Mailbox reservations forecast

Current rate estimate: 1,080 places per hour.

People in front of you:

At the current rate, you will get Mailbox access at

which is in

NB: I now have access to Mailbox, so I don’t know what the pace is. Contact me if you would like to contribute data. Thanks to Marlena C and Ricco F for providing their data.

Data

24 @ProfJeffJarvis tweets that actually make sense

(Sorry for the extra space.)

iPod touch 3G as low cost iPhone

John Gruber on a 3G enabled iPod touch as the low cost iPhone:

It’s a fine idea, but without carrier support it wouldn’t work, and I don’t think any major carrier would support it. Data-only connections and VOIP for all “phone calls” are surely the future, but they are not the present.

US carriers won’t support it, but there won’t be a problem outside the US. And a low cost iPhone would mostly sell in non-US markets where carrier subsidies are not as dominant. American consumers already get a “free” iPhone 4, so a low cost iPhone doesn’t have to work in the US (but T-Mobile might still support it).

Annette Vilhelmsen har ret [Danish]

Vores hårdtarbejdende erhvervs- og vækstminister er under beskydning for at udtale at erhvervslivet saboterer væksten så de kan få en borgerlig regering valgt. Jeg er ked af at se at hun nu trækker i land, for hun har højst sandsynligt ret.

Private virksomheder eksisterer for at profitmaksimere. Den værste krise er ovre nu og virksomhederne har nu mulighed for at investere, men de kan styre hvornår de investerer. En borgerlig regering kan give gunstigere forhold for firmaerne og højere profit, for eksempel gennem lave skatter og lempelig regulering. Det kan derfor, afhængig af nogle antagelser om blandt andet diskonteringsrater, betale sig at udskyde investeringerne hvis det kan forsinke væksten til næste valgperiode og dermed øge sandsynligheden for at en borgerlig regering bliver valgt.

Hvad hvis det viser sig at Vilhelmsen og jeg tager fejl og virksomhederne ikke saboterer væksten? Så burde aktionærerne i danske virksomheder spørge ledelsen hvorfor de ikke saboterer og dermed ikke profitmaksimerer som de har pligt til.

Der er naturligvis et koordinationsproblem: hvis langt de fleste firmaer udskyder investeringer, kan andre firmaer fortsætte med at investere og dermed vokse på flertallets bekostning. Det vil føre til at alle firmaer dropper sabotagen og investerer.

I dette tilfælde er det dog tvivlsomt om en enkelt firmaer kan profitere ved at afvige fra ligevægten. Hvis alle firmaer holder tilbage med investeringerne, betyder det at den samlede efterspørgsel i økonomien er lav. Det betyder at enkelte firmaer ikke kan profitere ved at investere og udvide kapaciteten. Når den borgerlige regering så bliver valgt, er det et signal til alle firmaer om at de skal investere samtidigt. Dette øger efterspørgslen og gør at den nye kapacitet kan udnyttes fuldt ud.

Hvordan havnede man så oprindeligt i en ligevægt med lave investeringer? Det kan ganske simpelt være på grund af krisen at der i første periode slet ikke var vilkår for investering, selv hvis alle firmaerne investerede samtidig. De kan også have koordineret sig frem til lave investeringer med valget af den venstreorienterede regering som koordinationssignal.

Erhvervsministeren har vist at hun forstår spillet, men spørgsmålet er om hun også har en strategi for at komme ud af lavvækstligevægten. Hendes første forsøg var at afsløre sabotagen. Det er nu opgivet. En anden mulighed er at få en af de største virksomheder til øge eller fremskynde investeringerne. Heldigvis har hun stor indflydelse på en af landets suverænt største virksomheder.

Opdatering: Jacob Christensen har nu rent faktisk læst det oprindelige interview og udtaler: “mit indtryk er at AV ikke fanger effekterne af en likviditetsfælde og at hun heller ikke forstår omsætningen af individuelle incitamenter til kollektiv aktion.” Øv.

Aaron Swartz NYC memorial service

Aaron’s New York memorial service will be held in the Great Hall of the Cooper Union on Saturday, January 19th, at 4pm. I can’t think of a better venue.

Aaron Swartz’s potential prison sentence in context

A lot of reports about Aaron’s criminal case have centered around reports that the maximum sentence for his alleged crimes was 50 years (in the superceding indictment). It’s also been reported that the prosecutor was actually going to seek 7 years if he went to trial, and that he would likely get close to that because the judge in the case was known to be a harsh sentencer.

I wanted to compare that possible sentence—84 months—with other sentences. The last year that statistics are available for is 2011. Many federal offenses weren’t tried at all in the District of Massachusetts that year, so I looked at national medians (Table 7).

84 months would be more than the median sentences for these offenses:

Offense Length of imprisonment
Manslaughter 39 months
Assault 30 months
Robbery 65 months
Arson 60 months
Drug trafficking 60 months
Forgery/counterfeiting 18 months
Racketeering/extortion 60 months
Arson 60 months
Firearms 60 months

A sentence of 84 months would have been less than or equal to the median for these offenses:

Offense Length of imprisonment
Murder 210 months
Kidnapping/hostage taking 188 months
Sexual abuse 108 months
Child pornography 84 months

There you have it. According to the government, Aaron’s crimes justified a punishment as severe as that typical for child pornography, and less than murder, kidnapping or sexual abuse, but more severe than for arson, drug trafficking, manslaughter and firearms offenses.

