The ethic of efficiency has to be replaced with an ethic of efficacy. Efficiency focuses attention on selected details of a process. The most efficient way to capture the greatest amount of energy from the burning of sugar has no efficacy for a living thing. What matters for life is that the burning of sugar is integrated into a matrix of chemical reactions and pathways, interconnected and self-supporting; and oh yes, that a sufficient amount of energy is captured to supply the system. The maximum capture of the energy would destroy the living order.I only read Yglesias when someone asks me too, found this link in a comments thread elsewhere. Every time I happen upon Yglesias, the android like nature of his writing is what makes a far greater impression than anything he says. To borrow from Ken Jennings' description of Watson, the Jeopardy! playing machine, it almost appears that there is a thinking, feeling human being with some measure of empathy behind the writing, but if you look closely you can see the cracks.
Our economic systems have come to be dominated by the ethic and the excuse of efficiency: humans must accept painful outcomes so that economics can function efficiently – that is just insane.
Keye Commentary
Something that I think we don’t hear enough about in the inequality debate is that it’s not just median wages that have been stagnating recently, it’s equity prices as well:
...
It’s a pretty classic “capital crushes labor” kind of story that goes along nicely with Ronald Reagan’s political agenda of helping capital to crush labor as an inflation cure. But for the past 20 years, median wages, stock prices, and per capita GDP have shown a similar basic pattern.
The Immiseration of Capital
Matt Yglesias
The rise of economics as primary lens through which many of us see the world and its problems is a subject I've been thinking a lot about lately. In the west, we've come to subordinate human welfare to the aesthetics of our economic theories. The media, as such, often discusses and judges a policy or plan by how well it is supported by the values of economic doctrine rather than human welfare. They explain issues, problems and solutions first in economic terms, not how they relate to human beings. What ultimately gets lost is a sense of the author's humanity. This is what is nauseatingly creepy about reading someone like Yglesias, even when in some measure of agreement with any of his points.
For instance, here is his solution for preventing a system where fireman stand around and watch a house burn to the ground because the occupant has neglected to pay a $75 fee.
[P]art of what’s odd here is the mayor’s refusal to provide ex post firefighting services at any price. Since putting a fire out is much cheaper at the margin than rebuilding a burned-down house, it should be easy to set a pricing scheme that doesn’t entail any substantial adverse selection issues.I really have nothing against Yglesias personally, at least nothing more than I have against guys like David Brooks or Thomas Friedman. My problem is that our system produces people who think like this. Try to imagine the horrifyingly warped and hollowed out transformation your personality would have to undergo for this to be the way you made sense of the world.
I think there’s a surprising amount of inefficiency in the world deriving from the fact that people with various competencies—fighting fires, organizing rock concerts, cooking tasty food—don’t really understand optimal pricing.
62 comments:
I think you're overlooking Yglesias' background. As his wikipedia entry puts it, he's a student of analytic philosophy, and can be expected to use a degree of formal logic in his arguments. To the degree that approach assists readers in cutting through formal BS, it's all good.
I'm not overlooking his background, thats my entire point. That this is the context (or background) in which we are increasingly seeing the world and its problems.
I couldn't disagree more that our culture produces this sort of thinking. I would say that Yglesias' manner of writing is an exception, part of why I find his writing such an enormous relief compared to the highly affected styles of most people who write about issues that relate to society (ie. politics, economics, religion). I think it adds a lot of clarity to his ideas and thus creates a great starting point for interesting discussion about those points, which can be more affected and "human" if you like. Plus, I object to your limited/limiting view of the realm of human discourse.
I don't have to "imagine" what such warped personalities are like, I have been surrounded by them from 9AM to 5PM every day of my 20-year career at 7 different offices and agencies.
The vast majority of them kindly and well-intentioned. But warped.
That's why I (and Processed World) have always railed against the values of the larger American society. These people are all over the place. These are not individuals who chose to become warped this way after reading one book or attending some lecture. These people are the products of, the sum total of all the numerous indoctrination forces blowing through our society.
" I object to your limited/limiting view of the realm of human discourse."
I didn't try to limit the realm of discourse. My issue is with what is a dominant perspective, not with what is allowed.
This argument is as romantic as it is nihilistic. Just come from watching True Grit and it is striking how logical the thought processes are in the dialogue (you see the same in, for example, Austen's marginal gentility).
