Back in the day, there used to be a lot more arguments across blogs. Perhaps we’ll see more of it happening again as Twitter continues its collapse into a dwarf star composed of degenerate matter. To get things started, this seems to me to be a quite wrongheaded claim by Tyler Cowen.
In a deal months in the making, the University of Wisconsin System has agreed to “reimagine” its diversity efforts, restructuring dozens of staff into positions serving all students and freezing the total number of diversity positions for the next three years.
In exchange, universities would receive $800 million for employee pay raises and some building projects, including a new engineering building for UW-Madison.
“This is an evolution, and this is a change moving forward,” UW System President Jay Rothman told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “But it does not in any way deviate from our core values of diversity (and) inclusion.”
Here is the full story, via HB, it is rare that the real world is actually so Coasean.
“Coasean” here refers to the notion of Coaseian bargaining – the claim that it is better not to try to resolve externalities through external fiat. Instead, according to the simplest interpretation of Coase’s theorem, actors can bargain among themselves to reach a mutually satisfactory outcome. Coase (who I met in his 90s and found both sharp and impressive) was fervently libertarian – the class of economist who never left opportunities to undermine state power on the pavement. His theorem has been taken up by other libertarians as a cudgel to belabor people who worry about power relations.
And this story is all about the power relations, which is one reason why the deal has since fallen apart. Wisconsin legislators were holding the University system hostage, by refusing to grant any pay increases to faculty, so long as DEI remained a core concern. The university administration negotiated a deal to release the hostages with a side payment. The regents of the university have since decided, by a very narrow margin, that the deal was a bad one.
For purposes of clarification, I’m trying to imagine how Tyler would respond to a somewhat tweaked version of the same story.
In a deal months in the making, George Mason University has agreed to “reimagine” its relationship with classical liberalism, restructuring dozens of staff servicing the economics and law faculty and the Mercatus Center into positions serving all students and freezing the total number of law & economics positions for the next three years.
In exchange, the university will receive $50 million for employee pay raises and some building projects, including a new building for sociology and public policy.
“This is an evolution, and this is a change moving forward,” GMU President Gregory Washington told the Fairfax Times. “But it does not in any way deviate from our core values of ideological diversity.”
I’m guessing that Tyler would not be celebrating this as an example of Coasean bargaining. Instead, the distributional consequences – the exercise of external power to determine who gets what – would likely be at the forefront of his attention. As they used to say back in the home country, it’s easy to sleep on another man’s wound. But not so easy to sleep on your own.
And this isn’t just a gotcha. Situations like this are “bargains” in much the same sense as as an unfortunate traveler is bargaining with a highwayman over whether it is to be their money or their life. There is a possible win-win outcome – both the highwayman and the victim will be happier if the highwayman gets the money, and the victim keeps their life. But it is a win-win situation that is structured by a grossly asymmetric bargaining relationship, in which one side has most of the power.
Under this logic, the Wisconsin situation could of course be restructured as a different kind of libertarian parable, about how the government’s monopoly on force is a source of tyranny. And there is something to that: government power can be misused!
Equally, such asymmetric bargaining situations can arise perfectly easily among private actors too. And one could furthermore point to the politics behind the Wisconsin legislature’s position. That legislature is the product of a notoriously gerrymandered electoral map. Libertarian friendly organizations such as ALEC have been up to their eyes in the effort to promote this kind of gerrymandering.
I’ve long thought that Jack Knight’s chapter on institutional change in this edited volume is an unknown classic of political economy (lots of people cite Jack’s book, and they should – but the chapter gets the core argument more precisely and succinctly). As Jack explains, libertarians and conservatives like to reduce politics down to situations where people freely contract with each other, or pursue collective benefits through decentralized means. But in fact, politics usually involves asymmetric power relations, where one actor or group of actors has far more bargaining power than its interlocutor, and is able to push for outcomes that provide it with the lion’s share. That kind of politics, rather than a Coasean solution, is what appears to be happening in the University of Wisconsin system.
{ 52 comments }
Chetan Murthy 12.10.23 at 7:08 pm
Tyler Cowen is a bad faith commentator. His “straight” work is a beard for his bad-faith nutjob libertarian/right-wing propaganda. And this here is in the latter camp, not the former.
Nobody should be reading Tyler Cowen, except to do as Henry does here: to excoriate him for his shittiness. I take nothing Tyler Cowen says seriously: if it’s a good idea, it’ll be espoused by non-shitty people, so I can wait.
