Why do we disagree?

This question matters.  It determines the scope of debate and helps us understand differing viewpoints.  It is also answered with confusion or misinformation with hilarious frequency.  I'll touch on how to think about these disagreements and briefly highlight some examples of confusion in the tax and voter ID debates.  Anyway, why do we disagree?

In politics, it seems to come down to a few things:

1. Differing, empirically testable, ideas about the world (facts)
2. Differing, empirically testable, ideas about how the world works (models)
3. Differing ideas about the proper values and goals of society 
4. Differing ideas about the proper powers of government

or, if you like:

1. What is the world like?
2. What can we do about it?
3. What should we do about it?
4. How shouldn't we do it?

None of that is terribly controversial, but I think that people often confuse the origins of their disagreement.  

I often, for instance, hear conservatives saying that the government shouldn't raise taxes on the rich, but depending on who you talk to, the answer to why varies a lot.  For some it is "because they are job creators", but for others it is "because it isn't fair".  These world views have the same conclusion, but different implications.  We can, to some extent, test the proposition that raising taxes will mean less job creation.  If a person genuinely believes this to be the primary reason not to raise taxes on the rich, then empirical arguments are the most appropriate forum of discussion.  For the "it isn't fair" person, the proper arguments are philosophical--diminishing marginal utility, &c.  Of course, people often convolve many different types of reasons, or simply hold positions as an aspect of group identity, but the basic point still stands.

Now, I don't think it is impossible to convince people to change their positions in 3 & 4 type disagreements, but it's substantially harder.  It is, however, possible to give people better access to facts, and in many cases that changes the nature of the discussion for the better.

Presenting evidence of the extremely low incidence of voter ID fraud, for instance, seems to have shifted the debate from "we need to curb rampant voter ID fraud" to "it is right and proper for voters to show ID in order to vote".  In other words, the debate has shifted from an empirical one to an ideological one.  From my perspective, that is good, because ideological questions are the only valid questions to ask voters in my idealized constitutional anarchy model of government.   Voters are, in fact, quite bad at discerning which facts and models best reflect the real world.  But, they are excellent at determining what they think are good goals to focus on as a society, and what they think are categorically unacceptable ways of achieving those goals.

I'll have more on practical applications of this idea, and ways in which it might help move the debate forward in a later post.

Not sold on the Local Food movement: take two

My college roommate--an ecologist--just took a swing at my local food skepticism post.  I think he missed in all the same ways that my other ecophile buddies do, but his comment gave me a great sampling of the typical arguments I hear.  I'm going to address each of them in the hopes that future ecophiles might be able to help me understand their position better, or come to the realization that their position is untenable and surrender to my superior arguments.  You can read his original comments here; I'm just going to summarize what I see as the key claims and arguments and then address them systematically.

My Claims	Common Ecophile claims
Sustainability should be about efficiency	Sustainability isn't just about efficiency
Even if externalities were priced in and subsidies were eliminated, industrial agriculture would benefit from economies of scale and be cheaper than "local" food.	Industrial agriculture is cheaper because its real costs are hidden (subsides and externalities)
Sustainability is only a real concern for resources that we must use continuously, but that we use faster than we make.  Creating a viable alternative, finding a way to slow consumption, and/or finding a way to speed production are the only ways to address real sustainability problems.	We should stop using X now so we don't catastrophically run out of X later.
Organic food has not been shown to be any healthier or more nutritious than regular food.	Organic is healthier and more nutritious
I see no reason to believe that waste per unit product is higher for industrial agriculture, nor have I seen any numbers to show it.  Please educate me if such arguments/numbers exist.	Industrial agriculture produces more waste than local agriculture.

My Conclusions:
Sustainability efforts should be focused on pricing in externalities and improving resource usage efficiency.  The health/nutrition stuff doesn't really have science on its side.  I also think that we benefit enormously from global food markets, since regional disease and bad weather events would be catastrophic if there weren't willing food exporters distributed around the world.  It's one of the best tools we have for avoiding global food shortages.  Increased diversity would be another good defense from this, but we don't need to go local to do it, and I'm not sure going local would help.

My Arguments:
Piles of arguments below the fold.  Before you read them you should know that I approach ecological issues in an entirely human-centric manner.  I don't think we should destroy pretty places or be mean to animals just because we can.  But, I don't care about pretty places or rare animal species or being nice to caged chickens or anything like that except in so far as it benefits human beings to do so.  I think saving the algae is way more important than saving the whales and I'd flatten every mountain in Africa if it meant we could feed all the Africans.  I am glad we forced smallpox into extinction and would happily support mass extinctions of many other organisms that are inconvenient to human beings (eg. malaria, HIV).

Debunking the "US Budget is like a Family Budget" Nonsense

Because I'm fed up with hearing this crap from even my smart informed friends, I am doing you all the favor of collecting the relevant facts, figures, and context and systematically addressing the common objections.  Please don't make me do it again.

