JDN 2456227 EDT 13:54.

I had very high hopes for this book. It should be right up my alley: It's a hard-SF novel about the colonization and terraforming of Mars, something I've been passionate about as long as I can remember. All those mountains and canyons it mentions are mountains and canyons I've learned all about and always wanted to see with my own eyes. I would like to be one of those first hundred astronauts (I'm probably most similar to Frank, or maybe Michel). The novel comes highly acclaimed and has won several awards.

But reading it... I found myself generally disappointed. I guess it's competent, a mediocre SF novel in general. I've certainly read worse. Perhaps my high hopes were my downfall, as I had expected one of the greatest books I've ever read, on a par with Dune or Contact, and received instead something decent, but deeply flawed, more like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.

Robinson spends long, flowery passages describing the terrain of Mars; and even as someone who finds the terrain of Mars enthralling, it just gets old after awhile. The character conflicts that start out interesting don't change over the course of the novel, and as a result become grating. The plot takes far too long to get going; on page 200 you still don't know what the story is about aside from "they're colonizing Mars." It seems like he just thought that the basic premise was so fascinating, he wouldn't need an actual plot.
Worst of all, Robinson makes a few really spectacularly egregious scientific errors. Most of the science seems to be fine, but when he gets the conversion wrong between Kelvin and Celsius, and does so consistently several times, I just can't trust anything else he says about science in the rest of the novel. This is not Science Marches On, it's not even a minor error that one could easily forgive. It's Physics 101 stuff, and it should have been caught by an editor.

Overall, it's... okay, I guess. But it's pretty disappointing, especially for someone who loves Mars as much as I do.

JDN 2456224 EDT 18:08.

A recent article in Huffington Post in connection with Scientific American (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/23/homosexuality--choice-born-science_n_2003361.html) notes that people’s views on whether gay sex is morally permissible track quite closely to their views on what causes sexual orientation. “The science conveniently supports the moral decision.”

 And in this case, that’s right: The morality of homosexuality does not hinge upon any particular causation for sexual orientation. It rests on far stronger principles than that---in short, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Gay sex is good not because it isn’t a choice (gay sex is a choice, though gay sexual orientation isn’t), but because gay sex hurts no one and brings great joy.

 But the general sense of the article is that science has nothing to tell us about our moral values, and this is not only mistaken but dangerous. Science should inform our moral values, at least in cases where science really is relevant.

 Consider a question like, “Should we raise taxes on capital gains?” This is a moral and political question. Yet, it seems perfectly natural to answer this question in terms of empirical facts, like what would happen to GDP growth, interest rates, government deficits and such if we made this policy.

Or think about the question, “Who committed this murder?” That’s a factual question with obvious moral relevance, and it’s one that is on a daily basis studied in explicitly scientific terms using fiber analysis, DNA typing, and so on.

 Even a fraught moral question like, “When should abortion be allowed?” can be understood in terms of factual questions like “When does a human fetus attain consciousness?” and “Does an aborted fetus experience pain?” and “What would happen to our society with and without access to abortion?”

 The mistake is not in the use of science in moral questions, but the abuse of science in moral questions. (Maybe the overuse? No, actually I think we underuse it, just when we do use it it’s often in the wrong way.)

 A classic example of this abuse is “scientific racialism”, which is certainly racialist (indeed usually outright racist) but not terribly scientific. Black people have lower IQs on average than White people. That’s a fact. You really can’t dispute it. But so what? These are measurements, they are based on tests that we know to be subject to various flaws and biases. The variation within each group far outstrips the difference between them. There are a number of reasons why racial inequality in society can lead to reductions in IQ scores for disadvantaged people, like a lack of access to nutrition and education. One that a lot of people don’t recognize is stereotype threat, in which the stereotype of being stupid becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. When all that is factored in, there’s no reason to think that the observed difference in IQ scores has any real meaning in intelligence.

 But suppose it did! Suppose it were in fact the case that Black people are, on average, 5 IQ points less intelligent than White people. This is almost certainly false, but for the sake of argument, what would it mean if it were true? Almost nothing! Can you imagine assigning different rights to people with IQ 115 than you do to people with IQ 110? Can you imagine denying people the right to vote for scoring a 95 on an IQ test? The only scenario I can think of where this would have any legitimate impact at all would be the hiring of people for advanced technical positions, and even then, there are a lot of other factors that matter besides IQ. (Moreover, we know for a fact that discrimination against women and racial minorities exists in the scientific community. It’s been experimentally demonstrated.)

