text:
Tag Archives: Public goods
Who Are the Zero-Sum Winners?
Posted by pnuetz in Big Government, rent seeking
Caveat Emptor, Compliance Costs, Consumer Sovereignty, Drug Prohibition, Economic Rents, Energy subsidies, Farm Subsidies, Monopoly Rents, Mutually Beneficial Trade, Public Aid, Public goods, Public Lottery, Public Trough, Regulatory Rents, rent seeking, Social Security, Subsidies, Tax Deductibility, Zero-Sum Economics
Productive effort seldom goes unrewarded, but all too often rewards are directed to nonproductive activities and secured in ways that are outright takings of resources and rights from others. These are zero-sum propositions at best, as the rewards come only at equivalent or greater costs to others. Gains from zero-sum activities are often purely consumptive in nature and tend to foster more destructive behavior. A clear-cut example is outright thievery, but there are many cases in which, by matters of degree, the perpetrators are not even dimly aware that their gains bring harm to others.
Sadly, our society has undergone a transition to a state in which everyone collects ongoing streams of zero-sum rewards, which are, by definition, at someone else's (and often our own) expense. The turbulence caused by this unnecessary and avoidable mix of costs and rewards is all too real for consumers and businesses, but again, they don't always fully grasp its dysfunctional nature.
The Way To Positive Sums
Of course, there are winners and losers in almost any area of economic life. Even when two individuals engage in mutually beneficial exchange, an otherwise win-win situation, other traders might regret missing out on the deal. Pleasing buyers more effectively than one's competitors might force those rivals to turn to other pursuits. That's all for the best from a social point of view, unless they can come up with an even better idea to win back customers. In this way, things can keep getting better and better for everyone, even for the one-time losers who are free to compete in trades to which they are better suited. Winners, then, are defined by their success in creating value for others. These are the productive winners. But again, material success doesn't always come so honorably.
Bobbing For Booty?
Purely "consumptive" or zero-sum winners might be simple crooks who are able to avoid apprehension, or perhaps they are dishonest business-people who sell goods with hidden defects or inferior workmanship. There are many degrees here: a talented salesperson with shoddy merchandise might compromise on price. A clever product manager might reduce the size of a package slightly without reducing price.
A simple gamble is zero-sum in a purely monetary sense, but both gamblers do it for enjoyment, so there are psychic gains involved. A successful gambler might be a zero-sum winner in a monetary sense, but luck usually runs out on honest players. A cheater qualifies as a zero-sum winner. Conversely, it's not correct to say that casinos are strictly zero-sum winners, though the odds are always stacked in favor of the house and everyone knows it. Casino patrons enjoy the experience, including other amusements available in casinos, so they are often happy customers despite their losses. They are engaging in mutually beneficial exchange.
Private Affairs Made Public
A short-hand description encompassing much of our zero-sum havoc is "the public trough". Many zero-sum rewards have arisen out of legislative battles, court cases, and regulatory actions restricting private decision-making and encroaching on private property rights. The unremitting tendency is for expansion of these kinds of actions. Where there are zero-sum winners at the public trough, or an opportunity to expand the trough itself, there are always more covetous seekers of zero-sum winnings, otherwise known as rent seekers. They are reliable promoters of "do-something-ism" relative to the outrage du jour through more legislation, lawsuits, and regulatory filings. The tragic thing about rent seeking is that the process itself consumes resources and undermines private incentives, thereby transforming zero-sum outcomes into wasteful, negative-sum outcomes.
Winners At the Trough
There are many kinds of zero-sum winners at the public trough. The winning and losing often occur separately and asynchronously, connected only by an enabling authority who sets rules and funds winners from proceeds taken from losers. For this reason, it is easy for citizens to lose track of the "zero-sumness" of the many benefits they receive. After all, the government can deliver things for "free", right? And the connection between one's obligations, losses, and the gains reaped by others is not always obvious.
All of the following involve some degree of zero-sum activity, and all attract rent seekers:
Public aid in exchange for no contribution to output, funded by zero-sum losing taxpayers.
Subsidies for politically-favored technologies that are otherwise uneconomic, funded by zero-sum losing taxpayers.
Farm subsidies when too much is produced and the output is not highly valued, leading to an overallocation of resources to agricultural activity and rents for farmers funded by zero-sum losing taxpayers.
Complex regulatory and tax rules generate income for compliance advisors such as attorneys, accountants, and consultants. Those are rents, pure and simple, paid for by parties who must comply under penalty of law.
Regulatory advantage conferred upon firms sufficiently large or dominant to afford compliance. That penalizes smaller competitors and undermines their market position. The additional profit large firms may earn as a consequence is a rent, funded by zero-sum losing consumers and weaker competitors.
The award of government contracts is often as much political as it is economic. Such a process is not subject to the market discipline imposed on private contracts, so there is ample opportunity for rents via cost-padding and graft, again funded by zero-sum losing taxpayers.
More generally, government purchases of any kind are subject to weak market discipline, like any buyer spending someone else's money. Thus, government has a tendency to pay prices not supported by economic value, offering rents to suppliers, funded by zero-sum losing taxpayers.
The tax deduction afforded to employer-provided health care is a targeted subsidy that leads employees to over-insure. More fundamentally, these employees and their employers are zero-sum winners. It also creates profits for health insurers and drives up health care costs. The zero-sum spoils are to the detriment of other taxpayers and participants in the individual insurance market.
Drug prohibition drives up black market profits, creating zero-sum winnings at the expense and safety of users.
Social Security creates zero-sum winnings for those who will not or cannot save. But this is a mixed bag to the extent that some people are unable to save privately: their ability to do so is largely usurped via payroll taxes, both on them and on their employer. The many zero-sum losers would otherwise have no difficulty earning better returns on private investments.
There are many other examples. And almost everyone ends up on one side or the other of many different zero-sum outcomes. Show me a government action and I'll show you zero-sum winners and losers. This is not to say there are no welfare gains associated with government action. Public aid, for example, is intended as social insurance and surely has some value in mitigating the risks of personal economic calamity. Nonetheless, the overextension and poor incentives of aid programs create a significant zero-sum component. Likewise, government spending on public goods creates social benefits, but government is insufficiently incented to economize, creating a zero-sum win for contractors and losses for taxpayers.
Not Zero Sum
While zero-sum winners collect economic rents, the existence of economic rents does not imply a zero-sum winning. For example, members of the so-called rentier class collect passive investment income. Those investments represent a supply of current resources to other parties hoping to transform them into a greater supply of future resources. That's productive, and so the gains enjoyed by rentiers are not zero-sum winnings, but payments for the use of transformational capital.
Economic profits are those exceeding the owner's opportunity cost, and they too are called rents. They should not necessarily be classified as zero-sum gains, however. Only sometimes. Successful innovators and first movers often earn economic profits as a reward for their efforts, as do alert entrepreneurs deploying their resources where they are most demanded. This "positive-sumness" applies to monopolists with a hot product just as surely as it applies to a firm facing nascent competition. But economic profits gained through political connections, outright graft, and government-enabled monopoly are zero-sum, enabled by non-market, authoritarian forces. Members of the political class tend to share in these zero-sum gains, and there are many losers.
Zero-Sum Psyche
Unfortunately, zero-sum thinking is deeply ingrained in the human psyche, despite our transition to a higher plane of social cooperation via markets. Even in those markets, certain outcomes might seem zero-sum in the moment. Witness the widespread denigration of the profit motive, which produces efficient outcomes in the long-run. As noted above, over time, the biggest winners tend to be those capable of creating the most value.
If you ask school children today how to get rich, many will say "win the lottery" without hesitation. I know, I know, government-sponsored lotteries are a relatively new phenomenon, and some of the lottery proceeds may benefit schools or other public programs, but the idea that a game of chance is so indelibly ingrained in the minds of children is a manifestation of the psychology of zero-sum success.
The Tangled Mess
So we have the zero-sum winners: successful gamblers, thieves, and rent seekers. The latter root deeply for gains made possible by government intervention in private affairs, actions that always leave room for enduring rents. They always lobby fiercely for new public interventions that might confer private advantages. And then we have the hapless public, stumbling through a series of zero-sum gains and losses made possible by the Leviathan they know and obey. They should look in the mirror, because every law and every program they have allowed their political leaders to hatch, reliably sold as good and just, creates more zero-sum activity to the detriment of long-term economic welfare. Roll it back!
New Socialists Fail Socialism 101
Posted by pnuetz in Big Government, Socialism
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Authoritarian, Compassion, Democratic Socialism, Exclusivity, Free Rider Problem, Imprimis, Jeffrey Tucker, Maine Wire, Matthew Gagnon, Means of Production, Private Goods, Public goods, Safety Net, Socialism, The Claremont Review of Books, William Vogeli
Not many self-styled socialists can actually provide a proper definition of socialism these days. That includes the celebrated Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York congressional candidate who has proven herself to be an incredible stumble-bum in numerous media appearances since her primary victory over incumbent democrat Joe Crowley. Maine Wire's Matthew Gagnon calls her "belligerently ignorant" as she tweets what she believes to be examples of democratic socialism. Gagnon dissects some of her flakey assertions. The sad truth is that Ocasio-Cortez is fairly typical of her generation, despite her dual college majors in economics and political science.
Gagnon notes that socialism is public ownership of the means of production. But socialism is somehow regarded as a "soft" version of communism: less authoritarian, perhaps. That premise deserves closer examination. There is only one way that the public sector can take possession of private property: by force. A new, authoritarian regime might simply commandeer property, nationalize it, and revoke prior ownership claims at the point of a gun or a club. The government would ultimately impose new rules under which management of formerly private enterprises must operate, and it would engage in centralized decision-making and planning to a large extent. This is essentially communism. Some personal freedoms might be preserved, but they are likely to be severely curtailed; dissidence is not likely to be tolerated.
There is another mechanism by which society can declare public ownership of productive resources that is nominally less authoritarian: democracy. Citizens or their elected representatives simply vote for the state to acquire particular resources and enterprises, in whole or in part. Enabling legislation might authorize administrative agencies to determine how the former private owners of these enterprises are to be compensated. To one extent or another, this involves takings of private property and rights, and it boils down to a very real tyranny of the majority: we will vote to take possession of your business; we will vote to create a bureau that will determine its worth and your compensation; we will vote that henceforth you may not operate this business on your own behalf, but only in the service of the people; and we will vote on what rights you possess. This is the ugly tyranny of democratic socialism, and it still requires force.
Self-proclaimed socialists are fond of proclaiming that we already have socialism in many sectors of the economy. They cite public parks, roads, bridges, K-12 education, and other goods and services sometimes provided by the public sector. There is a key distinction, however, that separates many of these examples from actual socialism: whether a good is actually a "public good", meaning that its benefits are non-exclusive, as opposed to a private good that yields exclusive benefits. A more precise definition of socialism, in my view, is public ownership of the means of producing private goods.
The typical example of a public good is national defense: the benefits I receive do not reduce the benefits you receive, so those benefits are non-exclusive. I have little personal incentive to pay for national defense if anyone else is willing to pay for it, as I'll receive the benefits anyway. But who will pay if everyone tries to free-ride on others? That's why the provision of public goods is an appropriate function of government, and it is not generally what is meant by socialism. Gagnon is correct that government involvement in an activity is not the same as socialism, and he correctly ridicules some examples of governmental activities (and non-governmental activities like cooperatives) that Ocasio-Cortez believes to be socialism.
In contrast to public goods, private goods are exclusive in their benefits. The development of a private market can be counted upon to fulfill demands for such goods because private individuals are willing to pay. However, when government grants itself an advantaged position as a provider in such a market, such as a monopoly franchise, we can safely describe it as socialism. Many goods are not purely private, having some degree of non-exclusivity in their benefits. This is commonly asserted to be the case for K-12 education, but the matter is not as clear-cut as the public education establishment would have you believe. The bulk of the benefits to education accrue privately. Therefore, it is fair to describe public K-12 education in the U.S. as socialism. And it is largely a disaster.
Is a social safety net rightly described as socialism? Gagnon thinks not and, strictly speaking, the welfare state does not require public ownership of the means of production, only a means of redistribution. It requires funding, so private resources will be extracted via taxes, and the same is true of public goods. Taxes do not make it "socialism". Let's stipulate for the moment that there is a true safety net supporting only those unable to support themselves, either on a temporary or a permanent basis. This may yield non-exclusive benefits to the extent that such a "lifeline" reduces crime, begging, and our personal discomfort with the possibility that other individuals might starve. However, on an ex ante basis, some of these benefits represent a form of risk reduction that, in principle, could be arranged privately. To the extent that we vote to provide these potentially private benefits, those parts of the safety net can be construed as democratic socialism. In practice, our "safety net" covers a large number of able-bodied individuals. Unfortunately, it does a poor job of encouraging self-sufficiency. Like most public benefit programs, it is expansive, poorly designed, and has pernicious effects on the private economy that act to the long-term detriment of its intended beneficiaries.
