Bryan Caplan's Blog, page 72

A Deal on Immigration is Most Unwise, by Bryan Caplan

Last week, Will Wilkinson published a piece in the New York Times on the political strategy of immigration.  While Will assumes a moderate persona, he's long been in favor of large increases in immigration.  In terms of ultimate goals, then, we're fellow travelers.  But in terms of strategy, we're worlds apart.  The heart of Will's position:

So
a deal that includes money for the wall ought to be a no-brainer for
Democrats. Every viable proposal under discussion includes a hefty
"border security" element, but not any of them include a literal solid
wall spanning the entire southern border..

Democrats
should also be willing to make reasonable concessions on family
reunification (so-called chain migration) and the diversity lottery
(intended to bring immigrants from underrepresented countries). Shifting
visas from certain family-reunification to merit-based categories
should be similarly tolerable.

But
Democrats should reject a DACA compromise that would reduce the overall
level of immigration. Immigrants yet to arrive matter too. Consistent
worst-case-scenario thinking means assuming new legislation will set
immigration policy for the foreseeable future. A DACA fix that cuts
legal immigration could eventually deprive at least as many people as
are currently covered by DACA from ever having a shot at the American
dream.

Two key points:

1. Chain migration is the root cause of relatively high immigration, at least in the U.S.  The 1965 immigration act accidentally liberalized immigration; most of what we've seen since is the product of this glorious accident.  As Gjelten explains in his A Nation of Nations :

Perhaps the most important factor explaining [the 1965 Act's] relatively
easy passage was that both the immigration reformers and the
immigration restrictionists managed to convince themselves and each
other that the legislation would not change the immigration picture all
that much.  In future years, the advocates of tighter immigration
controls would look back at the passage of the 1965 Act as a major cause
of the immigration wave that followed, with millions of Asians,
Africans, Middle Easterners, and Latin Americans moving to the United
States.  The administration officials who insisted that no such inflow
would occur were proved wrong, but they were not alone.  Ironically, it
was Congressman Michael Feighan, a long-time supporter of the national
origins quotas and a close ally of the immigration restrictionists, who
was most responsible for opening the United States to more non-European
foreigners... Fifty years later, about two thirds of all immigrants
entering the United States legally were family members of U.S. citizens
or permanent residents, and the 1965 law was even known in some quarters
as "the brothers and sisters act."

While it's theoretically possible the U.S. could scale back chain migration without cutting overall immigration, it's extremely unlikely.  Under current law, anyone with relatives in the U.S. has a built-in team of lobbyists and well-wishers.  My wife and father-in-law got in because my mother-in-law was already here, pleading with her Congressman's office for help.  The H1-B gives employers some incentive to play the same role, but it doesn't seem nearly as effective. 

I'll admit that's speculative, but this isn't: Chain migration is the mechanism that's actually allowed relatively high immigration these past fifty years.  It has worked.  It does work.  If we keep it, it will keep working.  If you favor immigration, giving it up in exchange for legislative promises is folly.

2. What will happen without a deal?  Will urges worst-case thinking:

When the legal protection of 800,000 people
is at stake, Democrats need to expect the worst, even while hoping for
the best. That means assuming that if DACA expires without a fix, the
administration will be aggressive about deportations, the Senate will
remain Republican, judicial stopgaps will fail, a Republican will win
the White House in 2020, hundreds of thousands will be pushed into the
shadows and many tens of thousands will be rounded up, detained and
ejected from the country.

If you're trying to craft a prudent strategy, though, you should focus on what's likely, not what's scary.  And Will's scenario is highly unlikely.  Why?  Because Dreamers are sympathetic.  Very sympathetic.  They're kids who look and sound as American as apple pie.  As a result, they are less
politically vulnerable than virtually any other non-citizen.  And even if Will were right, there's a silver lining: Any
politician who targets Dreamers doesn't just endanger his own career.  The optics are bad enough to endanger the
cause of immigration restriction itself.  Visualize the deportation of the heroic Jose Antonio Vargas.  I absolutely do not want to make any martyrs, but the blood of the martyrs is still the seed of the church.