 That’s how science gets used wrong—basically, it’s being used to a posteriori justify what you already wanted to believe, i.e. that racism against Black people is justified. This is not science being used to make moral judgments, this is moral judgment being used to manipulate science.

 And indeed that’s also what seems to be happening in theories of sexual orientation. The morality of homosexuality does not depend upon finding that sexual orientation is genetic, it just doesn’t. In fact I think sexual orientation is probably not genetic, because identical twins can display different sexual orientations. But even if it turned out to be, that isn’t why it’s permissible. In fact, I can imagine scenarios where a behavior that is completely genetic would still be morally wrong: Suppose psychopathy turned out to be entirely the result of a gene. Does that mean it’s all right to act like a psychopath? We’d probably consider this a genetic disorder.

 What causes sexual orientation? I don’t know. I lean toward an epigenetic explanation, because we observe high but not perfect correlation across identical twins. But maybe there are cultural or environmental factors as well. Who knows? The point is, it doesn’t matter.

 But that doesn’t mean science has nothing to say about morality, or even about the morality of homosexuality. There are scientific questions that can inform us here. What are the consequences of gay sex? What is life like for gay people? Does being openly gay make people’s lives better, or worse? What happens in societies that are very accepting, compared to societies that are very intolerant? Are there dangers and risks involved that are particular to homosexuality? Can they be mitigated?

The answers to these questions point toward acceptance. The main danger involved in gay sex is AIDS, and HIV transmission is actually worse in societies that are intolerant of homosexuality because it pushes gay sex underground and reduces access to condoms and sex education. More pro-gay cultures have less AIDS. In fact, HIV is by no means particular to gay sex, and straight people catch it all the time. Once again, having a more sex-positive culture with better education and more condoms would protect most of these people. Contrary to popular belief, “the gay lifestyle” is not that different from “the straight lifestyle”, and if you’re thinking, “Hey, there isn’t just one straight lifestyle,” you’re exactly right. There are many different ways to live life as a gay person, and they overlap substantially with the ways to live as a straight person. There are gay prostitutes, to be sure. There are also gay engineers. There are even gay politicians, though most of them are closeted.

 As for the joy and love that gay sex can engender, we need to talk about this a lot more. Having your sexuality degraded is not like being prevented from playing golf; it’s not something you can just shrug off and do something else instead. It’s more like being prevented from eating—being forced to subsist on intravenous nutrition and never experience the pleasure of a delicious meal. One of the most fundamental joys in your life has been denied—and worse, people hate and despise you for desiring it in the first place.

 It’s not just about sex, of course. It’s also about love, and family. In fact, love seems to offend people more! Compare how conservatives react to a Congressman’s “rent boy” with how they respond to two high school boys kissing and holding hands.

 But even if it were just about sex, sex is important. Sex is a big deal. It’s fundamental to our lives. We shouldn’t be ashamed to say that sex is part of what we want. So much of what is wrong with our culture (and others) is this deep-seated shame about sexuality, an unwillingness to face the fact that we are sexual creatures. Christians, Muslims, even a lot of feminists agree on this one thing: “Sex is bad.” Until we get over that, humanity will never be free.

I'm tutoring online at the same time, but it's playing in the background. It's pretty awesome. 
Obama is pulling no punches, being clear, being forceful, even a little condescending, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. The meme will be "bayonets".

Meanwhile, Romney keeps saying how his policies would be just like Obama's, only... better. Somehow. In some unspecified way. In every substantive case, Obama can show his way is better: Military spending that's more efficient, war policy that's more cautious, intelligence policy that's more effective. Romney was even dovish on Bin Laden! Obama can now hit him with that.

Once again, I doubt it will have a significant impact on voters. But maybe it will sway a few more undecideds. Certainly anyone who thinks Obama is "soft on terror" has some words to eat. He's positively hawkish. Maybe even some of the liberal base will be a bit disturbed by Obama's hawkishness, but they can't really think Romney is better (again, Jill Stein would be better, but she's got a glacier's chance in Greenland). 