Leftists fancy that socialism is "compassionate" and righteous, despite its predictably harsh outcomes. The misleading conceit that universal alms-giving by the state is always empowering to individual recipients, and potential voters, is an extremely corrosive element of democratic socialism. William Voegeli, Senior Editor of The Claremont Review of Books, writing in Imprimis makes "The Case Against Liberal Compassion". (I dislike his misuse of the word "liberal" — too many conservatives are willing to cede that label to the Left.) Voegeli notes the "never enough" mentality of welfare statists, who refuse to acknowledge that the expansive growth of the welfare state over the past five decades has failed to reduce rates of poverty. The programs are rife with fraud, waste and bad incentives. If leftists are truly compassionate, Voegeli insists, they ought to take more interest in fixing problems that leave less for the truly needy and create dependencies rather than simply increasing the flow of funding.
Many well-meaning individuals are careless about affiliating with socialist causes because they do not understand what it actually means, and they often lack any historical and theoretical perspective on the implications of socialism. The flirtation is dangerous, and we can only attempt to educate and reason with them. Some will grow into greater wisdom. Some, like Bernie Sanders, will never come around. While we educate, let's keep their hands away from the reins of power.
Open Borders and Club Goods
Posted by pnuetz in Immigration, Liberty
Alex Tabarrok, Bryan Caplan, Citizenship, Club Goods, Common Resources, Congestion Costs, Contestable Goods, Don Boudreaux, Exclusivity, Immigration, James Buchanan, Patrick McNutt, Private Goods, Public goods, Rivalrousness, Safety Net, Sheldon Richman, Social Contract, ThoughtCo., Tyler Cowen
The question of open borders divides libertarians as much as any. The arguments for open borders made by the likes of Bryan Caplan, Alex Tabarrok, Don Boudreaux and Sheldon Richman are in many ways quite appealing. Fewer borders means greater opportunities for gainful trade among individuals. For the U.S., the economic gains from in-migration have been unquestionable. From a pure libertarian perspective, governments should never interfere with the non-violent actions of free individuals, including freedom of movement. These great economists contend, in effect, that there is no real moral distinction between government actions that confine individuals within borders and those that keep people out, though our conciences are less burdened by the latter because the world abroad seems so large.
There is a gnawing contradiction in this viewpoint, however. It relates to the appropriate scope of "ownership". At the link above, Caplan says:
"The only principled libertarian objection to this is that the citizens of each country are its rightful owners, so they're entitled to regulate migration as they see fit. … But if you believe this, there is no principled libertarian objection to any act of government. Fortunately, the belief that citizens are countries' rightful owners is crazy. The social contract is an utter myth. Contracts require unanimous consent, and no country has ever had unanimous consent."
The Character of a Good
I contest Caplan's assertion that any one act of government is like all others. Yes, there is always a danger of a majoritarian tyranny in any democracy. But there is also the question of sovereignty, for which borders of some kind are necessary. If policies governing those borders are established legislatively, they should be subject to checks and balances: executive consent as well as judicial review of disputes.
I also contest Caplan's statement that ownership implies unanimous consent. In fact, there are many forms of property over which decisions do not imply unanimous consent of joint owners. One such form is the subject of what follows, and I believe that form of "ownership" is applicable to one's citizenship or residency status.
To keep things simple, I'll frame this discussion only in terms of citizenship. I therefore abstract from issues like green cards, visiting worker programs, and the presence of resident aliens in general. For a nation, the essence of barriers to immigration can be addressed by considering the simpler case of citizens versus non-resident non-citizens. For purposes of this discussion, if you are allowed to arrive on a nation's shores, you will be a citizen.
If a country's citizenship can be considered a good worth acquiring, what is its real character? It is privately possessed and not tradable, but not all goods are tradable. An important taxonomy of goods in the public finance literature is based on two dimensions: exclusivity and rivalrousness. The former is the degree to which other parties can be excluded from enjoyment or use of the good or resource.
Most goods have at least some degree of exclusivity: you can be denied admission to a concert, the use of an appliance or furniture, and even parks and port facilities. Pure public goods like national defense and the air we breath are completely non-exclusive, however. Broadcast television is non-exclusive as well, as long as you have the equipment to watch it.
Rivalrousness is the degree to which the use or enjoyment of a good precludes another's use or enjoyment. My friend can't eat the steak if I eat the steak. That's rivalrous. But my friend and I can both enjoy the concert. That's non-rivalrous. A private good is both exclusionary and rivalrous. A public good is neither.
Citizenship as a Good
Citizenship can be viewed as a bundle of attributes much as any good, but it is an extremely complex bundle: it includes the individual rights enshrined in a nation's constitution (if any), the personal and economic opportunities available by virtue of access to in-country markets and resources, the culture(s), and any personal risk reduction provided collectively, i.e., a safety net via public support. How, then, would one classify citizenship, or its component attributes, in terms of exclusivity and rivalrousness?
First, the entire citizenship bundle has a high degree of exclusivity. A nation can decide on closed borders, or partially open borders, if it chooses to do so, just as a theme park limits its gate. That is the political decision at hand. The degree of exclusivity of individual components of the bundle matters little if the bundle itself is highly exclusive.
At a high level, citizenship itself is non-rivalrous. My citizenship does not preclude citizenship for anyone else. Therefore, at the level of the bundle, citizenship is exclusive but non-rivalrous, so it has the character of what economists call a "club good". Citizens are already part of the club; to that extent they are joint "owners". Like many clubs, decisions about new membership need not be unanimous.
Classification of citizenship attributes as goods is trickier. The exclusivity of citizenship makes the non-rivalrous public goods available to citizens into club goods. Once admitted, for example, you are free to engage in speech, practice a religion of your choice, own a weapon, and receive due process and habeas corpus without interfering with any other citizen's ability to exercise the same rights. You get national defense and a judicial system. You have equality of opportunity to the extent that your pursuit of economic gain does not interfere directly with anyone else's opportunities. On the other hand, the freedom of assembly is rivalrous to at least some extent, as we learned last year from events in Charlottesville, VA. In fact, there may be congestion limits to some of the other freedoms mentioned above.
Access to a nation's markets permits mutually beneficial trade to take place. An individual's participation usually does not rule out participation by others, so it is essentially non-rivalrous. (In some markets the entry of new sellers may be limited and exclusionary.) Of course, a nation's resources are scarce; exploiting them for gain or enjoyment necessarily prevents others from using the same resources. From the point of view of existing citizens, these resources are non-exclusive and rivalrous, and are therefore classified as "common resources", subject to congestion effects, but they are still exclusive to those citizens. The key here is not whether there are gains from trade, but that there is some rivalrousness embedded in this citizenship attribute.
In addition to the basic rights mentioned earlier, the entire legal structure, regulatory apparatus, and the political process are complex attributes of citizenship. These bear on the limits of legal conduct: Can you buy or sell liquor on Sundays? Do businesses require licensure? Is abortion legal? And on and on. In a democracy, the ability to participate in the political process is non-rivalrous: it does not prevent others from participating. However, the range of possible outcomes of the process can also be viewed as an attribute, and these outcomes, as they are promulgated, are certainly rivalrous. If the "other" side gets extra votes, then the power of my vote is diminished. So the limits of legal conduct are exposed to political rivalry. In the case of open borders, a large number of citizens may not favor existing rules, regulations, and the allocation of public spending.
So the attributes of citizenship are mixed in terms of rivalrousness: Some are rivalrous but many are not. The citizenship bundle, at a more detailed level, is therefore a mix of club goods (exclusive but non-rvalrous) and some goods that are rivalrous. This is important, because under the classical description club goods are public goods provided privately; they are therefore under-provided from the perspective of social welfare and the Pareto criterion that a new citizens can be made better off without making any existing citizen worse off. That might not be the case in the presence of congestion effects.
Should a Club Good Be Unrestricted?
Citizenship has value at the margin to both existing citizens, who should be regarded as established club members, and non-citizens. The foregoing establishes that there are some private (exclusive and rivalrous) attributes attached to citizenship. Sometimes this is due to the impact of congestion on the provision of public goods. Patrick McNutt, in his survey of literature on "Public Goods and Club Goods", summarizes some basic conditions under which public goods are provided by clubs:
"The public good is not a pure public good, but rather there is an element of congestion as individuals consume the good up to its capacity constraint. What arises then is some exclusion mechanism in order to charge consumers a price for the provision and use of the good. Brown and Jackson (1990, p. 80) had commented that the purpose of a club 'is to exploit economies of scale, to share the costs of providing an indivisible commodity, to satisfy a taste for association with other individuals who have similar preference orderings'. For Buchanan and Ng the main club characteristic is membership or numbers of consumers and it is this variable that has to be optimised."
Citizenship (or residency) is generally not price rationed, though there are certainly costs to the immigrant. I make no pretense here as to the determination of an optimal membership from a club or larger social perspective. My point is that rationing membership is a rational choice by club members, or citizens in this case.
Okay, I Like My Club
Tribal affiliations, and ultimately nation states, were a natural outgrowth of early competition for resources, especially when identifying threats from outsiders was a constant preoccupation. Territorialism was a byproduct, and with the establishment of agriculture, the peoples of these early societies probably identified strongly with their homelands.
Modern nation-states have evolved from those early patterns, and nations continue to differ in terms of language, culture, and governance. Successful nations are undoubtedly more liberal (in the classical sense) and open to trade and cross-border movement. Maybe one day all nations will be united under the principles of libertarianism… don't count on it! For now, to one degree or another, a nation's inhabitants have an interest in minimizing economic and political risks and retaining access to resources within their borders. I don't believe that desire is irrational or immoral. If the inhabitants of a nation have a moral obligation to share their rights, wealth, and political process with all comers, then they must accept the possibility that their rights will be compromised, and possibly even complete upheaval. They suffer a loss of sovereignty and a loss in the expected value of their citizenship.
There is obviously no limiting principle to the open borders policy, as Tyler Cowen says. Existing citizens would be obligated to accommodate all those who land upon their shores, granting them the full rights and opportunities accorded to all other residents. Perhaps there would be economic gains in the short or long run, as most libertarians would predict. But perhaps there would be some losses along the way. Perhaps there would be political stability after a large influx of new residents, but perhaps not. And ultimately, perhaps changes in the political climate would feed back to the detriment of economic performance. One simply cannot say, a priori, how things would go. There are risks to the existing citizenry, and if they are obliged to accept those risks, those might well include having to feed, clothe and house new residents. There should be no absolute obligation to accept those risks. If the debate is about individual liberty, then surely imposing those risks via open borders would abrogate the rights of existing citizens.
Addendum: A Note on the Goods Taxonomy
Given the two dimensions of goods discussed above, exclusivity and rivalrousness, goods are classified as follows:
Private goods: exclusive and rivalrous;
Public goods: non-exclusive and non-rivalrous;
Club goods: exclusive but non-rivalrous: e.g., a concert;
Common resources: non-exclusive but rivalrous: the air we breath; an aquifer;
Another category is sometimes defined: contestable goods, which have the character of public goods or even club goods when under light use, and are common resources when under heavy use. There is a difference between an empty park and a crowded park; or an empty road and a crowded road.
See ThoughtCo. for a good exposition on the taxonomy.
Private Incentives and Infrastructure
Posted by pnuetz in infrastructure, Markets
central planning, Donald Trump, Exclusivity of Benefits, infrastructure, Infrastructure Tax Credit, Lawrence Summers, Material Infrastructure, Private Infrastructure, Public goods, Public-Private Partnership, Randall O'Toole, Trump Infrastructure Plan, Tyler Cowen, User Fees, Walter Buhr
Material infrastructure is fixed plant and equipment providing services considered basic to the functioning of society. That definition leaves plenty of room for interpretation, however. For example, it does not limit the meaning of "infrastructure" to facilities necessary for the provision of "public goods", for which benefits are non-exclusive. And it encompasses facilities used by firms in certain competitive markets, such as some forms of telecommunication. The character of infrastructure tends to change over time, as new technologies lead to changes in our way of life (e.g., the cellular network). That's even more evident when infrastructure is defined more broadly, as Walter Buhr does in "What Is Infrastructure?" His definition of material infrastructure encompasses all facilities enabling "the activation or mobilization of the economic agents' potentialities."
Infrastructure ≠ Government
There is a popular fallacy that infrastructure is the exclusive province of government. Infrastructure often does provide some public, non-exclusive benefits, but the willingness of users to pay is the key test of private benefits. As it happens, most infrastructure needs can be met privately and partly, if not fully, supported by user fees. That follows from the high degree of exclusivity of benefits yielded by the infrastructure. Today, privately-owned infrastructure includes communication networks, power generation and distribution, some water and sewer systems, toll roads, ports, and landfills. The presumed monopolistic nature of some infrastructural services probably encourages the notion that infrastructure must be public, but that view is largely unjustified: the services may be "monopolized" only to the extent that the relevant market is defined narrowly, such as road travel, rather than transportation. Indeed, certain kinds of infrastructure functions in markets that are fairly competitive (e.g., wireless networks).
The great thing about most private infrastructure is that owner-operators have an incentive to put it up and keep it up. So it kind of takes care of itself. I say "kind of" because there is always a degree of public involvement, from land use and environmental approval to construction permits, to licensing, to spectrum auctions, to rate regulation, and many other varieties of oversight. Aside from those considerations, if there is a need for infrastructure that is commercially-viable, the project is likely to be proposed by private interests. The funds necessary to pay for construction can be raised from private investors, rather than taxpayers. It's not at all strange to say that private infrastructure is highly advantageous from a public finance perspective.
