The Libertarian Vice

Excellent post from Tyler Cowen about the vices in libertarian philosophy:

The libertarian vice is to assume that the quality of government is fixed.  The libertarian also argues that the quality of government is typically low, and this is usually the bone of contention, but that is not the point I wish to consider.  Often that dispute is a red herring...

But sometimes governments do a pretty good job, even if you like me are generally skeptical of government.  The Finnish government has supported superb architecture.  The Swedes have made a good go at a welfare state.  The Interstate Highway System in the U.S. was a high-return investment.  In the area of foreign policy, we have done a good job juggling the China-Taiwan relationship.  Or how about the Aswan Dam for Egypt?  You might contest these particular examples but I assure you there are many others. 

I think this first sentence describes me very well:

It is possible to agree with the positive claims of libertarians about the virtues of markets but still think that improving the quality of government is the central task before us.  One could love markets yet be some version of a modern liberal rather than a classical liberal.

These posts about the liberal vice and the conservative vice are very good as well.

Numbers of the Week, Demography Edition

Britain is getting more diverse and less religious, via the Economist:
88 - Percentage of British people who described themselves as "white British" in 2001.
81 - Percentage of British people who described themselves as "white British in 2011.
661,000 - Number of British people of mixed identity in 2001.
1,200,000 - Number of British people of mixed identity in 2011.
15 - Percentage of British people who said they have no religion in 2001.
25 - Percentage of British people who said they have no religion in 2011.

From the CIA World Factbook:
91.5 - Percentage of ethnically German people in Germany.
87.4 - Percentage of ethnically Irish people in Ireland.
80.5 - Percentage of ethnically Dutch people in the Netherlands.
91.5 - Percentage of ethnically Han Chinese people in China.

Global population in 2050, via Photius:
397,000,000 - America's projected population in 2050.
1,462,000,000 - China's projected population in 2050.
1,572,000,000 - India's projected population in 2050.
2,181,000,000 - India's projected population in 2050 if Pakistan and Bangladesh were still a part of India.

The state's role in fighting obesity

This issue is well framed by the Economist, as usual:

For those (like this newspaper) who believe that the state should generally keep its nose out of people’s private affairs, obesity presents a quandary. “A millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and Ryvita biscuits,” Orwell pointed out; “an unemployed man doesn’t…You want to eat something a little bit tasty.” If people get great pleasure from eating more than is good for them, should they not be allowed to indulge themselves? After all, individuals bear the bulk of the costs of obesity, quite literally. They suffer at work, too: their wages are often lower and, in America, some employers also make fat workers pay more for health insurance.

Yet in most countries the state covers some or most of the costs of health care, so fat people raise costs for everyone. In America, for instance, a recent paper estimated that obesity was responsible for a fifth of the total health-care bill, of which nearly half is paid by the federal government. And there are broader social costs. The Pentagon says that obesity is shrinking its pool of soldiers. Obesity lowers labour productivity. And state intervention is justified where it saves people from great harm at little cost to themselves. Only zealots see seat-belt laws as an affront to personal liberty. Anti-smoking policies, controversial at first, are generally viewed as a success.

And this is a good point about obesity being more than just a matter of personal responsibility:

Obesity is, at its heart, the result of many personal decisions. But the rise of obesity—across many countries and disproportionately among the poor—suggests that becoming fat cannot just be blamed on individual frailty. Millions of people, of all cultures, did not become lazy gluttons at the same time, en masse. Broader forces are at work. The government can try to influence them by discouraging overeating. But how?

And more here, on how, unlike climate change or cigarettes, there is no single big solution to obesity; rather that the state will need to pursue a number of smaller solutions in schools and communities:

Drugs and surgery can help in the most extreme cases. They do not, however, offer a solution to the wider problem. Economists, faced with behaviour they don’t like, tend to favour imposing “sin” taxes. But eating fatty and sugary foods is not a “sin”, even in the fiscal sense, for unlike cigarettes, fatty foods are not uniformly unhealthy. Moreover, since poor people spend a higher proportion of their income on food than rich people do, such a tax would be regressive. It would also be an administrative nightmare, as the fat content of each item of food would have to be measured. Denmark, which imposed a fat tax in 2011, abandoned it after a year.

