Today someone pointed out to me that civilisation has (arguably) existed for about 7000 years - since the Sumerians. So if you live to 70, you have been alive for 1% of the length of civilisation. That seems quite substantial, and perhaps a remedy for those that feel insignificant in the scheme of things. 1% is quite a substantial chance to make a difference.
That said, the earliest historical figure I can think of is Thales (can you do better?), and he was only about 600BC - which is less than half the length of civilisation ago. So perhaps our prospects for being remembered aren't all that good after all.
Of course, scientifically-inclined readers will note that if you live to 70, you have been alive for about 0.00000005% of the history of the universe so far...
The Poverty of the Politics of Poverty
Udayan complained the other day that my writing is too 'vanilla'. Luckily for him, I have been a little unimpressed with the NZ blogosphere of late, and so here is something a little more strongly worded than usual. Normal posting will resume shortly; I have a few thought experiments on the morality of tax which will be coming soon.
Like many, I am little worried that the social development minister Paula Bennett thinks it's appropriate (read that link because I will assume you know what I'm talking about!) to chuck private information into the public domain to win some cheap debate points. But unlike some local commentators, I don't think it's worth hyperventilating about. It's clearly inappropriate, but saying that it is 'about the right to free speech without fear of reprisal' is way off-base. It's also a little hypocritical for those who are provoked into a righteous rage whenever someone even mentions that the 'more Government' isn't the answer to every political question to tell us to 'beware of unbridled Government'. But it's pretty apparent that many people are only opposed to Government power when it's wielded by the 'bad guys', and are quite happy for themselves or their friends to have it - witness Obama's somewhat limp redaction of Bush-era civil-rights abuses.
Let's be quite clear here - these two ladies are certainly criticising the Government. But they are also making empirical claims about the amount of welfare they receive, which appear to have been misleading, to make their case for more welfare sound stronger than it actually was. That puts them in a very different situation than your average National-hating blogger, some of whom are now ridiculously suggesting that they could be the next target. Get over yourselves. More importantly though, you should realise that National's reponse, while bad, isn't straight out of Mussolini's playbook. There's a world of difference between abusing your power to embarrass your critics and abusing it to correct them when they lie about their means. Both are bad, but only one is really a threat to the fabric of democracy. The former discourages criticism full stop, the latter discourages lying about yourself in the public sphere to try to get more money.
I think that in any healthy debate, both actors should as a general rule be able to correct factual inaccuracies in the other side's case. In this specific situation, the error related to private information, so the Government should have definitely proceeded more carefully (read: not given out the information). The appropriate response would be to defend their programs with averages and hypotheticals.
I guess a large part of the reason I am annoyed here is my views are coloured by my own situation - I am a student and (if Paula Bennett's figures are right) have an income (including weekly student allowance, not including course fees) of less than half what those women receive. In terms of Government transfers, I get less than a quarter, and I have to pay that back when I graduate (or more accurately, when I start working full-time :) ) I appreciate that it's difficult to raise a child and study at the same, but with student loans and subsidised child care on top of what they already get, I'm very sceptical that these two women can't afford to study.
Like many, I am little worried that the social development minister Paula Bennett thinks it's appropriate (read that link because I will assume you know what I'm talking about!) to chuck private information into the public domain to win some cheap debate points. But unlike some local commentators, I don't think it's worth hyperventilating about. It's clearly inappropriate, but saying that it is 'about the right to free speech without fear of reprisal' is way off-base. It's also a little hypocritical for those who are provoked into a righteous rage whenever someone even mentions that the 'more Government' isn't the answer to every political question to tell us to 'beware of unbridled Government'. But it's pretty apparent that many people are only opposed to Government power when it's wielded by the 'bad guys', and are quite happy for themselves or their friends to have it - witness Obama's somewhat limp redaction of Bush-era civil-rights abuses.
