Disqus - Latest Comments for DWAnderson

Re: My Personal Windows 7 Upgrade Experience

DWAnderson — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:13:16 -0000

I upgraded 6 PCs at our house from Vista to Windwos 7. All upgrades went smoothly: five in-place upgrades and one from Vista Ultimate to Windows 7 Pro that required a reformat and reinstall. Details of the upgrade to our Media Center PC are here: http://thunor.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!71C238B5... All but the latter were completed in about two hours each.

Re: Unholy Trinity

DWAnderson — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 11:52:02 -0000

I think the main reason my scenario is flawed has to do with the magnitude of soem of the effects I have posited, e.g. (as simon alludes to) if fines are high enough (although it is hard to see how they could exceed the cost of coverage and be politically paletable) people will just get even really expensive insurance that would now seem like a bad deal.

What is interesting to me about my scenario is that the practical effects of a given "reform" plan have more to do with things like the magnitude of fines and other smaller features than the features of the system that much of the debate focusses on. But perhaps that is inevitable with 1000+ page bills.

Re: Unholy Trinity

DWAnderson — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 16:56:27 -0000

All this depends on the magnitude of the various incentives of course, but here's a best case scenario: insurance becomes so expensive that no one purchases it until they have a catastrophic illness, but everyone who has such an illness is able to and purchases the insurance for the duration of the illness. Everyone else becomes uninsured and ends up paying the fines to be uninsured. The net result is a system where all insurance becomes defacto catastophic coverage and people pay for most medical costs out of their own pocket. The fines serve to subsidize this catastophic insurance. The high cost of insurance effectively acts as a deductible. So you end up with some redistribution to pay for guaranteed catastophic care, but the end of insurance as a means to pay for less than catastrophic conditions.

This seems like a pretty decent result. Where is my scenario flawed.

Re: Learning from Milton Friedman’s Rhetoric

DWAnderson — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 17:12:33 -0000

The distinction Friedman and "conservatives today" is really one between academics and politicians. I'm sure there (i) were plenty of rude conservatives invested in political outcomes at the time of this talk and (ii) are now plenty of academic conservatives who speak similarly persuasively now.

Re: Urban[ism] Legend: Gas Taxes and Fees Cover All Costs of Road Use

DWAnderson — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 18:25:56 -0000

I'm all for more market oriented transportation, but is there any evidence or calculations that show roads to be the least subsidized form of transportation? This doesn't mean we shouldn't use more market mechanisms, merely that we shouldn't be surprised if the results in a more market based world were at least as car-centric as those in the current one.

With respect to a couple of specific points:

First, you raise some interesting negative externalities of highways that are not included in cost discussions, but there are also positive externalities (e.g. more commerce). Is there any strong reason to believe either of these effects dominates?

Second, your use of opportunity costs with respect to tax revenue is one that as best is not unique to transportation, but rather is an argument that the economic cost of taxes always exceeds the nominal amount of such taxes-- even apart from any efficiency losses with respect to the activity/item being taxed. It is probably correct, but it is hard to measure the effect of this loss because the subsidzied project might generate value in excess of the nominal cost. This is unlikely to be true overall given all of the ways in which government resource allocation is inferior to private resource allocation, but I think your post overstates the negative effect rhetorically by not mentioning the value that projects might have in excess of their costs.

Given that this seems like a hard area in which to make calculations, I guess I am nore inclined than you to cut Randal O'Toole some slack.

Re: The Gender Politics of Mad Men

DWAnderson — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 15:01:59 -0000

Re Ken, I'm not sure Ken is naive, but he does seem like an optimist.

Re Cooper, he doesn't seem befuddled so much as disarmingly wise, but I grant you we really don't know whether he is happy.

Re Don, he definitely has some strange characteristics, but I can't decide if that make him unrealistic of just unusual.

Re: The Gender Politics of Mad Men

DWAnderson — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 12:06:05 -0000

Nice post. A few thoughts:

I don't think Micha is correct that nobody is happy on the show. How about Burt Cooper and Ken Cosgrove?

