The Sumner Political Wheel

At this point, several people have shared and discussed Scott Sumner’s division of the political landscape into six groups, and a lot of people like it.

I started as positively pre-disposed to it myself. I have a few questions about it though. I feel most at home in the upper-right orange, between pragmatic libertarian and idealistic progressive. But there’s something weird about being there, because I don’t feel like I’m especially an idealist. I feel a lesser identification with the dark red group (see my caveat on the narrowness of this idea of a “corrupt progressive” below) and the yellow “minimal state” group, each of which emerges more on some points than others. There’s something very odd about this arrangement, though. Notice there is no:

1. Pragmatic progressive
2. Pragmatic conservative
3. Dogmatic progressive
4. Dogmatic conservative
5. Corrupt libertarian, or
6. Idealistic libertarian

Why? Sumner suggests that by “corrupt” he doesn’t mean “taking bribes”, he just means abandoning principles to please people. But that’s an extremely narrow way of thinking about the reasons for flexibility in an ideological perspective. Sumner allows for pragmatic libertarians and considers himself one. Why? Presumably because he doesn’t think he’s “abandoning principles” for someone – he’s simply pragmatically recognizing where principles are good guides and where they are less good guides. He sees principles as broad sketches or frameworks for approaching problems not divine laws. He is, in short, a pragmatic libertarian.

But don’t progressives and conservatives act flexibly for precisely this reason as well? Most progressives and most conservatives aren’t in power and aren’t seeking votes, so they’re clearly not maintaining a flexible outlook to “please special interest groups”. Even many progressives and conservatives in power aren’t doing this to “please special interest groups”. There is a good reason to push for tort reform – the Republicans aren’t just kowtowing to the doctors. Clinton didn’t work on welfare reform to cater to a segment of the political spectrum, he largely did it because it needed to be done! This complete lack of pragmatism on the progressive/conservative side of Sumner's schema and complete lack of a “corruption” group on the libertarian side says a lot about Sumner.

He has some strange points here too. Dogmatic libertarians and idealistic conservatives revere the original intent of the Constitution? That this sentence was written by a libertarian is blatantly obvious. A progressive would say that it’s the dogmatic libertarians and idealistic conservatives that are putting their own modern spin on the Constitution. But of course the very idea that this is even a contested point is foreign to many libertarians and conservatives. They simply assume that progressives have knowingly and proudly written off the founders!

There’s also something very odd going on when Scott Sumner and Will Wilkinson both put themselves pretty darn close on this mapping to where I put myself (we seem to just be on different halves of the same segment). I imagine a lot of progressives and a lot of libertarians are all putting themselves in that segment. What good is this schema if that’s where everybody in the discussion puts themselves? I imagine anarcho-capitalists are going to put themselves in the yellow area rather than the very light purple area. When a centrist Keynesian and an anarcho-capitalist are adjacent to each other something’s a little off, I think.

I don’t like that old diamond model much, personally – but even over the course of writing this post I’m starting to think that is better than this.

What's Obama doing in Wisconsin?

I haven't done a federalism post in a while, but I woke up and saw this on the Washington Post website and it pissed me off. What is Obama doing wading into this budget brawl in Wisconsin? I'm not following the Wisconsin situation very closely - it's not just about the budget, there is also union stuff there too (which is another fascination of this administration that I don't particularly share), but the point is these are issues to be decided in Madison, not Washington. There are some things like, say, funding for higher education where there is a case to be made that there's a national role in funding scientific research or something like that, in addition to state funding. I don't see how this extends to a state's own budget or the organization of public employees.

To block the measures, a bunch of Democrats in the legislature have skipped town in an effort to deny Republicans a quorum. This sort of thing has precedent, of course. Texas Democrats did it as recently as 2003 to stymie a Republican redistricting effort that they considered grossly unfair. Tom DeLay tried to sic the FBI on them (they politely declined the request), while Willie Nelson brought them whiskey in solidarity. It does back farther than that too - the Pennsylvania Anti-Federalists ditched their legislature to try to block ratification of the Constitution. I like to think of this sort of thing as creative filibustering. I hate that the filibuster has just turned into a super-majority requirement. If a Senator is willing to stand up and read from the phone-book for hours, that's fine. If a Senator wants to hole up in a cheap motel across state lines, that's fine. They exerted some effort. Now its just a pro-forma way of circumventing democracy.

