Links to Consider, 10/1

Alexander Salter and Philip Magness on illiberalism; Richard Reeves on boy problems;

Alexander Salter and Philip Magness write,

Although it was never electorally viable, the Libertarian Party occasionally offered a home for conscientious protest voters against left- and right-illiberalism. This is quickly fading. The tendentiously named "Mises Caucus," which recently seized control of the party’s leadership, is dragging its reputation through the mud. Rather than promoting Ludwig von Mises’s brand of cosmopolitan liberalism, they’re cozying up to overtly racist and sexist elements from the political fringe. Official Twitter accounts now flaunt the philosophy of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, a German economist who advocates exclusionary communities based on race, religion, and ethnicity. Recent party-affiliated spokespersons have even flirted with segregationism on the flimsy assertion that "freedom of association" somehow gives municipalities the right to ban African Americans from "trespassing" on town property. Others have called for repealing women’s suffrage. This foul behavior undermines the foundational tenets of voluntarism, tolerance, and respect for human dignity.

They also decry the trends toward illiberalism in the two major parties. Pointer from Don Boudreaux.

I believe that small-L libertarians have valuable ideas to contribute to the political discussion. In fact, the more that illiberalism has risen in recent years, the more libertarian I have become. But if Salter and Magness are correct, today’s Libertarian Party is self-marginalizing.

In an interview with Yascha Mounk, Richard Reeves says,

you see huge gender gaps in education, especially at the bottom of distribution, I can't emphasize that enough—the gender gaps just get bigger and bigger, the further down you go.

…A 15-16 year-old girl is between a year and two years ahead of a boy the same age, in terms of the development of the prefrontal cortex, sometimes called the CEO of the brain. That's the bit that says, “No, you should study, not go out, and you should turn your homework in, and you should plan ahead, and have you thought about which college you're going to?” Girls are better at that than boys anyway. But most importantly, they get better at it much sooner. The boys catch up in their 20s. 

That period is incredibly important in the US education system. And so, when you look at the GPA distribution, if you take the top 10% in GPA, two thirds of them are girls.

…And the second thing that's happening is that the teaching profession is becoming more and more female over time. 76% of K-12 teachers now are female, and that's rising all the time. The evidence suggests that that actually does lead to worse outcomes for boys and men, for reasons that are a bit unclear.

The increase in the proportion of teachers surprises me, considering that a standard story is that women used to be excluded from so many fields that they had to become teachers. My guess is that the quality of teachers—of either sex—has gone way down since I was in school. Perhaps this harms boys more than girls.

In an article for National Affairs, Reeves writes,

The boys and men struggling the most are those at the sharp end of other inequalities. The ones we need to be worried about are not those of the upper middle class, who are flourishing in almost every respect, but the ones on the bottom half of the economic and social ladders.

He cites research showing that government programs that promote upward mobility tend to work for women, but not for men. He speculates,

The problem is not that men have fewer opportunities; it's that they are not seizing them. The challenge seems to be a general decline in agency, ambition, and motivation.

By the time this post goes up, I expect I will be deep into Reeves’ new book.