Showing posts with label anti virtue signalling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anti virtue signalling. Show all posts

Thursday, March 31, 2022

Well At Least We Can Agree On This, Right?...

Here is a partial list of some things people commonly get wrong (by my judgment at least) yet believe in them with strong conviction and desire. Therefore, these are just a few examples of times when I disagree with conventional wisdom. 
  • Veterans are always human, sometimes (but rarely) heroes. I wonder how much mental anguish in veterans is caused by either an imposter syndrome (these people think I did something I did not do) or a guilt complex (these people don't know what ugly things I endured and perhaps contributed to). Veterans deserve reverence and sympathy, but we do a grave disservice to them when we dismissively and robotically admire them.
  • Localized industrial policy is very bad. This includes tax-increment financing (TIF), direct subsidy, government/private partnerships, and other favored-interest actions. The local darling in my neck of the woods is M.A.P.S. Like so many cases of local industrial policy, it suffers from a server case of Bastiat's "what is seen and what is unseen--just look at all the shiny things! There are two crucial and high hurdles for these public (i.e., taxpayer-funded) endeavors to overcome before we can believe in them: 1) there must be a clear market failure preventing entrepreneurs from seeing and acting to realize the positive gains to be had, and 2) the government must be able to identify and execute on these supposed investment opportunities.
  • There should be no government licensure for employment (especially law and medicine--those in particular are too important and nuanced to leave up to central planning). I've got strong economic and principle-based arguments against licensure while those supporting it typically rely on that it feels good and that an idealized government can correct a hypothesized problem (not even a market failure mind you). Yet my view is political poison because it takes the unpopular tactic of addressing people's fear through passive action rather than blatant pandering.
  • Edward Snowden is an American patriot and hero.
  • Almost all acts of state-level aggression (AKA, war) should be met with minimal retaliation if not appeasement and forbearance. This certainly cuts against human nature, but most secondary reactions in response to violent hostility are counterproductive. They make the world a worse place--overall, on net, all things considered. My follow up right there is not my attempt to qualify my view. Rather I am saying I am considering all the supposed benefits people offer as to why vengeance shall be mine! . . . we must stand up to belligerent aggressors. Too often the cost is not worth the cure, and the actions taken in response are just closing the barn door after the horse has bolted. The most I can say in defense of the typical defender of retaliation (too much play on words?) is that if one wants to maintain the world closer to how it is at the cost of how much better it could be, then fight every fire with fire. It is very hard to truly hold territory and control a people. And this difficulty grows more and more as human society advances. Initial victories for would-be rulers become short lived if not pyrrhic. The constant eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth state of the world keeps us in a local maximum, struggling to escape to higher peaks. I think Bryan Caplan says it well.
  • The following should all be legal with minimal to no interference from government: prostitution, recreational drugs, performance enhancing drugs, selling/buying organs, prediction markets, actual gambling (games of chance rather than skill), and basically everything else under the sun of If you can do it for free…. The list is what makes this item fully counter-conventional--very few will defend all of these items.
  • The motto “Safety First!” is basically nonsense. It amounts to trite virtue signaling. If it is your “highest priority”, then you are incompetent. It is simply not possible for this to be a goal. It is a constraint. Fortunately most of the time when used it is just there to help the naïve and fearful to be a bit braver. In this sense it is innocuous as far as a noble lie can be. But for God’s sake can we grow up and stop saying it or accepting it as a substitute for meaningful signal?

Things the major tribes actually do unfortunately agree upon: 

  • There is lots of speech that needs to be censored (e.g., hateful speech, disruptive speech, unpleasant speech).
  • We need to fund the police such that we have a strong and powerful police state
  • Government can and should solve the "problem" of big tech.
  • A safe world and a safe America requires a overwhelmingly strong, uber-engaged, and extensively involved U.S. military.
  • American farmers are a sacred group who need constant support especially to maintain the status quo. They should enjoy private profits and be afforded extensive social insurance against losses. 
  • The welfare and education and indoctrination of the young is a state concern and needs strong state intervention. Parents should only be left up to their own desires when those desires fully correspond to the state's interests (defined separately by the two biggest tribes, of course). 
  • Incumbent firms and industries need and deserve deference if not extra support. It is wrong that they might be challenged by newcomers and new approaches. 


Sunday, June 14, 2020

Things That Can Both Be True - Mind-Blowing Partial List


Beware of false contradictions. It can be the case that:
  • One is against the drug war (wants to completely legalize all drugs) and is against the use of most currently illicit drugs.
  • One believes that prostitution should be legalized and that prostitution is morally wrong and culturally damaging.
  • One finds many of the actions and policies of the Trump administration have been bad and many of the actions and policies of the Obama administration ON THE SAME ISSUES were bad. 
  • One wants the best for low-wage workers and one is against the minimum wage. 
  • One desires a strong, vibrant job market and one views jobs as an economic cost rather than a benefit. 
  • One believes the government-commanded lockdowns were absolutely bad policies and voluntary social distancing is absolutely good behavior in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. 
  • One thinks the United States of America is a great country and the U.S. government with the support of the people of the United States has done many very wrong things. 
  • One believes a highly successful person worked very hard while being very smart and they benefited greatly from luck. 
  • One sees college education is very valuable to college graduates and it is not the best option for a very large percentage of college attendees.
  • One thinks college education is valuable to society and society would be better off with a lot less college education.
  • One strongly supports freedom of speech and strongly disagrees with the specific speech that freedom of speech is protecting.
Updated to add:

  • One believes that the use of fossil fuels meaningfully contributes to a negative effect on climate change and that the use of fossil fuels has been a wonderfully positive thing for humanity and the Earth.

Sunday, March 15, 2020

Emergency Situations Call For Proven Failed Policies

The pandemic of the novel coronavirus (SARS-COV-2) is upon us. But rest assured; our fearless leaders are here to help by making sure we keep reality at bay. I'm talking about an old favorite of head-in-the-sand, wish-it-all-away virtue signalers--price gouging laws (aka, price controls).

Because it worked so well exactly never but makes those who don't like an certainly very bad and difficult (but nevertheless necessary) change feel like something is being done, we shall inflict self harm.

Let's turn this into a partial list of things to remember about price gouging laws:
  • Price controls that limit market clearing prices don't change the reality that suddenly and acutely certain goods and services are more scarce--demand has risen while supply is temporarily mostly or entirely fixed.
  • They don't allow us to efficiently allocate goods. I hear you cry, "But what pray tell is so great about efficiency in a crisis?!?" Okay, okay, I sneaked in some technical jargon. When economists speak of efficiency, they are sorta saying how can we do the best for the most. We have to get what we have (water, ice, lumber, medical supplies, etc. depending on the disaster) to those who need it most. Most is key. While we always want to satisfy this to the best of our abilities, in a crisis it becomes crucial. What substitutes do we have for allowing prices to gauge who wants/needs it most? We could use:
    • First come, first served
    • Personal, arbitrary preferences
    • Non-price competition (to the beautiful, the rich and powerful, the special interest, etc. go the spoils)
    • Government or other authorities trying (honestly trying) to determine who should get what (more on this fantasy world below)
  • All other methods listed above have SUBSTANTIAL costs associated with them. And there is very little reason to believe they would outperform the price dimension. They are all subject to manipulation (both malicious and innocent; intentional and accidental). They waste resources including time when resources are especially scarce. They encourage hoarding and black markets (more below). The best they possibly can do is match the outcome price would achieve while avoiding some of the dreaded downsides of allowing prices to rise. But just how bad and realistic are those downsides?
  • The downsides to letting prices rise to the new equilibrium levels are hypothetical straw men. If you are worried or distressed by the idea that someone, somewhere will profit off of a bad situation you need to realize that is a reflection of your own envy and a mischaracterization of who actually is in a position to provide goods and services. If you are worried that only "the rich" will be able to get the precious thing(s), then you are ignoring the fact that "the rich" always will have access, ignoring the charitable impulses of most everyone including those with more wealth, and ignoring that your wrongheaded description of "the rich" still leaves "the not rich" without access--store shelves get emptied when prices don't rise properly (see the Art Carden link at the bottom).
  • Black markets will spawn and propagate where markets in the light of day are prohibited. If you think you are ending the high prices "problem" by stopping prices in stores, etc. from rising, you are woefully naive. Those same "greedy" people who would otherwise raise their price up to the market-clearing, too-high-for-your-comfort level will simply take the items off the shelves and sell them in the alley at a more reasonable (given the new economic reality) level. And who do you think is buying in the alley? I can assure you, it is not the Boy Scouts.
  • Demand is not the only curve that can change. Supply very crucially can and will if we entice it. As also indicated in the next bullet point, one must answer the always important question: "And then what?". Allowing prices to rise sends signals literally worldwide that scream: "HEY, STOP WHAT YOUR DOING! THOSE [goods and services specific to the given situation] ARE DESPERATELY NEEDED ELSEWHERE. Help us reallocate them there. And help us make more of them!" The Mike Munger links at the bottom have a lot on this very important point. In a dire situation I don't just want some (water, medicine, etc.). I want all we can get including that for which it has not yet been economical to access/build/develop. I want the best pharmaceutical firms and minds working on a vaccine today--not just the most altruistic. I want the best doctors out of their personal quarantines and on the front lines--not just the most altruistic or frankly those with lower opportunity costs. If you have a severe, acute, and emergency back injury, you don't want to be paying only enough to entice a chiropractor to help you.
  • Think past the first level--there are strong incentives (social and economic) for businesses to not allow prices to fully rise or to themselves supply the charity we would want to make sure those without means can get the goods and services they truly need.
  • It is a very bad way of forcing charity as it imposes the cost of charity on those supplying goods and services as well as those who otherwise would have access to those goods and services. Think of the guy who really needs ice for baby formula or a nearby hotel room to keep his job but who showed up later than the guy who didn't need those things so badly but wasn't deterred from taking them because the price wasn't giving him the crucial information that somebody else needs it more who isn't yet here to say so.
  • It is immoral as it denies the property right that the owner of the resource has and it disallows her from most easily finding the person who needs it most and it punishes her for having been there in the first place to supply it. In a disaster we want the church to have been built and maintained for Easter Sunday. That is expensive. One way to get that insurance policy against pain in a disaster is to allow those who bear it 99% of the time to reap the reward for having bore it. 
  • Lastly, you want to substitute a market process with a government process in a time of desperate need. Do you really, really, really think those in government are in a better position (access to knowledge, incentives and feedback effects, corruption temptations, organizational structure, etc.) than the market to do the job? I would not trust a group of (non-government) people to have the judgement, knowledge, and ethics to dictatorially make the best decisions. Why would that change for those same people if I simply put them into a government system?
Links to more thorough sources:

Sunday, February 9, 2020

Psst... I Have a Secret

Every day I burn a dollar bill. You see I’m really worried about inflation and I want to do my part. If everyone would act like me, we could stop inflation for good.

I admit this is a bit of snarky argument by analogy for the purpose of exposing what I see as the absolute ridiculousness of trying to address macro problems with extremely micro actions. I say "actions" so as to avoid dignifying them with the term "solutions".

Put into this category activities like:

  • The bulk of ESG investing. (I don't invest in company XYZ, who does the bad things, or company ABC, who doesn't notice that what they are doing can't last forever, because I want to deny them capital.)
  • The vast majority of consumer-level environmental activism. (Please use my reusable cloth bag when you sack my groceries full of paper drinking straws, boxed water, and non-GMO foods. And please pack it tight so it fits in my backpack--I biked here, obviously.)
  • Voting as a means of changing the course of public policy. (This is the most important election of our lifetimes--once our candidate wins, disaster will be avoided.)
  • Shaming others for not being part of the cause. (You should have rescued a dog from a shelter rather than buying one from a breeder.)
  • Ad hoc donating to random strangers. (Gives $5 to the man with a sign asking for money on the street corner.)

These activities may be virtuous. They may bring you personal joy or satisfaction. But if you think you will change the world through these activities, you are gravely mistaken. Each of these as a solution to their supposed underlying problem suffers from a kind of reverse Kantianism fallacy whereby an individual action is presumed to be sufficient to bring about a desired outcome because if everyone took this action, the outcome would be achieved. 

Friday, October 25, 2019

An Idea Ahead of Its Time Is a Bad Idea


Is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) simply way ahead of her time

If someone came back from the future to tell us that in her time (our future) fossil fuels had been successfully banned (first nationally and then worldwide), this would have to be taken as exceptionally good news. 

At the same time if we were to implement a first national and then worldwide ban on fossil fuels today, it would be colossally bad news.  

It is overwhelmingly likely that a ban on fossil fuels sometime in the future can only happen in a remarkably wealthy world. Ironically it will be built on the back of the use of fossil fuels that we will be wealthy enough to eventually ban them.

Religious leaders like AOC don't understand the subtle yet critical difference between our legitimate aspirations and our binding realities.

Politicians follow rather than lead. Perhaps we should be grateful for this when it holds true.