One-Two Punch, or . . .

. . . How to go down for the count.

Let's make a boxing analogy for "appropriate" humor: Know your sparring partner; know when it is the real match; there are rules (no below the belt, but the belt moves); stay in your weight class. 

I post this in reflection upon the recent blow up of a comedic tweet by Niskanen Center's now former vice president Will Wilkinson. 

As one who has always been very comedic, I both identify with and fear hitting below the belt. I’ve done it, and I have fortunately always been forgiven when it mattered. I also identify with and fear what got Wilkinson into trouble--not knowing when it was a real match. In other words making a joke in the "wrong" way at the "wrong" time. I use the scare quotes because I've never been big on this concept. It is "wrong" because you the audience (intended audience or accidental audience) didn't like it. 

I am ambivalent on the idea that an honest attempt at humor is wrong. I don't want to offend people, but I know it will have to happen from time to time as both a risk of comedy (and serious argument) and because everyone at one time or another is overly sensitive (or hears things the wrong way). In truth I agree with Scott Sumner that there are no offensive jokes. So my views are simultaneously: I am sorry you have taken offense and Too. Fucking. Bad. 

To one degree or another grown-up comedy (not necessarily “adult” but certainly mature in the sense of developed and sophisticated) makes the audience uncomfortable. The other elements of comedy (surprise and irreverence) are at play here too in that comedy has to push boundaries or it is too childish to be considered “grown up”.

Time and place are tricky, though. Elon Musk has been very active on Twitter either joking or promoting (or both) the GameStop, et al. and Dogecoin trades. Is he humorously trolling? Should he be? 

This is a thorny issue. He uses Twitter to promote serious ideas including his public company. People look to him as an authority figure. We know we lose context and tone in email. That shortcoming is often taken too eleven when on Twitter. Maybe what he is doing is going over my head, and I should see rule #3 below. Regardless, he is an adult speaking to adults . . . yes, rule #3 indeed.

A healthy society allows mistakes. Actually it embraces them knowing they are a cost of progress. If a comedian cannot bomb, he cannot ever entertain. 

Here are two rules we as the audience should follow:

1. Assume good intent.
2. Accept sincere apology.
3. When offended, get over it. - if for no other reason, your own happiness

So back to Wilkinson. His comedic attempt was ruled a mistake by Niskanen who didn't accept apology. We don't live in a world where my rules above are followed. Rather we live in what Arnold Kling calls a Zero Tolerance Culture. And as Jason Brennan perfectly points out, this is a cancel culture with glaring hypocrisy. 

Knock knock

Who's there?

Boo

Boo who?

Why you cryin'? It's just a joke.

It Takes a Cynic

I have long been accused of being cynical, and while I will cop to it, I have always maintained that to the degree I am it is a good thing. 

Think of it as the combination of Hanlon’s Razor and Occam’s Razor: the most obvious, self-centered explanation should be considered the most likely until reasonably ruled out. 

This point of view has its dangerous downside. Namely, one can fall into an ugly attitude or a jaded viewpoint that never sees things with an open mind. I strive to avoid this helped a lot by my natural optimism. 

When done appropriately, cynicism has great benefits. Frankly, it cuts through the crap. And it starts one out from a position of epistemic strength as it protects against the fraud of social desirability bias.

In fact I would go so far as to say any analyst worth his salt takes a cynical approach. Let your mind's eye have a cocked eyebrow--it will help keep you from being duped. 

What first got me thinking about this recently was listening to Steve Levitt's story in a recent episode of Freakanomics about advising a firm years ago regarding their advertising budget. The key part was this: 

LEVITT: They said, “Are you crazy?” It was almost if they found out they didn’t work, it was far worse for these people than it was not finding out it didn’t work. Because then they had to explain why for the last 15 years they had been wasting $200 million a year. So, they were happy to just live in a world in which as long as there were ads in every market, every Sunday, life was good.

Or when he says it more plainly in episode 2: 

LEVITT: If you think about it, no chief marketing officer is ever going to say, “Hey, I don’t know, maybe ads don’t work. Let’s just not do them and see what happens.” So, don’t get me wrong. I’m not implying that advertising doesn’t work. I’m implying that we don’t have a very good idea about how well it works.

Add to that this interesting monologue from Dave Chappelle in which he is arguing, unsuccessfully in my opinion, that we should not watch his former show on any streaming network. The part related to this post is his description of the Three-Card Monty scam and that as a analogy for how the [media] industry works. And also, this point: "Never come between a man and his meal." 

If you want to know what underlying motivation is driving a given set of actions, ask yourself first who is standing to gain (or avoid loss).

My cynical demeanor is probably why The Elephant in The Brain resonates so strongly with me. Seeing that X is not about X is a red-pill superpower. 

It is also why I see recent examples from sports like the gyrations in college football's season cancelled/starting/stopping in 2020 and Duke choosing not to play its remaining non-conference games in 2020-21 basketball season for what they are--selfish ploys by powerful vested interests.

To understand what is going on in college football right now you have to view it all through the lens of a labor dispute, cartel behavior, and game theory. COVID is pretense.

— Steve Winkler (@swinkler78) August 10, 2020

Being cynical has its challenges, but it also has its benefits that are underrated. 

Walter Williams, R.I.P.

 

Walter Williams, one of the greatest communicators and expositors of freedom and economics, passed away this week. While I never had the pleasure of being in his classroom, he was quite certainly a teacher to me. My first encounters with his work were reading his articles in The Freeman and his republished op-eds in the Conservative Chronicle as well as attentively listening when he would fill in for Rush Limbaugh. Over time as I became enlightened, with no small part guided by Dr. Williams, it was only his moments filling in for Rush that I would find that show meaningful.

He was a teacher directly to many teachers I have had including ones who entered his classroom avid Marxists and exited passionate free-market capitalists. 

I strongly encourage you to read Don Boudreaux's tribute to him in the WSJ as well as watch the short documentary, Suffer No Fools.

For more tributes, see this list.

May he rest in peace, and may his great work, wonderful spirit, and inspirational message live on.

It’s More Than Qualified Immunity

To truly help those suffering from poverty (poverty of justice, poverty of spirit, poverty of options, poverty of opportunity, poverty of consumption, etc.), we have to address all of the constraints and forces that are keeping people from being all that they can be. The police state abuses in general are an important aspect of this, but they are just a single portion of this plague. We must look deeper than these very important issues as they are themselves just symptoms of bigger problems. 

Qualified immunity is one particular, nuanced element in a much larger set of problems. The list of police and policing and prosecution reforms is deep:

1. End qualified immunity
2. End mandatory police unions
3. Require police to obtain individual liability insurance
4. Require body cams
5. End no-knock raids
6. Stop militarizing police
7. Implement substantial bail reform
8. End civil asset forfeiture
9. Reform plea bargaining to limit prosecutorial power
10. Strengthen the public defender process
11. We could go on and on.

But these alone are neither exhaustive nor completely sufficient. Broadly there are three additional major areas of reform that would start to help heal and to eventually enable tremendous growth in the communities that are suffering the most: 

1) Occupational licensure - Make no mistake about it. These are very simply anti-competitive policies to protect incumbents. They hide under the pretext of consumer protection yet operationally they are clearly a producer protection. The result is two groups of victims: the consumer generally and the weakest producers (competitors to the powerful vested interests). There is slow progress on this area, but much more is needed. 

2) Zoning and other forms of development restriction especially in housing - Zoning has racism at its origin. No, that does not imply it is still a racist policy in fact or in law, but it should give us pause in accepting it as innocuous. Zoning is still largely about keeping "them" out. Who "they" are varies. While a charitable reading leaves zoning as a plan to make the best decisions, it rests on a dubious logic that we can plan the future and government knows best. Housing unaffordability is a major obstacle to upward mobility for those in poverty (of all kinds). Barriers to opportunity are not a solution.

3) Most importantly the senseless, unjustifiable, and evil drug war - The drug war's biggest victims are those in the weakest position to fight back. Leave aside whether we have the right to punish people for doing things we wish they wouldn't but that otherwise only harm themselves. Leave aside the intentions of those who have promoted it. Prohibition does not work . . . no, it is worse than that. It very greatly harms. It must end if we are to build a world of justice and opportunity.

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.

Stupid Questions Can Yield Brilliant Results

Consider:

• Are some populations less susceptible to (severe) infection?
• Is there a genetic, cultural, experienced condition that could be used to thwart the virus? What about dietary practices?
• Does a person’s specific pH level factor into infection and symptom risk?
• Should we expect latitude or altitude to help especially in regard to humidity and average temperature?
• How would a plumber fix a leak behind a wall without ripping down the wall?
• What counterintuitive action might aid treatment and recovery? Forced activity? Forced suppression?
• Is quasi-herd immunity the next line of defense—i.e., identifying those with antibodies or simply recovered people and having them be the non-social distancing economic/logistical conduits for a while.

THIS IS JUST A PARTIAL LIST! We need everyone adding to it and (responsibly) acting on it in the real world.

Imagine going back in time to 50, 100, 500 years ago and asking dumb questions:

• Are we sure we should drain the ill person’s blood to release the bad humors? (no)
• Maybe a severe sunburn will cure this fever? (no)
• Perhaps a small, very small, creature is causing this? (yes)
• Maybe interaction with lots of people including those in outlying areas is a problem? (no)
• Should we wash our hands between patients? (yes)

In the midst of COVID-19, we need lots of experimentation. We need to harness and leverage creativity and experimentation. The private sector working in a free market is unmatched in this capacity. Frankly, a catastrophe-risk, global threat is no time to rely on government. In the current context this includes everything from suppressing and replacing the FDA to “radical” ideas like not nationalizing supply chains.

For every challenge to a medical practice, prescription, and diagnosis we have to ask a critical question: Is this bloodletting or is this hand washing?

From truly dumb questions we can derive amazing successes.

Partial List of Serious Problems We Won't Solve

Partial list of serious problems where too many of us are unreasonably unwilling to accept the clearly best solutions*: 

• Climate change/energy efficiency - nuclear power
• The need for kidney transplants - a free market in organ transfers
• Higher levels of economic growth -  free movement of people across borders
• Too little affordable housing - allowing more housing to be built
• Inner-city education failure - getting government out of the provision and design of schooling via vouchers (case in point of why this is on the list)
• Health care cost - removing regulation against competition in insurance provision and required components of insurance along with removing tax advantage for employer-provided insurance (updated to add: eliminating at least FDA's efficacy requirements if not the FDA altogether and allowing unencumbered competition in health care supply (i.e., eliminating certificate of need laws, et al.))
• High unemployment and underemployment within the underclass - remove occupational licensing (also helps in health care and legal work markets among others)
• Social Security insolvency - sun setting of future obligations by means (for near claimants) and age (ending the scheme for all those below a certain age)
• Drug-related crime, violence, and social disruption - full legalization of all currently illicit narcotics
• Sex trafficking - full legalization of sex work including a social norm of tolerance
• Geopolitical conflict (aka, war) - embrace and default to pacifism
• Taxation distortions and inequalities - Replacing income-based and all other resource-creation-based taxation with consumption-based taxation such as a VAT

*These are not necessarily completely sufficient solutions, but they are at least the most complete way these problems could be greatly alleviated.

Highly Linkable

Kojak. Bang! Bang!

Virginia Postrel gives us four questions courtesy of FIRE to ask prospective universities regarding their attitudes on free speech.

Federal land ownership looks like an epidemic outbreak (HT: Mungowitz):

Scott Sumner gives two posts on taxes that are both important examples of thinking like an economist. He then follows it up with a lesson on why it is all about consumption--not income--when it comes to inequality.

Bryan Caplan recently participated in a debate hosted by Reason on immigration (hopefully it will be up in video form soon at ReasonTV). As such, he is on an immigration posting roll. Each one is worth reading.

Go On, Take the Money and Run

Almost three years later, I along with tens of thousands of Americans have now received back the money we had on deposit with FullTilt.com. Collectively we had about $80 million that we were using to play online poker. Suddenly on April 15th, 2011 (Black Friday) those funds were no longer available and the website and computer programs used to play poker and transact into and out of player accounts were shut down by our friends in the U.S. Federal Government. Of course, it was for our own good . . . Wish you'd stop bein' so good to me, Cap'n.

It is my understanding that playing real-money online poker has never been illegal--not before passage of the UIGEA, not between its passage then enforcement and the actions taken on Black Friday, and not after including when the DOJ said, "Oops, my bad!"

But my understanding does not matter here. Let us not have a failure to communicate when we say, "Consenting adults playing poker with their own money SHOULD NEVER BE ILLEGAL!" Alas, we do not live in a world of free markets and free minds. And so when the Attorney General of NY took action on Black Friday, he pushed online poker from the shadows and fully into the black market. Throughout this entire affair online poker has always been available to U.S. players. But as the government took a firmer hardline stance against it, the providers (Party Poker who abruptly exited the U.S. market in 2006, FullTilt, PokerStars, Bodog/Bovada, et al.) and facilitators (various third-party money transfer services) some of whom remained in the market became less transparent and less trustworthy. However, FullTilt never failed to fulfill any withdrawal requests I made including one made a few weeks before Black Friday. It remains unclear how at risk player funds were before government action versus how government action created a liquidity risk.

The fight goes on. There is strong, widespread support for poker including lobbying by the aforementioned via link Poker Players Alliance (PPA). And there is the fledgling coalition against it led by casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. No fear mongering is beyond the pale for Sheldon's group--"Online gambling funds terrorists!" "It's going to target the elderly and college-aged children, CHILDREN!"

This recent NPR piece shows where the trend is going along with the position the prohibitions are staking. From the story, Sheldon states, "I'm morally against it and I think it will kill the entire industry." Sorry Sheldon, you can't be both the Baptist and the Bootlegger at the same time. Framing it as a moral stand is transparently pathetic. But at least that would be an argument, begging the question that government should enforce your morality positions. That it threatens your business model is never an argument against innovation or for prohibition.

And so we grind on.