In fact it surprised me that reasonably knowledgeable people still thought this was possible. I guess Keynes was right about public opinion and defunct economists.
I have to take issue with one of Time Lee's points. There are two of those propositions that Friedman would have objected to, the second being creating full employment through stabilisation policy. In fact Friedman won his Nobel for proving that you can't do this. If you try you get the 1970s.
I agree with Tom on this. I'm way more libertarian than most government employees, but if you put me in front of a camera and asked me that question, I'd give a similar answer to him. Rule number 1 of public service: do not criticise your government in public. There's a reason why I spend my time on American political blogs and not New Zealand ones.
The function of the civil service is to advise the government of the day and then carry out that government's instructions, including making any decisions that have been duly delegated to them.
You won't find current government employees that are heavily critical of government in public, it just doesn't work like that.
For me, game theory helps put morality into focus. Human beings have an evolved set of instincts (a small number of sociopaths aside) and there are clear ways that those instincts can lead to better social outcomes than a pure utility maximiser.
Basically, a society of sociopaths isn't sustainable. That fact, combined with our natural instincts seems like a good reason to use our own moral sentiments as a guide (if an imperfect one) to how to live your life. And honestly, I don't thin believers are any different on the big stuff. That why everyone's perception of their God seems so similar to what they themselves think. There's no substitute for your won moral judgement.
Also, what did he mean by sin? There are a lot of things the Catholic Church considers sinful that I don't have nay moral qualms about. A lot of sin is malum prohibitum rather than mala in se. After all, I don't have any trouble believing that most Orthodox Jews would eat bacon, were it not for their faith.
In addition to Pat's point there's also the prospect that the Republican party is being damaged by constant resort to this rhetoric. You can very easily get a vicious cycle where more reasonable voices are silenced or driven out of the party, leading to even more extreme rhetoric and so on.
Having one political party going off the reservation can't be good for American political debate.
My Source for the meteorite strike figures is Death from the Skies by Dr Phil Plait. It includes the risk of an extinction-level meteorite, which naturally wouldn't be included in historical data.
It's quite remarkable how badly skewed our risk perceptions can be. When you think about cars are more dangerous than guns in many regards and I've read that you're more likely to die by meteorite strike than terrorism.
When it comes to situations like this, the wisest words I've ever read come from a computer game:
"Why do madmen do anything? Because they're bloody madmen, that's why!"
Sometimes there is no why. Sometimes there are no lessons one can learn. Sometimes things are bad for no good reason and there's nothing we can do about it.
How are repealed provisions of laws normally treated in the US? In New Zealand if a section of a statute is repealed then the text of that section is replaced with "Repealed". If a section is amended, the old text is replaced with the new.
I would suggest that constitutional amendments should be treated the same was as statutory ones.
While I agree with your general premise that public sector unions can be problematic, and many such unions are a serious problem in the US, I think there are some factors cutting against your main point.
1) It really depends on the union. To give you examples, the PSA in New Zealand represents core public sector employees in New Zealand (though I'm not a member myself), and it has a reputation for being willing to work productively with government Departments. The PPTA (which represents high school teachers, and instructors at non-university tertiary institutions) can be more rancorous, but there's nothing like the pension problems I've read so much about in the US.
2) In some ways unions can be more important in the public sector than the private. In my mind, the primary benefit of union pay negotiations occurs when the market the workers operate in in uncompetitive. In a perfectly competitive market an employer could pay no more than marginal product or labour or they'd go out of business, and they could pay no less or they wouldn't be able to hire anyone. But in less competitive markets, the firm obtains supernormal profits, and unions can enrich their members by transferring a portion of these profits to their workers. Also, less competitive markets tend to give employers more bargaining power so unions are more useful as a counter-balance. Mind you, perhaps the problem with some US public sector unions is that they're too good at this.
Now I don't think this refutes your main point, it's more that I think the way to address the problem is by comparing and contrasting the productive unions with the pathological ones and trying to work out how to prevent the latter from occurring.
From your personal blog to Positive Liberty to The One Best Way to here and now back to your personal blog? I can't help but feel we've come full circle, you and I.
Incidentally, I would expect that people in the future will work "part time" if only because I'd expect people to take a fraction of their future wealth in leisure time, leading to shorter working weeks in the future. predict this merely because it would be a continuation of prevailing historical trends.
Consider the mass urbanisation during the Industrial Revolution. What would that look like to the rural communities that were being hollowed out? Suddenly there's not enough hands at harvest time, the church pews are always half empty and even the pubs can barely stay open. It would look like the end of the world, but it was one of the greatest moment of human progress in history.
