Corporation as individual

One of the odder corners of legal philosophy and business is the invention and treatment of the limited liability corporation. The idea is that rather than an individual acting directly, they can bundle their money together with other investors while at the same time limiting their responsibility to a simple dollar sign.

A corporation can't be liable for more than what it actually holds on hand, and nobody in particular is responsible for it - not the executive officer, not the board, it's something of a blank empty void that can't be put in jail and whose maximum financial penalties are sharply limited.

It's either very good or profoundly problematic. Good, in that it allows small investors to take a share in large ventures without being worried about negligence on the part of those with more share over running said ventures; problematic, in that action that would lead to severe penalties for an individual can go unpunished or underpunished with nobody in particular clearly responsible.

The most bizarre turn is that under law, corporations are treated in many cases like individuals. While I can be convinced that the benefits to the efficient allocation of capital are great enough to warrant the construction of such an entity, it remains very difficult for me to buy that this non-jailable entity, so difficult to hold accountable, deserves the same legal protections and fundamental rights as a human being.

Moreover, the sheer scale of a corporation and its anonymity makes it highly difficult to keep damage in perspective. If I were to shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater and caused a dozen people to be trampled to death and others injured, I could be put away for the rest of my natural life on multiple counts of manslaughter; for a large corporation, a dozen incidental deaths resulting from poorly-considered actions (such as failing to place a warning label "DO NOT MIX WITH ALCOHOL," or knowingly selling batteries with a tendency to burst into flame) barely even qualifies as a speed bump.

We're already not equal. I am far more accountable than the corporation is; I can incur penalties and responsibilities well beyond the current value of my bank account, I can be imprisoned... and the corporation simply exists to help people turn a buck. If it has a "motive" for exercising political influence, it is for the crass motive of its own bottom line; a corporation, not being an actual person, has no morality, no soul, no religious or political dispositions, no reason for any personal "rights" at all beyond that of being created and dissolved in a manner according to its legal liabilities and its charter - in that order.

A right to privacy? Kid me not. A strong motive to keep trade secrets, yes; a reason for wanting to obstruct investigation, sometimes; but a corporation has no personal affairs, not being a person. It cannot have a sex life or write poetry about how depressing its life is; it is simply a framework for handling responsibility for financial adventures that no single investor wishes to hold personally.

Long term; short-term

Some days, I wonder how many of the people I meet are putting their long term interests or their short term interests first.

Being aware of both is another thing that many people don't do well, whether planning for a party or running a major corporation. Unfortunately, we put many people in positions where they are unlikely to look for long term interests - traders looking to make the new smarter quicker buck, a CEO hired to make immediate changes in the short term profit numbers, politicians looking to win this year's race.

And while it's foolish to neglect your short-term interests completely, it's possible to focus a little too much on the long view, but it's much easier to go for the immediate reward. And I can't help but think that when people looking only at the short term results get that immediate reward, they're being trained to keep doing that. Something about psychology and positive reinforcement.

Nixon's southern strategy won the Republican party the South for a generation - and alienated the non-white voter for at least as long. George III found the colonies a quick and easy source of additional revenue. It is usually a perfectly rational strategy that is the worst mistake of all. Just dump it in the river, and watch it catch on fire after decades of dumping; save a few million now by privatizing prisons, and watch prison populations climb at a faster rate; throw out the rules of war, and wonder why your opponents do likewise.

This is the real reason I don't trust in the invisible hand - and the reason, too, why I try to be so careful in my decisions these days. Everything has consequences stretching into the long term.

Unintended benefits

A little while ago, I was reading an AP opinion piece in the newspaper, titled Disease prevention often costs more than it saves. I was skeptical about its premise, but then I read the article, and the details bothered me more. The example used is that of relying on a personal trainer/lifestyle coach to prevent diabetes.

It's a terribly poor example, and whoever Carla Johnson is, I am sad to report that she appears to be neither a mathematician nor a health expert. True, the annual cost of diabetes is about $4100 initially (ref - note, however, that it rises over time) and we are, hypothetically, spending $5400 or $6300 a year to prevent it (note: The article says "$5400" but also says that for every person that this sort of treatment works for, it fails six others, and seven times $900 is $6300, not $5400). So on diabetes, we're saving $600-700 or so per person per year with this program, hypothetically, if each year of the program leads eventually to 1/7 of one year free from diabetes for one person.

