> "The last ten times as Republican administration has been replaced by a Democratic administration, growth has gone down, while the last ten times a Democratic administration has been replaced by a Republican administration, growth has gone up."
I think you meant to write the opposite? (Maybe "has replaced" rather than "has been replaced by", in each place?)
Appeals to the consensus of economists aren't going to convince someone who knows a good bit about economics and thinks they're wrong. I think the case for a libertarian/laissez-faire economy is empirically overwhelming, and Hanania likely agrees. Economists are just wrong about laissez-faire economics, like philosophers are generally wrong about dualism and non-naturalist positions in general. There are exceptions among philosophers on issues like moral realism much like there are exceptions among economists on issues like free trade, housing, and immigration, but they still aren't free market enough.
I think there's a good reason why most economists who are either prominent rationalists or rationalist-adjacent seem to be at least moderate libertarians. I'm thinking of GMU guys like Caplan, Hanson, etc. and also David Friedman.
I really appreciate your work. However, it seem reprehensible to support a candidate who strips human rights from unborn children, and subjects prepubescent children to anthropological errors in the most vulnerable possible arenas--errors that cannot be remedied. Nothing could be more anti-human then the intentional mistreatment of children--and the censorship of those who would object.
Anyways, not to be too extreme, but I do think it entirely unjustifiable to vote for Harris. And certainly unjustified to advertise for her candidacy.
I have an article coming out tomorrow about why you shouldn't be a single-issue abortion voter. Among other things, PEPFAR saves more lives per year than abortion costs--and PEPFAR is just one issue. Plus, the Republicans aren't much more likely to restrict abortion access.
Can you explain what you mean by "anthropological errors in the most vulnerable possible arenas?"
He's talking about transgender children who receive gender-affirming care, I bet. My two now-grown transgender children would beg to differ.
Everybody complains about how gender affirming care for children harms them, but that's because they weight the value of conforming to cis- standards. As though it is better to be cisgender. For the overwhelming majority of trans people, it is worse to be cisgender. Their preferences shouldn't be unfairly discounted.
I appreciate your response. And you are absolutely correct about what I view to be harmful cultural dogma. I am certain your children are wonderful human beings, and they should obviously be supported and protected. If you consider the studies that have come out on this issue in Norway, where such "care" measures had been long in place, you may be surprised to find large sweeping changes being instituted.
I am not too surprised. This is new science and different cultures are still discovering where they fall on the cost-benefit line of allowing gender affirming care. I do try to keep an open mind about the topic as new research continues to be published.
The devlopment of human sexuality and the "assignment" of gender is what I mean by "the most vulnerable human arenas"--and the direct censorship and prevention of discussions to expose and correct these errors, is how these arenas have been harmed by the party in question.
As for the single issue article, I look forward to reading it. And I appreciate your response.
If the single issue is slavery, then we would make it a single issue case I should think. This is because human rights must be hierarchically supported to be intelligibly applied. To lose the human right to property, by "democratic" vote, would be an unintelligible act for a social system predicated on human rights (if we grant that property is a human right). Regardless of one's views on property, and how it should be understood, the right for innocent human life to *not be killed*, seems necessarily higher than any other possible human right--for any moral system must be predicated on primum non nocere.
I grant that Republicans are not Pro-Life. But the goal must be to allow for the discussion and cultivation of limits in this domain. And the Democrats have opposed any limits in principle. Many times over, but especially by Harris--to the disappointment of many pro-life Democrats you can be sure. So, it cannot be morally supported.
Do you think that electing Kamala will majorly effect either public discourse about human sexuality or the number of surgeries? Those seems mostly not a byproduct of federal policies (and there are very few transgender surgeries).
I think governance instructs. And most certainly a tone of applause surrounding these kinds of things, with a corresponding excommunication of those who would oppose it, at the top, will very much inform all social institutions which way the wind is blowing. And they will act accordingly.
Maybe governance instructs in some broad sense, in that if the Democrats were a political nonentity the cultural movement wouldn't exist, but the president has almost no effect.
Also, almost no one gets these sorts of surgeries--the numbers are in the low thousands--so it seems completely crazy to be a single-issue voter based on who will slightly reduce the extent of a problem that affects like 4,000 people. (I also disagree with you about whether the internalization of the notion that people can change their gender is a bad thing, but I think even if you're right, it's nowhere near the most important issue).
You seem to measure governance by means of consequence. And certainly, we must measure governance this way. But there are some realities much more important than the sum of all horror iver here, counter to the sum of all horror over here (assuming you could weights that properly). There are principles that must be in place to secure a flourishing polity. You cannot be permitted to violate human rights if it seems inconsequential granted the new tax cuts bill.
I don't mind if our GDP isn't humming along as fast as it could be otherwise so that we can secure a welfare system. The real life costs today, and the suffering therein, outweighs the fact that I know, if left alone, those areas of human life would improve (just not the individual members caught up in the first wave of the changes). This is why I am no longer a libertarian. I think we need principle that appeal to human dignity, and we can go from there.
This is exactly the opposite of what actually happens. When Trump was president, there was an explosion of "woke" cultural dogmas, and now that Biden is president, those ideas are much more widely and openly opposed. Thermostatic public opinion is a strong force, much stronger than the government's supposed ability to instruct cultural institutions.
Even if "subjects prepubescent children to anthropological errors" was an accurate description of accepting trans kids, it would be pretty crazy to weight that higher than millions of lives.
It depends on how you understand human identity. To be anti-human is to oppose that which secures human identity and by extension human flourishing. I think that to inspire in children, who are facing the, in some sense, unlimited suffering of existence, the idea that their identity is founded in an effervescent self concept, even if in antagonism to their structural reality, is to be clearly anti-human. To attempt to draw a line between the person and their body is to oppose what a human being is.
Even if you disagree with this assessment, can you at least see why censorship in this domain seems absolutely criminal to those who understand human identity in this way?
I don't think it depends on how you understand human identity. Calling something "anti-human" surely means that it is vastly harmful to humanity as a whole, or promotes such harm. This is where it gets its negative connotation from. If you mean something else by it, you're just sneaking in that negative connotation from a different meaning of the word. But I'm not even sure what you mean by it because you're speaking so vaguely.
And trans acceptance doesn't require drawing a line between a person and their body, unless you think that anything other than defining a person purely in terms of the intrinsic, non-mental characteristics of their body is "drawing a line between a person and their body". And if that's the case, then drawing such a line is obviously good, because mental characteristics of a person, as well as their social relations, are pretty important to defining who they are.
> Even if you disagree with this assessment, can you at least see why censorship in this domain seems absolutely criminal to those who understand human identity in this way?
I can see why people don't like censorship, but who says the Harris administration is going to censor you? You still have first amendment rights, and even if she tried to violate them, the Supreme Court would stop her. Besides, I consider saving millions of lives via PEPFAR, preventing the economic disaster Trump's policies would cause, and protecting democracy to be more important than preventing an instance of censorship.
Sir, to oppose the right concept human identity is to oppose human flourishing.
The good of a cat isn't the good of a mouse. Our good is predicated on our identity.
So, to oppose that identity is to be anti-human. And notice I am not applying this criticism on actual human persons. I am applying this to a cultural dogma. This is an anti-human dogma. And my critique of this administration is the wholesale promotion of this dogma, and the desire to enshroud these mistakes with a mystique of maternal concern and affirmation.
"Hanania’s case for Democrats being better for the economy is mostly about the sorts of people they’ll appoint to various obscure federal regulatory agencies."
I think that should say "Hanania's case for Republicans being better etc."
Regarding immigration I suspect that the innovations you tout as coming from immigrants probably come from different groups of immigrants than those streaming across our Southern border.
> The last ten times as Republican administration has been replaced by a Democratic administration, growth has gone down, while the last ten times a Democratic administration has been replaced by a Republican administration, growth has gone up.
Another important and obvious point is that with the recent supreme court ruling that presidents cannot be held legally liable for official actions in a court, its absolutely crucial now more than ever that erratic, mentally unfit or malignant people be kept out of the presidency.
Did you bother to weigh PEPFAR against prescription drug price caps?
Going through your points:
1. The economy. I think this is misleading. The first link you point to attributes the causes to cheaper oil, defense spending, and better productivity (this last point plausibly in part due to cycles happening to line up that way). This correlates only with the presidency, not with congress, and fiscal and monetary policy seem better from Republicans—I doubt Harris will be a Clinton democrat, who had the best of all worlds. I'm less confident that Harris would lead to cheaper oil, given her general environmental concerns.
Your other link is weaker; it depends on things that seem pretty chance-y, most prominently, COVID existing.
2,3. Conceded.
4. Redistributive policies. It is way less intuitively clear that redistributing *wealth* is good compared to redistributing *consumption,* which no one does. Forcing CEOs to sell stock in their companies to donate money to poor people is not obviously net-good. Republicans are more likely to care about things like making sure that people are incentivized to earn more, instead of having increased pay disqualifying people for aid, and so they lose money by working. And we could easily see economic policies punishing the wealthy under a Democratic administration, which would be bad.
5. I concur that independence of the federal reserve is a good thing.
6. I imagine the overall democratic affiliation (if I remember correctly, something like 4:1, among the most even D:R ratios in academia) might have some causal influence in who they think will be better.
To be quite clear, I'm not at all sure who would be better economically—tariffs and immigration matter, and the Republican party's overall been getting worse.
I don't think Democracy is on the ballot, except insofar as the Democrats wish to abolish the independence of the federal judiciary. Re: decency, I think the most important part of this is which side hates the other more/is willing to do things at any cost, and that's not at all clear to me. The other points are good and important.
Do you believe in “Utility Sinks?” Maybe people who have developed HIV from extensive intravenous drug use and homosexual orgies and violent anal rape are, perhaps, utility sinks. And maybe saving them from HIV isn’t a total positive.
> "The last ten times as Republican administration has been replaced by a Democratic administration, growth has gone down, while the last ten times a Democratic administration has been replaced by a Republican administration, growth has gone up."
I think you meant to write the opposite? (Maybe "has replaced" rather than "has been replaced by", in each place?)
Oops, fixed.
Appeals to the consensus of economists aren't going to convince someone who knows a good bit about economics and thinks they're wrong. I think the case for a libertarian/laissez-faire economy is empirically overwhelming, and Hanania likely agrees. Economists are just wrong about laissez-faire economics, like philosophers are generally wrong about dualism and non-naturalist positions in general. There are exceptions among philosophers on issues like moral realism much like there are exceptions among economists on issues like free trade, housing, and immigration, but they still aren't free market enough.
I think there's a good reason why most economists who are either prominent rationalists or rationalist-adjacent seem to be at least moderate libertarians. I'm thinking of GMU guys like Caplan, Hanson, etc. and also David Friedman.
Would you rather have PEPFAR or a 0.8% reduction in demand for meat?
I really appreciate your work. However, it seem reprehensible to support a candidate who strips human rights from unborn children, and subjects prepubescent children to anthropological errors in the most vulnerable possible arenas--errors that cannot be remedied. Nothing could be more anti-human then the intentional mistreatment of children--and the censorship of those who would object.
Anyways, not to be too extreme, but I do think it entirely unjustifiable to vote for Harris. And certainly unjustified to advertise for her candidacy.
I have an article coming out tomorrow about why you shouldn't be a single-issue abortion voter. Among other things, PEPFAR saves more lives per year than abortion costs--and PEPFAR is just one issue. Plus, the Republicans aren't much more likely to restrict abortion access.
Can you explain what you mean by "anthropological errors in the most vulnerable possible arenas?"
He's talking about transgender children who receive gender-affirming care, I bet. My two now-grown transgender children would beg to differ.
Everybody complains about how gender affirming care for children harms them, but that's because they weight the value of conforming to cis- standards. As though it is better to be cisgender. For the overwhelming majority of trans people, it is worse to be cisgender. Their preferences shouldn't be unfairly discounted.
I appreciate your response. And you are absolutely correct about what I view to be harmful cultural dogma. I am certain your children are wonderful human beings, and they should obviously be supported and protected. If you consider the studies that have come out on this issue in Norway, where such "care" measures had been long in place, you may be surprised to find large sweeping changes being instituted.
I am not too surprised. This is new science and different cultures are still discovering where they fall on the cost-benefit line of allowing gender affirming care. I do try to keep an open mind about the topic as new research continues to be published.
The devlopment of human sexuality and the "assignment" of gender is what I mean by "the most vulnerable human arenas"--and the direct censorship and prevention of discussions to expose and correct these errors, is how these arenas have been harmed by the party in question.
As for the single issue article, I look forward to reading it. And I appreciate your response.
If the single issue is slavery, then we would make it a single issue case I should think. This is because human rights must be hierarchically supported to be intelligibly applied. To lose the human right to property, by "democratic" vote, would be an unintelligible act for a social system predicated on human rights (if we grant that property is a human right). Regardless of one's views on property, and how it should be understood, the right for innocent human life to *not be killed*, seems necessarily higher than any other possible human right--for any moral system must be predicated on primum non nocere.
I grant that Republicans are not Pro-Life. But the goal must be to allow for the discussion and cultivation of limits in this domain. And the Democrats have opposed any limits in principle. Many times over, but especially by Harris--to the disappointment of many pro-life Democrats you can be sure. So, it cannot be morally supported.
Do you think that electing Kamala will majorly effect either public discourse about human sexuality or the number of surgeries? Those seems mostly not a byproduct of federal policies (and there are very few transgender surgeries).
I think governance instructs. And most certainly a tone of applause surrounding these kinds of things, with a corresponding excommunication of those who would oppose it, at the top, will very much inform all social institutions which way the wind is blowing. And they will act accordingly.
Maybe governance instructs in some broad sense, in that if the Democrats were a political nonentity the cultural movement wouldn't exist, but the president has almost no effect.
Also, almost no one gets these sorts of surgeries--the numbers are in the low thousands--so it seems completely crazy to be a single-issue voter based on who will slightly reduce the extent of a problem that affects like 4,000 people. (I also disagree with you about whether the internalization of the notion that people can change their gender is a bad thing, but I think even if you're right, it's nowhere near the most important issue).
You seem to measure governance by means of consequence. And certainly, we must measure governance this way. But there are some realities much more important than the sum of all horror iver here, counter to the sum of all horror over here (assuming you could weights that properly). There are principles that must be in place to secure a flourishing polity. You cannot be permitted to violate human rights if it seems inconsequential granted the new tax cuts bill.
I don't mind if our GDP isn't humming along as fast as it could be otherwise so that we can secure a welfare system. The real life costs today, and the suffering therein, outweighs the fact that I know, if left alone, those areas of human life would improve (just not the individual members caught up in the first wave of the changes). This is why I am no longer a libertarian. I think we need principle that appeal to human dignity, and we can go from there.
This is exactly the opposite of what actually happens. When Trump was president, there was an explosion of "woke" cultural dogmas, and now that Biden is president, those ideas are much more widely and openly opposed. Thermostatic public opinion is a strong force, much stronger than the government's supposed ability to instruct cultural institutions.
Even if "subjects prepubescent children to anthropological errors" was an accurate description of accepting trans kids, it would be pretty crazy to weight that higher than millions of lives.
Imagine "acceptance" as the word of choice for anti-human cultural dogmas.
Even if you disagree with trans acceptance, calling it "anti-human" is just insane.
It depends on how you understand human identity. To be anti-human is to oppose that which secures human identity and by extension human flourishing. I think that to inspire in children, who are facing the, in some sense, unlimited suffering of existence, the idea that their identity is founded in an effervescent self concept, even if in antagonism to their structural reality, is to be clearly anti-human. To attempt to draw a line between the person and their body is to oppose what a human being is.
Even if you disagree with this assessment, can you at least see why censorship in this domain seems absolutely criminal to those who understand human identity in this way?
I don't think it depends on how you understand human identity. Calling something "anti-human" surely means that it is vastly harmful to humanity as a whole, or promotes such harm. This is where it gets its negative connotation from. If you mean something else by it, you're just sneaking in that negative connotation from a different meaning of the word. But I'm not even sure what you mean by it because you're speaking so vaguely.
And trans acceptance doesn't require drawing a line between a person and their body, unless you think that anything other than defining a person purely in terms of the intrinsic, non-mental characteristics of their body is "drawing a line between a person and their body". And if that's the case, then drawing such a line is obviously good, because mental characteristics of a person, as well as their social relations, are pretty important to defining who they are.
> Even if you disagree with this assessment, can you at least see why censorship in this domain seems absolutely criminal to those who understand human identity in this way?
I can see why people don't like censorship, but who says the Harris administration is going to censor you? You still have first amendment rights, and even if she tried to violate them, the Supreme Court would stop her. Besides, I consider saving millions of lives via PEPFAR, preventing the economic disaster Trump's policies would cause, and protecting democracy to be more important than preventing an instance of censorship.
Sir, to oppose the right concept human identity is to oppose human flourishing.
The good of a cat isn't the good of a mouse. Our good is predicated on our identity.
So, to oppose that identity is to be anti-human. And notice I am not applying this criticism on actual human persons. I am applying this to a cultural dogma. This is an anti-human dogma. And my critique of this administration is the wholesale promotion of this dogma, and the desire to enshroud these mistakes with a mystique of maternal concern and affirmation.
"Hanania’s case for Democrats being better for the economy is mostly about the sorts of people they’ll appoint to various obscure federal regulatory agencies."
I think that should say "Hanania's case for Republicans being better etc."
Regarding immigration I suspect that the innovations you tout as coming from immigrants probably come from different groups of immigrants than those streaming across our Southern border.
And Republicans are less supportive of those kinds of immigration too!
I haven’t meant many republicans that are against immigration uniquely talented individuals.
> The last ten times as Republican administration has been replaced by a Democratic administration, growth has gone down, while the last ten times a Democratic administration has been replaced by a Republican administration, growth has gone up.
I think this is meant to be reversed, right?
Oops, fixed.
Another important and obvious point is that with the recent supreme court ruling that presidents cannot be held legally liable for official actions in a court, its absolutely crucial now more than ever that erratic, mentally unfit or malignant people be kept out of the presidency.
Did you bother to weigh PEPFAR against prescription drug price caps?
Going through your points:
1. The economy. I think this is misleading. The first link you point to attributes the causes to cheaper oil, defense spending, and better productivity (this last point plausibly in part due to cycles happening to line up that way). This correlates only with the presidency, not with congress, and fiscal and monetary policy seem better from Republicans—I doubt Harris will be a Clinton democrat, who had the best of all worlds. I'm less confident that Harris would lead to cheaper oil, given her general environmental concerns.
Your other link is weaker; it depends on things that seem pretty chance-y, most prominently, COVID existing.
2,3. Conceded.
4. Redistributive policies. It is way less intuitively clear that redistributing *wealth* is good compared to redistributing *consumption,* which no one does. Forcing CEOs to sell stock in their companies to donate money to poor people is not obviously net-good. Republicans are more likely to care about things like making sure that people are incentivized to earn more, instead of having increased pay disqualifying people for aid, and so they lose money by working. And we could easily see economic policies punishing the wealthy under a Democratic administration, which would be bad.
5. I concur that independence of the federal reserve is a good thing.
6. I imagine the overall democratic affiliation (if I remember correctly, something like 4:1, among the most even D:R ratios in academia) might have some causal influence in who they think will be better.
To be quite clear, I'm not at all sure who would be better economically—tariffs and immigration matter, and the Republican party's overall been getting worse.
I don't think Democracy is on the ballot, except insofar as the Democrats wish to abolish the independence of the federal judiciary. Re: decency, I think the most important part of this is which side hates the other more/is willing to do things at any cost, and that's not at all clear to me. The other points are good and important.
How do Africans get HIV?
Same way other people do--body fluids of infected people.
But what kind of behaviors? Same kind of behaviors as in the West?
Yeah, mostly sex.
Well, certain types of sex. And maybe intravenous drug use? Certainly not regular vaginal sex.
Is this line of questioning going somewhere?
Do you believe in “Utility Sinks?” Maybe people who have developed HIV from extensive intravenous drug use and homosexual orgies and violent anal rape are, perhaps, utility sinks. And maybe saving them from HIV isn’t a total positive.