Furthermore, if we're going to indulge in worst-case thinking, why not tell a story where compromise costs pro-immigration forces the moral high ground, leading to a slippery slope into 1920's era nativism?  This is hardly fanciful.  Remember: the 1965 liberalization was a glorious accident that still managed to lock-in relatively high immigration for a half century and counting.  A deal with restrictionists really could hand them what they want for decades to come.

Compromise is particularly foolish because time is on the pro-immigration side.  The fraction of Americans who favor more immigration has tripled since 2002.  Nativists have a temporary advantage, but so far they've disappointed their base and disgusted moderates.  If you care about immigration, the best path is just to stonewall and wait a few years.  Instead of a mixed bag of "reform," we can get something worth fighting for: liberalization.

(11 COMMENTS)

Gillespie Interviews Me on The Case Against Education, by Bryan Caplan

My Reason interview with Nick Gillespie on my new book is now up.  Enjoy!



(0 COMMENTS)

Elephant in the Brain on Religious Hypocrisy, by Bryan Caplan

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!
for ye are like unto whited sepulchres,
which indeed appear beautiful outward,
but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness.

Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men,
but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.

--Matthew 23: 27-28When Robin Hanson's first book, The Age of Em , came out in 2016, we had an extended debate.  Despite his genius and the value and originality of his topic, I saw (and see) this book as deeply mistaken.  I'm pleased to report, then, that Robin's second book, The Elephant in the Brain (co-authored with Kevin Simler), is vastly more convincing.  My blurb calls it, "Deeply important, wide-ranging, beautifully written, and fundamentally right" - and I mean every word. 

Though Hanson-Simler (HS) scrupulously avoid the word "hypocrisy," the concept pervades the book.  Since my objections are about the details rather than the basics, I thought it would be fun to just stroll through their chapter on an area of life where accusations of hypocrisy have been prevalent for millennia: religion.  HS are in blockquotes; I'm not.

Religion. There's perhaps no better illustration of the elephant in the brain. In few domains are we more deluded, especially about our own agendas, than in matters of faith and worship. When Henry VIII divorced his first wife under the guise of piety, or when religious leaders launch imperialist crusades, we can be forgiven for questioning their motives. But most of what people do in the name of God isn't so blatantly opportunistic. And yet, as we'll see, there's a self-serving logic to even the most humble and earnest of religious activities.

The last sentence seems like a clear case of overstatement.  What about hidden religiosity?  Persecuted religiosity?

[R]eligion presents not one but two striking puzzles. In addition to the behaviors, we also have to explain the menagerie of peculiar religious beliefs. A quick tour of the these would include gods, angels, ghosts, demons, talking animals, virgin births, prophecies, possessions, exorcisms, afterlives of all sorts, revelation, reincarnation, transubstantiation, and superaquatic perambulation-- to name just a few...

It's tempting to try to collapse these two puzzles into one, by assuming that the strange supernatural beliefs cause the strange behaviors...

And yet, as we've seen throughout the book, beliefs aren't always in the driver's seat. Instead, they're often better modeled as symptoms of the underlying incentives, which are frequently social rather than psychological. This is the religious elephant in the brain: We don't worship simply because we believe. Instead, we worship (and believe) because it helps us as social creatures.

While this story is plausible, HS don't really grapple with the strongest counter-arguments.  Most obviously, arcane doctrinal disputes seem to be the sparks behind several major historical events.  Take the Protestant Reformation.  Yes, there's plenty of realpolitik under the surface.  But it's hard to deny that Luther, Calvin, and other key figures did put beliefs in the driver's seat: "Sola scriptura!"  And without these belief-centric theologians, it's far from clear that the century of violent realpolitik they inspired would have come to pass. 

