Monday, September 26, 2005

Dwyane Wade: Injury Prone?

I thought that this article by Kevin Pelton was very interesting - especially considering that it is about one of my newest favorite players:

At heart, I am a pessimist. I know this when I watch Dwyane Wade play. When most people see the Miami Heat's dynamic young guard, an All-NBA Second Team pick in just his second season out of Marquette University, they see one of the league's most exciting players. I see Penny Hardaway and Grant Hill.

Like Wade, Hardaway and Hill were once the toast of the NBA as young players before injuries robbed them of their explosiveness. Hill remains one of the league's better players when his chronic ankle problems have subsided enough to allow him to play, but he is no longer a superstar. Hardaway's knees have reduced him to one of the league's most highly-paid reserves.

As NBA fans, we generally tend to assume that players will develop in a predictable fashion. But while, on the whole, players improve dramatically in their first couple of seasons, peak around age 27 and gradually level off before falling off a cliff in their mid to late 30s, individual players exhibit all sorts of unpredictable development patterns. Amongst others, Willie Anderson (best season came as a rookie), Bruce Bowen (not an NBA regular until age 26, but still as good as he ever has been at age 33 last season) and Karl Malone and John Stockton (productive into their 40s) can attest to this fact.

While many of these developments are random, there are predictable trends in addition to the obvious aging pattern. Players who are productive regulars at a young age are usually derailed only by injuries, while youngsters who commit a lot of turnovers in an effort to do good things usually end up developing better than their more conservative counterparts.

Injuries remain something of a mystery to NBA analysts; there is no equivalent of baseball "medhead" Will Carroll. If there were such a person, however, my cynical side wonders if he wouldn't worry about Wade. Not only did the Heat star miss 21 games due to injury as a rookie, few guards take more punishment. Thanks to his lightning quickness, Wade attempted 762 free throws last year, the fourth-highest total in the league. The Flash mostly managed to avoid harm until the Eastern Conference Finals, when a strained rib muscle sidelined him for Game 6 and hampered him in Game 7 as the Heat was eliminated by the Detroit Pistons a game short of the NBA Finals.

To try to establish whether Wade's style will have any impact on his chances of injury long term, I decided to first look for similar players by identifying the leaders in free-throws attempted per game in a season by players 6-4 and under (Wade is 6-4) and in their first three seasons. I subsequently limited the study to players since 1967-68, ostensibly because the game changed but in truth because having seasons less than 82 games was too cumbersome.

The leaderboard:

Player         FTA/G   Year
---------------------------
Nate Archibald 10.8 71-72
Allen Iverson 9.9 98-99
DWYANE WADE 9.9 04-05
David Thompson 8.4 77-78
Kevin Johnson 8.1 89-90
Stu Lantz 7.9 70-71
Earl Monroe 7.8 69-70
Steve Francis 7.4 01-02
World B. Free 7.4 77-78
Geoff Petrie 7.3 70-71
Sidney Moncrief 7.2 81-82

The list confirms that Wade is indeed special in his ability to get to the free-throw line (and in the amount of punishment he takes in the paint). So to what extent were these other players affected by injuries? To answer this question, I looked at their games played over their first 10 seasons in the NBA (1998-99 totals pro-rated to 82 games). Zero indicates that the player was unable to play due to injury, while a blank space means they'd left the league for other reasons (or, in the case of Iverson and Francis, have yet to reach 10 seasons); these seasons were not used in the computation of averages. For the latter group of players, their totals are pro-rated to 10 seasons. I also include the summary statistics "full seasons" (in which the player missed five games or fewer) and "injury-shortened seasons" (in which the player played 50 games or fewer):

