Back in 2018, I wrote an Article for EconLib entitled “Does National Security Justify Tariffs?”  In that piece, I argued against the national defense justification for protectionist tariffs.  My main argument was tariffs on goods vital to national defense were unnecessary for the United States given our stable allies and that any supply disruptions would be short-lived as producers adjust. But here it is in 2022.  For nearly two years, the US and the world have been dealing with chronic shortages of goods and services.  Many items needed for national defense and consumer demand, such as computer chips, are very difficult to procure.  The idea of tariffs to protect domestic supply chains are becoming vogue again, with none other than a prominent former Federal Reserve chair floating the idea.  My predictions seem to have failed.  Now seems to be the perfect time to revisit the case for free trade. First, let me discuss why my predictions failed.  I did not foresee the events of the past two years.  They are unprecedented.  Never in human history has the entire world essentially closed up and gone home.  Global trade fell 25% and domestic producers were shut down or severely curtailed.  Even in my most pessimistic thoughts, I could not imagine such a collapse in trade.  In my 2018 article, I assumed trade flows would remain fairly stable, if only over land.  But that assumption did not apply to the policy responses to the COVID pandemic. Additionally, I assumed a well-functioning price mechanism.  Prices would rise for needed goods, encouraging more quantity supplied.  During the COVID pandemic, prices were not allowed to function.  Price controls were slapped on all sorts of goods in the early days.  Firms faced rapidly increasing costs, coupled with decreased labor productivity, and the inability to raise prices.  Naturally, this would combine to reduced quantity supplied.  Add in forced closures and “work from home” orders, and firms could not increase productivity to meet rising demand. The predictions I made in my 2018 article did not come true.  But does that imply that there is a case for protectionist tariffs after all?  Does the pandemic prove free trade is wrong?  I do not think so for two reasons: First: Protectionism would not have helped in 2020.  It is true that other nations were shutting their borders and cutting off trade, but domestically the US was shutting down factories, too.  No amount of protectionism is going to help if workers cannot work. Second: People respond to incentives.  Since costs 1) take place in the future and 2) depend on the realizable alternatives each person face, expectations play a large role.  Prior to March 2020, no one had expectations of a major forced global shutdown of economic activity.  But now, in 2022, expectations have changed.  Producers now must expect some probability of such behavior going forward.  Consequently, they face new costs and new benefits of global supply chains and “just-in-time” production networks.  How producers will respond to these new costs and benefits is anyone’s guess, but I suspect we will see more “near-shoring,” at least in the near term.  Market interventions only make sense if there is some reason for why the market fails to provide “proper” incentives.  But that is not the case for firms in 2022.  They do not need incentives from the government; markets have provided that for them. One of the advantages to free trade is it allows people the leeway they need to make decisions given the costs and benefits they face.  As a rule, it is solid.  If society is to be truly progressive and forward-looking, we need general rules that are also forward-looking.  To impose protectionist tariffs based off the events of 2020 and 2021 would be reactionary, not proactive.  It would be binding, not freeing. (0 COMMENTS)

This is a theme I’ve considered in numerous previous posts, but it’s worth revisiting in light of recent events. Tyler Cowen directed me to the following tweet: Consider what would happen if you surveyed 1000 Russians with the following question: A.  Do you favor using Russian troops to liberate Ukraine from its Nazi-like government? Then ask another 1000 Russians the following question: B.  Do you favor invading Ukraine if the locals greet Russian troops with hostility? I suspect the poll results would differ.  So which poll result reflects actual Russian public opinion?  It depends what you mean by actual opinion.  Do you mean views prior to being well informed of the facts, or views after being well informed on the facts? Views on the invasion they might have imagined, or views on the actual invasion? Here’s an analogy.  You’ll get one set of answers if you ask Americans if we spend too much on foreign aid, and another if you first tell Americans the relatively small amount we actually spend on foreign aid, and then ask them if that’s too much.  Which one is the actual opinion?  The poorly informed answer or the well-informed answer?  I’d say both, but for different purposes. People sometimes resist my claim by suggesting that public opinion exists, but that it’s not solid like the trunk of a tree, rather it’s fragile and easily blown about like the leaves on a tree.  But even that isn’t quite right.  We are dealing with something more akin to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.  