Chapter 5 of Public Choice Theory and the Illusion of Grand Strategy taught me the most.  Hanania provides a great survey of what we know about the effects of trade sanctions – and then gets meta. He starts by emphasizing the terrible harm of sanctions.  “Humanitarian” exceptions mean little in practice: Sanctions regimes that target the economy of a country usually have humanitarian exceptions. Despite this, other regulations usually serve to limit their effectiveness. For example, federal law prohibits the president from implementing sanctions on Iran that involve “the sale of agricultural commodities, food, medicine, or medical devices …” (22 U.S.C. § 8806(c)). Still, sanctions related to the financial sector and other parts of the economy work to nullify these exemptions. To see why, imagine an American company that tried to trade in food or medicine but did not have access to banking services, such as the ability to take out loans or accept credit cards ( Cullis and Handjani 2019 ). Compounding the problem is the fact that Iran is a largely state- run economy, which makes it diffi cult to do business there while completely avoiding the government sector. Even when one can potentially operate within the letter of the law, the sanctions regime is of such complexity, and the potential consequences of running afoul of US law so dire, that there is a chilling effect on many businesses ( Cunningham 2018 ). The idea that sanctions will lead to regime change is silly wishful thinking: Politicians who support sanctions typically argue that economic pressure can help propel major changes in policy, perhaps even regime change. Occasionally, American leaders spell out precisely how this is supposed to happen. They sometimes argue that by hurting the economy of the targeted country, the people will become fed up, blame the regime for their problems, and get rid of it. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, for example, predicted that the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran “will lead the Iranian people to rise up and change the behavior of the regime” ( Harb 2019 ). Sometimes policymakers expect regime elites, rather than regular citizens, to rise up against the government. The Trump administration sanctioned Venezuela beginning in 2017 in the hopes that military leaders would overthrow President Nicolás Maduro ( Wyss, Ordoñez, and Torres 2018 ; Cohen, Spetalnick, and Rampton 2019 ). Proponents of sanctions also occasionally expect that the process of starving the targeted government of resources will lead to regime change. Thus, after the Obama administration placed sanctions on the Syrian government in August 2011, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton assured the American public that the new measures would “strike at the heart of the regime” by making it unable to fund its security forces ( Wilson and Warrick 2011 ). Each one of these theories about how sanctions lead to regime change or major policy shifts has serious theoretical flaws. First of all, even if citizens living under tyranny and economic deprivation dislike their government, they still face a collective action problem in overthrowing it ( Olson 1971 ). Regime elites, almost by definition, benefit from the current system, so even if they face less of a collective action problem, they usually should not be expected to take major risks in order to bring down their government. Furthermore, there is little reason to expect any government to simply run out of money to pay its security forces. A regime facing an internal threat should prioritize security above all else. While international arms races are expensive, domestic repression is cheap, with governments having been known to even compensate private militias by allowing them to loot civilians and enemies of the regime ( Steinert, Steinert, and Carey 2019 ). Sanctions policy, too, is incoherent: [P]olicymakers show little interest in actually using the leverage that sanctions give them to achieve foreign policy goals. If the instrumental explanation of sanctions is correct, then the United States should, at the very least, talk to targeted regimes in order to make its demands clear and provide a clear path toward the removal of restrictions on trade. Yet American administrations have done the opposite, in certain cases both demanding the impossible from their adversaries and cutting off all contact. So why do sanctions exist?  Action Bias!  Something must be done, this is something, therefore this must be done. Political psychology can explain the appeal of sanctions. A leader who engages in an unpopular foreign intervention can see his presidency destroyed. That happened during the presidencies of Lyndon Baines Johnson, who decided not to run again when facing pressure over his policies in Vietnam, and George W. Bush, who, although he won reelection, saw Iraq contribute to the collapse of his approval ratings during his second term and damage the electoral prospects of his party. At the same time, there is often domestic pressure to “do something” about human rights violations and cases of military aggression. Sanctions can thus appear to be a moderate and measured response to unacceptable behavior abroad. British diplomat Jeremy Greenstock was expressing a common frustration when he said that “there is nothing else between words and military action if you want to bring pressure upon a government” ( Marcus 2010 ). Sanctions are an “easy” option because the death and destruction that they cause are unlikely to stir large- scale domestic opposition. The War on Terror has also been incoherent: Throughout American policy toward the region, we see much stronger evidence for the public choice perspective. The Afghanistan papers reveal uncertainty about the mission at the highest levels of government, generally matching what we see in memoirs and other first-hand accounts of what happened… In Iraq, I show that the decision to go to war was based on the victory of one bureaucratic faction over the other. The lack of planning for the postwar aftermath can be explained in part by the fact that the hawkish faction, centered around the Pentagon and the Office of the Vice President, did not believe in nation- building. Yet after Saddam was removed, President Bush adopted the views of what had been the anti-war faction, which involved a rejection of the exiles championed by the war hawks and a more long- term strategy oriented toward creating a democratic Iraq with new leaders. President Bush, who worked with dedication on a year-long campaign to bring the country into war, made the most important decisions about the postwar planning at the latest date possible and with the most careless indifference. While the Iraq War was sold as a preemptive strike that would protect Americans from direct attack, it became a humanitarian intervention based on an ad hoc theory that forced democratization was achievable, that it would have a domino effect, and eventually end terrorism. This was due to the embarrassment over the lack of WMDs and connections between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida that became apparent not long after the occupation began. The freedom agenda was born because it was the only way that the Bush administration could justify a continuing occupation, which was necessary because pulling out would have been interpreted as an embarrassing defeat. Culpable negligence abounds: We fi nd that the origins of both Iraq and Afghanistan follow a pattern. In each case, the United States ostensibly wanted something – bringing al- Qaida to justice in Afghanistan and verification of disarmament in the case of Iraq – but did not seriously consider ways to achieve those ends short of war. Once it conquered the targeted country, American behavior appears to have had little to do with the original justification for war. The United States could have stayed narrowly focused on terrorism in Afghanistan, as it has when striking countries like Somalia and Yemen, and it could have removed Saddam Hussein and then left, putting into power the Iraqi National Congress or even keeping the old regime intact with a new president. In both cases, top American officials made or delegated key decisions about their postwar policy with little thought given to the issues involved. Why is there so much culpable negligence? The simplest explanation for why the United States went into Iraq and Afghanistan and removed the governments of those states is that there were psychological and political incentives to engage in regime change. War in response to terrorism was good politics; it also soothed any wounded pride that officials had. Putting U.S. defeats in economic perspective: Most scholars who write on the topic widely acknowledge that it was a mistake to go into Vietnam and Iraq, and that even if the war in Afghanistan was originally justified, the mission was too ambitious and went on for too long. Yet the field has not yet come to terms with the magnitude of these failures. In each of these countries, the United States has tried to secure a nation by spending many times what that country produces in a given year. Comparing what these countries produced before American troops arrived to what the United States has sacrificed, even setting aside the number of lives lost, the money spent to GDP ratio has been 74:1 in South Vietnam, 43.3:1 in Iraq, and a stunning 396:1 in Afghanistan. In other words, the United States has spent in Afghanistan the equivalent of that country’s level of production, assuming it stayed constant, for close to four centuries. While scholars will acknowledge that American foreign policy has had serious failures, they have yet to grapple with what these conflicts mean for the rational actor model, in which foreign policy is said to be based on some kind of cost– benefit analysis and serve the national interest. If only the U.S. responded to humanitarian disasters by welcoming refugees instead of sending soldiers.  Helps far more, costs far less, with near-zero collateral damage. The book ends by grappling with public choice fatalism – though by this point I did find it hard to retain any optimism. (0 COMMENTS)

The story of how I became an economist is its own odyssey: I started college as an English major, intending to hone my creative writing skills, and hopefully to drop out after I wrote the first book of an extremely long, best-selling fantasy epic. The winds of fate blew in other directions and I found myself fascinated by economics: here was a way to describe the world plainly and powerfully. Even when I found flaws large and small with the analysis of economists past and present, economics just made sense to me. It gave me a powerful analytical framework and vocabulary to describe the social world. I was lucky to have great teachers, including one who would eventually become my doctoral advisor, who described economics as “the scientific study of all aspects of the social world,” which hooked me from the beginning. Like most of my students, I had initially thought of economics as being in some sense closely connected to money, a study that never appealed to me. I was wrong. Although I changed my field of study drastically, I was never interested in anything other than what it means to be human and live among humankind. The big questions which motivated the greatest poets and storytellers are still what give life to my work. Unfortunately, many people are introduced to economics as a branch of applied mathematics having mostly to do with solving optimization problems of one kind or another. This never had any appeal to me, and appeals to virtually no students. When I teach economics, I try to impress from the first day that economics—like anything worth studying—is about understanding what it means to be human. Ideally, it might even help us make a better life for ourselves and others. Literature has the same function. Homer’s Odyssey1 is one of my favorite stories filled with many truths about these fundamental questions. For all the truth it conveys, though, poesy lacks the analytical precision that the economic way of thinking affords. That said, students are often ready to believe that great stories have a lot to say about the human condition while they are skeptical that economics can do the same. Talking about the Odyssey with my students lets me explore economic concepts with them and demonstrate how examples of how these concepts are at work in various themes of the epic. Strategy and Game Theory “Nobody—that’s my name. So my mother and father call me—and all my friends.” Odyssey Book ix. Odysseus is a master strategist, a cunning tactician. In game theory, a strategy is a plan to choose among various options where the actions taken by both you and other agents matter for the outcome. The Odyssey contains myriad examples of Odysseus employing strategic thinking to achieve his goals. A perfect example of strategic thinking is in the cyclops’s cave. Odysseus knows that even if he could kill the cyclops, he could not move the boulder in front of the cave. Even if he were a great fighter who could defeat the cyclops, that path would lead to death for the entire trapped crew. So, instead of slaying the cyclops, Odysseus blinds him, and he and his men sneak out in the morning, when the boulder is moved so the cyclops’s sheep can exit the cave to graze. A key strategic principle which we see at use here is backward induction, a solution concept in game theory where actions are analyzed from the end to the beginning. In another such example, since no man can resist the sirens’ song, Odysseus knows he will fall victim if he engages them head on. So, he has his men tie him to the mast before the ship comes close enough to hear their song. With these precautionary protections in place, he is able to hear their song and live to tell the tale. Another game-theoretic concept at work in the Odyssey is the importance and viability of cooperative strategies between strangers. Hospitality customs are at work in several scenes of The Odyssey, for instance when Telemachus and Pisistratus are welcomed in the house of Menelaus. Why should strangers—who might very well be enemies, or at least opportunistic free loaders—be treated with lavish hospitality by others? Is a stranger a potential threat, or a potential ally? For more on this, see Catherine Tracy “The Host’s Dilemma: Game Theory and Homeric Hospitality” (2014)2. Those who value hospitality traditions are rewarded by the gods, reinforcing cultural norms that allow for greater levels of coordination between strangers of good will. Comparative Advantage “Each man delights in the work that suits him best.” Odyssey, Book xiv. “The gods don’t hand out all their gifts at once, not build and brains and flowing speech to all. One man may fail to impress us with his looks but a god can crown his words with beauty, charm, and men look on with delight when he speaks out.” Odyssey, Book, viii. One of the main themes of The Odyssey is the value of cunning over brute strength. Odysseus recognizes throughout the tale that, unlike the great Achilles in The Iliad, he lacks the requisite strength and martial prowess to reach his goals by fighting. This recognition leads him to employ his mind whenever possible. He is “a man of twists and turns.” His cunning is really what makes him a compelling character from a storytelling perspective, and within the story this gift is what makes him of such interest to the gods, especially Athena. It is not that Odysseus is not a great fighter or lacks strength. He is, after all, the only man strong enough to string his famous bow. He has spent years fighting and leading men in battle and against the elements. His heroism, however, rarely comes from any application of his strength. For more on these topics, see “The Relentless Subjectivity of Value,” by Max Borders, Library of Economics and Liberty, May 3, 2010; and “Adam Smith, Ayn Rand, and the Power of Stories,” by Caroline Breashears, Library of Economics and Liberty, March 2, 2020. See also Game Theory, by Avinash Dixit and Barry Nalebuff in the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics; Comparative Advantage, by Donald J. Boudreaux in