Here's my favorite part:
Adding bodies is even more problematic; you have to spend time showing the new people how the system works, and then more time managing all the interactions between the extra people. Think of the difference between trying to arrange girls’ night out with a few friends, and trying to throw a sit-down award dinner for 200, and you’ll get some idea of the ways in which adding people can actually slow things down rather than speed them up.Astute analogy, Hostess with the Mostest. In Megan McArdle's America, anything more complicated than a podcast goes into Why Bother territory, at least if it has Democratic cooties. Thank God she wasn't around for the construction of the Hoover Dam.
UPDATE. In comments, Dr. Hunky Jimpjorps: "That's funny, I can think of a time when Megan McArdle was all for throwing manpower at a problem, back in those mystery days in the pre-Obama before-times." To be fair, that was in furtherance of a much more important goal than national health care -- that is, fixing it so all those lucky anti-war people would no longer be right.
That's funny, I can think of a time when Megan McArdle was all for throwing manpower at a problem, back in those mystery days in the pre-Obama before times...
ReplyDeleteIn her own words: http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1971133_1971110_1971107,00.html
ReplyDeleteAnd so rather than launch a quixotic war on failure, we should be using what we've learned to build a system that fails better: increasing the reserves financial institutions hold against a crisis, improving our tools for modeling system-wide risks, creating better mechanisms for winding down the operations of failed institutions without triggering a market panic, and making better provisions for the people who are hardest hit.
The real secret of our success is that we learn from the past, and then we forget it. Unfortunately, we're dangerously close to forgetting the most important lessons of our own history: how to fail gracefully and how to get back on our feet with equal grace.
I wish the Medium Lobster was still around. To my limited perception it doesn't make sense either. I would have to assume that Megs is simply an arsehole who simply tries to rationalize her political preferences and a concern troll. And that can't be because she belongs to our Galtian Overlords.
ReplyDeleteIn Megan McArdle's America, anything more complicated than a podcast goes into Why Bother territory
ReplyDeleteYou've said a far more profound and depressing thing than you perhaps realize (or perhaps you do!). This is something that's been on my mind a lot lately, though Fred Clark sums it up a lot better than I could. He talks about the aftermath of the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, in which the entire city was raised and placed on a slope facing away from the ocean, thus lessening the impact of future hurricanes. And he concludes:
Consider this account of the rebuilding and re-engineering of Galveston. Consider the scope and audacity of the project — the cost, the labor, the years it took. Does any American city, or America itself, still have the courage, vision or capacity to attempt such a thing? I don’t know. I doubt it.
We seem to have become a small-minded people obsessed with smaller government, smaller visions, smaller aspirations — a crimped, cramped people from whom it seems unimaginable to expect or ask for this kind of hard work and investment and long-term foresight.
[...]
We have better tools than the rebuilders of Galveston had. We know more. And we are far, far wealthier as a nation. But we seem to lack their courage, their will, their vision and their determination to make the world better.
We seem to have become a shallow, convenience-obsessed people supporting the kind of shallow, convenience-obsessed leadership that will allow us to lead shallow, convenience-obsessed lives uninterrupted by concern for the future or any attempt to be better than that.
Whenever I hear people talking about America's Big Problems, they always want quick, easy, immediate solutions, a la "Drill, baby, drill." They don't want to wait, they don't want to sacrifice, they don't want to spend. And if they have to do any of those things, then, well, just fuck it anyway. So many obvious solutions (obviously worth trying even if not obviously effective) aren't politically possible because they're too large-scale, too ambitious, too expensive, apparently, for the wealthiest nation on the planet. Instead we're content to slouch forward on self-assurances of our greatness without actually trying to be great.
The space program. That was just a couple of guys working out of a garage, wasn't it?
ReplyDeleteTo be fair to McMegs McArshle, she wrote this column while still under the influence after a Anti-ACA Tailgate Party at a U. of Miami football game.
ReplyDeleteApparently she was thrilled with the cornholes she made especially for the occasion.
I'm so glad Roy banned that Warstler guy so we're spared his explanation that if we only had privatized the space program we would have already been to MARS, BITCHEZ!
