Brian Flaxman—Bern Notice: Why Bernie Sanders is the Best Candidate to Take on Donald Trump in 2020

I am delighted to be able to host another guest post by Brian Flaxman. Don’t miss his two previous guest posts:

Brian notes my intent to have a nonpartisan blog. On that, see “What is a Partisan Nonpartisan Blog?” Brian gets close to being partisan in this guest post, but I think he stays on the analytical side of the line. Below are Brian’s words:

Note: Given the non-partisan nature of this blog, I will try to stick to a positive analysis of Bernie Sanders as a candidate rather than my personal feelings towards him.

One of the major political phenomena over the past decade has been the rise of Bernie Sanders in American politics. In 2016, the self-proclaimed democratic socialist (although his policies are much closer to social democracy), previously a relative unknown, mounted a challenge to that was far more powerful than people thought. Since then, he has continued to move the needle of public opinion and has expanded his appeal, to the point where he is (as of 2/17/2020) an inarguable frontrunner (if not the inarguable frontrunner) for this year’s Democratic Nomination.

There are many reasons why he has become so popular and why he is a much more viable candidate in today’s day and age than in recent years. The Cold War has become increasingly a distant, less scary memory; the public has been experiencing widening income equality and increasing economic anxiety. These changes make his populist economic platform appealing. Also, Bernie has been on the right side of many social issues, even when he was in the minority in those positions. That helps in a country that is becoming more socially liberal by the day. The moderate candidate lost the electoral college to Trump in the last election, only being able to best him by 3 million popular votes overall, making people rightfully question whether the idea of moderation and triangulation is a wise electoral strategy. After all, if the way to defeat the extreme politics of Donald Trump were a moderate Democrat to attract swing voters, we wouldn’t be having this conversation now, as our 45th President, Hillary Clinton, would be running for reelection. (Side-note: I point to a highly corporate-influenced Democratic Party infrastructure’s heavy involvement in both primary and general congressional elections, as well as the obscenely Republican gerrymandered congressional districts as to why the “Moderate Democratic Wave of 2018” argument for a more moderate Democratic Presidential nominee is deeply flawed). And then there is the fact that even though he has consistently been making life difficult for Democratic, Republican, and economic establishment figures alike for the past 5 years, nobody has been able to discover him sending inappropriate twitter pictures to minors, taking part in prostitution rings, or going for nice leisurely “hikes up the Appalachian Trail.”

While these are all certainly true and have varying degrees of impact on his support and viability, there is likely something deeper that could make him the most effective candidate in the general election. I will motivate this by a quote from Sanders himself from 2015:

 [In my last Senate election in Vermont] we got about 25 percent of the Republican vote. Why is that? Because people say, okay, I disagree with Bernie on women's rights. I disagree with Bernie on gay rights. Okay. But you know what? I believe he is fighting for my kids and for my parents and for the rights of the middle class. And you see a lot of those folks saying, I disagree with him, but I'm going to vote for them.

Yes, you read that right. The self-proclaimed democratic socialist garnered one in four REPUBLICAN voters in the state. The data bears out this support from his home state even further. For a long time now, he has had the highest approval rating of any Senator in the country from his or her constituents. And while his politics are very much aligned with the very liberal state of Vermont, there is likely something more there than just political alignment. Elizabeth Warren, one of the most liberal senators in the country from one of the most liberal states in the country, Massachusetts, is not nearly as popular from her home state. And Mitch McConnell, the man who has done more for the right-wing in this country than any Senator in recent memory, has the second highest overall level of disapproval in the country and THE highest net level of disapproval from the deeply conservative state in Kentucky. There is something about this widespread appeal from all corners of his home state that I believe has carried over onto the national stage. And given his widespread appeal, could it actually be the case that Sanders is the BEST candidate to take on Trump in the 2020 election despite popular orthodoxy? I would argue yes.

This is a notion that many who regularly follow politics might scoff at. Yet most people in 2016 thought that Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders would not have any chance in their respective primaries. People also were convinced that there was no way that Trump could defeat the monolith that was Hillary Clinton in the general election. Yet I predicted ahead of time, as early as October 2015 or so, that both Trump and Sanders were going to be far more formidable in these contests than a lot of people believed. And, while I thought Hillary was going to win giving the polling at the time, I had a feeling in my gut on election day that Trump was going to pull it off, a feeling that the New York Times and the Huffington Post didn’t share given their respective estimates of a 84% and 98% chance that Clinton would win on election day. I’ve also looked through the many studies on the previous election and have done a fair amount of statistical analysis of my own regarding the last election. I mention this because my argument as to why Sanders is the best candidate to take on Trump in this election revolves around a decades-long decay of confidence in our political system that is as potent now as it was in 2016, if not more so.

While politicians have always had a reputation for being two-faced and calculating, the overall favorability and trust in politicians and political institutions seems to be declining every day. For example, polling shows that 72% of people disapprove of how Congress is doing its job while only 23% approve—a disappointing number given that 28% of people believe in a New World Order, 21% believe that a UFO crashed into Roswell, and 20% that believe that vaccines cause Autism. And unlike those latter 3 claims, this opinion can be widely justified, especially when looking at the disparity of outcomes over the past several decades between the average American and large monied interests. These disparities, might I add, coincide both with changes in our campaign finance system starting in the late 1970s and lobbying practices starting in about the early 1980s.

Supreme Court case law has chipped away at the ability to enact and enforce measures to limit the influence of large monied interests on campaigns, starting in the late 1970s. The 1976 case of Buckley v. Valeo struck down certain limits on political expenditures, including establishing the right to self-finance a campaign (see Michael Bloomberg’s philanthropic venture for television stations here). The 1978 case of Bank of Boston v. Belloti decided that corporations have First Amendment rights to make contributions on ballot initiative campaigns. And it was the Citizens United v. FEC case of 2010 that acted as an even further catalyst for the outsized role of money in elections, making it unconstitutional to place any limits on spending from political groups not directly affiliated with a candidate. In sum, it is ridiculously easy for the extremely wealthy and large corporations to exert their influence on our elections. And it can be seen in the data how campaign spending has exploded over the past few decades. All of the following numbers are in real dollars. In the 2017/2018 election cycle, $739 million was raised by all 377 House of Representatives incumbents running for reelection, $323 million raised by political action committees (PACs), bodies that through either direct or indirect expenditures allow large monied interests to influence elections. In the 1993/1994 election cycle where 383 incumbents ran for reelection, only $372 million was raised overall and $175 million from PACs after adjusting for inflation. And much of this money comes from groups that represent certain industries, rather than from groups that only focus on particular political issues. For example, in the 2017/2018 cycle, PACs representing the finance, insurance, and real estate industries directly donated $90 million dollars to all federal candidates. In the 1997/1998 cycle, this amount was only $54 million.

