I saw a woman on Stossel tonight who works for McDonald's. She said she was paid $8 an hour, but felt she deserved $15. I thought: Wait a minute, McDonald's isn't the only company not paying you $15 an hour: neither you nor I are aware of anyone willing to pay you that much. So why is your problem with McDonald's?

This is what a friend on Facebook, John T. Kennedy, wrote. It makes a good point. The woman felt or thought that she deserved $15 an hour. But Kennedy's point is: Why single out McDonald's? Indeed, there's a presumption that McDonald's is paying her more than anyone else would. Why? Because if someone else would pay more, she would likely be working for someone else. Or, it's possible that someone else would pay more, but she likes McDonald's because the job is better, on a non-wage dimension, than that other higher-paying job. In short, she's in the best place she can find.

McDonald's is giving her a better deal than anyone else is offering. So her beef, so to speak, is with the very company that's giving her the best deal!

In blaming McDonald's rather than other firms, she is kind of like the minister who, on Sunday morning, expresses his anger at his congregation for poor attendance.

This doesn't quite match the U.S. Olympic swim team version, but it's not bad. Check out Greg Mankiw boogeying at about the 3:00 point. Go Greg!

Often over the last few years, President Obama has blamed the Bush cuts for a large part of the deficit. He's right. But he often gave the impression that they went primarily to "the rich." Of course, he didn't mean the rich; he meant high-income people, which is not always the same. Many of his supporters played along and one of them was Paul Krugman. I'm not saying that Paul Krugman ever lied or even said anything untrue about this issue (although he may have), but he, like Obama, left the impression that "the rich" got most, or at least a disproportionate share, of the overall Bush tax cut.

Many critics of the Bush tax cuts actually did make the claim that the taxes of high-income people (aka incorrectly as "the rich") fell by a higher percent than the taxes of low-income people.

Here's what I wrote in a review of Alexander J. Field's excellent book, A Great Leap Forward: 1930s Depression and U.S. Economic Growth, about Field's mistaken reading of the Bush tax cuts:

Field also drops his careful methodology in addressing George W. Bush's tax policy. Field writes that Bush's 2001 tax cuts "allowed disproportionate reductions in taxes to upper-income households." The author seems to imply disproportionately high, and he confirmed in an e-mail that this is what he means. In fact, though, for all the Bush tax cuts (in 2001, 2002, and 2003) combined, the percentage reduction in taxes for upper-income households was less than the percentage reduction for lower-income households. The second-lowest quintile, for example, had its taxes cut by 17.6 percent whereas the highest quintile had its taxes cut by about 11 percent. I don't have data for the 2001 tax cut alone, which is what Field's claim is about. But because the 2002 and 2003 tax cuts were aimed disproportionately at high-income people, it follows that the 2001 cut alone had to have been even more tilted to lower-income people than the above percentages suggest.

Why do so many people, including Field, think differently about this important issue? My guess is that it's because the media emphasized the absolute size of the tax cuts that higher-income people got. In a progressive tax system, with higher marginal tax rates for higher incomes, a given percentage tax cut will cut taxes of the people who pay a lot in taxes much more than it cuts taxes for people who pay only a little.

Finally, it's nice, although a little late in the game, to see Krugman explicitly say that only "a small piece" of the Bush tax cuts was for high-income people. It's at about the 7:05 point of this video.

Last spring I asked EconLog readers about the obviousness of on-the-job incompetence.  Most people thought incompetence was very obvious indeed.  It turns out that this view is widespread.  The General Social Survey asks:

In your job how easy is it for you to see whether your co-workers are working well or poorly? On a scale of 0 to 10 please describe with 0 meaning not at all easy to see and 10 meaning very easy to see.

The distribution of responses:

I'm looking for research on the extent to which people make useful career connections in school - high school, college, grad school, whatever.  My sense is that the economy is so big and diverse that people rarely (a) end up working with their former schoolmates, or (b) get jobs through their teachers or professors, but I'm having trouble finding evidence one way or the other.

If you know of anything I should read, please tell me in the comments.

