Month: June 2017

Government Regulations Suppress Poor Street Entrepreneurs

(p. 7) HANOI, Vietnam — As strips of tofu sizzle beside her in a vat of oil, Nguyen Thu Hong listens for police sirens.
Police raids on sidewalk vendors have escalated sharply in downtown Hanoi since March [2017], she said, and officers fine her about $9, or two days’ earnings, for the crime of selling bun dau mam tom — vermicelli rice noodles with tofu and fermented shrimp paste — from a plastic table beside an empty storefront.
“Most Vietnamese live by what they do on the sidewalk, so you can’t just take that away,” she said. “More regulations would be fine, but what the cops are doing now feels too extreme.”
Southeast Asia is famous for its street food, delighting tourists and locals alike with tasty, inexpensive dishes like spicy som tam (green papaya salad) in Bangkok or sizzling banh xeo crepes in Ho Chi Minh City. But major cities in three countries are strengthening campaigns to clear the sidewalks, driving thousands of food vendors into the shadows and threatening a culinary tradition.
. . .
. . . some experts say street food is not inherently less sanitary than restaurant food. “If you’re eating fried foods or things that are really steaming hot, then there’s probably not much difference at all,” said Martyn Kirk, an epidemiologist at the Australian National University.
. . .
Ms. Hong, the Hanoi vendor, said her earnings had cratered by about 60 percent since the start of the crackdown, when she moved to her present location from a busy street corner as a hedge against police raids.

For the full story, see:
MIKE IVES. “Food So Popular, Asian Cities Want It Off the Streets.” The New York Times, First Section (Sun., APRIL 30, 2017): 7.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date APRIL 29, 2017, and has the title “Efforts to Ease Congestion Threaten Street Food Culture in Southeast Asia.”)

“The System Is Totally Crazy”

(p. D1) Mr. Ahmed, 46, is in the business of chicken and rice. He immigrated from Bangladesh 23 years ago, and is now one of two partners in a halal food cart that sets up on Greenwich Street close to the World Trade Center, all year long, rain or shine. He is also one of more than 10,000 people, most of them immigrants, who make a living selling food on the city’s sidewalks: pork tamales, hot dogs, rolled rice noodles, jerk chicken.
These vendors are a fixture of New York’s streets and New Yorkers’ routines, vital to the culture of the city. But day to day, they struggle to do business against a host of challenges: byzantine city codes and regulations on street vending, exorbitant fines for small violations (like setting up an inch too close to the curb) and the occasional rage of brick-and-mortar businesses or residents.
. . .
(p. D6) Mr. Ahmed ties on his apron and pushes a few boxes underneath the cart so he can squeeze inside and get to work. Any boxes peeking out beyond the cart’s footprint could result in a fine (penalties can run up to $1,000), as could parking his cart closer than six inches to the curb, or 20 feet to the building entrance. Mr. Ahmed knows all the rules by heart.
. . .
He applied for a food vendor’s license, took a required health and safety class, bought a used cart and took it for an inspection by city officials. (The health department inspects carts at least once a year, and more frequently if a violation is reported.)
Mr. Ahmed still needed a food-vending permit, though, and because of a cap on permits imposed in the 1980s, only 4,000 or so circulate. He acquired his from a permit owner who has charged him and his partner $25,000 for two-year leases (for a permit that cost the owner just $200), which they are still paying off.
A day ago, Mr. Ahmed received a text message: 100 vendors were protesting the cap. Organized by the Street Vendor Project, a nonprofit group that is part of the Urban Justice Center and offers legal representation to city vendors, they hoped to pressure the City Council to pass legislation introduced last fall that would double the number of food-vending permits, gradually, over the next seven years. Mr. Ahmed, who believes the costs for those starting out should be more manageable, wanted to join them, but like many vendors, he couldn’t get away from work.
“The system is totally crazy,” Mr. Ahmed says. “Whoever has a license, give them a permit. It’s good for all of us.”

For the full story, see:
TEJAL RAO. “A Day in the Lunch Box.” The New York Times (Weds., APRIL 19, 2017): D1 & D6.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date APRIL 18, 2017, and has the title “A Day in the Life of a Food Vendor.”)

