Russell Roberts's Blog, page 412

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: “Can’t buy me love”

(Don Boudreaux)

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In my column for the August 16th, 2009, edition of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review I wrote about the Beatles and the net contribution creative people make to society; I was inspired to do so by attending a concert at FedEx Field by Paul McCartney. You can read my column beneath the fold.

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Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from a recent Facebook post by my emeritus Nobel-laureate colleague Vernon Smith:

[image error]Proposition: Whatever the policy choice, people will die that otherwise would not have died.

So, who shall we choose to live?

Bonus Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from page 48 of the May 9th, 2020, draft of the forthcoming monograph from Deirdre McCloskey and Alberto Mingardi, The Illiberal and Anti-Entrepreneurial State of Mariana Mazzucato:

Some rich kids will do well: being born to an affluent father does not inevitably imply stupidity. Some others will do badly and fail. That he or she fails, despite coming from a position of privilege, suggests that the market economy does not bow to privilege per se. Yet what State does not bow to privilege?

Some Links

(Don Boudreaux)

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This short essay by economists Richard Baldwin and Rebecca Freeman, on the pandemic and globalization, is packed with important information and, more importantly, also with deep economic wisdom. Here’s their conclusion:

If the world is to ramp up the production of essential medical equipment to meet the swift rise in pandemic-driven demand, there is no alternative to international trade given the integrated nature of global manufacturing. The same is true for the medicines, vaccines, and medical tests that will become important in defeating the virus. Trying to shut down this sort of supply-chain trade will simply make it harder to fight the virus for all nations.

Whatever merits there may be to addressing risk in international supply chains, pursuing this goal in the midst of a pandemic could lead to serious, unintended consequences. Pursuing policies aimed at forcing companies to alter their supply chain practices can easily lead other nations to respond. A spiral of retaliation could disrupt world productive capacity in virtually all manufacturing sectors given the high level of interdependence we documented. This could make economic recovery more challenging, to say the least. In short, keeping trade channels open will help us fight the disease and help the world economy recover.

Inspired by the late Mancur Olson, Mike Munger sees a silver lining around the dark cloud that has covered humanity for the past few months.

Deirdre McCloskey was recently interviewed on covid-19 and Brazil.

Steve Landsburg riffs thought-provokingly on Jeffrey Tucker’s recent essay on the 1969 pandemic and Woodstock.

Mark Perry was inspired to construct a Venn diagram by a superb Jason Riley column.

Phil Magness busts the myth that the school-choice movement is a plot by segregationists.

David Henderson fondly remembers the late, great Dick Timberlake. And here’s Tyler Cowen on the sudden, tragic death of Alberto Alesina. (The past week has been bad for good economists.)

Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from page 303 of the 1999 Liberty Fund edition of James M. Buchanan’s and Gordon Tullock’s seminal 1962 book, The Calculus of Consent:

The modern critic of constitutional democracy who calls for more direct operation of majority rule cannot, at the same time, rationally condemn modern man for his attention to selfish and short-run interests in the nation’s market place. If modern man is unduly interested in the emoluments of the affluent society (in creature comforts), he is not likely to shed this cloak merely because he is placed in a slightly different institutional complex. A shift of activity from the market sector cannot itself change the nature of man, the actor in both processes. The individual who seeks short-run pleasures through his consumption of modern “luxury” items sold in the market is precisely the same individual who will seek partisan advantage through political action.

DBx: In the late 1970s, as an undergraduate, I read an essay from the Wall Street Journal that my great teacher and mentor Bill Field posted on his office door in Powell Hall at Nicholls State University. That essay was by Herbert Stein. As I recall, Stein said something there to the effect that a peculiar modern belief is that the same ordinary man or woman believed in the voting booth to be unquestionably capable of wisely choosing government officials is believed outside of the voting booth to be incapable of wisely choosing a refrigerator.

This peculiar, incongruous set of presumptions has ever since then struck me as being especially strange – which likely is one reason that I’m so taken with my colleague Bryan Caplan’s 2007 book, The Myth of the Rational Voter. I do indeed generally trust each adult to make choices that are for him or her sound – or, at least, I trust each adult, (say) Smith, to make such choices more consistently for Smith than I trust other persons, (say) Jones or Williams or both, to make those choices for Smith. That is, I trust you to generally know better what is best for you than I trust me to generally know better what is best for you. And vice-versa.

But in the voting booth – as in most political settings – not only does each chooser not bear any direct material costs, or receive any direct material benefits, from his or her choices, but each of us gets to have a say for free, in the ways that other people (most of whom are strangers to us) lead their lives. It’s a crazy system, one that survives in large part because people have romantic delusions about the nature of voting and collective choice.

Bonus Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from Juliette Sellgren’s new and excellent podcast with David French, available here; near the 28-minute, 15-second mark, French says:

Conversion is more powerful than compulsion.

DBx: Of course, people can be compelled to do a great deal that is against their interest by threatening them with guns and grenades. But no great society will ever be built with such coercion. It is far better and more lasting to persuade people to your point of view. And if you cannot do so, then what basis do you have for believing that your point of view is worthwhile?

Ideas that people must be compelled to act in accordance with are almost certainly dangerous, uncivilized, and uncivilizing.

Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from page 132 of George Will’s excellent 2019 book, The Conservative Sensibility (footnote deleted; link added):

And deficit spending – borrowing – is, as [Christopher] DeMuth says, “a complementary means of taxation evasion.” It enables the political class to provide today’s voters with significantly more government benefits than current taxes can finance, leaving the difference to be paid by voters too young to vote or not yet born.

DBx: Spending other people’s money doesn’t become less a source of waste and inefficiency just because other people’s money is gotten through government-issued bonds.

Bonus Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from this recent EconLog blog post by Scott Sumner:

Every time I read an intellectual defending nationalism I think to myself; “Have these people not studied history?”  Haven’t we been here before?

DBx: The alternative to nationalism is not, as is believed by many, one-world government. Nor is the alternative a romantic transformation of human beings into loving members of the giant family “Humankind.”

The alternative to nationalism is individualism. And of course by individualism is not meant atomism. By individualism is meant liberalism, as this term was originally understood.

Liberalism rejects the notion that society, the nation, and the market are sentient creatures with preferences and goals and feelings and expectations. Liberalism recognizes that choices are made only by individuals and that experiences are had – are sensed, are expected, are evaluated – only by individuals. Liberalism regards the individual as the measure of all things social.

And – pay close attention collectivists of all stripes – true liberals not only recognize, but celebrate, the fact that individuals use their freedom to act in ways that create bonds of cooperation with other individuals.

Some of these bonds, such as those that form the family, are intimate and understandable to the human mind. Other of these bonds, such as most of those that are formed by commerce, are “arms’-length.” But all of these bonds are natural, in the sense that they arise from human nature.

The full pattern of commercial bonds that make possible modern society are designed by no one and undesignable by anyone. And so to understand complex commercial bonds requires an active application of human intelligence. Whether it be from inability or unwillingness, many people – including many intelligent people – refuse to apply their intelligence to understand the nature of these complex commercial bonds. These people, fearing what they do not understand, lash out at extensive commerce. They blame it for ills that it does not cause, and they refuse to credit it for the countless benefits that it does bring.

Nationalism – by creating the false impression that the nation is a large family with interests ultimately opposed by foreigners – artificially obstructs individuals’ efforts to form peaceful, productive commercial ties with each other if those ties happen to cross political boundaries.

It’s stupid. It’s dangerous. It’s nationalism.

Is Basic Economics Still Relevant? (And other topics)

(Don Boudreaux)

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My old friend Pierre Garello invited me to be a guest of Diana Nasulea on this broadcast by IES-Europe. I was honored to accept. And doing the program was much fun. Thanks to Pierre, Diana, and also to Christian Nasulea, who ensured that all worked well behind the scenes.

Is basic economics still relevant? with Donald J. Boudreaux

Welcome everyone!

Posted by Institute for Economic Studies – Europe on Friday, May 22, 2020

Some Links

(Don Boudreaux)

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Tim Worstall gets to the heart of Wells King’s and Oren Cass’s misunderstanding of financial markets. A slice:

The argument here is that financial markets don’t add much value, if any at all. A contention well up there with 2+2 = 5 in its usefulness. For to gain this insight it is necessary to entirely ignore the people doing the buying and the selling. Something really a bit strange – to the point of drivel – among those on the right who might be expected to support things like private property and the ability to acquire and dispose of it.

Barry Brownstein explains that safety is found in principles. A slice:

There are significant differences between order that is made and order that emerges spontaneously. Safety measures that emerge from a spontaneous order are infinitely adaptable as they rely on the creative power of free people. An emerging array of safety measures would have a [to quote Hayek] “degree of complexity not limited to what a human mind can master.” In a planned order, safety measures imposed by politicians are authoritarian, depend on the limited knowledge of people, and may be motivated by a lust for power. Imposed orders are not adaptable and so can be infinitely cruel.

Eric Boehm exposes one result of the mix of cronyism and idiocy at the heart of the Trump administration’s effort to reduce America’s supposed dependency on Chinese-made medical supplies.

Daniel Ikenson and Huan Zhu warn of the costs of a trade war over technology.

This powerful essay by Brendan O’Neill on Britain’s lockdown insanity is relevant also for American readers. A slice:

‘But it is all necessary’, the lockdowners cry. This was questionable from the very start of the lockdown. Now it is utterly untenable. The lockdown was justified as a temporary measure to ensure that the NHS was not pushed to breaking point by the hundreds of thousands of Covid cases that the ideologues of doom predicted. The cases never came. Many hospitals are half-empty. The lockdown’s justification has evaporated.

I’m very sorry to learn of the death of the great Nobel-laureate economist Oliver Williamson. (During my first year on GMU’s faculty – 1985-86 – I reviewed his superb 1985 magnum opus, The Economic Institutions of Capitalism. [The review isn’t on-line, but Pete Boettke last night kindly sent me this photo of it.] Much to my surprise, not long after my review was published, I received a lovely and warm letter from Williamson thanking me for the review. His was a kind gesture to an unknown and unpromising young assistant professor.)