My friend Ted Levy, a retired doctor, told me over the phone this week that it’s not just the latest Woke Oath for doctors that is problematic; the traditional Hippocratic Oath is no prize either. So I encouraged him to write up his point in two posts. The first takes on both the Hippocratic Oath and the Woke Oath. That’s below. The second is his preferred substitute, which he came up with. Here’s Part I, his criticisms. Introduction Medical oaths have been in the news lately. Some conservatives have expressed dismay about a woke oath that has made the rounds, lamenting that society is moving away from the traditional Hippocratic Oath. In fact, that move happened quite a while ago. And the Hippocratic Oath has its own problems. So I thought it might be fun to analyze both the traditional oath and the recent woke oath, and perhaps compare them to what we’d want to see in a medical oath that libertarians could embrace. The Hippocratic Oath Hippocrates of Kos was a Greek physician practicing around 400 BC, traditionally referred to as the “Father of Medicine.” The Hippocratic Oath is named after him. It is often thought to contain the famous phrase, “First, do no harm.” It does not. It is often thought to be an altruistic oath in which physicians pledge to do their best for the patient and for humanity. It is not. A simple economic analysis indicates that much of it was designed to maintain a medical guild capable of garnering supra-market profits by limiting competition. Let’s consider some aspects of the Oath. Early on, after swearing to Apollo, the God of, among other things, medicine, the young physician says he will “hold my teacher in this art equal to my own parents; to make him partner in my livelihood; when he is in need of money to share mine with him.” That is, doctors in training guarantee to provide financial security to academic physicians and, as needed, provide them with a sinecure. Nice work if you can get it. But a physician-in-training must do even more for those masters who train him to enter the guild. The trainee must consider his master’s sons as his “own brothers, and to teach them this art, if they want to learn it, without fee or indenture.” Today, Ivy League schools are often condemned for offering “legacy admissions.” That’s the practice of a college giving preferential admissions treatment to the children of its alumni. As you can see, it’s not a new idea. The medical guild of Hippocrates’ time wrote it into its oath. Legacies don’t need to have any demonstrated competence. They are automatically accepted and they get training for free. Good deal if you can get it. But the nature of guilds is, unfortunately, that most people can’t get it. The Hippocratic Oath continues with a pledge “to impart precept, oral instruction, and all other instruction to my own sons, the sons of my teacher, and to indentured pupils who have taken the Healer’s oath, but to nobody else.” It’s hard to get clearer than that. The medical guild supporting the oath wants to restrict practitioners not to those who best perform medical skills to benefit patients, but as much as possible to their own families, friends, and loved ones. BUT TO NOBODY ELSE. The oath then delves into two issues that, thousands of years later, remain hot button topics. Ancient practitioners pledged not to engage in euthanasia or abortion. You may well oppose both parts of that pledge today. Many do. But notice that in both cases the oath opposes patient autonomy, a value and principle not in evidence in ancient times but that has become pre-eminent in modern medical ethics. Here’s yet one more example of how guilds function. The Hippocratic Oath has a passage sounding odd to modern ears: “I will not use the knife, not even, verily, on sufferers from stone, but I will give place to such as are craftsmen therein.” In modern times a surgeon is a type of doctor. In ancient times a surgeon was an alternative to a doctor. Doctors treated what ailed their patients with potions, powders, ointments, and advice. Surgeons (who were also barbers) cut the patient open. The Hippocratic Oath (where “stone” refers to kidney stones or gallstones, horribly painful conditions for which surgery is generally warranted) tells doctors to do nothing in such cases but instead to send them to a surgeon/barber. In other words, they must uphold professional jurisdictional rules. Neither the medical nor the surgical guild competes with the other, to the benefit of both. You may think, “That’s good. People with kidney stones should see a surgeon.” But, as any modern surgeon can tell you, sometimes they are sent patients on whom they couldoperate but who would do just as well with non-surgical treatment. In ancient times, such patients didn’t get the best treatment; they got the treatment based on the way the guilds divvied things up. Medical guilds, protecting their members more than the public, have historically been the rule rather than the exception. Historian Ronald Hamowy, in his article “The Early Development of Medical Licensing Laws in the United States 1875-1900,” appearing in the Journal of Libertarian Studies 3 (1):73-119 (1979), noted that from its origin in 1847 