Bryan Caplan's Blog, page 78

Caplan Family School Graduation Podcast, by Bryan Caplan

For the last two years, I homeschooled my elder sons, Aidan and Tristan, rather than send them to traditional middle school.  Now they've been returned to traditional high school.  We decided to mark our last day with a father-son/teacher-student podcast on how we homeschooled, why we homeschooled, and what we achieved in homeschool.

In person, Aidan and Tristan are rather reserved, so if you've only met them once or twice, you don't know what's going on inside their heads.  On the podcast, in contrast, they are... outspoken.  And all paternal pride aside, they are knowledgeable beyond their years.  Their 5's on the Advanced Placements tests in United States History, European History, Microeconomics, and Macroeconomics are only the beginning.

You can hear the whole podcast now on Soundcloud.  Enjoy!




P.S. In the opening of the podcast, I state that I homeschooled them for "two weeks."  The actual time was two years!  Slip of the lip.

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My Homeschooling Textbooks, by Bryan Caplan

People often ask me about the textbooks I used to homeschool my sons during grades 7 and 8.  I appreciate the question, because - aside from grading essays - textbook selection was probably the most time-consuming part of being Caplan Family School's Head Teacher.  The books I assigned, with commentary:

7th Grade
For Algebra we used Practical Algebra: A Self-Teaching Guide .  This is probably the best math text I've ever seen: clear, thorough, and (to our eyes) literally infallible.

For Geometry, I couldn't find a really good text, so we just used the geometry sections of the Kaplan SAT prep book and Kaplan SAT Math Level 1 prep book, plus miscellaneous others.

Our source for Algebra II was Practice Makes Perfect: Algebra II .  Pretty good, but quite a few errors.

For United States history, I assigned Nation of Nations, volumes 1 and 2.  It's not thrilling, but was comprehensive, and low on annoying political remarks and outright economic illiteracy.  Here, and in many other cases, I saved a bundle of money by using old editions.  History really hasn't changed much since 2007, after all.

Later, I bought virtually every A.P. U.S. History prep book for practice questions, as well as Barron's excellent flash cards.

My students also took my labor economics class, using all the assigned texts.

8th Grade
For Trigonometry and statistics, we used the later chapters of Practice Makes Perfect: Algebra II .

For calculus, we used Quick Calculus: A Self-Teaching Guide .  This book is very well-written and easy to follow.  It's also full of errors, but a public-minded Amazon reviewer posted a nearly-complete page of errata here.

If Caplan Family School were continuing, I would start a normal calculus textbook from page 1 now that we finished Quick Calculus.  The subject's hard and deep enough it's worth mastering the basics, then redoing it with all the bells and whistles.

Our primary source for European history was Carlton Hayes' A Political and Social History of Modern Europe, volumes 1 and 2.  Few historians are more fun and funny.  Though his words are occasionally monstrous to modern ears, cut him some slack.  The guy moonlighted by saving tens of thousands of lives during World War II.

Since Hayes only goes up to 1924, I added Civilization in the West to get up to the present day.  But despite its massive size, this book's coverage of the twentieth century was superficial, especially the post-war era.  My sons mainly learned about the twentieth century from random lectures, Wikipedia, and David Phillips' awe-inspiring flash cards.  Best... flashcards... ever.

For micro and macroeconomics, we relied on Cowen and Tabarrok's Modern Principles of Economics .  Using a text written by two guys within earshot may seem like nepotism, but my students privately called it their very favorite textbook: written with joy and packed with mind-expanding problems.

This year, my sons also took my public choice class, using all the assigned texts.

Did I choose textbooks wisely?  Hard to be sure, but I know two things as facts:

1. My students were happy doing their work, day after day. 

2. We took a total of four Advanced Placement tests - U.S. History, European History, Microeconomics, and Macroeconomics, earning straight 5's.  In middle school.  I'll probably never get to cheer for my boys at a competitive sporting event, but this before all the world do I prefer.



