Our non-gay military

by  Tyler Cowen in

It appears that the family of Jared Guinther, an 18-year-old from Oregon, was trying to get him released from the army, which recruited him in spite of the fact that he is autistic. 
Guinther, who rarely speaks, "wasn’t even aware of the war in Iraq
until a recruiter enlisted him last fall to be a calvary scout, the
Army’s most dangerous job".  Guinther’s mother tried to intervene, but
the recruiter told her that he himself was dyslexic and that Jared
"doesn’t need mommy to make his decisions for him".

Here is further information.

Jeff Koons and the Test of Time

by  Tyler Cowen in

It will be so rich, 200 years from now, to look back at the art that Jeff is creating today. It might all look quite quaint and sweet, and the graphic quality will look retro. And, of course, the vacuum cleaners will look like pieces of a stagecoach. But it will let people know that we did understand the weirdness of our world.

Read more here.  I sympathize with Jeff Koons.  One of my goals in writing this blog is to help people understand the weirdness of our world.  Here is one sculpture by Jeff Koons; try this too.

The Dark Ages were Dark

by  Tyler Cowen in

It is currently deeply unfashionable to state that anything like a ‘crisis’ or a ‘decline’ occurred at the end of the Roman empire, let alone that a ‘civilization’ collapsed and a ‘dark age’ ensued.  The new orthodoxy is that the Roman world, in both the East and the West, was slowly, and essentially painlessly, ‘transformed’ into a medieval form.  However, there is an insuperable problem with this new view; it does not fit the mass of archaeological evidence now available, which shows a startling decline in western standards of living during the fifth to seventh centuries.  This was a change that affected everyone, from peasants to kings, even the bodies of saints resting in their churches.  It was no mere transformation — it was decline on a scale that can reasonably be described as ‘the end of a civilization.’

That is from Bryan Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization.  This recent book is the best integration of archaeology and economics I have seen; it is also a first-rate economic history in its own right, as well as a history of pottery.  Highly recommended for those who think they might like it.

Libertarians and Government Quality

by  Alex Tabarrok

Tyler is very wrong to say that libertarians assume that government quality is fixed.  On the contrary, I always assume that government quality can go way down.

Seriously, however, a large part of the libertarian/classical liberal program has been about designing institutions to improve government quality just look at Hayek’s the Constitution of Liberty or Buchanan and Tullock’s the Calculus of Consent.  The classicals, Montesquieu, Locke, Madison et al. were primarily focused on increasing government quality through constitutional design, things like democracy, division of powers, federalism, an independent judiciary and a bill of rights.  The libertarian program of improving government quality has been remarkably successful, and far more successful than any other program.

Are there other methods of increasing government quality?  Yes.  In my post on Fiasco, I wrote, "Should we be surprised that delays, errors and incompetence are more prevalent at the INS than at bureaucracies which must deal with citizens or which face competition from the private sector?" which implicitly gives two methods for raising government quality – giving customers a vote and creating a competitive benchmark.

Contra Tyler, libertarians are on the forefront of offering
ideas to improve government quality.  Term limits, flat tax (as a way
of reducing corruption not just an economic improvement), different voting methods, a balanced
budget amendment, openness and transparency, competition, increased
federalism, and unrestricted media are just a few ideas.

Tyler, in contrast, doesn’t give any hint of how to improve government quality and his examples are not very good. Tyler likes Finnish architecture.  Well it’s no surprise that if a lot of governments promote architecture one of them will produce something that Tyler likes. I think this is very cool but I don’t advocate bringing back the funders.  Same thing with the highway system or the Internet.  Sure, these were good investments but does government investment pay as a rule?

The grand libertarian program has improved government quality tremendously – so much so that we are well into the realm of diminishing returns but we can do better and libertarians are among the leaders in suggesting how.

Addendum: Glen Whitman replies to Tyler also.

