The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear

I was at the rally yesterday and it was a lot of fun - it was enormous, as I'm sure most people know. I've heard two estimates - 215,000 and 250,000, which sounds about right to me. I'm personally wondering if that takes into account how packed the crowd was. When people were interviewed at the Beck rally, interviewers were easily weaving their way through the crowds. At least in my section of the rally, we were packed shoulder to shoulder. I couldn't see a thing the whole time, but I could hear it most of the time. I went in with a friend from Pittsburgh - Kate and another friend of ours stayed home and watched it on TV. I'll have to do that this week - I heard there was some pretty funny stuff going on on-stage.

The signs were all pretty funny. CBS has a sign review here, and Alex Tabbarok has one here. The majority of them were on the theme of staying calm and being civil with others. Lots of "I disagree with you but I'm pretty sure you're not Hitler". I saw a "we may disagree on a lot but I'm sure we agree on some things - do you like toast?". I saw a fair amount of political signs - mostly against Fox News and Glenn Beck. A fair amount against the Tea Party too. Very much in the vein of "I'm not a socialist/I'm patriotic too" - very few hostile to Fox or the Tea Party for anything other than the crap they shoveled on us (i.e. - I didn't personally see any signs accusing them of racism or anything). There were signs refering to Fox News as liars... hard to disagree with that one. Not a lot of partisanship aside from that. People may take issue with this, but you know what - Fox News and the Tea Party are injecting precisely the kind of extremism this rally was intended to combat. I don't see a problem with calling them out on it as long as we don't veer into other things like accusations of racism.

There were, of course, a lot of Halloween costumes there. I saw lots of zombies, one of whom was carrying one of my favorite signs: "What do we want?: Brains! When do we want them?: Brains!".

Best sign of the whole event... "Gee, this orgy is getting off to a slow start".

One other thing worth remarking on - I was surprised at the range of people there. It was an ethnically and geographically diverse crowd - that wasn't surprising. But the age range was. Lot's of senior citizens there, lots of parents with young children. That was pretty cool to see. And of course there were lots of twenty-somethings which wasn't as surprising.

Every commenter an ombudsman at F&OST...

Robin Hanson shares a great list of behaviors which are "Signs that your opinions function more to signal loyalty and ability than to estimate truth". I think I do fairly well on most of these - some of these I consciously work at. But then again, I'm a biased observer. What do readers think? Do I fare well by these standards? Do you fare well in your comments or in your own writing? And be specific please - remember, I may be biased in my self evaluation but you are probably biased too. I'm interested in this as a self-evaluation tool, and interested in how others think of themselves on each of these points. I've bolded the pit-falls that I think I am especially good at avoiding, and highlighted in red the pit-falls that I'm most likely to be guilty of:

1.You find it hard to be enthusiastic for something until you know that others oppose it.

2.You have little interest in getting clear on what exactly is the position being argued.

3.Realizing that a topic is important and neglected doesn’t make you much interested.

4.You have little interest in digging to bigger topics behind commonly argued topics.

5.You are less interested in a topic when you don’t foresee being able to talk about it.

6.You are uncomfortable taking a position near the middle of the opinion distribution.

7.You are uncomfortable taking a position of high uncertainty about who is right.

8.You care far more about current nearby events than similar distant or past/future events.

9.You find it easy to conclude that those who disagree with you are insincere or stupid.

10.You are reluctant to change your publicly stated positions in response to new info.

11.You are reluctant to agree a rival’s claim, even if you had no prior opinion on the topic.

12.You are reluctant to take a position that raises the status of rivals.

13.You care more about consistency between your beliefs than about belief accuracy.

14.You go easy on sloppy arguments by folks on “your side.”

15.You have little interest in practical concrete implications of commonly argued topics.

16.Your opinion doesn’t much change after talking with smart folks who know more. [maybe, but this is tough to assess because there's usually ample "smart folks who know more" that agree with me and "smart folks who know more" that disagree with me - so attributing this accurately is a little hard]

17.You are especially eager to drop names when explaining positions and arguments.

18.You find it hard to list weak points and counter-arguments on your positions.

19.You feel passionately about a topic, but haven’t sought out much evidence.

20.You are reluctant to not have an opinion on commonly discussed topics.


It bothers me most when people fail on #11 and #18, and these are two things that I consciously try to succeed at. You only shoot yourself in the foot if you don't familiarize yourself with the weaknesses of your own argument. You open yourself up to having other people raise the point - it's always better to raise the point yourself and acknowledge not everything is worked out yet. Number eleven is pointless too. Some people have a need to disagree with those from a "different school of thought". I think that's extremely dangerous because (1.) it could create superficial differences where there really aren't any, and (2.) it's not really clear whether you've thought through someone's claim or just opposed it because they support it.

Take it Down a Notch, for America

So most of you are probably aware that Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert are holding rallies in D.C. on 10/30/10. Stewart has his Rally to Restore Sanity, and Colbert has his March to keep fear alive. We've never really participated in anything like this before, but it looks like Kate and I and a couple friends are going to go to the Stewart rally, for two reasons. First, I think on balance he's funnier than Colbert. But also, he's really the only one on the national stage that makes comments and speeches that I think could actually be called inspirational and have a positive impact. Bloomberg's reaction to the mosque controversy was a rare beam of light as well, but there's not much else out there in the way of inspiration and groundedness.

Nothing captured it better for me than an example sign that Stewart pulled up on his show announcing the rallies:

"I disagree with you, but I'm pretty sure you're not Hitler"

I think we need more of that in the public sphere, but also in the economics blogosphere.

Jon Stewart, William and Mary alum

Happy Constitution Day

"Let us now pause and ask ourselves whether, in the course of these papers, the proposed Constitution has not been satisfactorily vindicated from the aspersions thrown upon it; and whether it has not been shown to be worthy of the public approbation, and necessary to the public safety and prosperity. Every man is bound to answer these questions to himself, according to the best of his conscience and understanding, and to act agreeably to the genuine and sober dictates of his judgment. This is a duty from which nothing can give him a dispensation. 'T is one that he is called upon, nay, constrained by all the obligations that form the bands of society, to discharge sincerely and honestly. No partial motive, no particular interest, no pride of opinion, no temporary passion or prejudice, will justify to himself, to his country, or to his posterity, an improper election of the part he is to act. Let him beware of an obstinate adherence to party; let him reflect that the object upon which he is to decide is not a particular interest of the community, but the very existence of the nation; and let him remember that a majority of America has already given its sanction to the plan which he is to approve or reject."

