What threatens the future of America (and other Western societies) was forecasted in a 1988 book by Friedrich Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism. It is the return of tribalism. The Wall Street Journal writes (“Why Tribalism Took Over Our Politics,” August 26, 2023): It was the latest example of the Republican former president employing a potent driver of America’s partisan divide: group identity. Decades of social science research show that our need for collective belonging is forceful enough to reshape how we view facts and affect our voting decisions. When our group is threatened, we rise to its defense. The research helps explain why Trump has solidified his standing as the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination despite facing four indictments since April. The former president has been especially adept at building loyalty by asserting that his supporters are threatened by outside forces. His false claims that he was the rightful winner of the 2020 election, which have triggered much of his legal peril, have been adopted by many of his supporters. Democrats are using the tactic, too, if not as forcefully as Trump. … Yet the research on the power of group identity suggests the push for a more respectful political culture faces a disquieting challenge. The human brain in many circumstances is more suited to tribalism and conflict than to civility and reasoned debate. The journalist unfortunately does not mention Hayek, a 1974 laureate of the Nobel Prize in economics, who devoted much work to tribalism and its modern forms. For most people, it seems, “social science” does not include economics—while it is the social science par excellence, as Hayek’s work demonstrates. Some 300,000 years have wired and coded the human brain for survival in the tribal environment where humans lived until about 12,000 years ago. The wiring was genetic but the coding, which is Hayek’s subject, was cultural. In The Selfish Gene, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins expressed a similar idea: “Man’s way of life is largely determined by culture rather than by genes.” With Hayek’s analysis, we can see more clearly that the hundreds of thousands of years of tribal evolution solidified group identity and collective action (if we may use a term that looks anachronic) for the purpose of survival. The discovery of what Hayek calls the “Great Society” may have started with the first urban societies but only showed up with the Ancient Greeks circa 500 B.C. By the 18th century and the Enlightenment, the Great Society was clearly recognizable. (Hayek’s Great Society has nothing to do, quite the contrary, with Lyndon Johnson’s welfare-state slogan in the 1960s.) It continued with the Industrial Revolution, the explosion of trade, and a general escape from poverty for the first time in the history of mankind. (See my Regulation review of Joel Mokyr’s A Culture of Growth and my short Regulation treatment of why the Great Enrichment started in the West.) In the West, the Great Society, which is the same as classical liberalism, started to decisively replace group identity and submission of individuals to political rulers. (For a different interpretation of Western history since the end of the first millennium of our era, see the beginning of Chapter 4 in Anthony de Jasay’s 1989 book Public Good, Free Ride.) The Great Society is characterized by abstract social relationships based on general rules, as opposed to concrete obligations to family, stifling customs of the tribe, or commands from political authority. Trade, contract, the rule of law, and individual liberty—all abstract institutions—replace tribal autarky and individual submission to political rulers. (Another major work of Hayek that develops these ideas is his trilogy Law, Legislation, and Liberty. See my Econlib review of Volume 1; links to my EconLib reviews of the two following volumes can be found on my personal website.) The Great Society is still a work in progress as shown has been subject to attacks and steps back during the past century or so. Furthermore, most humans are still not living in the Great Society, even if many have tried to imperfectly imitate it so attractive is its model of wealth and independence for ordinary individuals. The problem, argued Hayek, is that individual minds have been capable of adapting only partially to the new liberal world. Most people still instinctively long for primitive societies, the noble savage, group identity, or a strong political leader. Many if not most are attracted to social engineering and conscripting everybody toward collective goals. They wrongly believe that human reason is able to reconstruct society ab novo, an intellectual error that Hayek called “constructivism.” Therein lies the fatal conceit. These instincts and beliefs can undermine and eventually destroy the abstract liberal civilization, which is the only one compatible with prosperity and individual liberty—a danger much more serious danger than an increase of three degrees Celsius in world temperatures. But identitarians of the left (woke) or the right (nationalists and such) don’t understand that. Was Hayek’s warning prescient or unduly alarmist? Were he still alive, I think he would have seen in wokism an ultimate form of the social constructivism he blamed socialism for. I think he would also agree that we have learned something important during the last political decade in America: it is not inconceivable that civilized society would start unraveling under some ignorant and immoral demagogue for whom personal loyalty and the right tribe, not abstract rules, should govern. Too bad that conservatives, just like socialists, don’t (and perhaps cannot) understand Hayek. (0 COMMENTS)

