Tom Keane

If memory serves

A false memory has been implanted in a mouse; possibilities abound

Researchers at MIT announced last week that they had succeeded in implanting a false memory in a mouse. The conspiracists among us are doubtless thinking that, if this is just now being announced to the public, it’s probably been in the works for years. In fact, they likely believe, the government almost certainly has mastered these techniques at levels far beyond what the MIT scientists revealed.

So I checked in with some folks at the National Security Agency, and I remembered them assuring me that wasn’t the case at all. “And even if it was,” they asked, “Whatever would we use it for?”

Good point. And I also remembered that I mentioned to them something I had read about the NSA conducting large-scale surveillance of American citizens. “Absolutely not,” they told me. “That would utterly violate the Bill of Rights. It would be against the ideals we are committed to serving: protecting the liberties of every American.”

“By the way,” they asked, “Where did you hear about this?”

And come to think of it, I couldn’t recall. “I’m not sure,” I said, “Maybe it was just one of those weird dreams. You know, the kind where you wake up in the early morning and you’re not sure what is real and what isn’t?”

“Happens all the time,” they said. I apologized for ever thinking ill of them, and they promised me no offense taken.

Since then, I have to say, I’ve been feeling pretty good about how things are going.

Take this immigration issue. I know there was a lot of controversy over it, with a number of conservatives taking a hard line against so-called illegals. But then, as I now remember, one of the leading opponents of reform had a dramatic epiphany on the House floor. “It occurs to me,” he said, “that these people are no different from my forebears. From a different part of the world, maybe, and maybe with a different complexion. But they have the same yearning for freedom that brought my great-grandparents to these shores. America welcomed them then and should welcome them today.”

Those words brought everyone to their senses, the reforms swiftly passed and President Obama promptly signed them into law.

Someone once told me that there had been talk about our political system being dysfunctional, but I don’t know where that came from. Whether it’s the economy, student loans, or the budget deficit, Republicans and Democrats are tackling issues together. Remember House Speaker John Boehner saying, “Our job is to come together for the good of the American people”? And Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid responding, “We may disagree, but we never doubt each other’s honor and integrity”? Heck, they’re even saying nice things about Obamacare.

This, as I remember, is the way it’s supposed to be.

Meanwhile, with President Obama at the helm, the United States continues to lead the world to a brighter future. Egypt, for example, is doing great. After its first true elections ever, Mohammed Morsi last year was sworn in as President, ushering in a thriving democracy while winning the love and affection of the entire country . . .

. . . No, wait, sorry. I must have misremembered, because now I remember that it’s really the decisive Egyptian armed forces who created a strong transitional government that will soon lead to free and fair elections, thereby winning the love and affection of the entire country.

My point is, what a wonderful world it would be if we could remember things the way we wanted them to be. Think of it as nostalgia for the present. Even in Massachusetts: The governor and legislative leaders are working together as a true team, new bridge construction is going off without a hitch — nary a traffic jam in sight! — and crime in Boston has completely vanished.

And, as I recollect, things are going well personally too. There was that Pulitzer Prize, the lottery ticket that netted me a cool $25 million, and the woman with supermodel looks I got to marry. I wake up in the weak light of dawn, when reality and fantasy are easily confused, and look over at the sleeping form next to me. Oh, well. One out of three isn’t bad.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Globe on July 30, 2013.

Confined by destiny

It’s better to be a commoner with free will than a prince with none

A child is born and America rejoices, making us wonder, once again, what it is about British royalty that has such attraction for those living in the land of the free and the brave. We supposedly cast off that yoke 237 years ago, but we never really seem to have gotten over our fascination with royals, wishing, perhaps, that we could be them. In truth, it’s a wish we’d never want fulfilled.

