Month: September 2022

Most dictators self-destruct

Daniel Treisman, a UCLA political scientist… analyzed 218 episodes of democratization between 1800 and 2015 and found they were, with some exceptions (such as Danish King Frederick VII’s voluntary acceptance of a constitution in 1848), the result of authoritarian rulers’ mistakes in seeking to hold on to power.

According to the Bloomberg Opinion article, the five major mistakes are:

  • Hubris: An authoritarian ruler underestimates the opposition’s strength and fails to compromise or suppress it before it’s too late…
  • Needless risk: A ruler calls a vote which he “fails to manipulate sufficiently” (like Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1988, when he lost a plebiscite on whether he should be allowed to stay in power) or starts a war he cannot win (like Argentina with the Falklands conflict of 1982)…
  • Slippery slope: That’s Gorbachev’s case: a ruler starts reforms to prop up the regime but ends up undermining it…
  • Trusting a traitor: This is not always a mistake made by the dictator itself, although it was in the case of Francisco Franco in Spain, who chose King Juan Carlos, the dismantler of fascism, as his successor…
  • Counterproductive violence: Not suppressing the opposition when necessary can be a sign of hubris in a dictator, but overreacting is also a grave mistake…

I am curious to see what will happen with Vladimir Putin.

Archived article from Bloomberg Opinion: https://archive.ph/CyYaf. Original paper (34 pages, conclusions start on page 28; plus eight pages of references and 14 pages of Appendices including tables): https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w23944/w23944.pdf:

Common mistakes include: calling elections or starting military conflicts, only to lose them; ignoring popular unrest and being overthrown; initiating limited reforms that get out of hand; and selecting a covert democrat as leader. These mistakes reflect well-known cognitive biases such as overconfidence and the illusion of control.

Detecting Parkinson’s by smell

When Les Milne was 31, his wife Joy detected that his odor had changed. And some ten years later, his personality began changing. He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, and at a Parkinson’s support group, Joy realized that all the sufferers there had that odor. But she had detected it years before other symptoms were noticeable:

Parkinson’s begins slowly, taking years or maybe even decades before symptoms such as tremors appear, Kunath says. “Imagine a society where you could detect such a devastating condition before it’s causing problems and then prevent the problems from even occurring,”

And it’s not just Parkinson’s:

Joy’s superpower is so unusual that researchers all over the world have started working with her and have discovered that she can identify several kinds of illnesses — tuberculosis, Alzheimer’s disease, cancer and diabetes.

NPR article for laypeople: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/03/23/820274501/her-incredible-sense-of-smell-is-helping-scientists-find-new-ways-to-diagnose-di. Scientific paper: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acscentsci.8b00879.

Solving poverty with cash?

You’ve heard this refrain before — giving money to homeless people is not the best way to help them because it might be squandered, or spent on harmful habits. But a new Canadian study makes a powerful case to the contrary…. Researchers gave 50 recently homeless people a lump sum of 7,500 Canadian dollars (nearly $5,700). They followed the cash recipients’ life over 12-18 months and compared their outcomes to that of a control group who didn’t receive the payment. The preliminary findings, which will be peer-reviewed next year, show that those who received cash were able to find stable housing faster, on average. By comparison, those who didn’t receive cash lagged about 12 months behind in securing more permanent housing.

“One of the things that was most striking is that most people who received the cash knew immediately what they wanted to do with that money, and that just flies in the face of stereotypes,” Williams told CNN. For example, she explained some cash recipients knew they wanted to use the money to move into housing, or invest in transportation — getting a bike, or taking their cars to the repair shop to be able to keep their jobs. Others wanted to purchase computers. A number of them wanted to start their own small businesses. “People very much know what they need, but we often don’t equip them with the intervention or the services that really empowers them with choice and dignity to move forward on their own terms,” Williams said.

Although note that the group of homeless people was preselected:

Project participants were carefully screened for program eligibility to ensure the highest likelihood of success. Eligibility criteria include: age of recipients, length of time homeless, Canadian citizen or permanent resident, and degree of functionality (mental health and severity of substance and alcohol use). Our goals in designing these criteria were to support participants to the highest degree possible, assess their readiness for change, and reduce any risk of harm.

Fifty individuals were randomly selected to receive a one-time cash transfer of $7,500.

Still useful, though:

The study shows there are advantages for the taxpayer, too. 

According to the research, reducing the number of nights spent in shelters by the 50 study participants who received cash saved approximately 8,100 Canadian dollars per person per year, or about 405,000 Canadian dollars over one year for all 50 participants.

CNN report: https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/09/americas/direct-giving-homeless-people-vancouver-trnd/index.html.

New Leaf Project: https://forsocialchange.org/new-leaf-project-overview.

The Quest for Fuel in World War II

An interesting (to me, at least) overview of how vital oil was in all theaters of WWII.

Millions of pages have been written about the tactics and strategies of World War II, but relatively little about how almost every major decision of that conflict was conditioned by the need for one commodity without which no modern army can operate – oil.

You may not be aware of these tidbits (emphasis mine):

Though it varied from campaign to campaign and unit to unit, as much as 70 percent of German supply transport remained horse-drawn throughout the war. There were 5,375 horses assigned to each infantry division. In fact, as the war dragged on and petroleum became even more critical, horses became more important to the German war effort rather than less.
…
An appropriate postscript to Japan’s defeated drive for oil occurred shortly after its surrender, when a detachment of U.S. sailors went to arrest Gen. Hideki Tojo for war crimes. He attempted suicide, and it took two hours to find an ambulance with enough fuel to take him to a hospital.

http://www.eiaonline.com/history/bloodforoil.htm. 4,900 words. (By the way, this appears to me in very tiny print. Use the “+” button a few times to enlarge.)