Derek Khanna, the author of the important policy brief on the excesses of copyright law, has been fired by the Republican Study Committee. The brief, which the RSC pulled from their website, is here. From the Examiner: 

The staffer who wrote the memo, an ambitious 24-year-old named Derek Khanna, was fired -- even before the RSC had decided on other staffing changes for the upcoming Congress. The copyright memo was a main reason.

Rising star Derek Khanna wrote a heralded paper on intellectual property rights for the House Republican Study Committee that was withdrawn by higher-ups in the party, presumably because it differed from the usual lobbyist-driven position.

Brooks continued: 

Since Nov. 6, the G.O.P. has experienced an epidemic of open-mindedness. The party may evolve quickly. If so, it'll be powerfully influenced by people with names like Reihan, Ramesh, Yuval and Derek Khanna.

More on decadent parenting from the intro of Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids:

---

To be brutally honest, we're reluctant to have more children because we think that the pain outweighs the gain. When people compare the grief that another child would give them to the joy that the child would bring, they conclude that it's just not worth it. As Bill Cosby put it, "The reason we have five children is because we do not want six."

You could easily call this a very selfish outlook. How can you focus exclusively on whether another child would make you happier? What about the child? Unless your baby is truly unlucky, he will almost certainly be happy to be alive. Aren't you? This is your child we're talking about. If you have to make yourself a little less happy in order to give a son or daughter the gift of life, shouldn't you? The question is serious, but I'm going to dodge it. While I accept
the natalist view that more births should be encouraged because they make the world a better place, asking others to sacrifice their happiness for the good of the world seems futile. Preaching against selfishness is usually about as productive as nagging a brick wall.

---

More from the conclusion:

---

I don't deny that some parents immiserate themselves for their children's sake. What I reject is the widely shared assumption that conflict between kids and happiness is unavoidable. It's natural for anti-natalists to equate the first couple of kids with servitude--and any more with slavery. What amazes me is how readily natalists agree. You'd expect them to downplay parental misery. Instead, most race to concede its inevitability--and tell us to be less calculating and selfish.

At least to my ears, natalists' pleas against prudence are pretty lame. Arguing against foresight with a straight face isn't easy. Imagine the public service campaign: "You think too much. Just have a baby." Appeals to duty are less laughable: "Your parents sacrificed their happiness to have you. Now it's your turn." But aspiring grandparents have tried guilt since the dawn of man. It's hard to imagine that strangers' nagging will succeed where relatives' nagging failed. The child-free don't want to sacrifice their lifestyles, and parents feel like they've already sacrificed enough.

This book takes a different approach. I don't defend acting on impulse; I'm a big fan of planning ahead. I don't preach a duty to be fruitful and multiply; I expect sermons to fall on deaf ears. Instead, I appeal to enlightened self-interest. While kids can make their parents unhappy, the choice between kids and happiness is largely self-imposed. My goal isn't to attack consumerism and individualism but to join forces with them--to show that kids are a better deal than they seem.

Garett's main point - air travel terrorism has enormous social costs counting the effect on foreign policy - is clearly correct.  The straightforward implication: Mildly reducing the risk of terrorism with major inconvenience for air travelers easily passes a cost/benefit test.

However, none of this argues in favor of mere security theater - like making sure people's tickets match their I.D.  In fact, Garett's point is an powerful argument against security theater.  First, security theater is a waste of resources that could be reallocated to actually reducing the risk of terrorism.  Second, and more importantly, security theater probably increases public resentment against all airport security. 

Closing question: I'd be curious how far Garett would take his argument.  Couldn't terrorist attacks on trains, malls, sporting events, or bridges also have massively bad effects on foreign policy?  How expansive and pervasive would a global utilitarian's security measures be?

...I'd probably push for an incredibly stringent anti-hijacker policy.  After all, the last time a few individuals hijacked U.S. planes, it genuinely caused a war in Afghanistan and substantially raised the probability of a war in Iraq.  Massive loss of civilian life in both countries as a result.  

