Megan McArdle misinforms her readers

Megan McArdle has a new article in The Atlantic about how "the freeloaders" are ruining music. You see, the revenues from album sales have been falling for the past 10 years. McArdle attributes this mainly to 2 factors: illegal downloading, and a high baseline in the 80s and 90s, as people replaced their collections with CDs. She doesn't mention the boy-band boom that caused a massive surge in CD sales at the end of the 90s. And then she hits upon the reason why her thesis is fatally flawed: the concert industry.

The concert industry is indeed booming despite the downturn. And people who admit to downloading music illegally may actually spend more money on recorded music than people who don’t. One assumes they plump up concert revenues as well.

She then argues that this is wrong:

Moreover, spending less on recorded music doesn’t necessarily mean you spend more on shows; the savings could just as easily go toward beer. And even avid music lovers in urban areas can see only a few shows a week. To raise revenue, you have to get new customers in the door or raise ticket prices.

This is classic McArdle. Argue from Econ 101 first principles, while ignoring the real-life data that might invalidate some of the assumptions in your model. Like the data, here and here, showing revenue from concerts and album sales. Essentially, concert revenue has risen at about the same rate that album revenue has decreased. And this is actually a very good thing for musicians, as they see a far greater percentage of concert revenue than they see from album sales.

Helicopter parents

Jonathan Klick at CATO Unbound says that:

Apparently a number of firms report that entry-level candidates are now bringing their parents to job interviews and letting mom negotiate their benefits for them.

This sounded hilarious, so of course I had to check out the links. Firstly, Klick gets the links backwards. The article at the first link says that "parents of new hires are calling employers to negotiate salary and benefits." That's kind of creepy. But in the article at the second link, the "bringing their parents to job interviews" seems much more normal, once you read what actually happened.

"Last year I had a parent sit in the lobby and wait the entire four hours during the job interview," says Audrey Abron, an executive recruiter for Belk Department Stores in Charlotte, N.C. "The girl introduced us to her mother, and there was no embarrassment. She felt it was acceptable behavior. What do you say? Some things should be understood." Things like, you don't bring your mommy or daddy to a job interview.

To me, though, this just sounds like the kid got a ride with their mom, and her mom waited in the lobby. It's a bit weird that she would wait in the lobby, rather than go to a coffee shop to wait, but it's not like the parent was in the interview room with their kid.

But what really piqued my interest was that the second article included the line "as the labor market tightens". Tightening labour market? That doesn't sound right. It turns out that Klick, to back up his contention that "entry-level candidates are now bringing their parents to job interviews and letting mom negotiate their benefits for them" [emphasis mine], has relied on articles from 2006 and 2007. In his last paragraph, Klick says:

But, as Thaler suggests, if this turn has proved to be a bad one, we can simply reverse course to fix things in 20 years or so.

The fact that he's relying on stories that are about 3 years old to bolster his case suggests to me that it may take less than 20 years to "fix things".

Defending David Petraeus

There seems to be a big dust-up on the right that maybe Petraeus holds "Arabist, anti-Israeli attitudes." For example, Diana West thinks that Petraeus "blames the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for the existence of Hezbollah". The evidence she cites is:

... this Petraeus quotation from last summer as reported by the Lebanese Daily Star via Pajamas Media: “Hezbollah’s justifications for existence will become void,” Petraeus said, “if the Palestinian cause is resolved.”

I think it's pretty clear that Petraeus is not saying that Hezbollah was caused by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or that the end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will cause the end of Hezbollah. I think it is obvious that Petraeus is saying that, were the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to end, the justifications Hezbollah gives for their ongoing violence will no longer be valid. Hezbollah will undoubtedly come up with new justifications for its existence (no organisation shuts itself down voluntarily), but these new justifications will be much weaker, and command much less support in the Arab world, than the current justifications.

Andrew Sullivan's selective attention

Andrew Sullivan says:

The gay left is horrified, rather than encouraged, by the Tory party's big steps to include gay people in its party and policies.

This is after he quotes Anastasia Beaumont-Bott, the founder of LGBTory, saying, "I'd go as far to say that I'll vote Labour at this general election." I don't follow British politics, but it seems like this is a member of the gay Right that does not believe that the Tory party is taking "big steps to include gay people in its party and policies".

In the post, Sullivan also extracts at length from this post by Johann Hari (of 533 words in Hari's post, Sullivan reprints 214, or 40.1%). Unfortunately, he does not quote the last 63 words of Hari's post:

This is a tragedy primarily for the large number of naturally right-wing gay people who want to vote Conservative.

It will be a great day for Britain when gay people can choose any party on the political spectrum, knowing it won't support prejudice and bigotry against them. David Cameron told us that day had come. His actions, alas, show that it has not.