I see Don as being comfortable with Peggy for a less abstract reason: because she is really competent (and discreet). Don also seems to have a greater capacity for self-examinination and change that I suspect would prevent Peggy from threatening Don in the sense you describe. Nevertheless your explanation of Don is also a plausible one.

That, BTW is why I think that the show really is centered on Don: he's such an interesting character. People identify with him (at least in part), but he's really hard to understand definitively.

Re: Housing, Transportation, and the Politics of Path Dependency

DWAnderson — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 11:12:32 -0000

I agree that zoning has probably led to sub-optimal land use in the suburbs, but it is hard to believe eliminating zoning would eliminate sprawl, see, e.g. Houston where there are private alternatives to zoning.

The subsidies to cars are greatly exagerated and are far lower than any other form of transportation, see, e.g. Randal O'Toole's work on this subject at http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2007/03/19/ten-b...

Re: Poisoned Well of Blood Guilt by Association: A Very Special Full Disclosure

DWAnderson — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 16:20:30 -0000

Was that intentionally ironic?

Re: More on Declining Marginal Utility: Reply to Yglesias and Clarke

DWAnderson — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 17:19:37 -0000

Excellent post until the last paragraph: Wouldn't Matt prefer cutting defense as a means to finance a new program, but argue that it is not in the set of politically feasible solutions?

Re: Response to Jonathan Chait on Inequality

DWAnderson — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 15:54:45 -0000

The response is that where inequlaity is correlated with other problems it is a symptom of other, deeper problems rather than a cause of the problems. Better to address the deeper problems that worry about the inequality, which is probably unimportant in and of itself.

Re: Classical Liberalism Is Not Colorblind

DWAnderson — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 10:24:51 -0000

Isn't this post just an attempt to win the top Hayekian Public Intellectual contest, by attacking the competition?

Re: The Meaning Dodge

DWAnderson — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 13:28:44 -0000

It is an argument not a bet. If one were to bet, they might discount based on p<1 of the argument being valid, but why do that in ordinary discourse, especially when (i) it's hard to quantify what you think p might be, and (ii) it doesn't affect the validity of the argument.

Re: Hello? Excuse Me! Brrrring… Anybody Home?

DWAnderson — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 16:02:13 -0000

I think Will is right that Obama risks looking bad for not doing more with respect to things like Treasury appointments if things get worse. But it is hard for me to believe that anything Obama, might actually do would help matters, so it is hard for me to get excited about it. I can think of good things someone might do, e,g. a two-year regulatory holiday, payroll tax cuts that might do some good, but these are not within the realm of options being considered by this administration.

I suspect that Obama really believes that the economy will eventually recover fully on its own and is willing to sacrifice it taking an extra year or so to entrench his other policy priorities that are more important to him than economic growth.

Re: Hungry for Howley? Try Slate’s XX Factor!

DWAnderson — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 15:50:28 -0000

I thought this post was pretty funny. My wife thought it was a bad precedent to set while still engaged.

Re: Let’s Keep Our Eye On the Ball

DWAnderson — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:51:06 -0000

I don't really understand your metaphors, but I don't deny that there is deleveraging going on. I just deny that it is inherently a bad thing. There is less credit now because the prior level of lending was based on asset values (e.g. real estate and corporate assets) that have turned out to be out of whack with current views of the values of those assets. That is the main reason there is less lending, not problems inherent in the banking system itself (at least not after $700 billion in TARP).

Of course, this is just my hypothesis, so I'm interested in hearing contrary evidence.

I also don't claim that the banking system is perfect and in great shape, just that any problems it has are far less responsible for our current situation than a big change in asset values.

Re: Let’s Keep Our Eye On the Ball

DWAnderson — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 13:55:03 -0000

I don't think there is that much evidence that this is currently a banking crisis. Rather this seems to a deep recession caused by the sudden realization that we are 5-10 trillion dollars poorer than we thought we were (given the declines in real estate and stock prices). Problems with banks seem to be more a symptom than a cause of the crisis.

