Back when I was doing research on the Great Depression, I read the New York Times from 1929 to 1938 (on microfilm.) Occasionally, I came across articles discussing the possibility of creating a United States of Europe. The Economist has a fascinating article about Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, who was the most prominent interwar figure pushing for the creation of the EU: Few Europeans remember Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi. But as Martyn Bond argues in a new biography, he deserves as much credit as anyone for creating the eu. In 1923 he wrote a bestselling book, “Pan-Europa”, advocating a United States of Europe. He launched a movement, the Paneuropean Union, which soon had thousands of members, including Albert Einstein and Thomas Mann. Adolf Hitler referred to him as “that cosmopolitan bastard”. He was probably the model for Victor Laszlo, the activist fleeing the Nazis in “Casablanca”. He counselled Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle on creating a European federation, and proposed Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” as its anthem. Yet today his name is best known on the paranoid right. Over the past decade and a half, xenophobic nationalist groups all across Europe have put him at the centre of their conspiracy theories. Seizing on predictions he made of rising migration and intermarriage, they have imagined a secret “Kalergi plan” comprising the EU’s real mission: to destroy European nations through miscegenation. The problem with the European dream is that not everyone dreams of the same sort of Europe.  In 2016, British voters opted to leave the EU, the first country to do so.  On the other hand, the logic of European integration is still quite strong, as seen by the fact that very little has actually changed in Britain.  Here’s the Financial Times: Lamenting the “current direction of travel”, Frost complained that Boris Johnson is resiling from the dream of “a lightly regulated, low-tax, entrepreneurial economy, at the cutting edge of modern science and economic change”.  Other economic liberals voice similar concerns. Iain Duncan Smith, former Tory leader and co-author of a report for Downing Street on potential post-Brexit reforms, wrote recently: “We have yet to see the Government seize this opportunity” of moving from the “EU’s deeply risk-averse precautionary principle to . . a proportionality principle”. With personal and corporate tax rises just introduced, ministers pledging not to scale back employment rights and an increasing role for the state, the buccaneering post-Brexit vision of a low-tax, low-regulation UK seems more remote than ever. So long Singapore-on-Thames, hello Sweden. The Trump administration took the Brexit side of the debate, but one can argue that the US is the most important force pushing the world toward this sort of globalist structure.  The US has been in the forefront of the move to unify taxes and regulations across borders. Consider the following: 1.  Under the Trump administration, countries were punished for not adhering to US policies on everything from banking rules to economic sanctions.  Through our control of the SWIFT payment system, we were able to bend smaller countries to our will. 2. The Biden administration has successfully pushed through a global rule to prevent “excessive” corporate tax competition. 3. Several administrations have been in the forefront of demanding that international trade pacts go beyond reducing tariffs, and require unification of all sorts of rules and regulations affecting consumers, labor, and the environment. In this sort of world, the British have little hope of developing their own distinctive style of regulation.  And where they do have a bit of freedom, domestic interest groups often oppose any sort of change: The clearest changes so far are new immigration and agricultural subsidy regimes, neither very light touch. The state aid and takeover regulations seem more designed to facilitate governmental intervention than prevent it. In some sectors, wage inflation is practically an official policy. The new chemical safety regime offers more domestic bureaucracy for multinationals that need also to comply with EU regulation. Ministers are keen to break free of EU data laws but are rightly nervous of straying too far lest the UK lose its European data adequacy certification. In almost every trade-off, valuable market access was surrendered for a sovereignty that is being little used. On the size of the state, Tories are in an uphill struggle. MPs may fret about tax levels but neither they nor their voters evince much appetite for a return to austerity. The US increasingly dominates the global scene.  English is becoming the de facto global language.  American popular culture dominates almost everywhere.  Our identity politics (both left and right wing versions) are increasingly influential throughout the world.  Science is dominated by US universities. In a few decades, the entire Brexit debate will seem quaint, as smaller countries are crushed between hegemonic blocs such as the US, the EU and China.   A global free trade zone made up of independent states was a beautiful dream.  Global unification of taxes and regulations is becoming a dystopian nightmare.  For better and for worse, Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi’s vision is on the way to being achieved. PS.  Russia’s recent bullying of Ukraine is pushing Sweden and Finland closer to joining NATO.  China’s bullying of Lithuania makes the EU seem more attractive to Lithuanians.  For small countries, there is safety in numbers. (0 COMMENTS)

