The New York Times Wonders Why San Francisco Waiters Are Disappearing, Blames Everything But $15/Hr. Minimum Wage

The New York Times struggles vainly to blame everything but San Francisco's $15/hour minimum wage (which goes into full effect on July 1) for the disappearance of table waiting jobs:

So burgers get more expensive as houses do. But even wealthy tech workers will pay only so much to eat one. “If we were to pay what we need to pay people to make a living in San Francisco, a $10 hamburger would be a $20 hamburger, and it wouldn’t make sense anymore,” said Anjan Mitra, who owns two high-end Indian restaurants in the city, both named Dosa. “Something has to give.”

If customers won’t buy $20 burgers, or $25 dosas, and the staff in the kitchen can’t be cut, that something is service. “And that is what we did — we got rid of our servers,” Mr. Mitra said.

This brings up an important point: productivity increases are a prerequisite to rising real wages. Today's waiters have the same productivity, more or less, as their predecessors a century ago; there's only so many people one person can feed in an hour. It's basically an unskilled job, so the competition for labor is essentially infinite.

The second quoted graf above brings up something Brian Doherty wrote in Reason back in 2013: if there is a social obligation to pay a "living wage", why does it only fall on business owners? In other words, if business owners need to raise prices to meet the new, higher payroll, why is there no similar obligation on the part of patrons to spend more? The circle-squarers of the left never consider these kinds of problems. Their utopias rely upon ignoring second-order effects.

Also:

The city also requires employers with at least 20 workers to pay health care costs beyond the mandates of the Affordable Care Act, in addition to paid sick leave and parental leave.

I guess if those jobs don't exist, then it doesn't matter what they're "guaranteed".

The Insanity Of Maxine Waters' Mobs

So, a rural Virginia restaurant named the Red Hen refused service to Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the president's press secretary, and her party. The owner, Stephanie Wilkinson, did this on the grounds that "the restaurant has certain standards that I feel it has to uphold, such as honesty, and compassion, and cooperation". Sanders and her party left without further incident.

Public establishments appear to have the right to eject people based on their political leanings, and thus Robby Soave's defense of Wilkinson's ejection in Reason. I do not think this is a terrific precedent, one that is likely to backfire in numerous ways. Particularly, that became obvious after long-time Representative Maxine Waters called for an escalation:

Waters said, “If you think we’re rallying now, you ain’t seen nothing yet. You have members of your cabinet being booed out of restaurants. You have protesters taking up at their house. We say no peace, no sleep. No peace, so sleep. And guess what? We’re going to win this battle, because while you try to quote the Bible, Jeff Sessions and others, you really don’t know the Bible. God is on our side. On the side of the children. On the side of what’s right. On the side of what’s honorable. On the side of understanding that if we can’t protect the children, we can’t protect anybody, and so let’s stay the course. Let’s make sure that we show up where ever we have to show up. If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out, and you create a crowd, and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”

The first problem I see here is that of charitable reading of Waters' statement. It is in no way clear that she intended for mobs to attack, although it is easy to read it in that way. ("Push back" is not the same thing as "push", i.e. physical assault.) But mobs do not do nuance. They are also not in charge of the venues she mentions. As Soave put it,

Waters seems to be encouraging people to form angry mobs to harass Trump officials; if such a practice became normal, it could very well get out of hand quickly. Besides, Waters doesn't get to decide the rules of engagement in department stores, gas stations, and restaurants—the owners of those properties do. I bet a lot of them would prefer if people didn't harass other customers, regardless of whether those customers work for Trump.

 The plain problems raised by such incendiary gabble sparked a response from no less a figure than Nancy Pelosi:

In the crucial months ahead, we must strive to make America beautiful again. Trump’s daily lack of civility has provoked responses that are predictable but unacceptable. As we go forward, we must conduct elections in a way that achieves unity from sea to shining sea. https://t.co/vlpqOBLK4R

— Nancy Pelosi (@NancyPelosi) June 25, 2018

Leaving aside the problem of whether America is beautiful with only the right political leadership, Pelosi's tweet was as close to a public (if coded) rebuke as another member of the same party could ever offer.