The Libertarian Vice

by  Tyler Cowen in

Analytical vice, that is.

The libertarian vice is to assume that the quality of government is fixed.  The libertarian also argues that the quality of government is typically low, and this is usually the bone of contention, but that is not the point I wish to consider.  Often that dispute is a red herring.

If the quality of government is fixed, the battle is then "government vs. market."  Not everyone will agree with libertarian views, but libertarians are comfortable on this terrain.

But sometimes governments do a pretty good job, even if you like me are generally skeptical of government.  The Finnish government has supported superb architecture.  The Swedes have made a good go at a welfare state.  The Interstate Highway System in the U.S. was a high-return investment.  In the area of foreign policy, we have done a good job juggling the China-Taiwan relationship.  Or how about the Aswan Dam for Egypt?  You might contest these particular examples but I assure you there are many others.

The libertarian approach treats government vs. market as the central question.  Another approach, promoted by many liberals, tries to improve the quality of government.  This endeavor does not seem more utopian than most libertarian proposals.  The libertarian cannot reject it on the grounds of excess utopianism, even though much government will remain wasteful, stupid, and venal.  More parts of government could in fact be much better, and to significant human benefit and yes that includes more human liberty in the libertarian sense of the word. 

Libertarians will admit this.  But it does not play a significant role in their emotional framing of the world or in their allocation of emotional energies.  They will insist, correctly, that we do not always wish to make government more efficient.  Then they retreat to a mental model where the quality of government is fixed and we compare government to market.

It is possible to agree with the positive claims of libertarians about the virtues of markets but still think that improving the quality of government is the central task before us.  One could love markets yet be some version of a modern liberal rather than a classical liberal.  This possibility makes libertarians nervous, thus their desire to fix the quality of government in advance of making an argument.  (For one example of this, see Glen Whitman’s commentary.)

Libertarianism and modern liberalism differ in many regards, and usually I am closer to the libertarian point of view.  But I am also a contrarian by nature.  If you want to make me feel more like a modern liberal, just go ahead and commit The Libertarian Vice. 

To be fair, here is my post on the modern liberal vice.

Addendum: Here is a look at drug policy from both libertarian and liberal points of view.

The ten weirdest cosmologies?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Here is the list, courtesy of GeekPress.  But they are not trying very hard.  Here is one candidate:

3. Superfluid space-time

One of the most outlandish new theories of cosmology is that space-time is actually a superfluid substance, flowing with zero friction. Then if the universe is rotating, superfluid spacetime would be scattered with vortices, according to physicists Pawel Mazur of the University of South Carolina and George Chapline at Lawrence Livermore lab in California – and those vortices might have seeded structures such as galaxies. Mazur suggests that our universe might have been born in a collapsing star, where the combination of stellar matter and superfluid space could spawn dark energy, the repulsive force that is accelerating the universe.

Duh!  That’s not weird at all.  My favorite weird cosmology is missing from the list: time is an illusion, all possible universes exist, and that includes many universes with false memories and traces of a supposedly distant past.

Then there is always "elephants all the way down…"

I can’t help but wonder…

by  Tyler Cowen in

Press reports use the word "sophisticated."  And it seems cavalier to trivialize what appears to have been a major and serious danger.  And I hardly know any facts about the event.  But the more I hear about the plot, the more I wonder.  24 guys arrested, according to some 50 guys involved.  A whole bunch of them seem to spill all the beans right away and rat on each other in great numbers.  Um…a British sports drink (which one?).  I guess in theory you can trigger a liquid explosive with a flash camera.  The Internet certainly says you can.  How much practice did they have igniting actual explosions?  How much mid-air assembly of the procedure is required, and at what point do the scheming Pakistanis start to look suspicious?  Do the passengers just stand around and watch?