the American Medical Association spared no effort at restricting medical supply, largely via licensing. The AMA’s code of medical ethics, based on and expanding from Hippocrates’ Oath, contained a variety of principles not based on patient care but on physician avarice. For example, one edition of the AMA’s Code of Medical Ethics stressed the impropriety of “A wealthy physician [giving] advice gratis to the affluent.” Why? Because it decreases the “common funds” of the guild, thereby “defrauding” fellow doctors. But now, in the 21st century, only about 15 percent of American physicians are members of the AMA. The dramatic growth of third-party, largely governmental, payments to physicians in the second half of the 20th century achieved the AMA’s long sought goals of limiting supply and increasing physician revenue and thereby ironically diminished its membership among now satisfied private practice doctors. Instead, as government rules, regulations, and restrictions became a more substantial part of the physician’s practice, and had to be stressed in medical education, academic medical faculty and administrators became more important among AMA members. And academic medical faculty, of late, tend to be woke. A Woke Oath In December 2022, Robert Englander, MD, MPH, Associate Dean of Undergraduate Medical Education at the University of Minnesota school of medicine, led the first year medical students in their White Coat ceremony. That’s a traditional ceremony in the move from layperson to medical professional, where students first get to wear the symbolic “white coats,” garb they will continue to don throughout their medical school, internship, and residency. But Dr. Englander’s words, dutifully repeated by the first years, was anything but traditional. He had re-written the medical oath to, in his vision, fit the times. He began by noting that the medical school was “located on Dakota land,” referring to land owned by the Dakota Indian tribe. He added: “[T]his acknowledgment is not enough. We commit to uprooting the legacy and perpetuation of structural violence deeply embedded within the healthcare system. We recognize inequities built by past and present traumas rooted in white supremacy, colonialism, the gender binary, ableism, and all forms of oppression.” So it seems clear that when Englander (how appropriate a name for someone recognizing his role in white supremacy and colonialism!) said the medical school was “located on Dakota land” he didn’t mean “purchased from the Dakota Indians.” He meant illegitimately taken from them. Yet for all his expressed willingness to end the “perpetuation of structural violence” and recognize the inequities rooted in white supremacy, colonialism, the gender binary, ableism (in a medical school??, a place devoted to training people to aid the sick and infirm??), and “all forms of oppression” Englander never mentioned his willingness to give the stolen land back. I can’t speak for Native Americans, of course, but I’d be willing to bet that given the choice of getting their land back or dealing with the traumas associated with the gender binary, they’d take the land. Englander and his woke oath were nowhere near finished, though. It went on to pledge “healing our planet.” As Alex Epstein has noted in his book Fossil Future, environmental pleas to heal the planet involve demands to minimize if not eliminate human impact on the environment. Thus the need to reduce energy use as much as possible. Does Englander have any idea how much energy modern hospitals use? Maybe that’s why his pledge also commits to “honor all Indigenous ways of healing that have been historically marginalized by Western medicine.” Granted, acupuncture and medicinal herbs use much less energy than CT scanners and extracorporeal lithotripsy units. The Woke Oath also contains a vow “to embrace our role as community members and strive to embody cultural humility” yet also to “learn from the scientific innovations made before us and pledge to advance and share this knowledge with peers and neighbors.” The Woke never see the contradictions in their visions. Many communities in America, we’ve learned in the last few years, are concerned about vaccines. Should the white coats learning about Jenner’s past scientific innovation “share this knowledge” with community neighbors? Or should they “embody cultural humility” and not bring it up, instead recommending “indigenous ways of healing…historically marginalized” in the past? A  reading of this version of a medical oath on YouTube led to much consternation. FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, sent the medical school a letter of concern and received confirmation from the dean that no one was forced to attend the White Coat ceremony or take the oath. But if you get sick in the Minnesota area in the future, be sure to remember that you have indigenous and historically marginalized, as well as Western, medicine options to choose from. Well, maybe not all Western medical options, but at least the culturally humble ones. The picture above is of Hippocrates. Next up: Ted Levy’s suggested pro-medical liberty replacement. (0 COMMENTS)

