His talk is here.
He says that voice tends to be less democratic than exit. Even though everyone has a right to vote, political influence tends to be highly concentrated.
I tried to make the same point, probably less well, in the widely-unread Unchecked and Unbalanced. For a more concise version of the arguments there, see my essay on competitive government. That essay and Martin’s talk go well together.
Most [of the Paris terrorists] had already been flagged as potential security threats. But so had tens of thousands of others — 20,000 in France alone — and the plotters were careful not to stand out or give law enforcement an excuse to arrest them.
I have said before that when a terrorist watchlist gets large enough, it becomes like an odometer that rolls back to zero. If you’re “watching” 20,000 people, you are not really watching anyone. And I think that it is reasonable to suppose that adding Syrian refugees will eventually add to the number of people on a watch list.
One argument that I have seen for allowing Syrian refugees runs as follows: it is easier to enter this country as a tourist than a refugee, therefore allowing refugees does not really add to the threat of terrorism. If you have made such an argument, do you really believe it? Think through your other implicit beliefs.
1. There must not be much point in vetting Syrian refugees to any greater extent than we vet tourists. In that case, “vetting” is pretty much an empty theatrical gesture.
2. There may not be much point in having a Department of Homeland Security. After all, if terrorist attacks are not really preventable, then why are we spending billions of dollars supposedly trying to prevent them?
3. Addimg Syrian refugees does not add to the risk of an intelligence failure, due to resources being diverted to screen refugees or to the refugee population making it easier for terrorists to blend in. This is because (a) there is no such thing as an intelligence failure. Or (b) dealing with Syrian refugees imposes zero marginal costs of intelligence resources.
It may be perfectly legitimate to believe these things, although I do not myself believe them. But if there is a way to believe that adding Syrian refugees adds no risk without believing such things, then I cannot see it.
I think a more reasonable statement in defense of taking in refugees would be that although it adds to the risk of a terrorist attack, the additional risk is small relative to the benefits of allowing refugees.
[Arizona] Gov. Ducey came up with a clever plan to draw $2 billion over a decade from the state trust lands—a constitutional set-aside, established at statehood to promote public education, that currently holds about 9 million acres and more than $5 billion. The governor wanted to put that additional money directly into the classroom, rather than funnel it through layers of bureaucrats. Even with this outflow, the governor’s estimates showed, the trust would continue to grow in the long term, and its value would be higher in five years than today.
More money for schools with no new taxes: What’s not to like? A lot, apparently. Mr. Ducey’s plan disrupted the usual coalition of teachers unions and public school districts, leading some in the K-12 establishment—those administrators and union officials who have a way of soaking up dollars while doing little for students—to take the unfamiliar position of objecting to new education funding.
How could you ensure that the additional money would be spent only on classroom teachers? Money is fungible. And what were the objections of the educrats? The piece is short on details.
Cato’s Marian Tupy has praise.
In 1970, the first year for which data is available, Singapore had the third freest economy in the world (behind Hong Kong and Canada). Singapore maintained a high degree of economic freedom over the next 45 years and ranks as the second freest economy in the world today (behind Hong Kong). As late as 1970, per person income in Singapore was 54 percent of the global average. Today it is 321 percent of the global average.
And yet, I once met (At long-time Cato chairman Ed Crane’s annual Salmon fest) an ex-Singaporean who had very negative things to say about the military service requirement and other coercive policies there.
a market economy encourages specialization: We become very good in a narrow set of skills or products, and exchange them for millions of other things we have no clue how to do or make. As a consequence, we end up doing remarkably few things and buying everything else from others.
Pointer from Mark Thoma.
The Book of Arnold starts this way. Hausmann’s main point is that industries that compete in world markets tend to progress more rapidly than local industries.
One thought I have is that national retail chains have forced retail to become more competitive. The resistance of some countries, such as Japan, to competition in retail have held back their economies.
Another thought I have is that there is much resistance to competition in the U.S. in health care and education.
I did not treat Doug, whom I have known and have loved since 1967, as an “enemy.” That is a strange way to characterize my scientific criticism of his views on so-called “institutions.” I merely think Doug was, and the many folk who accept his views, mistaken. Briefly, the new orthodoxy about institutions “mattering” (as people usually put it) ignores human ethics and language, reverts without admitting it to a conventional Samuelsonian Max U framework, is strikingly inconsistent with historical evidence, mixes static efficiency with dynamic discovery, never offers quantitative oomph, and retreats to tautology and personal abuse when challenged. It shares such features with psychoanalysis and Marxism and the more dogmatic expressions of Samuelsonian economics. I don’t make such arguments against the new dogma out of some strange animus against one of the most amiable members of our profession, no more than did, say, the rare American geologist before 1965 who advocated for moving continents. I make arguments, as I know you do in your own work, because I believe them to be (probably, with an open mind) true. One can assess my reasons for thinking so by reading pp. 296-354 of Bourgeois Dignity (2010), or earlier this year a paper in the Journal of Institutional Economics and a subsequent debate with Greif, Mokyr, Langlois, and others in reaction, or in the forthcoming volume 3 of the trilogy, out in April: Bourgeois Equality. It is silly and unfair to characterize a serious scientific disagreement as “treating Doug like an enemy.” Doug would never have done so.
What I don’t understand, is who did upper middle class women marry in the Mad Men era, if the men married their secretaries?
1. The distinction between upper middle class and lower middle class was not as sharp back then.
2. College was not as much of a status marker back then. Few women went to college, and even most middle-class men did not.
3. So class selection was not as strong. A (upper-) middle-class woman who married someone without a college degree did not think of herself as marrying down.
4. The result was a lot divorces from middle-class marriages of that period. I believe that it is Stevenson and Wolfers who point out that the period of the 1970s was a transition from marriage as production complementarity (I’ll bring whom the bacon, you fry it) to consumption complementarity (let’s make sure that our leisure interests coincide). This form of marriage turns out to be much more class-selective.
The bottom line is that the upper middle class men and women both married down. In the 1970s, they got divorced, and the sorting along class lines got sharper.
By using an accounting method known as cash-basis accounting, legislators project future spending without having to consider billions of dollars of long-term financial commitments, leaving many budgets balanced in name only.
The Federal government also should have accrual accounting. In fact, back when I was drawing up my preferred list of priorities for the 2016 campaign, this was on the list. But I do not think that Donald Trump is planning on making it an issue.
1. Deirdre McCloskey treated him as an adversary.
2. I cannot think of any other Nobel Laureate who produced anything as significant after winning the Nobel Prize as Violence and Social Orders (My most recent essay about that book is here, and more links to my use of his framework can be Googled), or even come close.
Tyler Cowen has more.
Even 4-year-old Syrian orphans are too dangerous to welcome to the United States, says New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. What sort of man turns away desperate orphans out of fear?
Four-year-old orphans aside, it is not unreasonable to be concerned about the security challenges posed by Syrian refugees. It requires more than just screening out known radicals, a task which is difficult enough. Ideally, you would want to screen out those who may become disenchanted and radicalized over here, and that is impossible to predict. It does not take many Type I errors to have catastrophic results.
I think that there is rhetorical excess on both sides of the issue. A long time ago, I said that there is a lot of writing that is not designed so much to change anyone’s mind as it is to try to rally people on your own side not to change their minds. That is where I see the “debate” over refugees heading.
If someone can point me to an article on the subject that does not characterize the other point of view as “lunacy” or “irrational,” I would like to see it.
UPDATE: Apparently Megan McArdle and I have similar views.