Tag Archives: Tyler Cowen

Central Planning With AI Will Still Suck

23 Sunday Feb 2020

Posted by in Artificial Intelligence, Central Planning, Free markets

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Artificial intelligence (AI) or machine learning (ML) will never make central economic planning a successful reality. Jesús Fernández-Villaverde of the University of Pennsylvania has written a strong disavowal of AI’s promise in central planning, and on the general difficulty of using ML to design social and economic policies. His paper, “Simple Rules for a Complex World with Artificial Intelligence“, was linked last week by Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution. Note that the author isn’t saying “digital socialism” won’t be attempted. Judging by the attention it’s getting, and given the widespread acceptance of the scientism of central planning, there is no question that future efforts to collectivize will involve “data science” to one degree or another. But Fernández-Villaverde, who is otherwise an expert and proponent of ML in certain applications, is simply saying it won’t work as a curative for the failings of central economic planning — that the “simple rules” of the market will aways produce superior social outcomes.

The connection between central planning and socialism should be obvious. Central planning implies control over the use of resources, and therefore ownership by a central authority, whether or not certain rents are paid as a buy-off to the erstwhile owners of those resources. By “digital socialism”, Fernández-Villaverde means the use of ML to perform the complex tasks of central planning. The hope among its cheerleaders is that adaptive algorithms can discern the optimal allocation of resources within some “big data” representation of resource availability and demands, and that this is possible on an ongoing, dynamic basis.

Fernández-Villaverde makes the case against this fantasy on three fronts or barriers to the use of AI in policy applications: data requirements; the endogeneity of expectations and behavior; and the knowledge problem.

The Data Problem: ML requires large data sets to do anything. And impossibly large data sets are required for ML to perform the task of planning economic activity, even for a small portion of the economy. Today, those data sets do not exist except in certain lines of business. Can they exist more generally, capturing the details of all economic transactions? Can the data remain current? Only at great expense, and ML must be trained to recognize whether data should be discarded as it becomes stale over time due to shifting demographics, tastes, technologies, and other changes in the social and physical environment. 

Policy Change Often Makes the Past Irrelevant: Planning algorithms are subject to the so-called Lucas Critique, a well known principle in macroeconomics named after Nobel Prize winner Robert Lucas. The idea is that policy decisions based on observed behavior will change expectations, prompting responses that differ from the earlier observations under the former policy regime. A classic case involves the historical tradeoff between inflation and unemployment. Can this tradeoff be exploited by policy? That is, can unemployment be reduced by a policy that increases the rate of inflation (by printing money at a faster rate)? In this case, the Lucas Critique is that once agents expect a higher rate of inflation, they are unlikely to confuse higher prices with a more profitable business environment, so higher employment will not be sustained. If ML is used to “plan” certain outcomes desired by some authority, based on past relationships and transactions, the Lucas Critique implies that things are unlikely to go as planned.  

The Knowledge Problem: Not only are impossibly large data sets required for economic planning with ML, as noted above. To achieve the success of markets in satisfying unlimited wants given scarce resources, the required information is impossible to collect or even to know. This is what Friedrich Hayek called the “knowledge problem”. Just imagine the difficulty of arranging a data feed on the shifting preferences of many different individuals across a huge number of products,  services and they way preference orderings will change across the range of possible prices. The data must have immediacy, not simply a historical record. Add to this the required information on shifting supplies and opportunity costs of resources needed to produce those things. And the detailed technological relationships between production inputs and outputs, including time requirements, and the dynamics of investment in future productive capacity. And don’t forget to consider the variety of risks agents face, their degree of risk aversion, and the ways in which risks can be mitigated or hedged. Many of these things are simply unknowable to a central authority. The information is hopelessly dispersed. The task of collecting even the knowable pieces is massive beyond comprehension.

The market system, however, is able to process all of this information in real time, the knowable and the unknowable, in ways that balance preferences with the true scarcity of resources. No one actor or authority need know it all. It is the invisible hand. Among many other things, it ensures the deployment of ML only where it makes economic sense. Here is Fernández-Villaverde:

“The only reliable method we have found to aggregate those preferences, abilities, and efforts is the market because it aligns, through the price system, incentives with information revelation. The method is not perfect, and the outcomes that come from it are often unsatisfactory. Nevertheless, like democracy, all the other alternatives, including ‘digital socialism,’ are worse.”

Later, he says:

“… markets work when we implement simple rules, such as first possession, voluntary exchange, and pacta sunt servanda. This result is not a surprise. We did not come up with these simple rules thanks to an enlightened legislator (or nowadays, a blue-ribbon committee of academics ‘with a plan’). … The simple rules were the product of an evolutionary process. Roman law, the Common law, and Lex mercatoria were bodies of norms that appeared over centuries thanks to the decisions of thousands and thousands of agents.” 

These simple rules represent good private governance. Beyond reputational enforcement, the rules require only trust in the system of property rights and a private or public judicial authority. Successfully replacing private arrangements in favor of a central plan, however intricately calculated via ML, will remain a pipe dream. At best, it would suspend many economic relationships in amber, foregoing the rational adjustments private agents would make as conditions change. And ultimately, the relationships and activities that planning would sanction would be shaped by political whim. It’s a monstrous thing to contemplate — both fruitless and authoritarian.

3 Cheers, No Tears for Strike on Master of Iranian Terror

08 Wednesday Jan 2020

Posted by in Middle East, War

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Note: As I finish this post, Iran has fired missiles at U.S. bases in Iraq, so we know a bit more about their response to the killing of Qassim Soleimani. Tonight’s response by Iran looks to have been impotent. There are risks of other kinds of action, of course. We shall see.

Last week’s killing of Iranian General Qassim Soleimani was not prompted solely by the attack on the U.S. embassy in Iraq by Kataeb Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militia. Iran, perhaps the largest state-sponsor of terrorism in the world, has been guilty of provocation and aggression in Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere under Soleimani’s direction for many years. And he was reviled for his ruthless treatment of protestors within Iran’s borders. In recent weeks there had been a series of rocket attacks on U.S. bases, and there was “chatter” that much more was planned. It’s been noted that the presence of so-many high-level officials in one place at the time of the attack on Soleimani indicated that something big was in the works. This Reuters article gives some insight into Soleimani’s suspicious activities in the weeks prior to his death, of which the U.S. was surely aware. While the attack on the U.S. embassy provided additional pretext (as if it was needed), all of this indicates that Soleimani’s assassination was not an impulsive decision, but deliberated, contrary to assertions by critics of President Trump’s decision to act. It was both retaliatory and preemptive. Soleimani’s travels and whereabouts were well known, and it’s highly likely that a “decapitation” had been planned as a contingency for some time. This report in Politico provides details of the decision making leading up to the strike. The attack was executed brilliantly by all accounts.

The U.S. had retaliated to earlier rocket attacks with strikes against Kataeb Hezbollah positions. That the strike on Soleimani was more than retaliation and an act of self-defense against additional threats is, I believe, the flaw in arguments against the strike like the one Tyler Cowen seemed to make in Bloomerg (though his main point was different). The value of the strike goes far beyond retaliation. This was not intended to be another volley in an ongoing series of “tits-for-tats”.