I suspect you could work less than half time. Of the top of my head real incomes increased between 5 and 20 times over the 20th Century in most Western Countries.
In principle the incentive effects should be more agreeable than current welfare, this is the reason Milton Friedman favoured it. Since people get government money whether they work or not, why wouldn't people try to get some work if they could? It's true that some people will be so work-averse that they choose to live on their government stipend indefinitely, but I suspect that will be pretty rare.
The real difficulty is that this type of system is very expensive. Still, I've seen calculations showing it could be done in New Zealand with reasonable tax rises, so it could well be feasible in the US as well.
I think the "zero point" question is a good one. I'm using the zero point of Phil K taking no action. I don't have a thoroughly well-reasoned case for why this is a good point to use, but I tend to think that nothing is the most we owe most people so no action is a good point to start at.
<blockquote>You would examine the morality of his actions in a vacuum isolated to doing x or not doing x, where as I would examine it against x and all others. I’m not sure which is right.<blockquote>
No, I would compare against all actions as well, but I'm smuggling in extra exceptions as to what I see happening downstream.
If Phil K used the factory money to start a charity that would be morally superior to running a sweatshop but there's only so much charity money in the world, and for-profit companies can raise a lot more capital because they can appeal to self-interest rather than altruism. So the sweatshops can help more people in aggregate than charities can. Furthermore, I suspect sweatshops are a necessary stepping stone on the transition from labour-intensive manufacturing to capital-intensive manufacturing. They're not fun, but I believe they're necessary.
There's the intermediate case of course, which is to run a factory, but to offer better pay and conditions that the market will allow. I really think this is just a mixture of the "Sweatshop" and "charity" options, as the owners of the factory would be taking lower returns for the benefit of the workers, just as if they were simply giving them money / life-improving amenities. I would also expect that the presence of high-profit factories in 3rd world countries will attract more would be factory owners, and the more competition there is to attract works, the better the pay and conditions will get.
I wouldn't expect these second-order effects to be in play for the life saved for a BJ scenario. Mind you, I still think someone who saves your life for a BJ is better than someone who refuses to save you outright, just not as good as someone who saves your life for lesser (or no) consideration.
I don't want to go into great depth since this is off topic, but 1964 sounds about right for The Great Society doesn't it? The thing about math is that it isn't magic: ultimately, if you do more, you spend more.
As to truing the clock back: The logic I noted above holds in both direction: do less and you can spend less. But I don't think most Americans would be happy with an 1800s welfare state, or for that matter an 1800s military.
Mind you, I don't think you'd need to go that far, the key is stability as much as anything else; reform Social Security and Medicare, cut back in a few other places and you'll be fine. If not, then I expect things will start to get pretty interesting in 20-30 years.
If you are an invading army then enslaving is less bad than killing, but invading is more bad than not invading. When you add them together the badness of invading is bigger than the less-badness of not killing, especially since if you hadn't invaded there would be neither killing nor enslaving.
So, where's the equivalent of invading in the Phil K hypothetical? Where's the big negative that offsets the net positives?
Yes Mike, if those women had better alternatives available to them, they wouldn't become prostitutes. And it's not a purely positive thing, there are very few purely positive things, it's just positive on net for the women.
Poor countries demand less environmental quality than rich ones. I don't see why you think this is noteworthy, poor countries demand less of most things than rich countries.
The point is that these countries have the option of trading x environmental quality for y economic opportunity. If they didn't like the trade-off they could tell the foreign companies to pound sand and be no worse off than if the foreign companies never made the offer.
Nothing is infinitely valuable, not even your own health. It's terrible that people are force dot make this trade-off, but it's not the fault of the foreign companies, and vilifying them is only likely to make them decide not to bother.
The thing about economics is that is progresses by starting with unrealistic, but analytically useful, assumptions and then relaxing them once the idea conditions have been figured out.
The profession has been relaxing that rationality assumption for awhile now. Are you familiar with behavioural economics?
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Reclaiming Liberalism”
In fact it surprised me that reasonably knowledgeable people still thought this was possible. I guess Keynes was right about public opinion and defunct economists.
"
I have to take issue with one of Time Lee's points. There are two of those propositions that Friedman would have objected to, the second being creating full employment through stabilisation policy. In fact Friedman won his Nobel for proving that you can't do this. If you try you get the 1970s.
