Peggy Noonan: Bring the Insurrectionists to Justice

Peggy Noonan is a Republican Wall Street Journal opinion columnist who has become more and more disgusted with Donald Trump. Like her, some other prominent Republicans have begun putting distance between themselves and Trump since his encouragement of the insurrection against the presidential vote counting in Congress. To me it is a very good thing for the nation if a large part of the Republican party distances itself from Donald Trump. I have certainly had other differences with Donald Trump (see for example “It Isn't OK to Be Anti-Immigrant”), as well as some somewhat common views (particularly on the potential value of negative interest rate policy). But, to put it simply, it is definitely not OK for a president to advocate the violent overthrow of the US government. For, make no mistake, to encourage people to use force to interrupt the constitutionally mandated procedures for determining who won a presidential election is to advocate the violent overthrow of the US government as the US government is defined by the Constitution of the United States. For Donald Trump to send lawyers into court to argue about what the constitution and the election facts on the ground allow is one thing. To inspire an armed mob to attack the Capitol is quite another thing.

I can understand other judgments, but in my view, opposing attempts at the violent overthrow of the US government is not a partisan issue. It is the agreement by both Democrats and Republicans that we should follow constitutional procedures (with the Supreme Court as the ultimate arbiter of disputes about what is a constitutional procedure) that makes our nation a democracy. I am for democracy. Many other systems of government have been tried. Everything else tried so far has been much worse than democracy. (And many things people want to try are much closer to political systems that we have historical evidence on than some people realize.) The democratic power of the electorate to “Throw the bums out,” though not always put in action at the most appropriate moments, is one of the greatest defenses we have against great political ills.

In addition to agreeing with Peggy Noonan’s sentiment that, without hesitation, and without excusing them for what they did, we should bring the insurrectionists to justice, I have flagged her op-ed because of this passage:

True conservatives tend to have a particular understanding of the fragility of things. They understand that every human institution is, in its way, built on sand. It’s all so frail. They see how thin the veil is between civilization and chaos, and understand that we have to go through every day, each in our way, trying to make the veil thicker. And so we value the things in the phrase that others use to disparage us, “law and order.” Yes, always, the rule of law, and order so that the people of a great nation can move freely on the streets and do their work and pursue their lives.

I want to keep living in a free country. Without adhering to constitutional procedures, we won’t stay a free country for long.

Postscript

Let me admit here that I was mistaken in my predictions. I thought Donald Trump would push every possible legal argument he could, but then would grudgingly accept the outcome when the courts said he had lost (while of course saying that he had really won). Donald Trump went a big step beyond that. I was wrong.

Don’t miss these closely related posts:

The Optimal Rate of Inflation

Link to the Wikipedia article “Inflation”

Link to the Wikipedia article “Inflation”

The Bank of Finland asked me to respond to a survey about the optimal rate of inflation. (This was the sort of survey that is sent to those who might have a professional opinion about the optimal rate of inflation.) I thought I’d share my answers here. I give their questions in bold. I give my answers in italics.

Should the central bank have an explicit inflation target? If so, what rate of inflation should it seek to achieve, given the current longer-term, structural economic trends?

Yes. 0%.

My answer of 0 inflation as the best target is assuming what I consider the appropriate strategy of being willing to use deep negative interest rates. I have written about that here:

All the pieces flagged here provide context:

Imagine a hypothetical scenario in which the central bank had previously not adopted an inflation target but now decides to adopt one. What rate of inflation should the central bank target, given the current longer-term, structural economic trends?

0%.

The argument is the same. The readiness to use deep negative rates (which is the appropriate strategy) makes an inflation target of zero optimal. But it is also important to do the transition from a higher inflation rate to zero in a low-cost way. Distinguish between paper currency and bank money ("electronic money"), allowing a nonpar exchange rate between them. While most prices are sticky in the paper unit of account, mechanically make e-money have a zero rate of inflation. Having established credibility in that way, it is likely that gradually more prices will be set in terms of the e-money unit of account. That can be encouraged by shifts in the literal accounting rules. As more and more prices are set in terms of the e-money unit of account, zero inflation in that e-money unit of account needs to be maintained by standard monetary policy tools. That can no longer be done mechanically when almost all prices are set in terms of the e-money unit of account.

What should the central bank's objective(s) be?

Please choose only one option.

Here, ‘central bank’ refers to the central bank responsible for monetary policy in your country of residence.

  • Price stability only

  • Price stability and other objective(s) with equal weights.

  • Price stability and subordinate objective(s). Please feel free to specify the secondary objective(s)

  • No opinion

Price stability and other objective(s) with equal weights.

Please feel free to specify the other objective(s):

Keeping the output gap equal to zero

Although not literally true, I consider the "divine coincidence" a useful rough approximation. Price stability and keeping the output gap at zero are the same objective when the "divine coincidence" holds, but to the extent that the divine coincidence does not hold, a central bank should worry about both objectives.

Among the options below, what specific observable variable(s) would be the most preferable target(s) for the central bank in the conduct of its monetary policy?

Please choose only one option.

Here, ‘central bank’ refers to the central bank responsible for monetary policy in your country of residence.

The inflation rate

The price level

The inflation rate and the unemployment rate

The growth rate of nominal GDP

The level of nominal GDP

Other, please specify

No opinion

The level of nominal GDP

What specific price index should the central bank use in the conduct of its monetary policy?

Here, ‘central bank’ refers to the central bank responsible for monetary policy in your country of residence.

Headline consumer price index

Core consumer price index (excluding food and energy prices)

Headline personal consumption expenditures index

Core personal consumption expenditures index (excluding food and energy prices)

GDP deflator

Other, please specify

No opinion

A price index with a higher weight on investment goods prices and other durables prices than the GDP deflator

How likely is the central bank to achieve its inflation target over the next three years?

Here, ‘central bank’ refers to the central bank responsible for monetary policy in your country of residence.

Relatively unlikely

The only reason I think average unemployment would decrease is that I believe unemployment is convex in inflationary/disinflationary pressures.

Given the current longer-term, structural economic trends, do you think that the benefits of increasing the inflation target of the central bank would outweigh the costs of doing so?

Costs clearly outweigh benefits

The right solution is readiness to use deep negative rates when called for, not increasing the inflation target. The appropriate paper currency policy for deep negative rates engineers inflation relative to paper currency, but not relative to e-money. Better to have comparatively innocent inflation relative to paper currency only when needed than to ever have the quite damaging inflation relative to the e-money unit of account.

