Category Archives: Web Article Review

drought in the Mekong basin

Here’s a Straits Times story on drought in the Mekong basin, focusing on increased pumping of river water for agriculture in Thailand.

The Mekong, which originates in the Tibetan plateau, travels for more than 4,000km through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam before draining into the South China Sea. It supports the world’s largest inland fishery, and is a vital source of water for agricultural communities in that area.

Yet it is also a contested resource. China’s hydroelectric dams to the north, as well as those being built in Laos, have been fingered for hampering the migration of fish and blocking the movement of nutrient-rich silt downstream.

Riverside communities suffering sudden, drastic fluctuations in water level they attribute to dam operations upstream fear Thailand’s plans will only make their lives more difficult.

So it’s fed by snowmelt in an age of climate change, then goes through several countries that are considering or in the process of building dams, then provides food and economic livelihood for a whole lot of people. It sounds like a dangerous recipe. Hopefully this year’s drought is El Nino related and will not recur for awhile.

By the way, shame on you Straits Times for using a picture of a drainage channel in Nakhon Sawan province, which is in the Chao Praya basin and nowhere near the Mekong. It doesn’t change the story but it just seems like lazy journalism, and when a journalist is lazy about one detail you happen to know about, you wonder what other details they might be lazy about that you don’t.

Sanders’s socialism

According to the New York Times, “left leaning economists” say Sanders can’t pay for his proposed programs. (For an alternative viewpoint, see BillMoyers.com which says the NYT irresponsibly cherry-picked experts with ties to the Obama/Clinton administration).

Mr. Sanders’s plan includes a new, across-the-board 2.2 percent income tax to help pay for his single-payer, government-run health plan for all. But progressive economists and business groups say middle-class taxpayers would pay more for the European-style social welfare state that Mr. Sanders envisions.

They dispute his contention that all but the richest Americans would be better off, on balance, with higher wages and benefits like expanded Social Security, free public colleges and, most of all, free health care. His policy director, Warren Gunnels, dismissed the critics in an interview, saying, “They’ve picked sides with Hillary Clinton.” The campaign has a list of 130 endorsees, including some economists.

“If, at the end of the day, people don’t believe that we can achieve the same savings as Canada, Britain, France, Japan, South Korea, Australia are achieving on health care, then we have a fundamental disagreement,” Mr. Gunnels said, naming countries with single-payer systems.

There’s that cynicism again. It works everywhere else but it can’t work here because…why exactly? Because we choose to be cynical, for one. And because we let the medical and insurance industry buy politicians and write laws in its favor and at everyone else’s expense.

I will say, though, that I am attracted to the idea of a well-functioning market setting prices rather than the government setting them. We live in a world of finite resources, so if you truly have no price signal – no premiums, no co-pays, no bills of any kind – then people can’t be allowed to choose any amount of health care they want, because our collective wants will always exceed what we can collectively afford. Then you have to have government rationing and price controls. That is what single-payer is. It is an efficient system to deliver some amount of health care the experts think is affordable and cost-effective. It’s equitable because it can deliver the same rationed amount to everyone, rich or poor. It is not a market-based system.

What could a hypothetical pure market-based system look like? First, the U.S. political system would have to not depend on contributions from the medical, insurance, and finance industries, so politicians would have no incentive to favor the profits of these companies over the interests of voters. Then people would have the option, or perhaps the requirement, to save a portion of their incomes in a health savings account. Then they would use their own money to purchase health care. Government would make copious amounts of education and information available on what medical services are available and how much they cost and what outcomes are being achieved, in terms simple enough for anyone to understand, so that true apples-to-apples comparison shopping would be possible for anyone, even under the stress of serious or sudden illness. Prices would settle at a level where supply and demand are in harmony given what the society can afford in aggregate and what other goods and services people are willing to give up in exchange for health care. Companies would have to compete based on price and outcome, and would have to innovate over time or else lose their edge.

The above might be an economist’s utopia, but it would not be remotely equitable, because the rich could afford much more than the poor. Government could do a few things to help. The savings accounts could be tax-advantaged, obviously. The savings could be matched by government, and the match could be larger for the poor and gradually phased out for the rich. Basic preventive care and maintenance care for chronic conditions could be provided for free (i.e. by taxes), because we know that is cost-effective. Catastrophic insurance could be provided for the big expenses, because we know those are back-breaking for all but the super rich, and when the poor show up in emergency rooms we end up treating them (poorly) at enormous taxpayer expense. With these policies in place, people are now using their savings only to make those decisions in between preventive and catastrophic, the things you could argue they want but don’t necessarily need. The rich would still be able to afford more, but hey, that is the nature of a market economy unless you want a true socialist utopia. I assume we still want some incentive to work or start a business.

Death of Hard-Line Jurist Throws Regime Into Chaos

With apologies to the recently deceased, I like this Slate parody of how the U.S. media might cover the death of Antonin Scalia if it happened somewhere else.

