There are so many things I don’t understand I would hardly know where to start but one particular issue I don’t understand is those who think we need more socialism. There are only two known ways of allocating resources: markets or politically. When resources are allocated politically the only people who really benefit are those doing the allocating.

I completely understand dissatisfaction with the results when markets allocate resources. That’s why practically all modern economies are hybrids. For example, I think that imposing regulations and inspections on food and pharmaceuticals is completely reasonable. Those inspections and regulations necessarily engender distortions in the market that require further interventions. The art of government is a constant balancing act, requiring insight, deftness, persistence, and attention to detail, all qualities sadly lacking in our present Congress.

IMO what we actually need is not more allocation of resource politically but a greater willingness on the part of the Congress to offset the adverse consequences of their own interventions. But that’s the matter for a different post.

This post started off as a reaction to this piece at RealClearPolicy by Randal O’Toole but it has transmogrified into musings on transportation, infrastructure, and politics.

Did you realize that the House had passed an infrastructure spending bill? Me, neither. Or that the bill they had passed leaned so heavily on inter-city rail transport? Although I like and have used inter-city rail transport, I recognize that it is not particularly practical, especially for freight. Buses are more efficient for passenger travel; trucks for freight. Leaning into inter-city rail, particularly for passenger traffic, only makes sense in the Boston to Washington corridor. It is another case of what I have deemed “One Size Fits New York”.

Infrastructure spending bills serve many purposes. They are seen as a way of stimulating the economy, particularly by folk Keynesians of the stamp of those in the Congress on both sides of the aisle. Genuine Keynesian stimulus requires different circumstances than those we face right now. For one thing for there to be a multiplier (the near term benefits exceed the near term costs) we would need to be making more of the things we buy in the United States. For another much of the decline in aggregate demand is due to uncertainty about the future which an infrastructure spending bill of any sort will do little to quell.

Such spending bills are also ways of channeling money to political allies. They are basically a form of corruption. Infrastructure spending bills are also political statements.

As much as anything else infrastructure spending bills are predictions of future value. All told I can hardly think of a worse time for a major infrastructure spending bill than today.

Due to the way construction is done in the 21st century it would create few jobs, little equipment would be purchased, and very few people would actually benefit for reasons I outlined above. If you had asked me a year ago about the future of transport my answer would have been nothing like my answer today.

Do you really think that people are going to want to be crammed into crowded conditions in airports, railway stations, passenger aircraft, or railway cars over the next year or so? In one year? In ten years? I don’t know about you but I am seeing television advertisements for driving vacations. My point is not that personal transport is better than rail or air transport. It is that right now the future is just too uncertain for confident predictions.

Why not concentrate investment in areas we are confident will be useful over the productive life of the structures being built? The power grid, Internet connectivity, improved sewers. Speculation inter-city rail seems remarkably imprudent.

But it’s an election year. The only thing likely to be of any concern is the value of legislation as a political statement.

In his reminiscence of Carl Reiner in the New York Times Steve Martin explains succinctly not just the influence that Mr. Reiner had on him but something I have preached here for years:

I’ve heard several people say Carl was like a father to them. But, to me, Carl was not fatherly. He was exemplar. Five years and four films later, I was a different person because of a subtle osmosis of traits from Carl to me. Carl’s manner on the set taught me how to behave on the set. His interaction with people gave me a template of how to be better, nicer, how to lead with kindness. His directorial results were the same as the nastier directors I ran into later in my career. He taught me about modesty, too. I called him late one evening to discuss the next day’s shooting. I asked, “Am I interrupting you?” He said, “No, I’m just lying here going through a litany of my failures.”

When I perform comedy, I can still hear echoes of my influences coming through. Jack Benny, certainly, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Lenny Bruce, Steve Allen, Carl Reiner, too. But it is not Carl’s comedic advice I cherish. Rather, it was how he affected my everyday life, the part that has nothing to do with movies or acting. Sometimes I deal with people in meetings, social dinners and plain-old conversation with a buoyancy foreign to me and realize, “Oh, that’s the way Carl would have done it.”