Donald Shoup, famed author of the most fascinating possible book about parking, can also do comedy.  From his recent essay on “The Pseudoscience of Parking Requirements“: Everyone wants to park free, and most people consider parking a personal issue, not a policy problem. Rational people quickly become emotional about parking, and staunch conservatives turn into ardent communists. Thinking about parking seems to take place in the reptilian cortex, the most primitive part of the brain responsible for snap judgments about urgent fight-or-flight issues, such as how to avoid being eaten. The reptilian cortex is said to govern instinctive behavior like aggression, territoriality, and ritual display, which all play a role in parking. Parking clouds people’s minds, shifting analytic faculties to a lower level. Some strongly support market prices — except for parking. Some strongly oppose subsidies — except for parking. Some abhor planning regulations— except for parking. Some insist on rigorous data collection and statistical tests—except for parking. This parking exceptionalism has impoverished thinking about parking policies, and ample free parking is seen as a goal that planning should produce. If drivers paid the full cost of their parking, it would seem too expensive, so we expect someone else to pay for it. But a city where everyone happily pays for everyone else’s free parking is a fool’s paradise. I already knew the basic economics of parking when I started writing Build, Baby, Build.  But it was Shoup who convinced me that parking regulations were a major restriction on housing supply.  Residential parking restrictions sharply raise the price of multi-family housing, especially in urban areas.  Commercial parking restrictions sharply raise the price of even suburban land, indirectly raising the price of suburban housing.  All the parking spaces at the mall that are empty 99% of the year could have been housing instead! P.S. Build, Baby, Build update: The storyboards are complete.  My artist plans to have the pages done by June.  The full-color book will be available for sale in early 2023.  To whet your appetite, here’s the Table of Contents: Chapter 1: The Home that Wasn’t There Chapter 2: The Manufacture of Scarcity Chapter 3: The Panacea Policy Chapter 4: The Tower of Terror Chapter 5: Bastiat’s Buildings Chapter 6: Dr. Yes Chapter 7: Mission to YIMBY   (2 COMMENTS)

One worrying trend of our epoch is a celebration of irrationality by those who believe that their wishful thinking produces ideas that are necessarily true—from the Donald Trump crowd to the woke galaxy. Are we entering an obscurantist age? A story in the current issue of the Economist may vie for the place of Exhibit No. 1 (“Trans Ideology Is Distorting the Training of America’s Doctors,” January 8, 2022), although new candidates appear by the day. The Public Health movement, more a political movement than a field of scientific inquiry, has been working for a century or so (depending on the country) to translate its vision of a sanitary utopia into socialist proposals and policies. Core medicine itself has been hit by the anti-scientific agenda. In another Econlog post, I wrote: “If an adult wants to modify his body at his own expense, he should of course be free to do so, and we should respect his decision.” It’s called individual liberty. But the trans ideology, which we can view as part of the woke galaxy, goes much further by negating that there is such a thing as two biological sexes if you redefine them as genders. A large part of the intellectual and educational establishment seems to accept such claims. “Fear and Ignorance” is the subtitle of the Economist article. It reports on what is apparently taught in American medical schools: An endocrinologist told a class that females on testosterone had a similar risk of heart attack to males (they have a much higher risk). Debate about all this was apparently off-limits. … Professional bodies, including the American Academy of Paediatrics, have endorsed “gender-affirmative” care, which accepts patients’ self-diagnosis that they are trans. This can mean the prescription of puberty blockers for children as young as nine. … Affirmative care has done irreversible harm to some young people’s bodies. This has become especially clear from the experience of “detransitioners” who regret taking hormones or having their breasts or genitals removed. Puberty blockers also prevent bones from developing properly; when combined with cross-sex hormones they can lead to infertility and inability to have an orgasm. A 26-year-old student at a medical school in Florida who plans to become a paediatrician is shocked by what she has not been taught about these treatments. “With other diseases and treatments we are