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Deadlock and Partisan Bitterness

February 20, 2019February 20, 2019 Bryan Caplan

Why does American politics seem so deadlocked? The media mostly focuses on issues where Democrats and Republicans refuse to compromise because they strongly disagree: immigration, guns, health care. But American politics often seems deadlocked even when both parties agree. For example, supermajorities of both parties want to protect DREAMers, but they’ve never reached an agreement to do so. How is this possible?

1. Transactions costs. Hammering out a deal is hard work, so many mutually beneficial deals don’t happen.

Critique: Economists routinely appeal to these alleged costs, but how high can they possibly be? Seriously, why should it take more than a single day for the DREAM Act to become a law? Vote, vote, sign, done.

2. The hold-out problem. Suppose we agree that X is good, but you want X a lot more than I do. In this situation, it makes sense for me to demand some “compensation” from you even though we basically agree.

Critique: This might make sense for a year or two. But if we’ve failed to reach an agreement after many years of negotiation, you’d expect both sides to moderate their demands to cut their losses. Yes, they could conceivably be investing in their reputations for intransigence to secure favorable terms in the future, but does anyone seriously expect to see the day when one party finally submits to the other?

3. Insincerity. For example, perhaps Republicans only claim to want to protect DREAMers in order to seem nice and reasonable. In fact, however, they never genuinely favored the DREAM Act in the first place.

Critique: This is often plausible, but it’s hard to see it as a general explanation. Politicians have clear incentive to lie about their goals, but why would average citizens bother to lie in anonymous polls?

4. Partisan bitterness. The two main parties intensely dislike each other. Like a quarrelsome couple, they could find something to fight about at a fancy restaurant on Valentine’s Day. As a result, the two parties have trouble cooperating procedurally even when they agree substantively.

Critique: This is my preferred story. What I wrote about divorce a decade ago cleanly explains political deadlock as well:

Unfortunately, the Coasean argument overlooks a pretty obvious fact: Couples contemplating a divorce often hate, loathe, and despise each other. We’ve all heard of stories of divorcing couples deliberately destroying objects of sentimental value to each other. Indeed, many couples in this situation wallow in petty spite; they can’t stop bad-mouthing each other to anyone who will listen.

With these facts firmly in mind, how confident are you that Coase’s zero transactions costs assumption is remotely true? At risk of sounding Austrian, transactions costs are subjective: Bargaining with your mortal enemy hurts.

If this story seems grim, I should add that bitter politics has one major advantage over bitter divorce. Namely: Partisan bitterness throws much-needed sand into the gears of the state. Given public opinion, amicable government is likely to be big government. As long as political antipathy is too shallow to cause civil war, both libertarians and pragmatists should welcome it. Will Rogers once mused, “Be thankful we’re not getting all the government we’re paying for.” I’d add, “Be thankful we’re not even getting all the government both parties support.”

P.S. I’m well-aware that deadlock locks existing bad policies in place, too. But I see little political support for repealing such policies, and broad political support for adding new bad policies. Tragic, but that’s the world we live in.

Including the Renegade

February 19, 2019February 19, 2019 Bryan Caplan

In the last six months, I’ve found myself stuck in two separate Sermons on Inclusion. These were public events. Neither was branded as left-wing. Both, however, gave the floor to speakers who explained the supreme value of making everyone feel included in the community.

In each case, my mid-sermon reaction was the same: “I don’t think I’ve ever before felt so excluded in all my life.”

Why would I react so negatively? It’s not because I disagree with the one-sentence summary of the sermons. Sure, be friendly to people. Make them feel welcome. It’s common decency. So what’s the problem?

I’m tempted to blame the glaring hypocrisy. It was obvious that the speakers had zero interest in making Republicans, conservatives, macho males, traditional Christians, veterans, or economists feel included. In fact, the Sermons on Inclusion were full of thinly-veiled accusations against members of these groups.

Yet on reflection, glaring hypocrisy is too ubiquitous in life to explain why I personally felt so excluded by the Sermons on Inclusion.

