ means ‘sell’. So, Canada is perhaps going to sell its airports to fund the CSF. This leads me to wonder – what else might Mr. Carney’s now-Liberal-majority government seek to sell?

I checked, and the Government of Canada claimed it held some $127B in non-financial assets in 2025. No details on what is in there, but airports would be one item, I suppose.

According to another Carney quote from the Globe:

“Over time, the fund will grow through asset recycling and reinvestment, creating even greater opportunities for future generations,” he said, adding that Canadians will be able to invest directly in the fund if they wish.

Oh, yea – sign me up for a $100 donation to that: ‘greater opportunities for future generations.’ Sure. Do I get a tax receipt?

I’m sure the ex-central banker could also explain just what is ‘asset-recycling’.

[Ok, I checked. ‘asset recycling refers to the practice of selling off underperforming or idle assets and using the proceeds to invest in new projects or additional assets that have a greater potential to generate returns.’ Brilliant, eh?]

So Carney is proposing to do pretty much what those other countries with SWFs did years ago. He is going to start up an entity that will take some money, invest it in whatever and then re-invest and recycle it to make said fund grow and grow, for purposes just as vaguely noble as all those earlier SWFs proclaim. The one difference is that he has no money with which to start this entity, other than borrowing more and selling whatever assets Canada’s government already owns. One could see this as a poor-country imitation of an SWF, I guess.

I have seen a similar movie to this in the past, so I offer another perspective.

When I finished my doctorate and had in hand a very welcome offer of employment from The University of Western Ontario, the ex and I had been earning very little income for some time. The income from my new faculty position would not start for months, yet we had to find a way to get ourselves and our infant son – and our stuff – from Indiana to London, Ontario. What to do?

We put together all the precious metal we owned, which wasn’t much – my high school class ring and some US silver dollars, as I recall. Then we went to a Holiday Inn by the highway, where some dudes had advertised they would be buying such things. A guy sitting on a bed in a hotel room with a .38 by his side (loaded? I have no idea) weighed it all up and gave us $US80 in exchange. Not a great sum, equivalent to about $US340 in 2026, but it helped get us to Canada.

That was an act of necessity, if not desperation, on our part. We had to get through a couple of months without income and get to Canada. Fortunately, we had not accumulated a big pile of debt, and I can’t say we missed the ring or coins later in life. I mean, it’s not like we sold an airport.

Final Question: What is Carney’s goal in starting this CSF?

Perhaps he just wants Canada to do what all the cool kids are doing. Fake it ‘til you make it.

Or maybe he thinks borrowing more and selling stuff to fund a SWF that will ‘create opportunities for future generations’ will enhance his reputation as a financial wizard, and thus win him the next election. Record deficits? Nothing to see here, folks, but just look at our Canada Strong Fund.

Maybe it should be called The Carney Slush Fund.

 

Know Thyself….Or Not

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Uncategorized.

I was recently looking for contact information for a newly opened pub in my town. The Freeps had run an article saying it would open on April 17, and I wanted to call them to insure that it would be open for lunch on the following Friday so that my hiking group could try it out after our walkabout. Alternatively, a website giving opening hours would do.

Well, you can find anything on the internet, right? So, I typed the name of the pub in from the article, and found – nothing. No website, no phone number, nothing to help me in my quest.

What I did find was a site announcing the Grand Opening of the place, but that site gave only a street address for it. No phone number to call, no website info. Not helpful. What I also found on the site, whose only purpose was to publicize the already-past Grand Opening Event, is what I have screenshotted below, from the very bottom of the page:

AI is gonna be so cool. We won’t need to know anything about ourselves – that’s always such a bother, isn’t it?

We can just ask Claude or Perplexity (Perplexity? Really?) if any particular event or pub or food or person or occupation or color suits us. AI knows all, after all.

But What Does it Mean?

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Economics.

Readers know that I subscribe to the WSJ, and I do so because I expect it to maintain reasonably high standards for reporting on economic and financial matters. I mean – Wall Street, right?

WSJ manages to disappoint me on that score regularly. There is an Opinion column in today’s issue with this headline:

In Defense of the McDonald’s Cheeseburger

It’s cheaper than it was in 1948, when gauged on a sandwich-per-hour basis.

Um…..sandwich-per-hour basis? What the heck does that mean?

So of course I read the column to find out, and here is what it means to the writer, one Faith Bottum. The key paragraph from the article says this:

A cheeseburger in 1948 cost 19 cents, while the federal minimum wage was 40 cents an hour. Today Mac-Menus reports the price of a cheeseburger at around $3.89, depending on region. And McDonald’s workers average $12 to $14 an hour (with California’s minimum wage for fast-food workers at $20). Even with the lower average wage, that’s 3.1 cheeseburgers an hour today, as opposed to 2.1 in 1948.

Ok, so 40/19 = 2.1 and 12/3.89 = 3.08, or roughly 3.1.

That is Ms. Bottum’s arithmetic, clearly. What does that mean? She says it means a cheeseburger is cheaper than it was in 1948. I don’t think so….

If you want a read on whether a McD cheeseburger is cheaper for a buyer than it was in 1948, then you compare the rise in the price of a cheeseburger over the relevant time period with the rise in the general price index, known as the CPI. Or, even better, you compare the cheeseburger price rise with how much the average or median earnings of a worker have changed over that time period.

Doing the CPI calculation is easy. The US CPI stood at 24 in 1948 and at 330 at the start of 2026. So, the CPI went up by a factor of 330/24 = 13.75 over the relevant period, while the price of a cheeseburger went up by a factor of 3.89/0.19 = 20.47.

Sorry, Faith. From the viewpoint of a consumer, a McD cheeseburger has gone up in price at a much higher rate than the prices of consumer goods in general, making it a less good deal than other things a person might spend their money on, relative to what it was in 1948.

(Yes, I know, very few people who bought McD cheeseburgers in 1948 are still around to do so today. I did not pick that year, Ms. Bottum did.)

Ms. Bottum ends her little piece with this:

Maybe this is why I’ve always had a fondness for the fast-food chain and its cheeseburger. It’s both delicious and a pretty good bang for your buck.

Well, you may be fond of them, Faith, but your numbers do not support ‘good bang for your buck’.

Now, the calculation she presents is not useless, it just doesn’t tell us anything about the relative cheapness of a McD Cheeseburger today vs 1948. It does tell us something from the perspective of McD as a profit-seeking company.

In 1948, McD had to sell 2.1 cheeseburgers to pay for one hour’s wages for an employee. In 2026 it has to sell 3.1 cheeseburgers to cover one hour’s wages. That’s what Bottum’s numbers tell us, and I doubt that makes McD happy in any way. The reason for that is that the hourly wage McD must pay for its workers has gone up by a factor of $12/$0.4 = 30, much higher than the increase in the CPI over that period, which we calculated above as rising by a factor of only 13.75.

It’s actually kinda simple. If the wage you gotta pay workers by law goes up a lot, then you are gonna have to sell more stuff and/or at a higher price to pay that wage.

Ain’t economics fun?

Full Disclosure: My first-ever-real-job (paid by cheque, tax withholding, etc.) in 1968 was at McD’s. I earned $1.20/hr, and I recall a hamburger being $0.49 and a cheeseburger $0.59. On a busy Friday supper hour, there would be 15 or more pimply-faced teenagers in the restaurant cranking out burgers and fries to feed the masses. You will never see that many youngsters working in a McD’s at one time today.

 

 

A Long Road to Freedom

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Education.

This is a long post that meanders across a number of things, so you might want to leave some bread crumbs as you read. I have broken it up into three sections.

A CBC Documentary

I read an op-ed, denoted as being ‘Contributed to the Globe and Mail’ a couple of days back, with the title ‘Self-censorship has become the safest form of expression’.

The title surprised me, but the content did so even more. It was written by a ‘Canadian documentary director’ named Ric Esther Beinstock, whose documentary titled Speechless was about to be shown on the BBC and CBC.

I have not seen this documentary, but in the Globe op-ed, Bienstock describes what she said she found as she moved across the US for 10 years making this film. I will give you a taste with a couple of quotes from her Globe op-ed:

Words I thought I understood had been quietly redefined. White supremacy no longer referred to neo-Nazis. It referred to things like being on time, setting agendas, and believing in objectivity. Safe space no longer meant protection from physical harm. It meant protection from ideas that challenged your world view. A documentary organization I was involved with arranged an anti-oppression training session. We were shown a pyramid that started with non-inclusive language and microaggressions (eg., asking someone “Where are you from?”) at the base and ended with genocide at the top.

She later writes:

Erec Smith is a Black professor of rhetoric who disagreed, in writing, with a colleague’s argument that teaching standard English to students of colour was an act of white supremacy. He was called a white supremacist by white colleagues.

Her article ends with this sentence:

Because once we decide that some ideas are too dangerous to hear, we have already conceded the argument to the people who would silence us.

Now, let me be clear, I am writing this piece not because I want to warn you about all of this (although I do) but because I was so shocked to read this piece in the Globe. Even more shocking to me was the fact that the CBC was planning to show Beinstock’s documentary.

This was Stage I in my journey. I thought that just maybe if the CBC was willing to air such a film, and the Globe was willing to give it free publicity by allowing this op-ed to appear in its pages, perhaps the worm was starting to turn. Maybe some of our media at least were beginning to see that ideas like the oppressiveness of punctuality and the need for safe spaces were madness. Maybe there was hope for a return to sanity in the 21st century.

Nestruck Turns the Worm Around

Then, a couple of days later, another article appeared in the Globe by one of their regular writers, J Kelly Nestruck, said to be the G&M’s ‘Television Critic’. His article is titled Speechless, CBC’s tedious campus speech doc, rehashes moot debates.

This took me to Stage II of my journey.

As you may guess from the title, Mr. Nestruck does not think much of Beinstock’s documentary. A quote from his review:

It is a doc that essentially restates the concerns of the Harper’s letter of 2020 (signed by, among others, Canadians Margaret Atwood, Michael Ignatieff and Jeet Heer), which argued that illiberal elements of the left were aiding in the rise of the anti-democratic far right.

That’s a pretty moot point now in the middle of Donald “a whole civilization will die tonight” Trump’s second term.

It seems that Nestruck thinks the doc is all old news which has been superseded in importance by what DJT is doing today. He seems to have entirely missed the point of the 2020 Harper’s letter he mentions. He also takes a cheap shot at Biekenstock when he writes:

This is the most muddled, insufficient section of Speechless – though it was also when I realized the film is less about the ideological capture of colleges than the addiction of Bienstock’s generation to watching drama unfold.

Ok, maybe a cheap shot at her entire generation.

Nestruck ends his piece with one admittedly good question: why did the CBC give so much airtime to a documentary that is wholly about US campuses?  I suspect that no one had the cojones to make such a doc about what is happening in Canada, but Nestruck thinks that would not be of interest anyway. He notes that Biekenstock did mention two examples of the limiting of speech on Canadian campuses in her op-ed in the Globe, but then he writes:

If you’re still worked up about an exercise class cancelled more than a decade ago while the world is burning, it’s time to break from your phone and return to reality.

So, back to ‘the world is burning, courtesy of DJT’, and so there is nothing important to see on Canadian campuses. It’s a clever take. If you are concerned about freedom on Canadian university campuses, you must be a drama queen.

Nestruck’s piece reminded me that the Globe remains a home to plenty of folks who think that the only thing wrong with the 21st century is the rise in the popularity of ‘alt-right’ figures like Trump, and they of course had nothing to do with facilitating that.

The UWO Lawsuit

By pure coincidence I came across a story that is very relevant to all of the above, regarding something that had recently occurred on a very familiar Canadian university campus – that of my former employer. It was apparently covered to some extent last year in The National Post, to which I do not subscribe, but I came upon it quite by accident, in the process also discovering a blog by another former UWO prof.

On to Stage III of my journey.

The UWO story concerns one Margaret Munn, a Scottish-born woman in her 60s who had earned a BA at UWO in the 90s, and returned there in 2022 to get a teaching degree. Here is a quick summary of what happened to her, from an article about it on The Free Speech Union of Canada website:

In her first week of classes, she asked a question in a course called, “Indigenous Education: Towards a Decolonizing Pedagogy.” Specifically, she wanted to know what was meant by ‘decolonization’ and how it translated practically to the business of teaching children math, chemistry and the like. This question, and other mild challenges to the ideological instruction being imparted in the classroom, were not well-received, and triggered what became a Kafkaesque nightmare for Margaret for the next two years.

In fact, nightmare not withstanding, Ms Munn got her teaching degree, and filed a lawsuit against my former employer last year. Her statement of claim can be found here in pdf form, courtesy of The FSUC. It is dated January of 2025.

Now, this is Ms. Munn’s side of the story only, to be sure. I went looking in the Ontario court system for any reference to this case, and/or a response by the defendant, UWO, but could find none. That may be due to my ineptitude at searching that site. I intend to keep looking.

Here is some of what Ms Munn claims:

a. The instructor of the course mentioned in the FSUC quote above was one Robyn Michaud. According to Munn’s filing,

On October 31, 2022, the conversation in Michaud’s classroom turned to “cultural appropriation” in the context of discussing Hallowe’en costumes. Munn opined that you cannot stop people from wearing costumes and noted that people “appropriate” Scottish cultural symbols such as kilts all the time. This prompted a further complaint by Michaud to Hibbert.

Hibbert was an Associate Dean in the Faculty of Education, about whom you will read much below. I am quite sure that in my 42 years at UWO not once did I think it appropriate to complain to a dean – or anyone else – about something a student said in my class. (Ok, I probably complained to my girlfriend a few times.)

b. Michaud went further. Munn’s filing says:

Michaud then escalated the matter and called an emergency meeting with the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (“EDI”) Committee. The EDI Committee agreed to convene the meeting because the teacher-training program had become an unsafe space, citing concerns about Munn’s “hate speech.” The EDI Committee recommended the immediate expulsion of Munn and communicated this to Hibbert.

c. On Friday Nov 4, 2022, Munn was told she must attend a meeting on the following Monday morning. Here is what Munn says happened:

A two-hour long meeting was held on the Monday, with Munn, Hibbert, Tattersall, and a friend of Munn’s for support. Hibbert advised Munn that the EDI Committee had no independent authority to order disciplinary measures against individual students, but that she took their recommendations seriously. During the meeting, Munn was accused of being racist, colonialist, transphobic and an advocate of child abuse (apparently for saying that she had received corporal punishment as a child and was none the worse for it). Munn was told not to attend Michaud’s classes, although she was still expected to complete the assignments.

d. Students in the Teaching program in the faculty of education (a two-year program) are assigned ‘placements’ as student teachers in the surrounding school boards as part of the program. According to Munn:

The following day, Munn received an email from Joanne Lombardi, placement coordinator for the Faculty of Education, advising her that her forthcoming placement was suspended. No reason was given for this.

e. But the hits kept coming:

On November 16, 2022, Munn had yet another two-hour meeting with Hibbert, Tattersall and her support person. Hibbert advised that more allegations had come in and that she had interviewed students and faculty about Munn. No names were provided, nor were there written complaints to view—it was all hearsay.

And then:

On January 11, 2023, Munn was required to meet again with Hibbert, along with Tattersall and Munn’s support person. This meeting also lasted two hours. Hibbert advised that her investigation was complete and a decision had been made to formally move Munn to “conditional status.” Hibbert told Munn that the Student Code of Conduct Office had also completed an investigation, and it did not lead to further action (there never was such an investigation, Munn later learned). Hibbert further advised that any appeal had to be filed within 3 weeks (it was actually 6). Hibbert informed Munn that a makeup placement session could be done in May or June (although this never happened)

f. Here is my favourite – as in most maddening – bit from Munn’s claim:

During this meeting, Hibbert reviewed the results of her investigation, describing how various informants had denounced Munn for her views. Munn was instructed that she was not allowed to challenge Indigenous faculty members and must just accept their teachings because they have lived experience that she does not have.

I could go on, there is much more. Munn was never expelled, in fact, in my opinion because the assholes thought the ongoing threat of expulsion aimed at a woman in her 60s who just wanted to get a teaching degree was more likely to keep her submissive.

Amazingly, Munn did graduate, but even more remarkable is that Munn decided in February of 2023 to file an appeal of her ‘conditional status’ in the program with UWO’s Senate Review Board Academic. I spent a few painful hours in one of those back in the day, it is the final body of appeal for all students regarding any aspect of their academic status.

Munn won. The SRBA panel unanimously upheld her appeal, ordered the assholes to lift her conditional status, and then issued a 74-page decision in which the Board Chair noted all of the following:

  1. Hibbert behaved as though there was a finding of plagiarism, which was procedurally unfair and therefore unreasonable;
  2. Hibbert relied excessively on hearsay and double hearsay;
  3. Hibbert withheld details of accusations until meetings;
  4. Hibbert injected subjective standards into the decision-making process;
  5. The school failed to inform Munn of the rules she was accused of violating; and
  6. Conditions placed on Munn were designed to compel her to “think and speak in a prescribed way” leading Munn to be “afraid to participate in class discussions”.

The Senate panel also held that “the classroom environment needs to feel safe for all students, including students like Munn who seek clarification and critically examine the content of a course. Students should have  the opportunity to express and discuss a range of opinions regardless of their being in a professional program.”

The cynic in me suspects that the SRBA panel looked at the record, which included recordings of the many meetings Munn was made to attend, and saw a lawsuit looming. As it happens, they got one anyway.

This ought to feel like some kind of victory, but look at what Ms Munn had to go through, and most of all, look at what the assholes in the Faculty of Education thought was appropriate behaviour on their own part.

After reading about all this, I had a look, and Katherine Hibbert is no longer an Associate Dean in the Faculty of Education, but she remains a faculty member, and – get this – a Distinguished University Professor. She had a paper published last October titled ‘Judging the institution: Simulated jurisprudence and the governance of professional futures’

I look forward to reading that one. Katherine’s pronouns are she/her, in case you were wondering.

I could not find any reference to Robyn Michaud anywhere on the Faculty of Education website. But I know how this stuff works, so I went to my old faculty of social science, wherein resides the Indigenous Studies program. No mention of her on that website, either. Last chance, I used the U’s person search feature and got a hit. She is listed as Ms Robyn Michaud, and supposedly is affiliated with the Faculty of Education, with the following job title: Lecturer, Visiting Appointment (Indigenous Teaching Scholar Secondment).

An office is listed also, but I don’t plan to go looking for her. Although she is still listed in the Directory of the Education Faculty, she does not appear on the Faculty Profiles page. Pity, I would really like to have checked out what she gets up to when she is not intimidating students.

Conclusion

The Munn vs UWO debacle illustrates clearly that Canadian Universities and other ‘elite’ organizations have a long way to go before I will feel like the worm has really turned away from what Bienstock writes about in her Globe op-ed and apparently filmed in her documentary. And, J Kelly Nestruck is the one who needs to return to reality. I suspect it is not a reality he is prepared to acknowledge. Most disturbingly, it is precisely the supposed educators of our educators, like Hibbert and Michaud, who are most to blame for all this. The list of findings by the SRBA in Munn’s case should make everyone at UWO ashamed. However, I am sure no one in that entire organization but the lawyers and the parties involved know about them.

Postscript

I alluded above to my discovery of a blog by another UWO prof – it’s called Mulcahy’s Miscellany and you can check it out here. I only know he’s a retired UWO prof because he mentioned it in passing in one post. He has a post on his site about the Munn affair at UWO, so like me he keeps up with the goings on there. Our blogs are quite different. One thing you will find on his site is a bunch of posts about the history of London, Ontario, which celebrates the 200th Anniversary of its ‘founding’ this year. Some of those posts are pretty interesting.

 

 

The Real Scoop

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Uncategorized.

As readers know, I write about homelessness, both local and general, with some frequency. However, I’m just an old retired guy whose contact with this problem consists of what I read and what I see as I move around my home town.

I was sent and read a post about the problem, which you can read too, right here:

We are Loving the Homeless to Death

Just click on it, no paywall.

The reason you might want to read it is that it is one of many posts on this problem by one Kevin Dahlgren. Besides writing the blog Truth on the Streets, from which the above comes, he has worked in social services for over 25 years. As he says on the blog:

I started reporting on the homeless and addiction crisis a few years ago after many years of watching our government fail in ending this crisis.

There are many other posts on his blog worth your attention; he seems to be based in Oregon somewhere. What he has to say about these issues is way more credible than anything I write.

You’re welcome.

Extreme Avoidance

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Education, News Media.

I read a story in the New York Times (I am now a subscriber, at least temporarily) with the headline

Student Debt Burdened Them, So They Moved Abroad and Stopped Paying

Whoa, says I. Did not occur to me that was a way to avoid any debt. I mean, if they can’t find you they can’t collect, and a good way to be hard to find is to move to another country, that I can see. But this seems a drastic step to take, and I’m pretty sure it does not actually wipe out the debt, so going back to the US ever would be off the table.

Before I get to the NYT article on this, I thought I should go looking for some general facts about US student loan defaults. I did, and found the graphic below:

90 days past due is not technically in default, I believe, but it is the step just before default. And clearly the percentage of these loans at that stage is much higher than it was just before the Covid Catastrophe. So, OK – things have changed for the worse in those 5 years. I could not find any more current numbers, but 30+% at 90+DPD seems like a big number to me.

As to the NYT article, the first thing it does is quote one Amanda Lynn Tulley, who moved to Prague a year after graduating with a Master’s degree in historic preservation from the U of Oregon. She has not made a loan payment in over 7 years – way more than 90 days.

The quote from the story:

“I was never financially stable because I was never taught to be financially stable,” Ms. Tully, 37, said.

Ah. It’s mum and dad’s fault. I should add that Ms Tully is taking a beating on social media, according to a story in the New York Post, because of that quote, and because it turns out that the payment she went to Prague to avoid was $60/month.

NYT likes telling personal stories, as do most media these days, and in the article is also featured one Eric Cooper. He graduated with a degree in logistics and $60k in student debt, but got a job right away paying $50k/year, so the repayment amount was leaving him in tough financial shape. Easy to see why, since his pre-tax income would have been just over $4k/month, meaning maybe $3k and a bit per month take-home.

He took a different tack. His loan was through his parents, so he knew that if he bailed on it, they would be responsible for repayment. He therefore consolidated the loan into a personal loan in his own name, moved to Southeast Asia to teach English and continued making minimum payments while applying for citizenship in his new country. He stopped paying when he got citizenship in 2019.

However, the last word in the article goes to one Michele Zampini, associate vice president of federal policy and advocacy at the Institute for College Access and Success.

Here is the last two paragraphs of the NYT article, all from Ms Zampini:

Ms. Zampini said she was concerned about the narrative that defaulted borrowers living abroad were “gaming the system,” or being such a small minority of borrowers that their experiences shouldn’t motivate policy change.

“This is one piece of the bigger puzzle of how borrowers are managing,” she said. “The fact that someone would need to make such a drastic life change driven by student debt is, itself, an indictment of a broken system.”

Yes. That a borrower would leave the country to avoid a $60/month loan payment surely shows that it is the system that is broken.

From the mouth of a VP of policy and advocacy to your ears.

 

Failing Econ 2129

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Economics.

Sometimes the world hands a blog-writer a topic on a silver platter. All one can do is say ‘Thanks, world’. Then write the article.

Reading the WSJ this week I came across a story with this headline:

Delta’s Ace in the Hole for Surging Jet Fuel Costs: Its Own Refinery

Airline’s 2012 acquisition of Pennsylvania refinery has been called both prescient and pointless

I taught Delta’s acquisition of that refinery as a case study on vertical integration in my Managerial Econ class back in the day. And, wouldn’t you know it, everyone who has anything to say about it in the WSJ article would have done rather badly in my course.

Here’s the sitch. Delta Airlines did indeed buy a (money-losing at the time) refinery in Pennsylvania in 2012. In principle, this seems to make some kind of sense. There is no doubt that fuel costs are an enormous fraction of the cost of flying people around in airplanes. So, the thinking goes, buy an oil refinery, and you can supply yourself with jet fuel from your own refinery, without the markup that other refiners would charge you. Instant savings.

The technical term for that argument is – ‘wrong’.

First, just think about it for a minute. If that argument is correct, then every airline should own a refinery, and every automaker should own a steel plant, not to mention a tire company, and every grocery chain should own dairy farms and cattle ranches.

And yet – they do not. There are some good reasons for vertical integration, some situations in which it can increase profit, but ‘cutting out the middleman’ ain’t one of them.

The reason is not that hard to see. Suppose Delta is flying planes and being charged the going price of $4/litre for jet fuel by its usual suppliers. That is a cost to Delta, and is revenue to the refiners it buys from.

Now it buys a refinery, and the idea is that it sells the jet fuel to itself for only the cost of producing the fuel, which is, say, $3/litre. It thus saves $1/litre, and if it buys 1million litres per month, it adds $1million per month to its bottom line because owning that refinery lowers its fuel cost that much. Its rivals are all paying $4/litre. Advantage, Delta.

But wait a minute, ‘Delta’ now consists of an airline and an oil refinery, and that reduced $1million in cost to Delta every month is also a reduction of $1million in revenue to the refinery. Why? If the going price is really $4/liter, it could sell those 1 million litres to other airlines at that price, but it does not, it sells it to Delta at cost.

The Delta division of the integrated company will have $1million in reduced costs and the refinery division will have $1million less of revenue each month. Not an advantage, just a change in the bookkeeping entries for the two divisions of newly-integrated Delta.

Now, there is a way for Delta to increase its profits at the expense of its rival airlines, and that would be to buy up nearly all of the jet fuel refining capacity available. That would make it a monopoly in jet fuel production, always good for the bottom line, and it could sell to itself at a price lower than it sells to other airlines.

Of course, the anti-trust authorities would not allow that to happen – or so I would hope.

Let’s go to the WSJ article, folks.

Ed Bastien is the CEO of Delta. Here’s a quote:

“We don’t know where fuel is going to go, but to the extent fuel stays elevated, that refinery will continue to help us,” Bastian told reporters this week. The airline said the refinery will boost its expected second-quarter earnings by $300 million.

Bastien runs the airline, not the refinery, so he need not mention that the refinery’s earnings will be down $300m. And of course, no one ever sees money you did not make, not even the accountants. Think how much better Delta’s earnings could be if their refinery paid Delta to take the jet fuel and burn it in their jets. I bet Ed never thought of that one.

Here’s another quote which is just complete nonsense:

Delta’s refinery is run by a subsidiary that sells its jet-fuel output to Delta at market rates. The arrangement allows Delta to avoid paying outside suppliers for the work of churning oil into fuel.

Um, if the subsidiary is selling the fuel at ‘market rates’, then Delta is paying the same price it would if it bought from another refinery. That is what market rate means. So then it is in fact paying the same as it would to an ‘outside supplier’. Like I said, those two sentences make no sense at all.

Fortunately, some economists are quoted in the piece also. They will sort things out for WSJ readers, I’m sure. Here’s one quote:

Ed Hirs, an energy economist at the University of Houston, said the refinery has been a costly mistake.

You tell ‘em, Ed.

Then he says this:

“They bought the bakery but not the wheat field,” he said.

Oh, dear. No, Ed, it does not matter that they did not buy the wheat field, which in this context means that they did not buy oil wells. My argument above holds, no matter how many stages back into the production of fuel – or bread – you go. It does not help profitability.

Happily, there is a second economist on the job, and he is quoted as such:

Philip Verleger, an energy economist, said the purchase made sense for Delta.

“Everybody was highly critical of Delta when they did it,” he said. “I thought this was a really smart decision. The oil companies treated airlines as cash cows.”

Folks, real economists don’t use the term ‘cash cow’. We prefer ‘customer’.

The thing is, economists do not have a guild, so there is no one I can write to and file complaints about Mr. Verleger and Mr. Hirs for engaging in economic malpractice. Anyone can claim to be an economist, and say any damn silly thing they like, it turns out.

I’m afraid that CEO Bastien and ‘economists’ Hirs and Verleger would have failed my Econ 2129 class. As did others, back in the day.

 

Asked And Answered

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in News Media.

I went to the Wall Street Journal website this morning, as is my habit, and there I found headlines for two separate stories, side by side.

On the left was:

Why Iran Thinks it Won the War

Despite Huge Military Losses

and right next to it was:

Iran Tightens Its Grip on

Hormuz Despite Cease-Fire

That was easy.

The First Casualty – and The Last

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Government, Standards.

I think we live in a world in which facts are of rather little importance. One reflection of this is how few actual facts are reported by news media. So many of the stories they run are about how someone feels about something, or about group/person A ‘calling out’ group/person B for something they said or did. Not to mention endless, fact-free quotes from ‘activists and advocates’.

The Prez of the US is notable for his casual relationship to the facts, but our late great Boy King was no better on that score, albeit less flamboyant.

I write below a rather short piece, precisely because there are so few facts to work with. That I have anything at all to say about it is because I keep an eye on Juno News, a non-mainstream and definitely right-leaning online media outlet. They ran a story today that I have not seen covered anywhere else in Canada. (I went through every inch of the Canadian Press website and could find nothing.)

The Juno piece is an op-ed, but it contains a report of what was said at a March 25 update to members of the Canadian Senate Standing Committee on Indigenous Issues, provided by Rosanne Casimir, Chief of the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation (Kamloops Indian Band). Ms. Casimir announced on May 27, 2021 that the remains of 215 children who were students of the Kamloops Indian Residential School had been found buried near her reserve’s former boarding school.

This shocking announcement was much-covered in all the media, a very few of whom pointed out that it was supported by results from ground-seeking radar, which, so far as I know, cannot possibly reveal the existence of bodies. What it shows are basically shadows.

Note that this announcement came almost 5 years ago, The story quotes Senator Scott Tannas of Alberta as follows, along with Casimir’s reply:

“I just wondered, coming up on the fifth anniversary of the initial discovery that you were a part of, the 215 graves, how many people have you identified that you believe are within that 215?” asked Senator Tannas.

“That is out of my realm right at this time,” replied Chief Casimir.

So, none have been identified. The Canadian government has given the band $12.1million to find out what happened here, if anything. No exhumations have been done or even attempted in five years. Here is Casimir again:

“Well, I definitely see this here, it’s definitely not a one-, three-or five-year process,” replied Casimir. “I definitely see it as a longer process that is going to take some time.”

And more money, I am guessing. If any of the Senators asked what had been done with the $12million, it is not reported in the article.

I will add that the op-ed is not, on the whole, very good. It goes on about the appropriation of the well-documented Jewish Holocaust by Chief Casimir, and it is not very well written or argued. But it is the only source I can find for this ‘update’ having actually taken place, and what was said there.

And, so far as I know, the following statement from the op-ed is quite accurate:

…there is not a single, authentically documented case of a student murdered by a staff member at any government-funded Indian Residential School in Canada during the 113 years these schools operated.

As I noted above, I checked the Globe and the Canadian Press website for stories about this meeting, and found nothing, Here are some stories I did find on the CP site:

Grassy Narrows chief wants Carney to apologize in person for comments about protester

‘Absolute betrayal’: First Nations blast Eby in leaked transcript of DRIPA meeting

No difference between suspending and amending DRIPA, says First Nations leader

N.S. premier blasts First Nation highway blockades, calls for RCMP to be respected

As it says at the top of the CP site:

Yewbetcha.

 

If You Build it, They Will…?

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Government.

I offer here a look at two seemingly unrelated stories about housing. They are in fact related, and sadly so, as I think you might see.

First, the Freeps and CBC London have not written anything about this so far as I recall, but a letter to the editor in today’s Freeps put me on to it, surprisingly. There is a housing co-op in East London called Tolpuddle where many of the units are rented on a Rent Geared to Income basis. A story on CTV news from early March, which you can check out in its entirety here, indicates that it includes at least 15 units which cannot be rented out because of the damage done to them by previous tenants. There are photos and video at the link above. The co-op also says it cannot afford to repair these units, and is asking the City to agree to fund those repairs. A number ‘between 1 and 2 million’ is mentioned.

A salient quote from the CTV story:

According to the Co-op President, city hall’s housing access waitlist determines which tenants are chosen for RGI units, but some of those individuals have not had their mental health or addictions stabilized prior to moving in.

That’s led to some chaotic tenancies that attracted drug use, drug dealing, damage, violence, and trespassing.

The story says the building has 134 units, 94 rented on a RGI basis. The article also says there is a ‘multi-year waitlist’ for RGI units in the city.

There was, however, a ‘story’ on the new modular units on Cheese Factory Road on the CBC site last week. CBC found one resident there who was unhappy about the remote location and the no-visitors rule, as well as the amount living there was costing him. Rather typical CBC reporting, telling us almost nothing about how things are going there. A Freeps story reported that all the units there are occupied, with a waitlist of 100 people.

So, we have a significant ‘shortage’ of low-rent units, it seems, the units that exist get trashed by at least some of the tenants who occupy them, and guess what – there are calls to spend more money on such housing; build more units, and repair the ones that have been trashed.

Well, here is the second, seemingly unrelated-but-not-really story, coming to you all the way from NYC. It is all in the graphic below.

A summary of what is in that graphic – I know the numbers are not easy to read:

From fiscal year 2019 to fiscal year 2025, that is six years, real, inflation adjusted spending per homeless person in NYC on services for that population went from $28.4k to $65.8k. Not quite tripling, but keep in mind that is per person and adjusted for inflation. Over that same period, the population served by that spending went up 26%, from 3,588 to 4,504.

 

As I say often, the human universe is a very complex thing. One cannot point at those numbers, stark as they are, and say – spend a lot of money on the homeless and you will get more homeless.

However, it can be said unequivocally that those stark numbers also do not support the idea that spending money on the homeless will reduce the number of homeless.

 

If You’ve Got the Money, Honey, I’ve Got The Time

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Culture.

I think we all go through our lives with certain basic beliefs about the world. Call them perspectives or hypotheses or attitudes, or whatever. I have my own, formed partly from what I read (and I do read a lot) and partly from what I see around me as I go about my days. My hypotheses about the world have changed over time, I think because the world has changed, but there is no denying that I have changed, also.

One of my key current hypotheses is that the world – let’s say North America – is populated by too many people who have too much time and/or too much money to spend. Put differently, they are in a position to spend time and money on things that seem to me – well, nutso.

Readers know that I like watching sports, and I like listening to live music even more. In my day I went to a lot of concerts by talented performers. The Stones, Blue Rodeo, Allison Krause, the Hip, Guess Who, Steely Dan, Chris Isaak, REM, the list is long.

However, these days going to a concert by a first-tier performer is eye-wateringly expensive. A website called The Pricer gives the following info as of October of 2024 for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour of that year.

Taylor Swift’s average ticket prices range from $400 on the low end to over $3,500 for the best floor seats via primary sales.

The same article noted that

According to an article on Fortune, the average ticket prices for her U.S. tour range between $2,000 and $8,500 on the resale market.

That ‘resale market’ is important, as that is how a vast majority of people obtain their tickets to big-name concerts these days. (I’m no fan of Ms Swift, but her prices are only one example; I am not picking on her.)

As a contrast, I saw The Stones in 1998 at Aloha Stadium in Honolulu. Long time ago, yes, but that means they were still an ass-kicking band, and the price on the ticket (which I still have) is $US65. Reserved seats, great view, great sound.

Bigtime sporting events are similar. According to the NY Post, writing at a time when the two teams for the 2025 World Series were set:

At the time of publication, the lowest price we could find on tickets for any one game in Toronto was $1,244 USD including fees on Vivid Seats.

Prices start at $755 including fees for games in La La Land.

Here is a quote from a recent Globe article about the World Cup, coming soon to North America:

On FIFA’s own resale marketplace, a ticket for the final was being listed for as much as US$230,000 this week. FIFA does not resell tickets or set prices on the platform, but can cash in for a second time by taking a 30-per-cent cut from any sale.

30% of those prices adds up to a chunk of change, eh FIFA?

FIFA is among the most corrupt organizations on planet Earth, but those prices are at those levels only because there are schmoes in North America willing to pay them. Hence, my hypothesis.

One must have a lot of ‘spare’ income and time to attend the World Cup, the World Series, or a Taylor Swift concert. But this article was actually inspired by my coming across some more mundane illustrations of my basic hypothesis.

Here they are:

Poop Monitoring

I was reading an article in The Free Press, as I do, and it referred to something called Throne.

I went and looked it up on the interweb thing, and here is a quote direct from the top of their website:

Throne is a smart, toilet-mounted sensor that turns everyday bathroom moments into personalized gut, hydration and urinary insights — no manual tracking, no food logging, no routine changes.

That last bit would be clearer if they had written ‘no changes in your routine’, but – you get the picture.

This is a sensor you put on your toilet, and it – well, it checks your poo every time you go.

Why?

Well, as the website says:

Stop guessing.
Start understanding your body.

Who does not want to understand their body, after all?

More quotes from the site – I really do love the way they put things:

Automatic, hands-free detection turns bathroom moments into health signals you can use the same day.

The ‘hands-free’ bit is definitely important.

Then there is this:

Gut Health, Hydration, Bathroom Habits and Urinary Function scores make patterns easy to see and easier to act on.

I can just see myself checking my scores every day……

I know, some of you degenerates reading this are thinking…..Hey, but…..

The Throne people are on to you. The site also says this:

What the sensor actually sees

Throne’s optical sensor faces downward into the bowl. It is physically incapable of recording the person using the toilet.
Additionally, each frame passes through privacy filters that automatically delete anything that could contain human anatomy.

No, you cannot capture photos of your guests’ jolly bits on your iphone, folks. Sorry.

And….for those worried about their own privacy, well:

How we protect your data

Your data is encrypted with bank-level security.

    • Use the toilet as usual, just bring your phone!

    • Throne uploads your TLS 1.2 encrypted session data to the cloud for analysis.

    • Throne’s AI turns raw session data into health insights. These are protected with AES-256 encryption.

    • Your health insights are securely sent to your phone via the Throne app.

Obviously, if it’s TLS 1.2  and AES-256 encrypted, nothing could go wrong. And – poo data being analyzed in the cloud. Now that is an image.

Not surprisingly, the most prominent thing on the Throne site is a Shop Now button. It’s everywhere. I clicked on one, and am happy to inform you that Throne One can be had for only $399.99.

US dollars, I’m afraid, and I expect there is some Shipping and Handling added once you get down to ordering. Cheap, though, compared to a Taylor Swift or World Cup ticket, and it will provide months, if not years, of happy poo-gazing.

You may of course be wondering if you should not wait a bit for Throne 2.0. Tough call.

Beating the Odds

For this next one, I will admit I am not sure it really illustrates a society full of people with too much income or one with too little smarts. However, I am mindful of the adage that a lot of people have more money than smarts, and this is surely an illustration of that.

To give credit, I was pointed at this modern wonder by the fine folks at Gelman’s statistics blog. As you will see, it is not surprising that a bunch of practicing statisticians had something to say about Lotto Champ.

Statisticians, as well as most reasonable folks, take the view that the outcome of a State or Provincial lottery is random. However, it should be admitted that what exactly it means for some process to be ‘random’ is murky. One might want to say that it means it is unpredictable, but the weather two weeks from now is quite impossible to predict (despite what your local forecaster claims), but it is the result of deterministic natural processes. It’s just that the processes are so complex that we have no hope of predicting them. So, things can be unpredictable that are not really random, but if something is truly random, then it is certainly unpredictable.

I play online solitaire, in which the deal of the cards is said to be ‘random’, but they are in fact the output of some kind of carefully constructed computer algorithm. I can’t predict them, but I don’t think the cards I see dealt in each game are arrived at randomly.

When we try to make things random, like when we shuffle cards before dealing in a game of poker, we are just doing physical actions that we think mix the cards up from the last deal, and which we are unable to control, and which – important if you don’t want to get punched – our fellow players believe we cannot control.

You have probably seen the numbers for a Powerball lottery drawn, they are printed on balls that blow around in a container until one pops up through a chute, to be read by the lovely young lady employed for that task. The point of all that theatre and equipment is so that no one thinks anyone is determining which numbers come up. I was convinced, back when I had cable and could watch these things. There is just no reason to believe that any particular one of the balls in the container are more likely to pop to the surface than any other. However, if one could predict which balls were more likely to pop up, well – maybe one could make some money on the Lotto, eh?*

That’s what Lotto Champ does for you. Sortof. Maybe. Below is a photo from the website of the box in which the fine folks who ‘invented’ Lotto Champ will send you their software. It will only cost you $197 (marked waaaay down from $970 – something about 9 and 7 is attractive to these folks).

I hear all you skeptics out there asking – just what does this software do? Well, it is –

The Advanced
AI-Powered Tool For
Smarter Lottery Wins

Not only is Lotto Champ AI-powered, it is Advanced.

Do note that it says ‘smarter’ lottery wins, not ‘more frequent’.

I won’t bore you with details, you can find it online yourself easily, and the language on the site is remarkable in avoiding any claim that you will actually win more, or even win anything at all. It just tries to impress you with how awesomely cutting edge it all is.

And, the site guarantees ‘100% Satisfaction’ and a ’60-Day Money Back Guarantee’.

Class, what do you think happens if you go to the site and try to claim your money back after purchasing a Lotto Champ?

This is out and out fraud, but what is further notable is that these assholes don’t stop at trying to sell you a random-number generator, they also build fake ‘Review’ websites that pretend to have evaluated Lotto Champ and found it ‘100% legit’.

Here is the bottom line from one of these ‘independent review’ sites:

If you’re someone who plays the lottery regularly and wants to increase your odds with a smarter, AI-driven strategy — Lotto Champ is a game-changer. It’s affordable, easy to use, and packed with value thanks to the bonuses and lifetime access. With nothing to lose (thanks to the money-back guarantee) and everything to gain, this might just be the smartest lottery decision you ever make.

It is tempting to see this as another example of the enshittification of the world by the internet, but to be fair, these kinds of things have been around since governments first realized that state-run lotteries were a way to tax people with low numeracy. The internet only makes it easier to market this crap.

And, given that all the data on government lotteries I have ever seen makes it clear that the players are overwhelmingly from the bottom half of the income distribution, it is not likely true that Lotto Champ is mostly purchased by those with too much money. More likely, those with little money and even less smarts.

Which I think makes it more depressing.

_____

* It’s actually harder than that, because governments earn revenue from their lotteries. That means they pay out less than they take in. Always. That ‘vig’ means you have to do a lot better than random picking to hope to make money above what you spend on tickets.

What is it Good For?       

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Government.

Absolutely nothing, some have written regarding war, but it strikes me that it is at least sometimes necessary. WWII was in that category, I would say, once Germany and Japan got it started. But it’s hard to tell when that point is reached. Britain and France clearly waited too long back in the 30s, but hindsight is easy.

History is full of wars that seem unnecessary in hindsight – or at least unwise – started by various nations for various claimed reasons. What is shared by all wars is death and destruction. A relatively new aspect of this, on full display in the current war in the Middle East, is that so many of the deaths that accompany the destruction are of civilians. Modern military strategy and hardware makes it easy for the military to stand back and destroy things without losing many of their own personnel. Richer nations are better at this, as the requisite technology is expensive, and the US is one of the best at it. However, what the Ukraine/Russia and current Middle East war have also demonstrated is that drone technology makes ‘stand back and blow shit up’ a more viable strategy for less rich combatants, too. I don’t know if that is a good thing or not.

I suspect this all makes it easier to start a war. The potential to do a lot of damage without having to witness flag-draped coffins coming home makes war an easier choice for national leaders, particularly in a democracy. I think that was a key factor in the willingness of the Bush II Administration to start the ‘shock and awe’ Gulf War II.

That conflict went on for a very long time, and of course the flag-draped coffins did start coming home eventually, although not in anything like the numbers generated by the Vietnam or Korean wars.

Memories of all that came back to me when the US and Israel began their attacks on Iran some weeks ago. I felt no sadness at the news of the death of a Supreme Leader who had so recently overseen the killing of some tens of thousands of his own people for the sin of massing to protest his government. But I still felt a big dose of – WTF?

We’ve heard many things from members of the US administration at different points. The calls to the Iranian people to ‘rise up’ against their leaders seemed to me a fantasy. First, what reason was there to believe they could now effectively do that when they were cut down in the streets for trying simply to protest only weeks ago? Second, what reason is there to think they want to in the face of attacks from outsiders that are – inevitably – killing their friends and relatives?

History Lesson 1: Poor white dirt farmers did the overwhelming majority of the dying for the Confederacy during the US Civil War. They hated slavery more than most Northerners, not out of moral compunctions, but because that institution robbed them of a means of feeding their families. None the less, they fought and died for the Confederacy with considerable bravery because the goddam Yankees had invaded their homes. People do that.

Niall Ferguson, a born-again Trumpist, wrote an article in The Free Press on Feb 28, asserting confidently that this would not be a long war. To quote him directly – ‘One thing I can confidently promise about the US-Israeli war against the Islamic Republic: it will not last long’.

History Lesson 2: That was precisely the belief on all sides at the start of WWI. It is something like Military Principle No. 1 that ‘No plan survives first contact with the enemy’. (Helmuth von Moltke, 1871, I believe). Ferguson is supposed to be a historian, and here we are now with the Straits of Hormuz all but closed and the world price of oil dancing around $US100/barrel.

The next two articles by Ferguson in The Free Press were titled ‘Could This be the Start of WWIII?’ and then ‘This is How the Iran War goes Global’.

So much for ‘it will not last long’, I guess.

DJT at one point a bit after this war started said it could only end with the ‘Unconditional Surrender’ of Iran. It is doubtful the US President could recite any of the occasions in the USA’s past where it demanded ‘unconditional surrender’ of an enemy.

One was U S Grant in the aforementioned Civil War. Indeed, it was eventually said that was what his initials stood for. He insisted on those terms because he (and Lincoln) had determined that the Southern combatants were traitors, and because he and W T Sherman had by 1864 built a military machine that the South had no hope of matching. The North had simply out-produced and out-manned the South, Grant had Lee in a corner, and Sherman was burning and pillaging his way across the heartland of the South. The war was clearly headed to a Union victory.

Another case was in WWII, when Roosevelt, Churchill and (sadly) Stalin agreed that those would be the only terms on which they would end WWII. Again, once the US had entered the war, those three powers commanded wartime economies that Germany and Japan could never match. WWII was also clearly going to end with an Allied victory, so they could declare how it must end. The same Allies had also put some 8million military boots on the ground in Europe, North Africa and the Pacific.

Now, I read in the WSJ that Trump is ‘seeking a dealmaker’ in Iran while the Iranian government says that no talks with the US are occurring or planned.

Here is a quote from the WSJ story:

The U.S. sent Iran a 15-point plan to end the war, which centers largely around previous Trump administration demands of Tehran. Iran’s military spokesman suggested the U.S. was negotiating with itself to get out of a “strategic defeat.”

Um, you don’t send a ’15-point plan’ to an adversary of which you are demanding ‘unconditional surrender’. And from what I can tell from reading the news about what is happening in the Middle East at this writing, ‘Iran’s military spokesman’ is saying things much closer to the facts than anything DJT has said recently.

I also read that Israel has killed the Iranian naval commander responsible for blocking the Straits of Hormuz. Does anyone think that will re-open the Straits to oil tankers? The Supreme Leader was killed on Day One, and that did not stop the war. Iran is a nation with a gang government, like modern Russia and China and the old Soviet Union. It is run by a clan in which there is always another clan member available to step up. (Being a gang nation, the one who steps up may have had to kill – or ‘purge’ – some of the others, that’s how gangs work.) The Supreme Leader was quickly replaced by one of his sons (a family business kind of thing) and the naval commander will be replaced by another naval officer – perhaps not his son. I don’t think you can kill the entire clan. Perhaps they are going to try.

Just today, after I had already written two drafts of this post, another article appeared in the Free Expression section of the WSJ, by one Matthew Continetti.

It ends with the following:

Even as the White House pursues negotiations to end war with Iran, U.S. ground forces are moving into position near the Persian Gulf. Marines, special forces and paratroopers will give the president options. They can be used to secure Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium, open the Strait, guarantee freedom of navigation and fulfill his objective of ending the threat from the Islamic Republic.

The White House says Mr. Trump will “unleash hell” if Iran doesn’t accept a deal. Sometimes hell isn’t enough. The president must see Operation Epic Fury through to a successful conclusion—and finish what he started.

Mr. Continetti’s article leans heavily on the US’s failure to remove Saddam Hussein in Gulf War I in urging the US to ‘finish the job’ in Iran. He mentions the failed campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan in Gulf War II, but does not seem to see the lessons of those conflicts as relevant to the current situation. Why Mr. Continetti believes that this time it will be possible to finish what Trump started is not at all clear.

It is a terrible thing to start a war. It is a sin of the highest order to start a war, to begin sowing death and destruction, without a clear-eyed assessment of what you want to accomplish, and a carefully constructed plan to achieve it. If the USA went into this with such a plan, it has indeed not survived contact with the enemy. I see no reason to believe Iran will ‘surrender’ in any common meaning of that word, and the Middle East will be a bigger ongoing mess than it was before the bombing started.

I hate to write it, but this looks to me like another ignorance-based major military fuck-up by the USA. The list of those is already much too long.  I do hope that I am wrong, but that is at this point only a hope.

Do The Right Thing

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Culture, Safety.

I wrote last week that the 6th anniversary of the start of Covid Madness and the coincidence of the two years’ dates had triggered some memories of that time, and I promised to write more.

I here offer you a condensed account of what was for me the most infuriating of the many infuriating things that occurred during that time.

It was in the Fall of 2021, and I was still a working stiff. We had finally been allowed to go back into our offices at UWO (although many of my colleagues were almost never there) and in-person meetings could again happen – with various restrictions, of course.

A big event that happened every Fall in Econ was the Prospectus Meetings, at which senior PhD students presented their plans for what their dissertations would look like. Almost all faculty attend these, along with most grad students, even the ones not presenting. Afterward the students are all sent out of the room and the assembled faculty come up with detailed commentary on each proposed dissertation and, finally, a decision as to whether the proposal should be passed (good to go ahead) or not (the student has to re-work their ideas and come back and try again).

A big moment for the grad program and the Dept in general, as you can imagine, and we could once again do it together in a room, face-to-face. Ya-hoo.

There is a limit to how many of these one-hour sessions one can digest in a day, so the proposals were scheduled to happen over two successive Fridays, with four presentations on the first Friday. A bigger room than any available in our building was arranged for, and we met.

A few days after that first meeting, an all-Dept email was sent out reporting that someone at that first meeting might have Covid. Oh. Our Chair then sent out a very sensible email saying that the current university policy if someone in a class is diagnosed with Covid is to just proceed with the class.  We would do likewise. Ok, then.

Some days after that we got another all-points email saying the person in question had taken a Covid test, and it was negative. So – relax.

Except not.

Before the second prospectus meeting on the following Friday could take place, we got a third email saying that (I will never forget the phrase) ‘out of an abundance of caution’ the second prospectus meeting would occur only on Zoom. No more in-your-face presentations or discussions would occur.

Just after this last email landed, one of my youngest colleagues came into my office, angry. I cannot remember his exact words, but it was along the lines of ‘what the hell are we doing?’

I said ‘I guess we have decided to abandon Bayes Rule’ and he said ‘yea, that’s fair’.

I’m going to now tell my faithful readers about Bayes Rule, because otherwise you cannot understand what an absolute abrogation of our duties as academic economists it was for that second meeting to be moved to Zoom.

The Reverend Thomas Bayes (1701-1761) was the English minister and mathematician who was, so far as we know, first to codify a rule for updating one’s beliefs about anything uncertain in the face of new information. His Bayes Rule, or Bayes Theorem, is absolutely essential to Economics and any other science that studies decision-making under uncertainty. Very few of the economists in the world do not teach some version of Bayes Rule in any reasonably advanced class. I taught it in my Political Economy class because it is central to understanding how people update their views of political candidates during the course of an election campaign. Decision theorists use it, management gurus use it, psychologists use it, statisticians use it.

And, without dragging you into the weeds with me, I can assure you that the only Bayes-rule-consistent decision that could possibly emerge from our learning about the person who had the negative Covid test would have been – ‘Next Friday’s Prospectus Meeting will be back in person and in the same room’.

Indeed, it is really common sense. All we had learned between the two meeting dates was that one person at the first meeting had tested negative for Covid. Not a reason to do anything different. None.

Had I set this scenario as a question on an exam, asking students ‘Under what conditions should the second meeting be held?’, any student who answered ‘Only on Zoom’ would have gotten an F.

But it was my Department that earned an F. And that includes me.

I have no idea who made the decision to move to Zoom, it was certainly not the administrator who was given the task of sending the email.

I did not try to find out, and I did not march into that person’s office, whoever it was, and ask them ‘What the Hell is wrong with you?’

One very simple, almost costless thing I could have done is Reply All to that stupid third email, saying ‘So I assume we will no longer teach Bayes Rule in any of our classes?’

The young colleague who came into my office understood that, every other economist in the Dept would have, also.

But I did not do even that small thing.

So, the minor lesson from this story is that supposedly smart people are willing to abandon their principles in the face of…..I don’t know what it was, but I suppose ‘fear’ is as good a word as any. I am told it was Jordan Peterson who coined the term ‘terrified tyrants’ for the folks who made most of the big decisions during the Covid Catastrophe. They locked us all down and imposed all sorts of nonsensical rules on us, and suggested that anyone who protested against any of it was asking to kill Granny. This from people who let Granny die alone in a room with no family to comfort her.

The Major lesson from this episode for me, however, is personal. It is always easier to shut up and go along, and that is what I did, and I am still kicking myself for not saying or doing anything about this particular piece of madness back in 2021. That it was madness from my own colleagues rather than some dipshit administrator makes it worse.

What each of us does is what the world is made of. It’s goddam hard to do the right thing, often, which is no doubt why we see it done so seldom. But it’s still the right thing. And if no one does it, methinks the world just goes to shit. As it indeed is.

Memories

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Government.

Not something I write about a lot here….or maybe I do. But this memory goes back six years – exactly six years.

Sunday, March 15, 2020 was my granddaughter’s birthday, just as was Sunday, March 15, 2026. The Ides of March. On the following Monday in 2020, my buddy and I went out for our usual Monday night dinner and drinks and bullshit. We had been doing this for years, but unbeknown to us, the world was about to get very weird.

We stopped first at our favourite pub, to find it closed. The publican, recognizing us at the door as two of his regulars, let us in, and said ‘we’ve been told we have to close down tomorrow, so we were closing early tonight’.

Covid.

Remember? The next day was to be St Paddy’s, party party party, just as it was a Tuesday this year. Being a good guy, said publican got his kitchen to make us some schnitzels (the deep fryer was still on, he said) and poured us a couple of beers. He did not charge us for anything but the beers but said ‘Tip my staff well, they won’t be earning anything for a while’. We did.

He also said, ‘This is good, close everything down for a few weeks, the virus will subside, and we can all get back to life’.

Ha.

Having left our tips, we headed off to another of our regular haunts, which was still open (it survived the lockdowns, but has since closed), had a couple there, and then headed to the good ol’ Richmond Tavern, of which I have written here. No music that night, it was Monday after all, but we had one (might have been more, the memory is foggy at this point) there, and then headed home to see what tomorrow would bring. No St Paddy’s day celebrations would occur, the supposed reason for closing down on that night.

And on it went…..

And on…..

Little did we know, eh?

I remember many months later, probably more than a year later, being back in the Richmond under one of the serial Byzantine sets of regulations imposed on us in those days, and the bartender yelling at us ‘If you sit down you can remove your mask, but once you stand up, you damn well better put it back on!’

No sipping while standing.

Poor guy. He was just trying not to get fined. Or jailed.

I think we should not forget those days. The serendipity of the fact that these dates/days this year coincide with the same dates/days from 2020 has inspired me to post something I wrote up many years ago, but never posted. It’s long, but pertinent, so I will edit it down some and post it soon. Lest we forget……

Stay tuned.

The Utter Decadence of The American Broadcasting Company

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Culture, LBOs.

Really, you can’t make this shit up.

I will start this off by saying once again that I watch no broadcast or cable TV anymore, I ‘cut the cable’ a long time ago. Seems like 10 years, certainly close to that.

However, the mainstream media does report on things like the Oscar awards ceremony (whose audience has cratered since 2014, see chart below), and other TV ‘events’.

 

So, I hear things about TV shows. Or, rather, I read them, and today’s WSJ had quite the TV story, titled ABC Pulls ‘The Bachelorette’ After Video Showing Star’s Alleged Violent Behavior Toward Ex

Lest all the feminists go ballistic, let me quickly point out that the ‘star’ mentioned in that headline was one Taylor Frankie Paul – a chick.

A video has surfaced on the website of TMZ. TMZ used to have a cable TV show back when I had cable. Don’t know if they still do, but they do have a website. According to the WSJ  “…TMZ published a video that appeared to show its popular lead, Taylor Frankie Paul, being violent toward her former partner with a child present.”

I went to the website, it’s easy to find, there is a video there whose caption suggests exactly what the quote says. I did not watch it.

I hear you wondering – who is this Ms Paul?

I quote from the article in the WSJ:

A 31-year-old mother of three with more than 6 million TikTok followers, Paul became a breakout star of Hulu’s popular reality show “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.” Her “Bachelorette” casting announcement in September brought fresh buzz to ABC’s reality dating show.

So now she has brought an even ‘fresher buzz’, I guess. The article also says this:

Paul did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Wall Street Journal has not independently verified the authenticity of the video, which appeared on TMZ hours before ABC pulled the “Bachelorette” premiere.

Where do you suppose TMZ got the video? I dunno. Don’t imagine they are saying.

Ok, so – who cares, Al? These shows are shit, but they get few viewers anymore. No one is surprised there are bottom-feeders out there like Ms Paul, the ‘breakout star’ and ‘influencer’, and the folks who watch her and are, um, influenced by her. What of it?