[W]e engage in a wide variety of activities that have a religious or even cult-like feel to them, but which are entirely devoid of supernatural beliefs. When Muslims face Mecca to pray, we call it "religion," but when American schoolchildren face the flag and chant the Pledge of Allegiance, that's just "patriotism." And when they sing, make T-shirts, and put on parades for homecoming, that's "school spirit." Similarly, it's hard to observe what's happening in North Korea without comparing it to a religion; Kim Jong-un may not have supernatural powers, but he's nevertheless worshipped like a god...

The fact that these behavioral patterns are so consistent, and thrive even in the absence of supernatural beliefs, strongly suggests that the beliefs are a secondary factor.

I struggle to see the logic here.  Yes, the world's leading religions have much in common with secular movements.  But how does that suggest that what distinguishes these religions from secular movements is "secondary"?  Indeed, doesn't it suggest precisely the opposite conclusion - that supernatural beliefs are what makes leading religions special? 

Nevertheless, we think people can generally intuit what's good for them, even if they don't have an analytical understanding of why it's good for them. In particular, they have a keen sense for their concrete self-interest, for when things are working out in their favor versus when they're getting a raw deal.

Again, this seems like a rash overstatement.  For starters, if the religious order is stable and powerful, doubts are dangerous.  HS's own model suggests that the oppressed would develop pronounced Stockholm Syndrome.  Why?  To avoid social sanctions.  The best way to convince your oppressor that you love him is to love him sincerely.

HS acknowledge their broader agenda in this chapter's footnote 15:

In other words, we're going to provide a functionalist account of religion...

This raises major ambiguities.  Are they saying that religion is functional today - or only that it used to be functional?  Are they saying that religion is functional for rank-and-file adherents, religious elites, the whole society, or what?  But HS usually sound like they're talking about current functionality for whoever belongs to the religion.  Case in point:

Groups that are chock full of peaceful, rule-following cooperators are ripe for exploitation. In a religious context, cheaters can take many forms. Some people might put on a show of great piety, but then mistreat others whenever it's convenient-- like a wolf in sheep's clothing, preying on the flock. Others will simply engage in the casual form of cheating known as free-riding. This might entail people taking advantage of church services without giving anything back, or perhaps seeking help from a religious group during their time of need, but then abandoning it as soon as they're back on their feet. Even something as simple as reading email during a sermon could be construed as cheating.

To lock in the benefits of cooperation, then, a community also needs robust mechanisms to keep cheaters at bay.

Strangely, though, many of the leading religions loudly proclaim that they welcome everyone.  And they live up to this rather naive promise to an amazing degree.  I was raised Catholic for my first sixteen years, and can't recall any anti-cheating mechanism more "robust" than collective scolding.  Preaching blanket forgiveness swamped efforts to stamp out "exploitation."  Catholicism was plainly stricter before my time, but the modern Church didn't invent unconditional love in the 1970s.  It's deeply embedded in the New Testament.

Time and energy are perhaps the easiest resources to waste, and we offer them in abundance. Examples include weekly church attendance, sitting shiva, and the Tibetan sand mandalas we saw earlier. This helps explain why people don't browse the web during church. Yes, you probably have "better things to do" than listen to a sermon, which is precisely why you get loyalty points for listening patiently. In other words, the boredom of
sermons may be a feature rather than a bug.

Or not.  Mega-churches led by charismatic preachers and packed with audience participation have been doing very well in the religious marketplace.

Consider the belief in an all-powerful moralizing deity-- an authoritarian god, perhaps cast as a stern father, who promises to reward us for good behavior and punish us for bad behavior. An analysis of this kind of belief should proceed in three steps. (1) People who believe they risk punishment for disobeying God are more likely to behave well, relative to nonbelievers. (2) It's therefore in everyone's interests to convince others that they believe in God and in the dangers of disobedience. (3) Finally, as we saw in Chapter 5, one of the best ways to convince others of one's belief is to actually believe it. This is how it ends up being in our best interests to believe in a god that we may not have good evidence for.

I've often heard economists make claims like this.  But when you look at the real world, it's far from clear that disobedience and belief in divine punishment are even negatively correlated.  Luther and Calvin, the fathers of modern Protestantism, preached predestination with utmost clarity: Your salvation is absolutely beyond your control.   Nevertheless, fundamentalist Protestants have long been known for strict adherence to the rules - especially compared to traditional Catholicism.

