Militias, guns, killing, etc.

"He [Obama] is going to try to hand over the sovereignty of the United States to the U.N. What's going to happen when that happens? I'm thinking worst case scenario -- civil unrest, civil disobedience, civil war maybe ...

"What's going happen ... if the public decides to do that? He's going to send in U.N. troops, I don't want them in Lubbock County. I'm going to stand in front of their armored personnel carriers and say 'You're not coming in here,"

- Thomas Head, County Judge in Lubbock County, Texas

"No one, not even the United Nations, would ever mess with Texas."

- Spokesman for UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon

Texas is certainly a lot to contend with, especially considering how many guns exist in that state that are owned, privately, by civilians, although I would guess that in the event of a large-scale UN invasion, these Texans would cause plenty of harm to their own people if large numbers of them were involved, merely as armed civilians. When I was an undergraduate, my professor gave us an account of a conversation he had with a shopkeeper in Arizona, while he was a professor at Brown University, travelling to Arizona for a conference. I am not recalling his words perfectly, and I doubt he was perfectly recalling what he heard, but it was, more or less, as follows: "You know what it is with you northerners and easterners? If you all had carried guns, the attack on the World Trade Center would've never happened." There are plenty of gun-owners in Connecticut and Rhode Island, plenty in Massachusetts, and plenty in New Jersey, PLENTY in upstate New York, and PLENTY in Long Island, as we can see from the murder rates of these places. Also, just for fun, we can see the Huffington Post has claimed in June, 2012 that Chicago has a higher murder rate, per capita, than Kabul.

Let's put this all into perspective. I think we can all agree that guns have a very visceral sort of appeal. Most of us - including many females among us - loved playing with toy guns or imaginary guns when we were children. And I think most people see profound intuitive value in owning their own gun when their lives are threatened by a human enemy and the forces entrusted to resist the enemy do not seem sufficient or trustworthy. A perfect example, which I will discuss in a subsequent paragraph, is gun ownership among American gangs who feel threatened by other gangs and are loath to rely on the police.

But let's start from the beginning, which unfortunately means relying primarily "official" accounts of history that only deal with affairs in which the government was directly involved, rather than infighting among ordinary citizens. In another blog post I wrote about gun-related laws in the English colonies on the American east coast. Among the thirteen colonies, there was only one (Pennsylvania) that did not at any point require gun ownership among adult males (with certain exceptions, of course, which varied depending on the specific colony. Allowing natives and slaves to own guns would defeat the purpose of these laws). Among these twelve colonies, five of them - Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Virginia and North Carolina - required all gun owners to bring their guns to church services. This practice continues today in churches that hold a Bring Your Gun to Church Day, albeit for symbolic reasons more than for practical reasons. This policy seems to be inspired by the policy of universal military service which was in place in the country that ruled these colonies, both before and after Restoration. Several of the colonies organized citizen militias which required all young men to serve for a certain number of years, so long as they were among the good guys.

In fact, I was just reading on Wikipedia that until the 20th century, the major American military engagements were fought largely, if not primarily, by private militias, state militias, or militias organized by an English or Dutch colony and their Native American allies. Of course, I'm not claiming that Wikipedia provides us with the absolute truth, but Wikipedia is a live debate between thousands (millions?) of people who are determined to prove each other wrong. To start with, the main forces in the American Revolution was the Massachusetts militia - consisting primarily of last-minute amateur enlistees - and enthusiastic bystanders with guns. At that time there was no United States, but in the following hundred-some years, state and private militias would be the main contributors to the American efforts in the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War (on both sides), and the Spanish-American War. Also, not surprisingly, they were the primary force in just about all of the Indian wipe-out campaigns, from the Pequot War to the John Wayne wars. And even since the start of the 20th century, the National Guard has a significant role in the major American military engagements, some small-scale interventions, and in Operation Iraqi Freedom, where they had a much larger role than was originally intended. The National Guard has also had a crucial role in aiding those harmed and in maintaining order in instances of domestic turmoil, such as the September 11th attacks or the attack on a children's hospital in Oklahoma City (an event which I find far more revolting. See below). The National Guard has also played the role of the aggressor in such instances as the Waco siege.