Let's be quite clear here - these two ladies are certainly criticising the Government. But they are also making empirical claims about the amount of welfare they receive, which appear to have been misleading, to make their case for more welfare sound stronger than it actually was. That puts them in a very different situation than your average National-hating blogger, some of whom are now ridiculously suggesting that they could be the next target. Get over yourselves. More importantly though, you should realise that National's reponse, while bad, isn't straight out of Mussolini's playbook. There's a world of difference between abusing your power to embarrass your critics and abusing it to correct them when they lie about their means. Both are bad, but only one is really a threat to the fabric of democracy. The former discourages criticism full stop, the latter discourages lying about yourself in the public sphere to try to get more money.
I think that in any healthy debate, both actors should as a general rule be able to correct factual inaccuracies in the other side's case. In this specific situation, the error related to private information, so the Government should have definitely proceeded more carefully (read: not given out the information). The appropriate response would be to defend their programs with averages and hypotheticals.
I guess a large part of the reason I am annoyed here is my views are coloured by my own situation - I am a student and (if Paula Bennett's figures are right) have an income (including weekly student allowance, not including course fees) of less than half what those women receive. In terms of Government transfers, I get less than a quarter, and I have to pay that back when I graduate (or more accurately, when I start working full-time :) ) I appreciate that it's difficult to raise a child and study at the same, but with student loans and subsidised child care on top of what they already get, I'm very sceptical that these two women can't afford to study.
Yay! I guess.
From the NZ Herald:
So it's good news, but not great news.
I thank The Standard for the tip.
Finance Minister Bill English yesterday said the Government was dropping criteria preventing the sale of "strategically important assets" into foreign hands as part of a raft of changes aimed at encouraging greater foreign investment. ...The latter is obviously a political move to look more centrist (median voter theorem anyone?), but probably the most disappointing part. They say that they won't use it, but given their previous actions I am very sceptical. And I think we can be pretty sure that if they don't, Labour will. The fact that they still couch their announcement in the misleading language of 'protecting national assets' is unfortunate. Are we supposed to believe that the evil foreigners will abscond our airports off to their home countries and do who knows what with them? Well perhaps not all of us, but politicians are still playing very much to those that do.
The Government will introduce a new right to veto on the grounds of "national interest" - but Mr English expected it to be used so rarely that he could not think of a case which might require it to be invoked.
So it's good news, but not great news.
I thank The Standard for the tip.
Moral and Political Psychology
In the last few days we've been exploring a putative evolutionary basis for political groupishness. Tom suggested it was due to group selection, I suggested that it wasn't, but I think that we both agree that there must be some psychological trait which underpins our political choices. Jonathan Haidt is a pscyhologist who explores precisely these issues. In this interesting lecture, he explores five dimensions of morality and how they are differently emphasised in the minds of liberals and conservatives.
This is exactly the kind of work which will hopefully help us to stop being so tribalistic, and seriously look beyond partisanship.
Rock, Hard Place, etc
The popular narrative of the financial crisis is that banks got greedy, took on too much risk and subsequently got into trouble. In particular, they lent money to people for mortgages that realistically they would never have been able to pay back, and then fooled themselves into thinking they were not at risk. This is (we are told) doubly bad, because the people who took out the mortgages paid out heaps of money in mortgage payments only to be thrown out of their homes.
Obviously reality is far more complex, but if you accept something like this narrative (which a lot of people do, including many in Government) you would think that you would support banks being more conservative in their lending.
Unfortunately this looks to be one of those ideas that people like more in theory than in practice. For example, Stuff reports that a Nelson man was so upset that the bank refused his application for a mortgage (because he had no regular income) that he withdrew all his life savings from the bank in $20 notes, just to be ornery (bizarrely to the teller, who obviously has no responsibility for bank lending policy).
It seems to me that most people would like banks to be conservative about their lending and not lend too much money, except to themselves, people they identify with, or their constituents. This is an attitude that we can only hope has no effect on public policy in the short term.
Note: I don't mean to pick on this gentleman - he may not himself believe that the crisis was caused by loose lending practices, and thus be quite consistent intellectually. But it provides a good explanation of what I think is quite a widespread cognitive dissonance.