Alex SL 12.10.23 at 8:52 pm
In the past I have run into libertarians who, when presented with a thought experiment to the effect of “what if person A is dying of dehydration, and person B has all the water and offers it at $1 million per bottle”, would respond that this is how it should be, and person A’s freedom isn’t infringed on in any way, as they can simply say no and die if that is the free choice they prefer. Free market! (It is obvious from this response how they reason about power imbalances in the labour market.) But if the government makes you pay taxes, now that is jack-booted tyranny.
Those were rank-and-file libertarians, not the kind who get to have theorems named after them, but it told me all I needed to know about the libertarian movement’s understanding of power and about its intellectual consistency. By and large, they start with the theorem that a rich person should have absolute freedom to use their money and power to do whatever they want, no matter the harm to others, and reason backwards from there.
Peter Dorman 12.10.23 at 9:39 pm
No doubt unbalanced power relations are an important part of the UW story, but the Coasian parable breaks down even before you invoke this. Coase envisions bargaining between parties proposing offers based on their preference schedules. In the farmer-railroad case, the farmer calculates the cost of fires instigated by RR sparks, while the railroad owners calculate the cost of mitigating those sparks. You get a subjectively determined joint cost minimization out of their agreement.
But Coase, as the progenitor of transaction costs, was quite aware, as I understand it, that many costs and benefits that accrue to collectivities are difficult if not impossible to represent in the form of a composite actor. Then the goal of public policy would then be to approximate the outcome that the parties directly involved would have come to if they could have overcome their collective action frictions.
Cowen appears to be simply assuming that the WI legislature is aggregating or at least representing utilities of Wisconsin citizenry as a whole. But this is absurd for two reasons. First, there is no reason to assume that the legislature’s bargaining schedule with the university reflects any sort of social preference. In fact, that is about as far from a libertarian starting point as I can imagine. Second, and even more fundamentally, the “costs” and “benefits” of DEI, whatever you may think they are, have little to do with the utilities and disutilities experienced by the citizenry. That’s a category error, isn’t it? If you think it’s wrong to have job applicants file a diversity statement, what does that have to do with how much positive or negative well-being Wisconsin residents experience when they contemplate the statement mandate, or if they even know such a mandate exists or how it is administered?
Tyler Cowen, in meeting his daily post quota, often tosses off comments like this one that are absurd on the basis of just a little reflection. More than anything else, I think this reflects the asymmetric reward structure of his Koch-funded enterprise. He needs to generate a stream of zingers, and if he also tosses in a bunch of dumb, off the wall posts it’s not a problem.
PatinIowa 12.10.23 at 10:11 pm
I thought, “This is bullshit,” when I read this, “In exchange, universities would receive $800 million for employee pay raises and some building projects, including a new engineering building for UW-Madison.”
My guess is the engineering building will be budgeted at 799.9 million, before the cost overruns, and the .1 million will raise the president’s salary.
Yes, I’m being cynical.
TF79 12.10.23 at 10:52 pm
Seems like a weird context to invoke Coase. What’s the externality being resolved through side payments over a well-defined property right? If he had said “transactional” instead of “Coasean”, I could see that making more sense, but those two things are not synonymous.
JPL 12.11.23 at 12:17 am
What does the criterion of “seriousness” in the critique of thought entail, what does it consist in, in the context of problem-solving and truth-seeking and the use of our collective repertoire of categories and general principles? Which is preferable, an answer to the question at hand that is the result of agreed upon best practices in the conduct of thought (and I’m not talking about psychological “best practices”), or one due merely to fiat (i.e., money), which puts an end to the ethically necessary process of compromise? (And just why is it ethically necessary?) Why does fiat continue to be a possible choice? (Asking for an analysis, not making an exhortation.)
Ebenezer Scrooge 12.11.23 at 1:51 am
I’m not sure you’re being fair to the Coase theorem.
– It does not promise fairness.
– It does not even promise efficiency. Indeed, any fair reading of the Coase theorem stresses the prevalence of transaction costs. And this is the only value of the Coase theorem. Otherwise, it does no useful work.
– Finally, neoclassical micro cannot comprehend bilateral negotiations, which even Chicago boyz admit involve power relations. That’s why the Chicago boyz would rather ignore them, and rhapsodize over impersonal open markets with low transaction costs. (Such markets don’t exist in the real world, with the possible exception of some financial markets, which can be pretty damn-nigh perfect, if you ignore the regulators.)
Brett 12.11.23 at 7:21 am
It’s wild that just a week or so earlier, that site had Alex Tabarrok complaining about how it wasn’t “really bargaining” but supposedly blackmail for the government to tell drug companies to either bargain over prices or walk away from Medicare/Medicaid purchases.