In short, there has always been a very clear context for the Second Amendment to the Constitution, ever since it was ratified. The Second Amendment stipulates the following: "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." In the 121 years since this amendment took effect, the text has remained the same. So the right of people to own guns, and the 

一言既出,驷马难追

I first encountered this proverb about a year and a half ago. It became to me at a very visceral level a few months later, when I learned of Rep. Anthony Weiner sent a picture of his concealed penis on Twitter. About a year later, my wife and I were talking about mistakes we had made between us. I finally said this axiom out loud, or rather my own translation of it: "when a word is spoken, it can never be retrieved." I was unable to say the entire sentence at once, and in the middle I would find that tears were streaming down my face. It might be the single best piece of advice I've ever encountered: true wording is very cogent, and the message is very true, very disquieting, and very relevant to our times.

And as for the Prince of England being caught romping through the hallway of Las Vegas hotel naked, that's a situation none of us want to wind up in. This mistake will be on people's minds the rest of his life. Personally, I'd spend the rest of my life regretting a mistake like that, but at least I won't have to deal with the entire world knowing about it. I think most of us are inclined to say "I would never do something like that." However, we are all likely to make mistakes that we had either not considered ourselves likely to make, or not considered a potential problem. Those of us who would not appear naked in public might say something in public (or electronically, supposedly in private) that offends other people and causes the offender profound humiliation that he would have never expected.

The instant classic The Innocence of Muslims is a perfect example. The people behind this film probably did not intend for their work to have quite so much influence, causing quite so much humiliation to themselves and their country that will be recognized, if not felt, by people across the globe, and will last longer than any of us.

To be continued ...

Race: the scientific, political and religious versions

My wife, as some readers will have learned from other blog posts, is Chinese. One time I sat down with her to a dinner with her of noodles with chicken and Thai burapa peppers, the preparation of which created a big cloud that made me cough. After taking a few bites I started tearing, but kept eating, until I could no longer bear the sting. I then spent nearly an hour gulping down water, putting several consecutive ice cubes in my mouth, breathing sharply to soothe my tongue. I had long considered myself a patron of spicy food, in fact at ethnic restaurants I will often opt for the spiciest item on the menu. But that day I realized I had my limits. My wife, meanwhile, kept eating with no sign of discomfort. She told me that in her home province, Hunan, in South China, most people eat comparatively spicy food on a regular basis. Not everyone in Hunan can handle this food, but among the majority who can, they rely on it: their fiery foods help them sweat, which in turn cools them down during their brutal summers. In a similar matter, when we go out to dinner, we get to save some cash because my wife has a strong adverse reaction to alcohol. Like her parents, she has "Asian flush syndrome." According to Wikipedia, this disorder is almost exclusive to East Asia, particular Southern China.

These examples are among many known by historians, anthropologists, (etc) of regional genetic idiosyncrasies among the people. These regional genomes develop for many reasons, all of which are compatible with natural selection as it is understood by scientists today. Of course, at the risk of sounding preachy and condescending, they are not compatible with Nazism and eugenics. First of all, the task of identifying these regional genetic idiosyncrasies requires a far greater scientific ability than what existed before World War II. People's skin and eyes and facial features reveal some genes, but we have thousands of other protein-coding genes. Moreover, while regional gene pools all have their own strengths and weaknesses, and I don't think any is plainly superior. Furthermore, I think we're best off having an optimally diverse gene pool globally, then at least some of us will things that others don't.

 Ok, so it's arguable that in the long term, over the course of thousands of years, the mass-killing of humans via nature is making us better off. That argument is, if you will, teleological, and the reader might agree with it. I will explain why I, personally, don't. In addition, I want to make some other arguments. First of all, I want to make the more obvious argument that the scientifically-proven regional genomes are very different from the characteristics that "ethnic groups" tend to consider particular to them. In making this argument, I will recount human history from the years when we slowly became a separate species, to our migrations across the globe, to the beginning of civilization and eventually until today. In doing so, I also want to explain why most ethnic groups have little common history, and those that do can only trace their history back to an assemblage of people with heterogeneous histories and no common origin. I also want to explain the role of politics in this process. Lastly, as a comic relief, I decided to retell the same story as it appears in the Bible.

