Bryan Caplan's Blog, page 145

Data Challenge: Can "Full-Time, Year-Round Workers" Be Unemployed?, by Bryan Caplan

I've often heard economists talk about "full-time, year-round workers."  Data challenge: Can such workers also be officially "unemployed"?  Answer tomorrow.

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Cartoon Introduction to Climate Change: Pollution Taxes Illustrated, by Bryan Caplan

Here's another page from The Cartoon Introduction to Climate Change that's worth more than all the demagogic words spoken about pollution taxes.  Now in stores.  Click to enlarge.



[Excerpted
from The
Cartoon Introduction to Climate Change by Grady Klein and Yoram Bauman,
reprinted with permission from Island Press.]

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Cartoon Introduction to Climate Change: Experimental vs. Observational Studies Illustrated, by Bryan Caplan

Here are two of my favorite pages from The Cartoon Introduction to Climate Change , available starting today!  I've seen hour-long lectures on experimental versus observational studies that were less pedagogically effective.  Click to enlarge.







[Excerpted
from The
Cartoon Introduction to Climate Change by Grady Klein and Yoram Bauman,
reprinted with permission from Island Press.]

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Myth of the Rational Voter: The Complete Animated Series, by Bryan Caplan

All five of my Learn Liberty videos are now up.  The complete series:

1. Intro. (thanks to Art for the shout-out).

2. Anti-market bias.

3. Anti-foreign bias.

4. Make-work bias.

5. Pessimistic bias.

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Why Sailer Scares, by Bryan Caplan

The full text of Steve Sailer's response to my Eugenic Experiment post reads:

According to Gregory Clark's research on wills in England
from 1200 to 1800, that's pretty much how English society worked: the
richer you were, the earlier you could get married and the more children
you would tend to have.

And we all know how badly that turned out!

In the past (see here, here, and here for starters), Steve and his fans have criticized me for interpreting him uncharitably.  While Steve openly favors policies "based in favor of current fellow citizens," he still acknowledges moral obligations to non-citizens:

But, Bryan, as you may have noticed in the first line you quoted from me, I said,

By "citizenism," I mean that I believe Americans should be biased in
favor of the welfare of our current fellow citizens over that of the six
billion foreigners.

"Biased in favor of" is hardly the same as "recognizes no moral
obligations to non-citizens" and does not imply Poisoning Children. I
also do not, for example, to use one of your 3 AM in the Dorm Room
hypotheticals from another post, believe America should invade Canada
and enslave Canadians.

My response to Steve's clarifications:

Steve devotes most of his intellectual energy to making policy more
biased in favor of citizens.  He devotes almost no energy to explaining
when that bias would, in his eyes, be sufficient or excessive.  Given
the many horrors committed by groups explicitly committed to in-group
favoritism, he should preemptively affirm our moral obligations to
out-groups instead of leaving the issue to listeners' imaginations.

With this context in mind, consider Steve's reaction to my Eugenic Experiment post.  Does he explicitly advocate denying people with below-median income the right to have children?  No.  But he does nothing to reassure readers that he would oppose such laws.  Indeed, I think that neutral observers will agree that Steve comes as close as possible to advocating draconian eugenic laws without actually saying, "I advocate draconian eugenic laws." 

Indeed, his two-sentence comment strongly suggests two frightening positions:

1. There is no important moral distinction between (a) a social system where everyone is perfectly free to have children, but rich people end up having more kids than poor people, and (b) a social system where draconian eugenic policies actually forbid poor people to have kids.*

2. The social consequences of England's historic differential fertility were so outstanding that we shouldn't morally criticize draconian eugenic policies likely to have similar effects.

To repeat, I'm fully aware that Steve has tipped his hat to moral side constraints.  My point is that while he recognizes such constraints at an abstract level, such constraints have almost no visible influence over his concrete evaluations.  In fact, Steve seems to find antinomian fun in scoffing at moral condemnation of draconian eugenic policies.  If you say his comments were designed to be humorous, note that much of the humor arises from the likelihood that many readers take him seriously.

Does Steve genuinely favor denying half of Americans the right to reproduce?  It's hard to know.  It is the uncertainty that he carefully cultivated that makes Sailer's thought so scary to so many - including me.  We shouldn't have to wonder if a thinker approves of denying half the population the right to have children.

* Generalizing this approach would imply, for example, that there is no important moral difference between a 99% Catholic country with freedom of religion, and a 99% Catholic country where an Inquisition cruelly persecutes dissenters to maintain Catholicism's dominance.

