Marginal Revolution

On Bryan Caplan's ethical intuitionism

Tyler Cowen — 2009-11-23T06:06:00-05:00

Bryan offers the most extensive version of his view I've seen him blog. On overall method and meta-ethics, I'm not so far from Bryan (and someday he will get a post in praise of him). But I usually disagree with his applications of the method. For instance he seems to argue that because employees are allowed to discriminate against employers, we should allow for a reciprocal right of employer discrimination.

My first objection is that we cannot judge an argument like this outside of a particular historical context. In some cases employer discrimination rights may be fine, in others not. I don't think ethical intuitionism, as could be represented by abstract reasoning from analogy. can do the hard work here. Rather we must look to the history to understand the meaning and long-term effects of the discriminatory act under question. In some cases the discrimination is effectively perpetuating a regime of evil and thus it is morally wrong.

Here is another part of Bryan's argument:

Suppose A and B be are dating. A has an equally good outside option. B can't bear to live without A. A therefore has some bargaining power - vastly more than most employers, in fact. Yet almost everyone thinks it would be wrong to force A to stay with B.

If there is one intuition that many reasonable people have, it is that family and personal relationships are not, in moral terms, exactly like commercial or work place relationships. I get nervous when I see ethical intuitionists serve up simple analogies across these various realms. (In general I think Bryan creates too much license for analogical reasoning of this kind.) This is also why I am not convinced by all of the arguments in Steve Landsburg's Fair Play.

My overall view is that ethical intuitionism settles many fewer issues than most of its proponents like to think. That said, there is often nowhere else to go. We somehow need to come to terms with two propositions at the same time:

1. We need to think more rather than less ethically.

2. The content of ethical philosophy tells us less, in reliable terms, than most people would like to believe.

Facebook rescission?

Tyler Cowen — 2009-11-22T17:29:00-05:00

A Canadian woman on long-term sick leave for depression says she lost her benefits because her insurance agent found photos of her on Facebook in which she appeared to be having fun.
Nathalie Blanchard has been on leave from her job at IBM in Bromont, Quebec, for the last year.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reported Saturday she was diagnosed with major depression and was receiving monthly sick-leave benefits from insurance giant Manulife.
...She said her insurance agent described several pictures Blanchard posted on Facebook, including ones showing her having a good time at a Chippendales bar show, at her birthday party and on a sun holiday.

The insurance company claims there is more to it than that. Here is further information.

The practical value of economics as a science

Tyler Cowen — 2009-11-22T14:06:00-05:00

I know of three very good books on the actual (or sometimes hypothetical) application of economic ideas to real world problems:

1. Alex Tabarrok's Entrepreneurial Economics: Bright Ideas from the Dismal Science.

2. Some other book I haven't read and can no longer remember.

There is now a third:

3. Better Living Through Economics, edited by John J. Siegfried. It covers emissions trading, the EITC, trade liberalization, welfare reform, the spectrum auction, airline deregulation, antitrust, the volunteer military, and Alvin Roth algorithms for deferred acceptance. The contributions are uniformly excellent and written by top economists.

Assorted links

Tyler Cowen — 2009-11-22T10:58:00-05:00

1. Ben Casnocha reviews Kling and Schulz.

2. Are better-looking athletes more likely to win?

3. "Mozart was a Red" -- Murray Rothbard's satire of Rand, here is the full text. It doesn't seem that funny to me.

4. Portrait of Durrr: an on-line poker player.

5. Seth Roberts interviews me.

Benton's smoky ham and bacon

Tyler Cowen — 2009-11-22T04:27:00-05:00

It's equal to the best I've had, including what I've sampled in Spain. (I've also had especially fine ham in Slovenia.) You can read about it and order it here. It ships without incident or loss of value. It's what David Chang uses in Momofuku and its affiliated restaurants, by the way. It's not even very expensive.

Speaking of animal products, a few of you asked me a while ago how the eating of animals could possibly be morally justified. My primary objection is to how we treat animals while they are alive, especially in factory farms. The very rise and continuing existence of humanity is based on the widespread slaughter and extinction of other large mammals, not to mention other animals as well. I'm not saying we should feel entirely comfortable with that, but rather a "non-aggression" stance toward other animals simply isn't possible, short of repudiating all of human civilization, even in its more primitive versions. Everyone favors the murder of animals for human purposes, although different people draw the lines at different places. I don't know of any good foundationalist approach to these issues, but at the very least we should be nicer to non-human animals at the margin and less willing to torture them.

At the policy level we should tax meat more heavily and regulate farms more strictly, for both environmental reasons and reasons of animal welfare. I draw a line at where the life of the animal is "not worth living," but for me animal slaughter is not immoral per se.

There are a few things you can do personally, including:

1. Buy less from factory farms.

2. Eat better meat and in turn eat less meat, substituting quality for quantity. This is a common demographic pattern, so it shouldn't be too hard to mimic.

If you are a vegetarian, I think that is excellent. If you're not, Benton's is a step toward both #1 and #2.

The culture that is Italy

Tyler Cowen — 2009-11-21T14:09:00-05:00

The new (old) labor market idea -- you can call it fifth best perhaps -- is hereditary jobs:

It is a problem many a company faces in these tough times: how to replace older – and costlier – workers with younger, cheaper ones.
A Rome bank has what it thinks is the solution: to make the jobs hereditary. Under a deal signed with unions this week, 76 employees of Banca di Credito Cooperativo di Roma (BCC di Roma) must take early retirement but they will get a choice: either take a payoff or leave your job to your son or daughter (or indeed any relative "up to the third degree", which would allow the post to be left even to great-nieces and nephews).

The full story is here and I thank The Browser for the pointer.

The corn genome

Tyler Cowen — 2009-11-21T06:14:00-05:00

I have many favorite topics which I don't blog much or at all. One of these, taken from my time in Mexico, is the history of corn. I very much enjoyed this recent article on the topic. There is this good bit:

The sequencing revealed that an astonishing 85 percent of the corn genome is made up of "transposable elements" -- short stretches of DNA, some perhaps descended from viral invaders -- that show evidence of having moved around in corn's 10 chromosomes at some point in evolution. Their peregrinations provided the basis for new genes, or the on-and-off regulation of existing ones...

And this:

Corn's diversity of traits has been largely maintained, despite a century of intensive breeding. Modern corn produces cobs that range from the familiar farm-stand variety to lopsided baseballs and fat pencils and have a rainbow of kernel colors. Varieties of corn can have a greater genetic difference between them than what exists between human beings and chimpanzees.

And this:

Walbot, the Stanford geneticist, speculates that this unusual diversity survived because corn cultivation spread along a north-south axis. That exposed the species to a much greater variety of environmental conditions -- temperature, day length, rainfall, altitude -- than if it had spread along an east-west axis, as did wheat.

There is extraordinary genetic information and power in corn. I am always willing to read another book on the history of corn and its breeding.

Is the Senate bill fiscally responsible?

Tyler Cowen — 2009-11-21T04:37:00-05:00

Matt Yglesias writes:

The bill contains provisions that have front-loaded positive impacts on the deficit and also have provisions that have back-loaded positive impacts on the deficit. The bill, rather intelligently, seems to balance this out well leading to net deficit reductions in the short-, medium-, and long-terms. The bill by no means solves the considerable long-term fiscal challenges to the United States, but it does improve the situation. If people want to say that on balance they think the bill is a bad idea, that’s fine, but to do so is to oppose what’s far-and-away the most politically realistic way to enact non-trivial long- and medium-term deficit reduction in the 111th Congress.

I should coin a new MR term: the retreat into the relative. As I understand it, the apparently fiscally responsible portions of the bill come from a) eventual cuts in Medicare spending, and b) rising taxes on some health insurance plans and they come later of course. Few Congressional representatives are willing to do these things today, so should we predict they will be done in the future? (The same problem plagues Waxman-Markey, by the way, so these back and forth rhetorical debates are becoming quite common.) In my view, policies structured in this manner are simply another way of doing deficit spending.

To quote Matt, he writes of: "the most politically realistic way...to enact...deficit reduction." That sounds powerful. and in fact I agree with his claim as it is worded. But if all the politically realistic options make our fiscal position worse rather than better (Congress likes to spend money more than it likes to inflict pain on voters)...well, this bill still makes the deficit problem worse. Even it is the best of the realistic worsening options. We should be wary of the retreat into the relative because all the options may be bad. Nor should the phrase "building a framework" be translated into anything but "we are unwilling to do this now or anytime soon and thus we are engaging in more de facto deficit spending."

The fact that Republicans can (correctly) be blamed for making the bill worse does not constitute an argument that the current bill will make things, in fiscal terms, better.

Citing inconsistencies of bill opponents ("but he didn't scream loud enough about [fill in the blank] way back when") does not help on this score either.

Another argument I have seen in MR comments is: if we can't solve this health care costs problem it won't matter, therefore we can spend more without making the problem in net terms worse. That's a fallacy and you would never apply such reasoning while driving over the speed limit ("I'll accelerate right now, after all at some point I've got to slow down anyway.") Think of it as a kind of Zen-like, reverse Sorites ploy: "It is adding stones which takes a pile away." Or "Let us add stones. The pile must disappear in any case."

Here is a numerical style guide (SG) for identifying future arguments in these veins, because they will recur when you have an activist government which wants to be very popular, combined with an under-educated, short-term oriented citizenry:

SG1. The retreat into the relative: "All the other options are even worse."

SG2. Blame the Republicans: "They made the bill bad, not us."

SG3. The critic is evil or inconsistent: "Your views are inconsistent, or you are morally questionable, so I can dismiss your worries."

From now on in the MR comments section you can just cite the appropriate number and spare yourself carpal tunnel syndrome.

Addendum: Megan McArdle adds relevant comments and also here.

Badges? We don't need no stinkin badges.

Alex Tabarrok — 2009-11-20T17:14:55-05:00

In pursuit of an Eagle Scout badge, Kevin Anderson, 17, has toiled for more than 200 hours hours over several weeks to clear a walking path in an east Allentown park.

Little did the do-gooder know that his altruistic act would put him in the cross hairs of the city's largest municipal union.

Nick Balzano, president of the local Service Employees International Union, told Allentown City Council Tuesday that the union is considering filing a grievance against the city for allowing Anderson to clear a 1,000-foot walking and biking path at Kimmets Lock Park.

"We'll be looking into the Cub Scout or Boy Scout who did the trails," Balzano told the council.

Story here. Hat tip to Modeled Behavior.

Assorted links, second dose

Tyler Cowen — 2009-11-20T13:11:54-05:00

1. Air Genius Gary Leff is hailed by CNN.

2. Good post on interest rates (though I am not sure I agree with it). Brad DeLong comments. Critically important stuff and two of the best recent economics blog posts, in some time.

3. The world's first native Klingon speaker?

4. Spider silk tapestry.

5. Via Yana, France's hamster hotel, and here.

Markets in everything?

Tyler Cowen — 2009-11-20T09:49:00-05:00

A gang in the remote Peruvian jungle has been killing people for their fat, the police said Thursday, accusing the gang’s members of draining fat from bodies and selling it on the black market for use in cosmetics...
Three suspects have confessed to killing five people for their fat, said Col. Jorge Mejía, chief of Peru’s anti-kidnapping police. He said the suspects, two of whom were arrested carrying bottles of liquid fat, told the police it was worth $60,000 a gallon.
Colonel Mejía said the suspects had told the police that the fat had been sold to intermediaries in Lima, the capital. While police officials suspect that the fat was sold to cosmetic companies in Europe, he said he could not confirm any sales.

That's from The New York Times, not The Weekly World News. Medical "experts" express varying degrees of skepticism about the depth and liquidity of this market, but if you read the whole article you will encounter some truly graphic descriptions of the production process. Caveat emptor.

Assorted links

Tyler Cowen — 2009-11-20T07:08:46-05:00

1. How much will U.S. taxes ever go up?

2. Useful lateral thinking and how it is described by the lateral thinker.

3. The biological bases of business and entrepreneurship.

4. One hour show with me in Second Life; they even did up a Tyler Cowen avatar. Other shows are here, including economist Robert Frank and libertarian Adam Thierer.

5. Matt Kahn on "cash for caulkers".

6. The new AEA calendar of economists. To whet your appetite, here is a photo of Francis Ysidro Edgeworth.

The Unincorporated Man and slavery

Tyler Cowen — 2009-11-20T06:59:23-05:00

As long as we are on the topic of slavery, why not consider fiction? This science fiction novel has an intriguing economic premise: you're born a slave and you're not free until you can buy yourself back from your owner (which may be a corporation).

It may sound funny to think that a slave can save money but arguably an optimal slavery contract in a high-productivity society will give the slave some residual claimancy and some property rights, in order to spur work effort.

At some point you wonder whether a slave in this futuristic society is better off buying the rights to himself or herself. (Then he has to find individual health insurance!) If the system of slavery is truly secure, it's like living under Laffer Curve-maximizing taxation. That's oppressive, but many people have lived under worse. There would be lots of "Nudge" as well and with advanced technology very effective monitoring and control.

Is it possible that in such a world you would trust only a person who was a slave?

In many historical instances, slaves cannot precommit to "no revolt." So slaves aren't allowed to earn at the Laffer maximum point, for fear they will rebel or otherwise receive or lobby for greater rights. Real world slavery is much much worse than this hypothetical portrait might make it seem.

I won't have time to read through the novel (the new Alice Munro is out, for one thing) but I thought the premise was an intriguing one. The Amazon reader reviews are favorable.

In praise of Robin Hanson

Tyler Cowen — 2009-11-19T21:03:07-05:00

My fondest memory of Robin Hanson is when we interviewed him for a job and, during his on-campus visit, I gave him some papers I had been working on. Later he emailed me back, before getting the offer I might add, and told me the papers weren't very good and what was wrong with them.

Ten years later, as his colleague, I disagree with Robin on many topics, including futarchy, whether we will become computer uploads, and meta-ethics (oh, if Robin would only advocate the ethical theory he so consistently lives by!..instead of his contorted contractarian version of preference utilitarianism, which he sometimes calls "dealism."). Despite our disagreements, Robin and I are oddly in frequent common agreement on practical "life topics." Most of all, I view Robin as a reductionist thinker to a greater degree than I am comfortable with for myself; relative to Robin, I'm more attached to the mumbo-jumbo of the mess and the piling on of multiple perspectives to the point of squishiness.

Those of us who speak regularly with Robin know how brightly his star blazes. He's a truly original and important thinker in a way that few are, plus on analytic back and forth he is blindingly fast and accurate. But you can't expect him to be a "I'm going to agree with him all around" kind of guy; he isn't. If you are one of his detractors, or even just a common sense skeptic, you can always find many of his beliefs to be outright absurd, The real question, however, is how much you can learn from him and on that he is an A+.

Addendum: Robin responds.