the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics; and Comparative Advantage, by Lauren Landsburg, Library of Economics and Liberty. In economics, an economic agent is said to have a comparative advantage when he can produce some output at a lower opportunity cost than another. Comparative advantage is an important principle for establishing the importance of trade. We gain by trading and cooperating with one another because when we focus on our comparative advantages, we are able to have more total output even if no one improves through specialization. Odysseus is good at many things, but has a comparative advantage when it comes to cunning. For most of my students, comparative advantage is seen as a counter-intuitive concept. Developing an understanding of it requires the persistent application of as many examples as I can think of. Trade-0ffs and Subjective Value “There is a time for many words, and there is also a time for sleep.” Odyssey, Book xi. “So then, royal son of Laertes, Odysseus, man of exploits, still eager to leave at once and hurry back to your own home, your beloved native land? Good luck to you, even so. Farewell! But if you only knew, down deep, what pains are fated to fill your cup before you reach that shore, you’d stay right here, preside in our house with me and be immortal. Much as you long to see your wife, the one you pine for all your days…” Odyssey, Book v. The pervasiveness of tradeoffs is one of the fundamental realities of human life. The concept of scarcity describes the condition where choices have to be made. Unfortunately, economics textbooks often describe all this as an optimization problem. The sharp-minded student of economics recognizes that each person’s tradeoffs are different because each perceives costs and benefits in a unique way. For Odysseus and his crew, home and family serve as a primary motivation for all the action of the book. At several junctures, the heroes have the opportunity to give up on the quest and make a new home. Odysseus even has an opportunity to live an immortal life with the beautiful and powerful immortal nymph Calypso. He chooses his wife, Penelope, and his home, Ithaca, over an immortal life of divine luxury, and the audience is meant to think of this choice as noble. It can be hard for students to understand the decision to choose domesticity over divinity, but in life, motivations are complex. Every person responds to his or her own incentives, and we each respond in different ways. When teaching economics, it is easy for students to believe that economists see human beings as automatons that respond in entirely predictable ways, just as they might in a homework problem. I use The Odyssey to show that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. What is valuable to a person is entirely individual. Agency Dilemma “‘This dog,’ answered Eumaeus, ‘belonged to him who has died in a far country. If he were what he was when Odysseus left for Troy, he would soon show you what he could do. There was not a wild beast in the forest that could get away from him when he was once on its tracks. But now he has fallen on evil times, for his master is dead and gone, and the women take no care of him. Servants never do their work when their master’s hand is no longer over them, for Zeus takes half the goodness out of a man when he makes a slave of him.” Odyssey, Book xvii. One of my favorite parts of the Odyssey is our hero’s homecoming and his battle with the suitors. Upon his return, though, he finds a number of suitors have arrived to win the hand of his wife Penelope. Scholars disagree on exactly why they want this, though clearly Penelope is a beautiful bride and marrying her is a key to the kingship of Ithaca. When Odysseus returns home, his dog recognizes him, but without his master there to care for him, he has fallen into a state of disrepair, and soon after, expires. In economics, an agency dilemma or principal-agent problem occurs whenever an economic agent is acting on behalf of someone else (the principal), presumably in the interest of the principal. But the agent has interests of his own, creating a moral hazard where the interests are not aligned. The above quotation about the neglected dog Argos is a perfect example of the principal-agent dilemma, and solutions to this problem are something that humans have been trying to figure out for thousands of years. “Great stories help us better understand ourselves. Economics does the same.” Great stories help us better understand ourselves. Economics does the same. Economics also comes with its own technical vocabulary for describing the world and the actions of the people in it. As a teacher of economics, I have often found that students assume that economics only has applicability in the modern world of markets and impersonal, optimizing agents. The examples in this essay should not only be helpful to economists looking to emphasize the timeless and universal relevance of the economic way of thinking, but also to teachers of literature who want to show how the story includes all sorts of practical lessons for understanding people today. Footnotes [1] Available online at the Online Library of Liberty: The Iliad and the Odyssey. Available for purchase, the Robert Fagles translations: The Odyssey, by Homer, translated by Robert Fagles at Amazon.com.* [2] Illinois Classical Studies, No. 39 (2014), pp. 1-16 *Zachary Gochenour is a Lecturer in Economics at James Madison University. He uses economics to write about politics, law, and history. He received his Ph.D. from George Mason University in 2014. As an Amazon Associate, Econlib earns from qualifying purchases. (0 COMMENTS)

(A revised and extended version of a tribute to Gordon Tullock published as Professor Gordon Tullock: A Personal Remembrance, by Richard B. McKenzie. Library of Economics and Liberty, December 1, 2014.) Professor Gordon Tullock would have turned one hundred this month. He died in 2014 at age 92 and was eulogized with an outpouring of fond memories and acclaim from colleagues, students, and friends. He will long be remembered by economists around the world who never met him. Gordon—I call him that because he was a mentor, co-author, and good friend—was one of the hundred most influential economists of the twentieth century. Many still lament the fact that Gordon did not share the 1986 Nobel Prize in Economics with James Buchanan, who won it for his development of public choice economics. Gordon, along with Buchanan, nurtured public choice from its birth in the late 1950s, co-authoring or authoring several of the subdiscipline’s classic works. Many economists reflected, at the time of his death, on how Gordon could well have been on the so-called “short list” for a future Nobel for his path breaking work on “rent seeking,” which is concerned with how businesses and other interest groups seek—through lobbying and campaign contributions—monopoly profits, or “rents,” from government-provided largesse or market restrictions.1 Gordon’s work on rent-seeking spawned a mountain of journal articles that changed people’s assessment of how political processes work. The concept of rent-seeking is now so widely adopted in economists’ public commentaries that the expression no longer needs to be placed in quotes. Gordon Tullock, An Original Academic Character “He was an economist who saw argument as a serious sport. He would not drop arguments or even sugarcoat them out of concern for political (or personal) correctness.” Beyond his many path-breaking accomplishments, however, Gordon was a real character. Many who knew him still carry the sting of a (usually gentle) dismissal or insult, while others remember epiphanies that Gordon freely distributed. Gordon could be abrasive, especially in his early years, and especially when he could readily pick out flaws in arguments. Some who felt (and may still feel) his sting but did not stay around long enough to really know him may remember him as mean-spirited. But those of us who lingered came to realize that he was virtually incapable of being intentionally mean-spirited. He was an economist who saw argument as a serious sport. He would not drop arguments or even sugarcoat them out of concern for political (or personal) correctness. For Gordon, argument was a sport that gave his life meaning, and he was a gracious sportsman, never willing to press points with those who found him difficult. On his death, law professor and economist David Friedman related a personal story similar to those of others who could draw from their memories of Gordon, “My wife remembers meeting [Gordon] when she was my girlfriend. He started the conversation by asking why she was wearing a backpack. Her interpretation was that the only form of conversation he knew was argument. He knew only two things about her—that she was my girlfriend, and she was wearing a backpack—so she flipped a mental coin and chose the backpack. He never made the common mistake that an argument was a quarrel.” As National Review columnist John Miller recalled at the time of Gordon’s death, Gordon was proud to announce that he didn’t vote, with Gordon explaining that the late “Anthony Downs [one of the earliest public-choice economists] convinced me long ago that I stand a greater chance of being killed in a car accident on the way to the polls than I do of making a difference with my vote. So why bother?” Miller added that his friends, colleagues, and students delighted in pinning their “I voted” stickers to his office door. I am confident that Gordon was silently pleased to see the stickers. After all, they engaged him, albeit at a safe distance. One might surmise from Gordon’s allegiance to marginal economic thinking that he was always and everywhere a cost minimizer. On the contrary, I’ve never encountered a more principled and generous economist, or human being, which I suspect was at the heart of the outpouring of tributes on his death. He gave of his time generously in argument with colleagues and students alike, always leaving them with grist to ponder. But then there was his willingness to develop comradery among his colleagues and students, current and former. Gordon was not a cook, which means he shied from entertaining in his townhouse in Blacksburg. But he was “old school” and firmly believed that convivial interactions among colleagues over wine and cheese and dinners was important to department cohesion and to the advancement of intellectual arguments. Many of Gordon’s colleagues and students know that I am referring to the many dinners he hosted for twelve to twenty invited guests and spouses at an upscale French restaurant outside of Blacksburg. These events started at his townhouse with cheese, crackers, and wine but would soon move in a caravan of cars to the restaurant Gordon had reserved for the evening. The conversations were never chit-chat—for long. They quickly became substantive as Gordon and Jim Buchanan, or other guests, would spike discussions with observations. Never have academic discussions been so wide-ranging and productive for me. When I was invited back to Virginia Tech in summer 1977 as a visitor, Gordon arranged one of these dinners for me. He misunderstood when I would arrive in Blacksburg, which was after his gathering had left for the restaurant. My townhouse was doors away from his, which means I heard the guests returning late after their dinner. When I realized the mistake, I knocked on his door to apologize as profusely as I could for my absence. I was surprised and greatly relieved at his cordial reaction, “No problem. I will arrange another one for tomorrow night,” which he did. A Natural Economist Gordon Tullock was, in James Buchanan’s words, a “natural economist” who saw economics as his way of understanding all of life.2 He talked and wrote much about personal interest and profit as motivations in markets and politics. Yet he gave much of himself and his time to others—especially to his students, including me, early in our careers—by promptly reviewing countless of our papers. Gordon did not have an economics pedigree, and that made him proud. Indeed, he received his JD degree from the University of Chicago without having an undergraduate degree. With a publication record in economics journals that has rarely been matched, he was never more pleased than when he told people that he had taken only one formal course in the subject, which, he insisted, provided poor training at best and freed him to find insights where traditional economists believed they should not tread. He seemed convinced that being an untrained economist was an advantage, because he could freely think outside the box that he was never in. A Fountain of Insights In spite of Gordon’s occasional barbs, a privileged group of economists who were his students and colleagues will remember Gordon fondly for his many and varied oddball observations of the world. These observations abounded with insights and were sometimes laced with the peculiar humor of a purebred contrarian. The foyer and hallways of the Public Choice Center at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia were yeast vats for fruitful and sometimes off-the-wall arguments, fueled by Gordon’s relentless search for those prized new ideas, big and small. I remember, as a young graduate student in the early 1970s, listening to several faculty members in the foyer discussing the case for regulating the internal safety of automobiles, then an emerging hot political topic. They were refining standard arguments regarding mandates for the installation of seatbelts, collapsible steering columns, padded dashes, and airbags, all proposed to save lives. Gordon emerged from his office on hearing the discussion and pressed a new and, at the time, startling insight: “You have it wrong! Interior safety features in cars will reduce the costs of accidents for drivers and encourage them to drive more recklessly, causing more pedestrians’ deaths. To reduce deaths, the government should require the installation of a dagger at the center of the steering wheel with its tip one inch from the driver’s chest. Who would take driving risks then?” One of the economists in the group dared to challenge Gordon, “I think you have it wrong. If there were such daggers on steering wheels, drivers about to hit pedestrians crossing the street would not hit the brakes. They would hit the accelerator so the car would jolt very little on impact. The daggers will increase deaths of pedestrians.” Gordon adjusted his argument, “My point is that greater safety in automobiles should be expected to increase pedestrian deaths.” Subsequent econometric research has proved him right.3 Today, many economists delight in generating such oddball arguments. Back then, such arguments were viewed in some quarters as peculiar, if not reckless. Interestingly, this small academic anecdote has been repeated so often in so many places that it has many “fathers,” but I am fairly confident that it originated with Gordon that day. Even if the dagger argument was not original to Gordon, it describes vividly the way his mind worked. Large groups of economists insist that they have no professional expertise in determining what people want, or should want. After all, they say, preferences are subjective and unobservable. On hearing an economic novice make that point in the Center’s hallway, Gordon snapped, “Do you really believe that? Well, I am fairly certain that you would not want me to pour a bucket of boiling oil over you.” He then quickly turned and retreated to his office. Indeed, he often made a quick about-turn just after he twisted his verbal knife. Gordon was on my dissertation committee. After reading all 252 manuscript pages of my dissertation within twelve hours of my submitting it, Gordon caught me in the hallway to give me his terse assessment: “Minimal but acceptable.” To which I replied, “That’s optimal. Done.” After completing my Ph.D. and taking a professorship, I continued, out of respect, calling Gordon “Professor Tullock.” A year after I graduated, Gordon rebuked me for addressing him so formally: “You know, you can now call me ‘Gordon’… although I really prefer ‘Your Majesty.'” I suspect that a number of Gordon’s students have, like me, borrowed that quip. In the mid-1970s, Gordon and I co-authored The New World of Economics, which was the Freakonomics of the era and was widely adopted for what seemed to be its outlandish (for the era) applications of economic analysis—from sex to dying, from mate search to marriage to divorce, and from presidential elections to crime. A life-long bachelor and very private person, Gordon asked me, “Please tell people I didn’t write the sex chapters.” I assured him, “Gordon, I don’t think you need to worry.”4 A Keynesian Maverick In the 1970s, the “Phillips curve,” which graphically describes the presumed tradeoff between inflation and unemployment rates, was still the rage in macroeconomic circles (although it was beginning to lose professional respect). Gordon caught several of us in the Center’s foyer to show us a roughly drawn graph without the axes labeled but with scattered points on it that formed an upward sloping band. He asked us to guess the variables on the axes. No one tried. He then announced that they represented the combinations of the inflation and unemployment rates over the past two decades or so, a revelation that suggested that higher inflation could be hiking unemployment, a bit of macroeconomic heresy to the then dominant Keynesian economists, who were committed to the downward-sloping Phillips-curve, which they considered sacrosanct. Gordon’s point about the slope of the Phillips curve eventually won the argument (at least through the 1970s and 1980s). Following the substantial success of our New World of Economics, publishers pursued us to write a full-year economics textbook. On agreeing to write our introductory text, Modern Political Economy, in the late 1970s, Gordon and I divided the workload. He would write the macroeconomics half and I would write the microeconomics. This was a questionable division of labor, given that macro was hardly Gordon’s professional comparative advantage. After six months, he left his dictated 500 or so manuscript pages on macroeconomics on my desk. After reviewing what he had done, I had to press him, “Gordon, you have only five manuscript pages on Keynesian economics. That won’t work.” He quickly retorted, “Well, tell me what I left out that’s important.” I was lost for an answer that he would find convincing, other than explaining to him that all other textbooks had a dozen or so chapters on Keynesian economics and adding that our book would be dismissed for adoptions as a result. This was an argument that left Gordon unmoved. I agreed to add the missing content if he would add chapters on public choice economics, which no other textbook had. The Buchanan/Tullock Calculus Sadly, people’s personal reflections on Gordon’s career will soon fade from historical relevance as the many students he directly affected age out of their careers. What will last will be his massive body of work, which cannot be done justice here (selections of which have been collected by Charles Rowley for Liberty Fund.5) Gordon’s lasting impact on the profession, of course, got its biggest boost with The Calculus of Consent, in which he and James Buchanan worked through “the logical foundations of constitutional democracy” (the book’s descriptive subtitle.)6 In that book, Gordon and Buchanan dared to assume (at least for theory’s sake) that the people who toil at building national constitutions and work through the politics of policy making, within constitutional constraints (or binding rules), are very much like people in the market—no better and no worse—and all are driven by their own interests (broadly determined). People in private markets, who pursue their “self-interest,” should not be expected to pursue some grand construct of the “public interest” when they enter political markets. With that shift in assumptions (again, if for no other reason than for the sake of a coherent theory), Gordon and Buchanan were able to deduce several necessary constitutional constraints to limit political operatives’ pursuit of their strictly selfish goals, much as competition limits market players’ pursuit of their selfish goals. One such natural candidate for control was the rule of the majority, which avoided the political log jam that would be expected from the rule of unanimity (under which everyone could engage in strategic voting.) Majority rule would also avoid the potentially oppressive outcomes of votes of small pluralities (under which minorities could vote themselves favored government programs and impose the costs on everyone through higher taxes, resulting in a collection of government programs that a large swath of the polity believes fail a cost-benefit test.) Gordon soon followed The Calculus of Consent with analytical extensions in his Toward a Mathematics of Politics, in which he notably explained why most voters have little incentive to be informed about political candidates’ favored policies.7 Nonetheless, voters from private interest groups would tend to be well-informed on policies that furthered their private agendas. Among the numerous and diverse topics Gordon covered in his career, two should receive more attention than they do. The first is the concept of “transitional gains trap.”8 Economists have long recognized that government programs (such as farm subsidies) are almost impossible to curb, much less terminate. Gordon provided a simple, yet powerful, explanation: The benefits governments provide (for example, crop subsidies) often become capitalized in the market value of capital (say, farmland). This means that many of the people who currently gain from these programs paid full market value for those gains. If the government curbs or eliminates these programs, it will impose a huge transitional loss on people who never got a windfall in the first place. Those people will lobby intensely to avoid a capital loss. For more on these topics, see “Rent-Seeking: Not Just a Public Problem,” by G. Patrick Lynch, Library of Economics and Liberty, Oct. 29, 2019; and “The State Is Us (Perhaps), But Beware of It!,” by Pierre Lemiuex, Library of Economics and Liberty, Jan. 3, 2022. See also Public Choice, by William F. Shughart II in the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics; and The Tragedy of the Commons, by Garrett Hardin in the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics. A second notable contribution that should receive more attention is his article in the Journal of Theoretical Biology, in which he applied the logic of the “tragedy of the commons” to forestry.9 He reasoned that each tree in an unmanaged forest has a private interest in spreading its leaves as broadly as possible and in outgrowing other trees to access as much sunlight as possible. Trees in an unmanaged forest are in something of an “arms race” that must be suboptimal: if all trees checked their growth (or were forced to check their growth by “managers”), they all could receive as much sunlight as with unchecked growth, with less energy spent on becoming spindly. Hence, Gordon concluded (surely with a smile) that if trees could (which they obviously can’t) be given a choice between being managed or not, they would collectively choose to be managed. A Lasting Legacy Many of us feel fortunate today as we reflect on how Gordon Tullock affected our lives and careers—so much for the good. We remember the verbal wounds, but we also remember how he made economics productive, fun, and relevant. In no small way, Gordon, along with a few others, changed the way hordes of people across the globe assess constitutions, politics, and bureaucracy, as well as outlining the important issue of the appropriate division between the public and private sectors. Many people, far removed from academies who provide political commentaries today, don’t know they are relating versions of arguments Gordon originated and nurtured during his long career. Much of the modern skepticism about government solutions to market failures— among academics and in society generally—can be traced in significant, albeit unheralded, ways to the flow of words and incisive arguments coming from Gordon Tullock’s pen (or, rather, from his Dictaphone). Footnotes [1] Gordon Tullock. 2005. The Rent-Seeking Society, in The Selected Works of Gordon Tullock, vol. 5, edited by Charles Rowley. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund (with details of the collection available from the Liberty Fund Book Catalog). [2] For his major writings that pushed the disciplinary boundaries of economics, see Gordon Tullock. 2006. Economics without Frontiers, in The Selected Works of Gordon Tullock, vol. 10, edited by Charles Rowley. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. [3] See Sam Peltzman. 1975. “The Effects of Automobile Safety Regulation.” Journal of Political Economy 83(2): 677, accessible (with a fee or university affiliation) from JSTOR. [4] Richard B. McKenzie and Gordon Tullock. 1975 (with following editions in 1978, 1981, 1985, 1989 and 2012). The New World of Economics. Homewood, Ill.: Richard D. Irwin (first five editions) and Heidelberg, Ger.: Springer sixth edition). [5] Gordon Tullock. 2005. The Selected Works of Gordon Tullock, vols. 1-10, edited by Charles Rowley. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund (with details of the collection available from the Liberty Fund Book Catalog. [6] James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock. 2004. The Calculus of Consent: The Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy, in The Selected Works of Gordon Tullock, vol. 2, edited by Charles Rowley. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. Available online at the Library of Economics and Liberty. [7] Gordon Tullock. 1967. Toward a Mathematics of Politics. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press. [8] Gordon Tullock. 1975. “The Transitional Gains Trap.” Bell Journal of Economics, 6(2): 671-678, accessible (with a fee or university affiliation) from JSTOR. [9] Gordon Tullock. 1971. “Biological Externalities.” Journal of Theoretical Biology, 33(3): 565-576, accessible from ScienceDirect.com. *Richard B. McKenzie is the Gerken Professor of Economics and Management Emeritus in the Paul Merage School of Business at the University of California, Irvine. He co-authored with Gordon Tullock The New World of Economics, which went through five editions (and five foreign languages) and was adopted at one time or another in almost all of the country’s colleges and universities in the 1970 and 1980s. His latest book in economics is The Selfish Brain: A Layperson’s Guide to a New Way of Economic Thinking (2021). Photo of Gordon Tullock courtesy of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. For more articles by Richard McKenzie, see the Archive. (0 COMMENTS)

Individuals feel their way toward those situations in which, through the local combination of ingredients making an Interaction Ritual happen, the Emotional Energy payoff is the highest. —Randall Collins, Interaction Ritual Chains,1 p. 177 Sociologist Randall Collins offers a theory of human nature that is probably more realistic than that employed by economists. Instead of “economic man,” who is concerned with obtaining and deploying material resources, what we might call “sociological man” is concerned with obtaining and deploying Emotional Energy (EE). “Economic man” makes his calculations as a separate individual. Economists can and do analyze how a Robinson Crusoe translates his preferences into decisions. However, EE only arises in interactions among two or more people. Because EE is obtained and deployed in personal interactions, sociological man is socially constructed. Your personality emerges out of the sequence of significant social encounters that you experience as you go through life. These are what Collins calls interaction ritual chains. EE plays a central role in Collins’ 2004 treatise, Interaction Ritual Chains, as well as in Napoleon Never Slept (henceforth NNS), a 2015 book co-authored with Maren McConnell that was written to appeal to a business audience. Interaction Ritual Chains is laden with academic jargon and references to prominent works of sociology. NNS is more accessible but too light to be convincing on its own. In NNS, Collins describes Emotional Energy as follows. High EE is feeling pumped up, bodily and mentally. High EE persons are confident and proactive. They are forward moving; they have a path to a goal and they convey it to other people. Emotional energy can vary from high to low. Some social interactions pump up people’s EE. Other kinds of interactions bring them down. People with low EE are hesitant, passive, even depressed. They quickly lose enthusiasm and are easily tired. Great leaders make their social encounters generate high EE. And they avoid the kinds of encounters that bring EE down. … people in the group build up a shared emotion; the stronger the emotion, the more they feel themselves in tune with each other, and the more tightly they focus together. And the more tightly they focus, the more their shared emotion pumps each other up. … the leader of the group—the one at the center of attention—is getting the most energy of all… They are getting high on their work, getting high running a successful organization. —Napoleon Never Slept,2 p. 9 Imagine a quarterback leading his team on a drive toward a game-winning touchdown in a home game. The emotional energy of the quarterback feeds that of the rest of the players and the fans, and their energy in turn raises the emotional energy of the quarterback. Or imagine a group very engaged in church worship, singing hymns and clapping in unison. They experience shared emotions and a feeling of solidarity, giving them high EE. Your emotional energy is lowest when you feel excluded from a group. Imagine being among people all speaking a language that you do not understand. A few years ago, I was seated at dinner with a number of people, several of whom I had never met. I was looking forward to interacting with them. However, a Rude Law Professor took over the conversation, telling story after story about people in his legal circles known to at most a couple of others at the table. Every time I tried to open up the conversation to hear from more dinner guests, the Rude Law Professor quickly re-asserted control and returned to telling his stories. If I were to describe this episode using Randall Collins’ terminology, I would say that the Rude Law Professor engaged in Emotional Dominance. The Rude Law Professor probably enjoyed the dinner and gained EE from it. I, on the other hand, felt marginalized. My emotional energy would suffer if this were to happen to me often. Collins’ theory of Emotional Energy has many interesting applications. One aspect that particularly struck me was his emphasis on the important role that co-presence plays in generating experiences with high EE. For example, he asserts that if you are not physically present at a funeral or a wedding, you will not experience the same grief or joy felt by those in attendance. If you watch the football game by yourself on television, it will not be as powerful an experience as if you were in the stadium. “In a live lecture, if everyone else is paying close attention to the speaker, you will sense this joint attention and this will lead you to focus on the lecture.” This emphasis on the importance of co-presence may explain what is missing in remote learning. A teacher in the classroom is better able to engage students using EE. In a live lecture, if everyone else is paying close attention to the speaker, you will sense this joint attention and this will lead you to focus on the lecture. On the other hand, if the audience seems distracted (people checking their phones), the lack of common focus will cause people to experience the event as having low EE. Collins says that a large-scale, formal ritual can come across on television, but a small, informal gathering cannot. Since he wrote that book, the pandemic and Zoom have given us an opportunity to test that hypothesis. In a paper published in October of 2020, Collins points out a number of ways in which Zoom differs from face-to-face (F2F) meetings: Achieving synchrony with others is hard to do with a screen full of faces, delayed real-time feedback, and lack of full body language… In ordinary F2F conversation, persons do not stare continuously at others’ eyes, but look and look away… Thus, seeing a row of faces staring directly at you is artificial or even disconcerting. … Continuously seeing one’s own face on the screen is another source of strain.3 In the paper, Collins says that: Writing, inscriptions, paper, books, postal delivery, newspapers, all became capable of transmitting emblems of social membership and its markers in distinctive group meanings, but even here people had to learn to read them and give importance to them, and this was done in F2F settings. Can we say, though, that as media become more ubiquitous and mimic more aspects of F2F interaction, social connections become increasingly transferred to media connections while the bodily interactional basis fades away? His answer is that so far it seems that people are suffering a loss of EE from social distancing. In the conclusion to his paper, Collins writes: If people are deprived of embodied interactions, we can expect they will be more depressed, less energetic, feel less solidarity with other people, become more anxious, distrustful, and sometimes hostile. For more on these topics, see “The Sociology of Sociologists,” by Arnold Kling, Library of Economics and Liberty, Oct. 2, 2017; and Masks and Mutual Adjustment, by Steven Horwitz, AdamSmithWorks, July 13, 2020. This seems to have occurred. Even prior to the pandemic, researchers were claiming to have found these sorts of effects of social media on people, especially teenagers. Market activity and political activity take place within a social order. Our communications media appear to be disrupting this social order. Economists would do well to keep our eye on sociological man. Footnotes [1] Randall Collins, Interaction Ritual Chains, Princeton University Press, 2005. [2] Randall Collins and Maren McConnell, Napoleon Never Slept: How Great Leaders Leverage Social Energy. Maren, Ink., 2016. [3] Randall Collins, “Social distancing as a critical test of the micro-sociology of solidarity,” American Journal of Cultural Sociology, October 2020. *Arnold Kling has a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of several books, including Crisis of Abundance: Rethinking How We Pay for Health Care; Invisible Wealth: The Hidden Story of How Markets Work; Unchecked and Unbalanced: How the Discrepancy Between Knowledge and Power Caused the Financial Crisis and Threatens Democracy; and Specialization and Trade: A Re-introduction to Economics. He contributed to EconLog from January 2003 through August 2012. Read more of what Arnold Kling’s been reading. For more book reviews and articles by Arnold Kling, see the Archive. As an Amazon Associate, Econlib earns from qualifying purchases. (0 COMMENTS)

Also, competition is a hardy weed, not a delicate flower. I was shocked last week to learn that GoFundMe, which I have used a lot in the last 3 years, withheld money that had been contributed to the Canadian truckers who are protesting vaccine mandates. It was only after extreme pressure that GoFundMe relented and agreed to return contributions to those who had contributed. Elon Musk’s comment helped. But it was only within days that another organization came along and said that people who contributed to the truckers through its site would actually have their money reach them. That organization is GiveSendGo. Interestingly, there’s another competitor that Facebook advertised: Facebook. When I went on Facebook to tell friends that I would no longer used GoFundMe, an immediate message from Facebook came up. It said: When you need to raise money for something or someone important to you, your friends can help. Create a fundraiser on Facebook in a few quick steps. I follow the NBA; well, actually, I follow the Golden State Warriors. One of the lines I have seen NBA commenters use is “Scoring cures a lot of ills.” Postscript: There has been a lot of misinformation about the truckers’ protest. As this interview with one of the leaders of the protest makes clear, it is NOT about opposition to vaccines. It’s about opposition to vaccine mandates. (0 COMMENTS)

I know a guy who keeps getting hassled by his Human Resources Department.  Why?  Because he hasn’t submitted his official vacation paperwork. What’s the big deal?  It’s paperwork, and like most people, he hates paperwork. If the paperwork is so hateful, why does it exist?  Because the firm is located in a city where regulators require such paperwork, to ensure that every employee gets all the vacation they’re entitled to. Upshot: Due to regulation, this guy has to fill out piles of paperwork in order to receive… exactly what his employer was going to give him anyway. If you’re tempted to quip, “Thanks for nothing!,” you underestimate how Kafkaesque this situation really is.  This is not a “Thanks for nothing” situation.  It is a “Thanks for less than nothing situation.”  A situation where government “protection of your rights” makes you wish you didn’t have the rights in the first place. Nor is this an isolated case.  Consider HIPAA, the law that protects your “health privacy.”  Due to HIPAA regulations, I’ve been hassled dozens of times.  To fill out extra paperwork for myself.  To fill out extra paperwork for my kids.  To stand behind the red line at the pharmacy.  Most annoyingly, these regulations occasionally prevent me from handling my wife’s medical issues, or prevent her from handling mine.  You go through a serpentine phone tree, and at the end discover that – due to HIPAA – they’re not legally allowed to even discuss the patient with you. But don’t I get something in exchange?  Sure: Extra “health privacy” that I never wanted in the first place.  Even if I were dying of cancer – indeed, especially if I were dying of cancer – protecting my health privacy would be virtually the last thing on my mind.  Frankly, I couldn’t care less about my health privacy.  And I doubt more than a few percent of people care enough to personally do anything about it. Ergo: Thanks for less than nothing, HIPAA. The same goes for the confidentiality of letters of recommendation.  The law gives students the right to see their letters of recommendation unless they explicitly waive this right.  As a result, every request for a recommendation comes bundled with another piece of paperwork waiving confidentiality.  That’s how government “stands up for your rights.” Again, thanks for less than nothing. Or to take one last example: Suppose a law firm gives new law school graduates a cash advance the summer before they start working to help them focus on the bar exam.  At least back in the 90s, New York State made it illegal for firms to deduct the repayment for this cash advance from your paycheck once you started work.  Instead, beneficiaries of the cash advance had to write dozens of separate personal check to their employer to repay the debt.  The same funds flowed.  But thanks to regulators, they flowed with serial aggravation. Thanks for less than nothing, New York. Why do these crazy laws exist?  First and foremost: Social Desirability Bias.  Protecting workers from “vacation theft” sounds good.  “Health privacy” sounds good.  The right to see your letters of recommendation sounds good.  Protecting workers from “wage theft” sounds good. Under laissez-faire, market forces handle these problems well enough that almost no one wants to personally take action to handle them better.  Unfortunately, in politics, words speak louder than actions.  If leaders can loudly “do something” about trivial problems by forcing everyone to fill out yet another stupid form, they probably will. (0 COMMENTS)

[ANNUAL LISTENER SURVEY: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/CQX28T6. Vote for your 2021 favorites!] What’s so bad about rising inflation? Why should we aim for a rate of 2 percent? Why is it a problem if interest rates are too low–and what do we mean by inflation, anyway? Stanford University’s John Taylor talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about these questions, […] The post John Taylor on Inflation, the Fed, and the Taylor Rule appeared first on Econlib.

and of many others who are not in the top one percent. I just finished being discussion leader of a colloquium on “Liberty and Power” in Fort Lauderdale. It was glorious to go into various establishments without wearing a mask. (I recognize that some of these establishments might have wanted to require masks and were prevented from doing so by the governor. I hope, but don’t know, that the ones I didn’t wear a mask in were ones that didn’t want to require masks.) And I had a great time. One of the readings was from a George Gilder book I hadn’t known of. It’s titled Knowledge and Power: The Information Theory of Capitalism and How It Is Revolutionizing Our World. I particularly liked this excerpt: Entrepreneurial knowledge has little to do with the certified expertise of an advanced degree from an establishment school. It has little to do with the gregarious charm of the high school student voted most likely to succeed. The fashionably educated and cultivated spurn the kind of fanatically focused learning undertaken by the 1 percent. Wealth all too often comes from doing what other people consider insufferably boring or unendurably hard. The treacherous intricacies of building codes or garbage routes or software languages or groceries, the mechanics of butchering sheep and pigs or frying and freezing potatoes, the mazes of high-yield bonds and low-collateral companies, the murky arcana of petroleum leases or housing deeds or Far Eastern electronics supplies, the ways and means of pushing pizzas or insurance policies or hawking hosiery or pet supplies, the multiple scientific disciplines involved in fracking for natural gas or tapping shale oil or contriving the ultimate search engine, the grind of grubbing for pennies in fast-food unit sales, the chemistry of soap or candy or the silicon-silicon dioxide interface, the endless round of motivating workers and blandishing union bosses and federal inspectors and the IRS and EPA and SEC and FDA—all are considered tedious and trivial by the established powers.       (0 COMMENTS)

Since 2009, I’ve spoken to many libertarian audiences. One point that I keep coming back to is that NGDP targeting minimizes severe recessions, and severe recessions lead to non-libertarian policies. A new study by Paola Giuliano and Antonio Spilimbergo in The Review of Economic Studies confirms the second part of that claim.  Here’s the abstract: Does the historical macroeconomic environment affect preferences for redistribution? We find that individuals who experienced a recession when young believe that success in life depends more on luck than effort, support more government redistribution, and tend to vote for left-wing parties. The effect of recessions on beliefs is long-lasting. We support our findings with evidence from three different datasets. First, we identify the effect of recessions on beliefs exploiting time and regional variation in macroeconomic conditions using data from the 1972 to 2010 General Social Survey. Our specifications control for nonlinear time-period, life-cycle, and cohort effects, as well as a host of background variables. Second, we rely on data from the National Longitudinal Survey of the High School Class of 1972 to corroborate the age–period–cohort specification and look at heterogeneous effects of experiencing a recession during early adulthood. Third, using data from the World Value Survey, we confirm our findings with a sample of 37 countries whose citizens experienced macroeconomic disasters at different points in history. The problem is simple.  While severe recessions are actually caused by governments (i.e., by unstable monetary policy), to the average person (and even the average economist) it looks like they are caused by the inherent instability of unregulated capitalism.  Hence the call for more socialism every time there is a severe recession. What makes me believe in the first part of my claim, that NGDP targeting minimizes severe recessions? This: (0 COMMENTS)

Social movements like #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter, powered by social media, have given rise to heightened corporate activism on social issues. While these movements have drawn attention to the importance of addressing diversity issues for the workforce rather than simply at the board or even management level, corporate responses to these movements have unfortunately been short-sighted. As I argue in a recent paper, when companies play to the gallery and make decisions to address social media criticism in the moment, they might make temporary reputation gains, but open themselves up to future, more serious issues. While the conventional narrative of short-termism, i.e. activist investors (typically, institutional investors like hedge funds) pressure management to maximise profits in the short-term and prevent the corporation from pursuing long-term goals that benefit all stakeholder, is well recognized, short-termism in equity issues is something that we need to pay more attention to. Whether companies fire an executive who is the target of social media pressure or issue a statement in support of some cause or condemning some action in response to demands of the online crowd, such actions are not likely to help the company do better on diversity issues in the long term. On the contrary, it may be counter-productive. For instance, such actions can result in an environment where employees are afraid to voice a view that is different from the majority view, or cause employee dissatisfaction when they see that the company is not following through on its promises. Companies need to recognise that in most cases, the social media outcry only reflects the views of a small but vocal minority. Instead of catering to this group, which is probably only interested in the company for a short period of time, the company should work towards addressing its internal issues in a manner that addresses the concerns of its employees. Using tools like employee surveys to identify issues of firm culture and then introducing measures to address these issues will be far more helpful. Such measures will bear rewards over a period of time by ensuring that misconduct of any sort can be addressed ex ante, and by promoting talented employees. Beyond working on improving firm culture, boards and management should be prepared for social media activism on various issues. While these external pressures cannot be controlled, what companies can control is their own conduct. Clearly stating some guiding ethical principles and acting accordingly will be important in an environment where corporate actions are susceptible to online criticism that can prove costly. Such a statement of what social issues the corporation will prioritise and address will be firm-specific. Take the example of SkyUp Airlines, a Ukrainian Airline which announced in October 2021 that it would replace the old uniform for flight attendants with a comfortable alternative that includes trainers instead of high heels. This decision was based on a survey of its employees which revealed that female employees were fed up with the previous uniform which included tight blouses, pencil skirts, and high heels. Such tailored solutions would allow companies to distinguish themselves from their competitors. The competition could even lead to innovative solutions to social problems. This may still not prevent antagonising some individuals who are not well-informed and whose views may be coloured by their distrust of corporations. However, in the long run, those stakeholders that are regularly interacting with the corporation, employees and suppliers, will spread positive information about the company. From the perspective of social movements, it is more helpful to their broader causes if corporations genuinely work towards the goals sought to be achieved, rather than simply bowing to social media pressure. Insincere corporate initiatives on social justice issues are not uncommon, and have come to be known as woke-washing (similar to greenwashing in the context of environmental action).   Akshaya Kamalnath is a Senior Lecturer at the Australian National University College of Law and blogs at The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Corporate Governance. (0 COMMENTS)