Based on the clinical evidence from the 93 trials that ivermectin reducedmortality by an average of 51 percent, and on the estimated infection fatality rate of COVID-19,  about 400 infected Americans aged 60-69 would need to be treated with ivermectin to statistically prevent one death in that group. The total cost of the ivermectin to prevent that one death: $40,000. (Based on the GoodRx website, a generic prescription for ivermectin is priced at approximately $40. Roughly 2.5 prescriptions would be needed per person to receive the average dose of 150 mg per patient.) How much is your life worth? We’re betting it’s worth far more than $40,000. When the next pandemic strikes, by necessity we’ll rely on older drugs because newer ones require years of development. Ivermectin is a repurposed drug that helps, and could have helped so much more. It deserves recognition, not disparagement. What we really need, however, is a way to inoculate ourselves against the lies and misrepresentations of powerful public figures, organizations, and drug companies. Sadly, there are no such vaccines for that contagion. These are the closing paragraphs of Charles L. Hooper and David R. Henderson, “Setting the Record Straight on Ivermectin,” Brownstone Institute, December 14, 2022. Read the whole thing, which is not long. (0 COMMENTS)

In intellectual debate, I find a special charm when someone plays the proverbial “reverse card.” This is when an argument usually deployed in one direction gets applied to reach an opposite conclusion. For example, many political theorists argue for political authority and state intervention using ideal theory – but Jason Brennan played the reverse card to argue that ideal theory, if applied consistently, would actually support a stateless society operating according to free market capitalism. Chris Freiman applied his own reverse card arguing that consistent use of non-ideal theory would also support free market capitalism. Dan Moller’s reverse card argued that a worldview harboring a modest view of individual rights and a strong respect for our neighbors and community leads to libertarianism and the abolition of the welfare state. Of course, like all modes of argument, the reverse card can be done well or poorly. I’ve occasionally seen attempts to use arguments traditionally associated with conservatism or libertarianism in defense of the regulatory state. Here I describe just one, in the hopes that it will forever be banished from discourse and spare me the secondhand embarrassment I experience when I see it invoked in this way. The argument I’m talking about is Chesterton’s Fence. Chesterton’s Fence is an argument against hasty abolition of laws, institutions, or customs, courtesy of G. K. Chesterton. Chesterton imagines someone coming across a fence in a field for which he sees no point or purpose. A reckless reformer might say “Well, I don’t see any purpose being served by this fence, so we might as well tear it down.” This is folly, says Chesterton. If you don’t see the point of something, that doesn’t provide a justification to eliminate it – it only shows the limits of your understanding. After all, the fences don’t grow in fields like plants – someone put it there for a reason. If you don’t know why the fence was built in the first place, maybe it’s there for a good reason. Some argue that economic regulations, or the regulatory state itself, is a kind of Chesterton’s fence. To be clear, I think Chesterton’s Fence is a good heuristic. But I don’t think it cuts any ice in the argument about economic regulation, for a couple of different reasons. First, Chesterton’s Fence isn’t an argument that existing institutions should be presumed valid, full stop. What Chesterton actually says is: The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to [the fence] and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.” So the injunction is to first understand what led to the fence being built, at which point tearing it down might prove to be the correct move after all. This is why the Chesterton’s Fence reverse card in defense of economic regulation fails. Critics of economic regulation don’t merely say “this regulation seems pointless, lets get rid of it.” Public choice theory meets Chesterton’s injunction to understand what led to these regulatory fences being created. And according to public choice, most regulation isn’t crafted to serve the public interest, but is instead largely created at the behest of lobbyists to gain special protection for themselves at the public expense. So critics of economic regulation – at least those who draw on public choice theory in their critique – have, in fact, gone off to think about why these regulatory fences were built and what purpose they are meant to serve. And the arguments go beyond a general theory of regulation. It also consists of a body of scholarship which examines specific regulations to measure their effect. This is how Nobel Prize winning economist Ronald Coase described these findings: Coase: When I was editor of The Journal of Law and Economics, we published a whole series of studies of regulation and its effects. Almost all the studies–perhaps all the studies–suggested that