Monday assorted links
1. Burke and the Scottish Enlightenment.
2. Younger Chinese are also having less sex.
4. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy is an excellent movie, think of a sharper Japanese version of Eric Rohmer.
5. The top five papers assigned in economics classes since 1990.
St. John’s, Newfoundland bleg
You know the deal. Your assistance is much appreciated, thank you!
My podcast with Brian Chau
He titles it:
The Dark Side of Talent, Sorting and Institutions
Plus the IDW, Covid, Polio, The Case for Global Wokeness
Here is the link. It is rare I am interviewed from “the Right” (and here I don’t mean “the cosmopolitan business Right”), but here you go. (To be clear, I do think Brian is cosmopolitan, he just is not “the cosmopolitan business Right.”) Very different questions and directions once we get going. I try to persuade him to be a bit more positive about mainstream elites — perhaps I fail!
Here is Brian Chau on Twitter, here is his Substack.
If you are an elite, and on the verge of erring, please do think of Brian Chau. Brian Chau needs you! You can’t let Brian Chau down like that. Please.
The Return of Privateering?
TexasSignal: Rep. Lance Gooden, a Republican who represents Texas’ 5th District, has introduced legislation that would allow U.S. citizens to seize the yachts, jets, and other property belonging to Russian oligarchs who have been sanctioned in response to the invasion of Ukraine. In other words, privateering.
…In the age of sail, it was common for nations to issue letters of marque licensing private citizens to raid the shipping of enemy nations. The practice died down in the 19th Century with the Paris Declaration of 1856 outlawing privateers. However, the United States never signed the Paris Declaration, and Article I of the Constitution gives Congress the power to issue letters of marque.
Gooden’s bill would require President Biden to issue letters of marque to seize yachts and other assets belonging to sanctioned Russian citizens. Gooden’s office even says that letters of marque could be issued to hackers to go after Russia in cyberspace.
There are three questions. First, should some Russian citizens be sanctioned? Second, should assets belonging to sanctioned Russian citizens be seized? Third, should privateers be able to do the seizing under a legal regime? There is a lot of room for debate on the first two questions but oddly these questions aren’t debated. Sanctions of this kind are common and broadly regarded as legitimate although likely overused in my view. The latter question arouses the most debate but is to me the easiest to answer. Sure, why not? Privateering worked well in the wars of the 19th century and we could likely have saved trillions by using bounties in the war in Afghanistan.
Here’s my paper on privateering and my story about the time I went bounty hunting in Baltimore.
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.
Sunday assorted links
Mandated vaccine boosters for the AEA meetings?
Yes, the new AEA regulations will mandate vaccine boosters for attendance at the New Orleans meetings. Not just two jabs but yes boosters, at least one of them.
Like the N-95 (or stronger) mask mandate, this seems off base and possibly harmful to public health as well. Here are a few points:
1. The regulations valorize “booster with an older strain,” and count “infection with a recent strain” for nothing. In fact, the latter is considerably more valuable, most of all to estimate a person’s public safety impact on others. So the regulations simply target the wrong variable.
1b. People who are boosted might even be less likely to have caught the newer strains (presumably the boosters are at least somewhat useful). Thus they are potentially more dangerous to others, not less, being on average immunologically more naive. Ideally you want a batch of attendees who just had Covid two or three months ago.
2. More than three-quarters of Americans have not had a booster to date. Very likely the percentage of potential AEA attendees with boosters stands at a considerably higher level. Still, this is a fairly exclusionary policy, and pretty far from what most Americans consider to be an acceptable regulation.
2b. To be clear, I had my booster right away, even though I expected it would make me sick for two days (it did). I am far from being anti-booster. I am glad I had my booster, but I also understand full well the distinction between “getting a booster at the time was the right decision,” and “we should mandate booster shots today.” They are very different! Don’t just positively mood affiliate with boosters. Think through the actual policies.
3. Blacks are a relatively undervaccinated group, and probably they are less boosted as well. The same may or may not be true for black potential AEA attendees, but it is certainly possible. After all the talk of DEI, and I for one would like to see more inclusion, why are we making inclusion harder? And for no good medical reason.
3b. How about potential attendees from Africa, Latin America, and other regions where boosters are harder to come by? What are their rates of being boosted? Do they all have to fly to America a few days earlier, line up boosters, and hope the ill effects wear off by the time of the meetings? Why are we doing this to them?
3c. Will the same booster requirements be applied to hotel staff and contractors? Somehow I think not. Maybe that is a sign the boosters are not so important for conference well-being after all?
