Chinchero

So, I took the day off from recoding data and learning Quechua to check
out the Incan ruins and market in nearby village of Chinchero.
Beautiful little town--I've put some pictures up on my Picasa account,
and you can get to them by clicking on the link (a picture of an
indigenous woman) over in the sidebar.

Chinchero is another place where you're surrounded by history. Farmers
still work in the shadow of Incan terracing, and the (stunning) village
church is built on the site of an Incan religious site. People also
speak Quechua in the market to one another, and the locals wear
traditional costume, and probably not only for the tourists. In the
market, you can see indigenous families and friends eating together,
sharing their meals communally.

It's neat to hear people speaking Quechua in these places, even if I can
only understand a little.

I don't envy the lives these people hold--Peruvian peasants are tough,
and many of them live lives that many of us would find unimaginable.
But it's good to see that their strong social bonds have, in many
places, survived the changes of the modern age, at least so far.

In the course of my Quechua lessons, we've spent a lot of time talking
about the process of modernization, and the ways in which urban
in-migration, technological modernization, and resulting cultural
changes have left a lot of poor urban residents without either a
connection to their ethnic and cultural roots, or the ability to take
advantage of many of the things the urban world offers.

I wonder if there's something of a Samuel P. Huntington-esque story here
in which social bonds and informal, traditional institutions (like the
Quechua tradition of communal labor) are unable to deal with the large
numbers of people and more complex problems of the urban world. On the
other hand, urban areas of Peru and other parts of the developing world
have yet to develop the complex institutions of the developed
world--things like effective police forces and educational systems.
Maybe, despite his authoritarian apologetics, Huntington got it right.

On the other hand, a lot of the developed world lacks these things, as
well. One might argue that parts of New York, possibly the most
developed place on earth, lack effective law enforcement and educational
institutions.

The Moustache: The Universal Symbol for Pizza/Villainy/Irish Bartenders from the 1850s

One question: Why is the handlebar moustache the universal symbol for
Pizza when (1) Pizza is really hard to eat with a moustache, and (2)
I've never seen an Italian with a handlebar?

The campesinos, by the way, very rarely have any facial hair. I get
stared at a lot. And pointed at, sometimes. Especially by little kids.

And the little kids out in Anta tugged on it to make sure it was real.
I'm not sure they were convinced. And they pulled _hard_!

Me and the Evangelical Protestants

First off, one of the great advantages of being Episcopalian is that you
can pretty much be all things to all men (and women) down here. You're
not really Catholic, so you can always explain to the evangelicals that
you're protestant, etc., and then you're good. If you're talking to a
Catholic... well... Episcopalianism is, as some of my Episcopalian
friends have said, "Catholic Light." And if you're talking to a
nonbeliever, you just tell them the story about how the Anglican church
got started with sufficient irony ("Henry VIII really wanted to divorce
Catherine of Aragon, but the Pope said no, so he just started his own
church.") and you're golden.

And I'm not what you would call a rabidly dogmatic believer, so this is
really no big deal as far as I'm concerned, though I'm sure it would
make some people uncomfortable.

Anyways, the family I'm living with here in Cusco is evangelical
protestant, and they're pretty vocal about it. Normally, this would
make _me_ a little uncomfortable--We talk about religion in my family
(Actually, it's all my grandfather ever talked about. Somehow, even
arguments about gun control turned into arguments about Jesus), but I
guess I'm always just afraid somebody else is going to try to convert
me. And I'm pretty much okay with my Anglican belief system.

No fear of attempted conversion here, though. And all in all, I have to
say, I really agree with the fam's version of evangelical
protestantism. In effect, they think people should:
(a) be honest,
(b) be respectful of women,
(c) work hard,
(d) not judge others, and
(e) go to church on Sunday.

With the exception of the last one, which I'm not too big on, I pretty
much agree with all of that stuff.

Indeed, it's interesting that so many of the European and American
travelers down here have such a strong negative reaction to religious
faith of any kind. First off, the Catholic faith is such a part of the
local history and culture that it's difficult to imagine a day here
without some pretty salient Catholic feel to it, and second of all, one
of the things that these Protestants admire most about the States and
Europe are the same things that have turned them to their own religion.