Being of Normal Weight Seems to be More Protective against Cardiovascular and Heart Disease than against Cancer

In “Association of Body Mass Index With Lifetime Risk of Cardiovascular Disease and Compression of Morbidity,” by Sadiya Khan, Hongyan Ning, John T. Wilkins, Norrina Allen, Mercedes Carnethon, Jarett D. Berry, Ranya N. Sweis, Donald M. Lloyd-Jones argue that the claim moderately overweight people have greater longevity gives the wrong idea. For one thing, people who are already sick can lose weight for two different reasons: the direct effect of their illness, and doctors telling them they need to lose weight. When people talk about the effect of weight on illness, what they would normally be thinking of is the effect of one’s weight when seemingly healthy on later disease and mortality risk.

Also, some studies don’t look at survival to a given age, instead looking at survival from time of diagnosis. If risk of disease goes up for any reason, one is likely to get the disease at a younger age. Conditional on being diagnosed with a disease, one will probably survive more years beyond that time of diagnosis if one is younger at the time of diagnosis.

One way to address both of these problems is to find a set of apparently healthy people of the same age, some of normal weight and others in various overweight categories, and track what happens to them.

The simple answer from this study is that obese folks (body mass index 30 or above) tend to die quicker and get more of all kinds of diseases. Folks who are merely overweight (25.0-29.9 body mass index) die at about the same rate as those of normal weight (18.5 to 24.9 body mass index), but die a lot more from cardiovascular and heart disease and a lot more from other causes. Of course, we are all mortal, so if we don’t die of one thing we will die of another. But overall death rates at given ages are pretty similar for the overweight and those of normal weight.

I take this to mean that, leaving out the officially “obese,” the typical variation that makes some people of normal weight is helping those normal weight folks reduce their cardiovascular and heart disease risk a lot more than it is helping them reduce their cancer risk. The authors argue that reducing cardiovascular disease and heart disease risk is especially valuable, so there is a great benefit to whatever it is that makes people of normal weight. But I would argue that we need to understand where the extra cancer risk is coming from.

We don’t even have conclusive science on what makes some people of normal weight while others are overweight; there is a big debate about whether dietary sugar or dietary fat is a bigger culprit. (I blame dietary sugar.) And we don’t know why whatever makes people of normal weight instead of overweight contributes to cancer. But here is one hypothesis that needs to be closely examined: what if those who consume less sugar and other refined carbohydrates consume more protein? My reading suggests that both sugar and too much protein (especially animal protein) are cancer risks. If you reduce sugar and increase protein, what happens depends on the relative strength of the effect of sugar and the effect of protein. Among the health conscious, I think protein has much too positive a reputation at this point in history.

Another possibility is that the combination of having a metabolism that allows one to eat a lot without gaining weight and actually eating that food is a cancer risk. This seems a real possibility to me. A cancer cell with a high metabolism and plenty of available food might grow fast.

In all of this, it is crucial to notice my emphasis on the variation in the population that causes most of the difference between being (moderately) overweight and of “normal” weight. People who lose weight by regular fasting are probably not well represented in population data sets because not many people in the population have been serious fasters in the past. (I hope more people use fasting as a weight-loss and health tool in the future.) So losing weight by fasting could have a dramatically different effect on cancer mortality at each age than, say, cutting back on sugar while increasing animal protein consumption.

Don’t forget that normal weight seems protective against cardiovascular disease and heart disease. That is a benefit. But unless you are obese to begin with, you probably need to lose weight the right way to reduce cancer risk.

Posts on Anti-Cancer Eating:

For annotated links to other posts on diet and health, see:


Tiktok of Econolimerick #1

I hope you like the tiktok above. (This will be a test of my understanding of the technology.) It is a duet with my former intermediate macro student Taylor McCoy, who devotes her Tiktok channel to Tiktoks about economics.

Here are links to all of my econolimericks so far (not all of which have TikToks yet):

The Federalist Papers #22 C: Pillars of Democracy—The Judicial System, Military Loyal to the Constitution, and Police Loyal to the Constitution

Recent events make it worth thinking about what it is that can keep our nation’s government from being overthrown. I want to point to two key elements. First, judges whose partisanship is tempered by caring about the law and the respect for the judicial system that leads many powerful people outside the judicial system to take decisions of the Supreme Court as final. Second, a powerful military loyal to the Constitution, including the role of the Supreme Court in that Constitution.

Going beyond simply avoiding the overthrow of the government, in achieving social justice, a third element is key: police loyal to the Constitution—especially the 14th amendment that makes all equal before the law, regardless of race and other caste markers.

On judges, let me make an analogy. Unlike some, I am not worried about a resurgence of inflation in the United States (and have similar views for many other rich countries) because I know how the economists who staff the Fed are trained. They are all taught about the Great Inflation of the 1970s and how overly stimulative monetary policy caused that Great Inflation. Similarly, I believe that legal training instills a respect for the law that, for a large majority of judges, significantly influences their decisions away from being 100% partisan. Indeed, I believe that the law—the letter of the law and precedents—has at least as big an effect on judges as considerations of the good of the nation (beyond partisan ideology) has on voters.

On the military, I am very grateful that military training puts loyalty to the Constitution ahead of loyalty to the Commander in Chief. The words “I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic” come first, before mention of the President of the United States as Commander in Chief to be obeyed. Under some circumstances, the President of the United States could come within the set of “all enemies, foreign and domestic,” especially at moments of time close to a constitutionally ordained transfer of power. (See “John Locke: If Rebellion is a Sin, It is a Sin Committed Most Often by Those in Power.”)

On the police, I think we fall short in inculcating into them loyalty to the constitution. In particular, in order to carry out the promise of the 14th amendment which made all equal before the law, regardless of race, everything should be done to hire a police force composed of individual significantly less racist than the general population. I don’t think we have achieved this.

Rather than defund the police, I think we should spend more on one specific item: requiring all new hires to the police force to have bachelor’s degrees from rounded curricula at colleges and universities. (For adequate recruiting, I assume this will require somewhat higher average pay for those new hires.) Both sides of the partisan divide seem to agree that colleges and universities have some effect in getting students to try to be more politically correct. In the extreme, there may be some professions for which that is bad training (as when political correctness causes people to distort the truth of social-science findings). But I want the police to be a lot more politically correct than they have been, on average.