4. Many people are in a position, right now, where they should not boost. Let’s say you had Covid a few months ago, and are wondering if you should get a booster now or soon. I looked into this recently, and found the weight of opinion was that you should wait at least six months for your immune system to process the recent infection. That did not seem to be “settled science,” but rather a series of judgments, admittedly with uncertainty. So now let’s take those people who were not boosted, had a new strain of Covid recently, and want to go to the AEA meetings. (The first two of three there cover a lot of people.) They have to get boosted. And in expected value terms, boosting is bad for them. Did this argument even occur to the decision-makers at the AEA?
5. The AEA mentions nothing about religious or other exceptions to the policy. Maybe there are “under the table” exceptions, but really? Why not spell out the actual policy here, and if there are no exceptions come right out and tell us. And explain why so few other institutions have chosen the “no exceptions” path, and why the AEA should be different. (As a side note, it is not so easy to process exceptions for the subset of the 13,000 possible attendees who want them. Does the AEA have this capacity?)
Again, this is simply a poorly thought out policy, whether for N-95 masks or for boosters. I hope the AEA will discard it as soon as possible. Or how about a simple, open poll of membership, simple yes or not on the current proposal?
Insurance markets in everything
Xcel confirmed to Contact Denver7 that 22,000 customers who had signed up for the Colorado AC Rewards program were locked out of their smart thermostats for hours on Tuesday.
“It’s a voluntary program. Let’s remember that this is something that customers choose to be a part of based on the incentives,” said Emmett Romine, vice president of customer solutions and innovation at Xcel.
Customers receive a $100 credit for enrolling in the program and $25 annually, but Romine said customers also agree to give up some control to save energy and money and make the system more reliable.
Basically their AC was shut off and some of the homes had temperatures as high as 88 Fahrenheit. Sounds like an OK arrangement to me! Here is the full story, via Tom Hynes.
How to discover Indian classical music
Versions of that request were repeated a few times, along with a request for a YouTube or Spotify list. Given the visual element, I would say that YouTube >> Spotify. But mostly you are looking to hear world class performers in live concert, there is no substitute for that, most of all for the percussion, but also for the overall sense of energy.
I first heard Indian classical music by stumbling upon the Ravi Shankar section of the Concert for Bangladesh album, at a young age (thirteen or so?). It seemed obvious to me this was better than “Within You, Without You,” but it was a long time before I really would get back to it. Shankar never ended up clicking with me, but definitely he was the introduction.
As a young teen I also loved the Byrds song “Eight Miles High,” with its opening riff taken from John Coltrane’s “India.” Not exactly Indian classical music, but a clue there was much more to discover, and again I took this very seriously. The raga bits on the Byrds 5D album intrigued me more than the lugubrious Harrison tunes.
I recall my high friend friend (and composer) Eric Lyon insisting to me that Carnatic classic music was better than American jazz improvisation. I didn’t follow him at the time, but I always took Eric’s opinions very seriously, and so I filed this away mentally for later reexamination.
I also recall Thomas Schelling telling me that his son decided to become a professional Indian classical musician (in fact he ended up as more of a poet and translator). I had the vague sense this was something quite admirable to do. So the data points were piling up.
Years passed, and I spent most of my time listening to traditional Western classical music, and with fantastic aesthetic returns.
Still, I grew restless to learn more, and kept on returning to musics I did not understand very well. My best and most common entry point was simply to listen to a lot of other musics that are (were?) somewhat atypical to Western ears, whether it be atonal music, guitar drone music, or Arabic microtonal tunes. Nonetheless progress was slow.
In the 1990s, I started going to lots of world music concerts in the DC area, often at University of Maryland or GWU. These years were a kind of golden age for world music (a terrible term, btw) in the U.S., as post 9/11 visa restrictions were not yet around.
Twice I heard L. Subramaniam play Indian classical violin. Wow! My head was spinning, and from there on out I was determined to hear as many Indian classical concerts as possible. Maybe his melodic lines are not the very deepest, but he was a remarkably exciting performer. A whole new world was opened up to me. I also heard Shakti, with Zakir Hussein and John McLaughlin, play at GWU. That was fusion yes, but it owed more to Indian classical traditions than anything else. To this day it remains one of the three or four best concerts I’ve ever seen.
The Ali Akbar Khan Signature Series CDs made increasing sense to me, and I grew to love them and many others. I did go back to Shankar, but decided he was, all along, far from the top of the heap. Maybe a great marketer, though.
