Month: May 2010

Ilya Somin follows up:

To a large extent, both conservative Republicans and left-wing Democrats tend to “root for their political team” with little regard for objectivity or truth. But it is also the case that knowledge makes a difference. Increasing political knowledge tends to alter one’s views towards greater skepticism about most (but not all) government interventions in both economic and “social” spheres (taxes are an important exception). These results hold true even after controlling for ideology, education, race, gender, and partisanship. Increasing political knowledge doesn’t necessarily make you a libertarian; far from it, in most cases. But it does, on average, make people significantly more libertarian than they would be otherwise.

As does Yglesias:

Inability to see that supply-restrictions on housing raise the price of housing is a big problem. Inability to see that carbon dioxide emissions are leading to ecological catastrophe is a big problem. The good news about progressives is that actual policymaking in, for example, the Obama administration is not based on elementary errors of economic policy. Larry Summers, Peter Orszag, Tim Geithner and their key deputies all understand the situation perfectly well as do leading progressive political commentators like Paul Krugman. Unfortunately, the situation with climate science and the right is by no means parallel in this regard.

Scott Morgan's two cents on the connection between medical marijuana and outright legalization:

[Some Drug warriors lobby] for the right to continue arresting seriously ill patients, solely because they're afraid that failing to do so will result in the eventual legalization of marijuana.

Medical marijuana laws can't possibly lead to full legalization unless the American people are impressed with how well those laws work and agree to expand them. Unfortunately for the drug warriors, recent polling suggests that this is already beginning to happen.

Matt Steinglass examines the state of reporting:

I understand Brad DeLong’s frustrations with journalists failing to get complicated stories about economics and economic policy right. I don’t know anything about the specific cases in which he feels some reporters at the Washington Post weren’t trying to get it right. But as a broad response, I would have to say: for most of us, the level of detailed and scrupulous reportage which he expects on every story entails an amount of work that almost no journalistic institution in the world will pay us enough to do, anymore.

This isn’t really a complaint; it’s more of an observation.

New York, New York, 7 pm

McArdle fumes:

This is our nation's drug enforcement in a nutshell.  We started out by banning the things.  And people kept taking them.  So we made the punishments more draconian.  But people kept selling them.  So we pushed the markets deep into black market territory, and got the predictable violence . . . and then we upped our game, turning drug squads into quasi-paramilitary raiders.  Somewhere along the way, we got so focused on enforcing the law that we lost sight of the purpose of the law, which is to make life in America better.

I don't know how anyone can watch that video, and think to themselves, "Yes, this is definitely worth it to rid the world of the scourge of excess pizza consumption and dopey, giggly conversations about cartoons."  Short of multiple homicide, I'm having trouble coming up with anything that justifies that kind of police action.  And you know, I doubt the police could either.  But they weren't busy trying to figure out if they were maximizing the welfare of their larger society. They were, in that most terrifying of phrases, just doing their jobs.

And in the end, that is our shame, not theirs.

Dan Riehl defends the cops.

Zeljka Buturovic and Dan Klein have a new paper about which Americans understand basic economics. Todd Zywicki summarizes:

• 67% of self-described Progressives believe that restrictions on housing development (i.e., regulations that reduce the supply of housing) do not make housing less affordable.
• 51% believe that mandatory licensing of professionals (i.e., reducing the supply of professionals) doesn’t increase the cost of professional services.
• Perhaps most amazing, 79% of self-described Progressive believe that rent control (i.e., price controls) does not lead to housing shortages.

And adds:

Note that the questions here are not whether the benefits of these policies might outweigh the costs, but the basic economic effects of these policies. Those identifying as “libertarian” and “very conservative” were the most knowledgeable about basic economics.  Those identifying as “Progressive” and “Liberal” were the worst.

Tyler Cowen cautions:

My own view is that "who in the general public understands economics best" is very sensitive to which questions we ask.  Libertarian-leaning voters have a better understanding of government failure, but left-leaning voters are more likely to understand adverse selection or aggregate demand management.  Which is a more important topic?  That may depend on the researcher's own point of view.  What's the closest we can come to a value-neutral test of whether elites or the "common man" understand economic reasoning better?

Sam Harris goes another round.

Stephen Clark reframes belief in God:

[T]o "believe in God" for the Abrahamic tradition is to believe in the possibility of Justice, of Freedom from oppression: "what does the Lord require of you", said the prophet Micah, "but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?" Believing in God is believing that the orphan and the widow will be, must be vindicated. The first Abrahamic monotheists, like the first Christians, were in a real sense atheists: that is, they denied that the spirits evoked in most religious ceremonial deserved our worship, denied that kings and emperors were divine, and chose to remodel their personal and communal lives in the light of the demand for Justice.

How he brings God back into the equation:

If we are to trust in the possibility of Justice, must we not also believe that there really is such a thing, and that it will indeed prevail? Must we not, in fact, believe that God, the Spirit of Justice, does indeed exist, and that He will repay?

Norm Geras shudders:

To first define religion in a way that radically reduces its core, turns atheists into disguised people of faith and religion itself into a set of ethical and political commitments; and only later add belief in the existence of God as a necessary support for those commitments. Note also the logical fallacy of inferring an existence from a putative need. I might think that my future happiness depends on someone's securing for me a chauffeur-driven stretch limo and a supplementary barouche; but even if I do think it, I wouldn't let the hypothesis convince me that such a benefactor will eventually turn up.

For me, the core argument for some force behind the universe, revealed metaphorically in Scripture, is affirmed by science as we currently have it. Our universe came from nothing and is still expanding. What conceivable force made this possible? The second question is the nature of that force. The core revelation of Jesus – and the Buddha, for that matter, in some respects – is that the force is good, not evil. There is hope. Death is not what it seems. Love prevails. In this tragic, fallen, cruel world, this is not an easy doctrine. It cannot be inferred from the evidence. Which is why it is the gift of faith, from some source so deep, so great and so benign it defies any human description. Even metaphor fails.

To shear theology of its architecture and expose the rawest of its foundations is, I believe, part of what we need to do now as Christians. As our organized faith crumbles into archaism and fundamentalism, we need to re-imagine again what we already know, to take the so-familiar concepts, and make them real again.

(Photo: Thomas Hohnes/Getty.)

Most Washingtonians recall the lonely figure of John Wojnowski, who stood on Masachusetts Avenue for years with a placard accusing the Vatican of covering up the rape of children. Like many formerly mocked as a crank, he now seems prescient and on-target – so on target that each time the papal nuncio to the US, Archbishop Pietro Sambi walks past him in his new protest point, Embassy Row, he lashes out. Here are the following alleged insults hurled by this prince of the church at a man who claims to have been sexually abused by a priest at the age of 15:

"You are a loser. You are a loser with a camera. You are a total loser." (Sei un fallito. Sei un fallito come fotografo. Sei un fallito totale) March 19, 2010

"I do not speak with crazies" (No parlo con i pazzi, in response to Wojnowski's request in Italian for a brief chat with the Nuncio) May 3, 2009

"Imbecile. Cretin. I am ashamed of you, a gift to the enemies of the Church." (Deficiente cretino per mi vergogno di te, un dono hai nemici de la chiessa) March 21, 2009

"Cretin" (Cretino) Feb. 18, 2009

"Tool. Paid idiot." (Strumentallizzato. Idiota pagato.) Jan. 19, 2009

"Idiot" (Idiota) Jan. 10, 2009

"I am ashamed of you. You are a pig" (Mi vergogno di te. Sei un porco, Sambi's answer to Wojnowski's question: Excellency, are you ashamed to dress as a priest?) Dec. 28, 2008

"Imbecile. Cretin." (Imbecille. Cretino) Dec. 21, 2008

"Moron" (Deficiente). Nov. 20, 2008

"Perfect Moron" (Perfetto Deficiente) Nov. 1, 2008

"Shame. Shame. Shame. Shame. You are a fetid pervert." (Schemo. Schemo. Schemo. Schemo. Sei un pervertito fetente.) Oct. 21, 2008

"Crazy. Crazy. Moron," (Pazzo. Pazzo. Deficiente). Oct. 15, 2008

"I am not for sale, like you are" (Spoken in English) Sept. 5, 2008

"Paid Imbecile." (Pagato imbecile) Aug. 31, 2008

"You are paid. You have no dignity" (Ti hanno pagato. No hai dignita) Aug. 17, 2008

"So there, idiot. A paid idiot (Ecco Idiota, un idiota pagato) Aug. 16, 2008

Paul Bloom studies the moral lives of infants:

[O]ur initial moral sense appears to be biased toward our own kind. There’s plenty of research showing that babies have within-group preferences: 3-month-olds prefer the faces of the race that is most familiar to them to those of other races; 11-month-olds prefer individuals who share their own taste in food and expect these individuals to be nicer than those with different tastes; 12-month-olds prefer to learn from someone who speaks their own language over someone who speaks a foreign language. And studies with young children have found that once they are segregated into different groups — even under the most arbitrary of schemes, like wearing different colored T-shirts — they eagerly favor their own groups in their attitudes and their actions…

The aspect of morality that we truly marvel at — its generality and universality — is the product of culture, not of biology. There is no need to posit divine intervention. A fully developed morality is the product of cultural development, of the accumulation of rational insight and hard-earned innovations. The morality we start off with is primitive, not merely in the obvious sense that it’s incomplete, but in the deeper sense that when individuals and societies aspire toward an enlightened morality — one in which all beings capable of reason and suffering are on an equal footing, where all people are equal — they are fighting with what children have from the get-go.