ReplyDeleteWell, a foolish consistency... Or maybe a consistent foolishness?
ReplyDeleteImagine how quickly we could have won WWII by going after Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan with bands of crack mercenary commandos instead of mobilizing the country.
ReplyDeleteIIRC she also advocates for the human-wave manpower-throwing solution when the problem is an armed assailant in a school.
ReplyDelete"Inglourious Basterds" -- best documentary, 2009.
ReplyDeleteThink of the difference between trying to arrange girls’ night out with a few friends, and trying to throw a sit-down award dinner for 200, and you’ll get some idea of the ways in which adding people can actually slow things down rather than speed them up.
ReplyDeleteMcAddled is so innumerate, she probably equates 200 to an uncountable amount. She's like the rabbits in Watership Down, where "Fiver's" real name meant "little thousand".
We could have just sent a time-traveling Chuck Norris, then the wingnuts could have a wingnut WW2 hero, instead of that liberal Eisenhower guy.
ReplyDeleteYou know, even Fred Brooks himself called Brooks's Law an "outrageous
ReplyDeleteoversimplification," and The Mythical Man-Month was
published in 1975. There's still plenty of truth to it for certain approaches to late projects, certainly, but some software engineers have subsequently noted that it is a highly contingent effect.
An appropriately experienced group of programmers, for instance, need
not have every single piece of the system explained to them with small
words. In fact, they have probably already worked with most of the
framework, since I sincerely doubt the whole thing was written from
scratch in-house.
Of course, using this line of reasoning to
refute McMegan is like using quantum field theory to argue with a
feces-flinging monkey. Since I don't care to disembark from the boat,
does she even attribute her "insight" to Brooks? Or does she simply
Randsplain?
There must be a lot of inbreeding in her warren.
ReplyDeleteAdding bodies is even more problematic; you have to spend time showing the new people how the system works, and then more time managing all the interactions between the extra people.
ReplyDeleteThe abject failure of the Internet and cellular phone technology proves her point. If McArdle had her way 500 years ago we'd all be wearing legwear called a pant.
Ron Paul (shockingly) distorted the situation in Galveston when he (shockingly) came out against federal aid for hurricane victims.
ReplyDeleteI dunno about that, but there's a real bad case of the "white blindness".
ReplyDeleteHanley, Saunders, Littlejohn, Kirby, Caje (at the point), Doc and the others could handle any Kraut unit you could throw at 'em. Privatize those dudes and watch the bodies fall.
ReplyDeleteHaha, McArdle is a gem: In the article you link, she cheers the Surge by saying she monitors two "economic statistics that happen to be closely tied to the security situtation: electricity and barrels of oil pumped... [And] electricity, which has been the metric that generally induces in me the greatest sense of despair, soared in September. Leave it to McArdle to think "electricity" is a better gauge of the security situation in Iraq than "daily total of murdered Iraqis," and to feel greater despair over lost kilowatts than over thousands of people killed. Shine on, Megan, you crazy diamond!
ReplyDeleteThink of the difference between trying to arrange girls’ night out with a few friends, and trying to throw a sit-down award dinner for 200
ReplyDeleteYes! Just think about it! Think about the awful feeling of passive aggressiveness when you are being asked "where would you like to go to dinner" and you don't want to offend your vegetarian friend who suggested the Tibetan place that has that nasty smell and the mean old lady with the club foot. "Indian, maybe?" But then that's not good enough because some other person can not handle even the smell of curry, and then you really aren't even addressing the bigger issue of what bar you want to end up at, because OH MY GOD, that's where Ezra met his ex and it's got that awful bouncer in front.
That, or in each example, McMeg is just philosophically wondering what either would be like, if she had friends to plan with.
Not only is Meg's analogy dumb, it's also wrong. It's gotta be easier to arrange the big dinner. You rent a hall. You tell a caterer, "Do the chicken, some vegetarian option, and the second-cheapest wine you've got." The hall itself supplies the chairs, microphone, and valets. You're done. If 20 people of the 200 don't have a great time, who gives a damn? Who even notices? Whereas invite six girls out and try to pick a restaurant they all love, can afford, are in the mood for, that's not a much farther drive for one than it is for the others -- you're in for some rough sledding.