In addition to Soleimani, several other high-level Iranian military personnel were killed. This undoubtedly disrupted plans that would have threatened U.S. soldiers and assets, yet some describe the strike as an “impulsive” act on Trump’s part, and an “act of war”, as if unprovoked. And as if Iran had not been warring on the U.S. for the past 40 years. What to make of those who take this position?  Of course, most are reflexively anti-Trump, refusing to evaluate the decision on it’s own merits. They pretend that Soleimani and the Iranian overseers of the stooge government in Iraq have legitimacy. Anderson Cooper actually compared Soleimani to Charles De Gaulle. It would be more accurate to compare him to the murderous Che Guevara, but then again, many on the Left worship Che’s memory as well! These fools will tell you that Soleimani was “worshipped” in Iran. In fact, there are a great many Iranians who are quietly celebrating his death.

Middle East analyst Avi Melamed does not mince words in describing the impact Soleimani has had on the Middle East (emphasis his):

“Some argue that the assassination of Soleimani will increase tensions in the Middle East. This outlook confuses cause and effect: Tensions in the Middle East have intensified over the past decade because of the violent Iranian aggression which Soleimani spearheaded. Aggression which has led to Syria’s destruction and the disintegration of Lebanon and Iraq. Aggression that threatens maritime routes and safe passage in the Arab (Persian) Gulf and the Red Sea, a direct attack on Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities that spiked oil prices and compromised the world’s oil supply. Aggression that has fueled and intensified tensions – including direct military confrontations – between Iran and its proxies and Israel.

General Soleimani and the Al-Quds force led the escalation in the region in the service of the hegemonic vision of the Iranian Mullah regime. Their actions have so far claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, led to the destruction of states, the disintegration of cities, and caused a wave of millions of refugees. Killing Soleimani is not the cause of the escalation – but the result.”

Malamed expected Iran to take retaliatory actions in Iraq, where it already has a strong military presence and good reconnaissance. Missiles have now been fired at U.S. bases from Iran (as of tonight), but with few or no casualties. It remains to be seen how effective a response the Iranians can mount. Any short-term U.S. casualties should probably not be viewed as incremental, given the high likelihood of casualties had Soleimani lived. Perhaps Iran will fire missiles at Israel from western Iraq or Syria, or at Saudi Arabian oil assets, as it did last September. Or it might make a bold military intervention in Iraq to strengthen its control there, which Iran considers crucial to its own security.

Al Monitor believes the assassination “leaves Iran with very few options to retaliate” with any strength, at least in the short-run:

“… the economic hardship in Iran — in addition to the challenges the government is facing internally — would not allow Tehran to increase the tension. Iran’s past conduct against Israel strikes on Iranian bases in Syria also shows it will not seek revenge if its national security and interests are in danger. … This all indicates that Iran and its proxies in the region most likely would not seek revenge in the near future and — in regard to Iraq, in particular — would not lead Iraq to fall into a civil war or mass destruction, because it would lose even more in Iraq if it takes such a risk.”

So despite the brash talk, Iran is weak and spread thin across commitments outside its borders, and the regime has real fear of retaliation by its enemies that can only have been reinforced by the strike against Soleimani. Of what other retaliatory actions is Iran capable, assuming the regime can survive in the longer run? And assuming the Mullah regime itself is willing to take existential risks? It has threatened actions against civilians in the West. Can it bring down planes? Can it bomb targets in the U.S.? Can it develop or buy a small nuclear device? It can try any of those things, of course, but with uncertain odds and with risks it might not want to take. Survival is of the utmost importance to the regime, and it is already on shaky ground.

Trump’s critics claim that he authorized the “decapitation” without a plan for its aftermath. Trump has made clear his intent to “punch back twice as hard”, as it were, in response to any additional force from Iran. This is, first and foremost, a game of deterrence. Beyond that, however, and despite talk of “changing the Iranian regime’s behavior”, it appears that the larger plan pursued by Trump is to continue undermining the regime with sanctions and targeted strikes, if necessary. “Maximum pressure”. But there will be no World War III. The markets seem pretty comfortable about that as well, including the oil market.

I do take issue with Trump’s mention of the possibility of striking “cultural sites” in Iran, though he seems to have retracted it. On that point, however, I fully agree with Tyler Cowan (linked above). The only plausible rationale for such a statement is to frighten Iran’s leadership, especially if it has located military and intelligence functions within cultural sites.

Trump still maintains that our ultimate goal should be withdrawal from Iraq. That assumes stabilization in the region and fair elections, which would be well-served by a weaker Iran or a regime change there. As Victor Davis Hanson explains, the Middle East is of declining importance in world energy markets and trade generally. That’s one reason we’re unlikely to ever again send a huge ground force to the region, and it’s a good reason to scale back our presence in the Middle East generally.

Jordan Peterson Is Not Complacent

23 Tuesday Jan 2018

Posted by in Identity Politics, Individualism

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It’s a hoot to watch Jordan Peterson‘s videos — he stands before crowds doing … crisply-articulated philosophy, seemingly on the fly. He is an outspoken psychologist at the University of Toronto who covers a lot of intellectual ground with an impactful delivery. One of Peterson’s primary messages is so simple as to seem trite: take control of yourself, because you can and you should for your own sake and those around you! But his treatment is an empowering tonic for both men and women, and many are listening. He has toiled away as a professional psychologist, a professor, an author and a philosopher for many years; his ascent to notoriety has been recent and fairly meteoric. Luminaries like Tyler Cowen and Noah Smith now call Peterson one of the top public intellectuals in the western world.

However, Peterson takes positions that are seemingly hard for the Left to swallow: he believes in the power of individual action; that freedom of expression is the basis of personal and academic freedom; that identity politics is destructive (whether on the Right or the Left); and that white privilege is a lie.

Predictably, the Left has attacked Peterson and attempted to characterize him as a spokesman for the far-right. He meets challenges of this kind with a kind of charged equanimity, exposing falsehoods with quick-footed logic, empirics, and honest reflection. Dan Sanchez has written a nice summary of the attacks on Peterson and shows them to be wholly without foundation. He has critics in both ends of the political spectrum, as Sanchez observes:

“[Far right] critics don’t understand what Peterson is saying, because they are mired in the mindsets of politics and war. The way of politics and war is to confront an enemy horde by amassing your own horde: whether it be on the battlefield, in street demonstrations, or in voting booths. It is to fight tribal barbarism by tending toward the tribal and the barbaric yourself. But the way of the heroic, civilized individual is to lead by example and to lead by appealing to the interests of those whose behavior you want to influence.”

And in Peterson’s own words, quoted by Sanchez, tribal barbarism is the way to social ruin:

“…where we’re making your group identity the most important thing about you. I think that’s reprehensible. I think it’s devastating. I think it’s genocidal in its ultimate expression. I think it will bring down our civilization if we pursue it. We shouldn’t be playing that game.“

On those assertions, Sanchez notes the following:

“… Peterson’s claim that identity politics is ‘genocidal in its ultimate expression’ is no exaggeration. Hitler’s military invasions and death camps were the ultimate expression of the racialist and nationalist identity politics that spiritually drove Nazism. And Stalin’s weaponized famines and ‘gulag archipelago’ were the ultimate expression of the class warfare identity politics that spiritually drove Soviet communism.”

So Peterson clearly condemns groupthink on both the Left and Right. He celebrates the value of people as individuals, and he urges us all to realize our value through individual responsibility and productive effort. Help yourself, help those you love, and help others. That’s a call to real human action, as distinct from the seeking of rents through the political process. Peterson is both a fascinating personality and thinker. His ideas and passion can be a powerful antidote to the complacency that plagues so many today. I hope he continues to gain prominence.

