Conversations with Tyler

 People this is what I have to put up with! What follows below is verbatim.

TC:  Lonzo Ball really good! Pelicans could be decent if they make Zion the #3 option.

Angus: So far this year Lonzo is at 11 ppg, 4.6 assists, 2.3 turnovers. His PER is 10. Zion's is 24. Ingram 20. Lonzo is shooting 38.8 from the field, 30.1 from 3 and  58.3 on free throws. His career shooting numbers are about the same as that.  So, that's the opposite of good.

TC: You are like those people who do not wish to approve the AstraZeneca vaccine!

Angus: If he was 56% effective, I would definitely approve him.

TC: Just don't let anyone over 60 years of age watch him play.

Brown Paper Packages Tied Up in String

 

Most pleasing musical sounds:

1. Electric guitar with Alnico pickups played through a tube amp and a speaker with paper cone and alnico magnet.

2.Hammond B-3 organ

3. Fender Rhodes piano

4. Stradivarius Cello

5. Selmer Paris tenor Sax

I couldn't pick a guitar brand. I play a Reverend guitars East Ender (a tele-strat hybrid). But I have to admit there are a lot of great sounds coming from Gibson too. It's all about the downstream I think. Only 20 Strad cellos ever made, Yo Yo Ma plays one. Here it may be about the compositions for me. Bach's suites for solo cello are some of the very greatest things a human has ever created. Selmer-Paris was Stan Getz's axe.

F**K, Marry, Kill

 I'm really exhausted by this quixotic attempt at the elevation of (price) theory. As Boettke, Coyne and Leeson (2003) themselves point out, theory has evolved to the point where any proposition is provable, making good empirical work more important than ever.

Take the minimum wage for example. There's the basic supply and demand model that says one thing and there are monopsony and other models that say something else. IT'S AN EMPIRICAL QUESTION!

In the absence of experiments, modern methods that try to get at identifying causal effects are super-important.

If your theory is so right, you should be able to find empirical support in models using the best available methods for the problem.

None of this is to say that empirical work doesn't suffer from file drawer bias or p-hacking, or cannot be influenced by the ideology of the researcher. Of course it can. BUT SO CAN THEORY!!

I really feel like to be a scientist, you have to have at least some tiny part of your brain be willing to consider the possibility that your preferred theory may be wrong.

5 years ago I would have said that raising the minimum wage was a laughably horrible way to try and help people, but today I'm not so sure how bad it really is. Thanks to the research of Dube and company.

Smoking Hot Takes on Jan 6, 2021

 Three hot takes:

1.  The lack of security at the Capitol was clearly a tactic. I'm not sure the Capitol Police are really at fault, though of course in retrospect it was a really bad mistake. During the BLM marches on the mall, there were fully fitted out infantry/police, 2 or 3 deep, on the Capitol steps. On Jan 6, very few police, and not wearing riot gear. The thought must have been that it would be better not to have a show of force, to avoid provoking violence. 

The police had no way of knowing in advance that Trump was going to throw them under the bus, actually telling his supporters to go to the Capitol and (implicitly) mob it.

I do have a question about the counterfactual: Suppose there had been a substantial show of force, and the mob had attacked (more than a few of the rioters were armed). There would have been dozens of casualties, on both sides. Would that have been better?

For myself, the answer is yes. The symbol of the relatively easy takeover of the Capitol is very bad. But having 5 police and 20 rioters killed and wounded (say) would have been pretty bad also.

2.  DJT made a speech at the rally yesterday. He said that being "weak" was bad, and now was the time for strength. Having the Capitol stormed by a mob, almost without resistance, and having the cops be sprayed with mace and beaten up, and having people breaking into secure areas and the offices of elected officials, is NOT strength.

The only way to make that strength is if you care only about Trump, and hate the U.S.

3. We are lucky that Trump is lazy, incompetent, and shallow. With a competent leader, capable of planning, yesterday could have been an actual coup. Imagine that instead of firing up the mob and then being surprised (I think) that they did something, Trump had in fact led the March to the Capitol. Imagine that he had quietly coordinated that march with even one dissident tank battalion. With 50 tanks, that march could have actually occupied the Capitol and held the Congress hostage.

Instead, Trump went back to the WH to watch TV, like he always does, unless he's playing golf. That's not what Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini, Hussein, or Putin would have done. 

The best analogy is probably Mussolini's "March on Rome," where King Emmanuel likewise did not offer police or military opposition. It's very fortunate that Trump is not capable of carrying out a detailed plan. It could have been much, much worse, since it turns out that the Capitol was wide open for the taking.