Bryan Caplan's Blog, page 133

Thank Obama for All He's Done, by Bryan Caplan

While I still harbor doubts about implementation, Obama's recent executive order on immigration exceeds my wildest hopes from two months ago.  Yet to be honest, I'm having trouble feeling thankful.  Not because I'm afraid he's "undermined the rule of law."  Legal arguments aside, I strongly believe that unjust laws should not be enforced and broken whenever expedient.  No, I'm having trouble feeling thankful about Obama's executive action because:

1. Philosophically, I think Obama should be judged relative to what he was morally obliged to do, not relative to what presidents usually do.  And he was and remains morally obliged to do far more. For starters, it is in his power to extend lifelong deferred action to every illegal immigrant, and pardon everyone in prison for immigration offenses.

2. I strongly oppose almost everything else Obama's done, leading to a reverse-halo effect.  On an emotional level, I dislike the man and what he stands for so intensely that I find it hard to give him credit where credit is due.  Not that I consider Obama especially awful for a politician; every successful politician of every party makes my flesh crawl.

3. To avoid feeling miserable about politics all the time, I've cultivated a mentality of detachment from public affairs.  I haven't simply lowered my expectations; that would make me appreciate Obama's actions all the more.  Instead, I've inwardly given up.  The downside: Good news tempts me to start caring, a prospect that fills me with dread given the daily travesty of politics.

Are any of these good reasons to not be thankful for what Obama's done?  Not really.  Reason-by-reason self-criticism:

1. Yes, Obama ought to do much more, but millions of innocents have still received a major reprieve.   

2. The reverse-halo effect is a cognitive bias that we must strive to resist.

3. Emotional detachment is no excuse for factual denial.  Caring too much about what Obama does is hazardous for my peace of mind, but I still have to admit that he's given genuine hope to millions of innocent people.

The upshot: Despite my odd personal issues, I wholeheartedly thank Obama for all he's done for illegal immigrants.  He should do much more.  But most men in his position would have done nothing or worse than nothing.  This Thanksgiving, millions are thankful that they may finally be allowed to legally work.  Their entire families are thankful.  And so am I.

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The Lawful Neutral Case for Deferred Action, by Bryan Caplan

If life were classic Dungeons & Dragons, many opponents of immigration would be Lawful Neutral.  The law is the law; good or bad, everyone has to obey the rules.  In his defense of Obama's deferred action policy, Ilya Somin points out that Lawful Neutral Americans should favor non-enforcement of U.S. immigration restrictions because they've been unconstitutional from the get-go.  The Constitution only gives the federal government control over naturalization, not migration:

Under the original understanding, Congress did not have a general power to restrict immigration
(though it did have power over naturalization). That may not matter to
adherents of "living constitution" theories of legal interpretation. It
also should not matter to those who believe that the Constitution
generally means whatever Supreme Court precedent says it means.
Immigration restrictions have been deemed permissible under longstanding precedent dating back to 1889.

But it should
matter to those who consider themselves constitutional originalists,
which includes many of the conservatives who have been most vehement in
opposing Obama's actions today. If you believe that the Constitution
should be interpreted in accordance with its original meaning, and that
nonoriginalist Supreme Court decisions should be overruled or at least
viewed with suspicion, then you should welcome the use of presidential
discretion to cut back on enforcement of laws that themselves go against
the original meaning.

But the Supreme Court has ruled otherwise for over a century?  That's hardly surprising given the tight correlation between what the Justices personally favor and what they imagine a two-hundred-year-old document says.

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On the Complexity of the World, by Bryan Caplan

Confession: I have been enamored of extreme policies for as long as I can remember.  When I was around ten years old, for example, I decided that all smokers should be summarily executed.  Adults' attempts to rebut my visionary proposals usually proved counter-productive.  Why?  Because they came off as completely evasive.  They almost never engaged the specifics of my ideas.  Instead, the typical adult condescendingly told me, "You don't understand the complexity of the world."  Such vague objections, I decided, were a clear sign that my juvenilia was rationally unassailable.

One of the biggest lessons I've learned in the meanwhile: The Complexity of the World Argument (CWA) is deep and important even though most people lamely trot it out when they can't think of anything concrete to say.