There are risks to private infrastructure developers, but those risks are too often borne publicly. A new facility, be it a water treatment plant or a road, might not prove to be profitable once a new revenue stream or reduction in operating costs is realized. Given those circumstances, private interests might seek additional incentives from public authorities to ensure profitbility. To the extent that the shortfall is due to an error in pricing administered by a public regulatory authority, it might be reasonable to make adjustments in the owner-operator's favor. However, to the extent that demand falls short of the owner-operator's expectations, it might be better to let the firm fail. That would allow the assets to be sold at a discount to a new operator who can make the cheaper investment profitable. No bailouts!
Trumpian Infrastructure Incentives
The coming Trump Administration is known to have certain steps in mind for encouraging infrastructure development. While the tax plan that has been discussed has a few questionable features, any policy that reduces corporate tax rates would increase the return to existing and prospective private infrastructure, and the profitability of private operation of public infrastructure. In addition, a proposal mentioned explicitly by Trump is a corporate tax credit for infrastructure development.
Here is where a more precise definition of infrastructure would be helpful. Would traditional categories of infrastructure investment by power, telecommunication, and water treatment companies qualify automatically? Moreover, the long timelines required in the planning and installation of most infrastructure might make it difficult to distinguish between new plans and those already in the works. Will the administration establish a bright line between infrastructure investment and run-of-the-mill corporate spending on new plant and equipment? Perhaps any form of corporate investment will qualify. These are questions that remain unanswered as we await Trump's inauguration.
There is another public-finance dimension of the Trump infrastructure credit. Public infrastructure projects, such as roads, are frequently difficult for governments to fund because they face limits on the debt they can issue. This is emphasized by Randall O'Toole in a recent piece on the Trump credit. Instead of issuing its own debt, a government can take advantage of a large private road builder's ability to raise funds in the capital market, agreeing to compensate the contractor over time. Thus, taxpayers will be obligated to pay-off the contractor's debt. The term "Public-Private Partnership" has been invoked in this connection.
Private Incentives Or Central Planning?
I am never averse to reduced tax rates to the extent that taxation always distorts economic incentives. However, selective targeting of tax benefits at certain industries, specific forms of business organization (like corporations), or specific activities like capital investment is overt central planning. Overriding market incentives in this way is not desirable. (Neither are proposals to subsidize exporters and penalize importers. Tyler Cowen at the Marginal Revolution provides some salient quotes from Lawrence Summers on this point.) At this stage, Trump's tax plan looks like central planning gone berserk.
Ideally, private investment and private infrastructure should be judged on its real merits, not on the prejudices of a central authority. To that end, I believe the Trump Administration's intent to roll back regulatory distortions is commendable. A case in point is nuclear power generation. Despite the constant outcry against the burning of fossil fuels, there has been little emphasis on encouraging investment in new nuclear capacity. The lengthy approval process and costly regulatory requirements discourage this zero-carbon form of energy production relative to other forms of energy investment.
Users Are the Cost-Causers
I should note that O'Toole speaks favorably of "targeting" certain kinds of public infrastructure, but I think his point is that private operation of infrastructure, if not ownership, will allow markets to do the targeting more efficiently than government ever could. In particular, he notes that politicians tend to prefer new projects to the maintenance and repair of existing infrastructure, independent of the actual merit. Would relying on private operation and user fees encourage better maintenance?
"Unlike infrastructure paid for out of tax dollars, user-fee-funded projects tend to be well maintained because the agencies that manage them know they have to keep them in good shape to continue earning revenues."
The cartoon above satirizes the consequences of providing free access to a costly facility. User fees encourage more rational patterns of use. For example, it is folly to think that projects like light rail can be financially viable when free alternatives exist. Specific highway routes under high demand must be priced in order for commuters to make rational decisions about the alternatives available to them, and for providers of transportation facilities, whether public or private, to rationally balance the resources dedicated to supporting various modes of travel.
Lower tax and regulatory burdens under the Trump infrastructure plan offer some encouragement for private development and operation of infrastructure projects. As a by-product, the plan might encourage greater reliance on user fees as a method of defraying the costs of infrastructure and promoting a more efficient allocation of resources toward infrastructure needs. However, there are unanswered questions about the details of the plan, and some of its heavy-handy features should be dispensed with.
Rainfall, Individualism and Income
Posted by pnuetz in Capitalism, Collectivism
Agricultural Risk, Capitalism, Collectivism, Exogenous Risk, Individual Responsibility, Individualism, Instrumental Variables, Lewis Davis, Marginal Revolution, Public goods, Rainfall Variability, Social Risk
Highly variable rainfall in a country is associated with less individualistic attitudes, according to a provocative paper by economist Lewis Davis (HT: Marginal Revolution). He leverages this relationship to estimate a positive impact of individual responsibility on economic development. Both results are potentially important, if somewhat controversial. Davis admits that he confronted a number of measurement issues and methodological complexities.
Davis notes that the variability of rainfall creates agricultural risk. He posits that countries having to deal with such recurrent, exogenous risks tend to develop institutions that might allow risk to be shared more broadly. In other words, such uncontrollable events as droughts, destructive flooding and uneven agricultural output lead to a social tendency toward collectivism, which is also reflected in the attitudes of individual citizens. He first builds a mathematical economic model with that implication:
"… the model predicts the equilibrium level of collective responsibility will be greater where nature is more capricious."
Davis finds that the relationship holds up empirically using cross-country data on rainfall and surveys of social attitudes. His real interest, however, is to exploit that relationship to obtain estimates of the impact of individual responsibility on economic development. The complication he grapples with is that more favorable survey ratings of individual responsibility are themselves a function of economic development, so causation runs both ways. To tackle this problem, he uses rainfall variability to create an empirical "instrument" based on survey measures of individual responsibility, and in turn uses the exogenous variation in the instrument to explain differences in per capita income. Controls are used in the fitted equations for other social and economic factors. Again, he finds that his instrument for individual responsibility is positively related to income.
Another way to summarize Davis' results is that natural risks are associated with greater acceptance of collectivism, but collectivist attitudes are associated with lower income levels. The empirical finding of a preference for heavy reliance on the state to insure against common risks is fascinating and it comports with the theory that the government has a legitimate role in the provision of public goods, social risk mitigation being among them. One should not place too much faith in the state as a reliable problem solver, however, or as an engine of economic growth. After all, there is a good reason for the second result: an economy dominated by the public sector is doomed to long-term decline. Individual initiative and capitalism, on the other hand, are more reliable in producing long-term economic gains and ending poverty, even when the rain is spotty. General prosperity might be more difficult to achieve when the weather is fickle, but prosperity is a much better cushion against risk than government.
The Virtue of Libertarian Consistency
Posted by pnuetz in Liberty
"Legitimized" Aggression, American Civil Liberties Union, Classical Liberalism, European Conservatism, Friedrich Hayek, Fusionism, Jonah Goldberg, Libertarianism vs. Conservatism, National Review, Non-Aggression, Non-Coercion, Public goods, Role of Government
Many on the Right of the political spectrum sincerely believe that they hold libertarian views. They might be close on some economic matters, but only some, and not on a host of social issues. Fewer on the Left make the same mistake, but it happens. Some uninformed lefties might imagine that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is representative of libertarianism, and occasionally the ACLU does take positions consistent with libertarian views. Many of these individuals, left and right, probably self-identify as libertarian only because they think it "sounds good". After all, the root "liberty" might ring a compelling (if distant) bell, but perhaps I'm congratulating myself.
Jonah Goldberg, the conservative senior editor of National Review, wrote an interesting article a few weeks ago called "Fusionism, 60 Years Later". In it, he describes the historical relationship between libertarianism and conservatism. Fusionism, Goldberg says, is the longstanding effort to find common ground between these two camps. He contends that most support for libertarian ideas comes from Conservatives:
"In other words, conservatives tend to be libertarian, but libertarians tend not to be conservative. …libertarians want to have their own identity, separate and distinct from that of conservatism. They're a bit like the Canadians you meet abroad who go to almost obsessive lengths to show everyone that they aren't American."
I got a laugh out of that quote because it contains a grain of truth, but Goldberg knows all too well that there are substantive differences between Libertarians and Conservatives on the role of government. There are not-so-subtle departures on the basic role of government in regulating personal behavior. Libertarians, of course, believe that government almost never has a legitimate role in that area, with exceptions for the prevention and redress of various forms of aggression. Another difference is that Conservatives, like the political Left (not a typo), often favor government promotion of private business objectives, including protectionist anti-trade legislation, policies which Libertarians consistently oppose. And unlike Libertarians, Conservatives make a glaring exception to their avowed dedication to small government in their support for massive military outlays and foreign incursions in the name of protecting vital U.S. interests, which usually amount to safeguarding private economic interests abroad.
Nevertheless, Goldberg contends that Libertarians and Conservatives are all classical liberals, defined broadly:
"The Founding Fathers were all classical liberals, but … they were largely conservative in manners, morals, and faith. Their conservatism was not labeled as such because it suffused the culture and was simply taken for granted. …
Until the middle of the 20th century, the conservative side of the classical-liberal tradition in America was not cultivated the way the libertarian side was, in large part because no one thought it needed to be cultivated."
That may be, but it does not diminish the differences that exist. Insofar as "conservatism" is about the preservation of certain institutions, such as private property, free speech, and other individual liberties, then there are areas of commonality between Conservatives and Libertarians, but full "fusion" is impossible if Conservatives cannot consistently recognize the appropriate limits of government. The power of government derives from its police power, or "legitimized" aggression to accomplish public objectives. That power must be restrained by adherence to the kinds of checks embodied in the U.S. Constitution.
Here is a quote from Goldberg's piece giving just a bit too much relative credit to Conservatives on the subject of morality:
"… conservatives borrowed heavily from the libertarian tradition, but they also borrowed from the religious, patriotic, and moral arsenals of the Founders. That is why the libertarians have stood apart like Coptic Christians, who claim a lineage and authenticity that needs no sanction from the larger, more powerful, and more syncretic Catholic Church."
The libertarian philosophy is grounded in two moral principles to which I've already referred: liberty and non-aggression (or non-coercion). The liberty of individuals is sacrosanct (as it was to the Founders) but does not extend to physically aggressive actions, including any form of theft. Liberty includes freedom of speech (the notion of "micro-aggression" is unlikely to carry much (if any) weight with most libertarians) and the freedom to defend oneself. Defined properly, aggression includes the imposition of external costs on others, such as unchecked pollution of the environment.
Ideally, "legitimized" aggression or coercion by the state extends only to preventing aggression by private parties or foreign aggressors, and to the revenue collection necessary to provide public goods desired by the polity. Defining strict limits on aggression by private and public parties provides a direct mapping to the broad extent of liberty. In other words, non-aggression itself implies liberty.
The libertarian philosophy provides a moral framework that exists comfortably alongside a wide range of religious beliefs as well as atheism. However, it cannot be denied that differing religious beliefs among libertarians often inform different positions when the rights of individuals stand in conflict.
There is no reason to assume that Libertarians lack patriotism, as Goldberg comes close to implying. However, patriotism should never be used to justify aggression, whether that involves limiting expression or unnecessarily entering into conflicts abroad. So Goldberg is stretching when he credits Conservatives with a better grip on moral or patriotic principles than Libertarians.
Goldberg ends his piece with misgivings about the potential for Donald Trump to hijack the conservative movement, and in this I am sympathetic. About Trump, he says:
"He makes little or no effort to celebrate conservatism as a defense of the American tradition of liberty. He never talks about the Constitution, nor plausibly about religion. He makes scant mention of freedom. Instead, he taps into deep reservoirs of resentment and a kind of nationalism that has little to do with patriotism rightly understood."
Goldberg's piece serves as a reminder of Friedrich Hayek's great essay, "Why I Am Not a Conservative". While not referencing this essay explicitly, Goldberg mentions that Hayek and other European political philosophers have known a different kind of conservatism than what we know in the U.S. In Europe, conservatives:
"... sought to conserve the absolute rule of Church and Throne. The American Founders sought to overthrow even the partial rule of Church and Throne. And therein lies all the difference. In Europe, conservatism was understood as the opposite of classical liberalism. The reverse was the case in America, as Friedrich Hayek observed: 'What in Europe was called 'liberalism' was here the common tradition on which the American polity had been built: thus the defender of the American tradition was a liberal in the European sense.'"
Point well taken, and Hayek understood that difference all too well. His essay focuses on certain unflattering aspects of conservatism that ring true of the American version as well, including certain nationalistic and authoritarian tendencies, and a penchant for government involvement when it suits them:
"… neither moral nor religious ideals are proper objects of coercion, while both conservatives and socialists recognize no such limits. I sometimes feel that the most conspicuous attribute of [classical] liberalism that distinguishes it as much from conservatism as from socialism is the view that moral beliefs concerning matters of conduct which do not directly interfere with the protected sphere of other persons do not justify coercion."
My attraction to libertarian philosophy has much to do with the simple appeal of liberty and the ugliness of aggression. However, I think my original attraction to libertarianism was strongly related to the superiority of market forces as a form of social organization. Market forces cannot operate very effectively without liberty, and the healthy maintenance of liberty is facilitated by the superior resource allocation made possible by market forces. What a beautiful symbiosis!