In your actions model the behavior that you think is right, that you want to see in others. In my behavior I follow the great examples I have had in my life—my mother and father, teachers, and friends. Role models. That, my friends, is immortality.

This article by Nicole Wetsman at The Verge recounts how physicians have learned to treat COVID-19 the hard way. All of the methods described in the article have been mentioned here at one time or another but they’re all collected in a single place in the article which is handy.

I’m afraid that providers will continue to learn how to treat patients with COVID-19 for the foreseeable future.

These remarks from Chris von Csefalvay at City Journal should give us pause:

The March 25 order by New York governor Andrew Cuomo and state health chief Howard Zucker mandated that nursing homes and LTCFs accept patients discharged from hospitals, even if they received only emergency care and were still infectious; it is now reported that 6,300 Covid patients were sent to nursing homes throughout the state. The motivation behind the order was understandable: in late March, public concern was high that Covid-19 cases would overwhelm New York’s hospital capacity. Yet, despite an impressive deployment of surge capacity from the federal government (much of which went unused), Cuomo’s order remained in place for almost two months, not being rescinded until May 10.

By then, New York had lost 6 percent of its residents in nursing homes to the virus. Michigan would lose 5 percent, and New Jersey a harrowing 12 percent. Florida, which never implemented such a treat-and-return policy, suffered a mere 1.6 percent mortality among nursing-home residents, while California, which changed course in time, managed to keep nursing-home casualties at 2 percent. While the media were preoccupied with Floridians enjoying walks on the beach, Covid-19 raged unchecked through nursing homes and LTCFs throughout America, with little attention paid to the plight of their residents.

That we don’t really know how to keep SARS-CoV-2 out of nursing homes is fair comment but it’s also not the issue. What New York and, apparently, New Jersey did is introduce SARS-CoV-2 into nursing homes, a major policy fiasco. The states with the largest number of nursing home residents are New York, California, Texas, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, Illinois, and New Jersey in descending order. So far the mortality in Illinois’s nursing homes is below 5%. If California, Texas, and Florida can somehow manage to spare their nursing home residents, I would conjecture that their policies have succeeded. Otherwise…

In a piece at Project Syndicate Minxin Pei articulates a view near and dear to my heart—the Chinese Communist Party faces an existential threat in the form of its own bad policies. Much of it may sound familiar, for example:

The CPC sees the world as, first and foremost, a jungle. Having been shaped by its own bloody and brutal struggle for power against impossible odds between 1921-49, the party is firmly convinced that the world is a Hobbesian place where long-term survival depends solely on raw power. When the balance of power is against it, the CPC must rely on cunning and caution to survive. The late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping aptly summarized this strategic realism with his foreign-policy dictum: “hide your strength and bide your time.”

which hearkens back to an earlier post here this week.

But consider this:

The CPC’s worldview is also colored by a cynical belief in the power of greed. Even before China became the world’s second-largest economy, the party was convinced that Western governments were mere lackeys of capitalist interests. Although these countries might profess fealty to human rights and democracy, the CPC believed that they could not afford to lose access to the Chinese market – especially if their capitalist rivals stood to profit as a result.

That was the view of the Soviets as well. The prevailing wisdom was that turning American diplomats and intelligence assets was easy—all it took was money and they had considerable success with that tactic. In the short run.

Dr. Pei concludes:

Unfortunately for the CPC, therefore, it now has to contend with a far more determined adversary. Worse still, America’s willingness to absorb enormous short-term economic pain to gain a long-term strategic edge over China indicates that greed has lost its primacy. In particular, the US strategy of “decoupling” – severing the dense web of Sino-American economic ties – has caught China totally by surprise, because no CPC leader ever imagined that the US government would be willing to write off the Chinese market in pursuit of broader geopolitical objectives.

For the first time since the end of the Cultural Revolution, the CPC faces a genuine existential threat, mainly because its mindset has led it to commit a series of calamitous strategic errors. And its latest intervention in Hong Kong suggests that it has no intention of changing course.