300,000-Year-Old Homo Sapien Fossils Found

(p. A6) Fossils discovered in Morocco are the oldest known remains of Homo sapiens, scientists reported on Wednesday [June 7, 2017], a finding that rewrites the story of mankind’s origins and suggests that our species evolved in multiple locations across the African continent.
“We did not evolve from a single ‘cradle of mankind’ somewhere in East Africa,” said Philipp Gunz, a paleoanthropologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and a co-author of two new studies on the fossils, published in the journal Nature. “We evolved on the African continent.”
Until now, the oldest known fossils of our species dated back just 195,000 years. The Moroccan fossils, by contrast, are roughly 300,000 years old. Remarkably, they indicate that early Homo sapiens had faces much like our own, although their brains differed in fundamental ways.
. . .
Resetting the clock on mankind’s debut would be achievement enough. But the new research is also notable for the discovery of several early humans rather than just one, as so often happens, said Marta Mirazon Lahr, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Cambridge who was not involved in the new study.
“We have no other place like it, so it’s a fabulous finding,” she said.
The people at Jebel Irhoud shared a general resemblance to one another — and to living humans. Their brows were heavy, their chins small, their faces flat and wide. But all in all, they were not so different from people today.
“The face is that of somebody you could come across in the Metro,” Dr. Hublin said.
The flattened faces of early Homo sapiens may have something to do with the advent of speech, speculated Christopher Stringer, a paleoanthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London.
“We really are at very early stages of trying to explain these things,” Dr. Stringer said.
The brains of the inhabitants of Jebel Irhoud, on the other hand, were less like our own.
Although they were as big as modern human brains, they did not yet have its distinctively round shape. They were long and low, like those of earlier hominins.
Dr. Gunz, of the Max Planck Institute, said that the human brain may have become rounder at a later phase of evolution. Two regions in the back of the brain appear to have become enlarged over thousands of years.
“I think what we see reflect adaptive changes in the way the brain functions,” he said. Still, he added, no one knows how a rounder brain changed how we think.
The people of Jebel Irhoud were certainly sophisticated. They could make fires and craft complex weapons, such as wooden handled spears, needed to kill gazelles and other animals that grazed the savanna that covered the Sahara 300,000 years ago.
The flint is interesting for another reason: Researchers traced its origin to another site about 20 miles south of Jebel Irhoud. Early Homo sapiens, then, knew how to search out and to use resources spread over long distances.

For the full story, see:
Zimmer, Carl. “MATTER; Oldest Fossils of Homo Sapiens Found in Morocco, Altering History of Species.” The New York Times (Thurs., JUNE 8, 2017): A6.
(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date June 7, 2017, and has the title “MATTER; Oldest Fossils of Homo Sapiens Found in Morocco, Altering History of Our Species.”)

I believe the two Nature articles mentioned above, are:
Hublin, Jean-Jacques, Abdelouahed Ben-Ncer, Shara E. Bailey, Sarah E. Freidline, Simon Neubauer, Matthew M. Skinner, Inga Bergmann, Adeline Le Cabec, Stefano Benazzi, Katerina Harvati, and Philipp Gunz. “New Fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco and the Pan-African Origin of Homo Sapiens.” Nature 546, no. 7657 (June 8, 2017): 289-92.
Richter, Daniel, Rainer Grün, Renaud Joannes-Boyau, Teresa E. Steele, Fethi Amani, Mathieu Rué, Paul Fernandes, Jean-Paul Raynal, Denis Geraads, Abdelouahed Ben-Ncer, Jean-Jacques Hublin, and Shannon P. McPherron. “The Age of the Hominin Fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, and the Origins of the Middle Stone Age.” Nature 546, no. 7657 (June 8, 2017): 293-96.

“20 Years in a Labor Camp for ‘Practicing Capitalism'”

(p. 23) “Just talk to any Chinese who lived through that time,” a middle-aged man whose father spent nearly 20 years in a labor camp for “practicing capitalism” tells the radio reporter Rob Schmitz, in “Street of Eternal Happiness,” his new book about some of the ordinary people he encounters in his Shanghai neighborhood. “We all have the same stories.”