The last century or so has seen tale after tale about the soap opera-like lives of the House of Windsor. Edward’s abdication in 1936. George’s accession to the throne, stutter or not. Elizabeth’s long reign, from age 26 and now in its 61st year. The fairy-tale wedding of Charles and Diana, its grinding dissolution, and her tragic death. The fairy-tale wedding as well of William and Kate — she plucked from the obscurity of a commoner (well, OK, her parents are multimillionaires) — and then the multiple false reports of pregnancies, confirmation, and finally, last week, the birth of George Alexander Louis.

George’s birth is particularly striking because it is unlike that of almost any other birth in the world. George has a destiny. It’s an idea that seems very far removed from modern-day sensibilities.

We like to think of ourselves as autonomous individuals, free to be and free to become whatever we want. In the United States, in particular, that ideal of equal opportunity has a powerful hold. We believe that no one is bound by the circumstances of their birth. Parentage is irrelevant, social strictures of class are fluid and maybe even nonexistent. One rises and falls based on individual ambition and merit.

There are real-world limits to this. When people are judged on matters such as their race, ethnicity, or sex, then the opportunities available to them are circumscribed. There is also much evidence that the conditions of our earliest years — from birth through year five — are enormously consequential. Everything from poor nutrition to poor parenting reverberates through a person’s life. Then too there is a sense that the US economy has changed and that opportunities to move from lower class to middle class — to be comfortable but not wealthy — have become less available.

Still, those are all challenges to be confronted and fixed. Indeed, we see those issues as social evils precisely because they undercut equal opportunity. We may not be there yet — and we may never really achieve it — but, as expressed in the Declaration of Independence, we are always in “pursuit.”

Royalty represents an entirely opposite notion: You are what you were born to be. It’s an idea rooted in antiquity; as far back as we have recorded history, we’ve had nobility. Parentage and class were supremely important. To be on the upper rungs was preferable — one had wealth and status. To be on the lower rungs, on the other hand, often meant being consigned to misery.

Much of the story of the United States, in fact, is that it was a place where people could escape the Old World’s strictures. It was a revolutionary model, and many of the countries that people once escaped from — especially in Europe — have now followed suit. Like the United States, they’ve created true democracies, giving citizens equal voices and getting rid of the rigid hierarchies that once defined the course of people’s lives. Many of them still retain the vestiges of royalty — Great Britain, of course, but also Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain, and more — but it is a largely powerless position, a figure on a stage acting as head of state, but nothing much more.

Which brings us to baby George, a child who one day likely will be king. Many doubtless envy his circumstances. Isn’t it everyone’s fantasy to learn, “Princess Diaries”-like, that we are in truth a prince or princess? But envy, it seems to me, is the wrong word. Pity is more like it. As the rest of the world increasingly grants its citizens the right to be whatever they want, George has no choice. The royals are indeed different: There is no equal opportunity for them. Their destiny is known, and that is a terrible burden to bear.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Sunday Globe on July 28, 2013.

Is Boston like Detroit?

The difference between a thriving city and one in collapse is public safety

Look at Detroit, an utter basket case of a city, bankrupt and seemingly beyond hope, and marvel at how different and how much better off is Boston. But the line between Boston and Detroit is short. Detroit’s downfall could, in the not-so-recent past, have been Boston’s too, and it might be again. The fortunes of cities — ascendant or descendent — are no accident, but rather a consequence of conscious choices. It’s a sobering reminder during this year’s mayor’s race: the next man or woman in charge risks losing it all.

In 1950, Detroit, with 138 square miles, had a population of 1.8 million, making it the fourth-most populous in the country. Today it’s just a shade over 700,000. Once densely packed and vibrant, vast stretches are now empty and desolate. Over 78,000 buildings stand abandoned. Half of its 305,000 properties can’t pay the property tax they owe. The unemployment rate is 16.3 percent, more than double the nation’s average. City services — police, fire, road work, and the like — are spotty and underfunded. Middle-class residents have fled; those left are poor and predominantly African-American. And the latest blow: Last week the city filed for bankruptcy. The state-appointed emergency manager, Kevyn Orr, estimates Detroit owes over $18 billion.

A great American city, now deeply, abjectly, humbled.

And Boston? It’s smaller than Detroit — only 48 square miles — and went through its own loss of population, from 801,000 in 1950 to a low of 563,000 in 1980. An observer at the time might have thought the futures of both cities to be alike. But Boston’s story took a very different turn. Since 1980 the population has slowly climbed; it’s now 636,000. Middle-class families in Boston stayed, and now the city is seeing a flood of newcomers. White flight has reversed, especially among the young, the college-degreed, and empty nesters. Detroit’s per-capita income is $15,261; Boston’s is $33,158. Only 12 percent of those living in Detroit have a college degree. In Boston, the figure is 43 percent. Far from bankrupt, Boston’s finances are solid and its budget balanced. Business is booming as well, reflected in a low unemployment rate of 5.9 percent.

The difference between the two, I think, comes down to basics and in particular, to one key essential: public safety. In 1980, both cities had reputations as crime-ridden and dangerous. Over time, even as crime rates dropped nationally, Detroit just got worse. Last year’s homicide rate was the highest ever, and the city regularly ranks as the most dangerous in the country. During the same period, crime in Boston dropped precipitously, thanks in large measure to a series of crime-fighting reforms dubbed the “Boston Miracle.” Boston was soon being called one of the nation’s safest big cities.

It seems pretty clear that, in general, people like living in cites. They relish the diversity, the intensity of entertainment options, and the constant, stimulating change. But safety concerns can easily trump all of that. A murder the next street over, a neighbor getting mugged, and pretty soon the “for sale” signs are up. The borders of cities are porous; no wall keeps in people or businesses. If crime rises, nearby communities beckon. Those who can afford to leave do so. Those who can’t afford to leave stay. And, as the levels of wealth and income drop, so does the tax base. That forces city services to be cut, which in turn pushes people out even more.

It’s a vicious cycle, the result of which is Detroit. Conversely, improve public safety and the cycle becomes virtuous — the result of which is Boston.

To date, much of the Boston mayor’s race has focused on higher-level matters, such as managing downtown development. These are the kind of concerns one has when everything else is going right — the problems of success, if you will. But of late worries about crime have re-emerged. Gun violence is up; the specter of the Marathon bombings continues to loom. The candidates are starting to talk more about public safety and that is as it should be. It’s the core issue, the criterion by which those who want to be mayor should be judged. Get it wrong, and Motor City here we come.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Globe on July 23, 2013.

Too much transparency

A closed-door meeting reveals how public access has weakened politics

Lovemaking and politics are perhaps best done behind closed doors. The former may be obvious, the latter far less so. Indeed, the trend has been to ever-greater openness in government, a trend that arguably improves public access but also comes at some significant cost. Under the spotlight, politicians increasingly play for the camera, hardening their positions and becoming less willing to compromise. And proof of that was on display (or not, as it turns out) last week when the US Senate met in a rare, secretive session for what turned out to be something akin to group therapy. The result may just herald a new day in the nation’s politics.

At issue was a process that is arcane: confirmation of presidential appointees. The president proposes and the Senate confirms — that’s the rule from the Constitution — and that power used to be exercised modestly. Not lately, however. Republican senators have taken to opposing nominees for reasons unrelated to their basic qualifications, largely, it seems, to torment and undercut the president.

Complicating things were the Senate’s rules themselves. Every senator is special (just like the Barney the Dinosaur song!) and so each is uniquely powerful. If any one senator doesn’t like something, he or she can object and there it sits, immovable, unless a supermajority — 60 senators — votes otherwise. With 45 Republican senators, that supermajority is hard to muster, and so President Obama has been watching, frustrated, as nominee after nominee has been held up. The logjam had reached a breaking point.

But the funny thing about the Senate supermajority rule is that it is merely a rule, and rules are created by a majority. So at any point 51 senators can eliminate the supermajority requirement and that’s what Democrats were now threatening to do. Billed as the “nuclear” option, the change would have upended over 200 years of tradition and deference to the minority party. Republicans were up in arms, promising their own payback when they someday secured majority status. The body truly was in a crisis.

So last Monday night, 98 out of 100 members met in the historic Old Senate Chamber (no longer used by the Senate, it’s now largely a museum) and hashed things out for three hours. The media weren’t invited, which was the point, and by the evening’s end, as press reports afterwards made clear, there had been a kind of catharsis. The meeting “enabled people to understand the difference in viewpoints,” said Oregon’s Jeff Merkley, a Democrat, while Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called it “an important moment for the Senate.”

“We have a new start for this body,” said Majority Leader Harry Reid. “Monday night was a magical night,” added West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin.

And it was magical, in large part, because people listened to each other. “Whenever we come to the floor normally we are speaking to a void, we are speaking to a camera, we are speaking to our constituents but there’s no one there to listen to us among our colleagues,” Merkley told reporters. It’s a telling observation. Freedom of information and open meeting laws had their genesis in the 1960s. Such “sunshine” acts were supposed to improve government by making the process visible to all. But too much sun can hurt also. As our politics has become ever more public, it is no coincidence that it has also become ever more mean-spirited.

We elect politicians, at whatever level of government, as our representatives. They are then supposed to meet and work to fashion policy and law. Doing so inevitably requires connecting together at a personal level so that one can understand and compromise. But when every word is recorded and where every sign of weakness or deviancy from orthodoxy is later used as a weapon, that doesn’t happen. What we get instead is point-scoring and harsh words.

After their private meeting, both parties came to an agreement. Democrats backed off on their threatened rule change. The GOP promised to let seven long-stalled nominations move forward. For the moment, at least, there’s a newfound sense of comity. A little less transparency and a little more sitting down to talk might do the Senate — and the country — a lot of good.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Sunday Globe on July 21, 2013.

Family feud

THE DEMOULAS clan is at it again, with name-calling and bad blood spilling into the public realm as the owners of the regional Market Basket supermarket chain gear up for another legal fight. The enterprise had its origin in Lowell in 1916 as a humble store selling fresh lamb. The two sons who bought it from their father in 1954 made it big and profitable. But the death of one in 1971 triggered a war for control and money that persists to this day. One rip-roaring lawsuit in 1994 featured fistfights and the disbarment of two lawyers; now the Demoulases are back in court, expletives and all.

I’m not picking sides. Family feuds are like divorces: Each camp can make its own compelling case for the utter venality of the other. The best course for bystanders is just to get out of the way. But it does make one wonder whether the worlds of commerce and family are just too toxic a mix. Perhaps it would be best to keep the two apart.

That won’t happen — and it shouldn’t.

The clashes of the Demoulases are hardly unique. From Cain and Abel and down through the years, families have a habit of shamelessly and publicly ripping themselves apart. Sumner Redstone, head of National Amusements, has had a series of public fights with daughter Shari. Donald and Roger Saunders — celebrity local hoteliers — clashed in the 1990s over accusations of self-dealing. Roger and Marc Berkowitz, inheritors of Legal Seafood, battled each other in court as well. Adidas and Puma are two shoe companies born out of a nasty split between two brothers. The life of L.S. Shoen, founder of U-Haul and father of 12, crumbled amid intrafamily tales of murder, beatings, and lies.

It’s a sad scene. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, “The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society,” but based on these stories, one might credibly fear for the future of civilization. Yet for all of the well-publicized incidents of strife among families, there are many more that are doing just fine.

For those of us accustomed to following the fortunes of public companies, it may come as a surprise to learn that family-owned or controlled companies are by far the biggest players in the world’s economy — accounting for somewhere between 70 to 90 percent of global GDP, according to the Family Firm Institute, an advocacy group. Perhaps even more striking, those businesses tend to be better run than non-family companies. A November 2012 study in Harvard Business Review found that while family businesses fared slightly less well in good economic times, they did better in bad times and in the long run had superior returns.

That makes sense. Family companies tend to be more conservative. As economies soar, they may not be as quick to rush ahead as their non-family counterparts. But that same frugality serves them well during recessions. In addition, because they aren’t subject to quarterly reporting measures, they can think more about investing for the future.

Bechtel, S.C. Johnson, Mars, and Wegmans are just a few of the larger, family-held companies where contentious and bitter lawsuits are not the norm. In fact, there’s an industry of advisers to family companies whose job it is to help them avoid precisely the sorts of problems that plague the Demoulases. A lot of that has to do with smart planning — being clear about who gets what and making sure that, the pressures of nepotism notwithstanding, the right people fill the right roles (even in family-owned companies, only one person can be the CEO).

Don’t expect family companies to go away, either. It is through families that we create and nurture the next generation. That means, most obviously, providing care, sustenance, and education for children. But also, for those in a position to do so, it means passing on a means of livelihood, a legacy arguably of far more value to one’s heirs than just a pot of money. It’s a job and an opportunity to have an impact on the world. The family business fulfills a deep human need, one undeterred even by the public feuds of others — since, of course, that would never happen to our family...

This column originally appeared in The Boston Globe on July 16, 2013.

Consumer, protect thyself

Scrap costly, inefficient government regulations — the Web does a better job

A VAST ARRAY of consumer protection requirements mandate licenses, certifications, inspections, and the like for the businesses that sell us goods and services. Those regulations may once have made sense but — thanks to the Internet — increasingly they do not. It’s time for them to go.

Barbers, manicurists, and cosmetologists have to be licensed. So do plumbers and roofers. Restaurants are inspected. Lawyers have to pass a bar exam. Real estate appraisers must be registered. Taxicabs have medallions. The list goes on and on, touching on almost every facet of our daily economic lives. And, for the most part, all these requirements are an enormous waste.

They don’t provide consumers with much in the way of protection. And they come at a considerable cost. There’s the cost of the governmental inspection regime, of course, as well as the fees that businesses have to pay to pass muster. But there’s a hidden, less apparent cost as well. Licensing requirements limit competition, stifle innovation, and raise prices. Rather than helping consumers, they hurt them. Indeed, that’s why it’s often businesses themselves that are the loudest supporters of government regulation: They like them because they’re protectionist.

Examples are easy to find. Taxi regulations in most cities sharply limit the number of cabs. Prices are higher than they should be, service is poor, and the availability of a cab is spotty. As documented in the Globe’s recent Spotlight series on the industry, the beneficiaries of all of this are the owners of medallions; the drivers who do the work are treated poorly — brutally, even. Then too, the regulatory regime resists change. Although some enlightened officials in Boston have welcomed new entrants such as Uber and Hailo (both smartphone apps that connect passengers to drivers), the industry (not surprisingly) doesn’t want competition, and collaborates with its own regulators to stifle it. That’s what happened in Cambridge, for instance, which last year sued to shut down Uber.

Anyone who has taken an introduction to economics course remembers the theoretical discussions of supply and demand and how, in an optimal world, markets would function perfectly, delivering high value and low prices to consumers. The real-world objection, however, is that information is imperfect. Sellers of goods and services can lie and cheat; they can sell or deliver substandard goods and services, fooling too many and sometimes hurting them in the process. “Caveat emptor” (“buyer beware” ) put too much of a burden on consumers to figure out which sellers are good and which are bad. Government intervention, it seemed, was needed. Otherwise, it was feared, without health inspections, restaurants would become filthy. Without bar exams, incompetents would be practicing law. Without licenses for hairdressers, we’d all be having bad hair days.

Of course, with health inspections occurring infrequently, there’s little guarantee that kitchens are always clean. Inept lawyers are easy to find. And most of us have tales of disastrous haircuts that ruined our day. In other words, the protections all these regulations give us are, at best, weak.

But more to the point, the conditions that gave rise to the need for government intervention have changed, brought about largely by the Internet and the explosion of information now available to almost anyone. Consumers review and rate almost every buying experience they have, posting them on general review sites, such as Yelp or Epinions, as well as on more specialized venues, such as Amazon or OpenTable. Thus, if a restaurant serves a bad meal, it’s probably not the health inspectors who will catch it. Rather, it’s customers, who will report any sign of vermin, hair in the food, or illness suffered. Other potential customers then read those reports and react accordingly, withholding their business.

This is true of more than restaurants. Indeed, businesspeople now live in near terror of those reviews, quickly fixing issues that arise, making amends with offended clients and doing whatever they can to improve customer satisfaction.

Instead of regulation by the government, we now have regulation by the masses — ever present and ever watchful. What the Internet is creating is the kind of optimal economic world that economists once dreamed of. And in that world, where each of us is a regulator, the government is irrelevant.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Sunday Globe on July 14, 2013.

Rental empires bare teeth at car-sharing startups

If only the owners of horses and buggies had been more organized, they likely could have thwarted the introduction of the automobile. If the slide rule industry had ponied up for more campaign contributions, it might have stopped the handheld calculator dead in its tracks. And if travel agents had banded together and gotten some strict regulations in place, Travelocity, Kayak, and the like never would have had a chance.

Disruptive technologies are tough on the old guard. Carriage rides are now a throwback curiosity, slide rules are collectors’ items, and travel agents are a dying breed. The transportation industry is now going through its own purge as an array of new businesses, most of them grounded in the explosion of information and communication made possible by the Internet and handheld devices, threaten long-established companies. But unlike the examples above, these old-line businesses have been able to secure the favor of legislators and regulators, meaning they are protected by rules that keep competitors out and slow the pace of change.

I’ve written about some of this before. The taxicab industry is beset by the likes of Uber and Sidecar. The oligopolistic automobile dealer industry is under attack by new manufacturers such as Tesla and the increasing obvious illogic that — of all consumer products — we can’t purchase cars online. And now along comes a new business model, called peer-to-peer car rentals or car sharing, that threatens to upend the dominance firms such as Hertz and Avis have enjoyed, particularly when it comes to on-airport operations.

Each of these industries has fought back, using the power of the state to beat back the new entrants. Municipal taxicab regulators tightly control the number of cabs and the prices they charge. Every state has laws in place prohibiting the sale of automobiles directly to consumers. And local governments and their airports have long offered rental firms a near-exclusive on travelers in need of a car while at the same time generating lucrative fees for themselves.

A quick explanation of car-sharing is warranted. Most of us own a car. Sometimes we’re not using it. When we aren’t, why not rent it out to someone who needs it? In a pre-Internet world, the logistics of matching owners and renters would have been nearly impossible, but new players such as FlightCar and RelayRides make it easy. Signing up to rent or be a renter takes moments. The companies take care of insurance, the entire transaction is done online (no queues, no counters, and no salespeople loading you up with useless insurance!), and in some cases it’s possible to unlock the car and drive away with just a command from your smartphone. And because the market is robust — lots of people are happy to rent their cars — prices are far below the norm.

At first the peer-to-peer businesses focused on residential neighborhoods, but they are slowly starting to eye airports — where most car rentals occur. Disappointingly (although not surprisingly) there’s been a lot of blowback. Massport, which operates Logan Airport, worries about the upstarts’ “safety, security, and customer service.” San Francisco is suing peer-to-peer company FlightCar to stop it from operating at the airport. And in May, RelayRides had to suspend all of its operations in New York because the state is unhappy with the insurance it carries.

Boston, San Francisco, and New York will argue that their true concern is consumer protection, but that’s a claim to be greeted with skepticism. More likely, it’s just about money. In San Francisco, for example, car rental companies pay the airport $25 per rental and 10 percent of their gross profits. FlightCar does not. That’s what is really upsetting the City by the Bay.

Granted, no one likes to lose a comfortable and consistent source of revenue. But think of the absurdity of this. Governments are thwarting innovation because they’re trying to protect their own narrow economic interests. Indeed, for those who argue that government should be more “business-like,” this is a sobering reminder that the public sector really isn’t business — and when it tries to be, it gets it wrong. Rather than fighting car sharing, states and localities should be getting out of the way, letting free markets do their stuff.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Globe on July 9, 2013.

Say yes to the carbon tax

A revenue-neutral strategy reflects the true costs of using energy

A small advocacy group in Massachusetts has proposed a novel, market-based approach to limiting the emissions of carbon dioxide — the colorless, odorless gas that is the underlying cause of global climate change. Their plan comes even as the Obama administration has unveiled its own set of rules aimed at accomplishing the same thing.

The president’s approach is the more traditional, the kind we associate with big government regulation — what some political scientists dub “command and control.” The Bay State scheme has a far greater potential for success, however, and is grounded in the power of prices and the way they affect our behavior. If the price of butter climbs, we use less, shifting over to margarine. If it falls, we use more. The local environmentalists, who call themselves the Committee for a Green Economy, want to apply the same principles to energy.

The basic problem with most forms of energy is that the price we pay — whether it’s at the pump or on our utility bill — doesn’t reflect its true cost. To be sure, the expense of extracting, refining, and then distributing the stuff is included in the bills we pay. But there are additional costs (economists call them “externalities”) that are borne by others. In the case of carbon dioxide emissions, those costs can be measured in the billions of dollars, as climate scientists have been documenting for years and as we are increasingly finding out first-hand. They include extreme temperatures and superstorms, the loss of coastline and an ever-rising likelihood of flooding. Someone eventually pays for all of this, of course, be it individuals in lives lost or governments funding efforts to clean-up and rebuild.

The ideal solution would be to somehow “internalize the externalities” — that is, make it so users of energy paid the full cost of that energy. Higher prices on fuels that emit carbon dioxide would mean we’d turn to sources (such as natural gas or wind) that emit less or we otherwise would seek to conserve. In the long run, rather than taxpayers bearing the cost of disaster relief after a flood, the hope is that the flood itself just wouldn’t happen.

How can this be managed? Here’s the tricky part: Put a tax on carbon dioxide. Those who have wearily battled Massachusetts’ infatuation with soaking its citizens for ever-more revenue undoubtedly (and for good reason) will be suspicious. New taxes would hurt the economy. Yes, they would cut carbon dioxide emissions. But they’d also cut jobs and economic growth.

There is a way around this conundrum, however. The Committee for a Green Economy’s thought is to take any new money raised and use it, dollar-for-dollar, to cut other state taxes — making it revenue-neutral, in other words. The organization hired a well-respected economics modeling firm, Regional Economics Models, Inc., to run some numbers and figure out the best approach. The answer: Use half of the revenue from a new carbon tax to reduce the corporate income tax, and the remainder to equally chop sales and income taxes.

Do so, and two interesting things happen. One, as expected, is that carbon dioxide emissions decline. Right now, Massachusetts emits about 64 million metric tons annually. With a tax of $45 per metric ton (which works out to about 39 cents per gallon of gasoline), that falls to about 56 million in 20 years.

The second, and perhaps surprising effect, is that the Bay State’s economy actually improves. Lower corporate and personal taxes offset the higher cost of living from the carbon tax, with the result being that the state’s gross domestic product increases by $8 billion from 2013 to 2035 (again, if the tax is $45 a metric ton). At the same time, the number of jobs climbs by about 10,000.

The Committee for a Green Economy’s proposal is already embodied in legislation introduced earlier this year by state Representative Thomas P. Conroy of Wayland and Senator Michael Barrett of Lexington, and the organization plans to launch a ballot campaign to try to make it law. A carbon tax — despite the word “tax” — is an exciting and worthy idea. Its reliance on markets rather than regulation makes it, as the Committee’s cofounder Jessica Langerman puts it, “an effective alternative both Democrats and Republicans can agree on.”

This column originally appeared in The Boston Sunday Globe on July 7, 2013.

The myth of crime and the NFL

The fall from grace of Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez should be no surprise. Football is a violent game, war by other means (albeit with black-and-white-striped referees). Here we have young men, taught from an early age to be brutal and then handed extraordinary riches for acting savagely. Conceived of this way, the remarkable thing about the Hernandez saga is not the charge of one murder (and perhaps three), but that it doesn’t happen more frequently. The boundaries of civilization that constrain most people don’t apply to NFL athletes. They can do whatever they want, indulging in their darkest and most vicious impulses mostly without consequence.

There is a surface appeal to the above, and I suspect more than a few reading it are nodding their heads in agreement. But it is also, utterly, nonsense. According to crime reports, NFL pros are not, on the whole, more prone to behaving badly than the rest of us. If anything, they are more law-abiding. And from there should pop the balloon of commentary that has followed Hernandez, commentary that has struggled to find the meaning of it all, as if one arrest must somehow tell us something important and deep about sports and ourselves. It doesn’t. Hernandez is — allegedly — a bad man. There are bad people everywhere, in all walks of life. And some of them, it turns out, happen to be famous.

The myth about crime and professional athletes arises because it’s easy to find examples. New York Giants star Plaxico Burress went to prison in 2009 on a firearms charge. Last year Jovan Belcher, of the Kansas City Chiefs, murdered his girlfriend and then committed suicide. Even as media everywhere were intently focused on Hernandez, the Cleveland Browns were cutting rookie Ausar Walcott after he was charged with attempted murder. In fact, a shocking 29 NFL players have been arrested since the 2013 Super Bowl ended.

But anecdotes can hide truth, not reveal it. It seems as if NFL players are committing so many crimes because every time they do, they make the news. It’s the same kind of thinking that leads people to erroneously believe air travel is more dangerous than automobile. Every time a plane goes down we read about it. Car crashes go largely unreported.

Two researchers writing in the academic journal Chance (published by the American Statistical Association) several years ago went through reams of data about crime and NFL players. Their perhaps startling conclusion: The rate of arrests of pro athletes for assault and domestic violence was less than half that of the general population. In other words, the football players were not more violent and in truth were markedly less so. That finding applies to other crimes as well. NFL players commit property crimes at a far lesser rate than does everyone else (perhaps not unexpectedly, given their relatively high incomes). And despite the image of NFL players as wild and crazy partiers (over 624 have been arrested for drunken driving since 2000), the drunken driving arrest rate for pro footballers is about half of that for all young men ages 20 to 29.

Of course, in the high-profile, big-money world of professional sports, any incident by a player has the potential for disaster. Pro players, especially stars, are individual marketing machines, hawking everything from clothing to automobiles. One misstep has a far greater consequence for others when it is committed by a well-known athlete (no one, for example, is buying a jersey with my name on the back). So it makes sense that the Patriots and the NFL quickly cut their ties with Hernandez — and in all likelihood will in the future be even more careful in scrutinizing the backgrounds and temperaments of those they employ.

Still, it’s a far step from there to claiming that the arrest of Hernandez proves the Patriots have “lost their way” or that there’s some deep, festering problem in the NFL. The violence inherent in the game does not, it turns out, somehow spill over to players’ personal lives; what happens on the field stays on the field. Coaches like to tell their charges that sports “build character.” The lower arrest rate of NFL athletes gives those homilies a ring of truth.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Globe on July 2, 2013.