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Tristan Caplan's Tetlockian Glossary, by Bryan Caplan

This summer, I assigned Tetlock and Gardner's Superforecasting (see here, here, and here) to my homeschoolers.  They took to this masterpiece of political psychology like fish to water.  I'd already taught them about human beings' wacky mapping from language to quantitative probabilities, but these passages have really stuck with them:

In March 1951 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) 29-51 was published. 
"Although it is impossible to determine which course of action the
Kremlin is likely to adopt," the report concluded, "we believe that the
extent of [Eastern European] military and propaganda preparations
indicate that an attack on Yugoslavia in 1951 should be considered a
serious possibility." ...But a few days later, [Sherman] Kent was
chatting with a senior State Department official who casually asked, "By
the way, what did you people mean by the expression 'serious
possibility'?  What kind of odds did you have in mind?"  Kent said he
was pessimistic.  He felt the odds were about 65 to 35 in favor of an
attack.  The official was started.  He and his colleagues had taken
"serious possibility" to mean much lower odds.

Disturbed, Kent
went back to his team.  They had all agreed to use "serious possibility"
in the NIE so Kent asked each person, in turn, what he thought it
meant.  One analyst said it meant odds of about 80 to 20, or four times
more likely than not that there would be an invasion.  Another thought
it meant odds of 20 to 80 - exactly the opposite.  Other answers were
scattered between these extremes.  Kent was floored.

Ideally, analysts would adopt standard conventions on the correct way to translate from English to math.  But since that won't happen anytime soon, my son Tristan proposed a simple, effective half-measure.  Namely: every serious book (and perhaps every article) should include a Probability Glossary in the opening pages, alongside the List of Illustrations and List of Tables.  In these glossaries, each author would explicitly state what probabilities (or probability ranges) he assigns to probability-relevant English words.  For example, here are roughly the probabilities I have in mind when writing this blog:

English Term

My Probability

Absolutely certain

100%

Certain

>99%

Almost Certain

���95%

Highly Likely

>80%

Probable

>60%

Likely

>51%

Toss-up

45-55%

Unlikely

Possible

1-35%

Highly Unlikely

Almost impossible

���5%

Impossible

Absolutely impossible

0%

Filling out this table makes me self-conscious of the inadequacies of my current usage.  But it's still a big step forward in the War for Clarity.  Indeed, reading this table might make you realize you and I suffer from illusory disagreement - or illusory agreement.  And even if publishers are loathe to add a Probability Glossary, there's no reason why every thinker who wants to signal seriousness couldn't publicly post one on his blog or webpage.

When you do, please credit my son for the idea...

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Four Decades of Middle Eastern Disaster: The Proximate Cause, by Bryan Caplan

Counter-factual history is really hard.  If World War II hadn't happened, one could easily imagine it being replaced by a global thermonuclear war in the 1960s.  But the history of proximate causes is much easier.  Let A, B, C, and D be highly specific major events.  A good historian can credibly determine that A caused B, B caused C, and C caused D, so if not for A, D almost certainly wouldn't have happened.  The assassination of the Austrian Archduke caused World War I, which caused the rise of Marxism-Leninism and Nazism, which caused World War II, which caused the Korean War, which caused Kim Jong Un to be the present dictator of North Korea.  This doesn't prove the world today would be better-off if Princip's assassination plot had failed; something worse could have happened instead.  But we can still chronicle the path of history's dominoes.

My favorite recent example: almost all of the Middle East's disasters over the past four decades can be credibly traced back to a single highly specific major event: the Iranian Revolution.  Let me chronicle the tragic trail of dominoes:

1. In late 1977, political resistance to the Shah comes into the open, with demonstrations, civil resistance, and strikes.  Rather than crushing it with an iron fist as you'd expect, the Shah is indecisive, erratically mixing conciliation with brutality.  By 1979, Iran is officially an Islamic Republic under the dictatorship of Ayatollah Khomeini.

2. Smelling revolution-induced weakness, Saddam Hussein attacks Iran in 1980, starting the Iran-Iraq War.  The war drags on until 1988, killing roughly a million people.

3. During the Iran-Iraq War, Kuwait lends Iraq $14B.  Afterwards, Hussein pressures Kuwait to forgive the debt, and Kuwait refuses.  This leads to an unraveling of relations, and ends in Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

4. The U.S. organizes an international coalition to expel Iraq from Kuwait, culminating in the Gulf War.  Part of the deal: the U.S. gets military bases in Saudi Arabia.

