Is here.
Holmes claims that the left has largely abandoned liberalism. To back this claim, he offers a depressing litany of examples, which I will not recite here. Instead, what I found particularly interesting is the way that Holmes blames post-modern philosophy for leading the left away from the Enlightenment values of free speech and individual liberty.
It is from reading Scruton and Holmes that I have come to see post-modernism as something other than a minor intellectual diversion.
The IS relation remains the key to understanding short-run movements in output. In the short run, the demand for goods determines the level of output. A desire by people to save more leads to a decrease in demand and, in turn, a decrease in output. Except in exceptional circumstances, the same is true of fiscal consolidation.
Pointer from Scott Sumner, who disagrees for different reasons than mine.
In the 1960s, macro was distinct from micro, and few people worried about that. If “spending creates jobs and jobs create spending” was contrary to Walrasian general equilibrium, then so be it. By 1985, the situation (at the graduate level) was totally reversed. Every macro model had to nod in the direction of general equilibrium. It stayed that way until 2008.
Now, the best that MIT economists can do is revert back to 1960s thinking. In my forthcoming book, I offer the alternative of PSST.
I get the impression that post-modernists make two moves with regard to what I call frameworks of interpretation.
1. Let us agree that no framework of interpretation can be demonstrated conclusively to be correct.
2. Let us proceed to rely on a framework of interpretation that explains all social phenomena in terms of the concepts of race, gender, privilege, and power.
The first proposition denies that there can be such a thing as science. I disagree when it comes to the natural sciences. As I see it, using the atomic theory to interpret chemical reactions, using Newton’s laws to interpret the behavior of large bodies, and using evolution to interpret the characteristics of plants and animals is valuable enough that we can treat those frameworks as truth.
However, I agree when it comes to social phenomena. I would say that economics, sociology, social psychology, and the study of politics are disciplines, but not sciences. They are disciplines in that it is better to be informed about the literature than to be uninformed about it, but they are not sciences, because there are relatively few propositions that can be tested conclusively.
But proceeding to (2) is a brave swindle. With (1), you have said that you believe in disarmament. With (2), you have brandished your favorite pistol.
If students were alert to the swindle, they would demand that the post-modernists recognize that the race-gender-privilege-power framework is just one imperfect framework among many that might be used. It should have to contend on a level playing field with other frameworks.
In my new book, I elaborate on the concept of frameworks of interpretation.
So how do we go about strengthening families, religious organizations, schools and all those mediating institutions? Levin’s recommendations are aggressively vague, and where they get specific they seldom surprise. He calls for a “mobility agenda,” with economic growth spurred by tax and regulatory reform, a more competitive and low-cost health-care system, lower budget deficits — all part of a standard conservative recipe. He proposes education reform that includes more professional certificates, apprenticeships “and other ways of gaining the skills for well-paid employment that do not require a college degree.” He prefers to untether employees’ retirement accounts and health insurance from any particular workplace, but acknowledges that this would require “more fundamental policy innovations, and it is not yet evident just what those will be.” Okay, then. It’s nice if the things you want are all bottom-up and empowering and networked and diverse and flexible, but adjectives are not policies.
The review is more sympathetic than what I expected. In my view, Lozada makes too much of the contrast between Levin and Trump. Of course, that contrast is quite strong, but dwelling on it does not help the reader of the review understand what is distinctive about Levin’s thought. For that, you should go back to my review. And read the book when it comes out, which will be in a few days.
From the May-June issue of Cato Policy Report (I did not write the preview, or even read it before it came out, but it provides a good foretaste).
while Kling’s primary audience is other scholars of economics, his writing also provides a first-rate introduction to economic ideas that are easily accessible by students with little or no previous training in economics.
Think of this as the book that every first-year economics graduate student should read (but won’t).
Here is a provocative sentence:
Kling argues that post-World War II economists have mistakenly placed the concepts of scarcity and choice at the center of economic thought.
While scarcity and choice are certainly important concepts in economics, I have two problems with making them central.
1. Scarcity and choice are concepts that focus on a fixed pie. Yet economic growth and the enlargement of the pie are what matter most.
2. Scarcity and choice are taught using “2×2” economics. That is, a choice between 2 activities, hiding the fact that there are millions of specialized tasks in the economy.
These two problems are related. The growth of the pie is the effect of specialization that is vast and mind-boggling in its complexity.
Also, consider where macroeconomics fits in. Your choices are:
1. Treat macro as something that departs from and even contradicts micro. This is the way things worked in the 1960s, and it is where most of the profession seems headed again today.
2. Do macro as general equilibrium theory. This was the attempt to integrate micro and macro in the 1980s, an attempt that strikes me (and others) as having failed.
3. Think of both micro and macro in terms of patterns of specialization and trade. In macro, the focus is on the process of old patterns becoming unsustainable and the process of finding new patterns that are sustainable.
The book makes the case for (3). Along the way, as the preview points out, it takes a hard swipe at MIT-influenced economics for being mistakenly mechanistic in its approach to both micro and macro.
The contemporary world is not very well built for a large chunk of males. The nature of current service jobs, coddled class time and homework-intensive schooling, a feminized culture allergic to most forms of violence, post-feminist gender relations, and egalitarian semi-cosmopolitanism just don’t sit well with many…what shall I call them? Brutes?
His point seems to be that we are becoming a more feminized society, and some of what we observe is (futile) pushback against that. My thoughts:
1. When one speaks of feminized culture (or at least when I speak of it), it is not to suggest that all women have traits that differ from all men. Rather, think of tendencies that are higher in one gender or another.
2. I am less positive than Tyler about the traits of feminized culture. While the favorable characteristics are there, I also associate with feminized culture: consensus-driven to the point of repressing unpopular ideas; elevation of feelings relative to reason; too much tolerance for roles with authority without accountability and for roles with accountability without authority, rather than constructing a hierarchy that keeps authority and accountability aligned (“the buck stops here”).
My impressions are based on experiences working in organizations as well as observations about society at large. I used to say that I felt uncomfortable at business meetings that were male-dominated or female-dominated. I felt most comfortable with close to a 50-50 mix.
3. I am considering reading another Peter Turchin book, from ten years ago, called War and Peace and War. He apparently offers a grand theory of the integration and disintegration of empires, and I wonder how well 21st-century developments fit the “disintegration” model.
If your intentions are good, if they conform to the general received values of your friends, family, and co-workers, what a person of your class and social milieu is supposed to think, everything is fine. You are that “good” person. You are ratified. You can do anything you wish. It doesn’t matter in the slightest what the results of those ideas and beliefs are, or how society, the country, and in some cases, the world suffers from them. It doesn’t matter that they misfire completely, cause terror attacks, illness, death, riots in the inner city, or national bankruptcy. You will be applauded and approved of.
…Moral narcissism is the ultimate “Get out of jail free” card in a real-life Monopoly game. No matter what you do, if you have the right opinions, if you say the right things to the right people, you’re exempt from punishment. People will remember your pronouncements, not your actions.
This is from a forthcoming book.
He attempts to rope social conservatives and libertarians into his thesis. I am not sure that this works so well. Social conservatives may be wrong-headed, and some turn out to be hypocritical, but I do not see them as trying to use political posturing in order to avoid accountability for the consequences of their actions. Perhaps you can come up with enough examples to prove me wrong on that.
I think that the charge sticks better with some libertarians. When they agree with progressives, libertarians can be as preening and morally narcissistic as, well, progressives.
Also, I think that libertarians share with progressives a certain adolescent inability to admit the benefits of an institution they dislike. In the case of progressives, the difficulty is with admitting the benefits of free markets. In the case of libertarians, the difficulty is with admitting the benefits of government. For all the misguided actions that government takes, you should not take it for granted that you will have internal peace or effective urban sanitation without it.
Moral narcissism allows one to disengage from reality. Paradoxically, the moral narcissist tends to deny that humans have a propensity to be evil while believing in the evil of one’s political opponents.
A recent catalog from Princeton University Press includes the following, all self-recommending:
Ken Rogoff, The Curse of Cash.
Joel Mokyr, A Culture of Growth.
Jason Brennan, Against Democracy.
It also includes James E. Campbell’s book on polarization, which is Tyler-recommending.
Guglielmo Barone and Sauro Mocetti write,
We focus on the Italian city of Florence, for which data on taxpayers in 1427 – including surnames, occupations, earnings, and wealth – have been digitalised and made available online. We matched these data with those taken from the tax records relating to the city of Florence in 2011. Family dynasties are identified by surnames. Table 1 offers a first flavour of our results. We report for the top five and bottom five earners among current taxpayers (at the surname level) the modal value of the occupation and the percentiles in the earnings and wealth distribution in the 15th century (the surnames are replaced by capital letters for confidentiality). The top earners among the current taxpayers were already at the top of the socioeconomic ladder six centuries ago – they were lawyers or members of the wool, silk, and shoemaker guilds; their earnings and wealth were always above the median. In contrast, the poorest surnames had less prestigious occupations, and their earnings and wealth were below the median in most cases.
Yes, this is reminiscent of and reinforces the findings of Gregory Clark in The Son Also Rises. Recall my review of Clark’s book.
Tyler Cowen was asked this question.
My answer is based on my classification system for op-eds and political blgs.
1. A piece that speaks to people on the same side as the author and tries to close their minds.
2. A piece that speaks to people on the same side and tries to open their minds.
3. A piece that speaks to people on the other side and tries to open their minds.
I try to read 2 and 3 and to avoid 1. But there is so much 1 being written that even though I try my best to avoid it, I still probably read more of it than anything else.
There is much more pseudo-3 than actual 3. That is, the “advice” to the other side is to admit that you are stupid and evil. It might look like 3 but it is really 1.
The book by Kim Holmes that I have been reading has a bit of 2 and 3. I think it would have been better if he had focused more consciously and consistently on those aspects of his message.
I think that 30 years ago there was much less 1 and more 2 and 3. Back then, people on the left seemed to me to have open minds.
I think that Holmes would blame the influence of post-modern philosophy, which denies that issues can be dealt with through reason.
I blame Paul Krugman.