Malls are scary

I have spent a large portion of my brief visits to Manila in the Greenbelt Mall in Makati -- a very, very upscale establishment which consists of five normal-medium sized malls stuck together with pathways. I thought this was fairly overwhelming, but had just begun to get the hang of it. Greenbelt 1 has the downscale hardware and book stores, Greenbelt 3 has the upscale restaurants, etc.

Then my boss asked me to make a trip to another mall to pick up a gift for a co-worker's wedding this weekend. The directions? Walk through Greenbelts 1-5. Then take the skybridge to the Landmark Mall across the street. Walk through Landmark to the Glorietta Mall on the other side. Walk through Glorietta Malls 1-5 to the SM Mall. Go to customer service desk at the opposite end of SM.

Oh. My. God. I am traumatized. I have never seen so many large malls with so many people. And there are four of them in a row. Or 12, depending on how you count.

On the other hand, I spent more than five minutes in a mall, and still felt like buying something, which I guess speaks fairly strongly to the quality of Filipino hyper-active consumerism, at least.

Bye bye, CDO

I've been having an extremely awkward set of goodbyes with people in CDO, in which I say that I am coming back in the spring, thereby making it sound like we don't really need to say goodbye. This is possibly true, but I am not clarifying that I mean for, like, a month, not moving back here permanently. Oh well.

I took some kids from my dorm out for dinner last night. It was awkward, but mostly still fun. Then I spent $100 to buy a pig (lechon!) for my coworkers at lunch today. This was also awkward, as it turns out that lechon is really for birthdays. They all sang happy birthday and laughed at me (in a good natured way) and I didn't really have a chance to say thank you to everyone. Oh well again.

In summary: awkward, and tasty food. I am too lazy to write a real blog post, so here are some pictures of my coffee shop and the kids at my dorm.

Muxes

Or, as just pointed out by me padre, maybe there is an equivalent for the below outside the Philippines.

Bulua Miss Gay 2008

I approach the task of describing Friday evening with some considerable trepidation. The pictures I was able to take don't do it justice at all, so I'm feeling the need to compensate appropriately with words.

The brief story is that I spent the evening as a groupie for the 2^nd runner up at the Bulua Miss Gay 2008 Pageant. It was as least as strange as it sounds; probably more so.

First, a little background. A small posse of gay boys lives upstairs in my dorm, one of whom is what the Filipinos call a girl-boy, or, as I learned last night, an uy-uy. JR prefers to be considered a woman, so I will refer to her that way from now on. From what I have observed and read, this really constitutes a separate gender in the Philippines. Cross-dressing is very prevalent here – it's not unusual for me to be at the mall and see a pack of young men wandering around in skirts and high heels. But beyond that, there seems to be a gender identity that resides somewhere at the intersection of male homosexuality, transgenderedness, and femininity that has no real Western equivalent.

Surprising as it may be in an overwhelmingly Catholic country with a vocal Muslim minority, the Philippines is in practice very tolerant of male homosexuality. There is certainly a bias that translates into discrimination – gay men tend to be associated strongly with the lower classes and customer service positions, and there is no question of them getting married. In practice, however, there is a large degree of good humored tolerance and even affectionate acceptance. I'm sure that part of this has to do with the sacrosanct nature of the Filipino family. As my friend Adrian (nee Richard) explained to me last night, if your son is gay you will just have to accept it – there is no question of cutting off ties or disowning him. Take as secondary evidence the fact that thousands of people showed up for this neighborhood gay pageant. Little kids, straight men, old women, siblings and co-workers of contestants, the local ruffians, the barangay captain and barangay policeman all crowded into the school gym and hooted and shrieked for a good three hours. There was no evidence that this was considered anything other than wholesome, mainstream Friday night entertainment.

Let me try to take things chronologically. I departed from my dorm with Philip, Adrian, and Blaze (from L to R in picture). JR was already in Bulua getting prepared. We took a taxi to Bulua, an outlying barangay in Cagayan de Oro. It is important to note that the gay boys are unusually kind to me, and that their English is generally superior to everyone I've met except the Lims. They were very intrigued by the fact that I wanted to attend the pageant. Did I know any gays in the US? Had I ever been to a gay pageant? Do gays in the US look the same as in the Philippines?

We arrived in Bulua at 6:45. The pageant was scheduled to start at 7. There were literally 20 people there. I was already starting to feel sorry for the competitors – clearly this was some sort of hokey local pageant for outcast gays, and no one wanted to watch. We took a seat in the bleachers. It was hot. We were restless. Blaze joked that the pageant would probably start around 9pm – on Filipino time. Adrian suggested that we go backstage and visit JR. Although we could see 20 contestant numbers laid out on the judges' table, there turned out to only be about four contestants actually present backstage. I wondered about this. We visited with JR, who was surrounded by an older woman and a young man and woman who were trying to do her hair. She was very nervous – worrying about her hair, about her introductory speech, and about her registration form. A few little kids were hanging around and pasting shiny stuff onto big palm-woven discs that looked liked shields, but not much else was happening, so we decided to go to Jollibee for a snack, just across the road.

After some chicken and rice, we came back to the gym. 8pm. Still no one in the audience. We went backstage again, and this time there were at least 10 competitors there. Adrian explained to me that they don't like to get there early because gays are bitches and will 'borrow' one another's beauty supplies and not return them. Interesting. By this time, a few of the more professional candidates had arrived, and things were buzzing backstage with their groupies and little girls watching them dress. We stuck around for a while. The contestants seemed completely nonchalant about having an audience while preparing. A rather busty contestant stood up in the middle of the room and stripped while her helpers prepared her evening gown, and everyone watched. I will say that she did not resemble anything we would expect at a gay men's pageant in the US and leave it at that. I flirted with some little girls, who wanted to know how old I am and whether I have a sister. It was 8:30 and still hot and still no sign of things getting started, so we went back downstairs and took a seat on the bleachers again. Things started to fill up – maybe a few hundred people.

By 9:30, the gym was packed, with hundreds of people in the bleachers and thousands standing on the basketball court. Kids swarmed behind the judges' table, while an elderly barangay policeman with a whistle on a string of rosary beads pretended to be angry and swatted at them to move back; they all responded by grinning, mano po-ing, and continuing to run amuck. Guys selling peanuts and little bags of flavored popcorn were making the rounds. I was squished in between Adrian and Philip – Blaze had gone upstairs to provide moral support to JR who had texted us to say that her hair dresser and registration fee had disappeared and she was having a major case of stage fright. Philip, who is too shy to talk to me because he thinks his English is bad, was variously leaning on me, resting his arm on my lap, and scooting me further over into JR. Filipinos are not particular about personal space. I will note here that straight men in the Philippines wander around with their arms around one another and lean and hold hands, etc without anyone considering it 'gay'.

