Freakenomics Redux

Garrison Keillor was badly done by the Me Too movement.  He misreads social cues because he is on the autism spectrum.  He touched the back of a woman who worked for him once.  She did not understand the gesture.  Because of that, he was fired from MPR and put in the same bucket as Harvey Weinstein, Clarence Thomas, Brett Cavanaugh, and the Catholic Church.  I am an ally to women, LGBTQ people (particularly the T people) and immigrants, but that’s not fair.

Keillor played up the Norwegian angle in many of his bits.  Powdermilk Biscuits are made by Norwegian bachelor farmers, so you know they are pure – mostly.  A Norwegian man loved his wife so much he almost told her.  Ole put an ad in the paper saying he was selling a boat.  Sven told him, ‘You don’t have a boat, Ole.  You just have a lawn mower and a snow plow’.  Ole says ‘Ja.  I am selling de two of dem, bot.’

(When I went to college in the Midwest, a guy used to hang out at the weight room the same time as I did.  He was tall, blond, broad and buff, with thick calves, blue eyes and a beatific smile that never left his face even when he was doing a human flag. He had thick coke-bottle glasses and always wore a shirt that said Powdermilk Biscuits – Heavens, They Are Tasty – and Expeditious!’  That was when I realized that the Midwest is a different country, like the past.)

In August, Freakenomics did a podcast called Extra: A Modern Whaler Speaks Up. Previously, they did a three-part series on the whaling industry, but they could not find a whaler brave or foolish enough to speak on record.  After they had put out the series, a Norwegian whaler contacted them and said that he was willing to be interviewed.  The stub episode is devoted to him.

I can’t do the accent in print, so readers should click on the link to listen to the episode.  The interview really does come across as a Prairie Home Companion bit.  The whaler’s name is Bjorn Andersen.  He is a Norwegian bachelor fisherman who has the personality of one of Halldór Laxness’ Hard Headed People.  And that accent – oh, man, that accent.  You just have to listen to it:

FE: When you’re out on the water, can you describe how you locate the minke whale? 

ANDERSEN: We only use our eyes. 

FE: Wow. No sonar, nothing like that? 

ANDERSEN: No, nothing. It’s the best equipment we have. 

FE: Okay. So, what are you looking for?

ANDERSEN: Oh, looking for the whale. 

FE: Have you read Moby-Dick? 

ANDERSEN: No. I’m not a reader. 

Andersen considers himself a conservationist.  He only hunts Minke whales.  Minke whales are not an endangered species, and the Norwegian government sets strict quotas, which he observes.  Since Minke whales eat fish, rather than baleen, culling the Minke whale population boosts fish stocks:

FE: So what would happen to you if Norway decided that they don’t want to allow anyone to hunt whales anymore?

ANDERSEN: If they do, they are crazy. Some years from now, there will be no cod or no herring to fish because there are so many whales. That’s the food for the whale. Minke whale is an opportunist. He eat even salmon. And cod and herring and everything. If you hunt the whale, you can fish more fish because you have the balance in the ecosystem. 

FE: Does anyone talk about the minke whale as endangered at all?

ANDERSEN: That must be people who don’t know anything about the sea, because if you are going to the coast of Norland and Troms and Finnmark, you can see minke whale and humpback and fin whale. All the spring and summer and the autumn. If you number out how much minke whale eat, if there are 150,000 minke whales, it will be about 50 to 60,000 ton each day of fish. They have studied the number of, how much the sea animals, including birds and everything, eats in a year. It’s 25 million tons of food. And the fishermen only take 4 million tons.

FE: Do you consider yourself an environmentalist? 

ANDERSEN: Yes. 

FE: Do you think of yourself as a conservationist?

ANDERSEN: Yes, I think it’s common sense. If you harvest nature, you have to make sure that there are growing up things to hunt or to harvest next year. 

FE: So what do you say to someone who thinks that they are being a perfect moral person, right? And says that no one should ever kill whales.

ANDERSEN: Get some understanding of the nature. It’s simple like that. They don’t understand the nature. They believe more on Walt Disney or something like that.

He works in an industry where the good things outweigh the bad, but the bad are more salient.  Because of that, he has a low opinion of journalists looking to score cheap points with people who jump on shiny objects without understanding the facts:

FE: We spoke with someone in Japan who said that one reason that some whalers there still hunt whales is because the world tells them they can’t. And I’m curious if that’s the same for you in Norway. 

ANDERSEN: That’s stupid. Yes, that’s stupid. I already said it, you have to harvest in a sustainable way. It’s stupid.

FE: Bjørn, we’ve been working on this series about the history and economics of whaling for about six months. And you are the first whaler who agreed to speak with us. Why do you think that whalers are so reluctant to speak about whaling?

ANDERSEN: Oh, I have had a lot of journalists on board a ship and there are many bad journalists who only want to have the big scoop, you know? Want us to say something they could put together so they could make a scoop or something like that. A lot of journalists are very bad. That’s a pity. When I watch the news, I have a big question signs: is this true or not? Because I have experienced many bad journalists — but also some good. I think people, the whalers, are fed up with the bad journalists, who only want to have a scoop. 

FE: And when you say they want a scoop, what does that mean? It means they want to make you look bad? It means they want to make you look like you don’t have morals?

