Declaring war on Iran?

A reader writes:

I agree with you 100%. But I think war with Iran really would be different from the other recent failures to declare war.

Congress has managed to get out of its obligation to declare war in part because the post-WWII operations of the American military were - ostensibly or actually - either small operations not worth dignifying with the name of "war" (e.g., Grenada), or defensive operations undertaken pursuant to treaty obligations and/or explicit acts of Congress (e.g., Vietnam), or authorized by a supra-national body such that they arguably were *not* wars in a legal sense, but police actions (e.g., Korea, the first Iraq war).

The second Iraq war was an exception to the above, in that the United States initiated an aggressive attack on another country without either an explicit declaration of war or an emergency that required rapid response by the executive branch or an explicit authorization from a supra-national body to conduct a police action. But we could still rope Iraq back into the familiar categories under which Presidents have initiated hostilities by pointing out that America had been continuously in action in Iraq between 1991 and 2003 (enforcing the No-Fly Zone, for instance), and that Iraq had violated the terms of the 1991 cease-fire in a variety of ways, such that America still (arguably) had the authority to take action to enforce the terms of that cease-fire. Given those unique conditions, perhaps an "authorization" to use force such as Congress *did* pass was sufficient constitutional warrant for Executive action. This might seem tenuous, but it's not nothing.

Kossovo and, ironically, Afghanistan are much tougher to bring under the rubric of "traditional" exceptions. The war in Kossovo was not authorized by the U.N., and hence was not a police action; it was not a response to aggression against a NATO state, and hence was not pursuant to a treaty obligation, so the fact that it was a collective action on the part of the NATO alliance does nothing to add to its legal justification. As the legislature never declared war on Serbia, the Kossovo war was most likely unconstitutional. In Afghanistan, meanwhile, America - quite rightly - went to war in response to a surprise attack on American soils, and on civilians to boot. The war was about as just a war as could be imagined - but it was not undertaken in a constitutional manner because there was no declaration of war, when we were plainly *going* to war and there was plenty of time to issue a declaration. I note in this regard that President Bush was widely quoted at the time as having "declared war" on September 11th - by which he seems to have meant that he "recognized" that a state of war "existed" because we were attacked, but be that as it may: he used the language that the constitution explicitly reserves for the legislature.

War with Iran would mean crossing the last bridge, and would mean the final Caesarian transformation of the American Republic. There is, as you say, no chance that Congress would declare war on Iran. (Any "use of force" authorization by Congress would give them plausible deniability and hence would constitute an evasion of their constitutional responsibility, as you note; Congresscritters could perfectly well claim after the fact that they did *not* vote for war, but only to give the President the "freedom of action" to go to war *if necessary* which, the Congresscritters could assure us, the Congress had confidently hoped would be sufficient to *avert* war!)

There is also no chance that such an attack would be authorized by the U.N. as a police action, and hence (arguably) not require a formal declaration of war by Congress, but only an authorization to use force (since, after all, in such circumstances, there arguably was no state of war between America and the country in question, but rather a state of outlawry on the part of the country in question, with America playing the part of the head of the posse bringing the miscreant to justice). There is also no chance that the President could honestly articulate a reasonable justification for hasty action in the face of an imminent threat such as would leave no time for him to obtain a declaration from Congress. Hence, if we do attack Iran, a precedent will have been set that the President can go to war whenever and wherever he wants, without any authorization from anyone.

As it happens, I don't think we're going to war with Iran. I think Bush would face actual, public insubordination if he tried it. I also think he doesn't have time before November, and he won't have a compliant Congress after that to give him a fig-leaf of authorization. But I do agree that an undeclared war against Iran would be unconstitutional - and more plainly so than the other undeclared wars of the last 60 years.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Good grief, more dating advice

Readers have lots more to say (lots more than I have to say on the subject, having been happily removed from this harrowing experience for eons):

Your statement that political opinions are fashion statements for women has clarified a few things for me. It has also cleared up why working in women only public sector PR offices - as I do - is like working in a one party state. It is not that they do not get other arguments. It is that they think other arguments are superfluous when placed against the need to fit in. It is social intelligence of a high order – or intellectual corruption depending how you look at it.

I remember becoming aware of this when a co-worker insisted on imposing Fairtrade coffee on the rest of the office. I attempted to get her into an argument about the merits of Fairtrade…bogus economics, unfair on other coffee farmers, tendentious reasoning etc etc. She was just puzzled that anyone would ever want to argue about it. There was a general consensus that it was a good and fashionable thing and the details are irrelevant.

*

In my college classes I've noticed that when I gain respect from women due to a performance in discussion respect it is generally proportional to the degree to which I have beaten other males rather than the strength of my actual points, whereas respect from my male peers has sometimes come from their recognition that I argued for a losing side brilliantly. However that never seems to impress the ladies very much.

Well, not the female readers of iSteve.com!

*

My experience in the undergraduate dating scene, such as it is, has been that Feynman's admonition against paying compliments to women is somewhat outmoded. He was writing at a time when chivalrous traditions in America were still relatively strong, everyone thought that the way to woo and wed was trhough whispering sweet nothings. Not to be melodramatic but today chivalry is dead or at least in a persistent vegetative state. What this means for the women in my social circle is that they almost never receive compliments from men. I noticed this and have found that when I do issue a compliment they are remarkably greatful. Obviously compliments alone don't do it, you have to show enough 'machismo' to be in the game, but their rarity has allowed compliments to regain a certain amount of value today. In sometimes competitive situations you have to operate by means of the law of reverse public opinion, if everyone is trying to attain a goal by one means, try to attain it through a different way. The path will be less crowded.

*

I have been doing my own research into dating, romance, seduction etc. and have come across a whole lot of material that backs up the be-a-jerk-and-the-women-will-flock-to-you theory. But even though most of my sources site this as a successful strategy, I think they are only half right and, more often than not, lead men to get things totally wrong.

My theory is that the reason bad boys get the girls is not that they are bad per sé, but that they are totally confident and have respect for themselves. I believe this is mostly because they are stupid and unreflective. Since they have no idea how worthless they are, they can act in the world with total self assuredness.

I think it is the confidence and self respect that women are attracted to, whether it is in bad boys, football stars, actors, presidents, tycoons, princes, or whatever.

If you tell an introspective nerd that he needs to be a bad boy to get the girl, Ithe plan will probably blow up in his face. I'd bet most women will easily see through this because all you've done is change what men see (i.e. the physical and tangible) and not what women see (i.e. that which is implied).

This could also be why when looking for a used motorcycle there tend to be a disproportionate number of nearly new Harleys for sale.

*

That letter from the woman whose single brother was into mountain biking and vintage tractors got me thinking ... in my experience, men who are involved in stereotypically male-oriented hobbies and activities don't seem to have any particular difficulty finding women. These would include things like sports, cars, outdoor recreation, and manual crafts such as woodworking. One could say, as a general rule, that women have no trouble with men involved in activities that don't normally interest women, so long as the activities are conventionally masculine, guy-stuff things.