What threatens the future of America (and other Western societies) was forecasted in a 1988 book by Friedrich Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism. It is the return of tribalism. The Wall Street Journal writes (“Why Tribalism Took Over Our Politics,” August 26, 2023): It was the latest example of the Republican former president employing a potent driver of America’s partisan divide: group identity. Decades of social science research show that our need for collective belonging is forceful enough to reshape how we view facts and affect our voting decisions. When our group is threatened, we rise to its defense. The research helps explain why Trump has solidified his standing as the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination despite facing four indictments since April. The former president has been especially adept at building loyalty by asserting that his supporters are threatened by outside forces. His false claims that he was the rightful winner of the 2020 election, which have triggered much of his legal peril, have been adopted by many of his supporters. Democrats are using the tactic, too, if not as forcefully as Trump. … Yet the research on the power of group identity suggests the push for a more respectful political culture faces a disquieting challenge. The human brain in many circumstances is more suited to tribalism and conflict than to civility and reasoned debate. The journalist unfortunately does not mention Hayek, a 1974 laureate of the Nobel Prize in economics, who devoted much work to tribalism and its modern forms. For most people, it seems, “social science” does not include economics—while it is the social science par excellence, as Hayek’s work demonstrates. Some 300,000 years have wired and coded the human brain for survival in the tribal environment where humans lived until about 12,000 years ago. The wiring was genetic but the coding, which is Hayek’s subject, was cultural. In The Selfish Gene, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins expressed a similar idea: “Man’s way of life is largely determined by culture rather than by genes.” With Hayek’s analysis, we can see more clearly that the hundreds of thousands of years of tribal evolution solidified group identity and collective action (if we may use a term that looks anachronic) for the purpose of survival. The discovery of what Hayek calls the “Great Society” may have started with the first urban societies but only showed up with the Ancient Greeks circa 500 B.C. By the 18th century and the Enlightenment, the Great Society was clearly recognizable. (Hayek’s Great Society has nothing to do, quite the contrary, with Lyndon Johnson’s welfare-state slogan in the 1960s.) It continued with the Industrial Revolution, the explosion of trade, and a general escape from poverty for the first time in the history of mankind. (See my Regulation review of Joel Mokyr’s A Culture of Growth and my short Regulation treatment of why the Great Enrichment started in the West.) In the West, the Great Society, which is the same as classical liberalism, started to decisively replace group identity and submission of individuals to political rulers. (For a different interpretation of Western history since the end of the first millennium of our era, see the beginning of Chapter 4 in Anthony de Jasay’s 1989 book Public Good, Free Ride.) The Great Society is characterized by abstract social relationships based on general rules, as opposed to the stifling customs of the tribe,  obedience to the collective, or commands from rulers. Trade, contract, the rule of law, and individual liberty—all abstract institutions—replace concrete individual obedience. (Another major work of Hayek that develops these ideas is his trilogy Law, Legislation, and Liberty. See my Econlib review of Volume 1; links to my EconLib reviews of the two following volumes can be found on my personal website.) The Great Society is still a work in progress as shown has been subject to attacks and steps back during the past century or so. Furthermore, most humans are still not living in the Great Society, even if many have tried to imperfectly imitate it so attractive is its model of wealth and independence for ordinary individuals. The problem, argued Hayek, is that individual minds have been capable of adapting only partially to the new liberal world. Most people still instinctively long for primitive societies, group identity, or a strong political leader. Many if not most are attracted to social engineering and conscripting everybody toward collective goals. They wrongly believe that human reason is able to reconstruct society ab novo, an intellectual error that Hayek called “constructivism.” Therein lies mankind’s fatal conceit. These instincts and beliefs can undermine and destroy the abstract liberal civilization, which is the only one compatible with prosperity and individual liberty—a more serious danger than an increase of three degrees Celsius in world temperatures. But identitarians of the left (woke) or the right (nationalists and such) don’t understand that. Was Hayek’s warning prescient or unduly alarmist? Were he still alive, I think he would have seen in wokism an ultimate form of the social constructivism he blamed socialism for. I think he would also agree that we have learned something important during the last political decade in America: it is not inconceivable that civilized society would start unraveling under some ignorant and immoral demagogue for whom personal loyalty and the right tribe, not abstract rules, should govern. Too bad that conservatives, just like socialists, don’t (and perhaps cannot) understand Hayek. (0 COMMENTS)

