O-rings in Community

The O-ring model in economics offers an explanation of a production weakness.

The O-ring theory of economic development is a model of economic development put forward by Michael Kremer in 1993,[1] which proposes that tasks of production must be executed proficiently together in order for any of them to be of high value. The key feature of this model is positive assortative matching, whereby people with similar skill levels work together.[1]

The model argues that the O-ring development theory explains why rich countries produce more complicated products, have larger firms and much higher worker productivity than poor countries.[2]

The name is a reference to the 1986 Challenger shuttle disaster, a catastrophe caused by the failure of O-rings.

WIKI

However, this model understates the possible results, as its production is thought to be positive. In communal markets, the weakest link can fail in their task and draw against the resources other teammates offer.

At Home Economics, we like to distinguish between two types of products: some are more conducive to private transactions, and others are more conducive to communal or public transactions. Those in the first category benefited greatly from the division of labor, for instance. Every worker in the chain focuses on one job, and the line produces a fabulous model T. The second category includes activities such as the ‘eyes on the street’ method of public safety, which was developed by urbanist Jane Jacobs. If a community is mindful of on-goings outside their front doors and reports as necessary, then residents benefit from reduced crime.

Now consider two forms of education delivery. Say one involves students completing modules of schoolwork from a home computer. The overall score of the class will harmed by the weakest link, but each individual performs independently. Now consider a classroom setting. Say one child often misses the bus. They regularly arrive late to class. This disrupts the teacher’s material delivery and causes friction between the students. In this communal situation, it is not only the tardy child who suffers but the whole class. This scenario is one most often given in explanation of why some high-poverty elementary schools suffer from below-average performance.

With items suited to private goods production, the o-ring model implies fewer products that meet perfection. If a company builds laptops and one worker fails to meet standards, fewer laptops are sold. But in a group scenario, where the leaders, perhaps of a certain age, are unwilling to adopt an electronic methodology, say a new accounting feature, they create more work for employees effectively pulling negative productivity.

The negative impact potential in the o-ring model for communal products is underestimated.

Elegant Slumming

Who doesn’t like a wry metaphor or particularly apt simile? Tom Wolfe’s writing is rich in both. His short story Radical Chic depicts the wealthy of NY cooing over the edgy Marxist-Leninist black power organization.

For example, does that huge Black Panther there in the hallway, the one shaking hands with Felicia Bernstein herself, the one with the black leather coat and the dark glasses and the absolutely unbelievable Afro, Fuzzy-Wuzzy-scale, in factโ€”is he, a Black Panther, going on to pick up a Roquefort cheese morsel rolled in crushed nuts from off the tray, from a maid in uniform, and just pop it down the gullet without so much as missing a beat of Felicia’s perfect Mary Astor voice…

And this is all in one sentence. As a high schooler I would try out a few colorful comparisons just to have my paper returned marked up in red: too DRAMATIC! I guess you have to be famous to be creative.

There’s more to talk about in Radical Chic than a descriptive tableau. Perhaps we should take a cue from economist and blogger Tyler Cowen, who recently wrote about the Odyssey in economic terms. After all, the point of Radical Chic is a money transfer from the ultra-rich to a group with a cause, the Black Panthers.

In the Odyssey, the people involved are neatly tucked away on their islands. The groups are clearly delineated as a sea separates them from the others Homer meets on his journey. Fortunately, we have the clever and perceptive Tom Wolfe. He makes the reader see the affluent managing their servants in their townhomes in Manhattan. He corrals one group with descriptors and then another.

What the Bersteins will find out is that there are, in fact, many groups to consider. Many more than the radical chic who desperately needed something new and different in their lives. By the short story’s end, Wolfe lists many more economic players.

FOOLS, BOORS, PHILISTINES, BIRCHERS, B’NAI B’RITHEES, Defense Leaguers, Hadassah theater party piranhas, UJAvia-tors, concert-hall Irishmen, WASP ignorati, toads, newspaper readers-they were booing him, Leonard Bernstein, the egre-gio maestro… Boooooo.

As Leneord Berstein, a famous maestro, is booed while on stage, he learns that there were many more groups in play than the virtuous and the radicals, and this fact has led to him taking a private loss.

Negative Values

People love a villain. Sometimes, I think they need a villain. They can wrap up all their angst and anger and launch it into the world by saying mean things about them. Property owners and landlords have had targets on their backs for the last ten years. After the great recession of 2008 pulled real estate prices to new lows and held them fast under-water in prolonged recovery, the bubbling up of prices has made real estate ownership look like easy money.

The anti-capitalists appeared as if in response to a dog whistle, armed with outrage and disgust at the accumulated value through property ownership. Instead of being pleased with the improved market, which serves as the engine of continued investment in neverending maintenance and repairs, those who spend their days looking for someone with more than them proclaim foul play.

Will the critical voices show up tomorrow at the auction advertised below? A lovely downtown building is listed with a starting price of $1. No– they won’t be there. The truth is many people do not wish to carry the burden of ownership. And that’s fine, but then they can’t criticise those who do the work and reap the reward.

https://twitter.com/FrederickMelo/status/1893113482934891001

Voice is an essential feature in our economy. The voices I value the most are those from people with experience in the field and those with a personal stake in the experience under review. Be a good shopper. Cut through the noise and valuate the source.

Iโ€™ll tell you how the sun rose

Iโ€™ll tell you how the sun rose, -
A ribbon at a time.
The steeples swam in amethyst,
The news like squirrels ran.

The hills untied their bonnets,
The bobolinks begun.
Then I said softly to myself,
"That must have been the sun!"

But how he set, I know not.
There seemed a purple stile.
Which little yellow boys and girls
Were climbing all the while

Till when they reached the other side,
A dominie in gray
Put gently up the evening bars,
And led the flock away.

Emily Dickinson

What is public, What is private

The Minnesota Court of Appeal recently made an interesting ruling. The court concluded that a car’s interior may be a public space if it sits atop a public road.

The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that the interior of a vehicle is a โ€œpublic placeโ€ if it is driven on public roads, in a case involving a criminal charge over a BB gun found under a driverโ€™s seat. MSN

We at Home-Economic.com like to think through public and private spaces. Typically, what is considered public is defined by access. If anyone can stroll into a park, it is a public space. If you can walk through the doors of the public library, have a seat in a nice armchair, and read for a couple of hours, then it is a public space.

Wayzata Library is part of the Hennepin County Library System. Great views of Lake Minnetonka!

So, is public transit public in the same way? One might argue it is not. You can board the bus if you pay a fee. It is more of a service subsidized by the public and charged at a reduced rate. Is the interior of the bus a public space? In the sense that the buses are owned, usually by a metropolitan community, then it is public to the municipality. Yet- to board a passenger still needs to come up with the fee. Thus, there is a bit of the private side of life to the transaction.

In looking for perspectives on how to consider the interior space in a privately owned vehicle, the court considered this:

In trying to clearly define what exactly is a public place in relation to a personโ€™s vehicle, McKeigโ€™s opinion focused first on Minnesota legal statute concerning the transportation of firearms, explainingย how the lawย allows for legal firearm possession in a vehicle: โ€œA person may only transport a firearm in a motor vehicle under certain conditions, including in a gun case, unloaded and in the closed trunk of the vehicle, or with a valid permit.โ€

It seems a little unusual to me to look for the lines between what is private and what is public in a law regarding the use of firearms. But far be it for me to judge! I have no legal training.

It just seems that if a car is privately ownedand can be contained and controlled by its owner, it should be considered entirely private, even if it sits on a public road.

How’s the up-zoning going?

Not so well, according to Dr. Carol Becker. Here’s a photo excerpt from The failure of the Minneapolis 2040 plan to boost housing:

Although it is fair to keep in mind, or rather it is essential, to keep in mind that many other factors could contribute to the drop off in new housing permits in the city. If you can think back to the last time you made a housing decision, what were the core attributes of your new place to live? Perhaps safety. Crime is up in the city. What else? Perhaps schools. School performance and attendance rates are down. Perhaps proximity to work. Many employment situations went with a remote model, leaving the downtown core empty, reducing the premium to be close-in.

There are many variables that contribute to or detract from the desirability of living situations. Zoning has an impact, but it is way down the list of the core features that impact people’s daily lives.

Fancy faucet

Thereโ€™s all sorts of reasons to travel. But inevitably you try something new, or experience something new, or learn something new.

Sometimes you see something new like this fancy faucet at the Kalispell airport.

If you look closely at the shiny chrome bar, the left hand side dispenses soap, water is activated under the middle and a cool hand dryer is triggered under the right hand corner.

Nifty icons prompt you while the water vanishes through the bar drain.

Touchless and efficient.

New Realtor Rules- Were they consequential for consumers?

CNN brings readers up to date on the antitrust lawsuit against the National Association of Realtors. The plaintiffs were granted $418 million last summer, not a small amount of cash. Once all the legal bills were paid, the 500 petitioners received an estimated $900.

So, did all that work and expense result in a new way of doing business?

โ€œPaperwork has changed, and I think some really good things have happened in the way most of us discuss commissions upfront with our buyers and sellers,โ€ said Brita Kleingartner, a Realtor in Los Angeles. โ€œBut I donโ€™t think that business has changed in any way.โ€

With mortgage rates hovering around 7% for the last six months and average home prices across the USย continuing to rise, the new rules, which took effect in August, had spurred hope that commissions paid to real estate professionals would plunge, making homebuying and selling less expensive for average Americans. Last year, TD Cowen Insights estimated that the new rules could cause fees paid to Realtorsย to fall by 25% to 50%.

Instead, commissions have remained largely unchanged since August, according to a study released this month by real estate platform Redfin. For relatively lower-priced homes that sold for under $500,000, Redfin found that the average commission has increased since the rules took effect.

As I predicted a year ago, how business is done has not changed. The lawsuit alleged a problem that did and does not exist. How do we know? Watch the consumers and what they do. If they choose not to employ two realtors (one to represent the seller and one to represent the buyer), if they decide to pay them at a different rate, then their pull in the market generates a change. If consumers, despite all the layer’s fees, publicity, and exposure, continue to desire representation by a professional licensed agent, then the market rate is being met in an open and non-coercive environment.

Is all this activism worth it? I wish someone would keep track. A legal battle of this size is expensive. Plus, the plaintiffs who were encouraged to participate spent valuable time on this versus other aspects of their lives. It tapped into some of their family capacity for civic participation. Could other causes within their immediate circles better deserve their efforts? Very possibly.

Many feel a moral superiority by fighting the good fight. But when the fight goes to show that the monsters were but mist off a lake on a cold fall morning, then one must count up the expense of it all and do an analysis.

Property Condition Ratings

Montana’s Commerce Department has an interesting rating system for property conditions. Finding parcel information with physical measures is standard fare. But this site color codes each parcel with a rating from very poor to very good.

This is important as a long list of defrayed maintenance can negatively affect older properties. The costs for windows, siding, plumbing, and so on only increase as a property ages. It would be interesting to know what metrics are used to draw the ratings. If accurate, it is helpful information. At some point, for example, the cost necessary to bring a home back to an acceptable condition exceeds the finished project’s market value. These parcels are excellent prospects for tear-downs.

Of course, homes with pet deer, like this one in Whitefish, MT, which is near the pink square on the above map, are more valuable.

Restraining fraud in non-profits

Chat gives an overview of what types of reporting are asked of non-profit organizations.

Nonprofit organizations are required to complete various types of reporting to maintain compliance with federal, state, and local regulations. These reporting requirements ensure financial transparency, accountability, and proper governance. The primary form of federal reporting is the IRS Form 990 series, which includes different versions depending on the nonprofitโ€™s revenue and assets. Large organizations must file Form 990, while smaller ones may qualify for Form 990-EZ or the simplified Form 990-N (e-Postcard). Nonprofits with unrelated business income must submit Form 990-T, and private foundations must file Form 990-PF. Additionally, nonprofits receiving more than $750,000 in federal grants are subject to a Single Audit under OMB Uniform Guidance.

At the state level, many nonprofits must comply with charitable solicitation regulations, requiring annual registration and financial disclosures with the Attorney Generalโ€™s office or another designated entity. Some states mandate additional corporate annual reports to maintain nonprofit status. Organizations with employees must also adhere to payroll tax reporting, including Form 941 for quarterly payroll taxes and W-2s for employees.

Beyond government oversight, nonprofits are reviewed by various watchdog organizations and trade associations that assess transparency, governance, and financial responsibility. Groups such as Charity Navigator, GuideStar (by Candid), BBB Wise Giving Alliance, and CharityWatch rate nonprofits based on financial health, accountability, and transparency. Many donors and grantmakers rely on these ratings when deciding which nonprofits to support.

Trade associations like the National Council of Nonprofits, Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP), and Independent Sector provide best practices and ethical standards for nonprofit governance. Certain industry-specific organizations, such as the Council on Accreditation (COA) for human services nonprofits, the Joint Commission for healthcare-related nonprofits, and NAEYC for early childhood education nonprofits, offer accreditation programs to ensure nonprofits meet high standards in their respective fields.

Despite these oversight measures, fraud remains a concern in the nonprofit sector. Strengthening fraud prevention efforts could include stricter audit requirements, mandatory conflict-of-interest policies, and enhanced financial disclosure standards. Increasing public access to real-time financial reporting could deter misuse of funds, and whistleblower protections could encourage internal accountability. Additionally, watchdog organizations could collaborate with regulatory agencies to identify and penalize fraudulent activities more efficiently. By reinforcing these measures, nonprofits can build greater public trust while ensuring that charitable contributions are used effectively to serve their intended missions.

But something must be missing– as non-profits attract subterfuge and fraud. What other measures could be considered to validate the good works at hand? What about engagement?

When I was a young office worker, my employer supported several non-profit organizations. United Way was big at the time. Walking to raise money was a popular form of fundraising, and the presence of walkers out and about brought causes like MS into the public’s view. They were annual events.

When volunteers give their time, they implicitly endorse the activity. It’s a little vote of confidence for the cause and the folks in charge. Record volunteer participation if you want to determine an organization’s legitimacy.

Birds of a feather

For Life- Series Review

Once you’ve spent a bit of time on police dramas, it can be fun to compare by country. Watching For Life with subtitles reminds one how different Norwegian is from the latin based European languages. It’s rare when you can pick up on the words. There are only a few Anglo words remixed with an accent.

The relationship between the two lead detectives has a different strong-woman vibe than Mariska Hargitay in the long-standing US show Law and Order and is the total opposite of Brenda Blethyn, who plays Vera in the British sitcom of the same name. Then there is the very modern and Scandinavian relationship between lead detective Victoria Wolls and her older yet still teenage son.

But the fun is in the details like detective Wolls fabulous modular home and the snowy Norwegian landscape. It is a show which reflects its place of origin.

Montana fact of the day

According to Grok:

Based on the latest available data, around 3,286 Californians moved to Montana from 2021 to 2022 according to IRS data analyzed by SmartAsset.com. However, another source from the San Francisco Chronicle reported that more than 13,000 Californians moved to Montana since the beginning of the pandemic, indicating a significant influx during that period. These numbers suggest that while the annual migration might be in the thousands, the total over recent years could be higher, especially considering the broader context of population movements during the health crisis.

Montanaโ€™s population records in at 1.13 million.

A sunny day at Whitefish Mountain Resort

Now that people are talking in groupsโ€ฆ

Robin Hanson wrote recently about his Status Circles. They start on an enormous scale with the whole universe and then life on Earth. But when most people focus on nation, acquaintances, and family, Robin distinguished his affiliations to people interested in the big questionsโ€”the intellectuals. But even within this grouping, he offers a wide range of ever-narrowing groupings.