taught in such depth about every possible side-effect,” she says. Confused corporate executives, whom I criticized in my post of yesterday, look like small fry compared to that, even if their own contribution to muddled thinking should not be underestimated. The new obscurantists, like those in other times or places, are so persuaded that they have intuited the definitive truth, that they try to censor or bully those who don’t agree with them: An academic paediatrician (who did not want her name, institution or state to appear in this story) says that all medical students understand that they are expected to follow the affirmation model “uncritically and unquestioningly”. … Some trans-rights activists bully anyone who expresses concerns publicly. Reason and free debates are necessary conditions for liberty and prosperity. (0 COMMENTS)

In my June 2021 article for Reason, “Economic Lessons from COVID-19,” I ended with this: Recall, though, an earlier anti-liberty episode that was not nearly as shocking as the lockdowns. In 2005’s Kelo v. New London, the U.S. Supreme Court gave its blessing to a city government’s use of eminent domain to expropriate property from homeowners and transfer it to a private entity, the New London Development Corporation. This sent shockwaves through the country. The Institute for Justice, which represented the losing side before the Supreme Court, has noted that the decision “sparked a nation-wide backlash against eminent domain abuse, leading eight state supreme courts and 43 state legislatures to strengthen protections for property rights.” Could we see a similar response to the lockdowns? Already there have been some moves at the state level to limit governors’ lockdown powers. A bill that passed both the House and the Senate in Ohio would have limited the Ohio Department of Health’s power to quarantine and isolate people, restricting it to only those who were directly exposed to COVID-19 or diagnosed with the disease. Similarly, in Michigan, the Senate and House passed a bill to repeal a 1945 law that Gov. Gretchen Whitmer had used to impose the state’s rather extreme lockdowns. Both bills were vetoed, but I doubt that will be the end of the story. Even if it doesn’t happen until this particular pandemic is over, there’s good reason to believe that some state legislatures will want a say in future decisions. Whatever the case for letting governors move so quickly early last year, that case gets weaker and weaker the longer the lockdowns last. At some point, legislators just might roll back those powers. Or so we can hope. Coming in June, my prediction might sound less impressive than it was: I wrote those paragraphs in January 2021 and there was a longer lag to publication than usual. Since then, some of the things I predicted and hoped for have come, and are coming, about. Here’s Reason writer Eric Boehm in “The Lockdown Showdown,” Reason, February 2022. Many state legislatures grappled with that issue in 2021, as more than 300 measures to limit governors’ unilateral emergency powers were proposed in 45 states. Such measures have been approved in at least a dozen states—including Pennsylvania, where lawmakers and the state’s voters approved a pair of constitutional amendments restricting emergency powers. Those laws, in turn, have sparked opposition from governors’ offices and from the public health community, which overwhelmingly backed 2020’s harsh lockdowns. Later in the piece, Boehm writes: According to a Kaiser Health News report published in mid-September, legislators in at least 26 states had passed laws to limit public health decrees since the start of the pandemic. That count includes rules limiting governors’ executive power, but it also includes states where lawmakers have exercised arguably excessive powers themselves by banning private businesses from imposing mask or vaccine mandates on employees and customers. Boehm also reports good news on Kentucky: To restore balance, state lawmakers in Kentucky passed what is so far the most aggressive limitation on gubernatorial emergency powers since the pandemic began. A three-bill package initially passed in January 2021 caps emergency declarations at 30 days and requires legislative consent—which can subsequently be revoked at any time—for an extension. The bills also prohibit the governor and attorney general from suspending state laws during an emergency and forbid emergency declarations that impinge on the right to worship or protest. Once an emergency declaration expires or is ended, a “substantially similar” one cannot be issued for 90 days. [Governor] Beshear vetoed the bills, but the state legislature overrode his veto in mid-February. A state district court issued an injunction against the new laws after Beshear argued that they would undermine Kentucky’s response to the pandemic and cause avoidable deaths. But the Kentucky Supreme Court overturned that injunction in September and told the district court to rehear the case on the merits. While that legal back-and-forth was playing out, the state legislature agreed to extend Beshear’s emergency pandemic powers until June 21, after which they were terminated. “The Supreme Court has confirmed what