The answer is “both”. I’ll try to illustrate this with a few examples.Almost every day, I see a report in the local media (OC Register) that leaves me scratching my head. A few days ago, three young women from Orange County were killed when Gregory Black sped through a red light at 100 mph and hit their car. It turns out that Black has a long criminal record: Moreno described Black as “a well-known gang member” with a long criminal history. . . . Black pleaded no contest to one count of attempted murder in 2021. But he was only sentenced to five years of probation. The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office said that besides vehicular manslaughter charges for Black, he faces special allegations of two or more prior felony convictions and aggravated circumstances of great bodily injury. At the same time, our prisons are full of people who have committed much less serious crimes.  Roughly 40,000 people are currently incarcerated for possessing or selling marijuana, an activity that is legal in nearly half of all states.  In contrast, attempted murder is illegal in all 50 states, as well as Washington DC. Whenever I see a news story describing a horrific crime, the article almost invariably includes a long list of the previous offenses for which the accused was previously found guilty.  So it’s pretty clear to me that we are able to identify the most serious criminals.  But in most cases the accused merely received a slap on the wrist for the previous offenses. On the other hand, you can also find innumerable examples of people being incarcerated for minor offenses. After all, America has more than 2 million people behind bars. For every news story about a violent criminal who receives an absurdly mild sentence, I can recall stories with exactly the opposite outcome.  I recall reading about a female high school teacher sentenced to years in prison for having sex with a boy in her class.  Why prison?  I get that her behavior is not OK, but why not fire her from her job?  Or how about the young woman who was sentenced to decades in prison after being pressured by her boyfriend to carry some drugs to a drop-off location.  Isn’t that a bit extreme?  Or how about the woman sentenced to prison for insider trading?  Wouldn’t a hefty fine be adequate?  Or how about women in jail for prostitution? Matt Yglesias has complained that DC prosecutors are failing to prosecute people caught with illegal firearms.  Not surprisingly, these people then go out and commit violent crimes.  I don’t know about you, but I’m far more concerned about being victimized by a guy with an illegal gun than I am by a high school teacher, the girlfriend of a drug dealer, a prostitute or an insider trader.  There’s a huge disparity in the incarceration rates of men and women.  Perhaps the disparity should be even greater. Time magazine recently had this to say: Murder, for instance, should be treated as a far graver crime than writing a bad check.  That would seem obvious.  But our actual sentencing practices don’t seem to follow any rhyme or reason.   Some politicians say that we need to be tougher on crime, while other politicians suggest we have too many people behind bars.  According to Reason magazine, some politicians can’t seem to decide what they want: In my view, the debate over criminal justice is too simplistic.  We don’t need more people in prison.  We don’t need fewer people in prison.  We need different people in prison. (0 COMMENTS)

If you follow discussions about tax policy that academics and politicians engage in, sooner or later you’ll come across the concept of a “tax expenditure.” The term seems internally contradictory. How could something be both a tax and an expenditure? It can’t.  The term is contradictory. And thinking in terms of tax expenditures can lead you to some strange conclusions. These are the opening paragraphs of David R. Henderson, “The Bizarre Economics of ‘Tax Expenditures‘”, TaxBytes, Institute for Policy Innovation, August 29, 2023. I use a numerical example with the deduction for home mortgages. I chose that on purpose because I think there should not be a deduction for interest on a home mortgage. But that doesn’t mean that using the term “tax expenditure” to refer to the deduction is a legitimate use of language. I go on to point out some implications of using the term “tax expenditure” to describe the home mortgage deduction. Here’s one: Similarly, raising his tax rate would increase the tax expenditure. And then tax policy wonks would say that he benefited hugely from the tax expenditure even though the higher tax rate made him worse off. Read the whole thing, which is not long.   (0 COMMENTS)

Nowadays, it is common, when introducing an event, to say something along the lines of: “We are grateful to the XYZ Indian Tribe for allowing us to hold this gathering on what is really their land.” Universities, bastions of the left, have been particularly intent upon engaging in this practice. For example, Northwestern University offered this “expression of gratitude and appreciation to those whose territory you reside on, and a way of honoring the Indigenous people who have been living and working on the land from time immemorial.” Here is another instance: “Princeton (University) seeks to build relationships with Native American and Indigenous communities and nations through academic pursuits, partnerships, historical recognitions, community service and enrollment efforts.  These communities and nations include the Lenni-Lenape people, who consider the land on which the University stands part of their ancient homeland.” Do the American Indians really own the entire country based upon homesteading, mixing their labor with the land? Not at all. There are now some 350 million people in the country, and there are still vast areas of it that have never so much as been touched by human feet, let alone homesteaded as farms, factories or residences. Before the white man came to the continent the best estimate is that there were only 2-3 million native persons in existence (the lowest estimate is less than one million; the highest, 18 million). It is difficult to see how they, alone, could have accomplished any such task. There is a continuum issue heavily involved in homesteading. How intensively must the land be homesteaded, and for how long, before it can be clearly stated that ownership has been attained? Experts aver that it must be more intense, and less acreage attained for any given amount of effort, east of the Mississippi rather than west of it. Why? This is due to the fact that area off the Atlantic is far more fertile, on average, than in most of the west. Thus, a family of four would rationally invest in the homesteading of less acreage in the east than in the west. Not only is there a continuum in terms of how intensively must be the homesteading, and the duration thereof in order to attain ownership, but, also, the degree of property rights after the fact. Consider many Indian tribes in the Midwest of the United States. They had a