There's also a peculiar omission in this chapter.  HS barely acknowledge the massive gap between how religious people say they are and how religious they actually are.  How many people announce, "God is the most important thing in my life," yet don't even bother to attend church or learn the basics of the Bible?  On reflection, this is one of the world's best examples of hidden motives.  Since most religious people offer little more than lip service to their own faith, isn't the simplest explanation is that the world is packed with subconscious atheists?  If I were HS, I would have put this stark assertion front and center.

To repeat, Elephant in the Brain is a stellar book.  Buy it; read it; live it.  But HS could have done even better.  They're so excited about their own theory that they occasionally forget to be curious about the facts.  And they're so eager to show that strange behavior could be functional that they frequently forget to ask, "Functional when?" and "Functional for whom?"

(10 COMMENTS)

A Golden Journey, by Bryan Caplan

Here's the speech I delivered at my in-laws 50th anniversary party a couple of weeks ago.  It's anecdotal, but I think social science fans will enjoy it.

On New Year's Day, 1968, a young couple married in
Bucharest, Romania.  Their names were
Corneliu Dumitru Mateescu and Maria Teodora Ghitza.  I wasn't there, but I hear it was a three-day
Old World extravaganza of feasting and dancing. 
Despite disapproval from the Romanian Communist Party, Cornel and Maria celebrated
an old-fashioned church wedding.  At the
time, I suspect that loyal Communists were saying, "Well, it's only a
wedding.  It's not like they're going to
reject everything we stand for."

But let's back up. 
Corneliu, the groom, was born in the mid-1930s.  He was the cherished only child of two loving
parents who worked hard to give him an idyllic childhood.  But then the war came.  Daily life was a struggle.  By the war's end, young Corneliu was a
refugee - fleeing the city to escape the bombing.  When peace finally came, it was the peace of
the Red Army.  The Communists soon closed
Corneliu's school, where he had been educated by German monks - "the Br��der."  When he reached adulthood, Corneliu was
drafted and sent away from home.  But he
persevered, eventually earning a top job with the electric authority - about as
high as anyone in Romania could rise without joining the Communist Party.

Maria, the bride, was born in 1948.  She missed the war - and had no memories of
pre-Communist Romania.  She grew up with
her mom, a schoolteacher, and her little brother Alecu.  They didn't have their own television set,
but a relative did.  When Maria was in
her late teens, that t.v. malfunctioned. 
Now, you may ask, where in Communist Romania do you go to get your t.v.
repaired?  Well, it turns out that a
charming young man with the electric authority repaired t.v. sets after
hours.  He showed up and went to
work.  And who happened to be visiting
her relatives that day?  Young Maria
Ghitza! 

Cornel's electrical skills must have been awesome, because they
were soon the stars of a three-day wedding. 
Three years later, they were parents of a lively, adventuresome,
determined, adorable little girl, Corina Ruxandra.  Cornel's parents were on site to help raise
her in the family home.  Cornel, Maria,
and Corina hiked together through the beautiful Carpathian Mountains.  But as their daughter enjoyed the great
outdoors, her parents couldn't help but realize that as long as they remained
in Communist Romania, most of the world's beauty and opportunity would remain
beyond her reach.

So in 1974, Maria made one of the hardest sacrifices a
mother can make.  When she received
permission from the Communist government to visit the West, she saw a once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity to give her daughter a better life. 
The Communists assumed that a mother of a young girl would return.  Instead, Maria reached America - and Cornel
began stubbornly asking permission to follow her.

It was a sad time for the Mateescu family.  Maria had to make her solitary way in the
United States by the sweat of her brow. 
While learning English, she worked as a nanny.  She worked on a lunch truck.  And she kept sending money and gifts home to
her family.  Cornel and his parents had
to raise Corina alone.  Corina spent
years without her mother to guide and comfort her.  She was even sent home from school for
wearing one of Maria's gifts - a lovely but forbidden "capitalist dress."