In neglecting to mention the standoff between India and China in the Galwan area or China’s aggression against Bhutan, Dr. Pei understates his case if anything. Something will depend on how or whether the Democratic Party manages to unify itself over the next four months. Although the neoliberal foreign policy establishment may favor reinstating Chimerica, the Sanders-Warren wing of the party certainly doesn’t. If Trump is re-elected or the anti-China forces within the Democratic Party gain ascendancy, the situation may become even more dangerous as China’s sphere of influence narrows. Cornered rats, etc.

An article at Al Monitor by Nilsu Goren and Dalia Dassa Kaye, blandly described as “Middle East experts”, on how the United States can reach a modus vivendi with Erdogan’s Turkey reminds me of nothing so much as the old wisecrack about two wolves and a sheep arguing about what’s for dinner. I wish I knew more about their backgrounds and preconceptions. Just remember that everybody, repeat everybody has an axe to grind. Here’s a sample:

Turkey’s entanglement in regional conflicts, as well as Erdogan’s shift to a revisionist regional policy through military interventions in Syria and Libya, could make it difficult to frame the agenda with Turkey around ending regional wars. Turkey may find its own constraints with continuing its military operations and eventually focus attention back home, particularly given increasing economic challenges in the midst of the global economic downturn and the pandemic. Regardless, we do not foresee openings for significant improvement in bilateral relations between Turkey and the United States as long as the current political dynamics and deep disagreements leading to strong anti-American sentiments are in place.

Consequently, we might suggest an alternative approach focused on a regional rather than a bilateral agenda — specifically, a possible road map for US-Turkish cooperation focused on a regional security and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) nonproliferation agenda. This could be a critical issue for regional stability and an area with multiple looming crisis points in the months and years ahead. In principle, it may also be an area where there is common interest in preventing the further spread of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in the Middle East. Indeed, despite continued Turkish-Iranian economic ties and Turkey’s political engagement with Iran through forums like the Astana process, Turkey continues to be wary of Iranian intentions and supports the Iran nuclear deal. Turkey opposes the capability of Iran to acquire nuclear weapons because of the threat this would pose to regional stability. Similarly, Turkey adamantly opposes the chemical attacks by Syria’s Bashar al-Assad regime. This could provide a foundation for a cooperative regional agenda with the United States, working with international forums, despite the general friction in the bilateral relationship.

I think they’re taking a far too nostalgic view of Turkey. What, for example, makes them think that today’s Turkey is interested in “regional stability”? Quite to the contrary I think that Erdogan’s Turkey is not only Islamist but irredentist. I believe they’re thinking of Kemalist Turkey.

As dangerous as the areas adjacent to China in all directions are because of China’s obvious irredentist policies, so the Middle East is probably in its most volatile condition in a century. There are four different powers vying for influence, at least three of them irredentist and a different three with ambitions that extend far beyond the Middle East, namely the leadership of the Islamic world. They cannot all succeed.

I think we have very little in the way of interests in common with Erdogan’s Turkey, the Saudi Arabia of MBS, or Iran under the mullahs. Formulating a workable Middle East policy is daunting at the best of times and, well, these aren’t the best of times. I think we should start considering our interests in the Middle East much more narrowly and pragmatically than we have for the last half century. That will mean a lot less intervention there which is something I would think that most Americans and probably most people in the Middle East would support.

There has been substantial breastbeating in the media about the situation in states that are, in their view, opening up too quickly. Let’s consider this by looking at a few graphs. All of the following were sampled from Worldometers.info. I have taken the liberty of drawing some trend lines on the graphs.
Admittedly, these trend lines are not “fair” in the sense that they don’t all start from the same date. I drew them to be consistent with what I see as the actual daily trends.

Some caveats. Although daily deaths due to COVID-19 are a better indicator than the number of cases of COVID-19 for use in evaluating how the campaign against the disease it proceeding it is, indeed, a lagging indicator. In other words the number of deaths today reflects the number of cases and methods of treatment of a week or a month ago.

Additionally, the number of deaths alone is not adequate to assess how we’re doing without also taking into account the health of the health care system as well. Doing that is beyond the scope of this post other than to mention that as long as there’s 10% or more excess capacity in ICU beds, ventilators, and so on not only are we doing okay but greater excess capacity does not necessarily provide additional benefit.

