Musical Links

The reading list has unfortunately taken a backseat to work related reading. Fortunately multitasking is one of my strengths. A coworker recently called me “an input”, although “cultural filter” might be more appropriate. Anyway, here’s some things, mostly music, that have sparked my interest recently.

The Snake The Cross The Crown – A folk/americana/indie band that has really pushed my buttons. Behold the River is a cross between a gospel, an elegy and a travelling song. Great American Smokeout has a catchy chorus, and Cakewalk makes me want to curl up with a hot drink and take a long sleep. By the way, bluegrass fans should also check out the Jerks of Grass. I used to watch them live most Thursday nights in a dingy basement bar in Portland, Maine. Always a great time.

Harlem Shakes – Strictly Game always gets my toes tapping. Love the lyrics “I’m sick of quick quips/sick of holding onto nothing/when I just want to hold your hips”.

Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson – Winter song. Great song for SnOMG.

DCist flicker pool – One of the better DC-centric blogs has a flicker pool readers can upload too. Recently, it’s been dominated by beautiful snowy shots. Some of my favorites.

Lord Acton – One of my bosses at work is particularly fond of this quote:

“At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities”

This one also jumps out at me as descriptive of the libertarian mind:

“Liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right to do what we ought.”

If anyone feels like sharing other musical links, feel free to post them in the comments.

Snowbound and Linking

Sleep Talkin’ Man – Guy talks in his sleep, wife records it, we laugh.

Tom Palmer – Excellent interview with The Examiner. My favorite selection:

I believe that the individual human life matters. I believe that human freedom is a constituent element of a good life — of human happiness — and is, consequently, intrinsically valuable.

This letter – Moves me to compares that sentiment with the pessimistic anti-humanity of Howard Zinn.

Homebrewing – Open-source software that helps create and manage homebrewing recipes. Yum.

Nobel Winner Elinore Ostrom spoke at Mercatus last week, it was a wonderful event for anyone interested in economics, cooperation and public goods problems.

Creative? Internecine? Both?

Via Joe Henchman:

The Dallas Morning News is reporting that the Tea Partiers are taking on that bastion of big-government tax-and-spend policy, *record scratch* Dr. Ron Paul.

This doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. Haven’t we see this movie before, when the Club for Growth took on incumbents? The results are mixed. While getting rid of big-government “conservatives” like Arlen Specter is good for the brand of fiscal conservatism, wouldn’t it be better if small-government, low-tax politicians got involved in lower profile government roles? Why are three people from Paul’s district challenging an incumbent who is the epitome of small-government?

You See What You Want to See

At least Matt Yglesias does. Via his twitter feed, he writes:

It’s a bit strange that a majority of Americans approve of Obama’s job performance, seeing as he’s so unpopular and all

He’s referring to this Gallup poll, which shows the President with a slim nine-point advantage in overall job approval. Twitter is certainly the place for snarky one-liners, but Matt’s being disingenuous.

First, as polling goes, this question is pretty ridiculously broad. The sample is “adults”, and the question is whether they “approve or disapprove of the job Barack Obama is doing as president.”

Rasmussen gets unfairly slammed as being partisan, but their results are amazingly accurate. Their more detailed Daily Presidential Tracking Poll uses much different method, but asks a similar question. The main differences are that Rasmussen targets only ‘likely voters’ and not the general population, and that Rasmussen only compares those groups with strong feelings either for or against the president. The differences are significant. Rasmussen pegs approval at -7 (as of today), although he’s recently hit a low of -19. The distance between +9 and -7 is vast.

So which view is correct? I think Matt is guilty of seeing what he wants to see. Would he argue that Bush was “popular” in 2005? I doubt it. But that’s the last time he polled a similarly positive number from Gallup, in March.

The most damning criticism from Obama isn’t generalized, it’s specific. CBS has him pulling a -18 on health care. On Cap and Trade, a joint NBC/WSJ poll reported in October that the bill was rapidly losing steam, and the Journal cited other polls from The Atlantic on how confused the public was. I’ve seen nothing to alleviate any of those problems; the old adage is that a confused mind says ‘no’. On safety (which I think is a misguided goal, but certainly one that weighs heavily in the minds of many voters), only 36% believe the country is “safer” than pre-9/11. Finally, and most problematic, only 26% think the nation is “headed in the right direction”.

