David J. Bier, a research fellow at the Cato Institute who has built an expertise in immigration issues over the last few years, has an outstanding post today titled “Haitians Assimilate Well in the United States,” Cato at Liberty, October 4. He applies a data howitzer to the issue, laying out fact after fact that make his case. Here are a few. Language assimilation of Haitian immigrants: more than two thirds of Haitians above the age of 25 do not speak English well upon moving to the United States (Figure 1). However, this rate falls quite dramatically as Haitians remain in the United States over a long period of time, to only ~17 percent after 10 or more years of residence. Haitians get jobs quickly: Although most Haitians arrive without jobs, a majority of adults find work within 1 year. After three years of residency in the United States, Haitians actually had a higher rate of employment than the population on average, peaking at nearly 80 percent, or almost 20 percent higher than the national average. I think he understates it. I think he’s comparing 80 percent to our employment/population ratio of 58.5 percent as of August 2021. 80 percent is a whopping 37 percent above 58.5 percent. Bier may have had in mind a more normal pre-pandemic time, such as 2019. Even there, though, he understated it. The employment/population ratio then was 60.8 percent. 80 percent is 32 percent about 60.8 percent. (Maybe his 20 percent was meant to be 20 percentage points.) Language of people born in the United States but of Haitian ancestry: Nearly 100 percent of those born in the United States with Haitian ancestry speak English well or very well with only 1 percent speaking English “not well” or not at all. Do read the whole thing.   (0 COMMENTS)

Three-quarters of a century ago, Friedrich Hayek warned that the West was on “the road to serfdom.” President Biden’s nomination of Ms. Saule Omarova as Comptroller of the Currency is another illustration that the peril has not receded. A graduate of Moscow State University in 1989 on the Lenin Personal Academic Scholarship, Omarova has not apparently understood that the state cannot run the economy without tightly—and in fact, savagely—controlling individual lives. In the 2oth century, Communism gave what we would think was a definitive illustration. Other sorts of totalitarianism came close: at the forefront was National Socialism, which was both nationalist and socialist as its name confirmed. Hayek saw all that, as you can see in my review of The Road to Serfdom (University of Chicago Press, 1944) in the Fall issue of Regulation. The Wall Street Journal devoted an editorial to Omarova (“Comptroller of the Economy,” September 29, 2021). Now a law professor at Cornell University (Hayek has many things to say about the concept of “law” she must adhere to), she has argued for powerful central agencies, including a “National Investment Authority” and, to determine where in heaven the “public interest” is, a “Public Interest Council” of “highly paid” academics with broad subpoena power. A few quotes from the Wall Street Journal editorial, which is well worth reading at length: “Until I came to the US, I couldn’t imagine that things like gender pay gap still existed in today’s world. Say what you will about old USSR, there was no gender pay gap there. Market doesn’t always ‘know best,’” she tweeted in 2019. After Twitter users criticized her ignorance, she added a caveat: “I never claimed women and men were treated absolutely equally in every facet of Soviet life. But people’s salaries were set (by the state) in a gender-blind manner. And all women got very generous maternity benefits. Both things are still a pipe dream in our society!” … In two papers, she has advocated expanding the Federal Reserve’s mandate to include the price levels of “systemically important financial assets” as well as worker wages. As they like to say at the modern university, from each according to her ability to each according to her needs. … In a recent paper “The People’s Ledger,” she proposed that the Federal Reserve take over consumer bank deposits, “effectively ‘end banking,’ as we know it,” and become “the ultimate public platform for generating, modulating, and allocating financial resources in a modern economy.” What ideologues like Omarova don’t understand is, at the basis, the following: individuals have different preferences and values (not to mention different circumstances), and only the power of the KGB can fit them in the same matrix. And read about the necessity for a socialist state to control remunerations in my Regulation review. How can a Cornell professor be so ignorant or naïve? How can she be as intellectual lacking as Trump was on the other side of the statist continuum? (Caveat: I haven’t read the Omarova articles referenced by the Wall Street Journal.) Why do we observe this rise of ignorance in the political class? There again, Hayek foresaw that. To quote my Regulation review: Perhaps the direst prediction of The Road to Serfdom and the one that seems the closest to current concerns comes in the chapter (fittingly) titled “The End of Truth.” A totalitarian government must make people believe its propaganda about its values and goals, as well as the wisdom of the chosen means to those ends. Bringing people to approve the means involves peddling causal relationships whether they are true or not. The propaganda of totalitarian governments is thus “destructive of all the foundations of all morals,” which lie in “the sense of and respect for truth.” Both in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, the ruling party was presented as the source of all truth. This generates a “spirit of complete cynicism as regards truth” and “the disappearance of the spirit of independent inquiry and of the belief in the power of rational conviction.” It is true that, in the West, government propaganda and censorship have not grown to that point. In America, on the contrary, First Amendment protections were strengthened in the last three quarters of the 20th century. However, even here, governments and political parties have contributed to the debasement of the notion of the truth. The latest U.S. political developments reflect this. Whether the rulers of a limited state are knowledgeable or ignorant, wise or idiotic, might not matter much because the extent of the damage they could do would be limited. It’s a different matter under Leviathan. (0 COMMENTS)

When a business exploits political interventionism for profit, several terms may be used to describe the undertaking. If one is looking at the exploitation from the perspective of political science—and perceives the behavior as a special-interest group corrupting impartial government—then one might choose the terms regulatory capture or cronyism. But if one is looking at the activity from the perspective of business management—and understands the behavior as a corporation’s abandonment of market-oriented wealth creation—then one might choose the terms rent-seeking or using the political means instead of the economic means. The Idea of “Contra-Capitalism” This second alternative suggests a further thought. If we understand rent-seeking and using the political means to be, at their most fundamental level, a business’s abandonment—and ultimately its social subversion—of capitalistic practices, then we must contemplate the possibility that these two practices are but instances of a far wider category of actions. We must consider that there may exist an entire class of actions, comprising many similar abandonments and subversions of capitalist practices, including actions that are far outside the realms of politics and government. That, at any rate, was the insight of Robert Bradley Jr. while writing his multi-volume history of Enron’s rise and fall. As a longtime Enron employee, and CEO Ken Lay’s speechwriter, Bradley had seen innumerable instances of perfectly legal rent-seeking by his company. The infrastructure socialism of “open access” was fundamental to the operation of Enron’s natural-gas and electricity divisions. The Ex-Im Bank and OPIC were essential to its overseas power-generation deals. Subsidies were key to Enron’s participation in the wind-power and solar energy industries. But such rent-seeking, Bradley began to understand, was somehow connected to other behaviors that he was witnessing or hearing about. These practices also seemed perfectly legal, but they were diametrically contrary to those practices and attitudes that Bradley, in his long study of the free-market tradition, had repeatedly heard mandated by advocates of capitalism. One example was Ken Lay’s imprudent pursuit of ventures clearly beyond Enron’s competence, such as the provision of global water supplies and the retailing of electricity to households. Another example was COO Jeff Skilling’s free-wheeling use of mark-to-market accounting, untethered from data based on closely similar markets. A third example was CFO Andy Fastow’s construction of Rube Goldberg debt-structures that purported to meet accounting standards via mind-numbing contortions. Hubristic imprudence. Hyped projections. Impenetrable accounting. Just like rent-seeking, Bradley thought, those are exactly the sorts of behavior that the capitalist tradition has always denounced, strenuously. Thus, he termed the category of behavior that he was trying to conceptualize “contra-capitalism.” And he began to look for connections among its instances. Capitalist Orthopraxy Invariably, when Bradley proposed his neologism “contra-capitalism” to thinkers in the libertarian or conservative world (including this author), they responded: “You mean “anti-capitalism.” For that reason, Bradley was fortunate to have been at a “conservative” Texas natural-gas company rather than a “middle-of-the-road” Manhattan bank. At Enron, the top executives generally espoused the main mantra of the Chicago-School’s ideology: embrace competitive markets to better serve consumers. Enron’s signature domestic crusade was lessening energy regulation for the sake of increased competition among suppliers and lower prices for buyers. Abroad, Enron’s best-known crusade was the privatization of publicly owned companies. Lay himself had been quoted as saying: “I believe in God and free markets” If there was one thing Enron executives were not, it was anti-capitalist. The second-most-common response to the thesis of “contra-capitalism” was: “You are committing the fallacy of ‘no true Scotsman’.”1 Enron’s top executives were unquestionably capitalists, in the colloquial sense of that word: they were leading businessmen who ran a large profit-and-loss company in a relatively free economy. Therefore, ran the objection: One can say that a capitalist who games accounting standards is not a morally good capitalist. But to say his behavior is “contra-capitalist” is like saying “No true Scotsman would put sugar on his porridge.” This objection fails. Yes, it may be irrational to speak of acts that “no true Scotsman” would commit, for the simple reason that nationality generally implies no code of conduct. But, by contrast, some categories of human types do imply a code of conduct, and then a “No true…” assertion can be accurate. For example, a person may unquestionably be a gentleman, as a matter of social status, but some of his behavior may be “ungentlemanly” and thereby bring his class into disrepute. “No true gentleman would do such a thing.” Likewise, a person may unquestionably be a Christian, theologically and devotionally, but some of his behavior may be “un-Christian” and thereby bring his religion into disrepute. “No true Christian would do such a thing.” Those statements can be accurate. In the second case, students of religion formulate this truth by distinguishing between orthodoxy in one’s beliefs or attitudes and orthopraxy in one’s behavior. Bradley’s term “contra-capitalism” rests on the premise that there exists a capitalist orthopraxy. The Derivation of a Capitalist Orthopraxy But if there is a code of orthopraxy associated with capitalism, a code that condemns “contra-capitalist” behavior, how is that code to be determined? The parallel example of Christian and un-Christian behavior offers a possible answer: Two procedures must be employed in tandem—one empirical, one philosophical. Empirically, over the course of two thousand years, Christian theologians, proselytizers, and novelists—people proven by history to be devout—have generated and refined an enormous body of reflection on how Christians should behave. Integrating that corpus of thought, then sifting it, yields a Christian orthopraxy. However, this process of refining and abstracting an orthopraxy must simultaneously be guided by theoretical principles, by orthodoxy. Considering Christianity’s fundamental metaphysics and philosophical anthropology, what is the heart and soul of Christian behavior? Applying that philosophical screen to the empirical tradition helps one to weed out the outré suggestions of heretics, mavericks, outliers, eccentrics, and cranks. Formulating a capitalist orthopraxy proceeds by the same two-step process. In Capitalism at Work, the first volume of his Enron tetralogy, Bradley showed that 250 years of the capitalist tradition had generated a more or less consistent and mutually reinforcing set of reflections on how a capitalist ought to behave. This present essay attempts to integrate and sift Bradley’s empirical findings using a version of the philosophical approach, to produce a tentative formulation of capitalist orthopraxy. Assembling the Data “In short, capitalism involved an orthopraxy of hard bargains, hard facts, and hard work.” The initial section of Capitalism at Work was called “Heroic Capitalism,” and it described the epistemological and ethical thought of three very different pro-capitalist authors living in three very different centuries: Adam Smith, Samuel Smiles, and Ayn Rand. Despite (or because of) the highly divergent perspectives of those authors, an overlay of their philosophies began to produce the recognizable contours of a bourgeois-capitalist orthopraxy, with three main elements: a social commitment to seeking mutual benefit through voluntary trade, an epistemological commitment to focusing one’s mind only on realities, and an arduous personal pursuit of prosperous self-realization. In short, capitalism involved an orthopraxy of hard bargains, hard facts, and hard work. Clearly, the writings of Bradley’s three pillars needed to be supplemented, most obviously by scholarly commentary that could elucidate the thinking of these three capitalist champions. And so Bradley brought into the conversation the works of Smith analysts James Otteson and Jonathan Wight; Smiles commentators Asa Briggs and Tim Travers; Rand scholars Edward Younkins and Stephen Hicks. But in order to truly demonstrate the existence of an orthopractic tradition within bourgeois capitalism, Bradley needed much, much more. And so he also brought into the discussion scores of other pro-capitalist thinkers, in order to create an omnium gatherum of business precepts. Included as contributors were: Dugald Stewart, Herbert Spencer, William Graham Sumner, Simon Newcomb, Joseph Schumpeter, Allan Nevins, Henrietta Larson, Alfred Chandler, F. A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, Israel Kirzner, James Buchanan, Ronald Coase, Vernon Smith, Julian Simon, Murray Rothbard, Don Lavoie, Robert Nozick, Jim Collins, Michael Novak, Richard Epstein, and Charles Koch. The effect of this survey was both to reinforce the general contours of capitalist orthopraxy and to add particular details. Yet how much of that detailed particularity was truly a part of capitalist orthopraxy, and how much was just the personal dicta of individual authors? Separating the essential from the idiosyncratic demands a sifting that takes a philosophic approach. Abstracting the Elements When the precepts laid down by pro-capitalist thinkers over the course of centuries are grouped and categorized, two striking facts emerge. First, they tend to fall into three large categories of behavior. Secondly, each of those three categories reflects one or more of the three fundamental injunctions of capitalism: no force; no fraud; fulfill contracts. The first and most obvious category of capitalist orthopraxy (based on “no force”) involves injunctions to employ the free market, in contrast to employing “the political means” of profit-making. The second category is an insistence on honest dealing with others who are actually or potentially in one’s market, which is to say, the general public. This has two facets: Honesty about what one has to offer (“no fraud”), then keeping one’s promise to deliver what one has offered (“fulfill contracts”). The third category of injunctions is less familiar, though it is actually the second category (honest dealing) applied to oneself. Philosophers in the classical tradition, such as Josef Pieper and Douglas Den Uyl, use the term “prudence” to describe this virtue. It entails a realistic assessment of one’s abilities and one’s situation (“no fraud” becomes “no self-deceit”), followed by an unshakeable dedication to the self-realizational goals dictated by that assessment (“fulfill contracts” becomes “do not abandon one’s commitments”). Unfortunately, as those philosophers admit, the term “prudence” is no longer understood in this classical sense. Still, some term is needed for this third element of capitalist orthopraxy. For it was this third category of injunctions—brutal self-honesty leading to onerous achievement—that transformed the timeless rules of fair exchange into the “bourgeois capitalist” economy. The Concerns of “Contra-Capitalism” If that is capitalist orthopraxy, what is “contra-capitalism”? Logically, “contra-capitalism” would include any behavior contrary to capitalist orthopraxy. Empirically, though, one finds that the capitalist moralists concern themselves most often not with behavior that is utterly alien to capitalist orthopraxy (e.g., running a hippie commune) but with contra-capitalist behavior that tends to emerge insidiously from ordinary capitalist behavior—not naturally and logically but easily, via self-partiality, rationalization, and evasion. For example, the capitalist tradition expects governments to pursue their countries’ prosperity (the wealth of nations). Adam Smith supported the state’s “erecting and maintaining” public works vital to national flourishing. Even the most pro-capitalist businessmen are therefore tempted to believe that their own company or industry is so vital to national prosperity as to merit subsidy and protection in trying times. Recognizing that very natural temptation to self-partiality, capitalist orthopraxy in this first category denounces such Hamiltonianism as almost always an attempt to circumvent the market and gain what one has not earned—contra-capitalism. Again, the capitalist tradition expects free-market traders to extol their offerings. Advertising and salesmanship are central to capitalism. But, as the ambiguity of the word “hustle” demonstrates, businessmen are often tempted to push their salesmanship into the realm of hyperbole. The capitalist moralists say that even the most enthusiastic salesmanship must be bound by honesty; if not, it becomes a form of deceit and (even if legal) an attempt to gain what one could not earn—contra-capitalism. The capitalist tradition expects its adherents to pursue self-realization and prosperity. Self-Help, by Samuel Smiles, is in some ways the key ethical work of bourgeois capitalism. But hard work is, well, hard work. And that creates a temptation in most people to perceive and portray their situation and their prospects as more promising than they really are, leading people to undertake hubristic and unpromising ventures, to the detriment of themselves and their colleagues or dependents. This is the third form of contra-capitalism: imprudence. From the largest perspective, these three forms of contra-capitalism are one. “Philosophic fraud” was the name Bradley gave to violations of honest dealing, the second form of contra-capitalism. Such behavior does not transgress capitalist orthodoxy’s legal ban on fraud, but it does transgress capitalist orthopraxy’s spirit of truthfulness and realism. Stepping back, however, one can consider all forms of contra-capitalism to be “philosophic fraud.” The rent-seeker deceives both himself and the public about the national importance of his company. The vaporware salesman deceives both himself and the market about his prospects. The daydreamer deceives both himself and those who rely on him about his abilities, prospects, and commitments. Conclusion The concepts of “capitalist orthopraxy” and “contra-capitalism” are needed both for business management and for business history. From the standpoint of business management, a capitalist orthopraxy based on “the earned” helps a corporation optimize profit in a way that keeps the company operating as a profit-making engine—the central legal purpose of a for-profit company. The concept of “contra-capitalism” provides a guardrail for that endeavor. It insists that executives focus on reality, honesty, and markets—not daydreams, hype, and political pull. For more on these topics, seeRent Seeking, by David R. Henderson in the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics and “Political Enron: Its Behavior and Spirit,” by Robert L. Bradley, Library of Economics and Liberty, Apr. 7, 2014. When the concepts of “capitalist orthopraxy” and “contra-capitalism” are employed socio-economically, they enable historians and journalists to perceive as interrelated and mutually reinforcing numerous behaviors that might otherwise appear disparate. How was Enron’s rent-seeking linked to its executives’ nepotism? How was its excessive compensation connected to its vaporware hype? How was its civic grandstanding similar to its gaming of SEC rules? The concept of “contra-capitalism” explains those linkages. They were all examples of an infectious willingness to deceive oneself and others rather than pursue “the earned.” After Bradley’s layoff from Enron, he began to read journalistic analyses of his former company’s collapse. Again and again, he saw Enron’s failure explained as the natural and logical result of its executives’ pro-capitalist beliefs. That is when Bradley began drawing on his long experience at the company and his long study of the capitalist tradition to formulate his rebuttal, which he then demonstrated in his multi-volume history. Enron’s fall was not at all a natural or logical evolution of its executives’ capitalist beliefs. On the contrary, it was brought about by the company’s increasing adoption of contra-capitalist behavior. To be sure, that behavior emerged easily as its executives succumbed to capitalism’s besetting sins: hubris, hype, and rationalization. But the behavior that brought Enron down was not capitalist orthopraxy; it was the opposite. It was contra-capitalism. Footnotes [1] Importantly, “no true Scotsman” is not a logical fallacy. It is a rhetorical move that involves the ad hoc rescue of a generalization. Anthony Flew first formulated it this way. “In this ungracious move a brash generalization, such as No Scotsmen put sugar on their porridge, when faced with falsifying facts, is transformed while you wait into an impotent tautology: if ostensible Scotsmen put sugar on their porridge, then this is by itself sufficient to prove them not true Scotsmen.” God & Philosophy (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1966), p. 104. *Roger Donway is a research assistant at the Institute for Energy Research and freelance editor and writer. (0 COMMENTS)

After a long hiatus, it’s time to finish the Knowledge, Reality, and Value Book Club.  Here, I respond to Huemer’s responses to me (in two parts).  Then I’ll give the author the last word.  As usual, Huemer is in blockquotes; I’m not. Rejoinder to Huemer’s Response, Part 1 Consequentialism vs. deontology isn’t one of them, though. I don’t see any discussion of that in the ancient philosophers. You can maybe trace the consequentialist/deontological debate to Hume and Kant, but they are not clear about the issue. Why doesn’t the Ring of Gyges thought experiment count?  At least one common interpretation of the debate is that we should practice justice as an end in itself, not because of its consequences.  Yes, you could argue that they’re really debating about less-obvious consequences – like “Whether an unjust man can be truly happy?” – but it still seems plausible to frame this as an early consequentalist/deontological debate. Is the rule of thumb about subjective claims redundant? I don’t think so. Consider Caplan’s two examples: (Subjective)        Being mean to children is worse than being mean to adults. (Objective)        Communist governments murdered millions of people. The second one is a better premise for an argument than the first one, right? It looks to me like that is best explained by the fact that the latter is more objective. The second one is a better premise if Communism’s historic crimes are well-known.  But they aren’t.  In the real world, that makes the former premise a better way to craft a convincing argument, especially if you don’t have time to give a remedial history lesson. Rejoinder to Huemer’s Response, Part 2 In Bayesian terms, this has the effect of increasing your likelihood (P(e|h) in Bayes’ Theorem). It also reduces your prior (P(h)) by the same ratio (or more). So there’s no free lunch. In other words, now the problem is just going to be that the new theory (B&A) has a low prior probability, because it stipulates that the scientists program the computer in a particular way, where this is one out of a very large number of ways they could program it (if there were such scientists). Lower, definitely.  But why “low”?  In fiction, after all, the main use of the Brain in a Vat is to simulate reality.  I still say that everything hinges on the high prior probability of the Real World story relative to all alternatives.   Rejoinder to Huemer’s Response, Part 3 Bryce Canyon is not really very ordered (though admittedly more ordered than just a big junk pile); you could move large parts of it around in lots of ways and not upset any salient pattern or activity. This is very unlike a watch: If you move parts of the watch around, for almost all ways of doing so, it stops working. The rock carving has a simple order. But I don’t understand how Bryan thinks we know that it was carved by a person. I don’t know what “independent knowledge” he’s referring to. Maybe it’s the knowledge that a lot of people like heart shapes? Maybe it consists of having seen people drawing such shapes in the past? Not heart shapes specifically.  I’m thinking of the independent knowledge that so far, things that look like carvings have always been man-made.  If that sounds circular, I say it’s just the problem of induction all over again. I’ve never seen that shape before I found it on the internet just now. I bet a lot of readers haven’t either. I also have not looked up what that is, or whether it is natural or man-made. This one object is my entire sample of surfaces with that shape etched into them. Q: Can I tell whether that’s man made? Yes, I can. I have zero doubt. This doesn’t rest on background knowledge about instances of that shape. How about a sphere?  It’s awesomely “ordered.”  Perfectly symmetrical.  Perfectly smooth.  It perfectly satisfies the formula (x – a)² + (y – b)² + (z – c)² = r².  By your reasoning, it seems like you would have “zero doubt” that it’s human-made (or perhaps alien-made).  But I bet you think the opposite.  