- A paper that I co-authored is now posted on the Treasury website. It's on state-level rules and regulations of "alternative financial services": refund anticipation loans, payday loans, rent-to-own, pawnshop loans, and auto-title loans. These are small-dollar, short-term, high-interest credit products that are often marketed to people with limited access to the financial sector. They're tough to deal with, in much the same way that sub-primes were. There are clearly cases of people being taken advantage of because they don't understand the product, but there are also lots of people that do understand and need the product.
- Jonathan Catalan takes a post by Lew Rockwell that's hard to take seriously, and uses it to make some valid points in favor of and against the General Theory.
- There is considerable chatter about this new article by John Tierney about the overrepresentation of liberals in academia. I never know quite what to make of these concerns. Of course, such skewed numbers could come from some very illiberal practices in academia. That's a possibility and that would be bad. But a lot of people seem to assume that's the only possibility, or jump to the conclusion that we should think about this the same we think about race (a point that Paul Krugman raised). I can't rule out the idea that bad practices lead to this, but I find it strange that people would just assume that. In any other area where we talk about "what academics think", we usually don't worry about this. When academics disproportionately accept evolution, nobody worries about that. When academics disproportionately accept a literary canon, nobody worries about that. But when academics disproportionately accept a stance on social organization somehow that becomes illegitimate. Nobody can say anything conclusively about why any given professor hast he politics he has, but it's always shocking to me that people automatically act like this is a problem, and they don't reflect "maybe that says something about the value of progressive politics", as they do when academia converges on, for example, evolution. Why is that? This all reminded me of this interview of Paul Krugman. In it, Krugman talks about how people perceive him as being political today. He makes the point that he was giving the same advice to developing countries in the 1990s, when nobody considered him especially political. Nothing changed all that much in his views, but since he's giving the advice he used to give to developing countries to the developed world, people are suddenly up in arms. He's not longer an economic scientist - he's "political". I think this may have something to do with why people worry about "liberal professors". When the positions of professors don't directly concern them, people assume "well he's studied it for a while so he probably has a pretty good grasp of things". When they do directly concern them, they think "that's not a reasoned position - there has to be something nefarious about it so I'm free to disregard it". You see it in creationists who feel like they can school evolutionary biologists, and you see it in places like Econ Journal Watch that think they can simply point out differences like this in academia and that that in itself is a fault. I'm not saying nothing fishy is going on. There are probably some instances of strong-arming, shutting people out, etc. But I'm amazed that people look at these numbers and act like it's some kind of proof in itself that there is a problem. They wouldn't think that if they saw that academics disproportionately accepted evolution. Most libertarians weighing in on the debate wouldn't automatically think it's a problem if they saw an isolated statistic that said academics were disproportionately tolerant of homosexuals. Why, when you broaden it to other issues, does it turn into a problem or something suspect? Why don't Daniel Klein and others look at these statistics and feel like it says something about non-liberals? Why do they assume it says something about the academics? I have no idea.
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May not be work safe:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whZwDM4_bz8&feature=player_embedded
But when academics disproportionately accept a stance on social organization somehow that becomes illegitimate."
ReplyDeleteIt is troubling because politics - and that is what were are talking about here - is as Hume wisely states merely opinion.
Anyway, "progressive politics" is merely opinion; evolution is far more than merely opinion.
I'm not sure it's "mere opinion", but it's certainly partial opinion. Much of the most frustrating elements of politics today emerge out of primarily objective questions.
ReplyDeleteBut even then - would Tierney or Dan Klein remark on the substantial degree of tolerance for homosexuality in academia? Probably not. And what reasons would they give for that tolerance... probably something about open mindedness, intelligence about the determinants of homosexuality, broader experience with the question at hand, and a more liberal (in a classical sense) mindset. It's still largely a question of opinion but Dan Klein would probably find very good reasons not to be disturbed by it.
Why wouldn't he apply those same reasons to other questions of opinion?
I suppose my biggest concern isn't that I think academia is entirely innocent. I don't find it implausible that some of this may originate in some bad practices.
ReplyDeleteWhat I find more disturbing is that people would look at this and automatically assume there's a problem. I wouldn't look at those numbers and immediately think something funny is going on.
It's like the underrepresentation of minorities in academia. Might we have reasons for not liking that? Sure. But I think it's absurd to just look at that and say "there must be something about higher education that puts minorities at a disadvantage". The much more likely explanation is problems in primary and secondary education, not in post-secondary education. That's why people who are strongly committed to affirmative action have always struck me as missing the point. I don't have a major problem with affirmative action, but it seems to me the damage has largely been done by the time those policies go into effect. Forget affirmative action - what you need to do is fix child development, elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools. If you do that, I imagine the "minorities in academia" problem will largely solve itself. I think this is fairly defensible, but for some reason people see disparities in higher education and assume something is wrong with higher education.
Like this politics/ideology data, just don't see how you could infer that from the data. There doesn't seem to be warrant for those conclusions.
Politics is about passion, opinion and imagination - I think we fool ourselves by arguing that it is about objective questions.
