The purpose of the special category Enemy Combatant is not, as the media wants to suppose, because these folks are the worst of the worst and that due process is too good for these people. Due process has successfully punished quite a few criminals and it's very rare for criminals and other evildoers to escape justice, including terrible bombers like Timothy McVeigh, and 20th highjacker Zacarias Moussaoui regardless of where they are from or what the politics are, around their crime or arrest. Due process is about making sure there's a real crime, that this is the person who committed the crime, and whether there are any mitigating circumstances when determining punishment.
Many of the people who are held in Guantanamo are there because they were arrested on or near a battlefield but have not necessarily committed any real crime. That is to say, they were improperly arrested. Several of them have been tortured. Were these men to be tried in a proper court using due process, the defense would raise these points, and the judge would rightly let them go. It may be that some of them are actually bad people, and it's even more likely that the abuse they have suffered has turned some of them into terrorists, which they hadn't previously been, willing to do anything to get back at their abuser. This is why we should always follow due process and never torture. Guantanamo is a national stain. The people who did it should be turned over to the war crimes tribunal in The Hague. No US jurisdiction can be regarded as neutral for these war criminals. This includes George W Bush and several of his advisers, including John Yoo. It probably should only include a few of the actual torturers, because they can rightly claim that they were just following orders.
The Geneva convention established fairly clear categories: An enemy combatant is one who is clearly identified as an enemy by uniform or context or something, and is arrested as an enemy. They are subject to the rules about prisoners of war. Everyone else who has been arrested must be subject to whatever appropriate due process is in the country that's arresting them--including if they're a spy. That's it. John Yoo and Jay Bybee tried to invent an alternate category where terrorists "fall through the cracks" and can be abused, and quite a bit of the legal community called for their disbarment and prosecution as consequence. But congress (then entirely controlled by republicans) stepped in and blocked it.
There are some circumstances where open application of due process may undermine the hunt for other criminals, and even a few where there's reason to believe the delays incurred by due process may allow another crime to take place. There are procedures for this too. But mostly, when there's a push to get someone tried by a special court, such as a military tribunal, it's because there's something the accuser doesn't want widely known. This especially the case with Bradley Manning. Most of the revelations that have come out due to Manning are trivia and the non-trivia are things which are rightly embarrassing or worse to the subject. Most of it has been well vetted by the New York Times and others. Manning deserves to be treated as a hero. He is a whistleblower who has crossed powerful people. I'm not quite sure why there's such a push to try Tsarnaev as an enemy combatant. What is it that they don't want us to see? Maybe because there was excessive use of force in capturing him?
30 April 2013
08 April 2013
Transit Calculations
I crossed the I-90 bridge earlier today while the express lanes were empty for changing directions. This is where the EAST LINK rails will be placed. There's a lot of bridge lane that's going to be used for this. It will be a net reduction in the capacity of the road, even if they share it with buses.
Everything here is in meters. PPHPD is passengers per hour per direction, per lane. So 6 freeway lanes, three each way, each operating at maximum vehicle capacity (1800/hr/lane) with an average 1.2 passegers per vehicle, can carry 12960 passengers. two light rail lanes, one each way, 5 minutes headway with 200 passenger vehicles, can carry 4800 vehicles. you can run closer than 5 minutes apart on the bridge, but because there are stations at the end of the line and on mercer island, you can't actually do it. Central Link today runs at 7.5 minute headway during rush hour, so the actual PPHPD is 1600. Actual Link ridership for the whole 17 mile, two way route is about 32K/day
Estimates for PRT are for a first system, one way. the 2.4 mile (1.2 2way) Heathrow ULTra system cost about $45M to install. More installations will drive costs down. Installations in denser cities will cost a little more (but not as much as heavier systems). The cheapest LRTs installed in the last few years cost about $50M/2 way mile. the most expensive are over $200M
Everything here is in meters. PPHPD is passengers per hour per direction, per lane. So 6 freeway lanes, three each way, each operating at maximum vehicle capacity (1800/hr/lane) with an average 1.2 passegers per vehicle, can carry 12960 passengers. two light rail lanes, one each way, 5 minutes headway with 200 passenger vehicles, can carry 4800 vehicles. you can run closer than 5 minutes apart on the bridge, but because there are stations at the end of the line and on mercer island, you can't actually do it. Central Link today runs at 7.5 minute headway during rush hour, so the actual PPHPD is 1600. Actual Link ridership for the whole 17 mile, two way route is about 32K/day
Estimates for PRT are for a first system, one way. the 2.4 mile (1.2 2way) Heathrow ULTra system cost about $45M to install. More installations will drive costs down. Installations in denser cities will cost a little more (but not as much as heavier systems). The cheapest LRTs installed in the last few years cost about $50M/2 way mile. the most expensive are over $200M
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06 April 2013
Transit Costs per Acre
This spreadsheet shows the density requirements for transit systems. Assumptions are:
1: that the riders served are within 1/4 mile (400m) of the guideway. For PRT with a station every half mile, this is entirely reasonable. For heavier modes with less frequent stations, less so.
