Not all innovation works

However, thanks largely to its absurd specifications, which called for dive bombing capability, the He 177 was a disaster. Its wings were prone to falling off and its peculiar back-to-back engine configuration resulted in frequent self-combustion. (Adam Tooze, “The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy”. p. 448)

The impact of class size on the performance of university students

The effect of increasing class size in tertiary education is not well understood. A new column at VoxEU.org estimates the effects of class size on students’ exam performance by comparing the same student’s performance to her own performance in courses with small and large class sizes. Going from the average class of 56 to a class size of 89 would decrease the mark by 9% of the observed variation in marks within a given student. The effect is almost four times larger for students in the top 10%. This last result is a bit worrying, your best students are effected most. I hate to think what they would make of our lectures with 400 students!

The column, The impact of class size on the performance of university students, is by Oriana Bandiera, Valentino Larcinese, and Imran Rasul. Their approach to identifying class-size effects is to look at the within-student variation in marks across different courses with different class sizes.

To address this policy question, we estimate the impact of class size on the final exam marks of graduate students in a leading UK university between 1999 and 2004 (Bandiera et al. 2010). As we observe the same student being exposed to very different class sizes, we estimate the effects of class size on students’ exam performance by comparing the same student’s performance to her own performance in courses with small and large class sizes. It is important to stress that, on average, most of the variation in marks is due to fixed students’ characteristics and not university inputs. On average the performance of a given students only varies by around 7% of the average mark across her courses. We shed light on how much of this within-student difference is attributable to differing class sizes the student faces.

The effect of class size on students’ performance is – as expected – negative; students do worse in big classes. Namely, a given student receives lower marks in courses with larger classes, everything else equal.

To get a sense of the magnitude of this effect, our estimates imply that a one standard deviation increase in class size from the mean (that is going from the average class of 56 to a class size of 89) would decrease the mark by 9% of the observed variation in marks within a given student. These estimates, however, mask two important forms of heterogeneity: (i) the impact of class size varies across the range of class sizes; (ii) the effect of class size varies across students.

On the first form of heterogeneity, the negative effect of class size on student exam performance is large and negative only in the smallest and the largest classes. There is no class size effect across a wide range of intermediate class sizes. The magnitudes imply that moving the average student from a class of 10 to a class of 25 leads to a drop in exam performance of around 12.5% of within-student standard deviation. Increasing the class size from 25 to 45 determines a further 12.5% drop. In contrast, there is no impact in a wide intermediate range, while moving from 80 to 150 determines a further drop of 25% in the within-student standard deviation. If moved from a very small class (of size 10) to a very large class (of size 150), the average student can be expected to suffer a loss corresponding to about 50% of the overall variation in exam marks the average student experiences across all of her courses.

The second form of heterogeneity concerns students’ ability. Students at the top of the mark distribution are those most affected by class size. The effect is almost four times larger for students in the top 10% of the distribution of exam marks than for students at the bottom 10%, and about 50% larger than the average student. This heterogeneity is most apparent in the largest classes and virtually non-existent for a range of intermediate class sizes. This implies the highest-ability students would benefit the most, in terms of academic achievement, from any reduction in class sizes, when class sizes are initially very large.

What mechanisms are at work here? Bandiera, Larcinese, and Rasul explain,

To shed light on the underlying mechanisms for the class-size effect, our analysis uses information on teachers' assignments to classes and on students' characteristics. We find no evidence that departments purposefully assign faculty of differing quality to different class sizes, and we find no evidence that faculty members alter their behaviour when exposed to different class sizes. It appears that the preparation and delivery of lectures is independent of the number of students taught.

On student characteristics, the class-size effect does not vary with proxies for students' wealth. Hence if larger classes resulted in lower grades because students had more limited access to library books or computer laboratories, the effect should have been smaller for students who can purchase these inputs privately. Moreover, the class-size effect does not vary with student's familiarity with this particular university as an undergraduate or with the UK system generally. This casts doubts on the relevance of mechanisms that work through the information students have, such as their awareness of other local resources (for example other libraries in the area), or their knowledge of the characteristics of faculty, courses, or departments.

Clearly class size matters for student performance and particularly for the most able students. So the question is, How effective is reducing class size as a strategy for improving the performance of students? Bandiera, Larcinese, and Rasul argue that reducing class size is not always an effective strategy and is certainly not effective for all students in the same way.