On “The bureaucratic mindset”
I agree with Tom on this. I'm way more libertarian than most government employees, but if you put me in front of a camera and asked me that question, I'd give a similar answer to him. Rule number 1 of public service: do not criticise your government in public. There's a reason why I spend my time on American political blogs and not New Zealand ones.
The function of the civil service is to advise the government of the day and then carry out that government's instructions, including making any decisions that have been duly delegated to them.
You won't find current government employees that are heavily critical of government in public, it just doesn't work like that.
On “Lucretius, “Of Natural Things”- also Atoms & Atheists”
Yes that's also true. You own moral judgement is central. Even delegating your judgement to another authority is a form of moral judgement.
"
For me, game theory helps put morality into focus. Human beings have an evolved set of instincts (a small number of sociopaths aside) and there are clear ways that those instincts can lead to better social outcomes than a pure utility maximiser.
Basically, a society of sociopaths isn't sustainable. That fact, combined with our natural instincts seems like a good reason to use our own moral sentiments as a guide (if an imperfect one) to how to live your life. And honestly, I don't thin believers are any different on the big stuff. That why everyone's perception of their God seems so similar to what they themselves think. There's no substitute for your won moral judgement.
"
Also, what did he mean by sin? There are a lot of things the Catholic Church considers sinful that I don't have nay moral qualms about. A lot of sin is malum prohibitum rather than mala in se. After all, I don't have any trouble believing that most Orthodox Jews would eat bacon, were it not for their faith.
On “Happy Meal Conservatism”
In addition to Pat's point there's also the prospect that the Republican party is being damaged by constant resort to this rhetoric. You can very easily get a vicious cycle where more reasonable voices are silenced or driven out of the party, leading to even more extreme rhetoric and so on.
Having one political party going off the reservation can't be good for American political debate.
"
My Source for the meteorite strike figures is Death from the Skies by Dr Phil Plait. It includes the risk of an extinction-level meteorite, which naturally wouldn't be included in historical data.
"
It's quite remarkable how badly skewed our risk perceptions can be. When you think about cars are more dangerous than guns in many regards and I've read that you're more likely to die by meteorite strike than terrorism.
On “Rep. Gabrielle Giffords shot at Tucson rally”
When it comes to situations like this, the wisest words I've ever read come from a computer game:
"Why do madmen do anything? Because they're bloody madmen, that's why!"
Sometimes there is no why. Sometimes there are no lessons one can learn. Sometimes things are bad for no good reason and there's nothing we can do about it.
I think this is one of those times.
On “A Meaningless Constitution, Thankfully.”
How are repealed provisions of laws normally treated in the US? In New Zealand if a section of a statute is repealed then the text of that section is replaced with "Repealed". If a section is amended, the old text is replaced with the new.
I would suggest that constitutional amendments should be treated the same was as statutory ones.
On “The Problem with Public Sector Unions”
While I agree with your general premise that public sector unions can be problematic, and many such unions are a serious problem in the US, I think there are some factors cutting against your main point.
1) It really depends on the union. To give you examples, the PSA in New Zealand represents core public sector employees in New Zealand (though I'm not a member myself), and it has a reputation for being willing to work productively with government Departments. The PPTA (which represents high school teachers, and instructors at non-university tertiary institutions) can be more rancorous, but there's nothing like the pension problems I've read so much about in the US.
2) In some ways unions can be more important in the public sector than the private. In my mind, the primary benefit of union pay negotiations occurs when the market the workers operate in in uncompetitive. In a perfectly competitive market an employer could pay no more than marginal product or labour or they'd go out of business, and they could pay no less or they wouldn't be able to hire anyone. But in less competitive markets, the firm obtains supernormal profits, and unions can enrich their members by transferring a portion of these profits to their workers. Also, less competitive markets tend to give employers more bargaining power so unions are more useful as a counter-balance. Mind you, perhaps the problem with some US public sector unions is that they're too good at this.
Now I don't think this refutes your main point, it's more that I think the way to address the problem is by comparing and contrasting the productive unions with the pathological ones and trying to work out how to prevent the latter from occurring.
On “So long, farewell, auf wiedersehn, adieu”
From your personal blog to Positive Liberty to The One Best Way to here and now back to your personal blog? I can't help but feel we've come full circle, you and I.
On “American Manufacturing and Employment”
I'd say that's a pretty good first cut.
Incidentally, I would expect that people in the future will work "part time" if only because I'd expect people to take a fraction of their future wealth in leisure time, leading to shorter working weeks in the future. predict this merely because it would be a continuation of prevailing historical trends.
On “Death of a City and a Region”
Good point RTod.