The outsized role of money in our elections is a relatively recent phenomenon. However, lobbying has always played a role in our government and is essentially as American as baseball, apple pie, and an emotional attachment to firearms. There were, however, two major changes to lobbying practices that greatly influenced the role that lobbying has had in Washington that took places around the early 1980s. The first was the advent of “K Street” firms dedicated to lobbying (as opposed to individual corporations conducting lobbying efforts themselves) that made lobbying a lucrative career. The second change, the one I would argue is far more problematic, is the advent of the so called “revolving door” system where career politicians work in lobbying capacities after and in between serving in official government roles. This creates incentives for politicians to act in accordance with special interests while in office so that they can eventually cash in after their tenures come to a voluntary or enforced end. (This is also why I personally believe that imposing term limits is a dreadful and counterproductive measure to fight corruption; it would incentivize government officials to start building resumes for careers they know they will need to transition into after their term limits expire rather than rewarding politicians who better serve the public with a good income as a public servant.) At around this time, the previously overwhelming stigma of this practice went away, likely due to lobbying’s increasingly lucrative nature. Much like the simultaneous increase in campaign spending, the amount of money spent on lobbying has ballooned over time. The amount spend on lobbying efforts rose from tens of millions in the 1970s to billions in the mid-2000s.

With all of these political ventures by large monied interests, it is only reasonable to assume that they got something in return. Political spending can’t be used as a tax write-off, and charitable giving to the poor, starving, politician doesn’t seem to be something that would directly be a good public relations move by firms to help their standing in the community. It is literally impossible for a multinational profit-maximizing firm to have a set of principled political beliefs. And I’m sure it is not a coincidence that those ever-principled libertarians who donate large sums to campaigns because they have a firmly held belief in small-government seem to have a blind spot in such a belief when it comes to fossil fuel subsidies or no-strings-attached financial firm bailouts. In all seriousness though, it takes a large level of naivete to believe that the increased political agency of large monied interests and the increasing economic struggles of much of the American population aren’t inherently linked. It’s a naiveite shared mostly by those in Washington and not those that have been negatively impacted by the economic trends that have helped those large monied interests. Trends in technological innovation, a more international economy, etc. have clearly played a role. But the troubles of ordinary Americans are taking place against the backdrop of ever more corporate-influenced politicians—politicians whose election chances were boosted by the campaign donations they have taken; politicians who let lobbyists craft the legislation they put forward; politicians who have to play a political tap dance of acting in accordance to those interests while making sure they can appeal to their voters as well, a lot of times only in the areas that don’t hurt the bottom lines of the donors and lobbyists. And voters can see it.

So how does this play a role in the popularity of Bernie Sanders? It’s simple really. He was one of the only politicians in this ecosystem able to maintain a 30 year political career while being able to buck all of these interests, most likely from being a Vermonter and from having a relatively low profile for all but 5 of them. Over this period, he has maintained a track record of being against nearly all of the decisions that benefited large monied interests that have been seen as hurting the average American. These are decisions, I should add, that were supported by many of his Democratic Primary opponents in both 2016 and 2020. The many tax cuts on the wealthy that that benefited the wealthy individual donors and corporations while leading to increased deficits but little economic growth. The many trade deals, massive deregulation, bankruptcy bills, and no-strings-attached bailouts, that one can argue were an overall net positive for our economy but were written with large-monied interests in mind, not the everyday Americans who have been hurt by such policies. And then there are the many decisions over the years made on issues such as foreign policy, criminal justice, environmental policy, healthcare, etc. that also have caused great damage to many in this country while just happening to benefit those at the top. Bernie was against nearly all of them, and in the great minority of nearly everyone in Washington. Essentially, over the past 30 years, he has engaged in a fight for the average American that is nearly unrivaled in Washington over this time frame.

It’s this fight that allows his support to transcend his left-wing political ideology. A recent survey found that amongst all voters, not just Democrats, 39% of voters believes that Sanders “shares their values”. The same question, asked about Trump, Warren, Buttigieg, Biden and Bloomberg gives answers between 28% and 31%. (If you are wondering about the 31% of voters felt Trump “shared their values,” it is worth noting that 52% of voters explicitly said that Trump did not share their values compared to only 36% who said Bernie did not share their values.) That gap between Sanders and the results for both Trump and other top Democratic contenders is telling. It says that for him, more than any other candidate, while some voters may disagree with him in many of their political views, they at least know he is in their corner. This, I believe, makes him the most formidable opponent to take on Trump in the general election.

For individuals not fully committed to a political ideology, the voters that can actually be swayed in this election, this ability to speak to people’s needs while transcending the political spectrum is potent, especially when trying to counter Donald Trump’s “all bark and no bite” populism. This is what makes Bernie Sanders the most viable candidate to flip the 37 electoral votes needed to defeat Donald Trump and win back the presidency. The alternative is for the Democratic Party to run a standard, uninspiring, moderate, politician again. But you know what they say about the definition of insanity.

Sources:

https://publicintegrity.org/politics/a-modern-history-of-campaign-finance-from-watergate-to-citizens-united/

https://morningconsult.com/senator-rankings/

National USA Today/Iposos poll, 2/4/20 Open Secrets

https://www.statista.com/statistics/207579/public-approval-rating-of-the-us-congress/

The Case Against Monosodium Glutamate—Why MSG is Dangerous (as are Other Sources of Free Glutamate) and How the Dangers Have Been Covered Up

A little over a week ago, I tried doing online searches to try to find out if monosodium glutamate (MSG) was safe or not for my blog post “Too Much of Any Amino Acid is Probably Bad for You, But Monosodium Glutamate Isn't Any Worse Than That.” I overwhelmingly found articles that were reassuring about the safety of MSG and explained why research results that sounded bad about MSG weren’t good evidence for problems from MSG. I have to thank Adrienne Samuels for her comment on my post pointing me to her work documenting not only the dangers from free amino acids such as the glutamate that MSG breaks into, but also the orchestrated, decades-long industry campaign to whitewash glutamate that was behind the difficult I had in getting a clear picture of the dangers of glutamate from online search. This work is summarized in her article “The Toxicity/Safety of Processed Free Glutamic Acid (MSG): A Study in the Suppression of Information,” which I will refer to in this post simply as “Adrienne’s paper” and quote from extensively. Let me say upfront that I find her paper very credible. The amount of traffic my blog gets from Google search gives me some hope that this can be a useful resource to others who, like me, try to search online to see whether MSG (and glutamate more generally) is safe.

One of my mistakes (which I believe was fostered by the industry campaign to whitewash glutamate) when I wrote “Too Much of Any Amino Acid is Probably Bad for You, But Monosodium Glutamate Isn't Any Worse Than That” was not understanding the key distinction between the biological effects of amino acids inside a protein, or during the controlled disassembly of that protein during ordinary protein digestion and the biological effects of amino acids on their own, called “free amino acids.” This is particularly true because certain amino acids, when on their own, are used by our bodies as signaling molecules, or are closely related chemically to signaling molecules. Glutamate (also called “glutamic acid”) in particular is used as a signaling molecule in the nervous system. So it can overstimulate the nervous system in a harmful way. As Adrienne puts it:

… MSG is simply processed free glutamic acid, or processed free glutamic acid combined with sodium (depending on how it is defined), and that glutamic acid is a neurotransmitter that causes nerves to fire; and when present in excess quantities, causes nerves to fire until they die.

Another free amino acid that acts similarly to glutamate is aspartic acid, the key chemical component of the nonsugar sweetener aspartame. Aspartame is on my bad list in “Which Nonsugar Sweeteners are OK? An Insulin-Index Perspective” for reasons related to its neurotoxicity.

