Russell Roberts's Blog, page 145
May 3, 2022
On Keeping Concepts Clear
Similar considerations apply to environmental cleanliness. What exactly is meant by a “clean environment?” As long as humans and other carbon-based creatures exist, gasses that have some negative impact on some environmental amenity will be emitted. Also emitted into the atmosphere will be molecules that, to at least some of these creatures, are pathogenic. A perfectly clean environment, such as exists on the lunar surface, is simply incompatible with life.
Even the term “environment” is vague in meaning and, in modern usage, artificially restricted.
I often ask students if they think it’s a good idea to reduce the amount of the earth’s surface excavated for use as garbage landfills. The almost-unanimous answer is “Yes!” Then I ask them if they’d support legislation requiring every household to devote at least one-half of its indoor space to permanently housing garbage. Such legislation would reduce the amount of the earth’s surface excavated for use as garbage landfills. The unanimous answer to this second question is “No!”
Classroom discussion reveals that students understand that burying garbage beneath the earth’s surface is cleaner and more sanitary for humans than would be the in-house storage of garbage.
“So,” I conclude, “landfills lead to a cleaner environment.” Most students, however, resist this conclusion. Some do so quite vigorously. In their minds, “the environment” consists of land and the outdoor atmosphere, not of indoor spaces, such as homes and workplaces. My students’ failure to think carefully about just what dimensions are covered by the term “environment” leads them, as it leads many other people, to forget that a very real part of the environment is the indoor spaces in which we live, work, and play.
This forgetfulness is unfortunate because it blinds many people to the enormous environmental improvements enjoyed by everyone living in modern, innovative, capitalist society. Compared to our pre-industrial ancestors, nearly every American daily enjoys cleaner – that is, less polluted – clothing, food, living quarters, workplaces, schools, and streets and highways. Even the interiors of our bodies are made less polluted by the availability of modern marvels such as antibiotics and food refrigeration.
Some Non-Covid Links
The stated goal of combating mis- and disinformation is framed to seem unobjectionable. Who objects to truth and pines for falsehood? DGB experts will guide the way, separating the informational wheat from the disinformational chaff. But there’s one small problem with empowering “truth experts”: Experts are people.
People respond to incentives. Therefore experts respond to incentives. Graham Medley, a British expert involved in the U.K. policy response to Covid, illustrated the point in recent testimony before Parliament. “The worst thing for me,” he said, “would be for the government to say, ‘Why didn’t you tell us it could be that bad?’ Inevitably, we were always going to have a worst case which is above reality.”
Put yourself in his shoes. If you predict doom and nothing much happens, it was because of your wise warning. If you don’t predict doom and reality is worse than you predicted, you will be blamed and shamed. The incentives are clear. Truth experts at the DGB will proclaim grave threats around every turn even when any “threats” are minor to nonexistent.
By creating the DGB, the U.S. government is creating a crisis monitor with the dial permanently set to “existential threat.” No one inside the board will have the incentive—or the courage—to dial it down.
Nate Hochman wonders why the New York Times is ignoring the DGB?
Katherine Mangu-Ward explains why a wealth tax is a bad idea.
The left calls what AMLO wants “participatory democracy” but it is instead a dangerous flirtation with mob rule.
When he took office in 2018, Mr. López Obrador promised to deliver an irreversible “fourth transformation” of Mexico, an ambiguous utopian vision that seems to require the centralization of political power and the state as the dominant player in the economy. With only two years and seven months left in his six-year term, he’s running out of time.
The April 17 defeat in Congress of constitutional reforms to reverse the 2014 opening of Mexico’s energy markets is a major setback for AMLO. Those reforms were aimed at restoring the monopoly power of state-owned oil company Petróleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, and of the state-owned Federal Electricity Commission, or CFE.