However, the health benefits of having someone sort out your diet and exercise problems are not limited to not getting diabetes! Diabetes is the big-ticket item, sure. But is it the only thing? Obesity is linked to many other health problems. What the article author should instead be comparing is the cost of the program - which we expect would be discontinued after the first year or so if it were not making a difference - to the average increased cost of being overweight and not exercising, not just diabetes.

And then there's the other side of the question of cost effectiveness: We have not only a significant portion of the costs being repaid in saved diabetes bills, and much (quite possibly all) of the remainder being repaid in other medical bills; we have additional years of healthy productive life, fewer sick days, etc. Direct medical costs are only about half the total price tag of obesity (ref) and so, even hypothetically paying $900 a year indefinitely for personal lifestyle coaching is, on the scale of a national system, a good idea. After all, we're looking at an expected average positive payout at that point.

So the example is quite poorly considered. Is there a valid point to the op-ed piece? Well, yes. An ounce of prevention is not always worth a pound of cure, and it's worth actually checking to see if it is. But a valuable moral of the story is that you have better be very thorough in weighing the costs of everything being prevented. Narrow focus on particular kinds of costs while ignoring others is how we wound up with this system in the first place.

Palin's retirement

Political analysts, by and large, seem to be a little puzzled about Palin's resignation. One of my favorite statistician authors of political blogs, Nate Silver, summarizes the spectrum of opinion as (1) she really wants out, (2) there's something else coming up in the news soon that will make it make sense, or (3) she's nuts enough to think this will help her in 2012/2016. He thinks it could be a combination of all three.

I'm not entirely sure that resigning won't help her political ambitions in the long term. I doubt she will be elected president in 2012/2016, but I would not be surprised to see her make a play for a nomination at some point.

As I said earlier on NationStates, I can think of four direct reasons this could help her:

1.) She stops being such a juicy target for other Alaskan politicians - who may be in a good position to make dirt stick to her name.

2.) She's not going to have the duties of governor - which, last I checked, is a full time job - occupying her time. She can focus full-time on handling growing her national base of support, building her image, etc.

3.) As long as she's in Alaska, she's less able to respond fluidly to the news cycle of the lower 48 - the time zone difference, and the long flights, make it more difficult to work closely with national media.

4.) She doesn't have to deal with disbursing stimulus money, or holding to the potentially unpopular stand of trying to refuse federal money being sent to her state. This will let her oppose Obama much more distinctly and directly than many other governors.

I can see her actually deciding she wants out of the limelight. But in this, I can also see the start of a potential future narrative that heavily invokes traditional family structures. Step by step:

Mother retires from politics to concentrate on her traditional role of homemaker, raising her new young child (and quite possibly her slightly-newer young grandchild). After several years, however, her loyal supporters and/or fiendish opponents (and, of course, the dire necessity of current events) push her reluctantly back onto the national stage.

The reluctant-nominee story is one that has resonance. It's a rich literary/historical tradition that those who do not wish political power are the best to exercise it. It is a major theme of the book Goblin Hero, which I was re-reading recently; it and its converse, the corrupt and evil nature of the ambitious power-seeker, are both very common themes. Moreover, her reasons for retiring from public view are the sort of reasons that work very well with the "traditional family values" theme commonly exercised within the social right-wing - and with the endless escapades of many male Republican politicians, she is better positioned than many prospective future candidates.

And I'm not sure that the aim would necessarily be 2012 or 2016 for her national ambitions. The long view is one worth considering, as popular as it is for political analysts and media pundits to consider the short-term question of who will run in 2012 or 2016. And that would be enough said. Really, spending so much time talking about Palin's resignation is quite counterproductive; if she is truly retiring from public life for good, then well done; if she is not, then all the speculation plays into her hands by giving her more national attention.

Recalling the honors chorus experience.

I still have a t-shirt from N.C.'s year 2000 high school honors chorus. It was one of the more memorable episodes of my high school career. I remember working on throatsinging techniques before and after my audition; I think we got out of school to travel up to Greensboro for the auditions,

I learned that I had made the cut when an acquaintance (who we'll call N.) pulled over and picked me up as I walked back from school one day. The results were posted up on the chorus room door around the end of that day, but I hadn't bothered to check before leaving, something N. was shocked by. I had made the main list, along with two other students (L. and E.), and three others had made the alternate list, including N. (Alternates usually went to honors chorus anyway.)