the General Assembly has asserted throughout this case—the legislature is the only body with the constitutional authority to enact laws,” House Speaker David Osborne and Senate President Robert Stivers, both Republicans, said in a joint statement on August 21, shortly after the state Supreme Court blocked the injunction against the law. Read Boehm’s whole article, though. Besides the issue I highlighted, it’s incredibly illuminating about how many governors and public health bureaucrats hate to have their powers reined in. And the governor of Washington state takes the prize for having what Friedrich Hayek called the “fatal conceit.” Boehm writes: During an October interview with a local TV station, Washington’s Democratic governor, Jay Inslee, provided a perfect example of the problems with the top-down approach that public health authorities have championed. More than a year and a half after the pandemic began, people have figured out their own strategies for managing risk and coping with the disease. But Inslee sees it differently: “There is only one person in the state of Washington who has the capability to save those lives right now, and it happens to be the governor of the state of Washington,” he said.       (1 COMMENTS)

As a professor and public speaker, I’ve spoken to a wide range of student groups.  On reflection, my very favorite turns out to be: Effective Altruism.  Indeed, I’ve had positive experiences with 100% of the EA groups I’ve encountered. What’s so great about the Effective Altruists?  They combine high knowledge, high curiosity, and high iconoclasm.  When I ask EAs if they’ve heard of signaling, or the Non-Identity Problem, or pollution taxes, most of them say Yes.  The ones who say No are eager to get up to speed.  And if I defend a view that would shock a normal audience, EAs are more likely to be amused than defensive or hostile.  They’re genuinely open to reasoned argument. Though you might expect EAs to be self-righteous, they’re not.  EA is a chill movement.  While ethical vegans are greatly overrepresented in EA, they’re the kind of ethical vegans who seek dialogue on the ethical treatment of animals, not the kind of ethical vegans who seek to bite your head off. Most EAs are official utilitarians.  If they were consistent, they’d be Singerian robots who spent every surplus minute helping strangers.  But fortunately for me, these self-styled utilitarians severely bend their own rules.  In practice, the typical EA is roughly 20% philanthropist, 80% armchair intellectual.  They care enough to try make the world a better place, but EA clubs are basically debating societies.  Debating societies plus volleyball.  That’s utilitarianism I can live with. Why do I prefer EA to, say, libertarian student clubs?  First and foremost, libertarian student clubs don’t attract enough members.  Since their numbers are small, it’s simply hard to get a vibrant discussion going.  EA has much broader appeal.  Anyone who likes the idea of “figuring out how to do the most good” fits in.  Furthermore, to be blunt, EAs are friendlier than libertarians – and as I keep saying, friendliness works. Furthermore, while the best libertarian students hold their own against the best EA students, medians tell a different story.  The median EA student, like the median libertarian student, like almost any young intellectual, needs more curiosity and less dogmatism.  But the median EA’s curiosity deficit and dogmatism surplus is less severe. The good news is that most EA clubs already contain some libertarians.  And the best way to improve both movements is for the libertarians to regularly attend EA meetings.  It’s a great chance to spread superior libertarian logos while absorbing superior EA ethos. When I last spoke at the University of Chicago, one student defended education as a crucial promoter of social justice.  In response, I argued that Effective Altruism is what the social justice movement ought to be.  EAs know that before you can make the world a better place, you must first figure out how to make the world a better place.  This in turn requires you to prioritize the world’s problems – and calmly assess how much human action can remedy each of them.  Social justice activists imagine that these questions are easy – and as a result their movement has become one of the world’s major problems.  Probably like the twentieth-worst problem on Earth, but still. Perhaps the main reason why I get along so well with EAs is that their whole movement rests on a bunch of my favorite heresies.  First and foremost: Good intentions often lead to bad results.  EA exists because many good things sound bad, and many bad things sound good.  The very existence of their movement is an attack on Social Desirability Bias and demagoguery.  Furthermore, since EAs like to rank social problems by their severity and remediability, their movement is also a thinly-veiled attack on Action Bias and social stampedes.  No, we shouldn’t do “all that we can” to fight Covid, or global warming, or anything, because resources are scarce, some problems fix themselves, many problems aren’t worth solving, and many cures are worse than the disease.  Once you take these truisms for granted, fruitful conversation is easy.  And fun. (0 COMMENTS)

