On a completely different topic for this blog, there's a new Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game out there: A Tale In The Desert. It's an interesting twist on the genre:

• No killing.
  
• No non-player characters; everyone you can interact with in the game is a real person.
  
• The "goal" of the game is to create an ideal society. To get there, an enormous list of things has to be done by players in seven areas: art, politics, competitive card games, competitive building construction, cooperative rituals, exploration, and riddles.
  
• Various in-game resources are required to meet all of these tests. The world starts in a state of grace, with minimal production methods (growing barley, catching fish); cooperative action is necessary to research new ones (silver mining).
  
• Laws can be passed (by two-thirds vote) changing the game itself - regulations on building placement, item decay, and so on.
  
• You can group with other players in "guilds" for local cooperation.
  
• There's an intense conflict between cooperation and competition when it comes to meeting the game's goals; you don't want someone else to finish it, but you need them to do so.
  

Unfortunately, the legal system is in complete shambles:

Well then, should I say that at this point the results are spectacularly uninteresting. Allow me to summarize for you:

Initial conditions: 2000 people put together to try to create a simulated society. Placed in world seeded with resources, and given system to self-regulate.

Results as of 1 1/2 months into experiment: People build many buildings, agressively strip mine Egypt for its natural resources, and complain that they can't get more resources and build more things. Organization into guilds occurs for some sharing. Legal system's greatest achievements are allowing people to tear down other's buildings so they can build more, banning someone from the game, and creating a library where the many failures and few successes can be listed.

Conclusions: Humanity's natural tendency is to consume. No one wants to give someone any kind of power over them, but they also want someone to fix all of their problems for them. People therefore must be confused and unable to think properly. Experiments should be run on possiblity of extremely damaged brains in all human specimens, due to this illogical behavior.

As he mentions, pollution from mining (which is toxic to plant and animal life) is completely out of control, although a flax farmer threatened by silver mining runoff is trying to start an environmental movement. I have a feeling the game is going to end up in an economic journal some day.
- posted by Jason @ 10:35 PM

 
I wrote this up for a comment over at Ygelasis's today, but it's interesting enough to repost here.

What does the racial breakdown of members of the GOP and Democrats look like? It's a question with fuzzy answers. The general election totals tend to underestimate the differences, as independents and the loosy-aligned have to pick a party, but the makeup of delegates and elected official makeup goes the other way; only the "hardcore" get that involved.

Let's just use the general election numbers. Assuming the makeup of GOP voters roughly matches their 2000 totals, the GOP has 54% of whites as members, 9% of blacks, and so on. If you multiply the proportion of voters in each racial category with the percentage that went for each party, then calculate the ratio between the numbers inside the parties, you get:

• 
  Those voting for Democrats in 2000 were 71% white, 19% black, 8% hispanic, and 2% asian; the sex breakdown was 58% women, 42% men.
  
• Those voting for Republicans in 2000 were 93% white, .2% black(!), 5.5% hispanic, and 2% asian; the sex breakdown was 53% men, 47% women.
  

Unless the election totals seriously deviate from actual party makeup, the GOP is far whiter than I'd ever have imagined. One-fifth of one percent of the Republican party is black? Geez, I guessed it was at least a percent or two.
- posted by Jason @ 6:26 PM

 
MediaWhores flagged this Paul Krugman speech at the New School a couple days ago. Paul discusses a few interesting things, which we'll probably see more of in the book he has coming out this fall:

• The income distribution has become extremely polarized.
  
• The political power exerted by the rich as a result of this has completely eliminated the overlap between the political parties.
  
• Class warfare is actually starting to break out. The rich didn't used to have enough money to make it worth the trouble of going after their money, but they sure do now.
  
• The explosion in executive pay illustrates the new cultural gap on money; the ratio of CEO to employee pay has gone completely haywire. No 1950s or 60s executive would dare to open up such a large gap between his compensation and that of the regular employees.
  
• The polarization of politics on income lines and the increased power of the rich explain how dividend and inheritance tax cuts have managed to become dominant political issues.
  

It's over an hour, but well worth your time.
- posted by Jason @ 2:14 PM

 
Ben Muse has an interesting Medicare chart up. Current projections show Medicare spending growing from its current level of about 2.5% of GDP to 9% of GDP in 2075.

The problem with this sort of analysis (and the usual conclusion attached - "How on earth will we pay for this?") is that, implicitly, it kinda-sorta assumes medical spending is worthless. To boot, there tends to be a underlying panicky assumption that unless something is done, and done right now, we'll have a future of poverty; nice medical care, but no money left for anything else. I'm complaining about the "per capita growth in medical costs in excess of GDP growth" category, which is most of it; the aging population thing is another bit entirely.

As an example of the mathematical fallacy being engaged in here, imagine a similar chart, depicting the amount of candy people buy. Assume that people have a never-ending desire for candy; they could always use more, and once they've got their basic needs satisfied, they'll spend the rest on candy. The chart would look about the same. As income keeps increasing, more and more basic needs are satisfied (transportation, housing, food) and people "splurge" on stuff that's not absolutely necessary, but nice to have (candy, the latest and greatest medical tricks.) If the essentials are mostly satisfied, then of course you'll see the proportion of income spent on luxuries skyrocket.

Now, candy and healthcare aren't directly comparable, but the basic point is the same. Paul Krugman has written a bit on this; why is healthcare considered a loss? The only reason projections show it getting so big in the future is people really like medical spending, and judging by their private buying decisions, they're looking to spend a lot of future income on it.

A quick mathematical example of this:

Imagine per-capita income is $100, annual per-capita income growth is 1.5%, annual growth in per-capita medical spending is 3%, and the proportion of income used for medical spending starts at 2%, with all leftover money is spent on other things. You've got $2 in medical spending and $98 in other spending to start.

After ten years, income is $116.05 and medical spending is $2.69. After thirty years, income is $156.31 and medical spending is $4.85. After 75 years, income is $305.46 and medical spending is $18.36.

Explosive growth, right? Medical spending went from 2% to 6% of income over 75 years. Note, however, that everyone wasn't reduced to poverty; non-medical spending had a smaller growth *rate* over the time period, but in *aggregate* it increased more, from $113.36 to $287.10.

It is useful to wonder if the deadweight loss imposed by a government that collects 6.5% more of income would be a problem, but that always seems to be a side issue in articles about the medical industry. Read enough of them and you'd think those medical premium increases were being trucked out to a landfill for burning, instead of spending on new treatments and research. Sheesh.
- posted by Jason @ 4:26 PM

 
Something leaped out at me when reading Alterman's What Liberal Media?: Reason magazine gets a lot of money from Richard Mellon Scaife.

Check it out. From 1985-1999, $1,427,500 dollars went from various Scaife groups to Reason.

Another one to put on the "do not trust" pile, I guess.
- posted by Jason @ 9:07 PM