Category: Political Science
Are artificial wombs a left-wing or right-wing proposal?
On one hand, it is pro-natalist, so that makes it right-wing.
On the other hand it is (ostensibly?) feminist, relieving a burden on women, so that makes it left-wing.
It also could be construed as trying to “equalize family,” which would be left-wing or even communist.
Under another reading, it is about “corporate babies,” which pushes it a back into the right-wing camp.
From yet another perspective, no one really thinks it will happen, at least not soon. So the symbolic message for the world of today is “Women are not that important and they could be replaced by machines.” Maybe neither the right-wing nor the left-wing like that message (albeit for different reasons), but it has a tinge of “someday this differential burden will be gone and then you left-wing feminists will need to stop whining.”
Which puts it back a bit into the right-wing camp.
So which is it?
Modeling Vladimir Putin
That is the subject of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt:
Economists typically define rationality as the effective use of means to achieve ends — spending your money for maximum enjoyment, for example. That is fine for some purposes, but it fails when it comes to understanding those political leaders, Putin included, who are obsessed with power.
The economic framework doesn’t work well when power is the end itself. While no one can truly know what’s in the mind of Putin, he has ruled Russia for 22 years, a pretty good sign that he cares about power. Putin also grew up in an era — as a KGB agent behind the Iron Curtain — when power was the currency of status.
So how does the quest for power make Putin difficult to deter?
Deterrence, by its nature, attempts to limit the power of the deterred person. If a person cares about many things, not just power, they will respond to deterrence by seeking less power and spending more on other things, such as quiet contemplation or time with family. If a person cares mainly about power, however, the induced response to deterrence is to try to seize back more power.
In other words, trying to make power “more expensive” for Putin is not guaranteed to work. The price of enjoying power might go up — say, because of threatened sanctions — but the thirst for renewed power goes up too, precisely because some power has been taken away.
Deterrence does not always work in international affairs, or in other situations with power-mad individuals. Napoleon and Hitler faced high costs from their blunders, but still they proceeded with ambitious and ultimately foolish military plans. Many revolutionaries try to seize power and die doing so.
…It is a common economic trope to insist that “incentives matter.” While true, it does not necessarily follow that deterrence therefore works. Putin isn’t looking to retire and spend more time on one of his luxurious yachts. The full consequences of that fact are just now becoming clear.
Note that as a powerful leader crosses the “will be allowed to retire peacefully” line, as Putin certainly has, he has to become obsessed with power all the more, even if the demand for traditional goods and services does not fade away. Without ongoing power, the life of that leader simply will end and all consumption will fall to zero, therefore cementing in a kind of power addiction all the more.
My Israel-only Conversation with the excellent Russ Roberts
Here is the audio, video, and transcript, here is the CWT summary:
In this special crossover special with EconTalk, Tyler interviews Russ Roberts about his new life in Israel as president of Shalem College. They discuss why there are so few new universities, managing teams in the face of linguistic and cultural barriers, how Israeli society could adapt to the loss of universal military service, why Israeli TV is so good, what American Jews don’t understand about life in Israel, what his next leadership challenge will be, and much more.
We didn’t shy away from the tough stuff, here is one question:
COWEN: Let me ask you another super easy question. Let’s say we think that under current circumstances, a two-state solution would not lead to security either for Israel or for the resulting Palestinian state. Many people believe that. Let’s say also, as I think you believe, that a one-state solution where everyone votes would not lead to security for a current version of Israel or even a modified version of it.
Let’s say also that the current reliance of the Palestinian territories on the state of Israel for protection, security, intelligence, water — many important features of life — prevent those governing bodies from ever attaining sufficient autonomy to be a credible peace partner, guaranteer of its own security, and so on. From that point of view, what do we do? We’re not utilitarians. We’re thinking about what’s right and wrong. What’s the right thing to do?
Do read Russ’s answer! (Too long to excerpt.) And:
COWEN: Now, the United States has about 330 million people, yet there are more Israeli TV shows I want to watch than American TV shows. There’s Srugim, there’s Shtisel, there’s Prisoners of War, there’s In Judgment, there’s Tehran. There’s more. Why is Israeli TV so good?
ROBERTS: I’m glad you mentioned Prisoners of War, which doesn’t get enough — Prisoners of War is in my top five. If I had to list my top five, I’d pick Shtisel, Prisoners of War, The Americans, probably The Wire, and The Crown. Do you have a top five that you could reel off?
