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The Jordan Peterson Moment

by  Tyler Cowen

That is the new David Brooks column, here is one excerpt:

Much of Peterson’s advice sounds to me like vague exhortatory banality. Like Hobbes and Nietzsche before him, he seems to imagine an overly brutalistic universe, nearly without benevolence, beauty, attachment and love. His recipe for self-improvement is solitary, nonrelational, unemotional. I’d say the lives of young men can be improved more through loving attachment than through Peterson’s joyless and graceless calls to self-sacrifice.

But the emphasis on strength of will, the bootstrap, the calls to toughness and self-respect — all of this touches some need in his audience. He doesn’t comfort. He demands: “Stop doing what you know to be wrong. … Say only those things that make you strong. Do only those things that you could speak of with honor.”

There is much more at the link.

Do Tibetan Buddhists fear death the most?

by  Tyler Cowen in

It is an old philosophical idea that if the future self is literally different from the current self, one should be less concerned with the death of the future self (Parfit, 1984). This paper examines the relation between attitudes about death and the self among Hindus, Westerners, and three Buddhist populations (Lay Tibetan, Lay Bhutanese, and monastic Tibetans). Compared with other groups, monastic Tibetans gave particularly strong denials of the continuity of self, across several measures. We predicted that the denial of self would be associated with a lower fear of death and greater generosity toward others. To our surprise, we found the opposite. Monastic Tibetan Buddhists showed significantly greater fear of death than any other group. The monastics were also less generous than any other group about the prospect of giving up a slightly longer life in order to extend the life of another.

The economist might call this an income vs. substitution effect, the income effect in this case predominating.

That is from “Death and the Self,” by Shaun Nichols,  Nina Strohminger, Arun Rai, and Jay Garfield.  Via Rolf Degen, who in turn notes on Twitter:

I don’t think that the terrible thing about dying is the expiration of the self. The terrible thing is that WE must leave – and the party goes on without us. Social comparison until the end.

There is this famous saying that being ostracized is like death, it is “social death”. But it goes further: Real death IS social death, it is like being ostracized by the living.

Wednesday assorted links

by  Tyler Cowen

1. Should investors eschew masculine hedge fund managers?

2. Selling and renting out private jets (NYT, interesting).

3. Unusual story, involves stealing wine from the boss on a rather large scale.

4. Yana, Kyle, and Spinoza in the news, as indeed they should be every day.

5. Stripe is ending Bitcoin support.

6. Information on Mercatus graduate fellowships, including visiting and short-term arrangements.

Tyler Cowen’s 12 rules for life

by  Tyler Cowen in

After reading Jordan Peterson’s 12 rules, a few people asked me what my list would look like.  I would stress that what follows is not a universal or eternally valid account, but rather a few ideas that strike me in the here and now, perhaps as the result of recent conversations.  I suspect the same is true for everyone’s rules lists, so please keep this in perspective.  Here goes:

1. Assume your temperament will always be somewhat childish and impatient, and set your rules accordingly, knowing that you cannot abide by rules for rules sake.  Hope to leverage your impatience toward your longer-run advantage.

2. Study the symbolic systems of art, music, literature. and religion, if only to help yourself better understand alternative points of view in political and intellectual discourse.  Don’t just spend time with the creations you like right away.  Avoid “devalue and dismiss.”

3. When the price goes up, buy less.  Try to understand what the price really is, however, and good luck with that.

4. Marry well.

5. Organize at least some significant portion of your knowledge of the world in terms of place, whether by country, region, or city.  If you do that, virtually every person will be interesting to you, if only because almost everyone has some valuable knowledge of particular places.

6. When shooting the basketball, give it more arc than you think is necessary.  Consistently.

7. Learn how to learn from those who offend you.

8. Cultivate mentors, and be willing to serve as mentors to others.  This never loses its importance.

9. I don’t know.

10. Heed Cowen’s Three Laws.

11. Do not heed Cowen’s Three Laws.

12. Every now and then read or reread Erasmus, Montaigne, Homer, Shakespeare, or Joyce’s Ulysses, so that you do not take any rules too seriously.  The human condition seems to defeat our attempts to order it.