5. Iraq is defeated and becomes an international pariah, but Saudi dissidents, most prominently Osama bin Laden, are outraged by the U.S. military presence in the land of Mecca and Medina.  In 1996, bin Laden issues a fatwa calling for the U.S. to leave.

6. Bin Laden tries to give his fatwa teeth by calling for and organizing terrorist attacks against the U.S., culminating in the events of September 11, 2001.

7. The same year, the U.S. responds by giving the Taliban (the rulers of Afghanistan) an ultimatum to hand over bin Laden and his whole organization.  When the Taliban refuses, the U.S. invades.  Though victory is swift, it is far from total.  The war continues to this day, though the body count is lower than you'd think - Wikipedia counts under 100,000 cumulative deaths in a country of over 30M.

8. In early 2003, the U.S. invades Iraq as well.  While the U.S. government does not officially accuse Hussein of involvement in the 9/11 attacks, the wartime hysteria silences most domestic opposition.  Years later, Bush's CIA director concedes that they knew of no actual al Qaeda-Iraq cooperation.

9. After a crushing military victory, the U.S. swiftly loses the peace - unsurprisingly, since the Bush team made almost no plans for the post-war era.  Civil war breaks out, mostly calming down by late 2008.  At this point, the Bush Administration agrees to remove all U.S. forces by 2011.  Body counts vary widely, but all are much higher than Afghanistan's.  Obama tries to renegotiate a delay, but fails.

10. While there's no blatant link between the Iraq War and the start of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, chaos in post-war Iraq is crucial for the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and the long length of the civil war in Syria.  ISIL soon begins launching high-profile terrorist attacks around the world, and sharply aggravates the Syrian refugee crisis.

11. And here we are.

While you could quibble with a few of my points, the basic story is pretty clear.  But notice: If Cassandra had foretold the future of the Middle East in 1977, she would have seemed totally crazy to the entire world.  "One wishy-washy dictator is going to cause all this?!  Yeah, right."

All of which make me wonder: Which thinkers in the 70s came closest to predicting what actually happened?  The Cassandras may already be dead, but it would be nice to know their names.

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Pacifism in A Generation of Materialism, by Bryan Caplan

Highlights from Carlton Hayes' fascinating section on the International Peace Conference of 1899 in his A Generation of Materialism, 1871-1900 :

On August 24 of the eventful year of 1898 the Tsar's foreign minister, Count Muraviev, communicated to the diplomatic corps of St. Petersburg an "imperial rescript" declaring that "the preservation of peace has become an object of international policy" and inviting their respective governments to participate in a conference on "possible reduction in the excessive armaments which weigh upon all nations."  The move was sensational, and doubly so by reason of its being made by Russia.

The Tsar Nicholas II had not been generally regarded as either a liberal or a pacifist, and yet he was now giving point and crystallization to latent aspirations for international peace on the part of a considerable body of liberals and humanitarians...

The hidden motives:

Neither the Tsar nor his foreign minister quite merited the reputation for idealistic pacifism which their "rescript" gained them.  They had been pushed into sponsoring it by the Russian finance minister, Count Witte, and he was actuated by very realistic considerations.  Russia was a comparatively "backward" and hence a poor country... its finances were strained to the utmost.

The fruits obviously did not include lasting peace in Europe, but:

The Conference did do something... [I]t adopted a number of minor amendments and additions to the rules of war.  The state and condition of belligerency were defined; better treatment of war prisoners and of sick and wounded soldiers was prescribed; the Red Cross convention was extended to naval warfare; gas attacks and dum-dum bullets were banned; the throwing of projectiles from balloons was prohibited for five years.  But what finally aroused major interest and debate was the question of a permanent court of arbitration.  There was general agreement that any such court should have no jurisdiction over cases which were "non-justiciable" or which involved any nation's "vital interest" or "honor."  Over other cases, however, there was heated debate whether jurisdiction should be compulsory or voluntary.  The German delegation for a time opposed the establishment of any court at all, and in the end agreed to it only after the other powers had accepted the voluntary principle.  Even then the unbending Baron von Holstein resigned... as a solemn protest against what he deemed a sinister specter of international arbitration and a most dangerous flirtation with peace.

Again, read the whole book.

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The Not-So-Curious Absence of American Emulationists in the Third World?, by Bryan Caplan

Lots of interesting responses to yesterday's puzzle.  The least convincing point to factors (such as European ethnicity) that apply equally well to the Soviet Union.  The best fall into three main categories:

1. Anti-market bias.  Despite the far greater success of the American model, relying on markets and competition to modernize your society is much less emotionally appealing than socialist central planning.

2. Power-hunger.  The American model restricts opportunities for political leaders to wield power, and political leaders generally love wielding power.  So if you're not going to be pro-Soviet, you want to be a socialistic nationalist instead.

3. The soft sell.  The Soviet bloc funded a massive multi-decade international propaganda campaign on the glories of their system.  The U.S., not so much.

Several people suggested that the Soviet model was more popular because it looked like a faster route to development.  Whatever the actual facts, the Soviet Union claimed to have dragged itself from total backwardness to modernity in two decades.  I can see how this argument would have some broad appeal, but it's hard to see how it could explain the near-absence of American emulationism.  After all, the Soviet Union still looked blatantly worse than the U.S. during post-war years.  For every person calling the Soviet model a quicker route, there should have been another person scoffing, "Promises, promises.  The U.S. approach demonstrably works."

The best counter-example to my initial claim comes from Savva Shanaev:

I believe Singapore counts as a pretty clear example of Western
emulationsim, British emulationism rather than American emulationism,
but still. I suppose one of the reasons why copying Western institutions
post-WW2 would be harder and less appealing even for well-meaning Third
world elites is that Western-educated intellectuals promoting Western
institutions were much rarer at the time than Soviet-educated
intellectuals promoting Soviet institutions. Most of the Soviet-type
experiments were at least partly consulted and supervised by
Soviet-educated specialists. Singapore had its elites educated in the
UK, fascinated by and firmly believing in the "old", more
classical-liberal Western institutions. Undoubtedly, that helped to
carry out a rather successful transition of Singapore. Western
intellectuals, in turn, were in their majority fascinated by social
engineering ideas and often argued for at least some Soviet emulationism
themselves, especially right after the WW2. Therefore, it would
arguably be rather hard to find a Western so-called "free-market
economist" post-WW2 to assist the elites in any kind of "Western
emulationism" project.

Even for Singapore, though, the emulation seems pretty covert.  "Let's be like the British" is not an important theme in Lee Kuan Yew's massive autobiography.  In fact, I don't remember it being a theme at all, though he did take the time to explain why he didn't emulate Hong Kong.



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The Curious Absence of American Emulationists in the Third World, by Bryan Caplan

After World War II, virtually every Third World country had a major political faction that looked on the Soviet Union as a model society.  What path should their nation take?  The answer was obvious: Emulate the Soviet Union.  With minor allowance for local conditions, they sought to copy Soviet institutions and policies.  Despite the fiery anti-colonial nationalism of the day, members of the Third World's pro-Soviet factions happily publicized their desire to follow in the footsteps of a foreign land - even putting a string of Europeans - Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin - on their banners.

You could say, "Of course they did.  It was the Cold War.  Every Third World country was debating which alliance to join."  But there's a stark asymmetry.  While most Third World countries had a faction that wanted to ally with the U.S., few had factions that emphasized their desire to emulate the United States.  You could say that many in Western Europe and Japan wanted to model their societies after the U.S., though even that's a stretch.  As far as I know, the Christian Democratic parties of Germany and Italy never anointed the United States as the Promised Land.  But in the Third World, it's hard to think of any major political parties that held the U.S. up as an ideal.  For example, the governments of South Korea and South Vietnam angrily rejected the Soviet path, but their alternative was independent nationalism, not Americanism.

Personally, I think post-war U.S. institutions and policies were often bad.  But it still seems like American emulationism should have had great psychological appeal at the time.  Compared to the rest of the world after World War II, the U.S. looked absolutely fabulous: rich, strong, tranquil, and safe.  You'd think that anyone from a newly independent country who visited the U.S. would say, "The Americans have their act together.  Wouldn't it be great if we could make our country just like theirs?"  Furthermore, the Us-Versus-Them mentality of the Cold War should have amplified the variance of opinion.  Once you dub communists the spawn of Satan, it seems natural to embrace the Yankees as God's Chosen People.  But almost no major movement did.

All of this leads me to a question I struggle to answer: Why exactly was Soviet emulationism so much more prevalent than American emulationism?  While you're at it, what are the strongest counter-examples to my claim?  Again, I'm looking for Third World movements that explicitly advocated the emulation of the United States, not groups that were merely "pro-Western."

Please show your work!

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New Reflections on the Evolution in France, by Bryan Caplan

I just returned from a month in France.  I stand by everything I said during my last visit in 2008, but have plenty to add:

1. The biggest change is the ubiquitous police and military presence.  Teams of militarized police and policified military patrol every tourist site and every public function, plus numerous random locations.  It wasn't just Paris; even small cities like Bayeaux were on guard.  I've never seen anything like this in the United States, even on September 12, 2001.

2. France's massive effort still looks like security theater to me.  None of the major terrorist attacks of recent years targeted high-profile locations, and endless unguarded targets remain.  Any fanatic who can drive could kill dozens of people with ease.  So why isn't it happening every day?  Because suicidal fundamentalists are thankfully very very rare. 

3. The behavioral economics of crime inspires some lingering doubt.  If ordinary people can be fooled by security theater, could would-be terrorists be fooled as well?  But given recent high-profile vehicular attacks, I can't take my lingering doubt seriously.  Terrorists may be dumb, but they're not that dumb.

4. This visit, I noticed many more biracial French families - about 90% of them black-white pairings.  This wasn't just Paris; I saw the same pattern even in small towns in Normandy and Brittany.  Overall, French blacks seem markedly more assimilated than American blacks.  If they had a distinctive accent, I couldn't detect it.

5. On my earlier visits to France, their grocery stores seemed to have markedly higher-quality food than in the U.S.  At least in the D.C. area, however, I'd say that France has actually fallen behind the U.S.  During an entire month in France, we never found bread better than what my neighborhood Wegmans sells every day.  Quality pastries and cheese are definitely cheaper in France (though even that partly reflected the strong U.S. dollar), but the best U.S. grocery chains have leapfrogged over their French counterparts.

6. What I'd call France's "convenience gap" doesn't seem to have narrowed at all.  You don't have to look any further than a French hotel bathroom.  Most showers lack soapdishes.  Half of the toilets have seats so flimsy they wobble or fall off.  The median amount of counter space is under one square foot.  So many minor annoyances could be fixed for a few Euros, but they haven't been fixed. 

7. I spent fifteen days teaching high school students at the John Locke Institute's Summer School.  The students - most from British boarding schools - were brilliant and enthusiastic.  Many of the students from British boarding schools were not actually British, but even the Nigerians, Spaniards, and Romanians seemed fully Anglified.  The biggest surprise: The students accepted one-on-one face-to-face essay feedback with good humor.  If they were American, I think many would have been on the verge of tears.  In strange contrast, the British students were visibly nervous during their mock interviews.  Weird. 

8. I taught at two separate sessions of the summer school on a wide range of topics, including open borders.  The first group of students seemed to take cultural objections very seriously.  The second group barely mentioned culture; their most common objections revolved around brain drain.  Random variation?  Group dynamics?

9. I also lectured on my case against education.  As usual with lay audiences, almost no one questioned the descriptive accuracy of the signaling model of education.  Instead, students' modal objection was distributional: Whatever the efficiency gains of budget cuts and vocationalism, the poor would lose out.

10. I met an American student whose family probably survived World War II thanks to heroic Japanese non-conformist Chuine Sugihara.  If you don't know Sugihara's story, you should.









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War Crimes and the Long Run, by Bryan Caplan

Economists often sing the praises of credibility, also known as "time consistency."  When Kydland and Prescott won their Nobel Prizes in 2004, their citation gives this work pride of place:

Finn Kydland and Edward Prescott have been awarded the 2004 Bank of Sweden Prize
in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for their fundamental contributions to
two closely related areas of macroeconomic research. The first concerns the design of
macroeconomic policy. Kydland and Prescott uncovered inherent imperfections-credibility
problems-in the ability of governments to implement desirable economic policies.

But what does credibility mean in practice?  One common objection to the Nuremberg trials was that they gave bad incentives to future war criminals.  If war criminals know they'll be tried and executed if they lose, self-interest urges them to fight to the bitter end.  From this perspective, the trials were short-sighted.  They satisfied the impulse for revenge, but extended the duration of future wars.

On reflection, however, that's only a medium-run view.  The apostle of credibility could easily retort, "Yes, the Nuremberg trials encourage future war criminals to fight to the bitter end.  But they also discourage future leaders from committing war crimes in the first place.  We should take a truly long-run view." 

In politics, the masses are highly impulsive.  They favor whatever feels good at the moment; medium- and long-run effects are usually too dull and remote to contemplate.  Elites, however, often want to claim the mantle of credibility - and deride their opponents' short-sightedness.  If you're paying attention, however, the real elite debate is rarely Credibility Versus the Easy Way Out.  Instead, it's Medium- Versus Long-Run Credibility.  Should the U.S. reach a new understanding the Russia?  In the short-run, it wounds U.S. pride.  In the medium-run, it helps resolve a bunch of pressing global issues, like the Syrian Civil War.  In the long-run, it encourages countries to act like Russia.

What's the prudent course?  Economists' rhetoric suggests that we put the long-run uber alles.  But a real answer requires a massive detour into the psychology of history.  How long do world leaders even know what other countries did in the past?  How long will they remember?  And how much does this knowledge affect their expectations?  Personally, I don't know - and I doubt many people who pontificate on the value of credibility know either.

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What's in Your Bag?, by Bryan Caplan

As a consumer, my experiences are exceedingly pleasant.  I don't just receive endless great products for reasonable prices.  I routinely receive gracious, flexible service with a smile.  Small snapshot: When I buy baked goods or produce at Wegmans, the cashiers don't even bother to look in the brown paper sack.  They simply ask me, "What's in your bag?" - and ring up whatever I declare.

How can profit-maximizing businesses treat me so well?  The easy answer is "competition" - if any one business offered worse terms, I'd take my business elsewhere.  That makes a lot of sense, but dodges the deeper question: Why is gracious, flexible service with a smile the market equilibrium in the first place?

The academically fashionable answer is probably just "trust."  If consumers are generally honest, stores don't need to verify what they say.  That answer, too, is sensible but superficial.  I live in a wealthy area, so consumers have far less motivation to lie to save a few dollars.  Perhaps more importantly, stores can - and almost certainly do - unofficially profile individual consumers to decide how to treat them.  I look like a middle-age, middle-class dad - and businesses treat me accordingly.

The obvious upshot is that my first-hand experiences are rather unrepresentative.  Business gives me the royal treatment, but that's because I frequent upscale areas and project a suitable image.  If you changed either of these conditions, I expect I'd see an uglier side of the market.  If you changed both, it might get downright ugly.  My beautiful Bubble is wonderful, but encompasses only a tiny corner of the business world.

The deeper lesson, though, is that consumers' experiences vary for totally forgivable reasons! Being nice in a rich area is cheap; being nice in a poor area is expensive.  The same goes for individuals: Being nice to mellow middle-age people is a lot cheaper than being nice to surly teens.  If you want to blame anyone for sub-excellent service, you should blame the consumers whose opportunistic behavior confirms negative stereotypes. 

The final lesson, of course, is that using regulation to mandate royal treatment for everyone would have dire side effects.  There'd be a cost spike throughout the economy; the less upscale the area and the consumers, the sharper the spike.  And as usual, trying to mask cost increases with price controls would provide cheap, high-quality products for some - and shortages for everyone else.  A world where business willingly provided excellent service to everyone would be a big improvement over the world of today.  But a world where business were legally required to provide excellent service to everyone would be much worse.

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