Home: The 2009 Documentary

This is one of the best documentaries I have ever seen--on visual, social, cultural, and political levels. The documentary chronicles the present day state of the Earth, its climate and how we as the dominant species have long-term repercussions on its future. A theme expressed throughout the documentary is that of linkage—how all organisms and the Earth are linked in a "delicate but crucial" natural balance with each other, and how no organism can be self-sufficient.

The first 15 minutes include footage of the beginning of the natural world, starting with single-celled algae developing at the edges of volcanic springs. By showing algae's essential role in the evolution of photosynthesis, it also explores the innumerable species of plants which all have their origins in this one-celled life form.

In the rest of the first hour of the film, the documentary takes on a more human-oriented focus, showing the agricultural revolution and its impacts, before moving on to talk about the harnessing of oil, leading to fire, industry, cities and inequality gaps like never before. It portrays the current predicament regarding cattle ranches, deforestation, food and water shortages, the use of non-renewable "fossil water", the over-quarrying crisis and the shortage of energy, namely electricity. Cities such as New York City, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Shenzhen, Mumbai, Tokyo and Dubai are used as examples of the mismanagement and wastage of energy, water and food. The recession of marshlands and glaciers are shown in vast aerial shots of Antarctica, The North Pole and Africa, while mass emigration and refugee counts are shown currently and forecast in the event that these events remains unchanged.

It is at this point that the film begins to focus on global warming and the carbon crisis. Home shows how melting glaciers, rising sea levels and changing weather patterns are ravaging the people who have least to do with climate change, but also how it soon will affect rich populous areas.

Here, about three minutes of film is given to displaying harsh facts in large white text on a black background followed by a video representation of the fact. This is followed by a positive conclusion. The documentary shows the awful truths regarding our impact on the Earth, but also what we are now doing to combat and reverse it: including renewable energy, the creation of more and more national parks, international co-operation between various nations on environmental issues and the extra education and reform being had across the globe in response to the current problems facing the earth. To view the entire movie click here.

Sociology is a Martial Art

" I often say sociology is a martial art, a means of self-defense. Basically, you use it to defend yourself, without having the right to use if for unfair attacks". Pierre Bourdieu

Pierre's Bourdieu's forty books and countless articles represent probably the most brilliant and fruitful renovation and application of social science in our era. The highly influential, at times controversial intellectual--a longtime Professor of Sociology at the College de France--passed away in January 2002.

A "committed" thinker in the vein of Foucault, his work is concerned with elucidating the processes of symbolic violence and cultural domination in various areas of social life. His most well known book, Distinction (1979), addressed these themes in an effort to overcome the opposition of objectivist (Marxist) and subjectivist (Weberian) theories of class.

In the late nineties he became something of a celebrity scholar, one of the world's most important academics actively associated with the anti-globalization movement. Bourdieu himself argued that scholars and writers could and should bring their specialized knowledge to bear on social and political issues. His powerful critiques of the neoliberal revolution were the natural outgrowth of a lifetime of research into economic, social and cultural class domination among peoples as disparate as Algerian peasants and French professors, and as expressed in everything from amateur photography to posture.

SOCIOLOGY IS A MARTIAL ART, a new documentary about Bourdieu's life, became an unexpected hit in France just prior to his death. Filmed over three years, director Pierre Carles' camera follows Bourdieu as he lectures, attends political rallies, travels, meets with his students, staff, and research team in Paris, and includes Bourdieu having a conversation with Günter Grass.

The film's very title stresses the degree of Bourdieu's political engagement. He took on the mantle of Emile Zola and Jean-Paul Sartre in French public life, slugging it out with politicians because he considered those lucky enough to have spent their lives studying the social world could not be indifferent to the struggle for justice.

"The finest documentary a social scientist could ever dream of...While discovering this fascinating man and his strong personality, we can understand how and why Bourdieu became the most famous French sociologist of the second half of the 20th century, and the most quoted social scientist on the Internet. [The film is] a vital documentary that should be part of every college or university library. It will be easily comprehensible to undergraduate students, and quite useful in various courses in social sciences."—International Sociology

A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld

This is a great talk at the 2009 TED conference by the journalist Misha Glenny. Glenny spent several years in a courageous investigation of organized crime networks worldwide, which have grown to an estimated 15% of the global economy. From the Russian mafia, to giant drug cartels, his sources include not just intelligence and law enforcement officials but criminal insiders.

The talk is based on his book McMafia. In the book, former BBC World correspondent Glenny (The Balkans, 1804–1999) presents a riveting and chilling journey through the myriad criminal syndicates flourishing in our increasingly globalized world, which make up as much as 20% of global GNP. Tracing the growth of organized crime—ranging from the burgeoning sex trade in volatile, postcommunist Bulgaria to elaborate Internet frauds in Nigeria—Glenny expertly combines interviews with key players, economic studies and sociological analysis. He argues that the chaos and political upheaval following the demise of communism in Eastern Europe, along with increasing demand in the West and the easy flow of money and people provided the perfect opportunity for organized crime to gain a foothold on the dark side of the globalizing economy. Glenny's achievement is in introducing readers to the less familiar aspects of global crime, from Kazakhstan's caviar mafia to the flourishing marijuana trade in British Columbia. Consequently, his interview subjects are equally varied: sex slaves in Tel Aviv, a co-conspirator in the deadly 1993 Mumbai bombings and top Washington policy makers share the pages. Readers yearning for a deeper understanding of the real-life, international counterparts to The Sopranos need look no further than Glenny's engrossing study.

Chicago Schooled

The visible hand of the recession has revitalized critics of the Chicago School of Economics. This intellectual school has led U.S. domestic and foreign policy for the last 3 decades. Will the current economic shock force the Chicago boys to change or adapt? Or will they simply keep prescribing to the same models? Is the Chicago School to blame for the economic disaster? According to Stiglitz, the 2001 Nobel lareate in economics, “The Chicago School bears the blame for providing a seeming intellectual foundation for the idea that markets are self-adjusting and the best role for government is to do nothing.” Enjoy the article and let me know if you have any comments or concerns.

By Michael Fitzgerald--On a sunny day this spring, more than 1,000 people streamed into the Sheraton near the Gleacher Center for a conference on the Future of Markets. Its keynote panel, headlined by Nobel laureate Gary S. Becker, AM’53, PhD’55, featured six Chicago economists with differing viewpoints. The stock market was in the early part of a rally that would yield its best quarter since 1998. Stock-market turnarounds usually signal better times coming, but in an economy contracting 6 percent, better was relative.