Conor Friedersdorf Clanks Again: The Anti-Male Agenda Of Modern Academic Feminism

Conor Friedersdorf and his milquetoast attacks on feminist extremists (viz., his response to the Scott Aaronson fracas) continue with a review of Suzanna Danuta Walters’ two-minutes’-hate against men in the pages of the Washington Post, of all places. (Imagining that paper publish a screed against women — can anyone do it?) Friedersdorf argues that her

argument is actually a perversion of “Team Feminism”—that is, the web is awash with feminists earnestly dismissing the notion that “Team Feminism” hates men, and the view is so unrepresentative of the various strands of “in real life” feminism that it is encountered more commonly among ideological enemies trying to parody or undermine feminism than among earnest advocates like Walters.

The problem with such gabble is that none of it is true. Pen poison pieces like this, and it gets you multiple tenured professorships — including as the founder of Indiana University's Women's Studies program. Presume men are always guilty of sex crimes, and you get to head the Title IX bureaucracy in a perverse redefinition of "civil rights". Vote for anybody other than Hillary Clinton as a Democrat, and you're slandered as a sexist ("Bernie bro"). Go off the ideological reservation, and get canned by a corporate feminist political officer. Offer criticism of a beloved comedy franchise's clumsy, unfunny, political reboot, and get waylaid as misogynist. "Team feminism", in reality, is the majority in the trade, if not the only kind on tap.

Perhaps my assessment of causality is wrong; perhaps Walters wasn't extreme enough in her prior writing, perhaps she is doing this as a plea for help, or attention. The only way men can win this game is not to play. Friedersdorf fails to even survey the landscape.

"Check Your Privilege" Meets The Royals: The Surprising Compatibility Of Modern Feminism With Monarchy

Joanna Williams in Spiked explains why "Monarchy And Feminism [Are] A Perfect Marriage". "Bold declarations of feminist intent do not show that the monarchy has changed: instead, they show how much feminism has changed."

Today, feminism ... doesn’t call for an expansion of democracy, but for democracy to be tamed. All-women shortlists and quotas for women on company boards deny people a free choice in appointing anyone they choose. They move us away from seeing gender as an irrelevance and treating people as equals. Instead, we’re told that women need to be afforded special privileges. In the past few weeks we’ve had calls for the banning of sexist adverts and the criminalisation of street harassment. Rather than calling for women to be recognised as adults, today’s feminism insists women are treated like children.

The only question campaigners and commentators have so far raised about Meghan’s feminism is whether she’ll get away with it. Is it realistic to think she can be both a feminist and a royal? Of course it is. Feminism today poses no threat to the establishment. Feminism is the establishment. Feminism is now concerned with enforcing etiquette, telling boorish men how to behave, and calling for censorship and regulations. It is elitist and condescending – a perfect match for the monarchy. Today’s younger royals reveal all about mental-health troubles and want us to know that despite wealth and privilege, they suffer too. Again, a perfect match for a feminism that allows rich celebrities to swap stories of disadvantage.

(Emboldening mine.) The advantages of being rich collide with feminist ideals:

Where Meghan differs from other women is that she has given up her own career for marriage. Today, over 70 per cent of all women and 90 per cent of female graduates are employed. Yet on the royal website, details of Meghan’s acting career – presumably earned through her own merit and tenacity – are given only a cursory nod.

The New Feminist Woman may have never materialized in the real world, but the old one — class-conscious as ever — still sets the rules.

Burning Down The Medical Village To Save It: The Folly Of Big Data In Medicine

Rena Xu's recent piece in The Atlantic on physician burnout is mostly interesting for its between-the-lines reporting. Yes, Big Data (i.e. medical coding) is driving a lot of physician burnout:

Regulations governing the use of electronic medical records (EMRs), first introduced in the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act in 2009, have gotten more and more demanding, while expanded insurance coverage from the Affordable Care Act may have contributed to an uptrend in patient volume at many health centers. These changes are taking a toll on physicians: There’s some evidence that the administrative burden of medicine—and with it, the proportion of burned-out doctors—is on the rise. A study published last year in Health Affairs reported that from 2011 to 2014, physicians spent progressively more time on “desktop medicine” and less on face-to-face patient care. Another study found that the percentage of physicians reporting burnout increased over the same period; by 2014, more than half said they were affected.