Merely asking the question actually changes the answer.  The answers on the foreign aid questions differ because the question can be framed in a way that provides more or less accurate information.  The same is true of the two Ukraine invasion questions shown above. Because I’m a philosophical pragmatist, for me the bottom line on truth is always usefulness.  If you want to consider public opinion, you also need to consider the purpose for which it will be used.  For instance, are you trying to win an election?  Putin might be interested in Russian public opinion before launching a war.  But he can also shape public opinion because he controls the Russian news media.  So Putin would make a mistake to rely too much on artificially “manufactured” public opinion.  To employ a term used by economists, it’s not “structural”.   If he’s smart, he’d also be interested in what public opinion in Russia will be once the Russian people learn that Ukrainians view them as aggressors, not liberators.  So when I say there is no such thing as public opinion, I don’t mean that people don’t have opinions.  Rather I am suggesting that there is no single public opinion that is invariant to the way a question is asked.  Public opinion can be manufactured in many ways, including political propaganda, but also including the framing of survey questions.                    PS.  In my previous post, I was skeptical of the willingness of Western governments to impose tough sanctions on Ukraine.  (Whether sanctions would be wise is a different question.)    This tweet caught my eye:                            (0 COMMENTS)

Based on the title of this post, you might assume that I am about to propose cutting Russia out of the SWIFT system for facilitating money transfers through the banking system. Not so.  Based on what I’ve read, it seems unlikely that Western powers have the stomach for sanctions severe enough to have big impact on Russia, as our voters would be upset.So here’s another idea. How about punishing Russia by removing sanctions? Specifically, why not allow Iran back into the SWIFT network, and allow Iran to dramatically boost its oil exports. The goal would be to punish Russia by depressing global oil prices. It is bizarre that we ban Iran from the SWIFT network while allowing Russia to continue using the network. Iran’s government is certainly bad, but Russia’s is far worse.Here’s a second proposal—restart the German nuclear power industry. Then sharply reduce German imports of Russian gas. Neither of my proposals will be adopted. The sad truth is that the US and Europe simply don’t care very much about Ukraine. We should care, but we don’t.  We’d like to help Ukraine.  We wish them well.  But . . .  PS.  National Review has another good idea. (0 COMMENTS)

  Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) has a new campaign ad out. In it, he talks about how hard finances were for his family when he was growing up. Nothing wrong with that. It’s nice to see that someone has a concept of a tight family budget. Maybe that would make him more sympathetic to opponents of the government’s white elephants, such as the medium-speed rail in California. These white elephants cause huge waste, which means fewer resources for other projects or higher taxes at some point. The problem comes with this statement Kelly makes at about the 0:07 point: I remember my mom sitting at our kitchen table, all these papers scattered around, and she was having to make decisions about what bill to pay. The clear implication is that she was deciding not to pay some bills. Why? Check his bio and you learn that he’s the son of two retired police officers, who must certainly have been active police officers at the time. That would seem to have given them a decent middle-class income. Even if not, what kind of people don’t pay their bills? I understand deferring payment by a month or two to the providers of goods and services who don’t charge interest. Is that what he means? He doesn’t say. I think we’re supposed to think that his family was really strapped for funds. But ironically, less than one second after the part about choosing which bill to pay, he shows a home movie of, presumably, him and his twin brother. So his parents had enough money to buy a video camera and the expensive tape that those cameras used. My family had priced them in the mid-1960s and concluded that there was no way we could afford a camera and multiple films. Of course we could have afforded them, but it would have meant not going to movies or not doing something else. My parents made tradeoffs. Our family of 5 people and one dog lived on one income, the income of a high-school teacher. There’s no way my father and mother refused to pay a bill. My guess is that his parents did pay their bills and what he saw was a parent feeling some distress because the bills made up most of their income and made it hard to save. Fortunately for them, they are retired police officers and, I bet, are making a good retirement income. My objection here is not partisan. I remember Senator Phil Gramm from Texas, when he was running for the 1996 Republican presidential nomination talking about “my mama” trying to decide which bills to pay and which bills not to pay. If Gramm’s memory is right, his mama set a terrible example. My guess, though, is that both Mark Kelly is doing and Phil Gramm was doing was what politicians often do: lying.     (0 COMMENTS)

Over the past decade, I have been sounding the alarm about the recent resurgence of nationalism all over the world. Many commenters have had trouble understanding what the fuss is all about. Some confuse nationalism with patriotism.If you are still having trouble understanding why the rise of nationalism is the crisis of the 21st century, then I suggest you take a peek at today’s headlines. Utilitarianism is based on the idea that the welfare of all humans is equally important.  It’s not the only alternative to nationalism, but in my view it is the most persuasive. The 20th century saw a giant battle between nationalism and utilitarianism.  By the 1990s, it looked like utilitarianism was winning.  Now those gains are being reversed. PS.  You will likely encounter a great deal of misinformation about Putin’s motives.  Here is what actually happened: When Mr Putin became president in 2000, he showed no overt hostility towards America or the West, despite a recent NATO bombing raid on Belgrade without a UN resolution that had triggered a shrill anti-American response. In his first interview with Britain’s BBC, Mr Putin said: “I cannot imagine my own country in isolation from Europe, so it is hard for me to visualise NATO as an enemy.” Russia, he said, might become a member of NATO if it were treated as an equal partner. Even when the three Baltic states joined NATO in spring 2004, Mr Putin insisted that relations with the defence organisation were “developing positively” and he had “no concerns about the expansion of NATO”. The breaking-point in Mr Putin’s relationship with the West came towards the end of that year when several seemingly unrelated events coincided. The first was a terrorist attack on a school in Beslan, in the north Causasus, in which 1,200 people, mostly children, were taken hostage. After Russia’s special forces stormed the school, leaving 333 people dead, Mr Putin accused the West of trying to undermine Russia. He cancelled regional elections and handed more powers to the security services. Let’s hope that Russia can join NATO someday. (1 COMMENTS)

What’s the empirical evidence that RCTs actually improve policy?  Incisive comments from the noble Lant Pritchett: The argument that RCTs would be more than a tiny component of the overall process of improving development outcomes seems, even now, 10 years in, at best not provable and at worst not very likely—as it is at odds with some basic known facts about development and about policy formulation and implementation. What “basic known facts” does he have in mind?  First, RCTs can’t be crucial for development, because many countries became highly developed long before RCTs mattered. First of all, the argument that RCTs had, until recently, been used sparingly, if at all, and yet are important in achieving good outcomes sits in kind of embarrassing counterpoint with the obvious fact that lots of countries have really good outcomes. That is whether one uses the Human Development Index or the OECD Better Life Index or any social indicator—from poverty to education to health to life satisfaction—there is a similar set of countries near the top… No one has ever made the arguments that these countries are developed and prosperous because they used rigorous evidence—much less RCTs—in formulating policy and programs. While one might have faith that RCTs can help along the path to development, RCTs didn’t help for those that are there now. Second, the highest observed economic growth in human history happened in the decades right before RCTs became fashionable: Second, at about the time (early 2000s) that the randomista movement, which often claimed to be about reducing poverty, was gaining steam, several countries were experiencing or had experienced the rapidest reductions in low-bar absolute poverty in the history of man. Indonesia, China, Vietnam had all seen dollar-a-day–like poverty measures fall from well over half of their population to under 20 percent in less than 30 years. In Vietnam the World Bank figures show dollar-a-day poverty falling from over 40 percent to 16.9 percent just between 2002 and 2008. If these countries did this completely without any use of RCTs (and they did), then from where exactly does the argument that using RCTs will accelerate poverty reduction come? Is there any evidence that countries that used more RCTs had more rapid poverty reduction than those that didn’t? No. While it might be the case that RCTs could accelerate poverty reduction this was (and is) a faith-based, not evidence-based, claim. Third, the past is the best predictor of the future – and past RCTs had little influence on policy: Third, there was the recent historical experience with RCTs in social policy in the USA. The randomistas were not proposing new methods or techniques but rather broader adoption into the field of development methods that already had a long history. There was a big fad toward the use of experiments in a variety of social policy domains in the USA in the 1970s. The Rand Health Insurance Experiment, carried out from 1971 to 1986, is still the largest health-policy experiment ever done. Income maintenance (negative income