I don’t know the percentages, but I suspect that most police forces have at least a substantial minority of officers who have bachelor’s degrees already, so the danger of police forces giving the new, all college educated recruits too hard a time.

The bottom line is that we need to even more than we have in the past to inculcate loyalty to the constitution in those who get legal training, in our military, and in our police. That includes especially (since this seems to be difficult) to the 14th amendment, whose words I find inspiring:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Judges should be—and to an important extent, are in the real world—like priests of the Constitution. Without the judicial system and the respect it is afforded, the Constitution would be in grave danger of being merely words on paper, ignored whenever convenient. Alexander Hamilton made this point in the last five paragraphs of the Federalist Papers #22. In the last two paragraphs, he also points to two other great strengths of the then proposed constitution: first, that it had checks and balances in its structure, and second, that through ratification by a vote of the people it would have a clear supremacy over state governments.

Notice that the spirit of what Alexander Hamilton says about the importance of ratification by the people really goes well beyond ratification: it is of great importance that even in times of great stress, a large majority of people in the United States feels a deep loyalty to the constitution. And it is especially important that those given the heavy guns or the great power that police wield have a deep loyalty to the constitution.

Below is the full text of the last five paragraphs of the Federalist Papers #22:

A circumstance which crowns the defects of the Confederation remains yet to be mentioned, the want of a judiciary power. Laws are a dead letter without courts to expound and define their true meaning and operation. The treaties of the United States, to have any force at all, must be considered as part of the law of the land. Their true import, as far as respects individuals, must, like all other laws, be ascertained by judicial determinations. To produce uniformity in these determinations, they ought to be submitted, in the last resort, to one SUPREME TRIBUNAL. And this tribunal ought to be instituted under the same authority which forms the treaties themselves. These ingredients are both indispensable. If there is in each State a court of final jurisdiction, there may be as many different final determinations on the same point as there are courts. There are endless diversities in the opinions of men. We often see not only different courts but the judges of the came court differing from each other. To avoid the confusion which would unavoidably result from the contradictory decisions of a number of independent judicatories, all nations have found it necessary to establish one court paramount to the rest, possessing a general superintendence, and authorized to settle and declare in the last resort a uniform rule of civil justice.

This is the more necessary where the frame of the government is so compounded that the laws of the whole are in danger of being contravened by the laws of the parts. In this case, if the particular tribunals are invested with a right of ultimate jurisdiction, besides the contradictions to be expected from difference of opinion, there will be much to fear from the bias of local views and prejudices, and from the interference of local regulations. As often as such an interference was to happen, there would be reason to apprehend that the provisions of the particular laws might be preferred to those of the general laws; for nothing is more natural to men in office than to look with peculiar deference towards that authority to which they owe their official existence. The treaties of the United States, under the present Constitution, are liable to the infractions of thirteen different legislatures, and as many different courts of final jurisdiction, acting under the authority of those legislatures. The faith, the reputation, the peace of the whole Union, are thus continually at the mercy of the prejudices, the passions, and the interests of every member of which it is composed. Is it possible that foreign nations can either respect or confide in such a government? Is it possible that the people of America will longer consent to trust their honor, their happiness, their safety, on so precarious a foundation?

In this review of the Confederation, I have confined myself to the exhibition of its most material defects; passing over those imperfections in its details by which even a great part of the power intended to be conferred upon it has been in a great measure rendered abortive. It must be by this time evident to all men of reflection, who can divest themselves of the prepossessions of preconceived opinions, that it is a system so radically vicious and unsound, as to admit not of amendment but by an entire change in its leading features and characters.

The organization of Congress is itself utterly improper for the exercise of those powers which are necessary to be deposited in the Union. A single assembly may be a proper receptacle of those slender, or rather fettered, authorities, which have been heretofore delegated to the federal head; but it would be inconsistent with all the principles of good government, to intrust it with those additional powers which, even the moderate and more rational adversaries of the proposed Constitution admit, ought to reside in the United States. If that plan should not be adopted, and if the necessity of the Union should be able to withstand the ambitious aims of those men who may indulge magnificent schemes of personal aggrandizement from its dissolution, the probability would be, that we should run into the project of conferring supplementary powers upon Congress, as they are now constituted; and either the machine, from the intrinsic feebleness of its structure, will moulder into pieces, in spite of our ill-judged efforts to prop it; or, by successive augmentations of its force an energy, as necessity might prompt, we shall finally accumulate, in a single body, all the most important prerogatives of sovereignty, and thus entail upon our posterity one of the most execrable forms of government that human infatuation ever contrived. Thus, we should create in reality that very tyranny which the adversaries of the new Constitution either are, or affect to be, solicitous to avert.

It has not a little contributed to the infirmities of the existing federal system, that it never had a ratification by the PEOPLE. Resting on no better foundation than the consent of the several legislatures, it has been exposed to frequent and intricate questions concerning the validity of its powers, and has, in some instances, given birth to the enormous doctrine of a right of legislative repeal. Owing its ratification to the law of a State, it has been contended that the same authority might repeal the law by which it was ratified. However gross a heresy it may be to maintain that a PARTY to a COMPACT has a right to revoke that COMPACT, the doctrine itself has had respectable advocates. The possibility of a question of this nature proves the necessity of laying the foundations of our national government deeper than in the mere sanction of delegated authority. The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis of THE CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE. The streams of national power ought to flow immediately from that pure, original fountain of all legitimate authority.

Related post:

Links to my other posts on The Federalist Papers so far:

2020's Most Popular Posts

The "Key Posts" link in navigation at the top of my blog lists all important posts through the end of 2016. Along with "2017's Most Popular Posts," “2018's Most Popular Posts” and “2019's Most Popular Posts,” this is intended as a complement to that list. (Also, my most popular storified Twitter discussions are here, and you can see other recent posts by clicking on the Archive link at the top of my blog.) Continuing this tradition, I give links to the most popular posts in the 2020 below into six groups: popular new posts in 2020 on diet and health, popular new posts in 2020 on political philosophy, popular new posts in 2020 on other topics, and popular older posts in those three categories. I provide the pageviews in 2020 for each post as counted when someone went specifically to that post.

I am pleased to be able to report 613,658 Google Analytics pageviews in 2020—over 50,000 pageviews per month. Of these, 31,480 were pageviews for my blog homepage. One other thing that stands out from the data is how well my back catalog does because of Google search.