southern encampment which they utilized in the winter, and a northern one, occupied in the summer. Each consisted, say, of 100 square miles. However the two camps were located, perhaps, 1000 miles away from each other. Therefore, of necessity, to get from one to the other, and back again, they had to traverse this larger distance. So, what property do they own and to what degree? In my view, there are three different statuses. First, they own, fully, the one square mile inside each of their two locations, fully. They had their tents therein, and their crops were grown there. Second, what about the other 99 square miles in each of these two sites? They only hunted there. Thus, they have only semi ownership therein. They may continue to hunt there, but, assuming no chance of over hunting, they cannot object to other tribes hunting there too, especially in the hunting areas they are no longer occupying for six months of the year. Third is the 1000-mile path between their two encampments? Here, there property rights are even less intense. To be sure they would have the right to continue to travel back and forth between those two places, but may not properly prohibit others from also engaging in this practice, provided, only, that there would be no clash between them and anyone else. If there were, then “our” Indian tribe which had first used this avenue would have priority. There is also more than just a little bit of hypocrisy involved in this left wing land recognition movement. If the native peoples really own it in total, all others should either depart (back to Europe? Back to Africa? Back to Asia?) and/or start paying rent to the rightful owners. Has anything of this sort, on a serious basis, been placed on the table by any of these advocates? If so, not by too many of them; this would hardly be popular. Nor would it be justified, given the paucity of the case in favor of their total ownership of the entire country.     Walter E. Block is Harold E. Wirth Eminent Scholar Endowed Chair and Professor of Economics at Loyola University New Orleans and is co-author of the 2015 book Water Capitalism: The Case for Privatizing Oceans, Rivers, Lakes, and Aquifers. New York City, N.Y.: Lexington Books, Rowman and Littlefield (with Peter Lothian Nelson ). (0 COMMENTS)

Co-blogger Scott Sumner wrote yesterday that the positive correlation between economic freedom and civic virtue was not something he expected. It is something I expected. And it has to do with how free markets lead to virtue. In a chapter titled “Market Virtues and Community” in my 2001 book, The Joy of Freedom: An Economist’s Odyssey, I wrote, “Markets teach or encourage at least three virtues: tolerance, honesty, and compassion.” In that chapter I spell out how. Here’s what I write about Oskar Schindler, in response to Walter Mondale’s dissing of Schindler: In other words, to Schindler, each person is worth counting—each has value; 850 differs from 851 by one person, and that person’s life matters. This is a major transformation. Earlier in the movie, after rescuing Stern from certain murder, Schindler had said angrily, “What if I got here five minutes later? Then where would I be?” He had been upset about being without an accountant. Now he cared about all his workers. This transformation made some movie critics call Schindler “complicated” (San Francisco Chronicle) and “puzzling” and “contradictory” (Atlanta Journal and Constitution). But Schindler’s growing humanity is about as hard to understand as warm weather in summer and should surprise only those people who think about Marxist cardboard characters—“workers” and “capitalists”—rather than real human beings. Schindler started to like the people he worked with. Commerce does that. Almost all of us care for the people we work with, whether they are our employees, our employers, or our fellow workers. Indeed, we think of fellow workers who don’t care about anyone else as being odd, troubled, unusual. Anyone who knows employers knows that the part of the job many of them hate most is firing somebody. Schindler was a hero—his actions were heroic because he took a big risk. But what led to his heroic actions was his caring for his employees, something that is quite normal. Virtually all of us would be willing to take some risks to help those around us, and the bigger the threat to their well-being, death obviously being the biggest threat, the bigger the risk we’re willing to take. So the transformation in Schindler, though heroic, was entirely normal. The free market created an environment in which Schindler learned to value people; in a sense, markets taught Schindler morality. In that chapter I also lay out why economic freedom supports accountability and compassion. Another story that I don’t relate in the book. In the late 1990s, I played volleyball with a regular group that included some people who, as adults, had escaped from Czechoslovakia. One thing I noticed about 2 of the 3 adults was that they often called balls in when they were out or out when they were in and always when that benefited their team. The other players didn’t do this nearly as often and sometimes made wrong calls that hurt their team. As I talked about it to another economist who played with us, it made sense. They had come from a Communist society where lying was a way of life, and it almost had to be because the stakes were so high.   (0 COMMENTS)

A few months ago, I bought Micheal Keen’s and Joel Slemrod’s entertaining book on taxes, Rebellion, Rascals, and Revenue. It’s not the kind of book I like to read cover to cover. It’s more the kind I like to dip into to find an interesting story or two. There are many. In one section, though, the authors, both of whom are good economists, make a basic error. In discussing the Earned Income Tax Credit, they write: By making work more attractive, the EITC induces an increase in labor supply among low-income workers. Unless the demand for labor is perfectly inelastic (meaning, improbably, that employers will employ the same amount of labor no matter what wage they have to pay), this increase in labor supply drives wages down. No. It’s the opposite. It’s when the demand for labor is perfectly inelastic that the drop in wages is greatest. I’m not great at drawing demand and supply curves on line. But imagine a vertical demand curve for labor. Then draw an upward-sloping supply curve. Then shift the supply curve to the right. You’ll see that the equilibrium amount of labor demanded and supplied doesn’t change. What changes is the equilibrium wage, which drops. It’s actually when the elasticity of demand for labor is perfectly elastic (think of a horizontal demand for labor schedule) that the increased supply leads to no drop in wages. (0 COMMENTS)