I started to reassess the CWA when I discovered economics.  One of intro econ's main lessons, after all, is that feel-good policies often have bad indirect consequences.  Imposing a price ceiling on food doesn't just make food cheaper; it also discourages the production of food, and fosters black markets and rent-seeking.  Banning pre-existing conditions clauses doesn't just help sick people get affordable insurance; it also makes insurance more expensive, and encourages healthy people to drop out of the risk pool.  When economists like Mises drew the more general lesson that the failures of government intervention naturally spiral into further interventions, it blew my mind. 

Stories like these didn't merely demonstrate that the CWA had some real-world relevance.  More importantly, they showed that intellectually powerful yet socially invisible arguments exist.   "I haven't heard anyone provide a good argument against X" is only weak evidence in favor of X, because good arguments are routinely, widely overlooked.  The longer my economic education continued, the more relevant the CWA seemed - especially when I discovered that strong objections are often vulnerable to even stronger rebuttals.  Branching out into psychology showed me that I'd been blind to a whole world of additional insights.

In time, however, I realized that there's another field that illustrates the CWA better than any other: history.  Fact: A brutal Communist dictatorship rules North Korea in 2014 because one Serbian shot one Austrian in 1914.  If you know basic history, this seemingly bizarre claim should be obvious.  In 1914, however, this ripple effect was so utterly non-obvious that no one on earth is likely to have considered it!  (Disagree?  Look at how bad even experts are at far less remote predictions). 

Once you merge basic history with the biological fact that none of us would be here if our fathers had crossed their legs one more time, the CWA becomes overwhelming.  The tiniest change in your reproductive behavior eventually changes the identity of every living human.  And some of those humans will make choices that affect billions.  The tiniest change in the behavior of Lenin's parents prior to his conception would have annulled his existence - and a world without Lenin would be a very different world than the one we've known.

After you stare into the face of the CWA, there's no going back.  The only question is: How can you live with it?  Once you fully absorb the CWA, confidence in your long-run, big picture predictions sharply falls.  If you adhere to norms of rationality and candor, the CWA requires you to moderate your claims - and alienate the overconfident masses that surround you.  If you're a strict consequentialist, belief in the CWA is almost paralyzing.  How are you supposed to maximize overall X if long-run, big picture predictions are so tenuous?  How?  How?!  How?!?!?!

From other ethical perspectives, however, the CWA cuts the Gordian knot of indecisiveness.  Suppose you have a modest moral presumption against murder.  The CWA reminds you that such scruples could easily have bad long-run consequences.  After all, you could be sparing an ancestor of the 23rd century's Hitler.  But the CWA also saps the strength of every attempt to defease your presumption against murder.  It is nigh impossible for a reasonable person to be 90% confident that murdering a seemingly harmless person will ultimately make the world a better place.

The upshot: The CWA combined with homely moral presumptions logically leads to a bunch of extreme policies.  Not summarily executing smokers.  I was totally wrong about that and so much else.  But the CWA does elegantly support policies like libertarianism, pacifism, tolerance, and general passivity.  In a world as complex as our own, you have no compelling reason to get your hands morally dirty.  Just leave other people alone, wish them well, and beautify your Bubble.

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A Nice Quote for Obama's Immigration Address, by Bryan Caplan

"I want to ask a question. What is a loophole? If the law does not punish a definite action or does not tax a definite thing, this is not a loophole. It is simply the law. Great Britain does not punish gambling. This is not a loophole; it is a British law. The income-tax exemptions in our income tax are not loopholes. The gentleman who complained about loopholes in our income tax - he did not refer to the exemptions - implicitly starts from the assumption that all income over fifteen or twenty thousand dollars ought to be confiscated and calls therefore a loophole the fact that his ideal is not yet attained. Let us be grateful for the fact that there are still such things as those the honorable gentleman calls loopholes. Thanks to these loopholes this country is still a free country and its workers are not yet reduced to the status and the distress of their Russian colleagues."

--Ludwig von Mises, Defense, Controls, and Inflation

The "loophole" in question, of course, is that prosecutors have essentially absolute discretion to not enforce the law.

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The Bottom Line on DACA, by Bryan Caplan

When the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy was announced in 2012, I repeatedly heard that two million would benefit.  The bottom line has been far smaller: as of March 2014, 673,000 requests were filed, and just 553,000 approved. 

I hasten to add that this is better than I would have expected back in 2011.  But it underscores the fact that we shouldn't take aspirational numbers at face value.

Prove me wrong, Obama.  Prove me wrong.

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Intertemporal Corruption, by Bryan Caplan

When I was an undergrad at UC Berkeley, there was an informal norm about professors dating their students: Just wait until after the final exam.  Professors dating their current students?  A recipe for corruption.  Professors dating their recent students?  Only the prudish could object.