New Posts in 2020 on Diet and Health

  1. The New England Journal of Medicine Review of the Effects of Intermittent Fasting on Health, Aging and Disease 5,380

  2. Can Fasting Help Fight the Coronavirus? 5,236

  3. James Nestor on How Bad Mouth Breathing Is 3,287

  4. The Case Against Monosodium Glutamate—Why MSG is Dangerous (as are Other Sources of Free Glutamate) and How the Dangers Have Been Covered Up 786

  5. Getting More Vitamin D May Help You Fight Off the New Coronavirus 559

  6. Carbon Dioxide as a Stimulant for Respiratory Function 493

  7. Have We Gone Too Far with Sunscreen? 394

  8. Don't Drink Sweet Drinks Between Meals—Whether Sugary or with Nonsugar Sweeteners 356

  9. Eating During the Coronavirus Lockdown 285

  10. Fasting Before Feasting 274

  11. Jane Brody on Intermittent Fasting 260

  12. Fasting Helps Avoid Collateral Damage in Fighting Bacterial Infections; Glucose Helps Avoid Collateral Damage in Fighting Viral Infections 230

  13. A Modern World of Endemic Jaw Dysfunction 228

  14. The Surprising Genetic Correlation Between Protein-Heavy Diets and Obesity 220

  15. Fasting Tips 200

  16. Too Much of Any Amino Acid is Probably Bad for You, But Monosodium Glutamate Isn't Any Worse Than That 194

  17. Interactions between COVID-19 and Chronic Diseases 155

  18. Sugar Puts You in Greater Danger from Covid-19 137

  19. Inducing Autophagy 133

  20. Slate Star Codex on Saturated and Polyunsaturated Fat 130

  21. Sugar Is Not Very Satiating 127

  22. My Pillbox 123

  23. Journal of the American College of Cardiology State-of-the-Art Review on Saturated Fats 118

  24. Hope in Returning to the Road Not Taken in Psychiatry 109

  25. Hypotheses about Salt and Blood Pressure 103

  26. BJ Fogg's Tips for New Year's Resolutions 101

  27. Human Skulls, Ancient and Modern 97

  28. An Inexpensive Cold Sore Treatment That Doubles as an Antiseptic Towelette 97

  29. On Minimalist Shoes 96

  30. Potential Protective Mechanisms of Ketosis in Migraine Prevention 89

  31. The New England Journal of Medicine Review of the Effects of Intermittent Fasting on Health, Aging and Disease 88

New Posts in 2020 on Political Philosophy

  1. The Federalist Papers #10 A: Conflicts Arising from Differences of Opinion Are an Inevitable Accompaniment of Liberty—James Madison 368

  2. The Federalist Papers #20: The Weakness of the United Netherlands up to the 18th Century is Evidence for the Weakness of Confederations—Alexander Hamilton and James Madison 260

  3. The Federalist Papers #9 A: There Has Been Technological Progress in Practical Principles of Republican Government—Alexander Hamilton 178

  4. The Federalist Papers #10 B: The Larger the Republic, the Easier It is to Find Thoughtful Legislators and the Harder It is to Put Together a Majority to do Unjust Things—James Madison 148

  5. The Federalist Papers #15: A Government, to be Worthy of the Name, Must Govern Its Citizens, Not Just Its Subordinate Jurisdictions—Alexander Hamilton 128

  6. The Federalist Papers #6 B: Commercial Republics Also Start Wars with Their Neighbors—Alexander Hamilton 111

  7. The Federalist Papers #14: A Republic Can Be Geographically Large—James Madison 109

  8. The Federalist Papers #19: The Weakness of the German Empire, Poland and Switzerland up to the 18th Century is Evidence for the Weakness of Confederations—Alexander Hamilton and James Madison 104

  9. The Federalist Papers #18: Alexander Hamilton and James Madison Point to the Weakness of Confederations of Cities in Ancient Greece to Argue for a Strong Federal Government 98

  10. The Federalist Papers #7 A: Divided, the States Would Fall into Territorial Disputes Likely to Lead to War Between the States—Alexander Hamilton 91

  11. The Federalist Papers #4 B: National Defense Will Be Stronger if the States are United 90

  12. The Federalist Papers #21 B: Alexander Hamilton Complains of the Lack of a Measure Such as GDP Suitable for Apportioning Taxes to the States 86

New Posts in 2020 on Other Topics

  1. How Does This Pandemic End? 2,877

  2. How Economists Can Enhance Their Scientific Creativity, Engagement and Impact 1,671

  3. Why Housing is So Expensive 1,554

  4. Avoiding Economic Carnage from the Coronavirus: There are Better Policies than Sending Everyone $1000 1,335

  5. Glennon Doyle on Wild Humanity 1,255

  6. How Even Liberal Whites Make Themselves Out as Victims in Discussions of Racism 1,059

  7. Logarithms and Cost-Benefit Analysis Applied to the Coronavirus Pandemic 995

  8. The Right Amount of Wokeness 992

  9. 100 Economics Blogs and 100 Economists Who Are Influential Online 795

  10. It Isn't OK to Be Anti-Immigrant 604

  11. Taking Applications for a Full-Time Research Assistantship with the Well-Being Measurement Initiative—Miles Kimball, Dan Benjamin, Ori Heffetz and Kristen Cooper 556

  12. Enablers of White Supremacy 471

  13. Japan's Mysteriously Low COVID-19 Death Rate 468

  14. On Human Potential 448

  15. The Supreme Court Confronts the Principles of Multivariable Calculus in Extending Employment Protections to Gay and Transgender Employees 428

  16. 'The Four Agreements' by Don Miguel Ruiz (with Janet Mills) and `The Fifth Agreement' by Don Miguel Ruiz and Don Jose Ruiz (with Janet Mills) 408

  17. Thinking about the 'Executive Order on Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping' 371

  18. On the Herd Immunity Strategy 370

  19. 2020 First Half's Most Popular Posts 370

  20. Responding to Negative Coverage of Negative Rates in the Financial Times 368

  21. Two Dimensions of Pandemic-Control Externalities 353

  22. Bex's Rules for Life 346

  23. How Perfectionism Has Made the Pandemic Worse 345

  24. My Life will be Good When ... 336

  25. The Moral Duty of Uplift (in David Brin's Sense) 330

  26. Interstellar Travel and Uploaded Humans 320

  27. Grace Wetzel: Orgasmic Inequality 313

  28. Seconding Paul Romer's Proposal of Universal, Frequent Testing as a Way Out 297

  29. Why We are Likely to Need Strong Aggregate Demand Stimulus after Tight Social Distancing Restrictions are Over 287

  30. Narayana Kocherlakota Advocates Negative Interest Rates Now 283

  31. The Fed Needs to be Ready to Go to Negative Rates and the Bank of Japan Needs to be Ready to Go Deeper Negative 267

  32. Indoors is Very Dangerous for COVID-19 Transmission, Especially When Ventilation is Bad 262

  33. Vicky Biggs Pradhan: How Crises Make Us Rethink Our Lives 255

  34. Miles Kimball's Discussion of "When to Release the Lockdown: A Wellbeing Framework for Analysing Benefits and Costs," by Layard, Clark, De Neve, Krekel, Fancourt, Hey and O'Donnell 251

