Good assignment

Here’s a nice assignment (via Instapundit):

If you want to introduce someone to libertarian thinking, encourage them to try this experiment. Spend a few days reading nothing but technology news. Then spend a few days reading nothing but political news. For the first few days they’ll see an exciting world of innovation and creativity where everything is getting better all the time. In the second period they’ll see a miserable world of cynicism and treachery where everything is falling apart. Then ask them to explain the difference.

- Andrew Zalotocky

If you accept this challenge, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

 

Neither do I

Don Boudreaux, of Cafe Hayek, explains why he doesn’t care about income inequality. I agree. At the end his post, Boudreaux adds a great comment from Steve Horwitz.

I also agree with a couple of comments to the post that say that concern for income inequality isn’t necessarily “envy elevated to public policy,” as Boudreaux claims at one point.

While I think envy plays a role for some of those concerned with the income-inequality-shiny-object, I think others are motivated by what they view as unfair processes for achieving wealth, which is also a concern of Boudreaux’s.

It’s just that Boudreaux and these folks have different views on what constitute unfair processes. Which, I believe, should take the discussion to the next stage: What are those unfair processes and why are they unfair?

Boudreaux and libertarians generally see wealth acquired through market activities as fair and wealth acquired by scratching the back of a politician as unfair.  But, others tend to see it the other way around.

But, those who see it the other way around don’t explain the processes they deem as unfair. They assume income inequality is proof that the processes were unfair.

Here’s something else I’ve noticed. Ask them about the wealth Steve Jobs earned before his death or that of their favorite movie stars and you’ll hear why these particular wealthy people deserve it. It’s because they produced something these folks personally value.

Ask them about the wealth of an oil or pharmaceutical company CEO and you’ll get a sneer.

Their idea of “unfair processes” generally is their own arbitrary assessment of whether the person deserves the wealth or not.

 

Don’t Miss the Chance to Privatize

According to this Forbes piece, President Obama proposed privatizing the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in his budget, but Republicans from Tennessee are opposed using the very same arguments that democrats used to oppose privatizing the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), when President Bush proposed privatizing it.

First, I want to point out that politics is politics. In the comments of this post from February, Wally and I discussed the BPA, an electric power provider in the Northwest structured like the TVA as a Federal government stepchild.

It isn’t a fluke that President W proposed privatizing the BPA, while Obama proposed to privatize the TVA. The BPA provides power primarily to states that tend to vote for Democrats, while the TVA does the same in states that tend to vote for Republicans. Might as well take government goodies from your opponents first.

Plus, it doesn’t hurt to get your opponents in Congress spun up on keeping their government goodies so you can claim they are not cooperating with making budget cuts.

But, if I were a Republican I’d put privatizing the TVA on a fast track and call President Obama’s bluff.

It would make a great test case that Republicans could use to demonstrate privatization can happen without calamity. Successful test cases make good sales material. If it works out well, it just might touch off the willingness for more privatizations, including things like the BPA in the Northwest and the TSA.

Let’s add this to the curriculum

(HT: The Last Embassy)

I wish this video of the Tommy Lee Jones look-alike would have been part of the curriculum when I was in high school.

Links

1. Proof of ‘precious childhood syndrome’? (via Instapundit)

2. Good advice for interpreting statistical evidence. Statisticians I know should read this.

3. Good reading from the Idiot’s Collective blog on Michael Sandel.

4. Michael Sandel thinks waiting in line is a more equitable way to allocate resources than price. I remember a story from last Black Friday about a lady who pulled up late to the Black Friday part and simply offered to buy product vouchers from those who had waited in line. But, I’m sure Sandel would outlaw line privileges.

5. But, Sandel uses price anyway.

Signals vs. Causes: Reynolds’ Law

I hadn’t realized that someone had dubbed confusing signals with causes, Reynolds’ Law. Glenn Reynolds does a nice job of summing up the disease:

The government decides to try to increase the middle class by subsidizing things that middle class people have: If middle-class people go to college and own homes, then surely if more people go to college and own homes, we’ll have more middle-class people. But homeownership and college aren’t causes of middle-class status, they’re markers for possessing the kinds of traits — self-discipline, the ability to defer gratification, etc. — that let you enter, and stay, in the middle class. Subsidizing the markers doesn’t produce the traits; if anything, it undermines them.

Yes. And by undermine, I believe he means changes.

Home ownership, for example, was once a reward for making tough choices to live beneath your means, save for a down payment and protect the value of your equity stake in your home by keeping it up.

By bending the rules to make ‘home ownership’ a participation trophy that anybody could get by signing theirs’ (or their dog’s) name on the dotted line, it changed what home ownership meant. As someone (can’t remember who) correctly put it, someone with no equity in their home is a renter with a mortgage, not a home owner.

The curious task of economics…

Russ Roberts, host of EconTalk podcast, often reminds his listeners and his Cafe Hayek blog readers that F.A. Hayek said:

The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.

I think Edward Glaeser did a good job of fulfilling this task in last week’s EconTalk podcast when it comes to nice-sounding government policies that may have unintended consequences of hurting cities.

Here’s one consequence I hadn’t thought of regarding government policies meant to encourage more home ownership:

Having a very pro-home ownership policy also means you have an anti-urban policy, because typically single family houses are owner-occupied whereas multi-family dwellings are rented; on average more than 85% of multi-family dwellings with 5 or more units are rented, exactly the same percentage of households for single-family occupancy being owner-occupied. So if you are going to have federal policy which both directly, through let’s say the home ownership interest deduction, or indirectly, through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are going to subsidize owning, you are going to be stacking the deck against high rise houses.

Glaeser also comments on how school districts hurt cities (my parents moved to a suburb when I was a child primarily to get their kids into a better school district):

Now the last thing that artificially stacks the deck against cities is just the way our local education systems work. So, by your telling me your kids like to go tromping around in grass, that’s great; my kids do that. I have no problem with parents making those choices. However, I grew up in the streets of Manhattan and that can also work perfectly well. The problem is that we’ve created such a strong schooling incentive for people to move out of those cities that have weak school systems. I think anything that we can do that tries to somewhat reduces those spacial, those schooling-related, which are fundamentally government-created incentives to suburbanize, that’s probably a good thing.

As I heard Glaeser say this, I was reminded of how Arnold Kling decomposed freedom into having the power of voice and exit. People with bad ideas to use public schools as a means to achieve their desirable social goals took over many public school districts and drowned out the power of voice for many. They didn’t worry about it because public schools were free and they figured that folks would continue to send their kids there. What were they going to do, move?

Yes, that’s exactly what happened. They exercised their power of exit.

The neighborhood I grew up in was a nice, middle class neighborhood. It had been for 40 years from when it was first built. Sadly, it turned into a pit soon after we left. And not because that was the natural order of things. The public education system was failing to educate and that chased people away.

More people wanted out than wanted in. ’Supply and demand’ says that means home prices will go down. When prices fell, folks who couldn’t afford much because they hadn’t made good life choices, or simply didn’t care, moved in. I remember my grandparents finally moving from the home that I believe they bought new when they discovered their next door neighbors were crack addicts willing to do just about anything for their next score.

There are neighborhoods of similar age and design in different parts of the metro area that are subject to different public school systems and they are still thriving.

It’s amazing to me that the very people who love cities so much, the so-called intellectual elites, have done so much damage to them. But, it’s the perfect example of Hayek’s fatal conceit and the curious task of economics.