A Critique of Public Libraries

In a recent article in the New York Review of Books the author notes:

Years ago, I lived in a remote mountain town that had never had a public library. The town was one of the largest in New York State by area but small in population, with a couple thousand residents spread out over about two hundred square miles. By the time my husband and I moved there, the town had lost most of its economic base—in the nineteenth century it had supported a number of tanneries and mills—and our neighbors were mainly employed seasonally, if at all. When the regional library system’s bookmobile was taken out of service, the town had no easy access to books. The town board proposed a small tax increase to fund a library, something on the order of ten dollars per household. It was soundly defeated. The dominant sentiments seemed to be “leave well enough alone” and “who needs books?” Then there was the man who declared that “libraries are communist.”

 In contrast, I grew up in New York City where there were a lot of libraries and generally filled with useless stacks of books selected by librarians who seemed to think less of the taxpayers and more of their own view of the world. Try and get a math book, a science book, and the list goes on. If one likes fiction then you were happy.

Also, yes be quiet, at best you got the book for two weeks. You could not teach yourself calculus in two weeks, no less learn Russian.

The haven was the used book stores. Once you found a good one then for a dollar or so you could own a book. It was yours, it did not have to go back, you could read it at your own pace, mark it up, digest its contents. The hell with novels, you had something that you could build on in the real world. You could learn chemistry, learn how to design a bridge, and learn about those fellows Watson and Crick.

Why are used book stores great? Simple, for two reasons. First at some time a real person paid real money to buy a book that they thought was worthwhile.  Second, a bookseller then paid real money for a book that they thought was worthwhile. The first purchase was a real customer, and the second a real market maker. None were librarians, all had some economic calculus afoot. Librarians on the other hand often have some socio-political set of reasons and they want to spread then to their captive audience.

You could not have access to the best scientific journals in libraries but you could get a subscription to Scientific American, in the days when it had some worthwhile content, not like today, where it is filled with junk.

You also started what would become a library. Then if you went to Barnes and Nobel to their section on Dover books, for about $1.50 you could get paperback copies of great books, pushing the edge of the envelope.

Thus why go to any library when the real stuff was outside. Today in New Jersey the Libraries are guaranteed substantial funds from the Real Estate taxes. But try and get anything useful from them. At best they are a Starbucks without coffee and food.

Is there a place for Public Libraries today? As a taxpayer subsidized social club perhaps, if that is what one seeks. But as a source of information, hardly.

Stay with the used books stores and that new thing called the "Internet" I think.

Rights, and their Loss

A letter from Thomas Paine to Thomas Jefferson, [1]:we have the following

AFTER I got home, being alone and wanting amusement I sat down to explain to myself (for there is such a thing) my Ideas of natural and civil rights and the distinction between them— I send them to you to see how nearly we agree.

Thus there was and still remains a distinction. Herein Paine describes Natural Rights, those stated expressly in part in the Bill of Rights, and enshrined in the Constitution. Yet which of the Rights in the Bill of Rights are Natural or civil?

Suppose 20 persons, strangers to each other, to meet in a country not before inhabited. Each would be a Sovereign in his own natural right.

Now this pre-dates Rawls and in a sense exceeds the complexity of Rawls and the development of the inhibiting construct of Social Justice.

His will would be his Law, but his power, in many cases, inadequate to his right, and the consequence would be that each might be exposed, not only to each other, but to the other nineteen. It would then occur to them that their condition would be much improved, if a way could be devised to exchange that quantity of danger into so much protection, so that each individual should possess the strength of the whole number.

Note, Paine comes back to the singular entity of the individual, the basis of any and all Natural Rights.

As all their rights, in the first case, are natural rights, and the exercise of those rights supposed only by their own natural individual power, they would begin by distinguishing between those rights they could individually exercise fully and perfectly and those they could not.