Is the US Constitution problematic in terms of the creation and implementation of successful public policy in today’s America? Is the Constitution authoritarian? What’s the history of constitutional ambiguity? Louis Michael Seidman joins EconTalk host Russ Roberts to discuss and disagree on constitutional disobedience, how the Constitution should be interpreted, and the ideal place of the Constitution in how policy is designed. Seidman is the Carmack Waterhouse professor of constitutional law at the Georgetown University Law Center, and the author of On Constitutional Disobedience. Seidman’s main point throughout the podcast is that of constitutional disobedience: not using the Constitution as a framework for creating laws for the country. Seidman believes that blindly accepting the rules that people from three centuries ago is archaic and undemocratic, and that we should ignore the Constitution when it advocates for immoral rules: Constitutional Disobedience does not mean disobeying everything that’s in the Constitution. To the extent that the Framers put in the Constitution are good things, they ought to be obeyed because they are good things. And so you’ve pointed to one feature of the Constitution which you consider a good thing. And that ought to be followed because it’s a good thing. There are other things in the Constitution that are not good things and ought not to be followed because they are not good things. Seidman has a few arguments to bolster this view. For example, he believes that there is a significant pattern throughout American history of the Constitution being ignored or blatantly violated due to practicality or morality. His main example is the Emancipation Proclamation: Other sorts of foundational events in our history are also either outright violations or constitutionally questionable. So, my favorite example: We’re now celebrating, the 150th anniversary of it, is the Emancipation Proclamation. It was common ground, a view shared by everybody, including Abraham Lincoln and including most abolitionists, that the Constitution prohibited interfering with slavery in the states where it already existed…So the abolition of slavery was accomplished not by constitutional processes but by the force of arms, in violation of the Constitution. And when the Constitution finally caught up in 1866, with the passage of the 13th Amendment, the Amendment itself was adopted by mechanisms which were constitutionally questionable. A few people dispute this, but the vast majority of people who have studied it think that the framers of the 14th Amendment would certainly not have read their words as prohibiting segregated schools. Here, Seidman is making the point of many dis-unionist abolitionists in the 19th century, such as William Lloyd Garrison. Garrison believed that slavery was constitutional due to the opinions of the founding fathers being mostly pro-slavery, but he also encouraged his followers to not accept the U.S. Constitution as a legitimate legal document until slavery was abolished. However, many other abolitionists at the time, namely Lysander Spooner and Frederick Douglass disagreed. In Spooner’s The Unconstitutionality of Slavery, he outlines why the Constitution’s language itself is anti-slavery, and why the pro-slavery attitudes of the framers are irrelevant to interpreting the Constitution.  Seidman references a more niche issue, that of how U.S. Senators have been elected since 1791. Seidman concludes that Americans have sensibly ignored the Constitution in this realm, and that more scrutiny needs to be applied towards the more nonsensical portions of the Constitution: The way in which we have appointed elected Senators since 1791 pretty clearly violates Article I. So, Article I. provides that all Senators serve 6 years, except for the first group of Senators, who were divided by lot into 3 groups to serve 2, 4, or 6 years, so as to have staggered elections. So, in 1791, Vermont became the first new state. And in the resolution making Vermont the first new state, Congress provides that 1 Senator is going to serve for 6 years and the other is going to serve for only 4 years. That’s a violation of Article I. And you know what? Every state that’s been admitted since then, Congress has done that. This leads into the “obsession” with constitutionality that Seidman takes issue with. He explores how appeals to the Constitution, and the strict use of the Constitution to justify rules in America are inherently authoritarian. According to Seidman, Americans are too focused on whether policies are constitutional, as opposed to their effectiveness in solving the problems they were intended to solve. To Seidman, this is representative of a fallacious appeal to tradition and legality over morality. A focus on constitutionality stifles debate and gives hegemonic, totalitarian, and undemocratic control of the nation over to the opinions of the founders as opposed to the views of Americans today, and is no different from a dictatorship, or control from a hostile foreign power: I don’t have to give you any reasons, you’ve got to think aid to agriculture is unconstitutional because people 250 years ago said so, people are not willing to accept that. And they shouldn’t accept it. The obligation you have is to explain to people why now government aid to agriculture is a bad thing. And in the end what we think of as constitutional rights aren’t going to survive unless folks can explain to their fellow Americans why these are principles that ought to be accepted and not just something that in an authoritarian way you tell people they have to whether they want it or not. This is our country. We live in it. We have the right to have the kind of country we want. We would not accept rule by France or rule by the United Nations. And for the same reasons, we shouldn’t accept rule by a relatively small group of people who probably did not represent a majority even at the time that they lived; but in any event have been dead for several hundred years. Seidman’s claim here ignores the concept of the Constitution as a living document. However, Americans don’t have to accept the attitudes and ideas of those who lived 250 years ago, contrary to what Seidman suggests. Evidence of this is the amendment process, and the significant changes to American law since 1787 which have passed the merits of constitutionality, such as the Affordable Care Act.  