Russell Roberts's Blog, page 147
April 27, 2022
Some Non-Covid Links
Presidents who have never run anything larger than a Senate office. Who have confused striking poses — in the Capitol, on Twitter — with governing. Who have delegated legislative powers to the executive — for example, who have passed sentiment-affirmations masquerading as laws: Hurray for education and the environment; the executive branch shall fill in the details.
And who have been comfortable running the government on continuing resolutions (at existing funding levels) because Congress is incapable of budgeting. There have been 128 CRs in the previous 25 fiscal years — 41 since 2012. Why look for presidents among senators, who have made irresponsibility routine?
For more on Musk, here’s Robby Soave.
Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey tweeted that Congress “must pass laws to protect privacy and promote algorithmic justice.” For the record, Mr. Musk says his plan for Twitter includes “making the algorithms open source to increase trust.” He’s risking billions of his own money, so he hardly wants users and advertisers to flee. There’s no digital Berlin Wall keeping people trapped in the Twitterverse.
Wall Street Journal columnist Mary Anastasia O’Grady understands economics. A slice:
When it comes to economic malpractice, it’s hard to beat Argentina, the breadbasket of the region. It recorded monthly inflation of 6.7% in March. Some analysts now expect 2022 inflation to be near 60%, following 2021 inflation of over 50%.
As always this inflation is a monetary phenomenon—to paraphrase Milton Friedman. President Alberto Fernández’s government, in long-standing Argentine tradition, has been deepening the country’s indebtedness to finance its deficit spending. According to Pablo Guidotti, a professor of economics at Torcuato Di Tella University in Buenos Aires, since 2000 government expenditures, as a percentage of gross domestic product, have doubled to 40% from 20%. Government debt as percentage of GDP is now about 100%. To pay the bills, the central bank prints pesos with abandon, sending prices through the roof.
My Mercatus Center colleague Adam Thierer reviews the new book Questioning the Entrepreneurial State. A slice:
The essays in Questioning the Entrepreneurial State offer a different perspective, rooted in the realities on the ground in Europe today. Taken together, the chapters tell a fairly consistent story: Despite the existence of many different industrial policy schemes at the continental and country level, Europe isn’t in very good shape on the tech and innovation front. The heavy-handed policies and volumes of regulations imposed by the European Union and its member states have played a role in that outcome. But these governments have simultaneously been pushing to promote innovation using a variety of technocratic policy levers and industrial policy schemes. Despite all those well-intentioned efforts, the EU has struggled to keep up with the US and China in most important modern tech sectors.
In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith distinguishes between commutative justice, or not messing with other people’s stuff; distributive justice, or making a becoming use of what is one’s own; and estimative justice, or estimating objects properly. When a claim not to have our possessions messed with is made against government, it is called liberty. Yet even classical liberals can sense that justice extends further. What, after all, justifies commutative justice or liberty but some larger principles?
George Leef asks if there’s any chance of restoring our lost freedom.
Bryan Caplan writes here about BLM and collective guilt. Here’s Bryan’s conclusion, that I believe to be right:
What’s the correct conclusion? I maintain: Strict blame for the violent crime of both police and rioters, tangential blame for associated police and protestors, and no blame for mere bystanders – including, above all, “society.” I suspect this position will displease almost everyone, but how is it wrong?
People Don’t Understand Prices
Washington University economist Ian Fillmore sent to me the following insightful e-mail about public attitudes toward so-called “price gouging.” I share it here, in full, with Ian’s kind permission.
Hi Don,
I just saw this NBER working paper that surveyed people’s attitudes and beliefs about price increases. I wonder if there might be some insights here for those of us who oppose price gouging laws (and other forms of price controls) regarding which types of arguments are likely to be persuasive with the general public (My impression is that these laws exist precisely because they are popular.). In particular, my anecdotal experience says that many people view prices as being arbitrarily set by businesses. When I ask whether McDonald’s, say, could charge $1000 for a hamburger, I’m usually greeted with “Of course not! Don’t be absurd!” even though I’m just restating their logic back to them. This tells me that many people have very fuzzy and logically inconsistent notions about where prices come from.