2: density is the average throughout the half-mile wide ridership corridor. A high rise residence may have hundreds of residents per acre, a semi-urban apartment building may have 30 or 40, suburban housing may have 10. Similar formula for office space. This is a reasonable way to present the data, because it's relatively easy, when looking at an acre of land, to estimate how many riders (and dollars per day) will be available from it. The actual farebox per linear mile is the sum of 320 such acres, but a reasonable approximation can be made by looking at a few representative acres.
By "fixed annual cost, I mean things like operator salaries, maintenance, insurance, depreciation, etc.
By "construction cost" I mean initial capital cost. Basically that which is paid for by the construction loan.
The way to use this table is to find the per-mile costs of the system you'd like to build, and compare it to the per-acre density of the occupants of the region. For example, if you think your site has an average density of 10 riders per acre and you think you can get $2/day from each, you have $2.336M/mile/year to work with. If your operating costs are $500K/mile/year, then you can afford to pay for a system that costs $28M/mile to construct, assuming 5% interest on a 30 year loan.
One of the things this table shows, is that if you've got a light rail system that costs $70M/mile to construct and $1M/mile/yr to operate, you need an average revenue along the route of $50/acre/day to pay for it entirely with the farbox. A single floor building which is packed with office cubicles might be that dense, factoring in streets, hallways, lavatories, etc. To do it with residences though, you'd have to stack them over 5 stories high, over the whole area.
1: that the riders served are within 1/4 mile (400m) of the guideway. For PRT with a station every half mile, this is entirely reasonable. For heavier modes with less frequent stations, less so.
2: density is the average throughout the half-mile wide ridership corridor. A high rise residence may have hundreds of residents per acre, a semi-urban apartment building may have 30 or 40, suburban housing may have 10. Similar formula for office space. This is a reasonable way to present the data, because it's relatively easy, when looking at an acre of land, to estimate how many riders (and dollars per day) will be available from it. The actual farebox per linear mile is the sum of 320 such acres, but a reasonable approximation can be made by looking at a few representative acres.
By "fixed annual cost, I mean things like operator salaries, maintenance, insurance, depreciation, etc.
By "construction cost" I mean initial capital cost. Basically that which is paid for by the construction loan.
The way to use this table is to find the per-mile costs of the system you'd like to build, and compare it to the per-acre density of the occupants of the region. For example, if you think your site has an average density of 10 riders per acre and you think you can get $2/day from each, you have $2.336M/mile/year to work with. If your operating costs are $500K/mile/year, then you can afford to pay for a system that costs $28M/mile to construct, assuming 5% interest on a 30 year loan.