- Publius

Was I wrong on "Draw Mohammed Day"?

The Koran burning in Florida on its own is just an ugly incident, but one thing that's really been frustrating me recently is hearing people compare it to the mosque in New York. You often hear that both are legal but people should have the decency not to do either.

Why the Koran burning is legal but offensive is obvious. The pastor intends to be offensive, so there's not much discussion there. To consider the Cordoba Center offensive, though, you have to assume that Muslims are the same as terrorists. It's the only way to take offense at all, which means that you have to be either an idiot or a bigot to put them on the same playing field. Or, as Jon Stewart has recently put it, you're saying that burning a Koran and reading one are equally offensive. It's precisely this sort of understanding of what's "offensive" that leads people to burn Korans in the first place.

All this made me wonder - was I wrong in supporting "Draw Mohammed Day" several months ago (for the record, Evan was less supportive of it)? I don't think so. Even considering the offensiveness of the Florida pastor, I think I'm still confident in the decision, and the decision to post the winners of Draw Mohammed Day on this blog. In the end, I think there's a difference between satire and intimidation, and I think intentions and context are important. When you see a cartoon mocking the backwardness of al Qaeda or Ahmadinejad, for example, that's very different from a broader mockery of Muslims. You also have to consider what is being responded to. Choosing to draw cartoons specifically, in the aftermath of the threats to South Park, seems very different from choosing to burn Korans, in the aftermath of the Cordoba Mosque controversy. One is clearly directed at people who kill in response to cartoons, because of their fundamentalism. The other is clearly directed at the simple act of building a mosque, and the medium is a more general FU to Muslims. It's not targeted to terrorists or radicals in any discernible way.

You don't arrest a court jester or a satirist for treason. Why? Intent and context.

It does seem like a slippery defense - I'm OK but the Florida pastor isn't because I didn't intend to be offensive to Muslims generally. Does that work? Or was I wrong? My gut tells me it's fine, but I'm interested in others' thoughts.

Boettke on New Methods of Peer Review

I want to pass this post by Peter Boettke for reactions, although I don't have time to think in detail about it now. He mentions a New York Times article about a more open, blog-like "crowd-sourcing" of the peer review process. I didn't even get a chance to read the article in detail yet, but it sounds interesting.

I do have my doubts, though. I have very little experience with the peer review process, and the experience I have had doesn't entirely reaffirm the value of the status quo, but I worry that this is the wrong stage in the process for introducing a blog-like approach.

It seems to me peer-review is simply a way of ensuring quality and making sure important points in research were hit, right? I don't see how this blog-like approach helps with that. What blogging can offer is a way to formalize a much wider range of comments and critiques than the normal journal format for replies and comments. A good example of this is what Econ Journal Watch is doing to collect a series of critiques of the Buturovic and Klein article on economic ideology (which I participated in). We could have more of this sort of thing, and we could presumably have each of these critiques as blog posts with comment sections, methods of voting on the salience of different critiques, etc.

But is it really necessary as a gate-keeper? I don't think so.

This is not to say the current peer review process is perfect - it's not. But it seems to me the biggest problem with peer review are issues of (1.) elevating the most sexy, counter-intuitive findings and empirical tricks, regardless of whether they are the right findings, and (2.) having a bias against insignificant findings. I don't see how these would be solved with a blog-like approach.

I also imagine it would be a nightmare to respond to everybody in an equitable way. I had only two reviewers for my recent Review of Austrian Economics article, and on some issues they advocated exactly the opposite change! And this is RAE - presumably the reviewers of other journals are even less homogenous than the reviewers of this one.

So my initial reaction is to move forward with these possibilities and definitely experiment with them, but I'd hesitate to use them at the peer review stage.

Do others have thoughts?

From the culture wars...

1. Politicians are ugly, ugly people.

2. I don't know if it's better or worse that Glenn Beck claims he didn't even know Martin Luther King delivered the I Have a Dream Speech on August 28th at the Lincoln Memorial when he scheduled his rally on August 28th at the Lincoln Memorial. That seems like it should be a 4th of July or December 7th or April 9th sort of date for Americans. I've had a tough time figuring out what I think on this. Ex ante, I can't figure out a good reason why this is inappropriate or why Beck shouldn't do this. But I have a strong suspicion that something will be done or said there that will make it inappropriate. He claims it will not be used to demagogue, and who are we to stop someone that makes that claim? But in all likelihood it will be used to demagogue and the worst part is, to his ears it won't even sound like demagoguing so when people criticize him for it he'll develop even more of a martyr complex than he already has.

The Tea Party happened in Boston, but it's come to Williamsburg

The Washington Post has a great article this morning on the influx of Tea Partiers into Colonial Williamsburg. For those of you who weren't aware, this is of special interest to me because I attended the College of William and Mary as an undergraduate. I spent my freshman year living in (and met my future wife in) Monroe Hall, which was right across the street from Colonial Williamsburg. That part of campus itself is in many ways an extension of Colonial Williamsburg, with the Wren Building - the oldest continually operating academic building in the country - not far from Monroe Hall (the Wren was also the building I was married in). You can still see Civil War bullet holes and fire damage on this building, where Jefferson himself studied.

Anyway, now I'm starting to reminisce and wax poetic, which I suppose just goes to show how important this place is to me. It's also important to the Tea Partiers who are increasingly frequenting the tourist destination, often in colonial garb. The reasons are obvious, of course. Colonial Williamsburg does a fantastic job recreating the history of the revolutionary era, with founding fathers roaming the streets and interacting with tourists. The Post article highlights this point:

"General, when is it appropriate to resort to arms to fight for our liberty?" asked a tourist on a recent weekday during "A Conversation with George Washington," a hugely popular dialogue between actor and audience in the shaded backyard of Charlton's Coffeehouse.

Standing on a simple wooden stage before a crowd of about 100, the man portraying Washington replied: "Only when all peaceful remedies have been exhausted. Or if we are forced to do so in our own self-defense."