There's a flip side to this, however. Women have a much harder time accepting men who are involved in interests or activities that appeal mostly to males yet at the same time are perceived as not fully masculine. Examples would include Star Trek, science fiction in general, Dungeons & Dragons and other role-playing games, certain video games (especially Warcraft and its ilk), Lord of the Rings and other forms of fantasy, and (somewhat paradoxically) military history and especially re-enactments. Given this, it should come as no surprise that the percentage of men who are single and unattached at, for example, a Star Trek convention is almost certainly going to be higher than the single and unattached percentage among a group of NFL season ticket holders.

Over the last million years or so, there has emerged a dichotomy between the Big Man, the leader of the hunting and war parties, and the Nerd, who makes the stone axes for the Big Man to use. I'm not sure that the evolution of female sexual desire has caught up with the fact that the tool-makers can make a lot of money these days.

*

"The way for women to put themselves more deeply in the guy stream is to take up golf."

My impression is that males are most fanatical about golf from their mid-20s through about age 40 -- i.e., prime marrying years for middle class white guys. Golfers tend to be closer to the Big Man than the Nerd pole, but not so much so that they are too masculine to be housebroken. So, they are good husband prospects, but you seldom see women much shy of menopause taking up golf as a way to put themselves around a lot of potential husbands.

*

If you have spent any time at these dating websites, some very interesting trends stand out which are a better reflection of who we are and what we think than the PC inflicted world we live in.

For example, white women with children are more likely to state their preference for a white man than white women with no children who usually do not specify the ethnicity in their preferences.

So dating non-white men is considered 'risky behavior' by white women when they have children! Overweight white women are more likely to be open to all ethnicities than average weight white women while really overweight white women usually put down black men or sometimes even hispanic men as their preferred mate. So Black men are more open to over weight white women than white men!

I am no social scientist but some very clear trends emerge from the preference section of these dating websites. Someone with more time needs to do some number crunching and figure out this data. It will be an interesting read.

Good idea. I'm not sure, however, that my wife would be as enthusiastic about my personally doing the research, so I will cede this opportunity to whichever of my readers is interested.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Sacrificing smart black kids on the altar of "diversity:"

A friend of mine graduated from Pepperdine Law School after the usual three years of classes, then, while working as a hospital orderly, spent a nightmarish seven years or so trying and repeatedly failing to pass the California bar exam before finally giving up. In other words, he devoted about a decade of the prime of his life (age 22-32) to a fruitless quest to become a lawyer.

He just wasn't smart enough and diligent enough at the kind of hard, boring mental labor that the law demands. He had more smarts than the average person, but not enough to be a California lawyer. A charming fellow, if he'd become a salesman out of college instead of going to law school, he might have been making six figures within that decade. His total costs, out-of-pocket and opportunity, for this decade-long misadventure must have been in the half million dollar range (in current dollars).

He is a white guy, so nobody was pushing him to go to law school to bring the benefits of diversity, such as they are, to their institutions. But getting lured into going to law school by white liberals happens all the time to young black people who are smarter than the black average. And a lot of them end up like my friend: with huge student debts yet with no license to practice law.

UCLA law school professor Richard Sanders has been quantifying the racial gaps in law school graduation and bar exam passage rates.

Here are his estimates from the Empirical Legal Studies blog:

	2004 Era (my estimates)
	Whites	Blacks
% of entering law students who graduate	90%	78%
% of graduates who take the bar	94%	93%
% of bar takers who pass on first attempt	78%	47%
% of bar takers who ultimately pass	90%	65%
% of entering law students who graduate and pass bar on first attempt	66%	34%
% of entering law students who ultimately become lawyers	76%	47%

In other words, 53% of the black students who enter law school fail to qualify to become lawyers, versus 24% of white students.

I'm particularly concerned about a number that he doesn't specify but is calculable from his data: the percent of students who graduate from law school but never pass the bar exam. These are the young people who had enough brains and work ethic to graduate from law school but not enough to pass the bar exam. They wasted at least three years of their lives at law school, and usually several more while studying for and failing the bar exam over and over again.

That percentage of law school graduates who never pass the bar exam appears to be about 40% for blacks versus about 15% for whites.

So, the legal establishment is luring a sizable number of the black race's more promising young people (not the very best and brightest blacks, but the one or even two standard deviations above the African-American median blacks) into a career cul-de-sac.

According to the Supreme Court Grutter decision okaying the U. of Michigan to discriminate against whites and Asians in law school admissions, the purpose of affirmative action isn't to help the black and Hispanic students admitted preferentially, but to spread the blessings of "diversity" on everybody else at the school. But that warm fuzzy feeling that liberals get from "diversity" comes with very real human costs.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Dating advice

Readers have lots more to say (lots more than I have to say on the subject, having been happily removed from it for eons):

Your statement that political opinions are fashion statements for women has clarified a few things for me. It has also cleared up why working in women only public sector PR offices - as I do - is like working in a one party state. It is not that they do not get other arguments. It is that they think other arguments are superfluous when placed against the need to fit in. It is social intelligence of a high order – or intellectual corruption depending how you look at it.

I remember becoming aware of this when a co-worker insisted on imposing Fairtrade coffee on the rest of the office. I attempted to get her into an argument about the merits of Fairtrade…bogus economics, unfair on other coffee farmers, tendentious reasoning etc etc. She was just puzzled that anyone would ever want to argue about it. There was a general consensus that it was a good and fashionable thing and the details are irrelevant.

*

My experience in the undergraduate dating scene, such as it is, has been that Feynman's admonition against paying compliments to women is somewhat outmoded. He was writing at a time when chivalrous traditions in America were still relatively strong, everyone thought that the way to woo and wed was trhough whispering sweet nothings. Not to be melodramatic but today chivalry is dead or at least in a persistent vegetative state. What this means for the women in my social circle is that they almost never receive compliments from men. I noticed this and have found that when I do issue a compliment they are remarkably greatful. Obviously compliments alone don't do it, you have to show enough 'machismo' to be in the game, but their rarity has allowed compliments to regain a certain amount of value today. In sometimes competitive situations you have to operate by means of the law of reverse public opinion, if everyone is trying to attain a goal by one means, try to attain it through a different way. The path will be less crowded.

*

I have been doing my own research into dating, romance, seduction etc. and have come across a whole lot of material that backs up the be-a-jerk-and-the-women-will-flock-to-you theory. But even though most of my sources site this as a successful strategy, I think they are only half right and, more often than not, lead men to get things totally wrong.

My theory is that the reason bad boys get the girls is not that they are bad per sé, but that they are totally confident and have respect for themselves. I believe this is mostly because they are stupid and unreflective. Since they have no idea how worthless they are, they can act in the world with total self assuredness.

I think it is the confidence and self respect that women are attracted to, whether it is in bad boys, football stars, actors, presidents, tycoons, princes, or whatever.

If you tell an introspective nerd that he needs to be a bad boy to get the girl, Ithe plan will probably blow up in his face. I'd bet most women will easily see through this because all you've done is change what men see (i.e. the physical and tangible) and not what women see (i.e. that which is implied).

This could also be why when looking for a used motorcycle there tend to be a disproportionate number of nearly new Harleys for sale.