Why do consumers, who interact with markets every day, have essentially no idea where prices come from? I think it’s because they have zero incentive to learn. If I’m a price taking customer buying in a competitive spot market, then all that matters to me is the price. I could have a crazy theory about where the price comes from that involves the phases of the moon and the appetite of my pet cat. Or I could have a sophisticated theory based on supply and demand analysis. The market won’t punish me for my crazy theory any more than it will reward me for my sophisticated theory. In many areas, knowing something makes you better at it. Knowing about ocean currents and weather patterns makes you a better sailor. Knowing about chemistry and physiology makes you a better pharmacist. But knowing about supply and demand does nothing to make you better at grocery shopping. This is one of the virtues of free markets–they require precious little economic knowledge from their participants. On the other hand, this is one of the great challenges of economic education. People have little tangible incentive to learn and understand economics.
Ian Fillmore
DBx: I agree. And thus a challenge to all competent economists is to better explain to the general public the formation of, and the indispensable role played by, prices. Ian is correct that this lesson is not one that the public is seeking to learn. Indeed, it’s a lesson that the public actively resists. Yet because markets among strangers work only insofar as prices (including wages) are free to rise and fall to reflect the prevailing conditions of supply and demand, the greater is the public’s acceptance of market-driven changes in prices and wages, the better for society.
Some Covid Links
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki concurred: “Public health decisions shouldn’t be made by the courts. They should be made by public health experts.”
But Mizelle did not make a public health decision; she made a legal decision, based on her understanding of the relevant statute. Contrary to Psaki’s implication, courts are not only authorized but obligated to make such decisions, as she surely would have conceded had Mizelle ruled in the CDC’s favor.
The Justice Department is appealing Mizelle’s ruling, but it did not seek a stay that would have restored the mask requirement while the case is pending. Although that omission may seem puzzling given the CDC’s claim that the mandate “remains necessary for the public health,” it makes sense if the administration’s goal is to facilitate future power grabs by keeping the agency’s statutory authority as vague as possible.
If there is “no place for the courts” to assess the legality of disease-control edicts, as Fauci maintains, it follows that the Supreme Court erred not only by blocking the CDC’s nationwide eviction moratorium but even by taking up the issue. Evidently, it also should have stayed out of the dispute over the federal vaccination-or-testing requirement for private employees, which it likewise deemed illegal.
Fauci’s impatience with legal niceties has been apparent for some time. “The states are very often given a considerable amount of leeway in doing things the way they want to do it,” he complained in a 2020 interview with BBC Radio 4, “as opposed to in response to federal mandates, which are relatively rarely given.”
The result, Fauci explained, was “a considerable disparity, with states doing things differently in a nonconsistent way.” That “disparity,” he averred, “has been a major weakness in our response” to the pandemic.
The “leeway” that bothers Fauci is required by the Constitution, which leaves states with the primary responsibility for addressing public health threats under a broad “police power” that the federal government was never given. So his beef is not simply with the way COVID-19 policy happened to play out in the United States; it is an objection to our system of government.
Charles Oliver reports on just how authoritarian Covidians can be.
Vinay Prasad lists some things that the CDC does not know.
Dystopian Covidian authoritarianism stalks Britain. A slice:
Doctors who criticise vaccines or lockdown policies on social media could face being struck off if regulators rule they are guilty of spreading fake news, in an update to the “Hippocratic Oath”.
The core guidance for medics has been updated for the first time in almost a decade to cover media such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Meanwhile in Shanghai… “China’s strict zero-Covid policy means many of the city’s residents are trapped at home – and left fearing infection, detainment or famine.”
The Covidocrats in charge of the WHO simply can’t let go of Covid derangement.