Must Support For "Family Planning" Be Compelled?
Posted by pnuetz in Big Government, Liberty, Presumptive rights, Property Rights
Abortion, Compulsion, Federal funding, Free Association, Libertarians, Nonexclusive benefits, Planned Parenthood, Property Rights, Public goods, Reproductive rights, Sheldon Richman, Slate
Where do Libertarians stand on the issue of federal funding of Planned Parenthood? What sort of balance should be struck between the rights of conscientiously-objecting taxpayers and the rights of women to use Planned Parenthood (PP) services? The correct answer has nothing to do with abortion, an issue on which Libertarians lack unanimity. However, the existence of moral objections by any segment of society, whether considered valid by a majority or not, is an important consideration.
Do Individual Freedoms Require Taxpayer Support?
Sheldon Richman discusses the funding question on his Free Association blog in "Planned Parenthood, Social Peace and the Libertarian approach". He first makes a basic point: "… no one's freedom is violated by lack of access to taxpayer money." I agree, but this statement requires some context. For Libertarians, the baseline is a society in which individual liberty is a presumption. That cannot be the case if taxes and transfers dominate our economic lives. If we're all busy picking each other's pockets, then perhaps anyone can lay claim to a dollop of public funds to pay for any damn thing they want. But in a society that explicitly limits the powers of coercive government, private individuals cannot, on the public dime, lay claim to whatever they wish to compel from others. What they desire, after all, is almost always available privately. Therefore, the denial of public funding for PP does not constitute a denial of anyone's rights.
Individual's are free to exercise their reproductive or non-reproductive rights as they see fit, and to pay for related services themselves or by seeking a benefactor. Nothing is deprived to that individual other than an invalid claim on the belongings of others.
"Individual rights ultimately boil down to the single right to be free from aggression, that is, to self-ownership. Rights would be defined out of existence if they could be ignored whenever doing so would make someone else's objectives easier to accomplish. Such an approach to "rights" would turn rights theory on its head by making us a mere means to other people's ends rather than ends in ourselves."
Consistent Application of Property Rights
Richman asserts that the right of ownership of one's body applies equally to the right of individuals to the income they produce:
"Ironically, the right to choose abortion is defended as an application of the right of women to their bodies, that is, as a property right (self-ownership). Another implication of the right to one's own body is the right to control the fruits of one's labor (income). No coherent theory of rights can permit a clash of the right to one's body with the right to the fruits of one's labor. Thus implicit in the pro-choice case is an argument against tax funding of Planned Parenthood (and anything else), that is, against taxation itself."
Leftist elites say that a denial of public funding for PP is tantamount to a denial of service to low-income women. Richman asks the elites to put up or shut up: if they believe the services in question are critical, they are free support PP financially, but they much prefer to extract resources from taxpayers without regard to possible moral objections.
Protection of Religious and Moral Principles
Richman adds the following thoughts on public funding of Planned Parenthood near the end of his post:
"Reasonable people of all persuasions should see that it is simply unreasonable to force people to finance an organization they find morally offensive. Thomas Jefferson famously said, 'To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical.' Compelling men and women to furnish contributions for the performance of services they deem immoral (whether or not they are) is worse."
Supporters of public PP funding have sought to deflect morality-based opposition with the contention that abortions represent only 3% of PP's services, but Slate debunked that claim over two years ago. It was based on a count of tests and procedures performed, not on revenue. PP also claims that tax funds never pay for abortion, but as Richman points out, once available, the revenue is fungible and may be used to cover the cost of any procedure. In short, the argument is specious.
The Public Good Argument Is Weak
One more elephant in the PP funding debate concerns the appropriate functions of government. Does PP provide a truly "public" good, one having benefits that are nonexclusive to the primary user? Health services are sometimes assumed to confer public benefits; that is an easy argument in the case of infectious diseases and to some extent for medical research, but not for most health services. The benefits of individual health services are largely private, providing little justification for government funding of PP from a public finance perspective.
Collective Action Needs Strict Limits
Collective action should be confined to the provision of public goods, but even then it can be fraught with conflicts, such as the difficulty of accommodating pacifists during wartime. A truly liberal society will do all it can to accommodate diverse beliefs by allowing objectors to opt out, if possible, or avoiding the funding of private activities, especially those over which there is significant dissent. Under no circumstances should one be compelled to pay for private services that they find to be morally objectionable.
Will ET Be a Socialist?
Posted by pnuetz in Capitalism, Socialism, Space Travel
B.K. Marcus, Capitalism, Carl Sagan, central planning, Colonizing Mars, Elon Musk, Enrico Fermi, Extraterrestrials, F.A. Hayek, Fermi Paradox, Huffington Post, Interstellar Travel, io9, Large Hadron Collider, NASA, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Planned Society, Private Space Exploration, Public goods, Self-Replicating Machines, SETI, Socialism, SpaceX, The Freeman, The Great Filter, Tim Urban
If we are ever visited or contacted by agents from an extraterrestrial civilization, what kind of society will they come from? The issue is given scant attention, if any, in discussions of extraterrestrial life, at least according to this interesting piece in The Freeman by B.K. Marcus. The popular view, and that of many scientists, seems to be that the alien society will be dominated by an authoritarian central government. Must that be the case? Marcus notes the negative views taken by such scientific authorities as Neil deGrasse Tyson toward laissez faire capitalism, and even Carl Sagan "… could only imagine science funded by government." Of course, Tyson and Sagan cannot be regarded as authorities on economic affairs. However, I admit that I have fallen into the same trap regarding extraterrestrial visitors: that they will come from a socialist society with strong central command. On reflection, like Marcus, I do not think this view is justified.
One explanation for the default view that extraterrestrial visitors will be socialists is that people uncritically accept the notion that an advanced society is a planned society. This runs counter to mankind's experience over the past few centuries: individual freedom, unfettered trade, capitalism and a spontaneous social order have created wealth and advancement beyond the wildest dreams of earlier monarchs. Anyone with a passing familiarity with data on world economic growth, or with F.A. Hayek, should know this, but it Is often overlooked. Central planners cannot know the infinitely detailed and dynamic information on technologies, resource availability, costs and preferences needed to plan a society with anything close to the success of one arranged through the voluntary cooperation of individual actors.
Many of us have a strong memory of government domination of space exploration, so we tend to think of such efforts as the natural province of government. Private contractors were heavily involved in those efforts, but the funding and high-level management of space missions (NASA in the U.S.) was dominated by government. Today, private space exploration is a growth industry, and it is likely that some of the greatest innovations and future space endeavors will originate in the private sector.
Another explanation for the popular view is the daunting social challenges that would be faced by crews in interstellar travel (IST). Given a relatively short life span, a colonizing mission would have to involve families and perhaps take multiple generations to reach its destination. There is a view that the mini-society on such a ship would require a command and control structure. Perhaps, but private property rights and a certain level of democratization would be advantageous. In any case, that carries no implication about the society on the home planet nor the eventual structure of a colony.
A better rationale for the default view of socialist ETs involves a public goods argument. The earth and mankind face infrequent but potentially catastrophic hazards, such as rogue asteroids and regions of strong radiation as the sun orbits the center of the Milky Way galaxy. These risks are shared, which implies that technological efforts to avert such hazards, or to perpetuate mankind by colonizing other worlds, are pure public goods. That means government has a classic role in providing for such efforts, as long as the expected benefits outweigh the costs. The standard production tradeoff discussed in introductory economics classes is "guns versus butter", or national defense (a pure public good) versus private consumption. IST by an alien civilization could well require such a massive diversion of resources to the public sector that only an economically dominant central government could manage it. Or so it might seem.
As already noted, private entrepreneurs have debunked the presumed necessity that government must dominate space exploration. In fact, Elon Musk and his company SpaceX hope to colonize Mars. His motives sound altruistic, and in some sense the project sounds like the private provision of a public good. Here is an interpretation by Tim Urban quoted at the link (where I have inserted a substitute for the small time-scale analog used by the author):
"Now—if you owned a hard drive with an extraordinarily important Excel doc on it, and you knew that the hard drive pretty reliably tended to crash [from time to time] … what's the very obvious thing you'd do?
You'd copy the document onto a second hard drive.
That's why Elon Musk wants to put a million people on Mars."
Musk has other incentives, however. The technology needed to colonize Mars will also pay handsome dividends in space mining applications. Moreover, if they are successful, there will come a time when Mars is a destination commanding a fare. Granted, this is not IST, but as technology advances through inter-planetary travel and colonization, there is a strong likelihood that future Elon Musks will be involved in the first steps outside of our solar system.
While SpaceX has raised its capital from private sources, it receives significant revenue from government contracts, so there is a level of dependence on public space initiatives. However, the argument made by Marcus at the first link above, that IST by ETs is less likely (or impossible) if they live under a socialist regime, is not based primarily on recent experience with private entrepreneurial efforts like Musk's. Instead, it has to do with the inability of socialist regimes to generate wealth, especially the massive wealth necessary to accomplish IST.
Discussions of ETs (or the lack thereof) often center around a question known as the Fermi Paradox, after the physicist Enrico Fermi. He basically asked: if the billions and billions of star systems, even in our own galaxy, are likely to harbor a respectable number of advanced civilizations, where are they? Why haven't we heard from them? My friend John Crawford objects that this is no paradox at all, given the vastness of space and the difficulty and likely expense of IST. There may be advanced civilizations in the cosmos that simply have not been able to tackle the problem, at least beyond their own stellar neighborhood. No doubt about it, IST is hard!
I have argued to Crawford that there should be civilizations covering a wide range of development at any point in time. In only the past hundred years, humans have increased the speed at which they travel from less than 50 miles per hour (mph) to at least 9,600 mph. The speed of light is approximately 270,000 times faster that that! At our current top speed, it would take almost 50% longer to reach our nearest neighboring star, Alpha Centauri, than the entire span of human existence to-date. With that kind of limitation, there is no paradox at all! But I would not be surprised if, over the next 1,000 years, advances in propulsion technology bring our top speed to within one-tenth of the speed of light, and perhaps much more, making IST a more reasonable proposition, at least in our "neighborhood". There may be civilizations that have already done so.
Answers to the Fermi Paradox often involve a concept called the Great Filter. This excellent HuffPo article by Tim Urban on the Fermi Paradox provides a good survey of theories on the Great Filter. The idea is that there are significant factors that prevent civilizations from advancing beyond certain points. Some of these are of natural origin, such as asteroids and radiation exposure. Others might be self-inflicted, such as a thermonuclear catastrophe or some other kind of technology gone bad. Some have suggested that the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland could be a major hazard to our existence, though physicists insist otherwise. Another example is the singularity, when artificial intelligence overtakes human intelligence, creating a possibility that evil machines will do us in. The point of these examples is that some sudden or gradual development could prevent a civilization from surviving indefinitely. These kinds of filters provide an explanation for the Fermi Paradox.
More broadly, there could be less cataclysmic impediments to development that prevent a society from ever reaching an advanced stage. These would also qualify as filters of a sort. Perhaps the smart ETs lack, or failed to evolve, certain physical characteristics that are crucial for advancement or IST. Or their home planet might be light on certain kinds of resources. Or perhaps an inferior form of social organization has limited development, with inadequate wealth creation and technologies to transcend the physical limitations imposed by their world. On a smaller than planetary scale, we have witnessed such an impediment in action many times over: socialism. The inefficiencies of central planning place limits on economic growth, and while high authorities might dictate a massive dedication of resources toward science, technology and capital-intensive space initiatives, the shift away from personal consumption would come at a greater and greater cost. The end game may involve a collapse of production and a primitive existence. So the effort may be unsustainable and could lead to social upheaval; a more enlightened regime would attempt to move the society toward a more benign allocation of resources. Whether they can ever accomplish IST is at least contingent on their ability to create wealth.
Socialism is a filter on the advancement of societies. ETs capable of interstellar travel could not be spawned by a society dominated by socialism and central planning. While government might play a significant role in a successful ET civilization, one capable of IST, only a heavy reliance on free-market capitalism can improve the odds of advancing beyond a certain primitive state. Capitalism is a relatively easy ticket to the wealth required for an advanced and durable civilization, and conceivably to the reaches of the firmament.
Unfortunately, there is absolutely no guarantee that capitalistic ETs will be friendly toward competing species, or that they will respect our property rights. They might be big, smart cats and find us mouse-like and quite tasty. Their children might make us perform circuses, like fleas. In any case, if ETs get this far, it's probably because they want our world and our resources. My friend Crawford says that they won't get here in any case. He believes that the difficulty of IST will force them to focus on their own neighborhood. Maybe, but on long enough time scales, who knows?
I would add a caveat to conclusions about the strength of the filters discussed above. A capitalistic society might reach a point at which it could send artificially intelligent, self-replicating machines into space to harvest resources. Those machines might well survive beyond the end of the civilization that created them. Conceivably, those machines could act autonomously or they could take coordinated action. But we haven't heard from them either!
For a little more reading, here is SETI's description of the Fermi Paradox, and here is a post from io9 on the Great Filter.


