A Liberty Classic Book Review of Areopagitica and Other Political Writings of John Milton.1 What does it take for a book to get banned? The Newbery Award-winning children’s book, The Higher Power of Lucky, has been the center of a storm of this kind of debate because of its use of the apparently shocking word “scrotum.” The Harry Potter novels have come under fire for being un-Christian, for encouraging children to believe in magic, and for including deaths of characters. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has long been banned by schools for its use of the word “nigger.” It’s been quite a long time since a book for adults has been banned, but there have been some famous obscenity cases and bans over D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, James Joyce’s Ulysses, and Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man has been banned occasionally, and so has George Orwell’s 1984. Many books have been banned within the United States—sometimes throughout the country and sometimes just in individual locales or schools. Even more have been challenged in an attempt to ban them. But, the important thing to remember is that—in current times—these bans are just bans on selling the book, or teaching it in a class. That’s terrible. Don’t get me wrong. But the kinds of bans that the framers of the Constitution were most likely thinking about when they protected a free press are even more upsetting. These are pre-publication bans on written material, also called “licensing.” Licensing meant that before a book was published or a play was performed, a government official, or a committee made up of government officials, had to approve the content. If the officials felt the work’s content was inappropriate, they would refuse to give it their literal seal of approval, and it would be illegal to publish the book within the country. These are the kinds of bans that John Milton addresses in one of the most famous defenses of free speech and free publication—Areopagitica. In writing Areopagitica Milton plays with the literary conceit that he is writing a speech to be given before Parliament in much the same way that the classical Greek orator, Isocrates, addressed the General Assembly of Athens (or Areopagus) on the topic of civic order and safety. Since Milton is addressing a similarly august body, and “speaking” on a similar topic, (censorship is nearly always done on the grounds of protecting people and maintaining good order) he titles his piece “Areopagitica” and fills it with classical allusions. He also constantly speaks of his essay in terms of a speech—referring to its sounds, and so on. He never intended the speech to be given before Parliament, however. Printing it won it a much wider audience. Milton begins his argument against licensing by praising the freedom of expression that allows him to write the argument in the first place. He takes his epigraph from Euripedes’s play The Suppliants. “This is true liberty, when free-born men, /Having to advise the public, may speak free,/Which he who can and will deserves high praise;/Who neither can nor will, may hold his peace: /What can be juster in a state than this?” Milton, preparing to critique his government for clamping down on one kind of language, praises their willingness to support another kind. This is a tactic seen again and again throughout the piece. Indeed, just a page later, he points out that, “… This is not the liberty which we can hope, that no grievance ever should arise in the Commonwealth, that let no man in this World expect; but when complaints are freely heard, deeply considered, and speedily reform’d then is the utmost bound of civil liberty attained that wise men look for.” He argues, in other words, that no one expects the government to be perfect, but they do expect the government to listen to the voices of the people when they have legitimate grievances. This is a clever set up. Since Milton is about to argue in favor of allowing books to be printed in order to allow free discussion and debate, it makes sense for him to remind the Parliament that by “listening” to his “speech” they’re already allowing some of this discussion and debate, and to remind his readers—whomever they are—that there is a classical and an English tradition of governments listening to the complaints of the people. John Milton Milton goes on to lay out four different arguments that he will muster against the idea of licensing publications. First, he says, the kinds of people who invented this type of pre-publication censorship are not the kinds of people that the Parliament wants to be. Second, reading is beneficial, regardless of the quality of the book. Third, the order won’t actually do anything to fight against “scandalous, seditious, and libellous books.” And lastly, that the order will discourage learning and make Englishmen stupid. I want to look at each of these arguments in turn, because I think that it’s very important—if you believe that language can serve as a tool for liberty—to know some of the best and most famous arguments in its defense. But before Milton gets down to his arguments he establishes a crucial point about the significance of books and their power. Books are not absolutely dead things, but doe contain a potencie of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacie and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous Dragon’s teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet on the other hand unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book; who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, Gods Image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself… “In arguing for the power of books and language, Milton does not