Two narratives on academic discrimination

I credit an interview with government studies professor Harvey Mansfield for showing me two inconsistent narratives on diversity in higher education faculty.

If there is a lack of minority faculty members, including women and racial minority members, it is the result of discrimination, prejudice and other efforts to keep them out.

However, when asked to explain why there are so few conservative faculty members, those same people will say they lack the competence to become faculty members, or there is a lack of interest for academic jobs among conservatives and they self-select into other fields.

That is to say, in the first scenario the problem is prejudice, while in the second scenario the university functions as a meritocracy and the problem is with the conservatives themselves.

I will add that people like me tend to see it in reverse, where the university is a place of discrimination for conservatives, but when it comes to minority hires it is a perfect meritocracy.

In a recent blog post, Bryan Caplan gives the political diversity question a one-two-three combo beatdown, with a jab showing just how deep the imbalance is in faculty political positions, a right and a left hook showing the value of a politically diverse faculty and for the haymaker? He showed a 2012 study of social psychologist academics where 82 percent of surveyed liberals admitted they would be prejudice against a conservative candidates.

The usual defense of this is that conservatives are just plain wrong, well, paper authors Yoel Inbar and Joris Lammers addressed that argument in the paper:

Is it a problem that conservative political opinion is not tolerated? If one believes that conservatives are simply wrong, perhaps not. After all, geologists are not obliged to accept colleagues who believe the earth is flat. But political or moral beliefs often do not have a truth value. A belief that the earth is flat is factually false; a belief that abortion should be prohibited is not. Neither is a belief that cultural traditions should be respected or that economic inequality is acceptable. It may also be that many aspects of conservative thinking can serve as inspiration for interesting research questions that would otherwise be missed. Finally, as offensive as it may seem to many (liberal) social psychologists, believing that abortion is murder does not mean that one cannot do excellent research.

I can't speak for how much of demographic diversity is discrimination, but it looks compelling that political diversity is a result of discrimination.
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Are left wingers prepared to choose?

I'm a supporter of an open borders immigration policy. I'd like to see anyone come to America and be able to become a citizen in short order, although I want screenings for medical conditions and criminal background checks to avoid a Scarface scenario where another nation can dump its prisoners on us.

That view is embraced by most progressives, or at least a more moderate version that wants much more immigration than we currently have. But what's contradictory is that those some people also want a generous welfare state.

Here's Paul Krugman on that very issue:

Democrats are torn individually (a state I share). On one side, they favor helping those in need, which inclines them to look sympathetically on immigrants; plus they’re relatively open to a multicultural, multiracial society. I know that when I look at today’s Mexicans and Central Americans, they seem to me fundamentally the same as my grandparents seeking a better life in America. 

On the other side, however, open immigration can’t coexist with a strong social safety net; if you’re going to assure health care and a decent income to everyone, you can’t make that offer global. 

So Democrats have mixed feelings about immigration; in fact, it’s an agonizing issue.

My concern here is that this is in fact not an agonizing issue for Democratic voters, while it is most likely on the radar for Democratic politicians. To often, I see rank and file Democratic voters speaking about the legend of infinite wealth, where the government should be strengthening the social safety net with no consideration on costs because America is "rich."

Perhaps I'm wrong, maybe this is something they really do agonize over in private and don't like to talk about in public.

What I find most frustrating about this is the way immigrants are often portrayed as a burden when they should really be considered an asset. Bryan Caplan's analysis of the data tells us that most studies show immigrants pay more in taxes than they use in benefits, and the ones that show a net loss only show a small one.

Our borders need to be open for everyone, even the uneducated and the poor. Maybe we'd make some progress on this issue and pass immigration reform is everyone stopped talking about poor people as victims in need of saving and instead as untapped resources that can help us if given better incentives.
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Progress is coming - unless we stop it

Four years ago I wrote that destroying jobs is progress, in my post titled Destroying Jobs is Progress.

Now, Bryan Caplan says the same thing, but this time it's animated, and therefor, much more compelling.