I find Yglesias interesting because he pushes the envelope, knows how to think and has good sense of ethics.
I think placing the blame on economics is putting the cart before the horse, at least in the case of people like Yglesias. As was said, he's coming at this from the perspective of trying to be analytical, and economics is simply the most mathematical of the social sciences. (Although it's not remotely the only social science that uses mathematics.)
And I don't think looking at things from a rationalistic perspective necessarily take the "human perspective" out of it. I mean, the first quote you give notes the problem by making reference to metabolic biochemistry, which is a deeply analytical field. Human interests are things that can be quantified and reduced to nice utility functions.
In general, I think that overemotional thinking has caused vastly more evil in the world than underemotional thinking has.
Crud, typing in these hyperlinks is a bear...
With due respect to Joel W., his brief response appears to be arguing that Yglesias' point of view is not warped; he doesn't actually argue that it isn't prevalent. He simply denies that it's so. I think that tells us which camp Joel is coming from.
It's deeply ironic that someone whose side of the discussion prefers to reduce all human interactions and values down to dollar amounts, (not that Joel is doing it personally in his response), can then turn around and say Justin is "limited/limiting".
I mean, that's Justin's whole point: Yglesias can look at a fire scene, with family heirlooms and refrigerator fingerpaintings going up in smoke, with a sniffling daughter in her pajamas on the sidewalk clutching a teddy bear, and say that the real tragedy is insufficient financial education about exotict investment protection products. That is the country we live in.
As far as showing how prevalent the worldview is, we can go back to this article (which I discussed here). At the bottom of the article, the Washington Post interviews a Real Estate "Expert" who says he "can't imagine any positive" that can come out of people being granted a reprieve from foreclosure. Instead, we have to worry about the effect of such reprieves on the crucial mortgage CDO speculation market. And nobody bats an eye. Now that is a limited/limiting imagination.
It's very easy for Joel or Matt Y. to object that they keep the human values in mind all the time while they discuss economic formulae. But believe me, when you reduce everything to numbers day in, day out, it makes you jaded and inured. All too many Americans have lost that vision, empathy and imagination already.
"In general, I think that overemotional thinking has caused vastly more evil in the world than underemotional thinking has."
Hey, good for you. Besides the fact that this is a rather absurd statement from the perspective of anyone who knows anything about history, it's a worthwhile opinion you're sporting there.
I don't see what exactly the 'warping' is here. Specifically, what is it in Yglesias's proposals that are objectionable? If his worldview is so 'horrifying', what is it about the content of what he's saying that horrifies? Are you just unhappy with his lack of outrage over the firefighter story? We can all get that from any number of other writers.
Plus, I think that many readers don't understand that a great deal of his writing is very dryly sarcastic.
Oh, I see. He is just being ironic. But if what he says isn't a little creepy, then what is he ironically distancing himself from?
The horrifying part of his world view is the idea of coming upon a family's home burning down while firefighters stand back doing nothing and having the odd reaction of babbling about optimal pricing.
"what is he ironically distancing himself from?"
From the inhumanity of the firefighters standing there while the house burns.
He very coolly shows the brutal stupidity behind behavior he doesn't like. By showing up its lack of logic.
But instead he should be saying "What about the heirlooms?"
I didn't realize "Mathew Yglesias" was actually a big performance piece meant to call attention to exactly the kind of stunted mindset I am talking about, kudos to him. I respect the discipline required to maintain character all these years.
Adding...
"He very coolly shows the brutal stupidity behind behavior he doesn't like. By showing up its lack of logic."
This is my point, he is not saying anything about the logic of their behavior. He uses his understanding of economic theory as its internal logic predicts human behavior as a measure of the quality of real world decision making. A "logical" economic decision is not necessarily a "logical" human decision. There seems to be a lot of confusion on this point.
Predicted outcomes in economic theory are not a measure of the soundness of real world decision making, rationality or intelligence. They are true to an internal logic, but that is only logical in the context of economics, it has little connection to logic as we use it in every day behavior that takes into account a wide range of other factors above, under and beyond economic logic.
Anonymous@8:38 How so? Look at practically any war ever and emotions have their bloody fingerprints all over it. Greed, fear, hate, pride, etc. Or on the personal level, people regularly kill because of "passion", but fairly few people kill because it just seems like the efficient thing to do.