In retrospect, this was one of a series of episodes involving N. becoming frustrated with the fact that I could seem (or perhaps be) remarkably lazy and enjoy the sort of success he had to work obsessively hard to achieve. I will probably never know if he was jealous on some level, or simply considered it a criminal waste of rare talents. By the end of our time in high school, we had developed a strong and mutual dislike of each other.

Six of us going to honors chorus was quite unusual for Ms. D., and she was quite excited and pleasantly surprised - and it was an amazing experience. Never before had I sung with such a large group; never before had I rehearsed with a group that was so uniformly good at singing - so technically proficient, so responsive to direction. It was beautiful.

And yet, when I recall honors chorus, I don't always first remember the powerful use of dynamics the conductor put into play, or the fact that rehearsals were practically note-perfect; I remember the warmups, and having to sit down before all the other second basses had hit the audible bottom of their range. I had known there were lower basses than I; I rarely, however, experienced them in person. Here were several extraordinarily powerful basses with quite noticeably lower limits.

I was used to being a big frog in a small pond, so to speak; I was always one of the best, if not the best, low-rumbling basses in the choruses I sang in, and so, when I think of big frogs in little ponds, I think of honors chorus, when auditions filtered out any but the largest of big frogs, and being a more medium-sized frog for a change.

I suppose I'm still used to being a big frog in many other ways; changing to the larger pond of college didn't shrink me down much - or even at all - in some dimensions.

It has to feel rough to be Norm Coleman...

So you're a serious politician with a bit of a political career behind you, and you very narrowly lose an election to a political commentator - a radio show host - in a statewide election that attracts national attention. That has to be stunning; it has to be disappointing, to know that you could quite possibly have defeated the victor of the election.

But Norm Coleman didn't let that halt his political career in its tracks. He picked himself up and kept going while Minnesota got used to its new image as the home of its new governor, Jesse "The Body" Ventura - who, according to exit polls, would have lost to Norm Coleman, and barely came out ahead of him in the actual plurality count. It was a tragic demonstration of the weakness of a plurality vote.

Now, ten years later, the 2008 election stands beside the 1998 election as being another case of Norm Coleman losing narrowly to a political commentator and radio show host. One with a background as a comedian, rather than a professional wrestler; and by the narrowest margin of counting ballots, rather than a structural flaw in the procedures for elections.

For all that I know, Minnesota has attracted such attention on the national political stage three times since the day I was born: The only state voting for Walter Mondale over Reagan in 1984, and Norm Coleman's two narrowest electoral losses. I wonder if he will take a chance on statewide office ever again - or if the Republican primary crowd thinks his losses have been too dramatic and too public to ever again take a chance on a man who has now lost to two radio show hosts.

The point of summer camp

I went to several different summer camps as an adolescent - one of them for six summers in a row - and worked at two more. I also spent all five of my years as an undergraduate living in the dorms.

There's an interesting connection there. The summer camps I went to and worked at were mostly populated by socioeconomically similar crowds; and almost all summer camps, whether or not they bill themselves as a pre-college experience, expose youth to many of the things that are likely to trip them up in a freshman year at a university.

There are, as I see it, three reasons why freshmen wash out. In most cases, two or more apply. The least common - by far - is that they simply cannot handle the coursework they've taken on; it is too difficult for them. College admissions are generally competitive, and introductory college coursework is generally not that difficult. The two more common reasons are a little more subtle.

The first common reason - quite obvious to anybody who has seen new students spiral into alcoholism, skip classes, or take up drugs - is inability to handle being responsible for themselves. We could break this reason into many smaller reasons if we like, but many freshmen are not prepared - in some cases, not able - to handle their day-to-day lives independently. More on this reason another day.

The second common reason is failing to adapt to their new environment socially. It is the freshmen who go home every weekend who, one weekend, stay home. They are homesick, they have difficulty making new friends, they miss their dog, their siblings, their boyfriend or girlfriend back home, and their parents. They can't handle dorm life - the roommate, the communal hall, perhaps a shared bathroom and kitchen.

And this seems a most practical reason for packing your kid off to summer camp, where they can learn to cope with homesickness, with making new friends in an environment where they already know few, if any, of the others, and learn to cope with a communal lifestyle similar to the one common in the "college experience." I can't help but think that kids that went off to camp just might turn out to handle that experience a little bit better. I wonder if there have been any good studies done - it's very difficult to control for the socioeconomic factors here...