Ryan's Journal

"My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?" — David Mitchell

Tag: Ramblings

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

Posted from Culver City, California at 6:36 pm, May 19th, 2021

Over a year ago I wrote that I hoped the COVID-19 pandemic would be handled so competently that people would suggest we overreacted. After fourteen months of masks and lockdowns, over 500,000 deaths in the US, and trillions of dollars of emergency spending, it’s clear that those hopes did not come to pass, but the end of COVID is finally in sight, so it’s worth capturing what this year-plus has been like.

First, it’s going to be interesting to see how history views our response to the pandemic; my impression today is that while the federal response was marked by incompetence, there was also a disturbing lack of personal responsibility from much of our society. Scientists warned us what needed to be done, but simple steps like wearing a mask turned into a weird political battle and resulted in what were likely hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths and millions of unnecessary hospitalizations. Meanwhile, even though we learned that the virus mostly impacted older Americans and that masks were an effective preventative measure, much of the economy shut down completely for over a year, costing us trillions of dollars. While it is too early to say with certainty what should have been different, it seems pretty clear that we handled things poorly.

On a more personal level, the pandemic and lockdown was unlike anything that people alive today have experienced before. For almost a year and a half, anytime I saw someone who was older than sixty I wondered if there was a chance I might somehow accidentally infect them with a disease that could kill them. Some of my friends and co-workers were terrified of being around other people, with a few too scared to even leave their apartments for the entire year. The pandemic also revealed an ugly side to the country that was more pronounced than I realized – despite clear evidence that wearing a mask protected those around us, a not-insignificant number of people treated this commonsense health precaution as an affront to their personal liberty. Videos showing maskless people spitting in the faces of store employees, or attacking people wearing masks, were fairly common during this time. Also, continuing a long and scary trend, scientific expertise continued to be dismissed by political leaders and a large number of their followers. Overall, it did not feel like a shining moment in the country’s history.

All that being said, with vaccination rates climbing, the end is in sight. Despite the fact that this introvert enjoyed a year without work travel or social engagements, I’m looking forward to the world returning to its pre-pandemic state. Going to a movie theater will soon be an option. Eating out with a waiter who isn’t wearing a face shield, and at a table that is indoors, will be something we can do. Audrey and I are planning a vacation in September and not worrying whether businesses will be shuttered. Our friend Jocelyn recently visited, and for the first time in a year excitedly ran up to everyone to give them a hug. Audrey’s church choir will start singing together again soon. And we’ll soon be able to get together with friends without the conversation being dominated by the subject of masks and the pandemic. People are resilient, and after a long period that has been unlike any other, it’s nice to see the world finally starting to return to normal.

The Supreme Court

Posted from Culver City, California at 10:33 am, September 19th, 2020

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died yesterday, and like everything in today’s politics it kicked off a firestorm that made citizens feel angry while causing a further erosion of confidence in this country’s political system. Republicans are now promising a vote that will replace a liberal Justice with a conservative one, despite spending the bulk of 2016 making the argument that “voters should decide” while blocking Obama’s Supreme Court nomination during an election year. Even the most partisan Republican must understand how hypocritical this position is, but at the same time I suspect many liberals would grudgingly admit that had the situation been reversed, in this political climate Democrats likely would have done exactly the same thing. As a result, we’re moving quickly towards a showdown in which the current Republican position will lead to inevitable Democratic retaliation, further eroding any hope of competent governance of the country.

We probably over-glamorize the great statesmen of the past, but it seems to me that they might have sought a compromise in this situation. Thinking this problem through, I suspect that there may be an opportunity here for current statesmen to solve this crisis while improving our politics in the future.

For many years there have been proposals to implement term limits for Supreme Court Justices, so that in the future an 87 year old woman with cancer will no longer feel compelled keep her job lest she be replaced by someone of a different political persuasion, and that Justices won’t have to time their retirements based on the political leanings of the President and Senate. Most proposals for term limits suggest an 18 year term, with each Justice replaced every two years, but concerns about that proposal have suggested that it could lead to courts that frequently overturn past decisions, given that the swing vote could potentially change every two years, leading to chaos in the legal system.

The argument against injecting too much ideological change into the Court is a solid one – a President who served two terms would appoint nearly half of the Court, meaning (for example) that Obama would have theoretically replaced one Bush Sr nominee and three Clinton nominees, flipping the Court from a 5-4 conservative majority to a 5-4 liberal majority. Trump would then arrive and replace one Clinton nominee and one Bush Jr nominee, flipping the Court back to a 5-4 conservative majority. If Biden were to win he would be replacing two Bush Jr nominees and the Court would flip again.

As a compromise, I’d propose the following: set term limits for Justices, but first increase the size of the Court to eleven members, meaning term limits would be twenty-two years per Justice. Issues with Court ideology changing would still be a problem, but it would be less so with a smaller portion of the Court changing during any given administration, while a larger Court would also have a broader spectrum of ideological viewpoints, thus reducing the likelihood of decisions being regularly overturned.