Another mistake I made was to believe to readily the claim that glutamate doesn’t get past the blood-brain barrier. Adrienne points out that the blood-brain barrier is far from foolproof. Just as some people have leaky guts, some have leaky blood-brain barriers:

Today scientists know that MSG kills brain cells and causes neuroendocrine disorders in laboratory animals; and that it causes adverse reactions in humans. Scientists know that the blood brain barrier, once thought to prevent glutamate that comes from exogenous sources (eating included) from entering the brain, is not fully developed until puberty; is easily damaged by such conditions as high fever, a blow to the head, and the normal course of aging; and, in the area of the circumventricular organs, is leaky at best at any stage of life. Scientists know that a diverse number of disease conditions such as ALS, Alzheimer's disease, seizures, and stroke are associated with the glutamate cascade (Blaylock, 1994).

The blood-brain barrier is unavoidably leaky for the circumventricular organs because these parts of the brain need to be able to put hormones into the bloodstream. So it is especially easy for glutamate to get to the parts of the brain that are heavily involved in the hormonal regulation of the rest of the body.

The Dangers of Free Glutamate. With the “It’s a natural part of many proteins so it can’t be dangerous” and the “It can’t get past the blood-brain barrier” defenses of glutamate dismantled, what are the dangers of glutamate that evidence points to? Adrienne writes:

I found two sorts of studies: 1) those sponsored by the glutamate industry, which invariably concluded that MSG is safe, and 2) those done by independent neuroscientists and other researchers who found that MSG kills brain cells, causes neuroendocrine disorders, learning disabilities, and a variety of disorders such as tachycardia and seizures.

Some of the key research showing dangers of glutamate goes back to John Olney, but has been well-replicated. Adrienne writes:

… John W. Olney, M.D. reported that laboratory animals suffered brain lesions and neuroendocrine disorders after being exposed to monosodium glutamate (Olney, 1969). Scientists studying retinal degeneration in mice treated with free glutamic acid had noted that these mice became grotesquely obese. Olney, who speculated that the obesity might be a sign of damage to the hypothalamus (the area of the brain that regulates a number of endocrine functions, including weight control), found that infant laboratory animals given free glutamic acid suffered brain damage immediately, and assorted neuroendocrine disorders later in life. Pharmaceutical grade L-glutamic acid was often used to produce these disorders until neuroscientists observed that monosodium glutamate, an inexpensive food additive, could be substituted for laboratory-grade free glutamic acid in these studies and produce the same effects.

Given both the less-than-fully-formed blood-brain barrier of infants and the general sensitivity of infants to toxins, the use of MSG and other sources of free glutamate in baby food is particularly scary. Here is Adrienne’s account of that:

In the years that followed, neuroscientists replicated the work of Olney, and Olney spoke out repeatedly about the toxic potential of glutamic acid freed from protein prior to ingestion. In 1972, for example, Olney testified before the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs that ingestion of MSG places humans at risk, with the greatest risk being for the very young; and that a National Academy of Science panel organized to determine whether MSG ought to be banned from baby food had produced an "industry arranged whitewash" by a group of scientists with almost no experience in neuropathology (Gillette, 1972). In the early 1970s, manufacturers of baby food voluntarily removed the monosodium glutamate from their products, but replaced the monosodium glutamate with [other sources of free glutamate] such as autolyzed yeast and hydrolyzed vegetable protein.

Reading Adrienne’s paper and looking at the Wikipedia article “Monosodium glutamate,” I was surprised to see that food labeling laws don’t require that free glutamate (glutamic acid) content be labeled: it can be listed as “natural flavor.” Most other sources of free glutamate do need to be labeled: “… hydrolyzed vegetable protein, autolyzed yeast, hydrolyzed yeast, yeast extract, soy extracts, and protein isolate, which must be specifically labeled.” However, the fact that these are all sources of free glutamate may or may not be clear on the label. According to the FDA website, the only time the word “glutamate” is required if glutamate is added in the form of monosodium glutamate. But free glutamate is the issue, not exactly how it got into the food.

Over and above the harm from the left-handed glutamate that is a neurotransmitter, MSG is likely to contain right-handed glutamate and other contaminants. Here, from Adrienne:

… in addition to the L-glutamic acid found in unprocessed, unfermented, unadulterated free glutamic acid, processed free glutamic acid invariably contains D-glutamic acid and brings with it pyroglutamic acid and other contaminants--some of which, depending on procedures used for processing and the protein source, are carcinogenic.

The Industry Campaign to Whitewash Glutamate. Adrienne’s account of the industry campaign of misinformation about glutamate is easy to believe because it is such a distressingly familiar story in other areas. Gary Taubes details the campaign of misinformation about sugar in his book The Case Against Sugar. Keith Woodford details the campaign to discredit the evidence of the dangers of non-A2 milk in his book Devil in the Milk, which I distill in my post “Exorcising the Devil in the Milk.” Those who want to know how a campaign of disinformation works should read Adrienne’s paper in full. One key element is coopted individuals in and out of government referring to other coopted individuals as authorities. But those trying to present glutamate as safe have had a surprising strength not only in getting their story out, but also in being able to prevent or delay the publication of contrary views.

Adrienne very usefully explains strategies that were used to appear to be doing science proving glutamate is safe when proving nothing of the kind. Here is Adrienne’s rundown of those strategies (I omit #11, using student samples or samples of people who say they are sensitive to MSG, which I do not consider a serious flaw):

  1. Use variables and methods known to minimize or be irrelevant to identification of the toxic effects of glutamic acid; then conclude that glutamic acid never produces adverse effects. Studies have focused on the relationship between "objective" parameters such as blood pressure and body temperature and ingestion of MSG. Unless MSG sensitive people are studied, one can not legitimately draw conclusions about the relationship of the variables being studied (no matter how objective they are) to people who are sensitive to MSG. Often, these studies are used to allegedly "prove" that people who are not sensitive to MSG are not sensitive to MSG.

  2. Limit the recorded adverse effects to a few generally mild and transitory reactions occurring simultaneously, such as those first reported in 1968 by Kwok and dubbed "Chinese- restaurant syndrome" (CRS): "...numbness at the back of the neck, gradually radiating to both arms and the back, general weakness and palpitation." Industry researchers do not consider migraine headache, asthma, tachycardia, arrhythmia, depression, anxiety attacks or other obviously debilitating and/or life-threatening reactions reported since 1968.

  3. Make no attempt during a study to prevent subjects from ingesting food to which they might be allergic or sensitive.

  4. Record reactions as reactions to monosodium glutamate or placebo material only if they occur 2 hours or less following ingestion of test or placebo material, even though many symptoms are commonly expressed much later, and reactions may persist for much longer periods.

  5. Fail to report all data.

  6. Draw conclusions that do not follow from the results of the study. The IGTC researchers have concluded, for example, that because approximately one third of their subjects reacted adversely to placebos containing MSG and/or aspartame, they have "proved" that reactions to MSG-containing test material are not reactions to MSG.

