10 thoughts on “The Reckoning”

  1. I ran across an interesting lesson of sorts from where I work. As some probably recall, I currently live seasonally in Yellowstone National Park. One of the many quirks of the park is the bears and how we, humans have to change our behavior to accommodate them. As I understand it, some point back in the 60s and 70s, the Department of the Interior did a bunch of studies and found out that humans had a profound impact on bears and their habitat. It wasn’t just that many of the bears learned that if they climbed on cars, they could get candy bars. Or the few dozen bear maulings that unfortunate tourists experienced each year. For example, the biggest landfill in the park at certain times of the year had half the population of bears in Yellowstone (I believe they counted 50 or so bears in the dump at one time compared to an estimate of 100 bears for the park overall at the time). It was also determined that human food and other products just weren’t healthy for the bears. So when they started separating the bears from the tourists back in the 70s, the idea was to improve the health of the bears and reduce the danger to the visitors to the Park.

    This process has often been spurred by fallout from bad human/bear interactions. For example, a section of the park has a permanent ban on camping due to a single bear attack where a German female tourist was fatally mauled and eaten by a bear back in the 80s. There are about a dozen or so “Bear Management Areas” where people are excluded at certain times of the year when bears are most active in these regions.

    A consequence of the “bear management” has been a series of rules and procedures for dealing with bear encounters. The rules are rather simple, you cannot deliberately approach within 100 yards of a bear or provoke a bear in any way from any distance. You must store, use, and dispose of food and anything that a bear might confuse with food (even stuff such as feminine products and human waste products, to put it delicately), in ways that make it very difficult for the bear to associate humans with food (such as disposing of smelly trash in bear-proof trashcans which seem a bit like safes). In addition, the National Park Service aggressively stalks and persecutes bears that habitually get near people (for example, “hazing” bears that enter campgrounds with blanks and bean bag shotguns or even killing bears that get dangerous enough)

    Needless to say, most of the onus of “bear management” is on the people except for problem bears that seek out humans. And most of the instruction is passive. You store food out of reach of the bear. You minimize food odor that might attract a bear in the wild. You travel in large groups (four or more being recommended). You behave somewhat passively and non-aggressively when first confronted by a bear. And so on.

    But one thing has changed this year. They now advise people to carry bear spray (also called “pepper spray”, typically a mixture containing capsaicin, the “hot” part of chilis and peppers). This weapon is to be used only when the bear is clearly going to attack as a final deterrent.

    I think this demonstrates an analogous situation to the one of militias. Bears are far heavier and better equipped than humans. And sometimes they turn on humans and attack them. The NPS has found that the former, purely passive advice, didn’t work the best, even for the bears. A pure passive strategy doesn’t work on a bear that thinks of humans as prey. It just makes things easier for the bear. Conversely, a bear that gets to that stage is going to be hunted down, meaning the bear doesn’t benefit in the long run either.

    But a bear that gets a whiff of well-aimed bear spray will think differently and more cautiously about humans than one that isn’t so confronted. This means some people and some bears will live that otherwise wouldn’t.

    This leads me to a possible benefit for widespread gun ownership. Just as the presence of a bear spray deterrent may change some bears’ behaviors so they live longer, a similar deterrence may change some criminals’ behaviors so that they live a more lawful life. In other words, it might not only save a victim from crime, but change the cost/benefit of crime so that someone doesn’t enter crime (or just does less crimes) in the first place. We might actually help people become better humans in the process.

  3. Economics applies to both human and animal activities. I am reminded of an incident that I witnessed with my son some years ago where a golden eagle stole a fish from an osprey. The eagle did it because he was hungry and he could get away with it (the osprey being smaller). It was certainly economic for the eagle, if morally the plain acting of the law of the jungle. In terms of human action, increase the price (attempt to steal and you get dead) and quantity of crime demanded will fall. Demand curves slope downward, supply curves upward. Equilibrium may be non-static, but it achieved at the margin.

  4. If… we put our primary emphasis on tracking down the terrorists and on killing Osama bin Laden and his associates, we will fail.

    Obviously true. We need leaders that understand and will focus on the problem. Have I mentioned Allen West?

    the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.

    One benefit of government training would be less suspicion of the government by militias.

    The importance of gaming: Winning and losing is understood. In the real world it’s a lot less clear. In the real world people become ignorant that others are playing for real and they are in it even though they likely don’t want to be. The ignorant don’t get the choice of play or not.

    I think people that game have a much better understanding of reality than people that don’t. I imagine militias spend a bit of their time gaming and expect others to ridicule such behavior.

    Meditation can be a substitute for gaming. We need to be considering possibilities and their ramifications.

    Some accuse others of wanting bad things to happen. But that often ignores that when bad things happen, the part of the population that doesn’t think about the possibilities is suddenly forced to react to the real world.

    The bad guys are playing a serious and unrelenting game. They don’t need obvious wins to win overall. We should pay more attention to those in the wilderness shouting a warning. We need to focus on a war that only one side is taking seriously. History is our guide. It can happen here as it has happened to others in the past. We do not know what the future will look like. It can be worse than today, which is already in some ways worse than our past.

    Our ‘leaders’ do not inspire it will be better. Most seem clueless to me.

  5. I have one huge complaint. If Islamic supremacists are working under a false assumption about their prophet, then – I cannot say this strongly enough – the caretakers of that faith ABSOLUTELY MUST publicly and forcefully fisk the stuffing out of that meme. To quote my own blog:

    “A key concern is Mohammed’s long list of military dictates – scolars (sic) must explain logically (and not with Jaques Derrida deconstructionist sleight-of-hand) that those commands were intended to address existing wars, and contained no calls for future generations to fight future wars against the infidels.”

  6. That link to the article containing the Section 311 of US Code Title 10 quote is extremely useful:

    Section 311 of US Code Title 10, entitled, “Militia: composition and classes” in its entirety:

    “(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.

    (b) The classes of the militia are —

    (1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and

    (2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.”

  7. Economics applies to both human and animal activities. I am reminded of an incident that I witnessed with my son some years ago where a golden eagle stole a fish from an osprey. The eagle did it because he was hungry and he could get away with it (the osprey being smaller). It was certainly economic for the eagle, if morally the plain acting of the law of the jungle. In terms of human action, increase the price (attempt to steal and you get dead) and quantity of crime demanded will fall.

    Last month’s riots in the UK support your statement. The mobs knew that they could overwhelm the police’s ability to respond. Many people who likely would never have considered looting took advantage of the opportunity to get free stuff and flip off the authorities, such as the examples of young people from wealthy families who were arrested. The mob behavior reminded me of the way many schools of fish bunch together. In one sense, bunching together makes it easier for predators to get a meal but that behavior can increase an individual’s chances of survival. If a criminal acted alone at looting, the chances of getting arrested are pretty high. Bring together hundreds or thousands of looters and the chances of any individual being arrested are pretty small.

    Some people are throwbacks to the old hunter-gatherers. A career criminal has to constantly be on the search for something to steal to make a living. Getting arrested is just part of the occupational risk. If the penalties for getting caught aren’t severe, then there is little deterence from criminal activity.

  9. “I think people that game have a much better understanding of reality than people that don’t.”

    I wish that were true. There are too many MS gamers.

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