Romney even just said "the President was right" [to use drones]. How not to win a debate?

I can't stand when anti-porn feminists insist that all porn is inherently evil and degrading to women. This makes no sense; why would depicting sexuality be automatically degrading? Only someone with a very puritanical, sex-negative attitude would think that this is something inherent to porn.

But it's really true that a lot of porn is degrading to women. Actually, a lot of porn is also degrading to men; it basically reduces a man to the size of his penis, and causes a huge amount of anxiety and body image problems as a result. A lot of porn depicts extremely unrealistic sex, with lots of fake orgasms and weird sexual positions.

So it's always nice to point out porn that doesn't do this, porn that does it right. I found a site today called "I Feel Myself" that does a really nice job. It's all women masturbating, which is a genre I very much like, but it is a little disappointing not to see any men or partner sex. Two other good sites that also includes men and trans people are VegPorn and Indie Porn Revolution. They're all pay sites, which means it costs money. On the upside, you won't be inundated with ads and you won't have to worry about malware.

JDN 2456220 EDT 15:19.

We've had three debates so far.

The first one was bad: Obama looked exhausted and distracted (perhaps due to the challenging business of being President of the United States), while Romney was constantly on point, taking control, getting all his talking points delivered. The moderator was effectively worthless. Romney lied through his teeth, and went largely unchallenged, except by a few of Obama's comments.

After that, however, things got a lot better. In the second debate, Joe Biden, who is normally affable but also gaffe-prone, was completely on message, and expertly demolished Paul Ryan's misleading statements and vague claims. The moderator was excellent, and Ryan was so utterly outclassed I felt a little sorry for him.

Then in the third debate, Obama was much more prepared, much more energetic, and much more aggressive. Romney didn't seem to know what hit him; he had been expecting the same smooth sailing of the first debate. The moderator was not quite as good as the second debate, but still demanded factual answers. Many of the questions were quite good, and dealt with some issues (like women's rights!) that hadn't been dealt with in the other two debates.

What will happen as a result of these debates? Sadly... almost nothing. Or maybe it's not that sad: For the people like me who read up on things and try to understand issues in detail, the debates don't say anything we didn't already know. For most of the American public who doesn't care all that much and votes based on one issue (like abortion, or gay marriage, whether the economy is doing well), the debates aren't going to have an effect either. The only ones who would be affected are voters who care about policy issues but don't know much about them yet; and it seems like in this day and age, if you care about policy issues you look them up on the Internet, you don't wait to have them spoonfed to you with spin.

But still, there are a lot of people out there who clearly don't know much about policy issues, and should know, and maybe some of them watched these debates and actually picked up some things. Even basic things, like "Actually Ryan's tax plan makes no sense" or "Wow, Romney is a misogynistic douchebag." You don't need to understand the nuanced details of cyclical fiscal deficits to see that Obama/Biden is a much better choice than Romney/Ryan. (Frankly, all you have to do is not hate women.)

My main disappointment, therefore, is that Jill Stein and Gary Johnson were not included in these debates. I doubt they have much chance of winning, but that can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. And even if they can't win, they can still influence the discussion. Stein could bring up global warming, which hasn't been talked about really at all in these debates. I was almost bashing my head against a wall as Obama and Romney were arguing about who is more pro-coal. If only Jill Stein had been there to say, "I'm not pro-coal. Coal is dirty and dangerous, and the EPA estimates it kills 30,000 Americans a year. I want solar and wind power, and fusion research, and fission in the meantime. Coal is bad, for our health, for our climate, and ultimately, for our economy as well." Johnson would say stupid things about economic policy (that's kind of his job description), and he could have the undesirable effect of making Ryan seem less radical by comparison. But at the same time, how awesome would it be for Obama, Stein, and Johnson all to say, "Of course gay people should be able to get married, why not? What's wrong with you?" while Romney squirms?

Will the debates change a lot of minds? Probably not. Still, as part of an overall political discourse, I think it's good to hear Republicans called out on their "bunch of stuff" (as Biden so PG put it). I wish this were a contest between Obama and Stein, but alas we have to deal with the ridiculousness of the GOP, so we may as well confront it head-on and call them out on their lies and distortions.

