In my last post, on the public debate on limitarianism, I responded to Matt’s philosophical doubts about limitarianism by saying that there was a debate on this matter forthcoming in The Journal of Political Philosophy, and that I would post it once published in Early View. So, here it is.

Robert Huseby wrote a critique on limitarianism arguing that we don’t need that idea, given that we have egalitarianism and sufficientarianism. I responded in two ways. First, by saying that there are other ways to judge a philosophical idea than looking at philosophical distinctiveness (in other words, Huseby and I have different views on what we want political philosophy to do, and I argue that this has implications for judging the value of limitarianism). Second, within the meta-theoretical choices made by Huseby, I object to his arguments.

Those interested in this intra-academic-philosophical debate, feel free to chime in. If anyone wants to read the paper by Robert Huseby (since unlike mine, it’s not open access), I’m happy to send it to anyone dropping me an email.

NB: Luigi Caranti and Nunzio Alì published in the Italian Journal Politica e Società a paper with the same title as Huseby’s paper, voicing overlapping criticisms. Email them or me if you want to get hold of a copy.

For more than a century after the achievement of the eight hour day (around 1850) in Australia and New Zealand standard hours of week were reduced steadily, with the shift to a five day week, annual leave and more. But progress came to a halt with the resurgence of neoliberalism in the 1980s. I’ve been writing about the need for shorter weekly hours, more holidays and so on ever since, mostly with no apparent impact.

But the pandemic may have changed things, if only by making us all feel more exhausted than ever. After I published this piece in The Conversation advocating a four-day week, I was deluged with interview requests. It’s not perfect, and some of the most striking turns of phrase are the editor’s, not mine. But it seems like a good way to start the discussion.

There’s been a lot of debate lately about whether tightening of anti-trust legislation might be a useful response to inflation. Underlying this question is that of the relationship between monopoly and inflation more generally. The dominant view among mainstream/neoclassical economists seems to be that there is no such relationship. That view is stated by one of the most prominent mainstream theorist, Larry Summers as follows

There is no basis in economics for expecting increases in demand to systematically [cause] larger price increases for monopolies or oligopolies than competitive industries.

Summers goes on to describe the opposite view as ‘anti-science’.

Readers of this blog will be devastated to learn that Summers is dead wrong. It’s quite straightforward to show, in a simple neoclassical model, that imperfect competition amplifies the inflationary effects of demand shocks. Here’s a paper I’ve just written with my colleague Flavio Menezes which makes this point using the concept of the strategic industry supply curve. The same result can be presented, less elegantly in our view, using the standard tools of comparative statics to be found in any intermediate microeconomics test.

We also show that, contrary to a suggestion by Elizabeth Warren, imperfect competition is likely to dampen the impact of cost shocks. There isn’t, however, any equivalence here. Warren’s background is in law, and she isn’t making a claim just observing that monopoly power might be a problem. The distinction between cost shocks and demand shocks is unlikely to have been relevant to her, whereas it should have occurred immediately to a leading theorist like Summers.

I’m not sure about the lessons from all this. For me, it’s to think carefully before making dogmatic statements from authority. If all experts agree on something, we should say so, but be careful to make sure we are right.

If you want to mark the end of hope for US democracy, last weekend was as good a date as any. Both Trump and the Republican National Committee made unequivocal commitments to supporting the insurrection.

The response, on the Republican side, was much the same as in every previous step along the road to dictatorship. The usual handful of serving politicians, like Romney and Hogan (MD governor) objected, as did sometimes-Trumper Mitch McConnell, but none (not even Cheney and Kinzinger, the targets of the censure) even hinted at changing parties. A rather larger group of retired Repubs signed a statement, again failing to urge rejection of their party. Most current Repubs dodged the issue, claiming not to have read the news for a while. And, a couple of days later, it’s just about forgotten.

