Principled Leftists Realizing That Bush+Eloquence=Obama
Bob Roddis sends this encouraging video. Remember back during the Bush years, kids, when those of you who think like me were so mad at being lumped in with the “conservative” nation-building, deficit-exploding, Big Brother Bush administration. Well by the same token, we should give credit where it’s due. There are a lot of leftists (whose preferred programs would be awful, don’t get me wrong) waking up to the truth about Barack Obama. The below video is very well done, because it weaves in campaign promises that Obama is now completely ignoring. Also, I love how the host calls him “such a charming liar.”
And she’s right, he is. It’s a very pleasant contrast to the cocksure lying of the last guy.
Libertarian, Free-Market Blog "MarginalRevolution" In Support of White House Torture
Yeah, their argument is that given that the feds are going to torture people to prevent American deaths–and really, can any libertarian be for American deaths? isn’t it unlibertarian to blow up a building?–then it makes sense to allow trained professionals, under the direct supervision of the Cabinet, carry out the electroshocks, waterboarding, and mock child-execution. After all, if you’re going to torture people, you want it to be in the open, with Hillary Clinton watching. You don’t want some CIA goon doing it in a foreign country.
Ha ha, fooled you! Alex and Tyler would never advance such an argument. No, the closest you’ll ever see is that in back-to-back posts, they support government bailouts of banks and government provision of health insurance. Man those guys are hardcore. It’s great that we’ve got free marketeers in higher education, to combat the socialism being peddled in our elite universities.
Potpourri
You know, it would really make my life easier if all of you readers would get your brother to start reading. Then I could quit my day job and blog full time. As it is, I keep accumulating interesting tidbits until the width of each tab on Firefox bumps up against the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, and I am forced to issue another “Potpurri”…
* David Gordon saw my debate with Jeff Madrick, and sent along his review of Madrick’s The Case for Big Government. Quick! Guess whether David liked the book.
* Robert Wenzel (who saw it on Mankiw’s blog) emailed me this pretty funny description of publishing a negative Comment. People often ask me if I miss academia. Skim the link and guess my answer. BTW, I had formed some opinions about the type of guy who would write such a thing. I figured he had to be tenured, probably very well published, and also a bit odd on a personal level. Here’s his homepage; you tell me.
* Yuri Maltsev actually lived under socialized medicine. No thanks.
* Scott Sumner proudly linked to this puzzle on opportunity cost, and explained that he (Scott) knew the “right” answer. But Scott, the answer is, cost is subjective and you can’t make interpersonal utility comparisons. It doesn’t make any freaking sense to ask how much something cost (in the opportunity cost sense) for Mary versus John. True cost isn’t even realized, as Buchanan showed. Somehow I don’t think that’s what our Benthamite friend Scott had in mind. (Fortunately he is in China and so can’t impose costs on me.) (And yes I know that you can’t “impose costs” on somebody else.)
* Does Arnold Kling know he’s an Austrian macroeconomist? Search your feelings, Arnold. You know it to be true. Join me, and together we will rule Jackson Hole.
* Not sure where to put your money? Stocks? Real estate? Gold coins? Postage stamps? I know, federally guaranteed green bonds! Woo hoo!
* Here’s a great example of how you can prove anything you want in economics/finance, in order to make your boss happy. Incidentally, when I get suspicious of the BLS’ inflation numbers, it’s not that I’m imagining the analyst grunts doctoring numbers. No, I think they know what the “official story” is, and they (perhaps subconsciously) make decisions on how to adjust for hedonic changes, how many years back to look when calibrating the seasonal adjustment, blah blah blah, so that the answer is what their bosses want. You don’t have to be pure evil to behave that way at work, and things (especially in economics/finance models) are so arbitrary that it doesn’t even feel like lying. You don’t view yourself as falsifying data, you rather view yourself as the hero who comes up with the best way to illustrate the story the team is working on. If you are shocked and don’t have any idea what I’m talking about, then good for you. But I think anybody who has worked in an office knows what I mean.
PIG to Capitalism Audio Online
I’m thinking this isn’t legal, so if your conscience bothers you buy a copy of the book. But anyway I just came across this online reading of my book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism. If you have a colicky infant, I suggest playing this along with chirping birds. It soothes and educates at the same time.
Two Men Enter, One Man Leaves the Back Door Open
Earlier I was happy that Paul Krugman had “definitively” (you’ll understand the quotation marks in a sec) said we were in a recovery, since I am predicting that the economy is going to be in the toilet for years. Just to refresh our memories, here’s how Krugman opened his August 21 blog post: “Barara Kiviat asks, is this a recovery or isn’t it? The answer is yes.”
OK, that seems pretty definitive, right? For most people it would be, but not with our Nobel laureate. The very next day he wrote:
Reading comments, I see that some readers think that by saying that we may be in a recovery by the usual definition, even though jobs are still being lost, I’m either (a) shilling for Obama (b) radically changing my views.