Seidman takes significant issue with the ambiguity in the Constitution. He believes a core purpose of law is to settle disputes, and the constant debates over the unclear language of the Constitution create gridlock and animosity. To Seidman, the Constitution doesn’t only do a poor job of settling arguments, it causes them and fans the flames of contemporary American polarization. What you end up with is not the Constitution settling our arguments. What you end up with instead is people on both sides accusing the other side of violating our foundational document. And that’s not conducive to the kind of respectful and restrained debate we ought to have in a mature democracy. Though Roberts pushes back on a significant portion of Seidman’s arguments, this is one he agrees with. But where I agree with you, and I think you make a very telling point, is that the document is ambiguous, and those of us who don’t like what’s happened under its name, we are fooling ourselves a little bit in that we are saying, not just that we want the Constitution. We want the Constitution that’s the one we like. The one we interpret. Another argument Roberts takes no issue with is Seidman’s assertion the Supreme Court needs to be honest about legislating from the bench, and making decisions largely through political beliefs, and not an understanding of constitutional law. So, really, the important decisions, like the decision outlawing segregated schools or creating an abortion right or limiting affirmative action or protecting the rights of gay men and lesbians, those decisions have basically no grounding in the Constitution. They are some combination of the Justices’ views of political morality, their views of our traditions, their interpretation of their own prior precedents; and if we are going to have a body act like that, I think we need to be honest with the American people and come clean and make clear that that’s what it’s doing. I believe many Americans would also align with Roberts and Seidman on this point. It’s understandably difficult for the court to rule on modern issues which the Constitution doesn’t address specifically, or even ambiguously. Justices of the court are forced to post-hoc justify their rulings, which are may be based on political views, tying together bits of constitutional provisions that fit their narrative, instead of using the legal text to inform their opinions on cases brought to the court. However, Roberts significantly pushes back on a few of Seidman’s points, such as the authoritarianism of the Constitution. In his counter-argument Roberts makes the point that people don’t appeal to the Constitution because might makes right. The Constitution prevents that mindset in the first place, due to its focus on constraint of factions and power. Roberts further takes issue with Seidman’s argument against the gridlock that the Constitution encourages. Roberts argues gridlock prevents authoritarianism, as it’s simply too difficult to enact so much totalitarian change with the sheer amount of barriers that need to be bypassed: My thought is that the gridlock that we have right now–you are talking about gridlock writ large, that it’s very hard to amend the Constitution. It’s also hard to get a lot of things done. We’re having a lot of trouble right now agreeing on how to close a trillion dollar deficit, whether we should at all. We can’t agree on either of those things. Or how to make it happen. So let me argue that that’s a feature and not a bug. There’s a general, I think, perception that policy in America moves very slowly. And there’s a lot more inertia here relative to in Europe. And I think that’s a good thing. Though this episode was full of disagreements between Seidman and Roberts, both expressed gratitude to the other for being able to educationally and amicably disagree. Seidman and Roberts specifically mention the constant anti-Semitic abuse they both receive as a point of comparison for the healthy nature of this podcast. Lastly, the podcast finishes with Seidman explaining his approach to education as a professor.  I don’t expect or even want people to come away from my classes agreeing with me. What I want them to come away from the classes is holding the view they hold in the most sophisticated form that it can be held. And that’s my ambition as a teacher. This is a fantastic note to end on. The purpose of education is to understand the best process of thought for deciphering the complexity of the world, and deciding how to improve it, and Seidman’s method of teaching is a wonderful example of this.   While listening to this podcast some questions came to mind. feel free to share your thoughts as well. 1- Seidman asserts that it is authoritarian to use an appeal to the Constitution. Why is it authoritarian to reference agreed upon principles? If we can’t appeal to these, how else will we solve disputes? Would Seidman agree with this argument in any other scenario, such as a sports environment or private contract? This seems like a strawman; does Seidman think that Americans only have arguments based exclusively on constitutional law and not morality? If Americans reference the Constitution, doesn’t it stand to reason that they do so because they agree with the provision being referenced, not solely because it exists?   