| Farebox Revenue | Construction cost available for given Fixed Annual Costs (per mile): | |||||||
| $ per acre/day | daily $ per linear mile | annual $ per mile | $0 | $100,000 | $250,000 | $500,000 | $1,000,000 | |
| $1 | $320.00 | $116,800.00 | $1,795,502.28 | $258,257.18 | ($2,047,610.48) | ($5,890,723.23) | ($13,576,948.75) | |
| $2 | $640.00 | $233,600.00 | $3,591,004.56 | $2,053,759.46 | ($252,108.20) | ($4,095,220.95) | ($11,781,446.47) | |
| $3 | $960.00 | $350,400.00 | $5,386,506.84 | $3,849,261.74 | $1,543,394.08 | ($2,299,718.67) | ($9,985,944.19) | |
| $4 | $1,280.00 | $467,200.00 | $7,182,009.12 | $5,644,764.02 | $3,338,896.36 | ($504,216.39) | ($8,190,441.91) | |
| $5 | $1,600.00 | $584,000.00 | $8,977,511.40 | $7,440,266.30 | $5,134,398.64 | $1,291,285.89 | ($6,394,939.63) | |
| $6 | $1,920.00 | $700,800.00 | $10,773,013.68 | $9,235,768.58 | $6,929,900.92 | $3,086,788.17 | ($4,599,437.35) | |
| $7 | $2,240.00 | $817,600.00 | $12,568,515.96 | $11,031,270.86 | $8,725,403.20 | $4,882,290.45 | ($2,803,935.07) | |
| $8 | $2,560.00 | $934,400.00 | $14,364,018.24 | $12,826,773.14 | $10,520,905.48 | $6,677,792.73 | ($1,008,432.79) | |
| $9 | $2,880.00 | $1,051,200.00 | $16,159,520.52 | $14,622,275.42 | $12,316,407.76 | $8,473,295.01 | $787,069.49 | |
| $10 | $3,200.00 | $1,168,000.00 | $17,955,022.80 | $16,417,777.70 | $14,111,910.04 | $10,268,797.29 | $2,582,571.77 | |
| $12 | $3,840.00 | $1,401,600.00 | $21,546,027.36 | $20,008,782.26 | $17,702,914.60 | $13,859,801.85 | $6,173,576.33 | |
| $15 | $4,800.00 | $1,752,000.00 | $26,932,534.20 | $25,395,289.10 | $23,089,421.44 | $19,246,308.69 | $11,560,083.17 | |
| $18 | $5,760.00 | $2,102,400.00 | $32,319,041.04 | $30,781,795.94 | $28,475,928.28 | $24,632,815.53 | $16,946,590.01 | |
| $20 | $6,400.00 | $2,336,000.00 | $35,910,045.60 | $34,372,800.50 | $32,066,932.84 | $28,223,820.09 | $20,537,594.57 | |
| $25 | $8,000.00 | $2,920,000.00 | $44,887,557.00 | $43,350,311.90 | $41,044,444.24 | $37,201,331.49 | $29,515,105.97 | |
| $30 | $9,600.00 | $3,504,000.00 | $53,865,068.40 | $52,327,823.30 | $50,021,955.64 | $46,178,842.88 | $38,492,617.37 | |
| $35 | $11,200.00 | $4,088,000.00 | $62,842,579.80 | $61,305,334.70 | $58,999,467.04 | $55,156,354.28 | $47,470,128.77 | |
| $40 | $12,800.00 | $4,672,000.00 | $71,820,091.20 | $70,282,846.09 | $67,976,978.44 | $64,133,865.68 | $56,447,640.17 | |
| $50 | $16,000.00 | $5,840,000.00 | $89,775,114.00 | $88,237,868.89 | $85,932,001.24 | $82,088,888.48 | $74,402,662.97 | |
| $60 | $19,200.00 | $7,008,000.00 | $107,730,136.80 | $106,192,891.69 | $103,887,024.04 | $100,043,911.28 | $92,357,685.77 | |
| $70 | $22,400.00 | $8,176,000.00 | $125,685,159.60 | $124,147,914.49 | $121,842,046.84 | $117,998,934.08 | $110,312,708.57 | |
| $80 | $25,600.00 | $9,344,000.00 | $143,640,182.40 | $142,102,937.29 | $139,797,069.64 | $135,953,956.88 | $128,267,731.37 | |
| $90 | $28,800.00 | $10,512,000.00 | $161,595,205.19 | $160,057,960.09 | $157,752,092.44 | $153,908,979.68 | $146,222,754.17 | |
| $100 | $32,000.00 | $11,680,000.00 | $179,550,227.99 | $178,012,982.89 | $175,707,115.24 | $171,864,002.48 | $164,177,776.97 | |
| $125 | $40,000.00 | $14,600,000.00 | $224,437,784.99 | $222,900,539.89 | $220,594,672.24 | $216,751,559.48 | $209,065,333.97 | |
| $150 | $48,000.00 | $17,520,000.00 | $269,325,341.99 | $267,788,096.89 | $265,482,229.23 | $261,639,116.48 | $253,952,890.96 | |
| $200 | $64,000.00 | $23,360,000.00 | $359,100,455.99 | $357,563,210.89 | $355,257,343.23 | $351,414,230.47 | $343,728,004.96 | |
One of the things this table shows, is that if you've got a light rail system that costs $70M/mile to construct and $1M/mile/yr to operate, you need an average revenue along the route of $50/acre/day to pay for it entirely with the farbox. A single floor building which is packed with office cubicles might be that dense, factoring in streets, hallways, lavatories, etc. To do it with residences though, you'd have to stack them over 5 stories high, over the whole area.
