Bryan Caplan's Blog, page 15

Boudreaux’s Aged Hypothetical

The noble Don Boudreaux builds on my ageless hypothetical:

To avoid the many challenges with calculating the value of a statistical life, think of the matter in the following way: Suppose that a society, identical to ours, will – with 100 percent certainty – be stricken with one of three deadly pathogens. But this society can choose which of the three to suffer. Each pathogen will kill the same number of persons, with this number being significant, potentially as high as 0.15 percent of the soc...

The Song of Slack

When I criticize leaders great and small, critics often reply: “You’re so naive.  These leaders are under immense pressure to act as they do.  Even if what they’re doing is as bad as you say, they have no choice.”

 

Question: What exactly does it mean to say, “Leaders have no choice but to do X”?  Here are a few interpretations:

1. If leaders tried to do not-X, they would instantly lose their leadership position.  The leader’s only choice is to do X, or get fired and watch their replacement do X...

Age and the Value of Life: A Further Reply

“Old Lives Matter.” I fully agree with the title of Jeremy Horpedahl’s latest reply on the value of life.  To say that the life of an 80-year-old is worth 1% or .1% as much as the life of a 10-year-old is not deny the high value of elderly lives, because 10-year-old lives are immensely valuable.

However, I disagree with almost all of Jeremy’s arguments.  To wit:

Let’s start with Caplan’s three reasons, which he calls “iron-clad”: young people have more years to live, those years are generally he...

The Missing Right-Wing Firms: Hanania’s Plausible Resolution

Last year, I tried to figure out why there aren’t a lot more right-wing (or apolitical) firms.  A recent piece by Richard Hanania comes down firmly in favor of my Explanation #4.  To review:

Explanation #4. Few moderates or right-wingers care enough to create a major profit opportunity.  While they don’t relish looking over their shoulders, they prefer their current job to an alternative where they can shoot their mouths off but earn a $1000 less per year.  In this story, the left proverbially j...

Goldberg on Expressive Politics

Brennan and Lomasky’s expressive voting model tries to explain why politics is largely about style and stories, not substance and numbers.  Long story short: Political entertainment is a private good; political results are a public good.  As a result, political systems primarily yield entertainment, not results.  Jonah Goldberg nicely illustrates these insights in a recent column.  Highlights:

For instance, during what was supposed to be the debate period for President Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVI...

An Ageless Hypothetical: Horpedahl’s Critique

In response to my ageless hypothetical, Jeremy Horpedahl raises some empirical doubts about the relative value of life for the young and the old:

Surprisingly, though, roughly equally valuing all lives is actually the answer that a normal economic calculation, willingness-to-pay for risk reduction, would give you! Or at least roughly. I haven’t seen an estimate for a 10-year-old, but estimates of the Value of a Statistical Life for 20-year-old is roughly equal to an 80-year-old. I’ve written abo...

The Romanoffs

I recently watched Amazon’s 2018 series The Romanoffs.  While reviews were mixed, I thought this limited ensemble series was amazingly good overall.  Backstory: A century after the execution of the czar and his immediate family at the hands of the Bolsheviks, viewers experience eight distinct stories about descendants of Russian royalty.  None of the characters remain more than mildly Russian; they’re all highly assimilated to American or French society.  Given the Russian monarchy’s despotic re...

Admissions versus Asians

Whenever I want a clear-cut example of latter-day racial discrimination, I point to elite universities’ treatment of Asians.  As far as I’m concerned, the evidence is overwhelming.  The denials are not only motivated reasoning, but desperate motivated reasoning.

Still, this leaves me with a puzzle.  Do I really think that elite admissions officers wake up in the morning and think, “God, I hate Asians”?

I’m not a mind-reader, but I seriously doubt that they do.  Indeed, I bet that the vast majori...

An Ageless Hypothetical

Suppose you could either save one 10-year-old, or X 80-year-olds.  What value of X is morally indifferent?

That is, if you wanted to make the world as morally valuable as possible, when should you switch from saving one youth to X elders?

I suspect that people’s modal answer will be 1.  Not the median, and certainly not the mean.  But probably the mode.

Why would X=1 be such a popular answer?  Charitably, people set X=1 because they sincerely believe that all lives have equal value.

In all hones...

Anything is Small…

“Anything is small if you divide it by GDP.”  I’ve been quoting this line for decades, usually to point out exceptions like the gains of deregulating immigration and housing.  But who, if anyone, actually said it?  I recently decided to email Theodore Keeler, the Berkeley economist who (I believe) first shared the aphorism with me.

Hi Ted, I took IO with you about 30 years ago!  I hope all is well with you.

Question: There’s a quote you told us that I’m having trouble placing.  If memory serves,...