Government structures are often thought of as falling into one another. The town is part of a county, which is part of a state, which falls under a country’s national laws and jurisdictions. Let’s call this the Russian Doll effect. By encapsulating one organization into the other, it seems a default that the interests of the smallest doll would be taken in consideration up the chain.

In Vincent Ostrom’s book The Intellectual Crisis in American Public Administration, the author uses ideas offered by de Tocqueville to suggest otherwise.

I’m reading Vincent Ostroms The Intellectual Crisis in American Public Administration. On page 80, he refers to De Tocqueville’s impressions of the US administration. Can it be said that the French man thought there was independence between various levels of US governance, and that’s a good thing?

ChatGPT said:

Yes, Alexis de Tocqueville generally viewed the decentralization of governance in the United States as a positive feature. In Democracy in America, he admired how local institutions, especially townships and states, maintained a degree of independence from the central government. Tocqueville saw this decentralization as essential to fostering civic engagement, political responsibility, and democratic stability. He believed that allowing different levels of government to function with relative autonomy helped prevent tyranny and encouraged active participation by citizens in public affairs.

Vincent Ostrom, in The Intellectual Crisis in American Public Administration, often draws from Tocqueville to critique centralized bureaucratic models. Ostrom emphasizes how polycentric governanceโ€”where multiple centers of authority operate independently but cooperativelyโ€”aligns with Tocquevilleโ€™s observations about Americaโ€™s administrative structure. So yes, Tocqueville did see this independence as beneficial, particularly in reinforcing democratic habits and limiting the overreach of centralized power.

4o

You said:

If one were to take the imagery one step further, could one separate each level out by encapsulating them in a self-interest cloak- the idea being that in terms of action, each level will prioritize the interest at the local level, which can be at odds with other levels of governance.

ChatGPT said:

Yes, you could extend the imagery in that way. If each level of governance is wrapped in a “self-interest cloak,” it suggests that local, state, and federal authorities will act primarily to protect their own interests, which may sometimes conflict with other levels. This aligns with public choice theory, which Ostrom himself engages with, emphasizing that political actorsโ€”whether at the local, state, or national levelโ€”pursue their own interests rather than some idealized collective good.

Tocqueville observed that the strength of American governance lay in its decentralized structure, where local institutions had enough autonomy to make decisions that best served their immediate communities. However, this same independence could lead to friction when different levels of government pursue conflicting agendas. For example, a state might resist federal mandates that it views as intrusive, or a local government might implement policies that are at odds with state priorities.

This “self-interest cloak” metaphor also ties into the broader tension in American federalism: the push and pull between cooperation and competition among different levels of government. In practice, while decentralization fosters adaptability and local problem-solving, it can also create inefficiencies, redundancy, and legal battles when interests clash. Ostrom, like Tocqueville, would likely argue that this tension isn’t necessarily a flaw but an inherent feature of a system designed to resist centralized authority and encourage pluralism.

The benefit of this model, as opposed to the Russian Doll model, is understanding when a group becomes a competitor rather than an altruistic companion. For instance, during the COVID crisis, all the states bid up the price of masks by bidding against each other. In their actions, which were independent (cloaked in self-interest), Americans increased the costs of masks for all Americans to the benefit of those abroad. When reorganized as a bidding unit at the national level, this price effect is reduced.

The only trick, of course, is that you must trust that the greater group will, in turn, divide out the masks to everyone’s satisfaction.

Letters from Paul

Assure the weak that they can be made strong.

But he said to me, โ€œMy grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.โ€ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12: 9-10)

Cash is not always the answer

They say some things you can’t buy. Or maybe some things are more conducive to pecuniary transactions than others. Take the Violence Interrupters. By the summer of 2020, the community wanted to try a new angle on crime prevention, as an article from September explains.

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — The city of Minneapolis is sending members of the community into the streets to prevent violence that is plaguing the city.

They are called the Violence Interrupters, and they’re tasked with stopping shootings by mediating conflicts in the community, and following up with individuals to decrease retaliatory violence.

Jamil Jackson and his group of interrupters are on the move.

“Our mantra is engage, relationships, resources,” Jackson said. “We’re teachers, we’re business owners, we’re city employees, we’re park employees, we’re just individuals who came to the call and had a desire to come out here and change.”

Their bright-orange shirts stand out, so they can walk in and use their relationships within the community to stop the shootings before they happen

The idea was that if responsible people in the neighborhood could step in on demand when they saw an event unfolding, interacting with police would be avoided entirely. Neighbors helping neighbors have the advantage of, in many cases, a clearer view of the issues at hand.

Others have written about this very thing, extolling the benefits of an active community busy engaging with each other across the sidewalks and parks of a neighborhood. Here’s what Jane Jacobs wrote in The Death and Life of Great American Cities.

The first thing to understand is that the public peace the sidewalk and street peace-of cities is not kept primarily by the police, necessary as police are. It is kept primarily by an intricate, almost unconscious, network of voluntary controls and standards among the people themselves, and enforced by the people themselves.

With good intentions, an office of violence prevention was created and funding was carved into the city budget to pay people in the neighborhood to step in and prevent an incident from escalating. So what happened? Fast-forward to this week in 2025.

Some Minneapolis City Council members say the cityโ€™s Neighborhood Safety Department (NSD) has been too riddled with mismanagement to continue overseeing violence intervention programs. On Thursday, three council members proposed that more than $1.1 million be allocated to Hennepin County to temporarily take over two intervention programs. 

For more than a year, council members have routinely flagged concerns over the department that administers violence interruption programs. Several violence interruption groups reported contracts that had lapsed or gone unpaid last year, which council members say shrunk safety services in parts of the city. A 2023 lawsuit also alleged the department arbitrarily awarded millions of dollars in contracts without adequate oversight. 

Things have gotten so bad that the council people, who are most vocal against professional police, no longer want to be responsible for this new form of neighborhood quieting. But why didn’t it work? It has the right components.

It’s the money.

The eyes-on-the-street people, who help keep the peace, are many and are often never called on to intervene in any way. To meter out the job to an individual is resource misallocation as it takes a large group, a whole neighborhood, of people to monitor and, through small actions, or phone calls, or gestures, alter the course of events. There isn’t enough of a job for just one person.

When resources don’t have a direct draw against them, they become ripe for fraud. Those in charge of the money have to put it somewhere. Opportunists realize this and create a demand where none exists.

Community policing is a group thing. It does not jive with the division of labor or hourly wages. Whoever is available when the car crashes into a pole and is set on fire, whoever happens to be passing by and has the will and capacity to help, are those who step up voluntarily in times of need. For that they receive an award.

Repricing Underway

It’s kind of silly to say markets do not like uncertainty. Markets deal with new news all the time. Who thought Nvidia was going to surge last year and then precipitously drop in January? As a market participant, you can take advantage of such speculation. Bloomberg reports this activity in a newsletter today.

People don’t want to think of aid grants as having a market, but they do. They involve needs, donors and are constrained by resources. By abruptly closing down USAID, a repricing in the market for assistance will follow. Some of the needs will rise to the level of attracting a backer. But how?

Voice is used on this side of the market to advertise demand. Hereโ€™s an interesting comment from X.

People who need help are not always in a position to voice that need loud enough to be heard. But I think Mike Benz has a point. Why isnโ€™t the international community, or doctors and health professionals commenting on the lack of funding?

So what next? Most probably some of the projects will continue under the management of the State Department. In the meantime, a market process sifts through the various priorities of market participants. Some needs abroad may be taken over by other philanthropies. Some local organizations might have to downsize.

Whatโ€™s important, is the ones that are no longer deemed worthy of funding will no longer find a match.

The wheels only turn under the push of need.

Strong Women

Itโ€™s fading now, how discouraging it was decades ago when there were so few strong women in the public sphere.

Thatโ€™s all changed. Minnesotan Lisa Demuth can claim a first as speaker of the House; Nellie Bowles with The Free Press gets extra credit for her skill with humor; Karoline Leavitt is so young to be so poised. Andโ€” they are all moms.

The times they are a changing.

Buyers are the boss

What most people want out of their homes hasn’t changed much. Most buyers are looking for a free-standing single-family dwelling with a yard in a suburban neighborhood (Slides taken from an NAR buyer report).

The most typical financing is a conservative thirty-year fixed rate mortgage.

Where do the compromises start? With money and condition, of course. Buyers will give on those and the size of the home before distancing themselves from their networks or jobs.

Planners love to come up with ideas like high density living, but in the end– the buyers are the boss.

Housing Starts & Lumber prices

Prompted from Chat

December 2024 Sees a Surge in U.S. Housing Starts

After a challenging year, U.S. housing starts saw a 15.8% surge in December 2024, reaching an annualized rate of 1.50 million units. This growth was largely driven by a 61.5% rebound in multifamily construction, while single-family starts rose 3.4%. Despite this late-year boost, overall housing starts for 2024 fell 3.9% compared to 2023, reflecting a cooling market due to higher mortgage rates and construction costs.

A significant portion of the lumber used for home construction in the U.S. still comes from Canada, accounting for 25-30% of total softwood lumber consumption. However, the cost of lumber has fluctuated. Over the last year, lumber prices have declined from elevated levels seen in 2022-2023, as supply chains improved and housing demand adjusted. As of early 2025, lumber prices are around $538 per thousand board feet, down from previous highs but still above pre-pandemic averages.

Trade policy remains a critical factor. In August 2024, the U.S. increased tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber from 8.05% to 14.54%. Additionally, a new 25% tariff on Canadian and Mexican imports, set to take effect in February 2025, could drive costs higher. These tariffs may slow future building starts as material costs rise, impacting affordability and overall construction activity.

While Decemberโ€™s surge in housing starts is promising, builders must navigate ongoing supply chain challenges and policy shifts that could influence construction costs in the months ahead.

Read Jane Jabobs with me

I’ll be hosting a reading group on the excellent Interintellect site. We’ll tackle only a few chapters at a sitting to make for an easy reading assignment and plenty of time for everyone to get in on the conversation.

The first Zoom meet-up is on March 7th.

https://twitter.com/interintellect_/status/1886422037331071349

Regulation vs Market Clearing–Knob and Tube Edition

A few months ago, I wrote about an investor who bought a property with an old style of electrical wiring called knob and tube. Their post was an example of the complexity of a rehad project. The price of the building was undoubtedly part of their decision-making. But you don’t always know what you are buying. Inspections are done to determine all the variables upfront; when it comes to real estate renovations, there are bound to be some unexpected costs. The expense of rewiring a nine-unit building was a downstroke against their profit.

Homes have so many features, which leads people to make different choices depending on their skills, what they value, and their tolerance to risk. Some homeowners, for instance, will not purchase a home with a tuck-under garage. The thought of the amount of energy loss every time the twenty-foot double garage door goes up in the winter when it is below zero makes them cringe. The energy inefficiency of this floor plan makes the home unacceptable in their eyes.

Over time, particularly when mechanicals or construction processes improve, old systems like knob and tube wiring make their way out of the market. First, the market starts to reject the item, so sellers, in preparation for sale, determine they would be best off making the improvement before going on the market. Sometimes, the insurance company will influence the market by making it more expensive to insure certain features, which provides incentives for replacing those items. Eventually, the old way of doing things becomes obsolete and unacceptable to buyers.

This process may take a couple of decades or a quarter century. Old-timers grumble about replacing perfectly feasible mechanicals, wasting funds that could be spent elsewhere. A long time ago, a local electrician advised that as long as the cylindric glass fuses supported the current demand, then all was well. When one insurance company refuses coverage, other smaller companies may step in. And around it goes until the verdict changes and most homes have been converted.

Consider this method versus a regulation. Once an empowered authority draws a line and publishes a restriction, the market no longer has the ability to evaluate this change in contrast to all the dozens of other upgrades and improvements that can go into a home. The burden falls most heavily on the more dated homes, which are often owned by people who have gotten on in years and are not keeping up on things or those of lesser means who patch and plug problems as that’s the best they can do.

A decree from above creates an acute demand for that one mechanical, which, in my experience, causes opportunistic behavior and price inflation. The market system is the kinder and gentler way to transition from one set of norms to another.

Philip Roth talks w work

The men worked fifty, sixty, even seventy or more hours a weeks the women worked all the time, with little assistance from labor-saving devices, washing laundry, ironing shirts, mending socks, turning collars, sewing on buttons, mothproofing woolens, polishing furniture, sweeping and washing floors, washing windows, cleaning sinks, tubs, toilets, and stoves, vacuuming rugs, nursing the sick, shopping for food, cooking meals, feeding relatives, tidying closets and drawers, overseeing paint jobs and household re-pairs, arranging for religious observances, paying bills and keeping the family’s books while simultaneously attending to their children’s health, clothing, cleanliness, schooling, nutrition, conduct, birthdays, discipline, and morale. A few women labore alongside their husbands in the family-owned stores on the nearby shopping streets, assisted after school and on Saturdays by the older children, who delivered orders and tended stock and did the cleaning up.

It was work that identified and distinguished our neighbors for me far more than religion.

From- The Plot Against America

Not just trendy

The founders of Airbnb, Brian Chesky, Nathan Blecharczyk, and Joe Gebbia, (see yesterday’s post) were not looking to sell a trendy item like beanie babies. They were looking to change the framing of travel lodging. This entailed getting people to use their platform while having their new method benefit from all the classic institutional supports. Both hosts and visitors require safety, for instance. What are the ways people monitor for safety? They report objections. The site allows both parties to provide feedback.

A fad can take off when it strikes people’s fancy at a particular moment. When the Twins baseball team headed to the World Series twice in a handful of years, fans took to Homer Hankies as a sign of their support. The whole stadium flutter with the white kerchiefs. It’s a simple transaction: an object for cash. No further servicing or support is needed. It’s a perfect private market trade.

The sharing market, whether house sharing or car sharing, has added dimensions of safety and property damage. My son’s friend ran some cars through Turo while in college. One rental went awry when the leasor passed off the vehicle to an acquaintance. Fortunately, there was a tile in the trunk, so it was easy to track down at a nearby strip mall. The boys gained access to the parked car and waited. When the dude came out of the store, he saw the vehicle was occupied and realized his ride was over. The boys drove by him slowly to emphasize the game was up.

Some transactions, like selling stock out of your Merrilyn portfolio, are private. And then some require engaging circles of cooperative action to enforce the rules of the trade.

Group problem, group solution

Often, when people discuss problems that occur in group transactions, they single out an individual experience and hold it up as a representative example. That’s out of line. If you want to talk about individual outcomes, stick to that setting. If you want to talk about group outcomes, don’t exemplify one individual’s experience.

That’s what I like about the following clip from the Airbnb founders. They’ve come up with their house-sharing idea and worked out the logistical aspects to take it to market. Now, they just need people to try it. Not one person. That won’t make the platform start humming. They need a group.

https://twitter.com/StartupArchive_/status/1884285320029692413

They are trying to link the two groups of people with rooms to rent and the people who are taken with the idea and feasibility of renting from a homeowner. But they need something more. They need a common cause, an affinity that overlays the group and makes them feel like one. This elevates the sense of trust and is the little push needed to overcome the hesitancy of a new experience.

In groups, no one host can make the system move, no one guest. The individual is nothing on its own. Group analysis has group features, including an underlying group shared value.