To Andrew, this is someone who "is horrified, rather than encouraged, by the Tory party's big steps to include gay people in its party and policies." To me, this sounds like someone who does not believe that the Tories are taking "big steps", but still wishes that they were.

Economic assistance

Steve Rothman doesn't think that the U.S. offers economic aid to Israel:

Israel will receive $3 billion, in military aid only. There is no economic aid to Israel, other than loan guarantees that continue to be repaid in full and on time.

Firstly, dollars are fungible, so $3 billion in military aid is $3 billion which Israel does not have to spend, freeing them to spend it on whatever they want. It is a $3 billion transfer of wealth from America to Israel. Semantically, it may not be "economic aid", but in practice it is.

Secondly, loan guarantees are economic aid. To say "there is no economic aid to Israel", followed by a clause describing the economic aid that is provided to Israel, is an intentional attempt to mislead the reader.

The impossibility of defending Benedict

Rod Dreher, while specifically "not trying to let the Vatican off the hook", remarks that:

OK, look. There are over 400,000 Catholic priests on the planet. Do you know how many priests are on the staff of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which has oversight in these matters? Something like 40.

If only there were some way for the Vatican to increase the number of priests serving on the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Unfortunately, it is impossible.

Serious question: how is the Vatican, with its extremely limited resources, supposed to handle this problem? Again, I'm not trying to excuse Vatican inaction, but I don't see how Rome is going to get a handle on this at the level of monitoring particular priests.

I always thought that the Vatican had vast wealth, not "limited resources", but I'll ignore that for now. Dreher is setting up a straw man argument: that people are outraged at the inability of the Vatican to "get a handle on this at the level of monitoring particular priests". What people are outraged about is that, upon hearing that one of its priests may have raped a child, the Vatican response was "the priest should simply be monitored". THAT is where the outrage lies. But to Dreher, the problem is that:

How Benedict fixes this, God only knows. He theoretically has the power to order wholesale reforms. In truth, it's far, far more complicated (what's he going to do if bishops refuse to obey him, send in the Swiss Guards?). The quandary he's in is that he's got responsibility for all of this stuff, without the practical means to police it effectively. It is an administrative nightmare.

It must suck being at the top, and yet not having any power. I bet he wishes he was still Cardinal Ratzinger, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. From Deborah Caldwell:

[Ratzinger has] been the driving force behind the Vatican's crackdowns on liberation theology, religious pluralism, challenges to traditional moral teachings on issues such as homosexuality, and dissent on women's ordination.

And how did he do that?

Ratzinger maintained strict discipline on church doctrine, excommunicating and silencing dissenters.

Too bad that he lost those disciplinary powers once he became Pope. It could have brought comfort to a whole lot of raped children.

Funny quote for the day

Mary C. Gordon, on the nuns who came out in favour of health care reform:

Some say we owe the passage of health care to these brave women

Some say that Mary C. Gordon is full of it.

Craig Shirley and Donald Devine have an article in the Washington Post claiming that "Karl Rove is no conservative". While I agree with most of what they said, they do gloss over some important points. Describing the rise of the conservative movement in the second half of the 20th century, they say:

Modern American conservatism has roots in the ideas of philosopher John Locke, the founding fathers and the notion that humans' natural state is freedom. This thinking later fused into a modern political movement with Buckley, who also championed the idea that that liberty is God-given, thus broadening the movement's appeal to social conservatives. Over time, American conservatism evolved into a well-defined political movement that is anti-status quo, opposed to excessive government, populist and pro-individual.

Of course, what they neglect to say is that this support from social conservatives came at the cost of supporting policies that are distinctly anti-individual and pro-excessive government, such as drug prohibition and anti-homosexuality.

Later, they make the laughable assertion that "the party's problems are complicated by its good manners".

Republicans do not wish to upbraid Bush and Rove for leading the GOP and conservatism astray. People such as Glenn Beck and Mark Levin who have even mildly criticized the spending and excesses wrought by Republicans have been churlishly attacked by defenders of the era.

In case you are unsure, Merriam-Webster defines churlish as "of, resembling, or characteristic of a churl: vulgar". So you see, Republicans want to denounce the un-conservative legacy of Bush and Rove. Unfortunately, other Republicans will "churlishly" attack them if they do so. And so they say nothing. To my eye, that looks more like intellectual cowardice than "good manners".

Extreme TNC Bait

Andrew Sullivan has a post up about Teabonics with the title "TNC Bait". He links to a great slideshow demonstrating the mastery of Engrish displayed by the tea partiers. One of the pictures really caught my eye:

The sign reads: "OBAMA HAS A CRISIS OF COMPETNCE". CompeTNCe? Spooky.