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Unemployment Insurance Bleg, by Bryan Caplan

As far as I can verify via Google, workers under the age of 18 remain fully eligible for U.S. unemployment insurance.  Am I missing anything? 

Please show your work.

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The Fungible Kidney, by Bryan Caplan

After I made my animated case for a free market in human kidneys, Zac Gochenour - my co-author and soon-to-be assistant professor at Western Carolina University -  originated a rather clever argument.  Quick version: Suppose you're now poor and healthy.  You're worried that one day you'll need a kidney, but won't be able to afford the free-market price.  What can you do to sleep easy?  Simple: Sell a kidney now and bank the proceeds!  Self-help at its finest.

Here's Zac fleshing out the argument.  Reprinted with his permission.

A common complaint about a market in kidneys is that the
sick poor would not be able to get kidneys as easily as with a
first-come, first-serve system. Even the lowest estimates of the price
of kidneys in a free market is a significant
sum [1] for many of the world's poor. But this argument ignores one of
their biggest assets - their healthy kidney before the onset of failure.




Most underlying causes of renal failure affect both kidneys [2], so
keeping a reserve kidney in case one fails will usually not work. Also,
kidneys can only be stored outside the body for about 30 hours [3], so
storing your healthy kidney for future transplant
is impossible. In a sense, though, it is possible to store your kidney: in a market for organ
transplants, your healthy kidney can be sold and the money earned from
the sale used for another purpose, such as the purchase of another
kidney in the future.




One way to help ensure you will have the market value for a kidney
in the future is to sell one now at current market value and save the
money. Prohibition of the sale of kidneys takes away the one asset that
most of the poor have that could potentially
save their lives.




[1] Adams, A. F., A. H. Barnett, and D. L. Kaserman. 1999. "Market for Organs: The Question of Supply." Contemporary
Economic Policy17 (April): 147-155.




[2] http://www.joslin.org/info/Kidney-Transplants.html

[3] http://www.transweb.org/faq/q24.shtml
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A Eugenic Experiment, by Bryan Caplan

Imagine a Eugenic America where citizens who earn less than median income are forbidden to have children.  Enforcement isn't perfect, so 5% of all kids born are "illegals."  Over time, this leads to a substantial stock of people who weren't supposed to be born in the first place. 

Pundits have the predictable range of positions on eugenic policy.  Liberals demand amnesty for the current stock of illegals, and pledge stricter enforcement of eugenics in the future.  Conservatives oppose amnesty - partly because they don't want to reward law-breaking, and partly because they don't trust liberals to help them strictly enforce eugenics laws.  "Think-outside-the-box" thinkers occasionally chime in, "Fertility policy should be skill-based!  Letting talented low-income people breed is good for America."

As this morally blind debate rages on, a libertarian arrives on the scene.  He vocally proposes "Open Breeding."  Abolish eugenics laws, and let any woman who wants a baby have a baby.  Mainstream reactions are diverse, but uniformly negative. 

Liberals demur, "These new births will drive down wages, especially for the poorest Americans.  Open Breeding is a windfall for the rich, but regular Americans will suffer terribly."  And "That sounds compassionate.  But until we've taken care of everyone who's already here, we can't afford to allow any more needy births."

Conservatives huff, "These poor babies will be a massive fiscal burden.  Think about all the money we'll have to spend on schools, health care, and welfare."  And "Civilizing the next generation of Americans is already an uphill battle.  These poor kids are just too culturally distant from us to co-exist in the same society."

Even many self-styled libertarians back the eugenics laws.  "You can't have Open Breeding and the welfare state.  Milman Friedton said so."  And, "Public opinion research shows that the poor are less libertarian.  When these extra babies grow up, they'll vote away our freedom."

Regardless of your political standpoint, you probably think the libertarian advocate of Open Breeding has right on his side.  Suppose then you were transported to Eugenic America.  How would you rebut your side's stereotypical objections to free reproduction?  How convincing would you be?  If your honest answer is, "Not very," what does that tell you about your compatriots?

Please show your work.

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Dear Nationalism, by Bryan Caplan

Dear Nationalism,

We've grown up together.  In a sense, you and I have been together our whole lives.  In a deeper sense, though, we've never been together.  I've tried to let you down easy a hundred times.  But subtlety doesn't work on you, Nationalism.  I don't want to hurt you.  But Nationalism, you're constantly hurting me.  The only way to protect myself, I'm afraid, is to tell you how I feel, loud and clear.