The tourist, a self-described conservative activist named Ismael Nieves from Elmer, N.J., nodded thoughtfully. Afterward, he said this was his fifth visit to Colonial Williamsburg.

"We live in a very dangerous time," Nieves said. "People are looking for leadership, looking for what to do. They're looking to Washington, Jefferson, Madison."

Sometimes, they didn't get the leadership they were expecting:

"Sometimes, the activists appear surprised when the Founding Fathers don't always provide the "give 'em hell" response they seem to be looking for.

When a tourist asked George Washington a question about what should be done to those colonists who remain loyal to the tyrannical British king, Washington interjected: "I hope that we're all loyal, sir" -- a reminder that Washington, far from being an early agitator against the throne, was among those who sought to avoid revolution until the very end.

When another audience member asked the general to reflect on the role of prayer and religion in politics, he said: "Prayers, sir, are a man's private concern. They are not a matter of public interest. And nor should they be. There is nothing so personal as a man's relationship with his creator."

And when another asked whether the Boston Tea Party had helped rally the patriots, Washington disagreed with force: The tea party "should never have occurred," he said. "It's hurt our cause, sir.""

The organizers of Colonial Williamsburg have embraced the Tea Partiers enthusiastically. It's good for business, obviously. That's an important reason. But they also feel the dialogue is important:

""If people . . . can recognize that subjects such as war and taxation, religion and race, were really at the heart of the situation in the 18th century, and there is some connection between what was going on then and what's going on now, that's all to the good," said Colin Campbell, president and chairman of Colonial Williamsburg. "What happened in the 18th century here required engagement, and what's required to preserve democracy in the 21st century is engagement. That is really our message."

...Campbell's hope is that such visitors come away having learned something about the nuance and messiness of history -- a theme that runs through all of Colonial Williamsburg's programming."

One thing I wish the Tea Partiers would appreciate more is that the history of our founding does not provide an unequivocal stamp of approval on their modern political outlook and ambitions. I'm not saying "the founders would have disagreed with the Tea Party". Probably many of them would have agreed, and many of them would have disagreed. But this attitude that people have "forgotten the founding" because they disagree with the Tea Party is extremely condescending (someone more disposed towards populism than I might even call it "elitist"). History is complex, particularly the history of the founding, and as Marshall once said "nothing is gained in the long run by pretending it is simple and reducing it to a series of elementary propositions".

Libertarians and Ideological Cross-breeding

Xenophon shares a great link from the blog Really, Libertarians?, about whether libertarians should form alliances with liberals or not. The blogger starts by affirming the libertarians shouldn't attempt to place themselves on the political spectrum. But he goes on to emphasize that that doesn't mean there shouldn't be substantial interchange between the left and libertarians (presumably there has already been such interchange between the right and libertarians).

The discussion is very interesting. I have a few thoughts:

1. First, I find it interesting that he thinks about the "liberaltarian" phenomenon as liberals turning more libertarian and not libertarians turning more liberal. Empirically, I have no clue what direction of conversion dominates. Anecdotally, I can say that I personally moved from libertarian to what I guess you'd call "liberal".

2. And the reason why I made that conversion is important. Libertarian insights in a lot of ways are basic, Econ 101 insights about the efficiency of free contracting writ large and converted into norms or political values. In other words, I think one of the most essential libertarian fallacies is building a politico-ethical system around positive social science findings (and, I want to stress, basic and introductory social science findings at that). It's kind of an odd way of going about formulating a politico-ethical system. We don't adopt Nietzschean super-man ethics because of evolutionary biology, and we shouldn't simply adopt libertarianism because of these insights. I want to be clear - my point is not that you have to mix up normative and positive findings to come to libertarianism. My point is only that it's possible to get everything there is to get out of libertarianism simply by improving people's knowledge of social science. This is only to say that it's not entirely clear to me what should be important here: teaching people more social science, or sharing libertarianism.

3. But even that isn't entirely satisfying - after all, the reason why I abandoned libertarianism was because I kept learning social science. Yes, the market is efficient and the price mechanism leverages decentralized knowledge. But if institutions don't or can't internalize costs and benefits social scientific insights start to militate against the efficiency of markets. Uncertainty and imperfections ensure that market forces, as fantastic as they are, are going to remain sub-optimal. I haven't abandoned any of the introductory insights in adopting these views - the complement the introductory insights that I still use. I still have a relatively contractarian view of human relations. I still take a fairly atomized, individualist view of things. I still come down on Hayek and Mises's side of the socialist calculation debate. But I can't call myself a libertarian. So, if what we really want is to get people to take the implications of social science more seriously, then its not clear that that would move people towards libertarianism either.

4. This all reminds me of something that's been bugging me lately about the way libertarians talk. I recently got Marginal Revolution on my blogroll. I know, I know - that sure took a while. Anyway, the blog uses this language "market-oriented economists" a lot. At first it confused me - Cowen wrote something about how no "market-oriented economists" think the minimum wage raises employment. My response was "haven't you ever heard of Card and Krueger?!?!? It's a little much to say that no market-oriented economists think this". Later it dawned on me - what he meant was "libertarian economists". I think this gets to the point of my feelings on this particular blog post. A lot of libertarians have a pretty twisted view of what non-libertarians think, and the idea that if you're not a libertarian you're not "market-oriented" or "pro-market" is high on the list. I think this sort of thing is completely unproductive. If I were more cynical, I might just as easily turn the epithet on libertarians. I've said before that the market is a lot like a tool in the sense that it works for certain jobs and not for others. You use the right tool for the right job. If you saw someone banging on a screw with a hammer, your reaction wouldn't be "wow - that guy has a deep respect for hammers". Quite the opposite. That's how I see libertarians and markets. I could go around referring to people that see things my way as "market oriented economists", but that would confuse things, just like Cowen and other libertarians that use this phrase as a synonym for "libertarians" confuses things. The fact is there are fundamental differences of opinion - let's leave it at that and stick to the clear terminology when we talk. [Mises.org does this all the time with "pro-liberty" too. It can be very confusing if you don't know what the code-words mean].

This is starting to get a little farther afield, but I think the point I want to make is simply that (1.) the link that Xenophon shares is a very good one and the impulse is very good, but (2.) the guy clearly has blinders on and that limits the usefulness of his more fundamental insight. This is fine. We all have blinders on. I'm providing a few counter-arguments here to help take those blinders off, and people should take them how they will.