Here's hoping Obama keeps up the performance in debate 4 that he did in debate 3.

JDN 2456216 EDT 14:14

Suppose I were to agree, for the sake of argument, that poor people are lazy. In fact I don't agree with this, but suppose I did.

 What are we supposed to do with these people?

Even if it's really the case that there are millions of single mothers literally too lazy to work to feed their own children, what do we do with all those children? Let them starve? Tough luck? Too bad your mom is lazy, kids! No school lunch or food stamps for you!

It actually is the case that millions of homeless people are addicted to drugs and alcohol, suffering from mental illness, unable to hold down a job. That's not laziness exactly, but many of these people definitely have made a long series of very bad choices in their lives. It'd be better if they quit drinking, got on medication, found jobs. But they aren't doing that; they don't know how. What do we do with them?

A lot of this really comes down to behavioral economics.

If you assume that people are perfectly rational, then all you have to do is create a system that provides the right incentives, and people will work. There's still the issue of equality of opportunity (which we do not have right now, and if you think we do you're obviously not paying attention); but once that's in place, if people are broke, well, they are choosing to be broke because they value their free time more than their material possessions. Basically, those aren't poor people, they're hippies.

But when you realize that this is not how the world works, that people aren't rational all the time, they make stupid decisions, they act on impulse, they get addicted to drugs; well, at that point, incentives aren't going to work. The incentives were already in place! It's alreadyincredibly stupid to inject yourself with heroin, even once, even with a clean needle, I don't care how good it feels--but people do it anyway. It's already a terrible idea to drink a six-pack of beer every day from the time you're 12, but people do this--as my aunt did, and now, big surprise, she has Korsakov's Syndrome. It's already moronic to drive a motorcycle on the highway and not wear a helmet, but people do it. And we have to ask ourselves: What do we do with these people?
If there weren't any externalities, maybe we could just let them be stupid. And sometimes, maybe we really should; actually with helmet laws my favored policy is that you don't have to wear a helmet as long as you're an organ donor. If you're not going to use your brain, maybe we can use your liver! But I return to the example of the single mother who lives on Welfare and instead of working drinks all the time. What about her kids? Should they be made to suffer because she is an alcoholic?

And even without the externalities, think about the people who have ruined their lives. What do we do with those people? Think about my aunt. She has made a long series of incredibly stupid decisions over the course of her life, starting with when she began drinking at 12 years old. She has been extremely irrational, and the person most harmed by it has been herself. Now she suffers from dementia and is less self-reliant than most 8-year-olds. What do we do with her? Do we just let her die, because it's her fault? Can you really be that heartless?

Okay, my family can care for her, and guess what? We do. But what about other people in similar situations who don't have families to care for them? Or what about the financial troubles my family actually is going through right now, making it very hard for us to cover her care? Medicare and Medicaid have allowed us to afford to care for her! That socialism is the only reason my aunt isn't dead already.

And how is that unfair, really? It's not like she put herself in this situation on purpose. She didn't set out at 12 years old thinking, "I'm going to drink so much that I erase my memory with vitamin deficiences and become a drain on society! That sounds fun!" She was abused by her father, which destroyed her emotionally, and for the rest of her life she went down a long spiral of mental illness and alcohol addiction. There were many chances she had to make things better, and she should have; but she didn't, so now what?

It'd be one thing if we couldn't afford it. But we can. We have plenty of money in this country--in fact, we have such mind-bogglingly huge amounts of wealth that when Keynes predicted them a century ago, people told him he was crazy (even though he actually underestimated slightly). We set out as a society to maximize the amount of stuff we could make, and we succeeded.

Now we need to start talking about what we're going to do with all this stuff. I for one think we should spend a little of it caring for people who need help.

JDN 2456208 EDT 13:13.

There's something you'll hear from a lot of social justice activists which sounds really nice and egalitarian, but actually has the potential to completely undermine the entire project of social justice.

This is the idea “Oppression can't be measured quantitatively. We shouldn't try to compare different levels of oppression.”