The problem with increasing the Court’s size is that neither side wants to give the other two new seats on the Supreme Court, and any attempt to increase the size of the Court would be seen as unfair partisan politics. It’s here where the current impasse of RBG’s replacement would come into play. Senators could agree now that if Trump wins re-election then things stay as they are – he appoints a successor to RBG and the number of Justices stays at nine. But if he loses, rather than have a lame-duck Senate approve a lame-duck President’s nominee and Democrats then retaliate in ways that further erode current governing norms, make this compromise: Trump gets his successor to RBG, but the Court size is increased to eleven, meaning Biden gets to appoint two new Justices. Then, starting in 2025, Justices will start to be termed out based on seniority. Conservatives would maintain a 6-5 majority on the Court through Biden’s first term, we avoid the inevitable crisis over RBG being replaced in the midst of an election, and we solve this issue in the future by taking political calculus out of Supreme Court retirement decisions. Additional concessions might need to be made for conservatives, such as guaranteeing that the Filibuster would stay as-is or even giving Republicans the choice of who to nominate for one of the two new seats, but there’s a deal to be made here that would be a win-win for conservatives, liberals, and the country as a whole.

This solution wouldn’t be perfect – we’d probably need a Constitutional amendment, which is a HUGE issue, and we’d still need to figure out what to do when a Justice dies in office, retires early, or gets impeached. But I think those problems are solvable, and this process would defuse a very difficult political issue in a way that feels fair and leaves the system stronger for the future. Statesmen of the past found compromises for the most difficult issues of their day, and with another one brewing now, hopefully someone in our political establishment will be able to turn a situation that causes people to lose faith in our system of government into one that makes it stronger going forward.

COVID-19

Posted from Culver City, California at 5:12 pm, March 15th, 2020

There have been a handful of times in my life that have felt like historic moments, and this week has that feel so I’m going to ramble a bit, mainly for my own benefit as it is a useful exercise to be able to revisit one’s thought process later with the benefit of hindsight.

The reason that this week feels novel is obviously because if was the week where the threat from coronavirus became real. Government at the local, state and federal levels started taking action against the virus, all sports leagues shut down, colleges closed, school districts closed, museums shuttered, people are being told not to go to work, grocery stores are being mobbed by panic buyers cleaning out the shelves; it is reminiscent of the days and weeks following September 11, when no one was quite sure what was going on and people entered a weird state where everyone just put normal life on hold and waited to see what would happen next.

Sadly, one difference between 9/11 and this crisis is that the country came together after 9/11 with a common purpose. Say what you will about George W. Bush, but he provided clear and decisive leadership when the country needed it, and his approval ratings reflected that all Americans were with him, at least for that moment. Today the top-level leadership is very different, and half of the country seems to question whether this crisis is even real, or whether it’s a media-driven, left-wing assault on Donald Trump. In a few years, once we know how it plays out, I suspect that the differing views of this pandemic will begin to converge, although I worry that if the state and local response to this crisis is effective that we will learn the wrong lesson.

I haven’t lived through many major crises, but my experience has been that when they are handled well people assume that the danger itself was overblown. I started in technology in 1998, and at the time IT professionals the world over were focused on the Y2K bug, expected to hit older computer systems on January 1, 2000 with dire consequences. Billions of dollars were spent testing the systems that ran nuclear plants, transportation networks, banking systems and other critical infrastructure. Government issued warnings to make sure that everyone, everywhere was aware of the problem and looking closely at their systems. Then, at the start of the millennium when things were supposed to break, nothing happened. People scoffed and said it was much ado about nothing, but the opposite is true – testing in advance made it clear that there would have been massive disruption, and without huge amounts of work and a gigantic effort to make companies aware of the problem, the world would have been a very different place on January 1, 2000. It was only because so many people worked so hard that the response was so effective and none of the worst consequences came to pass, but instead of cheering the success, “Y2K” is instead today widely perceived as an example of fear-mongering and over-reaction.

Today, with the coronavirus, I hope that it can be another Y2K. Scientists estimate the range of deaths from coronavirus in the USA will be up to 1.7 million, but that scenario only occurs if we don’t take action to slow the spread; the reason schools are shutting down today is because that number is based on almost 200 million Americans contracting the disease, which only happens if there is no change in social behavior. Keeping people separated means infected people are less likely to pass the virus to others, slowing down the spread and potentially saving a lot of lives. However, if we avoid the worst-case scenarios I fear that instead of rewarding officials who took drastic action, people will instead say we overreacted, just as they did with Y2K, making the next crisis even harder to contain.

Reasons for Optimism

Posted from Culver City, California at 6:56 pm, December 15th, 2019

Every day while I’m working, one of the neighbors passes by our house walking his dog. The reason this event is worth noting is because the dog is now too old to walk, so the the owner has built a wooden platform on wheels and pulls the dog up and down the street, presumably so that the dog still gets the joy of being outside. It’s a nice daily reminder that there are an infinite amount of amazing acts of kindness that happen on this earth, most of which go completely unnoticed. Humans are hard-wired to pick up on negativity and to react more strongly to bad experiences, but I really believe that there is far more to be hopeful about in this world than there is to despair over.

