Grading 2019 Predictions

I make predictions every year to put empirical tests on my model of the world. I tend to do a lot of predictions, in order to get a larger dataset, and at the end of the year, I grade them. These were made last year in March.  I’ve placed levels of confidence for each prediction with the odds I would bet on those outcomes in the vein of Bryan Caplan. I’ve created a chart at the end to show my calibration versus perfect calibration.

  1. Trump Approval Rating end of year <50% (Gallup): 95% ✔️
  2. Trump Approval Rating end of year <45% (Gallup): 90% (was 45% exactly)
  3. Trump Approval Rating end of year < 40% (Gallup): 70%
  4. US will not get involved in any new major war with death toll of > 100 US soldiers: 60% ✔️
  5. No single terrorist attack in the USA will kill > 100 people: 95% ✔️
  6. The UK will not leave the EU this year: 80% ✔️
  7. North Korea will still be controlled by the Kim dynasty: 95% ✔️
  8. North Korea will not conduct a nuclear test this year: 60% ✔️
  9. North Korea will not conduct a missile test this year: 60% They conducted 10, with several launching many missiles
  10. North Korea will not agree to give up nuclear weapons entirely, contingent on US troops staying in the Korean peninsula: 99% ✔️
  11. North Korea will not agree to give up nuclear weapons as a result of any negotiations: 90% ✔️
  12. Yemeni civil war will still be happening: 70% ✔️
  13. S&P 500 2019 >10% growth (from 2506 on Jan 1): 60% ✔️
  14. S&P 500 will be between 2400 and 3100: 80% (80% confidence interval) was 3231
  15. Unemployment rate December 2019 < 6%: 80% ✔️
  16. Unemployment rate December 2019 < 5%: 70% ✔️
  17. WTI Crude Oil price up by 10% (from $45.41): 70% ✔️
  18. Price of Bitcoin in dollars up over the year (Coinbase – 3823 Jan 1): 70% ✔️ was $7163
  19. Price of Bitcoin < $8,000 (does not double): 60% ✔️
  20. Price of Bitcoin > $1900 (does not lose half value): 70% ✔️
  21. Price of Bitcoin < $12,000 (does not triple): 70% ✔️
  22. Drivechain opcodes not soft-forked into Bitcoin: 80% ✔️
  23. No drivechains soft-forked into existence: 99% ✔️
  24. US government does not make Bitcoin ownership or exchange illegal: 95% ✔️
  25. Self-driving cars will not be available this year for general purchase: 95% ✔️
  26. Self-driving cars will not be available this year to purchase / legally operate for < $100k: 99% ✔️
  27. I will not be able to buy trips on self-driving cars from Uber/Lyft/Waymo in a location I am living: 95% ✔️
  28. I will not be able to order groceries on self-driving cars in a location I am living: 90% ✔️
  29. I will not be able to buy a trip on a self-driving car from Uber/Lyft/Waymo without a backup employee in the car anywhere in the US: 80% ✔️ This is tough. You can get self driving cars in Phoenix, but only if you’re part of the Waymo beta and so far they are free, so no “buying”.
  30. The artificial general intelligence alignment problem will not be seen as the most important problem facing humanity: 99% ✔️
  31. Humans will not be in lunar orbit in 2019: 99% ✔️
  32. SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket will launch again this year: 90% ✔️
  33. SpaceX will bring humans to low earth orbit: 60%
  34. SpaceX will test the “Starship” mock up this year: 70% ✔️ (pretty sure I just meant this giant water tower thing, not a real launch)
  35. Mexican government does not pay for wall: 99% ✔️ (lol)
  36. Border wall construction not complete by end of 2019: 99% ✔️ (some construction occurred, mostly replacing existing wall)
  37. National Debt increases by >$1 trillion (from
    $21,943,897,000,000): 90% ✔️ (was $23.201 trillion on Jan 1 2020)
  38. There will not be a significant decrease in trade barriers between US and China from pre-2017 tariff levels: 90% ✔️
  39. Democratic RCP front runner will not be Bernie Sanders: 80% ✔️ (front runner on Jan 1 was Biden)
  40. Democratic RCP front runner will not be Kamala Harris: 80% ✔️
  41. Democratic RCP front runner will not be Beto O’Rourke: 80% ✔️
  42. Trump not removed from office or resign: 95% ✔️
  43. Trump not impeached: 70% I was not expecting this
  44. No CRISPR edited babies will be born: 80% (it turns out the researcher responsible for the two 2018 CRISPR edited babies had already treated a third unborn child in 2018 when the story broke. Apparently the third baby was born in 2019 if you carefully read Xinhua, so technically this prediction is wrong, although I meant no other researcher would do anything. Remember to properly word your predictions!)
  45. No full year US government budget will be passed (only several months spending): 90% ✔️ (they basically only do continuing resolutions now)
  46. Some tariffs raised: 90% ✔️ (like a bunch)
  47. Trump administration does not file a lawsuit against any news organization for defamation: 90% ✔️
  • I got 4 of 6 predictions correct at 60% confidence
  • I got 7 of 9 predictions correct at 70% confidence
  • I got 7 of 9 predictions correct at 80% confidence
  • I got 8 of 9 predictions correct at 90% confidence
  • I got 7 of 7 predictions correct at 95% confidence
  • I got 6 of 6 predictions correct at 99% confidence

Overall, not bad at all, and we should note that from last year’s grading, my 60% confidence predictions have tended to be overconfident. I only had 6 of those predictions this year, so actually 66% is the closest I could have been to perfect calibration. 70% also ended up being a bit overconfident, but a single additional missed prediction here would have dropped me down to 66% as well. Had I moved one of my correct 70% predictions to 80%, I would have been perfectly calibrated.

Combining this data and data from last year gives:

  • I got 11 of 15 predictions correct (73%) at 60% confidence
  • I got 14 of 20 predictions correct (70%) at 70% confidence
  • I got 14 of 17 predictions correct (82%) at 80% confidence
  • I got 14 of 15 predictions correct (93%) at 90% confidence
  • I got 16 of 17 predictions correct (94%) at 95% confidence
  • I got 10 of 10 predictions correct (100%) at 99% confidence

In 2018, as I noted in the post last year, I should have made some of my 60% predictions at a higher confidence, but other than that, these predictions are remarkably well calibrated if I do say so myself.

I hope to post my 2020 predictions soon.

2019 Predictions

I’ve made predictions for the past several years, and here are my predictions for 2019, a bit late. I’ve noticed that when discussing politics or difficult subjects with other people with whom I have strong differences, a possible avenue of understanding is to make a prediction about the world with odds. Most people don’t accept these bets or predictions, which I think are one of the best ways to test different models of the world against each other. Nonetheless, I think it’s personally beneficial to list predictions and accompanying odds each year to see test my model of the world.

  1. Trump Approval Rating end of year <50% (Gallup): 95%
  2. Trump Approval Rating end of year <45% (Gallup): 90%
  3. Trump Approval Rating end of year < 40% (Gallup): 70%
  4. US will not get involved in any new major war with death toll of > 100 US soldiers: 60%
  5. No single terrorist attack in the USA will kill > 100 people: 95%
  6. The UK will not leave the EU this year: 80%
  7. North Korea will still be controlled by the Kim dynasty: 95%
  8. North Korea will not conduct a nuclear test this year: 60%
  9. North Korea will not conduct a missile test this year: 60%
  10. North Korea will not agree to give up nuclear weapons entirely, contingent on US troops staying in the Korean peninsula: 99%.
  11. North Korea will not agree to give up nuclear weapons as a result of any negotiations: 90%
  12. Yemeni civil war will still be happening: 70%
  13. S&P 500 2019 >10% growth (from 2506 on Jan 1): 60%
  14. S&P 500 will be between 2400 and 3100: 80% (80% confidence interval)
  15. Unemployment rate December 2019 < 6%: 80%
  16. Unemployment rate December 2019 < 5%: 70%
  17. WTI Crude Oil price up by 10% (from $45.41): 70%
  18. Price of Bitcoin in dollars up over the year (Coinbase – 3823 Jan 1): 70%
  19. Price of Bitcoin < $8,000 (does not double): 60%
  20. Price of Bitcoin > $1900 (does not lose half value): 70%
  21. Price of Bitcoin < $12,000 (does not triple): 70%
  22. Drivechain opcodes not soft-forked into Bitcoin: 80%
  23. No drivechains soft-forked into existence: 99%
  24. US government does not make Bitcoin ownership or exchange illegal: 95%
  25. Self-driving cars will not be available this year for general purchase: 95%
  26. Self-driving cars will not be available this year to purchase / legally operate for < $100k: 99%
  27. I will not be able to buy trips on self-driving cars from Uber/Lyft/Waymo in a location I am living: 95%
  28. I will not be able to order groceries on self-driving cars in a location I am living: 90%
  29. I will not be able to buy a trip on a self-driving car from Uber/Lyft/Waymo without a backup employee in the car anywhere in the US: 80%
  30. The artificial general intelligence alignment problem will not be seen as the most important problem facing humanity: 99%
  31. Humans will not be in lunar orbit in 2018: 99%
  32. SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket will launch again this year: 90%
  33. SpaceX will bring humans to low earth orbit: 60%
  34. SpaceX will test the “Starship” mock up this year: 70%
  35. Mexican government does not pay for wall: 99% (lol)
  36. Border wall construction not complete by end of 2018: 99%
  37. National Debt increases by >$1 trillion (from
    $21,943,897,000,000): 90%
  38. There will not be a significant decrease in trade barriers between US and China from pre-2017 tariff levels: 90%
  39. Democratic RCP front runner will not be Bernie Sanders: 80%
  40. Democratic RCP front runner will not be Kamala Harris: 80%
  41. Democratic RCP front runner will not be Beto O’Rourke: 80%
  42. Trump not removed from office or resign: 95%
  43. Trump not impeached: 70%
  44. No CRISPR edited babies will be born: 80%
  45. No full year US government budget will be passed (only several months spending): 90%
  46. Some tariffs raised: 90%
  47. Trump administration does not file a lawsuit against any news organization for defamation: 90%

I’d like to comment on every prediction, but I’m afraid it would take too much time. The predictions I find most interesting are whether the UK will leave the EU. I’m going by what predictions markets say, but I’m not really sure it will play out with only a few weeks to go and no deal. I’m also quite interested in the Democratic Presidential primary race, but I’m afraid the nomination will be trending towards someone pretty left wing. I’m also interested in whether Trump will be removed from office. I put the chances of Trump being impeached at 30% to stay in line with prediction markets, but my gut is that I should put that chance even lower.

What is Postlibertarianism? v2.0

When I started blogging here about 18 months ago, I knew that I was having trouble identifying myself as exactly “libertarian”, despite that being my primary blogging perspective for years before that. I’ve mapped out important parts of this “new” position in previous posts, but now I think it would make sense to put everything in one place. This post is labeled “2.0” since former postlibertarian.com blogger Joshua Hedlund defined it pretty well in 2011. This is a more in depth analysis.
Continue reading What is Postlibertarianism? v2.0

Russian Hacking and Divisive News Cycles

In 2014, the death of Michael Brown became the focal point of first the Ferguson protests and then the beginning of the Black Lives Matter movement. Just a couple months earlier, Eric Garner had been strangled to death on Staten Island by police on suspicion of selling untaxed cigarettes, while everything was caught on film. Michael Brown’s death had not been caught on film, but there had been video evidence of him robbing a convenience store and assaulting the store clerk moments before his altercation with a police officer. A later Justice Department investigation also found no wrongdoing on the part of the police officer who killed Michael Brown.

So the question is, why did the Michael Brown case get so much more attention than the Eric Garner case? Even Bill O’Reilly thought what happened to Eric Garner was unfair. Scott Alexander suggests the most successful stories are those that are controversial. A story that only induces frustration in one side doesn’t foment much of a debate. But on a controversial or murky topic, one can signal their loyalty to their tribe much more strongly; you really care about police brutality if you criticize the police when there’s no video evidence in Ferguson. Criticizing the police when there’s clear evidence of an illegal chokehold on Eric Garner doesn’t get you points.

Of course, even if the Michael Brown case was a bad example, the general topic of police abuse is important. I can’t say the same for the continued interest in this Russian Hacking story. For those who don’t know, the Clinton campaign accused the Russian government of hacking into the DNC’s email server, during the campaign. Trump denied that we knew for sure it was Russian state-sponsored hacking. More recently, US intelligence agencies have claimed they have evidence of Russia being involved, including high level Russian officials. They have also claimed they cannot show this evidence to the public as it would compromise their intelligence.

From top to bottom, the entire story is just so boring to me. This “hack” was apparently just a spear-phishing attack, something that is fairly easily avoided by not clicking on the wrong links in your email. Or using two-factor authentication. People are hacked this way every day, but it’s reasonable to have slightly higher expectations for political officials. But again, these weren’t political officials in office, it was the DNC in an election year. What was hacked was also not particularly valuable; we saw a bunch of emails of DNC officials being politicians. Yes, it put the DNC in a bad light, looking like they were colluding with the Clinton campaign to have her win the primaries…but what exactly is the point of a political party if not to try and win political office? The DNC obviously thought Hillary had a better shot than Bernie. That’s not a crazy idea. Moreover, most of these emails came long after Bernie had fallen behind in the delegate count anyway.

The only people these emails could have surprised are those unfamiliar with politics or those not skeptical enough (and not this blog). It seems quite possible that Russia was indeed behind these attacks; they have the capabilities and the motivation as the Clinton State Department was quite annoying to Russian foreign interests. Trump has signaled a much more dovish approach to Russia, as well as an admiration for Putin’s strong man policies. There’s some uncertainty, but the Clinton campaign, Obama administration, and now US intelligence all insist Russia was involved and trying to “influence” the US election…by releasing accurate exact transcripts of emails of DNC officials. Ok.

What if these accusations are true? Suppose Russia did sponsor very simplistic attacks on the DNC email server and then released those emails to the public in order to make Clinton less popular. Who cares? Russia doing this doesn’t change the content of the emails; what if a whistleblower at the DNC had leaked them? It changes nothing.

And while we’re talking about changing nothing, I’m under the impression that these emails changed very little. Trump voters weren’t exactly huge DNC and Clinton fans before they read these emails; neither were Bernie supporters. I doubt this had much impact on the election.

Many on the left have been shocked Trump won’t admit Russia was behind this hack, but it’s such a low stakes thing, I can’t imagine it would much change his position towards Russia. Meanwhile, Trump has repeatedly said much more heinous and horrific things, likely in the week prior to you reading this blog post.

To continue the absurdity, recently US intelligence agencies released a report detailing why they think Russia was behind the hack. The report is embarrassing. It has no details or evidence, and it spends the majority of its pages talking about the Russian state-sponsored news station RT and how it criticizes the US government. I’m still fairly confident that Russia is indeed behind this hack, but the report makes American intelligence look completely incompetent, and its evidence of the hack purely circumstantial.

Ok, I’m going to stop talking about this non-story. The problem is that this non-story has continued for weeks without my help. I bring it up only to show the truly insidious nature of a divided outrage news cycle. This debate being had on Russian hacking is based on little and has essentially no relevance to the very real challenges we face. The president-elect has continuously vowed to challenge free trade ideas which will seriously harm the global and domestic economy. He’s planned to use executive authority in insane ways to violate civil liberties, including torturing people, committing war crimes, and depriving people of due process. We ought to be talking about those issues and what Congress will be doing to thwart him, but instead we are caught up arguing about email phishing scams.


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The Alternative to Trump

I’ve made a couple posts detailing that Trump’s populist ideology has no real ideas, and the ideas it has are pretty universally terrible. So how do we go about opposing Trump?

After Trump won the nomination, I thought I was going to have to write a big post about picking up the pieces on the right after Trump’s loss. Turns out, Hillary Clinton was a much worse candidate that even I suspected, and now it’s the left that needs to look at themselves. I’ve got some ideas that could help them (and at least one that advances my own agenda).

However, even I have to admit that the reality is not that dire for Democrats politically, nor progressives ideologically. At last count, Hillary was winning the popular vote by 2.5 million. It seems quite possible that if they had nominated someone who was more palatable to independents and moderate Republicans in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, Democrats would have done fine. No platform overhaul necessary. In fact, had Obama been able to win a 3rd term, I’d bet a lot of money he’d have won it, were he facing Trump.

However, Democrats are doing poorly in most state-level races, including the House. In light of this, and since people are talking about refurbishing left-wing ideas anyway, it’s at least fun to discuss  ways to improve the Democratic Party. Bernie Sanders stated that Democrats have to go beyond identity politics to focus on progressive ideas. I agree with this on its face, but I’m sure what Bernie really means is we should make the welfare state bigger and envelop not just retiree pensions and retiree healthcare, but universal healthcare, childcare, and free college-level education. He also seems to pair this with a strong regulatory state and reduction in some individual rights such as free speech connected to campaign financing. Rather than focusing on groups of people as representatives of ethnicities or genders, I think it’s fair to say Sanders thinks we should focus on wealth and socioeconomic status. In political coalition terms, Sanders wants to focus on revitalizing and expanding the New Deal Coalition, bringing back the white working class voters who supported Trump. This isn’t a crazy idea, but it does seem like trying to fight fire with fire, or rather, populism with populism.

Let’s take a look at a favorite libertarian tool, the Nolan chart:

The Nolan Chart splits the usual left-right spectrum into two separate political spectrums of economic and personal liberty. Theoretically, you could have as many axes as you want, with respective Nolan hypercubes.
The Nolan Chart splits the usual left-right spectrum into two separate political spectra of economic and personal liberty. Theoretically, you could have as many axes as you want, with respective Nolan hypercubes.

Sometimes this chart will be drawn with “Populism” instead of “Authoritarianism” in the bottom quadrant. “Personal freedom” and “economic freedom” are often more intertwined than this chart would like to admit, and both the left and the right can be all over this chart. When Ron Wyden argues against NSA spying and against harsher sentences for drug offenses, he’s definitely high on the personal liberty access on the left. But when Democrat Chuck Schumer supports the Patriot Act, the prohibition of aerial drones, and the banning of Bitcoin, he’s a lot lower on the personal liberty axis. Likewise, Republicans can vary from very libertarian leaning, high up on the right side (Ron Paul) to low down on the right side, ok with regulated markets and curtailing personal freedoms (Donald Trump). The problem with the new Bernie Sanders approach for the Democratic Party is that it challenges Trump for the lower middle of the Nolan chart, meeting him head-on, while ignoring the top middle of the chart. Even if there were enough voters just in that lower quadrant, The Economist points out that recently left-wing parties have struggled with populist victories, losing to right-wing populists in a litany of countries.

Rather than fighting populism with populism, I suggest a flanking maneuver for the left, countering a view of government solving most problems with a view of more personal freedom, more efficient markets, but also a government focused on solving market failures. A tolerant market welfare state, or a neoclassical liberalism.

 

I’m not the only one who has advocated something like this; Scott Alexander has an excellent Something Sort of Like Left-Libertarianism-ist Manifesto. I would really recommend reading his article on this, as the following arguments are just poor restatements of Scott’s more eloquent  points.

Markets convey valuable information and coordinate action across millions of actors with differing preferences. To quote from Hayek’s famous essay, “The Use of Knowledge in Society”:

The economic problem of society is thus not merely a problem of how to allocate “given” resources—if “given” is taken to mean given to a single mind which deliberately solves the problem set by these “data.” It is rather a problem of how to secure the best use of resources known to any of the members of society, for ends whose relative importance only these individuals know. Or, to put it briefly, it is a problem of the utilization of knowledge which is not given to anyone in its totality.

Markets are really good at solving this problem of distributed knowledge. They can then get the most efficient allocation of resources, and even direct future production towards the creation of goods most demanded by consumers.

But markets don’t solve every problem. They don’t solve the “initial” allocation of resources, when some market actors are endowed with few goods or capital. Thus, while it’s important to allow these people specifically to trade what resources they have (likely low-skilled labor hours) in the most lucrative way possible, they still won’t be able to end up with much since they didn’t start with much. In other words, some people aren’t highly skilled and may never be. Despite a nice efficient market, they might end up with few available resources. Markets also don’t solve (by definition) externalities where market transactions harm unseen third parties (pollution is the usual example).

A solution here is to create a welfare system that assists low productivity workers, while leaving as much of the market as untouched as possible. We can thus solve the problem and also continue to take advantage of the distributed knowledge and allocation abilities of markets. To be clear, most welfare programs are pretty good at giving assistance to the poor, but in the United States, they come with far too many market regulations and exceptions. Most of the most popular Bernie Sanders ideas emphatically do not leave the market untouched. His $15 minimum wage advocacy has little empirical support. Rather than punish companies for hiring low-productivity workers, we should be either subsidizing wages for low-income earners, or giving a small basic income. The cost would not then be forced upon companies that hire low-skilled workers (the opposite of what we want), but distributed among society generally (the whole point of the welfare state). The government negotiating for Medicare rates of specific procedures and the exclusive use of government bonds for the Social Security trust fund are two more examples of welfare that shun a market based approach.

Interestingly, this pro-market-and-pro-welfare approach is actually somewhat familiar in Bernie Sanders’ favored Nordic countries. While their budgets are larger than the US, in several measures, their regulatory burden is more favorable and laissez- aire, and some indices also give them stronger contract and property rights than America.

There are other benefits to this low regulation approach too. Specifically, rather than banning things we don’t like, such as the use of coal to produce electricity or drinking alcohol, we simply tax them to disincentivize their use. As Scott states, this leaves us more options. Obviously, there are some benefits to doing things the state wants to ban; otherwise people wouldn’t be doing them. Coal is burned because it’s so cheap. The problem is that its burning has externalities. If the state increases the cost born by those who burn it to better reflect the pollutants it releases, energy from coal could still be used, just not to the same extent. This is a good thing! We should encourage behavior when the benefits exceed the costs. If the state can help create better incentives, individuals will make better choices themselves without blunt bans from the government.

This neoclassical liberal approach also means an opposition to Trump’s (and Bernie’s) protectionism and anti-immigration stances. If workers are concerned about their situation in the information economy, we need to liberalize their education opportunities, or even subsidize low productivity wages. But we can’t respond with trade barriers and stifle technological progress. The defense of classical liberal values, like tolerance, the rule of law, privacy, and freedom of expression, is also fundamental to this political position, especially as all these values all under threat by Trump.

I don’t really expect Democrats or the left generally to take this approach, but perhaps I can convince a few here and there that it would make sense. Caring about what happens to the unfortunate in society is something libertarians don’t always do well, but markets still have a vital part to play in improving society. Ultimately though, over the next four years, libertarians and progressives will have to work together on some issues, such as defending civil liberties. Hopefully, progressives will realize that libertarians are allying with them for the very same reasons they opposed them during the Obama administration, and had they listened then, our problems would not be so dire now.


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Links 2016-5-30

Gary Johnson selected former Republican Massachusetts Governor William Weld  to be his running mate. This was pretty surprising for Libertarians considering Weld isn’t really a well-known libertarian guy.  Obviously, the Johnson campaign hoped not to repeat the failings of Jim Gray who was essentially unknown to the national media. During the Libertarian Party convention this weekend, the delegates selected both Gary Johnson and Bill Weld opting for pragmatism rather than party purity.  This is some election year when the libertarians are more reasonable than the Republicans and Democrats.

With 2 former Republican governors on the ticket, the Libertarian Party is now poised to be a real third party alternative. This could be a huge year for them, even if they don’t win. Remember, from our archives, if you reach 5% of the popular vote in a presidential election, you are entitled to real money in the next cycle (the irony of Libertarians accepting Federal handouts not withstanding).

Nicholas Kristof has a follow up to his column “A Confession of Liberal Intolerance” where he condemned the intolerance of progressives especially in the university. Apparently, the left universally scoffed at the thought of tolerating conservatives…which essentially confirmed his point.

The EFF is shutting down their canary watch program after a year. I have previously discussed the importance and usefulness of warrant canaries. It seems the EFF has decided it isn’t worth the effort to keep track of all the notices because they seem to change too much from post to post.  These aren’t bad reasons, but it is a little concerning. It seems likely that you’ll just have to stick to the default that any website you visit has received national security letters asking for information.

Jason Brennan at Bleeding Heart Libertarians on the difference between Ignorance, Misinformation, and Irrationality in democracies.  Essentially ignorance isn’t exactly the problem in democracies, since if everyone is equally ignorant, then the non-ignorant people will be able to make rational decisions; there is no bias for the ignorant people since they have no opinion. Misinformation can be a problem though, if most people are misinformed, they will make poor decisions. But even if people are misinformed, having a deliberative discussion will help as rational logic should triumph. But irrationality is a serious problem, since even discussions would just spread more misinformation. This relates to the thesis of Bryan Caplan’s book The Myth of the Rational Voter (Wikipedia, full text for free).  I look forward to reading Brennan’s new book, iconoclastically titled Against Democracy.

Tangentially related: John Oliver has a segment on the flaws of the primary system. Unfortunately, he sort of glosses over the assumption that they need to be more democratic, but do they? He says this time we “got lucky” in that the candidates with the most votes were the ones actually chosen, but we need to change things in the future. I disagree; the candidates we did choose are awful. If the system is working now, making it work better won’t help anything. Check out my previous post for more on this, and forward it to John Oliver if you get a chance. Better than reforming the primary system, let’s try making more parties more viable with some proportional representation in the House of Representatives!

Why Bernie doesn’t quit: Polisci 101 analysis of Bernie Sanders’ intentions. Basically, he wants to stop Hillary from turning towards the center, since he wants the Democratic party to be very a progressive Social Democrat party. This is also the reason that anyone who’s not a Social Democrat wants Bernie out of the race.

Ilya Shapiro at the Cato Institute, who knows his stuff pretty well, called Donald Trump’s list for replacing Justice Scalia’s SCOTUS seat “exceptional”. This is good news in that a Trump presidency would at least have this going for it. I don’t know if all this would make him a better choice than Clinton, but it is a big deal, at least to me.  Doubtful if this alone would be enough to unite all Republicans around him.

Nick Gillespie has two solid blog posts. One is a great overview of a recent Foreign Relations Committee Hearing and the constrasting views of Marco Rubio and Rand Paul.  Paul, we should note, won his primary to stand for reelection for his Kentucky Senate seat. This should largely guarantee his victory (PredictIt doesn’t have a market yet but PredictWise has it at 90% Republican).  The other post discusses how Obama’s new overtime regulations are going to harm workers by reducing hours, workers, or both.

Meta-blog post. Do you need more economics blogs? Here is a giant list of them. They’re vaguely ordered by popularity, and you shouldn’t just dismiss it because Paul Krugman is first; there’s a lot of good blogs I didn’t know about.

Dylan Matthews at Vox makes the case for getting rid of the TSA. Doesn’t even mention the financial cost savings (their budget is $8 billion, and cost of time is at least that).

Scott Sumner on the problems with government policy responses to crises. Scott also did a much better job predicting the economy than the Fed. Takeaway: please, please institute prediction markets for the basic macroeconomic indicators.

Cool YouTube video on computational complexity and the P vs NP problem.

Short summary of one of the best essays on markets: Hayek’s “The Use of Knowledge in Society”.

What are the components of airline ticket prices? Great YouTube video explanation.

All the Scott Alexander: Apparently good kindergarden teachers have massive effects on income decades later, but no lasting effect on test scores. There really bizarre studies and all I can tell is that education research is hard.

As part of his ongoing philosophy of niceness and tolerance in society, and relating to my post on tolerance, Scott discusses more on tolerance and coordinated vs uncoordinated meanness.

Scott also has a great post on his experience in the Irish health system, related to the UK junior doctors’ strike.  There are serious barriers to entry to the US medical system because the benefits are so high if you become a doctor. In UK, this is not true, since the state regulates how much doctors can make, so of course many doctors are leaving the UK and Ireland for places where the pay is less regulated. Scott says he’s not sure how to solve labor disputes, but if you have a freer market in hiring and payment, you don’t end up having labor disputes. The American system has problems as well, and if the barriers to entry could be reduced

And finally: Scott Alexander’s review of Albion’s Seed, and his analysis of the importance of culture in determining beliefs.

Apparently non-technical people don’t know this, but Craig Wright isn’t Satoshi Nakamoto. He had an “exclusive” interview with several media outlets discussing how he was really the inventor of Bitcoin. But if you read the story pretty quickly, you notice he doesn’t provide a signature with Satoshi’s private key (the reddit and Hacker News threads found he stole a signature from a transaction in one of the early blocks), and he doesn’t move any of Satoshi’s money to a publicly declared account. Those are very easy ways to prove he is Satoshi Nakamoto, and he didn’t do them, instead relying on some weird demonstration directly to a journalist. I would have guessed most people would have figured he was lying (he has a weird history as well), especially because Satoshi Nakamoto has gone to great lengths to protect his identity, and this guy is clearly trying to get attention. But several news outlets printed it as true. Gavin Andresen, the lead developer of Bitcoin, has declared that he has seen proof, but he hasn’t told us what the proof is.  But you shouldn’t need a really famous person to vouch for someone’s identity, that’s the whole point of Bitcoin; decentralized proof is easy and clear.

From Ars Technica: Death by GPS.

Bryan Caplan on global warming cost-benefit analyses.

The Fourth Amendment apparently no longer applies to the federal government. The FBI can access any data gathered from general warrants issued under the FISA court to the NSA, which is only supposed to be targeting foreign nationals, but which we know just grabs all data a company has.

Marginal Revolution discusses the issue of public bathrooms in context on North Carolina’s recent law.

Your Candidate Sucks: Democracy Troubles

Now that we basically have our two major candidates, let’s do a retrospective look at some of the political candidates our system was able to produce, reject, or approve over this election cycle.  Let’s start with Republicans.

In early 2015, the prevailing wisdom was that Hillary Clinton was going to be the Democratic nominee.  She looked like a strong candidate but one with a low ceiling; she had great name recognition and experience, but also was (and is) tied to the Obama administration, especially its foreign policy. I’d argue she’s appeared even weaker over the course of the primaries than she did in 2015 as big swaths of Democrats have shown hesitation to embrace her candidacy. Given this situation, Republicans should have been able to come up with candidates that played well against Hillary; what they got is someone who (as of May 2016), isn’t very competitive. If only there had been someone else to pick from!

Wikipedia counts 17 Republican candidates. We won’t spend lots of time on all of them, but it’s worth seeing some of the candidates that were rejected. Continue reading Your Candidate Sucks: Democracy Troubles

Links 20160224

Marginal Revolution has a post about an event that occurred on Shark Tank. The pitch on the show was an alternative to bee honey, made from apples. Part of the pitch was that this would save the bee population by reducing the industrial demand for it (yes, really). Spoiler from Professor Tabarrok: “Reducing the demand for honey, reduces the demand for bees”.

Politico has a nice article about the potential of Bernie Sanders’ campaign, even if he doesn’t win a majority of delegates. The way the Democrats set things up, he will be in an excellent position to make demands on the party platform, possibly reshaping the Democrats’ economic policy for many years to come.

A recent Quinnipiac poll found that head-to-head, Sanders beats Trump by 10 points in a national survey (he does better than Clinton against Trump). Things could change of course, but it seems that Trump really isn’t who I should be worried about becoming president right now, as he’s still not likely to win the Republican nomination, and it seems the Democrats poll well against him.

SCOTUSblog has a nice write up on the next court nomination fight, now that Scalia is gone, what factors will be in play, and how can the Obama administration find a nominee with a spotless record that fires up the base and ensures a left-of-center court for a long time. I doubt they nominate a classical liberal.

Tyler Cowen writes about the benefits market monetary policy can bring, as well as the shortfalls of its approach when critiquing Fed policy.

Apple CEO Tim Cook posted a public letter to Apple customers detailing a demand made by the FBI. Law enforcement wants the company to create a new version of their operating system which they could then install on a criminal’s seized phone. The new OS would have a backdoor allowing the FBI to more quickly access it.  I liked Apple just fine as a company, but this is pretty awesome. This week, it turns out the FBI was lying about this being a one-time request as the DoJ is already pursuing orders to force Apple to unlock about a dozen other phones, according to anonymous sources.

Nostalgia Critic on Channel Awesome on YouTube has a great video detailing the absolutely horrible copyright abuse rampant on YouTube.   Claimants have no repercussions for false claims, even on self-evident fair use cases because YouTube’s system is entirely automated with no oversight.  Copyright battles are not something of the past, there are still huge problems today.

An NBER study from last year found government subsidies more than account for increases in tuition. H/t Slate Star Codex.

The German government gives us another example of how you can’t have government surveillance without fundamentally breaking security. Hacker News discussion.

Second link from Alex Tabarrok, this time on drug prices and the FDA. Apparently the US has the lowest generic drug prices of any developed nation. I feel like we should switch to a prize system where drug companies are awarded $X million for successfully passing approval, and then that drug is immediately released with no patent into the market. X could be set based on the amount of patients in the previous 5 years who could have used the drug.

People like to talk about the “Uber” of some industry, trying to say a company is disrupting their space like Uber did to taxis (also in the interest of fighting monopolies, Lyft is great too).   How about Uber for welfare? The left often opposes “workfare”, or ways which incentivize welfare recipients to work, since finding jobs for everyone isn’t practical “…but today the gig economy offers the solution: It can easily and quickly put millions of people back to work, allowing almost anyone to find a job with hours that are flexible with virtual locations anywhere.”  There’s also some data that working is a really good on a cultural level, teaching discipline and responsibility. This sort of goes against my attraction to a basic income, but could go hand in hand: you get a basic income allowance if you can prove you engaged in the gig economy recently. Really cool idea.

From EconLog, some praise for the Free State Project. Apparently they’ve already got over a dozen people elected to the state legislature? Tried to find somewhere else this is being tracked, but I didn’t see anything. If you have info on this, tweet at me.

Also from EconLog, Bryan Caplan finished his summarized his extended discussion of ancestry and long run growth literature.  In sum, we can’t say that people with more advanced culture thousands of years ago had that much better outcomes today. It’s likely other institutional decisions are more important (like having stable free markets).

The Iowa Caucuses

Republican

Ted Cruz has won Iowa, and it looks like Donald Trump and Marco Rubio are essentially tied for second place. This is good news for Cruz and Rubio, and bad news for Trump. Trump was leading in most of the polls leading up to Iowa, and Trump has marketed his high polling numbers as his claim to relevance.  It seems, at least in Iowa, those polling numbers aren’t as powerful as we thought.  This could be due to the fact that caucuses are bad for Trump’s less educated constituency, or it could be evidence of deeper issues that his constituency will have a hard time showing up in many primaries.  Rand Paul, for what it’s worth, did better than expected, but was a distant 5th.

What does this mean?  Well, as I’ve referenced before, Trump’s lead may be due to disproportionate media coverage. This may fade as there is more focus on Cruz this week. Before tonight, I would have expected Trump to win in New Hampshire, but after tonight, his chances will be a bit slimmer.  Referencing my own predictions, I had Trump at 20% on December 31, and I personally had him at a 30% chance of winning the nomination yesterday. I’d bump him down to at most 25% now, perhaps less.  You have to also figure Rubio’s chances have increased.  Iowa is not somewhere he would be expected to do very well, yet he essentially tied for second. I’m not sure where I’d put Rubio’s chances to be the Republican nominee, but perhaps around 40%. Cruz would probably be around 30%.

How do I feel about this?  Well my preferences are certainly Rubio > Cruz > Trump, so I’m glad Trump lost. There’s the destructive argument that if Trump wins the nomination, it might help third parties out as conservatives voters cast about for another candidate, but even then it would be tough for libertarians to get the 5% needed for public financing or the 15% needed to get into the debates. We’ll have to see how the rest of the primaries go, but I severely hope Trump continues to do poorly.

Democratic

This was very close, and though I still don’t know who officially won, an outcome this close has clear ramifications: Clinton underperformed and Sanders beat expectations.  Sanders was already likely to win New Hampshire, and I’d bet that 538 will give him above an 80% chance to win for the rest of the week.  He is still likely to lose South Carolina.

What does this mean? In December, I gave Hillary a 90% chance to be the Democratic nominee (and Bernie a 10% chance). Before tonight, I think I would have given Bernie a 15-20% chance. After tonight, I think I’d be closer to 20%. Maybe. The problem for Sanders is just that Iowa plays to his strengths; he’ll do well in NH as it also plays to his strengths, but in big states and in more diverse states, I predict he will lose.  This will be one of Bernie’s best showings–and it was essentially a tie.  In all the other areas: funding, endorsements, connections…Hillary wins very handily.

How do I feel about this?  I vaguely prefer Sanders as I know exactly where he stands and what problems I have with him. Moreover, the president controls foreign policy, and I agree with Sanders much more than Clinton on foreign policy. But on his domestic agenda, Bernie has disastrous ideas.  I haven’t focused on them much this cycle because I gave Bernie a very low chance of winning the nomination. It may be worth writing about his policy flaws while people are still interested in discussing his policies.

However, that’s not the whole story, because there is some strategy involved as well. Even though in my last post, isidewith.com recommended Bernie over many other candidates, I’m not nearly so excited about him in my own preferences. I think in reality, I might prefer a Rubio presidency to a Sanders one, although both would be bad. Rubio just seems less extreme, and some of his compromises might be very beneficial, such as on immigration. So here’s the point: if Sanders was the nominee, it would doubtless lead to a GOP victory. This is bad if it’s Trump, but probably good if it’s Rubio (and I’m not sure about Cruz). And so this gives me another incentive to cheer for Sanders, as long as Trump does poorly.

So overall, it’s good Trump missed expectations, good Rubio beat expectations, and probably good Bernie beat expectations as well, but I doubt it’ll last.

And as for my last prediction I’ll bring up; in December, I gave myself a 70% chance I’d vote for the libertarian candidate in November.  An important reason I wouldn’t vote for the libertarian candidate would be if a situation arose where my vote would help decide the outcome of the state I live in, and if I feared for the outcome of the election. Overall, if I’m not voting for the libertarian candidate, bad things are probably happening. Luckily I’d say my prediction remains unchanged as of right now.

 

 

Picture credits: both by Gage Skidmore, licensed under CC-BY-SA.