The adoption by the State of Indiana of a law restricting abortions offers an opportunity to review some economic, or economically-inspired, arguments on both sides of the debate (“Indiana Passes Near-Total Abortion Ban, Marking First State Restrictions Since Roe v. Wade Overturned,” Wall Street Journal, August 6, 2022). Because normative economics assigns value equally to all individuals, economists—or at least a large number of them, including this blogger—implicitly oppose murder, whatever the balance of utilities, even if the murderer gets more utility from it than his victim loses (if such comparisons have any meaning). Hence, the question of whether the fetus is a human being and, if so, whether abortion is murder or justifiable homicide has some importance. The defense of “reproductive rights” is suspicious. If “rights” mean anything precise, reproductive rights must the freedom to reproduce if one wants to, is physically able to, can get a partner (or a surrogate), and other such conditions. The paradigmatic violation of reproductive rights in recent times was the eugenic policies promoted by progressives (mainly) in the first part of the 20th century. Under American eugenic state laws, in force between 1907 and 1980, 65,000 women were forcibly sterilized. (See Paul Lombardo, Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court, and Buck v. Bell [John Hopkins University Press, 2008]; and Thomas Leonard, Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics & American Economics in the Progressive Era [Princeton University Press, 2016].) Reproductive rights do not imply the right to kill the reproduced individual, just as marriage rights do not imply the right to kill your spouse. Doesn’t the life of a human being, even potential, have some value? Is the fetus less human than an old person victim of a stroke or Alzheimer? These questions underline the importance of affirming the value of human life. To those who invoke the welfare of future generations when it serves their own political purposes, we may ask what future individuals think about the probability of being aborted. If one imagines that future individuals are invited to our social contract (admittedly a big imagination stretch), what is the probability that many of them would consent to “reproduction rights” as conceived by the unconditional supporters of abortion? A time inconsistency problem is lurking here: the future individuals who consent to very permissive abortion rules now may in fact never be born and thus have no voice in any social contract. This being said, the principle“ My body, my choice” is enticing for whoever takes seriously the normative implications of economics. So is the “Bans off our bodies” slogan that some Indiana House Democrats were wearing—assuming it equally applies to the other sex. Economists naturally assume that an individual is the owner of his own body. In current discourse, however, the slogans above seem to apply only to abortion. Don’t they apply as clearly as, if not more clearly than, peaceful and contractual acts, like an adult choosing to work for less than a state-decreed minimum wage in order to use her body to earn a living? Don’t they apply if she wants to wear a gun on her body in order to protect that body against violent aggressions? And so forth. However, a consistent argument for “My body, my choice” cannot be summarily dismissed. It was used in a classic defense of abortion by philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson, published in  1971 in Philosophy and Public Affairs and simply titled “A Defense of Abortion.” Jarvis Thomson argued that even if we admit that the fetus is a human being, there is no defendable philosophical argument for preventing his (or her—yes, fetuses can be girls too!) mother from detaching him from her body. If it leads to the death of the fetus, abortion would not be murder, but justifiable homicide like in self-defense. Thomson’s demonstration is a general libertarian my-body-my-choice argument that applies to any non-voluntary obligation to help others. She emphasizes the difference between, on the one hand, a morally commendable action (keeping the child you have conceived even if it implies large costs) and, on the other hand, owing to somebody a right to assistance because it has been voluntarily contracted for and can thus be imposed by force. (For this post, I reread Thomson’s article after several decades; it may be changing my opinion on abortion.) In the famous article, Thomson wrote: I am arguing only that having a right to life does not guarantee having either a right to be given the use of or a right to be allowed continued use of another person’s body—even if one needs it for life itself. So the right to life will not serve the opponents of abortion in the very simple and clear way in which they seem to have thought it would. … If a set of parents do not try to prevent pregnancy, do not obtain an abortion, and then at the time of birth of the child do not put it out for adoption, but rather take it home with them, then they have assumed responsibility for it, they have given it rights, and they cannot now withdraw support from it at the cost of its life because they now find it difficult to go on providing for it. If they have taken all reasonable precautions against having a child, they do not simply by virtue of their biological relationship to the child who comes into existence have a special responsibility for it. Note that Thomson does not think her argument morally or legally justifies all abortions: While I do argue that abortion is not impermissible, I do not argue that it is always permissible. … A merit of my account [is] precisely that it does not give a general yes or a general no. … While I am arguing for the permissibility of abortion in some cases, I am not arguing for the right to secure the death of the unborn child. … I agree that the desire for the child’s death is not one which anybody may gratify, should it turn out to be possible to detach the child alive. I don’t think she satisfactorily explained when impermissibility is only a moral obligation and when is should be backed up by a legal ban. And did she underestimate the degree of responsibility of the mother (and the father too) in the conception of a human being? Except for the ban on aborting fetuses with serious but non-lethal genetic abnormalities as well as some authoritarian features of its enforcement, the Indiana law may not be so radically different from Thomson’s guidelines—at least if the WSJ’s description is correct, notwithstanding the story’s title: The ban, which takes effect Sept. 15, includes some exceptions. Abortions would be permitted in cases of rape and incest, before 10-weeks post-fertilization; to protect the life and physical health of the mother; and if a fetus is diagnosed with a lethal anomaly. (0 COMMENTS)

More correctly, they understand Covid tradeoffs for themselves. “Senate Democrats, some of whom have decried their G.O.P. colleagues’ lenient attitude toward masking, have adopted an unofficial ‘Don’t Test, Don’t Tell,’ protocol of late, particularly as they endeavor to pass the historic Inflation Reduction Act this weekend,” a senior Senate aide told Puck News. “They’re not going to delay it if a member has gotten COVID… Counterparts are saying they’re not going to test anymore. It’s not an official mandate but we all know we’re not letting COVID get in the way. The deal is happening. Less testing, just wear masks and get it done.” This is from Matt Margolis, “Democrats Nix COVID Precautions to Ensure Vote on Spending Bill in Senate,” PJ Media, August 6, 2022. I’ve found that Margolis’s title writer sometimes overstates but this one appears to be accurate. We opponents of lockdowns and compulsory masking over the last 2.5 years have consistently pointed out that there are tradeoffs: even if the lockdowns and masking requirements that many people want would be effective, they will have costs. The Senate Democrats understand that. They are willing to throw caution to the wind, giving up their own Covid conventions so they can raise our taxes, spend money on green pork, and shelter even high income people from paying for health insurance. Tradeoffs for me but not for thee. (0 COMMENTS)

Waze and Google Maps tell us the best way to get to where we’re going. But no app or algorithm can tell us whether we should head there in the first place. To economist Russ Roberts, the reason is simple: Humans are dynamic and aspirational beings. When it comes to making life’s big decisions, from […] The post Russ Roberts and Mike Munger on Wild Problems appeared first on Econlib.

On July 25th, the ice cream company Klondike discontinued the Choco Taco, one of their popular novelty ice cream treats.  Fans were disappointed.  The Choco Taco has been a staple of Klondike’s offerings for almost 40 years now.  By all accounts, the product was popular and profitable.  So why the decision from Klondike to discontinue it?  Economics helps us understand why. The official statement from Klondike reads: “The Klondike Choco Taco has unfortunately been discontinued in both 1ct and 4ct pack sizes. Over the past 2 years, we have experienced an unprecedented spike in demand across our portfolio and have had to make very tough decisions to ensure availability of our full portfolio nationwide. A necessary but unfortunate part of this process is that we sometimes must discontinue products, even a beloved item like Choco Taco.” Firms, just like all economic actors, face scarcity.  They only have so many resources (labor, capital, etc.) and they need to decide how to deploy those resources in the most effective manner.  When resources are used to produce one item, they cannot be used to produce a different item.  Thus, we have the economic understanding of cost: whatever you must give up in order to take an action is the cost.  If Klondike wishes to produce a Choco Taco, the cost of the Choco Taco is the monetary price of the inputs plus whatever product could have been produced with those inputs instead.  In other words, if Klondike has to choose between the Choco Taco or a Klondike Bar, the cost of producing the Choco Taco is the price of inputs plus one Klondike bar. The economic understanding of costs as including what one has to give up helps us understand another key economic concept: economic profit.  When people hear the word “profit,” they tend to think of accounting profit: monetary revenue minus monetary costs.  But economics have a broader conception of profit.  Economic profit is total revenue minus total costs.  The Klondike Bar in the example above is included in “total costs” for a Choco Taco.  If the cost of a Klondike Bar (measured by the foregone revenue of the Klondike Bar if it was produced instead of the Choco Taco) was sufficiently high, then the Choco Taco could have negative profits. Indeed, it appears this is the case given Klondike’s statement:  As demand spiked for all of their goods, the cost of the Choco Taco rose: other goods, potentially earning higher revenue, were sacrificed to produce a Choco Taco.  In order to maximize their profit, Klondike decided to discontinue the Choco Taco.  Even though the Choco Taco was earning accounting profit, the economic profit turned negative.  The company could increase their profit by allocating resources to the marginally more profitable items.  As my friend and co-author Nathan Goodman quipped to me: “What would you do for a Klondike Bar?  Shift scarce resources away from production of the Choco Taco, apparently.” The Choco Taco may return.  Costs in economics are subjective: they depend on the situation and viable alternatives.  Some other firm may purchase the rights from Klondike to produce the product.  Some offers are apparently already out there (though it is less clear how serious those offers are).  Or, if the costs of producing the Choco Taco fall (that is, the value of the foregone Klondike Bar falls), it may come back.  Either way, the firm is led as if by an invisible hand to produce goods that people value more highly.   Jon Murphy received his PhD in economics from George Mason University and is an Instructor at Western Carolina University. (0 COMMENTS)

Don Boudreaux, over at CafeHayek, quotes Roger Scruton’s criticism of the “globalized form” of the free market. Here’s the quote: Although I’m very much in favor of the free market, I’m very suspicious of the globalized form of it, and the way in which it does not respond to the demands of local communities and local forms of value. So this is a problem for real conservatism – to develop an economic doctrine that does not menace the local communities on which we all depend. Don is in the top 5 worldwide defenders of international trade and so his response is, as always, quite good. He focuses on the disruption that new suppliers bring to local communities and points out that there’s nothing special about the suppliers being foreign: Walmart is just as capable of bringing disruption. But I think–and this is rare–that there is a response to Scruton that he missed. Well, he didn’t exactly miss it–it’s implicit–but I think it should be explicit. Suppliers, whether domestic or foreign, succeed in any community by providing goods and services that people want. Precisely because we in the United States are relatively free to buy goods from other countries, local communities get served better. As I sit here writing, I’m in my Altra shoes in which I played pickleball Saturday morning. I believe that they were made in either China or Vietnam. As one person in the Monterey community, I find the makers have nicely responded to my local demand for shoes that help my plantar fasciitis rather than make it worse. (0 COMMENTS)

  Two thousand years ago, the proudest boast was civis Romanus sum [“I am a Roman citizen”]. Today, in  the world of freedom, the proudest boast is “Ich bin ein Berliner!”… All free men, wherever they may live,  are citizens of Berlin, and therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words “Ich bin ein Berliner!” –John F. Kennedy   The Industrial Revolution was the beginning of our changing times, the period that made possible the prosperity we have today. Usually, we give credit and gratitude to the machines and the personalities who made them, but it might all be misplaced. I’d say that the Industrial Revolution was just the tipping of the trend that began long ago with Pericles’ Athens and something that we take for granted today: citizenship.   Can Industrialization be Planned? The idea that prosperity follows from industrialisation will fail if we look at countries like the USSR, Maoist China, or Nehruvian India. Looking at the West, making full use of  Marxist-Leninist or Fabian ideas, central planners fixed their eyes on industrializing rapidly, an objective they achieved. But where was the prosperity? They had the factories, the experts, and all the machines. What went wrong? Why did the pristinely planned countries have many running factories that couldn’t produce anything of value or minimise their losses? Cush countries rapidly industrialised, but the revolution they anticipated never happened. This unexpected failure can be explained by the context within which they industrialised – citizenship or the lack of it. Citizenship is the state of man distinct from that of a subject, serf, cattle, or some form of a slave. It is the recognition of man as an end in himself. As an institution, it is supported by others such as the rule of law, self-governance, and property rights.   Industrialization or Individual Rights? From this, we can see that while people in parts of post-Enlightenment Europe were citizens, the people in the rest of the world were not. This, I believe, is the foundation of their success. With the privilege of enjoying rights predicated on responsibilities, protected by laws, rather than by the transitory goodwill and patronage of aristocrats and autocrats, the citizens of  Europe had more legal and economic latitude to paint, write, build, farm, create,  discover, or litigate. Unlike the rest of the world, citizens of Europe didn’t have to worry about being arbitrarily jailed, killed, or deprived of personal property or inheritance. There were no authorities to tell them where and how to live, so they had personal control over their lives and property, and often, their communities prospered as a result. They would go on to create grassroots enterprises, making use of their talents and bearing the financial risks. The son of a blacksmith in England would discover the effects of induced current. A few years later, a Serb financed by an American investor would create the AC motor, one of the cornerstones of our electrical world. Likewise, industries would pop up around the ideas of individuals and backed by their sweat and blood, while the rest of the world would watch in awe and envy.   The Secret Ingredient Many revolutionaries would come and go, trying to achieve the same prosperity and success through their ingenious plans and grand visions for society. It would all be in vain, as they assumed industrialization to be the sole factor for prosperity. In doing so, they confused the effect to be the same as the cause. Nobody planned the progress that the Western world went through. However, this is not to say that there weren’t any plans. In fact, millions of individuals, like you and I, planned their lives and made their own choices. These plans may have only concerned bread and shoes, but it was these little plans that would change the world for the better. It all happened because unlike ever before, the wills of millions of citizens aligned toward common goals of prosperity. It wasn’t the result of theoretical ideas based on universal brotherhood but the cumulative outcome of voluntary cooperation of individual citizens. The history of liberalism is not a history of kings, conquerors, or statesmen. It is the  ‘scholastically insignificant’ history of all of us. Its grand consequences don’t follow from the passions of great men or the writ of great bodies but from human action.   Aashay is a Writing Fellow with Students for Liberty’s Fellowship for Freedom in India. He is currently pursuing his Bachelor of Technology in Computer Science Engineering and is interested in studying emergent phenomena. (0 COMMENTS)

Regular reader Kevin Corcoran has sent me yet another short essay, this time on why requiring that all charging cables comply with the same standard is a really bad idea. I particularly like his last paragraph, which really drives the point home by asking us to imagine what would have happened had such a standard been imposed any time in the past. Here’s Kevin: I’m a tech nerd. I enjoy new gadgets and gizmos, and I enjoy reading about the development of these things. So it caught my eye when I saw that a few Democratic Senators (Including Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, of course) are pushing to have the government enforce a universal charging cable standard. What draws the Senators’ ire is that Apple has two different charging cables in its lineup. Most non-Apple devices, like Android phones and laptops, use USB-C. And many of Apple’s products, like their MacBooks and some of the higher end iPads, also use USB-C. But the iPhone and many other devices use Apple’s own Lightning cable. The Senators have divined that This Is The Wrong Way To Do Things, and want to force Apple to put USB-C on all of its devices. For what it’s worth, I’m not a fan of Apple’s proprietary cable. I would have preferred that it had switched entirely to USB-C a while ago. USB-C can charge devices faster and transfer data faster and having to carry two sets of cables around if you’re traveling with multiple devices can be a minor hassle. That said, I think the Senators are totally in the wrong here. First, having a legally mandated standard for charging cables is a surefire way to stifle innovation. Smartphone ports and chargers have gone through several stages of evolution since they first came to market; this process would not have been helped if from the beginning companies needed to get government permission to try a new standard, or if they were all required to use the same standard all at once. Had that been the case, I suspect ports and chargers today would still be in the state they were 10 years ago. Second, using older standards is a common cost saving mechanism for budget devices. Android phones have been using USB-C as a standard for a while now, but until recently it was very common for low end budget phones to use the older Micro-USB standard as one way to save on hardware costs and sell to consumers at lower prices. Not only would universal standards slow down the rate at which we’d get new technologies, but also they would limit the ability of tech companies to use older standards to offer lower cost options to consumers who have tighter budgets. Looking back, I can’t see any point in the past where it would have been a good idea for the state to come in and point to a specific technological development and say, “This right here – this is where all companies and consumers need to be, all at once, going forward.” It’s easy to see why that would have been a bad idea in the past, because here in the present we also know of all the successive improvements that have been made since then that might have been thwarted by such a move. There’s nothing magical about this moment that would make a universal standard in August 2022 a wiser move.  The Senators and others who think they can determine otherwise for consumers everywhere are indulging in Hayek’s fatal conceit. Now, here’s me, DRH, with my additional thought. It’s understandable that Bernie Sanders would advocate such a coercive proposal. After all, recall the statement he made in 2015: You don’t necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or of 18 different pairs of sneakers when children are hungry in this country. He’s right that you don’t need 23 underarm spray deodorants. Only one will do as long as it’s the one I want and the rest of you be damned. Or sneakers? I have plantar fasciitis in my right foot and I’ve finally found a pair of sneakers that seems to be making it better, not worse. The brand is Altra. The sneakers cost me about $130. Does my spending money on it mean that some children are going hungry? No. To say that, you would have to believe that my next best choice for the $130 is to spend it on feeding children. It’s not. But whatever I would have spent it on, it’s my money and there’s a company out there producing something I badly want. More choices are generally good, not bad. (0 COMMENTS)

Robert Barro recently asserted that the US entered a recession in early 2022: The bottom line is that, with the announcement on July 28 of a two-quarter GDP decline, we can be highly confident that the US economy entered a recession early in 2022. I believe that claim is extremely unlikely to be true, although it’s quite possible that we are about to enter a recession. Barro points out that since WWII, two consecutive quarters of negative RGDP have invariably been associated with recessions.  So why is he wrong about early 2022? There are several mistakes that people make when looking for statistical patterns.  One is data mining.  Thus they might notice that Super Bowl wins from former AFL teams are almost always associated with a certain stock market performance.  Once the pattern is discovered, it usually proves unreliable going forward, as there is no reason to expect such a correlation.  Barro is not guilty of that sin.  It has long been known that falling GDP is a good rule of thumb for there being a recession, and for good reason.  He is not engaged in data mining. Barro is guilty of another mistake, however.  He doesn’t pay enough attention to other important information that tends to conflict with his claim.  For instance, it’s also a good rule of thumb that industrial production always falls during recessions.  Always.  No exceptions.  And yet industrial production rose very rapidly during the first 6 months of 2022 (at an annual rate of 5%): Here’s another reliable pattern.  Payroll employment usually falls during recessions.  In a few occasions such as 1974 and 1980, it rose modestly during the early months of recession.  But even then the rate of growth was slowing.  Furthermore, the 1970s and early 1980s was a period of very rapid growth in the labor force–the trend in employment was sharply higher (as both boomers and women entered the labor force in large numbers.) In recent years, in contrast, we have very slow growth in the labor force, mostly due to sharply lower immigration and retiring boomers.  And yet despite that very slow underlying growth in the labor force, employment in the first 6 months of 2022 grew at a phenomenal rate of 461,333/month.  Nothing like that has ever happened before during a recession.  Indeed not only is that an above normal rate of growth in employment, it is faster growth in employment than the US normally sees during an economic boom.  And the second half of the year began with the economy still red hot, as 528,000 jobs were added in July. Indeed there is a wide range of indicators whose behavior is completely inconsistent with the notion that the economy was in recession in early 2022.  One of those indicators is real GDP measured using the “income method”.  That’s right, the US measures real GDP in two different ways, and one of those methods actually showed positive growth in the first quarter. Instead of focusing on one metric, the NBER relies on wide variety of monthly indicators such as payroll employment and industrial production, not just quarterly GDP.  Most of those suggest that the US experienced a strong economic boom in the early months of 2022.  It seems very unlikely to me that the NBER will date the recession as beginning in the first quarter.  I even doubt that a recession began in the second quarter, although I’d say that’s somewhat more likely (say a 10% chance, vs. a 1% chance in Q1.) I suspect that many economists don’t know that the quality of US macro data has been declining for many decades.  Modern economies are much harder to measure than the commodity-based economies of 100 years ago.  That’s why we see so many bizarre anomalies in the data for variables such as GDP. In some respects, it’s even worse in other countries.  Unlike the US, many countries do use two negative quarters as an official definition of recession.  This leads to some pretty absurd claims; such as that Japan has had 4 recessions since 2007!  Oddly, their unemployment rate data shows only 2 of the 4 recessions: In previous posts, I’ve called the other two recessions (during the 2010s) “phony recessions”.  The problem here is that Japan’s trend rate of RGDP growth has fallen to such a low level that even a tiny slowdown can briefly push RGDP growth below zero.  When there’s an actual recession (as during the global crisis of 2008 and the Covid crisis), you see a noticeable rise in the Japanese unemployment rate.  In contrast, when there’s a brief slowdown, say due to the timing of purchases around a Japanese sales tax increase, the labor market is largely unaffected. If people insist on calling those minor slowdowns “recessions”, that’s their prerogative.  But if you are going to do so, don’t act like recessions matter at all. You say that Japan had recessions in 2011 and 2014?  Oh really, and why should I care? PS.  You may be wondering about the fall in US industrial production during 2016.  That wasn’t a recession, but it did hurt certain sectors on the economy.  It was caused by a combination of tight money and a drop in fracking (which uses a lot of equipment made in the USA.)  It probably cost Hillary Clinton the election, as it hit Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin harder than other states.  But in retrospect, I suspect Trump would have won in 2020 if he’d lost in 2016, so it all evens out in the long run. PPS.  Hillary would have reappointed Yellen, who would have implemented a less inflationary policy, benefiting Trump in 2021.  Trump appointed Powell, who was reappointed by Biden.  Powell’s inflationary policies have made things more difficult for Biden.  It’s funny how things work out.   (0 COMMENTS)

“Buy local” is one of the most simplistic political slogans. It obliterates complex analytical ideas such as the division of labor and comparative advantage. As I wrote in another article, If something costs less to import, it is better to send the money out of the community and to bring more money back into the community by exporting what local producers have a comparative advantage in. Google’s Books Ngram Viewer suggests that the expression “buy local” started spreading at the end of the 19th century but grew rapidly only after the mid-1970s (see figure below). It looks like it reached its peak in 2010, although perhaps its occurrence in books (which is what the Ngram Viewer measures) does not correctly measure the phenomenon in popular culture. Merriam-Webster online defines “local” as “primarily serving the needs of a particular limited district.” Whether something is local depends on how “district” and “limited” are circumscribed. The online Oxford US dictionary defines “local” as “belonging or relating to a particular area or neighborhood, typically exclusively so.” Until you determine which “particularly area or neighborhood” is referred to and to which extent the good or service is “exclusive” to that area, you don’t know whether it is local or not. I remember, in my Maine suburb, following a Maine-registered Japanese-made (or Japanese-brand) car with a bumper sticker saying “Buy Local.” An online survey showed that Canadian consumers consider beef to be local if it comes from less than 100 miles away. A few days ago, I saw a sign at Whole Foods in Portland, Maine, saying, with a heart symbol for “love” (see the featured image of this post): We love local. Supporting over 850 farmers and suppliers from across New England From northern Maine to the south-west point of Connecticut, New England is 500 miles long and up to 300 miles wide. That’s a large place to buy local. Not to mention that buying anywhere on Earth is buying very locally in the Milky Way, and that the James Webb telescope gives another scale to the concept of local. Let’s keep our feet on Earth. However you define “local,” it is likely that at least part of what you buy there comes from far-away places. This was true even in the “good old times.” In Laura Ingalls Wilder’s delicious novel Little House on the Prairie (1935), Charles had to travel 40 miles on his horse-drawn wagon to the nearest city (Independence, Kansas) when the family needed such things as nails, sugar, seeds, or a plow. The steel for the nails and the plow must have come from England or Ohio. The injonction “buy local” is only meant to elicit political emotions or, as Hayek would have likely said, tribal emotions. (0 COMMENTS)

Jane Shaw Stroup wrote a short and rather effective piece on Hayek’s “atavism thesis”. Hayek came to it, as she writes, after a life of struggling with socialism and economic interventionism. F.A. Hayek was born in 1899, he fought in WWI (contracting the Spanish flu and malaria on his way back from the trenches), and was exposed, as a young man, to the most unpropitious series of events – which did not make liberalism very popular among men and women of his generation. On the contrary, liberalism was on the wane. 19th century liberalism had many nuances but all shared the urge to move from discretionary rule to something which resembled automatic mechanisms, reducing politics at best to a very limited, technical endeavour. Of course some politicians tended to be larger than life, flamboyant personalities who could mastermind public opinion in the 19th century too. But liberals, of all sorts, were skeptical of their playing public opinion as a piano in order to be legitimised in taking decisions of their own liking. Public opinion ought to be a tribunal, severely scrutinising all collective action and possibly keeping precisely those types in check. The 20th century was the triumph of boldness: bold leaders, bold decisions, bold ambitions. Politics, quite far from being a limited endeavour, was to reshape the very nature of man. The few savvy people around asked themselves how it was possible that the most educated societies which ever existed could fall for that. Many thought it was a problem of education. The truths of political economy were, for example, by and large counterintuitive and hence difficult to digest. Hayek followed that path too, hence his insistence in better educating “second hand dealers in ideas” (journalists, high school teachers, etc) who tended to spread bad ideas in good faith. But at a certain point, after many a year of struggling within those ideas while treating in the kindest, more gentlemanly and scholarly manner those holding them, Hayek realised that perhaps the problem lies not in education but before education. Hayek concluded that humans have instincts that evolved genetically, starting with humans’ predecessors, animals in a pack, and continuing when humans lived together in small bands. This evolution ended only about 12,000 years ago. Those instincts weren’t inherently bad. In fact, they included essential emotions, such as solidarity and compassion, that kept the band alive. But they were beneficial only when people lived in small groups. The growth of what Hayek called the “extended order”—trade and communication outside the band, the modern economy—required people to act differently. “Mankind achieved civilization by developing and learning to follow rules (first in territorial tribes and then over broader reaches) that often forbade him to do what his instincts demanded, and no longer depended on a common perception of events.”[5] Humans have never entirely given up their early instincts, however, and that draws them to socialism and fascism, said Hayek. Socialism and fascism give them the “visible common purpose”[6] so essential in the distant past. But forcing people to share a visible common purpose is not compatible with freedom. Contemporary research on cognitive biases tends to reinforce Hayek’s point. I’d like to add, to Jane Shaw’s splendid little essay, only one caveat. These innate instincts are not something of concern only when we deal with the masses or with ordinary people – as many educated people tend to believe. They are deeply ingrained with all of us, and make even the most educated and sophisticated experience lust for super-imposed “order” or enjoying the vertigo of feeling part of the team of the good and right. (0 COMMENTS)