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Maybe it's good the rich have more political power

Whenever the mournful dirges start about the supposed death of American democracy and how the rich have too much power, I've never stopped and asked if that's always a bad thing.

This morning a book review from Tyler Cowen stirred an idea that will bring me blank stares and quiet frowns from my friends, but it's still important to ask. Do we really want the poor to have more political power?

The argument that the rich have too much influence over legislation is usually constrained to the realm economic issues, and it props up the myth that richer Americans on average pay a smaller percentage of their income in in federal income taxes as a result of their political influence. What about other issues?

Cowen references his mood affiliation fallacy concept, which means mistakenly rejecting an idea because it criticizes something you think deserves a better reputation. He wrote:

I would be falling prey to the fallacy of mood affiliation if I simply assumed the author wanted policy to be more responsive to the wishes of the poor and middle class. Still I can ask whether this would be a desirable end. Aren’t they less educated and less well-informed on average? Don’t they also care about politics less and derive less of their status from political processes and outcomes? Do I want them to have a greater say over social issues, including gay marriage? No.

We know that education correlates with both higher incomes and higher support for gay marriage, so that issue could regress under power redistribution. Cowen also listed contradictory wishes from the uneducated, such as wanting tariffs and cheaper goods. These are impossible and more power from uneducated voters would hurt the poor.

Matthew Yglesias made a similar point:

Needless to say, the disproportionate influence of the rich on the political system is also troubling from an accountability perspective. It suggests that elected officials will be more responsive to the objective needs of the prosperous at the expense of those whose objective needs are more pressing. But pining for a world in which policy outputs precisely reflect the views of the public is neither here nor there in terms of obtaining a better political system.

No one wants a system where the poor have no political power. However, believing that giving more political power to the poor will produce benefits universally is flawed and reads like a chapter out of The Myth of the Rational Voter. The average American leftist would have a tougher time passing the social issues he or she cares about if the poor had a larger platform and voted more


This should be uncomfortable idea for anyone who believes in representative government.
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Lenin the Utilitarian

I was proud of a post I wrote earlier this month on how utilitarian justifications has caused a lot of evil in the world because proponents lack perfect knowledge of the world.

Having now read a pair of posts Bryan Caplan wrote on the banality of Lenin, I now wish I had read Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment in order to make superior literary references. Caplan's point is a little different, but falls along similar lines.

Protagonist Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov is an intellectual that declares great men are not restrained by morality. With the freedom to shed innocent blood they can bring great improvements to the world and should not be held accountable.

Caplan quotes Crime and Punishment at length and shows that Raskolnikov and Lenin shared many ideas. They hastily accepted utilitarianism, saw shedding rivers of innocent blood in a poetic light and praised the "extraordinary men" who is above common morality. Caplan continued:

More tellingly, if you read the entire chapter, you'll notice two typically Leninist omissions:

1. Even a token effort to show that any specific policy change would in fact have extremely good consequences.

2. Even a token effort to argue that well-targeted "terrible carnage" would greatly improve the probability of these policy changes being adopted.

The key difference between a normal utilitarian and a Leninist: When a normal utilitarian concludes that mass murder would maximize social utility, he checks his work! He goes over his calculations with a fine-tooth comb, hoping to discover a way to implement beneficial policy changes without horrific atrocities. The Leninist, in contrast, reasons backwards from the atrocities that emotionally inspire him to the utilitarian argument that morally justifies his atrocities.

I criticized some utilitarianism justifications as a false dichotomy. Caplan went beyond that and showed just how recklessly utilitarianism solutions can be picked.

Not only does utilitarianism inspire some people to commit evil in the name of ignorance, it's also applied lazily. While I stand by that utilitarianism plus ignorance equals death, when you throw in hubris and power the results are nothing short of mass murder.
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How did I miss that?

I was checking my Google Analytics page and saw something curious from last week.



It turns out Bryan Caplan had linked to my intellectual Turing test post, where I answered questions using leftist economic arguments and mixed them in with answers given by my Keynesian friends. This spike was about 150 percent of the size of the spike I got when I spoke at TAM 9 last July.