ReplyDeleteI think she has a special bechamel recipe for that....
ReplyDeleteThat government is best which lets 12,000 of its own citizens die due to lack of disaster preparedness.
ReplyDeleteThat always gets me. If you need 1500$ of equipment to make something as simple as a bechamel sauce you shouldn't be near a kitchen, you'll never be a good cook.
ReplyDeleteBut at least he is for a humble foreign policy (essentially isolationism), acknowledges that muslims can be human beings (as long as they are human beings were they came from), and is for civil rights (for white, conservative men).
ReplyDeleteSpace program, or just a space movie, for chrissakes. The visual FX unit alone for Ron Howard's Apollo 13 had at least 100 people in it, and the stakes were a whole lot lower.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty amazed McArglebargle has heard of Brooks' Law, though, whether or not she knows it is called that (what, me read her article?)
ReplyDeleteThen again, every benighted dipshit boss I've ever had knew about it or even preached it, but none of them ever stuck to it.
Bloomberg should be proud of the reporting skills of their new journalist.
ReplyDeleteA lot of people with private health insurance are losing their policies.
How may people? Megan doesn't say. But it must be a lot.
Premiums are rising substantially in many markets.
How high? How substantially? Megan doesn't say. But it certainly looks true.
Millions of people are facing those cancellation letters.
Millions! Wow, you'd think that other reporters would notice this, too. What a nose for news Megan has!
When the tech geeks raised concerns about their ability to deliver the website on time, they are reported to have been told “Failure is not an option.”
Where was this reported? Google shows only one person reporting this -- and being quoted on it, too -- none other than our Megan. What a scoop!
Megan reports what happens in the future, which is some simply amazing investigative journalism.
Hack that she is ,she probably thought it was David Brooks' law.
ReplyDeleteYeah, McMeager left out a whole lotta' shit in her piece of "journalism." Like how insurance companies are misleading former policy holders, how misinformed dipshits are all over the media spouting half-truths and how there is an active push against making this a success from the GOP at both the state and federal level.
ReplyDeleteThat’s a whole lotta’ misses from any “journalist.” But just another day pounding out dreck for our Megs McArdent. Bless her shilling curdled soul.
Whereas invite six girls out and try to pick a restaurant they all love, can afford, are in the mood for, that's not a much farther drive for one than it is for the others -- you're in for some rough sledding, buddy.
ReplyDeleteI disagree. Last time I invited six women out I chose an
establishment very close to my own home, let them all know it was Dutch late in the meal, set the mood with scintillating table talk, ate a dozen oysters myself and...later that evening two of them worked!
Of course, I had to shuck them on my own, but still…
We all have a special sauce for that.
ReplyDeleteThink of the difference between trying to arrange girls’ night out with a few friends, and trying to throw a sit-down award dinner for 200, and you’ll get some idea of the ways in which adding people can actually slow things down rather than speed them up.
ReplyDeleteOh, can I play? "Think of singing "Row your boat" with a preschooler, and conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Chorale for Verdi's Requiem! So much more complicated! And I don't even know how to play the timpani!"
"Think of flying paper planes in class, and coordinating a squadron of RAF bombers over the Baltic states! You might totally need some maps and stuff! Plus airplane mechanics!"
Of course, she's a total dipshit, because in her analogy, the 200 dinner guests are CUSTOMERS not participants, so of course throwing more people - i.e., wait-staff - at it is a crucial element that would make it more successful.
Yes, and "throwing more people at it" is exactly what you need to do; when the guest-count goes up, you need more wait-staff.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I could pretty much make a béchamel on a hot plate with a tin pan, as long as I had good butter and crèam.
ReplyDeleteOh, was this when she suggested the larger children rush the gunman to overwhelm him? With what, one wonders, their sticky hands?
ReplyDeleteIt's Brenda Starr! No, it's Lois Lane! Nope, it's MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEgan, a caricature even in the world of cartoon female journalists.
