Brain Pickings

Not sure how I’ve managed to miss the site Brain Pickings for so long. I discovered it today thanks to a Tim Harford tweet.

While writing about critical thinking, I thought how nice it would be to have some good guides about critical thinking. Someone beat me to the punch, with six, 2-minute videos designed for kids — but adults can learn something too. I’ve watched them and I recommend them.

Here’s a nice quote from Carl Sagan about a key balance to keep in order to think critically.

And, another interesting post I stumbled upon with a collection of thoughts about finding your purpose in life.

Looking forward to finding more interesting stuff there.

Reagan Advises Romney

While I’m not a fan of the background on the video below, I am a fan of what was said in it. This is one example of how Reagan convinced a large swathe of the independents to vote for him. He made it sound easy.

Of course, I can imagine that the left would answer Reagan’s final question in this clip: the elite, of course.

Penn Jillette says it well

In this post, I explained why I want to throw my vote away. Penn Jillette agrees with me and explains it better than I in this video. Here’s what he said:

I believe that voting for the lesser of two evils in game theory will always leads to more evil.

Critical thinking skills — Nature or Nurture?

It’s seems like the critical thinking should be teachable.

The keys to good critical thinking are simple. Have some skepticism and humility. Consider evidence from multiple sources. Evaluate the reasoning to see if it follows logically. Observe what actually happens. Be open to changing your mind. Don’t get too wrapped up in your own BS. If you’re wrong, you’re wrong. Move on.

But, in observing what actually happens, I see some people who tend to be good critical thinkers others that tend to not be so good.

I often criticize the education system for graduating so many people without the ability to think critically. But, perhaps I’m wrong.

Having the American Dream should not be an entitlement

Rather, you should be entitled to the pursuit of the American Dream.

From Mark Perry’s blog post, Opening the Floodgates:

Government housing policies turned “good renters into bad homeowners” and created an unsustainable housing bubble.  It’s now becoming apparent that government education policies have turned “good high school graduates, many of whom should have pursued tw0-year degrees or other forms of career training, into unemployable college graduates with excessive levels of student loan debt that can’t be discharged,” and created an unsustainable higher education bubble.

That got me thinking that the underlying driver of politics — both liberal and conservative — of the past decade or two has been to try to guarantee the achievement of the American Dream, rather than guarantee its pursuit.

Politicians tried to remove “barriers” to home ownership, college education, cadillac health insurance, jobs and an overall comfortable life. By doing so, they’ve changed what these things mean. Back in the day, having a pair of Jordache jeans meant something…until everybody had a pair.

It’s a grave misconception to view all hurdles to achieving the American Dream as discretionary and unfair barriers. Most are not barriers, they are readiness measures.

Consider college education. In the old days you had to work hard to earn it. Even if you were fortunate enough to have parents who would cover your college costs, you still had to make the grades to stay in. If you had to scrounge to finance it yourself, even better. That meant you were a self-starter and could balance financial and academic responsibilities.

Getting a college degree wasn’t easy. Earning one demonstrated that you had some moxie. Employers valued that because they wanted people who could contribute to their organization.

Making it easier to get a college degree changed its meaning. College degrees no longer signal intelligent self-starters with moxie. Now degrees are signals risk averse, color-by-numbers people. Bureaucratic employers value these people for their conformity and aversion to risk.

Home ownership is another good example. In the old days you were expected to make a down payment of 20% and take out a loan that you could repay.

Having saved enough to make a 20% down payment was a test. Passing this test demonstrated to lenders that you had enough financial discipline to keep your expenses in check and save money, which means you will pay your mortgage each month. It also gave you a vested interest in maintaining your property.

Removing this barrier (or readiness test) changed the meaning of home ownership. As someone once said, a homeowner with no or negative equity in their home is a renter.

Rather than wanting politicians to give us the American Dream (and destroy it in the process), we should ask government to help ensure that we can pursue it.

That means keeping us safe from foreign invaders and keeping our fellow citizens and government from infringing on our freedoms.

Two parties

In the comments of my Thank You post, Ben asked what I thought about our two-party political system.

He reminded me of my post from last November, Why I Might Throw My Vote Away. I think that should give Ben a good idea of my views about it.