ColoGuard's Brooklyn data center 2 is located at 470 Vanderbilt Avenue., Brooklyn, NY 11238. The data center provides office space for work, conference rooms, free Wi-Fi connections, and free onsite parking facility.
The data center offers flexible colocation space ranging from small 1U server, 2U to 4U server, quarter cabinet, half cabinet, full cabinet, and customized cage space. The data center is regularly audited and is a certified SSAE 16 SOC II facility, and offers solutions meeting the rigorous compliance requirements of HIPAA. The data center provides excellent security measure including 24x7x365 onsite security guards and multiple CCTV cameras systems monitoring and recording all activity with archiving of footage. The access to data center is strictly limited through the use of key card access system and pulse sensitive biometric scanners, and extra security is provided by mantrap entry. The data center is equipped with gas based fire suppression system to extinguish any fire spark.
The Brooklyn data center 2 is reliable and fault tolerant power infrastructure. The entire critical infrastructure is protected by Liebert UPS system in N+ 2 redundant configurations. The emergency power to the data center is provided by N+2 diesel generators on prolonged power outage. The data center delivers redundant power circuits in A+B configurations to each cabinet, and has redundant PDUs and transfer switches for reliable power system. The entire power system components are regularly tested by doing heavy load and fail-over testing. The data center uses HVAC units in N+ 2 redundant configurations for effectively moderating cooling and humidity levels in the facility.
ColoGuard's 470 Vanderbilt Avenue. data center is a carrier neutral facility with connectivity to multiple Tier I carriers and service providers. The data center supplies two diverse network connections from two separate core switches with one as hot standby ensuring no single point of failure. The network utilizes BGP routing topology along with use of several network metric tools to determine the quickest and most reliable paths. The core BGP network is built on Cisco 6500 series switches connected to core server network based on Cisco 3500 series Catalyst switches. 24x7x365 NOC technical staff provides support and monitoring services. The data center provides free remote hands services, free hard/soft reboots services, and many other managed services.
I would like a quote from ColoGuard - Brooklyn Data Center #2.


