Half Sigma

Can Iran hurt us militarily?

This is not something the MSM has been talking about, but after doing some research I think the resounding answer is YES.

Yes, we kicked Saddam's butt easily. Twice. Saddam may have been the worst military tactician the world has ever known. Both times he let us build up a huge force on his borders, and he let us attack first with our overwhelming airpower, and he tried to fight with us on our own terms.

Airplane against airplane, ship against ship, infantry man against infranty man, we can crush anything in the Middle East. But if the people running Iran's military have any sense, they will not let us attack first with overwhelming airpower, and they will fight asymmetrically against us.

Iran's biggest military buildup has been in the acquisition of missiles. Missiles are asymmetric weapons. They don't have to be as good as our missiles. They just have to be better than our defenses. Two Exocet missiles knocked out the USS Stark in the 1980s, and one Exocet missile (out of two fired) sunk the HMS Sheffield in the Falkland Islands war. Iran has hundreds of Exocet and Chinese anti-ship missiles.

If the U.S. has a naval fleet in the Perian Gulf, it could be a sitting duck for Iranian missiles. For our defense we have one or more Aegis cruisers that are supposed to be able to shoot down incoming missiles and protect the aircraft carrier. But who knows if this will really work in combat? If Iran launches a big attack with dozens of missiles simultaneously coming at our fleet, can the defense systems really shoot all of them down?

Iran has a lot of the latest Chinese missiles, and sure it's easy to say "ha, Chinese missiles must be crap," but Chinese engineers are pretty smart (visit the engineering department at any American college and count how many white American engineering students you see there) and if they can make DVD players and computer chips, they can also make effective missiles capable of shooting down our ships and planes. Once again, the Chinese missiles don't have to be as good as the best American missiles (but who says they aren't?), they just have to be better than our anti-missile defenses.

If Iran attacks first, there is the serious possiblity that the U.S. could suffer the worst naval defeat since Pearl Harbor.

Thomas Friedman is a moron (a post about oil)

This is Thomas Friedman’s suggested State of the Union address for Bush:

My fellow Americans, on May 25, 1961, President Kennedy gave an extraordinary State of the Union address in which he called on the nation to marshal all of its resources to put a man on the Moon. By setting that lofty goal, Kennedy was trying to summon all our industrial and scientific talent, and a willingness to sacrifice financially, to catch up with the Soviet Union, which had overtaken America in the field of large rocket engines.

"While we cannot guarantee that we shall one day be first," Kennedy said, "we can guarantee that any failure to make this effort will make us last."

I come to you this evening with a similar challenge. President Kennedy was worried about the threat that communism posed to our way of life. I am here to tell you that if we don't move away from our dependence on oil and shift to renewable fuels, it will change our way of life for the worse - and soon - much, much more than communism ever could have. Making this transition is the calling of our era.

There is no doubt that government can create huge engineering feats when it steals labor from its citizenry. We’ve known this ever since the ancient Egyptians used slave labor to build the Great Pyramids. It was many thousands of years before mankind built another structure that tall.

Using tax dollars (stolen from the citizenry) to send a man to the moon was the modern equivalent of the building of the Great Pyramid. A huge waste of public money that accomplished nothing except the bragging rights to say “wow, we did it.” Who knows if another human will ever be sent to the moon? So far it has been 37 years since the first moon landing and we currently have no capability of repeating that feat.

Government is good at spending money, but very bad at actually making things more efficient. The free market makes things more efficient. We sent men to the moon, but we were unable to do it economically. Sure, government can reduce our nation’s fuel consumption, but only through an incredible waste of non-fuel resources.

Friedman talks about the problem of Middle East countries getting rich from their oil sales, but there is no U.S. policy that can change the laws of nature. Oil is an incredibly useful resource. That’s not going to change. Not now, not ever. Countries that have that resource are going to make money selling it to someone and there is nothing that Congress or the President can do to stop that from happening short of military conquest of every oil producing nation.

Hamas wins an election

I have never blogged about Israel until now. It seems pointless. I'd just get pissed. I get pissed at people in the West who insist that Israel is just as culpable in this conflict as the Palestinians and other Muslim Arabs. And pissed at Israelis who are are so full of liberal guilt that they let everyone walk all over them.