The real reason I felt so excluded was that the preachers of both Sermons on Inclusion spoke as if human beings naturally value their cultural heritage. Frankly, I usually don’t. I don’t value my religious heritage. My mother was Catholic, and I was raised Catholic. But I deem the religion false and don’t care about it. My don’t value my ethnic heritage. My mother was Irish, my father was Jewish, but neither identity matters to me. I don’t support Ireland or Israel… or any other country for that matter. My parents raised me to be an American nationalist; my schools taught me about the wonders of democracy. But in all honesty, the only institution I really believe in is business.

So what am I? A renegade. And I’m not alone. Lots of people turn their backs on the religion of their birth. Lots of people never feel – or lose interest in – their ethnic heritage. Lots of people dissent from “their” political culture. Cultural loyalists may call them traitors, sell-outs, self-haters, or gusanos. Yet despite our cosmic diversity, we renegades have one thing in common: We refuse to be ruled by the circumstances of our birth. And any sincere Sermon on Inclusion ought to acknowledge our existence and outlook.

Unfortunately, this omission is hard to correct. Why? Because one of the main goals of Sermons on Inclusion is to foster group pride, and the existence of renegades is an affront to group pride. You can’t favorably discuss the assimilated Irish without tacitly snubbing people who cherish their Irish identity. You can’t people who leave Orthodox Judaism without tacitly snubbing Orthodox Jews. Et cetera.

But don’t Sermons on Inclusion lionize some renegades, like anti-war veterans or the transgendered? Sure. But since the the Sermons barely acknowledge the existence of these renegades’ groups of origin, there’s little tension. It’s easy to welcome renegades from group X if your default is to exclude typical members of group X.

Are efforts to promote inclusion therefore self-defeating? Not if you’re careful, because actions speak louder than words. As I’ve argued before, the best way to make people feel included is just to be friendly and welcoming. Sermons divide us. Common decency brings us together.

McCarthyism, Then and Now

February 15, 2019 Kilgore Forelle

Nobody asked but …

The stale whiff of McCarthyism stole across the venue of the State of the Union address last week. POTUS played the “socialism” card, or rather he just showed the back of the card, allowing no peeks at the face of the card — not of its value, not of its suit. He was deliberately vague and ambiguous. He traded in his wall and immigration, in favor of an even more nebulous concept, gearing up for 2020. Wonder why he didn’t go all in against communism?

I am all in against both communism and socialism. I believe that nothing should be subjugated to state interests. That is why I believe that when politicians use fear of these preposterous systems, they are playing with fire.

Let’s face it, immigration and the border wall had 6 years of exposure under Bush II, and now another two under POTUS (clown car edition). That’s more than double the mileage that Joe McCarthy got out of the era of McCarthyism.

All adult Americans should consider it a mandatory educational chore to learn, in some depth, the who, what, why, when, where, and how of the fervor against communism that distracted us, to the benefit of exploitative politicians, in the 1950s. Google “books, articles, and research on McCarthyism.” Make your own choices — you are responsible for what you learn. Further, you are responsible for what you make of that knowledge. It may be instructive to note that POTUS has invoked the words “witch hunt,” it seems, I could be wrong, more than has been done by any politician since the era of McCarthyism.

— Kilgore Forelle

We Wanted Tech

February 12, 2019February 12, 2019 Bryan Caplan

“We wanted workers, but we got people instead.” This line from Max Frisch didn’t just give George Borjas the title of his most recent book. At last Friday’s immigration conference in St. Cloud, Borjas declared it his all-time favorite immigration epiphany. The point, he explained, is that immigrants aren’t just machines that produce stuff; they have broad social effects on our culture, politics, budget, and beyond.

Borjas is right, of course. In fact, he doesn’t go far enough. After all, even machines aren’t just machines that produce stuff. They too have broad social effects on our culture, politics, budget, and beyond. If you look closely at any major technological development, you can justly say, “We wanted tech, but we changed society instead.”

Consider cellphones. When they were first introduced, you might picture them as more convenient phonebooths. But they’ve revolutionized not only our society, but our psychology. Many human beings now interact with their phones more than they interact with fellow human beings; go to any public place and you will see this to be true. Even when we are talking to fellow human beings, cellphones have changed the tone and tenor of our conversations. When I casually chat with my friends, for example, we often fact check each others’ assertions. And cellphones are crucial for social media, which has dramatically swayed not only public discourse, but elections and policy. Without Twitter, would Donald Trump’s candidacy even have been able to get off the ground?