Finally, around 9:35 the announcer said the competition would be starting! In ten minutes. I realized that Blaze was not joking about Filipino time. More squishing. The gym was getting hot and sticky. There were thousands of people, some of whom were smoking and making the atmosphere even tighter than it would otherwise have been. I felt sorry for the people sitting in the bottom row of the bleachers, who surely wouldn't be able to see over the standing crowd. At 9:45 the pageant actually started. For five minutes, the announcer recites an endless list of names and titles, as is wont to happen in the Philippines. They thank everyone who has had anything to do with anything and recite all of their titles and ties: we thank Honorable Barangay Captain So-and-so; we thank the Bulua Barangay Council including the Honorable blah and the Honorable blah; we thank the Bulua Youth Council; we thank the wife of Honorable Mayor So-and-so. And on. And on. At this point I also stopped feeling sorry for the people in the bottom row of the bleachers – their obvious solution was just to stand up and block my view instead.

Then, the candidates were called out on stage for the first time, in their bathing suits. This terrible picture is the best I could do from my far-off seat in the poorly lighted gym, but I hope it will suffice as evidence that these candidates did not look like boys. In fact, they looked like they could probably take home prizes at prestigious women's beauty pageants in the US. Some had breast implants, others were wearing silicon breasts (as I found out later). None of them displayed any evidence of being male, despite wearing itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny bikinis. Each candidate was called up to a microphone to introduce herself. Each recited a short motto ("Don't judge a book by its cover." "When God closes a door, somewhere he opens a window." "Beauty is as beauty does.") and recited her qualifications. JR, as I knew, is a registered nurse and was valedictorian at her high school. She had some stage name I didn't entirely catch – Christina Concepcion Ramos or something like that. The candidates came from as far away as Zamboanga and Butuan. Some were nervous, some were flirtatious. Most of the speeches were partly in English, partly in Bisaya. (It is an odd feature of Filipino public events that the announcing is likely to be in English, even when the entire audience is Bisayan.) As one contestant put it: "I was the star of Gingoog. Now I stand before you, sexier, bombastic, and more arousing!"

The bathing suit competition was incredible. Most of the women must take hormone pills, and many looked like they'd had breast or facial plastic surgery. There was a large contingent that was tall and unbelievably slender, and a smaller group that looked more like most actual Filipinas – petite, and pleasantly round. Almost all seemed rather experienced at sashaying around suggestively in heels. They all posed and twirled like runway models. As each came forward, the announcer listed her 'measurements', which – I'm pretty sure – were complete bullshit. The tall, slender ones definitely did not have 36" chests, and the small, plump ones definitely did not have 24" waists. All this time, va-va-voom music is blasting, the audience is screaming and hooting, and a small colored spotlight is projecting swirly shapes onto the stage and audience. Next, there was a break for judging, during which we were treated to that now globally mandatory intermission special: the troop of early adolescent breakdancing boys. Next, the evening gown competition. The gowns were all quite original and flamboyant – none of the junior prom look. I couldn't get any good pictures, but for a taste, see JR in her gown with groupies after the awards were handed out.

The question and answer round was surprisingly substantial, at least for some candidates. Most were asked to explain their mottos from their introductions; a few were asked to explain their stated career goals. JR was asked "As a homosexual, what is your greatest aspiration in life?" My instant reaction, of course, was as a homosexual? Why should this affect your greatest aspirations, blah blah blah. I think, however, that this was the cue for JR to be able to say something a little more topical. Her answer was long, and I only understood part of it, but she ended with, "We did not ask to be made this way, but we homosexuals are also part of God's creation. My aspiration is to be respected in a peaceful and loving Filipino society."

After all 20 candidates did their question and answer session, the first elimination round commenced. I accept that I am lacking in context for the standard of beauty in this competition, but it seemed clear that the goal was to look as much like a glamorous woman as possible. There did seem to be some tension between the candidates who were using surgery and hormones to become more physically female, and those who were dressing up their given bodies to look more female. Either way, the choice of the five finalists was truly bizarre. The first chosen was the most manly-looking of the 20 – the only one who would have fit in a standard American drag context. Her clothes did not flatter her, and she seemed nervous and unpracticed throughout the competition. The second choice was the short, chubby contestand – the one with huge breast implants who had stripped backstage. The third was one of the tall slender girls, who had won the 'best gown' award. She was beautiful, but maybe not the most beautiful of the tall girls. The fourth was JR, who is delicate and pretty, but clearly does not have surgery or hormone treatments. The fifth was another one of the petite girls who looked cute but had a fairly unflattering gown. Each of the top five participated in another question and answer session, this one significantly more hard-hitting. The first girl was asked who should take responsibility for the financial crisis in the Philippines – the president, or the people? JR was asked who she would support in the next presidential election and why. Making the Philippines into a 'progressive nation' and having the people take responsibility for development were common themes.

The candidates were allowed to choose which judge would ask them a question. The tall contestant was the only one who chose judge #1 – Miss Gay Bulua 2006. Adrian whispered to me that they were friends. Ah. After that, I was able to correctly predict the order of the awards among the five. We had two finalists who were probably the least attractive (by the standards of the competition), two who were cute but middle-tier, and only one who was in the top-tier but who would not have stood out if compared to the others who looked like her. And that last was friends with one of the judges. The manly contestant was fourth runner up. The chubby contestant was third runner up. JR was second runner up. The short contestant in the bad dress was first runner up. And, surprise! The tall contestant was the winner.

I don't want to be disloyal to JR. She looked very, very pretty, and I appreciated that she was someone who stood out as not having starved or carved up her body. She is also clearly very intelligent and gave by far the most interesting answers in the Q&A rounds. But, I suspect that she and the other three runners up were placed in the top five to provide a more convincing contrast with the winner. In any event, JR seemed quite happy, and her much-expanded groupie bunch (her nurse co-workers showed up halfway through the competition) was ecstatic.

I don't think that I've fully processed this happening yet. It's clear that this could not have happened anywhere other than the Philippines. I had strongly considered just going to the mall to have some dinner and write a blog post on Friday night instead of going out with the boys. Fortunately, sometimes my better instincts overwhelm my day-to-day anti-social idiocy.

News

1. I finally figured it out -- riding a jeepney is exactly like being on Mr. Toad's Wild Ride at Disneyland. Whew. We can all rest in peace now that this has been established.
   
2. I am moving back to New Haven in January to be the project manager for Dean Karlan and Jonathan Morduch's new textbook. And hopefully to take some real analysis so that I can get into grad school.
   

Old jeepneys, new tricks

I finally noticed a much more subtle and likely more effective jeepney trick than those previously mentioned. The driver pays some of the young guys who skulk around the mall entrance to sit in the back and make it look like there are more passengers and the jeepney will leave sooner. When real passengers start to get on, they hop off. It took me a long time to figure out what was going on. Even if you're Filipino and used to it, it would be pretty hard to tell if they were legit passengers or not until it was too late. Very sneaky.

Gay marriage: Part 2

This is my second of three promised posts on gay marriage, examining whether or not the judicial precedent I called on in the first post is itself valid. I started to write a post about the validity of a penumbra of privacy versus substantive due process and whatever. Then I realized that this is boring. And that it’s been a long time since I’ve taken a constitutional law class, so I probably shouldn’t pretend that I’m making sophisticated legal arguments. In brief, I think that the latter is a more valid justification for all of the decisions in the last half century about contraception, abortion, sodomy, etc than the former, but that both of them are pretty tenuous.

Here’s what it boils down to. There are two possible ways to view the Constitution/Bill of Rights as a guarantor of freedoms, and consequently the role of the Supreme Court in interpreting those guarantees. One is as the direct guarantor of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all citizens. The other is the guarantor of political rights as essential instruments by which the people can protect an arena in which to carry out said pursuit.

If you take the former view, then the intuition that it makes no sense for the Bill of Rights to protect us from troops being quartered in our homes but not from serious infringements on the ability to make decisions about sex and childbearing is reasonable. The Court has a responsibility to defend not only enumerated rights, but also those "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty" -- liberties so fundamental as to make Constitutional citizenship meaningless without them.

However, I think there is a strong argument to be made for the second view. The Constitution doesn’t read like a treatise on the rights of man. It makes no attempt to specify the range of freedoms necessary to the pursuit of happiness. Precisely the intuition that leads people with the first view of the Constitution to find a right to privacy in family matters is in itself an argument against that view. Why would we choose to interpret the Constitution in a way that makes it nonsensical as written?

In this latter view, the Constitution is meant to outline the powers of government, and provide a strong guarantee of the political rights that make full civic participation possible. The authors therefore listed protections against the specific tyrannies which were used in their experience to deny political representation. And, recognizing that their list was based on limited experience, they allowed for new provisions to be added as needed. And, just to be clear, they noted that the list was not meant to be exhaustive of all important individual liberties, just a list of those things which were beyond the pale of majority decision-making. In sum, the Constitution is meant to define and defend the parameters of a valid democratic process, so that everything else can then be decided through that process under the guarantee of its legitimacy.

I don’t think that taking this view requires a literal or ‘dead’ interpretation of the Constitution. Interpreting the spirit of the enumerated provisions can and should involve allowing the scope of applications to change along with society and technology. The protections of the 2nd Amendment should not cover nuclear weapons. The power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce, on the other hand, should expand to deal with any genuine coordination problems or externalities involving commerce between states. So, interstate highways and environmental regulations, yes, handguns in schools, no.

I have two major concerns with the political rights view. The first is that there are probably issues beyond the obvious scope of the enumerated protections which genuinely affect the functioning of the democratic process, such as significant educational or economic barriers. I think, although I am not sure, that this problem can be largely solved through a robust understanding of enumerated protections. Here is where the concept of substantive due process has a role to play, albeit a rather different one than that which is currently implied by the term. To the extent that substantive due process means that political rights are meaningless if not accompanied by fundamental but unrelated personal freedoms such as the ability to marry a person of one’s choosing, I disagree that it can be found in the Constitution. If, however, it means that political rights are meaningless without the conditions which enable one to actually exercise that right, I think it is a powerful concept. In this line of reasoning, I would probably go further than current case law has in some areas, and say, for instance, that some version of universal free primary education should be a constitutional guarantee, as well as public holidays for federal and state elections. I suspect that this sort of interpretation would be sufficient to get us most of the non-privacy related civil rights decisions. It’s also possible that some of the privacy cases could arrive at a similar conclusion through an expansive understanding of equal protection of the laws under the 14th Amendment, although I won’t go into that here.

Let me clarify that given current jurisprudence, I think the Supreme Court ought to strike down both federal and state DOMAs as unconstitutional. To not do so is simply an unfair and inconsistent application of stated principles. Had the Court taken an interpretive approach like the one I describe above for the past 70 years, or were it to choose to do so now, however, I have to admit that state DOMAs would probably stand up to scrutiny. Please understand: under such circumstances I would feel compelled to spend a significant portion of my life working to change the laws, state by state. But I would not feel that they were unconstitutional. This sort of federalism would create space for productive cultural pluralism on the state level. (More on this soon.) Given the ease of moving from state to state in this country – even for the poor – I am not terribly sympathetic to someone who says that the abridgment of a right so fundamental as to negate the exercise of due process is not worth moving to another state to rectify. If certain states are willing to accept an exodus of anyone who wants to use birth control, have an abortion, marry someone of the same gender, or have sex without the moral input of the rest of the citizenry in order to maintain their cultural standards, so be it. We’ll see how that works out for them.

My remaining, and more serious concern is what happens to small, permanent minorities under the political rights view. I am not so concerned about the results of such an interpretation for transitory minority status (e.g. age) or large groups mostly held back by historical oppression rather than minority status (e.g. women, blacks) – these people have a rather good chance to protect their interests through the political process by dint of their numbers or intimate connections to non-minority groups. Groups that are never likely to be large enough to impact political interests, nor integrated enough with majority interests to achieve results through coalition building (e.g. gays, disabled people, possibly Native Americans) don’t really have a fighting chance under a system that protects their ability to participate but not to be free from majority rule in all other areas of life. I don’t know what to do about this.

Things I wish I had known: Part 4

Communication edition

Speak really slowly – like you're giving a speech. You may feel like you’re being condescending, but in general it will help people understand you. Also, much like giving a speech, you actually don’t sound nearly as slow to your audience as you do to yourself.

Be literal and specific. Don't use generalities or expect people to figure out what you need from a description of your purpose. For instance, as I have discovered the hard way, “I need tables A, B, and C from your transactions records database for January 2008 through the present” works much, much better than “I am trying to find out how much the average client saved over the last year” or even “I need to see client details and transactions history for the last year”.

Try to use local honorifics and figures of speech. It has taken me a long time to get comfortable calling people “Ma’am So-and-So” and even longer to get my mouth around “Sir So-and-So”. I know that this doesn’t sound strange to people here, and in fact, it is probably disrespectful for me to refer to an older woman without calling her ma’am. Nonetheless, it took me quite a while to get used to it.

Watch out for local patterns of conversation that indicate or cause misunderstanding. For instance, in the Philippines people will answer negatively phrased questions literally – unlike standard practice in native English-speaking countries (eg. Me: “This doesn't have shrimp in it, does it?” Waiter: “No” = “No, the statement that it does not have shrimp is incorrect” = “Yes, it DOES have shrimp in it” = recipe for death). People are also highly likely to say “yes” when they have no idea what you’re talking about or think you are being an idiotic American but are too polite to say so. It took me a while to figure out that a non-committal but affirmative sounding “o-o” (yes) while refusing to make eye contact means, “uh, sure, whatever you just said”.

Bukidnon

I’ve been traveling around northern Mindanao for the past couple of weeks visiting rural bank branches. This is for the most part not particularly enjoyable, as my average day goes something like this:

Go to bus station. Spend half an hour being screeched at by every one of the hundreds of people in the station who all want me to get on their bus, buy their water/pineapple/chicken/small child, ride their jeepney, etc. Decide whether to ride the regular bus, which will be uncomfortable and overcrowded, or the aircon bus, which will be slightly more comfortable but freezing. Spend four hours on bus. Arrive in small town. Get gawked at by all residents of said small town while trying to locate the bank branch. Find branch, spend an hour trying to yell at loan officers as nicely as possible in a language they don’t really understand about how they are not doing their jobs. Am acutely aware of the fact that some random white girl they’ve never met before who clearly doesn’t really understand the loan products they are offering is telling them how to do their jobs. Get back on a bus, usually aircon, because I perhaps irrationally feel that they are safer at night on wet mountain roads. Shiver on bus for another 4 hours. Pretend to be asleep while the ticket collector sits down next to me and wants to know if I have a boyfriend and whether I need a Filipino one too. Arrive back in CDO bus station in the dark and rain. Am tackled by ten people who want to provide a taxi/jeepney/motorella/umbrella. Try to find a safe path through the several-foot-deep lakes in the bus station and locate a jeepney.

This generally unpleasant daily schedule is significantly improved, however, when I get to go to Bukidnon, as I have a couple of times this week. Bukidnon is the mountain province just south of CDO, and is not, shall we say, a known as a major tourist haven. It’s a poor, rural province, but with heavily developed agriculture. This is where half the world’s pineapples are grown (and then packaged and shipped out from CDO), along with huge amounts of produce for the domestic market. I haven’t taken any pictures, because muddy, rain-streaked bus windows are not conducive to high quality photography. But, it’s a beautiful drive up into the mountains, and this last trip was particularly nice, so I’ll try to describe it.

The most important thing is that it’s always misty and raining. As you all know, this immediately endears any locale to me, and it’s even better when you add twisty mountain roads and lush greenery. The road between CDO and Malaybalay is pretty good – which is to say that it is almost entirely paved, has two full lanes, and is well-graded if somewhat extreme on the switchbacks. The trip is 95 kilometers, and takes a little over two hours. The first 15k are within the rather expansive CDO city limits along the coast, and are fairly boring and industrial. Essentially a strip of car dealerships, agricultural processing plants, and warehouses along the highway.

The bus turns right just after the international port at Puerto (where else?), and heads up an incredibly steep hill, chugging along behind a line of trucks at no more than 15-20k/hour. Along the road are the beginnings of a more interesting set of villages, made up clusters of tiny shacks on stilts hanging onto the hillside for dear life. I really can’t say how these houses don’t slide right down the slope when it rains (which, as I mentioned, it does every day at this time of year) – maybe they do. This area looks quite impoverished – between the city and the agricultural area – and all of the houses are made of a combination of scrap (corrugated tin sheets, press-board) and native materials (woven palm mats, thatch, bamboo slats).

As the bus gets further up into the mountains, the houses become fewer and farther between, until they are just single huts on the side of the highway. These are mostly so small they look like large chicken coops or kids’ playhouses. I don’t know how the people who live there get from place to place, or what they do for a living. There is often a dog tied up outside, and if you look through the door as the bus goes by, there is a baby on a blanket on the floor, and not much else. After a while there are no more houses at all, and the road passes through a rough section of the mountains intersected by river gorges several hundred feet deep, with giant bamboo forests and mist sitting in the bottoms.

The bus makes it up onto a high plateau, and the serious agriculture starts. Of the crops I could identify, there was pineapple, corn, rice, banana, and white potatoes. Although, that last one I only knew because of the sign that said “Welcome to the white potato center of Mindanao”. I am told that Bukidnon also grows large quantities of watermelon, papaya, mango, and wheat. I also saw horses, goats, cows, pigs, ducks, chickens, dogs, weird looking curly-haired sheep. And a baby kalabaw! Man, it was cute. Seriously.

This area is far more populated, with some fair sized towns and lots of small villages between. I saw a young guy riding a horse. He was wearing a backpack and holding a purple umbrella with gold fringe that frankly looked more like a parasol from the 1890’s than an umbrella. Remember, it is pouring this whole time. We passed a couple of little girls walking along the road in their school uniforms, with umbrellas in two different shades of lavender. As the bus went by (spraying a huge wave of muddy road-water behind it, of course), they popped into a crouch against the barrier with their umbrellas toward the lane, perfectly synchronized, like a row of little purple anemones sucking in their tentacles.

This region is rural, but looks more prosperous. Or at least less like the Filipino version of an ex-urban trailer park. The houses are still small and made out of native materials, but they look well-made and cared for, and have gardens with flowers and fences. There are a few “ecological living parks” which I assume is some sort of attempt at enviro-tourism. The schools alongside the highway are quite nice – strings of little stand-alone classroom buildings around a grassy courtyard, with flower pots and little brick paths. They all have signs that say “This is a child-friendly school”. Which worries me a bit. I mean, as opposed to the local non-child-friendly school?

I eventually get to Malaybalay City, which is pretty boring, so I won’t describe it. Except that there is a store near the bus station called “Jungian Eatery and Sack Dealer”. Hmmm.

Things I wish I had known: Part 3

Transportation edition

Ask multiple people for directions. If people don’t know, they will make something up just have something to say.

Take public transport, when possible. It's probably about 1/10th the price of a private car or taxi. On the other hand, when you’re tired, stressed, worried about getting lost, or worried about being somewhere dangerous, remember that even the private car is probably costing you a tenth of what it would in a developed country.

Clarify that you are traveling on the meter as soon as you get into a taxi (or before you get into it). If the driver tries to argue with you and keep driving, threaten to get out and find another taxi (and do it, if they won’t listen). Don’t be tempted by offers of special off-the-meter deals. Think about it – what incentive would they have to offer you a deal that would cost you less than the meter? They will never offer you something less than the meter rate.

Keep your eye on the meter in taxis, even after it is turned on. Plenty of taxi drivers will add miles when you’re not looking.

Keep valuables in the seat with you rather than in the trunk so that the driver is not tempted to drive off as you get out. Also, don’t pay until after you have removed your belongings from the taxi, including the trunk.

Have all of your travel documents with you when you cross international borders. Some countries will want to see your departing ticket before issuing a tourist visa. Others will want to see proof of yellow fever immunization (mostly in Africa). Most importantly, do not be like me and leave your passport on the other side of the country when you are trying to get home.

I am often bothered by the sight of a parent going about her business, followed by a small, screaming child who is being 100% ignored.

The other day in my Cagayan de Oro coffee shop, I saw a guy who is occasionally there with his small daughter. My guess is that he is French, and she is three. They sat for quite a while, and she cried and cried, and he mostly just let her cry. After a while, he got up and walked out, and she toddled after him, still wailing. This did not bother me at all. In fact, it seemed like it was probably good parenting technique.

I’m trying to figure out what the difference is. One possibility is just that I’ve seen this guy before and I know that he is always with his daughter and clearly adores her, so I have enough context to know that he is not a generally neglectful parent and must have good reasons for his current behavior.

But I think it’s something more than that, in the tone either of the kid’s distress or of the parent’s ignoring. What bothers me the most is when I see parents ignoring kids who seem genuinely upset or terrified, not just toddlers who have worked themselves up into a mad fit. There’s also something about the parent’s attitude, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.

Help from those with experience with childcare? When is it approved technique to ignore your kid?

Society for the Reclamation of Liberalism

I had an epiphany while scurrying back from the bank tonight to talk to my boss about which hemisphere I’ll be living in three weeks from now (Answer? No one knows!).

Epiphany: I’m a liberal!

Update: Not in the sense in which we now use the word liberal. And not a progressive or a leftist.

Who knew, right? But it took reading this kid’s blog for some reason to really bring things full circle: There are other strange creatures like me out there in the world. I always knew there were other people who thought like me; I just thought they were called ‘economists’. I totally feel like the gay kid who has figured out that there is a word for what she feels and she isn’t just an alien changeling adrift in human society.

This has been a moment of personal liberation in several respects.

Sub-epiphany A:
I’m not just picking a word I like and pasting it slapdash onto concepts I like. This word has a history and a meaning that has mutated and been purposefully corrupted into nearly unrecognizable forms. Things that don’t have a word don’t really exist, so learning that there is a word for my ideas is waaaaay validating. I didn’t even have to make it up!

In light of the above, I hereby announce the founding of my Reclamation of Liberalism project. I’d only engaged in this project half-heartedly until now, thinking that I was driven mainly by being self-centered enough to want to rearrange everyone else’s political taxonomy to align a category to my personal beliefs. Ha. Nevermore such modesty.

Sub-epiphany B:
I have long felt vague nascent annoyance at being labeled ‘moderate’ or having right-wingers think I’m conservative and leftists think I’m ‘liberal’. This has now hatched into full-fledged self righteous anger! I mean, not so angry. But you know. I watched countless smart freshman show up at Yale confused and neither labeling themselves as liberal or conservative according to the way those terms are now conventionally used in American politics. Since ‘moderate’ and ‘centrist’ are bad words in my alma mater’s political milieu, these kids were quickly either beaten down and re-forged as more ‘radical’ and ‘principled’ leftists or rightists, or decided that being a moderate means you are a pragmatist with no principles and thereby excused themselves from critical self-examination.

Liberals are often mistaken for moderates in our current political lingo, because they sometimes fall on one side of the great political dichotomies and sometimes on the other. This is not because we are moderates, necessarily. It’s because we think you are asking the wrong questions. For example: big government or small government? This is possibly the most philosophically and rhetorically over-used question in American politics. My answer is: tell me the policy and the context, and I’ll tell you what I think. This is not because I am an unprincipled pragmatist or even because I think that the efficacy of government involvement is not a central question in most policymaking. It’s because I do not have a moral principle regarding the size of government. In contrast to a libertarian who likes markets and small government on principle as a matter of just processes and natural rights, I like them when they work toward the things I care about, and not when they don’t. I don’t think that there is anything inherently just or un-just about big government. I wish that those who often find themselves sitting the American political fence realized that there are good reasons to do this on principle.

The point is, I am going to cry myself to sleep tonight over all of the baby Yalies I could have rescued from the clutches of libertarianism or Marxism had I only been noisier about political philosophy in college. Don’t let The Man call you a moderate! Liberalism is, like, totally radical! Because if there were one phrase to describe my college career it would be “shy and retiring regarding matters of political philosophy”.

What is a Liberal, you may ask? I’ve laid out, roughly, the four principles underlying my political philosophy here. The Cliff Notes version is: individualism, egalitarianism, meliorism, utilitarianism. To assist in the identification of these elusive creatures in the wild – a bizarre place where I am told most people don’t throw around words like ‘meliorism’ in casual conversation – here are a few broad-and-only-slightly-less-abstract generalizations.

• She may be what we now refer to as a ‘social liberal, fiscal conservative’. Or, a Democrat who thinks markets are okay sometimes. Or, a neo-liberal (sometimes).
• She may think it makes more sense for government to muck around with the economy than with cultural norms. (The reasoning, in brief: Personal behaviors are, well, really personal. Public policy is by nature one-size-fits-all. Economic policies can also be constraining, but money is at least fungible. I can use it to buy weird music that no one else wants to listen to, and you can use it for whatever knocks your socks off. More on this chain of reasoning at a later date.)
• She may think that government shouldn’t try to legislate everyone toward a single concept of The Good Life, and that it should probably provide some protections against families or religious communities or employers doing it, too. (Pluralism is pretty unavoidable once you put individualism and utilitarianism together. Different stuff makes different people happy, so a good world will necessarily have diverse communities that cater to different preferences. More on this topic too, aka Dara’s-favorite-Professor-Startz-lecture-involving-incoherent-blackboard-diagrams.)
• She may be a Democrat who was – at least, at some point – okay with invading Iraq.

Uh… probably some other stuff, too. You all are hereby invited to the grand kickoff of the Society for the Reclamation of Liberalism, to be held whenever I next find myself in North America in a place with some effing drinkable beer. Or wine. Or scotch. Mmmmm…

Coming attractions:
A Stylized History of Liberalism, or, How Everything Got So Screwed Up
Why Liberalism is Radical (An exposition in four parts)

Things I wish I had known: Part 2

Avoiding harassment edition

Learn to say no in the appropriate tone of voice. Usually I try firm but gentle first, because especially if people are just trying to sell you something, there’s no reason to get offended or offend them. After that, sometimes angry and confident works best, sometimes laughing at them. Seriously, I’ve found that especially with men, laughing and rolling my eyes at them while saying no often works better than anything else. (Not friendly giggle-giggle laughing. Like, I-can’t-believe-how-ridiculous-you-are, you-are-so-beneath-me-that-I’m-not-taking-your-harassment-seriously laughing.)

If you don’t want attention, avoid eye contact and don’t smile. This sounds terrible, and it’s certainly not a way to get to know your neighbors and meet the locals. But if you’re in a particular place and time where you need to be left alone, don’t think you can get away with being polite and not attracting unwelcome attention. I’ve definitely noticed that men who are watching me but not saying anything will inevitably start in on their “Hey American girl” routine the second I look at them.

Remember that you will never see these people again. Actually, this is always my rule for overcoming embarrassment, but it works particularly well in countries where I have no clue what I’m doing and feel like I’m constantly making a fool of myself. This rule helps me err on the side of just doing it rather than freaking out about potential embarrassment, and also to let go of something afterward and not replay it in my head over and over again once I’ve already screwed up. So what if I mispronounced things, or over paid, or whatever? Really – I will never see those people in Bohol again. Ever.

Again, any additions? Especially women?

Unhelpful thoughts on abortion

Approach to abortion #1: Human life begins at conception, therefore abortion is murder.
Problem: How can you allow any exceptions, even for rape or mother’s health? If there is really mass murder going on, why aren’t you out citizen’s arresting doctors who perform abortions?
Solution: Yes.
(Okay, fine – some argue that even if they feel this way they recognize that compromising politically to prevent as many deaths as possible is better than letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.)

Approach to abortion #2: Human life begins at birth, therefore any decisions about abortion should be left in the mother’s hands.
Problem: Why do we feel sad about abortion, as if it’s something acceptable but better to avoid if possible?
Solution: We feel regret about plenty of things with never-to-be-realized potential that have nothing to do with taking human life. Like, novels we never wrote and vacations we should have taken.

Approach to abortion #3: Human life begins somewhere between conception and birth, therefore we should legalize abortions performed before that point and criminalize those performed after it.
Problem: How can we know when life begins?
Solution: We should take our best guess now based on scientific evidence, and refine our laws as medical science improves.

Really unhelpful alternative I am proposing: Human life begins between conception and birth. But not only can we not know when it happens, there is no ‘point’ when it ‘happens’. There is a spectrum which we can only classify at either end – everything between is just a matter of more and less. Any attempts to draw a line through it are not just uncertain, but arbitrary and invalid by the nature of the thing. And the health and happiness of the mother and other people are relevant as an also-impossible-to-classify-spectrum of more and less bad outcomes that have to get weighed against the more and less of the life. Abortion is therefore neither flat out murder, nor a-okay, but always something morally grey, uncomfortable, and squishy.
Problem: So, uh, what are the policy implications of this?
Non-solution: I have no effing idea.

As a general point, I have noticed that people are very uncomfortable with the idea that pretty much everything is morally grey. (Please overlook my assertion of a few days ago that gay marriage is a black and white issue…) The fact that something is the least-bad option does not make it ‘good’. Conversely, the fact that all of your choices are morally unpalatable – or possibly even unforgivable – does not obviate your responsibility to choose between them as best you can. It’s called tragedy, folks, and it’s awesome.

People want to have a list of things they should do or refrain from doing as they go about their daily lives, and to feel that if they can check off everything on that list, they are good, and if they can't, they are bad. Everyday life is about choosing from among less-than-good options, by virtue of the fact that there is always more good one could have done. You can never relax and say “I have been good today”. You haven’t. You’ve been bad. And good. And tomorrow you should be more good and less bad. I say this as someone who bought a latte today instead of sending my two bucks to Medecins Sans Frontieres.

Throat clearing

Reading Hannah Arendt has been driving a lot of my recent musing about authority and revolution (of which more to come). It is deeply, deeply frustrating to me that her writing is 80% boring gobbledy-gook interspersed with flashes of brilliance about political language. As we know, I am desperate for someone to talk about how to use words in a precise and meaningful manner, and Arendt is one of the few writers I have encountered who takes this on as one of the central purposes of her political and historical analysis.

But really, do I have to wade through all the rest of it? On Violence was 35 pages of blah blah blah, followed by 20 pages of awesomeness, followed by another 50 pages of blah blah blah. On Revolution is better so far; it’s only taken me 25 pages to get to this:

And this relatively new experience, new to those at any rate who made it, was at the same time the experience of man’s faculty to begin something new. These two things together – a new experience which revealed man’s capacity for novelty – are at the root of the enormous pathos which we find in both the American and the French Revolutions, this ever-repeated insistence that nothing comparable in grandeur and significance had ever happened in the whole recorded history of mankind, and which, if we had to account for it in terms of successful reclamation of civil rights, would sound entirely out of place.
Only where this pathos of novelty is present and where novelty is connected with the idea of freedom are we entitled to speak of revolution. This means of course that revolutions are more than successful insurrections and that we are not justified in calling every coup d’etat a revolution or even in detecting one in each civil war.

Maybe I should have finished this book before I started mouthing off about revolutions?

Anyway, one of the most useful things I learned in a class with J.D. McClatchy is that the first bit of almost any poem starts out with “throat clearing”. Good poets get that way by becoming self-aware enough to identify this throat clearing and merciless enough to slash it off the page. Apparently neither Arendt nor her editor understood this concept?

Economists love 'gotcha' arguments involving profit motives

A few months ago, my excellent Spanish colleague Fernando (hello, Fernando – are you reading this now?) kindly lent me Paul Collier’s new book, The Bottom Billion. Sadly, Fernando has since returned to Spain and taken his copy of the book with him, so this post will be based on my generally non-functional memory and the notes that I took at the time. Fortunately for me, Collier has mostly been spared the ravages of the great International Economist Polemics Ego Wars, so I don’t feel so bad making ‘gotcha’ criticisms of his book.

Collier writes that there are a few reasons why international capital is not flowing to Africa, in spite of its relative scarcity there: (I paraphrase, obviously, but according to my notes, this is on pp.88-90)

1. Opportunities for capital investment in Africa are starting from such an abysmal place that even rapid improvement hasn’t yet brought them up to the level of profitability
2. Incorrect international perceptions of risk factors
3. Lack of information on the part of those holding capital, due to the small size/international irrelevance of the economy
4. The fragility of political and economic reforms and an inability for African governments to signal to the holders of capital that these reforms represent a true commitment rather than a short term bid for donor money

He goes on to note that an additional reason for the lack of capital in these countries is that wealthy nationals tend to funnel their money out as quickly as they can. This, he says, is both because “People were holding their assets where they would yield a reasonable and safe return” and again, people have false perceptions about the level of risk. Here, Collier seems to me to be providing excellent evidence that only the first of his four explanations for the lack of international capital in-flow is relevant.

Presumably, his assessment that anyone has a “false” perception of risk must be based on some “true” perception of risk to which he has access and others do not. Like, uh, governance surveys showing recent improvements in “political stability” and “rule of law” in African countries? I’m not sure why we would assume that such surveys are more accurate or responsive to changing conditions than the behavior of international capital flows. Without further evidence, this goes against the grain of the top few dogmas of economics.

But suppose we accept that it’s just not worth it to large international businesses to inform themselves accurately about the true state of African investment opportunities. Even if foreign capital is under some sort of false consciousness or information gap regarding Africa, would wealthy, powerful Africans who presumably have proven their ability to make things happen in their home countries (legally or not) also be desperately funneling their money out? Wouldn’t they know much more about business opportunities and the validity of governance reforms in their countries than either foreign capital or the people who compile risk indexes? Were I possessed of billions of dollars of internationally mobile capital, I would certainly not guess that my highest return investments are located in a country whose richest citizens invest abroad.

I’m certainly not saying that we should give up on attempts to measure investment risk in developing countries. I’m just saying that where the people with local information and a profit motive are not behaving in a way that agrees with the consultants’ surveys, I’m betting on the kleptocrats and not the consultants. Fortunately for all of us, my brilliant boyfriend has come up with a way to use profit motives to construct an index of long-term risk. More on that as soon as we’re both unemployed and in the same hemisphere so that we can write a paper together…

Things I wish I had known: Part 1

Things I was glad I brought or wish someone had told me to bring before I started traveling in developing countries:

Hand sanitizer – There won’t be soap, and sometimes not even water.
Toilet paper – Really. Especially in Asian countries, in my experience. You don't have to cart this with you from the US, but definitely buy some and carry it with you when you travel in-country.
A bandanna or large, sturdy handkerchief – Will double to wipe away sweat so you don’t look and feel so nasty, and to cover your mouth while you sit in smoggy traffic in big cities.
A very small umbrella – I haven’t taken my own advice on this one, but the point is that rain in the tropics is different than in a lot of the US – if you are out in it uncovered for even a minute you will be drenched and it might take you a week to dry out again.
Ciprofloxacin – Easily available broad-spectrum anti-biotic, which fixes everything.
Non-rot-able flip-flops – For beaches, showers, and keeping your feet cool. But make sure they’re not leather or fabric that will rot if they sit around wet in your bag overnight.
A big sarong – Serves as pretty much everything: towel when your hotel doesn’t have one, beach cover up, blanket on long bus rides where the AC is up too high, something to wear in your hotel when there is no AC and it’s too unbearably hot to wear clothing, pillow, bag to wrap your laundry in…
A scrunch-able fleece or sweatshirt – Paradoxically, stores and vehicles in tropical countries seem to have no middle ground between unbearable heat and uncomfortably strong AC. You will want something warm surprisingly often.
A small, zip-able change purse – You don’t want to carry a wallet or loose change in your pocket because it will be stolen, but you’ll need regular access to small change for buying food and paying for transportation.
A very tough medium-sized backpack – It makes no sense to carry a wheeled suitcase for short trips, because there are no sidewalks or escalators, so you’ll end up hefting it around anyway. A pack that is large enough for weekend excursions and small enough to carry for a long time without killing your back is ideal. (Thanks, Barbara!)