*

That letter from the woman whose single brother was into mountain biking and vintage tractors got me thinking ... in my experience, men who are involved in stereotypically male-oriented hobbies and activities don't seem to have any particular difficulty finding women. These would include things like sports, cars, outdoor recreation, and manual crafts such as woodworking. One could say, as a general rule, that women have no trouble with men involved in activities that don't normally interest women, so long as the activities are conventionally masculine, guy-stuff things.

There's a flip side to this, however. Women have a much harder time accepting men who are involved in interests or activities that appeal mostly to males yet at the same time are perceived as not fully masculine. Examples would include Star Trek, science fiction in general, Dungeons & Dragons and other role-playing games, certain video games (especially Warcraft and its ilk), Lord of the Rings and other forms of fantasy, and (somewhat paradoxically) military history and especially re-enactments. Given this, it should come as no surprise that the percentage of men who are single and unattached at, for example, a Star Trek convention is almost certainly going to be higher than the single and unattached percentage among a group of NFL season ticket holders.

Over the last million years or so, there has emerged a dichotomy between the Big Man, the leader of the hunting and war parties, and the Nerd, who makes the stone axes for the Big Man to use. I'm not sure that the evolution of female sexual desire has caught up with the fact that the tool-makers can make a lot of money these days.

*

"The way for women to put themselves more deeply in the guy stream is to take up golf."

My impression is that males are most fanatical about golf from their mid-20s through about age 40 -- i.e., prime marrying years for middle class white guys. Golfers tend to be closer to the Big Man than the Nerd pole, but not so much so that they are too masculine to be housebroken. So, they are good husband prospects, but you seldom see women much shy of menopause taking up golf as a way to put themselves around a lot of potential husbands.

*

If you have spent any time at these dating websites, some very interesting trends stand out which are a better reflection of who we are and what we think than the PC inflicted world we live in.

For example, white women with children are more likely to state their preference for a white man than white women with no children who usually do not specify the ethnicity in their preferences.

So dating non-white men is considered 'risky behavior' by white women when they have children! Overweight white women are more likely to be open to all ethnicities than average weight white women while really overweight white women usually put down black men or sometimes even hispanic men as their preferred mate. So Black men are more open to over weight white women than white men!

I am no social scientist but some very clear trends emerge from the preference section of these dating websites. Someone with more time needs to do some number crunching and figure out this data. It will be an interesting read.

Good idea. I'm not sure, however, that my wife would be as enthusiastic about my personally doing the research, so I will cede this opportunity to whichever of my readers is interested.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Dating advice

Readers have lots more to say (lots more than I have to say on the subject, having been happily removed from it for eons):

Your statement that political opinions are fashion statements for women has clarified a few things for me. It has also cleared up why working in women only public sector PR offices - as I do - is like working in a one party state. It is not that they do not get other arguments. It is that they think other arguments are superfluous when placed against the need to fit in. It is social intelligence of a high order – or intellectual corruption depending how you look at it.

I remember becoming aware of this when a co-worker insisted on imposing Fairtrade coffee on the rest of the office. I attempted to get her into an argument about the merits of Fairtrade…bogus economics, unfair on other coffee farmers, tendentious reasoning etc etc. She was just puzzled that anyone would ever want to argue about it. There was a general consensus that it was a good and fashionable thing and the details are irrelevant.

*

My experience in the undergraduate dating scene, such as it is, has been that Feynman's admonition against paying compliments to women is somewhat outmoded. He was writing at a time when chivalrous traditions in America were still relatively strong, everyone thought that the way to woo and wed was trhough whispering sweet nothings. Not to be melodramatic but today chivalry is dead or at least in a persistent vegetative state. What this means for the women in my social circle is that they almost never receive compliments from men. I noticed this and have found that when I do issue a compliment they are remarkably greatful. Obviously compliments alone don't do it, you have to show enough 'machismo' to be in the game, but their rarity has allowed compliments to regain a certain amount of value today. In sometimes competitive situations you have to operate by means of the law of reverse public opinion, if everyone is trying to attain a goal by one means, try to attain it through a different way. The path will be less crowded.

*

I have been doing my own research into dating, romance, seduction etc. and have come across a whole lot of material that backs up the be-a-jerk-and-the-women-will-flock-to-you theory. But even though most of my sources site this as a successful strategy, I think they are only half right and, more often than not, lead men to get things totally wrong.

My theory is that the reason bad boys get the girls is not that they are bad per sé, but that they are totally confident and have respect for themselves. I believe this is mostly because they are stupid and unreflective. Since they have no idea how worthless they are, they can act in the world with total self assuredness.

I think it is the confidence and self respect that women are attracted to, whether it is in bad boys, football stars, actors, presidents, tycoons, princes, or whatever.

If you tell an introspective nerd that he needs to be a bad boy to get the girl, Ithe plan will probably blow up in his face. I'd bet most women will easily see through this because all you've done is change what men see (i.e. the physical and tangible) and not what women see (i.e. that which is implied).

This could also be why when looking for a used motorcycle there tend to be a disproportionate number of nearly new Harleys for sale.

*

That letter from the woman whose single brother was into mountain biking and vintage tractors got me thinking ... in my experience, men who are involved in stereotypically male-oriented hobbies and activities don't seem to have any particular difficulty finding women. These would include things like sports, cars, outdoor recreation, and manual crafts such as woodworking. One could say, as a general rule, that women have no trouble with men involved in activities that don't normally interest women, so long as the activities are conventionally masculine, guy-stuff things.

There's a flip side to this, however. Women have a much harder time accepting men who are involved in interests or activities that appeal mostly to males yet at the same time are perceived as not fully masculine. Examples would include Star Trek, science fiction in general, Dungeons & Dragons and other role-playing games, certain video games (especially Warcraft and its ilk), Lord of the Rings and other forms of fantasy, and (somewhat paradoxically) military history and especially re-enactments. Given this, it should come as no surprise that the percentage of men who are single and unattached at, for example, a Star Trek convention is almost certainly going to be higher than the single and unattached percentage among a group of NFL season ticket holders.

Over the last million years or so, there has emerged a dichotomy between the Big Man, the leader of the hunting and war parties, and the Nerd, who makes the stone axes for the Big Man to use. I'm not sure that the evolution of female sexual desire has caught up with the fact that the tool-makers can make a lot of money these days.

*

"The way for women to put themselves more deeply in the guy stream is to take up golf."

My impression is that males are most fanatical about golf from their mid-20s through about age 40 -- i.e., prime marrying years for middle class white guys. Golfers tend to be closer to the Big Man than the Nerd pole, but not so much so that they are too masculine to be housebroken. So, they are good husband prospects, but you seldom see women much shy of menopause taking up golf as a way to put themselves around a lot of potential husbands.

*

If you have spent any time at these dating websites, some very interesting trends stand out which are a better reflection of who we are and what we think than the PC inflicted world we live in.

For example, white women with children are more likely to state their preference for a white man than white women with no children who usually do not specify the ethnicity in their preferences.