COWEN: The Sopranos would be my number one. Srugim and Prisoners of War plausibly would be in my top five.
We then consider the Israeli topic at hand. Interesting throughout, a very good dialogue.
When is a prediction right or wrong?
When I lived in Germany in the mid-1980s, it seemed obvious to me that the chances of a pending German reunification were pretty high. West Germany seemed obsessed with its status as a separated twin. That seemed everywhere in the serious literature and film of the time. Yet all my German friends insisted that my expectations were nonsense and that they absolutely had moved on and did not care one whit about East Germany. Still, to me the yearnings were obvious.
At that time I was expecting an overture from the Soviet Union, bringing the two Germanies together and cementing a status somewhere between Finlandization and outright Soviet sympathies. Neutral de jure, but never much upsetting the larger neighbor to the east. The United States wouldn’t much like that arrangement, and would be preparing to pull out its troops, but what could it do?
I simply could not imagine that the USSR would give up its East Germany prize and so 1989-1992 came as a major shock to me. I traveled to the new, free East Germany as soon as I could, not long after the Wall came down, because I wanted to witness what was happening.
For many years, while I was pleased by the unfolding of events, and pleased to have seen an inkling of reunification, I felt my prediction was absolutely, totally wrong.
But these days!? My prediction was maybe not so wrong after all. There are even reports — not yet confirmed — that Germany will not allow the UK to use its airspace to ship arms to Ukraine.
Model this and who are the real liberals anyway?
– Fifty-nine percent (59%) of Democratic voters would favor a government policy requiring that citizens remain confined to their homes at all times, except for emergencies, if they refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccine. Such a proposal is opposed by 61% of all likely voters, including 79% of Republicans and 71% of unaffiliated voters.
– Nearly half (48%) of Democratic voters think federal and state governments should be able to fine or imprison individuals who publicly question the efficacy of the existing COVID-19 vaccines on social media, television, radio, or in online or digital publications. Only 27% of all voters – including just 14% of Republicans and 18% of unaffiliated voters – favor criminal punishment of vaccine critics.
– Forty-five percent (45%) of Democrats would favor governments requiring citizens to temporarily live in designated facilities or locations if they refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccine. Such a policy would be opposed by a strong majority (71%) of all voters, with 78% of Republicans and 64% of unaffiliated voters saying they would Strongly Oppose putting the unvaccinated in “designated facilities.”
That is from a Rasmussen poll. You might consider Rasmussen a right-leaning institution, but these kinds of results should not be possible even in somewhat slanted polls (methodology here). Furthermore, this poll came out January 13, and it hasn’t exactly received a ton of attention from mainstream media, can you model that too? Wouldn’t it be awful even if this poll were off by 2x?
One lesson is that it is not always good for your party if it is on the winning side of the culture wars.
The prisoner’s dilemma for prisoners and Mafia men
We develop experimental evidence on cooperation and response to sanctions by running prisoner’s dilemma and third party punishment games on three different pools of subjects; students, ordinary criminals and Camorristi (Neapolitan ‘Mafiosi’). The latter two groups were recruited from within prisons. Camorra prisoners show a high degree of cooperativeness and a strong tendency to punish defectors, as well as a clear rejection of the imposition of external rules even at significant cost to themselves. The subsequent econometric analysis further enriches our understanding demonstrating inter alia that individuals’ locus of control and reciprocity are associated with quite different and opposing behaviours amongst different participant types; a strong sense of self-determination and reciprocity both imply a higher propensity to punish for Camorra inmates, but quite the opposite for ordinary criminals, further reinforcing the contrast between the behaviour of ordinary criminals and the strong internal mores of Camorra clans.
Here is the paper by Annamarie Nese, et.al., via Ethan Mollick and Ilya Novak.
What is actually a heretical view?
I was two days ago at Hereticon, and wondering which views actually should be considered heretical. It seems there are some distinct categories, for instance here are a few categories of the “partially heretical”:
1. Used to be heretical, or on the verge of switching.
Favoring gay marriage, or more on the border thinking that UFOs are of alien origin. The latter view is now presented with a straight face by former presidents and CIA heads, so it is not heretical any more. In polls, it is not even so unusual amongst the American public, though some elites will mock it and it remains outside of the mainstream.
