Category: Political Science
White, Male, and Angry
From the bottom to the top of society, white men are angry. This paper provides a reputation-based rationale for this anger. Individuals care about their social reputation and engage in belief-motivated reasoning. In the presence of uncertainty, white men tend to have too high an opinion of their group, whether they belong to the elite or not. When new information reveal that the elite is biased in favor of white men, their reputation of all white men decreases causing a payoff loss and the anger that comes with it. I also show how policies in favor of disadvantaged groups can be supported by some white men and opposed by some individuals from the minority when social reputation is taken into account. Reducing white men’s privileges can have a very different effects from disclosing the advantage this group enjoys.
That is the abstract of a new paper by Stephane Wolton. The piece has some subtle and oft-overlooked ideas, and it comes via the subtle Kevin Lewis.
The End of History (of Philosophy)
Hanno Sauer on why philosophers spend far too much time reading and writing about dead philosophers:
What credence should we assign to philosophical claims that were formed without any knowledge of the current state of the art of the philosophical debate and little or no knowledge of the relevant empirical or scientific data? Very little or none. Yet when we engage with the history of philosophy, this is often exactly what we do. In this paper, I argue that studying the history of philosophy is philosophically unhelpful. The epistemic aims of philosophy, if there are any, are frustrated by engaging with the history of philosophy, because we have little reason to think that the claims made by history’s great philosophers would survive closer scrutiny today. First, I review the case for philosophical historiography and show how it falls short. I then present several arguments for skepticism about the philosophical value of engaging with the history of philosophy and offer an explanation for why philosophical historiography would seem to make sense even if it didn’t.
A devastating example:
Consider Plato’s or Rousseau’s evaluation of the virtues and vices of democracy. Here is a (non-exhaustive) list of evidence and theories that were unavailable to them at the time:
- Historical experiences with developed democracies
- Empirical evidence regarding democratic movements in developing countries
- Various formal theorems regarding collective decision making and preference aggregation, such as the Condorcet Jury-Theorem, Arrow’s Impossibility-Results, the Hong-Page-Theorem, the median voter theorem, the miracle of aggregation, etc.
- Existing studies on voter behavior, polarization, deliberation, information
- Public choice economics, incl. rational irrationality, democratic realism
The whole subsequent debate on their own arguments…When it comes to people currently alive, we would steeply discount the merits of the contribution of any philosopher whose work were utterly uninformed by the concepts, theories and evidence just mentioned (and whatever other items belong on this list). It is not clear why the great philosophers of the past should not be subjected to the same standard. (Bear in mind that time and attention are severely limited resources. Therefore, every decision we make about whose work to dedicate our time and attention to faces important trade-offs.)
This is obviously true so I think the more interesting question is why do philosophers do this?
Hat tip: Jason Brennan
Cognitive ability predicts economic extremism
Conservative economic attitudes have been theorized as symptoms of low cognitive ability. Studies suggest the opposite, linking more conservative views weakly to higher, not lower, cognitive ability, but with very large between-study variability. Here, we propose and replicate a new model linking cognitive ability not to liberal or conservative economics, but to economic extremism: How far individuals deviate from prevailing centrist views. Two large pre-registered studies in the UK (N = 700 & 700) and the British Cohort Study dataset (N = 11,563) replicated the predicted association of intelligence with economic deviance (β = 0.4 to 0.12). These findings were robust and expand the role of cognitive ability from tracking the economic consensus to influencing support for (relatively) extremist views. They suggest opportunities to understand the generation and mainstreaming of radical fringe social attitudes.
That is from a new paper by Chien-An Lin and Timothy C. Bates. I would frame it a little differently! For one thing, the extreme views are sufficiently complex that perhaps the smarter people are more likely to pick them up and understand them, whether those views are correct or not.
Via Michelle Dawson.
John Stuart Mill was Woke and Based
I love that John Stuart Mill was woke and based:
Looking at democracy in the way in which it is commonly conceived, as the rule of the numerical majority, it is surely possible that the ruling power may be under the dominion of sectional or class interests, pointing to conduct different from that which would be dictated by impartial regard for the interest of all. Suppose the majority to be whites, the minority negroes, or vice versâ: is it likely that the majority would allow equal justice to the minority? Suppose the majority Catholics, the minority Protestants, or the reverse; will there not be the same danger? Or let the majority be English, the minority Irish, or the contrary: is there not a great probability of similar evil? In all countries there is a majority of poor, a minority who, in contradistinction, may be called rich. Between these two classes, on many questions, there is complete opposition of apparent interest.