ReplyDeleteI'm kind of wounded that you wrote nothing about my review of "The King's Speech." ;)
ReplyDeleteI did read the review! Would you like a guest post? The only thing I have heard is the historical inaccuracy point, and that was from Christopher Hitchens. You mention that point, but like you I don't like to get too caught up in historical inaccuracies when there is legitimate historical license. Movies are stories, after all.
ReplyDeleteNo, just joking. Best movie I've seen in some time.
ReplyDeletetoo late :)
ReplyDeleteBean counting!
ReplyDeleteNothing but bean counting! That's what I think about the article on "left wing" "bias" in academia.
Any single demographic group will be over- or under-represented in a given category. The Israeli Defence Force? Mostly filled with Asian Jews. The Israeli government leadership? Mostly has been occupied Russians, Poles, and even Americans like Netanyahu.
The point is that it's unreasonable to expect a perfect demographic representation in ANYTHING. When in the world has that ever happened?
Perfect representation is a pipe dream, but there is such a thing as statistical likelihood :)
ReplyDeleteDo you think those Israeli distributions are random? The math department where I went to college was disproportionately Russian Jews, and it wasn't a question of "oh, there's bound to be variation and no representation is perfect". There were quite concrete reasons for this particular imbalance! The question is, are those reasons justifiable, or not. I consider the reason for the over-representation of Russian Jews in my math department entirely justifiable. I consider the under-representation of blacks unjustifiable, but probably having nothing to do with the the academic departments themselves. I consider the over-representation of liberals a lot fuzzier, but probably entirely justifiable - and informative.
The terms conservative and liberal in the American sense are still a little fuzzy to me, since they seem to extend all the way into views on bio-ethics.
ReplyDeleteBut I am guessing that American conservatives don't want change and American liberals do? Won't the latter be more common? Almost everybody has an idea of what they think is a perfect society and wants to achieve it. Very few bitterly swallow those desires, stop thinking about solutions, and say they don't want any change. While I am not necessarilly praising the former and condemning the latter, I reckon being an American conservative puts a person in a whole different spectrum of thought?
Two people in the public policy studies department might have two different proposals on what how they want to reform medical care. The debate would be intensive enough between them. But the man who does not want any reform at all will be the annoying third party who would divert the discussion too much, and so is already out of the scope of the subject.
In that sense, I guess it's understandable that there aren't many conservatives in academia.
"since they seem to extend all the way into views on bio-ethics"
ReplyDelete...they essentially extend into anything that you can plausibly bitch or grand-stand about.
"But I am guessing that American conservatives don't want change and American liberals do?"
ReplyDeleteIf we were simply dealing with a bunch of Burkeans I think it wouldn't be as big of a concern :)
If anything I would say conservatives want more radical change than liberals, and libertarians even more radical still. Everyone is interested in pushing things in their direction. Independent moderates are probably the most traditionally Burkean. But the biggest change (at least in terms of the claim) comes from conservatives and libertarians. Perhaps somewhat less so after Clinton and Bush, but it's still a good rule of thumb.
Biggest change comes from American libertarians? It would be interesting if that were true. I remember some (yes, sue me) Wikipedia statistic saying that there were about 200,000 libertarians in the United States. That would be less than 0.1% of the population. It's a big deal if they are able to have an effect on public policy.
ReplyDeleteThe Economist magazine's online bloggers alleged that Obamacare was made as decentralized and pro-market as possible to appease the Friedmanite and Hayekian crowd. I remember reading that and thinking, "Really?" The 0.1% of the US population so effectively managed to change the writing of a bill?
Politics is such an annoying zero-sum game. Somebody wins big and somebody loses all in every legislation. Or both sides make heavy concessions, so everyone gives up a lot. The easiest option may be not just to be an anti-change person, but to be out of politics altogether in day to day life, except for entertainment and general knowledge.
Is that membership in the Libertarian Party perhaps?
ReplyDeleteWe have a very fluid concept of party loyalty here :)
I think there's a reasonable chunk of the Republican Party that is libertarianish - at the very least that talks like libertarians. The Tea Party is essentially a libertarian-populist fusion movement. Any of the people that affiliated themselves with Ron Paul are libertarian. I think it's more substantial than 0.1%, but it is hard to quantify, and it all depends on how you count them. If you count anyone that claims to want to elminate the Education Department and the Commerce Department and dramatically reduce spending and end welfare, then it's a pretty decent segment (at least according to what they claim to be). If you go more purist, of course it gets smaller.
And of course a lot of the people that spout off on either side of the aisle don't have any real commitments or know what they're talking about.
Rockwell: "Even more effectively, it was written with an eye to impressing the elites in the one way they can be impressed: a book so convoluted and contradictory that it calls forth not comprehension but ascent through intimidation."
ReplyDeleteThis means Rockwell read the first 10 pages, couldn't get it, put it down, and asked Rothbard what to his opinion of it should be.
G. Gunnels: It is a serious error, one made by rationalists of all stripes (beginning with Plato), to think that if something is not amenable to deductive proof, then it is "mere opinion." Aristotle offers the right antidote to that: true, politics is not a matter of theoria, but it is amenable to the application of phronesis, or practical wisdom. And there are those who are better and worse at it, and there are rules of thumb (not "principles"!) that can guide us towards better and worse political decisions. It is no more a matter of "mere opinion" than is, say, good football coaching, or skill as a carpenter.