So the rally didn’t change the feeling among the free-market enthusiasts at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business management conference that market economics was on shaky ground: most of the financial industry, they felt, had been nationalized in all but name. Two of the three U.S. automakers looked like they would follow suit. The government was capping pay in the financial services. What in the name of the Chicago School was going on? (read more)

The Cycle of Human Consumption

I came across this critical look at the cycle of human consumption in our modern economic system and loved it. Please take the time to watch the entire video--around 20 minutes. From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.--by Annie Leonard

How Different Groups Spend Their Day

This is a great interactive graph that breaks down how those in American society spend--or value--their time. The American Time Use Survey asks thousands of American residents to recall every minute of a day. Here is how people over age 15 spent their time in 2008.

The related NYT article points out that, on an average weekday, the unemployed sleep an hour more than their employed peers. They tidy the house, do laundry and yard work for more than two hours, twice as much as the employed. The unemployed also spend an extra hour in the classroom and an additional 70 minutes in front of the television.

The annual time use survey, which asks thousands of residents to recall every minute of a single day, is important to economists trying to value the time spent by those not bringing home a paycheck.

"If all we were doing is substituting production at home for production in the marketplace," said Daniel S. Hamermesh, an economics professor at the University of Texas at Austin, "then maybe unemployment wouldn't be so bad."

Alain de Botton: A Kinder, Gentler Philosophy of Success

Alain de Botton examines our ideas of success and failure -- and questions the assumptions underlying these two judgments. Is success always earned? Is failure? He makes an eloquent, witty case to move beyond the typical view of these notions to find true pleasure in our work. In particular, it is important to face the subtle complexities of modern society that are holding us back--anxiety in modern society, competitive society, individualistic society, and the lack of a central component. I hope you enjoy! http://www.ted.com

Ghana: Digital Dumping Ground

This is a shocking investigative report by FRONTLINE! As this month's digital conversion makes tens of millions of analog TVs obsolete, and Americans continue to trash computers and cell phones at alarming rates, FRONTLINE/WORLD presents a global investigation into the dirty secret of the digital age--the dumping and dangerous recycling of hundreds of millions of pounds of electronic waste across the developing world. The report also uncovers another byproduct of our disposable culture--data fraud, as thousands of old hard drives are finding their way into criminal hands.

On the outskirts of Ghana's biggest city sits a smoldering wasteland, a slum carved into the banks of the Korle Lagoon, one of the most polluted bodies of water on earth. The locals call it Sodom and Gomorrah.

Correspondent Peter Klein and a group of graduate journalism students from the University of British Columbia have come here as part of a global investigation -- to track a shadowy industry that's causing big problems here and around the world.

Their guide is a 13-year-old boy named Alex. He shows them his home, a small room in a mass of shanty dwellings, and offers to take them across a dead river to a notorious area called Agbogbloshie.

Agbogbloshie has become one of the world's digital dumping grounds, where the West's electronic waste, or e-waste, piles up -- hundreds of millions of tons of it each year.

The team meets with Mike Anane, a local journalist who has been writing about the boys at this e-waste dump.

“Life is really difficult; they eat here, surrounded by e-waste,” Anane tells them. “They basically are here to earn a living. But you can imagine the health implications.”

Some of the boys burn old foam on top of computers to melt away the plastic, leaving behind scraps of copper and iron they can collect to sell. The younger boys use magnets from old speakers to gather up the smaller pieces left behind at the burn site. (more)

The Science of Economic Bubbles and Busts

It is great to see the new trend in economics--behavioral economics, finance economics, and neuroeconomics--away from classical economic theory to an investigation of the role of psychology in making economic decisions. What is next? An investigation of the role of socal structure and cultural schemes in economic markets:) I hope you enjoy the following article and I look forward to any reaction.

Gary Stix--Even people who do not use illicit drugs or get shot in the head have to contend with the reality that some of the decisions cooked up by the brain’s frontal lobes may lead them astray. A specific site within the prefrontal cortex, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) is, in fact, among the suspects in the colossal global economic implosion that has recently rocked the globe.

The VMPFC turns out to be a central location for what economists call “money illusion.” The illusion occurs when people ignore obvious information about the distorting effects of inflation on a purchase and, in an irrational leap, decide that the thing is worth much more than it really is. Money illusion may convince prospective buyers that a house is always a great investment because of the misbegotten perception that prices inexorably rise. Robert J. Shiller, a professor of economics at Yale University, contends that the faulty logic of money illusion contributed to the housing bubble: “Since people are likely to remember the price they paid for their house from many years ago but remember few other prices from then, they have the mistaken impression that home prices have gone up more than other prices, giving a mistakenly exaggerated impression of the investment potential of houses.”

Economists have fought for decades about whether money illusion and, more generally, the influence of irrationality on economic transactions are themselves illusory. Milton Friedman, the renowned monetary theorist, postulated that consumers and employers remain undeluded and, as rational beings, take inflation into account when making purchases or paying wages. In other words, they are good judges of the real value of a good.

But the ideas of behavioral economists, who study the role of psychology in making economic decisions, are gaining increasing attention today, as scientists of many stripes struggle to understand why the world economy fell so hard and fast. And their ideas are bolstered by the brain scientists who make inside-the-skull snapshots of the VMPFC and other brain areas. Notably, an experiment reported in March in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA by researchers at the University of Bonn in Germany and the California Institute of Technology demonstrated that some of the brain’s decision-making circuitry showed signs of money illusion on images from a brain scanner. A part of the VMPFC lit up in subjects who encountered a larger amount of money, even if the relative buying power of that sum had not changed, because prices had increased as well. (more)

If you like this, then here are a few books you should read:

Shiller, Robert. 2008. The Subprime Solution: How Today's Global Financial Crisis Happened and What to DO about It. Princeton University Press.

Akerlof, George A., and Robert Shiller. 2009. Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism. Princeton University Press.

Thaler, Richard H., and Cass Sunstein. 2009. Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness. Penguin Books.

Ariely, Dan. 2008. Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions. HarperCollins.