Mexicans don’t seem to see a future in inefficient and corrupt state energy monopolies. The reforms never had backing from the necessary qualified majorities in Congress. Even Morena knew they were a long shot, which is why it tried to reduce the number of opposition legislators who would show up to vote by scheduling the session during Holy Week and then abruptly moving it to Easter Sunday. Desperate Morena supporters even tried to get up a rabble to block opposition legislators physically from entering the chamber.
My GMU Econ colleague Bryan Caplan’s new book – How Evil Are Politicians? Essays on Demagoguery – is now available for sale! (I am honored beyond words that Bryan dedicates this book to me.)
On Protectionism and the Dignity of Protected Workers
Several people have written to challenge two letters of mine from yesterday – this one, and even more this follow-up one – in which I argued that workers in industries protected by tariffs should feel ashamed because their protection enables them to get paid for doing tasks that are less productive than would be the different tasks that would be done absent the protection.
The principal complaint about my letter is that it’s written by a state employee – me – who receives an annual income that consists of a substantial amount of dollars taken from taxpayers. This complaint is justified and fair.
The easy answer for the typical economist in my shoes is one that I reject, but it warrants mention. It’s this: The economic theory justifying state provision of education is that education is a “public good” that would be undersupplied absent government subsidization. In contrast, protective tariffs – as opposed to tariffs meant to raise revenue, as well as tariffs meant to ensure adequate national defense – have no such justification. Other than the so-called “optimal tariff” (which few economists believe to have little real-world relevance), there is no economic theory available to justify protective tariffs. Economic theory no more justifies protective tariffs than it justifies allowing, say, blue-eyed males between the ages of 14 and 23 and of Scandinavian descent to legally pick pockets. Protective tariffs are special-interest devices meant simply to artificially enrich politically powerful producers by protecting them from competition.
As I say, however, I reject this “public-goods” justification of government provision of, or subsidization of, education. I believe it is wrong, and I’m not proud that part of my income comes from funds extracted from taxpayers. In my ideal world, people – including professors at state schools – would feel ashamed of benefitting from such government action.
So why do I continue to work at George Mason University, a school owned and operated by the State of Virginia? My answer is that I’m imperfect. I could plead – truthfully – that I don’t make the rules. I can also honestly say that if I could do so I’d abolish all taxpayer support for all higher education, including government-subsidized student loans – loans that inflate my income. So not making the rules, I must play by the ones that large numbers of my fellow citizens find to be acceptable.
Where to draw the line on following rules that I, as an individual, would not choose but that are supported by others? A line must be drawn somewhere. Many years ago when my father was laid off for a long stretch from his job at the shipyard, my parents refused government welfare payments when they were eligible to receive such payments, yet my father worked in a shipyard that benefitted both from government contracts and from the cronyist Jones Act. (I should add that my parents’ refused to accept welfare payments not so much because they were opposed to the welfare state – although they were no great supporters of it – but because they would simply have felt personally ashamed to be on the dole. It was their horror of feeling shame that caused them to refuse welfare. This sense of shame for being on the dole is, I believe, admirable. I am very proud to have parents who felt this way.)
I have no good answer on the line-drawing question. I am, I admit, hypocritical for working for the state while believing that state-run education is wrong. But I believe that nearly everything done by government is wrong. Living for me would be nearly impossible were I to avoid receiving any benefits, such as those from driving on public roads, from government.
Nevertheless, I do wish that many more of my fellow Americans would feel shame at working for government. Such shame would reduce the government’s size and scope – an outcome that I believe would be both economically and ethically advantageous.
As for workers in protected industries not themselves being the instigators of protectionism, I agree – mostly. Some workers, especially through labor unions, lobby for protection. But I here put those workers aside.
It’s true that a worker – call her Smith – who merely works in a protected industry without awareness of the protection has less to be ashamed of than does a worker – call him Jones – who actively supports protectionism. In my ideal world, however, both the Joneses and the Smiths would feel embarrassed by what they do.