Here he comes and reflects on the Natural Rights and what limits if any could be imposed as a result of entering into some form of compact. I would argue that in Rawls discussion, the assembly is formed by individuals without any rights, Natural or Civil, and in such a de novo situation the outcome is skewed. However Paine foresaw the problem that Rawls was blind to, namely the inherent rights of the individual, the Natural Rights.

Of the first kind are the rights of thinking, speaking, forming and giving opinions, and perhaps all those which can be fully exercised by the individual without the aid of exterior assistance— or in other words, rights of personal competency.—

Here Paine attempts to law forth the Natural Rights. These rights were well understood by 18^th Century people, they were the basis for our own Bill of Rights.

Of the second kind are those of personal protection, or acquiring and possessing property, in the exercise of which the individual natural power is less than the natural right.

It is interesting to see Paine place property rights as being a lesser than a Natural Right. For it was in the writings of Ockham that we first see individual rights and amongst them the right to property. The right to own, to use, to transfer property, a right resulting from the work of the individual and a construct handed down to Locke. As for personal protection, one would assume self defense is a prime Natural Right, it is a corollary of self-defense, of self-survival.

Having drawn this line they agree to retain individually the first Class of Rights, or those of personal competency; and so detach from their personal possession the second class, or those of defective power and to accept in lieu thereof a right to the whole power produced by a condensation of all the parts. These I conceive to be civil rights or rights of Compact, and are distinguishable from Natural rights, because in the one we act wholly in our own person, in the other we agree not to do so, but act under the guarantee of society.

Rights of Compact or civil rights are those which we as a society would agree to assert and enforce. The Natural Right as Paine asserts is the right to act in one's own person. Then is not self-preservation such a right? For Paine perhaps not because it asserts an act upon another. What os the Natural Right of Free Speech, again Paine may argue it impacts another. Paradoxically many of what we assert are Natural act upon another. Why do we need a guarantee of society to worship as we so choose, to have property, to speak, to have a free press?

It therefore follows that the more of those imperfect natural rights, or rights of imperfect power we give up and thus exchange the more security we possess, and as the word liberty is often mistakenly put for security Mr. Wilson has confused his argument by confounding his terms.

Here is the essence, the battle between liberty and security.

But it does not follow that the more natural rights of every kind we resign the more security we possess, because if we resign those of the first class we may suffer much by the exchange, for where the right and the power are equal with each other in the individual naturally they ought to rest there.

The statement is quite powerful. If we give up our natural rights we do not gain security! The individual suffers. We must assert and sustain our natural rights, and the security that is sought is done so only at the peril of the mob. Those who assert that society as a whole can be more secure, say in health care or environmental concerns, do so at the diminution of the primal individual or Natural Rights. As Paine notes they do so at their peril.

Mr. Wilson must have some allusion to this Distinction or his position would be subject to the inference you draw from it. I consider the individual sovereignty of the states retained under the Act of Confederation to be the second Class of rights. It becomes dangerous because it is defective in the power necessary to support it. It answers the pride and purpose of a few men in each state— but the State collectively is injured by it.

Where Paine failed in regards to the French Revolution was understanding the power of the mob, of Robespierre and of Danton, of the many who used the Revolution to assert their power. One need just look back to the 14^th Century in France and England and the mobs in both. In France it was the Jacquerie who roamed about slaughtering at will, the power of the mob, while in 1381 we have the Peasants Revolt in England the confronting of the King. Chaucer may have been fearful but not the King. The result was no slaughtering but the evolution of the law.

By the time of the 18^th Century we again see the brutality of the French Revolution as compared to the rather "gentler" American Revolution. The French tend to show the impact of the mob. That should be a warning for any who seek the libertine stands of the Social Justice warriors.

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[1] Paine, Thomas; Mark Philp. Rights of Man, Common Sense, and Other Political Writings (Oxford World's Classics) (Kindle Locations 1615-1622). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.