Why?  Because you have independent knowledge that e.g. liquids in outer space naturally assume a spherical shape. BC:      I say this is an obviously terrible argument, and I don’t say such things lightly. Why? Because we have zero evidence that the anyone can “set the parameters of the universe”! I don’t know why Bryan thinks we have no evidence of that. The theist cited the evidence: the fact that the universe has life-friendly parameters. To say that we have no evidence of anyone being able to set the parameters of the universe, you have to assume that the evidence the theist just cited is not in fact evidence of what the theist says it is evidence of. That begs the question. Why do I say this?  Well, we’ve looked around the universe a lot, and never seen anyone “setting its parameters.”  We haven’t even found a securely locked control panel with a “parameters of the universe” label.  And the very idea sounds totally fanciful, so we should assign it an ultra-low prior probability. I’ve never seen anything labelled “made by God”, so I’m not sure what things Bryan is referring to. Of course, if I saw an ordinary object, like a shirt, labelled “made by God”, I would think it was made by a human being. That’s what I had in mind. This, however, was not a plausible explanation in my example, because (i) there are no people on Mars before the astronauts go there, (ii) it was stipulated that the formations are consequences of the laws of nature. My bad, I missed the latter stipulation.  But then it’s practically circular, because anything that’s a “consequence of the laws of nature” is by definition not human-made (or even alien-made). MH:     [Firing squad example] BC:      My reply: Entertaining such hypotheses only makes sense because we have independent reason to believe that people normally don’t survive fifty-man firing squads. Again, I don’t know what independent reason Bryan is talking about. Explain it to me like I’m a baby. I think it makes sense to entertain hypotheses for how you survived, because it is initially extremely improbable that you would survive the 50-man firing squad. Is that the independent reason Bryan is referring to? I’m tempted to say “exactly,” but your use of the word “initially” makes me wonder if we’re talking past each other. It is weird for us to exist, once you know about the incredibly specific conditions required for us to exist. It’s weird because, well, it’s extremely improbable. It’s only “extremely improbable” if you think the parameters of the universe could have been “set differently.”  And as I said, that seems totally fanciful to me.  There’s no sign that a cosmic control panel exists. But I’m not sure what counts as “fantastical”. In particular, I’m not sure whether the idea of a conscious being that can adjust the parameters of the universe is fantastical. If it is, then I’m not sure why we should think all “fantastical” things have a low prior probability. I’m not sure what counts either, but in practice it’s not hard to perform the classification.  Biblical miracles are fantastical.  The existence of rocks isn’t.  Marvel superpowers are fantastical.  The ability to breathe isn’t.  Spells from Dungeons & Dragons are fantastical.  Math isn’t.  Alien abduction is fantastical.  Sleeping people aren’t.  What distinguishes all these cases?  (a) We only hear about the fantastical stuff from unreliable sources or in fiction; the other stuff we either see first-hand or hear about from reliable sources.  (b) The fantastical stuff appeals to the human emotion of wonder; the other stuff is boring by comparison.  Put that together, and extreme (though not insurmountable) initial skepticism is the sensible reaction. Another example: I find someone living in a penthouse in Denver worth $3 million. I offer that person 50 bucks for the condo. I can predict, with very high probability, that the owner is going to turn down my offer. Surely that doesn’t mean that the owner’s decision to reject my offer is not free. 6. Degrees of Freedom BC:      I say, for example, that alcoholics are fully free to stop drinking. They rarely do, but they absolutely can. Indeed, there is strong empirical evidence that I’m right, because changing incentives changes alcoholics behavior; and if changing incentives changes behavior, that is strong evidence that you were capable of changing your behavior all along. I would say that changing the incentives changes how difficult it is to stop drinking. The more difficult it is to stop, the less free the alcoholic is. The extreme of difficulty (the maximum level) is impossibility, and that is where the person is not free at all. Being “fully free”, or “maximally free” would be at the opposite extreme, where it is completely easy to stop drinking. I think that view coheres with the fact that changing incentives sometimes alters the alcoholic’s behavior. It also explains why we blame someone less for bad actions that were, as we say, “more difficult” to resist. By the logic of your alcoholic story, it seems like the more money we offer the condo owner, the “less free” he is to turn it down.  That seems bizarre to me.  I say you are fully free to reject a billion-dollar offer on your condo.  And the alcoholic is totally free not to drink.  Wanting something more or less doesn’t change what you’re capable of doing. (0 COMMENTS)

Review of We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin. Modern Library Classics. July 11, 2006. First written 1921.1 Decades before Gene Roddenberry launched the U.S.S. Enterprise, Yevgeny Zamyatin imagined the maiden voyage of INTEGRAL, a spaceship designed to carry the odes and treatises written in honor of OneState by its people (“Numbers”). The goal, as the state newspaper tells readers, is to prepare new worlds for their coming bliss: It is for you to place the beneficial yoke of reason round the necks of the unknown beings who inhabit other planets—still living, it may be, in the primitive state known as freedom. If they will not understand that we are bringing them a mathematically infallible happiness, we shall be obliged to force them to be happy. But before taking up arms, we shall try what words can do. So begins the dystopian novel We, which Zamyatin finished and attempted to publish in 1921. Zamyatin was no friend of oppression in any form, and he paid the price. As Kingsley Widmer observes in “Utopia and Liberty,” he “had the political good taste to be persecuted by both the Czarists and the Bolsheviks.”2 The latter appreciated neither the satire of the novel’s opening nor the irony of suppressing a book about the suppression of freedom. Then again, the Soviet famine of 1921-22 would have starved away anyone’s sense of humor. We was reputedly the first book banned by the Soviet censorship board. Analyzing We for EconLog, Alberto Mingardi observes that OneState’s “managerial obsession” is typical of a mindset described by F.A. Hayek: that of the man who wishes to turn the world into a machine that he controls. As Mingardi asserts, “behind totalitarian politics lurks a devastating contempt for liberty.”3 At its centennial, We remains a powerful defense of freedom that gives literary form to John Stuart Mill’s arguments in On Liberty (1859). As Mill insists in Chapter III, The spirit of improvement is not always a spirit of liberty, for it may aim at forcing improvements on an unwilling people… but the only unfailing and permanent source of improvement is liberty, since by it there are as many possible independent centers of improvement as there are individuals.4 “In relation to speech, originality, and action, Zamyatin’s novel shows the devastating cost of eliminating individual freedom: the loss of self.” In relation to speech, originality, and action, Zamyatin’s novel shows the devastating cost of eliminating individual freedom: the loss of self. The Appeal of “Ideal Nonfreedom” The narrator of We, D-503, is the Builder of the INTEGRAL and excited to add to the mail packet by writing “what I see, what I think—or, to be more exact, what we think (that’s right: we; and let this WE be the title of these records).” He and the other Numbers exemplify the conformity Mill analyzes in On Liberty: It does not occur to them to have any inclination except for what is customary. Thus the mind itself is bowed to the yoke: even in what people do for pleasure, conformity is the first thing thought of; they like in crowds; they exercise choice only among things commonly done; peculiarity of taste, eccentricity of conduct are shunned equally with crimes, until by dint of not following their own nature they have no nature to follow…. D-503 wants to spread the yoke around. He shares the glory of being part of the whole, one of many Numbers who live in a city of glass: “Every morning… at the very same hour and the very same minute, we get up, millions of us, as though we were one.” He extols the aesthetic order brought by this “nonfreedom,” the beauty of afternoon walks taken by thousands wearing the same blue uniform, marching four abreast. Yet what is D-503’s ideal is Mill’s nightmare: “A man cannot get a coat or a pair of boots to fit him unless they are either made to his measure or he has a whole warehouseful to choose from; and is it easier to fit him with a life than with a coat?” D-503 thinks so, especially since he fears the condition in which previous people lived: “in freedom—that is, in disorganized wildness.” They even mated at random. How could the government have allowed people to act like animals? After all, “freedom and criminality are… indissolubly linked.” But above all, he admires the drive to eliminate envy by making everyone equal. Hunger and love no longer rule the world, since everyone shares an abundance of petroleum food, and “any Number has the right of access to any other Number as a sexual product.” For D-503, everything is awesome. The Progress of the Machine Well, almost everything. Occasionally a Number rebels, and D-503 hears “a wild, ape-like echo.” But these are “chance details”: “it’s easy to repair them without bringing to a halt the great eternal progress of the whole Machine. And in order to discard some bolt that has gotten bent, we have the heavy, skillful hand of the Benefactor, we have the experienced eye of the Guardians.” That is, they have spies who find rebels and a ruler who executes them. Such executions are practically religious rites. Awestruck, D-503 records the beauty of the ceremony as well as the death of a man who wrote “a blasphemous poem, one in which the Benefactor is called… but no, I can’t make my hand write it.” To do so would be to acknowledge other possibilities, other perspectives. And suppressing freedom of expression is as necessary for totalitarianism as sharing opinions is for liberty. In chapter II of On Liberty, Mill identifies four reasons why: 1. A silenced opinion might be true, and “to deny this is to assume our own infallibility.” 2. A silenced opinion might be incorrect yet “contain a portion of the truth.” 3. Even if the commonly held opinion is true, it will become merely a prejudice unless citizens are able to explain why. 4. Finally, the truth will be lost if it becomes mere dogma. For Mill, the right to speech free was essential. The Benefactor of OneState disagrees, as do some intellectuals now who believe that Mill was “wrong” in his “free-speech absolutism.” Yet without free speech, how is the truth to be recognized? Individualism and Originality For the revolutionaries in OneState, the first step is introducing the Builder of the Integral (D-503) to individualism, a trait emphasized by Mill in chapter III of On Liberty: “It is not by wearing down into uniformity all that is individual in themselves, but cultivating it and calling it forth, within the limits imposed by the rights and interests of others, that human beings become a noble and beautiful object of contemplation.” I-330 is such an object. Bold and brilliant, she invites D-503 to an excursion at a museum, the “Ancient House,” sited next to the Green Wall dividing OneState from the wilderness. When she changes her uniform for a yellow silk dress and black stockings, D-503 sputters, “It’s clear that you want to show off your originality.” “It’s clear,” I-330 responds, “that to be original means to distinguish yourself from others. It follows that to be original is to violate the principle of equality.” Such originality threatens the foundations of a society built on sameness, pointing toward the possibilities of individuals developing themselves and society. And if such individuals “are of a strong character and break their fetters,” Mill notes, they are marked by society as “wild.” Yet these figures have much to offer skeptics, including the service “of opening their eyes: which being once fully done, they would have a chance of being themselves.” This is precisely what frightens D-503. He flees not only from the temptation to indulge in a liaison or to look beyond the Wall. He runs from what he glimpses in I-330’s eyes: “my own reflection. But it was not natural and it did not look like me.” “Two Me’s” Denying this vision, D-503 struggles to resume his role as a mere Number. He fails to report I-330’s behavior to the Bureau of Guardians. He dreams, which OneState considers a sign of mental illness. And he seethes when assigned sexually to I-330, who boldly smokes cigarettes and savors a “charming liqueur.” Provoked, D-503 resorts to quoting the law against poison. I-330 calmly continues his point: “To destroy a few quickly makes more sense than to allow the many to ruin themselves, to degenerate, etc., etc. That is indecently true.” But she shows as much disdain for this social control as Mill, who insists in his introductory chapter, “the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.” In this case, D-503 believes such control is right