This Matt Yglesias tweet caught my eye: While that sounds plausible, I believe Yglesias is mistaken about how politics works. There’s more to politics than public opinion polling on this or that issue; the intensity of support also matters. Here’s a simply numerical example: Suppose that the GOP contained 50% of the public, and the Democrats were also 50% of the public. (I’m ignoring independents just to make a point.) Also assume: 1. Roughly 25% of the public is religious conservatives. Assume their policy views are endorsed by only 35% of the electorate. In other words, their views are unpopular. 2. Roughly 25% of the public is economic conservatives who oppose high taxes on the rich, higher minimum wages, etc. Again, let’s say only 35% of the public agrees with them. It looks like it would be a mistake for the GOP to adopt conservative positions on religious questions and economic policy. These positions don’t poll well. But that view ignores the intensity of beliefs. Many of the religious conservatives may not agree with economic conservatives on tax issues, but it’s the moral issues that really motivate their voting. Vice versa for the economic conservatives. You could add in a few other issues where GOP voters might have passionate beliefs, such as opposition to restrictions on gun ownership, or favoring a ban on marijuana. Even if the positions don’t poll well, they may offer an opportunity for the GOP to add small but highly motivated voters to their “big tent” coalition. The Democrats do the same. Recent polls in (left-leaning) California suggest that the affirmative action proposition on the ballot is not very popular, but the issue may be important in motivating a significant portion of the Democratic “base”. I think of the GOP as the party of people that resent progressive views on a wide range of unrelated policy questions.  They have “conservative” views on everything from economics to traditional religious values to foreign affairs to criminal justice.”  There are no “rank and file conservatives”. To some extent all parties include “strange bedfellows”, but that seems truer of the GOP than the Dems, and much more true of the GOP than the Libertarians or Socialists.  This tendency might be less pronounced in a multiparty parliamentary system with proportional representation.  But when there’s a two party system, at least one party (maybe both) must include lots of people with little in common. There’s a name for political parties that only adopt highly popular positions: “Losers” PS.  Here’s a general rule of thumb.  Be skeptical when a pundit (including me) says that a political party needs to fix its problems by adopting positions closer to their own view on the issues.  I almost never recall a pundit saying to a losing party, “Your mistake is that you agree with me on this issue; you need to start opposing my view on this issue.” (0 COMMENTS)

  As noted earlier today, Tyler Cowen posted about my critiques of his views on lockdowns. I don’t have time to answer thoroughly but I do think I did him an injustice on one issue. Cowen writes: And my remark about “It just doesn’t seem worth it”, cited by David as me dismissing school reopenings?  Here is what I actually wrote: Indoor restaurant dining and drinking, for example, is probably not a good idea in most parts of the U.S. right now. Yes, many of the Covid cases spread by such activity would be among the lower-risk young, rather than the higher-risk elderly. Still, practically speaking, given America’s current response capabilities, those cases will further paralyze schools and workplaces and entertainment venues. It just doesn’t seem worth it. I am worried about reopening indoor bars and restaurants because I want to keep schools (and other venues) open.  At my own school, GMU, I very much argued for keeping it open, which indeed we have done with success but also with great effort.  My whole point is one about trade-offs. The above three paragraphs are from Tyler. Now the following is David R. Henderson: I did misinterpret him. I thought he was throwing in schools with bars and restaurants and I see now that he wasn’t. My apologies to Tyler Cowen and to my readers. This post is titled “One of Tyler Cowen’s Points is Right.” That doesn’t mean there aren’t others. If I find them, I will post on them. But it won’t be today. I have deadlines. (0 COMMENTS)

  Tyler Cowen posted a response to my critiques of his articles this morning. Unlike Tyler, I will do him the courtesy of linking to his post. Someone named David Henderson responded. If you know me, you know that that’s not me. That’s not my style at all. I did post two comments on Cowen’s post, under my name David R. Henderson, the one I always use to post comments and the one I always use in my articles. I didn’t address the merits of Cowen’s case. I simply posted to let him and his readers know, assuming his readers care (I think Tyler does), that I am not the David Henderson who commented. Update: Tyler Cowen offered to delete the “David Henderson” comments and I thanked him. (2 COMMENTS)

