In sumo wrestling, the two top regulators (referees) carry a dagger at work. The dagger indicates their willingness to commit ritual suicide (seppuku) if they make a mistake. This is an excellent practice that regulators across a variety of fields and around the world should adopt.
The First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays, published in 1623, provides a benchmark price for an up-market, popular book about four centuries ago. The folio book size, which was the largest typical book size, marked that publication as being an up-market item. Although the Shakespeare’s First Folio has become an enormously valuable collector’s treasure, it was not produced as a limited-edition book. The First Folio had an initial print run of an estimated 750 copies. That was a relatively large print run for that time. In 1623, the price of the First Folio, unbound, was 20 shillings. A high-quality binding might have cost several additional shillings.
Over the past four centuries, the price of books relative to services has decreased roughly a hundred-fold. In 1623, the price of the First Folio relative to an up-market seat at a enclosed theater, relative to a craftperson’s monthly earnings, and relative to the price of a man’s visit to the barber were 13.3, 0.7, and 10.0, respectively. By 2011, these relative prices had increased by factors of 41, 111, and 8, respectively. The barber’s service in 1623 may have been much more extensive (shaving, wig treatment, etc.) than a man’s haircut in 2011. The admission price for groundlings at open-air London theaters like the Globe was only a penny. The change in the relative price of an up-market book to a craftperson’s monthly earnings is the best indicator of the change in relative prices. By any reasonable indicator, the relative price of books has dropped enormously.
Dispersion in general-market book prices appears to have decreased. The First Folio, even unbound, cost forty times more than a standard playbook in 1623. In the U.S. today, most paperbacks cost more than five dollars, and most hardcover books, less than fifty dollars. The growth in e-books may push price dispersion towards the higher levels of four centuries ago.
* * * * *
Statistics: book prices relative to other prices across four centuries (Excel version)
Sources: The price for Shakespeare’s First Folio is from Edward Dering’s Book of Expenses (entry for Dec. 5, 1623). The source provides a variety of prices in London in 1623, including the prices for attending a play and going to the barber. For information about Dering’s Book of Expenses, see Lennam, T. N. S., “Sir Edward Dering’s Collection of Playbooks, 1619-1624,” Shakespeare Quarterly, v. 16, n. 2 (1965) pp. 145-153.
About as many prisoners are killed illegally in U.S. jails and prisons as are executed through judicial sentences. Data are readily available only for the years 2001-4. Across these years, on average 72 prisoners were illegally killed per year, while on average 65 were legally executed per year. A much larger number of prisoners commit suicide and have deaths listed under an “other/unspecified” cause.[*] Total prisoner deaths from non-medical causes (in order of decreasing frequency, deaths from suicide, other/unspecified causes, accidents, and homicides) averaged 877 per year. That’s more than an order of magnitude greater than the frequency of legal executions.
The death penalty and legal executions get a relatively large amount of public attention. The death penalty involves direct, deliberate, legal killing. The action necessary to stop legal executions is obvious and formally feasible. The death penalty supports well-recognized actors, focal stories, and polarized public arguments. The death penalty is thus well-suited to public deliberation.
However, measured by death in the criminal justice system, the considerable effort and resources applied in opposition to the death penalty probably have been a relatively poor investment. Suppressing the death penalty is a very difficult challenge in the U.S. Legal executions have not occurred only for about fifteen years across all of U.S. history. On the other hand, reducing non-medical prisoner deaths by 10% would account for a larger reduction in deaths in the U.S. criminal justice system than would eliminating the death penalty. If the material resources and public attention committed to death-penalty debate were directed to prison guards and administrators, a 10% reduction in non-medical prisoner deaths probably would be quite feasible.
Unfortunately, details of prison conditions and operating protocols aren’t well-suited to public deliberation. Authoritative decisions can’t easily and directly change outcomes. Prison conditions and operating protocols involve the actions of many persons with no public profiles. Most persons aren’t interested in narrow issues of prison administration and can’t be easily motivated to learn about them and discuss them.
General public values of bureaucratic professionalism, reasoned action, and humane concern are probably the most quantitatively imporant democratic controls on death in the criminal justice system.
* * * * *
Statistics: deaths of prisoners in U.S. prisons and jails (Excel version)
[*] “Other/unspecified” causes don’t include death from medical causes, meaning “natural causes” / illness and deaths from AIDS.
In professional sports, instant replay technology typically must provide “indisputable visual evidence” of a mistaken call in order for officials to overturn the call. Understanding the “indisputable visual evidence” standard of review for audio-visual replays requires recognizing that:
Officials’ deliberating about what is the correct call isn’t an exiting spectator sport. Such deliberations should be limited to correcting blunders, meaning calls that are obviously incorrect to most fans in the midst of their real-time experience of the competition.
An interesting recent law article argues against the “indisputable visual evidence” standard of review and in favor of de novo review. The article emphasizes a competitor’s perspective and just deserts. In the context of primarily considering major-league professional American football, the article states:
the value of error-correction gains strength from views about what those who participate in a rule-governed competition deserve, and about the justice of arranging institutions to yield outcomes that comport with desert.[1]
Major-league professional football players have more interesting work, higher pay, and greater social status than most persons, including persons arguably much more deserving of such rewards. The factual correctness of officials’ calls in professional football has little significance to all but the narrowest evaluation of justice and desert for professional football players. Major-league professional sports are a big-money entertainment business. Considering standards of review for instant replay should begin from that economic reality.
Apart from obvious officiating blunders, erroneous reversal of an official’s initial call reduces the entertainment value of sports significantly more than erroneous affirmation of a mistaken call. The excitement of sports is largely in the moment of the game. Immersed in the game, fans interpret what they see within the rules of the game. Officials support that diegetic experience. Making a call later is a poor substitute for making the call in the stream of the game’s normal competitive activity. A human psychological tendency toward loss aversion makes regret likely to weigh more heavily than pleasure across two opposing fans after a reversed call.[2] In addition, reversal of calls undermines the general experience of immersion in the game by raising the salience in consciousness of extra-diegetic activity. Lessening immersion in the game reduces the entertainment value of sports.
Officiating rules need to be considered in conjunction with game presentation technologies and practices. More cameras, higher-definition images, and more use of replays in game presentations may not make for more entertaining games. Game presentation technology that allows fans to judge the game more accurately than officials undermines officials positions as supports for fans’ immersion in the game-world. Sports officiating technology and standards of review should be chosen to support fans’ immersion in the sports game-world.
Read more:
* * * * *
Notes:
[1] Berman, Mitchell N., Replay (March 7, 2011). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1830403 Quote from p. 37. Berman is a pathbreaking scholar in the legal analysis of sports. A least one government bureaucrat has asserted the value of sports officiating in developing regulatory expertise.
[2] Berman (2011) pp. 37-9 considers this effect and argues that its importance increases with the extent that the relevant sport is valued as entertainment.