  35. How the Nature of the Transmission Mechanism from Rate Cuts Guarantees that Negative Rates have Unlimited Firepower 249

  36. Adam McCloskey and Pascal Michaillat: Calculating Incentive Compatible Critical Values Points to a t-Statistic of 3 as the 5% Critical Value after Accounting for p-Hacking 243

  37. Vicky Biggs Pradhan: The Lost Art of Curiosity 236

  38. How to Reduce Date Rape 234

  39. Matt Adler's Critique of Methods Based on the Value of a Statistical Life 226

  40. Michael Ostrovsky and Michael Schwarz: Self-Driving Cars, Tolls, and Carpooling are Much More Powerful as a Combination than Separately 223

  41. Brian Flaxman—Bern Notice: Why Bernie Sanders is the Best Candidate to Take on Donald Trump in 2020 216

  42. 4 Types of Heterogeneity that Offer a Bit of Extra Hope for Keeping the Pandemic Under Control without Blanket Lockdowns 214

  43. How to Fight Global Warming 209

  44. Frank Wilczek: Are We Living in a Simulated World? 198

  45. The University of Colorado Boulder Deals with a Free Speech Issue 194

  46. On Ex-Muslims 191

  47. Michael Lind: College-Educated vs. Not is the New Class War 186

  48. Dan Benjamin, Mark Fontana and Miles Kimball: Reconsidering Risk Aversion 179

  49. How Dating Apps Are Making Marriages Stronger 176

  50. The Mormon Church's Counterpart to a Sovereign Wealth Fund 176

  51. Recognizing Opportunity: The Case of the Golden Raspberries—Taryn Laakso 166

  52. Lumpers vs. Splitters: Economists as Lumpers; Psychologists as Splitters 162

  53. On Policing: Roland Fryer, William Bratton, John Murad, Scott Thomson and the American People 161

  54. The Wisdom of Jerome Powell 159

  55. My Experiences with Clay Christensen 155

  56. Eric Lonergan and Megan Greene: Dual Interest Rates Give Central Banks Limitless Firepower 155

  57. Equality of Outcome 153

  58. Scott Cunningham on Losing a Child 151

  59. The ECB’s Monetary Policy at 20—Massimo Rostagno, Carlo Altavilla, Giacomo Carboni, Wolfgang Lemke, Roberto Motto, Arthur Saint Guilhem and Jonathan Yiangou Defend Negative Rate Policy 149

  60. Appropriately Dosed Rapamycin and Metformin Can Improve Immune Function and Seem to Be Partial Preventatives for COVID-19 139

  61. COVID-19 Math: Why Just 2 Months of Extreme Isolation Alone Probably Won't End the Epidemic—Katrina Ligett and Aviv Zohar 138

  62. June 2020 Covid-19 Science Roundup 138

  63. Marc Lipsitch: The New Coronavirus May Be Worse Than You Think (link post) 137

  64. America's Struggle 127

  65. Michael Coe on Joseph Smith the Shaman 118

  66. Getting the Best from Wokeness by Having the Right Mean, Reducing the Variance and Mitigating the Losses from Extreme Values 113

  67. 'Everything Happens for a Reason' for Nonsupernaturalists 108

  68. Pressure on the Fed from the Market and Trump for Negative Rates 102

  69. Consensual, Non-Solipsistic Experience Machines 92

  70. A Nonsupernaturalist Perspective on Meridians in Chinese Medicine 90

  71. What Fraction of Participants in a Randomized Controlled Trial Should Be Treated? 90

  72. Christian Kimball: Doubting Thomas 87

Older Posts with Continuing Popularity on Diet and Health

  1. Reexamining Steve Gundry's `The Plant Paradox’ 58,073

  2. Which Nonsugar Sweeteners are OK? An Insulin-Index Perspective 44,997

  3. Forget Calorie Counting; It's the Insulin Index, Stupid 38,366

  4. How Fasting Can Starve Cancer Cells, While Leaving Normal Cells Unharmed 18,025

  5. Why a Low-Insulin-Index Diet Isn't Exactly a 'Lowcarb' Diet 16,636

  6. Whole Milk Is Healthy; Skim Milk Less So 10,969

  7. Obesity Is Always and Everywhere an Insulin Phenomenon 4,347

  8. Evidence that High Insulin Levels Lead to Weight Gain 3,565

  9. Using the Glycemic Index as a Supplement to the Insulin Index 3,314

  10. Stop Counting Calories; It's the Clock that Counts 3,164

  11. What Steven Gundry's Book 'The Plant Paradox' Adds to the Principles of a Low-Insulin-Index Diet 2,803

  12. Miles Kimball on Diet and Health: A Reader's Guide 2,074

  13. 3 Achievable Resolutions for Weight Loss 1,781

  14. Intense Dark Chocolate: A Review 1,707

  15. My Annual Anti-Cancer Fast 1,665

  16. Exorcising the Devil in the Milk 1,650

  17. Jason Fung's Single Best Weight Loss Tip: Don't Eat All the Time 1,375

  18. In Praise of Flavored Sparkling Water 1,350

  19. Jason Fung: Dietary Fat is Innocent of the Charges Leveled Against It 1,217

  20. Meat Is Amazingly Nutritious—But Is It Amazingly Nutritious for Cancer Cells, Too? 1,201

  21. The Keto Food Pyramid 1,069

  22. The Case Against Sugar: Stephan Guyenet vs. Gary Taubes 1,004

  23. Why You Should Worry about Cancer Promotion by Diet as Much as You Worry about Cancer Initiation by Carcinogens 976

  24. Our Delusions about 'Healthy' Snacks—Nuts to That! 967

  25. Layne Norton Discusses the Stephan Guyenet vs. Gary Taubes Debate (a Debate on Joe Rogan’s Podcast) 940

  26. Lisa Drayer: Is Fasting the Fountain of Youth? 912

  27. David Ludwig: It Takes Time to Adapt to a Lowcarb, Highfat Diet 870

  28. Carola Binder—Why You Should Get More Vitamin D: The Recommended Daily Allowance for Vitamin D Was Underestimated Due to Statistical Illiteracy 797

