Time management tips for writers (and others)

Tyler Cowen wrote the following on his Marginal Revolution web log in 2004.

1.  There is always time to do more.  Most people, even the productive, have a day that is at least forty percent slack.

2.  Do the most important things first in the day and don’t let anybody stop you.  Estimate “most important” using a zero discount rate. Don’t make exceptions.  The hours from 7 to 12 are your time to build for the future before the world descends on you.

3.  Some tasks (drawing up outlines?) expand or contract to fill the time you give them.  Shove all these into times when you are pressed to do something else very soon.

4.  Each day stop writing just a bit before you have said everything you want to.  Better to approach your next writing day “hungry” than to feel “written out.”   Your biggest enemy is a day spent not writing, not a day spent writing too little.

5.  Blogging builds up good work habits; the deadline is always “now.”

Cowen was asked recently if he would like to revise the list.  He added these.

6.  Don’t drink alcohol. Don’t take drugs.

7.  At any point in your life, do not be watching more than one television show on a regular basis.

8.  Don’t feel you have to finish a book or movie if you don’t want to.  I cover that point at length in my book Discover Your Inner Economist.

I think I would take back my old #5, since I observe some bloggers who have gone years, ten years in fact, without being so productive.

via Do I wish to revise my time management tips?.

Funding government by fines and penalties

Back in the 1950s and 1960s, I used to talk about rural justices of the peace whose incomes were drawn from the fines they levied.  You can’t have impartial justice when your judge as a financial incentive to find you guilty.  But I thought of this as an anachronism that soon would fade away.

I was wrong.  Fines, fees and confiscations have become an important source of governmental revenue.  Alex Tabarrok, an economist and blogger, came across a report by Arch City Defenders, a non-profit legal defense organization in the St. Louis area, that cites Ferguson as a prime example.  (Arch City’s words are in italics and Tabarrok’s in bold.)

Ferguson is a city located in northern St. Louis County with 21,203 residents living in 8,192 households. The majority 67% of residents are African-American…22% of residents live below the poverty level.

…Despite Ferguson’s relative poverty, fines and court fees comprise the second largest source of revenue for the city, a total of $2,635,400. In 2013, the Ferguson Municipal Court disposed of 24,532 warrants and 12,018 cases, or about 3 warrants and 1.5 cases per household.

You don’t get $321 in fines and fees and 3 warrants per household from an about-average crime rate. You get numbers like this from bullshit arrests for jaywalking and constant “low level harassment involving traffic stops, court appearances, high fines, and the threat of jail for failure to pay.”

If you have money, for example, you can easily get a speeding ticket converted to a non-moving violation. But if you don’t have money it’s often the start of a downward spiral that is hard to pull out of.

For a simple speeding ticket, an attorney is paid $50-$100, the municipality is paid $150-$200 in fines and court costs, and the defendant avoids points on his or her license as well as a possible increase in insurance costs. For simple cases, neither the attorney nor the defendant must appear in court.

However, if you do not have the ability to hire an attorney or pay fines, you do not get the benefit of the amendment, you are assessed points, your license risks suspension and you still owe the municipality money you cannot afford….If you cannot pay the amount in full, you must appear in court on that night to explain why. If you miss court, a warrant will likely be issued for your arrest.

People who are arrested on a warrant for failure to appear in court to pay the fines frequently sit in jail for an extended period.  None of the municipalities has court on a daily basis and some courts meet only once per month.  If you are arrested on a warrant in one of these jurisdictions and are unable to pay the bond, you may spend as much as three weeks in jail waiting to see a judge.

Of course, if you are arrested and jailed you will probably lose your job and perhaps also your apartment–all because of a speeding ticket.

Arch City Defenders said motorists who drive through Ferguson are subject to the usual “driving while black” stops.  White people are 29 percent of Ferguson’s population (the percentage driving through would presumably be higher), but account for only 12.7 percent of stops by police.   Black drivers are twice as likely as white to be searched and twice as likely to be arrested, but fraction of white drivers with contraband, such as illegal drugs, is 50 percent higher than the fraction of blacks.

There are little quirks in the court system that mutiply the fines and penalties.  Courthouse doors are locked five minutes after the courts are scheduled to begin their sessions, so if a defendant is a little bit late, he or she will be locked out and fined for failing to appear for trial.   The public is excluded from trial proceedings, so somebody without child care available can be fined for child neglect if they leave their children outside.

In fairness to the good people of St. Louis County, Arch City Defenders found fault with only about 30 or so of the 60 court systems it observed, and only two others were as bad as Ferguson’s.  Even so, I don’t think Ferguson is unique.   Use of fines, penalties and confiscations to finance government, especially police, is increasing across the USA.   Increasingly state governments increasingly get big chunks of revenue from corporate settlements.

Inequality, austerity are enemies of meritocracy

A smart economist named Tyler Cowen has written a book entitled Average Is Over, in which he foresees a world of advanced technology in which maybe 15 percent of the population will have the ability to keep up and grow rich, while everybody else falls behind.

He said new technology will make the population more legible to the job creators, so that those who have merit will rise more quickly, but those who make bad choices early in their lives will be marked forever.  He has no problem with this because, like many economists, he thinks anything is all right if it is the result of market forces.

I don’t have standing to criticize Cowen’s book because I haven’t read it, but I think that, as a general principle, the greater the degree of inequality and the fewer the openings at the top, the less likely that these openings will be allocated on the basis of merit.  Rather the gatekeepers will first make sure that their families and loved ones are taken care of, and then will look to do favors for those who can do favors in return.

Equality of opportunity entails risk for those at the top, but that risk is minimized when prosperity is widely shared, and people who miss out on one thing have a fair shot at something else.