tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-172320512024-03-18T22:36:04.361-04:00NoahpinionThis is the old Noahpinion archive. Noahpinion continues at noahpinion.substack.comNoah Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09093917601641588575noreply@blogger.comBlogger934125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-43272330056000953912020-11-24T14:20:00.001-05:002020-11-24T14:20:24.214-05:00Noahpinion has moved to a new website!<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-78gL-ZCD5BU/X71cxz71WzI/AAAAAAAAPos/hIqzhHVH7T0ho1yqm-jpnLqixQR7iffhwCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/cowboy%2Bsunset.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="419" data-original-width="640" height="263" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-78gL-ZCD5BU/X71cxz71WzI/AAAAAAAAPos/hIqzhHVH7T0ho1yqm-jpnLqixQR7iffhwCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h263/cowboy%2Bsunset.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br />Well folks, it's been a fun 10-year run at this little website. I'm moving on to a new platform: <a href="https://noahpinion.substack.com/">Substack</a>! <p></p><p>Here's the new Noahpinion:</p><p><a href="https://noahpinion.substack.com/">https://noahpinion.substack.com/</a></p><p>Thanks for reading, and hope to see you at the new site!</p>Noah Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09093917601641588575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-78754520177885446302020-07-23T00:53:00.005-04:002020-07-25T19:04:36.328-04:00Rabbit = Good Friend (or, how to take care of rabbits)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_beV7sjkNkM/XxkF8u3AfCI/AAAAAAAAPUA/K-aKf18Qr04dua-1RoIB1Zhz4OfK89FBwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/8R9Zfrn_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_beV7sjkNkM/XxkF8u3AfCI/AAAAAAAAPUA/K-aKf18Qr04dua-1RoIB1Zhz4OfK89FBwCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/8R9Zfrn_.jpg" title="Snuggly wuggly woo" width="300" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
Rabbits make great friends. Unfortunately, rabbits are not as popular of a pet as they ought to be, thanks to two big misconceptions. Let's start out by busting these myths.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Myth #1: Rabbits can't be litter trained.</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In fact, most rabbits are really easy to litter-train. Just <u>put the litter box next to the hay feeder</u>, and they will litter-train themselves! Here's my setup:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UzTij3X22ws/XxkD4sytNKI/AAAAAAAAPTo/68UJAiUThcQJ1mGVooI6OhzLhbC-PrORQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/20190108_084541.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UzTij3X22ws/XxkD4sytNKI/AAAAAAAAPTo/68UJAiUThcQJ1mGVooI6OhzLhbC-PrORQCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/20190108_084541.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
There are a few exceptions, just like with cats, but in general this isn't something you have to worry about. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Myth #2: Rabbits aren't affectionate.</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This really does depend on the rabbit. Some are extremely affectionate, and will hug and cuddle you.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AP9EXbjAsEM/XxkBZdyOrCI/AAAAAAAAPTc/8R-mPdrfg74ZafQo21NUa9NN7wKddJc0gCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/rabbit%2B1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="484" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AP9EXbjAsEM/XxkBZdyOrCI/AAAAAAAAPTc/8R-mPdrfg74ZafQo21NUa9NN7wKddJc0gCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/rabbit%2B1.jpg" title="This is not me! I included this photo because my rabbits don't like to be picked up like this one does." width="201" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
Some don't like humans that much. Similar to cats, really. Quiet, clumsy, vegan cats.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Once people realize that rabbits can easily be litter trained and are often affectionate, they become much more favorable to the idea of rabbits as pets. But that still leaves the question of why you might want a rabbit, as opposed to a cat or a dog. Here are some of what I see as the advantages and disadvantages of having rabbits as pets, as compared to dogs or cats.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Advantage #1: They aren't loud.</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Rabbits make almost no vocal noises, apart from very occasional extremely soft grunts. The only noises they make are A) chewing, and B) stomping (but only very occasionally). This means they're much quieter than a dog or cat. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Advantage #2: They aren't stinky.</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Rabbits themselves are clean and nice-smelling. Rabbit poop is usually odorless, unlike cat or dog poop (occasionally I'll feed my rabbits some vegetable that will make their poop smell a little bit funky for a couple minutes but this is very rare). Also, rabbit food is not stinky like cat food or dog food, and their breath never smells bad. Rabbit pee does smell (similar to cat pee), but if you use the right litter, it will absorb all the smell. The only smell your house will acquire from keeping rabbits is the smell of hay, which is the main thing rabbits eat.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Advantage #3: Their fur is very soft.</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Rabbit fur is softer than dog or cat fur, and often <i>much</i> softer.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
BUT...</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Disadvantage #1: They chew things.</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Cats scratch stuff, and rabbits chew stuff. The main thing that's at risk is your power cords, so having rabbits requires either A) confining the rabbits in a pen or rabbit room when they're not under supervision, or B) rabbit-proofing your cords. A few rabbits are really bad and will chew baseboards and carpets; these rabbits will have to be confined to a pen most of the time. Most can be taught not to do this, though. Rabbits will also tend to chew leather furniture. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Disadvantage #2: They only live 10-12 years.</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This is a little bit shorter than a dog and considerably shorter than a cat. The very big rabbits live even shorter - maybe 7-8 years. </div>
<div>
<b><br /></b></div>
<div>
<b>Disadvantage #3: They can get constipated quickly.</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Rabbits can quickly become constipated and die (we'll learn more about how to prevent/treat this later). This means you can't leave them alone for more than a day, unlike cats who can generally be left alone for a couple days. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Disadvantage #4: They are a little expensive.</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Rabbits require frequent litter changes, a variety of food, and LOTS of hay. This makes them a bit expensive. I spend a total of about $200 per month on my 2 large rabbits, not counting the cost of boarding/sitters and veterinary care.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
If you want to see if rabbits are right for you, you can <b>try volunteering</b> at your local animal shelter or rabbit rescue. Just google "animal shelter" or "rabbit rescue". You'll get a chance to take care of rabbits and play with them a bit. That's how I ended up with pet rabbits, when before I had only had cats, dogs, and small pets like hamsters and fish. Note: <u>You should always get a pet rabbit at a rescue or a shelter if possible</u>. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
OK, so if after having read all of this you're considering a pet rabbit, here are my thoughts on how to take care of them.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>WARNING</b>: Every rabbit keeper will, in general, have different ideas about how to take care of rabbits. In fact, vigorously disagreeing over the particulars of rabbit care seems to be a favorite pastime of rabbit keepers. So be warned, there are going to be some rabbit people who angrily swear that I'm all wrong about this point or that point. And this would be true no matter what I write. There is no universal consensus on the exact right way to take care of rabbits. I'll try to highlight what the more hotly contested points are.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
That having been said, without further ado:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><u>How to Take Care of Rabbits</u></b></span><br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>1. Where to keep a rabbit</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Do NOT keep your rabbit in a cage. Rabbits need more space than that. There are basically three choices for where to keep a rabbit: Free roaming, in a pen, or in a rabbit room.<br />
<br />
Wherever you keep your rabbit, you'll need a <b>hay feeder and a litterbox</b> next to it. For litter, I use a layer of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002AQ0BQ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1">Purina cat litter</a> on the bottom to absorb pee, and a top layer of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Carefresh-Natural-Small-pet-Bedding/dp/B07T17Z91P/ref=sxts_sxwds-bia-wc-nc-drs1_0?cv_ct_cx=carefresh&dchild=1&keywords=carefresh&pd_rd_i=B07T17Z91P&pd_rd_r=8805ba0f-58a5-4297-926b-979ee0509999&pd_rd_w=rSSD0&pd_rd_wg=CRTJa&pf_rd_p=43f4b3f0-0b04-46ba-8a08-2e851d035e17&pf_rd_r=HAAGEMS83TT6WX8WHZD2&psc=1&qid=1595484162&s=pet-supplies&sr=1-1-f3947b35-9c59-4d7a-9603-b751e6eed25b">Carefresh Natural</a> soft litter so the rabbits' feet are comfy. Also, rabbits like to hide in caves, so make sure that you have some <b>place for them to hide</b> -- a cardboard box, under a bed, etc.<br />
<br />
Here are the three basic rabbit arrangements that I think are OK:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
A) <b>Free roaming</b>: A free roaming rabbit just runs around your house like a cat. My rabbits are free roaming. I have a pen area with hay in it, but I never close it off -- it's just so the rabbits have some area they feel like is "their" territory. But they can go anywhere they want, just like a cat. If you do this, you must rabbit-proof your house (we'll talk more about this later). You can also put up a fence around the hay/litter area but leave it open to give the rabbit a sense of their own "territory".<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-x_XSKkGfp3Q/XxkFrPN5hVI/AAAAAAAAPT4/P8VMrSA5BvI3nai8KSNVJBBlH1kTlbbmwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/20200106_001645.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-x_XSKkGfp3Q/XxkFrPN5hVI/AAAAAAAAPT4/P8VMrSA5BvI3nai8KSNVJBBlH1kTlbbmwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/20200106_001645.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div>
Mine also love to go under my bed!<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OKVL8IexB_4/XxkMndkFXPI/AAAAAAAAPUw/CRFq7bOnzk0pKbcFPuUcsmpDjPr5pSHJwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/74634704_10156845221017711_3021735996426289152_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OKVL8IexB_4/XxkMndkFXPI/AAAAAAAAPUw/CRFq7bOnzk0pKbcFPuUcsmpDjPr5pSHJwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/74634704_10156845221017711_3021735996426289152_o.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
B) <b>Pen</b>: You can keep your rabbit in an "<a href="https://www.amazon.com/MidWest-Foldable-Metal-Exercise-Playpen/dp/B00377WL46/ref=sr_1_6?keywords=rabbit+pen&qid=1579569178&sr=8-6">exercise pen</a>":<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iOwUJInBE1Y/XxkGOx5w4BI/AAAAAAAAPUI/0g8gLSeOQQk3G0u96AM2qj2XAZWQ6f5pQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/pen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="302" data-original-width="419" height="230" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iOwUJInBE1Y/XxkGOx5w4BI/AAAAAAAAPUI/0g8gLSeOQQk3G0u96AM2qj2XAZWQ6f5pQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/pen.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
But despite the name, this sort of pen doesn't give rabbits enough room to exercise. You have to let the rabbit(s) out for 2 or more hours per day to get proper exercise. If you have stuff that's vulnerable to chewing, such as exposed power cords, you'll need to supervise the rabbit during this time.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
C) <b>Rabbit room</b>: If you have a spare bedroom, you can give it to your rabbit(s). You can put up a fence at the entrance so the rabbits don't have to be shut behind a closed door all the time.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>2. Rabbit-proofing</b></div>
<div>
<br />
Rabbits like to chew electrical cords. This is dangerous for the rabbit and for your house. One way to protect your cords is to put them behind a fenced-off area:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LNkEOe-owFw/XxkOZ-cFHJI/AAAAAAAAPVE/s2nuXiDYItoqlrPDCGPqGsSe8IrCuINeQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/20200229_164415.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LNkEOe-owFw/XxkOZ-cFHJI/AAAAAAAAPVE/s2nuXiDYItoqlrPDCGPqGsSe8IrCuINeQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/20200229_164415.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
Another way is to put cord covers on your cords. Thick <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Protector-Electric-Protect-Rabbits-Diameter/dp/B07L86SJNJ/ref=sr_1_9?crid=Z1JGK5CGGISI&dchild=1&keywords=pet+cord+protector&qid=1595475615&sprefix=pet+cord+prot%2Caps%2C329&sr=8-9">plastic ones</a> or <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Alex-Tech-10ft-Protector-Sleeving/dp/B07FW3GTXB/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=kevlar+cord+protector&qid=1595475641&sr=8-1">Kevlar ones</a> should work.<br />
<br />
Some rabbits also chew baseboards. If your rabbit is one of these, you can put protectors on your baseboards. These can be made of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/WALLPROTEX-634-112-Clr-Univ-Cornerguard/dp/B003KII7J0/ref=sr_1_8?dchild=1&keywords=baseboard+protector&qid=1595475744&sr=8-8">plastic</a>, <a href="https://www.homedepot.com/p/1-in-x-2-in-x-8-ft-Furring-Strip-Board-160954/100009348">wood</a>, or even metal.<br />
<br />
Some rabbits chew other things, and there are <a href="http://bunnyproof.com/">many guides</a> online to <a href="https://myhouserabbit.com/rabbit-care/bunny-proofing-your-house/">bunny-proofing</a> your house. Some people use special sprays to make things taste bad to rabbits, but I've never used these.<br />
<br />
I find that it's very useful to fence off areas of my house when I don't want the rabbits to go there. The easiest way to do this is to buy a few exercise pens, disassemble them into their component panels, and use those to make fences. You can screw some screw eyes into your walls, and attach the fence panels to those (and to each other) with c-clips. Ta-da, instant fences wherever you need them!<br />
<br />
Finally, it's possible to train rabbits not to chew most things. NEVER hit or punish a rabbit. But when you see a rabbit chewing something bad, snap your fingers, say "no", and hand the rabbit a good chew instead, like a piece of cardboard. Do that a few times, and most rabbits will learn what's chewable and what isn't.<br />
<br />
But if your rabbit just can't be trained and chews lots of inappropriate things, you'll need to keep them in a pen when you're not around to watch them. Fortunately, most rabbits are responsible enough to be free-roaming. </div>
<div>
<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>3. Food and water</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
A rabbit's main food is<b> hay</b>. Rabbits should get unlimited hay; basically they should be able to graze whenever they want. Hay goes in a <a href="https://www.etsy.com/listing/67290023/saveabunnys-three-hole-hay-saver-box?ref=shop_home_feat_1">hay feeder</a>:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PWaUBCi-Pns/XxkJFDwdcgI/AAAAAAAAPUU/ETcMpgs45Dc9ihmW05D_ln3OtRf4baEMACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/hay%2Bfeeder.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="596" data-original-width="794" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PWaUBCi-Pns/XxkJFDwdcgI/AAAAAAAAPUU/ETcMpgs45Dc9ihmW05D_ln3OtRf4baEMACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/hay%2Bfeeder.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
Keep the hay feeder filled. You can fill it once a day or more if you like. NOTE: There are some pieces of hay a rabbit just won't eat for some reason, so every week or so, dump out the hay feeder and put in all new hay.<br />
<br />
My favorite hay brand is Small Pet Select. You can <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Small-Pet-Select-12-Pound-Cutting/dp/B07CJ2FRNC/ref=sxts_sxwds-bia-wc-nc-drs2_0?crid=2SYKOO319NL27&cv_ct_cx=small+pet+select+timothy+hay&dchild=1&keywords=small+pet+select+timothy+hay&pd_rd_i=B07CJ2FRNC&pd_rd_r=088b5185-91be-4d8b-b958-65a9d16bbad7&pd_rd_w=LmiNS&pd_rd_wg=NnDkp&pf_rd_p=43f4b3f0-0b04-46ba-8a08-2e851d035e17&pf_rd_r=ATT270PZBDNT4PE7Y91X&psc=1&qid=1595476416&sprefix=small+pet+select+%2Caps%2C234&sr=1-2-f3947b35-9c59-4d7a-9603-b751e6eed25b">order it on Amazon</a>.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yksMqGyp0F0/XxkKQtZ0DYI/AAAAAAAAPUc/_JLDG0bh9OskGlTVjSjvS-BezbgEQ39PgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/hay.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="732" data-original-width="970" height="241" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yksMqGyp0F0/XxkKQtZ0DYI/AAAAAAAAPUc/_JLDG0bh9OskGlTVjSjvS-BezbgEQ39PgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/hay.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
Most pet stores sell Oxbow and Kaytee hay, but I don't like these as much. Rabbits tend to like long, grassy hay pieces more than short, chopped-up pieces.<br />
<br />
There are multiple types of hay. <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Small-Pet-Select-12-Pound-Cutting/dp/B07CJ2FRNC/ref=sxts_sxwds-bia-wc-nc-drs2_0?crid=2SYKOO319NL27&cv_ct_cx=small+pet+select+timothy+hay&dchild=1&keywords=small+pet+select+timothy+hay&pd_rd_i=B07CJ2FRNC&pd_rd_r=088b5185-91be-4d8b-b958-65a9d16bbad7&pd_rd_w=LmiNS&pd_rd_wg=NnDkp&pf_rd_p=43f4b3f0-0b04-46ba-8a08-2e851d035e17&pf_rd_r=ATT270PZBDNT4PE7Y91X&psc=1&qid=1595476416&sprefix=small+pet+select+%2Caps%2C234&sr=1-2-f3947b35-9c59-4d7a-9603-b751e6eed25b">Timothy</a> is the most popular, but some rabbits prefer <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Small-Pet-Select-Orchard-Grass/dp/B00S6YIF36/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?crid=2VGP5UW2MR37Y&dchild=1&keywords=small+pet+select+orchard+hay&qid=1595476572&s=pet-supplies&sprefix=small+pet+select+orchar%2Cpets%2C213&sr=1-1-spons&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUEzSjdUR05UNzdUUkcyJmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwMTE0ODQ5UUlVODNQQUMzOTBJJmVuY3J5cHRlZEFkSWQ9QTAyODk3NTUxV1ExRjNZMERBRVEwJndpZGdldE5hbWU9c3BfYXRmJmFjdGlvbj1jbGlja1JlZGlyZWN0JmRvTm90TG9nQ2xpY2s9dHJ1ZQ==">orchard grass</a>. There are also "dessert hays", like alfalfa and oat hay, but these should be given only in small amounts, as a treat.<br />
<br />
The second food rabbits eat is <b>pellets</b>. They can technically survive without these, and too much will make a rabbit fat, but they contain helpful nutrients and such.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XaHkNBpmUus/XxkKwc5ZtDI/AAAAAAAAPUk/0IeWS9oWEJs8HSIS5KzsAlqWFPHqpsangCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/pellets.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="983" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XaHkNBpmUus/XxkKwc5ZtDI/AAAAAAAAPUk/0IeWS9oWEJs8HSIS5KzsAlqWFPHqpsangCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/pellets.jpg" width="209" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Don't give rabbits too much of this -- maybe just two tablespoons a day. If you run out of hay in an emergency, rabbits can survive on pellets for a couple days, but it's not good for them.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
The third thing rabbits eat is <b>greens</b>. I give my rabbits about two handfuls a day, each. My rabbits like parsley, arugula, lettuce, kale, dandelion greens, and spinach. Some also like cilantro. If you find some leafy vegetable that you think would be good for your rabbit, check a list online to <a href="https://myhouserabbit.com/rabbit-care/what-to-feed-your-pet-rabbit/">make sure it's safe</a>. Remember to introduce any new food slowly, in small amounts, to make sure it's safe. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
The final thing rabbits eat is <b>dessert</b>. This mainly consists of carrots and/or fruit. Don't give them too much or they'll get fat! I give my rabbits each either half a baby carrot per day, or a few little slices of apple. You can also find various <a href="https://store.binkybunny.com/treats-c3.aspx">processed treats</a> online.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Finally, rabbits need lots of <b>water</b>. I like to use water bowls instead of water bottles; I don't think rabbits can get enough water out of bottles. Flat-bottomed glass or ceramic <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Ethical-5-Inch-Stoneware-Crock-Dish/dp/B00025YU3Q/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=glass+water+bowl+for+dogs&qid=1595484454&sr=8-2">bowls</a> are good. Change the water every day or two. </div>
<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>4. Toys and chews</b></div>
<div>
<br />
Rabbits' favorite thing to do is <b>chew</b>. You have to get them lots of stuff to chew, and leave it where they can get to it. <b>Carboard</b> is the best chew. My rabbits love shoeboxes and thick packing boxes the most.<br />
<br />
<b>Sticks</b> are another good chew. My rabbits love <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Niteangel-Chinchilla-Hamsters-Rabbits-Parrots/dp/B0742B75CY/ref=sxts_sxwds-bia-wc-nc-drs2_0?cv_ct_cx=apple+sticks&dchild=1&keywords=apple+sticks&pd_rd_i=B0742B75CY&pd_rd_r=341cdf51-6cd6-4106-9d8a-8b0460da4d51&pd_rd_w=0TTuN&pd_rd_wg=KTk6t&pf_rd_p=43f4b3f0-0b04-46ba-8a08-2e851d035e17&pf_rd_r=M6X2QS83XG9QZJSCMN48&psc=1&qid=1595477271&s=pet-supplies&sr=1-2-f3947b35-9c59-4d7a-9603-b751e6eed25b">apple sticks</a> and <a href="https://store.binkybunny.com/baskets-c11.aspx">willow baskets</a>, but there are lots of other flavors. They're really cheap, so you can get your rabbits lots of them.<br />
<br />
In addition, there are plenty of toys and chews you can <a href="https://store.binkybunny.com/toys--chews-c2.aspx">buy online</a>. Experiment with different things, see what your bunny likes! Some like harder chews and some like softer ones.<br />
<br />
The next thing rabbits like to do is to <b>explore</b>. You can buy or build them little tunnels, castles, playhouses, caves, etc. It's fun! You can then assemble them into obstacle courses or mazes to keep bunnies entertained.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ldjOAjmvEEA/XxkPIkFo4UI/AAAAAAAAPVM/b7axhLxc12YjPlG25HTaxkFbErb5uokGACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/97416442_10157417603382711_4574460003569631232_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ldjOAjmvEEA/XxkPIkFo4UI/AAAAAAAAPVM/b7axhLxc12YjPlG25HTaxkFbErb5uokGACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/97416442_10157417603382711_4574460003569631232_o.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
The final thing rabbits like to do is <b>dig</b>. You can get them a dig box -- a cardboard box or cat litter box will do. You can fill that with crushed newspaper or crumpled phone book pages or hay. And you can even hide little treats for them to find! Rabbits sometimes also like to dig in a pile of blankets or towels.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div>
<b>5. Petting, cuddling, and playing with your rabbit</b></div>
<div>
<br />
Rabbits generally love to be petted. Some rabbits like being picked up, but others don't. If your rabbit doesn't like to be picked up, sit next to them and pet them on the ground.<br />
<br />
The best place to pet a rabbit is on the ears. Many rabbits also like being petted on their noses and backs. But don't try to pet their feet; it will freak them out!<br />
<br />
Rabbit games are not very complex. Generally they just like to run in circles around each other. You can also play "keep away" with a chew or a treat. Some rabbits will enjoy climbing all over you. Others will play with a cat toy, and a few will even play fetch! You just have to spend time with your rabbit and try various things til you find out what they like.</div>
<div>
<br />
<br />
<b>6. Things that kill or hurt a rabbit (predators, health problems, and heat)</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Rabbits are naturally afraid of predators, and with good reason. Hawks, foxes, weasels, dogs, raccoons, and other animals can and kill rabbits. So never let your bunnies outside except under strict supervision (in fact, some people say not to let rabbits outside at all).<br />
<br />
Rabbits can also get a number of health problems. The most common one is <a href="https://rabbit.org/gastrointestinal-stasis-the-silent-killer-2/">gastrointestinal stasis</a>. Unlike many animals, rabbits can't puke, so when they eat something bad, it can stick in their stomach or intestines and make it impossible for them to eat or poop. This can kill rabbits very quickly, possibly in 24 hours, so watch out! If your rabbit isn't eating or pooping, you need to take them to a vet. A vet can also give you laxatives and painkillers to keep at home, in case the vet isn't open in time.<br />
<br />
GI stasis can come on so quickly that you shouldn't leave your rabbit home alone for more than 1 day at a time. Always get a rabbit sitter to come check on a rabbit twice a day when you're gone, or board the rabbit at a rescue!<br />
<br />
Another common health problem is sore hocks (back feet). If you don't clean the litter often enough, rabbits can get sore feet from standing in their own pee, so clean it often! If you see red bumps on the bottom of rabbits' hind feet, take them to the vet and get some ointment.<br />
<br />
Also, there are some <a href="https://rabbit.org/rhdv2-vaccine-information/">hemorrhagic viruses</a> that kill rabbits, called RHDV1 and RHDV2. There are vaccines for these, so check to make sure if the disease is in <a href="https://www.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=37791da88ef04cd08404a5794aaf0be3">your area</a>, and if it is, get the vaccine!<br />
<br />
Finally, rabbits don't tolerate heat well. If temperatures get over 85°F (29°C) for more than an hour or so, they can get heatstroke. Make sure the rabbits have a shady place, and put down some <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Ceramic-Alcohol-Painting-Decorating-Ceramics/dp/B07XRZ7HP6/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=ceramic+tile&qid=1595484760&sr=8-2">tiles</a> or a couple of little <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Kaytee-Chinchilla-Chiller-Granite-Stone/dp/B000A7707O/ref=sxts_sxwds-bia-wc-nc-drs1_0?cv_ct_cx=granite+for+chinchilla&dchild=1&keywords=granite+for+chinchilla&pd_rd_i=B000A7707O&pd_rd_r=4954f573-326d-4abd-a9b3-0758a7767647&pd_rd_w=vOycH&pd_rd_wg=NXeHR&pf_rd_p=43f4b3f0-0b04-46ba-8a08-2e851d035e17&pf_rd_r=WKSA3CYMP060QSCBKES0&psc=1&qid=1595484706&sr=1-1-f3947b35-9c59-4d7a-9603-b751e6eed25b">granite slabs</a> for them to lie on to cool themselves. Air conditioning is definitely recommended if your house gets hot often.<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>7. Rabbits and other pets</b></div>
<div>
<br />
Generally rabbits get along with cats, though they will need some time to get used to each other. Cats love to lick, and rabbits loved to be licked, so it's often a perfect partnership.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2py7qQv1cmo/XxkQjvmXPiI/AAAAAAAAPVs/aHgGx1mYwLwxEZguL1eI_RWAuU4-aXbewCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/cats%2Band%2Brabbits.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="480" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2py7qQv1cmo/XxkQjvmXPiI/AAAAAAAAPVs/aHgGx1mYwLwxEZguL1eI_RWAuU4-aXbewCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/cats%2Band%2Brabbits.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
Dogs are trickier, since some dogs' hunting instincts can take over when they see a rabbit run, and they can chase and even kill a rabbit. Be very careful introducing rabbits and dogs, and use an <a href="https://rabbit.org/journal/1/dogs.html">online guide</a>.<br />
<br />
And remember: The best friend for a rabbit is <b>another rabbit</b>! Your local rabbit rescue can help your rabbit find the perfect mate. It may take a long time to bond them (mine took a month!), or they may fall in love right away. The people at the rescue can help you learn how to bond rabbits.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>8. Essential rabbit resources</b><br />
<br />
1) <a href="https://binkybunny.com/">BinkyBunny</a>: A great website with tons of information, a forum where you can talk to other rabbit people, and a great <a href="https://store.binkybunny.com/">online store</a> full of tons of good stuff.<br />
<br />
2) <a href="https://rabbit.org/">House Rabbit Society</a>: Another great page with lots of info.<br />
<br />
3) Rabbit rescues: There are rabbit rescues everywhere in the U.S. They're always willing to help teach you how to take care of rabbits, find you the perfect rabbit friend, or board your rabbits when you go out of town. Just Google to find the nearest one. My favorite Bay Area rescue is <a href="http://www.saveabunny.org/">SaveABunny</a>, in Marin County.<br />
<br />
<br />
Well, that isn't everything there is to know about having rabbits, but it's enough to get you started! Good luck finding your perfect rabbit friend...<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7yPFi_YDxTc/XxkWj3HfpiI/AAAAAAAAPWE/1-EGZz3jaaY_Xi41ljXzhTK-AhdiDLsdwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/received_10154922644912711.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="900" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7yPFi_YDxTc/XxkWj3HfpiI/AAAAAAAAPWE/1-EGZz3jaaY_Xi41ljXzhTK-AhdiDLsdwCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/received_10154922644912711.jpeg" width="225" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gHiijGT1KLU/XxkW5H-_CqI/AAAAAAAAPWM/uxIzOcIVHyInAU3ypiL-rHzyxe1gpP94QCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/FullSizeR%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gHiijGT1KLU/XxkW5H-_CqI/AAAAAAAAPWM/uxIzOcIVHyInAU3ypiL-rHzyxe1gpP94QCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/FullSizeR%25281%2529.jpg" width="240" /></a><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gHiijGT1KLU/XxkW5H-_CqI/AAAAAAAAPWM/uxIzOcIVHyInAU3ypiL-rHzyxe1gpP94QCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/FullSizeR%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5ihZoxen13M/XxkXDzG-WEI/AAAAAAAAPWQ/0TUKwBaFez0OJK2rYH5Xpr20KPyQr8ZzgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/20180426_093945.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="180" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5ihZoxen13M/XxkXDzG-WEI/AAAAAAAAPWQ/0TUKwBaFez0OJK2rYH5Xpr20KPyQr8ZzgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/20180426_093945.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PRRYHIZDBKs/XxkXPYDuIFI/AAAAAAAAPWY/2jwyR2htf5cFqIKix7hO73c0X25NNRKAQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/20190401_094341.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PRRYHIZDBKs/XxkXPYDuIFI/AAAAAAAAPWY/2jwyR2htf5cFqIKix7hO73c0X25NNRKAQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/20190401_094341.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
Noah Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09093917601641588575noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-44385332785040388712019-08-03T17:36:00.000-04:002019-08-03T22:27:14.528-04:00Why Kevin Williamson is wrong about poverty and bad behavior<div style="text-align: left;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jgEH4NmgHnI/XUX9DwqXm5I/AAAAAAAAN8M/4DPjB0_TFZkvj5JC4vsmn5visRVjzh3iwCLcBGAs/s1600/japan%2Bguy.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="389" data-original-width="730" height="212" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jgEH4NmgHnI/XUX9DwqXm5I/AAAAAAAAN8M/4DPjB0_TFZkvj5JC4vsmn5visRVjzh3iwCLcBGAs/s400/japan%2Bguy.png" title="Probably just listened to too much rap music" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
I recently <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-07-30/u-s-economy-personal-bad-behavior-isn-t-what-causes-poverty">wrote a post at Bloomberg Opinion</a> arguing that "bad behavior" - drug use, violence, single parenthood, and idleness - is not the main cause of poverty in advanced nations. As evidence, I cited the country of Japan, which has extremely low rates of drug use, violence, single parenthood, and idleness, and yet which has a poverty rate almost as high as that of the U.S., and significantly higher than those of wealthy European countries. Since Japan has so little bad behavior and still has a pretty high poverty rate as advanced nations go, it must be the case that bad behavior, in aggregate, is not the major cause of poverty.<br />
<br />
Kevin Williamson of the National Review took issue with my post. In <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/what-noah-smith-gets-wrong-about-poverty/">a strongly worded rebuttal</a>, he calls my piece "a stale slab of conventional wisdom", "sloppy thinking", "tedious writing", a "mishmash of tendentious platitudes and misunderstood truisms", and "sloppy analysis, if it counts as analysis at all." Yet despite this vitriol, Williamson fails to substantively rebut any of the points I made. In some cases, his arguments contain logical errors; in others, he simply misunderstands my argument.<br />
<br />
Let's go through Williamson's post, and show why it fails to rebut my arguments.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>1. Absolute poverty or relative poverty?</b><br />
<br />
Williamson's first attempted rebuttal relies on the idea that Japanese poor people are not really poor:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
It is not obvious that Japan “has lots of poverty.”...Smith here relies on a useless measure of “relative” poverty, the share of the population earning less than half of the median income. You can see the limitations of that approach: A uniformly poor society in which 99 percent of the people live on 50 cents a day and 1 percent live on 49 cents a day would have a poverty rate of 0.00; a rich society with incomes that are rising across-the-board but are rising much more quickly for the top two-thirds would have a rising poverty rate, and some people who are not classified as being in poverty this year might be in poverty next year even though their incomes are higher, etc. It would be far better to consider poverty in absolute terms, but our progressive friends are strangely resistant to that.</blockquote>
Let's leave aside the question of whether poverty is best conceived of in absolute or relative terms. There are good arguments on both sides (and perhaps room for <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-11-26/poverty-in-america-greater-than-statistics-indicate">even more definitions</a> of poverty than those two!). But it's definitely true that the average Japanese poor person enjoys a significantly higher standard of living than the average poor person in, say, Ethiopia.<br />
<br />
But <i>this is also true of American poverty</i>! The kind of deprivation that conservatives like Williamson often blame on bad behavior in the United States is also <i>relative</i> poverty, not absolute. "Poor" Americans, including the residents of Garbutt, NY that Williamson famously <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2016/03/28/father-f-hrer/">blamed for their own economic difficulties</a>, are also much richer than the average poor person in Ethiopia. So when evaluating conservative beliefs about behavior and poverty, we should look at <i>relative </i>poverty, because that's exactly the kind of poverty conservatives are generally talking about.<br />
<br />
Now, if Japan were richer than the U.S., it might not be an appropriate country to compare ourselves to. If Japanese people making 50% of Japanese median income were materially better off than Americans making 50% of American median income, then Williamson's argument would have some bite. But in fact, the exact opposite is true. In purchasing power parity terms, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income">Japan's median household income is only about 63%</a> of Americans' median household income.<br />
<br />
In other words, in absolute terms, someone at the Japanese relative poverty line is doing <i>even worse</i> than someone at the relative American poverty line. So it's not clear why Williamson thinks that insisting on an absolute standard of poverty, rather than a relative one, will advance his case.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>2. What does looking at national averages tell us?</b><br />
<br />
Williamson's next argument is that instead of looking at national averages of behavior (violence, drug use, etc.), we should look specifically at the behavior of the Japanese poor:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Secondly, it is not entirely clear that the Japanese are as free from the pathologies that attend poverty in many other places as Smith suggests. It is true that Japan as a whole has low rates of chronic unemployment, drug use, single motherhood, etc., but the relevant question here would be how Japanese who are poor compare on these metrics with Japanese at large. To assume that the situation with the poor can be approximately deduced from national averages is pretty sloppy analysis, if it counts as analysis at all.</blockquote>
Williamson is wrong about the relevant question. The relevant question is P(relative poverty | absolute bad behavior). In other words, the relevant question is: "How much does bad behavior change my chances of falling into the lower echelons of my developed country?". The percentage of Japanese people who are badly behaved is much smaller than the percentage of Americans who are badly behaved. Yet about the same fraction of people there fall into the lower echelons of that society (which, as noted above, are actually lower in absolute terms than the lower echelons of American society, at least at the 25th percentile). Thus, even if there are individual Japanese people who become poor due to bad behavior, it can't <i>statistically</i> be the biggest factor, as long as poverty has roughly the same causes in both countries.<br />
<br />
Just to show how this works, let's do a simple example. Take one measure of bad behavior, e.g. violent crime. Suppose, hypothetically, that the violent crime rates per 100,000 population were:<br />
Poor Japanese people: 2<br />
Non-poor Japanese people: 1<br />
Poor Americans: 20<br />
Non-poor Americans: 10<br />
<br />
In this hypothetical, there is a behavior gap between poor and non-poor Japanese people. In fact, the ratio of bad behavior between poor and non-poor is the same between the two countries! But <i>as long as the causal relationship between bad behavior and poverty is the same for both countries</i> (and I'll talk more about this assumption in point #9 below), American poverty could not be reduced much simply by telling the poor Americans to stop being violent; in fact, they'd have to lower their violent crime rate by 95% just to catch up with their poor Japanese counterparts!<br />
<br />
Statistically, it could also be the case that Japanese poor people are about as badly behaved as poor Americans. In other words, there could be one cohort of really badly behaved Japanese people hogging the lower end of the income distribution, while everyone higher in the distribution acts like a saint. In this case, the differences in the averages of Japan and America all come from the middle and upper classes of the two countries. (This example is totally unrealistic and false, but let's run with it, just for fun). In this example, non-poor Americans are <i>much much worse behaved</i> than non-poor Japanese people...yet still, this bad behavior doesn't cause them to fall into poverty. In other words, even this imaginary and extremely contrived situation would support my argument instead of Williamson's!<br />
<br />
These are just two examples. But in general, you won't be able to find a single function relating bad behavior to poverty that fits both the Japanese data and the American data. The math just doesn't work.<br />
<br />
So as long as we're willing to assume that the causes of poverty are similar from country to country, then <i>just from looking at the national averages</i>, we can conclude that bad behavior is statistically not the main cause of poverty in rich societies.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>3. What about alcohol?</b><br />
<br />
In my article I focused on four dimensions of bad behavior - illegal drug use, out-of-wedlock births, violence, and idleness. Williamson suggests there is another type of bad behavior I failed to consider: alcohol.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Third, it emphatically is not the case that Japan is a society that is largely free from substance abuse. In Japan, as in the United States, the most socially significant and destructive mode of substance abuse is legal: alcohol abuse. <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-alcohol/in-binge-tolerant-japan-alcoholism-not-seen-as-disease-idUSTRE5AF0OO20091116">Japan has a big problem with alcohol</a>, and alcohol abuse is related to joblessness and poverty, although the question of causality (Are they unemployed because they drink, or do they drink because they are unemployed?) gets complicated, and some studies suggest that in Japan some kinds of destructive drinking increase with income.</blockquote>
It's true that alcohol is typically the drug of choice in Japan. But even here, America is worse-behaved. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_alcohol_consumption_per_capita">Several different data sources all agree</a> that the number of alcoholic drinks consumed per person in Japan is around 7, while the number in America is around 9. France, Germany and Australia, which have lower poverty rates than the U.S., are around 12.<br />
<br />
It's also instructive to examine <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-alcohol/in-binge-tolerant-japan-alcoholism-not-seen-as-disease-idUSTRE5AF0OO20091116">the Reuters article</a> that Williamson links to regarding alcohol in Japan. The article notes that alcoholism is a problem in the country. But its three examples of alcoholics are 1) a civil servant who remained employed after six months in the hospital, 2) the country's finance minister, who died in office, and 3) a prince. These examples illustrate how differences in institutions affect the relationship between behavior and economic outcomes. Despite alcoholism, the civil servant was still employed, the finance minister was still finance minister, and the prince was still a prince. More on this later.<br />
<br />
But in any case, suppose Williamson has a point, and alcohol, not illegal drug use, out-of-wedlock births, violence, or idleness is the big behavior-related cause of poverty. That would imply that conservatives' emphasis on the former four types of behavior is probably misplaced, and they should focus more on encouraging temperance and <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180809093453.htm">taxing alcohol more highly</a>.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>4. Why isn't Japan's system preventing more poverty?</b><br />
<br />
Williamson asks, if Japan has higher employment rates and national health insurance, why is their poverty only slightly less than that in the U.S.?<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Smith is correct that Japan has high work-force participation, and that it has a universal(ish) national health-insurance scheme. To which he adds: “Too many people fall through the cracks in the capitalist system because of unemployment, sickness, injury or other forms of bad luck.” This is an odd thing to write immediately after noting that Japan has 1. low unemployment and 2. a national health-care system that helps people through sickness and injury. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Perhaps those things are not sufficient?</blockquote>
This is absolutely true; these things are not sufficient. But nowhere did I say they are.<br />
<br />
National health insurance helps reduce individual bankruptcy risk and (if done right, as in Japan) control costs. Maintaining low unemployment also reduces bankruptcy risk, and <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/bpea-articles/fiscal-policy-in-a-depressed-economy/">the risk of losing</a> one's skills and connections. But Japan does show that neither of these will be sufficient to attain low European levels of poverty. For that, we will need more - other forms of income transfers, and/or institutions to ensure that more of society's income flows to lower-wage workers.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>5. Is poverty due to "capitalism"?</b><br />
<br />
Williamson argues that to attribute poverty to "capitalism" ignores the differences between countries' systems:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Capitalism” is a very broad term. The United States is a capitalist country, and a rich capitalist country at that. So is Japan. So is Singapore. So is Sweden. So is Switzerland. These countries have radically different health-care systems, tax codes, family lives, cultural norms, etc. Unsurprisingly, these produce different outcomes on a great many social fronts — but all of them are comprehended by “capitalism.”...To argue that the problem is “the capitalist system” is to retreat into generality and to refuse to consider the facts of the case, each on its own merits.</blockquote>
It is true that different advanced countries have different systems, and that labeling them "capitalism" tends to obscure more than it clarifies. In fact, I recently wrote <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-07-23/the-choice-isn-t-between-capitalism-or-socialism">a whole article about that topic</a>, which Williamson should read!<br />
<br />
But since the time of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle#In_economics">Vilfredo Pareto</a> it has been well-known that every country has a substantial amount of market poverty - that is, poverty before taxes and transfers. Here is a graph from the Economic Policy Institute of market poverty rates vs. post-transfer poverty rates:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jMqrZhJUdaI/XUXslRwA6LI/AAAAAAAAN7Y/Tw6cydclT6YPNpeojre72g7L3D27yVX1wCLcBGAs/s1600/inter_pov.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="467" data-original-width="762" height="392" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jMqrZhJUdaI/XUXslRwA6LI/AAAAAAAAN7Y/Tw6cydclT6YPNpeojre72g7L3D27yVX1wCLcBGAs/s640/inter_pov.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
In other words, no matter how you set up your system, you're going to get a lot of people who will experience relative poverty without government transfers. Hence, the social safety net matters a lot.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Capitalism is not a bad thing. Capitalism, in some form, is an amazing engine of wealth creation. Capitalism of some sort, as far as we know, is absolutely necessary to maintaining high standards of living and eliminating absolute poverty.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
But capitalism is not omnipotent. Drowning government in a bathtub and leaving individuals to sink or swim on their own in a free market economy will result in some people failing and being poor, no matter how well they behave. Thus, any capitalist system can be improved with a social safety net.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
That was my point. I think most people got it!</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<b>6. Extreme poverty and mental illness</b></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Williamson notes that much extreme poverty in the U.S., including chronic homelessness, is caused by mental illness:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="clear: both;">
In New York, Los Angeles, and other big cities, it is common for people to sleep on the streets even as beds in shelters go unoccupied. There are many reasons for that, but the main one almost certainly is mental illness (and substance abuse as a subset of that). That is the nearly universal opinion of the professionals who work with the urban homeless. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="clear: both;">
There are better and worse ways to deal with mental illness in a wealthy, complex society, and we in the United States have settled on one of the worst: After the “deinstitutionalization” of the 1960s and 1970s, in which left-wing liberationist thinking combined with right-wing penny-pinching to gut the public mental hospitals, we punted the problem to the police and to the jailers, who are ill-equipped to handle it. The United States is not alone in this. Many (perhaps most) Western European countries have more effective social-welfare systems than we do, but even in Sweden, with its fairly comprehensive welfare state, mental illness is the leading cause of “work force exclusion,” as they call it.</blockquote>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
As far as I know, this is all absolutely true. But notice that mental illness is not generally a behavioral issue - alcohol, drugs and violence can exacerbate your chances of becoming a schizophrenic, but there are tons of people with mental illness even in well-behaved countries like Japan. As Williamson notes, the most effective way of dealing with mental illness is government-funded treatment. And as Williamson notes, "right-wing penny-pinching" was indeed one reason the American government stopped providing the classic form of such treatment - compulsory institutionalization (which still exists in Japan). The question of how best to treat mental illness is an open one, but it's basically certain that the answer will be carried out by government intervention rather than by some improvement in personal responsibility - again, speaking to my thesis.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<b>7. Would more antipoverty programs reduce poverty in America?</b></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
Williamson writes:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="clear: both;">
[T]he big changes that progressives generally propose for the United States — a national health-care system like Japan’s, an enlarged welfare state more like Sweden’s — do not seem to have been entirely effective in the places where they have been tried. And there is good reason to believe that Swedish or Swiss practice cannot simply be imported into Eastern Kentucky or Baltimore and replicated locally. That does not mean that there is nothing to learn from Japanese or European practice — perfection is not our criterion — but it does complicate the conversation. We have, in fact, spent a tremendous amount of money on anti-poverty and economic-development programs, and much of that has not delivered anything like the promised return.</blockquote>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
Well, it is the case that the U.S. spends less on social welfare than most European countries:</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-u5iftmvlQz0/XUXx9d8xlOI/AAAAAAAAN7k/_hH_1VZVCCQtl4xvAPSjrRKUa0fE2xosACLcBGAs/s1600/quote.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="698" data-original-width="701" height="397" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-u5iftmvlQz0/XUXx9d8xlOI/AAAAAAAAN7k/_hH_1VZVCCQtl4xvAPSjrRKUa0fE2xosACLcBGAs/s400/quote.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
But it's also true that Canada and Australia have lower poverty rates than we do, despite lower rates of welfare spending (at least according to this measure). Williamson is almost certainly right that the U.S. has different challenges than these other countries. That may mean we need to spend more in order to achieve the same effect. But before we go claiming that government social spending won't work for the U.S., we should at least try spending as much as the UK or Germany (or Japan!). </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
