Smoking up state's rights

A friend recently posed this question to me:

I am wondering what you think of the inconsistency of Democrats and liberals claiming that marijuana policy "should be left to the states" while simultaneously criticizing arguments for "states' rights" as coded racist/discriminatory" language? This strikes me as a sort of wanting to have the cake and eat it too situation.

That's easy. I never saw that as a sincere criticism of states rights.

Like most accusations of modern racism, it seems to be an emotionally-satisfying way some members of the left can dismiss their opponents without having to have a real debate. I think coded words and dog whistles are largely delusional.

 I very much believe in states rights for the old laboratories of democracy reason and I think everyone should embrace them. For example, Card and Krueger's revolutionary (and still controversial) 1992 paper on small increases in the minimum wage failing to hurt employment was only possible because of the laws being different in different states.

I think liberals who support letting the states decide have figured out it's better to get some smaller victories now instead of waiting for the whole country to come around. For example, here in Massachusetts we've had legal gay marriage for 10 years. While today 19 states recognize gay marriage, 31 don't. If not for states rights we would have zero states without gay marriage today.

I do have one qualm with my friend's premise: Despite being a liberal himself, he is accusing Democrats and progressives of categorical hypocrisy. While I'm sure there's some overlap, I don't know for a fact that there are specific individuals that hold those two opposing views. He is treating a diverse group as if it was homogeneous.

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Always, always go with science

I really want to like EconPop, the new comedy-slash-economic education web series from EconStories; the same people who brought us the Keynes and Hayek rap videos.

I want to like it, but having seen the first episode, I don't.

The first episode combs the Dallas Buyers Club movie for economic and libertarian messages. Some of them are good points, like how capitalism promotes tolerance by getting people to trade with folks they might otherwise hate, and a good lesson on regulatory capture.

But there's a part of the episode that I found repulsive, and it wasn't the awful George Stigler segment. It was the promotion of medical pseudoscience.

The film presents the FDA as a corrupt, incompetent agency that blocks good medicine, including the life-saving supplements the film's hero sold to the public as HIV treatment. While I think that portrayal of the FDA isn't far from the truth, the magic bean cures it was trying to stop were a legitimate problem.

The film, and EconPop, portrays anecdotal "it worked for me" stories as evidence that the supplements are useful for treating HIV. They aren't, and it's well established that most of these things he sold were bad medicine.

Economics and scientific skepticism are two dimensions of scientific analysis that I value. Most of the time when I see them clash I go with the economic perspective. That's because I usually conclude that the skeptic failed to understand the economics of the situation, and their analysis would change if they understood it. In this case, the economic approach failed to understand skepticism, and produced a flawed point.

There is a second episode of EconPop out, but it's on the economics of House of Cards and I will wait until I finish season two to see it.
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No national abortion regulation debate

For the last few years my favorite example of politically-opportunistic regulation has been safety regulation legislature for abortion clinics, which are always promoted by pro-life Republicans.

It never occurred to me that they might be worth doing.

Now that the Dr. Kermitt Gosnell case has become a national story and he has been sentenced to prison for illegally killing just-born children with scissors at his abortion clinic, a reasonable person might consider supporting some of those regulations.

Yet, that option isn't on the table the same way gun control was on the table following the Sandy Hook shooting.

Plenty has already been written about the media's reluctance to cover this story, and how much of the subsequent focus has been on the media itself and not the actual case. I found Megan McArdle's explanation for the lack of coverage to be the most compelling:

...I understand why my readers suspect me, and other pro-choice mainstream journalists, of being selective—of not wanting to cover the story because it showcased the ugliest possibilities of abortion rights. The truth is that most of us tend to be less interested in sick-making stories—if the sick-making was done by "our side."

...If I think about it for a moment, there are obviously lots of policy implications of Gosnell's baby charnel house. How the hell did this clinic operate for seventeen years without health inspectors discovering his brutal crimes? Are there major holes in our medical regulatory system? More to the point, are those holes created, in part, by the pressure to go easy on abortion clinics, or more charitably, the fear of getting tangled in a hot-button political issue? These have clear implications for abortion access, and abortion politics.

After all, when ostensibly neutral local regulations threaten to restrict abortion access--as with Virginia's recent moves to require stricter regulatory standards for abortion clinics, and ultrasounds for women seeking abortions--the national media thinks that this is worthy of remark. If local governments are being too lax on abortion clinics, surely that is also worthy of note.