Player          Y1  Y2  Y3  Y4  Y5  Y6  Y7  Y8  Y9 Y10  TOT FULL INJ
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Nate Archibald 82 76 80 35 82 78 34 69 80 80 696 6 2
Allen Iverson 76 80 79 70 71 60 82 48 75 712 3 1
David Thompson 82 80 76 39 77 61 75 19 0 0 509 3 4
Kevin Johnson 80 81 74 77 78 49 67 47 56 70 679 4 2
Stu Lantz 73 82 82 81 51 50 75 53 684 3 0
Earl Monroe 82 80 82 81 63 75 41 78 76 77 735 6 1
Steve Francis 77 80 57 81 79 78 753 5 0
World B. Free 71 78 76 78 68 65 78 73 75 71 733 3 0
Geoff Petrie 82 60 79 73 80 72 0 0 0 0 446 3 4
Sidney Moncrief 77 80 80 76 79 73 73 39 56 62 695 4 1
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Averages/Totals 78 78 77 69 73 66 58 47 52 51 664 40 15

Those are some interesting results. On their own however, they don't really tell us much. We have to have some comparison data. To produce that, I decided to create a control group. In the same season, I looked for players 6-4 and under who played similar minutes totals (to control for ability) and had lower free throw per game averages.

 Player         FTA/G   Year
---------------------------
JoJo White 4.3 71-72
Stephon Marbury 5.7 98-99
Ricky Sobers 5.1 77-78
Mitch Richmond 6.0 89-90
Norm Van Lier 5.4 70-71
Clem Haskins 5.2 69-70
Baron Davis 4.1 01-02
Quinn Buckner 2.5 77-78
Ron Williams 4.8 70-71
Kyle Macy 2.1 81-82

I should stop to point out a couple of problems here. The first is that, while I attempted to match quality as closely as possible, the players on the second list are likely worse than the players on the first list on average. In general, players who get to the free-throw line more often are likely to be better. The other is that the differences in getting to the line aren't always huge; Mitch Richmond, for one, wasn't far from the previous top ten list. (Richmond is also listed at 6-5 by most sources, but I have in my database at 6-4.) Still, here are the summary statistics for the control group:

Player          Y1  Y2  Y3  Y4  Y5  Y6  Y7  Y8  Y9 Y10  TOT FULL INJ
--------------------------------------------------------------------
JoJo White 60 75 79 82 82 82 82 82 46 76 746 6 1
Stephon Marbury 67 82 81 74 67 82 81 81 82 775 6 0
Ricky Sobers 78 79 79 81 82 71 80 41 81 71 743 7 1
Mitch Richmond 79 78 77 80 45 78 82 81 81 70 751 8 1
Norm Van Lier 81 82 79 80 80 70 76 82 78 38 746 7 1
Clem Haskins 76 79 82 82 79 77 81 70 55 0 681 6 1
Baron Davis 82 82 82 50 67 46 682 3 1
Quinn Buckner 79 82 81 67 82 70 72 79 75 32 719 5 1
Ron Williams 75 80 82 80 73 71 46 9 645 3 2
Kyle Macy 82 82 82 82 65 82 76 787 5 0
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Averages/Totals 76 80 80 76 72 73 75 66 71 48 728 56 9

On average, the low free throw group played 63 more games than the high free throw group over their first 10 NBA seasons. They were more durable, with 56 "full" seasons to 40 for the high free throw group and only nine seasons lost to injury as compared to 15. Many of the perimeter players were extremely durable; Richmond only had two seasons where he failed to play in at least 77 games, while Kyle Macy was an iron man (playing all 82 games) five times in his seven NBA seasons, while JoJo White did five straight seasons.

What I find particularly interesting is a season-by-season comparison of the two groups:

Group    Y1  Y2  Y3  Y4  Y5  Y6  Y7  Y8  Y9 Y10
-----------------------------------------------
High FT 78 78 77 69 73 66 58 47 52 51
Low FT 76 80 80 76 72 73 75 66 71 48
-----------------------------------------------
Diff +2 -2 -3 -7 +1 -7 -17 -19 -19 +3

Naturally, as players age, they miss more games because of injuries. While this progression was rather gradual for the low free throw group, however, it was rather rapid for the high free throw group. As young players, they played similar numbers of games before the low free throw players became increasingly more durable (before dropping off in Year 10, presumably a fluke but still perhaps an ominous sign for Stephon Marbury, who is entering his 10th season).