Prediction Markets Should Be Legal
I submitted a public comment on Kalshi’s request to the CFTC to create a prediction market on which political party will be in control of each chamber of the U.S. Congress.
Political election markets have proven themselves to be a powerful tool for forecasting elections and are typically more accurate, timely and complete than alternative methods such as polls. These markets have been widely used by researchers to understand political behaviour, institutions and events. e.g. see the research summarized here
https://www.nber.org/papers/w18222
and an important application to understanding the costs of war here:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1468-0335.2008.00750.x
Political election markets are also useful to hedgers, traders and other market participants to help them predict and incorporate information about risks into asset prices.
Markets similar to political election markets have been used to predict other important events such as the prospects for war or scientific breakthroughs and have been adopted by firms to better estimate sales forecasts and other relevant events.
The United States has pioneered the use of these innovative markets and we should continue to lead in creating better means of aggreating information to improve the quality of decision making.
Richard Hanania interviews me
78 minutes. With transcript. It starts off as a normal “talent conversation,” but soon takes other paths. We discuss feminization in some detail, libertarianism too. Here is part of Richard’s summary:
Another one of Tyler’s traits that came out in this conversation is his detached skepticism regarding fashionable intellectual trends. For example, I’d taken it for granted that social media has made elite culture more pessimistic and angry, but his answer when I asked about the topic made me reconsider my view.
Interesting throughout, and here is one excerpt:
Tyler: It seems to me social media are probably bad for 12- to 14-year-old girls, and probably good for most of the rest of us. That would be my most intuitive answer, but very subject to revision.
Richard: I think it’s good. I mean, I think it’s good for me…
Tyler: But they’re bad for a lot of academics. I guess, they get classified in…
Richard: They might be at the…
Tyler: They get lumped in with the 12 to 14-year-old girls, right?
Richard: [laughs] There might be a similarity there.
Tyler: They have something in common.
Recommended.
*The Culture Transplant: How Migrants Make the Economies They Move To a Lot Like the Ones They Left*
That is the new forthcoming book by Garett Jones (and his wisdom), I am very much looking forward to reading/rereading the final version of this one! (See the link for my blurb based on a pre-pub reading.) Here is the Amazon summary:
Over the last two decades, as economists began using big datasets and modern computing power to reveal the sources of national prosperity, their statistical results kept pointing toward the power of culture to drive the wealth of nations. In The Culture Transplant, Garett Jones documents the cultural foundations of cross-country income differences, showing that immigrants import cultural attitudes from their homelands―toward saving, toward trust, and toward the role of government―that persist for decades, and likely for centuries, in their new national homes. Full assimilation in a generation or two, Jones reports, is a myth. And the cultural traits migrants bring to their new homes have enduring effects upon a nation’s economic potential.
Built upon mainstream, well-reviewed academic research that hasn’t pierced the public consciousness, this book offers a compelling refutation of an unspoken consensus that a nation’s economic and political institutions won’t be changed by immigration. Jones refutes the common view that we can discuss migration policy without considering whether migration can, over a few generations, substantially transform the economic and political institutions of a nation. And since most of the world’s technological innovations come from just a handful of nations, Jones concludes, the entire world has a stake in whether migration policy will help or hurt the quality of government and thus the quality of scientific breakthroughs in those rare innovation powerhouses.
You can pre-order here, due out November 15.
US Economic Freedom is Falling
A big drop in Economic Freedom, mostly due to pandemic policies. Not surprising but will we recover? This is from the just released Economic Freedom of the World 2022 Annual Report.
Do conservatives believe in a dangerous world?
One recent study says no:
Decades of research suggest a correlation between belief in a dangerous world and political conservatism. However, research relied on a scale that may overemphasize certain types of dangers. Furthermore, few other world beliefs have been investigated, such that fundamental worldview differences between liberals and conservatives remain largely unknown. A preregistered study of nine samples (N = 5,461; mostly US Americans) found a negligible association between a newly improved measure of generalized dangerous world belief and conservatism, and that the original scale emphasized certain dangers more salient to conservatives (e.g., societal decline) over others most salient for liberals (e.g., injustice). Across many measures of political attitudes, other world beliefs—such as beliefs that the world is Hierarchical, Intentional, Just, and Worth Exploring—each explained several times more variance than dangerous world belief. This suggests the relevance of dangerous world belief to political attitudes has been overstated, and examining other world beliefs may yield insights.