Some of my liberal acquaintances have argued that polling only likely voters skews the numbers. However, this seems to conflict with the other liberal claim, made often on this blog by frequent commenter Tom, that the majority of the masses are stupid, and we shouldn’t pay attention to them. It seems disingenuous to discount the majority of the public when they disagree with you, and cherry pick popular sentiment when it’s handy.

Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m seeing what I want. I certainly agree that we’re on a bad path, and I agree with most of the policies referenced above are wasteful, arbitrary, prone to corruption and graft, and generally bad ideas. But I’ve examined the methodology of the polls, and looked at my suppositions. My bias is for results, not ideological harmony. I agree we could discount those unlikely to vote, in all cases. As mentioned, I am in the minority on some of these issues.

I don’t know how Rasmussen determines ‘likely voters’, but so far the firm is vindicated by results. It will be interesting to see if they can continue this track record, given that Obama’s supporters in the last election are traditionally apathetic in election cycles (minorities and young people have the lowest turnout rates, and those were two core Obama support groups).

That’s why I think Matt is seeing what he wants to see.

Hob Nob with Nobs

Tomorrow night at the Mercatus Center there’s a reception to welcome 2009 Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom. It’s going to be a great event, and if you’re in the D.C./Arlington area, you should come. You can register here.

I Dislike the Term “Economist,” or, Why I Love the Austrian School

I was watching a Mises Institute video (not worth linking to) about a new English-language Bastiat compendium (new as of I don’t even know when), and the scholar who edited the works called Bastiat an economist. It got me thinking: I don’t like the term “economist.” It presupposes that something needs economizing. In fact, narrowly speaking, I hate “economists” (for a thorough exposition of this sentiment, see The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb). The job description assumes a central planner role. A technocratic role. An OMB/CBO/Peter Orszag/bulls***ter who makes ridiculous claims about, for example, Social Security’s solvency*, based on “economic projections.” It assumes someone who studies economics but thinks that “economics” allows them to know and do much more than it actually does.

“High priests and lowly philosophers” — read it. Economists really shouldn’t act like they transcend the title “lowly philosopher.” That’s why I love Bastiat, Hazlitt, and others (e.g. Stossel) who are outside of the “economics” establishment. They’re observers and lowly philosophers, not technocrats. For all the purported benefits mathematics has brought to economics, I think they have been outweighed by the air of sophistication and accuracy they have afforded economics, exploited by those who wish to use the “science” for authoritarian ends. See “The Pretence of Knowledge,” because if you haven’t read it already you must. This is why Austrians are legit. They realize the limits of their knowledge.

More generally, I hold great respect for scholars who do not reside in academia (or who can at least avoid groupthink within it). I include the aforementioned Bastiat and Hazlitt, along with Mises (virtually unknown in America while he resided here), Hayek (scorned until his unexpected Nobel in ‘74), even Rand, and my new favorite intellectual terrorist, Taleb. And of course, the Austrians. Perhaps their status as outsiders in the intellectual tradition of economics has kept Austrian economists free of the pretensions of the mainstream. In any event, I consider economics to be enlightened philosophy — normative arguments must be informed by an understanding of what is, which is why Austrian concepts such as spontaneous order, entrepreneurship, and market processes are so useful.** Useful in a philosophical sense, however — not analogous to the physical sciences, which is what many (most?) mainstream economists desire to emulate.

*Along the lines of intellectual herding, I’m infuriated every time I hear an academic knock Wikipedia, or hear the oft-uttered, sarcastic “Well if its on the internet it must be true.” To which I reply “Well if its in print it must be true.” For first-rate intellectual fraud and ideological rationalization, check out this book on Social Security by Peter Orszag. While researching the (nonexistent)  Social Security Trust Fund a couple of years ago, I came across this book and Orszag immediately made my top 5 most despised public intellectuals. Other notables include Naomi Klein and the notorious Michael Moore (not an intellectual, but you get the idea).