So what does this all mean for Wade? With such a small sample, it's not fair to draw powerful conclusions, but it does appear that his constant penetration puts him at increased injury risk going forward. I don't know that I would say it changes his chances of a major, Hardaway- or Hill-style injury; I suspect those are fairly random. An Allen Iverson or a Kevin Johnson might be a better guide. While Iverson has only missed a great deal of time once in his career, he's regularly bothered by nagging injuries and has only played more than 75 games once in the last six years. Johnson never played more than 80 games after his first two seasons.

There's no need to be a pessimist like me and see injured man walking. At the same time, it's worth remembering that while Wade is in his healthy prime, we should enjoy this opportunity to watch him play without taking him for granted.

Anyway, I didn't have much time to do a whole lot on my own on this topic. I don't completely agree with the analysis for a variety of reasons, but I thought that it was definitely an interesting perspective.

Wednesday, September 21, 2005

Sustainable Development

I would like to begin with a quote from Judge Richard Posner:
More important, if there is a fixed percentage of geniuses, there may also be a fixed percentage of evil geniuses, including potential terrorists.


I really find it funy when such a renowned mind seriously talks about a fixed percentage of evil geniuses.

On to the main course now. Since I work for the Earth Institute under Jeff Sachs, a huge proponent of "sustainable development", and since I also work for two other professors who largely ignore this notion (Miguel and Linden), and since my most influential professor (Xavier Sala-i-Martin) is very dismissive of Sachs' view regarding this issue, I thought it might be a worthwhile point of discussion.

From the Becker-Posner Blog we have an excerpt of Gary Becker's column on sustainable development, posted on September 18:

The very large increase in oil and natural gas prices in the past couple of years has led to renewed concern about whether world economic development is "sustainable". This term is typically not defined carefully, but sustainability requires that improvements in the living standards of the present generation should also be attainable by future generations. The concern is usually that because fossil fuels and other non-renewable resources are used to produce current economic development, future generations will have much greater difficulty in achieving equally high living standards. A related concern is that environmental damage due to global warming and other types of pollution will create major economic and some health problems for future generations.

In a simple arithmetical sense, the use of some non-renewable resources in current production clearly reduces the stock remaining for future generations. But the relevant concept for development purposes is not the physical supply of fossil fuels and other non-renewable resources, but the economic cost of gaining access to them. Over most of the past 100 years, fossil fuel prices relative to other prices declined rather than increased, even though significant amounts of these fuels were used to help develop many nations. The reason for the decline in relative prices is that new discoveries and better methods of getting at known sources of oil, gas, and coal led to growing rather than falling stocks of economically accessible reserves.

Exactly 140 years ago a great British economist, W. Stanley Jevons, argued (see The Coal Question, 1865) that the world was running out of coal, which he claimed in a few decades would make further economic progress impossible for England and other nations. The book is a high quality statistical study, but even Jevons failed to anticipate the use of oil, natural gas, and nuclear power, the discovery of additional sources of coal, and the extent of improvements in methods of extracting coal and other fuels from the ground.

Of course, what happened in the past is no certain guide to the future. But a 2005 study by Cambridge Economic Research Associates, a prestigious consulting company in the energy field, estimates that known reserves of liquid fuels (oil and gas) will continue to increase at least in the near term future, especially if the high prices of these fuels during the past year continue. Their report discusses the growing importance of drilling for oil in deep rather than shallow water, and other technological advances in extracting more cheaply the world’s stock of oil and natural gas both under land and under water.