Communist officials felt sure that Cornel would eventually
stop asking to reunite his family.  But
there was one thing they didn't count on: the stubbornness of a Mateescu.  Despite years of bureaucratic abuse, Cornel
kept asking to leave. He refused to give up. 
He wouldn't take no for an answer. 
In 1978, he won.  Cornel left
Communist Romania with his daughter. 
After six more months as refugees in Italy, Cornel, Maria, and Corina
were reunited right here, in Southern California.

The Mateescus were now a family of immigrants - and lived
the full immigrant experience.  Finding
work.  Learning English.  Exploring a magical new country.  Teaching their daughter to excel in life -
and to blend the best of two sharply contrasting worlds.  Corneliu eventually reentered his chosen
profession - electrician - for JPL. 
Maria became a skilled draftswoman in the prosthetics industry.  Corneliu's parents were finally able to join
them as well.  All four elders poured
their love and encouragement into young Corina Mateescu.  And that little girl from Bucharest, who
didn't speak a word of English when she arrived at LAX in 1978, became the
valedictorian of her high school - and a student at UC Berkeley.  Dreams do come true.

When Corina went off to college, her father made some dire
predictions about the first boyfriend she'd bring to meet the parents.  Though she'd given him little cause for
pessimism, he announced that she'd fall for a Communist... Berkeley... hippie.  Imagine his delight, then, when I showed
up!  I did live in Berkeley, but my hair
was short - and my anti-Communist credentials were rock solid.  Well, he may not have been absolutely
delighted at first, but Maria reminded him that things could be worse.  And when Corina and I got engaged in late
1993, today's honored guests gave us their blessing.

Much has happened since then.  Cornel and Maria are now grandparents four
times over.  Their grandchildren are all
here today.  Aidan and Tristan, the twins.  Simon, our younger son.  And Valeria, named after Corneliu's beloved
mother.  And of course, Cornel and
Maria's daughter Corina, their most precious jewel and the organizer of
tonight's festivities, is here by their side. 
This party won't last three days like it did fifty years ago, so please
try to squeeze three days worth of revelry into the next couple of hours.   But first, friends and family, let's all
raise our glasses to a special couple and the courageous and bountiful life
they have made together.

(11 COMMENTS)

An Ignorant Plot?, by Bryan Caplan

Twitter was angry with me after my Tucker Carlson interview.  The most common accusation was roughly, "Of course Fox News loves  The Case Against Education .  Undermining education is a plot to help the Republicans by spreading ignorance."  
I could take umbrage, but I see where the accusers are coming from.  In the last election, the education gap between Trump supporters and opponents was indeed enormous.  Trump - or at least his public persona - is proudly ignorant.  Wouldn't it help Trump's successors if education levels fell?

I doubt it.  While it's possible that Trump has sparked an historic party realignment, the safe bet says that (a) Trump is an outlier, and (b) we'll return to the long-run trend.  And over the long-run, there's surprisingly little connection between education and partisanship.  As I explain in my book:

In the data, the well-educated are only microscopically more liberal.  In the General Social Survey, people place themselves on a seven-step scale, where 1 is "extremely liberal," 4 is "moderate," and 7 is "extremely conservative."  An extra year of education seems to make people .014 steps more liberal.[1]  Taken literally, over seventy years of education are required to shift ideology a single step.  Statistical corrections make education's impact on ideology look stronger, but it stays weak.[2]
If the effect on ideology is slight, the effect on partisanship is slightly perverse.  As education rises, people grow less Democratic.  The General Social Survey's respondents place themselves on a seven-step scale, where 0 is "strong Democrat," 3 is "independent" and 6 is "strong Republican."  An extra year of education seems to make people .071 steps more Republican.[3]  Statistical corrections makes this effect look weaker, but education still appears to mildly boost support for the party that teachers and professors disfavor.[4]