So dating non-white men is considered 'risky behavior' by white women when they have children! Overweight white women are more likely to be open to all ethnicities than average weight white women while really overweight white women usually put down black men or sometimes even hispanic men as their preferred mate. So Black men are more open to over weight white women than white men!

I am no social scientist but some very clear trends emerge from the preference section of these dating websites. Someone with more time needs to do some number crunching and figure out this data. It will be an interesting read.

Good idea. I'm not sure, however, that my wife would be as enthusiastic about my personally doing the research, so I will cede this opportunity to whichever of my readers is interested.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Declaring war on Iran?

A reader writes:

I agree with you 100%. But I think war with Iran really would be different from the other recent failures to declare war.

Congress has managed to get out of its obligation to declare war in part because the post-WWII operations of the American military were - ostensibly or actually - either small operations not worth dignifying with the name of "war" (e.g., Grenada), or defensive operations undertaken pursuant to treaty obligations and/or explicit acts of Congress (e.g., Vietnam), or authorized by a supra-national body such that they arguably were *not* wars in a legal sense, but police actions (e.g., Korea, the first Iraq war).

The second Iraq war was an exception to the above, in that the United States initiated an aggressive attack on another country without either an explicit declaration of war or an emergency that required rapid response by the executive branch or an explicit authorization from a supra-national body to conduct a police action. But we could still rope Iraq back into the familiar categories under which Presidents have initiated hostilities by pointing out that America had been continuously in action in Iraq between 1991 and 2003 (enforcing the No-Fly Zone, for instance), and that Iraq had violated the terms of the 1991 cease-fire in a variety of ways, such that America still (arguably) had the authority to take action to enforce the terms of that cease-fire. Given those unique conditions, perhaps an "authorization" to use force such as Congress *did* pass was sufficient constitutional warrant for Executive action. This might seem tenuous, but it's not nothing.

Kossovo and, ironically, Afghanistan are much tougher to bring under the rubric of "traditional" exceptions. The war in Kossovo was not authorized by the U.N., and hence was not a police action; it was not a response to aggression against a NATO state, and hence was not pursuant to a treaty obligation, so the fact that it was a collective action on the part of the NATO alliance does nothing to add to its legal justification. As the legislature never declared war on Serbia, the Kossovo war was most likely unconstitutional. In Afghanistan, meanwhile, America - quite rightly - went to war in response to a surprise attack on American soils, and on civilians to boot. The war was about as just a war as could be imagined - but it was not undertaken in a constitutional manner because there was no declaration of war, when we were plainly *going* to war and there was plenty of time to issue a declaration. I note in this regard that President Bush was widely quoted at the time as having "declared war" on September 11th - by which he seems to have meant that he "recognized" that a state of war "existed" because we were attacked, but be that as it may: he used the language that the constitution explicitly reserves for the legislature.

War with Iran would mean crossing the last bridge, and would mean the final Caesarian transformation of the American Republic. There is, as you say, no chance that Congress would declare war on Iran. (Any "use of force" authorization by Congress would give them plausible deniability and hence would constitute an evasion of their constitutional responsibility, as you note; Congresscritters could perfectly well claim after the fact that they did *not* vote for war, but only to give the President the "freedom of action" to go to war *if necessary* which, the Congresscritters could assure us, the Congress had confidently hoped would be sufficient to *avert* war!)

There is also no chance that such an attack would be authorized by the U.N. as a police action, and hence (arguably) not require a formal declaration of war by Congress, but only an authorization to use force (since, after all, in such circumstances, there arguably was no state of war between America and the country in question, but rather a state of outlawry on the part of the country in question, with America playing the part of the head of the posse bringing the miscreant to justice). There is also no chance that the President could honestly articulate a reasonable justification for hasty action in the face of an imminent threat such as would leave no time for him to obtain a declaration from Congress. Hence, if we do attack Iran, a precedent will have been set that the President can go to war whenever and wherever he wants, without any authorization from anyone.

As it happens, I don't think we're going to war with Iran. I think Bush would face actual, public insubordination if he tried it. I also think he doesn't have time before November, and he won't have a compliant Congress after that to give him a fig-leaf of authorization. But I do agree that an undeclared war against Iran would be unconstitutional - and more plainly so than the other undeclared wars of the last 60 years.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

USA Today on the Republican-Democrat gaps in marriage and fertility

Reporter Dennis Cauchon of USA Today called me last week and we spoke for close to an hour about my work on the correlation between affordable family formation and voting. His twin articles on the marriage gap and fertility gap are up today, although he doesn't see fit to mention my name. Good stuff, nonetheless:

Marriage gap could sway elections

•Republicans control 49 of the 50 districts with the highest rates of married people.

•Democrats represent all 50 districts that have the highest rates of adults who have never married.

The political tug-of-war is between people who are married and those who have never been.

The “never married” group covers a variety of groups who form the Democratic base: young people, those who marry late in life, single parents, gays, and heterosexuals who live together.

The marriage divide drew attention in the 2004 presidential race. President Bush beat John Kerry by 15 percentage points among married people and lost by 18 percentage points among unmarried people, according to an exit poll conducted by national news media organizations.

Most serious Democratic challenges this fall are in Republican-controlled House districts that have lower marriage rates.

For example, the two seats most likely to switch from Republican to Democratic are Arizona's 8th District and Colorado's 7th District, according to the non-partisan National Journal. The districts — in which Republican incumbents are not seeking re-election — rank 251st and 307th respectively in marriage rates among the 435 districts.

Of the five Republicans who have the lowest rates of married people in their districts, four are in tough battles with Democrats. On the other side, Rep. Melissa Bean, D-Ill., whose district has a high marriage rate, faces a strong GOP challenge.

Rep. John Linder, R-Ga., whose district has the highest marriage rate (66.1%), says the gap exists because “people get more conservative when they settle down.” Democratic pollster Mark Mellman says the gap is magnified because a greater percentage of married people vote than unmarried people.

[More, including tables of Congressmen with the most and least married constituents. Tom Tancredo has the fourth most-married residents. Most of the least-married Congressmen are blacks who represent districts gerrymandered under the Voting Rights Act to elect blacks. An important exception is Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco.]

'Fertility gap' helps explain political divide

GOP Congress members represent 39.2 million children younger than 18, about 7 million more than Democrats. Republicans average 7,000 more children per district.

Many Democrats represent areas that have many single people and relatively few children. Democratic districts that have large numbers of children tend to be predominantly Hispanic or, to a lesser extent, African-American.

This "fertility gap" is crucial to understanding the differences between liberals and conservatives, says Arthur Brooks, a professor of public administration at Syracuse University. These childbearing patterns shape divisions over issues such as welfare, education and child tax credits, he says.

"Both sides are very pro-kids. They just express it in different ways," Brooks says. "Republicans are congenial to traditional families, which is clearly the best way for kids to grow up. But there are some kids who don't have that advantage, and Democrats are very concerned with helping those kids."

Children in Democratic districts are far more likely to live in poverty and with single parents than kids in GOP districts.

Rep. José Serrano, D-N.Y., has 227,246 children in his Bronx district, the 10th most in the House. Only 29% of those children live with married parents.