Update: Tim Lee says the judge might have sentenced him to 10 years, or 120 months.

Default

With the platinum coin dead, the small probability that the United States will default on its debt or other obligations has ticked up significantly. While some commentators say default won’t happen because it’s illegal, and therefore the possibility and potential consequences are not even worth considering, I think we should absolutely study the effects of default on the economy, the financial markets, and Treasury yields. I tend to think that in the short term, the panic caused by default will actually cause yields to fall as investors buy safe (!) Treasury bonds, but let’s look at the last time the United States defaulted on its debt.

That happened in 1979 and the event is the subject of an article by finance professors Terry Zivney and Richard Marcus. The Treasury was unable to pay Treasury bills maturing on April 26, 1979, May 3, and May 10, 1979 (emphasis added):

The Treasury blamed the delay on an unprecedented volume of participation by small investors, on the failure to Congress to act in a timely fashion on the debt ceiling legislation in April, and on an unanticipated failure of word processing equipment used to prepare check schedules. Though these conditions were temporary, in truth—this was the day the United States defaulted.

The United States defaulted on a total of $122 million in T-bills. Based on prevailing interest rates at the time, the holders of those T-bills lost $325,000 in interest, and some of the investors filed suit in federal court in California. The Treasury pointed to Smyth v. United States, a 1937 Supreme Court decision which held that “interest does not run upon claims against the Government even though there has been a default in the payment of principal,” but decided to offer compensation anyway.

The authors looked at what happened to yields on T-bills in the period after the default. They conclude that while there was also a flight to quality in the weeks after default, the default did have a lasting effect on yields:

Although causality cannot be established with only one observation—the sole instance of a U.S. T-bill default—a careful review of the Wall Street Journal failed to uncover a better explanation for the sudden surge in interest rates. Under the guiding principle that one good explanation is better than twelve weak ones, we therefore conclude that the series of defaults resulted in a permanent increase in interest rates of about 60 basis points.

Federal debt held by the public was about $630 billion at the time (but increasing), so if the authors are correct and the increase in Treasury yields applied to all debt, the episode could have cost taxpayers more than $3 billion a year in extra interest cost.

Aaron Swartz 1986–2013

I woke up this morning to a direct message from Bøtter telling me that Aaron died and that his last tweet was to me. Aaron’s work was a great inspiration and I will miss him. I don’t really have much else to say today, but reading all that’s been written today only serves to remind me of the great person he was. It is a tribute to him that almost every story on the front page of Hacker News right now is about Aaron.

I couldn’t help but smile at the image of Aaron reading Robert Caro aloud to Quinn: the second-to-last time I met Aaron was when we went to a Caro reading at the Union Square Barnes & Noble in May. We argued about how much credit Caro gave Ina in The Path to Power. As Caro was signing his copy, Aaron asked him who he’d write about next.

Read more by The Tech, Cory Doctorow, Aaron’s mom, Larry Lessig, The New York Times, Alex Stamos, Tim Berners-Lee, Philip Greenspun, Aaron’s family, Rick Perlstein, Glenn Greenwald, Dean Baker, danah boyd, Matthew Yglesias, Henry Farrell.

No change

I guess the platinum coin won’t be minted after all. We will end up in a game of chicken between a player who caved the last time the game was played, and a player who has publicly downplayed the negative consequences of losing. Everyone who advocated this should compute the Nash equilibria of that game.

To state the question more directly, are all the laws but one to go unexecuted and the Government itself go to pieces lest that one be violated?

James Buchanan = Market Marxism–Leninism

Crooked Timber posts a brilliant new-to-me article about what James Buchanan and his public choice theory really mean.

The central points of the Marxist-Leninist theory are

  1. Politics is about struggle between economic classes. The state acts in the interest of the capitalist class as a whole, and arbitrates differences among ‘fractions’ of capital;
  2. Political ideas (except Marxism-Leninism) are ‘ideologies’ designed to rationalise class rule;
  3. The masses acquiesce because of ‘false consciousness’ associated with submission to a dominant or ‘hegemonic’ ideology.

Translating to public choice theory, we get:

  1. Politics is about the struggle between interest groups. The state responds to the pressure of organised interest groups, typically tight coalitions of producer groups. Logrolling between these groups produces an outcome which benefits them collectively at the expense of taxpayers and consumers;
  2. Political ideas (except free-market ideas) are ideologies designed to rationalise policies serving various interest groups;
  3. Voters acquiesce because of ‘rational ignorance’ which leads them to take little interest in politics and makes them easily subject to manipulation by political interests.

On the Leninist implications of both theories

If ideas do not matter, free speech is at best a luxury and at worst a distraction. Even if speech is not actually suppressed, it is debased. When political debate is seen as a charade by its participants, it naturally becomes one. Furthermore, since the system cannot be changed by reason, some form of ‘short sharp shock’ is required. The result is a cult of ruthlessness (the catchphrase here is ‘tough decisions’). Since opposition to one’s policies is interpreted as a sign that interest groups are being hurt, it may be taken as evidence of correctness. The correct response is not to persuade one’s opponents, but to override them.