Our beginning is difficult to locate. It is unlike the Bible, perhaps most notably, in one particular regard. The Bible has it that two humans were implanted onto the earth, one of them male and the other female. Between them, these two people had three sons, two of whom survived into adulthood: Cain and Seth. Afterwards these sons went on to have their own children with their "wives." The Bible does not specify who their wives were, however there was only one woman alive at the time. For the following five or six generations the Bible only lists the male children by name, although it speaks of these men as having "sons and daughters." Whom these sons and daughters procreated was, I guess, their cousins when they had the chance.

By contrast, according to science, the process of "speciation" takes thousands of years. As with any new species - i.e. a group of organisms that can produce viable offspring amongst themselves, but not via a member of another species - by the time this species has come into being, there will have been thousands or millions of transitional beings. In the case of humans, we seem to have separated from homo erectus over the course of about 500,000 years, with a number of creatures coming and going along the way that may or may not be considered the same species.


...


I would conjecture, though, that similar conditions were common at one time. However, most people carrying the genes lived short lives, or they were murdered, or they're still alive but they live short lives in poverty and isolation and most of us don't really think about them. I.e. they're Native American. And alcohol is believed to have been an enormous part of the problem all along - in both their gradual genocide and their disturbing state at present.  So it's not perfectly fair to accuse European colonists, and white Americans, of committing suicide (or, more precisely, several different genocides). Most of the killing was not done directly and deliberately by them.

I will refer the reader to a particular book on this subject. The reader probably knows which book: it's syphilis, which may or may not have originated in the Americas. But it seems to have reached Europeans in conjunction with the explorers, and the Europeans were clearly not well exposed, since it would be a defining feature of the following 500 years for them (more on that in forthcoming posts).

Granted, the European population was not monolithic. In 1881 a British ophthalmologist would discover an eerie red dot in one of his patent's eyes and an American neurologist who would attribute this symptom to a brain disease that infects infants and usually kills them in early childhood. The disease would be named after these two gentlemen: physical benefits of sunlight. Likewise, people from colder climates need to be very careful about excessive exposure to the sun, because it can make them look like a character from Jersey Shore. Similarly, people from warmer regions tend to have lankier body types, which increase their body's surface area, allowing them to release heat more easily, while Caucasians have sturdier builds that retain heat. Anyone who has witnessed a marathon, whether in New York, London or Tokyo, will notice that the first to finish are almost exclusively African, usually Kenyan. Likewise, it is known that African Americans, through their athletic prowess, have monopolized the NBA.

And life in a tropical climate has perks, albeit with drawbacks. Tropical diseases are different, in many ways, from the epidemics that have swept through Europe and Asia. My wife, who spent her high school years at a  boarding school in Singapore, has told me about some of the nasty bugs that harass the people there. She spoke of big mosquitoes that sound "like helicopters" and bite people through their clothing, in addition to big, shiny ants that are trained in self-defense and would invade her dormitory in droves if any crumbs were on the ground ... Bear Grylls once spoke of an American soldier in Vietnam whose bladder was invaded by an aggressive leach that entered through his penis. And these bugs carry diseases that infect people when they get the chance, but meanwhile remaining on the bug indefinitely. By contrast, the "propagated" diseases in temperate climates will spread from person to person, spreading vast distances in a short period of time, but retreating after doing so.

To be continued ...

American fatness: a very personal problem with a very impersonal solution

Many Americans are fat (I used to be one of them), and many are very, very fat. According to a study in 2009 by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the "obesity epidemic" is costing us as much as $147 billion in healthcare costs every year; that's about $500 per person every year, in addition to the costs from lost productivity. So what has allowed this to happen? There are many things. For one thing, some minority groups in the US do not usually stigmatize fatness as much as white Americans do. Sure, there are plenty of blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans who do stigmatize fatness, but we don't see white women paying thousands of dollars for buttock implants, which are very popular in South America.