Open Borders and Club Goods

13 Saturday Jan 2018

Posted by in Immigration, Liberty

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The question of open borders divides libertarians as much as any. The arguments for open borders made by the likes of Bryan Caplan, Alex Tabarrok, Don Boudreaux and Sheldon Richman are in many ways quite appealing. Fewer borders means greater opportunities for gainful trade among individuals. For the U.S., the economic gains from in-migration have been unquestionable. From a pure libertarian perspective, governments should never interfere with the non-violent actions of free individuals, including freedom of movement. These great economists contend, in effect, that there is no real moral distinction between government actions that confine individuals within borders and those that keep people out, though our conciences are less burdened by the latter because the world abroad seems so large.

There is a gnawing contradiction in this viewpoint, however. It relates to the appropriate scope of “ownership”. At the link above, Caplan says:

“The only principled libertarian objection to this is that the citizens of each country are its rightful owners, so they’re entitled to regulate migration as they see fit. … But if you believe this, there is no principled libertarian objection to any act of government. Fortunately, the belief that citizens are countries’ rightful owners is crazy. The social contract is an utter myth. Contracts require unanimous consent, and no country has ever had unanimous consent.“

The Character of a Good

I contest Caplan’s assertion that any one act of government is like all others. Yes, there is always a danger of a majoritarian tyranny in any democracy. But there is also the question of sovereignty, for which borders of some kind are necessary. If policies governing those borders are established legislatively, they should be subject to checks and balances: executive consent as well as judicial review of disputes.

I also contest Caplan’s statement that ownership implies unanimous consent. In fact, there are many forms of property over which decisions do not imply unanimous consent of joint owners. One such form is the subject of what follows, and I believe that form of “ownership” is applicable to one’s citizenship or residency status.

To keep things simple, I’ll frame this discussion only in terms of citizenship. I therefore abstract from issues like green cards, visiting worker programs, and the presence of resident aliens in general. For a nation, the essence of barriers to immigration can be addressed by considering the simpler case of citizens versus non-resident non-citizens. For purposes of this discussion, if you are allowed to arrive on a nation’s shores, you will be a citizen.

If a country’s citizenship can be considered a good worth acquiring, what is its real character? It is privately possessed and not tradable, but not all goods are tradable. An important taxonomy of goods in the public finance literature is based on two dimensions: exclusivity and rivalrousness. The former is the degree to which other parties can be excluded from enjoyment or use of the good or resource.

Most goods have at least some degree of exclusivity: you can be denied admission to a concert, the use of an appliance or furniture, and even parks and port facilities. Pure public goods like national defense and the air we breath are completely non-exclusive, however. Broadcast television is non-exclusive as well, as long as you have the equipment to watch it.

Rivalrousness is the degree to which the use or enjoyment of a good precludes another’s use or enjoyment. My friend can’t eat the steak if I eat the steak. That’s rivalrous. But my friend and I can both enjoy the concert. That’s non-rivalrous. A private good is both exclusionary and rivalrous. A public good is neither.

Citizenship as a Good

Citizenship can be viewed as a bundle of attributes much as any good, but it is an extremely complex bundle: it includes the individual rights enshrined in a nation’s constitution (if any), the personal and economic opportunities available by virtue of access to in-country markets and resources, the culture(s), and any personal risk reduction provided collectively, i.e., a safety net via public support. How, then, would one classify citizenship, or its component attributes, in terms of exclusivity and rivalrousness?

First, the entire citizenship bundle has a high degree of exclusivity. A nation can decide on closed borders, or partially open borders, if it chooses to do so, just as a theme park limits its gate. That is the political decision at hand. The degree of exclusivity of individual components of the bundle matters little if the bundle itself is highly exclusive.

At a high level, citizenship itself is non-rivalrous. My citizenship does not preclude citizenship for anyone else. Therefore, at the level of the bundle, citizenship is exclusive but non-rivalrous, so it has the character of what economists call a “club good“. Citizens are already part of the club; to that extent they are joint “owners”. Like many clubs, decisions about new membership need not be unanimous.

Classification of citizenship attributes as goods is trickier. The exclusivity of citizenship makes the non-rivalrous public goods available to citizens into club goods. Once admitted, for example, you are free to engage in speech, practice a religion of your choice, own a weapon, and receive due process and habeas corpus without interfering with any other citizen’s ability to exercise the same rights. You get national defense and a judicial system. You have equality of opportunity to the extent that your pursuit of economic gain does not interfere directly with anyone else’s opportunities. On the other hand, the freedom of assembly is rivalrous to at least some extent, as we learned last year from events in Charlottesville, VA. In fact, there may be congestion limits to some of the other freedoms mentioned above. 

Access to a nation’s markets permits mutually beneficial trade to take place. An individual’s participation usually does not rule out participation by others, so it is essentially non-rivalrous. (In some markets the entry of new sellers may be limited and exclusionary.) Of course, a nation’s resources are scarce; exploiting them for gain or enjoyment necessarily prevents others from using the same resources. From the point of view of existing citizens, these resources are non-exclusive and rivalrous, and are therefore classified as “common resources”, subject to congestion effects, but they are still exclusive to those citizens. The key here is not whether there are gains from trade, but that there is some rivalrousness embedded in this citizenship attribute.

In addition to the basic rights mentioned earlier, the entire legal structure, regulatory apparatus, and the political process are complex attributes of citizenship. These bear on the limits of legal conduct: Can you buy or sell liquor on Sundays? Do businesses require licensure? Is abortion legal? And on and on. In a democracy, the ability to participate in the political process is non-rivalrous: it does not prevent others from participating. However, the range of possible outcomes of the process can also be viewed as an attribute, and these outcomes, as they are promulgated, are certainly rivalrous. If the “other” side gets extra votes, then the power of my vote is diminished. So the limits of legal conduct are exposed to political rivalry. In the case of open borders, a large number of citizens may not favor existing rules, regulations, and the allocation of public spending.

So the attributes of citizenship are mixed in terms of rivalrousness: Some are rivalrous but many are not. The citizenship bundle, at a more detailed level, is therefore a mix of club goods (exclusive but non-rvalrous) and some goods that are rivalrous. This is important, because under the classical description club goods are public goods provided privately; they are therefore under-provided from the perspective of social welfare and the Pareto criterion that a new citizens can be made better off without making any existing citizen worse off. That might not be the case in the presence of congestion effects.

Should a Club Good Be Unrestricted?

Citizenship has value at the margin to both existing citizens, who should be regarded as established club members, and non-citizens. The foregoing establishes that there are some private (exclusive and rivalrous) attributes attached to citizenship. Sometimes this is due to the impact of congestion on the provision of public goods. Patrick McNutt, in his survey of literature on “Public Goods and Club Goods“, summarizes some basic conditions under which public goods are provided by clubs:

“The public good is not a pure public good, but rather there is an element of congestion as individuals consume the good up to its capacity constraint. What arises then is some exclusion mechanism in order to charge consumers a price for the provision and use of the good. Brown and Jackson (1990, p. 80) had commented that the purpose of a club ‘is to exploit economies of scale, to share the costs of providing an indivisible commodity, to satisfy a taste for association with other individuals who have similar preference orderings’. For Buchanan and Ng the main club characteristic is membership or numbers of consumers and it is this variable that has to be optimised.“

Citizenship (or residency) is generally not price rationed, though there are certainly costs to the immigrant. I make no pretense here as to the determination of an optimal membership from a club or larger social perspective. My point is that rationing membership is a rational choice by club members, or citizens in this case.