Listening to these guys talk, it's become increasingly clear to me how
appealing this kind of philosophy can be in a place where:
(a) people lie and cheat all the time (prisoners' dilemma, really--cheat
or the other guy will and you'll be the sucker),
(b) machismo is more the rule than the exception, and sometimes the
worst version is openly on display,
(c) people show up to work late and often do a poor job--good luck
getting the internet turned back on once it's broken down, for example, and
(d) the Catholic church is, shall we say, less than energetic about
following its own dogma.

They see a lot of hypocrisy in the Catholic church (which is,
incidentally, one of the things that drives me nuts about dogmatic
people of any ideological or religious stripe back home), and they
believe in what could almost be termed a constructivist theory about
commonly held beliefs leading to improved behavior. They really think
that energetic religious belief--a very worldly belief system about the
right way to behave in this life, rather than the next--will help solve
Peru's problems with corruption and development. If everybody is trying
to lead a life of "right action" (to steal a phrase from the Buddhists)
and they're all keeping one another in line, things will get better.

As someone who's been socialized as a rational choicer, this stuff is
sometimes hard for me to swallow, but there's clearly a role for belief
in a rational choice explanation of human behavior, as I've written
about before.

There's also a social network story to be told, I think, about the way
evangelicals belong to a close-knit community that can sanction its
members for breaking certain social codes, so it's easier for
evangelicals to trust one another than it is for them to trust the
Catholic downstairs, or (frankly) than it is for others to trust
Evangelicals.

Of course, this won't stop me from making fun of the comically awful
evangelical musical tradition.

But even that, in a way, is a form of democracy. You don't have to be a
professionally trained musician to express your faith through music.
You can just be some schmoe with an electric guitar and a microphone.
And a screechy, out-of-tune voice. And lots of feedback. And a
terrible double-breasted suit.

More thanksgiving...

I am also thankful that my hat is wearing a belt:

http://www.homestarrunner.com/stinkoturkey.html

Maureen thinks I should be thankful for television online and Pizza
Hut. I'm not a big fan of either Pizza Hut or TV, but I have clearly
forgotten to be thankful for Taco Bell and "Bembo's" the Peruvian burger
chain (which is not related to the even-more-amusingly named "Bimbo's",
the Mexican bread company. And Inka Kola.

Yesterday, my Quechua instructor taught me how to give thanks to the
Apus (animist Quechua deities) and Pachamama (mother earth) with my
Chicha. Chicha is homebrewed corn beer. I said, "I'm not a big chicha
drinker. Do I do this with Inka Kola, too? He said, "the campesinos do
it with everything."

So I need to start making coffee offerings to the Fifth Flatiron and
Bear Peak.

A Couple Things I'm Thankful For

I realize it's a little late, but the Peruvian internet was broken over
Thanksgiving. And I had Quechua homework.

1. Emily
2. NetNewsWire
3. STATA
4. The SteriPen
5. Thunderbird
6. Cast iron frying pans
7. Skype
8. Emily

Certainly not a comprehensive list, but three things that do make my
life easier.

Thanksgiving

And by the way, happy Thanksgiving, all!

"Thanksgiving: We were fundamentalists before you were!"

The story has everything:
1. Religious fundamentalism
2. A military captain that was so short that he had to shorten his
sword by 6"
3. Funny hats
4. Anticommunism
5. Great chase scenes (though mostly on foot).
6. Religious persecution
7. Several possible roles for Bruce Campbell
8. The exiling of dissidents to Rhode Island

A fate worse than death, really.

As my good friend William J. Bourke would say, "I kid because I love."
Mostly, I love the cranberry sauce that arrives in the shape of a can,
and the pie. I'll take any kind, but I'm especially fond of the
mincemeat. I'll pass on the turkey and green bean casserole.

I also like Rhode Island. The state's only okay, but the accent is the
best. And there's a pretty good Boy Scout camp there.