attempt to deny their potential to be dangerous. He is not one to argue ‘They’re only words on the page. They can’t hurt you.'” In arguing for the power of books and language, Milton does not attempt to deny their potential to be dangerous. He is not one to argue “They’re only words on the page. They can’t hurt you.” Instead, he compares them to Dragon’s teeth—a reference to the story from Metamorphoses where Cadmus needs an army, plants dragons’ teeth in the soil, and grows a crop of soldiers. Books, says Milton, are as “lively and as vigorously productive” as these teeth were. They inspire future generations of books. They inspire thoughts. They may even, like the dragon’s teeth, produce armies. But that is not sufficient reason to kill a book by preventing its publication. What is sufficient reason then? Or, what has been sufficient reason historically? Milton now begins to set up his first argument—that those who censor are not the kinds of people that the English Parliament would like to be. He begins with a look at Athens where “books and wits were busier than in any other part of Greece ” and notes that only blasphemous/atheistic works and legally libellous works were burnt. (Keep an eye, incidentally, on these exceptions to the free press and how they change or remain the same over the course of Milton’s piece.) The Spartans, he argues, didn’t need any specific licensing because they hated books and chased poets out of their city. This protection against poets, argues Milton, does not seem to have helped them since as, “Euripides confirms in Andromache, that their women were all unchaste.” As for the Romans, “neither the Satyricall sharpness, or naked plainness of Lucilius or Catullus, or Flavius [were] by any order prohibited.” Even when the Roman emperors became Christians, the laws, according to Milton, were no more severe than previously. “The books of those whom they took to be grand Hereticks were examined, refuted, and condemn’d in the generall Councells; and not till then were prohibited.” In other words, there was still no pre-publication censorship. Milton claims it takes the rise of the Catholic Church for censorship to really kick into gear. And this is Milton’s first argument against licensing. It was invented by the Catholics, whom 17th century English Protestants hate and fear and are fundamentally different from. Why would they want to reinforce this Catholic invention? Indeed, he points out that licensing was first invented to keep early Protestant works from being published. So why would Protestants want to use this same tool? (It’s important to remember that Milton’s hatred of the Catholic church is not necessarily entirely rational and well-thought out. Milton was a particularly fervent Protestant, living in a time when the divide between the Protestants and Catholics was particularly fierce. England is about to chop off their king’s head, fight a civil war, and install a completely new form of government because of these religious issues.) Besides, points out Milton, swinging into his next argument, we have to remember to consider the value of reading regardless of the quality of the books read. Again, Milton doesn’t attempt to argue that all books are good or right or true. Some books are rotten. Some books are good. But “The best books to a naughty mind are not unappliable to occasions of evill,” and bad books may serve to “discover, to confute, to forewarn and to illustrate.” It is for the reader to encounter the books and to decide how to respond to them. That encounter and response is the thing we call reading and the thing we call education. Milton, further, makes such reading a spiritual issue: He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, his is the true wayfaring Christian. I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed that never sallies out and sees her adversary…. Since therefore the knowledge and survay of vice is in this world so necessary to the constituting of human virtue, and the scanning of error to the confirmation of truth how can we more safely, and with less danger scout into the regions of sin and falsity then by reading… Milton is not arguing for some sort of post-modern “meaning doesn’t matter” notion that all books are good by virtue of being books, and that we should approach them completely uncritically. He’s arguing for reading with your mind and your spirit, together, and testing the goodness or badness of a book by applying the strength of your intellect and character to it. And if this is the way that the wise person approaches reading, he will become wiser regardless of what he reads. And a fool will inevitably only become more foolish, regardless of what, or if, he reads. So why “deprive a wise man of any advantage to his wisdome while we seek to restrain from a fool that which being restrained will be no hindrance to his folly?” Licensing won’t, in other words, do what it’s supposed to do. This is Milton’s third argument. Rather than protecting people from inappropriate books, licensing will, according to Milton, spur the instinct to regulate all sorts of other things—dress, conversation between unmarried man and women, drinking, gluttony, free assembly, and so on. If we regulate everything, he argues, what does virtue mean? Indeed, if licensing is truly to do what it intends, it will have to retroactively cover all books previously printed. It will have to examine all books entering from foreign countries. It will have to outlaw entire print shops merely in order to save time. And even if they do all this, they will achieve nothing. Look, he says, at countries with the strictest laws about printed material. Are their people any more virtuous than ours? For more on these