Complete text:

Brian Chesky explains how Airbnb solved the chicken-and-egg problem โ€œMarketplaces are incredibly defensible at scale, and maybe itโ€™s because theyโ€™re incredibly hard to start. And the problem is simple – they call it the chicken and egg problem.โ€ As Brian explains, it was tough to bootstrap Airbnb in the beginning because travelers couldnโ€™t book homes if there was no inventory, and homeowners didnโ€™t want to list their homes unless people were going to book them. โ€œWe didnโ€™t know what to do for a while .We tried a lot of different things. And I can tell you what worked. Summer of 2008, the press announces that Barack Obama is moving from a 20,000 seat basketball arena to an 80,000 seat football stadium. And we said, thatโ€™s our shot. You have 60,000 people that donโ€™t have housing, surely at least a few of them are going to need a place to stayโ€ฆ And so we literally started with local people in Denver. Then we started emailing bloggers. We got the bloggers. Then the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News covered us. Then the local ABC and NBC and CBS affiliates. And then the Wall Street Journal. Then the New York Times and CNN are in our living roomโ€ฆ We did that in a matter of three weeks.โ€ Brian continues: โ€œWe started these little infernos. You start getting a few users here, a hundred here, fifty thereโ€ฆ And we did the same thing with the inauguration. And when you have a hundred people here and there, then you obsessively meet themโ€ฆ Paul Graham, our first investor, said itโ€™s better to have a hundred people love you than a million people kind of like you. And the reason why is itโ€™s really hard to build off of a really wide but shallow base. But with a hundred people, you can find out everything they wantโ€ฆ You meet them, you spend a ton of time with them, and once they fall in love with your product, theyโ€™ll tell every one of their friends. Thatโ€™s why [Airbnb] took a really long time to start, but it grew much faster later on.โ€

Dramatic Plunge

Sometimes, crazy northerners crack a hole in the ice and disrobe down to a skinny bikini before plunging into a chilly frozen lake. It’s called a Polar Plunge. It’s supposed to be fun!

But that’s not the type of plunge I’m bringing you in this article by well-known urban geographer Bill Lindeke. New construction in the legacy cities, which had made nice strides from 2017-2021, plummeted down 88%.

Comparing the slowdown to other cities of similar size reveals an undeniable first place in the worst record award to be given out. The cause, you ask? Bill suggests.

The most obvious culprit to me is that both St. Paul and Minneapolis have enacted (or taken steps toward enacting) rent stabilization policies. This was an issue that I argued about back in 2021, writing that the policy proposal appearing on the referendum would amount to St. Paul โ€œredlining itselfโ€ when it came to attracting housing investment. The bigger surprise is that Minneapolis seems to also have been affected by concerns about rent stabilization, even though they havenโ€™t actually enacted any actual policy.

I say it doesn’t stop there. The hostile environment against developers, landlords, tradespeople, maintenance and upkeep folks, and anyone who puts effort into the upkeep of real property has taken a toll.

There are other municipalities that welcome people who want to build upon and maintain investment properties. Options provide choices.

Slum Clearing- Gateway Edition

Is the Housing Act of 1949 the reason today for the hyper-local control of housing and real estate decisions? It’s hard to say. But the slum clearance, financed by the federal government, was significant enough to still be recognized today.

Judith A Martin, professor and director at the University of Minnesota, was a prominent figure in the local urban lore. This is an extract from her paper: Past Choices/Present Landscapes: The Impact of Urban Renewal on the Twin Cities

THE GATEWAY PROJECT
City planners assumed that the Gateway area, the old core of downtown Minneapolis, would qualify for federal urban renewal assistance when they proposed clearing and reconstructing about one-third of the entire downtown in the mid-1950s. Beginning in 1956, federal renewal officials raised serious questions about the size of the project: was what was proposed too big for the local real estate market? In 1957 a group of civic and government leaders, led by Mayor P.K. Peterson, went to Washington, D.C. to convince federal renewal officials that Minneapolis needed a project this size. They were successful, and returned with a commitment for the money.

Not everyone found favor with the proposed redevelopment however. Several owners of condemned property tried to stop the Gateway plan. They sued the HRA, claiming that the condemnation action was “arbitrary and unreasonable.” They also challenged the legality of the overall development plan. The owners did not win any of these suits, nor did the preservationists who sued to stop the destruction of the Metropolitan Building (formerly the Guaranty Life Building). This last suit made it as far as the Minnesota Supreme Court, which upheld the HRA’s right to condemn the Metropolitan Building. This decision essentially reaffirmed the “greater good” argument about eminent domain (Buildings 1961 b).

The 1956 Highway Act worked with the Housing Act by sometimes forging the interstate system through poor, dilapidated neighborhoods. While I suspect only the most dedicated automobile haters would argue against a national network of roads, the lamentation of housing being leveled still lingers today. And petitions are underway to return the freeway to neighborhood streets. (Although, most recently removed from the planning process.)

What is the balance between hyper-local governanceโ€”where people want to take out a freeway for residential streetsโ€”and an all-encompassing federal project? In the end, who owns the land?

The downtown library sits in the old Gateway district.

Skid row and more

Around the time (1961) Jane Jacobs was writing her book about cities, cities were reacting to many unpleasant issues. Skid row, for instance, was part of many downtowns home to drunks and vagabonds. A trend to suburban living had already led many people to focus their energies on the city’s limits; urban planners feared these litter-ridden blocks chased average folks from frequenting the area.

The solution? Raze to the ground the whole Gateway District of downtown.

Jacobs also comments on freeway expansions, parks, foot traffic, the impact of large institutions like hospitals, neighborhood interaction, and so much more. Her work is more about the questions about how neighborhood life worksโ€”what are they, and is there a logic to them?

The Northwestern National Life Building was built in the Gateway district in 1965.

Jane Jacobs- Neighborhood Specialist

To hunt for city neighborhood touchstones of success in high standards of physical facilities, or in supposedly competent an nonproblem populations, or in nostalgic memories of town life, is a waste of time. It evades the meat of the question, which is the problem of what city neighborhoods do, if anything, that may be socially and economically useful in cities themselves, and how they do it.

We shall have something solid to chew on if we think of city neighborhoods as mundane organs of self-government. Our failures with city neighborhoods are, ultimately, failures in localized self-government. And our successes are successes at localized self-government. I am using self-government in its broadest sense, meaning both the informal and formal self-management of society.

I will be hosting a reading group for Jacobโ€™s The Death and Life of Great American Cities. More information to follow.

Think of flowers


Itโ€™s good to think of flowers this time of year

When the groundโ€™s frozen crust caps the earth in fear

The fluffy petals in playful colors gently sent the air

When the soft southern gusts tussle their hair

Today is harsh and hard- even the cheery sun turns ice to glare

But soon, dear friend, the earthโ€™s soil will soften, so donโ€™t despair

Simply think of flowers this time of year.

My Everest?

There’s an inclination to make things of natural beauty available to the public. John Muir, for instance, advocated for the National Parks in general and Yosemite National Park in particular. Yet, there are still obstacles of geography. One must take themselves to the south rim of the Grand Canyon to see the sunlight paint the canyon. One must board a plane and cross the Pacific to walk through Waipi’o Valley on the Big Island.

Then, political boundaries stand between the majestic places on Earth and the traveler. Nepal announced they were increasing the permit fees for aspiring climbers of the great Mt Everest.

Nepal will increase the permit fees for climbing Mount Everest by more than 35%, making the worldโ€™s tallest peak more expensive for mountaineers for the first time in nearly a decade, officials said on Wednesday.

Income from permit fees and other spending by foreign climbers is a key source of revenue and employment for the cash strapped nation, home to eight of the worldโ€™s 14 highest mountains, including Mount Everest.

I doubt the increase will deter the mountaineers who can accomplish such a feat. It seems that people with steep ambitions would be able to raise the finances. And there are options for reduced fees in two of the off-seasons. But of course, tackling the December through February quarter in high winter winds would whittle the group down to the fittest and most crazy.

If anything, the lines to the summit and the wait lists indicate that Nepal is underpricing access to the Himalayan peak. The climb’s popularity has exploded since Sir Edmund Hillary and a sherpa summited in 1953. Perhaps the tiny nation can use some of the fees to tidy up after the visitors who distractedly leave their debris behind.

The magnificence of nature is something to behold. If you are Nepalese, the snowy peak is a national treasure. It rises proudly every day sure as the sunlight at dawn. Citizens can also extract private benefits by accommodating the needs of visitors who come to tackle the mountain. For outsiders, issues of distance and expertise determine who can take in what part of the massif.

For still others, Mount Everest can be seen through the window of a prop plane tipping its wings at the majestic summit.

Handling the Unexpected

Yesterday, Carrie Underwood led the high-test audience in the Capital Rotunda in singing America the Beautiful. As a professional singer, she regularly performs in front of crowds. But in this case, the room was full of dignitaries, and the background music malfunctioned, leading to an awkward minute of silence.

Her confidence to rise to the occasion was rewarded. The acapella version, where the voices near her can be heard through the mike, was gorgeous. Both former and newly inaugurated presidents of the United States thanked her.

The Erdos Number

Paul Erdos, featured yesterday, chose a lifestyle that led to a striking number of shared work projects. Due to the sheer number of work friends, a number system was developed to keep track of the network that worked on shared ideas. Chat explains.

Paul Erdล‘s, one of the most prolific mathematicians of the 20th century, collaborated with an extraordinary number of researchers throughout his life. His collaborators are often counted as part of the famous “Erdล‘s Number” system, where Erdล‘s himself has an Erdล‘s Number of 0, his direct collaborators have a number of 1, their collaborators have a number of 2, and so on.

Estimated Number of Collaborators

Erdล‘s collaborated with approximately 511 mathematicians on research papers during his lifetime. These collaborations resulted in over 1,500 papers, making him one of the most prolific authors in mathematical history.

This number of collaborators reflects Erdล‘s’s unique approach to mathematicsโ€”he would travel extensively, visiting mathematicians worldwide, and work intensively with them on specific problems. This collaborative approach led to his reputation as a “mathematical nomad.”

Now, how do you think that work went when you think about all these math types puzzling over combinatorics or vertices of convex polygons? Did Erdos have a payroll and dole out cash? It seems it was the opposite. Collaborators and friends brought him into their home and put him up so he could work with them out of their university. This is not work compensated through pecuniary means.

So what’s in it for the collaborators? The Edos number, of course. Being in the Erdos network gives one sense of participation in the mathematical theory underway, and then their Erdos number specifies a claim to a distance from Erdos himself.

To recap, this type of work is voluntary and participatory, and the end product feeds into a jointly held assetโ€”a school of thought in mathematics. Money is not the primary motivation for action. Membership in the network and the potential for the elevated position are the compensating factors. Every participant has access to the knowledge. It is a public good.

Here’s Chat’s visual.

Is it a public good to the whole world? In a sense, yes, but not in a practical sense. Just like it’s not practical to say the streets of Fargo, ND, are public to the whole world. The knowledge is open, but only a few will have the talents and learned knowledge to comprehend it. Only people in the geographic vicinity of Fargo will use their streets.

Is there externalizing and internalizing going on? Sure- when a new entrant learns a theorem, it becomes part of their knowledge. They have acquired the benefit, internalized, of the learned network. If a few of them collaborate on a textbook and sell it for their private pecuniary gain, they externalize knowledge and realize a gain. These actions do not conflict or reduce the network’s accomplishment. They add to the power and benefit of the group. The image you see inflates.

Paul Erdos’ life had living constraints, just as ours do. Yet the value of his research was such that he could be entertained at associates’ homes to assist in writing all 1,500 papers he left to the world.

Erdos Update

Paul Erdos, traveling mathematician extraordinaire, has been on Home Economics before. The Hungarian distinguished himself both in abstract thinking and in being a prolific houseguest. This willingness to travel undoubtedly helped him to become the most collaborative scholar in mathematics.

This free-spiritedness apparently made the FBI uncomfortable. This video (13 min) will fill you in on all the details. One supporter claimed to the government agency that Erdos could never be a spy because his allegiance was to the truth, in science and not in politics.

Small Town Surprise

Every year, the National Association of Realtors compiles a report on buyer and seller trends. Here’s a link to last year’s highlights.

What struck me about this chart isn’t that suburban locations came in as the top destination, but that small towns came in second. What happened to the allure of the big city?

Models positioned with the Public and the Private

One way to think about the public and the private is whether the activity is, rather uniformly, the benefit to a group of individuals or whether the benefit can be captured by an individual (or entity) which can preclude others.

According to Chat, here are some well-known models framed around two sectors of activity- the public and the private.

Yes, there are several economic models and frameworks that distinguish outcomes in two distinct spheres: public/groups (e.g., government, associations, nonprofits) and private individuals or organizations (e.g., households, corporations). These models analyze how actions, decisions, or policies produce effects that logically fall into one sphere or the other. Below are examples of such models:

1. Tiebout Model of Local Public Goods

  • Overview: This model explains how individuals “vote with their feet” by choosing communities that provide the optimal level of public goods (like schools, parks) for their preferences.
  • Public Sphere Outcomes:
    • Local governments provide public goods financed through taxes.
    • Group-level outcomes emerge as communities cater to specific preferences.
  • Private Sphere Outcomes:
    • Households or individuals make decisions about where to live based on private utility maximization (e.g., balancing taxes with public goods quality).
  • Distinctiveness: The model distinguishes between collective outcomes (e.g., quality of local schools) and private choices (residential decisions).

2. Coase Theorem (Private Bargaining vs. Public Regulation)

  • Overview: Coase’s theorem analyzes how private bargaining can resolve externalities without government intervention if property rights are clearly defined and transaction costs are low.
  • Public Sphere Outcomes:
    • If private bargaining fails due to high transaction costs, the government may step in with regulations or taxes to address the externality (e.g., pollution controls).
  • Private Sphere Outcomes:
    • Individuals or firms negotiate outcomes to internalize the externality (e.g., a factory pays a neighboring community for air pollution damages).
  • Distinctiveness: The model separates cases where private solutions are feasible from those requiring public intervention.

3. Public Choice Theory

  • Overview: Public choice models apply economic principles to political decision-making, distinguishing between individual preferences (in markets) and collective choices (in political processes).
  • Public Sphere Outcomes:
    • Collective decisions are made through voting, lobbying, or legislative processes, leading to public goods provision or redistribution.
  • Private Sphere Outcomes:
    • Individuals and corporations pursue private interests, such as profit maximization or personal utility.
  • Distinctiveness: The model highlights conflicts between collective outcomes (e.g., tax policies) and private incentives (e.g., tax avoidance).

4. Ostromโ€™s Commons Governance (Private vs. Collective Action)

  • Overview: Elinor Ostromโ€™s work explores how communities manage shared resources (e.g., fisheries, forests) through collective action rather than relying on markets or governments.
  • Public Sphere Outcomes:
    • Collective agreements and rules are created to manage resources sustainably, benefiting the group as a whole.
  • Private Sphere Outcomes:
    • Individuals or firms may overexploit resources if acting in self-interest without collective rules (tragedy of the commons).
  • Distinctiveness: The model contrasts sustainable group governance with unsustainable private behavior.

5. Samuelsonโ€™s Theory of Public Goods

  • Overview: Samuelson formalized the distinction between public goods (non-excludable and non-rivalrous) and private goods (excludable and rivalrous).
  • Public Sphere Outcomes:
    • Goods like national defense or public parks benefit everyone and are provided by governments or groups.
  • Private Sphere Outcomes:
    • Private goods like food or cars are traded in markets based on individual preferences and purchasing power.
  • Distinctiveness: Public goods are logically grouped into collective outcomes, while private goods are tied to individual consumption.

6. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Models

  • Overview: CSR models analyze how corporations balance private goals (profit) with public outcomes (social and environmental responsibility).
  • Public Sphere Outcomes:
    • Actions like reducing carbon footprints or supporting local communities generate public benefits.
  • Private Sphere Outcomes:
    • Firms may adopt CSR policies for private reasons, such as enhancing brand reputation or avoiding regulatory penalties.
  • Distinctiveness: Outcomes are split between private gains and public benefits.

7. Club Goods Models (Shared Private Benefits vs. Public Goods)

  • Overview: Club goods are excludable but non-rivalrous within a specific group (e.g., private golf clubs, gated communities).
  • Public Sphere Outcomes:
    • Benefits are shared within a group (e.g., access to a community swimming pool), mimicking public goods but limited to club members.
  • Private Sphere Outcomes:
    • Individuals decide to join clubs based on their private valuation of the benefits versus the cost.
  • Distinctiveness: The model distinguishes between group benefits (public within the club) and individual decisions to join.

8. Tax Incidence and Distribution Models

  • Overview: These models analyze how taxes imposed by the government affect private individuals, groups, or firms.
  • Public Sphere Outcomes:
    • Taxes fund public services like infrastructure, healthcare, or education.
  • Private Sphere Outcomes:
    • Individuals or firms bear the tax burden directly (through income taxes) or indirectly (through price increases).
  • Distinctiveness: Public benefits are tied to tax-funded services, while private costs are borne by taxpayers.

Summary

Models like the Tiebout model, Coase theorem, and public choice theory offer frameworks where outcomes are clearly distinguished as belonging to the public/groups sphere versus the private sphere. These models are particularly useful for analyzing policies and decisions that impact both domains, such as taxation, public goods provision, and environmental regulation. Let me know if you’d like to explore any model further!

What about Marx Matters?

For anyone younger than 50, it might be hard to imagine the zeal and inflammatory context wrapped in the calling out of Marxism or Communism. There was a time when it triggered fear, fear of ostracism, loss of employment, or any many other adverse physical or social outcomes. Now that history has sorted itself out, the source of terror stemmed from the madmen who adopted Marx’s writings as their intellectual endorsement. Most agree that Marx would oppose the outcomes done under his philosophical banner. Most don’t bother to read the text to find out for themselves.

Last week, an English professor, Alex Moscowitz, suggested that Marx’s work is foundational for economics. The economists objected, debunking the validity of his work. Business people are particularly offended by his Labor Theory of Value, which the nineteenth-century thinker penned in Das Capital.

“The value of a commodity, therefore, is determined by the quantity of labor expended to produce it, but only of labor that is socially necessary. Socially necessary labor time is the labor time required to produce any use-value under the conditions of production normal for a given society and with the average degree of skill and intensity of labor prevalent in that society.”
(Das Kapital, Volume I, Chapter 1)

Everyone knows that in the commercial world, one gets paid the market rate for labor.

Noah Smith types up an interesting overview of the topic in Should Economists Read Marx. He chews through a lot of the interesting aspects of the topic, including listing out the foundational economic material he was required to tackle while a PhD student. Each work tussles with market failures or public goods. The greats like Paul Samuelson and Kenneth Arrow devoted intellectual energy to issues on the cusp of private and public sectors, two sectors each with their own structure.

It’s just that people who came after Marx took his text to initiate disruption and then exert social control. Noah closes with a reminder to his contemporaries that accuracy is not everything. An impassioned sweep and forceful embellishment of an errant study can end in tragedy.

This should serve as a warning to economists โ€” a reminder of why although narrow theories about auctions or randomized controlled trials of anti-poverty policies might seem like small potatoes, theyโ€™re not going to end with the skulls of thousands of children smashed against trees. Modern economics, with all of its mathematical formulae and statistical regressions, represents academia appropriately tamed โ€” intelligence yoked to the quotidian search for truth, hemmed in by guardrails of methodological humility. The kind of academia that Alex Moskowitz represents, where the study of Great Books flowers almost instantly into sweeping historical theories and calls for revolution and war, embodies the true legacy of Marx โ€” something still fanged and wild.

But what about the labor theory of value? Is there anywhere in life where there is a pooling value to the work at hand? Consider intellectual property. Is there some pool of work hours necessary to accomplish a new way of thinking about a technology? Scientists in twos and threes or on their own throw their time into advancing an idea. Isn’t the idea behind a patent that the inventor doesn’t get his labor time paid for in the idea development process, so he has a claim to future benefits from the product as a reimbursement mechanism?

What about founders and startup folks. Don’t they calculate the labor hours they think they’ll need to put into a new venture and then figure out whether they’ll be able to recoup their labor time?

Outsider on point, Outsider not so much

I’ve been diving into Democracy in America lately, written by a Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville, about a voyage to the New World in 1831. He was writing for the French government and primarily focused on public life. So, taken by the spirit of the population, it resulted in a text that shares the rhythm and enthusiasm of civic life, which makes the book popular today.

One point of fascination is the energy of governance at the township level. He ogles at the ability of a small group of men to tackle a public project, do their best (although he notes that this is often not as well done as professional bureaucrats), and see it through to completion. He notes the short distance between the man on the street and the organizer of public goods. In France, the central authority resides far from the common man. It’s a distance thing.

As an outsider, de Tocqueville was a keen observer. But this isn’t always the case. Sometimes, the outsider over-simplifies, and sometimes, they interpret to fit a convenient view.

Lately, immigration has been in the news, particularly the subset of intelligent, well-educated types. We have one such community. The tech workers from Asia gravitate to the same suburban area, the same school district, really. This public school district pulls in the highest scores in the state. It’s no coincidence. All the Tiger moms want their kids to go to the top schoolโ€”not a private school, mind you, but a public one. For comparison, Asians in Minnesota make up 5% of the population.

Their contribution to raising the level of education among all those other Minnesota kids doesn’t stop there. Their interests in debate club, science club, and robotics flush out the teachers who are willing to lead the group. Inevitably, a photo of the teams winning some national prize filters into the community newspaper a few pages ahead of the sports teams and their accomplishments. These families want a lot and put in the work to get it.

This community also wanted to play cricket close to home. And voila! Our city has a cricket pitch.

Plymouth to Get City’s First Cricket Pitch

The activity of this group reminds me of what de Tocqueville describes in the immigrant communities he witnessed. The profile of people who support the notion that anything is possible if you put a little elbow grease into the project. The distance between those with ambition and those able to coordinate and shepherd a favorable outcome is short.

When commentators imply otherwise, you wonder where they’ve been. If you are in the education game, it’s clear who carries the ball. It’s the families and the teachers. Corporations are so far removed from education mechanics that they might as well be on an island somewhere. General observation shows that highly educated, foreign-born tech workers result in positive externalities to their surrounding communities.

Big business and corporate America aren’t even on the same playing field. And those who think so might want to check the game’s rules.

Prefab Rebranded?

When Amazon changes the name of a product and puts it out there, it has a better chance of being embraced by the market. This seems to be true with the tiny home priced at an attractive $47K.

$46999

Buy on Amazon

The 30-foot-deep house has a floor plan thatโ€™s anything but tiny, despite its name. Itโ€™s made with high-quality materials like steel that, according to the brand, will stand up against harsh weather conditions. It has two stories that you can access via a staircase, and it comes prewired with electricity and plumbing, making it live-in-ready upon installation.  The sleek walls are also insulated, so you’ll stay cozy and cool all year long, and they’re soundproof, providing privacy between rooms. 

On the first floor, thereโ€™s a bedroom with a full-size bathroom: It has a toilet, sink with storage, and a private shower area. The kitchen has built-in cabinets while the open-concept living room has ample space for a couch, a coffee table, and a dining room table. The second floor houses the main bedroom, an en suite bathroom, and sliding glass doors that lead out to a charming deck with space for chairs, a fire pit, or a patio heater. 

Trailer homes and prefab homes have been on the market for decades. The difference lies in their setting. Despite their name, the former is traditionally stationary in a trailer park. Rent is paid to a landlord who maintains the grounds and hook-up services. Prefab homes are built in a factory and shipped in pieces to the purchaser.

So far, the prefab homes are not common in the Minnesota market. Perhaps Amazon will change all that.

DeTocqueville on Liberty & Religion

Liberty regards religion as its companion in all its battles and its triumphs,โ€”as the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its claims. It considers religion as the safeguard of morality, and morality as the best security of law, and the surest pledge of the duration of freedom….

From Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville.

Housing needs and prices vary

The US Census has a new look. The site has improved tremendously. This might be old news, but it’s news to me. It’s worth checking out if you haven’t been there in a while. I particularly like the profile pages, like this one.

Take note of the breakdown of housing units and households. There are approximately 5.7% more housing units than households in the state. You need some vacancies as there are units under renovation or being held while a family relocates from one living situation to another. Is 5.7% in the comfortable range? It’s hard to know. Still– comparing the spread between households and units is a measure to determine how many extra spaces, if any, there are for families to live.

The county-level profiles are great too and come in several formats. Here are three to compare.

Each county has a different spread between the number of housing units and the number of households. The range is from 7% vacancy in the agricultural area of Blue Earth to a low of 1.8% in the most densely populated Hennepin County to a generous 16% in the northern lakes area of Mille Lacs County. Hennepin County is the only place we can say with certainty that there is a clear need for more housing.

Counties are large. There may be vacant structures in rural Blue Earth county while the demand for places to live is in Mankato, a nice-sized town of forty-five thousand. For that reason, it’s great that the Census even zooms into the city level.

Here’s a snapshot of Perham, a small but humming town about an hour SE of Fargo.

The point here is that housing is local. When people observe that the price of housing did not come down when new units were added, the follow-up question should be, what type of housing and where?

An Example

Say you live in a high-density, well-frequented area where lots of people come and go to visit local amenities like ballparks, restaurants, and museums. At some point, you get tired of being unable to host book club because your friends can’t find parking in front of your home, or the noise of continual foot traffic along the sidewalk is plain annoying. You decide to do something about it. After all, this is your homeโ€”right?

The voluntary action taken to rev up the neighbors, petition your city council, and air your grievances across social media platforms can, in sum, add up. It is an opportunity cost to you. You’ve engaged in volunteering and spent some of your time and talents to improve your environment. In fact, you’ve done such a good job that there is now a team of neighbors- Team A- all on the same quest.

Traditionally, streets and sidewalks are open-access town amenities. It’s too inconvenient to block passage for those from afar and those nearby. Hence, most roadways in the US are public in the most generous sense of the term. The free flow of people circulates around for their various needs, whether it be for a commercial delivery, a commuter getting to and from work, or a family out and about doing what families do. People in the know might adjust their schedule and stay off the roads at rush hour or following a Taylor Swift concert, but otherwise, it is a free-for-all, first-come-first-serve type commodity.

Team A, in the neighborhood wants more control than the anything goes, and engage their city to intervene in the spirit of preserving their neighborhood. They make a material claim to the pavement outside their doors. In order to make it official, they need the blessing of an official body with authority. The constraints change once a sign goes up on the block limiting parking hours, or requiring a parking pass.

Imposing minor inconveniences like restricted hours, passes, or even meters might make street parking more orderly. It’s a way of relaying information. A restriction might be just what someone needs to make an effort to drive through the alley and put their car away in a garage. A small charge encourages people to walk further and park on a less busy street.

The time to take note is when a restriction pushes other groups to form. Then, there are more preferences to consider than simply those of the neighbors who want ownership benefits of the street spots in front of their homes. Take the recent change implemented for those who wish to drive into Manhattan. To listen to this guy, it’s all a great success to charge $9 and discourage entrance by vehicle. He appears to speak on behalf of the commuting group.

Screenshot

What other groups are in the mix? Shoppers who would come into the city, but now the surcharge discourages them? Small shop workers like home repair people? Tourists who decide against coming in for the day? What is the cost of their behavior in the face of this new constraint? It seems that retail shops and restaurants could see a decrease in business. Less competition for small-scale home repair services results in higher prices for homeowners. Fewer tourists, as pesky as they seem, weakens the arts and museum support systems.

Time will tell. But it seems that gaining a little bit of ownership of the asphalt might cost Team A more than the time it took to lobby for the change. Commuter Team B may benefit the most, as the $9 is a fraction of the income they earn in the city. And the othersโ€”workers, shoppers, and touristsโ€”all lose out. After all, there’s no free lunch. But more importantly, is this matrix of tradeoffs between various interest groups the desired outcome of implementing the surcharge?

Super Power

It might be a bit difficult to buy this picture as a model of spontaneous order. Spontaneity, perhaps, but order?

Each little bubble is a representation of an independent actor out fulfilling their purpose of the day. Bubble wrapped, as they each get to retain their skills, talent and experiences and bring those forth in the work they do.

This is in fact their super power. No matter who you know in life or where you start, you have the power to devote your time and energy to the endeavors of your choice.

Luckily, the twentieth century is full of modeling the chores done in exchange for pay. No need to review that here. Economics is most comfortable in this environment: money for goods, services, and labor. It’s countable. The measures are used in all sorts of reports and for all sorts of comparisons.

Sometimes the numbers seem off. Sometimes, people don’t end up where someone thinks they should. And Social Welfare Economics tried to get a handle on such things. As a method, it really couldn’t pull off the knowing part. How do you know when such a group is better off than the other? Isn’t a comparison contingent on all the factors that go into the moment? This is what James M Buchanan seems to argue in Positive Economics, Welfare Economics, and Political Economy (1959)

A second major problem which has concerned theorists in welfare economics has been the possible existence of external effects in individual consumption and production decisions, sometimes called “spillover” or “neighborhood” effects. But this annoying complication also disappears in the approach to welfare economics suggested here. If, in fact, external effects are present, these will be fully reflected in the individual choices made for or against the collective action which may be proposed. External effects which are unaccounted for in the presumptive efficiency criterion of the economist and the proposal based upon this criterion will negate the prediction of consensus represented in the alternative suggested. The presence of such effects on a large scale will, of course, make the task of the political economist more difficult. His predictions must embody estimates of a wider range of individual preferences than would otherwise be the case. The compensations included in the suggested policy changes must be more carefully drawn and must be extended to include more individuals who might otherwise be neglected.ยฎ

The reader might be led to believe, in this bottom-up observation of human behavior, that consumers reflect a comprehensive analysis of the entirety of their transaction, including internalizing spillovers and externalizing expenses. The market filters through individuals’ private desires and their accommodations for public or group enterprise in a complex, yet thoughtful manner.

The graphic specifies the draw of a common cause, whether it be education, peace, or public health (and there are thousands more). It is the cause that sorts the analysis. It’s not a group being told to sign up to walk for MS. It’s the desire to be on the team fighting a deadly disease that drives the worker to devote their superpower to a cause.

In review

First principles of the model are

  • 1. Actors are independent free agents.
  • 2. Actors may offer work for private benefit or toward a group goal.

Unpaid Work and More

Everybody knows what labor is. It’s the activity performed by an individual in return for a paycheck. But what about all those other activities that are done that also benefit some or many people?

I asked Chat to list all the terms out there for unpaid work done in homes and communities. And here is what I got.