The Crow and the Sheep: Politicians

A TROUBLESOME CROW seated herself on the back of a Sheep. The Sheep, much against his will, carried her backward and forward for a long time, and at last said, “If you had treated a dog in this way, you would have had your deserts from his sharp teeth.” To this the Crow replied, “I despise the weak and yield to the strong. I know whom I may bully and whom I must flatter; and I thus prolong my life to a good old age.”

Translated by George Fyler Townsend. Aesop's Fables (Amazon Digital Services, Inc..)

Treasury Spreads

Above are a few Yield Curves. Look at yesterdays. It is really inverted. The dip in the 10 year region is significant. Short Term yields are the highest yet.

The above is the spread of 10 year to 90 days. It is negative in the current period. It had gotten close before but now it is in real negative territory.

So you can buy a house and the rates are not too bad. But if you are the US Treasury and most of your debt is short term, you are in deep trouble. If we assume a 22 trillion debt at 2.5% annual interest rate that is $550 billion debt payments. So if you look at the Budget, you have $550 billion for interest, and still some $300-400 billion for the obligations under Obamacare.

There is zero chance of solving this problem. I think. Oh yes, massive inflation!

On the one hand, on the other hand

There is an interesting but I feel confused piece in Nature by some "philosopher" at some state school opining on science. I will admit I am not a scientist by profession, engineering and medicine is my forte, but perhaps my botanical and mathematical studies will assist. I also was a philosophy minor so again a foot in the door as they say.

Now what does this person say. Let us start:

Today, St Paul is making a comeback: the authority of science is again under attack. In areas of national and global consequence — from climate to medicine —political leaders feel confident that they can reject scientific claims, substituting myths and cherry-picked facts. I have spent five years investigating why this has happened and what can be done.

First,  I am not a fan of Paul, he sort of showed up late, and then wandered all over making claims that somehow were askance of what was said back in Jerusalem. Grace and all that stuff. Out with the good works and in with grace. But I digress. Science is interpretative. It interprets what we observe. It is iterative. As we get better tools to observe we do change our science. Science is also a true dialectic process. Marx never saw it at work but just look at Darwin. Then Watson and Crick, and just look at what we see today. Science is a continual conflict. It seems never to be settled. It is the challenge and joy of science. Climate science will continue to change as we learn to measure better, calculate better, get better tools and the like. Medicine is changing every hour, and just what politicians are doing there, well I leave it to the scholar.

He continues:

It is tempting to think that scientific authority is natural and will soon reassert itself like a sturdy self-righting boat knocked over by a rogue wave. The ugly truth is that science is more like Facebook, whose positive features are also vulnerabilities. Precisely because it allows us to connect and share, Facebook creates opportunities for misuse. Similarly, science is an exemplary form of enquiry because it is technical, fallible, done in communities and able to reshape our values. But these very features allow detractors to reject the authority even of eminent experts.

Just what this is saying I really do not know. Science requires understanding. One cannot understand the metastatic basis of cancers by using Facebook. One must read the literature, observe the cases, test the hypotheses and start over again when one's assumptions fail, as they often do. You communicate with others who are competent. You subject your ideas to critiques, to those who object, to those who know more. You learn by mistake and errors, and correcting them.

Science denial, however, is like crime: combating it requires both short-term and long-term strategies. A crucial clue to a long-term solution comes from studying the experiences of non-Western nations that imported Western science. They had to work out how to incorporate it while convincing sceptics that it would not destroy their culture and values.

 Science denial is what? Criminal? China has "imported" western science, and frankly they are peers in the process. Russia has always had expertise in science. India likewise. The list goes on.

