In response to my previous post, commenter BC asked: When you say that you don’t expect Bezos to give away almost all his wealth and that you’re “fine” with that, do you mean that you don’t expect Bezos to act morally and that you’re fine with some immorality? I responded: This is almost a textbook example of the connotation of words getting in the way of clear thinking.  “Immorality” has a literal meaning, and also a (quite different) connotation. Suppose I park somewhere and put a quarter in the parking meter.  Then I overstay the hour I’ve purchased.  I’ve broken the law, and should be punished by the meter maid if I’m caught.  Is my action “wrong”?  Yes, obviously.  Am I behaving in an “immoral” way?  It depends whether you use ‘immorality’ in a literal sense of doing something wrong, or with the everyday connotation of “a great evil”.  Parking violations are not great evils. I’m fine with people being guilty of a few parking violations, but I also think people who are caught should be fined.  I’m fine with people being somewhat selfish with their vast wealth, but also think there should be a progressive consumption tax, a sort of “fine” or sanction on selfish wealthy people. Economists tend to be cold-blooded rational utilitarians, whereas most people are more “moralistic” in their thinking.  For an example, consider these two policies: A. Keep marijuana illegal and have a fine that averages out to $5 per use.  (Maybe a $50 fine imposed on one of each ten uses.) B.  Legalize marijuana and impose a $5 tax. To most people, those are very different policies.  Policy A is seen as treating marijuana use as being immoral, whereas in policy B society is “saying” it’s OK to use pot. To an economist, the two policies are almost identical, and would be completely identical if people were risk neutral.  Economists are all about costs and benefits, sanctions, incentives, externalities, etc. They don’t tend to use terms like evil, immoral, etc.  Littering and murder lie along the same continuum, with murder imposing much more harm on others than littering.  But fundamentally the questions are always the same; what public policies shape incentives in such a way as to minimize the harm done by externalities? I cannot emphasize strongly enough that this approach does not provide any hard and fast policy answers.  In my view, the optimal public policy regime is pretty close to complete laissez faire, partly for “rules utilitarian” reasons, but also because the distortionary impact of interventionist government policies is greater than most progressives suspect.  But I also see very intelligent progressives using the same sort of reasoning that I use, and reaching much more interventionist policy conclusions because they perceive the world in a different way.  To take a simple example, how a person reacts to the Great Recession will depend on whether they see it being caused by Fed policy or by a reckless unregulated financial system.  I think you know where I stand. I say this because I worry that deontological libertarians might respond to progressives advocating big government for utilitarian reasons by rejecting utilitarianism, whereas they should in fact be questioning whether progressives actually have a good grasp on economic theory, i.e. whether progressives are correctly interpreting the utilitarian consequences of their proposed policies. I actually think that Bryan Caplan conceded too much to the socialists when citing Huemer with approval: I say utilitarianism is utterly crazy.  After all, as Huemer previously told us: It’s worth taking a moment to appreciate how extreme the demands of utilitarianism really are. If you have a reasonably comfortable life, the utilitarian would say that you’re obligated to give away most of your money. Not so much that you would starve, of course (because if you literally starve, that’ll prevent you from giving away any more!). But you should give up any non-necessary goods that you’re buying, so you can donate the money to help people whose basic needs are not met. There are always plenty of such people. To a first approximation, you have to give until there is no one who needs your money more than you do. If that’s not crazy, what is? It’s the socialists who believe we could establish this moral norm without discouraging wealth creation.  I don’t believe that, because I don’t believe that people are robots.  I certainly don’t have that sort of self-control.  If I could be convinced that I had a moral obligation to give away almost all of my wealth, it would badly damage my morale.  Why get up in the morning to work hard to create a better Amazon?  You might say that utilitarianism “demands” that Jeff Bezos work hard for others, even if he doesn’t benefit.  But people aren’t robots!  I take people as they are and form judgments about behavior based on actual people with actual brains that are wired in specific ways.  Most people need motivation in the form of money to go out and create wealth. A person is not a single “identity”; they are a hive of competing emotions and desires.  One part of the brain says I want to lose weight, another says I want to eat ice cream.  Most people find it hard to lose weight, even if “they” want to.  But what does “they” mean?  The “want to lose weight” component of the brain?  Or the “want pistachio gelato” component? My views may seem weird, but in some respects they are perfectly normal.  Normal people don’t expect others to give away 95% of their fortune.  But normal people do tend to have high opinions of selfless people who devote most of their wealth to helping the unfortunate.  Both statements can be true! Words like ‘immoral’ have connotations that get in the way of clear thinking.   (0 COMMENTS)