1. The Home

Unpaid labor focused on household maintenance, caregiving, and family life:

  • Household Production
  • Domestic Work
  • Unpaid Domestic Labor
  • Reproductive Labor
  • Invisible Labor
  • Social Reproduction
  • Home Production
  • Unpaid Household Services
  • Homemaking
  • Housekeeping
  • Child-Rearing
  • Elder Care
  • Family Caregiving
  • Emotional Labor (within the household)
  • Caregiving
  • Informal Care
  • Unpaid Childcare
  • Parental Care
  • Kin Care

2. The Office or Other Professional Settings

Unpaid or voluntary labor in organizational, administrative, or professional contexts:

  • Pro Bono Work
  • Volunteer Work (for professional organizations)
  • Advocacy Work (unpaid)
  • Mentorship (unpaid)
  • Internship (unpaid)
  • Apprenticeship (unpaid)
  • Emotional Labor (in workplace or professional settings)

3. The Church or Other Places of Worship

Unpaid labor related to spiritual, communal, or faith-based activities:

  • Charitable Work
  • Community Service
  • Faith-Based Caregiving
  • Volunteer Work (religious organizations)
  • Advocacy Work (faith-driven)
  • Grassroots Organizing
  • Altruistic Work

4. The Community Center or Public Spaces

Unpaid labor supporting community well-being and public engagement:

  • Mutual Aid
  • Neighborly Assistance
  • Community-Based Care
  • Volunteer Work
  • Charitable Work
  • Grassroots Organizing
  • Community Service
  • Non-Market Work
  • Social Support Work
  • Advocacy Work (public or civic)

5. Schools or Educational Settings

Unpaid labor supporting education, learning, and mentoring:

  • Unpaid Tutoring
  • Mentorship (unpaid)
  • Parent-Teacher Association Work
  • Volunteer Work (schools)
  • Advocacy for Education

6. Medical and Health-Related Facilities

Unpaid labor related to caregiving and health support:

  • Elder Care
  • Family Caregiving
  • Informal Care
  • Unpaid Childcare
  • Caregiving (medical settings)
  • Volunteer Work (hospitals and clinics)

7. Farms, Rural Settings, or Outdoor Spaces

Unpaid labor connected to food production or outdoor community support:

  • Subsistence Work
  • Self-Provisioning
  • Reciprocal Labor
  • Communal Work
  • Obligatory Labor (culturally expected in rural communities)

8. Government or Civic Buildings

Unpaid labor focused on governance, policy, and public service:

  • Advocacy Work (political or civic)
  • Volunteer Work (government programs)
  • Grassroots Organizing
  • Community Service

9. Museums, Theaters, and Cultural Institutions

Unpaid labor supporting arts, culture, and historical preservation:

  • Volunteer Work (cultural organizations)
  • Passion Work (for the arts)
  • Charitable Work (for cultural causes)

This categorization demonstrates how unpaid work is intricately woven into all aspects of society, emphasizing its importance across diverse settings. (end Chat)

Although a lengthy list, I think Chat missed a few.

A notable one is the hours tinkerers spend trying to develop new products and technologies. Did the Wright Brothers get paid for their first flight?

Claims about Housework

Duncan Ironmonger, an Australian household economist, wrote in 2001.

3.2 The New Household Economics
In the mid 1960s a major theoretical development took place, known as the โ€œnew
household economics” (see Becker (1981), Ironmonger (1972) and Lancaster (1971).
In this theory the household is regarded as a productive sector with household
activities modeled as a series of industries.
In this new approach, households produce commodities that are designed to satisfy
separate wants such as thirst, hunger, warmth and shelter. The characteristics, or
want-satisfying qualities, of the commodities used and produced can be regarded as
defining the production and consumption technology of households. With changes in
incomes and prices, households still alter expenditures as in the earlier theory.
However, in the new theory, households adjust their behaviour as they discover new
commodities and their usefulness in household production processes.
The activities approach derived from the theory of the new household economics
readily combines with the earlier input-output approach of Leontief (1941) to
establish a series of household input-output tables as the framework for modeling
household production.

And then this in conclusion.

6 Household Production and a World of Binary Economies

The major scientific achievement of this field has been the measurement of the
magnitude of household production through surveys of the uses of time. Household
production is now recognised as an alternative economy to the market; in many
countries the household economy absorbs more labour and at least one third the
physical capital used in the market economy.

In future, national statistical organisations will produce regular estimates of GHP.
Data on outputs of household production – accommodation, meals, clean clothes and
the care of children and adults – will complement data on inputs of unpaid labor and
the use of household capital.

Proper recognition of the household economy will have arrived when national
household accounts are published each quarter alongside national accounts for the
market economy. These data will enable greater scientific research on the
organisation of household production, the interactions with the market economy, the
role of households in building human capital, on the effects of household technology
and alternative social and economic policies on gender divisions of labor and on
family welfare.

Full paper: Houshold Production and the Household Economy.

Incentives Matter

If you run the provision of public goods like private goods, are you missing the structure of things?

New Year, New Paradigm

Here at Home Economics, much thought is given to the distribution of labor and resources throughout all facets of life. In the twentieth century, the economy is talked about as if held in a sphere of its own nested in greater society, with the government sitting on high, ready to use its power to intervene.

Embedded is a term used to depict a feature of this model. The sphere where all the money is exchanged for goods and services, from industry to agriculture to banking and so on, is cradled in a nest. The business works logically within the sphere but is nudged and tugged at by all the pesky twigs and branches that make up the lodge that holds it. This world isn’t complicit with the education system or the family. These are subsidiary concerns present to push things along for industry. They are supports, not players, in economic affairs.

By the 1970s, the public started voicing concerns. Many objected when acid-stained river beds from industrial pollutants burned through some of the thatchings in the nest. When small farmers were displaced by large-scale operations or factory closures caused massive layoffs, the support structure thinned, and people fell right through it. Market failure was the term coined for every debacle left behind by the economic sphere, guided by the rational economic man. The dented and damaged underpinnings of greater society were left for the government to fix.

I suggest we focus on Carl Menger, a European economist (1840-1921), who proposed a different view of the economy’s driver: the actors. Introducing Ed and Frida.

Individuals make independent decisions about their welfare and needs based on their present situation. Although they look after themselves, they are directed by human impulses like fairness, justice, and altruism. They are also influenced by what polymath Michael Polanyi described as tacit knowledge since individual experiences weigh heavily on one’s judgment throughout one’s life. The bubble around the figures represents their tacit knowledge as well as their education, or human capital, and unique skills, which are inalienable.

As atomic agents, individuals cling to others who share a similar goal in producing goods and services to accomplish those goals. This may very well be in industry, family life, the care of their elderly parents, and the countless other interests people pursue and share. These groups form, merge, and reconfigure. The model becomes a dynamic structure of movement as actors group and regroup throughout the day.

Each dot under the magnifying glass is a person with agency on the move. Generally, a spontaneous order pulls and pushes contributors to various objectives. They use their time, talents, and resources together with others and then move on to do it all again.

For the most part, we think of these agents as adults with the capacity to hold a job, raise a family, make it to the doctor regularly, and so on. But we all start out in this world as vulnerable infants in need of constant care. And many of us will need care again before we die. For this reason, it makes sense, for calculation purposes, to use a household as a base unit of analysis.

Throughout 2025, the goal will be to show how individuals participating in systems of spontaneous order contribute to or deter from the viability of their household unit and how that impacts neighborhoods and the public goods found herein. This is Home Economics.

Time opens up opportunities

A construction guy uses X for a market survey. He was surprised when another contractor claimed the biggest regret many have is taking on a large home. A bunch more commentors piled on to confirm that big is no longer a draw and for some a detriment.

Time changes all things. What was popular will run its course. It’s not always a new technology that gives entrepreneurs a new angle. Changing views are in continuous motion and desire constant attention.

Foods that linger in our minds

I found myself at the grocery store almost daily in the flurry of preparations leading up to Christmas. I was buzzing by the produce section when the package of pearl onions stood out from its spot in the case. Despite the pressures of the moment, my attention was lifted back to another time.

My grandmother adored pearl onions. She wouldn’t pay the grocery store price, so she cultivated her own in a shallow plot beside their country home. The dirt was dry and loose in the warm days leading up to the fall. The onions, resting just below the surface, dislodged easily to the pull of a hand. Their skins were already drying at the edges as my grandmother arranged them across a screen in the garage to dry some more.

The anticipation of her harvest was palpable. She wasn’t a fancy cook but had an acceptable rotating menu. She cooked a roast in a Dutch oven. It stewed for hours, surrounded by root vegetables. The pearl onions were served as a side dish in a creamy white sauce. It was a marriage of meat and potatoes and a refined companion.

I speculate that tradition and your family largely influence what you eat. I’m not talking about the finer distinctions, whether a dinner roll accompanies a spaghetti dinner or the fat content of the yogurt you have for breakfast. A broader perspective includes people who rarely have a home-cooked meal versus those who eat around a table at least five nights a week. And then again, those who take the time to grow their special delicacies and serve them at their table.

To Your Health

If you google ‘health determinants, ‘ a bunch of stuff scrolls out in the feed, but none of it is exactly the same. For example, the World Health Organization‘s (WHO) site reports:

Determinants of Health

Many factors combine together to affect the health of individuals and communities. Whether people are healthy or not, is determined by their circumstances and environment. To a large extent, factors such as where we live, the state of our environment, genetics, our income and education level, and our relationships with friends and family all have considerable impacts on health, whereas the more commonly considered factors such as access and use of health care services often have less of an impact.

The emphasis is on a person’s situation in life more than on their genetic make-up or even access to health care services.

The US Center for Disease Control (CDC) offers a helpful graphic to describe their social determinants.

If you look at the hexagon you might note that the categories remind one of public goods. These goods are provided at large as they are thought to generate a universal effect that benefits everyone. If people are more educated, they will understand how to stay home with a virus so as not to pass it along to others. The availability of health care and clinics provide ease of treatment. The built environment includes transportation routes for ambulances and fire trucks to speed up a person in need. People fare better in safe communities enhanced through public provisions police services.

These categories line up nicely with the categories at Home Economics. Because the social determinants of health are also the determinants of a stable and vibrant neighborhood.

What isn’t provided at either of the sites are details. When one drills down to the street level, what can one measure that represents safety? Is it the number of pedestrian fatalities? Homicides? Or carjackings? Which number best represents safety?

Numbers meant to quantify school performance are subject to manipulation. Is the highest performer in a medium school really better off if they become a slightly above-average performer at a high-performing school? In the first instance, the student may evolve into a leader, one who expects more from themselves. Whereas in the second scenario they shrug off the duty to perform as there are so many better students in the lead. Yet competitive parents are expected to seek out the ‘top’ schools for their child- folklore says they are the best predictors of educational success.

Another factor that seems to be omitted is the level of dedication an individual, family, or community has to contribute to health issues. It’s one thing to live near a dentist, but if you never take off work to make sure your kids get in for a check-up, it does little good. Do the kids get on the school bus so they don’t trundle in late and disrupt the class? Does a neighbor ensure the octogenarian across the street gets in for their monthly treatments? How much work is going into these public health projects?

Neighborhoods are a rich source of social determinants. Combine that with a bit of information about volunteerism and who knows where that could lead us?

Stocking stuffers

Who said gift giving was inefficient?

This book appeared in my stocking yesterday, and after rounding the halfway mark on the page number count, I appreciate the offering.

Introducing the gift receiver to an author theyโ€™ve never read opens the door to a world they might not have entered otherwise. My preferred mystery novel is the perfect mix: a bit scientific, a little unpredictable, and off-beat enough to be intriguing without overdoing the gore. Charles Donlea pens just such a combination.

A book is the kind of gift that adapts to its surroundingsโ€”it can be enjoyed in the quiet solitude of an armchair, glowing under a reading lamp, or in brief pockets of calm amid the holiday bustle. The dishes can sit. The requests quipped out from the kids can be left unheard. For a handful of pages, the story surrounds your thoughts.

Such a gift is light in its demands but rich in its rewards. It requires little investment but shows a wealth of thoughtfulness by the giver. A novel has the unique power to distract and delight, allowing the recipient to step away from the chatter and clatter of festive gatherings and into a story that captivates their imagination. It also has the lasting joy of discovering a new favorite author or style. In this way, a novel becomes more than a giftโ€”itโ€™s a gateway to connection, inspiration, and the timeless magic of storytelling.

Stocking stuffers are highly leverable. Don’t miss the opportunity to bring someone at your holiday festivities a little jubilation at this merry time of year.

Twas the Night before Christmas

Clement Clarke Moore

1779 โ€“ 1863

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;
And mamma in her โ€™kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winterโ€™s nap, 
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.
The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow 
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below,
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer, 
With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name;
“Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!”
As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;
So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
With the sleigh full of Toys, and St. Nicholas too.
And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.
He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;
A bundle of Toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a pedler just opening his pack.
His eyesโ€”how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow
And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;
He had a broad face and a little round belly,
That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly.
He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;
He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle,
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,
“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night.”

Clement Clarke Moore

Embedded bugs

embedded [ษ™mหˆbedษ™d, emหˆbedษ™d] adjective

  1. (of an object) fixed firmly and deeply in a surrounding mass; implanted: “a gold ring with nine embedded stones”

I’ve never followed the use of this word as a descriptor of how norms and values influence economic activity. So I asked Chat. How is it that Karl Polanyi, who wrote The Great Transformation, talks of actors navigating a dynamic system where the act of their own free will and yet somehow is fixed firmly and deeply, i.e., embedded, in pre-set cultural norms? Here’s Chat’s response.

You raise a compelling point about the term “embedded” potentially being seen as static or limiting. However, in Karl Polanyiโ€™s usage, the term โ€œembeddedโ€ does not imply a rigid or unchanging system. Rather, it signifies that economic activity is integrally tied to social, cultural, and political frameworks. Within this embedded system, change and enhancement by participants are entirely consistent with the concept.

Why “Embedded” Is Appropriate in Polanyiโ€™s Framework:

  1. Embeddedness Is About Integration, Not Inflexibility:
    • Polanyi uses “embedded” to describe how economies are integrated into social and cultural systems, rather than existing as separate, autonomous spheres (as in the market economy).
    • Embeddedness highlights that norms, values, and institutions guide economic behavior, but it does not preclude change or evolution. It acknowledges that human agency and interaction shape these systems over time.
  2. Dynamic Nature of Embedded Systems:
    • An embedded system evolves as participants interact with and reinterpret the norms and institutions that structure their actions. These systems are adaptive and responsive to changing circumstances, such as shifts in resources, relationships, or external pressures.
    • For example, reciprocity in a small community might evolve to accommodate new technologies or trade relationships, but it remains embedded because it is still governed by the communityโ€™s social values.
  3. The Contrast with Disembedded Economies:
    • Polanyi contrasts embedded economies with disembedded ones, where economic activity becomes โ€œautonomous,โ€ governed solely by market principles. In disembedded systems, human relationships are subordinated to market imperatives, creating a more rigid and dehumanized structure.
    • Embeddedness, by contrast, ensures that economic systems remain rooted in human relationships, which are inherently flexible and participatory.
  4. Room for Agency and Innovation:
    • Embeddedness does not eliminate agency or pre-set participants to fixed standards. Instead, it provides a context within which people act, negotiate, and innovate. Participants are active agents in shaping the system, but their actions are always informed by their embedded relationships and cultural understandings.

A Possible Refinement: “Interwoven” or “Integrated”?

For clarity, terms like โ€œinterwovenโ€ or โ€œintegratedโ€ might better capture the dynamic, evolving nature of the systems Polanyi describes. These terms emphasize the mutual influence between individuals and institutions, as well as the ongoing negotiation and adaptation of norms.

Conclusion:

The term “embedded” in Polanyiโ€™s framework is appropriate because it emphasizes the interdependence of economic, social, and cultural systems. However, it is crucial to understand that embedded systems are not static. They are enhanced and reshaped by participants, reflecting a dynamic and evolving process rather than a pre-set, unchanging standard. If the term “embedded” feels too rigid, alternatives like โ€œinterwovenโ€ or โ€œintegratedโ€ can convey the same idea with more emphasis on fluidity.

I still say embedded is misleading. Economic activity doesn’t sit in a nest of norms and rules. It participates in making norms and rules along the way. In the process, economic agents are continuously confronted with the choice of Exit, Voice, and Loyalty.

How about you? Does economic activity sit atop a mangle of social requirements calling out orders? Or are social needs slid in side-by-side with personal gains?

Thank you for 2024!

It’s been a great year at Home Economics in 2024- thank you, readers! The views and visits were double that of any prior year.

By a mile, the most-read post was How Many Homes in a Neighborhood? This is beneficial because neighborhoods will provide the backdrop for more thoughts on volunteer and wage labor combinations and the outcomes that ensue.

More on that in the New Year.

Housing Starts and Prices

Max Tabarrock pulled out these interesting graphs in his tweet (https://twitter.com/MTabarrok/status/1870631673911754883) to emphasize the effect of a higher rate of new construction and price in Japan.

Looking at large data sets can lose a lot of nuance. Not all countries show step-change movement between housing starts and priceโ€”take Spain as an example. The US numbers show that prices stayed low for years after the great recession, even after building starts started to rebound.

Local numbers, in conjunction with local conditions, are far more revealing in real estate.

Playing with notation

Say one wanted to track how much labor was available in a neighborhood. There’s the labor devoted to paid-for employment and there is volunteer labor.

Let’s call the first one W (for wage) and the second one V (for volunteer). Then, one could note the total household available labor- such as seen above.

If you have a neighborhood of five hundred houses, for instance, you could have multiple households with the same labor mix. Or many varieties of labor mixes.

But the usefulness would be to see how the time available for wage labor balanced with the time available for volunteer work usually associated with community work.

Table Manners

We live such casual lives– meals in front of the TV. Snacks on the run. It really hit home when a college friend invited a few of us over for a Christmas tea. To sit at a well-dressed table is a luxury these days.

The visual appeal first draws you in. The cheery winter colors of red and green are offset against a crisp white tablecloth. The greenery in the centerpiece and window wreaths softens the setting. Then, your hand grazes the linens as you pick up your water glass, and you note the quality of the textile. While reaching for the strawberries you note the warmth of the tea light. There’s an evergreen scent gently emanating from the arrangement.

The hostess has invited you to a table to enjoy fine food and linger. She offers ginger scones with cardamon and curried chicken salad. There is fresh fruit, clotted cream, and jam. The finery of her table makes you feel pampered, and you desire to stay a while in such a fine setting and enjoy the company of friends.

Harnessing a Spontaneous Order?

Randy Clark has gotten a hold of a turn-a-bout momentum, bringing the DC metro into an about-face toward ridership satisfaction. Is there a method to his madness? First, consider the background, from the Washingtonian.

Clarke arrived in Washington at a low point for Metro. In July 2022, the Omicron variant was causing a midsummer spike in Covid cases and DC had one of the highest rates of remote work in the country. Bus and rail trips were still stuck at about half their pre-pandemic levels. The previous October, a relatively new 7000-series train had derailed on the Blue Line in Arlington, leading to a rebuke from the National Transportation Safety Board.

The metro chief was not a train enthusiast from the start. But as he went through school, he became fascinated by how transport touches many other aspects of life. People need to connect with each other and travel the distances to do just that, which gives the service a public flair. This sets up the juggle between the funding flow from governing bodies and the satisfaction of the general population.

There are two sometimes conflicting areas of public-transportation management: (a) politics, or how to obtain funding and craft policy, and (b) operations, or how to make trains and buses run safely and on time. An effective transit leader has to excel at both.

The payer and the end user are disjointed. So how does a manager of such a system tie the money and the product together?

A regular rider, Clarke has a commuterโ€™s perspective on Metroโ€”and an executiveโ€™s fluency with how it works. Onboard, he tells me about the relative quietness of the systemโ€™s tracks (they use massive lengths of continuous welded rail, so they donโ€™t make the loud click-clack of, for example, the New York City subway) and the stretch of track where trains travel fastest (the tunnel between Rosslyn and Foggy Bottom).

It’s hard to get payers on board when the users are unhappy with the product. Clark dedicates himself to changing that.

When the system is working poorly, Metro can feel dated, even a little sad. But when itโ€™s working well, itโ€™s easy to feel the pride behind its creation. Clarkeโ€™s fans credit him with restoring that feeling, and he believes vibes matter. When transit infrastructure is broken and dirty, he says, riders and local politicians get frustrated. They ride less, drive more, andโ€”consciously or unconsciouslyโ€”devalue the system. By contrast, when trains and buses run frequently and stations feel clean, riders feel more pride and lawmakers believe the system is worth supporting.

Priming the pump to lure riders back to the metro is only one side of the story. The funding side is more complicated for this public good because 1. it has no dedicated funding source, and 2. its ridership draws from Virginia, Maryland and DC. Clark must shake out the individuals who place train transit at the forefront of their priorities. He is looking for the individuals out of the three groups who share this transit goal.

For now, Clarke is riding high, the closest thing to a rock star local transit has ever known. And heโ€™s not changing his hands-on approach. As he rides the rails, he notes any problems he sees: Recently, he pointed out a broken gate to a station manager, and repairs were soon made.

Minimal ridership in 2021

Visuals of Freeway Construction

Excellent use of images (poor choice of outcome emphasis).

There were very, very few minority neighborhoods in the area in 1947. Hence, 98% of displaced people were plain-Jane everyday folk. Here are the demographic numbers for the time that the Interstate was built.

When you can do something this cool with data, why not stick to it and skip the drama?

If not cash- then what?

Andrew Yang points out that money wonโ€™t always purchase what you want to buy. Despite outspending her competitor handsomely, Harris lost.

You see this in social services too. Money can be poured into some of the most deserving causes: care centers, autism learning, culturally specific food without comparative results.

In fact, the less the objective is tied to a cash response, the more likely the cash flow will be highjacked by fraudsters.

So what is the factor which better represents a price paid for results?

Construction customs and outcomes

In a recent post, House Prices and Quality: 1971 vs. 2023, Jeremy Horpedahl points out the difference in house prices by time values, which I really like for comparison purposes. He notes, “As you can see, in 2023 it took 31 percent more hours of work to buy a square foot of the median home, compared with 1971.” Furthermore, he makes the adjustments for the extra footage most homes offer today versus when the Brady Bunch lived in their swanky multi-level Californian home.

Then he goes on to say the quality of construction in the 1970s was modern and hence met a certain threshold of acceptability. I would argue that’s not the case. The 70s was a time of experimentation with new methods driven by a desire to enhance eco-friendliness. These materials and techniques did not provide the same longevity of use as the old country techniques from earlier in the century. This article cites a variety of issues. Focusing on a few mechanical components of a home will best exemplify how the norms and standards of the time affect the durability of the product, which is internalized in price.

Homes are expensive to buy and to maintain. One justification for paying the premium for new construction is that all major mechanicals are warranted for ten years, and most, on average, will last more than that. Heating and cooling systems have an average lifespan of fifteen years and cost $12-14K. Roofs keep homeowners dry for twenty-two years or so ($15K). Windows and siding can vary significantly depending on the quality of the materials.

For instance, in the photo on the right, the windows are original to the 1912 apartment building. They are wooden double-hung sashes that protected the lower level laundry and storage area from the weather for a century, serving the purpose intended. The windows on the left are vinyl replacement windows that were installed less than fifteen years ago. The dirty-looking glass is called a broken seal. Moisture has found its way through the double-paned structure, dictating that they are a failed mechanical by industry standards.

Window repair and replacement are among the more costly repairs in a home. The insert on the left probably costs about $3,500 in our market, just for one window.

The 1970s were full of experimentation with lower-quality materials. Hardwood flooring was replaced with plywood and then covered with carpet. Whereas wood floors are sanded and refinished for a beautiful crisp feel once every twenty years, carpet wears out in about a third of the time, seven years. My hardwood flooring guy tells me they have been back to refinish quarter-inch oak in one-hundred-year-old homes. There is the esthetic appeal to this home feature but it also translates to lower upkeep.

Solid stucco exteriors (stucco is a cement-like product that lasts for thirty years or more) are another application prevalent in homes built prior to the 1970s. Exteriors were instead clad in inexpensive plywood. This fibrous product does not necessarily fail in functionality after twenty years but no longer takes paint well and hence looks thrifty. Woodpeckers tend to find it appealing for sharpening their beaks as well.

By the late 1980s, homes built in the 1970s were highly unpopular. In part, their split entry style and vaulting with dark beamed ceilings had lost their cosmetic appeal to younger buyers. Buyers also longed for quality craftsmanship. The seventies homes were built cheaply, and consumers felt it. Most people wouldn’t have verbalized their selection as a commentary on an experiment in housing gone wrong, but they showed it in their choices.

Praise for Steinbeck

No writer yet has fully succeeded in bringing life together all in one piece. The good writer never stops trying, and he will be discovered, as Steinbeck has been, by the readers for whom he is writing, by those who recognize that he has carried, further than they have been able to carry, some of their own efforts to make life into an orderly pattern. This is what you will find in these short novels, along with much else-beauty (and ugliness), questions (and some answers), and always the high drama, the urgent flow, of fine storytelling. Which is to say you will see Steinbeck plain, and maybe your world, too, a little more plainly than you had before.

Joseph Henry Jackson – Berkley California – 1953

Blended Pricing, blended purpose

Interfaith Outreach (IOPC) is a local organization that provides social support services in the area. Their most recent newsletter encouraged readers to use the power of personal consumption to simultaneously direct funding to their programs. Here how it works.

By frequenting local businesses, a portion of the price paid for a private market transaction will go to IOPC and thus toward a public purpose. It’s all accounted for.

We do this all the time, don’t we? Environmentally friendly consumers pay extra for electric cars or solar panels. Technology-loving individuals churn the tech market by purchasing all the latest innovations and gadgets. Pro-immigration folks frequent small businesses and restaurants run by those who have recently arrived in this country. We have packed purpose and intention into many of the purchases we make daily, even if we can’t come up with a monetary accounting like the one provided above.

Russian Doll model of public safety

Some goods are best produced privately, and some perform better in the public goods market. Production in the former is enhanced by the division of labor, whereas in the latter, crowdsourcing is vital. The recent high-profile apprehension of a person of interest in the death of a local CEO is illustrative.

Letโ€™s break down the Russian Dolls. The largest doll is the level of law enforcement, which is officially put in place by the government and funded through taxation. These forces fall under territorial boundaries. Since the attack against the healthcare executive took place on the sidewalk in front of the Hilton in Manhattan, the NYPD is in charge of the case.

These uniformed professionals went to work and quickly found the getaway route the suspected assailant took leaving the scene. He fled on foot and then jumped on an e-bike. He went through Central Park and ended up at a bus station. The officers were fortunate to find out the suspect had spent the night at a local youth hostel (Time).

A senior law enforcement official is quoted as telling the Times that the person of interest photographed used a fake New Jersey identification to book a room at a hostel, checking in on Nov. 24 after arriving in the city via bus. He then checked out of the hostel on Nov. 29, before checking back in the next day.

The real breakthrough from this local contact was a photo of the normally masked man who had been snapped in the hostel lobby. He showed his features at the friendly receptionist’s request. A citizen can contribute to an investigation simply by following the rules of their employment.

As the manhunt continued into other states, the following levels of Russian Dolls were engaged. Even though the NYPD remained in charge of the official investigation, it depended upon the work and resources of many other branches across state lines. These details remained in their reporting realm. While the media activated public interest in the case, they kept the general public interested in the pursuit.

This brings us to the McDonaldโ€™s worker who noticed a similar-looking young man in his restaurant. He could have looked the other way. Now we are down to the last Russian doll. Not everyone at this level will engage. How many others saw the perp, became suspicious, and stayed quiet? Thereโ€™s a potential cost of reporting, and not everyone is willing to take the risk.

Fortunately, the greater society doesn’t need everyone to report. Only one person needs to step up. This is not pay-by-the-hour employment; it is a job one does under the influence of a shared vision when the duty shows up on the other side of your counter at McDonald’s.

Public goods respond well to this blended model of paid personnel in conjunction with a more significant population of people who follow the norms, like the youth hostel receptionist, and those willing to take risks and report. But I do hope the McDonald’s worker gets a bonus.

Crisis?

Crisis [หˆkrฤซsษ™s], noun, a time of intense difficulty, trouble, or danger.

Let’s consider a few housing facts to see if the state of our housing needs rise to that level in MN:

  • According to the US Census, Minnesota’s homeownership rate has hovered between 72% and 76% in the last four years. This is well above the national homeownership rate of 65%.
  • Minnesota’s foreclosure rate is down 9% from last year and ranks 27th nationwide with 370 homes in foreclosure or 1 out of 6,740. (Attomdata)

It seems that many Minnesotans can afford to own homes. Few are having difficulty maintaining their ownership positions. Crisis of homeownership averted in the far north.

That’s not to say that there may be housing issues for non-homeowners. Princeton University tracks evictions. Minnesota is third from the bottom on their list, at 4%. So renters don’t seem abnormally stressed or in crisis.

For those undergoing foreclosure or eviction, there is a crisis. Thus, they should receive the appropriate support to help them navigate their way to a solution to reestablishing shelter.

There is a crisis. It’s a crisis of wasteful regulation. So, call that out and make efforts for reform where needed.

Prime Suspect- Series Review

I’ve taken to finding new viewing options by searching by actors. That’s how I found Prime Suspect, by searching the projects Helen Mirren has been involved in. And it does not disappoint.

My husband finds old movies tiresome. The dated sets and lack of technology leave him longing for more recent productions. I love seeing pleated trousers, blazers with shoulder pads, and feathered haircuts. It’s nostalgic, and I often remember owning just such a trench coat.

This story starts with DCI Jane Tennison running against the steady headwinds of 1990s sexism in the workplace. I find it invigorating to note how much a part of history’s overt disdain for women in leadership positions has become. Not gone, mind you. But certainly passรฉ in most instances.

The quality of the scripts, actors, and productions is as strong as expected for a series that has won multiple awards. Helen Mirren is a gem set in an expansive and glittering piece of jewelry.

The rent really isn’t that high

In a recent post about time prices, the excellent Jeremy Horpedahl noted that workers are better off today than in 1924 except in the cost of housing. These comments are rooted in data compiled by Anthony Davies.

Antony Davies recently did a 100-year comparison of time prices for an average worker in the US. He compared prices in 1924 for several common food items, gasoline, electricity, movie tickets, airline tickets, an automobile, and several measures of housing costs to the best comparable thing in 2024. This following table shows his results:

Is housing really more expensive?

Rent is shown to be less expensive than in 1924 in small and medium cities, not more expensive, and by quite a bit. Living in a small city today only costs the worker 4.7 days of labor versus 1.3 weeks in days of yore.

However, consider the increase in the cost of living in a large city, shown at 2 weeks versus a week and a half. Doesn’t the proximity to work and services save workers a considerable amount of time? Many people who live in smaller towns or rural areas commute long distances to work. They drive to larger commercial centers for shopping and medical services. In an emergency, an ambulance service can run up a large bill.

Aren’t there considerably more services in the large cities than in 1924? In addition to road transit, there is access to international airports. The city is also the heart of entertainment culture, from major sports franchises to fine arts and musical venues. Conferences take place in the city, and universities are located there. Cities provide the landscape for all the restaurants and eateries where politicians and leading business figures congregate.

When you rent in a large city, part of what you pay is the capitalization of the entrance fees to many more social enterprises that were not available in 1924.

Public motives, Private motives

Here at Home-Economics, we argue that there are two motivations behind every transaction. People trade to benefit the public interest, such as funding flood insurance relief at the federal level. On the other hand, people are motivated to trade for the benefit of themselvesโ€”the purchase of a private residence to house a family. A blended purchase is easily seen at a fundraiser when a guest pays an inflated price for TimberWolves tickets, obtaining the private benefit of going to a basketball game while the surcharge is kept by the non-profit.

Goods traded in private markets have certain traits and are taxed and supervised by a governing body. Non-profits and governments provide many public goods and services that are not taxed nor subject to the same level of oversight. But what about private companies that provide public goods? This seems to be at the crux of the recent kerfuffle over Google.

The issue at hand is the Google search function. Clients do not pay to use it. Clients can use any other search engine and have them appear as the default web page. The search page is access to an environment. Just as the air conditioning in the mall is paid to make the shopping experience of mall shoppers more enjoyable is an enhancement to a public space, a high-functioning search is an enhanced entrance to the internet. They are both public goods to the groups of people who access their spaces.

What would be a beneficial review of a public good? Is it available to the greater group without impediments? Google search- yes to all those who have access to the internet. (Efforts are underway to make it available to residents in rural Minnesota). Is the search function supported voluntarily with some degree of additional financial support? Yes, there has been substantial investment in R&D for the benefit of the consumer. Is it providing a beneficial service? Yes- Without a doubt.

Not all public activities can meet these thresholds with the same confidence level.

Memories

I just finished Ayaan Hirsi Aliโ€™s Infidel, a memoir, and I was sad to see it end.

Here’s a post about the clashing commitments among her clansmen at the beginning of her life in Somalia. Later, she became famous as a politician in the Netherlands for exposing the experiences of subjugated women from her homeland mistreatment within the national boundaries of land that outlaw such things. She sorts the Russian dolls of a culture living within a culture and brings light to the injustice of old tribal traditions in high contrast to Western freedom from harm.

Her dangerous tales of uprooting ancient and crushing traditions are attention-getting, even if safely done within modern institutions. The earlier narratives, though, stirred memories from my time in the Horn of Africa in the mid-1970s. She tells of the schoolgirls in uniforms walking down the dusty roads of Nairobi. She fills in the backstories of many fellow students during my time at Lycee Gebre Mariam.

My brother and I are the only fair-haired kids in the bunch.

In our first year, we were in the Accueil class, which brought our language skills to a level where we could integrate with the mainstream kids. The group was a hodgepodge of international students from Dutch to Japanese to West African. There was no common language, which forced everyone to learn a new language.

Calling all Complaints

Listening to a complainer can be tedious. Wonh, wonh, waaaa. The sun isn’t shining bright enough, their coffee isn’t hot enough, and on it goes. It can be a character trait for some. If they can’t see something off in their world, then the world itself is the object of their grief.

But some folks are constructive complainers. For the most part, they go along to get along. But then something strikes them as idiotic. These people’s opinions most probably have some merit. So let them vent! Not only is it therapeutic, but it is also valuable. Listen to Bill Maher complain to Jane Fonda about the regulatory burden on his garage door.

Nowโ€”there’s no point in complaining when the powers that be are in no mood to listen. Every kid knows to take the temperature of the room before making requests to mom or dad. A parent recovering from a rough day is bound to be a more stringent rulemaker. Biding a little time can result in greater freedom. Wait them out until their frame of mind improves.

The time seems right in America for objections to inefficiencies. If you can’t get your garage door replaced, say it out loud. If you can’t get your lot approved for a rebuildโ€”take it to the airwaves. The mood is open to housing growth over fears of a tall building throwing shade on a neighbor for a few hours daily.

Complaining is also most productive when solutions are possible. A deep recession is not such a time, for instance. But today’s economic environment is solid. There’s money churning in the system, and workers are able to get out and about ready to tackle new projects. Set them to work by complaining!

Hopefully, the record-keeping types will jump on board with this project and collect the notes. The same folks who show up at the PTA meetings and scribble out the meeting minutes in shorthand are perfect for the job. If they could pair up with someone gifted in the data visualization field, even better. Then, the crucial complaints can be told boldly, the numbers can be tallied for depth, and the information can be shared repeatedly so all benefit from the feedback.

Don’t delay. Time is not on the complainers’ side. It will soon become unpopular to lodge criticisms, no matter how objective. Just remember, riffling through all that mud, one is bound to dig out a few precious gems.

Deregulation on the tip of the tongue

Everyone is talking about peeling back regulations. I, too, think this is a good thing. Picking which rules should go and which should stay is the question of the day. The rules were put in place often to save folks from some harm, so those would be worth keeping, right? But where is the final test to turn for such judgement?

Every industry will be different. Perhaps people in each walk of business will have an opportunity to point out the absurd or even the slightly off base.

Real estate construction offers a wide play of potential overreach by bureaucrats. At least from the layman’s side of things, it’s a bit difficult to understand the fine nuances of a vent’s proximity to a floorboard. Can a metal heat vent ever rise to a temperature that would ignite a beam? If the vent turns at this angle it is unacceptable, yet a few degrees to that angle it passes.

AI could be one way to double-check the interpretations of safety requirements. Instead of well-intended people imposing the most stringent interpretations of what is safe, a history of events could be considered. The power of scanning large files allows thousands of cases of, say, insurance claims to detail actual construction failures that resulted in harm. If there has never been a claim involving a heat vent setting framing on fire, that should give some direction on whether the rule is worth pursuing.

The standards each community picks will reflect its risk tolerance. But if the level of acceptability has risen far above what the average person tolerates in their own dwelling, then the rule makers are stifling the construction process and adding undue expense.

Talk of Tariffs- MN Edition

In 2022, Minnesota traded a total of $6.2 billion with Mexico. With our neighbors to the north in Canada, Minnesota traded more than $21 billion.

In response to the question of who pays for tariffs, University of Minnesota professor of economics Tim Kehoe replied, “And the findings have been that somewhere between 90% and 100%– the number gets bigger over time– of the tariff revenue comes from US firms or consumers. That is, we pay more for the imports.” But this is really a follow-the-money answer. Where does the cash come from that goes into the tax revenue? The consumer who made the purchase.

This is an incomplete analysis.

The economist says Minnesotans will pay higher prices to cover the tariffs. Yet he suggests that when countries retaliate, they simply have the choice to buy goods elsewhere. It seems that a country that imposes a tariff suffers, and one that chooses a less efficient trade with another partner also suffers a loss. The question isn’t whether the less agreeable trading arrangements are costly. The question is what the cost of buying is, and is that worth it?

Consider the objectives at hand.

“Now, President-elect Donald Trump says, on day one in office, he will impose sweeping new tariffs of 25% on Canada and Mexico and another 10% tariff on China. Trump says, the Mexico-Canada tariff is to crack down on illegal immigration and drugs. “

I’d be interested in an analysis that shows how tariff penalties will incentivize these trading partners to respond to the above-mentioned objectives. Will the cost of this trade arrangement induce Mexico and Canada to put some muscle into immigration issues? How about drugs?

The American people want these issues addressed, and this implies they are willing to put resources towards this aim. Will these new trade agreements prove to be the most cost-effective compared to other enforcement options? (MPR article quoted)

Inappropriate use of Voice

Last week, a local real estate brokerage settled with the state attorney general’s office over allegedly deceiving clients about the performance of a $540 home warranty. The product is offered to both buyers and sellers on an optional basis. Every client who does business with the broker signs a disclosure about the affiliated nature of this business, as well as other businesses such as mortgage providers, title company services, and so forth.

The settlement was for $3.5 million. A paltry amount when it comes to engaging the legal profession. The option of going to court to be exonerated from such a ridiculous claim would cost the brokerage a figure in the multiples of this, and the continued press coverage predictably tilted as anti-business. Take for instance, this quote from the attorney general:

“Today’s settlement will put this money back in the pockets of Edina’s customers who were misled into purchasing HSA warranties without ever being told that Edina was being paid handsomely to promote these problematic home warranties,” Attorney General Ellison said.

Explain how a spiff off a $540 home warranty can be considered handsome in the total expense to purchase a home. Even the full $540 falls, perhaps between .1-.2% of the average total home sale cost. The spiff might be a tenth of that- hardly a game changer for any worker in the chain of events.

There’s more from the Bring Me the News article. There’s the part where government makes claims about consumers’ abilities to determine value:

The investigation by the AG’s office also alleged that HSA “confused consumers” into believing its home warranty was a valuable product that contained benefits that it didn’t actually have.

Many consumers purchase warranty products through utility providers and home warranty insurance providers to have the peace of mind that if the mechanicals in question fail, they have some sort of repair or replacement coverage. I’m not sure how offering an accepted open-market product at a relevant point of another transaction confuses the general public.

Maybe the government is confused, and consumers are actually much more intelligent than they are.

Compliance costs for public entities and non-profits

Mark Gilson provides excellent service free of charge on X. He compiles findings from school board meetings into an easy-to-digest post on Twitter. I assume this search, compile, and reformat function is the result of an AI application. Getting information out to consumers, especially in the non-profit and public spheres will be greatly enhanced as a result.

How many parents have the time to attend or sift through school board meeting minutes? Do small association non-profits even post things such as minutes, financials, or filings? I don’t think so. One must either be all in and participate in board-level activities or throw up one’s hand and go along with whatever is required regarding fees and opportunities.

Lack of transparency, however, fuels skepticism and fraud. I’ve been on many a youth activities board where whispers of handing the hand in the till swirl around. There can be takings directly from paid dues. If there is food involved, people joke about how all the over-bought items end up in the tournament director’s garage. These are little annoyances and the fodder for the Debbie Downers.

Lack of tracking and documentation shortchanges the associational activity from another angle. It denies potential participants the numbers necessary to evaluate how their support will or won’t mesh with the group. Some sort of account of the organization allows shoppers for such endeavors to judge how they can fit in.

The non-profit world could bear more fruit with a bit of product labeling.

Another Labor Theory- Structural Constructions

A super introductory sentence for the structural constructions emanating from a combination of labor in the traditional sense and volunteerism. From The Economist (Oct 26th-Nov 1st issue) Killing an Idea.

A second argument is structural. Before October 7th Hamas was the de facto government in Gaza, with tens of thousands of civil servants on its payroll. Hizbullah is a state within a state: it hands out patronage jobs, operates a chain of discount groceries and runs a bank. These are not just militant groups, in other words, but political and economic entities with deep roots.

Insurance and Bureaucracies

There’s a certain type of contractor who shows up when an insurance-triggering event sweeps through a neighborhood. There’s a knock on the door. A fresh-looking worker type of guy is handing a brochure out to the owner as he starts a pitch on what looks like damage to the roof. We work with your insurance company, he offers with confidence.

In this scenario, the skill of working with the claim has more to do with understanding how to max out the claim and get it paid than simply roofing the home. There are incentives to work toward the company-set reimbursement schedules rather than the lowest cost for quality that is usually in play on home repairs. The money involved is often in the 15-20% surcharge range.

I’ve noticed bids given to bureaucracies have a similar play-to-the-maximum reconstruction nature. Say a county acquires a home through tax forfeiture. Most homes in this category are in tough shape, as the owners endured financial hardship for an extended period. Perhaps there’s a little mold along the bathtub caulk line and the lower edge of the sheetrock in the basement. Perhaps the major mechanicals have been patched and primped but desperately need replacement. Once the contractors are aware of the type of seller, everything is ripped down to the studs, cut up two feet off the floor, redone with green-board, and high-efficiency appliances purchased. The impulse to do it right by-passes all budget measures.

It seems to me the best remedy is to have stand-in owners who look like everyday market participants. Otherwise expect to pay and extra 20%.

Another Labor Theory- Autonomous decision makers

Who are the actors in this model of labor for pay and volunteerism? Who are the laborers? They are individuals who act of their own free will. They are autonomous decision-makers; the labor in this theory is performed free from force.

Familiarity with labor for money makes the concept easy to accept. However, volunteerism is a newer type of work and deserves a little more attention. Volunteerism functions in conjunction with an individual’s shared interests. People are born to kin and kith; throughout their lives, they regroup with many other shared alliances. These affiliations result in obligations through reciprocity, attention to loyalties and possibly the necessity to exit.

The model requires an acceptance that an individual may pamper the ego and still consider others who fall within their life bubbles.

Suppose one were to write a symbolic notation of labor; one might start by defining L as the number of labor hours the individual allots to paid work and V as the number of hours allocated to volunteerism. If you had a couple where one worked 40 hours a week at a career and devoted 10 hours a week to help in the home, it would be shown as L subscript 40 V subscript 10. Let’s say the other partner worked 20 hours a week at a part-time job and filled in 30 hours to their home life; this would be shown as L subscript 20 and V subscript 30. Or- let’s say that both partners worked 40 and did domestic chores for 10; this could be written as 2(L subscript 40 + V subscript 10)

Another Labor Theory

If one had a labor theory, where would one start sketching it out?

The first thing to know is what labor is. The traditional view would be the time and expertise an actor sells to the state, a business, or anyone who will pay. I suppose. Labor is given to fulfill a job, for pay, that is. So anyone who throws a hammer to reroof a house, counts coins at a teller window, or cares for a child in the oncology ward is earning a paycheck for their time.

The thing is, people do these very same actions without pay. A handful of buddies construct a deck as a weekend project in exchange for some beers and a BBQ. A granddaughter shows up at Grandpa’s house to sort through and pay his medical bills. A sister takes in her niece, who has the flu, so the mom can go to work. This is labor, too. Except it’s done in community and not for pay. So,we call it volunteerism.

The first premise is that people spend their time on paid labor and volunteer labor. It is measured is labor hours.

The Thing about Regulation

People expect their government, or governing bodies, to protect them. It’s the most basic and oldest public good. Band together in a cave or behind fortifications and put the physically strongest in charge of fending off harm. For better or worse, this placed the physically strong in high-status positions for more than several millennials.

But what does that mean to keep you safe? And here is the sticky part. There is a broad spectrum upon which the answers to that question may fall. In some cultures, women are safe when clothed from head to toe and sequestered out of the public eye. Most people and women find this a violation of individual liberty. It is not up to the group to seek a safety goal so that it impinges excessively on one or a whole section of society’s liberties.

One story in the news yesterday tells of a mom in Georgia arrested for negligence when her ten-year-old was seen walking home on a rural road. The police were notified by a neighbor. They then showed up at the family’s home and cuffed the mom in front of her kids. Last month, there was a story in the news of another ten-year-old in another part of the country who was finally detained when he drove a stolen car through his neighborhood playground. This ten-year-old had been released on numerous occasions for auto-related theft to a mother who was never held responsible in any way.

Of course, there are many more mundane questions about what is safe. How many smoke detectors does a house need? How many inches does a metal vent need from a combustible floorboard? Will that tenth detector be the one that alerts the family of smoke in the house? Can a wood rafter really catch on fire from metal only exposed to air heated to seventy degrees? Someone thought so. How high does a standard need to be to be safe enough? I’m not sure. But I expect that no one wants to be the regulator who, after a death from a fire, is thought to have been too lax.