The U.S. birthrate is falling, and Ross Douthat largely blames decadence:

[W]hile the burdens on modern parents are real and considerable and in certain ways increasing, people in developed societies enjoy a standard of living unprecedented in human history, and the sacrifices required of would-be parents in America or South Korea or Germany do not undo their immense material advantages over their parents and grandparents and great-great grandparents going back millennia upon millennia. Once you've acknowledged that (fairly obvious) point, then you're acknowledging that people in rich countries who forgo or limit their childrearing aren't all just responding in inevitable ways "to the situation that actually exists"... Some are, yes. But others -- many millions of others, in Europe and North America and Asia -- are actively creating their own situations, and deciding that children (or more than one child, or more than two) don't fit with their ambitions or desires or preferred consumption patterns.

And you shouldn't be decadent:

if children are not the only good in human life, they do seem like a fairly important one, no? Maybe even, dare one say, an essential one, at least in some quantity, if the pursuit of the wider array of human goods is to continue beyond our own life cycle? Or to put it another way, if we have moral obligations to future, as-yet-unborn generations, as almost everyone seems to agree, surely those duties have to include some obligation for somebody to bring those generations into existence in the first place -- to imitate the sacrifices that our parents made, and give another generation the chances that we've had?

Very eloquent, but I've still got to say: With friends like this, natalism doesn't need enemies.  I doubt Douthat is going to guilt anyone into having more kids.  But even if he did, how many fence-sitters is he frightening off with all this talk of sacrifice, frustrated ambitions, and moral obligations to the yet-unborn?

I'm a natalist too, and I practice what I preach.  But as I argue in Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids, the main modern enemy of fertility isn't "decadence"; it's overparenting and the misconceptions about nature and nature that underlie it.  Modern parents falsely believe that upbringing has a large effect on adult outcomes.  As a result, they focus on "investing" in their kids' future - and turn parenting into an unpleasant chore.

Instead of handing out another helping of guilt, natalists should try to deflate the guilt that so many people already shoulder.  Natalists should share the good news from twin and adoption research: The long-run effects of vaguely normal parenting styles are roughly equal, so vaguely normal parents should focus on enjoying the journey instead of constantly fretting if they're raising their kids right.  Natalists should celebrate the incredible safety children in modern societies enjoy, endless scary media anecdotes notwithstanding.  Natalists should hail the many undersung positive externalities of population growth to counterbalance misanthropic nay-saying. 

Above all, natalists should try to make kids fun again.  Forget doom and gloom.  Sharing the wonder of life with your many descendents is inherently exciting.  I savor it.  You might even call the experience... decadent.



[Valeria Caplan, my youngest.]

Greg Mankiw's rarely-offered financial advice has put me in a mild panic:

[I]n light of the fiscal situation we are facing, I will pass along one tidbit.  Consider converting some of your retirement savings into a Roth IRA. Over the past few years, I have converted all that I can, which is about half of my retirement savings.

The last time I investigated this, I couldn't take advantage of the Roth conversion because only 401k, 403b, and 457 plans from previous employers were eligible.  Since GMU econ has been my only real job, I seemed to be out of luck.  However, the law changed in 2010, and reading the most recent google hits, I still can't quite figure out if people in my situation remain ineligible.

Mankiw's ability to take advantage of the Roth conversion amplifies my doubt.  Unless he quit Harvard to work at the CEA, hasn't Mankiw been with the same employer even longer than me?

If you know the definitive answer, please share it, with references.

Pillar #10 of my "Ten Pillars of Economic Wisdom" is:

Competition is a hardy weed, not a delicate flower.

I thought of that when I read Steven Denning's recent article on the recent bankruptcy of Monitor. It's titled, "What Killed Michael Porter's Monitor Group? The One Force That Really Matters." The most-relevant paragraph:

There was just one snag. What was the intellectual basis of this now vast enterprise of locating sustainable competitive advantage? As Stewart notes, it was "lacking any foundation in fact or logic." Except where generated by government regulation, sustainable competitive advantage simply doesn't exist.

I have a close-to-personal interest in Monitor, by the way. When Monitor went bankrupt last month, one of my closest friends, a retired Monitor employee, lost one third of his net worth. I'm amazed at, and proud of, how clearly my friend is thinking and acting and how little he is playing "ain't it awful?"