Caplan had a good question about why only two of the six questions concerned macroeconomics, thus being more saltwater than Keynesian. That's an error on my part, as I failed to request any distinction when I asked Josh Zelinsky to draft six economic questions for the experiment.

Regardless, I am an order of magnitude below Caplan's ability. The test could best be described as an attempt to make left-wing economic arguments, as opposed to a specifically Keynesian model.
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Will the imposter please stand up?

The week is up and I am now revealing the identities of my four mystery Keynesians.

Please do not read any further or click to expand this post if you have not had a chance to read the previous post. You will spoil your own fun.

Al Pacino was Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, who blogs at BlindSight 20/20. Sadly, the blog has been dormant because of his workload as a research assistant for violence against woman and an political science major. Dylan has also been too cool to comment here so far, although he responds to things I write or share in private corners of the Internet.

Steve Buscemi was Kevin Paul, who recently started the video game blog RetroTavern. Kevin and I were friends in college where he majored in business, eventually graduating with an MBA.


Christopher Walken was Jeremy Corbally-Hammond, who blogs at JermSix and occasionally comments here. Jeremy is the former chairman of the Maine Green Independent Party and works at a food bank.

That leaves one slot left.

Robert De Niro was me the whole time. With the exception of question two about spending more money on pet projects to boost aggregate demand, I never actually wrote an answer I found flawed or illogical I simply changed the emphasis. Some of the questions, like the ones on trading with space aliens and mercantalism, do not stray from my real beliefs. They hit upon some things that are simply universal.

I had a few people contact me directly to guess which writer I was. The only one to get it correct was Nate, who blogs at Congress Shall Make No Law. He said:

I haven't had time to read the whole thing in depth, but I think you are the 4th minion of Keynes, based on a preliminary investigation of the faulty economics.

He could have been lucky, of course. My inner Robin Hanson says a betting market is needed to separate the guessers from those with serious opinions.

I had a lot of fun with this project. Thanks again to Joshua Zelinsky of Religion, Sets, and Politics for providing the questions, my team of stunt Keynesians for taking the time to answer those questions, and Bryan Caplan for inspiring the project in the first place.

I'd love to see readers react to learning which writer was me. Please comment below to which one you thought I was, why you went with it, and how you feel now that you know who was who.

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Can you spot the fake Keynesian?

As promised, I have assembled a team of informed Keynesians and left-wing econ fans to answer some general questions about modern economists. Mixed in with their answers are my own, using my understanding of left-wing economics to answer them from that perspective. I did not Google any of my answers or look at what someone else wrote first.

Before I get started, a special thank you to Joshua Zelinsky of Religion, Sets, and Politics who provided the questions used in this experiment. Thanks Joshua, you were a great help.

I used a random number generator to choose the order for the answers from my guests and I, and the order remains constant for each question. Instead of attributing each answer to writer A, B, C and D, I have labeled them as Al Pacino, Steve Buscemi, Christopher Walken and Robert De Niro because it's my blog and it's more fun that way.

The identities of each writer will be revealed in one week. Now on with it!

Question 1: Does government funding of scientific research do more good than harm?

I think that government funding for R&D is very important and, in most cases, relatively effective. It's important to take into consideration the role of the patent-granting activities of the government as the most potent tool for the advancement of scientific research and development, particularly in the pharmaceutical and medical science fields. Without the economic security granted by a patent, companies involved in the research and development of new technologies and advancements would have very little incentive to continue their work if they have no assurances of profit-maximization opportunities once they've developed or discovered something important. In my view, government funding of R&D and scientific and technological advancements in general should be a transcendent policy issue - everybody from every corner of the political and ideological arena should be able to recognize just how worthy of an investment this sort of spending is to the future of the country.

The government funding of science does more good than harm. Scientific research raises our collective good by investing in the intellectual capital of its people. In addition research by the government paves the way for private industry to profit from their discoveries. This is particularly true with Tempur-pedic fabric and nuclear technology.