The nine unelected justices who sit for lifetime terms on the Supreme Court are tasked with ensuring that laws passed by the democratically elected government don’t violate the ancient juridical texts upon which the country’s laws are based. As such, they wield immense powers and have the ability to overrule even the president himself. The aged, scholarly jurists, cloaked in long black robes, conduct their deliberations behind closed doors, shielded from the scrutiny of the media, and their most important decisions are often released to the public with great drama but little warning…

Both sides of America’s traditional political divide are under more pressure than usual this time around. Any compromise by the conservatives in the legislature could benefit the surging ultra-nationalist, far-right campaign of television performer Donald Trump, considered a threat to the establishment across the political spectrum. Obama is likely hoping to hand power to his former foreign secretary Hillary Clinton, a member of the powerful Clinton clan, but radicals within his own coalition have broken off to support the far-left populist campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders, known for his scathing attacks on the political influence of America’s ruling oligarchs. The court has abetted this influence with some controversial recent decisions, which Sanders has vowed to overturn…

But American legal scholars disagree on what the ancient texts say should be done in this situation, and the confrontation is likely to drag on for some time.

“transitioned” infiltration basins

Here’s an interesting article about an infiltration basin that has failed in its infiltration function and “transitioned” into a wetland. Interestingly, the researchers determined that it still performs a stormwater management function, while also performing ecological functions.

Ecological assessment of a transitioned stormwater infiltration basin

Infiltration basins are stormwater control measures (SCMs) widely employed for urban stormwater management. A transitioned infiltration basin is a failed infiltration basin that has gradually transformed into a wetland- or wetpond-like practice. The transitioned basin was found to effectively control the storm runoff flows and volumes, and improve the discharge water quality, thereby reducing the downstream hydrologic and pollutant loads on most occasions. Qualitative assessment of the site showed presence of wetland and non-wetland vegetation, small animals, and some potential for cultural benefit. The ecological evaluation demonstrated that runoff management and habitat provision in a sub-urban setting enhance the overall functionality of this new type of SCM ecosystem. A functionality assessment guide was developed for assessing infiltration basins considered to have failed. The Level-1 assessment includes visual criteria such as hydrophytic vegetation, hydric soils, hydrologic regime modification, and design check. The rapid assessment plans developed in this study can be applied to determine the ecological and stormwater management functions and benefits of failed/transitioning/transitioned basins, and may be adapted for other similar SCMs.

A lot of us engineers assume that green infrastructure will have a useful service life and then eventually fail. This is in keeping with the idea of infrastructure, which needs constant maintenance to keep it from wearing out, or else eventually wears out and has to be replaced. But green infrastructure is supposed to be a designed ecosystem. Ecosystems can change over time but they don’t exactly wear out, in fact their functions tend to stay stabilize or increase over time. So if we really understand an ecosystem thoroughly and are able to design it, we should be able to anticipate and even control these changes. An example would be planting deep rooted, self-mulching plants that keep the soil of the infiltration basin loose and permeable for the long term. But even if there is a limit to that, you could let it gradually transition to a forested and/or wetland condition in a controlled way over time.

So here’s an idea I have to build streetside rain gardens on the cheap. Take a typical sad, compacted tree pit where a tree recently died or was removed (sadly, very, very common here in Philadelphia). Remove a foot or so of soil, or at least down to a few inches below street level. Throw in a handful of seeds like clover, daikon radish, prairie grasses, horseradish, or anything else aggressive, deep-rooted, perennial or self-seeding. Throw in an acorn or other tree seed (why not pick something edible). Now wait a year or two for all this to grow and begin to loosen up the soil and create some organic matter. When the plants have established themselves, go back and cut a hole in the curb to let water in. Gradually, the tree will grow and shade out the smaller plants. With this system, you get a functioning ecosystem in a few years with maybe $5 worth of seeds, and a lot of patience. If it doesn’t grow, you can afford to throw in another $5 worth of seeds.

variable carbon tax

This post explains how a variable carbon tax could work. In summary, it automatically adjusts when oil prices rise or fall, damping out the effects of price fluctuations and raising more revenue when prices are low. It can be designed so that the overall, average tax increases over time, with those increases happening when the economy can best handle them.

The tax would decrease gradually as oil prices rise, and then increase again when prices eventually come back down.

If the adjustments are asymmetric – larger increases when prices fall, and smaller decreases when prices rise – this system would gradually raise the overall carbon tax, even as it follows a counter-cyclical pattern. Such an incremental increase is what most models for controlling climate change call for…

The key to this strategy’s political feasibility is to launch it while prices are very low. Once it is in place, it will become a little-noticed, politically uncontroversial part of pricing for gasoline (and other products) – one that produces far-reaching benefits. Some of the revenue could be returned to the public in the form of tax cuts or research support.