text:
Arlington is a former commuter railroad train station in the Arlington section of Kearny, Hudson County, New Jersey. Located on Garafola Place between the Forest and Elm Street intersections, the station served trains on NJ Transit's Boonton Line. The station, which contained two low-level side platforms, operated trains between Hoboken Terminal and locations west to Dover and Hackettstown. The next station to the east was Hoboken while the station to the west was Rowe Street in Bloomfield.

Railroad service through the Arlington neighborhood began on January 1, 1873 with the introduction of the Montclair Railway between Pavonia Terminal in Jersey City to Monks in West Milford. The station was one of two in Kearny for the line, with the other one at West Arlington. This line became and the New York and Greenwood Lake Railroad, operated by the Erie Railroad until October 17, 1960. The line became part of the merged Greenwood Lake-Boonton Line in 1963. The service continued into NJ Transit, becoming the Boonton Line. Arlington station closed, along with Rowe Street and Benson Street station in Glen Ridge on September 20, 2002 in advance of the opening of the Montclair Connection.

Station layout

Accident

On September 8, 1965, three Kearny High School students were struck and killed by a two car Erie Lackawanna train. The trio, on their way to the first day of the fall term, crossed the tracks at the Elm Street crossing next to the station despite the gate being down. Thinking the warning lights were for a departing east bound train (towards Hoboken), the three students went around the barrier. A boxcar parked in a siding next to the station blocked the victims from seeing the oncoming west bound express train.

All three (Robert Floyd, 16, Rodney Murdock, 16, and Richard Collins, 15) were killed instantly. Both the train's fireman and conductor were later arraigned on charges of manslaughter. Following the accident, the town of Kearny began to have physical guards at the crossing during school hours.

See also
Benson Street – First of two additional stations that were removed with the Montclair Connection.
Rowe Street – Second of two additional stations that were removed with the Montclair Connection.
West Arlington station – Second of two stations in Arlington for the Erie Lackawanna Railway.

Bibliography

References

Railway stations in the United States opened in 1873
Railway stations closed in 2002
Former railway stations in New Jersey
Former NJ Transit stations
Former Erie Railroad stations
1873 establishments in New Jersey
Demolished railway stations in the United States
Kearny, New Jersey
2002 disestablishments in New Jersey

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Mantras are tools for thinking—worshiping and meditating on mantras shapes the mind and makes it pure.
The greatest of these is OM, mother of all sounds. Composed of the elements A,U,M—signifying the creation, preservation, and dissolution of the world—OM is the manifestation of bindu, the creative impulse of the cosmos. OM is the source of all mantras and seed syllables.
OM is described in the Mandukya Upanisad as the best, the highest, and the most wonderful of all sounds. It stands for both change and changelessness. Its components are A,U,M. A represents the waking state. U is the sound made between the opening and closing of the mouth; it symbolizes the dream state. M is the third sound, made with the lips shut; it is the state of deep sleep. The silence which follows is the consummation of the syllable's power—peaceful, unified, and unutterable. When pronounced together they recreate the alpha and omega of existence. OM is the seed character of the universe.
Some realize the unity of Brahman-Atman in OM while others find in it the nonduality of Buddha-nature; yet OM itself retains its position as a symbol of supreme liberation, beyond words and concepts. OM is the ultimate word of affirmation and should be spoken and written with confidence.


text:
Q: Error: Actions must be plain objects. Use custom middleware for async actions. React-redux error index.js
import store from "./store";
import { createStore } from 'redux';
import reducers from './reducers';
import { Provider } from 'react-redux';

console.log('init state', store.getState());

ReactDOM.render(
    <Provider store={ store }>
        <App />
    </Provider>,
    document.getElementById('root')
);

registerServiceWorker();

action.js
import * as types from "./types";
import axios from 'axios';
import { incrementProgress, decrementProgress } from "./progress";

const userLogin = username => ({
  type: types.AUTH_LOGIN,
  username,
});

const userLogout = () => ({
  type: types.AUTH_LOGOUT,
});

const fakeLoginRequest = (username, password) => {
    alert(username, password)
}

export const doLogin = username => {
    alert(username)
};

export const doLogout = () => dispatch => {
  dispatch(userLogout());
};

LoginForm.jsx - Dumb Component
class LoginForm extends React.Component {

    constructor(props) {
        super(props);
        this.state = {
            username: '',
            password: '',
        };

        this.handleClick = this.handleClick.bind(this);
    }

    fakeLogin = e => {
        const { username } = this.state;
        e.preventDefault();
        if (!username) {
          return alert("Provide a username.");
        }
        this.props.doLogin(username);
        this.setState({ username: "" });
      };

    render() {

        return (

            <MuiThemeProvider>

               <TextField
                 hintText="Enter your Username"
                 floatingLabelText="Username"
                 onChange = {(event,newValue) => this.setState({username:newValue})}
                 />

                 <TextField
                   type="password"
                   hintText="Enter your Password"
                   floatingLabelText="Password"
                   onChange = {(event,newValue) => this.setState({password:newValue})}
                   />

                 <RaisedButton label="Submit" primary={true} style={style} onClick={this.fakeLogin}/>

             </MuiThemeProvider>

    );
}
}

export default LoginForm;

LoginPage.jsx - Wise Component
const LoginPage = ({ auth, doLogin, doLogout }) => (

      <NavBar/>

                <LoginForm doLogin={doLogin} doLogout={doLogout} auth={auth} />

);
const mapStateToProps = state => ({
  auth: state.auth,
});

export default connect(mapStateToProps, { doLogin, doLogout })(LoginPage);

I am totally new to react-redux and I am trying to create a flow that recognizes the current login status of the user. What I am trying to with the codes above is that I wanted to make sure that the username and password pass correctly and alerts them.
However, I get the error
Error: Actions must be plain objects. Use custom middleware for async actions. React-redux error.
On this.props.doLogin(username); of the LoginForm.jsx. It seems like it's also related to the onClick of the button. I don't understand because the function that I am calling is not async.
What am I doing wrongly?