Furthermore, whatever pattern exists likely reflects relative education rather than absolute
education.  After all, education has risen dramatically over the last
century, but America's partisan composition has been quite stable.  If
education matters, then, it matters because - regardless of average
national education - people with similar education levels
politically cluster together.  In technical terms, education largely
works via peer effects - and peer effects are inherently double-edged:

To isolate education's influence on society, however, you must unpack how education sways students.  Is the mechanism "leadership" - planting teachers' ideas in students' heads?  Then education remolds society.  Is the mechanism "peer effects" - sorting kids into distinct groups?  Then education mainly reshuffles society without remolding it.[5]
Suppose you funnel an extra kid into college.  His peer group seismically shifts.  Given human conformity, the freshman will likely try to blend in with his new peers.  College youths are less religious, for example, so one would expect the student to veer in a secular direction.  This does not imply, however, that college makes society less religious.  The existence of college splits kids into two subcultures with opposing peer effects.  If college kids are less religious than average kids, then non-college kids must be more religious than average kids.  Members of each subculture adjust their behavior to locally fit in.  Religious conformity pressure in the non-college pool offsets secular pressure in the college pool.  Net effect on society's religiosity: unclear, even if college demonstrably makes students less religious.

Voter turnout is a clean example:

Voter turnout rises sharply with education. Substantial effects of education on turnout usually linger after statistically correcting for income, demographics, intelligence, and so on.[6]  Despite some thoughtful naysayers, limited experimental data also show extra education boosts turnout.[7]
The catch: Education has sharply risen over the last century, but turnout has gently fallen.  This could mean offsetting factors masked education's pro-voting effect.[8]  But several prominent researchers instead conclude that turnout depends on relative education.[9]  People don't vote because they're educated, but because they're more educated than others.  This once again suggests peer effects: The longer you stay in school, the more politically active your social circle, and the more politically active you become to fit in. 

But what about the effect of education on issue views?  That, too, seems largely driven by peer effects.
Bottom line: I'm delighted to receive favorable coverage from Fox (or any major news outlet, for that matter).  But even if The Case Against Education became the blueprint for radical education reform, there's little reason to think it would reshape the electorate.
Notes
1 Results from regressing GSS variable identifier POLVIEWS on a constant and years of education.
2 Chief problem with the simple approach: The well-educated are richer, and the rich are more conservative.  As a result, income conceals some of education's effect.  If you regress POLVIEWS on a constant, years of education, and log family income, one year of education makes you .028 units more liberal - double the estimate from the simple approach.  Further correcting for race, sex, age, and year, one year of education makes you .024 units more liberal.
3 Results from regressing GSS variable identifier PARTYID on a constant and years of education, excluding respondents who support third parties.
4 If you regress PARTYID on a constant, years of education, log family income, race, sex, age, and year, one year of education makes you .029 units more Republican.
5 To surmount this "zero-sum" problem, peers must have non-linear effects in the right direction.  As Burke and Sass 2013, p.58 remark, "[P]olicy can hope to generate aggregate achievement gains only if peer effects are nonlinear and therefore non-zero-sum in their impact on achievement."  See also Lavy and Schlosser 2011, p.4.  Hoxby 2002 discusses the complex empirics of non-linear peer effects. 
6 For overviews of the research and some basic results, see e.g. Burden 2009, Nagler 1991, and Powell 1986.
7 The most notable naysayers: Kam and Palmer 2008, p.612 reports higher education has no effect on turnout after fully accounting for "preadult experiences and influences in place during the senior year of high school."  Tenn 2007 finds immediately after gaining an extra year of education, individuals are no more likely to vote than they were in the previous year.  Sondheimer and Green 2010 examines three sets of experimental evidence on education and turnout.
8 Burden 2009 reviews the contrast between micro- and macro-level evidence, and summarizes the top contending "offsetting factors." 
9 The leading defenses of the relative education theory are Tenn 2005, and Nie et al. 1996. (6 COMMENTS)

I Win All My Ebola Bets, by Bryan Caplan

Back in 2014, Ebola was national - and global - news.  Even in Africa, fears ultimately turned out to be overblown.  The WHO's official tally was about 11,000 fatalities.  The true figure is almost certainly higher, but not grossly so.  This is far short of the hundreds of thousands of deaths so many predicted.  Brad DeLong, for example, opined: "Ebola will not become the biggest public health problem in West Africa
unless deaths reach the high seven figures - which they may: it is highly
likely that deaths in the six figures are now baked in the cake."

