Author: ken

Does Ethnic Purity Matter?

Analysis of the genome of a young boy buried in eastern Siberia 24,000 years ago shows overlap with European but also American Indian DNA. That’s a new piece of the puzzle about the origins of native Americans, but it also supports the idea that mankind is inherently nomadic – and adaptable, and something of a mongrel species. (See, “24,000-Year-Old Body Shows Kinship to Europeans and American Indians.”)

Whatever drove European tribes to Mongolia — and on to America, and possibly back again – it wasn’t about maintaining the purity of their blood or their traditions. And it probably wasn’t about adventure, a craving for new experience. Chances are, it was about survival.

The process was grueling, no doubt, filled with fear and uncertainty. Undoubtedly, there was plunder and rape along the way, though the northern passage through Alaska, rich with animals and fish, was not well populated.

Up until recently, most anthropologists had thought that American Indians descended from European or Asian tribes that crossed over the Bering land bridge between Alaska and Siberia about 11,000 years ago before the rising seas made it impassable. Now the story looks far more complex. The emerging new consensus is that different parts of America were “discovered” by many different tribes at different times. The body of the boy who died in Siberia 24,000 years ago with American Indian DNA, is an intriguing new part of the puzzle that still remains to be put together.

It stands in dramatic contrast to another story recently carried in The New York Times about the struggle of Mayflower descendants to be certified. The society that judges the evidence is very strict as membership is highly coveted.

The Times noted there is a dark side to such “lineage societies.” A Bernard College historian observed: “Mayflower societies developed, at least in part, as a ‘reaction to immigration’ that was transforming the United States late in the 19th century. . . . Membership, he said, conferred the notion that ‘we’re authentic. We’re better. We were here before. Unlike these unwashed immigrants coming to America.’” (See, “Persistence in the Genes: Connecting the Dots to the Mayflower.”)

Some members of the Society of Mayflower Descendants objected to being characterized as snobbish, and no doubt not all of them are. But what is the value of such a lineage?

Actually, inbred families and societies are more prone to carrying genetic defects, while intermarriage and other forms of comingling seem to invigorate genetic heritages. Moreover, the stress on purity inevitably distracts from the challenge of adaptation and the striving that leads to significant accomplishments.

Throughout history, the human species has been marked by migrations and invasions, repeated relocations, epidemics, and natural disasters that have profoundly altered the character and stability of our populations. The more we are able to trace the stories inscribed in our DNA, the clearer this becomes. And that may well be one of our greatest strengths. We struggle on.

Pride may try to control the process. Fear of others and the demands of identity and social cohesion may hold us back. But the good news is that the battle has already been lost.

What We Shouldn’t Buy and Can’t Sell

Society has many strictures about money: we shouldn’t use it to bribe judges; we shouldn’t pay for sex or traffic in slaves. Those things are often actually done. But then there are the issues that really feel wrong, that are sacrilegious or taboo.

Cynics tend to believe everything has its price, while economists track markets to find out how much we are willing to pay. In a market economy such as ours, a surprising number of things become commodities, and the number is growing. The Harvard political philosopher Michael Sandel has made a career of exploring this issue, noting how traditional considerations of fairness seem be eroding under market pressure.

As Sandel points out, now one can buy a place at the head of most lines, or get an upgrade to a better jail cell. One can rent a womb, or purchase rights to pollute the atmosphere, or buy the insurance policy of someone dying. Nowadays, it is possible to buy a Green Card, a seat at a Papal mass, or a place in college. (See What Money Can’t Buy)

For Sandel this raises questions of ethics and public policy. Is it good for us to be able to buy and sell anything? And the issue is intensified when the divide between the rich and poor continues to grow. Now it seems there is nothing the rich can’t buy.

But psychologists are casting a new light on the topic. According to The New York Times: The study of what are now called sacred values began in the mid-’90s with two psychologists, Jonathan Baron at the University of Pennsylvania and Philip Tetlock, then at the University of California, Berkeley. In both economics and game theory, the conventional assumption is that we humans are “rational actors” — that we respond to a given situation by weighing our options and picking the one that seems to offer the greatest benefit. But psychologists, who study actual people as opposed to abstractions of people, have long been aware that humans don’t always exhibit behavior an economist would consider rational.”