topics, see the EconTalk podcast episode Abby Smith Rumsey on Remembering, Forgetting, and When We Are No More. See also the OLL Collections: Freedom of Speech and Banned Books. And what will be the effect of licensing upon the people? “He who is not trusted with his own actions, his drift not being known to be evill, and standing to the hazard of law and penalty, has no great argument to think himself reputed in this Commonwealth wherein he was born for other than a fool or a foreigner.” Indeed, licensing is clear evidence of the government’s contempt for its people. “If we be so jealous over [the common people] as that we dare not trust them with an English pamphlet what do we but censure them for a giddy, vicious, and ungrounded people; in such a sick and weak estate of faith and discretion, as to be able to take nothing down but through the pipe of a licenser. That this is care or love of them, we cannot pretend….” It is English liberty, the liberty protected and nourished by Parliament, the liberty that has freed him to “speak” to Parliament as he now does, that has inspired all this writing that Parliament now seeks to control. “Ye cannot make us now lesse capable, lesse knowing, less eagerly pursuing of the truth, unlesse ye first make your selves, that made us so, lesse the lovers, less the founders of our own true liberty.” A free people, says Milton, writes and reads and thinks. A good government allows them to do so. Language is the product of a liberal society. To shut down its production is to render the society illiberal forever. Footnotes [1] Areopagitica and Other Political Writings of John Milton, by John Milton. Foreword by John Alvis. Liberty Fund, Inc. Available at the Liberty Fund Book Catalog. *Sarah Skwire is a Senior Fellow and Senior Web Editor at Liberty Fund, Inc. For more articles by Sarah Skwire, see the Archive. (0 COMMENTS)

System noise, that is, unwanted variability in judgments that should ideally be identical, can create rampant injustice, high economic costs, and errors of many kinds. —Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment, by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass R. Sunstein.1 (P. 24) Daniel Kahneman, Cass Sunstein, and Olivier Sibony (henceforth KSS) argue that inconsistency in human judgment is widespread, not well appreciated, and very costly. Sentences differ for similar crimes. Underwriting decisions differ for similar loan applicants. Hiring decisions differ for similar job candidates. Performance evaluations differ for similar employees. KSS convincingly argue that variability in judgment is a significant source of unfairness and inefficiency. In 1977, for example, William Austin and Thomas Williams conducted a survey of forty-seven judges… In a case involving burglary, for example, the recommended sentences ranged from five years in prison to a mere thirty days (alongside a fine of $100). (20) KSS distinguish noise from bias. If a lender turns down more loan applicants than is optimal, then its underwriting process is too biased toward rejection. But even if it approves the right proportion of applicants, it may still approve some bad applicants and reject some good applicants. This latter form of variability is what KSS call noise. KSS classify three sources of noise. They call these occasion noise, level noise, and pattern noise. Occasion noise occurs in a given individual. Level noise and pattern noise operate at a system level when multiple individuals differ in their judgments. Think of a baseball umpire calling a pitch near the outside corner. (If you prefer, think of a football referee deciding whether to call a tripping penalty when he sees an opposing player fall down nearby.) Occasion noise refers to variability in the decisions made by a single individual. An umpire might see the same pitch twice, but call it a ball on one occasion and a strike on the other. KSS cite studies showing that a given judge might hand out a harsher or more lenient sentence depending on the time of day. Level noise occurs when one individual more often comes down on one side than would another. In baseball, some umpires tend to call close pitches as strikes, while other umpires will call them as balls. Pattern noise occurs when individuals judge differently under different circumstances. One umpire may call a close pitch a strike when it is a fastball, but call it a ball when it is a curveball. Another umpire might do the opposite. That is pattern noise, which KSS argue is the largest source of noise in many systems. Noise is mostly a product not of level differences but of interactions: how different judges deal with particular defendants, how different teachers deal with particular students, how different social workers deal with particular families, how different leaders deal with particular visions of the future. (202) KSS point out that the amount of noise in a system often comes as a surprise to managers. When we asked 828 CEOs and senior executives from a variety of industries how much variation they expected to find in similar expert judgments, 10% was also the median answer and the most frequent one… Our noise audit found much greater differences. By our measure, the median difference in underwriting was 55%, about five times as large (29) This implies that managers ought to focus more on identifying and reducing the sources of noise in their processes. KSS make a number of suggestions for reducing noise. One suggestion is to select better people to make judgments. General mental ability (GMA) plays an important role. GMA contributes significantly to the quality of performance in occupations that require judgment… If you must pick people to make judgments, picking those with the highest