2. It’s heretical to say but the actual idea is not heretical.
Presenting “eugenics” ideas is heretical, but talking about “dating” and “matchmaking” is not. Embryo selection is on the verge of not being heretical, if it ever was. Or talking about “the feminization of society” is modestly heretical, but believing women have a much greater cultural influence is not heretical at all. You just have to talk about it the right way.
3. The idea is not heretical globally.
But it might be heretical domestically, such as saying “the CCP is great.” Or “women should have their kids really young.” Those are a special category of heretical ideas, extremely common around the world, for better or worse, but still a no-no in some locales.
4. Popular views, but heretical with many elites.
Try “Darwin is wrong,” or “Facebook is fine.” How about “autocracy is good”? NB: In all of these discussions, I am not considering whether the belief is right or wrong.
Which would be a truly heretical belief that does not fall into these “partially heretical” categories? But it can’t be absurd either, for instance it is not “heretical” for me to believe I can jump one hundred feet in the air, rather it is simply stupid. I am also not looking for beliefs that offend or insult groups per se, as that is too easy. “Group X is crummy” is not interesting for my purposes.
Maybe here are a few outright heretical views, again noting that I am not endorsing them:
5. ESP works.
6. Whales are smarter than people and deeper thinkers too.
7. In fact you can trust Congress to do the right thing.
8. Ten percent inflation a year is just fine.
9. Fortunately America has so many guns that we couldn’t do very strict lockdowns for Covid.
10. It would be better if humans never had existed, as they have destroyed more welfare than they created. Most of all because of their effects on non-human animals.
11. Non-human animals suffer more than they enjoy, and it would be better if they did not exist.
12. American TV was much better in the 1960s and 1970s.
What else?
Why Does the CDC Do This?
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday advised Americans to avoid travel to Canada, citing “very high” levels of the coronavirus.
Canada was placed under a Level 4 travel health notice — the highest category…“Because of the current situation in Canada, even fully vaccinated travelers may be at risk for getting and spreading Covid-19 variants,” the C.D.C. said.
It’s very strange. It’s as if the CDC are on auto pilot and even after two years can’t recognize that the United States may not be the safest place in the world. But why announce to everyone that they can’t compare risks? Why throw away so much credibility?
The political polarization of U.S. firms
Executive teams in U.S. firms are becoming increasingly partisan, leading to a political polarization of corporate America. We establish this new fact using political affiliations from voter registration records for top executives of S&P 1500 firms between 2008 and 2018. The rise in partisanship is explained by both an increasing share of Republican executives and increased sorting by partisan executives into firms with like-minded individuals. Further, we find that within a given firm-year, executives whose political views do not match those of the team’s majority have a higher probability of leaving the firm. The increase in partisanship is taking place despite executive teams becoming more diverse in terms of gender and race.
That is from a new paper by Vyacheslav Fos, Elisabeth Kempf, and Margarita Tsoutsoura.
Do all left-leaning institutions need to unionize?
That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt:
Columbia University, with its sizable endowment, is a relatively well-capitalized entity. Still, it’s appropriate to ask what problem is solved by a graduate student union. The main difficulty for these students seems to be a lack of jobs when they graduate, and a pay hike might crowd the field further, with unwelcome consequences for the job market. And in the long run, the university could simply cut back on its initial financial aid offerings. The point is, it is hard for graduate student unions to bargain effectively across many of the most relevant dimensions of their student and work experience.
In the meantime, all of these unions are introducing additional veto points into the workplace, sometimes slowing response times. If you run the business and plan to make a big change in how it operates, you might feel — either contractually or tactically — that you need to check with the union first. And if you are a Democrat and a pragmatist, you might prefer a more effective but less unionized DNC, which after all is a major promoter of unionization for the U.S. economy as a whole.
What would a less hypocritical version of a Republican organization look like? Should everyone be given equity shares, or should there be bonuses for star performers? Whatever the answer may be, it probably won’t be debated much in public, as Republicans tend to be more circumspect about such matters. That’s a danger for Republicans, who may find it harder to live up to their principles if no one is calling them to account.
The Democrats, in contrast, tend to stage noisy debates — most of which, sooner or later, seem to settle in the same direction. That’s not a healthy norm of discourse, either.
Recommended.
Japan facts of the day
Compared with the previous year, the survey showed a drop in the number of people who wanted to work and study abroad, work with foreigners in Japan and learn foreign languages. Most notably the percentage of those who wanted to “use English for a job” declined from its 2020 peak by 10.6 points to 38 per cent.