05 April 2013
Offshoring, inflation, and medical expenses
One of the major changes that's occurred in the last 40 years is that many, many American businesses have outsourced a huge part of their operations to places where labor is very much cheaper than it is in the US. Initially, this was relatively specialized manufacturing, but improvements in shipping and electronic communications have made it possible to take a large fraction of all production, including food production, away from American labor. When it was just a few products, this didn't have much effect on the overall economy, but now it's all sorts of stuff, and the effect is quite profound.
Since these costs are part of the overall "market basket" that makes up the cost of living, the share of outsourced goods in the cost of living is going down. Meanwhile, the costs of things that aren't being outsourced are not following this same curve. We could thus view inflation as a composite of two numbers: an "outsourced" inflation and a "local" inflation. Overall inflation is the weighed average of the two. (there are other inflation composition measures too, such as core vs headline inflation, which I won't get into here). Conspicuous in local inflation are housing and medical care.
As everybody knows by now, housing prices recently took a big skyrocket and then collapsed when it turned out that the derivatives market was running a giant scam. There's a necessary coupling between house prices and wages: you can't afford a mortgage on a house that costs more than about 3 times your annual income. House prices have come down a lot, but prices remain stubbornly above the necessary balancing point. Some of this is a vestige of the scam, but with demand so terribly low, they should be coming down farther.
The other big chunk is medical care. Medical care is provided by a group of monopolies and near monopolies which control various aspects of medicine: the AMA controls the number of doctors to keep wages high (and also standards of practice). The hospitals provide services but have to pay out of pocket for those who are unable to pay. The insurance companies (explicitly exempt from anti-trust law) provide payments. There are too few companies providing too many, too complicated services. Unregulated, they've degraded into a race to the bottom of gouging, and a race to the top of luxurious and effective treatments. Government insurance (such as Medicare, VA, the British National Health) has about 5% overhead, while pseudo-competitive American insurance has 20-30%. Insurance companies can negotiate with hospitals over price, so they give a 25% or more discount to insurers. This means individual payers are being gouged, and this applies even to some insurance companies and big "self-insured" companies. (Generally, self-paying customers can get some fraction of this discount if you pay promptly and know to ask for it. But they won't tell you). And the need to subsidize emergencies creates opportunities for gouging throughout the system.
Combined with these inflationary pressures, medicine and housing can't be outsourced, so the rising costs need to be paid for with a dollar that is weakening (inflating) through outsourcing. It's a double whammy.
Since these costs are part of the overall "market basket" that makes up the cost of living, the share of outsourced goods in the cost of living is going down. Meanwhile, the costs of things that aren't being outsourced are not following this same curve. We could thus view inflation as a composite of two numbers: an "outsourced" inflation and a "local" inflation. Overall inflation is the weighed average of the two. (there are other inflation composition measures too, such as core vs headline inflation, which I won't get into here). Conspicuous in local inflation are housing and medical care.