Jeez... have you really never heard of the great leap forward? Or Stalin's famines?
No, it's normal, you just think like old people. That's what it means to give up all metanarratives - stuff doesn't have meaning, it just has connections and relationships to things.
Um, I don't think economists would have any trouble explaining why Stalin and Mao's policies were disastrous.
"A 'logical' economic decision is not necessarily a 'logical' human decision.
That's a good point. I saw someone make a very similar point recently.
OTOH, a decision that claims to be a logical economic decision, but actually is based on bad logic, is an illogical decision.
That Ted Rall comic is not a very good example of Yglesias-like thinking. He's got a bunch of posts grumbling about re-phrasing all of our arguments in terms of economic "competitiveness" and "winning the future".
Sorry to pile on like this, but, well, you're wrong.
I would add the "Domino Theory" to the above list...
I seem to recall that trade disputes, rather than religious disputes, are the ostensible excuse for the majority of wars that I can think of...
...my point being that, if you won't let the religious folk disassociate their religions from their violence, then I won't let you disassociate economic theories from greed -- which all too often motivates and persuades people to buy-in to economic theories. No doubt all the wars ever started over trade disputes were justified by very careful, sober economic analysis that shedding a little blood over textiles and sugar cane was preferable to the economic aggression of starvation and embargo that the enemy was forcing upon our nation...
Furthermore,
"Confessions of an Economic Hit Man"
Justin: I didn't say emotion has always been in the wrong, just that emotions have caused more damage than reason.
Although the various Communist famines were errors which is a different problem from what was originally being talked about. The problem wasn't that they were looking at the world in inhuman terms and missing the big picture, it was a problem of failing to effectively (or hell, efficiently) produce what people wanted to produce.
UserGoogle,
You are right, you were making a distinction of difference, my response was beside your point. Apologies for misreading you.
Taking a step back, I still think the emotional vs. rational cause of killing is kind of meaningless because we can have so many motives at once. We can have both rationale, dispassionate motives as well as "greed, fear, hate, pride."
For instance, I think the U.S. had very 'rational', cold-blooded reasons for invading Iraq as well as emotional ones. I don't know that you can go through history and assign clear-cut rational vs. emotion based reasons for what people do to each other. Anyway, I've spent more time explaining this than I think its worth.
"Sorry to pile on like this, but, well, you're wrong."
I might be wrong about what I am trying to express in this post, but I think we are talking past each other.
I am using Yglesias as an illustrative example to make a broader point about - in my opinion - the limitations and deficiencies of one of the dominant frameworks for understanding the world. I think maintaining or staying faithful to aesthetics of economics as a goal in and of itself has had terrible effects.
Whether or not Yglesias has made a different point or used irony elsewhere in a post I did not cite is really not my concern. As I said, I am not familiar with the Ygleasias canon, I've only read him probably 10 time and its I always get the creepy vibe, not to mention that I can recall several times feeling kind of cringey because the way he uses economics jargon reminds me of a kid trying out a new vocabulary word and shoehorning it into places it doesn't quite fit.
Those specific posts of Yglesias' are to my point. Maybe he is being sarcastic or ironic, but if so, then he is parodying the subject of my post. I never meant this to be about Yglesias and I'm really not talking about him, but using him to talk about a bigger point.
We certainly don't have enough empathy in the world, but that's not the fault of economics or logic.
Yglesias writes in a mild, ironic, analytical tone. He likes to poke holes in emotional arguments using dry logic, especially if the emotional arguments are themselves dressed up in dry faux-logic. This ain't rocket science, people.
"I never meant this to be about Yglesias and I'm really not talking about him, but using him to talk about a bigger point"
Yes, but to assess your bigger point, we have to deal with the examples you actually provide i.e. Yglesias.
Have you seen the Paul Krugman baby-sitting co-op piece?
I would say that Krugman's viewpoint is the same as the viewpoint Yglesias was writing from in the firefighter post.
Krugman contrasts it with the viewpoint that is actually the dominant one--that economic suffering is some sort of divine punishment for our sins.
Yglesias is a generalist. He's not remotely the best economics writer out there.
I don't understand why it was useful to include a bunch of ad hominem attacks on Matt Yglesias in the making of an uncontroversial point about how one needs an ethics beyond the "aesthetics of economics." If that means what I think it means, you might have just quoted Matt Yglesias himself. There are many examples: this is just the first that comes up if you google "Matty Yglesias ethics economics". http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/2009/04/the_ethics_of_homo_economicus/
So you think Yglesias is a warped and hollow theory fetishist. May be your opinions would be more worthwhile if you could say something about the subject (firefighters and the institutions around them that might be advantageous) and forget the man. It amazes me that people still use ad hominem and expect to be taken seriously.
But what is more creepy? Earnestness or ad hominem in response to it?
Interesting that the first two non-Justin comments are praising Little Tubby the Merit Tugboat. I haven't read below them, but I have to say I've never seen an Yglesias comment or essay that taught me anything aside from this lesson:
Matt Yglesias is an egomaniacal idiot who thinks his Crimson Parchment makes him a wise man and a "public intellectual." He's a man, and he's "public," but that's as much as I'll grant him -- ever.
He does know how to put away some food, though. Pass the ranch dressing, Matt!
I enjoy his writing because I feel like he tries to at situations with clear eyes. Presuming that you would have the firefighters put out the fire, your suggested course of action would result nobody paying for fire service unless their house was on fire RIGHT THEN, which would result in lower funds for the department and reduced department effectiveness that everyone suffers from.
This means that yglesias cares more about providing fire service than you do - going right to the heart of your complaint. He is living in an imperfect world where people don't pay for services they need. You are living in an ideal world where people receive services they haven't paid for.
"He is living in an imperfect world where people don't pay for services they need. You are living in an ideal world where people receive services they haven't paid for."
Based on this (and others), I am starting to think that I am not doing a very good job of saying what I mean. I am not suggesting that Yglesias is the problem, or that he ought to change his way of looking at issues. What I am saying is that Yglesias's perspective is perfectly normal within the context of our times. That is my complaint, that this is normal. In fact, the manner in which he makes his points, couched as they are in econo-jargon, is the how our ruling class primarily understands the rest of humanity. That is a problem.
To bring it back home, I think this is what leads to the insanity of policies that pursue fiscal austerity in times of crisis for the sake of inflicting suffering as a lesson in morality on how to live within means... or whatever the reasons are. They aren't looking at people and their problems as such, they understand them as graphs, equations, indexes, ratios, and platonic ideals (efficiency) as understood in free-market behavior.
adding this... because there was some misunderstanding on this point earlier...
I am also not saying that we should never try to understand the world using frameworks like economics, or that it is inherently immoral, only that that should not be our dominant frame of reference and I believe it is.
One thing I didn't do a good enough job was to separate the people who glibly use economics and the people who take the field seriously as a science. As many may have noticed, politicians and media often misuse actual economic theory to tout policies or ideas that are directly contradicted by the work of economists. This is Paul Krugman's career as a columnist.
I've been faithfully reading Yglesias since he started blogging, and without a doubt the economics framework has become much more dominant in his writing since he started working for CAP. What frustrates me, and what I think Justin was trying to say, is that Yglesias more often than not ends up coming down on the right side of things, but he usually takes the coldest (and most business friendly) route to get there. Any phenomenon can be understood using an almost limitless number of explanatory frameworks, and often different contexts call for different models. But Yglesias will (almost) always rationalize it, economize it, and wrap it in language fit for consumption by wonks and those who aspire to wonkiness -- even if the liberal position might be better argued another way.
This isn't about rational thinking per se -- and maybe that's the point, actually. In the media, the blogosphere, and lots of other domains, a process which has rendered an identity relationship between "rational thinking" and "economic thinking" has been so powerful that folks arguing in terms that aren't explicitly economic -- in moral terms, for instance -- are often dismissed out of hand as "unserious", despite the fact that many non-economics models are entirely rational. To be treated as a member of the big boys club one needs to conspicuously display one's economic bone fides.
On one level this is simply a matter of style, and I get that. But I suspect there are deeper implications for this, not the least of which is the continual delegitimation of sound argumentative frameworks that foreground social justice over economic efficiency. Yglesias himself is obviously not *against* social justice, but by backgrounding such concerns in favor of mollifying those who control the money, he alters the discourse in ways that certainly aren't helping the cause of social justice. It's not to much to ask for a little humanism in our technocrats.
Km, where were you 40 comments ago?
Sorry I came late, just discovered the link through Yglesias's site.
I think the level of Yglesias fandom that apparently swoops in on any critical post he links to is bizarre, considering how his own comments sections are usually full of people making fun of him.
Or at least that's how it was last time I looked, which was admittedly a while ago. Have things changed?
I'm not sure economics is as much an enforced model as it is an excuse/just-so story. I mean, when does anybody ever consult an economist before making any decision? The fact that Yglesias thinks this happens and matters all the time is part of what makes hom such a deluded creep.
To km and Michael Dawson: +1+1+1+1+1 etc.
Just so we're not all picking on Matt Yglesias, a different example of this same type of phenomenon is Dean Baker. Just like Yglesias' supporters say, Dean Baker has made a career out of taking apart conservative economics by using a very rigorous, logical, well-referenced application of the conservatives' own economic principles and hoisting them on their own petard, as the saying goes.
For example, read his excellent and free book, The Conservative Nanny State. One of his big points is that the principles of "Free Trade" (like outsourcing) are applied selectively rather than equally across all professions. Doctors, lawyers, and media/journalists, his main examples, are required to go through onerous licensing procedures in order to operate in this country, and he concludes that these procedures are effectively government trade barriers which amount to economic protectionism. His solution to the high cost of health care is to make it easier for foreign doctors to practice in the U.S., exposing American doctors to wage competition from, say, Mexican and Hindu doctors, who go to very highly regarded and internationally accredited medical schools, but are willing to work for half the salary.
Sounds great on its face! Ha ha, hoo boy, that's sure hoisting those Free-Market advocates on their own petard!
But wait a minute, where does the concept of a "race to the bottom" fit in? Is the solution to our domestic health care problems really to tear down the wages of our own hometown doctors? 'Cause I mean, tearing down the wages of factory workers in this country sure hasn't turned us into a manufacturing powerhouse. Shouldn't we be seeking higher quality in life-critical fields like health care, and how is higher quality really possible while continually cutting down salaries?
So I read Dean Baker regularly, and he does have an awful lot of really good, intelligent, innovative ideas. Yet he leaves me with a creepy feeling after reading him. To the best of my knowledge, he has never hinted in 10 years that his work is any kind of irony or performance art. He really just writes because he believes economic principles should be applied equally to everyone without bias.
Yglesias' fans will probably enjoy reading Dean Baker, if you don't already.
The Yglesias fan club is notably silent on the question of whether their man understands the dismal science at all. (Hint: Until about two years ago he betrayed not the slightest bit of interest in it.)
OK Justin if there were a different framework than what the likes of Yglesias and Krugman use then it has to get out there and compete. If you feel that the dominant framework is not optimal then what are you going to use to displace it?
I see now Dean Baker also invokes creepy feelings. Good job, this is how you're going to get around the problem of not being taken seriously.
Brian: "the likes of Yglesias and Krugman"?
I'm not a huge Krugman fan, but your boy Yglesias can't shine his shoes. Exhibit A: "The Immiseration of Capital"
Meanwhile, you're here, in a post where the topic touches upon the yawning chasm between science/truth and what can be said in the mainstream of this utterly rotten culture, taunting people about "the problem of not being taken seriously." Wow.
"This isn't about rational thinking per se -- and maybe that's the point, actually. In the media, the blogosphere, and lots of other domains, a process which has rendered an identity relationship between "rational thinking" and "economic thinking" has been so powerful that folks arguing in terms that aren't explicitly economic -- in moral terms, for instance -- are often dismissed out of hand as "unserious", despite the fact that many non-economics models are entirely rational. To be treated as a member of the big boys club one needs to conspicuously display one's economic bone fides."
Exactly the same is true when it comes to war and peace issues. "Serious" people never oppose an American war because it is immoral. They oppose it because it would hurt our national interest. Yet they do use the language of morality when discussing enemy violence.
OT slightly: "Predicted outcomes in economic theory are not a measure of the soundness of real world decision making, rationality or intelligence. They are true to an internal logic, but that is only logical in the context of economics, it has little connection to logic as we use it in every day behavior that takes into account a wide range of other factors above, under and beyond economic logic." Didn't Augustine use this devise to prove the existence of God?
Slightly off topic: In the future, more people's opinions will matter but it will not seem that way. The domain in which each will carry weight will be much smaller than before. So small as to the point of practically vanishing. It will not seem that people's opinions matter only that their interests matter. In each domain more and better communication will allow the dominant idea to emerge quickly. It will probably seem less democratic because it will happen so quickly. If it is in fact less democratic, I would not be so sure. Part-timers will not be able to keep up and their views will be taken to be either uninformed or self-interested. Policy makers are either balancing different interests or putting their own first; not yours. I would not characterize the dominant framework as "economic" even if it is mostly. There probably is a way to evolve the framework to make room for morality and emotion. When that happens, it will probably look more formal and probably more like economics which in my view is a formal way to understand how people might decide to organize things that matter to them. Until that happens, morality and emotion look like expressions of self-interest.
"Try to imagine the horrifyingly warped and hollowed out transformation your personality would have to undergo for this to be the way you made sense of the world."
I don't have to imagine, that is how I make sense of the world. I'd say at least since I was in middle-school. It's really the viewpoint hostile to "rational" or "cold" thinking that strikes me as odd, yet extremely common. I sometimes get to thinking how strange it is most people think that way, but then I remember there is no God but the Blind Idiot Azathoth/Evolution and we can get by with lots of wacky beliefs.
I made a Devil's Advocate argument regarding a "race to the bottom" with Scott Sumner here. And I really enjoyed Dean Baker's book (though I'm sure we disagree on many substantive things).
Good job, this is how you're going to get around the problem of not being taken seriously.
I never before realized Matt Yglesias posted under the handle "Brian" on Blogger.
Lovely implication there, "Brian," that Yglesias is "taken seriously" while Justin and Thomas won't ever be.
I do take Tubby the Merit Tugboat seriously: he seriously knows how to eat, seriously knows how to think himself wise, seriously konws how to over-value his own insights and opinions.
That's some serious stuff right there.
On the Q of why I don't respond "seriously" to Tubby's posted ideas?
They don't merit serious treatment because they are so hollow, and so grandiose in their self-impression and self-soothing. To address them pointwise as if they were serious would be to credit them with a depth, breadth and wisdom that they simply do not possess or embody.
I don't have any problem with Dean Baker, that was someone else's remark. While he doesn't creep me out in particular, I agree with the sentiment and that is part of what the post is about.
The not being taken seriously remark killed me. That's kind of my whole point, one of the ways to be taken seriously in our media/political structure is to adopt a pseudo-economic persona and use that as your primary frame of reference from which to see the world. What I am saying is that I don't want to be taken seriously if that is how one is taken seriously.
I'm not interested in participating in a discussion with policy wonks, I am talking at them, not with them.
...and the first requirement in both policy wonking and mainstream economics is the same -- confinement of one's scientific attentions to the terms and matters that serve the vested interests. What Homo economicus is to the dismal non-science, Homo takemeseriosus is to the wonking world.
I'd like to leave this article by the Guardian and see what those who have no problem with economics as a dominant world view to discuss it's implications:
Food speculation: 'People die from hunger while banks make a killing on food'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2011/jan/23/food-speculation-banks-hunger-poverty
"It all makes perfect economic sense."
"I am talking at them"
Is that another way of saying "about them", or with the implication that you would like them to understand their critique but know they won't pay it serious attention? I say that only because I remember a line from "Torin's Passage".
Atilio, speculators try to guess where the price is going to be. The sooner we get a warning, the better (killing the messenger does not help). And as Krugman wrote after Vidal, there wasn't much evidence of food speculators in the first place. If you want some moralizing on the wrongness of anti-profiteering, see here.
"I'm not interested in participating in a discussion with policy wonks, I am talking at them, not with them."
Right. Then my interpretation is that the original comment was meant to be a harmless "venting". It is an emotional, indulgent and self-interested expression which you are entitled to because it's your blog. Recognized as such it will not convince that there is a problem with the kind of discourse that you rail against.
Atilio, to get rid of food price speculation you would have to get rid of futures markets in food. If you get rid of futures markets in food you will have higher food prices because the food business will be riskier. If you have higher food prices, you will have more starvation. The reason economics does not make sense to many people is because they did not bother to try.
Atilio, the people who have a problem with the dominant perspective really don't want to make an effort to change it. They just want to indulge in their emotions while reading about starvation.
"It is an emotional, indulgent and self-interested expression which you are entitled to because it's your blog."
Enough with the tautologies.
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