For the full review, see:
ADAM ROSE. “‘Shanghai Confidential.” The New York Times Book Review (Sun., MAY 15, 2016): 23.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date MAY 13, 2016, and has the title “‘Street of Eternal Happiness,’ by Rob Schmitz’.”)

The book under review, is:
Schmitz, Rob. Street of Eternal Happiness: Big City Dreams Along a Shanghai Road. New York: Crown, 2016.

Self-Driving Cars Would Help Older Adults Continue to Live at Home

(p. B4) Single, childless and 68, Steven Gold has begun to think about future mobility and independence. Although in good health, he can foresee a time when he won’t be a confident driver, if he can drive at all. While he hopes to continue to live in his suburban Detroit home, he wonders how he will be able to get to places like his doctor’s office and the supermarket if his driving becomes impaired.
For Mr. Gold and other older adults, self-driving cars might be a solution.
The number of United States residents age 70 and older is projected to increase to 53.7 million in 2030, from 30.9 million in 2014, according to the Institute for Highway Safety. Nearly 16 million people 65 and older live in communities where public transportation is poor or nonexistent. That number is expected to grow rapidly as baby boomers remain outside of cities.
“The aging of the population converging with autonomous vehicles might close the coming mobility gap for an aging society,” said Joseph Coughlin, the director of the Massachusetts Institute for Technology AgeLab in Cambridge.
He said that 70 percent of those over age 50 live in the suburbs, a figure he expects to remain steady despite a recent rise in moves to urban centers. Further, 92 percent of older people want to age in place, he said.

For the full story, see:
MARY M. CHAPMAN. “Wheels; For the Aged, Self-Driving Cars Could Bridge a Mobility Gap.” The New York Times (Fri., March 24, 2017): B4.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date March 23, 2017, and has the title “Wheels; Self-Driving Cars Could Be Boon for Aged, After Initial Hurdles.”)

Middle Class Wants to Be Free to Choose Skinnier Health Insurance

(p. B4) For Linda Dearman, the House vote last week to repeal the Affordable Care Act was a welcome relief.
Ms. Dearman, of Bartlett, Ill., voted for President Trump largely because of his contempt for the federal health law. She and her husband, a partner in an engineering firm, buy their own insurance, but late last year they dropped their $1,100-a-month policy and switched to a bare-bones plan that does not meet the law’s requirements. They are counting that the law will be repealed before they owe a penalty.
“Now it looks like it will be, and we’re thrilled about that,” Ms. Dearman, 54, said. “We are so glad to feel represented for a change.”
. . .
In interviews over the last few days, people who support repealing the Affordable Care Act pointed to their long-simmering resentment of its mandate that most Americans have health insurance or pay a tax penalty. Many also said that they could no longer afford the comprehensive coverage available on the individual market, and that they were eager to once again be allowed to choose skinnier policies without a penalty.
“Now I will no longer be expected to pay twice what I should for a product I don’t need and be treated like a criminal with a fine if I refuse,” said Edward Belanger, 55, a self-employed business appraiser in Dallas. He is an independent who usually votes Republican but last year chose Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, over Mr. Trump.
Like the Dearmans, Mr. Belanger canceled a plan that complies with the Affordable Care Act and bought a short-term policy that does not meet the law’s standards, paying $580 a month for his family of four compared with the nearly $1,200 a month he paid last year. Policies like theirs usually have high deductibles and primarily offer catastrophic coverage for major injuries.

For the full story, see:
ABBY GOODNOUGH. “Feeling Hurt By Health Law, and Eager to See G.O.P. Repeal It.” The New York Times (Tues., May 16, 2017): A12.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date May 12, 2017, and has the title “Why Some Can’t Wait for a Repeal of Obamacare.”)

Lower Ivory Prices Reduce Incentives to Poach Elephants

(p. A9) NAIROBI, Kenya — Finally, there’s some good news for elephants.
The price of ivory in China, the world’s biggest market for elephant tusks, has fallen sharply, which may spell a reprieve from the intense poaching of the past decade.
According to a report released on Wednesday [March 29, 2017] by Save the Elephants, a respected wildlife group in Kenya, the price of ivory is less than half of what it was just three years ago, showing that demand is plummeting.