Well, you know my love for LBO’s, and the American Broadcasting Company is still certainly an LBO. Indeed, it’s part of the Disney empire now, and there ain’t many LBO’s Bigger than that. With that in mind, here is the most telling quote from the WSJ article on this:

In 2023, Paul was arrested by police in Herriman, Utah, over allegations of domestic violence after an argument with Mortensen. At the time, Paul pleaded guilty to aggravated assault.

In 2023 that happened, so over two years ago. If the WSJ knows this now, then so did the American Broadcasting Company.

I checked, it is easy to do here.

Aggravated assault, to which Ms Paul pleaded guilty, is a third degree felony in Utah.

But, hey – there was all that buzz.

 

Ah, The Irony

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Government.

No one talks about irony any more. I suppose so much that occurs in the world is so absurd that pointing out irony seems like mentioning that rain causes puddles.

I bet Ontario premier Doug Ford thinks it has something to do with laundry.

From the Globe on March 16:

Ontario Premier Doug Ford says his government is looking into livestreaming bail hearings, despite federal laws that routinely prohibit the publication of many of the details of these proceedings both to protect victims and to ensure the right of an accused to a fair trial.

Another excerpt:

“I am sure Premier Ford knows that the current state of our law would not permit bail proceedings to be broadcast, for multiple reasons. So this is not a realistic proposal that is being made,” Mr. Bytensky said in an interview.

But Mr. Bytensky said he welcomed the idea of providing the public with more information about how bail is administered, which he argues would put to rest the common refrain from politicians such as Mr. Ford that it is granted too liberally.

Yea, well, I think you’re missing Dougie’s point here, Mr. Bytensky. Realistic or not, he wants bail hearings public, not explanations from you or anyone else about how bail is set. Dougie thinks judges do a terrible job at setting bail, allowing too many people out of custody who should not be, and he figures if said judges knew their decisions were publicly witnessable they might stop behaving that way. Dougie just doesn’t trust judges to do the right thing.

I expect I agree with Ford on that, although I am not at all sure livestreaming would change their behaviour with regard to granting and setting bail. Judges, like almost all public servants these days, are mostly committed ideologues. But, at least we would see the consequences of their attitude in real time.

In fact, I would suggest that we not stop at bail hearings, I would like to see a law passed that makes all public proceedings – trials, bail hearings, meetings of Parliament, Cabinet, City Councils, and yes, even all meetings at public universities and hospitals, completely on the record. Livestream them all, and make transcripts of all of them available within one hour of the conclusion of every meeting. Hiring meetings, firing meetings, disciplinary meetings, budget meetings, everything. Nothing should be ‘in camera’. If you work for a government org, everything you do is on the record. No more of this privacy shit.

I will come back to my proposal in a moment, but first let’s get to the irony I advertised above.

In the same issue of the Globe, a story ran with this headline:

Doug Ford says his cellphone records must remain hidden to protect privacy

Last week his government announced that the Premier, cabinet ministers and their offices would no longer be subject to freedom of information requests

This is more sloppy writing by the GM. Here is what his government actually did.

If passed, the legislation, to be introduced in the spring, would quash existing and future requests for any document held in the Premier’s office and the offices of any of his cabinet ministers, such as their e-mails, internal memos and meeting schedules.

This is legislation. Proposed legislation. We have a legislature and a legislative process that must be followed before there can be any change in FOI laws, people. So, what they announced was that they would introduce a new law limiting FOI requests.

Another quote:

Ontario’s freedom of information watchdog condemned the exemptions. In a statement last week, Information and Privacy Commissioner Patricia Kosseim called the proposal “shocking” and “alarming.” Noting that existing rules protect personal and confidential information, she said the change is “about hiding government-related business to evade public accountability.”

And she linked the move to Mr. Ford’s phone-records case: “By changing the law retroactively, the government’s message is plain: if oversight bodies get in the way, just change the rules.”

I see nothing to disagree with in those two paragraphs, but then this is hardly unique to Mr. Ford. No one in public office – and I mean no one, irrespective of party or ideology – wants what they do and say to be public. The Ontario Liberals and NDP will decry this move by Ford, but if they get in office I can promise you they won’t rescind this law if Ford’s government actually passes it.

Ford does not trust judges to do the right thing – I don’t either – but we gotta trust him and his Cabinet to do the right thing.

Bullshit. I don’t. Either of them.

Like I said: ironic.

Hence my radical proposal. I know, people will say people need privacy to make good decisions. Horseshit, people need privacy to make bad decisions.

People will say that no one will serve in government if everything is public all the time. I say that I am not suggesting government employees, elected or appointed, have to have their private activities made public. Ford can have a private phone and an official Premier phone. Hell, I had a private phone number and an office phone number when I worked, what is so hard about that? And if you call Dougie’s public number about anything, your conversation will be public. He’s a goddam public servant, that’s why you called him.

Maybe what we would get from this regime is only people who are willing to be public servants in public.

I know someone who went through the process of becoming a cop. So far as I can tell, they had their life investigated with a flashlight, vise grips and a machete. Fair enough, if you are to be given the right to run around town with a gun and enforce the laws, we need to be as sure as possible nothing in your life suggests you are not fit for that job. If you are one of the people in charge of those people, same deal. No secrets. Actually, I want to give the pols and bureaucrats in charge a much easier deal. We won’t comb through your past, like an applicant to be a cop, but once you are elected or hired, no secrets. If you drink too much, not a problem – unless you show up tanked to a meeting. Then everyone will know you did.

Want to take a meeting with some lobbyists? Go ahead, but it has to be recorded and the transcript posted.

I think this would be great for democratic governance. I also know that it has not a snowball’s chance in hell of happening.

Addendum: People will also say that we cannot possibly have our federal Cabinet on record when they discuss matters pertaining to foreign policy and relations with other countries. I grant that, only because those other countries would not have similar rules in place, and that asymmetry would put Canada at a disadvantage. However, as soon as an exemption was granted for matters related to external affairs, you can bet the pols will find a way to claim that everything is related to external affairs, and so gut the rules at the federal level. No matter, as I wrote, this ain’t ever gonna happen anyway. But it should.

 

Debtor Nation?

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Economics, Government.

I came across one of those ‘explainer’ stories in the Globe and Mail the other day, titled

Rather than paying down debt, Canadians are happily borrowing even deeper

Being by now rather skeptical of anything the G&M publishes on matters economic, I thought I would see what it said. The theme is clear from the above headline; us crazy Canucks are borrowing more and more. Here is a graphic from the article:

The graphic above is about household debt. There is also some chatter about government debt in the article, which I will get to, but let me separate those two and start with us plain folks.

A. Household Debt in Canada and Elsewhere.

The clear lesson of the graphic above is supposed to be that Canadians were carrying more debt in ’25 than they were a year ago in all categories, although credit card debt showed the smallest increase. That mortgage debt grew the most is slightly surprising, as the graph below from good ol’ FRED indicates that average residential property prices in Canada, after hitting a peak in the first quarter of 2022, have since been dropping. Perhaps people are moving up in the size (hence price) of their houses, now. Hard to say. There are many reasons people might be carrying bigger mortgages, but it does seem they are, on average.

In any case, all that original graphic from G&M tells us is that household debt in Canada has increased some over the year from ’24 to ’25. Is that anything to be concerned about? Is that a big increase? Big compared to what? We need a comparison, so –

Here is an international comparison from an article in The Hub which is where much of the info in the G&M article came from, anyway:

 

I only included the data from the most-indebted countries here to save space. What this shows is the total household (not government) debt in a country relative to that country’s GDP, which is a measure of how much income is generated in that country. So, Canadians are, by world standards, very highly indebted, indeed, relative to the income they generate. On the other hand, they seem to be in good company. I don’t think that anyone is too concerned that the Swiss or Dutch are in trouble. Do note that Canadian households are much more indebted than those in the US, relative to GDP, however.

My own perhaps idiosyncratic view of ‘debt trouble’ is when folks start running up their credit card debt. That may be misguided, but here is some data on that for Canada from The Financial Post:

The average card balance per customer has risen some over this two year period, but the average monthly spend not at all, and the delinquency rate – the most worrying sign – is up a bit, but still very low, below 1%. It’s always good to compare oneself to others, so let’s see what the situation is for US credit card holders. The data for the US in the table below is from The Motley Fool, and not directly comparable, but still useful.

The average credit card balance is clearly higher than in Canada at $US6500, and the flows into early and serious delinquency look much worse, but I believe those numbers indicate the percentage of balances that have gone into delinquency rather than the percentage of customer accounts.

Anyway, the credit card situation of Canadians is, on average, not obviously worse than that for Americans.

I am always interested in not just what the situation is, but how we got there. So, I got to wondering what household debt in Canada looked like in the past, and how it might have changed. As so often is the case, I had to go to FRED to get the info on this I wanted, and it is below.

So household debt in Canada was less than 70% of GDP back in 2005, climbed to over 90% in the next five years, and has continued to tick up slowly after that, with some ups and downs along the way.

What about the USA households? Well……

This is a very different history than Canada’s, to say the least. Household debt was very high in the US up until the 2008 debacle, and since then it has trended down, to sit at its current 60-something percent. This got me wondering, so I kept digging. Here is the same info for Germany:

There was no run-up in the years prior to 2008 in Germany, just a long slow decline, except in the years just following the pandemic. The UK looks much the same as the US and Germany. The only developed country I found data on that had that long upward trend was Canada,  although I did not check every country, of course.

So….WTF? Canada’s household debt to GDP ratio is very high by international standards, and it got there via a run-up over 20 years during which other advanced economies saw household debt declining as a percentage of GDP. And, the increase in Canada started well before the run-up in real estate prices.

There is one other fact worth mentioning here. Canada’s GDP, and even more, its GDP per capita, has not been doing well in recent years. This is well-known and much lamented, but it certainly raises the possibility that the reason Canada’s household debt history looks so different from that of other countries is not due to debt itself increasing so much as its GDP (the denominator in those graphs) doing so poorly.

B. Government Debt in Canada and Elsewhere

As you might guess, the G&M article went on about government debt in Canada, also. Here is a graphic analogous to the one I started this article out with:

Once again, Canada seems to be a world leader in indebtedness (government this time) although no country comes close to Japan’s 237% of GDP.

However, there is something hidden in those numbers which is worthy of your attention, I think. I discovered this about a month ago after an evening out with the Diners group. We do talk about many things, and on this evening, someone at the table commented on the massive government debt being carried by the good ol’ US of A. I responded that I was pretty sure Canada was in a similar position, and afterwards went to find data to see if I had stuck my foot in my mouth (a not uncommon occurrence).

I came across some info much like what you see above, which indicated that as a percentage of GDP, Canada’s debt was not much below that of the USA. Vindication for Al…..but there’s a but.

I will turn to more historical data from the ever-reliable FRED to show you that – once again – it’s complicated. Below is FRED’s tracking of the history of general government debt in the USA as a percent of GDP.

It has surely skyrocketed since 2002, but here is the thing. This is debt by governments at all levels, including the US States. I could also show you a graph of just the Federal US government debt-to-GDP ratio, but it would not look much different from the above. A bit higher, but a tiny bit higher in recent years, because US States don’t borrow much. Indeed, many of them have ‘balanced budget clauses’ in their state constitutions that prevent them from running deficits.

Now let’s have a look at Canada. Below is FRED’s historical data on the borrowing by Canada’s central (i.e., federal) government as a percentage of GDP.

Notice that in 2024 it was around 65% of GDP, not the over-100% we saw in the graphic above. That is because that graphic above is for the total debt of all levels of government. Canada’s provinces, unlike US states, are big borrowers. According to the Fraser Institute, a generally reliable bunch of mostly-economists (I know, I know) the federal government held just over 60% of total government debt in Canada and the provinces just under 40%.

Here is an interesting twist on this. Ok, interesting to me.

If there is a reason to worry about growing government debt, one is that the need to service that debt – that is, to pay the interest on it – begins to override other government spending possibilities. People like to say that governments are not like households but actually, they very much are. If a household borrows too much, eventually its interest payments chew up its income to the point that it cannot afford to spend on, you know, food and shelter. Government is the same. To illustrate the point, here’s a nice cogent line from an article in the National Post from last August:

In 2024/25, the federal government alone spent a record $53.8B on debt interest — more than the $52.1B it paid to the Canada Health Transfer.

As the ‘alone’ in that sentence suggests, the provinces were making significant debt service payments, too.

Now, if that debt service gets too big, and this has happened to governments from time to time in history, what can be done? The Feds have two options. One, default, and two, print money. Not with a printing press, but the Bank of Canada can certainly create more. This second approach is known as ‘inflating the debt away’, or ‘monetizing the debt’. The Provinces have only the one option, as they have no Bank of Ontario, etc, which is in control of the money supply.

Oh, and another often-heard bit of silliness is ‘government debt doesn’t matter because we owe it to ourselves.’

First of all, Canadian government debt is held by all kinds of people and orgs, many of which are not Canadian. You can be sure it matters to them if Canada’s government(s) take the first option and default on their debt. More to the point, if I lend money to my brother, and he decides not to pay it back, in what sense does that ‘not matter’? I was expecting my $20 back, and if I do not get it, it matters, even if it was my brother who bailed on the loan. You probably have Canadian treasury bonds in your pension fund. Would it not matter to you if Canada’s government decided to default on those?

A Summary – sortof…..

I started this out with an investigation of Canadian household debt, and the one clear finding from that is that Canada’s households do seem to be carrying world-class levels of debt, and they got there over the last 20years, while other countries’ households were contracting theirs. Why the difference? Right now, I dunno, but the possibility that this is mostly driven by Canada’s crappy GDP growth cannot be discounted.

Canada’s various governments also hold world-class levels of debt, but what is unique here is that so much of it is the responsibility of provincial governments. One might wonder – if, say, Ontario’s government got to the point of having trouble servicing its debt, what, if anything, would the Feds do to help them out? Again, I dunno, but I am confident that no one else does, either.

 

Elon Musk, Herrenvolk, and Representative Democracy

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Politics.

I am a general fan of the stats blog of one Andrew Gelman of Columbia U, as regular readers know. However, I am a fan largely because of his exposure of really bad and sometimes fraudulent science. I would not look to him for wisdom on many other points. For example, his blog has included wayyyy too many posts about the Epstein files, and I believe it is because it allows him to disparage people he does not like. He seems to have a real antipathy towards economist Larry Summers, for one.

He also does not think much of Elon Musk, and I am no fan of Mr. DOGE, either. He is one of too many ego-inflated rich guys in the world today. However, just like DJT, not everything Musk does or says is evil or even wrong.

A recent post by Gelman which featured yet another shot at Mr. Musk seems to me just a bit much. And….it reminds me of an idea I used to torture my senior Political Economy students with, just to be mean. So, another post in two parts.

A. Elon Herrenvolk

Gelman teaches an advanced course in Political Science at Columbia with the intimidating course title:

Rationalizing the World: The Hopes and Disappointments of American Social Science, 1900 to the Present

Week 6 of the course is devoted to ‘Democracy and Totalitarianism’.

Go big or go home, eh? I expect it is a very interesting course. I’d love to sit in.

This course – at least week 6 of it – comes up in a post on his blog titled ‘Herrenvolk democracy and objections to ethnic political representation’

In the post he writes the following about week 6 of his course: ‘ In particular, we have several readings related to “herrenvolk democracy,” which is the term used for countries such as apartheid South Africa and the U.S. south that had democratic governance but with the vote restricted to members of the ruling ethnic group.’

OK, I had never heard of ‘herrenvolk democracy’, and it is clearly a German term and that is no coincidence. The online Merriam-Webster dictionary translates it from German into ‘master race’.   Gelman’s post was triggered by Elon writing a comment on an X post in which he writes ‘I’m sure that’s about to happen any day now’ followed by a laughing emoji.

So, what is the post that Elon commented on in this way? Here is the entire post right from X. Gelman left much of this out, also not a coincidence, I think:

Will there ever be a day a scottish woman becomes leader of a Pakistani region and creates a video where she proudly in a thick Glasweigan accent surrounded by tartans and scottish stuff…announces she is the first Scottish mayor in Pakistan and it’s been long long overdue and she will overcome the tyranny of Pakistan only ever electing Pakistanis to represent them

?

why is the opposite happening here not considered as absurd?

This X post was by someone known as chatnoir of whom I know nothing, and the context is the following. In 2023, Scotland’s Prime Minister became one Humza Yousaf, a Muslim of Pakistani heritage. He did not last very long, being replaced by one John Swinney in May of 2024. I know nothing of Scottish politics, so I don’t know what happened to end Yousaf’s time in office. (Swinney, by the way, looks to me like he could be the younger brother of Patrick Stewart, one of my favourite actors. Make it so, Jean-Luc.)

So, chatnoir writes the post above regarding Mr. Yousaf, Musk responds with ‘I’m sure that’s about to happen now’ and Gelman writes this about it:

I can’t be sure, but I think that in the above post, Musk is expressing support for a sort of politics of ethnic separation, where Pakistan is populated by ethnically Pakistani people with Pakistani accents and wearing Pakistani clothing and Scotland is populated by ethnically Scottish people with Scottish accents and wearing Scottish clothing.

Yea, Gelman ‘can’t be sure’, but the entire post, which you can read here, sure reads like he is quite sure about this. He spends a lot of energy picking this attributed-to-Musk ‘herrenvolk’ viewpoint apart. That Musk is from South Africa gets mentioned, naturally.

However, one of the other things I love about Gelman’s blog is the diversity of people who read it and write comments. One such commenter, going by the moniker of Padang Itik (that may or may not be his/her name) goes after Gelman on this particular post, and does not let up. He writes many things in a back and forth with Gelman, but here is his opening sentence:

I don’t think it’s right to say that Musk’s post indicates that he’s an advocate for apartheid, herrenvolk democracy, or ethnic separation. His response to the idea of a Scottish mayor in Pakistan is not “God forbid” or “hope not,” but instead is a sarcastic implication that it would never happen.

Exactly, Padang. Musk, as well as chatnoir’s original post, is making a point about the asymmetry of attitudes toward immigrants from culturally alien places in Scotland versus Pakistan. I think it was Mark Steyn (I’m sure Gelman would dislike him, too) who got lots of shit for saying something along the lines of ‘If you want to compare country’s cultures, compare the number of Egyptians in Sweden with the number of Swedes in Egypt’.

Gelman is willing to attribute bad motives to people he does not like, and he is hardly unique in that, but it is disappointing in someone who is by any measure a serious academic. And, in the 21st century, there is no motivation one can attribute that is badder than racism.

Still, I am heartened by Padang’s push-back, which did end up in Gelman backing off a fair bit in the end.

B. Democratic Representation

Now, on to some fun on the topic of representation in democracies. The fundamental idea that drives this form of government is that groups of people in a democracy vote for representatives to a national legislative body (Congress, Parliament) to represent their interests in that body, which is in turn tasked with writing and passing legislation. This is a difficult job, as there are many different people with many different viewpoints in any Congressional district or Parliamentary riding. Still, that’s the job.

That job has, in my view (and that of others, too) been seriously perverted in modern times. In the US gerrymandering has been used so that most Congressional districts are sure wins for the candidate from a particular party. In Canada, riding candidates for most parties must be approved by the Party leader, guaranteeing that they will represent the Leader who chose them rather than the people in their riding.

That is all very sad, but let us ignore that for a moment and ask the following question:

Why are ridings and districts defined geographically?

Presumably the idea is that people in a given area will in fact share a lot of ideas and interests, but not all, for sure. No system of representation will do this perfectly, there will always be a diversity of views in any district, however you define it. That’s why we have elections.

Given that, I had a proposal (let’s call it Al’s Great Big Idea – AGBI) for a different means of definition. Let’s define a riding/district by birth dates. Each riding would consist of every person born between two consecutive dates, with those dates being set such that each ‘age-riding’ contained about the same number of constituents. This can easily be done using census data. It would not be exact, but current geographic ridings in Canada vary considerably in the number of people they hold. If any single date contained too many people (unlikely), you could then further divide those folks up alphabetically by the letter that begins their last name. Or, use SINs.

The ridings at the top of the age distribution would eventually shrink in size (old people do die) and would have to be consolidated and eventually eliminated, and new ridings would have to be created for those at the bottom who just reached voting age. A computer program could do all this easily. Don’t even need AI (ae-eye).

The members of each single riding would share one characteristic; their age. In the current system, they also share one characteristic; their geographic location. There would be ‘neighbouring’ age districts just as there are currently neighbouring geographic districts.

This would make gerrymandering impossible. It might well turn out that some age-ridings always voted Liberal or Democrat or whatever, but that is itself not a problem. The problem lies in parties being able to manipulate the boundaries of ridings so that their party always wins. And, the voting pattern of any given age district might well change significantly as the district aged.

The biggest problem I see would be in representatives being able to meet with their constituents, both during the campaign and while in office, because their constituents would be scattered all across the country. That could be done on Zoom, of course, but I hate doing things on Zoom. And, organizing a district association of Republicans, say, would be a nightmare.

So, it’s not perfect, for sure, but neither is our current system. Sadly, AGBI would not by itself eliminate the problems caused by party leaders selecting candidates. That would require party members to change their own rules. Fat chance, I know.

My point in introducing AGBI to my students back in the day was to get them to think about how representative democracy really works (few of them did, but a guy’s gotta try).

One can imagine other ways of organizing ridings, of course. Ethnic background is one, but the problem with that is that it is hard to determine (see my post on ‘Pretendians’). The government knows your date of birth and nothing anyone does can change it.

Income levels, based on the previous year’s income tax return, is another possibility. Harder to do, maybe, but it would have the (to me) valuable effect of allowing only those who file a tax return to vote.

So, readers…..other ideas?

Me, I gotta million of ‘em.

 

Property Wrongs II

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Government.

I got a couple of responses to my post last week about the Canadian government signing an agreement with the Musqueam band in BC. (Folks do write me from time to time.) One was from a resident of the contested area saying she and her neighbours are indeed concerned about what it means for their own property holdings. Here are two quite separate follow-ups to that post.

1. Marc Miller

Marc Miller is the federal minister who negotiated the Musqueam agreement. The Globe ran a story on March 9 titled

Musqueam deal ‘nothing to do with’ private property, says Marc Miller

In the article Miller is quoted by the Globe as saying exactly that. The article also includes this:

The government says the agreement recognizes Musqueam Aboriginal rights “including title within their traditional territory,” which the nation asserts is an area encompassing much of Metro Vancouver.

That sentence, coupled with Bruce Pardy’s explanation of the court ruling that aboriginal and individual, fee simple rights cannot co-exist, would indeed have me worried if I lived where my western correspondent does, and I would not find Mr. Miller’s quote claim reassuring. Nor would this sentence from the Globe story do any better:

Miller says “opportunistic political types” and “a bunch of ignorant people” were weaponizing the ruling, which was about acknowledging rights of one of the “more oppressed Indigenous groups in B.C.”

Call me ignorant, but it might be harder to ‘weaponize the ruling’ if a) it had not been negotiated in secret and then announced only after its signing, and b) Mr. Miller or someone in the federal government took the time to explain what the agreement actually does.

Ok, so I guess I should not expect that, and thus went here to read the agreement for myself. It did get published after it was signed. I guess that’s like a labour contract. You could read it too, but I warn you – it’s long. And abundantly opaque.

This appears in the Agreement’s Preamble:

D. Musqueam has unextinguished Rights and Title within the Musqueam Territory. Musqueam has and continues to exercise Rights and Title within its traditional territory. The existence of Musqueam’s unextinguished Rights and Title within Musqueam Territory is not contingent on recognition by court declaration or any agreement.

Here is what the agreement says about its own purpose:

2.1 The purposes of this Agreement are to:

a) recognize Musqueam’s Rights and Title within Musqueam Territory;

b) demonstrate progress in incrementally implementing Musqueam’s Rights and Title;

c) contribute to the implementation of the UN Declaration;

d) provide a foundation for reconciliation and an ongoing mutually beneficial relationship taking into account Musqueam’s and Canada’s interests;

e) set out Fundamental Principles, General Provisions, and procedures to guide and facilitate the Incremental Implementation Agreements; and

f) to guide Future Discussions and Negotiations of potential future Incremental Implementation Measures

based on a new nation-to-nation, government-to-government approach and in accordance with Canada’s commitment to implement the UN Declaration through measures developed cooperatively with Indigenous peoples, including Musqueam.

I reckon it is a) and b) above that I would be worried about if I lived in the affected area, as per Pardy’s analysis of aboriginal title. But it says nothing specific. Of course not.

A section 5 titled General Provisions includes this:

  5.1 This Agreement does not constitute a treaty or lands claims agreements within the meaning of sections 25 or 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982.

  5.2 This Agreement does not create, amend, define, establish, abrogate or derogate from Musqueam’s Rights and Title.

So, I dunno. What is it that has been agreed to here? Possibly not much – yet – but I really cannot tell.

2. McGirt vs. Oklahoma

Another regular reader (they’re out there, really) wrote me to ask if I was familiar with the McGirt vs Oklahoma case in the States. In fact, I had read something about it back in the day, but had forgotten all of the details. So, I went looking to see if this US case was in any way parallel to what is happening in BC.

In fact, it seems quite different. In a 2020 decision, the US Supreme Court ruled that the land reserved for the Muscogee Nation by Congress had never been ‘disestablished’, and so the State of Oklahoma had no right to prosecute members of that band for crimes committed there. This was extended to nine other Indian bands by a lower court, applying the McGirt ruling, so that most of the eastern half of Oklahoma is now free of state law enforcement. The original case was brought by one Jimcy McGirt, a registered Seminole, who was charged with sexual abuse. In June 1997, McGirt was found guilty, and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus two consecutive 500-year sentences. The Supreme Court ruling meant that his charge and conviction under Oklahoma law was invalid.

In the immediate wake of McGirt, Oklahoma courts began reviewing past criminal cases involving Native Americans, vacating past convictions, and transferring the matters to the federal courts for criminal prosecution. However, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals effectively ended this practice by issuing a controversial ruling that McGirt was not retroactive. Apparently federal law still applies on these lands, as they remain part of the USA. An FBI press release dated Feb of 2021 notes that this has led to a large increase in the case load of the FBI in Oklahoma.

So far as I can tell, the repercussions of this remain unclear but ongoing. For example, in August 2023, the Supreme Court declined to hear a decision from the Tenth Circuit US court which ruled in favor of a tribal member who was ticketed for speeding by the Tulsa police within the portion of Tulsa that was within Muscogee territory. The member challenged the ticket on the basis of McGirt. The ruling from the Tenth Circuit asserted that because of McGirt, the city could not enforce municipal regulations against tribal members on the parts of the city in tribal lands.

So far as I can tell no one in Oklahoma is going to lose their home or property due to this SCOTUS ruling, and no one in BC is saying the Vancouver police cannot charge Musqueam band members with speeding. I guess we will wait to see further developments.

 

Property Wrongs

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Government.

I will start by saying I owe much of the substantive content in this post to Bruce Pardy and his blog, First Principles. Bruce is a Law Professor at Queens U who I have heard speak more than once over the years, and had a few conversations with. When my former employer put forward a new ‘sexual harassment’ policy back in the day, Bruce was good enough to give me his lawyerly opinion of what it meant. (It will end badly, was the essence of his view).

He is one very sharp dude who says what he believes, and says it well.

Some of you may have heard of the recent agreements between our Federal Government and the Musqueam Indian Band. The Globe published a story on it on March 3 which said this:

The text of the rights recognition agreement, which runs 30 pages, was not released in February when the deal was signed. It does not reference private property, an issue of acute public interest since the B.C. Supreme Court ruled in a separate case last August known as the Cowichan decision. It stated that Aboriginal title is a “prior and senior right” to land, over and above the “fee simple” title that private landholders have.

Bruce also wrote about the Musqueam in a blog post titled Ottawa pours oil on the fire burning up B.C. property rights: The Canadian government has surrendered Vancouver on March 4.

You can read Pardy’s entire post here, no paywall.

Here are some of the more interesting things he has to say….

The Canadian Constitution does not include property rights. But it does guarantee Aboriginal rights.

I had a look, and yes, Canada’s Constitution includes this clause 35(1):

The existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the aboriginal peoples of Canada are hereby recognized and affirmed.

Just for fun I searched the Constitution for the word ‘property’. Professor Pardy is right, it appears nowhere. As we all have been taught, property is theft, after all.

What that means is that if the Government of Canada decides that an aboriginal band has rights to your property, giving them to that band does not in any way contradict any rights you might think you have – cuz you don’t have any. As Pardy writes –

Those agreements promise to honour private property interests. But “fee simple” and Aboriginal title are incompatible. According to the Supreme Court of Canada, Aboriginal title is a collective right. It cannot be parcelled out into individual lots. No individual, Indigenous or not, can hold exclusive property rights in a plot of land subject to Aboriginal title. Moreover, a group that holds Aboriginal title cannot surrender the title to anyone but the Crown. When it does so, Aboriginal title is extinguished. If Haida Gwaii is subject to Aboriginal title, then in principle no fee simple interests can exist on Haida Gwaii. Those who own property there must now wait to see what the Haida Gwaii agreement will mean.

Aboriginals do have treaty rights, which leads to the following conundrum.

You may also recall that in 2024 the B.C. and federal government recognized Aboriginal title to Haida Gwaii, an archipelago off B.C.’s northwest coast. Here’s what Pardy has to say about that:

And now the federal government has announced that the Musqueam hold Aboriginal title to Vancouver and its suburbs. In an interesting twist, the area covered by the Musqueam agreements appears to include Richmond, where the B.C. Supreme Court found Cowichan title to exist.

How does that get worked out? Two different bands having title to some of the same land? Could we see a return of band warfare? Of course not, we know those folks never engage in violence. However, people who thought they had fee simple title to their homes in Richmond, BC, well…..incoming!! You’re just caught in the middle.

Bruce gets a tad upset by the end of his post. But I don’t think he is wrong in what he writes below. I was in a discussion this week in my seniors’ learning group about contraceptive policy in the 1950s in Canada and the US. We were discussing what could have been the reasons it was so restrictive. In Canada one could possibly blame the oversize influence of the Catholic Church. I pointed out that the Roman Catholics had rather little influence in the US, so that did not explain similar restrictions in the US. One woman in the group pointed out what was to her an obvious driver of restrictions on the use of contraceptives – ‘colonialism’, she said.

So, Bruce has a point when he writes this about the typical Canadian’s attitude toward the government’s ongoing usurpation of the property rights of its own citizens:

If you are surprised, you haven’t been paying attention. If you are outraged, you must be a settler. If you are a property owner in the Lower Mainland, suck it up for reconciliation. After all, we live on native land. Haven’t you been paying attention to land acknowledgements?

Many Canadians cannot even recognize the attack. Their obsequious devotion to reconciliation gets in the way. They are stuck in a stupor of acquiescence and disbelief. The beaver is too good for Canada’s national symbol. The country deserves the ostrich.

Noah Meets Nash

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in LBOs, Standards.

My dumbphone service provider is Telus, a big company. They send me an email each month with my bill in it, but they send me plenty of other emails, too. The subject line of this one caught my attention.

Introducing a convenient new way to connect with a human expert about your services

Here is the step-by-step way to do this, according to the email:

How it works:
On the Web
1. Log in to My TELUS online
2. Select the Virtual Assistant icon in the bottom right corner of the screen to start a chat
3. The Virtual Assistant will quickly transfer you to the TELUS Expert Messaging platform
Reading the rest of the email made it pretty clear you should not expect a reply from the ‘human expert’ immediately. Just go about your day, and you will get a reply eventually. My real question is: why would I believe that I will get a response from a ‘human expert’? I have to send my request to the Virtual Assistant first, meaning a chatbot. First, there seems to be a missing bit of info: what does one type at the Virtual Assistant to let them know you want your query to be answered by a human? And, whatever that requires, there is no way to know whether whatever response you get back is really from a human.

I almost never need to contact Telus, thankfully, another advantage of having a dumbphone. However, this ‘convenient new way’ looks to me like another step in the online enshittification of everything. All companies are quickly moving to using LLM/chatbots for all customer enquiries, guaranteeing a miserable experience for us all.

However, the world remains teeming with AI enthusiasts. One of these is Noah Smith, an economist (yea, one of those) whose blog Noahpinion I generally recommend. He has recently posted an article titled:

Superintelligence is already here, today

It’s going to revolutionize science. It also might take control of this planet.

You can kindof guess what he has to say just from that, and if you want to read the whole piece, it is freely available here.

What I want to write about here is something that his article illustrates really, really well. The tendency for people who are enthusiasts about something to abandon all their critical thinking skills so as to promote the idea about which they are enthusiastic.

Here is a quote from Smith’s article titled as above:

This doesn’t mean that AI can now do everything a human being can do. Its intelligence is “jagged” — there are still some things humans are better at. But this is also true of human beings’ advantages over animals. Did you know that chimps are better than humans at game theory and have better working memory?

Now, notice that he is not saying here that animals are better at physical things than humans. Yes, cheetahs can run at speeds no human can match and bald eagles’ distance vision puts ours to shame. No, Noah wants us to believe that animals – chimps, specifically – are better at some mental tasks than us. One of these, as quoted above, is at game theory. If you click on the link there, you will be taken to an article in something called Science, which indeed has the headline ‘Chimps best humans at game theory’.

Here’s a quote from that article:

The chimpanzees trumped the humans. They learned the game faster than their human counterparts and performed in line with the Nash equilibrium—hitting the theoretical benchmark.

Here’s the deal – ‘trumped the humans’ is bullshit.

Some background info on game theory, first. Nash equilibrium is named for John Nash, the brilliant but troubled academic who was portrayed by Russell Crowe in the movie A Beautiful Mind, based on a book of the same name.

His equilibrium concept is indeed the central piece used by economists and others to try to understand human behaviour in strategic situations. What is a strategic situation? Any situation with more than one participant in which the payoff to each participant depends on what they do as well as on what the other participants do. This includes all the games you can think of – poker, monopoly, bridge – hence the name ‘game theory’. However it also applies to important economic situations, such as two gasoline station owners at the same intersection trying to decide what prices to set. Economists got very very interested in game theory right when I joined the profession, because strategic situations as I just defined them include almost everything that happens in the economy.

John Nash’s equilibrium gave us the first idea of how to predict the choices that would actually be made by those two gasoline station owners. Nash won a much-deserved Economics Nobel for this idea.

However, it is highly problematic idea. In plenty of games, there is no Nash equilibrium, and in others there are many many of them. For a concept that is supposed to be predictive of human behaviour, those are serious deficiencies. So is the fact that if you watch humans in actual situations, they often don’t behave as Nash’s concept predicts they would.

But none of that is the real problem with the Science article, or with Smith’s jumping on it to explain to us non-believers that animals are sometimes smarter than us.

What is very well known to all economists is that the Nash equilibrium choices in a strategic situation are almost always inefficient. That is, there are other choices the people in the situation could make that would be better for all of them than the ones Nash’s theory predicts. Indeed, in my two-gas-station example, if the two owners would get together and agree on a couple of higher-than-Nash prices for their gasoline, they would both make more profits. (This is illegal, by the way, but it happens frequently.)

So, what the Science headline should say is ‘Nash’s equilibrium concept does a better job of predicting chimp behaviour than it does human behavior in some situations’. The experiment described, with monkeys and humans, tells us something about Nash’s equilibrium concept’s usefulness. It tells us nothing about the relative mental ability of humans and chimps, as there is nothing ‘better’ about those Nash equilibrium choices the chimps make more often.

And Noah Smith, who is supposedly an economist, should know that, too. But that would not help him make his point about AI – and that is what he desperately wanted to do, the truth be damned. He later in his post writes:

But if what we’re talking about is domination of the planet’s resources, and control of the destiny of life on Earth, we don’t actually need AI to be better at every cognitive task. Humans conquered the planet from animals despite having worse short-term memories than chimps and being worse at differentiating sounds than rabbits.

So now he’s back to the ‘chimps have better short term memory’ thing.

Smith mentioned that in the original quote above, too. Well, I looked into the basis for that claim , also, and it is in fact based on yet another game theory experiment with chimps and humans playing. Here’s a quote about it:

In Camerer’s experiment, it turned out that chimps played a near-ideal game, as their choices leaned closer to game theory equilibrium.

Again, not ‘ideal’ in any normative sense, just closer to the theoretical equilibirum. I doubt ol’ John Nash appreciated that he had developed a first-rate theory of chimp behaviour. (He died in 2015.)

He’s an AI-believer, is Noah, so he is all about selling it to the rest of us, never mind the truth.

Honestly, I do not worry about AI taking over the world or destroying mankind. Get real. I do worry about what humans – like the people who run Telus – are going to do to life for most of us, with their chatbots and general attitude toward customer service. However, they were enshttifying our lives before AI came along. AI may well make the enshittification worse, and the true believers and cheerleaders like Mr. Smith will just help that along, I guess.

 

 

You Better Believe It!

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Government, Language.

I spend most of my time with Canadians since retiring, and rather little with Americans. My old Dept had a fair number of Americans in it, as NAFTA meant that if you were going to hire foreigners into any academic position, it was easier to hire Americans than Europeans or other nationalities. And, given the scarcity of Canadians with PhDs in Econ, it was pretty much necessary to hire non-Canadians to fill vacant positions. So, I spent a lot of time in a world swimming with Canadians and Americans, and we all got along just fine.

Living in this – shall we say – more purely Canadian environment since retirement has caused me to notice more the rather knee-jerk tendency of Canadians to rag on the US and Americans. Not on me, personally, just on the country and the way ‘those folks’ go about things. This hit me in particular at the last session of my retiree learning group, which is what got me thinking about writing this piece. Well, that and another thing. See below…..

Any regular reader here will know that I am neither an apologist nor a cheerleader for the US of A. Their current President is an ignorant asshole, and the country has plenty to answer for going back decades.

That being said, the US has also had some excellent ideas at times, and just as importantly, has managed to avoid taking on some truly terrible ones. In particular, there is no such thing as a ‘hate crime’ in the US, nor do they have any so-called Human Rights Tribunals.

Which brings me to the other igniter of this article: John Cleese.

Yes, that John Cleese – one of the funniest men to ever walk the planet. If he had done no more than be part of Monty Python’s Flying Circus we would owe him much, but of course after that he went on to some great TV and movie roles (A Fish Called Wanda, anyone?) and a career as a stand-up comedian.

What does this funny Brit have to do with anything – I know you’re wondering.

This morning’s National Post included a story with the headline Cleese opts to avoid BC over gender ideology.

Yes, Mr. Cleese is about to do a comedy concert tour of Canada, and has gone on record as saying he would do no shows in the lovely province of British Columbia.

Why? Well, the BC Human Rights Tribunal decided on February 18 that one Barry Neufeld, a former school trustee, should pay the amount of $750,000 to ‘an unnamed consortium of transgender teachers’ because he has questioned the province’s policy that an individual’s gender is whatever he or she declares it to be.

The Tribunal decision apparently goes on for 143 pages, noting, among other things, that Neufeld  had engaged in ‘extremely serious and damaging speech’.

I know nothing of Mr. Neufeld, but unless he is massively wealthy, that amount is bankruptcy territory.

The NP story also notes that the terms of the decision make it clear that it was not Neufeld’s role as a trustee that generated it. Anyone in BC who were to express the same view would be subject to the same sanction under the BC Human Rights Code. The same dollar amount? I expect that would depend on the case, and the attitude of the BC Human Rightists regarding it.

Hence, we have Mr. Cleese’s decision. The NP article notes that he once wrote in a post that ‘deep down, I want to be a Cambodian police woman. Is that allowed, or am I being unrealistic?’ I find that funny, and on point. The BC Rightists would not, I expect.

So, I guess he figured it was either sanitize his jokes to avoid running afoul of the BC Human Rightists, risk a fine, or just stay away; he picked door number three. Probably wise.

Here is my absolute favourite quote from the Rightist Tribunal’s decision in the Neufeld case, as quoted by the NP:

A person does not need to believe in Christianity to accept that another person is Christian. However, to accept that a person is transgender, one must accept that their gender identity is different than their sex assigned at birth.

What that first sentence does not say, but we know, is that if you choose to not believe a person’s claim to be a Christian, the Rightists will not come after you. That is to say, if someone you think is a mendacious asshole says ‘I am a Christian’ and you reply ‘The hell you are’, they will get nowhere filing a complaint with the BC Rightist Tribunal. Substitute ‘Muslim’ for ‘Christian’ in that sentence and….well, I dunno. ‘Indigenous’? Hard to predict. I wouldn’t chance it if I were you.

What the second sentence makes clear, without quite completing the syllogism, is that we must believe whatever someone says about their gender. Disbelief is not an option if you don’t want trouble. Well, just as in the Soviet Union in days of yore, you don’t actually have to believe it – just don’t say so. It was, after all, Mr. Neufeld’s speech that was ‘extremely serious and damaging’.

Which brings us full circle. In the US of A, you are free to believe any damn fool thing you like. And other people, hearing of your belief, are free to tell you that you are full of shit.

Call me a non-Rightist, but I think that’s the way it should be.

Doing the Reciprocity Shuffle

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Economics, Government.

The things you can learn by reading a book. I have been working my way through The Penguin History of Canada lately. It has been on my bookshelf for ages, and I have no memory of how or from where I got it. It was published in 2006, so it ends with the first Harper minority Conservative government, but starts waaay back with what is known about the first humans to inhabit the current territory of Canada.

It is not a great book by any stretch, and rather condensed, covering hundreds of years of recorded history in just over 500 pages. Still, one can learn things from such a book, and one thing I recently came across that was illuminating was a discussion of The Canadian–American Reciprocity Treaty of 1854, also known as the Elgin-Marcy Treaty.

Now, despite that name, this was legally a treaty between the US and Great Britain, as Canada was not yet a country in 1854. The chief negotiators were James Bruce, the 8th Lord of Elgin for Great Britain, and William L Marcy, Secretary of State for the US, and it did concern trade between the US and what would later become Canada.

Britain’s North American colonies had up to 1846 done most of their trading with the mother country. Britain in those years had high tariffs on most imports, including those of food and timber, due to what were known as The Corn Laws. The Colonies were given ‘Imperial Preference’ in England, however, and so escaped the tariffs that the Brits imposed on, say, wheat imported from the US. However, in 1846, seized by a fit of ‘Free Trade-itis’, Britain axed the Corn Laws, which meant US grain and other products could be imported free of tariffs, also. This put a big dent in the amount of staples of all kinds that Britain imported from Newfoundland, the prairies, and Upper and Lower Canada.

This gave the merchant and agricultural interests in those colonies the idea to see if they could get access to the US market for their products, which was in those days also protected by pretty high import tariffs. The remarkable thing was that it worked. An agreement was reached, and listed most colonial raw materials and agricultural produce, most importantly timber and wheat, as goods to be admitted duty-free to the US. The treaty ended the US 21% tariff on natural resource imports, at least those from north of the US border.

In exchange, the Americans were given fishing rights off the East Coast. The treaty also granted navigation rights to each other’s lakes and rivers.

In those days, the treaty was championed by the Democrats in the US, but the Republicans, the party of business, opposed it. It should be said also that at this point the Democratic party in the US was the pro-slavery party, while the Republicans would soon nominate Abe Lincoln, the Great Emancipator (as some call him) for US President, marking the start of the Civil War.

I have read a claim, hard to substantiate, that this was one of only three trade treaties signed and ratified (by the Senate, as must all treaties be) by the USA in all the years between 1789 and 1931. That’s a long time.

The general consensus seems to be, as far as I can tell, that this treaty didn’t have much effect on the already-larger US economy, but it did do a lot for colonial exports. They grew by some 33% in ten years, while the US exports north grew by only 7%.

Part of this was due to the fact that when the US Civil War broke out in 1861, the British colonies did a nice business in keeping the northern states of the US supplied with agricultural and raw materials. It is often said that war is good for business, if not for human beings. That being noted, it should also be pointed out by your former-economist correspondent that it is quite difficult to determine how much of that increase in exports to the US can really be attributed to the treaty. There was a lot going on, on both sides of the border in those years.

However, nothing is either all-good or all-bad. The treaty reduced tariff revenues to both the British colonial governments and the US federal government, in an age when tariffs were the primary source of tax revenue for both. Further, the increase in north-south trade reduced east-west trade in Canada to some extent, which reduced the profitability of the recently built canals in the future Canada.

The treaty was set to have a ten-year term, after which it could be abandoned by either side with one year’s notice. In fact, the treaty was abrogated by the US in 1866, a year after the end of the Civil War, and a year before Confederation. I can find nothing coherent regarding why that happened, although it was certainly the case that the Republican Party was the party in power in the US at that point, still.

Whatever the reasons, one source I consulted suggested the abrogation in 1866 did not have all that much effect on British North America. Here’s an extensive quote from one retrospective study in The Journal of Economic History from 1968:

Trade with the United States briefly declined from the stockpiling peak of 1865 but by 1870 was as high as ever. Among the British North American colonies trade expanded rapidly, with exports from [Upper and Lower] Canada to the Maritimes rising from $935,000 in 1863 and $1,571,116 in 1865-1866 to $3,418,000 in 1866-1867. Exports to Britain doubled from 1867 to 1874, and Dominion revenues reflected this prosperity, also doubling over this period. Customs revenues increased by $5 million to $14 million and tax returns increased 60 percent.

Hey, maybe there’s a lesson here. Trade deals with the US might not be the most important thing for Canadian prosperity. Really.

Notably, after Confederation both the US and the new country of Canada put up significant trade barriers. A second reciprocity treaty was negotiated between the US and Canada in 1911, over 40 years later, between Sir Wilfred Laurier’s Liberal government and the US administration of William Howard Taft. Ah, but then…..politics – Canadian politics.

The Conservatives made reciprocity the central issue of the 1911 Canadian Parliamentary election, warning that this new reciprocity treaty would turn the economy over to American control. The Liberals were decisively defeated in that election, and Robert Borden’s new Conservative government refused to sign the treaty.

Ya just never know, eh?

 

Human Flags

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Government, Standards.

The 2026 Winter Olympics is over, and I gotta admit the ending of the men’s hockey final was a kick in the ass. I thought going into that game the Canadian team was going to get whupped, based on the preliminary rounds, but I could not have been more wrong. From the 2nd period on (which is all of the game that I watched) Canada pretty much owned the ice. That Hellebuyck guy was great in goal for the US, and once you get to 3-on-3 OT, the outcome gets to be a crap shoot. Canada lost. I will survive. As will Canada.

The end of the Games has produced the quite-inevitable post-mortems here in the Land of Ice and Snow, and one article of this genre was in yesterday’s Globe and Mail, written by their sports columnist, Cathal Kelly, titled:

Canada risks making its Olympic program a country club without proper federal funding

I expect that headline gives you the drift. Kelly’s column argues that Canada’s federal government needs to increase (to a ‘proper’ level) its funding of the Olympic program or only rich folks will be able to compete for Canada at the biannual Olympic games.

For those who don’t know, Kelly’s modus operandi, his very reason for being in the Globe, I would say, is to be cranky and controversial. For the entire NHL season he rags on the Toronto Maple Leaf organization (perhaps deservedly so) and the rest of the time he writes negative columns about whatever else in sport he can find. That’s all fine with me, sports writing is full of hero-worship generally, so some spice to go with all that sugar is welcome.

This column is no exception, and here is one of his opening lines:

CBC does a lot of things, but to me, it is the Olympics. Without the Games, our national broadcaster is PBS, minus the thrills.

So how do we explain that we publicly fund the national broadcaster to the tune of $1.4-billion a year, but won’t give a fraction of that to the event that gives it its main purpose?

Well, as it turns out, we (meaning Canadian taxpayers) do give a fraction of that to the Olympics. Kelly also writes this:

According to COC CEO David Shoemaker, the government funnels about $220-million annually to all the various sports organizations that make up the Canadian Olympic tapestry. They would like a raise – by $144-million – to $364-million annually.

Punching all that into my calculator, that means we give just under 16% of the CBC annual budget to ‘the Canadian Olympic tapestry’, every year, and the COC (Canadian Olympic Committee) would like to see that increase to 26%. Definitely a bigger fraction. And percentage.

I would note in passing, as I have in the past, that the taxpayer also gives more than a billion dollars to Canada Post, except….apparently we don’t ‘give’ it to Canada Post, it is a ‘loan’. Canada Post recorded an ‘operating loss’ of $1.3B in its 2024 annual report, almost exactly the subsidy that we ‘give’ to the CBC. So, we (taxpayers) loaned CP the money to keep going.

One might ask – why a ‘grant’ to CBC and a ‘loan’ to Canada Post?

The amount that goes to Olympic sport is, it would appear, also not a loan. I mean, how would they ever pay it back, even the gold medal winners? I don’t actually see how Canada Post is ever going to repay its loans, either, but this is an article about the Olympics, so let’s move on.

More from Kelly’s article:

This isn’t to install an MRI machine in the rumpus room of every snowboarder. According to the assembled sports executives, it’s to get the basics.

Milan’s Chef de Mission and former gold medalist, Jennifer Heil, told the story of a young Canadian Olympian being chided in a grocery store by a veteran teammate for not buying enough greens. Their excuse? They can’t afford fresh vegetables.

And of course, as a ‘get to the truth’ journalist at The Globe, Kelly believes whatever is said by the people like Ms Heil who work for the organization that would get this proposed increase in funding.

Thousands wouldn’t, but CK believes.

And that – let’s call it journalistic skepticism – seems to be what is missing from his article. I would bet, without looking, that Mr. Kelly has written many an article in the past on the corruption inherent in the IOC. The vast amounts of money spent by the countries that host the games to build facilities that afterward stand hardly used, and the constant stories of big envelopes full of money being passed around to win a Games hosting bid. The Big Owe is still standing unused – and crumbling – in Montreal 50 years after that city last hosted a Games. To be fair, FIFA’s process for deciding who hosts the World Cup is surely even more corrupt (the bags of money appear to be even bigger), but that is hardly to the credit of the IOC.

Kelly is a sportswriter, and The Globe sent him to Milan with an expense account so he could write about these games. Not terribly surprising he is in favour of more taxpayer money going to the athletes who compete there from Canada. But honestly, some of what he writes seems to me like an argument against taxpayer funding of Olympic athletes. Like this:

Is this really the country we want to be? The one that slaps away the hands of people volunteering to travel around the world dressed up like human flags, making the rest of us look good?

That’s an interesting argument for taking money out of people’s pockets to fund elite athletes, Mr. Kelly. Here’s another of his characterizations of what we ‘should’ be doing –

The other way is to trust that the people who run our Olympic set-up aren’t trying to con us, and believe them when they say the money is not going to be used to buy everyone a gold-plated BowFlex.

Again, anyone who has kept up with the ongoing saga of Olympic corruption, as well as anyone who notes what happens when the federal government starts handing out hundreds of millions of dollars, might very well balk at being asked to ‘trust’ that all that money will be well-spent.

Anyway, I will confess my own bias. I stopped watching the Olympics ages ago. In the summer I might watch some of the soccer (i.e., football) and I saw a couple of the Canadian men’s hockey games, although that happened mostly because I had a bug and was doing a lot of lying about during the day.

When I was a kid I did watch the Winter Olympics some. It was exotic and new, with people doing things like luge and skeleton (is that still a thing?) that were sort of fun to watch. Over the years the Games have just gotten bigger and bigger, all in an effort to hand out more medals, have a longer broadcast, and sell more ads. There is now a team medal competition in figure skating. I’m sorry, figure skating is not a team sport. (Canada’s ‘team’ finished 5th, apparently. I have no idea what that means.)*

The entire Olympic mess has come to be yet another device for allowing people who have too much money already to make more. I don’t mind people making money, I watch plenty of professional sports played by multi-millionaire athletes, playing for teams owned by billionaires. However, I do mind the hypocrisy of the Olympics. They are not about building national pride, or bringing the world together, or promoting the dream that anyone can be a world class athlete. The Olympic Games are driven by cash, as in the chance for some few folks to get a lot. I don’t want to help pay for any of it.

One last quote from Kelly’s article:

But the winning of medals isn’t the core issue. As Heil pointed out, an underfunded sports system will become a playground exclusive to the rich. They’re the only ones who can afford to become permanent amateurs through their 20s and 30s.

I will echo here what one of the commenters in the Globe on Kelly’s article had to say. No amount of taxpayer funding will change the fact that only the quite well off will be in a position to ‘become permanent amateurs through their 20s and 30s’. That just ain’t natural.

However, Kelly seems to be correct; that is the madness required to compete at the world level in obscure sports. If you believe that giving the COC that extra $144million is going to be what turns some poor kid from Saskatchewan into a world class curler/snowboarder/luger/whatever, then good for you. And if it doesn’t, well – maybe just another $200million will?

______________

*After I wrote this it occurred to me: if they had the figure skaters from various countries do a relay race around a speed-skating rink, I would watch that.

The Great Alabama/Canada Battle: Round 1

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Economics.

I haven’t written anything geeky in a while, and this article was prompted by a non-geeky article in the Friday Globe titled

How Canada became poorer than Alabama

That sounds just wrong, doesn’t it? I mean, the very idea that Canada is ‘poorer’ than Alabama.

So, let me get the easy part out of the way first. What the article means by that ‘poorer’ adjective comes from comparing the GDP per capita of Alabama to that of Canada. To quote from the article itself:

After adjusting for foreign exchange and some cost differences in both countries, the average for Canada’s 10 provinces was estimated at US$55,000 in 2022, the same as Alabama. Shortly after, the IMF found Canada had actually fallen behind the southern state.

If you click on the link in that quote above, it will take you to an article in The Hub, about these numbers.

The Globe article in itself is said to be an ‘In Depth’ one. It’s quite long, and the writer actually went to Huntsville, Alabama, so you know they put some resources into this.

What I want to do here is just suggest a couple of better ways to compare the typical economic situation of someone in Alabama to someone in Canada (which is, by the way, muuuuch bigger and more diverse in climate and geography than Alabama).

Yes, economic prospects are not the only thing that matters to people, but let us just focus on those for this discussion.

First, what is this GDP/cap number anyway? The article says this:

To measure this, they calculated gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. In simple terms, it’s the size of the Canadian economy in a given year divided by the population. The same was done for Alabama.

Ah, jeez. Typical G&M. That’s not ‘in simple terms’, it’s confusing. ‘size’? How does one measure the ‘size’ of an economy? Is that in square inches or square kilometres?

So….GDP is a calculation of the dollar value of everything produced in a country (or state) in one year. Then you divide that dollar amount by the population. So, it gives you the dollar amount produced per person.

Is a comparison of those numbers for Canada and Alabama a useful thing to do to determine which place is ‘poorer’?

It’s not useless, but there are certainly issues.

If some company produces $1million worth of stuff in a year and sells it, then that money is used to pay out profits to shareholders and wages to workers and to pay suppliers, who in turn use that money to pay their shareholders and workers. Fine, but – even if the company is in Alabama, some of those shareholders are almost certainly not in Alabama. Same with the suppliers. So, $1million in sales by an Alabama company does not necessarily translate into $1million of income to Alabamans.

Presumably, if you want to do a ‘poorness’ comparison, you want to compare incomes in the two places, and GDP doesn’t quite do that. GDP tells you how much income is being generated per Alabaman, but not how much is being earned. If you are deciding where you would rather live (unlikely, I know) it is what you might earn that matters to you.

But, stats are available on incomes in these places, too. However, I am going to here suggest that we do not really want to compare income per capita (that is, average income) in the two places. Average income in two places can be the same yet it might be very differently spread around. To ease that problem a bit, I suggest we try to find out how median incomes compare in the two places. The median income for a jurisdiction is the income such that half the income earners earn more than that, and half earn less. Thus, it gives you some information about how incomes are distributed to all individuals. Not a lot, to be sure, for that you want to see the entire income distribution for Alabama or Canada, but that is complex to compare. We’re trying to keep things fairly simple here. [I’ve put in an example at the end of this post for those not familiar already with median vs average.]

Comparing earned incomes has its own issues. Like with GDP, you have to adjust for the exchange rates, but beyond that, income data is typically gathered in a number of different ways. Income per earner and income per household are the two biggies, with the latter including all the incomes earned by anyone in a household. Ya gotta compare apples to apples to learn anything.

So, I went looking, and as usual, finding what I wanted for Alabama was easy, as it is in the US, and that country is full of orgs that work hard at compiling and displaying such data. Canada is always tougher.

Below, first, is data I took from a site called World Population Review, which says the original data comes from the Current Population Survey, which is administered by the US Census Bureau. Below I only present the data for a selection of US states that includes Alabama. As you can see, they give different numbers for different size households. In 2023, for a two-person household they say the median income is $71,147.

Median income in US states, selection, 2023

In Canada, StatsCan does not gather or display the data in the same way. This makes comparisons tricky. Canada uses the concept of ‘economic family’, which includes singles living alone as well as households of various sizes. They do say the following –

According to StatsCan: Median market income for Canadian families and unattached individuals was $68,700 in 2023, a 1.5% increase from $67,700 in 2022.

Of course, that is in $C, and so the 68.7k is notably less than the $US71k for Alabama, for a household of two people, which seems to be as close as we can get to the Canadian ‘family’ concept. Ideally, one wants to use a ‘purchasing power parity’ exchange rate to ‘accurately’ compare these numbers, but I am not going to go there. I think what I show below is more revealing.

A factor which the G&M article mentions in passing is history. Whatever might be the exact comparison between Canada and Alabama right now, what do these two places histories’ look like, and how do they compare?

I did some more digging, and below is a graph from the always reliable St Louis Federal Reserve:

This depicts the median household income in Alabama from 1985 to 2024 in constant 2025 dollars, meaning with inflation taken out. It is a notable path, starting at around $17k way back when, and hitting $65,560 in 2024.