The Changing Role of Technology in Social Movements

The recent turn of events in Iran have brought to the forefront the changing role of technology in social and political movements. There are those who argue that new media technology allows for the possibility of significant political resistance--and potential revolution. Others say that it is epiphenomenal to the larger organic social movement. However, I believe that we should understand the pros and cons of these new technologies and their potential role in the geo-political landscape. With this in mind, here is an interesting article by Noam Cohen spelling out the strengths and weaknesses of the micro blogging service called twitter.

Political revolutions are often closely linked to communication tools. The American Revolution wasn’t caused by the proliferation of pamphlets, written to whip colonists into a frenzy against the British. But it sure helped.

Social networking, a distinctly 21st-century phenomenon, has already been credited with aiding protests from the Republic of Georgia to Egypt to Iceland. And Twitter, the newest social-networking tool, has been identified with two mass protests in a matter of months — in Moldova in April and in Iran last week, when hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to oppose the official results of the presidential election.

But does the label Twitter Revolution, which has been slapped on the two most recent events, oversell the technology? Skeptics note that only a small number of people used Twitter to organize protests in Iran and that other means — individual text messaging, old-fashioned word of mouth and Farsi-language Web sites — were more influential. But Twitter did prove to be a crucial tool in the cat-and-mouse game between the opposition and the government over enlisting world opinion. As the Iranian government restricts journalists’ access to events, the protesters have used Twitter’s agile communication system to direct the public and journalists alike to video, photographs and written material related to the protests. (As has become established custom on Twitter, users have agreed to mark, or “tag,” each of their tweets with the same bit of type — #IranElection — so that users can find them more easily). So maybe there was no Twitter Revolution. But over the last week, we learned a few lessons about the strengths and weaknesses of a technology that is less than three years old and is experiencing explosive growth. (more)

How Pharma and Insurance Intend to Kill the Public Option

I am cautiously optimistic about the up coming battle for a public healthcare option. I have been scanning the cable news channels, the dominant newspapers, and the blogs. They all point out that there is an intensifying debate in Washington and things are going to get worse. Leading the opposition, ironically, is the American Medical Association. The AMA is letting Congress know that it will oppose creation of a government-sponsored insurance plan, which President Obama and many other Democrats see as an essential element of legislation to remake the health care system. Additionally, as Reich points out, the opposition is coming from Big Pharma and Big Insurance. Enjoy the article below and let your representative and senators know you want a public option without conditions.

By Robert Reich--

I'ved poked around Washington today, talking with friends on the Hill who confirm the worst: Big Pharma and Big Insurance are gaining ground in their campaign to kill the public option in the emerging health care bill.

You know why, of course. They don't want a public option that would compete with private insurers and use its bargaining power to negotiate better rates with drug companies. They argue that would be unfair. Unfair? Unfair to give more people better health care at lower cost? To Pharma and Insurance, "unfair" is anything that undermines their profits.

So they're pulling out all the stops -- pushing Democrats and a handful of so-called "moderate" Republicans who say they're in favor of a public option to support legislation that would include it in name only. One of their proposals is to break up the public option into small pieces under multiple regional third-party administrators that would have little or no bargaining leverage. A second is to give the public option to the states where Big Pharma and Big Insurance can easily buy off legislators and officials, as they've been doing for years. A third is bind the public plan to the same rules private insurers have already wangled, thereby making it impossible for the public plan to put competitive pressure on the insurers...

This is it, folks. The concrete is being mixed and about to be poured. And after it's poured and hardens, universal health care will be with us for years to come in whatever form it now takes. Let your representative and senators know you want a public option without conditions or triggers -- one that gives the public insurer bargaining leverage over drug companies, and pushes insurers to do what they've promised to do. Don't wait until the concrete hardens and we've lost this battle. (more)

Poking Holes in a Theory on Markets

Having spent many years debating my economist friends from the University of Chicago, this article gives a nice overview of the problems with one of the dominant economic theories of our time--efficient market hypothesis. I hope you enjoy and I look forward to any responses.

For some months now, Jeremy Grantham, a respected market strategist with GMO, an institutional asset management company, has been railing about — of all things — the efficient market hypothesis.

You know what the efficient market hypothesis is, don’t you? It’s a theory that grew out of the University of Chicago’s finance department, and long held sway in academic circles, that the stock market can’t be beaten on any consistent basis because all available information is already built into stock prices. The stock market, in other words, is rational.

In the last decade, the efficient market hypothesis, which had been near dogma since the early 1970s, has taken some serious body blows. First came the rise of the behavioral economists, like Richard H. Thaler at the University of Chicago and Robert J. Shiller at Yale, who convincingly showed that mass psychology, herd behavior and the like can have an enormous effect on stock prices — meaning that perhaps the market isn’t quite so efficient after all. Then came a bit more tangible proof: the dot-com bubble, quickly followed by the housing bubble. Quod erat demonstrandum.

These days, you would be hard-pressed to find anybody, even on the University of Chicago campus, who would claim that the market is perfectly efficient. Yet Mr. Grantham, who was a critic of the efficient market hypothesis long before such criticism was in vogue, has hardly been mollified by its decline. In his view, it did a lot of damage in its heyday — damage that we’re still dealing with. How much damage? In Mr. Grantham’s view, the efficient market hypothesis is more or less directly responsible for the financial crisis. (more)

President Obama’s Speech to the Muslim World

This was a wonderful speech by President Obama yesterday in Cairo, Egypt, outlining his personal commitment to engagement with the Muslim world, based upon mutual interests and mutual respect, and discusses how the United States and Muslim communities around the world can bridge some of the differences that have divided them. June 4, 2009. I hope you enjoy!

Financial Careers Come at a Cost to Families

Why do we choose the careers we do? How often do we assess the larger implications of our career decisions on our life and family? What are the specific factors that we decide on--money, status, quality of life, and time off, etc.? I am often surrounded by students in the academy struggling to choose a career. And many times, I am taken back by the small amount of time given to these questions. I understand that our decision making process is short sighted and can only take into account what we know at the time. However, it is crucial that more time is spent thinking about what we want and what will make our lives better--in the long run. Enjoy the article and I look forward to any comments.

The big influx of highly educated workers into finance in the last two decades has been the subject of some national hand-wringing lately. President Obama, college presidents and economists have all worried aloud that Wall Street has hoarded human resources that might otherwise have gone to science, education, medicine or other fields.

