It is a tired cliché to say that the government should govern. But is it true? What does “governing” mean? Consider the following illustration: on Tuesday, when announcing his resignation, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo repeated the cliché. He said: The best way I can help now is if I step aside and let government get back to governing. We are again dumbstruck by Cuomo’s selfless devotion to the public good, which is, as we know, characteristic of all politicians’ altruism. But my question here is different: Is “governing” so obviously good? The first chapter of Anthony de Jasay’s seminal book The State is titled “The Capitalist State” and presents a minimal state whose role is precisely not to govern, that is not to favor some individuals at the cost of harming others (which is, let us note in passing, exactly what cost-benefit analysis is meant to justify). Once we realize that the essence of most government activities consists in harming some individuals in order to favor others, the problem of political power becomes much clearer. The function of the Jaseyian minimal state is to protect liberty and property and to preempt any other state, foreign or domestic, intent on governing. In other words, the function of the minimal state is to preserve minimum anarchy against governing. De Jasay wrote: If there is a state (which is not the same as claiming that there could be one) which is prepared to agree to these basic conditions [protect property and freedom of contract], it must be one which finds its satisfactions elsewhere than in governing. … The very rational of being a minimal state is to leave few levers for the zealots to get hold of and upset things with if, by the perversity of state or of the electorate, they manage to become the state. There are objections to the liberal or perhaps conservative anarchism defended by de Jasay. A serious objection, exemplified by primitive stateless society, is that the conventional rules necessary to coordinate behavior in the absence of state laws may be much more oppressive and stifling than those laws and certainly those based on the rule of law. (This argument is invoked by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson in their recent book The Narrow Corridor.) Most objections, however, are less persuasive. One of them is that there exist “public goods” that all individuals want (public protection, military defense, etc.) but which private enterprise will not produce, at least in “optimal” quantities. In that area, government serves everybody. Perhaps. The counter-objection is that public goods are not very numerous (the “etc.” in the preceding parenthesis is not easy to document) and that many of them can conceivably be produced privately. Moreover, look at what governments do in practice. Another objection is that it is as much a value judgment to prefer the moving status quo under the spontaneous order of individual liberty to government meddling in it. This is true, but the objection seems to grant the same moral status to non-liberty as to liberty. It is also objected that the net effect of governing is not that bad because if it often turns against any given individual, it also often turns in his favor; this “churning” compensates. Every individual is alternatively on one side and the other of the favor-harm divide. James Buchanan tried to explain how a classical-liberal constitution can achieve this feat of preventing some individuals from being stuck in an exploited minority. Perhaps this ideal is worth pursuing, but this is not the way the world is generally going. Leviathan usually wins. Moreover, except in the special case of public goods, the dream of a governing authority that does not, in a net sense, harm any individual is suspect: if each individual is equally favored and harmed by government interventions, the net effect is zero, not counting the waste and deadweight losses incurred in the process. Then, what is this egalitarian governing useful for? It is true that the qualification of public goods has its importance, but a look at the world shows that their production only represents a small fraction of government activities. Can governing be anything else than exploitative? Is governing a benediction or a curse for the governed? (0 COMMENTS)

My friend and fellow economist Jonathan Meer of Texas A&M University had a provocative article on Market Watch last Friday in which he advocated making people who refuse to be vaccinated pay for their own medical bills in the event they are hospitalized for Covid. It’s titled “Don’t want the COVID-19 vaccine? Then pay the full cost if you land in the hospital.” His argument is quite compelling: people should not be allowed to impose costs on others for their own behavior. He writes: Insurers, led by government programs, should declare that medically-able, eligible people who choose not to be vaccinated are responsible for the full financial cost of COVID-related hospitalizations, effective in six weeks. Why 6 weeks? Because, he explains, that gives time for pretty much any U.S. resident