In the negative part of Professor Hayek's thesis there is a great deal of truth. It cannot be said too often -- at any rate, it is not being said often enough -- that collectivism is not inherently democratic, but, on the contrary, gives to a tyrannical minority such powers as the Spanish Inquisitors never dreamed of.

Orwell went on to criticize Hayek's favored system, capitalism:

But he does not see, or will not admit, that a return to "free" competition means for the great mass of people a tyranny probably worse, because more irresponsible, than that of the State. The trouble with competitions is that somebody wins them.

The last sentence indicates that Orwell has missed the most important insight about the market: mutually beneficial exchange. In most economic competitions, there are not winners and losers. The game is not zero sum. Hayek was not much help on this point referring to "the game of catallaxy" as "the best way to understand" the benefits of the market system. He tries to reassure us that the game is not zero-sum, but even a great mind like Orwell was trained to think otherwise when the words "game" and "competition" are used.

(Thanks CLR for the pointer)

I have previously speculated that the metric system may be inferior to other measurement systems, because of the possibility of large errors.

The bias also relates to uncertainty regarding coordination of behavior. If a meeting is scheduled to begin at 10:00AM, my experience is that the meeting will not begin at 10. Some people will show up early, thinking the meeting starts at 10 and not wanting to be late. Some will show right at 10. Some will show up late, thinking the meeting starts "around 10."

Speed limits are another coordination problem. If the speed limit is 55, can I be ticketed for going 56? 60? 65? There seem to be vague rules of thumb, I assume occasionally enforced by courts, but it all seems quite arbitrary. Stated simply, the bias is "when numbers are stated in multiples of 5 or 10, the number loses some of its focal point quality."

I have read Nudge, and have lots to say but really do not know where to begin (or where the "review" would eventually go). Overall I think the book is very confused and confusing, above all since the authors are often ambiguous as to whom the advice is directed: individuals, firms, or government (as Mario Rizzo stressed mulitiple times in a discussion with Thaler).  But I do have some "nudges" for the "rounding bias." And just to be clear, these are suggestions for private meeting organizers and owners of private roads (I expect local governments love the revenue generated from the uncertainty).

For starting meetings (or parties), I have occasionally used the trick of starting at "odd" times, such as 3:03PM. Starting 3 minutes past the hour becomes focal (perhaps simply because it is novel), and the repetition of 3 sticks in your mind. This seems to have had some positive effects, but maybe this is just confirmation bias. For speed limits, posting non-round numbers would be a similar nudge, such as this 29 MPH speed limit at the private Valdez Marine Terminal in Alaska (according to this page the Marine Terminal also has speed limits of 11, 16, 21, and 26).

This summer I am teaching Public Choice, and we have spent a little time working through the basic calculus of voting model. As, I hope, my students can now articulate, in order for your vote to matter in an instrumental sense it has to break a tie (or force a tie). We also spent plenty of time discussing non-instrumental reasons for voting, but as far as influencing an election, unless the margin is one vote your can not influence the outcome.

Okay, so there is a Republican Congressional primary in Virginia tomorrow, and the candidates are Amit Singh and Mark Ellmore [edit: in the 8th District]. Some mud has already been thrown in public and through private emails, but it's now really heating up, as they say. Singh is somewhat of a newcomer/outsider to the party, and it appears that there is some fear that he may present a challenge and be very important. In fact, the Ellmore campaign thinks that Singh is a very important guy, so important that he personally is allowed to cast 4,655 ballots.

In an email I received from they Ellmore campaign today, they claim that "thanks to Amit Singh, Democrats control the Senate and no judges are confirmed." You see, in 2006 Republican George Allen lost his Senate race by 4,655 votes. Amit Singh did not vote for George Allen. But as far as I know, Singh only possesses one vote. So how could his vote have tipped the election? It's unclear. (Note: Singh was not a public figure in 2006, so announcing who he was voting for could not have influenced anyone to vote for Allen.)

Is this just a single typo in the email? No. The Ellmore campaign goes on to ask "Why wouldn't Amit Singh support George Allen to keep the Senate in Republican control?" Again, Singh's support wouldn't have changed one thing about that election. And further: "Amit Singh helped to sabotage George Allen's Senate race in 2006 that gave control of the Senate to the Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Kerry Democrats." In conclusion, Republicans don't understand how elections work, in a very fundamental sense.

The Ellmore campaign email makes other accusations against Singh, including linking him to Ron Paul. Oh, the horror! But, oops, seems like Ellmore has kind things to say about Paul as well.

Yah for democracy. 