Another reason is that Americans have a higher fertility than almost any other high-income country, and that usually means fatter women (and often fatter men, since it affects them psychologically). Another reason is that middle-class American families usually live in suburbs, which zoning laws which have made unfit for walking. Most places where people need go are either beyond walking distance, or they require crossing highways which cannot safely be crossed on foot, or they simply require a very monotonous, lonely walk. Likewise, for kids, their friends' houses are often inaccessible on foot, leaving us with the very lame concept of "play dates," which usually involve much less exercise than several kids rendezvousing after school and doing whatever comes to mind. 

Another cause, some people would claim, is that Americans are working more hours, and as a result have less time to eat, and therefore do so in a careless manner. Another reason, of course, is that most American "food" is among the great evils of our time. Cows are fed corn rather than grass. Chickens have no room to move their legs, much less their wings. There are any number of additives in our food that are only legal because of fierce, dauntless lobbyists. Corn growers, who also have plenty of lobbyists, know that they cannot turn a profit unless corn syrup is extracted and inserted - very cheaply - into foods and beverages that certainly do not need it (a similar situation existed in the years before the Whiskey Rebellion). Many of these corn farmers practice crop rotation, and an excellent additional crop is soy beans, since soybean oil is also a very cheap and very unnecessary supplement to much of our food. And many Americans eat fruits and vegetables ... but that could mean anything.

And lastly, it can only be a factor that American standardized test scores are not great, especially our science scores, although comparisons with other countries will be different depending where you look. OK, so there are plenty of countries whose test scores are not as high but are certainly fitter than us. But if we are going to solve the "obesity epidemic," then I think this might just be the most important step. Everyone has some idea of which foods are healthy and which aren't, but wouldn't it be great to know which of these notions are true? Or better yet, wouldn't it be great to know why some foods are or aren't healthy? It's one thing to want to lose weight, or to maintain one's current; it's another to make a strong commitment; and it's another thing to know how precisely what to do in order to succeed. I can give a strong example from my days as an English teacher at a college in a remote part of China. Where I worked, Danfeng, science plays an enormous role in society ... or maybe only in high schools, as we know because students recite and memorize entire paragraphs from their textbooks. But I spent plenty of time in both the pharmacies and the hospital, and I was not impressed; nor was I impressed with the scientific savvy of the people I dealt with. One student at the college was fiercely determined to lose weight, so she went on the All-Watermelon Diet for 3 days. From what I heard she quit because she found herself vomiting profusely - our bodies won't respond well if we only give them sugar. And I would speculate that afterwards, her body retained most, if not all, of the sugar. Personally, I know from experience that vomiting rids our bodies of water and fiber, but very little sugar and fat, unless we do it many, many times over.

But I think China is on its way to current standards of enlightenment. I mean, if Shanghai were its own country, then it would be out-performing every other country in math, science and reading. In would guess that when the rest of the country reaches that level of education, people will be more sensible. Fatness is very strongly stigmatized in East Asia, and the people there are many degrees thinner than they are here, and much thinner yet than in Arkansas. I doubt it's a coincidence that this region has all the highest test scores; alright, so there's some competition from low-population countries, but these countries are also much slimmer than the US. So I think we've spotted a trend, and I think the reason for it is very clear. I think we'd all be better off if we knew what the difference is between simple carbohydrates and complex carbohydrates, or saturated and unsaturated fat, or different kinds of proteins; or if we knew precisely what a vitamin is, and what certain minerals do, and what we should do to avoid developing too much insulin. Or, better yet, what if we could also learn to interpret the stimuli in our bodies, so that we know precisely what nutrients we need at what time. When we experience cravings, we are not having the strength of our will tested by Satan and His personnel; these cravings are an evolved response to the absence of a nutrient. An understanding of science can help us identify precisely what nutrient, so that we fulfill our body's request, instead of just guessing. When I was in high school, I never heard a girl admit to eating breakfast. Without exception, they either lied that they don't eat breakfast, or they lied that they don't eat breakfast. But either way, if they were telling the truth, then this habit would be profoundly inefficient, and would certainly cause them to eat more than they would otherwise. And even among adults, the discourse on food and on losing and gaining weight seems to be inextricably moral in tone, with talk about resisting temptations, indulging when not due, deserving to lose or gain weight, seeking redemption after indulgences; I think these concepts are quite familiar to most of us, even if not from firsthand experience. But I think we're better off relying on science rather than moral judgments, and I think that those whose scientific knowledge is not sufficient should acquire more scientific knowledge, since it hardly requires much scientific knowledge to be competent in these matters. So for this aspect of the problem, the solution not only requires no judgments of people's personal character, but it is also very easy to carry out.