But won't we need ever-more new physicians to deal with the aging US population? Yes, we will, but —

A quarter of U.S. physicians are expected to retire over the next decade, while the number of older Americans, who tend to need more health care, is expected to double by 2040. While it might be tempting to point to the historically competitive rates of medical-school admissions as proof that the talent pipeline for physicians won’t run dry, there is no guarantee. Last year, for the first time in at least a decade, the volume of medical school applications dropped—by nearly 14,000, according to data from the Association of American Medical Colleges. By the association’s projections, we may be short 100,000 physicians or more by 2030.

And this despite modest, recent upticks in new physicians, even despite Medicare's meddling in internship slots. In addition, the article cites the "Resident Physician Shortage Reduction Act ... [which] would add 15,000 residency spots over a five-year period." That's a 1.6% increase vs. the 2014 physician population of 916,264, but nothing compared to the gaping hole implied by 100,000 missing doctors. Mandated medical coding — the raw material of Big Data in medicine — contributes to a physician burnout we can scarcely afford.

But this kind of insanity is to be expected. The people who imagine they are helping very frequently do not subject themselves to the consequences of their "help" (viz., Jonathan Gruber, who is not a doctor). The meretricious belief that big data will somehow "bend the cost curve" is deeply embedded, including, especially, in service providers with something to sell. There are costs to acquiring that data, and that cost is, more administrative overhead (emboldening mine):

...[D]octors are most valuable when doing what they were trained to do—treating patients. Likewise, non-physicians are better suited to accomplish many of the tasks that currently fall upon physicians. The use of medical scribes during clinic visits, for instance, not only frees doctors to talk with their patients but also potentially yields better documentation. A study published last month in the World Journal of Urology reported that the introduction of scribes in a urology practice significantly increased physician efficiency, work satisfaction, and revenue.

And who pays for that increased revenue? Ultimately, it's the patients, of course, or the government (taxpayers) if it's Medicare/Medicaid.

The Supreme Court Blesses Inter Partes Review, And The Possibilities For Pharma Reform

One of my big complaints about medicine is the ongoing problems with patents (general complaints here, a more specific example here) needlessly driving the costs of pharmaceuticals higher. The Supreme Court recently delivered some good news on this front in the case of Oil States Energy Services v. Greene's Energy Group. Essentially, the 7-2 decision said that the USPTO can revoke its own granted patents in a process called Inter Partes Review.

The basic idea behind the IPR process was an admission that the USPTO is historically bad at properly reviewing patents before granting them. It grants a lot of bad patents. The IPR process allows anyone to present evidence to the PTO that it made a mistake and granted a patent that should never have been granted. If the PTAB is convinced, it can invalidate the patent. Seems pretty straightforward. Except that the usual patent lovers (mainly patent trolls and big pharma) insisted that this was some sort of unconstitutional taking of property, without the review of a court. This is wrong for a whole bunch of reasons -- starting with the incorrect view of patents as traditional "property."

 The reaction of the pharmaceutical business, which is often predicated on shabby patents, is highly negative, but it’s unclear whether there’s enough momentum behind the process, as “Pfizer, Merck, Novartis and Sanofi are among the companies to have used the IPR process” to invalidate patents. Unfortunately, because IPR is a strictly bureaucratic creature, it is also subject to regulatory capture, i.e. if Big Pharma (say) gets hold of it, it will actually result in worse outcomes than appeals before Article III judges. A study by BiologicsHQ shows that “despite widespread concerns about the PTAB operating as a patent death squad in IPRs, ‘such concern is not justified for drug patents.’” The study found that

According to the March 2017 IPR statistics issued by the PTAB, 53 percent of IPRs resolved as of March 31, 2017 were instituted; the rest were either denied institution or reached some other resolution prior to the institution decision. 35 percent of all resolved IPRs resulted in final written decisions and 23 percent led to findings of all claims unpatentable. Only 7 percent of all resolved IPRs led to final written decisions finding that no claim was unpatentable, and 5 percent led to mixed claim findings.

