Egypt and oil

FiveThirtyEight has some interesting analysis posted on Egypt, Tunisia, and (lack of) oil supplies:

Egypt does have some oil: it produces about 600,000 barrels a day, with a retail value of about $18 billion annually. Still, because of Egypt’s large population, this would translate to only about $220 per capita. And most of Egypt’s oil stays in its domestic market: it exports only 89,000 barrels a day, which would produce $2.6 billion a year at a price of $80 per barrel, or just $32 per person. This is much less than the aggregate figure for the Middle East, which is $1,605 per person.

All told, countries are probably better off when they don’t have oil. Most of the ones that have it are at least partly corrupted because of it, and even the ones who avoid that get hooked on oil revenues despite the better angels of their environmental consciousness.

High school science

Talking with Emily the other night, I was reminded of something that happened to me while I was attending Handsworth Secondary School, in North Vancouver. I can’t remember which grade it was in, but I had a large group lecture in ‘science’ (back before they were split by sub-discipline) and one topic covered was buoyancy.

The lecture was taught by Mr. Salkus, one of the two or three teachers who I remember being seriously important for me in high school. At the end, he presented a problem to the class: working out how many five gram helium balloons of a set volume it would require to lift him. Naturally, his weight was provided.

Because I left elementary school having read all the science books I could handle, I started high school with quite a head start in chemistry, physics, and biology. I remember the The Usborne Illustrated Dictionary of Chemistry and the The Usborne Illustrated Dictionary of Physics being favourite childhood texts. (Parents, buy them for your children!) As a result, I was allowed to take Science 8 and Science 9 simultaneously, and move to Science 10 in 9th grade.

One problem with this approach is that my math lagged behind. Math also wasn’t a subject I was particularly strong in. Along with French and gym, it introduced Cs into my high school report cards. I remember, in Chemistry 12, having my brilliant lab partner explain that a problem could be solved easily using an integral, but having no idea how such a thing was done. (Later, as an undergrad, I had a similar experience in an early economics course with regressions.)

So, at the time of this balloon lifting problem, I was not comfortable with algebra. I knew that an algebraic equation would be the way to work out the answer: first by comparing the density of air and helium, then by working out the net lift from each balloon. What I didn’t know was the mathematical technique for doing this properly. Instead, I solved it using an arithmetic kludge.

A prize had been promised to whoever got the answer right, and I remember submitting mine (one of only a small few who did) with nervousness, given that I knew my approach to be somewhat faulty. The next lecture, however, Mr. Salkus gave me a mini Toblerone bar, along with the two students who had actually solved the problem correctly. Maybe he realized that my math classes had lagged behind my science classes; maybe he just felt inclined to reward my effort. In any case, it was one of the things that made me remember him as an unusually good teacher.

Whaling and sustainability

I have been reading Andrew Darby’s Harpoon: Into the Heart of Whaling and, while it tells an interesting story in and of itself, it also seems to say a lot about the relationship between humanity and the natural world. The story of whaling is a common one: people developed technology that allowed them to make big short-term gains at the expense of long-term sustainability. Even while it was happening, there were those who pointed out how senseless it was to do things like kill the most successful breeding females and leave their calves to die. And yet, the impetus for short-term gain overwhelmed the case for conservation, and whale populations around the world were brutally cut back.

Now, despite the lack of need for whale meat, and everything we know about the rarity and intelligence of the creatures, states led by Japan continue to allow their special interests to operate at the expense of humanity and the natural world at large, continuing commercial whaling under the guise of scientific research.

All this seems to relate to a common theme: human beings are smart in an abstract sense, but frequently behave in ways that are profoundly dumb and unethical. While, in a certain sense, climate change is a narrow technical problem subject to technical solutions, it is arguable that in order to build up the energy and motivation necessary to make those changes, humanity needs its mindset to evolve. With a few local exceptions, like urban air quality rules, we are burning through the biosphere like there’s no tomorrow. As soon as an environmental problem gets large enough, the will to deal with it becomes terribly weak. Then, only the most technical and minimal problems – those that can be addressed with little or no real societal change – can actually be addressed. Arguably, ozone depleting substances and persistent organic pollutants are evidence of this hypothesis.

Who harvests America’s food?

Anyone who is concerned with food security in the United States should be concerned about immigration policy as well:

The government estimates that more than 80% of America’s crop workers are Hispanic (mostly Mexican), and more than half are illegal aliens. But Rob Williams, the director of the Migrant Farmworker Justice Project (which represents farmworkers in court), considers those numbers grossly misleading because they rely on self-reporting. He estimates that more than 90% of farmworkers are sin papeles (without papers)[.]

Much of the abuse suffered by these workers apparently relates directly to immigration law, since the constant threat of deportation strips workers of any ability to demand better work conditions.

Citizens arrest

There are good reasons why we restrict powers like arrest to trained agents of the government. While there are certainly many problems with the conduct of police and oversight over them, at least they have training and experience and there are mechanisms in place to evaluate their actions. By contrast, empowering every shopkeeper and random citizen to physically detain people who they think are criminals seems dangerous and unnecessary. In a few cases, it may be the least bad option available, but I think the onus should be on the person performing the arrest to justify it later.

In the grand scheme of things, shoplifting seems a lot less significant than physically detaining somebody against their will. Saying that as soon as somebody steals from you, you have the right to effectively kidnap them seems liable to create harm and abuse. Kidnapping is rightly considered a more serious offense than shoplifting, and I don’t think the fact that someone committed a crime before being thus apprehended has all that much legal or moral significance. It smacks of the sort of crude revenge-based legal systems where people get their hands lopped off (or get thrown into the terrible conditions of prison, but that is another discussion).

That’s why I think it is wrongheaded when people argue that David Chen – the Toronto shopkeeper who physically detained a shoplifter – should never have been criminally charged. When you opt to take the law into your own hands, you are effectively claiming that the situation is so important and so urgent that you should take over from the actual authorities. It seems to me that such cases are rare and involve things like real risks of injury or death – not the danger of losing a few dollars worth of merchandise.

If you feel that you need to usurp the powers of the police, it just seems sensible to expect that you may need to justify that choice in a court of law. They may well find that you behaved reasonably. But the fact that there will be some after-the-fact oversight could in itself act as a minor deterrent to abuses of power.