Feds May Move Against Nevada Rancher This Weekend
I don’t have too much commentary to offer on this developing story of federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) officials and their standoff with a Nevada rancher; if you aren’t familiar with the details, you really should watch this short news clip.
Beyond the particular issues of the standoff and the eerie memories of Ruby Ridge and Waco, there is the ominous notion of a “First Amendment Area.” Those versed in Rothbardian libertarian theory know that it’s silly to speak of “free speech rights” as opposed to general property rights. However, given the framework of legislation that the United States federal government uses, it is definitely creepy that they think they can designate particular geographical regions to which the Bill of Rights applies.
Supreme Irony
I know, I know, I’ve been blogging too much about Krugman lately, but this is too delicious to pass up, and I am pretty sure only I have the ability and desire to pinpoint such hilarity. Let’s get this over with as quickly as possible:
==> Ezra Klein has his inaugural post for his new site Vox, and it’s superficially a “hey-both-sides-are-terrible-let’s-all-be-more-tolerant” kind of thing. Klein cites some research showing that when it comes to political issues, more research actually leads to more polarization, because each side just parses the additional information to cherry-pick the arguments and facts that bolster the original position.
==> In order to illustrate the problem, Klein picks an example of a right-winger refusing to learn. (I’m sure this was the result of a coin toss, and not because Klein had a predisposition to bash right-wingers.) Here’s the narrative:
Imagine what would happen to, say, Sean Hannity if he decided tomorrow that climate change was the central threat facing the planet. Initially, his viewers would think he was joking. But soon, they’d begin calling in furiously. Some would organize boycotts of his program. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of professional climate skeptics would begin angrily refuting Hannity’s new crusade. Many of Hannity’s friends in the conservative media world would back away from him, and some would seek advantage by denouncing him. Some of the politicians he respects would be furious at his betrayal of the cause. He would lose friendships, viewers, and money. He could ultimately lose his job. And along the way he would cause himself immense personal pain as he systematically alienated his closest political and professional allies. The world would have to update its understanding of who Sean Hannity is and what he believes, and so too would Sean Hannity. And changing your identity is a psychologically brutal process.
==> Now here’s the wonderful thing that almost makes me burst with joy. We don’t have to speculate about an alternative universe in which a previous hero to progressives does something heretical on climate change, and then receives pushback from former colleagues for it. No, we’ve got Paul Krugman doing it for us, for real, when he writes: “Ezra Klein’s new venture Vox is up, and so far, so OK — some fairly interesting pieces, and nothing like Nate Silver’s lamentable decision to make a professional concern troll his chief writer on climate.”
==> Now you might be saying, “Bob, you’re too clever, as usual. What’s so ironic or funny about this?” OK I’ll spell it out for you: If you click Krugman’s post, his purpose is to mildly chastise Ezra Klein for making it sound as if both sides are capable of this kind of tribalism that reinforces prejudices about ideological positions; according to Krugman, nope, his side is just fine, thank-you-very-much, it’s only those stupid (his term) right-wingers that actually in practice behave this way. Remember, Klein (as we have seen) used a hypothetical example of Sean Hannity going off the reservation about climate change and being punished for it. In commenting on this post, Krugman first starts off by punishing Nate Silver (and he has been doing it for a while now) for going off the reservation about climate change.
==> Last thing: It’s also supremely ironic that Krugman (as well as Klein) pick climate change as the epitome of an issue in which the “other side” refuses to learn from the incoming data. You could write a fairly extensive analogy between the debate over global temperature and CPI. (E.g.: “CPI is the highest it’s been since they started recording it!!”) It would be difficult to describe Krugman’s reactions to both topics in a consistent way.
Billy Joel and Jimmy Fallon Sing “Lion Sleeps Tonight”
I have been trying to contain my jealousy since Jimmy Fallon has been living my dream lately, doing decent enough singing that he produces awesome clips with famous musicians. (E.g. look at the first minute of his “history of rap” with Justin Timberlake.) But this is just flat-out cool:
Murphy Talk at Texas Bitcoin Conference
Somebody put up the audio of my talk at the Texas Bitcoin conference. I thought the best contribution I could make was to explain to the evangelists why the orthodox libertarians were going to resist their message. So this is mostly about Austrian monetary theory, not Bitcoin. Also note that this only captures my main talk, not the Q&A in which I was on fire.
Milton Friedman on Ford Pinto
Major Freedom reminds us (in the comments of the previous post) of this classic exchange. Without realizing it, I think my recent thoughts on GM are basically just channeling Friedman. I am too squeamish about confrontations like this; I literally can’t even watch the whole video because I am embarrassed for the kid.
Thoughts on GM and Michael Moore
At Mises Canada. An excerpt:
Suppose years ago when they discovered the problem, GM had contacted all of the 2.6 million customers driving the vehicles with a faulty switch and told them, “We think 13 of you will end up dying because of the faulty switch. The problem is, we don’t know which 13–if we did, we’d obviously fix your vehicles. Although the part itself is under $1, there is the labor involved, plus many of you will want a loaner while we fix the vehicle. All told, it would probably cost us about $50 per each of you to replace all 2.6 million switches. So we’ll give you all a choice: We can fix your switch, OR we can mail you a check for $40, and promise that if you die because of the faulty switch, we will pay your estate $1 million.”
I have no idea how many people would take that offer. I’m guessing out of 2.6 million, most would elect to get the switch fixed, but a good many would take the $40 and promise of indemnification. Certainly if we changed the numbers around–so that people got, say, a $400 check–the balance would tilt in favor of the “live with it” outcome.
The reason I have framed this hypothetical is that I’m trying to show that the underlying logic–that in situations where there is a very small chance of death–it really might make economic sense to not do a recall. In my scenario above, if a particular customer had elected to take the $40 rather than get the switch fixed, and then that person happened to die–with his estate then getting $1 million further compensation–people like Michael Moore could hardly complain about the absurdity of neglecting a repair because of cost. In such a hypothetical scenario, the victim himself (or herself) would have chosen to bear the risk in order to save on the repair cost.
For this post, I asked myself, “What would Steve Landsburg say, if he still blogged about economics?”
Potpourri
==> This is Part II of my discussion of IER’s “Comment” (submitted to the feds) on the Social Cost of Carbon. If you’re a climate change nerd, this one’s for you.
==> Richard Ebeling’s brief remarks on the South Royalton conference (teleconference at the recent conference in Auburn).
==> This is so awesome: a story about the private code that comedians use to protect their jokes from “stealing.” If I had to do it all over again, maybe I would have done my dissertation on this.
==> Does anybody know about this experiment in “anarchy” in Denmark? Somebody emailed me about it, but I’ve never heard of it.
==> The government allegedly set up a Twitter account to disrupt Cuba.
==> Apparently this young lady struck out Gehrig and Ruth.
==> Now we know why Alex Tabarrok opposes the National Labor Relations Board.
==> I am sorry but this “puzzle” seems obvious to me: Of course the vendors working on the street don’t want to be making change. The guy I bought coffee / bagels from outside of NYU priced everything in increments of quarters, as I recall. I don’t think it had anything to do with the sequence of ordering and trickery, I think it was quite obviously so he only had to deal with bills and quarters.
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