*****

Federalism issues came up in Alex Tabarrok's discussion of "Keynesian politics" yesterday, too. I didn't elaborate too much at the time, but I oughta here. One of the policies he suggests was the somewhat amorphous "funding for states". I've come out against using federal funds to shore up state budgets in the past, and I did in the comment section of this post too. I wrote:

"The real failure of Keynesian politics, we should remember, is at the state level. The reason why government spending was fairly flat despite a huge increase in federal spending is because the feds were essentially filling a hole that the states were digging. How do [we] keep on pushing Keynesian politics AND prepare for the next crisis? Loosen state balanced budget requirements. Then federal fiscal policy will have some traction and states won't be hamstrung."

When the federal government starts solving state problems, states stop solving their own problems, and they don't implement the reforms that would help them do better. Don't get me wrong, I think we're better off since the federal government was able to fill the gap in this particular case than we would have been, but a federal rescue means more federal control, and it means that they can't focus on demand management because they're spending all their money on keeping states afloat.

Tyler Cowen notes a trend in states rejecting federal money as well, and suggests that this represents a new chapter in American federalism. Maybe - we'll have to see. I have always said that health reform needed to look more like welfare reform in the 1990s, with a lot more flexibility at the state level. I'd rather not have it as ad hoc as Cowen is describing here (Arizona getting a waiver to tighten certain requirements), and I'd rather see states bringing new innovative ideas to the table rather than just tightening up old ways of doing things - but we'll see how it goes.

Hints of Thomas Kuhn

So I'm almost done with Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. It's very good and very rich. I think everyone knows the basic Kuhnian argument about paradigm shifts in science, but Kuhn is one of those writers that packs a lot more detail and insights into his books than just the central thesis that most people know. I recommend it, particularly for epistemologically minded people that have a tendency to think about the scientific method and the understanding that it builds in terms of pure epistemology and questions of "knowledge".

Anyway, I've seen a couple hints of Kuhn on blogs ever since I started reading it. I think that's always a good sign - when you read something, and applications of what you read seem to pop up places.

- First, a couple days ago Jonathan Catalan asked the question "what the heck does an economist study?". This is not a new question - it's been the subject of several presidential addresses to the AEA, books, commentary, etc. Answers range from "economics is whatever economists want to talk about" to more specific responses. One of the things that Jonathan notes is that economists really don't do deep epistemological work anymore. Jonathan writes:

"The book has gotten me thinking, however, about how the important epistemological questions of economics have been slowly pushed aside, in favor of more empirical, mostly historical questions. Perhaps it is a sign that most economists seem to be content with whatever foundations they base their own research on and instead trudge forward — these elementary, basic metaphysical questions seem redundant. This, however, does not satisfy me, because these questions are still relevant, especially given the fact that there is no widespread consensus on what an economist studies, and what is the best method by which to study whatever is being studied — one could go as far as to claim that these questions have not been completely answered within the Austrian School, even!"

This has never bothered me that much for the reason that Jonathan points out - we already answered that question. The question hasn't been "pushed aside" it has been answered! Kuhn talks about this process in the emergence of a "mature" science, and he notes that epistemological and metaphysical discussions are a hallmark of pre-scientific thought, or at least immature science. I think this is an important component of the case for economics as a science - that we have settled are epistemological and methodological questions fairly conclusively. It also addresses why so many people who are not satisfid with that answer are also less likely to see economics as a science.