And I'm not the first person to debunk the idea of health foods, but many people are still being fooled by it. The concept of health foods is simply women lying to themselves that their cravings are less harmful than men's. Men are larger and more muscular, and therefore they are attracted to more substantial foods with plenty of protein. By contrast, women are smaller and have much less muscle, however unlike men, women need body fat to protect unborn children, so they have evolved to crave fattening foods. They are attracted to what we call "health foods" because these foods contain outrageous amounts of sugar. And things work out in the end because science women are generally more science-challenged than men, so while women are more likely to read nutrition labels, they are less likely to understand the scientific meaning of the numbers, so they are more susceptible to the absurd, commercially-driven claims about what's healthy and what isn't.

Freedom of speech: can we at least try?

Ever been a public school teacher? It's wonderful: everything you can think of saying is either racist or anti-Semitic or homophobic or it promotes alcohol ... If teachers work within so many constraints, then To Kill a Mockingbird is about the most intellectually-challenging thing that can be discussed in history and language arts classes.

Sure, the Constitution doesn't say that we should be able to say whatever we want anywhere. It only says that the government shouldn't make any laws "abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." And we can't expect freedom of speech everywhere; our our Founding Fathers must certainly have anticipated that there would be bars in places like Detroit, and I doubt they wanted little kids talking like they're in a Monty Python movie. In this blog post I won't address any legal or philosophical matters regarding the First Amendment. I am not qualified to. Instead, I will talk about the idea of freedom of speech, and about its absence - usually not due to the government - and the causes and results of its absence.

To start with, according to a poll by GFK America, 77 percent of Americans believe in angels. They were asked explicitly. What the hell has allowed this to happen? Or, to give a more cliched example, a in a 2010 Gallup poll, 40% of respondents agreed with the statement "God created man in present form," whereas 16% agreed that "Man developed [via evolution], but God had no part in process."

Seriously, with statistics so disgusting, we should do what we can to at least try understand this phenomenon, so that we can learn how to help Americans out of it and ensure they never go back. In understanding the causes, we should look at the scriptures themselves, in addition to social and cultural factors. Regarding the former, western religion is oppressive at many levels, if you combine the radicalism of the New Testament with the Kim Jong-ilism of the Old Testament. Fortunately, the custom has always to pick and choose, so that we follow only the parts that we agree with, or that we're told to agree with.

To be continued ...

Globalization: looking at the big picture

So this post was triggered by a book that I recently came across. It was written nearly a decade ago, in the months between the arrival of American troops in Iraq, and the symbolic return by the President on an aircraft carrier with a banner that read "Mission Accomplished." Around this time many people were frustrated with what they viewed as adverse effects of globalization, but I think we now know that we're better off, even if the post-Cold War era hasn't been the "end of history." The book I'm referring to is this one:

http://books.google.com/books?id=KSp1okOggpkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=a+world+on+fire:+how+exporting&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Y2GMT7vvKofn0gGR7-SZBg&ved=0CDoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=a%20world%20on%20fire%3A%20how%20exporting&f=false
It almost seems pointless commenting on it nine years later, but I want to just for practice.

