My anonymous UT friend offers this reply to my reply to his reply to my Anti-Communism and Anti-Racism piece.  I’ll give him the last word.  This time, I’m in blockquotes, and he’s not. There are two plausible positions here. (1) The historic loyalty oaths were strict and would have greatly improved the free exchange of ideas in U.S. universities in the long-run. (2) The historic loyalty oaths were mild and would not have greatly improved the free exchange of ideas in U.S. universities in the long-run. I hold to (2).  My friend seems to implausibly maintain that these mild measures would have made a big difference if maintained. … Though while we’re on the topic of salesmanship, it is probably much rhetorically much easier to decry Anti-Racism as “McCarthyism reborn” than to first convince people that academic McCarthyism was fine but Anti-Racism is as bad as people today falsely believe academic McCarthyism to have been. On some of these issues, our disagreement is even narrower than Bryan implies.  I agree that the loyalty oaths were likely too weak to have been all that useful.  We need a much more robust system to exclude from universities those who would exclude unorthodox ideas.  Hence, my proposal for an office of free speech.  Such a system would still not be legitimately considered analogous to the “anti-racism” policies currently being imposed and is in fact necessary to preserve open discourse.  Yet, I find that raising this point is routinely met with truly absurd charges of hypocrisy; just yesterday when discussing these issues I was told by someone who certainly should know better “You are just as bad as them.”  These errors are why we must aggressively guard against even implying the false equivalences between the legitimate, if ineffective, efforts to preserve institutions that support individual liberties and the current, apparently successful, efforts to impose ideological conformity at universities and beyond.  Thus I disagree with Bryan’s point on the rhetoric of the discussion.  Following this path then means that even if we gain some temporary success in stalling the “anti-racism” plans and other forms of compelled speech and government funded indoctrination, we will never be in a position to actually effect positive change.  Stalemate will be ripped from the jaws of victory, and those who explicitly advocate for turning universities into state funded political training camps will prevail. We thus must acknowledge that academic freedom and free speech can only be maintained as reciprocal arrangements.  When those who oppose such freedoms are given free rein to impose their ideas, and no one pushes back against them when the opportunity presents itself, the long-term outcome almost certainly involves handing control of institutions over to those most opposed to free expression.  We can see this effect playing out now, as even Republican governors stand in the way of efforts to remove systematic racial stereotyping and related ills from public school curricula.  These officials fall into the trap of confounding democratic oversight of the use of public funds for political purposes within schools with the completely unrelated idea of free speech under the first amendment.  The idea that government bureaucrats have a right to dictate, with no democratic oversight, what is being taught to children, and that they can use that right to impose a novel theory of society with no empirical backing, is patently absurd, but the rhetoric that any pushback against such a situation in some sort of book banning or infringement of the rights of the bureaucrats seems to hold a great deal of currency even among those who will be the targets of the hate being taught in schools.  Thus, we should be judicious in our rhetoric, not taking short-term gains of drawing false parallels at the cost of undermining the long-term institutional change necessary to restore open debate in our society. If all actual members of murderous revolutionary Communist organizations had been excluded from U.S. universities, I can see things being slightly better today.  But only slightly. I think Bryan’s claim that excluding members of revolutionary Communist parties would be only a marginal improvement is a bit disingenuous.  I was clear to include their supporters.  Modern “anti-racists” are the direct intellectual descendants (e.g. Angela Davis) from the murderous Communists, and these “anti-racists” are now the dominant intellectual force on many campuses and are among the highest status and most well-compensated public intellectuals.  We are no longer talking about some crazy grey-beard Marxists ranting in the corner of the sociology department.  We are talking about people what have the institutional power to impose ideological criteria for hiring on all faculty positions in a state with unified Republican control of all branches of government and a Board of Regents appointed exclusively by Republican governors.  In my brief experience with crossing one of these groups, I was explicitly warned that my career could be at stake because they have so much power within the University, an interesting irony for a group who assert that they are marginalized within the intersectional hierarchy of privilege.  I suspect if I had been in the College of Liberal Arts instead of the Business School (another clue in case anyone is trying to infer my identity) I would have faced real consequences.  Bryan’s position as a somewhat prominent public intellectual in one of the most institutionally bizarre and protected economics departments in the country insulates him from how much influence these people truly have at universities. Yes, full-blown Marxist-Leninists are loud.  But they are also few and low-status. I am puzzled by what standards being a tenured professor at Northwestern Law counts as low status. “Murderous” in the sense of advocating murder, or actually doing it?  There are numerous examples of the former, but only a few of the latter. I wonder what exactly is Bryan’s threshold for murderous-Communists-teaching-American youth, particularly at law schools and education schools.  I would suggest that one example would be enough to suggest a serious problem with decision-making in academia.  I seriously doubt many people would have reacted with this sort of equanimity if Timothy McVeigh had gotten off on a technicality and then been hired as a professor.  I would certainly say that even half a dozen cases of murderous terrorists teaching at universities in the US strongly indicates a systemic problem; this one article documents five such cases, and it does not even include Angela Davis.  Or maybe we are looking at the wrong numbers.  Perhaps we should instead look at the fraction of murderous Communist terrorists in the US who did get positions at US universities, which seems higher than, say, the fraction of non-terrorist Americans who end up as college professors.  Even if the numbers are small, do we really want Communist terrorism to be a positive on a faculty application?  Arguably there is an endogeneity issue here, but there is at least a pretty strong indication of causation in this career trajectory. Also, why draw such a strong distinction between people who wanted to murder others to bring about a totalitarian state and those who actually had the organizational ability to pull off such murders?  Being bad a making bombs doesn’t provide moral absolution.  Nor does squeamishness in actually following through and risking ones future.  The fact that universities for decades have handed themselves over to people who, in principle, want to send their fellow citizens to reeducation camps, but maybe only half a dozen or a dozen or so actual murderers and co-conspirators ended up fully employed as faculty, does not give me comfort as to the people who have been tasked with training the American elite.   (0 COMMENTS)

Relative to your expectations, how well did government respond to COVID?  How about regular people?  How about business? Before you answer you have to ponder your general expectations for government, regular people, and business.   In my case, I expect absolute performance to be awful for government, mediocre for regular people, and excellent for business.  Since I expect government to do poorly, government can (and occasionally does) exceed my expectations by attaining mediocrity. Feel free to share your assessments in the comments.  Here are mine: 1. Government (all levels, all nations) did even worse than I expected.  I remain stunned that official shutdowns went on for more than a couple of weeks.  And by my calculations, it would have been far better to do nothing.  Overall, I put government at the 10th percentile of my already low expectations. 2. Regular people did vastly worse than I expected.  The initial level of paranoia was no surprise, but its sheer durability continues to shock me.  One of the main lessons of happiness research is that pleasant interaction with other humans is our most important source of happiness.  And one of the main lessons of COVID is that a mild risk wrapped in official nagging is enough to get roughly half of all people to throw their most important source of happiness in the garbage.  Overall, I put regular people at the 2nd percentile of my initially mediocre expectations. 3. Business in general moderately exceeded my high expectations.  Yes, grocery stores ran out of “essential” products.  And almost all business subjected customers to mind-numbing COVID propaganda.  But they started reimagining their business model ASAP, and restarted the wheels of production almost as soon as the law allowed.  Overall, I put business in general at the 60th percentile of my high expectations. 4. The performance of the pharmaceutical industry was straight out of science fiction.  I would have expected a vaccine to take at least three years.  I would have given a 30% chance that a COVID vaccine never happened.  After all, there’s still no vaccine for AIDS.  Instead, people started getting their shots less than a year after the crisis began.  This wasn’t merely a triumph of science; it was a triumph of business.  Knowing is half the battle, but mass producing and distributing the vaccine is the other half.  And the pharmaceutical industry did it all.  Overall, I put the pharmaceutical industry at the 99th percentile of my high expectations.  Maybe the 99.99th percentile. 5. While we’re on the subject, the FDA also did far better than I expected.  I’ve long deemed the FDA awful.  And they could have saved a lot of lives by abolishing themselves a year ago.  Still, I expected them to drag out pharmaceutical improvement for at least a year.  The damage of the Johnson and Johnson pause is a rounding error compared to the pig-headed, innumerate foot-dragging I’ve come to expect from the FDA.  Overall, then, I’d put the FDA at the 80th percentile of my rock-bottom expectations. P.S. Sales for my #FearMeNot COVID t-shirts are at the 60th percentile of my modest expectations… (0 COMMENTS)

Bob Chitester, who produced the famous Free to Choose series for PBS, died on Saturday, May 8. I gave an appreciation of him here and highlighted some of his earlier work here. We first met when he invited me to a dinner that followed a meeting of his board in Santa Monica in 1989. Also attending were Arnold Schwarzenegger and his wife Maria Shriver. We kept in touch after that, sometimes with years in between. Because he made known to me about three years ago that he was dying, we talked on the phone about twice a year instead of twice a decade. David Boaz at the Cato Institute gives a nice summary of his work here. Bob gave me one tip about wearing ties that I still haven’t taken. I’m guessing he gave this same tip to others. Aware early on that free-market views are not popular and that many people carry negative stereotypes about those who have them, he always wore ties with pictures of happy children on them. Maybe I’ll get such a tie as a tribute to Bob. I hate cancer. (0 COMMENTS)

Did you know that nearly EIGHTY PERCENT of Americans will experience at least one year of living at or below the poverty level? On the flip side, almost 40% of Americans will also spend at least one year in the top 10% of income earners. So what is poverty? According to sociologist and author Mark Rank, poverty is not an “us” or “them” phenomenon, as it affects us all-both economically and morally. In this episode, EconTalk host Russ Roberts welcomes Rank to explore these questions and more. Now it’s your turn to help us continue our conversation. If you have relevant experiences to share, we’d be honored to hear them. We’re also interested in your responses to the questions below. Share your reflections on this episode in the comments, at your dinner table, or drop us a note at econlib@libertyfund.org. We love to hear from you.   1- How is poverty measured, and how has the process changed over time? We know Russ to be skeptical of such measurements; what does he suggest this particular calculation misses?   2- Rank points to Amartya Sen‘s definition of poverty as a lack of freedom. What does this mean? To what extent do you find this to be a useful definition?   3- What does Rank mean when he invokes the “us versus them distinction” with regard to poverty? How does the notion of the “lifetime risk” of poverty disprove the myth that most people who are poor will always be poor? How does the distinction of income versus assets affect the way we measure poverty? Since a majority of people in America will experience poverty at some point, how should this change the way we think about it?   4- Related to the question above, there are still people who are persistently poor- about 10-15% of those living in poverty constitute an “underclass” of poor households. How is this sort of poverty different from others, according to Rank? In discussing childhood poverty in particular, what does Rank mean when he says we’re paying on the back rather than the front end of the problem?   5- Rank argues that in order to mitigate the effects of poverty in America – and especially the problem of the persistently poor- we need structural changes more than transfer payments. (Think of his two analogies- musical chairs and queuing.) What are some of the policy suggestions he offers, and what is your assessment of each? What additional proposals might you offer?   (0 COMMENTS)

Last month Edmund Santurri of St. Olaf College’s Institute for Freedom and Community interviewed me on “Freedom, Populism, and Big Tech.”  The format was highly unconventional, and I liked it.  There was no lecture.  Instead, Santurri and St. Olaf students asked me a bunch of questions about a bunch of blog posts, especially this one.  Santurri kicked off the conversation by asking me a few broad questions.  Then he aired pre-recorded video questions from students, and relayed questions people sent him during the live event.  I was on this “hot seat” for 90 minutes straight, and most of the questions were novel.  Overall, a great experience. Watch the full video.   (0 COMMENTS)

Philosopher Agnes Callard of the University of Chicago talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about anger. Is anger something we should vilify and strive to eradicate in ourselves? Or should we accept it as a necessary and appropriate human emotion? Callard takes a fresh look at anger and has much to say about jealousy, desire, […] The post Agnes Callard on Anger appeared first on Econlib.

Philosopher Agnes Callard of the University of Chicago talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about anger. Is anger something we should vilify and strive to eradicate in ourselves? Or should we accept it as a necessary and appropriate human emotion? Callard takes a fresh look at anger and has much to say about jealousy, desire, […] The post Agnes Callard on Anger appeared first on Econlib.

Philosopher Agnes Callard of the University of Chicago talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about anger. Is anger something we should vilify and strive to eradicate in ourselves? Or should we accept it as a necessary and appropriate human emotion? Callard takes a fresh look at anger and has much to say about jealousy, desire, […] The post Agnes Callard on Anger appeared first on Econlib.

The economic concept of externalities has been used to explain or justify all sorts of government interventions. For example, Tyler Cowen suggests that rich old individuals who spend on health care to postpone their deaths are imposing externalities on their heirs. (Tyler qualifies by adding “at least according to economic standards,” but this only reinforces a suspicion that these mainstream economic standards are irrelevant for public policy.) A commenter to a recent post of mine argued that murders committed with guns are an externality of the Second Amendment. Many other such examples exist and the sky is the limit. The standard definition of externalities in mainstream economics does support such overreach. In the New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics (1987), Jean-Jacques Laffont defined an externality as an indirect effect of a consumption activity or a production activity on third parties which can be either consumers or producers—where “indirect” means that the effect does “not work through the price system.” The late E.J. Mishan of the London School of Economics, a well-known welfare economist and expert in cost-benefit analysis, noted that a consumption externality can arise “from an awareness of what is happening to others” (emphasis in original; see his Introduction to Normative Economics, Oxford University Press, 1981, p. 135). This makes sense because a consistent definition of the externalities requires to include consumption externalities as well as production externalities. The smoke of your neighbor’s fireplace can dirty the clothes on your clothesline as much as the smoke from a distant factory. The photons deflected to your atheist neighbor’s windows by the cross erected on your property are physical pollution as much as smoke. A caricature, but not much exaggerated, of today’s concept of externality looks as follows. If I don’t like what you do, that’s an externality you impose on me. And if you don’t like that I don’t like it, it is also an externality I impose on you. Thus, the government has to decide—perhaps by putting its bureaucrats to work on some cost-benefit analysis—who will be imposing an externality on whom, with which citizens and against which other citizens the state will take sides. The justification of government intervention to correct externalities with the help of cost-benefit analyses–having some pay the costs of others’ benefits–is not easy to defend. This sort of justification often looks like voodoo policy or state levitation. It is seriously damaged by Anthony de Jasay’s theory of the state: The long and short of it is that objective and procedurally defined interpersonal comparisons of utility… are merely a roundabout route all the way back to the irreducible arbitrariness to be exercised by authority… [T]he two statements “the state found that increasing group P’s utility and decreasing that of group R would result in a net increase of utility,” and “the state chose to favor group P over group R” are descriptions of the same reality [emphasis in original]. Instead of normative nearly magic justifications, de Jasay focus on the real, positive reason for any government intervention : Wen the state cannot please everybody, it will choose whom it had better please. That is, it will please its supporters with different privileges in return for their support. The government very legally buy votes. Even if one does not go as far as de Jasay (but reserve your judgment until you read his masterpiece, The State), there are many reasons to challenge the mainstream concept of externalities and its justification for government intervention. A good summary of these reasons is given in Donald J. Boudreaux and Roger Meiners, “Externality: Origins and Classifications,” Natural Resources Journal 59:1 (2009). I will review the whole issue in a forthcoming issue of Regulation. My paper “Public Health Models and Related Government Interventions: A Primer” (Reason Foundation, March 2021) offers some criticisms of the standard externality argument in the context of epidemics. (0 COMMENTS)

There’s been a lot of buzz about former NYT journalist Nicholas Wade’s article on the origin of the Covid-19 virus. Much of the discussion revolves around his claim that the virus was probably created in a Chinese lab, and then accidentally infected several researchers who worked there. In fact, the article contains a far more explosive accusation. Wade suggests that the global community of virologists has knowingly and recklessly engaged in highly dangerous research that threatens the lives of millions (if not billions), and then covered up an accident to avoid scrutiny. To be clear, he does not make that accusation in so many words, but I see no other way to interpret his claims: 1. Wade claims the virus was probably created in a lab in China, and then accidentally escaped. 2. Wade claims that “gain-of-function” research is an accepted practice among virologists, and indeed the Wuhan research was actively encouraged and even financed by western scientific institutes. 3. Wade claims that Western virologists denied that Covid-19 could have been created in a lab, even though in fact it clearly could have been created in a lab. The Wade article presents a picture of scientific research creating a sort of Frankenstein’s monster, the worst nightmare of any Hollywood film. Just to be clear, I have no idea if any of his accusations are true. The WSJ says: There seems to be some debate about whether the Wuhan coronavirus work really did involve “gain-of-function” research—genetically engineering viruses to attack people under the premise that such research assists in learning how to counter future threats. In February the website PolitiFact reported, “All parties involved in the grant to the Wuhan Institute of Virology have denied that it involved gain-of-function research.” PolitiFact attributed a quotation to the National Institutes of Health, the parent agency of Dr. Fauci’s organization: The NIH told us: “The research supported under the grant to EcoHealth Alliance Inc. characterized the function of newly discovered bat spike proteins and naturally occurring pathogens and did not involve the enhancement of the pathogenicity or transmissibility of the viruses studied.”” But PolitiFact also stated: MIT biologist Kevin Esvelt reviewed a paper that appears to have been published with financial assistance from the grant. According to Esvelt, certain techniques that the researchers used seemed to meet the definition of gain-of-function research. This column contacted the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases this afternoon on this issue and a spokesperson says, “We’ll get back to you.” One thing that makes me skeptical of Wade’s account is that he doesn’t seem to understand the implications of the facts that he presents.  Here’s Wade: Here are the players who seem most likely to deserve blame. 1. Chinese virologists. First and foremost, Chinese virologists are to blame for performing gain-of-function experiments in mostly BSL2-level safety conditions which were far too lax to contain a virus of unexpected infectiousness like SARS2. If the virus did indeed escape from their lab, they deserve the world’s censure for a foreseeable accident that has already caused the deaths of three  million people. True, Shi was trained by French virologists, worked closely with American virologists and was following international rules for the containment of coronaviruses. But she could and should have made her own assessment of the risks she was running. She and her colleagues bear the responsibility for their actions. . . . 2. Chinese authorities. China’s central authorities did not generate SARS2, but they sure did their utmost to conceal the nature of the tragedy and China’s responsibility for it. . . . 3. The worldwide community of virologists. Virologists around the world are a loose-knit professional community. They write articles in the same journals. They attend the same conferences. They have common interests in seeking funds from governments and in not being overburdened with safety regulations. Virologists knew better than anyone the dangers of gain-of-function research. But the power to create new viruses, and the research funding obtainable by doing so, was too tempting. They pushed ahead with gain-of-function experiments. They lobbied against the moratorium imposed on Federal funding for gain-of-function research in 2014, and it was raised in 2017. Sorry, but this ranking makes no sense to me.  It’s like saying that when a father let’s his 6-year old drive the family car, the child is most responsible for an accident that occurs.  Certainly the virologists in Wuhan would deserve a great deal of blame if this account is true, but Wade is accusing the global community of virologists of engaging in a truly monstrous crime.  Anyone who has ever worked in a lab knows that accidents are inevitable.  Would you allow scientists to do experiments on H-bombs in the middle of Manhattan?  And no, this isn’t hyperbole; a rogue virus could kill hundreds of millions of people.  Wade is suggesting that the global community of virologists actively sought to have the ability to do such research, and then covered up an accident that has killed millions of people (so far.) I find this claim to be so incredible that I’ve searched my brain for some sort of explanation.  Perhaps the potential benefit of such research exceeds the cost.  Maybe this research will eventually lead to medical breakthroughs that save hundreds of million of lives, more than making up for the death toll from Covid-19. It only takes a moment of reflection, however, to realize that this excuse won’t work.  If gain-of-function research actually were essential, but could also cause a horrific global pandemic if there were an accident, then it obviously should have been done in remote sites in the middle of the desert, where workers had to quarantine for weeks after leaving work and returning to society.  This is how the astronauts were handled after the moon landing of 1969, and the threat of viruses from the moon is much smaller than the threat from gain-of-function research.  The astronauts didn’t just wear masks; they wore spacesuits on the moon! In the past, I’ve usually discovered that when something makes no sense, I have somehow misunderstood the relevant facts.  One possibility is that Wade is simply wrong.  (I suspect this is the case.)  Maybe gain-of-function research is not being done.  Or maybe it presents no threat of a global pandemic.  Maybe the scientists who say the Covid-19 virus could not be man-made are correct. One thing is clear—Wade is an unreliable narrator.  He presents facts without seeming to understand the explosive nature of his claims.  He suggests that he is presenting a Chinese conspiracy theory (and he is), but embedded within the article is a far more explosive claim about the Western scientific establishment.  If his claims were true, this would be by far the worst scandal in global history. (1 COMMENTS)