  29. Don't Tar Fasting by those of Normal or High Weight with the Brush of Anorexia 751

  30. 4 Propositions on Weight Loss 725

  31. My Giant Salad 717

  32. 'Is Milk Ok?' Revisited 716

  33. Letting Go of Sugar 703

  34. The Problem with Processed Food 692

  35. Best Health Guide: 10 Surprising Changes When You Quit Sugar 665

  36. On Exercise and Weight Loss 662

  37. The Four Food Groups Revisited 652

  38. Good News! Cancer Cells are Metabolically Handicapped 593

  39. Nutritionally, Not All Apple Varieties Are Alike 583

  40. Sugar as a Slow Poison 567

  41. How Sugar, Too Much Protein, Inflammation and Injury Could Drive Epigenetic Cellular Evolution Toward Cancer 562

  42. On 'Flipping the Metabolic Switch: Understanding and Applying Health Benefits of Fasting' by Stephen D. Anton et al. 513

  43. Anthony Komaroff: The Microbiome and Risk for Obesity and Diabetes 498

  44. A Low-Glycemic-Index Vegan Diet as a Moderately-Low-Insulin-Index Diet 478

  45. After Gastric Bypass Surgery, Insulin Goes Down Before Weight Loss has Time to Happen 470

  46. Mental Retirement: Use It or Lose It—Susann Rohwedder and Robert Willis 466

  47. How Important is A1 Milk Protein as a Public Health Issue? 463

  48. Kevin D. Hall and Juen Guo: Why it is So Hard to Lose Weight and So Hard to Keep it Off 451

  49. Yes, Sugar is Really Bad for You 443

  50. Which Is Worse for You: Sugar or Fat? 417

  51. Mass In/Mass Out: A Satire of Calories In/Calories Out 371

  52. Vindicating Gary Taubes: A Smackdown of Seth Yoder 364

  53. Salt Is Not the Nutritional Evil It Is Made Out to Be 354

  54. Eggs May Be a Type of Food You Should Eat Sparingly, But Don't Blame Cholesterol Yet 312

  55. Increasing Returns to Duration in Fasting 311

  56. Cancer Cells Love Sugar; That’s How PET Scans for Cancer Work 303

  57. The Trouble with Most Psychological Approaches to Weight Loss: They Assume the Biology is Obvious, When It Isn't 297

  58. How Low Insulin Opens a Way to Escape Dieting Hell 294

  59. Andreas Michalsen on Fasting 294

  60. Diseases of Civilization 281

  61. A Barycentric Autobiography 249

  62. Black Bean Brownies 244

  63. Live Your Life So You Don't Need Much Self-Control 233

  64. Is Milk OK? 231

  65. The Case Against the Case Against Sugar: Seth Yoder vs. Gary Taubes 228

  66. In Praise of Avocados 210

  67. Freakonomics: The Story of Bananas 199

  68. Biohacking: Nutrition as Technology 195

  69. How Sugar Makes People Hangry 192

  70. Is 10,000 Steps a Day More Than is Necessary for Health? 177

  71. Nina Teicholz on the Bankruptcy of Counting Calories 176

  72. Should the Typical Person be Restricting Salt Intake? 160

  73. Data on Asian Genes that Discourage Alcohol Consumption Explode the Myth that a Little Alcohol is Good for your Health 153

  74. How Not Getting Enough Sleep Messes You Up, Part 1 152

  75. David Ludwig, Walter Willett, Jeff Volek and Marian Neuhouser: Controversies and Consensus on Fat vs. Carbs 140

  76. A Conversation with David Brazel on Obesity Research 139

  77. Critiquing `All-Cause and Cause-Specific Mortality with Low-Carbohydrate Diets' by Mohsen Mazidi, Niki Katsiki, Dimitri P. Mikhailidis, Naveed Sattar and Maciej Banach 133

  78. Hints for Healthy Eating from the Nurses’ Health Study 130

  79. Evidence that Gut Bacteria Affect the Brain 125

  80. Eating on the Road 119

  81. Carola Binder: The Obesity Code and Economists as General Practitioners 102

  82. On the Epistemology of Diet and Health: Miles Refuses to `Stay in His Lane’ 98

  83. Fighting the Common Cold 96

  84. Maintaining Weight Loss 90

Older Posts with Continuing Popularity on Political Philosophy

  1. The Social Contract According to John Locke 66,079

  2. John Locke: Freedom is Life; Slavery Can Be Justified Only as a Reprieve from Deserved Death 3,901

  3. John Locke on Why the Executive and Legislative Power Should Be Separated, but the Executive and Foreign Policy Power Should Be Combined 3,634

  4. John Locke: The Purpose of Law Is Freedom 3,139

  5. On John Locke's Labor Theory of Property 2,978

  6. John Locke on Punishment 2,877

  7. John Locke's Argument for Majority Rule 2,705

  8. William Graham Sumner, Social Darwinist 2,568

  9. John Locke: The Only Legitimate Power of Governments is to Articulate the Law of Nature 2,154

  10. John Locke's Argument for Limited Government 1,728

  11. Governments Long Established Should Not—and to a Good Approximation Will Not—Be Changed for Light and Transient Causes 1,664

  12. Liberty and the Golden Rule 1,654

  13. John Stuart Mill's Brief for Freedom of Speech 1,507

  14. John Locke's State of Nature and State of War 1,419

  15. John Locke: Legitimate Taxation and other Appropriation of Property by the Government is Limited as to Quantity, Procedure and Purpose 1,370

  16. John Locke: When the Police and Courts Can't or Won't Take Care of Things, People Have the Right to Take the Law Into Their Own Hands 1,362

  17. John Stuart Mill’s Vigorous Advocacy of Education Vouchers 1,297

  18. John Stuart Mill on Freedom from Religion 1,109

  19. Freedom Under Law Means All Are Subject to the Same Laws 1,107

  20. John Locke: The Public Good 1,000

  21. John Locke: Defense against the Black Hats is the Origin of the State 961

  22. Cass Sunstein on the Rule of Law 927

  23. John Locke: People Must Not Be Judges in Their Own Cases 913

  24. John Locke: Government by the Consent of the Governed Often Began Out of Respect for Someone Trusted to Govern 874

  25. On the Achilles Heel of John Locke's Second Treatise: Slavery and Land Ownership 764

  26. John Locke: Democracy, Oligarchy, Hereditary Monarchy, Elective Monarchy and Mixed Forms of Government 697

  27. John Locke's Smackdown of Robert Filmer: Being a Father Doesn't Make Any Man a King 691

  28. John Locke on the Equality of Humans 686

  29. John Locke: How to Resist Tyrants without Causing Anarchy 671

  30. John Locke on Legitimate Political Power 631

  31. John Locke: We Are All Born Free 614

  32. An Experiment with Equality of Outcome: The Case of Jamestown 566

  33. The Metaphor of a Nation as a Family 555

  34. John Stuart Mill on Freedom of Thought 547

  35. Democracy is Not Freedom 536

  36. John Stuart Mill’s Roadmap for Freedom 521

  37. John Stuart Mill on Balancing Christian Morality with the Wisdom of the Greeks and Romans 512

  38. Human Beings as Social—and Trading—Animals 507

  39. John Stuart Mill on Sins of Omission 489

  40. John Stuart Mill: In the Parent-Child Relationship, It is the Children Who Have Rights, Not the Parents 470

  41. John Locke: The Law Must Apply to Rulers, Too 464

  42. John Locke: How to Recognize a Tyrant 463

  43. John Locke Against Natural Hierarchy 460

  44. John Locke Against Tyranny 453

  45. John Locke: The Right to Enforce the Law of Nature Does Not Depend on Any Social Contract 446

  46. John Locke: No One is Above the Law, which Must Be Established and Promulgated and Designed for the Good of the People; Taxes and Governmental Succession Require Approval of Elected Representatives 433

  47. John Stuart Mill on Running Other People’s Lives 428

  48. John Locke: The Obligation to Obey the Law Does Not Apply to Laws Promulgated by Invaders and Usurpers Who Do Not Have the Consent of the Governed 417

  49. Democratic Injustice 413

  50. John Locke Treats the Bible as an Authority on Slavery 413

  51. John Locke: By Natural Law, Husbands Have No Power Over Their Wives 410

  52. Social Liberty 405

  53. On Despotism 403

  54. Getting Away with Doing Good 395

  55. John Stuart Mill: Two Maxims for Liberty 390

  56. John Stuart Mill: In Praise of Eccentricity 387

  57. John Locke Off Base with His Assumption That There Was Plenty of Land at the Time of Acquisition 382

  58. Michael Huemer's Immigration Parable 378

  59. John Locke Explains 'Lord of the Flies' 377

  60. Michael Huemer's Libertarianism 367

  61. John Stuart Mill on the Role of Custom in Human Life 367

  62. John Locke: The People are the Judge of the Rulers 366

  63. John Stuart Mill on Freedom of Contract 358

  64. John Stuart Mill on the Protection of "Noble Lies" from Criticism 343

  65. John Locke on the Supremacy of the People, the Supremacy of the Legislature over the Executive, and the Power of the Executive to Deal with Rotten Boroughs 342

  66. John Locke: If Rebellion is a Sin, It is a Sin Committed Most Often by Those in Power 330

  67. John Stuart Mill on Rising Above Mediocrity 281

  68. John Stuart Mill on the Sources of Prejudice About What Other People Should Do 280

  69. John Locke: Theft as the Little Murder 275

  70. John Stuart Mill on the Gravity of Divorce 274

  71. John Stuart Mill’s Defense of Freedom 273

  72. John Locke on Monarchs (Or Presidents) Who Destroy a Constitution 266

  73. John Locke and the Share of Land 252

  74. The Federalist Papers #2 A: John Jay on the Idea of America 246

  75. John Stuart Mill on Being Offended at Other People's Opinions or Private Conduct 237

  76. John Stuart Mill's Brief for Individuality 234

  77. John Stuart Mill on Puritanism 231

  78. The Federalist Papers #1: Alexander Hamilton's Plea for Reasoned Debate 226

  79. John Stuart Mill: How Laws Against Self-Harm Backfire 219

  80. John Stuart Mill on the Rich and the Elite 212

  81. John Stuart Mill on Benevolent Dictators 209

  82. John Locke on the Mandate of Heaven 198

  83. Vigilantes in the State of Nature 196

  84. John Stuart Mill’s Brief for the Limits of the Authority of Society over the Individual 195

  85. John Stuart Mill on the Historical Origins of Liberty 194

  86. John Locke: Lions and Wolves and Enemies, Oh My 190

  87. John Locke Looks for a Better Way than Believing in the Divine Right of Kings or Power to the Strong 189

  88. John Stuart Mill on the Chief Interest of the History of Mankind: The Love of Liberty and Improvement vs. Custom 187

  89. John Locke: The Law of Nature Requires Maturity to Discern 182

  90. John Stuart Mill’s Defense of Freedom of Religion for Mormons as an Argument for Chartering Libertarian Enclaves 180

  91. John Stuart Mill on Public and Private Actions 180

  92. The Rise and Fall of Venice 178

  93. John Stuart Mill: The Central Government Should Be Slow to Overrule, but Quick to Denounce Bad Actions of Local Governments 172

  94. John Locke: Law Is Only Legitimate When It Is Founded on the Law of Nature 171

  95. Edmund Burke's Wisdom 169

  96. Paul Finkelman: The Monster of Monticello 165

  97. The People Have the Right to Erect a New Government When the Previous Government Betrays the Trust It Has Been Given 164

  98. John Locke: Property in the State of Nature 147

  99. John Locke on Peace through Surrender to Tyranny 136

  100. If the Justice System Does Not Try to Deliver Justice, We Are in a State of War 131

  101. John Stuart Mill's Argument Against Political Correctness 128

  102. John Stuart Mill: People Should Be Allowed to Govern Their Own Lives Because They Care More and Know More about Themselves Than Anyone Else Does 128

  103. John Stuart Mill: We Are Ethically Responsible for the Harm We Do to Others, Even When That Harm Stems from First Doing Harm to Ourselves 127

  104. John Stuart Mill on Humans vs. the Lesser Robots 127

  105. John Stuart Mill on Having a Day of Rest and Recreation 125

  106. John Locke: Usurpation is a Kind of Domestic Conquest, with this Difference, that an Usurper Can Never Have Right on His Side 125

