Month: September 2005

There’s a good reason we are promised a freedom to “pursue happiness” and not happiness itself. That good would, then, always hang out of reach.

Earlier, I linked to Johan Norberg’s discussion of happiness. He tells us “Apparently, a sense of competence and efficacy gives us happiness—a sense of being in control in complex situations. This is not surprising since it is difficult to imagine a trait that has helped mankind to survive and procreate better than this, but the implications are interesting.” Autonomy gives us happiness. So does a sense that things are improving – no matter how low or high the base we use.

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It is looking more and more like the flooding of New Orleans resulted from preventable human error and not a physically overwhelming storm.

First comes this report:

But with the help of complex computer models and stark visual evidence, scientists and engineers at Louisiana State University’s Hurricane Center have concluded that Katrina’s surges did not come close to overtopping those barriers. That would make faulty design, inadequate construction or some combination of the two the likely cause of the breaching of the floodwalls along the 17th Street and London Avenue canals — and the flooding of most of New Orleans.

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Last month fellow Chicagoboy demimasque posted about babies dying from abuse or neglect in Europe. While shocking, this isn’t representative for Europe, or Germany and France as whole, but rather there are certain areas where this kind of thing happens much more frequently than elsewhere (and even there not frequently enough to affect demographics even marginally).

For example, this kind of thing happens three times as often per 100,000 people in in Eastern Germany than in Western Germany, and the particular instance demimasque cited unfortunately became an election issue:

Conservative candidate for chancellor Angela Merkel was forced to reprimand Brandenburg state interior minister Jörg Schönbohm after he argued that “forced proletarianization” by the communist regime had led to a lasting breakdown in traditional values and a prevalence of violence.

“Such a horrible crime cannot and must not be explained with generalizations of this kind,” said Merkel, who is the first major contender for the chancellery to come from the depressed east, where Schönbohm’s comments drew a hail of criticism.

“I spoke with Jörg Schönbohm (who belongs to Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party) and expect him to end this discussion as soon as possible.”

Such a huge disparity in incidents is a legitimate issue for debate, but it is counterproductive to make the point in a way that makes 15 million people feel accused for the actions of a few. And to do that in the month before a election when you want those peoples’ votes you have to be really special.

Even worse, that this didn’t remain the last serious insult to those 15 million:

Bavarian state premier Edmund Stoiber, who ran on the Christian Union ticket against Chancellor Gerhard Schröder in 2002 and narrowly lost, told a small group of supporters and journalists that the east had too much power over the poll’s outcome.

“I do not accept that the east will again decide who will be Germany’s chancellor. It cannot be allowed that the frustrated determine Germany’s fate,” Stoiber said, in comments made last week and first reported late Wednesday.

Stoiber stepped up the attack at a campaign rally Wednesday night, leaving Christian Union leaders scrambling to control the damage Thursday.

“If only everywhere else were like Bavaria, we would not have any problems at all. But unfortunately, ladies and gentlemen, we do not have such intelligent members of the population everywhere like we have in Bavaria,” he said.

“The strong must sometimes carry the weak a bit. That’s the way it is… I do not want the election to be decided in the east yet again.”

He neglected to mention that a better candidate than himself would easily have beaten Schröder in 2002, though. Either way, those two gaffes weren’t decisive in themselves, but without them the Christian Democrats would have had a more comfortable lead over the Social Democrats, making them the party with the most members in the new parliament. As it is, the final tally of the so-called ‘overhang mandates’ might make the Social Democrats the strongest party instead.

In 2001, an interviewer asked Vincente Fox’ Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda:

Q: What about the Spanish model? Joining the European Union gave Spain a boost.

The answer is pretty obvious, if you think about it:

A: That’s what Fox essentially wants, the type of resource transfers that occurred in Spain and, before Spain, in Ireland, and, after Spain, in Portugal and Greece. The Germans were willing to build highways in Spain. Somebody else has to build our highways. We don’t have the money.

So, hop to it, you yanqui imperialists. :)