The 19th-century French economist Frederic Bastiat observed, “The worst thing that can happen to a good cause is, not to be skillfully attacked, but to be ineptly defended.” I thought of this quotation when looking for a statement from President Trump on his early-term regulatory reform efforts. This is a top quote from a WhiteHouse.gov press release, presumably from its Department of Redundancy Department:
We will get rid of the redundancy and duplication that wastes your time and your money.
Comments Off on At Least He Means Well
Posted in General Foolishness, regulation, Uncategorized
John McWhorter – Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English
McWhorter’s larger thesis is both kindly and curmudgeonly. Languages change over time. This is fine; deal with it. In this book, McWhorter applies that philosophy to the history of the English language. How did Old English become Middle English? The big historical reason was the Norman conquest of 1066. By about 1100, a generation had passed since the invasion. The Normans, who by then made up as much as 10 percent of the population, had had enough time to have their linguistic impact, importing grammar and continental vocabulary along with themselves.
But the invaders also had to learn the Old English the natives spoke, and the resulting Middle English is a messy hybrid of the two cultures and languages as they met and mixed in a completely ad hoc manner. Everyone knows how difficult it is for adults to learn a new language; McWhorter argues that a big part of this change is, as with so many other things, simply adults screwing things up. Conquerors and natives also often intermarried, and simplifying language by mostly stripping it of elaborate verbal conjugations and gendered nouns helped these new families communicate with each other.
There was also some precedent for this simplified grammar in nearby Celtic languages, further helping matters. So if you ever wondered why English, for its many other quirks and complexities, is mercifully simple in those areas, that is part of the reason why. It is a mixture of cultural exchange, nearby precedent, necessity, and language’s inborn tendency to change over time.
from Herbert Simon, Administrative Behavior, 4th Edition, p. 244:
Even reading one book a day—a pretty good clip—a person who has collected a library of 30,000 books will take 100 years to read through all of them. We may even consider it a bit ostentatious of people to collect more books than they can possibly read—as though they were trying to impress us with their learning. However, we must not be too hasty in judging them. If their libraries are properly indexed, then each of our collectors has potential access to any of the information in the 30,000 volumes. They are quite justified in collecting more volumes than they can read if they cannot predict in advance what particular information they will need in the future, and if they have a good indexing system for finding, on demand, what they want to see.
Comments Off on The Value of Too Many Books
Posted in Books, Uncategorized
While Washington’s “This Town” types geared up for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, the rest of the country flocked to movie theaters for a much more realistic and wholesome form of entertainment—“Avengers: Endgame.” Meanwhile, rulemaking agencies issued new regulations from Mushroom Council membership to hydroelectric licenses.
On to the data:
Highlights from last week’s new final regulations:
For more data, see Ten Thousand Commandments and follow @10KC and @RegoftheDay on Twitter.
Comments Off on This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Posted in regulation
My adoptive home state of Illinois recently decided to gradually increase its minimum wage to $15 per hour in 2025. Bethany Blankley at Watchdog.org has a writeup in which she quotes me on some of the non-wage tradeoffs that will accompany the wage increase:
Ryan Young, a fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a free market think tank in Washington, D.C., said that implementing a higher minimum wage “forces employers to reduce non-wage pay such as insurance, breaks and personal time off, free meals or parking, and more.”
The whole article is here.
Comments Off on Increased Wage Compensation Means Decreased Non-Wage Compensation
Posted in Economics, Media Appearances, Minimum Wage, Uncategorized
Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington – The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist: A True Story of Injustice in the American South
Disclosure: Balko was briefly a colleague about 15 years ago.
Mississippi is likely a bit of an outlier regarding its dysfunctional criminal justice system. But the vividness of its stories Balko and Carrington tell here applies nationwide. The differences from other states are in degree, not in kind. Two of the main themes explored in this book are braggadocio and incompetence, and they go together very closely in this book.