Thanksgiving makes for something of a strange story, really. According
to historian Nathanial Philbrick, the whole time the Pilgrims were in
Massachussets, they really wished they were back in the Netherlands.
Can't say I agree with that. If there's one place I'm not inclined to
go (other than Checnya), it would be Kashmir. But after that, it's
Holland. And then Disneyland. Where they also celebrate "Dia de accion
de gracias." Gracias a diós.

A Good Afternoon

You know when you have those days when you just are really thankful that
everything's going the way it is?

After class today (during which we had almost no grammar instruction but
spent the whole morning talking about the social structure of the
quechua-speaking world), I headed down to the supermarket near the
house, to get some groceries and break a S./100 note. It was just a
beautiful afternoon. Blue sky, fluffy white clouds.

I walked through the Plaza Tupac Amaru--commemorating a failed
revolution in 1780--walked past indigenous women in their hats and
braids eating lunch on the grass, walked past the Kaiser jeep pickup at
the Policia Nacional building, walked past little kids with their
parents running around the glowering Tupac Amaru, walked past two middle
class women praying at a Catholic altar in the parking lot of a gas
station (Christ being whipped by a guy with a mean moustache,
incidentally--handlebar moustaches are, along with Stetson hats with
capes, the universal symbol of villainy)

I don't know. Nothing too special, but it just really struck me at that
moment how fortunate I am. I really like it here. Like Peru, like the
people, like the locally manufactured soft drinks.

I also saw, for the first time today, a shelf full of Coca beer. I have
no idea how that works, but it was there in living color.

I have nothing but respect for cocaleros' attempts to build a better,
legal life by marketing their product as a healthy alternative to...
well... pretty much everything. And I get a kick out of Hugo Chavez's
going on about Coca when he clearly has no idea what he's talking
about. (Wouldn't you like to say to unc'l Hugo's face, "Dude. You
don't chew coca paste. That's for cocaine")

But I have to say, most of the coca products I've have the pleasure to
trying have basically been like... like what you would expect a product
made out of ground up leaves to be like. Grainy, dry, and with
basically no taste. Like eating green dirt.

For those of you who haven't been down here, you can buy coca toffee,
coca flour, coca tea, and a lot of other coca crap.

Coca tea is fantastic. I drink it every day.

The rest of the stuff is crap. For a bag of 15 or 20 pieces of coca
toffee, I could support 30 candy-selling street children for a year, and
be much happier off. Knock-off Peruvian jolly ranchers are far superior
to their narcotic-containing brethren.

Jelly beans aren't as good here as in Guate., though.

And in case you don't know, there is no mind-altering aspect to these
coca products. Coca, when chewed by the indigenous folks, does have a
mild stimulative effect. To be honest, I'd like to try it. Sounds like
a strong cup of coffee, only without the jitters. Might help me get
through Avner Greif faster.

All the locals claim that coca tea is great for altitude sickness, but
they're full of it. Unless you typically take your tea with a teaspoon
of sugar and another teaspoon of ash.

Though I do wish they still made Coca Cola with real coca. Probably
better for you, too.

To get the narcotic effect, you have to consume (usually chew) coca with
a catalyst, which is usually the burnt ash of the Quinoa plant. You can
buy that stuff in the market, in theory, but I've never gone looking for
it. I should check it out some day. If only to know what it looks
like. Though I suspect Mike T. can tell me.

For the record, by the way, I'm also not a big fan of Quinoa. Except
for the puffed Quinoa cereal I eat every day. That stuff is awesome.
I'm bringing 150 lbs. back with me when I come home for Xmas.

Sometimes they're got the culinary thing down...

First of, I don't understand why you can't yogurt for drinking in the
states. The stuff is excellent. (Bill S. Preston, Esq.)

And popped Quinoa cereal. By god, if they've got anything due for
export to the United States, it's that stuff! Just like rice crispies,
but bigger puffs and more nutritious.

On an only tangentially related note, I wanted to mention that I saw a
whole truck (not a pickup, but a truck with a 15 or 20 foot bed and 6'
stake sides) entirely filled with cattle heads and hooves. It was
awesome. I've seen cow heads in the streets and in the markets before,
but never in such quantity! Just like seeing a truck full of green
bananas, except better, at least for the adolescent boys among us that
look like 31 year-olds.

