Posted 9:56 PM by Floyd

InstantMan links to a snivelling -- excuse me, editorial -- by the National Review's John J. Miller. Miller notes that many close races in 2002 and earlier were decided by less than the vote total for the Libertarian party. Miller states "Libertarians are now serving, in effect, as Democratic Party operatives."

Let's have some fun with rhetorical questions and my friends <UL> and <LI>:

• Are all eligible voters required to vote?
  
  No.
  
• Is the proportion of voters who choose to vote the same in each election?
  
  No.
  
• Is there any evidence that a person who cannot vote for their favorite minor party will instead vote for a major party, rather than leaving the choice unmarked or not voting at all?
  
  No.
  
• Is there any statistical validity to the Libertarian Party's claim, quoted by Miller, that the small fraction of voters who preferred Libertarians would be more likely to vote Republican than Democrat?
  
  
  Not unless the LP took all the money that goes to Harry Browne's "consultants" and spent it on polling. (Briefly: No.)
  

Even worse is the end of Miller's article, where he blames Libertarians for Republicans winning, but not covering the point spread:

The next time they wonder why the Bush tax cuts aren't permanent, why Social Security isn't personalized and why there aren't more school-choice pilot programs for low-income kids, all they have to do is look in the mirror.

Hey John, buddy, you won! Congratulations -- sorry, my sincerest sympathy. And what is this nonsense about "permanent" tax cuts? Let's say the hypothetical Mondo Republican Congress passed a bill enacting tax cuts for "the next million jillion years?" Couldn't a later Congress undo that any time it wanted to?

Posted 9:29 PM by Floyd

I have been to China twice, in 2000 and 2002, and in this post will describe what I saw of China's economy. Of course I saw practically nothing at the macro level, so I will talk about the living standards of the people that my wife Sherry and I visited, and the prices of consumer goods.

The people around my age with middle class jobs seemed to be doing pretty well. They had about 1000 square feet of living space -- not bad considering that Shanghai has 16 million people packed into a few hundred square kilometers. They had microwaves, washing machines, TV's, computers, VCR's or DVD players. Appliances were a little different, and perhaps cheaper than what I am used to, but were also more compact. (One washer I saw was about half the size of mine, but appeared to use its space efficiently and probably had more than half the capacity.) Dryers and dishwashers appear to be luxury items in China at the current time.

Most housing looks unimpressive from the outside, but nice on the inside. Everyone that we met seemed to have remodeled recently, and they all had nicer hardwood floors than I do. It makes sense to focus on interiors because the climate and pollution degrade the appearance of buildings. (On my first visit I would attempt to guess the age of structures, and would guess them as older than they really were by a factor of three or so.) A more practical shortcoming is that some several-story condos lack elevators.

I have heard that Shanghai's economy has grown faster than that of other cities. But two years ago I visited Baoji, a medium-sized town in the interior, and the standard of living was roughly the same. I did see some farmers briefly from the road and they did seem quite poor.

(I hope no one from China is offended by this. Twenty-five years ago China's economy was Communist and a basket case. I wouldn't be surprised if the Chinese standard of living at that time had been comparable to colonial America's. It is quite impressive that China has mostly caught up on centuries of progress in just a quarter century.)

One manifestation of Shanghai's growth was the incredible rate of construction. Everywhere you went in the city you could see several construction sites, most of which were obviously large buildings. Our 2000 trip was Sherry's first visit to Shanghai in almost five years. At that time there were hundreds, maybe thousands of tall (twenty-plus) story buildings, many of them condo complexes with little balconies running all the way up each wall. I asked Sherry how many of these buildings were new. She said 80 or 90%! There was a remarkable elevated freeway, which was new. There was a subway, half of which was new.

The Chinese currency, the yuan, is quite stable. In 2000 a dollar was worth around 8 yuan, and in 2002 8.25 yuan. I went to Mexico in 1994 when the dollar was worth 3 pesos; during our visit last Christmas a dollar was 9 and a fraction, and is now worth more than 10! People do not pester you for dollars and you can't buy things with them (though you can tip a bellboy with a buck). An American acquaintance went to China almost ten years ago and said that people would pester him for dollars.

Groceries are cheap. I went to a Lawson's which is a convenience store like a 7-11, and bought a breakfast pastry, a diet coke, and two Halls candy rolls for my cold. This cost 12 yuan, or $1.50. My next trip was for another pastry, a diet coke, a small packet of tissues, and a beer. This cost 11 yuan. I would expect to pay $3 or $4 for the same goods at a 7-11.

A trip to a restaurant cost maybe half what it would in the US. But a cup of coffee cost three or four dollars. This is because people go to a cafe to hang out and play cards all night, and don't buy many drinks. These cafes did not even sell coffee to go. Coffee as a commodity, at the Shanghai Starbucks, was only slightly more expensive than here. (I didn't think much of Chinese coffee, but it was easier to find coffee in Shanghai than Diet Coke. It was also hard to find cold drinks, which is strange considering Shanghai has a climate like Houston's.)