A few more random items that inspire hopefulness:

  • In December 2017, a billionaire couple from Redding, California purchased 24,364 acres of pristine California coast near Santa Barbara for $165 million and donated it to the Nature Conservancy. The land is on Point Conception, which is where the California coast bends eastward, a meeting point of ocean currents that is an exceptionally productive ecosystem. Anyone who has driven the Central Coast knows that it is one of the most beautiful places on earth, and now a large chunk is guaranteed to stay that way forever.
  • After being eradicated from California in the 1920s, gray wolves have been returning to the state since 2011, and there is now a breeding pack of wolves living near Mount Lassen that has been dubbed the Lassen Pack. The tiny pack consists of only 2 adults, 1 yearling, and 4 pups. While the pack travels widely enough that they may eventually leave the state again, at least for now California is home to an animal that was missing for almost one hundred years, and there is reason to believe that other packs will form here in the coming years.
  • Despite the current polarized political environment, in March of this year the John D. Dingell, Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act became law with overwhelming bipartisan support, passing in the Senate 92-8, passing in the House 363-62, and getting signed by the President. While it does many things, highlights of this bill include wilderness protection for 1.3 million acres, expansion of eight national parks, the creation of four new national monuments, and permanent authorization for the Land and Water Conservation Fund. The latter was perhaps the most important part of this bill, as the LWCF had lapsed in October 2018 due to opposition from a small number of legislators. With the fund now permanently authorized, about $900 million collected annually from offshore oil and gas leases is again available, and will remain available, to be used for everything from buying land for conservation to maintaining trails at existing sites. Since its original creation in 1965, money from this fund has been used in every single county in the country.
Good things happen all around us

I’m in a Funk

Posted from Culver City, California at 8:28 pm, June 14th, 2018

If there are any readers of this journal left, it’s become painfully obvious that I’m falling far short of my three entries per month goal. I’ve got no good excuse – every time I sit down to write something I’m coming up empty. At some point either we’ll head out on the road and this page will again become a travel journal, or else inspiration will strike and I’ll launch into a twenty-part treatise on solving the mysteries of life, the universe, and everything, but until either of those things happen it’s probably going to be quieter than normal. In the interim, feel free to use the comments section to suggest any future topics that might help break the current radio silence.

Sometimes the world gets better

Posted from Culver City, California at 9:50 am, May 20th, 2018

Too often the message of conservationists is only about doom and gloom – unstoppable global warming, coral reefs dying, deforestation – which is a shame, because there is plenty of good news about the environment to buoy people’s spirits and remind us that we are capable of making positive changes in the world.

  • I’ve written about the decade-long rat eradication program on South Georgia Island before, but to recap: starting in 2010, and continuing in 2012 and 2014, teams in helicopters dropped poison bait across the entire island in an effort to eliminate rats that had been brought to the island two centuries ago by whalers and sealers, decimating the island’s nesting birds. While using poison to kill rats is an unfortunate solution for a man-made problem, the chance of making the island safe again for as many as 100 million nesting seabirds far outweighs any negatives. Had the effort left even one breeding pair of rats alive it would have been a failure, but last week it was announced that two years after the last bait was dropped, and with thousands of chew sticks examined, tracking tunnels checked, and a team of rat-sniffing dogs having scoured the entire island, no signs of rats were found and the island has been officially declared rat-free. As the years go by bird populations will increase, and someday the island may again reclaim its title as one of the most important seabird nesting sites in the world.
  • Closer to home, dam removal throughout New England has for the first time in centuries re-opened rivers to anadromous fish (fish that spawn in rivers but spend their lives in the ocean). On Maine’s Penobscott River, where just one herring was seen a decade ago, 1.8 million herring were counted in 2016. Other waterways where dams have been removed also show huge increases, and just as importantly the otters, raptors, and other animals that depend on those herring should also greatly benefit.
  • Finally, in 2011 a Dutch teenager named Boyan Slat gave a TED talk about cleaning up plastic in the ocean using floating screens that drift in currents. In most cases you would expect that to have been the end of the story – a nice viral video that a lot of people watched, with no follow-up. However, in this case Boyan doggedly persisted, founding the Ocean Cleanup Project, raising over $30 million, and this week the now-23-year-old Boyan and his team launched a prototype cleanup system for tests in the Pacific outside of San Francisco Bay. Although I’ll admit to being skeptical about the likelihood of success with their current design, the fact that this project has persisted, and has managed to capture funding and attention year after year, makes me optimistic that they will eventually succeed and make a significant dent into removing some of the estimated five trillion plastic objects currently floating in our seas.
Grey-headed albatross on South Georgia Island
Grey-headed albatross on South Georgia Island in 2004. This photo was actually taken on a smaller, rat-free island just off of the South Georgia coast, but with rats gone from the mainland these birds will now have vastly more rat-free nesting territory available.

What If…

Posted from Culver City, California at 9:19 pm, April 2nd, 2018

I know politics are a turn-off for a lot of folks, but it seems like an interesting thought exercise to imagine what it would be like if a few states had voted slightly differently, making Hillary Clinton the 45th president. Please feel free to use the comments to add any additions or corrections to this alternative timeline…

November 2016: If Democrats had turned out in numbers that were just large enough to give Clinton the victory in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, that turnout likely would have also provided narrow Democratic victories in the Wisconsin & Pennsylvania Senate races, resulting in a Senate that was split 50-50, with Vice President Tim Kaine the deciding vote in case of ties.

January 2017: With Clinton in the White House and a Democratic Senate, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer would have invoked the “nuclear option” in order to overcome Republican obstruction against Hillary Clinton’s nominees (just as Republicans did with Trump’s nominees), enraging conservatives and leading to an uproar in conservative media. The end result would be a bitterly divided Senate, a re-energized Tea Party, and a Supreme Court with a liberal majority.