Other forms of environmental harm could be taxed in this way too – for example, building materials (pavement) that cause pollution and habitat destruction, emissions of air pollutants other than carbon, consumer packaging not designed to be reused or recycled. You could make the whole thing revenue-neutral by reducing taxes on hard work and productive investment.

fire trucks

I want to start this post by thanking the fire department for what they do. Obviously, they save lives and property, and have one of the least morally ambiguous jobs out there. That said, they are so almost universally revered that you wonder if it is okay to voice any doubts about the way they do things. So I was surprised to see this article voicing some of my own questions about whether fire trucks need to be so big. When I lived in Singapore, I noticed that they didn’t use the huge fire trucks – they were more like vans, and used some kind of foam rather than pure water. Now, the buildings in Singapore are almost all very modern, and all have prominent water hookups, and streets are very wide. Singapore chose to bulldoze a lot of its older buildings and streets at some point and start fresh, and I would not necessarily want my home city of Philadelphia to do that – I love our narrow streets, largely 19th century housing including my own house, and the walkability, mom-and-pop businesses and odd scattered public spaces it leads to. Another thing is that as an engineer occasionally involved in aspects of street design, the fire department is sometimes a voice in opposition to change. Take bumpouts for example that create  a shorter crossing distance for school children at intersections. These will save lives. The fire department will say that these slow down fire trucks making turns, and anything that slows down fire trucks could cost lives. I am not saying this is the wrong dialog to have, but the fire department shouldn’t always be the bullies getting their way, the two safety issues should be weighed against each other and a rational (okay, at least political) decision made.

cynicism

Poor Hillary. I voted against her last time, and I probably will vote against her again even though I think she would probably make an adequate President. The reason is that she is choosing the path of cynicism. When Bernie Sanders talked about how all other advanced countries provide health care, education, and child care for their citizens, citing Denmark as an example, Hilary said we aren’t Denmark, we are the USA. In other words, we can’t do it because we are the USA.

One night I tuned in to the Democrats’ presidential debate to see if they had any plans to restore the America I used to know. To my amazement, I heard the name of my peaceful mountain hideaway: Norway. Bernie Sanders was denouncing America’s crooked version of “casino capitalism” that floats the already rich ever higher and flushes the working class. He said that we ought to “look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway, and learn from what they have accomplished for their working people.”

He believes, he added, in “a society where all people do well. Not just a handful of billionaires.” That certainly sounds like Norway. For ages they’ve worked at producing things for the use of everyone — not the profit of a few — so I was all ears, waiting for Sanders to spell it out for Americans.

But Hillary Clinton quickly countered, “We are not Denmark.” Smiling, she said, “I love Denmark,” and then delivered a patriotic punch line: “We are the United States of America.” Well, there’s no denying that. She praised capitalism and “all the small businesses that were started because we have the opportunity and the freedom in our country for people to do that and to make a good living for themselves and their families.” She didn’t seem to know that Danes, Swedes and Norwegians do that, too, and with much higher rates of success.

That’s not logic – if every other country can do it, we are the exception, we are dysfunctional, and it is cynical to say we can’t do it when obviously it is possible. When Bernie hit her for praising Henry Kissinger, I think we was spot on. Henry Kissinger was a “realist”, a cynic, and he has the blood of millions on his hands. I would listen to arguments about how well-functioning markets could boost retirement savings, restore rational prices to our broken health care and education systems, boost growth and innovation, from Democrats or even from Republicans, but I am not hearing those policies from anyone. Instead, I am hearing intolerance and science denial from the Republicans, which I won’t entertain for a second, and “USA, no we can’t” from Hillary. I like what I’m hearing from Bernie on campaign finance, financial regulation and climate change. So go ahead and sign me up.

Citi and Oxford on automation

Citi and Oxford have a long report called Technology at Work v2.0: The Future Is not What It Used to Be. Among the worrisome statistics and over-the-top infographics: 77% of jobs in China at risk due to automation, compared to 47% in the U.S. 77% seems like a recipe for serious unrest. 47% is still half. Still, maybe these are existing jobs and there will be new jobs created. Like robot repairman, for example. Being the guy who owns the robots seems like a very good option, if you can pull it off. Another eye opening statistic they show is the payback period for investments in robots at 1-2 years in China right now.

City Observer’s Weekly Roundup

City Observer has a nice weekly roundup with way more stuff than I could actually hope to read in a week. This example covers everything from car “demonization” to affordable housing to real estate capital gains.

I’ve been in the process of trying to form opinions on these issues for many years. On cars, I think they are demons. At least, private cars and all the waste and environmental and social hell they have unleased on the entire world. We should design cities and connections between them so we almost never need them. Then we can keep a few share cars and taxis around. On affordable housing, I don’t have the answers that have alluded everyone else forever, but in general I like focusing on the idea of supporting well-functioning markets that are able to set appropriate prices. When you distort prices with large subsidization schemes in a world of finite resources, you end up with distorted systems and unintended consequences. Better to find ways to remove hidden distortions, subsidies, and discrimination, constrain supply less, help people get around efficiently, and generally help them make an income and build assets so they can afford what housing costs. In the U.S., all the tax deductions and exceptions for homeowners and subsidization of inefficient low-density infrastructure are forms of distortion that maybe should be phased out. But please don’t take away my personal subsidies all at once, because I was counting on them when I made my last round of housing and financial decisions.