That is from Jeremy D.W. Clinton and Nicholas Kerry. I do not think you should over-index on these new results. But in general you should start seeing this literature as increasingly dubious.
*The Rise and Fall of the EAST*
The author is Yasheng Huang of MIT and the subtitle is Examination, Autocracy, Stability, and Technology in Chinese History and Today. Forthcoming from Yale University Press in 2023. Excerpt:
For many years, I struggled to come up with a coherent explanation for the power, the reach, and the policy discretion of the Chinese state. There is coercion, ideological indoctrination, and probably a fair amount of societal consent as well.
Keju [the civil service exam system] had a deep penetration both cross-sectionally in society and across time in history. It was all encompassing, laying claims to time, efforts and cognitive investments of a significant swath of Chinese population. It was incubatory of values, norms, and cognitions, therefore impacting ideology and epistemology of Chinese minds. It was a state institution designed to augment the power and the capabilities of the state. Directly, the state monopolized the very best human capital; indirectly, the state deprived society access to talent and preempted organized religion, commerce, and intelligentsia. The Chinese state in history and today is an imprinted version of this Keju system.
Chinese state is strong because it reigns without a society.
Among the other interesting features of this book, including many, are:
There is a very useful discussion of Sui Wendi, the man who reunified China (and is barely known in the West).
Just how much the exam system expanded in the 17th century, to support a larger and growing Chinese state.
Why Chinese bureaucrats in the provinces tend to be generalists and the ministerial officials tend to be specialists.
Oliver Williamson is applied and cited throughout.
“A state without society is a vertically integrated organization…Keju’s powerful platform effect crowded and stymied alternative mobility channels…the Keju was an anti-mobility mobility channel.”
“In the 1890s, China’s population literacy was only 18 percent, way below 95 percent of England and the Netherlands.”
Exam competition takes up so much of individual mind space. Furthermore the competition atomizes society and makes it harder to form the kinds of collective movements that might lead to democracy.
The author sees the 1980s as the truly revolutionary time in Chinese history.
“Throughout Chinese history very few emperors were toppled by their generals or senior functionaries, a sharp contrast with the Roman Empire.”
I could say much more. This is by far the best book on Chinese bureaucracy I have read, and probably one of the best books on China period. I am sure many of the claims will be contested, but the author tries in a very serious way to be explanatory and to actually answer the questions about China you care about. So few books even attempt that!
Addendum: Note that the author also wrote Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics, another of my favorite books about China.
The Kremlin cuts off the gas
Russia’s gas supplies to Europe via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline will not resume in full until the “collective west” lifts sanctions against Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin has said.
Here is more from the FT. This seems to me a turning point of sorts. Remember the old chess saying: “The threat is stronger than the execution”? Well, this is the execution!
Europe bears the full burden today, and rather soon in the winter to come. Over time, however, Europe will adjust and the Russian position and threat value will weaken each period.
It would make sense as a strategy if Russia were about to start negotiating for peace, but that is not my prediction.
It also would make sense if Russia thinks Europe is at the very end of its rope, and now will crack. That also does not seem correct for me.
Or maybe Russia can’t think of anything else to do, and so they do this rather than nothing. That would signal the Russian position is weaker than it looks. Maybe.
In some accounts, the Kremlin has left itself a partial out. Still, from the point of view of public opinion, very few are aware of this out. So the Kremlin may have shot its negotiating wad.
Which means…? How do we model this…?
Public policies as instruction
That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt:
Minimum-wage hikes also send the wrong message to voters. Yes, there is literature suggesting that such increases destroy far fewer jobs than previously thought, and may have considerable ancillary benefits, such as preventing suicides. Still, a minimum wage is a kind of price control, and most price controls are bad. Voters may not realize the subtle ways in which minimum-wage hikes are different (and better) from most price controls. Instead, they get the message that the path to higher living standards is through government fiat, rather than better productivity.
If you think that far-fetched, consider the initiative passed by the California Senate this week. The bill would create a government panel to set wages and workplace standards for all fast-food workers in the state, and labor-union backers hope the plan will spread nationally. That may or may not happen, but those are precisely the paths that are opened up by minimum-wage advocacy. Many people hear a bigger and more ambitious message than the one the speaker wishes to send.
