Whenever the debt ceiling creeps back into the news, Smart People start talking about how ridiculous the whole thing is and why it should be completely abolished. Congress already approved the legislation that led to increasing the debt, so why should they get a chance to play dangerous political games around actually allowing it to be increased? As Bill Clinton says, “The idea that the Congress gets to vote twice on whether to pay for [expenditures] it has appropriated is crazy.”
Category: Philosophy
The Asymmetrical Nature of Good and Bad Guns
In the wake of last week’s tragedy, and the ensuing proliferation of ideological tweets and comments and posts and other ephemeral boastings, I saw multiple arguments of this flavor: “Let’s be real, how often do you hear about some upstanding citizen with a gun saving the day?” Apparently I wasn’t the only one, as Eugene Volokh stated more eloquently:
What examples can one give of civilians armed with guns stopping such shootings? Sometimes, I hear people asking if even one such example can be found, or saying that they haven’t heard even one such example.
Eugene points out that such examples will be inherently rare, “partly because mass shootings are rare, partly because many mass shootings happen in supposedly ‘gun-free’ zones (such as schools, universities, or private property posted with a no-guns sign) in which gun carrying isn’t allowed, and partly for other reasons.”
Some of those “other reasons” may include 1) the difficulty of reporting about any shooting that never even begins to occur because of the possibility that someone may be armed, and 2) the lower level of reporting about any shooting that does begin to occur but is stopped or limited by someone who is armed.
We are talking about a mass shooting that does not happen, and comparing it to a mass shooting that did happen. There is an inherently asymmetrical nature that makes us far more likely to learn about and remember things that did happen – even if they are relatively rare events – compared to things that did not.
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Lincoln, Corruption, and Compromise
I had the pleasure of watching the Lincoln movie over Thanksgiving weekend. The film fills almost three hours mostly with politicians talking to each other, which of course I found terribly interesting. I’m not spoiling too much to tell you that it mostly revolves around Abraham Lincoln buying votes with job offers and deceptions, all in order to pass the super-important Thirteenth Amendment to abolish slavery.
Capitalism and Altruism Are Not Incompatible
A few days ago Jason Kuznicki, provoked by a misguided capitalist prayer, raved against the “monstrous hybrid of Randism and Christianity so often seen on the American right.” Elaborating in comments, he says, “The one is individualist and professes rational self-interest. The other preaches charity and self-sacrifice. Those two don’t go together.”
It seems that Jason’s statements boil down to the belief that capitalism and altruism are incompatible, even though a lot of American Christians seem to try to combine the two. I’m at risk of straw-manning someone I don’t regularly read – I came to the article though an @ATabarrok tweet – but I think it’s a reasonable assessment, especially considering that Alex’s tweet was followed by a retweet of @AynRandBot stating that “Capitalism and altruism are incompatible; they are philosophical opposites; they cannot co-exist in the same man or in the same society.”
While there are certainly complications and pitfalls, I disagree with the notion that Christian capitalism is a “monstrous hybrid” of cognitive dissonance. I also disagree with the more general idea that capitalism and altruism are incompatible. I do not intend this to be an iconic (or even completely coherent) screed, as I am doubtlessly ignorant on many details, but I do want to make a few points as I mull over this.
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Peak Republican
Part of the myopic focus on the presidential race this week has involved pundits and journalists blathering about the dire future of the Republican party. I don’t feel like looking up the links and statistics because I’m feeling lazy on a Saturday and I don’t like linking to speculative pundits anyway, but the basic argument goes like this:
Why Do Liberals Hate Science?
If you listen to liberal activists or even most of the mainstream media these days, conservatives are dangerously “anti-science.” They cling to religion and ideology that traps them in a warped reality, denying the Smart People Consensus about climate change, evolution, and Keynesian economics. They don’t even understand how women’s bodies work! Any evidence that contradicts their already-established beliefs is immediately dismissed as the propaganda of a left-wing conspiracy. Meanwhile, enlightened progressives are able to eagerly accept whatever science reveals to be Ultimate Truth.
It’s a tidy little narrative, and many conservatives only seem to encourage it. (The latest controversy is over “polling denial,” which New York Magazine says is similar to all the other “fields of conservative reality denial.”) Unfortunately, this narrative isn’t true: liberals are guilty of hating science, too.
The Externalities of Space Junk
Every now and then I’ll hear about space junk as a Thing To Worry About. Yesterday, the IEEE said “we’ve already passed the tipping point for orbital debris,” complete with a disproportional depiction of Earth surrounded by thousands of pieces of junk that would each have to be the size of New York City to be visible from that range.
Active spacecraft and satellites are increasingly endangered by “the by-product of thousands of launches and routine spacecraft deployments, nearly 200 explosions, and several collisions.” If things get too crowded, collisions will lead to more collisions in a catastrophic feedback loop that will basically be Very, Very Bad For Everyone and Everything.
Perspectives in Gun Shootings and Other Risks
Following last weekend’s Aurora tragedy, liberal columnist Eugene Robinson took a typical stand:
Will we even pretend to do anything to prevent the next mass shooting by a crazed loner? I doubt it. We’ll just add Aurora to the growing list — Columbine, Virginia Tech, Tucson — and wait for the inevitable…
Congress should pass an assault weapons ban this morning and the president should sign it tonight…
Eugene is upset that the risk of a mass shooting in America is high enough that one occurs every few years while there is little will to lower that risk. It’s a reasonable position, but I think the high visibility of these tragedies skews people’s perceptions about risks. I think the risk of this kind of tragedy is already so low that it’s 1) hard to lower the risk even more, and 2) hard to justify lowering this risk relative to many other risks we could be lowering.
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The Paradox of Shrink
Earlier this week Alex Tabarrok highlighted the opposite trends in the numbers of fires and firefighters. Despite the 40% decrease in fires over the past 35 years, the number of career firefighters has increased 40%. With the huge increase in firefighters per fire, a lot of them spend more time tagging along with ambulances or finding other city busywork.
Many commenters denied this was proof that firefighters are oversupplied, but I think they either have to be oversupplied now or very undersupplied 35 years ago. Given the apparent lack of a fire apocalypse in the 80’s, and the increasing non-firefighting work of firefighters today, I think the evidence is pretty strong. Some argued that it’s useful for firefighters to answer medical calls as they often arrive quicker than ambulances, but that doesn’t prove that firefighters need to be the ones doing that, especially if “it costs $3,500 every time a fire truck pulls out of a fire station in Washington, DC.”
If firefighters are oversupplied, who is to blame? It’s easy to pick on pushy unions taking advantage of budgets in good times, but maybe we need to look no farther than ourselves.
The Oops Cost: When Government Makes Mistakes
Sometimes governments make mistakes that incur random penalties on their citizens. I like to call this the “oops cost.” I believe that the opportunities for oops costs have increased in recent years, as well as the magnitude of their costs.
For example, when Obama signed the NDAA a few months ago, he dramatically increased the oops cost of being mistaken for a terrorist.
Oops! You’re not really a terrorist! But now you’re locked up forever with no charge or trial!
From my understanding of the law, this could literally happen to any American citizen, but to the best of my knowledge, it’s no more than a hypothetical fear thus far. However, for many years many Americans have been charged with a lower oops cost of being mistaken for a terrorist: having trouble getting on a plane.
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