By contrast, 84% of children live with married parents in Cannon's central Utah district.

... Marriage and parenthood define what's different about Democratic and Republican districts even more clearly than race, income, education or geography, USA TODAY's analysis of Census data found.

For example, Republicans represent seven of the 50 districts that have the highest concentrations of blacks. Both parties are well represented among affluent and well-educated districts.

Democrats control only one of the 50 districts with the highest marriage rates.

Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., who represents the most-married

... Pelosi says in speeches that her most important concern is "the children, the children, the children," says her spokesman, Drew Hammill. That's why she wants to raise the minimum wage to help low-income parents, he says.

The stay-at-home mom is uncommon in all congressional districts. Mothers work at the same rate — about 71% — in Republican and Democratic districts.

Nevertheless, a big difference in family life is clear:

• Democrats represent 59 districts in which less than half of adults are married. Republicans represent only two.

• Democrats represent 30 districts in which less than half of children live with married parents. Republicans represent none.

"The biggest gaps in American politics are religion, race and marital status," says Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg. [More]

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

The War Nerd on Afghanistan

Gary Brecher writes:

If your exterminator says he just killed 200 rats down in the basement, is that good news or bad news?

On the one hand, it's good those rats are dead. On the other hand, I thought we got rid of them years ago, and now there's hundreds? What's going on?

That's the Big Question everyone should be asking in Afghanistan. NATO's claiming we killed 500 Taliban near Kandahar this month. That's a mighty impressive body count, sure, but if Nam taught us one thing, it's that body counts are a bad sign. For all sorts of reasons, starting with basic common sense: if we're killing that many, how many more are running around out there? ...

We were spoiled by initial success in Afghanistan; we got the Taliban down and then just stopped paying attention. Dunno if you remember this far back, but after 9/11, when it was obvious we had to go in there and root out Osama, everybody was saying Afghanistan was unwinnable, "the graveyard of empires," etc. And the campaign seemed to stall at first, till we took Mazar-I-Sharif and sent the Northern Alliance rolling into Kabul. Boom, game over, victory party, let's go home.

Except the new wars just don't work that way. The tough part was really just beginning. The biggest problem once we took Kabul was tribal. Reporters are always calling the Taliban "Islamic extremists," but it's way simpler than that: the Talibs are Pushtun, and our allies in the Northern Alliance were their old tribal enemies the Tajiks, Uzbeks and a few free-agent Hazaras.

The Pushtun are the biggest tribe in the country, if you can call it that, by far. Afghanistan is 42% Pushtun, and the second-biggest group, the Tajiks, are only 27%. Pushtuns are -- now how can I say this nicely? -- insane. The craziest Taliban rules, like demanding every man have a beard that was at least ZZ Top length, aren't Mohammed's rules; they're just Pushtun tribal ways.

It's like if the Baptists took over in Fresno, they'd make it God's rule that every guy had to have an extended cab on his pickup, and if you asked where in Scripture it says that, they'd shoot you. That's the Pushtun way: total tribal insanity, all the time. They're so "sexist" that feminists might like them, because they don't even think of women as "sex objects." To a Pushtun guy, nine-year-old boys are the sexiest thing on earth.

Professor Victor Davis Hanson might approve, because from what I've read, his classical Greek heroes felt the same way. The Pushtuns are so classical that to them, women are just labor-saving and baby-making machines.

And never mind peace; these Pushtuns may be gay but they sure ain't sissies. They love making war, and they're real good at it.

Also, they don't get the whole "literacy" thing. They're not interested in becoming entrepreneurs or learning self-esteem or personal hygiene or compassion or any of that crap. And let's be honest, the joy they felt running around Central Asia blowing up Buddhas and blasting infidels is the same joy a frat boy feels running around a 10-kegger party with a bra on his head. It's pure fun 'n joy, Pushtun-style.

So once we'd taken Afghanistan we had this leftover problem, which was that nearly half the population consisted of these lunatics who had no stake in "peace," didn't want "peace," and thought "peace" was a lot of newfangled nonsense only fit for heterosexuals, foreigners, and assorted sissies. Especially because "peace" came to their town on tanks and APCs driven by their old enemies the Tajiks and Uzbeks.

Worse yet, right behind those tanks came American do-gooders whose idea of pacifying the Pushtun was doing incredibly naive stuff like starting a TV news show with female anchorpersons or whatever you call them. I'm not making this up. First thing the US occupation officials did in Kabul was start a news station with some 19-year-old Pushtun girl as anchor. That was our idea of winning hearts and minds. That's what was going to calm down those bearded angry dudes: seeing a perfectly saleable daughter telling them the news, as if she was the one laying down the law.

I get tired of having to say it, but: not everybody thinks like we think. Not everybody wants what we want. The Pushtun want (a) somebody to kill; (b) women kept in their place, which is somewhere between the clay oven and the livestock; (c) nobody reminding them that there are other ways to live. [More]

Ah, the Pushtuns (a.k.a., Pashtuns, Pathans)! Life just wouldn't be the same without them.

I've used it before, but here's a quote from Churchill's great memoir for boys, My Early Life: A Roving Commission, about his experience in the 1890s in a punitive expedition against the Pushtuns near the Khyber Pass:

Except at harvest time, when self-preservation enjoins a temporary truce, the Pathan tribes are always engaged in private or public war. Every man is a warrior, a politician, and a theologian. Every large house is a real feudal fortress made, it is true, only of sunbaked clay, but with battlements, turrets, loopholes, flanking towers, drawbridges, etc., complete. Every village has its defense. Every family cultivates its vendetta; every clan, its feud. The numerous tribes and combination of tribes all have their accounts to settle with one another. Nothing is ever forgotten and very few debts are left unpaid… The life of the Pathan is thus full of interest…

Into this happy world the nineteenth century brought two new facts; the breech-loading rifle and the British Government. The first was an enormous luxury and blessing; the second, an unmitigated nuisance. The convenience of the breech-loading, and still more of the magazine, rifle was nowhere more appreciated than in the Indian highlands. A weapon which could kill with accuracy at fifteen hundred yards opened a whole new vista of delights to every family or clan which could acquire it. One could actually remain in one's own house and fire at one's neighbor nearly a mile away.

One of the oddities of cultural anthropology is that, despite 2000 miles of rough country in-between, the Pushtuns are quite similar in many ways to the desert Arabs from whom Mohammed arose.

In my reductionist way, I see Mohammed as a public-spirited reformer trying to get his fellow desert raiders to stop being so bloody awful toward each other. The problem with living in the desert is there is no law and order. Recall the early scene in "Lawrence of Arabia" when Lawrence and his Bedouin guide spot camels on the horizon, so the guide immediately drops behind the brow of a sand dune to spy out whether his fellow Bedouins are his friends or whether they would try to kill him if they caught him. The life of the Bedouin is thus full of interest.

This jihad thing is a way to turn the violence outward, thus preserving a sphere of peace at home. It's been used a thousand times down through history all over the world, and it often works fairly well.