the results of regulation had been bad, that the prices were higher, that the product was worse adapted to the needs of consumers, than it otherwise would have been. I was not willing to accept the view that all regulation was bound to produce these results. Therefore, what was my explanation for the results we had? I argued that the most probable explanation was that the government now operates on such a massive scale that it had reached the stage of what economists call negative marginal returns. Anything additional it does, it messes up. But that doesn’t mean that if we reduce the size of government considerably, we wouldn’t find then that there were some activities it did well. Until we reduce the size of government, we won’t know what they are. Reason: What’s an example of bad regulation? Coase: I can’t remember one that’s good. Regulation of transport, regulation of agriculture–agriculture is a, zoning is z. You know, you go from a to z, they are all bad. There were so many studies, and the result was quite universal: The effects were bad. Clifford Winston of the Brookings Institute gives a less dim assessment, but only slightly so, concluding that environmental protections have probably done more good than harm, but in every other area, economic regulations, as they are actually crafted and carried out, have done more harm than good. (Another common response that misses the point – “Sure, you can complain that government does things imperfectly, but simply showing that something is flawed isn’t good enough. You need to show why an alternative would be better.” If something does more harm than good, then doing nothing would be better, even without an alternative. And that’s the argument being made – not that regulation is imperfect, or that it can be captured, or that it has costs. The argument is that regulations are doing more harm than good. Maybe that argument is wrong, but simply saying “nothing is perfect so what’s your alternative” is a nonresponse.) Now, all of the above referenced arguments might be wrong. But a defender of economic regulation needs to actually make that case. They would need to say “Public choice theory is wrong about the actual point and purpose of economic regulations because [insert argument here]. Additionally, all the studies citied by Coase and all the research referenced by Winston reached the wrong results because [additional arguments].” That would be a respectable and productive response. But to simply say “sure, things are imperfect but you need to suggest a better alternative” simply fails to engage. And invoking Chesterton’s Fence is likewise toothless – the person doing so only shows they are a step behind in the discussion.   Kevin Corcoran is a Marine Corps veteran and a consultant in healthcare economics and analytics and holds a Bachelor of Science in Economics from George Mason University.  (0 COMMENTS)

David Beckworth directed me to a tweet by Jeanna Smialek: A friendly shorthand for non-housing core services PCE?  How about “wages”? When nominal wages grow at about 3%/year, inflation will average 2% in the long run.  In that case, any deviations in the headline inflation rate will be transitory.  The burst in inflation that began in 2021 went from being transitory to permanent when it became embedded in wage inflation.   If you listen closely to Jay Powell, it’s pretty clear that he understands that fact.  But the Fed is reluctant to say this out loud.  It sounds bad to emphasize that the number one goal of the Fed right now is to reduce wage increases.  When the public hears that, they think in terms of real wages.  Actually, a tight money policy that slows the growth of nominal wages will tend to cause real wages to rise in the short run.  Some of the largest increases in real hourly wages occurred in years like 1921 and 1930, when nominal wage growth slowed due to tight money, but consumer prices fell much more dramatically. Goods inflation is already slowing.  Housing prices (part of services) are still rising due to the lagged effects of rent contracts signed earlier in 2022.  But the inflation rate of “spot” rents on new rental contracts has begun slowing, and overall average level of rents will eventually follow suit.  Today, the main outstanding problem is fast rising nominal wages, which is the primary factor behind non-housing service prices.  But then nominal wage inflation has always been the essential monetary policy problem, as price inflation is a misleading guide to policy that mixes supply and demand side influences.   In other words: (0 COMMENTS)