ReplyDelete"That's a big problem. A lot of people with private health insurance are
ReplyDeletelosing their policies. This was supposed to be not so bad because they
could go onto the exchanges. Only now, there are no functioning
exchanges"
Umm... Megan? There are these things called State Exchanges. You know... the ones that a bunch of red state governors refused to set up, thus fulfilling their obligation to throw as many monkey wrenches as possible into the system. THEY are working just fine, thanks, and are getting close to the million enrollee benchmark that would define success.
Perhaps the most jarring assumption in that entire piece is the one where she purports to be some kind of arbiter of gracefulness. I can think of ninety-nine descriptions for McMegan, but "graceful" ain't a one.
ReplyDeleteMM's innumeracy always brings to mind the something I read a while ago:
ReplyDeleteIndeed, the teenagers we tested, although they could all read and write numbers and perform simple calculations, provided truly nonsensical numerical responses in cognitive estimation tasks. The size of a large kitchen knife? Six feet and a half, said one of them. The duration of a drive from San Francisco to New York? An hour. Curiously, although their numerical answers were often quite wrong, the patients almost always selected appropriate units of measurement. Sometimes they even seemed to know the answers, yet they still selected an inappropriate number. When asked to estimate the height of the tallest tree in the world, one patient correctly reported 'redwood', then generously granted it precisely 23 feet and 2 inches!"
Their estimates of the length of a dollar bill ranged from 2 inches to 5 feet. Length of an average man's spine, from 1 inch to 24 feet.
Ewwwww....
ReplyDelete"Both sides throw manpower at problems willy-nilly."
ReplyDeleteThe freedom to die!
ReplyDeleteNot to mention, that the website isn't the exchange itself. It's just a convenient way (or hopefully will be at some point) to comparison shop. All of the plans that will eventually be available via a functioning website exist now, in the real world. People can still shop for them the way they've always shopped for health insurance before, by spending hours with different insurer reps sorting through the plans they have available. Sure, it's a pain in the ass - but it's a pain in the ass that had always existed for people in the private insurance market. It's status quo. It's one of the things the website will eventually make much easier. McMegan's argument is that since the website isn't working right now, we have to revert to status quo rather than ever hope for such an out-of-reach achievement such as setting up a website much less complicated than many others already in existence. But even that fails to take into account that even if the shopping experience has yet to improve, the situation overall is vastly improved for people in the private market, because they can no longer be denied coverage or charged rates that look more like extortion payments. They have to be offered policies that meet minimum standards, and they can qualify for subsidies to help pay for it. In other words, even though people are still having to do the equivalent of going down to the DMV to buy their insurance, they aren't having to go through all of that only to not be able to get insurance after all.
ReplyDeleteBut....NOOOOOOOOOOOO! Since the rollout hasn't provided the instant convenience McMegan's strenuous standards demand, well then, might as well just toss the whole thing aside, learn from your mistake, and conclude that nothing can ever be made better.
Nothing's for sure but death in Texas.
ReplyDeletePerhaps someone will tell her the same principle applies to word count.
ReplyDeleteYou can't fuck your cake and eat it...
ReplyDeleteActually you probably can SHUT UP SMUT
Quite frankly, Willy is sick of it.
ReplyDeleteIt was all a Hollywood set
ReplyDeleteI tried to teach her the basics of human metabolism via e-mail. When I got to the part where humans can't convert fat into sugar, she was all like "Why not?" And I was trying to tell her that it isn't why not, it just is.
ReplyDeleteRight, Megan. I'm sure you don't scramble desperately for a hiding place whenever you hear a car backfiring.
ReplyDeleteMegan doesn't do her research either, but unlike Jonah she doesn't openly beg her readers to do it for her. I guess the assumption is they should do it without being asked.
ReplyDeleteYes, there are many recipes that can be cooked with the equivalent of bear skins and flint knives.
ReplyDeleteFilmed on location in Arkansas.
ReplyDeleteDue to a misreading of the recipe book (such as anyone could make) I ended up cooking Bêche-de-mer sauce.
ReplyDeleteAh well, who wants dinner guests anyway.
