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comment by blackbootz
blackbootz  ·  1716 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Labor Econ Versus the World

All I'm hearing from you is that I'm forbidden from thinking these things. And with an urgency that totally confuses me. That workers have become more productive, causing employers to compete for them along axes like higher wages and providing more hospitable working conditions, not only has no explanatory power to you but apparently paints me a mental invalid or worse for thinking, and stupid for falling for.

Does that mean people who consider these things are stupid? Even if it somehow did, why would your sanctimony push edge cases like me to your side? You know how hard it is to persuade anti-vaxxers to change their minds with condescension and outrage, and that sort of position actually has clearly persuasive data refuting it. Here we're talking about the economy, something at the edge of our epistemic limits, and I'm getting told I'm stupid for considering critiques 1, 2, 5, and 8 are onto something and worth discussing.

I understand that you think Caplan is an invidious, pernicious shit, but surely there are lots of really interesting theories as to why wages and productivity decoupled. And now I don't want to even bring them up because hubski is off limits for this stuff for fear of looking stupid to you.

    >Why do large group differences exist?

    Because "work" is a cultural construct and cultures differ.

Isn't that precisely Caplan's point? There are group productivity differences not because there's something wrong with black people--a statement nil imputes to Caplan--but because humans are wildly diverse in their preferences, preferences that are psychologically wired to be influenced by our cultural heritages and upbringing, and not because there is a compartmentalized racist shutting seven doors to African-Americans at Stuyvesant but opening four to Asian-Americans.





kleinbl00  ·  1716 days ago  ·  link  ·  

The anti-vax analogy is apt. There's an existing body of science that is entirely settled by everyone with any knowledge of the matter, yet a rogue opportunist runs a dishonest study with an n of 6 and all of a sudden we're spending billions re-proving what we already know so that things we beat back through great force of effort decades ago are suddenly infecting young idealists and their children.

You are in no way "forbidden from thinking these things." You are, however, entirely deserving of scorn for discarding all intellectual rigor, for accepting it all at face value, for failing to see the rhetorical sleight of hand that produces the framework they hang their ideology on. I haven't taken economics since 1994 and that was like a 200-level class. I've only taken one quarter of statistics. But I can see it's a bunch of assertions and cherry-picked data points simply because I've seen the preponderance of evidence which says the exact opposite of what they say and can find that evidence easily.

The difference is I'm looking. you're not.

Caplan does not withstand any sort of skeptical scrutiny whatsoever. He's the guy saying anthropocentric global warming is a myth because it snowed last winter. But so many people want to believe that they don't have to feel bad about Walmart workers making nothing that Bjorn Lomborg has a think tank.

Thing about the anti-vaxers? They have to Patreon this shit. AEI, just to use one easy example, has 250 people on staff and a budget of $55m. Think all you want but fucking think:

    Tenet #1: The main reason today’s workers have a decent standard of living is that government passed a bunch of laws protecting them.

    Critique: High worker productivity plus competition between employers is the real reason today’s workers have a decent standard of living. In fact, “pro-worker” laws have dire negative side effects for workers, especially unemployment.

Caplan's got two links in there but they're not links. They're just his syllabus, which contains no information that he didn't create. Meanwhile, he's arguing that "productivity" and "standard of living" are positively correlated. That's great. That's easy. I can do a google image search on that and find graphs that people who use actual numbers and actual data have assembled to examine this correlation and check it out:

The web is full of that graph, or that graph's friends, or that graph's cousins, and I can look at them all and see vetted, scientifically-collected, peer-reviewed data. Then I can go google "worker protections over time" and not do great, but I can know, because I'm a thinking human being, that what Caplan and his ilk mean when they say "worker protections" is "unions" and I can look up "union jobs over time" and I can see this graph and all its friends and all its cousins:

So where are we? I'm sure we'll argue whether "per capita income" isn't a direct correlation to "standard of living" and whether Caplan really meant "union participation" when he said "worker protections" because that's the mealy-mouthed shit think tanks like to do - "C02 concentration is not a perfect analog for global temperature increase" and the fact is, a bald-faced lie has just become a disputed fact because they asserted a bunch of horse shit and now we're dickering over what 'union participation' means. Meanwhile, before this bald-faced lie, you were sitting stuck like a patsy thinking that unions are good for workers like your father did and your father's father before him.

'member "truthiness"? The parody there is that sentiment is becoming "fact" because facts are inconvenient and unfashionable. Caplan and crew are what truthiness is all about - here you are, upset that we don't want you believing a bunch of groundless, harmful bullshit just because it happens to be demonstrably untrue.

Are you stupid for considering it? No. You're stupid for thinking you're "considering" it when you aren't. You're accepting it.

The anti-vax movement is an undiluted evil that has accomplished nothing but division and the outbreak of preventable diseases. It's also a social signifier that broadcasts allegiance to a certain set of values. I'll make you a deal - I'll read your Caplan book as soon as you read The Curse of Bigness and gimme a book report. 'cuz I saw that, too - you take an anti-vax parent and you let them see what being anti-vax means on a practical level and before too long, they're scheduling an MMR. Been there, done that, charged $40 a head.

I'n'I be studying the Belle Epoque. In particular, the jewelry of the era and the people it was made for. And you know what? If you were shopping at Cartier in 1910, Upton Sinclair was a rabble-rousing peasant, your world was one of diamonds and platinum. And if you looked at the world in a truthy way, it always would be...

...and may well be again.