Category: The Arts

Mario Vargas Llosa on Liberty

by  Alex Tabarrok in

Mario Vargas Llosa in the WSJ:

There are those who in the name of the free market have supported Latin American dictatorships whose iron hand of repression was said to be necessary to allow business to function, betraying the very principles of human rights that free economies rest upon. Then there are those who have coldly reduced all questions of humanity to a matter of economics and see the market as a panacea. In doing so they ignore the role of ideas and culture, the true foundation of civilization. Without customs and shared beliefs to breathe life into democracy and the market, we are reduced to the Darwinian struggle of atomistic and selfish actors that many on the left rightfully see as inhuman.

What is lost on the collectivists, on the other hand, is the prime importance of individual freedom for societies to flourish and economies to thrive. This is the core insight of true liberalism: All individual freedoms are part of an inseparable whole. Political and economic liberties cannot be bifurcated. Mankind has inherited this wisdom from millennia of experience, and our understanding has been enriched further by the great liberal thinkers, some of my favorites being Isaiah Berlin, Karl Popper, F.A. Hayek and Ludwig von Mises. They have described the path out of darkness and toward a brighter future of freedom and universal appreciation for the values of human dignity….

Many cling to hopes that the economy can be centrally planned. Education, health care, housing, money and banking, crime control, transportation, energy and far more follow the failed command-and-control model that has been repeatedly discredited. Some look to nationalist and statist solutions to trade imbalances and migration problems, instead of toward greater freedom.

…The search for liberty is simply part of the greater search for a world where respect for the rule of law and human rights is universal—a world free of dictators, terrorists, warmongers and fanatics, where men and women of all nationalities, races, traditions and creeds can coexist in the culture of freedom, where borders give way to bridges that people cross to reach their goals limited only by free will and respect for one another’s rights. It is a search to which I’ve dedicated my writing, and so many have taken notice. But is it not a search to which we should all devote our very lives? The answer is clear when we see what is at stake.

I am thrilled that Mario Vargas Llosa, Lech Wałęsa and economist Robert Higgs  will receive the Alexis de Tocqueville Award from the Independent Institute (where I am research director) at our Gala on Nov. 15, these remarks were written for that occasion.

Groucho Marx and T.S.Eliot (really)

by  Tyler Cowen in

Groucho cannot resist the compulsion to remind one of literature’s most famous expatriates of his origins: “Dear Tom…I think I read somewhere that your first name is the same as Tom Gibbons’, a prizefighter who once lived in St Paul.” He is quite open about his ignorance of the very public details of the poet’s life: “My best to you and your lovely wife, whoever she may be.” He pushes Eliot’s origins in his face. In another letter he calls him an “early American, (I don’t mean that you are an old piece of furniture, but you are a fugitive from St Louis)…” In the same letter he relays to Eliot that “the name Tom fits many things. There was once a famous Jewish actor named Thomashevsky. All male cats are named Tom—unless they have been fixed.” He concludes by assuring the famously buttoned-down author that “I would be interested in reading your views on sex, so don’t hesitate. Confide in me.”

Here is much more, hat tip goes to Mike Tamada.

Alebron asks

by  Tyler Cowen in

He is a loyal MR reader:

The combination of powerful smartphones and social internet sites has given rise to an interesting phenomenon at concerts: people spend a massive chunk of the time at concerts documenting their concert-going. Is technology like this making meta-experience more important to people than experience? Is an experience that you can’t document/signal less valuable? Is this a new phenomenon?

Arguably the meta-experience was always more important, we just produce the meta-experience more efficiently these days.  The very best cultural experiences are thus more leveraged in the direction of potent final output, and thus they sell for higher prices.  On top of that is a sector of really cheap stuff, mostly illusory in nature.  Imagine someone who reads ESPN.com every day and fancies himself a follower of the NBA, without hardly seeing a game or spending money on the sport.  There is a polarization of cultural prices and experiences, and hollowing out of the middle.  If your output isn’t spectacular or culturally central, it will be hard to cover your fixed costs and you will have to go niche and super-cheap.

That’s what I think we are seeing.  Overall it is good for consumers, bad for Platonists.

Markets in everything the law of one price?

by  Tyler Cowen in

As an investment, cash is considered a conservative bet. Tonight in Melbourne, a confident buyer took a punt that sometimes, in certain company, cash is worth more as art than money in the bank.

As the opening lot of the Deutscher and Hackett auction, a single wad of $20,000 cash – an artwork called Currency – was sold for $17,500. When the 22 per cent buyer’s premium is added, the total cost comes to $21,350.