There once was a man from Nantucket...
ReplyDeleteOh we had bear skins and flint knives by themselves last night, and they were delicious!
ReplyDeleteLooxury!! We made our bechamel with powdered milk, margarine and a flat rock!
ReplyDeleteWas that when she claimed people can't lose weight because BIOLOGY!!!!
ReplyDeleteOr when she claimed our ancestors didn't eat fat?
Thus spake Megan McPeterPrinciple
ReplyDeleteAs someone who has worked with medium to large distributed software systems, it's simply wrong that you can't improve by adding more developers. Most modern software is built up from little pieces which are used to build up services. What the pieces and services know about each other are governed by contracts and interfaces, and so long as you keep the external facing API of the pieces constant, you can work on them independently. Plus, automated testing is about a million times more prevalent and accepted than it was just a few years ago. Obviously, McArdle doesn't know shit about how modern software is written. But there's a very long list of stuff she doesn't know shit about.
ReplyDelete(Helping Miami lose their second straight game, and knocking them out of the Coastal Division race. Hope she enjoys their cold-weather pre-Christmas bowl game.)
ReplyDeleteArgleBargle and most other conservatards WANT the ACA to fail. I'm not sure why, but they seem to think it's destruction give them eternal power and glory. Whereas if it works, their taxes might go up a percentage point or two.
ReplyDeleteThis is what comes from believing gastroenteritis = calculus. (Hey, they're both Latin.)
ReplyDeleteShe just couldn't wrap her head around the fact that sugar goes to make fat but not the other way around in the human body. I swear, she's probably reminded to breath from time to time by members of her family.
ReplyDeleteSome people say she is just a liar for personal gain and not stupid, but I say why not both?
ReplyDeleteI was taught that calculi form in the bladder, not the intestines.
ReplyDeleteHas anyone ever so perfected the graduate student pretence shuffle as well as our Megan? She is simply a delicious mixture of fakery and puffery with a dash of insouisance. She brings to her faithful readers a piece of misdirection, a few factoids, and an outright lie or two all wrapped up with a puzzled but concerned frown--gosh darn it, she'll help you make sense of this crazy world!
ReplyDeleteShe is simply a delicious mixture of fakery and puffery with a dash of insouisance
ReplyDeleteAnd a heap of Himalayan pink salt.
Chinese? Thai, maybe? Ahh, I've got it. Italian food...
ReplyDeleteShe writes all of her articles only after consulting with noted statistician and scientist Professor Otto Yerass.
ReplyDeleteWell, to be fair, obesity is a huge problem with kids these days. Maybe she thought we could use that to our advantage.
ReplyDeleteThe would be a good assumption, but Megan's response to readers giving her facts is usually to 1.) insult them, 2.) attempt to argue from removed authority ("I come from a family of intellectual heavyweights!"), 3.) come up with ultra lame-ass excuse (calculator doesn't go that high!), and then 4.) simply move on to the next issue she's being paid to obfuscate.
ReplyDeleteYes, when the project gets bigger you need more manpower. Her analogy is simply totally misguided. She's one of the few people who could probably kill herself on the horns of a dilemma--she's that stupid. Definitionally when you go from a party of six in a restaurant to a party of 200 in a restaurant there are going to be more people involved in managing it--it might be harder, it might be more expensive, it might be more complex but you are not going to be able to entertain 200 people with the same resources as you would six friends. That's the entire point.
ReplyDeleteThere may be a poitn at which there are diminishing returns for the things you throw at the problem--too many waiters and not enough food, too much food and not enough cooks, but you will always need more manpower for the bigger party.
Fascinating, though turgid, article. One of the interesting thing is that the control group and the fAS group were both frequently significantly off, neither group had a good handle on monetary value at all, and the control group was only slightly better (and frequently just as bad) at guesstimating the sizes of things they themselves had actually seen.
ReplyDeleteIf I'm remembering correctly, wasn't it you who once tried to gently point out some foundation factual errors Megan made, only to be first told that she came from a family of intellectuals and then eventually banned from her comments?