Here’s Bryan Caplan: I say utilitarianism is utterly crazy.  After all, as Huemer previously told us: It’s worth taking a moment to appreciate how extreme the demands of utilitarianism really are. If you have a reasonably comfortable life, the utilitarian would say that you’re obligated to give away most of your money. Not so much that you would starve, of course (because if you literally starve, that’ll prevent you from giving away any more!). But you should give up any non-necessary goods that you’re buying, so you can donate the money to help people whose basic needs are not met. There are always plenty of such people. To a first approximation, you have to give until there is no one who needs your money more than you do. If that’s not crazy, what is? It seems to me that there are two types of utilitarianism.  One type treats utilitarianism as a compassionate but authoritarian religion, demanding that people behave in such a way as to maximize aggregate utility.  A second type of utilitarianism is a sort of policy guide or an aspirational religion if you prefer.  It describes what we should do to make the world a better place. To be sure, it’s not completely obvious that the world would be a happier place if I gave away almost all of my money to the poor.  There are various costs and benefits to income redistribution.  But it’s certainly plausible that the world would be happier if I gave much more money to charity.  So for the moment let’s take that as a given.  Would utilitarianism then “demand” that I do so?  Not my version, which is not the authoritarian religious version. When Bryan says that behaving in such a way that the world is a happier place is “crazy”, I don’t think he’s saying it would necessarily be a bad thing, rather that it’s unrealistic to expect people to behave that way.  Most people are partly selfish and partly altruistic, and thus it’s a bit unrealistic to assume (or “demand”) that people behave as if they are 100% altruistic.  That doesn’t mean that being 100% altruistic would be a bad thing, just that one doesn’t observe many people with that sort of personality. Most people wish to be healthy, but for selfish reasons almost everyone occasionally does things that are unhealthy.  Most people wish to be altruistic, but altruism is costly.  For this reason, most people exhibit a mixture of selfish and altruistic behavior.  For instance, altruism is my only motivation for voting—I don’t actually expect my vote to impact my personal life.  So I vote on an altruistic basis—why else would I even bother to show up at the polls?  If I were so selfish that I voted for my personal interests, then I wouldn’t bother voting at all. On the other hand, selfishness is my motivation for not giving more money to charity.  (As an aside, the share of your income that you give to charity isn’t really what counts, what matters is the share of your lifetime income that you and your heirs eventually consume.) I do understand that there is another form of utilitarianism.  The version that makes “demands” says that Jeff Bezos should move to a simple room in a monastery and donate his $160 billion to charity.  In my version, while the world would be a better place if Bezos were to do this (perhaps), I don’t really expect him to behave this way.  If instead he spends $10 billion on consumption and then when he dies donates the other $150 billion to charity, then that’s also fine with me.   Not optimal, but I am pretty realistic about human nature.  Most of us are a mixture of selfish and altruistic motives. What if Bezos spent all $160 billion on consumption and didn’t give anything to charity?  That’s why I favor a progressive consumption tax.  Indeed I favor setting the tax rates at a level that maximizes aggregate utility.  On the other hand, I don’t favor a tax system that is so punitive that it reduces most of us to poverty, as I worry that it would so distort incentives that it would even fail in its goal of boosting aggregate utility. Unlike Bryan, I don’t regard even the “compassionate but authoritarian religion” version of utilitarianism as being crazy.  Indeed there are some popular real world religions that make equally unrealistic “demands” of their adherents, without kicking them out of the church when they (inevitably) fall short.  Think about a religion that demands that you love your fellow human beings, even if they murdered one of your family members.  Not easy to do, is it? Although I am not religious, I would never call a religion like Christianity crazy just because it’s almost impossible for any normal human being to live exactly as Jesus suggested we should live.  Indeed, Jesus might well have agreed with those more demanding utilitarians who insist that the rich should give most of their wealth to the poor.  So why the double standard?  Why demand more of utilitarianism than we demand of various popular religious creeds? All utilitarianism is actually saying is that the world would be a better place if people behaved in such a way as to boost aggregate happiness.  And that’s true!  The fact that it’s difficult to always behave that way doesn’t change that truth. (1 COMMENTS)