This suggests that only the most obscenely obvious patents will end up invalidated, and even among those patents that do go through the process, not all of them end up being instituted! But the numbers are even worse for pharmaceutical patents:

By contrast, drug patents fare better under PTAB scrutiny in terms of having claims upheld. Of the 4,563 resolved IPRs, BiologicsHQ reports that 222 petitions (5 percent) involved patents covering drugs listed in the Orange Book. Focusing on just the IPRs involving Orange Book patents, 44 percent were instituted and 38 percent reached a final written decision, but only 16 percent led to final written decisions where all claims were found unpatentable. No instituted claim was found unpatentable in 50 percent of final written decisions (19 percent of the total number of resolved Orange Book IPRs).

 (The Orange Book is the list of FDA-accepted drugs.) Far from being a salvation, IPR might prove to be an industry Trojan Horse. To be clear, there’s no immediate evidence that regulatory capture is currently running rampant at the USPTO,  but the outcomes certainly point in the same direction.

"Is There A Smarter Way To Deal With Sexual Assault On Campus?" Asks The New Yorker

A steaming heap of dogma from Jia Tolentino, who had the incredible gall necessary to write that

Seven years ago, the Office of Civil Rights, under President Obama, issued a “Dear Colleague” letter, reasserting that sexual violence on campus was a violation of Title IX, and pushing universities to handle sexual-assault cases in a timely, transparent, accuser-friendly manner.

Two out of three ain't bad? Then there's the friendly interview with serial liar Emma Sulkowicz that conveniently omits the fact that Sulkowicz filed her report months after the alleged incident, or Cathy Young's embarrassing revelations of Sulkowicz's friendly text messages in the wake of the purported "assault". The two principles of the study at the center of the piece, Jennifer Hirsch and Suzanne Goldberg, meet at a conference and resolve to conduct an "enthnography". It sounds really important! Except, of course, what they mean is, "unverified stories".

They call the ensuing project SHIFT, whose clumsy retronym stands for "Sexual Health Initiative to Foster Transformation". Already we know we are among advocates who know what they want to find and do. They're smarter! They've got Ideas!

... Hirsch and Mellins think about sexual assault socio-ecologically: as a matter of how people act within a particular environment. They are doggedly optimistic that there is, if not a single fix, a series of new solutions.

But, rape is hard to prove! Can we expand it?

Today, the D.O.J. defines sexual assault as unwanted sexual contact, which means that groping counts, as does attempted assault. The crime hinges on intention, and there are often no witnesses, which makes it uniquely difficult to adjudicate in any legal system, let alone one made up of college administrators. Campus judiciary systems don’t have a criminal court’s investigative powers or evidentiary procedures, but they do have many of a criminal court’s responsibilities. To complicate matters further, everyone involved in the process—accuser, accused, administrator—essentially works under the same roof. Betsy DeVos, Trump’s Secretary of Education, has called the current approach a “failed system,” and said that she would seek to replace it.

"It might seem simpler to let the criminal-justice system handle things," Tolentino intones, "but universities have a responsibility to insure that women have equal access to education." Pesky due process! (But wait, aren't women already a majority of students enrolled in college?) And then there's all those juicy staff positions:

Columbia now has twenty-three staffers with Title IX responsibilities, including case managers, investigators, and administrators, and provides free legal services to accusers and accused. The school’s gender-based misconduct policy is thirty-one pages long.

Somebody has to hire all those Womyn's Studies majors, not to mention attorneys who skipped class on the day they taught rape in crim law. It's a good thing, because in the end, Hirsh likens the situation to that with drunk driving; included in the "solutions" for that problem are

new laws, and social change, as school and community programs taught people to designate a driver and to intervene when a wobbly friend grabbed his car keys. It also involved changes to the physical environment: cities established police checkpoints, and offenders were required to install Breathalyzer locks on their cars. Citizens lobbied for better street lights, more speed bumps.

 What possible analog exists for these among sexual assault? Chastity belts? Whatever it might be, there's no doubt that some idiot will propose it, and it will rush through the legislatures in California, Illinois, and New York with hosannas. At last! Sexual assault has been cured! Meanwhile, young men will find themselves spied upon and spat upon for no reason other than owning a penis. Misbehavior or even missed communications on a date will result in unpardonable ejection. That is, the answer to the title question is "no".