June 2017: In this alternate timeline, the US would not have dropped out of the Paris Climate accords, nor would DACA have been rescinded. Similarly, there would have been no discussion of a border wall, a Muslim ban, or withdrawing from NAFTA.

September 2017: With the House still in Republican control, and conservatives enraged by the actions of President Clinton, the odds of a budget agreement would have been zero, almost certainly resulting in a shutdown of the government. Conservatives likely would have demanded documents and testimony for their many ongoing investigations over Benghazi, the Clinton Foundation, and Clinton’s email servers as a minimum precondition for any re-opening of the government.

October 2017: While Trump rescinded Obamacare’s cost sharing subsidies, resulting in health insurance premiums that were about ten percent higher than they otherwise would have been, President Clinton would have spent her time looking for ways to strengthen the health care law. Without Republican support it is unlikely there would have been much she could do, but in this alternate timeline Obamacare would not have been weakened, premium increases would have been lower, and Congress would not have spent months debating how to repeal the law.

November 2017: With Clinton as President and Trump likely viewed as an outcast in Republican circles, the one thing that the parties would probably have agreed on was addressing Russian interference in the 2016 elections. In this timeline, FBI director James Comey’s investigation into Russian meddling would have reached its conclusion, and with the support of the Senate and European allies the US would have imposed strict sanctions that isolated Russia internationally. In addition, bipartisan action to improve voting security and combat future meddling would be one of the year’s very rare examples of the parties actually working together.

December 2017: After a temporary agreement to end the previous shutdown, the divided government would again be unlikely to find a budget agreement, resulting in yet another shutdown. With huge deficits projected, Republicans would probably be rallying around the debt and deficit and demanding steps to address those issues as preconditions for any budget agreement. Note that in this timeline, the Republican tax cuts of 2017, with their corresponding reduction in federal revenue, would never have become law.

January 2018: With the North Koreans conducting nuclear and missile tests throughout 2017, President Clinton would have most likely pushed for an international response that was led by China and based on the framework used in the Iran nuclear agreement. While any deal would have been condemned by the Right (like they have done with the Iran nuclear deal), faced with real pressure from its one main ally (China), North Korea would have been boxed into a corner, forced to choose between sanctions that could finally threaten King Jong Un’s power or pausing its nuclear ambitions.

April 2018: After almost no legislative progress, two government shutdowns, ongoing investigations, and a huge block of Bernie Sanders voters still fomenting dissent on the Left, Hillary Clinton’s approval ratings would likely be dismal. The Republican establishment would be railing non-stop against Clinton corruption and deficits, and Tea Party rallies would be even larger than they were under Obama. In this environment, political scientists would be predicting a massive Republican wave in the midterms that would not only increase the Republican House majority, but would also flip 6-10 Senate seats to Republicans. Pundits would be questioning how the Democrats could possibly regain any path to a viable governing majority, and openly wondering if Clinton should consider stepping aside after just one term.

Moneyball V

Posted from Culver City, California at 12:02 pm, March 25th, 2018

In an ongoing effort to drive away readers by combining my love of the worst team in the NFL with my love of math, here’s another post about the upcoming NFL draft.

As I’ve posted previously, I buy in fully to the idea that most NFL teams are bad at valuing draft picks, and that the Browns have done a great job in recent drafts of taking advantage of that quirk of NFL management (note: they’ve done a great job acquiring picks, and a terrible job of using those picks). For example, while one can argue about whether Deshaun Watson should have been the Browns’ choice last year at #12, it’s tough to argue against the value they got for that trade, giving up #12 in 2017 for #25 in 2017 and #4 this year.

In my predictions for 2018 I suggested that the Browns would take a quarterback #1, and then take advantage of teams willing to overpay to move up by trading away the #4 pick. The Jets recently traded up to the #3 position, heavily overpaying for that privilege according to the traditional draft value chart:

IND trades NYJ trades Result
#3 (2200 points) #6 (1600 points)
#37 (530 points)
#49 (410 points)
2018 2nd round pick (270-580)		 2200 points for 2810-3120 points
(28-42% premium)

Assuming the Browns would get a similar premium for the #4 pick (worth 1800 points), the following are all trades that I suspect will be viable in this year’s draft based on the fact that there are four quarterbacks being discussed as top picks, and all of the following teams need QBs; were I the Browns’ GM, I would accept any of these offers without hesitation:

Trading partner Picks traded Result
Denver #5 (1700 points)
#71 (235 points)		 1800 points for 1935 points
(8% premium)
Miami #11 (1250 points)
#73 (225 points)
2019 1st round pick (590-3000)		 1800 points for 2065-4475 points
(15-149% premium)
Buffalo #12 (1200 points)
#65 (265 points)
2019 1st round pick (590-3000)		 1800 points for 2055-4465 points
(14-148% premium)
Arizona #15 (1050 points)
#47 (430 points)
2019 1st round pick (590-3000)		 1800 points for 2070-4480 points
(15-149% premium)

Obviously making mathematically-smart trades won’t matter if the Browns don’t do a better job of actually drafting players that have success in the NFL, and thus the Browns clearly need to improve their talent evaluation. That said, statistically they’ve made all the right moves when it comes to maximizing their draft capital, and I hope that they don’t forgo that success this year when teams offer to trade a king’s ransom for whoever the fourth-best quarterback ends up being.

