Year: 2018

Midweek Reader: The Folly of Trump’s Tariffs

Zachary Woodman Links , , , , , , , , ,

With stocks plummeting this week upon an announcement of retaliatory tariffs by China in response to a recent spate of steel and aluminum tariffs from the Trump administration, it seems a midweek reader on the situation is appropriate.

  • At the Washington Post, Rick Noack explains how Trump is going into unprecedented territory since the WTO was founded, and why existing trade norms probably can’t stem a trade war. A slice:

    But while China has used the WTO to accuse the United States of unfairly imposing trade restrictions over the last months, Trump does not appear interested in being dragged into the dispute settlement process. In fact, Trump appears to be deliberately undermining the legitimacy of that process by saying that his tariffs plan was based on “national security” concerns. WTO rules mandate that a member state can claim exceptions from its trade obligations if the member’s national security is at stake.

    That reasoning has long been a no-go among WTO member states, because they understand  that triggering trade disputes under a “national security” framework could eventually render the WTO meaningless.

  • Last month at the Chicago Tribune, Steve Chapman had a good op-ed showing why Trump’s justification of steel and aluminum tariffs on national security grounds is bogus:

    But putting tariffs on all imports to prevent dependence on China or Russia is like throwing away your library card to avoid bad books. It would make more sense to focus on the guilty countries rather than deploy a sprayer that also soaks the innocent.

    The national security risk is minuscule, though. Imports make up only one-third of the steel we use, and the Pentagon requires less than 3 percent of our domestic output. No enemy has us over a barrel, because we buy steel from 110 different countries.

    Most of what we import comes from allies and friends, including Canada, South Korea and Mexico, which would have no reason to cut us off in a crisis. If China stopped shipping to us, friendlier countries would leap to grab the business.

  • Also at the Washington Post last month, historian Marc-William Palen gives numerous historical examples of how nobody wins in trade wars and how they can threaten our national security by arousing populist resentment of the US abroad. A slice:

    The trade wars that followed the Republican passage of the protectionist Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which raised duties on hundreds of imports, similarly contain illustrative lessons for today. Canada responded with tariff increases of its own, for example, as did Europe.

    In a widely cited study from 1934, political economist Joseph M. Jones Jr. explored Europe’s retaliation. His study provided a warning about the trade wars that can arise when a single nation’s tariff policy “threatens with ruin” specialized industries in other countries, arousing “bitterness” throughout their populations.

  • At Cato’s At Liberty, Daniel Ikeson explains how Trump’s tariffs establish a dangerous international precedent that will threaten US interests elsewhere:

    By signing these tariffs into law, President Trump has substantially lowered the bar for discretionary protectionism, inviting governments around the world to erect trade barriers on behalf of favored industries.  Ongoing efforts to dissuade China from continuing to force U.S. technology companies to share source code and trade secrets as the cost of entering the Chinese market will likely end in failure, as Beijing will be unabashed about defending its Cybersecurity Law and National Security Law as measures necessary to protect national security.  That would be especially incendiary, given that the Trump administration is pursuing resolution of these issues through another statute—Section 301 of the Trade act of 1974—which could also lead the president to impose tariffs on China unilaterally.

  • The Independent Institute’s Robert Higgs reminds us that citing trade deficits is misleading:

    In reality, individuals, firms and other organizations, and governments trade with other such entities, some of which are located in the same country and others of which are located in other countries. The location of the trading partners has no economic significance whatsoever. Trading entities enter into exchanges voluntarily, each one in each transaction anticipating a gain from the trade. Hence, in expectational terms, every such trade entails a gain from trade, or in other words an addition to the trader’s wealth.

  • At American Greatness, Henry Olsen tries to give a communitarian justification of protectionism:

    So-called populist movements around the world are gaining strength because their voters no longer feel like valued members of their nations. They do not believe their worth should decline because the owners of capital say so, nor do they think their life dreams or values should be denigrated simply because the most educated have different visions.

    Populists like Trump address this spiritual yearning and fulfill the deepest need every human has, to be valued and to belong to a group that values you. In this, and perhaps in this need alone, all men are truly created equal. Tariffs are simply an economic means to fulfill this spiritual need. Tariff opponents can only win if they first recognize this need and promise a more effective way to fulfill it.

  • At Bleeding Heart Libertarians, Jason Brennan explains why communitarianism cannot justify protectionist policies:

    Second, if tariffs don’t actually succeed in helping these workers, then the symbolic argument falls flat. Imagine an artist said, “I’m so concerned about the plight of people living in tenements, I’m going to do a performance art project where I burn down all their homes and leave them on the street. Sure, that will make them even worse off, but my heart is in the right place, and I thereby express my concern for them.” This artist would be…a contemptible asshole.

  • Finally, given its relevance at the moment, it’s worth revisiting Paul Krugman’s classic essay “Ricardo’s Difficult Idea” which remains the best account of why non-economist intellectuals have a hard understanding free trade:

    (i) At the shallowest level, some intellectuals reject comparative advantage simply out of a desire to be intellectually fashionable. Free trade, they are aware, has some sort of iconic status among economists; so, in a culture that always prizes the avant-garde, attacking that icon is seen as a way to seem daring and unconventional.

    (ii) At a deeper level, comparative advantage is a harder concept than it seems, because like any scientific concept it is actually part of a dense web of linked ideas. A trained economist looks at the simple Ricardian model and sees a story that can be told in a few minutes; but in fact to tell that story so quickly one must presume that one’s audience understands a number of other stories involving how competitive markets work, what determines wages, how the balance of payments adds up, and so on.

From the Comments: More trade, more states?

Brandon Christensen Comments, Current Events , , , , , , , , ,

Nguyen Ha left this thoughtful comment about my post on protectionism in Africa that I am embarrassed I missed:

Would you care to explain how “stronger economic ties will hasten the demise of current African states’ superficial institutions”?

What a tough question! First, though, I stated that it was my hope that deeper trading ties would lead to more states, not my prediction. My hope is based on current trends around the world: stronger economic ties have led to more states (and more aspirations for statehood within existing states).

The best academic treatment on this topic comes from Giacomo Ponzetto, an economist currently at CREI in Barcelona (he’s been mentioned at NOL on more than one occasion, too), and especially the Introduction and Section 5 of his working paper titled “Globalization and Political Structure.” Here:

As globalization proceeds, localities remove borders by increasing the size of countries. The number of countries declines and the mismatch between each locality is ideal and actual provision of public services grows. Eventually, this mismatch is large enough to justify a move to a two-level governance structure. The world political structure shifts from a few large countries to many small countries within a world economic union. The two-level structure is more expensive, but it is nonetheless desirable because it facilitates trade and improves preference-matching in the provision of public services.

By “two-level governance structure” Ponzetto means one level, a locality, that’s focused on delivering public goods to that specific locality, and another level, a world economic union, that’s focused on protecting property rights and eliminating border costs.

You can see this concept play out in a few different federative structures, especially the EU, the US, India, and China. In the European Union, multiple localities have tried to separate from countries (Catalonia from Spain, Scotland from UK) while still remaining part of the international economic union in place. Deeper trade ties, more states.

Three new states were created in India in 2000, and China is currently grappling with federalism as a way to keep up with its predictable economic success. The US hasn’t seen any new states added since 1959, but that’s because its system does a good enough job overall to keep all its member states content (happy, even).

The free trade zone in Africa will be interesting to watch because there are so many different variables at play than in China, the EU, India, or the US. India was governed by one overseas empire; the EU has been able to maintain stability because of American military power and the security umbrella it provides; China has been unified on and off again for centuries; and the US is, for all intents and purposes, a polity underscored by British cultural, economic, and political mores. Africa has none of these traits, yet its various leaders recognize that free trade leads to prosperity and often (not always) to better diplomatic ties.

If all goes well, and current trends elsewhere are any indication, Africa would see more states come into being to go along with its deeper economic ties. (This might be a major factor why Nigeria refused to join; Abuja fought a vicious civil war in the 1970s against separatists in Biafra and its leaders are probably tacitly aware of current global trends.) If all doesn’t go well, then violence and poverty will be just around the corner.

Nightcap

Brandon Christensen Links , , ,
  1. The global reaction to “America First” Brands & Feaver, War on the Rocks
  2. Putin’s new Cold War Lawrence Freedman, New Statesman
  3. The “borders” of Gaza Irfan Khawaja, Policy of Truth
  4. A difficult question on Trump’s tariffs Arnold Kling, askblog

Can Elizabeth Warren help turn the populist tide?

Tridivesh Singh Maini Current Events, Politics , , , , , , , , ,

During her recent visit to China, a Democratic Senator from Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren (perceived by many as a potential Presidential Candidate of the Democratic Party in 2020), came down heavily on US President Donald Trump’s approach towards foreign policy, arguing that it lacks substance, is unpredictable, and does not pay much attention to liberal values and human rights, which according to her has been the cornerstone of US foreign policy for a long time.

Trump’s unpredictability

Commenting on Trump’s unpredictable approach towards Asia, Warren stated:

This has been a chaotic foreign policy in the region, and that makes it hard to keep the allies that we need to accomplish our objectives closely stitched-in.

Critical of US approach towards China

Warren met with senior Chinese officials including Liu He, vice-premier for economic policy, Yang Jiechi, a top diplomat, and the minister of defense, Wei Fenghe, and discussed a number of important issues including trade and the North Korea issue.

Warren criticised China for being relatively closed, and stated that the US needed to have a more realistic approach towards Beijing. She also spoke of the need for the US to remain committed to raising Human Rights issues, and not skirt the issue, while dealing with China.

Said the Democratic Senator: Continue reading →

Nightcap

Brandon Christensen Links , , ,
  1. France hails a martyr, but Catholicism is dying there Bruce Clark, Erasmus
  2. The misunderstood art of the Qajar dynasty Joobin Bekhrad, BBC
  3. Let’s restore judicial impeachment Greg Weiner, Law and Liberty
  4. John Paul Stevens is wrong on Second Amendment, again Damon Root, Reason

Revisiting Epstein’s Freedom and Growth

Mark Koyama Economics, History, Liberty , , , , , , , , , , ,

I was fortunate to be invited give the Epstein Lecture at LSE this March. The series is named after the great LSE economic historian Larry (Stephen) Epstein. Here I’ll summarize why it was such an honor to give the lectures. The content of the lecture will be another post.

Epstein was a historian whose origin field of expertise was medieval Italy. I encountered him through Freedom and Growth. Published in 2000, I first read it a couple of years later, perhaps in 2002 or 2003. At the time I was devoted to a story of economic growth shaped by Douglass North, particularly Structure and Change in Economic History (1981).

The focus of Structure and Change was on transaction costs. High transaction costs limited market exchange and kept societies poor for most of history. Sustained economic growth could only occur once transaction costs fell to a level that allowed markets to expand and the division of labor to develop. On this view, market expansion or Smithian growth was itself a stimulus to technological innovation. But what kept transaction costs high?

One answer North gave was the state. To paraphrase: the state had the ability to both keep a society mired in poverty through predatory behavior and to provide the preconditions for growth by securing property rights. The origins of sustained economic growth for North lay in institutional changes that occurred secured property rights and lowered transaction costs. The most important such institutional change was the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

North’s account received many challenges, but the issue that Epstein honed in on was the assumption that there was such a state, able to either revoke or secure property rights. It was assumed that “rulers rule”. Epstein contested this arguing that New Institutional Economists

“project backwards in time a form of centralised sovereignty and jurisdictional integration that was first achieved in Continental Europe during the nineteenth century; they therefore fundamentally misrepresent the character of pre-modern states.”

North, Wallis, and Weingast would address this in their 2009 Violence and Social Orders. But Epstein’s criticism was spot on in 2000. Epstein argued that alongside the problem of predatory states, a central problem was the lack of integrated markets. He attributed market disintegration to coordination and prisoners’ dilemma problems between political authorities. In so doing, Epstein set the agenda for the subsequent “state capacity” research agenda.

Epstein made several points which continued to be expanded upon by current research (see here). First, he documented that the lower interest rates that the British state paid after 1688 were characteristic of city republics from the middle ages onwards. He argued that the English monarchy in the 17th century was characterized by an anomalously backwards financial system. Lower interest rates after 1688 partly represent a convergence to the Republican norm achieved by Italian city-states centuries earlier.

Second, he challenged the argument that monarchies “overtaxed” cities. There was “no evidence that townspeople paid higher taxes under monarchies than republics”. Per capita taxes were likely higher in Republican city-states.

Third, he disputed that Republican city-states like Florence brought economic freedom noting that “republican subjects faced several limitations to their economic and political freedoms that monarchical subjects did not”. All of this challenged generalizations made by historical sociologists like Charles Tilly and economic historians like North.

Epstein’s historical evidence came from medieval Italy. Late medieval Italy was highly urbanized and prosperous by pre-industrial standards. According to Broadberry’s estimates, per capita GDP in Italy in 1450 was not matched by England until 1750. Like growth elsewhere in the premodern world, it was Smithian growth, driven by trade, market integration, and the division of labor. But unlike in England, this Smithian growth did not continue and blossom into modern growth. Epstein’s explanation for why this did not take place was that late medieval Italy suffered an “integration crisis”.

He saw the late medieval period as characterized by new opportunities for growth and innovation. Urbanization increased. Capital markets expanded and deepened. Interregional trade developed. Proto-industrialization took place. But Epstein contended these opportunities were only seized in areas where political authority was centralization.

In reference to proto-industrialization, he observed that

“Crucially, the success of regional crafts was inversely proportional to the concentration of economic and institutional power in the hands of a dominant city.”

With respect to the establishment of permanent fairs, he noted that

In fifteenth-century Lombardy, new fairs proliferated only after the balance of power shifted decisively from the former city-states to the territorial prince with Francesco Sforza’s victory in 1447.

Market integration was complemented and perhaps driven by political integration. Integrated urban hierarchies were themselves the product of political centralization.

“Centralisation underlies all the major institutional changes to market structures previously described. It lowered domestic transport costs, made it easier to enforce contracts and to match demand and supply, intensified economic competition between towns and strengthened urban hierarchies, weakened urban monopolies over the countryside, and stimulated labour mobility and technological diffusion.”

The more centralized parts of Italy — notably Lombardy — were better able to benefit from these trends than was Tuscany. But in general, political fragmentation and regional diversity were “distinctive features of pre-modern Italy” in general and an impediment to its long-run growth prospects.

Unlike in his analysis of interest rates, Epstein brought little data to bear on these claims and I am unaware of subsequent research on late medieval Italy. As such, the thesis of a late medieval integration crisis laid out in Freedom and Growth remains speculative. Epstein would no doubt have fill in the details had he lived longer. Subsequent research has mostly focused on early modern rather than medieval Europe (see here).  But the larger message: the importance of the state for premodern economic development has been central to subsequent research, including my own work (e.g. here).

Lunchtime Links

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Links , , , , , , , , , , ,
  1. David Reich’s essay in the New York Times on genetics, race, and IQ
  2. Henry Farrell’s essay at Crooked Timber on genetics, race, and IQ
  3. Ezra Klein’s essay at Vox on genetics, race, and IQ
  4. Chris Dillow’s essay at Stumbling and Mumbling on genetics, race, and IQ
  5. Andrew Sullivan’s essay at Daily Intelligencer on genetics, race, and IQ

Andrew’s essay is a must read. It’s careful, well thought out, and bolder than the other ones. All are well-worth reading, though.

Reich’s essay has sparked an important dialogue in the Anglo-American world (props to the NY Times). Globally, I think conceptions of race, genetics, and IQ in the non-Anglo world are based on pseudoscience (at best), so it’s nice to see this debate unfold the way it has (so far).

I don’t think any of them have done a good job grappling with Charles Murray’s argument. (More on that later.)

Thanks to Uncle Terry for bringing this to light in the first place.

An update on the federalist debate in India

Tridivesh Singh Maini Current Events, Politics , , , ,

In recent days, numerous leaders in India’s South have spoken in one voice against the 15th Finance Commission — arguing that it is unfair to South Indian states. The bone of contention is a directive in the terms of reference given to the Finance Commission, which states that the distribution of revenues amongst states should be based on the 2011 census, as opposed to the 1971 census. During this period, South Indian states have fared well in controlling their population, while Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh – all northern states – have been unsuccessful. South Indian states have put forth the argument that they have been penalized for controlling their population, while states which have not fared particularly well have been rewarded.

Some leaders have also objected to the commission dubbing important welfare schemes as ‘populist’ without understanding the economic and social dynamics of different states.

Non-Economic Issues Continue reading →

Nightcap

Brandon Christensen Links , , ,
  1. The Geopolitical Risks of Trump’s Protectionism Shikha Dalmia, Reason
  2. A New Classic in Administrative Skepticism Jeffrey Pojanowski, Law and Liberty
  3. A short history of black people and their banks Towns & Hardin, LA Review of Books
  4. The popular connoisseur: Kenneth Clark, art historian Richard Dorment, NY Review of Books

Eye Candy: The Age of Borders

Brandon Christensen History , , ,
NOL map the age of borders
Click here to zoom

I think the border dates for Europe are a disingenuous in places, such as the Czech Republic’s 1459 border with Germany (neither of these two countries existed then) and the borders of the Balkan states (Yugoslavia?). Other than a few discrepancies here and there, it’s a pretty cool map. (h/t Bill Easterly)

Nightcap

Brandon Christensen Links , , ,
  1. Kenneth Clark, John Berger, and art as seeing Kenan Malik, Guardian
  2. 10 forgotten wonders of the world Simon Schama, Financial Times
  3. Why writing Jewish history is so hard Adam Kirsch, New Yorker
  4. Ottoman erotica İrvin Cemil Schick, Aeon

The President’s commission on opioids (2/2)

Bill Rein Culture, Current Events, Law , , , , , , , , ,

Here’s the second half of an abridged essay I wrote for a public policy course. First half is here, and next week I’ll write about the FDA’s new enemy, kratom.

 

Epidemic status

The DEA’s 2015 declaration of an opioid epidemic was the first sign of large-scale federal attention to prescription analgesics, to my knowledge. On the CDC’s official glossary, “outbreak” and “epidemic” are interchangeable: “the occurrence of more cases of disease than expected in a given area or among a specific group of people over a particular period of time.”

The classification of addiction as a disease is sometimes controversial. (See also Adam Alter’s Irresistible for a popularized form of the psychological takes on addiction.) For the opioid problem to be an epidemic, the focus must be the addition rate, and not the overdose or death rate alone. The federal government usually refers to the opioid situation as an epidemic or emergency (which presupposes a value judgment), and when media has covered it (as with the deaths of Philip Seymour Hoffman, Heath Ledger and Prince) they use the same language. One definitive media moment might have been last year, when John Oliver announced for a young progressive crowd that “America is facing an epidemic of addiction to opioids.”

Oliver was referring specifically to addiction — criticizing companies like Purdue Pharma (creator of OxyContin) for misleading or misinformative advertising about addictiveness. But usually it does not seem like the focus is on addiction. As stated, nonmedical usage of opioids is generally down or stabilized from the last couple years, and the problem is mostly overdoses. (True, these are intimately connected.) This might indicate that cutting the pills with other drugs or general inexperienced use are greater problems than general addiction. So, there is an epidemic in the colloquial usage — extensive usage of something which can be harmful — but only questionably in the CDC’s medical definition, as the usage rates are expected to be up as synthesized morphine-, codeine- or thebaine-based pain relievers diversified, and these have mostly stabilized except for heroin (thought as often beyond opioid status) and fully synthetic derivatives which get less attention (fentanyl, tramadol).

Why the standard of abuse fails

John Oliver — worthy to talk about because much of the public plausibly started paying attention after his episode — noted that the pills are assigned to patients and then, even if the patient doesn’t develop an addiction, they end up in the “wrong hands.” What happens at this point? The Commission recommends that companies design their prescription drugs for “abuse-deterrent” formulations (ADF). After spikes in opioid abuse, Purdue Pharma and other companies began researching mechanisms to prevent abusers from easily obtaining a recreational high by tampering with the pill or capsule. In a public statement, FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb asserted that the administration’s focus is on “decreasing unnecessary exposure to opioids,” but, recognizing the real role that prescription opioids play in pain relief, Gottlieb continues that “until we’re able to find new nonopioid forms of pain management … it’s critical that that we also continue to promote the development of opioids that are harder to manipulate and abuse, and take steps to encourage their use over opioids that don’t offer any form of deterrence.” Some of these abuse-deterrent options are crush resistance or wax coating to make dissolving more difficult.

However, opioid abuse comes in two forms which are conflated by the legal language. The first is when a patient takes more than their recommended allocation or takes it in the wrong way. The second is when someone with or without a prescription consumes them purely for recreation. Many drug savvy abusers of the second variety have adapted methods to get a recreational high but avoid potential health risks, the most popular method being “cold water extraction” (CWE). Most opioid pills contain both a synthesized opium alkaloid (from morphine, codeine or thebaine) and acetaminophen: Percocet contains oxycodone and paracetamol; Vicodin contains hydrocodone and paracetamol. The acetaminophen or APAP has no recreational benefits (a pure pain reliever/fever reducer) and can cause severe liver problems in large quantities, so recreational users will extract the opium alkaloid by crushing the pill, dissolving it in distilled water, chilling it to just above freezing, and filtering out the uncrystallized APAP from the synthesized opium. This way a greater quantity of the opioid can be ingested without needlessly consuming acetaminophen. Other recreational users that want less of the opium derivative can proceed without CWE and insufflate or orally ingest the particular pills.

ADFs might be able to dent the amount of abusers of the second variety. If the pills are harder to crush (the route of Purdue’s 2010 OxyContin release) or, for capsules, the interior balls are harder to dissolve (the route of Collegium Pharmaceutical’s Xtampza), amateur or moderately determined oxycodone enthusiasts may find the buzz is not worth the labor. As the Commission observes, more than 50% of prescription analgesic misusers get them from friends and family (p. 41) — these are not hardcore aficionados, but opportunists who might be dissuaded by simple anti-abuse mechanisms. Abusers of the first variety, though, are unaffected: at least in the short term, their abuse rests on slightly-over-the-recommended doses or a natural tendency to develop an addiction or non-medical physical dependency. And, if the political core of the opioid emergency is patients that develop an addiction accidentally (those that stay addicted to pharmaceuticals and those that graduate to heroin), abuse-deterrent focuses are unlikely to create real change in addiction rates. It could even have the unintended consequence of higher overdose deaths for amateur narcotics recreationalists, who aren’t skilled enough to perform extractions and opt to consume more pills in one sitting instead.

And furthermore, ADFs can be incorporated into the naturals and synthetics that are usually bonded with APAP like codeine, oxycodone, hydrocodone and tramadol, but cannot for the drugs that come in pure form like heroin or fentanyl. And those are the problem drugs. The NIDA research on drugs involved in overdose deaths across the board, for one, shows that overdose deaths are on the rise as a whole (except for methadone), and also that the synthetic opioids are much more deadly than the naturals and semi-synthetics: fentanyl is the biggest prescription analgesic killer (it’s much more potent than morphine, and tramadol is not very good for recreation).

drugoverdosedeaths

(This graph also shows, however, that the natural/semi-synthetic usage rate was possibly leveling out but resuscitated in 2015.) So ADFs are useless for the drugs most massively causing the “opioid epidemic.” Making them harder to abuse only dents the second category of abuser, and does not limit their addictiveness for those prescribed them for postsurgical pain or otherwise.

Moreover, from a libertarian standpoint, the second category of abuser does not really belong in the “public health crisis” discussion. Those who knowingly consume opioids for recreation are not a problem, they are participants in a pleasure-seeking activity that doesn’t tread on others. So long as their costs are not imposed on other people, it might be better to separate them from the “epidemic” status. Blurring the lines between the groups that fall under “abusive” means that those with a side-interest in OxyContin on Friday nights are lumped in with addicts suffering from physical dependency. Someone who has a glass of wine each night is not “abusing” alcohol, but we can recognize someone who is an alcoholic; the same distinction should be applied medically to opioid users. By painting all consumers outside of direct medical usage as “abusers,” there can be no standard for misuse, and thus no way for a recreationalist to know how much is too much, when health problems might set in, if they are really trapped in their recreation, etc. Research and knowledge are threatened by the legal treatment and classification.

Conclusion

To summarize, the government terminology of “abuse” obscures a legitimate distinction that is justified on both medical-political and civil liberty grounds. Some of the approaches in the Commission report, like the market-based CMS package recommendation, will likely succeed at quelling opioid exposure (and thus addiction and overdoses), while other maneuvers like an education campaign or ADFs should be treated with cautious skepticism. The trends show that heroin and fentanyl are actually the biggest contributors to the opioid epidemic, although semi-synthetics are climbing again in overdose deaths after leaning toward stabilization two years ago. Evidence that prescription abuse and street use are linked, as well as testimony from former addicts, indicates that drug users easily swing between the legal and black market.

Nightcap

Brandon Christensen Links , , ,
  1. The socialism of moralizing fools Chris Dillow, Stumbling and Mumbling
  2. Friedrich Hayek’s devotion to the free market Linda Yueh, Times Literary Supplement
  3. The art of the Big Lie Phil Tinline, New Statesman
  4. Revolutionary Terrorism and Russian Literary Culture Chelsea Gibson, LA Review of Books

English and Math

Brandon Christensen Culture , , , ,

These thoughts by David Henderson over at EconLog have stuck with me since the day I read them (in 2012):

At the end, one of two hosts [of a radio program he was being interviewed at] asked me, “If you were giving a 12-year-old American kid advice on what languages to learn, what advice would you give?” I think he was expecting me to say “English and Chinese.” I answered, “Two languages: English and math.”

I think of this insight often when I read, mostly because they confirm my own anecdotal experiences travelling abroad. Everybody in Ghana spoke English, and only rural Iberians and Slovenians had trouble with English in Europe. Non-Native French speakers seem only to be in parts of France’s old empire, where old customs – learning the language of the conqueror to get ahead in the rat race – still prevail. English is learned because it’s necessary to communicate these days.

Check out this excerpt from a piece on Swiss language borders in the BBC:

There are four official Swiss languages: German, French, Italian and Romansh, an indigenous language with limited status that’s similar to Latin and spoken today by only a handful of Swiss. A fifth language, English, is increasingly used to bridge the linguistic divide. In a recent survey by Pro Linguis, three quarters of those queried said they use English at least three times per week.

Read the rest. That’s a lot of English used in a country that’s sandwiched between Germany, France, and Italy. I think the power of English, at least in Europe, has to do with the fact that it’s a mish-mash of Germanic and Latin; it’s a “bastard tongue,” in the words of John McWhorter, a linguist at Columbia. Let’s hear it for the bastards of the world!

Nightcap

Brandon Christensen Links , , ,
  1. John Bolton is back, and so are his bad ideas Emma Ashford, the Skeptics
  2. Some more thoughts on libertarian foreign policy Matt Fay, Niskanen
  3. Congress should reclaim its war powers Ilya Somin, Volokh Conspiracy
  4. John Bolton isn’t crazy. The world is. David French, National Review