Trick question: None, zero, zilch.  By law, Fannie and Freddie can't originate loans--they can only buy or guarantee loans that have already been made by actors in the private sector.  This is no small point, but it's a point that Zandi leaves blurry at best in his book Paying the Price which I reviewed for Barron's here ($ probably).  Here's a key graph from the first few pages of the book: 

Over at Open Borders, Nathan Smith shares his preliminary immigration policy empirics from the World Values Survey.  Out of 48 countries surveyed, the people of Vietnam (?!) favor the fewest restrictions on immigration, and the people of Malaysia favor the most.  The people of the U.S. come in 32rd, with 7% saying "let anyone come," 37% favoring immigration "as long as jobs are available," 49% favoring "strict limits," and 8% advocating "prohibition."

Weirdest result: The most pro-immigration religion, by a wide margin, is ancestor worship.  I wonder if this just reflects a small-N, or if it would hold up in a multiple regression...

Read the whole thing.

A Confederacy of Dunces' unemployed anti-hero, Ignatius Reilly, explores the tension between the school ethic and the work ethic in a conversation with his long-suffering mother:

"I doubt very seriously whether anyone will hire me."

"What do you mean, babe? You a fine boy with a good education."

"Employers sense in me a denial of their values." He rolled over onto his back. "They fear me. I suspect that they can see that I am forced to function in a century I loathe. This was true even when I worked for the New Orleans Public Library."

"But, Ignatius, that was the only time you worked since you got out of college, and you was only there for two weeks."

"That is exactly what I mean," Ignatius replied, aiming a paper ball at the bowl of the milk glass chandelier.

"All you did was paste them little slips in the books."

"Yes, but I had my own esthetic about pasting those slips."

P.S. One recruiting blog's take on Reilly.

As the late Professor Olson might have observed, the popcorn subsidy will likely become fiscal law because almost no one, other than the popcorn growers, will notice. Being a small lot, they have all the incentive they need to lobby their members of Congress to do their bidding. The general public will have no incentive even to know the subsidy is in the works, much less to incur the costs to oppose its enactment.

This is from "Popcorn As Political Pork," by Richard B. McKenzie. It is one of the two December Econlib Feature Articles.

This next excerpt applies Tullock's famous "transitional gains trap" insight:

Moreover, the beneficial effects of subsidies for farmers are not likely to be long lasting. As public choice economist Gordon Tullock argued nearly forty years ago, any net gains that farmers receive from subsidies will likely be largely (if not fully) captured in higher prices of farmers' resource inputs, primarily fixed assets, for example, land. If there are net gains to farmers from any farm program, the price of farm property will rise along with demand, with those higher prices feeding into higher cost structures for farmers, which will be fully evident to people who seek to become farmers after the subsidies. The farmers who are in business when the subsidies are instituted will be the prime beneficiaries, since their property rises in value. New entrants to farming will have to pay prices for land and other assets that reflect the stream of anticipated net government benefits going into the relevant future.

Once the subsidies have been fully capitalized, Tullock argued, government policy makers will be effectively "trapped" in maintaining subsidies, or even increasing them if succeeding generations of farmers are to garner any net gains. If policy makers try to cut the subsidies, they will face the howls of existing farmers who paid good money for their farms in anticipation of the stream of subsidies being maintained into the future.

Scott Sumner has posted an interesting story about his trip to Washington last week. Some highlights along with my comments in square brackets:

6. During the day I attended a bunch of foreign policy panels. It was interesting to see what these are like, although I can't really process foreign policy discussion very well. It seems like lots of words, without clear meaning. I couldn't tell you why we [sic] intervened in Libya and not Syria, except I gather that it's complicated. There doesn't seem to be a model, but then maybe there can't be a model-I certainly don't have any suggestions. [I do, by the way, as people who have read some of my www.antiwar.com columns know. It has to do with using the same kinds of analyses of dispersed information and unintended consequences that many of us economists use to analyze domestic economic policy. For more on why I put [sic] after Scott's "we," read this and this.]

7. My favorite speaker was Google's Sebastian Thune, who remarked that California was wasting a fortune on a train that would connect two obscure Central Valley towns in 2020, by which time self-driving cars would be more energy efficient (and convenient) than high speed rail. His friend remarked that in-vitro meat could cut agricultural greenhouse emissions by 95%. (I doubt it.) Both seemed to think policymakers in Washington were clueless about technology.