tax) experiments were carried out between 1968 and 1982 in four sites around the USA. A 1970 act of Congress authorized experiments such as the Housing Allowance Demand Experiment. The Kansas City Police Preventive Patrol experiment was carried out in 1972–73. This created ample capacity in the USA for doing social experiments inside organizations like Rand, Abt Associates, and Mathematica Policy Research, among others. At the founding of J-PAL there was 35 years of experience with RCTs in the USA on which to draw evidence of their efficacy (or not) as tools for improving policy and hence human outcomes. You would have thought that if the widespread use of RCTs had strongly impacted policy in the USA, this would have been put forward as evidence. Strangely, whether or not decades of social policy RCTs actually did have impact on policies and outcomes in the USA just kind of never came up in arguing that they would in developing countries. What’s the alternative?  Pritchett elsewhere argues that orthodox growth economics worked wonders for humanity but got almost no credit.  In fact, it got turned into the bizarre conspiracy theory of “neoliberalism” and denounced by left and right alike.  Fortunately, as Vanilla Sky teaches us, “Every passing minute is another chance to turn it all around.”  Growth economists have made plenty of mistakes, but they should admit that RCTs are a trendy distraction and pick up where they left off. (0 COMMENTS)

Andrew Batson has a very interesting article on China.  Here’s an excerpt. Does it matter what we call China? Does it really make a difference what term we, as outsiders to China’s political and economic system, attach to that system? Certainly it is not going to make much of a difference in terms of what actually happens in China whether foreigners prefer to call it communist, socialist, fascist, state capitalist, or what have you. Arguments about terminology are the classic academic dispute, the kind of thing only pedants can get excited about. Yet despite the low stakes involved, I’ve found myself repeatedly returning to this question, picking away at it like an unfinished home improvement project. The label may not make a difference to China, but it does make a difference to us: for better or worse, we use these simplifying labels to think with, and if the label is wrong then our thinking will be off. I would never deny that we need some labels in order to think. After all, words are labels and we cannot think about complex issues without some use of words.  At the same time, I worry that we overuse labels to the detriment of thinking.   China is a large diverse country, with a population nearly the size of the Americas and Western Europe combined.  We don’t typically think of Denmark and Bolivia as forming a unified whole, and we shouldn’t think of Xinjiang and Shanghai as having the same political-economic systems.  On the other hand, (mainland) China is ruled over by a single government (unlike Denmark and Bolivia), so some generalizations are appropriate. Jeffrey Sachs and William Schabas deny that China’s policies in Xinjiang constitute “genocide”.   This year’s State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices (HRP) follows Pompeo in accusing China of genocide in Xinjiang. Because the HRP never uses the term other than once in the report’s preface and again in the executive summary of the China chapter, readers are left to guess about the evidence. Much of the report deals with issues like freedom of expression, refugee protection, and free elections, which have scant bearing on the genocide charge. There are credible charges of human rights abuses against Uighurs, but those do not per se constitute genocide. They discuss a number of clear human rights violations, then (correctly) point out that these do not meet the definition of genocide.  When it comes to population control, however, things get a bit murkier: Another of the five recognized acts of genocide is “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.” The State Department report refers to China’s notoriously aggressive birth-control policies. Until recently, China strictly enforced its one-child policy on the majority of its population but was more liberal toward ethnic minorities, including the Uighur. Today, the one-child policy is no longer applied to the majority Han Chinese, but stricter measures have been imposed on Xinjiang’s Muslim minority, whose families are traditionally larger than China’s average. Still, Xinjiang records a positive overall population growth rate, with the Uighur population growing faster than the non-Uighur population in Xinjiang during 2010-18. I see a couple problems with this argument.  First, the one child policy aimed at the Han Chinese was clearly not reflective of animus toward the Han (who make up over 90% of China’s population and virtually all its leadership.)  On the other hand, the population control policies aimed at the Uighurs likely do reflect animus against that particular ethnic group.  That’s an important distinction.  Second, China’s earlier one-child policy was an extreme violation of human rights, an extremely brutal policy that caused enormous suffering.   I wonder of Sachs and Schabas believe that making this comparison will somehow make China’s policies toward the Uighurs seem less bad to most people.  If so, they are probably correct.  But this comparison actually should not make the policy seem less bad.  If it does so, that’s because most Western readers don’t fully understand the awfulness of the earlier one-child policy for the Han Chinese.   In the end, I’m not comfortable with the claim that China’s policy in Xinjiang is genocide, and I’m not comfortable with the claim that China’s policy is not genocide.  My discomfort comes from two facts.  First, labels oversimplify reality.  Second, labels have fuzzy meanings, at least in terms of a label’s connotation in everyday use.   At the end of Batson’s essay, he suggests that “Leninism” is the appropriate label for China’s system: All of these features were present in China before 1978, and are still present in China today despite many other changes. For Lenin himself, the designer of the system, politics was always the most important thing. He was the first to experiment with the combination of Communist Party rule and a market economy, in his New Economic Policy of the 1920s. The NEP was an important reference point for Deng and other leaders in the early years of reform, and it’s not unreasonable to see China’s entire reform era as a “long NEP.” Lenin used the term “state capitalism” to refer to that system: while admitting that Germany also practiced state capitalism, he insisted that state capitalism in Soviet Union would be different because the Communist Party was in charge. That is not too different an approach from Xi Jinping’s more recent insistence that Communist Party leadership is the most important feature of Chinese socialism.  That’s a good argument, but is that how most people understand the term “Leninism”?  I suspect that the vast majority of people equate Leninism with communism, not state capitalism.  Similarly, the term “genocide” is often seen as a label for mass murder, as with the Holocaust or the killing of the Tutsis in Rwanda. Rather than describe China’s system with a single term like “Leninism”, I’d prefer to say “a mixed economy with a highly repressive political system”.  Rather than describe China’s policies in Xinjiang as “genocide”, I’d prefer “mass incarceration, suppression of Uighur culture, and coercive population control aimed at reducing the number of Uighurs.”  Sachs and Schabas explain why this is important: The charge of genocide should never be made lightly. Inappropriate use of the term may escalate geopolitical and military tensions and devalue the historical memory of genocides such as the Holocaust, thereby hindering the ability to prevent future genocides. In some sense, it shouldn’t even matter if Sachs and Schabas are right or wrong.  Their view of China’s policies in Xinjiang in a factual sense are not much different from those of the US government, they simply attach a different label.  In an earlier post, I argued that we should focus on the underlying reality, not the label: Is graffiti an art? Is alcoholism a disease? Is economics a science? Is bombing cities during wartime terrorism?Who cares? Art, disease, science, terrorism are just words. How I feel about graffiti, alcoholism, economics, and bombing doesn’t depend in any way on how society labels those activities. Words are just words.I base my judgment on other factors. Do I like graffiti? How do I believe alcoholism should be addressed? Do I believe economics is useful? Do I support bombing cities during wartime? Labeling those activities one way or another does not in any way influence the way I evaluate those things. What China’s government is doing to the Uighurs is really bad.  At the same time, it’s obviously nowhere near as bad as what the Nazis did to the Jews.  Both claims can be true.  Our public policy should be driven by what we think of the specific policies, not how we prefer to define the term “genocide”. Of course readers might respond that I frequently use labels, and in some cases my use oversimplifies reality.  Mea culpa.  Here I’m trying to describe an ideal, not necessarily my current way of communicating. PS.  Is the current inflation “transitory”?  Yes, if you are thinking in terms of inflation targeting.  No, if you are thinking in terms of average inflation targeting.  Inflation will likely fall to 2% in a few years, even as the average inflation rate for the 2020s remains elevated. The ambiguous term “transitory” doesn’t help us to think more clearly. The real question is whether monetary policy is currently too expansionary.  (Yes, in my view.) (0 COMMENTS)

In a few high-profile markets, prices seem to stay far above average cost even though there are tons of competitors.  There are thousands of credit card issuers, but the average interest rate is 18.26%.  There are over 100,000 real estate brokerage firms, but the default commission remains 6%.  Sure, unsecured credit has a high default risk, but high enough to justify an 18.26% rate?  And why on Earth would it cost $60,000 to sell a million-dollar home? From the standpoint of economic theory, such industries are deeply puzzling.  In monopoly models, prices stay above average cost forever, but calling an industry with thousands of competitors a “monopoly” seems absurd.  In oligopoly and monopolistic competition models, prices stay above marginal cost forever, but entry should still drive prices down to average costs. My UT friends John Hatfield and Richard Lowery (plus Scott Kominers) have a model where realtors are basically a giant cartel that crushes price competition with the threat of ferocious retaliation.  (More elaboration here and here).  The HKL math is impressive, but ultimately it’s an incredible conspiracy theory.  What evidence is there that realtors really are unleashing hell on price-cutters?  I see cut-rate realtors in my neighborhood all the time.  And the same is even clearer for credit cards.  Zero-interest offers show up in my mailbox on a regular basis. What’s really going on?  I propose a much simpler model than HKL.  Namely: In some industries, many consumers foolishly fail to shop around.  Maybe they’re lazy.  Maybe they’re fatalistic.  Maybe they don’t want to look cheap.  Maybe they don’t want to look weird.  Whatever the non-shoppers’ motivation, however, the result is the same.  If firms know that many consumers don’t shop around, then one profit-maximizing business model is simply to charge a high price and see how many suckers come along.  Sure, rival firms will compete for the price-sensitive consumers.  Or maybe each firm will charge an easy-to-see high price for suckers and a (slightly) harder-to-see low price for bargain-hunters.   Either way, however, we’ll see a long-run equilibrium where a lot of people pay prices that far exceed average cost.  Indefinitely. Why is my model better than HKL?  Because it explains the same facts – lots of firms persistently charging above average cost – without straining credulity.  Look around with your own eyes.  Don’t you see lots of people who stubbornly fail to shop around, even though shopping around totally works?  I sure do.  For virtually any major purchase, I ask the vendor, “Can you do any better?”  And guess what?  They cut my price two-thirds of the time.  Everyone else pays full price.  The same goes for realtors.  Discount realtors advertise publicly.  And several of my friends have negotiated commission cuts with “full-price” firms.  A little self-advocacy can easily yield $10k in savings.  For credit cards, I know grad students who did 0% balance transfers over and over, receiving many thousands of dollars of unsecured credit for negative real interest rates despite their very low income.  All fueled by the power of gumption and frugality. As a classic Payless commercial from the 80s remarks, “You could pay more, but why?” Should we deem this situation a “market failure”?  Only if you hold markets to impossibly high standards.  If consumers pay high prices because they refuse to shop around, many businesses will naturally charge high prices.   But in such scenarios, it makes far more sense to say that it is not the market, but the consumers, who have failed.   (2 COMMENTS)

“Do you mean to tell me that you’re thinking seriously of building that way, when and if you are an architect?” “Yes.” “My dear fellow, who will let you?” “That’s not the point. The point is, who will stop me?” This is one of my favorite passages from Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. The conversation takes place early in the novel. It’s between the Dean of the architecture school and budding architect Howard Roark. The Dean wonders how Roark will survive in the architecture world, given Roark’s unusual approach to each design. Roark has no such worry. I thought of this when I was engaged in a discussion on Facebook last week. Someone had pointed to a “politically incorrect” movie and said that such a movie “couldn’t be made today.” If he had said “almost certainly wouldn’t be made today,” I would have agreed. But I disagreed that it couldn’t be made today. It’s true that the knives would be out for whoever made the movie and, knowing that, many potential funders would be scared off. But all funders? I think that’s unlikely. How about actors? The prominent actors are like NBA players: they’re the best of the best. But go down a notch and you can probably find some very good actors who are at least 80% as good as the top actors and who would gladly work for 20% of the pay of the top actors. In Charley Hooper’s and my book, Making Great Decisions in Business and Life, we discuss a similar issue, the issue of whether you have to do something. You typically don’t. Under the subtitle “I Must”, we write: Another way many of us think unclearly is by going through life with a list of made-up obligations. We wake up in the morning with a long list of “must do” items. After a while, our feet start dragging and we feel a heavy burden on our shoulders. But we “must” press on. Such phony obligations get in the way of clear thinking. There is very little in the world that we actually must do. Let’s face it, unless we are in jail or otherwise detained, we have complete freedom about how to spend our day. The reason we don’t just pack up and go sit on the beach every day is that our actions lead to outcomes—and many of our “have to’s” give us the outcomes we want. Going to work, for example, provides camaraderie and a feeling of importance, as well as the money to buy the things we need and want. The “I must” person tells himself that he must go to work. The clear-thinking person says, “If I work at this job for another year, I’ll be able to buy a house. I could quit my job today, but if I want that house a lot, I’d better show up for work on Monday morning.” The “I must” attitude increases our burdens and lessens our humanity. When we have goals in mind, we should reframe the issue from “I must” to “I want.” I want to go to work so that I can feed my kids, buy a car, buy a house, or change the world. If my goals don’t seem to justify the effort, then maybe I should rethink my goals and my overall strategy. When we act with clarity of mind, we cease being a fake prisoner and realize our true freedom. For more on this, see David Kelley’s powerful essay “I Don’t Have to.