Month: March 2018

That was then, this is now

From the (early) MR archives

Bush to drop most steel tariffs, Tyler Cowen, on December 1, 2003 at 7:45 am

Bush decided in March 2002 to impose tariffs of 8 to 30 percent on most steel imports from Europe, Asia and South America for three years. Officials acknowledged at the time that the decision was heavily influenced by the desire to help the Rust Belt states, but the departure from Bush’s free-trade principles drew fierce criticism from his conservative supporters. After a blast of international opposition, the administration began approving exemptions.

The WTO’s ruling against the tariffs was finalized three weeks ago, clearing the way for the retaliatory levies, and Bush’s economic team concluded unanimously that the tariffs should be scrapped. The source involved in the negotiations said the consensus in the White House was that “keeping the tariffs in place would cause more economic disruption and pain for the broader economy than repealing them would for the steel industry.”

Here is the full story. The formal decision is expected to be announced later this week. This is the first piece of economic policy good news in some time, but it is sad that it required a WTO ruling and threats of European retaliation to come about.”

I recall visiting the White House with Vernon Smith around this time.  Smith told Bush that he had done the wrong thing with the steel tariffs, and Bush simply snapped back: “You’re the economist…leave the politics to me!”  I wonder how Trump put it to his advisors…

Addendum: Here is Bob Crandall criticizing Reagan steel protectionism from the 1980s.  Here is a 2003 retrospective analysis of the Bush steel tariffs.

South Africa update

The National Assembly on Tuesday set in motion a process to amend the Constitution so as to allow for the expropriation of land without compensation.

The motion, brought by the EFF leader Julius Malema, was adopted with a vote of 241 in support, and 83 against.

The only parties who did not support the motion were the DA, Freedom Front Plus, Cope and the ACDP.

The matter will now be referred to the Constitutional Review Committee which must report back to Parliament by August 30.

That is from a South African website, and the story really does seem to be true.  Yet reputable Western outlets do not seem to have much interest in reporting on this, except for this piece on Quartz.

There has been more coverage of Cape Town possibly running out of water.  I do understand that foreign troubles often look worse from a distance, but still in an era when emerging economies have been booming, including in most of Africa, it is hard not to be put off by these developments.  I am not sure how to interpret the data quality issues, but it is not obvious that the median wage has increased since the fall of apartheid.

Thursday assorted links

1. The decay of the public library (NYT).

2. Have the rich abandoned rich-people rugs? (NYT)

3. Letting the young vote makes their parents more likely to vote.

4. Genes don’t seem that important in shaping human gut microbiota.

5. “Beware covert war morality tales.

6. “An emerging field, digital phenotyping, tries to assess people’s well-being based on their interactions with digital devices.” (NYT)

No, American fascism can’t happen here

Politico is running an excerpt from my essay in the new Cass Sunstein book.  Here is one opening bit:

My argument is pretty simple: American fascism cannot happen anymore because the American government is so large and unwieldy. It is simply too hard for the fascists, or for that matter other radical groups, to seize control of. No matter who is elected, the fascists cannot control the bureaucracy, they cannot control all the branches of American government, they cannot control the judiciary, they cannot control semi-independent institutions such as the Federal Reserve, and they cannot control what is sometimes called “the deep state.” The net result is they simply can’t control enough of the modern state to steer it in a fascist direction.

…Surely it ought to give us pause that the major instances of Western fascism came right after a time when government was relatively small, and not too long after the heyday of classical liberalism in Europe, namely the late 19th century. No, I am not blaming classical liberalism for Nazism, but it is simply a fact that it is easier to take over a smaller and simpler state than it is to commandeer one of today’s sprawling bureaucracies.

…the greater focus of the night watchman state, for all its virtues, is part of the reason why it is easy to take over. There is a clearly defined center of power and a clearly defined set of lines of authority; furthermore, the main activity of the state is to enforce property rights through violence or the threat of violence. That means such a state will predominantly comprise policemen, soldiers, possibly border authorities, Coast Guard employees and others in related support services. The culture and ethos of such a state is likely to be relatively masculine and also relatively martial and tolerant of a certain amount of risk, and indeed violence. The state will be full of people who are used to the idea of applying force to achieve social ends, even if, under night watchman assumptions, those deployments of force are for the most part justified.

Do read the whole thing, the article has points of interest, and the essay in the book even more.

Are NBA players friendlier with each other these days?

From one recent ESPN report:

And Bird would always say, “Did Laimbeer make it? [the All-Star game]” And I would say, yes or no, and if it was no, he’d be like “Oh, good. Cause then when I get on the bus and he says, ‘Hi, Larry’ I don’t have to say, “F— you, Bill.” So we can bleep that out, OK? But that’s the old days.

Windhorst: I can actually hear Larry saying that.

MacMullan: That’s the old days. But the new days, these guys are all friends. I’m just amazed at the camaraderie between teams.

Today, ESPN presents “the three unwritten rules for NBA trash talking,” the first being “Don’t make it personal.”  The second is “Be quiet on the bench.”  Where’s the trash?

*Radical Markets*

The authors are Eric A. Posner and E. Glen Weyl, and the subtitle is Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society.

“Suppose the entire city of Rio is perpetually up for auction.”  To be clear, I don’t agree with these proposals.  But if you want a book that is smart, clearly written, dedicated to Bill Vickrey, and sees its premises through to their logical conclusions, I am happy to recommend this one.  Think of it as a bunch of social choice and incentive mechanisms, based on market-like ideas, though not markets in the sense of a traditional medieval fair.

The authors call for perpetually open auctions, quadratic voting, a kind of apprenticeship system for the private sponsorship of immigrants, a ban on mutual fund diversification within sectors (to preserve competition by limiting joint ownership), and creating more explicit markets in personal data.  If nothing else, it will force you to clarify what you actually like about markets, or don’t, and what you actually like about economics, or don’t.

Most of all, I differ from the authors in seeing a larger gap between models and the real world than they do, and thinking we need a greater variety of kinds of evidence before making very radical changes.  But at the very least, it is worth thinking through why we do not handle life as a second price auction.