Okay, I Like My Club

Tribal affiliations, and ultimately nation states, were a natural outgrowth of early competition for resources, especially when identifying threats from outsiders was a constant preoccupation. Territorialism was a byproduct, and with the establishment of agriculture, the peoples of these early societies probably identified strongly with their homelands.

Modern nation-states have evolved from those early patterns, and nations continue to differ in terms of language, culture, and governance. Successful nations are undoubtedly more liberal (in the classical sense) and open to trade and cross-border movement. Maybe one day all nations will be united under the principles of libertarianism… don’t count on it! For now, to one degree or another, a nation’s inhabitants have an interest in minimizing economic and political risks and retaining access to resources within their borders. I don’t believe that desire is irrational or immoral. If the inhabitants of a nation have a moral obligation to share their rights, wealth, and political process with all comers, then they must accept the possibility that their rights will be compromised, and possibly even complete upheaval. They suffer a loss of sovereignty and a loss in the expected value of their citizenship.

There is obviously no limiting principle to the open borders policy, as Tyler Cowen says. Existing citizens would be obligated to accommodate all those who land upon their shores, granting them the full rights and opportunities accorded to all other residents. Perhaps there would be economic gains in the short or long run, as most libertarians would predict. But perhaps there would be some losses along the way. Perhaps there would be political stability after a large influx of new residents, but perhaps not. And ultimately, perhaps changes in the political climate would feed back to the detriment of economic performance. One simply cannot say, a priori, how things would go. There are risks to the existing citizenry, and if they are obliged to accept those risks, those might well include having to feed, clothe and house new residents. There should be no absolute obligation to accept those risks. If the debate is about individual liberty, then surely imposing those risks via open borders would  abrogate the rights of existing citizens.

Addendum: A Note on the Goods Taxonomy

Given the two dimensions of goods discussed above, exclusivity and rivalrousness, goods are classified as follows:

  • Private goods: exclusive and rivalrous;
  • Public goods: non-exclusive and non-rivalrous;
  • Club goods: exclusive but non-rivalrous: e.g., a concert;
  • Common resources: non-exclusive but rivalrous: the air we breath; an aquifer;

Another category is sometimes defined: contestable goods, which have the character of public goods or even club goods when under light use, and are common resources when under heavy use. There is a difference between an empty park and a crowded park; or an empty road and a crowded road.

See ThoughtCo. for a good exposition on the taxonomy.

Does Google Dominance Threaten Choice, Free Speech and Privacy?

29 Tuesday Aug 2017

Posted by in Censorship, Free Speech, monopoly

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I’ve long been suspicious of the objectivity of Google search results. If you’re looking for information on a particular issue or candidate for public office, it doesn’t take long to realize that Google searches lean left of center. To some extent, the bias reflects the leftward skew of the news media in general. If you sample material available online from major news organizations on any topic with a political dimension, you’ll get more left than right, and you’ll get very little libertarian. So it’s not just Google. Bing reflects a similar bias. Of course, one learns to craft searches to get the other side of a story,  but I use Bing much more than Google, partly because I bridle instinctively at Google’s dominance as a search engine. I’ve also had DuckDuckGo bookmarked for a long time. Lately, my desire to avoid tracking of personal information and searches has made DuckDuckGo more appealing.

Google is not just a large company offering internet services and an operating system: it has the power to control speech and who gets to speak. It is a provider of information services and a collector of information with the power to exert geopolitical influence, and it does. This is brought into sharp relief by Julian Assange in his account of an interview he granted in 2011 to Google’s chairman Eric Schmidt and two of Schmidt’s advisors, and by Assange’s subsequent observations about the global activities of these individuals and Google. Assange gives the strong impression that Google is an arm of the deep state, or perhaps that it engages in a form of unaccountable statecraft, one meant to transcend traditional boundaries of sovereignty. Frankly, I found Assange’s narrative somewhat disturbing.

Monopolization

These concerns are heightened by Google’s market dominance. There is no doubt that Google has the power to control speech, surveil individuals with increasing sophistication, and accumulate troves of personal data. Much the same can be said of Facebook. Certainly users are drawn to the compelling value propositions offered by these firms. The FCC calls them internet “edge providers”, not the traditional meaning of “edge”, as between interconnected internet service providers (ISPs) with different customers. But Google and Facebook are really content providers and, in significant ways, hosting services.

According to Scott Cleland, Google, Facebook, and Amazon collect the bulk of all advertising revenue on the internet. The business is highly concentrated by traditional measures and becoming more concentrated as it grows. In the second quarter of 2017, Google and Facebook controlled 96% of digital advertising growth. They have ownership interests in many of the largest firms that could conceivably offer competition, and they have acquired outright a large number of potential competitors. Cleland asserts that the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FTC essentially turned a blind eye to the many acquisitions of nascent competitors by these firms.

The competitive environment has also been influenced by other government actions over the past few years. In particular, the FCC’s net neutrality order in 2015 essentially granted subsidies to “edge providers”, preventing broadband ISPs (so-called “common carriers” under the ruling) from charging differential rates for the high volume of traffic they generate. In addition, the agency ruled that ISPs would be subject to additional privacy restrictions:

“Specifically, broadband Internet providers were prohibited from collecting and using information about a consumer’s browsing history, app usage, or geolocation data without permission—all of which edge providers such as Google or Facebook are free to collect under FTC policies.

As Michael Horney noted in an earlier Free State Foundation Perspectives release, these restrictions create barriers for ISPs to compete in digital advertising markets. With access to consumer information, companies can provide more targeted advertising, ads that are more likely to be relevant to the consumer and therefore more valuable to the advertiser. The opt-in requirement means that ISPs will have access to less information about customers than Google, Facebook, and other edge providers that fall under the FTC’s purview—meaning ISPs cannot serve advertisers as effectively as the edge providers with whom they compete.”

Furthermore, there are allegations that Google played a role in convincing Facebook to drop Bing searches on its platform, and that Google in turn quietly deemphasized its social media presence. There is no definitive evidence that Google and Facebook have colluded, but the record is curious.

Regulation and Antitrust

Should firms like Google, Facebook, and other large internet platforms be regulated or subjected to more stringent review of past and proposed acquisitions? These companies already have great influence on the public sector. The regulatory solution is often comfortable for the regulated firm, which submits to complex rules with which compliance is difficult for smaller competitors. Thus, the regulated firm wins a more secure market position and a less risky flow of profit. The firm also gains more public sector influence through its frequent dealings with regulatory authorities.

Ryan Bourne argues that “There Is No Justification for Regulating Online Giants as If They Were Public Utilities“. He notes that these firms are not natural monopolies, despite their market positions and the existence of strong network externalities. It is true that they generally operate in contested markets, despite the dominance of a just few firms. Furthermore, it would be difficult to argue that these companies over-charge for their services in any way suggestive of monopoly behavior. Most of their online services are free or very cheap to users.