And now some are peering into the brain: “In one recent experiment, Gregory Berns, a neuroeconomist at Emory University, took M.R.I. images of participants’ brains as he asked them to consider changing their personal beliefs in exchange for money. Would they trade their preference for dogs over cats? What about their belief in God? Would they be willing to kill an innocent person?”

“When participants were questioned about issues of the dog-or-cat variety, their brain scans showed activity in the parietal cortex — a region that’s thought to be involved in making cost-benefit calculations. But when asked about issues on which they declined to make a trade, entirely different parts of the brain were activated — systems that are associated with telling right from wrong and with storing and retrieving rules. The result, Professor Berns observes, could be a new way to gauge sacred values ‘that is not solely dependent on self-report’.” (See, “Don’t Mess With My ‘Sacred Values’.”)

Such research cannot help us discriminate right from wrong. That’s not a matter of biology. But it can help us to understand what we can or cannot tolerate, and it can give us a better understanding of the emotional price we pay, the personal cost of buying and selling.

A Brand, Not Just a Genius

We like to think of the inspired inventor working alone in his lab – or, nowadays, his garage – but David Burkus, author of The Myths of Creativity has pointed out that “Edison worked with a team of 14 or so engineers, machinists, and physicists—collectively known as ‘muckers.’ The muckers resided on the upper floors of the Menlo Park warehouse while Edison split his time between inventing, dealing with clients and investors, and speaking to the press.”

But the most fascinating part of the story is that “the team of muckers . . . found that when they advertised their ideas or tried to sell themselves to potential clients, their audience seemed to like the notion that a single individual had authorship of their ideas, especially when that person was Edison.”

“In short, the muckers created Edison, the archetypal inventor. They saw that Edison by himself made for a more valuable brand than their collective group, and capitalized on that by mythologizing him.” (To be sure, by calling them ‘muckers’ Edison could not have helped them acquire much self-confidence.)

A few years earlier, Stanford Law School professor Mark A. Lemley had commented that Edison “did not ‘invent’ the light bulb in any meaningful sense.” Electric lighting was long in the works when Edison came on the scene, and his work attracted several patent infringement lawsuits from his contemporaries. “What Edison really did well,” Lemley argues, “was commercialize the invention.”

Lemley noted that this is part of a larger pattern among inventors. Alexander Graham Bell, Samuel Morse, and Eli Whitney, besides Edison, assembled teams to solve technological problems – and got the credit for their inventions. (See, Business Insider, Thomas Edison and the Myth of the Lone Inventor.)

We like to think we are a nation of individualists, and so we recall and celebrate our unique inventors. And, to be sure, many introverts do need to isolate themselves from the crowd to think clearly and follow their own inspiration, a point that was beautifully made by Susan Cain in her new book Quiet. (You can check out her Ted Talk on “The Power of Introversion.”) Competition can get in the way, as can the pressure to conform. A group of people can generate a lot of noise.

But the fact is that most of us are usually much smarter and more creative when we work together. If there is a clear common goal and reasonable incentives, we can also build on each other’s ideas, spur each other on, and push past the limitations of our individual thoughts. We can brainstorm our way into a better future.
Sir Isaac Newtown is reported to have said that he was able to see further than others because he was standing on the shoulders of giants. He wasn’t the first to make that point.

But you don’t need to be a giant to give someone else a boost, and you don’t need to see something clearly at first to pursue a valuable insight.
Getting to new ideas can be a messy process, and we won’t often know how we got there or, even, when we arrived. So it might not be a good idea to isolate ourselves.

And Banks Can be Regulated

The economists were surprised: legislation designed to curb the hidden fees banks charged their credit card customers actually worked.

They had assumed that the banks, thwarted in raising profits one way, would figure out new ways of compensating for the lost revenue they had come to rely upon. But, crunching the numbers, the economists found that “the new law saved customers an annualized 2.8 percent of the average daily balance on cards.” Over all, that meant a savings to consumers of an estimated $20.8 billion.

According to Floyd Norris, the business reporter for The New York Times, many economists expected the banks “would simply raise interest rates. But the study concludes that did not happen.” The reason was that one of the things customers do pay attention to is the interest rates they pay on their debt. That’s not hidden, and banks know their customers can easily shop around for a better rates if they are available. So market competition kept the banks in line on that.