Israeli spokespeople will often say "no other nation would put up with..." and they are right, no other nation would put up with whatever shit they are taking that week they way the Israelis put up with it. But the problem is, no one really believes it because they can't imagine any nation acting so against its self-interest. For example, after the U.S. suffered a terrorist attack we responded by taking over two whole countries. So the world figures that if Israel doesn't just solve the Palestinian problem by shoving all the Palestinians into Jordan, it must be because the Israelis know they are in the wrong.

The majority of Palestinians would kick the Israelis into the sea, the stated policy of the organization they just voted for. So they figure that the Israelis would do the same to them, and the only reason they don't do it is because they can't. They have a complete lack of understanding about Jewish liberal guilt.

So anyway, what happens now that Hamas is in charge? Probably nothing much. Prior to the Olso Accords the Palestinians were committed to the destruction of Israel and Israel put up with it without doing much about it, so the same thing will happen now. The only thing different today is that there's a greater chance that Palestinian terrorists might acquire a nuclear weapon.

Political thought: emotion not logic

Via Marginal Revolution, I came across an article in the NY Times explaining how MRI evidence shows that partisan thought is based on emotion and not logic.

I explained the same thing in a previous post about politics and genes. We form our political beliefs based on genetic predispositions, and then we adhere to them emotionally without logical thought.

From today's article:

It is possible to override these biases, Dr. Westen said, "but you have to engage in ruthless self reflection, to say, 'All right, I know what I want to believe, but I have to be honest.' "

UPDATE

Some commenters have questioned the link between genes and political belief.

Besides reading the post I linked to above, I also urge you to read this post by the "Libertarian Man of Mystery" which is a truly excellent post explaining how the genes which cause guilt are the same genes which cause liberalism, and the post further explains why Jewish people feel the most guilty and therefore are the most liberal.

Animal personality

An article in the Sunday magazine of the normally liberal New York Times is about animal personalities;

Alison Bell has done related experiments with sticklebacks. It has long been clear to researchers that fish that have lived for many generations in the proximity of dangerous predators are less bold and less aggressive than animals that have lived relatively risk-free. What Bell discovered is that those cautious tendencies outlast the presence of risk, even by a generation. When she moved sticklebacks who had always lived in a high-risk environment into a low-risk environment, she found that not only did they retain their cautious tendencies, but so did their offspring.

So we learn that fish are extraverts or introverts just like humans. And that it’s a genetic trait that shows up in just a few generations of living in a different environment.

If personality is a genetic trait in fish, why not in humans? Wouldn’t humans living in different environments eventually develop personality traits which provide a better survival advantage in their environments? Isn’t it logical to conclude that, after tens of thousands of years, humans living in Africa would develop genetically different personalities than humans living in Europe or in Asia?

Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits

Check out my review of Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits in my Contarian Investing Blog.

Oregon not about federalism

Professor Bainbridge has a post about Scalia and federalism as it relates to the Gonazales v. Oregon case (which I blogged about two days ago).

Based on the Raich case, I agree that Thomas is really the only friend of Federalism left on the Court. Hopefully Alito will join him, but who knows?

But Oregon is not a case about federalism, it is a case of statutory interpretation, and what it really stands for is the rule that, in the case of vaguely worded statutes, judges will interpret the statute in a manner consistent with their personal policy preferences. Roberts and Scalia oppose assisted suicide for religious reasons, and presumably Souter, Ginsburg and Stevens are anti-religious and want to stick it to the Christian Right.

Should prostitution be legalized?

Warren Meyer says that prostitution should be legalized.

I read his post, and thought about it, and now I wonder how it makes sense that sex between two men is a constitutionally protected right while sex between a man and a woman where some money is paid to the woman is grounds for imprisonment.

It isn't very consistent. I prefer it when our laws make sense.

Clarence Thomas, most brilliant Justice

Thomas has been on a tear lately, making himself stand out as the true thinker on the Court and relegating Scalia to the role of ideaological hack.

A few months ago, the Supreme Court decided Gonzales v. Raich in which the majority held (with Scalia being part of the majority) that the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) gave a regulatory agency the power to overrule a state's decriminalizaton of marijuana for medical purposes.

Thomas dissented based on ennumerated powers issues. He said that growing marijuana for personal use was an intrastate issue and outside the reach of the interstate commerce clause.

Today, Thomas dissents in Gonzales v. Oregon in which the Supreme Court ruled that the CSA does not grant the authority to prohibit doctors from prescribing medicine for suicide purposes if state law permits it.