In the U.S., the news was even better.  Total deaths came to one .  Given the effectiveness of sanitation and quarantine at preventing its spread, this was highly predictable.  But medical science didn't inoculate us against national hysteria.  And as usual, anti-immigration activists seized on this tragedy as an excuse for the policies they favor in sickness and in health.  My frequent debate opponent Mark Krikorian even tweeted under the hashtag #LibertariansForEbola.

Rather than fruitlessly argue with a maelstrom of passion, I publicly proposed the following bet in October, 2014:

$100 says that less than 300 people will die of Ebola within
the fifty United States by January 1, 2018.

Four noble souls took the other side.  Since today is January 1, 2018, I am pleased to announce that I have won the bet.  (Since all prepaid, we're already settled up).

Part of the reason deaths were mercifully low, no doubt, is that health workers took the danger seriously.  But of course, that's one of the variables wise bettors will factor into their decisions.  And despite angry Congressional calls for travel bans, Obama went with the moderate expert consensus.  Domestically speaking, little was done.  And domestically speaking, even less happened.

As always, you can insist I got lucky.  But this would carry far more weight if pessimists were lining up to take my money back in 2014.  Needless to say, they weren't.  Betting kills hyperbole; and for most people, politics without hyperbole is as dull as watching paint dry.

Still think I got lucky?  Well, if you've got another Ebola bet to propose, I'm all ears.

(3 COMMENTS)

Only the Rich, by Bryan Caplan

The government gives an excludable good away for free: roads, parks, education, medicine, whatever.  Then some economist advocates privatization of one of these freebies.  Technocrats may offer some technical objections to privatization.  Normal people, however, will respond with a disgusted rhetorical question: "So only the rich should have roads/parks/education/medicine/whatever."

A straw man?  Not really. As I've explained, a straw man is when you falsely attribute a silly argument to your opponents.  But "Only the rich..." is an argument the opponents of privatization routinely embrace.

But what exactly is so silly about the "only the rich" argument?

1. Some free government services would remain quite affordable after privatization.  These goods certainly wouldn't "only be for the rich."  This is especially clear if (a)  government subsidies are currently driving up prices or (b) privatization paves the way for broad-based tax cuts.

2. Suppose that after privatization, the formerly free goods become quite pricey.  The non-rich could still afford them by making their purchase a priority.  In the current regime, for example, boats are pretty expensive.  But many people of modest means still own boats because they make boat ownership a priority, sacrificing other goods and services to free up funds for the activity they intensely value.  Prioritizing is especially effective in the long-run because motivated people can and do save money to build up a nest-egg.

3. The market often offers expensive full-price products and affordable substitutes side-by-side.  In a free market, for example, driving during peak time would probably be very expensive.  But tolls earlier or later in the day would be far cheaper. 

4. If they plan ahead, the non-rich can often afford extremely expensive products by buying insurance.  Even if the rates aren't cheap, insurance is the classic way to transform devastating financial shocks into manageable financial burdens.

5. Where all else fails, the non-rich can turn to borrowing and charity.

Intelligent critics are likely to blame me for being overly literal.  Of course "Only the rich will have X" is hyperbole.  But it's a poetic way to lament the inequities of the market mechanism.  But I say the intelligent critics are interpreting populist rhetoric far too charitably. 

If literally true, the hyperbolic arguments would be powerful objections to privatization.  If privatization will genuinely deprive all non-rich people of all medicine, we probably shouldn't privatize.  But if the worst you can say about privatization is, "Rich people will have more and better medicine," the obvious retorts are: "Rich people already have more and better medicine," followed by "That's the whole point of money - to get more and better stuff."