I would agree with the core argument of this book, but I think that the benefits of democracy outweigh the risks dozens of times over. It's known that transitioning to democracy is very dangerous, and in absence of certain conditions, there are a broad variety of problems that can arise. But democracy prevents a lot more conflicts than it causes, and the wars that occur in absence of democracy tend to be on a far greater scale. We know, for instance, that things were a LOT worse before the Cold War, even in the decades immediately before. And, as I will discuss further down, wars are a small part of the problems that have shrunk exponentially as a result of four global trends: democracy, the sale of state assets, the removal of trade barriers, and the separation of church and state. I want to emphasize that these improvements would not be occurring otherwise. And, not only are things getting better for people in these countries; because of the improvements in other parts of the world, there are plenty of nasty social issues in the US that are also improving.
We have plenty of evidence that in the 1970s and 1980s, there were more conflicts and they were more deadly. For starters, let's look at this graph:


http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/atrox.htm


and how about we look at the number of democracies over the past 200 years:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Number_of_nations_1800-2003_scoring_8_or_higher_on_Polity_IV_scale.png


Things seem to have cooled down since the 1970s, and to have slowly continued receding since then[1]. During that time period we also saw the nascent stages of what would become effective democracies in South America, East Asia, and the Mediterranean. Later we would see the end of the Cold War, which would be a cause of some high-profile conflicts. However, even after the Cold War, the conflicts resulting from it were not nearly as bad as those in non-democratic countries, such as the Congo, that can hardly be attributed to democratization. And we have not seen a return to the level of bloodshed in the 1970s.


Additionally, we have the role of politicized religion. Personally I think we cannot have peace world peace without the obsolescence of religion altogether (feel free to disagree with me). In the short term, though, we should at least ask that countries secularize their governments. To demonstrate why, let’s look at the first two verses of the national anthem of a country with no formal separation of church and state:


God Save our gracious Queen
Long live our noble Queen
God Save the Queen.
Send Her victorious
Happy and glorious
Long to reign over us
God Save the Queen.


O Lord our God arise,
Scatter her enemies
And make them fall;
Confound their politics,
Frustrate their knavish tricks,
On Thee our hopes we fix,
Oh, save us all!


This country seems to be staying out of trouble these days, and I would guess that’s because most of the people are atheists, including most of their national clergy, and because this country is a fully-functional democracy.


And war is hardly the worst of problems that have diminished over the past few decades. Consider the problems relating to underdevelopment, which I doubt would have been solved without increased international trade. What do you think is the cause of these statistics about the global GDP?


http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=ny_gdp_mktp_cd&tdim=true&dl=en&hl=en&q=global+gdp


Or, rather, just the GDP of Sub-Saharan Africa


http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=ny_gdp_mktp_cd&tdim=true&dl=en&hl=en&q=global+gdp#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=ny_gdp_mktp_cd&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&idim=region:SSA&ifdim=region&hl=en_US&dl=en


Part of this wealth is caused by the Green Revolution, but the Green Revolution had finished in the 1970s. But is this money going to oligarchs? If so, then what should we make of this trend in global life expectancy:


http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=sp_dyn_le00_in&tdim=true&dl=en&hl=en&q=global+life+expectancy#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=sp_dyn_le00_in&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&idim=region:SSA&ifdim=region&tdim=true&hl=en_US&dl=en


Or how about the opposite trend in fertility rate:


http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&tdim=true&dl=en&hl=en&q=global+fertility+rate


I learned in EC101 that a country’s fertility rate decreases when the standard of living improves because children become less profitable. There are other reasons why the two trends usually go together, such as increased access to contraception and greater rights for women. Either way, the trend seems pretty consistent.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:TFR_vs_PPP_2009.svg


And what are the implications of a lower fertility rate? Well, for one thing, few children means fewer children dying, so we shouldn’t be surprised that infant mortality rates have been plummeting across the globe. Now that we’re on this subject, I think it helps that governments in Sub-Saharan Africa are democratizing and secularizing their governments, since that will make it easier to shed restrictions on condoms. Many of these countries need to catch up with the Catholic Church, which travels at light speed, and two years ago it proclaimed that condom use is better than the transmission of HIV; or, rather, since abortion is off the table, condom use is better than giving a woman HIV then forcing her to give birth to a child with HIV. It would also help to make quality healthcare facilities available, which development is helpful for. It also helps to allow in foreign aid workers, and democratic countries usually grant visas more readily. Many women might be glad that the infant mortality rate is falling, especially since there are 92 million women in Africa who have undergone female genital mutilation.