A: Like the error says, your action creators have to return an object.
export const doLogin = username => {
    console.log('READ THE DOCS. IT IS VERY HELPFUL TO READ THE DOCS.');
    console.log(username);
    return {
        type: 'YOUR_ACTION_TYPE',
        payload: { whatever: 'you', want: 'it', to: 'be' }
    };
};

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Blog Blog Posts	 From D to Z?
As you may already know, not all diamonds are crystal clear. Chemical imperfections and structural flaws can create diamonds of virtually any color of the rainbow. In some cases, these colors are brilliant and beautiful–and actually increase the value of a diamond. The slight discoloration of an otherwise translucent diamond, however, is considered a negative. That's why "colorless" diamonds are usually graded based upon a standardized scale running from D (perfectly clear) to Z (strong yellowish tint.) This seemingly odd arrangement actually has a very logical origin. No one is completely objective, and jewelers are no exception. Because most of us have been dealing with grading that starts at A for our whole lives, it was decided that people could be more impartial if they graded diamonds on a fresh scale that did not' carry any previous associations. Thus the "D to Z" grading scale was born.


text:
Any Cathy Dennis fans here?
By Bucksfan_Margo,
July 30, 2007 in Music Discussion
Bucksfan_Margo 0
Bucksfan_Margo
Hi all, I was just wondering if any of you guys here like Cathy Dennis. I remember hearing her music played on radio when I was in 1st or 2nd grade. She is such a great musician with great song writing ability. I wonder what she is doing now... I MISS HER!
blind-fitter 0
blind-fitter
For about a decade now, Cathy Dennis has enjoyed a successful career as a songwriter, having penned quite a number of chart-toppers for other distinguished recording artists.
In recent years, her greatest success has come as a songwriter: in 1996 she co-wrote "Bumper to Bumper", which was the B-Side to Spice Girls' first hit single "Wannabe". Five of her compositions have reached number one in Britain. "Never Had a Dream Come True" and "Have You Ever", written with Chris Braide (both recorded by S Club 7), "Anything Is Possible" (recorded by Will Young), and "Toxic" (recorded by Britney Spears) all reached number one, with "Toxic" and "Never Had a Dream Come True" also hitting the Top 10 in the United States. Her highest-selling composition, "Can't Get You Out of My Head" (recorded by Kylie Minogue), spent four weeks at number one in Britain, rekindled interest in Minogue in America, where it hit #7 on the Hot 100, and sold over three million copies worldwide to become the world's second highest selling single in 2001. "Can't Get You Out of My Head" also won Dennis an Ivor Novello Award for the year's most performed composition. She also won this award two years later for "Anything Is Possible" (Cathy Dennis,Chris Braide). In the US, Cathy received the Billboard Award for Female Artist of the Year in 1991. Her highest musical accolade state-side is the Grammy Award for Best Dance Recording for "Come Into My World" recorded by Kylie Minogue (who is also a recipient of the award).
She co-wrote the Pop Idol theme for the television series, and in Britain and the United States contestants Will Young, Gareth Gates, Kelly Clarkson, and Clay Aiken have recorded her songs as their first singles. Other artists who have recorded her songs include Dannii Minogue, Delta Goodrem, Céline Dion, Spice Girls, Emma Bunton, Ronan Keating, Rachel Stevens, Hear'Say, S Club Juniors, P!nk, Brooke Hogan, Michelle McManus, Hooverphonic and Jentina.
She has recently collaborated with the British singer Sophie Ellis-Bextor, and song-writer Greg Kurstin, on a track called "Catch You", the first track Sophie hadn't been involved with the writing of since her days in theaudience. It peaked at #8 on the UK singles chart. Ellis-Bextor's album entitled Trip the Light Fantastic is set to be released in May 2007 through Fascination Records.
As of 2007, it has been confirmed that Cathy has been working with Roisin Murphy on her second solo album due to be released sometime in 2007.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Anatolij Viktorovics Fegyukin,  (Voronyezs, 1952. január 26. – 2020. július 29.) olimpiai bajnok és ezüstérmes szovjet válogatott orosz kézilabdázó.

Pályafutása
1978-ig a Zenyit Moszkva, utána a CSZKA Moszkva játékosa volt.

A szovjet válogatottban 103 alkalommal szerepelt és 222 gólt szerzett.
Tagja volt 1976-os olimpiai bajnok és az 1980-as ezüstérmes csapatnak.

Sikerei, díjai

 Olimpiai játékok
 aranyérmes: 1976, Montréal
 ezüstérmes: 1980, Moszkva

Jegyzetek

Források
 Olympedia – Anatoly Fedyukin

1952-ben született személyek
2020-ban elhunyt személyek
Szovjet kézilabdázók
Orosz kézilabdázók
Szovjet olimpiai bajnokok
Szovjet olimpiai ezüstérmesek
Olimpiai bajnokok (kézilabda)
Olimpiai bajnokok (1976)


text:
3-acetyl-6-chloro-2H-chromen-2-one
Deepak Chopra, K. N. Venugopal, B. S. Jayashree, T. N Guru Row
Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Manipal College of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Manipal
In the title compound, C11H7ClO3, the coumarin system is planar and makes a dihedral angle of 6.6(1)° with the acetyl group. The crystal structure is stabilized by C - H⋯O hydrogen bonds and aromatic π-π interactions.
Acta Crystallographica Section E: Structure Reports Online
Dihedral angle
Chopra, D., Venugopal, K. N., Jayashree, B. S., & Row, T. N. G. (2006). 3-acetyl-6-chloro-2H-chromen-2-one. Acta Crystallographica Section E: Structure Reports Online, 62(6). https://doi.org/10.1107/S1600536806016990
Chopra, Deepak ; Venugopal, K. N. ; Jayashree, B. S. ; Row, T. N Guru. / 3-acetyl-6-chloro-2H-chromen-2-one. In: Acta Crystallographica Section E: Structure Reports Online. 2006 ; Vol. 62, No. 6.
@article{a256e6b8c87643a9876511fd80a265b1,
title = "3-acetyl-6-chloro-2H-chromen-2-one",
abstract = "In the title compound, C11H7ClO3, the coumarin system is planar and makes a dihedral angle of 6.6(1)° with the acetyl group. The crystal structure is stabilized by C - H⋯O hydrogen bonds and aromatic π-π interactions.",
author = "Deepak Chopra and Venugopal, {K. N.} and Jayashree, {B. S.} and Row, {T. N Guru}",
doi = "10.1107/S1600536806016990",
journal = "Acta Crystallographica Section E: Structure Reports Online",
Chopra, D, Venugopal, KN, Jayashree, BS & Row, TNG 2006, '3-acetyl-6-chloro-2H-chromen-2-one', Acta Crystallographica Section E: Structure Reports Online, vol. 62, no. 6. https://doi.org/10.1107/S1600536806016990
3-acetyl-6-chloro-2H-chromen-2-one. / Chopra, Deepak; Venugopal, K. N.; Jayashree, B. S.; Row, T. N Guru.
In: Acta Crystallographica Section E: Structure Reports Online, Vol. 62, No. 6, 01.06.2006.
T1 - 3-acetyl-6-chloro-2H-chromen-2-one
AU - Chopra, Deepak
AU - Venugopal, K. N.
AU - Jayashree, B. S.
AU - Row, T. N Guru
N2 - In the title compound, C11H7ClO3, the coumarin system is planar and makes a dihedral angle of 6.6(1)° with the acetyl group. The crystal structure is stabilized by C - H⋯O hydrogen bonds and aromatic π-π interactions.
AB - In the title compound, C11H7ClO3, the coumarin system is planar and makes a dihedral angle of 6.6(1)° with the acetyl group. The crystal structure is stabilized by C - H⋯O hydrogen bonds and aromatic π-π interactions.
U2 - 10.1107/S1600536806016990
DO - 10.1107/S1600536806016990
JO - Acta Crystallographica Section E: Structure Reports Online
JF - Acta Crystallographica Section E: Structure Reports Online
Chopra D, Venugopal KN, Jayashree BS, Row TNG. 3-acetyl-6-chloro-2H-chromen-2-one. Acta Crystallographica Section E: Structure Reports Online. 2006 Jun 1;62(6). https://doi.org/10.1107/S1600536806016990


text:
Cecilio Pla y Gallardo (Valencia, 22 de noviembre de 1860-Madrid, 4 de agosto de 1934) fue un pintor español. Gran parte de su obra se encuentra en la Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos de Valencia.

Biografía

El pintor
En su niñez estudió música en la Escuela de Artesanos de Valencia, siguiendo los deseos de su padre que era director de banda y encargado de partituras del Teatro Principal, continuando sus estudios posteriormente en el Instituto San Pablo y en la Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos en Valencia.

Tras conseguir medalla de plata en la Exposición de Valencia de 1879 y otros premios, se traslada a Madrid en 1880 con su amigo Carlos Mateu. Allí ingresó en la Academia de San Fernando de Madrid, siendo además discípulo de Emilio Sala.