Jay Bhattacharya tweets a message to Meta:
Dear @meta censor,
You do not know more about masking efficacy than @carlheneghan and Prof. Tom Jefferson. Please permit the scientists to speak with each other and the public without your ignorant filters.
Encouraging you to emulate @elonmusk,
Jay B.
Quotation of the Day…
… is from page 72 of David Mamet’s new 2022 book, Recessional: The Death of Free Speech and the Cost of a Free Lunch:
The danger of a command economy is not that mistakes will be made but that they will not be corrected.
DBx: Government officials who use their power to override market processes in order to impose their own economic plans do not spend their own money. Further, these officials win power by presenting themselves as being singularly inspired and blessed with extraordinary vision. The stated purpose used to justify any of their schemes is to replace with a ‘rational’ or ‘common-good’ plan what they portray as mindless or chaotic or myopic or greed-fueled private actions.
Failure of any such scheme – whether that scheme be full-on socialism or industrial policy or some other species of economic arrogance – to live up to its hype, because it costs the planners nothing personally, is attributed to subversion, or to insufficient vigor in pursuing the plan, or to weather – to anything other than any fault in the plan itself. How, after all, could the plan be faulty given that it is the product of the minds of uniquely public-spirited geniuses? So the state doubles-down on pursuit of the plan. In doing so, it identifies enemies of the plan – speculators, financiers, billionaires, “the elite,” the bourgeoisie, foreigners, long-dead economists, or often (because of its rigor, my favorite!) “greed.”
As evidenced by the short and not-so-sweet run of CNN-Plus, no such folly occurs when economic processes are guided by markets, with individuals and firms investing their own money, and with consumers – also spending their own money – being free to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ as they choose.
April 26, 2022
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: “Crowding out private-sector success”
In my column for the August 14th, 2012, edition of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, I continued my criticism of those who believe that Barack Obama uttered something profoundly important when he observed “You didn’t build that.” You can read my column in full beneath the fold.
Some Non-Covid Links
Kyle Smith looks forward to the changes that Elon Musk will likely bring to Twitter. Here’s his conclusion:
Musk understands that we need more, not less, engagement with disagreeable ideas. Remember when everyone agreed sunlight is the best disinfectant? Adherents of the world’s worst idea (communism) are allowed on Twitter. A great start! So should those who vouch for every other idiotic ideology.
Twitter should be like a soapbox: it’s there for anyone to stand on and shout from. If you don’t like something, the mute button’s right there, folks. Vehement disputation is the American way. Apparently we need a South African to make that the Twitter way.
Liz Wolfe documents some of the predictable progressive hysteria over Musk’s purchase of Twitter. Here’s her conclusion:
A lot remains to be seen about how Twitter will change and what Musk will bring to the table. Optimism, with some reservations about Musk’s ability to execute, seems warranted. Hysteria—like declaring that it’s now open season for white supremacists,that Musk’s vision for free speech will be “lethal,” or that Musk is an echo of imperialist, colonizer forebears because he wants to go to Mars—is not.
On Elon Musk, here’s wisdom from Dan McLaughlin. Here’s his conclusion:
In many ways, this is the great issue of our time: the drive by authoritarians, progressives, and the illiberal Right to abolish the space in which people can speak freely, interact freely, cooperate some of the time, then go their separate ways. We do not need to pledge ourselves permanently to Elon Musk in order to recognize that his conquest of Twitter is likely to be a thing worth saluting.
The hyperbole surrounding Mr. Musk’s Twitter foray has been curious, hilarious, and sometimes both. Mr. Musk “is increasingly behaving like a movie supervillain,” an Axios writer said. A former CEO of the social site Reddit called for government regulation “to prevent rich people from controlling our channels of communication.” That line was published in an op-ed at the Washington Post, which is owned by the noted pauper Jeff Bezos.
“I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter,” Mr. Musk tweeted Monday, “because that is what free speech means.” How supervillainous of him. Mr. Musk at a conference this month seemed to muse about permitting any tweet that’s legal. Last week he sounded more modest. “A social media platform’s policies are good,” he tweeted, “if the most extreme 10% on left and right are equally unhappy.”
Why conservatives are wrong to punish Disney.
Also weighing in on the revocation of Disney’s special district in Florida is David Henderson.
Magatte Wade and Michael Strong remember George Ayittey. (HT George Leef) A slice:
His observations of the inner workings of African society made him the continent’s first, and perhaps harshest, critic of foreign aid long before the “dead aid” debates of the 1990s. His biggest bugaboo was military aid used to prop up despots and dictators.
Such iconoclastic views, delivered with passion and clarity, won him invitations to forums such as TED and other hubs of the jet-setting elite. We’ll never forget a heated discussion George got into with Bono back in 2007 at TED Global in Tanzania. They were arguing about the benefits of free trade. By the end of the debate, he had convinced the pop singer that free trade was more effective than foreign aid.
Never content to be just a boring technocrat or a tenured professor, he used his newfound soapbox to be a scourge of strongmen, champion of the dispossessed, and chronicler of government corruption. He liked to describe the African state as a “leaking begging bowl,” a “vampire” that sucked the lifeblood out of the economy.
Jim Gwartney and David Macpherson predict that inflation will stick around for a while. A slice:
Inflation is a regressive tax that hits those with low and middle incomes the hardest. The inflation tax harms these households disproportionately because they spend a larger share of their income on food, transportation, and other basic necessities that are more expensive as a result of the inflation. And these households own only a small share of assets, such as houses and stocks, that increase in value as a result of the inflation. In contrast, the higher asset prices actually benefit those in upper-income categories who own most of these assets. Most politicians, particularly those favoring big government, constantly let everyone know how they despise income inequality. Nonetheless, their spending policies, financed via money creation, generate more of the income inequality they say they abhor.
My Mercatus Center colleague Adam Thierer wonders about the direction of Progress Studies.
Quotation of the Day…
… is from page 7 of the Introduction by GMU Econ professor emerita Karen Vaughn to the 2021 collection of some of her writings, Essays on Austrian Economics and Political Economy:
Market economies are about learning and change, not about achieving some equilibrium state….
Markets are indeed “discovery procedures.” Actors are driven by competition to learn and experiment with new ways to satisfy consumer demands. Profit and loss are indicators of whether they are successful, and thus whether the innovation will persist. Hence, economic discovery leads to the growth of market institutions that codify the results of market discovery.
DBx: Yes. And therefore designs to enrich the populace through policies such as industrial policy are not only inherently inconsistent with market economies, they necessarily eliminate genuine innovation.
Of course, industrial-policy bureaucrats can dream up new ideas that these bureaucrats then impose on their economic schemes. But no new ideas other than those that are dreamed up by, or pre-approved by, industrial-policy bureaucrats can be allowed if industrial policy is seriously to be pursued. The reason is that any new idea must be fitted into the industrial-policy scheme; if it is not so fitted yet allowed to be implemented, it will likely undermine that scheme. Actions taken in the trail of the introduction of this new idea, if these are not pre-approved of by the industrial-policy bureaucrats, cannot help but unravel great swathes of the industrial policy.
Because always in their details, and usually even in the large, genuine creativity, discovery, innovation, and change are inherently unpredictable – and because predicting in sufficient detail the full consequences of the introduction into economic processes of any new idea is far beyond the ability of the human mind – industrial policy that reliably promotes sustained economic growth for the masses is impossible. Successful industrial policy is more than unlikely. More than implausible. More than improbable. It’s impossible.
Keep this reality in mind when you next encounter a plea for using industrial policy to raise the living standards of ordinary people.
April 25, 2022
Some Covid Links
Your editorial “The Mask Mandate Goes Down” (April 19) says “this has been a rough few months” for the CDC. How so? Its eviction moratorium was in place for over a year before it was struck down, and the mask mandate even longer. Was the agency penalized in any way for exceeding its statutory authority? Was anybody fired, demoted or anything? The CDC has demonstrated that it can exceed its authority with impunity.