Even if one discounts this and other studies, and believes that the relevant reserves of fossil fuels will decline in the future, the supply of energy sources would greatly increase if nuclear power were more extensively used. That power too is based on a limited resource, uranium, but the supply of uranium is vast relative to its use in generating nuclear power. Nuclear power cannot only generate electricity, but it can also be used instead of oil or gas to produce the hydrogen used in hydrogen fuel cells. Although it is too early to tell, hydrogen cells could replace the internal combustion engine in cars, trucks, and busses sometime in the next few decades. Nuclear power would also help reduce greenhouse gases, such as CO2, and other types of pollution since it is a "clean" fuel (see the May 2005 discussion of nuclear power in our blog).

However, I believe that the most serious deficiency in the usually discussions of "sustainability" is that it should refer to total wellbeing, not simply to what is measured by national income statistics. Even if fossil fuels become increasingly scarce and expensive, and even with further declines in the environment, improvements in health will continue to advance overall measures of wellbeing. Life expectancy has grown enormously during the past half century in virtually all countries, including the poorest ones. Indeed, the typical length of life has generally grown faster in poorer than richer countries as they benefited from medical and other advances in health knowledge produced by the rich nations. The Aids epidemic has set back several African nations, but the increase in life expectancy has been impressive even in most of Africa.

A recent study (see Becker, Philipson, and Soares, "The Quantity and Quality of Life and the Evolution of World Inequality”" American Economic Review, March 2005) shows how to combine improvement in life expectancy with traditional measures of the growth in GDP to measure what we call the growth in "full" income. We demonstrate that the growth in full income since 1965 has been much faster than the growth in material income in essentially all countries, but especially in less developed nations. A better measure of full income that adjusts not only for the growth in life expectancy, but also for changes in the environment, and for the great advance in the mental and physical health of those living, especially of the elderly, almost surely grew at an even faster rate.

It is highly unlikely that the pace of medical progress will slow down in the coming decades. Indeed, I believe just the opposite is true, that medical progress is likely to accelerate. My belief is based on the magnificent advances in knowledge of the genetic structure of humans and other mammals, and the development of biomarkers, such as the PSA test for prostate cancer, and the blood test for BRAC 1 and BRAC2 gene mutations that greatly raise the risk of breast cancer. Experts on mortality are predicting huge increases during the next 50 years in the number of people who live beyond seventy, eighty, and even ninety in reasonably good health.

Slowing down and reversing global warming may require reductions in the world's use of fossil fuels, and economically relevant reserves of non-renewable resources could decline in the future rather than increase. These forces combined might lower GDP per capita in many countries-although I doubt it- but progress in medical knowledge will produce substantial advances in the world's full income. So just as the per capita wellbeing of present generations is much higher than that of our parents and grandparents, so the wellbeing of the generations of our children and grandchildren are very likely to be much higher than ours (setting aside the damage from possible highly destructive wars and terrorism).

This is why I believe that while the sustainable development literature asks important questions, the analysis has been inadequate and overly alarmist. Most of the discussion takes a mechanical view of changes in the stock of the stock of non-renewable resources, pays insufficient attention to technological advances in the economy, and gives much too little weight to the enormous advances in health that are highly likely to continue in the future, and possibly even accelerate.

Thoughts?

Saturday, September 17, 2005

Bill Maher's Open Letter to G.W.

Bill Maher, on his HBO show, had a pretty funny open letter to George Bush:
- Mr. President, this job can't be fun for you any more. There's no more money to spend--you used up all of that. You can't start another war because you used up the army. And now, darn the luck, the rest of your term has become the Bush family nightmare: helping poor people.

Listen to your Mom. The cupboard's bare, the credit cards maxed out. No one's speaking to you. Mission accomplished. Now it's time to do what you've always done best: lose interest and walk away.

Like you did with your military service and the oil company and the baseball team. It's time. Time to move on and try the next fantasy job. How about cowboy or space man?

Now I know what you're saying: there's so many other things that you as President could involve yourself in. Please don't.

I know, I know. There's a lot left to do. There's a war with Venezuela. Eliminating the sales tax on yachts. Turning the space program over to the church. And Social Security to Fannie Mae. Giving embryos the vote.