(Mini-Summary For Lazy Readers:
On its face, the Family Budget metaphor ignores assets and misrepresents the US debt situation to make it seem more severe than it already is.  Furthermore, countries that borrow in their own currencies (not the euro states, not most "3rd world" nations because no one trusts their money) need never default because they can print any amount of money they like to service their debt.   And, none of the things we might see if we were actually in "too much" debt are even close to happening.)

The annoying meme that is being passed around looks something like this if you use the CBOs numbers for 2011:

Family Budget

Annual Income:	$23,025
Annual Spending:	$35,981
New Credit Card Debt:	$13,628
Total Credit Card Debt:	$147,900

Looks pretty ugly, right? But then why are there all these articles and op-eds about the debt thing being overblown?  Well, probably the first thing to look at is the "Total Credit Card Debt" thing.  It turns out that that can be split into "Debt Held by the Public" (money the government owes other people) and "Debt Held by Agencies and Trusts" (money the government owes itself), so maybe the budget should look like this:

Family Budget

Annual Income:	$23,025
Annual Spending:	$35,981
New Credit Card Debt:	$13,628
Total Credit Card Debt:	$101,300
Money Dad Owes Mom:	$46,580

That 46k doesn't seem to be a real issue so long as Mom and Dad are on good terms, and thankfully, our government agencies can't divorce the treasury.  Say Mom paid Dad's way through lawschool; but hes only a legal clerk now.  This kind of stuff happens all the time in families and few think of it as part of their debt burden.

Now, absent from the Family Budget is the rather important aspect of "assets".  This isn't by accident... the credit card debt framing makes it seem like all the money was spent frivolously, that the interest rates are high, and that nothing of value is retained by the Family.  Of course none of this accurately reflects reality, and in no place is this more egregious than in the case of foreign debt.  It turns out that one of the assets that are left out of this budget is the foreign stuff we own. We own almost as much foreign debt as we owe:


And we're actually making more money on our foreign investments than it costs us to service the money we owe them:



So where does that leave our family again?  Well according to FRED, we owe 4,660 billion dollars to foreign investors, or in the parlance of our family: $46,600.  Since our income from foreign investments exceeds our payments to foreign investors and our total foreign debt is similar in size to our total foreign holdings, I think it's fair to say that debt is a wash.  Let's look at our family now:

Family Budget

Annual Income:	$23,025
Annual Spending:	$35,981
New Credit Card Debt:	$13,628
Total Credit Card Debt:	$54,700 ( $101,300-$46,600 )
Money Dad Owes Mom:	$46,580

Well, that looks like a tough year (all that new debt), but pretty manageable in the long run so long as we can get spending under control, and that's just what we can do playing by the silly rules of the metaphor.

And those rules are very very silly.  US Government debt isn't like household or business debt for a few very important reasons.  First and foremost, the government happens to own a device called a "printing press" which is miraculously capable of printing any sum of money at virtually no cost.  Secondly, the government is capable (at least in theory) of giving itself a raise through increased taxation, and its revenue stream is much more secure than a regular family on account of it is very difficult to be fire the government, and if you did its debt would disappear anyway.  Finally, all that remaining debt ($54,700) is borrowed from US tax payers and will be payed off by US tax payers, so there's no money actually being lost to the US (though of course the US government would be better off without the debt, but that's very different from the nation of the US).  It might be more appropriate to say that the entirety of the debt in this family budget is owed between members of the family.

If that's true, though, then why would any level of debt be bad, and what signs could we see that we've really gotten to the bad level of debt?  Well, if you borrow in a currency you can't print, and primarily from other countries (like Greece) then your situation IS actually like the family budget, and you might be in trouble.  But, what if you are like the U.S.? What bad things could a large debt do to us?

1. It might increase borrowing costs or reduce access to credit by some other means (such as no one being willing to lend you money at any interest rate at all).
   
2. In the government case, it might "crowd out" business investment (by soaking up all the loan-able funds or by driving up interest rates for businesses and private citizens
   
3. It might transfer large amounts of wealth from our economy to some other nation's central bank.
4. It might transfer large amounts of money from some American Taxpayers to other American Taxpayers in a systematically destabilizing way (like maybe we give all the poor people's money to very rich people and impose huge hardships)
5. It might force us to engage in money printing at a scale which produces dramatic inflation

How does that stack up against our actual situation?

1. It is currently cheaper in real terms to borrow money to pay for things than to pay for things out of current tax revenue. (because the real interest rate on government loans is negative... you can buy a bridge for 100 inflation adjusted dollars now and charge tax payers 100 dollars for it, or you can build it for 100 inflation adjusted dollars on credit and pay back your creditor with 99 inflation adjust dollars later)
2. Banks have massive excess reserves available for loaning and borrowing costs are historically low... no crowding out
3. Our government spends the vast majority of its money on buying things in america, and our net foreign debt is close to zero, so none of this money is leaving our economy.
4. Hard to say on this one.  Our current tax code is mildly progressive (rich people pay a little more than poor people), and bonds are owned primarily by rich people, so it is likely that the wealth transfer caused by debt will be largely from rich people to rich people, but if the tax code got mixed up maybe something systematic and bad could happen.  Doesn't look like a big problem so far though.
5. Inflation is. you know, average...

US Inflation Rates

About Particles and Arguments

So the recent maybe-discovery by CERN of some possibly-faster-than-light neutrinos has been garnering a lot of attention lately.  Predictably, people are claiming that this result, if true, destroys everything we thought we knew about physics.  For people convinced by this argument, please see my previous post.

A Key Question

I used to think that the important thing to ask someone whose views you wanted to understand is "why do you believe this?"  It seems like a good start for a discussion, and a way of figuring out whether you're on the same page as someone, what they value, and how they came to their decision.  But, after spending the better part of this year embroiled in near-constant virtually-zero-progress political debates, I can't help but think that I had this one wrong.  I think I figured out a better one.  "What hypothetical evidence would it take to change your mind on this issue?" Try it out on some people.

I like this question because it separates core value issues from higher order policy ideas.  If you can't give a real answer to this question (I can't think of any possible evidence that could convince me that slavery should be legal... for instance), then your policy goal is simply to enact your favored policy (in this case abolition).  However, I can think of lots of ways that, say, my belief in the fiscal stimulus's effectiveness could be overturned.  For example, if someone showed me that job losses or GDP losses had accelerated or stayed the same after its implementation, I would be forced to abandon my belief that the stimulus improved the economy.

If you manage to have a conversation with someone entirely about the ways in which each of your views could (hypothetically of course) be overturned, then you are a lot closer to understanding where they come from, and how you can fix them ;-).

Here's my economic issue list.  Please feel free to comment in your own convinceables.

Empirical Evidence of Plutocracy

I know that most of you didn't need this to believe, but I had to share this snippet from Ezra Klein:

I’m sure all of these theories are at least partially right. But they’re missing the big one that has the best evidence behind it: The unemployed don’t have very much money. And it’s money that gets the political system interested in your agenda:

Gilens has been collecting the results of nearly 2,000 survey questions reaching back to the 1980s, looking for evidence that when opinions change, so too does policy. And he found it — but only for the rich. “Most policy changes with majority support didn’t become law,” Hacker and Pierson write. The exception was “when they were supported by those at the top. When the opinions of the poor diverged from those of the well-off, the opinions of the poor ceased to have any apparent influence: If 90 percent of poor Americans supported a policy change, it was no more likely to happen than if 10 percent did. By contrast, when more of the well-off supported a change, it was substantially more likely to happen.”

If 15 million college-educated professionals were unemployed right now, the political system would care.

I spent a little time trying to find the original study, but I couldn't track it down. I guess you'd have to read the book, but suffice to say that I am not surprised.

I am sad now

Dear Politicians,

It has come to my attention that you are more or less incapable of doing anything in America at the moment.  Please quit mucking about and do something useful.  A couple basic guidelines:

1. Evidence - please use it, and please present it in context.  Large numbers are scary, but large numbers when compared to other historical or projected large numbers are much less so.
2. Consistency - I know it is bad politics to hold logically consistent beliefs, but I think that maybe if you don't someone should call you on it, and in a public easy to understand way, not in the clever but not terribly accessible way my favorite bloggers do.

Point 1 is for the pragmatists.  If you care about the impact of your legislation, and not terribly much on the abstract values behind the way it works, then you should be a slave to Evidence.  For those of you who are primarily interested in a legislative enactment of some value-system, you should be checking to make sure your enactment doesn't undermine your values by its effects.

Point 2 is for values-politicians.  If you're holding a core set of beliefs and want to enshrine them in law, then you should at the very least make sure that they don't contradict each other.  For pragmatists, this might not matter as much in your implementation, but you should be watching the aggregate effects to make sure they still do what you hope they will.

I know this is a hopeless and empty plea, but I'm burnt out on real world politics and needed to get that off my chest.  Expect more bounds on taxation and other abstract policy discussions in the near future.

Love,
Rory

Good Conservative Blogs Follow Up

So a while ago I asked after some good conservative blogs in order to balance out my reading material.  I also spent quite a lot of time searching on my own and here's my conclusion: there are no good conservative blogs.  

Basically, the closest you can get is mises libertarian stuff where maybe one in four or five articles has some intellectual merit, but even there we only get a tiny amount of evidence based information... maybe one in 20 articles actually uses real world numbers to support its points.  As far as actual main stream republicanism goes, there does not appear to be a SINGLE intelligent thinker in the entire blogosphere.  I am eager to be proven wrong here, and have spent quite a lot of my time and resources attempting to prove myself wrong, but I'm convinced.

Dear Republican party, I would like to know about the deep thinking behind your sound bytes.  If I cannot find any evidence in support of that thinking anywhere, I am inclined to believe that there is none.