Personally I, like the blogger, don't see a lot of use for these ideological spectrums. Mostly I just feel like a non-descript moderate, often I feel like a liberal, sometimes I feel conservative, on occasion I feel downright leftist, and fairly regularly I do feel like a libertarian. The center of gravity for me is probably what you'd call "center-left" but the point is spectrums are often a dumb way to think about this stuff, and even distinct ideologies like "libertarianism" is a dumb way to think about this stuff. It is convenient, though - and convenience matters.

The NAACP statement on the Tea Party

There has been a lot of back and forth on the NAACP statment that I simply haven't engaged in. Some interesting exchanges have gone on on the blogs of The Atlantic that I thought were worth highlighting, specifically some from Ta-Nehisi Coates, here and here. Coates also has a post here titled "Why Black Writers Tend Not to Shout", about how he and other black writers are usually very circumspect because their audiences are often largely white. So they equivocate and try not sound particularly pushy about issues like this. Coates notes that the NAACP's forthrightness on this point was a relief for black writers who typically try to avoid these confrontations. Factually, Coates sounds right on target on this. But I have to say I found it supremely ironic that of all people, Coates wrote this one. He can be very in-your-face in his own comment section, and very dismissive of commenters. I know from personal experience. I've only commented a handful of times before and he's gone into weird attack mode almost every single time, and not just towards me. Usually I comment on posts of his on the Civil War (he's a Civil War history buff). Those posts are his way or the highway - let me put it that way.

I know I can be blunt and I feel perfectly free to disagree strenuously with commenters on this blog too. But then again, I never claimed to be meek and mild, did I? :)

I like Coates's final post on this issue a lot. It is here. I left this in the comment section, which pretty much sums up my views on the NAACP statement on the Tea Party:

"I agree whole-heartedly.

There is a lot to criticize in critiques of the Tea Party movement that frame all Tea Partiers as racist, or that downplay the fact that it fundamentally is a small-government movement (however hypocritical, however poorly executed). The worst commentary on the Tea Party movement has been the commentary that blindly dismisses all of them as racists, and dismisses even the idea that they may be expressing genuine differences of opinion. That has been the worst sort of response.

But the NAACP has provided the best sort of response - the sort of response people should have been making all along, namely that

(1.) Elements of the Tea Party have incontrovertibly racist positions and motivations. This phraseology that they used - discussing "elements" was precisely the right note to strike.

(2.) That these elements should be denounced, not just because the NAACP doesn't like the Tea Party movement, but because if the Tea Party movement itself wants to have any relevance it can't continue to coexist with these elements.

If people confuse these points or fail to understand them, that's on their heads. I thought the NAACP statement was perfectly understandable and right on target.

Now, was it a tactical error? I suppose that depends on how you define it. If you think that ensuring we all communicate our views to each other in a marketplace of ideas is dependent on descending to the least common denominator of public discourse, that it is dependent on getting rid of all nuance and contingency and specificity, then yes, I suppose you might describe the NAACP statement as a "tactical error", because clearly there were willfully ignorant readers that missed the point.

But honestly, I don't want to participate in a public discourse like that, I don't think the NAACP wanted to either, and I applaud them for transcending it."

My unsolicited advice for an anonymous blogger/housekeeping note

A couple months ago Evan asked that readers avoid anonymous commenting, and resorting instead to at least a pseudonym for the purposes of attribution and accountability.

I want to reiterate that plea and impress upon anonymous commenters that when you write things addressed to me like: "PS: You really need to brush up on your economics", and you do it anonymously, you really come across as juvenile. It's also just not the kind of environment we want to promote here. Facts and Other Stubborn Things is not a blog like Brad DeLong's, where we attract attention by insulting other people and their views in our posts. And we don't want it to become like Cafe Hayek, which both attracts attention by insulting other people in their posts and has a comment section where rudeness and attacks substitute for substantive discussion of the post. When I get told I need to brush up on my economics, that's obnoxious, but fine. Sure I do - who doesn't. I know putting yourself up in this kind of forum means opening myself up to crap like that. I'm concerned these comments are going to start getting hurled at other commenters, though - and that's something I don't want to see.

We don't like to delete comments (to my knowledge we never have, have we Evan?), so please (1.) try not to post anonymously - if you have trouble with the the comment interface, just end your comment with your name or pseudonym, and (2.) don't be petty or rude.

And if you violate my first and second request simultaneously, here's some unsolicited advice: you look incredibly childish and no one is going to take you seriously. We all occasionally feel the need to get sharp with others. I have, on occasion, featured it in posts. But if you feel the need to get sharp, at least man up and identify yourself when you do it.

Kling on a Budget Compromise... I hope he doesn't actually consider this to be as original as he seems to be considering it

It can be very strange to read Arnold Kling sometimes - sometimes I get the impression he is very disconnected from the world outside GMU libertarianism. He writes about the budget hawk/stimulus dove fiscal policy combo of:

"1 A larger deficit in the short term.
2. Specific, clear measures to reduce deficits over the next ten years, by trimming entitlements and raising taxes.
3. Linking (1) and (2) in a single piece of legislation."

And then says "I would think someone would articulate it"...

...ya Arnold - LOT'S of people articulate this. Paul Krugman, Brad DeLong, and Ezra Klein to name a few that advocated this sort of thing in the very recent past. All these liberal bogeymen fall more or less in line with what Kling describes, not as a compromise position, but as their preferred position. Krugman was talking about the long-term budget back in the Bush administration too, so its not just a matter of talking responsibly as a means of selling his stimulus wish-list. Instead of recognizing this for what it is - a differentiation between macroeconomically unsound boom-time deficits, macroeconomically sound bust-time deficits, and a completely separate long-term entitlements problem - critics of Krugman act like he flip flops from the Bush administration to the Obama administration. Scott Sumner attributed it to "Bush derangement syndrome" in a post that really makes you wonder how well Sumner knows his opposition. Sometimes - sometimes - reading posts by Kling or Sumner you get the impression that they think everyone out there that doesn't see things the way they do is a liberal, vulgar Keynesian that thinks we should always be spending tons of money. There's no recognition at all that this proposal he outlines is largely what a lot of left and center-left people have been saying for a very long time. It's always been my position. It's the position of the entire executive office here at the Urban Institute (Bob Reischauer, Rudy Penner, Gene Steuerle, the late Ned Gramlich, Len Burman (formerly of the Urban Institute)), all of them! Some of these guys are very, very liberal and I've heard considerably more serious talk from each of them about the long-term budget than I've heard out of all of EconLog commenters put together.