For the full commentary, see:
JEFFREY GETTLEMAN. “Ivory Prices May Mean a Reprieve for Elephants.” The New York Times (Thurs., March 30, 2017): A9.
(Note: bracketed date added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date March 29, 2017, and has the title “Elephants Get a Reprieve as Price of Ivory Falls.”)

Banks Often Less Transparent and Less Flexible than Bank Alternatives

I saw a C-Span interview on their weekend Book TV today (3/16/17), with Professor Lisa Servon. She pointed out that many of the highly regulated, and much-criticized, alternative banking services, offer a more transparent, more flexible, and more friendly service environment than the incumbent banking industry. She even argues that for those with low-incomes, and low-education, the alternative services are often less expensive. This happens because those with low-incomes and low education are often those who by mistake or by difficult circumstance, incur high fees at banks.
She points out that many who are bankless, previously made use of bank services, but decided to go with the alternatives. She suggested that in a free market environment, some of the alternatives might creatively destroy the incumbent banks.
Servon is clearly no libertarian, but much of what she says is thought-provoking.

Servon’s book is:
Servon, Lisa. The Unbanking of America: How the New Middle Class Survives. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Co., 2017.

DARPA’s $66 Million Fails to Develop Tech to Match Dog Noses

(p. A2) “What’s cool about dogs is when they do come into contact with an odor, they can track it to its source,” said L. Paul Waggoner, co-director of the Canine Performance Sciences Program at Auburn University. “There is not an instrument out there that replicates a dog’s nose.”
That’s not for lack of effort.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the U.S. Department of Defense spent $66 million between 1997 and 2010 drawing on the expertise of at least 35 different research institutions to develop sensors that could detect explosives as ably as a dog and identify other chemicals.
They couldn’t do it.
. . .
Surprisingly, pigs and ferrets outperformed German shepherds and Labrador retrievers, breeds often chosen for odor detection.
But overall, dogs won out because of their combination of qualities: Not only do they have strong noses, they are compatible with people, they respond to training, and–for now–they beat technology paws down.

For the full commentary, see:
Jo Craven McGinty. “THE NUMBERS; Dogs Still Beat Technology in the Smell Test.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., March 25, 2017): A2.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date March 24, 2017, and has the title”THE NUMBERS; Making Sense of a Dog’s Olfactory Powers.”)

Mainstream Economist William Baumol Celebrated Innovative Entrepreneurs

William J. Baumol is a key source in my book project on Innovation Unbound. I had hoped he would be able to read, and comment on, the current draft, but that is not to be. He was one of the heroes of the economics of entrepreneurship.

(p. A13) The disease that bears William J. Baumol’s name is not what led to his death on May 4 [2017] at age 95, but it is what cemented his legacy as one of the pre-eminent economists of the 20th century.
. . .
Professor Baumol was “one of the great economists of his generation,” Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist at Columbia University, said in an interview, adding, “The series of insights he had about managerial economics, the role of innovation — a whole series of innovational breakthroughs over a long period of time — had a profound effect on economics.”
. . .
“Nobody ever explained to him the difference between work and play,” Daniel Baumol said of his father. “During a long trip, he would sit in the back of the car, oblivious to the world, and as we pulled in, he would announce, ‘I just finished that article.'”
Patrick Bolton, a professor of economics at Columbia, described Professor Baumol as “someone who could come to a big problem and bring an extremely simple analysis that really shaped the way people would think about it.”

For the full obituary, see:
PATRICIA COHEN. “William J. Baumol, 95, Leading Thinker in Economics.” The New York Times (Fri., May 12, 2017): B14.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)
(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date May 10, 2017 and has the title “William J. Baumol, 95, ‘One of the Great Economists of His Generation,’ Dies.”)

My favorite Baumol paper, is:
Baumol, William J. “Education for Innovation: Entrepreneurial Breakthroughs Versus Corporate Incremental Improvements.” In Innovation Policy and the Economy, edited by Adam B. Jaffe, Josh Lerner and Scott Stern. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005, pp. 33-56.