Category Archives: Politics

The libertarian non-moment (Kevin Williamson)

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Kevin Williamson writes,

But “libertarian” often means little more than “a person with right-leaning sensibilities who is embarrassed to be associated with the Republican Party.” (Hardly, these days, an indefensible position.) Libertarian sensibilities are popular because they enable the posture of above-it-all nonpartisanship, but libertarian policies, as [Bryan] Caplan and others have noted at length, are not very popular at all. Americans broadly and strongly support a rising minimum wage and oppose entitlement reform with at least equal commitment, and they are far from reliable supporters of free speech and free association or enforcing limits on police powers.

Pointer from Tyler Cowen.

By the end of the essay, Williamson wonders whether the Democrats might make some overtures to libertarians. But I get the sense that he is stopping short of going full Niskanen Center. That is, he doesn’t seem to be bad-mouthing libertarians as a way of trying to curry status with the left.

OK, so I scheduled this post over a week ago, and subsequently Williamson was fired by the Atlantic. Nothing to do with the column I quoted; he apparently is anti-abortion and does not mince words in expressing his opinion on that, and the severity of the way he expressed his views was the reason given for the decision to let him go. I don’t know anything about the background to his hiring or firing, but my instinct is to assign a very low probability to the official explanation being the full story.

Where I get news

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A reader asks,

What sources do you use to gather “news”? I have become quite cynical and skeptical of most major news outlets. I am certain that one must consider multiple sources of news to gather a general understanding of what is going on. I am just interested as to where you gather your news from.

In general, I think that competition for attention favors “outrage of the day” stories and disadvantages important stories that do not feed the outrage machine. I try to lean against.

1. My print news source is the Wall Street Journal.

2. I dropped my subscription to the Washington Post. I sort of miss the editorial section, which has some balance to it. But the front section is devoted to undoing the 2016 election. No doubt this caters to the tastes of many of the Post‘s readers, but it does not make for reliable prioritization of stories or for balanced coverage within those stories. Also, the Sunday Outlook section has too many pieces that look like undergraduate essays written to please the sociology professor. Instead, the Journal‘s Saturday Review section often has interesting material.

3. I check Google News once or twice a day, just to see the headlines. Interestingly, they almost never show me headlines from the Journal, but they always show me headlines from the Post. So I don’t

4. Blogs are less shrill and more useful for following news than other social media. But the blog ecosystem functioned better when there were trackbacks, the Google newsreader and Google blogsearch. And no Twitter. As it is, I use Feedly to check blogs. Even though I am not interested in the outrage-of-the-day stuff, it often gets enough blog coverage to keep me from missing out entirely. As an aside, I believe that some of the stories that outrage people on the right, such as college campus hijinks, are not covered in the mainstream media very much.

5. I never turn on a TV. I would not be able to pick out of a police lineup any of the reporters or pundits whose names I see mentioned on blogs, much less anyone who is less well known.

6. All I do on Twitter is echo my blog posts there. Not sure I should even do that.

7. I check Facebook once or twice a week. But I really want Facebook to show me personal items from my friends, not so-called news. I only click on a news-type story if it seems really interesting and different from what I might see anywhere else. That does not happen very often.

Update: Jordan Greenhall, one of my current favorites, says,

I have recently fully unplugged from social media because social media is almost completely toxic, which is to say that when I go into any social media environment I find myself decreasingly capable of making good choices and increasingly willing to make bad choices, because it has that effect. Now, this is an interesting problem because we’ve got billions of people who are now connected on social media.

And by the way I don’t just mean social media; think also broadcast media… if I read an article in the New York Times there’s a 99% chance that I’m worse off rather than better off. Books, particularly old books, by the way, are things that we can still rely on because they take so long to write and to read. They have this cool concept… that has to do with a differential time element—so books are slower than other things.

Perspectives on Jordan Peterson

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1. By Jordan Greenhall.

It might very well be the case that 2018 will be known as the “Year of Jordan Peterson”.

. . .Sovereignty is the capacity to take responsibility. It is the ability to be present to the world and to respond to the world — rather than to be overwhelmed or merely reactive. Sovereignty is to be a conscious agent.

2. Russ Roberts writes,

Peterson reminded me that civilization is fragile.

…Because of Peterson, I read The Brothers Karamazov, a big hole in my reading history. What an extraordinary book. Part of me is amazed and ashamed that I’d never read it. The other part of me is thrilled. I don’t think it would have nearly the impact on me in my teens and twenties as it did reading it now. Deeply thought-provoking on questions of good and evil and theodicy, on the dark side of human nature and on the potential for goodness to be redemptive despite that dark side. I’m thinking of inviting Peterson back to EconTalk just to discuss The Brothers K.

Scott Alexander writes,

The non-point-missing description of Jordan Peterson is that he’s a prophet.

. . .prophets are neither new nor controversial. To a first approximation, they only ever say three things:

First, good and evil are definitely real. You know they’re real. You can talk in philosophy class about how subtle and complicated they are, but this is bullshit and you know it. Good and evil are the realest and most obvious things you will ever see, and you recognize them on sight.

Second, you are kind of crap. You know what good is, but you don’t do it. You know what evil is, but you do it anyway. You avoid the straight and narrow path in favor of the easy and comfortable one. You make excuses for yourself and you blame your problems on other people. You can say otherwise, and maybe other people will believe you, but you and I both know you’re lying.

Third, it’s not too late to change. You say you’re too far gone, but that’s another lie you tell yourself. If you repented, you would be forgiven. If you take one step towards God, He will take twenty toward you. Though your sins be like scarlet, they shall be white as snow.

My own thoughts:

For those of us who gaze at college campuses and see students being taught to conform and to bully rather than to think, Peterson offers a rallying point.

He does have some ideas that are intellectually provocative. Scott Alexander points to the theme of chaos and order, which is important in Peterson’s thinking. Russ Roberts points to Peterson’s ability to derive insights from classics in literature.

I still think that he is better as a performer than as a writer. I am inclined to recommend binge-watching him on YouTube over reading his books.

This will be posted in the middle of Passover (note that, as usual, I schedule my posts in advance). The substance of the holiday is progressive, celebrating freedom from slavery. But the form of the holiday is order–doing things in a traditional way. The very word “seder” can be translated as “order.” One could have a discussion at the seder table that takes off from Peterson’s view of the need to preserve order while exploring chaos.

Complicated vs. Complex

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Jordan Greenhall writes,

a complicated system is defined by a finite and bounded (unchanging) set of possible dynamic states, while a complex system is defined by an infinite and unbounded (growing, evolving) set of possible dynamic states.

. . .In the case of complication, the optimal choice is to become an “expert”. That is, to grasp the whole of the system such that one can make precise predictions about how it will respond to inputs.

In the case of complexity, the optimal choice goes in a very different direction: to become responsive. Because complex systems change, and by definition change unexpectedly, the only “best” approach is to seek to maximize your agentic capacity in general. In complication, one specializes. In complexity, one becomes more generally capable.

I found this distinction to be interesting. I would argue that mainstream economists treat economic problems as complicated, to be mastered by the expert. Those of us who lean toward Austrian heterodoxy treat economic problems as complex, best dealt with by adaptation.

I recommend the entire essay. His theme is the challenge that social media poses for human culture. As you know, this topic interests me a great deal.

The game-playing society

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My latest essay.

During the industrial era, the key word was systematic. Factories and assembly lines turned production into a system. We invented the discipline of political economy, which analyzed the capitalist system. From Leon Walras in the 19th century to the Congressional Budget Office today, economists have used systems of equations as a way of interpreting the economy.

. . .I claim that we are entering the era of games, in which the key words are scorekeeping and strategy.

The main idea in the essay is, if valid, really profound. Whole books have been written about less. Read the essay twice, and then see what happens if you look contemporary phenomena and try to view them through the “era of games” lens.

Will Jews divorce the left?

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The BBC prints a scathing letter from “Jewish leaders.”

When Jews complain about an obviously anti-Semitic mural in Tower Hamlets, [Labor leader Jeremy] Corbyn of course supports the artist. Hizbollah commits terrorist atrocities against Jews, but Corbyn calls them his friends and attends pro-Hizbollah rallies in London. Exactly the same goes for Hamas. Raed Salah says Jews kill Christian children to drink their blood. Corbyn opposes his extradition and invites him for tea at the House of Commons. These are not the only cases. He is repeatedly found alongside people with blatantly anti-Semitic views, but claims never to hear or read them.

More discussion by Dalibar Rohac.

Could something like this happen in the U.S.? Today, the vast majority of Jews in this country are more closely affiliated with the left than they are with Judaism.

Well, first of all, it may not be happening in the UK. It could be that these “Jewish leaders” are unusually conservative politically. I am not familiar with the scene there.

Many of my Jewish friends proudly took part in the march for gun control last weekend, expressing their solidarity with the left. But some of them also noted the DC Council Member who said that the Rothchilds control the weather. As of now, they see Democratic anti-semitism as a fringe phenomenon and right-wing anti-Semitism as a serious threat. We’ll see what happens as that view continues to collide with reality.

William Galston on immigration, sovereignty, and populism

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He writes,

make peace with national sovereignty. Nations can put their interests first without threatening liberal democratic institutions and norms. Defenders of liberal democracy should acknowledge that controlling borders is a legitimate exercise of sovereignty, and that the appropriate number and type of immigrants is a legitimate subject for debate. Denouncing citizens concerned about immigration as bigots ameliorates neither the substance nor the politics of the problem. There’s nothing illiberal about the view that too many immigrants stress a country’s capacity to absorb them, so that a reduction or even a pause may be in order. No issue has done more than immigration to feed populism, and finding a sustainable compromise would drain much of the bile from today’s politics.

Galston is likely to be regarded by the left as a traitor, much as David Brooks is viewed as a traitor by the right. If so, then this reinforces my view that if we had a proportional-representation parliamentary system, the center-left and center-right parties would be collapsing.

Too much political identification

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Rebecca Newberger Goldstein writes,

I’m no fan of postmodernism, but I somehow doubt that this obscure academic ideology is responsible in any meaningful way for our post-truth woes. For one thing, the writings of postmodernists are so opaque and filled with jargon that I’ve often wondered whether the authors themselves have any idea what they’re trying to say. It’s hard to see how they could exert much influence outside of their own small coterie.

I would say instead that the downgrading of truth, both within the academy and without, shares a common cause—namely, the promotion of political ends above all else. We have lost the capacity to limit the reach of our ideologies and the identities that go with them. Perhaps modern life has so unsettled traditional identities that many of us have nothing better to fall back upon than the crude claims of politics. And it is certainly the case that new media bear some of the blame, with their unprecedented capacity to distort and heighten every point of ideological disagreement and to disseminate it far and wide.

My emphasis. I wish that politics would retreat. Instead, if we look at how businesses are feeling impelled to take stands on political issues, politics seems to be advancing.

Yuval Levin and I were speculating the other day that perhaps our society just wasn’t prepared to handle the media environment that has emerged. Maybe as we adjust and learn, the political tribalism will die down.

Not your 1960s protests

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Barton Swaim writes,

a walkout is supposed to be an act of rebellion, of resistance. It involves risk. Like a strike at a factory—if you participate, you might get what you want or you might lose your job. The Enough! walkout was a safe gesture, honored by our governmental and cultural authorities. The national news media—consider the lavish coverage in the New York Times—practically begged the kids to go through with it and heaped praise on them when they did.

Pointer from the WSJ. The way I would put it is that a real protest is an act of disagreeableness. It is not an act that primarily attracts the agreeables.

Let me reminisce a bit.

1. Around 1966 or so, my middle school in the tony suburb of Clayton, Missouri invited a performance by a group called “Up with People!” Their songs were upbeat and patriotic. They were trying to steer young people away from becoming hippies or war protesters. I hated the assembly, and I let other students know that I didn’t like having an agenda thrust on me like that. It was traumatic for me because a beautiful female classmate sneered at me, “Arnold, you have no soul.” It was an episode that marked me as a disagreeable.

2. The biggest cause for protest at my high school was the demand by students for a smoking lounge. It was not my cause, but lots of students fought for it, and they won. So if you think that the 60’s was all about peace and civil rights, think again. At Clayton High School, it was about a smoking lounge.

3. I remember writing a long editorial in favor of gun control for the high school newspaper, but it’s hard to pinpoint when. I want to say it was after Robert Kennedy was assassinated, but that would have been the end of my freshman year, and I don’t think I became involved with the newspaper until at least a year later.

4. It was actually during high school that I peaked as a radical. I lost my radical edge when I went to college. The Swarthmore radicals scared me, because they either seemed cult-like (this was when Lyndon Larouche called himself Lyn Marcus and was a Marxist and he recruited heavily at Swarthmore) or just not very logical in their thinking. I wanted them to be more intellectually sophisticated than I had been in high school, and it seemed more like the opposite. The bottom line is that I just didn’t connect on a personal level with any of the campus radicals.

One factor in my de-radicalization is that I arrived on campus prepared to re-think my entire personality. I had become aware that my high school persona wasn’t working well for me socially, and I made a conscious effort to be less sarcastic and hard-edged.

The group of friends I fell in with as a freshman had very left-wing views, but politics was not their focus. They were more into folk dancing (and I was not–that came later) and classical music (again, I did not really share that interest, but what little classical music I own goes back to chamber music that I saw my friends perform). If I had been more agreeable, I might have at least joined them for dancing.

Come to think of it, my freshman-year friends were very strongly on the agreeable end of the spectrum. In hindsight, I think I fell in with them because unconsciously they represented the direction I wanted to take myself, and it was exciting because they made me feel like it was working.

In my junior year, I took the first of several economics seminars with Professor Bernie Saffran. Bernie was not out to champion any one political view. He wanted to be friends with everyone in the economics profession, and in that he was very successful. He did his graduate work at Berkeley, where he be-friended many young liberals who later achieved very high status within the profession, including Peter Diamond, Laura Tyson, and George Akerlof. Yet his own views were mildly conservative, and in class he had more praise for Milton Friedman than for Paul Samuelson. Although many of his students went on to become prominent left-of-center economists, more than one of us ended up differently. Jeff Miron comes to mind.

On the whole, my memories of my political self in high school are more negative than positive. The Vietnam War was stupid, but the protest movement was stupid in its own way.

Wither the center? post-election Italy

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Alberto Mingardi writes,

A country like Italy ought to have a moderate, responsible, free enterprise-oriented right. But it is indeed an “ought”: not, in our case, an “is” and a truly felt tradition in this country.

Michael Barone writes,

As in France, Austria, the Netherlands, and Germany, the traditional center-left party largely collapsed, with just over 20 percent of the vote

My guess is that if the U.S. had a similar electoral system, we would observe the same thing. As of now, a center-left party would do less well than a far-left party. The right would be split among libertarians (not a large bloc), Trump supporters, and traditional conservatives, with the latter possibly split into a faction that stresses social issues and a faction that stresses the economy and foreign policy.

It could be that Martin Gurri is correct, and that the new media environment helps to foster a revolt against elites. But another possibility is that the financial crisis of 2008 had an effect on the perception of elites in America not unlike the Vietnam War. That is, the “best and the brightest” looked really foolish, and they lost the trust of many people.

Taste-makers in the press have not been kind to Vietnam War architects Robert McNamara, McGeorge Bundy, and Dean Rusk. But for policy makers involved in the financial crisis, the outcome has been different. Henry Paulsen, Timothy Geithner, and especially Ben Bernanke are often described by journalists in heroic terms, and they have vigorously patted themselves on the back in their memoirs. Barney Frank and Chris Dodd etched their names in history as the co-author of post-crisis banking legislation, blotting out their prior role as bosom buddies of Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, and Countrywide Funding when those firms were running up dangerous risks.

The public may have a better intuitive sense of the policy elite’s role in all this. For the center not to wither, it has to earn the trust of the people.