Go to Cognitive Strain blogspot for continued blogging

I have continued my blogging at CognitiveStrain.blogspot.com.

Don Boudreaux letter on raising New York minimum wage

Here is Don Boudreaux doing what he does best; humorously synthesizing complicated ideas into simple language and easy to follow logic.

Suppose your employer were to cut your wage by 21 percent.  Would you not respond negatively – say, by quitting your job or by working less diligently?  If you answer “yes,” why do you suppose that employers would not respond negatively to a forced 21 percent increase in the cost of employing low-skilled workers – say, by employing fewer such workers or by demanding a great deal more effort per hour from them?  Do you believe that employers are less responsive to economic incentives than you are?

How do we change things if votes don't matter?

One time when I told someone that their vote doesn't matter, he responded, "But then how do you change the system?"

While I don't have a good answer to his question, that should not be taken as evidence for votes mattering. Maybe there is no way for individuals to change the system. Maybe there is but I don't know it. Regardless, that doesn't mean that voting does matter.

Consider a tribe practicing a rain dance to try to make it rain. I come up to them and say, "you know, that isn't going to change things." And they go, "Yeah, but then how do we change the weather?"

The answer is, beats me.



Note: interpret my use of the term, not matter, as practically doesn't matter. Votes matter, they're just so small that rational behavior treats them like 0s.

Bryan Caplan on Jim Crow and Immigration Restrictions

One of my all-time favorite Bryan Caplan posts is, Tell me the difference between Jim Crow and Immigration Restrictions.

"The American government continues to mandate discrimination against an unpopular minority: illegal immigrants.  And this mandatory discrimination is far harsher than anything under Jim Crow.

Most obviously:

1. Under Jim Crow, there were many places in America where blacks were not legally allowed to live.  Under current immigration laws, there is nowhere in America where illegal immigrants are legally allowed to live.

2. Under Jim Crow, there were many jobs in America that blacks were not legally allowed to perform.  Under current immigration laws, there are no jobs in America that illegal immigrants are legally allowed to perform."

Public Opinion for Libertarians - Bryan Caplan

Bryan Caplan gives a very nice lecture on public opinion for libertarians.

Matthew Yglesias on immigration and economic optimism

Good stuff this week from my favorite liberal, Matthew Yglesias. One post on immigration and another on economic optimism.

On immigration,

According to Gallup there are 150 million people around the world who say they'd like to move permanently to the United States. Right now the United States has about 89 residents per square mile. Add another 150 million people and we'd be at around 135 people per square mile. How would that stack up in context? Well, France has 303 people per square mile and Germany has 593. Japan has 873. The Dutch have 1,287!

On economic optimism (after he refutes education and health care stagnations)

My question for the stagnationists is what exactly is stagnating? Men have more leisure time and women have more career opportunities. People are healthier and better educated and have more material goods and entertainment options.

Is Government inherently Evil?

Jon Stewart, in his 19 tough questions for libertarians, asks,

Is government inherently evil?

Libertarians answer this question many different ways because they come from different philosophical backgrounds that define what evil is differently. One tenet of evil that is broadly accepted by libertarians is that using violence to control non-violent people is evil. Everyone accepts this in their private lives. Civil society understands that it's wrong for me to threaten violence and imprisonment to take your money or make you do what I think is best for you or for society. Many libertarians take broadly accepted moral principle and asks, "what attribute of government excludes it from this principle?"

Definitions become very important. Government language gives the appearance that something is different from its definition. Take the constitution for example. Maybe the constitution excludes government from the principle of the non-initiation of force? But what is a constitution? If I get thirty people to sign a piece of paper, can I tell assign who gets to use force and who doesn't. Maybe Democracy excludes government from the principle of the non-initiation of force? But Democracy can be anywhere. If me and my brother outvotes you, can we tie you up and throw you in the river? Maybe it must be a big democracy, but how big? As big as the boarders determined by the government? Now we're back where we started.

Maybe consent legitimises government initiating force. After all, boxing is legitimate, because both the athletes consent to it. But where is the consent? A system which nobody opted into and are not allowed to opt out has my consent? What is a social contract? It is not coherent to say that nobody individually consented, but as a group consented. The group is the sum of its parts. Its saying that nobody agreed and everybody agreed at the same time in the same manner. Incoherent! Maybe its in a different manner? In what manner did people agree socially? By being born? By being born did you also consent to my social contract where I get to enslave you? Why were the slaves not a part of the social contract?

There are all kinds of hoops that statists have to jump through to make government consistent with the principle of the non-initiation of force. The only way is to not recognize the principle of the non-initiation of force, and say that private sector violence is much less pragmatic than public sector force. Which I think is a perfectly rational thing to do. It is evil if it isn't means to the good. Sometimes government force is a means to the good, sometimes it is not. Perhaps sometimes private sector force is a means to the good, but if we allow it it will moreso tear apart the good. This is at least rational.

Whether government is evil depends on your philosophy of ethics. Most deontological ethical philosophies include the non-initiation of force. It is impossible for them to exclude government from this principle because government is a subjective definition. What is a government for some is not for others. Objective principles cannot be set aside for subjective definitions; it makes the principles therefore subjective. Government must be evil in this case.

Most people aren't pure deontologists, but mild deontologists. It would not be okay for a doctor to kill one cancer patient and use his organs to save five lives, but if it were 100 lives... okay. This means that government is only evil if it acts for a far greater purpose. It's okay to tax or legislate if it is for something really important. Just proving that it leads to a social benefit isn't good enough. Government action must lead to a far greater social benefit if it is to be not considered evil.

And then you have the consequentialist. For them, killing a cancer patient to use his organs to save lives is just fine, as long as it serves a greater purpose. In this case government might be evil, sometimes. But it might be good, sometimes. It is very hard to see government as an entity which only produces bad results. Some libertarians try to do that (Austrian Economics). But consequentialist libertarians don't have to prove that everything government does does not lead to good results, they only have to prove that government produces bad results on net. Maybe government can help our health care system in some ways, maybe they can hurt our health care system in other ways, but what results can we likely expect from government intervening in health care? Pragmatic libertarians use economics to show that free markets have more desirable results than government interference. In this case, maybe evil isn't the right word, but instead libertarians might answer that government is ineffective.

Tough question for liberals: "How many people does it take to turn a crime into a virtue?" (Leo Tolstoy asks this in his book).