  7. Use test material that will minimize the effect of any stated amount of glutamic acid test material in producing adverse reactions. One gram monosodium glutamate encased in capsules, and therefore guaranteeing slow release, will cause less effect than 1g monosodium glutamate sprinkled on food; and 1g monosodium glutamate modified with sucrose will cause less effect than otherwise because sucrose is known to slow monosodium glutamate uptake (Stegink, 1986).

  8. Continue subjects on medications that might block the effects of MSG.

  9. Using placebos to which MSG-sensitive people would react (placebos containing MSG, aspartame, carageenan or enzymes, for example), test potential subjects for sensitivity to those placebos, and eliminate any subjects who react to placebos. Researchers can be fairly certain that those who do not react to their reactive placebos will not react to monosodium glutamate test material.

  10. Advertise for, and presumably use, "well subjects" – people who had never experienced any of the symptoms with which reactions to MSG are associated. (If 50 per cent of the population were sensitive to MSG, but research design precluded inclusion of that 50 per cent who were sensitive, a study claiming to assess the number of people sensitive to MSG would be invalid.)

  11. …

  12. Use placebos virtually guaranteed to produce as many reactions as might be produced following ingestion of the monosodium glutamate test material. Using toxic material in both test material and placebo, researchers argue that the reactions to MSG-containing test material are not reactions to MSG because subjects also react to placebos, which are assumed to be inert. However, the use of toxic material in placebos, particularly when it is identical or similar to the MSG in the test material, makes it virtually inevitable that there will be approximately as many reactions to placebos as there are reactions to MSG test material.

I find the problem of using placebos that might cause reactions a particularly interesting and serious flaw in these research designs.

Adrienne’s Appendix B is entitled “Excerpt from the prepared statement of John W. Olney, M.D. pertaining to adverse reactions to monosodium glutamate presented before the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology April, 1993.” This is a particularly telling account of bad research used to try to whitewash glutamate. Here is the beginning of that excerpt—John Olney’s words:

...When I reported in 1969-70 that glutamate destroys neurons in the hypothalamus when administered either subcutaneously or orally to immature mice (9-12), a U.S. Senate Nutrition Committee was investigating infant nutrition and asked me to comment on the fact that glutamate was being added to baby foods....Under pressure from the Senate committee, FDA arranged for a special ‘scientific' committee to evaluate the safety of glutamate for babies. The committee investigated the matter and concluded that glutamate was safe, but the committee was then investigated and most of its members were found to have close financial ties with the food industry....Of particular note, the committee Chairman, Lloyd J. Filer, was found to be receiving moneys from both the baby food industry and the glutamate industry while he chaired this committee.

Here is John Olney’s critique of the monkey research done to show that glutamate was safe, with my labels added in bold italics inside square brackets:

[Give the monkeys so much glutamate they vomit it up. Then neglect to mention that in the published paper.] … they tube-fed very large doses of glutamate to infant monkeys, which led me to suspect that their infant monkeys probably vomited (large doses of glutamate are known to induce vomiting in monkeys). This raised a crucial issue; if their infant monkeys vomited, they obviously lost dose control and this would render their data unreliable for establishing the safety of glutamate. I questioned Dr. Reynolds on this in public at a scientific meeting a few months before their Science paper appeared in print. In front of a large audience, she admitted that their monkeys vomited. When their Science paper appeared in print (33), I was surprised to read the following description: 'Each infant was maintained in an incubator with handling and cuddling at intervals for a 6 hour period. No unusual behavior was exhibited by the infants.' No mention was made at all of vomiting. Therefore, I wrote a letter to Science pointing out that by the author's own acknowledgment at a public meeting, these infants had vomited. The letter was accepted for publication in Science and was sent to Dr. Reynolds for her response. To my astonishment, in a letter signed by Reynolds, she responded with a denial that they had encountered problems with vomiting or with dose control. Therefore, I withdrew my letter and this exchange was never published.

[Knowingly autopsy the wrong part of the monkeys’ brains.] ....In the following year, I invited Reynolds et al. to send a member of their group to my laboratory to learn how to find glutamate damage in monkey brain. In May 1972, a member of their group (Dr. N. Lemkey-Johnston) did visit my laboratory and reviewed microscopic slides with me and she told me she was convinced that glutamate neuropathology was present in the hypothalamus of my monkeys. She also thanked me for pointing out specifically where to look in the hypothalamus to find these lesions. Two years later, when Reynolds et al. published their second paper (34), they stated that they had treated a few additional monkeys with glutamate and had serially sectioned the hypothalamus to provide definitive evidence of no damage. To my amazement, the illustration they showed was once again from the wrong region of the brain....

[Use monkeys who are likely to be much less susceptible to glutamate problems than humans.] ....In summary, the record shows that FDA for two decades has been assuring the public that glutamate is safe, based almost exclusively on certain industry-generated monkey data which appear upon close scrutiny to be seriously flawed, unreliable and spurious. However, even if these data were not flawed, unreliable and spurious, it is obvious from industry's own finding, shown in Fig. 1 above, that the pharmacokinetics of glutamate absorption and/or metabolism are so disparate between monkeys and man that monkeys, despite their phylogenetic closeness to humans, must be regarded as a singularly inappropriate animal model for evaluating oral glutamate safety. The same oral dose of glutamate that causes a dramatic increase in blood glutamate concentrations in humans, causes no increase at all in monkeys. Therefore, it is difficult to understand why so much money and effort was expended on oral glutamate monkey studies, unless the goal was to amass an unchallengeable mountain of negative evidence that could serve as basis for fostering the misleading impression, and fueling the spurious argument, that if monkeys are resistant to glutamate-induced brain damage, other primates, including humans, must be similarly resistant.

How to Avoid Free Glutamate

MSG and other sources of free glutamate are mainly found in Chinese food and processed food. The post “Is MSG Bad for You” on Real Mom Nutrition, which goes too easy on MSG overall, does have useful information on where MSG is found. It says MSG is especially prevalent in these foods (I am copying the list, with its original bullets):

  • Chinese food

  • canned soup

  • frozen foods

  • fast food

  • packaged snacks

It also gives the list of other sources of free glutamate that I mentioned once above (copying the list with its original bullets):

  • hydrolyzed vegetable protein

  • autolyzed yeast

  • hydrolyzed yeast

  • yeast extract

  • soy extracts

  • protein isolate

The dangers of free glutamate are another good example of the dangers of processed food, which I have warned of in this blog. See for example:

Of course, simply trying to eat low on the insulin index to avoid weight gain would steer one away from a large fraction of processed foods—though it wouldn’t be enough to steer one away from all processed foods. See “Forget Calorie Counting; It's the Insulin Index, Stupid.”

A Note on Umami. Adrienne is suspicious of the idea that umami or the savory taste is a fifth taste along with sweet, salty, bitter and sour. Although I agree with Adrienne’s view that Kikunae Ikeda’s declaration of umami as the fifth taste was intimately bound up with the discovery of monosodium glutamate, that doesn’t mean that it is wrong that this is a fifth taste. Nevertheless, just as using sugar or nonsugar sweeteners to overstimulate our sweet sensors is a bad idea, using MSG or other sources of free glutamates to overstimulate our umami sensors is a bad idea. Tickling the umami sensors in our taste buds with glutamate that arrives bound into proteins is likely to be safer, though overdoing protein is also a problem. Of the three “macronutrients”—carbohydrates, fat and protein, all of which are necessary for human life—I think protein is the most overrated.