TM 12.11.23 at 10:30 am
Cowen (who obviously is a hack and doern’t deserve to be taken seriously) presumes that the pay raises and buildings are in the interest of Unviersity leadership and the diversity policy changes are in the interest of the legislature, and deal (now rejected) deal was the result of bargaining between these two parties. Now, the legislature is supposed to represent the public interest, the interest of the citizens of the state. Cowen assumes that the pay raises etc. are not considered to be in the public interest by the legislature – iow they are considered a huge waste – but nevertheless it was reasonable to offer to waste the 800 million in exchange for a change in the diversity policy. In what universe does this make sense?
The legislature should approve the 800 million if and only if they they believe this to be in the public interest. And if I understand correctly, everybody agrees that this is the case. So what this “bargain” amounts to is that the legislature agrees to do what is in the public interest (aka as doing its job) but only under the condition thatf some ideological pet obsession gets satisfied.
Trader Joe 12.11.23 at 11:43 am
Maybe I don’t understand Coase and maybe I don’t understand all I need to know about UW-Ms diversity program but:
UW-M gets $800m for salaries and a building (that seems pretty good in a world of tight university budgets).
To get that all they have to do is agree to freeze a diversity program that is likely already pretty sizeable and pretty effective (based on what I know of UW-M vs many midwestern Us). And they have to restructure said program – but have full control of that process so likely won’t make it meaningfully worse and presumably better is at least a possible outcome.
I guess I fail to see how UW-M is a loser in the “highwayman” sense unless you are saying its the State that is worse off, which seems an odd stance.
mw 12.11.23 at 12:13 pm
I wouldn’t read the MR post as an endorsement of this. The periodic ‘Markets in Everything’ posts are typically cases of, “Hey, look over here at this weird market”. The political horse-trading attempted in Wisconsin between a conservative majority legislature and a progressive state university is unusual — the deal-making is rarely this explicit. And the breakdown of the deal (also noted on MR as “Thwarted Wisconsin DEI markets in everything”) suggests why not. And then there was also this ‘market in everything’ post:
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2023/12/university-betting-markets-in-everything.html
I’m pretty sure it should not be read as either a call to fire the two university presidents or NOT to fire them. TC may have an opinion, but he’s not tipping his hand by posting the link.
If you want to dispute a post where Cowen actually tells us what he thinks about a topical higher-ed issue, you might do better to start with this one:
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2023/12/freedom-of-speech-for-university-staff.html
Harry 12.11.23 at 2:10 pm
My take, for what it’s worth, is that Trader Joe is right about what the deal actually meant. Basically, what drove the anti-DEI stuff was that a group of anti-Trump Republicans decided that this was a good way to get in with DeSantis, and that anti-UW rhetoric played well with its base (which, of course, given gerrymandering, is actually a secondary consideration). They don’t really know anything about DEI, or how it is structured, or the extent to which long-running programs that they actually like (eg for first gen students, many of whom at Madison are from rural-ish backgrounds) have been placed under DEI for administrative convenience/virtue-signalling purposes. The deal would almost certainly have resulted in very little substantive change, but a lot of renaming and reorganizing, which is why the leadership were ok with it. And the anti-Trump, anti-DEI Republicans were fine with almost no change, since this is all playacting for them anyway.
One excellent part of the deal was the 5% rule. I don’t know who put that in, but whoever it was, good for them. I was sorry to see that the Regents rejected it. Maybe they think they can win the money back through law suits, which may or may not be true, but is a dreadful way of winning. Maybe the legislature could force a 5% rule on us separately (I imagine it would get bipartisan support, not that it needs it — I can’t imagine the governor vetoing it).
None of this affects Henry’s more abstract point, which seems right to me.
Harry 12.11.23 at 2:18 pm
Though, just a factual correction to Trader Joe’s comment. It was the whole system (13 campuses, including UW-Madison) that would get the $800 million between them. The buildings were just for Madison (as I understand it, we need the legislature to approve all buildings, even if privately paid for). TC’s wording is confusing (not inaccurate, but confusing).
And…. and this is very pedantic: UW-M usually refers to UW-Milwaukee (an excellent institution, in a great city), whereas the other UW campus beginning with an M is usually referred to as UW-Madison to avoid confusion.
engels 12.11.23 at 7:14 pm
“Inclusion” in these contexts always seems Orwellian to me. If you want to make universities “inclusive” abolish fees and entrance requirements, and pay students enough to live on while they’re attending. Until then they will continue by their nature to be exclusive “communities” (as everybody really knows when they’re being honest).
Lee A. Arnold 12.11.23 at 8:38 pm
Coase’s “Theory of Social Cost” (1960) could be the most abused paper in economics. “Social cost” here is the additional cost to society of a business firm, and Coase uses examples of environmental damage. Coase uses these to mount two arguments AGAINST the cocksureness of neoclassical economics:
Disputants could come to an efficient agreement, were it not for transaction costs, i.e. the additional costs to search, check quality, bargain, transport, insure, & enforce. Transaction costs are ubiquitous, so sometimes an institutional solution will be better, including government (“The government is, in a sense, a super-firm” — Problem of Social Cost, pt. VI). Each new situation will have to be figured out anew.
This is rather a stunning opening to institution economics, coming ten years after Kapp’s book, The Social Costs of Private Enterprise (1950). More evidence that institutionalism in midcentury was alive. So I’m not convinced that Coase should be called libertarian, unless that means classical liberal. Indeed Coase makes another remarkable point:
“In this article, analysis has been confined, as usual in this part of economics, to comparisons of the value of production, as measured by the market. But it is, of course, desirable that the choice among different social arrangements for the solution of economic problems should be carried out in broader terms than this and that the total effect of these arrangements in all spheres of life should be taken into account. As Frank H. Knight has so often emphasized, problems of welfare economics must ultimately dissolve into a study of aesthetics and morals.” (Pt. X)
In other words, not only are 1. social costs likely to be resolved by institutions and not just the pure market, but also: Those institutions 2. must go beyond simple efficiency and price calculations in order to maximize social welfare.
This is quite a one-two punch to the solar plexus of neoclassical economics. The fact that it is taken to uphold the same, is a tribute to Coase’s clever composition skills in slipping it under their noses, and/or, a tribute to the low reading-comprehension skills of the intellectual class, particularly but not restricted to the United States.
Of course there’s also wishful thinking. Stigler mathed-up only the first part of Coase’s paper, regarding efficiency in the absence of transaction costs, calling it a “Coase Theorem” and misleading generations of economists and jurists. Coase himself wrote that this misses the point. Stigler also couldn’t come to terms with Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments (almost an ur-bible for institutional intentionality, though perhaps Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals is deeper and more thorough). So maybe it’s the Chicago-Hayek-libertarian-Virginia-public-choice aversion to comprehensive social thinking, “as usual in this part of economics.”
LFC 12.11.23 at 9:46 pm
In line with engels’s point @14, DEI could be renamed DETE — diversity, equity, and tempered exclusion — pronounced “deet.” (The only drawback of this proposal is that DEET is a key ingredient in some insect repellents.)
Chris 12.12.23 at 4:01 am
This is all just vaguely ridiculous. No idea why Henry needs to invent hypotheticals when Tyler Cown has already “revealed his preferences:”
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/05/tyler-cowen-koch-brothers-funiding-mercatus-center-george-mason-university-academic-freedom.html
“Yet these agreements fall short of the standards of academic independence I expect any gift to meet.”
https://theintercept.com/2018/09/19/the-mercatus-center-is-a-part-of-george-mason-university-until-its-not/
Lest you think he really doesn’t care about academic freedom, you can find him at his blog cheerleading Elise Stefanik, calling for the heads of university presidents who dare suggest the First Amendment can be complicated.
TM 12.12.23 at 9:54 am
Thanks for the useful reminder, Lee 15!
Lee A. Arnold 12.12.23 at 11:33 am
Correction, the title of Coase’s 1960 paper is “The Problem of Social Cost”
engels 12.12.23 at 11:34 am
Diversity, Equity and Meritocratic Sorting (Dems)
Reason 12.12.23 at 1:13 pm
Lee Arnold@15, TM@18
And of course do we really have to point out here that negative externalities are theft? That a firm making a deal, “pay me or I’ll pollute” amounts to hostage taking.
steven t johnson 12.12.23 at 3:34 pm
Lee A. Arnold@15 “In other words, not only are 1. social costs likely to be resolved by institutions and not just the pure market, but also: Those institutions 2. must go beyond simple efficiency and price calculations in order to maximize social welfare.”
My first reaction is to think Coase himself had ample opportunity to clarify what he really meant. I suspect he was fairly satisfied with the usual interpretation, not this one. It’s no big thing to say Stigler missed the point, when the point is to make the point yourself. Or so it seems to me.
But looking closely, the first point still implies the default is the market status quo. And any case for reliance on “institutions,” *has to be justified on an ad hoc basis, setting no precedent for because it’s not possible to justify any general mission for “institutions.”
To me this seems like compatibilism in moral philosophy, the notion that despite all the evidence there is a free will, hence punishment is justified. (1) But if this commitment to the status quo leads to widespread outrage—maybe the idea that juveniles shouldn’t be tried as adults, though this is increasingly unpopular—you can “figure out each situation anew.” No compatibilist need ever admit that retributions is not justice. And the notion that deterrence is inherently limited because 1)being deterred is not an act of free will, therefore escalation of punishments is not rational and is merely retribution by another name and 2)punishments can interfere with rehabilitation and 3)rehabilitation can be a rational alternative precisely because criminal/deviant behavior is not a freely willed choice. Change the causes, change the behavior. The false notion of a free will that chose criminality already, therefore there is no rational reason to expect change is a conclusion from the false premise. The market here seems to play the same role as the compatibilist myth of free will, a fig leaf for the status quo. Or so it seems to me.
As to the second point, saying that all welfare economics dissolves into questions of aesthetics and morals means variously, they are merely matters of opinion (all of which are equal) or they are objectively insoluble or they must be determined by the objective justice embodied in the wisdom of the ages (known to the rest of us as, the status quo.) (2) The invocation of Frank H. Knight, the prophet of profit, suggests Coase was very much of the latter school. That would explain why the alleged abuse of Coases’s “theorem” was no problem for Coase.
(1)Yes, I am aware that compatibilism between science (to speak very generally) and the old religious notion of free will in suitably neutral wording is very likely the nearly universal opinion among professional philosophers. Remembering the ideological functions of higher education, this is hardly surprising.
(2)The three alternatives, even as starkly phrased as here, are not actually mutually exclusive. Epistemological skepticism, both of the ostensibly democratic kind that generously awards a meaningless equality to all opinions or the rigorous kind that emphasizes there are no answers, both are entirely compatible with the dominance of conventional thinking and practice. Skepticism is hobbyism, it changes nothing, it’s quietism. It is the proposition of an alternative to the way things are that affirms it is based on fact and principle that can in some sense be objectively known that pose a problem with the fundamental purpose of higher education.
LFC 12.12.23 at 4:57 pm
Glancing at Marginal Revolution, which I usually don’t read, I have a question: How can someone (Cowen) who apparently posts something almost every day, even if it’s just a series of links, and is also apparently on X (Twitter), or at least uses it, have time to think and to adequately do his academic job (never mind publishing)? (He also apparently does podcasts.) Even if he’s an extremely fast reader, which he no doubt is, I’d think at some point something would have to give. (I have roughly the same question re the regular front-page posters at LGM, although in that case they seem to have split up sections of the day among themselves, which I suppose could help.)
Lee A. Arnold 12.12.23 at 11:45 pm
“The Coase Theorem is widely cited in economics. Ronald Coase hated it.”
httpiss://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/09/04/the-coase-theorem-is-widely-cited-in-economics-ronald-coase-hated-it/
There exist several interviews from Coase’s later years in which he put distance between his own views and the received interpretation.
Institutions reduce transaction costs. This is a point in his first famous paper, “The Nature of the Firm” (1937). But the idea of a transaction cost goes back at least as far as Charles Babbage, On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures (1832).
In “The Problem of Social Cost,” the main institution discussed by Coase is the law, and he detailed cases in which old British laws decided rights and liabilities regarding smoke and smell.
There’s no question that Coase and Knight did not prefer government intervention. But they were intellectually far more honest and forthcoming on the limits of markets than the later Chicago School, e.g. Stigler and Milton Friedman. There is a large amount of useful and revealing information on all of this, in the notes at the end of the book, Where Economics Went Wrong: Chicago’s Abandonment of Classical Liberalism, by David Colander and Craig Freedman (Princeton, 2019). (Colander died last week.)
The reason I think all of this matters is that our present quandaries require a massive reappraisal, and the necessary key is a better public understanding of non-market institutions.
both sides do it 12.13.23 at 2:44 am
How can someone [do all this other stuff] and have time to think and to adequately do his academic job
Apropos quote from apropos source Richard Posner: “it’s easy to be productive if you get up early and just start working.”
Matt 12.13.23 at 10:51 am
…Richard Posner: “it’s easy to be productive if you get up early and just start working.”
It’s worth noting that Posner, according to a profile about him in the old Lingua Franca, also was almost completely uable to do day-to-day tasks becuse he’d basically had done none of them in his adult life. This was because his wife (and other minders) did essentially everything for him – all the household taks, made his meals (or they were provided by others), got him around, took care of his scheduling, bought and arranged his cloths, etc. He was, of course, very productive, and worked hard, but it’s easier to do that when you have someone else (like a wife) who does literally everything except your professional tasks for you. (I don’t know how far, if at all, something similar applies to Cowen.)
D 12.13.23 at 10:56 am
Many people think that DEI works against academic freedom, and it’s also more of an administrative function than area of study. Given this, the comparison here seems foolish.
As regards ‘Coasian’, it’s a passim on his blog – I don’t think he means much beyond party A pays party B to change something party B has ownership rights too.
(I read his blog and respect his work. I’m not a libertarian and disagree with a lot of what he says/his values)
JRLRC 12.13.23 at 7:29 pm
Hi Henry!
Have you read “Technofeudalism”, by Yanis Varoufakis? I you have already, what do you think?
both sides do it 12.13.23 at 8:14 pm
Matt,
Good point. That reminds me of some business guru who was describing a productivity framework at a panel I saw once. When someone asked him a question about how completing household chores fit into his framework, he responded “this is a framework for being productive, not grubbing a few bucks off your folks while you’re a kid.” Wish I had a painting capturing the looks of the rest of the panel.
I once saw Posner in a grocery store buying a single cantaloupe melon. The entire time in the checkout line he kept looking around quickly. Turning his torso across a wide arc, darting his eyes. Since he was wearing a giant fur hat the effect was of a raccoon hoping he could get away with a stolen prize from the trash.
Alex SL 12.13.23 at 8:40 pm
steven t johnson,
Your fourth paragraph at 21 is a strawman of impressive size and flammability. I don’t want to dig into this at length, because that is not what this thread is about, but it might help if you talked to a compatibilist and listened to what we are actually saying, because it has nothing to do with your characterisation.
engels 12.13.23 at 9:27 pm
it’s easy to be productive if you get up early and just start working
What does Posne produce?
steven t johnson 12.14.23 at 1:11 am
Lee Arnold@23 “But [Coase and Knight] were intellectually far more honest and forthcoming on the limits of markets than the later Chicago School, e.g. Stigler and Milton Friedman.” Talk of the “limits” of markets is an unwarranted default. False framing of a question is an error at best, a rhetorical exercise at worst. Or so it seems to me.
The correct framing I think is all complex functional markets rely on “institutions” to deal with social costs, as much as possible, something essential in various degrees for the formation of market economies, day to day operations of same and as well conflict resolution in market economies—and that bargaining between individual agents cannot in principle resolve all issues of social costs, strongly implying that mathematical demonstrations of the theoretical possibility of some conflicts being resolved privately, therefore such theorems “miss the point.” Talk of the “limits” of markets does to, or so it seems to me.
I think the further invocation of an outside authority, namely philosophy in its subfields of aesthetics and morals, is so ambiguous as to be positively misleading. Banning the notion of a welfare economics that attempts to analyze sufficiency as well as the status quo, or projects the outcome of the current arrangements over time does not seem to me to be forbidden by the deontological imperatives of private property or aesthetic revulsion at the vulgar. The libertarians are not misreading Coase in that respect. Or so it seems to me.
Sashas 12.14.23 at 1:51 am
I’ve been too busy with the last couple days of the semester to comment on this before, but there is news. The Board of Regents took up another resolution with identical provisions a couple hours ago and passed it. So the deal has un-fallen-apart.
IMO this was a disastrous blunder by the Board and we can expect to see UW employee raises, benefits, anything really held hostage to increasingly radical demands every budget cycle until the Republicans lose all power in the state legislature. I mean, why wouldn’t they?
engels 12.14.23 at 3:26 pm
Maybe we’d all be better off if Posner stayed in bed a bit more?
somebody who remembers the panic when misty copeland was going to dance ballet while black 12.14.23 at 4:14 pm
cowen also completely writes out of the equation the people actually affected by the policies – namely, those that are marginalized racially, sexually, for their gender and for their religion. the only reason the disabled aren’t on that list (yet) is that they haven’t figured out a way to repeal the ADA. but they will and when they do cowen will cheer the jackhammering of wheelchair ramps as “just another coase-ian bargain” between the administration and the legislature and congress. at no point will the experience of any actual human being (neither legislatures nor university administrators count) be considered either as cost or benefit.
roger gathmann 12.16.23 at 12:11 pm
So – this use of a transaction implies that the sides are constructed according to their preferences, or what they want. What does the legislature want from freezing diversity? What gain is that, and for what constituency? I personally think that if the gain is what I think it is – a victory for white racism of a boneheaded kind – than I can’t see that as being a gain that is itself frozen. The take on the legistlative side should be analyzed in context: how often has the GOP legistature stuck by compromises? Without looking at that side, you have lost yourself in interesting theoretical pettifoggery, which sets up the next iteration as the legislature comes back for more bites.
mw 12.16.23 at 12:23 pm
IMO this was a disastrous blunder by the Board and we can expect to see UW employee raises, benefits, anything really held hostage to increasingly radical demands every budget cycle until the Republicans lose all power in the state legislature. I mean, why wouldn’t they?
You might well ask why conservative legislatures didn’t they do this during the decades/centuries leading up to this point. And it might have to do something with state universities only rather recently promoting political activism to a coequal or higher priority than scholarship — with that activism being in clear opposition to the values and interests of those conservative legislators (and majorities of voters in the districts that elected them). The idea that they’ll continue to sign the checks with no questions asked seems naïve.
Alex SL 12.20.23 at 3:49 am
Ah yes, irregular nouns: your wanting to have fairer representation of disadvantaged minorities in academia and leadership positions is (gasp) political activism, but my wanting them to remain disadvantaged is just normal how it should be and not any activism at all and certainly not political, oh no.
Sashas 12.20.23 at 7:30 pm
@mw (37)
The DEI moral panic is only a couple years old. Next question!
Seriously though, speaking as someone who has been trying to get a university to care about the welfare of the people at it for over a decade now, all of your premises do not match with my experience. Universities do not now care more about promoting political activism, nor have they during any time I have been aware of. In contrast they do care about scholarship often to the exclusion of anything else important. At least in Wisconsin, legislators are not elected by majorities in any meaningful sense. We are gerrymandered to hell and back. UW public universities have been under repeated rounds of defunding dating back a decade or so. (I want to say either 2011, 2013, or 2016. I can look up which if you really care but I don’t think it matters to my point.)
What I think you’ve identified here is a pattern of escalation by the Republican-dominated state legislature. The DEI “scare” is new, so this is the first time they’ve demanded we cut it, but funding cuts have been consistent and we’ve already seen Vos announce that he’s coming back for the rest of DEI so I think I feel vindicated in predicting that the university system’s appeasement plan has not worked. We’re going to get smacked either way, and this way we also lose the very important programs that support the scholarship and access to education of minoritized faculty, staff, and students.
steven t johnson 12.20.23 at 9:16 pm
Alex Sl@30 was overlooked. Compatibilism is the commonest position and is expressed in daily life by an overwhelming number of individuals, not just in formal discussions on the topic. It is also the premise of almost all popular literature and drama too. Further it is the official position of the larger part of institutions such as courts and prisons. At first glance it should be obvious that the issue is compatiblists not understanding what determinists are saying, not the reverse.
In popular culture, the equation is evil=crazy=demonic and the conclusion is that retribution is justice. Determinism is the coherent argument that retribution is not justice. If compatibilism denies this, the compatibilists have signally failed to explain their own alleged position despite being the accepted authorities.
Running the US prison system like a set of torture chambers is compatiblism in action. Putting addicts in jail is compatibilism in action. Executing mentally ill people or severely mentally handicapped people is compatibilism in action. Keeping mentally ill people in prison without providing health care is compatibilism in action. Giving religious officials and principles legal privileges in the justice system is compatibilism in action. Having in principle a separate justice system for juveniles is a rare shame-faced concession to determinism. But the insistence that it is morally just to waive this concession and try juveniles as adults whenever the prosecutor feels it is politically expedient shows the limits of such pretended concessions. The whole issue is cited because compatibilist mislead by false framing, which is the same tactic used by the Coases of the world.
In natural science, “compatibilism” is simply nonsense, not indulged by anyone but cranks, so far as I can tell. Compatibilism only exists as an apologia for the justice system as it is, limiting at worst every dissidence to as narrow a scope as possible. And ditto Coasean logic in economics. Or so it seems to me.
J-D 12.21.23 at 2:31 am
If state universities had done something like that, then it might have something to do with the actions of the state legislature; but it is not the case that state universities have done something like that, so you’re just telling us something which is not true.
John Q 12.21.23 at 2:58 am
The important corollary of Posner’s claim is: if you want to be productive, don’t watch TV (early to bed & early to rise and all that).
Worked for me. But now that I am entering semi-retirement, I have an awful lot of TV to catch up on.
Alex SL 12.21.23 at 6:40 am
steven t johnson,
At first glance it should be obvious that the issue is compatiblists not understanding what determinists are saying, not the reverse.
Compatibilists are determinists (plus randomness/quantum, which isn’t supernatural either, etc etc). The WHOLE POINT of the word compatibilist is that we have a concept of free will that is compatible with determinism. If we weren’t determinists, there wouldn’t be anything for free will to be compatible with.
It is important to understand that with this one sentence, you have proved that you do not understand what compatibilists are saying.
The rest of your comment is equivalent to personally redefining socialist to “being unreasonably opposed to cake” and going off the rails from there. Please, please just read up about compatibilism instead of unilaterally deciding that it means being in favour of retributive justice.
TM 12.21.23 at 8:40 am
stj 40, Alex 43
This kind of debate always raises the interesting question what an avowed determinist thinks he is doing when he tries to convince others that freedom of will is nonsense? If agency is an illusion, why do determinsts even engage in debate at all?
both sides do it 12.21.23 at 8:22 pm
Maybe a more apropos quote from apropos character Mr. Bernstein from apropos cinematic masterpiece Citizen Kane: “It’s easy to make a lot of money, if all you want to do is make a lot of money”
engels 12.22.23 at 1:25 am
It’s easy to make a lot of money, if all you want to do is make a lot of money
(Asking for a friend) how?
J-D 12.22.23 at 3:26 am
The observable fact that determinists engage in debate is compatible with free-will theories if one supposes that they will freely to engage in debate (the same way that anbody wills anything freely), but it’s equally compatible with deterministic theories if one supposes that it is determined that they will engage in debate (the same way that anything is determined).
Alex SL 12.22.23 at 11:14 pm
TM,
I understand it in the sense that J-D is proposing. But I do not understand it in the sense of how they think we can even discuss what goes on in the world if we adopt their proposed taboos. I mean, every time we discuss any hypothetical in science, we mean ‘if circumstances had been different’, without implying magic. Similarly, when we discuss hypothetical choices made by humans, we mean ‘if she had wanted to do something different’, without implying magic.
What I find illuminating about this discussion is to observe people’s behaviour to infer what they actually believe even as they claim otherwise. To nod back at the topic of the OP, if a libertarian claims to prioritise freedom, what will they do if they had a binary election choice between a party that wants to safeguard freedom of expression and free elections but raise taxes and another party that promises lower taxes but wants to install a dictatorship? In the case of the free will debate:
Nobody who claims to believe in magical, contra-causal, non-deterministic, libertarian (whatever word one prefers) free will actually behaves as if they really did believe that. They all assume that they themselves can predict future behaviour of other people based on what they know about their character as shaped by genes and environment. They do not live in constant fear that their best friend will suddenly attack them for no reason – they accept cause-and-effect. In other words, they all behave as if they are determinists in practice, outside of armchair reasoning to e.g. refute the problem of evil or justify libertarian economic preferences.
And hardly anybody who claims to be an incompatibilist actually behaves as if they really were one. They generally do not put a landslide on trial for murder, or treat a kleptomaniac the same as a premeditated robber, or treat somebody who accidentally stepped on their foot the same as somebody who aggressively shoved them. They accept that humans who are awake, sane, and not under duress have a freedom that a landslide or a person under compulsion do not have. In other words, they are themselves compatibilists in practice but weirdly obsessed about tabooing some terms others use to describe these distinctions.
I conclude that (nearly) everybody actually lives their life as a compatibilist determinist, because that is how they behave when the rubber hits the road, whatever else they may claim. And that is what makes this discussion so frustrating, the futility of it.
Tm 12.23.23 at 7:53 am
Sure J-D but that’s not my point. It seems to me that stj is imputing intentions and agency while, as a noncompatibilist determinist, denying that such things could exist. Take the justice system. From a strictly deterministic standpoint, the justice system is the way it is
because it couldn’t be otherwise. What we think about it, how we justify it, is irrelevant. Inventing an „apologia“ to limit „dissidence“ is pointless. If you believe that moral convictions matter, that arguments matter, that people can be persuaded to change their minds and act differently, then you are a compatibilist, respectively your brain processes produce outputs that make you appear like a compatibilist.
J-D 12.23.23 at 10:43 am
When experienced chess players play chess with each other, they proceed as if they can, with some confidence, make some estimates of the moves that other players are likely to select, but not as if they can make certain predictions of opponents’ play move by move. That seems to me to be pretty much the way things work in most areas of human interaction. Will somebody hold the lift for me, or will they not? I can’t be sure. Can you predict the content of steven t johnson’s next comment? I bet you can’t.
Some time ago I abandoned as futile all efforts to understand the meaning or purpose of steven t johnson’s comments.
hix 12.23.23 at 11:33 pm
” It’s easy to make a lot of money, if all you want to do is make a lot of money
(Asking for a friend) how? "
Become a dentist.
(Still asking for another plan that could also work for me, since dentistry is no option for various reasons, starting with insufficient productive life years left even after fastest possible graduation)
Alex SL 12.24.23 at 1:17 am
Oh dear, I just realised that stj and I went over this exact same discussion in a Crooked Timber post in June this year, the counterfeit digital persons one. It was the same then: he defines philosophical compatibilist as somebody who is in favour of retributive justice and wants to punish addicts for their addiction, and explanations of how that is not at all what I as a compabilist believe, nor how that word is defined in, say, encyclopedias, simply bounce off. I guess this has to be filed under next time, don’t engage.
Comments on this entry are closed.