Moreover, surely those of us who are pro-choice must worry that this will restrict access to abortion: that a crackdown on abortion clinics will follow, with onerous white-glove inspections; that a revolted public will demand more restrictions on late-term abortions; or that women will be too afraid of Gosnell-style crimes to seek a medically necessary abortion.

I have never considered that abortion clinics actually need more regulation before this, but as McArdle said 17 years of Gosnell's unsanitary, brutal practice implies it should be considered.

While we should expect the pro-choice crowd to have this conversation in their own sphere, shouldn't we also have a national conversation about increasing health standards for abortion clinics? Why isn't the media leading that charge now that they cat is out of the bag? I submit it is because they are afraid of where it would lead.
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It doesn't work that way

Two years ago I wrote about attempted "food sovereignty" municipal ordinances in Maine. While I support their goal of deregulating food, even if it's only small-scale production, I said the approach was doomed for failure.

Well, the update is obvious. The courts reminded them that state and federal legislation trumps municipal ordinances.

A [Maine] Superior Court ruling against a Blue Hill farmer who has been selling unlabeled, unlicensed raw milk will have farmers in several Maine towns wondering about the future of local “food sovereignty” ordinances that seek to exempt them from state oversight.

Sorry kids, but a strong top-down federal government prevents natural experiments in local government. It's a shame, although an obvious one, as there was never a reason to believe this plan would work in the long term.
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Deregulate local food

How bad can a situation be for local food advocates when critics like me have to come to their side?

Here's a typical example. In November the Quail Hollow Farm in Nevada hosted a five-course meal and the owners say they met all the standards they were told ahead of time, but then the health department waited for the event to start before they cited additional unmet requests and destroyed the food.



My niche for this blog has been to provide a reality check to the buy local movement. I mostly write about the pseudo scientific economic selling points, but I occasionally branch out to the phony environmental and health claims. Quail Hollow Farm is guilty of these too. These advocates make plenty of other fictional claims like "fresh locally-grown fruits and vegetables are indispensable for optimal nutrition and health" on their list of core values, but none of this has anything to do with the awful health regulations the government enforces.

The slow wheels of government has not caught up to this cottage industry of local food advocates. While I disagree with their motives and values, I feel sickened to see their consumer choices being thwarted by government officials allegedly out of paternalistic concern. It's much easier to create government restrictions than remove them, and these locavores are paying the price for bad legislation.

People on the left seem to have a knee-jerk response to the idea of deregulation. Let this example shine through to that logic. While regulation is needed in some very specific areas, we should never assume that our current level of regulation is optimal. It's easy to image a dangerous over-regulated situation, and we should always be open to arguments to remove or add additional regulations.

There's something very wrong with assuming all food is considered poison until proven otherwise, and anyone should be able to recognize that. I'm glad to see the locavores carrying that torch.
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In praise of Matthew Yglesias

There are a handful of leftie economists I'm eager to quote or draw inspiration from. They include Paul Krugman, Brad Delong, Ezra Klein, Matthew Yglesias and of course, Lord Keynes himself.

I think Yglesias deserves more praise for being so consistent with his economics while being very serious about his progressive views. He makes a serious attempt to understand his intellectual opponents, and he's not afraid to criticize people on his side. Look at yesterday's post on barber licensing for a perfect example.

I see breaking up the barber cartel and increasing competition for barbering services as a progressive measure, because if you reduce the cost of things that poor people buy, you increase their real living standards. A contrary view espoused in comments is that since barbering is a working class occupation, we ought to favor cartelization as a means of increasing working class income.

But he wasn't done.

But to perhaps gesture at a “theory of politics” issue, I think part of what bugs people about the barber issue is that they’ve developed the implicit view that for progressive politics to succeed we need to raise the social status of “big government,” and that it’s counterproductive to this mission to highlight any misguided “big government” initiatives. It’s acceptable to criticize excessive spending on the military and on prisons, because the conservative critique of “big government” often exempts those institutions. But if conservatives attack “regulation,” then “regulation” must be defended or, when indefensible, ignored.

Well played, good sir, well played. Being automatically against all "deregulation" means tolerating - if not embracing - a lot of bogus regulations that didn't work the way they were supposed to.
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