- Second, many people have remarked on Bryan Caplan's explanation of why so many GMU professors blog. In it, he recognizes another Kuhnian concept - "normal science". Normal science, for Kuhn, is puzzle-solving. The scientific paradigm sets up a series of puzzles that are relevant for the scientist to solve: cataloguing new elements, tracking new orbits, and also just generally fitting observational data to an existing paradigm. Caplan argues that most economists are puzzle-solvers, and that apparently this is in contrast to bigger-picture thinkers that are more likely to blog. I'm noting the Kuhnian reference here, but I'm not buying the argument. Austrians and libertarians are puzzle-solvers too, they just work on slightly different puzzles than the rest of the discipline. It doesn't seem like much of an explanation for blogging behavior. Caplan also talks about GMU professors' relationship with "the life of the mind" and a deeper appreciation for the issues than you get from a typical economics class. I also don't quite buy this argument, again because I don't think GMU professors are unique in this. I attribute GMU blogging to some path depenence (early successes by a few bloggers encouraging others), and the entrepreneurial nature of the GMU department (they are well known for head-hunting big names and cultivating niche sub-fields).

- Finally, Brad DeLong had a post where he described relativity as easier to understand than essentially all other modern physics (this was in a response to a guy who said he understood evolution but had to take relativity on faith). Sean Carroll, a blogger at Cosmic Variance, agreed with Brad that relativity isn't that tough to grasp. What caught my attention was this line:

"He’s completely right, of course. While relativity has a reputation for being intimidatingly difficult, it’s a peculiar kind of difficulty. Coming at the subject without any preparation, you hear all kinds of crazy things about time dilating and space stretching, and it seems all very recondite and baffling. But anyone who studies the subject appreciates that it’s a series of epiphanies: once you get it, you can’t help but wonder what was supposed to be so all-fired difficult about this stuff."

The idea of a "series of epiphanies" is very Kuhnian. We resist understandings because we don't have an underlying paradigm that allows us to see facts in a way that is relevant to a scientific theory. One of the episodes that Kuhn talks about a lot is the development of theories of electricity in the mid 18th century. There was a time when electricity was actually thought of as a fluid. That was the dominant paradigm. Static and charges in things that had not directly touched an electrical current were simply ignored as "leaks" from the electrical fluid - complete side-shows. Not important. By changing how one understood electricity and abandoning the idea that electricity was a fluid, that which was peripheral and an oddity made perfect sense. The important thing about paradigm shifts is that they change the way you see the world. Theories that were once inconceivable then become obvious, and those that were once obvious start to look silly. The nature of time is a great example - our senses cause us to rebel against the idea of time as a dimension, but when you accept that a lot of new intuitions follow naturally. Our senses cause us to rebel against the idea that we are just like other animals, but when you accept that, a lot of new intuitions follow.

Obnoxious and funny notices from Yale Econ hopefuls...

OK - all day today I've been refreshing thegradcafe.com to check out whether any of my schools have given admission notices yet.

So far it's just been a lot of Yale, Rice, and American (I got my admission to American).

The Yale rejections have been interesting... I've seen one obnoxious one and one funny one. First, one guy wrote of his Yale rejection: "sad, the backup uni of my applications". Look, dude - if Yale is your backup then, (1.) you're probably a dumbass for having Yale as your backup, and (2.) you're definitely a jackass for feeling the need to tell everyone that was just your backup, and (3.) you're definitely a dumbass for telling us that after receiving a rejection from them.

Later, there was a funnier Yale rejection that took the self-absorption down a notch. He wrote "I did not want their 37k stipend anyway - too much for me" :)

Why in the world does Yale have that kind of stipend anyway?

Tabbarok on Keynes

Alex Tabbarok suggests that even if we accept Keynesian economics, Keynesian politics has failed (and he cites Krugman on that). Further, he argues that Keynesian politics may always fail, and that it may only be possible in totalitarian regimes (he cites Keynes - although I think he's jumping on the bandwagon rather than doing a close read on this one). He then suggests that, knowing this, what policies should we implement to address depressions before they happen.

I offered a comment that critiqued his initial premise about Keynesian politics. I wrote:

"This is sort of an odd view. If we accept, as you suggest we could at least theoretically, Keynesian economic analysis, then wouldn't a "failed" (what would we call this - 25% of the way? 30% of the way?) Keynesian policy still be better than a failure to attempt any Keynesian policy?
If we accept Keynesian analysis, shouldn't the policy be "do as much Keynesianism as you can get through a democratic republic and just understand you probably won't reach any kind of ideal"?

Not that your other options are bad ideas, I just don't see how the "failure" of the politics means that in politics we should abandon the analysis.

It's also worth noting that not everyone is so down on policy as Krugman. Many have pointed out that while fiscal authorities have not behaved in an especially Keynesian way, monetary authorities have done OK at least. That's something, right?

This is also just a failure of "Keynesian politics" in depressions. Presumably in periods outside the 1930s-1940s and post-2008 we have had successful demand management through both fiscal and monetary policy, and a decent re-evaluation and re-formulation of crude Keynesianism after the 1970s. You pick out the two depressions, but the whole post-war period can be broadly understood as "Keynesian politics".

If you are saying "we can't expect perfection", then of course that's true. But who ever did?"

Of course, there's absolutely nothing wrong with the sorts of things Tabbarok does propose (although I probably differ with him on the aid to states, for reasons I've noted here in the past about how that atrophies a robust federalism). He offers:

"What are the alternatives to Keynesian politics? Greater regulation to prevent crises from occuring is a legitimate response, although one that I wouldn't necessarily buy into in all particulars. Along the same lines, increasing wage, price and real flexibilities (e.g. relocation flexibility and public and private savings flexibility) would benefit us in future recessions. Automatic stabilizers such as unemployment insurance are one area that has worked quite well. What other areas can be automatized? Funding for states? How about an automatic payroll tax cut tied to the unemployment rate?"

Gradcafe

1. Thegradcafe.com is an enormously frustrating, stressful website.

2. If this newly discovered bane of my sanity is to be trusted from last year, I may be hearing from the University of Maryland very, very, very soon. A bunch of acceptances went out February 16th and 17th last year, then apparent silence till mid-March when a few more acceptances and wait-lists, and a ton of rejections were passed out. If this one pulls through I will be a happy camper.

Two quick things...

1. Every day I'm learning more about the academic publishing biz... just recently had a manuscript rejected from Social Science Quarterly (this was primarily my writing and data work, albeit for work - my heart and mind ain't in revising and resubmitting just yet - the contract for the research that produced it is long over), and I just submitted one (this will be my third to a journal) to the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. We'll see how that one fares.

2. I always forget that in the end, you all are just a bunch of smelly hippies.

The mystery of romantic love

One thing that’s clear about romantic love is that the math simply doesn’t work out on “soul-mates”. I don’t think there was one woman out there for me that could uniquely fulfill me that I was destined to find. It’s an absurd idea. In that sense there is nothing “special” about Kate (which is not to say that Kate isn’t special – simply that it’s not the fact that she’s some “soul-mate” of mine that makes her special). The very idea quickly falls about. We’re talking roughly a one in 3 billion chance if we abstract away from minority orientations. We can improve the odds somewhat by restricting the “soul-mate” concept to a specific age cohort. That seems reasonable. But any other adjustments strike me as being inappropriate. We’re just supposed to believe that these soul-mates often live in reasonably close geographical proximity to us? That they often attend our high school, college, or one of our first few jobs? And that historically that proximity correlation has gotten weaker as transportation networks have improved? That’s an odd pattern for Cupid to follow, is it not?

So no, I don’t buy into the idea of soul-mates. As I said, the math simply doesn’t work out. Romantic love seems to be a function of access and convenience. And yet that doesn’t make sense either. Anyone who’s married or has been married knows there’s nothing really “convenient” about it. “Convenient” would be no need for compromising, no need for spending two hours picking out curtains, no need for keeping a predictable schedule. That’s not marriage or in a committed relationship knows that that is not what we’re talking about.

So what is it? A dependable availability of sex? Perhaps, but there’s nothing especially challenging about getting that either if you want it.

All of these seem to miss something fundamental. “Love”, really, but what is that? It’s a feeling. It’s a commitment you make. It’s frustratingly slippery, though. We shove a lot under that word “love” and don’t spend too much time worrying about understanding exactly what the hell it is. But it clearly is something. It is a real thing.

I end up seeing lots of beautiful women over the course of the day. It’s not hard to see a woman and acknowledge if she’s beautiful or not. It’s subjective, of course, but it’s not something that takes careful study to ascertain. You can determine that quality walking by someone on the sidewalk. But I never get enraptured looking at a beautiful woman on the sidewalk. Nobody does! If I passed a group of super-models walking down the sidewalk I would certainly turn my head, but nobody would walk into a lamp-post or anything ridiculous like that like they do in cartoons. And super-models are supposedly the cream of the crop! And yet despite that, I genuinely get enraptured by Kate’s beauty. Sometimes the sunlight catches her the right way and I can literally lose my train of thought. I’ve been married to this woman for three years, I’ve dated her for almost seven years, and I’ve known her for eight and a half years and yet this can still catch me off guard. Why? It doesn’t make sense at all. Romantic love seems to me to be a violation of a social second law of thermodynamics. Even when we put aside nonsense about soul-mates and even if we come to grips with the things that make pairing efficient (division of labor, resource pooling, etc.) there’s still this very mysterious residual of romantic love, and the more you think about it the weirder is. It’s just very hard to account for – but I’m glad it’s out there.

Three things people don't always think about outside of Washington

1. Stan Collender rejoices at how much easier life is now that the president's budget is released electronically. He's actually one of the wonks that spends time sifting through it, in which case the difference must be unimaginable. I never had to do that work, but I can sympathize as well. I always used to have to go over to the Old Executive Office Building (which Mark Twain once called the ugliest building in America) to pick up Bob Reischauer (president of the Urban Institute's) reserved copy of the five (thick) volume books. Now he can just download it :)

2. Matt Yglesias points out how surreal the media's reaction to Congressional math is. In 2009-2010, Democratic bills in the House that couldn't get past a Republican filibuster weren't considered important news. Democratic relevance was measured by the stark reality of the Republican minority in the Senate. Today, however, House Republicans are lauded as a force to be reckoned with and a new reality in Washington. Is there position any stronger or more mandate-backed than the Democrats in 2009-2010? No. In fact, they're in a weaker, and less popularly backed position with a much smaller chance of doing much of anything. But the media lionizes them. I try not to be too plugged into the political world in this city, but sometimes if you didn't live here I think you'd start to mix up who is in power and who has what mandate, the way the media reports it.

3. Finally, whenever anyone in this town breathes a word about the budget, really the only discussion at hand is a discussion about Medicare and Social Security. That's what "the budget" means in Washington. Politicians may not want to do anything about it, but that's what the policy people talk about when they talk about the budget. I think in a lot of the country "federal entitlements" sound like welfare-queen doles. But in Washington "entitlement" has a very specific meaning - it's the collection of guaranteed social insurance programs but essentially "entitlement" means Medicare and Social Security. Matt Yglesias reports, however, that 44.1% of Social Security recipients and 39.8% of Medicare recipients say they haven't received any government social programs!!!! Unbelievable! If you keep the share of recipients who've received nothing but Social Security and Medicare (i.e. - take out the people that have received food stamps and Social Security and are only thinking of their food stamps when they respond that they've participated in a government program), I wouldn't be surprised if that constitutes a majority. This thing that is the centerpiece of worries in Washington isn't even directly associated with government social policy by many recipients!

Thoughts on two comments

Gary Gunnels, Ayn Rand, and Libertarianism
Gary has this thought on my post on the new Atlas Shrugged movie: "It just illustrates how libertarian the world has become. When Rand was writing her major works they were a slap in the face to the dominant paradigm. It was a bit like being an atheist in the 18th century. Now Rand pervades the culture so much that this movie doesn't seem so radical", and seems to have largely missed my point about "ideological orthogonality" (and maybe I'm not communicating the idea clearly). It strikes me as weird to say we are more libertarian today because we like markets more - because Americans generally don't flirt with socialism the way they did in the 20s, 30s, 40s, and even into the 50s. If we replaced that America with a libertarian America, then Gary would have justification in saying the world has become more libertarian. But that's not the case. In America and in most of the rest of the world we replaced a brief flirtation with socialism with a solid and stable commitment to social democracy. I hate to break it to my readers, but Randians and libertarians aren't the only ones that like markets. I don't think this trailer struck me as banal because we are more libertarian - I think it struck me as banal because in this world of market-oriented social democracy that we live in Atlas Shrugged seems pretty pedestrian. Gary views a continuum of sorts between collectivism and libertarianism, so from his view it seems like we've moved towards libertarianism. Yes, we embrace markets a lot more now than we did earlier in this century. But it seems odd to pick out one relatively small ideological perspective that embraces markets and say we've move closer towards it just for that! Wouldn't it make more sense to say "we've moved more towards market-oriented social democracy" than "we've moved more towards libertarianism"?

Gary seems to think that in the debate over markets, there's the libertarian side and the non-libertarian side, so if you're not on the non-libertarian side you must be "more libertarian". That's like saying in the debate over progressive income taxes there's a Communist side and a non-Communist side and if you're not on the non-Communist side you must be "more Communist". Sorry - I like my progressive income tax and my profit seekers in a free market, and I haven't moved to be "more Communist" or "more libertarian" - I am "more market-oriented social democrat". But I am glad to see that Gary at least embraces a portion of the market-oriented social democrat platform. It's good to see that he's "more market-oriented social democrat" than some others are.

Prateek Sanjay, Keynes, Evolution, and Classical Economics
In my post on Darwin, Prateek responds to the selection from The End of Laissez Faire with: "I have never, ever, never, ever heard any single free market economist, whose book I have read, trace his views down to Darwin. Even economics books by pro-market progressives or other political affiliations never do that Darwin analogy." I whole-heartedly agree with him and assured him I'd clarify what I think Keynes was trying to say. So I never read where Keynes suggested that economists "traced his views down to Darwin". I could be wrong, but what I thought Keynes was trying to say was that there was a powerful confluence of ideas in the second half of the 19th century that fit together very easily. Classical economics (indeed almost all the economists Keynes cited) was already well established by the time Darwin came along, so clearly he's not arguing they trace their ideas to him. In fact, Darwin traced some of his ideas to the Classical economists, particularly Malthus (who was the most Keynesian of the bunch!). I like to frame The End of Laissez Faire as Keynes's genealogy of classical liberalism. Keynes is describing and lamenting the bifurcation of liberalism into two camps: communitarianism and individualism. The bifurcation itself isn't especially problematic for Keynes. These two strains have always been in tension and it has been a creative tension. Keynes's concern is that they have separated, stopped engaging each other, and thereby degenerated into two very impoverished orthodoxies: laissez-faire and socialism. Real liberalism, for Keynes, is the primary victim of this bifurcation. So that is the context of the book.

What I think Keynes was trying to say about Darwin was that a major spur to the evolution of laissez faire is that you had this more individualist orientation of classical economics and Victorian laissez faire bolstered by Darwinism, which seemed to provide license to Social Darwinism and a ruthless individualism. I don't think Keynes ever argues that that's what gave birth to Classical Economics. I don't think Keynes ever argued that that was what Darwinism implied. But the coalescence of all these ideas in the second half of the 19th century made a degeneration of classical liberalism into laissez faire possible. It has been perhaps a year since I last read The End of Laissez Faire, but I think this is what he is saying in this passage.

Now, that having been said I don't think Prateek should be so pessimistic about bringing Darwin into a market-oriented perspective on economics! Darwin does not give license to Social Darwinism. But Darwin does provide us with a very powerful mechanism for emergent order in complex systems. When you have variation, the prospect of failure, and time you have the possibility for evolutionary selection. "Natural selection" for Darwinism, but we can think of this as social selection or market selection. Firms that fail the market test will die. People who assemble the wrong combination of human capital will not do well in the labor market. Thankfully, we don't have to rely on random variation for this to produce a better and stronger economy over time. We can add learning and anticipation to the mix. Unlike the ape in the jungle who is born with the equipment to survive or not survive, humans and firms can acquire the means for survival. We talk about "the rough edges of capitalism", and indeed there are a few. But our ability to learn and anticipate actually means that capitalism does away with "the rough edges of the law of the jungle", which confine organisms to the traits they were born with! So I agree with Prateek, market economics isn't some base, objectionable, twisted Social Darwinism. That gives market economics too little credit and Social Darwinism too much. But there is an important role for evolutionary thought in economics.