The thing is that too much regulation can kill, too. At least, that’s the argument for those who feel there are too many restrictions in the drug industry. Failure to approve causes people to die from lack of access to a cure. Lengthy approval processes cause people to die, too. Just like too many building codes add an undue burden to housing expenses. Without housing, some people are severely disadvantaged and may even die on the streets.

So– what to do? What level of protection is requested when the people go to the government and ask? It seems like the answer would be some expected norm of the group.

If you raise the standards above the norm, people are restricted from liberties they would have enjoyed. Plus, more than likely, some people will disregard the regulation as they feel it is not worthwhile. Before you know it, the mayor of some town is caught at a party without a mask when all other good city dwellers have been putting up with the stinky things. A non-conformist attitude can then carry over to different areas, like permits for home repair. And people start getting their brother-in-law, who’s ‘handy’ to connect a gas line. Here the permit and ensuing inspection is beneficial.

Walking the fine line between setting regulations and meeting people’s expectations for safety is a balancing act worth figuring out.

There are no regulations against garage door decorating.

Shared property hazards

I checked out Francois Furetโ€™s book (yesterdayโ€™s post) from our nationally recognized Hennepin County Library. Itโ€™s a great service to have unusual, high quality books locally available.

I was startled to find the pages profusely underlined in black ink. Throughout the whole book. And every time Furet explains a downfall of the communist system there is a sidebar note: No!

Does the defacer of a publicly owned book not see the irony in treating the volume as their own? That the blatant disregard for the fine-tuned implications of ownership is where precisely where the communist project gets ripped to shreds?

Furet

I met a guy. He’s French and smart. He’s got all these great ideas. Wellโ€” I didn’t meet him exactly, but I know what he thinks because I met him through his book, The Passing of an Illusion: The Idea of Communism in the Twentieth Century. His name is Francois Furet. His work on The French Revolution (1965) brought him fame, but in a video interview on YouTube, he says he was just doing his job. He hadn’t yet found his question, the one that would stay with him, the one that demands his concern.

In the early 1970s, Furet was involved in a large-scale, interdisciplinary initiative that combined history with statistical methods to better understand the social and political dynamics of the French Revolution. The project was highly innovative for its time, as it sought to use quantitative analysis to uncover patterns and trends in historical events, particularly in relation to the Revolution.

Furet and his collaborators were working within the framework of Annales School historiography, which emphasized the integration of social science methods, including quantitative approaches like statistics, into historical analysis. The Annales School, a major force in 20th-century historiography, had already pioneered efforts to expand the scope of historical inquiry beyond political events and figures, focusing on social and economic history, and using more “scientific” approaches to study history. (ChatGPT)

Cool, hugh? That he wanted to set out a statistical approach to the social sciences.

The project didn’t work out quite the way they anticipated. In the video he is clearly disapointed. He says math is tough. It only considers one variable. Despite all the demographic data, the results posed more questions than answers.

Yet in The Passing of an Illusion (here’s a book review to give you an overview of it), there’s a sense that the author has thought through the historical events in terms of definitions and relationships. His narrative talks of actors and associations instead of the grand sweeps of inevitable movements. He tells of individuals and the choices they make. He groups people by their shared ambitions. There is an agency to the peasants or the bourgeoisie, to the aristocrats and the intellectual class.

There’s a sense of time in his sorting as well. As soldiers took up arms under their national flags in July of 1914, he describes a sense of obligation to the past, to the generations who came before and fought to maintain national borders. The sentiments of statehood weren’t found in the moment but had built up a reserve of obligation over time.

Whereas the passion ignited on behalf of the downtrodden proletariat reached a universal appeal. The shared interest in favor of the worker found at odds with the capitalist would not be contained by political boundaries. Communism, indeed, found its footing across the globe.

Furet, rather shyly, also talks of another facet of social activity: volunteerism. It’s hard to know if he looks down and away in the video because the concept wasn’t well received. But the idea that people devote their volunteer labor to the cause is part of his theory. From Chat:

Summary of Key Ideas in Furet’s Concept of Volunteerism:

  • Rejection of Structuralism: Furet rejected deterministic structural explanations (such as class conflict theory) for revolutionary action, arguing instead that individuals and groups made deliberate decisions that led to the Revolution.
  • Ideology as Driving Force: He saw ideological commitment as the key motivator behind revolutionary action, with people acting voluntarily to advance certain political ideas and principles.
  • Revolutionary Agency: The French Revolution was a voluntary act of will, driven by the agency of individuals and groups who made choices based on their ideological commitments, not merely by economic conditions or social determinism.
  • Collective Action from Voluntary Unity: Furet explored how diverse groups, driven by shared ideological commitments, united in collective action to achieve common revolutionary goals.

Here’s how ChatGPT summed up Furet’s focus.

This approach presents the Revolution as a complex interaction of ideology, agency, and action, where individual choices play a central role in determining the outcome of collective struggles.

I couldn’t agree more. But I think we can generalize this structure across all public efforts, including all those which are much more mundane than revolution. Thankfully.

Honor and Respect

Vintage picture with Arlington Cemetery in the foreground and the Kennedy Center across the Potomac, through the trees.

Now it’s time to return to honoring the faithful, like the military personel who serve our country. Let’s hope for a while we can bring back recognition for most, instead of the few, who voluntarily support the many in lieu of the self. Let’s remember, through the year, at each holiday, to praise those tried and true workers who show up for others.

Betting on the Future

You know how during a basketball game, when the losing team comes back from halftime with new energy. All of a sudden, the three-point shots start to fall. The layups hit the glass right at the sweet spot. Turnovers help to turn the game around. The momentum has shifted, and the losers can do no wrong.

That sort of thing happens in neighborhoods too. It might start off innocent enough. One resident starts to add a few extras to their lawn maintenance routine: edging along the sidewalk and mulching the flower beds with that deep chocolate-colored mulch. Another neighbor takes note of the new look when out walking their dog, thinks to themselves how nice that looks, and evaluates how little extra time it would take; he too brings the soon-to-be new norm back home.

The satisfaction of returning home to a place that looks just a wee bit nicer acts as an accelerant. Pretty soon, a scrutinizing eye picks up on some peeling paint. The next weekend, a paint scraper, primer, paint brush, and matching paint are purchased and put to use. Others might not be able to handle the ladder work and hire it done. That’s when the cargo vans start to show up. Some have rolls of carpet peeking out of the back doors strapped shut with tie-backs. The one with a lightning bolt logo on the side deposits a worker who installs nifty spotlights over the covered porch.

And on it goes. The circulating activity of people in the trades leaves the neighborhood just a bit more polished when they leave. People enjoy the effect and start to walk their dogs more frequently to check out everyone’s progress. There’s a beautification movement underway. Residents are betting on the future.

What will Women do?

The embers of the women’s movement championed by Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan are cooling and turning to ash. During the last election cycle, a successful initiative was still able to galvanize women voters into one voting block through abortion rights. Similar attempts did not succeed in this year’s competition. Falling in status are pink things people wear on their heads, bra burnings, and Murphy Brown reruns.

Where will white wealthy women turn for direction?

Nancy Pelosi is without a doubt the most powerful women in American politics. She took office in the house of representatives in 1987. She was the first women to become speaker of the house in 2007. All this after she raised five children with a man she married in 1963. Despite spending nearly a quarter of a century focused on being a wife and mother, Nancy Pelosi has enjoyed an enormously successful political life.

Perhaps being part of a large, bustling family contributes to her success rather than distracts from it. Perhaps devoting the necessary energy to maintaining a life-partner garners the type of support one needs in political life. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933-2020) also chose a very traditional family life. She raised two children with one husband, whom she married in 1954. The same can be said about Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

As minority groups switch alliances, perhaps it’s time for a new focus for women. Perhaps there will be a rising status of all those activities in neighborhoods full of long-term partners and their kids. It seems that such efforts come back in forms of future career support later in life.

Alice’s author has more to offer

Did you know that Lewis Carroll penned more than a story about a young girl stumbling through a fantastical world of characters? I did not. I had an Alice in Wonderland doll like many of my peers. When I was a teenager, I read somewhere that Carroll was a math teacher and found that interesting. But this source of information provided no additional accolades around his professional achievements.

Perhaps it is because Lewis Carrol is a pen name for Chales Lutwidge Dodgson. Perhaps it is because we now live with never ending access to information, at least to those who wish to jump down the rabbit hole. His Wikipedia page is quite long. Here’s a bit (the youth clearly suffered from distraction).

His early academic career veered between high promise and irresistible distraction. He did not always work hard, but was exceptionally gifted, and achievement came easily to him. In 1852, he obtainedย first-class honoursย in Mathematicsย Moderationsย and was soon afterwards nominated to aย Studentshipย by his father’s old friend Canonย Edward Pusey.[19][20]ย In 1854, he obtained first-class honours in the Final Honours School of Mathematics, standing first on the list, and thus graduated as Bachelor of Arts.[21][22]ย He remained at Christ Church studying and teaching, but the next year he failed an important scholarship exam through his self-confessed inability to apply himself to study.[23][24]ย Even so, his talent as a mathematician won him the Christ Church Mathematical Lectureship in 1855,[25]ย which he continued to hold for the next 26 years.[26]ย Despite early unhappiness, Dodgson remained at Christ Church, in various capacities, until his death, including that of Sub-Librarian of the Christ Church library, where his office was close to the Deanery, where Alice Liddell lived.[27

The book that catches my attention is a volume on symbolic logic, Symbolic Logic and the Game of Logic. What else could the mind that offered up so many tremendous visuals in an adventure do with little drawings and abstract concepts? A visual of a fleeting concept can be quite powerful. Apparently the book is full of quirky humor.

A new Administration, Less Regulation?

Even prior to the election outcome, there was bipartisan interest in reducing regulations which hinder housing. Yet in 2024, efforts around housing ended up being a power struggle between different levels of government and zoning control. Traditionally, land use is determined at the local level. The political efforts were geared at removing local control through state mandates. Come to find out, residents like to control the land in their direct periphery.

With the new administration, one would anticipate this spirit of deregulation to find its way to most industries. Is there a good place start? Where would less government result in a net positive? Where are the low hanging fruit?

The market solves for social concerns. Tesla is a prominent example. If there is a mass of consumers with a shared concern, than they will demand it of the market. Looking for the majorities with shared common interest might be a start. For example a ballot measure passed in Minnesota to divert funds from the lottery to the environmental trust fund. It passed with 77.5% of the vote.

When people voluntarily allocate resources for a casue there is a better chance that mediating their interests through the market will result in a more efficient outcome. Without the surcharge of bureaucracy and the unintended outcomes of intervention, markets often are more fruitful. When it comes to the environment, the majority of Minnesotans indicate that they will spend the money to preserve and protect.

Whitney’s Voice is like no other.

O! say can you see by the dawnโ€™s early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilightโ€™s last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
Oโ€™er the ramparts we watchโ€™d, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocketsโ€™ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;
O! say does that star-spangled banner yet wave,
Oโ€™er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?

On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foeโ€™s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, oโ€™er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morningโ€™s first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream,
โ€˜Tis the star-spangled banner, O! long may it wave
Oโ€™er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battleโ€™s confusion,
A home and a country, shall leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footstepsโ€™ pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave,
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave,
Oโ€™er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.

O! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their lovโ€™d home and the warโ€™s desolation,
Blest with victโ€™ry and peace, may the Heavโ€™n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: โ€œIn God is our trust;โ€
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
Oโ€™er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.

Hayek’s Extended Order

Hayek won the intellectual battle. Government of any sort is not be capable of planning their country’s economy. If in doubt, this animated version of Leonard Read’s famous essay, I, Pencil, will surely convince you.

Near the end of his life, Hayel published his last book The Fatal Conceit, The Errors of Socialism (1988). By now the debate had lost its salience. The Berlin Wall would fall just a year later vindicating all who opposed socialism. A reader is left to think of the Fatal Conceit as a remix of a brilliant mindโ€™s famous career.

But I think Hayek was trying to advance his ideas of extended order to a new level. First note, in the clip above, that the creation of the pencil navigates hundreds if not thousands of exchanges between people. It’s a linear activity. The order is rather flat.

Hayek suggests there is more.

Moreover, the structures of the extended order are made up not only of individuals but also of many, often overlapping, sub-orders within which old instinctual responses, such as solidarity and altruism, continue to retain some importance by assisting voluntary collaboration, even though they are incapable, by themselves, of creating a basis for the more extended order. Part of our present difficulty is that we must constantly adjust our lives, our thoughts and our emotions, in order to live simultaneously within different kinds of orders according to different rules. If we were to apply the unmodified, uncurbed, rules of the micro-cosmos i.e., of the small band or troop, or of, say, our families) to the macro-cosmos (our wider civilisation), as our instincts and sentimental yearnings often make us wish to do, we would destroy it.

Yet if we were always to apply the rules of the extended order to our more intimate groupings, we would crush them. So we must learn to live in two sorts of world at once. To apply the name ‘society’ to both, or even to either, is hardly of any use, and can be most misleading (see chapter seven).

We live in two worlds. The mechanics of one would crush the otherโ€”but then again, the passions are known to be deadly as well. In this way, the actions in one must bend to the actions in the other. And in the worlds of dual ambitions, the subgroups explode into a cacophony of midlevel playing fields of interactions. He describes the replication process in Appendix C.

Homeland- Series Review

This is turning out to be a really good series. The writing holds. So many times the storylines start to repeat or are drawn out to slow the whole thing down. But the material here tumbles along and plays to the actors’ strengths instead of grating against them.

Mandy Patinkin, Claire Danes, and Damian Lewis are strong leads, with the supporting cast also interesting and credible in their roles. I love the way they play the idea that everyone is holding back something in their lives; everyone has a double life in a way. Claire Danes has the most opportunity with this material, and she guns it. As long as you can handle all the self-questioning, her performance has more depth than most things you see on the small screen.

Other plusses are the international themes and the DC lifestyle takes. Also, the dwellings of each of the characters are credible. The furnishings, the level of mess or trendiness, ring true in each house. Kudos to the prop people. They take their job seriously.

Social influence on price- Endogenous or External?

It was a privilege to meet sociologist Viviana Zelizer yesterday. Our No Due Date book club read her 1994 book The Social Meaning of Money and we are fortunate to have an hour live with authors to discuss their work.

I think ChatGPT provides some interesting insights into her work:

Viviana Zelizer’s work suggests that the value of social relations is not simply an external force acting on price, nor is it strictly endogenous in the sense of being fully determined within the price mechanism itself. Instead, she argues that social relations and economic transactions are deeply interwoven in a way that both shapes and is shaped by the cultural and moral contexts surrounding them.

In her framework, Zelizer contends that social values and economic exchanges co-constitute one another. That is, social relations influence economic value and practices, but these exchanges also affect the nature of social relationships. For example, in “The Social Meaning of Money,” she demonstrates that people assign specific social meanings to money and earmark it for different purposes (like gifts or household expenses), which reinforces particular social relationships. The relational context affects how money is perceived and used, indicating that social and moral values are not external to money and price but integral to how people understand and navigate economic transactions.

Zelizer’s approach thus goes beyond a simple model of “external influence” or “endogenous value,” advocating instead for a relational view. She calls this the โ€œrelational workโ€ perspective, emphasizing that people continuously create and manage the boundaries between social and economic life. Through this process, social norms and values both influence and are influenced by economic behavior, making them mutually constitutive rather than separable or one-directional forces.

Seriously?

One- that this is news. Two- that actions speak far louder than words. Three- that this is considered a solution.

Aย Minneapolisย City Council committee has approved a proposal to add two people who are currently or were previously unhoused to join its housing advisory board. (Bring Me the News)