As for Williamson's statement that "We have, in fact, spent a tremendous amount of money on anti-poverty and economic-development programs, and much of that has not delivered anything like the promised return", that may or may not be the case, but much of it <i>has</i> delivered the promised return. Just looking at recent examples, we see that government transfers have been entirely responsible for <a href="https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/child-poverty-falls-to-record-low-comprehensive-measure-shows">the fall in the child poverty rate</a> since the early 1990s:</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_MfX7HMaDcs/XUXzZYE8QiI/AAAAAAAAN7w/hdLPr9DdOww_rnhsX8zSJdX1xyQG1C05QCLcBGAs/s1600/poverty.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="531" data-original-width="580" height="365" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_MfX7HMaDcs/XUXzZYE8QiI/AAAAAAAAN7w/hdLPr9DdOww_rnhsX8zSJdX1xyQG1C05QCLcBGAs/s400/poverty.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Also, thanks to policies begun by George W. Bush and continued by Barack Obama, homelessness in the U.S. <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-05-21/ending-homelessness-is-a-job-for-the-federal-government">has fallen substantially</a>:</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NaynkYMRKmY/XUXzx9EVKNI/AAAAAAAAN74/ugEaquaMQa4WX2_Vv24K8FkgC9nEgQcvgCLcBGAs/s1600/homelessness.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="833" data-original-width="1200" height="277" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NaynkYMRKmY/XUXzx9EVKNI/AAAAAAAAN74/ugEaquaMQa4WX2_Vv24K8FkgC9nEgQcvgCLcBGAs/s400/homelessness.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
These approaches are working. Tell me again why we shouldn't double down on things that work, especially if we can afford to do so?</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<b>8. Sentimentality and poverty reduction</b></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Williamson, whose work I cited in my original post as an example of a conservative blaming poverty on bad behavior, writes:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/white-ghetto-kevin-d-williamson/">In my own reporting on poverty in the United States</a>, I have tried to present the facts as unsparingly as I can. Perhaps Noah Smith thinks that I do this in order to savor the exquisite delights of moral condemnation. But <b>the intended purpose is to scour away the crust of sentimentality that poverty has acquired</b> in order that we may deal with the actual facts of the case in a way that is productive and that does not end up deepening the very problems we hope to mitigate. (emphasis mine)</blockquote>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Here are some quotes from <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2016/03/28/father-f-hrer/">the Williamson article I cited</a>:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Yes, young men of Garbutt — get off your asses and go find a job... </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
[N]obody did this to them. They failed themselves...There wasn’t some awful disaster. There wasn’t a war or a famine or a plague or a foreign occupation. Even the economic changes of the past few decades do very little to explain the dysfunction and negligence — and the incomprehensible malice — of poor white America... </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles.</blockquote>
And in the article Williamson himself cites, he wrote:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Thinking about the future here and its bleak prospects is not much fun at all, so instead of too much black-minded introspection you have the pills and the dope, the morning beers, the endless scratch-off lotto cards, healing meetings up on the hill, the federally funded ritual of trading cases of food-stamp Pepsi for packs of Kentucky’s Best cigarettes and good old hard currency, tall piles of gas-station nachos, the occasional blast of meth, Narcotics Anonymous meetings, petty crime, the draw, the recreational making and surgical unmaking of teenaged mothers, and death...</blockquote>
If this represents "scouring away the crust of sentimentality", what does poverty reporting look like with the crust of sentimentality still on??<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>9. What an actually good conservative critique of my article would look like</b><br />
<br />
It's true that an 800-word comparison of two countries can't make a watertight case that bad behavior is not the biggest cause of poverty. It would definitely be possible for a conservative to read my article and then poke holes in my arguments. I don't think Kevin Williamson has done this. But if he did, I think it would look something like this:<br />
<br />
"The U.S. and Japan don't have comparable economic systems, so comparing their behavior and their poverty rates is inappropriate. America is a meritocracy where you can climb high if you work hard and act right. Therefore if you're poor in America, it must mean that you chose to sabotage yourself. But Japan's combination of lifetime employment, an inefficient corporate system that doesn't reward effort and achievement, sexism, and permanent social stigma for failure means that poverty there is usually caused by bad luck."<br />
<br />
In other words, different countries, even different developed countries, might have fundamentally different reasons for allowing people to fall into poverty.<br />
<br />
This is a real possibility. If this is true, it would mean that Japan has lots of room to reduce poverty by making their system more like America's, so that their well-behaved, hard-working poor people can escape poverty by the sweat of their brows. And it would mean that America is already doing about as well as it can do in terms of institutional set-up, and that the best it can do is to urge its poor people to try harder and be more moral.<br />
<br />
Of course, I could also marshal plenty of data against that case - for instance, the aforementioned success of U.S. government transfers in reducing child poverty and homelessness in recent decades. Or the big decreases in American violence and drug use since 1990 that haven't been accompanied by decreases in market poverty. But at least I would need more than just the example of Japan!<br />
<br />
(In fact, this is the counterargument that I was prepared for, since people often respond to Japan-based arguments by saying "Japan is just different". But Williamson didn't use it.)<br />
<br />
<br />
So even though my article does not completely settle the question of the root causes of poverty (and indeed, no article will), Kevin Williamson's attempted rebuttal does not hit the mark. For a good follow-up to my article, see <a href="https://www.econlib.org/beyond-victims-and-villains-2/">this post by Scott Sumner</a>. And thanks to Sumner for the photo at the top of this post.Noah Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09093917601641588575noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-68107214288991813242019-06-19T20:17:00.002-04:002019-06-19T20:20:53.984-04:00The Middle Eastern Thirty Years War?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kuoyfzdm4O8/XQrQhFLfDYI/AAAAAAAANw8/1fFhL2kknfwBJG6lzBopHGc7e4FzcZOqgCLcBGAs/s1600/war.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="869" data-original-width="1600" height="216" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kuoyfzdm4O8/XQrQhFLfDYI/AAAAAAAANw8/1fFhL2kknfwBJG6lzBopHGc7e4FzcZOqgCLcBGAs/s400/war.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
I know sweeping historical analogies are silly, but I've always been partial to <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2016/01/ending-new-thirty-years-war">the analogy</a> between the Middle East's recent decades of war and the Thirty Years War of early modern Europe. So let's run with that and see where it takes us.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>The Thirty Years' War</b><br />
<br />
In the early 1600s, most of Europe was involved in a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War">gigantic war</a> (which really lasted more than 30 years if you count other associated wars). A good history is C.V. Wedgwood's creatively named classic, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Thirty-Years-Review-Books-Classics/dp/1590171462"><i>The Thirty Years War</i></a>.<br />
<br />
Most people think of the war as a Protestant-vs-Catholic fight -- an extension and climax of the Wars of Religion that had been going on in Europe since the Reformation a century earlier. And religion was a big fault line between the two sides, and a big motivator for both people and regimes to keep fighting. But Wedgwood believes that the war was primarily a proxy contest between France and Spain for control of Europe. "There was enmity between France and Spain" is an often-repeated line throughout the book.<br />
<br />
Spain, at that time, was under the control of the Habsburg family, Europe's most famous set of blue-blooded aristocratic schemers. Europe was still in transition between the old feudal form of political organization and the modern nation-state system, and the Habsburgs definitely represented the former -- besides Spain, they had tons of possessions in Germany, Belgium, and elsewhere, in addition to the Spanish Empire in South and Central America. The Habsburgs wanted to control Germany, which was the richest and most densely populated part of Europe, but which at that time was divided into a ton of tiny little micro-states loosely under the control of the increasingly irrelevant and rickety Holy Roman Empire:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZYoHGBaJp9o/XQqpgHjiahI/AAAAAAAANwk/fuwU-Na2TNgrqZmAjUqV4WEXdWq9gzgbACLcBGAs/s1600/europe.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="593" data-original-width="728" height="325" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZYoHGBaJp9o/XQqpgHjiahI/AAAAAAAANwk/fuwU-Na2TNgrqZmAjUqV4WEXdWq9gzgbACLcBGAs/s400/europe.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
The Habsburgs had maintained loose domination of Germany by constantly winning the elections for Holy Roman Emperor, but when some Protestant states rebelled against the emperor, they decided it was time to conquer Germany for real. They had massive resource wealth (silver and gold) from the New World, and they had the feared <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tercio">Spanish fighters</a>, so they seemed to have a pretty good shot.<br />
<br />
But that didn't work out, and one big reason was the Habsburgs' chief rival in Europe: France. France was Catholic, but had no desire for pan-Catholic solidarity with the Habsburgs. When the war broke out, France was in the process of becoming an absolute monarchy, and -- especially after <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_La_Rochelle">subduing</a> the Protestant Huguenot rebellion -- looked increasingly like an effective centralized state. Under the effective control of the famous Cardinal Richelieu (villain of the Three Musketeers!), encouraged first Denmark and then Sweden to enter the war against the Habsburgs, as well as supporting various Protestant leaders. In the end, the Habsburgs were unable to conquer most of Germany, and their holdings in the south part eventually turned into the Austrian Empire.<br />
<br />
Spain finally got pissed enough to attack France directly, but -- to many people's surprise -- France <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Rocroi">gave them the boot</a>. France's counterattack <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Spanish_War_(1635%E2%80%931659)">also failed</a>, but by then Habsburg power in Europe was broken forever. The idea that a noble house with distributed feudal possessions could dominate the region was over, and absolute monarchies and modern nation-states started their long climb to preeminence. In fact, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_of_Westphalia">Peace of Westphalia</a>, the series of treaties that officially ended the Thirty Years War, is often cited as the blueprint for the modern concept of state sovereignty.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>The Saudi-Iranian Rivalry</b><br />
<br />
In the modern Middle East, a royal family with ample flows of natural resource wealth (the House of Saud) is engaged in a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Saudi_Arabia_proxy_conflict">long proxy conflict</a> with a autocratic, centralized rival state (Iran). Here's a slightly out-of-date map, from back when the Islamic State still had territory:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-26WIzodnhB8/XQrG6WHTEYI/AAAAAAAANww/6DkrI7n8By0L_foL5UlPhROcex7S0IJIACLcBGAs/s1600/proxy.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="616" data-original-width="768" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-26WIzodnhB8/XQrG6WHTEYI/AAAAAAAANww/6DkrI7n8By0L_foL5UlPhROcex7S0IJIACLcBGAs/s400/proxy.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<br />
Religion is involved, as Iran is Shia and the Saudis are Sunni; both sides have sought at various times to whip up religious fervor as a weapon against the other. But most observers think the conflict is as much about which regime controls the Middle East as it is about religion.<br />
<br />
The conflict has its roots in an ancient Arab-Persian rivalry, but it really began after the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Ayatollah Khomeini was hostile to all of the Middle Eastern monarchies, and wanted to replace them with Islamic Republics. In response, Saudi Arabia backed Saddam Hussein's invasion of Iran in 1980; the king of Saudi Arabia actually wrote to Hussein and told him to "crush these stupid Iranians". The Iran-Iraq War killed around 800,000 people, and Saudi Arabia and Iran nearly came to blows at least once during that conflict.<br />
<br />
The Saudi-Iranian conflict quickly became entangled with religion. Sunni and Shia Muslims had coexisted more-or-less peacefully for a long time, but Saudi Arabia and Iran have both been eager to destroy that comity in order to motivate their citizens and proxies. In 1987 Khomeini said that "these vile and ungodly Wahhabis are like daggers which have always pierced the heart of the Muslims from the back”, and called the Saudis “a band of heretics". In that same year, Iranian pilgrims and Saudi security <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1987_Mecca_incident">clashed at the Hajj</a> in Mecca, leaving over 400 people dead. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia increasingly sponsored and supported Sunni radicalism around the world, partly as a bulwark against Iranian influence. The Saudis also <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Shi%27ism#Saudi_Arabia">repressed</a> Shia within their borders, and there are accusations that the regime supports anti-Shia sentiment abroad as well.<br />
<br />
The Saudi-Iranian rivalry was effectively put on hold during the Gulf War in the early 1990s, but it never quite went away. Iran and the Saudis backed rival factions in the Afghani Civil War in the late 90s, and Iran almost went to war with the Saudi-supported Taliban. In Lebanon in the 2000s, the Saudis backed efforts against Iranian-backed Hezbollah, and Lebanon has continued to be a locus of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Lebanon%E2%80%93Saudi_Arabia_dispute">proxy conflict</a>. During the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the Saudis supported the U.S. presence while the Iranians backed Shia militias.<br />
<br />
But the rivalry really kicked into high gear after the Arab Spring in 2011. A Shia uprising in Bahrain <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi-led_intervention_in_Bahrain">was crushed</a> by Saudi soldiers, and the Sunni Bahraini royals accused Iran of stirring up the unrest. The Saudis <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabian_involvement_in_the_Syrian_Civil_War">supported</a> some of the rebels in Syria, while Iran vigorously <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_involvement_in_the_Syrian_Civil_War">supported</a> the government and even sent troops to help. Now, Saudi Arabia is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabian-led_intervention_in_Yemen">fighting a war</a> against the Shia Houthi movement in Yemen, which many claim is backed by Iran.<br />
<br />
This conflict has now been going on for 40 years. By my rough guesstimate, the various wars related to the conflict have now cost about 2 million lives. That is a lot less than the Thirty Years War, in both absolute numbers and percent of population, but the carnage is still significant.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Parallels and Differences</b><br />
<br />
The House of Saud is a bit reminiscent of the Habsburgs -- a hidebound, sprawling royal family supported by natural resource wealth (oil, vs. gold and silver from the Spanish colonies). That would put Iran in the role of France, its autocratic/bureaucratic rival. Like France, Iran has made use of various proxies -- Bashar al-Assad, Hezbollah, the Houthis, etc. And like France, Iran has generally chosen the more effective proxies -- Assad has crushed the rebels (with Russian help), Hezbollah dominates its Lebanese rivals, and the Houthis have proven far better fighters than Saudi's Yemeni proxies, and have even scored wins against Saudi Arabia's own military.<br />
<br />
But there are at least two big differences between Iran now and France in the 1600s. First, whereas France crossed the religious divide and employed Protestant proxies, Iran's proxies are mostly either Shia or quasi-Shia sects like the Syrian Alawites. Thus, there seems to be the possibility that the Saudi-Iranian conflict will stay religious in character, as opposed to the Thirty Years War, where the religious aspect eventually took a back seat to the intra-Catholic conflict between France and Spain.<br />
<br />
Second, Iran has a lot of oil too. While this might appear like an advantage, it can lead to the dreaded <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse">Resource Curse</a> (which arguably helped sink Spain in the Thirty Years War, when its shipments of silver were interrupted and it went bankrupt several times due to the habit of relying on steady flows of free money). Oil wealth could actually inhibit Iran from becoming an effective modern bureaucratic state. It seems possible that both the Saudis and the Iranians will be able to fuel their conflict with oil money for years to come, without being forced to cultivate more effective economic institutions. While France came out of the Thirty Years War looking stronger than ever, Iran might not be so lucky.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, the Saudis differ from the Habsburgs in one important way -- they exist in the modern, Westphalian world of nation-states. Thus, they cannot hope to gain influence by taking personal possession of territory, as the Habsburgs could. Instead, their hope for long-term influence probably depends on continued use of proxies in places like Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. And the Saudis will probably try to motivate and bind those proxies with religious ties.<br />
<br />
In other words, while the Thirty Years War signaled a shift from religion to nationalism as the organizing principle of Europe, the Saudi-Iranian conflict might not be able to repeat the trick for the Middle East -- instead, it might leave the region more polarized between Sunni and Shia.<br />
<br />
Another big difference between the wars is the importance of outside powers. The Thirty Years War really had only one relevant outside superpower, the Ottoman Empire, which offered limited help to some anti-Habsburg forces. But the modern Middle East has seen major interference from both the United States and Russia. The U.S. invaded and occupied Iraq, helped smash ISIS, supported autonomy for the Kurds, has provided financial and military support for the Saudis, and has occasionally threatened war with Iran. Meanwhile, Russian intervention proved decisive in Syria. Middle Eastern oil is so important to China's economy that China could conceivably become involved in the region as well.<br />
<br />
Thus, while the Thirty Years War ended with the consolidation and increased independence of European proto-nation-states, a similar process in the modern Middle East might be harder to achieve, thanks to the influence and domination of outside superpowers.<br />
<br />
Still, it does seem like the Saudi-Iranian conflict might lead to big and lasting changes in the Middle East, and some of those changes might not be too dissimilar from the aftermath of the Thirty Years War. The depredations of ISIS and other extremist groups -- almost as savage as <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Furies-Europe-1450-1700-Lauro-Martines/dp/1608196097">the atrocities</a> in 1600s Europe -- might convince Middle Easterners that fundamentalist sectarian warfare is not a source of power and unity, but a one-way road that leads nowhere good. Already, <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/20190205-iran-forty-years-islamic-revolution-broken-ayatollah-shah">the legitimacy</a> of the Islamic Republic in Iran has eroded, as young people come to resent the constant conflict, social repression, and lack of economic development.<br />
<br />
Second, the wars might end up leading to increased nationalism. If pan-Shia and pan-Sunni solidarity are seen as leading to endless conflict, young Middle Easterners may instead decide to think of themselves as Syrians, Iraqis, or Yemenis. Granted, this future looks fairly remote right now, but the rise of nationalism in Europe took centuries.<br />
<br />
Third, the constant warfare might simply create a weariness with war and conflict, especially when paired with the big drops in <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=ZQ">fertility rates</a> across the region. After the smoke clears from the wars in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and elsewhere, the Middle East might enter an era of enlightenment, much as Europe did. Science, literature, and institution-building might replace violence as sources of mass inspiration. As oil becomes less important to the global economy, Middle Eastern states will have the chance to shrug off the Resource Curse and diversify their economies to more productive, inclusive industries.<br />
<br />
Though the Thirty Years War was insanely savage and destructive, some good things did come out of it in the end. I hope that the same is true of the Middle East's current era of wars.Noah Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09093917601641588575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-78620176798766482122019-03-31T15:45:00.000-04:002019-04-01T11:53:09.113-04:00Examining an MMT model in detail<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HsUDnRAAZ0w/XKEYg8z2DKI/AAAAAAAANU0/lfS-vwVhtxsNU5VmmSuvitmtARiOFykQACLcBGAs/s1600/under%2Bthe%2Bhood.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="266" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HsUDnRAAZ0w/XKEYg8z2DKI/AAAAAAAANU0/lfS-vwVhtxsNU5VmmSuvitmtARiOFykQACLcBGAs/s400/under%2Bthe%2Bhood.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
What is MMT, the heterodox economic theory that has <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-ommt-modern-monetary-theory-how-pay-for-policies-2019-1">captivated Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez</a>, made its way into <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190207191119/https:/ocasio-cortez.house.gov/media/blog-posts/green-new-deal-faq">the Green New Deal discussion</a>, and inspired dozens of thinkpieces and critiques? What does it say? How can we tell if it's a good theory or a bad one?<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
These are incredibly important questions. Thanks to Ocasio-Cortez and the Green New Deal, MMT has very quickly gone from an obscure heterodox idea to one of the most potentially influential and important theories in all of economics. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<br />
<b>Formal Models vs. Guru-Based Theories</b><br />
<br />
These days, most economic theories are collections of mathematical models. If you want to know what the theory says, you can parse out the models and see for yourself. You don't have to go ask Mike Woodford what New Keynesian theory says. You don't have to go ask Ed Prescott what RBC theory says. You can go read a <a href="https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.97.3.586">New Keynesian model</a> or a <a href="http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=DF138D2D92D898EC0BDE88B12560D16D?doi=10.1.1.729.974&rep=rep1&type=pdf">Real Business Cycle model</a> and figure it out on your own.<br />
<br />
MMT is different. There are many <a href="http://neweconomicperspectives.org/modern-monetary-theory-primer.html">wordy explainers</a> and <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/video/2019/03/01/stephanie-kelton-explains-modern-monetary-theory.html">videos</a> that will explain some of <i>the concepts</i> behind MMT, or tell you some of MMT's <i>policy recommendations</i>. But that's different than having a formal model of the economy. In <a href="http://www.thomaspalley.com/docs/articles/macro_theory/mmt_response_to_wray.pdf">a criticism of MMT</a>, Thomas Palley writes:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The critical economic policy question is what does the power to money finance deficit spending mean for government’s ability to promote full employment with price stability? This question can only be answered by placing that power within a theoretical model and exploring its implications...Proponents of MMT have a professional obligation to provide [a simple mathematical] model to help understand and assess the logic and originality of their claims. Yet, [MMT proponents Eric Tymoigne and L. Randall Wray] again fail to produce a model...If MMT-ers did produce a model, I am convinced the issues would become transparent, but readers would also see there is “no there there”.</blockquote>
Now, a lot of people like to criticize mathematical models in economics. And they do have their drawbacks. Economists can sometimes become so entranced by the <a href="https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.p20151066">precision of math</a> that they ignore the need to connect that math with the real world. And the difficulty of hacking through math can lead economists to make the models <a href="http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2014/03/rbc-aint-dead.html">too simple</a>.<br />
<br />
Furthermore, Palley is being a bit too strict in demanding math; formal models can be stated in English or in graphs, rather than in equations.<br />
<br />
But formal models have important advantages. For one thing, a good formal model can be compared with quantitative data, to see whether it works or whether it fails. Formal models can make <i>testable predictions</i>.<br />
<br />
A second advantage of formal models is that you can figure them out for yourself, without having to ask any gurus. If you have to run to the gurus to ask them what the theory says any time you think you've found a flaw, it becomes almost impossible to skeptics or outsiders to evaluate the theory objectively.<br />
<br />
This latter issue comes up a lot when dealing with MMT. In <a href="https://www.bradford-delong.com/2019/03/james-montier-wonders-why-people-hate-mmt-he-is-about-to-discover-that-mmt-hates-him.html">a recent post</a>, Brad DeLong expresses his frustration with the theory's apparent slipperiness:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Functional finance" is a doctrine originated and set out by <a href="https://ideas.repec.org/p/wpa/wuwpma/9908002.html">Abba Lerner</a>...When I said that "functional finance" is at the core of MMT, I got immediately smacked down by one of the gurus...<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "roboto"; font-size: 16px;">Perhaps the key to the eagerness of [L. Randall] Wray to dismiss me (and James Montier) for saying that MMT is Lerner+ is sociological. Perhaps MMT is <b>not model-based</b> ("IS-LM with a near-vertical IS curve") and <b>not idea-based</b> ("Functional Finance") so that it can be <b>guru-based</b>. (emphasis mine)</span></blockquote>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "roboto"; font-size: 16px;">It wasn't just DeLong and Montier who conflated MMT with Functional Finance. Aryun Jayadev and J.W. Mason <a href="http://newserver.jjay.cuny.edu/sites/default/files/contentgroups/economics/mainstreammacroeconomicsmodernmonetarytheory.pdf">did something similar</a> in their attempted write-up of MMT, leading Josh Barro to do the same thing in <a href="http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/01/modern-monetary-theory-doesnt-make-single-payer-any-easier.html">his own criticism of MMT</a>. Mason, Jayadev, and Barro criticized MMT on the grounds that raising taxes to control inflation - something you have to do in Functional Finance, and which some MMT advocates <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-07/deficits-mmt-and-a-green-new-deal">agree is necessary</a> - is politically very difficult.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "roboto"; font-size: 16px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "roboto"; font-size: 16px;">But in response to these critiques, Mason, Jayadev, Barro, Montier, and DeLong were told: No, MMT's approach to fiscal policy is <i>not</i> just Functional Finance. It is very very different. On Twitter, MMT insider <a href="https://twitter.com/rohangrey/status/1083041728565792768">Rohan Grey declared</a> that MMT has other tools besides fiscal policy for fighting inflation. On his blog, MMT insider <a href="http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2019/03/mmt-responds-to-brad-delongs-challenge.html">L. Randall Wray said</a> that MMT's main tool for maintaining price stability is the federal Job Guarantee:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: "roboto";">Yes, MMT does have another tool to maintain price stability. It is the JG approach to full employment. It has always been a core element of MMT. We have never relied the simplistic version of Functional Finance that was presented by Mason. It would take about five minutes of actual research to demonstrate this.</span></span></blockquote>
Now that's a perfectly fine rebuttal. People get theories wrong all the time. It's perfectly possible that Mason, Jayadev, Barro, Montier, and DeLong were all very wrong to conflate MMT with Functional Finance, and that five minutes of actual research <i>would</i> have demonstrated this.<br />
<br />
But <i>which five minutes?</i> If you want to know how MMT's price stabilization policy differs from Functional Finance, where do you look? Do you trust Wray's blog? Or Grey's tweets? Or an online explainer? Or a video explainer? Or in one of the many papers written by MMT proponents? Which one?<br />
<br />
Because MMT doesn't often include formal models, the question of how MMT thinks inflation works is very difficult to answer for yourself. The same is true of a number of other questions, such as how MMT's Job Guarantee would create full employment with price stability. You have to go ask the MMT People themselves.<br />
<br />
But "few formal models" doesn't mean "no formal models". Occasionally, MMT people do write down a formal description of how they think the economy works (or might work). One example is "<a href="https://modernmoneynetwork.org/sites/default/files/biblio/Pavlina_2007.pdf">Monopoly Money: The State as a Price Setter</a>", by Pavlina R. Tcherneva.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Examining an MMT Model (or, "Pavlina Tcherneva and the EMPL of Doom")</b><br />
<br />
"<a href="https://modernmoneynetwork.org/sites/default/files/biblio/Pavlina_2007.pdf">Monopoly Money: The State as a Price Setter</a>" explains the idea of how a Job Guarantee would work. The formal model begins on p.130 (page 7 of the PDF).<br />
<br />
Here is the model's "conceptual framework":<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9MPoJARSx3U/XKD-_2zD9DI/AAAAAAAANTA/VpTVS-tVV5kxRFE3Eb-3_86zoepl7sKtgCLcBGAs/s1600/tcherneva%2B1.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="321" data-original-width="924" height="222" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9MPoJARSx3U/XKD-_2zD9DI/AAAAAAAANTA/VpTVS-tVV5kxRFE3Eb-3_86zoepl7sKtgCLcBGAs/s640/tcherneva%2B1.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
The government demands that people pay taxes in dollars, which you can only get by working for the government. So people work for the government because that's the only way they can pay their taxes.<br />
<br />
Now let's look at exactly how people work for the government and pay their taxes:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-K3xUfw1-Ig0/XKEBUbuYuKI/AAAAAAAANTQ/QTfSDReBDp49Z9OgGzFGVBXvsC-zlaFjQCLcBGAs/s1600/tcherneva%2B2.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="744" data-original-width="750" height="633" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-K3xUfw1-Ig0/XKEBUbuYuKI/AAAAAAAANTQ/QTfSDReBDp49Z9OgGzFGVBXvsC-zlaFjQCLcBGAs/s640/tcherneva%2B2.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Already I can see one potential problem with this model, which is that <b>everyone in the entire economy dies.</b></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Note the part that I've marked with a red arrow. This economy produces only one service, which is firefighting. But you can't eat firefighting. So if that's literally the only thing anyone does in this economy, everyone will starve to death.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
LOL OK, so that's probably too harsh. Maybe the people in this economy are doing other stuff on the side that's not in the model - farming, manufacturing, etc. After all, Tcherneva does mention that T could be "a property tax", and the model doesn't include property. So let's assume there's other stuff outside the model too, so that people don't starve, or freeze, etc.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
But that still leaves the question of <b>why the government needs firefighting services</b> in the first place. What if there aren't any fires? If the government hires <a href="https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/07/firefighters-dont-fight-fires.html">more firefighters than it needs</a> to actually fight fires, then it's just wasting resources - making people labor in useless toil, taking them away from subsistence farming, or whatever. The more useless firefighters it hires, the poorer each person is. (In the limit, if every person has to spend all their time and effort doing unproductive work for the government, they actually do <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward">starve to death</a>!)</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Anyway, let's go on. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iIN7lMtQIGg/XKEDOxzOqtI/AAAAAAAANTg/NpnIIZRXswQyJOVhxk4iojWCthhgzAA8wCLcBGAs/s1600/tcherneva%2B3.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="852" data-original-width="728" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iIN7lMtQIGg/XKEDOxzOqtI/AAAAAAAANTg/NpnIIZRXswQyJOVhxk4iojWCthhgzAA8wCLcBGAs/s640/tcherneva%2B3.png" width="546" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
So the government can hire 1 firefighter for $10 or 10 firefighters for $1 each, etc. (cents apparently don't exist in this world, so you can't hire 4 firefighters for $2.50 each, which is weird but OK).</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Another question arises: <b>Why is anyone willing to work as a firefighter in this model?</b> According to Tcherneva, they need dollars to pay their taxes. But <b>who pays the taxes? </b>Tcherneva specifies that the tax bill "for the entire community" is $10. But how is this tax bill paid? Does the entire community file taxes jointly?</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Suppose the government chooses to hire only one firefighter - call her Susan. She gets $10 for firefighting, and everyone else gets $0. Does the government tax Susan $10 and tax everyone else $0? Apparently so. Because Susan has $10 and everyone else has $0, so the only way the government can get its $10 is to tax Susan $10.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
So <b>why does Susan go fight fires in the first place?</b> Firefighting takes work. If instead she decides to be one of the 9 people who don't work as firefighters, she can relax and watch Netflix, or farm food, or go do whatever it is that people in this model do when they're not firefighting. Someone else will get the dollars, someone else will pay the taxes. Because if you don't work as a firefighter your tax bill is zero, because you don't have any dollars to tax!</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
So taxation in this model doesn't make a lot of sense, because the model doesn't explain who actually pays the taxes. Without knowing that, it's hard to know why people would accept the government's prices for their firefighting services.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
But OK, there must be some reason they work. Maybe the government makes people work at the price it offers. In this case, people are effectively doing slave labor for the government.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
That sounds bad...right? It sounds a bit like colonialism, when European governments would send their armies to Africa or Latin America or India and make the locals labor for their overseas masters. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
At this point you may be saying "Noah, you jerk, why are you slandering the MMT people by equating their ideas with colonialism? That's not fair!" But I have a good reason for drawing this comparison: <i>Tcherneva makes it herself</i>, earlier in the paper! European colonialism in Africa is explicitly held up as a successful example of a "tax-driven currency":</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WGc6RANbblo/XKEL8-1znOI/AAAAAAAANTs/NAmCE49Ma285FoPM_TasSMcfHBByCBwCwCLcBGAs/s1600/tcherneva%2B4.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="157" data-original-width="737" height="136" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WGc6RANbblo/XKEL8-1znOI/AAAAAAAANTs/NAmCE49Ma285FoPM_TasSMcfHBByCBwCwCLcBGAs/s640/tcherneva%2B4.png" title="Fantasy fans will also recognize this as the method of colonial enslavement from "The Traitor Baru Cormorant"." width="640" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-81_32nJBUO4/XKEMbIcRc-I/AAAAAAAANT0/1-yHSsn-BwAGIqF8JHR-3DZJSPiqCso-gCLcBGAs/s1600/tcherneva%2B5.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="702" data-original-width="726" height="618" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-81_32nJBUO4/XKEMbIcRc-I/AAAAAAAANT0/1-yHSsn-BwAGIqF8JHR-3DZJSPiqCso-gCLcBGAs/s640/tcherneva%2B5.png" title="Fantasy fans will also recognize this as the method of colonial enslavement from "The Traitor Baru Cormorant"." width="640" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qjRv9ZVAGAw/XKEMnBJM_iI/AAAAAAAANT4/Jev5aECNq9saUHfq8QDnkoxkZe6u26uEwCLcBGAs/s1600/tcherneva%2B6.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="235" data-original-width="735" height="204" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qjRv9ZVAGAw/XKEMnBJM_iI/AAAAAAAANT4/Jev5aECNq9saUHfq8QDnkoxkZe6u26uEwCLcBGAs/s640/tcherneva%2B6.png" title="Fantasy fans will also recognize this as the method of colonial enslavement from "The Traitor Baru Cormorant"." width="640" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
On p.135 (page 12 of the PDF), Tcherneva explicitly states that the case where the government sets prices for firefighters "is the African example." So yes, it's explicit that in the model where the government sets prices, it also sets quantities - i.e., it forces people to work. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
I don't want to editorialize too much here, but "the African example" seems <i>bad</i>. Forced labor, potentially to the point of genocide, does not sound like the kind of "job guarantee" I would want. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Does Tcherneva offer any alternative? Yes. In her "case 2b" on p.134 (page 11 of the PDF), she relaxes the assumption of forced labor, and allows the price (and therefore also the quantity) of workers to be set by the market. She also allows for the possibility that labor unions might organize to reduce the amount of labor they do in exchange for their tax dollars:</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-byrMFa0dPyk/XKERE8liqpI/AAAAAAAANUM/m3nBb9CC3mEO7dztOfNvSpmuoxya7yarQCLcBGAs/s1600/tcherneva%2B7.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="808" data-original-width="740" height="640" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-byrMFa0dPyk/XKERE8liqpI/AAAAAAAANUM/m3nBb9CC3mEO7dztOfNvSpmuoxya7yarQCLcBGAs/s640/tcherneva%2B7.png" width="586" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qhX9HS_68zE/XKERH5oeflI/AAAAAAAANUQ/6GlEPaSGCHsOzM4RCmkNfoRXrhW02mA6ACLcBGAs/s1600/tcherneva%2B8.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="263" data-original-width="733" height="228" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qhX9HS_68zE/XKERH5oeflI/AAAAAAAANUQ/6GlEPaSGCHsOzM4RCmkNfoRXrhW02mA6ACLcBGAs/s640/tcherneva%2B8.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
In this model, the government can't determine how much labor it gets or how much each laborer gets paid; it can only determine the total number of dollars it pays for labor. In fact, as Tcherneva suggests, labor unions might even allow workers to get all the government's dollars for a very small amount of labor - good for workers, but bad news if there really is a fire!</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Anyway, this new model sounds much less horrifying, but it still doesn't answer the fundamental questions of "why do we need all these firefighters" or "who exactly pays the taxes". But at least it does allow for the possibility that either market forces or organized labor could minimize the amount of potentially-useless labor people were compelled to perform for the government in exchange for the money they need to pay their taxes. Colonial Africa, but with labor unions.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
(Tcherneva also develops some further cases, including one where the government purchases park benches and another in which desired net saving is nonzero. But none of these cases answer the basic questions either. But don't take my word for it; <a href="https://modernmoneynetwork.org/sites/default/files/biblio/Pavlina_2007.pdf">check the paper</a>.)</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Anyway, this formal model is very useful, because it allows careful, precise, explicit analysis of MMT ideas. It allows us to identify potential problems with the theory, such as the question of whether a job guarantee would represent unproductive toil, and whether that's something we would want as a society. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<b>Further Questions for MMT</b></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
There is much I do not yet understand about MMT, that I would like to understand. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
For example, suppose the government implements a job guarantee and sets deficits, credit policies, etc. at the appropriate level to ensure price stability, but we still have more inequality of income and wealth than we would like? What policies should then be used to reduce inequality, without interfering with the goals of price stability and full employment?</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Also, I would like to know how to test MMT empirically. What concrete predictions - about macroeconomic aggregates or other quantities - does MMT make that would allow us to determine whether it describes the economy better than, say, Old Keynesian IS-LM models, or New Keynesian models with financial frictions?</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Also, how does MMT model productivity in the economy? It seems like hiring a bunch of firefighters in the absence of fires would negatively impact productivity and <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-11/u-s-economy-federal-job-guarantee-would-hurt-private-employers">reduce living standards</a>. Does MMT assume that productivity is exogenous, does it assume that productivity reductions will always be of secondary concern relative to the importance of full employment, or does it have some other way of dealing with potential hits to productivity?</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
I'm not confident in my ability to answer these and other important questions by reading L. Randall Wray blog posts, or long online explainers, or wordy MMT papers. I want to be able to read a concrete, formal, well-specified model like the Tcherneva model above, and answer these questions myself. And the rest of the non-MMT econ deserves this as well.</div>
Noah Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09093917601641588575noreply@blogger.com31tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-2938190851530593432019-03-30T18:45:00.001-04:002019-03-30T18:58:00.806-04:00Where should Americans live if they live abroad?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MG6jEz4pbPk/XJ_xYtjrk3I/AAAAAAAANSk/pgb3ZWvRRg82TQJcYssRoURRaLnX6vRUwCLcBGAs/s1600/expatriates.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="643" data-original-width="1386" height="185" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MG6jEz4pbPk/XJ_xYtjrk3I/AAAAAAAANSk/pgb3ZWvRRg82TQJcYssRoURRaLnX6vRUwCLcBGAs/s400/expatriates.png" title="You’re an expatriate. You’ve lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed by sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You’re an expatriate, see? You hang around cafés." width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
I'm a huge fan of living abroad, and I think many more Americans should do it. Living in a big, rich country with relatively few other countries nearby, Americans <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/tripping/wp/2017/09/29/u-s-citizens-among-least-likely-to-travel-abroad-british-firm-says/">don't tend to travel</a> overseas much. And of course, a great many don't have the economic opportunity to do so. I think there should be <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2016-06-01/young-americans-would-gain-a-lot-from-seeing-the-world">government programs</a> that help young Americans travel and live abroad, and I think more charities, religious organizations, and other nonprofits should focus on helping people go overseas.<br />
<br />
In <a href="https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1112054669012983808">a recent Twitter thread</a>, I explained how I think living abroad changes one's perspective. In addition to the obvious benefits of cosmopolitanism - helping people realize that people around the world aren't so different after all, etc. etc. - I think it conveys a healthy appreciation for how hard institutions are to get right. Living in Japan for a few years, I got to observe institutions that work better there (cities, primary education), but also institutions that in many ways <i>don't</i> work as well - like the media, universities, corporate culture, the justice system. In fact, the institutions that Japan struggles with the most tend to be things that Americans complain about a lot.<br />
<br />
Thus, living abroad taught me that institutions are very hard to get right, that tradeoffs and path dependence are very real, and that even the smartest people (in this case, Japan's vaunted elite bureaucracy) can often get things wrong for a very long time. I think I returned to the U.S. with a deeper appreciation of how hard it is to make a society work the way you want it to, and how precious functional institutions are. It made me both less satisfied with the things America does wrong - for example, urban density and transportation - and more wary of tearing up the things that actually work halfway decently. I can see the same sort of perspective in the writing of some of my favorite writers, including James Fallows and Terrell Starr.<br />
<br />
OK, so if you're young-ish and looking to live overseas and gain some perspective, where do you go? Or if you're a nonprofit looking to give young Americans some perspective by sending them overseas, where do you send them? Japan's not a bad choice, but I imagine that there are even better places in terms of comparing/contrasting local institutions and culture with the U.S. Here are some ideas:<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>1. China</b><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yVE3PZlTKqM/XJ_yL1VvV9I/AAAAAAAANSs/GbJrvpnUJ-oFczO4urb7V2Sk8Qin0MEpACLcBGAs/s1600/china.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="852" height="225" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yVE3PZlTKqM/XJ_yL1VvV9I/AAAAAAAANSs/GbJrvpnUJ-oFczO4urb7V2Sk8Qin0MEpACLcBGAs/s400/china.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
China has got to be the obvious choice, because the country is just so important to the world economy and to geopolitics. This is the Chinese Century, so might as well try living where the action is! Making connections to China could be very useful in life, in addition to any perspective gained.<br />
<br />
Furthermore, China's one-party rule, development-oriented state, and close cooperation between government and companies make for an important and interesting institutional contrast. Chinese politics, ethnic divisions, and sense of history are also probably all very interesting and different. Some of these differences are <a href="https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1111390590556491777">very scary</a>, but scary things can also be instructive. James Fallows is one of my favorite writers, and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Postcards-Tomorrow-Square-Reports-China/dp/0307456242/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=james+fallows+china&qid=1553982024&s=books&sr=1-3-catcorr">his time in China</a> shaped him deeply.<br />
<br />
The big problem here is that unless they speak Chinese (which, due to the large # of characters and the tonality, is not the easiest language to learn), an American's ability to really get to know people in China might be limited. Being trapped in the expat community is an easy way to avoid getting the full experience of a country. Though notably, some Americans who have actually lived in China <a href="https://twitter.com/AdamMinter/status/1112094796078825472">claim that Chinese ability isn't as necessary</a> as you might think.<br />
<br />
I hear through the grapevine that the best city to live in is Shenzhen, though of course Shanghai and Beijing will always be popular (and Sichuan in general has my favorite food!). There are tons of other places to choose from, too.<br />
<br />
Alternative: For those who want to see an up-and-coming superpower with more democratic governance and more English usage, try India.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>2. Germany</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-UEsYoGH1qOA/XJ_mS4ecqXI/AAAAAAAANRs/RRF9-VBLWSwJ-q3ln2roKciOv3FqnzUNQCLcBGAs/s1600/germany.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="960" height="266" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-UEsYoGH1qOA/XJ_mS4ecqXI/AAAAAAAANRs/RRF9-VBLWSwJ-q3ln2roKciOv3FqnzUNQCLcBGAs/s400/germany.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
When choosing a foreign country to live in, there's a balance between choosing one that's too similar (in which case you might overlook the important differences) and one that's too different (in which case you might assume there are no relevant lessons to be learned). Germany might be in the sweet spot. It's a rich Western country, which contributed more immigrants to America than any other nation except possibly Mexico. But it also has a very different economy and set of institutions -- worker councils and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-determination">co-determination</a>, strong vocational education, export- and manufacturing-oriented industrial policy, and dense urbanism with good public transit.<br />
<br />
Germany might therefore be the best country if you want to see different ways to run an advanced economy. Also, lots of people can speak good English, and the country is safe, wealthy, beautiful, and fun. It might also give good perspective on issues of ethnonationalism, what with its WW2 history and its recent acceptance of large numbers of <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/two-years-since-germany-opened-its-borders-to-refugees-a-chronology/a-40327634">Middle Eastern refugees</a>.<br />