It would depend upon the scientific research. Martial scientific research, like research in advanced weaponry, does little to improve our economy. War is ultimately a destructive force with net economic losses. Profit aligns with our values often enough to rely on it to drive economic growth a majority of the time, but the alignment isn’t seamless and it’s my opinion that a democratic society can decide to allocate resources for research in areas where start-up costs are too high for for-profit entrepreneurs to be attracted to it.

Scientific breakthroughs are public goods, and you subsidize public goods with positive externalities. That's econ 101, folks. Private companies need to justify research with short-term profits, and what happens if their funding shuts off in short order? How could you hope to have a massive project like the Collider - a machine the size of a racetrack - to satisfy curiosity and not make money? What about figuring out how nature works in general with no intended application? These are major market failures.

Question 2: What caused the current recession and what is the best thing the government can do to help us get out of it?

The current recession was causes by a toxic confluence of events precipitated by bad economic policy and a healthy dose of bad luck. The massive amounts of deregulation in the Reagan and Clinton years led to an environment on Wall Street in which poisonous mortgage-backed securities (subprime) and derivatives became the centerpiece of trading and investing behavior. Predatory and ill-advised mortgage lending made these securities toxic and the vile collusion between ratings agencies and financial institutions led to these investments being used for pensions and 401Ks and other such investment activities which subsequently tanked. Massive tax cuts, an unpaid for prescription drug benefit for Medicare and two incredibly expensive and unpaid for wars, in addition to the mess on Wall Street and the housing bubble, are the main causes of the current disastrous economy.

I propose that increased government spending in targeted, stimulative areas such as hiring tax credits, R&D, infrastructure programs, unemployment benefits, job training programs, education, and so on, will be the most effective ways to stimulate and jump start the economy. This need only last until full employment is reached. Full employment however is not 0% unemployment but there is a 4% to 6% level. Due to the leakages from MPS (marginal propensity to save) the government spending option provides a more direct, dollar-for-dollar boost to the economy at a time when neither consumers nor producers are in a position to do much in the way of growth-oriented economic activity.

The current recession was caused by lack of oversight and hubris: Oversight on the side of the major rating houses and hubris on the part of bankers. Bankers had to feed a demand for more and more mortgage backed securities, so they had to become creative with how they acquired them and bundled them together. This, combined with rating houses giving risky securities AAA ratings, was a recipe for disaster.

I honestly don’t know what happened - I have not studied the recession in great detail. But what I do know is that the state of our nation is nothing remotely close to what it was during the depression or other serious economic downturns. Whatever was or wasn’t done by the government (bailouts?) has likely either saved us, or their affects were negligible (nothing was harmed) and economic forces kept our machine oiled.

The recession was not caused by deregulation per say, existing protective laws were not relaxed. Instead it came from the stubborn refusal to adopt new regulations for new financial products. Derivatives and sub-prime loans entered the marketplace with no safety rail, and the economy went over the cliff.

We're already out of the recession now, but that doesn't mean the government can't still speed up the recovery with public works projects and putting more money in the hands of the impoverished through redistribution, who will spend more of it right away. Yes, you can let the wound heal on its own, but why not put some neosporin on it to speed up the process?

Question 3: How serious a problem is deadweight loss? What are the primary causes and what can be done to reduce it?

Dead weight loss is a serious problem. If you observe a graphic representation, you can see what is called the "welfare loss triangle" to get a nice visual sense of how and why this phenomenon exists. The primary causes of dead weight loss are taxes, price floors and price ceilings. In all three instances, government imposes policies that interfere and obstruct the natural machinations of markets where the markets would ordinarily adjust through the price mechanism of supply and demand, thus arriving at equilibrium levels through the invisible hand. When taxes are paid, not all of the taxes paid are collected by government due to leakages which result in dead weight loss. The same is true of price floors and ceilings; price floors cause an excess of supply and thus dead weight loss and price ceilings cause an excess of demand and result in dead weight loss as well.