ANDERSEN: Yeah, something like that.

The foregoing could have been written about the manufactured housing industry.  No business is perfect, but, on balance, we create more good than we do bad.  We are the only form of non-subsidized public housing in the country.  A mobile home park is the only place where a family of four with one worker earning the minimum wage can afford to live.  We provide the only path to home ownership for a large portion of the population.  We give clean, safe and affordable housing to people who need it – but journalists love to dump on us, because the bad things about our industry are catnip to people who don’t think slowly and the good things require analysis and thoughtful reflection.  It is easy to score cheap points with a shot of a dead whale or a story about a disabled veteran who has been evicted.  It takes effort to analyze incentives, externalities, policy goals, net utils and wheels that don’t squeak.  Most journalists don’t want to spend that effort.

Here is what the interview would sound like, if Andersen were a park owner, instead of a commercial fisherman:

FE: What do you use to look for leaks?

DL: We dig a hole in the ground.

FE: What do you look for?

DL: The leak.

FE: Have you read any plays by Beckett?

DL: I live in one.

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FE: What would happen if lot rents were capped, or clawed back?

DL: Me and my residents would both be homeless. 

FE: Do you support rent control?

DL: If it is done right, sure.  Benchmark the floor to market rates.  Index increases to inflation.  Allow for capital expenditures.  Prevent unreasonable rent increases but allow owners to run their business.  Shear the sheep, but don’t slaughter it.

FE: Are you a sheep?

DL: No.

FE: When the barnyard animals revolt, what will you do?

DL: I will kill a few whales.

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FE: Do you support cooperative ownership of parks?

DL: Just pay me fair market value when I sell.

FE: Do you think that the patients can run the asylum?

DL: I have seen all kinds of strange shit.

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FE: Would you evict a single mother?

DL: Of course.

FE: Some people say it is immoral to evict people.  Robert Frost said that home is where, when you have to go there, they have to –

DL: Warren, the husband in the poem, said that.  He did not mean it in a good way.  He meant he was sick of taking Silas in when Silas didn’t produce.  He thought that, if Silas didn’t work, he shouldn’t eat.  Frost had Warren say that to illustrate the moral conundrum that is baked into capitalism.  He did not mean to condemn capitalism as a system.  He meant to say that people get hurt in a market-based economy, even if, after you account for the externalities, the system creates more utility than any alternative we have found yet.

FE: Mary said, ‘I should have called it / Something you somehow haven’t to deserve.’

DL: Are you a socialist?

FE: We are asking the questions here!

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FE: Would you evict a single mother?

DL: Nobody gets married anymore.

FE: Answer the question.

DL: I provide a service in exchange for a fee pursuant to a contract.  If my counterparty does not perform their side of the agreement, I should be able to withdraw from the contract.

FE: A single mother has three kids who she is raising on her own.  She works at Mirabito but rarely gets enough hours to pay all her bills.  She can’t afford child care.  Her mother helps out when she can, but her mother has her own problems.  A flat tire, a case of COVID, a sick child that causes her to miss a shift can cause her to miss a rent payment which she will never be able to make up.  And you want to evict her?

DL: Working rural white people do not get married anymore.  An economist has written a book about it. Most families in most parks are headed by women.  ‘Single mother’ now means ‘person under the age of sixty’.

FE: And you would evict her, and her children, if she misses a lot rent payment?

DL: I would help her get public assistance and allow her to make up a payment in installments if it is a first offense and she is acting in good faith.

FE: And after that, you would evict her and her children?

DL: Should she be allowed to eat for free at McDonald’s?

FE: Some people say that that is immoral.

DL: Some people think that forest fires are caused by Jewish space lasers.

FE: Focus, please.

DL: Some people think that housing is a human right.  Reasonable people can disagree about that.  Speaking for myself, I think that it is an attractive idea but politically impractical.  That said, if housing is a human right, it should be provided by the state.  I am not the state, although I would be happy to pay taxes to fund a public housing insurance scheme.

FE: So – you would evict our single mother?

DL: We have the system we have now.  It is the best way we have found to allocate social resources so far.  Under that system, if I don’t enforce payment rules, everyone will be homeless.  That is not fair to me, or to the other single mother who lives next door to the deadbeat, who honors her contractual obligations.

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FE: Some people think that PE firms shouldn’t buy parks. 

DL: I think these people believe on Walt Disney or something like that.

FE: They say that rents go up and people get priced out.

DL: Their neighbors get roads without potholes and sewers that don’t back up.  Nobody writes about that, because we only hear from the squeaky wheels.

FE: But these people are on fixed incomes!

DL: Lot rents have gone up from around $350 a month to around $500 a month.  If you can find an apartment that cheap, tell me where it is.  I will rent it.

FE: You would tell that to an old lady who has to move?

DL: Does the old lady wear high heels when she shovels snow?

FE: I don’t follow.

DL: Balance the utils, man.

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FE: Would you let a journalist tour your park?

DL: There’s a guy from Missouri who does that.  He takes the abuse for the industry.  I think he is crazy, but he is willing to be the lightning rod for the industry.  God bless him for that.  It takes the heat off the rest of us.

FE: Do you have plans for the weekend?

DL: I will call my cousin in Norway and kill some whales.