This sounds nice, because it means we don't have to ask hard questions like, “Which is worse, sexism or racism?” or “Who is worse off, people with cancer or people with diabetes?” These are very difficult questions, and maybe they aren't the right ones to ask—after all, there's no reason to think that fighting racism and fighting sexism are mutually exclusive.

But we must not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Oppression is quantitative. Some kinds of oppression are worse than others.

Why is this important? Because otherwise you can't measure progress. If you have a strictly qualitative notion of oppression where it's black-and-white, on-or-off, oppressed-or-not, then we haven't made any progress on just about any kind of oppression. There is still racism, there is still sexism, there is still homophobia, there is still religious discrimination. Maybe these things will always exist to some extent. This makes the fight for social justice a hopeless Sisyphean task.

But in fact, that's not true at all. We've made enormous progress. Unbelievably fast progress. Mind-boggling progress.

Sexism used to mean that women couldn't own property, they couldn't vote, they could be abused and raped with impunity. Now sexism just means that women aren't paid as well and they sometimes sexually harassed or raped—but when men are caught doing this they go to prison for years. This change happened in only about 100 years. That's fantastic.

Racism used to mean that Black people were literally property to be bought and sold. They were slaves. They had no rights at all, they were treated like animals. They were frequently beaten to death. Now they can vote, hold office—one is President!—and racism means that our culture systematically discriminates against them in the legal system. Racism used to mean you could be lynched; now it just means that the cops will sometimes harass you. This took only about 200 years. That's amazing.

Homophobia used to mean that gay people were criminals. We could be sent to prison or even executed for the crime of making love in the wrong way. If we were beaten or murdered, it was our fault for being faggots. Now, homophobia means that we can't get married in some states, we're depicted on TV in embarrassing stereotypes, and a lot of people say bigoted things about us. This has only taken about 50 years! That's astonishing.

And above all, the most extreme example: Religious discrimination used to mean you could be burned at the stake for not being Catholic. It used to mean—and in some countries still does mean—that it's illegal to believe in certain religions. Now, it means that Muslims are stereotyped because, well, to be frank, there are some really scary things about Muslim culture and some really scary people who are Muslim leaders. (Personally, I think Muslims should be more upset about Ahmadinejad and Al Qaeda than they are about being profiled in airports.) It means that we atheists are annoyed by “In God We Trust”, but we're no longer burned at the stake. This has taken longer, more like 500 years. But even though it took a long time, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this progress is wonderful.

Obviously, there's a lot more progress remaining to be made on all these issues, and others—like economic inequality, ableism, nationalism, and animal rights—but the point is that we have made a lot of progress already. Things are better than they used to be—a lot better—and keeping this in mind will help us preserve the hope and dedication necessary to make things even better still.

If you think that oppression is either-or, on-or-off, you can't celebrate this progress, and as a result the whole fight seems hopeless. Why bother, when we've always been on, and we'll probably never get to off? But we started with oppression that was absolutely horrific,and now it's considerably milder. That's real progress. We have gone from 90% oppressed to 15% oppressed, and we can bring it down to 1% or 0.1% or even 0.01%. Those aren't just numbers, those are the lives of millions of people.

Oppression is quantitative. And our goal should be minimizing that quantity.

JDN 2456205 EDT 13:17.

I finished reading Future Americas, a collection of short stories by 16 current big-shot SF authors about, as you might imagine, the future of America. It's a mixed bag. I do like that they had a fairly even mix of men and women authors. The fact that all the authors are American is, I suppose, to be expected given the topic. But it would have been interesting to get some outside views on America's future.

I guess these specific reviews are slightly spoilerish?

Brendan DuBois's story “A Souvenir to Remember” is quite good, and a poignant reflection of the real inequality and injustice in today's society.

“Suffer the Children” by Barbara Nickless is interesting, but overall vaguely unsatisfying.

“Better Guns” by Jean Rabe is just a stupid paranoid Southerner fantasy.

Ed Gorman's “The Baby Store” is very interesting in concept, though I didn't really like the way it was executed. It exaggerates the issues to the point where the real problems seem minor by comparison. For a much better handle on it, see the movie GATTACA.

“Jesus Runs” by George Zebrowski was just bizarre, and it is already falsified by the fact that Obama appointed some new Supreme Court Justices.