But anti-competitive behavior can be subtle. There are numerous ways it can manifest against consumers, developers, advertisers, and even political philosophies and those who espouse them. In fact, the edge providers do manage to extract something of value: data, intelligence and control. As mentioned earlier, their many acquisitions suggest an attempt to snuff out potential competition. More stringent review of proposed combinations and their competitive impact is a course of action that Cleland and others advocate.  While I generally support a free market in corporate control, many of Google’s acquisitions were firms enjoying growth rates one could hardly attribute to mismanagement or any failure to maximize value. Those combinations expanded Google’s offerings, certainly, but they also took out potential competition. However, there is no bright line to indicate when combinations of this kind are not in the public interest.

Antitrust action is no stranger to Google: In June, the European Union fined the company $2.7 billion for allegedly steering online shoppers toward its own shopping platform. Google faces continuing scrutiny of its search results by the EU, and the EU has other investigations of anticompetitive behavior underway against both Google and Facebook.

It’s also worth noting that antitrust has significant downsides: it is costly and disruptive, not only for the firms involved, but for their customers and taxpayers. Alan Reynolds has a cautionary take on the prospect of antitrust action against Amazon. Antitrust is a big business in and of itself, offering tremendous rent-seeking benefits to a host of attorneys, economists, accountants and variety of other technical specialists. As Reynolds says:

“Politics aside, the question ‘Is Amazon getting too Big?’ should have nothing to do with antitrust, which is supposedly about preventing monopolies from charging high prices. Surely no sane person would dare accuse Amazon of monopoly or high prices.“

Meanwhile, the proposed Amazon-Whole Foods combination was approved by the FTC and the deal closed Monday.

Speech, Again

Ordinarily, my views on “speech control” would be aligned with those of Scott Shackford, who defends the right of private companies to restrict speech that occurs on their platforms. But Alex Tabbarok offers a thoughtful qualification in asking whether Google and Apple should have banned Gab:

“I have no problem with Twitter or Facebook policing their sites for content they find objectionable, such as pornography or hate speech, even though these are permitted under the First Amendment. A free market in news doesn’t mean that every newspaper must cover every story. A free market in news means free entry. But free entry is exactly what is now at stake. Gab was created, in part, to combat what was seen as Facebook’s bias against conservative news and views. If Gab or services like cannot be accessed via the big platforms that is a significant barrier to entry.

When Facebook and Twitter regulate what can be said on their platforms and Google and Apple regulate who can provide a platform, we have a big problem. It’s as if the NYTimes and the Washington Post were the only major newspapers and the government regulated who could own a printing press.

In a pure libertarian world, I’d be inclined to say that Google and Apple can also police whom they allow on their platforms. But we live in a world in which Google and Apple are bound up with and in some ways beholden to the government. I worry when a lot of news travels through a handful of choke points.“

This point is amplified by Aaron M. Renn in City Journal:

“The mobile-Internet business is built on spectrum licenses granted by the federal government. Given the monopoly power that Apple and Google possess in the mobile sphere as corporate gatekeepers, First Amendment freedoms face serious challenges in the current environment. Perhaps it is time that spectrum licenses to mobile-phone companies be conditioned on their recipients providing freedoms for customers to use the apps of their choice.“

That sort of condition requires ongoing monitoring and enforcement, but the intervention is unlikely to stop there. Once the platforms are treated as common property there will be additional pressure to treat their owners as public stewards, answerable to regulators on a variety of issues in exchange for a de facto grant of monopoly.

Tyler Cowen’s reaction to the issue of private, “voluntary censorship” online is a resounding “meh”. While he makes certain qualifications, he does not believe it’s a significant issue. His perspective is worth considering:

“It remains the case that the most significant voluntary censorship issues occur every day in mainstream non-internet society, including what gets on TV, which books are promoted by major publishers, who can rent out the best physical venues, and what gets taught at Harvard or for that matter in high school.“

Cowen recognizes the potential for censorship to become a serious problem, particularly with respect to so-called “chokepoint” services like Cloudflare:

“They can in essence kick you off the entire internet through a single human decision not to offer the right services. …so far all they have done is kick off one Nazi group. Still, I think we should reexamine the overall architecture of the internet with this kind of censorship power in mind as a potential problem. And note this: the main problem with those choke points probably has more to do with national security and the ease of wrecking social coordination, not censorship. Still, this whole issue should receive much more attention and I certainly would consider serious changes to the status quo.“

There are no easy answers.

Conclusions

The so-called edge providers pose certain threats to individuals, both as internet users and as free citizens: the potential for anti-competitive behavior, eventually manifesting in higher prices and restricted choice; tightening reins on speech and free expression; and compromised privacy. All three have been a reality to one extent or another. As a firm like Google attains the status of an arm of the state, or multiple states, it could provide a mechanism whereby those authorities could manipulate behavior and coerce their citizens, making the internet into a tool of tyranny rather than liberty. “Don’t be evil” is not much of a guarantee.

What can be done? The FCC’s has already voted to reverse its net neutrality order, and that is a big step; dismantling the one-sided rules surrounding the ISPs handling of consumer data would also help, freeing some powerful firms that might be able to compete for “edge” business. I am skeptical that regulation of edge providers is an effective or wise solution, as it would not achieve competitive outcomes and it would rely on the competence and motives of government officials to protect users from the aforementioned threats to their personal sovereignty. Antitrust action may be appropriate when anti-competitive actions can be proven, but it is a rent-seeking enterprise of its own, and it is often a questionable remedy to the ills caused by market concentration. We have a more intractable problem if access cannot be obtained for particular content otherwise protected by the First Amendment. Essentially, Cowen’s suggestion is to rethink the internet, which might be the best advice for now.

Ultimately, active consumer sovereignty is the best solution to the dominance of firms like Google and Facebook. There are other search engines and there are other online communities. Users must take steps to protect their privacy online. If they value their privacy, they should seek out and utilize competitive services that protect it. Finally, perhaps consumers should consider a recalibration of their economic and social practices. They may find surprising benefits from reducing their dependence on internet services, instead availing themselves of the variety of shopping and social experiences that still exist in the physical world around us. That’s the ultimate competition to the content offered by edge providers.

Private Incentives and Infrastructure

10 Tuesday Jan 2017

Posted by in infrastructure, Markets

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motorway-to-hell

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Material infrastructure is fixed plant and equipment providing services considered basic to the functioning of society. That definition leaves plenty of room for interpretation, however. For example, it does not limit the meaning of “infrastructure” to facilities necessary for the provision of “public goods”, for which benefits are non-exclusive. And it encompasses facilities used by firms in certain competitive markets, such as some forms of telecommunication. The character of infrastructure tends to change over time, as new technologies lead to changes in our way of life (e.g., the cellular network). That’s even more evident when infrastructure is defined more broadly, as Walter Buhr does in “What Is Infrastructure?” His definition of material infrastructure encompasses all facilities enabling “the activation or mobilization of the economic agents’ potentialities.”

Infrastructure ≠ Government

There is a popular fallacy that infrastructure is the exclusive province of government. Infrastructure often does provide some public, non-exclusive benefits, but the willingness of users to pay is the key test of private benefits. As it happens, most infrastructure needs can be met privately and partly, if not fully, supported by user fees. That follows from the high degree of exclusivity of benefits yielded by the infrastructure. Today, privately-owned infrastructure includes communication networks, power generation and distribution, some water and sewer systems, toll roads, ports, and landfills. The presumed monopolistic nature of some infrastructural services probably encourages the notion that infrastructure must be public, but that view is largely unjustified: the services may be “monopolized” only to the extent that the relevant market is defined narrowly, such as road travel, rather than transportation. Indeed, certain kinds of infrastructure functions in markets that are fairly competitive (e.g., wireless networks).