California is the most populous state in the Union and it was the first to “lock down”. Much of the media attention has been focused on California as the “next epicenter of contagion” and the like. Is the concern expressed reasonable? I don’t think so. The number of deaths per day due to COVID-19 in California has been declining for months. If the disease overwhelms California’s health care system, it can only be attributed to fecklessness on the part of state officials. They had plenty of time to prepare. They should have used it more wisely.

The State of Texas provides the greatest cause for concern among the states. It is the second largest state by population and the largest by geography in the continental United States. Although the number of deaths per day declined for a month the trend has been in the wrong direction for the last month. Clearly, Texas is doing something wrong, remedial action is required, and, since deaths are a lagging indicator, we won’t know for a while whether they’ve been successful or not.

Florida’s pattern is similar to that of Texas—the number of deaths declined for a month but has increased more recently. In one sense it’s less worrisome than Texas but what is worrisome in Florida is demographics. The median age in Texas is around 34.9 while the median age in Florida is around 42.

Arizona is another state in which the trend is in the wrong direction and, once again, its pattern is similar to that of Texas.

If there is one state which looks as though it had done the right things among my sample, it would be Georgia. The governor issued a statewide shelter-in-place directive on April 2 and relaxed it a week later. The directive was removed on April 24 which is reflected in the bump in the graph in May.

You didn’t expect to get away without my mentioning Illinois, did you? Is Illinois’s trajectory indicative of success or failure? I think it’s too early to tell. I am reminded of a satirical comment that’s at least two centuries old: the operation was a success but the patient died. We will know if Gov. Pritzker’s strategy was successful if Illinois’s economy recovers and if Chicago doesn’t lose a hundred thousand Chicagoans in the process. Stay tuned.

What is the shape of victory? Is it Illinois’s? Illinois’s results parallel New York’s. Is it Georgia’s? Those results parallel those of Illinois and New York with much lower amplitude in the early stages. Or is it California’s?

In preemptive response to the complaint that I am attacking a strawman, in the last several days I have read several complaints from major media outlets that the only measure of victory is zero fatalities, cf. this one at Bloomberg.

I want to draw your attention to a piece by T. Greer (of The Scholar’s Stage) at Foreign Policy on the Marines’ plans to reconstitute the force to address a Chinese threat:

The Marines’ plans reflects a broader change of focus by the Pentagon, which has been ordered by the White House to redirect its focus from counterinsurgency campaigns toward what it dubs “great-power competition” with Russia and China. The threat posed by China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is especially dire. While American forces were campaigning in the mountains of Afghanistan, the commanders of the PLA slowly shaped their military into the world’s premier counter-American military force.

The PLA realized that the U.S. military had grown accustomed to operating freely in the airspace and neighboring waters of its enemies. To counter this way of war, a terrific percentage of the Chinese defense budget has been directed to developing weapons that might challenge American control of the sea and air. The result: thousands of what are known as “anti-access” and “area denial” weapons whose range and precision create a death zone extending hundreds of miles from the Chinese coast. These precision weapons, launched from an ever-growing number of PLA Navy vessels, PLA Air Force craft, and PLA Rocket Force units, will make it impossible for traditional expeditionary forces—like the existing U.S. Marine Expeditionary Units—to get within striking range of any East Asian battlefield without risking destruction. When these long-range weapons are combined with the PLA’s air defense systems, sea mines, submarines, and electronic warfare and cyber-capabilities, the result is a gauntlet of fire that American expeditionary forces cannot be expected to securely traverse.

The Marines’ response has been to plan to station troops within the “death zone”, in the mistaken belief that such will deter the Chinese leadership from adventurism. I agree with Dr. Greer that they are planning for the confrontation they want to have rather than the one they are likely to have.

I think that our military leadership needs to adjust itself to the possibility that the Chinese leadership is not deterrable at all. 21st century “great power” confrontation cannot be limited warfare. That is foolishness. The Marines would be practically useless in the warfare of extermination that would ensue.