Here is a roughly comparable graph for Canada as a whole: (this is in constant dollars, but I can’t tell which year)

The graph we want to look at is the blue one, which is for all families, since the FRED data is for ‘households’. The time frame is a bit different, starting back in 1976 and ending in 2021, again in constant dollars. The median in 1976 was $65,200 and in 2021 it hit $78,200. Once again we have a currency rate to consider, but let’s just ignore that, and ask ourselves the following – in their own currencies, with inflation factored out of both, how have median incomes changed over this time in Alabama and Canada?

A quick use of the calculator (yes, I still have one) tells us that the real median income in Alabama increased by some 280% over 40years, whereas in Canada it increased by some 20% over 45 years.

Now, it is a matter of arithmetic that it is easier to get big percentage increases in something when you start from a low number, as is true for Alabama. Still, that comparison is so one-sided that, independent of exchange rates and all the other things that happened over that long time horizon, it does answer one of the questions in the G$M article; what happened? On purely economic grounds the economic case for moving from Canada to Alabama in, say, 1980, would have been hard to make. In 2025, it’s a very close call. What happened is that Canada chugged along in a perfectly acceptable fashion, while Alabama just took off.

Now, the hard question, as always, is why did that happen? That it did is hard to argue against.

Appendix: Mean vs Median

Imagine a very small place with 5 people in it, all earning income. The four poorest folks earn annual incomes of $10k, $15k,$25 and $30k per year. The one rich guy earns $100k per year. So, total income earned is $180k/year, and the average, or mean annual income is $36k.

However, the median annual income is only $25k/year.

And, more importantly, if the rich guy’s income doubled to $200k/year while everyone else’s stayed the same, the mean income would go up to $56k/year (280/5) whereas the median income would stay at $25k.

 

Neo-Toddlerism and AI

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Standards.

I’ve had a bug for about a week, and because I am a wuss when unwell, this has dented my productivity. Which is a fancy way of saying that I have not gotten much accomplished while feeling ill, including on this blog. As partial make-up while my health is on the upswing, I point you at a blog I like a lot, and which seems to be freely available, called The Prism. It is written by someone who calls themselves Gurwinder – I assume that is a family name, I can find no other identification of him on the site. This is what he writes about the purpose of his blog:

“…this blog is my attempt to describe the myriad ways in which technology and psychology conspire to fool us, and to explore how we can withstand the covert assault on our senses.”

That is a purpose I am happy to sign up for.

I’ve read and learned from many of his posts, but one in particular I will say a bit about here is titled The Rise of Neotoddlerism: Why activists are behaving like infants, which he posted in August of 2024.

You can read it yourself here, so I won’t go on at length about it, but it dovetails in an interesting way with something else I came upon, so I will write a bit about that.

The general point made in the Prism post above is that activists of all stripes, right, left, whatever, now engage in activities that resemble the behaviour of toddlers. They block streets, throw paint on paintings and statues, break into church services and lectures and shout down speakers, etc. etc. Simply put, they throw toddler-tantrums.

They do this because it is much easier than actually trying to solve difficult problems, and because it gets themselves and their cause plenty of attention from the media. That includes legacy media as well as the newer phenomenon of online/social media. It is the growth of that second thing since 2009 that caused neo-toddlerism to emerge as a preferred strategy for these people. That’s a rough outline of his argument; the post itself is long and full of examples, and as I say, you can read it yourself if you want to learn more.

The post is a bit dated, and one thing he does not investigate is the role of AI/LLMs in this ‘neo-toddler’ syndrome. One might imagine that this new technology makes it less costly to spread news about such behaviour on the internet, at minimum. One certainly reads reports – how accurate they are I cannot say – that AI has been used to flood the internet with misinformation of various kinds. So, one can imagine a cycle in which some neo-toddlers do something tantrum-like for their cause, and then their allies use AI to spread and amplify and, if necessary, distort what was done.

That’s not a happy prospect, in my view, but here is the other thing I came across recently that might begin to tell us something about this possible cycle, and, just maybe, offer some hope that things are not so bad as all that.

I was led to an article called More Articles are Now Created by AI Than by Humans on a website called Five Percent. Again, you can click on the title and read it yourself, it’s pretty involved, but here is what it is about. It describes the results of a project to determine how much of the written content now available on the great www is written by AI. The title of the piece gives the answer they came to, but one first has to appreciate what a major undertaking it is to try to answer that question. I am writing about it only because after working through everything on this site, I think these folks did a very careful job trying to accurately answer the question.

First,  their ‘Key Takeaways’ from the project are worth listing in detail:

  • The quantity of AI-generated articles has surpassed the quantity of human-written articles being published on the web.
  • However, the proportion of AI-generated articles has plateaued since May 2024.
  • Despite the prevalence of AI-generated articles on the web, we show in a separate study that these articles largely do not appear in Google and ChatGPT. We do not evaluate whether AI-generated articles are viewed in proportion by real users, but we suspect that they are not.
  • Our study did not evaluate the prevalence of AI-generated / human-edited articles, and they may be even more prevalent.

The graphic below from the article does a good job of illustrating the first two of those takeaways:

I will come back to these, but my own key takeaway is that these researchers took seriously the difficulties inherent in their enterprise. Here are just some of those difficulties:

  1. The number of www sites is so large that there is no hope of checking them all. Thus one must check a sample of them, which means that one must work very hard to make that sample representative of the entire www.
  2. One must have a reliable way of determining when an article is AI-generated, something which is recognized to be difficult.
  3. Given difficulty 2, one needs to reliably test whatever tool is used to detect AI-generated articles for its rates of ‘false positives’ and ‘false negatives’.

They acknowledge all this, explain in detail how they dealt with each item, the limitations inherent in what they do find. I was impressed.

As to what they do find in their Key Takeaways, my readers will not be surprised to hear me say that knowing that there is more AI-written than human-written stuff on the web now does not make me happy. However, all is not bad news.

First, it has plateaued. Maybe that is temporary, and it’s not at all clear why it has happened, but it is something.

Better yet, the authors third finding suggests something else. They note that Google and ChatGPT do not often reference the AI-generated stuff. Interesting, to me, if it means that no one is much reading the AI stuff. But I would want to push this farther. I don’t read random stuff on the web. Yes, I write about my ‘wandering the web’, but what that consists of is my being on some site I find useful and trustworthy, and having that site refer me to another site, which turns out to be interesting. Certainly I sometimes find myself looking at a site that I pretty quickly see is garbage, and so I move on.

If that is what most people do, then there is some hope that the web still has reliable gatekeepers, even if that is not how they see themselves. I start from sites like the WSJ and Gelman’s Stats blog and TFP and such, and for all my bitching about those sites (which they deserve) they do not send me off to read AI slop.

If the WSJ et al ever starts doing that, then we are doomed, I suppose, but so far that is not the case. And, for it to not do so, it must be true that the WSJ’s people know AI slop when they see it, and hence don’t send their readers to it. A sort of web of ‘reliable sources’ is what needs to exist. I am hopeful that is still the case, even on the Wild West Web as it exists today.

My remaining concern is that people who spend a lot of time on Social Media – X, Bluesky, Instagram, TikTok, etc – are rather more likely to be sent off to AI slop, because those platforms allow other usesr to send you to other sites. And, I confess to being surprised at the project finding that ChatGPT does not refer people to AI-generated content. I wonder why, and how long it will last.

Not being a SM or AI user myself, I don’t really know.

Final note – this same wandering took me to a paper titled ‘Quantifying large language model usage in scientific papers’ published in Nature: Human Behavior. The abstract suggests the authors tried to find out how much LLMs like Claude are being used to write academic research papers. I want to follow up on that, but it will require me to use my super-power of University Library access to journals with paywalls, so it will take some time – stay tuned.

In the meantime, I do recommend Gurwinder’s The Prism for thoughtful writing. I go back regularly.

Mayoral Race

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Government.

I have to admit this headline in a story in today’s Wall Street Journal made me stop and stare –

Mamdani Warns of Nearly 10% Property-Tax Boost if No Tax on Wealthy

New York City mayor says ‘drastic measures’ might be needed to fund his proposed budget

Yes, this is the newly-elected radical ‘democratic socialist’ mayor of New York City being quoted, and he is saying the ‘drastic measure’ of a 9.5% hike in property taxes will be needed to fund his budget if Governor Hochul does not agree to increase taxes on corporations and the wealthy – something only the governor of NY state can do, apparently.

My goodness, drastic measures. Here is what the property tax rates have done here in London, Ontario over the last three years: an increase of 8.7 per cent (2024), 7.3 per cent (2025) and 3.4 per cent (2026).

The increase in this third year was originally set to be over 7 percent, until someone in the Mayor’s office last year looked at a calendar and noticed that there is a municipal election in 2026. Still, with compounding (yes, it applies to tax increases, too) that adds up to twice Mamdani’s measly 9.5.

With property tax hikes over three years like that, do we have city-run grocery stores in London? Nope. Free busses? Not a chance. Free universal child care for all Londoners? I think the province has some kind of $5/day thing, but not free, certainly, and not funded by the city in any case.

What does London have?

Well, we have been told the city blew through the entire season’s snow-clearing budget by last January. Oh, and some 500 businesses and non-profit organizations that used to have their recycling blue-boxes picked up every week just like us homeowners, have been told they are going to lose that service. City won’t take on the cost to do it.

I don’t think London’s illustrious mayor, Josh Morgan, has ever called himself a Democratic Socialist. I’ve called him a few things, but never that.

If Mamdani can pull off all his campaign promises with a one-time 9.5% property tax hike in NYC, he’s a freaking wizard.

I know, I know, you’re thinking – ‘Al, don’t be so naïve. He’s only threatening the 9.5% hike for one year now to distract people. Just like London’s Josh and the Gang, he will be back for further increases in succeeding years, at least until another NYC municipal election looms.’

Perhaps that is so. I am not a huge fan of Margaret Thatcher, UK Prime Minister in the 80s. She was  probably a tonic that the UK needed back then, but was also not the sharpest politician of the 20th century, by a long shot.

She is credited with at least one well-aimed phrase, however: ‘The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples’ money.’

So, perhaps we should all just sit back and see if Zohran or Josh run out first. Or who gets run out first.

I’ve got a dog in this race, so you know who I’ll be rooting for.

 

Canadian News Updates: Unexplained, Modest, Unfair, and Smelly

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Education, News Media.

I am not an Olympics follower. The website of the Globe and Mail is dominated every day now by news of the Olympics and how Canadian athletes are doing there (not so well, reading between the lines). I am happy to report that the CBC-London website as well as my local newspaper contain rather little Olympics coverage. Thank you for that.

Anyway, here is some interesting Canadian non-Olympics news from the past week.

1. But, but….

I saw a graph and a headline in the G&M today that leaves me puzzled. Still. The headline:

Alberta imports of U.S. alcohol are back, but who’s drinking it?

Under that was printed

‘In Ontario, beer, wine and alcohol from south of the border have tanked 95 per cent due to the trade war’

That latter assertion was backed up by this graph:

The graph as well as the quote are what puzzle me. The drop in US alcoholic beverage imports into Ontario is not due to some nebulous ‘trade war’, it is – I thought – due to the fact that the Liquor Control Board of Ontario has stopped importing all such beverages, at the order of Premier Doug Ford. This leaves me wondering – why have they only tanked 95% rather than a hundred? Is this a ban, or is it not? What is still coming in? If I am reading the graph right, more than $1m worth of US booze came into Ontario in October of ’25. Is that what travelers from the US brought in with them? I really doubt that, if you are under the customs limit, no one even tracks that.

One might expect The Globe writers to dig into this. This was, after all one of their ‘Decoder’ articles, which purports to ‘explain an important economic chart’.

The article does say this:

At the same time, Ms. Martinez said there appears to be a booming interprovincial flow of alcohol from Alberta online retailers to residents in Ontario, even though the latter restricts such shipments.

“They’re selling bourbon like crazy, and a lot of it is being shipped to Ontario, and that could explain why the volume in Alberta has gone up,” she said.

Yes, but does it explain the remaining volume going into Ontario? The amount being imported into Alberta from the US is exactly the same as it was in October of ’24, so how do we know how much is going from Alberta to Ontario? Is that, or is that not included in those numbers for Ontario? If not, where is that $1+million in US booze into Ontario coming from?

It’s the Globe, and I have learned not to expect much in the way of curiosity or effort from their reporters, so I did some research of my own. I found an online Alberta liquor store (they are not provincially run as in Ontario, that was clear right away) called BSW. I found that I could purchase online a bottle of my favourite Bourbon, Woodford Reserve, for $62.24 plus shipping. I can guess shipping would be substantial, but the shipping form I would have to fill out already had my address as being in Ontario, so I assume I could definitely do this if I was willing to pay the freight, so to speak. This bit of research does not tell us, however, whether my ordering of that bottle (or three) of bourbon would be included in the amount of US liquor imported into Ontario in February.

I know, I expect Globe articles to explain things. Silly me.

2. A modest, unfair increase

I found a story on the CBC-London website stating that after 8 years of frozen tuition in the Ontario college and university system, the province is going to allow said tuition to go up two percent a year for the next three years.

A sentence from one of the CBC articles on this:

But representatives from universities and colleges said the funding and ability to implement “modest” tuition-fee increases will ease the pressures they were facing.

It is common practice in 21st century journalism to put quote marks around single words. What does that signify? I can almost never figure it out. If the word ‘modest’ was used by someone who is being quoted, then that person should be named. My suspicion is that this is done so the media outlet can distance itself from the actual word. ‘Someone else used that word, we certainly would not.’ The CBC, being of the general editorial position that everything important should be available to all at a zero price, does not wish its readers to think that anyone at the CBC believes this tuition rise is modest.

Indeed, in another story on this increase, the quite-hopeless Prez of my former employer seems to characterize the increase as ‘modest’, so there is CBC’s plausible deniability.

Another quote from that same CBC story:

For the average yearly tuition in Ontario universities ($8,958), this could mean an average increase of $179 for the first hike. Ontario Colleges lists the average yearly cost of a diploma program at $2,400, leading to a possible increase of around $50.

I don’t understand the qualifications here. ‘could’? ‘possible’? Are those numbers equal to 2% or are they not? Perhaps the writer is just hoping that after 8 years of frozen tuition, some institutions will not raise theirs the full 2%. (If any reader or CBC reporter can name any other thing whose price has not increased over that 8 years, I will eat my hat. I own several.)

The CBC, ever on the side of the ‘little guy’, asked a couple of students what they thought of all this. Another quote:

“I don’t like that this funding had to come right out of my pocket, when as a student we already don’t have a lot of money to begin with,” said Alessia Dalimonte, a Fanshawe College student in her second-last year of studies.

No, Alessia, funding for the things we want is always better if it comes out of someone else’s pocket. And, just to be clear, the province also said it is boosting its general operating grants to universities, which does not come out of student pockets, but directly from taxpayers. Whether they or their kids went to college/university or not.

There is a photo in one story of one Taylor Timlick, described as a ‘second year student at Western University’ (that is to say, The University of Western Ontario, legally speaking) and this line:

Timleck said she finds both the tuition hikes and the changes to OSAP “unfair,” especially with the rising cost of living.

Indeed. Now that is a 21st century university student speaking, for sure. That is the word they used to describe anything they did not like – a mark, a comment on an essay, or a refusal to accept a late assignment – ‘That’s unfair, Professor’.

It is the universal adjective, one of the few concepts that has been effectively drilled into students throughout their previous 12-plus years of education.

Note its selectivity, however. Having other people – whose cost of living is surely rising – pick up most of the tab for your post-secondary education – not unfair. Everyone knows that, even the CBC.

There are other changes coming to the Ontario PSE sector, too. The Ontario Student Assistance Plan (OSAP) has for many years provided financial support to students enrolled in PSE in the province. Currently, any award from OSAP to a student can consist of at most 85% in the form of a grant with the other 15% being in the form of a loan, on which no interest accrues until the student graduates.

The province is going to alter this to a maximum of 25% in the form of a grant, with the rest being a loan. So, students who rely on OSAP will graduate with more student debt. I see this as inducing more young people to ask themselves: ‘Is this worth it?’

As my career in the PSE sector in Ontario went on, it became blindingly apparent to me that I was seeing a lot of students in my classrooms who had zero enthusiasm for university. They were there because their parents and/or their peers and/or the general zeitgeist said they should be. That’s a waste of four years, not to mention a lot of other people’s time and energy.

I would like to see a purely academic scholarship program at every university that offers a tuition grant to any student whose secondary school performance indicates they are truly brilliant. However, recognizing brilliance in the current educational environment is all but impossible, as secondary school grade inflation means tons of students have basically perfect marks. Back in the day I got such a scholarship to university, but that was on the basis mostly of a competitive exam. 21st century educators, particularly those in Ontario, just hate competitive exams, so I don’t see this happening. At least not in a way I could applaud. Such exams are, after all….oh, what is that word?……yea – unfair.

So it goes.

  1. Smell Test

This headline on a story on the CBC website stopped me in my tracks:

Oshawa Generals apologize after asking fans to shower before games

Really??!!

Yea, really.

I can do no more than quote from the story:

“If you went to the gym or did something that produced body odour, please shower before attending the game,” reads the email sent out by Jason Hickman, the Ontario Hockey League (OHL) team’s director of ticket sales and service.

Here is another unsurprising quote from the article:

The team issued an apology on social media on Thursday, which said, “it’s not our place to overstep like we did. We are sorry and hopefully we can wash this one off.”

Ya think? My son played hockey growing up. Every hockey parent is deeply aware of the odour that emanates from any kid’s hockey bag by halfway through a season. You do what you can to minimize it, but mostly you just learn to live with it – and keep the bag in the basement between games. Nothing a hockey spectator could generate in the way of odour can possibly compare with that.

One fan of the Generals, name of Ashley, was interviewed for the CBC story, and offered some advice:

Ashley said she hasn’t noticed bad smells at games before. She called the email a blunder for the team, saying they should have addressed odours by approaching people in person.

I would have loved to see how that ‘in person’ approach went down had the Generals tried it. A potential Monty Python sketch, for sure.

Ah Jeez, Larry

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Education.

This article is prompted by a letter to the editor in today’s London Free Press, but I have to go back some for it all to make sense.

First, you will recall the 10,000 book purge at the Beal Secondary School library, which I wrote about here, back in early January. Still angry as hell about that.

The hero of that appalling story was one Larry Farquharson, who was the teacher-librarian at Beal who raised a stink about the purge, else we would not have heard about it at all. He got suspended for ‘insubordination’ for that, and eventually resigned his position.

Some time after that, a story appeared in the London Freeps on January 29 titled;

School board using vice-principals to fill library roles amid deficit: Union

A secondary teachers’ union leader says the assignments could reduce support for students and staff

That sub-title gives you the entire jist of the article. TVDSB ran a big deficit, they are now in receivership, being run by an appointee of the provincial education ministry, and that has resulted in some vice principals being give some teaching or librarian duties for part of their day as a way to save money.

Here’s what John Bernans, a local leader with the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, had to say about all this to the Freeps:

“As a result, vice-principals have been assigned some teaching responsibilities,” Bernans said. “At some schools, they have been assigned to teacher-librarian jobs for part of the day.

“We asked that they be assigned to areas where they are qualified, but the board did not do that in all cases.”

Without appropriate qualifications, vice-principals are “not adequately trained to meet the needs of students and staff within the library,” he said.

“Because their responsibilities are divided across multiple areas, their capacity to assist staff in managing student behaviour is greatly diminished,” Bernans said. “In situations where urgent matters demand the vice-principal’s immediate attention, the library may even be forced to close.”

Library closed? Oh, Dear. We can at least console ourselves with the fact that many of those libraries have many many fewer books which students will not be able to access for a day.

I did not pay much attention to this article, it is full of the usual featherbedding stuff one hears from all unions. God forbid a vice-principal (what exactly do they do?) be put in the library for a while. They are not ‘qualified’ to be there. I admit to being ignorant of the deep and difficult qualifications needed to be a school librarian. Some familiarity with the particular library’s resources would surely be helpful. No way a mere vice-principal could acquire that, though….

Well, now that the letter in the Freeps (about which more below) brought this back to my attention, I have read the entire Jan 29 article, only to be very surprised to find this quote in it:

Larry Farquharson was the teacher-librarian at H.B. Beal secondary school until he resigned following last year’s removal of about 10,000 books from the library.

Using unqualified staff in school libraries is an insult to trained teacher-librarians and to students, who have “the absolute right” to access qualified teachers, Farquharson said.

“Teacher-librarians often invest significant extra time and effort to engage with and supervise students – many keeping the library open and accessible outside their assigned contractual duties,” he said.

Oh. My. God.

Larry.

He is parroting the union line. A union that could/would not protect him from getting suspended for insubordination, and he is on their side in this.

There is more. Larry doubles down. The letter in the Freeps today which I mentioned above is captioned ‘Demand Credentials’ and is signed ‘Larry Farquharson, London’.

In it Mr. F says this about putting ‘non-qualified’ vice principals in the library.

This practice undermines the legitimacy of qualifications and the requirement that a qualified individual be placed in a particular teaching (or administrative) position.

Parents and students must demand that vice-principals be assigned classroom instructional and co-instructional roles for which that are appropriately and legitimately professionally qualified, without exception.

Yes. Professional qualifications, indeed. Credentials. ‘Legitimacy’, even. Once a union guy always a union guy, I suppose.

I worked in one institution that provides those ‘credentials’ for teachers and librarians for 42 years. The so-called School of Education was probably the outfit at UWO that had the lowest academic standards in the whole place. Hell, when I was an undergrad in the 70s at BGSU, everyone knew that every student in the Faculty of Education had an A average. The teacher teachers got grade inflation going way before everyone else, which is pretty much how it took hold throughout the whole now-rotten system.

To be fair, if you want an MA or PhD in ‘Library and Information Science’ from UWO you go to the Faculty of Information and Media Studies. FIMS. It ends in ‘Studies’ – there is no more to be said than that.

From Hero to (Retired) Featherbedding Credentialist. Once again, the world disappoints me.

Oh for Crony’s Sake

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Government, Standards.

I have not been writing much about Mr. Trump in these pages of late. It seems pointless. He is an ignorant asshole who should not have been allowed to get within 1000km of the Oval Office. [I add that I have also said, often, that Joe Biden should have been removed from the Oval Office and any proximity to the Nuclear Codes by 2022 at the latest, and that Kamala Harris also did not belong anywhere near the Oval Office. Such is the stellar record of the D and R political parties of the US of A in the last decade or more.]

There is not much fruitful to write about DJT. Until and unless a significant portion of the Republicans in the US federal government grow a spine, he is going to fuck things up (mostly; I admit not everything he has done has been wrong) for his own citizens, Canada, and the rest of the world. It does not help that his opposition is a Democratic party that is as full of (a different flavour of) shit as is Himself.

I despair, so why write about it? I get angry, and that is not good for me.

However, I expect that few of my readers also read the Wall Street Journal, and it has an opinion piece in it today on Trump’s latest bit of bullshit – the Gordie Howe Bridge – that I really really want to write about. This won’t be long.

I don’t read Trump posts. I don’t read anyone’s posts, actually, but the WSJ says Trump posted what is below in regard to the Gordie Howe Bridge, which Canada paid for, btw.

I quote directly from the WSJ:

Mr. Trump complained that the bridge didn’t use enough U.S. steel and that Ontario reacted to his trade wars by boycotting American alcohol. He suggested China is conspiring to “terminate” Canadian ice hockey and “permanently eliminate” the Stanley Cup. “I will not allow this bridge to open until the United States is fully compensated,” Mr. Trump said, demanding that Canada show “the Fairness and Respect that we deserve.”

Ignorant bullshit, as per usual. No doubt the Chinese Communist Party has an entire committee devoted to undermining the Stanley Cup. Fuuuuck.

The Gordie Howe Bridge:

Here is what the WSJ writes next:

Then came news that shortly before Mr. Trump’s social post, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick had met Matthew Moroun, whose billionaire family runs the privately owned Ambassador bridge. Will it shock readers to learn Mr. Moroun isn’t a fan of the competing Gordie Howe project? The Journal reports, citing an anonymous official, that Mr. Lutnick came away skeptical of the new bridge, and he “made that clear” to Mr. Trump.

The intervention is another illustration of the Administration’s governance by cronyism. All sorts of people are trying to reach Mr. Trump with special pleading, maybe even to present him with some gold-plated award that they invented yesterday. The bet is that, in return for their investment, they might soon have a pardon, or a tariff exemption, or even the President mucking up U.S. national interests to advance their agenda.

I have been very critical of the WSJ Editorial Board in the past, because they have richly deserved it. This time they hit the goddam nail on the goddam head.

Can you spell ‘banana republic’, America?

Doing The Math

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Standards.

The good old The Free Press (TFP) featured another story this week that made me despair for the future. I know, I know…..

There exists something that mere mortals like you and I have no way of understanding: AMC 12, the first in a series of math contests that lead to the International Mathematical Olympiad. This is not like the Math part of the SAT or some other test. This is a grueling series of tests taken only by the most mathematically gifted of high school students. The website for this test says the following:

Founded in 1950, the AMC is the preeminent math competition for students K-12. Today, over 300,000 students in 50 states and over 30 countries take the AMC to bolster their confidence and passion for math.

The AMC 12 refers specifically to the test taken by students in grade 12 – seniors in high school. This is a 75-minute test, with 25 multiple-choice questions. Those questions are arranged in rough order of difficulty; the last few are impossible for all but a handful of top students. For many years, the score needed to make the distinguished honor roll – meaning the top 1% of scorers – hovered mostly in the 120s, with a perfect score being 150. This is one hard test, folks.

[Note – I am good at math. It was this recognition in university that got me into economics, which in its modern form uses a lot of fairly sophisticated math. But ‘good at math’ does not get you a score of 130 on the AMC. That requires being truly gifted at what is an unusual activity: much like being a violin virtuoso, I suspect.]

Then, in 2023, when stolen (or bought) exams started to appear online before the test, the score needed to make the distinguished honor roll went from the 120s to the 130s.

This past year, something even bigger changed – getting into the top 1% required a perfect score of 150, as there were some 300 of those recorded.

What happened? Two things, apparently. Once again, some folks got hold of the test questions ahead of time. On top of that, they put the questions into an AI bot to be solved. I here quote from the TFP article:

What is happening in the world of competitive math is a warning for the entire education system. A combination of technologies has turned cheating into an industry. In the past, tests were stolen by unscrupulous proctors and sold online. Now with AI tools, if an exam is stolen, it can be instantly solved—and sold along with the answers. Or the cheating can be done in real time, right from the testing room, with cheaters discreetly photographing questions and sending them right to a chatbot.

Now, it seems to me that last thing can be easily stopped by not allowing any electronic devices into the testing rooms, and I have to wonder why that has in fact not already been the rule, if indeed it has not.

And, to be sure, the first method of cheating can be stopped if the exams are not allowed to be seen by anyone until the moment the test is to be taken. Rather more difficult to guarantee, I suspect, for a test that is taken in a thousand different places.

I quote again from the article:

The MAA declined to answer questions for this story; a spokesperson noted that the MAA “continuously reviews and strengthens its practices.”

The MAA – Mathematical Association of America – is the group that formulates the MA12 test. This test then is used – in part – to invite students to participate in the American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME), a selective test open to top high school math students. This in turn leads to the international math Olympiad mentioned above.

I have a hard time deciding which part of this story depresses me more. The fact that proctors of this exam, given the question papers so they can administer the test, apparently make them available online for a price ahead of time, where test-takers buy them, or the fact that now they can make them available with the chatbot-generated answers – and no doubt charge much more.

An AI enthusiast, of which there are multitudes, might say about that second thing: who cares about finding top-flight math students if AI can solve all the problems anyway?

Yea….who cares?

After all, according to the TFP article:

Last summer, ChatGPT-maker OpenAI said that its latest tool could solve 94.6 percent of [the higher-level] AIME problems; now the best AI tools can usually solve the entire exam.

One last quote from the TFP article:

An admissions director of a highly selective math program for high school students told me, “Ironically, now when a student reports a high AMC score in their application to us, it hurts them in our admission process. We become more suspicious of them.”

“Sadly, the score distribution suggests that among the top scorers this year, there are more cheaters than honest people,” the admissions director added.

Yea, but c’mon – who needs honest people?

Epilogue:

After writing this post, I went back to the TFP article to read the comments from readers that appeared under it. This one expresses a view of AI that I mentioned above, and ends with a real kicker….

The important question here is, why would students want to devote time and energy to learning to solve these problems when the “AI” (more exactly, massive-scale plagiarism) programs are ubiquitous and effective? I’m a part-time college prof (retirement job) and this is something we’re all dealing with; academics seem more pointless than ever right now.

If he means academics as people, regular readers will know I find many, if not most, of them pointless already. But if by academics he means the study of the universe by curious people…god help us.

Music Hath Charms

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Music.

Last night I was sitting in my favourite honky-tonk bar, London’s Richmond Tavern, with some friends, listening to two superlative musicians: Tara Dunphy and Dean Harrison.

They do a show the first Wednesday of every month from 7-9pm, and if you have never gone to see them, then why the hell not? OK, if you don’t live in London Ontario, that’s probably a good excuse, but if you do – what is your problem?

There is music at The Richmond most days/nights, including some awesome Saturday and Sunday matinee acts. You can check out their live music calendar here:

https://www.richmondtavern.ca/upcoming-events

Tara and her husband Tom are the leading lights of the Rizdales, a great honky-tonk band, which you will find on that calendar, and Tom has his own country band that is well worth seeing, also. I can recommend Old School Rock and Roll, KJ and the MoTones, and McAdam Road, too. Oh-oh, if you ever have a chance to see The Jitterbugs, go. They used to play The Richmond from time to time, but have not lately. Great jump and swing.

Anyway, I said to one of my friends at the RT last night that, since I write on this blog about books and reading from time to time, then maybe I should put up an occasional post about music. Truth is, music, especially live performances, are more important to my good mental health than even reading. Sadly, in the 21st century, finding good live music is harder than finding good books. The economics of the bar and restaurant biz today seems to be such that it is hard to support live music in any venue, which is why I love The Richmond. They keep doing it, and are rewarded at least some of the time by packing the place with happy, dancing, beer-drinking people. If you don’t walk out of a Rizdales Saturday matinee performance with a big smile on your face, check yourself for a pulse.

So, I will write about fine musical acts or performances that I come across from time to time, just as I have in the past written about particularly excellent dining outings my Diners group has had. Stay tuned for that.

Beyond that, I also want to write about other good music, and I will do that briefly here. Most of you are unlikely to have heard of one Joe Ely. He was a Texas story-telling songwriter from Amarillo who I caught on to a long time ago, and bought one or two of his cds. Then, by pure luck, I saw him perform live in, of all places, Austin, Texas, at some outdoor barbecue venue whose name I have forgotten. I was in Austin to give a talk at the University of Texas’s Econ Dept in the early 2000s, but the Chair of the Dept, who was an old friend and colleague of mine, sent me off with some of his UT colleagues to this BBQ place the night I arrived. This was not just a cool BBQ place, Joe Ely was playing a show there. I suspect my old friend had an assignation with a lady arranged for that evening, and needed me out of his house, where he was kind enough to billet me during my stay in Austin. Anyway, it was all a win-win, as I got some good BBQ and Ely did a great show. I can only assume my old friend had a pleasant evening, too…..

Joe died last December at 78, which set me to remembering all that, and to looking for more of his music.

Here’s a photo of Joe doing his thing some 20 years ago.

Country music artist Joe Ely plays during a concert in Austin, Texas to benefit the South Asia tsunami relief effort, January 9, 2005. Country music legend Willie Nelson organized the musicians and headlined the event. REUTERS/Jeff Mitchell JM

I have learned that the next best thing to live musical performance can be found on YouTube, which has videos of all sorts of musicians playing live. Some of the videos are of miserable quality, to be sure; some kid at a concert with a phone – but many of them are excellent. When I’m needing a lift and there is no live music in town to be heard, I just put on my headphones and type YouTube into my browser.

Below are links to two songs performed live by Joe, featuring just him and his acoustic guitar. (He had a full rockin’ band, also, and early in his career played with a band called The Flatlanders. They’re worth a listen, too.) These two performances I think will give you a good idea as to what was special about Mr. Ely. I highly recommend you use a pair of decent earphones to watch/listen to these:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbBw9F0cOmI&list=RDqbBw9F0cOmI&start_radio=1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5zbUuxo-jU&list=RDo5zbUuxo-jU&start_radio=1

The man could write a lyric.

If you like those, there is plenty more Joe to be found on YouTube, playing solo or with his own and various other bands.

Oh, yea – and Tara Dunphy has plenty of great stuff on YouTube, too, just go there and type in her name. But c’mon, you can see her live if you live in London. Nothing’s better than that.

What Is Behind That Disturbing Graph?

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Health Care, Popular attitudes.

A couple of weeks back I wrote an article about Sorrye Olde England in which I stated that one of the many distressing things about the current UK was a graph showing an apparent large increase in the number of abortions in the UK over the last few years. I said then that I thought that was disturbing independent of what were one’s views on the availability of abortion.

A graph with a sharp uptake like that calls out for some digging, and Kara Kennedy, of The Free Press, which is where I first saw that graph, did some. I tip my hat to her for this. We should all be so diligent and inquisitive. She had some help, and I did a bit more digging of my own, and here is what I think I/we have been able to figure out.

First, Kennedy says she interviewed 12 British women who had abortions, and none mentioned financial difficulties as a reason for their decision to abort. She also says none of them mentioned getting any pressure to abort from anyone else. They just didn’t want to have a child.

Ok, fine, but I am not going to pretend I think we learn much from talking to 12 women in a country that is home to some 30+ million women.

Kennedy also writes this, which is more revealing:

The overwhelming majority of abortions in England and Wales in 2023—248,250 of 277,970, or 89 percent—were performed at two to nine weeks gestation. This involves taking two pills, and most of the time this can be done at home.

Apparently the number of surgical abortions then is quite small, although it too rose over the same period.

Then she writes:

Until 2020, women seeking an early-stage abortion were required to attend a clinic to take the first of the two medications under supervision.

This was changed during the pandemic, allowing women to take both pills at home, and the UK Parliament extended this in 2022.

So, most of the ‘abortions’ on that striking graph we saw in my previous post have since 2020 been women getting two abortion pills from an NHS clinic and taking them home. No one knows if they went through with taking them, whereas it would seem that a woman who took the first one in a clinic would be highly unlikely not to take the second at home.

There is therefore a real possibility that what that graph shows is more women worried about a recently revealed and early-stage pregnancy going to a clinic to get the pills, just in case. Before 2020 a woman went to a clinic to get an abortion by taking the first of two pills. Now they go to get some pills to take home, and those are two very different things. How many actual abortions occurred is very hard to say. As Kennedy writes:

Under the current system, an abortion is logged when pills are prescribed, not when—or even if—they are taken.

The graphic below from the TFP article is critical:

[I note in passing, that this graph displays monthly numbers through the end of 2023. The numbers in the previous graph that triggered all this were annual.]

Clearly, if all of those women who were prescribed the two pills took them both at home, then the upward spike in UK abortions is a real thing. But there is no way to know the extent to which that is true.

But there is still more to this. Kennedy says there has been a considerable drop in the number of UK females who use oral contraceptives. If you are brave enough to go here and work through some Excel tables, you will find she is right about that. So far as I can tell, in 2014-15 the NHS recorded some 426k females using them, whereas by 2022-23 it was only 126k. That is a huge drop, but the tables also seem to say that fewer females and males are using contraceptives at all. That may be partly demographic, as the total number using any contraceptive method fell by half over the same period. I don’t know what has happened to the total number of UK women of child-bearing age over this period, nor do I know how immigration, which has been considerable, has affected this. Still, what we have from these two pieces of info is a big rise in the number of women getting the abortion pills, while fewer are using contraception.

Kennedy says that the percentage of UK women using oral contraception as their main contraceptive method was 47 in 2013 and down to 27 in 2022. However, in 2021 the progesterone-only pill became available without a prescription, meaning the NHS has no idea how many women might now be using it.

So, guess what – it’s complicated. It seems likely that at least some of the women who obtain those two abortion pills don’t take them. They are provided free by the NHS, and having them gives one the option to abort, so why not get them if one is at all uneasy about the pregnancy? How many take the option is simply unknowable, but it seems likely to be less than 100%, meaning the spike in actual abortions is not so dramatic as the original graph suggested. Yet, at the same time, many fewer women are using contraceptive pills and (from those same Excel tables) fewer men and women are using every type of contraception, except for a small increase in the use of an ‘IU system’. I don’t know and cannot find out what that last thing is, but yes, fewer male condoms, too. (Does the NHS dispense those? Surely a guy can buy a pack at the corner store, still.) So we have a lot of abortion pills being dispensed while the overall use of contraceptives declines. Still not a happy story so far as I can see.

If the decline in contraceptive use is largely due to a decline in the size of the age group for who it is relevant, then it is even more alarming that so many abortion pills are being prescribed.

Finally, if I believed that all these women are aborting purely because they don’t think they should or are fit to have kids, as the women Kennedy talked to seem to say, well – I find that disturbing, too. These were not teenagers she spoke to.

I intend to see if I can find similar numbers for Canada and the US. I’m curious to see if similar trends are occurring there. Stay tuned.

 

Precise Bullshit

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in News Media, Standards.

I write this blog in no small part because I believe something I used to tell my students: ‘Writing is thinking’. I know a lot of people watch or listen to podcasts, and good for them, you can probably learn a lot from them. My Wall Street Journal seems intent on turning itself into the YouTube of News, as its website features all kinds of videos. What I find disturbing is that the website does not allow you to ignore those videos. As I scroll down it automatically stops me when I get to a video, and then pushing the down key on my laptop starts the video playing. In other words, ‘Watch the goddam video!’

Instead, I stop the video and keep scrolling down to other articles I want to read. And, I cuss a lot. There is a long post on the blog Cultural Capital by James Marriot titled ‘The Dawn of the Post-literate Society’ if you want to get really depressed about the decline of reading and writing. I know I did. It’s free, and you can read it here.

Despite my belief as stated above, however, not everyone who writes a blog thinks very hard about what they write, sadly. Indeed, as I have pointed out elsewhere on this blog, not even the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal seems capable of thinking very hard about what they write, or understands the difference between information and bullshit.

In some recent meandering around the great WWW, I came across a blog post by one Ed West that made that point very clearly. West writes a blog called Wrong Side of History which is mostly behind a paywall, but whose freely available posts have in the past contained some interesting material. However, my willingness to believe anything he writes took a big hit when he wrote a free post called ‘The Mourning of the Elephants’ which you can read here.

It included the statement ‘Humans, in contrast, do not even rank in the top 30 of species who kill their own kind, despite the toll of wars.’

West gives no source for this remarkable claim, but includes the graphic below. It is not very legible in his post, either, and there’s nothing I can do about that, unfortunately. You can make out the numbers in it, however.

Before I say more, let me note that I took that line at the bottom of the graphic to heart, and went to the website of Nature, which is a high-visibility scientific journal, and tried to use that number 19758 to find the source of this graph. I got nowhere. I put that number into the search box, nothing. I tried various keywords like species killing and such, but nothing resembling this graph could be found, and keep in mind that I also could look through articles in Nature itself due to my faculty status at the university library. I got nowhere, so I have no idea where this graph comes from, or what ‘adapted from’ means in that caption.

Let us nonetheless see what the graph is trying to tell us. It is the foundation for West’s quote above, as it seems to rank the 30 (mammal) species in which the deaths that were caused by being killed by another member of the same species were highest. Humans, who are definitely mammals, apparently don’t rank that high. In other words, there are at least 30 other mammal species in which murder is a more frequent cause of death than it is among humans.

Here is the thing. Where in the hell does this data come from? How can anyone claim to know that 10.48% of all deaths of ‘white throated round-eared bats’ were due to murder? How was that data gathered? I am sure highly reliable data exists on the percentage of human deaths that are due to murder, at least in advanced countries like Canada and the US. That is because those countries keep track of all deaths, and when a death is at all suspicious a trained coroner comes in and determines whether it should be classified as a murder.

There are plenty of less developed countries in the world where any such data would be rather questionable, as it takes a lot of administrative machinery to keep track of all this. In some countries, when someone dies out in the hinterland, they are quietly buried and no report is made to any central authority. So, I say again, how does anyone come up with a number for meerkat murders? And note that the chart does not say it is believed that ‘somewhere between 15 and 23 percent of all meerkat deaths are due to murder’. No, no, it says that ’19.36% of all meerkat deaths are due to murder’.

Precision out to two decimal places!! What amazing exactitude! What bullshit!

Mr. West put this graph in his post because he could tell an interesting story with it. That the story is very possibly false is no matter, it is interesting. Sadly, and more worryingly, many social scientists take the same attitude to the data they use.

Addendum: Wait! Wait!

I have trouble leaving things alone, and the source of that graph above kept bothering me. And I found it! Well, sort of. I found Nature 19758. That is in fact the ‘title’ given to the pdf of an article in nature titled ‘The phylogenetic roots of human lethal violence’, which is a 10-page ‘letter’ published in Nature in 2016. Now, that graph above does not appear in said letter, but the authors do have things to say about ‘conspecific violence’ in different mammal species. It is part of the data they used for their statistical analysis. Here is what they say in the ‘Methods’ section of their letter:

Lethal aggression in mammals. To estimate lethal aggression in mammals (defined as the percentage of deaths caused by conspecifics) we compiled a database including the amount of conspecific killing observed in many species of mammals.

Um…..’many’? How many? A lot:

We found information about more than four million deaths in the 1,024 mammal
species (~ 20% of the total species) from 137 families (~ 80% of total families) and
the three main extant mammalian clades.

So, I went to that is called the ‘Supplementary Information’ for this letter to see what I could learn about this data on ‘conspecific violence’ in mammal species. Said information comprises some 168 pages. Jeeeezus. But hey, I’m a geek, so I found my way to the section on p. ??? (there is no page numbering) marked Data on Lethal Aggression in Mammals.

There is, indeed, a list of many many mammals by their latin names, and source codes (which I did not dig into) that indicates the reference from which data on that mammal came from. For each species they also give the number of deaths of that mammal that were observed, and the percentage of those deaths that were ‘conspecific’. At last we have a source from which the table above could be constructed. I can only guess that is what West or someone did. However, it is notable that the three authors of this article in Nature do not attempt to construct such a table of ‘most’ (or least) lethal mammals.

The data they have is, to put it mildly, highly varied. Some examples:

For species acomis cohirinus some 57 deaths were recorded in two different studies (don’t know if 57 is a total or an average) and 1.75% were ruled as conspecific. Don’t know what were the criteria for that ruling.

For species axis kuhli only 5 deaths by one study, none ruled conspecific.

For species axis axis on the other hand, some 8,317 deaths, 0% conspecific, in 15 different studies.

Are we starting to get the picture here?

For species canis simensis there were 46 observed deaths with a whopping 10.87% said to be conspecific, in exactly one study.

It is simply not good science, or good data analysis, to try to compare numbers that have been arrived at in many different ways, sometimes in multitudes of studies, sometimes in one, and with what had to be very different ways of determining the ‘conspecifity’ of a mammal death. The data on conspecific violence in any one of the studies cited would need to be taken with many grains of salt. No mammal species can possibly be observed in total. The meerkat, to cite one supposedly violent example, has a habitat that includes most of Botswana, Namibia and South Africa in southern Africa – around a million square miles by my reckoning. To observe anything about such a species without spending infinite amounts of cash, one sets up some kind of observation protocol in some particular area for some period of time, records what one finds, and then hopes that data is representative of the entire habitat at all times. In cases where several distinct studies were done for a single species, if the results were consistent with one another, that would be reassuring. If they are not, what does one do?

I stick to my adjective: 19.36% is bullshit.

 

More Adventures in Reading  

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Culture.

Readers may know that I am an enthusiastic consumer of books, and that I like to haunt used-book stores. These are obviously complementary activities, and I hit The Book Addict before Christmas and scored a couple of promising novels. However, before I started in on them, Christmas arrived and my sweetheart gave me two fabulous books by Victor Davis Hanson. Hanson is a military historian, and although I have peeked at his blog from time to time, I had not read any of his books. These were titled The Second World Wars and A War Like No Other, and the s at the end of that first title is not a typo. I have read a lot about WWII, but this is not a typical chronological history. Hanson picks particular aspects of the conflict, and lays out the decisions made by the various combatants in that domain, pointing out mistakes, and how their choices led to bad – or in some cases good – outcomes. It is very analytical, and quite fascinating. The second book is structured in much the same way, but it is about a war – The Peloponnesian War – about which I knew almost nothing. It was a conflict between Athens (and its allies) and Sparta (and its allies) that consumed some 27 years of the 5th century BC in the eastern Mediterranean.

Because I started out reading that second book as a newbie, I got less out of it than I did the first, but it was nonetheless very interesting, and has prompted me to look for more books about that particular conflict whenever I next need new reading material. I have learned that Hanson, who is in his 80s now, is not well, so I don’t imagine he will be writing anything new, but he has written much in the past, so his previous work is also on my lookout list.

I read often and pretty fast, but it took a while for me to get through those 800+ pages of military history, after which I settled down to the two books I had picked up at The Book Addict. They are really what this post is about. They are The Red Queen, by Margaret Drabble, and The Voyages of Somebody the Sailor by John Barth. I grabbed the Drabble book off the shelf as soon as I saw it for the same reason I grabbed the novel by Doris Lessing some months back. Drabble is often mentioned in positive terms in my Times Literary Supplement and has reviewed some books by others in that periodical. After finishing her novel I did some digging; I learned that she’s a Brit who published her first novel in the 1960s and is now into her 80s, and that she has declared she will write no more fiction.

I wanted to read for myself what all the fuss was about, and I was not disappointed. The Red Queen is an unusual novel, as it has two parts; the first set in late 18th century Korea, and the second set in contemporary times in Europe and Korea, with a different female protagonist in each segment.

I was rather quickly captivated by part one, which involves a long-dead Korean woman telling the story (yes, from beyond the grave) of how she came to be Crown Princess and the trials and tribulations she endured over her long life. Ms. Drabble can write. By all the outwards signs, this is a ‘chick novel’ and I should not like it, but – I very much did. The second part put me off at first, I am sure partly because I wanted the part one story that I had been so enjoying to continue, but Ms Drabble’s writing drew me in again, eventually. The novel was published in 2004, so rather late in her career, but early enough that the 21st century’s worst tendencies are nowhere to be seen.

The Red Queen is, in my humble opinion, a very good book, and Ms Drabble’s other novels are now also on my lookout list.

Having finished it, I am now into the second novel, which I picked up purely on spec. If I have ever heard of John Barth I don’t recall it. I bought this novel from The Book Addict because I found the title intriguing. We’ve all been told about or read the stories of Sinbad the Sailor’s many voyages, so I wondered – what is this all about? Mind you, it also cost like $6, so buying it was not a big gamble.

I am just getting into The Voyages, but I like it already. It also occurs in two different time frames and places, about two different, but (supernaturally) connected sets of people. I had no idea the two novels shared this feature when I bought them. Serendipity. Barth’s writing style is very different from Drabble’s, to be sure. In fact it reminds me a bit of that of Jonathan Lethem, whose novels Gun, With Occasional Music and Motherless Brooklyn I very much enjoyed, and which still sit on my shelves. Voyages was published in 1991, more than a decade before Drabble’s novel. It strikes me as being very autobiographical, but I am only 60 pages in, so that is highly speculative.

I have come to realize that one of the great joys of retirement is having all this time to read. And, of course, to wander around in used book stores.

The only downside is that once again I am out of shelf space here at home. My solution will be to comb through my holdings, and pick out a boxful of books to donate to the Book Addict for them to re-sell to others. No school board trustee or bureaucrat am I.  That will give me room for more new volumes, until the next winnowing is needed.

Correction: The title of the Barth book is actually The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor. rarelypureneversimple regrets the error.

So – It Does Happen

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Government, Health Care.

People living on the street in London is a problem, one about which I have written more than once on this blog. Reading the news, it appears to be a problem in many places. However, there has always been a belief about this problem floating around in my city, one that has been voiced to me by a variety of people of various stations in life. The idea is that the problem is worse in London than in other cities in Ontario because London is generally known to have the most available no-questions-asked services for the homeless. And, the idea goes on, this leads officials and health-care workers in other places to send homeless people in those places to London by some means or other.

Having heard this claim more than once, I have always been skeptical. It sounded to me like the sort of urban myth one often hears when people are upset about something. They want to blame it on ‘outside forces’. Indeed, it sounded to me like a conspiracy-theory-adjacent kind of belief.

My skepticism regarding this phenomenon has dropped recently, with the appearance of a story on the CBC-London website dated January 26, with the headline:

This homeless man was put in a taxi to London. Here’s who paid the $241 fare

The ‘who’ in the headline is revealed in the story’s first sentence:

A Huron County man who often uses shelters to avoid sleeping outside says the Huron Perth Health Care Alliance paid his $241.42 taxi fare to London, Ont., to free up space in a shelter where he’d been staying in Clinton.

Clinton is a town about 80km north of London, and much smaller than London. Now, according to this guy, one Stephen Webster, he was told there would be shelter space in London for him, which turned out not to be true once he got here.

Webster said he was being treated in the Clinton hospital for trench foot, after which they moved him to a shelter in Clinton. After seven nights there they said he had to make room for others, and a cab ride to London was all they could offer. Webster is quoted:

“They told me that they send a lot of people to London because London has the shelters.”

CBC did some more digging, to their credit. From the story:

CBC News has confirmed with a local taxi company that the transfer happened and that the $241.42 fare was paid by Huron Perth Healthcare Alliance, which operates four hospitals in the area.

So, Huron Perth Healthcare Alliance is much like LHSC here in London. It operates the hospitals in the area, which means that Ontario taxpayers paid Webster’s cab fare to London. Isn’t universal health care great?

Also from the story:

When contacted for comment by CBC News, the Huron Perth Healthcare Alliance would not confirm they paid for the cab trip, citing privacy reasons. However in a statement they said their outpatient mental health teams do not relocate people out of their community “unless it is their choice.”

The statement goes on to say they make an effort to provide care for people locally whenever possible.

Whenever possible. Sure. And ‘privacy reasons’. Um….whose privacy is being protected here, exactly? I suppose we should be impressed they did not cite ‘safety concerns’.

The story also details Webster’s itinerary of shelter stays once he got to London, which, by the way, seems to contradict the claim that there was no space available when he reached London. What appears to be true is that there was no space at the first place he tried, run by the Salvation Army. Here is where he did find space over the next several days:

City of London shelter at the Boyle Memorial Community Centre

Ark Aid Street Mission on Dundas Street, London

After hitching-hiking to Stratford on Thursday and finding no available shelter space there, he managed to find a shelter space in Cambridge, Ontario.

Now, I said there had been rumours about this happening for some time, but the CBC story also contains a link to a story they posted in August of 2023, headlined

Stop sending your homeless people to London, deputy mayor says to others

The story quotes deputy mayor Shawn Lewis as follows:

“It has been conjecture and speculation and rumour over the years, but now we are starting to get some hard data,” he said.

Lewis wrote a letter to the London City Council laying out that data, and saying that he was going to ask the Council to condemn “the relocation of homeless individuals under false pretences and against their will.”

As to that ‘hard data’, this is also from the earlier story:

According to Lewis’s letter, in the first six months of this year London helped connect 319 people back to “where they have a natural support network” after they came to London seeking service.

Of those 319 people, more than a quarter were sent to London “against their will or under false pretences by various individuals and organizations from outside London,” Lewis said.

I have not been able to determine whether Council passed Lewis’s suggested condemnatory motion, but I would put my money on ‘no’. Nor do I believe anything important would be changed by the passing of any such motion. Lewis’s letter is no longer available on the CBC website.

When I wrote about London’s approach to homelessness back when, I said that there would be no number of shelters or granny flats or sheds that would be enough. Mr. Webster’s odyssey shows one – but only one – reason this is true.

_____

Caption: Mayor Josh Morgan walks through the modular shelter site under construction on Cheese Factory Road in London on Friday, Jan. 23, 2026. The first tenants are expected to move next week. (Mike Hensen/The London Free Press)

______

Webster made his way from a shelter in Clinton to Victoria Hospital in London by the good graces of the Huron Perth Health Alliance. Once in London, however, he somehow got from Vic hospital, where the taxi dropped him off, to the Salvation Army shelter, to the Boyle Memorial Community Center, to Ark Aid Mission on Dundas. All without a car. Then he hitch-hiked to Stratford (that’s 60km) and, finding no space there, somehow made it to another shelter in Cambridge, Ontario, a further jaunt of 60 km. What enterprise, what diligence – what effort. No one at the CBC appears to have asked Mr. Webster why he was homeless. He is quoted as saying ‘I bounce around a lot’ and is said to have a number of health problems.

‘If you build it, they will come’, as the movie line puts it. Or, in a less Hollywood vein – give away something of value for free, and the demand for it will be unending.

AI Will Set You Free

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in LBOs.

[Note of clarification: In the font used by my website, AI looks like my first name. In this post it should be read as ae-eye. You know, the technology that will change the world for the better.]

Here’s the title from a recent article in The Free Press by one Molly Cantillon, dated Jan 22:

AI Took Control of My Life and I Love It

Ms Cantillon is an executive in a tech company, as she writes –

“For context, I’m the founder of NOX, an AI-assisted inbox organizing tool, and I have a very busy schedule.”

Very busy. She says she was making commitments she could not keep track of, had put her phone in a constant state of Do Not Disturb and had no idea what she was subscribed to – and paying for.

She got various programs and fed them into Claude, the AI program, and had it cancel her subscriptions (after asking her if she needed each one), find and pay all her accumulated parking tickets, and she also had Claude write an app to ‘optimize her sleep’.

There’s more:

I hit inbox zero for the first time ever, thanks to Claude filtering and deleting spam while auto-drafting replies for all relevant inbound emails. It analyzed my bottomless pile of Apple Notes and meeting transcripts, found the things I’d procrastinated on and took care of them instantaneously—from confirming travel details to following up on action items from meetings.

Claude Code has taken over her personal finances:

Every morning, it scans the news and writes me a personalized brief on my portfolio and opportunities to buy or sell. Last month it flagged Democratic congresswoman Cleo Fields buying at least $500,000 in Netflix stock.

Whoa, Claude does insider trading on insider traders. [Aside: Ain’t democracy great, tho?]

She is, in a word, ecstatic about all this.

It’s hard to overstate the value of an impartial observer that reads all the data that makes up your life, catches what you’ve unconsciously dropped, notices patterns across domains you’d kept stubbornly separate, and—crucially—tells you what to do about it.

Two parts of that last quote struck me.

One, ‘impartial observer’.

Two, ‘tells you what to do about it.’

She says ‘Living with Claude feels like having a tireless chief of staff.’

Regarding One, if one did have a chief of staff, albeit a human, and thus, not-tireless one, it is fair to say that one could not be entirely sure that it was ‘impartial’. He might have an agenda. He might, for example, steer one away from any decisions or even information that he felt jeopardized his position, or in any way made him look bad.

I am left to ask: from whence comes Ms Cantillon’s belief that her AI does not also have an agenda? It is generally true that the AI chatbots that people use for various inquiries work hard to ingratiate themselves with their users. They are apparently ‘trained’ to behave that way. How is her Claude chief of staff trained? Does she know? Does she care?

As to Two, a human chief of staff would also tell (or at least ‘recommend’) what you should do. And, according to her, the default setting on her AICoS is that it asks her before it does anything in her name.

Ok, that seems wise, if it works. I guess you would not know if Claude went off the reservation on its own until shit started to happen. But I suppose that also would be true of a human CoS who went renegade on you.

Then she writes this.

Naturally, the watchtower has a landlord. Anthropic, Claude’s creator, sees every query you make. The value exchange is explicit: their visibility into your thinking for access to a small army of taskrabbits.

Indeed. And there it is. It is Anthropic, the corporation, in which one must have some level of trust if one is to do this. If AICoS has an agenda, Anthropic might just be from whence it comes.

She writes further:

“I know I am dependent. If Claude disappeared tomorrow, my day-to-day routine would fall apart.”

Ah.

She also writes this at the end –

“To paraphrase Charles Goodhart, the famed British economist: Meticulous optimization yields hollow victory.”

I have never heard of this Goodhart economist guy, but I am very sure I do not want to meticulously optimize my life, with or without an AICoS. I suspect, however, that such a move might have been more appealing to me when I was younger, more ambitious, climbing the academic career ladder.

Today, at this stage in my life, I find all this appalling. On reflection, that feeling has two levels to it.

One is, I think, highly personal. I could never trust Anthropic, or any other organization, to not take advantage of that ‘value exchange’ Cantillon mentions in the quote above. I have no doubt they would use all the info they gathered on me to their own advantage, and I do not see that serving my interests in the long run.

My second concern is more….social. I see looming a world in which all or most of us get the same info, make the same decisions, have the same ideas, because all of it is being run through a small set of incomparably complex programs that no one really understands. It is a future of the ‘hive mind’, a term Cantillon herself uses. We are all to become ‘dependent’ on this software, for everything. If it fails, or its ‘landlords’ just decide to fuck with us, things will indeed fall apart. Perhaps in a way that we will be unable to detect, or to do anything about if we do notice.

No, thanks.

Epilogue

After I had finished a third draft of the above post (I do write and re-write), an article appeared in The Free Press by Tyler Cowen, economist, titled ‘Can AI help us find God?’

Cowen is an AI enthusiast who has written a number of breathless articles in TFP about how great it is going to be for humanity. Might be a glitch here and there, sure, but in general – transformative. Awesome. He does go on.

I add in one quote from this latest Cowen article:

It’s common now to ask AI about the meaning of life, or about the ultimate nature of reality. From there, it’s only a small step to having AI be your major conversational partner about God, and then, for some people, a god or spirit as well.