Consider the mass urbanisation during the Industrial Revolution. What would that look like to the rural communities that were being hollowed out? Suddenly there's not enough hands at harvest time, the church pews are always half empty and even the pubs can barely stay open. It would look like the end of the world, but it was one of the greatest moment of human progress in history.
On “American Manufacturing and Employment”
I suspect you could work less than half time. Of the top of my head real incomes increased between 5 and 20 times over the 20th Century in most Western Countries.
On “Aggrieved libertarians”
In principle the incentive effects should be more agreeable than current welfare, this is the reason Milton Friedman favoured it. Since people get government money whether they work or not, why wouldn't people try to get some work if they could? It's true that some people will be so work-averse that they choose to live on their government stipend indefinitely, but I suspect that will be pretty rare.
The real difficulty is that this type of system is very expensive. Still, I've seen calculations showing it could be done in New Zealand with reasonable tax rises, so it could well be feasible in the US as well.
On ““Hey, won’t you play another somebody done somebody wrong song””
Well I can't imagine Vietnam did your budget any good either.
"
I think the "zero point" question is a good one. I'm using the zero point of Phil K taking no action. I don't have a thoroughly well-reasoned case for why this is a good point to use, but I tend to think that nothing is the most we owe most people so no action is a good point to start at.
<blockquote>You would examine the morality of his actions in a vacuum isolated to doing x or not doing x, where as I would examine it against x and all others. I’m not sure which is right.<blockquote>
No, I would compare against all actions as well, but I'm smuggling in extra exceptions as to what I see happening downstream.
If Phil K used the factory money to start a charity that would be morally superior to running a sweatshop but there's only so much charity money in the world, and for-profit companies can raise a lot more capital because they can appeal to self-interest rather than altruism. So the sweatshops can help more people in aggregate than charities can. Furthermore, I suspect sweatshops are a necessary stepping stone on the transition from labour-intensive manufacturing to capital-intensive manufacturing. They're not fun, but I believe they're necessary.
There's the intermediate case of course, which is to run a factory, but to offer better pay and conditions that the market will allow. I really think this is just a mixture of the "Sweatshop" and "charity" options, as the owners of the factory would be taking lower returns for the benefit of the workers, just as if they were simply giving them money / life-improving amenities. I would also expect that the presence of high-profit factories in 3rd world countries will attract more would be factory owners, and the more competition there is to attract works, the better the pay and conditions will get.
I wouldn't expect these second-order effects to be in play for the life saved for a BJ scenario. Mind you, I still think someone who saves your life for a BJ is better than someone who refuses to save you outright, just not as good as someone who saves your life for lesser (or no) consideration.
"
I'm willing to defer to the women on the question of what constitutes "better". If they think the trade-off is acceptable, who am I to argue?
"
I don't want to go into great depth since this is off topic, but 1964 sounds about right for The Great Society doesn't it? The thing about math is that it isn't magic: ultimately, if you do more, you spend more.
As to truing the clock back: The logic I noted above holds in both direction: do less and you can spend less. But I don't think most Americans would be happy with an 1800s welfare state, or for that matter an 1800s military.
Mind you, I don't think you'd need to go that far, the key is stability as much as anything else; reform Social Security and Medicare, cut back in a few other places and you'll be fine. If not, then I expect things will start to get pretty interesting in 20-30 years.
"
If you are an invading army then enslaving is less bad than killing, but invading is more bad than not invading. When you add them together the badness of invading is bigger than the less-badness of not killing, especially since if you hadn't invaded there would be neither killing nor enslaving.
So, where's the equivalent of invading in the Phil K hypothetical? Where's the big negative that offsets the net positives?
"
Yes Mike, if those women had better alternatives available to them, they wouldn't become prostitutes. And it's not a purely positive thing, there are very few purely positive things, it's just positive on net for the women.
"
Poor countries demand less environmental quality than rich ones. I don't see why you think this is noteworthy, poor countries demand less of most things than rich countries.
The point is that these countries have the option of trading x environmental quality for y economic opportunity. If they didn't like the trade-off they could tell the foreign companies to pound sand and be no worse off than if the foreign companies never made the offer.
Nothing is infinitely valuable, not even your own health. It's terrible that people are force dot make this trade-off, but it's not the fault of the foreign companies, and vilifying them is only likely to make them decide not to bother.
"
The thing about economics is that is progresses by starting with unrealistic, but analytically useful, assumptions and then relaxing them once the idea conditions have been figured out.
The profession has been relaxing that rationality assumption for awhile now. Are you familiar with behavioural economics?
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.