2- Another of Seidman’s critiques of the Constitution is its ambiguity leading to difficulty in solving problems. Does this contradict Seidman’s points on authoritarianism? Does Seidman want the Constitution to settle our disputes with unambiguous law? Isn’t this the exact same authoritarianism he believes appeal to constitutionality is representing in the first place? I would argue the ambiguity is without a doubt a positive, as it facilitates debate, and allows contemporary and future Americans to interpret the constitution as a living document, in a way that is in the best interest of the country throughout time. Where do youstand?   3- Gridlock is a key point that Seidman and Roberts discuss, specifically the drastic stagnation in constitutional amendments. How should Americans view the amendment process potentially going dormant?   4- Seidman seems to think that the Constitution has little effect on the American way of life today. In his words it’s not “the glue that holds us together.” However, he also points out that Americans seem hyper-focused on the constitutionality of proposed rules. Are these positions contradictory or can they both be held simultaneously?   5- Seidman expressed his dislike for the politicized nature of the Supreme Court, and though I agree that this is a problem, I wonder… to what extent is it possible for any governmental institution, including the Supreme Court, to be apolitical?   Kevin Lavery is a student at Western Carolina University studying economic analysis and political science and was a 2023 Summer Scholar at Liberty Fund. (0 COMMENTS)

Today, I’d like to discuss a couple of correlations in areas where I wouldn’t expect to observe them.  One is the positive correlation between free markets and civic virtue, and the other is the negative correlation between economic growth and birth rates (at least for advanced countries.) 1. Back in 2008, I wrote a paper entitled “The Great Danes.”  I argued that countries with a high level of civic virtue tend to have the freest economies.  More specifically, I looked at various indices of “economic freedom” that had the size of government removed.  I wasn’t interested in the amount spent of social welfare programs, rather my focus was on other aspects of free markets, such as free trade, deregulation, rule of law, lack of price controls, privatization, etc.  In a surprising coincidence, the world’s number one free market by this definition turned out to be Denmark.  And it turns out that Denmark also tends to top indices of civic virtue (an ambiguous concept that includes things like lack of corruption.) A recent paper by Leandro Prados de la Escosura developed a similar approach to economic freedom: Assessing economic liberty and its dimensions is hampered by unavoidable discretional decisions in the choice and transformation of variables (de Haan 2003). A widely shared view is that the more a society relies on the market and the less on government intervention, the larger its economic freedom. However, freedom of economic activity implies “freedom under the law, not the absence of all government action” (Hayek 1960: 193). In fact, the government, as a provider of protection to the individual from coercion, is essential for economic liberty (Friedman 1962). It is the nature of government action, rather than how active the government is, that is at stake. Hence, the size of government should not be considered a dimension of economic freedom. I wasn’t surprised to see Denmark come in number one in his ranking of economic freedom—I had produced a similar result.  I was surprised to see that Denmark’s leadership went back at least as far as 1850: Of course Denmark is just one country, but when looking across all developed countries I found strong evidence that economic freedom was positively correlated with civic virtue. Perhaps that should not be viewed as a surprise, but I must have read dozens of left wing intellectuals assert with confidence that free markets make people more selfish and corrupt. I suspect the causation goes in both directions.  Free markets make people more honest for reasons discussed in Deirdre McCloskey’s Bourgeois Virtues, and civic virtue makes it easier to set up a free and transparent economic policy regime that doesn’t favor particular special interest groups. As an aside, I recently read a book written in the early 1800s, which discussed the dramatic arts.  The author (August Wilhelm Von Schlegel) had this to say about cultural differences in Europe: Intrigue in real life is foreign to the Northern nations, both from the virtues and defects of their character; they have too much openness of disposition, and too little acuteness and nicety of understanding.  . . . In the North, life is wholly founded on mutual confidence. Clearly this sweeping statement involves plenty of hyperbole, but it does suggest that even 200 years ago certain “Nordic” cultural traits were already apparent. 2.  Some thoughts on a second interesting correlation were triggered by this tweet: Younger readers who are impressed by this growth spurt might be interested in knowing that Politano’s graph doesn’t even include the heyday of Korean growth, which occurred during the 1970s and 1980s.  In the 30 years between 1960 and 1990, Korea went from being one of the poorest countries on Earth to being a successful middle-income country.  By the time South Korea hosted the Olympics in 1988, it was already viewed as an impressive success story.  Unless I’m mistaken, Korea’s growth over the past 60 years is the most impressive in the entire world. So what does all of this have to do with “non-obvious correlations”?  It turns out that South Korea leads the world in another significant category; it has the world’s lowest birth rate (0.78 children per woman.) You might think that this correlation is not so surprising, as we all know that richer countries tend to have lower birth rates.  But that’s not the point I’m making here.  Korea is not unusually rich, it is unusually fast growing.  I understand why a rich country might be expected to have a low birth rate.  Among developed economies, however, there is actually very little correlation between birth rate and GDP/person.  