The great thing about most private infrastructure is that owner-operators have an incentive to put it up and keep it up. So it kind of takes care of itself. I say “kind of” because there is always a degree of public involvement, from land use and environmental approval to construction permits, to licensing, to spectrum auctions, to rate regulation, and many other varieties of oversight. Aside from those considerations, if there is a need for infrastructure that is commercially-viable, the project is likely to be proposed by private interests. The funds necessary to pay for construction can be raised from private investors, rather than taxpayers. It’s not at all strange to say that private infrastructure is highly advantageous from a public finance perspective.

There are risks to private infrastructure developers, but those risks are too often borne publicly. A new facility, be it a water treatment plant or a road, might not prove to be profitable once a new revenue stream or reduction in operating costs is realized. Given those circumstances, private interests might seek additional incentives from public authorities to ensure profitbility. To the extent that the shortfall is due to an error in pricing administered by a public regulatory authority, it might be reasonable to make adjustments in the owner-operator’s favor. However, to the extent that demand falls short of the owner-operator’s expectations, it might be better to let the firm fail. That would allow the assets to be sold at a discount to a new operator who can make the cheaper investment profitable. No bailouts!

Trumpian Infrastructure Incentives

The coming Trump Administration is known to have certain steps in mind for encouraging infrastructure development. While the tax plan that has been discussed has a few questionable features, any policy that reduces corporate tax rates would increase the return to existing and prospective private infrastructure, and the profitability of private operation of public infrastructure. In addition, a proposal mentioned explicitly by Trump is a corporate tax credit for infrastructure development.

Here is where a more precise definition of infrastructure would be helpful. Would traditional categories of infrastructure investment by power, telecommunication, and water treatment companies qualify automatically? Moreover, the long timelines required in the planning and installation of most infrastructure might make it difficult to distinguish between new plans and those already in the works. Will the administration establish a bright line between infrastructure investment and run-of-the-mill corporate spending on new plant and equipment? Perhaps any form of corporate investment will qualify. These are questions that remain unanswered as we await Trump’s inauguration.

There is another public-finance dimension of the Trump infrastructure credit. Public infrastructure projects, such as roads, are frequently difficult for governments to fund because they face limits on the debt they can issue. This is emphasized by Randall O’Toole in a recent piece on the Trump credit. Instead of issuing its own debt, a government can take advantage of a large private road builder’s ability to raise funds in the capital market, agreeing to compensate the contractor over time. Thus, taxpayers will be obligated to pay-off the contractor’s debt. The term “Public-Private Partnership” has been invoked in this connection.

Private Incentives Or Central Planning?

I am never averse to reduced tax rates to the extent that taxation always distorts economic incentives. However, selective targeting of tax benefits at certain industries, specific forms of business organization (like corporations), or specific activities like capital investment is overt central planning. Overriding market incentives in this way is not desirable. (Neither are proposals to subsidize exporters and penalize importers. Tyler Cowen at the Marginal Revolution provides some salient quotes from Lawrence Summers on this point.) At this stage, Trump’s tax plan looks like central planning gone berserk.

Ideally, private investment and private infrastructure should be judged on its real merits, not on the prejudices of a central authority. To that end, I believe the Trump Administration’s intent to roll back regulatory distortions is commendable. A case in point is nuclear power generation. Despite the constant outcry against the burning of fossil fuels, there has been little emphasis on encouraging investment in new nuclear capacity. The lengthy approval process and costly regulatory requirements discourage this zero-carbon form of energy production relative to other forms of energy investment.

Users Are the Cost-Causers

I should note that O’Toole speaks favorably of “targeting” certain kinds of public infrastructure, but I think his point is that private operation of infrastructure, if not ownership, will allow markets to do the targeting more efficiently than government ever could. In particular, he notes that politicians tend to prefer new projects to the maintenance and repair of existing infrastructure, independent of the actual merit. Would relying on private operation and user fees encourage better maintenance?

“Unlike infrastructure paid for out of tax dollars, user-fee-funded projects tend to be well maintained because the agencies that manage them know they have to keep them in good shape to continue earning revenues.“

The cartoon above satirizes the consequences of providing free access to a costly facility. User fees encourage more rational patterns of use. For example, it is folly to think that projects like light rail can be financially viable when free alternatives exist. Specific highway routes under high demand must be priced in order for commuters to make rational decisions about the alternatives available to them, and for providers of transportation facilities, whether public or private, to rationally balance the resources dedicated to supporting various modes of travel.

Lower tax and regulatory burdens under the Trump infrastructure plan offer some encouragement for private development and operation of infrastructure projects. As a by-product, the plan might encourage greater reliance on user fees as a method of defraying the costs of infrastructure and promoting a more efficient allocation of resources toward infrastructure needs. However, there are unanswered questions about the details of the plan, and some of its heavy-handy features should be dispensed with.

Unequal Pay For Unequal Work

25 Thursday Feb 2016

Posted by in Labor Markets

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equal-pay-cartoon

Debates on social issues are often plagued by facile comparisons that distort the underlying facts. The alleged gender pay gap involves such comparisons. The Obama Administration proposed new rules last month intended to address a difference in median earnings between men and women, demanding data reports on various demographics from firms with 100+ employees. Mark Perry points out that the pay gap in the Obama White House is about the same as the national difference. Can there be any reasonable explanation for these disparities?

One key to understanding the debate is that the difference in aggregate pay between men and women (17% in 2014, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics) is not a divergence in pay for equal work! However, that is the gist of the fraudulent narrative so often heard from the White House and elsewhere. The truth: 17% is the difference in the medians of two large distributions of working adults, one for men, one for women, covering all occupational categories. The discrepancy, which has declined sharply over the past 35 years, is explained today by fewer hours worked among women and “differences in educational attainment, work experience, and occupational choice.” These differences are well known, but gender-gap warriors conveniently overlook the following facts, as established by the Department of Labor:

  • There is more part-time work among women;
  • Women lose more experience to childbirth, child care and elder care;
  • Women demand more job flexibility and non-wage benefits (and that costs);
  • Women are disproportionately under-represented in dangerous occupations;
  • Women are disproportionately under-represented in STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math);

Interestingly, the last point may have more to do with a broader range of talents possessed by females who are skilled at math, relative to men, which leads to a greater variety of career options. An implication: non-STEM occupational choices by women are often voluntary and not the result of discrimination. And those choices are often driven by considerations other than cash remuneration.

As to the risk of physical danger, in 2010, men were almost 12 times as likely as women to suffer fatal injuries on the job. There is no question that high-risk occupations have higher wages. Apparently, women choose not to pursue opportunities in these occupations. An earlier study found that single parents, male and female, were the most risk averse in their choice of occupation, and that married women with children are more risk averse than married men with children. Of course, it is possible that some employers have requirements in terms of physical strength that favor men. Either way, the job-risk gap almost certainly contributes to the measured-wage gender gap, but it has little to do with gender discrimination per se.

Earnings are sensitive to factors such as full-time / part-time status, continuous job tenure, and the likelihood of extended leaves of absence. This is supported by a research finding cited in The Economist, that partners in lesbian relationships tend to out-earn married straight females. The division of responsibilities in the home is surely part of the story: lesbian couples tend to split chores more equally than straight couples. Millennial couples (ages 25-34) are also more likely to split household chores equally; the gender pay gap for millennials is much narrower than for older age cohorts, and it is nonexistent for childless millennials. Millennial women have more than closed the education gap as well.