The final remark is as follows:

I conclude my book with a discussion of the German-American philosopher Hannah Arendt. Arendt barely escaped the Holocaust — she was briefly imprisoned by the Gestapo in 1933 and shipped to an internment camp for a few weeks in 1940 — and lived through a time when human rights vanished and moral authority disappeared. Her writings on politics, truth and lying have been much cited in recent discourse on the sorry state of politics. Most relevant are her writings on authority. This, she thought, is neither innate nor automatic, and facts alone don’t have it. It is possible only thanks to institutions that create what she called public space. Without that, it is possible for people who are not personally accomplished, who pontificate in recycled stock phrases, who polarize situations and who are insatiable braggarts coveting media coverage, to acquire power and influence. She could explain that only by telling the full story of how humanity got itself in that position in the first place, in books such as The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951).

Now I have studies Arendt in some detail. Her commentary on Eichmann is confusing at best, banal? But her study of totalitarian regimes was reflective of Hitler, and trying to make a nexus with the US today is more than a stretch, but the left seem to feel it is essential. Arendt is a student and former lover of Heidegger, the German and Nazi philosopher whose work is a bit heavy, but after all it is German. Heidegger had his day, and one suspects it has come and gone. The French version was Sartre, again, it came and went. But Arendt did have some influence on the New York "intellectuals" of the post war period in the 50s. Pleasant she was not, but authority she could opine on, after all she was educated in Germany. Authority must be questioned, if we learned anything from the 1960s it was just that. Beware of anyone who says, "Because I am an expert". The expert must be back by facts, by a process, by an analysis, and by it you will a cross examination of that. It is a continuing dialectic that ensures a convergence, a synthesis in Hegel's world.

LY6, PCa, Mets and Again

Several years ago we wrote a piece on the LY6 markers and actually considered a company in that space. Too early. But a recent paper in Cell indicates that we were close and they seem to have gotten closer.

They note:

The exact identity of castrate-resistant (CR) cells and their relation to CR prostate cancer (CRPC) is unresolved. We use single-cell gene profiling to analyze the molecular heterogeneity in basal and luminal compartments. Within the luminal compartment, we identify a subset of cells intrinsically resistant to castration with a bi-lineage gene expression pattern. We discover LY6D as a marker of CR prostate progenitors with multipotent differentiation and enriched organoid-forming capacity. Lineage tracing further reveals that LY6D⁺ CR luminal cells can produce LY6D⁻ luminal cells. In contrast, in luminal cells lacking PTEN, LY6D⁺ cells predominantly give rise to LY6D⁺ tumor cells, contributing to high-grade PIN lesions. Gene expression analyses in patients’ biopsies indicate that LY6D expression correlates with early disease progression, including progression to CRPC. Our studies thus identify a subpopulation of luminal progenitors characterized by LY6D expression and intrinsic castration resistance. LY6D may serve as a prognostic maker for advanced prostate cancer.

Perhaps this is the useful marker we have been looking for.

Federalist 68 - Just a Read (Again)

To the People of the State of New York:

THE mode of appointment of the Chief Magistrate of the United States is almost the only part of the system, of any consequence, which has escaped without severe censure, or which has received the slightest mark of approbation from its opponents. The most plausible of these, who has appeared in print, has even deigned to admit that the election of the President is pretty well guarded.

I venture somewhat further, and hesitate not to affirm, that if the manner of it be not perfect, it is at least excellent. It unites in an eminent degree all the advantages, the union of which was to be wished for. It was desirable that the sense of the people should operate in the choice of the person to whom so important a trust was to be confided.

This end will be answered by committing the right of making it, not to any preestablished body, but to men chosen by the people for the special purpose, and at the particular conjuncture. It was equally desirable, that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice.

A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations. It was also peculiarly desirable to afford as little opportunity as possible to tumult and disorder. This evil was not least to be dreaded in the election of a magistrate, who was to have so important an agency in the administration of the government as the President of the United States.

But the precautions which have been so happily concerted in the system under consideration, promise an effectual security against this mischief.

The choice of several, to form an intermediate body of electors, will be much less apt to convulse the community with any extraordinary or violent movements, than the choice of one who was himself to be the final object of the public wishes.