Talking past each other and second guessing each other is a very serious problem in economic and policy debates. It's part of the reason why I've consciously tried to take a firm, not-entirely-convinced, but receptive position on libertarianism and the Austrian School here on this blog. I think it's important to overcome this second guessing each other as much as possible (and sometimes there are legitimate disagreements that are simply going to stand). But it really makes me wonder how progress on something like fiscal policy is possible when someone like Arnold Kling doesn't appear to realize that the position he outlines is a very, very common one that I at least hear every single day.

There's a lot of distrust or sheer misunderstanding to overcome just among researchers and wonks - and we're not even the ones with constituencies and clients to pander to! Congress is a whole different can of worms!

Anonymity is for losers.

Daniel and I prefer to operate in a relatively easy-going manner about comment policies; we're not into moderation or any sort of censorship.  Folks can pretty much say anything around here and they're not going to offend us enough to reap any sort of administrative action.  One thing that does get unwieldy, though, is when there are tons and tons of anonymous posters.

While I think that posting under one's own name is usually best because of the restraint it puts upon a person to own up to their words, I know that sometimes this personal attention is troublesome, risky, or even dangerous.  So I get the reasons why people post anonymously (although our conversations have never struck me as heated enough to really worry about such protections).  But when we have long threads of conversation in the comment section, or regular return visitors offering their thoughts on a variety of topics, it can be incredibly confusing when half of them have the same non-name.

I'd encourage readers of this blog to post with their real name, at least their first name, unless there's a genuine reason not to do so.  By approaching blogging in this way, a real conversation is better fostered.  Even a pseudonym, if you aren't comfortable with a real first name, would make things a lot more straightforward.  This isn't going to be a rule or anything, but I thought it would be worth making the plea to people.  Perhaps in the future I will shamelessly conflate the arguments of multiple anonymities in a comment section.  As I see it, you're asking for that sort of misreading when you post namelessly.

Mohammed Day Winners

Reason.com selects some winners... all very clever, and interestingly enough, all playing on the theme of bending over backwards to conform to ridiculous strictures. Each of these pictures begs the question of the fundamentalist: "well is this OK? No? How about this?", and you begin to realize that this isn't about substantive concerns at all - it's about inventing a reason to act out violently. I think the winners are well chosen.

This one is not a pipe... but guess who it is!!!

Where's Mohammed? (poor Mohammed - all those exposed females!!!)

Hmmm... looks more like a Smurf to me, but "A" for effort

Everybody Draw Mohammed Day

So what do readers think of this "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" business? A couple weeks ago, I had a quick post supporting the creators of South Park after they were threatened with violence for their satire. Evan was a little concerned about it (I reproduced one of the Danish cartoons in the post), but as a good skeptic of censorship (self-imposed and externally imposed), he was fine with me putting it up. And since the South Park incident the threats and violence keep coming. However "provocative" these artists and writers may be, the worst they provoke is angry words. They are indeed provocative - that's obviously the point. But that doesn't mean this violence is what they've provoked. They have provoked anger, but the violence I think needs to be considered unprovoked, because there is nothing that can even begin to justify it.

Anyway, it's not like I'm going to doodle a cartoon and post it. I have no real objection to that, but no inclination either. However, I am curious what people think about this. Some perspectives are deserving of ridicule. Nobody is plastering mosques attended by peaceful Muslims with these ridiculing cartoons (that I'm aware of). The people involved here - Vilks, van Gogh, Parker, Stone, Rushdie, etc. - aren't trying to marginalize or intimidate Muslims in general. I think they're quite clearly singling out a particularly totalitarian and illiberal segment of Islam, and because they're doing that it's natural for me not only to take their side, but also to have a degree of respect for continued deliberate satirical efforts, like Draw Mohammed Day.

But maybe I'm just a jackass. What do readers think of this effort?

UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan linked to this about a month ago. It shows depictions of Mohammed in art by Muslims. Muslims haven't always had the hang-ups that some do today.

A question to philosophers, theologians, and other assorted vague prognosticators

I meant to write about this a week or two ago when I first saw it. I was in the bookstore, looking through the philosophy section, and a new book by Slavoj Zizek caught my eye. I know Evan is interested, if not always in agreement, with him so I picked it up. I flipped to the back cover and I read:

"There should no longer be any doubt: global capitalism is fast approaching its terminal crisis."

I have to ask - what do you people think when you read something like that? What goes through your head? Do you have any clue how vacuous that statement is?

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I read what I consider to be pretty crazy assertions by certain schools of thought that will remain nameless a lot - maybe they just don't phase me because while I think they're equally crazy I at least have a sense of the lineage of the craziness. I can trace it back to its source - which is not quite so crazy. And maybe I just shouldn't worry so much about a guy making crazy remarks about something that he really doesn't have substantial insight into, because it's just a way of framing what he's going to say - which may very well be insightful. Or maybe I'm just giving Zizek more credit than I should because I've heard people speak well of him - maybe I really should dismiss him entirely for such a boorish, ill-conceived, and quite frankly inaccurate sentiment. At least hedge it. Take the Schumpeter route and suggest that capitalism is going through epic developmental changes. But I have a feeling that that's not what Zizek is really thinking about here. I have the sense that Zizek is taking the position that much of the left did during the Great Depression, namely that "this crisis will end it for good". It's not an evolution a la Schumpeter - it's Judgement Day.

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How should I take this? If I didn't know who Zizek was I would have re-shelved the book and concluded that the author was worthless and confused. Since I do know Zizek, I have to ask myself these questions - and I also have to wonder whether I make unwarranted statements like this myself.