mental ability makes a lot of sense. (215) In addition to general mental ability, KSS suggest that good judgment is associated with a cognitive style known as actively open-minded thinking. To be actively open-minded is to actively search for information that contradicts your preexisting hypotheses. Such information includes the dissenting opinions of others and the careful weighing of new evidence against old beliefs. Actively open-minded people agree with statements like this: “Allowing oneself to be convinced by an opposing argument is a sign of good character.” They disagree with the proposition that “changing your mind is a sign of weakness” or that “intuition is the best guide to making decisions.” (218) This actively open-minded thinking reminds me a great deal of what Julia Galef calls “The Scout Mindset” in her book of that title. “We make judgments more uniformly when we are given guidelines that are clear rather than vague.” But KSS emphasize the importance of managers giving employees tighter rules and guidelines within which to work, along with better training. We make judgments more uniformly when we are given guidelines that are clear rather than vague. KSS also favor stricter processes for making judgments. For hiring, structured interviews work better than open-ended interviews. Processes that break assessments into formal components work better than processes that allow intuition and first impressions to have an early influence. It struck me that KSS missed the tension between their recommendation for choosing good judges and their recommendation for tightening up rules and guidelines. If good judges use the scout mindset, then tight rules and guidelines run counter to that. Tight rules and guidelines might discourage people with the scout mindset from becoming judges. It might also inhibit those with the scout mindset from using their actively open-minded thinking to make better decisions. Another criticism I have of KSS is that they fail to connect to the large literature on process control in manufacturing. Twentieth-century management gurus, including Walter Shewhart and W. Edwards Deming, showed that quality control could be improved through statistical analysis and process redesign. One of Deming’s important principles is that there is more leverage to reduce defects earlier in the process than later. Designing a product that is simpler to assemble is more effective than training additional quality-control inspectors. If we apply this principle to criminal law, it would suggest that increasing the reliability of enforcement would do more to reduce unwanted variability than putting equivalent effort into improving sentencing practices. If we apply this to loan underwriting, it would suggest that there is more leverage from putting effort into improving data quality and analyzing the factors that affect default probabilities than from putting effort into training underwriters. For more on these topics, see the EconTalk podcast episodes Julia Galef on the Scout Mindset and Cass Sunstein on Infotopia, Information and Decision-Making. See also “Drop Your Intellectual Defenses,” by Arnold Kling. Library of Economics and Liberty, June 7, 2021. To the extent that KSS are correct that judgment should be constrained by tighter rules and guidelines, computers are likely to be better than humans at low-noise processing. Once we improve data quality and statistical analysis of borrower behavior, we turn loan underwriting over to computers. In fact, I think that the strongest conclusion that one can draw from KSS is that computers will continue to take over for humans in more fields. The project of reducing noise amounts to asking humans to behave more like machines. For that purpose, computers have the edge. Footnotes [1] Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment, by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass R. Sunstein. *Arnold Kling has a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of several books, including Crisis of Abundance: Rethinking How We Pay for Health Care; Invisible Wealth: The Hidden Story of How Markets Work; Unchecked and Unbalanced: How the Discrepancy Between Knowledge and Power Caused the Financial Crisis and Threatens Democracy; and Specialization and Trade: A Re-introduction to Economics. He contributed to EconLog from January 2003 through August 2012. Read more of what Arnold Kling’s been reading. For more book reviews and articles by Arnold Kling, see the Archive. As an Amazon Associate, Econlib earns from qualifying purchases. (0 COMMENTS)

Journalist and author Jonathan Rauch talks about his book The Constitution of Knowledge with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. People come up with ideas all the time. But the vast majority of these ideas aren’t worthwhile. Rauch argues that the constitution of knowledge–the norms and institutions for testing the reliability of new ideas and accumulating knowledge–has been dramatically altered by the internet and social media. The conversation explores the norms and institutions that once helped create a shared body of knowledge, how the internet threatens those norms and institutions, and what might be done to repair the damage. (0 COMMENTS)

Journalist and author Jonathan Rauch talks about his book The Constitution of Knowledge with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. People come up with ideas all the time. But the vast majority of these ideas aren’t worthwhile. Rauch argues that the constitution of knowledge–the norms and institutions for testing the reliability of new ideas and accumulating knowledge–has been dramatically […] The post Jonathan Rauch on the Constitution of Knowledge appeared first on Econlib.