Um, no.
And just to reinforce his claim now that we may be in a recovery, Krugman says today (August 24):
Judging from comments I’ve received, there’s still a lot of confusion about how it’s possible to be in economic purgatory, aka a jobless recession. Also, a lot of readers seem to think that by saying that the recession is probably over I’m somehow changing my position from a few weeks ago — when actually something like this is what I’ve been expecting all along.
No Dr. Krugman, I don’t think you’re changing your position from a few weeks ago. I think you changed your position from the previous day.
I’m Starting With the Man in the Mirror
OK I must confess that this Wonk Room hit piece on my compatriots really ticked me off. I had originally wanted to blog it with the title, “Definition” and the comment, “If you want to know what ‘ad hominem’ means, just check out this Wonk Room piece on the AEA bus tour.”
But then I calmed down a bit, realizing that the Wonk Room piece is really just the mirror image of what Glenn Beck did with Goldman Sachs, which I praised.
So if you truly believed that the Waxman-Markey bill was the last hope for averting global disaster, then yes I can understand that you would think the Wonk Room piece was just adding useful knowledge about your enemies…as opposed to a complete hit piece that has no substantive arguments at all. Because I must admit, Glenn Beck’s hit piece on Goldman didn’t have any arguments at all; it was just giving the biographies of the various players. At other places Beck of course gave his substantive objections to TARP etc., but then again the Wonk Room people would say the same thing about cap and trade.
Now that I’m preaching, let me generalize it a bit: Earlier I mocked Paul Krugman for actually claiming that senior citizens were rioting. But since then, I’ve come to realize that Krugman really doesn’t understand the people at these Town Hall meetings, or the tea parties. After all, Krugman doesn’t get goosebumps thinking about property rights or checks on government power. So when he sees a bunch of angry people mouthing such concerns, he is suspicious and thinks they’re either a bunch of racists or paid stooges of the health insurers.
So, by symmetry, I think people on “our side” should realize that the great masses of Americans who are for health care reform and climate legislation (and it pains me to not put scare quotes around those phrases) aren’t actually closet socialists who want to bring America to its knees. Don’t get me wrong, it is still perfectly consistent to think the elites in Washington are power-hungry liars. I’m just saying that, as ridiculous as Krugman’s paranoia over old people is, that’s how ridiculous some of our side’s rants against Obama fans must seem to people who know that they are really just trying to stem abuses they perceive in the health care system and so forth. They know they’re not socialists, just like we know “our guys” aren’t Nazis.
Ah, and the ultimate irony is that actual socialists (and the particular offshoot of Nazism) were real, and actually did seize control of governments and kill millions of people. Isn’t life funny.
The Innumerate Billy Ocean
I know this sounds impossible, but I actually don’t like the radio stations in Nashville. And no, it’s not because they play all country. Would you believe that there’s not even a reliable Oldies station? Or how about this–in the entire time I’ve been here (since fall of 2006), I swear I’ve heard maybe three Elvis songs on the radio. I am not exaggerating.
Anyway, out of desperation I stopped my Scan last night when it hit Billy Ocean’s “Suddenly.” And this line jumped out at me:
One thousand words are not enough to say what I feel inside
Holding hands as we walk along the shore
Never felt like this before, now you’re all I’m living for.
Say what? I’ve written Mises Daily articles that are a lot longer than that! One thousand words are not enough to say what I feel inside about Paul Krugman.
C’mon Billy, kick it up a notch. Other guys tell their sweethearts they’d walk a thousand miles for them–can you spit out a word per mile?! Or that they’ve been in love for longer than there have been stars up in the heavens. I get the honest approach, but c’mon. You’re not going to hang on to that Caribbean queen at this rate.
Finding an Actual Use for My Game Theory Training
Although my dissertation was in capital and interest theory, my “field exam” at NYU was in “theory,” which basically meant micro/game theory. This was definitely an example of studying something for its sheer elegance, because I think whenever game theorists pontificate on the actual real world, they usually give horrible advice. (E.g., “Yes, sir, it would be a good idea to build hundreds of nuclear warheads for the U.S. government, but only if we deploy them according to this formula.”)
But yesterday I actually benefited from my years of training. On the radio there was some goofy commercial with kids on a road trip. The kids are bored and the brother says, “Let’s play 20 Questions” and the sister immediately agrees and throws out the first question. So there was no way the brother could have had time to think of his pick, before hearing the question about it.
So that got me to thinking: Would there be an advantage to either player, doing it this way? In other words, if someone says, “Let’s play 20 Questions!” should you immediately blurt out a question, before the person can think up his pick? Or does it give an advantage to the other player, because then he can choose the thing based on your question (and then answer appropriately of course)?
At first, I thought there was no way to really answer this definitively. But then I realized that actually, the answer is straightforward, and all you have to do is make a very weak assumption that wouldn’t even upset Murray Rothbard on a good day.
I leave it to the reader as an exercise.
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