Michael J. Galassi
Hurst, Texas
Jeffrey Tucker talks with Ian Miller about mask mania.
We ran zero such trials. The CDC ran no studies. No one knows the answer to these questions, despite their bluster. The truth is it seems highly implausible that wearing a mask on one ear lobe, while eating pretzels for an hour works.
The CDC failed it’s social contract. It implemented a policy and never generated evidence. This turned a scientific question into a political one. Naturally battle lines were drawn.
Finally a judge comes in and throws out the mandate. Many people are upset with the judge. But the judge didn’t fail you. The CDC failed you. It never ran a trial. It never generated knowledge. It kept us in the dark. It should be no surprise that it lost it’s power and legitimacy. It proved it does not deserve the power it was was entrusted by the people. It failed to use science to reduce uncertainty. We should be ashamed of the organization. I certainly am.
Here’s a distressing tweet from Emily Feng in Beijing: (HT Jay Bhattacharya)
Beijing’s largest district (where I live) is undergoing mass “routine PCR testing” beginning tomorrow after 40 or so Covid cases in the last week. Most residents are interpreting this as sign of imminent, total lockdown. Long lines and empty shelves at supermarkets tonight.
Jay Bhattacharya writes to Twitter:
Dear @TwitterSupport,
Why are your algorithms automatically unliking ‘likes’ of my pinned tweet? As a publisher, if your editorial position opposes the @gbdeclaration, you should say so honestly with good arguments, rather than sneaky deplatforming nonsense.
Yours,
Jay
Scott Morefield tweets: (HT Jay Bhattacharya)
When Dr. Fauci insists the CDC’s decisions “shouldn’t be a court issue,” what he’s really saying is that a small group of unelected bureaucrats should be able to rule the populace without accountability to anyone. There are a few words for that, and none of them is “democracy.”
Covid mortality:
Less restrictions (Sweden) vs more restrictions (Europe)
It’s better to be in Taiwan than in China.
Quotation of the Day…
… is from page 72 of Christopher Snowdon’s excellent 2017 book, Killjoys: A Critique of Paternalism:
The ‘public health’ paternalist does not concern himself with odds, trade-offs or the size of the risk to the individual. When looking at mortality statistics he does not concern himself with the age at which people succumb to their ‘lifestyle-related diseases’, nor does he see what disease would have affected them had they avoided the avoidable disease. All he sees are the thousands of preventable deaths somewhere in the world….
DBx: The different goods, services, and experiences that make for a fulfilling human life are enormous in number and they differ in their details from person to person. What also differs from person to person is the relative weights that individuals attach to equal-sized increments of each ‘good.’ While both you and I attach positive value to the prospect of extending our lives for an additional year, the amount of exercise and refraining from drinking that I’m willing to do in pursuit of this benefit likely differs from the amount that you’re willing to do. If so, for either of us to wag an accusatory finger at the other is arrogant and uncivilized.
Each ‘public-heath paternalist’ is arrogant and uncivilized. He or she arrogantly supposes that his or her subjective assessment of the relative values of different goods, services, and experiences is the objectively (the ‘scientifically’) correct one, and then resorts to coercion to impose on legions of strangers his or her assessment – which is, of course, little more than the existing state of that particular individual’s personal preferences. That this officious tyrant does so in the name of science only adds further insult to injury.
April 24, 2022
Quotation of the Day…
… is from page 139 of the late Stanford University economic historian Nathan Rosenberg’s 1991 paper “Critical Issues in Science Policy Research,” as this paper is reprinted in Rosenberg’s 1994 book, Exploring the Black Box: Technology, Economics, and History:
Everyone knows that the linear model of innovation is dead. That model represented the innovation process as one in which technological change was closely dependent upon, and generated by, prior scientific research. It was a model that, however flattering it may have been to the scientist and the academic, was economically naive and simplistic in the extreme.
Russell Roberts's Blog
- Russell Roberts's profile
- 39 followers