The law addressed the “hidden” charges, such as penalties for late payments and exceeding the credit allowance, charges hidden in the small print. And then there were the even more hidden charges that some banks applied when customers paid by phone, in some cases, or when banks varied their due dates so confused customers would get it wrong. Late penalties sometimes took effect on noon of the due date. Sometimes banks even charged “inactivity fees” if a customer decided to take a break from running up more debt.

No doubt the existence of the newly established Consumer Financial Protection Agency also acted as a break on some of the more creative new sources of revenue banks might have come up with. Under-funded and hobbled by excessive congressional scrutiny (pushed for by bank lobbyists), the Agency nonetheless loomed in he background as a potential threat, at least a source of embarassment.

Norris concluded “this is a clear case of regulation that worked,” adding that given “all the hostility in Washington . . . to regulation in general . . . that is a very refreshing development.” (See, “Card Act Cleared Up Credit Cards’ Hidden Costs.”)

It’s a surprise to the rest of us as well, as we have seen the power of banks to thwart most efforts to control their practices or to limit their size.

To be sure, banks seem to be doing their best to damage their own reputations. The gigantic penalties recently agreed to by Chase and other banks signal a defensiveness and awareness of public discontent. No doubt, their willingness to pay up may even distract the public from the zeal that prosecutors are showing in pursuing criminal charges for individual bank officers.

But the publics’ growing awareness of income disparity may also be influencing perception of such issues. How can banks continue to quibble about the hidden fees they charge when their officers and investors receive outsized salaries and bonuses that set them further apart from their customers?

It just doesn’t pass the smell test.

But Not All Countries Wait

As portrayed in the media, the economy is a kind of uncontrollable beast. Pundits watch it expand and contract. They scrutinize its stirrings, take its pulse, check its circulation, and try to assess its health. So they note the lack of jobs, the growing disparity between the rich and poor. But they confirm our sense of helplessness. We can try to prod the beast, or restrain it, feed it or starve it, but it has a life of its own. Essentially we are hapless observers.

But Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize winning economist, has noted that countries differ significantly in their gaps between the rich and poor. “Of the advanced economies, America has some of the worst disparities in incomes and opportunities, with devastating macroeconomic consequences. The gross domestic product of the United States has more than quadrupled in the last 40 years and nearly doubled in the last 25, but . . . last year, the top 1 percent of Americans took home 22 percent of the nation’s income; the top 0.1 percent, 11 percent.”

Worse: “Recently released census figures show that median income in America hasn’t budged in almost a quarter-century. The typical American man makes less than he did 45 years ago (after adjusting for inflation).”

He calls attention to the fact that “countries like Chile, Mexico, Greece, Turkey and Hungary managed to reduce (in some cases very high) income inequality significantly, suggesting that inequality is a product of political and not merely macroeconomic forces.”

The conventional explanations for this disparity, he argues, don’t work: “It is not true that inequality is an inevitable byproduct of globalization, the free movement of labor, capital, goods and services, and technological change that favors better-skilled and better-educated employees . . . . Some countries have made the choice to create more equitable economies: South Korea, where a half-century ago just one in 10 people attained a college degree, today has one of the world’s highest university completion rates.”

His conclusion: “I see us entering a world divided not just between the haves and have-nots, but also between those countries that do nothing about it, and those that do. Some countries will be successful in creating shared prosperity — the only kind of prosperity that I believe is truly sustainable. Others will let inequality run amok. In these divided societies, the rich will hunker in gated communities, almost completely separated from the poor, whose lives will be almost unfathomable to them, and vice versa.” Stiglitz notes, “I’ve visited societies that seem to have chosen this path. They are not places in which most of us would want to live, whether in their cloistered enclaves or their desperate shantytowns.” (See, “Inequality Is a Choice.”)

So entrenched is our conviction that we are helpless bystanders to the economic forces driving us that it takes a Nobel Prize winning economist to see and speak such obvious truths.

It is not that the beast is immovable, but we lack the political will to move it. We cannot intervene in “free markets,” because we have been mesmerized by the conviction that they are the secret to our success. We cannot create jobs because we have been told repeatedly that we can’t afford to, and we can’t raise taxes because we have come to believe that will stifle motivation.

Meanwhile the beast groans and twitches, and we continue to wait for growth.