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Re: Arnold Kling on Tyler Cowen on Canada trucker convoy/BLM:

"I am more sympathetic to police than I am to Canadian health officials. What Tyler calls 'mood affiliation' would lead me to arrive at a position that is more in sympathy with the truckers and less with BLM than Tyler’s apparent [initial] views. But I agree that a heuristic of looking for rigorous thinking is worth using. A shorthand way of saying it is 'Show your work.' I think that if you are looking for clear, rigorous thinking, don’t look to any 21st-century mass movement."

I don't use a heuristic of "rigorous thinking" to make up mind about protests (the convoy, BLM, etc.) My principal heuristic: Is the protest an instance of *civil disobedience* against *tyranny of the majority* and/or *tyranny of 'experts'*?

This heuristic checks two basic boxes: form (civil disobedience) and substance (defense of minority rights).

As far as I can tell, pandemic restrictions and mandates in Canada are instances of tyranny of the majority and tyranny of 'experts' (public-health officials).

Arnold says, "Show your work." The burden of proof for restrictions and mandates is on the authorities. (Presumption of individual liberty.) Have the authorities shown clear and convincing evidence that restrictions and mandates yield great net benefits in public health?

Re: mood affiliation. Yes, I trust the motivations of most of the truckers more than I trust the motivations of most of the elites. Truckers and nurses braved the front lines in the early stage of the pandemic, when there was radical uncertainty about virulence and lethality. I have no reason to mistrust their sense of 'station and duty'.

One may agree with Martin Gurri, that "revolts of the public" aren't substitutes for governance. However, one may nonetheless support specific revolts of the public that rely on civil disobedience to abrogate unnecessary restrictions or mandates.

PS: Compare (a) Tyler Cowen's advice (20 January 2022) to a group conservative-libertarian students who chafe at arbitrary pandemic restrictions at Yale University and (b) public resistance by conservative-libertarian students to arbitrary pandemic restrictions at the University of Chicago:

(a):

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2022/01/my-talk-at-yale-on-university-covid-policy-and-how-universities-really-work.html

"Don't make it a crusade. [... .] If you're a top-line university adminstrator, and especially at a place like Yale, the pressures you're under and the number of constituents you have to cater to is so extreme, those are very frustrated people, they're not very free, they're kind of enslaved. [... .] Bear with it. Get rid of some of the stupidest [restrictions]. The other stuff you want to get rid of, you can do so more sustainably two weeks from now. [...] A little bit of patience now goes a long way." (Cue times: 21:00 and 33:00)

(b):

https://thechicagothinker.com/

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"When I hear that a particular group defends liberty . . . while this is partially true it makes me nervous. As a whole, they also seem to believe a lot of nonsense . . . . Fair numbers of them seem to hold offensive beliefs as well."

Could not the same be said of many who participated in the American Revolution; the slavery abolitionist movement; the Normandy invasion; the Jim Crow demonstrations; etc.? Shouldn't the Canadian protest be judged by its aims and means, rather than the moral and intellectual perfection of its participants?

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On the one hand: the truckers didn't have a cell phone video of a guy dying at the hands of state officials to generate sympathy the way the BLM folks did. On the other hand, there is no paranoid conspiracy theory among the truckers that has sucked in even one tenth as many people as Systemic Racism and White Privilege. So yeah, not Tyler's best moment.

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Feb 15, 2022·edited Feb 15, 2022

I have not attempted to rigorously fact-check the Guardian article that Tyler Cowen cites, but it calls opposition to vaccine mandates "anti-vax" sentiment, and claims that "there is no basis" for claims that the PM should be investigated for fascism. The first is a rather novel usage of the term. The second claim has not aged well in the week since it was written: Trudeau has invoked, for the first time ever, emergency powers to fight the protest. Such tell-tales make me skeptical that the rest of the article is fair, rather than engaging in nutpicking.

One could write a similar hatchet piece for an awful lot of establishment politicians. Should we treat the US government as illegitimate because the current president shows signs of dementia, promised to appoint a Supreme Court judge on a racist and sexist basis, committed plagiarism, selected an anti-vax veep, and engages a serial fabulist as press secretary? To borrow a phrase, "ugh", yet that is essentially the form and level of argument employed by The Guardian.

[Edited to fix editorial errors in the second paragraph.]

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"Actually, the most reliable institution for generating social benefits that are rigorously calculated is a profit-seeking firm."

For sure. But what if the people you would like to benefit have neither money nor marketable skills? Then a for profit firm is unlikely to be of much help.

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One thing that should be highlighted is that the "smart" (rational/analytical/elite) side of the Canadian conflict has invested itself in a position that is so deeply irrational and motivated by emotion.

Everyone concedes at this point that the trucker vaccine mandate is pointless. Rather than simply drop it (which would likely make the entire conflict go away), these supposed rational elites are sowing fear (mostly among themselves) to rationalize continuing to impose the admittedly irrational policy.

There's no rational solution here because neither side is behaving rationally. Crediting one side with more rationality is like crediting a guy poking a bear with a stick for being clearly smarter than the bear.

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Cowen, and I have been a daily reader of his and Tabarrok's blog for nearly 20 years, is trying to keep his writing gigs at, first, the NYTimes, and now Bloomberg. It was painful watching him contort himself this way- I was a big fan at one time. Now I just find it amusing.

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I wish more charitable giving was based on prior results & people. Not what they promise for the future, but what they've done in the past, with what resources - and who verifies work done.

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I don't much like the "Pony Express" because it seems to me to be a content-free slogan. What kind of "government operating system" would be more resilient and dynamic? Or at a minimum, less opposed to the resilience and dynamism of innovation, entrepreneurship and business?

Crickets.

Extra point: OK to innovation and entrepreneurship. Business? Be careful there. To the extent a business can capture market or governmental power, they're an impediment to the dynamism of innovation and entrepreneurship.

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Re: Progressivism vs. Dynamism, Ezra Klein’s latest piece may be of interest.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/12/opinion/yellen-supply-side-liberalism.html

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I liked your comments about Canadian truckers vs. BLM. Also, I generally don't have the patience to read or listen to interviews, but I thought the excerpt of Michael Eisenberg's comments was good. And yes, it's pretty similar to your comments about progressivism and dynamism.

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