You might dismiss this as a weird Berkeley norm, but it's also ubiquitous in American politics.  Consider:

If a major corporation gives a U.S. Senator a ten-million-dollar "gift," it's likely to be punished as corruption.  It doesn't matter if the corporation protests, "We're only expressing our affection for this fine Senator" or if the Senator bellows, "How dare you claim my vote is for sale!"  However, if the same Senator retires, and the major corporation gives him a ten-million-dollar sinecure on its Board of Directors, it's perfectly legal - and few demur.

The painfully obvious flaw with both norms: Intertemporal corruption is a wonderful substitute for ordinary corruption.  A professor is unlikely to give an F to his current girlfriend; but he's also unlikely to give an F to his future girlfriend.  A Senator is unlikely to vote against a corporation that gives him millions of dollars; but he's also unlikely to vote against a corporation that's going to give him millions of dollars.  What comes around, goes around.

You could object that intertemporal corruption is less reliable than ordinary corruption.  True, but the magnitude of this reliability difference is probably small.  Gratitude and resentment are deeply-rooted human emotions.  We like to repay kindness with kindness, affront with affront.  And whenever emotions fall short, reputation picks up the slack.  How hard can it really be for corporations to predictably hand out sinecures to their retired political cronies?

An alternate objection is that punishing ordinary corruption is much easier than punishing intertemporal corruption.  But if we learn anything from the economics of crime, we learn that the severity of punishment should go up when the probability of detection goes down.  So instead of throwing up their hands about intertemporal bribery, crusaders against corruption should sharpen their pitchforks.

There is one last intellectual escape route: Say that anti-corruption efforts are misguided in the first place.  Quit your bellyaching; it doesn't really matter if professors date their students, or if corporations have politicians in their pockets.  But few will want to bite this bullet, at least publicly.

Other attempts to explain our puzzling tolerance for intertemporal corruption?

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Bechhofer Immigration Bet, by Bryan Caplan

If I were in Obama's shoes, I'd give life-long deferred action to every illegal immigrant, past, present, and future.  I'd also immediately pardon all 20,000+ of the people in federal prison for immigration offenses. 

But to belabor the obvious, Obama and I are two very different people.  He's a two-time gold champion of the political Olympics.  I probably couldn't win a election for Chief Dog Catcher.  He's based his career on pandering to the American people; I've based my career on flunking the American people.  I was scoffing at voters' intelligence before it was cool.

The upshot: When I hear that Obama plans to shield many millions of illegal immigrants from the nation's draconian immigration laws, I'm skeptical.  Such an action requires the very iconoclasm the democratic process ruthlessly screens out.  Bold announcements notwithstanding, I expect him to (a) slash the numbers, (b) cave in to public pressure, and/or (c) fail to effectively deliver what illegal immigrants most crave - permission to legally work. 

GMU econ prodigy Nathaniel Bechhofer is considerably more optimistic.  Argument proved fruitless, so we agreed on a bet.  The terms:

If, by June 1, 2017, the New York Times, Wall St. Journal, or Washington Post assert that one million of more additional illegal immigrants have actually received permission to legally work in the United States as a result of Obama's executive action since November, 2014, I owe Nathaniel Bechhofer $20.  Otherwise he owes me $20.

Of course, I hope Nathaniel wins.  But hoping and thinking are two different things.

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The Margins of Moral Weaseling, by Bryan Caplan

Chris Hallquist recent post begins with a critique of my "Against Human Weakness."  Chris:

The problem is that once you've committed to "do the right thing all
day, every day," you've given yourself a powerful incentive to
rationalize whatever you do do as being the right thing. I find it
interesting that Bryan is a deontologist, and has pressed a version of the argument that utilitarianism is "too demanding."

He's correct.  Once you commit to always do the right thing, you do indeed have a powerful incentive to rationalize the morality of your choices.  But Chris misses the bigger picture.  There are three distinct margins along which people have powerful incentives to weasel out of their moral obligations.

Weaseling Margin #1: Moral principles.  The laxer your principles, the easier they are to satisfy, as Chris explains.

Weaseling Margin #2: Morally relevant facts.  Your moral principles can be incredibly strict as long as you're willing to fudge the empirics.  Being a utilitarian is easy if you can convince yourself that your ski trips to Colorado maximize human well-being.