Hayne the medical examiner and West the bite-mark analyst both exude confidence and are quick to puff up their already-inflated credentials. But sloppiness, poor standards, ethical violations, personal enrichment schemes, and general incompetence mar their work and have put numerous innocent people in jail–some on death row. Often in error but never in doubt, Hayne and West repeatedly double down on their mistakes, rather than admit to them when caught. They even tampered with evidence. Hayne, on video, once created bite marks on a dead child’s body that eventually put an innocent man in jail for murder. Imagine doing that to another person and having that on your conscience–or being the person wrongly jailed for murdering a child while the real killer still ran free.
Their eventual fall from grace was a long time coming. The delay was due to a number of factors, from lingering racism to institutional inertia and public indifference. Many of the injustices Hayne and West committed will never be put right, and they are far from the only ones at fault. Systemic problems are what make such actions possible. Reforms that don’t target these larger systemic problems will not have lasting benefits.
If there is a silver lining, Balko and Carrington are at least able to tell the stories of some people whose stories have better, if still unhappy, endings, such as Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks, who are now free. Carrington’s group, the Innocence Project, is devoted to making more such stories come true.
Balko and Carrington also give a fascinating tour of the history of forensics and criminal investigation, and ably explain which techniques are junk science and which are useful. They also give the historical context for why Mississippi’s criminal justice system is in such bad shape. Racism is still very much alive, and cultural change is just as important for criminal justice reform as any suite of policy or personnel changes. Sadly, the process will likely take generations more.
Fortunately, Balko and Carrington are doing as much as anyone to help right those wrongs, in Mississippi and across the country. They could use some company. Hopefully this book will gain them some.
Both parties are making antitrust regulation a 2020 campaign issue. Neither President Trump nor most of the Democratic candidates are proposing improvements. Over at the Washington Examiner I take a closer look:
After a two-decade lull following the Microsoft case, big antitrust enforcement cases are back in vogue. Both political parties are making antitrust regulation a 2020 campaign issue. Regulators, politicians, and voters have reasonable concerns about concentrated corporate power. But few policies are easier for big companies to game than antitrust regulation. Reformers should favor having fewer regulations for special interests to capture, not more.
Read the whole piece here. See also Wayne Crews’ and my new paper, “The Case against Antitrust Law: Ten Areas Where Antitrust Policy Can Move on from the Smokestack Era.”
Comments Off on Antitrust Regulation Is Turning into a Campaign Issue
Posted in Antitrust, Economics, Publications, Uncategorized
James M. Cain – The Postman Always Rings Twice
This short 1934 book helped give birth to the modern detective noir genre. Much popular literature of the period was on the vanilla side; this one was downright scandalous, with murder, adultery, and drunken car crashes looming large in the plot. Think of this book as a predecessor to today’s hard-boiled, Elmore Leonard-style stories. While not entirely to my taste, the sleazy story does have its low-brow appeal, to which I am not immune.
Comments Off on James M. Cain – The Postman Always Rings Twice
Posted in Books, Literature
Arthur Conan Doyle - The Complete Sherlock Holmes
The audio version, narrated by Stephen Fry, is a delight. I enjoyed the Benedict Cumberbatch BBC series a few years ago, and Fry’s radio programs on Victorian culture sparked an interest in reading some primary source material. Though lengthy—four novels and countless short stories—this collection made driving, exercising, and doing chores go by much more quickly. I also followed along on the Kindle edition, which is free.
Comments Off on Arthur Conan Doyle - The Complete Sherlock Holmes
Posted in Books, History, Literature, Uncategorized
The Notre Dame cathedral in Paris caught fire and sustained heavy damage. The rebuilding will likely take years, though people began politicizing it almost instantly. In other news, the Mueller report was publicly released on Thursday. Cable news networks on both sides of the partisan divide, in a show of unity, have reportedly agreed to report on nothing else for the remainder of 2019. Meanwhile, rulemaking agencies issued new regulations from synthetic cannibinoids to grapefruit grading.
On to the data:
Highlights from last week’s new final regulations:
For more data, see Ten Thousand Commandments and follow @10KC and @RegoftheDay on Twitter.
Comments Off on This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Posted in regulation
Inertia Wins! 