But, Sir, none of that is going to happen now. Why? Because you govern like Billy Joel drives. You've performed so poorly I'm surprised that you haven't given yourself a medal. You're a catastrophe that walks like a man. Herbert Hoover was a shitty president, but even he never conceded an entire city to rising water and snakes.

On your watch, we've lost almost all of our allies, the surplus, four airliners, two trade centers, a piece of the Pentagon and the City of New Orleans. Maybe you're just not lucky.

I'm not saying you don't love this country. I'm just wondering how much worse it could be if you were on the other side. So, yes, God does speak to you.

What he is saying is: "Take a hint." -




Maher also had a pretty funny take on the Intelligent Design "debate":
- And finally New Rule: You don't have to teach both sides of a debate, if one side is a load of crap.

Now, Presiden
t Bush recently suggested that public schools should teach intelligent design, alongside the theory of evolution. Because, after all, evolution is quote, "just a theory." Then the President renewed his vow to drive the terrorists straight over the edge of the earth.

Now, here is what I don't get. President Bush is a brilliant scientist. He's the man who proved you can mix two parts booze with one part cocaine, and still fly a jet fighter. And yet... yet he just can't seem to accept that we descended from apes.

It just seems pathetic to be so insecure about your biological superiority, to a group of feces-flinging, rouge-buttocked monkeys, that you have to make up fairy tales. Like we came from Adam and Eve, and then cover stories for Adam and Eve like, intelligent design. Yeah, leaving the Earth in the hands of two naked teenagers. That's a real intelligent design.

I'm sorry, folks, but it may very well may be that life is just a series of random events. And that there is no... master plan. But enough about Iraq. Let me instead restate my thesis. There aren't necessarily two sides to every issue. If there were, the Republicans would have an opposition party.

And an opposition party would point out that even though there's a debate, in schools, and government, about this, there is no debate among scientists. Evolution... is supported by the entire scientific community. Intelligent design is supported by guys online to see "The Dukes of Hazzard."

And the reason there is no real debate, is that intelligent design isn't real science. It's the equivalent of saying that the thermos keeps hot things hot and cold things cold, because it's a god. It's so willfully ignorant you might as well worship the U.S. Mail. It came again! Praise, Jesus!

No, stupidity isn't a form of knowing things. Thunder is high pressure air meeting low pressure air. It's not God bowling. Babies come from storks is not a competing school of thought... in medical school. We shouldn't teach both. The media shouldn't equate both. If Thomas Jefferson...

If Thomas Jefferson knew we were blurring the line this much between church and state, he would turn over in his slave. Now as for me, I believe in evolution and intelligent design. I think God designed us in his image, but I also think God is a monkey! God bless you and goodnight! -

Thursday, September 15, 2005

A Quick Glance at Depth Charts

San Antonio
PG1-T Parker
PG2-N Van Exel
PG3-B Udrih
PG4-M Wilks
SG1-M Ginobili
SG2-B Barry
SF1-B Bowen
SF2-M Finley
SF3-G Robinson
PF1-T Duncan
PF2-R Horry
PF3-S Marks
C1-N Mohammed
C2-R Nesterovic
C3-F Oberto
C4-T Massenburg

Wow is all I can say. Wow.


Golden State
PG1-B Davis
PG2-D Fisher
SG1-J Richardson
SG2-M Pietrus
SG3-M Ellis
SF1-M Dunleavy
SF2-C Cheaney
SF3-Z Cabarkapa
SF4-R White
PF1-T Murphy
PF2-I Diogu
PF3-C Taft
C1-A Foyle
C2-A Biedrins

I still think they should start Diogu with Foyle coming off the bench for Murphy eventually.