So what messages, in the broadest terms, should policies convey? I would like to see increased respect for cosmopolitanism, tolerance, science, just laws, dynamic markets, free speech and the importance of ongoing productivity gains. Obviously any person’s list will depend on his or her values, but for me the educational purposes are more than just a secondary factor. When it comes to prioritizing reforms, the focus should be on those that will “give people the right idea,” so to speak.
The mere fact that you are uncertain about such effects does not mean you can or should ignore them. They are there, whether you like it or not.
The wisdom of Garett Jones
Of course this Bloomberg column was inspired by Garett’s work, not to mention Paleo-Caplanianism! Here is one excerpt, with the focus being on the annoying tendency to label various policies “anti-democratic”:
The danger is that “stuff I agree with” will increasingly be labeled as “democratic,” while anything someone opposes will be called “anti-democratic.” Democracy thus comes to be seen as a way to enact a series of personal preferences rather than a (mostly) beneficial impersonal mechanism for making collective decisions…
It is also harmful to call the Dobbs decision anti-democratic when what you’re really arguing for is greater involvement by the federal government in abortion policy — a defensible view. No one says the Swiss government is “anti-democratic” because it puts so many decisions (for better or worse) into the hands of the cantons. And pointing out that many US state governments are not as democratic as you might prefer does not overturn this logic.
It would be more honest, and more accurate, simply to note that court put the decision into the hands of (imperfectly) democratic state governments, and that you disagree with the decisions of those governments.
By conflating “what’s right” with “what’s democratic,” you may end up fooling yourself about the popularity of your own views. If you attribute the failure of your views to prevail to “non-democratic” or “anti-democratic” forces, you might conclude the world simply needs more majoritarianism, more referenda, more voting.
Those may or may not be correct conclusions. But they should be judged empirically, rather than following from people’s idiosyncratic terminology about what they mean by “democracy” — and, by extension, “anti-democratic.”
I am worried about some of the increasing polarization on this issue. If you are on “the Left,” and you think various social and policy trends are so immoral, how is it exactly that you avoid becoming yourself “anti-democratic”? Even though at the same time you are cursing everything you don’t like as “anti-democratic” too?
How does such a “power grab” stay secret?
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced on Friday that former High Court Justice Virginia Bell will report on Nov. 25 on the findings of her inquiry into [Scott] Morrison’s secret power grab.
Morrison secretly appointed himself to five ministerial roles between March 2020 and May 2021, usually without the knowledge of the original minister.
Albanese, who replaced Morrison in May elections, cited Solicitor-General Stephen Donaghue’s legal opinion that while the appointments were legal they undermined the principle of responsible government….
Morrison, who is now an opposition lawmaker, maintains that he gave himself the portfolios of health, finance, treasury, resources and home affairs as an emergency measure made necessary by the coronavirus crisis.
But his only known use of the secret powers had nothing to do with the pandemic. He overturned a decision by former Resources Minister Keith Pitt to approve a contentious gas drilling project near the north Sydney coast that would have harmed his conservative coalition’s reelection chances.
Here is the full story. But really people — how is this secrecy possible? No one was tempted to mention this on Twitter? Did it involve no paperwork? Isn’t such a “secret” minister just a windowless monad? Or why not install loyal “lackey type” subordinates instead? Or is this like Trump’s “document declassification,” existing mainly in the mind of the executive and nowhere else? Model this for me please!!
Kin-based institutions and economic development
Though many theories have been advanced to account for global differences in economic prosperity, little attention has been paid to the oldest and most fundamental of human institutions: kin-based institutions—the set of social norms governing descent, marriage, clan membership, post-marital residence and family organization. Here, focusing on an anthropologically well established dimension of kinship, we establish a robust and economically significant negative association between the tightness and breadth of kin-based institutions—their kinship intensity—and economic development. To measure kinship intensity and economic development, we deploy both quantified ethnographic observations on kinship and genotypic measures (which proxy endogamous marriage patterns) with data on satellite nighttime luminosity and regional GDP. Our results are robust to controlling for a suite of geographic and cultural variables and hold across countries, within countries at both the regional and ethnolinguistic levels, and within countries in a spatial regression discontinuity analysis. Considering potential mechanisms, we discuss evidence consistent with kinship intensity indirectly impacting economic development via its effects on the division of labor, cultural psychology, institutions, and innovation.
That is a new and very important paper by Duman Bahrami-Rad, Jonathan Beauchamp, Joseph Henrich, and Jonathan Schulz, the two Jonathans being my colleagues at GMU.