What I wrote about umami in needs to be modified to take into account the difference between free amino acids and amino acids bound into proteins, but is otherwise still reasonable.

Umami is not all from glutamate. As Elizabeth Dunn writes in “From MSG Scare to MVP Status: How We Learned to Love Umami”:

Though the term is Japanese, umami is a global phenomenon. The same savory magic in pork and oysters runs through anchovies, seaweed and mushrooms, not to mention breast milk and amniotic fluid. In addition to glutamate, two other molecules, inosinate and guanylate, emit umami. Aging, caramelizing, drying and fermenting intensify it. Garum, the fermented fish sauce ancient Romans adored, teemed with umami, as do oyster sauce in China, miso in Japan, Worcestershire sauce in England and Maggi seasoning the world over. 

(You can learn a lot more about creating umami in the well-done Anime series “Food Wars,” which many of my family marathoned when we were together around Christmas. I recommend you do the version with subtitles. Few Anime shows have good English dubbing.)

Overall, I am willing to bet that it is safer to get the umami taste from some a reasonably balanced combination of glutamic acid, inosinate and guanylate than from an unusually large amount of glutamic acid. But glutamic acid in normal amounts seems to be part of the story of naturally occurring umami.

I worry that “Aging, caramelizing, drying and fermenting” might be ways of enhancing the amount of free amino acids. So intense umami from aging, caramelizing, drying and fermenting might have bad health effects. But umami from whole foods that are not processed in those ways nor more industrial ways should be safer.

For annotated links to other posts on diet and health, see:

The Mormon Church's Counterpart to a Sovereign Wealth Fund

The State of Missouri declared war against the Mormon Church in 1838. The US Federal Government declared war against the Mormon Church in 1857. The US Federal Government legally disincorporated the Mormon Church in 1890, and began confiscating Mormon Church assets. Many top Mormon leaders today were born in the early 20th century; the current head of the Mormon Church was born in 1924, when many were still alive who had experienced those events first hand. As a result, it comes much more easily to leaders of the Mormon Church to view the Mormon Church as under threat than those who don’t feel this history so keenly would suspect.

Money can’t take care of all kinds of threats, but it can help with some threats. Through a combination of strenuous saving and luck, the Mormon Church has $100 billion in its answer to a sovereign wealth fund. Ian Lovett and Rachael Levy did an excellent job reporting on this for a February 8, 2020 Wall Street Journal article, “The Mormon Church Amassed $100 Billion. It Was the Best-Kept Secret in the Investment World.” All of the quotations below are from that article.

Nathan Eldon Tanner was my grandfather Spencer W. Kimball’s First Counselor in the Presidency of the Mormon Church from 1973 to 1982. I met him during that time and liked him a lot. He had a key role in the history of the Mormon Church’s $100 billion warchest:

The church established the investment division, which would later become Ensign Peak, in the 1960s, during a period of economic hardship for the faith. In 1969, construction on the church’s office building was halted when the money for construction ran out.

Church leaders had long told members to put away provisions for hard times. Nathan Eldon Tanner, a counselor of the first presidency, the highest level of church leadership, said the church itself should do the same.

Given how much money it asks its members to contribute—10% of their income for “tithing” plus other smaller required donations—the Mormon Church has been eager to keep the extent of its financial assets for the sake of optics. It is not at all clear the Mormon Church has done anything illegal, but a whistleblower to the IRS has brought the Mormon Church’s “Ensign Peak” investment fund into public view.

Ian Lovett and Rachael Levy make these comparisons to help readers appreciate the magnitude of the Ensign Peak fund:

Its assets did total roughly $80 billion to $100 billion as of last year, some of the former employees said. That is at least double the size of Harvard University’s endowment and as large as the size of SoftBank’s Vision Fund, the world’s largest tech-investment fund. Its holdings include $40 billion of U.S. stock, timberland in the Florida panhandle and investments in prominent hedge funds such as Bridgewater Associates LP, according to some current and former fund employees.

The Ensign Peak fund is not a hedge fund—in part for a religious reason:

The firm doesn’t borrow money—the church warns members against going into debt. It also doesn’t invest in industries that Mormons consider objectionable—including alcohol, caffeinated beverages, tobacco and gambling. 

What is the “rainy day” the Ensign Peak fund is meant for? Ian and Rachael’s reporting identified a range of answers given. I add bullets and some emphasis in bold italics to the relevant quotations from their article:

  • “We don’t know when the next 2008 is going to take place,” said Christopher Waddell, a member of the ecclesiastical arm that oversees Ensign Peak known as the presiding bishopric. Referring to the economic crash 12 years ago, he added, “If something like that were to happen again, we won’t have to stop missionary work.” [However, the Great Recession and its aftermath were not in fact bad enough for the Mormon Church to have ever drawn on the Ensign Peak fund.]

  • A former employee and the whistleblower in his report said they heard Mr. Clarke refer to the second coming of Jesus Christ as part of the reason for Ensign Peak’s existence. Mormons believe before Jesus returns, there will be a period of war and hardship.

    Mr. Clarke said … “We believe at some point the savior will return. Nobody knows when" …

    When the second coming happens, “we don’t have any idea whether financial assets will have any value at all,” he added. “The issue is what happens before that, not at the second coming.”

  • From time to time, church leaders in the ecclesiastical arm that oversees Ensign Peak arranged lunch meetings with Ensign Peak employees. During Q&A sessions at the end, employees sometimes asked what the money might be used for, according to one of the former employees, who attended.

    Church leaders responded by saying they wanted to know that, too, according to this person.

    … ‘When we have direction from the prophet.’ Everyone was waiting, as it were, for direction from God.” The prophet is the president of the church.

I need to explain the last bullet point. The idea is that God will reveal to the President of the church what the Ensign Peak fund is for at some point in the future; for now, what is important to know is that God wants the Mormon Church to have that money saved up; God doesn’t always tell his servants why when He asks them to do something.

One can certainly question the mix of activities the Mormon Church chooses to support financially. But leave that aside for a moment to look instead at the question of when the Mormon Church should spend its financial resources. Although many people think that needs to be met in the world in 2020 are more acute than the needs to be met in the world of 2030, 2040 or 2050, I find that to be a question that reasonable people can differ on. And people are entitled to space for religious beliefs about what the future will be like.

 Don't miss these posts on Mormonism:

Also see the links in "Hal Boyd: The Ignorance of Mocking Mormonism."

Don’t miss these Unitarian-Universalist sermons by Miles:

By self-identification, I left Mormonism for Unitarian Universalism in 2000, at the age of 40. I have had the good fortune to be a lay preacher in Unitarian Universalism. I have posted many of my Unitarian-Universalist sermons on this blog.

How Dating Apps Are Making Marriages Stronger

This Valentine’s day, let me give a cheery note about the positive effect of technological progress on relationship quality. Quoting Peggy Drexler’s August 29, 2019 Wall Street Journal article “Dating Apps Are Making Marriages Stronger”:

… there is now evidence that online dating could, in fact, be improving the likelihood of romantic compatibility—and making marriages stronger. …

According to the study, the rate of marital breakups for respondents who met their spouse online was 25% lower than for those who met offline. 