Obviously reality is far more complex, but if you accept something like this narrative (which a lot of people do, including many in Government) you would think that you would support banks being more conservative in their lending.
Unfortunately this looks to be one of those ideas that people like more in theory than in practice. For example, Stuff reports that a Nelson man was so upset that the bank refused his application for a mortgage (because he had no regular income) that he withdrew all his life savings from the bank in $20 notes, just to be ornery (bizarrely to the teller, who obviously has no responsibility for bank lending policy).
It seems to me that most people would like banks to be conservative about their lending and not lend too much money, except to themselves, people they identify with, or their constituents. This is an attitude that we can only hope has no effect on public policy in the short term.
Note: I don't mean to pick on this gentleman - he may not himself believe that the crisis was caused by loose lending practices, and thus be quite consistent intellectually. But it provides a good explanation of what I think is quite a widespread cognitive dissonance.
A Challenge for Political Group Selection
Below, Tom argues that a dogged commitment to a political party might be well understood in terms of the dynamics of group selection. My intuitions generally agree. However, although the conclusion might be alluring, the mechanism proposed to get there seems like an all too crude application of evolutionary theory, and exactly the sort of just-so story that Darwinists should strive to avoid.
Here's why. Tom proposes that group selection produces pressures for individuals to engage in elaborate forms of signalling so that they can secure themselves as a member of that group. Crucially, this needs to be irrational, so that groups maintain their stability over evolutionary time-scales and are allowed to be selected for. The premise, of course, is that human social groups are a good way for individuals (or gene-lineages) to propagate themselves downstream.
This premise is the one which doesn't stack up, and is generally regarded with skepticism in evolutionary biology. Why? Because from the perspective of an individual (or their genes), adaptive fitness would be much higher if you exploited a group, than if you did your best to be a co-operative member of a group. This point is most vivid if we consider a possible proto-human social group: the hunting party.
It seems to make sense for a collective of cavemen to co-ordinate hunting activity, since it reduces the costs to any individual hunter, while allowing them to track bigger game (woolly mammoth et al) and thus maximise their payoff. But consider any individual hunter. They could do even better than the others, if they simply slacked off their hunting duties but still had access to the spoils. Of course, this kind of reasoning is symmetric, so every individual will think the same way and try to free-ride off the group. Obviously, this will destroy the stability of the group in favour of individual fitness.
The simple way to think of it is this. If the group is thought to be the unit of selection, then the challenge is to show that successful groups don't simply grow in number, but actually spawn new groups which are similar to themselves - groups that are their offspring. Otherwise, the best explanation for human groupish tendencies isn't group selection, but simply a cascade of individual selective pressure. Pace Tom, but I don't think his account paints the correct picture of the evolutionary architecture of political commitment, because it doesn't establish how these groups get going in the first place.
However, all is not lost for the conscientious Darwinist. I still agree with Tom's conclusion, but with a slightly different flavour. The answer, I think, is a question of cultural rather than biological evolution. And not just in a metaphorical sense, but in the literal application of natural selection to the propagation of social information. This is a big topic in itself, and hopefully one which I will explore shortly.
Evolutionary Irrationality
I've been intending to write about political ideology and group selection for a while now, but a good example last night has spurred me into action.
NZ's top left wing blog The Standard has a post in which the author argues:
But we shouldn't be dismissive - there is a potential evolutionary explanation for why people do things like this.
In group selection, the necessary (and most problematic) part is getting people to irrationally commit to a group - that is, so they stop considering the relative merits of other groups. A group that people left as soon as they found a better one wouldn't be very stable, and would be selected against. Of course, this is hard to do - even if you assign people to monitor defection, they are also incentivised to defect, and if you set up people to monitor the monitors, the problem just regresses! Some have proposed religion as possible solution (God is impossible to defect from if you believe in Him), but another potential one is simply costly signalling (although obviously this is part of the religion story as well).
