There is an article by Richard Epstein on the usual array of labour market recommendationts that always appeal to the economically illiterate.
The constant uncertainty about taxes and regulations is a deal-killing transaction cost that produces no collateral benefits. So long as macro-economic policy remains fixated with moving all the levers at once in different directions, it will act as a drag on the marketplace. Stability of expectations is key to a strong macroeconomic market.
The same mistakes are now very much at work in labor markets, where they do more than their fair share to increase the high level of unemployment. The dominant, though mistaken, attitude is perfectly captured in a letter by Risa Kaufman, the Director of the Columbia Law School Human Rights Institute, who claims that ‘the United States’ failure to enact meaningful protections enabling workers to accommodate the demands of work and family is not only out of step with countries around the world, but it is also counter to international human rights standards.’
These human rights people find work to do everywhere they turn. Anything that makes life a bit tougher than someone might like is becoming a human rights issue which seems to be some kind of international disease. But every solution Ms Kaufman suggests will only make matters worse for the unemployed, and for the employed as well for that matter. As Epstein writes:
What theory of human rights finds a moral imperative in killing jobs to satisfy some abstract and noble ideal?
What’s the theory. The theory is that every problem is caused by someone doing something and that if they stopped doing whatever it was that was causing the problem, the problem would go away. They are not killing us with kindness, we are being killed by their ignorance and stupidity, but it’s nice of them to wish that things were better than they are.
It is quite extraordinary that I am now putting up my 300th post since September 23rd. Not that anyone reads it nor have I made much of an effort to get anyone to read it. But I have sent links to a few people and on good days there may be as many as a dozen people who have looked in. So I should mention a couple of things about this website in case you are one of those who have stumbled across this by accident.
I am doing this just for fun and so what will never happen is that I will allow comments. There may be ways round that but whenever I have been asked to approve a comment I have rejected whatever it was. I read them and I appreciate them but I am not going to have to patrol this website for negativity. I get enough of it elsewhere that I can do without it here.
This is also written as a kind of scrapbook so that I can locate things again. I see things on the net or elsewhere so I write them up and there they are preserved if I want to go back to them. I have been able to use these in writing a couple of published articles so it has come in handy.
But thus far I have only a single reliable reader who comes back to see what I have said – hi again, Joshi – so it makes me happy just to know I am in touch with him. But if anyone else finds this worth a moment of their time, I am very glad for that as well.
Look at the video below and answer the following question: which of the people shown should be prosecuted:
The speaker
The man who left the meeting
Both
Neither
I don’t understand the question
…
Which leads me to the column today in The Australian by Professor Gillian Triggs, the president of the Australian Human Rights Commission. She is concerned about this:
Many of these commentators have been particularly concerned with the 1995 law making racial vilification an offence under the Racial Discrimination Act. The offence applies to conduct likely to ‘offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate’ a person on the grounds of race.
I have my doubts about whether there are very many concerned about this at all although there may be some doubts about judicial interpretation of the Act. As I wrote at Quadrant Online:
Free speech is about open debate about every single political issue. I agree that personal statements, individual to individual, can be a danger to social cohesion and may therefore in certain circumstances be unacceptable. There may well be a need to have limits on such personal remarks where they are made merely to wound someone else. These kinds of limitations should be very carefully identified and the social utility of limiting this kind of free speech should be broadly discussed and consensus of some kind reached. It should only be personal statements, those directed at individuals, and there should be no ambiguity about what is illegal since the law should be very precise about such matters. I am not fully convinced of this but there is certainly a case to be made.
Abusing individuals for any of those matters found in the international covenants she has discussed is wrong and there need to be protections against such forms of abuse. But that needs to be distinguished from this, which is also part of that same Quadrant Online article:
But [abusing individuals] is not what we are talking about. We are here talking about the right to discuss politically charged issues in a public space, issues that often are part of our parliamentary debates, and these should be as open to free a discussion as it is possible to have. That is what freedom of speech means and absolutely nothing else will do.
The example Professor Triggs gives is about someone who had denied the holocaust. Put it out there, I say, have people say it in public if that’s what they think. Since we live in a post-modernist world where every form of idiocy is believed by someone, the only form of protection we have – and I stress this, it is the only form of protection we have – is allowing such views to be stated in public so that others can put their contrary views in public as well. She doesn’t say what the outcome of the case was when the HRC came across this particular Holocaust denier – although it does seem clear that this chap was convicted of something – but if they prosecuted and worse, if they won the case, freedom of speech in Australia suffered a major setback. I wonder if Professor Triggs can understand why that is.
And to repeat, it’s not that I think free speech is a guarantor of truth. Nothing is, and when I hear some of the ideas spoken of today, it terrifies me to think which of these might become mainstream over the next 50 to 100 years. You never really do know. But the only hope we have of keeping the open society we have is by maintaining an open society, and to maintain an open society as the fundamental bedrock non-negotiable principle of the way we live.
Individual rights and personal liberty is not a law of nature but is a hard won outcome of centuries of debate and conflict with the result that a few very fortunate places on the planet now have an inherited and legislated right to say in public what they please about any public issue. It is a set of circumstances that can disappear because the one certainty is that governments – the people with political power – never like it. And they are the very ones most capable of denying the rest of us the right to have our views put in public.
Liz Broderick is a Human Rights Commissioner and her interview on the ABC the other day with Tim Wilson has had a bit of comment made about it but what really struck me about what she said was this:
We are a vehicle for those people who are marginalised who ordinarily would never have a voice in this country to step up and have their say about things.
Human rights is not about “the marginalised” whatever that might be. This is a product of the usual leftist mindset where some individuals are seen to have power and the rest of us are at the periphery somewhere. The example she gave of those who have been marginalised are the aged. I’m do in any way understand why being old is a form of being on the margin but that is by the way. It is not contrary to our human rights to find ourselves getting old and it is not the role of the Human Rights Commission to worry about whether the aged are able to have their views heard although apparently according to Ms Broderick this is an issue that is now well in hand. I have an article, “If I May be Allowed to Speak Freely” at Quadrant Online that addresses what I think the role of a Human Rights Commissioner should be.
But now that the problem of free speech amongst the elderly has been resolved, how about dealing with some other issues, such as, perhaps, the attempts by the present government to limit free expression through the media. Or about some of the vile and repulsive statements emanating from some of our new Australian minorities. Or defending the ability of journalists to make observations about the manner in which government grants are distributed to those who might not have been the actual intended recipients as originally conceived.
We are in dangerous times because there is so little appreciation of what is at stake since change is taking place incrementally. The right to debate any and every public issue is different from a licence to abuse individuals. We should make sure we all understand the difference and guarantee our right to say in public anything we believe is relevant about any and every public issue.
I’d like to put in my own take on Human Rights Commissioner Ms Broderick and her desiccated view of human rights and freedom of speech. This is from her opening statement at the ABC:
We are a vehicle for those people who are marginalised who ordinarily would never have a voice in this country to step up and have their say about things.
What training do these people have? What is the basis for one’s appointment? What previus learning, scholarship, knowledge and study are required to sit in such exalted positions? Most importantly, has she studied the great defenders of freedom in the past: Spinoza, Voltaire, Mill. Listening to her shallow maunderings was an insult to our intellectual history and to the history of free thought and free speech.
I have news for Ms Broderick. Freedom of speech is not about protecting the “marginalised”, it is about protecting everyone. If her example is the best she can do – focusing on the ability of the elderly to find a voice – well that must take some bravery. Who knew that the elderly were not permitted to speak up and say what they pleased. Good to know that she is so on the job in handling this no doubt very difficult problem. There must be a mountain of opposition to their efforts.
But now that the problem of free speech amongst the elderly has been resolved, how about dealing with some other issues, such as, perhaps, the attempts by the present government to limit free expression through the media. Or about some of the vile and repulsive statements eminating from some of our new Australian minorities in reference to other Australian minorities. Or defending the ability of journalists to make observations about the manner in which government grants are distributed to those who might not have been the actual intended recipients as originally conceived.
That, I fear, would be a bit trickier. It would actually require someone to have a philosophical position about freedom of speech and not some ambition to ensure that the marginalised be encouraged and enabled.
But since she got into this and did give us this one example of the elderly, why does she not give us others? Who are these marginalised who are unable to speak out? What is it they wish to say that cannot be said? Why does the HRC not publish these things on their behalf so that we can all see the kinds of statements we are being deprived of. Let’s get these suppressed statements on the record, the ones it is now impossible for these people to make.
She mentioned some European Senator who had been given a visa and allowed to speak. Well, whoever it is must be saying some very shocking things, but if she is so keen to ensure that such speech is given an airing – which is what freedom of speech is about – then why does the HRC not publish this person’s views and put them up on the HRC website. Do it for everyone and not just this Senator. Identify all of those suppressed views and publish them yourself. Then what revenge we would have on the people who are trying to stop their statements from being made because now rather than stopping them, they will have caused those views to have a public platform. That would fix them.
Instead, I fear, the aim is merely to stop non-politically-correct statements from entering public debate. I may be wrong about this, but that is often how it looks. There is the usual leftist position on everything and those who makes a statements outside those permitted bounds are likely to have their right to free speech cut out from under them.
Free speech is about open debate about every single political issue. I agree that personal statements, individual to individual, are dangerous and unacceptable with a need to have limits on such personal remarks made merely to wound someone. But that is not what we are talking about. We are here talking about issues that might well be part of our Parliamentary debates being open to as free a discussion as it is possible to have. That is what freedom of speech means and absolutely nothing else will do.
Update: Michael Ledeen also discusses free speech in a post titled, Shut up or I’ll kill you. Interesting article of which this is a representative sample:
Free societies are so much more productive and creative than the others in large part because of open debate, just as scientific discovery demands testing all manner of hypotheses. Once you lose the habits of the free mind, it extends to all areas of endeavor. Stifling free speech crushes creativity in all areas of life. And once the censors get their teeth into us, there’s no stopping them.
An article, “Brave New World”, by Victor Davis Hanson. Final para, but read all the paras that come before:
Panta rhei — ‘everything is in flux’ — Heraclitus says. The world we knew is not the one we wake up to after a short nap. January 2009 now seems like a far-off dream, in a way that 2016 may be a nightmare.
A surreal journey through recent times. If I hadn’t been there myself, it would be impossible to believe it was true.
Richard Epstein has put together an article, In Praise of Income Inequality, which scissors to ribbons the notion that making people richer at differential rates is somehow contrary to our social good. Here is the core of the issue:
Consider two hypothetical scenarios. In the first, 99 percent of the population has an average income of $10 and the top 1 percent has an income of $100. In the second, we increase the income gap. Now, the 99 percent earn $12 and the top 1 percent earns $130. Which scenario is better?
This hypothetical comparison captures several key points. First, everyone is better off with the second distribution of wealth than with the first—a clear Pareto improvement. Second, the gap between the rich and the poor in the second distribution is greater in both absolute and relative terms.
The stark challenge to ardent egalitarians is explaining why anyone should prefer the first distribution to the second. Many will argue for some intermediate solution. But how much wealth are they prepared to sacrifice for the sake of equality? Beyond that, they will have a hard time finding a political mechanism that could achieve a greater measure of equality and a program of equitable growth. The public choice problems, which arise from self-interested intrigue in the political arena, are hard to crack.
The reality is that people do make inter-personal comparisons. And not only that, there are some people who really would prefer that others were made worse off even if it would mean they were made worse off themselves. Envy is the single largest driver in economic and social relations. But we should recognise it, not by succumbing to the desires of some to crash the whole apparatus because they hate the success of others. We should instead call them out on it and make them justify ruining the prospects of us all so that they can indulge in their vicious attitudes towards success.
The large problem is that those who harbour these anti-social beliefs, but who are also in a position to infuse those attitudes in policy, are doing all right for themselves since if they are able to influence policy they have, by definition, achieved a position of power. It is a problem for everyone that someone can make a really good living by representing the envious and worm eaten by pretending they are really in favour of equality and fair dealing. They never seem to think they themselves should suffer the reduction in living standards they impose on others. No good ever comes of having these people in power but how to fight them off remains a perennial problem.
I noted in an earlier post Menno Rol’s characterisation of the epistemology of Charles Sanders Pierce. There has now been a very insightful reply from Altug Yalcintas who takes this much further along.
Menno Rol wrote: ‘The heart of the epistemology of Pierce can be formulated as the claim that sticking to old beliefs is a man’s normal inclination and that this is in fact rational.’
I agree. However, Menno Rol also wrote: ‘In order to learn, we update old beliefs with a certain unwillingnessin the face of counterevidence, facts that we stumble upon daily. The updating process runs via hypothesis making: inference to the best explanation. What counts as the best explanation depends not only on the newly encountered facts, but just as much – or even more – on our old beliefs. Again, this is rational.’
I disagree with Menno Rol here because scholars, who run into counter-evidence or refuting reasoning, do not always change their minds or update their beliefs. I think the reason is that ‘epistemic costs’ in scholarly life are significantly high.
Epistemic costs, to my understanding, refer to the costs involved in operating the various scholarly arrangements such as collecting data, drafting papers, arguing with other scholars, and replicating the results of old models. Epistemic costs are sometimes so high that, for example, errors that scholars made in the past such as plagiarism and deterioration of data are not always remediable today. As a consequence, scholars sometimes keep reproducing erroneous models. There are at least two reasons for this: (1) there is almost no reward in the academy in going back to the models and explanations of older generations and (2) it is sometimes impossible to replicate what older generations wrote. This suggests that the scholarly world is a world of positive epistemic costs in which negative externalities are not always and perfectly self-corrective. Perfect solutions do not come about so easily because scholarly mechanisms, such as refereeing and reviewing as well as the ethics of scholarly behaviour and certain codes of act, including the issue of liability, that help increase the productivity of scientific processes, cannot fully correct or cure the harmful consequences of individual scholarship. The problem of epistemic cost is that we do NOT ‘update old beliefs’ in the face of counter-evidence and errors frequently remain uncorrected.
Reminding the SHOE-List Ramzi Mabsout’s original question: would anybody suggest any cases in which old habits of thought prevent scholars from changing their minds despite the fact that there is sufficient evidence to abandon a refuted paradigm?
In its own way this is a longer version of economic theory advances funeral by funeral. As he argues, “there is almost no reward in the academy in going back to the models and explanations of older generations”, part of the reason that the history of economic thought remains so far outside the mainstream. And given how difficult it is to even get people to look at evidence from the past, he is surely right where he wrote, “we do NOT ‘update old beliefs’ in the face of counter-evidence”. He finally returns to the original question, “would anybody suggest any cases in which old habits of thought prevent scholars from changing their minds despite the fact that there is sufficient evidence to abandon a refuted paradigm”.
The example of Keynesian macroeconomics, and especially the notion of aggregate demand, ought to be ripe for refutation but this has not been even remotely the case. The straightforward fact is that government policy now not only ignores macroeconomic theory but acts precisely in the opposite direction. From The Australian we have this summary of the communiqué issued by the G20 just this week:
In a carefully worded final statement, G20 leaders said at the weekend they were committed to ensuring ‘sustainable public finances’ and stood by their prior commitments to halve their budget deficits by this calendar year and stabilise their debt levels.
And we are not talking about economies that have begun to find their way back but economies at the bottom of the cycle and in many ways still trending down. These are economies in deep recession with high unemployment, the very conditions for which Keynesian theory was supposedly designed. But they have tried the Keynesian solution and it not only has not worked but has unambiguously caused economic conditions to deteriorate. Yet there are no major articles within the profession arguing on the need to abandon Keynesian theory. This is a conundrum to myself and you really do have to ask why that is.
The back story is to explain why there were so many pictures of the meteorite which was because virtually every driver in Russia has a dashboard camera since the legal system is about as trustable as you might expect.
It is that the unexpected can happen in so many ways that makes being in business so chancey and the management of economies so difficult. An economic system that is built on the recognition that things will happen out of nowhere, some good most bad, is the only way to make the best of a very difficult job. Peeling the hands of governments back from their various attempts to “run” things once the rules of the road have been put in place is the best you can hope for.
Daniel Hannan has a useful column in London’s Telegraph on the socialist origins of fascism. I merely describe it as “useful” because it will be read and understood only by people who understand these things already but worth repeating just to remind ourselves who are enemies are and what they stand for.
‘I am a Socialist,’ Hitler told Otto Strasser in 1930, ‘and a very different kind of Socialist from your rich friend, Count Reventlow’.
No one at the time would have regarded it as a controversial statement. The Nazis could hardly have been more open in their socialism, describing themselves with the same terminology as our own SWP: National Socialist German Workers’ Party.
Almost everyone in those days accepted that fascism had emerged from the revolutionary Left. Its militants marched on May Day under red flags. Its leaders stood for collectivism, state control of industry, high tariffs, workers’ councils. Around Europe, fascists were convinced that, as Hitler told an enthusiastic Mussolini in 1934, ‘capitalism has run its course’
If you, too, are of the view that capitalism has run its course you should be aware of the company you keep.
Law of Markets 