If Marie Antoinette lived in a glass house, would her pot and kettle be black?

So I'm mixing methaphors . . . and stealing one in this case. Bob Stoops, the University of Oklahoma's rather well-paid football coach, made some comments the other day to the Sporting News regarding college football players' "pay". Having read the article, I'm not nearly as worked up as I was when the comments were related to me--so much for the reliability of hearsay.

The part where I'm stealing a metaphor comes from The Oklahoman's columnist, Berry Tramel's, article. I think he gets it basically right: message wasn't so bad, but delivery including the messenger is a problem.

Stoops' message is an argument worth having: that college football players do get paid in the form of scholarships, tutoring, athletic training, etc. Of course at some point the NCAA's basic message would be in conflict with Stoops' in that all the TV ads the cartel runs keep telling us that college athletes are almost always "going pro in something other than their sport". So much for the value of the training.

I read that Stoops says he is all for stipends. So maybe we are just arguing about the form and structure of how college football players, et al. should be paid. But if he wants to argue that a scholarship is of high value to an athlete, and let's remember that value is subjective (i.e., wage value is in the eye of the laborer), then there is a simple test we can conduct. Let athletes choose between full scholarships and the comparable amount in after-tax income. Stop making them attend classes unless they choose to attend and pay for college. If Stoops is right, then not much should change in the college football landscape.

PS. To those who would invoke the silly argument that college football players would make a foolish choice taking the money instead of the education, I'd say be careful the point you raise. Are you sure you know better how adults (nearly all college football players are adults) should live their lives than they do? If college football players are so foolish or short sighted or subject to bad decision making perhaps due to adverse influences in their lives, then are we sure no one other than the people profiting off of their labor should be making these choices for them? Are you sure college is as valuable as you think? Have you read Charles Murray? Are you sure all universities are created (and continue) equal? Does the fact that 115,000 janitors hold bachelor's degrees give you pause? How would you characterize "The Great Gatsby"? Was he . . . uh  . . . great!?

Marriage: a matter of equality before the law

Here comes another post where I relate an on-going discussion I've been having with a friend. The friend is a self-described conservatarian (part conservative and part libertarian). He struggles with some issues of libertarian ideology such as full drug legalization and same-sex marriage. He is thoughtful in his disagreement, when he has disagreement with my strict-liberty philosophy, and this extends to a careful treatment of the same-sex marriage issues. While he is not yet a supporter of same-sex marriage, he is very tolerant of those who are homosexual, and he is questioning his position on the marriage issues. He is willing to learn.

He brought today a new argument that he had heard recently. For background, this relates to an earlier segment of this debate we've been having where I invoked Mike Munger's rather good argument (I believe it is a very good argument) that the issue is not about some slippery slope to three-way marriage, etc. Today the argument brought was something along the lines of the following (I am paraphrasing and probably butchering as well):

The state should be blind in many respects in the marriage contract: Blind to race, blind to national origin, blind to religion, and blind to sexual preference. But the evolutionarily natural and by far historically predominant state of marriage has been between a man and a woman. If the state begins sanctioning the marriage contract between man and man or woman and woman, then the state is no longer blind to sexual preference. The state is making a judgment about conditions within marriage that it was previously blind to. Therefore, the state should not disrupt the natural and common understanding of marriage (man and woman). Otherwise, why not man-woman-woman? Why not spinster sisters who want to avoid inheritance tax? Etc.

The argument itself is a non sequitur and the additional worry at the end is a red herring. It is a strange twist to say that the state is treating people equally by not allowing some people major advantages it offers others because some don't meet a rather arbitrary condition: heterosexual union. 

As we discussed it further, we seemed to get bogged down in the slippery-slope part where if the state says that being a man and a woman are not essential conditions for marriage, then, according to the argument presented, there is no logical way to draw the line limiting it to two people, etc. The idea is in part an attempt to "corner a libertarian" by making me take a difficult position through reductio ad absurdum. If so, he was barking up the wrong tree. My argument was as follows: 

There may be a logical straight line (pun intended) as well as a liberty-principled reason to support marriage contracts among more than two people, but that is a battle for another day. It is not the current debate, and it doesn't shed light on how we should settle the current debate over same-sex marriage. What's more, many of these hypothetical marriages do not follow logically from allowing same-sex marriage. We can draw lines about what will and what will not be considered a legitimate marriage contract. 

I was searching for an analogy in the law to help make this concrete. At first I thought of liable and how it is different in different jurisdictions and somewhat arbitrary, but with liable we essentially get to a point where a balance is struck. Then I thought patent law might be a better analogy as it is a creation of the state as is the marriage contract (in case it isn't obvious, this entire discussion has nothing to do with how a particular religion defines marriage--it is only about state-recognized contract). But then the best analogy came to mind, and I sent the following email:

Forget the liable analogy. This one is much better, I think, to express my argument against the logic you were laying out this morning: The minimum age we allow people to get married.

This is something that has varied arbitrarily throughout history and varies today across societies. In the US it is usually 18 with the exceptions of Nebraska (19) and Mississippi (21). Most states allow minors to get married with parental or judicial consent generally limiting this group to 16 and 17 year olds. There are also pregnancy exceptions for females below 18 along with some other exceptions in various states.

I would equate same-sex marriage prohibitions with age prohibitions for those 18 or above. So Nebraska and Mississippi become the problem cases. Nebraska and Mississippi might argue that if they are forced to move their restriction down to 18, then why not 17? Why not 14? Etc. That isn't the issue. The issue is if legal, consenting adults can marry. Arguments could be made that those below the arbitrarily-set age of majority, 18, should still be allowed to marry, but that is not the issue at hand. Changing the definition of state-sanctioned marriage to include same-sex couples may weaken the case against three-person or more marriage, but that is not the issue being addressed. The issue is whether the state-sanctioned marriage contract can be rightfully limited to couples that are comprised of one male and one female.

My first-best solution is that the state should have no role in marriage--there shouldn't be a marriage penalty or benefit in tax policy, exchange of assets, etc. My second-best solution is that the state should not discriminate when sanctioning a marriage by considering the genders of the marriage participants. We've come a long way since the Army recruiter's standard question for Winger and Ziskey: "Are either of you homosexuals?" We still have a ways to go.

Highly linkable

I'm back from my unintentional hiatus. Now that my bracket is busted and other things have been put to bed, at least for a while, I can get busy with a lot of blogging that has been on my mind. To begin, let's get some good links in.

Megan McArdle takes just six minutes in this Cato Daily Podcast to very effectively explain what insurance is and what it is not and why Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is in the camp of confusion. The all-too conventional wisdom is that insurance is about a transfer of expense, but this should obviously be nonsense. How could a redistribution scheme be a profitable endeavor? Insurance is rather a transfer of risk.

While we enjoy the excitement of March Madness, let us not forget the madness that is the non-free market of college athletics. Dave Berri has a column on Freakonomics asking simply, "How about a free market for college athletes?"

Speaking of Freakonomics, if you'd like a scary example of how quickly a consortium of "experts" can slip into technocratic thinking and tyrannical behavior, listen to this Freakonomics podcast on fighting obesity. There was a strong vein of Kling's oppressor-oppressed narrative running through these progressives.

John Cochrane explains why boogeyman-like fears of genetically modified organisms (plants, foods, etc.) is not only misplaced, anti-science, and anachronistic, but it is also very bad for the poorest among us. GMO just ain't the big, bad wolf.

Finally, Stephen Landsburg makes a point in principaled agreement with me by showing in two videos how magnificently wealthy we are.

Highly linkable

This Los Angeles Review of Books interview with evolutionary biologist Michele Pridmore-Brown touched on a lot of interesting topics including some good challenges to the Paleolithic man obsession currently in vogue. I myself am sympathetic to the Paleo ideas, but like all things it must be taken in moderation and in proper context. The magnitude of how Paleo you go matters, so to speak. 

Scott Sumner lays out a great explanation as to why we can all say, "Well, here's another nice mess you've gotten me into!" 

Last month the great economist Armen Alchian passed away. Among so many other contributions such as the importance of property rights, Alchian is famous for the Alchian-Allen Theorem which for example tells us why we're more likely to find the highest quality apples in Washington, D.C. rather than Washington state where they are grown. Don Boudreaux shared his thoughts on Alchian in this brief Cato Daily Podcast. David Henderson offered his remembrance in this WSJ article. 

Elizabeth Warren suggested what?

A $22 per hour minimum wage might be reasonable.


Here is a telling passage from the full article on Huffington Post:

"If we started in 1960 and we said that as productivity goes up, that is as workers are producing more, then the minimum wage is going to go up the same. And if that were the case then the minimum wage today would be about $22 an hour," she said, speaking to Dr. Arindrajit Dube, a University of Massachusetts Amherst professor who has studied the economic impacts of minimum wage. "So my question is Mr. Dube, with a minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, what happened to the other $14.75? It sure didn't go to the worker."

It seems she basically believes that employers wouldn't pay workers without people like her making them. Now that is dumb. She also severely confuses average worker productivity with marginal worker productivity. Claiming that the minimum-wage worker in 1960 grown at the rate of productivity growth is the equivalent to the minimum-wage worker in 2013 is 1 + 2 = 7. That is dumber. Has nothing else changed since 1960? Job descriptions, labor pools, employer compliance with regulations, et al. all the same? Are we really sure the worker who should be earning the MINIMUM wage today is equal to the worker in 1960 who should have been earning the MINIMUM wage plus the AVERAGE growth in worker productivity?

Think about this simplified thought experiment that ignores A LOT of other changes: A grill cook with little capital equipment at a fast-food burger joint in 1960 can produce 200 burgers per hour. A grill cook with lots of capital equipment at a fast-food burger joint in 2013 can produce 500 burgers per hour. Should the worker in 2013 be paid a full 2.5x more than the worker in 1960, or should the guy who bought the capital equipment be paid something, which eats into the 2.5x for the worker?

It is good that the NRA sets the tone the gun makers follow

On today's NPR Morning Edition Bloomberg Businessweek assistant managing Editor Paul Barrett was trying to express concern but instead expressing confusion about the role the NRA plays in the debate over gun rights. Here he is again on Bloomberg TV.

He demonizes NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre as conspiratorial without any evidence offered, but that is not the major confusion he expresses. What he doesn't seem to understand is that the NRA is an organization lobbying for gun rights, not gun makers. He wants to fit it into a simple box like tobacco lobbyist towing the line for cigarette makers. But that isn't the correct model. What's more, we don't want it to be. And that is true of both ideological sides of the gun debate.

If the NRA were simply the gun manufacturers' political arm, we would expect to see lots more compromise on the issue of gun rights. Sounds good, right? It is not. When a corporation compromises with the government, it is a tit for tat arrangement. Hence, the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) of 1998 was very, very favorable to incumbent tobacco firms. Assuming one's goal was either tobacco freedom or tobacco prohibition, this agreement did not work very strongly in principle or practice to achieve either goal.

From gun rights supporters' perspective, they want an NRA beholden to their principals not the profitability of current gun makers. An NRA working for the gun makers would probably seek to prevent new entrants in the market a la the MSA as well as limit competition among existing firms--government-sponsored oligopoly. These compromises would be indifferent if not contrary to gun rights, but positive to gun makers.

While the limits on competition would be the compromise that somewhat satiates gun prohibitionist by limiting guns in some capacities, it would not be the ideal arrangement for that group either. 200-300 million guns exist in America today. These are highly durable machines. Limiting future production does little to correct what this group sees as a major problem in America (hear Steve Levitt's thoughts here.) An NRA fighting for a chance to capture public officials to the benefit of gun makers is a more dangerous foe than one staking out a principled stance. The latter will fight to the death, and you just might kill him. The former will fight to lose just enough that you won't win but will lose your own will and momentum to fight any longer.

Be able for thine enemy rather in power than use...

A third-grader on the reason for a Pope

In answering a question on her religion test earlier this week, my third-grade daughter indicated where she falls in Kling's Three-Axes Model.

No word yet on her opinion if Pope Francis will be hard line enough. I may be raising the next Sister Mary Stigmata.