A low fertility rate has other perks as well. It means fewer people dying whenever a war or natural disaster interferes. Fewer people also means the consumption of fewer resources, and generally less wear and tear on the environment. I think there’s nothing else we can do to prevent climate change that’s more important than this. And regarding development more generally, we can probably think of plenty of ways that development improves people’s lives – especially for the few remaining countries where the life expectancy is below 40.


And democratization has all kinds of other benefits, not only to the initiates, but also to us. First of all, consider these maps on the trade in cocaine and heroin.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Drugroutemap.gif


We see these drugs being exported to developed democracies, from poor countries that are either dictatorships or flimsy democracies. Most of our methamphetamines come from Mexico, which is an up-and-coming democracy. There are very few successful democracies that even appear as throughways on this map. If we are to solve the drug problem in the US, then ideally we should start by helping in the creation of effective democratic institutions in both the countries originating these drugs – Venezuela, Columbia, Peru, Bolivia, Afghanistan, Myanmar – and in the transit countries through which the drugs reach us. Some of these countries are democratic, and their institutions are continually improving, and I think the drug trade will be reduced dramatically when these countries are fully democratic. Democracy exists on a continuum, and political scientists measure a country’s “level of democracy” based on the quality of their institutions and on more general criteria such as freedom of speech. The institutions need time to develop so that a tug-of-war exists between the people and politicians where no one cheats.


How would democracy affect the drug trade? Essentially, the people can keep a watch on the government to make sure it does its job, and they can prevent it from doing anything completely stupid. There’s a reason why democratic countries are usually more orderly than authoritarian ones: the people do a better job than the government in making sure everyone follows the rules. I would guess most people in Columbia don’t want cocaine grown there, not do they want it being exported to the US. This cocaine can be consumed by their own people, it funds violence, and it breeds contempt from the US government. Furthermore, the people can prevent the government from getting involved in the drug trade, which is often the case.
And more generally, democracies usually have more control of what goes through their borders. Border control is an institution that the people want. To start with, the number of people apprehended crossing the Mexican-American border illegally has been steadily declining since the end of the 1990s:


http://www.economist.com/node/12332971


The article gives several reasons for this decline. One that I consider relevant, but that is not mentioned, is the beginning of democracy in earnest. In 2000, for the first time, an election was won by an opposition party – the Institutional Revolutionary Party had “won” every previous election for 71 years.
Personally I think we should allow as many immigrant as possible, as long as they come legally. If they don’t come legally, then the shear fact of their illegal status means they are likely to rely on crime instead of a legitimate work and housing. Likewise, if they come legally, then they will not be bringing illegal drugs or weapons or sex slaves with them.




When I was in college I wrote my senior thesis on the international trade in sex slaves. This topic is enormously important to many countries, including the US: an estimated 14,000-17,500 people are trafficked into the US each year, most of whom are prostitutes. These victims, who typically have been compelled to have sex thousands of times, usually have multiple STDs that will infect Americans, and they are likely to become patrons of the illegal drug trade. Here’s a map indicating the major exporters and importers of trafficked workers (mostly sex slaves):




http://rightsandwrongs.pbworks.com/w/page/8788554/Human%20Trafficking


This webpage does not look very professional, but I can confirm the statistics with my own findings. Of the 36 countries depticted on this graph as countries of origin for slaves, only 12 can plausibly claim to be democratic; they are Thailand, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Brazil and Mexico. Among these eight countries, only one (Czech Republic) seems to make it as a fully functional democracy by our standards. Look at their measures of democracy according to the All Powerful:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index


There are many reasons why non-democratic regimes are the ones originating slaves, for prostitution or for other purposes. As I explained earlier, the people provide surveillance that the government could not provide on its own, so democracies tend to be more orderly with more reliable legal system. Most people probably do not want children being involuntarily sold into the sex trade, nor do they want these children being slipped across the border into other countries. They might opt for legal prostitution, but not for adolescent girls being locked in the basement of a massage parlor for days on end. Nor are they likely to opt for restrictions on condom distribution – or for mere failure to act when HIV is rampant. In 1991 when Thailand was temporarily a military dictatorship, an estimated 143,000 people were newly infected with HIV. According to the same study, by USAID, this number steadily declined while democracy was establishing itself, and by 2003 the number of new infections was 19,000. There is a raging controversy over whether we should make put more effort into prosecuting people involved in sex trafficking, or whether we should endorse “harm reduction” programs that make sex trafficking less harmful to the victims and their clients. Both approaches have their benefits, and both could, theoretically, end sex trafficking (the latter because it would negate the need for forced entry). The second claim is mostly speculation. But either way, neither of these approaches can be successfully carried out without the people’s help.