Costly signalling is essentially just telling people that you are in the group. It has to be costly so it's difficult to fake (and therefore you are less likely to tell people you're committed to the group when you aren't). I think we can look at posts like the one discussed (and in fact a lot of political behaviour in general) as part of a scheme of costly signalling - the author is just telling his/her left-wing friends that they are part of the group, and he/she would never consider joining the other group because they are so deplorable.
Too simplistic? Of course. But I am fairly sure that it is a substantial part of why political behaviour is so irrational.
NZ's top left wing blog The Standard has a post in which the author argues:
One of the great strengths of the Right is that the rank and file supporters are such slavish followers of their leaders. ... Simply doesn’t happen with the Left’s support base. You can’t get the buggers to agree on anything. They care about detail. They argue over it. The educated ones, especially, see simple slogans and shallow arguments as anathema. They don’t tend to go in for blind adherence to their leaders either. They see leaders as tools. Servants for furthering their shared ideals. They critically assess what their leaders say. If they do agree with it when they repeat it to others it will be in their own words. Not a simple repetition of a carefully crafted slogan*. The Left will never have our version of ‘PC’. It’s just not the way we think.Certainly there are often cognitive differences between people on difference parts of the ideological spectrum, but I think any reasonable non-partisan would think that this far overstates any possible case.
But we shouldn't be dismissive - there is a potential evolutionary explanation for why people do things like this.
In group selection, the necessary (and most problematic) part is getting people to irrationally commit to a group - that is, so they stop considering the relative merits of other groups. A group that people left as soon as they found a better one wouldn't be very stable, and would be selected against. Of course, this is hard to do - even if you assign people to monitor defection, they are also incentivised to defect, and if you set up people to monitor the monitors, the problem just regresses! Some have proposed religion as possible solution (God is impossible to defect from if you believe in Him), but another potential one is simply costly signalling (although obviously this is part of the religion story as well).
Costly signalling is essentially just telling people that you are in the group. It has to be costly so it's difficult to fake (and therefore you are less likely to tell people you're committed to the group when you aren't). I think we can look at posts like the one discussed (and in fact a lot of political behaviour in general) as part of a scheme of costly signalling - the author is just telling his/her left-wing friends that they are part of the group, and he/she would never consider joining the other group because they are so deplorable.
Too simplistic? Of course. But I am fairly sure that it is a substantial part of why political behaviour is so irrational.
Best of the Rest
Via Marginal Revolution I learn that the cool new journal Rejecta Mathematica has published its first copy. The idea of the journal is to publish interesting papers that have been rejected several times from academic publication. There's no way I have enough maths to really understand all of what's going on, but each paper includes a brief rejection history (or a link to one); they make fun reading.
Some are a little petulant:
Some more forlorn:
And some kind of funny:
and
It's hard to do them justice as a whole, so I suggest you read them for yourself!
Some are a little petulant:
Mathematics my foot! ... Programming is much much harder than doing mathematics. I bet that the referee will never ever be able to write such a program.
Some more forlorn:
With high optimism, we submitted a paper to a top-tier image processing journal. ... But alas, our enthusiasm was deflated due to the following review points...
And some kind of funny:
Our obsession with these simple matrices has generated a great deal of criticism. Lubos Motl, the string theorist, called us F–ing Crackpots on my blog ...
and
Where did I go wrong? Perhaps I should not have called professional mathematicians, in the first paragraph, “meaning-imposers” who generate “inconsistencies and confusions”. Perhaps I should not have asked “Where did I go wrong?” on page 61; or, “Have I made another blunder?” on page 62. ... Maybe I used too many exclamation marks.
It's hard to do them justice as a whole, so I suggest you read them for yourself!
Rawls' Approach to Philosophy
Although from time to time I get mild criticism from some on the left for my economic views, astute readers of this blog (which is all of you of course!) might have ascertained from the name 'defective equilibrium' (c.f. this) that I am a bit of a fan of John Rawls, the great modern political philosopher.