…

They also found that more anonymous online communications produced greater self-disclosure—and stronger feelings of affection—than face-to face communications, laying the foundation for more enduring relationships. A 2011 paper published in the journal Communication Research reached a similar conclusion. In a study of 85 participants conducted by researchers at Cornell University, opposite-sex participants were assigned to a face-to-face exchange, an online exchange with the addition of a webcam, or a text-only exchange. Researchers found that the text-only couples made more statements of affection than either of the other groups and were more comfortable sharing intimate information.

The causal theories about why dating apps can lead to better relationships boil down to two main forces:

  1. For some reason, online communications fosters more self-disclosure.

  2. More choices of potential partners allows people to get to a higher optimum.

Note that the second argument could be a nice counterexample to the claims about the downsides of too much choice made by Barry Schwartz in his book The Paradox of Choice. (That is a fairly popular book I would like to bring down a peg. It confuses claims a benefit of having only a few choices when the benefit is really an informational benefit of having choices one is presented with curated so one knows which choices to look at first and then go on if one wants to look at more. It also has a psyche battery for identifying what Barry calls a “maximizer” that seems to me more like a battery for identifying neurotic people who aren’t savvy enough to realize that information processing can be costly. See my post “Cognitive Economics.”)

I should point out that in research looking for a causal effect of dating apps on relationship quality, one should worry about the potential confound that more tech-savvy people might also on average be more savvy about making relationships work well, even after controlling for other indicators of intelligence in the data set. (And don’t forget: “Adding a Variable Measured with Error to a Regression Only Partially Controls for that Variable.”)

Don’t miss these other Valentine’s day posts:

Cash Isn't Dead Yet

On of the important features of my proposal for eliminating the zero lower bound is that it does not require eliminating paper currency. (See “How and Why to Eliminate the Zero Lower Bound: A Reader’s Guide.”) But it does require a change in paper currency policy that will go down more easily with the public if the share of transactions done in cash is relatively small. So it is worth paying attention to what is happening to the cash vs. card or phone breakdown of transactions. Telis Demos’s January 31, 2020 Wall Street Journal article “Cash May Not Be King, but It’s Still Royalty” gives a useful update on that. All the quotations below are from that article.

The first key point is that paying by app or directly with one’s smartphone is getting more convenient:

The digital revolution in banking is one of the major investment themes of the young century, pushing big share-price and valuation gains for financial-technology upstarts like PayPal Holdings and Square, as well as network giants like Mastercard and Visa. Younger consumers have embraced cash-transfer apps like Venmo and, to an extent, cryptocurrencies. Some retailers have tried to ditch cash and take all payments in digital or card form.

Personally, I have found Venmo to be very easy to use. And as far as I can tell, there weren’t any fees for common transactions unless you are in a hurry to get funds from Venmo into your regular bank account immediately.

Since new methods of payment are mostly built on top of the existing system of banks and cards, one thing inhibiting the full adoption of new payments methods are people who are unbanked, who are often poor folks we should be especially concerned about:

A number of voices have arisen to oppose an all-digital future. They range from people advocating on behalf of lower-income consumers, who tend to use cash more, to companies in the cash business.

There have been some political efforts to make cash use easier that the current trend would otherwise leave it:

In January, New York’s City Council voted to ban cashless stores and restaurants. Philadelphia and San Francisco have made similar moves. In the U.K., banks increased subsidies for some cash machines after a spike in concern about “ATM deserts.” Amazon’s first New York Amazon Go store, designed to use seamless mobile payments, started accepting cash last year.

Despite these efforts to make cash use easier, the cash share of transactions is declining:

For all that, there is little question electronic payments in the U.S., ranging from debit cards to mobile apps, are gaining ground.

In the most recent Federal Reserve survey of U.S. consumer payments, covering 2018, for the first time cash wasn’t the most common form of payment. It was surpassed by debit cards. Even a slim majority of payments in the survey under $10, long cash’s stronghold, were made by other methods.

Of course, total transactions is going up:

Yet digital’s gain isn’t necessarily coming at the expense of cash. The overall pie still appears to be growing.

Despite total transactions increasing, Russia and Sweden have the total amount of cash going down:

Only two countries, Russia and Sweden, had a net substitution of cards for cash from 2007 to 2016, with cash in circulation shrinking as card payments grew

Given its innovative tech companies and people used to fast technological change, one possible leader in the transition away from cash might be China:

… the fact that cash will be around for some time to come isn’t an invitation to ditch digital-payment bets. That’s especially true for companies with exposure to China, where digital payments have leapfrogged cards and checks.

Overall, the picture is mixed. The share of cash transactions is declining, but at a deliberate pace.

Too Much of Any Amino Acid is Probably Bad for You, But Monosodium Glutamate Isn't Any Worse Than That

Update February 17, 2020: In response to following the trail from the first comment below by Adrienne Samuels, I have turned around 180 degrees in my views on monosodium glutamate. See my post “The Case Against Monosodium Glutamate—Why MSG is Dangerous (as are Other Sources of Free Glutamate) and How the Dangers Have Been Covered Up.” Other than this Update, I have kept the text of what I wrote for the sake of the historical record and as a foil for what I say in post “The Case Against Monosodium Glutamate—Why MSG is Dangerous (as are Other Sources of Free Glutamate) and How the Dangers Have Been Covered Up.”

When I was in elementary school back in the 1960’s we were taught that, leaving aside the contribution of smell to taste, there were four basic tastes: salty, sweet, sour and bitter. It was late in the 20th century before I learned of the fifth basic taste: umami, which can be translated roughly as “savory.”

The Wall Street Journal article “From MSG Scare to MVP Status: How We Learned to Love Umami” by Elizabeth Dunn not only celebrates umami, but also works to rehabilitate monosodium glutamate, which heightens umami when the right amount is added. I had coded monosodium glutamate as unhealthy, but googling around shows the evidence is a lot weaker than one might think. Placebo-controlled trials at relevant dosages do not show an increase in headaches or allergy-like reactions. Moreover I found the Ken Lee’s argument in his interview with Chau Tu for the 2014 article “Is MSG Bad For Your Health?” persuasive:

Lee breaks down his reasoning: “MSG stands for monosodium glutamate. So sodium—everybody knows what that is—[is] the first ingredient in common table salt.” (Natural salt found in foods accounts for about 10 percent of a person’s total daily intake, according to the Food and Drug Administration.) Meanwhile, glutamate, the basic component of MSG, “is a synonym for glutamic acid [and] is a naturally occurring amino acid. It’s one of the building blocks of protein,” says Lee. In aqueous solutions, MSG breaks down to sodium and glutamate.

Although I have argued that concerns about ordinary table salt and the sodium it contains are overblown (“Salt Is Not the Nutritional Evil It Is Made Out to Be,” “Should the Typical Person be Restricting Salt Intake?” and “Confirmation Bias in the Interpretation of New Evidence on Salt”), I have little doubt that there exists a large enough quantity of salt consumption that it would be bad for health. Similarly, I have little doubt that that there exists a large enough quantity of glutamic acid consumption that it would be bad for health. Nevertheless, both sodium and glutamic acid are common in many ordinary foods that have been tested by time. So it would have to be hooking sodium and glutamic acid together chemically that was harmful for monosodium glutamate to be terrible. But it is hard to see why that would be so when the combination breaks apart into sodium and glutamic acid in any watery solution—such as saliva.