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As the battle heats up on the Democrats’ voting legislation in the Senate and on the push to change the 60% practical majority rule to ensure its passage, large American corporations are again under pressure to take a political stance (“US Companies Condemn Election Fraud ‘Falsehood’ on January 6 Anniversary,” Financial Times, January 6, 2022). Business for America, a corporate lobby group whose members include PayPay, declared: We urge all companies to ensure their future donations go to those supporting free, fair, accessible, and secure elections that represent the will of the people. A hint that Business for America, just as the Business Roundtable, is not defending constitutional democracy (the classical liberal ideal of limited democracy in a free society) is the invocation of “the will of the people.” This expression is a trademark of right-wing and left-wing populists. It has no meaning in a constitutional democracy. Who is “the people”? Fifty percent plus one? Sixty-six percent? The “patriots”? The woke? I elaborated on this approach in a few Econlog posts as well as in an Independent Review article, “The Impossibility of Populism” (Summer 2021). At any rate, it is pretty clear that most corporate tenors are not defending a free society. One reason is that the vast majority of them don’t know what a free society is. In a Regulation article of last Summer, I wrote: In his 1973 book Capitalism and the Permissive Society, the late Financial Times columnist Samuel Brittan observed that “businessmen can usually be relied upon to defend the indefensible aspects of their activities while giving in to their collectivist opponents on all essentials.” They are bullied by the woke and caught in debates they don’t understand. James Buchanan proposed an interesting analysis. He defended a (classical) liberal and Smithian presumption of “natural equality” among individuals and thus opposed the power of the cognoscenti or any other elite. Yet, he emphasized that the maintenance of a liberal society does require citizens to have an understanding of simple principles of social interaction and thus basic economics, or else be willing to “defer to others who do.” (See his Why I, Too, Am Not a Conservative [Edward Edgar Publishing, 2005].) If Buchanan is right, the corporate elite is digging its grave or preparing its move to the Nomenklatura class. I would add that corporations are not obliged to, and should not, choose between wokism and fascism, which are not so different anyway. In their ideological fog, they should focus on what they know, that is, how to efficiently produce the goods and services wanted by individual consumers in all their diversity. The separation of economy and state is a feature, not a bug, of a free society. (0 COMMENTS)

In this episode, Nobel laureate James Heckman and EconTalk host Russ Roberts delve into issues of inequality and economic and social mobility with emphasis on Heckman’s paper (with Rasmus Landers) on inequality in Denmark. Heckman describes his access to the rich longitudinal datasets on all Danish citizens that enabled the research that led to a finding about social mobility that surprised him and many others. We hope you, too, are challenged and intrigued by this multi-faceted conversation. Now we’d like to hear your thoughts!       1- According to Heckman, what Danish social and economic policies are most significant in providing a basis for social and economic equality among households, and why? How directly does each policy mentioned affect children?    2- If intergenerational mobility is measured in skill attainment and equal educational access is available to all Danes, what specifically does Heckman conclude from the findings, given that social mobility is no higher than in the U.S.? How do economic and social policies ignore this fundamental source of inequality?   3- How does Heckman compare the role of the state in shaping the “final consumption bundle” through boosting and limiting disposable income to the Universal Basic Income approach that is focused more on boosting? What great costs, beyond financial, do direct subsidies to individuals incur?   4- Education, social and emotional skills, striving/grit, and engagement in society are all identified as valuable life skills. How does Heckman explain the disincentives of programs attempting to target and subsidize disadvantaged students?    5- How do Roberts and Heckman assess the Danish “model social welfare state” provision of material improvement and access to opportunity? If it’s not money, what do you believe can or should be done to target family life so that children might flourish to their full potential? (0 COMMENTS)

In the race for a COVID vaccine, how did a couple of companies who had never produced a successful vaccine make it to the finish line so quickly? Gregory Zuckerman talks about his book, A Shot to Save the World, with EconTalk’s Russ Roberts about the daring, deranged, and damaged visionaries behind one of science […] The post Gregory Zuckerman on the Crazy Race to Create the COVID Vaccine appeared first on Econlib.