I’m compiling a list for my friends and new IPA hires. Anyone have anything to add? (I’m looking at you, people I know have traveled in Thailand/live in Beirut.)

Gay marriage: Part 1

I know that I’m preaching to the choir, here, but I want to write about gay marriage while CA Proposition 8 is still fresh in our minds. It’s something that I have long felt very, very strongly about, and which I believe is the only morally black and white question facing my generation. That said, I have spent a lot of time discussing it with well-intentioned and definitely non-evil people who hold opposite views, and I think I have come out with a somewhat unusual set of thoughts on the topic.

My intention is to make a few posts:

1. There is a strong case for striking down both the federal Defense of Marriage Acts (DOMA) and discriminatory state marriage laws through the courts
2. Some of the legal precedent supporting the judicial case is itself of questionable merit
3. Everyone should support legal change through the legislative process, regardless of judicial outcomes

*******

First things first. The federal DOMA says that marriage is between one man and one woman, and in essence, that no state will be obliged to recognize a marriage conferred by any state that says otherwise. This seems to me to be an obvious and blatant contradiction of the “full faith and credit” clause of the Constitution, which says that states must recognize the public acts of another state, even when such an act would not occur under its own laws. This rule has been upheld in the case of common law marriage, which is legalized only in a minority of states, although not by the Supreme Court. It is my understanding that this point has been made before, but that the Supreme Court has not yet chosen to hear any of the relevant cases. This seems so obvious to me that I don’t even know what to say about the fact that nothing has been done about it. Maybe I’m missing something? Maybe the Supreme Court knows that if they had to actually hear this case they would set off a firestorm of the sort not seen since Roe?


Next, the more complicated question: Is there a federal case for overruling state marriage laws?

The popular argument about the judicial case for legalizing gay marriage often boils down to this:
Pro – “It’s just like Loving v. Virginia [the case that struck down anti-miscegenation laws]”
Con – “No, that was about race”
Pro – “It’s the same thing”
Con – “No, it’s not”

They are both right, and it’s more complicated than that. Loving v. Virginia provides the bedrock of the case, but you need two more past judicial decisions to bring it home. To make a successful Supreme Court case, you would need to show four things:

1. There exists a ‘right to marry’.
2. If a state wishes to nonetheless deny access to marriage, it must give reasons that meet a standard of strict scrutiny (the high bar that is needed to validate laws that distinguish on the basis of protected classes [e.g. race] or fundamental rights) rather than the usual ‘rational basis’ required for courts to defer to legislatures.
3. A union between two people of the same gender could theoretically meet the legal definition of marriage.
4. DOMAs do not meet the requirements of strict scrutiny.

Right to Marry
The first is provided by Loving. The Court found that anti-miscegenation laws violated not only the Equal Protection clause of the Constitution, but also the Due Process clause. They could have decided the case on Equal Protection alone: “[I]t is simply not possible for a state law to be valid under our Constitution which makes the criminality of an act depend upon the race of the actor.” But they didn’t. They went out of their way to say the following: “[T]he freedom to marry [is] one of the vital personal rights essential to the pursuit of happiness by free men.”

Strict scrutiny
Arguments against Loving as sufficient precedent often point out that since gays are not a ‘protected class’ and DOMAs are not created with the intent to do harm to people of one gender, they need only meet the requirements of a ‘rational basis’ for discrimination. If the defenders of DOMAs can come up with any rational basis (like protecting the traditional values of the state), then the Court must defer to the legislature. However, the decision in the 1978 case Zablocki v. Redhail says, “Since our past decisions make clear that the right to marry is of fundamental importance, and since the classification at issue here significantly interferes with the exercise of that right, we believe that "critical examination" of the state interests advanced in support of the classification is required.” Strict scrutiny should be applied, not because gays are a protected class, but because marriage is a fundamental right.

Same-sex marriage is marriage
There is a fundamental right to marry, but does same-sex marriage actually describe something which fits the parameters of this right? In Turner v. Safley, the Court considered a law enabling prison authorities to restrict the right of prisoners to marry, and concluded that such a statute did not even meet the low standard of being “reasonably related to legitimate penological interests” that pertains in a prison setting. Four important attributes of marriage were laid out as “sufficient to form a constitutionally protected marital relationship.”

1. Marriages are “expressions of emotional support and public commitment.”
2. Marriage is an “expression of personal dedication” and for some couples may involve an “exercise of religious faith.”
3. Most marriages are formed “in the expectation that they ultimately will be fully consummated.”
4. Marital status is often “a precondition to the receipt of government benefits, property rights, and other, less tangible benefits.”

The only possible argument that same-sex marriage could not meet this definition lies in the definition of “ultimately[…] consummated”. I will skip a lot of reasoning on this subject, but in essence, it is unlikely that ‘consummated’ equals ‘procreation’ since no state attempts to prevent infertile couples from marrying or asks people to declare their intention to have children upon marriage, and because we have Court cases that explicitly say that contraceptive use in married couples is a-okay because choices about childbearing in married relationships are none of the state’s business.

DOMAs don’t meet strict scrutiny
None of the areas of state interest that are commonly proposed as reasons to restrict the right of marriage to opposite-sex couples can overcome the demands of strict scrutiny set by Zablocki, which require that laws that “interfere directly and substantially” with the right to marry must be supported by “sufficiently important state interests” and be “closely tailored to effectuate only those interests.” For instance, let’s discuss the three areas of state interest proposed in the case that legalized gay marriage in MA, Goodridge v. Massachussets:

1. Connecting marriage to procreation -- Going beyond the case law regarding married couples being allowed to use contraception, there is no evidence that allowing same-sex couples to marry would decrease the likelihood of opposite-sex couples to procreate, whereas the ability to bring children into a family supported by marriage might very well increase the likelihood that same-sex couples would choose to pursue alternative methods of reproduction or adoption.
2. Preserving the optimal setting for child-rearing -- The generalization that homes with two parents of opposite sexes are preferable to same-sex households is too broad to meet strict scrutiny, especially given the lack of respectable social scientific evidence about impact of a same-sex household on children. The Court would never accept restrictions on marriage for people with demographic traits with a better documented correlation with negative parenting outcomes, even though such laws might serve the interest of protecting children’s welfare far better than a ban on same-sex marriage. Social welfare policies more narrowly designed to benefit children or families with children would be more closely tailored to serve the state’s interest in child welfare.
3. Preserving scarce state resources -- Where the state contends that same-sex couples are less financially dependent on each other than opposite-sex couples, MA Chief Justice Marshall responds that, “Massachusetts marriage laws do not condition receipt of public and private financial benefits to married individuals on a demonstration of financial dependence on each other.” A law granting benefits only to individuals or couples with demonstrated need would be a far more obvious and closely tailored method of preserving state resources.