Reducing the size of very large modules (above 100) could be a cost-effective way to improve students’ performance. For modules in the range 30-100 reducing class size could be a rather ineffective strategy, while for classes below 30 it could be a valid but not necessarily cost-effective strategy. Attention should be devoted to other inputs in such cases, and more refined and cost-effective solutions than pure number counting should be identified. To this end, it is important to have a better understanding of the mechanisms that link class size and performance.

Although student-to-staff ratio is a commonly used indicator of quality both in national and international comparisons, this might be a noisy measure of quality over this intermediate range of class sizes.4 Given the mechanisms our data rule outs, there appear to be at least two ways that larger classes reduce students' performance. First, changes in student behaviour such as their attentiveness or participation. Second, reduced resource availability, such as library books or faculty time during office hours.

As the best students are the most affected, that could imply that large classes induce a reduction in tutoring activity rather than a substantial deterioration in classroom conditions. It is reasonable to expect that the best students are able to compensate classroom deterioration at least as well as other students. However, the best students are also those that benefit the most (in terms of both learning and motivation) from contact with teachers. They, therefore, suffer the most in terms of reduced performance when such contacts or tailored feedback is less frequent.

• Bandiera, O., V. Larcinese and I. Rasul (2010), “Heterogeneous Class Size Effects: New Evidence from a Panel of University Students”, forthcoming, Economic Journal.

Joseph Schumpeter and regime uncertainty

In Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, Joseph Schumpeter argued that policy shocks, and policy uncertainty generally, lengthened the Great Depression:

The subnormal recovery to 1935, the subnormal prosperity to 1937 and the slump after that are easily accounted for by the difficulties incident to a new fiscal policy, the new labor legislation and a general change in the attitude of government to private enterprise all of which can, in a sense to be defined later, be distinguished from the working of the productive apparatus as such.

Since misunderstandings at this point would be especially undesirable, I wish to emphasize that the last sentence does not in itself imply either an adverse criticism of the New Deal policies or the proposition — which I do believe to be true but which I do not need right now — that policies of that type are in the long run incompatible with the effective working of the system of private enterprise. All I mean to imply is that so extensive and rapid a change in the social scene naturally affects productive performance for a time, and so much the most ardent New Dealer must and also can admit. I for one do not see how it would otherwise be possible for the fact that this country which had the best chance of recovering quickly was precisely the one to experience the most unsatisfactory recovery. (p. 64-5).

This idea that government policies can effect people's view of the economy and in particular investor's confidence in the longevity of private property rights and thus the return they may get from any investment has come to be known, thanks to Robert Higgs, as regime uncertainty. Higgs's argument being that that FDR’s policies at the time of the Great Depression, prevented a robust recovery of long-term private investment by significantly reducing investors’ confidence in the durability of private property rights. This lack of investment prolonged and deepened the depression in the US.

But there is nothing new under the sun. Schumpeter was ahead of even Higgs.

(HT: Organizations and Markets)

More on get rid of government experts

A previous posting, Get rid of government experts: they do not know what is best for the people, was based on an a article by philosopher James Otteson in Forbes. The Forbes article was in turn based on an academic piece by Otteson which has now appeared in the journal Social Philosophy and Policy. The full details are Adam Smith and the Great Mind Fallacy, James R. Otteson, Social Philosophy and Policy (2010), 27:276-304. The abstract reads,

Adam Smith raised a series of obstacles to effective large-scale social planning. In this paper, I draw these Smithian obstacles together to construct what I call the “Great Mind Fallacy,” or the belief that there exists some person or persons who can overcome the obstacles Smith raises. The putative scope of the Great Mind Fallacy is larger than one might initially suppose, which I demonstrate by reviewing several contemporary thinkers who would seem to commit it. I then address two ways the fallacy might be overcome, finding both wanting. I close the paper by suggesting that Smith's Great Mind Fallacy sheds interesting light on his “impartial spectator” standard of morality, including with respect to the specific issues of property and ownership.

The whole issue is worth reading as it collects together a number of papers from a distinguished group of scholars all addressing the general topic of "ownership and justice."

Thomas Sowell on intellectuals and society

From the Hoover Institution and The National Review Online comes this series of videos in which the great economist Thomas Sowell introduces his new book, Intellectuals and Society. Thomas Sowell is the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution.

In Chapter 1 of 5 he expounds on what he calls “the fatal misstep of intellectuals.”




Chapter 2 of 5 Thomas Sowell offers examples of why intellectuals are so often wrong about economics.



Chapter 3 of 5 What is the vision to which contemporary intellectuals subscribe? Thomas Sowell responds.



Chapter 4 of 5 Thomas Sowell reasons that intellectuals certainly can renounce war, “and that does not stop your neighbor from building up the biggest army in the world and coming in and killing you.”



Chapter 5 of 5 Thomas Sowell explains how the demand for public intellectuals is largely manufactured by the public intellectuals themselves.

Don Boudreaux on protectionism

At Cafe Hayek Don Boudreaux writes,

Trying to justify raising taxes on Americans who buy foreign-made steel, United Steelworkers’ President Leo Gerard says – in a letter today to the Wall Street Journal – that “China flat-out cheats in its trade practices.”

By “cheats,” of course, Gerard means that the Chinese find ways around artifices designed to restrict Americans’ access to Chinese-made products.

In fact, the real cheats are Gerard, U.S. steelmakers, and Uncle Sam. They conspire together to deny to hundreds of millions of Americans opportunities to take advantage of the best deals possible. They scheme to restrict Americans’ choices so that steel producers in the U.S. don’t have to work so hard to earn consumers’ dollars. They connive to raise their own spending power by reducing the spending power of millions of others.

This is a good point to make about the reasons for protectionism, rent seeking. Being few in number steelmakers, in this case, know that they have much to gain from restricting the choices available to steel buyers. The steel buyers on the other hand are many and so each one individually loses only a little from the protectionism. But those little losses add up to much more than the gains the steelmakers make. Overall the economy is made worse off.

Libertarian humour

From Jeffrey Miron's Libertarianism, from A to Z blog

“You libertarians are the types that would allow fornication in public parks!”

"What do you mean, public parks?”

The old delusion of protectionism

Jeff Jacoby at the Boston Globe writes on The old delusion of protectionism. He writes,

In my e-mail inbox, meanwhile, the subject line of a new message exhorts me to “BUY AMERICAN!!!’’ When I open it, I am reminded that “every little thing we buy or do affects someone else - even their job,’’ and that I should avoid products manufactured abroad and buy only those made in the United States. Among the items to be shunned: Bounce dryer sheets (allegedly made in Canada), GE lightbulbs (Mexico), and Apache hose fittings (China).

It is certainly true that people’s jobs are affected by consumers’ choices. If customers stay away in droves from Chinese hose attachments, it might well mean more work for an American hose and belting manufacturer. But why stop there? In addition to boycotting goods and services made in other countries, let’s avoid spending money on products from other states. Those of us who live in Massachusetts should refuse to buy dryer sheets from California, Ohio lightbulbs, and hoses made in California. My Boston cabbie should be curling his lip at cars made not just by companies headquartered in Japan or Germany, but by those based in Michigan, too.

Crazy? Of course. Refusing to trade across state lines wouldn’t make us economically stronger. It would make us weaker, condemning us to higher prices, less variety, reduced purchasing power, and inferior quality. Granted, such protectionism might work to the advantage of a few local producers. But it would do so only by depriving everyone else of economic opportunity and improved quality of life. To turn state borders into trade barriers would be irrational and self-defeating.

But Jacoby's best point is,

Free trade isn’t a battle that countries (or states) win or lose. It is a human right - the liberty to engage in voluntary transactions that leave both participants better off. If John wants to sell something that Mary wants to buy, it should make no difference to the lawfulness of their exchange whether they are residents of different neighborhoods, different states, or different nations.

Prediction by markets

Insurance markets can act as prediction markets. Adam Tooze writes in his book “The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy”,

The threat of war was obvious, so obvious in fact that the main global insurance market – Lloyds of London – ceased trading in war cover on property by the end of 1936. (p. 203)

There was a message there, which most people seem to have missed. Clearly the insurance industry thought war highly probable.

Interesting blog bits

A bit of weekend reading:

1. William Easterly and Laura Freschi on the The Power of Searchers. They searched, they found.
2. David Friedman on Jewish and Irish Law. There are connections.
3. Jason Kuznicki points out that Blasphemy Laws Are an Admission of Failure. A failure of free speech at least.
   
4. Bryan Caplan has A Modest Proposal for Wannabe Humanities Profs.
5. An interview with Raghuram Rajan. If you have to ask, there's no point in reading it.
6. Jeffrey Miron asks Should Polygamy be Legal?
7. Madsen Pirie argues Caution: Government warnings can damage your health. The government wants you to stop all those things you enjoy.
8. Charlotte Bowyer is Looking at CCTV. And doesn't like what she sees. Britain is the most watched nation in the world with around 4 million CCTV cameras installed across Britain. My issue with these cameras is, if the criminals know they are there, won't they just change their behaviour, the way or places they carry out crimes, in such a way as to reduce the usefulness of the cameras?
9. Laura Alfaro and Maggie Chen on Multinational firms, agglomeration, and global networks. Agglomeration effects are important but difficult to measure. This column uses a new database with precise geographical information to investigate the locational interdependence of multinational firms. Knowledge spillovers and capital- and labour-market externalities exert a significant effect on the co-agglomeration of multinational headquarters, while input-output linkages also play a significant role in the case of subsidiary co-agglomeration.
10. Franklin G Mixon Jr. and Kamal P Upadhyaya on Blogometrics. A new ranking of economics blogs based on the scholarly impact of the bloggers. It has to be wrong as I'm not on it!
11. Peter Boettke on Blogology 101: The Important Role of Shaming. What to do about the the lack of civility evident in the comments sections of blogs.
12. David Boaz ponders What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen. The unseen costs of regulation and also of the often unseen benefits of market processes.

Political spectrum quiz

My Political Views
I am a far-right social libertarian
Right: 8.77, Libertarian: 8.26

Political Spectrum Quiz

Another reason for having private roads

Richard Wellings writing at the IEA blog presents a new reason for privatising roads, snow. Wellings notes that the current cold snap in the UK has led to widespread disruption on roads all around Britain. Much of the road network has been left untreated as local authorities have struggled to cope and many routes have been blocked by uncleared snow or abandoned vehicles. Is there a solution to this snow induced transport chaos? Wellings says yes, privatise the roads. He writes,

Under current arrangements trunk roads and motorways are managed by the Highways Agency and the rest of the network by local authorities. While their staff undoubtedly work hard to respond to disruption as it happens, the financial incentives for these organisations to resolve this recurring problem in the long term are very weak. Taxpayers fund their activities whether or not they perform well.

By contrast, profit-seeking private road owners – heavily dependent on tolls for their income – would have very strong incentives to keep the roads clear. Nightmare scenarios, such as motorists being stuck overnight in their cars in freezing weather, could do immense damage to the reputation of private road companies and their brand names. Moreover, the possibility of costly insurance claims from accidents caused by poor road conditions would provide a further incentive for owners to ensure their infrastructure was adequately cleared and gritted.

The economy of the Third Reich

Earlier I posted on an essay by Steven Horwitz on The fascist economy. Horwitz made the point that under fascism there was a large degree of distrust of the unplanned order of free markets and that the power of the state was used to set economic goals. Both these points suggest that the fascist economy should be considered as a form of socialism or planning.

Writing in the current issue of The Freeman historian Steve Davies briefly discusses the success of the fascist approach to the economy using the example of the Third Reich:

In the case of the Third Reich, the widely held perception even now is that whatever else may be said about his regime, Hitler managed to bring about a dramatic revival of the German economy. After 1933 Hitler and his finance minister Hjalmar Schacht stabilized the economy and managed to solve the huge unemployment crisis that had destroyed the Weimar Republic’s legitimacy. This was partly due to Schacht’s imaginative monetary policy and partly to massive public works programs, such as the autobahnen. There was a sharp move away from free markets to a much more interventionist economy that worked better than what had gone before. During World War II this economy was able to achieve great success in terms of war production, notably under Hitler’s armaments minister, Albert Speer.

Obviously there is some truth in this account, or else it would not be credible. There was indeed a sharp move in the direction of a more state-controlled economy. In fact few people realize just how interventionist—even socialist—the policies of the Nazi state were (although the full name of the party should give some indication of this). However, the picture overall is mostly wrong. Adam Tooze conclusively debunked this account in his masterful work, The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy. Tooze shows that the public works programs had little effect on unemployment and wasted resources; that the 1930s saw constant financial and foreign-exchange crises for the Reich; that by 1939 the condition of the German economy was desperate and that this was in fact a major factor in Hitler’s increasingly aggressive policy; that the supposed success of Speer simply did not happen; and that overall the regime was so crippled by its economic incompetence that it is nothing short of a miracle that it had as much military success as it did.

Thus the Nazi planning based approach to economic policy was unsuccessful. An outcome that would not have surprised economists like von Mises and Hayek.

The government against competition

This Wall Street Journal editorial comments on a plan by the US Internal Revenue Service to make anyone who takes money to help people with their taxes register with the IRS, and eventually pass competency tests and sign up for continuing education. The WSJ writes,

Under the plan, which would begin with the 2011 tax season, anyone who takes money to help people with their taxes will have to register with the IRS, and eventually pass competency tests and sign up for continuing education. So having made tax filing so complicated that most Americans need help with their forms, Washington now wants to raise the price of such counsel by regulating advisers in a way that may reduce their supply.

But it will help those already in the business of preparing tax returns by reducing entry into the industry and thus reducing competition. The editorial continues,

Cheering the new regulations are big tax preparers like H&R Block, who are only too happy to see the feds swoop in to put their mom-and-pop seasonal competitors out of business. Kathryn Fulton, senior vice president for government relations, told the Washington Post the company was glad to support rules that meant H&R Block "won't be competing against people who aren't regulated and don't have the same standards as we do." With fewer tax preparers in the market, H&R Block will find it easier to raise prices.

Here's an idea, why not simplify the tax code so that its easy for people to fill out their own tax returns, that way you wont have to worry about professional tax advisers who aren't regulated and have low standards.

Crime and the economy

This article by Heather MacDonald from the Wall Street Journal rises an interesting question for the law and economics types: If poverty is the root cause of lawlessness, why did crime rates fall when joblessness increased? MacDonald writes,

The recession of 2008-09 has undercut one of the most destructive social theories that came out of the 1960s: the idea that the root cause of crime lies in income inequality and social injustice. As the economy started shedding jobs in 2008, criminologists and pundits predicted that crime would shoot up, since poverty, as the "root causes" theory holds, begets criminals. Instead, the opposite happened. Over seven million lost jobs later, crime has plummeted to its lowest level since the early 1960s. The consequences of this drop for how we think about social order are significant.

Hillary Clinton is coming to New Zealand

Aren't we luckly?! According to Yahoo!Xtra news,

Hillary Clinton's visit to New Zealand is being described as very significant.

Described by who and what does significant mean in this context?

Anyway, another significant Clinton event was her recent speech on development at the Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C. Development economist William Easterly has blogged on the speech: Tower of Babble: Hillary Clinton’s speech about development was not all bad, but it still contained plenty of nonsense and overly political thinking. Easterly writes,

Once upon a time, I believed in the theory that logic and evidence influenced public policy. After experience rudely contradicted this thesis, I switched to Theory No. 2: Political incentives cause public officials to say things inconsistent with logic and evidence -- babble.

These thoughts were prompted by Secretary of State Hilary Clinton's speech today on the U.S. government's new approach to economic development. It was not ALL babble. Among other things, she had some good ideas about soap. However, there was evidence in speech for Theory No. 2. Let's show some compassion for gifted individuals like Secretary Clinton, whom politics forces to babble.

He goes on to outline 4 classic signs of babble, and the political incentives that cause them.

1. Announce in the speech that you are going to do one thing, and then spend the rest of the speech doing the opposite.
2. Announce you are going to solve problems that have been insoluble for decades.
3. Mention obvious tradeoffs, then deny their existence.
4. When you say "THAT is not what we will do," you mean it except for the "not."

He also mentions the soap. Read and enjoy.

Economists are less generous, but not by training

An often made claim is that economists are more selfish than other people. There is some experimental and real world evidence to this effect. But the interesting question to ask is, Do selfish people self select into Economics, or do Economics students get indoctrinated by the material they are covering in classes.

Elaina Rose and Yoram Bauman have a new paper which asks Why are Economics Students More Selfish than the Rest?

A substantial body of research suggests that economists are less generous than other professionals and that economics students are less generous than other students. We address this question using administrative data on donations to social programs by students at the University of Washington. Our data set allows us to track student donations and economics training over time in order to distinguish selection effects from indoctrination effects. We find that economics majors are less likely to donate than other students and that there is an indoctrination effect for non-majors but not for majors. Women majors and non-majors are less likely to contribute than comparable men.

A few things look interesting from this: for econ majors training doesn't seem to affect their behaviour, so there is a section effect working here. However when it comes to non-majors they do become more selfish when exposed to Economics. In other words, economic arguments are quite convincing. Third, the fact that both female majors and non-majors are less likely to contribute than comparable men. I have always said men are nicer!

Get rid of government experts: they do not know what is best for the people

So says James R. Otteson, Joint Professor of Philosophy and Economics at Yeshiva University in New York, and the Charles G. Koch Senior Fellow at The Fund for American Studies in Washington, D.C., in a new piece in Forbes. Otteson asks,

Is rule by government experts the wave of the future? A recent spate of books argues yes--despite the multiple, spectacular failed attempts to do so in the 20th century.

Why should governments allow people the freedom to make choices we know are bad for them? In the past since we didn't know much about what made people happy and healthy we could afford to limit government action to preserving people's "liberty" or "rights." But surely not anymore. Now we know a lot about what makes people healthy and happy, and it is only humane to guide people's choices - even, where necessary, coerce them - toward good ends. Such notions underlie the paternalism-is-good-for-you movement. Otteson continues,

Another leader in the paternalism-is-good-for-you movement is law professor Cass Sunstein. Sunstein's innocuously titled book Nudge, co-authored with economist Richard Thaler, argues that expert knowledge about what is good for you justifies their structuring your choices for you so that you are more likely to choose what they know you should choose. Sunstein endorses government experts as "choice architects" who will arrange everything from retirement accounts to the food in the school cafeteria, carefully designing everyone's environments so that the choices the expert architects believe are best seem to people the only ones they really have.

You may think that these ideas are confined to the ivory tower, but no,

Sunstein has been named by President Obama as the Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs--or, as it's more popularly known, the Regulation Czar. Although it's difficult to figure out what exactly this position's powers are, it seems clear that Sunstein will enjoy considerable authority to begin writing his preferred "nudges" into regulatory mandate.

People like Sunstein are, I'm sure, good people with good intentions and they are very smart, so Can't we then entrust to them this extraordinary level of power and authority over our lives? What Sunstein, and other experts, however smart, cannot know are all the really important things. Otteson notes that while such experts are very smart they cannot know are all the most important things to you.

They don't know your goals, your ambitions or your priorities. They don't know what your values are; they don't know what opportunities are available to you (and what aren't); they don't know your likes and dislikes. Even if they know a lot about human behavior or human welfare in general, they don't know anything about you. They don't know anything about me either, or about anyone else besides themselves and their closest family and friends.

That means that the best they could do is make guesses. But even that overstates their competence. Think of all the information--explicit and implicit--you marshal all day long every day to make the routine decisions you do. What are you going to do for breakfast today? Will you call your friend this afternoon? Will you finally buy your daughter the cellphone she's been asking for? Or larger questions: Should you buy a new house? Look for a new job? Buy or lease a car--and which one?

The amount of information each of us processes to make these decisions is legion, far more than any of us probably realizes. Yet to get these decisions right, one must draw on all of it--and even then we still often get it wrong. What possible chance can a government bureaucrat have of making the right decisions for you, when he has none of this information about you, when you are only one statistically insignificant data point among hundreds of millions within his purview?

It was, in part, the fact that government bureaucrats can not have information like this, information dependent on time and place and people, that made economists like von Mises and Hayek argue socialism could not work, that markets are needed to process this type and quantity of information, that people must be free to make their own decisions, interacting with others via the market process.

Otteson goes on to remind us that,

In 1776, Adam Smith argued in his Wealth of Nations that the best person to make decisions like these is the person who possesses more of this information than anyone else. In your life, that would be you; in my life, that would be me. Unfortunately, no distant legislator can have a hope of getting these things right for us.

Smith went on to say that the legislator who fancied himself able to guide others' daily lives was not only bound to fail but was dangerous to boot--because the fantastic overestimation of his abilities probably means a megalomaniacal ego too. And we all know where megalomaniacs with expansive government power tend to end up.

Smith also identified a Great Mind Fallacy: the belief, or hope, that there is someone out there smart enough and benevolent enough to make these decisions for us, leaving us peacefully secure in the knowledge that somebody somewhere is protecting and taking care of us.

It's true that it would be nice if there was such a great mind out there, but there isn't. No imperfect, fallible human being - not even some "government expert" - will ever be so smart and so benevolent.

SuperFreakonomics is dangerous

or so thinks the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. On the Freakonomics blog Steven Levitt writes

An inmate there, Thomas Giesburg, recently attempted to order a copy of SuperFreakonomics from Amazon. Much to his surprise, the prison intercepted the book and would not allow it to be delivered to him because it deemed sections of SuperFreakonomics to be “written solely for the purpose of communicating information designed to achieve the breakdown of prisons through offender disruption such as strikes, riots, or security threat group activity.” The pages they cited in the book were 57, 59, 60, and 97.

Its good to see that the Nanny State in the US is keeping their prisons safe. They don't do too well on protecting aircraft from terrorists, but at least their prisons are safe from economics.

Global Warming!

Thanks to The Enquiring Mind for this cartoon from The Times, 19 December: