Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Sunday, April 01, 2007
New Milton Friedman index.
Long overdue: an index for criticisms of Milton Friedman.
There are lots of poor rants against Friedman: I'd like to collect the better criticisms.
Check out the first entry and suggest more, please.
There are lots of poor rants against Friedman: I'd like to collect the better criticisms.
Check out the first entry and suggest more, please.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
The Denialists' Deck of Cards
The Denialists' Deck of Cards: An Illustrated Taxonomy of Rhetoric Used to Frustrate Consumer Protection Efforts
Chris Jay Hoofnagle details the public relations methodology of CATO and other anti-consumer, business-funded organizations. Count how many of these you've heard on your favorite topic: global warming, for example.
I think the cards angle is a bit lame (and disliked the Bush Iraq application), but the large number of strategies needs to be organized somehow.
In the Discussion, Environmental, and CATO indexes.
Tip of the hat to David Fetter, who suggested it.
Chris Jay Hoofnagle details the public relations methodology of CATO and other anti-consumer, business-funded organizations. Count how many of these you've heard on your favorite topic: global warming, for example.
I think the cards angle is a bit lame (and disliked the Bush Iraq application), but the large number of strategies needs to be organized somehow.
In the Discussion, Environmental, and CATO indexes.
Tip of the hat to David Fetter, who suggested it.
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Ask a Libertarian, Part II: The Constitution as Libertarian Myth
Ask a Libertarian, Part II: The Constitution as Libertarian Myth
Logan Ferree does a good job of dispelling libertarian myths about being like classical liberalism and the early USA. He also tries to distinguish between libertarians and objectivists.
This one is nice for the Libertarian Revisionist History index.
Logan Ferree does a good job of dispelling libertarian myths about being like classical liberalism and the early USA. He also tries to distinguish between libertarians and objectivists.
This one is nice for the Libertarian Revisionist History index.
Friday, March 02, 2007
The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult
The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult
Murray Rothbard makes a very convincing case for Objectivism as a cult. It's delightful to see it compared to the communist party.
Murray Rothbard makes a very convincing case for Objectivism as a cult. It's delightful to see it compared to the communist party.
Monday, February 26, 2007
How To Explain Things to Libertarians
How To Explain Things to Libertarians
What it feels like to realize that you're talking to a libertarian. A great parody of the quiz. And more than 500 heartfelt reponses in agreement in one day.
Added to several indexes in Critiques Of Libertarianism.
Thanks to Michael Greinecker! Please, do contribute more suggestions everybody.
What it feels like to realize that you're talking to a libertarian. A great parody of the quiz. And more than 500 heartfelt reponses in agreement in one day.
Added to several indexes in Critiques Of Libertarianism.
Thanks to Michael Greinecker! Please, do contribute more suggestions everybody.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Markets Are Not Magic
Markets Are Not Magic
Mark Thoma, at Economist's View, explains when markets can perform very badly, and how the belief that "privatization and deregulation are always best" is wrong.
Mark Thoma, at Economist's View, explains when markets can perform very badly, and how the belief that "privatization and deregulation are always best" is wrong.
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Krugman on Milton Friedman's free marketeering
[From The New York Review Of Books article, Who Was Milton Friedman?, by Paul Krugman.]
Consider first the macroeconomic performance of the US economy. We have data on the real income—that is, income adjusted for inflation—of American families from 1947 to 2005. During the first half of that fifty-eight-year stretch, from 1947 to 1976, Milton Friedman was a voice crying in the wilderness, his ideas ignored by policymakers. But the economy, for all the inefficiencies he decried, delivered dramatic improvements in the standard of living of most Americans: median real income more than doubled. By contrast, the period since 1976 has been one of increasing acceptance of Friedman's ideas; although there remained plenty of government intervention for him to complain about, there was no question that free-market policies became much more widespread. Yet gains in living standards hav been far less robust than they were during the previous period: median real income was only about 23 percent higher in 2005 than in 1976
Part of the reason the second postwar generation didn't do as well as the first was a slower overall rate of economic growth—a fact that may come as a surprise to those who assume that the trend toward free markets has yielded big economic dividends. But another important reason for the lag in most families' living standards was a spectacular increase in economic inequality: during the first postwar generation income growth was broadly spread across the population, but since the late 1970s median income, the income of the typical family, has risen only about a third as fast as average income, which includes the soaring incomes of a small minority at the top.
This raises an interesting point. Milton Friedman often assured audiences that no special institutions, like minimum wages and unions, were needed to ensure that workers would share in the benefits of economic growth. In 1976 he told Newsweek readers that tales of the evil done by the robber barons were pure myth:
"There is probably no other period in history, in this or any other country, in which the ordinary man had as large an increase in his standard of living as in the period between the Civil War and the First World War, when unrestrained individualism was most rugged."
(What about the remarkable thirty-year stretch after World War II, which encompassed much of Friedman's own career?) Yet in the decades that followed that pronouncement, as the minimum wage was allowed to fall behind inflation and unions largely disappeared as an important factor in the private sector, working Americans saw their fortunes lag behind growth in the economy as a whole. Was Friedman too sanguine about the generosity of the invisible hand?
To be fair, there are many factors affecting both economic growth and the distribution of income, so we can't blame Friedmanite policies for all disappointments. Still, given the common assumption that the turn toward free-market policies did great things for the US economy and the living standards of ordinary Americans, it's striking how little support one can find for that proposition in the data.
Consider first the macroeconomic performance of the US economy. We have data on the real income—that is, income adjusted for inflation—of American families from 1947 to 2005. During the first half of that fifty-eight-year stretch, from 1947 to 1976, Milton Friedman was a voice crying in the wilderness, his ideas ignored by policymakers. But the economy, for all the inefficiencies he decried, delivered dramatic improvements in the standard of living of most Americans: median real income more than doubled. By contrast, the period since 1976 has been one of increasing acceptance of Friedman's ideas; although there remained plenty of government intervention for him to complain about, there was no question that free-market policies became much more widespread. Yet gains in living standards hav been far less robust than they were during the previous period: median real income was only about 23 percent higher in 2005 than in 1976
Part of the reason the second postwar generation didn't do as well as the first was a slower overall rate of economic growth—a fact that may come as a surprise to those who assume that the trend toward free markets has yielded big economic dividends. But another important reason for the lag in most families' living standards was a spectacular increase in economic inequality: during the first postwar generation income growth was broadly spread across the population, but since the late 1970s median income, the income of the typical family, has risen only about a third as fast as average income, which includes the soaring incomes of a small minority at the top.
This raises an interesting point. Milton Friedman often assured audiences that no special institutions, like minimum wages and unions, were needed to ensure that workers would share in the benefits of economic growth. In 1976 he told Newsweek readers that tales of the evil done by the robber barons were pure myth:
"There is probably no other period in history, in this or any other country, in which the ordinary man had as large an increase in his standard of living as in the period between the Civil War and the First World War, when unrestrained individualism was most rugged."
(What about the remarkable thirty-year stretch after World War II, which encompassed much of Friedman's own career?) Yet in the decades that followed that pronouncement, as the minimum wage was allowed to fall behind inflation and unions largely disappeared as an important factor in the private sector, working Americans saw their fortunes lag behind growth in the economy as a whole. Was Friedman too sanguine about the generosity of the invisible hand?
To be fair, there are many factors affecting both economic growth and the distribution of income, so we can't blame Friedmanite policies for all disappointments. Still, given the common assumption that the turn toward free-market policies did great things for the US economy and the living standards of ordinary Americans, it's striking how little support one can find for that proposition in the data.
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Market Failures in Everything: iodized salt
Marginal Revolution has a continuing series called "Markets in Everything" which highlights unusual markets. But for some reason they don't seem to have the opposite corollary, "Market Failures in Everything". I may not have their readership, but perhaps I can help anyhow.
MR pointed to an amazing NY Times article, In Raising the World’s I.Q., the Secret’s in the Salt.
The money quote is: "Worldwide, about two billion people — a third of the globe — get too little iodine, including hundreds of millions in India and China. Studies show that iodine deficiency is the leading preventable cause of mental retardation. Even moderate deficiency, especially in pregnant women and infants, lowers intelligence by 10 to 15 I.Q. points, shaving incalculable potential off a nation’s development."
And the solution is government regulation of private salt producers, forcing them to iodize the salt at a trivial cost, a little over a dollar a ton. The article details why this is necessary, but just on the surface it is obvious from the fact that universal iodization has never been market driven.
MR pointed to an amazing NY Times article, In Raising the World’s I.Q., the Secret’s in the Salt.
The money quote is: "Worldwide, about two billion people — a third of the globe — get too little iodine, including hundreds of millions in India and China. Studies show that iodine deficiency is the leading preventable cause of mental retardation. Even moderate deficiency, especially in pregnant women and infants, lowers intelligence by 10 to 15 I.Q. points, shaving incalculable potential off a nation’s development."
And the solution is government regulation of private salt producers, forcing them to iodize the salt at a trivial cost, a little over a dollar a ton. The article details why this is necessary, but just on the surface it is obvious from the fact that universal iodization has never been market driven.
Sunday, December 17, 2006
David Friedman's Blog
I've been posting a lot to David Friedman at his blog. David ranges widely on many subjects, and asks questions that are interesting not just because they are topical, but because they are posed from a set of libertarian premises that is unevenly informed by science and reality and also bizarre.
We had a really stimulating discussion at Academic Tabu. David (and others) totally missed the distinction between scientific ideas of race and cline, and thus why human races are a bogus idea. There were side trips on the value of S. J. Gould's "The MIsmeasure Of Man", and the creationist fallacy of whether evidence against a competing hypothesis increases the probability of a remaining hypothesis. A number of others don't get the simple point that genetics could be entirely responsible for all the variation of a character like intelligence within each of two populations, and yet there might be zero variation of intelligence between the two populations. Or that if there is variation between the two populations, it could be entirely due to some environmental influence.
Most recently, "Dishonest Words". There, David plays pot-calling-kettle-black. I also mention a real-life counter-example of the creationist fallacy: the Monte Hall Problem.
We had a really stimulating discussion at Academic Tabu. David (and others) totally missed the distinction between scientific ideas of race and cline, and thus why human races are a bogus idea. There were side trips on the value of S. J. Gould's "The MIsmeasure Of Man", and the creationist fallacy of whether evidence against a competing hypothesis increases the probability of a remaining hypothesis. A number of others don't get the simple point that genetics could be entirely responsible for all the variation of a character like intelligence within each of two populations, and yet there might be zero variation of intelligence between the two populations. Or that if there is variation between the two populations, it could be entirely due to some environmental influence.
Most recently, "Dishonest Words". There, David plays pot-calling-kettle-black. I also mention a real-life counter-example of the creationist fallacy: the Monte Hall Problem.
Friday, November 10, 2006
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Donald Rumsfeld has cut and run.
Perhaps I can be the first to make this obvious observation.
If only our troops were given similar options. Alternatively, isn't it a shame he can't have his tour of duty involuntarily extended and be reassigned to Iraq without sufficient body armor?
We should also note the timing: this was obviously planned long in advance, and scheduled to coincide with the election so that there would be fewer news cycles unfavorable to the Republicans and distraction from the Democratic victory.
If only our troops were given similar options. Alternatively, isn't it a shame he can't have his tour of duty involuntarily extended and be reassigned to Iraq without sufficient body armor?
We should also note the timing: this was obviously planned long in advance, and scheduled to coincide with the election so that there would be fewer news cycles unfavorable to the Republicans and distraction from the Democratic victory.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
