Alex Jacobson 3.0

Ever since I read about Hernando De Soto’s work years ago, I’ve been saying that the a major remedy for third world economic problems would be online land registries. Now, BusinessWeek reoprts that its happenning in India! Photon Courier notes

Why is this a big deal? you may ask. Previously, the deeds were controlled by “powerful village accountants.” They typically charged large fees to the poor farmers who needed copies of their deeds–and a farmer might need such copies 2 or 3 times a year when asking for loans (to buy fertilizer, for instance). And sometimes accountants would collude with upper-caste landlords to steal the land by altering the deeds.

In the state of Karnataka, 20 million deeds have been digitized over the past 5 years, and 200 kiosks have been deployed across the state. It now costs the equivalent of 30 cents to get a copy of one’s records–the previous fees from the local accountants were in the range of $2.00 to $20.00.

I would have implemented India’s system differently, but YAY anyway.

Via Belgravia Dispatch, perhaps the Finanial Times would be the honest liberal alternative to the NYTimes.

Intelligence officers learned between 1999 and 2001 that uranium smugglers planned to sell illicitly mined Nigerien uranium ore, or refined ore called yellow cake, to Iran, Libya, China, North Korea and Iraq.

These claims support the assertion made in the British government dossier on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programme in September 2002 that Iraq had sought to buy uranium from an African country, confirmed later as Niger. George W. Bush, US president, referred to the issue in his State of the Union address in January 2003.

Andrew McCarthy and Captain Edi do a good job of dissecting the NYTimes recent effort to mislead its readers into believing that there were no connections between Saddam and Al Queada, when in fact it knew that they had a cooperative relationship.

Robert and others argue that this administration faces a credibility problem. Fault for this credibility problem lies at the feet of the major media like the NYTimes that keep misreporting both what the Administration has said and the facts on the ground that may corroborate Administration conclusions.

In describing Michael Moore’s newest movie, Jeff Jarvis observes:

He’s no longer just ridiculing the powerful; he’s no longer turning them into punchlines; he’s now trying to convince us that these particular powerful people — Bush et al — are evil, venal, corrupt, incompetent co-conspirators out to ruin our world. If you’re going to try to convince us of that, then you have a different obligation of fact and argument than if you’re just trying to make fun of somebody. You should give us legitimate facts and arm us with arguments by showing both sides of an issue and beating down the other side. If you don’t do that, you’re only shrieking. You’re weakening your own argument by ignoring the other side. You’re insulting the intelligence of your audience by not giving them both sides. You’re just seething. That’s what Moore is like now. He wants to convince us he’s telling the truth but he’s afraid to tell the whole truth.

“All the News That’s Fit to Print” is falling into the same category. Unfortunately, unlike Moor’s movie, the NYTimes is, by far, the dominant news source for many people I know. And, they don’t feel insulted by its dishonest behavior, they feel relieved, and will leap to its defense. I don’t know what NYTime lie would be so outrageous so as to cause doubt. I think the solution is to find a news source that would serve the NYTimes’ audience better than it itself does. The NYSun attempts to provide a conservative alternative to the NYTimes but I think that misses the mark. What I am looking for is an honest news source for a liberal readership. Any recomendations?

Update: See also lying by the Kerry campaign.

Great article on polemics. Heres the rules:

1. “Forget about trying to convert your adversary. In any serious ideological confrontation the chances of success on this score are so remote as to exclude it as a rational objective.”

   This one is incredibly disapointing as it seems like I should be able to find agreement with my close friends and with people with whom I share a common culture. I would reframe this as try to reframe the dispute so you are not adversaries. No, I don’t know how to do this one easily.

   On the very rare occasions when it does happen, it will be because the person converted has already and independently come to harbor serious doubts and is teetering on the edge of ideological defection. This is due, more
   often than not, to some outrageous action by his own side or some shocking revelation: witness the effects on members of Communist parties in the West of the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939 and the Khrushchev speech
   of 1956.

   Perhaps revelations of the NYTimes misrepresentations are good enough (see prior post), but I doubt it.

2. “Pay great attention to the agenda of the debate. He who defines the issues, and determines their
   priority, is already well on the way to winning.” Totally! Rather than let the debate drift to lots of different accusations without conclusion, I pick one of the accusations an pummel it to death. Really, I should try to reframe to get on top of the general claim being made and try to work from there. Allowing the debate to drift into the question of lying rather than the question of justification is a failure.

3. “Preaching to the converted, far from being a superfluous activity, is vital. Preachers do it every
   Sunday. The strengthening of the commitment, intellectual performance, and morale of those already on
   your side is an essential task, both in order to bind them more securely to the cause and to make them
   more effective exponents of it.”

4. “Never forget the uncommitted: almost invariably, they constitute the vast majority. This may seem obvious, but intense polemical activity is often a coterie activity, and in the excitement of combat and lust for the polemical kill the uncommitted are often overlooked[...] whenever you think of something that strikes you as particularly brilliant, at
   least consider seriously the advisability of suppressing it in favor of something which projects moral and intellectual seriousness in a straightforward way.”

5. “Be aware that, at least potentially, you are addressing mutiple audiences. Decide whether, on a particular occasion, you want to make a broad appeal to many audiences, which will usually involve compromise and restraint in presentation, or whether you want to make a sharply focused pitch to a particular audience, even at the risk of alienating others.” Does this blog have too many audiences? Josh was feeling insulted earlier about posts to which he was extraneous. See Clay’s comments on Fork World.
6. “Be prepared to go around the block many times. When you have a good point to make, keep repeating it. Success in ideological polemics is very much a matter of staying power and will, and the same battles have to be fought over and over again. ” True and Ugh.
7. “Shave with Occam’s razor. Knowing what you can afford to give away is one of the great arts of polemic.[...]The willingness to concede or ignore what is inessential will make it harder for others to characterize you as dogmatic, and is likely to make a favorable impression on the uncommitted.” Amen.
8. “Be very careful in your use of examples and historical analogies. More often than not, their illustrative value is outweighed by their distracting effect.” Godwin’s Law anyone?
9. “When bolstering the authority of what you are saying by the use of quotation, give preference wherever possible to sources which are not identified with your case.” Notice my use of NYTimes quotations in the last post.
10. “Avoid trading in motives as an alternative to rebutting the opposing case.” Also, note when other’s violate this rule. “Motives can explain error, distortion, and falsehood, but they cannot establish the existence of these things.” The left attack on Bush and “its all about oil” violates this rule.
11. “In any polemical exchange, make sure that you know several times more about a topic than you can conceivably use or show.” Done. The upshot is that opponents frequently claim ignorance as a defense (as dinner companion did last night). Ignorance is not a defense. It is a failure.
12. “Take particular care to understand the position of your adversary – and to understand it not in a caricature or
    superficial form but at its strongest, for until you have rebutted it at its strongest you have not rebutted it at all.” This one is violated by the left all the time. Rather than engaging the actualy arguments of the Bush administration, they instead make up straw men e.g. imminent threat, nuclear WMD, Saddam-9/11 etc.