Of course if only one of the plots had succeeded it would have been terrible terrible terrible.  But, um, was this really a well-developed idea for a terror attack?  Just askin’, as they say…

Markets in everything, Paris Hilton edition

by  Tyler Cowen in

Hilton also told the magazine she collects $500,000 in fees just to show up at parties and other events from Las Vegas to Tokyo. Her best-paying gig, she said, was a recent Austrian appearance.

"I had to say ‘hi’ and tell them why I loved Austria so much," she is quoted as saying.

And why does she like Austria? "Because they pay me $1 million to wave at crowds!"

Here is the full story.

Where you vote matters

by  Tyler Cowen in

…the polling places used by voters may influence their choices. One study showed voters in Arizona in 2000 were more likely to support a measure to increase the state sales tax, with the proceeds going to public education, if they voted in a school. Following up, the authors showed subjects images of a church, a school, or a generic building and asked them to “vote” on certain measures. Not only were the respondents more likely to support education measures if they had been shown pictures of schools, but they were also more likely to vote against stem-cell research if they had been shown pictures of churches. American polling places have usually been assigned by state officials on the basis of convenience; this research suggests they could become political battlegrounds in a whole new manner.

Here is more.  So if you are a libertarian, where do you want people to vote?  In front of H&R Block?

WashingtonWatch

by  Alex Tabarrok in

WashingtonWatch.com is a new website that presents estimates of the costs or savings per family or person for a variety of bills.  Here’s the latest DOD budget cost:

S. 2766 would authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2007 for the
military functions of the Department of Defense (DoD), for activities
of the Department of Energy (DOE), and for other purposes, including
operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Cost Per Family: $5535.19

The website is a useful collection but be aware that there is no attempt to do any cost-benefit or incidence analysis.  The numbers are just brute government estimates of the total program spending or tax reduction divided by the number of families or persons.  I can guarantee you, for example, that the following calculation for the "average family" is way, way off the mark.

H.R. 5638 makes the estate and gift tax permanent; increases the
estate and gift tax credit to a $5 million effective exclusion amount,
making any unused effective exclusion amount portable between spouses;
and reduces rates, as well as making other changes in tax law.

Savings per average family: $1896.79

China market of the day

by  Tyler Cowen in

A bar in eastern China has come up with a novel way of attracting clients – they are allowed to beat up the staff.

The Rising Sun Anger Release Bar in Nanjing lets customers smash glasses, rant and even hit specially trained workers, state media reported. The owner, Wu Gong, told China Daily that he was inspired to open the bar by his experiences as a migrant worker.

Most of his customers were women working in the service or entertainment industries, he said.  The bar employs 20 men who have been given protective gear and physical training to prepare them for the job.  Clients can ask the men to dress as the character they wish to attack.

Here is the full story, and thanks to Jordan Lampe for the pointer.  Nanjing must be quite a place.  Here is my previous post on The Crying Bar in Nanjing.

The economics of micro-finance

by  Tyler Cowen in

This column is based on my trip to Hyderabad, earlier this year.  Here is part of the introduction:

Microfinance is not actually “micro” in scale. It is far more
organized than the individual moneylenders in poor communities, the
traditional source of finance. Spandana borrows from banks, has about
2,000 employees and deals with about 800,000 loan recipients. The
resulting economies of scale make possible lower interest rates.
Spandana has been lending at interest rates of 10 to 15 percent a year,
while other Indian microlenders may have rates ranging up to about 30
percent a year. Traditional moneylenders receive 5 or 10 percent a
month or more. It is no wonder that Spandana has grown.

Spandana
seeks to earn a profit through higher repayment rates. Unlike the
moneylenders, Spandana lends to small groups of 5 to 10 people rather
than to individuals; each member is liable if other group borrowers do
not repay. The carrot is that good borrowers become eligible to receive
higher sums.

Yes I am a fan of micro-finance.  One overlooked benefit is that the weekly repayments enforce fiscal discipline and responsibility on the borrowing families.  Otherwise the money often goes to deadbeat relatives.  Here is the full article.