I spent today reading The Soros Lectures by George Soros and The Science of Success by Charles G. Koch. I now know everything necessary to become insanely wealthy. Or at least to write a Big Think blog post comparing and contrasting the surprisingly similar philosophies of America’s most maligned philanthropists. The point of this post is to pressure myself to actually write about this so that in the off chance market-based management and the principle of reflexivity don’t soon make me one of the world’s wealthiest men, my day wasn’t a waste.
Latest at Big Think
Tea Party vs. OWS: The psychology and ideology of responsibility
I put a lot into this one.
Scanlon on libertarianism and the value of liberty
A reply to Scanlon’s reply to my reply to his Boston Review piece.
I still intend to reply to Mazie, but I just haven’t gotten around to it.
Mazie Replies on Rawls and OWS
Steven Mazie has posted a thoughtful reply to my post criticizing his Opinionator piece on Rawls and OWS. I’ll post a reply at Big Think later this evening.
New at Big Think and Newish Elsewhere
Occupy Wall Street and the deradicalized Rawls
And here’s other recent stuff I promoted in one of my disappeared posts…
A quickie review of Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature for The Daily.
Further thoughts on Pinker’s book at Big Think.
My reply to T.M. Scanlon’s critique of libertarianism at The Boston Review. (Here’s Brad DeLong’s reply, and Scanlon’s response to the both of us.)
Doesn’t Look Good
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A Bit Broken
I tried to reinstall this here blog due to malefactors and also sadness. My export omitted everything from October 2009 until now. It’s all in my old database, yo, but I’m an idiot, so who knows when the last two years will be restored?
A Matter of Justice
Typically excellent stuff from Tim Lee:
I think a far more effective approach [than cost-benefit analysis] is to use what is probably the most powerful weapon in American politics: our now deeply-rooted and emotional commitment to the principle of equality before the law. Over the last 50 years, American society has undergone wrenching transformations that moved us toward equality for Catholics, blacks, Jews, women, gays and lesbian, and other traditionally disfavored groups. We achieved these reforms not by emphasizing how reform would benefit straight white men, or by building complex models of how oppression depressed GDP, but by focusing on the cruelty of the status quo and appealing to America’s founding ideals. We’ve now reached the point where opponents of equality for blacks or Jews are not only in the minority, but are among the most despised people in society.
I think the same strategy needs to be employed on behalf of immigration reform. The problem with our immigration laws is not primarily that they are economically inefficient (Jim Crow wasn’t efficient either). The problem is that they deny civil rights to millions of hard-working individuals based on a factor over which they have no control: their place of birth. I’m sure Dixon and Rimmer mean well, but their narrow focus on the costs and benefits of immigration to American households not only ignores powerful arguments about justice, it actually undercuts them by accepting the premise that we’re justified in ignoring the welfare of the millions of people who are in such deep poverty that they’re willing to risk their lives for the privilege of picking our strawberries and scrubbing our toilets.
Preach it brother. Showing that increased immigration tends to benefit natives reduces resistance on the margin, which is worth doing. But, in my experience, laying out clearly the immense benefits to the immigrants is extremely powerful. It highlights the needless misery caused by the heartless status quo. Even then, it is more powerful still to illustrate clearly how the status-quo system of borders, passports, visas, and citizenships systematically violates basic human rights to free movement and association.
Here is a border patrol officer doing his job:
Unholy Trinity
Kevin Grier’s take on our likely health care reform legislation fairly well sums up my own feelings:
I actually think we are going to get a reform that is both worse than the status quo and worse than a pure single payer system.
Kudos to our Congress!As I understand it, insurance companies will not be able to refuse to cover some one, nor will they be able to charge high risk people a premium that reflects their risk. The price won’t be uniform, but the maximum variation will be well below what it would take to correctly price the variation in risks.As I noted before, this will make premiums for healthy people extra high. And as the WSJ pointed out yesterday, at least on the margin, it will make healthy people want to hold off from getting any insurance until they are actually sick.Problem solved, you say?Ahh, but now it appears that the third leg of the trinity will be rule that it will be illegal to not have insurance!So young healthy people will be forced to buy way overpriced (relative to their risk) insurance. Plus if said young healthy people make good money, they can look forward to paying more taxes to subsidize the purchase of said insurance by others.Guaranteed Issue, Community Rating, Individual Mandate. They sound so reasonable and innocuous, but they are freakin’ lethal.
I guess it shows that we care.
Music to My Ears
Roman Frydman and Michael Goldberg at the FT’s Economist’s Forum:
Behavioural economists have uncovered much evidence that market participants do not act like conventional economists would predict “rational individuals” to act. But, instead of jettisoning the bogus standard of rationality underlying those predictions, behavioral economists have clung to it. They interpret their empirical findings to mean that many market participants are irrational, prone to emotion, or ignore economic fundamentals for other reasons. Once these individuals dominate the “rational” participants, they push asset prices away from their “true” fundamental values.
I’ve been harping on this error for years, but it has seemed to me that economists generally don’t grok what the error is. It’s good to see economists who get it.
Learning from Milton Friedman's Rhetoric
via Mark Perry, here’s a delightful video of Milton Friedman arguing for the abolition of licensure for doctors at the Mayo Clinic. (Busting the monopolies in health care provision is the first item in my fantasy of health-care reform!)
The stark contrast between this class act and the histrionics of conservatives today got me thinking about Friedman’s rhetorical style. What’s so compelling about Friedman is his winsome combination of logic, lucidity, confidence, and geniality. He behaves as though the attention of even a hostile audience is a generous gift to be repaid with respect. And respect is paid by taking for granted the listeners’ intelligence and good will in the search for truth. He gladly accepts the burden of laying out the case for controversial propositions and addressing seriously even badly mistaken objections. He never assumes an antagonistic or combative stance, no matter how antagonistic or combative the audience may be. He is neither apologetic nor defensive about his unpopular positions. He evidently does take some small pleasure in his iconoclasm, and I think this can come across as smugness or self-satisfaction to those inclined to disagree with him. But the same wry twinkle can be received as well as a manifestation of the calm confidence that makes his intellectual independence possible and of his basic happiness as a person. His happiness, I think, was his rhetorical secret weapon. One doesn’t suspect a contented person of currying favor, seeking validation, or compensating for some unmet need. He makes it easy to believe in his good faith, and that makes him hard to dismiss.