S. Balachandar on the veena was another early discovery, via Fanfare.
Later in the 1990s I read Frederick Turner write that Indian classical music was one of humanity’s greatest spiritual and aesthetic achievements, and around the same time I chatted a bit with Turner too. I had never quite heard anyone claim that before, but instinctively I realized I very much agreed with him. I decided that I believed that too.
Shikha Dalmia helped me out with some recommendations as well, and she was the first one to mention to me the Indian classical music festival in what is now called Chennai. For many years I wanted to go.
Then followed more years of listening. On my first India trips, I carried back a large number of $2 CDs, high variance but many of them excellent, such as Kishori Amonkar. I bought as much as I could plausibly carry back home.
About eight years ago, I took daughter Yana to the Chennai Indian classical music festival held every December. We saw a number of incredible performers, most notably the great U. Srinivas (mandolin!), before his demise. I can recommend this experience to you all, and I plan on going again.
So what is the lesson of all this? My path was so inefficient and roundabout! You can avoid all of that, just read this blog post and be there…voila!
But that doesn’t quite work either.
A further Saturday link
1. An AEA Covid response by Joshua Gans. He comes up with just one conference with a proper mask mandate, albeit a weaker and more subjective one than what the AEA is proposing. Even my hospital doesn’t do the same. He cites Comic Con San Diego, but subsequent, more recent Comic Con events don’t seem to have the mask mandate any more. So maybe that isn’t such a good example.
Gans can’t cite any policy from any government either, except for one Australian government regulatory conference in Brisbane. At some point “the CCP” may occur to him as another answer.
But I welcome the publicity, even if he does describe my post as “whining.” (“Pissed off” would be a more accurate read.) I don’t think the AEA policy can survive the light of day, so the more people who attack my view the better. Gans also does not consider that almost any individual can be safe enough with a sufficiently good mask — internalize the externalities yourself! Gans should try a trip to Copenhagen or Zurich, two highly irresponsible cities that refuse to take care of their citizens, apparently.
As for some of the rest of you, there is no analytic inconsistency in favoring much weaker Covid regulations over time. As more people vaccinate, more people have caught Covid, more people have access to good privatized masks, and as we develop remedies such as Paxlovid, restrictions should in general become far more lax. If you don’t understand that, you never understood the case for Covid regulation in the first place.
Saturday assorted links
3. Economist John Friedman on education and mobility (NYT).
4. Arcadia, a new group house in Berkeley.
5. Why is China so obsessed with food security?
6. The wisdom of John Arnold, on student loans: “Interestingly, the government student loan program originally guaranteed only 80% of principal. In 1976 it was increased to 100% plus interest, thereby eliminating any shared risk and creating the moral hazard that exists today.”
Hume on the Rise And Progress of the Arts And Sciences
Avarice, or the desire of gain, is an universal passion, which operates at all times, in all places, and upon all persons: But curiosity, or the love of knowledge, has a very limited influence, and requires youth, leisure, education, genius, and example, to make it govern any person. You will never want booksellers, while there are buyers of books: But there may frequently be readers where there are no authors.
David Hume explaining why it’s more difficult to explain the progress of the arts and sciences than economic progress, even if the latter may depend on the former. And here is Hume on geography and the growth of the arts and sciences:
But the divisions into small states are favourable to learning, by stopping the progress of authority as well as that of power. Reputation is often as great a fascination upon men as sovereignty, and is equally destructive to the freedom of thought and examination. But where a number of neighbouring states have a great intercourse of arts and commerce, their mutual jealousy keeps them from receiving too lightly the law from each other, in matters of taste and of reasoning, and makes them examine every work of art with the greatest care and accuracy. The contagion of popular opinion spreads not so easily from one place to another. It readily receives a check in some state or other, where it concurs not with the prevailing prejudices. And nothing but nature and reason, or, at least, what bears them a strong resemblance, can force its way through all obstacles, and unite the most rival nations into an esteem and admiration of it.
…In China, there seems to be a pretty considerable stock of politeness and science, which, in the course of so many centuries, might naturally be expected to ripen into some thing more perfect and finished, than what has yet arisen from them. But China is one vast empire, speaking one language, governed by one law, and sympathizing in the same manners. The authority of any teacher, such as Confucius, was propagated easily from one corner of the empire to the other. None had courage to resist the torrent of popular opinion. And posterity was not bold enough to dispute what had been universally received by their ancestors. This seems to be one natural reason, why the sciences have made so slow a progress in that mighty empire.
