19 Comments

Regarding Razib Khan on abolishing tests, it might be observed that this can also work as a way for the privileged to overcome the competitive advantage of East Asians.

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On “somewheres” vs. “anywheres”: This is a take by people who, if they move about, move from blue city to blue city. Out here in rural America people are very wedded to place, and they despise government at all levels, even the local building inspector. It’s specifically the crypto millionaires who are “anywheres.” But the blue elites favor large federal govt. so that they have one set of rules (favorable to themselves) to follow as they migrate to the next blue city.

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founding

Re Standardized Tests

I think there are an awful lot of people in the upper tiers who think they would have gotten to go to an even better school if their test scores had been higher. The US educational system isn’t based on high-risk testing except at the very end, unlike foreign systems.

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"I would not under-estimate the power of the backlash coming from the Somewheres".

I will, seeing as the Elites are all on the side of the Anywheres, and are making things ever more clear, that that they'll delighted to liquidate those who stand in their way.

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Hard to trust Caplan's assessment of the evidence of the costs and benefits of the welfare state when he's made it abundantly and publicly clear that he blames the American poor for their predicament.

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The same Eric Topol that was asking for the vaccine to be delayed until after the election? Yep.

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I think Khan is wrong here. Opposition to tests isn't motivated by self-interest among the 'privileged' (though that makes for good rhetoric). Grades and other metrics are much easier to manipulate to yield the 'right' conclusions. See this Quillette article on how grading can be fudged to make sure the right people get ahead (https://quillette.com/2021/12/02/standards-based-grading-will-ruin-education/). It's possible that the process can be captured by rich people, but in theory 'equity' can be attained by highly subjective methods like grading; it cannot possibly be attained with test scores.

Re needing to change people's identity, an interesting anecdote: East German Economists in the 50s tried to gently push the government away from central planning. They did so not by openly arguing for free market reforms, but by arguing for free market reforms under the auspices of technological innovation. They talked about decentralized production networks (something like markets) using terms like 'cybernetics' as though they were describing some new, advanced kind of socialism. This is one example of trying to change one's ideas without changing their identity. One can try to convince socialists to support capitalist ideas without letting them know that what they're supporting capitalism. Of course, for those East German economists, it only worked for awhile; eventually, the government realized that these reforms were basically liberal reforms, and shut it down, and the economists got fired or sent to re-education.

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You wrote the reaction to Caplan's idea that political incentives are to do bad stuff that looks good would be that anyone who does not already agree with him will respond to those arguments by sticking their fingers in their ears and screaming epithets at him. Of course they will; he is attacking a sacred salvationist belief, namely that we have the ability to enter into a collective management of human affairs so as to ward off all the evils that beset the human condition. And this dogma also functions as the moral cover for self-interest; it is the justification for all the grift. Caplan's observation is a dagger aimed at the heart of such belief.

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Re: "To people whose identity is tied closely to their beliefs that markets are bad, Bryan simply represents 'outside opposition,' and his book will generate a hostile reaction. I would speculate that changing people’s minds requires something other than logic—it requires changing their identity."

If I understand Bryan Caplan's views correctly, he deems immigration restrictions and housing regulations the two most harmful restrictions on free markets. (See his book, Open Borders; and his forthcoming book, Build, Baby, Build.)

If I understand the median voter correctly, opposition to deregulation involves both logic and identity. For example, most homeowners deem themselves stakeholders in (a) a private investment and (b) a way of life. They believe, more or less reasonably, that their stakes rest on an implicit contract in status-quo housing regulations. They fear, not without logic, that housing deregulation might amount to an uncompensated taking.

Here (at the link below) is an empirical illustration from a recent study of “a major zoning reform on the build environment” (p. 3) in Sao Paolo, Brazil:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3953966

(Santosh Anagol, "Estimating the Economic Value of Zoning Reform," NBER working paper no. 29440, October 2021)

The authors quantify the magnitude of the reform as follows: “the maximum BAR [built-area-ratio] in the city’s approximate 45,000 blocks increased from 1.54 to 2.09, allowing 36% more construction for a given lot size, and 45% of the city blocks had a maximum BAR increase of 1 or more.” (p. 3) They estimate that “nominal house price losses faced by existing homeowners and landlord overshadow all consumer welfare gains.” (Abstract)

My point is not to put too much weight on one NBER paper. Rather, my point is about political economy and persuasion. If housing regulations really block gains from trade, and if current homeowners really have some reason to fear change, then it would behoove even libertarians to ponder whether and how the visible hand might compensate current homeowners for deregulation, now.

Instead, centralizers seem to hold the field in housing-deregulation policy. They would transfer jurisdiction from municipalities to States. See, for example, "Katherine Levine Einstein on Neighborhood Defenders" (EconTalk, 14 December 2020):

https://www.econtalk.org/jenny-schuetz-on-land-regulation-and-the-housing-market/

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"That culture produced the Beatles and others"

What "others"? Perhaps it's because I'm a millenial, but I don't know what other bands were from Liverpool or Hamburg.

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But why don’t foreign policy hawks pay any attention to economic growth issues like immigration lower deficits, free trade urban land use restrictions taxation of net CO2 emisiones?

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