I would say at this point in history dead weight loss is less of a problem than it has ever been. Major causes of deadweight loss are monopolies, cartels, and other supplies in collusion. The best way to combat it it is to maintain strong antitrust laws and keep a vigilant eye on mergers. Of particular interest at this point would be the cell phone providers in the US.

I can’t think of any consumer driven causes, but there are plenty of ways either suppliers or states can create deadweight loss. State tools include taxation, subsidies, price ceilings and floors, etc. Supplier tools include monopolistic/oligopolistic price gouging. I admit, I can’t remember a whole lot about the subject, but I might speculate the seriousness of deadweight loss is highly dependant on the volume of the loss and/or the subjective intrinsic/sentimental value of the consumer product. In the event where deadweight loss is undesirably high, the solution to correct it will depend on the cause. State driven deadweight loss requires legislation to correct. I’m unsure about the best way to correct supplier driven deadweight loss, but it might be to break up the monopoly.

Deadweight losses - where something is taxed and less of it is created - are not always a problem. That's the whole idea of Pigovian taxes - when you tax something, you get less of it - including tobacco use, soda consumption and other activities that have negative costs to society. It's true you see some marginal changes with taxes when you have elastic demands, but that just shows how serious the job of setting tax rates is.

Question 4: The leader of a small country in the developing world asks for your advice about monetary and fiscal policy. What do you say to them?

I would advise an aggressive mix of expansionary fiscal and monetary policies. Expansionary fiscal policies are either increasing government spending or cutting taxes. Since a developing nation is in similar conditions to what a nation like the U.S. would characterize as a "recession", I would advice going the route of increased government spending. Keynesian principles hold that deficit spending during a recession is the best and most effective way to stimulate economic growth. The reason is simply - government spending is most directly impactful on an economy because it does not have to be filtered through households and firms, where a decision has to be made in terms of what to spend, save or invest. Infrastructure spending and projects are great for stimulating an economy on two levels: the short-term increases in employment as people are needed to build, repair and plan these projects. And the long-term impacts are very important as a strong and modern infrastructure can very often be the vehicle of economic growth, such as the expansion of the interstate highway system in the mid 20th century and the advent of the Internet in the 1990s, each of which acted as tremendously important innovations and investments for the U.S. economy.

On the monetary side, I would also advocate an expansionary policy by increasing the money supply and thus lowering the interest rate. When the interest rates are low and credit is more readily available, firms and businesses can more easily invest and expand which will in turn increase employment and consumption. This will happen for the basic reason that as the money supply is increased, demand for money decreases and interest rates decrease accordingly. Interest rates are in essence the "price" of money and when money is cheap, firms and households can engage in larger amounts of economic activity.

Take a hard and brutal look at your country and decide what competitive advantage it might have over others in the region, and if transportation and infrastructure is in place, then the world. In addition, when allowing foreign companies to develop in country, require a percentage of their revenue to remain in country.

Monetary policy is not my area of expertise. I struggled in college to make the connections between interest rates and currency values, with trade and economic growth. Relative to developing nations and our past, our country has enjoyed a very long period of economic stability while employing state controls over the value of our currency and interest rates. But I may be confusing causality and correlation. I would argue that measures should be taken to stabilize currency, as opposed to letting it succumb to the whims of economic forces. Developing nations are much more vulnerable to instability and exploitation.

As for fiscal policy - developing nations tend to have fewer social institutions and stability. Good business depends on good relationships and a strong (don’t read as “big”) government that can enforce rules and agreements (no matter how few, libertarians.) Strong public investment in education is highly recommended.

I’ll go a step further and talk about trade policy as well. I would suggest free trading blocs with regional states at comparable stages of development. States that have opened trade with large Western nations get stuck producing (or rather just gathering) primary goods for export. While its an improvement from subsistence farming, it could be a dead end and unsustainable. Trade with regional partners strengthens political ties (reduces the chance of war, which is much more likely in developing nations) and diversifies markets.