“ Back to the idea that something can’t be done. There are, of course, certain things I can’t do. I can’t become a player in the NBA, for example. But many people can become players in the NBA. Similarly, there are qualified people who can make a politically incorrect movie. They may choose not to and their choice may be wise, given their other preferences and constraints. But that’s very different from saying they can’t. When I was in my late 20s, I expressed to my friend Roy Childs that I  was feeling discouraged by the economics profession’s narrow view of what was considered publishable research. I told him I couldn’t publish what I wanted. He said I could. It’s just that I probably couldn’t publish it where I wanted. That simple insight lifted a burden. I had been focusing on the “I Have To’s” and forgetting that I didn’t have to. That conversation, plus a few others,  led me to leave a good well-paying tenure-track position at the University of Rochester and to work at the Cato Institute in 1979. I’m publishing what I want.   (0 COMMENTS)

You don’t learn much in college.  You endure insipid brainwashing.  And don’t me get started on the dehumanizing Covid theater.  Signaling is the only good reason to go.  Still, once you’re on campus, you might as well make the most of it.  I’ve been in college non-stop for the last 33 years, and I’ve been paying close attention.  Here is how I advise you to get good value for all the time and money you’re spending. 1. Read teaching reviews before you pick your classes.  Teaching ability varies widely, so even though the average is low, you rarely need to suffer with a mediocre teacher. 2. Always sit in the front row.  Ask questions.  Talk to the professor before and after class.  Even if they seem like crazy ideologues, you can learn a lot by asking thoughtful questions.  If only at the meta level. 3. Type your professors’ names into Google Scholar to see what they’ve been doing with their lives.  Then go to office hours and talk to them about their work.  Come with questions that clearly won’t be on the test. 4. Crucial: Start doing this when you’re a freshman!  At that stage, no one will wonder if you’re just trying to suck up for a future letter of recommendation. 5. Go to the Faculty webpage for every major you’re seriously considering.  Look at everyone’s research specialties.  If you think there’s a 5% or greater chance that you would find a professor interesting, type his name into Google Scholar.  If you still think there’s a 5% chance you would find the professor interesting, go to their office hours and ask him some questions about his work. 6. Don’t be shy.  Most professors are bored and lonely.  Even at top schools, they almost never meet anyone who knows and cares about their work.  They want you to show up… even if they don’t know it yet. 7. If you and a professor hit it off, keep reading their work and keep visiting their office.  Ask them to lunch.  Becoming a professor’s favorite student is easy, because the competition is weak. 8. Be extremely friendly to everyone.  Always give a good hello to everyone in your dorm every time you see them.  “Good hello” equals eye contact + smile + audible. 9. Never eat alone!  If you don’t know anyone in the cafeteria, find a small group of students that looks promising and politely ask to join them.  Almost everyone will say yes. 10. See if your school has an Effective Altruism club.  If it does, attend regularly.  Even if you have zero interest in philanthropy, EA is a beacon of thoughtful curiosity. 11. Be a friendly heretic.  Openly regard official brainwashing with bemusement.  This will generate propitious selection: Many students are as skeptical of the orthodoxy as you.  If you’re good-natured about it, they will reveal themselves to you. 12. During Covid, live your life as normally as possible.  Bend every rule you can, and associate with the most non-compliant students you can find.  Because your school is trying to dehumanize you, you must strive to retain your humanity. 13. Avoid drunken parties.  They really are grossly overrated.  Just counting hangovers and accidents, the expected value is probably negative.  Strive to be uninhibited without artificial assistance.  And remember: The people who really enjoy alcohol are also the people most likely to ruin their lives with alcohol. 14. While you’re avoiding drunken parties, try to find true love.  Despite the Orwellian propaganda, you are extremely unlikely to be persecuted just for asking someone out on a date.  Remember: You will never again have such an easily-accessible candidate pool.  In the modern world, dating co-workers is dead, but dating co-students lives.  For now. (0 COMMENTS)