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What War Hawks Would Sound Like If They Weren’t Psychopaths

What War Hawks Would Sound Like If They Weren’t Psychopaths

by | May 23, 2023 |

Modern warfare almost always leads to killing lots of innocents; if governments were held to the same standards as individuals, these killings would be manslaughter, if not murder.  This doesn’t mean that war is never justified.  But the reasonable hawkish mood is sorrow – and constant yearning for a peaceful path.  The kind of emotions that flow out of, “We are in a tragic situation.  After painstaking research on all the available options, we regretfully conclude that we have to kill many thousands of innocent civilians in order to avoid even greater evils.  This is true even after adjusting for the inaccuracy of our past predictions about foreign policy.”

I have never personally known a hawk who expresses such moods, and know of none in the public eye.  Instead, the standard hawk moods are anger and machismo.  Ted Cruz’s recent quip, “I don’t know if sand can glow in the dark, but we’re going to find out” is typical.  Indeed, the hawks I personally know don’t just ignore civilian deaths.  When I raise the issue, they cavalierly appeal to the collective guilt of their enemies.  Sometimes they laugh.  As a result, I put little weight on what hawks say.  This doesn’t mean their view is false, but it is a strong reason to think it’s false.

– Bryan Caplan, Ph.D., Voters As Mad Scientists: Essays on Political Irrationality

The Free Market Serves the Masses, Governments Commit Genocide

The Free Market Serves the Masses, Governments Commit Genocide

by | May 20, 2023 |

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.

– Bryan Caplan, Ph.D., Voters as Mad Scientists: Essays on Political Rationality

The Truth About Discrimination – Walter E. Williams

The Truth About Discrimination – Walter E. Williams

by | May 14, 2023 |

If people are free to discriminate in favor of, or against, a university or wine, what argument can be made against their having that same right with respect to choosing based on the race or sex characteristics of their mates, employees, tenants, or club members? If one shares the value of freedom of association, why should some associations be permitted and others denied? If a man is not permitted to bring a court action against a woman who refuses to deal with him, in form of a dating or marital relationship or for any arbitrary reason she chooses, what is the case for bringing court action for other refusals to “deal,” such as in employment, renting or selling a house, or club memberships?…

…Refusal to deal can apply to any setting, including activities like marriage, friendship, invitations to social gatherings and golf games, all of which might affect one’s “life chances.”…

…These visions of prejudice expose analysts to the pitfalls of making ambiguous statements and advancing faulty arguments. A useful operational definition of prejudice can be found by examining its Latin root- praejudicium, meaning “to judge before the facts are known.” Thus, we might define prejudicial acts as decision-making on the basis of incomplete information.

That kind of decision-making, before facts are known, is necessary and to be expected in a world of scarcity, uncertainty, complexity, costly information-and often erroneous interpretation of that information. Furthermore, different individuals might arrive at different interpretations even if confronted with the same information. Also, different people reach different decisions on just what constitutes the optimal quantity of information to gather prior to making decisions…

Information is not costless. To acquire an additional unit of it requires a sacrifice of time, effort, or other resources. People therefore seek to economize on information cost. In doing so, they tend to substitute less expensive forms of information for more expensive forms. Physical attributes are “cheap” to observe.

– Walter E. Williams, Race and Economics

 

Black Youth Unemployment Before Democrats Started “Helping”

Black Youth Unemployment Before Democrats Started “Helping”

by | May 13, 2023 |

Although most people are familiar with more recent statistics on black youth unemployment, not many are aware of the black/white statistics for earlier periods. Table 3.2 (below) shows that in 1948, the two were roughly equal. For that year, blacks aged sixteen to seventeen had an unemployment rate that was less than whites of the same age-9.4 percent compared to a 10.2 percent. During the same period (until the mid-1960s), Table 3.3 shows that black youths generally were either just as active as whites in the labor force or more so. Since the ’60s, both the labor-force participation rate and the employment rate of black youths has fallen to what it is today. For those sixteen to seventeen years of age, the participation rate is less than 60 percent of that of white youths. During earlier periods, as shown in Table 3.2, the rate was equal to or higher than that of white youths.

– Walter E. Williams, Race and Economics

 

Political Discrimination vs. Market Discrimination – Walter E. Williams

Political Discrimination vs. Market Discrimination – Walter E. Williams

by | May 6, 2023 |

Gross racial discrimination alone has never been sufficient to prevent blacks from earning a living and bettering themselves by working as skilled or unskilled craftsmen and as business owners, accumulating considerable wealth. The fact that whites sought out blacks as artisans and workers, while patronizing black businesses, can hardly be said to be a result of white enlightenment. A far better explanation: market forces at work.

 

The relative color blindness of the market accounts for much of the hostility towards it. Markets have a notorious lack of respect for privilege, race, and class structures. White customers patronized black-owned businesses because their prices were lower or their product quality or service better. Whites hired black skilled and unskilled labor because their wages were lower or they made superior employees.

 

People have always sought to use laws to accomplish what they cannot accomplish through voluntary, peaceable exchange. As will be argued in subsequent chapters, restrictive laws harm blacks equally, whether they were written with the explicit intent-as in the past-to eliminate black competition or written-as in our time-with such benign goals as protecting public health, safety and welfare, and preventing exploitation of workers.

– Walter E. Williams, Ph.D., Race and Economics

The Democratic Policy Which Keeps Poor People Poor – Walter E. Williams

The Democratic Policy Which Keeps Poor People Poor – Walter E. Williams

by | Apr 30, 2023 |

To criticize occupational licensing laws is not to argue that information about the quality of a licensee’s services is not important to consumers. However, it is by no means clear that licensing is the most effective way to provide that information. Indeed, licensing may lower the “received” quality of the service in question. By making entry costs higher, there are fewer practitioners, which, as noted above, increases the cost of the service rendered and leads some consumers to resort to do-it-yourself methods that generally results in a lower-quality end product. For example, even the electrician who failed a licensing examination, scoring 65 when a score of 70 was necessary to pass, is likely to know more about electrical work and safety measures than the average consumer who undertakes a do-it-yourself project because he cannot afford to hire a licensed practitioner.

 

In addition, higher standards imposed by licensing requirements make consumers as a whole worse off. A spectrum of quality, from high to low, is consistent with the optimal stock of goods and services. Being forced to purchase a higher-quality good or service, when a lower-quality would suffice or is what the customer wants, hurts consumers economically. For example, in the name of safety, a law could be enacted requiring that the only cars that can be sold are those whose occupants would emerge uninjured after a fifty-mile per hour collision. However, such cars would cost so much that most people could not afford to buy them. The existence of less crashworthy cars is clearly part of the optimal stock. People are always better off if they have knowledge about quality and the right to choose quality levels.

 

There are methods to produce information about quality without having the restrictions imposed by occupational licensing. Certification is one method. A practitioner can take a test and, if he scores in the 90s, have the right to declare himself a Class A practitioner; an 80, a class B practitioner; and so on. Such a method would give consumers information about quality while leaving them free to choose.

– Walter E. Williams, Ph.D., Race and Economics

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