Whether or not a worker is aware that he or she benefits from protection, the following is indisputably true: That worker is misled if he or she is told that protection renders him or her a productive member of society. That worker is misinformed by intellectuals or politicians who portray protectionism as a means of giving that worker the dignity of being useful to society. Protectionism is a means of forcing consumers and taxpayers to pay workers to continue to produce outputs that consumers and taxpayers would not pay for voluntarily. There should be no dignity in holding a job that exists only because government compels other people to support it.
…..
The ultimate purpose of my two letters was to expose the intellectual flaw in Oren Cass’s argument that protectionism is a means of enabling workers to gain or maintain dignity. That many, perhaps all, protected workers feel dignity by working in their protected jobs is true enough. But that this feeling is rooted in a foundational misunderstanding is equally true. Protectionism is a means of making workers less productive to their fellow human beings; it is a means of forcing fellow human beings to pay for protected-workers’ special privileges. Attempts, such as those of Oren Cass, to paint protectionism as a means of restoring dignity to workers by making them useful to their fellow human beings are, thus, rooted in economic misunderstanding – a misunderstanding that should be exposed.
Quotation of the Day…
… is from page 614 of Will Durant’s 1939 volume, The Life of Greece; Durant here describes the historian Polybius (c. 200 BC – c. 118 BC) (footnote deleted):
He is a realist and a rationalist; he pierces the moral phrases of diplomats to the actual motives of policy. It amuses him to observe how easily men can be deceived, singly or en masse, and even repeatedly by the same tricks.
May 2, 2022
The Way We Talk Matters
Nolan McKinney hasn’t written to me in a while:
Mr. McKinney:
In response to my recent letter to Thomas Hutcheson you write that I and other free traders “lose people when [we] call workers in protected sectors ‘wasteful’ and ‘drains’ on society.” You insist that we “free traders would get a better hearing if [we] spoke more respectfully about those workers, which are just as honest and hardworking as other workers.”
I disagree. Workers who are paid to produce particular outputs only because government artificially obstructs consumers’ ability to purchase different outputs are in wasteful jobs. The protectionism that sustains these jobs drains other people of net wealth. Workers in jobs that exist because of protectionism should feel ashamed, not dignified or on par with workers in non-protected industries. Contrary to the superficial appearance of being made by tariffs to be productive to their fellow citizens, these workers are instead enabled by tariffs to prey on their fellow citizens.
Protectionism, don’t forget, operates by credibly threatening to initiate coercion against people engaged in peaceful commerce.
Deirdre McCloskey observes that society’s civility and productiveness depend greatly on the way we talk and write. And so because workers in jobs protected by tariffs are, at bottom, robbing their fellow citizens, it’s imperative to describe these workers accurately. Accuracy of description reminds these workers, as well as the general public, of the true, ugly, and destructive nature of jobs sustained by protectionism.
Society would be largely rid of the scourge of protectionism if the typical worker would be as embarrassed to confess publicly to working in a protected industry as a burglar now is to confess publicly to his line of work.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
Bonus Quotation of the Day…
… is from page 7 of Dominick Armentano’s excellent 1986 monograph, Antitrust Policy: The Case for Repeal:
[T]he enforcement of the antitrust laws is predicated on the mistaken assumption that regulators and the courts can have access to information concerning social benefits, social costs, and efficiency that is simply unavailable in the absence of a spontaneous market processes. Antitrust regulation is often a subtle form of industrial planning, and is fully subject to the pretense-of-knowledge criticism frequently advanced against government planning.
Don’t Feel for Protected Workers
Here’s a note to a long-time friendly but largely critical commenter, Thomas Hutcheson:
Mr. Hutcheson:
Commenting at Facebook on my recent letter regarding Oren Cass’s misunderstanding of what is meant by “production,” you write: “DB missed the point that people value feeling that they are effectively contributing to society, not just working to consume now or in the future.”
I don’t miss this point at all. It’s clear that Oren believes – correctly – that workers in jobs protected by tariffs do indeed feel that they are effectively contributing to society. But this feeling is unwarranted. What Oren misses – and what protected workers miss – is the reality that workers in such jobs are not “effectively contributing to society.” Workers in such jobs make their fellow citizens poorer than these citizens would be absent protectionism.
My objection is to a policy – protectionism – of forcing consumers and taxpayers to pay for any workers to enjoy the illusion that these workers are net contributors to society when, in fact, these workers are being enriched at the larger expense of their fellow citizens.
I’ve nothing against workers who choose to toil away in a manner that enables them to feel that they are contributing to society when, in fact, they are not so contributing. But I strongly object to consumers and taxpayers being compelled to pay for these workers to enjoy this false “feeling.” If a worker falsely “feeling” that he or she is contributing to society by working wastefully at a particular job is sufficiently valuable to that worker, let that worker personally pay to enjoy this “feeling” by agreeing to work at lower wages, for only then would this worker not be a net drain on society. Do not, however, compel consumers and taxpayers – the very people who are victimized by this worker – to subsidize this worker’s consumption of a false “feeling” of being socially productive.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
Some Covid Links
Here’s UCLA medical-school professor Edward Livingston’s letter in today’s Wall Street Journal:
The world would be different today had “medical misinformation” been disallowed in the past as is now proposed in California (“California’s Medical ‘Misinformation’ Crusade Could Cost Lives” by Allysia Finley, op-ed, April 21). Smoking would be embraced by clinicians.
In 1959 the editor in chief of JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, wrote, “Neither the proponents nor the opponents of the smoking theory have sufficient evidence to warrant the assumption of an all-or-none authoritative position.” In 1958 the leading expert on statistical analysis, R.A Fisher, wrote in Nature, “Unfortunately, considerable propaganda is now being developed to convince the public that cigarette smoking is dangerous.” Imagine if doctors would have lost their medical licenses for disagreeing with the expert opinion.
With Covid-19, honesty about what we know and don’t know would have been better than forced mandates. Had leaders been forthright about the limited efficacy of masks, the public may have been much more accepting of interventions with overwhelming evidence of success like vaccines. Suppressing dissenting views will only foster greater skepticism within the public at large.
Prof. Edward H. Livingston
UCLA School of Medicine
Debbie Lerman decries the pandemic-industrial complex. A slice:
We find ourselves in a state of crazy limbo: There is no more acute threat from Covid (as Fauci himself admitted), yet we cling to responses whose only justification was to address the acute threat of Covid.
The reason, I would contend, is that the pandemic-industrial complex cannot and will not let go. If we leave the pandemic behind us, as it technically already is, then…:
…the politicians who have catered to their base by supporting the most draconian measures and demonizing anyone who questions them as science-denying baby killers, will have to find new reasons to portray their opponents as monsters. (Yes, I’m talking about you, so-called liberals. As a lifelong very left-leaning Democrat I am appalled by your shocking and ultimately disastrous pandemic groupthink.)
…the public health officials who have gained so much fame and adulation for finding ever more variants to track and reasons to remain vigilant will lose the spotlight and have to return to their anonymous and complicated day jobs in which they are supposed to address all aspects of what makes a population healthy. It’s so much easier to focus on just one disease! They will also have to face the public health catastrophes in terms of addiction, mental health, educational deficits, untreated conditions etc. that the all-encompassing, devastating war against Covid hath wrought.
…news outlets and online platforms will no longer be able to rivet audiences and target users with bleeding red maps, skyrocketing case counts, and doomsday predictions. The transition from Trump to Covid as a fool-proof attention-getter helped all media remain sensationally relevant. In fact, I would argue that for a large segment of the media, just as for the left-leaning parts of the country, fighting Covid almost seamlessly replaced fighting Trump, which is how the response to Covid became so hopelessly and destructively politicized.
…the multi-billion-dollar markets for masks, tests, and vaccines will significantly shrink, leaving what I imagine will become vast stockpiles of useless medicine and equipment. Stock prices and investor returns in related companies and industries will probably fall.