John Rawls' most famous idea is what he calls the 'second principle of justice' (the first being a scheme of appropriate liberties, although he engaged in quite a bit of semantics about this later in his career), also known as the 'maximin principle'. The idea is that the goal of society should be to maximise the wellbeing of the worst off members. This means that inequality is permitted, but only if it makes the worst off better than the counterfactual.
As it is with a lot of influential political philosophy, a large amount of subsequent literature has been devoted to trying to read Rawls' mind, and divine what he was really advocating. Some have claimed him a defender of modern welfare capitalism (Hayek even approvingly cited his earlier work), while many on the left have portrayed him as pretty much a hard core socialist that was maybe willing to tolerate radically altered forms of capitalism (this is basically the approach of Samuel Freeman's book, for example).
I think that both these approaches are wrong, and they are show how people take different approaches to political philosophy. It seems to me that Rawls is at heart a political philosopher, and his book is a contribution to the field of political philosophy, not a political advocacy tract. The difference is subtle, and not, I feel, appreciated by a lot of philosophers. When you think something is unjust, it's very tempting to want to try to correct it, or provide a means by which others might. But trying to correct an injustice is not the same thing as rigorously proving it is actually unjust. It's not necessarily impossible to do both decently (I think Thomas Pogge would be a good example of a mixed approach), but Rawls, I think, only ever saw the task of political philosophers to be the former, not the latter. He essentially never advocated his views in a way that was even vaguely interesting to anyone without a deep interest in moral philosophy - his books are fairly long, exhaustively reasoned and create a lot of jargon. He rarely gave interviews, and certainly not in popular forums.
One way of bringing out this difference a little more sharply is to compare Rawls' work to Noam Chomsky's political writings. Chomsky writes for the most part with a general audience in mind - his goal is to change the world to make it more just. To do so, you have to persuade people, but that is essentially a tool to achieve positive change, not an end in itself. To Rawls (in my interpretation), persuasion and presenting the best possible argument are the ultimate end of political philosophy. In the preface to Theory of Justice, he essentially says that his goal is (only) to provide a more intutionally satisfying alternative to utilitarianism (my insertion).
That's not to say that Rawls was aloof and uninterested in the justice of the real world. I am sure he would have been delighted if modern states had adopted justice as fairness. But that would have been a pleasant side-effect of his writing only.
Whether or not this is the best approach (morally) is something I am not sure of.
John Rawls' most famous idea is what he calls the 'second principle of justice' (the first being a scheme of appropriate liberties, although he engaged in quite a bit of semantics about this later in his career), also known as the 'maximin principle'. The idea is that the goal of society should be to maximise the wellbeing of the worst off members. This means that inequality is permitted, but only if it makes the worst off better than the counterfactual.
As it is with a lot of influential political philosophy, a large amount of subsequent literature has been devoted to trying to read Rawls' mind, and divine what he was really advocating. Some have claimed him a defender of modern welfare capitalism (Hayek even approvingly cited his earlier work), while many on the left have portrayed him as pretty much a hard core socialist that was maybe willing to tolerate radically altered forms of capitalism (this is basically the approach of Samuel Freeman's book, for example).
I think that both these approaches are wrong, and they are show how people take different approaches to political philosophy. It seems to me that Rawls is at heart a political philosopher, and his book is a contribution to the field of political philosophy, not a political advocacy tract. The difference is subtle, and not, I feel, appreciated by a lot of philosophers. When you think something is unjust, it's very tempting to want to try to correct it, or provide a means by which others might. But trying to correct an injustice is not the same thing as rigorously proving it is actually unjust. It's not necessarily impossible to do both decently (I think Thomas Pogge would be a good example of a mixed approach), but Rawls, I think, only ever saw the task of political philosophers to be the former, not the latter. He essentially never advocated his views in a way that was even vaguely interesting to anyone without a deep interest in moral philosophy - his books are fairly long, exhaustively reasoned and create a lot of jargon. He rarely gave interviews, and certainly not in popular forums.
