I am just back from the G4G conference in Atlanta, where I gave a six-minute talk on how to organize a waiting line. The video of the actual talk will appear on the web eventually, but in the meantime, here is video of my practice run from the night before:
Or, for higher quality video, click here.
Not all podcasts are fun (for either the guests or the viewers) but in my experience all podcasts hosted by Bob Murphy are fun for all involved. You can see the latest here or on YouTube:
It’s always a pleasure to do a Podcast with a host who is thoughtful, understands the issues, and engages in meaningful dialogue instead of just mindlessly plowing through a list of prepared questions. Remarkably many fail to clear that bar. Alex Epstein clears it easily. My interview with him is here.
Technology marches on, and many of the flash videos I’ve posted here over the past fifteen years or so have become mostly unwatchable, because almost nobody uses flash players anymore. So I’ve just spent the better part of a day updating all of those videos to more modern formats. This means that if you have occasion to read old posts with videos in them, the videos will actually work now.
While I was at it, I updated this site’s video page, which you can get to by clicking on the menu at the top or by going directly here. This too had become unusable because of all the flash video. I updated the video formats and added several more items. Let me know if you have any special favorites you think I should add.
If you’re worried about the president subverting the electoral process, you might pause to give thanks for the electoral college. If the election were conducted by a federal authority, or if any single authority were responsible for aggregating all the votes from around the country, it’s a fair bet that either this president or some future president would be exploring ways to intimidate that authority.
How is it that so many of the very same people who express grave concern about a president clinging to power by manipulating or ignoring vote totals are so quick to disdain the institution that makes it essentially impossible for him to do exactly that?
It’s always dangerous to centralize power. It’s doubly dangerous to centralize the power to decide who wields power.
More thoughts on this can be found in my piece in today’s Wall Street Journal.
I don’t always enjoy being interviewed, but I do always enjoy being interviewed by the thoughtful and provocative (in the best way!) Bob Murphy. You’ll see why if you listen to the latest episode of the Bob Murphy show, where we discuss why there is something instead of nothing.
Although this is intended primarily as an audio podcast, those who prefer video can watch here.
This Saturday at 2PM Eastern time, I’ll be talking to the Philadelphia Association for Critical Thinking on “Why is There Something Instead of Nothing?”
Unfortunately, times are such that I’ll have to give my talk over Zoom. Happily, this means that no matter where you are in the world, you can attend. Register by visiting the upcoming meetings page and scrolling down to “Click Here to Register” (near the very bottom), or just visit the registration page. Registration is free but required.
The Essential Milton Friedman is now available from Amazon and other sellers, in an electronic edition priced — thanks to the generosity of the Fraser Institute— at an incredibly low 99 cents. I hope this is a subsidy that even Professor Friedman would approve. If you prefer an actual hardcopy book you can hold in your hands, you can request one (for roughly the price of shipping) by emailing publications@fraserinstitute.org . Either way, you’ll save so much money you can afford to pick up a copy of Can You Outsmart an Economist? while you’re shopping.
This week, I’ll be in Charleston, South Carolina as part of the annual Adam Smith Week celebration at the College of Charleston. You, along with the rest of the public, are invited to attend any or all of my talks:
Thursday, March 7, 1:45PM, “Is the World Overpopulated?”, Wells Fargo Auditorium
Thursday, March 7, 6:00PM, “What Do the Rich Owe to the Poor?”, Wells Fargo Auditorium
Friday, March 8, 12:00, “Why Be an Econ Major?” (discussion with Dr. Doug Walker)
If you attend, be sure to say hello!
A commenter in another thread wanted to talk about trolls, so I’m opening up a new post where they’ll be on topic.
The specific trolls I have in mind operate toll-booths (or troll-booths?), both of which you must pass through to get from Hereville to Thereville. The question is whether you, as a traveler, prefer to have both booths controlled by a single troll, or by separate trolls. (This is Problem 12 in Chapter 3 of Can You Outsmart an Economist?.)
(SPOILER WARNING!)
Is it rational to play Megamillions, with the current jackpot of a billion dollars or so?
Yes and no. Here are three questions:
There is no irrational answer to any of these questions. Some people like to play the lottery; some don’t. Some people are safety fanatics; some aren’t. Some, but not all, love huge risks with huge potential payouts.
But there is such a thing as an irrational pattern of answers. I know there are millions who answer yes to question 1, because I see them buying tickets. I’m guessing that almost all of those people would answer no to question 2. And I’m guessing that a fair number of those would answer no to question 3 as well. Perhaps you”re one of that fair number. If so, I declare you irrational.
Ten Megamillions tickets give you about a one in thirty-million chance to win the jackpot. One in thirty-million is also pretty close to the chance you’ll be struck by lightning in the next seven weeks. If you’re willing to buy the lottery tickets but not immunity from the lightning, you’re telling me that winning the jackpot means more to you than staying alive. So you should go for the coin flip in question three. If you didn’t, I declare you irrational.
Well, so what? Some economist called you irrational. Why should you care?
You should care because this is exactly the kind of irrationality that will allow me to take all your money. Keep reading to see why.
But first, let’s acknowledge that I’ve ignored a few things, like the possibility that you’ll win one of the lesser prizes in the lottery. I’m assuming that, compared to the jackpot, those are negligible as reasons to buy a ticket. (This is consistent with the observed fact that a whole lot of people buy tickets only when the jackpot is large.) If you don’t like that assumption, we can avoid it by tweaking the numbers in the questions, in ways that I strongly suspect won’t change most people’s answers.
Now let’s get to the fun part where I take all your money. Suppose you’ve answered yes/no/no to the three questions above. Then I’ll rig up the following experiment: I fill a bag with 30 million white balls, one black ball, and one blue ball. I plan to pull a ball from the bag, but before I do, I’ll make you two offers. You can take them or leave them; it’s entirely up to you.
You’ve already told me that you’d pay $20 for ten Megamillions tickets, giving you a one in thirty-million chance at roughly a billion dollars. So of course you’ll happily go for A. And you’ve already told you that it’s not worth it to you to give up $20 to avoid a one in thirty-million chance of electrocution. So of course you’ll also happily go for B.
So: You (voluntarily) give me $20 and accept my $20. So far we’re even. And, I might add, you’re very glad to be playing. You got two things and you wanted both of them.
Now the drawing. Most of the time I’ll draw a white ball, and nothing happens. But occasionally I’ll draw a blue or a black. When I do, I’ll tell you (perfectly honestly, because I’m honestly exploiting your irrationality, not trying to trick you) that I’ve drawn a non-white ball. There’s a fifty-fifty chance it’s black, in which case you will die, and a fifty-fifty chance it’s blue, in which case you win the billion. You are effectively facing the very coin flip that you told me in Question 3 that you prefer to avoid. Of course, then, you’ll gladly pay me a few bucks to call everything off. Now I’m ahead.
We might have to play this game several million times before I draw a non-white ball and take your money, but as long as you’re committed to your stated preferences, you should be willing to play several million times — or to let me set my computer to playing a virtual version for us several million times per hour. In a few hours, I’ll win some money from you. In another few hours, I’ll win more. And so on till you’re broke.
When an economist calls you irrational, it almost always means that if you follow through on your stated preferences, a sufficiently clever opponent can take all your money, leaving you smiling along the way. It’s worth being alert to such things.
If you thought this was fun, you should take the ten-question Irrationality Test in Chapter Six of Can You Outsmart an Economist?. Come back to the blog and let me know how you did.
For a book of brain teasers with economic morals, how do we collectively feel about this title?
I’m interested in whether we like it, but more interested in whether we think it will sell books.
While most Americans are celebrating Thanksgiving, I’ll be in London, giving the annual Hayek Memorial Lecture sponsored by the Institute of Economic Affairs. Topic: Is the World Over or Under Populated, and How Would We Know? Tickets are required but free, and are available here. If you come to the talk, don’t leave without saying hello!
Readers: I need your help!
More than once, my blog readers have proved themselves to be cleverer, smarter and more insightful than I am about a great many things. I need your cleverness, intelligence and insight now more than ever.
Yesterday, I delivered a manuscript to my editor at Houghton-Mifflin. Sometime in 2018, this manuscript will become a book. What it needs is a title!
The book is a compendium of puzzles and brain teasers designed to teach lessons about economics, statistical inference, and related matters. A recurring theme is that what’s “obvious” is often wrong. Here is a brief excerpt from the introduction.
The title should be catchy, clever, attention-grabbing and indicative of the content. What, specifically, should that title be?
Following in the footsteps of Jeb Bush, Alan Simpson, Erskine Bowles, James Carville, Mary Matalin, George F. Will, Tony Snow, John Bolton, Tommy Franks, Chris Wallace, Charles Krauthammer, Fred Barnes, Morton Kondracke, Christopher Hitchens, Walter Cronkite, Clarence Thomas, Queen Noor of Jordan and Milton Friedman, I will be delivering the Hatton Sumners Distinguished Lecture in Dallas this Friday. Join us if you’re free! Registration is here.
Here’s why recycling poses a policy dilemma: To keep people from dumping their trash on their neighbor’s lawns (or, when they burn it, in their neighbor’s lungs), we have to keep the price of landfill space artificially low. But once you’ve made landfill space cheap, you weaken the incentive to recycle, so arguably we get too little recycling. One solution is to pump up that incentive by casting recycling as a moral imperative. Unfortunately, once people believe recycling is a moral obligation, we’re liable to get too much of it.
This month’s issue of Cato Unbound is titled “The Political Economy of Recycling”, with a lead essay by Michael Munger of Duke University expanding on these and related points, with responses by Edward Humes, Melissa Walsh Innes and myself.
Over the course of the next month or so, we’ll be posting responses and re-responses to each others’ essays, as the mood strikes us. The best of your comments here might well find their way into some of my posted responses there.
Below the fold, a brief teaser from my essay:
Continue reading ‘Cato Unbound: The Political Economy of Recycling’
A while back, I posted a link to the first of my four talks at the 2012 Cato University. Today, I’m posting the second talk, titled “How Markets Work”, with the others to appear eventually.
Incidentally, I won’t be at the 2013 Cato U, but other stellar speakers will be. This really is an extraordinarily well run event, and I’ve met many fascinating people every time I’ve been there. It’s not too late to register!
The new issue RegionFocus (the magazine of the Richmond Federal Reserve) is out, including an interview with yours truly.
There are a few things I might wish I’d said a little differently, but Aaron Steelman (the interviewer) did a fantastic editing job.
Continue reading ‘It’s All About Me’
Valentine’s Day (i.e. February 14) will find me at the University of Maryland’s Baltimore County campus, speaking about why More Sex is Safer Sex. The lecture is free and open to the public. Join us if you’re in the neighborhood! More details here.
David Henderson reviews the new revised Armchair Economist.
I gave a series of four talks last week at Cato University; only the first of them was broadcast by C-SPAN, and you can watch it here. (The title was “The Greatest Story Ever Told”, meaning the story of economic growth.)
Much of this material will look familiar to those who have watched other videos recently posted in this space, but I think it comes together a little better in this one. The remaining lectures contained more in the way of new material, and I’m hoping to be able to post at least some video excerpts in the near future.
There were a lot of fabulous talks at this event by such luminaries as Tom Palmer (here and here) and the extraordinary Robert McDonald, who held the audience in thrall with his gripping three-part series on the history of the American revolution (not, unfortunately, online, even in part).
If you missed it, there’s always next year!
Here is a link to my piece in today’s issue of Time.com; and here’s the executive summary:
Deep inside a West Texas mountain, engineers are building a clock designed to click for 10,000 years. Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos has sunk $43 million into this project and that’s just a start. What’s the purpose? “To foster long-term thinking and responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years”, say the organizers.
Now thinking and responsibility are two different things, but it’s hard to see how this project is likely to encourage either. Re thinking: The question of what we owe to future generations is subtle and difficult and requires close attention to difficult arguments; it’s hard to see how a ticking clock will do to foster that kind of effort. And as for responsiblity — if responsibility means making a better life for our distant descendants, then Bezos’s $43 million would almost surely be better spent on lobbying for lower capital taxes. Whether the goal is thinking or responsibility, a giant clock seems like a giant waste of time.
The new revised edition of The Armchair Economist is now on sale in paperback and electronic versions. Last week’s glitch (where the electronic versions were of the wrong edition) is fixed.
For almost twenty years, Armchair has been widely recognized among economists as the book to give your mother when she wants to understand what you think about all day. In this new version, fully updated for the 21st century, I’ve completely rewritten several chapters to make them even clearer, livelier and more contemporary.
I (and you if you buy the book) am deeply indebted to Lisa Talpey who read every chapter multiple times, insisting that I keep rewriting until everything met her meticulous standards of clarity. Chapters I’d thought were pretty good are vastly improved thanks to Lisa; these include:
and
Others are almost completely rewritten to focus on issues that are in the news today; these include
and
By way of general housecleaning, I’ve excised all references to cassette tapes, Polaroid film, and Walter Mondale.
You can read the preface here. You can buy the book here. Here are direct links to the updated Kindle and Nook editions. (These editions are advertised as “published November 2007”, but don’t panic; that’s just the lingering shadow of last week’s glitch. They’re actually the brand-new 2012 edition.)
Dan Seligman at Fortune called the first edition of The Armchair Economist “enormous fun from its opening page”; Alfred Malabre of the Wall Street Journal called it “the most enjoyable and sensible book by an economist about economics that I’ve read in donkey’s years”; Milton Friedman called it “an ingenious and highly original presentation of some central principles of economics for the proverbial Everyman”; George Gilder called it “a crisp, lively, pungent display of the economist’s art”. This second edition is, I believe, all that and more.
The Armchair Economist is indeed the perfect gift for your mother, or for your father, or for the new college grad in your life, or even for yourself. Enjoy it, and come join the discussion right here.
Edited to Add: These problems are fixed now! The electronic versions are correct. They are still advertised as November 2007 editions, but they are in fact the May 2012 edition. You can now trust the links at http://www.TheBigQuestions.com/buy .
________________________________________________________________
Today (May 1) was the official publication date for the all-new revised edition of The Armchair Economist. (Read the preface here.) Unfortunately, we had a major communication screw-up and purchasers of the electronic editions (Kindle, Nook, etc.) are still receiving the 1993 edition (which is labeled the “2007 edition” because that’s when it was converted to an e-book). This will be fixed in a day or so. I’ll post to let you know when it’s safe to buy.
Meanwhile, if you’ve recently purchased an electronic Armchair Economist, I encourage you to return it, wait just a day or two till you see the announcement that all systems are go, and then buy it all over again.
I cannot begin to tell you how sorry I am about this. There is at least one very particular head I’d like to see roll.
Thanks for bearing with the glitch, and watch this space for the big announcement that all systems are go.
This is a reminder that I’ll be teaching at this year’s Cato University, where I and a distinguished cast of faculty will lecture on the political, historic, philosophical and economic foundations of liberty. There will also be ample opportunity for informal conversations with the faculty and, even better, with the other students, who I have learned from past experience are always bright and lively and fun.
Come join us, July 29 through August 3, at Cato’s newly expanded headquarters in DC. The insights you’ll gain, and the friends you’ll meet, will last a lifetime.
FROM THE PREFACE:
One day in 1991, I walked into a medium sized bookstore and counted over 80 titles on quantum physics and the history of the Universe. A few shelves over I found Richard Dawkins’s bestseller The Selfish Gene along with dozens of others explaining Darwinan evolution and the genetic code.
In the best of these books, I discovered natural wonders, confronted mysteries, learned new ways of thinking, and felt I had shared in a great intellectual adventure, founded on ideas that are dazzling in their scope and their simplicity.
Economics, too, is a great intellectual adventure, but I could find, in 1991, not a single book that proposed to share that adventure with the general public. There was nothing that revealed the economist’s unique way of thinking, using a few simple ideas to illuminate the whole range of human behavior, shake up our preconceptions, and jolt us into new ways of seeing the world.
I resolved to write that book. The Armchair Economist was published in 1993, and attracted much critical praise along with a large and devoted following. But what I take most pride in is that The Armchair Economist is still widely recognized among economists as the book to give your mother when she wants to understand what you do all day.
Apparently my Saturday talk at the Warwick Economics Summit (like several of the others) will be streamed live over the Internet here. I go on at 8:55AM eastern standard time, but don’t feel like you have to set an alarm clock; there will be video available after the fact.