One problem with Islam, however, is that while it tries to curb the worst excesses of desert bandit cultures, it also, sort of by osmosis, also preserves those cultures and promulgates their values to places where they aren't inevitable in the landscape. For example, Egypt had been an orderly farming nation-state for 3,500 years when the Arabs showed up with their desert religion.

A reader writes:

In contrast to the silly ideas of people like Dawkins and Dennett, isn't this the real problem with religion, that its greatest strength, binding people together to do good, also shades into its greatest liability? Given what human nature is, you can only make people so good by preaching and teaching. Given also that the best way to make people get along is to have them fight a common external enemy, isn't any group or ideology that tries to make people good going to be tempted to take the easy way out and have its members go out an fight some common enemy?

Example. We've all heard of something called the Crusades. But what we seldom hear about is the Peace and Truce of God movement. During the Early Middle Ages the Pope spent massive amounts of energy across centuries trying to keep the warring rulers/thugs across Europe from fighting their fellow Christians. [The Peace of God exempted clergy, peasants, widows, and virgins from attack. The Truce of God required warriors to take weekends off, and ultimately reduced the number of legal fighting days per year to 80.]

Needless to say this was a lot more in keeping with the actual teachings of Christianity than Crusading, but, human beings being what human beings are, it was almost a complete failure. Then, Pope Urban II comes up with the wonderful idea of attacking the Muslims. In contrast to the reaction to Peace of God, this idea almost instantly captures the imagination of all Western Europe. While it didn't completely stamp out fighting among the Christian rulers, it did reduce it by quite a bit. Given the anti-religious polemics of our time, we tend to hear a lot about the Crusades and the wickedness of religious warfare, but we hear almost nothing about the much more massive efforts the papacy put behind its Peace of God initiative.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

More Advice

A married woman writes:

I have a 40 year old never-been-married brother who spends much of his free time mountain biking and rebuilding vintage tractors. Not exactly hobbies loaded with potential female mates. My unmarried 37 year old sister in law's big hobby is ice skating. My other, twenty-something sister in law spends most of her time with her horse. Neither of these activities is loaded with eligible guys either. I don't have much hope for any of them to find mates.

What did my sister and I do to find a guy? First, we chose a profession loaded with men: engineering. Second, we moved to locations loaded with young, single people: me: Los Angeles, her: the greater Portland area. Third, we took up hobbies and activities that have abundant men: me: the company softball team, downhill skiing, golf. Her: mountain biking, wind surfing, and rock climbing. We both married fellow engineer employees (me at the advanced age of 33) but sharing the same hobbies as them is what sealed the deal.

I've told my brother many times to try taking some cooking or photography classes, join Habitat for Humanity, the Sierra Club, or Catholic Singles but he is unwilling to exit his comfort zone and make the effort. He is also unwilling to look at someone who isn't really good looking. I've tried to tell him that a slightly overweight, 30-ish woman whose clock is ticking would see him as a great husband but he won't bend his standards.

From a NY Post article by Reed Tucker about the upcoming comedy "School for Scoundrels," in which Billie Bob Thornton teaches Jon Heder What Women Want:

- Never pay a woman a compliment: All guys whisper sweet nothings to pretty girls. You want to be different. It will grab her attention. [In his autobiography, physicist Richard Feynman claimed this worked.]

- Parallel her values: If she's a vegetarian, you're a vegetarian. If she thinks Jon Heder will never be as good in any movie as he was in "Napoleon Dynamite," so do you. The goal is to make it seem like you're kindred spirits. [I suspect that my readers are especially vulnerable to the mistake of thinking that opinions should have some basis in fact and logic. Women don't care about stuff like truth when it comes to public issues. Opinions just serve as fashion statements. If she likes you, she'll later on adopt your opinions - until she stops liking you.]

- Be dangerous, it's cool: No chick wants a boring guy. They want the bad boy who'll do wild things - like wearing a vial of blood around his neck. [Well, maybe not that.]

- Wherever you are, the place is lame: Your goal is to get the girl alone, so no matter where you are, suggest the two of you take off. Preferably on your Harley.

- Lie, lie and lie some more: Pretty self-explanatory, and without this rule, the other previous rules wouldn't be possible. Just make sure you don't get caught in your lies...

- When all else fails, give her a sob story: Nothing warms her heart like that yarn about how you were born a penniless orphan in Serbia.

A reader writes:

The plain fact is online dating services don't come anywhere near the same level as a face-to-face meeting, there's tons of information they don't provide, and it's a lot easier for people on both sides to reject contact on the flimsiest of reasons (where a personal interaction would get you past that and maybe show it isn't such a big deal) - and it's entirely based on the photo and numbers. Looking like Brad Pitt is a big help. The chemistry of personal interaction is entirely nonexistent until you meet, and you have to convince them to do so based on other factors. The sheer number of women's ads I've seen who insist that a man be at least a head taller than them while they're wearing high heels ... it makes sense, but it also doesn't work. Average height is somewhere around 5'8 for men I think? It's equivalent to my insisting that the only women I look at have D-cup breasts. I'd like that, but I also know it ain't gonna happen.

Past few years, I've been doing a sort of experiment with various online personal services, answering every single ad that looks even vaguely appropriate (not with form letters either) and seeing what kind of results I get. Not much better than when I pick just the ones that actually look interesting. Response rate somewhere in the 2%-5% range, I think, of which the vast majority aren't of further interest. Maybe I just really overrate myself.

I'd like to see some reliable statistics on how well they work. I don't think that exists though - all I have are anecdotes.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

More conceptual tools for understanding how the world works

Here are some reader suggestions for ideas that journalists (or anybody else) should keep in mind:

- Perhaps the most important one: When someone proposes an explanation or description of reality, you should try it out--see if its predictions make sense. Don't let the use of computers, math, technical jargon, or the reputation of the person proposing it keep you from asking "what if" and playing with the model a bit.

- "The plural of anecdote is not data"

- The logic of collective action--analyzing organizations based on the incentives and knowledge of the individual decisionmakers. (My favorite reference for this is Sowell's _Knowledge and Decisions_.)

- The difference between individuals and distributions, so that you don't get idiocies like "How can you say women are weaker than men? Andrea here is a lot stronger than Bob." [This is also known as the Overlap Means Equality fallacy: "A and B have some overlap, hence A and B are equal."]

- The way that unthinking processes can lead to apparently organized results, where no individual decisionmaker is trying to get the results to come out that way. This has implications from economics to evolution to politics to the dynamics of computer networks.

- The ways in which a poll can be skewed by the way the questions are asked, how the responder is primed for question X by question Y, etc. Similarly, the importance of specifying exactly what a result means--not just "53% of Americans are literate readers" but "and that means they read at least one book, short story, play, or poem in the last year".

- The iterated prisoner's dilemma and its implications for competition vs. cooperation.

- Revealed preference.

- Confirmation bias, and the related tendency to notice flaws in your enemies you don't see in your friends, and virtues in your friends you don't notice in your enemies.

- The importance of asking the question "how would you know if this idea was wrong?"