One of the first lessons you learn in statistics is to discount first-hand experience.  “But I knew a guy who…” is weak evidence, for a long list of reasons: 1. Random error.  When you only sample one person – yourself – there’s immense random error.  The noise can easily drowns the signal. 2. Selection bias.  Are you an exactly average human?  Probably not.  In fact, exactly average humans probably simply don’t exist.  As a result, your first-hand experience systematically misrepresents reality.  And the less you resemble this average human, the greater the systematic bias. 3. Availability bias.  You are more likely to remember extreme, vivid events, so even if your first-hand experience were representative, beliefs based on your first-hand experience could still be seriously biased.   While these are all reasonable concerns, they dodge a critical question: “Compared to what?”  When someone sets aside their first-hand experience, statisticians are hoping – perhaps even assuming – that they rely on random sampling instead.  In the real world, however, almost no one does this.  For the vast majority of human beings, the alternative to first-hand experience is not statistics, but news.  And compared to news, first-hand experience is ultra-reliable, for a long list of reasons. 1. Random error.  Since the news is a vast industry, this might seem like a minor problem.  Due to severe media herding, however, the problem remains severe.  Journalists are not independent draws, but echoes in a vast echo chamber. 2. Selection bias.  Journalists are far from average humans.  They are highly-educated and highly-left-wing.  Even more importantly, they are desperately trying to grab people’s attention with shocking anecdotes and images.  What’s more, they have impressive resources to hunt down these shocking anecdotes and images.  The upshot is that media selection bias is literally off the charts.  What they choose to show is outside the first-hand experience all humans on Earth.  By which I mean that zero humans have personally experienced all – or even a tiny sliver – of the horrors on the news. 3. Availability bias.  After filtering reality through the biases of their ideology and need to grab people’s attention, journalists take the distillate and run it through yet another filter: their own memories.  So when they bring up old stories, or provide context for new stories, they are piling bias on bias. As you may have heard, when you see moonshine marked “XXX,” this means that the liquid has been filtered three times.  Each filtration raises the alcohol content.  This is a fine metaphor for the media.  Journalists filter their experience over and over until they have a final product strong enough to make you blind. By comparison, then, first-hand experience is a fountain of truth.  If statisticians tell you to fear something you’ve never experienced during decades of life, you may want to consider the possibility that you’ve led a charmed life.  If the media tells you the same thing, however, the wise response is to roll your eyes and rely on your first-hand experience.  While you’re not an average human, your first-hand experience almost certainty tells you that racism is rare, serious crime is ultra-rare, that terrorism is basically non-existent, and that the vast majority of people in rich countries are materially prosperous.  The media are in no position to “correct” you  – or anyone, really.  Politics aside, they are practically the most biased source on Earth. (0 COMMENTS)

Monetary economist Larry White had an excellent post recently on stablecoins. It’s titled “Should We Fear Stablecoins?” Alt-M, June 24, 2021. A large part of his discussion is critical of comments made by Leal Brainerd, a Federal Reserve Board governor. I really do recommend that you read the whole White piece, but I’ll give a couple of excellent highlights plus one criticism. He quotes this statement by Brainerd: Given the network externalities associated with achieving scale in payments, there is a risk that the widespread use of private monies for consumer payments could fragment parts of the U.S. payment system in ways that impose burdens and raise costs for households and businesses. In reply, Larry writes: To clarify, network effects (more users of a common standard make adopting that standard more useful for each user) and economies of scale are distinct phenomena.[1] Network effects in payments are associated with the widespread adoption of a common unit of account. Scale economies (declining marginal production cost) up to a point characterize wholesale clearing and settlement systems, but these economies need to be so extensive that a single national clearinghouse is most efficient. The huge volume of daily transactions in the New York foreign exchange market—nearly equal to the daily volume on Fedwire—continues to be cleared efficiently (to all appearances) by the private consortium The Clearing House (formerly the New York Clearing House Association). No informed observer, to my knowledge, suggests that moving forex clearing to the Fed would better achieve an efficient scale. The United States already has “the widespread use of private monies for consumer payments,” of course, namely transferable bank account balances. (Brainard’s language wrongly suggests that only stablecoins and cryptocurrencies are private monies.) Bank account monies are digital in the sense of being represented by digits on the banks’ balance sheets, and also in the sense of being transferable electronically. There is no fragmentation of the dollar unit-of-account network from the issue of dollar-denominated checking accounts by thousands of banks. Likewise, dollar-denominated stablecoins do not fragment the dollar unit-of-account network. They may even extend it, by enabling dollar-denominated payments outside the United States where dollar checking accounts are inaccessible. (In this respect they extend the dollar network much as offshore dollar banking systems do.) Consider the popular use of Zelle, the inter-depositor transfer system provided by a consortium of U.S. banks, for dollar-denominated transactions in Venezuela. The use of dollar stablecoins by traders in cryptoasset markets, or offshore, does not in any evident way impose burdens or raise transaction costs for U.S. households and businesses.   