to get vaccinated. I like the fact that he leads with government programs because these are least like insurance and more just simply tax-and-subsidy schemes. For Medicare and Medicaid, for example, the taxpayers have no say. For that reason, I was pleasantly surprised to see University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers tweet an agreement with Jonathan. I would have thought that Justin would want socialized medicine to do in this case what it does generally: shift the costs from some to others. I’m pleased that he opposes this. When it comes to private insurance, though, Jonathan’s case is less compelling. He argues that an insured person who doesn’t get vaccinated and goes to the hospital imposes costs on “others in their insurance group.” That’s not as clear as he thinks, although it could be true. Whether it’s true depends on how health insurance rates are set. If they’re set based on past experience, then he’s right; if they’re set in a forward-looking way, based on what’s expected in the future, then he’s wrong, as long as the Covid crisis is short term. Also, there’s another problem. I doubt that the insurance contract stated that in the event that the person gets Covid and didn’t get vaccinated, the insurance company won’t pay. So Jonathan’s proposal, if applied to non-government health insurers, is essentially to rewrite the contract in the middle of the period it covers. That’s a pretty serious breach. Jonathan recognizes the slippery slope that follows from his argument for making those who don’t get the vaccine bear the cost. He writes: The most common objection to this policy is a slippery slope argument: what if the insurers stop covering the health outcomes of other lifestyle-driven diseases, like cirrhosis or Type 2 diabetes? Or not covering health costs for those who are unbelted in auto accidents? How does he answer it? He writes: Health insurers already do charge more to people who smoke and are permitted in many states to exclude coverage when injuries arise from illegal acts or under the influence of drugs – including alcohol. And a full debate about whether people should be charged more when engaging in certain activities is not unreasonable if the costs of these kinds of choices are going to be spread to everyone. He seems to hesitate, though, writing: But more importantly, there is a direct and clear connection between vaccination and the likelihood of serious complications from COVID, unlike the decades-long development, mediated by genetics, between many health behaviors and serious illness. A more apt comparison would be if a safe single-shot cure for Type 2 diabetes was developed. The rest of us would be justified in refusing to cover the costs of complications for diabetes for anyone who refused to take the cure. For him, it seems important that other conditions can develop over decades as a result of unhealthy behavior. He doesn’t say why this matters and indeed, in his previous paragraph I quoted, he seems to be saying it’s legitimate to charge smokers more for health insurance even if the bad results take decades. Interestingly, a lot of the commenters on the Market Watch site are quite willing to slide down that slippery slope. Jonathan goes on to write: Those of us who are vaccinated did the responsible thing. A little too simplistic. There’s not just one responsible thing. People who have had Covid actually have more protection against Covid than people who got both vaccines. So how is it irresponsible for them to refuse the vaccine? Unfortunately, the only people Jonathan mentions who object to the vaccine are “[t]hose who continue to believe that COVID is no more than a cold, or that the pandemic is a sophisticated fraud, or that sheep parasite medicine is more effective than vaccines with shockingly good efficacy.” Notice what groups are missing? People who’ve had Covid, people who have some reason to fear a bad reaction to the vaccine, and very young people, to name three groups.   (1 COMMENTS)

Shortly after I crossed the border from Manitoba into North Dakota on Saturday morning, I saw a major billboard beside Interstate 29 that said: MRIs, CT scans. Don’t wait. It then gave the name of a company in Grafton, North Dakota. This was clearly aimed at Canadians, especially Manitobans, who sometimes must wait weeks or even months for their MRI or CT scan. I wish I had pulled over to take a picture. This billboard helped me maintain my smile. But here’s what I found on the web, from a firm called Unity Medical Center. (This might not be the firm that advertised.) CANADIAN PATIENTS It is our pleasure to offer you state-of-the-art medical care here at Unity Medical Center in Grafton, North Dakota. One of the areas we specialize in is Diagnostic Imaging. Currently, we offer MRI, CT, Ultrasound, Mammography, Dexa-scan and X-ray. We pride ourselves on keeping wait times to a minimum, many tests can be performed within 24 hours of the initial call and nearly all tests can be performed within one week – MRIs included. We have performed hundreds of tests for Canadian patients over the years and we pride ourselves on providing exceptional customer service. The drive from Winnipeg to Grafton is 2 hours each way. We understand the wait times in Manitoba are quite long for these types of tests. We encourage you to contact us and discuss this option with your physician and learn how quickly you can get this test completed and move on the the next phase of your treatment. The longer you wait the longer the rehabilitation process. And here’s a news release from the Canadian Medical Association in 1997 about what appeared to be a relatively newly provided service. And here were the prices at the time: Patients who go there will be paying from their own pocket. Although travel time isn’t onerous, the cost may deter some visitors. A CT scan costs between (US)$385 and $425, while the bill for an MRI is between (US)$400 and $690. An ultrasound costs from (US)$115 to $300. What I like about this, besides the obvious–a freer market in health care–is that patients were paying and are paying out of their own pockets and so, as a health economist, I get a read on what prices might be like if Americans were not overinsured. Postscript: Check here for even lower prices (inflation-adjusted) than in 1997. Although the trip to Fargo is an extra 65 minutes.   (0 COMMENTS)

I am rather agnostic toward “climate change” or “global warming” as it was called before the expression mutated for reasons that may be known only to our loving intelligentsia. I must say I was impressed by Tyler Cowen’s argument for (government) combatting climate change but, having now escaped his spell, the reasons for my agnosticism triumph again. The Economist’s story on the United Nations sixth report on climate change comforts me (“The IPCC Delivers its Starkest Warning about the World’s Climate,” August 9, 2021): The oncoming dread registers yet more clearly than it did in the IPCC’s previous major assessment, AR5, published in 2013-14. The Earth has warmed over a tenth of a degree since then; it is now approximately 1.1ºC (2ºF) hotter than it was in the second half of the 19th century. Even if the countries of the world cut their greenhouse-gas emissions dramatically (they are not yet on a consistent downward trend of any sort) the IPCC finds that temperatures are very likely to be 1.5ºC higher than they were in the 19th century by 2050—if not before. That breaks the more ambitious of the goals for limiting climate change that the world signed up to in the Paris agreement of 2015. The Wall Street Journal‘s title read “Some Climate Change Effects May Be Irreversible, U.N. Panel Says.” The lead paragraph adds  the precision that it means “irreversible for centuries.” One reason for my agnosticism is that ecological systems are extremely complex and naturally change over the centuries. Climate models are uncertain, by the very nature of modelization. With its chimneys and plastic bottles, Industrial Man still looks small compared to that. Scientists tell us that there was agriculture in Greenland before the Little Ice Age that started in the 14th century and lasted until the mid-19th. But I admit that I know close to nothing about the topic, by which I mean no more than what the typical environmentalist knows about economics and the logic of liberty. Another reason is that we have heard about coming environmental catastrophes before. It is not the first time that politicized science cries wolf. The 1970s were full of predicted catastrophes. Time magazine of June 24, 1974 expressed the fear of global cooling: However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age. I mention other manifestations of the environmental scares of those times in my Law & Liberty review of Paul Sabin’s The Bet—for example: In his 1968 book The Population Bomb, [Stanford University biologist Paul] Ehrlich warned, à la Malthus, that the population explosion was hitting resource constraints. He predicted that within a decade, food and water scarcity would result in a billion or more people starving to death. Governments should work toward an optimal world population of 1.5 billion. He opposed immigration, since the United States was already above its 150 million population limit. He talked about the imminent “disintegration of an unstable world” and said, “If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.” I suspect that a large number of the 234 experts who wrote the UN report have skin in the money game, because the scare is subsidized by governments, or in the ideological game. Moreover, the summary of their work has been revised by the governments that pay their salaries. The Economist notes: A crucial part of this document is the “summary for policymakers”, which is, to some extent, also a summary by policymakers. During a five-day plenary process which ended on August 6th the governments that are part of the IPCC worked through a draft summary prepared by the scientific authors to produce a text on which all could agree. In the past this process has sometimes been vexed, with some governments unwilling to see things they found politically troubling