NOT an actual email from a book author...

To be quite clear....

I did not receive the following email from any Duke colleague, or any professor of history. But I did receive the email, and I thought I would repost it.  It pretends (falsely) to be a summary of my review of Democracy in Chains. It isn't. But it is fair to say this is what the author might have said.

*********************

Thanks so much for the very positive review and affirmation of my book Democracy in Chains by my colleague Duke Professor of Political Science Dr. Michael Munger. Please find below salient extracts from Dr. Munger’s review.

Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America, by my Duke University colleague, Nancy MacLean, a professor in our distinguished Department of History… is… a remarkable book. MacLean has argued persuasively throughout her career for the historical method…in this book… MacLean recounts an exchange, a conversation really, between two conservatives…intent on reverse-engineering a …political order in America…using shadowy methods and discredited theories. Democracy in Chains is a work of …historical...research underpinning …facts … from a much larger record…drawing reliable conclusions about history. 

…Democracy in Chains is a great story… of … James M. Buchanan, the winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. MacLean is able to decode the true meaning of his …writings which…sought … to bring down.. America and replace it with a plutocracy. …MacLean’s excellence as a writer,…careful sifting of evidence and respectful encounters with opposing points of view…reveal … that …Buchanan … wanted to establish a …society …for racial segregation… 

MacLean’s book…is admirably academic and careful. … MacLean …found …the attempt by segregationist forces to support vouchers. MacLean says, “The economists made their case in the race-neutral, value-free language of their discipline, offering what they depicted as a strictly economic argument—on ‘matters of fact, not values.’” MacLean … support the claim that Buchanan advocated vouchers for the purpose of achieving segregation. … Buchanan’s support for vouchers and for school choice arose from a deeply held concern for …a …repressive apartheid society where African-Americans were …murderous and … must be forcibly suppressed… MacLean has discovered a number of important documents from the history of Public Choice, and other aspects of the history of the 1960s and 1970s in academic economic circles. There is a terrific example on pp. 115–117, where the “glee” of Buchanan and others about their conspiracy, gathered around a roaring fire in the remote mountains of Virginia, is documented.

 … MacLean has…written that history, using … public documents that … destroy...the conspiracy; …that … would sweep the nation, and the world… When summarized in this way, MacLean’s thesis really does read like a … narrative thread connecting the documents and discussions that …strategize about how to win back the White House and rejuvenate the conservative movement… The contribution of Democracy in Chains, then, is to do two things…Identify James Buchanan as the focal point of the revolution, and identify the content of Public Choice research and teaching as anti-Constitutional and anti-democratic… As I hope has been clear, as a book Democracy in Chains is well-written, and the research it contains is both interesting and …illuminating…as an actual history…of the work of James Buchanan …to end democracy in America. 

My thanks to the actual author of this email, Steve Spearman. And he is right: every word of the above actually appears in my review, and in precisely this order!

The powerful negative theorems of Economics

People, one area where economics has proven to excel is showing us what cannot be done.

There are several very powerful negative theorems out there that have real implications for policies but are often downplayed or ignored.

Here I pay homage to them.

1. The theory of the second best.

Simply put, if the world or model has multiple distortions in it, removing only one of those distortions may not make things better. This applies so strongly to macro and development economics, but it rarely even mentioned. Consider corruption. Suppose a polity has bad laws, weak rule of law, oppressive regulations, little protection of property rights and corruption. In such an environment, an anti-corruption campaign alone may actually make many people worse off. You can no longer bribe your way out of the oppressive regulation or bribe your way into protection of your property. This one is a real doozy.



2.  Arrow's impossibility theorem.

Simply put, this tells us that there is no ideal, comprehensive way of aggregating individuals preferences into an aggregate choice. Arrow shows there is no mechanism that is non-dictatorial, satisfies independence of irrelevant alternatives, and pareto efficiency.

Or as the great philosopher Robyn Hitchcock put it, "When I hear the word "Democracy", I reach for my headphones."


3. Related is Hurwicz's impossibility theorem of mechanism design, which shows that there is no strategy-proof, Pareto-efficient, and individually rational rule for allocation. In other words, a planner cannot get truthful revelation from people about their preferences and willingness to pay without wasting resources in the process.


4. The Folk Theorem.

This is a strange one because some "folks" take is as a feature, rather than the devastating bug that it really is. The folk theorem shows that if people are patient enough, any behavior pattern can be an equilibrium of an infinitely repeated game. I have actually seen papers invoke the folk theorem in a positive sense, citing it to prove their preferred story is an equilibrium story, without realizing the irony that in that setting ANY story is an equilibrium story.  Ouch.

Clouds taste metallic

Here is an actual un-"shopped" photo of actual clouds this evening in Norman before the Gustnado activity kicked of the 2015 tornado season:

Pretty freaky, but no real damage done in Normatopia.

Pretzel Logic

Apropos of at least a few things, here is a very funny story from Michael Crichton:


A man goes on vacation and leaves his cat with his best friend. And he’s on vacation and the friend calls him up and says, “Listen. I’ve got some bad news. The cat got up on the roof and we can’t it down. We called the fire department. They came. The cat jumped to a tree. They went up the tree, but anyway, the cat fell, the cat’s dead.”

They guy said, “Oh, my God! How can you tell me in this way?”

He said, “Well, how should I have told you?”

He said, “Well, you have to prepare me. The first day, you should have called and said, listen, the cat’s on the roof and we can’t get her down. Then the second day, you call and you say the fire department’s here and the cat’s jumped to the tree, and the third day, you call me and you say the cat died, and by then, I’m prepared.”

The guy said, “Oh, that’s the way you want it?” He said yes.

He continues his vacation. Gets a call a week later, and his friend says, “Listen, your mother’s on the roof and we can’t get her down.”


The whole Crichton talk is pretty fun.

Florida or Ohio?

OK people. I give you a headline and you tell me if it happened in Florida or Ohio before clicking on the story.

Here we go!

Woman Stabs Boyfriend After He Threatens Turtle

Awards season

Everyone is anxiously waiting to hear whether Barack Obama will be one of the nominees for the coveted Fredrick Fleet award.

Personally, I think he's a shoe-in:

People, if I can write crap like this, why do we even have an NSA at all?