I'm assuming we have a democracy, not an autocrat state, if we expect the advice to be heard. For monetary policy, have a central bank with a lot of government oversight to make sure monetary policy is being used appropriately, and put in safeguards to keep someone from running wild with the printing press like we saw in Zimbabwe. If the nation is small enough, why not have no monetary policy and adopt a foreign currency like the US dollar?

Fiscal policy needs to be tailored to the area. Do they have an AIDS problem? If so, thats going to require a lot of medical spending. Is there a lot of inequality to smooth out? I could give the boilerplate Keynesian prescription, but I'd have to know what I'm working with.

Question 5: Assume we discover an easy method of transportation to a planet with a far off alien species that is friendly and about the same technological level. Assuming small costs of transportation of goods to and from their civilization, what are the most likely economic consequences of such trade

According to Ricardo (and any other economist with a brain) engaging in free and fair trade will only benefit both trading partners. It will be imperative to first determing what we have an absolute advantage in and more importantly what we have a comparative advantage in; when I say "in" I mean in producing - what can we produce more efficiently than the aliens can or what can we produce at a lower opportunity cost in terms of other goods. If we specialize in that which we have those goods in which we enjoy a comparative advantage and the aliens do the same on their end, free trade between the two parties will benefit both. Real wages will rise and each trading partner will end up with more of all of the goods being traded than they would have if they'd chosen to keep all production and trade domestic. The only times I will even consider supporting protectionism or limitations on trade is in the case of "infant industry" or with respect to national security concerns.

Trade is good. If Gordon Gekko were a space trader he would have said the same thing. Trade will help out both countries, (sorry, planets) even if they are at the same technological level. The most likely consequence of such trade would be more specialization and lower prices on all goods involved.

We would easily see economic growth.






Depends if the general public can get over their irrational fears that "aliens are taking our jobs." The best case scenario is free trade with these beings, which will benefit both human and alien civilizations. There will be specific losers on both sides of space, like laborers who see their industry moving off-planet, but in total everyone will benefit. More "people" to cooperate with means more specialization and more gains from trade.

Question 6: Most would agree that as an economic theory, mercantilism suffered many flaws. If you had to identify a single biggest flaw what would it be and why?

The flaws in mercantilism relate very closely to my response to to the previous question. If government is too tightly restricting trade, consumers will have to pay higher prices for commodities that are expensively and ineeficiently produced domestically. The mercantilistic insistence on a "positive" trade balance is naive because it implies that there is something wrong with importing more than you export - there is not. The U.S. is uniquely positioned to lead in the information tech and information services sectors while other nations, such as China, are better suited to the manuifacturing of consumer goods. Mercantilism in short is an obnoxious and short-sighted repudiation of the reality of globalization. As I stated in the previous response, when trading terms are worked out fairly and intelligently, both partenrs end up with more of all goods being traded and the consumers and producers in both trading nations end up better off.

Anyone who has played a game of Settlers of Catan can tell you that it is harder to win if you don’t trade. However you define winning it is easier with trade. Whether winning involves; increased productivity, political stability, standard of living, or simply highest yield. In any case the greatest flaw of mercantilism would be that of its restrictive nature towards trade.

I hate following rules, so I will give you TWO major flaws: First, we probably suffered from EXCESSIVE deadweight loss under mercantalism - I realize that may seem redundant to some, but in a previous answer I argued that some deadweight loss may be regarded as negligible or tolerable.

Secondly, Mercantalism fostered jingoistic nationalism a driving factor for both wars and exploitative colonialism both of which were highly destructive.The best thing competing European countries did was open up trade between each other after WWII. I would argue that Western European Nations will never go to war with each other again *quickly sweeps sectarian-violence-in-Northern-Ireland under the carpet.*

I'd say confusing shiny rocks, be they gemstones, gold, silver or certificates that stand for them, with wealth. Wealth is in things like raw materials, manufactured goods, usable items and services. Mercantalists were willing to trade away those things to bring in more shiny rocks. They could indeed exchange these rocks for resources, but they chose to choke off incoming resources in lieu of more shiny rocks, thus making them poorer in the practical sense.