Another Brainerd quote: A predominance of private monies may introduce consumer protection and financial stability risks because of their potential volatility and the risk of run-like behavior. Indeed, the period in the nineteenth century when there was active competition among issuers of private paper banknotes in the United States is now notorious for inefficiency, fraud, and instability in the payments system. To which Larry replies: The view that that private banking systems are inherently or were historically prone to volatility and runs—or that antebellum US banking in particular was dominated by “inefficiency, fraud, and instability”—is sadly uninformed by the scholarship of the last 50 years. I will leave a clarification of the historical record of the antebellum United States to a planned future post on this blog by George Selgin. But I will note that Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Hong Kong today have “a predominance of private monies” in circulation without any ill effects for consumers or financial stability. I do have one criticism of Larry’s post. He writes: If asset losses make us [Tether] unable to pay 100 cents per dollar token, in order [Larry means “other”] words, we may scale down the claim to fewer cents. Invoking this clause would turn Tether into a mutual fund that has “broken the buck.” The clause protects the issuer, but does not protect customers by making Tether tokens less run-prone; quite the contrary. But it’s precisely the fact that it is a mutual fund that can “break the buck” that prevents runs or makes them highly unlikely. The reason for a run on a bank is that depositors fear that when it’s their turn, the cupboard will be bare. But why would you as depositor try to redeem your funds when you know that in doing so, you will take a haircut? Larry’s right that the clause doesn’t protect consumers from losses, but it does reduce their fear of runs. (0 COMMENTS)

In The Struggle for a Better World, Peter Boettke shares a quote from Kenneth Boulding on what economics might become if it continues down the path of encouraging economists to imagine themselves saving the world through analytical perfection: “Conventions of generality and mathematical elegance may be just as much barriers to the attainment and diffusion of knowledge as may contentment with particularity and literary vagueness… It may be that the slovenly and literary borderland between economics and sociology will be the most fruitful building ground during the years to come and that mathematical economics will remain too flawless in its perfection to be very fruitful” (Boulding 1948, p. 199; quoted in Boettke 2021). I just love that phrase, “slovenly and literary borderland.” The border between economics and sociology is one few dare to visit. That may be because many economists imagine themselves to be exceptional within the social sciences—exceptionally logical, smarter than the rest, natural intellectual leaders. Even those who do tour the domains of their neighbors in the social sciences don’t always take seriously the possibility that they might actually encounter something that would present a serious challenge to their way of life. The bigger problem may be, however, that most simply don’t find it worthwhile to visit. The “slovenly and literary borderland” is wild country. The payoffs are uncertain. It takes time to develop the skills that are necessary to even just survive there, and the powers that be won’t always appreciate the time it takes to build those skills. It’s easier to live in one world or the other than in the shadowy land between the two. BUT, for people like Pete Boettke, there simply is no alternative. I truly believe he has what some might consider ‘a calling’ to live in that “slovenly and literary borderland” as a student of society. To see what can be seen there without regard for its consistency with any pre-established vision of what a perfect world should look like. It’s an idea that fits in with timeless mantras to eschew perfectionism, to let go of those things that are outside of our control and focus on being in the world and learning to appreciate the forces of nature that run under and through it. Earlier in the essay, Boettke shares a well-known quote from Adam Smith: “Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest form of barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.” There are two ways to read this quote. A savior of society can read this quote and come up with a recipe for instant success. Peace? Low taxes? Reasonable courts? Put them all in the pot and stir, instant flourishing society. The rest will take care of itself. Instead of viewing Smith as a master chef, the student of society who reads this quote might instead appreciate the combination of peace, low taxes, and reasonable courts, but then immediately get stuck on the incredible puzzle at the end: “all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.” The what?? The natural course of things? How does that work exactly? What about it is so natural? (Particularly given that much of the world remains mired in conflict and poverty, and that was even more true in Smith’s time.) And this “natural course of things” is literally doing all the rest of the work. The prescription of peace, low taxes, and reasonable courts offered by Smith is akin to the Washington Consensus. A series of policies that most economists can agree have been good when and where they existed, but that does absolutely nothing to answer the question of how those policies could be brought about or what effects might result from introducing them into entirely new environments. Interference to create something that looks familiar is still inference in “the natural course of things.” It’s that natural course—the invisible hand, the spontaneous order, the possibility for regularity and expectation without a central plan—that we must seek to understand. Towards the end of the same essay (p. 34), Boettke offers a vision that limits the economist to three roles: (1) to communicate economic principles to interested students of all types and ages, whether or not they are enrolled at a university; (2) to be “a student of society” who seeks to understand economic and social processes as they are and have been; and (3) to be a social critic, analyzing ideas and policies “for their logical coherence and their vulnerability to opportunistic behavior.” In other words, it is not for the economist to control, but to UNDERSTAND and to SHARE. To step far enough back from what we study to be able to see it clearly, without stepping so far back that we imagine all we see to be within our command. If Boettke and Boulding are on the right track, the proper viewing distance is somewhere in that “slovenly and literary borderland between economics and sociology.” Jayme Lemke is a Senior Research Fellow and Associate Director of Academic and Student Programs at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and a Senior Fellow in the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. (0 COMMENTS)

Co-blogger Bryan Caplan, whose reasoning I virtually always respect, surprised me with his post earlier today. In it, he addressed an earlier comment by Liam: John’s child is dying from cancer. He cannot afford to fly her to a country offering pioneering treatment. Let’s assume it has a reasonably high chance of saving her life. Can John hack into Bill Gates’ bank account and steal the money he needs? I take it that Caplan thinks this would be wrong; and yet what could possibly be more demanding than a moral principle which requires you to step back and watch your own child die from cancer? In fact, utilitarianism would probably be less demanding in this case, since you may well increase overall utility by stealing the money. Bryan answered: Actually, I don’t think this would be wrong.  Like Huemer, I endorse a moderate deontological view that allows rights violations when the benefits vastly exceed the costs. I was shocked. If Bryan thinks it’s right to steal from Bill Gates to finance expensive cancer surgery with “a reasonably high chance of saving her life,” then that principle must apply to tens of millions of people who could have their lives saved even more cheaply by being able to get food. Think of, say, 100 million of the poorest people in India. They could ward off starvation for a year or even two with an extra $1,000. That’s $100 billion, which is enough to wipe out Bill Gates’ net worth, especially after Melinda is done with him. That seems wrong to me. How few people have to benefit from stealing  from Bill Gates to make it right to steal? 10 million? 1 million? 10? Working backward, it seems wrong to me for even one poor parent in India to steal from Bill Gates.   (0 COMMENTS)

In Rules for Radicals, Saul D. Alinsky’s handbook for left-wing activists, Alinsky gives thirteen rules for community organizers. Rule number four is “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” That rule is relevant for fighting wokeness on campus. And Scott Johnston, author of Campusland, a novel published in 2019, understands that. Usually people’s first novels aren’t good, but Johnston’s is a gem. With all the wokeness and intimidation happening on U.S. campuses in the last few years, we were due for such a novel that incisively makes fun of wokeness. Nothing in Johnston’s resume suggests that he would have done a good job. He worked at Salomon, opened some nightclubs in New York, and founded two tech start-ups. It’s true that he has written books on beer drinking and golf betting games, but that doesn’t seem like a straightforward way to become a first-rate novel writer. Yet the novel is first-rate and, although it’s humorous, it’s more profound than that. It’s about Ephraim Russell, a young assistant professor of American literature who teaches at fictitious Devon University, a small elite private university with a multi-billion-dollar endowment. Russell is up for tenure and his odds seem good. But while teaching The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a novel about which he is passionate, he gets caught in the buzzsaw of phony charges of racism. When we remember a real-world story about a professor teaching Chinese to a class at UCLA getting in trouble for pronouncing a Chinese word that sounds awfully like the N-word with a -ga at the end, it’s completely believable that Russell would get in trouble for teaching a novel in which the actual N-word is used repeatedly. Will this affect his chances at tenure? Obviously yes, but enough to torpedo his chances? I won’t tell you. These are the opening two paragraphs of David R. Henderson, “Campusland: A Delightful Book Delivers,” AIER, July 7, 2021. The main way it overlaps with my earlier EconLog post on the book is in the discussion of the effects of raising the legal drinking age to 21. Another excerpt: When I read the book and started to understand the motivations of the various players, it was like watching two trains twenty miles apart hurtling towards each other on a single track. You just know they’re going to collide and you wonder how destructive it will be. One major difference, though, makes my metaphor imperfect: free will. People can make different choices and when one person in particular makes a different choice because of his particular incentives and not because of any residue of integrity, it greatly affects the outcome. A fun excerpt on Hayek: The novel is full of nice little touches. Here’s one of my favorites, a few lines that Ephraim overheard at the Faculty Club: “So I had this student who wrote a paper—a paean, really—to Hayek. Can you imagine? Does he think this is Chicago? Who does this kid think he is?” It’s a nice touch, partly because it’s funny but mainly because I can just picture the dreamkiller in the faculty lounge trying to squelch the excitement of an undergrad. Read the whole thing. By the way, they didn’t use the bio I sent them. Here it is: David R. Henderson is an emeritus professor of economics at the Naval Postgraduate School and a research fellow with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Fortunately, in his 38 years of teaching at various universities nothing like what happens in Campusland happened to him. (0 COMMENTS)

Here are my reactions to your latest round of comments. KevinDC: The more I’ve discussed moral philosophy with people, the more I suspect lots of people are just intuitionists in denial. Scott Alexander, who calls himself a utilitarian, was admirably upfront about this when he wrote: It seems to boil down to something like this: I am only willing to accept utilitarianism when it matches my moral intuitions, or when I can hack it to conform to my moral intuitions. It usually does a good job of this, but sometimes it doesn’t, in which case I go with my moral intuitions over utilitarianism. Which raises the obvious question – why not just say you’re an intuitionist then and save yourself all the effort? A lot of brainpower is spent by very smart people trying to find ways to hack their ethical theories in the way Scott describes. Most of these efforts just seem like obvious attempts at reverse engineering an explanation to get to the desired and intuitive conclusion, and the obviousness of this backwards reasoning only further discredits that ethical theory to anyone who doesn’t share it. I’d say, and I think Huemer would agree, that intuitionism is a meta-ethical theory while utilitarianism is a first-order ethical theory.  So technically, you could be an intuitionist utilitarian or a non-intuitionist non-utilitarian.  Substantively, though, you’re right.  In the Huemerian framework, the correct formulation is that most so-called utilitarians are “moderate deontologists in denial.”  And as your “reverse engineering” point suggests, utilitarianism frequently degrades the quality of social science, because one of the easiest ways for utilitarians to to retain their ethical theory is to embrace to implausible factual beliefs. Liam: It’s hard to see how demandingness is a particularly strong objection to utilitarianism. All moral theories can be extremely demanding in certain circumstances. Yes.  The point is that utilitarianism is demanding in almost all real-world situations, not just odd hypotheticals.  It’s not implausible that you would have extreme moral duties in an emergency.  What’s implausible is that you have extreme moral duties almost all the time.  (Alternately, that we’re almost always in a moral emergency). John’s child is dying from cancer. He cannot afford to fly her to a country offering pioneering treatment. Let’s assume it has a reasonably high chance of saving her life. Can John hack into Bill Gates’ bank account and steal the money he needs? I take it that Caplan thinks this would be wrong; and yet what could possibly be more demanding than a moral principle which requires you to step back and watch your own child die from cancer? In fact, utilitarianism would probably be less demanding in this case, since you may well increase overall utility by stealing the money. Actually, I don’t think this would be wrong.  Like Huemer, I endorse a moderate deontological view that allows rights violations when the benefits vastly exceed the costs. Philo: On utilitarianism, Huemer writes:  “To a first approximation, you have to give until there is no one who needs your money more than you do.”  But, no, this is not a consequence of utilitarianism.  Huemer is overlooking the fact that in utilitarianism future people count just as much as present people.  If I invest my surplus wealth, I will benefit future people, probably doing more good than if I gave it away to people who will consume it immediately. First of all, this objection only works if you’re choosing between investment and charity.  It does not work if you’re choosing between consumption and charity.  So utilitarianism still requires you to bring your consumption down to near-zero. Second, as long as people in the future are likely to be much richer than people today, the law of diminishing marginal utility means that it could still easily be better to give to charity today.  (This is also the least-bad objection to Robin Hanson’s view that effective altruists should take all the money they would have given to charity and invest it in order to help a vastly larger number of recipients in the far future.  A la Benjamin Franklin). (Also, given the inherent self-centeredness of virtually all people, the expectation of give-aways would undermine the recipients’ incentives to be productive.) Almost all utilitarians would agree that government shouldn’t tax people into penury due to the bad incentives.  But these bad incentives only exist because almost no one is a consistent utilitarian!  A consistent utilitarian would keep working hard despite the lack of selfish payoff.   (0 COMMENTS)