The result is that the overthrow of democracy has become, as far as the political culture is concerned, a routine issue of disagreement between the parties. In these circumstances, the par outcome is that the opposition party will do well in the midterm elections, and all the evidence suggests that 2022 won’t be an exception. So, unless effective legislation to prevent election subversion is passed this year, it never will be. It seems highly unlikely that reforms to the Electoral Count Act, if they pass, will be enough.

Today is the last day to submit nominations for the 2022 Nobel Prizes. My father, an expert on the Prize, wrote some reflections on some prizes not received last year.. and more generally about the politics of the Prize and also how smaller countries (Hungary in this case) can think about supporting their scientists. This piece was only published in Hungarian at first, but I thought a broader audience would benefit from it so below is the translation.

From the Hungarian literary weekly, Élet és Irodalom (Life and Literature),
Volume 66, Issue No 4 in 2022, January 28

HUNGARIANS AND NOBEL PRIZES
by István Hargittai

2021 was a special year. Two Hungarians did not receive (deserved) Nobel Prizes. The only other year like this was 1994, when two Hungarians did receive (deserved) Nobel Prizes, George Olah, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and John Harsányi, the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics. The two non-winners in 2021, Katalin Karikó and Zoltán Hajós, are two different cases both with valuable lessons.

Throughout my six decades as a researcher, and even since the age of 11, I have been interested in the nature of scientific discovery, which has led me to follow the work of Nobel laureates and scientists of the caliber of Nobel laureates. There was a ten-year period in my life when I recorded conversations with such scientists, which, together with my wife and our son, were published in six hefty volumes by a prestigious London publisher. These interviews went far beyond my own field, chemistry, and the conversations meant a second college education for me. For twenty-five years I have been invited annually to be a nominator for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. I wrote a successful book on the Nobel Prize. I am saying all this to increase the reader’s confidence in what follows.

Many people were expecting Katalin Karikó to win the Nobel Prize for her achievements in the development of the vaccine against the COVID-19. As the date for the announcement of the Nobel Prizes approached in early October 2021, the various prize-giving bodies were practically in a race to honor her. For any prize, it enhances its prestige if its awardee later becomes a Nobel laureate, while awarding the same prize after the Nobel Prize is no longer so elegant. When it turned out that Karikó was not among the 2021 Nobel laureates, there was great disappointment. There were important reasons though why she was not awarded the Nobel Prize in 2021, and there is every reason to expect that she will receive it in 2022, or very soon after, in the category of physiology or medicine (medicice, in short) or of chemistry.

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I should know, I tried to imagine it.

Every few days, there’s another article pointing out the likelihood that a Democratic win[1] in the 2024 US election will be overturned, and suggesting various ways it might be prevented, none of which seem very likely to work. The best hope would seem to be a crushing Democratic victory in the 2022 midterms, which doesn’t look likely right now[2]

What I haven’t seen is anyone discussing what the US would be like after a successful Trumpist (or other Republican) coup. The closest approaches I’ve seen are “looking backwards” pieces, written from an imagined distant future when democracy or something like it have been restored.

I decided to attempt the task myself and found it very hard going. The resulting piece is over the fold. I tried a few outlets for it, and no one was interested in publishing it. So, I’m putting it out here, with all its faults.

Suggested improvements are welcome, as is serious criticism. Snarks and trolls will be deleted and permanently banned [3].

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If you are anywhere close to my age (and even for most of you who are not), and if you grew up in the UK, Barry Cryer almost certainly made you laugh, even if you never knew who he was. He wrote for everyone. Well, everyone that mattered. And even plenty of people who didn’t matter (sorry, but I have never understood the appeal of Bob Hope. Or Kenny Everett to be honest). ISIHAC was, I suppose, his masterpiece. When I am feeling down, even when I am feeling really really down, I know that if I listen to ISIHAC I will laugh (the day I don’t know that ISIHAC will make me laugh is the day I’ll wonder if life is worth continuing [1]). However funny Cryer was on ISIHAC, and he was always hilarious, the best thing was not him being funny, or anyone else being funny, but hearing him laughing at other people being funny. His sheer, authentic, enjoyment of other people was delightful. Over the next few days the stories of his role in promoting other people’s careers — and in particular the careers of various women in comedy (the great late Linda Smith springs to mind)– will dribble out. Enjoy them and take note.