expressed as bluntly as the scientists wished. On this occasion, though, the governments’ editing prerogatives were mainly used to ensure the inclusion of language various parties wanted in order subtly to bolster the negotiating positions they intend to take at COP26, the UN climate conference which will take place in Glasgow this November. It seems that a large majority of climate alarmists harbor a view of politics that is properly totalitarian or, if not, extremely naïve. (I am sure, though, that many are well-intentioned.) A climate emergency certainly requires unconditional obedience to, and respect for, the climate czar, right? Propaganda will help. There is nothing wrong with flower children as long as they don’t try to dictate to others how to live. Still another reason for my climate agnosticism is that adaptation to climate change may be much less costly for most people than a Quixotic battle to prevent it, especially so if you include the cost in terms of tyranny and lost prosperity for perhaps generations. (See “Henderson and Cochrane on Climate Policy,” Econlog, September 2, 2017.) Even assuming that the climate situation is as desperate as governments and their subsidized researchers proclaim, it is not clear if anything could be done without seriously compromising our already fragile liberties. If there is an endangered species, it is individual liberty and thus prosperity.  This reminds me of what Milton Friedman was already arguing in his Capitalism and Freedom (University of Chicago Press, 1962): If, for example, existing government intervention is minor, we shall attach a smaller weight to the negative effects of additional government intervention. This is an important reason why many earlier liberals, like [U. of Chicago economist] Henry Simons, writing at a time when government was small by today’s standards, were willing to have government undertake activities that today’s liberals would not accept now that government is so overgrown. (1 COMMENTS)

I wrote two posts on border crossings recently. The first was on my time-intensive crossing into Canada last month. On that basis, I predicted that when the Canadian government opened the border to Americans on August 9 (today), the result would be a mess. That prediction, by the way, has already been borne out by an 8-hour-long wait of cars and trucks trying to cross from International Falls, Minnesota to Fort Frances, Ontario. My second post was to point out that one does not need a negative Covid test if one is a U.S. citizen driving from Canada to the United States. One does not even need evidence of vaccination. Now to the point of this post. At the end of my stay at my cottage in Minaki, Ontario, I drove to Winnipeg and then south to the U.S. border crossing at Pembina, North Dakota. I was quite nervous. I didn’t need to be. There was no line in front of me when I drove up to window of the Customs and Immigration official. I showed her my U.S. passport and she asked me the kinds of questions I’ve been asked in normal non-Covid years. It went something like this. Her: What were you doing in Canada? Me: Staying at my cottage. Her: (Making fun of me in a non-nasty way)  Staying at your cottage. (I think she got a kick out of the fact that Canadians say “cottage” where Americans say “cabin.” She could tell by my U.S. passport that I was born in Canada.) Her: What was the water level like? (I think she was testing to see if I had been at my cottage.) Me: Almost a foot lower than normal. Her: (This part is vague in my memory.) Are you bringing any meat, fruit, or vegetables? Me: No. Her: Are you bringing back anything you purchased? Me: Yes, potato chips [I love the Canadian brand Old Dutch] and Coffee Crisp bars. Her: Ok. Go ahead. Me: (not able to resist). Wow! This was so much easier than when I went the other way. For the next 30 or 40 miles en route to Grand Forks, I didn’t have to look in the car’s mirror to see that I had a perpetual smile on my face. A peaceful, easy feeling. (0 COMMENTS)

Author and economist Michael Munger of Duke University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the virtues–and the flaws–of free markets. Munger says the best argument for a free market approach is not that it’s perfect but that it’s better than anything else we’ve been able to come up with over the centuries. Better at bringing people out of poverty, better at promoting wealth creation, and better at pushing up the standard of living for most of the people, most of the time. Topics include what exactly is a free market, why specialization is so important, the case for case-by-case intervention, and the challenge of picking the prettiest pig. (0 COMMENTS)

Author and economist Michael Munger of Duke University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the virtues–and the flaws–of free markets. Munger says the best argument for a free market approach is not that it’s perfect but that it’s better than anything else we’ve been able to come up with over the centuries. Better at […] The post Michael Munger on Free Markets appeared first on Econlib.