even as he swallows the “burning poison” that sharpens his vision: There were two me’s. One me was the old one, D-503, Number D-503, and the other…. The other used to just stick his hairy paws out of his shell, but now all of him came out, the shell burst open, and the pieces were just about to fly in all directions… and then what? Like Eve tempted by the serpent, D-503 has acquired desire and forbidden knowledge of himself. “Just one”: Imagination and Desire Most importantly, D-503 admits that he has an imagination, a trait that OneState identifies as “illness.” And for a time, D-503 doesn’t want to get well. Going with I-330 beyond the Wall, D-503 meets a different people living in freedom and discovers his own individuality: “I was… myself, something separate, a world; I stopped being one of many, the way I’d always been, and became just one.” As Mill explains, in developing individuality, “each person becomes more valuable to himself, and is, therefore, capable of being more valuable to others.” And so D-503 joins the revolution, helping I-330 and the rebels take control of the Integral at its first test. OneState’s Guardians halt them, and the state crushes the rebellion by demanding that all Numbers report for surgery. Doctors “cure” people of imagination—the “last barrier on the path to happiness”—by subjecting its center in the brain to three doses of X-rays. Zamyatin clarifies what is at stake when I-330 resists surgery, telling D-503, “What difference is it to you if I don’t want others to do the wanting for me? If I want to want for myself? If I want the impossible?” As Mill argues, humans gain most by allowing others to live as seems best to themselves. In fact, Mill concludes On Liberty by warning statesmen against excessive control: a State which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes—will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished; and that the perfection of machinery to which it has sacrificed everything will in the end avail it of nothing, for want of the vital power which… it has preferred to banish. For more on these topics, see “Five Books: The Soviet Butcher’s Bill Comes Due” by Peter Boettke, EconLog, June 10, 2020 and the EconTalk podcast episode Kevin McKenna on Solzhenitsyn, the Soviet Union, and In the First Circle. Zamyatin does not depict the fate of OneState, though he does present sad ends for D-503, whose imagination is removed, and I-330, who is tortured and slated for execution. Yet Zamyatin leaves readers with hope, as valuable now as it was in 1921. As I-330 says, there is no final number, so “how can there be a final revolution? There is no final one. The number of revolutions is infinite.” Even when liberty seems most at risk, it is never truly lost. Footnotes [1] Yevgeny Zamyatin, We. Modern Library Classics, July 11, 2006, available at Amazon.com. First written 1921. [2] Kingsley Widmer, “Utopia and Liberty,” in Literature of Liberty: A Review of Contemporary Liberal Thought, vol. IV, no. 4, Winter 1981. Online Library of Liberty. [3] Alberto Mingardi, Summer Reading: We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin. EconLog, August 14, 2013. [4] John Stuart Mill, On Liberty. Quoted text is from Chapter III, “Of Individuality, as One of the Elements of Well-Being,” paragraph III.17. *Caroline Breashears is a Professor of English at St. Lawrence University. As an Amazon Associate, Econlib earns from qualifying purchases. (0 COMMENTS)

It seems we’ve all had a rough year and a half. For some of us, the experience of the pandemic has exacerbated vulnerabilities we already have. For others, new vulnerabilities emerged. In either case, mental health awareness has been brought increasingly into focus- if only for the difficulty in finding help today. In this powerful episode, EconTalk host Russ Roberts welcomes author Johann Hari to talk about his book, Lost Connections: Why You’re Depressed and How to Find Hope. The conversation begins with Hari describing his personal story of depression and his use of antidepressants. But Hari is clearly not unique in this regard. He describes two mysteries that are the focus of the remainder of the conversation. First, he notes that depression and anxiety have increased throughout the western world, and very acutely over the past eighteen months. Second, Hari wonders why it seems to be increasingly difficult to get through each day, particularly when we are more materially prosperous than at any point in history. So Hari travelled around the world trying to use social science to find answers. Now we want to hear what you learned from this conversation. Use the prompts below so we may continue the conversation.     1- How do we know that depression and anxiety are on the rise; what evidence does Hari cite? How do depression and anxiety differ, and how has their “official” (i.e., in the DSM) definition changed over time? How might such changing definitions affect the ways in which we experience and/or treat depression and anxiety?   2- The conversation turns to the use of SSRIs in treating depression and anxiety. How compelling is the evidence of their success as a treatment option? For what reasons did Hari think them helpful, and for what reasons does he find them problematic? What does he mean when he says, “‘In theory, we have a biopsychosocial model. In practice, we have a bio-bio-bio model’.”?   3- The point of Hari’s books is to present lost connections as a causal factor in the rise in depression. What does he mean by “loneliness”? What is “social prescribing,” and how might this be an effective means to treat depression?   4- Roberts agrees with Hari that we have fewer connections today. But he also criticizes Hari’s book for leaving out some potential explanations for this loss. What are they, and how does Hari respond? By whom are you more convinced, and why? What should be our response to this loss of connection?   5- How much blame should we ascribe to capitalism for our loss of connection and the rise in depression and anxiety? Explain. (0 COMMENTS)

Economist and author Arnold Kling talks about improving government regulation with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Kling suggests ways to improve the administrative state–the agencies and regulatory bodies that often write the regulations that they enforce. The conversation concludes with Kling’s idea for holding public intellectuals accountable for their pronouncements. (0 COMMENTS)

Economist and author Arnold Kling talks about improving government regulation with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Kling suggests ways to improve the administrative state–the agencies and regulatory bodies that often write the regulations that they enforce. The conversation concludes with Kling’s idea for holding public intellectuals accountable for their pronouncements. The post Arnold Kling on Reforming Government and Expertise appeared first on Econlib.