I once bumped into him. It was December 2001, and we were attending The Nutcracker in the west end. I had agreed to meet my family, and just before getting to the meeting spot I found myself standing right next to him — he loitering with a fag and a phone. My immediate thought was just to thank him for making me laugh so often, and when I really needed it. But being English, I just nodded in recognition, and moved on.

Here’s the grauniad obit.

[1] After writing that I realise it might sound like I’m being flippant about mental illness. I’m not.

My first ever short story has been published, hurray! It comes out of an odd ritual called ‘being churched’, that used to happen in Ireland well into the 1970s (schoolmates in Tipperary in the 1980s told stories of it happening to their mothers after the birth of older siblings). What may have begun as a blessing and thanks after a baby is born was often practiced as a required cleansing ritual before a woman would be let back into the church building. There were always stories of women who’d chosen a name for their baby but found when it was brought home from church the child had been baptised something else – as typically the churching took place some weeks after baptism, so mothers often missed the christening. The idea of a post-birth woman as unclean is pretty repellent, especially in an essentially theocratic state that kept women pregnant through many of their fertile years. It stuck in the craw of many at the time.

The other thing the story is about are the marooned generations of Irish in London – people who came over from the 1950s onward, pushed out by economic and social stagnation, and who rarely got home again. The pre-Ryanair generations’ ties with home were more or less cut, and they often felt they hadn’t done well enough financially to return. The Irish Embassy in London has a lot to do with the Irish Centre in Kilburn, which is a social hub for many left behind by the Celtic tiger. I always feel there is a quiet care and respect from them for so many of our people who have aged past any chance of return and wouldn’t feel at home in Ireland now anyway. Walking around my south London neighbourhood with my dog Milo, I’ve made friends with several erstwhile Kerry and Connemara men who often talk of going home for a visit, but never actually do. Failing health is one reason, and the death of siblings who they might have stayed with – the parents of course long since gone.

They speak in idioms that sound anachronistic to most Irish people today, but are how people talked when they were young. I’ve tried to capture that in the story, though it probably makes it sound a bit Oirish to the modern ear. The guys I chat to are also pretty racist. A couple of weeks ago, one of them was giving out about “immigrants”, and I said “But sure we’re immigrants.” He went uncharacteristically quiet for a moment, and then roared laughing, agreeing that indeed we are.

Here is the opening. The rest of “Churched” is at Lunate.

“I don’t know how it is in Ireland now, but here if you want to see old people and babies, go to Mass. Mass is full of people you don’t see most places except the dole queue or A&E which is full of drunks with a bang on their head that might be a brain bleed and babies with runny noses that might be meningitis. We see the babies first. A sick child goes downhill fast but a drunk with a sore head will always be looking for company.”

We were having birthday cake with my youngest son who turned 14 today, when CBS aired an item on the Sunday Morning Show for which I was interviewed. The item was on the question whether one can be too rich. As regular readers of this blog know, I’ve written a couple of papers (this one being open access) and more journalistic pieces (e.g. this) that we should answer this affirmatively. So now CBS decided the idea deserved an item, and I think they did a great job in putting several different relevant concerns together in a mere 8 minutes. It can be watched online here. (I believe they could have found more vocal opponents of limitarianism, but I guess these voices get plenty of airtime elsewhere?)