There’s a sort of boomlet in authoritarian nationalism, with some prominent conservative leaders touting the Orban regime in Hungary, or even the earlier Salazar regime in Portugal.  But what is authoritarian nationalism? This term has been applied to regimes as dissimilar as the governments of Hungary, Poland, Turkey, Russia, India, China, and Brazil. Some of these countries are democracies, some are dictatorships, and some fall in between those two extremes.  So what do they have in common?  I see a few patterns, although the following traits don’t fit all the aforementioned countries: Nationalism: Nationalists focus on unifying around a given ethnic group, rather than people who happen to be living in a particular political entity.  Thus to the Chinese leadership, Han people in Taiwan (or even Singapore) are far more “Chinese” than Uyghurs living in western China.  To the Hungarian leadership, an ethnic Hungarian living in Romania is more Hungarian that a Roma individual living within Hungary.  Nationalism is not patriotism!  A French patriot roots for their Olympic basketball team; a French nationalist grumbles that almost all the players are black. Nationalism has both a geographical and a temporal aspect.  Minority groups are viewed with suspicion, as they are seen as weakening tribal identity.  Note that “identity politics” is not an inherently left or right wing idea.  Where it favors minority groups, it is typically framed as left wing.  When it favors the majority ethnic group (or more precisely the group in power–recall South Africa before 1994), it’s typically viewed as right wing.  Thus nationalists tend to oppose immigration, which threatens to dilute the dominant ethnic group. This desire to preserve the tribe also leads to resistance to cultural change over time.  Nationalists oppose globalization, as it threatens to upend traditional ways of life.  Similarly, nationalists oppose cultural liberalism, viewing ideas such as women’s rights and gay rights with a high degree of skepticism.  Universities are viewed with distrust, as they often embrace cosmopolitan ideas.  Nationalists favor an approach to teaching history that whitewashes any past atrocities committed by their nation.  If the dominant tribe is not viewed as being morally superior, then the argument against cosmopolitanism is weakened. Authoritarianism: In many cases, a nationalist government attempts to consolidate power by exerting control over alternative branches of government and alternative sources of information.  The primary targets are the executive, legislative, and judicial branches, as well as the media and the universities.  The goal is to eliminate any sort of “checks and balances” that might restrict the ability of outside forces to constrain the power of the regime. Why is nationalism often combined with authoritarianism?  Perhaps because they know that if the government were to alternate between nationalist and cosmopolitan regimes, then the nationalists would lose in the long run.  What good does it do to restrict immigration if the next government allows a massive inflow of refugees from the Middle East? The term “authoritarian” usually connotes non-democratic.  And yet there is no reason to assume that a democratically elected government cannot become authoritarian.  Often there are constitutional provisions or informal norms that limit the power of a government, but those restraints can be changed, particularly if the government wins a large enough number of seats to change the constitution. Authoritarian nationalism is by far the most important political development of the 21st century—nothing else even comes close.  This is not because authoritarian nationalists have control in most countries; rather it is because this is where all the energy is. Support for Biden is wide but not very intense, whereas support for Trump is consistently below 50%, but quite passionate.  (Because of its diversity, the US is not fertile ground for nationalism, but is fertile ground for a left wing version of identity politics.) As someone who came of age in the 20th century, I’ve been disappointed by the weakness of classical liberal parties all over the world (albeit pleasantly surprised by the weakness of socialist parties.) Because the authoritarian nationalists have all the energy, the prospects for liberalism are not bright.  