“The Rotator” by Pamela Sargent is intriguing, but it used a fascinating time-travel/alternate-reality story to basically just talk about how Dick Cheney is a psychopath.

“Acirema the Rellik” by Robert Jeschonek started out really fascinating, and could have gone all sorts of places, and then just collapses into a pointless bloodbath that is made even more intolerable by its undertones of self-hating guilt.

“Family Photos” by S. Andrew Swann was a good story, if a bit dark, but there's nothing really SF about it.

“Our Flag Was Still There” by Steven Mohan is has the most compelling concept of America's future, though it gets a little bit sappy at the end. Still, overall I think it was my favorite.

Mike Resnick's “The Last Actor” is really just the standard lamentation that art is dying (apparently it has been for centuries?), and it's particularly obnoxious coming from a guy who makes millions selling literature in today's market.

“The Great Chain of Being” by Brian Stableford is... interesting, I'll give it that. Bizarre, but interesting.

“Attached to the Land” by Donald Bingle is some kind of weird Old West fantasy thing about living off the land and how cities are evil and corrupt.

“The Thief Catcher” by Theodore Judson is just a poorly executed story all around; I cared nothing for the characters, had trouble understanding the plot, and learned very little about the setting. There's a lot of exposition about the technology, even though the technology is not that interesting. The story goes nowhere.

“Unlimited” by Jane Lindskold is a neat little story, which almost certainly will happen sometime soon. But it doesn't really have a plot or characters, just a setting and a premise which play themselves out and then the story ends. Nothing really happens.

“Switching off the Lights” by Peter Crowther has a very fascinating premise, and then cuts out before we really see anything. We have no idea where the funnels come from, why they are here, or even what happens when you go through them. The ending is about as ambiguous as it's possible to be.

Finally, “The Power of Human Reason” by Kristine Kathryn Rush is a boring mystery story that manages to be nanopunk and Luddite at the same time.

JDN 2456203 EDT 19:44.

Most of my posts lately have been either personal stuff or reflections on gender and sexuality (or both), so I thought for a change I'd do something wonky and economical.

Right now the conventional wisdom in the US, among both Republicans, Democrats, and Libertarians—one of the few things they all agree on—is that deficits are bad, we must end the deficit, cut spending, raise taxes, do something to make the deficit go away. (The Green position on deficits is more nuanced, which is part of why I like the Greens. That, and global warming will kill millions of people if we don't do something right now.) You can't get Republicans and Democrats to agree on much; but you can get them to agree that deficits are bad.

And yet, this conventional wisdom is completely wrong. In fact, when I say this I'm not even speaking as the heterodox behavioral economist social democrat I am. I'm speaking on behalf of the mainstream consensus of economics, the neoclassical-Keynesian synthesis. That mainstream consensus says, without hesitation: Deficits are good.

Or, I should say, deficits are good... sometimes. And right now, coming out of the worst depression in fifty years, is one of those times. We need to get the economy moving again, that means stimulating aggregate demand. There are two big ways to stimulate aggregate demand: Spend money and cut taxes. Both of these things will raise the deficit, there's just no two ways around that.

Republicans will try to tell you cutting taxes can lower the deficit, it's simply not true. It would be true only in extremely bizarre circumstances that the US has never actually been in. It's more of a theoretical notion, like Giffen goods. In fact, it's basically the taxation analogue to a Giffen good. Cutting taxes may grow the economy, and that's good, and why we should do it sometimes, but except in very unusual circumstances it does not grow the economy enough to make up for the lost revenue. It increases the deficit.

It's also possible to stimulate demand without raising the deficit, if you move spending from less-productive to more-productive sectors. Obama is a master at this. It's really astounding how little he has added to the deficit, given all the health care reforms, infrastructure repairs, and alternative energy programs he has invested in. The US government is now more cost-effective than it has been since at least World War 2, and may be actually at its most cost-effective ever. For example, the drone strike program is definitely the most cost-effective military intervention in human history. It's really quite amazing to watch; Obama is cutting fat we didn't even know we had.

