Walker

Walker joined Difficult Run as an editor in August 2013. He graduated from the University of North Texas with an MBA in Strategic Management and a BBA in Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management. He's currently a grad student in Government at Johns Hopkins University. He has been published in SquareTwo, BYU Studies Quarterly, Dialogue, Graziadio Business Review, and Economic Affairs. He also contributed to Julie Smith's (ed.) 'As Iron Sharpens Iron: Listening to the Various Voices of Scripture'. His other online writing can be found at Worlds Without End and Times & Seasons. He lives in Denton, Texas, with his wife.

Vaping: The Safer Alternative

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Another example of perfect being the enemy of the good and good intentions paving away:

Image result for vaping gifFlavor bans for e-cigarettes and menthol in combustibles are pressing policy issues that have received relatively little empirical study. Now that the FDA has the power to regulate flavors in both combustible and e-cigarettes, it has again been considering flavor bans for all types of cigarettes (FDA, 2017). Thus, there is an urgent need for an analysis of the impact of flavor bans on public health. Despite the need for this information, there are no studies predicting the impacts of alternative bans on the use of combustibles, e-cigarettes, and neither. We provide such information for adult smokers and recent quitters using a DCE and a large, nationally representative survey.

We find that flavors themselves serve as an attribute that drives choices across combustibles and e-cigarettes and choosing none. We conclude that flavor bans can be effective levers that affect smokers’ choices. Alternative flavor bans can either enhance protection of the health of the public or worsen it. Specifically, our results indicate that banning flavors in e-cigarettes, while allowing them to remain in combustibles, would result in the greatest increase in smoking of combustible cigarettes; and the use of e-cigarettes would decline (10.3 percent).

By comparison, we find that a ban on menthol combustible cigarettes would produce the greatest reduction (4.8 percent) in the use of combustible cigarettes across the flavor bans that we study. Much of this movement from combustible cigarettes would be to e-cigarettes (3.5 percent) and the remainder would be toward “none” (1.3 percent). Given that combustible cigarettes impose the most significant harms on those who smoke them, reducing the smoking rate would likely increase the health of the public. Our results suggest that policymakers need to consider simultaneously the impact of flavor policies on combustibles, e-cigarettes, and abstinence (pgs. 20-21).

One study found for “those aged 15 years and above in 2016, almost 6.6 million fewer premature deaths and 86.7 million fewer LYL due to cigarette use occur in the Optimistic Scenario. The average 15-year-old would increase their life expectancy by 0.5 years, reflecting the increased life span of those who have, or would otherwise have smoked cigarettes, switching to e-cigarettes.” Even in the Pessimistic Scenario, “a net gain of 1.6 million (1.4 million male; 0.3 million female) representing 6% fewer premature deaths and 20.8 million (17.8 million male; 3.0 million female) representing 8% fewer LYL are projected. Average life expectancy increases 0.08 years (0.14 male; 0.02 female).”[ref]E-cigarettes have also reduced smoking in Europe.[/ref]

While I’d prefer that people not smoke at all, I’m all for safer alternatives that reduce premature deaths.

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Chinese Rebirth: Art and the Economy

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Above is a pic of Chinese artist Chen Zhen’s 1999 sculpture Precipitous Parturition, which currently hangs in the Guggenheim Museum in New York City as part of its Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World exhibit. Zhen “used found materials, weaving black rubber bicycle inner tubes, plastic toy cars, and bicycle parts into a 25-meter-long writhing dragon form. Inspired by a slogan proclaiming: “In 2000, 100 million Chinese people will possess their own cars. Welcome China to participate in the competition of our car industry!,” the work comments on China’s transition from a nation of bicycles into a nation of cars.” If you look at the middle of the sculpture, you’ll see that the dragon is giving birth to an abundance of toy cars, capturing the essence of China’s emerging, globalized economy and culture.

As I listened to the background of Zhen’s art, I immediately thought of a 2001 lecture by the late Peter Drucker:

Let me start out by saying that maybe six weeks ago I had a visit from an old student. Forty years ago, he was a young Taiwanese. In the meantime, he has built a very successful business in Taiwan, and for the last seven years or so has been in Shanghai, where he is now head of a very large joint-venture firm. And I asked him, “What has happened? What’s the most important thing that has happened in China the last three to five years?” And he thought for about five seconds and then said, “That we now consider owning an automobile a necessity and not a luxury.” That is what globalization means. It is not an economic event; it’s a psychological phenomenon. It means that all of the developed West’s values–its mindset and expectations and aspirations–are seen as the norm…It is a fundamental change in expectations and values.[ref]Peter F. Drucker, Rick Wartzman (ed.), “On Globalization” in The Drucker Lectures: Essential Lessons on Management, Society, and Economy (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010), 215.[/ref]

While Zhen may have bemoaned this modern China,[ref]It’s worth noting that even though Zhen grew up in China, he lived in France from 1986 until his death in 2000.[/ref] the country’s heightened participation in the global economy nonetheless yielded enormous benefits for the Chinese people.