Laurent Pech points out that the EU has been rather toothless in trying to prevent an erosion of liberty in Hungary and Poland: To begin with, simply publishing an annual report will not help contain and address rule of law backsliding in countries such as Hungary and Poland. Indeed, an annual reporting cycle will not, in and of itself, help prevent deliberate/systemic violations of the rule of law or deter legal hooligans, as the Report is a mere after-the-event reporting mechanism making no concrete recommendations. After all, there have been 13 years of reports regarding the rule of law situation in Bulgaria and Romania and nobody would seriously claim that the “cooperation and verification” monitoring mechanism made any difference. Worse, in Bulgaria, the exercise was used, at times, to whitewash inconvenient developments. . . . As observed by Professor Bárd, by failing to make clear “how authoritarian regimes are qualitatively different from resilient democracies”, the annual report cycle risks normalising the abnormal; facilitating whataboutism and praising features (e.g. the adequate funding of a captured Media Authority) which only serve to consolidate autocracy in practice. It is particularly irresponsible to claim, for instance, that “nobody’s perfect” when it comes to the rule of law, as this rhetoric only ends up normalising the systemic, deliberate and deceitful annihilation of checks and balances in both Poland and Hungary. When I look at the EU today, it’s hard not to think of that famous line by Yeats: The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. (0 COMMENTS)

On Tuesday, in a previous post titled “Presuppositions,” I shared this picture:   and wrote: Four cards are shown, each card showing a character on the side shown, namely A, B, 2, and 3, respectively. Consider the following proposition: Proposition P: If one side of a card has a vowel, then on the other it has an even number. To establish that none of these four cards falsify Proposition P, which cards must one turn over?   At the original post, several people graciously shared their thoughts in the comment field. Thanks to you all for your valuable contributions! I encountered the picture at the home of Per Skedinger, who presented us with the puzzle. Different answers were suggested by members of our dinner group. Proposition P would be falsified by a card that on one side had a vowel and on the other side did not have an even number. The question is, which of the four cards may falsify Proposition P? At the dinner, one member of our group included the “2” card in his answer, I think because he took “If one side of a card has a vowel” to mean “If and only if one side of a card has a vowel.” But Proposition P does not say if and only if. So that reason for including the “2” card is faulty. At the dinner, I—like some of the commenters at the first post—suggested, the “A” card and the “3” card. But discussion made me realize that I was presupposing a condition that I didn’t have great grounds for, namely, that all cards have a letter on one side and a number on the other. Once we drop that condition, we see that we need to turn over the “B” card, for it may have a vowel on the other side. (Kudos to commenters Joel, Capt. J, robc, and Francisco.) Our formulations always involve inarticulate assumptions or presuppositions. Among the commenters at the first post, almost all operate on the assumption that we might read the card-side “data” as showing that one card has only an A on it, one only a B, one only a 2, and one only a 3. But are we certain that the “2” card-side has only a 2 on it? We do not see the entire side. Maybe there is a vowel or an odd number in the unshown portion of the “2” card-side. And you could go further, and wonder about teeny-weeny characters (“the fine print”). And Capt. J came up with some other creative responses to the problem. If you keep digging you can always argue that “the facts” are theory-laden. Suppose we turn over all four cards and find that none falsifies Proposition P. Does that mean that Proposition P has been verified? If Proposition P refers, not just to the four cards, but to some larger set of cards of which the four are but elements, then Proposition P has been confirmed for those four cards but has not been fully verified. I take this opportunity to excurse a bit. My thinking in philosophy of science tends toward Thomas Kuhn, Michael Polanyi, and Deirdre McCloskey, and I read David Hume along such lines. The tendency is skeptical about claims of a strict logic of science, a principle for demarcating between science and non-science, or a definite scientific method. (If I am not mistaken, the Kuhn work most relevant to these matters is his 1970 piece quoted here.)   