Yes. Let’s start with some data: A few comments:  1.This deflates median wages by the CPI.  Most economists believe the PCE is more accurate, and it would show much more rapid real wage gains.   2. This excludes fringe benefits, which have improved much faster than money wages. 3. On average, families are smaller, hence there are fewer children to raise. 4.  If I had used average wages, the increase would have been even greater, as top end incomes have risen faster than median wages. To summarize, this is a conservative estimate of the gains in real wages. So why the perception that it now takes two incomes for the lifestyle that one income once supported?  I see many factors: 1. In a few places such as Silicon Valley that claim is clearly true, at least for workers with median incomes.  Influential pundits often live in places where house prices have risen much faster than average. 2.  We now have higher expectations.  Suppose you are a median worker that wished to reproduce a 1960s lifestyle.  How do you do this?  You’d move into a 1200 square foot ranch house with one bath in a working class immigrant neighborhood.  To get a car as unreliable as a 1960s car, you must buy a cheap 15-year old car.  To get a TV as bad as a 1960s TV, you find one that someone left out at the curb.  You give up your cell phone.  No vacations by jet, it’s a drive down to Disneyland.  You get the idea. 3.  After the 1950s, a steadily increasing number of women began working.  As two incomes became the norm, the lifestyle that two incomes could support because the norm.  Now families wanted a 2500 square foot house with a big kitchen and three baths.  They expected a reliable car, a big flat panel TV and an iPhone.  They flew to Disney World instead of driving to Disneyland.  Humans are social animals, so the perception of “necessities” depends mostly on what sort of lifestyle you see among your friends and family.  Keeping up with the Jones. Pundits seem surprised that people now believe it takes two incomes to support a family, whereas one income would have been adequate in the 1960s.  In retrospect, however, this was inevitable once America’s married women decided to enter the labor force in large numbers.  It would have occurred even if real wages had increased 10 times faster. If you don’t believe me, you might want to study more extreme cases, such as China and South Korea, where real wages did increase at least 10 times faster.  If you speak with people from those countries, you’ll often hear claims that the birth rate has fallen to very low levels because it is too costly to raise children today. In one sense, that’s obviously nonsense.  Back in the early 1960s, South Korea was as poor as sub-Saharan Africa and (like Niger today) Korean women had roughly 6 children on average.  Today, South Koreans are vastly richer, even adjusting for the rising cost of living, and they have 0.8 children. In places such as China and South Korea there has been a radical change in expectations, in all sorts of dimensions.  Not just the number of goods that are viewed as necessities, but also the expectations for childrearing.  Far more effort is now devoted toward getting kids into the best universities.   Thus although Chinese and Korean parents are obviously not too poor to have larger families, there may be a sense in which economic factors are influencing family size.  But it has more to do with a change in acceptable lifestyles, rather than in any lack of growth in real wages. (0 COMMENTS)

  The Bureau of Labor Statistics report on inflation that came out today shows that in November, the CPI (not inflation) rose by 0.1 percent in November. That means that in the 5 months from June to November, the CPI has risen by 0.0 percent (July) + 0.1 percent (August) + 0.4 percent (September) + 0.4 percent (October) + 0.1 percent (November) for a total of 1.0 percent. Although one should ideally compound these numbers, they are so low that compounding would make little difference. That means that the annualized rate of inflation for the last 5 months is approximately 2.4 percent. Over those same months, the CPI minus food and energy (the core CPI) rose by 0.3 percent (July) + 0.6 percent (August) + 0.6 percent (September) + 0.3 percent (October) + 0.2 percent (November) for a total of 2.0 percent. Failure to compound is a little more serious here because of the large numbers in August and September, but still not a big mistake. That means that the annualized rate of core inflation for the last 5 months is approximately 4.8 percent. I posted about the inflation rate in November after the October data had been released. (0 COMMENTS)

In late 2008, the Fed was very worried about inflation. But they also faced a financial crisis. In response, they injected liquidity into the financial system system to help banks, while simultaneously instituting a program of paying interest on bank reserves in order to prevent that extra liquidity from boosting aggregate demand. As a result, demand collapsed and we plunged into the Great Recession.   At the time, the Fed was accused of trying to rescue Wall Street without helping Main Street. It might have been better if they had done the reverse. Keep that history in mind when you read this observation from the Financial Times: Central banks could be forced to backstop crucial parts of the financial system that are vulnerable to higher interest rates, undermining their attempts to fight inflation, the Bank for International Settlements warned on Monday. The BIS, dubbed the bank for central banks, said the crisis that unfolded in UK gilt markets in September underlined the risk that monetary authorities could be forced to inject liquidity into financial markets at a time when they are trying to rein in price pressures through higher interest rates and are shrinking their balance sheets. In fairness, the BoE is aware of the issue with moral hazard: Andrew Bailey, the BoE governor, told the Lords economic affairs committee last week that it had been “imperative” to end the operation promptly. The operation constituted a “serious moral hazard problem” — since parts of the market “would love to have the Bank of England permanently offering to buy gilts” — and “was running directly counter to the operation of monetary policy”. If modern economies cannot survive 5% interest rates without triggering a financial crisis, then we need to rethink a wide range of policy issues including both monetary policy and also the various ways that previous government bailouts have tended to encourage more risk taking by financial firms. (0 COMMENTS)

Is the flat income tax revolution underway across the states enough? No, but it must be advanced.  This extraordinary feat includes four states passing a flat personal income tax in 2022 after only four did over the last century. Now 14 states have or will soon have flat income taxes. But if you consider how the nine states without personal income taxes outperform, on average, the nine states with flat income taxes in economic growth, domestic migration, and non-farm payroll employment over the last decade, more is necessary.  While flattening income taxes is important, eliminating them is best. And this should be tied to spending restraint to avoid the infamous Kansas problem of excess spending while cutting taxes. The five states always with a flat income tax were Massachusetts (1917), Indiana (1965), Michigan (1967), Illinois (1969), and Pennsylvania (1971). The next four states initially with progressive income taxes before improving to a flat income tax were Colorado (1987), Utah (2007), North Carolina (2014), and Kentucky (2019).  The four states that passed a flat income tax in 2022 were Idaho (starts in 2023), Mississippi (2023), Georgia (2024), and Iowa (2026). After a recent court decision, Arizona will also have a flat income tax in 2023 at the lowest rate in the nation at 2.5%. This will support greater economic growth as progressive personal income taxes disincentivize people to work and live in those states. This is happening in California, where even its wealthy citizens are fed up with sky-high personal income taxes that will worsen when the top marginal tax rate rises to 14.4% in 2024. According to the American Legislative Exchange Council’s 15th edition of the Rich States, Poor States report that compares the economic performance of the 50 states, the nine states already with a flat income tax rank mostly in the middle of the pack from 2010 to 2020. This includes an average overall ranking for those nine states of 24th based upon three key economic variables with average rankings of 23rd in state gross domestic product (GDP), 29th in absolute domestic migration, and 22nd in nonfarm payroll. The highest overall rankings for these states are Utah (2nd) and Colorado (6th), lowest are Illinois (43rd) and Pennsylvania (45th).  States should seek better outcomes that ultimately help people flourish. The nine states without a personal income tax are Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming. These states have average rankings in ALEC’s report of 19th overall, 22nd in GDP, 14th in migration, and 21st in jobs. The highest overall rankings are Florida (3rd) and Washington (5th), with Texas (8th) and Tennessee (10th) also in the top 10, and lowest are Wyoming (41st) and Alaska (49th). Historically, the nine states with the highest personal income tax rates, including California (ranks 19th) and New York (36th), have underperformed in these economic measures and have dire outlooks ranking 48th and 50th, respectively, in ALEC’s report. Progressive, high-income tax structures produce undesirable outcomes, and states should work toward eliminating personal income taxes.  Other taxes and policies matter. The Tax Foundation’s latest report on state business tax climates shows how other taxes influence business activity, and thus economic performance.  States without a personal income tax or lower tax burdens overall rank the highest in business tax climate with Wyoming (1st), South Dakota (2nd), Alaska (3rd), and Florida (4th) leading the way. And those states with the highest personal income rates perform worst with California (48th), New York (49th), and New Jersey (50th) being last. What many of these states without personal income taxes tend to use to fund their spending are consumption-based taxes. The least burdensome form of taxation tends to be a flat final sales tax with the broadest base and lowest rate possible.  Whatever you tax, you get less of it. Taxing consumption results in less consumption but more savings, which can support greater capital accumulation and economic growth while taxing the underground economy, such as drug dealers and undocumented workers.  But the ultimate burden of government is not how much it taxes but how much it spends. Jonathan Williams, who is a co-author of the ALEC report, correctly noted, “There are nine states with no income taxes, and they spend substantially less per capita than states with an income tax.”  When there’s already heavy headwinds imposed by policymakers in Washington and across many states, it’s time to build on the flat tax revolution by cutting or even freezing state budgets, strengthening state spending limits, and eliminating personal income taxes.   Vance Ginn, Ph.D., is founder and president of Ginn Economic Consulting, LLC. He is chief economist at Pelican Institute for Public Policy and senior fellow at Young Americans for Liberty. He previously served as the associate director for economic policy of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, 2019-20. Follow him on Twitter @VanceGinn. (0 COMMENTS)

The title of a Financial Times story looks nakedly clear: “Iran Executes 23-Year-Old Protester” (December 8, 2022). It was referring to Mohsen Shekari, condemned and hanged for allegedly wounding a praetorian and “fighting with God” during recent protests. Did Iran really do that? Is it only able to? This is far from certain. As a citizen or subject, Mr. Shekari was officially part of Iran, a set of people in a circumscribed geographic space. Does this mean that he is the artisan of his own execution, as Jean-Jacques Rousseau might have claimed? Difficult to believe. He was also part of a part of Iran made of people who obviously disagreed with another part, the latter disagreeing so strongly that it executed Shekari. “Iran” is only the part that executes others. It only represents certain Iranians, minority or majority. What “Iran” means in the Financial Times title is the state or government of Iran or, in practice, those individuals who actually run it. To speak meaningfully and not confusedly, it is the latter, a certain part of Iran, not Iran, that executed Mr. Shekari. Adding “The state of” to the story title would have been useful, as it is analytically useful to look at the social-political world in the perspective of methodological individualism as opposed to holism, organicism, or collectivism. Of course, the Financial Times is far from the only one unaware of, or unsensitive to, these distinctions. One objection is that the way of speaking I criticize is not to be taken literally. It is just a figure of speech, like there are so many in ordinary language. Only mathematics and pure logic avoid them. What we are discussing is related to the “synecdoche,” a figure of speech that consists in substituting the part for the whole—a part of Iran for Iran. Interestingly, this sort of political example of a synecdoche is seldom if ever given, probably because because most people intuitively believe that, in this case, the part is the whole. The political rulers, their agents, their accomplices, and their supporters are deemed to be Iran. Note also that the synecdoche is an especially tortured figure of speech as it can also substitute the whole for the part. For sure, it is sometimes difficult to avoid popular ways of speaking. The common jargon helps being understood and “to belong.” But the problem is that the synecdoche we are talking about can reinforce a confusion about reality. Economist and Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek complained about “our poisoned language.” It is difficult to speak of individual liberty in Newspeak (see the Appendix on “The Principles of Newspeak” in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four). A more tricky issue is the following. To return to Rousseau, aren’t all Iranians, including Mr. Shekari, obligated by their “social contract” to support their government? Classical liberal contractarianism, as opposed to the Rousseauist brand, answers negatively. The basic idea is that a (implicit) social contract needs to be made of rules that can be unanimously consented to by rational individuals, which is not what characterizes Iran and people living under other tyrannies. (See James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of Consent; James Buchanan, The Limits of Liberty; and Geoffrey Brennan and James Buchanan, The Reason of Rules, of which a review of mine is forthcoming at Econlib. An easy but incomplete book is Buchanan’s Why I, Too, Am Not a Conservative. These arguments raises many questions worth pursuing. Reading my essays on these books is better as a complement or an introduction than as a substitute.) In any liberal or libertarian perspective, the punishment of Mr. Shekari and other resistance heroes by a tyrannical government is a crime. It is not “Iran” that should be punished, but the individuals, including the political bosses at the first rank, who committed the crime. Confusing Iranians with “their” government is an unfortunate linguistic habit that blurs this normative judgement besides making positive analysis difficult. (0 COMMENTS)

In our highly polarized times, everyone seems obsessed with the truth: what is it, who has it, and which side’s got it all wrong. What we don’t seem to care about, says journalist Monica Guzman, is the truth behind perspectives other than our own. Listen as Guzman and host Russ Roberts discuss Guzman’s book I […] The post Monica Guzman on Curiosity and Conversation in Contentious Times appeared first on Econlib.