Why are professors poorly paid?

by  Tyler Cowen in

From Daniel S. Hamermesh:

Using Current Population Survey data, I demonstrate a 15-percentage point wage disadvantage among academics compared to all other doctorate-holders with the same demographics. Time-diary data show that academics’ work hours are distributed more evenly over the week and day, although their total workweeks are equally long. This smoother distribution of work time accounts for as much as one-third of the wage disadvantage. Survey data (of economists only) indicate that flexible scheduling is an attraction, but only fourth among the characteristics of academic life.

Hamermesh then speculates the remaining difference may result from selection, namely that some people enjoy being less accountable to their superiors than do others.

Washington, D.C. New York City fact of the day

by  Tyler Cowen in

Washington also seems to be full of economists. We have 10 economists for every one member of the clergy, whereas in New York City there are 15 members of the clergy for every economist.

D.C. is the only major metropolitan area with more economists than clergy.  The Miami area is the one with the highest ratio of chefs to economists.  Here is the source, via Paul Winfree.

How to reform the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act

by  Tyler Cowen in

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is an excerpt:

Like it or not, this law is not going away — and there are some good reasons to have it. The U.S. has been the world leader in taking on corruption, and we shouldn’t give up that position without a fight. There has been a payoff, as other countries move in the American direction with tougher anti-bribery measures. Getting rid of the FCPA now would send the very worst possible message to the world. Furthermore, some aspects of the FCPA are useful in helping U.S. multinationals limit the demand for bribes, by claiming they are unable to comply for legal reasons.

Rather than junking the FCPA, we should consider reforming it, lowering its costs while simultaneously making it harder to use as an instrument of political retribution…

To improve the law, commentators have recommended adding a “willfulness” requirement for corporate criminal liability, limiting liabilities from the activities of subsidiaries or from previous acquisitions, clarifying exactly who counts as a “foreign official,” and more generally swinging the presumption back closer to innocence, especially for companies with active and responsible compliance programs. All of those changes could build in more safeguards for ambiguous cases and for companies that are basically engaged in honest business. Recently announced Department of Justice guidelines do take some steps in these directions, for instance by encouraging voluntary disclosure and remediation of infractions.

The column has plenty of information about how many companies violate FCPA — lots — and what is their chance of prosecution.  We would have to make the penalties at least eight times stiffer to make compliance profit-maximizing, at least on average.

The five most influential public intellectuals?

by  Tyler Cowen in

A few of you have been demanding this, here are those who come to mind, note that “influence” does not have to mean I agree with them.  And I am sticking with the West, otherwise Uncle Xi wins hands down.  In no particular order:

1. Jordan Peterson

2. Catherine Mackinnon

3. Ta-Nehisi Coates

4. Charles Murray

5. A composite alt-right thinker, mixing features of Curtis Yarvin, Steve Sailer, Steve Bannon, and a bunch of others.

In the fairly recent past, both Andrew Sullivan and Peter Singer would have been on this list, but not in 2018.  I would cite Michel Houllebecq as a figure who is important, and relatively influential, but more important than influential and thus not in the top five.  I am not sure if religious figures should qualify for this designation, for the time being I have not considered them.  Obama has a good claim, but adding elected leaders only confuses the matter, relative to what people are asking me for.

One list I saw, which I can no longer find through Google, had on it Peterson, Cass Sunstein, and Samantha Powers, plus two other names I forget.

Arguably a tech person should be on the list, but neither Elon Musk nor Peter Thiel have much written output, nor is either representative of the tech world as a whole.  Maybe a kind of composite tech CEO?  Bill Gates is also a plausible pick, even though to many intellectuals his ideas seem to be quite mainstream.  The mainstream, by definition, is highly influential!

An alternative list could be, again in no particular order:

1. Bill Gates

2. Mark Zuckerberg

3. Jeff Bezos

4. Peter Thiel

5. Brin and Page

6. Elon Musk

7. Jack Dorsey

How’s that?  Better?

“Get Out of Jail Free” Cards

by  Alex Tabarrok in

In the movies I’ve seen people who try to get out of a traffic ticket by telling the police officer they made a donation to the policeman’s ball, but those were comedies. I had no idea that not only does this exist there are official cards. In fact, the police in New York are livid that the number of cards is being limited:

The city’s police-officers union is cracking down on the number of “get out of jail free” courtesy cards distributed to cops to give to family and friends.

Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association boss Pat Lynch slashed the maximum number of cards that could be issued to current cops from 30 to 20, and to retirees from 20 to 10, sources told The Post.

