Stumbling and Mumbling

Rationality & preferences

Ben Saunders thinks the PFA player of the year awards - in which Ronaldo got player of the year whilst Cesc (pbuh) got young player of the year - show footballers to be irrational. How, he asks, "can Ronaldo be the best out of all players but not best out of the young ones?"
Quite easily. Players' weren't just expressing a preference for player of the year, but a wider preference. It would have been quite rational for a player to vote for Ronaldo as player of the year but Cesc (pbuh) as young player, even though Ronaldo was eligible in this category. He might have figured:

I have to acknowledge that Ronaldo has been the best player this year. But I don't want the oily little turd to become even more arrogant by giving him two prizes. And I want to recognize too the divinity of Cesc (proof). So I want him to get a prize too.

This, surely, is quite rational.
I make this point because it has a wider application. What looks like irrationality can sometimes (often?) be merely different preferences than we think.
Take a trivial example. Today, I prefer to have chicken than salmon for dinner. But yesterday, I preferred salmon to chicken. Isn't it inconsistent and irrational to prefer one thing one day and another the next? Not at all. My over-arching preference is for a varied diet.
If we re-assess preferences, then, what seems irrational can become rational, and vice versa.

Caring vs talking

The acres of dead trees discussing the craptaculartude of the world's worst football team reminds me of Heather Mills.
No, I don't just mean that England played like unipedal cretins. I mean that journalists are making the same mistake Ms Mills makes - of confusing caring with talking.
The thing is, no true football fan cares that much about England. Our loyalties are to our club side.
But we often talk more about the national side than about our club side. This is because the England team acts as a convenient focal point for discussion.  
I have a couple of colleages who support S****; as I say, work is alienating. I don't discuss the really important footballing questions with them: Walcott vs Rosicky? Should Hleb play out wide or in the middle? Have physicists discovered a unit of measurement large enough to capture the extent to which Cesc is superior to every other player on the planet?
Talking about Arsenal with S**** fans would be like discussing Rembrandt with David Blunkett. Similarly, they don't discuss their misfortune with me, for fear of hearing my Nelson Muntz impersonation.
Instead, we talk about England; it's a convenient meeting point for discussion. In other words, the England team is an Adler superstar (pdf). We talk about it not because we like it more than other things, but because its something we all know. The difference between the England team and piles is that we agree that one is a suitable topic of discussion whilst the other isn't; indeed, this might be the only difference.
The same is true for many celebrities. People talk about Britney Spears, Paris Hilton or Heather Mills not because these women are more talented or better-looking than others, but simply because they are well-known.
There are two implications here.
First, inequalities of income can be unmerited. Celebrities can earn big money not because they have ability, but simply because they get people talking; this is the secret of Piers Morgan's success*.
Second, celebrities themselves can get fooled by this. Some - and this is where Ms Mills comes in - think that because we talk about them, we care. But we don't. For making this mistake, Ms Mills will probably kick herself.
* No mention of Mr Morgan can pass without Stephen Fry's contribution to the Uxbridge English Dictionary: "Countryside: the act of killing Piers Morgan."

Blaming foreigners

Sports Minister Gerry Sutcliffe has entered the toughest competition in Britain; he's trying to become our most risible politician. He wants an inquiry into whether foreign players are to blame why the England team is doing so badly.
They are indeed to blame - they are better than us. And there is a link between the uselessness of English footballers and the dominance of foreigners in the Premiership. There are many foreign players in the Premiership because English footballers aren't good enough - not vice versa.
But there's a question here that's not being asked: why is there so much fuss about the number of foreign players now? Why wasn't there a fuss two or three years ago, when their numbers were almost as great?
There are two reasons:
1. 2-3 years ago, people thought England were a good team, and their failure to get beyond the quarter-final of the 2002 World Cup or Euro 2004 was due to bad luck or bad management. Today, this illusion is shattered. Everyone knows the England team are bad, and they're looking for someone to blame. And it's an old and universal fact that foreigners can be blamed for everything.
2. Arsenal are a better team now. And their rivals, having no hope of playing better football, want to drag them down. Let's look at who's calling for a quota on foreigners.

Asked if he was in favour of the quota system, Gerrard said: “Yes, definitely, I am all for there being a rule change. “Something has got to happen otherwise there will be more and more foreigners and they will take over." 

This is the same Stevie G who got outplayed by Cesc Fabregas last month, and who knows that Liverpool are obviously inferior to Arsenal.

Reading manager Steve Coppell says quotas on English players in Premier League teams are necessary in order to improve the national side.

He said this the day after Reading got played off the pitch by guess who.

"It's certainly not wrong that clubs should be seen to have a proportion of home-based players," said Ferguson, who is proud that his team is based equally on British and foreign players..."You want to protect your own."

Old Red Nose is certainly protecting his own. You'd never guess who are Manyoo's closest challengers for the title.
So, let's face it. Calls to limit foreign players are not only illiberal and illogical, but they are based on the most blatant narrow self-interest. The magnificent Daily Mash got it right:

Sir Alex Ferguson has demanded a cap on the number of matches Arsenal is allowed to win during a Premier League season.
The Manchester United manager said Arsenal wins were undermining the domestic game and preventing other teams from winning trophies as often as they would like to.

The talent myth

In his speech yesterday Gordon Brown  made much of the idea of talent:

Each and everyone of us has a talent and each and everyone of us should be able to use that talent...
we must unlock all the talents of all of the people.

This is the purest wibble. Economic success requires that talent not be unlocked, and remain unused.
One reason for this is that customers and employers want consistency, guaranteed delivery, predictability. And this requires that people work well within the limits of their talents.
If you had to go into hospital for a minor operation, who would you rather perform it - the brilliant surgeon for whom the operation is a dull routine one, or the young and mediocre  one for whom it's challenge requiring full use of their talent?
Even in football and music - two areas where "talent" is most valued - this is true. Many musicians feel frustrated because their audience wants to hear their well-known work which they can perform in their sleep rather than their newer more adventuous work. Many footballers can thrive by cutting out tricks - ask Joe Cole; even Cesc Fabregas (pbuh) reins in his full skills.
A second reason is that, as Adam Smith pointed out, the division of labour is the key to economic progress. We get rich by specializing, as this both raises productivity through incessant practice, and allows comparative advantage to generate gains from trade. But this specialization stifles many of our talents. The musician who becomes a lawyer never fully unlocks his musical talent. The cricketer who becomes a doctor lets his cricketing talent wither.
As A.N. Whitehead said, "civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them."
And then there's capitalism. Capitalism is all about maximizing profit. All profits come from power. And this means disempowering talented workers. As Harry Braverman showed in one of the best books ever written, capitalism requires that workers be robbed of their skills.
And this is why Brown's words are not only stupid, but perniciously stupid.  In pretending that economic progress and human flourishing can always coexist - especially under capitalism - he's ignoring one of the most important and profound trade-offs of all.