One way of bringing out this difference a little more sharply is to compare Rawls' work to Noam Chomsky's political writings. Chomsky writes for the most part with a general audience in mind - his goal is to change the world to make it more just. To do so, you have to persuade people, but that is essentially a tool to achieve positive change, not an end in itself. To Rawls (in my interpretation), persuasion and presenting the best possible argument are the ultimate end of political philosophy. In the preface to Theory of Justice, he essentially says that his goal is (only) to provide a more intutionally satisfying alternative to utilitarianism (my insertion).
That's not to say that Rawls was aloof and uninterested in the justice of the real world. I am sure he would have been delighted if modern states had adopted justice as fairness. But that would have been a pleasant side-effect of his writing only.
Whether or not this is the best approach (morally) is something I am not sure of.
Why the Government should lie to us
One under-appreciated aspect (in my opinion) of fully 'socialised' medicine is the effect it has on Government ad campaigns and the general goal of public health.
Why is this? Socialised medicine essentially means that people pay for health insurance through tax. The amount of tax they pay is in no way related to their health needs, or perhaps even inversely related, as chronically unhealthy people may earn less money on average. Because the direct relation is missing, health insurance becomes essentially a sunk cost. It is unrecoverable, and irrelevant to rational decision making.
This means that the monetary cost of most health procedures doesn't factor in to individuals' behaviour. There are certainly other costs to unhealthy behaviour (so costs don't go down to zero) but this will mean that people will consume more healthcare and behave generally less healthily than they would if they bore the full costs of their behaviour. It is kind of like a Government-created externality. This problem exists in private markets based on insurance also, but private insurance companies can adjust premiums, etc. This of course brings in moral hazard, but I will leave this issue aside for now.
How can the Government counteract this? One thing it can do is to try to provide misinformation. If people over-estimate the health cost of smoking or other similar behaviour, then this might cancel out their under-estimation of the monetary cost. For most people, Government ad campaigns are percieved to be a credible source of information, and the cost of fact-checking usually too high. The New Zealand Government appears to have taken particular advantage of this. From a cost-benefit perspective lying to the public, while it might be annoying, may actually make (economic) sense.
Of course, the Government is hardly a unitary, cost-minimising rational actor. It's likely that this sort of misinformation is encouraged by rent-seeking lobby groups, or politicians and elites assuming other people should share their preferences. Nonetheless, it may be a way to curb healthcare spending in a socialised system, and shouldn't be immediately derided.
Why is this? Socialised medicine essentially means that people pay for health insurance through tax. The amount of tax they pay is in no way related to their health needs, or perhaps even inversely related, as chronically unhealthy people may earn less money on average. Because the direct relation is missing, health insurance becomes essentially a sunk cost. It is unrecoverable, and irrelevant to rational decision making.
This means that the monetary cost of most health procedures doesn't factor in to individuals' behaviour. There are certainly other costs to unhealthy behaviour (so costs don't go down to zero) but this will mean that people will consume more healthcare and behave generally less healthily than they would if they bore the full costs of their behaviour. It is kind of like a Government-created externality. This problem exists in private markets based on insurance also, but private insurance companies can adjust premiums, etc. This of course brings in moral hazard, but I will leave this issue aside for now.
How can the Government counteract this? One thing it can do is to try to provide misinformation. If people over-estimate the health cost of smoking or other similar behaviour, then this might cancel out their under-estimation of the monetary cost. For most people, Government ad campaigns are percieved to be a credible source of information, and the cost of fact-checking usually too high. The New Zealand Government appears to have taken particular advantage of this. From a cost-benefit perspective lying to the public, while it might be annoying, may actually make (economic) sense.
Of course, the Government is hardly a unitary, cost-minimising rational actor. It's likely that this sort of misinformation is encouraged by rent-seeking lobby groups, or politicians and elites assuming other people should share their preferences. Nonetheless, it may be a way to curb healthcare spending in a socialised system, and shouldn't be immediately derided.