- The fallacy of composition -- [this is assuming that the whole is equal to the sum of the parts, like assuming that the U.S. Olympic basketball team is the best because it has the best players, although I can't find many examples of this that are particularly pernicious in the modern media climate]

- Agency costs

- Rational Ignorance

- Dispersed costs vs. concentrated benefits

- ad hoc hypothesis

- communal reinforcement

1- difference between a necessary and sufficient condition
2- demographic momentum
3- difference between national debt and budget deficit
4- difference between nominal and real economic variables
5- difference between birth rate and fertility rate.
5- ecological footprint
6- carrying capacity
7- fallacy of composition
8- fallacy of distribution
9- difference between short-term and long-term effects
10- demographic investment
11- difference between per capita economic growth and total economic growth
12- difference mark-up and profit margin
13 - purchasing power
14- the notion that every price has a payer and a receiver
15 -difference between nation and state
16- difference between citizenship and nationality
17 - dependency burden
18 - difference between tax rates and total taxes
19- difference between value added and gross sales
20 - difference between Bush and a statesman

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Declare war on Iran?

It's safe to predict that Congress won't vote to declare war on Iran. It's also safe to predict that Congress won't vote against declaring war on Iran. That decision will be left up to the President in direct contradiction of the Constitution vesting the decision to go to war in Congress. Here's what several of the Founding Fathers said about this central Constitutional issue:

James Madison: ". . . The power to declare war, including the power of judging the causes of war, is fully and exclusively vested in the legislature . . . the executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war." (1793.) "The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war to the Legislature." (Letter to Jefferson, c. 1798.)

Alexander Hamilton: 'The Congress shall have the power to declare war'; the plain meaning of which is, that it is the peculiar and exclusive duty of Congress, when the nation is at peace, to change that state into a state of war. . . ." (c. 1801).

George Washington: "The constitution vests the power of declaring war in Congress; therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they shall have deliberated upon the subject and authorized such a measure." (1793.)

But, we all know George Washington was an America-Hater, so who cares about his opinion?

According to Rep. Ron Paul, Congress hasn't declared war on anybody since Germany on Dec. 11, 1941. The reason, of course, is that members of Congress don't want the responsibility because war or peace is such an important issue that their constituents might actually notice how they voted and, if they don't like it, vote them out of office, if you can imagine.

That kind of voter impudence is simply not to be tolerated. Just look at how most of the big name Washington pundits were shocked that Connecticut Democrats voted against Sen. Joe Lieberman -- a former Veep candidate! -- merely over a little thing like being the leading Democratic cheerleader for the Iraq War.

A reader writes:

The only sane people in our government these days seem to be the high-ranking military. They should insist that Congress authorize a nuclear attack on Iran before they execute it. This would not be a coup. It is living up to their sworn duty to uphold the constitution, not their commander in chief.

On another note, a drawn-out Iran war would certainly increase the possibility of a military coup in Washington D.C. down the road. The two main scenarios are opposite in motivation, but both plausible:

1. The France 1958 scenario in which the French army in Algeria, feeling under-supported by the politicians in Paris, in effect overthrew the Fourth Republic (fortunately, the Army's choice for dictator, Gen. DeGaulle, preferred to be an elected monarch).

2. The Portugal 1974 scenario in which the Army rebels against the endless wars to preserve the African empire, overthrowing the senescent dictatorship, which almost led to a Soviet-aligned military dictatorship.

A reader writes:

"Congress declared war on Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania on June 5, 1942. It also declared war on Italy the same day as Germany."

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Declare war on Iran?

It's safe to predict that Congress won't vote to declare war on Iran. It's also safe to predict that Congress won't vote against declaring war on Iran. That decision will be left up to the President in direct contradiction of the Constitution vesting the decision to go to war in Congress. Here's what several of the Founding Fathers said about this central Constitutional issue:

James Madison: ". . . The power to declare war, including the power of judging the causes of war, is fully and exclusively vested in the legislature . . . the executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war." (1793.) "The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war to the Legislature." (Letter to Jefferson, c. 1798.)

Alexander Hamilton: 'The Congress shall have the power to declare war'; the plain meaning of which is, that it is the peculiar and exclusive duty of Congress, when the nation is at peace, to change that state into a state of war. . . ." (c. 1801).

George Washington: "The constitution vests the power of declaring war in Congress; therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they shall have deliberated upon the subject and authorized such a measure." (1793.)

But, we all know George Washington was an America-Hater, so who cares about his opinion?

According to Rep. Ron Paul, Congress hasn't declared war on anybody since Germany on Dec. 11, 1941. The reason, of course, is that members of Congress don't want the responsibility because war or peace is such an important issue that their constituents might actually notice how they voted and, if they don't like it, vote them out of office, if you can imagine.

That kind of voter impudence is simply not to be tolerated. Just look at how most of the big name Washington pundits were shocked that Connecticut Democrats voted against Sen. Joe Lieberman -- a former Veep candidate! -- merely over a little thing like being the leading Democratic cheerleader for the Iraq War.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Dating and Mating

In response to my latest posting on the travails of Lonelyguys15million (here's my original item), a reader writes:

A further comment on the dating problem for modern men. The fundamental difficulty has been created by the over-zealous harassment laws adopted by most American companies, forbidding employees from dating one another.

Women need to see men in action, being competent, reliable, and in charge. The only place where they will see them this way is at work. Thus Americans spend a very large amount of their time at work only to have it ruled moot for dating purposes. Without these cues to effectiveness and strength men are forced to compete where none of their better qualities will come through, and women are thrown back on picking up the most striking looking men in bars. When these then turn into one-night stands it should come as a surprise to no-one, but apparently it does, time and time again.

It is true that feminists (along with lawyers) have created this barren nightmare, because they have tried to pretend that when women find men in authority attractive (i.e. in positions that reveal their marriageable strengths) this means that the men are somehow abusing their position. But they aren’t necessarily: they are simply demonstrating those qualities that women most look for in a mate. Women will gravitate to them—but the men are forced to ignore them if they want to keep their jobs.

Another reader writes about the decline of dances attended by all generations, which were a big part of finding a spouse in, say, Pride and Prejudice and Gone With the Wind. Nowadays, wedding receptions are just about the only surviving examples.

Another reader notes:

It wasn't the electric guitar that killed off multigenerational socializing; it was the explicit sexuality of the music. If you're getting the generations together for the purposes of making a new one, you have to have plausible deniability that that's what you're doing and you can't enflame the passions of the young men. Otherwise lots of people are going to be too embarrassed to show and the ones that do are going to end up jumping the gun out back.

I have been involved with some social groups centered around electronic dance music, and while there are babies and young children present, there is a general consensus to exclude the nubile and marriageable, because the adults don't want to deal with the drama.

Making marriages happen used to be a huge part of what leisured women did; preparing young women for the season in London, for example, was an enormous undertaking and something that was generally understood as worth doing. Young people at risk for heartbreak are a burden, and only a group that wants to perpetuate itself will take on that burden.