Cowen presents no evidence for this, so I wonder: is it really common for people to ask AI those questions? God help us, if so. It’s a bloody computer program, it knows nothing that was not put into it. Actually, it ‘knows’ nothing, period.

 

Sorrye Olde England

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Standards.

I have written before on the sad decline of the UK in recent years. Sadly, I have more to report in that regard.

  1. Policing

Shabana Mahmoud is a name you may not know, but she is the Home Secretary in the current UK Liberal government. That makes her responsible for policing, in particular. Here is what The Independent has to say about her new grand plan for policing in the UK.

The number of police forces in England and Wales is about to be slashed under major[sic] a major overhaul of the system.

Under the proposed changes, the number of forces, currently standing at 43, will be significantly cut.

The remaining, larger forces will be tasked with focusing on serious and organised crime, alongside complex investigations such as homicides.

Yea, right. We in Canada have seen this movie before. Centralize some government function, and that will save money and make everything better.

What we know is that any money saved does not go into more teachers (hey, big-ass school districts) or health care workers (hey, LHSC), it goes into more bureaucrats to run things.

But that is merely the usual clueless thinking that all politicians spout. Here is a quote from Mahmoud on her personal vision for policing:

When I was in justice, my ultimate vision for that part of the criminal justice system was to achieve, by means of AI and technology, what Jeremy Bentham tried to do with his Panopticon. That is that the eyes of the state can be on you at all times. Similarly, in the world of policing, in particular, we’ve already been rolling out live facial recognition technology, but I think there’s big space here for being able to harness the power of AI and tech to get ahead of the criminals, frankly, which is what we’re trying to do.”

Nothing says good policing quite like ‘the eyes of the state can be on you at all times’. You go, Mahmoud.

  1. Political musicians

I have Sirius XM radio still in my car(s), and have had for years. When I first got it, my favourite stations were the two that played Geezer Rock – Classic Vinyl and Classic Rewind. You know, all the 60s and early 70s rock that I enjoyed when I was a teen. I hardly listen to those any more, in no small part because both of them have an abiding love for the music of Pink Floyd.

Imho, they were easily the most pretentious of all the rock bands of that era, and that is saying something, but those two Sirius stations insist on putting their music on frequent rotation. There were times when each of the two stations was playing a different Floyd track at the same time.

If you were a PF fan, you will know that one of its guiding geniuses was one Roger Waters, born in Surrey, England, who pretty much took over that band when original co-founder Syd Barrett left in 1968. PF are no longer touring, although I think Waters still does as a solo. He’s 82, and has been reborn in all his glorious pretentiousness as a ‘political activist’.

Well, Piers Morgan (remember him?) interviewed Mr. Waters, political activist and Brit, on X. You can catch it here. It’s largely about Waters’ views on Iran, and I suggest you listen for the bit where he says “We know the Iranians don’t want regime change’ and “The government sent the police out to protect those grocers.”

‘We don’ need no education’, indeed, Roger.

  1. Oh, my

Abortion is a contentious issue, this we all know. It seems to me that no matter what are your views on it, there is reason to be alarmed about the graph below:

What is going on? I have no earthly idea, but it is not something good, of that I am quite sure.

  1. And then – Canada

I cannot let my home and native land entirely off the hook here. When DJT was in maximum sabre-rattling mode over Greenland this week, the Globe and Mail ran a story with the headline:

Military models Canadian response to hypothetical American invasion

The first line of that story was

The Canadian Armed Forces have modelled a hypothetical U.S. military invasion of Canada and the country’s potential response, which includes tactics similar to those employed against Russia and later U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan, two senior government officials say.

Yea, right. Sorry, senior government officials. As usual, you know little about the citizens you are supposed to be serving. I don’t know any Canadians, including yours truly, who would be willing or able to go into the woods and engage in a mujahadeen-like insurgency against invading US troops. Do you?

That same G&M story includes the following sentence: ‘The officials, as well as a number of experts, say it is unlikely the Trump administration would order an invasion of Canada.’

Well, thank goodness for that, eh?

Scientists Go Bad….Again

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Research, Standards.

Time for another leap into the world of bad science, folks. I have two cases for you to consider.

I. Your Brain on Microplastics

I credit The Free Press for putting me onto this first one.

I suspect you all saw some mention last year of a research ‘finding’ saying that a careful investigation of the brains of human cadavers showed they contained an alarming amount of microplastic. That latter term is just the name for tiny particles of plastic that come off of plastic containers of all kinds, including those that contain potable liquids (e.g. Gatorade) and edible food. The original paper was titled ‘Bioaccumulation of microplastics in decedent human brains’ and it is open access from the Nature Medicine website if you want to read it.

This finding was publicized in CNN and many other mainstream media outlets, including one of the authors saying that the concentration of microplastics they detected in some brains would imply said brain contained enough plastic to construct ‘a plastic spoon’.

Alarming, eh? Who wants to think about having the makings of a plastic spoon in their skull? The mainstream media, having long ago abandoned any pretence of being skeptical reporters, played this up big time.

However, some other scientists did display the skepticism that ought to be the hallmark of good science, and so took a closer look at this and other related studies, finding a major problem. I will just quote one of these skeptics from an article that was published in The Guardian just this month. [You can read the entire Guardian article yourself here.]

“The brain microplastic paper is a joke,” said Dr Dušan Materić, at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Germany. “Fat is known to make false-positives for polyethylene. The brain has [approximately] 60% fat.”

Oops. It is, by the way, notable that The Guardian was one of the many mainstream media outlets to make a big deal of the original findings purporting to find all those microplastics in our bodies. Kudos to them for following up, even though it shows they were rather too gullible at the outset.

Anyway, it turns out the methods used to detect the microplastics have a hard time distinguishing between microplastic and the stuff our brains are in fact made of. That does seem to me a problem.

None of this is to say that the accumulation of mountains of used plastic is not a problem. To my mind the biggest issue right now is that all the recycling of plastic we do is often meaningless, as much of that stuff we throw in our blue bins is not recycled, unless you count shipping it to third world countries to be buried as recycling. I quote from the original TFP article:

To put it another way, while they may not pose the health crisis some hyperventilating scientists and newspaper writers warned of, they are threatening us with an irreversible ecological crisis. “The thing is, we are not getting this stuff out,” said ecologist Matthias Rillig of the Free University of Berlin.

A final twist on this, also from the TFP piece. Another often-repeated trope about microplastics is that we take in enough each week to construct a standard plastic credit card. The TFP author notes that retired industry chemist Mark Jones had looked into this claim, and written about it here. That credit card-per-week claim comes from a 2020 study done at University of Newcastle in Australia, which seemed to conclude that we take in 5g of plastic per week, which is about the weight of a plastic credit card. The problem is that 5g is the largest of three estimates that study came up with, by a large margin. The smallest estimate was 0.3g/week, more than 16 times smaller, and Jones has doubts about even that number. Jones’ piece is long, but you might want to read it. I will just end this segment with the following quote from it, as it echoes much of what I read from other scientists worried about what is happening to science and reporting about it:

The 5 grams of plastic per week is troubling in several ways. It illustrates the power of meme-promoted science. A compelling, if misleading, graphic can cement fact into the public consciousness. It shows few people take time to ask whether a value they hear feels correct. It shows even nonsensical values can become accepted. It shows when facts are widely reported, they don’t get corrected, and that clicks and eyeballs are more important than truth.

II. Corporate Bullshit and Academic Fraud

Speaking of mistakes not being corrected, here’s another one for you. It is not as compelling, I expect, because it is not about our own health. However, it displays even more clearly the appalling behaviour of some scientists and the scientific establishment when faced with evidence that some highly regarded research is baloney.

That fact, to me, is the real problem.

So, class, raise your hand if you can tell us what is meant by ‘Corporate Sustainability’.

No one?

Well, neither can I, but I know there is and has been much written about it in the last 10 years, and I know that it is generally thought of as A Good Thing.

To help us all out, I went looking for a definition. Here’s what Wikipedia says:

Corporate sustainability is an approach aiming to create long-term stakeholder value through the implementation of a business strategy that focuses on the ethical, social, environmental, cultural, and economic dimensions of doing business.

Um…approach to what? I think to organizational decision-making. I think. Given that ‘stakeholder’ is a blanket term for every person and group who might be affected by such decisions, all of whom will have different views of those decisions, and given that any decision that does well along one of those ‘dimensions’ is likely to do less well along the others, I would say this definition is close to meaningless. That is, it does not tell us how to determine whether or not a corporation is using this approach. Just for example, if a corporation decides to raise the wage rates of its lowest-level employees, that will certainly be good for those employees, and they are, after all, stakeholders. However, this same move will also certainly be bad for the company’s shareholders, who are, once again, stakeholders. So, is paying front-line bottom of the pile staff better an example of corporate sustainability or not? I dunno. The definition above does not let me figure that out.

Of course, Wikipedia is generally useless for anything at all complex, so let’s look elsewhere.

The OECD has this on their website:

Corporate sustainability entails integrating environmental and social considerations into a company’s business strategy and operations. It fosters sound governance and decision-making and helps investors better understand a company’s long-term risks and opportunities.

Hmmm. No mention of stakeholders at all. It seems to be all about investors; i.e., shareholders.

But what about the worker? The two definitions seem quite different. That’s a problem.

Ok, one more try. I found many attempts to define this concept, none of them satisfactory, but my favourite was from the UN, always a good source of bafflegab. One page of its report entitled Guide to Corporate Sustainability, featured this at the top of a page:

WHAT IS CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY?

(The font was even bigger than that, and multi-colored. Very impressive.)

Here is the answer given below that question:

Corporate sustainability is imperative for business today – essential to long-term corporate success and for ensuring that markets deliver value across society. To be sustainable, companies must do five things: Foremost, they must operate responsibly in alignment with universal principles and take actions that support the society around them. Then, to push sustainability deep into the corporate DNA, companies must commit at the highest level, report annually on their efforts, and engage locally where they have a presence.

I know, there is no definition of the concept in all those words. Were you able to figure out the five things? Me neither. And, uh…..which universal principles are we talking about here? What actions count as ‘support the society around them’ do you suppose?

And yet….this overwhelming ambiguity is not the real point of this second part of my article. Yes, CS is boolsheet, as are so many 21st century buzzwords and trends. It is much easier to claim you are doing something good when there is no clear definition of what that good is. Corporations can do whatever they want, and by filling out some (also vaguely worded) forms, claim that they are being sustainable. Actually, it’s not solely a feature of modern corporations, my former employer has been claiming to be a leader in sustainability for some time now.

What I want to write about is more research malfeasance, but it is research on this bogus concept of Corporate Sustainability, and it is all about a paper published in the academic journal Management Science  titled ‘The impact of corporate sustainability on organizational process and performance’, in 2014 (I know, ancient history, but stay tuned).

The paper has three authors, two from Harvard, and one from London Business School. And, I can tell you that Management Science is near the top of the prestige rankings for business journals, so this paper is A Very Big Deal.

However, it now appears to also be very wrong. But even that is not the heart of the story.

I picked up this story from Gelman’s Stats blog, so credit where it is due for publicizing this. You can read that whole post here, but I warn you to put on your big-boy-geek pants. It is long and complex. I will here summarize only the key – and in my view most appalling – aspects of this saga. The intrepid scientist who uncovered this malfeasance is one Andrew King, and he gives his own account of what happened here. You can read that, too, much of the Gelman blog comes from King’s original post.

First, there is a lot in the original MS paper by the three Important Professors. To my mind, one of the key things it claims is that corporations that engage in the undefined bullshit of ‘Corporate Sustainability’ get higher stock returns than those that don’t. The reason that is important is that corporations are, after all, really in the business of making money for their shareholders. But if you are an academic who is convinced that CS is an inherently good thing and so you want corporations to buy into it, your cause is greatly aided if you can convince the people who actually run corporations that doing so will increase the returns to their shareholders.

Well, here is what King has to say about that particular result in the Very Important Paper:

The authors did admit to the editor that they had misreported a key finding —labeling it as statistically significant when it was not. The authors claimed the error was a “typo”. They intended to type “not significant” but omitted the word “not.” They did not address the implications of this “typo”—that it misrepresented the evidence for a central claim of the paper, that corporate sustainability increases stock returns.

Now, if you believe that shit about a ‘typo’, we should talk about this great piece of land I have put up for sale in Venezuela. I could get you such a deal. The point, in any case, is that this key finding, that CS improves stock returns, is not actually supported by the paper’s own statistics.

That is hardly the end of this appalling story.

The authors of the paper ignored King’s emails about this and other issues in their paper repeatedly. He wrote to the journal editor himself about it, and was told nothing would be done, indeed the record would not be corrected. Frustrated that MS would not publish a commentary containing his analysis of the paper’s flaws, including the fact that if he replicated what the authors claimed to have done, he got very different results from them, King decided to publish that commentary in a different journal. He then says this:

While revising my replication for publication, I became convinced of a more serious issue: the method reported in Eccles, Ioannou, and Serafeim (2014) was not the method actually used. Worse, the true method could not support their “findings”.

Uh-oh. Now we are talking about, well,…..fraud. No more ‘typo’ bullshit.

So, what does King do? He writes to the research integrity offices of the institutions at which these people work. Yea, Harvard and London Business School. King then writes:

Shortly after I submitted my complaint, the authors acknowledged they had misreported their method. But they did not ask Management Science to correct the text of their article.

And what did the Research Integrity offices do upon receiving King’s complaints? Harvard – nada, and LBS – a promise to address the author’s ‘poor practice’ with “education and training or another non-disciplinary approach.”

King wraps up as follows:

Eccles, Ioannou, and Serafeim (2014) remains only partly corrected in the pages of Management Science. Diligent readers may discover the erratum correcting the “NOT significant” finding, but they will not learn of the misreported method in the pages of Management Science. Thus, thousands of readers remain misled.

But there is yet another kick in the ass. King went to various colleagues for help in his quest to get this very wrong paper corrected, and got some of the following responses:

  • “I can’t do anything—it would cause conflict.”
  • “Your email is too long.”
  • “I’m underwater for the next month.”
  • “I’m too much of a coward.”

King notes –

The last came from an internationally respected scholar with a chaired position at a top university. I appreciated the candor. It revealed an uncomfortable truth: much of social science operates on a culture of go-along, get-along.

And, to amplify King’s assertion, I will close with this deeply troubling statement from some scholars who undertook and then published an in-depth investigation into what typically happens when someone tries to do what King was trying to do  –

“Once a paper is published… it is more harmful to one’s career to point out the fraud than to be the one committing it” (Bloomfield et al., 2018).

Ain’t Science great?

Beal Book Purge, Part II – Nothing to See Here

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Education.

I wrote about the Beal Secondary School library’s 10,000 book purge here last week. Since then there was a second article in the LFP noting that the provincial Minister of Education had finally spoken up and said this sort of library culling of books must stop. Fine, Mr. Minister, but the books at Beal are already long gone.

Today’s Freeps has a third story on this, with the headline:

Expert downplays censorship fears after Beal 10,000-book cull

Well, an expert has spoken, so I am greatly reassured.

Who is this expert? Well, it is none other than James Turk, a director of the Centre for Free Expression at Toronto Metropolitan University.

Clearly, that’s the guy you want to hear from, eh? A quote from him from the Freeps article:

“I have gone through the list of the 10,000 books removed and checked the current online database of the items remaining in the collection and am satisfied that this case was not about censorship.”

There you have it. Oh, and the article also mentions that  “Officials with the Thames Valley District School Board declined to comment”.

Turk does have more to say.

“It is normal practice in all libraries to make space for new books by removing those, for example, that have been damaged or that no one has taken out for a period of years or to meet new curriculum needs.”

Well, they certainly made a lot of space, eh? 10,000 damaged and seldom checked out books.

Turk is critical of the Minister for pausing all those book culls, though. Another quote from Turk from the Freeps.

“The provincial government’s role is to make sure that all boards have appropriate selection and de-selection policies but leave the selection and de-selection to the teacher-librarians within the board” he said.

That’s interesting, as it was Beal’s teacher-librarian who raised a stink about this cull (else none of us would even know about it), was disciplined by his superiors for doing so (for ‘insubordination’) and then resigned when he felt his job became untenable.

This all made me very interested in Turk’s credentials, and so I looked him up at this Centre at TMU.

Now, in my discipline every serious economist working at a University has a website where the public can go to see what courses we teach, maybe even some sample course outlines, a copy of our CV indicating what we have published and the positions we have held, and usually a list of the projects we are working on currently, with maybe some working papers available to download.

For Turk – nada. I found the website for this ‘Centre’ he directs, and he is listed as being its Director, indeed, but there is no info that I could find about his work as an academic. He appears in some of the podcasts listed on the Centre’s site, but no serious research that I could find. No CV, either. I looked at the TMU School of Journalism site, too, and he is not listed as a faculty member there, so no help.

I was left to the device of putting his name into Google Scholar to see if any research with his name attached came up. Sadly, as academics know, GS has become enshittified along with the rest of the web. All one can do is put the name in and then, since Turk is not exactly an odd name, up comes a million papers having nothing to do with him. It is impossible to pare this pile down by being very specific about his exact name, because GS wants to throw as much shit at you as possible.

On the first page of results I got these papers:

High sensitivite flow cytometry of membrane vesicles

Measuring power in families

Uterin neuroplasia in 13 cats.

All fascinating reads, I am sure, but listed only because somebody named Turk was one of many authors. I did find a book chapter he wrote which of course I could not read, titled ‘Protecting the integrity of academic work in corporate collaborations’.

And, I found one paper he co-authored, published in the Canadian School Libraries Journal in 2025, titled ‘Censors Are Targeting Schools: Hardly New but Deeply Troubling’.

It is not actual research, just a brief piece laying out his idea of what is going on regarding attempts to influence what books are stocked by libraries, both public and school.

There are some curious things in this little article.

Near the end the authors provide a list of historical attempts to get books removed that failed. They write:

Barbara Smucker’s Underground to Canada, recipient of numerous awards, is an historical novel for Grades 5 to 8 describing the underground railway that brought slaves escaping from the American South to Canada during the 1850s and 1860s. It has been challenged actively in both Winnipeg and in Nova Scotia’s Tri-County school district because of its use of the N-word. That has been the basis of demands for removal in various school boards across Canada of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, and just this year of eminent Canadian author, Lawrence Hill’s The Book of Negroes.

Yet Turk sees no problem with the removal of Steinbeck from the Beal Library?

Later, they write:

“This makes the schools vulnerable to individuals and groups who invoke phraseology such as “age appropriate”, aim to deprofessionalize librarians and educators, and press for removal of a challenged item without a transparent and fair review by those with the necessary education and training.”

Yes. Those with the education and training. Like Beal’s teacher-librarian Larry Farquharson, perhaps. or – no?

And the term “age-appropriate’ is  ‘phraseology’? Hm.

The Beal policy document says of their purge “The project will focus on deselecting texts with harmful images, messaging, slurs, and racial epithets to facilitate the safety and well-being of all students.”

So, is that ‘phraseology’? Perhaps not. I suppose phraseology, like censorship, is in the eye of the beholder.

I learned a lot about what people at Turk’s Centre think about censorship through researching him, so I will be writing more on that in the future. For now I will just say that Mr. Turk (I have no idea whether he merits the term ‘professor’ given the paucity of info available on him at TMU) has not re-assured me in the least.

Those 10,000 books were destroyed (not passed on to others) mostly because the people who run Beal did not like what was in them. And they did not pass those books on to others because that would have made it too obvious what they were about to do, and a stink might have been raised before the books were gone.

About Those ‘Material Advantages’

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Health Care.

 

As I have noted often, I still get emails from a variety of university officials. One such is the new Faculty of Social Science Associate Dean for Research. The primary activity for all past holders of this position has been sending out emails. Lots and lots of emails. The current AD is no exception.

So, I got one today about a new ‘award’ from CIHR, which is the Canadian Institute for Health Research, which is the primary federal funding agency for research in health care. The email explained the steps one should take to apply for the award below.

Below is what the AD’s email says about this award. As you can see, only certain folk need apply.

_______________________________

 

The CIHR Research Excellence, Diversity and Independence (REDI) Award supports the professional development, career progression, and mentorship of trainees to establish and sustain strong, independent research programs in academia in order to advance scientific excellence and foster diversity in Canada’s research ecosystem.

REDI 2025 will support applicants through two distinct streams:

  • Stream A for trainees who self-identify as Black (any gender), racialized women, or racialized gender-diverse people, and
  • Stream B for trainees who self-identify as First Nations, Inuit, Métis scholars (any gender).

Award Value

The REDI award has two-phases across a maximum of 6 years and a maximum amount per award of $660,000 for up to 6 years.

_______________

$110,000/year for six years is some pretty good material advantage, no?

You Call This Journalism?

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in News Media.

Regular readers know that I am in general despair regarding the state of 21st century journalism. My local paper, to which I still subscribe as a matter of duty, has almost no staff, no resources, and the people employed there cannot even write English.

Here’s a recent LFP headline – yes, from the bloody front page:

Another Winter Weeather Wallop

Either they have no copy editors any more, or no one there knows how to spell ‘weather’.

The Globe and Mail, which is really a Toronto paper that tries to sell itself as the Canadian paper of record, gets worse almost by the week, but again I pay for a (online only) subscription as a way to stay informed about happenings in Canada. There is much that they ignore, so I also subscribe to The Free Press, which features a This Week in Canada post by one of its writers.

Then there is the Wall Street Journal, easily the most expensive of my many subscriptions, which I rely on for US and World news. It, sadly, is also becoming more and more staffed by badly trained, semi-literate and barely-numerate staffers. On top of that, they don’t seem to have any editors either, as the example below will indicate.

The top right hand of today’s WSJ lists a set of ‘Opinion’ columns, and the first one on the list is credited to The Editorial Board, titled The Affordability Problem in One Chart.

The sub-headline under that title says ‘Wages aren’t rising fast enough to counter still-rising prices’.

Ok, so we know the point of the story. Below is that ‘One Chart’ from the article that is supposed to convey this simple message.

So, let’s have a close look at it.

Along the horizontal axis we have the 12 months of 2025. Fine. Easy.

On the vertical axis the graph is labelled ‘average hourly earnings, Jan-Dec. 2025’

Um, guys…..earnings are measured in dollars, the numbers on the vertical axis are percentages. So, that is not what is on the vertical axis.

It must be in fact ‘the percentage change in hourly earnings’…right?

Ok, but wait a minute. A percentage change can only be measured as a percentage change from something. So, is this the percentage change from one year previously, the way the inflation rate is typically expressed, or is it the percentage change each month from the previous month?

Don’t know, but since we have been left to figure this out on our own, let’s just take a leap and assume it is the percentage change from the previous month.

The ‘Note’ below the charts says that Oct and Nov data are not available due to the lapse in appropriations. Ok, but…..why is the Jan, Feb, Aug and Dec data also not available? Dunno. Doesn’t say.

And, if we are right in guessing that those lovely blue bars represent the change in earnings from the previous month, then that missing data means that this ‘one chart’ tells us exactly nothing about what has happened to earnings over the last year. If the missing blue bar from Aug were, say, -2.4% then over the year earnings would have decreased terribly, but if it were, instead, +3.1% then whoo-hoo, things are going great. And of course that is only one of six missing months on that graph. Indeed, depending on what those missing six (half) data points are, anything might be true of the change in earnings over 2025.

And, and….it is almost embarrassing to go on like this….there is nothing in that graph about how much prices were ‘still rising’ in that same period. Nothing.

So, esteemed WSJ Editorial Board, your one mis-labelled graph with half of its undefined data missing tells us exactly zero about ‘The Affordability Crisis’. All it tells me is that the WSJ Editorial Board should all be fired. Ah, but then who would replace them?

Journalism was bad enough when people thought they could learn to be journalists by going to schools of journalism, rather than taking courses in English composition, History, Economics and Math. Now at my old employer they take courses in The Faculty of Information and Media Studies.

We all by now know the quality of education one gets from anything with ‘studies’ as the last word.

The Information Age, my ass.

 

Who Has the Tickets?

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Economics.

It has been a long time since I attended a big-time event for which tickets were sold by Ticketmaster. I go to hear a lot of live music, but these days that is always at a smallish local venue that either collects a fee at the door or uses its own devices to sell tickets.

The local Junior A hockey team, the Knights, play in an arena that is full to its 9,000+ seat capacity for every game, and if you want to try and get one of those seats, you are sent to a Ticketmaster site. I did that today just for fun and it indicated it had 14 seats available for today’s later game, out of those 9,000+. Prices were $56 each, plus a $5 fee.

I used to go hear the Toronto Symphony Orchestra quite frequently back in the day, so I also checked out some of their ticket prices. TSO has its own ticket sales site, and a ticket to hear Stravinsky’s Firebird and Brahms’ Piano Concerto #1 will run you just under $150 for a decent seat, plus an $8 service charge. This notion of adding a ‘service’ charge is also a regular feature of event ticket sales. It is curious, no? Can you imagine being charged a $15 fee when you buy your next microwave oven? Or a pair of jeans?

Anyway, this article is prompted by, and largely based on, of all things, a Powerpoint presentation I ran into on the web, put together by one Eric Budish, an Econ Prof at the U of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. He notes on the first page of the presentation that he bought his first scalped ticket in 1986 to see a New York Mets baseball game.

Ticket-scalping, which economists refer to as ‘secondary market sales’, and what to do about it, is the topic of his PP presentation.

Budish starts his slides with a story about a lecture given in Boston in 1867 by one Charles Dickens. Folks stood in line to buy tickets, and a limit of 12/buyer was imposed, to prevent ‘ticket speculating’. None the less, scalpers were soon selling tickets for up to $20 each, according to a story in The Boston Journal.

Scalping is an old phenomenon, is the point, but the second point he makes is that this ‘secondary market’ really went crazy once ticket sales moved to the internet. His talk is ultimately aimed at making some proposals for getting the event-ticket market to work better for fans and artists.

Before I get to that, it will be useful to go back over how things worked pre-internet, and what economics had and has to say about it.

When folks stood in line to get tickets for events, or made phone calls, some of those buyers were indeed speculators, who bought the tix with the intent of re-selling them at a profit. This was indeed speculation, since if the event was not all that popular, profitable resale would not be possible. You can’t re-sell tickets at a profit if there are plenty available at the original face value. However, what seemed to happen was that re-sale was always profitable for most well-known artists. Why? Economists saw this as in indication that the artists and their managers intentionally under-priced concert tickets. If it can always be anticipated by the scalpers that tickets can be re-sold at higher prices, why did the artists not set prices higher at the box office? Why let the ticket speculators make all that money, when higher face values would mean more money to the artists (and the venues)?

The typical explanation for this (from economists) was that the artists did not want to alienate their fans by extracting the highest prices possible from them. If a fan paid a high price to a scalper, that fan understood it was not their favourite artist who was profiting, hence no bad feelings.

Another possible explanation was the idea that the ‘best’ fans to have at the event, the ones who would cheer and dance the most, were not the ones who could afford high prices. (People who attend Toronto Maple Leaf hockey games tell me there is much to this. Leafs tickets are very expensive, and most fans are corporate types who sit on their hands. I have no personal recent experience of this.)

Anyway, the idea here in the pre-internet era was that this ‘under-pricing’ was in the long term interests of the artists and maybe even the venues.

Then ticket sales moved almost wholly to the internet for artists of any stature, and this introduced an old concept that was new to this old market, which changed things hugely: economies of scale. Now it was possible for a single operator to buy tickets for events all over the world and re-sell them. And it therefore paid such operators to invest in ‘bots’ and low-wage overseas workers to ‘get to the front of the electronic line’ and to defeat any safeguards put in place to limit sales to any one buyer.

Budish supplies a number of stories of how this changed things.

– Hannah Montana tour tickets in 2007 selling out in minutes, and dads paying $3,000 so their pre-teen daughters could attend a show.

– In 2018 tickets for an Ed Sheeran show sold out in 5 minutes, but here is the kicker – his management admitted they themselves sold tickets directly to re-sellers.

– Tickets for a three-day run of Grateful Dead ‘Farewell Tour’ shows in Chicago were offered for sale for $114,000 each on Stubhub.

– Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote an op-ed in the New York Times in 2016 titled ‘Stop the Bots from Killing Broadway’. By this point Ticketmaster had put anti-bot safeguards on its ticket site, but claimed that none the less a ‘bot army’ bought 30,000 tickets to performances of Hamilton.

As Budish says, the ‘secondary market’ had pretty much become the true market, with Ticketmaster saying that 20% of all tickets used by fans were bought on the secondary market, with the percentage hitting 90 for some events.

Things are now at the point where most of the money is being made by the organized re-sellers, like Stubhub, Seatgeek and Ticketmaster’s own secondary-market platform. There is an estimate (the slide does not specify which year) that some $15Billion in tickets sales happened on the secondary market, with Stubhub getting nearly $5B of that and Ticketmaster another $2B.

So – what to do? Budish has some ideas.

One, outlaw fees. If the fee must be paid no matter what the buyer does, then it is part of the price, and so must be stated that way. No adding fees when one gets to the point of giving credit card info.

That one is easy, and is not really related to the secondary market issue. The London Knights and Toronto Symphony sites I looked at both told me there would be a ‘service fee’. What I do not know, because I didn’t actually buy, is whether any other fees would have appeared when I got to the point of paying for the tix.

To shrink the secondary market, Budish proposes a technological fix. It is possible now to restrict re-sale of tickets by making them wholly electronic. If you buy a ticket to an event, it is downloaded to your online device (typically a smartphone) in a way that it cannot be transferred to someone else’s device. Sellers pair this with a limit to how many seats can be downloaded to any one device, and this (it is assumed) kills the resale market.

The curious part of his presentation is that he seems to think that with this technology in place, artists will naturally choose one of two scenarios.

One, they will restrict re-sale as just described, and set low box-office prices so their ‘true’ fans can afford tickets and come to the shows.

Two, they will not restrict re-sale and will set high ‘market-clearing’ box-office prices.

I do not understand why an artist who wants to set high box-office prices would not also employ the no-resale technology. When an artist and their management decide on concert prices, they can always get it wrong in either of two ways.

A, they set prices too high in the sense that tickets sit at the box-office unsold. An artist/maager who sees this happening as the date of the concert approaches can, I presume, lower prices for the remaining seats to try and sell them. This might piss off those fans who bought earlier, if they find out.

B, they set prices too low, and tickets go fast and end up on some re-sale market. Well, if artists really don’t want that to happen, then why not use the no-resale tech anyway? If you set prices too high it won’t matter, but if you set them too low it keeps money out of the hands of the scalpers.

It also seems to me that Budish assumes that artists don’t want to help ticket scalpers make money. Lin-Miranda’s op-ed suggests that may be true for him, but it is less than obvious to me that feeling is universal.

As noted above, in the pre-internet era, artists set low prices, (small-time) scalpers made money re-selling tickets, and the artists seemed mostly fine with that because they didn’t get blamed for the high prices.

It is clear that with the no-resale tech in place, the artists can set ‘low’ box-office prices without helping scalpers get rich. This is already how airlines sell their tickets pretty much. Pre-internet, airlines did this by requiring the ticket buyer to provide a full name that was included on the printed ticket. Airlines required you show a passport with a matching name when you boarded.

I just don’t see why artists who want to set high prices – whatever that means – won’t also put the no-resale tech in place.

However, another part of what Budish at least thinks about is how artists who want to set ‘high’ box-office prices might do that, and one option he considers is that they hold an auction. Or, more likely, some outfit like Ticketmaster would do it for them. You would go online to some site where you could bid the amount you were willing to pay for four Taylor Swift tix, for example. This should defeat the re-sellers, since in an auction the only way to insure getting lots of tix is to be willing to pay a lot, which pretty much kills any hope of profitable re-sale. Economists have done a lot of theoretical and practical work on auctions since I joined the profession in the 80s, and there is a consensus that auctions work much better than they used to because of their contributions. However, so far as I know, ‘work better’ mostly means auctions today generate a lot more revenue for the seller than they used to. I’m not sure that doing that for concert tickets will feel like an improvement, but Budish is an economist, so I expect he is in favour. And, it would mean that all that extra revenue would go to the artists and venues, rather than re-sellers. I suppose that is preferable.

Anyway, an artist that sells concert tix via an auction will have pretty much killed off any hope of a secondary market operating at even higher prices. Thus, they will indeed have no reason to also adopt the no-resale tech for their tix, so far as I can see. That would mean that someone who got a ticket in an auction but then had to miss the show, say due to illness, could re-sell the tix for something, at least.

One added note on the ‘hidden fees’ part of this. My strong intuition is that this is a pure internet phenomenon. A clothing retailer could certainly add a $5 ‘processing fee’ when you go to the cashier to pay for your new shirt or slacks. They do not do so only because they do not want their sales  personnel to face the customer’s anger when that happens. When paying for something on an internet platform, there is no one to feel your anger; you just pay it or cancel the transaction, and since it’s ‘only’ $10 almost everyone pays it.

That being said, there are exceptions. It’s been a while since I bought a new car, but I do recall that once you sat down with the ‘Sales Manager’ to sign the papers, all sorts of things could appear. ‘Destination charge’ rings a bell,, as does ‘Dealer Prep’. So perhaps part of it is that the amount of the extra charge be ‘small’ relative to the price you are already paying. Small enough that you don’t walk away.

Back to Budish’s techie solution to the secondary market taking over ticket sales, I absolutely hate it for the obvious (to me) reason that it makes us even more prisoners of online-enabled devices. (It also assumes that the same geniuses who figured out how to employ ‘bot armies’ won’t also figure out ways to defeat it. There are billions of $ to be made from doing so, apparently.) And, there is nothing on earth that would induce me to participate in an auction to get tickets to any concert by any artist. There’s lots of great music to be heard here at The Richmond Tavern, and all I have to do is drink a couple of beers and drop a 20 in the jug when it comes around.

I will never attend a Taylor Swift (or Rolling Stones) concert, but might one day again want to hear the TSO play. My refusal to own a smartphone or participate in an online auction will perhaps make that impossible.

So, from a personal point of view, the ban on ‘charges’ aside, I am not convinced Budish’s ideas will make the ticket market better. Bad in a different way, perhaps.

But, hang in there, folks, if they have their way, grocery and other retail stores will soon be doing ‘surge’ pricing, and ‘personalized’ pricing and all sorts of cool things that will really piss us off – and we will be powerless to avoid. It’s all about extracting the maximum Benjamins from us, as the internet enshittification of life continues.

 

Angry as Hell

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Education.

There are days I think of quitting writing this blog, but only because some of the things I write about make me so angry that I suspect it is all bad for my health, mental and physical. Being angry is not good for one.

This post will be about such a thing.

The headline in my paper London Free Press this morning:

City high school library’s 10,000-volume ‘book purge’ sparks censorship debate

Here are the facts presented in the story, all of them coming from Larry Farquharson, who just resigned as the teacher-librarian at London’s H.B. Beal Secondary School. He says in the Freeps story that ‘It was untenable to stay’.

The library there once held 18,000 books, the largest number in the Thames Valley School District. It is now home to 8,300.

Here are the titles mentioned in the story which were eliminated. All of the info below comes from the Freeps story.

The purged books included 128 war history titles with another 15 from the library’s reference section.

They covered such topics the War of 1812, the first and second world wars – including seven books documenting Canada’s contributions – trench warfare and the Holocaust, including all but one of the school’s copies of The Diary of Anne Frank.

A copy of The Gallant Hussars also was removed. It’s a history of London’s First Hussars Regiment from 1856 to 2004.

Copies of works of fiction such as the Harry Potter novels, Lord of the Flies and Wuthering Heights were removed, as were books by such luminaries as John Steinbeck, Lucy Maud Montgomery and Kurt Vonnegut.

Needless to say, with nearly 10k eliminations, that is not a complete list.

Another quote from the Freeps story.

A Thames Valley document dated 2024-25 and titled “inclusive library collection revitalization project,” a copy of which was obtained by The Free Press, notes the London-based board has several requirements for choosing library resources.

The “revitalization project,” it states, “aims to revitalize the collections of (Thames Valley) schools to ensure they are culturally responsive, reflect our diverse student population and contain accurate and up-to-date information.”

It adds: “The project will focus on deselecting texts with harmful images, messaging, slurs, and racial epithets to facilitate the safety and well-being of all students.”

Thames Valley officials did not reply to a Free Press request for comment on the Beal library decisions or whether there are similar efforts at other schools across the board.

Of course they did not reply. And I have to point out that the headline on the Freeps story is a lie. There is no ‘debate’ here, the assholes at Beal simply unilaterally removed the books. They did not consult the public. That is not how these people operate. Nor did they move the books on so others could read them. There are many used book stores in London, not to mention a yearly used book fair at Centennial Hall, that would have been happy to have them. No, these books are not fit for anyone to read.

The brave Mr. Farquharson has provided us with a photo to show what happened to those nearly 10,000 books. It’s below, copied from the Freeps story and credited to him. Those books are gone, pulped into oblivion, as the assholes wished. This all started a year ago, according to Farquharson. The debate never happened.

As I said, so angry that my hands are shaking as I type. This is education in the 21st century.

But Thames Valley students are safe from Kurt Vonnegut.

An Echo from X

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Education, LBOs.

I was reading an economist’s blog, and he linked to this random X post, from someone named ShoreKnight who clearly hasn’t got a clue about 21st century universities:

Academic life would improve if universities would dispose the 19th century decorum and be run like a business with clear roles: pure administration, pure research, pure teaching. Administration needs actual MBAs not theoretical physics PhDs.

You may recall my past post on Pournelle’s Law in this regard. However, someone else responded to this post directly on X, using words that I can hardly improve on:

Academia already did what you’re proposing. Universities are now run like businesses with professional administrators, branding strategies, risk management, consultants, and KPI dashboards. The result hasn’t been better research or teaching. It’s been the transformation of universities into brand-management and lifestyle companies, where prestige, expansion, and revenue extraction matter more than scholarship or education. Research and teaching don’t reliably maximize short-term financial returns, so they get crowded out. What grows instead is administration because once an administrative class is established, its primary function becomes self-preservation and expansion, not mission fulfillment. This is exactly what happens when a nonprofit adopts corporate logic without corporate accountability. You don’t get efficiency. You get mission drift and an institution optimized to look successful rather than to be successful.

The responder is known on X as Jason Locasale. Don’t know who he is, never heard of him, but – you got it right, Jason.

Londoners With Ideas

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Popular attitudes, Standards.

This is going to be about homelessness in my city, London. Unlike most posts here, this was not provoked by an article in the local paper, or any paper, although they write and report often on this topic. Rather, it was prompted by two letters to the editor I read in the Freeps a couple of weeks ago.

Homelessness is of great concern in London and many other places. There are people now who sleep on the street downtown as well as in the underpass I walk through to get downtown. There are also encampments in various places around London, and probably other examples of which I am unaware.

I will start by saying what I can about what I think a ‘solution’ to homelessness would look like. Number one, it would mean that when people were found to be sleeping outside as they do now, they would be removed and taken somewhere. That is indeed priority one as far as I am concerned. Absolutely no one benefits from having those people there, although I expect there are those who would say that they should not be removed from the street if they wish to stay there. The next issue is what happens to those people who are removed from the streets. Those with mental health and/or drug problems (I suspect one often comes with the other) would be put into mandatory programs to treat them. Anyone who knows anything about such programs knows that their success rates are very low. However, if someone is judged to have successfully beat a drug problem, or been treated for a mental health problem to the point that they can function in society, they should be given temporary shelter while they try to integrate back into society. Their families should be involved in all of this whenever possible, and those given such shelter should be charged with crimes if they commit any while in such housing. I add that last clause because I know people who have tried to run non-profit housing establishments for people in similar situations, and they say the biggest challenge and expense is repairing the damage done to them by some residents.

Now I strongly suspect that some of the people currently sleeping on the street will never be put in a position to again function in society by any program that can be devised. (Indeed, I think it likely that many of them never did really function.) I have heard stories from those in the health care sector that some long-term care beds in Ontario are now occupied by young people who have ODed and then naloxoned enough times that they are no longer physically or mentally functional. LTC homes are supposed to be provincial establishments for the elderly with no alternatives. They are, sadly enough, often little more than warehouses for those waiting to die. Such warehousing may also be the unfortunate final destination of some of the homeless.

My overall point here is that a solution involves taking them off the street and putting them into a system which moves them along to some final destination. That final destination will be unconstrained entry back into society only for those who can function there, without breaking the law, going back on drugs, or back onto a bed on the street.

The above is only a sketch of what I would suggest, there will be a million details to work out. I do not think this is in any way an easy problem to deal with, or even to make progress on. It is bloody difficult.

OK, that is prelude, I started this by saying it was prompted by some letters to the Freeps on the London homelessness problem. Each of them suggested a way of attacking the issue, and the first one I will note was written by one Stephen Orser. The Freeps staff titled it Reward Taxpayers, and in it Orser suggests that ‘We should look at a Homeowners Homeless Program’.

Orser’s idea is to have the city provide a forgivable loan of up to 10 years and $125k to build a separate granny flat on any homeowners property.

“Rent, at a reduced rate, would be paid directly by Ontario Works or ODSP to house homeless, drug-free, screened, police-checked individuals. The city would insure homeowners for losses caused by tenants and provide free sewer hookup and fast action for problem tenants.”

“Homeowners can save money while helping the homeless.”

He also finishes the letter with this:

“Instead, we’re spending $7million for 60 garden sheds by Highway 401 for three years.”

Now, I agree with the implied criticism in that last sentence of the City’s current plan, as I have written elsewhere. However, Orser’s alternative seems to be to subsidize homeowners to build those garden sheds in their backyards. I will admit that such sheds are more likely to attract the attention of people currently living on the street than are sheds miles from anywhere, but that is the only improvement.

No subsidy you can devise would induce me to build such a thing in my yard. My worry would be that I might live next to someone who did build one. In that event, I would have no faith that the city would provide ‘fast action for problem tenants’. My neighbor a few years back rented his basement to a bunch of young assholes, and the entire neighbourhood suffered for more than a year until they left and he stopped renting. I woke up one morning to find a pile of garbage at the end of my driveway from said tenants. No, thanks, Mr. Orser.

The second letter was from one Ron Pare, and the wags at the Freeps gave it the title Star Trek Solution. I have no idea why the Freeps feels it needs to give titles of any kind to letters, but I suspect in this case it was the headline-writer’s way of indicating he didn’t like the letter.

Pare’s letter contains a sentence that I think is right on the money.

‘We are currently treating homelessness like a storage problem. We try to find places to put people, like warehousing inventory, rather than fixing the underlying human fallout that surrounds us.’

Exactly, Mr. Pare. That is what the City is proposing with its ‘hubs’ and ‘garden sheds’. And that is not a solution.

Mr. Pare’s solution is detailed, even more so than what I wrote above. It starts with a 30-day period of ‘biological stabilisation’ to deal with drug and other health issues, then a 60-day period of helping people to acquire human capital of all kinds so they can more successfully re-enter society. Those are possibly sensible ideas for dealing with rather than warehousing homeless people.

Then he writes:

‘We need to stop debating where to put hubs and start debating what happens in them.’

Agreed again. I will add one thing, that was implicit in what I wrote above: no system, however detailed and well-conceived, will constitute an actual solution if entry into it is purely voluntary. If you are found living on the street, you go in, period. Where you end up depends on what happens next. That is something all the ‘activists and advocates’ who currently dominate all discussions of this problem will likely not tolerate.

And that, along with the general inability of our city leaders to do anything competently, is why I see no solution looming. The ‘garden sheds’ way down in south London will achieve nothing, and I see nothing else with a hope of success on the horizon. Not my system, and not Mr. Pare’s, because the City will simply not implement them in the face of predictable opposition from the activists and advocates – and likely also from various judges.

And, if my plan or one like it were to be implemented, I am sure that some people would end up involuntarily warehoused. That’s because I expect that some not-small portion of people currently sleeping on the street are there because of what happened to them when they were young. Terrible parenting, trauma, miserable nutrition, abuse….and on and on. The only way to heal from such as that, if there is one, is not something any ‘system’ is likely to deliver. That is also why I wrote that priority one is to get people off the street. If some street people cannot be healed, it is still imperative that the rest of us not have to live with them sleeping, taking drugs, defecating and occasionally being violent on those streets. Chaos must be tamed.

Epilogue

Various people wrote into the Freeps in reaction to the two letters above. One such reaction was titled ‘Fine, You Go First’ in which the writer invited Mr. Orser to be the first to build a granny flat in his yard. True to his beliefs, Mr. Orser wrote back volunteering to be the first to take up his program if the City would implement it. He also criticized Pare’s plan as being ‘too expensive’.

So, two further thoughts:

One, as I wrote, it is the Orsers of the world who worry me about his plan. If it were to be implemented, there would be those who saw it as a way to be ‘rewarded’ – and impose costs on their neighbours when their subsidized tenants caused trouble.

Two, yes the Pare plan is expensive, as would be anything like my own. That is not what London does, they prefer to spend money in ways that do not address problems – like their solution to snow-covered sidewalks.

Prostitute List, 2nd (Christmas )Edition

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Standards.

Below are the most recent additions to my list of megabucks-earning celebrities who shill for various companies’ products. I should add that once the World Series ended (badly) my US broadcast sports watching dropped precipitously.

Some other notes that have occurred to me since publishing the 1st Edition:

  1. These are all from TV. If anyone is shilling online or radio or….well, I don’t know where else shilling happens…then it won’t be on here. I have an adblocker on my web browser, so don’t get many ads when I am online.
  2. I have seen more than one TV ad which featured some person in a way that suggests to me they might be famous and shilling for the product in the ad. However, I had no clue who said person was, so those people have avoided getting on this list. I’m sure they are relieved.

 

Prostitute Client
Billy Bob Thornton TMobil
Payton Manning Nationwide Insurance
Steve Carell Lavazza Coffee
Kevin Bacon TMobil
Bradley Cooper Uber Eats
Owen Wilson Xfinity TV
Vince Vaughn Xfinity TV
Benedict Cumberbatch Amazon
Steph Curry Google Phones
Danny Devito Jersey Mike’s Subs
Eli Manning Jersey Mike’s Subs
Peyton Manning USBank
Jeff Goldblum Xfinity TV

 

People? Who Needs People?

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Research.

I say this often:

There is no idea so bad that one cannot find some politician who will support it.

Exhibits 1 to 26 for the truth of this – most of what London City Council has done in the last three years, plus most of the policies espoused by Z Mamdani for NYC.

I have always also thought, though I say it less often, that there is a corollary to that axiom:

There is no idea so bad that one cannot find an academic to support it, if it will give them an excuse to write more research papers.

This corollary came streaking across the night sky and back into my brain as I was reading one of the latest posts from Gelman’s stats blog. You know the one. Gelman has a team of people who contribute posts from time to time, and this one is from one Jessica Hulman on Dec 19. It describes an idea that is breathtaking in its ignorance.

However, I will have to back up into some history of social science research to explain the whole mess. Do hang in there, I promise not to get geeky.

Sometime after I joined the ranks of economists, a new area of study in Econ was born called ‘experimental economics’. It had two branches, and the legitimate one involved doing field experiments. One such that I remember well was about charitable giving, an area in which I used to work. [The details here may be a bit off, it’s been awhile, but I trust researchers Andreoni and company will forgive me. I just want to give you the idea of how such research works.]

These researchers collaborated with the Salvation Army to put their kettles just inside the doors of a big retail store – might have been Walmart. The bell-ringers operated in two different ways. In Situation 1 they stood silently by their kettles and thanked anyone who might drop money in. In situation 2 they rang their bells, yelled ‘Merry Christmas’ and did their best to engage with the shoppers going in and out.

They then checked to see how much money was in the kettles in each situation, but the clever part was that in each situation they put kettles at every entrance/exit but one. A door around the side of the store had no kettle at all, but it did have someone noting how many people used that door. This allowed them to tell whether any difference in money taken in was partly due to people dodging the kettles more often in one Situation than in the other.

Not world-changing research, but you can imagine that Sally Ann and other charities would be very interested in the results (no, I don’t remember what they found).

That is a social science field experiment. One goes out into the field and tries something out to see how humans react. They are not easy to do, take a lot of time and money, and this one in particular required the researchers to get the cooperation of both Sally Ann and Walmart.

The other branch of experimental economics does lab experiments. That is what it sounds like, these researchers bring the participants into a ‘lab’ to be part of an experiment. What that usually involves is sitting them down at a computer where they interact with other participants and some software package. These experiments require the participants to make choices at their keyboards, and those choices comprise the data that is gathered from the ‘experiment’.

To be concrete, a classic example of such an experiment, also used to study people’s charitable behaviour, is to have them participate in a ‘public good game’. Each subject is given a pile of electronic tokens to ‘spend’. Any tokens they still hold at the end of the experiment are redeemed for actual money before they leave the lab. The participants are given the opportunity to contribute some tokens to a ‘public good’. Each participant of course gets to keep any tokens they do not contribute, but they also get some tokens paid out to them by the software, and the amount they get increases as the total amount donated by all participants goes up. Thus, each participant has to decide how many of his original tokens to keep, and now many to contribute to the public good, knowing that his contributions increase the payoffs to all participants, including himself.

The point here is that using the computer software, you can vary in a million ways how the tokens accumulate and are paid out. For example, you can mimic a ‘matching donation’ regime in which some outsider pledges to match the total number of tokens donated to the public good, thereby increasing in some measure the payoffs each donor gets. You can also put in a pseudo government that takes some percentage of each participant’s tokens, but also gives a tax deduction for any tokens each contributes to the public good.

You can have the participants contribute simultaneously, so no one knows how much anyone else gave when they make their own donation, or you can have people contribute in some order, so each knows how much has been given by those who gave already.

The possibilities are indeed endless, it’s all a matter of software and then writing down what happens.

There is a technical name for this sort of experiment, I’m trying to remember it…..oh, yea – Horseshit.

Ok, that’s my name for it, and here is why. Whatever happens when you put people in a room to participate in such a public good game, the idea that it tells us anything about how people’s real-world donations to charity respond to actual tax policies or actual matching programs or….anything – is laughable. The reasons are many.

The public good game is not having people support an actual charity. It is not,full stop, so their attitudes toward charity in general, or what a charity does with their donation, play no role.

The people are not spending their own real income in the game. The get some tokens they can keep if they don’t contribute, but the amounts are trivial. A subject might walk out of that experiment with an extra $20 in their pocket. Indeed, ethical considerations typically require that subjects not come out of the experiment with less money than they went in with, a real problem if you are trying to study gambling or other risk-taking behaviour in a ‘lab’.

Because the amounts earned or lost are trivial, there is nothing to guarantee the subjects are not just trying to fuck up the experiment in some way. It costs them virtually nothing to do so.

If researchers gave people $5,000 worth of tokens to start with that would not be much of a problem, and then they would be making real decisions about significant amounts of money. But that never happens because it would make the experiments frightfully expensive to run. And, it would still be true that people typically treat money they had to earn differently from money someone gives them that they can then try to keep.

The point then is: whatever subjects do in those labs, there is no good reason to believe it tells us anything about how they behave when they give to actual charities using their actual earned income. The experiments have zero ‘external validity’, as academics like to say. And, the point of social science research is not supposed to be to publish papers, it is to understand society. You know, the one we all live in.

Yet, thousands of such ‘lab experiments’ in Econ have been done since the 90s, and the results get published. There is now even an Economic Science Association which publishes a journal called Experimental Economics solely devoted to this stuff.

Why the popularity of this type of research?   l have an answer. It is easy. You just get your university to build you a ‘Behavioural Economics Lab’, which consists of 30 or so computer terminals in a room, and some software, and you can do as many experiments as you can dream up…..and publish as many papers in EE as you can write up. For the universities that expense is minor, and if their faculty can publish tons of papers based on what happens in it, it seems like a good idea. Cuz what U-bureaucrats want is for their faculty to publish lots and lots of papers. Whether any of them are worth a plugged nickel is not the bureaucrats’ concern. They wouldn’t know, anyway.

Oh, and another key thing about this experimental research is that one cheap way to get subjects for your experiment is to require all the students in Econ 101 to sign up to participate in at least one experiment in order to pass the course. My Dept had none of these experimentalists so this did not happen, but the UWO Psych Dept had that requirement in their Intro Psych course for years. I don’t know if they still do.

One wonders how much of the field of psychology – and now, Econ – is based on the responses of disgruntled undergrads to surveys and computer games.

However – this has all been a description of history. The journal called EE marches on, you can get access to it here, no charge. [The phrase ‘You get what you pay for’ comes to mind, but that’s just mean, right?]

So much for background. The lightning bolt that prompted me to write this post was a post on the Gelman stats blog titled  ‘Validating language models as study participants: How it’s being done, why it fails, and what works instead’

You can click on that title if you want read it yourself.

Quoting from the first paragraph of the post:

Earlier this year, I started paying attention to proposals to use LLMs to simulate participants in surveys and behavioral experiments. The idea is that LLMs can be prompted with experiment or survey instructions and a participant persona (e.g., demographic description), making it possible to simulate target human samples without the cost and headache of recruiting real people.

Yep, that’s right folks. Ms Hulman is looking into the use of LLMs (Large Language Models) like ChatGPT to be used as responders to surveys and to participate in behavioural experiments like the one described above. You just give them a ‘persona’ and see how they respond to your survey or observe what choices they make in a public good game. All without the ‘cost and headache of recruiting real people’.

We can do social science – the study of human society – without any humans at all. I ask you: is that just  Fucking Fabulous or what?

It certainly is if you are an academic looking for ways to write more and more papers, which is how you get ahead in your career.

I can hardly wait to see the policy prescriptions that come out of this emerging new wave of research – and you better know, folks, that no self-respecting social scientist does research these days that does not generate a ringing endorsement of some policy or other.

Moreover, with that ‘cost and headache of recruiting real people’ gone there is truly no end to the number of papers any single social scientist can write. Hell, they can get an LLM to write them (actually, that’s already been happening for some time….).

As I said, this is breathtakingly ignorant of what social science is supposed to be. But academics have their eyes focussed on what matters to them – writing papers and getting them published. Three days after this article was published on the Stats blog, there have been four comments on it from other blog readers, and not one of them has suggested there is anything problematic here.

To sum up this admittedly long post –

The original experimentalists choose to ignore the fact that their human subjects are being observed in completely artificial situations, rather than in actual social settings. Now the LLMers want to ignore the fact that those observed subjects are not human.

Ya gotta love the academic mind, eh?

Mistress of Sloth

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Uncategorized.

At this time of year I like to post something positive in this blog. Peace on earth and goodwill towards men and all that. Unfortunately, reading the news everyday as I do does not give one much material to use in such an endeavour.

That being said, there is no doubt that at the personal level, if I look at my life and the people in it (which is what Life is all about once one is not working, and maybe even when one is), it’s pretty damn good. I am a lucky S.O.B. Thus, I give you some observations from that personal life on a subject on which I am no expert: cats.

I have never been a cat-owner, don’t know squat about them. Growing up we had dogs, as did my son when he was young. Indeed, my Dad had a distinct aversion to felines, prompted by his not unreasonable irritation over the fact that the cats in the neighbourhood in which I grew up seemed to do a lot of peeing on our front porch. That will not endear you to anyone.

Although I am not a pet-owner now, there have been a few occasions on which I have played innkeeper to my gal’s cat, who I will henceforth refer to as The Cat. It’s a she-cat, and a very interesting creature. Indeed, my time with her has me convinced that if there is reincarnation, I want to come back as a cat. They have things figured out.

Now, boarding The Cat is not an onerous task. Cats – in so far as one can generalize from The Cat – ask rather little of their humans. Keep them fed, keep the litter-box clean, and they are, so far as I can tell, content. There are things you can do that will piss them off, and I suppose those things might vary from cat to cat, but in the case of The Cat, it is definitely possible to pet her wrongly. I am not at all sure what the exact parameters of ‘wrongly’ are, but I know when I do it, because I get hissed at, or even a soft bite on the finger.

I back off, The Cat gets over it immediately, and life goes on. To me the most interesting aspect of the life of a cat is their unmatched ability to Do Nothing. There are two situations in which The Cat gets very excited and might race about and make a bit of noise. One, when she knows you are preparing her food, and two, when you entice her into attacking one of her toys or a catnip sack.

In the first case she runs madly about the kitchen mewling up a storm and standing up against the counter, which I interpret as a feline version of ‘Will you hurry up, already?’. In the second case she will wrestle the toy to the ground and beat it up with her back paws and maybe roll over on it. This I take to be an expression of her natural predatory instincts, but one must know that this second thing happens only if the mood seizes her. You can throw all kinds of things in her path and if she is not feeling it, she will ignore them without so much as a look.

Which brings me to Doing Nothing. Those periods of mad activity, by my admittedly casual reckoning (I did not keep a log during her time with me) takes up much less than one hour out of any 24. The rest of the time, The Cat Naps. She doesn’t read, and if she is doing philosophy during those snoozes she keeps it to herself – she just Naps. On a typical day I might leave the house at, say, 11am to do this and that, and as I exit The Cat is lying on a pair of pillows I put on a dining room chair for that purpose – catnapping. When I come back three hours later, there is no evidence she has moved an inch, so I take off my coat, and sit down in my Big Chair to read or write or watch a game or whatever. Quickly, The Cat is off the chair, walks slowly into the living room, stretching her legs as she goes, and in a trice is up on my lap, curled into a ball of fur, purring quietly as she….naps some more.

She will stay there on my lap happily for hours, but for the fact that her human innkeeper has to get up to do something from time to time.

When I finally head off to my own bed, The Cat sleeps. She wakes at some point in the morning to remind me about her breakfast, but if I ignore her, she goes and lays down somewhere until I am ready to feed her. Then, cue the 2 minutes of mewing at me and running about while I prepare her food.