A los veinte años de edad continuó su formación viajando por Europa. En 1880 se establece en Roma, viajando por el resto de Italia, Francia y Portugal. Desde Italia comienza a enviar obras, la mayoría de ellas escenas de género costumbristas en las que se observa la influencia de Mariano Fortuny, con las que participa en las Exposiciones Nacionales de Bellas Artes y con las que consigue numerosos galardones. Los primeros reconocimientos en dichas muestras, terceras medallas, llegaron en 1884 y 1887 por "Dante" y "El entierro de Santa Leocadia", pinturas de clara inspiración italiana. En 1892 y 1895 recibió segundas medallas, y en 1899, 1901, 1904 y 1912 otros galardones y condecoraciones. También resultó premiado con una Medalla de Honor en la Exposición de Valencia de 1899 y con la Exposición Universal de París de 1900 y en la Exposición de Valencia de 1910.Su obra, a veces decorativa, goza de un dibujo cercano a la sensibilidad modernista, que alterna con otros ejemplos de pincelada impresionista.
En 1910 inició su carrera como docente en la Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando sustituyendo a Emilio Sala al frente de la cátedra de "Estética del color y procedimientos pictóricos", que ejercería hasta su jubilación en 1931. En dicha cátedra tiene como discípulos a Cossío, Juan Gris y José María López Mezquita. Su labor teórica se vio completada con la publicación del ensayo Cartilla del arte pictórico. En 1924 es nombrado académico de San Fernando, ejerciendo su magisterio notable influencia en los círculos artísticos conservadores. Destacó ampliamente como dibujante, tal y como atestiguan los calendarios de Unión Española de Explosivos de 1906, 1907 y 1908. En ellos aúna el retrato burgués y el folklore valenciano con el carácter festivo de la pirotecnia y el lúdico de la caza.

Casado con Valentina Navarro, tuvieron una hija llamada Josefa Pla Navarro, citada Pepita por su padre en las obras en las que la retrata.

Decorador de interiores

Como decorador completó en solitario, debido al fallecimiento de Emilio Sala durante su realización, los murales de los salones principales del Casino de Madrid que había iniciado junto a su maestro. Otros lugares emblemáticos de la capital en los que intervino son el Círculo de Bellas Artes y el desaparecido palacio de Medinaceli de la plaza de Colón.

Ilustrador gráfico
Es fundamental resaltar su faceta de ilustrador gráfico. Colaborando con varias revistas (El Apunte Artístico, La Ilustración Española y Americana, La Risa y Blanco y Negro). Su etapa más fecunda como ilustrador, desde 1893 hasta el 1910, coincide con los años en que se consolida como pintor y la evolución de la técnica empleada en la ilustración es paralela a la que se produce en su obra de caballete, en la que parte del realismo para llegar al naturalismo. Utiliza una línea de dibujo muy precisa, aunque en los últimos años se aprecia la evolución del autor hacia trazos menos definidos y rasgos más amplios y desdibujados.

Características de su obra

La obra de este pintor se caracteriza por una gran diversidad, tanto en temas como en ámbitos de expresión. Utilizó para pintar todo tipo de soportes (papel, cartulina, cartón, lienzo), de técnicas (óleo, gouache, acuarela, carboncillo, lápiz) y de temas (retratos femeninos, masculinos e infantiles, escenas costumbristas o populares, paisajes urbanos y rurales, interiores con luz natural y artificial y escenas en la playa). Vivió y creó en dos siglos diferentes, influido por un lado, por la luz mediterránea y por otro, por lo cotidiano de la época, el ambiente y su gente, esa nueva burguesía de principios de siglo. Todo en sus obras se ve envuelto por el detalle, que se pierde en cierto modo cuando se traslada a grandes formatos, dentro de una atmósfera donde el silencio es envolvente tanto si los personajes están en frente o en pequeños grupos, como si están vueltos de espaldas.

Obra seleccionada

Pintura

 Señorita con cohete (1906). Cromotografía.
 Grupo valenciano en fiesta (1907). Acuarela y gouache sobre papel.
 Cazadores (1908). Gouache sobre papel.
 Niño con tazón. Óleo sobre lienzo.
 Paisaje rural. Óleo sobre tabla.
 Escena de playa. Óleo sobre tabla.
 Pinos mediterráneos. Óleo sobre tabla.
 La Verbena (1905). Óleo sobre papel adherido a lienzo (Museo Carmen Thyssen Málaga).
 Concurso Nacional de ganados. Óleo sobre lienzo.
 A los toros. Óleo sobre lienzo.
 Escena Estival. Óleo sobre lienzo.
 Playa de Salinas, Asturias. Óleo sobre lienzo.
 Retrato de D.Prudencio de Urcullu y Zulueta. Óleo sobre lienzo.
 Retrato de Doña Ubalda Cereijo Abella. Óleo sobre lienzo.
 Vista de pueblo. Óleo sobre lienzo/tabla.
 Los isidros de Madrid (1906). Óleo sobre lienzo.
 La Condesa de Yumuri (1906). Óleo sobre lienzo (Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao)

Dibujos-acuarela

 El fotógrafo. Lápiz/papel.
 Academia. Lápiz/papel.
 Copia de Wateau. Dibujo.
 Palacete junto al río. Lápiz/papel.
 Retrato de caballero. Carbón/papel.
 Personajes con sombrero. Lápiz/papel.
 Marina. Acuarela.
 Desnudo sentado. Dibujo.
 Estudio de desnudo masculino de espaldas. Carboncillo/papel.
 En el parque. Lápiz/papel.

Cecilio Plá en el cine
En 1980, se estrenó en España la película documental Cecilio Plá, dirigida por César F. Ardavin y producida por Aro Films, S.L.

Notas

Referencias

Enlaces externos

 Listado con fotos de obra seleccionada de Cecilio Plá
 Otra galería con sus pinturas
 Pintura valenciana a finales del siglo XIX y principios del XX

Pintores de Valencia
Pintores de España del siglo XIX
Pintores de España del siglo XX
Alumnado de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos
Pintores españoles con obra costumbrista
Ilustradores del modernismo madrileño
Luministas valencianos
Nacidos en Valencia
Fallecidos en Madrid


text:
Tag: Marriott-international
JW Marriott Caters to Multigenerational Travelers with Launch of 'Family by JW' Program
Featured Partners July 19, 2018 by DiversityInc Staff
Originally Published Marriott International. JW Marriott, part of Marriott International, today announced the launch of the brand's 'Family by JW' program, a new global initiative that underscores the importance of families spending quality time together. Through vibrant partnerships and non-profit collaborations, and with exclusive on-property experiences, Family by JW offers…
JW Marriott Nashville Debuts Downtown, Setting The Stage For Modern Design And Luxury Hospitality In Music City
Originally Published by Marriott International. Turnberry Associates and Marriott International announced the Grand Opening of JW Marriott Nashville, ideally situated steps from Music City's most treasured landmarks. The striking, 33-story glass tower transforms the iconic Nashville skyline and ushers in a new chapter for luxury hospitality and sophistication in one…
Marriott: W Hotels Strikes a Chord with Music City
Featured Partners July 3, 2018 by DiversityInc Staff
Originally Published by Marriott International. How do you make Music City USA even more exciting Set up a new stage for people to play. W Hotels Worldwide, part of Marriott International, announces the anticipated 2020 opening of W Nashville. Owned by Twelfth Avenue Realty Holdings, the new-build hotel is the…
Marriott International Celebrates Future Downtown Bethesda Headquarters with Groundbreaking Ceremony
Featured Partners June 22, 2018 by DiversityInc Staff
Originally Published by Marriott International. The Bernstein Companies and its joint venture partner Boston Properties marked a significant milestone as they broke ground on the future Marriott International headquarters and Marriott Hotel in downtown Bethesda, Maryland. J.W. Marriott Jr., Executive Chairman and Chairman of the Board of Marriott International, opened…
Marriott International Enhances Online Customer Journey of Arab Travelers
Originally Published by Marriott International. Marriott International, the world's leading hotel company, has today announced the relaunch of its Arabic website to enhance the online customer journey of the Arab traveler. With nearly 400 million Arabic speakers in 22 countries, the company is now providing an end-to-end solution for a…
Marriott International: Autograph Collection Hotels Debut In South Africa With Rebranding Of Five African Pride Hotels
Featured Partners May 25, 2018 by DiversityInc Staff
Originally Published by Marriott International. Autograph Collection, Marriott International's distinctive collection of thoughtfully designed independent hotels, today welcomed 5 African Pride Hotels to its global portfolio, marking the debut of the brand in South Africa. These hotels include, African Pride Melrose Arch Hotel, African Pride 15 On Orange Hotel, African…
Advice on Developing and Managing a Successful Career
Featured Partners News May 3, 2018 by DiversityInc Staff
At the 2018 DiversityInc Top 50 event, more than 400 people were in attendance during the day to hear best practices on effectively managing diversity and inclusion. Moderator: Shane Nelson, VP, Editor, DiversityInc Best Practices Panelists: Melissa Corwin, Vice President – HR, Diversity & Inclusion, AT&T Ted Acosta, Americas Vice…
Johnson & Johnson Claims the No. 1 Spot on DiversityInc's Top 50 Companies for Diversity List at D&I's Keystone Event
News Popular May 2, 2018 by Kaitlyn D'Onofrio
Johnson & Johnson took home the No. 1 spot on DiversityInc's Top 50 Companies for Diversity list in front of a record-breaking audience on Tuesday night. Nearly 1,000 guests, including 24 CEOs and presidents and 15 chief human resource officers from 34 companies, responsible for 1.9 million total employees worldwide,…
Marriott Hotels Continues to Spread Ideas and Conversation With TED Partnership
Featured Partners News April 30, 2018 by DiversityInc Staff
Following an exciting and inspiring first year, Marriott Hotels expands its partnership with idea engine, TED, to include even more innovative programming in its second year. The partnership included bringing creatively curated TED Talks to guest rooms, unique TED Fellows salons at hotels in popular destinations worldwide, plus thoughtful blog…
Marriott and FOOD & WINE Announce Full Lineup of Star-Studded Talent for Venice Food & Wine Festival
Featured Partners April 19, 2018 by DiversityInc Staff
JW Marriott Hotels & Resorts and FOOD & WINE are thrilled to announce the addition of notable talent for the inaugural Venice Food & Wine Festival, including award-winning singer and songwriter Emeli Sand, who will headline the festival's grand finale concert. Culinary legends, Michelin-starred Chef Missy Robbins, food artist, baker…