If you need further proof, see what Justice Scalia had to say in his dissenting opinion in the case Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down anti-sodomy laws:

Today's opinion dismantles the structure of constitutional the law that has permitted a distinction to be made between heterosexual and homosexual unions, insofar as formal recognition in marriage is concerned. If moral disapprobation of homosexual conduct is "no legitimate state interest" for purposes of proscribing that conduct, ante, at 18; and if, as the Court coos (casting aside all pretense of neutrality), "[w]hen sexuality finds overt expression in intimate conduct with another person, the conduct can be but one element in a personal bond that is more enduring," ante, at 6; what justification could there possibly be for denying the benefits of marriage to homosexual couples exercising "[t]he liberty protected by the Constitution," ibid.? Surely not the encouragement of procreation, since the sterile and the elderly are allowed to marry. This case "does not involve" the issue of homosexual marriage only if one entertains the belief that principle and logic have nothing to do with the decisions of this Court.

Zing. What a lovely fellow. I had dinner with him once. A poor befuddled Yale Law student made the mistake of beginning a question critical of one of Scalia’s decisions with “My girlfriend says…” Scalia’s response? “Get a new girlfriend.” Period.

Nigerian mediocrity

There are many reasons behind aid spending, but two are most often cited, particularly by private philanthropies (which tend to be less interested than public funders in providing ‘aid’ to Israel and Egypt):

• Development – This money is an investment which is going to contribute to the political or economic development of this country in a continuing way, beyond the direct impacts of the spending.
• Human rights – This money will provide direct relief to people who are unable to access some goods or experiences which we consider necessary to the expression of their humanity

One or both of these principles can drive a broad range of aid activities. Health and education provide particularly interesting examples, however, because the same activities are often justified using both principles simultaneously and with relatively equal weight. So, funders will argue that better HIV prevention is necessary to prevent massive human suffering and to rescue the economies of southern Africa. Or, that getting girls into middle school is both a matter of women’s rights and will have all sorts of fabulous indirect effects on politics, health, population growth, and labor force participation.

But this is supposed to be another anti-Nigeria post, you say? When do we get to the part about Nigeria, you say?*

The question next arises: where do we spend all of this lovely money on health and education? Well, the reasoning goes, we should spend it where the need is greatest. (Remember we’re talking about funders who don’t typically include upgrades in airborne bombing technology in their definition of need) If need is the extent to which you currently lack the desired object, Chad and Somalia are doing pretty badly on the health and education front. But then, we’re worried that spending money in those places would be a bad investment, since they also currently lack functioning governments or economies. What we need is a country that is doing really badly, but not sooooo badly that investing in human capital seems pointless. Hmm. Also, it would be good if it were really big and had a lot of poor people in it. If only we could think of a country like that…

Nigeria (okay – AND Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Uganda) often serves as a sort of compromise aid target: it is big, poor, and clearly needy, but not such an obvious basket-case that it is difficult to justify the development value of working there. I think is quite plausible, however, that this type of compromise may often serve neither development investment nor human rights purposes.

Generic health and education efforts are justified by both development and human rights aims. But different types of activities within the generalization of ‘health’ or ‘education’ may serve those purposes differently, and furthermore, even the same activity may achieve different things in different contexts. It seems very possible to me that we ought split our pot of health/education money in two, and spend some in the countries where development returns are maximized, and some of it in the countries where human rights impact is maximized. Nigeria may be a compromise based on the bizarre assumption that we have to find countries that have the least-bad combination for both goals.

Why don’t we support technical colleges in Botswana, and women’s literacy groups in refugee camps in Chad? How about full infant vaccination and HIV prevention in South Africa, and clean birthing kits in the Congo and water purification tools in Myanmar? We tend to discount the best off because they don’t need help, and the worst off because they won’t make good use of it.

You may notice that I have used wussy-waffly words like ‘possible’ and ‘may’ in this post more than usual. This is because there is a long list of possible reasons why Nigeria is actually an optimal compromise (shocking!), and I am open to being convinced of their validity.

1. We can’t work in Chad, not just because it wouldn’t reap the development benefits of human capital investment, but because the country is so dysfunctional that our money would actually disappear and not serve human rights purposes either. (Paul Collier cites a study in Chad showing that less than 1% of public money destined for rural health clinics actually made there.) For Nigeria to be the next best thing, of course, we would have to assume that money spent there doesn’t disappear…
2. Investing in middle income countries might maximize development in some sense, but because they are already doing sort of okay on their own, we would rather get less growth in countries with a lower starting point.
3. Investing in low income countries actually does maximize development, because there are large diminishing marginal returns to health and education improvements. The difference in the economic benefits of taking Nigerian kids from 4th to 5th grade versus taking South African kids from 10th to 11th grade overwhelms any other advantages of working in a more functional country.
4. Investing in low income countries actually does maximize development, because middle income countries are no longer at a point where outside interventions can help – if South Africa’s schools suck, it’s because of something wrong in the system, not because the department of education lacks funding or needs technical assistance.
5. Funder organizations have limited human and financial capacity and can’t split their attentions effectively between a bunch of countries. Since they have to show their donors that they are achieving both development and human rights outcomes, they have to pick a compromise target. Actually, I’m not real sympathetic to this one, but I thought I’d throw it in for the sake of completeness.

More in a future post on why development attention should focus more on lower-middle and upper-low income countries. We’ll call it the lifting-Africa-up-by-its-southern-bootstraps approach…

*For any future employers who may someday for some unknown reason find themselves reading this: I love Nigeria. Really. Nigeria is great. We should spend money there, as long as it’s on the right things. I’m totally straw-manning the country to serve my devious literary purposes.

My walk to work

As promised, here are some pictures from my walk to work. It turns out, predictably I suppose, that I a lot of people really wanted to have their pictures taken. I was still too embarrassed to stop and get really good shots, so a lot of these pictures are a little fuzzy from being taken in motion. Also, the kitten weren't out this morning, and the goats and piglets and bananas were all present in much smaller stacks than they usually are, so maybe I'll try again another morning.

My 2nd favorite security guard was at the door the dorm this morning.



















My view walking out the door -- this is the corner where there is usually a crowd of young men who hassle me, but they weren't there this morning. They're usually loading grain onto trucks, so I guess that wasn't happening today.



































The girl who sells me 'torta' most mornings for my breakfast.



















There are rows and rows of store fronts like this in the dry market selling the exact same things at the same prices.















The piglet pens!






































These guys really wanted their picture taken.




























These guys at the big feed store on the corner near the goats also wanted their picture taken.





































































The bank!



















Nice security guard with big gun.

































My desk.