Now, new research is suggesting that the shift also brought another cost — a cost that fell mainly on the people, especially women, who took jobs in finance. Among elite white-collar fields, finance appears to be uniquely difficult for anyone trying to combine work and family.

Finance, on this score, is worse than law and worse than academia. It is far worse than medicine, which emerges from the research as the highly paid profession with the most flexibility. Near finance at the bottom of the list is consulting, another field that became more popular in the last two decades.

The research, by Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz of Harvard, answers a question that college students, for all their careful career planning, rarely consider: which jobs offer the best chance at balancing work and family life? A decade or two after college, however, that question often comes to dominate conversations among friends and between spouses. (more)

Are We in Control of Our Decisions?

Here is a great talk by the behavioral economist Dan Ariely, the author of Predictably Irrational, who uses classic visual illusions and his own counterintuitive (and sometimes shocking) research findings to show how we're not as rational as we think when we make decisions.

By Ariely

Why are so many smart people convinced that irrationality disappears when it comes to important decisions about money. Why do they assume that institutions, competition, and market mechanisms can inoculate us against mistakes? If competition was sufficient to overcome irrationality, wouldn’t that eliminate brawls in sporting competitions, or the irrational self-destructive behaviors of professional athletes? What is it about circumstances involving money and competition that might make people more rational? Do the defenders of rationality believe that we have different brain mechanisms for making small versus large decisions and yet another yet another for dealing with the stock market? Or do they simply have a bone-deep belief that the invisible hand and the wisdom of the markets guarantee optimal behavior under all conditions?

As a social scientist, I’m not sure which model describing human behavior in markets-rational economics, behavioral economics, or something else-is best, and I wish we could set up a series of experiments to figure this out. Unfortunately, since it is basically impossible to do any real experiments with the stock market, I’ve been left befuddled by the deep conviction in the rationality of the market. And I’ve wondered if we really want to build our financial institutions, our legal system, and our policies on such a foundation. (more)

NYT: Rich Man's Burden

This article points out an interesting trend in the American labor market, class relations, and inequality. FOR many American professionals, the Labor Day holiday yesterday probably wasn’t as relaxing as they had hoped. They didn’t go into the office, but they were still working. As much as they may truly have wanted to focus on time with their children, their spouses or their friends, they were unable to turn off their BlackBerrys, their laptops and their work-oriented brains.

Americans working on holidays is not a new phenomenon: we have long been an industrious folk. A hundred years ago the German sociologist Max Weber described what he called the Protestant ethic. This was a religious imperative to work hard, spend little and find a calling in order to achieve spiritual assurance that one is among the saved.

Weber claimed that this ethic could be found in its most highly evolved form in the United States, where it was embodied by aphorisms like Ben Franklin’s “Industry gives comfort and plenty and respect.” The Protestant ethic is so deeply engrained in our culture you don’t need to be Protestant to embody it. You don’t even need to be religious.

But what’s different from Weber’s era is that it is now the rich who are the most stressed out and the most likely to be working the most. Perhaps for the first time since we’ve kept track of such things, higher-income folks work more hours than lower-wage earners do. Since 1980, the number of men in the bottom fifth of the income ladder who work long hours (over 49 hours per week) has dropped by half, according to a study by the economists Peter Kuhn and Fernando Lozano. But among the top fifth of earners, long weeks have increased by 80 percent.

This is a stunning moment in economic history: At one time we worked hard so that someday we (or our children) wouldn’t have to. Today, the more we earn, the more we work, since the opportunity cost of not working is all the greater (and since the higher we go, the more relatively deprived we feel)...read more.

The Torturers’ Manifesto

This is an eye opening article by the NYT's editorial board. I completely agree that until Americans and their leaders fully understand the rules the Bush administration concocted to justify such abuses — and who set the rules and who approved them — there is no hope of fixing a profoundly broken system of justice and ensuring that that these acts are never repeated.

To read the four newly released memos on prisoner interrogation written by George W. Bush’s Justice Department is to take a journey into depravity.

Their language is the precise bureaucratese favored by dungeon masters throughout history. They detail how to fashion a collar for slamming a prisoner against a wall, exactly how many days he can be kept without sleep (11), and what, specifically, he should be told before being locked in a box with an insect — all to stop just short of having a jury decide that these acts violate the laws against torture and abusive treatment of prisoners.

In one of the more nauseating passages, Jay Bybee, then an assistant attorney general and now a federal judge, wrote admiringly about a contraption for waterboarding that would lurch a prisoner upright if he stopped breathing while water was poured over his face. He praised the Central Intelligence Agency for having doctors ready to perform an emergency tracheotomy if necessary.

These memos are not an honest attempt to set the legal limits on interrogations, which was the authors’ statutory obligation. They were written to provide legal immunity for acts that are clearly illegal, immoral and a violation of this country’s most basic values.

It sounds like the plot of a mob film, except the lawyers asking how much their clients can get away with are from the C.I.A. and the lawyers coaching them on how to commit the abuses are from the Justice Department. And it all played out with the blessing of the defense secretary, the attorney general, the intelligence director and, most likely, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. To read more, click here.

Obama's Weekly Address--April 18th

It is essential to our democracy that we keep up with the recent changes taking place in Washington and to make sure our leaders are following through with what they were elected for--health, education, diplomacy, moral leadership, and a sustainable economic agenda, etc.. In line with that goal, here is Obama's weekly address. With the process of going through the budget line by line in full swing, the President uses his Weekly Address to give some examples, big and small, of how the Administration is working to cut costs and eliminate waste. The President also announces two new key appointments, Jeffrey Zients as Chief Performance Officer and Aneesh Chopra as Chief Technology Officer, who will be invaluable in streamlining the way government functions through efficiency and innovation. April 18, 2009. For more information, click here.

FRONTLINE: Sick Around America

Last night I watched an investigative documentary by FRONTLINE on the current state of the American health care system. I was completely shocked and saddened to find out that America is neglecting its citizens and treating them as if they are a liability. A few questions that come to mind--Where has the Federal Government been for so long? How can the leaders running our country stand for this? Are they so blinded by lobbyists, self interests, free markets, and a philosophy of self reliance? Why aren't the poor and middle class coming together to form a movement for change? Now that change has arrived with the Obama administration, is it possible for America to finally get a comprehensive and affordable health care system for all Americans? This report suggests some helpful solutions and opens our eyes to the difficulties we face ahead. Additionally, FRONTLINE has produced another report called Sick Around the World--for those interested in solutions other developed countries in the world have found. Enjoy and I look forward to any comments or debate.