There was also blood dripping out of the truck onto the ground in
pools. It ruled.

Then I came home and had this really good sausage and noodle dish.
Mmm. Salty.

Markets for Education

For fairly obvious reasons, I'm interested in education. Working as a
middle school teacher tends to do that to you. And I'm interested in
the ways that education in the United States can work better. In
general (partly, at least, because of my own personal experiences), my
preferences run towards market incentives and away from government
regulation. In general, I would have to say that (central) government
regulation in education (read: No Child Left Behind) doesn't work very
well.

There needs to be accountability in education. Unfortunately,
standardized testing promotes the wrong kind of accountability. And
frankly, it's kind of bizarre that the party of small government has
implemented an old-fashioned approach to regulating education of a kind
that I would expect from New Deal Democrats.

On the other hand, calling the administration of G.W. Bush a "small
government" administration is clearly stretching the truth beyond any
plausibly recognizable form. Mmm.

But that's a tangent.

According to UNESCO (I should cite this, but I'm being lazy), the
Peruvian educational system is almost singularly inefficient in terms of
the kinds of student achievement it gets out of its kids, relative to
the amount of money it puts into the system. Lots of money in, almost
nothing out.

Not surprising on the ground. Peruvian teachers don't show up to work,
and when they do they're faced with terrible working conditions.

But you might expect that the private education system would (1) be
better, and (2) force the public institutions to compete, leading public
schools to perform better.

At least this is what the radical proponents of privatized education expect.

I'm not opposed to the introduction of some market incentives into the
school systems. I'm a big fan of merit pay and charter schools. But I
also think that the Peruvian case demonstrates that market forces
themselves cannot lead to the kinds of outcomes we want.

Why not? I'm not sure, but I've got a couple of ideas.
1. Geographic barriers to educational markets. In some places (like
rural Peru and islands in Maine) there simply isn't a big enough market
for private education.
2. Poverty. In some places (like Peru and Mississippi) people can't
afford a high-quality private education. This may be "efficient" in the
economic sense, but we probably aren't generally in favor of this kind
of efficiency. In general, we would probably feel a lot better about
ourselves if we provided rural Peruvians with (for example) a
sixth-grade education, and if we provided rural Mississippians with (for
example) a high quality high school education and subsidized student
loans, so they have an opportunity to be upwardly-mobile.
3. Collusion. Here, I'm talking about unions that are politically
powerful enough to resist market forces (and democratic pressures, among
other things). This might be a story about clientelist history, or it
might not.

I would like to test these ideas, but I'm not sure how I would get
around the endogeneity issue. There is a strong argument to be made for
the opposite relationship and the opposite direction of causality.
Countries with crappy public education systems will have lots of private
education (because who wants to send their kids to the terrible public
schools).

Cool Internet Stuff!

So, my Quechua instructor lives in Calca, a (somewhat) rural town about
an hour from Cusco, a little bit out of town, where he can't get
internet (or mail, for that matter). So we've made some arrangements
together to do this cellular internet thing, which appears to be
working. Fabulous. The deal is that you get this nifty little USB
modem, plug it into your computer, and connect to the internet through
the cellular network.

The setup is a pain in the ass, because the software that comes with the
modem is terrible, but a little bit of internet searching (thank
goodness I also have wireless internet in the house at the moment) and
it works just fine.

Makes my day.

Now, to get some work done...

Peruvian Haircuts....

Are even cheaper than their Guatemalan counterparts (that's a strange
way of saying that, ey?

I paid about US $1.60 for a pretty good haircut today. Rock, rock on?

Quechua Animism

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a blog posting on the subjectivity of
economic rationality--the fact that these Quechua-speaking peasants do
things that are rational, but only when taken from the perspective of
their own philosophy and belief system (which has strong pre-Colombian
roots, and is fundamentally animist).

Aubrey commented that I might be not be casting my net wide enough, in a
way--that these kinds of belief system issues have been the root of many
conflicts in the past.

I agree with that--I didn't mean to downplay the relevance of these
kinds of belief systems to the things we see today. Fundamentally, we
all have our own belief systems which might or might not be correct--we
all probably do a lot of things that we think are rational, but in some
objective way, make no sense at all (or wouldn't make sense if we had
access to some sort of objective truth).

But maybe I'm getting a little esoteric.

In my Quechua lessons, we spend a lot of time talking about the
spirituality and philosophy of the Quechua-speaking peasants. Valerio
(my teacher) thinks it has a strong bearing on the kinds of things I'll
be looking for when I go out to the municipalities to do more
fieldwork. He might be right--I do think that sometimes these kinds of
"cultural" factors are often less important than we assume they will
be. But I did seem to find some evidence of the importance of some of
these things in my data analysis on the Guatemalan municipality data I
used this summer. Unfortunately, Krister doesn't have any questions in
the survey that touch upon issues like values, philosophy, and cultural
traditions, but ethnic background (Maya or Ladino/Mestizo) often was
statistically significant, as was level of education.

In any event, we've been talking about the way that the peasants will
often take part in a form of economic exchange with (who else) a Shaman
and an Apu (spirit/deity/ancestor).

As something of a questioning believer myself, I find all of this really
interesting on a personal level. I find the idea that my ancestors are
around looking out for me kind of comforting. Especially when I picture
my grandfather, handlebar moustache and all, keeping an eye out for me.

I also think it's pretty interesting the way that the shaman (is that
plural? Shamans? Paqokuna?) make contact with these deities. Sometimes
they talk to them--the more powerful or learned shaman can talk directly
with the Apu, but most of the time, they need to use some intermediate
tool--like reading the future in coca leaves tossed on a blanket, or (in
some places), the use of these terribly unglamorous hallucinogenic
plants that they have down in the jungle.

I wonder if there is some truth to all of this, but not in the way we
might think--it might not be that the well-trained Paqo can use those
coca leaves as something of an inkblot test to bring out his (her?) own
thoughts and instincts about the customer/client/lost soul/seeker of
truth.

Anyways, I probably won't be making offerings to Pachamama any time soon
(or offerings to Maximon, the Guatemalan evil saint, either), but it
does get me thinking. Is there a god? Are there parallel universes
close to our own? And is a 6'2" bald guy with a fantastic moustache up
there looking out for me?

I would make a terrible Catholic, and an even worse Evangelical
Protestant. And I would probably be worst of all as an Animist. I'd
probably be a pretty good Unitarian, though. And I might be able to
swing it as a Catholic of the Franciscan variety, too. Although I guess
the never getting married thing would do me in.

Might I just add...

...that it's bizarre how many hits for "prison labor," "prison," and
"prison torture" I get when I'm searching my hard drive for a .pdf file
with the phrase "prisoners' dilemma."

Chillin' like a statistician...

For the last couple days, I've been running some elementary statistical
tests (ANOVA analysis, two-sample t-tests) for this Paper that Krister
wants to write about a "race to the bottom" in decentralized forestry
regimes.

The race to the bottom argument says that, essentially, when capital
becomes more mobile (it's easier to move capital in whatever form
around) or when political authority is decentralized to sub-national
governments, local governments compete for investment and income by
lowering their regulations and taxation. The end result is that nobody
attracts any more investment, because everybody's taxes and regulations
go down, and everybody ends up worse off because regulations (like labor
and environmental regulations) decline, as do government services
(things like road maintainence law enforcement, and education) because
tax revenue declines along with declining tax assessment rates.

Aside from insane Laffer-curve nonsense, this makes a certain amount of
sense.

So, basically, what I'm doing is comparing forestry regulations, changes
in regulations, and local officials' knowledge of neighbors' forestry
regs through the use of several subjective survey questions.

In the end, I think the evidence pretty strongly supports the argument
that we want to make--there is no race to the bottom. The paper may
also present some weak evidence for a race-to-the-top dynamic (instead
of cutting regulations and taxes, municipalities compete for investment
by operating more efficiently and providing better services), but that's
a stretch for the data we're using.

Essentially, what we're doing is comparing the means of these questions
across the three countries--if a Race to the Bottom is taking place, you
would expect that regulations would be stricter in the least
decentralized country and less strict in the less decentralized
countries, municipal officials would have more knowledge of their
neighbors' forestry regulations in the most decentralized regimes, and
the stringency of regulations would have declined the most in the most
decentralized regimes. None of these things is the case, in several
different iterations of these tests.

In general, I think the paper is pretty strong. My concern is that the
relatively unsophisticated statistical techniques we're using won't be
taken seriously. What I wanted to do was use GIS software to generate a
spatial lag with which to test the idea. But Krister wants to get it
out quickly, and it's true that that sort of stuff will take a billion
years.

Maybe for the dissertation. It's a good excuse to spend months looking
at satellite pictures on Google Earth.

Congrats to Zane on his prospectus defense!

Aaron McGruder discovers...

...what I have always known:

http://www.gocomics.com/features/24/feature_items/393042

Long bus rides and weird coincidences

Today's 20 hour bus-ride from Lima to Cuzco turned into a 25 hour ride.
Not a significant increase in terms of percentage, but when you're
planning to get into Cuzco at 1PM and don't arrive until 6, that's a
difference! We had a blown-out tire in the middle of the night. Not
sure where we were at the time, but we were still on the coastal desert,
so we probably hadn't gotten much beyond Nazca.

That's my third ride like that in a little over a month. I'm hoping I
won't have to do anything like that again for a while yet. At least
it's not a 25 hour chicken bus ride. "Bus Cama"--"Bed Bus," where the
seats recline enough to really get a pretty comfortable night's sleep.
Even so, if I do it again, I think I'll try to do it in a couple of
stages, either Cuzco > Abancay > Nazca > Lima, or Cuzco > Arequipa >
Nazca > Lima. That will make it a little more comfortable. And all
places that I would like to see.

Glad I've done it, though. The scenery is simply stunning.

Just before I left, I bumped into a gal in the Lima bus terminal who was
a former classmate at CU--a Spanish class I took. She's in the Peace
Corps, headed out to her work site for the first time. She's involved
in a health project, but it sounds like she may be a good connection for
my research--she's involved in a project which outfits locals with wood
stoves so they don't have to cook in a smoky environment, but also so
they don't have to use so much firewood.

Small world.

Meeting the Mysterious Dr. J

I had my first meeting today with Krister's Peruvian colleague, Miguel
Jaramillo. All went well--he's a soft-spoken guy and a (very) casual
dresser who gave me a lot of information about what I should be looking
out for.

But man, what a list of things I have to do!

I love Krugman even more:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/in-which-i-get-petty-and-silly/

Baden Powell Park

As a proud former boy scout, I was curious about "Parque Baden Powell"
in Miraflores, named after the founder of the Boy Scouts in the UK. I
checked it out, hoping there would be a nifty statue of the founder,
Boer War veteran, and all around nice guy. I've been trying to convince
Emily for years to name a son (if we ever have one) Baden, which I think
is a pretty good name, even if there's no neckerchief involved.

Sadly, no statue was in evidence, and the only indicator, a traffic
sign, had been vandalized. Still, a pretty nifty park.

More on Lima

After spending most of the day recoding data, I took another walk this
afternoon through ritzy San Isidro and Miraflores.

I'm still not used to how clean and expensive everything is here--I
suspect that Aubrey will take this as gloating, but it's not. I ate
dinner in a cafe in Miraflores, and it cost me nearly what it would cost
in the states. Damn good food (and ice cream), but pricey. I ate a
"Hindu Chicken Panini," which was essentially a chicken panini with
Mango chutney. Is mango chutney really Indian? I have no idea. I felt
guilty eating something so expensive, but Lima is billed as the
"Gastronomic Capital of the Americas," so maybe this is part of my
cultural experience.

Anyways, it was a damn good sandwich.

Along similar lines, I have a question:

Why the hell can I get Dunkin' Donuts in Lima but not in Boulder?
Stupid. And I normally reserve the term "stupid" only for my
impressions of my old high school students.

Finally, the State Department has released a travel warning for the area
around Tacna, in the South of Peru. I have no plans to go there, for
two reasons. First, it's supposed to be a pit. Second, there's no trees.