8. Hillary Clinton is an impressive speaker, but not likable. I have nothing to say about her views on foreign policy. But in response to a final question on drugs (from a Latin American reporter), she said drug legalization would do no good because drug dealers are really bad people, and they would simply do other crimes. No discussion of how America's murder rate fell in half after alcohol was legalized in 1933. I think she'd be even worse (from a libertarian perspective) than Obama-and that's an already low bar for a Democrat.

9. Before she entered the room there was a hushed feeling, like the President was about to appear. People in Washington seem to worship power.

I noticed this last, worshipping power, my first day as a White House intern when I was 22. Here's an excerpt from "A Tour of Washington," a chapter in my book, The Joy of Freedom: An Economist's Odyssey:

During the summer of 1973, I had been hired as a summer intern by the Council of Economic Advisers. The president at the time was Richard Nixon. I had applied a few months earlier, and although my professors had supported me with reference letters, two of them had made snide comments about my timing--I would be going to the White House at the peak of the Watergate scandal. One professor pointed out that most rats try to get off a sinking ship, but I was like a rat trying to get on. Their lack of support made me feel very lonely. Later I understood that their attitude wasn't about me, but about their contempt toward Nixon.
I was feeling vulnerable at the time, with no support from my professors and with very little money in the bank. With my last few hundred dollars, I purchased an airline ticket to Washington, D.C. and off I went. After a long red-eye flight, I finally arrived in downtown D.C. As I exited the cab and turned around to look at the Old Executive Office Building (OEOB), I was shocked to see a huge red flag with a hammer and sickle above the OEOB. Maybe it was jet lag, or maybe it was the fact that I had slept less than an hour on the plane, but I felt a second of absolute terror, thinking that the Soviets had taken over Washington in the middle of the night. I saw people around me walking normally as if nothing unusual had happened, dismissed my immediate paranoid thought about The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and realized that the Soviets hadn't invaded. While I waited in the front waiting room of the OEOB to be let past the Secret Service agents, I asked one of them what the Soviet flag was there for. He answered, in an officious, self-important tone that I was to hear lots of--in every possible accent, from people at every possible level, on every day I was to be in Washington--that Soviet leader Brezhnev was visiting and that this was done to welcome him. Some welcome, I thought. I wondered which of the world's other tyrants would get such a welcome. I found out later that summer. When the Shah of Iran visited, sure enough, a huge green Iranian flag flew over the Old Executive Office Building. I learned, talking to the various secretaries and economists I met that day,that no one found it odd. Here was Brezhnev, who represented a government that had murdered tens of millions of people, more than Hitler's government had, and had never openly admitted it, let alone apologized for it, and people were matter-of-factly accepting that government's flag. Maybe there was something to my thought of the body snatchers after all. I knew literally from day one of my time in Washington that this was a strange place.

My latest book review for Barron's is here ($, probably).  Zandi's Paying the Price adds some value; this post excerpts some positive parts of the review:

"Regulatory, legal, and policy uncertainty was holding business back." That's author Mark Zandi, Moody's Analytics chief economist and CNBC-TV commentator, describing the economy in 2012. Uncertainty over the fiscal cliff, the implementation of Dodd-Frank regulation of the banking sector, the Affordable Care Act--Zandi says all these forces of uncertainty are restraining growth....

[Zandi's] firm, Moody's Analytics, advised top banks during the bank stress tests of 2009....He says the tests "seemed a gimmick to me until I heard the loud screaming from the bank executives"...

There's a lesson here, one that Europe's wimpier stress tests didn't take to heart: When it comes to capital ratios, if the executives of the too-big-to-fail banks aren't screaming, you're probably not doing it right....

Contrary to the claims of some, you don't end bank bailouts forever by passing a law that ends bank bailouts forever. As we saw in 2008, if you're against bailouts on 99.999% of the days and in favor of bailouts on 0.001% of the days, you're basically in favor of bailouts. 

FHFA-OIG found that the number of Fannie Mae's variances - and in effect its underwriting standards - have fluctuated substantially over time.  For example, in 2005 when standards were loose, Fannie Mae authorized over 11,000 variances.  Between January 2005 and August 2007, Fannie Mae began rescinding variances, which tightened underwriting standards.