That's everything. Can you guess which one is actually a freshwater economics writer attempting to answer from a Keynesian perspective? That answer is available here, but please don't click until you have a candidate in mind. There are things in there that you can see but can't unsee.

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What I missed in 2011

Each January I write a post about a topic from the previous year I missed writing about, as can be seen here and here.

In June 2011 I posted about conducting an intellectual Turing test to see if I understand left-wing and Keynesian economics well enough to blend in with the real ones. I contacted some friends and acquaintances for help. Joshua Zelinsky of Religion, Sets, and Politics was kind of enough to draft the questions in a timely manner, but after a lot of hounding only three people submitted answers to mix in with my own. Others agreed to and I was foolishly holding out for them.

I was hoping for another set of answers, but I am finally publishing the four sets I have instead of letting this go dormant another day. The questions and answers are available in a single post and I will reveal who was who in a week. I turned off the comments in that post for the benefit of future readers.

For the next post in this series, click here.
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More economics for skeptics

I've made a few attempts in the past to introduce basic economics to skeptics, as it's an important science that painfully misunderstood in the skeptical community.

As such, I was very happy to stumble across this recent episode of Rationally Speaking, the New York City Skeptic's podcast where author Joseph Heath talked about his book "Economics without Illusions."

It starts off a bit worrying, as the subtitle is "Debunking the Myths of Modern Capitalism" and early in the interview Heath said he didn't take economics classes in college because he thought it was a right-wing ideology.

However, he went back as an adult and the evidence lead him to accept capitalism while still identifying as a progressive. The bulk of the book is six myths the right believes about economics and six myths held by the left.

If that wasn't enough, Heath was eager to share Friedrich von Hayek's lesson that the problem with socialism isn't just getting people to work. It's not motivation so much as information, as he puts it. It's a great summary of The Use of Knowledge in Society.

The interview reminded me of a recent Bryan Caplan piece about "substitution" as an explanation for economic illiteracy. Caplan explained that a lot of positions the economically illiterate hold can be understood as an answer to a different, simpler question.

For example, when asked if the minimum wage helps low-skilled workers, they may give an answer to the question "Would I be happy if employers gave low-skilled workers a raise?"

The podcast is worth giving a listen, which implies the book is good as well.
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Looking for Keynesian test subjects

I'm looking for some anonymous writers who hold informed progressive economics views and would be willing to answer a few general questions as part of an experiment.

I've been toying with the idea of writing some pieces as if I held a Keynesian view to see how faithful I can do it, and this recent Bryan Caplan piece outlining an experiment got me thinking.

Please respond to this post or send me an e-mail if you'd like participate in the experiment I have in mind. I'm going to keep some of the details secret, but volunteers need to be able to write a one-paragraph response to some general questions about the modern economy without Googling their entire answers.
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Celebrating justice or vengence

Now that the US Military finally cornered and killed Osama bin Laden a national debate has emerged about the appropriateness of celebrating the death of an evil man.

It was surreal to hear newscasters and politicians proudly beam about the death of anyone, even someone who deserved worse. It's clear that there's an element of vengeance here, but as Bryan Caplan has written, what's wrong with revenge?

I can't speak for anyone else, but I was happy because we finally found him and stopped him. I think if we had captured him unscathed it would still be a cause for celebration and you'd still hear joyous cries of "we got him." After nearly 10 years, I'd given up hope we'd ever catch up to him, and I wasn't even sure he was alive anymore.

And just because he's dead doesn't mean we should hold back our joy of ending a long, long manhunt for a mass murderer. Following the death of Jerry Falwell, Christopher Hitchens wasn't shy about reminding the public of the awful things the reverend did in life.

I respect peoples who are opposed to celebrating the death of an enemy, but I hope they don't lose sight of the tremendous good that just happened - and remember there is a victory behind the bloodshed. I hope they can find some comfort in knowing a very guilty man will no longer be enjoying a life on the run and a terrorist network is missing a spiritual leader.

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