Invention, the Product of Copying

Part three of "Everything's a Remix," via the Dish.  This is interesting, and bucks the idea of individual geniuses coming up with grand new ideas on their own:


Everything is a Remix Part 3 from Kirby Ferguson on Vimeo.

Finally Caught Up

We've finally gotten caught up on our farm workload.  We've got the nitrogen on the corn, and the wheat is harvested.  The double-crop beans are sowed.  My first cutting of hay is made.  Now we can get stuff repaired and put away.  It was a long, drawn-out spring, but we finally got everything done.

Naked Capitalism Link of the Day

Today's link: Shale Gas: Not a 'Game Changer' After All, at Scitizen.  It is another story questioning the industry line on Shale gas as the solution to our problems.  I tend to also be a skeptic on the subject.  We'll see how it plays out, but I think we'll see rapid production decreases from producing wells.

Remembering Gettysburg

Paul Krugman marks the 148th anniversary of Pickett's Charge with YouTube clips of the Charge in the movie, Gettysburg.  My plan yesterday was to remember the battle at Little Round Top, and the bayonet charge of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and the 20th Maine. I consider July 2nd the most significant of the days of the battle, but I got busy sowing double-crop soybeans, and didn't get it posted.  Here it is:



I still don't understand what Bobby Lee was thinking on the 3rd. But I think that July 4, 1863 is probably the most significant date in our country's history, after July 4, 1776. The surrender of Vicksburg, combined with the rebel retreat from their defeat at Gettysburg, marked the climax of the worst event in American history. From then on out, the war was just dragging out the inevitable end. It took nearly two more years, and thousands of lives, but chances of rebel victory ended on that day.

Womens' Economic Roles and Agricultural Practices

at Naked Capitalism:

A number of scholars have argued that these differences can be explained by cultural values. However this leaves the questions of where these values come from. Ester Boserup (1970) in her path-breaking book Women’s Role in Economic Development argues that gender role differences have their origins in different forms of agriculture practiced traditionally.

In particular, she identifies important differences between shifting and plough cultivation. The former, which uses hand-held tools like the hoe and the digging stick, is labour intensive and women actively participate in farm work. The latter, in contrast, is more capital intensive, using the plough to prepare the soil. Unlike the hoe or digging stick, the plough requires significant upper body strength, grip strength, and burst of power, which are needed to either pull the plough or control the animal that pulls it.

Because of these requirements, when plough agriculture is practiced, men have an advantage in farming relative to women. Also reinforcing this gender-bias in ability is the fact that when the plough is used, there is less need for weeding, a task typically undertaken by women and children. In addition, child-care, a task almost universally performed by women, is most compatible with activities that can be stopped and resumed easily and do not put children in danger. These are characteristics that are satisfied for hoe agriculture, but not for plough agriculture since large animals are typically used to pull the plough.

In a recent study (Alesina et al. 2011) we test Boserup’s hypothesis. The idea is that this division of labour then generated norms about the appropriate role of women in society. Societies characterised by plough agriculture, and a resulting gender-based division of labour, developed the belief that the natural place for women is within the home. These cultural beliefs tend to persist even if the economy moves out of agriculture, affecting the participation of women in activities performed outside of the home, such as market employment, entrepreneurship, and participation in politics.

Interesting.  That isn't something I would have considered.

An Argument I Don't Understand

Peter Treadway:

The US is no virgin here. The US has legally defaulted twice, the first time when the gold clause was eliminated from debt obligations in 1934 and in 1971 when President Nixon refused to honor the Bretton Woods rule that the US sell its gold to foreign nations at $35 per ounce. And a dollar in 2010 was worth 4.6 cents as compared with $1.00 in 1914 (see mykindred.com/cloud/TX/Documents/dollar/). In 1914 the traditional near- zero-inflation gold standard was jettisoned and the Federal Reserve was established.

I don't understand what the point is about the dollar being worth 4.6 cents as compared to 1914.  The only income figure I can find for 1914 is that the average salary was $627 a year.  That would compute to $13,630 per year using the 4.6 cents number.  If the dollar was still worth a dollar, and we were making $627 per year, would we be better off than we are now.  I know wages could grow because of greater productivity, but if your earnings keep up with inflation, and your assets grow in value because of inflation, what is the major concern with inflation?  It is only when you own bonds or hold other peoples debts when inflation attacks your holdings.  I think right now, we could use some inflation, if it actually went into wages.

Why Did the U.S. Institute a Welfare State?

The Washington Post, via Mark Thoma:

The specter of a European social order, with societies irredeemably divided between aristocrats and a permanent underclass, seemed to have arrived on U.S. shores. Wealthy Americans began to fear for the stability of the social order.
What force, the wealthy asked in desperation, might mitigate the social chaos and misery, and mute what one public official called “the antagonism between rich and poor”?
Today, new fortunes have been accumulated that rival those of the Gilded Age. Some of that wealth, possessed by people like Charles G. Koch and David H. Koch or Peter G. Peterson, has been used to promote cuts to social spending. Before these opponents and their allies in Congress move forward with the dismantling of the welfare state, however, they might think harder about the reasons such policies were put in place.
The Gilded Age plutocrats who first acceded to a social welfare system and state regulations did not do so from the goodness of their hearts. They did so because the alternatives seemed so much more terrifying.

No kidding.  The welfare state benefits those who have the most.  It protects them from mobs taking what they have. 

Commodity Stocks and Price Swings

Greed, Green and Grains:

In just the last couple weeks corn prices have fallen from nearly $8/bushel to about $6.15.  All of that is due to a rather small amount of information about the progress of this year's crop.  Yes, there were reports of flooding and late plantings, but that kind of thing rarely has much effect on the overall crop production.  The late plantings just set up even more volatility going forward, since the plants will be  susceptible to extreme heat in July and August.

This volatility is exactly what economic models predict when inventories are low and cannot buffer weather shocks.  I expect to see even larger swings in late July and August, because it's weather in these months, and particularly the amount of extreme heat in the Midwest, that will determine the size of the corn and soybean crops.

But this volatility does provide a teachable moment:  it shows how sensitive prices are to small quantity changes.  That sensitivity provides some indication of how much ethanol could be influencing food prices globally.  And while long-run sensitivities are likely less than those in the short run, it also shows us how sensitive food commodity prices could be to even modest climate change impacts on US and world agriculture.

I don't really have much handle on what the effects of climate change could be on agriculture, but any more than very minor change could be disastrous for production in the Eastern Corn Belt.  Our heavy clay soils would be brutal if we began getting more wet springs like this one.  That could put us out of being a productive corn growing region. 

Rebels of the Sacred Heart

Today is the Feast of the Sacred Heart in the Catholic Church.  This may be heretical, but I like the song, so here it is, even though the video quality isn't so good (somewhat NSFW, some f-bombs):

NBA Accounting

How and Why an NBA Team Makes a $7 Million Profit Look Like a $28 Million Loss, at Deadspin, via Ritholtz.

Crooked bookkeeping?  No, never.  What would owners have to gain by claiming a loss? Hmmm....