I know that I was born inside "your" national borders.  But I don't love you, Nationalism.  I don't even like you.  I don't want "patriotic solidarity" with you.  I want you to leave me alone.  Stop acting like you own me.  Stop calling me.  I don't want to be with you.  The mere fact that I haven't fled the country doesn't turn my "No" into a "Yes."

Do you know what you're like, Nationalism?  You're like medieval Religion.  In the bad old days, authorities assigned people a religion - and effectively forbade them quit.  Sometimes quitting was itself a crime.  In other cases, Religion expelled its exes from the country.  The common theme: Religion didn't take no for an answer.

In hindsight, the past abusiveness of Religion is plain.  But you're no better, Nationalism.  Violation is a way of life for you.  You're as unwilling to take no for an answer as the intolerant Religion of yesteryear.

Nationalism, I know you're itching to lecture me about how you're better than all the other Nationalisms out there.  That may be true, but it's no excuse for the way you treat me.  Stop talking like you own the house I live in, the air I breathe, or me.  You don't.  You never did.  Frankly, Nationalism, you make my flesh crawl.

Am I cruel?  No crueler than I have to be to make my wishes known.  There are plenty of fish in the sea, Nationalism.  Lots of them love you already.  Go have patriotic solidarity with them.  Just leave me out of it.  Goodbye.

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Cartoon Introduction to Climate Change: Yoram's Last Word, by Bryan Caplan

I offered to give Yoram the last word in our exchange.  Here it is.

P.S. Yoram's non-fiction graphic novel officially releases on June 5.  That week, with his kind permission, I'll be posting a few pages from his book.

Let's focus on the major
issues in my exchange with Bryan, which now cover 4 posts. (Here's post #1,
which was Bryan's review of my Cartoon Introduction to Climate Change, and then here's #2
and #3.
And I promise that after this post I'll stick to the comments section on this
thread!)

1. Climate science
basics

Here I'm delighted to
report that Bryan and I agree.

I asked:

Are you comfortable saying
that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas? That human emissions of carbon dioxide
are raising atmospheric CO2 concentrations? That global temperatures have been
increasing over the past century? That humans are partly responsible for those
increasing global temperatures? That "it is extremely likely that human
influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the
mid-20th century"?

The Cartoon Introduction to Climate Change provides my
answers to these questions (Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, and No I'm Not Comfortable
Saying This But I Am Comfortable Saying That The Vast Majority Of Scientists
Are Convinced), so I'd like to hear what you have to say about them, Bryan. Can
you provide answers?

And he did:

My answers on all counts
are the same as your answers, Yoram: Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, and No I'm Not
Comfortable Saying This But I Am Comfortable Saying That The Vast Majority Of
Scientists Are Convinced.

This is great;
thank you Bryan.
But it would have been better for Bryan to own up to this years ago, back when
he was lauding
Superfreakonomics and
calling global warming "instrumental-looking"
and asking "What happens if you regress annual global temperature 1880-2011 on
CO2 [and other stuff] like church
attendance per capita, the Dow Jones, televisions per capita, etc"?

If more economists like Bryan
were upfront about their agreements with basic climate science then I would
feel better about not having time to respond to people like David Henderson,
who goes
to great linguistic lengths in an effort to argue that global temperatures
have not been increasing over the past century. Plus I wouldn't have to jaw-jaw
with people in the Comments section or spend my time reviewing
the treatment of climate change in economics textbooks. (The books from
Mitt Romney's top economic advisors, Greg
Mankiw and Glenn
Hubbard, both earned a top grade, so Bryan please tell your neighbors Cowen
and Tabarrok that I'm hoping their forthcoming edition can improve on the C+
they earned last time.)

Bottom line: Thanks for
acknowledging your comfort level with basic climate science.

2. Geoengineering

My main response is that we
appear to be having a communications problem. In my cartoon book, I write
that injecting sulfur particles into the atmosphere "won't stop ocean acidification." In post #2
of the current back-and-forth that Bryan and I are having, I again bring up ocean acidification and link to a RealClimate
article in which scientists discuss some of their concerns about sulfur
injections, including that it won't stop ocean
acidification. Here's Bryan's response, in post #3:
"One of the reasons I read Yoram's book, by the way, was to search out
additional analysis of geoengineering. By my count, he's now missed two
opportunities - his book and his response to my review - to expand my knowledge
of the topic." I'm flattered that you have such high standards for my cartoon
books, Bryan, but let me try again:
What do you think about ocean acidification?