I also highly recommend reading Peter Robinson’s book, It’s My Party. In it, Robinson gives a great account of the evolution of political parties in our country, including potential explanations for how the two have persisted.

I’ll have more to add-on the subject soon.

Annoying quotes

From David Henderson’s post, Quotations from Alice Rivlin, on EconLog, Rivlin said:

If we didn’t raise the debt ceiling and we actually defaulted, we’d have a hell of a crisis. If the Tea Party is strengthened in the next election, we might have a default.

This is like the old joke, “I have a drinking problem. I don’ have a drink.”

If you don’t get it, Rivlin is concerned about a default occurring because Tea Partiers may get in the way of letting government spending run rampant. In Rivlin’s view, we need to let government spending run rampant to avoid a crisis. That’s like staying drunk to avoid becoming sober.

Here’s a great comment from that post from Ken B:

If the Tea Party had been ‘strengthened’ in elections going back a couple decades I doubt we’d have the crisis she worries about.

Red herring society

I agree with what Newark Mayor Cory Booker said yesterday on Meet the Press. Issues like Bain Capital and Jermiah Wright are red herrings, or as Booker says, “a distraction from the real issues.”

I’m not sure who’s to blame for the proliferation of red herrings in society.

The media? I imagine they push the stories that produce responses.

Society? Probably the most to blame. We do like our red herrings.

Education? I would put some blame here, too. Many of my college educated friends can’t explain to me what red herring means. Every sixth grader should know this and be able to spot them.

For those of you who don’t know, red herrings are distractions from the real issue.

You tell me that my gum chomping annoys you. I respond that your yawning bugs me. Not only did I not address my gum chomping, but I attempted to distract you from that issue by introducing a new, unrelated topic — your yawning — and I put you on the defensive hoping you will begin to discuss that or something else (maybe my throat clearing) rather than my gum chomping.

According to Wikipedia, William Corbett first used “red herring” in his weekly newspaper in the early 1800s as a metaphor for a political maneuver to distract people from the issue at hand. A red herring is a cured and pungent fish. Corbett wrote that hounds can be distracted from the scent of their mark by dragging a red herring across the trail.

“Tell me at what point other people helping me made me your property.” -David Schmitz

The two open letters in the previous post reminded me of an excerpt from the recent EconTalk podcast with David Schmitz.

First, allow me to try to set up the excerpt.

Do you believe, as Elizabeth Warren does, that since ‘society’ provides things like roads, fire and police protection through taxes and various government entities, that part of the ‘underlying social contract’ entitles you to tell others what to do?

I’ve heard many variations of Warren’s viewpoint. As Thomas Sowell reminds us that is government by ‘cosmic justice’ or ‘the way things ought to be‘. That means, we determine if we think some government function or action is justified because we happen to agree with its intentions and believe we are entitled to tell others what to do.

We rarely question whether government has the authority to take the action (and we seem baffled when anyone brings that up) or consider what would need to happen to grant government that authority (e.g. amend the Constitution).

We also rarely consider whether the government function or action that we support actually accomplishes the good intentions that made it sound so good to us.

Further, we have this inane inconsistent penchant for ignoring the Constitution when our guys are in power, then becoming Constitutional scholars while the other guys are in power — never acknowledging the inconsistency and the fact that we helped set the precedent for the other guys trampling of the Constitution by letting our guy trample it. But, that’s just an aside.

Why do we behave this way?

Because most of us want the immediate benefit of claiming that we support good causes and because it costs us nothing directly to do so. Once we have demonstrated our enlightened support for good causes by supporting the government’s right to tell others what to do, we can go about our business with an air of moral superiority.

Of course, that superior feeling turns to indignation once the government tells you to do things that you disagree with.

The Schmitz excerpt from the EconTalk podcast touches on the nub of reality at that point where we think we are entitled to tell others what do.  Preceding this part of the podcast, Schmitz and host Russ Roberts discuss the idea that society has a claim on the success of a major league pitcher or Wilt Chamberlain, simply because without society, neither would have that success — and whether that is a liberal idea or not.

Schmitz says (emphasis mine):

…a theory that believes that an individual is a real thing. It’s not a scholarly, fictitious construct or something like that. There really are people in the world, and people really do have their own hopes and dreams, and people aren’t mere pawns; they actually are agents taking responsibility and making decisions.

Now, you can say that at the end of the day, society owns people. People don’t own themselves. You can say that, and probably say that consistently; but you are not saying something liberal when you say that.

So at the end of the day, for a liberal, you have to make sure you are on the right side of this question. When somebody says: Okay, I got it; I wouldn’t be where I am today without my teachers and cab drivers and parents and all kinds of other people; but I don’t like this deal ; I’m going to go home now; I’m going to leave the country, perhaps, if you don’t mind. Who gets to say: Sorry, you aren’t enough of a self-owner that you don’t have a right to say no?

Maybe we want your kidney, maybe we want your blood, maybe we just want your labor, maybe we want to restrict what you can do by laboring for yourself and your family. And at some point we say: Well, let’s be reasonable and let’s go along with this to some extent.

But still, there’s a fundamental matter of principle, a question that needs an answer at the end of the day, which is: Do I have the right to say No? Do I have the right to walk? Do I own myself? So, the fact that you can think of other people who helped me, or you just imagine–how do you know that I’m not an orphan? Maybe in your imagination all kinds of people helped me. Tell me at what point other people helping me made me your property.

Because if there was no point at which I became your property, then excuse me, but I’m going to go home, and I’m going to take all of my toys with me. If you want some of my toys, if you want me to share my toys, treat me like an adult, treat me like a self-owner, and make me an offer. And you might make me an offer that I’m perfectly willing to accept. I might say–and this was the thing you were excluding–yeah, I want to be part of a community, I want a community that has a real infrastructure; in fact, I want to be part of a community where the roads are free. Not that I think that anything is really free; I realize that I as a taxpayer will be paying for the free roads. But the point is, I want to minimize transactions costs because I want it to be as cheap as possible for my customers to get to my store. And so I would rather pay for that in part of my taxes than have to put up a toll road and have my customers have to pay to get to me. So, yeah, I want public goods, even things that aren’t inherently public.

As I mentioned in the previous post, I like to think of government as a partner with society. Perhaps it’s a partnership like what an agent has with a movie star. The more prosperous the movie star, the more prosperous the agent.

Where we are with government seems to be an agent-movie star partnership where the agent forgot that he is not the talent. He creates some value, but he doesn’t create THE value. He feeds from the value the movie star creates. When the agent forgets that, the movie star usually exits the relationship and finds another agent that appreciates that.

But, in the government-society partnership, it’s more like the friends of the agent who feel they can boss the talent around.

Two Open Letters

First, from Laurence Reed to people who think we need more government to solve problems: Say when (H/T: Speedmaster). Here’s the opening paragraph:

At the start of the 1900s, government at all levels in America claimed about 5 percent of personal income. A hundred years later, it takes more than 40 percent—up by a factor of eight. So my first questions to you are these: Why is this not enough? How much do you want? Fifty percent? Seventy percent? Do you want all of it? To what extent do you believe a person is entitled to what he (or she) has earned? I want specifics.

I like to think of government as a partner in the prosperity of its citizens. The more prosperous the citizens, the better this partner does. If you had a similar partnership with someone and you kept demanding more from him as if you were entitled to the produce of his talents, at what point to you think he would say enough is enough?

Second, from Don Boudreaux to the would-be lords of our manor:

Dear Sen. Casey and Sen. Schumer:

Irked that Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin has renounced his U.S. citizenship, you propose, with your “Ex-Patriot Act,” to punitively tax and to permanently bar from ever again entering America men and women who, to reduce their tax liabilities, renounce their citizenship in the U.S.

The very fact that sitting U.S. senators issue such a proposal – the sick reality that representatives of an allegedly free people act as if individuals are serfs bound to a master – the noxious yet proudly paraded assumption by American government officials that a peaceful man’s or woman’s freedom of movement can properly be restricted by a government jealous that it misses the opportunity to seize a huge chunk of that man’s or woman’s earnings – does nothing other than to confirm the wisdom and justice of Mr. Saverin’s decision.