I only want to comment on a small part of the article, the only fact (or rather, data) where Parker attempts to show that something new, and perhaps worrying is going on with respect to demographic trends:

Meanwhile, immigration trends have shifted drastically in the past 40 years, as growing percentages of Americans are foreign-born. In 1970, just 4.7 percent of the total population was foreign-born - 9.6 million people. By 2000, 11.1 percent, or 31.1 million individuals, were foreign-born, according to the Census.

Contributing to the growing unease among yesterday's Americans is the failure of the federal government to deal with the illegal immigration fiasco. It isn't necessarily racist or nativist to worry about what these new demographics mean to the larger American story.

Leave aside illegal immigration for the moment, as Parker is concerned with the growth in legal, foreign-born Americans. She is worried about "these new demographics." But are they really new? The data she presents seem to indicate so, with the percentage of the population that is foreign-born growing drastically from 1970 to 2000. But take a look at the full historical series from the same Census bureau that Parker cites.

Parker just happened to choose the low-point (1970) of 150 years of data as her baseline. I can see no logical reason for doing so (maybe someone else can correct me). Not only were there a few years from the early 20th century higher than the percentage in 2000, but every single Census year between 1860 and 1930 had a higher percentage of foreign-born Americans.

Pointing out this fact does not mean that Parker is wrong; their may be a qualitative difference (e.g. willingness to learn English) between past and current foreign-born populations. Maybe. But it can not simply be asserted. Show me the data, then we can have a discussion. Again, data showing qualitative differences does not close the case, as my data does not. But is necessary to start a reasonable discussion.

So here is a really obvious but probably wrong solution: if it turns out the torturee has no information, make the torturer and all his superiors liable for any crimes they commit. What would be the standard criminal penalty if I, as a private citizen, tied someone up and cut off their ear? Give the maximum punishment (with no trial) to the torturer. Make them sign a form beforehand. If it's a private in the Army, and it turns out the "terrorist" has no information about the alleged bomb, then everyone from his superior up to the Secretary of Defense and the President is punished. If the suspect did have the location of the bomb, no punishment is necessary.

I'm sure that will never work. And its chances of being implemented are even worse.

What, do I have to draw you a map?

(GMU also has two stops on the OL, but I'm not sure if that is evidence for or against.) 

RULES OF THE GAME: Sports contain a lot of rules, and I'm not a big fan of "rules," especially when it comes to sports. That's just Big Government interference. Let the free market decide what constitutes a touchdown.

Giuliani is well-known for his repetition of September 11, and recently Ronald Reagan as well (10 times in the ABC-Facebook debate). More confusingly is his description of Islamic terrorism as an "existential threat." Say what? Does this threat have something to do with deriving meaning from our existence? Actually, Giuliani is almost certainly not referring to existentialism. I would guess he is trying to say that Islamic terrorism represents a threat to our very existence (apparently this is not a unique use of the term). But existential does not seem to be the best descriptor for the audience he is addressing.

McCain is getting flak for his 100-years in Iraq statement, but he's also getting in on the philosophical game. Three times in the ABC-Facebook debate he described radical Islamic extremism as a "transcendent struggle" or "challenge." Is the struggle something which goes beyond any possible knowledge of a human being? Apparently not. In this case I would guess he means something like the "most important" challenge we face. Then again, according to Matt Welch, McCain has used this term "not just for campaign finance reform, the War on Terror, and Iraq, but for expanding Medicare, cracking down on Hollywood marketers, even banning ultimate fighting on Indian reservations."

Whatever these guys really mean, it certainly appears that they are trying to instill some fear and trembling in the electorate.

 Your membership is strictly voluntary, and you may leave at any time.

I wonder what Mises Instituters would propose to do about "involuntary" email subscriptions.  Prior restraint?  Jail?  Self-authorized, self-determined retribution?  An involuntary email subscription for an involuntary email subscription?  Nothing?

Pr(X=51 at t=2 | X=1 at t=0) = Pr(X=51 at t=2 | X=4 at t=1) = 0.

In plain English, this describes a situation where it remains impossible for a variable to clear some threshold value by a given time even though its value increases somewhat over an earlier period. 

But say the following argument was made:

• We observed X=1 at t=0, and
• Now at t=1, we observe X=4.
• Therefore, Pr(X=51 at t=2) increased between t=0 and t=1.

Obviously, and as is made extra-clear by the initial example, the third statement does not follow as a matter of pure logic from the first two statements.  But don't we hear this sort of argument all the time?  Certainly it is very often a reasonable claim, but it presumes at least limited knowledge about the distribution of future outcomes given present data. 

The next argument, however, is in most cases probably less reasonable:

• We observed X=1 at t=0, and
• Also at t=0, we observed Y=4.
• Given these observations, we know that Pr(Y=51 at t=1) > Pr(X=51 at t=1).

