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.