The Law and Justice
I don't know much about law in academia, but a lot of what I see seems quite a lot like moral philosophy. That makes sense, because if we are considering new laws, the morality of them is obviously important.
In that vein, the Legal Theory Lexicon has this excellent new entry on justice, including brief primers on consequentialism, deontologicalism and virtue ethics. I suspect most of our readers already know what these are, but it is interesting to see them (and other ideas) explained from a legal perspective, as opposed to a purely philosophical one.
In that vein, the Legal Theory Lexicon has this excellent new entry on justice, including brief primers on consequentialism, deontologicalism and virtue ethics. I suspect most of our readers already know what these are, but it is interesting to see them (and other ideas) explained from a legal perspective, as opposed to a purely philosophical one.
Spontaneous (Dis)Order
Today William Easterly at his great blog Aid Watch argues that the Pope, like many, is suffering from what he calls the 'Man in Charge Fallacy' - a false assumption that the economy is or can be centrally run.
This fallacy is related to something Udayan discussed a while back on this blog; the way people like to assume design when there is none. Economist readers will no doubt recognise the links to Hayek's 'spontaneous order' theory of the economy (or perhaps Adam Smith's Invisible Hand), but an perhaps even more fundamental application of it is in our own evolution, where amazingly complex order arises without any design at all.
It is not surprising that the head of a major religion has a tendency to see design in non-designed processes. But the rest of us should be wary of making the same mistake.
This fallacy is related to something Udayan discussed a while back on this blog; the way people like to assume design when there is none. Economist readers will no doubt recognise the links to Hayek's 'spontaneous order' theory of the economy (or perhaps Adam Smith's Invisible Hand), but an perhaps even more fundamental application of it is in our own evolution, where amazingly complex order arises without any design at all.
It is not surprising that the head of a major religion has a tendency to see design in non-designed processes. But the rest of us should be wary of making the same mistake.
Free Book
They say there's no such thing as a free lunch, but you can always get someone else to pay for you. Become a fan of Sir Roger Douglas on facebook (which you can do here) and he will send you a copy of his latest book. I have no idea what the book is about (although the title is suggestive), but something in me can never say no to a free book. I have therefore become a fan, and my book is apparently on its way.
Depending on your politics and friend circles, you might argue that publicly becoming his fan is the cost, which you bear to your reputation. That's probably true; I probably wouldn't, for example, become a fan of Hitler to get a free copy of Mein Kampf. Still, if you have non-judgemental friends, it looks win-win.
No word on whether he does overseas shipping. If he doesn't, is that protectionism?
Depending on your politics and friend circles, you might argue that publicly becoming his fan is the cost, which you bear to your reputation. That's probably true; I probably wouldn't, for example, become a fan of Hitler to get a free copy of Mein Kampf. Still, if you have non-judgemental friends, it looks win-win.
No word on whether he does overseas shipping. If he doesn't, is that protectionism?
Amateur Philosophers at BERL
I assume that most people who read this blog also read the excellent Offsetting Behaviour, which is why I haven't really commented on Eric Crampton's devastating critique of the BERL report on the social costs of alcohol. If you're not up on it, economic consultancy group BERL wrote a report on the costs of alcohol with (som say) some poorly defended assumptions, and some heavily misleading conclusions. It got some play through high-up lobby groups, so Crampton and Matt Burgess wrote a heavily critical response. Recently though, one of the authors defended the report in a particularly interesting way:
a) It should be done explicitly, rather than hiding it in leading assumptions.
b) Economists aren't generally the best people to do it.
You would think economists out of anyone would understand the benefits of division of labour.
In any case, the only (secular) case I can see for opposing consumption of alcohol prima facie in the same way we oppose murder would be a cost benefit analysis. It would be good if BERL defended their report on these grounds, and left the poorly-considered analogies out of it.
