Author: Brandon Christensen

New Issue of Econ Journal Watch is Out

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For those of you who don’t know, co-editor Fred Foldvary is an editor for the Journal, and Warren Gibson is the math reader. From the website:

James Tooley on Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo’s Poor Economics: Banerjee and Duflo propose to bypass the “big questions” of economic development and focus instead on “small steps” to improvement. But, says Tooley, they proceed to make big judgments about education in developing countries, judgments not supported by their own evidence.

Why the Denial? Pauline Dixon asks why writers at UNESCO, Oxfam, and elsewhere have denied or discounted the success and potentiality of private schooling in developing countries.

Neither necessary nor sufficient, but… Thomas Mayer critically appraises Stephen Ziliak and Deirdre McCloskey’s influential writings, particularly The Cult of Statistical Significance. McCloskey and Ziliak reply.

Was Occupational Licensing Good for Minorities? Daniel Klein, Benjamin Powell, and Evgeny Vorotnikov take issue with a JLE article by Marc Law and Mindy Marks. Law and Marks reply.

Mankiw vs. DeLong and Krugman on the CEA’s Real GDP Forecasts in Early 2009: David Cushman shows how a careful econometrician might have adjudicated the debate among these leading economists over the likelihood of a macroeconomic rebound.

Rating Government Bonds: Can We Raise Our Grade? Marc Joffe, a former Senior Director at Moody’s Analytics, discusses limitations of the methods employed at the credit rating agencies and problems in trying to infer default risks from market prices, suggesting another approach.

Also, if you’re unsatisfied with the status quo in terms of political parties, including the Libertarian party, Dr. Foldvary has established the Free Earth Party for you to look at. Be sure to check it out!

The UN Sucks

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I didn’t catch President Obama’s speech to the UN last night. I had other things to do (like stare at a brick wall).

I think the UN actually deserves credit for helping to avert nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States. The UN also did a good job of containing any French, British, or Chinese jealousies that could have erupted during the Cold War by keeping them included in the decision-making process. The diplomatic institutions it put in place were voluntary and had three clear-cut goals in mind: 1) avert nuclear war between the two rising superpowers, 2) avert rivalries between the two fading European powers not defeated by the United States, and 3) ensure that tensions in the Far East remained manageable.

The UN did all of these fairly well.

Today, though, I think the UN is a sham. The few good programs it has, such as the ones focusing on health and clean water, can be better run by various agencies in a decentralized manner. The goals of the post-Cold War UN are vague and paternalistic, which is why I suspect it attracts the curiosity, awe and respect of so many young Leftists. Continue reading →

“Happyism”

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If a man tormented by starvation and civil war in South Sudan declares that he is “happy, no, very happy, a regular three, mind you,” we have learned something about the human spirit and its sometimes stirring, sometimes discouraging, oddity. But we inch toward madness if we go beyond people’s lips and claim to read objectively, or subjectively, their hearts in a 1-2-3 way that is comparable with their neighbors or comparable with the very same South Sudanese man when he wins an immigration lottery and gets to Albany.

From Deirdre McCloskey in the New Republic. It’s about the mismeasurement of happiness. Read the whole thing, but don’t you dare smile!

State of Florida Wants NASA Land

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…so Tallahassee can develop a commercial spaceport.

This is both good and bad. Here’s why:

Liquidating NASA as a government entity will likely have the same type of effect on society that liquidating the computer industry had. There is a lot of technology in NASA that is just waiting to be developed by average, everyday geeks wanting to get rich.

Unfortunately, when I read that the state of Florida wants to buy up land and, presumably, technology from NASA I see a big problem ahead. It’s the same type of problem that always happens when “privatization” occurs. Instead of full-fledged privatization, as was the case when computer-based technology was passed on to the private sector, what we are seeing is a hybrid-type of privatization where the state still has a say in the process.

What’ll end up happening if Florida is any indication is probably nothing with big financial loses. “Nothing” by itself, however, is a bad sign, because again, there is a lot of potential bottled up in the NASA program. If the politicians in Florida really want a commercial spaceport, they would do well to heed to historical precedent and let the greedy geeks of the world make it happen with their own time and money being invested and potentially lost, rather than the taxpayers.

Many good economists have been talking about a “great stagnation” looming ahead for the West – a period where all of the available technology has been used up, as have all the available new ideas – and this stagnation may well come true, but I think that the de-socialization of NASA could help to alleviate this looming problem in a major way. It’s a shame that politicians think so lowly of their fellow citizens.

Also on the backburner: aside from the inevitable failure of a project like this, think of the ominous associations being created with ventures like these. Government and business working hand-in-hand to create a new niche in the economy for the citizens of Florida and the United States. This is the worst kind of fascism at work. The private sector could do much better, as could the American people.

Around the Web

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Marxists’ Apartment A Microcosm of Why Marxism Doesn’t Work. From the Onion.

Slavic Feminists in Paris (Not Safe for Work)

Is Peronism back in Argentina? Pay attention to the Left’s rhetoric

The Myth of the Failure of Capitalism, 1932 edition

Around the Web

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Matt Steinglass has a couple of great posts over at Democracy in America:

  1. Mitt Romney on Israel: Kicking the Can
  2. Mitt Romney’s Problems: Elite Defections

Paul Pillar of the National Interest picks on Romney as well

As I keep saying over and over: Mitt Romney is going to win the election. Why? Because the economy sucks. If it gets better within the next seven months, then Obama will get four more years to urinate on the rule of law and our federal republic.

K.I.S.S. Keep it simple, stupid.

And last but definitely not least, Marxist historian Gabriel Kolko sets the historical record straight on Herbert Hoover and his supposed laissez-faire policies: The New Deal Illusion. This is a must read (h/t Steve Horwitz).

The Lonely Libertarian

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In my elementary school, we began every day with the Pledge of Allegiance. Each morning, I and 29 of my ten-year-olds colleagues would tramp to school around 8:45, hang up our coats, take off our boots or rubbers when the weather was bad, put our books in the old-fashioned lift-top desks with attached chairs, and fool around while waiting for the bell to ring at 9:00 a.m. When it did, we would all quiet down, stand in line to the right of our desks, place our right hand over our hearts, and look at the upper right-hand corner of the classroom. Hanging there was an American flag next to a loudspeaker attached to the school’s public address system. Immediately after the bell, the school principal’s voice would emanate from the loudspeaker and lead us in the Pledge. Every school day for each of the last five years, we had mumbled the same meaningless words in unison, continually reaffirming our allegiance to the republic for Richard Stanz. But this day, something was different.

Immediately following the Pledge, our teacher instructed us to take out our “social studies” books. This was the day we were reading about the Soviet Union and why it was such a bad place. Our book explained (in language appropriate for fifth graders) that the Soviet Union was bad because its government enforced conformity on its citizens. To drive this point home, the book contained a picture of an elementary school class in the USSR showing the boys and girls lined up beside their desks (all wearing uniforms and hats with little red stars on them) reciting something in unison. Looking at the picture, something clicked in my ten-year-old brain and I thought, “Hey, didn’t we just do that? If government-enforced conformity is bad in Russia, why isn’t it bad here?”

From John Hasnas. Do read the whole thing.

I’ve been on summer break for the last few days, but I’ll be back on here regularly. Soon. 🙂 Hope you’re all enjoying the last remnants of a most memorable summer.

The Trees, the Bramble, and the Forest

Brandon Christensen Current Events, History, Religion , , , , ,

I apologize for not blogging much lately. I have finished summer school and have been enjoying my week off from rigorous studies. Back to the grindstone!

In China, protesters have been surrounding the Japanese embassy in Beijing and recently begun hurling debris at both policemen protecting the embassy and the embassy itself. In other parts of China (but not in the “special economic” [free trade] zones) Chinese citizens have been burning Japanese flags and calling on their government to take a harder line on a territory dispute and in trading policies with Japan.

The violence is not limited to the embassy or Japanese flags, of course. Japanese businesses have also been vandalized, threatened, and shut down due to the violence currently raging throughout the Chinese state. Continue reading →

Islam and Free Speech

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Dr Gibson and Dr. Delacroix have both staked out their positions on the matter, and Dr. Delacroix has promised more, but I thought I’d add my own two cents to the matter.

I’ve already shared my thoughts here before, and nothing that I see in the Middle East or elsewhere changes my argument.

Among observers of all political stripes, there have been two broad categories into which they have gravitated. One of these has been the Islamic societies are still in the middle ages argument. This is a legitimate point, too. As Dr. Gibson points out: Continue reading →

“The Young British Soldier”

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When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains
And the women come out to cut up what remains
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.

– Rudyard Kipling, “The Young British Soldier,” 1892

Fwd: Warren Buffet’s Idea for Passing the Budget

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Dr. Delacroix recently e-mailed me the following chain. I thought I’d reproduce it here since most of my e-mail contacts are from school and I use it get laid rather than to argue about politics. I don’t agree with everything Buffet says, of course, but when somebody says something smart or thoughtful, I’ll take it into consideration no matter which quadrant of the political section it comes from. The chain is below the fold. Continue reading →

Around the Web: Cato Unbound Edition

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The response essays to Dr. Horwitz’s Cato Unbound lead-off essay are now up.

Horwitz, Economy and Empirics by Bryan Caplan, a very good critic of the Austrian School

Free bankers George Selgin asks: How Austrian Is It?

And Antony Davies plays nice by saying “come to the middle!”

My own quick thought: none of these guys are hostile to the Austrian School the way a Keynesian would be. I take this as a sign that Keynesianism is dead intellectually, rather than any sort of selective bias on the part of Cato Unbound’s very good editors.

More on Secession

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Secession is not just a means of creating new countries, but can become a central element in governance in general. The general principle is that at any level of government, lower-level governments or individual residents may secede in part or in whole.

This is from a paper by our own Dr. Foldvary. Do read the whole thing. One thing I get tired of dealing with is the “confederate!” slur that is inevitably hurled my way when I bring up secession as a legitimate political function. In other parts of the world, secession is just as hotly debated (if it is not a forbidden subject to talk about).

I think there is a good case to be made that secession would get better reception once a larger (and lighter) federal or confederal system is place, and then allowing for mechanism of decentralization to happen. This way the polities under each system are still bound to each other economically or in some small political way, and would thus likely keep the threat of violence to a minimum.

Dr. Foldvary’s fascinating paper touches on this, too. Just read it!

States and Secession: Lamenting the Failure of the Euro Zone

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The Guardian has a so-so map on secessionist movements in Africa that’s worth checking out. I say it’s only so-so because it doesn’t really cover all the secessionist movements in the region, just the violent ones or the ones favored by Western diplomats.

I’m interested in secessionist movements because of the effects that they have on nationalism, one of the most dangerous ideologies to haunt mankind since the industrial revolution. Nationalism is probably worse than racism, or at least on par with it, when it comes to ideas gone horribly wrong.

That’s why I support free trade between states, and the deeper the better. The true tragedy of the EuroZone crisis is not the inevitable and predictable collapse of the euro but the fact that anti-liberal policies like the central bank and more political integration between states (and away from the people) are being misconstrued as liberal, in the classical sense.

The smaller the states the better, and the freer the trade the better. Mexicans should be able to travel and live in the US and Canada the same way that Nevadans are able to travel and live in California. The EuroZone could have been beautiful, but the pressure for a central bank and more control from a center, in Brussels, has probably ended it. It’s a good primer on how beautiful ideas often don’t pan out the way people would like them to.

Here’s how to fix the EuroZone crisis:

  1. Eliminate the monopoly of the central bank on creating money and credit.
  2. Open up the EuroZone market to more goods from the rest of the world (especially agricultural products from developing states).

I also think it’d be a good idea to keep Brussels as limited as it is. Doing so will not only allow more room for local policies to be experimented with and tested against other policies, but it will continue to erode the nation-state as well. What we were seeing prior to the crisis in the EuroZone is more calls for autonomy from state capitals throughout the EuroZone,  and a powerlessness on the part of states to do anything about it.

So instead of France and Spain, two states, the world may have seen up to five or six states in their stead, all interacting with each other economically while retaining nominal political independence from each other.

What a shame.

US Military Spending

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Over at Democracy in America, Roger McShane wonders aloud:

But I say the situation may be worse on the left, because if Democrats do not make the case for seriously cutting back military spending, who will?

He is speaking of course, of the so-called “cuts” to spending undertaken by the Obama administration. I put “cuts” in quotes because, well:

The cuts Barack Obama has pushed (outside of sequestration) are meager, despite what you may hear from Republicans. They are cuts to a ten-year plan that assumed annual increases. As Christopher Preble of the Cato Institute notes, “Over the next decade, the Pentagon’s annual base budget (which excludes most war costs) will average $517 billion in constant 2012 dollars, 11 percent higher than what Americans spent during the George W. Bush years.”

Jacques Delacroix seems to believe otherwise. In March of this year, he wrote:

In connection with Pres. Obama’s then-recent speech on cutting the US military budget, Paul also said clearly that those are cuts in increases to military expenditures, not absolute cuts. As one who has been reading the Wall Street Journal for the past thirty years and also for the past thirty days, I tell you that this is not true. I think it sounded good at the time so, the Congressman just said it, irresponsibly.

Dr. Delacroix is a numbers man (that’s how he earned his infamy), but with his track record on foreign policy I’d take his argument with a grain of salt.

At any rate, it’s nice to see the non-interventionists on both the Left and the Right get a shout out from the Economist (a supporter of the Second Gulf War), too:

And while the Republicans at least humour the Ron Paul-wing of their party, the Dennis Kucinich-wing of the Democratic Party has no voice in Charlotte.

Imperialism: the bane of free trade and individual liberty. Is it any wonder that Washington has so many enemies these days?