Almost ten years ago, philosopher Roderick Long wrote an uncommonly wise piece on political correctness.  The opening commands my instant assent:

There are two ways of letting political correctness control your mind.

One is to reject viewpoints, not because they're false, but because they're politically incorrect.

The other is to embrace viewpoints, not because they're true, but because they're politically incorrect.

We libertarians are seldom guilty of the first mistake. But we are often guilty of the second. Those who commit the second mistake are as much slaves of political correctness as those who commit the first.

At an academic reception I once saw a libertarian introduce himself to a female professor with the winning line: "Are you a feminist? I hate feminists." Libertarians describe the PC crowd as hypersensitive and too easily offended. The charge is often valid. But being hyperinsensitive, and too easily offensive, is no improvement.

Long then applies these insights, offering a series of thoughtful arguments.  Despite the merits of his arguments, however, I think his conclusions are largely mistaken.  Let's go through them one by one. 

Rod:

For example, because it's politically correct to attribute gender differences primarily to cultural rather than to genetic factors, many of us seem to revel in embracing the opposite position. That this rush to sociobiology is often motivated more by emotional than by intellectual factors is suggested by the fact that in arguing for such positions, libertarians will often permit themselves the kind of sloppiness they would rightly excoriate in, say, economic discussions.

Rod then offers two strong examples:

For example, I've heard libertarians argue: "Psychological differences between men and women have neurophysiological correlates, so such differences must be genetically rather than culturally based." Does this mean that acquired psychological traits, unlike innate ones, don't have neurophysiological correlates?

As a Szaszian, I have to agree with Rod: Neurophysiological correlation, though often invoked, proves nothing.  At the same time, however, it is easy to improve this argument.  Instead of pointing to mere correlations, innatists can (and do) emphasize that the correlations appear early in life before culture could plausibly have much effect.  Indeed, the correlations appear prenatally.

Rod continues:

Here's another: "If full sexual equality is possible, desirable, and consistent with human nature, how come no society in human history has ever achieved it?" Try substituting "libertarian freedom" for "sexual equality" in that sentence to see why it's an awkward argument for our camp to be espousing.

Once again, Rod's right.  This is a silly argument for libertarians of all people to make.  Yet this argument too is easy to improve.  If you're looking for signs that a radical change is realistic, focusing on its full achievement in an entire society is silly.  Radical change fails to meet this standard almost by definition.  Yet some radical changes have turned out to be entirely realistic.

If you're looking for signs that a radical change is realistic, you should focus on actually-existing precursors.  Check and see if the radical change has been approximated in some notable social niches. 

By this more reasonable standard, sexual equality still does poorly, and libertarian freedom does quite well.  Even staunch feminists typically treat men and women very differently.  At minimum, they use statistical discrimination when they weigh the chance that a man will be a violent criminal, or a woman will be a good babysitter.  On the other hand, as libertarians often point out, even staunch statists respect person and property in their daily lives.  They merely refuse to hold governments to their ordinary moral standards.

Rod goes on:

Libertarians -- including, sadly, many so-called libertarian or individualist feminists -- have been quick to embrace Christina Hoff Sommers' distinction between innocuous "liberal feminism" and scary "gender feminism." Liberal feminism accepts the institutions and practices of our society more or less as they are, and argues only for a more equal role for women within those institutions and practices. For gender feminism, by contrast, the institutions and practices of our society are deeply shaped by a socially constructed patriarchal order that systematically reinforces the disempowerment of women; hence such institutions and practices must be reformed in radical ways before equality can be achieved.

Well, gee. If those are my choices then hell yes, I'm a gender feminist!

I wish Rod had considered another choice: that gender equality is no more morally required than a 0% interest rate on loans.  At risk of sounding unromantic, gender relations are basically a barter market.  Men compete for women, women compete for men.  If there happens to be a high male/female ratio, terms will be unequal in women's favor; if there happens to be a low male/female ratio, terms will be unequal in men's favor.  The same goes for the countless other factors that shift supply and demand.  For example, if male-dominated hobbies like videogames became more fun, demand for women (a.k.a. supply of men) falls, and women typically get a worse deal in their relationships.