In short, the "Only the rich" catchphrase isn't merely a childish overstatement.  Like most political hyperbole, it's effective because adults take it literally.  As I've said before:

Why are proponents of government action so prone to hyperbole?  Because it's rhetorically effective, of course.  You need wild
claims and flowery words to whip up public enthusiasm for government
action.  Sober weighing of probability, cost, and benefit damns with
faint praise - and fails to overcome public apathy.

What would it take to transform "only the rich" populist demagoguery into serious policy analysis? Simple: Critics of the market could argue that the marginal improvement in incentives isn't worth the marginal costs of higher inequality.  Of course, once you frame the issue that way, it's a short jump from critic to agnostic.

(6 COMMENTS)

Me on Education on Tucker Carlson, by Bryan Caplan

I just appeared on Tucker Carlson's show to talk about The Case Against Education and my piece in The Atlantic.  I have no idea if Tucker knows how far apart we are on immigration.  But he treated me graciously and we had a great conversation.  Enjoy!



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What's Wrong With Students: A Guest Post by Dennis Fried, by Bryan Caplan

Former philosophy professor and successful humorist Dennis Fried sent me some poignant comments on my piece in The Atlantic.  Reprinted with Fried's permission.

Dear
Dr. Caplan,



I just read your article in Atlantic magazine and was blown away by the
brutal honesty displayed there, especially coming from someone whose career depends on the very system being criticized. I
taught philosophy at several public and private colleges and universities in the 70s, and I chose to leave the
field in 1980 because of the degradation in education that was taking place even then. I often said that, in my experience,
out of a class of thirty students only about five would normally possess the minimum requirements for a college student: the ability to read and write with competence, and a modicum of intellectual curiosity.



I clearly remember two moments that crystallized for me my decision to leave
teaching.



Appalled and shocked by the illiteracy displayed in my students' papers, I once
began a class (comprised of freshmen through seniors) by writing on the board three words: cats, cat's, cats'. I
then asked if anyone could explain the difference. About ten seconds elapsed before one (very brave) student raised her hand,
began "I think ..." and then proceeded to explain the difference correctly. I said, "This is third grade stuff. Why
do most of you not know it?"



Several said they were never taught it. I then asked, "Didn't your high
school teachers correct this sort of thing on your papers?" to which several responded, "We never had to write any
papers in high school."



"What did you do in English class?" I asked.  Answers: Listened
to records, watched videos, talked about movies and current events.



Second crystallizing event. I had a young man in my Intro to Philosophy class
who got so little right on his mid-term exam that it was hard to believe, even more so because he attended class, stayed
awake, and seemed to take notes. So I asked him to come in to see me. I asked to see his notes, and they seemed to be hitting
the main points. I was stumped.



Well, maybe he just didn't study for the exam. So I asked him if he had.



"Oh, yes." A "yes" with conviction. I don't know what
prompted me to ask the follow-up, but I did: "How long would you say you studied?"



"Well, the night before, I studied probably pretty close to an hour."
And with that the scales fell from my eyes.



"An hour? Do you realize that when I was in college it was common to start
studying for big exams a week or more before?"



"Gee," he said.



And, as your article and other sources make very clear, in the past thirty-plus
years it's only gotten worse.



In any case, with no irony intended, I wish you the best of luck!



Sincerely,

Dennis Fried (Osprey, Florida)

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The Political Economy of Social Desirability Bias, by Bryan Caplan

Last week, I visited the University of Freiburg for a conference on behavioral political economy.  My presentation: "The Political Economy of Social Desirability Bias: The Case of Education."  The first half, which summarizes The Case Against Education , will already be familiar to most EconLog readers.  The second half, however, should seem new.  I blend psychology and public choice to explain why education is almost universally politically popular despite the bountiful evidence in favor of the signaling model.  Simple version: For all its faults, education simply sounds good.

My slides are here.  Enjoy!

P.S. Alex Tabarrok presented a stand-out talk on what's wrong with India.  If anyone is going to fix India, it will be him...

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