But it's interesting. Rioting there is essentially over an issue of
federalism. Locals feel that the district, provincial, and regional
governments aren't getting a big enough share of the tax revenue from
mines in the area. What the ideal distribution of revenue from mines
is, I can't say, but the interesting thing is that there was a
referendum on regional autonomy a couple of years ago and Tacna voted
against it. I can't help but think that it has to do with symbols.
"Autonomy" and "decentralization" mean "neoliberalism." And everybody
hates neoliberalism, right?

Sadly...

In the election fever, we've missed out on the _really_ important news:
The "bong hits for Jesus" case settled:

http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/579852.html

Private Security and State

Reading through the Lonely Planet Thorn Tree forum today (a good
resource for travelers), I was struck by a half-asinine post by some
clown who claims that there is crime in Lima, not because people are
poor, but because "people are scum."

The post was only half-asinine because, after making that sweeping
statement, he made a rather well reasoned argument about the ability of
the state to control violence in Latin America. I have no doubt that
the strength of the state has something to do with the high crime rates
here--and I hope that the state will be able to control violence better
in the future, but I also wonder about the role for private security in
the control of violence.

One one hand, I get a kind of perverse kick out of the private security
guards with their shotguns (in Guatemala), AKs (in downtown Lima),
beat-up submachineguns (at a couple of banks in Miraflores) and pistols
(in Cuzco).

On the other hand, there are some real issues of social justice here.
The rich can afford private security. The poor can't. So the people
who experience the worst effects of crime are the ones who can least
afford it.

But on a third hand (I've been working on my ski-boxing), what's the
difference between local government providing security services at the
hands of hired police and community associations providing security at
the hands of hired security providers? And to be honest, a good portion
of the time down here I'd rather have Blackwater protecting me than the
local cops. At least Blackwater's better armed than the criminals
(although the local cops drive those cool Kaiser jeep pickups).

What's the role of private security in the maintenance of law and order
down here? Can there be a market for security which is compatible with
concerns of equity? And what's the correct role for local vs central
government in the provision of these public goods?

One argument for federalism is the idea that some goods are
non-excludable, like national defense. Therefore, these goods create a
free-rider problem. If you get the benefits whether you participate or
not, you'll have an incentive not to pay. And if everybody decides not
to pay, everybody is worse off, because defense won't be provided.
Therefore, we have the state.

And some goods provide benefits at different scales--a good example of
goods that might be better provided at smaller scales is the
environmental protection of watersheds. If you and I live in different
watersheds, and my watershed is threatened, it doesn't make sense for
you to protect my water, because you'll pressure government to spend
less money on protection that won't benefit you, but will cost you
money. It's best to match the size of jurisdictions (or so I will argue
in my dissertation) to the geographic area affected by the problem.

We used to assume that defense is a good best provided at the level of
the nation state. But it seems that, in some places (Iraq comes to
mind), defense at the level of the community makes more sense. What
about other forms of security?

Lima, Coffee, Krugman, and the Middle Class

Actually, those three things aren't connected in any way except that
they happen to be things bouncing around in my head at the moment.

First off, I know I've blogged about this before, but I rather like
Lima. As far as large cities go, it's right up there on my list. It
could do with a garbage dump not right on the ocean and a few other
changes (less sprawl), but it really is a city with a tremendous
history, from pre-Incan civilizations up to the present. I'm staying in
San Isidro, which is one of the ritzier districts of Lima, primarily
because Krister's colleague, Dr. Miguel Jaramillo of research institute
GRADE works out here. Other things being equal, I think I prefer the
center of the city (the historic center, near the Plaza de Armas)
because (1) it's not as ritzy, and thus makes me less uncomfortable (2)
it's marginally more dangerous, but infinitely more interesting, no
matter what you're into, from architecture to history to tailors to
Chinese food. No worries about danger, either, as long as you're smart
and don't go wandering around with an SLR around your neck at 11PM. (3)
It has more, better, and cheaper cafe's. Fact of the matter is, some of
the best coffee I've had so far on this trip was in cafes in downtown
Lima in the first days of my trip.

