bearing blog

The Nobel Peace Prize.

Even though at first I really, truly thought I was reading an Onion headline when I saw "Barack Obama Wins Nobel Prize" yesterday...  and even though I'm really thankful that skepticism about this particular honor appears to be largely (if, as is to be expected, unequally) bipartisan and not another cause for major, ugly division...

I think the Nobel committee are demonstrating that they're rational actors here.  It's just that their motivations aren't the motivations that people expect them to have, and the power they have to act is less (and more) than people realize.

The people of the Nobel committee do not, actually, possess a special power to identify individuals that have accomplished extraordinary feats to reduce world conflict and promote peace between peoples.  Even less do they possess the power to recognize less fruitful but no less heroic efforts toward that goal.  Any of us can do the same with a decent Internet connection.

Nor is the ability to give away a chunk of cash to a deserving recipient particularly special.  Lots of organizations and individuals do this every year. 

What they do uniquely possess -- and I am sure they are aware of this -- is a peculiar power to send a message of approval, a message that will be repeated in the world's large media outlets and so be sure to be heard.   And that's the power they are deploying every year:  the power to say "We approve of this person or this organization." 

They also possess -- again, this is a unique thing -- a certain moral authority that commands respect.  I don't know what the worldwide "approval rating" of the Nobel Peace Prize committee would be if you took a poll, but I have to think that it's pretty high and pretty evenly spread out, compared to other similarly visible global groups. 

The power to send messages will continue, I think.  But the moral authority, the worldwide respect, can be lost, or diluted, or restricted to a smaller group of sycophants.  I expect that it depends largely on people's perception of whether the messages they send are consistent with the group's stated purpose.

So anyway, I suspect the Nobel committee was (rationally, and in accord with their actual rather than imaginary special powers) trying to do this with the Prize:

(1) To send a message to the people of the United States that the committee approves of our selection of Barack Obama as president.   (Remember, they don't care that much about our domestic policy of any kind.  It's not really on their radar.  Think foreign policy alone.)

(2) To send a message to Barack Obama that they expect him to promote the Nobel committee's visible and stated and public purpose of promoting peace.

Nothing unexpected here.  Since we are dealing with an organization, of course, and since some sort of law states that every organization's first purpose is self-perpetuation, we can probably add this third purpose:

(3) To increase their organization's world stature and moral authority, by associating the name "Nobel Prize Winner" with President Barack Obama, a name they are betting will continue to be regarded highly on the world stage (not the domestic stage -- remember, you have to separate the two, we're talking about people outside the US here) for a long time.

Whether their actions actually give them the results they hope for ... we'll have to see.   But let's not forget the opportunity cost here.   They could have used their power to draw attention -- and attention means funds -- to some little, unknown organization that's doing great good somewhere, somewhere where attention and funds could make the difference between success and failure.  They chose a different path, a glitzier one to be sure.   The world rarely remembers the choices that could have been made, but weren't. 

(Next time I'll complain about the Nobel Prize in Physics.  I promise.)

Probably true about both sides of the health insurance reform debate.

Megan McArdle:

"People don't know what's in various bills, because bills are very complicated, so they just project whatever they think would be neat onto the ones authored by politicians they like."

I've noticed this too.  Come to think of it, I haven't read the various proposed bills myself, relying on an assortment of summaries.  For all the buzz, how many folks do you think have read the assorted proposals?  (And kudos in advance to any of my readers who've done it).  I try not to project my wishes too much onto politicians I like, but I mostly accomplish this by assuming that all the politicians have mostly bad ideas until proven otherwise.

A couple of examples at the link about the kinds of subtleties that people might be missing.  I can see how people might not appreciate the difference between their health care payroll deduction and their health care benefit.

A membership that works for the community.

A fascinating model for independent, Catholic nonprofit health care, described in detail at DarwinCatholic.   It works by offering two levels of care, in a structure which reminds me of the way our local YMCA works for gym membership.

1. "Concierge" style primary care, at a fixed yearly price, for a limited number of paying members.   This provides the clinic with a steady revenue and eliminates overhead costs from dealing with government agencies and insurance providers.  Members get highly personalized access to primary care doctors.  (Specialist care is not included.)
2.  Primary care, walk-in, first-come-first-serve, 3,000 appointments per year, completely free of charge, to the uninsured.

Isn't that a great idea?  

A potentially useful illegal protest against the federal government.

But will anyone pay attention to it?

 ...[T]he [Transportation Security Agency] officer chicken-scratched onto our boarding passes what might have been his signature, or the number 4, or the letter y. We took our shoes off and placed our laptops in bins. Schneier took from his bag a 12-ounce container labeled “saline solution.”

“It’s allowed,” he said. Medical supplies, such as saline solution for contact-lens cleaning, don’t fall under the TSA’s three-ounce rule.

“What’s allowed?” I asked. “Saline solution, or bottles labeled saline solution?”

“Bottles labeled saline solution. They won’t check what’s in it, trust me.”

They did not check. As we gathered our belongings, Schnei er held up the bottle and said to the nearest security officer, “This is okay, right?” “Yep,” the officer said. “Just have to put it in the tray.”

“Maybe if you lit it on fire, he’d pay attention,” I said, risking arrest for making a joke at airport security. (Later, Schnei er would carry two bottles labeled saline solution—24 ounces in total—through security. An officer asked him why he needed two bottles. “Two eyes,” he said. He was allowed to keep the bottles.)

Worth reading.

First they came for the ---holes, but I was not an ---hole.

Anthony Furey writing in Canada's National Post:

Compare that [Bill C-10, which would allow government to decide what film productions receive certain tax credits, and which has inspired much public outcry] to what could happen if a human rights tribunal decides against [magazine] Maclean's [for publishing Mark Steyn's opinions regarding Islam]: It could order the private magazine to publish material and images against its editors' wishes. Let me repeat that: The state will order Maclean's to publish something it does not want to publish. Isn't that what China does? So why don't ear-to-the-ground, free speech-loving Canadian artists denounce it?

At a trendy Toronto Annex watering hole, I recently posed this question to a lead scion of the left. Without hesitation he said, "Because Mark Steyn's an ---hole." "That may be," I responded. "He may also be right-wing, and you may be left-wing. But those are very poor reasons to deny a person or group their Charter rights." The fellow conceded my point, but I could sense he didn't understand how easily he could come to find himself in the same position in the near future.

Disturbingly common, this blind spot -- glee that some rule or another is being used against the other people, without even the most self-serving awareness "Hey, in a different political climate, this rule might be used against me too!"  I can't decide if it's a failure of empathy, of logic, or of long-term thinking.