And that’s not speculation. There is a phrase that is an object of immense stigma among those doing research on the illegal sex trade: 100% Condom Use Programme. The Programme began as a set of policies in Ratchatburi Province in Thailand, and was emulated by the national government when it proved to be successful. At the national level, CUP was less successful, but still saved maybe million lives. However, when the Programme was adopted by surrounding countries – Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, China, Phillipines, Mongolia – the Programme was a farce. For example, mandatory condom use often translated into brothel owners beating their employees more because they want to ensure silence about noncompliance, just in case they encounter a do-gooder police officer. So not surprisingly, the rates of HIV remained more consistent across the other seven countries. I have statistics to prove it:


http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/global_health/aids/Countries/index.html


There are other ways that democracy factors in. For example, many young girls choose (ambivalently) to enter the sex trade because the prospect of constant, forced sex does not frighten them, and that is because they were sexually abused during their childhood. I doubt most Southeast Asians think little girls deserve to be molested. I think that if their vagina could be protected with child abuse laws that are effectively and consistently implemented in this region, then the people approve almost unanimously. But without public accountability, these laws are rarely implemented well.


And returning to the issue of conflict, let’s look at conflicts within a country’s borders. This Wikipedia entry lists the murder rates of a slew of countries:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate


It seems the successful democracies don’t score so high. The most dangerous – that data is available for – are those with ineffective institutions of democracy that are used haphazardly. What should be done? Well, in my opinion, we need the four things I listed in the previous paragraph – or at least three of them. These countries should find the opportunity and the resources to build reliable democratic institutions. I do not advocate the use of force in building these institutions, unless we know for certain that the people will trust our cause and will feel confident and secure about the institutions we create.

Democracy will inevitably allow for improved law enforcement. With better legal institutions, these countries can not only discourage crime, they can also crack down on illegal drugs and other things that are often a cause of murder. In addition to democracy, development will be critical. Foreign aid can be very helpful, but these countries cannot climb out of poverty without international trade. For this the sale of state assets might not be necessary, but the removal of some trade barriers is. Foreign trade is always a mixed blessing, more or less so depending what commodity is being exported. However, we are hard-pressed to find any country that is worse off because they opened themselves to trade – even the oil oligarchies were pulled out of desperate poverty.


Sure, most of the countries are the small, tropical countries in the Western Hemisphere that we tend to think of as "banana republics," whose economies are stunted by dependence on a single export. In fact, according to the statistics from Wikipedia, in several of the most violent countries the murder rates have increased over the past two years. Some of these countries, such as St. Kitts and Nevis, have experienced crippling natural disasters during this time. All of them are in the western hemisphere, which means they were probably hit by the recession, since their economies probably depend inordinately on trade with the US.


How will development help? I admit the link is tenuous. Fortunately, most readers will not have read down to this paragraph. I have a hodgepodge of reasons: people of means will be less likely to steal, or to abuse drugs or alcohol, or to join gangs or become homeless, or to sell themselves or their daughters into prostitution, or to work for anyone illegally; and all of these situations usually imply that violence will be necessary for enforcing informal rules, for violating the informal rules, or for self-defense.


Another thing is worth noting: almost invariably, countries are more violent the more religious they are.


And lastly, let's look at the epochal attacks on the US in 2001. These attacks were committed by a loose coalition of terrorists scattered across a number predominantly of Sunni countries. What conditions allowed for these terrorists? Well, one was the trade drug trade, which was permitted for the same reasons. These countries had porous borders and a faulty legal system. If Saudi Arabia, for example, had reliable democratic institutions, then its royal family would probably not be funding Al Qaeda. I doubt the people want to live in a country that harbors terrorists or that grows heroin.