ReplyDeleteNot to forget
ReplyDelete#5. Proof by repeating the original claim but in italics.
Ah, now that is a classic.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it is almost mind bogglingly stupid!
ReplyDeleteUm, the difference between arranging dinner at a restaurant for six friends and throwing some kind of semi official awards dinner for two hundred people is precisely that the latter requires more workers than the former. Which proves the exact opposite of what Megs wants to say.
Basically, when it comes to the actual "arranging," as opposed to the cooking and serving, no employees or outside businesses are needed for the former. The friends email, text, call each other and so on, and, OK, after some fussing and back and forthing, a place is chosen.
But to "throw" an awards dinner for 200, unless you have lots and lots of time, you probably are going to call in some kind of party planner or caterer or both. Perhaps use professionals to print out the invitations too, and make up the trophies or whatever, and other tasks. And, of course, you need to meet with people who run halls for such things. Hire a band or DJ maybe.
Then, for the actual dinners, the normal cooking, wait, and cleanup staff in the restaurant should be able to handle the party of six just fine, while, again, lots of caterers or cooks and waiters are going to have be specially hired in the latter case.
Does Megs really think that the bigger the task, the fewer workers are necessary to do it? Sure it is harder to organize a lot of workers than a few, but that is like saying since it is hard to find a place to put all the steel girders needed to build a skyscraper, it would be better to have less space!
Adding people, in most cases, and subject to the law of diminishing returns mentioned above, is exactly how big jobs are tackled. How could it possibly be otherwise? Sure, smaller jobs are easier, and one reason for that is because less people are needed. Duh! Who is questioning that? But when there is a big job to do, just saying, "gee, wouldn't it better if we could do it with only a few workers?" is really pretty stupid (again, except at the margins, except when you already factor in the basic, irreducible, obvious to everyone but Megs reality that big jobs take more workers than small jobs).
Why couldn't Megs just say that the job is big, and thus requires lots of workers, and, the bigger the job and the greater the number of workers, the harder the task for the project manager? Running a big restaurant with lots of employees is harder and more complicated than running a two person food stand. See, it isn't hard! Then she could have made her point without looking like an idiot.
At the Mena airport?
ReplyDeleteI dunno, the Peter Principle has people not being promoted anymore once they've reached their level of incompetence.
ReplyDeleteOccams' Pink Himalayan Salt Correlate: If it's McMegan, it's at least one or both.
ReplyDeleteAnd if you put it in the oven you don't even have to do much stirring. But McArdle habitually pretends everything is harder than it really is, as she does in this article, the better to inflate her own expertise.
ReplyDeleteWarstler briefly popped up on Crooked Timber to tell us all about the wonders of his args.
ReplyDeleteI have never been less disappointed to not have an aneurysm.
Well that willied my nillies.
ReplyDeleteEither way she's a hobgoblin.
ReplyDeleteTo whom one should pay little mind.
ReplyDelete"Adding bodies is even more problematic; you have to spend time showing the new people how the system works, and then more time managing all the interactions between the extra people."
ReplyDeleteSurely such a feat cannot be accomplished by a government.
You want to respect Rule 34 there, chief.
ReplyDeleteAs industry consultant Bob Laszewski writes: “It is now becoming clear that the Obama administration will not have Health.care.gov fixed by December 1 so hundreds of thousands, or perhaps millions, of people will be able to smoothly enroll by January 1.”
ReplyDeleteIt helps if you get the URL right. Especially with him being an "industry consultant" (read: probably an insurance industry shill) and all.
This would be fine, if editors were as careful as profs. I'm just stunned when I read Richard Cohen write something like "12 Years a Slave really gives the lie to Gone With the Wind." Even if you give Cohen all the benefit of the doubt... there's just no way in which that line should survive. A good... make that an at-best-average editor would send it back with "I think what you're trying to say here is...."
ReplyDeleteHave you ever seen Megan McArdle and The Medium Lobster in the same room?
ReplyDeleteWas that the "args" guy? Man, that was an epic thread.
ReplyDeleteOne legged races!
ReplyDeleteYeah, and I formally apologize for that. There was no there there.
ReplyDelete