Worries over increasing technology, urbanization, and globalization–and the cultural ramifications of it–are too often misplaced. Personally, I find it troubling that people pine over a lost era of poverty and misery. So instead of interpreting the toy cars in Zhen’s piece as a kind of spreading viral infection, perhaps we should see it as a rebirth; as something new and beautiful. Because that’s the only way I can think to describe millions of people being lifted out of extreme poverty.

Pew Research: Growing Political Divide

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The Pew Research Center released the results of a new survey demonstrating a growing partisan divide in the United States.

I am happy to see that a growing number of people are recognizing immigrants as a net positive to the country:

More say immigrants strengthen U.S. as the partisan divide grows

But what about politics at the personal level?

Most Democrats, Republicans have ‘just a few’ or no friends in opposing party

If partisans are living according to their preferences, then our communities may be highly polarized as well:

Republicans, Democrats differ over ideal house size and community type

Check it out.

Just Don’t: On Political Passivity

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I recently came across a 2012 paper by philosopher Michael Huemer titled “In Praise of Passivity.” Given our current political climate, I found the paper to be rather wise:

Image result for don't, just don't gifWhen it comes to political issues, we usually should not fight for what we believe in. Fighting for something, as I understand the term, involves fighting against someone. If one’s goal faces no (human) opposition, then one might be described as working for a cause (for instance, working to reduce tuberculosis, working to feed the poor) but not fighting for it. Thus, one normally fights for a cause only when what one is promoting is controversial. And most of the time, those who promote controversial causes do not actually know whether what they are promoting is correct, however much they may think they know…[T]hey are fighting in order to have the experience of fighting for a noble cause, rather than truly seeking the ideals they believe themselves to be seeking.

Fighting for a cause has significant costs. Typically, one expends a great deal of time and energy, while simultaneously imposing costs on others, particularly those who oppose one’s own political position. This time and energy is very likely to be wasted, since neither side knows the answer to the issue over which they contend. In many cases, the effort is expended in bringing about a policy that turns out to be harmful or unjust. It would be better to spend one’s time and energy on aims that one knows to be good.

Thus, suppose you are deciding between donating time or money to Moveon.org (a left-wing political advocacy group) and donating time or money to the Against Malaria Foundation (a charity that fights malaria in the developing world). For those concerned about human welfare, the choice should be clear. Donations to Moveon.org may or may not affect public policy, and if they do, the effect may be either good or bad–that is a matter for debate. But donations to Against Malaria definitely save lives. No one disputes that.

There are exceptions to the rule that one should not fight for causes. Sometimes, people find it necessary to fight for a cause, despite that the cause is obviously and uncontroversially good–as in the case of fighting to end human rights violations in a dictatorial regime. In this case, one’s opponents are simply corrupt or evil. Occasionally, a person knows some cause to be correct, even though it is controversial among the general public. This may occur because the individual possesses expertise that the public lacks, and the public has chosen to ignore the expert consensus. But these are a minority of the cases. Most individuals fighting for causes do not in fact know what they are doing.

He concludes,

Image result for don't, just don't gifPopular wisdom often praises those who get involved in politics, who vote in democratic elections, fight for a cause they believe in, and try to make the world a better place. We tend to assume that such individuals are moved by high ideals and that, when they change the world, it is usually for the better.

The clear evidence of human ignorance and irrationality in the political arena poses a serious challenge to the popular wisdom. Lacking awareness of basic facts of their political systems, to say nothing of the more sophisticated knowledge that would be needed to reliably resolve controversial political issues, most citizens can do no more than guess when they enter the voting booth. Far from being a civic duty, the attempt to influence public policy through such arbitrary guesses is unjust and socially irresponsible. Nor have we any good reason to think political activists or political leaders to be any more reliable in arriving at correct positions on controversial issues; those who are most politically active are often the most ideologically biased, and may therefore be even less reliable than the average person at identifying political truths. In most cases, therefore, political activists and leaders act irresponsibly and unjustly when they attempt to impose their solutions to social problems on the rest of society.

…Political leaders, voters, and activists are well-advised to follow the dictum, often applied to medicine, to “first, do no harm.” A plausible rule of thumb, to guard us against doing harm as a result of overconfident ideological beliefs, is that one should not forcibly impose requirements or restrictions on others unless the value of those requirements or restrictions is essentially uncontroversial among the community of experts in conditions of free and open debate. Of course, even an expert consensus may be wrong, but this rule of thumb may be the best that such fallible beings as ourselves can devise.

So, the next time you get the itch to raise awareness about some controversial political issue, Huemer suggests…

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Individualism on the Rise Worldwide

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Reason reports,

Individualism is rising across the world, according to a forthcoming study in Psychological Science by a team of Canadian and American psychologists who evaluated 51 years of data on individualistic practices and values across 77 countries.

There is, however, one big exception to this salutary trend: China.

Researchers focused on shifts in measures like the cross-cultural Individualism-Collectivism scale in the countries they evaluated. Individualism promotes a view of self-direction and autonomy, whereas collectivism fosters conformity and adherence to social obligations. Individualistic cultures prioritize independence and uniqueness whereas collectivist cultures emphasize family and fitting in.

To get at how cultures have moved along the individualism-collectivism spectrum the researchers used data focusing on changes in individualistic cultural practices and also World Values Survey responses that track shifts in cultural values.

The relevant cultural practices included changes in household size, percentage of people living alone, older adults living alone, and divorce rates. The researchers also analyzed how values changed with regard to the importance of friends versus family; teaching children independence or obedience; and preferences for self-expression such as arguing that free speech should be protected in their countries.

So what’s causing this shift? After looking at “socioeconomic development, disaster frequency, pathogen prevalence and climate affected trends in individualism,” the researchers found that “socioeconomic development had by far the strongest effect, accounting for between 35 and 58 percent of the change in individualism…The shift toward greater individualism is not confined just to developed countries. Overall, they find a 12 percent global shift on the axis toward increased individualism. The richer people become, the more likely they are to throw off the shackles of collectivism.”

So how come China hasn’t kept up? “As a possible explanation, researchers cite a 2014 study that identified profound cultural differences between southern and northern Chinese. Specifically, the folks in rice-growing southern China are more interdependent and holistic-thinking than those who live in the more individualistic wheat-growing north. Of course, it doesn’t help that the Communist government under President Xi Jinping is forcefully suppressing dissent.”

Other Minds: Peter Godfrey-Smith at Google

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This is part of the DR Book Collection.

Image result for other minds the octopusWith philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith’s Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness, I have learned more about cephalopods–squids, octopuses, and nautiluses–than I’ve ever cared to know. And it was deeply fascinating.

I have always found the ocean to be frightening and incredibly alien. The temperature and lack of oxygen in space are certainly scary, but add creatures that are weird and often predatory to the mix? No thank you. But this makes Godfrey-Smith’s exploration all the more absorbing. He weaves together philosophy, science, and personal anecdotes (he’s an avid scuba diver) in a way that causes the reader to reflect on the strangeness of life and especially the oddity of consciousness. He explains,

Cephalopods are an island of mental complexity in the sea of invertebrate animals. Because our most recent common ancestor was so simple and lies so far back, cephalopods are an independent experiment in the evolution of large brains and complex behavior. If we can make contact with cephalopods as sentient beings, it is not because of a shared history, not because of kinship, but because evolution built minds twice over. This is probably the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien (pg. 9).

Yet, the neurons of an octopus operate differently than those of vertebrates, spanning the creature’s entire body:

“Smart” is a contentious term to use, so let’s begin cautiously. First, these animals evolved large nervous systems, including large brains…A common octopus…has about 500 million neurons in its body…Humans have many more–something like 100 billion–but the octopus is in the same range as various smaller mammals, close to the range of dogs, and cephalopods have much larger nervous systems than all other invertebrates…When biologists look at a bird, a mammal, even a fish, they are able to map many parts of one animal’s brain onto another’s. Vertebrate brains all have a common architecture. When vertebrate brains are compared to octopus brains, all bets–or rather, all mappings–are off. There is no part-by-part correspondence between the parts of their brains and ours. Indeed, octopuses have not even collected the majority of their neurons inside their brains; most of the neurons are found in the their arms (pg. 50-51).

And that’s just getting started. These scientific and philosophical reflections go back to some of the deepest questions that have been with humanity for thousands of years:

  • What is it to be alive?
  • What is to be?
  • What is it to be conscious?

While I would have preferred a little more philosophy (even some speculation), the book is nonetheless an eye-opening read. You can see Godfrey-Smith speaking on the subject at Google below.

The Global Economic Impact of Climate Change

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Yale economist William Nordhaus has done some of the best research on the economic effects of climate change. In a new working paper, Nordhaus and Andrew Moffat survey the literature (27 studies) and look at 36 different estimates regarding the global economic impact of climate change by 2100. They note that the IPCC stated in their 2007 report, “Global mean losses could be 1 to 5% of GDP for 4°C of warming” (pg. 2). Overall, “there are many studies of theoretical temperature increases in the 2 to 4 °C range, and that they cluster in the range of a loss of 0 to 4% of global output” (pg. 13). The authors’ own “preferred regression” provides an “estimated impact” of “1.63 % of income at 3 °C warming and 6.53% of income at a 6 °C warming. We make a judgmental adjustment of 25% to cover unquantified sectors…With this adjustment, the estimated impact is -2.04 (+ 2.21) % of income at 3 °C warming and -8.16 (+ 2.43) % of income at a 6 °C warming” (pg. 3).

This supports my previous posts about the economics of climate change. Once again, climate change will drastically reduce income over the next 100 years without intervention (and recent research suggests that we might have more time to intervene than previously thought). But people will still be be significantly better off compared to us today even if we fail to act. They just won’t be as well off as they could have been.[ref]Political philosophers Jason Brennan and Bas van der Vossen cover this in their upcoming book In Defense of Openness (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).[/ref]

Can Divorce Spread Through Social Networks?

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According to a new study, this appears to be the case. As reported at the IFS blog,

What we know from experience—that divorce has an infectious effect—researchers Rose McDermott, James Fowler, and Nicholas Christakis confirm in their study, Breaking Up is Hard to Do, Unless Everyone Else is Doing it Too: Social Network Effects on Divorce in a Longitudinal Sample. They write, “The results suggest that divorce can spread between friends. Clusters of divorces extend to two degrees of separation in the network.”

I would argue this might be especially true in insular groups like retirement communities, where a number of elements coalesce to create a perfect storm for social and personal dysfunction. One of these signs is the rise of divorce in the 50+ baby boomer American generation, what is sometimes called “gray divorce.” In a 2012 study published in The Journals of Gerontology, we learn first, that the United States has the highest rate of divorce in the world. And that Baby Boomers have shown high rates of marital instability beginning from young adulthood. As several studies indicate, Baby Boomers are carrying this marital instability into their latter years, giving rise to the gray divorce phenomenon. The study shows that the divorce rate for middle-aged (50-64) and older (65+) Americans has doubled since 1990.

…Looking for correlated variables, Cahn and Carbone dug into a 2016 study in an article for the Institute for Family Studies and found that financial insecurity and marital biographies (as Brown and Lin noted) were two major factors in Baby Boomer divorce. A notable third factor was the marital quality of the couple.

But if we consider the work of McDermott, Fowler, and Christakis, we cannot underestimate the social network effect on the Boomer generation. True, marital histories, economic stress, and marital quality can impact the health of a marriage, but social influence can act on a couple for good or for ill when they are in a weak position.

Information that is use both academically and practically.

Labor Protectionism: Minimum Wage and the Labor Market Effects of Immigration

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A new working paper provides some interesting results about the interplay between immigration and minimum wage laws:

Our first empirical strategy exploits the non-linearity of the minimum wage across U.S. States to investigate the role played by the minimum wage in shaping the impact of immigration on the wages and employment of competing native workers. We find that on average, immigration has relatively small detrimental effects on the wages and employment outcomes of competing native workers. The main contribution of this study is not to provide yet another estimate of the wage and employment responses to immigration but, rather, to investigate the role of minimum wages in determining such responses. Indeed, we show that the labor market effects of immigration are heterogeneous across U.S. States characterized by different levels of minimum wage. In particular, we find that the impact of immigration on natives’ labor market outcomes is more negative in states where the effective minimum wage is relatively low. In contrast, sufficiently high minimum wages tend to protect native workers from any adverse wage or unemployment effects of immigration.

Our second empirical methodology uses a difference-in-differences approach. We use cross-state differences in the impact of federal minimum wage adjustments on state effective minimum wages. Over our period of interest, the successive rises in the federal minimum wage have fully affected the states where the effective minimum wage is equal to the federal one (the treatment group), with no impact in high minimum wage states (the control group). Thus, we can estimate the difference between the labor market impact of immigration before and after the federal policy changes between the treatment group and the control group. Our estimates indicate that the detrimental impact of immigration on natives’ wages and employment have been mitigated thanks to the federal minimum wage increases that occurred in three installements between 2007 and 2010.

Taken together, our results indicate that high minimum wages tend to protect employed native workers against competition from immigrants. This may come at the price, obviously, of rendering access to employment more difficult for outsiders such as the unemployed natives and new immigrants, a question we cannot investigate given the limits of our data (pg. 51-52).

Interesting, but not surprising. Case in point, consider my summary of Thomas Leonard’s Illiberal Reformers:

The book meticulously demonstrates that the progressive impulse toward inflating the administrative state was driven largely by self-promotion (i.e, the professionalization of economists), racist ideologies (i.e., the fear of race suicide), and an unwavering faith in science. Not only should the “undesirables” of the gene pool be sterilized, but they should be crowded out of the labor force as well. Those considered “unfit” for the labor market included blacks, immigrants, and women. In order to artificially raise the cost of employing the “unfit,” progressives sought to implement minimum wage (often argued to be a “tariff” on immigrant labor), maximum hours, and working standard legislation.

A “tariff” on immigrant labor indeed.