Incentives in the Drug War
Part of why I oppose the War on (Some) Drugs is the horrible incentives it gives police departments through seizure laws. (For some good examples, read Paul Craig Roberts and Lawerence Stratton’s The Tyranny of Good Intentions, which I review here.) My wife tipped me off to the photo below:
Don’t Worry, God’s In Control
For this Sunday’s deep thoughts, I just want to remind everyone that if you believe in an omniscient, omnibenevolent Creator, then this has implications. You are acting inconsistently with this belief if, say, you are constantly worried about the future.
Note that there is a difference between preparation and worry. God appears to have designed reality to obey regular (and surprisingly simple) laws, and He equipped us with reason to discover them. So I don’t think it is being “faithless” to anticipate future contingencies and prepare for them. However, it is violating scriptural precepts to fret:
Matthew 6:25-34 (New King James Version)
Do Not Worry
25 “Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?
28 “So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; 29 and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
31 “Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
Think Before Acting
Regarding the earlier thread, where we are discussing a climate scientist’s handling of the alleged halt in global warming: It only occurred to me a couple of days after posting it, but isn’t it crazy that one of the climate scientist’s responses is that some of the temperature series show a warming? Specifically, he said:
The confused argument hinges on one data set – the HadCRUT 3V – which is only one of several estimates, and it is the global temperature record that exhibits the least change over the last decade. Other temperature analyses suggest greater change (warming). Thus, one could argue that the HadCRUT 3V represents the lower estimate, if a warming could be defined for such a short interval.
Isn’t it rather amazing that we are being asked to give all sorts of taxing and regulatory powers to the government when the climate scientists aren’t even sure if the earth is warmer now than it was ten years ago?! This isn’t the silly, “Ha ha they can’t even tell me if it’s going to rain next Tuesday!” quip. They are here admitting that they’re not sure if there has been warming over a ten-year interval. And it’s not as if one decade is a spit in the bucket for their whole sample period. The human contribution to the globe’s temperature was allegedly concentrated in a 60-year period or so; i.e. the serious GHG emissions didn’t kick in until the post-war boom.
So isn’t it strange that they are that certain, the science is settled, etc., based on waht really is about 60 years of actual measurements where the independent variable has significantly changed, and yet they themselves admit that 10 years is really not long enough to say much in this type of analysis?
As always, I am not claiming the climate scientists are dumb or lying. What I am claiming is that they are overrating the confidence we should place in their understanding of the relative contributions of various drivers of climate change.
Economics Is One Discipline With Low Perceived Barriers to Entry
I know there is a much more eloquent Rothbard quote to this effect, but I want to second his observation: For some reason, many people have no hesitation in confidently offering views about economic topics even though they would be much more modest if it came to another specialty.
For example, at Thanksgiving I was talking with a perfectly pleasant and intelligent relative of my wife. We were chatting about our respective businesses. He explained that he did video editing, and I explained that I was an economist. I asked him a few questions about his line of work, and when I was explaining mine, the issue of price movements came up. I gave my standard spiel about the monetary base and prices taking off once the panic subsides. Then he confidently told me that it’s not a matter of how much money there is, but how fast it moves from person to person; it was like water moving through a pipe (I think was the simile he used).
Now his statement was fine as far as it went, but it just struck me how breezily he “corrected” my own views on monetary theory. It would be as if he told me how he knew where to stand when taping a wedding, and I said, “Well it’s not so much that, but rather that you have to ask the father of the bride where he wants you to stand, since he’s paying for it.”
To repeat, I’m not picking on this guy in particular; it’s just a recent example of something you see all the time. I think it’s partly because politics is so partisan that people don’t think there really is an objective science of economics. So since any random econ PhDs might disagree about price inflation next year–whereas two physics PhDs won’t disagree about the trajectory of the moon–people don’t take “trained professionals” seriously when they are economists.
However, I think there’s more to it than just that. I think most people have no idea how complicated an economic system actually is. And the last thing, people have a first-hand knowledge of the basic content of economics. So it really doesn’t seem hilarious for someone to pontificate about the causes of price movements, whereas that same person wouldn’t dream of “taking issue with” something a heart surgeon says about his job while passing the gravy.
Chicago vs. Vienna Tag Team!!
I haven’t read Doug’s piece yet, but today at Mises.org you’ve got my Open Letter to Gary Becker (regarding whether depressions are “good”) and MacKenzie’s critique of Richard Posner on the same topic.
Trusting the Model Over the Measurements?
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This may shock some readers, but I really do try to keep abreast of the work of the “real climate scientists” and not get trapped in a corner listening to various skeptics argue whether Al Gore is evil or just crazy. Since one of the latest snarky things is for skeptics to point out that the world hasn’t warmed in the last ten years (despite large increases in CO2 concentrations), I was interested to read the latest post at RealClimate which took on this (alleged) canard.
Anyway, the writer says:
Confusion has continued regarding trends in global temperatures. The misconception ‘the global warming has stopped’ still lives on in some minds. We have already discussed why this argument is flawed. So why have we failed to convince 😉 ?
The confused argument hinges on one data set – the HadCRUT 3V – which is only one of several estimates, and it is the global temperature record that exhibits the least change over the last decade. Other temperature analyses suggest greater change (warming). Thus, one could argue that the HadCRUT 3V represents the lower estimate, if a warming could be defined for such a short interval.
A comparison with other temperature analyses, such as the NASA/GISS…reveals differences. We can also compare with model-generated data (re-analyses), keeping in mind that one must be very careful with these data since they are not appropriate for studying long-term climate change (they give a misrepresentation of trends – at least on a local scale). Nevertheless, information from independent data suggest an increase in global mean temperatures even over the last decade.
(Note that the figure above comes from one of the comments in the RealClimate thread, and note that the source is GISS, run by Hansen. I.e. I’m not taking the graph above from the Michael Crichton estate.)
I really am trying to not jump to conclusions here. I know some of Free Advice’s readers are on “the other side” so to speak, so by all means, please explain if I’ve missed something here.
However, it seems to me that what the writer above is saying, is that we shouldn’t take seriously the skeptic claim that “global warming has stopped” (for the last ten years), because (a) only one set of measurements shows this, and (b) such a halt in warming doesn’t fit our models.
Now point (a) is fine, and point (b) isn’t terrible, subject to a caveat. And yet, the caveat the writer gives is NOT, “Of course, these are just models, and in the long-run the data must trump the models.” I admit I don’t really understand what the stated caveat is, but I’m pretty sure it’s not pointing out the obvious danger in ignoring temperature readings (over the course of ten years) because they don’t match what your model predicts.
Like I said, I am trying to be fair. I suppose one could argue that I have done an analogous thing in my cynicism regarding the BLS’s inflation figures. But even there, I have not been saying, “I think inflation is higher than the BLS is admitting, because look at the money supply and I believe Milton’s theory!” Rather, I have been saying, “I think inflation is higher than the BLS is admitting, because no matter how I manipulate the government’s own gas price data, I can’t get the ‘seasonally adjusted’ fall that the BLS reports (back in April), and because the BLS’ own yr/yr increases suggest far more inflation than their seasonally adjusted, annualized rates.”
And you can be darn sure that if ten years go by and gold has never broken $1000,* I will admit that I was waaaay the heck wrong in my forecasts.
By the way, in case you are entirely new to all this stuff: The main reason the graph above annoys the proponents of the theory of manmade global warming is that 1998 was unusually warm. I.e. there was a huge spike from 1997 to 1998, and so it’s natural that temperatures fell immediately after it. Gavin Schmidt I think gives a better first pass at the “why hasn’t the globe warmed in ten years?!” attack than the guy I linked to in this post. But the guy above amazed me for how casually he relies on “model-generated data.” In my line of work, I think that would be a contradiction in terms. You’ve got the data, and you’ve got your model. The model is supposed to fit the data, or predict the future data, but not generate it.
* The one out I grant myself is if the government takes over the gold market again, and declares an official price. Then my predictions would of course refer to the black market price of gold.
More Evidence That Libertarians Aren’t the Rudest Ones Around
At MR they link to this Yglesias blog post on pricing carbon, and how libertarians just don’t get it. There are some rather strong comments regarding the intelligence and integrity of libertarians who oppose government caps on carbon emissions. (Note that I haven’t even read the piece Yglesias is ripping, so please don’t construe my post as endorsing it.)
Tim Swanson Hearts China
Here’s a neat article from Free Advice reader (and hot-tip-giver*) Tim Swanson, who just moved to China. He explains why he thinks the construction boom in China is the real deal. Plus, some cool photos, such as:
* Please excuse the liberal use of hyphens, but I was afraid that “hot tip-giver” would imply he was one who (a) gave tips and (b) was hot.
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