**I highly recommend The Foundations of Morality by Henry Hazlitt. It’s a beautiful synthesis of philosophy with economic understanding to produce a rule-utilitarian ethical system. It doesn’t answer all questions, of course, but its a great approach. And as discreetly as possible, I’m going to concede defeat in my debate with Seth.

Does deontology require consequentialism?

Earlier I made the argument that deontology requires consequentialism.  Over at Less Wrong, Alicorn has a great exploration of consequentialism and deontology that complements the discussion here.

If a deontologist says “lying is wrong”, and you mentally add something that sounds like “because my utility function has a term in it for the people around believing accurate things.  Lying tends to decrease the extent to which they do so, but if I knew that somebody would believe the opposite of whatever I said, then to maximize the extent to which they believed true things, I would have to lie to them.  And I would also have to lie if some other, greater term in my utility function were at stake and I could only salvage it with a lie.  But in practice the best I can do is to maximize my expected utility, and as a matter of fact I will never be as sure that lying is right as I’d need to be for it to be a good bet.”⁵… you, my friend, have missed the point.  The deontologist wasn’t thinking any of those things. The deontologist might have been thinking “because people have a right to the truth”, or “because I swore an oath to be honest”, or “because lying is on a magical list of things that I’m not supposed to do”, or heck, “because the voices in my head told me not to”⁶.

Read the whole thing.

A Very Specific Reader Mailbag, Part I

Last week commentator and all-around great guy Brice weighed in with two long responses to two separate posts. There’s quite a lot going on in his comments but they’re fairly interrelated, so rather than deal with them in the comments section, it makes sense to make a unified response here. Sit back, grab some coffee and get ready to nerd up because this is a big one. Let’s go with Part I.

More Thoughts on Consequentialist Ethics

I clearly need to develop my thoughts about consequentialism further.  When I attacked the mistake of deriving libertarianism from first principles earlier, I actually thought Aaron and I were in agreement.  Once Aaron and I had a conversation with another person about Kant’s deontological ethics, and both Aaron I remarked to each other later how silly it was that this person advocated Kantian ideas.

I’m not so sure Aaron and I really do disagree.  Aaron gives deference to utilitarian technologies, which neoclassical economists certainly use, but with an important caveat, that utility is ordinal, not cardinal.  What does this mean?  It’s incoherent to compare the value of $10.00, a market price, of any particular good or service, between two different individuals.  Individuals value what they purchase subjectively.  Trade-offs will be different; individuals have different utility functions.

Ordinal utility serves as a good universal principle.  So does self-ownership, and so does the importance of property rights.  I don’t dispute that these are valid principles that can be universally applied.  Rather, I’m arguing that these principles must be defended consequentially.  I don’t think that Rand solved the is-ought problem, and Aaron hasn’t either.  Even just by describing a solid, consistent principle that can be universally applied doesn’t mean that it has been derived from the intrinsic nature of the principle.  My intuition is that if we evaluate such principles, we’re constantly judging them on the basis of their consequences.

Suppose I tell a progressive that health care should be allocated on a free market.  They object that the consequences of such a policy mean that some people would not be able to afford some minimum amount of health care.  They evaluate the consequences of my recommendation, because in their mind, the consequence they desire is for all people to afford care.

Suppose a Marxist tells me that property is theft, and that all goods and services should be allocated centrally.  I evaluate the problems with this by noting that the failure to legally recognize private property for private goods distorts incentives, and will mean forgoing wealth that is otherwise possible with free markets.  I evaluate the proposed Marxist principle consequentially.

I don’t think Kant was being honest.  What makes a categorical imperative categorical?  Do we not need to evaluate the consequences of a universal principle?

Suppose that I propose, as the basis of an ethical system, that it is proper for every individual to to murder all other individuals, as many people as they possibly can.  This is pretty clearly a terrible ethical principle, but why is it?  Think of what it implies consequentially.

In evaluating ethical claims, consequentialism is unavoidable.

Lots to say, little time

It’s been a pretty hectic week, and it’ll be the weekend before I get a chance to respond to the various issues raised. For now, I thought everyone might be interested in this list of Scott Brown’s positions on issues besides health care. Enjoy. Sounds like a 70% solution to me.