Abigail Disney has a line of critique from which I’ve so far tried to steer away – namely that becoming superwealthy changes a person and their character for the worse. That resonates with some of the findings in the intriguing book by Lauren Greenfield, Generation Wealth. Although I wrote very briefly (in Dutch, alas) on the scientific studies that we have that suggests that extreme wealth concentration might lead to unhappier people than being moderately well-off, I am hesitant to write more about this, for two reasons. One is that arguing that they are less happy and that therefore they should not be so rich is quit paternalistic (and most approaches in political philosophy and social ethics reject paternalistic arguments). Still, it also affects their children, so the paternalism objection might be less strong than at first sight. Arguing that they become less virtuous (read: bad people) is something that I cannot say since I haven’t tried to find the relevant studies (if they exist); moreover, it also seems a non-starter if we want to engage in a political debate that should include those that are superrich, or that defend the superrich. The other reason why I haven’t gone down this road so far is that I think the other arguments for limitarianism are strong enough in themselves to carry the claim – why then introduce a more contentious one, except if the evidence were to be overwhelming?

I don’t think I’ve announced on this blog the other news I have on limitarianism, which is that I’m writing a trade book on the topic, which is under contract with Allen Lane/Penguin (for the UK), Astra (for North America), and translations secured in Dutch, German, Korean, Italian, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish (the magic that working with an agent does!). The manuscript is due after the (Northern Hemisphere) Summer, so I’ll be having more posts on this matter over the next months.

A fun and often useful way of getting perspective on events from what seems like the relatively recent past is to take the time interval between those events and the present, then count back an equal time into the past [1].

For example, The Beatles first big hit, Love me Do, came out 60 years ago, in 1962. Going back 60 years to 1902, the hits of that year included Scott Joplin’s ragtime number The Entertainer. The recent buzz around Get Back can be compared to the revival of interest in Joplin generated by the Newman-Redford movie The Sting[2]

A more memorable event for most who were alive at the time was the assassination of John F Kennedy in 1963, that is, 59 years ago. Going back 59 years gets us to 1904, only three years after the previous US Presidential assassination, that of William McKinley. At least according to Wikipedia, the immediate reaction to the McKinley assassination was comparable to that after Kennedy’s. However, McKinley was overshadowed by his successor, Teddy Roosevelt in a way that didn’t happen with LBJ and JFK. So, AFAICT, McKinley’s assassination was pretty much forgotten by the time of Kennedy’s election[2]

As far as left politics goes, a comparable observation that the events of May 1968 are closer to the October Revolution than to the present.

Looking at intervals like this gives an idea of whether change has been fast or slow. For example, the beginning of the Jet Age of passenger jet transport is commonly dated to the introduction of the Boeing 707 in 1958, but there’s also a case for the 747 introduced in 1969. Counting back from these two dates gives a range from 1894 to 1916, neatly bracketing the Wright Brothers in 1903. The massive advances from the Wright Brothers to the early 7x7s contrast sharply with the near-stasis since then (punctuated by the failure of the Concorde). Today’s 7x7s and their Airbus competitors differ most notably in the fact that the passengers are packed in tighter, and more effectively pacified with digital entertainment. The newer planes are more fuel efficient, safer and not quite as noisy, but those are incremental advances in an industry that used to symbolise modernity and technical progress.

That’s enough from me. Anyone else have a favorite?

fn1. The first time I saw this was in a look back at at an ANU Revue, during the Vietnam years, on the theme Hits of the Blitz. The author pointed out that the Vietnam War was now further in the past than WWII had been at the time the show was put on.
fn2. Doing the same thing for The Sting (1973) takes us back to the silent era and The Thief of Baghdad
fn2. Some fans of numerology noted that the winners of the 1860, 1880, 1900 and 1960 elections had been assassinated. Adding the 1840 1920 and 1940 winners, who died in office (though Roosevelt survived his third term, and won again in 1944), this produced the “Curse of the Zero Years”

Boris Johnson seems to be in a heap of trouble, but from the other side of the planet it’s hard to work out much more than that. So, I thought I’d throw it open, with a few questions

Will Johnson survive as PM ?
If not who will replace him ?
Change for the better or worse?
Implications for policy responses to the pandemic, if any?