Has Thomas somehow flip-flopped on the issues? Not at all! If you read Thomas' dissent, it's clear that he's dissenting in order to call out the hypocrisy of the majority who interpret the CSA based on their idealogical whim and not on sound legal principles. Basically he's saying to the majority, "hey you morons, you decided in Raich that that the CSA gives the government power to do whatever it wants with regards to regulating drugs, you're a bunch of hypocrites to suddenly change your mind here. I'm just agreeing with your first dumb decision because of stare decisis."

If you read the comments over at the The Volokh Conspiracy, you'll see that other people agree with my take.

Legalizing polygamy

In his excellent highly recommended blog voluntaryXchange, finance professor David Tufte writes about the coming legalization of polygamy, which he disproves of for the following reason:

Just in case we're missing the point here, tolerant people should recognize that polygamy means that the husband gets to choose when additional wives get added to the relationship. We need to recognize that this would allow one party of a contract to unilaterally decrease the property right of the second party in favor of an as yet uninvolved third party. Most people view that as a form of fraud.

The above probably accurately captures how polygamy is practiced in the backdesert of the Four Corners states, as well as in other parts of the world like Saudi Arabia, but I would assume that if it were legalized in the United States it would be legalized in such a way to be fair and equitable to both sexes. Every partner in the "marriage" would be required to approve of a new addition, and there wouldn't be any discrimination by sex. So a woman could have two husbands, or three women and four men could all join together in one big polygamous marriage.

This is the type of marriage that was endorsed by libertarian science fiction writer Robert Heinlein.

For the record, I previously wrote why legalizing gay marriage is not a libertarian position, so the same applies to polygamous marriage.

If polygamy were legalized, I think the type of group marriage that Heinlein envisioned would remain extremely rare because it just seems to go against human nature. Much more common would be the "traditional" one man many wives form of polygamy, and this would have a negative impact on society because it would mean that there wouldn't be enough women to go around for all the men who want to get married.

So I am opposed to legalizing polygamy for the same reasons I'm opposed to legalizing gay marriage: it's not a libertarian position and its effects are bad for society. However, I see no logical reason why gay marriage should be legal but not polygamy.

Contrarian investing vs. value investing

Confused about the differences? Read my post about value investing vs. contrarian investing at my Contrarian Investing Blog.

Suburbs and the free market

There is a commentary in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal entitled The War Against Suburbia. Joel Kotkin writes:

Suburbia, the preferred way of life across the advanced capitalist world, is under an unprecedented attack -- one that seeks to replace single-family residences and shopping centers with an "anti-sprawl" model beloved of planners and environmental activists.

And then the rest of the article is a much longer explanation of the same. But a lot of it is wrong.

Suburbia is not a natural creation of the free market, but rather was highly influenced by government policies. In suburbia, the local government generally prohibits the construction of dense housing, so people are given the choice of buying a single family house or living somewhere else.

The reason why cities emptied can be largely attributed to another government policy: integration of schools via forced busing. White middle class families fled the cities in the 1950s so that their children wouldn’t have to attend schools with ghetto blacks.

In the Washington, DC area where I lived until this summer, developers would have loved to build high density housing, but every community in the DC area has a NIMBY attitude towards high rise buildings. And there is an archaic federal law prohibiting the construction of tall buildings in the city of DC itself.

In the Hell’s Kitchen area of Manhattan where I live now, developers would love to tear down the old tenements and build modern high rise apartment buildings, but zoning laws prohibit this. In the article, Mr. Kotkin writes, “since 2000 ... New York City has gained less than 95,000 people while the suburban rings have added over 270,000.” He offers this as evidence that people prefer suburbs, but how can people move into the city if the city won’t allow the construction of more housing?

It seems to me that there would be less suburbanization if the free market were allowed to determine what kind of housing people live in.

Alito blogger unveiled

The Alito blogger has been outed. He is really part-time playwright Andrew Case, a guy who doesn't even have a law degree.

I wrote a play once in my high school Creative Writing class (which I took with famous author Frank McCourt who back then was just a high school teacher), but it really sucked.

Is Google the most overvalued stock?

This topic is addressed at my new Contrarian Investing Blog: Is Google the most overvalued stock?

Overpaid CEOs

Read about overpaid CEOs in my new Contrarian Investing Blog.

Big Mike's Contrarian Investing Blog

Big Mike's Wedding Blog was a complete failure, so I decided to recycle the url and use it for Big Mike's Contrarian Investing Blog.

So now there won't be any more investing posts at Half Sigma, you'll have to visit the investing blog. This blog will stick to politics and other miscellaneous non-investment related topics.

A semi-famous person leaves a comment on my blog

Johnny "the cop who wouldn't quit" Bonds (so named by author Rick Nelson in the book The Cop Who Wouldn't Quit) has left a comment on my old post about Mike Davis aka Walter Waldhauser, the nefarious Texas murderer and one of the nicest guys I attended law school with. Scroll down below his comment and read my reply.

Samuel Alito blogs from BlackBerry

Samuel Alito has been updating his blog from his BlackBerry during the hearings.

Anti-law school blog post

I randomly discovered an anti-law school blog post, and such posts are always worth linking to.

The same blogger has a post about internet sex photos posted by students attending my alma mater.

Buy LIZ

I recommend that you by Liz Claiborne (NYSE: LIZ). The most recent quote is $35.60. The low P/E ratio with consistently solid income year after year makes the company a decent but boring value stock.

But I am excited about LIZ's ownership of Juicy Couture which could be the next Big Brand.

China and Microsoft censor blogs

Microsoft has been censoring Chinese blogs in order to appease the Chinese government. Chinese bloggers are outraged after Microsoft shut down an especially popular Chinese blog located at MSN Spaces. Via Instapundit, you may read reactions from Chinese bloggers over at Rebecca MacKinnon's blog (post 1, post 2). You can even read about it in the New York Times.

What do I get out of this?

(1) Big companies like Microsoft are not the friends of freedom or even the friends of the United States. They are simply out to make money, and Microsoft is making zillions of times more money selling Windows and Office to Chinese customers than it makes from MSN Spaces.

(2) I would like to say that bloggers should support small independent companies such as Six Apart, the company that operates Typepad which I use to blog. But Typepad isn't a very good solution for Chinese bloggers because of the cost. $80/year is nothing to an American, but it's prohibitively expensive to someone in China. Only big companies with ulterior motives such as Google with its Blogger service or Microsoft with its MSN Spaces service can afford to give away blogging software and bandwidth for free.

(3) China is gearing up to be the next world superpower. We should be worried about this.

Joseph Farah blasts Republicans

Joseph Farah has a damning editorial blasting the Republican party:

"Republican" no longer connotes smaller government, more freedom, less intrusion in our personal lives and a more vibrant economy as it did after eight years of Ronald Reagan. "Republican" today more likely connotes – even for those who tend to vote for the party – incompetence, corruption, compromise, betrayal.

Joseph Farah is from the "religious right." It has been my theory that the Republican party has been hijacked by the Christian movement and consequenly is no longer responsive to traditional Republican principles like small government and free market economics. Outlawing abortion and promoting "faith based initiatives" has become more important.

Farah is definitely one of the best thinkers from the Christian Right, and I'm glad he realizes the Republican party is no longer right wing.

David Lat to become Wonkette?

Underneath Their Robes is back online, and David Lat will soon be moving on to better things, taking over for Wonkette, according to the Wall Street Journal Law Blog.

I saw good news that Wonkette is being replaced by a conservative. And good for David Lat that things worked out for him.

And sour grapes that no one pays any attention to me.

Houses are expensive these days

Confused about a recent page one NY Times article which proclaimed that houses are actually more affordable today than in the 1980s? Huh, aren't we in a huge uprecedented housing bubble?

Balasco explains why the article is bogus.

Merit based college aid on the rise

According to the NY Times, small colleges are increasing their use of merit aid:

So prevalent has the practice become that over the last decade, the amount of money granted in merit scholarships nationally grew to $7.3 billion in 2004 from $1.2 billion in 1994, said Kenneth E. Redd, director of research and policy analysis at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators.

The amount of need-based assistance has also grown, though at a slower rate. Need-based grants, including those from private universities and from the state and federal governments, increased to $39.1 billion in 2004 from $18.6 billion in 1994, a 110 percent increase, Mr. Redd said.

I find the increase in merit aid to be a positive trend. It makes college more affordable for those who are best able to benefit from college.

However, the increase in need based aid is worrisome. I hope the need based aid isn’t going to marginal students who would be better off not attending college at all.

I also hope that someone isn't turning down Harvard for a free ride at a crappy place like "Allegheny College." That would be a big mistake.