Fixing the System

Posted from Culver City, California at 7:08 pm, December 28th, 2017

Audrey and I were sitting in the back yard a few weeks ago talking about some political issue in the day’s news, and in the course of the conversation she asked what I would do to fix things. One of my suggestions wasn’t a popular one, but after explaining it a bit she said “you should write a journal entry about that”. I’ve presented thoughts for improving our government in journal entries in the past with varying amounts of seriousness, but here’s another entry that may or may not be worth the pixels that it’s printed on:

There is a lot of chatter these days about empowering the average citizen over party “elites” – getting rid of super delegates, doing away with caucuses, and otherwise increasing the power of the average Joe to choose the leaders of the country. My unpopular opinion is that this solution is exactly the opposite of what is needed, since the increase in direct democracy over the past several decades has correlated with an increase in government dysfunction. Hear me out…

People today lament that our government is incapable of getting things done or of making hard decisions, but the electoral process punishes candidates who address the country’s problems honestly. If Candidate A says that we need to address the deficit by raising taxes and/or cutting popular spending, while Candidate B repeats the well-worn fallacy that if only we trimmed “waste” from the budget then all of our problems would disappear, Candidate B will be elected. If Candidate A says she will make unpopular compromises in order to work with the other party, while Candidate B says that he will never compromise his principles, Candidate B will be elected. And for decades voters have reliably chosen Candidate B, only to discover that the debt continues to rise, and parties have no incentive to make the compromises that would lead to win-win solutions.

As a result, elections today are a contest of who can do the best job of telling the electorate what they want to hear, with candidates who say one thing in a primary and then “pivot” to a different position for the general election, and who voters expect will then “betray” them once in office. More direct democracy will only exacerbate that situation – if a candidate who honestly says that hard choices need to be made is generally going to lose to someone who says no hard choices are necessary, the only people who can win elections are going to be liars and/or incompetent. While I don’t think there is any foolproof solution to that issue, I would make the unpopular proposal that less direct democracy in nominating candidates for national elections (President, Senate, House) would at least keep out the worst charlatans, and thus the primary system should give more power to super delegates and other gatekeepers. The average voter would continue to choose among candidates in the general election, and could still have a say in primaries, but we need to find ways to reduce pandering and restore serious policy discussion to the electoral process. I’m not sure what form such a system might take – have the super delegate vote count for 50% of what is required to be nominated, or force candidates to have the backing of several super delegates before they are allowed to enter the race – but I think there would be significant value in providing more vetting than we have today.

Here are a small number of additional points in defense of why I think that this proposal is worth considering seriously:

  • We should give more weight to the most informed people when choosing leaders. Today a voter who knows the candidates personally and spends their life as a part of the government has a vote that counts equally to someone who flips a coin, someone who is influenced by a smear campaign, or someone who simply votes for any name that they recognize; I want to know that the leaders of my government have been vetted by more than just a popularity contest.
  • Money and fame would be less important as deciding factors in elections. Today politicians have to spend countless hours fundraising in order to afford TV commercials and other ways of achieving visibility in the electorate, with famous people such as Arnold Schwarzenegger or Donald Trump gaining an undeserved advantage. Giving more power to political insiders would help to level the playing field, making political ability more of a deciding factor than mere name recognition.
  • Empowering super delegates or similar actors would provide a check against populists or other unqualified individuals gaining power. It is in the interest of the party to put forward the best possible candidates, and giving the most knowledgeable party members an effective veto would provide a layer of protection against bad candidates.

Obviously this solution is imperfect – Bernie Sanders supporters who thought that the DNC “rigged” the primaries in favor of Clinton would be faced with an even steeper hill to climb. The 37% of citizens who currently give Donald Trump a favorable rating would almost certainly never have been given the opportunity to vote for him. Those who want to see more non-politicians on the ballot would be disappointed by a party system likely to support those within its own ranks. And those who fear a takeover of political parties by outside interests would have some reason to worry, since political parties are only as strong as those who choose to be active within that party. Finally, taking power away from individuals and giving it to “elites” sounds evil – it “feels” obviously correct that everyone in a democracy should have an equal voice in choosing candidates, even if those choosing are doing so with incomplete information and thus making bad choices.

Given the likely opposition to any proposal that would make the primary process less democratic it is unlikely that any such change could ever be made. However, since increased direct democracy over the recent decades has led to a system where elections often become popularity contests, and given the fact that it has left us with a government that seems more incapable of governing than ever before, I honestly believe that restoring the power of the parties as gatekeepers to the electoral process would be an effective way to ensure that we have stronger candidates on the ballot, thus leading to a more functional government.

Why this Bill?

Posted from Culver City, California at 8:49 pm, November 27th, 2017

“A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures.” — Daniel Webster

After a legislative session that so far has no major accomplishments, Republicans in Congress are now preparing a tax bill that they have stated could lead to electoral disaster if it doesn’t pass. As someone trying hard to understand the logic behind this particular legislation, it’s a mystery to me why this bill is what they chose for their “must pass” moment.

Republicans have preached fiscal responsibility for as long as I can remember, but they are now firmly behind a bill that adds at least $1.5 trillion to the national debt and whose major goal is to reduce the corporate tax rate. There is an argument to be had about whether lowering the corporate tax rate is a good idea or not, but where I’m puzzled is the fact that I don’t think anyone is arguing that lowering the corporate tax rate is the best possible use of $1.5 trillion. Thus, why make the corporate tax rate the centerpiece of what the party is now calling its do-or-die moment???