When gender differences in hours, tenure, absences, education, and job hazards are considered, as well as the full menu of compensating non-wage benefits available, the wage gap is essentially nonexistent. Yet President Obama’s proposed data mandate would carry high compliance costs and likely cost jobs as well. The purpose of the regulation is to make it easier for various groups to sue employers on the basis of wage discrimination. But observation of such a gap, wherever it might exist, is not prime facie evidence of discrimination; it is more than likely to be the result of private, voluntary agreement.

Is it possible that certain attitudes or behavioral characteristics of women generalize to poorer outcomes, relative to men, in negotiations? Tyler Cowan reports on research that suggests as much, based on “laboratory” experiments in which participants played repeated games involving actual rewards. In one experiment, the rewards depended on the acceptance of an offer to share a pot, and both men and women made lower offers to female partners than to males. However, when the partner was a woman, females were markedly stingier in their offers than males. Those women are tough! But seldom are real-world “deals” so one-dimensional, and controlling for all considerations of value is often impossible. In any case, trades rarely take place when the parties don’t find them to be mutually beneficial.

Fortunately, in labor markets, when differentials in skills and experience matter, discrimination is practiced only under a self-inflicted penalty on the discriminator. In the case of wage-based gender discrimination, the employer will tend to overpay for equivalently-skilled male help. Discrimination of this sort impairs a firm’s ability to attract the best employees and harms its competitive position. Nevertheless, the extent to which the market’s self-regulation confers benefits on individual participants depends upon their vigilance: buyer beware (caveat emptor) and seller beware (caveat venditor) are keys to real economic freedom. Most importantly, in all things, beware government edicts. Markets are the best regulator.

Sidebar: I was referred to an article on FiveThirtyEight by my friend John Crawford. The main subject matter of the article is off-topic and its conclusions are incorrect (I might post on it soon), but many of the charts are interesting; the third chart is really fascinating! It shows that women, by age 30, tend to belong to households that are higher in the income distribution than men who come from the same point in the distribution of household-income in childhood. This is true at every point in the childhood household-income distribution! Are there advantage(s) for women that can account for this? A few guesses: a lower rate of incarceration of women by age 30; women have higher marriage rates by age 30; women “marry up” more than men, both in terms of the ages and incomes of their spouses; women who don’t marry live with their parents more than men do (?). There could be other explanations, and the relationship may not hold at later ages. Still, it’s noteworthy that such a reverse “gender gap” exists in the data.

I close with a quote from Harvard’s Claudia Golden, from “A Grand Gender Convergence: Its Last Chapter” (HT: Marginal Revolution):

“The gap is much lower than it had once been and the decline has been largely due to an increase in the productive human capital of women relative to men. Education at all levels increased for women relative to men and the fields that women pursue in college and beyond shifted to the more remunerative and career-oriented ones. Job experience of women also expanded with increased labor force participation. The portion of the difference in earnings by gender that was once due to differences in productive characteristics has largely been eliminated. 

What, then, is the cause of the remaining pay gap? Quite simply the gap exists because hours of work in many occupations are worth more when given at particular moments and when the hours are more continuous. That is, in many occupations earnings have a nonlinear relationship with respect to hours. A flexible schedule comes at a high price, particularly in the corporate, finance and legal worlds.“

Authoritarian Designs

31 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by in Progressivism, racism, Uncategorized

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eugenics certificate

Why condemn today’s progressives for their movement’s early endorsement of eugenics? Kevin Drum at Mother Jones thinks this old association is now irrelevant. He furthermore believes that eugenics is not an important issue in the modern world. Drum’s remarks were prompted by Jonah Goldberg’s review of Illiberal Reformers, a book by Thomas Leonard on racism and eugenicism in the American economics profession in the late 19th century. Tyler Cowen begs to differ with Drum on both counts, but for reasons that might not have been obvious to Drum. Eugenics is not a bygone, and its association with progressivism is a reflection of the movement’s broader philosophy of individual subservience to the state and, I might add, the scientism that continues to run rampant among progressives.

Cowen cites John Stewart Mill, one of the great social thinkers of the 19th century, who was an advocate for individual liberty and a harsh critic of eugenics. Here is a great paragraph from Cowen:

“The claim is not that current Progressives are evil or racist, but rather they still don’t have nearly enough Mill in their thought, and not nearly enough emphasis on individual liberty. Their continuing choice of label seems to indicate they are not much bothered by that, or maybe not even fully aware of that. They probably admire Mill’s more practical reform progressivism quite strongly, or would if they gave it more thought, but they don’t seem to relate to the broader philosophy of individual liberty as it surfaced in the philosophy of Mill and others. That’s a big, big drawback and the longer history of Progressivism and eugenics is perhaps the simplest and most vivid way to illuminate the point. This is one reason why the commitment of the current Left to free speech just isn’t very strong.“

Eugenics is not confined to the distant past, as Cowen notes, citing more recent “progressive” sterilization programs in Sweden and Canada, as well as the potential use of DNA technologies like CRISPR in “designing” offspring. That’s eugenics. So is the child quota system practiced in China, sex-selective abortion, and the easy acceptance of aborting fetuses with congenital disorders. Arguably, Obamacare “effectiveness research” guidelines cut close to eugenicism by proscribing certain treatments to individuals based upon insufficient “average benefit”, which depends upon age, disability, and stage of illness. Obamacare authorizes that the guidelines may ultimately depend on gender, race and ethnicity. All of these examples illustrate the potential for eugenics to be practiced on a broader scale and in ways that could trample individual rights.

Jonah Goldberg also responded to Drum in “On Eugenics and White Privilege“. (You have to scroll way down at the link to find the section with that title.) Goldberg’s most interesting points relate to the racism inherent in the minimum wage and the Davis-Bacon Act, two sacred cows of progressivism with the same original intent as eugenics: to weed out “undesirables”, either from the population or from competing in labor markets. It speaks volumes that today’s progressives deny the ugly economic effects of these policies on low-skilled workers, yet their forebears were counting on those effects.

Scientism is a term invoked by Friedrich Hayek to describe the progressive fallacy that science and planning can be used by the state to optimize the course of human affairs. However, the state can never command all the information necessary to do so, particularly in light of the dynamism of information relating to scarcity and preferences; government has trouble enough carrying out plans that merely match the static preferences of certain authorities. Historically, such attempts at planning have created multiple layers of tragedy, as individual freedoms and material well-being were eroded. Someone should tell Bernie Sanders!

Eugenics fit nicely into the early progressive view, flattering its theorists with the notion that the human race could be made… well, more like them! Fortunately, eugenics earned its deservedly bad name, but it continues to exist in somewhat more subtle forms today, and it could take more horrific forms in the future.

Two earlier posts on Sacred Cow Chips dealt at least in part with eugenics: “Child Quotas: Family as a Grant of Privilege“, and “Would Heterosexuals Select For Gay Genes?“.