And while we're on the topic of bat-shit crazy intellectuals that actually have some really insightful things to say, but regularly manage to pair those insights with the most ridiculous garbage, I noticed this morning that the state of Israel denied Noam Chomsky entry. Chomsky probably isn't surprised, but I wonder if it's something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. However, cooler heads seem to be prevailing. The interior ministry recently said:

"We are trying to contact the military to clear things up and if they have no objection we see no reason why he should not be allowed in."

I've always liked this 1993 vs. 2007 comparison of Christopher Hitchens's evolving perspective on Noam Chomsky. Now that I think about it, Hitchens is another one that I like a lot, but who has also said really dumb things in his time - also often with respect to capitalism.

Capitalism is a real stumbling block for these guys.

Anyway - I'm seriously asking this question to people who might be kinder to Zizek, who like him, or who come from a background more similar to his: How should I receive a book like that? Am I wrong to instinctively conclude it must be mostly rubbish?

Wikigovernance

Eric Cantor (R-VA) started up an interesting project called YouCut, where people can vote for what they want to cut from the budget.

In its current form, it's beyond ridiculous. As many have noticed, it's nothing short of gimick. Not only will these votes have no impact at all on what Congress does, but the "savings" Cantor presents don't amount to much at all next to the entire budget.

But I think it's an interesting tactic. You could call it "common law 2.0". Simply voting on issues is only the most obvious thing to do. Presumably, though, we could have a Wikipedia-like site where actual legislation could be posted and amended. An obvious problem would be internet trolls that sabotage a potential wikilaw, but a solution might be to have self-policing communities with membership requirements and reviewers produce many different laws. You could have, for example, a conservative wikilaw community, a libertarian wikilaw community, and a progressive wikilaw community each with hundreds of users. Each could set up its own rules (that's kind of the point), but we could a imagine a situation where an aspiring wikilaw participant could apply for membership, and have an application reviewed and approved or disapproved by current members. Current members could also elect a review committee that keeps an eye on wikilaw revisions and on all the members in an effort to identify trolls. Each wikilaw community could have its own rules for arbitrating differences of opinion on changes. And ultimately, the community could vote on a wikilaw they think they've perfected. They could even have two circles of membership - one for people who would actually have a hand in crafting legislation, and a more open circle for wikilaw voters. Perhaps a potential wikilaw would have to be approved by both communities.

Once a wikilaw community builds a law in this way, they could submit it to an overarching website where anyone could vote for it. Or, the wikilaw text could be passed on to legislators would would then submit the law in Congress. Amendments in Congress to the original wikilaw could be highlighted by the wikilaw community.

The reasons why direct democracy can be dangerous, and why a republic can be preferable, are well understood. However, there can also be legitimate concerns about the extent to which an opaque republic can do away with the very real benefits of democracy. User-generated legislation in the context of a republic can overcome some of these concerns, I think.

There would be bugs to work out. "Technocrat" is often thought of as a dirty word, but the fact is there are a lot of things that the state does that are very technical and hard to understand. Budget policy is one of those things, particularly insofar as the budget plays a role in macroeconomic policy. Part of me sympathizes with the Bryan Caplan school of thought about democracies making bad policies and "The Myth of the Rational Voter". Then again, part of what Caplan ascribes to poorly informed voters is probably simply a difference of opinion (but of course it's harder for him to sell a book highlighting the fact that there are differences of opinion out there!). I think quite a bit of what Caplan himself would put in place would be "bad policy", but that doesn't mean that I think he's poorly informed or unworthy of voting. This is largely why we have democratic institutions - because the voters that Caplan would exclude aren't necessarily the voters that I would exclude (if I were to accept the underlying logic of a more limited suffrage).

The Fascist Octopus Has Taken The White House!

Bryan Caplan has urged "grateful bloggers" to "dance on the grave of Marxism" this May Day [please also see update at the bottom of this post]. It seems to me to be a very appropriate dance floor. Caplan offers his own contribution in a counter-factual history of what could have happened if Lenin had his fatal stroke in 1917. I raise some issues with the counter-factual he poses (fifth comment down), but all in all it's interesting.

I was going to offer insights from my favorite anti-Marxist, John Maynard Keynes. But then I saw an Atlantic post on accusations of Obama's Marxism, and I decided that I needed to stamp that out instead. I think Keynes would have approved. He spent much of his career critiquing both laissez-faire and Marxism, and in pointing out to people how Marxism was anti-thetical to his own ideas and threatened the cause of liberty. Back to Obama. On his tour of the Midwest, Obama said something that agitated the hyper-sensitive, hyperbolic, and self-righteous Right. He said: "I do think that at a certain point you've made enough money." Mark Levin said that the sentiment has "strong shades of Marxism". Seems like a pretty reasonable interpretation...

Except that I've misquoted Obama. I added a period, where he had a comma. What Obama actually said was:

"We're not trying to push financial reform because we begrudge success that's fairly earned. I do think that at a certain point you've made enough money, [<-- COMMA!!!!!!!] but you know part of the American way is that you can just keep on making it if you're providing a good product or you're providing a good service. We don't want people to stop fulfilling the core responsibilities of the financial system to help grow the economy."

Yes, when you start switching around commas and periods, and when you don't restate the entire sentence you can make it sound like just about anything. What's sadder, though, is that you know this is going to get traction.

It's like that infamous Chicago radio interview where Obama explicitly said that the courts were not the right place to pursue economic justice, and yet somehow the message that came out of that was that we should pursue economic justice in the courts. It's the same thing here with this "enough money" statement. He explicitly said in the sentence quoted above that people should continue to earn money - more money than they even need - if they're providing a good or service that people want. That's the epitome of market capitalism. How the hell does that get turned into Marxism? It's bizarre to see people do these mental gymnastics to take a grammatically simple sentence and turn it into what they wanted him to say.

At least in the Chicago radio interview, Obama elaborated his idea over the course of several sentences. He spent quite a bit of time explaining why the courts failed to achieve all the aims of the Civil Rights movement, why they weren't the right place to achieve all the aims of the Civil Rights movement, and for that reason why the leaders of the Civil Rights movement were wrong to put so much emphasis on the court process when they should have put more emphasis on community organizing. It took him a while to lay that thesis out - it's a complicated thesis after all! But this point about "enough money" is just one sentence. Can't people read all the way to the period at the end of the sentence? A couple years ago I would have said "can't people listen to the end of a radio interview before forming your full opinion?". Since then I've realized we really don't have that much attention span - but I would have thought we could at least finish the end of a sentence. Apparently not.