Even compounds that safe in food aren’t necessarily safe when injected into muscles (as monosodium glutamate often is in rat experiments) or into the brain. But Chris Mohr’s 2019 Men’s Health article “But Is MSG Bad for You? No—and Here's Why” has this reassuring passage:

In December 2018, John Fernstrom, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry and pharmacology at the University of Pittsburgh, published a study review on the supposed ill effects of MSG.

His team’s conclusion: “Findings from our data and other human studies provide important evidence that MSG in the food supply presents no hazard to the human brain. Oral ingestion of glutamate does not cross the blood brain barrier."

What is the level of harm one might worry about from glutamic acid? First, too much protein is not good, and protein is made of amino acids like glutamic acid. (See “Meat Is Amazingly Nutritious—But Is It Amazingly Nutritious for Cancer Cells, Too?”) But note that glutamic acid is not the same thing as (and is not easily converted into) the amino acid glutamine that is especially easy for cancer cells to metabolize for energy, as I discuss in “How Fasting Can Starve Cancer Cells, While Leaving Normal Cells Unharmed.”

Second, each particular amino acid probably has a variety of hormonal effects. Make these hormonal effects too strong in any one direction and it probably isn’t good.

Third, there is a genuine worry that by making unhealthy, cheap food tastier, the sodium and glutamate in MSG will lead people to eat more unhealthy, cheap food. There the principle to remember is that if food is unhealthy to begin with, sprinkling MSG on top certainly can’t transform it into healthy food! I take this point from “But Is MSG Bad for You? No—and Here's Why” where Chris Mohr reports:

“Umami is a really important factor in terms of making foods taste delish—and MSG is a concentrated form of umami,” says Ellie Krieger, R.D.N., and host of Ellie’s Real Good Food. “I think one of the biggest issues with MSG is the company it keeps—meaning the foods it’s often found in. It’s not MSG itself that’s of concern, but it can make poor-quality food taste great too so they may be more appealing than they would otherwise be.”

Umami is not all from glutamate. As Elizabeth Dunn writes in “From MSG Scare to MVP Status: How We Learned to Love Umami”:

Though the term is Japanese, umami is a global phenomenon. The same savory magic in pork and oysters runs through anchovies, seaweed and mushrooms, not to mention breast milk and amniotic fluid. In addition to glutamate, two other molecules, inosinate and guanylate, emit umami. Aging, caramelizing, drying and fermenting intensify it. Garum, the fermented fish sauce ancient Romans adored, teemed with umami, as do oyster sauce in China, miso in Japan, Worcestershire sauce in England and Maggi seasoning the world over. 

(You can learn a lot more about creating umami in the well-done Anime series “Food Wars,” which many of my family marathoned when we were together around Christmas. I recommend you do the version with subtitles. Few Anime shows have good English dubbing.)

Overall, I am willing to bet that it is safer to get the umami taste from some a reasonably balanced combination of glutamic acid, inosinate and guanylate than from an unusually large amount of glutamic acid. But glutamic acid in normal amounts seems to be part of the story of naturally occurring umami.


For annotated links to other posts on diet and health, see:

The Federalist Papers #6 A: Alexander Hamilton on the Many Human Motives for War

Steven Pinker’s contention in The Better Angels of Our Nature that violence has declined over the centuries has the corollary that violence was worse in the past. Accordingly, writing more than two and a quarter centuries ago, Alexander Hamilton argues that neighboring nations will almost inevitably be drawn into war with one another. At a minimum, this should make one appreciate the singularity in human history of the degree of 21st-century peace that exists between the US and Canada, between the US and Mexico and between many other pairs of neighboring nations around the world.

Viewing the 18th-century world, Alexander Hamilton points to many human motives leading to war in the first half of The Federalist #6, “Concerning Dangers from Dissensions Between the States.” In particular, he writes:

  1. “… men are ambitious, vindictive, and rapacious.”

  2. Some love power, while others hate or fear the power of others.

  3. Some love riches even if those riches are to be had at the expense of the lives of fellow human beings.

  4. There are a vast number of idiosyncratic motives that can lead to war.

For the first three of these points, I put the relevant passages in the quoted text below in bold italics. For the fourth, I add bold subheadings for different individuals who displayed idiosyncratic motives for fomenting war. I also spell out in square brackets the notes Alexander Hamilton provides.

|| Federalist No. 6 || 

Concerning Dangers from Dissensions Between the States
For the Independent Journal.

Author: Alexander Hamilton

To the People of the State of New York:

THE three last numbers of this paper have been dedicated to an enumeration of the dangers to which we should be exposed, in a state of disunion, from the arms and arts of foreign nations. I shall now proceed to delineate dangers of a different and, perhaps, still more alarming kind--those which will in all probability flow from dissensions between the States themselves, and from domestic factions and convulsions. These have been already in some instances slightly anticipated; but they deserve a more particular and more full investigation.

A man must be far gone in Utopian speculations who can seriously doubt that, if these States should either be wholly disunited, or only united in partial confederacies, the subdivisions into which they might be thrown would have frequent and violent contests with each other. To presume a want of motives for such contests as an argument against their existence, would be to forget that men are ambitious, vindictive, and rapacious. To look for a continuation of harmony between a number of independent, unconnected sovereignties in the same neighborhood, would be to disregard the uniform course of human events, and to set at defiance the accumulated experience of ages.

The causes of hostility among nations are innumerable. There are some which have a general and almost constant operation upon the collective bodies of society. Of this description are the love of power or the desire of pre-eminence and dominion--the jealousy of power, or the desire of equality and safety. There are others which have a more circumscribed though an equally operative influence within their spheres. Such are the rivalships and competitions of commerce between commercial nations. And there are others, not less numerous than either of the former, which take their origin entirely in private passions; in the attachments, enmities, interests, hopes, and fears of leading individuals in the communities of which they are members. Men of this class, whether the favorites of a king or of a people, have in too many instances abused the confidence they possessed; and assuming the pretext of some public motive, have not scrupled to sacrifice the national tranquillity to personal advantage or personal gratification.

Pericles. The celebrated Pericles, in compliance with the resentment of a prostitute, [Aspasia, vide Plutarch's Life of Pericles] at the expense of much of the blood and treasure of his countrymen, attacked, vanquished, and destroyed the city of the SAMNIANS. The same man, stimulated by private pique against the MEGARENSIANS, [Plutarch’s Life of Pericles] another nation of Greece, o] another nation of Greece, or to avoid a prosecution with which he was threatened as an accomplice of a supposed theft of the statuary Phidias, [Plutarch’s Life of Pericles] or to get rid of the accusations prepared to be brought against him for dissipating the funds of the state in the purchase of popularity, [Plutarch’s Life of Pericles: Phidias was supposed to have stolen some public gold, with the connivance of Pericles, for the embellishment of the statue of Minerva.] or from a combination of all these causes, was the primitive author of that famous and fatal war, distinguished in the Grecian annals by the name of the PELOPONNESIAN war; which, after various vicissitudes, intermissions, and renewals, terminated in the ruin of the Athenian commonwealth.