So for example someone who murders someone, from the individual’s point of view, Eric would be, I presume, quite comfortable with that. The person who decides to murder someone else makes an evaluation of what are the benefits and costs to me of this action? Society says ‘well some people do murder other people’, but society says ‘that’s not good.If BERL's report was on whether or not society thought people should drink alcohol regardless of the costs, Mr. Slack (who's quote this is) would have a point. But it wasn't a x-phi survey on folk morality, it was an economic analysis. That Mr. Slack has the two confused is perhaps revealing to the approach BERL took to the analysis. Moral philosophy has an important role to play in analysis of public policy. But:
a) It should be done explicitly, rather than hiding it in leading assumptions.
b) Economists aren't generally the best people to do it.
You would think economists out of anyone would understand the benefits of division of labour.
In any case, the only (secular) case I can see for opposing consumption of alcohol prima facie in the same way we oppose murder would be a cost benefit analysis. It would be good if BERL defended their report on these grounds, and left the poorly-considered analogies out of it.
Follow-up on Pay Equity
In a previous post I argued that at least part of the difference in pay between men and women (for the same job) would be attributable to social attitudes about pregnancy (and the physical realities of it).
Obviously it's given that women are in modern societies paid less than men. But are they paid less after correcting for all the other factors that affect income? My hypothesis suggests that they would be, but not by much. Unfortunately cross-sectional data with all the necessary variables is really hard to find, presumably because of privacy laws, etc. So my question is, does anyone know of any good data? It would be interesting to run a multiple regression on it to see what effect gender actually has on income, ceterus paribus.
The other thing I alluded to briefly is that I think 'pay equity laws' (currently popular with the New Zealand Left, and unpopular with the Right) are kind of like minimum wages, with the same sorts of costs and benefits. On the benefit side, obviously many women would receive higher wages. On the cost side, the number of women employed is likely to drop, as the proposal will not change the shape of the demand function for labour (and there will be an oversupply of labour). Whether or not the total amount of money paid to women increases will depend on the elasticities. There is some evidence that shows that small increases in the minimum wage don't lead to redundancies at all, but I suspect a 'pay equity' law would be a substantial enough increase.
On these grounds, perhaps a pay equity law is a good idea, particularly if you are a woman with a secure job. But like in my last post, I think it would be a better idea to try to correct the fundamentals which cause the inequity. This can be done through affirmative action scholarships for higher education, attempts to change societal prejudices (such as they exist), and so forth. To me, compared to these things, pay equity law seems crude and post-hoc. Perhaps it is intended to be a short-term solution. But I see no indication of this from its supporters.
Obviously it's given that women are in modern societies paid less than men. But are they paid less after correcting for all the other factors that affect income? My hypothesis suggests that they would be, but not by much. Unfortunately cross-sectional data with all the necessary variables is really hard to find, presumably because of privacy laws, etc. So my question is, does anyone know of any good data? It would be interesting to run a multiple regression on it to see what effect gender actually has on income, ceterus paribus.
The other thing I alluded to briefly is that I think 'pay equity laws' (currently popular with the New Zealand Left, and unpopular with the Right) are kind of like minimum wages, with the same sorts of costs and benefits. On the benefit side, obviously many women would receive higher wages. On the cost side, the number of women employed is likely to drop, as the proposal will not change the shape of the demand function for labour (and there will be an oversupply of labour). Whether or not the total amount of money paid to women increases will depend on the elasticities. There is some evidence that shows that small increases in the minimum wage don't lead to redundancies at all, but I suspect a 'pay equity' law would be a substantial enough increase.
On these grounds, perhaps a pay equity law is a good idea, particularly if you are a woman with a secure job. But like in my last post, I think it would be a better idea to try to correct the fundamentals which cause the inequity. This can be done through affirmative action scholarships for higher education, attempts to change societal prejudices (such as they exist), and so forth. To me, compared to these things, pay equity law seems crude and post-hoc. Perhaps it is intended to be a short-term solution. But I see no indication of this from its supporters.
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