There are even some really good ideas Obama had that would make our government even more efficient and stimulate the economy even more, which have been blocked by Republicans. Examples include a public option for health insurance, eliminating oil subsidies, cuts to defense spending, removing tax loopholes on offshore investments, and increased funding to food stamps. (Food stamps don't just save lives; they also pay back $1.80 in GDP for every $1.00 you spend on them. They shouldbe a no-brainer, as they have basically no downside.)

We should be spending, and cutting taxes, and not worrying about the deficit right now. But isn't it bad to go into debt? Well, no, it really isn't actually. Not if you're going into debt for a good reason.

Think of it this way: Is it bad to get a mortgage? Is it bad to get a car loan? Is it bad to get student loans? It is bad for a startup to get small business loans? These are going into debt, aren't they?

But debt can be a fine thing, as long as you're using that debt to invest in something that will yield returns in the future. Yes, using your credit cards to buy fancy clothes is probably not a good strategy (especially if you can't pay off those credit cards later). But that's not what the federal deficit is. It's more like a student getting a loan to pay for college, or a business getting a loan so they can invest in a new factory. We use debt now to finance investment that will pay off later, which we can then use to pay off the debt.

In fact, the government is in a uniquely wonderful borrowing position. They can borrow basically unlimited funds, and do so at extremely low interest rates. Yields on 30-year Treasury bonds rarely go above 3% or 4%; imagine what you could do—the investments you could make, risks you could take, opportunities you could exploit—if you were able to take out a loan for your annual income at 3% and not pay it back for 30 years. This is what the federal government is able to do. That's why its AAA credit rating is such a big deal, and why it's absurd that the Republicans jeopardized that with their posturing.

And yes, it was posturing. The debt ceiling is raised all the time, and it's raised whenever the federal government decides that it would be wiser to spend more this year than is being taken in with tax revenue. This is not like defaulting on a credit card; on the contrary, not raising the debt ceiling would be more like that. The closest analogy would be raising your limit on your credit card so that you can make another purchase, which credit cards do all the time if you have good credit. Except credit cards charge horrible rates like 16% or even 24%, while the government has to pay, remember... 3%. (Because it's exponential, this difference is even bigger than it sounds. In 30 years, 3% makes you pay 2.4 times your principal, 16% makes you pay 85 times your principal, and 24% makes you pay 634 times your principal. Yes, 634.)

Yes, at some point we will want to cut spending, raise taxes, and close down the deficit. We will want to do that after the economy has fully recovered, when unemployment is down to 5% and GDP growth is back at 3%. Indeed, Bill Clinton did exactly this, and it worked; at the end of his presidential term, the federal debt was on track to be paid off in about 10 years. There were literally economists worried about this: They weren't sure what would happen if there weren't enough Treasury bonds for investors to hedge their portfolios with.

That's how it's supposed to work: You're supposed to run a cyclical deficit, deficit in bad times, surplus in good times, to smooth out the business cycle and keep the economy running smoothly. When tax revenues go down because of a recession, that's okay; you let that happen, and maybe even add some spending to support it, because you want the economy to recover as quickly as possible. Once the recession ends, tax revenues will return and you can cut the spending. This is what Keynesian economics is all about, and as Milton Friedman so eloquently put it: “We're all Keynesians now.”

But then, apparently we aren't. At least, the people actually running things aren't. I know a fair number of economists, and they all think that deficits are good in recessions. But people aren't listening to these economists, they're listening to the radical few out there who are Austrian or whatever and think that deficits are bad, bad, always bad.

Want to know why the economy isn't recovering very fast? There's your answer. We need more deficits.

JDN 2456202 EDT 18:15.

There's a concept that comes up a lot in feminist discourse called “objectification”. You'll hear this all the time: “Treating women as sex objects,” “objectifying women,” “being objectified,” etc. But what exactly does objectification mean?

It sounds like it means “treating you as an inanimate object,” which would of course be terrible. But is that really what's going on here?

What is a “sex object”? Who wants to have sex with an object? In fact, can you even do that? If it's an object, it's not even sex anymore, it's masturbation. There are certain kinds of things you can do to either a person or an object (lift them, push them, weigh them, stab them, etc.), but actually having sex is not really one of those options. It would certainly be very odd to say “He was having sex with the table.” Even “he was fucking the table” seems pretty bizarre, and not just as an activity, but I mean as a sentence. He's masturbating by means of the table, but is he actually having sex with it?

