Bryan Caplan's Blog, page 92

Schneider's The Deadly Sins, by Bryan Caplan

This Wednesday, former EconLog blogger James Schneider is coming to GMU to present a draft of his amazing new book, The Deadly Sins: An Exploration of Behavioral Health Economics.  Schneider, a true polymath, interweaves research in economics, medicine, and psychology to teach us how to think and what to think about diet, exercise, addiction, mountain-climbing, and much more.

I've been reading drafts of this book for years, and I am a huge fan.  This is the book that deserves to be the next Freakonomics.  Publishers, you heard it here first!

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Michigan State Debate, by Bryan Caplan

Tomorrow I'm debating the Center for Immigration Studies' Stanley Renson on "Open versus Closed Borders" at Michigan State.  Details here.  Hope to see you there!

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All Roads Lead to Open Borders: A Caplan/Weinersmith Collaboration, by Bryan Caplan

I am overjoyed to announce that I will be collaborating with famed artist Zach Weinersmith, best known for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.  Our project, tentatively titled All Roads Lead to Open Borders, is a non-fiction graphic novel on the philosophy and social science of immigration. I'm writing the script and doing panel previsualization.  Weinersmith will enhance and illustrate the entire book of roughly 160 color pages.

Why a graphic novel?  I'm tempted to say, "Because I love graphic novels," but my rationale is deeper.  I love graphic novels for a reason: The combination of words and pictures is usually more enlightening, engaging, and memorable than words alone.  Few historians match the power of Larry Gonick's Cartoon History of the Universe series.  The case for open borders, replete with thought experiments and huge effect sizes, will gain much resonance in a graphic format.  Or so Zach and I aim to prove with our work.

Who's our market?  Since I oppose preaching to the choir, I'm aiming the book at any human being interested in (a) the ethics and science of immigration, or (b) non-fiction graphic novels.  If I can persuade faculty who teach labor economics, economic development, sociology of migration, and philosophy of global justice to adopt All Roads Lead to Open Borders as a secondary textbook, I'll be thrilled.  And if Zach and I end up on a panel at Comic-Con, my delight will be complete.

So far, I've prepared two draft chapters.  They're not ready to share, but these three sample Weinersmith pages are.  Only the first is inked, but even Zach's roughs reveal his humbling talent. 

P.S. After five years' toil, I have finally sent a polished draft of The Case Against Education to my publisher, Princeton University Press.  The wait for All Roads Lead to Open Borders should be much shorter.  I foresee publication by late 2018.

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Huemer on Ethical Treatment of Animals (Including Bugs), by Bryan Caplan

Mike Huemer, my favorite philosopher, responded to yesterday's post on Facebook.  Huemer's words, reprinted with his permission:
I
don't think the best way of determining whether x is true is by seeing
whether x-advocates are hypocritical or morally flawed. (Btw, on this
criterion, the slavery-defenders who knew Thomas Jefferson would presumably have declared that slavery is probably right, since even Jefferson held slaves.)

Rather,
the best way to find out whether x is true is to just look at the
arguments for and against x, especially if those arguments are simple
and easy to find.

The arguments on ethical
vegetarianism are simple and easily found. It seems wrong to cause
extreme amounts of pain and suffering for the sake of minor benefits to
oneself. If you just look at some of the things that go on on factory
farms, you're going to be horrified. If you look, I think you are going
to find it extremely difficult to say, "Oh yeah, that seems fine."

If
you think it is not wrong to inflict severe suffering as long as the
victim of the suffering is stupid, then you'd have to say that it is
permissible to torture retarded people for fun. Etc. (I don't have
anything to add to the standard arguments.) You also have to explain why
pain isn't bad when the victim is stupid.

Now, what
is the proposed response to the argument? The fact that people kill
many insects is supposed to be evidence that . . . pain isn't really
bad? That it's not really wrong to cause lots of bad things for the sake
of minor benefits to oneself? But how could the number of insects that
people kill be evidence for any of these things?

The
blog post even seems to suggest that it's impossible that it's wrong
to cause pain to stupid creatures. That is, that we know that pain is
only bad if you're smart. But really, could that plausibly be said to be
something that we know? How would that be? Is there some proof of that
proposition?

Maybe the suggestion is that it's
self-evident that pain is only bad if you're smart. But then, rather
than trying to draw inferences about this by looking at the behavior of
PETA-members, etc., it seems like we could just introspect and see
whether that's self-evident. When I do, I see that it's not self-evident
(indeed, it isn't even plausible). I don't have to make any inferences
or look at anyone else's behavior, since I can just look and see.

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Bugs, by Bryan Caplan

The most compelling objection to animal rights, to my mind, has long been... bugs.  Bugs are animals.  Every human being directly kills bugs just by walking - and indirectly kills bugs by renting and buying constructed housing.  Yet I've never heard even a strict vegan express a word of moral condemnation for this mass animal killing. 

So what?  I've previous defended what I call the Argument from Conscience.  The gist of it:

1. If even morally scrupulous advocates of view X don't live in accordance with X, the best explanation is that they don't really believe X. 

2. If even the dedicated advocates of X don't really believe X, X is probably false. 

By this logic: If even morally scrupulous animal rights activists don't sincerely believe that killing bugs is wrong, it's probably not wrong.  And once you proverbially throw bugs under the bus, why not other pests like mice and rats?  And once you abandon mammalian pests, why not cows and pigs? 

But perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself.  What exactly do leading animal rights activists actually say about bugs?  Let's start with PETA, which endorses the following general principles:

PETA believes that animals have rights and deserve to have their best
interests taken into consideration, regardless of whether they are
useful to humans. Like you, they are capable of suffering and have an
interest in leading their own lives.

The very heart of all of
PETA's actions is the idea that it is the right of all beings--human and
nonhuman alike--to be free from harm.

Now here's PETA on bugs:

All animals have feelings and have a right to live free from
unnecessary suffering--regardless of whether they are considered "pests"
or "ugly."

As with our dealings with our fellow humans, the
determination of when lethal defense against insects and animals is
acceptable must be judged on a case-by-case basis, taking into account
the level of the threat and the alternatives that are available. As
Albert Schweitzer once said "Each of us must live daily from judgment to
judgment, deciding each case as it arises as wisely and mercifully as
we can."

A bizarre juxtaposition.  No one would say that humans have a "right to live free from unnecessary suffering," then immediately talk about killing them on a "case-by-case basis."  And if someone killed hundreds of humans with his car on a cross-country trip, no one would accept the excuse, "It was necessary to cross the country."  If your only mode of transportation kills innocent human beings, you're obliged to stay put.  General principles notwithstanding, PETA clearly smuggles in the common-sense intuition that human lives are more morally important than insect lives.  Indeed, it smuggles in the assumption that human convenience is more morally important than insects' very lives.

To be fair, I've heard many animal activists hold PETA in low regard.  Here's what the Animal Rights FAQ tells us about bugs:

Singer quotes three criteria for deciding if an organism has the capacity to suffer from pain: 1) there are behavioral indications, 2) there is an appropriate nervous system, and 3) there is an evolutionary usefulness for the experience of pain. These criteria seem to satisfied for insects, if only in a primitive way.

Now we are equipped to tackle the issue of insect rights. First, one might argue that the issue is not so compelling as for other animals because industries are not built around the exploitation of insects. But this is untrue; large industries are built around honey production, silk production, and cochineal/carmine production, and, of course, mass insect death results from our use of insecticides. Even if the argument were true, it should not prevent us from attempting to be consistent in the application of our principles to all animals...

My Argument from Conscience, to repeat, objects: "But no one - even the author of this FAQ - does this.  Which strongly suggests even he finds his own position unconvincing."  But to his credit, the FAQ author discloses these complications:

Insects are a part of the Animal Kingdom and some special arguments would be required to exclude them from the general AR argument.

Some would draw a line at some level of complexity of the nervous system, e.g., only animals capable of operant conditioning need be enfranchised. Others may quarrel with this line and place it elsewhere. Some may postulate a scale of life with an ascending capacity to feel pain and suffer. They might also mark a cut-off on the scale, below which

rights are not actively asserted. Is the cut-off above insects and the lower invertebrates? Or should there be no cut-off? This is one of the issues still being actively debated in the AR community.


People who strive to live without cruelty will attempt to push the line back as far as possible, giving the benefit of the doubt where there is doubt.

The overarching problem with these "exclusion" arguments: They try to justify a massive difference in treatment with a totally debatable difference in capacity for pain.  It's easy to show that some creatures are much smarter than others; but how on earth could we ever convincingly show that some feel much less pain than others? 

This is especially pressing given the FAQ's closing proviso: If there's a real possibility that killing bugs is very wrong, we should refrain until we know better.  And per the Argument from Conscience, since even the author of the FAQ does not refrain, there probably isn't a real possibility that killing bugs is very wrong.

P.S. What about more academic sources?  I searched Google Scholar, but found nothing on the topic.  I'm open to reading suggestions in the comments.

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Apolitical Reasons to Hate Politics, by Bryan Caplan

I hate politics.  Part of the reason, to be honest, is that I'm a libertarian, and libertarian views have almost no influence in the world of politics.  Libertarians don't just lose every election; policy-makers normally summarily reject our position.  Libertarians don't just fail to control a major party; "successful libertarian politician" is almost an oxymoron.

But perennial defeat isn't the only reason I hate politics.  On reflection, I'd loathe politics even if my policy views matched Clinton's or Trump's word-for-word.  Indeed, I'd loathe politics even if I thought prevailing policies were the pinnacle of wisdom.  Why?  Because I hate the way people think about politics, independent of the ultimate outcome.

I hate the hyperbole of politics.  People should speak literal, measured truth or be silent.

I hate the Social Desirability Bias of politics.  People should describe reality as it is, not pander to wishful thinking.

I hate the innumeracy of politics.  People should focus on what's quantitatively important, not what thrills the masses.

I hate the overconfidence of politics.  People shouldn't make claims they won't bet on, and shouldn't assert certainty unless they're willing to bet everything they own against a penny.

I hate the myside bias of politics.  People should strive to be fair to out-groups, and scrupulously monitor in-groups, to counteract our natural human inclination to do the opposite. 

I hate the "winning proves I'm right" mentality of politics.  Winning only proves your views are popular, and popular views are often wrong.

Last but not least:

I hate the excuses people make for each of the preceding evils.  While I'm open to consequentialist arguments for doing evil that good may come, most of the arguments in this genre are deeply tainted by innumeracy and overconfidence.  If you calmly weigh the social benefits of political hyperbole, carefully crunch the numbers, and grudgingly and sorrowfully conclude that it's justified in specific cases, I'm all ears.  But if you defend hyperbole with casual, undiscriminating delight, life's too short to listen to you.

P.S. While I hate how people act in politics, I emphatically don't hate the people themselves.  Politics is only a small sliver of most people's lives, so the apolitical good normally far outweighs the political bad.

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Binding Arbitration: The Radical Implications, by Bryan Caplan

Contracts often require signatories to submit to binding arbitration.  If a dispute arises, the parties don't go to court; they go to a private arbitrator.  This arbitrator, in turn, makes a definitive ruling neither party can refuse.  The whole point of binding arbitration is to bar parties from playing, "Heads I win, tails I break even": If the arbitrator rules against you, you can't appeal the decision to a conventional government court.

Binding arbitration has thrived in recent decades.  But on reflection, fully binding arbitration would nullify a vast swath of regulation.  Every government effort to shift the terms of trade would be in grave danger.  Imagine, for example, an employment contract specifying that alleged minimum wage violations will be resolved via binding arbitration.  Any employer who wanted to offer less than the minimum wage could contractually specify an arbitrator who invariably rules in his favor.  And any worker ready to work for less than the minimum wage would willingly sign.  After all, what's the difference between the absence of a minimum wage and a minimum wage that's never enforced?

The same principle applies to all regulation of capitalist acts between consenting adults: safety regulations, discrimination laws, product liability, and so on.  Want to work for me?  Fine, as long as my brother adjudicates all our disputes.  Parties who can contractually outsource enforcement to anyone they like can informally gut the law.

So why hasn't this already happened?  Transactions costs are part of the reason; getting every trading partner to sign a contract is a pain in the neck.  But the fundamental reason is that governments refuse to recognize fully binding arbitration - probably because its officials recognize, at least subconsciously, that fully binding arbitration would strip them of much of their power.  The Legal Dictionary explains:

The FAA gives only four grounds on which a court may vacate, or overturn, an award: (1) where the award is the result of corruption, Fraud, or undue means; (2) where the arbitrators were evidently partial or corrupt; (3) where the arbitrators were guilty of misconduct in refusing to postpone the hearing or hear pertinent evidence, or where their misbehavior prejudiced the rights of any party; and (4) where the arbitrators exceeded their powers or imperfectly executed them so that a mutual, final, and definite award was not made. In the 1953 case Wilkov. Swan... the U.S. Supreme Court suggested, in passing, that an award may be set aside if it is in "manifest disregard of the law," and federal courts have sometimes followed this principle. Public policy can also be grounds for vacating, but this recourse is severely limited to well-defined policy based on legal precedent, a rule emphasized by the Supreme Court in the 1987 case United Paperworkers International Union v. Misco...

The Legal Dictionary's tone suggests that these are but mild impediments.  But they're huge.  If the government can overrule binding arbitration because the arbitrators are "partial" or "manifestly disregard the law," arbitration's radical potential stays hidden. 

Long ago, I interviewed the CEO of an arbitration firm.  When I asked him about the radical implications of binding arbitration, he got nervous.  His words were libertarian: "If you don't like the arbitration contract, don't sign."  But he clearly wanted to change the subject.  One of his key services was helping clients skirt the law - and the best way to continue providing such services was to pretend they didn't exist.  I suppose I could have thanked him for mitigating the harm of a multitude of unjust and inefficient laws, but I think that just would have spooked him further.

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Value-Added and Social Desirability Bias, by Bryan Caplan

Chetty, Friedman, and Rockoff's research on teacher value-added is widely interpreted as an argument for giving good teachers a fat raise.  Obama's 2012 State of the Union speech pulls a dollar figure right out of their abstract:

At a time when other countries are doubling down on education, tight
budgets have forced states to lay off thousands of teachers.  We know a
good teacher can increase the lifetime income of a classroom by over
$250,000.  A great teacher can offer an escape from poverty to the child
who dreams beyond his circumstance.  Every person in this chamber can
point to a teacher who changed the trajectory of their lives.  Most
teachers work tirelessly, with modest pay, sometimes digging into their
own pocket for school supplies -- just to make a difference.

Teachers matter.  So instead of bashing them, or defending the status
quo, let's offer schools a deal.  Give them the resources to keep good
teachers on the job, and reward the best ones.

When I finally read the originally paper, I was bemused to discover that Chetty et al.'s support for merit raises is muted at best.

Using Monte Carlo simulations analogous to those above, we estimate that retaining a teacher at the ninety-fifth percentile of the estimated VA [value-added] distribution (using three years of data) for an extra year would yield present value... [of] $212,000. In our data, roughly 9 percent of teachers in their third year do not return to the school district for a fourth year. The attrition rate is unrelated to teacher VA, consistent with the findings of Boyd et al. (2008). Clotfelter et al. (2008) estimate that a $1,800 bonus payment in North Carolina reduces attrition rates by 17 percent. Based on these estimates, a one-time bonus payment of $1,800 to high-VA teachers who return for a fourth year would increase retention rates in the next year by 1.5 percentage points and generate an average benefit of $3,180. The expected benefit of offering a bonus to even an excellent (ninety-fifth percentile) teacher is only modestly larger than the cost because one must pay bonuses to (100 ��� 9)/1.5 ��� 60 additional teachers for every extra teacher retained.

The policy that dramatically passes the cost-benefit test is "deselection," better known as firing bad teachers.

To quantify the value of improving teacher quality, we evaluate Hanushek's (2009, 2011) proposal to replace teachers whose VA ratings are in the bottom 5 percent of the distribution with teachers of average quality.

[...]

Rothstein estimates that a policy which fires teachers if their estimated VA after three years falls below the fifth percentile would require a mean salary increase of 1.4 percent to equilibrate the teacher labor market.43 In our sample, mean teacher salaries were approximately $50,000, implying that annual salaries would have to be raised by approximately $700 for all teachers to compensate them for the additional risk. Based on our calculations above, the deselection policy would generate NPV gains of $184,000 per teacher deselected, or $9,250 for all teachers on average (because only 1 out of 20 teachers would actually be deselected). Hence, the estimated gains from this policy are more than ten times larger than the costs. [emphasis mine]

What's up?  I once again point my accusatory finger at Social Desirability Bias.  Rewarding good teachers sounds a lot nicer than firing bad teachers.  So when research comes along that potentially recommends both, pundits and politicians don't coolly crunch the numbers.  They leap to the recommendation that's pleasing to the ear.  So what if the original researchers find that firing bad teachers wins with flying colors?  Move along folks, nothing to see here...

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The One Way Conservative Students Are More Libertarian Than Libertarian Students, by Bryan Caplan

Cato's Conservative-Libertarian Debate exit survey is fascinating throughout.  The most striking result is on the following question:

Q23. Do you favor or oppose a law in your state that would allow businesses to refuse service to customers for religious reasons?

Survey says:

















The standard libertarian position here, of course, is, "If a merchant turns you away on religious grounds, just take your business elsewhere."  Why would over a quarter of libertarian students think otherwise?  It's tempting to say they're just "pandering to the left."  But if the question were "Should racial discrimination in employment be legal?," I'm confident libertarians would express more agreement than conservatives (though less than 50%, I fear).  My explanation is that many libertarian students let their friendly attitude toward gays and chilly feelings for Christian fundamentalists color their judgment.  Even if individual rights are the foundation of your political philosophy, "Who has the right?" is a far less appealing question than "Who do I like?"

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GMU's Visionary, by Bryan Caplan

Last week, my colleague Dan Klein kicked off the Public Choice Seminar series.  During the introduction, I recalled some of his early work.  But only after did I realize how visionary he's been. 

In 1999, when internet commerce was still in its infancy, Klein published Reputation: Studies in the Voluntary Elicitation of Good Conduct.  Seventeen years later, e-commerce towers before us, resting on a foundation of reputational incentives - everything from old-fashioned repeat business to two-sided smartphone reviews.  

In 2003, long before Uber, Airbnb, or serious talk of driverless cars, Klein published The Half-Life of Policy Rationales: How New Technology Affects Old Policy Issues.  This remarkable work explores how technological change keeps making old markets failures - and the regulations that arguably address them - obsolete.  (Here's the intro, co-authored with Fred Foldvary).  Fourteen years later, the relevance of Klein's thesis is all around us.  Transactions costs no longer preclude peakload pricing for roads, decentralized taxis and home rentals, or full-blown caveat emptor for consumer goods.  So why not?

I'm not going to say that Klein caused these amazing 21st-century developments.  But he did foresee them more clearly than almost anyone.  Hail Dan Klein!

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