“Surely the American People Would Never Let That Happen!”
I was telling my son about Obama’s “secret kill list” and W. Bush’s global secret prison network and realized I had made a whole video about it (that I then forced him to watch). I wouldn’t have my so do something without forcing you to as well:
It takes me a minute to get going but then I think it’s pretty good, especially if you are multi-tasking.
More Examples of Intellectuals Not Really Believing Their ‘Shocking’ Claims
Recently I pointed out that (a) with the release of his second-last book, Bryan Caplan spent a lot of time debunking the popular notion that parents can influence their kids, (b) with the release of his most recent book, Bryan spent a lot of time debunking the popular notion that education can influence kids, and (c) Bryan is the most systematic and detailed blogger I know when it comes to telling the world his method for homeschooling his children (e.g. here).
To be sure, I’m not claiming an outright contradiction here, but it leads me to believe that Bryan doesn’t actually believe the TL;DR versions of his own books, and worse that he himself contributes to this presumably erroneous summary. Again, my smoking gun here is that he was fine with titling his second book, “The Case Against Education.” Bryan also has a blog post titled, “Can Billions of Parents Be Wrong?” and Bryan’s answer is YES, they can. In this post Bryan opens by taking on this reader’s objection: “Bryan, I’m mostly on board with Judith Harris’s hypothesis, but one thing bothers me: why do parents believe so strongly that they can influence their children? Perhaps parents’ intense efforts at influencing their children has some informational value about the parental profitability of such behavior.”
So with the proper caveats, I hope you can understand the sense in which I mean, “I don’t think Bryan actually believes this stuff.” Likewise, when Ludwig von Mises says the way to evaluate an action is by its utilitarian consequences, and that talk of natural rights is nonsense, I don’t think he actually believed that. He wouldn’t have stood up to Nazi Germany if he thought that.
(To avoid misunderstanding, folks: I’m not saying Bryan or Mises was consciously saying something they knew they didn’t believe. I’m saying deep down they are not acting on the prima facie implications of the doctrines they are teaching the public. Or, they too believe in the “superstitions” that the public cherishes, even though their rational frameworks reject such propositions as nonsense.)
For another example of this type of thing, consider a recent post by Scott Aaronson (HT2 Sumner). In this post, Aaronson is defending Robin Hanson from the recent 2-minute hate due to the incel stuff. With the same amount of leeway you can give me in my gentle critique of Bryan above, I can likewise say of Aaronson that in this post he makes the following claims:
1) Although his conclusions are sometimes shocking, you must respect the intellectual honesty of Robin Hanson. He follows his chain of logic to wherever it leads.
2) Say what you will about his tone-deaf rhetoric, but you can’t doubt good intentions of Robin Hanson.
3) One of Hanson’s most interesting contributions is his work on a theorem proving that it’s impossible for two people to have an intellectually honest disagreement with each other.
4) In Hanson’s excellent, most recent book, he explains that because of evolutionary theory, we should be very suspicious of the motives of others, because their actions are less about the ostensible content and more about signaling which tribe they are in.
The Man Who Knew Infinity
I watched this last night:
It was good stuff, especially because I didn’t catch them doing any Hollywood absurdities (a la John Nash explaining the exact opposite of a Nash equilibrium in the bar scene in A Beautiful Mind).
What was interesting is that Ramanujan said, “An equation for me has no meaning unless it expresses a thought of God.”
There was also an interesting tension for Ramanujan in concentrating on producing more results–what we would call “conjectures”–versus providing a rigorous “English-style” proof of the results he had already recorded in his famous notebooks. You can understand why his mentor G.H. Hardy (played by Jeremy Irons) stressed the importance of Ramanujan showing the profession that his claims were correct, but given Ramanujan’s early death, who can say? Obviously he needed to prove enough to make sure everybody else realized it was worthwhile giving serious thought to his conjectures, but one could plausibly argue that it would have been better for him to keep praying / meditating / cranking out notebooks while leaving it to others to fill in the missing steps in the subsequent decades.
Contra Krugman AND Sumner on Nominal Wage Growth
My latest at Mises.org. It’s too long to summarize, except don’t miss my analogy:
[S]uppose a father sees his 25-year-old son lounging on the couch watching reruns. The father exclaims, “Jimmy, this has got to stop! All through your teenage years you kept getting raises and better jobs. But after your messy breakup last year, you’ve fallen apart. Your mother and I shouldn’t have let you move back in. You get a job within two weeks or we’re kicking you out!”
Then Jimmy, who has spent some of his copious free time reading the work of Scott Sumner, responds to his father in this fashion:
“Dad, dad, stop thinking like a micro economist. You seem to believe that my effort determines the pay I earn. But actually, monetary policy drives NGDP growth, and NGDP growth (per worker) is by far the most important determinant of my wage growth. (The other determinant is my income as a share of GDP.)”