 

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Borkians Preserve Federal Obamacare Subsidies

29 Monday Jun 2015

Posted by in Obamacare

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ACA Supremes cartoon

I have mixed feelings about the Supreme Court’s King vs. Burwell decision upholding federal subsidies for health insurance purchased in states that did not establish their own exchanges. My biggest concerns are that the decision gives a pass to the unchecked exercise of executive fiat as well as congressional carelessness (“lassitude”, to use Justice Scalia’s term), and the smearing of the separation of legislative and judicial powers. I admit that I was eager to see the exchanges unravel under the weight of their own lousy economics. However, the economics remain lousy even with the ruling, which will become more evident as major subsidies to health insurers expire over the next 18 months. It will be interesting to watch as the process of escalating premia plays out. I’m relieved that the Obamacare opposition in Congress (primarily Republicans) is now off the hook. These legislators never coalesced around an alternative and would have received a good portion of the blame for any further disruptions in the insurance “market” had the decision gone the other way. Probably their best approach would have been to extend the subsidies to all exchanges, at least for the remainder of Obama’s term. As Tyler Cowen notes, an extension would have occurred:

“… only after a lot of political stupidity and also painful media coverage. So on net I take this to be good news, although arguably it is bad news that it is good news.“

On the merits of health care policy, given the failure to put forward a better plan, what would have been gained over the next 18 months from a ruling for the plaintiffs? Not much.

Cowen links to a Robert Laszlewski post emphasizing the fragile economic and political condition of Obamacare:

“Obamacare has only enrolled about 40% of the subsidy eligible market in two years worth of open enrollments. That level of consumer support does not make Obamacare either financially sustainable or politically sustainable. The surveys say the 40% who have enrolled like their plans. Of course they do, they are the poorest with the biggest subsidies and the lowest deductibles. The working and middle-class have most often not signed up for Obamacare because it costs too much and delivers too little.

That Obamacare is not financially sustainable is evidenced by the first wave of big 2016 rate increases by so many large market share insurers. The next wave of rate increases a year from now will also be large and will be in the middle of the 2016 election.“

The SCOTUS decision flies in the face of the roles and responsibilities assigned to the branches of government by the Constitution. The implication of the ruling is that a law means whatever the executive branch says it means, even when it says the opposite unambiguously. This goes too far in granting executive power to “reimagine” legislation, and the Left may well come to regret it as a precedent. Executive rulings in implementing laws is nothing new, but one hopes for the courts to keep a tight rein on this discretion in an era when the regulatory environment is growing increasingly complex.

A Randy Barnett post at SCOTUSblog quotes Chief Justice Roberts’ opinion:

“Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them. If at all possible, we must interpret the Act in a way that is consistent with the former, and avoids the latter.“

Improve health care markets? Not destroy them? Wait… I’m confused! But seriously, at this point in the process, Justice Roberts must be confused about actual outcomes. An objective assessment of Obamacare would include an accounting for the many individuals whose policies were cancelled against their wishes, premium escalation, and the fact that the ACA has fallen well short of expectations for reducing the number of uninsured; the law has certainly not improved markets. Barnett describes Roberts’ apparent philosophy on this point thusly:

“... the Chief Justice seems to be telling us that he is once again putting a thumb on the scale for the government here as he did in his solo opinion in NFIB. Rather than assessing the constitutionality of the law as written – or enforcing it according to its terms – the court will rewrite the law to suit the government.” 

This is not merely “legislative deference”, it is legislative rescue and a rewriting of the law. And Barnett points out that the Courts should provide a check on bad legislation, not serve as enablers.

Damon Root offers an excellent clarification of Roberts’ thinking: the strand of conservative judicial philosophy calling for deference to legislative intent is often attributed to Robert Bork. This obviously conflicts with the notion that conservatives are judicial activists. I discussed judicial activism here a few months ago, including Randy Barnett’s assertion that the term seems to be invoked as a pejorative almost any time someone doesn’t like a court decision. If it means preserving the Constitution, then count me as an activist.

Ilya Shapiro sums up the “intent” of the legislation and the “deferential” position taken by the court in King vs. Burwell:

“Roberts explains his transmogrification by finding it ‘implausible that Congress meant the Act to operate in this manner,’ to deny subsidies to millions of people as part of legislation intended to expanded coverage. But it’s hardly implausible to think that legislation that still says that states ‘shall’ set up exchanges—the drafters forgot to fix this bit after lawyers pointed out that Congress can’t command states to do anything—would effectively give states an offer nobody thought they’d refuse. It was supposed to be a win-win: states rather than the federal government would run health care exchanges (yay federalism!) and all those who need subsidies to afford Obamacare policies would get them (yay universal healthcare!).

But a funny thing happened on the way to utopia, and only 14 states (plus D.C.) took that too-tempting offer, perhaps having been burned too many times before by the regulations that accompany any pots of “free” federal money. And that’s why we ended up with King v. Burwell: Obamacare the reality doesn’t accomplish Obamacare the dream.“

We’ll watch to see how badly Obamacare fares over the next two years. And we’ll hope that eventually Congress can fashion a new health care plan that creates more choice, reduces taxes, increases competition and reduces coercive rules and regulatory burdens.

Community College Free-For-All

12 Monday Jan 2015

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Funny-Obama-Photo-With-Bear

Obama keeps puffing on the horn of taxpayer plenty, this time proposing free tuition at community colleges for all comers. This is a misapplication of the empirical observation that earned income is positively related to the level of education.

Supporters of “college for all” naively assume that enabling college enrollment will always translate into actual learning and success on the job market, or that college is always a good idea. Those assumptions are incorrect. Not everyone is capable of benefitting from higher education. It is a disfavor to them, and to their more academically competitive peers, to encourage them to enter an environment in which they are likely to fail or benefit less than in other pursuits, and where they will absorb scarce educational resources such as facilities, equipment, and instructor time and effort. And if less capable individuals are allowed to “succeed” under more relaxed standards, the degrees they earn will be degraded. Moreover, as Peter Theil has emphasized, we tend to think “too highly of higher eduction,” as if it is always one’s best option. In fact, that may not be true for even the most talented individuals, who may be capable of accomplishing greater things without it, and sooner!

But what real costs and benefits can be expected from Obama’s latest proposed giveaway? Scott Shakford at Reason summarizes and critiques the program, explaining that community college administrators are likely to be the chief beneficiaries. Shakford also notes that the program is likely to encourage grade inflation, based on the minimum GPA requirements built into the program. This op-ed in the Digital Journal points out that Obama’s plan will also encourage grade inflation at the high-school level, so as not to “unfairly” deny students their new opportunity to matriculate into community college.

Shakford at Reason puts the total cost to taxpayers at $34 billion, but it is based on an administration estimate that 9 million students could attend community college free-of-charge. It is not clear whether that number is net of those already attending for free. Tyler Cowen offers links to some good discussions of the plan, one of which notes that community college is already free on average for low income students via Pell grants. Higher income students obviously stand to gain, however, so the plan’s targeting of benefits is perverse. Community college completion rates are already quite low, and Cowen notes that the rate for marginal students pulled in by Obama’s program is likely to be even lower, which would further diminish the value of the degree on the labor market.

“Free stuff” always sounds so good and well-intentioned that is it difficult for many to oppose. But free stuff generally means that resources must be diverted from more highly-valued uses for little or no gain. After all, the value of the freebie to beneficiaries of a politician’s scheme can be minimal and they’ll still be takers. Taxes to fund the diversion of resources creates other perverse incentives.

Funding the education of promising but needy students may be quite worthwhile, but offering a free post-secondary education for all will grossly misallocate resources and carry a high social cost.