Even so, this setup is pretty nice.

Got my coffee, and my caffeine-deprivation headache is gone. I'm still
tired as all getout, but feeling like a human again. Shower and coffee
do wonders.

For all of the recent talk about Paul Krugman (in case you don't follow
this stuff, he's a left-leaning economist who just got the Nobel Prize
in Economics), I had never heard him speak before. Based on his picture
for the NY Times, I always figured he would be pretty dour, but I've
just been listening to an interview he did for Bloomberg, and I think I
really like the guy. Obviously, really smart but also pretty
soft-spoken and modest. Of course, there are other academics who I
thought I really liked based on their public speaking, then I got to
meet them (or bump into them in the hall) and found them to be less
positive.

To be perfectly honest, I can't think of a well-known academic who I
haven't liked more after hearing them speak. Totally fell in love with
Doug North after hearing him talk, and the same with Mearscheimer and
BBdM. Mearscheimer especially. Got to love that Brooklyn accent.

One thing that's really striking about Peru is how visible extreme
wealth and extreme poverty are. This probably shouldn't be a surprise,
but it is striking.

I've been thinking a lot about the issue of inequality and the issue of
the middle class and democratization. One theoretical argument you hear
all the time (from everyone from my Dad to Hilton Root) is this idea
that the growth of a large middle class leads to democratization. I've
never understood what the causal argument is behind that. Why should
the middle class want democracy more than (for example) the poor? Is it
just that they have more resources at their disposal to demand democracy?

Personally, I find redistributional arguments (like that of Acemoglu and
Robinson and Boix) much more compelling.

Elections

It's pretty strange being here in Lima for the election. I voted just
before I left the states on Oct. 7, but I'm used to sitting and watching
the returns with some like-minded individual(s).

In '96 (the first election in which I could vote), I voted by absentee
ballot because I was hiking the Appalachian Trail, but I sat and watched
the returns with some friends of the family in Waynesboro, VA, where I
was hiking at the time. I won't say who I voted for that time, but his
name rhymes with "Bob Dole". I still like Dole. I think the Republican
party would be doing a lot better than they are if there were more
people like him. Less Laffer Curve and more stem cell research.

In '00, I watched election returns with Emily at "The Pub" at the
student union at the University of Alaska. I voted in Alaska in the
student union. Alaska, ironically, has one of the more technologically
advanced voting systems that I've used.

In '04, we were on Vinalhaven Island, Maine, where elections pretty much
run the way they have for 200 years. You go into the basement of the
church (separation of Church and State, anyone?), the poll volunteers
(generally old women and men, like anywhere else) greet you by name and
don't bother to check your ID, because they know all 1400 people who
vote on the island, who they're related to, what house they were born
in, and who they're sleeping with at the moment. Then, they give you
your ballot, you fill it out, then you drop it in this big wooden box
(probably the same ballot box they've been using since 1936.)

Anyways, this year I'm in Lima for the election. I voted for Obama with
a mail-in ballot when I was still in Colorado. I don't buy into the
whole "Mr. Obama Goes to Washington" bit--I think it's naiive to think
he'll change the system around (and frankly, I'd be a little concerned
it he did. Our system works pretty damn well) and I still have worries
about his lack of experience (and his opinions on trade policy).

However, we can't afford a president who can't even keep his campaign
from falling apart every couple of months, and that seems to be pretty
much what's been happening with he (not) original maverick.

It also scares the hell out of me that the VP under McCain would be
someone who knows less about (a) foreign policy, (b) economic policy,
and (c) major newspapers in the United States than Sarah and Elliot
Robles. Personally, I think McCain would have done better to pick Jodie
Rell, current governor of CT. Or, for that matter, anyone else. Or at
least anyone that doesn't remind me of Kristina Kirchner.

In Lima

Don't you just love 20 hour bus rides? But I'm in Lima with a hell of a
caffeine-withdrawal headache. I'm in a really nice hotel, and I'm going
to get a shower and go to find some coffee and something to eat. Not
ceviche--don't even suggest it. But I might try to track down a taco
bell--if there's one anywhere in Peru, it's here in Lima.