Non-libertarians will be tempted to dismiss this as an amoral perspective, but libertarians know better.  You can simultaneously morally defer to the price set by supply and demand and morally insist that people honor their agreements in letter and spirit.  (Of course, it's logically possible for a libertarian to advocate voluntary gender equality, just as it's logically possible for a libertarian to advocate a voluntary 0% interest rate.  But once you internalize basic supply and demand, it's hard to see why one market price is any "fairer" than another.  If you object that the status quo isn't a free market, see my previous exchange with Rod on this general point).

Rod continues:

It is of course quite true, as libertarians charge, that a) many gender feminists have taken this idea to absurd extremes, and likewise that b) the solutions for which gender feminists call typically involve an increase in state violence. But with regard to (a), there's no position so reasonable that it hasn't had proponents who've defended it in absurd or extreme forms. (Some libertarians, e.g., profess to find the constraints of deductive logic "coercive.") And as for (b), outside libertarian circles nearly everyone tends to appeal to state violence as the solution to any given problem. That gender feminists' proposed solutions are unacceptable to us does not show that they have not identified any important problems.

Rod is wise as usual.  But it's easy to fix the arguments Rod is criticizing.  Here's where I'd start: I don't see that women in modern First World countries receive worse overall treatment than men.  In fact, people take male suffering less seriously than female suffering.  Consider the endless jokes about male prison rape.  Furthermore, existing First World law generally favors women in both the labor market (e.g. discrimination and sexual harassment law) and the marriage market (e.g. child support and child custody). 

Next, Rod switches topics:

Another issue that inflames many libertarians against political correctness is the issue of speech codes on campuses. Yes, many speech codes are daft. But should people really enjoy exactly the same freedom of speech on university property that they would rightfully enjoy on their own property? Why, exactly?

If the answer is that the purposes of a university are best served by an atmosphere of free exchange of ideas -- is there no validity to the claim that certain kinds of speech might tend, through an intimidating effect, to undermine just such an atmosphere?

Fair point.  But what does this have to do with actually-existing speech codes at American universities?  Does Rod really doubt that the main point is to discourage criticism of the orthodox left-wing views that university professors really do heavily favor?

Or if the answer is that universities, as recipients of tax-supported funds, are representing the public and must therefore administer those funds in a nondiscriminatory manner -- does that mean that welfare recipients, too, must be prevented from spending their relief checks in a discriminatory manner? If taxation is theft, as we claim to believe, it's hard to see how tax funds for universities with speech codes are a worse violation of rights than tax funds for universities without speech codes. The real problem is that universities are being funded by extortion at all.

Question for Rod: Suppose the government could use tax funds to (a) feed orphans, or (b) pay farmers to destroy their crops, driving up the price of food.  (a) and (b) both violate taxpayers' rights.  But (b) is much worse, because consequences matter, too.  Why not say the same about using tax funds to (a) foster an open discussion of ideas, or (b) leftist indoctrination?

Rod concludes:

Is it not true that the contributions of women, minorities, and nonwestern cultures have traditionally been marginalised and excluded? One needn't want to give George Washington Carver more pages in the history textbooks than George Washington to agree that the PC folks are on to something here. And look at the anti-Muslim, pro-war hysteria that's sweeping the country these days. The PC crowd, bless 'em, are certainly on the right side of that one. Libertarians should regard the PC crowd the way we regard conservatives: as potential allies. Often infuriating and wrongheaded potential allies -- but nonetheless people to cultivate, not to insult.

On the marginalization/exclusion point, I agree in moderation.  The same goes on the pro-war hysteria; the left was noticeably better until they regained the presidency.  On the last point, I agree with Rod emphatically.  He's a model of the friendly libertarianism that I preach and try to practice.

UPDATE: I was wondering if anyone would catch the contradiction between what David says at about the 2:00 point and what he says at about the 5:30 point. Apparently no one did or at least no one who did bothered to comment. It's a mild contradiction but, nevertheless, is one.

"Producing laws is not an easier problem than producing cars or food," says David Friedman, author, philosopher, and professor at Santa Clara University. "So if the government's incompetent to produce cars or food, why do you expect it to do a good job producing the legal system within which you are then going to produce the cars and the food?"

Here's David, with permission from Reason.tv.