The cards are often used to wiggle out of minor trouble such as speeding tickets, the theory being that presenting one suggests you know someone in the NYPD.

The rank and file is livid.

“They are treating active members like s–t, and retired members even worse than s–t,” griped an NYPD cop who retired on disability. “All the cops I spoke to were . . . very disappointed they couldn’t hand them out as Christmas gifts.”

A Christmas gift of institutionalized corruption.

Here’s another article on these cards which just gets all the more stunning.

First, there are tiers of cards. Silver cards are the highest honor given to citizens. It’s almost universally honored by officers, and can also help save money on insurance. Gold PBA cards are only given to police officers and their families. You’d be hard-pressed finding a cop who won’t honor a gold card.

Gold and silver cards! It gets better. You can buy these cards on eBay. Here’s a gold New Jersey card on sale for $114. A silver “family member” shield goes for $299. Some of these are probably fake. The gold and silver are rare but remember, cops get 20 to 30 regular cards so you can see why they might be upset at losing them.

The regular cards have become more common as NYC hires more police. The union may in fact be trying to bump up its monopoly profit by restricting supply.

The cards don’t just go to family members. The rot is deep:

Union officials say the cards are also public relations tools and tokens of appreciation handed out to politicians, judges, lawyers, businessmen, civil service workers and members of the news media.

A retired police officer on Quora explains how the privilege is enforced:

The officer who is presented with one of these cards will normally tell the violator to be more careful, give the card back, and send them on their way.

…The other option is potentially more perilous. The enforcement officer can issue the ticket or make the arrest in spite of the courtesy card. This is called “writing over the card.” There is a chance that the officer who issued the card will understand why the enforcement officer did what he did, and nothing will come of it. However, it is equally possible that the enforcement officer’s zeal will not be appreciated, and the enforcement officer will come to work one day to find his locker has been moved to the parking lot and filled with dog excrement.

He’s not kidding. Here is what seems like a real police officer on a cop chat room (from Mimesis law)

It’s important for me to get in touch with shield [omitted] and ask him why he felt it necessary to say “I’m not even going to look at that” to my PBA card and proceed [sic] to write a speeding ticket on the Bronx River Parkway yesterday afternoon to my fukking WIFE!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’ll show him the courtesy he so sorely lacks by not posting his name on a public forum.

Any help would be appreciated.  Please inbox me.

I will find you.

I find these cards especially odious as more and more police are funding themselves through fines and forfeitures. Discriminatory taxation increases the tax rate. It’s one rule for the ruler and another for the ruled.

The cards are not a secret but I agree with my colleague Mark Koyama who remarked:

Sometimes you find out something about the country you live in that makes it appear little better than a corrupt, tinpot, banana republic.

What is optimal group size for solving hard problems?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Galesic, M., Barkoczi, D., & Katsikopoulos, K. (2018). Smaller crowds outperform larger crowds and individuals in realistic task conditions. Decision, 5(1), 1-15.

Decisions about political, economic, legal, and health issues are often made by simple majority voting in groups that rarely exceed 30–40 members and are typically much smaller. Given that wisdom is usually attributed to large crowds, shouldn’t committees be larger? In many real-life situations, expert groups encounter a number of different tasks. Most are easy, with average individual accuracy being above chance, but some are surprisingly difficult, with most group members being wrong. Examples are elections with surprising outcomes, sudden turns in financial trends, or tricky knowledge questions. Most of the time, groups cannot predict in advance whether the next task will be easy or difficult. We show that under these circumstances moderately sized groups, whose members are selected randomly from a larger crowd, can achieve higher average accuracy across all tasks than either larger groups or individuals. This happens because an increase in group size can lead to a decrease in group accuracy for difficult tasks that is larger than the corresponding increase in accuracy for easy tasks. We derive this non-monotonic relationship between group size and accuracy from the Condorcet jury theorem and use simulations and further analyses to show that it holds under a variety of assumptions. We further show that situations favoring moderately sized groups occur in a variety of real-life situations including political, medical, and financial decisions and general knowledge tests. These results have implications for the design of decision-making bodies at all levels of policy.

I have heard a number of CEOs and directors claim that organizations change fundamentally once they start exceeding fifty employees, a number only slightly above the cited optimum here.  But if only for reasons of sales and marketing and branding, it does in fact make sense, on net, for many institutions to exceed that number of employees.

Here is the paper, and for the pointer I thank the excellent Kevin Lewis.