Sacramento
PG1-M Bibby
PG2-J Hart
PG3-R Price
PG4-E House
SG1-B Wells
SG2-K Martin
SG3-M Evans
SF1-P Stojakovic
SF2-C Williamson
SF3-F Garcia
PF1-S Abdur-Rahim
PF2-K Thomas
PF3-D Songaila
C1-B Miller
C2-B Skinner
C3-J Sampson

They don't really have a shooting guard, but everyone seems to be pretty able to stroke the J. Defensive strength isn't a whole lot better than it used to be, and their offense is definitely worse than the Kings of old. Still, I think the Kings are a legit contender for #2 this year if they gel.


So my question is, what do people think about Houston, Detroit, Cleaveland, and Indiana?
Houston
PG1-B Sura
PG2-M James
PG3-L Head
PG4-C Ward
PG5-M Norris
SG1-D Wesley
SG2-D Anderson
SG3-J Barry
SF1-T McGrady
SF2-R Bowen
PF1-S Swift
PF2-J Howard
PF3-V Baker
PF4-L Baxter
PF5-T Braggs
C1-Y Ming
C2-D Mutombo

Detroit
PG1-C Billups
PG2-C Arroyo
SG1-R Hamilton
SG2-L Hunter
SG3-C Delfino
SG4-A Acker
SF1-T Prince
SF2-M Evans
SF3-R Dupree
SF4-A Johnson
SF5-D Ham
PF1-R Wallace
PF2-A McDyess
PF3-J Maxiell
C1-B Wallace
C2-D Davis
C3-D Milicic
C4-E Campbell

Cleveland
PG1-D Jones
PG2-E Snow
SG1-L Hughes
SG2-I Newble
SG3-S Pavlovic
SF1-L James
SF2-L Jackson
PF1-D Gooden
PF2-D Marshall
PF3-A Varejao
PF4-M Andriuskevicius
C1-Z Ilgauskas

Indiana
PG1-J Tinsley
PG2-A Johnson
PG3-E Gill
SG1-S Jackson
SG2-S Jasikevicius
SG3-F Jones
SF1-R Artest
SF2-J Bender
SF3-D Granger
PF1-J O'Neal
PF2-A Croshere
C1-J Foster
C2-S Pollard
C3-D Harrison

Cheers.

Monday, September 12, 2005

The $/day Game

Let's play a game. There is only one object of the game - to stay alive for a year.

A few ground rules. Pretend for a minute that you were taken back in time to 1996. Say you were given about $2 a day for an annual income of $700. You cannot make more money than that - meaning you cannot trade, buy stocks, etc. The total value of whatever it is that you choose to purchase cannot exceed $700. Say that you had to purchase everything you needed in life with just that money. Oh - and let's make it even tougher. You aren't just concerned with food and shelter. Water is no longer free. Now, how do you win? How do you live for a year?

This is a lot harder than it would seem. You can't just go buy the $1 hamburger at McDonald's on a daily basis. Otherwise you are left with about $350 to find housing and water for a year. Good luck with that. (Not to mention medical bills, etc.)

The thing is, this is precisely the problem faced by nearly 1,000,000,000 people around the world. In fact, hundreds of millions of people face even more dire conditions, with incomes of barely $1/day instead of the $2/day in our example.

Economists use special mathematical techniques to guage the standards of livings in different countries. They usually scale it to the equivalent of living in America in 1996, so that we can get a good comparative sense of what it would be like to live in that condition.

See, really poor people have trouble living from day to day. They aren't quite like the Berkeley bums that we are used to seeing. Most poor countries are in the tropics, where tropical diseases wreak havoc and land is very difficult to cultivate. So now add the fact that natural disasters are a frequent occurrence, and you are stuck with a group of people who can't grow food because of disasters and infertile soil, and can't harvest food because they are too sick and tired from being diseased. By the way, these malnutritioned and diseased guys have trouble going to school and get good jobs. Heck, teachers are malnutritioned and diseased as well, so they can't really teach well. Also, even if they were to carry their undernourished and sick bodies to school half the time the teachers don't show up, and even if they do, the starting salary after an education is only marginally higher than the salary before an education. So it would seem like a moo point - like a cow's opinion.

To all of this, add the fact that they collectively have water shortage problems, and we see that they are stuck being diseased, starving, really really thirsty, and meanwhile they are unable to get an education, can't find good jobs without the education they lack, couldn't find a job even with the education that they can't attain, and have a very difficult time growing food. Now that they are starving, thirsty, and uneducated, they are too tired to actually build themselves a thatched shelter - which, by the way, will likely be knocked over by the natural disasters aforementioned anyway.

Point being - poor people can't buy medicines, can't feed their children, can't get drinking water, can't get a decent education, don't have job opportunities, endure harsh weather, face horrible labour conditions, lack nutrition, endure starvation, frequently become diseased, and after suffering for several decades - poor people die much earlier than their richer counterparts.

This is where economic growth comes in. Economic growth isn't really important in terms of seeing what happens to a rich country's GDP. Economic growth means a larger pie for a poor country. Growth means more slices per person. More food. More medicine. Less hardships. Fed babies. More education. Longer lives. Growth is a means to combat all of the crap that insanely poor people endure. Growth means the capacity to move from merely living on a day-to-day basis to being able to have leisure time to enter in this discussion. Growth means their being able to embrace their humanity. Growth matters.

Wednesday, September 07, 2005

Affirmative Action

A very strange thing happened at Columbia University during my freshman year. The College Republicans were out on College Walk for a bake sale. They had a fairly small booth and loads and loads of chocolate chip cookies. The interesting thing was the way in which they were selling these snacks. When a black student went up to the booth, they charged him $0.50 for a cookie. Then a white girl went to the booth and was promptly charged $1.00. Soon a commotion began, so I said to myself, "Self, what is all the ruccus?" Then my Jewish friend and I went over to purchase cookies and were charged $2.00 per cookie.

Anyway, turns out that this wasn't a demonstration in rapid inflation. It was a thinly veiled protest of affirmative action policies, with different rates for different races, based on "social performance" of the races.

Why Affirmative Action?
There are some fairly compelling arguments for affirmative action policies. First, there has been a documented history of discrimination against non-white groups such as blacks and latinos, and they have historically been portrayed as having inferior skill sets. So affirmative action would combat this disadvantage that certain groups face. Second, a low socio-economic setting is indeed a ball and chain on opportunity and mobility. Third, there is something to be said for the needs of diversity at places such as a university.

Why not Affirmative Action?
Before I start, I want to make it clear that prejudices that I/studies anticipate that people feel are not my own. I am not anti-black or anti-latino or pro-white or whatever. I do think, however, it provides a reasonably good snapshot of what reality affirmative action policies create.

First, I would argue "not affirmative action" because it does not really address the impoverished, destitute student that well. Studies explain that the real ball and chain is cast upon students in economic terms. That is, the force that drags them down the furthest is their own poverty and lack of access to strong educational opportunities. It so happens that a larger fraction of the black population than most other races are in these destitute conditions. Still, most studies point to the fact that of many of the students taken due to affirmative action do not necessarily come from impoverished backgrounds. Instead, a process called "cream skimming" occurs. Many of these African Americans, for example, come from upper-middle class students while other students (of any other race - white, asian, whatever) who are in a poverty trap are systematically disadvantaged in the process, even if they have exceptional academic ability. The fact that these students get +20 points on their application, simply because of their race, seems especially strange when understanding that the greater ball and chain (economic destitution) is not the harm being addressed.

Second, blacks do badly at every level. Statistically, the race with the lowest achievement at every level, from Harvard to community college, become African Americans (followed closely by latinos again). Of course, this should not be terribly surprising seeing how a +20 advantage is given simply because of skin color. This seems to indicate that the advantage does indeed bring in "underqualified" individuals into a slightly higher bracket. Note: the displacement of other racial candidates is not really my reason for objection - while many people feel that an affirmative action candidate got in and they didn't, they fail to realize that less than half a percent of people are actually displaced due to affirmative action, meaning it is more likely that they just weren't strong enough candidates. My objection, instead, comes from three points. First, a drag on the quality of the institution is inefficient. Second, it seems to be rather horrible to self-esteem when collectively one's race does extremely poorly at every level. Third,
doing poorly across all leagues causes people to think that minorities are only there because they are black - or native american.

Third, while affirmative action policies have historically not worked too well for most groups (women being an exception - but the circumstances are quite different [ask me if you are interested]) many other groups have integrated fairly well. In fact, most studies argue that many groups who never benefited from aff-action policies integrated just fine (which isn't to say that aff-action is completely counterproductive always - it is just saying that it is not a necessary condition). But the situation gets more dicey when there is a large percent of the population who do not integrate, and then are isolated uniquely by a policy which not only creates a large stratification between black (low) and asian (high) testing ability in the same classroom, but also encourages placing a stigma upon those who attend a quality school.

The Strange Complaints that We Make.
After the College Republicans' demonstration, many of the Columbia students went nuts. They began to march onto the Lowe Steps in a protest against racism. I was pretty confused - what was so racist about decrying affirmative action policies? For one thing, no one is saying that slavery, or the genocide of native americans, or the mistreatment of latinos was a good thing. Heck, remember World War II and the concentration camps for the Japanese? Or how the Chinese immigrants, Indian immigrants, Irish immigrants, [take your pick] immigrants were maliciously treated by US citizens? That is fine and dandy, but decrying an inefficient policy doesn't make you racist.

Possible Solutions?
I do think that there are several alternative solutions. One possible solution is to adopt a financial-need based affirmative action policy instead of a racial/demographic/etc affirmative action policy. I would argue that the marginal benefit of "diversity" at a school is mitigated by the fact that (a) a lot of clumping occurs and (b) we really don't care all that much because it is not like we are trying to draw a 20% foreign student rate or anything. On that note, I would discount demographic affirmative action (which I believe is a way to get rural whites into school) for the same reasons that I reject racial affirmative action. At least a financial-necessity based policy would actually deal with people who have a ball and chain and give them better access to mobility.

Now the common objection here will be - why won't all these poor people end up doing what blacks do now? Won't they fill up the bottom rungs at every level? But I would respond - I think we should adopt programs that seek out intellectual potential in economically disadvantaged regions. U Chicago has successfully employed such a program, as have many other very driven schools. I do not believe that the poor are less intelligent. On the contrary, many of the more intelligent people that I have met at my stay in Columbia have come from very destitute backgrounds. I just believe that a stronger effort of a search has to be made. Also, it seems to be an empirical point that people from poor backgrounds with a newfound capacity to excel make very good use of it (irrespective of whatever race they are). This would support a $-based as opposed to race-based affirmative action policy.

Finally, I want to note two things. I disagree with the policy initiatives of the UC system. I do not think that we should stop tracking racial data. We need records of this for precisely these kinds of discussions - so that econometric analysis can be done and we can see, for example, if blacks are benefiting from new policy, etc. The only way we know that old ones fail is through such tracking. (Of course, there is a complexity here when such data collection might induce an implicit affirmative action policy, as universities and employers will be in a game in which if a disadvantaged race is underrepresented they may be held as discriminatory and thus they might begin to admit unqualified minorities anyway. But I do not think this harm is as great as explicit aff action.) The other thing I want to note is that it is ok in a prison full of black prisoners, for example, to explicitly hire black guards. Studies show that these prisons are better managed (read: less violent). Apparently, people react better to racial self-rule. Similarly, I think it is ok for a black actor to portray Malcom X, as by necessity, race is a qualification for the position.

I know that was probably a lot longer than you would have liked - but it was a lot more brief than this issue deserves. In hindsight, it was a very superficial discussion of the topic, but hopefully it gets the ball rolling. I hope you have some feedback/comments/opinions on the matter.