Old enough to send someone to war, but not to go yourself?
This raises an interesting question: in what way are children not rationally self-interested? How can we justify depriving any of them of their natural rights?
Immigration and a Big Idiot
On Tuesday Lou Dobbs had a special on immigration and aired parts of interviews with Ben Powell (formerly of SJSU and my boss at the Independent Institute) and Alex Tabarrok. They were chosen specifically for having signed this open letter calling for an open borders policy. After giving both economists a lengthy 3.2 seconds apiece to state their case, Dobbs spends 3 minutes engaging in that time honored rhetorical tactic that earns him the big bucks from CNN: name calling. Because nothing says “argumentative superiority” like responding to a clip (that you edited and selected) with accusations that your opponent is an idiot and a jackass. Well played, sir.
3rd grade playground strategies aside, the “consequences” that Dobbs refers to actually support Powell and Tabarrok’s position. Every time an American purchases an immigrant’s services, be they anything from lawn care to back surgery, it is because that individual feels he will be better off than if he employed the services of an American for the same task, or refrained from having that job done at all. Otherwise he wouldn’t engage in the exchange. The same logic goes for every situation where an American takes an immigrant’s money in return for goods or services. If Americans did not benefit from immigrants we wouldn’t engage in commerce with them and they wouldn’t have any incentive to come here in the first place. It is precisely because Americans benefit from immigrants that immigration is an issue. If Mr. Dobbs spent a little more time listening to the “reasonably well educated” professors and less time formulating how to best call them stinkyface poopheads he might know this.
Immigration and the Welfare State
It’s intersting to note that the US had almost no immigration laws in the 19th century. But we also didn’t have Social Security then, or the draft, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, income taxes, driver’s licenses, affirmative action, and so on.
Basically I’m just saying I really don’t understand those organizations which simultaneously (implicitly) support unrestricted immigration and the welfare state.
Frivolous McDonals lawsuit
Via Drudge. In short, there’s a guy who ordered a couple of Quarter Pounders at McDonald’s and asked them to hold the cheese. They didn’t, and he had a “severe allergic reaction.” Hence MickeyD’s should fork over $10 million. Not just for his personally benefit, of course, he’s doing it for anyone who will ever eat at McDonald’s again.
“We’re interested in seeing McDonald’s take responsibility and change a systemic quality control problem that endangers the lives of up to 12 million Americans with allergies,” said Timothy Houston, the Morgantown lawyer representing the plaintiffs.
Having worked at MickeyD’s I’m pretty sure the only way to solve this ’systemic quality control problem’ would be to stop taking special orders. McDonald’s employees are human; most are teenages; mistakes will be made.
My favorite part of the story is this though,
“By my count, he took at least five independent steps to make sure that thing had no cheese on it,” Houston said. “And it did and almost cost him his life.”
Except for the step where after he gets the burger he lifts the top bun and looks to see if there is cheese on it. But you couldn’t get $10 million if you did that.
9/11 and Unity
There isn’t too much thought or coherent reasoning behind this article, but it does raise an interesting point: we were much more unified immediately after 9/11. It’s easy to blame Bush or the Democrats Iraq or American forgetfulness or the media or some combination, and to say as this guy does that because of Iraq, “America’s fabric is pulling apart like a cheap sweater.”
I don’t think our national “fabric” is nearly that strained, but I also think that the post-9/11 unity was only illusory, and our divides run deeper Iraq . It only lasted as long as we could avoid talking about what to actually do. Once we have to take some action, all the political divides which had been brewing since Vietnam came back to the surface. Everybody looked at the inkblot and saw what they wanted to. What’s remarkable is less that 9/11’s unity wore off so fast but that it made a difference in the first place.
Re: Hope on the Battlefield
I have to admit that I haven’t read Marshall, but I’ve seen him critiqued pretty heavily by the most recent generation of US WWII military historians (most notably Michael Doubler and Peter Mansoor), as part of the general effort to rehability the reputation of the US army in Europe. There’s apparently good evidence that Marshall was sloppy or maybe even dishonest in his research methodology (the argument is summed up here), and some WWII soldiers’ memoirs have explicitly said Marshall’s ratio didn’t apply to their units. (The only example I can remember is this one.) So I’m a little bit dubious of any argument that relies on Marshall. (From my reading of the critiques of Marshall, I think Grossman is right that soldiers more often just aim a little high, rather than not shooting at all as Marshall argued.)
And I agree with Joe that whatever inclination we have against killing (I think more societally conditioned than natural) is more easily overcome when dealing with those we know and who’ve offended us. A book I read recently argued that humans have been extremely violent throughout most of our history, and it’s only modern states that have managed to curb our tendency toward domestic violence. But when those states send people off to fight each other, isn’t there much less emotional motivation to kill?
Hope on the Battlefield
I do not read much about military history because I usually find it boring, but Wayne found this article and it surprised me. I guess I do not know at all if what he is saying accurately represents the evidence, or if the studies he sites have any merit. However, he seems to consider a variety of arguments, so it appears plausable.
This stuck out to me as problematic:
“I have realized that there was one major factor missing from the common understanding of this process, a factor that answers this question and more: the simple and demonstrable fact that there is, within most men and women, an intense resistance to killing other people.”
“Indeed, the study of killing by military scientists, historians, and psychologists gives us good reason to feel optimistic about human nature, for it reveals that almost all of us are overwhelmingly reluctant to kill a member of our own species, under just about any circumstance.”
I could easily mistake these passages as stating that people have this same reluctance to violence at home, in regular society. Most murders, rapes and other violence are directed at people who know their attacker. On a battlefield you do not know the person you are harming, but if you know him, live with him, or have a grudge against him, you might feel compelled to hurt him. You may even feel justified.
There might be hope for less violence on a battlefield (although that seems to be self-defeating), but I do not think it applies at home, where we do not need to manufacture contempt against others.
Capitalism, Ideas, and Evolution
This is one of the most interesting articles I’ve read in a long time, continuing Nicholas Wade’s streak of finding fascinating and unexpected theories. The theory seems overly broad and sweeping, like something Jared “I’m a Geographic Determinist” Diamond would write, but it seems a bit more historically grounded, it’s thought-provoking, and it makes an entry in several debates that are important not only for world history, but also for current affairs:
- It breaks down a simplistic Marxist view of Europe entering a new stage of History first and therefore being able to push everyone else around.
- Coupled with findings that a) even pre-industrial home manufacturing in England was being transformed in the early 1700s by “capitalist” production methods (systematization; an emphasis on efficiency, etc), and b) that forms of capitalism were emerging in the Middle East and Southeast Asia before European contact, this theory moves us back from a materialist emphasis on technology to a view that ideas DO matter. (But only sort of, since Clark argues the ideas come from evolution.)
- This is in turn awesome because it brings us back to the old question, “why didn’t the Middle East industrialize?” You could answer this by saying “well, of course they couldn’t, because they didn’t have the same resources of iron ore, coal, and hydropower that Europe did, and this answer does get us somewhere. BUT, if capitalism and industrialization are more about applying new ideas to the methods and resources you already have, then isn’t the question still open? And the article, at least, doesn’t satisfactorily explain why Clark’s theory proves that England in the 18th century, of all places, had this evolutionary epiphany.
This is not meant to be a post that’s only interesting to me, so I hope other people will weigh in with their thoughts–especially Wayne and Kyle, what’s an economist’s perspective on this?