When I spent several months as an activist in the Libertarian Party, I often heard this argument:  "Our candidates tend to get higher vote shares when they run for State Assembly than when they run for President.  Therefore, we should focus on campaigns for State Assembly, as that office is more winnable."  I thought this argument to be completely wrong; I argued that, as most voters don't know or care who runs for State Assembly, it is impossible for a third-party candidate to be elected, while the Presidential campaign draws enough attention so that a third-party candidate could win.  But my point today is more generalized:  this is, I believe, a type of argument that is often made and often accepted as more sound than it is. 

This all is surely elementary, but it is an example of a "logical fallacy", is it not?  If it is, is it important enough to get its own page on Wikipedia, or is it just a special case of the spurious relationship?  It seems different to me, but I am not a logician by trade.

UPDATE!  It occurs to me that this is perhaps not much more than a generalization and formalization of the slippery slope argument.  Even so, I still like it as a blog post.  It's end-of-semester crunch time*, so you can't be expecting too much around here.

*Jeremy:  I don't believe this is a sports metaphor, but I will defer to your judgment.  I know such metaphors are out of bounds, so edit if necessary!

...Hans-Herman [sic] Hoppe’s ultimate justification of the private property ethic (PDF file.)  [Hoppe] concludes, after proving that argumentation logically presupposes self-ownership, that any denial of property rights is impugned by a "performative contradiction," in which one’s actions contradict one’s case.

I believe this is an overstatement of the applicability of Hoppe's argument.  Hoppe writes (emphasis mine):

I want to demonstrate that only the libertarian private property ethic can be argumentatively justified, because it is the praxeological presupposition of argumentation as such; and that any deviating, non-libertarian ethical proposal can hence be shown to be in violation of demonstrated preference.

So, Hoppe says (and I think his argument is a pretty good one so far as it goes) that any non-libertarian ethical proposal can be shown to be self-contradictory.  However, this (correctly, I believe) leaves open the possibility for a consistent non-ethical proposal, e.g., a proposal that the concept of property rights is ontologically invalid.  In this sense, one can deny "property rights" without making a performative contradiction. 

And, I personally am in fact willing to put forth such a claim; I argue that there is no basis in reality for the category of "ownership"; there is simply control.  "Property rights", as spoken of by Hoppe and Ryan (i.e., as natural rights), are abrograted every day with no automatic consequence; whether or not the abrogation is thought "wrong" only has significance on this earth to the extent that this is a factor in someone's subsequent decision to act.  Thus I would claim that "ownership" is a purely ethical construct that is on no objectively distinguishable plane from, say, the teachings of any major religion.  Libertarians say "thou shalt not violate property rights"; if pressed for my own ethical principles, I might say something like "thou shalt not live randomly" or "thou shalt strive for consistency" or "thou shalt strive to understand the context of your life"; every day, someone else comes up with something else.  But as Mises, teacher of Rothbard, teacher of Hoppe, knew well:  there is no objective science of "meta-ethics" to pinpoint which of these is "correct".

Fine, well and good.  Here's where I say something of interest:  I believe that perceived well-roundedness comes not solely from a person's possession of that knowledge, but from eir judicious application of conceptual lessons learned in the careful study of a few things to enhance eir understanding of the many things about which ey has little concrete knowledge.  (What in the 'ell...)

I haven't written much about music or art on the blog, but I am considering changing that.  You see...due to the twin accidents of personal taste and semi-suburban '90s upbringing, one of the few things in this world about which I know a lot is a rock band, the Smashing Pumpkins.  Given the Pumpkins, I've tried to make pumpkin pie (sorry) and draw a lot of broadly applicable lessons from following the band: lessons about fame, about the intertemporal dynamics of a career in the creative arts, about the nature of organizations, and about the importance of the difference between what might be called the "visible history" of an entity (which is based solely on publicly available material) and what might be called the "total history", or the set of all underlying realities (the vast majority of which are not incorporated into the visible history). 

I think that these lessons (or, perhaps more humbly, "claims I often make") are good stuff to blog about, but I just can't write about them convincingly without using my best examples, and that means talking about the Pumpkins.  I will try to make it interesting (it's rock and roll, how dull can it be?), but if it doesn't work for you, well, (half of) this is my blog.  This post is already too long to proceed immediately, but I have at least a couple posts' worth of Pumpkin-related thoughts in mind on the preceding themes.  You have been so forewarned.

A day after [NBA star] Jason Kidd claimed in divorce papers to be a victim of spousal abuse, his wife's lawyer said the New Jersey Nets point guard had no reason to fear the diminutive woman.

"He says he's threatened by her?  He's a star athlete.  She's five-foot-two, I think, and 105 pounds," said celebrity New York divorce lawyer Raoul Felder, one of the lawyers representing Joumana Kidd.

In response, the plaintiff ballhandler could cite a great English philosopher.  As Gabriella Slomp writes in her Thomas Hobbes and the Political Philosophy of Glory (2000, pp. 25-26, emphasis hers):

Throughout his writings Hobbes often concedes that strength is unevenly distributed among people, but stresses that even the strongest of persons is vulnerable to otherwise weaker individuals.  He grounds his claim of natural equality on the observation of the complete fragility of the human body.  For example, in Elements of Law he points out that

the weaker in strength or in wit, or in both, may utterly destroy the power of the stronger, since there needeth but little force to the taking away of a man's life (Elements of Law, 70).

I have been reading about Hobbes for my work on theory of government, and Slomp's book has been most helpful.  The following item (p. 61) is particularly illuminating with regard to the emergence of democracy:

In De Cive and Leviathan Hobbes suggests that it is not because of idealistic trust in popular wisdom, but because of their personal ambition that individuals tend to prefer democracy to monarchy (Leviathan, 172) in so far as they believe to have more chances to succeed and to have their views accepted and implemented.  Hobbes argues that frustrated ambition and desire to excel one upon the other make this form of government more vulnerable and more prone to dissolution than monarchy:

That men see not the reason to be alike in a Monarchy, and in a Popular Government, proceedeth from the ambition of some, that are kinder to the government of an Assembly, whereof they may hope to participate, than of Monarchy, which they despair to enjoy (Leviathan, 123).

[Blacks] are human beings, and consequently have all the natural rights that any human beings can have. They have just as good a right to make laws as [whites] have, and no better; AND THAT IS JUST NO RIGHT AT ALL. No human being, nor any number of human beings, have any right to make laws, and compel other human beings to obey them. To say that they have is to say that they are the masters and owners of those of whom they require such obedience.

Don Mitchell, professor of geography at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, grew up on a cul-de-sac in Moraga, Calif., and has seen both sides of the debate.  “It’s a quiet street that all us kids could play on without too much fear of traffic,” he said.  “And there was pretty good surveillance by our parents when we were out in the street.”

But those advantages can also be disadvantages.  “They’re quite insular,” he said.  “They tend to almost induce a circle-the-wagons sort of atmosphere, so anybody becomes a stranger who’s on the street.  They don’t often act like public streets.  We always knew when there was someone who wasn’t a regular on our street, and yet they had every right to be there.”

Unless one is invited, as a friend or in the course of business (e.g., to make a delivery), what legitimate business can a non-resident have on a residential street?  But according to the view of the young, openly Marxist (and childless, I hypothesize?) Dr. Mitchell, it seems that, say, a John Karr has "every right" to drive up to the front of your house, maybe even to sit there in his car and look through your windows with field glasses.  It's a "public street", after all.  I can only guess what Mitchell's opinion would be of a weapon-brandishing father emerging from a home, gesturing angrily at Karr and suggesting none-too-politely that Karr had better never show his face again.  Maybe he'd tell the father to call the police to try to have Karr's "rights" taken away by a judge -- but that until then it's community, unfettered close-quarters communion with every creep driving slowly down a street where they have no business, that is the highest value.

Hopefully beyond the ivory tower there is not a widespread presumption that one should just sit idly by and take it whenever anyone in the world drives up to one's house on one's government-built street.  I'd tell the parent in question only to worry about the stranger's "rights" to the extent he expects adverse consequences to result from the actions he feels necessary to protect his family.  Government-defined rights aren't absolutes, so make a calculation with regard to your chances of being disciplined and do what you have to do.

UNITED NATIONS - The United Nations Security Council late Friday unanimously approved a compromise plan to end a month of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, but acknowledged that it was only a tentative first step to a lasting cease-fire.

...

After receiving the final draft...[Israeli Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert agreed to accept the compromise and urge his Cabinet to embrace it on Sunday, after the Jewish Sabbath ends.

In the meantime, though, the Israeli military is expected to press ahead in an effort to do as much as it can to cripple Hezbollah before the cease-fire takes hold.  At the same time, Hezbollah is likely to respond in kind by firing hundreds more rockets into northern Israel until its soldiers pull back.

I wonder what the God worshipped by members of Olmert's Cabinet thinks of their preferences as herein revealed.  Maybe He'd be cool with it, you know.  Maybe He'd say something like: 

Without fail, you shall rest on Saturdays, and let me be clear:  by 'rest', I don't mean, 'reach a peace agreement'.  If on the Sabbath a choice is forced upon you, a choice between considering a cease-fire or killing Gentiles, let it not be said that I made the decision a tough one.  As far as I, your God, is concerned, killing Gentiles is pretty much the same as rest, while signing off on a treaty is clearly work.  And on Saturdays you do not work. 

Lo, and this commandment you shall keep above all others.

But if that's what their God would say, then it turns out that their God isn't my God after all.