That beiing said, it would be nice if the government tried to to encourage the entrepreneurial activity that will pull us out of the recession instead of discouraging it by (i) constantly changing the rules, and (ii) making currying political favor a key element of success (e.g. by handing out trillions of dollars in various ways).

Re: What Policy Can Do for Growth and What Politics Won’t

DWAnderson — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 12:54:22 -0000

Matt thinks entrepreneurship is an empty business buzzword, but it is in fact the foundation of economic growth.

This is the critical insight that is missing from the vast majority of the discussion of US economic problems in the media.

Re: The Obama Budget

DWAnderson — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 17:29:05 -0000

Good luck with that! Why would higher tax rates and a larger governmental role produce more stability as opposed to a more corporatist bent to economic life-- leaving people subject to the caprice of their government.-- hardly a stable and predictable system.

Re: The Obama Budget

DWAnderson — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 17:24:52 -0000

Not just Larry Summers. If you are trying to get as little government induced interference in peoples decision to consume or save income, the rate is 0% for reasons that I can't easily explain in a short reply, but this is a mathematical truth.

The problem's that arise with a 0% CG rate are more practical: they create a huge incentive to try to reclassify ordinary income as capital gains and eat up a bunch of resources in doing so.

Re: The Structural Inequality Lobby

DWAnderson — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 17:15:13 -0000

True it has been arond for a while, but data keeps accumulating, so there is some hope.

Re: The Incoherent Obama

DWAnderson — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 17:12:38 -0000

I thought Matt's piece was excellent. Obama voices many general aspirations that almost everyone agrees with, but more his specific points reflect an unrelective acceptance of Democratic orthodoxy that take no account of compelling facts and arguments to the contrary.

Re: Big Government Libertarianism vs. Limited Government Liberalism

DWAnderson — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 22:09:36 -0000

I am all for the "the liberaltarian argument/strategy" but I think its proponents need to realize that there are some potentially large impediments to its success at the base level of values (that most modern liberals hold at some level) that proponents of the strategy should be realistic about.

BTW, I don't think there is necessarly tension between these values even though they may push in different directions in different circumstances. That just means their proponents need a to develop a more nuanced theory to describe how you resolve the conflicts. (But the resolution may not be to the liking of the libertarian!)

I should also point out that those of us reading this blog probably have similar competing values at some level. For example, I'm all for utilitarian justifications for limited government and defining rights and regulatory schema, but my definition of the good goes beyond utilitarianism in that I believe you have to pay a fair bit of respect to individual autonomy and concepts that flow from self-ownership even though these may push in directions that don't maximize aggregate utility.

Re: Big Government Libertarianism vs. Limited Government Liberalism

DWAnderson — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 17:15:44 -0000

"Accept what, being charitable, *motivates* the liberal."

That is the key premise. In reality is concern for the least well off really what motivates contemporary liberals? I would like to think so, but I fear not.

I think that is one motivation, but there are others not so compatible with the liberaltarian arguments:

-- Reflexive support of unionism (although this may derrivative of some of the items below)
-- Suspicion of "economic power"
-- Vision of regulatory utopia
-- Dislike for economic and social inequality
-- Desire to cushion *everyone* from economic pain
-- Desire to cushion *everyone* from social pain
-- Desire for justice through the legal system for those who have been harmed by the actions of other (embodied in support for lots of legal rights of action)

All of these are real modern liberal motivations that often conflict with a desire to help the least fortunate. When these motivations conflict, rationalizations tend to take over, at the expense (perhaps partial) of the motivation to help the least fortunate.

This is at the heart of Virginia Postrel's critique that liberals have never met a proposed regulation they don't like.

Re: Small and/or Limited Government: Some Distinctions

DWAnderson — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 00:30:56 -0000

I grant that they don't believe in "limited government, " I'm just not sure they really believe in "small government", however.