The work – by Sydney artist Denis Beaubois, and brought to life with a $20,000 grant from the Australia Council – was divided into two lots of 100 uncirculated $100 banknotes.

Deutscher and Hackett had given it an estimate of $15,000-$25,000, with both extremes sending competing messages about the inflationary value of the work. The notes can still be used as legal tender, according to the artist.

You will note that the winning bidder was not a Swiss bank.  Here is more and for the pointer I thank Zac Gross.

The Benefits of Fiscal Illusion

by  Alex Tabarrok in

David Wessel does a good job explaining how the Gang of Six plan is both a tax cut and a tax increase:

The Gang of Six, a bipartisan group of senators, threw its deficit-reduction package into the arena Tuesday and it is variously described as increasing tax revenues by $1 trillion over 10 years and also decreasing them by $1.5 trillion over 10 years. Huh?

Measured against current law, the Gang of Six plan is a tax cut. The law currently says that the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of 2012 for everyone and that the pesky Alternative Minimum Tax will reach deeper into the middle class (because it doesn’t automatically adjust its thresholds for inflation).

The Gang of Six, among other things, would eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax—that alone would cost the Treasury about $1.7 trillion versus current law. Altogether, the various tax changes in the Gang of Six plan would reduce tax revenues by $1.5 trillion.

But no one expects current law to prevail. Congress every year, for instance, puts a patch on the Alternative Minimum Tax so it won’t hit more families. And both the White House and many Republicans want to extend the Bush tax cuts for taxpayers with incomes under $250,000 a year. (The argument is over expending them for taxpayers with higher incomes.)

So budget wonks have developed “alternative” or “realistic” baselines. The Bowles-Simpson fiscal commission used such a baseline, borrowing one developed by the Obama White House. Among other things, that yardstick assumes the AMT is patched year after year, and assumes the tax cuts for the under $250,000 crowd are extended. Against that baseline, the Gang of Six raises about $1 trillion revenue over 10 years, roughly the same sum that the Bowles-Simpson plan did. That’s how it’s also a tax increase.

Thus, if the Republican base reads it as a tax cut and the Democrat base reads it as a tax increase, we just might get a deal.

Ella and Louis offer relevant advice.

The Art of Bribery

by  Alex Tabarrok in

Interesting piece on bribery in China. The following four scenarios all have counterparts elsewhere but, as relayed by the author, in China the elegance of the art and the elegance of the bribe are all brought together with true appreciation.

The First Scenario:

The corrupted official can sell a fake painting at any rigged gallery. After coordinating with the official, the briber will go to the designated gallery and buy it at the agreed price plus the commission of the gallery owner. All of the three parties know that the painting is fake, but eventually they are all benefited. This fake painting can be reused and it can go through another bribery circulation of other “elegant” buyers and sellers.

The Second Scenario:

The briber puts a real and expensive painting at the gallery. The gallery marks down the price as if it were a fake painting. The official buys it as if he has the greatest bargain on earth. Sooner or later, the official can resell it at the right place, at the right time, and at the right price.

The Third Scenario:

The briber visits the official and gives him/her a real or fake painting as a present. Three days later, a seemingly unrelated person knocks the door of the official and buys that particular painting at an unreasonably high price. This buyer is actually a trusted subordinate of the briber, and, by doing so, the whole process does not involve the gallery whose owner will certainly ask for a commission.

The Fourth Scenario:

There are rigged auction houses all over China and they become the most suitable places for elegant corruption. The briber, first of all, gets a fake painting either from a gallery or a fake painting factory. Then, s/he provides relevant document proof of scholars and experts to take care of the problem of authenticity. These scholars and experts are paid to confirm the authenticity of this fake painting. They falsify every historical detail, evidence of painting style and scientific verification of the materials used. The forged painting is then given to the official as a gift and is auctioned at a very high price. Eventually, there is always someone coming from nowhere who wins the bid. Again, the bidder is a trusted person of the briber. These auction houses get hush money before the whole corruption process is completed.

Hat tip: Daniel Lippman.

Markets in everything

by  Tyler Cowen in

Intentionally flawed goods:

Artist Jeremy Hutchison commissioned a series of intentionally incorrect products from factories around the world.

“I asked them to make me one of their products, but to make it with an error,” Hutchison explains. “I specified that this error should render the object dysfunctional. And rather than my choosing the error, I wanted the factory worker who made it to choose what error to make. Whatever this worker chose to do, I would accept and pay for.”