In her latest book, Cogs and Monsters, University of Cambridge economist Diane Coyle, co‐​director of the Bennett Institute for Public Policy, undertakes an ambitious project: to say what we need to change about economic thinking inherited from the 20th century to help us explain, understand, and make economic policy for the 21st century. Unfortunately, she rarely goes into specifics. Whether it be about how to measure well‐​being, what antitrust policy should be for an economy with industries in which one firm is dominant, or how large the role of government should be, she typically fails to pull the trigger. Along the way, she gives good examples of mistaken 20th century economic thinking without seeming to realize that her refutations can be accomplished with 20th century economic understanding. Although she has flashes of insight and affirms some important economic truths that economists have understood for more than a century, such flashes and affirmations are too rare in a 200+ page book. This is the opening paragraph of David R. Henderson, “Where’s the Beef?“, Regulation, Fall 2021. It’s my review of British economist Diane Coyle’s latest book, Cogs and Monsters. Some of the good: In surveying 20th century economic thinking, Coyle gives some credit where it’s due. She highlights, for example, economists’ belief in school vouchers and trade liberalization and she seems to second those beliefs. She also quotes a beautiful passage from economist Paul Seabright about the international origins of the various components of a shirt, a quote that is reminiscent of Leonard Read’s 1950s essay “I, Pencil.” She could have titled the quote “I, Shirt.” She understands Friedrich Hayek’s insight, expressed in his 1945 article “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” that only a market can aggregate individuals’ local knowledge and that a central planner would not have access to that knowledge. Coyle also points out that economists’ “market-oriented instincts” do not depend on understanding higher-level math. She writes, “Markets are far more useful in practice than they are in theory.” Nicely said. The straddle: At times, though, she seems to straddle an issue by not taking a position. There’s nothing wrong with that per se, but when one straddles, one should explain why. In discussing Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel’s critique of markets (see “The Smart Philosopher vs. the People,” Fall 2012), for example, she writes, “He argues for excluding medicine from the market — should only the rich be able to buy a kidney or a heart?” Because Coyle doesn’t make clear whether this rhetorical question is Sandel’s or hers, she leaves the reader wondering what her view is. The obvious economic answer is that allowing anyone to buy a kidney or heart — something that is illegal now — would give people a strong incentive to sell one kidney when they’re alive and both kidneys and one heart when they die. That would enormously expand the number of hearts and kidneys supplied and would make not just rich people, but also many others, recipients of hearts and kidneys. If you found out about a GoFundMe for a modest-income neighbor who wanted a kidney for her daughter, wouldn’t you contribute a few hundred dollars? I would. Read the whole thing. (0 COMMENTS)

I just returned from a 9-day vacation in the Pacific Northwest, which has triggered a few thoughts about what seems to me to be America’s best state. My wife and I spent most of our time hiking in the Cascade Mountains, which have absolutely spectacular scenery. I’m not sure why Mt. Baker is not a national park. And next to San Francisco, Seattle may have the best setting of any major American city. The only reason I don’t live up there is that I prefer hot sunny weather. Washington is a very “blue” state, but in some respects is quite unlike most other blue states. For instance, its population grew by 14.6% during the 2010s (same as Florida), which is double the national rate. Colorado was other only other blue state with that sort of fast growth, and Colorado is considerably less blue than Washington. (I count Nevada and Arizona as “purple”, despite Biden’s wins.) The only northern states with faster population growth were Idaho and North Dakota, which both started from a very low base. This fast growth partly reflects the fact that NIMBYism is much less entrenched in Washington than in other parts of the West Coast. Housing prices are even higher here in Orange County CA, but unlike Seattle we have very little new construction, and hence very little population growth. In Seattle, one sees high-rise apartments and condos being built at a rapid rate, and its suburbs are also expanding. More generally, Washington also has an interesting mix of left and right libertarian policies. It has legalized pot and physician-assisted suicide, and is unlikely to follow Texas in banning abortion. On the other hand, unlike other blue states it has no state income tax and (AFAIK) its gun restrictions are less strict that many other large blue states. Its corporate sector is also exceptional, having produced Microsoft and Amazon. At various times in recent years, the world’s two richest men lived in Washington. Washington is also exceptional in the way it handled Covid. There are some less populous states with a lower death rate, but among larger states Washington really stands out. It’s the 13th largest state in population, and yet its death rate is by far the lowest among the top 25. What makes this even more surprising is that early in the pandemic Washington had more Covid fatalities than any other state. Visiting Washington from California, I was immediately struck by how much more Covid cautious the population is. AFAIK, this is not due to major differences in government regulation between the two states, rather ordinary people enforce these norms by reminding you to wear a mask even if just going from a restaurant table to the restroom.  (Perhaps Northern California is more like Washington.) In contrast, when I visited Arizona I found the public to be somewhat more lax than in California. Not surprisingly, Washington has a far lower fatality rate than California, while Arizona has a much higher fatality rate.  Look at the difference in deaths between Washington and Arizona (which is 14th in population). Some of this may be demographics, but not all.  Masks and social distancing work. [Of course this doesn’t necessarily mean the Washington approach is “better”, as there are both costs and benefits to Covid caution. FWIW, I’m in the camp that believes that 1/3 of Americans take Covid too seriously and 1/3 don’t take in seriously enough. And again, I believe that differences between states mostly reflect culture, not government regulation.] If I could go back to age 21 and start my adult life over again, then Seattle is the place I’d wish to live. PS.  Thanks to Gordon and Sheena for their kind hospitality. PPS.  Here’s a picture I took hiking near Mt. Baker: (0 COMMENTS)