Weaseling Margin #3: Moral adherence.  Strict moral principles and a clear-eyed view of the facts are painless if you see little need to actually take the actions you consider morally right.

From a microeconomic standpoint, these three margins of weaseling are close substitutes.  Indeed, as long as one margin is totally flexible, the other two can safely be perfectly strict.  Puritanical rationalists like me can seek refuge in low-key deontological moral theories, as Chris suggests.  But even the most fanatical consequentialists have two escape routes of their own.  They can, as Chris suggests, plead moral weakness.  But they can just as easily combine self-righteous puritanism with corrupt social science.  The latter is, in my experience, rampant.  As I've explained before:

[C]onsider the policy views consequentialists held before they studied
philosophy and social science.  Then look at the views they hold after
studying these subjects.  Notice the suspiciously high correlation? 
It's almost as if people grandfather in their
pre-existing policy preferences rather than meticulously judging them
case by case against the facts.

Second, consider
the very high stability of the policy views of the typical mature
consequentialist.  A real consequentialist should be constantly
fine-tuning his policy views as new evidence arrives.  After all, as
soon as the net expected benefits of your current favorite policy fall
$.01 below the net expected benefits of any alternative policy,
consequentialism requires you to purge your old favorite policy and
adopt a new one.

Finally, consider the very high certainty of the
typical mature consequentialist.  No human being has the time to
consider more than a small fraction of policy-relevant evidence.  And
even if you did have the time to review all existing evidence, you'd
still be very far from fully understanding what's going on.  Call it a
cliche, but the real world really is extremely complex.

Chris identifies a real problem: moral weaseling is very very very bad.  But moral weaseling is hardly unique to puritans.  And holding the other two moral margins constant, puritanism helps mitigate the problem.  So why not criticize moral weaseling in all its guises, instead of apologizing for one form of moral weaseling in the strange hope that your excuses will, on net, make human behavior better?

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A Judgmental Typology, by Bryan Caplan

Here's a generalization of my last post.  Let X be any behavior in conflict with common-sense morality: lying, stealing, adultery, drunkenness, murder, etc.  Then two pressing questions about X are: "Is X prevalent in our society?" and "Is X morally acceptable?"

Responses to these two questions yield the following four-fold typology.

 

Is X Morally Acceptable?

Is X Prevalent in Our Society?

 

Yes

No

Yes

Apologist

 

Puritan

No

Antinomian

 

Naif

1. The Apologist admits that X is prevalent, but rejects the common-sense condemnation of X.

2. The Puritan embraces the common-sense condemnation of X, and laments that X is prevalent.

3. The Antinomian rejects the common-sense condemnation of X, and laments is X is not prevalent.

4. The Naif accepts the common-sense condemnation of X, but denies that X is prevalent.

Most societies tirelessly push the Naif position; it's part and parcel of Social Desirability Bias.  But thoughtful people eventually notice that it contradicts basic facts about human behavior.  At this point, they can either dismiss common-sense morality and become Apologists, or judge mankind and become Puritans.  All the while, a small fringe of Antinomians stick with Naif view that common-sense morality governs human behavior, yet reject this morality with contempt. 

The fundamental chasm between me and Tyler is that he's an Apologist, and I'm a Puritan.  To the Naif, we're both hopeless cynics.  But Tyler's a "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" cynic, and I'm a "Who needs 'em?" cynic.

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The Presumptive Puritan, by Bryan Caplan

Tyler on GruberGate:

It's hardly news that intellectuals who hold
political power, even as advisors, very often do not speak the truth.  If
anything, I feel sorry for Gruber that he has subsequently felt the need to so
overcompensate by actively voicing such ex post cynicism, it is perhaps the
sign of a soul not at rest.

These two sentences elegantly illustrate how Tyler and I start at the same place yet end continents apart.  We see the same facts: Lying politicians and the elite intellectuals who craftily decorate their masters' lies.  But Tyler starts with a strong moral presumption that Whatever People in Our Society Routine Do is morally acceptable.  Indeed, he bends over backwards to see the world from their point of view. 

I, in contrast, start with a strong moral presumption in favor of scrupulous honesty.  Unless you have strong reason to believe that lying will have awesome consequences, you shouldn't lie.  Instead of bending over backwards to make excuses for liars, we should bend over backwards to tell the truth.  The fact that most people fall short of this puritanical standard shows that most people ought to shape up and fly right. 

And when people fleetingly realize that every society is ruled by liars, they are right to shudder. 

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