what is "commerce"? This is the question plaguing the Supreme Ct's recent Lopez and Morrison decisions, which restricted Federal commerce power to areas which were commercial.
My intuition comes from economics, based on the idea of externalities. The founders drafted the commerce clause out of the concern that states would discriminate against one another, or pass bills in ways that passed the harmful effects of in-state actions to other states (trash dumping), or would be unable to regulate areas that spanned multiple states.
If we take that as the intuition, we may understand the phrase "commerce" to encompass areas that are especially suceptible to these interstate externalities. What is commerce, after all, but the movement of goods from point A to B. Once commodified, goods move freely, and it is pointless to say that this pair of shoes is produced for "in-state" consumption and the other is for "export" out of state. For fungible goods, at least, there is an intuition that there is a fundamental connection w/ interstate commerce.
Yet not all commerce is commerce. Consider four categories:
1. Fungible goods (commodities)
2. Unique goods (e.g. artwork)
3. Interstate services (e.g. Western Union)
4. Local services (e.g. Mama's pizza)
All four are "commercial", yet intuitively, not all four affect interstate commerce to the same degree - hence the intuition that the activity has to "substantially affect" interstate commerce. 2 & 4 seem inheriently local, to the point that it becomes questionable why the gov't has to regulate it. Yet that judgment line has been virtually obliterated thanks to the Wickard aggregation principle. Taken alone, Mama's pizza has no effect; taken "as a class", all the Mama's pizzas in the nation make a pretty big dent. Perhaps in the dough market.
So without the "substantial affect" test as a viable line, the burden shifts onto defining "commerce". Here, there is some intuition that, as an abstraction, most commerce - most exchanges in goods and services in today's internet, globalized marketplace - will have externality issues and require federal legislation.
Yet if "commerce" is only a shorthand for denoting a category that has externalities, there will inevitably be other activities - arguably non-commercial - that will nonetheless have interstate externalities and perhaps require Federal legislation. Should federal legislation touch these? Marijuana. Adoptions.
Is the solution to expand "commerce" broadly - anything that conceivably touches money? Or, as I believe, is the solution to make explicit the purpose of the commerce clause - the elimination of externalities - and regulation ONLY when those externalities are present, and to demand a stricter accountability for finding them.
Maybe it's saying the same thing as the doctrine already is. Just more honestly.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Politics: Education in China and US
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/6589301.stm
Interesting BBC article about how math education in China - as measured by difficulty of exam questions - outstrips anything in the UK, and by implication, in the west. Shocking that the UK college diagnostic test is testing the pythagorian theorem, i.e. what i learned in middle school.
The argument against the type of testing regime in China is that it kills creativity and creates advanced test-takers rather than people with the "creative problem solving" abilities that Western education systems are supposed to engender. Critics argue that the fact that the US still leads in technical innovation reflects the superiority of its "creativity-first" model over a more mechanized approach.
For two reasons, this argument is flawed:
1) The US creativity-first model works for only the wealthiest schools. Allowing student creativity requires a teacher-student ratio of around 20:1 or less. Any more and the "creativity" is overshadowed by the necessity of classroom management. So if the model works at all, it only does so for a small section of schools. For everyone else, this model creates a diversion from fundamental principles and an inability to hold failing schools accountable. General chaos ensues as "inspired" school teachers teach the class to build popcicle-stick bridges, without first teaching them how to do fractions.
And if you look closer, the best schools in the US don't even emphasize "creativity" that much. They emphasize honors classes, AP sciences classes, SAT prep -> all the things that are, guess what, oriented towards the fundamentals.
2) As people who've ever watched a NBA game realizes - fundamentals always win over glamor. Time after time, it's the team that blocks out and that makes free throws that wins over the team that shoots 50 3-pointers or attempts alley-oops every other possession. But there isn't actually a tension: the best teams are the ones who have the fundamentals and then build off that to create pretty-looking plays.
Same in education. If you look underneath the US creativity, you'll realize that it's been fueled by those Chinese and Indian engineers who got their fundamentals first and then learned how to improvise. They get a good solid primary and secondary education in their home countries, and then come to the West - where there is the resources - to do tertiary training. These are the people getting pH.D.'s nowadays and - increasingly - the people publishing in the top journals.
So emphasize creativity, at your risk, but don't let it be an excuse for failing test scores.