If Republicans feel that they must pass something, rather than choosing an unpopular tax bill with murky prospects, it would have made vastly more sense to choose something like an infrastructure package that would be broadly popular, easy to defend, and a clear benefit to both businesses and the working class – “look, we’re fixing highways, railroads, dams, bridges and other very useful and visible things that will make everyone’s lives better, and we’re putting hundreds of thousands of people to work and pumping tons of money into American companies in order to do it!” Instead they have a bill that no one is enthusiastic about, that appears to be fiscally reckless, and one that could easily become a budgetary lodestone if it passes, or a legislative Waterloo if it fails.

The quote at the top of this post is my best guess as to what’s actually happening – for some reason they picked the corporate tax rate as the item to focus on, and now they are stuck in a position where they “must pass” something that no one really likes. As to the larger question of how they picked the corporate tax rate as their area of focus, maybe it’s a result of having too many bankers in government, since the financial industry is probably most likely to make business decisions based on a favorable tax environment (as opposed to other industries that weigh things like labor costs, geographic location, infrastructure, worker availability, or some other criteria far more heavily). Like anything that happens in Washington, I’m sure that there is a lot that I don’t understand, and I may be missing something obvious about this particular bill, but it sure seems like a very, very strange piece of legislation on which to stake the party’s reputation.

American Exceptionalism

Posted from Culver City, California at 6:02 pm, July 4th, 2017

I’m not sure if this subject has made it into a journal entry in the past or not, but my favorite theory of why America remains such a powerful force in the world seems like a good topic for a Fourth of July entry.

During my four decades of life it has been a common refrain that the US is on the decline and in danger of losing its position as the world’s leader in commerce and innovation. In the 1980s and 1990s it was seen as inevitable that Japan would soon take the lead position, and these days everyone seems to believe that China will do so. Yet somehow, despite falling behind in metrics like education, government investment, etc, the US still creates companies like Tesla, Google and Apple that lead the world.

A theory that I read a long while back is that the root of America’s success is literally encoded in our DNA – being unique as a nation of immigrants, nearly every citizen has in their family tree the DNA of someone who was motivated to leave their circumstances and go to a country where, if they worked hard, they could create a better life. In an evolutionary sense, the entire country is made up of people whose gene pool favors motivation, hard-work, and risk taking. As a result, in America if you create a business that fails, instead of being demeaned for failing you are rewarded for having tried. If a city declines and jobs disappear people don’t sit around and wait for improvement, but instead pack up and move to another city that offers better prospects. When an individual wants to follow a dream, it isn’t considered crazy for them to sell prized possessions or amass large debts in order to fund that dream and make it become reality.

There are of course a vast number of exceptions to the above examples, but moreso than any other country, Americans can be characterized by traits that trace back to ancestors who risked everything to come to a new place that offered hope of a better life. Furthermore, that hope wasn’t represented by the prospect of an easy life, but was instead based on a belief that hard work would be rewarded. On this Fourth of July I like to believe that the greatness of America might literally be encoded in the DNA of its citizens, a fact that makes me optimistic that, despite its stumbles, the success of this nation will continue.

I Think We’re Going to Solve Global Warming

Posted from Culver City, California at 9:56 pm, June 3rd, 2017

Several weeks ago I decided that one of this month’s journal entries would be about why I’m optimistic that the problem of climate change is one that the world is going to solve, and the recent announcement from Trump that the US would join Syria and Nicaragua as the only nations not to be a part of the Paris Climate accords makes the subject even more appropriate.

To greatly oversimplify the issue of climate change, solving it means that clean energy needs to be a better option than fossil fuels in terms of cost and reliability. Looking at trendlines for both metrics, it seems that the world is underestimating how soon that tipping point is going to arrive.

Cost

In terms of cost, consider the following:

  • Batteries, key to storing renewable energy, are dropping in price by a rate of about 8% per year, meaning a 60 kw/h battery pack that today is a $13,600 component will cost $5880 in a decade, $2580 in twenty years, and $1080 in thirty years – we are fast approaching the point where the cost of the most expensive component of an electric vehicle is more than offset by the savings from not needing a complex engine or transmission, an exhaust system, or any of the other supporting components of a modern gasoline vehicle. Note that the 8% estimates could even be pessimistic – one study reports that electric vehicle battery pack costs dropped from $1000 per kw/h to $227 per kw/h between 2010 and 2016.
  • Solar power is following a similar trajectory, with costs declining 6-7% per year. A 2015 estimate put the cost of solar at $122 MW/h, vs natural gas at $82 MW/h, and coal at $75 MW/h. At a 7% annual improvement, the cost of solar matches that of coal and natural gas by 2022, and by 2030 solar costs would be just $41 MW/h, half that of natural gas.

The health benefits of reducing air pollution from fossil fuels are an indirect cost, but according to the US Department of Energy:

Achieving the SunShot-level solar deployment targets — 14% of U.S. electricity demand met by solar in 2030 and 27% in 2050 — could reduce cumulative power-sector GHG emissions by 10% between 2015 and 2050, resulting in savings of $238–$252 billion… This could produce $167 billion in savings from lower future health and environmental damages, or 1.4¢/kWh-solar — while also preventing 25,000–59,000 premature deaths.