What is the immigrant experience in America really like? Have you ever been curious about the emotional process of being an immigrant in the United States? In this episode of EconTalk, host Russ Roberts speaks with author and poet Roya Hakakian about her book A Beginner’s Guide to America: For the Immigrant and the Curious. Hakakian’s book retells her own experience of coming to the United States at the age of 19 due to political and economic turmoil in her home country of Iran. The book reflects both the love of America that Hakakian has found as well as some of the improvements she believes are necessary. Hakakian identifies some of the keys factors and experiences of immigration in an attempt to challenge the way Americans think- those born state-side and those who have emigrated in. Tell us what you think about Hakakian’s ideas by answering the prompts below, or use them to start a conversation offline.     1-Hakakian discusses the misconceptions that Americans have about how immigrants think about the US prior tp their arrival. She is honest about the fact that she was not happy to be in the US when she first arrived, while many native Americans assumed she was “thrilled” to be there. But Hakakian also illustrates the opposite side of this perspective. What does she have to say about the preconceived notions that her home country instilled in her prior to coming to the US? What everyday experience surprised her most when she first arrived? Why?   2- One aspect of the unhappiness of Hakakian’s coming to America brought up by Roberts was quite a surprise to Hakakian. What was this particular aspect? Roberts and Hakakian discuss the profound power of “shared-ness.” What do they mean by this? How does this relate and shape Hakakian’s experiences?   3- How does Hakakian express the importance of criticism as a way to show love of something? She goes on to discuss the reasoning behind what Roberts calls the “American hazing ritual” which is the idea that America has been” indiscriminate about discriminating against immigrants.” What are some of the historical examples that Hakakian gives? Do you think this is something the US should or even can change? How does Hakakian view the situation optimistically? To what extent did you find her optimism convincing?   4- Roberts brings up the notion of a national narrative of the United States in light of today’s increased polarization. He says, “…our history isn’t the same for everybody. It’s different for people whose ancestors were enslaved, versus who came here escaping tyranny… we need a rich narrative that’s not simple.” What does Hakakian have to say about the struggle of these narratives, especially for African-Americans in the US? To what extent do you think it possible to create a national narrative today?   5- Roberts reads this quote from Hakakian’s book: “What ought to be the quality that makes an American? The Answer is simple: devotion to America’s founding principles. If you believe that all people have the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that ideas and speech must be aired and protected, that people of diverse backgrounds can come together over the love of those values, that serving the country- through the army, unions, Rotary Club, volunteer groups- is the way to unite the people, that every person deserves a vote and equal regard before the law, then you are an American.” Do you agree with Hakakian’s viewpoint? To what extent are the shared values she mentions central to what it means to be an American? Are there other values she didn’t list? How does this quote relate to Hakakian’s experience of naturalization? (0 COMMENTS)

On Twitter, Republican congressman Dan Crenshaw (pictured above) writes: How about don’t knock on my door. You’re not my parents. You’re the government. Make the vaccine available, and let people be free to choose. Why is that concept so hard for the left? University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers gives a two-word answer: Because externalities. But that’s not enough. I debated Justin in April 2020 about lockdowns: he favored them and I opposed. In the debate, though, he made an important point about externalities that did affect my thinking. He pointed out that the standard law and economics solution to a negative externality is to have the “least-cost avoider” bear the cost of adjustment. I discuss what I learned from that here. There’s a related point. Now that vaccines in the United States are widely available at a zero price and highly effective, who are at the lowest risk? The people who are vaccinated. They face very little risk–on the order of the risk from catching the flu in a normal flu year–whereas the unvaccinated person faces a much higher risk. So the people who should bear the risk are those who, for whatever reasons, don’t get vaccinated. And they should, as Crenshaw says, be allowed to bear the risk. You can’t just say the word “externalities” and win an argument. (0 COMMENTS)