In the absence of a single big solution to obesity, the state must try many small measures. Governments, some of which already intervene a lot in the first few months of people’s lives, should ensure that parents are warned of the dangers of overfeeding their babies. Schools should serve nutritious lunches, teach children how to eat healthily and give them time to run around. Urban planners should make streets and pavements friendlier to cyclists and pedestrians. Taxing sugary fizzy drinks—which unlike fatty foods have no nutritional value—and limiting the size of the containers in which they can be sold may work. Philadelphia and New York, for example, have implemented a range of such policies, and have seen child-obesity rates dip ever so slightly.

I would say that the article is worth reading throughout, but I suppose I've linked to most of it already.

For what it's worth, I don't think that big solutions to obesity are inherently flawed.  The problem is that humans don't yet understand the areas of weight gain and weight loss well enough to design a policy that strikes at the heart of the obesity epidemic.  We understand on a broad level that there are a number of factors that are correlated with weight gain (lack of exercise, fatty foods, overeating, etc...), and so we try to design policies to reduce these behaviors.  But we don't fully understand, say, the biological process for how people lose weight.

I suspect that once we do understand this, there will be medications or surgeries that will do a better job of fighting obesity than any government policy.  In the meantime, government will probably be reduced to tinkering around the edges, as it has been doing in recent years.

Random Questions: Do people live in Antarctica? What is life like there?

According to a 2001 report from USA Today, there are between 1,000 and 8,000 people on Antarctica at any given time.  The number swells to around 8,000 people during the winter, and drops to about 1,000 for the other three seasons.  There are no cities, as we think of them, but rather people live on stations sponsored by country governments.  The U.S.'s McMurdy Station is the largest station on Antarctica, home to around 1,000 during the peak summer months.

Lonely Planet has more.  There has never been a native population in Antarctica, including today, since the current workers are only temporary residents.  As such, wildlife is still unafraid of people, which sounds pretty amazing.

Well-behaved visitors usually elicit no more than disinterested yawns from seals and penguins focused on rearing their young and evading predators.

Antarctica is governed by an international agreement, the Antarctic Treaty, signed by 46 countries, including the U.S., China, India, Brazil, Argentina, Russia, France, Germany, and the UK.  It is one of the few places on the plant where there has never been a war.

Landing a job there is quite difficult, according to Lonely Planet:

Antarctic workers must submit to a battery of physical and psychological tests – and most important, must possess advanced skills in one or probably several areas. 

One can apply to jobs through the several governments that conduct research there or through a private contractor.  About 600 people are employed in the service sector in jobs ranging from chefs to clerks to hair stylists and physicians, as well as in the trades and construction.

It is possible, though expensive, to visit Antarctica.  In fact, tourism is, by far, the continent's largest industry.  Most visitors arrive by sea, on cruise ships from Ushuaia, Argentina (the capital of Tierra del Fuego).  The cruise ships allow passengers to disembark and wander around landing sites.  Some wealthy people take private yachts.  You can also fly to the interior of Antarctica and take part in a tourism expedition, which might involve penguin watching or cross-country skiilng.  As of a few years ago, these trips cost in the range of $35,000-$60,000/person.

Will a society of millionaires push for better economic policies?

Scott Sumner thinks so:

So if Singapore ends up with a steady state of 25% to 30% millionaires, that steady state will imply that roughly half of all Singaporeans will be millionaires at some time during their lives.

This will make the Singaporean electorate much more “conservative” i.e. anxious to have government policies that preserve wealth.  It will also allow Singapore to get away with a smaller set of social welfare programs, and lower tax rates.  A virtuous circle of growth creating good economic policies, which will create even more growth.

I'm not so sure.  I normally wouldn't question Scott's economic expertise, but this statement seems to fly in the face of most of what I know about public choice economics and creative destruction.  It seems to me that a society of millionaires would push for policies that enshrine the economic status quo.  It is in the economic interest of these millionaires to restrict creative destruction and the resulting economic mobility.  Rather than "a virtuous cycle of growth creating good economic policies, which will create even more growth," I foresee growth eventually creating economic stagnation.  The entrepreneurial may then emigrate to other countries with more dynamic economics, creating a sort of leveling effect.

Novelty in Exercise

Really interesting thought from Henry Abbott at TrueHoop:

And here's a Joakim Noah story that's, amazingly, somewhat related. The story is that Noah has been in incredible shape after training in the offseason with, of all people, big-wave surfer Laird Hamilton. Now here's how that's related: As a runner I have put a ton of trust into the evidence-based insight of Jay Dicharry, who has written a book about running form and the like. I met Dicharry when I interviewed him at SXSW, and at that event he said that he thought one of the best things an athlete could would be to train like ... Laird Hamilton. The main reason he says that is that Hamilton goes to great lengths to put himself through new things, rather than spending all that training time perfecting well-known skills. Hamilton and Dicharry are also both very into working on balance, something that isn't a big part of most workout regimens, but that I've been working on for the past several months and that I believe has made big impact. I'm guessing Joakim would agree.

 This reminds me of the recent studies on deliberate practice, described as:

a constant sense of self-evaluation, of focusing on one’s weaknesses, rather than simply fooling around and playing to one’s strengths. Studies show that practice aimed at remedying weaknesses is a better predictor of expertise than raw number of hours; playing for fun and repeating what you already know is not necessarily the same as efficiently reaching a new level.

Tyler Cowen v. Ben Goldacre

Tyler Cowen reviews Ben Goldacre:

Goldacre’s policy recommendations would in general raise the costs of research and development, although they would  likely improve the accuracy of research results and reduce over-prescription and overuse of drugs.  It is quite possible they would lower the rate of return to pharmaceutical innovation, likely I would say.  These trade-offs are neglected, and, much as I admire many features of this book, I cannot help but, alas with trepidation, call some of its central features “Bad Science.”  Bad Economic Science.  The morality of the narrative and the Platonism of his vision distracts him from presenting the policy trade-offs clearly.

And Goldacre responds (in the comments):

The key argument of the book is that the results of clinical trials should not be withheld from doctors and patients. Industry spokespeople continue to deny that this happens at all, in the face of overwhelming evidence, in a testament to how easy they have found it to evade serious public discussion.

Sharing all trial results would not cost any more money, since the cost in a trial is in conducting it, rather than dissemination. The risk to industry is that doctors and providers of healthcare services would have a clearer picture of the absolute benefits of drugs, and of which is best, or most cost effective. So the downside would perhaps be that drugs might become more like commodities, as purchasers got better information.

I haven't read the book yet (though it's on my shortlist), but, for once, I think Goldacre has a stronger argument than Tyler here.  I'm sure that Goldacre probably could have moderated his tone a little bit, but if his book is, as he says, mostly about calling for greater transparency in pharmaceutical studies, then Tyler's response seems a bit weak.  Tyler basically seems to be saying that pharma companies should not have to publish their studies because they make a lot of money selling mediocre (but often unnecessary) drugs and the profits from these drugs allow them to create more drugs.  This seems akin to saying that it's okay for pharma companies to defraud the public because it's in the greater good.  It also seems to skew the incentives.  If a pharma company can turn a profit with either a mediocre product or a good one, there's not a whole lot of incentive to work extra hard to produce a good product. 

And as for Tyler's criticisms about tone, if your goal is to stir up public sentiment to push for reform, I'm not sure that moderation is the goal.  There is a place for moderate criticism and a place for outrage, and this book may fit the latter.