The US and Northern Europe have slightly higher birth rates than Mediterranean countries and East Asia, and are also a bit richer.  But even if it were true that richer countries had lower birth rates, why would you expect very low birth rates in fast growing countries that are not unusually rich? As with the Denmark “coincidence” discussed above, this is not just a correlation involving one country.  Next to South Korea, places like Taiwan, Singapore, China and Hong Kong have the world’s lowest birth rates, and are also the fastest growing economies since 1960. I have no explanation for this pattern, but I suspect that there is something in Korean culture that helps to explain both the birth rate and the rapid economic growth.  To be clear, I don’t believe that culture is the only factor explaining economic growth (a quick look at North and South Korea dispels that theory), but culture may be correlated with certain traits that boost growth, such as willingness to work hard and sacrifice for future benefit.  For instance, South Korean students are known to study unusually hard to achieve academic success.  South Korea maintained a 6-day workweek until 2004, and Koreans still work more hours per year than workers in other advanced countries. Perhaps that drive to succeed in some way pushes a country toward a lower birth rate. Alternatively, the causation might go from growth to culture.  Perhaps the rapid growth causes such extreme societal change that traditional cultural traits emphasizing the importance of big families get brushed aside. Any other theories? PS.  What other surprising correlation are out there?  It occurs to me that America’s most productive city (San Francisco) is also perhaps its worst governed city.  Is there a causal story there?  That correlation is clearly not true at the international level.  Switzerland is both richer and better governed than Somalia. (0 COMMENTS)

As I’ve mentioned before, I currently live in Minnesota. Like most places I’ve lived, it has its upsides and downsides, but one thing I put firmly in the “upside” category is the Minnesota State Fair. This event occurs in the final days before summer ends and the school season begins. While scrolling through the local news, I stumbled across an opinion piece with what struck me as a strange take on fair parking.  Parking at the fair can certainly be an ordeal. It attracts large crowds and there is only so much parking space and only so many streets one can take to get there, so the last leg of the drive to the fair is often spent moving at barely faster than walking speed while getting into the parking lot. The official state fair parking lots charge a $20 fee. In theory, street side parking is available in various neighborhoods within walking distance of the fairgrounds. But, because these street side parking spaces are available to use free of charge, they reach capacity approximately instantaneously and finding one requires a great deal of luck. Personally, I’ll cheerfully pay $20 to skip that process and park at the fairgrounds. The amount of time and hassle I save is worth significantly more than $20 to me – which will be even more true this year, since my three-year-old son will be coming along for the experience.  The author of this piece, however, takes a different view. For him, its either free street side parking or nothing at all. He calls this his “biggest tradition” regarding the fair. Now, I’m not going to say he’s wrong for harboring this preference. Economic value is subjective, and just because the time and hassle saved by using fairground parking is worth $20 to me doesn’t mean it must be worth $20 to him. However, I think his opinion would benefit if he took certain externalities into account.  He does seem at least partly aware of one externality associated with his parking preference – the time and hassle costs of fulfilling his parking preferences are also inflicted on the other people joining him to this event. He acknowledges this issue exists, commenting how his behavior “drives my friends and family accompanying me to the fair nuts: I will drive around for a looooooong time through the neighborhoods to find a free parking spot. This is a game I am not willing to lose.” But even though he’s aware that fulfilling this preference inflicts costs on the other members of his party, he doesn’t seem too troubled by that. However, there’s another externality going on that he also fails to properly appreciate. He points out that some “enterprising individuals who live adjacent to the grounds” will also, for a fee, allow state fair attendees to park in their driveways or even on their lawns. I think this is a great thing. Parking is a scarce resource, and during the state fair the quantity of parking demanded is unusually high, and local residents are responding to this by increasing the parking supply since they can charge a price for the use of that resource. Unfortunately, it’s clear that when he refers to these people as “enterprising individuals” his intention is full of sarcasm and scorn – he also refers to these people as “clowns” immediately afterwards.  I think his disdain for these people is uncalled for. Some people have extra space that can be used, others are happy to pay to use that space, and this is a mutually beneficial exchange for all parties involved. If he doesn’t find that it’s worth it for him, that’s fine, but sneering at people who do find it beneficial is a bad look. But even if he has no wish to partake, he should be grateful these arrangements exist – they work to his benefit. Every person who uses these spaces to park is one less person out there looking for street side parking. The more people are willing to allow their driveways and lawns and lots be used for fair parking, the more it improve his odds to find some of the street side parking he values so much. The very thing he scoffs at and looks down upon also creates a positive externality from which he benefits. Perhaps if he took the insights of economics a little closer to heart, his attitude towards other people would be a little less dismal.     (0 COMMENTS)