Posted 7:39 PM by Floyd

Infinite Thursday was followed by infinite sleep. I went to bed at 10:30 and a phone call woke me up at 11:15. Today I had to clean house -- and toss the contents of my fridge, as power had failed for three days while I was gone -- but there will be much blogging tomorrow, most of it commentary on China.

Posted 7:31 PM by Floyd

For those of you who thought, "At least McWilliams is the only libertarian bridge geek blogger I have to endure", I got bad news for ya. Aaron Haspel runs an excellent blog called God of the Machine, and does some bridge blogging of his own.

Posted 5:34 PM by Floyd

Something strange happened during my trip to China: I lost my fear of heights. First I noticed that the Great Wall, which is quite steep in places, did not induce the dizziness and panic that has always afflicted me at heights of five feet or more. Then when we were driving through Shanghai we sailed on a flyover that was higher than a seven-story building. I thought it was cool. Then when blogging from a six-story mall centered around an atrium, I had no fear when looking down a hundred feet through glass.

At this point I realized that my acrophobia was gone. Now I was concerned that I would be so taken with my ability to handle heights that I would lean over a railing and fall!

My neurons collapsed around new patterns and the world shook. Not just from my point of view either. For instance, I picked up a couple of issues of the International Herald-Tribune (as seen on mattwelch.com!) and saw two columns by Maureen Dowd that were not the ravings of a bag lady!

I'm not even going to discuss the bizarre reports of "Walter Mondale" losing a Senate race in Minnesota. It's an obvious brainwashing attempt perpetrated by Chinese Communists.

Speaking of Chicoms, here's an article from China Daily, page 2:

Fresh rules urged to protect private property

Legal experts and entrepreneurs hailed Party General Secretary Jiang Zemin's call to better safeguard private property ...

Maybe I should just stay home and hide under my bed.

Posted 5:19 PM by Floyd

Just before my flight took off I finished one of the eight books I brought to China -- Alexander Werth's Russia at War 1941-1945. This was a perfect book for a long trip. World War II is a familiar subject to me so it didn't matter if I was a little groggy on occassion while reading. And the book was bucking fig: 1045 pages excluding notes, almost as thick as it was wide. However there is always a problem when reading about World War II, and that is the stomach-clenching factor.

World War II is interesting for many reasons, some noble and some base. The base motive that attracts World War II buffs -- 1000-page book readers, All-Hitler-All-The-Time History Channel viewers, and wargamers -- is the sneaking admiration for the Nazi attempt to rule the world. This often manifests itself as "what if" -- what if the Germans had attacked Russia a month earlier in 1941, had sent more supplies to Rommel, had not conducted so many stupid attacks in 1942 and after? The answer is that millions more people would have been made into soap, but some part of us says "a small, daring nation would overcome incredible odds to create the greatest empire ever seen".

Any history of the war must contain some enumeration of Nazi atrocities, and thus in the middle of daring and bizarre exploits we face the stomach-clenching. In Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, another book approaching the proportions of a cube, the black passages reside in Chapter 27, "The New Order". Clench your stomach as you dive into page 1223 (Nazi attitudes toward Slavs) and release after page 1292 (the massacre at Lidice). It's best to come up for air occasionally.

Russia at War starts with high-level descriptions of German and Soviet military actions, and the author's experiences conversing with Soviets at and behind the front. But as Soviet territory is liberated, we hear of Nazi atrocities, and the gut must be firmed. I knew I wasn't going to like the chapter on Ukrainian Deportees, which started with

Valya, a dark little girl of twenty, must have been pretty only two years ago, but now was broken, and looked like a frightened little animal. To get away from Germany she had put her hand under a flax-cutting machine and had all four fingers cut off.

At this point my eyes bugged out a little, but Werth had shown his cards early, and I was able to clench my abdomen most firmly. It's much easier to read about atrocities when you already know what is involved. The next page and a half were what you would expect -- descriptions of Nazis so bestial that they would not let their slaves eat wild garlic to prevent scurvy and their teeth from falling out.

I did not throw myself under a train; and yet, as the days went on, I grew more and more desperate. I knew that if I did not do something, I should die a slow death. And then, one morning, without premeditation, I did it.

Without warning in real life, but plenty of warning in the telling. Thank you Werth; thank you Valya. I was able to get through the next two paragraphs, which had the sort of gory details you would expect.

Not so bad. A few fingers amputated -- an industrial accident! Just like one of the Beavis and Butthead episodes! I was probably panting a bit at this point, but no real problem. I idly scanned the last paragraph:

And then, as an afterthought: "There was another girl in the factory, and she decided to follow my example."

Maybe my eyeballs should stop reading this

But the Germans guessed this time that it had been done deliberately; and she was not allowed to go home.

Maybe my eyeballs should stop reading this

So she lost her hand for nothing.

Posted 4:34 PM by Floyd

It appears that poor Lileks was caught in the zone of Cold Denial. This is what happens when something is clearly wrong with you, but not to an extent that's it's definitely and irrevocabaly an illness.