As everybody knows by now, housing prices recently took a big skyrocket and then collapsed when it turned out that the derivatives market was running a giant scam. There's a necessary coupling between house prices and wages: you can't afford a mortgage on a house that costs more than about 3 times your annual income. House prices have come down a lot, but prices remain stubbornly above the necessary balancing point. Some of this is a vestige of the scam, but with demand so terribly low, they should be coming down farther.
The other big chunk is medical care. Medical care is provided by a group of monopolies and near monopolies which control various aspects of medicine: the AMA controls the number of doctors to keep wages high (and also standards of practice). The hospitals provide services but have to pay out of pocket for those who are unable to pay. The insurance companies (explicitly exempt from anti-trust law) provide payments. There are too few companies providing too many, too complicated services. Unregulated, they've degraded into a race to the bottom of gouging, and a race to the top of luxurious and effective treatments. Government insurance (such as Medicare, VA, the British National Health) has about 5% overhead, while pseudo-competitive American insurance has 20-30%. Insurance companies can negotiate with hospitals over price, so they give a 25% or more discount to insurers. This means individual payers are being gouged, and this applies even to some insurance companies and big "self-insured" companies. (Generally, self-paying customers can get some fraction of this discount if you pay promptly and know to ask for it. But they won't tell you). And the need to subsidize emergencies creates opportunities for gouging throughout the system.
Combined with these inflationary pressures, medicine and housing can't be outsourced, so the rising costs need to be paid for with a dollar that is weakening (inflating) through outsourcing. It's a double whammy.
Diocletian, Inflation, and the Road to Serfdom
Diocletian (244-311CE) was Emperor of Rome from 284-305, which was a difficult time for Rome. Traditionally, Rome had taken what it needed by force, but as the region became larger and more stable, and more Roman, the contributions possible by this means became more difficult. So Diocletian levied taxes. It worked for a little while, but economic factors beyond Diocletian and his adviser's understanding led to these becoming inadequate. Today we have a name for it: inflation. But it was a total mystery to third century Romans. All they knew is that a levy which had been adequate a few years ago to pay costs was not sufficient now, even though more money was coming in.
The first attack on inflation was to coin more money, and when that proved inadequate, to declare that the money that was out there was now worth double. Today, economists understand that these are ultimately both the same thing, and it didn't work either, in fact, it made the problem worse. Value in the economy is goods and services. The value of currency is simply the relationship between the amount of currency in circulation and the goods and services in the market. Currency-denominated tax levies are necessarily unsustainable, because currency is not connected to the amount of goods and services. Increasing the amount of currency in circulation makes it worth less. It also increases liquidity (the flexibility with which people can trade with each other), which, other things being equal, also increases inflation.
Finally, in 301, Diocletian instituted price controls. Price controls can work to solve a short term, isolated problem, but they fundamentally undermine the working of the market. The problem was that various shortages around the empire were increasing demand differentially, and trying to naively block inflation undermines the opportunity to fix the underlying problem. So the problem became worse, and in its ultimate manifestation, Diocletian's mandate prevented workers from changing jobs for any reason, including salary, non-payment, and other abuse. The system that grew out of this innovation was called serfdom. It's not quite slavery, but it's very close. Workers are required by the full force of the law to fulfill their commitments, regardless of how unfair they may be, even if they themselves had no role in making the commitment in the first place.
Over time, serfdom morphed into a related system, called wage-slavery. The worker is technically free to change jobs, but the economics of their life make this impossible. A worker comes to a company town, where they get a job at the mill, or mine, or company store. They pay rent for a home and buy food and clothing from the company store. Pay and costs are such that they very quickly get deeply into debt. As long as the worker is working for the company, these debts are tolerated. Many company towns provided reasonable benefits: free or cheap medical care, pensions, etc., and it was possible to lead a happy, if impoverished life in a company town. But if the worker agitates, in any way, or if they try to run away, the full force of government enforcement is used to punish them or bring them back.
If the free market is to work, workers need to be able to change jobs for any reason: a better salary, disgruntlement, etc., and they must be free to shop where they like. There's ultimately only one way this can happen: wages need to match the real economy; to be high enough that they don't need to go into debt for any normal circumstance, like getting sick, adding family members, changing jobs, etc. The mechanism that evolved in the 19th century to achieve this was the trade union. Workers banded together and bargained with management. Even workers who did not necessarily have a grievance would potentially strike in solidarity with their peers who did. This kept wages adequate and improved worker safety immensely.