I started my children playing traditional Irish music because it's inherently valuable, but also I expect them to meet their wives in this context. Very few people think like this. It's a pity.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Ah, the Music Industry:

It's gotten ridiculously expensive to go to a rock concert, in large part because of monopoly power wielded by Paul Allen's Ticketmaster, which bought out its main rival Ticketron and local rivals, and, perhaps, by concert promoters. As computers have gotten cheaper, the ticket agency fees have skyrocketed. This has a depressing effect on the rock concert industry, which was far more dynamic when I was young, and on rock music in general. It's always been hard to make money selling records, but now with fees often running to a 43% surcharge, lots of kids can't afford to see concerts. That's why the big concert draws these days are senile acts like The Rolling Stones and The Eagles.

From the LA Times:

Concert Giant Sees Cutting Prices as Ticket to Success
Live Nation blames high entry fees for turning off fans. But Ticketmaster poses a big obstacle.
By Charles Duhigg,

The nation's largest concert firm and the industry's ticketing powerhouse may be headed for a behind-the-curtain tussle.

At issue: control over the spiraling cost of show admissions that are turning off many music fans.

On one side is Live Nation Inc. Chief Executive Michael Rapino, who has vowed to drive down prices that last year soared to an average of $57 per ticket for the most popular shows. On the other side is Ticketmaster, which dominates music ticket sales through its thousands of outlets and Internet sites.

Great name for a music industry executive: Rapino.

"Seventy percent of people didn't go to a concert last year, and even the average concert fan only attends about two shows a year," Rapino said. "We can grow this industry by lowering prices."...

But to make good on his promise, Rapino must wrest power from Ticketmaster, a near-monopoly that built its empire locking up exclusive rights to sell admissions to major concerts and other live events. Last year, Ticketmaster reaped nearly $1 billion in fees and surcharges. Rapino began renegotiations with the company this month.

For some fans, those charges are boosting already expensive ticket prices by one-third or more. Los Angeles rock fan Eugene Kang bought six passes last month to see the Killers at the Wiltern LG theater, forking over $210 for the tickets and $90 more in fees, he said...

But picking a fight with Ticketmaster would be Rapino's boldest move yet. Ticketmaster built an empire giving venues and promoters — including Live Nation — a cut of its fees and establishing a powerful network of retail stores and phone banks that were too expensive for any one promoter to replicate. Last year, Ticketmaster sold tickets worth about $6 billion through the company's Internet sites, 3,500 retail outlets and 19 international call centers.

Fans for years have complained about Ticketmaster's fees. Now, the migration of ticket purchasing to the Internet has created more options.

"You don't need thousands of storefronts anymore because most tickets are bought through the Internet now," said Larry Magid, a Live Nation executive who operates the Electric Factory, a venue in Philadelphia. "There is an impression that Ticketmaster has gotten too comfortable and arrogant. You have to be more responsive to fans nowadays."

Alternatives include Irvine-based Paciolan Inc., which sells software that allows venues to manage their own ticketing. Recently, the Portland Trail Blazers, the Philadelphia 76ers and the Philadelphia Flyers — all previous Ticketmaster clients — have switched to Paciolan.

"The history of the ticketing business was about barriers to entry, which kept Ticketmaster protected," Rapino said. "That has changed."

People close to Ticketmaster say that other concert companies have made similar comments about the ticketing company, only to sign new Ticketmaster deals once they got the terms and upfront payments they demanded. They question whether Rapino's musings are a negotiating tactic.

Other industry insiders note that Live Nation pockets about 50% of the fees Ticketmaster collects, and if Rapino really wanted to lower ticketing costs, he could rebate those funds back to concertgoers.

Live Nation's real goal in challenging Ticketmaster, say some, is to keep the other 50% of fees.

In other words, if you buy a half dozen tickets for The Killers over the Internet, the face value of the ticket is $35, but Ticketmaster gets and additional $7.50 (21.4% extra) and Live Nation, the concert promoter, gets an additional $7.50 (21.4%).

Ticketmaster plays blatant monopolist hardball to keep these fees so high, as they showed by destroying the 1994 tour of the then top rock band in the country, Pearl Jam, for trying to keep ticket prices under $20. (Here's Pearl Jam's Congressional testimony.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Conceptual tools

Mark Kleiman offers a "list of concepts journalism students should be exposed to:"

- Institutional culture
- Regression toward the mean
- Moral hazard
- Expected value (of an uncertain outcome)
- Present value (of a stream of gains and losses over - time)
- Statistical control
- Correlation v. causation
- Benefit-cost analysis and willingness-to-pay
- Cost-effectiveness
- Separation of powers
- Mill's "harm principle" [more of a moral assertion than a conceptual tool, however]
- Rent-seeking
- Opportunity cost
- Cognitive dissonance
- Milgram experiment

Off the top of my head, I'd add:

- Occam's Razor
- Law of supply and demand
- Ceteris paribus -- all else being equal
- Selection (e.g., natural selection, kin selection, a self-selected sample, etc.)
- Importance of who your relatives are
- Nature vs. Nurture
- Nepotism vs. neposchism
- Relative vs. absolute
- Direction vs. magnitude

The confusion over the direction vs. magnitude comes up all the time these days in the comparisons of Iran in 2006 to Nazi Germany in 1938. See, Nazi Germany didn't like America and Iran doesn't like America, so, since the direction of their dislike (against us) is the same, the threat they pose must be the same. Right?

Okay, but magnitude counts as well, or as Greg Cochran writes in the upcoming American Conservative issue: Size Matters.

Most pundits think about public policy issues the same way I think about singing on key. If I succeed in getting the direction of the change from one note to another right, if I remember that in "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," the pitch of my voice is supposed to go up, not down, between "Some-" and "where," well, hey, I'm doing pretty doggone good. Only fancy pro musician nerds like Randy the judge on "American Idol" care about the magnitude of how much I'm supposed to go up between "Some-" and "where." Do you think Paula Abdul cares? Even when she sobers up?

What other handy conceptual tools would you recommend?

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

"All the King's Men"

From my upcoming review in The American Conservative:

At the 2005 Oscars, host Chris Rock asked,

"Who is Jude Law? Why is he in every movie I have seen the last four years? Even the movies he's not acting in, if you look at the credits, he made cupcakes or something. He's gay, he's straight, he's American, he's British. Next year he's playing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar."

In response, an even more than usually pompous Sean Penn defended Law on TV as "one of our finest actors." This ensured a slagging by film critics of the new version of "All the King's Men," in which Penn plays the Huey Long-inspired populist demagogue Willie Stark and Law his enervated aristocrat press secretary Jack Burden, who can never quite decide whether that's a gleam or a glint in his boss' eye.

Surprisingly, after endless editing, "All the King's Men" turns out to be an intelligent, serious film with memorable dialogue, which writer-director Steven Zaillian (who wrote "Schindler's List") largely lifted straight from the book. The famous 1946 novel by poet Robert Penn Warren tends toward the lyrically overripe when Burden narrates, but comes alive when Stark opens his mouth, furnishing as many superb lines as we're likely to hear in a 2006 movie.

While the new film is not as effective as the 1949 Best Picture version (with an Oscar-winning turn by Broderick Crawford), it is more artistically ambitious. Its flaws are frustratingly numerous, but not fatal.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer