The Skeptical Optimist

Switched to the Mac

Eleven weeks ago I mentioned I might switch to the Mac.  After a lot of mostly successful experimenting with my new MacBook, I went back to the Apple store last week and purchased a Mac Mini for my desktop.  The Mini is powerful, but its dimensions are just barely larger than Adam Smith's 1776 book, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.  (In other words, it's small enough to fit unobtrusively on, or under, the desktop.) 

The PC is now unplugged; the main thing I'll miss about it is the street mapping software (...that's a hole in the Mac software suite that Google maps does not fill).  I wonder how Microsoft would respond if I asked them when they plan to make MS Streets & Trips available for the Mac. 

(Actually, I had a great run with PCs, but I made myself a promise back in 1982 that I'd switch platforms every 25 years.) 

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Coming soon...

Is economic doomsday just a decade or two away?  If so, is my generation the culprit?  I'll have a better idea in a few days.

After finishing a few more cleanup tasks on the switch, I'll finish digging into the baby boomer demographics question, which I've had in the works for a while now.  (As you may recall, that problem is supposedly going to crater the economy and force our grandchildren back to subsistence farming, according to our fear-peddling politicians and journalists.)  I'm approaching it from a different angle: instead of figuring out how much everyone's taxes will have to increase, I'm figuring out how much productivity-driven growth it would take to make it a non-problem.  The doomsters tend to bury their economic growth assumptions, I've noticed; but I'm making growth and productivity the centerpiece.  Should be ready in a few days.  (Graphics and fonts will look a little different from now on.)

Planet-friendliness in China and the USA

China's Premier Wen Jiabao, in the same article I mentioned in my previous post, also mentioned how diligently his government is going to act in order to cut energy consumption from 2006-2010; specifically:

We have set a target for cutting energy consumption per unit of GDP by 20 percent from 2006 to 2010. Although the Kyoto Protocol has not set obligatory targets for developing countries, the Chinese government is acting with a sense of responsibility to the world and is earnestly fulfilling its due international obligations.

If China pulls that off, or even a substantial portion of it, I have little doubt that world opinion will smile on that country for being so green-conscious.  After reading that, I thought to myself, Just think how much cleaner and fresher the atmosphere will be, relatively anyway.  If China can act with that kind of responsibility to the world, why can’t the good ol’ USA? 

But before I allowed my emotional self to turn green with envy that China, not the USA, would get the world’s approving smile, I told my analytical self to check the numbers before jumping to negative conclusions about my country’s performance regarding energy efficiency. 

When Premier Jiabao said “energy consumption per unit of GDP” I took it for granted he was talking about real GDP, which is adjusted for inflation.  (Otherwise, all a country would have to do is inflate its currency to get more “energy efficient,” and I’m sure the Kyoto crowd would call a foul on that; I would, in any event.)  So I grabbed some of the data I used for article 3 of my energy series last year, and focused my attention on the USA’s energy usage per dollar of real GDP, year by year for a half century. 

The chart below tells the story.  What a surprise: since 1971, the USA has reduced its energy consumption (using China's definition) by 49.1 percent!  That’s a steady, long-run average improvement of 2.01% per year.  I’m glad I checked the numbers before jumping to the false conclusion that China deserves energy accolades and we don’t. 

Here’s the chart; click to enlarge. 

Conclusion
China is targeting a 20% improvement over four years.  The USA has already achieved a 49% improvement over thirty-four years—and we’re still improving steadily.  And we did it without any “obligatory targets.”  By Premier Jiabao’s logic, that’s “acting with a sense of responsibility to the world.” 

When one considers the size of our economy, a decades-long track record of steady improvement should be enough to get us some kind of planet-friendliness award, don’t you think? 

Things keep getting better—so why aren't we happier?

Most Americans, most of the time, have been getting better and better off in most aspects of life—and this has been happening for decades.  Shouldn't that be good news to our politicians, newspaper editors, and journalists?  Their silence on that subject is deafening. 

Each day, during midday exercise time, I catch up on various topics by listening to podcasts I select and download earlier in the day.  Yesterday I discovered one that's a must-listen for three types of Americans: optimists, pessimists, and fence-sitters.  Be sure to allocate 55 minutes to this listening session, because it's divided into two equally important halves:

• Why most aspects of our lives have been improving for most of us for decades, even though we don't hear much about it from our politicians and journalists; and . . .

• Why we are getting more and more unhappy—in spite of these improving conditions.

[The link to the podcast is at the very bottom of this article.]

Here's one excerpt with which I certainly cannot argue:

Institutionally, reporters, editors, and political figures just can't deal with evidence of progress—whereas they're very comfortable with scandal, corruption, claims of doomsday, etc.  There's a cohort of American life that seems to like scandal and doomsday.

That is Gregg Easterbrook talking, and the excerpt is from the first half of the interview. (Easterbrook is a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution.)  After his recent book was published—The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse—he learned that, paradoxically, "good news either scares people or makes them angry."  (I've independently observed that phenomenon, by the way.) 

The second half of the interview is just as interesting.  He mentions a relatively new development in psychology: research into the causes of happiness.  Research reveals several apparent causes, one of which is that the happiness level within different cultures is significantly higher "where honesty is highly regarded."  He points to Scandinavia as a leading example: telling a lie in that culture is regarded as scandalous and repulsive.  The high priority they place on truthfulness is one reason why Scandinavians are among the happiest people in the world.  It's not a coincidence, it's almost certainly cause-effect.  [Side note: I'd personally prefer a world in which a higher proportion of cultures and individuals held truthfulness as top priority, but my experience tells me that's wishful thinking.] 

The entire podcast interview is at this web page.  Be sure to listen to the whole thing on your computer or your iPod. 

Switching to a Mac, maybe

I’ll be spending a few hours in the Apple store today, to decide if I want to get a MacBook to run in parallel with my PC setup for a few weeks.  I’ve been a PC user for a quarter century—but as I age, I am more and more interested in things that “just work.”  I’m also more likely to give top priority to things that save me time, versus things that save me money—if I'm forced to choose. 

We’ll see; this should be an educational experiment, if nothing else.  Advice from anyone who’s been through this exercise is most welcome.

Another minor delay

Complications from surgery of three weeks ago are taking me back to the surgeon today.  This time it’s supposed to be easy, so I should be out of action for just a day or two.  In any case, all this hospital time is really eating into blog production.  Sorry.

Steve

Minor delay

I had some unplanned surgery yesterday.  Blogging will be light for a while, and "Ironies" series will be later than planned.  Recovery is underway.

Steve

Minor follow-up

As I was promised five months ago, my press coverage will hit the WSJ soon. 

Now the only loose end still hanging out there is whether or not my press release was corrected in time, as I had urgently requested last September; see my letter at the bottom of this article.  I might never find out, judging from the way things have been going inside the Beltway. 

Anyway, here's a sneak preview of the upcoming media splash.  Not sure yet if I'll have to hire someone to help handle all the fan mail this will generate.

Eyes-free reading: Highly recommended

I bought an iPod Shuffle, and after just a few days, I’m hooked—even though I haven’t downloaded song number one yet.  Come to think of it, I might never download any music to it.  Reason: I’d rather listen to Russ Roberts interview Milton Friedman while I’m outside walking, or driving to the store.  It’s eyes-free reading, using a little device that clips onto my shirt, and it’s a great new invention.   [What'll they think of next?]

I’m quickly finding out there’s a podcast (mp3 file) on just about any subject I’d like to hear about; iTunes (for the PC) makes it easy to pack a lot of them onto the device.  Looks like I’m about two years behind the leading edge on the podcast front—but it was the convenient, very-small size of the new device that got me over the hump. 

In case you’re interested, here are my two favorites so far:

• The Political Economy of Power – if nothing else, listen to this one for sure.

• Milton Friedman on Money – very informative summary by the man himself.

Several other good ones are available at this page.   

That’s it.  Just passing on a “new” discovery.

Becker/Posner remembering Milton Friedman

Don’t miss this article.

New policy: Comments are on

UPDATED, 3/4/08:  Comments are on; I get an email notification of each one.  High-integrity people are more than welcome here.  Not welcome here are smart-alecs, trolls, or (especially) people who refuse to reveal their real names and backgrounds to me when I ask privately. As you compose your comments, the best approach is to assume that I will ask you for those.  That information, if given, will be kept private; refusal to give the information will tell me just about everything I need to know. 

Because of a new constraint on the time I have for managing this blog, I've had to develop the habit of swiftly banning low-integrity cowards -- and it has been working well.  I wish I'd implemented that policy sooner. 

Aside from the usual things that get commenters banned (profanity, etc.), one of my pet peeves is the ad hominem attack, also know as the personal attack.  It’s when somebody finds it more difficult to address the topic than to attack the person who raised the topic, and even college professors have displayed a startling immaturity by resorting to it (... "so-and-so is the stupidest person on the planet" or "dumbest person alive", etc.).  At several other blogs it has pretty much ruined things for objective commenters, but I won’t let that happen at my blog.  Also, if you want to call me names, feel free, but please use email instead of comments.  It’s easy; my email is undisguised (thanks to gmail’s excellent spam filter).

UPDATE, 3/30/07:  Also, if you want to preach, or to argue solely by quoting others, feel free to put that stuff in a private email to me, instead of posting it as a public comment.