This is why it's so baffling to me when I am told that by being sexually attracted to someone, I am “objectifying” them. No, I'm... personifying them! Or sexualizing them if you want that concept specifically. But I do not, absolutely do not, want to have sex with objects. I want to have sex with people. So by wanting to have sex with someone, I have effectively removed them from the space of entities that I consider objects (assuming I hadn't already, which presumably I would have).

The closest I can think of to someone actually treating women as objects is a phrase I've heard on two occasions: “Walking vaginas.” The first time I heard it was from a raving misogynist. The second, however, was from a very aggressive feminist (or at least self-identified feminist). Isn't that interesting?

I think this is a good example of what is typically meant by “objectification”: You've reduced women to their vaginas. (A similar effect occurs when you sometimes hear men talk about “pussy” as an uncountable noun, a substance one apparently collects.) You care about no other part of them.

But is “all hands on deck” objectifying? It reduces sailors to their hands. Is “I need some brains on this problem” objectifying? It reduces people to their brains. Is “all eyes were on me” objectifying? It reduces people to their eyes. If these are not objectification, then why is specifically choosing the vagina objectification?

I definitely see a problem with “walking vaginas”, but are vaginas objects? No, they really aren't! They're body parts, which is not at all the same thing.

The problem with speaking of women as “walking vaginas” is that it's so limiting. That's all a woman is to you? Really? That's not even all a woman is to me in terms of sex. I mean, my god man, what about her breasts, her ass, her legs, her face, her lips? A walking vagina couldn't even give you a fucking blowjob. In fact, some of the sexiest experiences I've had in my life so far were all brain-to-brain, fantasies and memories expressed in digitally transmitted text. Even in terms of fucking her I want her brain.

And that's not even including all the other things I'd like to do with a woman besides sex: Thought-provoking conversations, sly grins, soft kisses, cuddling beneath the blankets on a cold winter night, firm hugs, crying on each other's shoulders, walking through the park, skinny-dipping in the Gulf of Mexico, sharing stories we've written and art we've painted. You can't do those things with a walking vagina, now can you? So if you think that's what a woman is... you're missing out on so much.

But at the same time, I want to fuck women. I do. I don't think I should have to be ashamed of that or keep it a secret. And I hope that there are some women out there who want to fuck me too. But I don't see this as degrading or dehumanizing them; on the contrary, it is only because I see them as fully human that they seem at all viable to me as sexual partners, as opposed to masturbation aids. Sex toys are not that hard to come by; you can buy them online. Real sexual partners who are whole human beings, they're a lot harder to get—especially good ones.

If you don't like the way women are portrayed in the media, or the clothes women are expected to wear, or the language people use when speaking about women, great. Let's talk about that. I might even agree. But when I watch a video of a woman masturbating or having sex, I am not at all turning her into an object. On the contrary, I view myself as sharing in her expression of her full humanity through sexuality. An object could not pleasure itself. I wouldn't enjoy seeing an object experience ecstasy. Indeed, the very notion strikes me as incoherent.

Maybe there is a sort of person who actually treats women like objects, and that is rapists. Indeed, rapists are also something I find quite baffling (as well as horrifying): What exactly do you get out of raping someone? Is it just about the raw neural sensations? Then we need to invent a better fake pussy stat to give all the rapists so that they can just go to town on the fakes and leave real women alone. Or is it something sadistic, they actually like to see people in pain? (Even that wouldn't be strictly objectification, though it's certainly horrible.) Are they just acting on an evolutionary instinct, trying to spread their genes? Most human instincts are subject to a lot of behavioral plasticity, I don't see why this should be an exception. Also if that's the case, then we're conceding that rapists are irrational, and just explaining their behavior in evolutionary terms. So in that case, yes, I guess you can speak of treating women like inanimate objects. For me half the joy of sex is sharing the experience with someone else, and rapists don't ever get to do that.

In general, I just don't see how “sexual objectification” is the right way to describe things at all. For me, the ideas of sexuality and objects just don't go together. Maybe for rapists they do, or maybe for some people who have really narrow concepts of what sex is about... but if you're doing it right, you don't have sex with objects. You have sex with people. The sex you want involves people.