Reliability

From the standpoint of reliability, the fatal flaw for renewable energy is that it’s only available when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing, but cheap batteries allow renewable energy to be stored and used whenever needed, and they also provide huge benefits for the grid. Since its inception the electrical grid has required energy to be used as soon as it is produced, so grid operators have had to execute a complex process for matching output to demand, and also have had to ensure that enough generation is available to match the highest possible load, meaning some power plants exist solely to meet demand on those few summer days when everyone is running their air conditioners. As batteries get cheaper, suddenly that’s no longer the case – instead, you store energy to handle peak loads, generation capacity just has to match average load (so inefficient power plants can be retired), and grid reliability is no longer an issue.

Reliability of cars improve when the system goes electric, too. A gasoline engine is about 20% efficient, the electric motor is closer to 75% efficient. The gasoline engine has belts, pistons, and tons of other moving parts that can fail, the electric motor is essentially a simple shaft wrapped in wires that costs far less to produce. A gasoline car requires a complex, multi-speed transmission, an electric car has a simple, single-speed transmission. A gasoline car uses oil, requires an exhaust system, and has tons of belts and hoses, an electric car has none of those things. Twenty years from now, we’ll wonder why anyone ever put up with regular trips to the mechanic.

Finally, consider home solar. Today we accept that a transformer failure or a fallen tree can mean no power for a few hours, and that a natural disaster can mean power outages for days. However, as solar and batteries drop in price, the grid starts to look kind of crazy – why would anyone pay more to have an unreliable grid connection that requires flimsy high voltage wires to be strung through the neighborhood when a system that can generate power from sunlight and store a few days worth of backup energy is available for the same (or less) money?

Why the future is awesome

The timelines above suggest that within the next twenty years a renewable energy world will beat out fossil fuels on both a cost and reliability basis. Stretch that 30-50 years, and all sorts of interesting possibilities occur – to cite one, desalination is cost-prohibitive because it is energy intensive, but if energy is cheap then a city like Los Angeles, located next to the ocean but forced to import freshwater from hundreds of miles away, could conceivably generate more freshwater than it needs and actually start exporting water to the rest of the state. Citing another interesting possibility, cheap energy might make it feasible to begin scrubbing CO2 from the atmosphere, so not only would emissions drop as fossil fuels are phased out, but mankind could actually begin to forcibly remove some of the greenhouse gases that we’ve unleashed.

Leaving the Paris Accords seems like an unnecessary, self-inflicted wound for the country, but the rate of technological advance still gives me great hope that the problems the world faces are going to be overcome, with or without support from America’s political leadership.

Moneyball IV

Posted from Culver City, California at 11:19 pm, May 8th, 2017

I promise that this will be the last post about the Browns and Moneyball for a while, but with the 2017 NFL Draft now complete (quick summary: from a math perspective, awesome draft by the Browns) I wanted to revisit the 2016 trade of the #2 pick. I get that some people believe that Carson Wentz is going to be the second coming of Peyton Manning, but statistically he seems pretty average so far, and even if he turns out to be above-average, it’s really, really tough to argue with the numbers when you look at what the Browns have gotten for trading that draft pick. Moneyball now and forever.

Browns trade: Browns receive:
  • 2016 First Round pick (#2): Carson Wentz
  • 2016 Fifth Round Pick (#141): Zack Sanchez2
  • 2016 Sixth Round pick (#176) Andy Janovich1
  • 2017 Fourth Round pick (#139): Jehu Chesson
  • 2016 First Round pick (#15): Corey Coleman1
  • 2016 Third Round pick (#76): Shon Coleman1
  • 2016 Third Round pick (#93): Cody Kessler2
  • 2016 Fourth Round pick (#114): Ricardo Louis3
  • 2016 Fourth-round pick (#129): Derrick Kindred2
  • 2016 Fifth Round pick (#154): Jordan Payton3
  • 2016 Fifth-round pick (#168): Spencer Drango2
  • 2017 First Round pick (#25): Jabrill Peppers4
  • 2017 Second Round pick (#52): Deshone Kizer1
  • 2018 First Round pick: TBD4
  • 2018 Second Round pick: TBD

1 via trade with Tennessee for 2016 First Round Pick (#8) & 2016 Sixth Round Pick (#176)
2 via trade with Carolina for 2016 Third Round Pick (#77) & 2016 Fifth Round Pick (#141)
3 via trade with Oakland for 2016 Fourth Round pick (#100)
4 via trade with Houston for 2017 First Round pick (#12)

The World is Still Mostly Awesome

Posted from Culver City, California at 9:59 pm, March 30th, 2017

There seems to be a constant undercurrent of doom and gloom in the world these days, so here are a few developments worth following for those who need reasons for optimism:

  • Today SpaceX re-used a rocket for the first time in history. The launch is a HUGE milestone towards dramatically reducing the cost of spaceflight, and a reason to believe that launch costs will drop by an order of magnitude in the next 5-10 years.
  • The Nature Conservancy recently demonstrated how floodplain restoration along the Truckee River could provide flood control, aquifer recharge, cleaner drinking water, and habitat for wildlife. If they can effectively argue that there are often greater benefits provided by “green” infrastructure instead of “grey” infrastructure then it will be very interesting to see if wetland restoration starts to become a preferred option as the nation deals with aging levees and rising seas.
  • Tesla’s Gigafactory continues to expand on its path towards becoming the world’s largest building. When complete it will produce enough batteries for 500,000 electric cars each year, and they are already producing battery cells and have plans to start churning out drive units for the upcoming Model-3 later this year.
  • I’ve been a frequent critic of Apple’s recent products and corporate decision making, but their new headquarters will be opening in April, and Apple has done an amazing job – it is probably the world’s most impressive corporate campus. The project was the last thing that Steve Jobs worked on, and seeing the finished product is a sad reminder of what the world lost when he died at an early age.
  • California high-speed rail is actually under construction, with viaducts, grade separations, and other major work throughout the Central Valley. Even if it is another decade before trains actually run, some of the improvements being made to roads and bridges as a result of this project will have immediate benefits.
  • The tomb of Jesus Christ recently underwent a lengthy archaeological renovation, with humans viewing the slab on which Jesus was believed to have been laid for the first time since at least 1555 AD. Even for those who aren’t religious, the archaeological value of studying this ancient & revered site has to be exciting.
  • Bloomberg reports that there are now more clean-energy jobs in the United States than oil or coal jobs. The federal government may not be acting to clean up the energy grid, but market forces seem to be betting heavily on clean energy options as prices for solar, wind, and other renewables continue to drop.

There are plenty more reasons not to succumb to despair about the state of the world – the comments link is available for anyone who wants to share any others and thereby help keep the world a slightly more optimistic place.

Seeing this campus nearly complete is a poignant reminder of how much the world misses Steve Jobs; even the parking garages look cool. I worked at this site back in 2001 when it was a Hewlett Packard campus.

Ryan Holliday, General Manager

Posted from San Antonio, Texas at 7:04 pm, February 20th, 2017

I’m pretty sure that writing a post that combines statistical analysis and the Cleveland Browns is a surefire way to drive away any remaining readers of this journal, but math and the NFL’s worst team are two of my favorite subjects, so against better judgement I’m going to indulge myself.

Browns fans apparently hate the idea of trading away the #1 pick in the upcoming draft, but here’s why I’d do it anyhow (see also Moneyball and Moneyball 2 for my past ramblings on this subject). The draft value chart says the #1 pick is worth 3000 points, a number that is almost certainly more than it should be, which means that the Browns should be able to make a trade similar to any of the deals in the table below. Note that in recent years teams have given up more than 3000 points, so the first pick may even be overvalued beyond what is shown below. The table shows the #1 pick from each of the last four drafts, and the players who were picked at positions equal to the value of that #1 pick. Pro-Bowlers are marked with an asterisk(*), and I’ve highlighted trades that I judged as “good” in green, “great” in bold green, “poor” in red, and “terrible” in bold red.

Trade #1 pick (3000 points) for:
  #2 (2600)
#50 (400)		 #3 (2200)
#21 (800)		 #4 (1800)
#12 (1200)		 #5 (1700)
#10 (1300)		 #6 (1600)
#8 (1400)
2016 Draft: #1 pick – Jared Goff
  Carson Wentz (QB)
Nick Martin (C)		 Joey Bosa (DE)
Will Fuller (WR)		 *Ezekial Elliott (RB)
Sheldon Rankins (DT)		 Jalen Ramsey (CB)
Eli Apple (CB)		 Ronnie Stanley (OT)
Jack Conklin (OT)
2015 Draft: #1 pick – *Jameis Winston
  Marcus Mariota (QB)
Ronald Darby (CB)		 Dante Fowler (DE)
Cedric Ogbuehi (OT)		 *Amari Cooper (WR)
Danny Shelton (DT)		 *Brandon Scherff (OT)
*Todd Gurley (RB)		 *Leonard Williams (DE)
*Vic Beasley (OLB)
2014 Draft: #1 pick – *Jadeveon Clowney
  Greg Robinson (OT)
Jeremiah Attaochu (LB)		 Blake Bortles (QB)
*Ha Ha Clinton-Dix (S)		 Sammy Watkins (WR)
*Odell Beckham, Jr (WR)		 *Khalil Mack (LB)
Eric Ebron (TE)		 Jake Matthews (OT)
Justin Gilbert (CB)
2013 Draft: #1 pick – Eric Fisher
  Luke Joeckel (OT)
Jonathan Bostic (LB)		 Dion Jordan (DE)
*Tyler Eifert (TE)		 Lane Johnson (OT)
D. J. Hayden (CB)		 *Ezekiel Ansah (DT)
Chance Warmack (G)		 Barkevious Mingo (DE)
Tavon Austin (WR)

I realize that teams rarely possess two high first-round draft picks, and thus that the table above is purely theoretical, but it gives an idea of how out-of-whack the valuation on the top pick actually is. In the past four drafts, the results of making the hypothetical trade would have been:

  • great: 3 times
  • good: 5 times
  • about even: 9 times
  • poor: 0 times
  • terrible: 3 times

There are exceptions – in 2012 everyone in the world agreed that it would be insane to pass on Andrew Luck – but this draft doesn’t have a can’t-miss quarterback, so if someone offered a deal I’d look at the numbers above and almost certainly make the trade, rather than risking everything on the hope that Myles Garrett won’t be the next Courtney Brown.