<br />
Berlin is the most famous place to live - it's very cheap, and is a legendary party town, with lots of history. But Munich is my personal favorite.<br />
<br />
Alternative: France is a country with similar points of interest, though its economic model is a bit different and its English usage is a bit less.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>3. Brazil</b><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sRMtNksOunc/XJ_pJejVGJI/AAAAAAAANR8/IbtHNb0pdfIFvHgPzoN_LgpZMwradiH_wCLcBGAs/s1600/brazil.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="520" data-original-width="780" height="266" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sRMtNksOunc/XJ_pJejVGJI/AAAAAAAANR8/IbtHNb0pdfIFvHgPzoN_LgpZMwradiH_wCLcBGAs/s400/brazil.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
Brazil is, in many ways, America's "sister country". It's a large, populous post-colonial Western Hemisphere nation with a history of slavery (abolished 1888), a history of immigration, and a very diverse population. For those who are intent on living somewhere nice, it's also famous for its natural beauty and fun culture (though with a murder rate 6 times as high as that of the U.S., it's also a bit dangerous).<br />
<br />
Brazil could offer some broad perspective on how to make a very diverse young society with a checkered past work for all its people. Economically, it's middle-income (slightly poorer than China), with some <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embraer">advanced industries</a> but low productivity growth. It may therefore be a good example of the "middle income trap" - a country that is no longer mired in poverty but is struggling to make it into the ranks of wealthy nations.<br />
<br />
Alternative: For those who would rather stick closer to the U.S., Mexico shares some of these points of interest.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>4. Ethiopia</b><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gbSjMd05dBU/XJ_sPr3XVcI/AAAAAAAANSM/tN4ejdcPiC8ScoUn6-XkRlPqAfJ832F7QCLcBGAs/s1600/ethiopia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="904" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gbSjMd05dBU/XJ_sPr3XVcI/AAAAAAAANSM/tN4ejdcPiC8ScoUn6-XkRlPqAfJ832F7QCLcBGAs/s400/ethiopia.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
My Bloomberg Opinion colleague Tyler Cowen <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-05-29/ethiopia-already-is-the-china-of-africa">strongly recommends Ethiopia</a>. If you want to see a developing country just on the cusp of industrialization, Ethiopia might be your best bet. Thanks to a recent <a href="https://qz.com/africa/1490811/ethiopian-photographers-document-change-abiy-ahmed-at-addis-foto/">improvement</a> in political stability and a torrent of foreign <a href="https://newbusinessethiopia.com/ethiopia-attracts-843-million-foreign-direct-investment/">investment</a> (much of it <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-03-02/china-is-turning-ethiopia-into-a-giant-fast-fashion-factory">Chinese</a>), Ethiopia looks like it's hopping aboard the train to industrialization. That could mean useful commercial advantages to living there, if you want to invest and get in on the ground floor! And because Ethiopia is the first African country to start out on this manufacturing-based growth path, you'd be there for a historic moment.<br />
<br />
The country is still desperately poor -- its income per capita is less than 1/30 that of the United States. But living in a desperately poor country is a good way to see what life is like without industrialization, and why countries rush to embrace it despite all the pollution, safety issues, and other drawbacks.<br />
<br />
Alternatives: Other countries going through similar rapid industrialization, but slightly farther along, include Bangladesh and Vietnam.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>5. Ukraine</b><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-995Be7BHSro/XJ_tyyAvfBI/AAAAAAAANSY/Ir6axmp3FwYYbDEY-JOwhjIyr3BU7KfEwCLcBGAs/s1600/ukraine.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="1024" height="300" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-995Be7BHSro/XJ_tyyAvfBI/AAAAAAAANSY/Ir6axmp3FwYYbDEY-JOwhjIyr3BU7KfEwCLcBGAs/s400/ukraine.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
It might feel a bit voyeuristic to go live in a country that is mired in troubles. But it could also be very instructive. Despite a history of industrialization as the center of Soviet heavy industry, and despite some of the world's most fertile agricultural land, Ukraine remains poor. It's mired in economic stagnation, political dysfunction, and a seemingly never-ending war with a small Russian-backed breakaway region in the east. If you want to see how a country with lots of advantages and close connections to the West can still struggle in this day and age, Ukraine is probably your best bet.<br />
<br />
Of course, Ukraine also no doubt has much charm. Terrell Starr <a href="https://iu.mediaspace.kaltura.com/media/Terrell+Starr+Black+in+Ukraine/1_0pc7swky">lived there</a> and liked it. Nor is he <a href="https://twitter.com/maxblumenthal/status/948650534491303937?lang=en">the only one</a>. It's cheap, and if you decide you'd rather return to the comfort of the developed world, other European countries are very close by!<br />
<br />
Alternative: You could always take the full leap and go live in Russia.<br />
<br />
<br />
So there are some suggestions of where to live if you're looking for some international perspective (with a bit of adventure thrown in). Of course, I haven't lived in any of these places, so this post is highly speculative. In the end, you won't know until you go!Noah Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09093917601641588575noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-4656081880772668522019-03-28T14:08:00.002-04:002019-03-28T14:08:25.548-04:00Guest post: Roy Bahat on Uber, Lyft, and the future of workRoy Bahat is the head of Bloomberg Beta, a venture capital firm focused on the future of work. In this guest post, he explains what he thinks is wrong with the way the "ride sharing" companies treat their workers.<br />
<br />
____________________________________________________________________<br />
<h1 dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 20pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 20pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">AS GOES UBER, SO GOES THE NATION</span></h1>
<h4 dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 4pt; margin-top: 14pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #666666; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">HOW MIGHT IT LOOK TO NEGOTIATE A “TREATY OF SILICON VALLEY?”</span></h4>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://twitter.com/roybahat&source=gmail&ust=1553882439327000&usg=AFQjCNFV5UQhpu_4XnFU38UWJfStZ5K6Yw" href="http://twitter.com/roybahat" style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Roy Bahat</span></a></div>
<br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;" />
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lyft could go public as soon as this week, with Uber tailgating. For either </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to succeed, they have to stop the rot at the core of their business: their drivers are suffering. Like a factory worker in a 1950 auto plant, Uber and Lyft drivers epitomize the struggles of many Americans today. To solve their drivers’ challenges, Uber and Lyft might need to strike a new bargain for all of American work, a new “Treaty of Detroit.” </span></div>
<br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;" />
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Treaty of Detroit, just after World War II, established employers as the providers of benefits. Then, the big three automakers rang up outsized profits, which depended on working people welding, painting, and assembling. Those people suffered unacceptable conditions, like many gig workers today, so they organized.</span></div>
<br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;" />
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">United Auto Workers chief Walter Reuther pressed General Motors to create the standard for a full-time job in America: health insurance, vacation, enough of a wage to provide for a family, regular raises, and money for retirement. He negotiated, in one word, security. </span></div>
<br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;" />
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">--</span></div>
<br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;" />
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Our economy and society are different today. Family lives come in many forms, and our workforce is more diverse. In a family headed by a single parent or by two working parents, all work, not just full-time jobs at profitable companies, must provide for stability.</span></div>
<br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;" />
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lyft and Uber, like many companies in the new economy, have been unable to provide their workers with a stable and complete livelihood. Still, with their bully pulpit and their relationship with millions of Americans, they might be our best hope for provoking change.</span></div>
<br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;" />
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That change starts with something unfamiliar to Uber and Lyft: partnering with government. Instead of using their muscle to whine to cities about taxi regulations, Uber and Lyft should call on government to lift the floor for working people. They could ask the federal government to pay for healthcare, joining the conversation about Medicare for All (as they did during the discussions about the Affordable Care Act). Government could set a minimum wage for drivers, as New York just did, so we riders pay our fare share.</span></div>
<br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;" />
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lyft and Uber could enable drivers to choose their own paths, in what’s now called “lifelong learning.” Uber </span><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolineodonovan/uber-will-pay-for-some-drivers-to-go-to-college&source=gmail&ust=1553882439327000&usg=AFQjCNE_hkTg5AI8kQLMGv-D5Ooch13eUg" href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolineodonovan/uber-will-pay-for-some-drivers-to-go-to-college" style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">offers</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> online college classes for free at Arizona State. Driver centers could offer GED-equivalent classes, or help drivers build their network and then learn </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">how</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to network. Imagine if drivers, who Lyft and Uber chose to brand as “</span><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://hbr.org/2016/04/the-truth-about-how-ubers-app-manages-drivers&source=gmail&ust=1553882439327000&usg=AFQjCNFd7sO8ke9MbLWMQLNP3rFEqIAC3A" href="https://hbr.org/2016/04/the-truth-about-how-ubers-app-manages-drivers" style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">independent entrepreneurs</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">” at the height of the employee-or-contractor game, actually received support to become genuine entrepreneurs -- like financing, or access to mentors to help them with business plans? Or better: Uber and Lyft could buy services from companies owned by their own workers, to create the spark of demand that gets them going.</span></div>
<br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;" />
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This company-supported learning might extend to developing drivers’ careers at Uber and Lyft. Unlike a retail store, where the cashier sees the manager every day and gets a shot to build a relationship and prove they can do that job, the app-is-my-boss experience gives drivers only the thinnest exposure to management. So Uber and Lyft need to invent ways to get drivers into corporate headquarters, or risk permanent castes dividing their workforce. </span></div>
<br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;" />
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Maybe workers conceded too much in the Treaty of Detroit, and drivers should organize to have a representative on Uber and Lyft’s boards? Uber’s CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, talks about his family coming from struggle. What if the Dara Khosrowshahi of 2030 is someone driving for Uber right now?</span></div>
<br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;" />
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Despite the avalanche of investor money that blanketed Uber and Lyft, they barely earn enough revenue to pay their costs. It’s hard to imagine them paying more for driver healthcare. They’re also locked in a do-si-do where if one raised prices to pay drivers more, we riders would probably just pick the other one -- you know you would. So a “Treaty of Silicon Valley” would need government to both level and raise the playing field.</span></div>
<br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;" />
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">---</span></div>
<br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;" />
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 3pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After the Treaty of Detroit, the President of General Motors said “</span><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://blogs.loc.gov/inside_adams/2016/04/when-a-quote-is-not-exactly-a-quote-general-motors/&source=gmail&ust=1553882439327000&usg=AFQjCNGtwRNEDEcvVsX7nkf0MUCg27ar5g" href="https://blogs.loc.gov/inside_adams/2016/04/when-a-quote-is-not-exactly-a-quote-general-motors/" style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">what was good for the country was good for General Motors, and vice versa</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.” Uber or Lyft might say the same today. The technology companies driving changes in work need to call on government and workers to strike a new bargain, and then do their part to invest in those workers’ futures. Big corporates, who have long shifted work from employees to contractors, might follow -- and we might all agree to a new treaty that will hold for another 70 years.</span></div>
Noah Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09093917601641588575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-61720089609177339522019-02-28T19:09:00.001-05:002019-02-28T19:15:26.988-05:00A proposal for an Alternative Green New Deal<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-djRPFkC7xRo/XHh4FsX_n2I/AAAAAAAANCI/1ZuWYoyJtCweWSmKtfQ68KK4gTAQBUbTwCLcBGAs/s1600/solar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="477" data-original-width="700" height="272" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-djRPFkC7xRo/XHh4FsX_n2I/AAAAAAAANCI/1ZuWYoyJtCweWSmKtfQ68KK4gTAQBUbTwCLcBGAs/s400/solar.jpg" title="Technological solutions work" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
Usually, Bloomberg Opinion understandably does not want me to repost my Bloomberg articles at this blog. But they made an exception for my <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-02-12/an-alternative-to-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-s-green-new-deal">Alternative Green New Deal</a> plan. So here it is.<br />
<br />
***<br />
<br />
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: PublicoText-Roman-Web, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 30px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
The planet is in grave danger from climate change. No reasonable person can doubt this fact. Drastic and immediate action is needed to reduce global carbon emissions.</div>
<div class="hardwall" data-position="1" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: PublicoText-Roman-Web, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
</div>
<div class="softwall" data-position="1" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: PublicoText-Roman-Web, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: PublicoText-Roman-Web, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 30px; margin-top: 30px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
But that doesn’t mean that any sort of drastic action is a good one. The Green New Deal, proposed by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has two big flaws. First, the plan <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-02-08/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-s-green-new-deal-is-unaffordable" style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-image: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-top-style: initial; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">overreaches</a> in its desire to deliver a raft of expensive new entitlements — guaranteed jobs, benefits, health care, housing, education, income and more. If the large deficits required to pay for all of these things ended up harming the economy, it would actually hurt the cause of limiting climate change rather than help it. Second, the plan focuses far too much on the U.S.’s own carbon emissions. The U.S. accounts for only about <a href="https://www.wri.org/blog/2017/04/interactive-chart-explains-worlds-top-10-emitters-and-how-theyve-changed" rel="nofollow noopener" style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-image: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-top-style: initial; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">14 percent</a> of global carbon output, and that percent is falling every day. The climate change battle will be <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-10-14/china-is-the-climate-change-battleground" style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-image: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-top-style: initial; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">won or lost</a> in developing countries such as China:</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JnJSWew0N3U/XHh23na4AVI/AAAAAAAANCA/_1ZccUTTMS4q6IBp8_qKUECBNG4_uzzkwCLcBGAs/s1600/one%2Bhuge%2Boutlier.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="697" data-original-width="732" height="608" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JnJSWew0N3U/XHh23na4AVI/AAAAAAAANCA/_1ZccUTTMS4q6IBp8_qKUECBNG4_uzzkwCLcBGAs/s640/one%2Bhuge%2Boutlier.png" title="How do you say "Choo choo motherfucker" in Chinese? Asking for a friend" width="640" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<figure align="center" class="" data-align="center" data-id="333769015" data-image-size="column" data-image-type="chart" data-type="image" data-widget-url="https://www.bloomberg.com/toaster/v2/charts/60a24f46655f42d48fa813d7f0be7186.html?brand=view&webTheme=view&web=true&hideTitles=true" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: PublicoText-Roman-Web, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 30px auto; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 620px;"><div class="chart" data-responsive="true" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 1em 0px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;">
<div class="chart-js" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<div class="chart__footnote" style="border: 0px; font-family: BWHaasGrotesk-55Roman-Web, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: 1.15; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
</div>
</div>
</div>
</figure><br />
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: PublicoText-Roman-Web, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 30px; margin-top: 30px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
So I propose an alternative Green New Deal, which would focus on actually defeating climate change. Some of the proposals here are included in the Green New Deal <a href="https://ocasio-cortez.house.gov/sites/ocasio-cortez.house.gov/files/Resolution%20on%20a%20Green%20New%20Deal.pdf" rel="nofollow noopener" style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-image: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-top-style: initial; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">resolution</a>; some are not.The first pillar of an alternative Green New Deal would be green technology. If the U.S. <a href="https://twitter.com/ramez/status/1094132705988534272" rel="nofollow noopener" style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-image: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-top-style: initial; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">can discover</a> cheap ways of manufacturing cement and concrete without carbon emissions, and of reducing emissions from agriculture, it will give developing countries a way to reduce carbon output without threatening their economic growth. To this end, the U.S. should pour money into research. The <a href="https://arpa-e.energy.gov/?q=arpa-e-site-page/arpa-e-budget" rel="nofollow noopener" style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-image: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-top-style: initial; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">budget of ARPA-E</a>, the agency charged with leading this research, should be increased from about $300 million to $30 billion per year.</div>
<div class="hardwall" data-position="4" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: PublicoText-Roman-Web, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
</div>
<div class="softwall" data-position="4" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: PublicoText-Roman-Web, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: PublicoText-Roman-Web, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 30px; margin-top: 30px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
The second way to move green technology forward is to encourage the scaling of these technologies. As companies build more solar power, batteries, smart grids, low-carbon building retrofit kits and other green technologies, the <a href="http://rameznaam.com/2014/09/30/the-learning-curve-for-energy-storage/" rel="nofollow noopener" style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-image: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-top-style: initial; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">costs go down</a>. To that end, the government should provide large subsidies to green-energy companies, including solar power, batteries and electric cars, as well as mandating the replacement of fossil-fuel plants with zero-carbon plants.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: PublicoText-Roman-Web, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 30px; margin-top: 30px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Infrastructure spending is also important. The original Green New Deal’s goal of building a smart electrical grid is a good one, as is the idea to retrofit American buildings to have net zero emissions.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: PublicoText-Roman-Web, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 30px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Technologies developed in the U.S. need to spread quickly to other countries. All ARPA-E breakthroughs should be <a href="https://unfccc.int/topics/climate-technology/the-big-picture/what-is-technology-development-and-transfer" rel="nofollow noopener" style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-image: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-top-style: initial; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">freely transferred</a> to other countries, through the offices of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change or other agencies. Subsidies should be increased for companies that export their emissions-reducing products. The plan should also include offers of favorable trade relations for countries that reduce their use of fossil fuels, as well as <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022199617301186" rel="nofollow noopener" style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-image: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-top-style: initial; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">tariffs</a> on the carbon content of imported goods.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: PublicoText-Roman-Web, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 30px; margin-top: 30px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
An alternative Green New Deal should also provide incentives for higher <a href="https://slate.com/business/2019/02/green-new-deal-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-flaw-land-use.html" rel="nofollow noopener" style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-image: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-top-style: initial; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">density</a> in urban areas, since sprawl contributes to emissions. It shouldn’t require the decommissioning of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-energy-202/2019/02/11/the-energy-202-green-new-deal-is-already-sparking-debate-over-nuclear-energy/5c6068621b326b66eb098676/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.ee60b249bfc2" rel="nofollow noopener" style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-image: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-top-style: initial; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">nuclear plants</a>. It should also implement a <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/10/10/17959686/carbon-tax" rel="nofollow noopener" style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-image: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-top-style: initial; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">carbon tax</a>, something now missing from the plan. This would encourage factories to reduce carbon output, to encourage air and sea travel to search for lower-carbon alternatives and to address various other sources of emissions.</div>
<br />
<aside class="inline-newsletter" data-state="ready" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; clear: left; float: left; font-family: PublicoText-Roman-Web, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 9px 20px 1em -210px; max-width: 170px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 270px;"></aside><br />
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: PublicoText-Roman-Web, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 30px; margin-top: 30px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
In addition, an alternative Green New Deal should include proposals to make sure as little as possible of the costs of the transition fall on the economically vulnerable. Government infrastructure and retrofitting projects will naturally create many green jobs. The proceeds of a carbon tax can be rebated to low-income Americans, either as a <a href="https://www.env-econ.net/2019/01/i-signed-the-economists-statement-on-carbon-dividends.html" rel="nofollow noopener" style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-image: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-top-style: initial; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">carbon dividend</a>, or through <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-10-01/earned-income-tax-credit-fights-poverty-while-encouraging-work" style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-image: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-top-style: initial; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">earned income tax credits</a>, child tax credits, food stamps, housing vouchers and income support for the elderly and disabled. These policies combine the goals of fighting climate change and supporting the poor and working class.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: PublicoText-Roman-Web, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 30px; margin-top: 30px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
In order to sweeten the deal politically, an Alternative Green New Deal should also include some economic policies that aren’t directly related to climate change — but make sure these are things that should be done anyway, and which won’t break the bank. Universal health insurance, which would free employees to move from job to job, as well as giving the government power <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-10-29/health-care-costs-are-still-eating-the-u-s-economy" style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-image: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-top-style: initial; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">to negotiate</a> lower health-care prices, should be included. Increased spending on public universities and trade schools in exchange for tuition reductions, and grants to help lower-income students pay for these schools, would help increase educational attainment without being too costly.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: PublicoText-Roman-Web, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 30px; margin-top: 30px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Finally, an alternative Green New Deal should involve progressive taxes, both to raise revenue for the spending increases and to let the nation know that the well-off are shouldering more of the burden. Wealth taxes and inheritance taxes are <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-31/elizabeth-warren-s-wealth-tax-is-better-than-some-alternatives" style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-image: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-top-style: initial; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">good ideas</a>. Income taxes should also go up, not just on the <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-07/u-s-economy-ocasio-cortez-s-70-tax-idea-isn-t-very-radical" style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-image: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-top-style: initial; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">super rich</a>, but on the affluent and the upper-middle class as well. And most importantly, capital gains and dividends should be treated as ordinary income, which would increase the tax rate actually paid by the wealthy.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: PublicoText-Roman-Web, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 30px; margin-top: 30px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
This alternative Green New Deal has similarities to Ocasio-Cortez’s version, but also has key differences. By focusing on technological development and international assistance, it would tackle the all-important problem of global emissions. By avoiding huge open-ended commitments like a federal job guarantee or universal basic income, and by including progressive tax increases, it would avoid the threat of excessive budget deficits. Ultimately, this plan would represent the U.S.’s best shot at fighting the looming global menace of climate change while also making the country more egalitarian in a safe and sustainable way. It would be a worthy successor to the original New Deal.</div>
Noah Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09093917601641588575noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-30731394485837142242019-02-21T21:40:00.000-05:002019-03-12T12:14:35.087-04:00Book Review: The Revolt of the Public, by Martin Gurri<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UXNwoSSXdLI/XG9KyrUxgRI/AAAAAAAAM-c/_vFEQuQGtHwK8ROJM31CwPKBhV9ujpizQCLcBGAs/s1600/revolt%2Bof%2Bthe%2Bpublic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1080" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UXNwoSSXdLI/XG9KyrUxgRI/AAAAAAAAM-c/_vFEQuQGtHwK8ROJM31CwPKBhV9ujpizQCLcBGAs/s400/revolt%2Bof%2Bthe%2Bpublic.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
If you do not read "<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Revolt-Public-Crisis-Authority-Millennium/dp/1732265143/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+revolt+of+the+public&qid=1550797221&s=gateway&sr=8-1">The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium</a>," by Martin Gurri, you will not be sufficiently prepared for the world to come.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Well, you probably won't be anyway. No one will! But this book brings together a startling number of important threads of contemporary politics, geopolitics, public affairs, and media, and weaves them into a coherent, comprehensible, and very plausible narrative. And it does so far better than any other book, blog post, or Twitter thread that I have seen attempt to deal with these issues (including <a href="http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-shouting-class.html">my own modest foray</a>). So buy this book and read it.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Why This Book Is Great</b><br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The basic thesis of the book is that social media has empowered the public, and that the public is using its newfound power to attack - but not to replace - the dominant institutions of society. Citing examples from the Arab Spring revolutions to the Indignado protests of Spain to Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party, Gurri pegs 2011 as the year where the new paradigm of viral, explosive discontent first asserted itself. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Importantly, Gurri defines the "public" in a weird, idiosyncratic way. It's not the people as a whole, so it can't be represented by opinion polls. It's not the "masses" of the mid 20th century, since it's not organized into hierarchical mass movements coordinated by leaders. Instead, Gurri defines the public as the set of people who are interested enough in a particular issue to pay attention and get involved. Thus, the public is actually a different set of people in each situation.</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
(Gurri's public is somewhat similar to my own conception of the "<a href="http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-shouting-class.html">Shouting Class</a>", but not quite the same. The Shouting Class are the set of people who are always vocally upset about one thing or another, due to their own personal life dissatisfaction, natural argumentativeness, desire for attention, or other factors that can't be assuaged or mollified by any change in the structure of the world. Gurri's public often includes these people, but often also includes non-shouters who genuinely care about one particular issue or are moved to action by viral enthusiasm instead of their own natural predilections.)</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Social media, Gurri asserts, has both empowered and emboldened the public, freeing it from the control of centralized, hierarchical push-media. The age of Walter Cronkite has given way to the age of the Twitter mob and the Facebook protest organizer. But the newly empowered public, he argues, has not focused on building things up, but on breaking them down. The public's goal is negation - denunciation of respected leaders, derailment of political programs, overthrow of parties or governments, discrediting of institutions, etc. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Gurri worries that this constant anti-everything attitude will descend into "nihilism", and that weakened institutions will be trapped in an eternal stalemate with an eternally raging public. The events of the 2010s have certainly conformed to this description. And the book, the first edition of which was released in 2014, looks especially prophetic when viewed from the vantage point of 2019. All the trends Gurri describes have only intensified.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The usefulness of this book is in drawing parallels between a bunch of things that might seem unrelated (and as a former CIA analyst, that's Gurri's specialty). If the many explosions of anger and activism since 2011 were fundamentally about specific issues - the Tea Party about taxes, the Women's March about sexism - then you might expect the anger to recede as the issues get successfully addressed. But if Gurri is right, these things are fundamentally about a <i>technology</i> - social media - and the way it changes power relations between the public and elites, then we can expect today's explosions of anger to be followed by others tomorrow, and then others the day after tomorrow, and on and on and on. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Gurri may not convince you - in fact, if he does, you're probably not enough of a skeptic - but he will give you a new framework with which to usefully think about the political chaos of the modern world.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
That said, there are some limitations, omissions, and missteps in the book (as there are in every book). Here are the biggest things I think Gurri left out:.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>More Than Two Futures</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Near the end of the book, Gurri allows for the possibility that his big thesis might be wrong. But he demands that readers choose between his hypothesis and the "null hypothesis" - i.e., the exact opposite of every trend he describes. If he's wrong, Gurri asserts, the world will proceed toward greater centralization, greater hierarchy, greater trust in and respect for authority, etc. etc. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But this is a false choice. Gurri's vision is complex and multi-dimensional, not a univariate hypothesis that can be tested against a null. It's perfectly possible that Gurri's description of the world will hold true in some respects but not in others. For example, it may be that elites and institutions never regain their aura of Olympian invincibility, but that the public becomes more constructive over time, eschewing nihilism and pushing for big utopian visions like the <a href="https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/12/21/18144138/green-new-deal-alexandria-ocasio-cortez">Green New Deal</a>. Or it might be that elites never become effective or respected, but successfully implement systems of total social control similar to the one China is trying to implement. Or it might be that elites never recover their power and effectiveness, but the public gets tired of outrage and finds something else to do, leaving society in a comfortable stasis.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
There are many possible futures, not just two. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Underrated Public, Underrated Elites</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Gurri takes a very even-handed approach toward the public and the elites. He criticizes the former for its inflated expectations and destructive nihilism, while taking the latter to task for failed grandiose promises, tone-deafness, and exclusion of outside voices. But my impression is that he is a bit too hard on both.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Recent protests in the U.S. have not been completely nihilistic - often, they've motivated real, concrete policy changes. Occupy Wall Street probably contributed some popular energy to the push for financial reform<strike>, which culminated in the Dodd-Frank law</strike>. The Black Lives Matter protests, which Gurri mostly doesn't touch on, may have led to needed <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/03/black-lives-matter-to-contribute-to-chicago-police-reforms/">police reforms</a> in many cities. In Tunisia, the Arab Spring led not to bloody civil war, but to the first green shoots of liberal democracy. I'm not a big fan of the Tea Party, to put it mildly, but they did seem effective in their goal of forcing Obama to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_Control_Act_of_2011">cut spending</a>.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Meanwhile, elites have not failed as badly as Gurri describes. The era of desegregation, civil rights, and the Great Society saw massive, permanent decreases in the black poverty rate (and modest decreases in the white poverty rate):</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Af8orQ7D6k8/XG9c8EJ4zdI/AAAAAAAAM-o/0deE1w0x6iE9vT_eIkeK2kCy3XSa6UUMwCLcBGAs/s1600/race_poverty.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="352" data-original-width="500" height="281" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Af8orQ7D6k8/XG9c8EJ4zdI/AAAAAAAAM-o/0deE1w0x6iE9vT_eIkeK2kCy3XSa6UUMwCLcBGAs/s400/race_poverty.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
During the mid 20th century, the era Gurri describes as High Modernism, the U.S. government also built the interstate system and helped create the early internet, in addition to implementing Medicare. Other rich country governments successfully implemented government health care systems that to this day are highly effective and relatively cheap. Government research pushed forward the frontiers of science and technology in ways too numerous - and too important - to count.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
More recently, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-05-16/the-u-s-social-safety-net-has-improved-a-lot">efforts</a> by the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations led to modest but real decreases in poverty. Even after Obama was checked by a Republican Congress, his Clean Power Plan helped start a transition from coal power to natural gas and renewable energy. Gurri excoriates the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve for failing to stop the Great Recession, but it's notable - and at the end of the book, Gurri even admits - that things never degenerated into another Great Depression. The system may not have worked perfectly, but <a href="https://www.amazon.com/System-Worked-Stopped-Another-Depression/dp/0190263393">it worked</a>. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
In other words, the public often gets things done, and government often gets things done. Gurri is too hard on both. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>So Why the Rage?</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Gurri accuses the public of nihilism, and that accusation often seems right - especially when it comes to Twitter outrage mobs and the more radical political movements that have fought each other in the streets since 2017. But he doesn't really explore the reasons for this rage. He mentions elite failures - the Iraq War, the persistence of poverty, the Great Recession. But he also characterizes the public as being generally drawn from people whose personal circumstances are not so dire. So why are people so mad?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
One possibility is that we're dealing with a "<a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/applied-and-social-sciences-magazines/revolution-rising-expectations">revolution of rising expectations</a>". This is the theory that an era of steady progress leads to ingrained expectations of continued progress, or even accelerating progress. So whenever the inevitable slowdown or minor reversal arrives, a generation with great expectations explodes in rage at the future visions that suddenly seem denied to them. Last September I <a href="https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1040785903201861632">wrote a Twitter thread</a> applying this idea to disappointed educated young people and the rise of the socialist left in America. The process might apply more generally. It might have been the success of modern societies and their elites, rather than their failure, that set the public up for disappointment and rage.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>This Might Have All Happened Before</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Gurri declares 2011 to have been a "phase change" in human relations, and portrays modern social media outrage and protests, and the chaos they cause, as something new under the sun, crucially dependent on information technologies that have never existed before. But the events he describes sound strikingly, even eerily similar to those described in <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Phantom-Terror-Political-Paranoia-1789-1848/dp/0465039898">another book </a>I read recently: "Phantom Terror: Political Paranoia and the Creation of the Modern State, 1789-1848".</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
"Phantom Terror" describes how, in the wake of the French Revolution, the governments of Europe became extremely paranoid about the existence of conspiracies they believed were fomenting revolution. They implemented police states, but could find no such conspiracies. Yet revolutions happened anyway - spontaneous, grassroots revolutions, culminating in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1848">upheavals of 1848</a>. Some governments fell and were replaced, most endured, and the character of European governance largely persisted even though institutions and their legitimacy seemed permanently weakened. And all of this without any centralized hand or elite conspiracy driving the revolutions - just a bunch of spontaneously materializing mobs. Sound familiar? </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Another pair of books I read recently were "<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Nixonland-Rise-President-Fracturing-America/dp/0743243021/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=nixonland&qid=1550800605&s=books&sr=1-1">Nixonland</a>: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America" and "<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Days-Rage-Underground-Forgotten-Revolutionary/dp/1594204292/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=days+of+rage&qid=1550800661&s=books&sr=1-1">Days of Rage</a>: America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence". These books described the political upheavals of the late 1960s and 1970s - smack dab in the middle of the elite-dominated industrial age. These were years of chaos. Hundreds of riots, striking every major American city. Widespread protests. High-profile assassinations. Thousands of (mostly non-fatal) <a href="http://time.com/4501670/bombings-of-america-burrough/">terrorist bombings</a> every year, very few coordinated or directed by any organization or hierarchy. And this chaos repeated itself throughout Europe, and in much of the rest of the world - witness China's Cultural Revolution. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
These were two former eras, one far in the past, one recent, in which spontaneous activism and popular rage led to widespread rejection of elites and endemic political chaos. And yet in each case, the public didn't need Facebook or Twitter to revolt - all it needed were pamphlets, independent newspapers, books, or that ultimate information technology, word of mouth.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So the Revolt of the Public might not be such a new thing under the sun. Instead, it might be a recent manifestation of a recurring phenomenon - a periodic eruption of popular discontent. Such a cycle might be driven by improvements in information technology - the printing press, telephones, radio, blogs, and now social media. Each time information technology improves, it might lead to an explosion of chaos and rage while elites and institutions struggle to adapt. But each time in the past, the slow-moving engines of government, business, and media have eventually figured out how to put the lid back on public rage. It may turn out similarly this time. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
More historical perspective might have also affected Gurri's predictions and recommendations, which he delivers at the end of the book. Gurri predicts a compression of society's hierarchical pyramid, and recommends that governments adopt a combination of localism and responsiveness. But over the last few centuries, as information technology has improved, government has tended to move in the opposite direction - toward greater control, greater intrusiveness, and greater projects of centrally directed social change. In the 1400s, government was highly localized and parochial, with the exception of the occasional conquering army. Why should we expect to go back in that direction? Instead, should we not expect Even Bigger Government and Even Higher Modernism to eventually assert itself as the antidote to social media rage? </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>In Conclusion</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
These omissions in the book should only emphasize how thought-provoking it was, and how interesting and useful of a framework Gurri has created for evaluating the modern world. I'm not repudiating Gurri, but riffing on him. I'm sure if you read this book, you'll find yourself doing the same.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So grab a copy of "<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Revolt-Public-Crisis-Authority-Millennium/dp/1732265143">Revolt of the Public</a>". In these turbulent times, it provides a much-needed map.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<b><u>Update</u></b><br />
<br />
Martin has <a href="https://thefifthwave.wordpress.com/2019/03/12/has-modern-government-failed/?fbclid=IwAR3atUp-f5sAS7d9a3L1PK3B1_cmio_3CSuqFni6gUdoMg1out3-b4uiEHE">a friendly response to my review</a>! He basically says that A) government may have done OK, but the public is never satisfied, B) government may have done OK but it over-promised relative to what it could deliver, and C) the public often doesn't even want real change, just to protest and get mad and feel important.<br />
<br />
Those all seem right to me. These ideas are part of the reason <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Revolt-Public-Crisis-Authority-Millennium/dp/1732265143/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+revolt+of+the+public&qid=1550797221&s=gateway&sr=8-1">Revolt of the Public</a> is such a great and important book.</div>
Noah Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09093917601641588575noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-57542103185673877352019-01-30T20:42:00.004-05:002019-01-31T13:14:56.830-05:00Book Review: "The Souls of Yellow Folk," by Wesley Yang<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8nQ-SqcTcRA/XFI4Swbzq3I/AAAAAAAAMk4/4Og_HutMahweP-y5pnKZdTM7lD2SPrUywCLcBGAs/s1600/syf.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="345" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8nQ-SqcTcRA/XFI4Swbzq3I/AAAAAAAAMk4/4Og_HutMahweP-y5pnKZdTM7lD2SPrUywCLcBGAs/s320/syf.jpg" title="The Wesley Souls of Yang Yellow, by Essays Folk" width="221" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
"He was ugly on the outside, and once you got past that you found the true ugliness on the inside."<br />
- Wesley Yang, "The Face of Seung-Hui Cho"<br />
<br />
<br />
Wesley Yang is not here to make you feel comfortable. He's here to find your most vulnerable places, and then, methodically, to poke you in those places. To pierce the veil of optimism that you use to get through your days. To make you think thoughts like: What if nobody really loves me? What if nobody really loves anybody? What if your failures are all your fault? What if they're not your fault at all, and society is out to get you?<br />
<br />
Wesley Yang is here to make you sit with discomfort.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Souls-Yellow-Folk-Essays/dp/0393241742"><i>The Souls of Yellow Folk</i></a>, a collection of Yang's essays, is a very Generation X work, in an age when Generation X is being rapidly eclipsed and forgotten. The voice is that of the disaffected, semi-detached loser, blaming himself for his own condition even as he watches the world grind down the people around him. It's Beck/Nirvana/Mudhoney/Soundgarden/Eminem. Really, the closest comparison I can think of is the graphic novels of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Adrian-Tomine/e/B000APY7M2">Adrian Tomine</a>.<br />
<br />
This ironic, self-deprecating attitude extends to the book's provocative title, a play on W.E.B. DuBois' <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Souls_of_Black_Folk"><i>The Souls of Black Folk</i></a>. Besides both being collections of essays, the two books aren't similar at all. Though some of Yang's essays deal with the Asian-American struggle, many don't. And even the ones that do offer little in the way of a practical program for racial advancement or emancipation. The message - ironic as always - seems to be that Asian Americans don't have "souls", or at least "soul", in the way that Black Americans do. That while Black Americans can find purpose in their long struggle for emancipation, inequality, and economic survival, Asian Americans find themselves like atomized specks adrift in a capitalist, postmodern fog - earning high incomes and long ago freed from systematic government oppression, yet denied promotions and invisible in popular culture. Free to succeed or fail as individuals, but denied the security of inclusion in a Real America that may or may not even exist.<br />
<br />
"The Face of Seung-Hui Cho", the first essay - and one of the most powerful pieces of literature I've ever read - is nominally about the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seung-Hui_Cho">mass murderer</a> who shot 49 people at Virginia Tech University in 2007. But really it's an autobiographical essay, about being Korean American and reacting to news of a massacre by another Korean American. Yang takes the gnawing question, which most people wouldn't even dare to ask themselves, and asks it openly: Could that have been me?<br />
<br />
Cho was an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incel">incel</a> killer before "incels" were even a thing - a man who blamed his sexual failures for his depression and alienation, who blamed women for his sexual failures, and who blamed society for his failure to attract women. Our usual approach to such people, whether or not they become violent, is to anathematize them - to assume that they're beyond the bounds of comprehension, like some scholars <a href="https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/article/understanding-the-holocaust">have claimed</a> the Holocaust is. To slap labels on them - "insane", "psycho", "misogynist" - and to then drop them in a mental trashcan where we no longer have to think about what makes them tick. They're not a matter for empathy or human understanding - they're a matter for the FBI.<br />
<br />
And for most of us, this approach makes sense. We don't need to go through life wondering what it would take - if it would even be possible - to make us, too, pick up a gun and murder dozens of innocent human beings. There's no need to spend our emotional bandwidth on that. We have better things to do.<br />
<br />
But Wesley Yang attempts it. He goes right to the most vulnerable place, right to the horrible question: Was Seung-Hui Cho denied romantic love because he was an Asian man in a racist America? And did the shame and loneliness of that denial push him over the edge from mentally disturbed young man to mentally disturbed young murderer? If girls had been attracted to Seung-Hui Cho, would he have ended up safely recuperating in a mental hospital instead of with a bullet in his head? Would his victims be alive today?<br />
<br />
Probably not. Almost certainly not! But we'll <i>never quite know</i>, will we? And it's this terrible never-quite-knowing that's at the center of many of Yang's essays. In "Paper Tigers", Yang deals with the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamboo_ceiling">bamboo ceiling</a>, and the way that Asian Americans denied promotion are forced to endlessly wonder whether it was systemic racism, bad luck, or their own personalities that held them back. In "Game Theory," he profiles the protagonists of the 2000s-era pickup artist movement, and asks whether even a lifetime of practice seducing women could make any man successful finding real romantic love. In a trio of essays - "We Out Here", "Is It OK to Be White?", and "What Is White Supremacy?" - he asks whether the social justice movement's crusade to purge structural racism, well-intentioned as it is, will end up creating a set of impossible expectations for society.<br />
<br />
In one of my personal favorites, "Inside the Box", Yang recounts the dawn of technology-assisted sex culture - ubiquitous porn, dating apps, and all the rest - and recalls wondering whether they would kill romance, and whether romance was always a lie. He takes this further in "On Reading the Sex Diaries", where he dissects the anxieties of promiscuous tech-addicted New Yorkers who desperately hope for romance even as they distract themselves with intrigue.<br />
<br />
The exception to the theme of discomfort might be Yang's profiles of famous individuals; several of the essays are portraits of people like chef Eddie Huang, technologist Aaron Swartz, and political scientist Francis Fukuyama. These aren't bad pieces - Yang's impressive command of the English language means that nothing he writes is bad, and there is a lingering tone of uncertainty over the value of even the most successful people's achievements. But the detached, journalistic approach of these profiles somewhat breaks the mood of the rest of the book.<br />
<br />
Reviews of <i>The Souls of Yellow Folk</i> have ranged from the insightful to the airily dismissive. Some of the reviews seem a bit like "Reviewer 3" - academic slang for a scholar who complains that your research paper doesn't happen to be the one he would have written. Viet Thanh Nguyen, writing in the <i>New York Times</i>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/07/books/review/wesley-yang-souls-of-yellow-folk.html">expresses disappointment</a> that Yang didn't turn his anxiety about anti-Asian racism into a call for organized political struggle. But organized political struggle just isn't what Yang is about. He belongs to a different literary tradition - one that sighs and broods and stares out a window instead of shouting and marching in the street. Call me crazy if I think our society needs both kinds of writers.<br />
<br />
An insightful <a href="https://slate.com/culture/2018/11/souls-yellow-folk-review-wesley-yang.html">piece in <i>Slate</i></a> by Sophia Nguyen, however, hits closer to home. Near the end of her review, she notes that women are conspicuously absent from Yang's essays - the profiles, the protagonists, and the villains are all men (with the exception of Amy Chua, who gets a brief profile!). There's nothing necessarily wrong with that, of course - if you want to write about men, you can write about men. Men are people, men are interesting.<br />
<br />
But I'm not satisfied. For a writer who took on the monumental, soul-crushing task of empathizing with a mass murderer, it can't be <i>that</i> hard to empathize with a woman or three. I want to know what Yang thinks it's like to <i>be</i> the women his male protagonists dream of finding romance with and winning validation from. I want to know if he thinks the bamboo ceiling feels different when there's a glass ceiling as well. I want to see him profile at least one famous woman.<br />
<br />
But there will be time for that. I have a feeling Wesley Yang is just getting started. In the meantime, pick up a copy of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Souls-Yellow-Folk-Essays/dp/0393241742"><i>The Souls of Yellow Folk</i></a>, and enjoy being uncomfortable.Noah Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09093917601641588575noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-57702922592691862162019-01-24T21:13:00.000-05:002019-01-25T19:19:32.636-05:00Book Review: "Stubborn Attachments", by Tyler Cowen<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Jg97bXPcGvM/XEpsIAmkSpI/AAAAAAAAMiE/ZqrOgfi1jl4fDofrkL6Ib7qq1SmKr6bSACLcBGAs/s1600/cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="338" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Jg97bXPcGvM/XEpsIAmkSpI/AAAAAAAAMiE/ZqrOgfi1jl4fDofrkL6Ib7qq1SmKr6bSACLcBGAs/s400/cover.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
Tyler was good enough to give me a review copy of his new book, "<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Stubborn-Attachments-Prosperous-Responsible-Individuals/dp/1732265135">Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals</a>", so here is my review!<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This is a philosophy book. It tries to answer the question of what a society's priorities should be. That's interesting, because Tyler is usually a very circumspect guy who doesn't like to come out and make strong value statements. So it's cool that he's finally telling the world, in no uncertain terms, what he thinks society should be all about!</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
There are two things about the way Tyler approaches philosophy that I really like. First, he's very informal, and doesn't bother to painstakingly define terms or refer to things other philosophers have said. That would probably annoy some people in the academic philosophy field, but it makes the book extremely readable even for a layperson. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Second, he doesn't try to set out an absolute, formalistic, fully internally consistent system of ethical principles - instead, he embraces an eclectic, often conflicting set of principles. This is refreshing, since rigid systems always prove fragile to intuitive counterexamples. Too much of ethical philosophy seems to consist of people finding intuitive counterexamples to rigid systems of principles, forcing advocates of those principles to redefine them in a way that wouldn't invite those counterexamples. As a sort of a Humean, I kind of believe that people's ethical systems are all just derived from moral intuition, and aren't really internally consistent, and never will be, and thus shouldn't have to be. It's therefore refreshing to see Tyler embrace a sort of eclecticism, where he draws at will on several different principles. This sort of philosophizing has very little formal discipline to it - it's basically just saying "Here's what I think is good". But so what? That's basically what we always end up doing anyway.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Anyway, OK, on to the actual ideas in the book. Basically, the book is an argument that long-term growth is the most important thing a society should strive for. The reason is that future people are just as important as present people, and the future is extremely long, so there are lots of future people. Thus, making sure we keep growth going is the most important thing we can do, morally speaking.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Importantly, Tyler makes sure to include sustainability in this calculation. Growth in technology doesn't matter much if the planet is unlivable. This point is inserted as a caveat, and deserves more attention throughout the book than Tyler gave it; he should have talked a bit more about environmental policy. But it's good that he put that qualification in there.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Tyler's moral reasoning appeals to me; I strongly agree that we should care more about future generations. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But the problem with this idea is that it doesn't lead to a lot of actionable policy ideas. Tyler seems to think that laissez-faire economic policies are often pro-growth. But this is usually only true in the slang sense; most economists would say that cutting taxes or cutting harmful regulations raises efficiency, but not steady-state growth. It seems unlikely that a change in the top marginal tax rate from 40% to 25%, say, would compound over the centuries into living standards that are hundreds of times higher. In a typical Econ 101 setup or Ramsey growth model, the tax cut would simply bump up GDP a bit, and then growth would continue as before.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The big exception to this is Romer-type endogenous growth. If a slightly higher GDP results in a slightly higher research expenditure, which discovers a slightly higher number of new ideas, which leads to a slightly higher GDP, etc. etc., then the long-term benefits of anything that raises GDP today are absolutely enormous. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But how much do we <a href="https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2015/12/smith-meet-jones.html">really believe that model</a>? Did the Industrial Revolution - the greatest explosion of human living standards ever observed - start in Britain and the Netherlands because GDP was a bit higher there, which allowed the economy to support a higher number of researchers? Maybe, but I think even Paul Romer would be incredibly skeptical about that historical story. Instead, there were probably some institutional or contingent factors at work. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Which brings us to my main problem with Tyler's big thesis - what are the actionable ideas here? Tyler mentions the problem of uncertainty - the fact that we don't really know what will lead to sustainably higher growth - but IMHO ultimately doesn't deal with it to my satisfaction.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The Industrial Revolution was the biggest sustained growth success story in the history of the human race. But now imagine you're an administrator in Ming Dynasty China in the 1400s. What policies do you recommend in order to make China industrialize? Even with the benefit of centuries of hindsight, the answer is not obvious at all. You can dig up coal, build factories, etc., but plenty of countries tried this approach with disappointing results. Even now, we don't know what combination of factors allowed Britain to succeed (accidentally!) at industrialization when other countries' later, deliberate attempts failed.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And if we don't know the magic growth-shifting policies in hindsight, how likely are we to know them ahead of time? </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This goes double for sustainability. The Industrial Revolution was amazing, but there's still some chance - small, in my opinion, but real - that the whole thing will cause the death of the planet's environment and make it permanently uninhabitable for the human race. If so, we might eventually wake up and realize that we would have been better off staying as subsistence farmers, trapped by the Malthusian ceiling, for many thousands of years, instead of enjoying a few centuries of doomed affluence. (Note again: I think this is unlikely, but it's hard to rule out). </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Anyway, the big weakness of growth-above-all-else-ism is that we mostly don't know what policies are likely to produce the kind of sustained, self-compounding, super-long-term growth that Tyler rightly declares we should prize. And given the risk that what we think are pro-sustained-growth policies might ultimately retard the rate of super-long-term self-compounding growth, this risk acts as a sort of discount rate - a reason not to completely sacrifice our present on behalf of our future, because we don't really know whether we're sacrificing our present to <i>destroy</i> our future. (In many economic models of intertemporal choice, risk aversion and time preference aren't separable, so this is just a hand-wavey version of that.)</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
BUT, that said, I do think there are a couple things that we can focus on that are more likely than not to result in super-long-term sustainable growth improvements. These two things are <b>scientific progress</b> and <b>technology that enhances environmental sustainability</b>. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The more ideas humanity knows, the higher the probability that the increase in our choice set gives us access to things that raise super-long-term sustainable growth. So, science. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And the more tools we have to reduce our use of finite resources, the higher the probability that our choice set includes futures where we don't destroy ourselves by destroying our environment. So, sustainability tech.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Thus, "Stubborn Attachments" reads to me more like a manifesto for basic research and green technology than a manifesto for laissez-faire economics or any of the other things that commentators call "growth policy". If we want to leave a much better world for our infinite future generations - and to maximize the infinitude of those generations - basic research and green technology are our best bet. </div>
Noah Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09093917601641588575noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-36616548308466877732018-07-27T14:50:00.004-04:002019-03-28T02:11:59.509-04:00Yuppie Fishtanks: YIMBYism explained without "supply and demand"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3KitFrukjCU/W1tpDlpcroI/AAAAAAAALM0/ywkcWsRFSQUz5SPuQc1_78vatrda4IQyACLcBGAs/s1600/san%2Bfransokyo.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="418" data-original-width="999" height="267" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3KitFrukjCU/W1tpDlpcroI/AAAAAAAALM0/ywkcWsRFSQUz5SPuQc1_78vatrda4IQyACLcBGAs/s640/san%2Bfransokyo.png" title="My dream: San Fransokyo" width="640" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
YIMBYism is the idea that cities need to build more housing in order to relieve upward pressure on rents. In Northern California, where I live, YIMBYs tend to get into fights with progressives about market-rate housing. YIMBYs don't want to build only market-rate housing, but they think market-rate housing has to be an important component.<br />
<br />
NorCal progressives, in contrast, tend to think that market-rate housing is bad - either they think it lures more high-earners into a city and pushes up rents (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand">induced demand</a>), or they object to private housing developers making profits, or market-rate housing just sounds like cities catering to the needs of richer residents instead of poorer ones. Instead, the progressives tend to support what they call "affordable housing" - either public housing, government-subsidized housing, or privately-subsidized housing mandated by <a href="http://furmancenter.org/files/publications/IZPolicyBrief.pdf">inclusionary zoning</a>.<br />
<br />
When defending market-rate housing, many YIMBYs appeal to the idea of supply and demand. If you supply more market-rate housing, the market rate itself will fall, making many previously unaffordable houses into affordable ones. This might be true - in fact, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-12-07/how-affordable-urban-housing-stays-affordable">evidence suggests</a> it is true, at least to some extent - but I think it's a weak defense, for several reasons.<br />
<br />
First of all, supply and demand is a simplistic model. It assumes a single homogenous good, when in fact everyone knows that housing comes in a bunch of different types. It doesn't take location into account, when everyone knows location is crucially important in urban real estate. And there are some situations, especially labor markets, where supply and demand just <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-12-07/how-affordable-urban-housing-stays-affordable">seems like a bad model</a> for how the economy really works.<br />
<br />
Second, the effect of new supply on rents might not be enough to help working-class families. If you build a ton of new housing and rents only go down by 3% - or go up by 3% less than they would have otherwise - it's not going to do a lot to help the people who progressives really want to help. Because of this possibility, "supply and demand" can sometimes sound a bit like "let them eat cake".<br />
<br />
But in fact, I think it's very important to build market-rate housing. And though the forces of supply and demand are probably at work, I don't think the supply-and-demand model captures exactly why market-rate housing is important. So in this post, I want to try to explain the YIMBY position without invoking supply and demand.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Background: Invasion of the Tech Yuppies</b><br />
<br />
The structure of the U.S. economy <a href="https://www.amazon.com/New-Geography-Jobs-BARACK-discussion/dp/0544028058">has changed a lot</a> in recent decades. Knowledge-based industries like tech, medicine, and finance are much more important - for simplicity's sake I'll refer to all of these as "tech". Tech businesses have ever more of an incentive to cluster together in cities, which means that tech workers - who tend to earn high salaries - have been moving into cities like San Francisco.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-P8cMN6osp4E/W1tTev8mKRI/AAAAAAAALME/MNpYU2VFFuoHYNJpwdu9fCaZmDfGypS7ACLcBGAs/s1600/techies.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1600" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-P8cMN6osp4E/W1tTev8mKRI/AAAAAAAALME/MNpYU2VFFuoHYNJpwdu9fCaZmDfGypS7ACLcBGAs/s400/techies.jpg" title="They pay lots of taxes!" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
If they're going to work in the city, these tech workers are going to want to live in the city. Where will they live?</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Some will move into shiny new glass-and-steel apartment complexes downtown:</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/--FvnRoRXbcc/W1tRyXQDy_I/AAAAAAAALLw/zkZZZDZfX_wV-Tp69QSBmkpaB0XdjpvAACLcBGAs/s1600/nema.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="876" data-original-width="1600" height="175" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/--FvnRoRXbcc/W1tRyXQDy_I/AAAAAAAALLw/zkZZZDZfX_wV-Tp69QSBmkpaB0XdjpvAACLcBGAs/s320/nema.jpg" title="At least it's not a sand-colored rectangle like most of SF's tall buildings." width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Looks kind of like a fishtank, doesn't it? A beautiful fishtank for yuppies.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-COegXV1QC_8/W1tb33cYFZI/AAAAAAAALMc/US_RoSLhhycqu9jmGyC4Ih4rp31oj7XnwCLcBGAs/s1600/fishtank.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="380" data-original-width="728" height="167" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-COegXV1QC_8/W1tb33cYFZI/AAAAAAAALMc/US_RoSLhhycqu9jmGyC4Ih4rp31oj7XnwCLcBGAs/s320/fishtank.png" title="Actually it's an Escape Room" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
But these beautiful giant yuppie fishtanks have limited space. So some of the incoming techies will go looking for apartments in other parts of town - neighborhoods occupied by long-time residents.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fDf7btbjDTU/W1tSQOthLuI/AAAAAAAALL4/sjrlGmzYTZkA2XNLgRKALR8CV4JpYVrsQCLcBGAs/s1600/victorians.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="695" data-original-width="1000" height="222" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fDf7btbjDTU/W1tSQOthLuI/AAAAAAAALL4/sjrlGmzYTZkA2XNLgRKALR8CV4JpYVrsQCLcBGAs/s320/victorians.jpg" title="Man, who painted that garage" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Many of the long-time residents currently renting these units are working-class. Many come from disadvantaged minorities. Some are artists or other creative types. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
The incoming techies have lots of money to spend, and landlords - the people who own the units where the long-time working-class residents live - know this. Therefore, they have an incentive to raise the rent, which usually means the working-class residents have to move and the techies will occupy the nice old Victorian apartments pictured above.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Now, often they can't do this, because of <a href="https://www.sftu.org/rentcontrol/">rent control</a>. But there are things they can do to get around rent control. They can <a href="http://www.kevinandjonathan.com/sf-condo-conversion-2-0/">convert units to condos</a>. They can evict tenants under <a href="https://sfrb.org/topic-no-205-evictions-pursuant-ellis-act">the Ellis Act</a>. Or they can just wait for residents to move out, then raise rents.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Additionally, not all apartments are subject to rent control, so often this isn't even necessary - landlords can often just raise the rent, which usually results in the replacement of working-class tenants with yuppie newcomers. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
The result: Displacement, gentrification, and an increasing rent burden on everyone not protected by rent control. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<b>How to Prevent Displacement From the Tech Invasion: The YIMBY Solution</b></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
The YIMBY solution to the problem described above is simple: Build more of the pretty glass fishtanks to catch the incoming yuppies as they arrive.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ecn5bEUJRkw/W1tZhkAU3nI/AAAAAAAALMQ/ChrzWPgLRwYGJeGooNaKjkvpncnPWlywgCLcBGAs/s1600/vara.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="432" data-original-width="720" height="240" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ecn5bEUJRkw/W1tZhkAU3nI/AAAAAAAALMQ/ChrzWPgLRwYGJeGooNaKjkvpncnPWlywgCLcBGAs/s400/vara.jpg" title="Where the party is" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Most of the yuppies would probably rather live in the fishtanks. The fishtanks tend to be located downtown, near to where the yuppies work (SoMa, Embarcadero, etc.), rather than in the older residential neighborhoods. Additionally, the fishtanks are pretty and modern and new, with gyms and common space and other stuff yuppies like. Probably more attractive for the average yuppie than an aging Victorian far out in the Mission or Haight with no built-in community or on-site services.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Even more importantly, long-time working-class residents and struggling artists and disadvantaged minority families are highly unlikely to go live in a yuppie fishtank. That means that every unit of yuppie fishtank housing - i.e., new market-rate housing - that you build will either A) be occupied by a yuppie, or B) sit empty on the market. Landlords want to fill all of their units, so if there are too many fishtanks and (B) happens, they'll drop the rent until more yuppies move in.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Eventually, every yuppie fishtank unit that you build will be occupied by a yuppie.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Now if the new fishtank units catch the incoming yuppies and <b>prevent them from invading</b> long-time residential working-class neighborhoods, that's good!</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
And if the new fishtank units <b>lure yuppies away</b> from long-time residential working-class neighborhoods, that's also good!</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
If the new fishtank units instead draw yuppies in from other cities - for example, in the Peninsula to the south - that's not ideal, but also not so bad. It means more yuppies in the city, but they'll be living in fishtanks instead of in long-time residential working-class neighborhoods. In other words, it's a wash - it neither increases nor decreases the total number of gentrifiers. (In any case, I think this is unlikely to happen much. The number of tech yuppies moving to SF is constrained by the number of tech offices in SF - almost no one wants to commute down the peninsula and back every day if they can help it. and yuppies are usually rich enough to be able to live near their jobs if they want.)</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
So the YIMBY solution to the yuppie invasion isn't - or shouldn't be - just to build market-rate housing anywhere and everywhere. It's more like the following:</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
A) Build market-rate housing that appeals specifically to yuppies, clustered in specific neighborhoods away from long-time working-class residential areas.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
B) Instead of tearing down existing housing to build market-rate housing, replace parking lots and warehouses and other inefficient commercial space with new market-rate housing.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
In other words, YIMBYism is about <b>yuppie diversion</b>. It uses market-rate housing to catch and divert yuppies before they can ever invade normal folks' neighborhoods.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<b>Why Affordable Housing Is Not a Great Solution to the Yuppie Invasion</b></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Affordable housing - a catch-all term encompassing public housing, publicly subsidized housing, and privately subsidized housing - is popular among progressives, and is often put forward as an alternative to market-rate housing. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Although YIMBYs believe affordable housing is good (for reasons I'll explain below), they also believe it's not a very good solution to the yuppie invasion described above. Why? Because affordable housing <b>accommodates</b> gentrification instead of <b>preventing</b> gentrification. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Suppose you're a long-time working-class resident who gets displaced by rising rents. Now the government offers you affordable housing somewhere else in the city. Well, at least you still have a place to live, and at least you're still in the city you've always lived in, right? But you have to move out of your home, which is expensive and emotionally draining. And you probably have to move to a new neighborhood, where your local ties will be weaker. In other words, it would have been better if you never had to move at all.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
So if cities can catch and divert the incoming yuppies (with new market-rate housing) instead of accommodating displaced working-class people, it's much better.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<b>Why Affordable Housing Is Good Anyway</b></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Affordable housing isn't a great solution to the tech yuppie invasion, but YIMBYs still want to build affordable housing. Why? Because affordable housing allows working-class people to move into the city to avoid commutes. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dboiWH5CCsU/W1tjdwpEjFI/AAAAAAAALMo/DwmOSlzzYYEcEAREEKV98q2jA5rYOuUlwCLcBGAs/s1600/bart.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="352" data-original-width="625" height="225" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dboiWH5CCsU/W1tjdwpEjFI/AAAAAAAALMo/DwmOSlzzYYEcEAREEKV98q2jA5rYOuUlwCLcBGAs/s400/bart.jpg" title="We need that 90s Japanese guy pushing people into BART with a giant broom" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Building new market-rate housing probably doesn't draw many new yuppies into a city from outside, since if their jobs are outside the city they'd still have to commute; most people would rather not commute, and yuppies can typically afford to live near where they work. But many working-class people are <i>forced</i> to commute from outside the city. Affordable housing changes that equation. It allows more working-class commuters to live closer to their jobs.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<b>NIMBY Solutions to the Tech Yuppie Invasion?</b></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
The YIMBY solution of catching and diverting incoming yuppies with market-rate housing (yuppie fishtanks) seems like a good one because it creates a city where everyone, yuppies and working-class folks alike, can live, while limiting the disruption to long-standing neighborhoods and communities. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
But some progressives dream of other solutions, based on strengthening protections against yuppie invasions of long-time working-class neighborhoods. For example, repealing the Ellis Act, making it harder to evict tenants. Or <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2018/4/23/17270880/costa-hawkins-repeal-california-rent-control-garcetti">strengthening rent control</a>, making it harder to raise rents when a tenant leaves.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
YIMBYs generally support repealing the Ellis Act. Rent control is more ambiguous, since it <a href="http://www.nber.org/papers/w24181">tends to hurt</a> a lot of working-class people while helping others. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
But initiatives like these, on their own, won't be enough to create a good city for working-class residents. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
When combined with prohibition of market-rate housing development, these initiatives seek to drive yuppies out of a city entirely. By creating an iron-clad, invincible wall around working-class neighborhoods and apartments, and confining them to ever-shrinking, ever-more-highly-priced islands of market-rate housing, this strategy seeks to force yuppies (and possibly their employers as well) to leave for greener pastures.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
But this is not a good idea. Driving yuppies and tech businesses out of the city means lower tax revenues. Those tax revenues are essential for paying for city services for the poor and working-class. Public housing, housing subsidies, homeless shelters, drug addiction clinics, social workers, public transit - these things all rely on tax revenues. And tech businesses and yuppies provide those revenues.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
NIMBYism, even progressive NIMBYism, doesn't lead to a city that works for everyone. It sacrifices prosperity, and (even more importantly) the social services that prosperity makes possible, in order to avoid the cultural change that comes from having yuppies walking the streets.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
That doesn't seem like a trade worth making. A successful city is one that doesn't simply preserve itself in amber, but embraces positive change that will improve the lives of its working class and poor residents. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<b>Wait - Does This Explanation Really Throw Away Supply and Demand?</b></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Astute readers will notice that supply and demand isn't completely absent from this explanation of YIMBYism. But this explanation contains several major departures from the textbook supply-and-demand theory that you might learn in an Econ 101 class.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
First of all, in a typical supply-and-demand model, there's only one kind of housing. In this explanation, there are three kinds of housing - "yuppie fishtanks" (new market-rate housing), long-time resident housing, and affordable housing. Market segmentation is real. This is something activists actually understand better than people who think only in terms of supply and demand.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Second of all, a typical supply-and-demand model of housing ignores location. In this explanation, location is crucial - the YIMBY solution is to build new market-rate housing in neighborhoods like SoMa, so that incoming yuppies go there instead of to neighborhoods like the Mission.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
(Now, there are <a href="http://www.nber.org/papers/w23146">far more complicated economic models</a> out there that capture all of these ideas and more. These models are actually more nuanced and realistic than my explanation here. But it's very hard for most people to think in terms of these models, and these models can also give different predictions depending on their assumptions.)</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
So when defending the YIMBY position, it's important to go beyond simply yelling "supply and demand". I hope this post gives YIMBYs a language to talk about market-rate housing without having to assume that all housing is the same, or that location doesn't matter. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Market-rate housing isn't the only solution to the problems facing cities like San Francisco. But it is an important, even crucial part of the solution.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<u><b>Update</b></u></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Want some evidence that the "yuppie fishtank" strategy really works? <a href="https://appam.confex.com/appam/2018/webprogram/Paper25811.html">Here you go</a>:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
In neighborhoods where new apartment complexes were completed between 2014-2016, rents in existing units near the new apartments declined relative to neighborhoods that did not see new construction until 2018. Changes in in-migration appear to drive this result. Although the total number of migrants from high-income neighborhoods to the new construction neighborhoods increases after the new units are completed, the number of high-income arrivals to previously existing units actually decreases, as the new units absorb a substantial portion of these households. On the whole, our results suggest that—on average and in the short-run—new construction lowers rents in gentrifying neighborhoods.</blockquote>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
This is exactly how it's supposed to work.</div>
Noah Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09093917601641588575noreply@blogger.com26tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-40743381075885650702018-07-14T02:19:00.000-04:002019-01-11T02:33:16.522-05:00Noah Smith's Japan Travel Guide<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JuAjR0H7u9Y/Wzcg5KHCr2I/AAAAAAAALGU/hVeEB8fKB80a17Xb3aTX7bdCzK_-9dffwCLcBGAs/s1600/hanami.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="1200" height="225" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JuAjR0H7u9Y/Wzcg5KHCr2I/AAAAAAAALGU/hVeEB8fKB80a17Xb3aTX7bdCzK_-9dffwCLcBGAs/s400/hanami.jpg" title="Weirdly, one of the people throwing this random free hanami party happened to be a grad student who was a fan of my dad's research." width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div>
Now is a GREAT time to travel to Japan. The country has really opened up, thanks to Abenomics, a weak yen, and the impending 2020 Tokyo Olympics. New technology has also made it a lot easier to get around the country, and to find cool stuff. Japan is in the middle of a huge tourism boom, and who knows how long it'll last, so you might as well be part of it. Go see the world, take a trip to Japan!</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Anyway, for a long time, people have been asking me for tips about what to do when they go to Japan. So instead of re-writing a list of recommendations every time, I thought I'd write a blog post. So here it is: Noah Smith's Abbreviated Illustrated Guide to Travel in Japan.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This list is HEAVILY weighted toward the "<b>urban Japan experience</b>", rather than touristy/historical stuff like temples, shrines, etc. or outdoorsy stuff like skiing and hiking. I've found that Japanese cities are the most distinctive thing about the country, and that people who do the "wander around in the city" thing and hit up some of these attractions on their first trip there tend to have the most fun. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It's also heavily weighted toward a <b>first-time</b> or second-time visitor who probably doesn't speak fluent Japanese, so it doesn't contain much hole-in-the-wall or out-of-the-way stuff either - i.e., Japan residents or regular Japan-goers will find this pretty "basic". If you're a Japan resident or regular Japan-goer who wants cool hip underground stuff to do and little unknown hole-in the wall restaurants or whatever, hit me up. Or better yet, you show <i>me</i> stuff. ;-)</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-94sUp0xWhMU/Wzce-3TizQI/AAAAAAAALF0/qHrcv-wrzPsTUD6x5U3lznsgVSelXC-9gCLcBGAs/s1600/clara.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="397" data-original-width="780" height="162" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-94sUp0xWhMU/Wzce-3TizQI/AAAAAAAALF0/qHrcv-wrzPsTUD6x5U3lznsgVSelXC-9gCLcBGAs/s320/clara.jpg" title="Tequila!" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>When to Go</b></span></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The most popular time to go to Japan is in late March/early April for the cherry blossoms (hanami). Warning: It will be very crowded and expensive. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1-5WCAy7xNo/WzcWaCR6xqI/AAAAAAAALDE/0iulzql2hqwNYs45tEnh2ydlRvlewanFwCLcBGAs/s1600/hanami.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="1024" height="300" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1-5WCAy7xNo/WzcWaCR6xqI/AAAAAAAALDE/0iulzql2hqwNYs45tEnh2ydlRvlewanFwCLcBGAs/s400/hanami.jpg" title="You could be here instead of in Trumpland" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div>
July/August is also a great time to go - you can see awesome fireworks and go to little traditional festivals with a bunch of yukata-wearing folk. It's fairly hot and humid. November is also a nice time to visit, and is much cheaper than spring or summer.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KAMAjzUU0Ck/Wz-OgZyq1JI/AAAAAAAALIg/c7-GLkhfcGo3zlEeD6y_6j4ErNb4__xZwCLcBGAs/s1600/fireworks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="1000" height="184" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KAMAjzUU0Ck/Wz-OgZyq1JI/AAAAAAAALIg/c7-GLkhfcGo3zlEeD6y_6j4ErNb4__xZwCLcBGAs/s320/fireworks.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Getting Around</b></span></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Getting around in a foreign country can be a bit of a challenge, but with these handy tips you should have no problem, even if you don't speak a word of Japanese (though you should learn Japanese because it's a cool language!).</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Flights</b>: There are lots of random cheap flights to Japan, and you just have to search a bunch to find them. But one trick you might want to try is to fly out of LAX. Try booking a round trip from LAX to NRT (Tokyo), and then booking a separate round trip to and from LAX to your home airport, and see if that saves you some money.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Lodging</b>: Airbnb, at least until recently, has worked AMAZINGLY well in Japan. Many Airbnb owners are commercial operators, rather than owner-occupiers as in the U.S. So for a much cheaper price than a Japanese hotel, you can stay in a fully furnished Japanese apartment! Apartments for 2 or more people are especially cheap and often spacious. However, Japan has just <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/8/17442230/airbnb-cancels-bookings-under-new-japan-law">stepped up regulation</a> of Airbnb, and there was one episode where many reservations were cancelled. The cancellation thing should be a one-time event (I hope), but still, you'll have to check to see how available Airbnb is when you make your trip. If you can't find an Airbnb, try staying at a cheap hotel like <a href="https://www.solarehotels.com/en/hotel/chisun/">Solare</a>.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-w5sJMrUYpB0/WzcWsDt674I/AAAAAAAALDM/IYcLwbZ2rA4_5s-6WyDc2f5Aw8j5ffpUACLcBGAs/s1600/airbnb.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="213" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-w5sJMrUYpB0/WzcWsDt674I/AAAAAAAALDM/IYcLwbZ2rA4_5s-6WyDc2f5Aw8j5ffpUACLcBGAs/s320/airbnb.jpg" title="The Mario themed pillows, sadly, are not typical." width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Pocket WiFi</b>: This is incredibly useful. It'll let you use wifi anywhere in Japan, even on trains. This means you'll have a functioning cell phone without having to pay for international data rates (or phone if you use a voice calling app), AND wifi for your laptop. You can rent a pocket wifi from <a href="https://www.globaladvancedcomm.com/pocketwifi.html">Global Advanced Communications</a> or <a href="https://ninjawifi.com/en/">Ninja WiFi</a>. You pick it up at the airport when you arrive, then put it in an envelope and drop it in a post office box when you leave. An alternative is to get a Japanese SIM card, which is slightly cheaper and doesn't require you to carry around a WiFi, but which will slow down considerably after 7GB of data. If you go with this option, I recommend <a href="https://www.mobal.com/japan-unlimited/">Mobal</a>. Finally, some Airbnb places come with a pocket WiFi, so if you get one of those, you don't have to pay for data in Japan at all! The only drawback is that you'll have to find the Airbnb place from the airport without data.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Y1fb1kx97Cw/WzcXZRx64HI/AAAAAAAALDk/pJvjvPEHbpw5sz8MCJEo3RdeqzE3gpJbwCLcBGAs/s1600/wifi.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="700" data-original-width="700" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Y1fb1kx97Cw/WzcXZRx64HI/AAAAAAAALDk/pJvjvPEHbpw5sz8MCJEo3RdeqzE3gpJbwCLcBGAs/s200/wifi.JPG" title="I always end up referring to these little guys as "WiFi-kun"." width="200" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Google Maps</b>: Google Maps works incredibly well in Japan. Many Japanese streets don't have names, so you can find yourself wandering around aimlessly for a long time...unless you use Google Maps, in which case you can unerringly walk directly to your destination every time. You can copy-paste Japanese addresses into Google Maps and it will handle them just fine.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Japan Rail Pass</b>: <a href="http://www.japanrailpass.net/en/">This pass</a> allows you to take any JR train for free. That includes the shinkansen (bullet train), which is the easiest way to go between most cities in Japan. It also lets you ride JR trains within cities, which are especially useful in Tokyo. JR passes come in 1, 2, and 3-week-long varieties. If you're going to travel around the country, this will save you a lot of money, but if you're going to just stay in Tokyo, or just go to one other nearby city, it probably isn't worth it. You can buy a Japan Rail Pass in your own country at an <a href="http://www.japanrailpass.net/area_04.html">approved location</a> or through a travel agent, or you can buy it in Japan at the airport until March 31, 2019.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Suica/Pasmo Card</b>: Suica and Pasmo are actually two names for the same thing. This is a refillable RFID card that will let you use JR trains AND subways AND private rail lines throughout Japan. The only things you can't use it for are shinkansen and a few other special rapid trains. It's super useful. You can get it at the ticket machines at any train station. That is also where you refill it. Suica/Pasmo cards can also be used at all convenience stores, many drink machines, and many supermarkets! Super useful.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oIYI4kkEEwU/WzcXI0L1ylI/AAAAAAAALDY/_ULyYJ4ibLojORRvztDL8YV6Huw-frs6QCLcBGAs/s1600/ICcard.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="800" height="150" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oIYI4kkEEwU/WzcXI0L1ylI/AAAAAAAALDY/_ULyYJ4ibLojORRvztDL8YV6Huw-frs6QCLcBGAs/s200/ICcard.jpg" title=""Suica" means "watermelon". "Pasmo" has a secret meaning, and if you discover it, let me know." width="200" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>From the Airport</b>: If you fly into Tokyo, use the Keisei Skyliner to get to the city, UNLESS you got the JR pass, in which case use the Narita Express because it's free. If you fly into Osaka, use the Nankai Airport Line.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Local Transportation</b>: You'll mostly be using the train. Taxis are around but they're very expensive. Uber is basically nonexistent. The train stops running between midnight and 1:00 AM, so be careful not to get stranded. In Osaka you can also buy a bicycle if you want, which will run you about $100.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Paying for Stuff</b>: You will need cash in Japan, so keep some on you. Visa cards can be used at a lot of stores and restaurants. Suica/Passmo cards can also be used in many grocery stores and convenience stores. But you will need cash. To make international ATM withdrawals, use the ATM in 7-11, which is pretty ubiquitous, or another ATM chain called Prestia. Google Maps can help you find the nearest 7--11 or Prestia if you're short on cash.<br />
<br />
<b>Pronunciation</b>: Japanese is a fun and easy language to learn, but even if you don't know any, it's important to pronounce things right when asking for directions. Lots of things are written out in English letters, but you still have to pronounce them right. All "a"s are pronounced "ah", like in "ha ha". All "o"s are long, like in "so". All "u"s are pronounced "oo", all "i"s are pronounced "ee", and all "e"s are pronounced "eh" like in "pet". "R"s and "L"s are sort of halfway between the two, somewhat like the "R" in Spanish.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">Daily Living</span></b><br />
<br />
<b>Climate Control and Laundry</b>: Almost all rooms have wall AC/heater units. The remote controls are in Japanese, so if you can't read Japanese, use an online guide like <a href="http://www.survivingnjapan.com/2012/07/use-air-conditioner-japan.html">this one</a>. Many rooms come with an in-room washer/dryer, but the dryer will probably not actually dry your clothes, so you'll have to hang clothes up on the balcony to dry. An alternative is to use a wash-and-fold service, which you can look for with Google Maps.<br />
<br />
<b>Drinks</b>: There are drink machines everywhere in Japan! You can use your Suica/Pasmo card at some; others you'll need cash for. They don't take 5 yen or 1 yen coins.<br />
<br />
<b>Convenience Stores</b>: Convenience stores have most of the stuff you need, and they're everywhere. There are a few big chains: 7-Eleven, Lawson, Family Mart, and Sunkus being the big 4. 7-Eleven is the best, since it also has international ATMs (note that 7-Eleven is sometimes "7 & i" in Japan, but otherwise looks the same). Convenience stores have water, snacks, drinks, crappy food, random household stuff, condoms, tampons, etc. You can use your Suica/Pasmo card here. Convenience stores are open 24/7, which is...convenient.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-N2le5BTp8gQ/Wz7ruwXJMwI/AAAAAAAALH8/AghD2VPP2SY9SERQKMIJowaVtb9SLpuHwCLcBGAs/s1600/7-11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="178" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-N2le5BTp8gQ/Wz7ruwXJMwI/AAAAAAAALH8/AghD2VPP2SY9SERQKMIJowaVtb9SLpuHwCLcBGAs/s320/7-11.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<b>Pharmacies</b>: The big chain is Matsumoto Kiyoshi, which is similar to Walgreens or CVS. There are some <a href="https://thedoctorq.com/2016/05/10/japans-top-5-pharmacy-drug-stores/">other chains</a> too. Some Matsumoto Kiyoshis are open 24/7, others are not.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dhtbgv0CKGs/Wz7r2hqHZGI/AAAAAAAALIA/qAy_7cMIU9ojeJVD4R6580IKztCfNn6uQCLcBGAs/s1600/matsumoto.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="842" data-original-width="1300" height="206" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dhtbgv0CKGs/Wz7r2hqHZGI/AAAAAAAALIA/qAy_7cMIU9ojeJVD4R6580IKztCfNn6uQCLcBGAs/s320/matsumoto.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<b>Supermarkets</b>: There are a ton of supermarkets around. The best one is Aeon, but it's rare. You just sort of have to look around for random supermarkets, they're on main streets. In supermarkets you can buy cheap prepared food, if you just feel like grabbing something quick and don't want to go out.<br />
<br />
<b>Food Courts</b>: Next to many big train stations, there are department stores. In the basements of department stores, there are food courts. These are not sit-down food courts like in an American mall; they are take-out. But the food tends to be pretty good, and there's a huge selection. If you need some good food fast, these are a good bet.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4rCuCgc4yv8/W0fubjMaegI/AAAAAAAALJA/vtdh25U0eJ8xDWYh3JYG27wSmB1yV9eFgCLcBGAs/s1600/depachika.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1066" data-original-width="1600" height="213" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4rCuCgc4yv8/W0fubjMaegI/AAAAAAAALJA/vtdh25U0eJ8xDWYh3JYG27wSmB1yV9eFgCLcBGAs/s320/depachika.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div>
<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Places to Visit</b></span></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
There are too many cool places to visit in Japan for me to tell you even a few of them, and if I do tell you some, you'll all just go to the same places and won't be able to swap stories. So I suggest you wander around, ask friends who live there, look on the internet, etc. etc. But just in case you still want me to tell you some places to check out, here's a short list. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Tokyo</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Much of what you'll visit will probably be on the west side of the city. This is where all the famous "cool" neighborhoods are: Shibuya, Shinjuku, Harajuku, Shimo-Kitazawa, etc. So I recommend staying somewhere near that area, for easy access. You'll mostly use the JR Yamanote line (loop line) to get around.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Shibuya</b>: Remember that one crazy neon-drenched intersection you see in every Western movie or news report about Japan? That's called Shibuya Crossing, but its real name is Hachiko Square. (It used to kick Times Square's ass, before they redid Times Square and turned it into Blade Runner.) Hachiko Square is a convenient place to meet up with people, people-watch, or begin your adventures into Shibuya. Shibuya has tons of good places to eat, lots of giant stores and malls, alleys full of cool little bars and trendy dance clubs, and (weirdly) startup offices. Just go there and wander around. It's the quintessential "urban Japan experience" you're probably looking for.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Ks42ve6m3t4/WzcXrixSp8I/AAAAAAAALDs/oY2GTdzvt34M-KLCQh4518ZrgVlT2aavgCLcBGAs/s1600/shibuya%2Bcrossing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="483" data-original-width="794" height="194" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Ks42ve6m3t4/WzcXrixSp8I/AAAAAAAALDs/oY2GTdzvt34M-KLCQh4518ZrgVlT2aavgCLcBGAs/s320/shibuya%2Bcrossing.jpg" title="To amuse old Japanese men, make a pun with the name of Center Street, which in Japanese is pronounced a bit like "sent a guy"." width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Harajuku</b>: This is where the fun kids hang out, or used to before it got taken over by tourists. You can still go to cool boutiques like <a href="http://dog-hjk.com/">Dog</a> or <a href="http://dokidoki6.com/">6%Dokidoki</a> and see fashion kids of the type advertised on the <a href="https://twitter.com/TokyoFashion">@TokyoFashion Twitter account</a>. Fight the crowds on Takeshita Street, or wander the less crowded backstreets of Ura-Harajuku. <b>Most importantly</b>, visit <a href="https://designfestagallery.com/index_en.html">Tokyo Design Festa Gallery</a>, a free art gallery with a cool cafe out back. I've met too many interesting people there to count, and the crowd is fairly international. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4DIqrPxMbyQ/WzcX52t2mlI/AAAAAAAALD0/yfJtOEArsNcJsSrwEXeXz9euhh6mdoIIgCLcBGAs/s1600/dfg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="536" data-original-width="750" height="228" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4DIqrPxMbyQ/WzcX52t2mlI/AAAAAAAALD0/yfJtOEArsNcJsSrwEXeXz9euhh6mdoIIgCLcBGAs/s320/dfg.jpg" title="MAKE DESIGN FESTA GALLERY'S PIPE SCULPTURE THING RED AGAIN!!! " width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Yoyogi Park (Yoyogi Koen)</b>: This is Tokyo's equivalent of Central Park or Golden Gate Park. It's right next to Harajuku station on the JR line. The park has a huge and beautiful old Shinto shrine called Meiji Jingu, a huge hangout area where people picnic a lot, and wooded jogging/biking trails. During hanami season in late March/early April it's especially amazing, especially on the weekends. At the south end of the park is a footbridge that crosses to a cool amphitheater area where they have events on weekends, and if you keep walking that way you'll get to Shibuya.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JKPGEMkIxc8/WzcYK9etmaI/AAAAAAAALEA/5B44Ds17lZMjsFFgvOh-Yv7WwhqW2J2zgCLcBGAs/s1600/yoyogi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="648" data-original-width="864" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JKPGEMkIxc8/WzcYK9etmaI/AAAAAAAALEA/5B44Ds17lZMjsFFgvOh-Yv7WwhqW2J2zgCLcBGAs/s320/yoyogi.jpg" title="The island at the center of this pond was the first piece of land to be raised above the ocean waves when the world was created. Actually I just made that up but I mean, could be true." width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Shinjuku</b>: This maze of neon backstreets is another quintessential "urban Japan experience". If you come out of the east exit from JR Shinjuku station, you'll arrive at an old red-light district known as Kabukicho. In Shinjuku you can also go to <a href="http://www.shinjuku-robot.com/pc/system.php?lng=en">Robot Restaurant</a> (warning: it's silly), hit the bars at Golden Gai, explore Japan's most famous gay district at Ni-chome, or even see the last few yakuza if you go to the right monjayaki restaurant. Or just wander around, really.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vSOZCeQYLm4/WzcYUadAM1I/AAAAAAAALEE/qzjXmjf9jN0qJfK4vfUh6lKFUmaDcYVNwCLcBGAs/s1600/kabukicho.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="770" height="199" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vSOZCeQYLm4/WzcYUadAM1I/AAAAAAAALEE/qzjXmjf9jN0qJfK4vfUh6lKFUmaDcYVNwCLcBGAs/s320/kabukicho.jpg" title="吾が舞へば、麗し女、酔ひにけり 吾が舞へば、照る月、響むなり" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Akihabara</b>: This is known as "geek city", but it probably won't seem that different from the rest of Tokyo. Go wander around <a href="https://hubjapan.io/articles/8-best-locations-for-shopping-in-akihabara">some geek shops</a>, play video games (Taito Station is my favorite arcade), visit a maid cafe (warning: pointless, cheesy and overpriced), etc. But don't expect to be mobbed by anime geeks in full cosplay (for that, go to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comiket">Comiket</a> or other similar events). </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Shimo-Kitazawa</b>: If you want to go to a hipster neighborhood, this is probably your best bet if you're in Tokyo for the first time. Jake Adelstein lives here, so make sure to bring a sword.<br />
(Note: This is a joke. Swords are very illegal in Japan.)</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Odaiba</b>: A giant game center, with some little beaches nearby where people party in the summer. Nice views of the city and bay from the monorail (which is actually not a monorail, interestingly enough).</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Ikebukuro</b>: Where the fun kids hang out and do fun stuff now that Harajuku and Shibuya have been mobbed by tourists. Of course now you'll read this guide and mob Ikebukuro too, and they'll have to find somewhere else! Damn general equilibrium!</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Shimbashi</b>: Also known as Shinbashi, this is where to go if you want to see and interact with Japan's famous "salarymen" in the after-work hours. Well, this or Yurakucho. Or Kanda. Or Ikebukuro. Damn, Tokyo has a lot of salarymen.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Daikanyama</b>: This is a very cool, modern, "new urbanist" style mini-neighborhood near Shibuya.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Asakusa</b>: This has another cool shrine, and an old-looking district around it, as well as a nice riverwalk.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Roppongi</b>: Here's where to go if you want to hang out with English-speakers, meet seedy characters, or hit the international clubs. Go to the top of Mori Tower for a nice panoramic view of the city. There's a nice art gallery in the building too, which always has surprisingly good stuff in it.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Ageha</b>: <a href="http://www.ageha.com/">Ageha</a> is probably Japan's best dance club, if you like dance clubs. It's a little ways out of the city, so you have to take a bus. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Osaka</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In Osaka, you'll mainly be getting around via subway. The Osaka Municipal Subway is the best-run train system in the entire Universe. In most of Japan, you walk on the left, but in Osaka you walk on the right, so remember to do this, so that you bump into all the people visiting Osaka from other cities. Also, watch out for bicycles. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Umeda</b>: Umeda is Osaka's answer to Shinjuku, but is actually kind of what Shinjuku was like before it got mobbed by tourist hordes. Lots of great food and cool neon streets. Visit the <a href="http://www.hepfive.jp/language/">Hep Five mall</a> and go up on the ferris wheel to get a nice view of the city.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fHHe1aHIBzk/WzcZIeHpeOI/AAAAAAAALEc/dCHeQAhV5QMUlQRTBdg_5O3381e9FhXfQCLcBGAs/s1600/hep.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="1024" height="240" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fHHe1aHIBzk/WzcZIeHpeOI/AAAAAAAALEc/dCHeQAhV5QMUlQRTBdg_5O3381e9FhXfQCLcBGAs/s320/hep.jpg" title="The inside of the mall has a giant red whale hanging from the ceiling" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Namba</b>: Even cooler than Umeda. See the Glico Man and the other big neon signs next to the Hikakebashi bridge, and walk around the riverwalk there. Go to Dotonbori street and eat some yummy food and go to cool shops. Walk down Namba Walk, a covered shopping arcade, all the way up to Shinsaibashi (where there are many good restaurants and clubs). Or go underground and wander the endless vast subterranean shopping centers. Or head over to Nipponbashi (where I used to live) and go shopping for electronics. You really can't miss, in Namba. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Jqbl72U2vaA/WzcYnKLxRUI/AAAAAAAALEQ/_h8ty4KWgd8KpSRfGVj8-vu4K3J6TszkgCLcBGAs/s1600/namba.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="677" data-original-width="1024" height="211" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Jqbl72U2vaA/WzcYnKLxRUI/AAAAAAAALEQ/_h8ty4KWgd8KpSRfGVj8-vu4K3J6TszkgCLcBGAs/s320/namba.jpg" title="The best time to go here is right after the Hanshin Tigers win the pennant." width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>America-Mura</b>: This mini-neighborhood, near Namba in the south of Osaka, is called "America town", but is neither American nor a town. It IS, however, a very cool place to hang out, with fashion shops and fashion kids in the daytime and cool clubs and bars at night. The streetlights look like robots, and one building has a giant clown on it. Go catch a live show at <a href="http://sunhall.jp/">Sunhall</a>, which was a rockin' place a decade ago and probably still is. Or buy cool clothes at Tom's House (or anywhere else, really). Or go buy rock & roll records at <a href="http://www.timebomb.co.jp/index_en.php">Time Bomb</a>. Or just hang out in Triangle Park, which isn't actually a park, but more of a concrete slab where kids sit around. In Ame-Mura you can almost feel the ghost of young Noah Smith wandering around taking pictures of fashion kids and asking for band recommendations...</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-arcQeL6VHTY/WzcZW39-liI/AAAAAAAALEg/6UcwPCVl7mcZli8l_ZbJz3lofWPNk8CTQCLcBGAs/s1600/amemura.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="750" height="213" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-arcQeL6VHTY/WzcZW39-liI/AAAAAAAALEg/6UcwPCVl7mcZli8l_ZbJz3lofWPNk8CTQCLcBGAs/s320/amemura.jpg" title="Sadly, my favorite bar, Babylon, closed many years ago..." width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Osaka Castle Park</b>: Also known as Osaka-jo Koen, this is a big nice park with a castle at the center. The castle has been destroyed and rebuilt multiple times, and is now a facsimile, but the park is really great and has fun people to meet and excellent views of the city. And lots of stray cats.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4Nq-iqmXdXs/WzcZoIM03mI/AAAAAAAALEs/LzX8HPhj9qwBGOvnGA7Y3CvX_YC2NOofACLcBGAs/s1600/b5d4cb64-1442-11e8-8067-0af0cba29dd8%2B%25281%2529.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="533" data-original-width="800" height="213" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4Nq-iqmXdXs/WzcZoIM03mI/AAAAAAAALEs/LzX8HPhj9qwBGOvnGA7Y3CvX_YC2NOofACLcBGAs/s320/b5d4cb64-1442-11e8-8067-0af0cba29dd8%2B%25281%2529.jpeg" title="The ghost of Yukimura Sanada is defending this bridge..." width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Tennoji Zoo</b>: A zoo that has some Asian animals that you might not see as much in Western zoos.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Sakuranomiya</b>: The best place to do hanami if you're there for cherry blossom season.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>A Few Other Places</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Kyoto</b>: Everyone likes to go to Kyoto and see the temples and shrines and geisha (who are actually not geisha but who cares). If you do that, make sure to go to Kiyomizu, Yasaka, and Gion, and then Kinkakuji and/or Ginkakuji if you want even more traditional stuff. If you'd rather do something more hip in Kyoto, go hang out on the Kamogawa riverbank.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gfrqrkFJmeM/WzcZzGqQE3I/AAAAAAAALEw/_zOeurCeZ5gdZjnixTKWtqfmWmVTq_FGACLcBGAs/s1600/kiyomizu.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="550" data-original-width="1320" height="166" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gfrqrkFJmeM/WzcZzGqQE3I/AAAAAAAALEw/_zOeurCeZ5gdZjnixTKWtqfmWmVTq_FGACLcBGAs/s400/kiyomizu.jpg" title="Remember: Temples are for Buddhism, shrines are for Shinto." width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Okunoshima</b>: This is an island full of bunnies. It takes a day to get there and a day to get back. You decide if it's worth it, for an island full of bunnies.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2oqWlTECPQ4/Wzckh3l4dqI/AAAAAAAALGg/dOQqCWaRzGwbuet1q7ZMpvMAFvslaZVJwCLcBGAs/s1600/bunnies.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="640" height="180" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2oqWlTECPQ4/Wzckh3l4dqI/AAAAAAAALGg/dOQqCWaRzGwbuet1q7ZMpvMAFvslaZVJwCLcBGAs/s320/bunnies.jpg" title="This is definitely how I want to die." width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div>
<b>Hakone</b>: A town with a bunch of onsen. If you want the real "country ryokan and onsen-hopping" experience, go here. You can also take a bus or taxi to a tea shop that has great views of Mt. Fuji. But if you want to see my favorite onsen in Japan, go to <a href="http://www.tb-kumano.jp/en/onsen/kawayu/">Kawayu</a> in Wakayama south of Osaka, and visit the senninburo (giant outdoor river bath). </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YXgtSi8yVOg/WzcaNpdxyPI/AAAAAAAALE8/2q_lNl513n0f-MJY0dWh1HAja7NxcNxjQCLcBGAs/s1600/hakone.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="1024" height="240" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YXgtSi8yVOg/WzcaNpdxyPI/AAAAAAAALE8/2q_lNl513n0f-MJY0dWh1HAja7NxcNxjQCLcBGAs/s320/hakone.jpg" title="Unlike Esalen, these aren't co-ed..." width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Himeji</b>: Possibly the only real samurai castle in Japan. Unfortunately, samurai were quite short and didn't have access to much metal or other materials, so the castle consists mainly of plain wooden corridors that are too small to stand up in. It also has a haunted well. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Really, I'm the wrong person to ask about touristy stuff around Japan, since I don't do a lot of touristy stuff. Places like Sapporo, Okinawa, Hiroshima, Mt. Fuji, etc. are pretty famous tourist destinations, but I've actually never been to them.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b><span style="font-size: large;">Food to Eat</span></b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The problem with Japanese food is that A) there is a ton of amazing stuff, but B) the traditional stuff that people typically go for is not the best, and C) there is a lot of bad stuff too, so if you go around trying random stuff you also won't have the best experience. On top of this, I'm a bit afraid of sending too many people to a few awesome restaurants that I know, for fear of swamping them and forcing them to become uncool tourist attractions. So writing a Japan food guide is tricky. Instead, I'll focus on types of food to try, and mostly let people find their own stuff, recommending only a few places. To search for good food, use Google, <a href="https://tabelog.com/en/">Tabelog</a>, and <a href="https://www.tripadvisor.com/">Tripadvisor</a>.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Izakaya</b>: The best food in Japan is actually found at izakaya, which are basically Japanese tapas restaurants. The problem is that lots of izakaya are cheap chain restaurants - good for parties, but not exactly fine dining. But the slightly upscale izakaya are the place where real creative cuisine happens in Japan - in fact, not eating at izakaya is the biggest food mistake that tourists make. But there is such a dizzying array of izakaya that it's impossible to give any general guidelines for how to find the good ones. Just two of the many that I'd recommend are <a href="https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g1066456-d1546951-Reviews-Teppen_Shibuya_Onnadojo-Shibuya_Tokyo_Tokyo_Prefecture_Kanto.html">Teppen</a> in Shibuya and <a href="https://gurunavi.com/en/b634006/mp/rst/">Fumoto Akadori</a> in Tamachi. If you must go to a chain, go to Nijyu-Maru or Za-Watami.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Ramen</b>: Everybody loves ramen, but you should definitely eat ramen in Japan, because it's just...better. There are two basic types: A) ramen without a ton of fat in it, and B) ramen with a ton of fat in it (aburamen). For simple classic ramen, a good place is the most famous touristy chain, <a href="https://en.ichiran.com/ramen/">Ichiran</a>. For fatty aburamen, my favorite is <a href="https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g1066456-d1680997-Reviews-Kyushujangara_Harajukuten-Shibuya_Tokyo_Tokyo_Prefecture_Kanto.html">Kyushu Jangara Ramen</a> in Harajuku. For fancy ramen, try <a href="https://lecaptainfoodie.com/index.php/2018/07/29/tomita-the-best-ramen-in-japan/">Tomita</a>, <a href="https://www.yelp.com/biz/mensho-tokyo-%E6%96%87%E4%BA%AC%E5%8C%BA-2">Mensho</a>, or <a href="https://www.yelp.com/biz/%E9%BA%BA%E5%B1%8B%E4%B8%80%E7%87%88-%E8%91%9B%E9%A3%BE%E5%8C%BA">Menya Itto</a>. Ramen is one of the rare foods that's as good in Tokyo as in Osaka. There's actually better stuff out there too - ramen gets as fancy (and as snobby) as you like.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qDaa7tdauwA/WzcbGzFiwRI/AAAAAAAALFM/5cXO67HCgHYMnjKqEkNLfwGI3BtO0Fz7wCLcBGAs/s1600/aburamen.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="960" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qDaa7tdauwA/WzcbGzFiwRI/AAAAAAAALFM/5cXO67HCgHYMnjKqEkNLfwGI3BtO0Fz7wCLcBGAs/s200/aburamen.jpeg" title="Like deep dish pizza, but for ramen" width="200" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Nabe</b>: Japanese hot pot. Really damn good. Served year-round but more popular in the winter months. Try chanko nabe, the traditional food of sumo wrestlers. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CEcFw4ZdZHQ/WzcazNVZRAI/AAAAAAAALFE/oy74HjOOEQ4bVW33ndH6UwnNDzFislfUgCLcBGAs/s1600/chanko.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="550" data-original-width="600" height="183" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CEcFw4ZdZHQ/WzcazNVZRAI/AAAAAAAALFE/oy74HjOOEQ4bVW33ndH6UwnNDzFislfUgCLcBGAs/s200/chanko.jpg" title="Fun fact: I once ate nothing but chanko nabe for dinner for 3 months and got really fat." width="200" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Yakiniku</b>: Barbecue! Japan does it very well. This can include pricey wagyu, Korean-style stuff, or weird seedy places that are difficult to describe. Try them all! A favorite of mine is <a href="https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g1066455-d6067653-Reviews-Yakiniku_Shibaura_Komazawa_Honten-Setagaya_Tokyo_Tokyo_Prefecture_Kanto.html">Shibaura</a>, not to be confused with the neighborhood of the same name.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Xen9Q0TEyB8/WzcbRjDnaAI/AAAAAAAALFQ/HschRY2JBvUr3RK9J1vNNkbrl4HFFvfHQCLcBGAs/s1600/yakiniku.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="616" data-original-width="1000" height="195" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Xen9Q0TEyB8/WzcbRjDnaAI/AAAAAAAALFQ/HschRY2JBvUr3RK9J1vNNkbrl4HFFvfHQCLcBGAs/s320/yakiniku.jpg" title="Always be the bugyo." width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Okonomiyaki</b>: A bready cabbage pancake with meat or other stuff inside and sweet barbecue sauce and mayo on top. Do NOT eat this in Tokyo; eat it only in Osaka. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jYcJXdBz7Uk/WzccSojnbLI/AAAAAAAALFc/Em5OXfXnQBwW_Y3l9OVQ1vP6nWnmrQENgCLcBGAs/s1600/okonomiyaki.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="600" height="212" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jYcJXdBz7Uk/WzccSojnbLI/AAAAAAAALFc/Em5OXfXnQBwW_Y3l9OVQ1vP6nWnmrQENgCLcBGAs/s320/okonomiyaki.jpg" title="The curry cheese okonomiyaki at Yukari is actually my personal favorite." width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Kaitenzushi</b>: This is what Americans call "sushi boat" - sushi on a conveyor belt. Japan does it better than anywhere, of course, and it's actually pretty cheap. <a href="https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g298566-d3787578-Reviews-Genrokuzushi_Sennichimae-Osaka_Osaka_Prefecture_Kinki.html">Genrokuzushi</a> in Osaka is the best, and <a href="https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g1066456-d2650138-Reviews-Heiroku_Sushi_Tokyo_Shibuya_Omotesando-Shibuya_Tokyo_Tokyo_Prefecture_Kanto.html">Heiroku Sushi</a> near Harajuku is fun and touristy and good.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Monjayaki</b>: This is a Tokyo specialty - a gooey hash made on a griddle at your table. The best places are in a neighborhood called Tsukishima. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Kaiseki</b>: This is a kind of restaurant where you get a long series of very small, very well-presented dishes. It's fairly expensive.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Italian food</b>: Japanese Italian is different from what you'll get in the States or elsewhere. For lunch, little Italian eateries can't be beat. <a href="https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g1066456-d1663332-Reviews-Il_Buttero-Shibuya_Tokyo_Tokyo_Prefecture_Kanto.html">Il Buttero</a> in Shibuya is a good example. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Beer</b>: Japan has gotten into the craft beer game, and there are lots of nice places where you can try good stuff. My personal favorite is <a href="http://craftheads.jp/craftheads/Craftheads.html">Craftheads</a> in Shibuya. Weirdly, Japan is into craft pilsners, which you don't see a lot of, so that's worth trying.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Sake</b>: There are too many awesome sake places in Japan to count. The key is to try "amakuchi" and "karakuchi" sake, to avoid just getting the dry-tasting stuff we usually get in America. Also, of course, try a bit of nigori. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Crepes</b>: The best place to eat Japanese crepes is probably on Takeshita St. in Harajuku, or Namba shopping arcade in Osaka.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-47K77YKL3gs/Wzccjyo27LI/AAAAAAAALFo/ymqZ6Gstyfk6ff6nzHN8hej6eIOW8QwcACLcBGAs/s1600/crepes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="525" data-original-width="700" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-47K77YKL3gs/Wzccjyo27LI/AAAAAAAALFo/ymqZ6Gstyfk6ff6nzHN8hej6eIOW8QwcACLcBGAs/s320/crepes.jpg" title="Banana chocolate FTW" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Drinks</b>: Drinks I recommend include Pocari Sweat (sports drink), Bikkle (yogurt drink), and royal milk tea (especially the Ko Cha Ka Den brand found in Coca Cola drink machines). My coffee drinking friends strongly recommend Boss Coffee.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UiUSIglTq7o/Wz7st9Iuh2I/AAAAAAAALII/YyJaoPbUOjAO4QgqY4TLp75NyvBBP3kuQCLcBGAs/s1600/kochakaden.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UiUSIglTq7o/Wz7st9Iuh2I/AAAAAAAALII/YyJaoPbUOjAO4QgqY4TLp75NyvBBP3kuQCLcBGAs/s320/kochakaden.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<b>Snacks</b>: A great salty snack is Jagariko, potato sticks that come in a small paper tub. A great sweet snack is Choco Takenoko, small cones of graham cracker dipped in chocolate. Other stuff, like Pocky, you're probably used to already.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8_-txpm3jes/Wz7toMpFWOI/AAAAAAAALIU/970yoFfTa-wJZyT7yZCAQHy3RW-QPIpFQCLcBGAs/s1600/jagariko.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="461" data-original-width="800" height="184" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8_-txpm3jes/Wz7toMpFWOI/AAAAAAAALIU/970yoFfTa-wJZyT7yZCAQHy3RW-QPIpFQCLcBGAs/s320/jagariko.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b><span style="font-size: large;">Fun Stuff To Do</span></b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This is just a random list of fun stuff to do in Japan. Some of this is redundant to stuff above.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Shell out some money and go to a music festival like <a href="http://fujirock-eng.com/">Fuji Rock</a> or <a href="http://www.sunsetlive-info.com/">Sunset Live</a>.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Shop for cool clothes in Shibuya, Harajuku, or Ame-Mura.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Buy some fireworks at a corner store and shoot them off in the park (legal!).</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Drink on the street or in a park (legal!).</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Shop for kitschy fun stuff at <a href="https://www.village-v.co.jp/">Village Vanguard</a>.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Go to a rabbit cafe, an owl cafe, a cat cafe, or whatever type of animal cafe you can imagine. It probably exists. Just Google it.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Play goofy video games at <a href="https://www.taito.com/gc">Taito Station</a>. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Go see the awesome art at <a href="http://.com/en/">Design Festa</a> (and don't miss <a href="https://designfestagallery.com/index_en.html">Design Festa Gallery</a>, open year-round!). </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Visit the <a href="http://shibuhouse.com/">Shibu House</a> art incubation space (you have to email them for an invite).</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Take a <a href="https://www.veltra.com/en/asia/japan/osaka/a/135883">riverboat cruise</a> around Osaka or a <a href="https://www.veltra.com/en/asia/japan/tokyo/a/100503">boat cruise</a> around Tokyo Bay.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Walk around the huge underground shopping malls in Osaka and get totally lost.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Picnic in Yoyogi Park or Osaka Castle Park.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Go to <a href="https://www.iheartraves.com/blogs/post/edm-culture-festivals-in-japan-in-a-nutshell">a rave</a>, which is still probably fun even now. Or go clubbing at <a href="http://www.ageha.com/">Ageha</a>. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Go to a live house (music club) like Sunhall, Fandango, or any of <a href="https://www.japanvisitor.com/tokyo-area-guides/shimokitazawamusic">the places</a> in Shimokitazawa.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Go to a <a href="https://www.jrailpass.com/blog/summer-festivals-japan">summer festival</a>. Or see some amazing <a href="https://favy-jp.com/topics/571">Japanese fireworks</a>, which often put the 4th of July to shame.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And obviously, go to a park if you're there for cherry blossom season. In fact, just live in the park. Camp out there every day. Meet all the people. It will make you happy.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And there you have it! Noah Smith's Abbreviated Illustrated Guide to Travel in Japan! This guide will be updated with random recommendations over time, but those are the basics. Happy travels, and post pics!<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<b><u>Izakaya List</u></b><br />
<br />
I asked friends of mine for izakaya recommendations...I will list them as they trickle in. Places I can personally vouch for are marked with an asterisk..<br />
<br />
1. <a href="http://bento.com/rev/1883.html">Seigetsu</a>*<br />
<br />
2. <a href="https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g1066451-d9919019-Reviews-Nozaki_Saketen-Minato_Tokyo_Tokyo_Prefecture_Kanto.html">Nozaki Saketen</a>*<br />
<br />
3. <a href="http://osakelist.com/en/bakushuan-ebisu/">Bakushuan</a><br />
<br />
4. <a href="http://bento.com/rev/0329.html">Donjaca</a><br />
<br />
5. <a href="https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g1066451-d3778960-Reviews-Tamakin_Roppongi-Minato_Tokyo_Tokyo_Prefecture_Kanto.html">Tamakin Roppongi</a>*<br />
<br />
6. <a href="https://tabelog.com/en/tokyo/A1307/A130701/13169147/">Uratsubaki</a>*<br />
<br />
7. <a href="http://www.maru-mayfont.jp/en/shops/maru-aoyama/">Maru Aoyama</a><br />
<br />
8. <a href="https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g1066456-d1546951-Reviews-Teppen_Shibuya_Onnadojo-Shibuya_Tokyo_Tokyo_Prefecture_Kanto.html">Teppen</a><br />
<br />
9. <a href="https://gurunavi.com/en/b634006/mp/rst/">Fumoto Akadori</a></div>
Noah Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09093917601641588575noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-21279740554268990632018-06-30T23:41:00.003-04:002018-07-01T00:53:05.639-04:00Book Review - "The Space Between Us"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BvNNLzDrpNM/WzfOZP5qnBI/AAAAAAAALGs/dEuqjV0s2pshGVSUCsNArncLhZ4yGhEFQCLcBGAs/s1600/space.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="601" data-original-width="500" height="400" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BvNNLzDrpNM/WzfOZP5qnBI/AAAAAAAALGs/dEuqjV0s2pshGVSUCsNArncLhZ4yGhEFQCLcBGAs/s400/space.png" width="332" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
"Hey, there ain't no space between us!"<br />
<div>
- a flight attendant who saw me reading this book</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This is a very important book about a very important topic (segregation and race relations). It is also a book that strongly agrees with my priors about how the world works. And not just my priors, but with my desires - I <i>want</i> segregation to be a bad thing. So because I'm so biased in favor of this book's thesis, I'm going to try to be especially hard on it in this review. Just realize that that's what I'm doing here. You should absolutely read this book. The research it explains is eye-opening, well-executed, and very important for our national future. And the theory that Enos weaves to explain his observations probably captures important features of reality, and deserves to be a central part of our national discussion.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Having said that, let me proceed to being overly critical.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>The Basic Idea</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
A very simplified version of Enos' basic theory goes like this: Racial conflict is exacerbated by segregation, proximity, and outgroup size. In other words, when you have a bunch of people living very close to you, but who are also kept separated from you, you start to view them as an enemy group, and you vote and behave accordingly.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
You can easily imagine a situation like this. Suppose you live in an all-Protestant neighborhood, separated from an all-Catholic neighborhood by a wall. The wall makes it easy to think of them as a hostile enemy tribe. But since the "enemy" is right there, just over the wall, in great numbers, you live in fear of them.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Enos delves into the psychology of why this might happen, but the basic idea is not hard to comprehend. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
One subtle but crucial point is that Enos thinks the impact of geographic segregation is distinct from the impact of contact. In other words, simply interspersing people of different races will reduce tension <i>independently</i> of how they interact with each other, since interspersing people reduces the degree to which they think of each other as belonging to separate groups. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It is this last part of the theory that, in my opinion, ends up being the weakest link in the chain, with important and unsettling consequences for policy.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Testing the Theory</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
There's no way to test this theory directly other than to design and populate cities from scratch. Instead, researchers like Enos have to rely on four limited techniques of observation:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
1. Correlational studies</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
2. Lab experiments</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
3. Natural experiments</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
4. Randomized controlled trials</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Each of these approaches has its limitations. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Correlational studies are subject to selection problems and lots of other types of confounding effects. What we really want to show is causation.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Lab experiments can demonstrate that a stylized version of a social science theory holds in a laboratory setting. But the real world may be very different than the lab, in a lot of ways that matter. The experiment might just be a bad analogy for the real world - for example, when people claim that a few undergrad students trading in an econ lab for stakes of $10 is <a href="http://www.pitt.edu/~vester/External_Validity.pdf">not similar</a> to a real-world market with high stakes, repeated interactions, and knowledgeable participants. Also, the real world may simply have so much else going on that an effect identified in a lab, though real, just isn't very important. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Natural experiments are great (as long as you correctly identify a natural experiment instead of imagining one exists when it <a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.718.8822&rep=rep1&type=pdf">didn't really</a>). But the limitation of natural experiments is that they don't measure exactly what you want them to. They are found by accident, so they're never quite what you want. And they can never be precisely replicated in different contexts, like lab experiments can.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And RCTs are limited by size. If you could get funding (and IRB approval) to make whole new cities, it would be easy to test the effects of geography on race relations. But in the real world, you're stuck with small stuff, like sticking a couple of guys on a train platform. These small-scale RCTs don't always scale up, and there's lots of stuff you can't control, and they're expensive to replicate in different contexts.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Of course, researchers know about all of these limitations, and Enos explains them at length in "The Space Between Us". And he does exactly what a researcher ought to do when faced with these limitations - he uses all four methods. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But even using all four methods doesn't mean you can verify a social science theory as big and sweeping as Enos'. Even the most diligent, careful, brilliant researcher can sometimes seem like a master swordsman hacking away at a boulder.</div>
<div>
<br />
Despite these limitations, Enos does - in my opinion - convincingly demonstrate two-thirds of his theory. He does show that the size and proximity of an outgroup pretty predictably generate negative feelings toward that outgroup. But the third part of his theory - the idea that geographic segregation plays a big role, above and beyond the impact of human interaction, in determining which groups get defined as an "outgroup" in the first place - is harder to demonstrate. And it's here that I feel Enos; methods, though probably the best available, don't end up being conclusive.<br />
<br />
This is due to two interrelated problems: A) the question of contact vs. context, and B) the problem of scale. Both are problems that Enos discusses extensively, but in the end I don't think there's an easy solution. </div>
<div>
<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Context or Contact?</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
"Contact" is human interaction. "Context" is the overall situation humans are in - in this case, where people live. There is <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1088868318762647">lots of evidence</a> that extended contact with people of other groups gives people a more positive attitude towards those other groups (though some kinds of contact may be more effective or less effective at this task). <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0146167212457953?journalCode=pspc">Negative contact</a>, meanwhile, can increase prejudice. Enos' theory, however, is about context - it's about living arrangements having the power to change attitudes above and beyond the effect of direct interaction.<br />
<br />
The problem is that it's very difficult to separate contact from context, observationally. In a lab, you can control the two - you can have people sit in chairs not talking to each other, or allow them to talk. But in the real world, it's hard to tell who's interacting with whom. If you put Protestants and Catholics next to each other in a city and you see a deterioration in relations between the two, was it due to proximity (Enos' theory) or due to some kind of negative interaction that sprung up between the two? If you see that desegregation leads to an improvement in race relations, was it because people got used to each other after chatting on the street, or because desegregated living arrangements made group differences less salient (Enos' theory)? Hard to tell.<br />
<br />
Sometimes context and contact aren't even conceptually distinct. For example, take Enos' famous <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/111/10/3699">Boston Train Experiment</a>. In this experiment, Enos sent Spanish-speakers to train stations in Boston, and found that observing Spanish speakers made Anglophone whites more likely to take a hard line against immigration.<br />
<br />
Was this an experiment about contact, or context? The title of <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/111/10/3699">Enos' paper</a> is "Causal effect of intergroup contact on exclusionary attitudes", which would seem to indicate that it's the former. But in "The Space Between Us", Enos writes that he "altering both space and contact", "increasing socio-geographic impact", and "moving Boston to the right on the horizontal axis of the plane of context" (p. 110). He thus claims that the Train Experiment altered context - that it didn't just represent an interaction between Anglo white Bostonians and Spanish speakers, but that it actually made those Anglo white Bostonians feel like Spanish speakers <i>had moved in next to them</i>. Enos thus claims this experiment as evidence for the impact of context on racial attitudes.<br />
<br />
The truth is, we don't know which it was. It might be that the Anglo white train commuters were annoyed at the experience of hearing a language they didn't understand, and that Enos was therefore measuring a negative contact effect. Or it's possible the Anglo white train commuters really did feel like their neighborhoods were becoming more Hispanic. (Asking additional survey questions might have helped differentiate these two hypotheses, but those responses might not have been completely reliable.)<br />
<br />
Enos says that when possible, he attempts to control for intergroup contact when measuring the effect of context. This is the right approach, but the problem is that it's often impossible outside of a lab. The same issue crops up in some of the other studies Enos describes in the book. Personally, I think that Enos theory describes a real phenomenon - context matters, and probably in the way Enos describes. The lab experiments Enos runs, together with his correlational studies, add to the pile of circumstantial evidence.<br />
<br />
But the fact that all the ecological causation studies involve a lot of contact makes it hard to identify and validate Enos theory. And there's a second problem that directly impacts the theory's potential usefulness: the problem of scale.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Proximity or Segregation?</b><br />
<br />
Enos' theory is that all else equal, proximity increases racial tensions, and segregation increases them as well. But how do you tell the difference between the two? If a black family moves in nextdoor to me, is that decreasing segregation (which Enos thinks should soften racial tensions) or increasing proximity (which Enos thinks should heighten racial tensions)?<br />
<br />
In a very nice diagram on p. 26, Enos explains the difference between desegregation and proximity. In one panel, the white and black dots are all clumped together, but the two clumps are very close. In another, the white and black dots are interspersed:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-H8CcNubbbS4/WzhCKl56QbI/AAAAAAAALG8/pR37ebZxubooLMDT4si3xAxnvnI-u7VMACLcBGAs/s1600/bad.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="797" data-original-width="450" height="400" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-H8CcNubbbS4/WzhCKl56QbI/AAAAAAAALG8/pR37ebZxubooLMDT4si3xAxnvnI-u7VMACLcBGAs/s400/bad.jpg" width="225" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
Visualized thus, the distinction seems to make sense. But what if we zoom out? What if each clump becomes a dot, and the clumps become interspersed? A high-segregation, high-proximity situation (bad in Enos' theory) would then become a low-segregation, high-proximity situation (not so bad in Enos' theory), just by zooming out and considering a different scale.<br />
<br />
To put this another way, imagine a neighborhood where every block is either all black or all white, but the white and blacks alternate. Is that integrated or segregated? Suppose you think it's segregated. Now change it so that each block is integrated, but each building is either all black or all white. Is <i>that</i> integrated or segregated? Note that if we're free to keep increasing the resolution of our segregation measures, so that every "desegregation" still results in a "segregated" distribution, then each "desegregation" is just an increase in proximity (bad in Enos' theory).<br />
<br />
The lack of any guide to what resolution we should use to measure segregation means that this resolution can be used as a free parameter, to make the overall theory ("proximity bad, desegregation good") fit almost any outcome. Enos is definitely tempted to do this at times. On p. 203 he writes:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
[I]n fact, typical measures of segregation probably understate the actual segregation in Los Angeles because much of the separation between Latinos and Blacks happens at a much finer level, alternating from block to block within neighborhoods, and our measures of segregation are not equipped to capture this.</blockquote>
And on p. 223:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
As populations became intermixed in closely segregated blocks, proximity between groups increased.</blockquote>
What is desegregation, if not intermixing populations?<br />
<br />
And on p. 20:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
For my purposes, though, there is no single "right" unit [of geographical area], but rather the psychologically salient <i>local environment</i> of each individual. </blockquote>
But if the researcher is free to guess what environment is salient, how can the theory be tested?<br />
<br />
Throughout the book, Enos is consistently better at measuring the impact of proximity than the impact of segregation. His most eye-opening and well-designed study is <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ajps.12156">a 2015 paper</a> looking at how white people in Chicago changed their voting patterns after nearby mostly-black housing (such as the Cabrini-Green Homes project) was torn down and poor black residents dispersed. Enos finds that white people who lived near the projects voted less, while white voters far away from the projects didn't change. It's a natural experiment, and is thus a powerful demonstration of how the proximity of an outgroup can raise racial threat. Enos measures proximity by physical distance, rather than any predetermined unit of area, which lends credence to his finding.<br />
<br />
But while researchers can use distance to measure proximity in a study like this, they can't use it to measure segregation. Segregation, unlike proximity, has no natural units, so to measure it we have to specify a resolution at which to measure the dispersion or concentration of groups of people.<br />
<br />
Ideally, that resolution should be included as a parameter in a quantitative model, along with proximity (represented by distance), relative size, and maybe some other variables. The segregation-resolution parameter could be estimated on one dataset (say, Chicago), and then tested on other data sets (say, New York City, Los Angeles, etc.). If the segregation resolution that worked in Chicago also worked to predict racial attitudes in NYC and L.A. and elsewhere, it could be treated as a structural parameter - a more-or-less universal constant of human psychology.<br />
<br />
Of course, this is a lot easier said than done. It requires extremely high-resolution datasets on where people of various groups live. AND it requires natural experiments in multiple cities in order to validate the model out-of-sample. Much much easier said than done.<br />
<br />
But in the meantime, we're left to wonder...and worry.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>The Question of Policy</b><br />
<br />
The overarching question of "The Space Between Us" is whether or not Hispanics and other Americans will experience racial conflict in the years and decades to come - and, even more importantly, how to prevent or reduce this conflict. Should we implement initiatives designed to get Latino and Anglo populations to mix more? Would that exert a psychological effect that would reduce the salience of the difference between the two groups, causing them to start to think of themselves as one single group? Or would it exacerbate the backlash that led to Trump's election?<br />
<br />
Take Enos' statement on p. 223, recounting a case in Los Angeles where "as populations became intermixed in closely segregated blocks, proximity between groups increased." According to his theory, that's a recipe for conflict. If block-by-block segregation is even worse for race relations than neighborhood-by-neighborhood segregation (because of higher proximity), what does that say about the prospect for the success of federal housing desegregation initiatives? If these resulted in "populations became intermixed in closely segregated blocks", would that backfire and make race relations worse?<br />
<br />
It's because of this question - which "The Space Between Us" doesn't answer - that the book ends up having an uncomfortably alt-right sort of undertone. Enos provides lots of evidence about why proximity between racial groups induces conflict - a staple of <a href="https://heartiste.wordpress.com/diversity-proximity-war-the-reference-list/">alt-right thinking</a> - but little evidence that desegregation could be used to reverse the problem, or even what that would entail.<br />
<br />
In fact, Enos' otherwise wonderful diagram on p. 26, showing the difference between proximity and segregation, has a very disturbing picture in the lowest panels. When illustrating a "low proximity, low segregation" situation - i.e., what Enos thinks would minimize racial conflict - it displays a dense clump of white dots at the center, surrounded by a far-flung scattering of black dots:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Os-RWJUYtjw/WzhClvhf5dI/AAAAAAAALHE/6zEgfA4GlnEQf1sw7LsGbESYfyXMVDp1wCLcBGAs/s1600/good.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="449" data-original-width="797" height="225" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Os-RWJUYtjw/WzhClvhf5dI/AAAAAAAALHE/6zEgfA4GlnEQf1sw7LsGbESYfyXMVDp1wCLcBGAs/s400/good.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
Not exactly what I think of when I think of "desegregation". And not exactly the racial-geographic future I imagine for a tolerant, integrated America.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Back to Contact</b><br />
<br />
Enos' book does offer a ray of hope regarding America's racial future: Tuscon, Arizona. In the final chapter, he describes how Tuscon has achieved much more harmonious relations between Anglo whites and Hispanics, through long-term positive interaction between the two groups. But he worries that in the rest of America, far-flung suburban development patterns and the increasing social isolation <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Bowling-Alone-Collapse-American-Community/dp/0743203046">described</a> by Robert Putnam will conspire to prevent this sort of long-term positive conflict, leaving Anglos and Hispanics permanently and bitterly divided.<br />
<br />
In other words, Enos' good and bad visions for America's future depend not on context, but on contact. He doesn't propose large-scale desegregation initiatives (perhaps because of the measurement difficulties described above). Instead, his vision of racial tolerance relies on something outside the scope of his theory: long-term positive contact.<br />
<br />
And in fact, this seems like exactly the right approach. Enos' theory may be right - and in fact, in spite of the measurement difficulties I still think it <i>is</i> right, and that there<i> is</i> some structural psychological scale at which segregation operates. But that doesn't mean it's <i>helpful</i>.<br />
<br />
In Enos' theory, there are basically three ways to reduce racial conflict:<br />
<br />
1. Reduce proximity between races. This sounds scary and bad.<br />
<br />
2. Reduce the size of minority outgroups. This sounds even more scary and bad.<br />
<br />
3. Reduce segregation. This is obviously the good option. But measurement difficulties mean that it's hard to know how to do desegregation right.<br />
<br />
So instead of trying to use context-based theories to heal racial divides, it seems like we should use contact-based ones - in other words, we should <i>do desegregation in a way that's designed to facilitate positive long-term contact among people of different races</i>.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>A Big Complicated World</b><br />
<br />
Fortunately, there are probably additional ways to address the problem of race relations in America. Enos' book, like many books that are centered around a theory, tends to ignore or downplay all the other factors that affect attitudes toward outgroups. For example, in America, black-white relations are deeply affected by the history of slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, race riots, and other terrible events; that will make Anglo-Latino relations in Phoeniz different from black-white relations in Chicago in ways Enos' theory doesn't describe. When measuring general attitudes towards outgroups, relative amounts of wealth and political power - which Enos touches on only lightly - should be taken into account as well.<br />
<br />
This isn't a problem with "The Space Between Us", it's just a natural limitation of this sort of book. When reading it, you have to keep in mind that there's a lot of other stuff going on in the world.<br />
<br />
But that also offers a reason for hope. There are probably many ways of improving race relations that don't involve the expensive, politically difficult, long-term process of changing living patterns and urban development. Geography is undoubtedly a big factor, but it's not an iron law that governs everything that happens to our society.<br />
<br />
<br />
Anyway, that's it for my overly critical review. Just remember to put these caveats in context (no pun intended). "The Space Between Us" is definitely a book worth reading - the research it describes is both well executed and eye-opening, and the theory it puts forth probably describes a very real phenomenon. </div>
Noah Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09093917601641588575noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-15507862964558366722018-04-01T05:48:00.000-04:002018-04-01T05:48:17.104-04:00DeLong vs. Krugman on globalization<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qra8oNNws9w/WsCq0-v1FyI/AAAAAAAAKrQ/D58A7t1KcyYcTPajrj_0O7HmYdmcgsoPACLcBGAs/s1600/manufacturing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="635" data-original-width="960" height="263" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qra8oNNws9w/WsCq0-v1FyI/AAAAAAAAKrQ/D58A7t1KcyYcTPajrj_0O7HmYdmcgsoPACLcBGAs/s400/manufacturing.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
I'm going to do the inadvisable, and argue with Brad DeLong. Hopefully this will turn out OK, since it's in response to Brad doing the inadvisable and arguing with Paul Krugman (thus breaking at least <a href="http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2011/10/1-paul-krugman-is-right-2-if-you-think-paul-krugman-is-wrong-refer-to-1.html">two of his own rules</a>).<br />
<br />
The topic is globalization. Krugman has <a href="https://www.gc.cuny.edu/CUNY_GC/media/LISCenter/pkrugman/PK_globalization.pdf">a new essay</a> in which he lays out what seems to be a rapidly crystallizing conventional wisdom on the recent history of globalization. Some excerpts:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
[D]uring the 1990s a number of economists, myself included...tried to assess the role of Stolper-Samuelson-type effects in rising inequality...[these analyses] generally suggested that the effect [of factor price equalization from globalization] was relatively modest, and not the central factor in the widening income gap... </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
[T]he basic fact in the mid 1990s was that imports of manufactured goods from developing countries [were only] around 2 percent of GDP....[T]his wasn’t enough to cause more than a few percent change in relative wages... </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
In retrospect, however, trade flows in the early 1990s were just the start of something much bigger... </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Until the late 1990s employment in manufacturing, although steadily falling as a share of total employment, had remained more or less flat in absolute terms. But manufacturing employment fell off a cliff after 1997, and this decline corresponded to a sharp increase in the nonoil [trade] deficit, of around 2.5 percent of GDP. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Does the surge in the trade deficit explain the fall in employment? Yes, to a significant extent...[A] reasonable estimate is that the [trade] deficit surge...explains more than half of the roughly 20 percent decline in manufacturing employment between 1997 and 2005...[S]oaring imports did impose a significant shock on some U.S. workers... </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The 90s consensus, however, focused almost entirely on asking how the growth of trade had affected the incomes of broad labor classes, as opposed to workers in particular industries and communities. This was, I now believe, a major mistake – one in which I shared... </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
This is where the now-famous analysis of the “China shock” by Autor, Dorn, and Hanson (2013) comes in...[T]he effects of rapid import growth on local labor markets...were large and persistent... </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
So does this mean that...trade war would be in the interest of workers hurt by globalization? The answer is, as you might guess, no... rapid change appears to be largely behind us: many indicators suggest that hyperglobalization was a one-time event, and that trade has more or less stabilized relative to world GDP... </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
So while the 90s consensus on the effects of globalization hasn’t stood the test of time very well, one can acknowledge that without accepting the case for protectionism now. We might have done things differently if we had known what was coming, but that’s not a good reason to try turning back the clock.</blockquote>
In other words, the new conventional wisdom on trade and globalization can be summed up as:<br />
<br />
1. Trade was pretty much good until the late 90s or 00s,<br />
<br />
2. The China Shock was unprecedented, and hurt lots of workers in America and other rich countries, and<br />
<br />
3. Now the China Shock is over, and a trade war would be bad news.<br />
<br />
This is a story I myself have told, in a series of Bloomberg posts.<br />
<br />
DeLong is not having it. He has <a href="http://www.bradford-delong.com/2018/03/globalization-what-did-paul-krugman-miss.html">a long essay</a> in which he claims that the supposed negative effects of globalization in the 2000s were, instead, entirely due to bad macroeconomic policy.<br />
<br />
I sagree with much of what DeLong writes, but I also disagree with some of it. Here's a point-by-point breakdown of the parts that strike me either as questionable or as not completely to-the-point.<br />
<br />
DeLong:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I think that from the early 1970s to the mid-1990s international trade, at least working through the Heckscher-Ohlin channels, put less than zero downward pressure on the wages of American "unskilled" and semi-skilled workers...From the early 1970s to the mid-1990s the relative wage levels of the then-current sources of America's manufacturing imports were rising more rapidly than new low-wage sources of manufacturing imports were being added. The typical American manufacturing worker faced less low-wage competition from imports in the mid-1990s than they had faced in the early 1970s.</blockquote>
DeLong thinks this contradicts Krugman, but I don't think it does. Krugman is considering only the latter part - the addition of new low-wage trading partners (and the effect of this, even considered in isolation, was small). I think Krugman would agree with DeLong that erecting trade barriers that prevented the entry of new low-wage trading partners into the global trading system in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s would have had net negative effects that far outweighed any positive Stolper-Samuelson effects.<br />
<br />
DeLong:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
[W]e could have protected Detroit and Pittsburgh from the consequences of their managerial and technological failings—but it would have been at immense cost for the rest of the economy, a very unfavorable benefit-cost tradeoff. </blockquote>
In fact, the U.S <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1987/01/1987a_bpea_crandall.pdf">did quite a lot</a> to try to protect Detroit and Pittsburgh. We jawboned Japan into <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaza_Accord">appreciating the yen</a> and implementing <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_export_restraints">Voluntary Export Restraints</a>, and enacted all kinds of protectionist measures toward European steel. The protectionist measures probably <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1987/01/1987a_bpea_crandall.pdf">failed</a> to help U.S. steel or auto companies, or their workers, in the long run. But there is the possibility that it was these measures that prompted Japan to start building its car factories in the United States. Most Japanese cars sold in the United States are now also <a href="https://www.bizjournals.com/columbus/news/2016/06/01/japans-big-3-automakers-built-more-cars-in-u-s.html">made in the United States</a>, which has sustained quite a number of manufacturing jobs.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, DeLong overlooks the possibility that U.S. research spending, intended as a protectionist industrial policy measure, led to positive externalities that helped the U.S. technology industry become as successful as it is today. We tend to think of manufacturing's importance in terms of the good blue-collar semi-skilled jobs of the 1950s, but I think this perspective is severely limited. There are <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-03-28/staying-rich-without-manufacturing-will-be-hard">a number of reasons</a> we might want high-value-added manufacturing to stay in the United States that have nothing to do with factory employment - it generates local multipliers, it creates products that are easy to export, and it may have a beneficial effect on the overall productivity growth of the economy.<br />
<br />
DeLong:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
[T]he coming of "hyperglobalization" strengthened opportunities for U.S. workers without formal education to find jobs where their skills, experience, and tacit knowledge could be deployed in ways that were highly productive.</blockquote>
For manufacturing workers, this seems to be directly contradicted by <a href="http://nber.org/papers/w21906">Autor et al.'s "China Shock" paper</a>, which shows that workers exposed to Chinese imports tended to experience greatly reduced lifetime incomes. (Autor et al. also claim that the China shock had negative aggregate employment effects, though this claim is heavily model-dependent and the model is kind of iffy.) In any case, DeLong's claim that globalization in the 2000s improved productivity for U.S. workers overall is in need of some empirical support. There <a href="http://www.nber.org/papers/w16717">are papers that do say</a> that Chinese import competition spurred U.S. innovation, but this doesn't necessarily support a story about beneficial worker reallocation.<br />
<br />
DeLong:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
What "hyperglobalization" did do was provide the top 1% and the top 0.1% with another lever to break apart the Dunlopian labor relations order, break the Treaty of Detroit, and redistribute the shared joint product from highly productive mass production backed by valuable communities of engineering practice upward in the income distribution. But there were many such levers in the U.S. from the 1970s to today. And "hyperglobalization" was, as I see it, one of the weakest and shortest of them.</blockquote>
This is another claim in need of evidence. It's true that unionization started declining in the U.S. since before globalization or hyperglobalization really got underway. But it's also possible that the U.S. weakened its pro-union laws and law enforcement because of fear that union wage demands would kill American competitiveness in the face of increasing import competition.<br />
<br />
More importantly, in absolving globalization of the blame for rising inequality, DeLong ignores the cross-country evidence. Here are some graphs of the Gini coefficient of disposable income in various rich countries.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.observingjapan.com/2013/06/japan-model.html">Graph 1</a>:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PxZritrWJKs/WsCd-ewV0eI/AAAAAAAAKq0/4QcVKyt89Ws5RO0pFfPrX4gmra1_3BpAgCLcBGAs/s1600/disposable1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="477" data-original-width="1081" height="281" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PxZritrWJKs/WsCd-ewV0eI/AAAAAAAAKq0/4QcVKyt89Ws5RO0pFfPrX4gmra1_3BpAgCLcBGAs/s640/disposable1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<a href="https://archiv.wirtschaftsdienst.eu/jahr/2016/13/income-and-wealth-inequality-in-oecd-countries/">Graph 2</a>:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Qh5CzlXIX8g/WsCfko6VyZI/AAAAAAAAKrA/2SsB19il1Zwn_KMf2v_FuL-ctl21ZmHegCLcBGAs/s1600/disposable2.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="403" data-original-width="590" height="435" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Qh5CzlXIX8g/WsCfko6VyZI/AAAAAAAAKrA/2SsB19il1Zwn_KMf2v_FuL-ctl21ZmHegCLcBGAs/s640/disposable2.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
It seems highly unlikely that market fundamentalism and plutocracy were such a potent mind-virus or political movement that they simultaneously prevailed not only in the United States, but in Sweden, Denmark, France, Germany, and Japan.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
The global nature of the runup in inequality across countries with very different policy regimes implies that it was something global - some combination of trade and technology - that did the trick. To write trade out of the equation and to blame technology mostly or entirely seems suspect, at least without solid empirical evidence. Having read a lot of papers on this topic, I'd say there's very little consensus.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
DeLong:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Moreover, from the perspective of the country as a whole and from the perspective of many of the communities affected, the China shock was not a big deal for local labor markets. Yes, people are no longer buying as many of the products of American factories as Chinese imports flood in. But those selling the imports are turning around and spending their dollars investing in America: financing government purchases, infrastructure, some corporate investment, and housing. <i>The circular flow will it</i>: the dollars are of no use outside the U.S. and so the dollar flow has to go somewhere, and as long as the Federal Reserve does its job and makes Say's Law roughly true in practice, it is a redistribution of demand for labor and not a fall in the demand for labor.</blockquote>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
The idea here is that trade deficits involve increased foreign financial investment into the United States, because a trade deficit is matched by a current account deficit. But an increase in foreign portfolio investment does <i>not</i> imply an increase in business or government investment (in things like infrastructure, housing, or whatever). In fact, if a trade deficit corresponds to a decrease in national savings - as it did in the 2000s, during "hyperglobalization" - then U.S. business/government investment goes <i>down</i>, not up. More generally, the idea that real investment is sensitive to the cost of capital is pretty suspect. <a href="http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/anil.kashyap/research/papers/imfdraftjuly29.pdf">Some people claim</a> that cost of capital <a href="https://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/feds/2007/200725/revision/200725pap.pdf">matters a lot</a>, but the evidence for this is very iffy. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
DeLong:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
And here is the kicker, as I see it: <i>the types of people and the types of jobs funded by the imports of the China shock looks very much like the types of people and the types of jobs displaced from the tradeable manufacturing sector</i>. Yes, some local labor markets got a substantial and persistent negative shock to manufacturing, often substantially cushioned by a boost to construction. Other local local labor markets got a substantial and persistent positive shock to construction. And on the level of the country as a whole the factor of production that is (truly) semiskilled blue collar labor does not look to me to have been adversely affected.</blockquote>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Again, the idea that displaced manufacturing workers got just-about-as-good jobs in other sectors (like construction) is directly contradicted by the Autor paper. In fact, job displacement of <i>any </i>kind seems to <a href="https://www.clevelandfed.org/newsroom-and-events/publications/economic-commentary/2017-economic-commentaries/ec-201711-measuring-the-true-impact-of-job-loss-on-future-earnings.aspx">hurt lifetime income</a>. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
As for semiskilled blue collar labor being adversely affected or not, it's certainly true that wages and income for the lower quintiles of the distribution stagnated during the 2000s, before taking transfers into account. Autor et al. haven't proven that China was the big culprit behind this stagnation, but others haven't disproven it either. Krugman, for his part, seems only to claim that it was one nontrivial factor. It doesn't make sense to dismiss it quantitatively until better evidence is in. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
DeLong:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
And this gets me to my fifth quarrel with Paul Krugman here. As I see it, the most important thing we missed about globalization was how much it required support from stable and continuous full employment.</blockquote>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
If globalization increases the costs of fiscal austerity and tight money, that seems to be a mark against it, even if you're totally against austerity and tight money. Policy is stochastic. Bad leaders get elected, foolish officials get appointed, and humans make mistakes. Anything which makes the economy more fragile in the face of random bad policy draws seems like it's imposing a cost on the economy, since we can't always count on getting good draws. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
So I agree with DeLong on a number of issues here. It's important to have good countercyclical fiscal and monetary policy. Deregulation-fueled financial crises, and bad policy responses to these crises, are scarier than globalization. We should think about globalization's hard-to-measure positive effects in addition to its easier-to-see negative effects. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
But in his zeal to defend globalization from the Trumpists, I think Brad has overstated the case against the new conventional wisdom articulated in Krugman's essay, and overstated the case for not worrying about China Shock type cases. And thinking of the alternative to free trade as being base, crude, Trumpist protectionism rather than research-heavy industrial policy aimed at boosting high-value-added exports - certainly not a way of thinking unique to Brad, but rather a false dichotomy that is endemic throughout the economics commentariat - seems like a failure of our collective vision. </div>
Noah Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09093917601641588575noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-39843623190678827492017-12-18T18:01:00.000-05:002017-12-26T12:24:20.298-05:00Sheepskin effects - signals without signaling<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-t3TpYs009yo/WjhIWID7WfI/AAAAAAAAKbk/cm-QclrmT3ofml2o5G1snPWapB0aFPNdQCLcBGAs/s1600/kanye.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="620" height="257" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-t3TpYs009yo/WjhIWID7WfI/AAAAAAAAKbk/cm-QclrmT3ofml2o5G1snPWapB0aFPNdQCLcBGAs/s400/kanye.jpg" title="Now even though I went to college and dropped out of school quick, I always had a Ph.D." width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
Bryan Caplan is one of the most enthusiastic proponents of the signaling theory of education, and this theory plays an important role in his new book, "<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Case-against-Education-System-Waste/dp/0691174652/ref=as_sl_pc_qf_sp_asin_til?tag=bryacaplwebp-20&linkCode=w00&linkId=2a0c58e873ed68d8abd86c1449dd0968&creativeASIN=0691174652">The Case Against Education</a>". But I've always had a <a href="http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2012/06/college-is-mostly-about-human-capital.html">number of problems</a> with this theory, and also with its application to the education policy issues. Recently, I wrote <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-12-11/college-isn-t-a-waste-of-time">a Bloomberg View post</a> in response to <a href="http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2017/12/reply_to_noah_o.html">an essay Bryan wrote in<i> The Atlantic</i></a> that was adapted from his book. Now, <a href="http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2017/12/reply_to_noah_o.html">Bryan has responded</a> to my post. He makes many interesting points, but here I'd just like to deal with one issue - the issue of sheepskin effects, and which model they support.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br />
<div>
<b>Sheepskin effects</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<a href="http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2013/02/sheepskin_effec.html">Sheepskin effects</a> are central to my debate with Bryan. In brief, the sheepskin effect is the fact that most of the college wage premium vanishes if you drop out right before finishing (e.g. in the final semester). Bryan, and many proponents of the signaling model, believe that sheepskin effects are solid evidence that college is mostly about signaling. On the other hand, I believe that sheepskin effects are strong evidence <i>against</i> the signaling model, and are consistent with the human capital model of education. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Why sheepskin effects are evidence against the signaling model</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
First, why are sheepskin effects evidence <i>against</i> the signaling model? Simple: In the <a href="https://www.econ.nyu.edu/user/debraj/Courses/05UGGameLSE/Handouts/05uggl10.pdf">signaling model</a>, the signal must be <b>costly</b>. If signals are not costly, there can be no separating or hybrid equilibrium. Without a separating (or hybrid) equilibrium, there is no return to sending the signal. In the model, low-type agents choose not to send the signal because doing so doesn't pass a cost-benefit test.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In other words, if completing the last semester of college is very hard, it can serve as the type of costly signal that could explain the college wage premium in the signaling model. But if completing one more semester of college isn't very hard, then the signaling model can't describe what's going on.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
How hard is it to finish the last semester of college? For some people it would be very very hard - but these people are unlikely to have completed all the <i>other</i> semesters of college <i>prior </i>to the last one. For someone who just finished 7 or more semesters, one more semester probably is not that hard.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Also, if agents are even close to rational - as the signaling model assumes them to be - then they wouldn't complete 7 semesters of college only to balk at the finish line. That would be very very suboptimal behavior - a waste of years of effort and years of foregone earnings, not to mention tuition. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Caplan <a href="http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2017/12/reply_to_noah_o.html">writes</a>:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Noah fail[s] to look at school from the point of view of a weak student. One more semester may seem like nothing to those of us who readily finish. But for students who find classes boring and baffling, even the thought of enduring even one more semester of academics is agonizing. </blockquote>
<div>
Agonizing, perhaps, but much more agonizing than the last 7 semesters? It seems highly unlikely. And why would a rational agent endure 7 semesters of agony (and foregone earnings and sky-high tuition) for practically no payoff?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Therefore, sheepskin effects are not consistent with the signaling model.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Why sheepskin effects are consistent with the human capital model</b></div>
<div>
<b><br /></b></div>
<div>
How could the last semester of college be so much more important for the building of human capital than the other 7 semesters combined? It cannot. So how can sheepskin effects be consistent with the human capital model of education? Here's how.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Education, in empirical research jargon, is a "treatment." In the human capital model of college, that treatment has different effects on different people - some study diligently and expand their perspectives greatly and build their networks and learn with an open mind, while others party and slack off and waste time on Twitter and fail to learn. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Employers try to tell whether the treatment worked. They look at GPA, for example. But if many of the human capital benefits of college don't come from grades, but from social networks, personal growth, etc., GPA doesn't tell you all you need to know about whether the treatment worked. So as an employer, you'd try to look for other clues as to whether college improved a student or not. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Dropping out of school is one such clue. It could mean that you didn't build human networks valuable enough to keep you hanging around. It could mean that you have some emotional problem, and that college therefore didn't give you the emotional maturity that it tends to give most people. In other words, even if the treatment typically works, dropping out - including dropping out right before the finish line - could indicate that the treatment didn't work for you.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Bryan didn't like the analogy I used to explain this idea in my Bloomberg View post, so here's a better (and more fun) one. Suppose a bunch of people are applying to be S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. To be a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent you have to take a serum that makes you a superhero. But the serum doesn't work on everyone - some people it dramatically weakens due to an allergic reaction. So 20 people take the serum. Nick Fury inspects them, and they all seem fine...until 2 of them fall unconscious. These two, obviously, are not hired as S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, while the other 18 are hired.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In this example, the serum DOES build human capital, and falling unconscious in the inspection line is like dropping out just before finishing college.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Sloppy use of the word "signaling"</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
"But wait, Noah," you may ask. "Aren't 'clue' and 'sign' just synonyms for 'signal'? Didn't you just describe signaling?"</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The confusion here is due to sloppy use of the word "signaling." Are we talking about <a href="https://www.econ.nyu.edu/user/debraj/Courses/05UGGameLSE/Handouts/05uggl10.pdf">the Spence signaling model</a>, or are we using "signal" to mean "any piece of information"? I believe that if you want to use the fame and the imprimatur of the Spence signaling model to support your view of college, you should stick to that model. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Also, the kind of "signal" I described in the previous section is 100% compatible with college's value being 100% human capital. Caplan and other detractors of the college system treat "signaling" and "human capital" as mutually exclusive - if dropping out is a (costless) signal of whether you derived human capital from college, then the human capital model is right. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Simply saying "well it's SOME kind of signal", and relying on the multiple uses of that English word to avoid careful consideration of how the models work, is not good economics! Sheepskin effects look much more like a truth-telling equilibrium in a model where students receive private stochastic shocks to their utility functions.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b><br /></b></div>
<div>
<b>Sheepskin effects and the consumption/sorting model of college</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I do not believe that 100% of the college wage premium reflects the return to college - I believe some fraction of it represents ability sorting. Nor do I believe that 100% of the price students pay to go to college represents investment - I believe some fraction of it represents consumption. College is fun. I believe that college does build some human capital, but part of the institution represents super-smart kids paying to party with each other at Harvard while pretty-smart kids pay to party with each other at Ohio State.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This is a third model of college - the consumption/sorting model of college. I believe that together, the human capital model and the consumption/sorting model explain most of both the price of college and the college wage premium.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Sheepskin effects are consistent with the consumption/sorting model. Employers use your college as a proxy for your ability. But if you drop out right before the finish line, that provides employers with additional, more detailed information about your ability. It might indicate that you're a smart person with emotional problems, motivational problems, or trouble with the law. In other words, it's a way that employers can improve the precision of their information about your ability, beyond relying only on the noisy proxies of alma mater and GPA.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Again, this explanation relies on sheepskin effects being a "signal" in the general, English sense, but not in the specific Spence model sense.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In conclusion, sheepskin effects are consistent with the human capital and consumption/sorting models of college, but not consistent with the signaling model.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b><u>Update</u></b><br />
<br />
<a href="http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2017/12/reply_to_noah_o_1.html">Bryan responds</a>. He writes:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Plenty of kids slog through two or three years of college, then get so distracted or disgruntled they fail to finish. Their exasperated parents could reasonably say, "How hard can it possibly be to finish?!" But social scientists should just work our way backwards from their failure to finish to the subjective difficulty of doing so.</blockquote>
No doubt. Kids often discover their own ability/motivation level by trying college. That process of self-discovery isn't signaling, but it is important for labor markets. The onus is on college's detractors to prove that this is an inefficient mechanism.<br />
<br />
Bryan:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Noah's right that conventional signaling models assume everyone's rational. But they don't need to. As long as employers are roughly rational, students can act impulsively without changing the main lesson of the model: Education pays you for what you reveal about yourself, rather than what you actually learn along the way.</blockquote>
Obviously, college has an ability-sorting component. But it isn't very costly, and the cost (taking SATs and AP tests and such) is paid in high school when you apply.<br />
<br />
We all know that some part of the college wage premium is not a return to college - it's a return to ability, which is indicated by test scores and grades and such. The ability premium is present whether you finish or drop out - "I dropped out from MIT" implies "I got into MIT". That's on top of the return to college (human capital) and the penalty for observable negative characteristics (early dropout).<br />
<br />
Signaling just isn't necessary here. Nor does any of this imply that college is economically inefficient.<br />
<br />
Bryan:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Forget models and look at actual human beings. Plenty of people will put up with something unpleasant for years, then snap. This is especially true for people who are relatively non-conformist. And as I've repeatedly said, conformity to social norms is one of the main things employers are looking for.</blockquote>
"Forget models and look at actual human beings" is a phrase I expect to hear from anthropologists, not economics professors! But OK. When I forget models and <a href="http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2012/06/college-is-mostly-about-human-capital.html">look at human beings</a>, I see college giving people invaluable life perspective and emotional maturity. When I apply formal models - the signaling model that Bryan invokes again and again to support his case - I find that it doesn't make sense as a major reason for the college wage premium. What's left?<br />
<br />
Bryan:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
There's no confusion on my part. Yes, you can equate "signaling" with a literal interpretation of Spence's model. But it's far more enlightening to treat the Spence model as a mathematical parable - then see how much of the real world the parable illuminates. Anything that raises the conditional probability of X signals X. If the world happens to reward X, this spurs people who lack X to send misleading signals of X in order to receive those rewards. These are the Spencean insights that matter - not the details of any specific model. </blockquote>
I just can't agree here. If a signal isn't costly, the Spence model isn't a good parable for it, because the Spence model crucially relies on the cost of a signal (really, the cost difference between types) to produce a separating equilibrium. Otherwise everyone lies.<br />
<br />
Bryan appears to be taking any observation that employers make about prospective employees during their college years and labeling that "signaling", then concluding that college is waste. That is pretty obviously an incorrect inference. </div>
</div>
Noah Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09093917601641588575noreply@blogger.com26tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-790876282635630962017-11-15T13:27:00.003-05:002017-11-18T12:19:41.023-05:00The "cackling cartoon villain" defense of DSGE<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ejYOZbh0m-I/WgxzOyZL28I/AAAAAAAAKZw/j4UfXl1xZKsaKTHwSD4H4SeRc1vUiWJqQCLcBGAs/s1600/jafar.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="546" data-original-width="970" height="225" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ejYOZbh0m-I/WgxzOyZL28I/AAAAAAAAKZw/j4UfXl1xZKsaKTHwSD4H4SeRc1vUiWJqQCLcBGAs/s400/jafar.png" title=""BUAHAHAHAHA, I shall add i-dot costs and habit formation, and the curves shall be fitted in-sample! NONE SHALL OPPOSE ME!!!"" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
I've <a href="http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2017/06/summing-up-my-thoughts-on-macroeconomics.html">sworn off macro-bashing</a>. I said what I had to say. And I'm seeing lots of young macro people <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-10-17/fixing-macroeconomics-will-be-really-hard">doing good stuff</a>. And the task of macro-method-criticizing has been taken over by people who are <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3022009">better at it than I am</a>, and who <a href="http://www.nber.org/papers/w23795">have much</a> <a href="https://paulromer.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/WP-Trouble.pdf">better credentials</a>. My macro-bashing days are done.<br />
<br />
But sometimes I just have to offer macro folks some marketing advice.<br />
<br />
The <a href="http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~lchrist/research/JEP_2017/DSGE_final.pdf">new defense of DSGE</a> by Christiano, Eichenbaum, and Trabandt is pretty cringe-inducing. Check this out:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
People who don’t like dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models are dilettantes. By this we mean they aren’t serious about policy analysis. Why do we say this? Macroeconomic policy questions involve trade-offs between competing forces in the economy. The problem is how to assess the strength of those forces for the particular policy question at hand. One strategy is to perform experiments on actual economies. This strategy is not available to social scientists. As Lucas (1980) pointed out roughly forty years ago, the only place that we can do experiments is in our models. No amount of a priori theorizing or regressions on micro data can be a substitute for those experiments. Dilettantes who only point to the existence of competing forces at work – and informally judge their relative importance via implicit thought experiments – can never give serious policy advice.</blockquote>
That reads like a line from a cackling cartoon villain. "Buahahaha, you pitiful fools" kind of stuff. It's so silly that I almost suspect Christiano et al. of staging a false-flag operation to get more people to <a href="https://twitter.com/stephenkinsella/status/930658558441648128">hate DSGE modelers</a>.<br />
<br />
First, calling DSGE critics "dilettantes" was a bad move. By far the <a href="https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=981008064022105031092081095092124087127032028046050025014118077088114094027097124022018060099009024042113103106116000013000008042051088034039091002098114123118095052060007094084105118126115072097012066099097092006118124073067113006027023123026088084&EXT=pdf">best recent critique of DSGE</a> (in my opinion) was written by Anton Korinek of Johns Hopkins. Korinek is <a href="http://www.korinek.com/">a DSGE macroeconomist</a>. He <a href="https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2014/wp14129.pdf">makes DSGE models</a> for a living. But according to Christiano et al., the fact that he thinks his own field has problems makes him a "dilettante."<br />
<br />
OK, but let's be generous and suppose Christiano et al. didn't know about Korinek (or <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1683617">Ricardo Caballero</a>, or Paul Romer, or <a href="https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/working-papers/chameleons-misuse-theoretical-models-finance-economics">Paul Pfleiderer</a>, etc.). Let's suppose they were only talking about <a href="http://www.nber.org/papers/w23795">Joseph Stiglitz</a>, who really is something of a dilettante these days. Or about bloggers like Yours Truly (who are actual dilettantes). Or about the INET folks. Even if so, this sort of dismissive snorting is still a bad look.<br />
<br />
Why? Because declaring that outsiders are never qualified to criticize your field makes you look insular and arrogant. Every economist knows about <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture">regulatory capture</a>. It's not much of a leap to think that researchers can be captured too -- that if the only people who are allowed to criticize X are people who make a living doing X, then all the potential critics will have a vested interest in preserving the status quo.<br />
<br />
In other words, Christiano et al.'s essay looks like a demand for outsiders to shut up and keep mailing the checks.<br />
<br />
Second of all, Christiano et al. give ammo to the "econ isn't a science" crowd by using the word "experiments" to refer to model simulations. Brad DeLong <a href="http://www.bradford-delong.com/2017/11/monday-smackdown-oh-dear.html">already wrote about</a> this unfortunate terminology. Everyone knows that thought experiments aren't experiments, of course - Christiano et al. aren't actually confusing the two. But obstinately insisting on using this word just makes econ look like a pseudoscience to outside observers. It's bad marketing.<br />
<br />
Third, Christiano et al. are just incorrect. Their defense of DSGE is, basically, that it's the only game in town - the only way to make quantitative predictions about the effects of policy changes.<br />
<br />
That's wrong. There are at least two other approaches that are in common use - <a href="http://www-personal.umich.edu/~lkilian/elgarhdbk_kilian.pdf">sVARs</a> and <a href="https://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/notes/feds-notes/2014/a-tool-for-macroeconomic-policy-analysis.html">SEMs</a>. sVARs are often <a href="http://www.nber.org/papers/w17447">used for policy analysis</a> in academic papers. SEMs are <a href="https://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/notes/feds-notes/2014/a-tool-for-macroeconomic-policy-analysis.html">used by central banks</a> to inform policy decisions. Both sVARs and SEMs claim to be structural. Lots of people laugh at those claims. But then again, lots of people laugh at DSGE too.<br />
<br />
In fact, you don't always even need a structural model to make quantitative predictions about policy; often, you can do it in reduced form. When policy changes can be treated like natural experiments, their effects - including general equilibrium effects! - can be measured directly instead of inferred from a structural model.<br />
<br />
As <a href="https://twitter.com/JustinWolfers/status/930636203224911877">Justin Wolfers pointed out</a> on Twitter, at least one of questions that Christiano, et al. claim is only answerable by DSGE simulations can actually be answered in reduced form:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Does an increase in unemployment benefits increase unemployment? On the one hand, conventional wisdom argues that higher benefits lead to higher wages and more unemployment. On the other hand, if the nominal interest rate is relatively insensitive to economic conditions, then the rise in wages raises inflation. The resulting decline in the real interest rate leads to higher aggregate demand, a rise in economic activity and lower unemployment. Which of these effects is stronger?</blockquote>
A <a href="https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/coglianese/files/coglianese_2015_ui_extensions.pdf">2015 paper</a> by John Coglianese addresses this question without using a DSGE model:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I analyze a natural experiment created by a federal UI extension enacted in the United States during the Great Recession and measure the effect on state-level employment. I exploit a feature of this UI extension whereby random sampling error in a national survey altered the duration of unemployment insurance in several states, resulting in random variation in the number of weeks of unemployment insurance available at the state level. </blockquote>
Christiano et al. totally ignore the existence of natural experiments. They claim that in the absence of laboratory experiments, model simulations are the best we've got. The <a href="http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2015/06/a-paradigm-shift-in-empirical-economics.html">rapidly rising popularity</a> of the natural experiment approach in economics doesn't even register on their radar screens. That's not a good look.<br />
<br />
Finally, Christiano et al. strike a tone of dismissive arrogance, at a time when the world (including the rest of the econ profession) is rightly calling for greater humility from macroeconomists. The most prominent, common DSGE models - the type created by Christiano and Eichenbaum themselves - failed pretty spectacularly in 2008-12. That's not a record to be arrogant about - it's something to apologize for. Now the profession has patched those models up, adding finance, a zero lower bound, nonlinearity, etc. It remains to be seen how well the new crop of models will do out of sample. Hopefully they'll do better.<br />
<br />
But the <a href="https://twitter.com/de1ong/status/930824700908863488">burden of proof</a> is on the DSGE-makers, not on the critics. Christiano et al. should look around and realize that people outside their small circle of the world aren't buying it. Central banks <a href="http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-foxy-fed_7.html">still use SEMs</a>, human judgment, and lots of other tools. Finance industry people <a href="http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-most-damning-critique-of-dsge.html">don't use DSGEs at all</a>. Even in academia, use of DSGE models is probably trending downward:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MX9aQjPRfIg/WgyD4CYTMHI/AAAAAAAAKaE/NNdEgGBXstAVfbJYRCRLLZdlwngaVIWaQCLcBGAs/s1600/dsge.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="624" data-original-width="1190" height="334" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MX9aQjPRfIg/WgyD4CYTMHI/AAAAAAAAKaE/NNdEgGBXstAVfbJYRCRLLZdlwngaVIWaQCLcBGAs/s640/dsge.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
In other words, Christiano et al. and other DSGE champions are still getting paid nice salaries to make DSGE models, but they're not winning the intellectual battle in the wider world. Dismissive rhetoric like this essay will not help their case. Even Miles Kimball, who spent his career making DSGE models, and who made crucial contributions to the models for which Christiano and Eichenbaum got famous, <a href="https://twitter.com/mileskimball/status/930826911915184128">was put off</a> by this essay. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Look. There are good defenses of modern macro, and of DSGE, to be made. Ricardo Reis made <a href="http://personal.lse.ac.uk/reisr/papers/17-wrong.pdf">a really good defense</a> earlier this year. Fabio Ghironi <a href="http://faculty.washington.edu/ghiro/GhiroFuture.pdf">made another good one</a>. Their essays are humble and smart. They acknowledge the key importance of empirical evidence and of a diversity of approaches. They also acknowledge that macroeconomists need to do better, and that this will take some time. They focus on the young people doing good work, striving to improve things, and striking out in new directions. These are the macro defenses the profession needs.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
The idea of DSGE models is not a bad one. Working on DSGE models isn't necessarily wasted effort. Nor are most DSGE modelers the dismissive, chest-thumping caricature that Christiano et al.'s essay paints them as. People are out there doing good work, trying to improve the performance of macro models. But rhetoric like this ends up hurting, rather than helping, their task. </div>
Noah Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09093917601641588575noreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-83302614317418391632017-10-10T00:44:00.001-04:002017-10-10T01:07:44.662-04:00Defending Thaler from the guerrilla resistance<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KUXTh0BWpFc/WdxQHKu5FzI/AAAAAAAAKYM/KhmtmSUHLtc0RDzMMSwODW-krkwmVV3AACLcBGAs/s1600/paintball.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1065" data-original-width="1600" height="266" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KUXTh0BWpFc/WdxQHKu5FzI/AAAAAAAAKYM/KhmtmSUHLtc0RDzMMSwODW-krkwmVV3AACLcBGAs/s400/paintball.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
So, <a href="https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/917415207932063744">Richard Thaler won the Nobel Prize</a>, which is pretty awesome. If you've read <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Misbehaving-Behavioral-Economics-Richard-Thaler/dp/039335279X">Thaler's memoir</a>, you'll know that it was a long, hard, contentious fight for him to get his ideas accepted by the mainstream. And even though Thaler is now a Nobelist and has been the AEA president - i.e., he has completely convinced the commanding heights of the econ establishment that behavioral econ is a crucial addition to the canon - resistance still pops up with surprising frequency in certain corners of the econ world. It's a sort of ongoing guerrilla resistance.<br />
<br />
An example is <a href="https://afinetheorem.wordpress.com/2017/10/09/the-2017-nobel-richard-thaler/">this blog post by Kevin Bryan</a> of A Fine Theorem. Kevin is one of the best research-explainers in the econ blogosphere, and his Nobel explainer posts have always been uniformly excellent. This time, however, instead of explaining Thaler's research, Kevin decided to challenge it, in a rather dismissive manner. In fact, his criticisms are pretty classic anti-behavioral stuff - mostly the same arguments Thaler talks about in his memoir.<br />
<br />
Anyway, let's go through some of these criticisms, and see why they don't really hit the mark.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>1. The invisible hand-wave</b><br />
<br />
First, a random weird thing. Kevin writes:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Much of my skepticism is similar to how <a href="http://www.bollettinoadapt.it/old/files/document/5679INT_FAMA_13_01_1.pdf">Fama thinks</a> about behavioral finance: “I’ve always said they are very good at describing how individual behavior departs from rationality. That branch of it has been incredibly useful. It’s the leap from there to what it implies about market pricing where the claims are not so well-documented in terms of empirical evidence.”</blockquote>
This is Fama, not Kevin, but it's a very odd quote. Behavioral finance has been very good at documenting asset price anomalies - in fact, this is almost all of what it's good at. This is what Shiller <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/2013/advanced-economicsciences2013.pdf">got the Nobel for</a> in 2013, and it's what Thaler himself is <a href="https://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/Richard.Thaler/research/pdf/DoesStockMarketOverreact.pdf">most famous for</a> within the finance field. Behavioral finance has struggled (though not entirely failed) to explain most of these anomalies in terms of psychology, especially in terms of insights drawn from experimental psychology. But in terms of empirical evidence, behavioral finance is pretty solid.<br />
<br />
Anyway, that might be a sidetrack. Back to Kevin:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
[S]urely most people are not that informed and not that rational much of the time, but repeated experience, market selection, and other aggregative factors mean that this irrationality may not matter much for the economy at large. </blockquote>
This is a dismissal that Thaler refers to as "<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/10/upshot/unless-you-are-spock-irrelevant-things-matter-in-economic-behavior.html">the invisible hand wave</a>". It's basically a claim that markets have emergent properties that make a bunch of not-quite-rational agents behave like a group of complete-rational agents. The justifications typically given for this assumption - for example, the idea that irrational people will be competed out of the market - are typically vague and unsupported. In fact, it's not hard at all to write down a model where this doesn't happen - for example, the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2937765">noise trader model</a> of DeLong et al. But for some reason, some economists have very strong priors that nothing of this sort goes on in the real world, and that the emergent properties of markets approximate individual rationality.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>2. Ethical concerns</b><br />
<br />
Kevin, like many critics of Thalerian behavioral economics, raises ethical concerns about the practice of "nudging":<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Let’s<a href="https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/12876718/LibPaternal.pdf?sequence=1"> discuss ethics first. Simply arguing that organizations “must” make a choice (as Thaler and Sunstein do</a>) is insufficient; we would not say a firm that defaults consumers into an autorenewal for a product they rarely renew when making an active choice is acting “neutrally”. Nudges can be used for “good” or “evil”. Worse, whether a nudge is good or evil depends on the planner’s evaluation of the agent’s “<a href="https://www.uea.ac.uk/documents/166500/0/CBESS+16-02.pdf/4a14ee37-fb93-4481-acbe-68db8dc69e3a">inner rational self</a>”, as Infante and Sugden, among others, have noted many times. That is, claiming paternalism is “only a nudge” does not excuse the paternalist from the usual moral philosophic critiques!...Carroll et al have a very nice theoretical paper trying to untangle exactly what “better” means for behavioral agents, and exactly when the imprecision of nudges or defaults given our imperfect knowledge of individual’s heterogeneous preferences makes attempts at libertarian paternalism worse than laissez faire.</blockquote>
There are, indeed, very real problems with behavioral welfare economics. But the same is true of standard welfare economics. Should we treat utilities as cardinal, and sum them to get our welfare function, when analyzing a typical non-behavioral model? Should we sum the utilities nonlinearly? Should we consider only the worst-off individual in society, as John Rawls might have us do?<br />
<br />
Those are nontrivial questions. And they apply to pretty much every economic policy question in existence. But for some reason, Kevin chooses to raise ethical concerns only for behavioral econ. Do we see Kevin worrying about whether <a href="https://afinetheorem.wordpress.com/2014/10/13/nobel-prize-2014-jean-tirole/">efficient contracts</a> will lead to inequality that's unacceptable from a welfare perspective? No. Kevin seems to be very very very worried about paternalism, and generally pretty cavalier about <a href="https://afinetheorem.wordpress.com/category/income-inequality/">inequality</a>.<br />
<br />
Perhaps this reflects Kevin's libertarian values? I actually have no idea what Kevin believes in. But hopefully the Nobel committee tries to make its awards based on the positive rather than normative considerations. After all, the physics Nobel often goes to scientists whose discoveries could be used to make weapons, right? I just don't see the need to automatically mix in ethics and values when assessing the importance of behavioral economics.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>3. The invisible hand-wave, again</b><br />
<br />
Kevin writes:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Thaler has very convincingly shown that behavioral biases can affect real world behavior, and that understanding those biases means two policies which are identical from the perspective of a homo economicus model can have very different effects. But many economic situations involve players doing things repeatedly with feedback – where heuristics approximated by rationality evolve – or involve players who “perform poorly” being selected out of the game. For example, I can think of many simple nudges to get you or I to play better basketball. But when it comes to Michael Jordan, the first order effects are surely how well he takes cares of his health, the teammates he has around him, and so on. I can think of many heuristics useful for understanding how simply physics will operate, but I don’t think I can find many that would improve Einstein’s understanding of how the world works.</blockquote>
This argument makes little sense to me. Most people aren't Michael Jordan or Einstein. And those people surely didn't compete all the other basketball players and physicists out of the market. Why does the existence of a few perfectly rational people mean that nudges don't matter in aggregate? Also, why should we assume that non-Michael-Jordans can quickly or completely learn heuristics that make nudges unnecessary? If that were true, why would players even have coaches?<br />
<br />
It seems like another case of the invisible hand wave.<br />
<br />
(Also, when it's used as an object, it's "you and me", not "you and I". This grammar overcorrection is my one weakness. If you ever need to defeat me in battle, just use "X and I" as an object, and I'll fly into an insane rage and walk right into your perfectly executed jujitsu move.)<br />
<br />
Kevin continues:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The 401k situation [that Thaler's most famous nudge policy deals with] is unusual because it is a decision with limited short-run feedback, taken by unsophisticated agents who will learn little even with experience. The natural alternative, of course, is to have agents outsource the difficult parts of the decision, to investment managers or the like. And these managers will make money by improving people’s earnings. No surprise that robo-advisors, index funds, and personal banking have all become more important as defined contribution plans have become more common! If we worry about behavioral biases, we ought worry especially about market imperfections that prevent the existence of designated agents who handle the difficult decisions for us.</blockquote>
Assuming that a market for third-party advice will take care of behavioral problems seems like both a big leap and a mistake. First, there's the assumption that someone with nontrivial behavioral biases will be completely rational in her choice of an adviser. Big assumption. Remember that people are typically paying financial advisers <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-04-11/those-tiny-fees-make-your-financial-adviser-rich">a fifth of their life's savings</a> or more. Big price tag. How confident are we that someone who treats opt-in and opt-out pensions differently is going to get good value for that huge and opaque expenditure?<br />
<br />
Also, suppose that financial advisers really do earn their keep, i.e. a fifth of your life's savings. If the market for financial advice is efficient, and financial advice is all about countering your own behavioral biases, that means that behavioral biases are so severe that their impact is worth a fifth of your lifetime wealth! If a cheap little nudge could make all of that vast expenditure unnecessary - i.e., if it could get you to do the thing that you'd otherwise pay a financial adviser 20% of your lifetime wealth to do for you - then the nudge seems like a huge efficiency-booster.<br />
<br />
So this point of Kevin's also seems to miss the mark.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>4. Endowment effects and money pumps</b><br />
<br />
Kevin writes:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Consider Thaler’s famous <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Richard_Thaler/publication/222078536_Toward_a_Positive_Theory_of_Consumer_Choice/links/09e4151030d3ad6d81000000/Toward-a-Positive-Theory-of-Consumer-Choice.pdf">endowment effect</a>: how much you are willing to pay for, say, a coffee mug or a pen is much less than how much you would accept to have the coffee mug taken away from you. Indeed, it is not unusual in a study to find a ratio of three times or greater between the willingness to pay and willingness to accept amount. But, of course, if these were “preferences”, you could be money pumped (see Yaari, applying a theorem of de Finetti, on the mathematics of the pump). Say you value the mug at ten bucks when you own it and five bucks when you don’t. Do we really think I can regularly get you to pay twice as much by loaning you the mug for free for a month? Do we see car companies letting you take a month-long test drive of a $20,000 car then letting you keep the car only if you pay $40,000, with some consumers accepting? Surely not.</blockquote>
First of all, the endowment effect isn't a money pump if it only works once with each object. It's only a money pump if you can keep loaning and reselling something to someone. Otherwise, people's maximum potential losses from this bias are finite - they're just some percent of their lifetime consumption. Maybe not 300%, but something.<br />
<br />
But anyway, Kevin says that we don't see car companies letting you take a month-long test drive. Hmm. I guess that is true...for cars.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2ZCOECfX3kA/WdxKHphZ-kI/AAAAAAAAKX8/h2oFJDSW9TcSNJjkESIAVmcBuhyxSarvQCLcBGAs/s1600/netflix.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="369" data-original-width="880" height="167" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2ZCOECfX3kA/WdxKHphZ-kI/AAAAAAAAKX8/h2oFJDSW9TcSNJjkESIAVmcBuhyxSarvQCLcBGAs/s400/netflix.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<b>5. External validity of lab effects</b><br />
<br />
Everyone knows external validity of laboratory findings is a big problem for experimental economics (and psychology, and biology...). Also problematic is <i>ecological</i> validity - even if a lab effect consistently exists in the real world, it might not matter quantitatively compared to other stuff. External and ecological validity do present big challenges for behaviorists who want to take insights from the lab and use them to predict real-world outcomes.<br />
<br />
But Kevin chooses some highly questionable examples to illustrate the problem. For example:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Even worse are the dictator games introduced in Thaler’s 1986 <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Richard_Thaler/publication/4900848_Fairness_As_a_Constraint_on_Profit_Seeking_Entitlements_In_The_Market/links/09e4151030d3de6264000000.pdf">fairness paper</a>. Students were asked, upon being given $20, whether they wanted to give an anonymous student half of their endowment or 10%. Many of the students gave half! This experiment has been repeated many, many times, with similar effects. Does this mean economists are naive to neglect the social preferences of humans? Of course not! People are endowed with money and gifts all the time. They essentially never give any of it to random strangers – I feel confident assuming you, the reader, have never been handed some bills on the sidewalk by an officeworker who just got a big bonus! Worse, the context of the experiment matters a ton (see <a href="http://home.uchicago.edu/jlist/papers/dictator_game.pdf">John List on this point</a>). Indeed, despite hundreds of lab experiments on dictator games, I feel far more confident predicting real world behavior following windfalls if we use a parsimonious homo economicus model than if we use the results of dictator games.</blockquote>
Does Kevin seriously think that <i>any </i>behaviorist believes that dictator games imply that people walk around giving away half of any gifts they receive? That makes no sense at all. In the dictator game, there's one other person - in the real world, there are effectively infinite other people. What would it even mean for a person on the street to behave analogously to a person in a dictator game? The situations aren't equivalent at all.<br />
<br />
As John List says, context matters. Wage negotiations at a company are different than family gift exchanges, which are different from financial windfalls, which are different from randomly being handed money on the street. Norms in these situations are different. If someone gives you a gift, there's probably a norm of not <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2014/12/18/pf/regifting-rules/index.html">re-gifting</a> it. If someone hands you money in a dictator game, you probably don't treat it as a personal gift. Etc.<br />
<br />
To me, this is clearly <i>not</i> a reason to assume that norms and values only matter in the lab, and that real-world people always behave perfectly selfishly. Quite the contrary. It's a reason to pay <i>more</i> attention to norms and values, not less. Why does Bill Gates <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/15/bill-gates-donates-4-6-billion-largest-pledge-since-2000.html">give away</a> so much of his money? Why do people give money to some beggars and buskers but not to others? Do these behaviors bear any similarity to how people behave when asking for (or handing out) raises in the workplace? Do they bear any similarity to the way people haggle over the price of a car or a house?<br />
<br />
These are not trivial questions to be waved away, simply because if you hand someone cash on the street they don't instantly hand half of it to the first person they see.<br />
<br />
Kevin follows this up with what seems like another bad example:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
To take one final example, consider Thaler’s famous <a href="https://5aeed477-a-62cb3a1a-s-sites.googlegroups.com/site/xiaoliangtushuguanfenguan3/gm937xing-xiao-zhuan-ti-yan-tao/Thaler1999.pdf?attachauth=ANoY7co91MrkHpuKLX9ryvtONHzuyZuUd5bdTUtkixVfVvrcK7A_PJbpPmCwq5wjGxbysbBT917g8slZf1F1ZQzNhchUPodRYH7iTlCK1IRg9R6oKzyxlcCDHE7fkiT5PAaLWW9IoDONZFt3rhZNSqehWXMuyizRitvhR1emU4NmGInTih1HjrJqNKjHiGyxm4TJj-YVG2vORAP4MbiPZ5UWZq4m85TDtYU43u_yq8CBmIDTXKgRVO58YTdciIoYSTZkv13-K7ncwHGChuoic0AdT1mCSmWq2g%3D%3D&attredirects=0">model of “mental accounting”</a>. In many experiments, he shows people have “budgets” set aside for various tasks. I have my “gas budget” and adjust my driving when gas prices change. I only sell stocks when I am up overall on that stock since I want my “mental account” of that particular transaction to be positive. But how important is this in the aggregate? Take the Engel curve. Budget shares devoted to food fall with income. This is widely established historically and in the cross section. Where is the mental account? Farber (2008 AER) even challenges the canonical account of <a href="http://econweb.umd.edu/~Lafortune/puc-readings/Farber_2008.pdf">taxi drivers</a> working just enough hours to make their targeted income. As in the dictator game and the endowment effect, there is a gap between what is real, psychologically, and what is consequential enough to be first-order in our economic understanding of the world.</blockquote>
Kevin's argument appears to be that if mental accounting only matters in some domains, it doesn't matter overall. That makes no sense to me. If mental accounting is important for investing and driving, but not for food purchases or taxi jobs, does that mean it's not important "in the aggregate"? Of course not! Gas is a substantial <a href="https://www.quicken.com/home-budget-cost-living-reality-check">monthly expense</a>. The compounded rate of return on your stock portfolio can make a huge difference to your lifetime consumption. Even if mental accounting mattered only for these two things, it would matter in the aggregate.<br />
<br />
<br />
So, Kevin's attacks on Thaler's research paradigm pretty much uniformly miss the mark. Because of this, I half suspect that Kevin - usually the most careful and incisive of bloggers - is playing devil's advocate here, taking cheap shots at behaviorism simply because it's fun. This guerrilla resistance is more like paintball.Noah Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09093917601641588575noreply@blogger.com26tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-62479010498777006092017-09-27T22:14:00.000-04:002017-09-27T22:35:34.207-04:00Handwaving on health care<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fEOMt9UZ1MI/WcxaY2KOxPI/AAAAAAAAKUs/SSGJew4d7gYJcb5cKJI_o8TWmU0UxH-xQCLcBGAs/s1600/jake.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span id="goog_753306577"></span><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="278" data-original-width="500" height="221" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fEOMt9UZ1MI/WcxaY2KOxPI/AAAAAAAAKUs/SSGJew4d7gYJcb5cKJI_o8TWmU0UxH-xQCLcBGAs/s400/jake.png" title="Bad analogy, I know. Cochrane is definitely more like LSP." width="400" /><span id="goog_753306578"></span></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="tr_bq">
There's a particular style of argument that some conservative economists use to dismiss calls for government intervention in markets:</div>
<br />
Step 1: Either assert or assume that free markets work best in general.<br />
<br />
Step 2: List the reasons why this particular market might be unusual.<br />
<br />
Step 3: Dismiss each reason with a combination of skeptical harumphing, handwaving, anecdotes, and/or informal evidence.<br />
<br />
Step 4: Conclude that this market should be free from government intervention.<br />
<br />
In <a href="http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2017/09/health-care-policy-isnt-so-hard.html?spref=tw">a recent rebuttal</a> to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/28/upshot/why-health-care-policy-is-so-hard.html">a Greg Mankiw column</a> on health care policy, John Cochrane displays this argumentation style in near-perfect form. It is a master class in harrumphing conservative prior-stating, delivered in the ancient traditional style. Young grasshoppers, take note.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/28/upshot/why-health-care-policy-is-so-hard.html">Mankiw's article</a> was basically a rundown of reasons that health care shouldn't be considered like a normal market. He covers externalities, adverse selection, incomplete information, unusually high idiosyncratic risk, and behavioral factors (overconsumption).<br />
<br />
Cochrane makes a guess at the motivation of Mankiw's column:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I suspect I know what happened. It sounded like a good column idea, "I'll just run down the econ 101 list of potential problems with health care and insurance and do my job as an economic educator."</blockquote>
That sounds about right. In fact, that actually was the reason for <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-06-01/americans-sure-seem-to-like-universal-health-care">my similar column in Bloomberg</a> a few months ago. Frankly, I think bringing readers up to speed on <a href="https://web.stanford.edu/~jay/health_class/Readings/Lecture01/arrow.pdf">Arrow's classic piece</a> on health care is a pretty <i>good</i> idea for a column. Mankiw generally did a better job than I did, although he didn't mention norms, which I think are ultimately the most important piece of the puzzle (more on that later).<br />
<br />
Anyway, Cochrane wrote <a href="http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2017/06/noahlogic.html">a pretty unfair and over-the-top response</a> to that Bloomberg post of mine, which also made a rather unintelligent pun using my first name (there's an extra syllable in there, dude!). His response to Mankiw has more meat to it and less dudgeon, but is still rather ascerbic. Cochrane writes:<br />
<blockquote>
I am surprised that Greg, usually a good free marketer, would stoop to the noblesse oblige, the cute little peasants are too dumb to know what's good for them argument... </blockquote>
<blockquote>
[I]s this a case of two year old with hammer?... </blockquote>
<blockquote>
I suspect I know what happened. It sounded like a good column idea, "I'll just run down the econ 101 list of potential problems with health care and insurance and do my job as an economic educator." If so, Greg failed his job of public intellectual... </blockquote>
<blockquote>
The last section of <a href="http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/john.cochrane/research/papers/after_aca_published.pdf">After the ACA</a> goes through all these arguments and more, and is better written. I hope blog regulars will forgive the self-promotion, but if Greg hasn't read it, perhaps some of you haven't read it either.</blockquote>
<div>
Grumpy indeed!</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So, Cochrane's post consists of him hand-waving away the notion that externalities, high idiosyncratic risk, and adverse selection might matter enough in health care markets to justify large-scale government intervention. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
To summarize Cochrane's points about externalities:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Health externalities affect only a small subset of the things that Obamacare deals with.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Lots of other markets have externalities. </li>
</ul>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
To summarize Cochane's point about high idiosyncratic risk:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>That's what insurance markets are for, duh!</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
To summarize Cochrane's points about adverse selection:<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Doctors know more about your health than you do.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Adverse selection assumes rational patients, while behavioral effects assume irrational patients.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>The government forces insurers not to charge people different prices based on their health status.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Other insurance markets, like car insurance, function without breaking down due to adverse selection.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Services to mitigate adverse selection exist in other insurance markets.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Most health expenses are predictable, and thus not subject to adverse selection. </li>
</ul>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So, to rebut these, I could go through each point one by one and do counter-hand-waving. For example:<br />
<br /></div>
</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>The idea that doctors know more about your health than you do assumes that you've already bought health care and are already receiving examinations. Prior to buying, you know your health better. </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>People can be irrational in some ways (or in some situations) and rational in others, obviously.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>The fact that the government forces insurers to pay the same price is part of the policy that's intended to mitigate adverse selection, and therefore can't be used as proof that adverse selection doesn't exist in the absence of government intervention.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Markets might have different amounts of adverse selection. For example, insurers might be able to tell that I'm a bad driver, but not that I just found a potentially cancerous lump in my testicle.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Adverse selection mitigation services are socially costly, and Carmax for health care might work much worse than Carmax for cars.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div>
...and so on.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But who would be right? It really comes down to your priors. Priors about how irrational people are. Priors about how much asymmetric information exists and how much it matters in various markets, Priors about how costly and feasible Carmax for health care would be. Priors about how reputational effects work in health care markets. Priors about how efficient government is at fixing market failures. And so on. Priors, priors, priors.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Reiteration of priors <a href="http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/what-is-derp-answer-is-technical.html">can get tiresome</a>.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Instead, here is a novel idea: We could look at the evidence. Instead of thinking a priori about how important we think adverse selection is in health care markets, we could think "Hey, some smart and careful economist or ten has probably done serious, careful empirical work on this topic!" And then we could fire up Google Scholar and look for papers, or perhaps go ask a friend who works in applied microeconomics or the economics of health care. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In <a href="http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/john.cochrane/research/papers/after_aca_published.pdf">his health care article</a>, "After the ACA", Cochrane cites a wide variety of sources, including New Yorker and Wall Street Journal and New York Times and Washington Post articles, a JAMA article and a NEJM, some law articles, a number of blog posts, a JEP article and a JEL article, some conservative think tank reports, Akerlof's "Market for Lemons" article, the comments section of his own blog, and a YouTube video entitled "If Air Travel Worked Like Health Care". (This last one is particularly funny, given that Cochrane <a href="http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2017/06/noahlogic.html">excoriated me</a> for claiming that he compared the health insurance industry to the food industry. As if he would ever imply such a thing!)</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
As silly as a couple of these sources may be, overall this is a fine list - it's good to cite and to have read a breadth of sources, especially on an issue as complex and multifaceted as health care. I certainly cannot claim to have read anywhere nearly as deeply on the subject. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But as far as I can see, Cochrane does not engage with the empirical literature on adverse selection in health insurance markets. He may have read it, but he does not cite it or engage with it in this blog post, or in his his "After the ACA" piece, or anywhere I can find.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This is a shame, because when he bothers to read the literature, Cochrane is quite formidable. When he engaged with Robert Shiller's evidence on <a href="http://www.nber.org/papers/w16972">excess volatility in financial markets</a>, and when he engaged with <a href="http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/john.cochrane/research/papers/NK_slides.pdf">New Keynesian theory</a>, Cochrane taught us new and interesting things about both of these issues. In both of these cases, Cochrane approached the issue from a perspective of free-market orthodoxy, and advanced the free-market (or efficient-market) case like a lawyer. But in both cases, he did so in a brilliant way that respected his opponents' arguments and evidence, and ultimately yielded new insight. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But in the case of adverse selection in health insurance, Cochrane does not engage with the literature. And although I haven't read much of that literature, I know it exists, because I've read <a href="https://sites.hks.harvard.edu/fs/rzeckhau/CZ2000.pdf">this 2000 literature review</a> by David Cutler and Richard Zeckhauser. Starting on page 606, Cutler and Zeckhauser first present the basic theory of adverse selection, and then proceed to discuss a large number of studies that use a large and diverse array of techniques to measure the presence of adverse selection in health insurance. They write:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
A substantial literature has examined adverse selection in insurance markets. Table 9 summarizes this literature, breaking selection into three categories: traditional insurance versus managed care; overall levels of insurance coverage; and high versus low option coverage. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Most empirical work on adverse selection involves data from employers who allow choices of different health insurance plans of varying generosity; a minority of studies look at the Medicare market, where choices are also given. Within these contexts, adverse selection can be quantified in a variety of fashions. Some authors report the difference in premiums or claims generated by adverse selection after controlling for other relevant factors [for example, Price and Mays (1985). Brown at al. (1993)]. Other papers examine the likelihood of enrollment in a generous plan conditional on expected health status [for example, Cutler and Reber (1998)]. A third group measure the predominance of known risk factors among enrollees of more generous health plans compared to those in less generous plans [for example, Ellis (1989)]. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Regardless of the exact measurement strategy, however, the data nearly uniformly suggest that adverse selection is quantitatively large. Adverse selection is present in the choice between fee-for-service and managed care plans (8 out of 12 studies, with 2 findings of favorable selection and 3 studies ambiguous), in the choice between being insured and being uninsured (3 out of 4 studies, with 1 ambiguous finding), and in the choice between high-option and low-option plans within a given type (14 out of 14 studies). </blockquote>
<div>
They proceed to list the studies in a table, along with brief summaries of the methods and the results.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Have I read any of these studies? In fact, I have read only one of them - <a href="http://www.nber.org/chapters/c9822.pdf">a 1998 study of some government and university employees</a>, also by Cutler and Zeckhauser. They document a market breakdown - the disappearance of high-coverage health plans. And they present evidence that this breakdown was due to the so-called "adverse selection death spiral", in which healthy people leave high-coverage plans until the plans can no longer be offered. And they show that a similar thing was starting to happen to the Group Insurance Commission of Massachussetts, before major reforms were made to the system that prevented the death spiral. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So there is some evidence that adverse selection not only exists and creates costs in (at least some!) health insurance markets, but is so severe that it can cause market breakdown of the classic Akerlofian type. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
If I were setting out to dismiss the possibility of this sort of major adverse selection, I would read a number of these papers, or at least skim their results. I would also look for more recent work on the subject. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I would also read the literature on adverse selection in other insurance markets, to see whether there's a noticeable difference between types of insurance. I'd read <a href="http://economics.sas.upenn.edu/~hfang/teaching/socialinsurance/readings/fudan_hsbc/Chiappori_Salanie00(2.7).pdf">this Chiappori and Salanie paper</a> on auto insurance, for example (which I had to study in grad school), which finds no evidence of adverse selection in car insurance. That would make me think "Hmm, maybe car insurance and health insurance are two very different markets."</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I am not setting out to dismiss adverse selection, however. Nor am I setting out to claim that it's a big enough problem that it requires major government regulation of the health insurance market. Nor am I claiming that Obamacare passes a cost-benefit test as a remedy for adverse selection. In fact, I don't even think that adverse selection is the main reason we regulate health care! I think it's kind of a sideshow - an annoyance that we have to deal with, but not the central issue. I think the central issue of health care regulation is just a social norm - the widespread belief that everyone ought to have health care, and that the cost of health care ought to depend only on your ability to pay. Those norms, I believe, are why people <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-06-01/americans-sure-seem-to-like-universal-health-care">embrace universal health care</a>, and why they are now coming to embrace the radical solution of <a href="https://www.salon.com/2017/09/22/majority-of-americans-support-single-payer-poll/">single-payer health care</a>.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But that's just me. Cochrane thinks adverse selection is the big issue, so he goes after it, but without standing on the shoulders of the giants who have investigated the matter before. Instead, he waves the problem away. Unlike me, who am but a lowly journalist, Cochrane is a celebrated professional economist. He has done much better in the past, and he could do better now if he chose.</div>
Noah Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09093917601641588575noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-91212834359372025552017-09-23T15:04:00.002-04:002017-09-23T18:47:16.408-04:00Speech on campus: A reply to Brad DeLong<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-EeZvw2jgl6o/WcaxB7Ax4EI/AAAAAAAAKUI/TXywZLyPi0k4pE1xop2zSGUqYMQsfQlDACLcBGAs/s1600/evergreen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="493" data-original-width="876" height="225" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-EeZvw2jgl6o/WcaxB7Ax4EI/AAAAAAAAKUI/TXywZLyPi0k4pE1xop2zSGUqYMQsfQlDACLcBGAs/s400/evergreen.jpg" title="From the new TV adaptation of Three Body Problem" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
On Twitter, I wrote that I disagreed with <a href="http://www.bradford-delong.com/2017/09/any-community-flourishes-only-when-our-members-feel-welcome-and-safe.html">Brad's ideas about speech on college campuses</a>. Brad <a href="https://twitter.com/delong/status/911305377727225857">then requested</a> that I write my ideas up in the form of a DeLong Smackdown. So here we go.<br />
<br />
Brad's post was written in a particular context - the recent battles over <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/09/15/9-arrested-in-berkeley-protests-relating-to-speech-by-conservative-ben-shapiro.html">right-wing speakers</a> at Berkeley. More generally, the alt-right has been trying to <a href="http://www.npr.org/2017/09/22/552427627/why-a-potential-free-speech-week-at-berkeley-is-causing-a-stir">provoke conflict</a> at Berkeley, seeing an opportunity to gain nationwide sympathy. The murder of <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/13/us/charlottesville-heather-heyer-profile/index.html">Heather Heyer</a> by Nazis, and general white supremacist street violence, has turned the national mood against the alt-right. The alt-righters see (correctly) that the only way to recover rough parity is the "both sides" defense - in other words, to get people so worried about left-wing street violence that they equivocate between left and right. To this end, they are trying to stir up the most obvious source of potential leftist street violence: Berkeley. Brad, who works at Berkeley, is far closer to the action, and knows far more about the details on the ground than I do. For example, he noticed this flyer:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qY5tHWCk7rg/Wcaaz8pRYzI/AAAAAAAAKTs/X8E8BCyDWj4KwsAYokxMpOIuoMOqgGijQCLcBGAs/s1600/flyer.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="649" data-original-width="527" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qY5tHWCk7rg/Wcaaz8pRYzI/AAAAAAAAKTs/X8E8BCyDWj4KwsAYokxMpOIuoMOqgGijQCLcBGAs/s400/flyer.png" title="In real life, Judith Butler is blonde." width="323" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
I am naturally coming at this from an outside perspective. Thus, my discussion will be more general than Brad's. That will naturally involve some degree of us talking past each other - I'll be thinking of things like <a href="https://www.thecollegefix.com/post/22839/">campus speech codes</a>, <a href="https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21728688-reed-college-oregon-shows-left-v-left-clashes-can-be-equally-vitriolic-arguments">aggressive protests</a><span id="goog_1531303374"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a><span id="goog_1531303375"></span> against lefty professors by even more lefty students, etc. Thus, my arguments will not directly contradict Brad's.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
But I believe there is something to be gained from this more general perspective. Brad, in writing his response to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/09/19/us/formacist-ucberkeley-callout.html?_r=0">the New York Times' questions</a> about free speech, seems to be starting with the particular example of alt-right "free speech" trolling, and generalizing from there. But generalizing from concrete examples can be dangerous, since the set of available examples is quite diverse. There is simply much more going on on college campuses in this country than the antics of the alt-right provocateurs at Berkeley. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Anyway, on to Brad's post. <a href="http://www.bradford-delong.com/2017/09/any-community-flourishes-only-when-our-members-feel-welcome-and-safe.html">Brad writes</a> that universities should restrict speech whose intent <i>and/or</i> effect is to harm the discussion of useful ideas and/or drive people away from the university:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="clear: both;">
A university has three goals:<br />
<ul>
<li>A university is a safe space where ideas can be set forth and developed.</li>
<li>A university is a safe space where ideas can be evaluated and assessed.</li>
<li>A university is a safe space where young scholars can develop, and gain intelligence and confidence.</li>
</ul>
Speech whose primary goal is to undermine and defeat one or more of those three goals does not belong on a university campus. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="clear: both;">
If you come to Berkeley, and if your speech is primarily intended to—or even, through your failure to think through what you are doing, has the primary effect of (1) keeping us from developing ideas that may be great ones, (2) keeping us from properly evaluating and assessing ideas, or (3) driving members of the university away, your speech does not belong here.</blockquote>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
At first glance, this seems reasonable. We all know that some people use speech as a weapon to shut down discussion or to hurt people - the aforementioned alt-right provocateurs are the paradigmatic example of this. More generally, we have all seen in the past three or four years how one very specific small group of people - the alt-right - has poisoned Twitter to the degree where it is less and less useful and fun for the vast majority of users, and has attempted to do the same to Facebook, Reddit, and YouTube.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
There are very good reasons not to let a tiny group of bad people piss in the pool of free speech.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
But the danger is that safeguards put in place to exclude this small minority of pool-pissers will wind up - to extend the metaphor - over-chlorinating the pool. The perfect example of this is the War on Terror. One guy tries (unsuccessfully) to hide a bomb in his shoe, and the next day we're stuck going through the bullshit security theater of shoe removal for all eternity. The danger of administrative overreaction should never be ignored.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
One thing I notice about Brad's criteria for which kinds of campus speech should be administratively banned is that they are incredibly vague. For example, take the question of which ideas "may be great ones". What does "great" mean? The notion of what constitutes "proper" evaluation of ideas is also extremely vague. What does "proper" mean? </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
In practice, these criteria are impossible to implement effectively without the personal judgment of a small and relatively self-consistent group of judges. For government speech restrictions, we rely on the judgment of federal and state judges and the Supreme Court to tell us what constitutes Constitutionally protected speech. Law is necessarily a subjective exercise, but it is a <i>systematic</i> subjectivity. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
But at the university level, the judges can be literally anyone on campus - administrators, faculty, and students. At different universities there will be different sets of judges, with different opinions. Unlike the world of U.S. law, where precedents are systematically logged and there is a huge well-trained legal profession dedicated to harmonizing standards and ideas and judgment across locations and situations, universities are a slapdash, haphazard patchwork of ad-hoc decision-making bodies. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
Thus, the standards Brad sets out are, in terms of actual content regarding the speech that is to be prohibited, effectively vacuous. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
But they are <i>not</i> vacuous statements <i>overall</i> - they connote a general endorsement of tighter speech restrictions than currently exist at most universities (or at least, at Berkeley). And that amounts to a directive to America's (or Berkeley's) entire vast, uncoordinated, untrained patchwork of campus stakeholders to go out and make a greater attempt to limit speech that they think is counterproductive. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
The effect of this advice, I predict, if widely heeded, will mainly be chaos. Given the lack of communication, coordination, shared values, training, and clearly recorded precedent among the various arms of the ad-hoc campus speech police, students and faculty at campuses across America will have little idea of what constitutes acceptable speech. In some situations, <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/steven-salaita-professor-fired-for-uncivil-tweets-vindicated-in-federal-court/">pro-Palestinian speech</a> might be grounds for firing; in others, <a href="http://www.jta.org/2017/09/20/news-opinion/united-states/university-of-maryland-professor-says-she-was-fired-for-being-pro-israel">pro-Israel speech</a>. At some universities we will see <a href="https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21728688-reed-college-oregon-shows-left-v-left-clashes-can-be-equally-vitriolic-arguments">queer, mixed-race leftist professors berated to tears</a> for wearing T-shirts saying "Poetry is lit". At other universities we will see <a href="https://www.thecollegefix.com/post/22839/">faculty instructed</a> not to ask students where they are from. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
In addition to the chaos of opinion regarding what constitutes counterproductive speech, there is the chaos of enforcement. The U.S. legal system has clear rules for how the law gets enforced - even though many police break those rules, it is<i> much</i> better to have the rules, and to identify who constitutes the police, than to rely on an ad-hoc patchwork of posses, lynch mobs, and other self-organized local militias to enforce the law.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
On campus, the enforcement of local opinions about what constitutes counterproductive speech has become hopelessly patchwork. In some cases, professors and/or students are fired or disciplined by administrators. In other cases, faculty discipline students who say inappropriate things in class. In yet other cases, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/16/us/evergreen-state-protests.html?mcubz=3">student protesters</a> act as ad hoc militias, sometimes with the blessing of administrators and/or faculty, to enforce speech norms against professors. It's a jungle out there already. And calling for more speech restriction will only increase the demand for enforcement, making the jungle yet more chaotic. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
The chaos on U.S. campuses has been <a href="https://twitter.com/tombschrader/status/898372486798204928">likened jokingly</a><span id="goog_2021173250"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a><span id="goog_2021173251"></span> to China's <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution">Cultural Revolution</a>. The comparison is obviously a joke - the Cultural Revolution mobilized millions of people, killed millions, and persecuted tens of millions, while the U.S. campus chaos has so far amounted to the firing of a few unlucky but (probably) financially secure academics and some (mostly) peaceful protests by a few thousand (mostly) spoiled upper-middle-class kids. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
But there is one clear parallel: the chaos. The Cultural Revolution was begun by Mao, who called for a general uprising to purge capitalist and reactionary elements from Chinese society. But because Mao by then had been stripped of most official power, and because Chinese institutions were weak, there was no real state apparatus to systematically prosecute Mao's goal. Instead, the task fell to self-organized militias across the country. Each militia had its own idea of what constituted true communism, and of what was required to achieve it. As a result, the militias did a bunch of crazy stuff, and even fought each other, and ultimately did nothing except to prolong China's century of suffering for another dozen years or so. (Eventually, the army cracked down and restored order.)</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NWXbBjsTsik/WcawGCJ-8gI/AAAAAAAAKUA/3-T3pBCn8KYSF1TDgzm6Gy-_3gOcDXVqACLcBGAs/s1600/cultural%2Brevolution.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="1055" data-original-width="1600" height="263" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NWXbBjsTsik/WcawGCJ-8gI/AAAAAAAAKUA/3-T3pBCn8KYSF1TDgzm6Gy-_3gOcDXVqACLcBGAs/s400/cultural%2Brevolution.jpg" title="He was probably a neoliberal who wrote in support of NAFTA" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
The lesson here is that forceful calls for vague revolutions have predictably chaotic consequences. Broadcasting the idea that there is lots of problematic speech on campuses that needs to be forcibly expunged, but offering neither a useful criterion for identifying such speech nor a useful method of punishing it, is a recipe for silliness, wasted effort, and general stress. That would be undesirable at any time, but a time when genuinely bad and threatening things are happening at the level of national politics, it seems like even more of an unneeded distraction. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
So what about the particular case of the alt-right and their Berkeley-poking? It seems clear to me that university administrators should stop provocateurs like Milo Yiannopolous from giving speeches intended mainly to provoke violent reactions. But this sort of provocation seems genuinely rare. Usually, when right-wing people give campus speeches, it's because they really believe in right-wing ideas. As much as Brad or I might disagree with those ideas, it seems counterproductive to ban them. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
In fact, it seems counterproductive to ban right-wing ideas from campus<i> even if</i> right-wing ideas are totally and completely wrong! The reason is that kids need something to argue and fight against. Like grouchy econ bloggers, college kids shape and refine their ideas through argumentation. Without John Cochrane tossing out terrible ideas about fiscal stimulus and health care, Brad and I would <a href="http://v/">waste our mental effort in byzantine disputes</a> with other left-leaning econobloggers over stuff like Verdoorn's Law. Similarly, without right-wing stuff to argue against, lefty college kids will turn their contentious intellectual passions against <a href="https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21728688-reed-college-oregon-shows-left-v-left-clashes-can-be-equally-vitriolic-arguments">their left-wing professors</a>. Given that right-wing ideas are still powerful outside of the university, I would rather not see America's premier source of left-wing energy and intelligence and ideas spend its fury devouring itself from within. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
So I believe that the proper approach to campus speech is a relatively hands-off one - to treat on-campus speech approximately like we treat off-campus speech. There will be some differences, of course - college kids live on campus, so there will need to be stronger protections against physical intimidation and threat. But in general, I believe that there should be no substantial increase in limitations of speech on American campuses. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
Attempted DeLong Smackdown complete.</div>
Noah Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09093917601641588575noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-2936746073180317172017-09-21T23:04:00.001-04:002020-02-07T16:12:27.118-05:00What we didn't get<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZCQiECI6RSc/WcR9xVCTKfI/AAAAAAAAKTM/85ZzMTFDY_Un7E2RIuJ8rqM3xuM8zi2OgCLcBGAs/s1600/gernsback.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="669" data-original-width="1600" height="166" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZCQiECI6RSc/WcR9xVCTKfI/AAAAAAAAKTM/85ZzMTFDY_Un7E2RIuJ8rqM3xuM8zi2OgCLcBGAs/s400/gernsback.jpeg" title="Everyone's white, so you know this is retrofuturist" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
I recently wrote <a href="https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/910591858081800192">a fairly well-received Twitter thread</a> about how the cyberpunk sci-fi of the 1980s and early 1990s accurately predicted a lot about our current world. Our modern society is totally wired and connected, but also totally unequal - "the future is here, it's just not evenly distributed", as Gibson was fond of saying. Hackers, cyberwarfare, and online psyops are a regular part of our political and economic life. Billionaires build spaceships and collaborate with the government to spy on the populace, while working-class people live out of shipping crates and drink poison water. Hobbyists are into body modifications and genetic engineering, while labs are researching artificial body parts and brain-computer interfaces. The jetpack is real, but there's only one of it, and it's owned by a rich guy. Artificial intelligences trade stocks and can beat humans at Go, deaf people can hear, libertarians and criminals funnel billions of dollars around the world with untraceable private crypto-money. A meme virus almost as crazy as the one in Snow Crash swept an insane man to the presidency of the United States, and in Texas you can carry a sword on the street like a street samurai in Neuromancer. There are even artificial pop stars and murderous cyborg super-athletes.<br />
<br />
We are, roughly, living in the world the cyberpunks envisioned.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-j4UwlEK6oqI/WcR8F0OvrGI/AAAAAAAAKS0/a6ub5qMu-O0hvEcCcPJvQia44I2lKp3RwCLcBGAs/s1600/cyberpunk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1305" height="245" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-j4UwlEK6oqI/WcR8F0OvrGI/AAAAAAAAKS0/a6ub5qMu-O0hvEcCcPJvQia44I2lKp3RwCLcBGAs/s400/cyberpunk.jpg" title="The cyberpunk era was a lot less "gritty urban street combat" and a lot more "chubby suburban gamer"" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
This isn't the first time a generation of science fiction writers has managed to envision the future with disturbing accuracy. The early industrial age saw sci-fi writers predict many inventions that would eventually become reality, from air and space travel to submarines, tanks, television, helicopters, videoconferencing, X-rays, radar, robots, and even the atom bomb. There were quite a few misses, as well - no one is going back in time or journeying to the center of the Earth. But overall, early industrial sci-fi writers got the later Industrial Revolution pretty right. And their social predictions were pretty accurate, too - they anticipated consumer societies and high-tech large-scale warfare.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-08fDmmYBcJk/WcR7sdD7n9I/AAAAAAAAKSw/hLmHpxwLL-8_0pA7HNc-rFiBe9Ojk4cDQCLcBGAs/s1600/land%2Bironclads.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="395" data-original-width="571" height="276" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-08fDmmYBcJk/WcR7sdD7n9I/AAAAAAAAKSw/hLmHpxwLL-8_0pA7HNc-rFiBe9Ojk4cDQCLcBGAs/s400/land%2Bironclads.jpg" title="Read "The Land Ironclads". Read it now. It is the best." width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
But there have also been eras of sci-fi that mostly got it wrong. Most famously, the mid-20th century was full of visions of starships, interplanetary exploration and colonization, android servitors and flying cars, planet-busting laser cannons, energy too cheap to meter. So far we don't have any of that. As Peter Thiel - one of our modern cyberpunk arch-villains - so memorably put it, "We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters."<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YhhbjuTiJuo/WcR8cGw4PvI/AAAAAAAAKS4/2UhXmSVeHdkN2FS1pzP6KBZCAWO5NTMLACLcBGAs/s1600/space%2Bopera.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="560" data-original-width="1178" height="190" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YhhbjuTiJuo/WcR8cGw4PvI/AAAAAAAAKS4/2UhXmSVeHdkN2FS1pzP6KBZCAWO5NTMLACLcBGAs/s400/space%2Bopera.jpg" title="Another question: WHY would we ever bother building all this stuff???" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
What happened? Why did mid-20th-century sci fi whiff so badly? Why didn't we get the Star Trek future, or the Jetsons future, or the Asimov future?<br />
<br />
Two things happened. First, we ran out of theoretical physics. Second, we ran out of energy.<br />
<br />
If you watch Star Trek or Star Wars, or read any of the innumerable space operas of the mid-20th century, they all depend on a bunch of fancy physics. Faster-than-light travel, artificial gravity, force fields of various kinds. In 1960, that sort of prediction might have made sense. Humanity had just experienced one of the most amazing sequences of physics advancements ever. In the space of a few short decades, humankind discovered relativity and quantum mechanics, invented the nuclear bomb and nuclear power, and created the x-ray, the laser, superconductors, radar and the space program. The early 20th century was really a physics bonanza, driven in large part by advances in fundamental theory. And in the 1950s and 1960s, those advances still seemed to be going strong, with the development of quantum field theories.<br />
<br />
Then it all came to a halt. After the Standard Model was completed in the 1970s, there were no big breakthroughs in fundamental physics. There was a brief <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/07/science/string-theory-at-20-explains-it-all-or-not.html?mcubz=3">period of excitement</a> in the 80s and 90s, when it seemed like string theory was going to unify quantum mechanics and gravity, and propel us into a new era to match the time of Einstein and Bohr and Dirac. But by the 2000s, people were writing <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Trouble-Physics-String-Theory-Science/dp/061891868X">pop</a> <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Not-Even-Wrong-Failure-Physical/dp/0465092764">books</a> about how string theory has failed. Meanwhile, the largest, most expensive particle collider ever built has <a href="http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-lhc-nightmare-scenario-has-come-true.html">merely confirmed</a> the theories of the 1970s, leaving little direction for where to go next. Physicists have certainly invented some more cool stuff (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_teleportation">quantum teleporation</a>! <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computing">quantum computers</a>!), but there have been no theoretical breakthroughs that would allow us to cruise from star to star or harness the force of gravity.<br />
<br />
The second thing that happened was that we stopped getting better sources of energy. Here is a brief, roughly chronological <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density">list of energy sources</a> harnessed by humankind, with their specific energies (usable potential energy per unit mass) listed in units of MJ/kg. Remember that more specific energy (or, alternatively, more energy density) means more energy that you can carry around in your pocket, your car, or your spaceship.<br />
<br />
Protein: 16.8<br />
<br />
Sugars: 17.0<br />
<br />
Fat: 37<br />
<br />
Wood: 16.2<br />
<br />
Gunpowder: 3.0<br />
<br />
Coal: 24.0 - 35.0<br />
<br />
TNT: 4.6<br />
<br />
Diesel: 48<br />
<br />
Kerosene: 42.8<br />
<br />
Gasoline: 46.4<br />
<br />
Methane: 55.5<br />
<br />
Uranium: 80,620,000<br />
<br />
Deuterium: 579,000,000<br />
<br />
Lithium-ion battery: 0.36 - 0.875<br />
<br />
This doesn't tell the whole story, of course, since availability and recoverability are key - to get the energy of protein, you have to kill a deer and eat it, or grow some soybeans, while deposits of coal, gas, and uranium can be dug up out of the ground. Transportability is also important (natural gas is hard to carry around in a car).<br />
<br />
But this sequence does show one basic fact: In the industrial age, we got better at carrying energy around with us. And then, at the dawn of the nuclear age, it looked like we were about to get MUCH better at carrying energy around with us. One kilogram of uranium has almost <i>two million times</i> as much energy in it as a kilogram of gasoline. If you could carry that around in a pocket battery, you really might be able to blow up buildings with a handheld laser gun. If you could put that in a spaceship, you might be able to zip to other planets in a couple of days. If you could put that in a car, you can bet that car would fly. You could probably even use it to make a <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/7487740/Star-Trek-style-force-field-armour-being-developed-by-military-scientists.html">deflector shield</a>.<br />
<br />
But you can't carry uranium around in your pocket or your car, because it's too dangerous. First of all, if there were enough uranium to go critical, you'd have a nuclear weapon in your garage. Second, uranium is a horrible deadly poison that can wreak havoc on the environment. No one is going to let you have that. (Incidentally, this is also probably why you don't have a flying car yet - it has too much energy. The people who decide whether to allow flying cars realize that some people would choose to crash those high-energy objects into buildings. Regular cars are dangerous enough!)<br />
<br />
Now, you can put uranium <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_marine_propulsion">on your submarine</a>. And you can <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)">put it in your spaceship</a>, though actually channeling the power into propulsion is still a problem that needs some work. But overall, the toxicity of uranium, and the ease with which fission turns into a meltdown, has prevented widespread application of nuclear power. That also holds to some degree for nuclear electricity.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-r3rWJDrzUG0/WcR89zg_lEI/AAAAAAAAKTA/pQ3MnkgVZ3s5i7lxVJ6RncKX2IwS15pwACLcBGAs/s1600/chernobyl.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="960" height="266" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-r3rWJDrzUG0/WcR89zg_lEI/AAAAAAAAKTA/pQ3MnkgVZ3s5i7lxVJ6RncKX2IwS15pwACLcBGAs/s400/chernobyl.jpg" title="I'm sure the Breakthrough Institute has good reasons why we should all move to Chernobyl" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
As for fusion power, we never managed to invent that, except for bombs.<br />
<br />
So the reason we didn't get the 1960s sci-fi future was twofold. A large part of it was apparently impossible (FTL travel, artificial gravity). And a lot of the stuff that was possible, but relied on very high energy density fuels, was too unsafe for general use. We might still get our androids, and someday in the very far future we might have nuclear-powered spaceships whisking us to Mars or Europa or zero-G habitats somewhere. But you can't have your flying car or your pocket laser cannon, because frankly, you're probably just too much of a jerk to use them responsibly.<br />
<br />
So that brings us to another question: What about the most recent era of science fiction? Starting in the mid to late 1990s, until maybe around 2010, sci-fi once again embraced some very far-out future stuff. Typical elements (some of which, to be fair, had been occasionally included in the earlier cyberpunk canon) included:<br />
<br />
1. Strong (self-improving) AI, artificial general intelligence, and artificial consciousness<br />
<br />
2. Personality upload<br />
<br />
3. Self-replicating nanotech and general assemblers<br />
<br />
4. A technological Singularity<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ctyu2soj5GQ/WcR9d7fp6GI/AAAAAAAAKTI/bjwvs7Y0Q7gLy4gj_2CL9XLWlFUmC0ehgCLcBGAs/s1600/matrix.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="375" data-original-width="620" height="241" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ctyu2soj5GQ/WcR9d7fp6GI/AAAAAAAAKTI/bjwvs7Y0Q7gLy4gj_2CL9XLWlFUmC0ehgCLcBGAs/s400/matrix.jpg" title="Why were the bullets spread out in a cloud like this??? Are the AIs really such bad shots *in a simulation they wrote*???" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
These haven't happened yet, but it's only been a couple of decades since this sort of futurism became popular. Will we eventually get these things?<br />
<br />
Unlike faster-than-light travel and artificial gravity, we have no theory telling us that we <i>can't</i> have strong AI or a Singularity or personality upload. (Well, <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/s/511421/the-brain-is-not-computable/">some people have conjectures</a> as to <a href="http://www.overcomingbias.com/2017/09/tegmarks-book-of-foom.html">reasons we couldn't</a>, but these aren't solidly proven theories like General Relativity.) But we also don't really have any idea how to start making these things. What we call AI isn't yet a general intelligence, and we have no idea if <i>any</i> general intelligence can be self-improving (or would want to be!). Personality upload requires an understanding of the brain we just don't have. We're <a href="https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/09/claim-of-molecular-bot-that-can-build-other-molecules.html">inching closer</a> to true nanotech, but it still seems far off.<br />
<br />
So there's a possibility that the starry-eyed Singularitan sci-fi of the 00s will simply never come to pass. Like the future of starships and phasers, it might become a sort of pop retrofuture - fodder for fun Hollywood movies, but no longer the kind of thing anyone thinks will really happen. Meanwhile, technological progress might move on in another direction - biotech? - and another savvy generation of Jules Vernes and William Gibsons might emerge to predict where that goes.<br />
<br />
Which raises a final question: Is sci-fi least accurate when technological progress is fastest?<br />
<br />
Think about it: The biggest sci-fi miss of all time came at the peak of progress, right around World War 2. If the Singularitan sci-fi boom turns out to have also been a whiff, it'll line up pretty nicely with the <a href="http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/Econ_Articles/macro_annual/delong_macro_annual_05.pdf">productivity acceleration</a> of the 1990s and 00s. Maybe when a certain kind of technology - energy-intensive transportation and weapons technology, or processing-intensive computing technology - is increasing spectacularly quickly, sci-fi authors get caught up in the rush of that trend, and project it out to infinity and beyond. But maybe it's the authors at the very <i>beginning</i> of a tech boom, before progress in a particular area really kicks into high gear, who are able to see more clearly where the boom will take us. (Of course, demonstrating that empirically would involve controlling for the obvious <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias">survivorship bias</a>).<br />
<br />
We'll never know. Nor is this important in any way that I can tell, except for sci-fi fans. But it's certainly fun to think about.Noah Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09093917601641588575noreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-74444886374970104372017-09-21T01:51:00.002-04:002017-09-23T11:37:57.653-04:00The margin of stupid<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Q4EVzVQH_JQ/WcNTLl8IJII/AAAAAAAAKSQ/MOBuMbz3_zMpdt691H3dOXMglfwgNaKJQCLcBGAs/s1600/stupid.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="540" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Q4EVzVQH_JQ/WcNTLl8IJII/AAAAAAAAKSQ/MOBuMbz3_zMpdt691H3dOXMglfwgNaKJQCLcBGAs/s320/stupid.jpg" title="Model: Tony Yates, formerly of the Bank of England. Photo by Noah Smith. " width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
Every so often, I see a news story or tweet hyping the fact that a modest but non-negligible percent of Americans said some crazy or horrible thing in a survey. Here are two examples:<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
1. "<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-chilling-study-shows-how-hostile-college-students-are-toward-free-speech/2017/09/18/cbb1a234-9ca8-11e7-9083-fbfddf6804c2_story.html?tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.f4ca471342a9">A chilling study shows how hostile college students are toward free speech</a>"</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The most chilling findings, however, involved how students think repugnant speech should be dealt with...It gets even worse. Respondents were also asked if it would be acceptable for a student group to use violence to prevent that same controversial speaker from talking. Here, 19 percent said yes. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-buvmuHB8cMA/WcNJZRL6d0I/AAAAAAAAKR0/UjAFnd8G3jwXC4XlxF5J2xwH22xrhG-hQCLcBGAs/s1600/quote.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1505" data-original-width="1484" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-buvmuHB8cMA/WcNJZRL6d0I/AAAAAAAAKR0/UjAFnd8G3jwXC4XlxF5J2xwH22xrhG-hQCLcBGAs/s400/quote.png" width="393" /></a></blockquote>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Update: It turns out this particular survey was a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/22/college-free-speech-violence-survey-junk-science">badly designed piece of crap</a>. I'm not particularly surprised...</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
2. "<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/04/07/white-millennials-are-just-about-as-racist-as-their-parents/?utm_term=.1b93c9a3ead6">Millennials are just about as racist as their parents</a>"</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Racial slurs that have cropped up chants, e-mails and white boards on America's college campuses have some people worried about whether the nation's diverse and fawned-over millennial generation is not as racially tolerant as might be expected. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-i770RM1RlNQ/WcNKoi3m0NI/AAAAAAAAKR8/55zf_DcZvRAP4PJXiJPcZgPpcL294wfLwCLcBGAs/s1600/quote.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="424" data-original-width="659" height="256" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-i770RM1RlNQ/WcNKoi3m0NI/AAAAAAAAKR8/55zf_DcZvRAP4PJXiJPcZgPpcL294wfLwCLcBGAs/s400/quote.png" width="400" /></a><br />
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ozSafGT83RY/WcNKzcWx5TI/AAAAAAAAKSA/HwKft9DGcyMR7HAYYLYUhOCM6OAIBJX2ACLcBGAs/s1600/quote.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="423" data-original-width="655" height="257" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ozSafGT83RY/WcNKzcWx5TI/AAAAAAAAKSA/HwKft9DGcyMR7HAYYLYUhOCM6OAIBJX2ACLcBGAs/s400/quote.png" width="400" /></a></blockquote>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
So, from these two examples -- both of them in the Washington Post -- I'm supposed to believe that Millennials are a bunch of unreconstructed racists, except for the ones who go to college, who are a pack of intolerant leftists. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
It seems to me like there's something inherently suspicious about judging a group of people based on sentiments expressed by only 15 or 20 percent of those people. But beyond that, there's another problem here - the problem of whether we can really trust these surveys. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Surveys give a false sense of precision, by reporting a "margin of error" (confidence interval). But that confidence interval comes purely from the fact that the sample is finite. It does not capture systematic error, like selection bias (Are the people who answer this survey representative of the population being sampled?). And it <i>definitely</i> doesn't capture the errors people themselves make when responding to surveys.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
When I did happiness survey research with Miles Kimball, there was always the nagging question of whether people are really able to know how happy they are. Of course, the whole question of what "happiness" should mean is a difficult one, but presumably there are some neurochemical tests you could do to determine how good someone feels, at least relative to how they felt in the past. How well do survey responses reflect this "true" emotion? Do people in different countries have cultural pressures that make them respond differently? Do Americans feel the need to say they're happy all the time, while British people would be ashamed to admit happiness? And are people measuring their happiness relative to yesterday, or to their youth, or to how happy they think they ought to be?</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
These errors were things that we lumped into something we called "response style" (psychologists call it <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Response_bias">response bias</a>). It's very very hard to observe response style. But I'd say we can make a pretty good guess that Americans - and possibly everyone - do a lot of random responding when it comes to these sorts of surveys.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
For example, <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/02/14/277058739/1-in-4-americans-think-the-sun-goes-around-the-earth-survey-says">a 2014 survey reported</a> that 26 percent of Americans said that the sun goes around the Earth. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Now, maybe there are a bunch of pre-Copernican geocentrists out there in America (there certainly are <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/09/flat-earth-truthers/499322/">the flat-earthers</a>!). Or maybe people just don't think very hard about how they answer these questions. Maybe some people are confused by the questions. Maybe some are trolling. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Whatever the cause, it seems like you can get 20 to 25 percent of Americans to say any ridiculous thing imaginable. "Do you think eating raccoon poop reduces the risk of brain cancer?" "23 percent of Americans say yes!" "Would you be willing to cut your toes off with a rotary saw if it meant your neighbor had to do the same?" "17 percent of Americans say they would!" Etc.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
You can also see this just from looking at some of the crosstabs in the first survey above. 20 percent of Democrats and 22% of Republicans say it's OK to use violence to shut down speakers you don't like. This sounds kind of nuts, given the panic on the right over <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/03/middlebury-free-speech-violence/518667/">lefty violence against campus speakers</a>. Why would Republicans even more likely than Democrats to condone this sort of violence? It makes no sense at all...unless you can get ~20 percent of Americans to say pretty much any ridiculous thing on a survey. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
I call this the margin of stupid. Unlike the margin of error, it's not even a roughly symmetric error -- because you can't have less than 0% of people give a certain answer on a survey, the margin of stupid always biases surveys toward showing some non-negligible amount of support for any crazy or stupid or horrible position. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Whenever you read a survey like this, you must take the margin of stupid into account. Yes, there are Americans who believe crazy, stupid, and horrible things. But dammit, there aren't <i>that</i> many. Next time you see some poll breathlessly claiming that 21 percent of Americans support executing anyone whose name starts with "G", or that 18 percent of Millennials believe themselves to be the reincarnation of Kublai Khan, take it with a grain of salt. It's a lot easier to give a stupid answer on a survey than to actually truly hold a nuts belief.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Sadly, the margin of stupid also probably applies to voting.</div>
Noah Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09093917601641588575noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-9228443629452759712017-09-10T14:31:00.002-04:002017-09-10T14:31:49.890-04:00a16z podcast on trade<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6_EPLQhdy2s/WbWE91B0KtI/AAAAAAAAKRI/I8K_vraMXps6FiRPHIhCKDTVjw2XUXVTwCLcBGAs/s1600/robots.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="427" data-original-width="640" height="266" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6_EPLQhdy2s/WbWE91B0KtI/AAAAAAAAKRI/I8K_vraMXps6FiRPHIhCKDTVjw2XUXVTwCLcBGAs/s400/robots.jpg" title="Not as sexy as the ones in Battlestar Galactica..." width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
I recently had the pleasure of <a href="https://a16z.com/2017/09/08/trade-tech-jobs/">appearing on the a16z podcast</a> (a16z stands for Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital firm). The topic was free trade, and the other guest was Russ Roberts of EconTalk.<br />
<br />
Russ is known for making the <a href="https://medium.com/@russroberts/the-human-side-of-trade-7b8e024e7536">orthodox case for free trade</a>, and I've expressed some skepticism and reservations, so it seemed to me that my role in this podcast was to be the trade skeptic. So I thought of three reasons why pure, simple free trade might not be the optimal approach.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Reason 1: Cheap labor as a substitute for automation</b><br />
<br />
Getting companies and inventors to innovate is really, really hard. Basically, no one ever captures the full monetary benefit of their innovations, so society relies on a series of kludges and awkward second-best solutions to incentivize innovative activity.<br />
<br />
One of the ideas that has always fascinated me is the notion that cheap labor reduces the incentive for labor-saving innovation. This is <a href="http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2012/02/robert-allen-the-british-industrial-revolution-in-global-perspective.html">the Robert Allen theory of the Industrial Revolution</a> - high wages and cheap capital forced British businesspeople to start using machines, which then opened up a bonanza of innovation. It also pops up in a few econ models from time to time.<br />
<br />
I've written about this idea in the context of <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-08-22/higher-minimum-wages-will-give-high-tech-a-boost">minimum wage policy</a>, but you can also apply it to trade. In the 00s, U.S. manufacturing employment <a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MANEMP">suddenly fell off a cliff</a>, but after about 2003 or so <a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MPU9900063">manufacturing productivity</a> growth slowed down (despite the fact that you might expect it to accelerate as less productive workers were laid off first). That might mean that the huge dump of cheap Chinese labor onto the world market caused rich-world businesses to <a href="http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/are-we-replacing-robots-with-chinese.html">slack off on automation</a>.<br />
<br />
That could be an argument for limiting the pace at which rich countries open up trade with poor ones. Of course, even if true, this would be a pretty roundabout way of getting innovation, and totally ignores the well-being of the people in the poor country.<br />
<br />
Also, this argument is more about the past than the future. China's <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-16/made-in-china-not-as-cheap-as-you-think">unit labor costs have risen</a> to the point where the global cheap labor boom is effectively over (since no other country or region is emerging to take China's place as a high-productivity cheap manufacturing base).<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Reason 2: Adjustment friction</b><br />
<br />
This is the trade-skeptic case that everyone is waking up to now, <a href="http://www.nber.org/papers/w21906">thanks to Autor, Dorn and Hanson</a>. The economy seems to have trouble adjusting to really big rapid trade shocks, and lots of workers can end up permanently hurt.<br />
<br />
Again, though, this is an argument about the past, not the future. The China Shock is over and done, and probably won't be replicated within our lifetime. So this consideration shouldn't affect our trade policy much going forward.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Reason 3: Exports and productivity</b><br />
<br />
This is another productivity-based argument. It's essentially the <a href="https://drodrik.scholar.harvard.edu/publications/industrial-policy-twenty-first-century">Dani Rodrik argument</a> for industrial policy for developing countries, adapted to rich countries. There is <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sourafel_Girma/publication/4784060_Does_Exporting_Increase_Productivity_A_Microeconometric_Analysis_of_Matched_Firms/links/0912f50ae4f8319aa6000000/Does-Exporting-Increase-Productivity-A-Microeconometric-Analysis-of-Matched-Firms.pdf">some</a> <a href="https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/74870/1/dp151.pdf">evidence</a> that when companies start exporting, their productivity goes up, implying that the well-known correlation between exports and productivity isn't just a selection effect.<br />
<br />
So basically, there's a case to be made that export promotion - which represents a deviation from classic free trade - nudges companies to enter international markets where they then have to compete harder than before, incentivizing them to raise their productivity levels over time. That could mean innovating more, or it could just mean boosting operational efficiency to meet international standards.<br />
<br />
This is the only real argument against free trade that's about the future rather than the past. If export promotion is a good idea, then it's still a good idea even though the China Shock is over. I would like to see more efforts by the U.S. to nudge domestically focused companies to compete in world markets. It might not work, but it's worth a try.<br />
<br />
<br />
Anyway, that's my side of the story. Russ obviously had a lot to say as well. So if you feel like listening to our mellifluous voices for 38 minutes, head on over to the a16z website and <a href="https://a16z.com/2017/09/08/trade-tech-jobs/">listen to the podcast</a>! And thanks to Sonal Chokshi for interviewing us and doing the editing.Noah Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09093917601641588575noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-87628195626350684932017-09-08T19:29:00.000-04:002017-09-10T13:04:37.163-04:00Realism in macroeconomic modeling<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XPBRRX95fqY/WbMnw6LJACI/AAAAAAAAKQ0/eicfVoO0P6AUTvuzr8sQrkD4qBlMb87eQCLcBGAs/s1600/help%2Bwanted.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="433" data-original-width="603" height="286" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XPBRRX95fqY/WbMnw6LJACI/AAAAAAAAKQ0/eicfVoO0P6AUTvuzr8sQrkD4qBlMb87eQCLcBGAs/s400/help%2Bwanted.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
Via <a href="http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/09/sticky-wages-part-macro-labor-market-story-not-center.html">Tyler Cowen</a>, I see that Ljungqvist and Sargent <a href="http://www.tomsargent.com/research/FundSur30.pdf">have a new paper</a> synthesizing much of the work that's been done in labor search-and-matching theory over the past decade or so.<br />
<br />
This is pretty cool (and not just because these guys are still doing important research at an advanced age). Basically, Ljungqvist and Sargent are trying to solve the <a href="http://personal.lse.ac.uk/vernazza/_private/Notes%20on%20Shimer%20(2005).pdf">Shimer Puzzle</a> - the fact that in classic labor search models of the business cycle, productivity shocks aren't big enough to generate the kind of employment fluctuations we see in actual business cycles. A number of theorists have proposed resolutions to this puzzle - i.e., ways to get realistic-sized productivity shocks to generate realistic-sized unemployment cycles. Ljungqvist and Sargent look at these and realize that they're basically all doing the same thing - reducing the value of a job match to the employer, so that small productivity shocks are more easily able to stop the matches from happening:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The next time you see unemployment respond sensitively to small changes in productivity in a model that contains a matching function, we hope that you will look for forces that suppress the fundamental surplus, i.e., deductions from productivity before the ‘invisible hand’ can allocate resources to vacancy creation. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The fundamental surplus fraction is the single intermediate channel through which economic forces generating a high elasticity of market tightness with respect to productivity must operate...The role of the fundamental surplus in generating that response sensitivity transcends diverse matching models... </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
For any model with a matching function, to arrive at the fundamental surplus take the output of a job, then deduct the sum of the value of leisure, the annuitized values of layoff costs and training costs and a worker’s ability to exploit a firm’s cost of delay under alternating-offer wage bargaining, and any other items that must be set aside. The fundamental surplus is an upper bound on what the “invisible hand” could allocate to vacancy creation. If that fundamental surplus constitutes a small fraction of a job’s output, it means that a given change in productivity translates into a much larger percentage change in the fundamental surplus. Because such large movements in the amount of resources that could potentially be used for vacancy creation cannot be offset by the invisible hand, significant variations in market tightness ensue, causing large movements in unemployment.</blockquote>
That's a useful thing to know.<br />
<br />
Of course, I suspect that recessions are mostly <i>not </i>caused by productivity shocks, and that these business cycle models will ultimately be improved by instead considering shocks to the various things that get subtracted from productivity in the "fundamental surplus". That should affect unemployment in much the same way as productivity shocks, but will probably have advantages in explaining other business cycle facts like prices. Insisting that the shock that drives unemployment be a productivity shock seems like a tic - a holdover from a previous age. But that's just my intution - hopefully some macroeconomist will do that exercise.<br />
<br />
But anyway, I think the whole field of labor search-and-matching models is interesting, because it shows how macroeconomists are gradually edging away from the Pool Player Analogy. <a href="http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-pool-player-analogy-is-silly.html">Milton Friedman's Pool Player Analogy</a>, if you'll recall, is the idea that a model doesn't have to have realistic elements in order to be a good model. Or more precisely, a good macro model doesn't have to fit micro data, only macro data. I personally think this is silly, because it ends up throwing away most of the available data that could be used to choose between models. Also, it seems unlikely that non-realistic models could generate realistic results.<br />
<br />
Labor search-and-matching models still have plenty of unrealistic elements, but they're fundamentally a step in the direction of realism. For one thing, they were made by economists imagining the <i>actual process</i> of workers looking for jobs and companies looking for employees. That's a kind of realism. Even more importantly, they were based on real micro data about the job search process - <a href="http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp0803.pdf">help-wanted ads</a> in newspapers or on websites, for example. In Milton Friedman's analogy, that's like looking at how the pool player actually moves his arm, instead of imagining how he <i>should</i> move his arm in order to sink the ball.<br />
<br />
It's good to see macroeconomists moving away from this counterproductive philosophy of science. Figuring out how things actually work is a <a href="http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2017/06/summing-up-my-thoughts-on-macroeconomics.html">much more promising route</a> than making up an imaginary way for them to work and hoping the macro data is too fuzzy to reject your overall results. Of course, people and companies might not search and bargain in the ways that macroeconomists have so far assumed they do. But because labor search modelers tend to take micro data seriously, bad assumptions will probably eventually be identified, questioned, and corrected.<br />
<br />
This is good. Chalk labor search theory up as a win for realism. Now let's see macroeconomists make some realistic models of business investment!<br />
<br />
<br />
<u><b>Update</b></u><br />
<br />
For some reason, a few people read this post as claiming that labor search theory is something new. It's not! I was learning this stuff in <a href="http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/what-i-learned-in-econ-grad-school-part.html">macro class</a> back in 2008, and people have been thinking about the idea since the 70s. In fact, if anything, there seems to be a mild dampening of enthusiasm for labor search models recently, though this is hard to gauge. One exception is that labor search models have been <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.3982/ECTA11776/abstract">incorporated into New Keynesian theory</a>, which seems like a good development.<br />
<br />
Sadly, though, I haven't seen any similar theory trend dealing with business investment. This post was supposed to be a plug for that.Noah Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09093917601641588575noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-6442282348885845942017-09-07T16:48:00.001-04:002017-09-07T17:05:46.257-04:00An American Whitopia would be a dystopia<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-F5QWwA92oUU/WbGuJdFAnRI/AAAAAAAAKQg/OlQmXTayZIsOv7Y89wa6058HyHA0aK5vACLcBGAs/s1600/femen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="907" data-original-width="1350" height="267" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-F5QWwA92oUU/WbGuJdFAnRI/AAAAAAAAKQg/OlQmXTayZIsOv7Y89wa6058HyHA0aK5vACLcBGAs/s400/femen.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
In <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/10/the-first-white-president-ta-nehisi-coates/537909/?utm_source=twb">a recent essay</a> about the racial politics of the Trump movement, Ta-Nehisi Coates concluded with a warning:<br />
<div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
It has long been an axiom among certain black writers and thinkers that while whiteness endangers the bodies of black people in the immediate sense, the larger threat is to white people themselves, the shared country, and even the whole world. There is an impulse to blanch at this sort of grandiosity. When W. E. B. Du Bois claims that slavery was “singularly disastrous for modern civilization” or James Baldwin claims that whites “have brought humanity to the edge of oblivion: because they think they are white,” the instinct is to cry exaggeration. But there really is no other way to read the presidency of Donald Trump.</blockquote>
</div>
<div>
Yes, at first glance, the notion that Trumpian white racial nationalism is a threat to the whole world, or the downfall of civilization, etc. seems a bit of an exaggeration. Barring global thermonuclear war, Trump and his successors aren't going to bring down human civilization - the U.S. is powerful and important, but it isn't nearly <i>that</i> powerful or important.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But there's an important truth here. An America defined by white racial nationalism - an American Whitopia - would be an economic and cultural disaster movie. It would be a dysfunctional, crappy civilization, sinking into the fetid morass of its own decay. Some people think that an American Whitopia would be bad for people of color but ultimately good for whites, but this is dead wrong. Although nonwhite Americans would certainly suffer greatly, white American suffering under the dystopia of a Trumpist society would be dire and unending. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Here is a glimpse of that dark future, and an explanation of why it would fail so badly.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Don't think Japan. Think Ukraine.</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
First, a simple observation: Racial homogeneity is no guarantee of wealth. Don't believe me? Just look at a night photo of North Korea and South Korea:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VeuD_Ah7_tM/WbGLDCwTL5I/AAAAAAAAKQI/01snDi19N2sBa5LeFv9XNuERrJQghO7nQCLcBGAs/s1600/north%2Bkorea.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="480" height="300" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VeuD_Ah7_tM/WbGLDCwTL5I/AAAAAAAAKQI/01snDi19N2sBa5LeFv9XNuERrJQghO7nQCLcBGAs/s400/north%2Bkorea.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div>
The red arrow and white outline point to North Korea. It's completely pitch dark at night because it's poor as hell. People <a href="http://www.dw.com/en/north-korea-drought-threatens-famine-and-instability/a-39904004">starve there</a>. But it's every bit as ethnically pure and homogeneous as its neighbor South Korea - in fact, it's the same race of people. North Korea, in fact, puts <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Cleanest-Race-Koreans-Themselves-Matters/dp/1935554344">a ton of cultural emphasis</a> on racial homogeneity. But that doesn't save their society from being a dysfunctional hellhole.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-keHXMeLyGZE/WbGL7OuLxjI/AAAAAAAAKQQ/MvW_XHdEq7k4pvDJwfyqbDxR_FGmbEgOgCLcBGAs/s1600/north%2Bkorea%2B2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="260" data-original-width="386" height="268" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-keHXMeLyGZE/WbGL7OuLxjI/AAAAAAAAKQQ/MvW_XHdEq7k4pvDJwfyqbDxR_FGmbEgOgCLcBGAs/s400/north%2Bkorea%2B2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div>
OK, so North and South Korea are an experiment. They prove that institutions matter - that a homogeneous society can either be rich and happy or poor and hellish, depending on how well it's run.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It's not just East Asia we're talking about, either. It's incredibly easy to find deeply dysfunctional white homogeneous countries. Ukraine, for instance. Ukraine's <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita">per capita GDP</a> is around $8,300 at purchasing power parity. That's less than 1/6 of America's. It's also a deeply dysfunctional society, with lots of drug use and suicide and all of that stuff, and has been so since long before the Donbass War started. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It's worth noting that Ukraine also <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Ukraine">has an economy</a> largely based on heavy industry and agriculture - just the kind of economy Trump wants to go back to. So being a homogeneous all-white country with plenty of heavy industry and lots of rich farmland hasn't saved Ukraine from being a dysfunctional, decaying civilization. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Alt-righters explicitly call for America to be a white racial nation-state. Some cite Japan as an example of a successful ethnostate. Japan is great, there's no denying it. But I know Japan, and let me assure you, an American Whitopia would not be able to be Japan. It definitely wouldn't be Sweden or Denmark or Finland. It couldn't even be Hungary or Czech or Poland. It would probably end up more like Ukraine. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Here's why.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b><br /></b></div>
<div>
<b>Where are your smart people?</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Modern economies have always depended on smart people, but the modern American economy depends on them even more than others and even more than in the past. The shift of industrial production chains to China has made America more dependent on <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/americas-advanced-industries-what-they-are-where-they-are-and-why-they-matter/">knowledge-based industries</a> - software, pharmaceuticals, advanced manufacturing, research and design, business services, etc. Even the energy industry is a high-tech, knowledge-based industry these days. Take away those industries, and America will be left trying to compete with China in steel part manufacturing. How's that working out for Ukraine?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
If you want to understand how important knowledge-based industries are, just read Enrico Moretti's book, "<a href="https://www.amazon.com/New-Geography-Jobs-Enrico-Moretti/dp/0544028058">The New Geography of Jobs</a>". Cities and towns with lots of human capital - read, smart folks - are flourishing, while old-line manufacturing towns are decaying and dying. Trump has sold people a fantasy that his own blustering bullshit can reverse that trend, but if you really believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So here's the thing: Smart Americans have no desire to live in a Whitopia. First, let's just look at smart white people. Among white Americans with a postgraduate degree, Clinton <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/even-among-the-wealthy-education-predicts-trump-support/">beat Trump</a> in 2016 by a 13-point margin, even though Trump won whites overall by a 22 point margin. Overall, education was the strongest predictor of which white people voted for Trump and which went for Clinton. Also note that close to <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2016/11/29/another-clinton-trump-divide-high-output-america-vs-low-output-america/">2/3 of the U.S.' GDP is produced</a> in counties that voted for Clinton. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Richard Florida has been following smart Americans around for a long time, and he has repeatedly <a href="http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1016/S1479-3520(03)09007-X">noted</a> how they like to live in diverse places. Turn America into an ethnostate, and the smart white people will bolt for Canada, Australia, Japan, or wherever else isn't a racist hellhole.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Now look beyond white people. A huge amount of the talent that sustains America's key industries comes <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-06-28/the-u-s-is-getting-the-educated-immigrants-it-needs">from Asia</a>. An increasing amount also comes from <a href="http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/must-read-noah-smith-it-isnt-just-asian-immigrants-who-thrive-in-the-u-s/">Africa</a> and the <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-07-24/middle-eastern-immigrants-make-the-u-s-stronger">Middle East</a>, though Asia is still key. Our <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2017/03/11/83-of-americas-top-high-school-science-students-are-the-children-of-immigrants/#4c53c9032200">best science students</a> are mostly immigrants. Our <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/07/12/new-report-shows-dependence-us-graduate-programs-foreign-students">grad students</a> are mostly immigrants. Our best tech entrepreneurs are about half immigrants<a href="https://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2016/03/17/study-immigrants-founded-51-of-u-s-billion-dollar-startups/">https://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2016/03/17/study-immigrants-founded-51-of-u-s-billion-dollar-startups/</a>. You make America into Whitopia, and those people are gone gone gone.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I'm not saying every single smart American would leave an American white ethnostate. But most would, and many of those who remain wouldn't be happy. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
There's a clear precedent for this: <a href="http://www.atomicheritage.org/history/scientific-exodus">Nazi Germany</a>. Hitler's persecution of Jews made Jewish scientists leave. But it also prompted an exodus of non-Jewish scientists who weren't Jewish but who didn't like seeing their Jewish colleagues, friends, and spouses get persecuted - <a href="http://www.nndb.com/people/308/000072092/">Erwin Schroedinger</a>, for example, and <a href="http://www.jewishpress.com/sections/features/features-on-jewish-world/enrico-fermi-saves-his-jewish-family-from-the-holocaust/2016/08/10/">Enrico Fermi</a><span id="goog_851222750"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a><span id="goog_851222751"></span>. This resulted in a bonanza of talent for America, and it starved Nazi Germany of critical expertise in World War 2. Guess who built the atom bomb? </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>How you get there matters</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
There are just about 197 million non-Hispanic white people in the United States. But the total population of the country is 323 million. That means that around 126 million Americans are nonwhite. Among young Americans, nonwhites make up an even larger percentage. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
To turn America into a white racial nation-state - into Whitopia - would require some combination of four things:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
1. Genocide</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
2. Ethnic cleaning (expulsion of nonwhites)</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
3. Denial of legal rights to nonwhites</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
4. Partition of the country</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
To see how these would go, look to historical examples. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Genocide is usually done against a group that's a small minority, like Armenians or Jews. Larger-scale genocides are occasionally attempted - for example, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalplan_Ost">Hitler's plan to wipe out the bulk of the Slavs</a>, or the general mass murder of 25% of the population in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge_Killing_Fields">Pol Pot's Cambodia</a>. These latter attempts at mega-genocide killed a lot of people (Hitler slaughtered 25 million Slavs or so), but eventually they failed, with disastrous consequences for both the people who engineered them and the countries that acquiesced to the policies.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Denial of legal rights to minorities also has a poor record of effectiveness. The Southern slavery regime in the U.S., the apartheid regime in South Africa, and the Jim Crow system in the U.S. all ended up collapsing under the weight of moral condemnation, economic inefficiency, and war. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Ethnic cleansing and partition have somewhat less disastrous records - see <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_India">India/Pakistan</a>, or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli%E2%80%93Palestinian_conflict">Israel/Palestine</a>, or maybe the Iraqi Civil War that largely separated Sunni and Shia. But "less disastrous" doesn't mean "fine". Yes, India and Pakistan and Israel survived intact. But those bloody campaigns of separation and expulsion left scars that still haven't healed. The cost of Israeli partition was an endless conflict and a garrison state. The cost of Indian partition was a series of wars and an ongoing nuclear standoff, not to mention terrorism in both India and Pakistan. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In America, a partition would lead to a long bloody war. Remember, 39% of whites voted for Hillary Clinton. And the 29% of Asians and Hispanics who voted for Trump are unlikely to express similar support for a policy that boots them out of their country or town. Furthermore, nonwhite Americans are not confined to a single region that could be spun off into a new country, but concentrated in cities all over the nation. Thus, any partition would involve a rearrangement of population on a scale unprecendented in modern history. That rearrangement would inevitably be violent - a civil war on a titanic scale. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
That war would leave lots of bitterness and social division in its wake. It would leave bad institutions in place for many decades. It would elevate the worst people in the country - the people willing to do the dirty deeds of ethnic cleansing. In an <a href="http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-siren-song-of-homogeneity.html">earlier post about homogeneity vs. diversity</a>, I wrote about how a white ethnostate created byan exodus of whites from America or Europe would probably be populated by the most fractious, violent, division-prone subset of white people. A white ethnostate created by a titanic civil war and mass ethnic cleansing would be run by an even worse subset.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This is why a partition or ethnic cleansing of America would lead to lower social trust, bad institutions, a violent society, and a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakistocracy">kakistocracy</a>. In other words, a recipe for a country that looks more like Ukraine (or even North Korea) than it does like Japan. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>It's already happening</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This isn't just theoretical, and it isn't just based on historical analogies either. There are already the first signs of dysfunction and dystopia in the new America that Trump, Bannon, Sessions, Miller, and others are working to create. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
First of all, the places that voted for Trump are not doing so well economically or socially. Not only do Trump counties represent only about a third of the nation's GDP, but they also tend to be suffering disproportionately from <a href="http://www.npr.org/2016/12/17/505965420/study-communities-most-affected-by-opioid-epidemic-also-voted-for-trump">the opiate epidemic</a>. States that shifted most strongly toward Trump from 2012 to 2016, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-08-29/there-s-something-the-matter-with-ohio-too">like Ohio</a>, tend to be Rust Belt states with low levels of education, low immigration, and low percentages of Asians and Hispanics. Imagine all the things that make Ohio slightly worse off than Texas or California or New York or Illinois, then multiply those things by 1000 - and take away all the good economic stuff in Ohio, like the diverse urban revival in Columbus - to see what a Trumpian Whitopia would look like. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Second, Trump is already creating a kakistocracy. His administration, of course, is scandal-ridden and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2017/06/02/no-wonder-the-trump-team-is-so-corrupt/">corrupt</a>. His allies are the likes of Joe Arpaio, who is reported to have tortured <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112296948">undocumented immigrants</a>. His regime has emboldened <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/12/us/charlottesville-unite-the-right-rally/index.html">murderous Nazi types</a> to march in the street, and his condemnation of those Nazis has been <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/richard-spencer-says-trump-didnt-condemn-the-alt-right-2017-8">rather equivocal</a>. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
That episode caused business leaders - some of the smartest, most capable Americans - to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2017/08/16/after-wave-of-ceo-departures-trump-ends-business-and-manufacturing-councils/">abandon the Trump administration</a>. If even business leaders - who are mostly rich white men - abandon an administration with even a whiff of white nationalism, imagine who would be in charge in a Whitopia. It would not be the Tim Cooks and Larry Pages and Elon Musks of the world. It would be far less competent people. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So already we're seeing the first few glimmerings of a dystopian Whitopia. We're still a long way off, of course - things could get a million times worse. But the Trump movement gives us a glimpse of what that path would look like, and it ain't pretty. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Whitopia: a self-inflicted disaster of epic proportions</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Refashioning America as a white ethnostate would be a self-inflicted catastrophe of epic, unprecedented proportions. It would drive America from the top rank of nations to the middle ranks. It would involve lots of pain and death and violence for everyone, but the white Americans stuck in Whitopia would suffer the longest. Nonwhite Americans would move away and become refugees, or die in the civil wars. But the ones who survived would escape the madness and begin new lives elsewhere, in more sane functional countries. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Meanwhile, white Americans and their descendants would be trapped in the decaying corpse of a once-great civilization. A manufacturing-based economy making stuff no one else wanted to buy, bereft of the knowledge industries and vibrant diverse cities that had made it rich. A violent society suffering long-lasting PTSD from a terrible time of war and atrocity. A divided society, with simmering resentment underneath the surface, like Spain under Franco. A corrupt, thuggish leadership, with institutions that keep corrupt, thuggish leaders in power. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This is what it would take to turn America from a diverse, polyracial nation into a white ethnostate. That is the price that white Americans, and their children, and their children's children would pay. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It's not worth it.</div>
Noah Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09093917601641588575noreply@blogger.com32