I would not have thought the old saying that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to master something applied to napping, but The Cat seems to think otherwise. Practice, practice.

Moreover, if I spend even one whole day at that level of inactivity, as I do, say, when I get a bug of some kind, my muscles and joints get so achy that it can be hard to sleep. Well, I can hear you saying, of course that happens to you, Al – you’re an old geezer. You gotta keep it all moving or it will just rust.

Fair enough, but The Cat is no spring chicken either. This is a mature, 12yo cat, not a kitten. Yet she can, if the mood takes her, jump from a standing start onto a three-foot high counter. Hell, I couldn’t do the equivalent of that when I was 22. All that lying about seems to in no way reduce The Cat’s ability to undertake great feats of derring-do when she wants to. I have had to chase her off my five foot high stereo stand and even higher fireplace mantel at times. And, if you can get her chasing the red light from a laser pointer, The Cat’s speed and agility is remarkable to behold. How is this possible for a creature that does nothing more than sleep most of the time? I have never known her to ask for my tube of Voltaren or an Advil after a good bout of chase-the-red-dot.

I wonder, do physiotherapists and athletic trainers study cats?  Surely there is something to be learned about training for athletic endeavours from these creatures.

To go along with this remarkable and seemingly effortless physical prowess, cats have a knack for exuding calm. As I noted, they will hiss at you if pissed off, but it doesn’t last, and the rest of the time they are the embodiment of calm serenity. At least, The Cat is. You get her lying curled up on your lap, purring quietly, and it is very hard to get angry or upset. About anything, Well, maybe about the fact that you really really have to pee and so need to get up and disturb all that serenity.

Again, if there is re-incarnation, forget about coming back as a Captain of Industry or a Great Thinker, I want to be a cat. They got it sussed.  Peace and Goodwill towards all, indeed.

 

Unexpected Cross-Border Grinchiness

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Economics.

I came across a short article in the Globe today which in turn sent me to a recent report by Canada’s Fraser Institute (it’s full of economists) that said this:

The percentage of tax-filers in Canada who gave something to charity declined from 21.9% in 2013 to 16.8% in 2023.

It also finds that:

The percentage of aggregate income given to charity in Canada has ranged between 0.52% and 0.55% over that same 10-year span.

So, giving as a percentage of income has been pretty stable, but it has been a decreasing percentage of filers who have donated, implying that those who still do donate are giving more than they did in the past.

Another surprising aspect of that first statistic is that the percentage who do donate has been declining very steadily over that period, with no blips up or down, not even during the pandemic year of 2020. (I cannot reproduce the graphs from the report here, but you can read it yourself here and check out their graphs for yourself). There has been a steady downward trend in the percentage of donors.

Now the writer of the Globe article suggests that one thing that is going on here is that some Canadians have switched their giving from charities to crowdfunding campaigns over time. The Fraser report says nothing about that, and I am very dubious about that explanation. Show me some numbers, man – do we know how much has been going to crowdfunding campaigns over time, and do they typically fund things that could be seen as substitutes for what charities do? I doubt it.

Well, not surprisingly, this made me curious about the trend in other places, so naturally I went to find numbers on the US. I will first say that Americans have forever given more to charities than Canadians by any measure. But it is the US that is the outlier here, the US is so far as I know the most philanthropic society on planet earth.

Still, one can wonder what is the trend in the US, and I did find some info. As you can see, the data for the  chart below came from the Indiana University School of Philanthropy, an organization that was kind enough to fund a sabbatical I spent in Indianapolis a hundred or so years ago.

So, let’s consider carefully a comparison of this with the Canadian numbers. First, it is on a different time frame, starting in 2000, with the data being collected every two years only. Second, as I expected, the percentage who give to charity is waaaay higher than in Canada, but that fact needs to be treated with care. The Canadian numbers come directly from income tax records (anonymized, of course) and so are quite accurate. People who give get a deduction, you don’t want to fake donations you didn’t actually give on your tax form, and even if you give $10 you can declare it if you got a receipt.

Things are much different in the US tax system. To get any charitable deduction you must have enough total deductions to make it worthwhile to itemize them all. That is not true for most filers, so the percentage of tax filers who claim a charitable deduction would greatly understate the true percentage who donate. The numbers above – as noted under the graph – come from a survey the Center does. That is always dangerous to take literally, as if you ask people if they did something virtuous – like give to charity – they may say ‘yes’ even if they did not. So, the percentage of actual givers may be somewhat less than in that graph, but still – those percentages are waaaaay above the Canadian ones even if you discount them some.

That being said, note that the downward trend is the same, fewer Americans are donating to charity than in the past, also. hmmmm……

[One thing this suggests is that the title of the original Globe article ‘Canada has become a nation of charity grinches’ is perhaps unwarranted. Something international in scope is going on, perhaps.]

But wait – there’s more.

Below is a graph from the IU Center on the total value of giving to charity over the same period, adjusted for inflation.

Now, this is not quite the same as the Canadian graph of giving as a percentage of total income, but it tells the same story. The total value of donations is up slightly, even though the number of donors is down, implying that those who still give are giving more.

Hmmmmm…… again.

There is an easy story to explain this. Easy doesn’t mean ‘correct’ of course, but here it is –

If people at the top of the income distribution are seeing most of the gains in total income over the last 10 or 20 years, then this would suggest that they might give more, while those at the bottom of the pile give less. Those at the bottom of the pile would have been giving less than those at the top anyway, so this overall trend results in fewer givers but a pretty steady total amount given.

Sorting that out in detail would require more data-analysis.

 

Getting it Wrong for Over 40 Years

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Government, London, Standards.

It is winter here where I live, and that means snow and ice and all kinds of fun things. It also means that snow and ice need to be cleared from roads and from sidewalks if people are to get around. Both of these tasks are performed by the City in London, although the city contracts with private companies to do some of the road clearing. That is, there are trucks with plows on the front that clear the streets and have City of London printed on the doors, but there is also a variety of other equipment that one sees doing this, and it is not labelled as being City equipment.

Both activities are done very badly in London, but for different reasons. I will cover them in turn here.

Road Plowing

To be fair, London is good at many of the dimensions of road clearing. We are located such that winter snow squalls off Lake Huron are a regular event, and they can bring a lot of snow and bring it pretty quickly without much warning. The crews typically get out in good time, and they keep at least the main roads clear most of the time.

The problem is what happens once the snow has ended and the roads have been cleared. For reasons I cannot fathom, the plows continue to come, doing no good and a fair bit of harm. I live next to a street that runs through the length of my neighborhood, called High Street. Just one lane of traffic going each way, and some parked cars, so not a thoroughfare, but busses do run on it, so it is high priority for snow clearing.

Here is how it goes. We get a snow on Monday, the plows are out clearing High street that day as soon as the snow stops, or even before it does if rush hour happens. Within a few hours the snow has been plowed and sand and salt put down on High, so that it is quite passable and no more slippery than a damp surface is. Of course we homeowners will  have gone out and cleared our driveways at the same time, and that includes clearing away the heavy, icy plow-dung left at the end of our driveways by the City plows. It is the hardest part of shoveling, but there isn’t much for it but to go out and hack away at it so one can get out of the driveway.

But here’s the thing. On Tuesday, even with no more snow having fallen, here come the plows again. What are they doing? Well, they are re-plowing the edges of High Street, once again pushing heavy, icy boulders onto everyone’s driveways, which must be again removed by hand – good luck using a snowblower on that stuff.

Why? The road is clear, people have been driving on it for a day. I have even seen the plows come back a third time, requiring a third plow-dung removal. Is this to make sure the plow-drivers get enough hours in? Do the City’s contracts with the private plowers specify that they have to do this? It is often equipment that is not City-branded that I see doing this.

Sidewalk Plowing

And plowing is what it is. The City uses little mini-plows to run up and down the sidewalks in London to clear them of snow. Except that this technology does not work. First, it does not actually clear the snow off the sidewalks, I suspect because the mini-plows are not heavy enough to actually get under the snow and lift it all off. So, what one gets instead is a layer of left-behind snow on the sidewalks that has been polished down to a hard, icy surface. This then turns to lumpy ice.

Below is a photo I took of the result of this operation on the sidewalk that runs along my property. This photo was taken two days after the snow stopped falling. In the centre you can see the lumpy ice that covers the sidewalk, and on the left, between my wooden fence and the ice, is what is left of the sod on my lawn after the mini-plow got done tearing it up. (The grass on the right gets torn up some, too, of less concern to me because that is a City boulevard. Although I get to cut the grass all summer.) The plow-drivers are not particularly concerned with what they do to your property with their machines, so this picture could be repeated along a thousand different yards in any neighbourhood. It will be up to me to repair said sod come the Spring.

So far as I can tell, this idea that the City is responsible for clearing all the City’s sidewalks is all but unique to London. I have certainly never lived anywhere else where it was the case, and there are recurring letters to the Freeps saying that other cities in Canada hold property-owners responsible for keeping the sidewalks adjacent to their properties clear of snow.

This City-sidewalk-plowing regime has been in place for the 45 years I have lived here, and when I have suggested that perhaps having property owners be responsible would be preferable, the typical response is something like ‘but what about all the little old ladies in London?’

Well, a common sight in winter in London is little old ladies tottering along on the road, because one look at the lumpy ice left behind by our City sidewalk plowers will tell you that walking on that is a recipe for disaster. The roads are typically clear of ice within hours – better to take your chances with unobservant drivers than to try walking on lumpy, wet ice, especially if you are of a certain age.

When I was a kid, living in the same climate as in London, us young folks were instructed by our parents to make sure the little old ladies of the neighbourhood had clear sidewalks and walkways. It was what neighbours did for each other.

I should add that in advocating for this change, I am working against my own self-interest. That picture above shows a good 100 feet of sidewalk that I would become responsible for clearing of snow were my private-responsibility proposal to be adopted. At my age, that is a lotta snow to shovel, but you know what – I would find someone to do it for a price, I betcha, if I did not want to do it myself. Or, I would invest in a snow-blower. Never owned one, but they look like fun. And, they clear the snow right down to the concrete; plenty of my neighbours have them.

I have to wonder why this persists in London, particularly if it is true that this City-responsibility regime exists almost nowhere else, including elsewhere in Canada.

It has always seemed to me that Canadians are simply much keener to have their governments be responsible for things than are Americans. Witness health-care, the much lower levels of philanthropy in Canada than in the US, and the fact that private non-profit universities do not exist in Canada.

However, if other Canadian cities do make property-owners responsible for sidewalk-clearing, then that is hardly a good explanation of this utterly useless sidewalk-clearing regime in London.

I suspect that this approach was adopted in London back in the dim mists of history, for reasons as seemingly meritorious as that of saving little old ladies from having to shovel. What I think is important at this point is that the ‘ratchet effect’ is operating, which means that no matter how it got started, and how badly it works in practice, London can never switch to a private-responsibility regime. There are two primary reasons for that.

First, those sidewalk-plowers are undoubtedly unionized, so good luck ending their jobs.

Second, here in the 21st century, it would be easy as pie to find an academic who could ‘show’ that the private-responsibility regime would have a disparate impact on the marginalized. That would be the end of the matter right there.

On The Lookout for Pretendians

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in LBOs, Standards.

I. Mr. King’s Fall

If you live in Canada it would have been hard over the last few weeks to miss the reports about the fall of one Thomas King. He has fallen, at least in the eyes of some (and no one knows who or how many) because it appears he is not ‘indigenous’, as most people, including Mr. King – maybe – used to think.

This has led to a flurry of articles and opinion pieces in the Globe and Mail, including one written by Mr. King himself, and while there are some good reasons to see it as a tempest in a teacup, I have found it fascinating. It is a sterling example of much of what is wrong with North America in the 21st century, so I am going to write about it.

A lot.

This won’t be short, so buckle up.

And, it’s going to get complicated, but I will start with this. According to the Globe and Mail, “Douglas Sanderson (Amo Binashii) is the Prichard Wilson Chair in Law and Public Policy at the University of Toronto’s faculty of law.”

Yea….so?

Well, Mr. Sanderson (or Mr. Binashii) is the one from whom I learned that word ‘pretendian’, in an essay he wrote in the Globe, titled ‘Indigenous’ is the new ‘Oriental’- and that opens the door to ‘Pretendians’.

What does that have to do with Mr. King? Let’s back up a bit –

Thomas King is a Canadian-American (dual citizen, lives in California) author, ‘presenter’ and ‘activist’ who has most often written about First Nations. For much of his career there was a general belief that he was ‘part’ Cherokee, but the big story this last month is that he has accepted genealogical evidence – whatever that is – that he is not. He is, therefore, one of Mr. Sanderson’s ‘pretendians’, along with others like Buffy St. Marie. At least I think Mr. Sanderson would say that, as his essay is anything but clear. It seems he does not like the term ‘indigenous’, although he admits in the article that it came along to replace ‘aboriginal’, which at least some folks did not like either. Sanderson says that dislike of ‘aboriginal’ was due to a grammatical misunderstanding, and his gripe with ‘indigenous’ seems (to me) to be that it is vague, unlike ‘Metis’ or ‘Anishinaabe’, and Mr. Sanderson thinks this is what opens the door to pretendians. That seems just silly to me. King thought/claimed he was ‘Cherokee’, which seems pretty definite. People who claim or think they are ‘indigenous’ always claim or think they are part of some particular tribe or group, so far as I can see. For example, Buffy-not-the-vampire-slayer claimed she was born a Cree. Not true, it turned out, but that was her claim.

I no longer expect clarity from law professors, and his article is another example of why. But it is not really his article that got me to write this one, beyond the fact that I kinda like his term ‘pretendian’. (If he did not coin it, he does not cite anyone else as doing so.)

That all being said, it’s time to get to the heart of the matter, part I – Mr King’s fall from grace.

Back on Nov 26, after the King story broke, the Globe published an Opinion column by Tanya Talaga titled ‘Thomas King’s storytelling now feels like a betrayal’. [Globe: Tanya Talaga is an Anishinaabe journalist and speaker. Talaga’s mother’s family is from Fort William First Nation and her father was Polish-Canadian.]

Full disclosure now, King has written novels which I have not read, but he also wrote a book called The Inconvenient Indian which gave his view on indigenous/aboriginal – settler relations in North America over the years, and I did read that. I think it was for a book club I was in at the time, and to my admitted surprise, I rather enjoyed it. It was less strident than most ‘grievance’ books, made any number of sensible points, and was clearly and – at times – humorously written. I learned from it, and that is always a good thing, so thank you Mr. King.

I do not feel as though the things I learned are somehow wrong or no longer valuable now that King has decided/revealed he is not really Cherokee. So, I read Talaga’s piece to try and understand why she feels ‘betrayed’.

Talaga writes early in her piece that:

Thomas King is an author I revered, right up there along with Lee Maracle and Murray Sinclair. Mr. King and the late Ms. Maracle were close friends; she spoke of him often. I met him at the Eden Mills writers’ festival, and told him I admired his work.

Ok, so she ‘revered’ King, and I will start with that. Maybe you should not ‘revere’ people you don’t know well. My favourite Canadian author is Robertson Davies. If only I could write like that man. And, to be honest, there have been days when I really really wished I was Keith Richards. That guy is amazing, partly just for still being alive, but also because he wrote so much of what I think of as the best rock riffs ever recorded. I even bought his autobiography, and I never buy those.

But still, I know that ol’ Keef is just a bloke, and he did a lot of bad things, as have we all. I could never say I revere him. Perspective, man.

Reverence aside, here is a pretty clear statement of the source of Talaga’s distress, I think:

I found it unbelievable that the person who wrote The Truth About Stories in 2003, a book I leaned on for its brilliant tear-down of the myth of the “noble savage,” was not, in fact, Cherokee.

Maybe this tells us something useful, at least about Ms Talaga, and perhaps about others. If you thought Mr. King did a brilliant job of tearing down that myth, what does his – for lack of a better term – ethnic heritage have to do with that? If it was brilliant, the way I find Robertson Davies’ writing brilliant, what difference does it make that Davies was a (as far as I can tell) Scottish-Canadian Anglican?

Part of an answer perhaps comes from this quote from Talaga’s article:

Until Mr. King can prove that he is Indigenous, or a member of another First Nations community via his paternal side, his work cannot be understood as being told from the perspective of an Indian, but of an ally, and it must be read through that lens. His books should not be added to courses on Indigenous literature and history; unless he proves otherwise, his work must move to the Canadian literature section.

So, it is about borders. Boundaries. Fences, and who is inside them and who is outside. His work must indeed be ‘understood’ differently (whateverthehell that means) if he is not a member of some ‘First Nation’.

Ms Talaga feels betrayed because she thought King was inside the fence, and it turns out he is not. I searched my brain for an analogy, and here is the best I can do.

Imagine you have had a family doctor for 15 years who you went to with health problems, and who you found at least mostly helpful. One day you learn he does not actually have a medical license, he has been practicing without one. Now he is likely going to go to jail, but the analogy here is about the question: how would you feel? Betrayed? You’re still alive, nothing he did killed you or harmed you irreparably. Yet, I can easily see that in that position a person would be angry, and maybe feel that the fake doc had betrayed their trust.

The difference would seem to me to be that a medical license implies the guy knew things that enabled him to help you. You thought he was trained, yet he was not. His lack of training meant he might have hurt you. Being part Cherokee does not imply any special training, but I suspect that Ms Talaga, and others, would not see it that way. They would assert that only someone who is actually ‘Indigenous’ can possibly credibly tear down the myth of the noble savage. I disagree, I don’t see how any ethnic heritage makes anyone more or less able to do anything.

Another quote from Ms Talaga:

The searing harm of Mr. King’s story, as it stands, is that it plants doubt into the many sisters and brothers out there who want to find us and come back home. It leaves other truly Indigenous authors overlooked. It crowds out our own truthful stories from education curricula, from the zeitgeist, from Canadian arts spaces.

I have no idea what that first sentence is trying to say. Doubt about what? Doubt that some people who say they are indigenous really are? Ok, sure, but such doubt would include everyone, including me. What could the reference to those ‘brothers and sisters’ possibly mean?

I don’t know, but the rest of the quote is to me about more border policing. King’s unwarranted claim to be indigenous meant that his work kept other work from the ‘truly Indigenous’ from being recognized – and getting on reading lists and such.

Before I move on to Part II, which my old employer was kind enough to provide material for, I close with one last quote from Talaga. It is the last line from her article:

Now we all have to find healing, again.

Oh fergodsakes, Tanya. ‘we all’? Get over yourself. It does not occur to some people, and Talaga is hardly unique in this, that not everyone shares their perspective. I am willing to assert that Canada and the US are full of people who see themselves as indigenous or Cherokee or Metis or whathaveyou, but who feel no need to heal again as a result of Mr. King’s newly revealed ethnic status. They have known all along that there are ‘pretendians’ around, this is just one more, and they will get along just fine from here on out despite that. No extra healing required.

II. Policing the Borders of Material Advantage

As I mentioned above, one of the many things to appear on the Globe website about the King story was an Opinion piece by King himself, in which he sort of tries to explain himself. Ms Talaga says in her article:

Mr. King appears to be another person who truly believed they were First Nations – and profited from that identity – but does not have living blood ties to a family, to a community, to anyone on or around the rez.

So, she is giving him the benefit of the doubt, believing that he truly believed, at least for awhile, that he was ‘indigenous’. Reading King’s G&M piece, I am less sure of that. It reads to me like the confession of someone who for a very long time had doubts about his own indigeneity, but chose not to look too hard at it, until an organization called TAAF (The Tribal Alliance Against Frauds) did some digging. [In one of those ironies with which the world is replete, TAAF is also how The Asian American Foundation refers to itself.]

You can check out the first TAAF here – https://tribalallianceagainstfrauds.org/

And here is the thing. If you are accepted as being ‘indigenous’, there are material advantages that accrue to you in the 21st century. Part of the reason for this is the existence of people like Tanya Talaga who might not read your books about anything related to indigenous peoples if you are not inside the fence.

But it runs much deeper than individual attitudes, a fact which my former employer is making clear these days.

I got another email from the powers at UWO a couple of weeks back, telling me of a draft of a new policy and related procedures they are working on. I know – yawn.

However, this one deals with people who claim to be ‘indigenous’. This came out just before the King thing surfaced, and has been in process for awhile, so it was not a reaction to The King Revelation. There have been plenty of previous ‘pretendian’ cases, as I said, and I suspect that includes some at UWO – which the powers would do everything to keep quiet, of course.

Anyway, here is a direct quote from the draft set of procedures I was sent:

Consistent with the concept of Indigenous self-determination, this Procedure is initiated once a member or prospective member of the University community who is subject to the Policy makes a declaration of Indigenous citizenship or membership that will result in a new or renewed material advantage to them at Western or is otherwise subject to the Policy.

This puts the crux of the matter in amazingly clear language for a bureaucratic document – ‘new or renewed material advantage’ indeed.

What might those be, you ask? Well there are some obvious ones. First, you will not get a faculty appointment in UWO’s Indigenous Studies department if you are not ‘indigenous’, but you can be sure that your application for a faculty appointment in any department will be enhanced by such status. Applying for a scholarship or post-doc position? Applying for a research grant? Appealing your mark in Econ 2251? The list goes on and on, and in every circumstance your chances of success will be enhanced by your indigenous status.

The procedures in the doc I was sent are all about how the U decides whether someone is inside the ‘indigenous’ fence, and thereby entitled to the relevant material advantage. The reason for the policy and related procedures are self-evident. If someone get such an advantage and then turns out to be a ‘pretendian’ it is very embarrassing for UWO in general and for those who conferred said advantage in particular. Just imagine if Buffy St Marie had been appointed as an ‘indigenous’ faculty member in the Faculty of Music, eh?

So, those borders must be policed.

And, the details of the policing are fascinating in itself.

If you want the material advantages, you have to say so (the appropriate form you must submit is attached to the document I was sent as Appendix 2: Declaration of Indigenous Citizenship or Membership) and then a committee will be struck to determine whether or not to affirm your claim to ‘indigeneity’.

How will this affirmation decision be made? Like this:

“The Vice-Provost & Associate Vice-President (Indigenous Initiatives) (VP/AVP II) will:”

[Aside: I love the initials. VP/AVP II. Do you suppose their admin assistant is R2D2?]

a) form an Indigenous Affirmation Advisory Committee (IAAC) on an as needed, ad hoc basis in accordance with this Procedure to verify all declarations of Indigenous citizenship or membership that are subject to this Procedure;

b) the IAAC will be comprised of a Chair and two (2) other local Indigenous community members from any of the local First Nation communities upon which the University is situated.

The procedure specifies that this IAAC Chair must be ‘an affirmed Indigenous faculty member, staff, librarian or archivist employee of the University’.

The document goes on to say that in doing its work, the IAAC will:

“provide trigger warnings leading up to any discussion where Indigenous citizenship or membership may be raised in the process of recruiting/ identifying an Indigenous-designated position(s), award, etc.; “

Also….

“share relevant and accessible resources, as listed in Appendix 1, with all individuals seeking affirmation as they may find the discussion around Indigenous citizenship or membership to be triggering;”

I won’t belabour you with all of Appendix I, save to say it lists a whole lot of ‘mental health resources’, including The First Nations and Inuit Hope for Wellness Help Line: 1-855-242-3310 or https://www.hopeforwellness.ca

….and so on.

I sat on both sides of many tenure-review committees during my career. People who failed these reviews got, well, fired. No one was told about such resources. Barbaric, I know.

Naturally, the IAAC is going to want to see some kind of documentation to support the claim of indigeneity. Here’s what the procedures doc says about that:

Upon direction of the University, anyone who makes a declaration of Indigenous citizenship or membership that is subject to the Policy will be required to provide the IAAC with the following current documentation for review and have affirmed:

(a) a statement of relational positionality1 (up to 4 pages) that includes details of:

(i) the individual’s personal lived experience in relation to their declaration of Indigenous citizenship or membership;

(ii) the individual’s personal connections, responsibilities, and interrelationships with their Indigenous Nation, Clan, language, culture, community, land, and other relevant responsibilities including details of the individual’s lineal descent; and;

(iii) where relevant, details about how colonial practices (e.g., the ‘Sixties Scoop’, Residential Schools) have impacted how the individual is able to claim Indigenous citizenship or membership as a person with lived experience.

There is a (b) also, which states that the applicant must present two out of a list of 15 possible documents. It also goes on to say that the IAAC may, at its discretion, require even more than this. It also says that if the applicant cannot come up with two of the 15 listed documents, a sworn affidavit from the applicant and two community reference letters might do the trick.

This might, to the unenlightened, seem like it makes gaining the relevant material advantages rather easy. Any 2 of 15 docs will do, and if you cannot come up with those just get two community members to swear an affidavit. Seems a pretty low bar.

Of course, anyone who has worked in an LBO knows that the primary purpose of procedures like this is to cover the LBO’s ass. If a ‘pretendian’ should be revealed at any point, the U’s top bureaucrats can say, with their hands over their non-existent hearts – ‘Hey, we had a thorough procedure and we followed it. Not our fault this asshole found a way around it.’

The procedures doc goes on to say how the appeal process works if indigenous membership is ‘not affirmed’ (‘denied’ is such a harsh word) by the IAAC. Guess what – a new committee is formed to consider the appeal.

And, one should not lose sight of the fact that all of this will involve tons of time by the six-figure-salaried VP/AVP II, and no end of other bureaucrats and faculty. For every case.

Why oh why has the number of bureaucrats in universities risen so much more than the number of students or faculty over the last 20 years?

But hey, those borders must be policed, right?

No Limits

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Economics, Government, LBOs.

So I open up my morning copy of The London Free Press on Friday, and here is a story headline from one of the inside pages:

LHSC cutting mental health benefits to staff in ‘26

The story also appears in the online version of the paper, with a rather more striking headline:

Staff decry LHSC move to cut unlimited mental health benefits

“It’s really hard to feel like you’re being supported, and we are a No. 1 trauma centre,” an employee said.

As discussed often here, online newspapers are all about click-baiting, so the difference in the two headlines is not surprising. ‘Decrying’, indeed.

The facts of the story are that LHSC, the local provincial hospital corporation, has been paying for an unlimited amount of mental health benefits for its employees, and these will now be limited to a set amount of spending per year. The amount depends on the employee group, ranging from $400/year to (still) unlimited, the last being for those who are in a union that had the foresight to get the ‘unlimited’ benefits into a collective agreement.

Here’s a quote from the email to LHSC staff about this change, which the Freeps said it obtained:

“Since the voluntary introduction of unlimited mental health benefits in 2024, we have seen costs rise exponentially,” the email said, citing expenses exceeding $3.1 million in 2024 and estimated the figure would exceed $5 million in 2025.

And here is a quote from the Freeps article itself:

A non-unionized social worker affected by the cuts, who asked not to be identified, called the decision “a gut-punch.”

“I just can’t wrap my head around that. I just can’t feel comfortable knowing that we had this option and now it’s being taken away, and there’s no other alternatives being proposed,” they said, noting their unlimited mental health benefits as a non-unionized employee will be reduced to $1,500 a year.

Yes, it’s terrible for people to not feel comfortable.

What I actually find most striking about this is the apparent surprise voiced in the email from LHSC. They made something freely available with no limit and ‘we have seen costs rise exponentially’. Goodness, whoddathought that would happen?

Economists are as capable of being full of shit as any social scientists, but there are things people in my former profession say and believe that have unquestionably stood the test of time. One of them is – ‘If you give something valuable away for free, there will be no end to the demand for it’.

And in this case, one must add in the 21st century view that humans are so fragile that it is a wonder anyone can get through their day without a mental health professional helping them out. (I add that social workers like the one quoted above are in the vanguard of that view.)

As it happens the (more serious) The Free Press referenced an article in The Atlantic dated Dec 3 on what is essentially the same phenomenon, and one on which I have written in the past; the granting of special accommodations to university students with ‘disabilities’.

The Atlantic article TFP references is titled Accommodation Nation and is behind a paywall, but for some reason they let me read it for free – an early Christmas gift, perhaps.

Anyway, here is a key quote from the article:

The surge itself is undeniable. Soon, some schools may have more students receiving accommodations than not, a scenario that would have seemed absurd just a decade ago. Already, at one law school, 45 percent of students receive academic accommodations. Paul Graham Fisher, a Stanford professor who served as co-chair of the university’s disability task force, told me, “I have had conversations with people in the Stanford administration. They’ve talked about at what point can we say no? What if it hits 50 or 60 percent? At what point do you just say ‘We can’t do this’?” This year, 38 percent of Stanford undergraduates are registered as having a disability; in the fall quarter, 24 percent of undergraduates were receiving academic or housing accommodations.

I predict they will not be able to say no at any percentage, and the reason I say that is contained in this other quote from the article:

Tarconish sees the growing number of students receiving accommodations as evidence that the system is working. Ella Callow, the assistant vice chancellor of disability rights at Berkeley, had a similar perspective. “I don’t think of it as a downside, no matter how many students with disabilities show up,” she told me. “Disabled people still are deeply underemployed in this country and too often live in poverty. The key to addressing that is in large part through institutions like Berkeley that make it part of our mission to lift people into security.” (One-third of the students registered with Berkeley’s disability office are from low-income families.)

Yes indeed. Only their accommodations are preventing that 38% of Stanford students from ending up underemployed and in poverty.

A monster has been created, and it is feeding an entire bureaucracy of people with titles like ‘assistant vice chancellor of disability rights’, whose livelihood is based on the existence of disabled people. If Stanford or any other U (including my former employer) were to try to pull back on the granting of special accommodations to students, the ‘activists and advocates’ will pour into the streets (and classrooms) and onto social media until the LBOs cry uncle. And they always cry uncle in response to such pressure. This we have seen many times.

This is the part of giving things away that economists have missed. In the 21st century governments giving things away generally creates a class of people (those advocates and activists – and bureaucrats) who have a vested interest in said things remaining free. This, coupled with that ‘gut-punch’ feeling of people who were getting the free stuff, makes stopping the give-away a political grenade.

As a parting shot, the Atlantic article also points out that it is the already-privileged who benefit from this disability industry. Another quote:

As more elite students get accommodations, the system worsens the problem it was designed to solve. The ADA was supposed to make college more equitable. Instead, accommodations have become another way for the most privileged students to press their advantage.

(You can also be sure that ‘assistant vice-chancellor for disability rights’ is making well into six figures, btw.) Along those same lines, people who work for LHSC are also mostly well up in the salary distribution. No one there is working for minimum wage, you can be sure, and few employees of any organization get unlimited anything. Indeed, I betcha London’s cops and firefighters don’t get unlimited mental health benefits.

One more (impending) example of this general phenomenon came across my desk the same week. The headline at the very top of the first page of my (on paper) London Freeps Friday morning was this:

Micro-shelter plan takes shape

Our brilliant city leaders have hatched a plan to ‘bring 60 micro-shelters for London’s homeless to a southeast farm field’.

I here predict that this will go one of two ways.

One, it will turn out, to our city leaders’ surprise, that no homeless person will go willingly to live waaay down in south London, miles from everything. Then the city will be faced with either writing off the whole thing as a bad idea, or forcing people to live there in order to receive other things. (The advocates and activists will hate that second option. Count on a human rights case.)

Or, two, if they do find people willing to live in them, it will turn out that no matter how many of these the city builds, no matter where they build them, and no matter how much they spend on providing free accommodation to homeless people, it will not be enough. The activists and advocates will be explaining in the Free Press forever that the City ‘needs to do more’.

[I’m betting on option one. A photo of the site for these shelters, taken from the Freeps, is below. It’s just off Cheese Factory Road. Really.]

Now, one might say in this instance – ‘But Al, clearly this does not benefit the well-off, this spending is clearly of benefit to the truly desperate among us’.

I will cite another quote from the Freeps article:

It was also revealed Wednesday that the site will be operated by Xpera, a national emergency management and security firm, which has a office in London.

In an interview with The Free Press, [London Mayor] Morgan cited the firm’s experience in crisis response, logistics, security, first aid and de-escalation training.

“So, a well trained professional firm which has a lot of experience doing this, a lot of experience with site management, site security, and they are the successful proponent and will be operating the site,” he said.

The article does not mention how or how much Xpera will be paid, or how many employees of theirs will be involved. It does say this:

The early estimate to set up and operate the site until April 2027 is $7 million, funded from a city reserve fund. The latest report outlines the shelters cost $1.2 million before HST, and the city will enlist J-AAR excavating firm to construct the site at a cost of around $725,000.

I got $100 in my pocket that says that ‘early estimate’ comes up waaaay low. Anyone want to take the other side of that bet?

 

Hark the Avenging Angel Sings

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Language, Safety.

I was reading the NP insert of national news in this morning’s London Freeps and came across a story with this as the first line:

“A Simon Fraser University shuttle bus driver has lost a freedom of speech appeal after he was fired for stopping on the job to tell a construction flagperson she was beautiful.”

My spell-checker doesn’t like that word ‘flagperson’, but that is the quote. Anyway, the rest of the story is that said bus driver did indeed do what is written there, and said flagwoman apparently took offense, and did something about it. She reported him to the university’s security people, who also took a statement from another witness. SFU then informed the driver’s employer, one Luxury Transport, and they in turn fired the fellow two weeks later.

Here is what the article says LT wrote to the driver in the termination letter:

“What is of great concern to us is that you do not believe that there was anything remotely wrong regarding your comments….”

“You continue to hold that view. You do not seem to understand or care that your comments had a negative impact.”

The other details in the story are that SFU did not tell LT to fire the driver, but informed them that he was not allowed to drive on campus any more. LT then offered him another route, which he refused, so they fired him. In response, the driver filed Freedom of Information requests with SFU for the material related to this and got back sheets of paper that were entirely blacked out. The driver also filed numerous complaints against SFU and LT and others, asserting they had violated his right to privacy and to free speech.

Clearly, the driver was a pain in the ass once this got going, and was determined to fight every step of the way.

My interest here is in the original incident, and the flagwoman’s response. The driver’s name is given in the story, but not hers, so I will refer to her as AA – Avenging Angel. Having the driver do what he admits he did, it is well within AA’s rights to be offended. Not all women would be, but if she was, so be it. A perfectly sane and – I will say proportionate – response to the driver’s unwelcome comment would be to yell something along the lines of ‘Fuck off, Asshole’. Crime, meet punishment. He said something to you that pissed you off, or offended you, return the favour. Like I said, proportionate.

But no, not today. AA decides to call in Big Brother to teach this fellow a lesson. She notes the logo on the bus and goes to SFU security and files a complaint. They in turn find another witness, or maybe AA brings one along with her, and there the tale of righteous revenge begins. I would bet $100 that somewhere in AA’s statement is the phrase ‘I felt unsafe’, but we already know that bet can never be resolved. All we will ever be allowed to see of said statement is a blacked-out page.

SFU in turn does not insist the driver be fired, their lawyers would at least know that they have no right to demand that, so they insist he not drive on their ‘safe’ campus. It is probably true that the driver could have kept his job had he apologized – at least to his bosses – and taken another route. Cojones, or just stubborn? You can decide for yourself.

I have to imagine that AA is pleased with herself, and that the SFU bureaucracy feels it has done what it must to keep the campus a safe place, free of comments with a ‘negative impact’, for flagwomen and others.

No Longer Merrye Olde England

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Government, Secrecy.

If you grew up in North America over the last 150 years, you are likely to see England as the source of much of what we view as liberal democracy. The Magna Carta, a representative Parliament, the idea that a man’s home is his castle, all that which says that it is the citizen who has rights, and the government exists to serve the interests of said citizens.

The UK today hardly lives up to that image. Here is a complete story recently published on the website for Reason Magazine. It’s brief, but the link in the story takes you to a MSN article which is purported to be from The Telegraph, a UK newspaper. The actual story in the Telegraph is behind a paywall, but it does exist, dated March 2025.

In England, the Hertfordshire Constabulary will pay Maxie Allen and Rosalind Levine around $26,000 after wrongly arresting them for complaining about their daughter’s school in a private WhatsApp group. Six police officers arrested the couple at their home and detained them for 11 hours on suspicion of harassment and malicious communications. Their “offense” was questioning the school’s head teacher recruitment process. The school reported the parents to the police, claiming their messages upset staff. After a five-week investigation, police found insufficient evidence and took no further action.

If the MSN article is accurate, then Reason is understating things a bit. The MSN piece notes that:

The couple were arrested after the primary school complained about Mr Allen and his partner sending numerous emails and making “disparaging” comments on a parents’ WhatsApp group.

The couple had been banned from entering the school after questioning the appointment process for a head teacher and “casting aspersions” on the chairman of governors on WhatsApp.

So, they were not just talking to other parents, they did send emails to the school itself, and one could imagine such emails being threatening. However, then we have this from the same article:

Mr Allen said that the worst example they have since been able to find was Ms Levine describing a senior school figure as a “control freak”. “That was the strongest remark we could find – no obscene language, no threats,” he said.

And, it seems fitting to include the last sentence of the article, which is a quote from a ‘police force spokesman’ –

“Therefore, Mr Haddow-Allen and Ms Levine were wrongfully arrested and detained in January 2025. It would be inappropriate to make further comment at this stage.”

Yea, inappropriate – just pay the money and shut up.

One last quote:

Having questioned the couple on suspicion of harassment, malicious communications and causing a nuisance on school property, Hertfordshire Constabulary ruled that no further action should be taken after a five-week investigation.

So this was an investigation into, among other charges, something called ‘malicious communication’. What the freak can that mean? ‘Fraudulent communication’ I could see being a crime, particularly if it is part of an attempt to separate someone from some of their possessions or cash. Is calling someone a ‘control freak’ enough to hit the bar for ‘malicious’? Apparently not, but then I’d like to know what is.

The two things I find most appalling about this:

  1. The school bringing in the police. This is up there with the Biden Attorney general wanting to look into parents complaining to and about their school boards as examples of ‘domestic terrorism’. Government bodies are finding more and more ways to avoid being questioned about anything they do, and this is another example of that very disturbing trend. Parents should not be objecting to the way a head teacher is selected, apparently. I can well imagine that the couple in this story were considered pains in the ass by the school, and perhaps deservedly so. That does not justify calling the police.
  2. The police sending 6 officers to arrest and detain this couple. This is also another example of a 21st century trend: police use of ‘massive force’ in any and all situations. I presume the idea is to protect the police, but six officers to arrest a couple for ‘malicious communication’?

I suppose the fact that the police ‘after a five week investigation’ cut a cheque to the couple for a not-inconsiderable amount can be taken as some sort of good news. It is certainly an admission that what happened was wrong, even in the UK. But, coupled with other stories coming from England, such as the comedian being arrested after getting off a plane in England for comments he made online that were critical of UK immigration policies, I find it hard to think of England as a place where citizen liberty is protected. It seems more like a country which is in the vanguard of protecting government officials from criticism.

Better Driving

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Safety.

Being all about public service, and having nothing better to do than muse about the state of modern society sitting at a looong red light in my car, I hit on the idea of writing up a set of rules and tips for being a better driver in the 21st century.

Naturally, one should start at the beginning.

Starting

You will often find yourself sitting at a red light, and it is important that you do the right thing once the light turns green. I will write as though you are the first car in line at the red. If you are not, the principles are the same, you just have to wait until the cars ahead of you have moved well ahead of you before implementing them.

Seeing your light turn green, gently lift your foot off the brake pedal. The car will begin to creep forward (because like 97% of North Americans, you are driving a car with an automatic transmission). Let the creeping continue until the car is moving at its top creeping speed. Then, verrrry gently put your foot on the gas pedal so as to increase your speed verrrry slowly. You may know that the gas pedal is sometimes referred to as ‘the accelerator’. Do not be misled by this. Acceleration is highly dangerous. Ideally, it should take your car three blocks or more to get up to the posted speed limit. Execute this well, and no more than two cars behind you will get through that green light you just left in your rearview mirror. Traffic movement is safest when it does not move at all.

Turning

First, note that if you are the first car in a right or left turn lane at a red light, then the guidelines above apply in spades. Turning and accelerating is exponentially more dangerous than accelerating in a straight line.

However, here we will focus on turning onto a street when there is no stop light or other impediment to your turn.

Let’s say you are making an unimpeded right turn. Here, the brake pedal is your best friend. You should use it to get your speed down to no more than 2kph before you actually turn the wheel, then ease your vehicle slooowly around the corner. Whatever car you are driving at this point in history is equipped with a suspension system that would be the envy of a Formula 1 driver of thirty years ago, but do not let that go to your head. You don’t want that expensive German-engineered car to tip over while turning.

A good practice as you go through this turn is to stick your head out above the steering wheel and peer intently into the street you are turning onto, to make sure there are no critters or people waiting to leap out in front of you. Having safely straightened the car out on this new street, the advice in Starting given above once again applies.

Equally important here is correctly using that stalk on your steering column when turning. Some folks believe that this activates a ‘turn signal’, which, in the case of making a right turn as above, is supposed to tell drivers behind and in front of you that you plan to turn right. This could not be more wrong. You should think of this as a ‘turning signal’ which is designed to let other drivers know ‘I am turning now’. Thus, it should not be engaged until you are actually turning the wheel. I know it is a challenge to turn the steering wheel and engage the turning signal at the same time, but it is a skill you can master with practice: I have seen many do so.

Stopping

This is the most important part of driving, and doing it correctly is critical.

You will often find yourself driving along on a road without much traffic, and notice that somewhere up ahead of you a previously green traffic light has turned to yellow. You should take this as a signal to apply the brakes. The red light is coming as sure as Summer follows Spring, and Red means Stop. It is quite immaterial how far ahead of your current position is this traffic light – 100meters, a kilometre, 3 kilometres, it makes no difference. You want to be sure to be fully stopped when you get to the light, so brake early and brake often. Good driving is all about stopping – any North American traffic engineer will tell you that.

There are other traffic events that will happen in front of you, or even off to one side, and all require that you use your brakes immediately. Some common examples include:

The brake lights of a car ahead of you come on. Once again, it does not matter how far ahead is said car.

A ‘turning signal’ lights up on a car ahead of you, however far ahead.

The brake lights or turning indicator of a car in a lane to either side of you comes on. It does not matter which turning signal is engaged, use your brakes.

Again, all of these are situations in which you should engage your brakes, and keep them engaged until you have ascertained beyond any doubt what these other drivers are up to. Trust no one.

Turning Lanes

The discussion of making a turn above assumed that you were turning from a lane in which other traffic would be proceeding ahead. However, you will often come upon a situation in which there is a separate lane dedicated to use only by cars that are turning. These lanes of course end at the intersection. Using these right or left turn lanes correctly is also important.

Here I will discuss a left turn lane, the principles for a right turn lane are essentially the same. So, imagine you are coming up to an intersection at which you plan to turn left, and the traffic engineers have very considerately put in a separate lane for you. To enter this lane from the through lane, you should drive so that your left tires are in the turn lane and your right tires remain in the through lane, right up to where the turn lane ends at the intersection. This will insure that no cars behind you in the through lane can pass you, thus avoiding a highly dangerous intersectional incident. You may hear horn-tooting from the cars behind you; this is the traditional ‘thank you’ from drivers whom you have helped stay safe.

Addendum: essentially the same principle applies any time you change lanes. You should keep one set of tires in the lane you are entering and the other in the lane you are leaving for as long as possible. Your fellow drivers will thank you, if only in their prayers.

Special Situations

– Crosswalks

It is common in the 21st century to come across a set of painted lines in the road, with a sign posted at the side of the road that looks like the one in the photo below:

The important word on that sign is Stop. You must do that before you cross those lines painted on the road, then look carefully in both directions to make sure no humans or bunny rabbits are about to cross. Then you can proceed to drive past the sign.

– 4 Way Stops

Once you are the lead car that is stopped in any direction at a 4 way stop, what you should do is remain stopped there and wave through all cars coming from all other directions, until you are the only car remaining at the intersection. This insures that nothing bad can possibly happen to you as you proceed through the intersection.

Addendum The rules for turning signal use given above quite logically apply also in this situation. If you are going to turn at the 4 way stop, on no account engage your turning signal until you are actually moving through the intersection. Everyone likes a surprise.

Everything is Fit To Print

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in News Media.

In an age when most newspapers are read online, one consequence is that there are effectively no limits on how many stories a paper’s website can carry. Couple this with a need to keep as many eyeballs looking at the website for as long as possible, and the result is a plethora of stories that say nothing, posted in the hope that the headline will catch someone’s eye, if only long enough to click on the article and then move on.

Here’s a typical example from the WSJ:

Headline: When Home Sellers Set Prices Too High, They’re Paying for It

Um….’paying for it’? How? Is there a fine for setting the price too high? Social shaming?

The sub-headline almost gives the punch line away: More than half of homes sold in 2025 through October had at least one price cut

Could this WSJ story then possibly be pointing out that if one sets the price too high then one must….wait for it…..lower it?

I can hear you gasping as you read this. I mean, whoddathought, eh?

Because I am all about informing my readers, I clicked on the headline to read the story, and here was the first sentence:

“If you are serious about selling your home, you might have to drop the price.’

Really? Now you know why I pay serious coin to subscribe to the WSJ. Insight like that does not come cheap. But wait, there’s more. Also in the article:

Homes priced correctly from day one tend to sell more quickly and get nearly 100% of their asking price, according to NAR. After three months, sellers usually trim prices by more than 5%, and after a year, by more than 12%.

You don’t say. This article sounds like an elaboration of a really bad stand-up comic’s worst joke:

“How did the home-seller know he had set the price too high?

“No one would buy it.”

To be fair, the author also includes some keen graphics. There is a bar graph that shows that the longer a house is on the market, the greater is the average cut in sale price from the original listing price. A deeply insightful graph, that one.

In the era of paper newspapers, this story never even gets written, I’m thinking.

The Consequences of Dishonest Honesty Research

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Research.

A while back I wrote a long piece about an academic paper that purported to show that having people sign an insurance form at the beginning of the form induced them to provide more honest answers than having them sign it at the end. You can re-read that overly-long post here if you are so inclined.

The paper was bullshit, the journal that published it eventually retracted it, and one of the authors, Gino Francesca, was de-tenured and then fired by Harvard for this and other alleged misbehaviour. She is currently suing Harvard over this. Of course.

I am writing to say that I have found out, thanks to Gelman’s stats blog, that this particular paper had an impact out there in the real world, and, not surprisingly, not a good impact. The entire story is laid out in an article in The Times of London, which has a paywall. I am not a subscriber, but the Gelman blog lays out enough of the story that I can pass it on to you here. (You can read the whole account yourself here if you prefer.)

A guy named Michael Sanders was working in the Nudge Unit in the UK in 2015. ‘nudging’ refers to a whole set of academic findings that claims to be able to change people’s behaviour using simple-seeming changes in the way choices are presented – like where they sign an insurance form. Tony Blair’s Labour government went in big on this stuff, clearly.

[I add here that Gelman and company are deeply skeptical of all of this research, and not just because some of it uses falsified data, referring to those who do it as ‘Nudgelords’]

Back to the story. Having taken in and believed the findings in the above-mentioned insurance form paper by Gino et al, Sanders and company went off to Guatemala, a country with low tax compliance, to run a big trial to show that country how to increase said compliance. [Why this UK unit did this in Guatemala I do not know, probably the original Times story explains.] They would have some folks in this trial sign an honesty declaration at the start of their tax form, the others would sign at the end. Here now I quote Gelman quoting the Times story:

He was confident. “It was an enormous amount of data. If there was an effect, we would see it. With samples that size, you can detect the sound of a gnat’s wing.” And the effect? “Nothing.”

They had promised the Guatemalans big impacts, and with justification. The authors of the original research were, said Sanders, “a who’s who of behavioural science.” Yet they couldn’t replicate the work. It was inexplicable.

Of course, it was inexplicable back in 2015, when they ran the trial, but not later, once it had been shown that the data in the original study had been faked.

Most embarrassing if you are a card-carrying member of The Nudge Unit, UK Division. I wonder if they could sue the authors of that original study?

Cannot Make This Shit Up

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Politics, Standards.

I reported a while back on the recent election for mayor of Seattle, which Katie Wilson narrowly won on the basis of a turnout of around 29% of the city’s voting age population.

Here is a quote from Ms. Wilson regarding the cabinet she will appoint, as quoted in the WSJ:

“I will appoint a cabinet of exceptional leaders whose lived experiences reflect the diversity of Seattle’s Black, Indigenous, Asian and Pacific Islander, Latinx/Hispanic, and People of Color communities as well as that of women, immigrants and refugees, 2SLGBTQIA+ communities, people with disabilities, people of all faith traditions, and residents from every socioeconomic background.”

It’s tricky, but I count 17 different groups being named in that statement. In fact she needs more than that, because I cannot say how many groups might have to be included in ‘+’ or how many different ‘faith traditions’ and ‘socioeconomic backgrounds’ she has in mind. Zoroastrians? Low income adherents of Wicca?

It’s gonna be one honkin’ big cabinet.

Why, Indeed?

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Economics, LBOs.

‘It’s all about the Benjamins, man.’

That’s a line from a pretty old movie, I think, but damned if I can remember which one.

Anyway –

This morning’s WSJ had an opinion piece in it titled ‘Why CEOs Get Paid So Much’, with the sub-headline – ‘Doug McMillon’s success at Walmart shows the value of corporate leadership’.

It’s not a long piece, and the gist of it is easy to lay out. McMillon took over as CEO of Walmart in 2014, and is about to step down and retire. In that time, according to the article:

“Walmart’s annual revenue has grown on his watch from nearly $486 billion to $681 billion in its latest fiscal year. Walmart’s shares have risen some 310% in his tenure, while the company has increased wages and benefits for Walmart’s 2.1 million employees.”

Now, as a number of the WSJ readers who commented on this piece point out, the fact that one CEO of one company did well (assuming that those numbers indeed imply ‘doing well’, as no comparisons with other retailers are offered) does not constitute an answer to the question that is implicit in the article’s title.

One commenter on the piece also made the very astute observation that McMillon’s actual compensation is never stated in the article. Sources tell me it was $US27million last year.

So, the implicit claim the article is making is that, given how well Walmart did during his term, McMillon’s pay package was perfectly reasonable. In a phrase, he was worth it. Again, hardly a proof that CEO pay is reasonable in general; I do expect better arguments from the WSJ.

However, I write mostly to say that this whole discussion goes against the way (most) economists think about pay. The only answer economics can give to the question ‘What is that employee worth?’ is the same as they give to the question ‘What is my house worth?’. It is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it.

That is not a normative, or ethical, claim. Rather, it follows from the belief that there simply does not exist any notion of objective, intrinsic value for, well, anything. ‘One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.’ I am well aware that this attitude flies in the face of much common sense and/or talk about such things, including often my own. I, too, wonder how Vlad Guerrero Jr’s prowess in baseball (much as I love watching him play) can possibly be ‘worth’ paying him a half billion (big US) dollars over the life of his contract.

A friend of mine pointed out during the World Series that, based on the claimed average price the Jays were getting per seat during the WS, they were raking in close to $100million per game, thus going a long way toward paying for Vlad. But of course, Vlad did not get them to the WS on his own, and there are all the other costs the Jays had to pay and…..

To an economist, that is all beside the point. The Jays org agreed to that contract, therefore he is worth it – to them – and they are the ones paying him.

This attitude also runs against any number of progressive slogans about workplace justice, like, ‘Equal pay for work of equal value’.

The economist’s objection to that slogan is ‘how does one assess what work is of ‘equal value’. Well, lots of bureaucracies do try to do that, and one way it often shakes out is to insist that people with the same job title must be paid the same. Anyone who has spent more than five minutes in the world of work knows that not all people with the same job title (first baseman, assistant professor, millwright, on and on) are providing ‘equal value’ to their employer – or to their fellow employees.

On top of that, there is no way to assess what ‘value’ any particular employee has to his employer, as economists insist that it is all ‘team production’ and quite impossible to separate out the contributions of the different team members. That holds for CEO McMillon, too. However well or badly Walmart did over his term, there is no way to determine how much of that is due to him and how much to other team members, not to mention everything that happened outside the company over which he had zero control.

All of the above could be taken to imply that no matter what or how anyone is paid, in any company, there is no way to improve the situation. It should not. In particular, there are aspects of how CEOs (and others) are selected and paid that do bear scrutiny, imho.

First, there are some incentive structures that are often built into CEOs’ (and others’) pay that seem to me to be clearly counterproductive.

Economists think incentives matter, although they do not believe that only financial incentives matter. Consider the occupation of restaurant server. It is typical that they are tipped by the customers. (I know there are those who think tipping is an awful practice, but I am much in favour of it, a topic for another post). The idea is that if the server does a better job the tip gets bigger; that is certainly how I approach tipping. However, a restaurant is still a team operation, so the server can only do a good job if the bar staff and kitchen do their job well, too. So, in recognition of this, many restaurants require servers to turn over some proportion of their tips to be divided between the bar, kitchen and busboy staff. This isn’t perfect, but it is a recognition of the fact that it is a team effort, and that still, incentives matter.

[Aside on the non-financial incentives in the workplace. One of my university-era summer jobs was as a short-order cook on the breakfast and lunch shift in a diner along I-75. The servers did not tip out to me in those days, but they sure let me know if I was doing my bit to help them keep customers happy, both when I did well and when I did not. Those incentives matter too, the question is whether the employer can augment them in some way.]

Not all incentive structures seem productive to me, however. In Ontario labour law, if an employee is terminated by an employer whose payroll is greater than a stated minimum, they are entitled to severance pay, unless they ‘are guilty of wilful misconduct, disobedience or wilful neglect of duty that is not trivial and was not condoned by the employer’.

Fair enough. However, it seems that many CEOs hired by large companies (like Walmart, etc) have negotiated into their contract some kind of ‘golden parachute’ that pays them a large sum in the event the Board of Directors fires them. Now, if a Board fires a CEO, it is invariably because they are not happy about the company’s performance. So, why should said CEO then get paid some amount that dwarfs any statutory severance pay when they have just been fired?

The answer is almost always said to be that the company could not have hired said CEO in the first place without including such a parachute in their contract. In other words, the market standard is that such clauses are always offered to new CEOs, so the only thing to negotiate over is its size.

Sorry. It seems to me a winning strategy here is to say to a potential CEO ‘If you are confident of your ability to run this company, such a clause won’t matter to you, because we are going to build into your contract all kinds of good things that you will get if the company does well’. A CEO candidate who turns that down is maybe not the person you want to run your company.

I admit that this has come to mind in no small part because of my awareness that this golden parachute infection is spreading.

Two cases in point.

a) Our local city council recently entertained a resolution that city councillors who lost their re-election bids should be paid some amount (I forget how much) of severance pay. Jeezus, Mary and Yosef. As if not being re-elected is not the ultimate dismissal with cause. In the end the Council voted itself a 30% raise in salary (J,M & Y again!), but did not approve severance for themselves.

b) NCAA football coaches with big-time multi-hundred-million-dollar programs now routinely have such clauses in their contracts.

You can read the whole sorry story here, I will give you just the last three lines of it:

“This season, LSU leads the way with a $53 million buyout for firing Brian Kelly, followed by Penn State’s $49.7 million buyout of James Franklin. The largest buyout ever remains the $77 million Texas A&M agreed to pay Jimbo Fisher in 2023.”

Yes, those are the payouts given to those three fired football coaches by those three (try not to laugh) non-profit, state-supported institutions.

By the way, Texas A&M’s football team this year, two years after firing the coach who they could not possibly have hired without that $77M clause, has a 10-0 record and is ranked 3rd in the country. Wonder what the new coach’s buyout clause looks like?

Ok, I’m being a smart-ass here, but I have a real point: such clauses seem to me like an incentive to fail. CEOs and football coaches get a big payment if things go badly enough that the Board/Athletic Director fire them. I get why you would want such a clause if you are the CEO or coach, but not why it is agreed to by the other side(s).

My second concern is not about an incentive problem per se, but rather about something that has crept into hiring all kinds of high-level people.

To illustrate, here is another quote from the WSJ opinion piece regarding Mr. McMillon:

“He’s spent more than 40 years at the company, rising from a part-timer in a Bentonville, Ark., Walmart garden center to the C-suite.”

That, my friends is a rare thing, so far as I can tell. Very few CEOs of major companies these days actually worked at that company at all before becoming CEO, let alone for 40 years. They are mostly ‘headhunted’ by professionals who are paid by the hiring company to find and vet potential hires.

So, here’s an idea the WSJ article never considers: maybe the reason for Walmart’s success is that they had as CEO someone who knew the firm from the ground up over a career of 40 years.

Suppose you are such a CEO, and the Board decides you are not doing the job, the company is not thriving, so they fire you. Having worked there for many years, and being paid very handsomely as CEO, you would quite naturally be entitled to a considerable severance package in that case. Seems sane and fair to me.

Another observation based on my own career. It has become common practice to do the very same thing at universities in both Canada and the US, in the following sense.

The two highest level positions at a university are that of President and Provost. The former is the CEO, the guy at the top, and the latter is the person in charge of academics, which is, of course, what a U is supposed to be about. Both positions are always held by people who started out as professors, doing what I did for 42 years.

My former employer did not have a President who had risen from its own professorial ranks for the entire time I worked there. And, during my career, we had, so far as I can tell, exactly two Provosts who were appointed to that position from the institution’s own professoriate.

Early in my career, when I had been around long enough to be known outside of UWO, I would occasionally get correspondence from colleagues at other institutions saying they were looking for a new Chair/Dean/Whatever and asking me if there was anyone I knew who might be a suitable candidate. In later years, when I got such emails they were always from a headhunter firm.

So, we have universities that are run by people who neither know nor give a shit about the institution’s history, strengths and weaknesses. They are all on the ‘administrative career ladder’, not having done a regular professor’s job in perhaps twenty years. All the head-hunted Provosts are hoping to be appointed President somewhere else one day, and the Presidents are all hoping to be appointed President at some more prestigious university. They are all looking ahead, and not to the university’s future, but to their own.

Much that is wrong with today’s PSE institutions can be laid at the feet of that simple fact, and I cannot see that it is any different for profit-making companies. To deny it is to deny that knowledge of the institution you are running is important for running it well.

Whither Goest The Middle Class?

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Economics.

One can write only so much about a 34-year-old with zero experience, even if they are a mayor-elect, so let’s turn to something a bit more hard-nosed, some income statistics. The graph below is from the blog Marginal Revolution, written by economist Alex Tabarrok, but credit where due, I first came across it in an article from The Free Press.

Now, let’s be clear about what this shows. It is based on data from the US Census Bureau’s CPS, which has been about as reliable as large data sets get for a very long time. It shows the change in the proportion of families in the US that are in three different annual income ranges: below $50k, above $150k and in between those two annual incomes. Thus, note that all families have to be in one of these three ranges.

The key point here is that the percentage of families in the bottom two groups have decreased between 1967 and 2024, while the percentage in the top group has increased. Very importantly, this is all measured in constant 2024 dollars, so this is not the result of inflation, which has of course been considerable over that period.

Thus, we have the caption – American families have been moving up.

There are other questions to ask about this surprising (to me) graph, however. For example, since this is household (i.e., ‘family’) income, is all this just a reflection of the fact that more and more households have come to have two earners in them over this time frame?

Well, Tabarrok considers this, and his answer is ‘yes, but only partly’. He provides a link to another economist’s blog, where you can find the graph below:

 

What this shows is that the percentage of married couples with two income earners did rise from 1967 to the late 90s, but after that it actually dropped a bit. So, the increase in household income shown in the first graph can reasonably be the result of more two-earner households up to the 90s, but after that it is simply because earners, whether one or two, are earning more in real terms.

So, the bottom line seems to be, for the US, if the middle class is truly disappearing (meaning those families in the middle income group), it is because they are moving into the higher income group. And, of course, the lower income group is shrinking in proportion too, as those folks earn more.

This is a surprise to me, but I suppose only because we all read so often in the media how everyone is suffering these days. Also, I wonder very much whether anything like this is true in Canada. As always, data of this quality is much harder to find for Canada, but I will keep looking and report back if I find anything. For now, let’s just say that reports of the relative impoverishment of families in the US middle class seem to have been rather exaggerated….unless I am missing something here.

Before closing this off, I will mention one more thing. Below is another graphic covering almost the exact time period as those above. It comes from the US Fed, and it depicts the Gini coefficient for income in the US over this period. The Gini is a long-used index of how unequally is income distributed in any population. A higher Gini index indicates a more unequal distribution. This graph is a bit odd in that the Gini is typically given as a decimal number between 0 and 1, and here it is a whole number. If you just put a decimal point in front of the numbers on the vertical axis you get the usual thing.

So, it is clear that income is distributed more unequally today in the US than it was in the 60s, and that the big increase in this measure occurred between 1980 and 2005. Since then it has bounced around. However, note that the actual change has not been a lot over that period – it went from 0.36 to almost 0.42. Secondly, given what we saw in the first graphic, one could ask whether this trend is even worrying. That is, if almost everyone is seeing their income increase in real terms, does it matter that income is distributed somewhat more unequally? What I suspect is going on here is that for the group with incomes above $150k, incomes have been growing more than for those in the two lower income groups. That would increase the Gini as we have seen, but still be consistent with more families moving into that group.

A final point, about which I have little to say, so far. The first graph above is about gross incomes, that is, before tax, and I think the Gini numbers are, also. Now, the US is a low tax country by any standard. The Tax Policy Centre notes that “In 2021, taxes at all levels of US government represented 27 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), compared with a weighted average of 34 percent for the other 37 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).”

However, it may be that over the period covered in the graphs above, that tax percentage went up, in which case the disposable incomes of US households may not have increased as much as did their gross incomes. This is harder to track, but I did find data from the same Tax Policy Centre indicating that US federal income tax rates have not changed much since the 1980s, and that the rate paid by those in the lowest income quntile has actually dropped noticeably. This of course only considers federal income taxes, not taxes levied by other levels of government or sales and other commodity taxes.

Back to the Future with Zohran Mamdani

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Government, Politics.

Despite living in Canada, I am going to write some more about NYC Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. It is hard not to, as most of the things he says make my Econy-sense tingle.

Here are some of the things he has said he is going to do as Mayor, in case you didn’t know or forgot.

But first, the context. NYC’s municipal government has an annual budget of about $120Billion, employs over 300,000 people, and the city is home to more than 8million people. Mayoring all that is no small job.

  1. Mamdani pledged to “freeze the rent” on nearly one million rent-stabilized apartments throughout the city.
  2. As a New York state legislator, he argued for ‘defunding the police’. He has (sort of) toned that rhetoric down in recent months as he campaigned.
  3. He said he will establish city-run grocery stores in NYC.
  4. He will make the NYC bus system ‘free and faster’.
  5. He will raise taxes on the rich.

The entire list is longer, but I will just say a few things about these, as they are in the wheelhouse of a retired economist like me.

1.

Rent freezes are not new, indeed, the fact is that NYC already has a ‘rent-stabilized’ category of rental units, which basically means that any rent increases are limited, either by a statute or by requiring that the increases be approved by some kind of review board. So, what does it mean to freeze the rents on such units? Presumably, it means they will be allowed zero rent increases for some period of time.

Details matter here. It should first be noted that Zohran cannot do this on his own, there is in place a Rental Review Board that would have to approve this freeze. ZM can appoint new members to this, but only after existing members’ terms lapse, so he would have to work on this board, one way or the other.

Assuming he can do that, the next issue is – which and how many of the rental units in NYC are included in this category? If more than a million is a small portion of the total, then some renters will get a nice little gift of zero increases, and the owners of these units will react in some way. If zero increases means they lose money as their costs increase (Zohran has not promised to freeze those costs, natch) then they will sell the units – perhaps at some loss – or find creative ways to get their units ‘uncategorized’ as rent-stabilized. Where there’s a bureaucracy there’s a way.

If, on the other hand, most rental units in NYC are in this category, and – most importantly, newly built units are – then the supply of units will dry up in general, and you will see lots of people who cannot find accommodations at all.

2.

(Wet Dream Police….apologies to Cheap Trick.)

The concern here, as expressed by people who currently work throughout the NYC justice system, is that even if he does not de-fund the police (that might actually be unpopular) he has the power as Mayor to appoint City judges. If he appoints judges who are determined to lower incarceration rates and give non-punitive sentences to those convicted of ‘minor’ offences, and to avoid imposing cash bail on those apprehended for not-so-minor offences, then it will not matter much what the police do. The people they apprehend will quickly end up back on the street, and so they will have no incentive to apprehend them in the first place. That way you get the same outcomes as with police defunding without actually, you know, defunding them. Judgement on this one will have to wait to see what he actually does, but he has the ability to do a lot.

3.

I could just say ‘what makes anyone think any government at any level can run grocery stores competently’, but I will in fact say more than that.

We have a case history of this. It was tried in Kansas City, where the city paid millions to renovate a building and then put a grocery store in it that was run by a non-profit called Community Builders of Kansas City. So, I could repeat the remark in quotes above with ‘government’ replaced by ‘non-profit organization’, but I won’t. The store was about to close as of the end of July, I can’t find any more recent info on its fate, but one could of course say that is just one example, it does not prove such a thing cannot succeed.

That is true, it proves no such thing.

Here are some quotes about the KC experiment of interest, however.

Noting that some have blamed high crime levels in the area of the KC store for its demise, the mayor of KC, Quinton Lucas, had this to say….

“While I hear and understand the crime issues and concerns,” Lucas said, “there’s a grocery store right down the street — largely in the same kind of area, some of the same criminal numbers and statistics — that still is doing pretty darn well.”

So, a grocery store being run to make a profit (horrible word, just horrible) down the street is doing fine. Oops .

And there’s this – One shopper said “There’s no meat. There’s no vegetables. There’s no nothing.”

Second oops. And….

“A rancid odor fills the market, with shoppers turned off by bare shelves and coolers, along with empty meat and deli departments,” reports local station KSHB.

Oh, dear.

I am betting that when Zohran puts the NYC version into place, they really will be run by the city, staffed by (union-waged) city employees. After all, he said in his victory speech that he was going to show everyone that ‘There is no problem government cannot solve.’

Can you say ‘money pit’, boys and girls?

4.

It turns out I have local information on an experiment almost exactly like this.

Some years back, the London Transit Commission (LTC) struck a deal with the university’s Student Council (USC). The USC would take some of the money they get from taxing students (sorry….from collecting fees from students) and give it as a lump sum to the LTC every year. In return, the LTC would let any university student ride LTC busses for free, anytime. They call it the student bus pass.

Prior to this deal, university students had the option to buy a regular LTC bus pass at a discount. Not surprisingly, some students did, and others did not, depending on where they lived and what other transportation options they had available. Now, with this deal all students can ride the bus for free, and all students pay for this – whether they want to or not.

The result of this was quite predictable. Students who might have walked six or so blocks to class or to get downtown to party of an evening because they had not bought a pass, and would have to pay the undiscounted fare, now could jump on the bus for free, so they did. If it’s raining, just jump on the bus. Busses in the university area got way more crowded. The LTC responded by running more busses (not free) and by buying ‘articulated’ busses that are basically two busses connected by an accordion-like middle section so they can sort of still get around corners (also not free).

Now, Zohran is planning to make NYC busses free for everyone. Thus, the same effect of increased riders will occur as occurred in London, but not just in some areas for some riders, but everywhere for all riders. So, busses will be free perhaps, but there is no way they will be fast, unless…..the NYC transit system increases the frequency and number of busses. The LTC got actual new revenue from the USC in their agreement, so they could buy new big busses and run them more frequently. NYC will have – yes, kids, that’s right – zero revenue.

So, to get to ‘free and fast’ some taxpayers somewhere are going to have to cough up the dough not just to replace the lost fare revenue (cuz drivers must still get paid, and busses maintained), but to pay for more and more frequent busses.

One commentator has mentioned another likely impact not seen in our local experiment. The homeless of NYC will have a new place to stay to get out of the cold. The homeless in London did not get university bus passes.

I can’t wait to see it all unfold.

5.

 

I think this is Mr. Mamdani’s favourite. Tax The Man. You know a card-carrying member of The Democratic Socialists of America is going to go big on this idea.

It happens that NYC has its own income tax, which of course is paid only by those who live in NYC, and whose revenues flow wholly to the NYC government. So, we all can easily see what the Big Question is here. If ZM does raise the NYC income tax rate on high-income New Yorkers, what will those folks do in response? Conservative commentators are all predicting they will leave NYC in droves, but it is surely not that simple. Living in Yonkers, White Plains or Jersey City is just not the same as living in NYC. Even I can grok that. So we may be about to find out just how much rich folks really like living in NYC.

Again, I can’t wait to see it all unfold. You go, Zohran.

 

What’s it Really all About, Zohran?

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Politics.

Even up here in Canada, the news of late has been full of US election results, particularly the news that Zohran Mamdani, the 34-year-old, exclusively-schooled dude who has never had a job other than a couple of years as a New York State Assemblyman, has been elected NYC’s mayor.

One ongoing theme of the news coverage of this event has been an emphasis on the record number of votes cast in this mayoral election.

An example is the graphic below. Look at that, more votes than have been cast in any NYC mayoral election since 1989. Decades of elections, indeed.

Well, everyone needs to take a breath, particularly the media, who have again demonstrated their disinterest in facts.

The number of registered voters in NYC is something between 4.9 and 5.3 million, depending on which account you read. You would think this would be easily available info, but apparently not, so let’s take the midpoint and say 5.1million.

Votes cast appear to have been 2.1million, as depicted in that chart above.

This means that the turnout in this election as a percentage of registered voters was some 41%.  Beyond that, there are undoubtedly more than 5.1 million New Yorkers who were eligible to vote but did not even bother to register, as voter registration is not automatic in the US. Undoubtedly then, Mamdani was elected in an election in which fewer than 40% of those who could have expressed a preference bothered to do so.

And, as for the number of votes cast in 2025 being greater than in 1989, in 1989 NYC’s total population was about 7.2million, whereas in 2025 it is about 8.5million. So, some 300,000 more votes in ’25 than in ’89 is nothing to get excited about given that the population is more than 1million greater.

To be fair, this is pretty typical of municipal elections in North America.  For an even worse example, the election in 2022 that put the current mayor and council in office in my city featured a turnout of 25% or so. For a US comparison, the municipal election in Chicago in 2022 saw a turnout of 45% of registered voters. (It was 66% in 2024, but that coincided with a US Presidential election, which always boosts turnout in lower-level elections.)

Mr. Mamdani declared in his victory speech that he was on a historic mission to do things differently in NYC. Well, if there are, at a guess, 5.6million residents of NYC who are eligible to vote, and we know he got 1.03million votes (compared to Cuomo’s 0.85million), then Mamdani’s vote represents 18.3% of voting-eligible adults. That’s not a lot of fuel for his great mission, in my humble opinion.

Such is politics – and political reporting – in the 21st century. But hey, you go, Zohran. It will be interesting indeed to see what he actually gets up to once in office, and what are the consequences of same.

Postscript:

A day after posting the above, I came across a story about the municipal election held the same day as NYC’s in Seattle, WA. (Elections at all levels in the US are almost always held on the Tuesday after the first Monday of November.) Seattle, you may recall, had seen a considerable spike in crime after the pandemic lockdowns of 2020, and in 2021 it elected a mayor, Bruce Harrell, and a city attorney, Ann Davison, who reversed a set of policies and procedures that their predecessors had put in place that had exacerbated the crime problem. The usual thing, like refusing to prosecute ‘minor’ offenses, refusing to incarcerate repeat-offenders, etc.

Well, in the election that just happened, it appears that Mr. Harrell will just barely stay in office after an electoral challenge from ‘community organizer’ Katie Wilson, but Ms Davison has been soundly defeated by Erika Evans. The WSJ labels Evans a ‘progressive’ whatever that means, and her campaign website has a lot to say about her defending Seattle from Trump administration over-reach. Again, I will look forward to seeing what results from this, but my point here is that the city of Seattle appears to have a voting age population of 650,000, out of a total population of around 800k. The total votes cast in the mayoral race were 230,000, and in the election for city attorney, 221,000. This puts the turnout at somewhere around 29% of the voting age population.

Post Postscript: It was indeed close, and now, over a week after the election, the above-mentioned Katie Wilson has in fact eked out a victory in this low turnout election for mayor of Seattle. Gonna be interesting…..

 

How the World Really Works – Episode Two    

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in LBOs.

OK, who has heard of Kenvue Inc? Not many of you, I suspect. Below is the corporate logo. Does that help?

Yea, I expect not, but you probably have heard of Tylenol, and Kenvue is the company that makes Tylenol, along with a lot of other over-the-counter health-related products like Visine, Neutrogena, Benadryl, Band-Aid and many others. It has been in the news in a less-than-positive way of late because some people – let’s not get into naming here – have claimed that Tylenol causes autism.

Whatever might be the evidence – or lack thereof – for that claim, it has not done good things for Kenvue’s stock price, a graph of which is displayed below, courtesy of WSJ:

Although it is hard to discern clearly in this image, the graph shows that Kenvue stock was trading at a share price of $22.18 on August 4, and at $14.24 on Oct 29. That’s a drop of around 36% over a three-month period. Ouch. Well, ouch if you happened to be holding shares of Kenvue during that time.

Again, though it is hard to see on the reproduction above, the WSJ original allows one to see that on Nov 3 – the day I am writing this article – the share price had popped back up a bit to $16.46.

On this same day there is an article in the WSJ headlined:

Kimberly-Clark Strikes $40 Billion Deal for Tylenol Maker Kenvue

Ah, a takeover bid from the giant company Kimberly-Clark, maker of Huggies and many many other brands you would recognize.

Here is one line from the WSJ article about this that caught my eye……

“In the cash-and-stock deal, Kimberly-Clark will pay $21.01 a share, compared with a closing price of $14.37 on Friday.”

So, K-C (no mention of The Sunshine Band) have agreed to pay $7 more per share than the shares could be bought for on the open market on the Friday before the deal was announced.

I ask you, if you saw a sweet-looking used Corvette on a lot on Friday with a price tag of $7500 on it, would you walk in on Monday and offer $12,500 for it?

Nah, me neither, but high finance is complicated, I guess.

Here’s another interesting line from the same WSJ article:

“The company had been under pressure from activist investors who wanted the company to pursue a sale.”

Activist investors? Do go on……

“Activist investor Starboard Value had launched a proxy fight at Kenvue earlier this year, arguing the company needed to fix its marketing strategy around its beauty brands and make other changes to boost shares. Starboard dropped its fight in March after winning three seats on the board.”

Ah, yes – ‘to boost shares’. The WSJ writer here is being prolix in deference to the delicate sensibilities of Starboard Value, so I will translate.

“Starboard Value argued that Kenvue’s management needs to do things that will increase the market price of the shares that Starboard Value owns.”

Simple, really.

One more quote from the WSJ article:

“Other activists including Toms Capital Investment Management, Third Point and D.E. Shaw had built up positions and were privately pushing Kenvue to sell itself, including in recent days, according to people familiar with the matter.”

Ah yes, those ‘people familiar with the matter’. They always seem to be around, but no one knows who they really are. At least you and I don’t.

Now, there is another article in today’s WSJ right below the one I have been quoting. It is marked EXCLUSIVE, and it’s headline reads:

Activist Investors in Kenvue Faced Big Losses. Kimberly-Clark Saved the Day.

Below that headline runs the sub-headline

D.E. Shaw, one of the Tylenol-maker’s largest shareholders, stood to lose over $200 million but is now expected to break even on its bet

I know I feel better knowing that K-C has ridden to the rescue of those poor embattled folks at D.E. Shaw. And – I think we have solved the mystery of the offer of $21/share for shares that were trading at $14. That wasn’t so hard, was it?

The final sentence in this second (EXCLUSIVE!) WSJ article is this:

“Kimberly-Clark and Kenvue say they expect almost $2 billion in cost savings from the deal in the first three years after the transaction closes.”

Once again, let me translate WSJ-speak for you: “The merged company is planning to fire a lot of people and close many plants over the next three years. “

“But ain’t that America, for you and me”

 

The Prostitute List

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Standards.

Got your attention with that title, didn’t I?

I have been watching the fabulous 2025 World Series assiduously, although I missed game 2 due to an even more fabulous live music concert. Because of the way I watch it, this has exposed me to US TV sports broadcasting. I prefer to watch the Canadian broadcast, believe me, but that is not always possible in my house, you’ll just have to believe me on that.

This has re-kindled a thought I have had for awhile about what I guess I will call ‘celebrity sellers culture’ today. I have been struck by the number of TV ads which feature quite famous people shilling for a product. The ‘quite famous’ part is key here. I have no issue with some starving actor no one knows taking a job appearing in a TV ad. We all have to eat. My issue is with people who have made millions and millions – usually in entertainment or sports – and become easily recognizable in doing so, who also then take a paycheck from some company in return for appearing in one of their TV ads.

The point is that this behavior offends me. Being willing to take a payment for helping persuade people to buy something when you are already very wealthy is prostitution. I am aware of the popular principle in both the US and Canada that if someone offers you a lot of money to do something you can easily do, you are a fool to say no. Sorry, but I think that is unethical. Those who engage in prostitution in its original sense are at least selling something that is their own to sell, and are in no case wealthy already.

Now, I also do not understand why this is done by the companies involved. They must believe that celebrities appearing in commercials increases sales of their products and services. If that is so, and they should know, I do not understand why it works. But, my issue here is not with the companies that pay the celebrities, it is with the celebrities who cash the checks.

I will add that one ad I saw repeatedly during the Series is for some restaurant, and it features at the bottom the caption ‘Paul Skenes, Major-Leaguer’.

I have never heard of Mr. Skenes, and if the ad-makers have to put your name at the bottom of the ad, you are not famous, and hence are exempt from my opprobrium. Average Major-Leaguers do not earn tons of money over a usually-short career. If someone is willing to pay them to hawk a product, I cannot fault them for taking the money. I will also add here that if a company came to me to appear in an ad, I would not do it. I know, fat chance, but the point is that I am not starving, I had a long, well-paid career, and so shilling for a product would in my case also be prostitution.

Below is my list, but I will be adding to it as new celebrities come to my attention. I have no doubt that they will, as the table below includes only those that came up in the four WS games that I have watched to date, and which I had the presence of mind to write down.

The Celebrity Prostitute List (World Series Edition)

Celebrity Cashing Cheque Company Writing Cheque
Jennifer Garner Capital One Credit Cards
Samuel L Jackson Capital One Credit Cards
Derek Jeter Capital One Credit Cards
Julianne Moore Eli Lilly
Matthew McConaughey Agentforce AI
Woody Harrelson Agentforce AI
Shaquille O’Neil LazyBoy
Jon Hamm* BetMGM
Cal Raleigh TMobil
Luke Wilson** AT&T

 

* I think there should be a special place in Ad Hell for celebrities who shill for gambling sites. There are many such (you know who you are) and I expect to add  many such names over time. I am surprised that only the one with Hamm emerged during the WS, but perhaps I have missed others. I am mostly trying to watch the games, after all.

**Apparently AT&T violated a National Advertising Rule (whatever that means) with this ad. Tsk-tsk.

Finally, I expect at some point to announce a 2025 Grand Champion Prostitute Award to some celebrity. At the moment the favourite would be Matthew McConaughey, who I know has done ads for Doritos, Lincoln Autos, and Wild Turkey Bourbon along with the one listed above. I expect Samuel L. Jackson to give him a run for his money, however.

It’s going to be exciting folks. OK, not as exciting as the WS, but still…….

A Bit of This and of That

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Uncategorized.

Faithful readers;

Not a lot to post this week, I have been very very busy. Getting my excuses all lined up:

I, my son and my grandson all had birthdays over a 12-day period that just ended. It’s been Party Hearty for nearly two weeks.

My gal and I have tickets for three (yes, 3!) different live music concerts over the last three days. Party Hearty II.

The Toronto Blue Jays, having dispatched the Seattle Mariners in a rousing 7-game ALCS Series, are now in the World Serious, and up one game to none. Go Jays!

Ok, excuses filed, here’s one fun thing I did come across in my spare time: The Babylon Bee. If you have not visited it, I recommend their website, as it is unique. It’s motto is ‘Fake News You Can Trust’ and I went to the site to check it out as I was posting this article to find that its leading headline this morning is:

Blue Jays To Start World Series With 7-Run Deficit As Trump Imposes Tariff On Foreign Teams

It was accompanied by this picture:

I would describe the Bee as a Christian satirical news site. Below is a list of some of the other more entertaining (to me) headlines that have appeared on the Bee site recently. However – here’s the thing. The headlines are often great, deservedly skewering the ridiculousness of much of what is done by the famous of all stripes. But it kinda ends there, the stories that are attached to the headlines are almost never as good as the headlines themselves. Kind of like Mad Magazine in days of old.

Anyway, here’s a list of some of my favourites:

Sad: Man Could Have Been Profoundly Moved By Classic Piece Of Literature If It Had Only Contained A Character Of His Exact Race, Sex, And Socio-Economic Class

Baby Attains 3rd-Degree Blackbelt In Rolling Out Of Diaper Changes

UK Prosecutes Synagogue For Provoking Attacker By Being Openly Jewish

UK Police Still Searching For Motive Of Terrorist Named ‘Jihad Jewkiller’

With Government Shutdown Closing National Parks, Mooses Forced to Find New Jobs

It’s Not Over Yet: Trump Still Hoping For Nobel In Literature For Latest Truth Social Post

Leftists Take To Streets To Protest End Of Genocide

Democrats Vow To Keep Government Shut Down Until Someone Notices

Church Organist Adds Blistering 10-Minute Organ Solo To ‘A Mighty Fortress Is Our God’

‘How Long, O Lord, Will The Wicked Prosper?’ Asks Nation As Dodgers Advance To World Series

RFK Orders Airstrike On Cargo Ship Full Of Tylenol

As a second contribution to your enlightenment, here is something I learned about in The Free Press and just feel I have to pass along.

If you did not know, Graham Platner is a Democrat who is challenging Republican Susan Collins for her seat in the US Senate. It has been noticed that Platner has a ‘totenkopf’ tattoo on his chest. If you do not know what that is, (I did not) it is the skeletal skull symbol used by Nazi death’s head SS units.

Platner says he got it while drunk and in the Marines, and had no idea it had any connections to Nazism.

That is not, in my humble view, the most ridiculous part of this episode. That arises from the following, which is a quote directly from TFP’s story about it:

Here’s a popular leftist commentator trying to explain why Platner’s Nazi symbol is bad:

“This isn’t just a Nazi tattoo, this is the symbol of the concentration camp guards, the guys who ran the death camps. The men who murdered socialists, communists, and liberals. They mass-murdered all black men in the French army. This is on par with a swastika.” (The commentator deleted it so I won’t name and shame. But isn’t it interesting?)

Indeed. They murdered ‘socialists, communists, and liberals.’ Oh, and those black French army guys.

That was terrible what those SS types did, eh?

I leave you with this final short item. Many of you will know that Ontario’s premier paid millions to have some ads made and then paid more to have them run on US TV.  In them, the (genuine, taped) voice of Ronald Reagan explains what a stupid idea tariffs are. Indeed, I saw one on the Fox broadcast of the World Series Game 1. This supposedly angered the US President so much he called off trade negotiations with Canada.

Here is a headline from this morning’s (Saturday, Oct 25) London Free Press:

Game on as anti-tariff ads stay

followed by the sub-headline:

Ontario premier says TV campaign that riled Trump will run in two world series games

Here’s a headline from The Globe and Mail’s website on the morning of Saturday, Oct 25:

Ontario to pause anti-tariff ads that drew Trump’s fury

followed by the sub-headline:

Ford says he made the call to pull the campaign that angered the U.S. President after speaking with Carney

Why oh why do people no longer trust legacy media? Truly a mystery.

 

 

 

Set My People Freeps!

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in London, News Media, Politics.

Below: Photo from the London Free Press website, which was also printed in the Saturday, October 18 print edition.

The semi-literate caption in the online paper was:

Londoners at Dundas Street part of the city on Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025. (Derek Ruttan/The London Free Press)

….but that caption is not what I want to write about.

This picture also appeared on the first news page of my Saturday morning real-on-paper edition of The London Free Press. The caption there was actually grammatically sound, but that is not the point of this post. This photo shows four derelicts lying on a sidewalk in London with some of their possessions. This is a regular sight all through London’s downtown and other places, like the Old East Village (OEV). What is new is that the Freeps is willing to show it on their front page, as the editorial position of the paper up to now has been to downplay any notion that downtown is going to hell. They will write about it from time to time, but have previously always been careful to follow such stories up with predictable statements by ‘activists’, ‘advocates’ and politicians that either things are not so bad, or that people who are upset about these folks lying on the sidewalk are just being nasty and should be ashamed of themselves.

In fact, one member of City Council, Susan Stevenson, was reprimanded by her fellow councillors a while back for putting photos like this on her Facebook page, to show what people living and working in her OEV ward were having to live with. That move was pure bullshit, it happened because Council did not like having Londoners see what was going on under the current leadership, but one stated reason for it was that Stevenson was posting photos of people who had not consented to have their images displayed.

Do you suppose the Freeps photographer asked those people lying on the sidewalk for consent?

Do you suppose Council is going to lodge a protest with the Freeps? Maybe send a couple of constables around to visit the editor?

I can’t wait to see.

In fact, the online version of this story includes more photos, including the one below:

A man smoking drugs at a bus shelter. Oh, my. ‘Do you mind if we post a photo of you smoking drugs, sir?’ I doubt that question was asked.

And then there was this graphic:

Yea, gunshots. There have been three or four homes in London shot up over the last couple of months. Do not expect either the Freeps or the London Police Chief to suggest what is perfectly clear to thinking adults; that we have become a city in which armed gangs operate.

In any event, I have no doubt that Council and our Mayor will be unhappy about the appearance of the first photo on the Freeps front page, as well as the other graphics above. What is less clear is whether they will understand that it might just signal that the Freeps editorial staff, such as they are, may have lost their willingness to go along with the narrative the Council wants to spin regarding our fair City.

The next municipal election is next year.

What’s In A Word?

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Government, Language.

Those of you who live in Canada will be aware that the employees of Canada Post – members of CUPW, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers –  are on strike, yet again. They have been negotiating with the Corporation over a new contract for what seems like eons, and this is the third strike they have called. The first one ended when the government passed so-called ‘back to work’ legislation, but that was temporary.

After more fruitless negotiating, they went back on strike again when the government directed the Corporation to make plans to stop door-to-door mail delivery for all households and to close some rural post offices. (We are told that about 1/3 of Canadian households still have delivery to their door, the other 2/3 have to walk to ‘community mailboxes’ to get their mail.)

The latest move by CUPW is to change to ‘rotating strikes’ which means that every now and then some mail shows up in my mailbox. This seemed a mad strategy to me, guaranteed to piss off the average Canadian even more than a full strike, until a hiking buddy of mine who used to work for Canada Post pointed out CUPW’s likely reason for the change in strategy-they are running out of money. That is, CUPW’s strike fund has likely been depleted, so going back to work a few days per week or month is a way to keep their members getting some amount of income.

Makes sense, I get it. Don’t like it, but I get it.

However, this post is really about something else.

Canada Post is a Crown Corporation, meaning it operates as an independent entity with some level of government oversight. It has a CEO, and it earns revenue by charging for delivery of both first-class mail (letters and such) and packages.

The CBC is a Crown Corporation also, with a CEO, and it earns revenue by selling advertising on (some but not all) its radio, TV and online programs.

Canada Post has a monopoly on the delivery of first-class mail, but competes with private companies in everything else it does.

The CBC competes with private entities in everything it does.

In a story on CBC.ca in April of this year, titled ‘Carney pledges $150Million boost to ‘underfunded’ CBC’ (the CBC put those quotes around underfunded, not me), CBC writes:

‘CBC received an estimated $1.38-billion in 2024-25.’

Then, in a story from May of last year, the CBC wrote:

 ‘Canada Post is reporting a $1.3-billion loss in operating expenses in its 2024 annual report.’

So, why is the $1.3B Canada Post needed from the government called a ‘loss’ and the $1.38B the government gave the CBC called ‘funding’?

Read This

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Education, LBOs.

This will be an unusual post, consisting of little more than a name, and a link.

First the name: Josh Barro. He writes a blog called Very Serious which you can visit by clicking on that link. Mr. Barro describes himself as a journalist, and was indeed once a senior editor and columnist at Business Insider. Coincidentally, he is the son of economist Robert Barro, currently a prof at Harvard, who I saw give more than a couple of talks during my career. Small world.

Now, the link:, it is given below, and is to one of the posts on the junior Barro’s blog. I provide it here because, as all my readers know, bad behaviour by those who work in universities, both administrators and faculty, is a recurring topic on this blog. I first read the post linked below just this past week, and although it was posted in January of 2024, it lays out almost everything I think is and has been wrong with universities, and explains it all very well.  Although it is focused on US universities, the problems with Canadian universities are the same, except that the Canadian ones get considerably less public funding on average. Whether that makes them better or worse than their US counterparts, on average, is an open question, I think.

So, if you want a very well-written article on why you should not trust anything that comes out of universities today, read it. I would add that you should also read all the footnotes at the end – there’s lot of good info in those, too.

https://www.joshbarro.com/p/universities-are-not-on-the-level

Black Math

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Education, Standards.

No, that title is not a typo. I know some of you grew up reading stories of the supernatural that featured some mysterious thing called a Black Mass. Details differed, but it was supposed to be some occult ritual at which unspeakable things were done for unspeakable purposes.

Well, this post is not about that. It is about what I will call Black Math, as a convenient abbreviation for a whole whack of really awful ideas about education, largely but not entirely regarding black kids. My starting point will be a person, one Danny Martin, who would very much like you to know that he is a Professor of Education and Mathematics in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Note that is not The University of Chicago, nor is it The University of Illinois. The University of Illinois at Chicago is a separate institution from those other two, and I would not wish you to think either of them provides employment to Professor Martin. Note also, please, that despite his very misleading title, he is certainly not a Professor of Mathematics. He’s in the College of Education for chrissakes, and I am sure no self-respecting Department of Mathematics would hire him. Those cats are weird, to be sure, but still…..

How I came to be familiar with Martin will be revealed below, but I will start this tale with a full rendition of the Abstract from a paper he published in a journal called Race, Ethnicity and Education in 2019. The paper is titled ‘Equity, inclusion, and antiblackness in mathematics education’ and its Abstract, in its entirety, reads as follows:

Despite decades of equity- and inclusion-oriented discourse and reform in mathematics education, Black learners in the U.S. continue to experience dehumanizing and violent forms of mathematics education. I suggest that equity for Black learners in mathematics education is a delusion rooted in the fictions of white imaginaries, contingent on appeasing white logics and sensitivities, and characterized at best by incremental changes that do little to threaten the maintenance of racial hierarchies inside or outside of mathematics education. Moreover, the forms of inclusion offered up in equity-oriented discourses and reforms represent contexts of containment and enclosure that keep Black people in their same relative position. Refusal is suggested as a strategy for Black learners to resist the anti-Black character of mathematics education, and as a first step in actualizing forms of mathematics education that are worthy of Black learners.

Let me start by noting that while I can imagine a student finding math difficult and even humiliating as a subject, I doubt seriously that by ‘violent forms of math education’ is meant smacking students who get things wrong in math class. Nor do I have any idea what is a ‘white imaginary’ a ‘white logic’ or a ‘context of containment’. I do suspect, from other things by this person that I have read, that by ‘refusal’ he means that black students should just avoid math class. I could, however, be wrong. As you will see, clarity is not Martin’s strength.

Now, just because I don’t know what a phrase or term means doesn’t mean it means nothing. Lord knows people in my own former discipline throw around terms like ‘Pareto efficiency’ and ‘consumer surplus’ that no one outside Econ understands.

So, I dug into the paper itself to see if I could suss out what Martin was on about.

I tried, I really did. Bear with me as I subject you to some of the prose in this paper.

Antiblackness is readily evidenced in mathematics education via several forms of systemic violence–epistemological, intellectual, and symbolic–that inflict injury and trauma on Black people (Martin, Price, and Moore in press). Teo (2010), for example, has characterized epistemological violence in the production of knowledge as occurring ‘when theoretical interpretations regarding empirical results implicitly or explicitly construct the Other as inferior or problematic, despite the fact that alternative interpretations, equally viable based on the data, are available’.

So far as I can discern, he is saying that when the performance of black students in math is studied, the fact that they do worse (although only on average), and so the discussion is about how to help them do better, is itself violence that inflicts trauma and injury. There is at least nothing really racial about this, in my view. It is all of a piece with the general view among ‘educational theorists’ these days that one should not focus ever on student shortcomings. Doing so is bad for them, or at least bad for their self-esteem. To correct is to traumatize.

I will take exception to that bit about interpretations that implicitly or explicitly construct the so-called ‘Other’ as inferior. That’s just horseshit, saying that no matter what an instructor or analyst of data on achievement does or says, what is really going on – implicitly – is racism. Boolsheet, as my former Russian colleague liked to say.

Another sentence from the paper:

Mathematical illiteracy is not a naturally occurring trait of Black children but has become a widely accepted signifier for Blackness and a decidedly Black geography (McKittrick and Woods 2007) subject to, and deserving of, violent description and intervention.

OK, agreed that ‘mathematical illiteracy’ (I thought the standard term was ‘innumeracy’, btw) is not a naturally occurring trait. But who says it is a ‘widely accepted signifier for Blackness’? Only Martin, so far as I know. And – ‘violent description’? Really? A description can be violent?

This is another shibboleth of this kind of academic. Anything they do not agree with, even words, is said to be ‘violent’, which then means that it is terrible, awful, horrible, because everyone is against violence, right?

Bloody hell.

Anyway, I hope it is clear, faithful readers, that I am trying here to use the context in which Martin uses these words and phrases in his article to figure out what he is really trying to say. I got nothing about white imaginaries this way, nor about white logic, he uses those only in the Abstract, so on to ‘refusal’.

Well, here’s a mouthful for you from the paper:

Envisioning and actualizing refusal requires one to invoke Black radical imagination (Kelley 2002) and engage in Black liberatory fantasy (Dumas and ross 2016) about the form and structure of such refusal and how it facilitates Black people flourishing in their humanity.

Yea, didn’t help me understand him any better, either. Here’s more….

Specifically, I refer to refusal in and refusal of mathematics education institutions, practices, and policies that instantiate anti-Black racism and white supremacist orientations. I am not suggesting that Black learners avoid pursuing mathematics within the existing system of mathematics education. For most learners, it is the only system available. Refusal in is a recognition of this fact. I am suggesting that the pursuit of mathematics knowledge within this system should not be for the sole purpose of being accepted into anti-Black and white supremacist spaces.

So, if you imagine yourself as a ‘Black learner’, what do you think this paragraph is telling you to do? If it is okay for one to pursue math, just not for that ‘sole purpose’, then….what should you do?

How about this?

Refusal in would also entail working against the commodification of and trafficking in Black suffering, especially as a way to counter appeals to white benevolence and liberal notions of care.

More helpful? Not to me, but my readers may be more perceptive than I.

This is what I have come to realize characterizes most writing by this sort of person. Absolutely nothing concrete is ever said. What in the name of anything holy is this guy saying anyone should do? I have read many many words, that say nothing anyone – including a ‘Black learner’ – can use as a guide to any kind of behaviour or plan or…..bloody anything. The mark of a well-trained academic used to be clarity. Now it is obtuseness, vagueness.

Ok, so how did I get onto this whole thing, and Prof Martin? I cannot trace to the absolute beginning, but something sent me to this article on a site called RealClear Investigations called ‘Billionaires Backing Woke Math Doesn’t Add Up Amid DEI Rollback’  which was about that: some wealthy people funding initiatives like one called Racial Justice in Early Math which aim to eliminate separate classes for students who are mathematically inclined/gifted and also one called ‘TODOS Mathematics for All, an Arizona-based organization that calls for elevating DEI practices and anti-racist activism into all math instruction’ according to the article.

Another such org, the Erikson Institute, has a video on its website titled Using Math to Learn about Racial Representation in K-2 by Priscila Ulegis Pereira.

I watched it, you can too, here.

For a taste, at one point in the video what is on the screen is headed with the words

2nd Grade: Is Our Library Equal?

 Then below that one sees:

 After building background knowledge, students embarked on the complex task of identifying the race of characters in books in our classroom library.

This is for a 2nd grade math class, remember. So I guess they had to count the number of white people, black people, etc.

Over the years, as I watched the standards to which students are held at all levels of the education system deteriorate, I became convinced that this was being done almost entirely by those within the system. That is, teachers (not all, thankfully) and administrators (nearly all) all the way up from kindergarten to post-graduate, were themselves the driving force behind lowering standards. And the primary reason for this denigration, I firmly believe, is that teaching to a high standard is very hard. It is hard work, because the teachers have to work just as hard as they expect their students to work. Instructors have to read a lot of what students write and provide copious and clear feedback, they have to go through their math and correct and explain why things are wrong, and do so clearly. Thus, lowering standards makes things easier for everyone, but in particular for the instructors.

Thus, I think Martin’s ‘math is epistemological violence’ bullshit is just one dimension of a much bigger phenomenon. He is, after all, a faculty member in a College of Education; ya know, the people who are supposed to be training teachers.

Final note (I promise). Hypocrisy is not a 21st century invention, but I would assert none the less that we are living in The Hypocritical Century.

If you read the RealClear Investigations article I linked to above, you will find that it ends on this note –

Last year, during a Racial Justice in Early Mathematics Project webinar titled “Who Is Labeled Smart?” Martin addressed the backlash against San Francisco’s push for educational equity. He toned down his scathing critique of merit-based advanced education programs that he believes harm black and Latino students and made a surprising statement about his own son’s schooling.

“I’m guilty, I’m guilty,” Martin said, almost sheepishly. “My son is, quote unquote, in one of those tracks.”

Almost sheepishly?

I know what my Dad, who worked two jobs so his sons could avoid the local public school, would have said about that quote…..`Yea; Refusal, my ass, buddy.’

 

Truth and Reconciliation and Blindness

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Education, LBOs.

September 30 was the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, now a statutory holiday in Canada. I have searched the governmental Canada.ca website to find the original legislation that proclaimed this holiday, but cannot locate it. I wanted to read what our parliamentarians thought the point of this holiday is supposed to be. Cannot find those words.

I keep reading in many places about how one should ‘commemorate the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation’ in yet another abuse of the language. The Day is presumably intended to commemorate something, just as Remembrance Day is intended to commemorate those killed in military action while serving in the Canadian Armed Forces. You can ‘celebrate’ a holiday, but you cannot commemorate it. Christmas is to commemorate the birth of Christ, not to commemorate Christmas. Such basic aspects of grammatical logic are beyond the ken of much of our current chattering classes.

So, absent any clear statement on what precisely this Day is commemorating, I will just say that so far as I know, it is intended to be about – in some way – the people who lived in Canada before the Anglo and French settlers came, and who, without a doubt, got treated badly by said settlers. Broken treaties, lands taken, you name it, it happened to them.

However, this post is not about the Day itself, but about my former employer. The Day only serves to highlight the degree to which one must remain blind to the reality around you to work in any position of responsibility for the university. Or, at least at UWO, but I think UWO is pretty typical.

On September 29, I got an email from the Econ Dept’s chief administrator which said this:

Good Afternoon, Everyone,

This is a reminder of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation & Allyship event tomorrow.  I attended this event last year, and it was a great way to bring the community together to collaborate on allyship and inclusivity.

I hope to see the Department of Economics well represented in orange shirts tomorrow. 😊

The ‘orange shirt’ remark is because someone somewhere decided an appropriate thing to do on Sept 30 was to wear an orange shirt. Now, let me be clear that I don’t wear a pink shirt when one is supposed to do that. I do own a pink shirt, and wear it when I feel like it. I think it looks great under a blue sportcoat with a blue-striped tie. I don’t grow a moustache in Movember, either. I find all these sorts of things highly irritating, a way for people to show their virtue without actually doing anything virtuous.

So, in light of this email, I resolved to go to my old-guy office on Sept 30, and looked through my wardrobe for a shirt whose colour could be described as ‘opposite of orange’. I chose green, but later a more colour-wheel savvy friend of mine convinced me blue would have been a better choice. Next year.

As a retired guy I have to park some way from my retiree’s office, a fact about which I am not complaining. That I have an office and any kind of parking on campus are two things for which I am genuinely grateful. It was a beautiful warm afternoon, so I got to see lots of university folks walking about the campus during my stroll. I did a haphazard survey as I walked. I would count off 10 people within my sight and note how many were wearing orange shirts. Came up with 0 or 1 every time. So, I put at 5% or less the number of people on campus who did the correct thing as to attire.

But there is more. ‘Allyship’ is one of those non-word words of which university types are so fond. The ‘allyship event’ which is referred to in the email above was explained in a previous email from the very bureaucratic Dean of Social Science, thusly:

On the 30th, we are excited to invite you to our second annual “Afternoon of Allyship” on September 30, which is open to students, faculty, and staff. This is a valuable opportunity for our entire campus community to come together and engage in meaningful dialogue about allyship and inclusive practices:

Second annual “Afternoon of Allyship” on September 30 from 12:00 p.m. – 2:45 p.m. at Western

Location: Social Science Centre (SSC) Room 2050

Admission: Free

 This event, co-organized by the Faculties of Social Science and Science, is an opportunity to reflect on what allyship means in your role as a student, supervisor, researcher, or leader at Western.

 Our speakers include:

    1. Dr. Christy Bressette, presenting the new “Principles of Indigenous Allyship at Western” guide (12:15)

    2. Drs. Lindsay Bell and Tania Granadillo, Anthropology, Social Science, speaking on “Availability without Expectation: Allyship in Indigenous Language Reclamation” (12:40)

    3. Dr. Desmond Moser, Earth Sciences, Science, speaking on “Allying Western Science with Indigenous Priorities” (1:40)

 A light lunch will be served at 12:00 to the first 75 attendees, so come early!

Apologies for including all that in this post, but I think it is good for non-University types to see the kinds of things that are written by University types. Note that Deans and other U-bureaucrats are very often ‘very excited’. I think it’s something in the wine they serve at their meetings. I could go on about a professor of Earth Sciences suggesting that Science should by allied with anything other than scientific priorities….but I won’t.

As I proceeded to my office on Sept 30, I walked past the room in SSC in which this event was being held. Some folks were grabbing their free lunch outside the room, and one of those people was a staff member from Econ, wearing an orange shirt. I know her well, she worked in the dept for a number of years before I retired. Of course she attended in her orange shirt. Given that email from her immediate Dept supervisor, what else could she do?

I got set up in my office on the fourth floor, turned the computer on and checked on some things that I can only access from a University computer, then walked over to the library to return a book. On the way back I passed the same room again, and with the free lunch scramble finished I could look in. It’s a big room, and there was somebody at the front saying something, and it was….pretty empty. As I kept walking I was preceded up the steps by the highly clueless and useless Dean, in his orange shirt, which you could just see under his black sportcoat. Guess he had other things to do, but that image was what prompted this post.

If you are said Dean, or the hapless new Dept administrative officer, you simply cannot look around at the paucity of orange shirts (I saw exactly 0 in the Econ Dept other than that one staff member) or at the low turnout at your ‘allyship’ event (despite classes being cancelled and a ‘free lunch’) from two faculties and wonder – ‘is this a worthwhile use of our energy and resources?’.

You do not ask yourself that question, and you do not raise it with those above you in the hierarchy. That would be blasphemous. Those lower down in the chain do what they must to not antagonize their own supervisors if they are staff members, and faculty and students, who are harder to put pressure on, mostly ignore the whole thing. Still, those nearer the top of the chain press on, oblivious to the lack of attendance at the ‘valuable opportunity to engage in meaningful dialogue’.

A well-run organization has as a basic requirement confronting sometimes difficult questions about priorities. That is not allowed at a university today. One carries on with things that are known to be ‘the right thing to do’, and asks no questions about their value.

A long final note. It is only somewhat related to the above, but it happened in the following week, and it is, I think, yet another indication of how cluelessly universities operate these days.

I got an email the next week from the History Dept, inviting me to a ‘Research Seminar’ the next day. Now, the Econ dept does not send emails outside the dept about its seminars and workshops. There is no reason to expect historians or sociologists to be interested. However, for some Depts, widely disseminating such notices is an important device for signalling said Dept’s virtue, and that was the case here.

The email from History had this in the subject line:

Today: Accidental Queer, with reflections on masculinity and coloniality in studies of gender and sexuality in Southern Africa

The email itself said that the presenter of this seminar, a Professor of Global Development Studies at Queens U, would indeed be sharing ‘a mix of story-telling and reflections on his personal experiences, motivations and ethical challenges…’

Your tax dollars at work, eh? I am all in favour of hearing stories and reflections. When I worked in the Dept we had a weekly coffee hour (not to mention Happy Hours at the Grad Bar) where we did just that. In particular, some of the older (than me) members of the Dept had been involved in things like putting the economy of Botswana on its feet in the 80s and 90s, or being part of the team that negotiated the first Free Trade Agreement with the US. Those cats had great stories to tell about all that. But…..we didn’t call that research. It wasn’t a seminar, as informative as it was – it was chat.

The attitude is different in UWO’s current History Dept, clearly. I’m sure they would find the stories about my senior colleague’s work in Botswana horrible, anyway. Coloniality, don’t ya know. Here’s Botswana’s history of GDP/capita, btw – just because I like graphs so much.

 

 

A final irony. There was a link in the email from History which I was supposed to click on to RSVP for the seminar. Under the link it said ‘Location shared upon registration’.

Yea, I guess History feels it needs to be cautious about who to let know about the location of this Research Seminar. I was rather tempted to click on the link to see if I would be considered an acceptable attendee.

I didn’t. Had better things to do, fortunately.

A Natural Experiment

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in News Media.

Regular readers will know that I often mention The Free Press, an online news/commentary platform founded by one Bari Weiss, after she left the New York Times in disgust at its ideological one-sidedness. TFP has thrived, with some 1.5 million subscribers, and although it certainly runs pieces I think little of, it is in general a source of news and comment of the sort one never gets in the mainstream media. So, I am more than willing to pay $US10/month for access to it. It even has a weekly column on what is going on in Canada, a most refreshing contrast to what The Globe and Mail reports.

We are, however, about to witness what people in my old profession referred to as ‘a natural experiment’ regarding TFP. A long-rumoured purchase of the platform by CBS/Paramount was announced today, and Weiss ran a story in TFP titled ‘The Future of The Free Press’, written by herself.

It seems Weiss got some $150million from CBS/P for her platform, and according to a story about this in the WSJ, CBS has appointed Weiss as ‘editor in chief of CBS News and empowering her to set the storied news organization’s editorial vision’.

The obvious questions here, to me, are – what happens to TFP now, and can Weiss actually alter anything important at CBS News?

I am doubtful about the second thing. CBS/Paramount is one hulking big LBO, so this looks to me like an attempt to change the course of an ocean liner using a rowboat. A very likely outcome in my view is that most of the staff at CBS News will regard Ms. Weiss as an enemy infiltrator and do anything and everything to make her life miserable and prevent any real changes to how things are done, or what gets on the air. The first time she tries to get anything not purely anti-Israel or less than adoring about OAC and her ilk on CBS News, expect a rebellion from the troops.

However, my personal concern is on the other side: what this does to TFP. I have no cable anymore, and have not watched network news in years – a posture which is common to much of North America, by the way.  Weiss’s piece in today’s TFP asserts that this buyout (she will remain as CEO and editor of TFP) will enable the platform to do more and do it more quickly. I am, to say the least, dubious.

So, I will continue my scrip, continue to read TFP, and see how it goes. Stay tuned for more updates as conditions warrant.

Postscript: After posting this, a new thought occurred to me.

While I was in the shower. It happens.

It strikes me that one admittedly cynical explanation of what the CEO of CBS/Paramount is doing with this deal is as follows.

He genuinely wants to change the lefty orientation of CBS News, but he is clueless about how to do it, and afraid of the shit that will hit the fan if he tries. Solution: hire someone who might know how, and bribe her to take it on by giving her a stack of cash (and Paramount stock, apparently) to do it. If it goes badly, and Weiss quits CBS in disgust, CBS/Paramount still has TFP, and Weiss still has the cash.

Win-win. Well, sorta.

We’ll see.

How the Real World Works

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Government.

How many of you have heard of Timmy Davis? Hands up. Sounds like a PGA golfer, no?

In fact he is a former Marine, who, after his decade in the Corps went onto a career as a US diplomat. The man reportedly speaks both Spanish and Arabic along with his native English, and in 2020 the Biden Administration appointed him as US Ambassador to Qatar. You know, that tiny and immensely wealthy country in the Middle East whose name no one is entirely sure how to pronounce. He seemed quite enthusiastic about the country in which he was appointed, having said, among other things “There is not anything that we do in the region that’s not enhanced by our relationship with Qatar.”

Davis as Ambassador to Qatar seems a very sensible appointment, given his linguistic abilities, no? Well, he stepped down from that Ambassadorship in June of this year, and he has a new job. To quote The Free Press, which put me onto this story,

Irth Capital Management, an investment fund backed by Doha and whose co-founder and chairman is a member of Qatar’s ruling Al Thani family, said that Davis has joined the firm as president and partner.

According to The Free Press, there is nothing in his background to suggest that Mr. Davis knows anything about finance or wealth management. I presume that is not why Irth hired him. This quote from the TFP article says it better than I can:

Government ethics experts interviewed by The Free Press also said it is fair to ask whether Davis’s activities as ambassador were in any way shaped by his impending business relationship with members of Qatar’s royal family.

It is of course not true that Mr. Davis has invented something new, here. The article goes on to point out numerous past Ambassadors to Qatar (and other countries) who have gone on after their ambassadorships to work for various orgs that lobby the US government on behalf of those same countries to which they were the Ambassador.

Davis is not being asked to lobby his government, his position at ICM seems more like…..I dunno, a payoff?

This is how the real world of BIP*s works.

_____________

*Big Important People

Putz, Inc.

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Education, LBOs.

I was having dinner with some friends who had the misfortune to have some water issues in a studio on the back of their property. There was water damage to be dealt with, and a representative of a company called Win-Mar was coming in periodically to give my friends a report on what his company was and would be doing to ameliorate the effects of the water and dry out what had been soaked. He seemed highly competent, which was reassuring to my friends, under the circumstances.

It was Saturday night, and he mentioned at one point that his company was very busy. We asked why, and he said ‘It’s homecoming at the University, and they hire us to clean up all the vomit’.

To be sure, I done some vomiting when I was of university age. It happens. What I find interesting is that the U did not put their own people to work dealing with this, but hired an outside contractor. I expect they prefer not to ruin the image of their students that they like to portray to their own employees.

There is another interesting fact about UWO related to this. For a number of years the London high school city league championship football game was held at the University’s stadium. A chance for some high school teams to play in a big venue, no doubt a bit of a thrill for them. The University stopped that practice, however, citing the ‘rowdyism’ of the high school students.

Here’s a quote from a 2024 London Free Press article about this, written after it was decided that the only place the game could be held was at a field in the city of St Thomas, just south of London:

For now, Western remains the most suitable site for a high school final. But even if organizers are able to cover the costs of security and alleviate safety and liability concerns, there are no guarantees the university will offer a contract for field usage.

That remains beyond frustrating to some for a facility originally built with an intended component of community use.

“It’s the most central location, a better venue and an easy recruiting opportunity for the best university football program in the country,” CCH head coach Alex Kurowski said. “St. Thomas has a nice new turf, but if you can do it at your major university, then why not?

 

Because the U is run by putzes, that’s why not. Safety and liability concerns, the universal excuse for not doing things if you run a university.

 

People Sayin’ Stuff

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Research.

When I was a young prof, I didn’t do any data research, but I saw a lot of it presented, and it was generally true way back then that economists did not often do survey research. That is, they did not put together questionnaires, get a lot of folks to fill them out and then analyze their responses.

To be sure, there were just beginning to be government-sponsored and funded large scale surveys like The Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), which began in 1968 with  a nationally representative sample of over 18,000 individuals living in 5,000 families in the United States. It describes itself as the longest running longitudinal household survey in the world. Wow, eh?

Things like the PSID are publicly available and painstakingly constructed, and those who do use them in their research are able to offer feedback on any issues they find with the survey. The PSID, like any such survey, asks people to answer questions about their income and such, and it is well-recognized that people’s answers are not entirely reliable, as I will discuss further below. However, when you have a panel like this, in which people answer the same questions repeatedly over time, it is possible to detect when some answers just don’t make sense.

So, what I am claiming economists did not do much in the 70s and 80s was what I described above: construct a questionnaire, get some folks to fill it out, and then analyze their answers with a view to understanding something about people in general.

The reasons for this lack of interest in surveys were, so far as I could tell, two.

One was a belief that it didn’t matter what people said about things. We economists were doing behavioural science, so it was what people did that was important, not what they said. Talk is cheap, but actions have consequences. We want data on what people actually bought and how many hours they worked and such.

Two was a recognition that people say all kinds of things that they don’t mean and/or are internally inconsistent. The most famous example of this in my discipline (I can’t find a reference to it, it was eons ago) was when someone went to a group of people in charge of running firms and asked them if their goal was to maximize the firm’s profit. This is of interest because one assumption made in the standard economic model of firm behaviour is that very thing: firms always behave so as to maximize their profits.

The person who asked this was chagrined to find that most of those asked said ‘No, that’s not how we operate at all.’

The chagrin was decidedly lessened by the fact that when those same people were asked ‘If you become aware of a change in your firm’s operations that will increase profits, do you implement it?’, to which most firm managers said ‘Well, of course we do.’

Like I said, inconsistent. They do maximize profits, they just don’t like to say it that way.

The problem with this stance on not doing surveys was that it left economists far behind empirical researchers in psychology, sociology and even political science, who were very big on survey research, and did tons of it.

Because here’s the thing. The absolutely essential input into all empirical research in econ, poli-sci, psych and soc is data. Getting your hands on good data is step one in any empirical research, and gathering good data is costly and time-consuming. Unless, of course, you just put together a bunch of questions on a form and use (back in the day) the phone or door-to-door canvasing or (more recently and much easier) some online platform as a way to gather people’s answers to your questions. Indeed, things like Survey Monkey mean that even you, my friend, can construct a survey and try to get people to answer it.

So, the absolute explosion in (mostly useless, imho) social science and other research in the last couple of decades has been at least partly aided by the fact that one can so easily generate data sets from online surveys, so long as one does not look too closely at what those surveys actually mean.

A prime example is the research by economists and others on – wait for it – ‘happiness’. Happiness research has grown massively in the last twenty years, all the result of people putting together surveys asking people how happy they are on a scale of one to whatever.

Indeed, there is something now called a World Happiness Report. You should click and check it out. How do they measure happiness, you ask? Here is what they say:

Our happiness ranking is based on a single life evaluation question called the Cantril Ladder:

    • Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from 0 at the bottom to 10 at the top.

    • The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you.

    • On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time?

Is that not awesome? But the really cool thing is that, because the steps on the ladder are numbered from 1 to 10, that means you can treat happiness like any other quantity, you know, like pints of milk. ‘Joe says he’s on step 4, so he has 4 cantrils of happiness.’ That means you can add happiness numbers together and find averages and standard deviations and then you can publish reports that say things like this –

Finns have an average life evaluation score of 7.736 (is that precise or what?) which is much better than the Germans with their average of 6.753.

Then you can do endless amounts of statistical operations in which you toss in other numbers like GDP and average temperature in March and the percentage of people who live in urban areas and average life expectancy and daily minutes watching TV in October and —- do you not see it children, there is no end to the set of possible papers one can write. Indeed, we can figure out why those damn Germans are so much grumpier than Finns.

All you have to do is never ever think about this question: If I put myself on step 7 of that ladder, is there any reason to believe that makes me in any important way similar to someone in Sri Lanka (or Manitoba, or down the street for that matter) who also thinks they are on step 7?

If that question occurs to you, Mr./Ms. researcher, just put it out of your mind, and go write another paper.

It is not just in this research on so-called ‘happiness’ that what people say is taken as objective truth that can be quantified and analyzed. One of the first articles I posted on this site was about some local researchers who claimed they wanted to learn how much discrimination was being experienced by recent immigrants, so – they asked them. When it turned out that non-immigrant white people claimed to be discriminated against more than immigrants, it did not occur to the researchers to consider the possibility that their survey responses were not telling them about actual discrimination. Onward, ever onward, there are (discriminatory) dragons to be slain, dammit.

And, think about it. If we care about discrimination, we care about how people behave, about what they do. We want to know if people are being cursed at due to their background or race, or if they are being denied jobs. But damn, that is very hard to discover, whereas if we just accept that whenever people say these things happened then they did – voila! We can really get somewhere.

While it is true that the internet age has made doing surveys easier, the problems with survey research are not new. One problem with which I am very familiar is the bias in surveys of voting behavior. If you ask a random sample of adults whether they voted in the last federal election, you will invariably get something like 80%+ of them saying they did, even though we know only some 60% of eligible adults actually voted.

There are a number of reasons for this. First, people feel that they should vote, and are reluctant to admit they did not, even to a pollster. Probably more important is that the sample in any voluntary voting survey is not truly unbiased, in that people who willingly answer surveys also are more likely to vote. Or, put another way, someone who didn’t vote is more likely than someone who did to tell a pollster to piss off, or to not fill out the online questionnaire.

What got me started on this ‘sayin’ stuff’ topic was a post on the stats blog titled ‘Junk Science Presented as Public Health Research’. This was written by good old Gelman about a paper published in a journal sponsored by The Journal of the American Medical Association (although not in JAMA itself) and it claimed that in a survey of 10,000 US adults, some 7% reported being injured in or otherwise present at a mass shooting. I mean, JAMA, right? Must be true.

Gelman the statistician pointed out that, given what we know about the actual number of such shootings, that 7% claim would require that the average number of people present at mass shootings over the last 50years would have to be some 700, and that was implausible. Some mass shootings have thousands present, like the one in Las Vegas in 2017, but that is a huge outlier, considering that ‘mass shooting’ is defined as 4 or more people being hit by gunfire.

Well, this led me to an even worse example of this in another JAMA network paper from 2024 titled ‘Prevalence and Risk Factors of Depression and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder After a Mass Shooting’

You can read the whole thing here, free. Worth every penny.

This paper surveyed people who were actually present at that shooting at the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival in Vegas in 2017, in which 60 people were killed. They contacted 1000 people on a list of those who were present (there were tens of thousands in attendance), got a final sample of 177 people, and concluded from the answers those 177 people gave to their survey that ‘eighty-seven participants (49.2%) reported past-year MDEs [Major Depressive Episodes], while 112 (63.3%) reported past-year PTSD’.

All fine so far, but in their conclusions they write ‘We documented a high burden of MDE and PTSD among witnesses and survivors of the Las Vegas MVI[Mass Violence Incident].’

No, folks, you did not. You documented what was true in your small and certainly biased sample. Think about it, readers. some 800 of the 1000 people contacted by the researchers did not reply, and who is more likely to respond to a survey about this incident? Those who feel they are suffering from depression and PTSD or those who have moved on and are doing ok?

Given that bias, and despite what they titled the paper, this work tells us nothing about the ‘prevalence’ of MDEs or PTSD in the set of people actually present at that shooting.

The researchers do eventually note that “Study limitations include a small sample size, predominantly female respondents, and a low response rate, all of which may affect generalizability.” Sample bias? Not even mentioned.

Besides, generalizability to what? There is no reason to believe your results tell us anything about the thousands of people at that event, period. And of course, after that brief and inadequate cautionary note, they go on to compound their error:

“This study found that witnesses and survivors of the Las Vegas MVI continued to have substantial mental health challenges even 4 years later, emphasizing the need for sustained mental health support.”

Isn’t it funny how leaving out the word ‘some’ in that sentence makes it seem so much more….important?

Let me emphasize my point. Gelman called the paper that asserted 7% of people in the US have been at a mass shooting ‘junk science’ because there was no reason to believe that 7% number was actually true in the entire US population. As he writes, what the researchers know is only that 7% of the people they asked said they were present. The characters in this PTSD paper cannot even claim that their results are representative of the population of people who were present at the Vegas shooting. They only know what 117 people from their biased sample said about having PTSD.

I will finish this by going back to that original JAMA paper Gelman dissed in his Stats blog. Along with taking the researchers to task for doing ‘junk science’ Gelman also suggests that a study of how many people might have been present at some mass shooting somewhere doesn’t even belong in a public health journal, and he suggests that it was published there to push a political agenda.

Some of his readers disagreed with this point, and he eventually caved and wrote that maybe the study was legitimately about public health.

I think he was right the first time. It makes sense to publish a paper on mass shootings in a public health journal if the methods used to deal with public health problems might be useful in dealing with mass shootings. If that makes sense to you, then think back to, oh, 2020, and consider the methods advocated by public health officials to deal with that problem. Clearly, a serious public health problem is sufficient to require all kinds of draconian measures, including the suspension of civil liberties.

imho, there definitely is a political agenda here. Same goes for alcohol consumption, by the way. Big public health problem, donthchaknow.

Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean people are not trying to mess with me.

Free Jimmy!

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Culture, Government.

My WSJ this afternoon has a story headlined ‘Kimmel’s Late-Night Show Will Return to Air Tuesday’ stating a fact which you all know by now.

The story does not say much about how ABC came to this decision, unless you consider the following from ABC an explanation:

“It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive. We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday,” the company said.

The WSJ story also says this about Nexstar, a company which owns more than 20 ABC affiliated stations.

A representative for Nexstar didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment on whether it would resume carrying Kimmel’s show.

Nexstar had said it’s stations would stop airing Kimmel’s show, even before ABC decided to suspend it.

What really induced ABC to put Kimmel back on the air is unknown, and I suspect always will be. More may be said by various parties, but the truth content of whatever is said will in any event be low.

Whatever the reason for ABC’s about-face, I applaud them growing a pair, if only belatedly, and I look forward to seeing Carr and Trump’s reactions to this news. I expect Kimmel’s ratings for Tuesday night’s first show back will be rather higher than they have been of late. He should send Mr. Carr a bottle of Carr’s favourite booze, at the very least.

A WSJ reader commenting on the story also mentions that Kimmel’s contract with ABC runs to May of 2026. If that is so, I would not bet much on the show being on the air in July of 2026, since I also predict that Tuesday ratings bump is unlikely to last.

As another commenter on this story said, this latest ABC decision is ‘a victory for free speech and negative net present value’.

 

Kids Today

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Uncategorized.

I worry about them.

I came across some X posts by a woman named Jean Twenge, who apparently has written books about teens and social media use and such. No, I don’t spend time on X, I got sent to her posts by something I was reading in The Free Press. She had some interesting – worrying, actually – graphics in a couple of posts which I thought worth sharing here. I might buy one of her books, based on this – speaking of which, this first graphic is indeed distressing, at least to a confirmed book reader like me.

And here is what I dislike about X posts. The caption on this graphic refers to ‘books’ losing kids attention, but the description of the data being depicted refers to 13-year-olds ‘reading for fun’. Does that mean reading books for fun? Not clear to me, but books are certainly one thing one could read for fun, so this big drop between the 80s and now is not a good sign, in any case.

Having fun is important, and so is maturing. This may be something today’s kids are having a hard time doing. Here’s another of her graphics:

I have seen other stats like this in other places. It all points to youth taking longer to grow into adulthood, another disturbing trend. Now, a certain kind of person – we know who they are – might well look at this and say:

‘Fewer kids are trying alcohol, well that’s just great.’

and…..

‘Fewer kids are getting driver’s licenses, that’s just what we need to combat climate change.’

and….

‘Less teen dating means less teen sex, that has to be good.’

and….

‘High-schoolers should not be working for pay, they need to concentrate on their schoolwork.’

To those people, I say #$&^!!

Young people have to try things, test themselves, confront the world, it is part of how they learn about themselves and mature.

But that’s me.

And then there is the graphic below, which is from a study in The Lancet, a very prestigious British medical journal which has managed to publish a fair bit of bullshit over the previous decade.

The key question one must ask about such a graph is – what is causing what? That is, does high use of social media induce clinically significant depression in young people (particularly girls) or is it the case that being clinically depressed (for whatever reasons) causes one to spend more time on social media? Either seems plausible, up front, and I will say my own bias is toward door #1, but because this data is from a cross-section of teens in the UK, there is nothing in such data that can sort that out.

To their credit (I downloaded the study) the authors are aware of this issue, and say they have evidence that it is the first direction of causality that is most likely, but by no means certain. It’s complicated, indeed.

I have grandkids. I worry about their generation. I am also very glad that I am no longer a parent of young kids.

All Sides Agree: Shutting People Up Is Good

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Government, Popular attitudes.

By now I expect most of you know that ABC has pulled Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show off the air. I’m going to go through (some of) the details as far as I know them because I think they matter.

On the show Kimmel said, among many other things “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”

Now this is not at all central to what I think is important about this, but I just have to say it. Does that look like a line from a comedy show to you? It does not to me, it looks like a line from a political commentary broadcast.

[To be fair, Kimmel later in the monolog showed a clip of Trump saying he was holding up well after Kirk’s murder, then immediately drifting into talking about the great reconstruction of the White House ballroom that was taking place. Kimmel said ‘He’s in the fourth stage of grief: Construction.’ That’s actually kindof funny. Sad, but funny.]

I got rid of cable long ago, so have not watched late night TV since, but I used to enjoy Jon Stewart and Colbert and – eons ago – Carson and Cavett. They made jokes about many things, including politicians, and they were more often than not, funny. Making fun of politicians and university bozos and celebrities is all healthy and useful. Where is the joke in that first line from Kimmel? Must everything be political commentary?

Ok, rant over, what happened next is that – and I am quoting The Free Press here, I did not see it – Federal Communications Commission chairman Brendan Carr went on Benny Johnson’s YouTube show and offered Disney-owned ABC a choice. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” said the country’s top regulator of broadcast television. “These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

As the Freeps says, this is called Jawboning. A government official suggesting that there will be trouble if some private actor does not take some action. ‘Nice little network you got there, ABC, be a shame for it to lose it’s licence’, basically.

[I’m dramatizing, here, the FCC licenses individual stations, not networks, but you get the picture….]

Jawboning has a long history, it was not invented by Mr. Carr, indeed Joe Biden’s admin used it on Facebook, trying to pressure it to remove what his administration referred to as ‘misinformation’. Biden’s people were sufficiently self-aware to do it quietly, however.

Like the editors of The Free Press, I thought that was wrong then and I am alarmed at Carr doing it now. And, Mr. Carr himself is on record as saying it is wrong. In a WSJ editorial this morning, Kimberly Strassel prints the following quote from Carr from 2019: “Should the government censor speech it doesn’t like? Of course not. The FCC does not have a roving mandate to police speech in the name of the ‘public interest’.”

Exactly, Mr. Carr. However, we live in a world in which 1) no one in government is expected to have any principles and 2) it is always ok to get revenge on anyone who plays for the other side.

Had ABC simply shut Kimmel down for being an embarrassingly ignorant boob, then I would not care. I mean, I would really really not care, because as I wrote above, I do not watch these guys any more. What I object to deeply is an official in the US Federal Government implicitly threatening ABC if they do not fire Kimmel. I agree with the Free Press that this ‘undermines our most fundamental values’, where the Free Press is no doubt referring to the value of free speech in the US, but I regard that as one of my fundamental values also, living here in Canada.

The Federal Government of the US – or of Canada – has no business shutting people up, no matter how stupid or insensitive is what they say. And sadder yet, Carr is hardly the first member of the Trump admin to talk about shutting people up since the murder of Charlie Kirk. As appalling as that murder was, it does not justify bringing the force of law – or jaw – down on people who talk about it in ways the current government does not like.

And, it gets worse from there. As always, there are plenty of reader comments in the Free Press below any of its articles. Here are those following the editorial which alarmed me the most:

– “I disagree with the way that this happened, but I don’t necessarily disagree with the fact that it did. Private companies can do as they want.”

– “Disappointing. The FP apparently felt that it needed to tack a couple of degrees to the left.”

– “Frankly, I don’t care. We’ve been subjected to so much hate, including from Joe Biden as president, and now the former president Obama, that we have to draw a hard line. Kimmel was inciting further violence against us by falsely claiming the assassin was MAGA.”

– “Good riddance, drag him through the streets. You underestimate how many people despised this man. I couldn’t care less about his freedom of speech.”

– “I fully support free speech in the media. But sometimes, payback is the only way to expose hypocrisy.”

– “It is nice to see the right punch back a little, instead of laying back and taking it, as they have for so long.”

To be fair to Free Press Readers, there were also some finely nuanced comments on the editorial.

The very existence of the FCC as a broadcast regulator means that Carr’s veiled threat is (probably) not a straightforward violation of the 1st amendment. However, an ignorant comment made by the host of a little-watched show should not be enough to get a license pulled, and Carr should not even be hinting that it could be. That amounts to gangster government (as did Biden’s people leaning on Facebook) and it should have no place in a democracy of free people.

The main point made by Strassel in her WSJ editorial mentioned above is that it is time for the FCC’s control over broadcasting to end. That power is a holdover from the days when the three US TV networks were the primary source of news for the country, and those days are long gone. I think I agree with Strassel’s point.  I doubt Mr. Carr does. Now.

So far as I can tell, no one in Trump’s Admin can comprehend that it is better to let the clueless talk, it is how we learn how clueless they are. Shutting them up just sanctifies their ignorance.

Final note on this, utterly independent of my worries about Carr’s actions. I knew nothing about Charlie Kirk until reading about his murder, but based on what I have read about him since, I wonder – does Carr  or Trump or J D Vance understand that Kirk himself would likely be appalled by Carr’s threat?

In an odd turn of events, I came across some other writing online about contemporary journalism while following the various paths taken by the story about Kimmel/Carr. That is, I came across some people writing about how journalism should be done today, and to be honest, I cannot re-construct the path that got me from this Kimmel thing (which is not really about journalism) to where I ended up.

That said, I think this stuff I ran into is important, and it is certainly new to me, so I’m going to write about it in a separate post – this one is long enough.

Poor France…..Poor Us?

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Government.

Here comes another article prompted by something I read in the WSJ, this time an editorial titled ‘Who Can Save France Now?’ credited to The Editorial Board.

France has a hybrid governmental structure. There is a President, currently Emmanuel Macron, who is elected in a separate election, just as in the US. However, they also have a parliamentary legislative branch, headed by a Prime Minister, who must command the confidence of that legislature to stay in office, just as in Canada and the UK. Well, the PM in France, Francois Bayrou, lost a confidence vote by a count of 364 to 194 (i.e., not close) and so Mr. Macron, whose position is unaffected by this, has two choices. He can call new legislative elections, as in Canada, or he can try to find another schmuck to appoint as PM and hope that person can put together a program which will win him/her the confidence of the current legislature.

Here’s the WSJ EB’s take on the situation:

This fiasco isn’t Mr. Bayrou’s fault. To him fell the unenviable task of crafting a government budget plausible enough that everyone could pretend to believe it. France’s debt-to-GDP ratio is due to climb to 116% this year, and annual government expenditure is approaching 60% of GDP.

The National Assembly is split among three factions—Mr. Macron’s centrists, and big-spending parties on the left and right. Actual spending cuts are out of the question politically. Mr. Bayrou hoped he could at least corral lawmakers behind an agreement to slow (ever so modestly) the rate of increase in future spending. Apparently not.

The question this brought to my mind was: is France’s fiscal position really so perilous? What does a debt to GDP ratio of 116% mean, and how does it compare to other countries?

First, one way to characterize what it means is this. GDP is the total value of everything produced in a country in one year. Government debt, which is what is meant here, is the total value of all French government bonds held by anybody. So, the 116% means that if France consumed nothing for a year (impossible, of course) and spent all the money they earned from producing things in that year on paying off their government’s outstanding bonds, there would still be outstanding debt they could not pay off. They would have to devote another 16% or so of next year’s production revenues to retire the remaining debt, assuming their government did not borrow anymore.

That sounds like a lot of debt when you put it that way, but how does it compare to other countries?

I found the graphic below online, depicting the top debt-to-gdp ratio countries in the world, based on data from the International Monetary Fund, a generally reliable source.

Apparently France has the 9th-highest govt debt to gdp ratio in the world, but it is half that of Japan, which seems to be ticking along ok, and it is less than that of the US and just ahead of Canada. Now, the conventional wisdom is that the US is able to get away with loads more government debt than other countries because the US dollar is the currency in which the vast majority of international trade is conducted. This makes everyone more willing to hold US bonds than those of other countries. But if France is in trouble on this score, what about Japan and Canada, never mind Italy?

Sudan, at the top of the chart above, has been at war for as long as I can remember, and there is nothing like military conflict to run up government spending. But number three on this chart is Singapore, which I always thought of as an economic success story, even though nothing on earth would get me to live there. Well, below is the historical record of Singapore’s GDP per capita, which, flawed thought it is, is the best measure of material well-being for a country we have.

I wouldn’t take too seriously the numbers after 2024, those are projections (otherwise known as guesses), but up to last year, the Singaporean economy seems to have been doing well for its people. And, if nothing else, the guesses past 2024 suggest that the guessers don’t see Singapore’s current 174% govt debt to gdp ratio being a hindrance to a growing economy.

I suspect the Wall Street Journal EB is just not happy about a country that is racking up debt and getting away with it. They often rail against the US government, independently of who is in office, on the same grounds, and would probably do the same to Canada if they ever bothered about Canada at all.

I share their disdain for the idea that governments can borrow forever with no consequences, but the fact is that plenty of governments have been doing it for a long time, and no one knows where it will end up. The world’s governments are, in my view, jointly embarked on a long-run uncontrolled experiment in indebtedness. My concern is that if it turns out badly, none of Misters Macron, Bayrou, Trump or Carney will pay the price: it will be, as always, Joe and Jane Average who do.

 

What’s a Fella To Think?

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Government, News Media, Standards.

My morning WSJ contained an Opinion piece by one Steven E Koonin titled ‘At last, clarity on climate change’ which starts with this sentence:

“A recent Energy Department report challenged the widespread belief that greenhouse-gas emissions pose a serious threat to the nation.”

Mr. Koonin is one of five co-authors of said report, which was commissioned by the current US Secretary of Energy. Mr. Koonin says these are some of the report’s key findings:

  • Elevated carbon-dioxide levels enhance plant growth, contributing to global greening and increased agricultural productivity.
  • Complex climate models provide limited guidance on the climate’s response to rising carbon-dioxide levels. Overly sensitive models, often using extreme scenarios, have exaggerated future warming projections and consequences.
  • Data aggregated over the continental U.S. show no significant long-term trends in most extreme weather events. Claims of more frequent or intense hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and dryness in America aren’t supported by historical records.
  • While global sea levels have risen about 8 inches since 1900, aggregate U.S. tide-gauge data don’t show the long-term acceleration expected from a warming globe.
  • Natural climate variability, data limitations and model deficiencies complicate efforts to attribute specific climate changes or extreme events to human CO2 emissions.
  • The use of the words “existential,” “crisis” and “emergency” to describe the projected effects of human-caused warming on the U.S. economy finds scant support in the data.
  • Overly aggressive policies aimed at reducing emissions could do more harm than good by hiking the cost of energy and degrading its reliability. Even the most ambitious reductions in U.S. emissions would have little direct effect on global emissions and an even smaller effect on climate trends.

He then adds – ‘Our work has attracted strong criticism, despite its grounding in established science.’

What a surprise, eh? So, let’s cut to the chase. I have not read this report, and don’t expect I will. In the Comments after the piece, a reader notes that a group of ‘climate experts’ have written a rebuttal/commentary on the report, which you can download here. It runs to 459 pages, and no, I’m not gonna read it, either.

Is this because I am confident the DOE report that Koonin is touting has it right? God no, I have no reason to believe reports that come out of the Trump executive branch at this point. It no doubt contains grains of truth, but here’s the thing. If that DOE report had come from the Biden Energy Department I would not bother to read that, either. I have no reason to think that any of these people are not stretching the truth, misusing logic, and painting the evidence up so as to support whatever pre-determined position they hold. That, sadly, is the state of governance and academic research in the Western world today.

That all being said, here is something of which I am quite sure. The media has for many many years been all too eager to put doomsday scenarios on their pages, and the so-called ‘scientific community’ has always contained enough alarmists that such scenarios can be given credibility by people with letters after their names. God save us from people with letters after their names.

I blame a lot of things on the internet, as my regular readers know, but this goes back to well before the invention of that bit of infrastructure. The older folks among you may remember the famous book The Limits to Growth, put out by a group of wise folks called The Club of Rome in 1972. It predicted the end of mankind was looming due to exploding population, ever-increasing pollution and the depletion of non-renewable resources. You can go here to a commentary in Reason in 2012 to see how those predictions were going up to then.

But wait, there’s more. I have compiled a list of doomsday predictions from the last many years, all of them made by people with letters after their names, and published with considerable fanfare by the media.

 

Predictions:

  1. Headline in the Salt Lake Tribune, 17 Nov, 1967 ‘Dire Famine Forecast by ‘75’

The article contains extensive quotes from one Paul Ehrlich, a biologist. Here’s one:

“At the moment it is shockingly apparent that the battle to feed humanity will end in a rout, said Ehrlich.”

There was no general famine in ’75, but honestly, it is a bit too easy to pick on Ehrlich. His entire career since then has been one of predicting one catastrophe after another, none of which have occurred, and yet – he keeps getting airplay. He’s at Stanford, dontchaknow? He was in the news within the last few years again with yet another dire prediction, the details of which I have forgotten. Look him up. Or not.

  1. Newsweek, April 28, 1975, The Cooling World

Here’s a quote from one of the letters-after-name people in this article:

“The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down.’

There are a bunch of these you can dig up from the 70s. It is easy to forget (or to have never realized, if you are young enough) that for a good while the letters-after-the-name people were telling us to fear a new Ice Age. Click on the link above to read what (some of) those folks were saying back then.

Here’s another one.

3. “The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist, Earth Day, 1970

  1. Moving forward in time, the NYT has always loved a good Catastrophe story. Here’s the beginning of one from 1995:

Needless to say, the beaches on the east coast of the USA are still there, 29 years later. I know some folks who had a great vacation on one of them last month.

  1. Another one from the first Earth Day.

“Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”
• Life Magazine, January 1970

6. And this one I include largely due to the last line. The formatting suggests it’s from The Guardian, but I can’t precisely nail it down.

 

That last sentence is classic: ‘uses complex modeling techniques that make its projections more accurate than others.’ First, how do you know before the fact which model’s projections are more accurate? Um…you don’t, cuz you can’t. And, what logical or other principle says that ‘more complex’ means ‘more accurate’ anyway? None. But hey, he’s a US Navy scientist, we can’t expect him to know about those sorts of things. I expect that he looooves his model, though.

In the same vein, an article in The Guardian from July of 2013 that I did track down is headlined thus:

Ice-free Arctic in two years heralds methane catastrophe – scientist

Professor Peter Wadhams, co-author of new Nature paper on costs of Arctic warming, explains the danger of inaction

You can read the whole article here, but the big quote from Professor Wadhams is this:

An ice-free summer (September) Arctic is clearly nearly upon us, and will be achieved within three years or less – this is plain from the observational data on ice extent (satellites) and thickness (submarines and altimeter satellites).

Here is the latest data on the arctic sea ice in 2025, 12 years after Wadham’s quote above.

Note that it falls during summer as you would expect, then starts to rise again in September – meaning, now. The current year looks very much like what happened in 2012, although the drop in ice through August of 2025 has been less than it was in 2012. Throughout the 2025 season, the ice cover has been less than the 1981-2010 median, clearly. Is that a concern? Perhaps it is, but it has not ‘disappeared’, some 12 years after that prediction was made.

I could go on. Prince Charles, (before becoming King) back in 2018 (ok, he has very different letters after his name) said we had 18months to solve climate change and save humanity. Greta Thunberg (yea, her) who has no letters after her name at all, so far as I know, put up a Tweet back in 2018 that said that someone with letters after their name (“a top climate scientist” – you know who you are) said that climate change would wipe out all humanity if we don’t stop using fossil fuels in the next five years. She took the post down later, but you can find it online, dated 2018. Yet, here we humans are, still.

And I haven’t even mentioned Al Gore.

Is my point in digging up all this bullshit that no one with a brain should think there is anything to worry about regarding climate change or global warming or whatever it is called in a couple of years? That it’s all hyped-up bullshit?

No. Certainly not. But there is plenty of bullshit out there, so…..what?

My point is that the media is full of people – some with letters, some without – saying shit that at the time should have been taken as unlikely, has now been shown to be bullshit, and yet they keep getting quoted, and so it is not exactly hard to understand why everyone is skeptical of everything. It is supposed to be the media’s job to be skeptical, or so I always believed, but today the media are only skeptical of things said by ‘the other side’ and all media has by now picked a side. Even sadder, so have most academics, and they are the only ones who could possibly go through the new DOE report, and the rebuttal, and figure out what is really up.

No one in academia is going to do that, of that I am sure, and I can see no good reason to pay attention to anyone who said they had, whether or not they have letters after their names.

And, be clear my friends, that the truth is neither ‘Climate change is real and will soon be a catastrophe’ nor  ‘Climate change is not real so we need not worry.’

Nothing in nature is that simple or binary. But simple (and therefore surely wrong) is all we ever get.

Great Writing

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Culture.

I wrote awhile back about the great pile of interesting books I picked up for a song at The Book Addict, a local used-book store. I was quite impressed by Doris Lessing’s novel The Good Terrorist at that point, but I had also picked up a volume that contained three (yes, three) novels by E. M. Forster, an early 20th-century English writer. I read the first two, Where Angels Fear to Tread and A Room With a View, and enjoyed them both very much. Now, Forster’s biggest success as a novelist was with A Passage to India, published in 1924, which was also made into a successful movie in the 80s. That is not part of this collection I bought, the third novel being Howard’s End, published in 1910 and turned into a movie in 1992.

I am about 2/3 of the way through Howard’s End and it is excellent. I think Forster has replaced Robertson Davies as my favourite wordsmith, the writing is just superb, as are the observations of people and life in early 20th century England. Here is a long quote from the novel, describing one of the characters, a struggling lower-class clerk, who encounters the novel’s two chief protagonists, the sisters Meg and Helen, a pair of well-to-do young ladies who we might today characterize as ‘limousine liberals’.

This is the omniscient narrator’s (i.e., Forster’s) description of Mr. Bast:

The boy, Leonard Bast, stood at the extreme verge of gentility. He was not in the abyss, but he could see it, and at times people whom he knew had dropped in, and counted no more. He knew that he was poor, and would admit it; he would have died sooner than confess any inferiority to the rich. This may be splendid of him. But he was inferior to most rich people, there was not the least doubt of it. He was not as courteous as the average rich man, nor as intelligent, nor as healthy nor as lovable. His mind and his body had been alike underfed, because he was poor, and because he was modern they were always craving better food. Had he lived some centuries ago, in the brightly colored civilizations of the past, he would have had a definite status, his rank and his income would have corresponded. But in his day the angel of democracy had arisen, enshadowing the classes with leathern wings, and proclaiming: “All men are equal – all men, that is to say, who possess umbrellas,” and so he was obliged to assert gentility, lest he slipped into the abyss where nothing counts and the statements of Democracy are inaudible.

A great paragraph, laying out in beautiful prose the situation in which Leonard finds himself in England at that time. His interactions with Meg and Helen are a source of great turmoil for poor Leonard, a fact of which the sisters are so far entirely unaware.

Weather at Eleven

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in News Media, Standards.

The ‘news’ business is not doing well, as we all know, particularly at the local level. My local London newspaper, despite being a monopoly in that business, is down to a handful of employees, publishes only 5 days per week, and doesn’t have the resources or staffing to do much of anything that would have been called ‘reporting’ twenty years ago. Stories about local crime, for example, are clearly just pasted from whatever the London Police put up on their News website.

This is generally attributed to the fact that people get their local news from social media, an explanation that ignores the issue of where social media gets its information from.

One might think that local weather reporting would be better. The only weather that matters to most people is local; we want to know if it’s going to rain where we live, not in Sri Lanka. However, weather reporting has gone national, too. I suspect most people in Canada now get their weather info from The Weather Network, which will give you short and long-term forecasts for your specific area of Canada at a click. For myself, I use Accuweather, which is a US website. I just bookmarked their Port Huron page, that being a town in Michigan some 90km directly west of where I live.

I use that largely because their weather radar is rather superior to what one can get from Environment Canada, and looking at current radar images is the best forecasting tool there is for precipitation. However, Accuweather is still an internet company, and thus subject to the ‘enshittification’ that all such organizations exhibit.

That is to say, what Accuweather wants you to do is click things on their site, as then you will see more ads, and hence they will get more revenue. They therefore give you many items on which to click, those items connection to the weather being…..uh, tenuous.

Here is a list of the headlines under the category of Weather News on the Accuweather website over the last several days:

Read the Coast Guard Report on the implosion of the Titan submersible

Third girl dies after sailboat and barge collision in Miami

Italian Farmers set up turnstiles to charge admission to hot spots

Small earthquake hits near New York City

Texas to enact sweeping camp safety law to protect kids

FAA investigating plane that went off end of runway after landing

Scientists have created rechargeable, multicolored, glow-in-the-dark succulent plant

I thought about sponsoring a contest to see who could best write a story under each headline that would somehow make it actually about weather in some way. I decided it was too easy, since all of life happens with some kind of weather around, and I suppose that is how Accuweather justifies to itself (if it bothers at all) posting all these stories under ‘Weather News’.

This is the same routine that has resulted in the enshittification of search engines. They are no longer designed to help you find info, they are designed to keep you clicking, so that Google can get paid. If you just find what you are looking for on the first page of results, there’s little money in that for Google, so they feed you shit that is barely related to what you are looking for to keep you clicking and trying new queries, then clicking some more.

Do you remember when you could refine your search query by putting quotes around it? You know, you type in air conditioning repair and you get results that have any of those three words in them, so you instead type in “air conditioning repair” and get only results that contain those three words in that order. That doesn’t work any more, go ahead and try it. It doesn’t even work any more on the shitty search engine the university library now makes one use to find things in their holdings. One has to just wade through thousands of books and articles that have nothing to do with what one typed into the beast.

Anyway, getting back to the weather,  I don’t know if anyone has noticed, but this year’s Atlantic hurricane season has been vewy vewy qwiet. It has been more than two months since it started, and there have been only six named storms, only one of which reached hurricane status. That one, Erin, had the temerity to stay far away from the continental US. There is always hope, the ‘official season’ lasts until Nov 30, but so far – nearly nada.

Now there is nothing the news media – not just the weather reporters – like better than a good hurricane, as each storm provides Big Headline clickbait for a good month, from the beginnings of the storm as a ‘tropical depression’ through tracking its path and intensity, and then, if it actually makes landfall, weeks of stories about the damage and cleanup and, if they’re really lucky, deaths.

Well, if you have no news of actual hurricanes to run at Accuweather, you can only resort to stories like this, categorized under the category ‘Hurricane’.

Is the Northeast overdue for a hurricane? Here’s what it would take.

Or

Atlantic tropical rainstorm may reach Caribbean as a hurricane.

Can’t you just feel the hope in those headlines?

The other reason for hope is this. The NOAA (The USA’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association) put this news release out on August 7

Prediction remains on track for above-normal Atlantic hurricane season: NOAA urges advanced preparations

As the 2025 Atlantic Hurricane Season enters its historical peak, atmospheric and oceanic conditions continue to favor an above-normal season as NOAA first predicted in May.

The details of their forecast included a prediction of 13-16 ‘named storms’  and 5-9 hurricanes.

To date: 1 hurricane. 6 named storms. With the season more than half over, Mother Nature better get moving, right? I am sure Accuweather – not to mention CNN, CBC, etc., etc. – all have their fingers crossed.

AI Attachment Issues

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Culture.

No sooner do I finish writing up a post on my skepticism about AI and LLMs, when The Wall Street Journal posts a story titled:

Whitney Wolfe Herd Has a New Idea for Bumble—and All Our Relationships

…with the subtitle:

She’s spent nearly all of her working life atop the dating-app business, and believes artificial intelligence could be the matchmaker we all need

Jeeezus, Mary and Joseph…..

If you’ve never Heard of Ms Herd, join the club, but you can learn a lot about her from this article, which reads to me more like a publicity piece for her and her companies than a piece of reporting.

Whatever, she is currently the CEO of an online dating app company called Bumble, worked originally at Tinder, another online dating app, and the article says this:

Since returning to Bumble in March after stepping down as chief executive in late 2023, she’s led a secret project to build a new, AI-powered matchmaking app that’s based on a surprising hypothesis. What if AI could understand us better than we understand ourselves? And what if that understanding gave it the ability to choose better matches for us than we might for ourselves?

Ok, so you just know what I think about this. Why in the freakin’ hell would you want to turn over your choice of who to date to a piece of software?

I suppose the obvious answer is that if you are prepared to believe that the software understands you better than you do yourself, you certainly would.

My first thought is that I would not have wanted to go on a date with someone who believed that about a piece of software, just as I would not have wanted to go out with someone who thought having compatible astrological signs was important.

But it gets better. The article says this, too –

‘Wolfe Herd and a team at Bumble have consulted expert psychologists and relationship counselors to program a matchmaking AI.”

Well, since they have consulted expert psychologists, that will surely make all the difference.

Here’s what the article has to say about how this AI matchmaking will work.

Bumble’s new app aims to help users build a dating profile based on how they answer questions about past relationships, breakups and experiences with love and dating.

One potential question: “As much as you’re willing to share, what is it about your last breakup that hurt you, that you don’t want to repeat in a future relationship?”

It will be built as a large language model, a form of generative AI that communicates with users in a humanlike way. One area of psychology the company is leaning on heavily to inform the AI is the science of attachment theory, she says.

I love that – ‘the science of attachment theory’.

You know me, just can’t leave a fine piece of silliness like this alone, so I did some digging into attachment theory.

Oh, boy.

Here’s the Wikipedia two-sentence description of this ‘science’ –

Attachment theory is a psychological and evolutionary framework, concerning the relationships between humans, particularly the importance of early bonds between infants and their primary caregivers. Developed by psychiatrist and psychoanalyst John Bowlby (1907–90), the theory posits that infants need to form a close relationship with at least one primary caregiver to ensure their survival, and to develop healthy social and emotional functioning.

Ok, but how does that translate into dating? Just wait, there’s more –

Attachment theory was extended to adult romantic relationships in the late 1980s by Cindy Hazan and Phillip Shaver. Four styles of attachment have been identified in adults: secure, anxious-preoccupied, dismissive-avoidant and fearful-avoidant. These roughly correspond to infant classifications: secure, insecure-ambivalent, insecure-avoidant and disorganized/disoriented.

Now, I suppose if we make the dubious assumption that by typing in answers to chatbot questions, the LLM can figure out what sort of ‘attachment style’ you favour, the question then becomes – how does it use this info about you and others to match people up? I guess users will find out eventually.

I confess to doing some online dating eons ago. In those days you just posted a profile and a photo or two, and you had to decide to contact any of the women on the site who had done the same, to see if they would have lunch with you. This resulted in two lunch dates in my case, neither a success. I figured out that, unlike me, who had just taken a photo with my digital camera and posted it, others posted pictures that were….let’s just say dated. And, of course, there is little reason to think what people wrote on their profiles was honest, either.

Looking back, my relationships were generally with women I met doing something in common. They were in the same profession, say, or in one case we met at a jazz and supper club because we both liked, you know, jazz and good food. Sometimes I was introduced to someone by a third person who knew us both. If you meet someone doing what you do, that’s maybe not a bad start, eh?

Then again, if the only thing you both do is poke at your smartphones, then that is all you have to work with, I guess.

The WSJ article does include two sentences that may reveal the key reason Ms Herd is going down this path:

Match Group, the dating behemoth that owns Tinder, Hinge and other dating apps, is on a yearslong streak of declining paying users. Bumble has a two-quarter losing streak of its own, and its market capitalization has fallen from a peak of more than $13 billion after its IPO to about $660 million today.

From $13B to $660M? Holy tomatoes, Batman, that’s a huge drop.

My money says this Attachment Theorized AI thing is not going to save Bumble or Ms Herd. But what do I know, I am a luddite.

The Responsibility of Deciding

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in LBOs, Standards.

A bit ago I went to Chapters and bought a book titled  These Strange New Minds by one Christopher Summerfield, who is a professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of Oxford and an AI researcher. The book’s subtitle is ‘How AI learned to talk and what it means’. As so often happens, I first read about this book in a review of it in a literary magazine.

I have by now had enough of people saying AI means the end of mankind or the birth of a new golden age, all of which is the sort of tripe uttered by people who don’t  know much but have some kind of self-interest in or against something new like AI.

I am utterly dubious about AI and LLMs and what they are doing to society, but then I am a luddite who is also sure that the internet has been a net force for bad in the world and that owning a smartphone is a terrible idea if you value your humanity.

I went to a seminar by a now-departed colleague of mine a couple of years ago in which he laid out the actual mathematical workings of LLMs like ChatGPT. I was quite surprised to see that the highest mathematics used in building these programs is the sort of linear algebra taught in a first-year university course. What makes LLMs special, if they are, is putting massive computing power to work on massive data sets to train them. Huh.

But I wanted to understand as well as I could how these things work, as it’s becoming clear that companies are going to start using them to do all kinds of things, and most certainly, they will be what you must deal with when you want to interact with any LBO. It is near impossible to speak to a person at any insurance company, government office or other service-oriented org now. Soon it will be LLMs and nothing but all across the corporate and government world.

It’s actually quite a well-written book, and I am about half way through and do understand better how LLMs evolved over the last 20 years and have a better handle on how they work. The author is pretty much a proponent of the wonderfulness of LLMs, albeit not to the utterly mindless extent of someone like Sam Altman. He has not yet convinced me in any way that the coming deluge of LLMs is going to be good for anybody but the people in the companies that run them, but I’m still reading.

Here’s one reason why. The stats blog I follow is pretty big on this stuff, although most of the people who write on it do admit that AI and LLMs are currently being over-hyped by the Altmans and Marc Andreesen’s of the world. [Here’s a direct quote from Andreesen: “We believe any deceleration of AI will cost lives. Deaths that were preventable by the AI that was prevented from existing is a form of murder.”]

A recent post from a computer scientist named Jessica on the stats blog described some of what she learned and heard at a conference discussing the use of AI in corporate strategizing. The post is titled ‘How will/should LLMs change how organizations do strategy?’, and you can read the whole post here yourself if you like. The key question at this conference, according to her, was ‘The workshop revolved around the question, How capable are LLMs of making hard strategic decisions?’

There is a regular commenter on Gelman’s stats blog who goes by the nom de plume ‘Anonymous’. He has written in the past (I am assuming it’s a he) that he is a faculty member at a university, and prefers to remain anonymous due to worries about the backlash he would face from colleagues for some of his posts.

Whether that is true or not, he is a gadfly on the blog. Very contrary, taking views not held by others who post or comment on the site, and I do appreciate him for that. After Jessica’s post, he posted the following comment on the topic of AI making corporate decisions:

I’m strongly reminded of a famous quote from an IBM presentation in 1979:
“A computer can never be held accountable, so it should never be allowed to make a management decision.”
This holds regardless of how “good” it is at making such decisions. What happens when, not if, it goes wrong?

A worthy point, in my view, but once again, I am a luddite. I simply do not understand why people use auto-complete in their emails and other writing. Even if the damn thing didn’t make tons of mistakes, have you no pride of authorship,  no desire to write well yourself?

Similarly, why in the hell does anyone want to let a computer program make decisions for them?

Dale Lehman posted a reply to Anonymous’s comment above that included the following:

I’m on the same page here…..Everything seems to concern what LLMs “can” or “cannot” do. What about “should?” Why do we want LLMs to make strategic decisions?….. Why not have someone decide who I should marry? I don’t think it matters whether it is an LLM or a human deciding for me – I would say that is my decision to make, regardless of whether or not I can do it as well as others.

The answer for most LBOs to that ‘why?’ question would be the same: it’s cheaper than paying managers.

Maybe it is, at least in the short run. I fear we are going to find out soon, en masse. I predict an ongoing shit-show, but I am, of course, a luddite.

PostScript to my faithful few readers:

I have regretfully shut down the comments on my blog. Few of you ever commented, but I still did this reluctantly, driven only by the fact that I found myself deleting dozens of spam comments, no doubt generated by robots, every hour. An annoyance at first, it lately turned into a torrent. Seeing no way to stop the deluge, and getting angrier and more depressed by it each day, I had my IT people just shut down that capability. The web is where assholes go to prosper, sadly. Or, perhaps it is more accurate to say that the web allows the assholes of the world to multiply their assholeness by a huge factor.

Making the World Safer – Again

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in LBOs, Secrecy.

Yes those wild and crazy Emergency Services people at my old employer are back at it again. On Aug 25 2:54pm I got an email addressed to me which read as follows (yes, it came from the UK again):

To all Western. A Safety Incident is occuring at Weldon Libary and Innovation Building . Leave the area or stay away as required for your safety. Issued by Western Special Constable Service. ^mc^
Thank you,
Alert WesternU
Campus Safety & Emergency Services, Western University

Then, just to be sure, I got an identical copy of that email again at 2:56pm. I do not know what the ^mc^ is supposed to indicate. It is different from the ^no^ that came at the end of the last emergency emails.

Then, showing they are right on the ball, at 2:57pm, a mere minute later, I got an email that said this:

WSCS and London Police and[sic] investigating a threat to safety incident at Weldon Library. All community members are asked to shelter in place until further notice.
Thank you,
Alert WesternU
Campus Safety & Emergency Services, Western University

Sounds serious, eh? I mean, they do not say what is going on, this is a University, after all, and they are not in the business of conveying useful information. They are in the business of telling you what to do – ‘shelter in place’.

Not – ‘stay where you are’ or ‘avoid the Library’. I suppose ‘shelter’ has a nice comfy sound to it.

So, folks who got this were free to let their imaginations run wild about what might be happening around the library.

However, they did not have long to imagine things, because at 3:33pm, a mere 36minutes after the last email, I got this:

ALL CLEAR
London Police Service has determined there is no threat to safety at Weldon Library. Community members can return to regular activities.
Thank you,
Alert WesternU
Campus Safety & Emergency Services, Western University

Still no indication as to what prompted the alert, but whatever it was, the London City Police showed up and determined that in fact there was no threat to safety. I am soooo reassured, but you just know that the interweb thingy is chock full of stories about what this was reeeeally all about.

And then, as I was writing this all up to put in this post, I got an email from my gal asking if I had gone on campus with my rapier and pistol. (She was joking…..I think.) Clearly, people who were not at Western were more informed about what happened than anyone getting emails from Western.

As I wrote above, no info, no thinking, just do as you are told. That’s UWO.

Now really curious, I went to the London, Ontario Reddit to see what might be posted there, and indeed, the most recent post said

“Multiple (over 10) police/unmarked police cars screaming down Richmond?’

In the many many comments below that was all kinds of interesting stuff, including claims of everywhere between 18 and 60 cops on campus, including people in tactical/Swat gear, then one that said:

 ‘Weldon Library, Shelter in Place alert, things are escalating. Yes. confirmation of firearm.’

Confirmation of firearm? By who?

Then one that said:

‘I got three and tbh I’m impressed. I’ve had my western email for years and have never seen one. Good notification protocol, seems like.’

Yea, great protocol, man – say as little as possible in three emails.

Finally, this last one, meaning, I guess, that it was the first comment posted:

‘Came here for the same reason! They went further than Huron… Something big is going on’

Don’t know where ‘here’ refers to, but yea – ya might think that with all the police cars zooming around, something big was going on. But this (presumably) young person has not yet twigged to the 21st century fact that Public Officials make everything into something big.

I would really like to hear the story of what actually happened over that 40 or so minutes, but we can be sure that Western will never tell us, and that no local media will be in a position to provide reliable information. They will simply parrot whatever scraps of info the London Police or UWO decide to release – and ask no questions.   

Epilogue: It’s now two three days after the incident. The London Police have confirmed that the report of a weapon was a hoax. Here is a sentence from the post on their website:

Shortly before 3 p.m. on Monday, August 25, 2025, police responded to a call in relation to a male with a gun outside of the Weldon Library at the University of Western Ontario.

Note the vague language, bureaucracy at its best. ‘A call in relation to…’. OK, what actually happened? Did someone call the library or campus cops with this report, who then called the London Police, or did the Police get a call directly? What did the caller actually say, in either case?

However, this is a waterfall of information compared to that coming from the university. They have said nothing, no email, no posts on their website explaining why they told people to ‘shelter in place’. As far as the ‘Latest News and Announcements’ page of the university website is concerned, the event never happened.

The decision to outsource these ‘emergency alert’ emails to a company in the UK was made by what Pournelle’s Law calls ‘org-types’. It was done not out of any concern for the safety of anyone on campus, but to fend off any legal liability for the org or its senior administrators. No threat to the survival of the university or the senior admins’ cushy jobs will arise from the fact that they provide no info to their ‘valued stakeholders’ as to what happened at Weldon Library. Folks working at the university long ago learned not to ask questions or raise a stink. No one will, they will just grin and bear it, expecting nothing more than the silence they get.

 

Something Perfect

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Standards.

What with my post of last week on crappy academic writing about Canadian airlines and then the brief AC flight attendant strike, I have been thinking and reading about airlines a lot of late. In fact, I have not flown in a long time, largely due to my diminishing willingness to be treated like firewood.

Then I came across a reader comment on an article on the AC strike in the Globe that struck me as perfect. It may not be original, but it is spot-on, in my (admittedly past) experience:

The Air Canada flight attendants’ motto:

‘We’re not happy until you’re not happy.’

The Law is Not Your Friend – Part II       

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Government, Safety.

A while back I was talking with a person of similar age to me, a person who, like me, has letters after their name – PhD. I had mentioned my concerns about what was going on in downtown London in recent years, the open drug use, people sleeping or just lying in store doorways, and the too-frequent occurrences of violence. I had in particular described what happened on a Monday evening when a friend and I were sitting at the bar of a rather upscale restaurant. A guy had come in who was by appearance one of the street haunters, but his behavior at the outset was unexceptional as he sat on a stool at the other end of the bar from us. The bartender took his order and delivered it, but something went awry as his visit ended, he started getting loud, then belligerent, finally throwing the stool on which he had been sitting around the bar.

Three staff tried to talk him down and ease him out the door without touching him. He did not go easily or quietly, but eventually they succeeded, at which point the belligerent started pounding on the restaurant’s large plate glass window. Eventually it cracked. The bartender had called 911 when things first got heated, but no police showed up. Ultimately one of the staff followed the asshole for a couple of blocks while another waiter stood on the corner watching them, hoping to direct the police if/when they showed up. By the time I left the bar, no police had appeared.

I recounted this tale to PhD-guy, along with what a friend of mine who owns a retail store in the same area had told me. One of her staff had tangled with a shoplifter, physically pulling the stolen merchandise out of the asshole’s hands. A cop she spoke to days later warned against that, saying the staffer could find himself charged with assault.

So, I fumed about all this, and the PhD-guy I was talking to said two things.

One, he noted he had been walking about in that same area (known as ‘Richmond Row’) the previous week, and found it quite pleasant.

Two, he went to a website of some local lawyer on his laptop as we sat there, and read to me from it. Said law firm claimed that Canadians have a perfect right under the law to defend themselves and their property.

‘See’, he said, ‘your concern is founded in misinformation’. Those restaurant people could have physically thrown the troublemaker out once he got violent, and the store staffer was within their rights, too’.

My thought at the time was that PhD-guy was a typical member of that class. Living in a bubble, essentially never going anywhere and certainly not living anywhere where they have to face the reality of contemporary London. Thus, of course you believe what you read on a website written by other people with letters after their name.

I was right about how people from that demographic see the world, and about the reality Canadians actually face in defending their lives and property from criminals.

CBC carried a story this week, which you can read here. The headline reads ‘Man charged after allegedly assaulting home intruder in Lindsay, Ont., police say’

It states that a man confronted an intruder in his home at 3am, and responded with force. Police responded, and the CBC reports that:

The alleged intruder, 41, is also facing charges, including breaking and entering and possession of a weapon for dangerous purposes. Police say the man was also already wanted for unrelated offences.

However the resident is being charged with aggravated assault and assault with a weapon. An update on the CBC website today says that the tenant in the apartment used a knife against the intruder, and that the police have – finally – identified both men. The police have not indicated whether the two knew each other previously.

You can also go here and read a CBC story on what a defence lawyer has to say about the ‘limits’ to the right of self-defence in Canada.

So, here’s the thing, as far as I am concerned. It is important to know if these two men knew each other previously. If they did, then it is certainly possible that this all was not the result of a random break-in to an apartment at 3am. It is possible that some settling of scores was involved, or some recovery of disputed property between two acquaintances is going on. Fair enough, that needs to be determined and the police need to tell the public if that is the case.

However, if this was a thief breaking into the apartment of someone he did not know at 3am, then I do not care what weapon the tenant used, and I do not care how badly injured was the thief. The tenant should not face charges. Period. If someone breaks into your home with a weapon at 3am, you should not be put in a position by our laws of having to decide how much you can do to defend yourself. Hit him with a baseball bat, slice him with a kitchen knife, kick his nuts up into his throat, I don’t care, no citizen should have to make a calculation about how much force is ‘reasonable’ in that situation.

I basically never agree with Premier Doug Ford, but I am right behind his quote about this: “You should be able to protect your family when someone is going in there to harm your family and your kids. You should use all resources you possibly can to protect your family.”

Ok, so Ford is not very articulate, but I agree with the sentiment completely.

However, our laws are written by and for people with letters after their names. People whose chances of facing a home intruder at 3am or a violent restaurant patron are nil. People who simply avoid the sewer that downtown London is becoming. As I wrote in a long-ago post, quoting a friend of mine: ‘The law is not your friend’.

Particularly in the 21st century in Canada.

The Iron Law of Bureaucracy: RIP Jerry Pournelle

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in LBOs.

I write a lot about LBOs, Large Bureaucratic Organizations. I also often think, but don’t write, about an explanation (or theory, if you like) of what makes such organizations such a force for evil in the world.

In my recent gadding about the internet, I came upon something called Pournelle’s Law, which has convinced me that I need not trouble myself to come up with Al’s Theory of LBO Evil. This guy figured it out some time ago:

Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representative who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions.

Pournelle is one Jerry Pournelle, who wikipedia tells me “was an American scientist in the area of operations research, a science fiction writer, essayist, journalist, and one of the first bloggers.” He died in 2017, but I want to say – I think Jerry had something there. His Iron Law does put in a nutshell much of what I have been thinking about LBOs.

That definition of the Iron Law above I got from Pournelle’s blog, which is inactive, since he is, but which you can still find in all its glorious primitivity here.  You can also still navigate around it, but only verrrry slooowly.

Now, while I happily acknowledge that Pournelle got there first, I am going to presume that I can update and perhaps even improve on his excellent Law.

First, a minor point. The example of someone working for the organization in that paragraph above – the ‘org type’ I will call them – should be that of a school district administrator rather than a union representative. You know, like those whiz-bang senior administrators who drove the local school board here in London to a $32 million deficit last year, in no small part by hiring  more and more administrators. (The teachers’ union played its part also, as one of the big expenses was pay to teachers filling in for regular teachers who don’t show up.)

The existence of a teachers’ union instead means that for teachers there are two LBOs working to make it difficult for them to educate children. That was certainly the case in my career, where it was a toss-up on any given day as to whether I would be more pissed off at the U’s administrators or the union that was ‘representing’ me.

More substantively, I want to also add a dynamic element to P’s Law (as I will now briefly refer to it). At any given time it is correct that there are the two kinds of people mentioned in any LBO. However, because those who work for the org (rather than the org’s stated goals) end up making all the rules, as P’s Law states, and they also typically make the higher salaries, there is movement over time from the ‘goal’ group to the ‘org’ group – but not the reverse. Because of this net people movement, the proportion of those in the LBO that belong to the org group rises over time, and hence the LBO itself becomes more and more an org whose primary goal is to perpetuate itself. The stated goals of the org – educating people, for example – become secondary to the goal of perpetuating the org itself, and hence maintaining the positions of the org types.

I’ll call this Al’s Dynamic Law of Bureaucracy. Cool, eh? I’ve always wanted there to be some kind of Al’s Law[i].

Think about it. We could educate people just by having school principals hire teachers and leaving them alone, with no school boards, administrators or unions. Indeed, that was the case in the rather distant past. But then the org types would have no jobs. That would be better for students and teachers, I am convinced, but the org types are, as P’s Law says, in charge. They make the rules. There is a quote attributed to Peter Drucker, often called the ‘father’ of management theory, which says that:

‘Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.’

I can’t find a reliable attribution – to Drucker or anyone else – for that quote, but it is certainly an accurate description of the contribution of almost all university administrators to my career. The Iron Law explains why this is so. The org types who manage the org are not trying to further the goals of the organization, which were, in my case, educating young people and doing research. They are trying to make sure the org and their cushy jobs survive.

Now any good theory, to be useful, must help to explain why the world looks the way it does. Well, Al’s dynamic version of P’s law explains the well-documented fact that the number of administrators in universities across North America has grown faster than the number of faculty and students. Indeed, in a previous post I unearthed a number of US universities in which the number of administrative staff was greater than the number of faculty or students.

This happens through a couple of processes in a University LBO. First, some folks who are hired as faculty – as ‘goal types’, that is – switch to becoming administrators at some point in their careers. They become Chairs then Deans or Associate Deans and then embark on a career of climbing the administrative ladder, perhaps with a goal of becoming a Provost or President at some point. Almost no one who gets as far as being a Dean on that ladder ever goes back to being a faculty member.

However the more important mechanism through which the dynamic law works is that administrators hire more administrators, and the senior administrators have the ability to prevent the hiring of more faculty. As an example, my old employer is claiming to be in financial trouble these days, and so my old department hired only one faculty member last year, despite the resignation of two faculty, the death of another, the pending resignation of two more, and another retirement after my own. The admins have also instituted a policy that no class can be taught with a student enrollment of less than 15. I have heard of no plans to lay off or to not replace any retiring associate vice-presidents.

Thus, the org types have direct control over the ratio of org to goal types in the LBO, and so it is hardly a surprise that the ratio moves in favour of the org types over time.

I think P’s Law and its Slivinski elaborations have great potential for understanding our world. You can expect to read more about this here in the future.

————

[i] When I was a young faculty member and spent a good deal of time talking and arguing with graduate students in the Grad Pub, I did formulate Slivinski’s 2nd Law, which had a pretty good run among the students. It stated ‘The distribution of assholes across the known universe is approximately uniform.’  I know, you’re wondering – what was Slivinski’s 1st Law?  No one remembers. Including Slivinski.

For This We Need Academics?

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in News Media, Research, Standards.

This morning’s London Freeps (online) included an article on a topic of some importance to most Canadians; airline travel. It is titled ‘Harvey: More airline competition won’t solve Canada’s aviation challenges’ and is written by one Geraint Harvey, ‘Special to The Free Press’. (Note that it was posted before the AC flight attendants went on strike. It is not about that.)

Harvey is DANCAP Private Equity Chair in Human Organization at UWO, which means he is a faculty member in the DAN Department in the Faculty of Social Science. DAN is the name that department adopted after Aubrey Dan gave it a big donation some years back. Why it is in ALL CAPS I have never understood. The department runs the pseudo-business program in the Social Science Faculty, so it competes with the IVEY (actually, they refer to themselves as the Ivey School, as you would expect) program across the road for students and prestige. Both programs are a pox on the University, in my humble opinion, but my topic here is this article written by Harvey. The punchline: he should be ashamed of himself.

What this article is trying to say is, I think, stated well in the subtitle of the piece: Canadians must be certain lower fares that result from increased competition are worth the costs, an[sic] Western University academic says.

I don’t expect Harvey wrote either the headline above or that subtitle, but the latter does capture the point of the article. What prompted the piece was the fact that Canada’s Competition Bureau has just released a study of the Canadian airline industry, which you can read and download here yourself.

It’s a long and complex report, and it does indicate that The Bureau believes more competition is needed in Canada’s air travel market. How that might be achieved is again a complex part of the study, and Harvey’s point is – so far as I can tell – if increased competition does reduce airfares, it may come at the cost of other bad things happening.

So far, so good. Harvey is an academic, but this is a newspaper article (first published in The Conversation, apparently) so it cannot be expected to be written up to academic standards. My problem here is that the article is not even up to the standards we should expect of journalists. That an academic would write something so shoddy, well – it just frosts my bum.

Let me count the ways.

Harvey notes that the CB report states that one big complaint Canadians have about air travel is the prevalence of hidden fees for luggage and such, and the complex structure of air fares themselves. Then he writes this:

But it’s unreasonable to expect increased competition — when airlines seek to make their offering more attractive than their competitors — to lead to greater transparency in Canada. In fact, competition has been linked theoretically and empirically to dishonest practices.

Yes, there is a link in that last sentence, to some research. Sort of. It is a link to an online paper titled ‘Competition increases the magnitude of dishonest reporting even when controlling for reward uncertainty’ in Scientific Reports.

It has nothing to do with the airline industry, or in fact with any industry on planet earth. It is a report of what happened when some researchers (not including Harvey) had 766 subjects sit in front of a computer screen and play a game. Here’s their description of said game:

We conducted a pre-registered experiment (https://aspredicted.org/kyxz-b4gb.pdf) that relied on the recently introduced “spot-the-difference task”27,28. In the spot-the-difference task participants are presented with 20 pairs of images that have some differences between them (see Fig. 1). Participants score points if they report seeing three differences between images, but unbeknownst to them, 10 pairs of images have only two differences between them. Thus, participants can achieve scores above 50% only by dishonestly reporting seeing three differences where only two exists. The only experimental manipulation is the way scores are converted into monetary payment at the end of the experiment.

No doubt this has a lot to teach us about the impact of increased competition in the airline industry.

This is what I mean by shoddy. Harvey found one barely related study that gives the result he wants – competition causes dishonesty – and stops. I typed ‘airline competition’ into google scholar and up came thousands of actual research papers on it. The first that google gave me, published in June of ’24, was titled ‘Airline competition: A comprehensive review of recent research’.

That paper had more than 100 references to other research papers at the end. But digging through all those to see if anyone has actually studied the impact of competition in airline markets on fee disclosure and structure, well, that would take some time and effort, right?

Harvey then writes:

Europe provides a cautionary example. Increased competition has not led to greater air fare transparency. Airlines like Ryanair, a low-fare airline and the continent’s largest airline by passengers carried, have been accused of hiding fees for passengers.

Yes, another link, this time to a story in something called Euronews titled ‘Is it always cheaper to buy a low-cost airfare? Here are the hidden charges to watch out for’

The article does not ‘accuse’ Ryanair of anything, It provides a ranking of how much your total air travel cost can go up at various airlines on average due to added charges, and Ryanair did come out on top on that scale, with Wizz Air next and Easy Jet coming in third. It also says ‘Carriers including Pegasus Airlines, Loganair and Icelandair have the least hidden fees, though their original airfare starts at a higher price’. Pretty much what one would expect, right? What the Euronews article does not do, or claim to do, is address the question of what impact the increased airline competition that arose in Europe over the years had on the size and prevalence of those fees. Nor is there any comparison of the size of those fees in Europe versus in Canada.

But here’s the thing. The Competition Bureau report has a big section on the fees and charges issue. At no point does it even suggest that more competition will fix this. Here is what the CB report concludes about this issue:

What we considered and why this is hard to fix

We looked at multiple approaches to improve how flight information is shared and displayed, including stakeholder proposals. Our study found that each potential solution presented limitations and risks. In this section, we do not recommend specific changes. We do discuss the approaches we have considered and what they would mean for the industry.

So, either Harvey did not bother to read the CB report, or he just wanted to construct a straw man he could easily knock down. Neither is appropriate behaviour for an academic.

More from our guy:

Those who suffer the most from airlines minimizing costs are employees, because labour represents one of the few areas where airlines can cut back.

The morality and safety implications of introducing wage and employment insecurity to workers within high reliability organizations aside, reducing the quality of employment terms and conditions for workers in such an important industry is short-sighted.

Here we go again. The first link in this piece is to another article Harvey wrote himself for The Conversation about the Westjet strike back in 2023. Self-referential, in other words. The second link is to a rather esoteric discussion about the relationship between ‘high reliability organizations’ and risk management schemes. I cannot for the life of me figure out what that second article has to do with competition in the Canadian airline industry. However, what Harvey is trying to say, if badly, is that more competition will lead to airlines reducing their employee rolls. That may be and it may be a problem if it happens. What is missing is evidence. For example, what happened to employment in European airlines when that market opened up many years ago? Looking into that would be rather more labour-intensive than just pointing at a journalism article you wrote yourself a couple of years ago.

The article itself includes the following statement by Harvey: “Deregulation has ultimately reduced the supply of pilots, creating a tighter labour market.”

He provides neither facts nor arguments to support this claim, and it is not at all obvious why de-regulating the airline industry would reduce the number of people willing to be an airline pilot. I suppose if you think de-regulation reduces pilot salaries, then it might. Harvey’s article on the Westjet strike in The Conversation also has a bunch of links in it, and so I started following them. I probably did an hour of reading through all this, and here’s the thing – it’s all journalism, mostly from CBC News. This is the kind of source material an academic is citing? No actual research trying to establish what the impact of de-regulation might be on pilot supply or demand?

Additionally, in one of those CBC articles, one finds the following quote:

“New federal rules around pilot fatigue could make the problem worse as airlines may have to hire substantially more pilots to maintain current flight schedules, industry representatives and observers say.”

And then there’s this quote:

“Air Canada receives “thousands of applications far exceeding vacancies in every round of pilot hiring,” it said in a statement.”

So, here’s someone saying a new regulation is making the ‘pilot shortage’ worse, and then AC saying they can’t hire all the applicants they get.

But more to the point, look at the kind of material Harvey is referencing in his article. It is all (shoddy, in my view) journalism, full of ‘observers say’ and  ‘some in the industry say’ and other unsupported, anonymous assertions. We need academics to write articles like this, completely lacking in any evidence? A journalism intern can do that – although they shouldn’t, either.

Last one, I promise.

A real issue in a sprawled out country like Canada is air connections – hell, any connections – to remote, low-population areas. Harvey admits in the article, ‘To its credit, the bureau offers several recommendations for northern and remote communities’. But then he goes on to write ‘But these communities are unlikely to benefit from competition alone’.

Again, the Bureau report does not say they will.

Harvey has to take one more shot at the idea of competition, however, writing:

Europe’s airline industry is once again instructive. Eurocontrol, a pan-European organization dedicated to the success of commercial aviation, states that “domestic aviation in Europe has experienced a substantial and persistent decline over the past two decades,” including the demise of regional operators serving lower-density routes.

Ok, let’s go once again to the article in that link.

It does indeed say what Harvey writes above. What he does not tell you is that it also says this:

The number of flights in Europe’s top 12 domestic markets has fallen by approximately 1.5 million compared to their historical peak, a reduction equivalent to 14% of total European flight volumes – although the drop in passengers flown domestically is less pronounced, as larger aircraft are often being used to operate the remaining routes….

The trend has not been driven by a single factor, but rather by a combination of structural, infrastructural, and behavioural or policy-related changes, such as:

    • more point-to-point international travel

    • the collapse of some regional carriers

    • the development of high-speed rail, improved road infrastructure, and intermodal solutions, all of which have reduced the competitiveness of short-haul flights

    • changes in business travel habits, growing environmental concerns, and government interventions (such as taxes and flight bans).

As they say – ‘it’s complicated’. Not, however, to someone who appears to have started out with the certainty that ‘competition is bad’, like Our Man Harvey.

To be sure, the best way to improve Canadian air travel is by no means clear, and the Bureau report is quite frank about that. Allowing foreign airlines to fly domestic Canadian routes is often mentioned as a solution, and Harvey notes with alarm the idea of having an airline like Qatar Airways fly such routes in Canada, given that it is subsidized by its government. This is indeed an issue, as it is in almost all sectors of international trade, from agriculture to computer chips. And, make no mistake, international trade is what we are talking about: letting Canadians buy a service – air travel – from a foreign provider. However, it should be noted that Qatar Airways already competes (‘unfairly’ according to Harvey) with many airlines on international routes. In fact, QA competes with Air Canada on those routes, flying out of Toronto Pearson. One might ask – what has been the impact of that competition on international air travel?

That would be a question worthy of serious investigation. I am sure such an investigation will not come from Professor Harvey.

Proclamation 7463

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Government.

You never know what you might learn from reading a literary magazine. I was doing just that, and a book reviewer stated that every US president since G. W. Bush in 2001 have every year re-signed something called Proclamation 7463.

So, I went looking and indeed found in the US National Register, Proclamation 7463, proclaimed and signed by President George Bush on September 14, 2001. Here is what the first two paragraphs of that proclamation say:

A national emergency exists by reason of the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center, New York, New York, and the Pentagon, and the continuing and immediate threat of further attacks on the United States.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, I hereby declare that the national emergency has existed since September 11, 2001, and, pursuant to the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.), I intend to utilize the following statutes: sections 123, 123a, 527, 2201(c), 12006, and 12302 of title 10, United States Code, and sections 331, 359, and 367 of title 14, United States Code.

Now the actual meaning and impact of this declaration that a national emergency exists presumably arises from whatever is said in that string of acts and statutes listed in paragraph two. I may follow those up in a future post. For now my interest is in the claim that every US president has re-issued and signed this declaration every year since 2001.  

Could that possibly be true? Again, I went looking, and I found a story from USA Today – hardly my favourite source for credible information – dated Sept 14, 2017, that said this:

President Trump has become the third president to renew a post-9/11 emergency proclamation, stretching what was supposed to be a temporary state of national emergency after the 2001 terror attacks into its 17th year.

But the ongoing effects of that perpetual emergency aren’t immediately clear, because the executive branch has ignored a law requiring it to report to Congress every six months on how much the president has spent under those extraordinary powers, USA TODAY has found.

Taking USA Today at its word, then, this means that G W Bush and Barack Obama had indeed re-declared it every year prior to this. And, by now, they have stopped obeying the law that says they must report any related spending to Congress. Huh.

Then, I found a story in Courthouse News Service dated Sept 8, 2023, that said:

Biden penned his signature to a one-year extension of President George W. Bush’s 7463, retaining broad powers over the organization of the military. The proclamation is officially titled “The National Emergency with Respect to Certain Terrorist Attacks.”

It also said this:

Most emergencies are used to impose economic sanctions. But Proclamation 7463, along with the broad 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, gives the president the power to call up the National Guard, alter the size and shape of the military’s top officers and hire or fire commissioned officers — even ordering them out of retirement if necessary.

I am going to go out on a real limb here and say that Biden did the same a year later in September of 2024, and that Trump will do it again next month. The literary magazine writer was absolutely right about Proclamation 7463. So, the US has been in a perpetually renewed state of emergency since September of 2001, ‘by reason of the terrorist attacks at the WorldTrade Center….and the continuing and immediate threat of future attacks on The United States’.

It is amazing the things you can learn reading a literary magazine.

Those folks participating in the ‘No Kings’ demonstrations down in the US the last month or two – seems they are more than 20 years too late.

 

Dumb or Dumber?

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Government, Politics, Standards.

Sometimes, the necessity to stick to a well-worn script causes prominent people to say things that are hopelessly stupid. I  present two recent examples.

I

In The Free Press last week there was a story titled ‘The iPhone Update That Could Wreck Political Fundraising’. It describes a new feature that Apple is going to put on its iPhones that, according to the article ‘…will allow iPhone users to screen messages from “unknown senders.” That will automatically place texts from such senders, starting in mid-September, in a separate folder without notifying the recipients.’

Now, I do not have a smartphone, but I had always assumed that some kind of blocking and screening ability for text messages was already available on them. Thus, I don’t know what is really new here. But that is beside the point. Here’s the point –

Joanna Rodriguez, a spokesperson for the NRSC [National Republican Senate Committee], told The Free Press:

“Unilaterally blocking campaigns and political parties from being able to contact voters with get-out-the-vote or persuasive messaging is voter disenfranchisement, and it’s critical Apple delay their rollout of this feature until these concerns have been addressed,”

Voter disenfranchisement?

Jeeezus, Mary and Joseph. Allowing users to block out unwanted texts is that? The NRSC, by the way, spends money in a variety of ways to help Republicans get elected to the US Senate. Here is what the ‘About’ section of their webpage says:

The NRSC (National Republican Senatorial Committee) is the only national organization solely devoted to strengthening the Republican Senate Majority and electing Republicans to the United States Senate.

We provide invaluable support and assistance to current and prospective Republican U.S. Senate candidates in the areas of budget planning, election law compliance, fundraising, communications tools and messaging, and research and strategy.

And their position is that if your phone can be set to block texts from them, you have been disenfranchised.

But, the NRSC are not the only fools in the room. Again from the article:

“This is a massive issue for a variety of reasons,” said one veteran Republican operative who runs a public affairs firm in Washington. “This is going to be an attack on democracy and free speech if Apple does this without ensuring voters are able to access information.”

An attack on democracy and free speech. Dear lord. (I do wonder why TFP didn’t name that ‘veteran Republican operative’.)

Not everyone is a self-interested ass, however. Here is what another person interviewed in the piece said –

“Apple is only doing this because they are getting a ton of customer complaints about the number of unsolicited text messages. It’s in the best interests of its consumers.”

He then added, “We have ourselves to blame as an industry. We bombard people with messages, and both [Democrats and Republicans] have a ton of candidates who never say or do anything interesting, who don’t have any original thoughts, who aren’t trying to bring people together.”

Exactly.

II

The Wall Street Journal published an editorial by one Sean McLean on August 3 titled ‘The WNBA and Caitlin Clark’s Civil Rights’. The editorial starts with a photo from a WNBA game on July 9 which shows Clark face down on the floor, the ball under her, and an opposing player, who is black, leaning on Clark and pulling on the ponytail in which Clark wears her hair during games.

In case you don’t know, Clark entered the WNBA last year as a rookie with the Indiana Fever, after a college career at the University of Iowa in which she became the highest-scoring player in NCAA basketball history, and led her team to two national championship games, losing both. She is a phenom, as they say, and her presence in the WNBA has done this, according to info in the editorial:

“Since she joined the league last year, Ms. Clark’s impact has been seismic: Merchandise sales soared 601%, Indiana Fever viewership jumped 170%, the team’s value tripled, League Pass subscriptions climbed 366%, app engagement rose 613%, and her endorsements topped $11 million.”

Not bad, eh? This has not come without issues, as Clark has also been beat up by opposing players at a rather high rate. Again, according to the editorial, ‘Clark absorbed 17% of flagrant fouls last season—double her peers’ rate.’

I’m not sure what that stat means, and no source is given. However, I don’t think it is controversial that Clark has been getting hit and pushed around more than her share since she entered the league. The question is, why? It has been suggested by some that it is largely because Clark is part of a minority demographic in the WNBA; she is white and, apparently, straight. To whatever extent that is the case, MacLean characterizes her treatment as follows:

“The league has fostered a hostile workplace for Ms. Clark through excessive fouling, targeting, and hostile comments from other players and owners. These aren’t isolated—they’re documented, continuing and ignored by officials.”

Mr. MacLean also knows what to do about this, it is written in the subtitle of his editorial:

If the league won’t act to protect its superstar from a hostile environment, the government should do so.

His specific action plan is this, again from the editorial:

“Congress and the administration should demand answers from WNBA leaders, investigate officiating and internal league communications, hold hearings, and insist on real reforms. The Labor Department should review league protocols for workplace safety. If evidence shows discrimination or retaliation, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division must act. If leaders remain inert, Congress should reconsider the WNBA’s special privileges, including its antitrust and broadcast considerations.”

Yes, I can think of few better uses of the time and resources of all those parts of the goddam federal government than to investigate what is going on in a professional sports league.

Again, lord save us from such as MacLean.

I do wonder what Ms Clark would think of this if she read the editorial. She’s out with an injury at the moment, so maybe she saw it.

Basketball is the one pro sport to which I pay no attention. I used to play backyard hoops endlessly as a kid, but lost interest when the formerly-awesome NCAA March Madness got bigger and bigger and full of one-and-done players.

However, I have watched some Fever games when Clark was playing, as I found her story compelling, and I do like the way she plays the game. She’s just fun to watch. Clark reminds me of a male college player of my youth, Pistol Pete Maravich. Dribbling madly all over the floor, firing no-look passes to her teammates (she led the WNBA in assists last year) and firing up long bombs from everywhere (she also led in 3-point baskets). And, she is no shrinking violet. She plays with real fire, and when she gets pushed, she pushes back.

Maybe we ought to let Ms Clark deal with all this hostility – and that there is hostility I have no doubt – on her own, or rather, with the aid of her teammates. As one commenter on the WSJ editorial noted, Jackie Robinson faced down the same bullshit when he entered Major League Baseball, and he triumphed without any help from any government agents. Caitlin Clark seems to me perfectly capable of doing the same, and it will be fun to watch. Congressional hearings – not so much.

 

The Anti-Porn Tech Bros

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Culture, Popular attitudes.

As I have mentioned often, I subscribe to The Free Press, an online ‘newspaper’ that I find more than a little interesting. It’s cheap, like $15/month, and it covers stories that I don’t see elsewhere, and has the wonderful habit of pointing out bullshit of all kinds, no matter its source.

I don’t love everything TFP prints, and this post is about a recent story in it that I do not like, titled ‘How to De-Addict Gen Z from Porn’, written by Sean Fischer, one of TFP’s regular writers.

The story is about two guys, who I will call M and S, who have developed an app that I will call Zap. I don’t wish to give these two guys or their app any extra publicity, for reasons that will emerge below. (I know, publicity on my little blog is not worth much, but it’s the principle, ok?)

According to the TFP article, M and S developed Zap precisely to help young men de-addict themselves from online porn. Why that might well be a good thing is important, so here is what I know about online porn, which is more than you might think. No, of course, I never look at it, heaven forbid, but the fact is the online porn industry became the subject of a small literature in my chosen discipline of Economics back when it was getting started, some 20 years ago. The key issue in that research was the proposition that the online porn industry had been very important in the overall development of the web. The reason for this is not hard to see. When some folks got the idea that they could put porn online (in the beginning it was only some feelthy peectures) it became instantly very popular.

Erotic photos that you didn’t have to go to a store in person to access? Sign me up, said much of the world. This meant that these online porn photo sites were the first to have to figure out how to acquire and service large (really large) numbers of subscribers, as well as reliably taking in their payments and giving them access to the site’s content. As the technology developed, this extended to maintaining an inventory of videos of increasingly high resolution, along with photos, and allowing subscribers to pay for, view and download them securely.

Getting all this to work in a way that didn’t scare away customers was a big deal, and as I said, some researchers at least thought these pioneering porn sites had been a key factor in expanding the www to what we now have.

So far as I can tell, the online porn industry has changed since then in at least one important way that is at the heart of the TFP story: the big players in online porn today are sites like Pornhub, where videos can be accessed for free, meaning that 12 year olds with no access to a credit card can view them. And, it seems, they do. The article references a report from Statista that throughout 2023, Pornhub got more than 10 billion visits every month. That’s a lot, and Pornhub is only one site.

So, free online porn is BIG. As a benchmark, Statista also reports that Youtube has 2.5 billion active users per month as of February of 2025. I don’t think those numbers are directly comparable, as the Pornhub number refers to visits, while Youtube ‘users’ likely ‘visit’ more than once per month.

Anyway, a lot of people are looking at Pornhub and (I presume) similar sites, and this is regarded by some as a problem. TFP ran a previous article (which in turn had previously run in a newsletter called ‘After Babel’ run by Jonathan Haidt) laying out author Freya India’s view of the harm being done, particularly to young people, by all this porn-watching.

It is to mitigate this harm that M and S’s Zap is said to be dedicated.

So, before we get to that, do I think watching porn online is bad? Well, if you are doing it for hours and hours, as some reports suggest some young (mostly) men are doing, it surely must be. As is playing online video games for hours and hours. As, perhaps, is playing bridge or solitaire online for hours and hours. This is, I suspect, one of the hard problems here: is it the hours-long obsession that is harmful, or just the content itself? I claim to have no good answer to that, but the Freya India article in TFP mentioned above is unequivocal; online porn is bad for people, period.

That is certainly what M and S think. Some quotes from them from the TFP article:

“The porn industry is just so destructive,” said [M]. “Their only motive is profit. They don’t give a shit about anything else.”

“It’s affecting them enough to be convinced by an ad to download a quitting-porn app at such a young age,” said [S]. “Isn’t that crazy?”

And, here’s a quote from the TFP article that includes another of their ideas.

“The [Zap] founders say that they have anti-porn ambitions far beyond the app. They have said they would “love to” one day buy the porn site OnlyFans (with an asking price of a cool $8 billion) so they can shut it down. Right now, they are simply in the first stage of what they see as a kind of fight for the future of civilization.”

[Side note: OnlyFans is a newish porn site, about which I know something because it came up in one of the last classes I taught before retirement. (Ya never know…..) A student mentioned it, and I asked the class to ‘educate the old guy’ about it. The students were very enthusiastic, characterizing it as a pornsite on which the performers had more control over what they did and what they earned. Students tend to be idealistic, and they should be at their age. Cynical me suspects that some old guy(s) in a badly-fitting suit is still making a lot of money from OnlyFans. I didn’t say that to my students.]

I think S’s quote above comes close to saying something useful about the potential for porn to be harmful. If you are spending any significant amount of time doing something of which you are ashamed, or, put differently, if you are spending time doing something you don’t want people knowing about, then – yea, what you are doing might very well be bad for you. A harder question is whether the porn-watching is itself the problem, or merely a manifestation of something deeper that is wrong. That is a question for which I have no expertise.

Leaving that aside for now, back to the bros.

What does their app actually do? And….does it work?

As to the first question, I can only report what is in the article – I did not pay to download Zap.

One quote from the TFP article:

“Let’s start by finding out if you have a problem with porn,” says the first prompt on [Zap], before presenting you with an intake form with questions like “How often do you typically view pornography? Have you noticed a shift toward more extreme or graphic material?” You’re then presented with a list of reasons why you should quit porn—it’s a drug, it destroys relationships, it shatters sex drives—before being asked to input your motivations for downloading the app.

[Zap], which costs $30 a year, then makes you a kind of promise.

“Grow stronger, healthier, and happier,” the screen reads.

It would be very enlightening to know if the app ever looks at the responses on a new user’s ‘intake form’ and spits out – ‘Hey, no worries, you don’t have a problem’.

Here’s another descriptive segment from the TFP article:

[Zap] claims to be built around “science-backed exercises”—like guided meditation and breathing rituals—that “rewire your brain” and “rebuild your dopamine receptors.” The app features daily checkups, content blockers to prohibit accessing certain websites, an AI chatbot therapist, and a community forum where users can turn for support and encouragement.

Their most-used feature is the “panic button,” meant to be pressed in moments of corporeal weakness. Activating it vibrates your phone and turns the front-facing camera on, holding up a mirror to users right before they relapse.

“The big thing is shame, like, look at how stupid you look,” [M] said. “That was the thought behind the camera.”

[Zap] then displays the reasons you had for downloading the app in the first place.

Oh, yea – and there’s this:

The app also encourages users to recommend it to other men in their life, prompting you to share a discount code: “Every day you wait, your boy sinks deeper into the pit of shame and self-hatred. The choice is on you to save him from this nightmare. Pull him out.”

Yea. Pull him out – and don’t forget the discount code.

So, then, does all this work? No testimonials from satisfied users are included in the article. Credibly answering that question would require, at minimum, a long-term Random Controlled Trial. Needless to say, nothing like that is cited, nor on the horizon.

However, there is some indication that [Zap] works well for its originators. According to the TFP article –

Now, almost a year later, [M] told me the app has almost a million downloads and around 100,000 paid users. Having bootstrapped the launch of the app with only $3,000 of [M]’s money—[Zap] has no external investors—they’re set to earn almost $3 million in total revenue this year.

As I wrote above, if you are inclined to download [Zap], that in itself suggests to me that just maybe you do have an online porn problem. Do I think that M and S have devised something helpful for such folks? I am doubtful. Very doubtful…..

Some other quotes from the article about M and S themselves –

[S], a 19-year-old self-taught coder and influencer from London, also likes to put his masculinity front and center. His X feed is filled with photos of exotic muscle cars, soccer jerseys, steak, and jet skis, and it is replete with dictums like “I wasn’t born to be average. I will never settle for less.”

Elsewhere in the piece we are told:

As if to prove how good a life without porn can be, [S] posts YouTube videos with titles such as “living the dream as a 19 year old ceo making $300K/mo” and  wonders aloud on X if buying a Lamborghini is a good idea. He brushed aside my question of whether he’s only building [Zap] for the money. “I actually really enjoy helping people,” he said over the phone, while driving through the streets of London in a convertible.

[M], for his part, reminds his followers [on X] that “Being rich isn’t enough. You must be rich, jacked, and popular.”

It is, in my opinion, a 21st century malady that people so often look to 20-somethings for help and wisdom. One could wonder, as a parent, whether you should be worried more about your son watching online porn or about them espousing the philosophy of life captured in that last quote from M.

 

What to Do in a Public Safety Incident, University Style

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Education, LBOs, Standards.

The now incredibly badly-run university at which I was employed for 42 years just keeps topping itself. As I have mentioned before, I continue, as a retiree, to be on all sorts of official administrative email lists. This means I get some amount of unwanted email which is, at times, both interesting and illuminating.

Such happened yesterday, July 30. I got an email with Public Safety Incident in the subject box, and this message:

To all Western. A Gas Leak is occuring[sic] at Chemistry Building. Leave the area or stay away as required for your safety. Issued by Western Special Constable Service. ^no
Thank you,
Alert WesternU
Campus Safety & Emergency Services, Western University

The time stamp on this email was 6:44pm, and had I been in my old-guy office in SSC, even though some distance from the Chemistry building, I would have been happy to have been so alerted, by whomever, even with a minor mis-spelling. As it happened, I was at home, so no worries.

However, here’s a thing. The email address from whence came this alert was:

alertwesternu@mir3.co.uk

um, that means it came from a commercial enterprise in The United Kingdom. That seemed odd to me, but not as odd as this. While the above was the sending address, the ‘reply-to’ name said it was from Alert Western U, but the ‘reply to’ email address was:

0625a7bf-0005-3000-8007-8be52242fed2@notify.cem.onsolve.eu

Ok, now that is in the European Union. An email with a a sent address that is in a different country than the reply to address? Does that say ‘scam’ or ‘phishing’ or something sinister to you?

It does to me, but I was not instructed to ‘click here’ or send my banking info anywhere, and yet – what the hell? Is UWO really farming out its emergency alert system to a company across the Atlantic? Really?

Well wait, it gets better.

At 7:10pm I got another email that said this (these are exact copies of the messages):

To all Western. A At this time the leak has been contained to Room 002 in the Chemistry Building. There is no threat to personal safety. Please continue to avoid the area as the London Fire Department is still on scene venting the area. is occuring[sic] at Room 002 Chemistry Building. Leave the area or stay away as required for your safety. Issued by Western Special Constable Service. ^^NO
Thank you,
Alert WesternU
Campus Safety & Emergency Services, Western University

So – whaddya think? Is there now no threat to my personal safety as of 7:10, or is it still ‘is occuring[sic]’ and I should leave the area or stay away as required?

What about that more emphatic ‘^^NO’ rather than just ‘^no’ at the end, is that a clue?

I could have written to that ‘reply to’ address for clarification, I suppose, but I was kinda doubting those folks in the EU would be of any help in the highly unlikely event that they answered at all. I mean, everyone over there is in bed by then, pretty much.

So, I remained somewhat perplexed, and doubly glad I was not actually anywhere on campus.

However, clarification was soon to come from the fine folks at mir3.co.uk. At 8:30pm I received the following email from them –

To all Western. A ALL CLEAR – The liquid nitrogen leak in the Chemistry Building has been contained and the area is now clear.  is occuring[sic] at Chemistry Building Room 002. Leave the area or stay away as required for your safety. Issued by Western Special Constable Service. ^^NO
Thank you,
Alert WesternU
Campus Safety & Emergency Services, Western University

So at 8:30 things are not just ‘A’ but indeed ‘A ALL CLEAR’ – all those caps seem pretty reassuring….and yet. It seems that something ‘is occuring and I should Leave the area or….’ ah, bloody hell, you can read it.

This is the current UWO Admin at their slovenly best. Paying some UK company to send out alert notices to a campus thousands of miles away, because some bean-counter somewhere determined they could save some bucks, so as to better spend them on more Assistant VPs. The contract with mir3 does not seem to include any specifications regarding clarity or even spelling, but who cares about that? It’s just emergencies, right, not anything REALLY important.

 

Who’s in Charge?

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Education, LBOs, Standards.

The headline splashed across the top of my local newspaper this morning reads “Trustees blasted over deficit”.

This refers to the elected trustees of the local public school board, which I should immediately add is in no real sense ‘local’. The provincial government some years back created the Thames Valley District School Board (TVDSB) by amalgamating a bunch of smaller boards into one monstrosity that is now one of the largest in the province. Many people seem to think that the lesson of Henry Ford – building a lot of cars on an assembly line allows one to build them at low cost – applies to everything. It doesn’t.

Anyway, the headline refers to the fact that the board, which has by now been put under the guidance of a provincially-appointed supervisor, had projected a deficit for the 2024-25 year of $16.8million, which is now turning out to be in reality a deficit of $32million. Oops.

After noting how ‘profoundly’ the former trustees had ‘failed in their duty’, the Ontario Education Minister goes on to say (and you had to see this coming…..):

“It also underscores the need for the ministry to have a more proactive role in the management of school boards in the province.”

It is the instinct of all politicians of all stripes: things will clearly run better if we consolidate control in one big office here, with me in charge.

Wanna bet?

The thing is, it is no surprise to me that this particular school board did a bad job of, well, doing its job. My one experience on any board was the three years I spent as a member of the board of a private social club of which I was a member. It seemed like a good opportunity to have a say in the running of the club of which I was a member. What it turned out to be was a crash course in the inertia of supervisory boards.

We did very little supervising of anything, there was almost no push-back or questioning of what the hired managers of the place wanted to do. We got monthly budget numbers, asked a few questions here and there, but most people went along with most everything. There was a lot of head-nodding.

Now a school board, particularly the one in which I live, is a much bigger and more important operation than a private club with a few hundred members. However, I think the same principles of inertia apply, and I have found a bit of evidence to back that up.

An organization known as The Brookings Institution, a Washington D.C. based non-profit think-tank has done a bit of research on what goes on in school boards. This is from the US, of course, but I don’t think the Canadian situation would be any different.

You can read the whole report yourself here https://www.brookings.edu/articles/school-boards-should-focus-budget-deliberations-on-student-outcomes-financial-sustainability/

I’ll pass along some of the key findings regarding what they say happens at US school boards. First, note that their findings are based on a study by three researchers who examined hundreds of hours of pre-recorded 2023 budget workshops across 174 school districts nationwide. They tracked each meeting, capturing how board members engaged in financial discussions.

Now, 174 is only a small sample of boards in the US, and the authors make no claim that it comprises a representative sample of such boards. Boards from only 27 states are included, but the authors assert that they represent a broad range of sizes, family average income levels, student performance and urban/rural mix. I will take their word on that.

Here are some of the key things they found, at least in my humble opinion. First, finances, which everyone (really, everyone) agrees is a primary responsibility of any board. It’s elected to oversee how the district spends the tax and other money the district receives. So, how much time does a typical board spend on finances at a meeting? The researchers found this:

It is certainly not surprising that larger districts, with more pupils and no doubt more funds to allocate, spend more time discussing finances. Here’s a quote from the study:

“District staff tended to do most of the talking even though trustees do receive all financial materials ahead of time. About a quarter (24%) of the meetings spent a majority of the finance segment time on revenues (which boards don’t control), leaving less time for the primary responsibility of determining how to deploy the dollars the district does have.”

An even more telling comment, and one that certainly jives with my own experience, is this:

“More than half of all school board members (53%) were categorized in our analysis as “silent observers,” meaning they offered no productive comments or feedback during public budget discussions (except to thank and congratulate the district on its efforts to draft and present a budget).”

But wait, there’s more –

“In our observations, most financial decisions of all types were called for vote with no board deliberation. For instance, in the meetings where employee salaries came to a vote, 82% of raises were approved without discussion.

Over 90% of meetings made no mention of any spending alternatives to the singular proposal on the docket.”

So far as I know, one must get elected to a school board, whether in Canada or the US. I know that in the local elections here, I never vote in the school board part of the ballot. I simply have no idea who any of the folks on the ballot are, and if there is a way to find anything out about them, I have not looked hard for it. I went looking to see how the elections for the TVDSB board went back in 2022 when those now-mostly-irrelevant trustees were elected.

Such information does not seem to exist. You can find out who was elected in 2022, and this website has information on ‘…the number of candidates seeking election, number of elected or acclaimed trustees, number of new or returning trustees and a comparison of 2018 to 2022 election results…’ but not vote totals. So, I have no idea how much actual support any of those elected had. Hmmmm…….

If anyone out there knows how to find this out, do let me know.

Anyway, on to more bad news about what actually goes on at school board meetings….and what does not:

Note here that only 23% of budget sessions included any discussion of student outcomes, which one might think is the absolute number one priority for any board. However, the following quote from the study is important, too –

“This is not to say that trustees were wholly unconcerned about student outcomes. Rather, any discussion of student outcomes typically took place outside of budget discussions. And yet, whether leaders recognize it or not, the budget is a set of choices about how to deploy the district’s resources and thus should be central to any strategy for learning. Money spent on one thing (e.g., more teacher aides, professional development, or pay raises) can’t be spent on another (e.g., tutoring or counselors). The tendency to separate these functions may be part of the reason why districts tend not to change their budgets much from year to year.”

A final quote about who ends up on school boards –

“Board members are typically elected positions that rarely come with any compensation. So it’s not surprising that many are unprepared for the financial aspects of their roles. In fact, 10% of meetings included a trustee expressing that they lacked knowledge of finance.”

Now, the implicit suggestion here is that it is board positions being uncompensated that leads to unpreparedness and inertia. That is not at all apparent to me. If board positions were paid, (and I cannot determine if they are in Ontario, but I don’t believe so) that would just be one more not very good reason for people to seek them. I don’t see that as helping things.

The over-riding lesson from this study is that boards don’t actually exercise much control over what happens to the money a school district receives. That is determined by the paid administrative staff of the district, and the board just rubber-stamps the budget they prepare, asking few questions and never ever suggesting alternative allocations of funding.

Well, that is at least consistent with what has happened in the aftermath of the two major fiascos that have occurred locally. The mess with the TVDSB began when it was discovered that a bunch of the administrative staff – not the trustees – had gone on a three-day retreat to the hotel in Toronto that is attached to where the Blue Jays play baseball. There were Jays games all three of those days. To quote my local paper on this ‘retreat’, “It was held amid deep spending cuts that slashed jobs in teaching, early childhood education and other areas as the board grappled with a then $7.6-million deficit that rose sharply.”

This triggered an outside audit, and the cost of said retreat was put at $38,000. Bad optics. This got the outside supervisor appointed by the province, and then, to again quote the Freeps:

“Mark Fisher, the board’s education director since 2019, abruptly took a paid leave days into the new school year, after news about the retreat was revealed, and later resigned without public explanation. Some other senior administrators also either resigned or retired.”

So…..it was the administrators who felt the need to take a leave, resign, or retire – perhaps fearing they would be fired if they tried to stick around. It was not the trustees, who are still around, albeit rendered even more meaningless by the presence of the appointed supervisor.

And, in the other local fiasco, when it was discovered that the local hospital organization was going to have a $150million dollar deficit, again a provincial supervisor was appointed, and it was the senior administrators who were pushed out, albeit slowly. Then, when it was further found the hospital system had been defrauded of some $50million dollars by some of its staff, it is those senior staff members, including the now-departed ex-CEO, who are being sued by the corporation for letting this happen – not the members of the hospital board.

To put it simply, it seems to me that no one really believes that trustees of school or hospital or university or social club boards are up to the task of overseeing what happens in their respective organizations. The (generally highly paid) senior administrative staff have all the information, all the expertise, and so hold all the cards. They control what the board even knows about the organization. The concept of a supervisory board is a good one. Checks and balances, right? Someone needs to keep the senior admin from feathering their own nests, from giving themselves raises, etc. Yet, they don’t seem to. The now-being-sued ex-CEO of the hospital system got a $230,000+ raise shortly after taking the job, something like a 30% increase.

So, we get the Education Minister saying the Ministry itself clearly needs to ‘have a more proactive role’. If you believe that better educational outcomes will result from decisions made in Queens Park about what happens in London school rooms, well…..I’ve got this great piece of land in the Okefenokee swamp we should talk about.

This is a difficult governance problem, no doubt about it. What to do? Boards don’t do their jobs of overseeing admins, the research from Brookings says so, and our local experiences with the hospital and school boards say so also. Yet, the admins run big deficits and commit fraud and get big raises, so…..???? Whaddya do?

Just for fun, here’s a crazy suggestion to consider.

Disaggregate the school board, tear the TVDSB back down into its former constituent parts. Hell, make the parts even smaller, break the London school board into four separate ones, one for each quarter of the city, east, west, north, south, make them really really local. Do the same with the LHSC, have each of London’s three major hospitals run themselves independently.

Now, let them compete for students and patients.

Crazy idea, eh?

Or, we could just have all the hospitals and schools and universities and hell – police and fire departments – in the whole country run by ministers in Ottawa.

Which is crazier?

 

Joyful Cacophony

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Uncategorized.

I work out these days at the downtown Y. 40+ year old building, a bit rough around the edges. I joined a couple years back when the private gym I had belonged to for 20 years closed down. The Y is not so posh, but then neither am I, and it has all the facilities I could want for my workout. The other day I got a reminder that it has one definite advantage.

I was walking up the stairs from the basement locker room to the second-floor workout area (part of my workout) when I heard the sounds of a troop of little ones coming from the first-floor lobby. In fact there were not more than 15, no doubt a Summer day camp crew, and they were making the sound always made by a collection of more than 5 kids – joyful cacophony.

OK, not always joyful, sometimes it’s “Miiiiiss, Jimmee spit on meeeee!!!” — but the default is definitely joyful. I never heard that sound at my private gym.

Mind you, if they start letting those little people into the locker room or workout area I will be much less happy about their presence, but they don’t, so I am. Happy, I mean.

Things That Made Me Go – Huh?

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Uncategorized.

A good while back I published a post that consisted only of odd/funny things I had picked up on my travels around the web. [My personal favourite: “When seconds count, the government is only minutes away.”]

Perhaps I have lost my sense of humour, as I find little that’s truly funny in my www travels anymore, but here I collect a list of things I’ve encountered lately that made me go ‘huh?’.

—-

I had no idea there was a Socialism 2025 Conference. There is, and one was also held in 2024, and plans are being made for 2026, all in Chicago.

From the website of the Socialism 2025 Conference, held in Chicago in early July, 2025:

Masks: Attendees are required to wear a mask (N95 or K95) over their mouth and nose while indoors at the conference. Masks will be provided for those who do not have a mask. Please note: this requirement applies only to formal conference spaces and sessions—attendees should be aware of the possibility that attendees will be unmasked elsewhere in the conference hotel (or beyond) where they may informally congregate.

Speakers: The sole exception to the masking policy above applies to session speakers, who may remove their masks only while they are delivering presentations from the front of their session room. We strongly encourage session speakers planning to un-mask during their presentations to pick up a free rapid test from the registration desk and test themselves 4-6 hours before their session.

—-

Experiment finds yoghurt can lower house temperature

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg4rg3nqq7go

Yes, an academic says so.

“Dr Ben Roberts, a senior lecturer in healthy buildings at Loughborough University, said applying yoghurt to the outside of windows could lower the temperature by up to 3.5C.”

A ‘senior lecturer in healthy buildings’?

My question: what becomes of yogurt that has been left smeared on windows after say….two weeks?

—-

Dismissal with cause?

A ‘task force’ commissioned by the City of London, where I live, is considering a policy whereby city councillors who lose a re-election bid would be given severance pay.

—

Motability program in the UK

‘Motability’ is just a great made-up word.

From The Telegraph

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/03/13/state-funded-bmws-epitomise-britains-dysfunctional-welfare/

“If you want a brand new BMW i4 M Sport, you have two choices. The first is to lay out the full £52,770. The second is to tell the DWP [UK Dept of Work and Pensions] that your mental health makes it hard to leave the house, claim the enhanced mobility rate of the Personal Independence Payment (Pip), fork out a down payment of £7,999, and get the Government to lease it for you.

In exchange for the mobility component of your benefit, you’ll get a new BMW every three years, your insurance and accident breakdown paid for, your servicing and tyre replacements covered, and your choice of “conventional metallic paint option”.”

—

A Money Loser

The Wall Street Journal reports that Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show lost $40million last year, which is, coincidentally, twice the host’s annual salary.

—

US State Department Devastated

I don’t know who Brian York is, but he has put up a post on X which you can read here:

https://x.com/ByronYork/status/1944121390388449391

The post includes screenshots of apparent government numbers, the veracity of which I cannot determine. I can barely read them. Here’s the punchline from York, which I (and you) can read:

“Looking at State Department documents, it appears the department went from 57,340 total employees in 2007 to 72,895 in 2015 to 80,214 in 2024. So it grew by nearly 23,000 employees before the ‘devastating’ cut of 1,300.”

—-

Spot-fixing doesn’t just happen at the dry cleaners anymore

Again from the WSJ, MLB pitcher Luis Ortiz has been put on paid non-disciplinary leave while the MLB investigates a pitch he threw into the dirt in the third inning of a game. There had been an unusual amount of money bet on the proposition that pitch would be a ball. The concern was for something called ‘spot-fixing’, which has emerged in many sports, now that bettors can wager on almost any event that occurs within the game, either before or during said game.

—

Criminal pub banter comes to the UK

From The Free Press

“On the night of Wednesday, July 16, the Labour government’s Employment Rights Bill passed its second reading in the House of Lords. If the bill goes into law in its current form—and there is not much to stop it now—Britons can be prosecuted for a remark that a worker in a public space overhears and finds insulting. The law will apply to pubs, clubs, restaurants, soccer grounds, and all the other places where the country gathers and, all too frequently, ridicules one another.”

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Crisis? What Crisis?

WSJ headline: The ‘Smart’ Bathrooms That Can Solve America’s Public Bathroom Crisis

 

The Corruption of Post-Secondary Education – One in a (Long) Series

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Education, Standards. 1 Comment on The Corruption of Post-Secondary Education – One in a (Long) Series

I have been writing this post in my head since I started this blog, as it’s prompted by an event that occurred just after I retired from my faculty position. I’m getting around to it now because a friend sent me a recent analysis of university course outlines that dovetails nicely into that story. So – a post in two parts.

I. Hiding Information at UWO

Shortly after I retired in a huff, I was in my office (my Chair did not kick me out of it upon retirement) and for a reason I don’t remember, went to the Departmental website with the intention of looking at a particular course outline for one of our courses. It had been standard practice in our Department to post on our site all of the course outlines for all the undergraduate courses that were being taught in each semester.

To my surprise, those course outlines were no longer posted. I asked a colleague about it, and was told that a directive had come down that Depts were to no longer post course outlines on their websites. Students could have access to them on the actual online sites for the courses in which they were registered, but those would require them to input their student credentials. In other words, the general public was to no longer have access to the syllabi of the courses taught at Western.

My colleague suggested they thought it was because not long ago some nutcase had gone into a classroom at U of Waterloo in which a gender studies course was being held, and stabbed two students and the professor. A terrible incident, to be sure, so the reasoning is that course outlines available to the public will allow crazy people to find out where and when courses of which they disapprove are being taught and then go and attack those in the classroom. Of course, this has not ever happened before or since, but you can’t be too careful, eh?

Thus, bowing to pressure from the Usual Faculty Suspects, the UWO Admin had ordered that course outlines with this information could not be made public. I was distressed – no, pissed off – by this, and went to see the Dept Chair to get confirmation that was what was going on. He confirmed it, and also mentioned in passing that some had suggested that we post course outlines that have the classrooms and meeting times deleted, but that was decided to be too much work.

I said ‘If I were still teaching I could prepare a version of my course outline with that information removed in six seconds’. He just looked at me.

Having recently looked again at the Dept website, I note that a sort of workaround has been found. One can view and download the syllabi from offerings of the course in previous years. Of course, if the instructor of the course changes, the previous year’s syllabi may not be very accurate, and a course that was not offered previously will have no info posted about it. I went to the websites of some other Depts in the Faculty and found they do the same: post previous year’s syllabi. I found some of those posted syllabi quite interesting, but will save any thoughts on them for another post.

[It is an irony lost on The Usual Faculty Suspects that said faculty, holding the safest and cushiest jobs on planet earth, are utterly consumed by worries about ‘safety’. Note, however, that students screaming into the faces of other students who are in a graduation ceremony – that is not a safety issue.]

I very much doubt any of you have much interest in reading university course outlines in any case. The thing is, if you wonder where the shit we all deal with daily comes from, you could learn a lot from reading the course outlines in gender studies and social work and sociology and anthropogy and even history and business these days.

I would suggest maybe you should, even if they are a year out of date. Which leads directly to part II below.

II. What is on university course outlines?

A friend sent me a copy of a paper titled ‘Closed Classrooms? An Analysis of College Syllabi on Contentious Issues’ .

In this analysis, the three authors make use of an interesting data base called OSP. This is, to quote them –

“…a unique database of college syllabi collected by the “Open Syllabus Project” (OSP). The OSP has amassed more than 27 million syllabi from around the world primarily by scraping them from university websites. They date as far back as 2008, though a majority are from the last ten years. Most of the data comes from universities in the United States, U.K., Canada, and Australia.”

[Note that ‘syllabus’ = ‘course outline’. The terms are interchangeable.]

  Using this data base, the analysis they undertake can best be explained by an example.

Take a contentious topic – for example, Racism and the American Criminal Justice System.

A highly influential book on this topic is Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness, published in 2010.

It lays the responsibility for the undeniable increase in incarceration rates in the US at the feet of white racism. The three authors of the paper summarize the thesis of Alexander’s book thusly:

“Alexander’s book claimed that American history should be understood as a cyclical struggle between white supremacists and advocates for racial justice. While advocates for racial justice eventually succeed in overthrowing systems of racial oppression (as they did in the case of slavery and Jim Crow), white supremacists are resilient. Thus, after the successful passage of the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, Alexander says, they waged a new drug war that stirred up racialized fears of urban crime and social breakdown. In this way, Jim Crow—a system of racial oppression and social control—was reborn, just in a more sinister form.”

They then point out that the book elicited immediate and ongoing pushback from a number of other writers and scholars. This generated an entire literature of agreement and disagreement on the causes of mass incarceration. The authors then ask this question:

In what proportion of course syllabi in which the Alexander book appears do any of the books arguing against Alexander also appear? In other words, when faculty tell their students to read Alexander, with what frequency do they also tell the students to read her critics?

Here are the results from the OSP data base:

Table 1: Frequency with which Prominent Critics are Assigned with Alexander’s The New Jim Crow

__________________________________________________________________

Forman (2011) 149 of 4,309 (since 2012) 3.46%

Pfaff (2014) 3 of 3,758 (since 2015) 0.08%

Fortner (2015) 53 of 3,405 (since 2016) 1.56%

Pfaff (2017) 49 of 2,438 (since 2018) 2.01%

Forman (2017) 84 of 2,438 (since 2018) 3.45%

Sharkey (2018) 9 of 1,951 (since 2019) 0.46%

The names are the authors who have written books contesting Alexander’s analysis. The (since 201x) indicate that the study only looked at syllabi that were dated one year after the book indicated was published. They understand that a professor cannot be faulted for not putting a book on a reading list before it is actually published.

So, what we have here is that faculty who assign Alexander to be read almost never assign any of her critics.

But wait, there’s more.

One can also ask the opposite question. Among those reading lists that assign Alexander’s critics to be read, what percentage also assign Alexander?

Here’s the result of that:

Table 2: Frequency with which Alexander is Taught in Courses that Assign her Critics

____________________________________________________________

Forman (2011) #1* 82%

Pfaff (2014) #1 75%

Fortner (2015) #1 72%

Pfaff (2017) #1 72%

Forman (2017) #1 56%

Sharkey (2018) #1 26%

The two tables are kinda asymmetric, ain’t they?

The authors don’t stop there. They ask also: what other readings are assigned to students by faculty who have those students read Alexander? Answer: other leftist critics. The authors write:

“The top three titles assigned with Alexander are Angela Davis’s Are Prisons Obsolete?, Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me, and Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish (see Table 3). Others in the top ten include Paulo Freire’ Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s Golden Gulag. Broadly speaking, then, it seems that most of the authors assigned with Alexander are those that reinforce rather than complicate her critical perspective.”

Teaching critical thinking, yewbetcha.

The paper goes on like this, and if you would like a copy of all 67 pages of it, drop me a line, as I would be happy to send along the pdf. They look at other contentious topics like abortion policy and the Israel/Palestine conflict. The story with those is essentially the same. To echo something I wrote in part I above, if you asked the profs who assign Alexander but not her critics why that is so, most would answer that they are not willing to make their students feel unsafe by exposing them to these other clearly racist and evil writings.

One other element is of interest here, I think, and it is captured in this table:

Table 4: Assignments of Alexander’s The New Jim Crow by Discipline __________________________________________________________________

Discipline Count, Percent

__________________________________________________________________

History 1,052, 22.4%

Sociology 1,032, 21.9%

English Literature 636, 13.5%

Criminal Justice 606 12.9%

Political Science 523, 11.1%

Social Work 296, 6.3%

Law 205, 4.4%

Philosophy 134, 2.8%

Education, 126, 2.7%

Theology 96, 2.0%

Here, the number after the discipline is the number of syllabi in that discipline that include Alexander on the reading list, and the percentage indicates the percentage of course outlines which include Alexander’s book that are from courses in that discipline. That a book on the US criminal justice system would be assigned in some History and Sociology courses is no surprise. Same with Criminal Justice. But that it is assigned in more Eng Lit courses than Criminal Justice courses? Huh? And way more often in Eng Lit than in Law?

21st century English profs have little interest in teaching literature or, god help us, writing. They are busy being front-line warriors for social justice.

As I noted in Part I, I looked through some (past) course outlines posted by other Depts in the UWO Faculty of Social Science, partly because I was curious about how they looked relative to what is in the OSP data. It was, as I said, quite interesting, and I will be writing more on that soon.

Crime and Media, Part Two

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in London, News Media, Safety.

More coverage has appeared in the local Freeps on the Richmond Row stabbing. In a front-page Freeps article on Tuesday, July 15, we have the following:

“The accused is a prolific offender with dozens of prior convictions,” Truong said in a post Sunday. “He was out on bail at the time of the attack. Thanks to the swift response of our officers, he was quickly identified and taken into custody. He remains there, and we will do everything in our power to contest his release.

“This is not just a policing issue. There are broader societal challenges at play, and we must acknowledge that some individuals, regardless of their circumstances, pose a real and ongoing risk to public safety…”

The Freeps continues to identify the accused only as ‘a 33-year old London man”. It also says he was to appear in court last Friday, and despite the piece appearing the following Tuesday, does not say what happened at that hearing. Was he released? Chief Truong says nothing about that either.

The Freeps article also says that after his March arrest, Dentelbeck ‘wasn’t held for a bail hearing’. I don’t know exactly what that means. Was he simply brought before court, read the charges against him and released? That’s my suspicion. Clearly he was not held in custody for any duration, else he would not have been able to stab Kools’ manager last week.

My favourite quote from the article, as it shows just what sort of politicians the police (and the public) have to deal with, is this one –

Coun. David Ferreira, whose Ward 13 encompasses downtown, said downtown is safe but still has its issues like other cities.

“There’s a lot of people in the downtown area, so with more people . . . you may see higher numbers of certain things happening here and there,” he said. “I don’t really see a difference between downtown and other areas of the city, so of course Richmond Row is safe and there are a lot of people (who) will attest to that.”

To be clear, I spend a lot of time in downtown London, both on Richmond Row and in the core area around the arena. Dundas and Richmond, basically. Obviously, I am not sufficiently worried about my safety that it keeps me away – partly because I am trying to do my bit to keep the assholes from winning. However, Ferreira’s statement that there is no difference between downtown and other areas of the city is pure, unadulterated bullshit. He is either a liar or utterly ignorant. In either case, he should not be a councillor.

On the other hand, Mike Smith, the owner of Kools’ and a long-time business owner in downtown London is quoted as saying he thinks Richmond Row has gotten safer over the last year, and credits the police and Chief Truong for this. That is an opinion I can take seriously.

However, a follow-up article in today’s (Wednesday) Freeps by Jane Sims is titled ‘Richmond Row Stabbing An Anomaly That Could Have Happened Anywhere’.

Well, ‘anomaly’ means a ‘departure from the normal or common order’, so I would certainly hope any stabbing is that. But ‘could have happened anywhere’? Really?

The article consists of a number of quotes from one man – the aforementioned Mr. Smith – and unsupported assertions from Ms. Sims. It seems an obvious attempt to convey the message that things are fine downtown, people should not stay away. I can see why Smith would want to make that point, he has two restaurants operating within throwing distance of the core and two on Richmond Row. He doesn’t want people to avoid going to those. But the Freeps? Perhaps Sims could have made more than one phone call, and talked to more than just one downtown or Richmond Row business owner about how they see the recent history of policing and safety around their businesses. That could have been quite informative.

Ah, but that would take time, effort. The Freeps seems to mostly put time and effort into writing headlines, like ‘Who wants to be in a 3-way?’ (May 30).

Crime and Media, 21st Century Edition

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Government, News Media, Safety.

I had intended to write an article about the lawsuits that our local hospital system has filed against various former employees and other persons, alleging complicity in a long-running fraud that cost the hospital system 10s of millions of dollars. I may yet do so, right now I have little to say that is not already on the record, but I am still poking away.

Instead, this is about a different crime committed in London, which you may also have read about. An employee of a bar on Richmond Street, located somewhere between Central and Dufferin, which is to say, the area across from Victoria Park, was stabbed at 3:30pm last Monday. The victim was taken to the hospital critically injured. The perpetrator, one Leslie Jacob James Dentelbeck, 33, of London, was located and arrested on Wednesday morning.

Now, the London Free Press story on this does not name the accused, I got it from the London Police News site. Hockey players accused of sexual assault the Freeps will name and show pictures of, but not this guy.

Here’s the other thing about Dentelbeck the Freeps does not mention in their story, which is essentially a cut and paste job from the London Police web site. This guy has been arrested and charged many times before, a fact that was laid out by a commenter on the Freeps story, to whom we are all indebted. Someone is willing to do some reporting…..

Here is a partial accounting of what our friend Dentelbeck has been up to:

March 18, 2025 –

Failing to stop for police/pursuit;

Two (2) counts of possession of firearm or ammunition contrary to prohibition order;

Two (2) counts of careless storage of firearm, weapon, prohibited device;

June 28, 2024 –

Failing to stop for police/pursuit;

Possession of property obtained by crime over $5000;

Dangerous operation of a conveyance;

Resisting arrest;

Failing to stop at scene of accident;

Two police cruisers were damaged to the tune of $10k

April 22, 2022 –

Dangerous operation of a motor vehicle;

Impaired operation of a motor vehicle;

Resisting arrest;

Possession of property obtained by crime over $5000; and

Two (2) counts of possession of property obtained by crime under $5000.

Another $2k damage to police cruisers.

This is just the list of charges against him by the police, as laid out on the London Police website for these various previous occurrences. What we do not know is whether the public prosecutor took any of these charges to court or whether they were dropped. It is not up to the police what happens once a suspect is brought before a judge, so it doesn’t appear on the police web site. If it appears somewhere, I don’t know where. If anyone does, do let me know.

Whatever is true about that, our man Leslie Jacob James Dentelbeck, 33, of London, has now graduated to stabbing someone. He fled the scene of the stabbing on a scooter, so no  ‘operation of a motor vehicle’ charges this time. LPS says he was charged with ‘aggravated assault’ and ‘breach of probation’.

He is still in custody, but scheduled to appear in court on the day I am writing this. I predict we will never find out if he is released from custody again after today’s court appearance. Unless, of course, he commits another crime afterward.

This person has been involved in criminal activity on a repeated basis for at least three years. He has now critically injured someone who was just trying to do their job. It seems to me of considerable interest to the London community to know what becomes of Dentelbeck after this. But our local media – the Freeps. CBC London, CTV – has few resources, and no interest in devoting them to following what happens here.

The CBC has an article headlined ‘Frustration builds as province delays delivering new homeless hub’

CBC is  always up for covering that mean old Conservative provincial government.

The Freeps has a nice story that ‘explains’ why you have more fireflies in your backyard this year. Good to know, eh?

I don’t have cable any more. If CTV London follows up on what happens to Dentelbeck after today, someone let me know, ok? I won’t hold my breath…

What else is there to say? This is the 21st century Canadian justice system in operation, along with its keen coverage by our trusted, reliable, news sources.

Epilogue: Writing now a day after posting the above. Today’s Freeps has a follow-up story in which the establishment at which the stabbed employee worked is named – Joe Kool’s, a long-standing bar. It also notes that he was a manager there, and is now listed by the hospital as in ‘fair condition’, so there is that to be grateful for. The story still does not name the accused, nor tell us what happened when he went before a judge yesterday.

Others who work in or manage shops nearby are interviewed, one of them stating that a person had stood outside his establishment causing a disturbance for 40 minutes and threatening to stab him. His call to the police resulted in no police showing up. This is consistent with stories I have been told by a friend who also runs an establishment in that area. The police do not show up when you call about someone causing a disturbance or stealing. The guy interviewed in the Freeps article is quoted thusly: “They (police) don’t even show up no matter how many times I call them, but the foot patrol is good; when I call them. They show up.”

I am left to wonder what that means. Is calling the ‘foot patrol’ different from calling the police? Do they have a separate number that merchants are given?

Later in the article, we have this:

“When asked about merchants’ comments about police response, London Police Sgt Sandasha Bough would only speak to Monday’s stabbing investigation.”

She then spits out a boiler plate paragraph saying what a wonderful job LPS did in this case. I won’t repeat it. The quote concludes with:

“If somebody is complaining about the police, then we encourage them to go through a complaint process.”

Yea, of course you do. Fill out form PC-6759-BS and we will get back to you.