#econlog

[eccentric-opinion]

Convenience has a massive effect on your behavior. You rarely shop in your favorite store, eat in your favorite restaurant, or visit your favorite place. Why not? Because doing so is typically inconvenient.

When governments mandate extra privacy or safety or consumer protection, crowds cheer and pundits sing. From now on, you’ll be clicking a few extra boxes a day. From now on, you'll have to stand ten feet away from the next person at the pharmacy. From now on, you'll have to sign your name and initials twenty times on a mortgage contract. Privately, almost everyone thinks each of these is a pain in the neck. Yet almost no one goes on TV and self-righteously objects, "These high-minded ideals are going to be awfully inconvenient."...

Why doesn't a rival politician gain power by promising to make convenience great again? Because "convenience" sounds petty and ignoble. People love convenience. They happily sacrifice other values for convenience. But they don't want to acknowledge this fact - or affiliate with those who do...

Yes, we long for a convenient world. A little inconvenience can ruin your entire day. No one, however, will ever go to the barricades for convenience. In fact, we're ashamed to admit how much convenience matters for our quality of life. The market mercifully sells us the convenience we want without judging us. Government, in contrast, takes us at our word - and robs us of precious convenience bit by bit, day by day.

- Bryan Caplan

[fatpinocchio]

Economists often off-handedly remark that basic economics is "counterintuitive".

1. Counterintuitive claim: Free trade makes countries richer, even if the other countries have big advantages like cheaper labor or more advanced technology.

Intuitive version: We'd be better off if other countries gave us stuff for free. Isn't "really cheap" the next-best thing?

2. Counterintuitive claim: Strict labor market regulation is bad for workers.

Intuitive version: Employers don't like hiring people if it's hard to get rid of them. Suppose you had to marry anyone you asked out on a date!

- Bryan Caplan

[eccentric-opinion]

The discovery of wasteful spending does not magically reveal constructive alternatives. Prudence dictates a two-step response. Step 1: Stop wasting the resources. Step 2: Save those resources until you discover a good way to spend them. Not wasting resources is simple and speedy. Don't just stand there; do it. Finding good ways to use resources is complex and slow. Don't just do it; think it through. Remember: you can apply saved resources anywhere...

Suppose I prove your toenail fungus cream doesn't work. I counsel, "Stop wasting money on that worthless cream." Would you demur, "Not until we find a toenail fungus remedy that works"? No way. Finding a real remedy could be more trouble than it's worth. It might take forever. Continuing to waste money on quackery until a cure comes into your possession is folly. Saying, "There must be a cure!" is childish and dogmatic. Maybe your toenails are a lost cause, and you should use the savings for a trip to Miami.

- Bryan Caplan

[eccentric-opinion]

No matter how controversial your political views are, there are always people on "your side" who hold a more extreme position than you do. How do you account for such people?

Top scenarios:

1. The extremists are actually right, but their proposals are "politically impossible". It's better to ask for half a loaf and get it than demand a totally unattainable whole loaf.

2. The extremists are actually right, but their proposals are politically unstable. Even if the extremists prevailed in the short-run, the long-run effect would be a mighty backlash, leading to a crushing defeat for your side. It's better to ask for half a loaf that you can actually keep than demand a whole loaf that will soon be confiscated.

3. The extremists would be right, except that foolish and/or knavish resistance to their proposals would be extremely costly. As a result, it’s better to pursue your more moderate approach, which is inferior in principle but elicits less strident opposition. It's better to peacefully obtain half a loaf than to fight a bloody battle for a whole loaf.

4. The extremists are wrong because they take a good idea too far. A moderate move in your preferred direction makes the world better; an extreme move, however, makes it worse. It's better to eat half a loaf and remain at a healthy body weight than to eat a whole loaf and become morbidly obese.

5. The extremists are wrong because they take your side’s rhetoric too literally. Yes, moderates like you often exaggerate and oversimplify, but you know you’re doing it. Your extremists, in contrast, naively believe your side’s exaggerations and oversimplifications, leading them to advocate ineffective or even dangerous policies. Just because your slogan loudly proclaims that “Bread is the staff of life” doesn’t mean you should follow an all-bread diet.

6. The extremists are wrong because they fail to grasp the intellectually sophisticated position held by moderates such as yourself. If they would just patiently listen, they’d discover the intricacies of your worldview. Alas, they rarely bother. Thus, you derive the value of a half a loaf of bread from a detailed examination of human nutritional requirements - and the extremists childishly fixate on getting "all the bread".

- Bryan Caplan

[eccentric-opinion]

Amazon is simply the best store that ever existed, by far, with incredible selection and unearthly convenience. The price: cheap.

Facebook, Twitter, and other social media let us socialize with our friends, comfortably meet new people, and explore even the most obscure interests. The price: free.

Uber and Lyft provide high-quality, convenient transportation. The price: really cheap.

Skype is a sci-fi quality video phone. The price: free.

Youtube gives us endless entertainment. The price: free.

Google gives us the totality of human knowledge! The price: free.

That’s what I've seen. What I've heard, however, is totally different. The populists of our Golden Age are loud and furious. They're crying about "monopolies" that deliver firehoses worth of free stuff. They're bemoaning the "death of competition" in industries (like taxicabs) that governments forcibly monopolized for as long as any living person can remember. They're insisting that "only the 1% benefit" in an age when half of the high-profile new businesses literally give their services away for free....

My point: If your overall reaction to business progress over the last fifteen years is even mildly negative, no sensible person will try to please you, because you are impossible to please.

- Bryan Caplan

[eccentric-opinion]

Almost all libertarians earnestly say, "I believe in free speech". Normally, though, this goes way beyond the right to speak freely. Most libertarians also believe that free speech "works" in some sense - that given a free exchange of ideas, the truth will at least ultimately prevail. On reflection, this is an awkward position.

While free speech doesn't lead to the victory of truth, at least it allows the search for truth to continue. As long as you have a large, diverse society, you're likely to have a rationalist subculture - or at least a bunch of subject-specific rationalist subcultures. Free speech allows these truth-seekers to ask thoughtful questions and propose reasonable answers, even if the thoughtful questions are awkward and the reasonable answers are scary. While the rationalists are likely to remain the minority, free speech preserves their existence. And since the methods and fruits of rationalism appeal to the smart and curious, free speech allows rationalists to continuously skim off the cognitive cream of society. Free speech doesn't make truth popular, but it does rescue the elect from abject error.

Thus, I can't honestly give three cheers to free speech, I can give it two. The first cheer for free speech is deontological: People have a right to express themselves freely, even if their expression is erroneous or irrational. The second cheer for free speech is elitist: Free speech lets the best and brightest produce and consume truth, even if most people hold the truth in disdain. But we can't honestly give free speech a third cheer for making truth popular - because the claim that free speech makes truth popular simply isn't true.

- Bryan Caplan

[eccentric-opinion]

Most complaints about immigration are declarative: "Immigrants take our jobs." "Immigrants abuse the welfare state." "Immigrants won't learn English." "Immigrants will vote for Sharia." One complaint, however, is usually phrased as a question: "But don't people have a right to their culture?"

Consider my parents. They were both born in the 1930s. During their 80+ years of life, American culture has mutated beyond recognition. The world they remember is all but gone. Just compare movies of the 1940s to movies today; they’re from two different planets. Or consider the change in gender relations, the raising of children, religion, or diet. Question: Do my parents have a right to get their culture back? The only sensible answer is: Absolutely not. They're free to keep living the Old Ways, but have no right to make anyone else follow in their footsteps. If younger cohorts make radically different choices - as they have - then my parents are obliged to allow their beloved culture to vanish. Sure, they’re free to complain. They're free to try to persuade us that we’re making a terrible mistake. But if they turn to the government for cultural regulation, they aren't "defending their rights"; they're violating the rights of others...

Question: Do you have more cultural ground in common with your grandparents - or with foreigners of your own generation? As long as you have to think about your answer, you already accept that these two paths of culture change are at least comparably dramatic.

- Bryan Caplan

[eccentric-opinion]

No one needs a political philosophy to tell them how to treat people they personally know. Once human beings forge personal bonds, they understand what to expect from each other. The main point of political philosophy is to tell people how to treat strangers.

[D]efault emotions like hatred and disgust bode poorly for a free society. If you hate strangers, you're likely to favor government action to make them suffer. But default emotions like love and devotion are also inimical to human freedom. If you love every stranger like your own child, the idea of respecting their freedom to make their own mistakes is hard to stomach. You'll want to give strangers what they need, regardless of what they want. This yearning makes both paternalism and the welfare state quite enticing.

If neither hate nor love cohere well with a free society, what does? Indifference sounds promising. Imagine trying to sell government persecution or government salvation to an society where the predominant emotion toward strangers is, "Meh. That's got nothin' to do with me".

- Bryan Caplan