Elsewhere, I have written: A sect might tailor its language so as to ensure the analyticity of the any of the following sentences: “The triangle has three sides.” “The child was born of a mother.” “The sum of the assets equals liabilities plus equity.” “Y = C + I + G + NX.” “The person maximized his utility.” “If transaction costs were negligible and parties were aware of the relevant opportunities, those parties achieved an efficient outcome.” “The moral sentiment relates to a sympathy.” For such a language community, the analytic statement in question would be non-falsifiable. Does that mean it’s not scientific? Here I think of something Thomas Schelling wrote: “It is sometimes said, in textbooks and in learned volumes, that these accounting statements, being unfalsifiable, do not count as science. I don’t care.” Here, someone might respond: Well, the falsifiability criterion is about demarcating between science and non-science for empirical statements, and those analytic statements are not empirical. So, by themselves, they don’t speak to the merit of the falsifiability criterion. I then say: A language community maintaining one of those analytic sentences may be taken to be saying, tacitly: Maintaining the analytic sentence is good. (Didn’t Gary Becker say that about one of them? Didn’t Adam Smith say it about another?) That statement, though vague, would seem to be empirical, and falsifiable, in principle. The big challenge then is in providing falsifying evidence. The challenging researcher must show that maintaining the analytic sentence is not good. Here we see why the philosophy of science merges with the history and sociology of science: Did the way in which the sociology of judgment actually unfolded conduce to the good? Was it perverted by certain forces, as in Soviet science or the governmentalization of science generally? Michael Polanyi wrote about the conditions under which the sociology of judgment conduced to the good. Like grammar, strict logic and the hunt for falsifying evidence have their place, but they leave important things underdetermined. It’s fine to call foul on errors in strict logic, and it’s fine to present purportedly falsifying evidence, but it’s misguided to think that strict logic and the hunt for falsifying evidence alone can establish important claims. Science is a moral activity. It is purposeful, interpretive, even aesthetic, and the rules of aesthetics are rather different from the rules of grammar (the differentness is presented in Figure 6.3 here). A blank page contains neither violations of grammar nor errors in logic, but it does not satisfy the standards of good science. Saying that science is interpretive is not saying that science is arbitrary. It is not saying that no interpretation is better than another. I have often wondered about the following proposition: Proposition R: No half-way serious, reputable thinker has ever said that no interpretation is better than another. I don’t know whether Proposition R is true. (Of course, “half-way serious, reputable thinker” is vague, but we have to draw a line somewhere.) Comments are open. In particular, if you can falsify Proposition R, please provide the falsifying evidence in the comment section. (0 COMMENTS)

The Biden administration just extended the moratorium on evictions until October (first implemented by the Trump administration). And yet when I look at the economic data, it’s hard for me to understand the motivation for this policy.  What emergency requires such an extreme infringement on property right? Personal incomes have been pretty high throughout the pandemic, so that doesn’t seem to be the issue. There really was a severe unemployment problem last year, but now the unemployment rate is down to 5.4%, which is below average for the past 50 years: Yes, 5.4% is far from ideal (3.5% would be better), but since when is below average unemployment the criterion for emergency legislation that disrupts the normal functioning of the rental market?  It’s not like 2009, when jobs were extremely difficult to find. Indeed we see lots of other government programs that might have made sense in 2020 but make no sense at all today, such as the supplemental unemployment insurance program.  The child tax credit might make sense as a permanent program (there are good arguments both ways), but I fail to see any argument for it as a temporary program.  What’s the purpose? It might be argued that the eviction moratorium is aimed at slowing the spread of Covid.  But how would it do this?  It’s not as if the people who avoid eviction are self-quarantining at home. Many of the Covid restrictions that might have made sense before the vaccine was widely available no longer make any sense at all.  If we aren’t going to get back to normal now, when will we ever be ready to do so?  It’s not like there won’t always be people losing jobs.  It’s not as if Covid will magically go away. Full disclosure:  I used to be a landlord (one of the worst decisions I ever made.)  In my case, my tenants were often as well off as I was. (0 COMMENTS)