One of the most disquieting and perhaps prophetic chapters in Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom (University of Chicago Press, 1944) is the one on “the end of truth.” The future Nobel economics prize winner argued that a totalitarian government or one getting there must necessarily make war on truth. But does truth really matter? I take truth to mean the concordance between beliefs on the one hand and, on the other hand, logic and observation. Preferences are not a matter of truth: there is nothing true or false in preferring dark to white chocolate, although persuasion can lead an individual to discover things that he actually prefers. Art, faith perhaps, and Goëdelian interstices between the true and the provable, not to speak of the unexplained usefulness of evolved rules of conduct (see Hayek on that), suggest that there is not a total overlap between reason and truth. Hayek probably did not imagine how, three-fourths of a century after The Road for Serfdom, many university departments and administrations would forget that the pursuit of truth and thus free inquiry and free speech are central to their missions. Recent political events in America show the extent of the problem. The Democrats have endorsed and often propagated flimsy economic theories as well as irrational if not laughable woke ideas. It looks as if they have outsourced censorship to Facebook and Twitter. The Republicans have been even worse enemies of truth. Before, during, and after his presidency, Donald Trump has shown an open and buffoonish disregard for the truth, not only by misrepresenting facts when he could do so at low political cost as virtually all politicians do, but also by unashamedly repeating implausible and debunked falsehoods often without even a semblance of an argument. He has required his officials and political minions to go along as a badge of loyalty. Facebook and Twitter have counteracted by trying laughingly to become arbiters of truth, further aggravating the damage. Frank Knight, the famous University of Chicago professor who was the mentor of many great economists including Milton Friedman and James Buchanan, wrote: The obligation to believe what is true because it is true, rather than to believe anything else or for any other reason, is the universal and supreme imperative for the critical consciousness. The typical politician is not after “critical consciousness.” But how can one who claims to think and teach not be pursuing this ideal? It would not be surprising, in this age of non-enlightenment, to find somebody arguing that the concern for truth is just virtue signaling. Truth and the pursuit of truth are important for at least three reasons. First, false statements, if they are believed and acted upon, will yield contradictory and absurd results, and not only in science and structural engineering. If it is believed that A and non-A are both true, the mottos of Big Brother in 1984 make sense: “War is Peace” and “Freedom is Slavery.” If it is believed that economic scarcity does not exist, everybody can have everything but, in fact, the rulers and their supporters will grab everything they can. Second, one who does not pursue the truth will end up lying each time he can benefit from it and will be trusted only by the gullible. Third, a generalized disregard for truth undermines the minimum social capital of trust necessary for prosperity and liberty. This last point is related to the economic literature on efficient institutions. (0 COMMENTS)

At most 8 people per hour. Canada’s border policy for Americans entering Canada, effective August 9, will not scale well. I’m basing this on my experience at the Emerson border crossing in Manitoba on July 25. First, some background. Under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s border policy for Canadians, announced in June and effective in early July, Canadians are allowed to enter Canada without quarantining as long as they have had both vaccinations and have had a negative test for Covid-19 within the previous 72 hours. They still can’t fly into Canada without going through one of 4 airports: Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, or Montreal. If they fly into Canada, they have to stay at a designated hotel for about 3 days while waiting for the results of a Covid test taken upon arrival at the airport. That 3 days was a show stopper for me because it cut into the time I would have at my cottage in northwestern Ontario. So my plan was to have a friend drive me to San Jose so that I could stay overnight in a hotel there and get on a 6:02 a.m. flight to Salt Lake City. From there I would fly from SLC to Minneapolis and from Minneapolis to Grand Forks, North Dakota. Why Grand Forks, which is about 5 hours from my cottage instead of International Falls, Minnesota, which is only 3 hours from my cottage? Because no matter what dates I tried, I couldn’t find a rental car in International Falls and I could find one in Grand Forks. It all went well. At about 5:30 p.m. I picked up my rental car in Grand Forks and headed for the border. So far it worked like clockwork. To help it work like clockwork at the border, I had pulled down on my iPhone, days earlier, a government-created App called ArriveCan. I had uploaded a screen shot of my passport, my CDC Covid card saying that I had had the 2 shots, and my under-72-hour negative Covid test reading. I had answered the obvious questions about whether I had symptoms of Covid (no) and whether I could quarantine at a place where there would be no one to spread Covid to in the event that I had it (yes). I did wonder about the latter because I thought that my 72-hour test would show that I didn’t have Covid so I wondered whether to attribute those questions to government simply not updating its software for the new rules. As I was soon to learn, that wasn’t why those questions were there. On the Interstate highway from Grand Forks to the border crossing at Emerson (north of Pembina, North Dakota), there were few cars. I joked with friends later that it was so deserted that you could have gone deer hunting on the interstate. That was predictable, given that almost no one in North Dakota was allowed to cross into Manitoba. When I got to the border crossing, a pickup truck with one occupant was in front of me. It took the immigration and customs official almost 5 minutes to deal with him. I wondered if he had not filled out the ArriveCan form. At the end of his time with the official, the official handed him a blue box. Then came my turn. The official was very nice to me. My thought was that he was glad to have company. I answered his questions about what I was bringing in (my limit of alcohol—arbitrage, doncha know) and my clothes, books, and miscellaneous. Was I bringing tobacco products or gifts for anyone? No. He asked the gift question again shortly after. Same answer. I had never in my life felt sympathy for a border official, but this time was an exception. I almost wanted to declare tobacco or a gift to help make his day. The one question missing was about where I was going. I think that was one of the few benefits of the ArriveCan software. He still wanted to see my Canadian passport, my vaccination certificate, and my negative Covid test result. Then he handed me a blue box and told me to drive up to a guy in civilian clothes wearing a mask and a shield. I did so, and the guy asked me to take a picture with my iPhone of something that took me to a special website. I did, and it had me fill in a bunch of information, all of which I had filled out in my ArriveCan app earlier. When it got to my street address in Minaki, I explained that there was no street address. “But you’ve got to fill it out,” he explained, “or else it won’t let you go to the next window.” I suggested that I fill in the lot number from my property tax bill, which I had brought along to show that I was going to a real place. He said that would work. So I made the number part into the street number and the letter part into the street name. Then it asked for an apartment number. “There’s no apartment number,” I explained. He told me that the software wouldn’t work without it and told me to key in the number 1. I did. Finally, he told me to move on to the next post, where a guy with a laboratory-type head-to-toe outfit was standing. So far, it had taken at least 10 minutes. By the way, the guy with the face shield was very nice. He had a Middle Eastern accent and a name that made me think he was Iraqi or Iranian. I had to wait until the pickup was through and then it was my turn. I’ve forgotten all the rigmarole at the next stop but what I remember was having to swab my hands and stick something up each nostril, twirl it around for 15 seconds in each nostril, and then put it in a test tube. Of course, if I had been expert at this, the stop would have taken only about 3 minutes. With all the explanations I needed about what to do, it took over 5 minutes. This guy also was very nice. He also had a Mideastern accent and an Arabic name. At the end he said it was nice meeting me, and I actually felt the same so I said “Nice meeting you too.” The guy before him had told me to key into the website I now had on my iPhone to check my results in “about 2 or 3 days.” This sounded loosy-goosy to me. Really? He couldn’t be more specific? Given how vague his directive was, I had no intention of going to the website. If they learned that I had tested positive, I had no doubt, they would be in touch with me because they had my cell phone number and my email address. Sure enough, 3 days later, I got a notification both by email and by message on my cell phone that my results were available. I held off caving into my curiosity for about an hour and then checked. As I told my doctor-neighbour (hey, I’m in Canada now so I’m using the Canadian “u”) friend next door, I have come to love the word “negative.” So that’s my story. How is it relevant to people other than me? I estimate that it took the Canadian government and its contractors at least 25 minutes to deal with 2 people entering Canada. Even if they sped it up substantially, they would get at most 8 people through in an hour. That doesn’t scale. The border policy for Americans will change later this month. If even 100 North Dakotans wanted to drive up I-29 to Winnipeg in the morning, not close to 100 of them would get through the Emerson border. And why? Because of government overkill. I had evidence of both vaccinations and evidence of a negative Covid test in the previous 72 hours. Could I have picked up Covid on one of the 3 airplanes or in the airport? Sure. But the probability was extremely low. What’s missing from so much of government policy in Canada and the United States is numeracy. Rochelle Walensky, head of the Centers for Disease Control, shows no understanding of simple probability theory, as Jacob Sullum has shown. Whoever put the Canadian policy together shows a lack of numeracy also. That dog don’t hunt. And I haven’t even talked, on a site dedicated to liberty, about the loss in liberty for Canadians and Americans.   (0 COMMENTS)

I am used to prosecutors saying something to the effect that, “The law is clear, one must not do X, Y and Z.” After all, one cannot expect people to adhere to laws that are so vague that’s it is not even clear what sort of actions are in violation of the statute. Here’s how this principle was described by Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute: Void for vagueness Definition 1) In criminal law, a declaration that a law is invalid because it is not sufficiently clear.  Laws are usually found void for vagueness if, after setting some requirement or punishment, the law does not specify what is required or what conduct is punishable.  For more information, see vagueness doctrine. 2) Under vagueness doctrine, a statute is also void for vagueness if a legislature’s delegation of authority to judges and/or administrators is so extensive that it would lead to arbitrary prosecutions. 3) In property law, a declaration that a deed or other instrument purporting to affect property rights is invalid because it lacks a sufficiently clear description of the property. Thus I was surprised to see the new FTC chair cite the vagueness of antitrust law as a reason that she should have free rein to decide how the law is applied, that is, to engage in what Cornell Law School calls “arbitrary prosecutions”: Shapiro has been critical of Khan’s approach to antitrust, particularly her view that enforcers focus too heavily on a so-called consumer welfare standard that emphasizes price as the main sign of a lack of competition. . . . “Antitrust over the last few decades has become dependent on a particular type of economic theory,” Khan said. “The antitrust statutes are quite sparse. They are very general. There’s nothing in there about what econometric analysis to use. There’s been choices about what types of analysis to privilege.” While the consumer welfare standard is not explicit in the law, it is surely more implicit than any other potential standard.  Khan seems to be saying that since we are not 100% certain that the framers of antitrust law wished to protect consumers from rapacious monopolists, it is perfectly acceptable for her to substitute some other policy goal, which is not written into the law. And how were the companies that supposedly violated the law in the 2010s to know that Lisa Khan would be appointed FTC chair in 2021?  Should companies obey the law as it existed at the time they made decisions on company policy, or should they look into crystal balls and attempt to obey the law as it will be reinterpreted by unelected future bureaucrats?  And if the law is to change, shouldn’t it be Congress that decides how? HT:  Tyler Cowen (0 COMMENTS)

This poll caught my eye: This shows everything that is wrong with polling.  I wouldn’t even know how to answer the second question, because I don’t see what they are asking.  Required by whom?  Should there be a law requiring that everyone be vaccinated before boarding an airplane?  Of course not.  Should airlines require vaccination?  That’s up to them, but it certainly makes more sense than requiring that people take off their shoes before boarding, or that they wear a seatbelt. Perhaps I’m unusual, although I know many people that feel the same way.  On the other hand, maybe the “many people I know” are all quite unusual. For some reason, poll questioners really struggle with the distinction between, “is X a good idea” and “should X be mandated.” I see the two getting mixed up quite frequently.  On the other hand, maybe the public also struggles to distinguish between those two views.  After all, pollsters are people too. PS.  Should children be required to brush their teeth?  And if so, by whom?  Parents?  Government officials? (0 COMMENTS)

Earmarking — congressional funding of specific local projects, arranged by individual lawmakers with little scrutiny from their colleagues — is undergoing a reputational rehabilitation. It also appears poised to make a big comeback on Capitol Hill. Earmarking has long been criticized as wasteful government spending. Revelations that funds have gone to a North Carolina teapot museum, a Florida turtle-crossing tunnel, and research into alcohol’s effects on mice’s motor skills have provided grist for late-night-show hosts and critics of government spending. In 2008, Republican vice-presidential candidate and then–Alaska governor Sarah Palin made political hay by deriding a $220 million earmark for a “Bridge to Nowhere” in her state. The group Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) annually releases its Congressional Pig Book summarizing these expenditures for each fiscal year. As a practical matter, earmarks are a tiny part of federal spending. At their all-time high in 2006, they totaled $29 billion, just 1% of that year’s outlays. More recently, FY 2021’s earmarks were 0.3% of spending. That said, using federal money to finance local projects enables all sorts of political mischief, violates federalism, and undermines the good-government principle of subsidiarity. About a decade ago, earmarking seemed to have reached a watershed moment. With the “TEA Party” movement in full swing, Congress announced a moratorium on the practice. After hitting an all-time high of 13,997 earmarks in 2005 and the $29 billion in spending in 2006, lawmakers adopted just 152 earmarks over FY 2011–2013, costing a total of $3.3 billion (0.03% of federal spending). Since then, the practice has had a bit of a revival. The number of projects is still small, but their individual price tags have increased considerably: FY 2021 saw $16.8 billion go to just 285 projects, according to CAGW. The infrastructure bill now nearing passage on Capitol Hill and several other spending bills wending their way through Congress provide opportunities for more such spending. This comes as some political commentators have been writing wistfully about earmarks, describing them as a way to foster political comity, build congressional alliances, and achieve public goals. In