In the Chicago radio interview, Obama laid out a strong case for (1.) negative rights, and (2.) a limited role for legislating from the bench. Willful misreading or involuntary ignorance twisted that into a case for (1.) positive rights, and (2.) an expansive role for the courts. By the same token, Obama is here making an explicit case for market capitalism, where people can continue to earn money beyond what they could possibly need if they're providing a useful product. But willful misreading or involuntary ignorance is turning it into precisely the opposite message. What's most striking is that they're twisting his words where they have common ground with him! They presumably agree with him on this point. So why not agree with him on this point and then disagree with him on the details of the finance reform where you legitimately disagree with him? The answer, of course, is simple. Claiming that Obama doesn't want you to make any more money after you've "made enough" plays better in a campaign ad than detailed disagreements on the financial reform bill. And these people - like all politicians - are all about winning power. They're all about the next election. So they choose to do and say what is most advantageous for winning power.

If the Lincoln-Douglas debates were held today, Douglas would have won hands down. People simply don't have the attention span to listen to an entire point. They form their opinion ahead of time and hear only the snippets that buttress that opinion. That is not a good sign for free society.

UPDATE: When I had read Bryan's initial post, I got the impression that this was just an opportunity for a bunch of people to discredit Marxism and celebrate the (relative) lack of Marxism that we've enjoyed as a planet since 1989. The Distributed Republic, which is aggregating many of these posts, has something more specific in mind - remembering the victims of Marxism. This is also an important thing to do today. I'm not sure what exactly to say on the matter - the facts speak for themselves. Millions died at the hands of this ideology. But why was the ideology so powerful? Ultimately, I think it was powerful because of human hubris. We place a high premium on our own intelligence and ability to figure things out. We are pretty smart creatures - it's not an entirely inexplicable hubris. But ultimately it's fallacious. We make mistakes. And our failures can be especially damaging when we get too wrapped up in extended, logically deduced megaprojects like Marxism. Logical deduction is very enticing. In theory, it's air-tight. It's a fantastic way to discover truths. But deductive logic is contingent on two pillars: accurate axioms or assumptions, and a valid chain of deductions. Human frailty often misleads us on both those points. However impressive logical deduction is on paper, we always manage to mess it up. Marxism emerged from this supreme confidence in man's ability to figure things out. When the early Marxists first devised their socialist framework, they relied on their ability to figure out the determinist contours of human society. That was hubris. The practitioners of Marxism added to that initial hubris the mistake of assuming that they could actually plan something as complicated as the economy. The Marxists were so confident in their deductive reasoning and so unwilling to test their ideas against experience that they felt justified in immolating countless innocent human beings. Hubris breeds confidence in our own logic, and confidence in our own logic leads us to violently defend logically deduced megaprojects that we've convinced ourselves can solve all the problems of the world. This hubris is the underlying failure of all megaprojects based on deductive logic: from Communism to libertarianism. Human reasoning is a powerful tool, but it has to be tempered and tested with experience. Anyone who tells you that they've figured everything out and by their logic Communism works is a fool. You can't figure out in your head some silver bullet form of social organization. By the same token, anyone who tells you that they've eschewed empirical testing and through their deductive logic they have concluded that libertarianism is a fool-proof silver bullet for social organization is also a fool. I'm bringing libertarianism into this, because I think the debate over Marxism is often skewed and distorted. Superficially, many ideologies are stark opposites - but unless we see their common underlying fallacies we inevitably threaten life and liberty. Verification, falsification, and empiricism dictate that people square their understanding of the social and political world with the understanding and experience of others. With these priorities, you cannot have the mass death that we experienced at the hands of Marxism. That sort of thing is only possible if you close your mind to experience and rely only on your own logical abilities (or, I suppose, if you are both an empiricist and a sociopath). The crimes of Marxism originated in the hubris of its deductive reasoning, which was cantilevered out to undergird an alien ideology.

Will the real "epistemic closure" please stand up?

There has been considerable discussion in the blogosphere about the "epistemic closure" of modern American conservatism. It seems to have started with Julian Sanchez, who expressed concerns about AEI's treatment of David Frum (an issue that has been disconcerting for me as well, as a think tank employee myself). Douthat, Yglesias, McArdle, Friedersdorf, and many others responded to Sanchez's thoughts. Another major engagement has involved Manzi and Levin at The National Review, over a piece that Levin wrote on climate change. Bruce Bartlett has shared his own, very well known experience in the conservative movement. Ezra Klein adds some interesting (if limited) empirical evidence (I share his criticism of the method - but as he suggests, something similar could be expanded upon). There's certainly a lot that I've missed, but each of these links will lead you to other links - so you should be able to catch up (I haven't read through it all in detail - I've been putting my free time into studying for a final this week).

Anyway, through all of these really great thoughts, I think the meaning of the initial "epistemic closure" concern has been lost. I count at least three versions of "epistemic closure" available to us - two of which are being addressed in this ongoing debate, and a third that I think is especially interesting to think about.

Version 1 (Wrong and Uninteresting): "Epistemic Closure" as shorthand for various and sundry bitching about conservatism
One of my biggest concerns, however, has been that this whole debate has degenerated into complaining about conservatism, rather than providing a clear critique of conservatism. For Bruce Bartlett, conservatism's alleged epistemic closure amounts to: "They don’t think there are any new ideas of particular interest to them. Their philosophy is fully formed. The only question is how best to implement conservative ideas in the political debate". His concern seems to be the increasing activism of conservatism, and the rigidity of their value system. Others have talked about the "conservative cocoon" phenomenon, where conservatives (allegedly) have restricted interactions with those who don't share their views (in a similar vein, a friend from college shared this this interesting research with me on the closedness of the conservative blogosphere). Douthat focuses on the point of whether there are internal debates in conservatism, a question that is especially salient in light of the Frum Affair. But none of these address the more fundamental point of epistemic closure that was originally raised.

Bartlett's concern about activism and values is beside the initial point. Marxists, for example (at least the early Marxists) were unalloyed activists with a completely closed value system, but they were very thorough in thinking through epistemological questions. As for the "cocoon", the phrase "the ivory tower" is definitive of the cocooning of a group of thinkers - and yet no one accuses the academy of having an underdeveloped approach to epistemology. Douthat's concern with internal debate also has nothing to do with epistemic closure. There is no debate to speak of that 2+2=4 or that the Earth revolves around the Sun. Does that mean it is supported by a suspect epistemology? As I say, I haven't read all of this in great detail, but a lot of the debate seems to simply be a random assortment of complaints about conservatism, with the fancy phrase "epistemic closure" thrown in as a catch-all.

Version 2 (Wrong and Interesting): "Epistemic Closure" and the way that conservatives know what they "know"
Beneath the surface of these random complaints, there is real concern with and discussion of what Julian Sanchez initially meant by "epistemic closure" - namely, how conservatives derive knowledge about the issues that they pontificate on. Sanchez argues that accuracy of the knowledge inputs for the conservative movement are increasingly unimportant. Conspiracy theories, birth certificate skepticism, and crazy Beckesque guilt-by-association chalkboard flow charts have (so the argument goes) become sufficient factual fodder on which conservatives build their arguments.

The Manzi-Levin debate on the National Review is worth looking at as an example (well, at least Manzi's initial post is an example) of a genuine discussion of epistemological questions. Climate change is one issue where I think conservatives are pretty clearly ignoring the evidence to defend what is essentially an ideological position. Other issues, such as financial regulation, health reform, and fiscal stimulus are more dubious issues. I think it's hard to make a blanket statement that conservatives "ignore the evidence" more than liberals. Often they're taking the same evidence and simply applying a different set of values to it. Regardless, it's a fruitful question to ask - and there are a lot of conservatives, particularly in Washington, that do seem to be assuming their own conclusions rather than carefully reviewing the evidence.

Version 3 (Right and Very Interesting): The "Epistemic Closure" of Julian Sanchez's undergraduate subconscious
The New York Times reports Sanchez's confession that "he probably fished “epistemic closure” out of his subconscious from an undergraduate course in philosophy". Indeed he did. Sanchez used "epistemic closure" to describe the problem of "epistemological closed-mindedness", but "epistemic closure" is also a technical term in philosophy, which I only stumbled across recently while preparing for this blog post. The short definition of "epistemic closure" is:

"The principle that, where P and Q are propositions, if we know that P, and know that P logically entails Q, we know that Q"

In other words, "closure" refers to a closed system of knowledge, not closed-mindedness. I think it's fine that Sanchez didn't use "epistemic closure" in this technical sense, but it's interesting to think about the implications of this definition. The idea of "epistemic closure" is often closely associated with skepticism, because of the very real possibility that your knowledge of your initial statement (P), somehow (implicitly) presupposes the later statement (Q). The example given in this longer treatment of epistemic closure is:

"the proposition I have a driver’s license issued by the state of North Carolina entails that North Carolina is not a mere figment of my imagination"

The skeptical position would point out that your ability to make the initial statement presupposes the truth of the second statement. It's not exactly what Sanchez had in mind (and I should point out that I think what he did have in mind, while not exactly "epistemic closure", was also very interesting), but this does relate to a problem that I'm personally concerned about: the problem of deductively extended logical systems of thought. Theoretically, deductive logic is a fantastic source of knowledge. But it relies on two fundamental pillars: the accuracy of its axioms and presuppositions, and the validity of its deductions. The skeptical objection to arguments based on "epistemic closure" are very similar to my (perhaps less formalized) reservations about deductive logic and a disproportionate emphasis on rationality and reason in general.

Logical formality can amplify the errors of bad initial assumptions, while providing the veneer of incontrovertibility. As logical systems get increasingly extended, making broader and broader claims, the initial errors (which may have been negligible) can easily multiply into substantial errors. As Nikola Tesla once said: "Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality". In economics, I think the Austrian School and Real Business Cycle School are both excellent examples of Tesla's scientists who have "wandered off", confident in their deductive systems that bear no relation to reality. At least Real Business Cycle theorists will do empirical work to check up on things. The Austrian School explicitly refuses to do this check up.

I suppose I've wandered quite far from the point of conservative "epistemic closure" over the course of this etymological exercise. Are conservatives more likely to "wander off" with deductive arguments built from fallacious assumptions? Quite possibly. I think that's an open question.

Solidarity

The creators of South Park recently joined the ranks of many other artists whose lives were threatened by Muslim fundamentalists dedicated to the proposition that other human beings who don't share their values or who offend their sensibilities don't deserve to draw breath. The motivations behind Muslim rage and frustration are varied and complex. I would even submit that some of these motivations may be justified. Muslim societies across the world have borne considerable pain and suffering over the last several decades - much of it entirely unprovoked. But none of this justifies threats to artists and satirists working to enlighten, enrich, and entertain us.

To add insult to injury, Comedy Central censored the episode that Trey Parker and Matt Stone submitted. This isn't a first amendment issue, of course. Comedy Central had every right to do what it did. But in my opinion, they tarnished themselves by abandoning Trey and Matt, who have worked tirelessly to deconstruct shibboleths and taboos. You may not enjoy the show, but to a certain extent you have to respect the satirical mission.

Militant fundamentalist Islam is more than a security threat. It is a step backwards in human evolution - a regress to a time before modernism and humanism - as is every militant fundamentalism. Perhaps the only difference between Islamic militant fundamentalism and other varieties is that its toxic combination of revealed truth, liberal textual appeals to violence, and an explicitly global sense of its own jurisdiction imbues the movement with a unique animation and activism. Nationally based militant fundamentalisms (such as national fascist movements), or militant fundamentalisms based on other epistemologies than revealed truth (such as international Communism) are certainly disturbing, but in many ways they are less disconcerting. More reasonable epistemologies can be reasoned with or disproven. More limited jurisdictional claims can be isolated or even simply appeased. Militant fundamentalist Islam is a different beast that is only further complicated by the fact that there most definitely is (and we can never forget this) a considerably more widespread non-militant, non-fundamentalist Islam.

I can only speak for myself, not Evan - but I want to offer this post in solidarity with South Park and all the other artists, film makers, and writers that have faced or even suffered death at the hands of these people.

South Park

The Danish Cartoonists

Theo Van Gogh

Salman Rushdie

And an intriguing response suggestion.