Some historians like counterfactuals. In his book Escape from Rome (Princeton University Press, 2019), Walter Scheidel analyzes counterfactual scenarios about how the Roman empire could have aborted earlier or could have been later succeeded by another European empire. In general, counterfactuals are inseparable from rational understanding. To identify a cause is to know what would have happened if, ceteris paribus, this cause had been absent. Take economics, for example. The law of demand—when the price increases, quantity demanded will decrease—implies that without that price increase, the decrease in quantity demanded (on the same demand curve) would not have occurred. Or consider the economic concept of “opportunity cost,” which is the net benefit  (if positive) that would have been obtained from the next best alternative if the current course of action had not been taken. Back to our historical topic. What would have happened if Hillary Clinton had been elected president instead of Donald Trump in 2016? Reflecting on a likely counterfactual scenario can help understand what were the consequences of the actual election of Donald Trump. Keeping in mind that other counterfactual scenarios are possible, here is one that seems very plausible. Given the Congress that emerged from the 2016 election, Clinton would not have been able to do much even with the large powers of the presidency. Until 2019, both the House and the Senate would have blocked any significant change she could have tried to implement. She might, however, have succeeded generating, like Trump did, a trillion-dollar annual deficit. The economy would probably have continued the Obama recovery, as it more or less did under Trump. The absence of Trump’s trade wars would have compensated for Clinton’s vetoing tax cuts. The 2018 midterms would have probably revealed mounting dissatisfaction with Clinton’s failures and character, so the Senate and the House would have stayed Republican. Given a Republican senate, Clinton would have had to nominate a Supreme Court candidate not very different in his constitutional philosophy than Trump’s actual choice, although his sex and perhaps his race might have been different. (This scenario assumes that Justice Anthony Kennedy would not have resigned; had he still done so, the scenario applies to his replacement too.) With a Republican Senate, Clinton would have been unable to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. A big unknown is how successful Clinton would have been at bargaining with Congress. She might very well have been more effective than Trump in the art of the political deal: she would have been more willing to trade votes (I will not veto your pet project if you legislate my pet project). Given the philosophical poverty of the Republicans, this political horse-trading would have been detrimental to liberty and prosperity. The high-profile murders of Black men by White policemen would also have occurred. Clinton might have stoked the racial fires more among the Blacks and the wokes, instead of Trump stoking them more among the Whites. The results would not have been very different. A Clinton administration would not have dealt with the Covid-19 pandemic in a fundamentally different way than the Trump administration. She would no doubt have deferred more to the public health experts, if only because their political agenda is generally very similar. However, since the experts changed track as the crisis developed, the Clinton administration would have provided ongoing advice as incoherent as the Trump administration. The central-planning push would have been similar: use of the Defense Production Act instituting federal price surveillance and allocation of certain products, gauche attempts to control allocation of materials à la Soviet, and no disagreement with the state governments’ own “price gouging” laws. The broad results would have been the same: a hair-raising series of government failures and shortages of many products. One difference, perhaps, is that Clinton would have more consistently and vocally blamed the shortages on “greedy capitalists.” (Trump did not use the expression, but often blamed capitalist behavior such as outsourcing and imports or even not obeying the government more religiously.) Clinton would have blamed the health care system for being not socialized enough. She would have used a more openly redistributionist vocabulary. The big difference, however, between this scenario and today’s reality, would have been the impact on the upcoming 2020 election. Public dissatisfaction against Clinton would run high, just as it does against Trump. Voters would (wrongly) blame her for Covid-19 and (correctly) for the government’s response. (In 1916, Woodrow Wilson lost votes in New Jersey because of shark attacks.) She would badly trail in voting surveys, whatever Republican candidate was running against her. Whether or not the small element of classical liberalism and libertarianism in the Republican Party would have survived the failure of Trump in 2016 is more difficult to ascertain. The answer would affect some components of my counterfactual scenario. But is easy to imagine that, after four years of Clinton, fickle public opinion would have concluded that, after all, socialism does not work—contrary to the current situation in which many people seem to think that capitalism has failed again, even if Trump does not favor free markets. A related lesson is that the results of political processes are often the opposite of what the voter thinks or hopes his vote will bring about. Voting is like trying to buy a bottle of Champagne but getting a Coke instead, or vice-versa, or whatever a majority of the electorate happens to fancy at that moment. (0 COMMENTS)

One popular variant on homeschooling is called “unschooling.”  The practice varies, as practices always do.  The essence, however, is that the student does what he wants.  He studies what he wants.  He studies for as long as he wants.  If he asks you to teach him something, you teach him.  Yet if he decides to play videogames all day, the principled unschooling response is: “Let him.” Almost every parent is horrified by the idea of unschooling.  Even most homeschoolers shake their heads.  Advocates insist, however, that unschooling works.  Psychologist Peter Gray defends the merits of unschooling with great vigor and eloquence.  According to unschoolers, the human child is naturally curious.  Given freedom, he won’t just learn basic skills; he’ll ultimately find a calling. On the surface, unschooling sounds like Social Desirability Bias run amok: “Oh yes, every child loves to learn, it’s just society that fails them!” And as a mortal enemy of Social Desirability Bias, my instinct is to dismiss unschooling out of hand. One thing I loathe more than Social Desirability Bias, however, is refusing to calm down and look at the facts.  Fact: I’ve personally met and conversed with dozens of adults who were unschooled.  Overall, they appear at least as well-educated as typical graduates from the public school system.  Indeed, as Gray would predict, unschoolers are especially likely to turn their passions into careers.  Admittedly,  some come across as flaky, but then again so do a lot young people.  When you look closely, unschoolers have only one obvious problem. They’re weak in math! In my experience, even unschoolers with stellar IQs tend to be weak in algebra.  Algebra, I say!  And their knowledge of more advanced mathematics is sparser still. Staunch unschoolers will reply: So what?  Who needs algebra?  The honest answer, though, is: Anyone who wants to pursue a vast range of high-status occupations.  STEM requires math.  CS requires math.  Social science requires math.  Even sophisticated lawyers – the kind that discuss investments’ Net Present Values – require math. Won’t kids who would greatly benefit from math choose to learn math given the freedom to do so?  The answer, I fear, is: Rarely.  For two reasons: First, math is extremely unfun for almost everyone.  Only a handful of nerds sincerely finds the subject engaging.  I’m a big nerd, and I’ve done piles of math, yet I’ve never really liked it. Second, math is highly cumulative.  Each major stage of math builds on the foundation of the previous stages.  If you reach adulthood and then decide to learn math to pursue a newly-discovered ambition, I wish you good luck, because you’ll need it. What’s the best response?  Mainstream critics of unschooling will obviously use this criticism to dismiss the entire approach.  And staunch unschoolers will no doubt stick to their guns.  I, however, propose a keyhole solution.  I call it: Unschooling + Math. What does Unschooling + Math mean?  Simple: Impose a single parental mandate on unschooled children.  Every day, like it or not, you have to do 1-2 hours of math.  No matter how boring you find the subject, you’re too young to decide that you don’t want to pursue a career that requires math.  And if you postpone the study of math for long, it will be too late to start later on. While most people don’t wind up using much math on the job, ignorance of basic math is still a severe handicap in life.  And when smart kids don’t know advanced math, they forfeit about half of all high-status career opportunities. We should have a strong presumption against paternalism – even the literal paternalism of a parent for his own child.  “Maybe the kid is right and the parent is wrong” is a deeply underrated thought.  The value of math, however, is great enough to overcome this presumption.  To be clear, I don’t mean that the government should force homeschoolers to teach math.  What I mean, rather, is that homeschoolers should require their kids to learn math.  Guilt-free. (1 COMMENTS)

Politics can be very depressing, but a recent Bloomberg article discussing my home state kind of made me smile.  I hope you enjoy it as well: And then there are backers like Derek Orth in Lancaster, Wisconsin, who are sticking by the president. Orth, a 34-year-old dairy farmer, appreciates the financial help Trump has channeled to the agriculture industry. “I can’t think of a single close friend in agriculture that is voting for Biden,” Orth said this month. An active follower of social media posts who doesn’t have cable television, he worries that Biden would institute socialism. I’m going to put this in my “Keep the Government’s Hands Off My Medicare!” file drawer. (0 COMMENTS)

In this inspiring episode, author, poet, and lawyer Dwayne Betts describes the terrible choice he made at age 16 that left him in prison for almost a decade. Despite his tragic situation, the young Betts was determined to see his sentence more as an opportunity than a punishment. EconTalk host Russ Roberts explores this experience with Betts, as well as the project born from his time in prison, the Million Books Project. The role of books in Betts’s life- it’s a line item in his personal budget!- is empowering and encouraging. If Betts can’t make you want to read great books, I’m not sure who can. We hope you’ll join us in continuing to reflect on this powerful episode. Use the prompts below and journal your thoughts. Or perhaps start a conversation at the dinner table. And by all means, grab some books. The shadow lineages are long… If we’re to get from Homer to Percy Jackson, it’s going to be a long night.       1- What does the process of reading look like for Betts, and how has his process changed over time? What does your process look like? Do you take notes, journal, dog-ear pages, or write in your books? How does Betts’s approach compare to Ryan Holiday’s? To what extent can Betts’s approach be seen as an “effort that goes into producing greatness? (This episode with David Epstein might also be helpful here.)   2- Why does Betts believe that reading is probably the most democratic thing we can do? How can we use reading to talk to people different from ourselves? (You might want to revisit this Extra, based on the recent episode with Zena Hitz.)   3- Pierre Goodrich, the founder of Liberty Fund, was purported to suggest never reading an introduction to a book. Why do you think that might be, and how does Betts’s plan for “new” introductions to the MBP books speak to Goodrich’s admonition?   4- What is the purpose of the Million Book Project, as Betts describes it? Why does he not want the books housed in a prison library, and why does he think about it more like a museum experience than a library experience? Which part of the program sounds most promising to you, and why?   5- How/when did you “find” your capacity to read multiple books deeply- college? Elsewhere? Consider Bette’s approach to his MBP “syllabi”- a selection each of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and a writing prompt. How well do you think this will work with prison populations? What other populations might benefit from such an approach?   6- The conversation concludes with Roberts asking Betts for his thoughts on the current environment with regard to race in America today. What most surprised you about Betts’s response?   (0 COMMENTS)

  I criticized (here and here) a recent article that Tyler Cowen wrote in Bloomberg about COVID-19 and lockdowns. Last week he doubled down by raising the issue of the elderly. The title fits his theme, is “Yes, Covid-19 Is More Serious for the Elderly. So What?” Cowen starts with an analogy to 9/11. (Everything in the shaded areas is a quote from his article.) Consider 9/11, when some 3,000 Americans died. The U.S. mounted a very activist response that included new security procedures at airports, crackdowns on money laundering, increased surveillance and two wars. Not all of those choices were prudent, but nonetheless they qualify as a very vigorous response. All true, but I wonder what point he is making. Then he gets to it. The point is this: Had 3 Americans been killed rather than 3,000 — if, say, 9/11 was a U.S. holiday the hijackers didn’t know about, so fewer people were working — the optimal response would not have been all that different. There were a lot of casualties, but it is also significant that several airplanes were brazenly hijacked and flown into major iconic buildings, the Pentagon was hit, and Congress itself came under threat. He says that “the optimal response” with 3 deaths plus the iconic destruction would not have been “all that different.” I gather he means that it would not be all that different from what would have been the optimal response with the actual 3,000 deaths. But he does not tell us what the optimal response to that was. Isn’t that the nub of the debate over lockdowns—what is the proper response? I count Bush’s war on Iraq as one of the most evil government policies of this century. Even if you don’t agree, it was big. So if we got close to the optimal response, then Cowen is saying that the Iraq war was close to optimal. And, by the way, in case he or you need reminding, that war caused many thousands of deaths of young, old, and in-between. Almost all were relatively innocent. Polities that do not respond to such attacks [as 9/11] soon find themselves out of business. Not only do they invite further intimidations, but their citizens lose faith in the government’s ability to maintain public order or shape the future of the nation. The entire U.S. system of government may well have been at stake in the decision to respond to 9/11 in a significant way. Even for things like 9/11, we should reject Cowen’s argument. It would have to apply to every government whose country is attacked. Ethical principles generalize, or they are not principles. There’s nothing special about the United States is that respect. So, for instance, when the U.S. government attacked Iraq, Cowen’s recommendation would have had to be for the Iraqi government to attack the United States. That would likely have cost thousands of lives if they could have pulled it off. They probably couldn’t have, but then we’re stuck with the non-principle that might makes right. But Covid is not like 9/11—unless Cowen wishes to suggest that the virus was biological warfare perpetrated by a foreign power. I don’t think that’s what he’s saying. To be sure, the number of U.S. victims is high — 220,000 and counting, plus some number of excess deaths from broader causes. But the event itself is so cataclysmic that “downgrading” those deaths by saying many of the victims were elderly doesn’t make a big difference in terms of formulating an optimal response. Cowen errs again in likening Covid to a military or terrorist attack. Yes, the murder of an ailing 80 year old is basically like the murder of a 20 year old. But succumbing to an illness does not involve the malicious conduct of a malefactors. That takes the moral and legal question of wrongdoing out of the matter. Now we are left with plain hardship: Succumbing to an illness is much more tragic in the case of an otherwise healthy 20 year old than an ailing 80 year old. Any reasonable ethical reckoning would agree. The focus on protecting the elderly flows simply from two facts: (1) they’re (we’re–I turn 70 next month and my wife is 71) most at risk and (2) they’re often retired and, therefore, are better able to isolate. So I think it makes a huge difference in an optimal response. Let the people who are lower risk be out in the world. As they spread the virus, we augment immunity. That doesn’t hurt the elderly. It helps us. Furthermore, it is likely that coronaviruses will return, which is all the more reason to excel in response now. To consider another example, during the 2002-2003 outbreak of SARS-1, 774 people died worldwide, none of them in America. The countries that took that virus seriously — Korea, Taiwan and Canada, to name a few — have performed much better during the current crisis. And many of the best biomedical responses, including vaccines and monoclonal antibodies, have evolved from very serious responses to previous pandemics. I agree that we should excel. But how? Do you do it with lockdowns, or do you do it with deregulation, including allowing people to try various vaccines whatever stage they’re at, and allowing self-test kits for the virus to be sold, kits that could be available now for less than $10 a pop, but which the Food and Drug Administration won’t let us have? And now Cowen’s pièce de résistance. One final (rather outlandish) thought experiment: Imagine that an enemy of the U.S. demanded that 100 90-year-old Americans be handed over each year for execution. Of course America would refuse. The age of the victims would not be a factor in that decision. Cowen persists in his false analogy of a terrorist or military attack. As Ryan Sullivan, my co-author on my recent Wall Street Journal op/ed advocating that schools be opened, put it, millions of years of children’s lives are being robbed. Ryan has an autistic son in kindergarten and a daughter in first grade. Both, but especially the son, are losing a lot. Cowen’s policy is more analogous to the terrorist attack on 9/11 than the virus is. Notice also, what’s missing in Cowen’s paragraph above: the idea of tradeoffs. Of course, we wouldn’t give over 90 to 100 year olds. But he’s willing to sacrifice the well-being of 50 million school-age children. Remember his  casual “It just doesn’t seem worth it” remark about allowing kids to go back to school. He handles the tradeoff by not mentioning it. Both of Cowen’s pieces resemble the work of a mainstream journalist ignorant of market economics. The essence of economics is tradeoffs. Precious little in his two pieces talks seriously about tradeoffs.   (0 COMMENTS)

This semester I volunteered to teach both of my classes in-person.  I’ve also given four public talks in Texas, and one at GMU.  All of these venues had mask mandates.  And in each case, I noticed an eerie pattern: Almost no one talks to each other anymore!  In the past, I had to ask classes to quiet down so I could start class.  Now I usually face dead silence.  Public lecture halls used to overflow with the chatter of the crowd.  Now you can practically hear a pin drop. From what I’m told, I’m not alone.  When I talk to other faculty who teach in-person (rare, I admit), they too remark upon this viral silence. What’s the explanation?  Here are my leading candidates. 1. Health fear. People avoid talking to others because they think it increases their odds of getting sick.  If you initiate a conversation, the other person might move closer to hear you better, or even remove his mask to speak more clearly. 2. Social anxiety. People avoid talking to others because they’re worried about upsetting others.  Maybe the other person will feel that you’re standing too close or wearing your mask improperly.  Maybe they’ll even bite your head off for your offense. 3. Poor audibility. Conversation is always a gamble.  If masks make it hard to hear and be heard, the gamble looks worse.  So fewer people place bets by opening their mouths. 4. Lack of normal social cues.  Human beings rely heavily on facial expressions to guide conversation.  So if you can’t see other people’s faces, you don’t know how to talk to each other.  This in turn usually leads to no talking at all. 5. General depression. People are so sad they don’t feel like talking. 6. The social multiplier. An extra factor to consider: Perhaps the preceding factors are all small, but when everyone has the same problem, the total effect remains enormous because humans feed off each other.  My social anxiety amplifies your social anxiety which in then further amplifies my social anxiety. Other stories?  What’s the truth of the matter? (0 COMMENTS)

On “Persuasion” (the newsletter-think tank launched by Yascha Mounk after the Harper Letter) there is an excerpt of Ivan Krastev’s forthcoming book, Is it Tomorrow Yet? Paradoxes of the Pandemic. Krastev struggles with the impact of the pandemic of different political regimes. His starting point is that “more than any other crisis, a public-health emergency can induce people voluntarily to accept restrictions on their liberties in the hope of improving their personal security. Invasive surveillance systems and bans on freedom of assembly have been introduced and accepted around the world with little public pushback.” It seems we should think that these kinds of crises are healthy for authoritarian leaders, who thrive on fear. Yet Krastev points out that such authoritarian leaders typically are “problem solvers”, but of problems of their making (up). As a seemingly unstoppable crisis that has riveted the attention of the global public, Covid-19 deprives authoritarian and authoritarian-minded leaders of the chance to manufacture a “better crisis.” Far from citing the coronavirus crisis to justify an increase in power, a high-profile slew of populists and autocrats have strenuously and ridiculously denied the very existence of the pandemic. … Political leaders in general prefer “enemies” who can unconditionally surrender to anonymous “threats” that need to be managed over time. Would-be dictators, in particular, find it more rewarding to pose as “deciders” than to do the hard work required of “problem-solvers.” The former allows them to vaunt their I-alone-can-solve-it unilateralism, while the latter requires them to cooperate with others, to freely admit their own mistakes, and to spend the time needed to master complex and evolving situations. Flashy stunts by men-of-action must give way to slow and laborious efforts by anonymous professionals. It is not only that authoritarian leaders despise crises that they do not freely choose and which require them to stake their prestige on cooperatively resolving problems that, at the outset, are difficult to understand. They also spurn “exceptional situations” that compel them to respond with standardized rules and protocols rather than with ad hoc, discretionary moves. Mundane behaviors such as social distancing, self-isolation and washing hands are the best way to stop the spread of the disease. The leader’s strokes of genius, inviting thunderous applause, are perfectly irrelevant. Worse still, the palpable courage of ICU doctors and nurses makes phony heroics in presidential palaces appear even more pathologically narcissistic than before. Another point Krastev makes is that the global nature of the crisis, “the ubiquity of the disease”, “makes it possible for people to compare the actions of their own governments with the actions of other governments around the world. Success or failure at flattening the curve provides a common metric, making cross-national comparisons possible and putting strong pressure on governments that had previously succeeded in insulating themselves from public criticism. The opening provided by easy government-to-government comparisons gives citizens the capacity to grade their government’s performance. This is a problem for authoritarian regimes and authoritarian-minded leaders, who previously got away with staged “performances” supplemented by the silencing of whistle-blowers and critics.   The whole thing is well worth reading, and I look forward to the book. What Krastev writes about authoritarian regimes is, in fact, a problem for political leaders in democracies, too: perhaps spectacular decisions in tackling the epidemic (the kind that politicians tend to favor) are not as effective and important as leaders believe. Perhaps containing the virus is an exercise in self-governance that some people are more adept at conducting than others, because of their history and their institutions. Krastev rightly points out that it is too early to say: success and failure in dealing with Covid-19 will be properly assessed years from now. I look forward to his books to see how he develops these views presented in the “Persuasion” excerpt. (0 COMMENTS)