If we consider the face of the globe, Europe, of all the four parts of the world, is the most broken by seas, rivers, and mountains; and Greece of all countries of Europe. Hence these regions were naturally divided into several distinct governments. And hence the sciences arose in Greece; and Europe has been hitherto the most constant habitation of them.
See Tyler’s In Praise of Commericial Culture for more Humean themes.
“Follow the science”
To attend the 2023 ASSA Annual Meeting, all registrants will be required to be vaccinated against COVID-19 and to have received at least one booster. High-quality masks (i.e., KN-95 or better) will be required in all indoor conference spaces. These requirements are planned for the well-being of all participants.
That is from the AEA. Really!!??
Even the Arlington County Public Library is doing better than that. Did someone do a cost-benefit analysis? If so, may I see it? And if this is optimal, why are no private American businesses following suit? (Can you name one, outside of some health care settings?) How far do you have to go to find an institution, profit or non-profit, doing the same?
How about allowing a members’ vote on this? Or should I just be happy that the AEA is making itself irrelevant at such a rapid pace? It is remarkable the speed at which the economics profession isn’t really about economics any more.
For the pointer here I thank MS.
Water problems in Jackson, Mississippi
I am now reading quite a few analyses of the problem, and so few mention price! Even when written by economists. I find this article somewhat useful:
“We are a city with very high levels of poverty, and it’s difficult for us to raise the rates enough to do large scale replacement type projects and not make it unaffordable to live in the city of Jackson,” said former city councilman Melvin Priester Jr.
Yet the cost of Jackson’s poor quality water is still passed on to families who don’t trust the tap and purchase bottled water — which can cost a family of four $50-$100 a month — to drink instead.
The city raised water rates in 2013, but the Siemens deal penned the same year came with an onslaught of problems, including the installation of faulty water meters and meters that measured water in gallons instead of the correct cubic feet. This made any benefits of the rate increase virtually impossible to see.
The results have been nonsensical. Over the past several years, the city has mailed exorbitant bills to some customers and none to others. Sometimes, the charges weren’t based on how much water a household used and other times, city officials advised residents to “pay what they think they owe.” Past officials said the city lacked the manpower and expertise in the billing department to manually rectify the account issues with any speed.
In trying to protect people during the persistent billing blunders, the city has at times instituted no-shutoff policies, which demonstrate compassion but haven’t helped to compel payment.
Today, more than 8,000 customers, or nearly one-sixth of the city’s customer base, still aren’t receiving bills. Nearly 16,000 customers owe more than $100 or are more than 90 days past due, a city spokesperson told Mississippi Today. Jackson water customers owe a total of $90.3 million.
As a result, the city continues to miss out on tens of millions of water revenues. In 2016, when officials first uncovered the issue, the city’s actual water sewer collections during the previous year was a startling 32% less than projected — a roughly $26 million shortfall.
And most generally:
“The nature of local politics is that city governments will tend to neglect utilities until they break because they’re literally buried,” he said. “One of the things that is a perennial challenge for governments that operate water systems is that the quality of the water system is very hard for people to observe. But the price is very easy for them to observe.”
From WSJ here is some important background information:
Unlike bridges, roads and subway lines, clean drinking water isn’t primarily funded by taxes. More than 90% of the average utility’s revenues come directly from constituents’ water bills.
In other words, the price is too low, and government failure is the reason why. A higher price is no fun for a relatively poor set of Jackson buyers, but the city’s per capita income is 22k or so, and plenty of countries in that income range have satisfactory water systems where you can shower without closing your mouth. You just have to get the institutions and incentives right. It is remarkable to me how few people in the public sphere are making theses relatively straightforward points.
Trade Adjustment Assistance might be going away
The program that Mr. Ogg looked to for help, known as Trade Adjustment Assistance, has for the past 60 years been America’s main antidote to the pressures that globalization has unleashed on its workers. [TC’s aside: this first sentence is quite false.] More than five million workers have participated in the program.
But a lack of congressional funding has put the program in jeopardy: Trade assistance was officially terminated on July 1, though it continues to temporarily serve current enrollees. Unless Congress approves new money for the $700 million program, it will cease to exist entirely.
And:
Some academic research has found benefits for those who enrolled in the program. Workers gave up about $10,000 in income while training, but 10 years later they had about $50,000 higher cumulative earnings than those who did not retrain, according to research from 2018 by Benjamin G. Hyman, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Still, those relative gains decayed over time, Mr. Hyman’s research shows. After 10 years the incomes of those who received assistance and those who did not were the same…
Here is the full NYT article. With the China shock largely behind us, perhaps phasing this out is the right thing to do?