Nothing New Under the Sun
In my Bible study we are plodding through Numbers and we looked up the maps to see the Israelites’ route over the 40 years from the Exodus until entering the Promised Land. (TL;DR it was out of Egypt, through modern-day Israel, Jordan, and maybe Syria [just eyeballing the map].) It was amazing to me, since all of this stuff is so topical right now with U.S. foreign policy.
Believers in the Abrahamaic faiths would say, “Yep, it’s not surprising that people are still fighting over this sacred land,” and many Christian fundamentalists of course think the Bible predicts end times stuff going down in the Middle East.
I suppose on the other hand secular rationalists would say this is a (literally) self-fulfilling prophecy where a bunch of people believe some nonsense in old texts and this is fueling warfare today.
Ideas for Bryan Caplan’s Next Book
It just occurred to me last night that two books ago, Bryan (among other things) told parents that they should quit worrying, because studies of twins show that parents don’t have any lasting influence on their children’s futures.
Now in his latest book, Bryan tells teachers and professors that education has no lasting influence on their students’ futures.
In this context, here are some suggestions for Bryan’s next book:
- When the Diapers Come Off, the Man Is Made
- Pacifier, My Only Coach
- Big Bird…Or Big Fraud?
- Phonics Is for Suckers
- I Would Kill the People Who Gave Me This DNA…If I Had Free Will
- Turns Out John Calvin Was Right
One Cheer and One Criticism for Don Boudreaux on Trade Deficits
(Notice kids that I’m doing this on my personal blog; I’m not picking a public fight with Don. Also, if Don has anything to say in response, I will edit this post and paste his reaction into the body, below.)
I think it’s fair to say that nobody has been hammering home the case for free trade since Trump got elected, more than Don Boudreaux. In the present post, I will first praise a subtlety that he has been making, showing the flaw in standard protectionist views. But then I will also criticize another of his posts, where Don repeats the same approach that Robert Barro used and which might (I claim) mislead people.
THE CHEER
In this post, Don writes:
After reading my letter in the Wall Street Journal on why U.S. trade deficits do not necessarily imply greater American indebtedness, Steven Crow describes the examples that I use to make my point as all involving “transferring U.S. assets to foreign creditors” (Letters, May 14).
Mr. Crow is mistaken.
Consider my example of BMW building a factory in South Carolina. This factory was created by BMW. Because it did not exist before BMW created it, this factory cannot possibly have been a U.S. asset that was ‘transferred’ to foreigners, be they creditors or otherwise. BMW’s factory in Greer, SC, exists only because BMW conceived of it, financed it, built it, and operated it profitably for the past quarter-century. It is neither an asset that ever belonged to an American nor one whose creation resulted in any further American indebtedness.
This is great stuff, and it underscores one of Don’s frequent points, namely: A trade deficit is not necessarily a form of debt increase, at all.
To really see it, forget about currencies and just think of barter. You’ve got two countries, USA and Germany, that (let’s suppose) initially have nothing to do with each other in terms of trade. Now in this year, the Germans decide to send over a cargo ship loaded up with bricks, cement, glass, lumber, and a bunch of alcohol and steak. The Germans then negotiate with some Americans for the following deal:
==> The American owner of a piece of land gets to keep a little bit of the alcohol and steak, in order to rent the use of his land for one year.
==> The American workers get to keep the rest of the alcohol and steak, in order to use the raw materials to construct a car factory.
The way the trade accounts are maintained, the US runs a trade deficit this year with Germany, because of the bricks, cement, glass, and lumber that Americans imported from Germany, without any corresponding exports. (In contrast, the American exports of labor and land rental exactly matched the American imports of alcohol and steak from Germany.)
Because we assumed an initial condition of no trade relations, this year’s trade deficit is also equal to this year’s current account deficit, which means there is a capital account surplus. And…YEP! The Germans invested and acquired a nice new factory in America, while the Americans made no investments in acquiring German-based assets.
Now in this scenario, Don wants to know: In what meaningful sense did the Americans become “more indebted” this year? It’s true that now the U.S. is “on the hook” for sending the net cars of this factory (after subtracting the cars that must be given in barter to the American land owner, as well as any workers employed in the factory) back to Germany, or to be sold to Americans for other goods that can then be shipped to Germany, but this flow of net factory output back to Germany (in the future) isn’t a subtraction from what Americans otherwise would have been able to consume. No, total output within the boundaries of the U.S. is now higher, because of the German investment.
THE CRITICISM
In this post, Don writes a letter to Donald Trump:
Earlier today you said “We’re importing a lot of cars. We want a lot of those cars to be built in the U.S. Build them here, and also ship them overseas. Doing a reverse act.”
Soooo….. You want to arrange for us to spend more of our own time, labor, and resources producing valuable outputs to be shipped overseas, and for us to receive fewer valuable outputs in return. I’m stumped. Can you spell out just how this arrangement will “make America great again”?
Are we made “great” when our government simultaneously obliges us to produce more goods and services for foreigners, and for those same foreigners to send to us in exchange fewer goods and services? In what way, Mr. President, do we Americans “win” at trade – in what manner are we Americans “put first” – when you force us to work harder than we otherwise would to produce goods and services for foreigners’ consumption, and for foreigners to work less hard than they otherwise would to produce goods and services for our consumption?