Statistics on American Health Care System-
How under-65 Americans are insured:
* + 60.9% -- get health insurance through their employer
* + 11.8% -- through Medicaid/SCHIP
* + 5.5% -- buy private health coverage (self-employed; those who retire at 55 and won't be working for the next 10 years until qualifying for Medicare; those between jobs/coverage due to divorce, being widowed, laid off, etc.)
* + 17.2% -- have no insurance
* + 1.3% -- covered through Medicare (65 or older; some disabled people under age 65; or all who have end-stage renal disease)
* + 1.2% -- covered through the military

America's various government health care systems:
* + one for people over 65
* + one for veterans
* + one for active military
* + one for members of Congress
* + one for Native Americans
* + one for under-16 people with 120 percent of poverty income
* + one for people with 200 percent of poverty income

Sick Around America

As the worsening economy leads to massive job losses—potentially forcing millions more Americans to go without health insurance—FRONTLINE travels the country examining the nation's broken health care system and explores the need for a fundamental overhaul. Veteran FRONTLINE producer Jon Palfreman dissects the private insurance system, a system that not only fails to cover 46 million Americans but also leaves millions more underinsured and at risk of bankruptcy.

At its best, American health care can be very good. For Microsoft employee Mark Murray and his wife, Melinda, their employee health plan paid for eight years of fertility treatments and covered all the costs of a very complicated pregnancy. "If it wasn't for our health insurance," Murray says, "we wouldn't have a baby boy right now." The Murrays' medical bills totaled between $500,000 and $1 million, and their plan covered every penny.

But beyond large, high-wage employers like Microsoft, FRONTLINE learns that available, affordable, adequate insurance is becoming hard to find. Small businesses face a very bleak outlook for finding and keeping coverage. Coverage is becoming more expensive and less comprehensive, with high deductibles, co-pays and coverage limits. Georgetown University Research Professor Karen Pollitz explains that for many people, the current system is "like having an airbag in your car that's made out of tissue paper: I'm so glad that it's there, but if I ever get in a crash, it's not going to protect me."

Outside of employer-based health care plans, matters are even worse. Americans seeking insurance in the individual market must submit to "medical underwriting," and if they have a pre-existing condition, they will likely be denied. Kaiser Permanente Chairman and CEO George Halverson says frankly: "I could not get insurance. I've had heart surgery, and so I am completely uninsurable in the private market. So it's important that I keep my job."

Around the world, other developed democracies offer universal health care, requiring insurance companies to cover everyone. People are mandated to buy it; insurance for the poor is subsidized; and governments control prices by setting the cost of everything from doctors' salaries and hospital rooms to drugs and MRIs. But efforts to implement similar policies in the U.S. have proven unsuccessful. In 2006, Massachusetts implemented reforms mandating everyone be covered by health insurance, but there are still problems of affordability. FRONTLINE profiles the Abramses, a Massachusetts family of four earning $63,000 annually, who found that although they were too prosperous to receive a health care subsidy, they could not afford to buy a health care insurance policy at around $12,000 a year. "What we're finding out in Massachusetts," says veteran insurance industry executive and consultant Robert Laszewski, "you can mandate that people have health insurance, but if it costs more than they can afford, it doesn't matter."

As President Obama launches his plan for reforming health care, Kaiser Family Foundation President Drew Altman tells FRONTLINE: "This is the first big opportunity for health reform since ... [the] early 1990s. And a question is again, pointedly, whether we will blow the opportunity again this time or [whether] we will actually get it all done or get something significant done." But consultant Laszewski wonders if Americans have the will to make it happen. "Every doctor I meet says he's underpaid. I've yet to meet a hospital executive who thinks he or she can operate on less. I have yet to meet a patient who is willing to sacrifice care. So we have this $2.2 trillion system, and I haven't met anybody in any of the stakeholders that's willing to take less. And until we're willing to have that conversation, we're just sort of nibbling around the edges."

The Quiet Coup - The Atlantic (May 2009)

The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund and MIT professor, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. This disturbing similarity between the U.S. and emerging markets centers around the elite business interests—financiers, in the case of the U.S.—that played a central role in creating the crisis, making ever-larger gambles, with the implicit backing of the government, until the inevitable collapse. More alarming, they are now using their influence to prevent precisely the sorts of reforms that are needed, and fast, to pull the economy out of its nosedive. The government seems helpless, or unwilling, to act against them. If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time.

The Quiet Coup
by Simon Johnson

One thing you learn rather quickly when working at the International Monetary Fund is that no one is ever very happy to see you. Typically, your “clients” come in only after private capital has abandoned them, after regional trading-bloc partners have been unable to throw a strong enough lifeline, after last-ditch attempts to borrow from powerful friends like China or the European Union have fallen through. You’re never at the top of anyone’s dance card.

The reason, of course, is that the IMF specializes in telling its clients what they don’t want to hear. I should know; I pressed painful changes on many foreign officials during my time there as chief economist in 2007 and 2008. And I felt the effects of IMF pressure, at least indirectly, when I worked with governments in Eastern Europe as they struggled after 1989, and with the private sector in Asia and Latin America during the crises of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Over that time, from every vantage point, I saw firsthand the steady flow of officials—from Ukraine, Russia, Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea, and elsewhere—trudging to the fund when circumstances were dire and all else had failed.

Every crisis is different, of course. Ukraine faced hyperinflation in 1994; Russia desperately needed help when its short-term-debt rollover scheme exploded in the summer of 1998; the Indonesian rupiah plunged in 1997, nearly leveling the corporate economy; that same year, South Korea’s 30-year economic miracle ground to a halt when foreign banks suddenly refused to extend new credit.

But I must tell you, to IMF officials, all of these crises looked depressingly similar. Each country, of course, needed a loan, but more than that, each needed to make big changes so that the loan could really work. Almost always, countries in crisis need to learn to live within their means after a period of excess—exports must be increased, and imports cut—and the goal is to do this without the most horrible of recessions. Naturally, the fund’s economists spend time figuring out the policies—budget, money supply, and the like—that make sense in this context. Yet the economic solution is seldom very hard to work out.....(more)

Why We Think It's OK to Cheat and Steal (Sometimes)

In light of one of the worst economic and financial crisis in modern history, it is important to evaluate the fundamental assumptions, intuitions, and reasoning behind our human behavior and institutions. In this talk, Dan Ariely--a behavioral economist at MIT--attempts to uncover one particular behavior that may have played a significant role--Cheating. What is cheating, how does it manifest itself in economic behavior, and what are the implications of cheating for the larger economic system? Ariely's experimental studies suggest that their are bugs in our moral code: the hidden reasons we think it's OK to cheat or steal (sometimes). Clever studies help make his point that we're predictably irrational--and can be influenced in ways we can't grasp. That is, human behavior is often driven by irrational forces such as social norms, visions of morality, intuitions, and social groups, which are themselves predictable. Enjoy the talk!

Capitalism Beyond the Crisis

The New York Review of Books has an excellent article by Amartya Sen--Lamont University Professor at Harvard and 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics--that addresses the nature of capitalism and whether it needs to be changed. Some defenders of unfettered capitalism who resist change are convinced that capitalism is being blamed too much for short-term economic problems—problems they variously attribute to bad governance (for example by the Bush administration) and the bad behavior of some individuals (or what John McCain described during the presidential campaign as "the greed of Wall Street"). Others do, however, see truly serious defects in the existing economic arrangements and want to reform them, looking for an alternative approach that is increasingly being called "new capitalism."

What are the special characteristics that make a system indubitably capitalist—old or new? If the present capitalist economic system is to be reformed, what would make the end result a new capitalism, rather than something else? It seems to be generally assumed that relying on markets for economic transactions is a necessary condition for an economy to be identified as capitalist. In a similar way, dependence on the profit motive and on individual rewards based on private ownership are seen as archetypal features of capitalism. However, if these are necessary requirements, are the economic systems we currently have, for example, in Europe and America, genuinely capitalist?

All affluent countries in the world—those in Europe, as well as the US, Canada, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Australia, and others—have, for quite some time now, depended partly on transactions and other payments that occur largely outside markets. These include unemployment benefits, public pensions, other features of social security, and the provision of education, health care, and a variety of other services distributed through nonmarket arrangements. The economic entitlements connected with such services are not based on private ownership and property rights.

Also, the market economy has depended for its own working not only on maximizing profits but also on many other activities, such as maintaining public security and supplying public services—some of which have taken people well beyond an economy driven only by profit. The creditable performance of the so-called capitalist system, when things moved forward, drew on a combination of institutions—publicly funded education, medical care, and mass transportation are just a few of many—that went much beyond relying only on a profit-maximizing market economy and on personal entitlements confined to private ownership.

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Rand Illusion

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

The Word - Rand Illusion

Colbert Report Full Episodes
Political Humor

Rap Battle
NASA Name Contest

On a lighter note, this is a great clip from the Colbert Report that has a little fun with the new found supporters of the novelist Ayn Rand. Specifically, with all this economic turmoil of late, not to mention a suspected socialist in the White House, right-wing pundits like femmebot Michelle Malkin and fellow Fox-friendly cretin Glenn Beck are looking to “author, philosopher and female comb-over pioneer” Ayn Rand for guidance. Stephen Colbert thinks they should move to an island all their own, where less work gets done on purpose.

On a more serious note, how can a novel that depicts a non-existent world, rallies the darker side of humanity, and intensifies the inequalities in society be held up as a model for American?

NYT: The Geography of a Recession

Over at the Grey Lady, they have created an excellent visual depiction of the geography of the recession. In particular, the map illustrates that job losses have been the most severe in the areas that experienced a big boom in housing, those that depend on manufacturing, and those that already had the highest unemployment rates. To see more click here.

Synopsis-

What does the worst recession in a generation look like? It is both deep and broad. Every state in the country, with the exception of a band stretching from the Dakotas down to Texas, is now shedding jobs at a rapid pace. And even that band has recently begun to suffer, because of the sharp fall in both oil and crop prices.

Unlike the last two recessions — earlier this decade and in the early 1990s — this one is causing much more job loss among the less educated than among college graduates. Those earlier recessions introduced the country to the concept of mass white-collar layoffs. The brunt of the layoffs in this recession is falling on construction workers, hotel workers, retail workers and others without a four-year degree.
The Great Recession of 2008 (and beyond) is hurting men more than women. It is hurting homeowners and investors more than renters or retirees who rely on Social Security checks. It is hurting Latinos more than any other ethnic group. A year ago, a greater share of Latinos held jobs than whites. Today, the two have switched places.

The President Addresses Joint Session of Congress

President Obama lays out his comprehensive approach to addressing both the economic and fiscal crises facing the nation, and stresses the need to end the era of profound irresponsibility that has brought us to where we are today. In my opinion, Obama's first address to the joint session of Congress was excellent--he set a progressive and inclusive vision for our government, focused on the specifics of energy/healthcare/education, and emphasized the necessity for transparency, accountability, and personal responsibility.

Similarly, I am in agreement with the February 27th Editorial in the NYT, which states that "President Obama’s first budget recognizes what most of Washington has been too scared or ideologically blind to admit: to recover from George W. Bush’s reckless economic policies, taxes must go up... A credible pledge to reduce the deficit is imperative. Without it, foreign lenders — who financed the Bush-era deficits and are now paying for the stimulus and bailouts — could lose faith in the nation’s ability or willingness to repay in anything other than rapidly depreciating dollars. That would send interest rates up and the economy down, the worst-case scenario. Controlling the deficit is also necessary to sustain a recovery — when it comes."

The Corporation

This is a thought provoking documentary on the rise of the most dominant institution of our time. Winner of 26 international awards. Including, 10 Audience Choice Awards--2004 Sundance Film Festival.

Since the late 18th century American legal decision, the corporate organizational model has been given the legal equivalency of a person and has become a dominant economic, political, and social force around the world. This film takes an in-depth historical and psychological examination of the organizational behavior of the corporation. What this examination illustrates is that if the corporation were a person, then its behavior would be considered dangerously destructive and border on psychopathic. Furthermore, this film argues that the corporation's behavior has the ability to profoundly threaten our world and our future. However, the film leaves the viewer with hope--people with courage, intelligence, and determination can reorganize society and influence the political system in a positive way. The Corporation includes interviews with 40 corporate insiders and critics - including Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Milton Friedman, Howard Zinn, Vandana Shiva and Michael Moore - plus true confessions, case studies and strategies for change.

FRONTLINE: Inside the Meltdown

I came across this excellent investigative report from FRONTLINE regarding what has happened to the economy. Specifically, the questions at the heart of Inside the Meltdown are--How did it all go so bad so quickly? Who is responsible? How effective has the response from Washington and Wall Street been? From a more sociological analysis, this investigative report provides evidence that markets presuppose trust between participants and confidence that promises made will be kept. Moreover, it reinforces the insights of Emile Durkheim regarding the dependence of markets on the existence of shared values--the non-contractual basis of contract. I hope you enjoy!

Synopsis-

On Thursday, Sept. 18, 2008, the astonished leadership of the U.S. Congress was told in a private session by the chairman of the Federal Reserve that the American economy was in grave danger of a complete meltdown within a matter of days. "There was literally a pause in that room where the oxygen left," says Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.).

As the housing bubble burst and trillions of dollars' worth of toxic mortgages began to go bad in 2007, fear spread through the massive firms that form the heart of Wall Street. By the spring of 2008, burdened by billions of dollars of bad mortgages, the investment bank Bear Stearns was the subject of rumors that it would soon fail.

"Rumors are such that they can just plain put you out of business," Bear Stearns' former CEO Alan "Ace" Greenberg tells FRONTLINE.

The company's stock had dropped from $171 to $57 a share, and it was hours from declaring bankruptcy. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke acted. "It was clear that this had to be contained. There was no doubt in his mind," says Bernanke's colleague, economist Mark Gertler.

Bernanke, a former economics professor from Princeton, specialized in studying the Great Depression. "He more than anybody else appreciated what would happen if it got out of control," Gertler explains.

To stabilize the markets, Bernanke engineered a shotgun marriage between Bear Sterns and the commercial bank JPMorgan, with a promise that the federal government would use $30 billion to cover Bear Stearns' questionable assets tied to toxic mortgages. It was an unprecedented effort to stop the contagion of fear that seemed to be threatening the rest of Wall Street.

While publicly supportive of the deal, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, a former Wall Street executive with Goldman Sachs, was uncomfortable with government interference in the markets. That summer, he issued a warning to his former colleagues not to expect future government bailouts, saying he was concerned about a legal concept known as moral hazard.

Within months, however, Paulson would witness the virtual collapse of the giant mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and preside over their takeover by the federal government.

The episode sent shockwaves through the economy as confidence in Wall Street began to evaporate. Within days, in September 2008, another investment bank, Lehman Brothers, was on the brink of collapse. Once again, there were calls for Bernanke and Paulson to bail out the Wall Street giant. But Paulson was under intense political pressure from conservative Republicans in Washington to invoke moral hazard and let the company fail.

"You had a conservative secretary of the Treasury and conservative administration. There was right-wing criticism over Bear Stearns," says Congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.

Paulson pushed Lehman's CEO Dick Fuld to find a buyer for his ailing company. But no company would buy Lehman unless the government offered a deal similar to the one Bear Stearns had received. Paulson refused, and Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy.

FRONTLINE then chronicles the disaster that followed. Within 24 hours, the stock market crashed, and credit markets around the world froze. "We're no longer talking about mortgages," says economist Gertler. "We're talking about car loans, loans to small businesses, commercial paper borrowing by large banks. This is like a disease spreading."

"I think that the secretary of the Treasury could not fully comprehend what that linkage was and the extent to which this would materialize into problems," says former Lehman board member Henry Kaufman.

Paulson was thunderstruck. "This is the utter nightmare of an economic policy-maker," Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman tells FRONTLINE. "You may have just made the decision that destroyed the world. Absolutely terrifying moment."

In response, Paulson and Bernanke would propose -- and Congress would eventually pass -- a $700 billion bailout plan. FRONTLINE goes inside the deliberations surrounding the passage of the legislation and examines its unsuccessful implementation.

The Crises of Credit

The Crisis of Credit
Movie by Jonathan Jarvis

This two part series visualizes the crisis of credit and makes it very easy to understand. The simple credit crisis story is the following. In the fall of 2008, the credit crunch, which had emerged a little more than a year before, ballooned into Wall Street’s biggest crisis since the Great Depression. As hundreds of billions in mortgage-related investments went bad, mighty investment banks that once ruled high finance have crumbled or reinvented themselves as humdrum commercial banks. The nation’s largest insurance company and largest savings and loan both were seized by the government. The channels of credit, the arteries of the global financial system, have been constricted, cutting off crucial funds to consumers and businesses small and large.

In response, the federal government adopted a $700 billion bailout plan (TARP) meant to reassure the markets and get credit flowing again. But the crisis began to spread to Europe and to emerging markets, with governments scrambling to prop up banks, broaden guarantees for deposits and agree on a coordinated response.

The roots of the credit crisis stretch back to another notable boom-and-bust: the tech bubble of the late 1990’s. When the stock market began a steep decline in 2000 and the nation slipped into recession the next year, the Federal Reserve sharply lowered interest rates to limit the economic damage.

Lower interest rates make mortgage payments cheaper, and demand for homes began to rise, sending prices up. In addition, millions of homeowners took advantage of the rate drop to refinance their existing mortgages. As the industry ramped up, the quality of the mortgages went down.

And turn sour they did, when home buyers had to leverage themselves to the hilt to make a purchase. Default and delinquency rates began to rise in 2006, but the pace of lending did not slow. Banks and other investors had devised a plethora of complex financial instruments to slice up and resell the mortgage-backed securities and to hedge against any risks — or so they thought...

IRAN (is not the problem)

IRAN (is not the problem)-
I came across this excellent documentary about the failure of the American mass media to provide the public with relevant and accurate information about the standoff between the US and Iran, as happened before with the lead up to the invasion of Iraq. We have heard that Iran is a nuclear menace in defiance of the international community, bent on "wiping Israel off the map", supporting terrorism, and unwilling to negotiate. This documentary disputes these claims as they are presented to us and puts them in the context of present and historical US imperialism and hypocrisy with respect to Iran. It looks at the struggle for democracy inside Iran, the consequences of the current escalation and the potential US and/or Israeli attack, and suggests some alternatives to consider. The goal of this movie is to promote dialog and change the debate on Iran, so please consider organizing a screening, big or small, in your area. Enjoy and I look forward to any comments or debate.

High Noon: Geithner v. The American Oligarchs

This is an excellent talk that gives insight into the power struggles taking place among Washington and Wall Street. Former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), MIT Sloan School of Management professor and senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Simon Johnson examines President Obama's plan for economic recovery.

February 13, 2009

BILL MOYERS: Welcome to the Journal.

The battle is joined as they say — and here's the headline that framed it: "High Noon: Geithner v. The American Oligarchs." The headline is in one of the most informative new sites in the blogosphere called: baselinescenario.com. Here's the quote that grabbed me:

"There comes a time in every economic crisis, or more specifically, in every struggle to recover from a crisis, when someone steps up to the podium to promise the policies that — they say — will deliver you back to growth. The person has political support, a strong track record, and every incentive to enter the history books. But one nagging question remains. Can this person, your new economic strategist, really break with the vested elites that got you into this much trouble?"

And here's the man who asked that question. Simon Johnson is former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. He now teaches global economics and management at MIT's Sloan School of Management and is a senior fellow of the Peterson Institute. He is co-founder of that website I quoted — baselinescenario.com — where he analyzes the global economic and financial crisis.

Welcome, Simon Johnson to the Journal....

A Humbler Bonus

This article makes some great points regarding the current Wall St. Bonus dilemma. There are two things that stand out in my eyes. First, there are multiple forms of bonuses, and each includes different forms of payments with different histories, culture, and legal standing. Thus, it is important to look at the context in which these bonuses were formed and implemented in organizations in the market. Second, and more importantly, a bonus gives insight into the structural and social underpinnings of actors in the market. That is, not only are bonuses a specified amount and a particular form but also establish the appropriate social relations between employer and employee. The bonus has become a way for those within organizations to establish social status, social hierarchies, and power. I hope you enjoy the article.

By Viviana A. Zelizer
Llod Cotsen '50 Professor of Sociology at Princeton University

Posted January 31, 2009 | 03:11 PM (EST)

The bonus is being targeted as a villainous currency, a material expression of uncontainable executive greed. How can Wall Street keep dispensing such rewards at the same time it's begging our government for financial support? How could Citigroup pay out $4 billion in bonuses when it lost some $19 billion in 2008? And how can it be, as the New York Times reports, that Citigroup bankers are being so grumpy about their reduced bonuses? This year's bonus, according to one disappointed investment banking associate felt much like a "doorman's tip." Is it simply greed gone mad? Larry Meyers, who works for an Italian securities firm, offered a New York Times (January 30) reporter a different interpretation. "On Main Street, 'bonus' sounds like a gift," Meyers explained "But it's part of the compensation structure of Wall Street. Say I'm a banker and I created $30 million. I should get a part of that."

The bonus is indeed an odd form of payment, not quite a gift, but neither a wage or salary. Yet bonus recipients in all sorts of firms feel entitled to their bonuses. Bonuses, what's more, include different forms of payments with different histories, culture, and legal standing. Consider, for instance, variations among advance inducements to make some major commitments (e.g. enlistment in the army), after-the-fact lump-sum rewards (e.g. veteran's bonuses, retirement bonuses), discretionary rewards by employers (e.g. Christmas bonuses), payments tied to extraordinary individual achievements (e.g. overfulfilling sales quotas, landing a big account, inventions that become company property); payments tied to collective performance (e.g. shares of company profits, group productivity rewards), and more....

TED Talk: The Paradox of Choice

This is an excellent talk by Barry Schwartz regarding the paradoxical situation we face in the advanced industrial societies. As Americans, we assume that more choice means better options and greater satisfaction. But beware of excessive choice: choice overload can make you question the decisions you make before you even make them, it can set you up for unrealistically high expectations, and it can make you blame yourself for any and all failures. In the long run, this can lead to decision-making paralysis. And in a culture that tells us that there is no excuse for falling short of perfection when your options are limitless, too much choice can lead to clinical depression, a loss of community, and the unraveling of the social fabric of our lives.

In particular, Schwartz states that "Autonomy and Freedom of choice are critical to our well being, and choice is critical to freedom and autonomy. Nonetheless, though modern Americans have more choice than any group of people ever has before, and thus, presumably, more freedom and autonomy, we don't seem to be benefiting from it psychologically."

Schwartz integrates various psychological models for happiness showing how the problem of choice can be addressed by different strategies. What is important to note is that each of these strategies comes with its own bundle of psychological complication.

1. Choice and Happiness. Schwartz discusses the significance of common research methods that utilize a Happiness Scale. He sides with the opinion of psychologists David Myers and Robert Lane who independently conclude that the current abundance of choice often leads to depression and feelings of loneliness. Schwartz draws particular attention to Lane's assertion that Americans are paying for increased affluence and freedom with a substantial decrease in the quality and quantity of community. What was once given by family, neighborhood and workplace now must be achieved and actively cultivated on an individual basis. The social fabric is no longer a birthright but has become a series of deliberated and demanding choices.

2. Freedom or Commitment. Schwartz connects this issue to economist Albert Hirschman's research into how populations respond to unhappiness: they can exit the situation, or they can protest and voice their concerns. While free-market governments give citizens the right to express their displeasure by exit, as in switching brands, Schwartz maintains that social relations are different. Instead, we usually give voice to displeasure, hoping to project influence on the situation.

3. Second-Order Decisions. Law professor Cass Sunstein uses the term "second-order decisions" for decisions that follow a rule. Having the discipline to live "by the rules" eliminates countless troublesome choices in one's daily life. Schwartz shows that these second-order decisions can be divided into general categories of effectiveness for different situations: presumptions, standards, and cultural codes. Each of these methods are useful ways people use to parse the vast array of choices they confront.

4. Missed Opportunities. Schwartz finds that when people are faced with having to choose one option out of many desirable choices, they will begin to consider hypothetical trade-offs. Their options are evaluated in terms of missed opportunities instead of the opportunity's potential. Schwartz maintains that one of the downsides of making trade-offs is it alters how we feel about the decisions we face; afterwards, it affects the level of satisfaction we experience from our decision. While psychologists have known for years about the harmful effects of negative emotion on decision making, Schwartz points to recent evidence showing how positive emotion has the opposite effect: in general, subjects are inclined to consider more possibilities when they are feeling happy.