When driverless cars come, they’ll disrupt our whole society again. Commuting time will plausibly skyrocket, especially in high-rent areas. If you can relax – or even sleep – in your car, why pay $1M for a tiny apartment downtown? Indeed, once you get rid of the driver’s seat, we’ll probably turn cars into small motorhomes, so “living out of your car” could become an alternative lifestyle rather than a tale of woe. And what will happen to all the truck drivers, taxi drivers, Uber drivers, and delivery drivers?

Still not convinced? I trust you’ll admit that nuclear technology did more to the world than slash electric bills.

Verily, we wanted tech, but we changed society instead.

How should you react to this truism? You could say, “Duh, everybody knows this already.” That’s my knee-jerk reaction to Frisch’s quote, too. But both “duhs” are too dismissive. “Obvious once you think about it”≠”Obvious.”

What else is there to say?

1. You could retreat to agnosticism. “Well, there are direct economic benefits, plus an array of intangible social effects. We don’t know how to measure these intangibles; we don’t even know if they’re good or bad.” This is basically what Borjas said about immigration in his Friday talk. There’s no reason we couldn’t generalize it.

Reaction: Philosophically, agnosticism of any kind is incoherent sophistry. We always have some information. We can and should combine this information with common sense to form reasonable guesses about whatever question is on our minds. Crucially, “information” includes psychological evidence about the errors to which the human mind is prone. And one of the best ways to keep your guesses reasonable is openness to bets.

2. You could start by measuring the direct benefits, then see if any of the broader social negatives are plausibly in the same ballpark. If not, the standard conclusion still goes through despite the complexity of the world.

Reaction: Once you factor in the value of time, this is typically the best approach for laymen. It’s a quick way to resolve a wide range of policy disputes, especially if you embrace some version of weak deontology rather than consequentialism.

3. You could try a lot harder to study the measurement of so-called “intangibles.” This might require a massive research program to fill in the enormous gaps in our knowledge. Or perhaps if you play around on Google Scholar, you’ll discover that many researchers have already measured the stuff you imagine “no one knows.”

Reaction: This is the best approach for experts. If you do good work and/or publicize it, you also help laymen reach the truth with modest mental effort. So earn your paycheck!

Whatever you conclude, know that immigration is nothing special. Everything has broader social effects. These complexities are no reason to defer to popular prejudice, which is what I suspect Borjas hopes we’ll do. Instead, these complexities are a reason to think broader and work harder to get the best answers we can.

On Diversity

February 11, 2019February 11, 2019 Skyler J. Collins (Editor)

The desire by so many for racial diversity seems to trump all other types of diversity. Can it be said that those who clamor for racial diversity “only see color”? Can it also be said that in their pursuit of racial diversity that they are tokenizing individuals as representatives for their race? If the goal is to produce a mix of different skin tones and facial features, then how can the goal also be to respect each person as an individual with individual merit and an individual perspective? What gives a person value in this mix is not their individuality, who they are on the inside and what they have accomplished, but rather, something superficial and virtually uncontrollable, who they are on the outside. It’s as if their only worth is as a member of a certain group (race, gender, sexual orientation). This seems strange to me at best, very cruel at worst. What do you think? And that’s today’s two cents.

Cooperation is Libertarian

February 11, 2019February 11, 2019 Kent McManigal

One thing I find very interesting, and a little frustrating, is how often people will try to put words in my mouth.

I guess it’s a facet of the straw man tactic.

Recently someone kept trying to say that I was against cooperation; that cooperation is against libertarian principles, so I have to be against it. Even after I explicitly said several times that I think cooperation is a great thing, and I’m completely in favor of it.

Libertarianism rejects cooperation? I’ve never made such a silly claim, nor have I ever seen anyone who understands liberty make a claim like that. It’s completely absurd.

But, because I’m opposed to stealing money to fund government or government “borders”, I must be against cooperation.

And if I am in favor of cooperation, then I must obviously see the “value” of theft and coercion in the name of government.

Yeah, I don’t get that connection either.

Government is the opposite of cooperation. If people willingly cooperate (and there’s really no such thing as non-willing cooperation) there is no need to rob them or to coerce them to do what you believe should be done. That’s not cooperation, that’s slavery.