…all the people, most of them in the so-called liberal coastal cities, such as Philadelphia where I live, who have spent two years wearing more masks, getting more vaccines, advocating for more school closures, and feeling infinitely superior to anyone who suggests these measures are ineffective or bad, will have to find a new cause to get super anxious and super angry about.
And Bill Gates is among those who is doing his damnedest to keep covid fear alive.
Well, Oprah is free to wallow in covid hysteria for as long as she likes.
Events in China continue to be surreal and dystopian.
In the week ending 15 April, there were 644 deaths registered in England and Wales involving Covid-19 as the underlying cause. In total, there were 9,919 deaths registered. Or, to put it in terms that a Covid hysteric might understand, enough people to fill 24 jumbo jets.
You don’t hear much about the 9,275 deaths that didn’t involve Covid because other respiratory diseases haven’t attracted a vocal lobby group that puts platitudinous opposition to them at the very core of its being.
Despite the latest wave of Covid being on its way out in Britain, there still exists a surprisingly resilient and increasingly hysterical movement calling for lockdown restrictions to be reintroduced. And as the health service has struggled in recent weeks, there have been predictable calls for society to close down again.
Two weeks ago, the chief executive of NHS Providers called for the government to bring back facemasks and social distancing to protect the health service. Independent Sage, a knock-off version of the government advisory body, has lobbied for restrictions to return. Academics on Twitter are still calling for masks and ventilation to prevent long-Covid.
…..
When Matthew Taylor of the NHS Confederation called for more restrictions this month it was not because the NHS was collapsing or even exceptionally busy, but merely because it was quite busy for this time of year. He accused the government of having a ‘living without restrictions ideology’ rather than a ‘living with Covid plan’. The word ‘ideology’ is nearly always a pejorative. How telling that he spits it out when talking about living normally.
…..
The Office for National Statistics recently estimated that 71 per cent of the English population had Covid between 27 April 2020 and 11 February 2022. Add in the people infected before and after this period and it seems reasonable to assume that four out of five of us have had the disease at least once. What is the point of trying to suppress a virus that everybody is going to get? As China’s Canute-like efforts to eliminate Omicron become more draconian and surreal, does it ever occur to the likes of ‘Independent Sage’ that this is not a virus that is going to be beaten by face masks and air filters? Is it all performative now? Is it just political?
Here’s the abstract of a new paper by Beny Spira (emphasis added):
Masking was the single most common non-pharmaceutical intervention in the course of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Most countries have implemented recommendations or mandates regarding the use of masks in public spaces. The aim of this short study was to analyse the correlation between mask usage against morbidity and mortality rates in the 2020-2021 winter in Europe. Data from 35 European countries on morbidity, mortality, and mask usage during a six-month period were analysed and crossed. Mask usage was more homogeneous in Eastern Europe than in Western European countries. Spearman’s correlation coefficients between mask usage and COVID-19 outcomes were either null or positive, depending on the subgroup of countries and type of outcome (cases or deaths). Positive correlations were stronger in Western than in Eastern European countries. These findings indicate that countries with high levels of mask compliance did not perform better than those with low mask usage.
It is a deep conflict of interest to have scientific funders like Fauci also closely involved with health policy. Scientists’ careers depend on winning funding. How many stayed in the sidelines because of this conflict while Fauci pushed destructive, anti-scientific lockdowns?
Tim Young tweets: (HT Jay Bhattacharya)
The servers at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner had to wear masks so that they understood their place was beneath all the elite in that room.
Quotation of the Day…
… is from page 79 of David Mamet’s new 2022 book, Recessional: The Death of Free Speech and the Cost of a Free Lunch:
[T]he dutifully masked citizens convinced they were acting for their own safety and the public good were learning to stand in line and do only those things and in that manner which the government allows. They were taking slave lessons.
May 1, 2022
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: “Deficit spending no free lunch”
In my column for the September 7th, 2012, edition of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review I did my best to debunk a popular myth about deficit spending by government. You can read my column in full beneath the fold.
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