Interesting BBC article about how math education in China - as measured by difficulty of exam questions - outstrips anything in the UK, and by implication, in the west. Shocking that the UK college diagnostic test is testing the pythagorian theorem, i.e. what i learned in middle school.
The argument against the type of testing regime in China is that it kills creativity and creates advanced test-takers rather than people with the "creative problem solving" abilities that Western education systems are supposed to engender. Critics argue that the fact that the US still leads in technical innovation reflects the superiority of its "creativity-first" model over a more mechanized approach.
For two reasons, this argument is flawed:
1) The US creativity-first model works for only the wealthiest schools. Allowing student creativity requires a teacher-student ratio of around 20:1 or less. Any more and the "creativity" is overshadowed by the necessity of classroom management. So if the model works at all, it only does so for a small section of schools. For everyone else, this model creates a diversion from fundamental principles and an inability to hold failing schools accountable. General chaos ensues as "inspired" school teachers teach the class to build popcicle-stick bridges, without first teaching them how to do fractions.
And if you look closer, the best schools in the US don't even emphasize "creativity" that much. They emphasize honors classes, AP sciences classes, SAT prep -> all the things that are, guess what, oriented towards the fundamentals.
2) As people who've ever watched a NBA game realizes - fundamentals always win over glamor. Time after time, it's the team that blocks out and that makes free throws that wins over the team that shoots 50 3-pointers or attempts alley-oops every other possession. But there isn't actually a tension: the best teams are the ones who have the fundamentals and then build off that to create pretty-looking plays.
Same in education. If you look underneath the US creativity, you'll realize that it's been fueled by those Chinese and Indian engineers who got their fundamentals first and then learned how to improvise. They get a good solid primary and secondary education in their home countries, and then come to the West - where there is the resources - to do tertiary training. These are the people getting pH.D.'s nowadays and - increasingly - the people publishing in the top journals.
So emphasize creativity, at your risk, but don't let it be an excuse for failing test scores.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Politics: Va Tech
32 + 1. = 33.
every few days, somewhere in the middle east, some young man, ranging from 16 to 30 in age, straps a bomb on his chest, in his car, in a bag, and walks into a crowd. boom.
we in america watch in the distance, mildly saddened, but tempered by distance. by the certainty that it is baghdad, kabul, jerusalem. then madrid, london, new york.
then finally it becomes irrational. finally there is no more politics. no more agenda. no more cause. just a maniacally depressed young man with two guns and a desire to end lives.
and this we don't understand.
is it fair to call Cho a martyr? no, not to us. just as suicide bombers aren't martyrs to us. but to some other alienated kid out there, someone watching the news and receiving the tapes on a different frequency, who's hearing it in the suburban american version of jihad-dom, there is the martyr's message: hedonism, vodka, sex, U.S.A.
truth is: we don't understand suicide bombers. and, after all the forensics is done, we won't understand suicide shooters. we'll just have to accept that for some, there is a sense of alienation so strong that it must be resisted against by any means necessary. this is durkeimian anomie, the fit of not fitting, a collective subculture of people who hate culture. counter-culture with guns instead of guitars.
he's silent, but he's not alone. there's others out there. and that. that is frightening.
every few days, somewhere in the middle east, some young man, ranging from 16 to 30 in age, straps a bomb on his chest, in his car, in a bag, and walks into a crowd. boom.
we in america watch in the distance, mildly saddened, but tempered by distance. by the certainty that it is baghdad, kabul, jerusalem. then madrid, london, new york.
then finally it becomes irrational. finally there is no more politics. no more agenda. no more cause. just a maniacally depressed young man with two guns and a desire to end lives.
and this we don't understand.
is it fair to call Cho a martyr? no, not to us. just as suicide bombers aren't martyrs to us. but to some other alienated kid out there, someone watching the news and receiving the tapes on a different frequency, who's hearing it in the suburban american version of jihad-dom, there is the martyr's message: hedonism, vodka, sex, U.S.A.
truth is: we don't understand suicide bombers. and, after all the forensics is done, we won't understand suicide shooters. we'll just have to accept that for some, there is a sense of alienation so strong that it must be resisted against by any means necessary. this is durkeimian anomie, the fit of not fitting, a collective subculture of people who hate culture. counter-culture with guns instead of guitars.
he's silent, but he's not alone. there's others out there. and that. that is frightening.
Friday, April 6, 2007
Why I hate out-of-towners
So I never stopped to think about why we New Yorkers are perceived to be rude until today:
I was riding the elevator going up from my building's basement with my basket of laundry. The elevator stops at the first floor, door opens, and a group of four upper middle-aged people step in. Three women, one man.
Door closes.
One of the women looks at me - in casual shirt and shorts - and at my basket of laundry, and says, "Columbia University student doing his laundry."
Now, I'm not sure who the comment was directed towards, and I'm really annoyed (it's a dreary day out anyways), so I retort, "Is this some kind of museum tour?"
To which she answers, "Yes, we're visiting a friend of ours who lives in this building."
Elevator keeps going up. Stops at my floor, thank god, and I get out to leave. "Good luck in college," she says. Now i'm really annoyed. "This is actually a grad school dorm," I say, and leave.
Small episode, but it shows the difference between New Yorkers and everyone else. New Yorkers, getting on an elevator, know to get in, look to the front, and shut up. Now, if there's something really noteworthy - a cute dog, a cute girl - you may have permission to invade the other person's space and start a conversation. If it's a cute dog, the person's asking for it. Same w/ cute girls. And maybe, if there's a MASSIVE rainstorm outside and the person getting in looks drenched, you are allowed to express sympathy. This is good New Yorker manners.
BUT, if there's really NOTHING to build a conversation out of, and you're in an elevator for all of 30 seconds, you shut up and just watch the dials.
What you do not do is invade other people's privacy by random observations. What you REALLY do not do is remark about other people in the elevator to the friends you came in with. We new yorkers like conversation. but we like interesting conversation. we like meaningful conversation. we do not like observations about us that state the perfectly obvious just so you don't have to listen to the sound of the elevator gears for a few seconds.
and what we really don't like is to be regarded as museum objects. Do you ever see us going to Omaha and going "Midwestern farmer riding his tractor down main street?" NO. We keep those thoughts to ourselves. Yet you tourists come, and you feel it necessary to put us into some sort observational box. "Oh look, mommy, there's a Columbia University student... with a Barnard girl... oh god, what're they doing with that cucumber ???" Just shut up and let it go. It's new york. it happens.
I was riding the elevator going up from my building's basement with my basket of laundry. The elevator stops at the first floor, door opens, and a group of four upper middle-aged people step in. Three women, one man.
Door closes.
One of the women looks at me - in casual shirt and shorts - and at my basket of laundry, and says, "Columbia University student doing his laundry."
Now, I'm not sure who the comment was directed towards, and I'm really annoyed (it's a dreary day out anyways), so I retort, "Is this some kind of museum tour?"
To which she answers, "Yes, we're visiting a friend of ours who lives in this building."
Elevator keeps going up. Stops at my floor, thank god, and I get out to leave. "Good luck in college," she says. Now i'm really annoyed. "This is actually a grad school dorm," I say, and leave.
Small episode, but it shows the difference between New Yorkers and everyone else. New Yorkers, getting on an elevator, know to get in, look to the front, and shut up. Now, if there's something really noteworthy - a cute dog, a cute girl - you may have permission to invade the other person's space and start a conversation. If it's a cute dog, the person's asking for it. Same w/ cute girls. And maybe, if there's a MASSIVE rainstorm outside and the person getting in looks drenched, you are allowed to express sympathy. This is good New Yorker manners.
BUT, if there's really NOTHING to build a conversation out of, and you're in an elevator for all of 30 seconds, you shut up and just watch the dials.
What you do not do is invade other people's privacy by random observations. What you REALLY do not do is remark about other people in the elevator to the friends you came in with. We new yorkers like conversation. but we like interesting conversation. we like meaningful conversation. we do not like observations about us that state the perfectly obvious just so you don't have to listen to the sound of the elevator gears for a few seconds.
and what we really don't like is to be regarded as museum objects. Do you ever see us going to Omaha and going "Midwestern farmer riding his tractor down main street?" NO. We keep those thoughts to ourselves. Yet you tourists come, and you feel it necessary to put us into some sort observational box. "Oh look, mommy, there's a Columbia University student... with a Barnard girl... oh god, what're they doing with that cucumber ???" Just shut up and let it go. It's new york. it happens.
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