Category: Jane Jacobs

Jane Jacobs and the Drug Industry

Seth Roberts14 Comments

At the Freakonomics blog there is a fascinating “quorum” (four people answer the same question) about the drug industry. “What can you tell us — good or bad — that we don’t know about drug companies?” was the question. Three of the answers were bad things, one was a good thing — pretty predictable given who was asked. What interested me was how bad were the bad things (very bad) and how good was the good thing (barely good). The answers make the drug industry look very bad, in other words.

You are reading this because of my fear and dislike of pharmaceutical drugs. Long ago, I had trouble sleeping through the night. If I went to a doctor, I knew I would be given a prescription for a drug that would be ineffective (long-term) and dangerous (due to biases in the way drugs are tested). So I struck out on my own and via self-experimentation eventually found several solutions that did not involve drugs. (The first was to stop eating breakfast.) This is how I realized the power of self-experimentation to find unusual solutions to everyday problems.

Why does an industry entrusted with something so precious — our health — come across so badly? In Systems of Survival, Jane Jacobs pointed out two moral “syndromes” (sets of values): the commercial syndrome and the guardian syndrome. The commercial syndrome (e.g., be honest) was appropriate for businesses; the guardian syndrome (e.g., be loyal) was appropriate for governments. Why just two? Because there were two fundamental ways of making a living, Jacobs said: trading (business) or taking (government). She pointed out the trouble that arises when governments act like businesses or businesses act like governments. It is bad news, for example, when policemen are given ticket quotas. Quotas are a business tool.

I recently experienced the problem Jacobs pointed out when my scooter was towed by Avenue Tow Service (Berkeley, CA) — using power given them by the city government. They broke the windshield. No surprise they lied about it. Why should they bother telling the truth? Unlimited power is a government tool.

The drug industry is a much larger example of the same thing. What is trading? You trade voluntarily. The two parties are roughly equal in strength. What is taking? The powerful take from the weak. Although drug companies are businesses, they deal with people who are weak (sick) and have no other choice. So in essence, they take rather than trade. One of the Freakonomics examples of bad behavior was price gouging.

The federal government has given drug companies this power, just as the Berkeley city government gave Avenue Tow Service the power to tow my scooter. The federal government has done so because it has failed to effectively support research into non-drug solutions. (Norman Temple and I wrote about how almost all research money goes in the wrong direction.) This leaves the drug industry, like the company that towed my scooter, with a monopoly. Unlike a conventional monopoly (a single company) it is industry-wide. But the effects are the same — a business starts to take rather than trade. And they do things that, when exposed, make them look very bad.

The Legacy of Jane Jacobs

Seth RobertsLeave a comment

Because of reading Jane Jacobs, I could begin to understand this fascinating post by E. M. Risse about trade vs import replacement. I hadn’t before heard his point that between-region trade tends to favor people at the top of the economic food chain. I’m not sure I completely understand Risse’s post but I am intrigued enough to want to look at his (four-volume!) book, The Shape of the Future, shape meaning settlement pattern.

Jane Jacobs and Art

Seth Roberts2 Comments

painting of big flat building

The Cleveland painter Michelle Muldrow was a musician for ten years before becoming a painter — although she got a BFA (Bachelor of Fine Arts) before that. From an unusual background, an unusual creative process:

Interviewer: Describe your working process when creating a new work.

MM: Usually I begin reading about environmental issues, urban development, really anything touching on the subjects of land use, as well American history and fiction. I guess I sort of consider myself a sponge at the beginning stages of work, then usually some travel helps and I take tons of source photos. From there I organize my photos into different obsessions, be it the artificial horticulture and landscaping in the modern developments, or the death of inner ring suburbs, subdivisions, etc, at that point I look for what I am most interested in painting. It’s sort of like all my intellectual obsessions still must go through a filter of how I feel, and that is an important element to my work- nostalgia. I suppose I attribute that to the rootlessness of my childhood, I am always trying to make sense of my landscape and home. Then I begin the body of my work. I tend to approach my work as a series or body rather than as individual images. I always prep, underpaint and paint at least 4-5 paintings all at once, never one at a time. I freehand draw, then do a monochromatic underpainting, and from there, I paint.

Painting, in other words, resembles blogging: You can blog about anything, you can paint anything — so long as you care about it.

One of her favorite writers is Jane Jacobs. She used to live in San Francisco, where there seemed to be no upper limit on the value of property. In Cleveland, with boarded-up homes everywhere, there seems to be no lower limit.

painting titled LA Wires

Jane Jacobs Roundup

Seth Roberts2 Comments

1. About her work, on YouTube (3 minutes).

2. Podcast of her first Massey lecture, about Quebec separatism (34 minutes).

3. To the extent I could figure out her intellectual likes and dislikes, I always agreed, with one glaring exception: She liked Stephen Jay Gould’s work, whereas I thought it was awful. This informative post reminded me of this disagreement; I learned that people in Gould’s field (evolutionary biology) agree with me. One reason I didn’t like Gould’s work was his dismissal of evolutionary explanations as “ just-so stories“.

Jane Jacobs Updated

Seth Roberts8 Comments

Chris Matthews’ latest book is Life’s A Campaign. “A recipe for sadness,” Jon Stewart called it in an interview that Matthews called the worst of his life:

In Systems of Survival (1992), Jane Jacobs described two ethical systems: guardian (= government) and commercial. Each system consists of rules of conduct (e.g., “be honest” is a commercial value but not a guardian one). Matthews’s book says you should use guardian principles in everyday life; Stewart said that’s a mistake — commercial principles work better. Jacobs said there is a tendency to think that the principles that work well in your system work everywhere. Maybe this is why Matthews seemed stunned by Stewart’s objections.

To Jacobs’ two systems, Chris Phoenix, a nanotechnology expert, has added a third: the “ information system“. It is about appropriate behavior — what is seen as appropriate behavior — in the world of open source software and similar goods. Phoenix argues persuasively that a different set of values applies. This is why I asked Aaron Swartz what’s wrong with Wikipedia: It’s not so obvious what the appropriate values are.

Long before open source software there were books: books share expertise. Long before books — at the dawn of humanity, I believe — there were hobbies: hobbyists share their expertise. The ethical system that Phoenix describes is much older and more important than he says. Phoenix acted within that system when he posted his essay on the Web; Jacobs did, too, when she wrote a book. Just as I do by blogging.

The Wikipedia Wars

Seth Roberts2 Comments

Speaking of Wikipedia, the LA Times has an interesting article today about what happened when Jimmy Wales — the founder — posted a one-sentence article about a butcher shop on the outskirts of Cape Town. It was deleted quickly — not important enough — but then a big debate ensued. The Times piece turned to the bigger issue:

Perhaps the granddaddy of all the Wikipedia debates is the question of which information deserves to be included, and which doesn’t. So-called Inclusionists believe that because Wikipedia is not bound by the same physical limits as a paper encyclopedia, it shouldn’t have the same conceptual limits either. If there’s room for an article on unreleased Kylie Minogue singles — and a group of people who might find it useful — why not include it? Deletionists, meanwhile, believe that because not all articles are created equal, judicious pruning increases the overall quality of Wikipedia’s information and strengthens its reputation. An encyclopedia, they say, is not just a dumping ground for facts.

While the people who run craigslist try hard to figure out what users want and how to give it to them — starting with the assumption that they themselves do not know — the people who run Wikipedia play God, at least by comparison. In this debate, both sides are playing God. As Aaron Swartz said, it isn’t wise. Jane Jacobs tells a story about a Pennsylvania Girl Scout troop. They were snobs; they made it hard for new members to join (the Wikipedian attitude that Aaron criticized). The girls who couldn’t get in formed their own troop. Several years later the new troop was thriving; the old troop was dying.

What Do Meatloaf, Acupuncture, Psychotherapy, and Clinical Trials Have in Common?

Seth RobertsLeave a comment

Jane Jacobs tells a story about a handed-down meatloaf recipe: After the loaf is made, the end is cut off. “Why?” she asked. “We’ve always done it that way,” she was told. The original recipe was for a smaller oven, it turned out; the end was cut off to make the loaf fit in the oven.

I thought of this story when I read a recent study in the Annals of Internal Medicine that compared three treatments for back pain: acupuncture, “sham acupuncture,” and “conventional therapy.” Sham acupuncture was like acupuncture except that the needles were put in “wrong” places, inserted less deeply, and not rotated after insertion. Conventional therapy was drugs, physical therapy, and exercise. The study found that acupuncture and sham acupuncture were equally effective. Both were much better than conventional therapy. The results imply that acupuncture works, but the surrounding theory (meridians, etc.) is wrong. Which I find reassuring.

Psychotherapy is essentially the same. Lots of studies show that psychotherapy helps — but many studies also imply that the surrounding theory is wrong. Untrained therapists are as effective as trained therapists. Keeping a journal has similar effects. The active ingredient may be telling your problems, just as the active ingredient of acupuncture is apparently needle insertion.

Ritual — doing something just because — can be found in meatloaf recipes, acupuncture, psychotherapy, and clinical trials. In the discussion section of the acupuncture paper, the authors wrote:

Potential limitations of this study [include] inability to blind acupuncturists to the form of acupuncture.

Just as the meatloaf cooks did not understand their recipe, the acupuncture researchers did not understand their research design. The original reason for blinding was to equate expectations. That the two forms of acupuncture came out equal in spite of unequal expectations among the therapists is better evidence that expectations were not important. The authors failed to grasp that lack of blinding worked in their favor.

Thanks to Hal Pashler.

Jane Jacobs and Traffic Tickets

Seth RobertsLeave a comment

Rexford Township, Michigan, has started to pay police officers according to the number of tickets they write. In Systems of Survival, a book about moral systems, Jane Jacobs criticized something similar: ticket quotas for police. Treating guardians (such as police) as if they were in commerce doesn’t work well, she wrote. There are two ways of making a living (taking and trading). Both have value, but they need to follow different rules of conduct (which we may grandly call morals) to work well.

Jane Jacobs and Japan

Seth Roberts3 Comments

At the end of The Shangri-La Diet, I mention Jane Jacobs’s view of complaints about overpopulation. The problem is not too many people, she said, the problem is the undone work. Much of that undone work is recycling, of course.

As The Onion recently reported (“Earthquake sets Japan back to 2147″), Japan is closer to the future. How the Japanese recycle:

Japanese recycling poster

More. Jane Jacobs and the food industry.

Michael Moore and Jane Jacobs

Seth Roberts20 Comments

Sicko is a great movie, one of the most emotion-evoking films I have ever seen. In this interview

Moore says something that is at the heart of Sicko:

They [HMOs] are required by law . . . to maximize profits for their shareholders. That’s what the law requires them to do. The way they can maximize profits is to deny care, is to not pay out claims. The more claims they pay, the less profit they make. You should never have the idea of profit enter into a health decision. We wouldn’t allow it for the fire department or the police department. We wouldn’t say, well, you know, we’ve got to be sure the fire department posts a profit. We wouldn’t turn it over to a private company, have investors invest in it, say, well, some people are going to get fire protection and other people aren’t. We wouldn’t allow that, would we? It would be immoral.

This is what Systems of Survival by Jane Jacobs is all about. Jacobs argued that there are two sets of “moral” rules — one appropriate for “guardians” (such as firemen, police and doctors), the other appropriate for “traders” (business people) — and that the two should not be mixed. When guardians follow commercial rules or when traders follow guardian rules, bad things happen. Sicko is about the bad things that happen when doctors follow commercial rules and how these bad things are avoided when (in other countries) doctors follow guardian rules.