PS. In addition to our
joint communications problem, I think that geoengineering advocates like Bryan
have a communications problem of their very own, namely that they tend to
oversell their position. This appears in Superfreakonomics,
when Levitt and Dubner claim that "perhaps the single best objection" to their
garden hose idea is that "it's too simple and too cheap." And it happens with
Bryan, who starts
off writing that "all things considered, geoengineering looks far superior
to other policy options on the table" and
that "climate activists sorely need to hear... that leading techno-fixes
really do look vastly cheaper than abatement" but then ends up
writing that "As best as I can gather... [after] I spent a week reading about
geoengineering four years ago... [the complaints of critics] seemed weak." No
wonder the general public has anti-smartest-guy-in-the-room
bias when it comes to, well, just about everything.

PPS. While I'm at it, let
me put a confession on the table. There are many walls that we can bang our
heads against, but each of us only has one head. So we need to pick. Jeff
Miron's got drug legalization, Bryan's got immigration reform, and I've got revenue-neutral carbon taxes. Bryan thinks that
geoengineering is a low-cost solution to climate change, and I think that revenue-neutral
carbon taxes is a low-cost solution to climate change.

Bottom line: I'm going
to continue working on revenue-neutral
carbon taxes, especially if geoengineering folks keep failing to address ocean acidification and all
these other concerns from climate scientists.

3. Cost-benefit
analysis

I think that trying to use
CBA for climate change is like trying to use GPS in a cave: great idea, it just
doesn't work very well.

Bryan thinks we need to
try--perhaps because of a philosophical belief that CBA always passes CBA??--and
he "immediately picture[s] multiple variants on the Wheat and
Chessboard Problem" to convey issues regarding discount rates.

I hate to play the "because
I'm the Mom" card, but look: I've now written three cartoon books, and that's
three more than Bryan has written. (I do like his
animated
videos
though.)
And I feel pretty comfortable saying that the Wheat and Chessboard Problem is a
lousy fit for cartoon books. (Animated video, yes. Cartoon books, no.) And I
feel very comfortable saying that a Cartoon
Climate Change book that tried to tackle CBA in a meaningful way
would not have much room for anything else. (Remember that Cartoon Micro spent a whole chapter
on the basics of discounting, and a whole chapter on the basics of expected
value; the long-time-horizon and fat-tail issues with climate change are
considerably more complicated, so I'd peg that at 4 chapters already, with a
complete treatment taking most if not all of a 16-chapter cartoon book.)

Bottom line: Why does
my book not spend much time on CBA? Because I'm the Mom. You go write a cartoon book,
Bryan--my psychotherapist tells me you really really want to!--and then we can
come back to this.

4. Insurance

Bryan says that "Costco.com
sells a year's
supply of dehydrated food for $1499.99" and ask me if I've bought it. The
answer is No... because it doesn't include Cougar Jim's Freeze Dried
Water!

On a serious note, I'll
admit--I'm not ashamed!--that in the days before Y2K I went out and bought a few
bags of ice and some extra supplies. And even now we try to keep a 3-day
emergency supply of food in the house, per Three
Days Three Ways. (Visit ready.gov and think
about whether you should too.)

Bottom line: Low probability outcomes that are
catastrophic really is a pretty good focal point for insurance. Whether you can get
insurance at a reasonable price is a good second-round question--as are concerns
about whether your dehydrated food would last much more than a week before
somebody with a gun overcame their reverence for private property rights and
came for it--but happily for climate change we've got revenue-neutral
carbon taxes.

5. Comparative
advantage

This is actually a new
addition to our list, but I can't resist because Bryan keeps harping on it. So here's a
question for you, Bryan: In Superfreakonomics,
Nathan Myrvold is introduced as somebody who wants to be "every kind of scientist", as being "so
polymathic as to make an everyday polymath tremble with shame." Did this set
off alarm bells for you? It did for me, so I wasn't surprised to learn that Myrvold
was wrong in writing that "the problem with solar cells is that they're
black." You, on the other hand, didn't
express any concerns about Myrvold, and neither did Levitt. Perhaps there
some new kind of bias here that's worth examining?

Bottom line: You are
clearly a very kind person, Bryan--for example, you post my rants on your blog,
and I'm grateful for that--but in future you should be less kind to people you
agree with.

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