And to the surprise of almost everybody, it actually improved the economy. A whole bunch of new enterprises sprang up, to serve the needs of the new, far wealthier workers, now called middle class, and they bought and provided goods and services too. The only people who lost were the worst of the exploiters: the robber barons who had not been paying an adequate wage, or providing a safe work environment, etc. Even they didn't lose much--they were still very, very rich--just not quite as rich as they had been relative to their employees. A new form of corruption sprang up--the corrupt union official. This is not really new, it's just a different group doing the same old thing.
Today, we have many executives who would like to bring back wage slavery or serfdom. They generally don't admit it or realize it, but when they want to set wages and services so that their workers are increasingly trapped and their only solution is to go heavily into debt, and when they undermine unions to prevent them from fighting back, that's what they're doing.
The first attack on inflation was to coin more money, and when that proved inadequate, to declare that the money that was out there was now worth double. Today, economists understand that these are ultimately both the same thing, and it didn't work either, in fact, it made the problem worse. Value in the economy is goods and services. The value of currency is simply the relationship between the amount of currency in circulation and the goods and services in the market. Currency-denominated tax levies are necessarily unsustainable, because currency is not connected to the amount of goods and services. Increasing the amount of currency in circulation makes it worth less. It also increases liquidity (the flexibility with which people can trade with each other), which, other things being equal, also increases inflation.
Finally, in 301, Diocletian instituted price controls. Price controls can work to solve a short term, isolated problem, but they fundamentally undermine the working of the market. The problem was that various shortages around the empire were increasing demand differentially, and trying to naively block inflation undermines the opportunity to fix the underlying problem. So the problem became worse, and in its ultimate manifestation, Diocletian's mandate prevented workers from changing jobs for any reason, including salary, non-payment, and other abuse. The system that grew out of this innovation was called serfdom. It's not quite slavery, but it's very close. Workers are required by the full force of the law to fulfill their commitments, regardless of how unfair they may be, even if they themselves had no role in making the commitment in the first place.
Over time, serfdom morphed into a related system, called wage-slavery. The worker is technically free to change jobs, but the economics of their life make this impossible. A worker comes to a company town, where they get a job at the mill, or mine, or company store. They pay rent for a home and buy food and clothing from the company store. Pay and costs are such that they very quickly get deeply into debt. As long as the worker is working for the company, these debts are tolerated. Many company towns provided reasonable benefits: free or cheap medical care, pensions, etc., and it was possible to lead a happy, if impoverished life in a company town. But if the worker agitates, in any way, or if they try to run away, the full force of government enforcement is used to punish them or bring them back.
If the free market is to work, workers need to be able to change jobs for any reason: a better salary, disgruntlement, etc., and they must be free to shop where they like. There's ultimately only one way this can happen: wages need to match the real economy; to be high enough that they don't need to go into debt for any normal circumstance, like getting sick, adding family members, changing jobs, etc. The mechanism that evolved in the 19th century to achieve this was the trade union. Workers banded together and bargained with management. Even workers who did not necessarily have a grievance would potentially strike in solidarity with their peers who did. This kept wages adequate and improved worker safety immensely.
And to the surprise of almost everybody, it actually improved the economy. A whole bunch of new enterprises sprang up, to serve the needs of the new, far wealthier workers, now called middle class, and they bought and provided goods and services too. The only people who lost were the worst of the exploiters: the robber barons who had not been paying an adequate wage, or providing a safe work environment, etc. Even they didn't lose much--they were still very, very rich--just not quite as rich as they had been relative to their employees. A new form of corruption sprang up--the corrupt union official. This is not really new, it's just a different group doing the same old thing.
Today, we have many executives who would like to bring back wage slavery or serfdom. They generally don't admit it or realize it, but when they want to set wages and services so that their workers are increasingly trapped and their only solution is to go heavily into debt, and when they undermine unions to prevent them from fighting back, that's what they're doing.
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