Hutchison received a comb without tines…

My favorite things Hungary

by  Tyler Cowen in

The Austro-Hungarian empire does not count per se, so I will use the Hungarian language for demarcation.  As you might expect, there is lots:

1. Author: Peter Nadas, A Book of Memories, is a classic novel of ideas which is under-read in the United States.  Nadas has a new book coming out this fall.  Imre Kertesz doesn’t do much for me.

2. Movies: Bela Tarr, Satantango.  It’s over seven hours long, but don’t be put off.  It has some of the best shots of grazing cows and angry peasants committed to reel, and I wanted it to be longer.  It’s mesmerizing in a way that makes it one of the film classics of the new century.  I find Werckmeister Harmonies too corny but it has some fine scenes.  Less traditionally thought of as Hungarian is the great Emeric Pressburger, who collaborated with Michael Powell on numerous fine films.  Alexander Korda did The Thief of Baghdad.

3. Actor, Peter Lorre is the obvious choice, plus Bela Lugosi made the best Frankenstein ever, forget about Dracula.

4. Conductor: You have George Szell, Antal Dorati, Georg Solti, and Eugene Ormandy.  Szell was so often perfect, Dorati cut some of the best sounding records of all time, Solti’s whiplash style was either offputting or splendid, and Ormandy was deeper than he was given credit for.   Ivan Fischer is a more recent contender, for instance his Mahler’s 4th reflects a scrupulous concern with rehearsals.  Péter Eötvös is an excellent conductor of contemporary music.

5. Pianist: Gyorgy Cziffra and Ervin Nyiregyhazi are two memorable eccentrics.  Solti and Szell were underrated as pianists and Zoltan Kocsis is very good.  Don’t forget Franz Liszt, even though no recording has survived.

6. Scientist: There is Szilard, Teller, and von Neumann and many many others but can they come close to this top tier?  The options for Hungarian mathematicians defy belief.  Hungarian inventors were critical to the “great non-stagnation” of 1870-1940, including for the all-important electrical transformer; few if any of those names have survived much into general Western history which I suppose says something.

7. Artist: Victor Vasarely is the obvious choice, but I don’t like him so much.  This area seems oddly weak.  Am I forgetting something?  Mihaly Munkacsy anyone?

8. Economist: Janos Kornai comes to mind, and Melchior Palyi remains underrated.  I believe Milton Friedman’s parents were from Hungary.

The bottom line: You can’t gush enough about music and math and physics and science and invention.  The achievements from a small country are staggering and unprecedented.  Yet literature and painting are relatively weak.  Hungarian composers will get a post of their own, but there is a strong line-up of Liszt, Bartok, and Ligeti.  What else am I forgetting?  I can’t think of major films set in Hungary and I don’t count the Hollywoodesque The Shop Around the Corner even though nominally it is Budapest.

*Outsider Art*

by  Tyler Cowen in

This is a poem by Kay Ryan:

Most of it’s too dreary

or too cherry red.

If it’s a chair, it’s

covered with things

the savior said

or should have said —

dense admonishments

in nail polish

too small to be read.

If it’s a picture,

the frame is either

burnt matches glued together

or a regular frame painted over

to extend the picture. There never

seems to be a surface equal

to the needs of these people.

Their purpose wraps

around the backs of things

and under arms;

they gouge and hatch

and glue on charms

till likable materials —

apple crates and canning funnels —

lose their rural ease. We are not

pleased the way we thought

we would be pleased.

That poem is cited in the new and enjoyable book by David Orr, Beautiful & Pointless {A  Guide to Modern Poetry}.

*The Anatomy of Influence: Literature as a Way of Life*

by  Tyler Cowen in

That’s the new Harold Bloom book, which has all the strengths and weakness of Harold Bloom books (I am a fan).  Excerpt:

Picasso is reputed to have said he did not care who influenced him but he did not want to influence himself.

Bloom’s books are very good for motivating rereads of classics, in this case Walter Pater, Paul Valery, Shakespeare, Hart Crane, Walt Whitman, Leopardi, and Montaigne’s essay “On Experience,” among others.  Here is a weaker passage:

I recall first reading the poem when I was thirteen, thrilling to Satan and falling in love with Eve.  In those years I fell regularly in love with fictive heroines and encountered Eve after a year of infatuation with Thomas Hardy’s heroines, particularly Eustacia Vye…and Marty South… I all but wept when Marty South cut off her long, beautiful hair, while I joined Milton and Satan in their lust for Eve’s wanton tresses.

Still, he is one of the greatest readers ever, this is probably his last major book, he truly believes in his project, and the point about prompting rereads makes this — whatever its flaws — better than almost anything else you can pick up.