Cardinal Wolsey. The ambitious cardinal, who was prime minister to Henry VIII., permitting his vanity to aspire to the triple crown, [worn by the popes] entertained hopes of succeeding in the acquisition of that splendid prize by the influence of the Emperor Charles V. To secure the favor and interest of this enterprising and powerful monarch, he precipitated England into a war with France, contrary to the plainest dictates of policy, and at the hazard of the safety and independence, as well of the kingdom over which he presided by his counsels, as of Europe in general. For if there ever was a sovereign who bid fair to realize the project of universal monarchy, it was the Emperor Charles V., of whose intrigues Wolsey was at once the instrument and the dupe.

The influence which the bigotry of one female, [Madame de Maintenon] the petulance of another, [Duchess of Marlborough] and the cabals of a third, [Madame de Pompadour] had in the contemporary policy, ferments, and pacifications, of a considerable part of Europe, are topics that have been too often descanted upon not to be generally known.

To multiply examples of the agency of personal considerations in the production of great national events, either foreign or domestic, according to their direction, would be an unnecessary waste of time. Those who have but a superficial acquaintance with the sources from which they are to be drawn, will themselves recollect a variety of instances; and those who have a tolerable knowledge of human nature will not stand in need of such lights to form their opinion either of the reality or extent of that agency. Perhaps, however, a reference, tending to illustrate the general principle, may with propriety be made to a case which has lately happened among ourselves. If Shays had not been a DESPERATE DEBTOR, it is much to be doubted whether Massachusetts would have been plunged into a civil war.

Given the flaws of human nature, it is a wonder that wars are as infrequent as they are now. In any case, as Alexander Hamiltonian contends, trying to bring neighboring states into a supranational organization is one way to try to reduce the frequency of war. For example, despite the tensions and resentments between countries within the European Union, we do not worry that much about full-scale armed conflict between neighboring nations within the European Union.

Here are links to my other posts on The Federalist Papers so far:

Michael Ostrovsky and Michael Schwarz: Self-Driving Cars, Tolls, and Carpooling are Much More Powerful as a Combination than Separately

Michael Ostrovsky came to present his paper with Michael Schwarz, “Carpooling and the Economics of Self-Driving Cars,” here at the University of Colorado Boulder. I was impressed. The paper provides hope for progress in transportation.

The basic claim of the paper is that self-driving cars, dynamic tolls, and carpooling are highly complementary in improving transportation. Here is why:

  • Self-driving cars have powerful computers that can easily plot a route that is sensitive to tolls for each possible segment of a journey that change all the time.

  • Tolls for road segments that are per vehicle incentivize carpooling because then the toll is effectively divided among all of the passengers. In other words, tolls per vehicle will tend to reduce the number of vehicles on the road as several passengers use the same vehicle in order to save on those tolls.

  • Carpooling is a lot easier with a ride-sharing service like Uber Pool, and self-driving cars make ride-sharing services much cheaper.

  • More total passengers can fit in any given size car if no driver is needed. (Also, note that having no driver opens up possibilities for reconfiguring the inside of a vehicle to make it more comfortable and easier to do work in; for example, they could have seats surrounding a small table—all with seatbelts.)

Improvements in transportation matter a lot because transportation is a large share—9.2 %—of household spending. That share has not been shrinking in recent decades. If dynamic tolls, carpooling and self-driving cars can come together to make transportation cheaper, that could help out households a lot.

Note that carpooling in self-driving cars or vans subject to dynamic tolls need not crowd out other forms of transportation. Instead, advances in these areas open up the possibility of “door-to-door public transportation” if self-driving cars and vans are effectively integrated into trunklines of light rail and heavily travelled, high frequency bus routes.

There is hope for better commuting.

Frightening New England Journal of Medicine Projections for the Rise of Obesity

I have often described my blogging on diet and health as “fighting the rise of obesity.” The December 2019 New England Journal of Medicine article shown above details what the rise of obesity is likely to be in the near future. The abstract of “Projected U.S. State-Level Prevalence of Adult Obesity and Severe Obesity,” by Zachary J. Ward, Sara Bleich, Angie Cradock, Jessica Barrett, Catherine Giles, Chasmine Flax, Michael Long and Steven Gortmaker shown above says:

… by 2030 nearly 1 in 2 adults will have obesity (48.9%; 95% confidence interval [CI], 47.7 to 50.1), and the prevalence will be higher than 50% in 29 states and not below 35% in any state. Nearly 1 in 4 adults is projected to have severe obesity by 2030 (24.2%; 95% CI, 22.9 to 25.5), and the prevalence will be higher than 25% in 25 states.

“Obesity” is defined as a body mass index of 30 or above. “Severe obesity” is defined as a body mass index of 35 or above. (To get a sense of the body mass index, you can compute your own BMI here.)

Color-coded maps obesity and severe obesity prevalence for each state in 1990, 2000, 2010, 2020 and projected for 2030 are frightening. You can see them yourself with one of your three free New England Journal of Medicine articles. The map for severe obesity in 2030 struck me as looking like the map for obesity in 1990. This is one area where things are getting worse.

Women have more extremes: a higher frequency of both severe obesity and normal weight than men. Non-Hispanic blacks have quite a bit more obesity than Non-Hispanic Whites; Hispanics have a modest amount more obesity than Non-Hispanic Whites. The “Non-Hispanic Other” category, which I assume is mostly Asian Americans, has by far the least obesity. Higher income is associated with less obesity. (The categories are < $20,000 per year, between $20,000 and $50,000, and $50,000 and above.)

There are many health problems strongly correlated with obesity. Is obesity causal for those health problems? I don’t know. Bad eating could easily cause both health problems and obesity, with obesity not caused by bad eating as not so dangerous. Lack of exercise could easily cause both health problems and obesity, though I think the evidence shows it has a more powerful effect on health, happiness and cognition than it does on obesity itself (as most people would intuitively view the magnitude of the effects indicated by the evidence). And I suspect obesity not caused by bad eating or lack of exercise is both reasonably rare and likely to be caused by something dangerous in its own way, even if not dangerous in exactly the same way as bad eating.

Note that I say “bad eating,” not eating too much. My view is that bad eating is much more a matter of eating the wrong things and eating all the time, with eating too much being more a consequence of eating the wrong things and eating all the time than something to focus on in itself.

What do I mean by eating the wrong things? In the first instance I mean eating sugar, potatoes and bread. Beyond that, I mean eating things high on the insulin index. See “Forget Calorie Counting; It's the Insulin Index, Stupid.”

What to I mean by eating all the time? I mean eating right when you get up and right before you go to sleep, and times in between.

The other approach when to eat is to limit one’s eating to at most a 12-hour window, an 8-hour window or a 6-hour window. It’s not that hard if you strategize a little! And eating foods low on the insulin index will make it easier than you think.

Someday, maybe we may have safe and powerfully effective anti-obesity drugs. In the meantime, it takes avoiding eating the wrong things and not eating all the time to keep the chances of obesity down. If you do that, you can get to—or stay at—a normal weight.

For annotated links to other posts on diet and health, see: