I totally agree it's proposition 13 from the 1970's that laid the foundation for this near-bankruptcy. I live in San Francisco from 1972 to 1994. I saw the state start to go down once prop 13 passed. I couldn't believe the selfishness of its proponents or of the foolish angry greedy voters who passed it. People who bought houses for $20,000 saw their value go up to $200,000. A nice $180,000 profit. But can the state tax the property at its new value? Noooooo. I can understand people not wanting to pay the higher taxes each year. But there was an obvious compromise to defer the taxes until sale of the property. All the selfish newly-minted rich people didn't care. "No" was easier than thinking. The sad part is that it was 35 years ago, and many of those people have since left the state taking their cash, and moving to Arizona, Texas, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, and even Oklahoma with their fast money. And where is California headed now... they'll have to pave paradise and put up a parking lot, to quote Joni Mitchell.

Gary, you're forgetting that, unlike the Europeans who settled America, the Jews used to live in Palestine thousands of years ago and were expelled. If that weren't the case this would be a whole different ballgame. That fact doesn't justify war, but it's essential in understanding the motivations of the parties and what they might be willling to agree upon. Nice try.

Buying more consumer-oriented toys at Wal-Mart won't solve our problems, but it's not because consumers don't have enough money to make a dent. It's because buying a plasma display doesn't add enough value to the world we live in. Buying an education does. Once we get our priorities straight, everything else will follow.

The woman just does not know when to quit. And by insisting on slugging it out after that time has come, she makes enemies and causes destruction. She's a brawler, and you can't help but think that she holds self-interest above community interest. Even back in the Health Care Initiative days, she made a lot of enemies by not knowing when to quit. Quitting gives your opponent the opportunity to show you grace. It will be nice to have this family out of presidential politics!

I don't give much weight to those, like the author, who say if the system had been simpler or fairer or whatever, the results would be different. Reason? People perform according to how they're being measured. If you tell me that I need to have the most delegates to win, I will spend my money and my time to win delegates. If, in the same state, you tell me I needed popular vote to win, i will spend my money and time differently, so I win the popular vote. And if you changed the measurement after the vote, I would complain mightily. So if we don't like the rules, lets change them instead of pitting two good candidates against each other. For a candidate, like Hillary Clinton, who whines that the rules don't make sense, I have no sympathy. And for the people of Florida and Michigan, whose preference is not likely to matter, I also have no sympathy. They elected their representatives, and those folks bucked party rules. They are seeing the consequences. If the people are unhappy, they can vote the representatives out.

If I had read the entire article, I would have seen that Mr Burton is indeed on top of the Prisoner's Dilemma. I hope he will forgive me. But I would still like to know more about how the agents learned.

I think the study is mistaking its own navel for truths about you and me, and I'm disappointed that Mr. Burton didn't notice. I'll guess that the "race to the bottom" found by the study is nothing more than an expression of the learning strategy the agents use. Mr Burton didn't describe any details of that strategy or relate it to the emotional evaluations we make in real life. Had he done so, he might have run across the Prisoner's Dilemma, an old and well-studied game that pits community thinking against selfishness. In that game, prisoners have encounters in pairs and, as a group, each gain the most if they cooperate. But there are penalties for trying to cooperate with a prisoner who is competing, and short-term defensive rewards for competing yourself. The best strategy in the game is to play in a way that trains other, possibly skeptical, prisoners that you are not going to compete. So trained, they stop competing also and you eventually all optimize your winnings. It costs you during training, but you get it back if the game lasts long enough. In that game, if your learning strategy is to maximize short-term gain, there's a race to the bottom. If it is to maximize long-term gain, you all wind up on the high ground. Mr. Burton?