And:
…the support for the ruling Liberal Democratic party among young people was higher than in other generations. That, said Junji Nakagawa, a professor at Chuo Gakuin University, reflected a view among 20-year-olds that the political landscape was unlikely to ever change.
Here is more from the FT, in part focusing on demographics, sobering throughout.
My Holberg Prize talk honoring Cass Sunstein
This is from 2018, I hadn’t know it was put on-line this last summer. The title is about threats to democracy, but much of the actual 24-minute talk is about Cass. Cass won the Holberg Prize that year, and I was asked to be one of the honoring speakers at the ceremony. Here goes:
The fish and chips in Bergen was excellent.
And for this pointer I thank Clara B. Jones.
Noah Smith Substack interviews me
Here is the interview. Here is one excerpt:
N.S.: So how would you generally describe the zeitgeist of the moment, if you had to give a simple summary? What do you think are a couple of most important trends in culture and thought right now? My impression has been that we’re sort of in a replay of the 70s — a period of exhaustion after several years of intense social unrest, where people are looking around for new cultural and economic paradigms to replace the ones we just smashed. But maybe I’ve just been reading too many Rick Perlstein books?
T.C.: I view the 1970s as a materialistic time, sexually highly charged, and America running into some significant real resource constraints, at least initially stemming from high oil prices. Mainstream culture was often fairly crass — just look at disco, or the ascendancy of mainstream network television. The current time I see as quite different. Sexually, we are withdrawing. Society is more feminized. America has far more immigrants. And we are obsessed with the virtual and with make-believe, to a degree the 1970s could not have imagined. Bruno Macaes is one author who is really on the right track here, with his emphasis on how America is building virtual and indeed often “unreal” fantasies.
I think today the variance of weirdness is increasing. Conformists can conform like never before, due say to social media and the Girardian desire to mimic others. But unusual people can connect with other unusual people, and make each other much weirder and more “niche.” For instance, every possible variant of political views seems to be “out there” these days, and perhaps that is not entirely reassuring. A higher variance for weirdness probably encourages creativity. But is it a positive development on net? We are going to find out.
Recommended throughout, and of course do subscribe to Noah’s Substack.
How to elect Republicans
In New York, racial minorities are automatically eligible for scarce COVID-19 therapeutics, regardless of age or underlying conditions. In Utah, “Latinx ethnicity” counts for more points than “congestive heart failure” in a patient’s “COVID-19 risk score”—the state’s framework for allocating monoclonal antibodies. And in Minnesota, health officials have devised their own “ethical framework” that prioritizes black 18-year-olds over white 64-year-olds—even though the latter are at much higher risk of severe disease.
These schemes have sparked widespread condemnation of the state governments implementing them. But the idea to use race to determine drug eligibility wasn’t hatched in local health departments; it came directly from the federal Food and Drug Administration.
Here is the full story, I am very willing to issue a correction if it turns out anything posted from this is wrong.
Is the Beijing Consensus collapsing?
From my latest Bloomberg column:
The more dramatic developments have come from China itself. China did effectively wield state power to build infrastructure, manage its cities and boost economic growth. And most advocates of the Washington Consensus underestimated how well that process would go.
But along the way, China became addicted to state power. Whenever there was a problem in Chinese society, the government ran to the rescue. The most dramatic example was the extreme use of fiscal policy to forestall the 2008 financial crisis from spreading to China.
Yet this general application of state power, even if successful in a particular instance, brought a great danger: The Chinese were left with overdeveloped state-capacity muscles and underdeveloped civil-society capabilities. Over the last several years the Chinese government has done much to restrict civil society, free speech and religion within China. Now much of the world, including but not limited to China’s neighbors, is afraid of Chinese state power.
Now, because state power has its limits, it is difficult for China to solve many of its most fundamental problems. Chinese leaders are worried about the country’s low birth rate, for instance, but lifting restrictions on the number of children has not yet helped increase the birth rate. In many societies, it is religious families that have more children, but promoting religion is not a remedy that comes easily to China today.
And how will China deal with the pending spread of the omicron variant of Covid-19? The Communist Party staked its legitimacy on the claim that it could control Covid while the U.S. could not. Soon Chinese citizens may be in for a rude awakening, especially if the Chinese vaccines are not so effective.
Recommended.