And as the electors, chosen in each State, are to assemble and vote in the State in which they are chosen, this detached and divided situation will expose them much less to heats and ferments, which might be communicated from them to the people, than if they were all to be convened at one time, in one place.

Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption.

These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one quarter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils.

How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union? But the convention have guarded against all danger of this sort, with the most provident and judicious attention. They have not made the appointment of the President to depend on any preexisting bodies of men, who might be tampered with beforehand to prostitute their votes; but they have referred it in the first instance to an immediate act of the people of America, to be exerted in the choice of persons for the temporary and sole purpose of making the appointment.

And they have excluded from eligibility to this trust, all those who from situation might be suspected of too great devotion to the President in office. No senator, representative, or other person holding a place of trust or profit under the United States, can be of the numbers of the electors.

Thus, without corrupting the body of the people, the immediate agents in the election will at least enter upon the task free from any sinister bias. Their transient existence, and their detached situation, already taken notice of, afford a satisfactory prospect of their continuing so, to the conclusion of it.

The business of corruption, when it is to embrace so considerable a number of men, requires time as well as means.

Nor would it be found easy suddenly to embark them, dispersed as they would be over thirteen States, in any combinations founded upon motives, which though they could not properly be denominated corrupt, might yet be of a nature to mislead them from their duty.

Another and no less important desideratum was, that the Executive should be independent for his continuance in office on all but the people themselves.

He might otherwise be tempted to sacrifice his duty to his complaisance for those whose favor was necessary to the duration of his official consequence. This advantage will also be secured, by making his re-election to depend on a special body of representatives, deputed by the society for the single purpose of making the important choice.

All these advantages will happily combine in the plan devised by the convention; which is, that the people of each State shall choose a number of persons as electors, equal to the number of senators and representatives of such State in the national government, who shall assemble within the State, and vote for some fit person as President. Their votes, thus given, are to be transmitted to the seat of the national government, and the person who may happen to have a majority of the whole number of votes will be the President.

But as a majority of the votes might not always happen to centre in one man, and as it might be unsafe to permit less than a majority to be conclusive, it is provided that, in such a contingency, the House of Representatives shall select out of the candidates who shall have the five highest number of votes, the man who in their opinion may be best qualified for the office. The process of election affords a moral certainty, that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.

Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of President of the United States.

It will not be too strong to say, that there will be a constant probability of seeing the station filled by characters pre-eminent for ability and virtue. And this will be thought no inconsiderable recommendation of the Constitution, by those who are able to estimate the share which the executive in every government must necessarily have in its good or ill administration.

Though we cannot acquiesce in the political heresy of the poet who says: “For forms of government let fools contest—That which is best administered is best,”—yet we may safely pronounce, that the true test of a good government is its aptitude and tendency to produce a good administration.

The Vice-President is to be chosen in the same manner with the President; with this difference, that the Senate is to do, in respect to the former, what is to be done by the House of Representatives, in respect to the latter. The appointment of an extraordinary person, as Vice-President, has been objected to as superfluous, if not mischievous.

It has been alleged, that it would have been preferable to have authorized the Senate to elect out of their own body an officer answering that description. But two considerations seem to justify the ideas of the convention in this respect.

One is, that to secure at all times the possibility of a definite resolution of the body, it is necessary that the President should have only a casting vote. And to take the senator of any State from his seat as senator, to place him in that of President of the Senate, would be to exchange, in regard to the State from which he came, a constant for a contingent vote.

The other consideration is, that as the Vice-President may occasionally become a substitute for the President, in the supreme executive magistracy, all the reasons which recommend the mode of election prescribed for the one, apply with great if not with equal force to the manner of appointing the other.

It is remarkable that in this, as in most other instances, the objection which is made would lie against the constitution of this State. We have a Lieutenant-Governor, chosen by the people at large, who presides in the Senate, and is the constitutional substitute for the Governor, in casualties similar to those which would authorize the Vice-President to exercise the authorities and discharge the duties of the President.

PUBLIUS