deference to (if not acceptance of) those claims, here is a (modest?) proposal: If Congress resumes widespread use of earmarks, then the funds should be parceled out equally across lawmakers. That would be equitable and transparent, and what better way to build comity and alliance, and advance public goals, than through fairness and transparency? Suppose that Congress decides to spend $20 billion on earmarks in a fiscal year. That money could be divided evenly between the two houses of Congress, and then between the individual members of each house. Senators would get $100 million and congressmen about $23 million. The individual lawmakers would then determine which local projects receive the funds, and their choices would be scrutinized by their voters. For longtime observers of U.S. policy, this idea may sound familiar. Back in 1972, Congress and the Nixon administration instituted the general revenue sharing (GRS) program to transfer some federal tax money to local and (to a lesser extent) state governments. Though the total outlays under the program were relatively small — $83 billion over the program’s 15 years, comprising just 0.2% of federal spending over that time — the program had enough support that it was extended three times before expiring in 1986. Apparently, one of the reasons the program did end was because federal lawmakers felt they did not get enough credit for it; unlike earmarks, GRS did not associate particular lawmakers with particular projects. (It would be interesting to know if earmark spending decreased during the GRS period, but I couldn’t find data for that time.) This earmark proposal would not fall prey to that problem because individual lawmakers would divvy out the money to the projects. This proposal would also be more sophisticated than the GRS program. Lawmakers could “bank” some or all of their funds in a given year, instead of having to distribute each year’s money that year. Lawmakers could also join forces to finance projects — say, Rep. A and Sen. B could each contribute $5 million to a project in A’s district in B’s state. And lawmakers could negotiate to borrow and lend funds with each other (presumably at interest). Finally, each lawmaker would be permitted to return the money to taxpayers in his district in the form of tax refunds, thereby addressing the standard question raised about government spending: Would taxpayers prefer the government benefit or the funds used to finance it? This proposal has at least three virtues over traditional earmarking. First, earmark funds would not be divvied out according to lawmaker seniority and political power, unlike in the “old days” when they were dominated by such pork barrel maestros as the late Sen. Robert C. Byrd (W.Va.) and Rep. Jack Murtha (Pa.). That should help with the comity and alliance-building. Second, the option of handing out tax refunds would incentivize lawmakers to distribute the funds more thoughtfully, increasing the chances that the money really would further public goals. Third, because individual lawmakers decide how their funds are used and would answer to their voters for their decisions, that would partly address subsidiarity concerns. The one big drawback is that lawmakers could use the money to gain political benefits in an election year — or, put more crudely, to “bribe” voters with government projects and/or tax refunds. But then, is that different from what earmarks do now? Under this proposal, at least the practice would be transparent. That aside, this (modest?) proposal should deliver — and increase — all the benefits that wistful supporters of earmarking claim the practice provides. (0 COMMENTS)

Not as much as  you might think. The Food and Drug Administration claims to follow the science. So why is it attacking ivermectin, a medication it certified in 1996? Earlier this year the agency put out a special warning that “you should not use ivermectin to treat or prevent COVID-19.” The FDA’s statement included words and phrases such as “serious harm,” “hospitalized,” “dangerous,” “very dangerous,” “seizures,” “coma and even death” and “highly toxic.” Any reader would think the FDA was warning against poison pills. In fact, the drug is FDA-approved as a safe and effective antiparasitic. Ivermectin was developed and marketed by Merck & Co. while one of us (Mr. Hooper) worked there years ago. William C. Campbell and Satoshi Omura won the 2015 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for discovering and developing avermectin, which Mr. Campbell and associates modified to create ivermectin. These are the opening 3 paragraphs of David R. Henderson and Charles L. Hooper, “Why Is the FDA Attacking a Safe, Effective Drug?,” Wall Street Journal, July 28, 2021 (electronic) and July 29 (print.) I’ll post the whole piece in 30 days. We found out last night, in response to some feedback, that one of the studies we quote was retracted earlier this month due to questionable data. We immediately drafted a letter last night to the Wall Street Journal stating that we retract our cites of that study. The Wall Street Journal editor was quite responsive, adding this correction at the bottom: Correction This article has been edited to remove a reference to a study of 200 healthcare workers by Ahmed Elgazzar of Benha University in Egypt. Messrs. Henderson and Hooper relied on a summary of studiespublished in the American Journal of Therapeutics. They learned after publication that this study has been retracted because of charges of data manipulation. Because we cited multiple evidence, though, we stick by the rest of the piece. Also, our main point, that, contrary to the FDA, ivermectin is incredibly safe, stands.   (0 COMMENTS)