Last Monday afternoon, on our first full day in Shanghai, my throat started to feel a little sore and scratchy. This is how a cold always develops for me: Scratchy throat for two days, then I can put out three-alarm fires using my nostrils. But no problem! I'm not sick! My throat feels weird because I had a greasy lunch!

My rhinoviral-infested tissues beg to differ.

Posted 3:13 PM by Floyd

It's time for you to test your ability to make quick decisions. Clear your mind and I will set the scene.

You are on a Chinese Airlines flight. You are reading a light novel and the stewards are roaming the aisles with food carts.

Seafood -- or duck?

If you've never seen a bunch of tiny octopi on an airline food tray, consider yourself a lucky man

Posted 3:08 PM by Floyd

Today is infinite Thursday. On infinite Thursday all things are possible. I can wake up in the Tien Ping hotel, go to a Lawson's mini-mart to fetch breakfast and a replacement beer for the minibar, go to a nearby mall to check email, check out of the hotel, and head over to Sherry's grandmother's. There we are fed on delicious Chinese food, and Sherry spends some quality time with Abu (grandma) while I relax and get occasional translations.

We pack a couple bags and take a taxi to Pudong airport. This takes over an hour; there is heavy rain and heavy traffic. I check my bags and linger over bad coffee with Sherry. Then Sherry goes back and I go through customs and security. My fellow passengers and I fill the 747 to about a sixth its capacity. We take off and head northeast to begin the nine-and-a-half-hour flight.

On the plane I eat twice -- actually I am subjected to airline food three times and eat maybe one and one-half times. I fail to watch either movie (You've Got Mail and a Chinese movie set in Mongolia), read two Agatha Christie novels, and play with my Palm Pilot and GameBoy. I stretch out on three adjacent seats and take a nap. When we break into daylight the attendents wake us up and serve us breakfast. I ignore the scenery until I figure that we have reached the Golden Gate Bridge; unfortunately I misjudge our approach and miss watching the plane fly over my neighborhood. We land uneventfully. Customs is swift and I meet my friend Eric at the gate.

I had spent a week and a half in China, so naturally we spent the drive home talking about Civ III: Play the World. We arrive at my house, survey the damage done by a recent storm and greet the cats.

And I still have at least NINE HOURS to kill before I can go to bed.

Posted 10:39 PM by Floyd

I was propagandized yesterday!

During our tour we stayed at hotels designed for Westerners, and the TV usually included CNN. Yesterday we checked into a Chinese hotel (the Tian Ping) in Shanghai, and I surfed the channels for English content. There was no CNN but there was an English channel which reported on the Communist Party Congress being held in Beijing. The voiceover claimed that everyone was discussing the congress, and there was a shot of a circle of smiling happy people, all intently reading newspaper reports of the congress. Actually it was so obviously faked that it was funny. (My wife says that these are government workers on break from their usual duties.)

There is very little propaganda here. If you had to guess the spiritual leader of China based on public portraits, it would be not Zemin or Mao but Colonel Sanders. Mao appears on currency, but other than that the only place to see him is on cheap knickknacks sold in tourist bazaars. The last time I visited China the only political poster I came across had a picture of Deng Xiaopeng and the phrase, "Development is the Truth." The mall in which I am blogging does have a floral sculpture of a hammer and sickle, but also features a bronze statue of a man with a briefcase and cell phone -- hardly Communist dialectic.

Posted 10:27 PM by Floyd

An addendum to my claim that most major news sites are censored: Two years ago I was unable to view the Drudge Report, the Mercury News, or the Washington Post. Now I can get to the Drudge Report, the Post, and the San Francisco Chronicle, but am still unable to view the Mercury News. I don't know what the Merc did to offend Beijing more than other newspapers.

Posted 12:24 AM by Floyd

This is the first time I have blogged outside my house, and it is also the first time I have blogged while fighting off vertigo. I am in a huge six-story mall in Shanghai with all floors opening out of a central atrium. My computer is next to this atrium; a four-foot glass wall separates me from a 100-foot drop.

We got done with our tour last night and are hanging out in Shanghai. I have had internet access at each hotel in the tour, but have been too tired for any blogging. While on tour we rise around 6:15 every morning, so by the time we got checked into our hotel for the night around 9 p.m. I was dead tired. I have checked other blogs and email.

The blogosphere is my main source of information as most major news websites are censored. (The Drudge report is not, though in 2000 I could not access it.) I was on the short end of the election decisions I cared most about -- the continued existence of Gray Davis and the two marijuana ballots.

I'll end with an attempt at original election analysis. Some Democrats were concerned that Bush would pull an "October surprise" and invade Iraq in an attempt to boost Republican ballot totals. I think that holding off on Iraq was actually best for Republicans. If America had gone to war, the actions of anti-war Democrats would be a moot point, and pro-war voters would be less inclined to punish anti-war incumbents as those officeholders had not prevented the war from going forward. By delaying the war, the issue is left hanging over everyone's head.