As I said in my reaction to Robert Barro, I think this type of argument might mislead most readers. (And again, let me say that I’ve used similar reasoning in the past.)
What some people might think Don means in the above–and this isn’t a strawman, because the WSJ editor (?) who subtitled Barro’s piece explicitly fell into this trap–is something like this: “Right now we import a bunch of goods, and we export a bunch of goods, but the imports exceed the exports to the tune of 1 million cars. If Trump got his way, we would keep the other imports the same, but we’d cut back on imports by (say) 500,000 cars per year, and we’d keep our other exports the same, except we’d increase our car exports by 500,000 cars per year. Then we’d have balanced trade, going forward. But this is stupid,” so continues the person who might be misled by Don’s post, “because it effectively means every year, Americans have 500,000 fewer foreign cars to enjoy, and to add insult to injury, we have to bust our butts producing an additional 500,000 cars in order to send them abroad as gifts to foreigners. What kind of crappy deal is that?! Give me trade deficits any day!”
OK so in case that’s what some of Don’s readers are walking away with…it’s wrong. Now to be fair, it is just as sophisticated (or not) as Trump’s mercantilism. But what I’m saying is that this type of view–which ends up thinking Americans are somehow lucky ducks with our trade deficit–is not right.
If we were dealing with spot barter transactions, then it would be correct to say that a decrease in the amount of goods given up–without a decrease in the amount gained–represents a boost in the “terms of trade.” So for example, if Americans initially are sending 1 billion bushels of wheat to Japan in exchange for 250,000 cars, and then the Americans manage to renegotiate the deal so that they only send 900 million bushels of wheat, then yes, this makes the Americans richer. Specifically, they are getting the 250,000 Japanese cars in exchange for 10% less wheat.
But when the U.S. runs a trade deficit, it’s not getting “more imports in exchange for fewer exports” in this sense. Rather, we are still paying “full market price” for all the imports, measured in dollars. The gap between imports and exports is made up by Americans selling net assets to the foreigners.
To return to our bushel/car example: Suppose instead of sending 1 billion bushels of wheat to Japan in exchange for 250,000 cars, that now the Americans send over 900 million bushels of wheat and sell IOUs promising the Japanese holders 115 million bushels to be delivered in 3 years in order to get those same 250,000 cars this year. Now it is not at all obvious that the renegotiated deal is better. In any event, it would be crazy to describe this renegotiation as the Americans getting the same quantity of Japanese cars in exchange for 10% less work.
Potpourri
==> How do you choose among your children? This is in the top 5 of my all-time favorite Contra Krugman episodes.
==> The latest Lara-Murphy Show discusses “Lessons from History” (chapter 6 of our new book with Nelson Nash).
==> REMEMBER CHICAGO PEOPLE: Carlos, David Stearns, and I will be presenting on Austrian economics and IBC this Saturday. Details here.
==> This was recorded a while ago, but in this podcast Carlos and I are guests, talking about Austrian economics and the economy.
==> At IER I talk about gas prices in Vancouver, and how Trudeau says things are unfolding exactly as the Emperor has foreseen.
==> I realize that sometimes Rothbardians react too harshly against the “DC libertarians,” but this recent Michael Cannon piece contained the following line that shocked me (HT2 Michael Accad):
As hostile as libertarians are to government, even we believe government can legitimately order the withdrawal of life support, and prohibit parents from moving a child to obtain further treatment, when that treatment would fruitlessly prolong a child’s suffering – i.e., when further treatment would be akin to torture. In such cases, the government intervenes to protect the child’s rights. (British law frames the decision in terms of the “best interests” of the child, but it seems to me that language clouds the issue and thereby unnecessarily inflames passions.)
There is no objectively right place to draw the line between cases in which the government should and should not intervene. But I don’t know anyone who thinks it never should. If anyone does make that argument, they’re just wrong.
(The italics is in the original; I added the bold.) So as an aside, in the next sentences Cannon admits: “There is plenty of room to argue about whether British law and courts drew the line in the right place here. It did not appear Alfie was suffering, but doctors could not completely rule it out.” So that’s a bit ominous in itself, that apparently the burden of proof is on parents to prove beyond all possible doubt that their child isn’t suffering, before the government might forfeit its ability to make them stop offering medical care.
Yet I want to go back to the part that I put in bold. Cannon is working for an institution that teaches the world about libertarianism, and he is saying he literally doesn’t know a single libertarian who thinks the government should never forcibly prevent parents from giving more medical care to their baby? I would be shocked if there weren’t a dozen interns at Cato who believe that. Has Accad never heard of David Friedman? I don’t even need to talk about all the Rothbardians running around.
I realize it might seem like I’m going nuts over a little thing, but this was the whole POINT of his post. It’s not like he was talking about his plan to use tax credits to unwind ObamaCare by Fiscal Year 2034, and he made an offhand remark about libertarian rights theory.
Recent Comments