  107. John Locke: Rivalry in Consumption Makes Private Property Unavoidable 115

  108. John Stuart Mill—The Great Temptation: Telling Others What to Do 114

  109. John Stuart Mill Applies the Principles of Liberty 112

  110. John Locke: An Unjust War Cannot Win Any True Right to Rule 109

  111. John Stuart Mill on Other-Regarding Character Flaws (as Distinct from Self-Regarding Character Flaws) 109

  112. John Stuart Mill on Raising the Next Generation 106

  113. John Stuart Mill on China's Technological Lost Centuries 102

  114. John Stuart Mill: Different Strokes for Different Folks 101

  115. John Stuart Mill on the Need to Make the Argument for Freedom of Speech 98

  116. The Free Market and Collective Liberty 94

  117. Reparation and Deterrence 92

  118. John Stuart Mill and C. S. Lewis on Originality 92

  119. John Locke: Thinking of Mothers and Fathers On a Par Undercuts a Misleading Autocratic Metaphor 89

Older Posts with Continuing Popularity on Other Topics

  1. The 7 Principles of Unitarian Universalism 9,217

  2. William Strauss and Neil Howe's American Prophecy in 'The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny' 7,277

  3. What to Call the Very Rich: Millionaires, Vranaires, Okuaires, Billionaires and Lakhlakhaires 3,153

  4. The Medium-Run Natural Interest Rate and the Short-Run Natural Interest Rate 2,687

  5. Adding a Variable Measured with Error to a Regression Only Partially Controls for that Variable 2,662

  6. Monetary vs. Fiscal Policy: Expansionary Monetary Policy Does Not Raise the Budget Deficit 2,550

  7. How and Why to Eliminate the Zero Lower Bound: A Reader’s Guide 2,183

  8. Joshua Foer on Deliberate Practice 1,572

  9. Five Books That Have Changed My Life 1,545

  10. The Logarithmic Harmony of Percent Changes and Growth Rates 1,543

  11. Why I Write 1,321

  12. An Optical Illusion: Nativity Scene or Two T-Rex's Fighting over a Table Saw? 1,297

  13. The Complete Guide to Getting into an Economics PhD Program 1198

  14. The Descent—and the Divine Calling—of the Modernists 1,186

  15. There Is No Such Thing as Decreasing Returns to Scale 1,163

  16. Government Purchases vs. Government Spending 1,096

  17. Noah Smith: Buddha Was Wrong About Desire 1,065

  18. Peter Conti-Brown's Takedown of Danielle DiMartino Booth's Book "Fed Up: An Insider's Take on Why the Federal Reserve is Bad for America" 1,006

  19. Why Taxes are Bad 993

  20. Greg Shill: Does the Fed Have the Legal Authority to Buy Equities? 967

  21. Expansionist India 946

  22. The Costs of Inflation 908

  23. Supply and Demand for the Monetary Base: How the Fed Currently Determines Interest Rates 889

  24. A Liberal Turn in the Mormon Church 848

  25. Q&A: Is Electronic Money the Mark of the Beast? 831

  26. The Message of Mormonism for Atheists Who Want to Stay Atheists 825

  27. There's One Key Difference Between Kids Who Excel at Math and Those Who Don't 772

  28. David Byrne: De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum 771

  29. Why GDP Can Grow Forever 768

  30. Daniel Coyle on Deliberate Practice 755

  31. An Agnostic Prayer for Strength 748

  32. On Teaching and Learning Macroeconomics 732

  33. 2019 First Half's Most Popular Posts 696

  34. Robert Shiller: Against the Efficient Markets Theory 668

  35. 2019's Most Popular Posts 664

  36. Shane Parrish on Deliberate Practice 646

  37. The Deep Magic of Money and the Deeper Magic of the Supply Side 637

  38. David Pagnucco: The Eurozone and the Impossible Trinity 620

  39. Returns to Scale and Imperfect Competition in Market Equilibrium 602

  40. The Mormon View of Jesus 596

  41. Netflix as an Example of Clay Christensen's 'Disruptive Innovation' 583

  42. Noah Smith: You Are Already in the Afterlife 548

  43. Reza Moghadam Flags 'Enabling Deep Negative Rates to Fight Recessions' in the Financial Times 534

  44. What is a Supply-Side Liberal? 485

  45. The Most Effective Memory Methods are Difficult—and That's Why They Work 456

  46. Critical Reading: Apprentice Level 446

  47. How to Turn Every Child into a 'Math Person' 433

  48. Q&A on the Idea of a US Sovereign Wealth Fund 415

  49. Co-Active Coaching as a Tool for Maximizing Utility—Getting Where You Want in Life 413

  50. Deeper Learning in Macroeconomics 389

  51. Cognitive Economics 367

  52. Fight the Backlash Against Retirement Saving Nudges: Everyone Benefits When People Save More for Old Age 364

  53. Even Central Bankers Need Lessons on the Transmission Mechanism for Negative Interest Rates 330

  54. Will Your Uploaded Mind Still Be You? —Michael Graziano 328

  55. How Subordinating Paper Currency to Electronic Money Can End Recessions and End Inflation 324

  56. Franklin Roosevelt on the Second Industrial Revolution 320

  57. The Volcker Shock 317

  58. Christian Kimball on Middle-Way Mormonism 311

  59. Will Women Ever Get the Mormon Priesthood? 301

  60. Going Negative: The Virtual Fed Funds Rate Target 299

  61. Negative Interest Rate Policy as Conventional Monetary Policy: Full Text 298

  62. Clay Christensen, Jerome Grossman and Jason Hwang on the Three Basic Types of Business Models 282

  63. The Shards of My Heart 280

  64. Rodney Stark on the Status of Women in Early Christianity 270

  65. Who Leaves Mormonism? 269

  66. Ezra W. Zuckerman—On Genre: A Few More Tips to Academic Journal Article-Writers (link post to a pdf) 268

  67. On Master's Programs in Economics 267

  68. On Having a Thesis 265

  69. Marriage 101 265

  70. When the Output Gap is Zero, But Inflation is Below Target 263

  71. 18 Misconceptions about Eliminating the Zero Lower Bound 258

  72. Teleotheism and the Purpose of Life 258

  73. The Unavoidability of Faith 257

  74. Michael Weisbach: Posters on Finance Job Rumors Need to Clean Up Their Act, Too 250

  75. The Shape of Production: Charles Cobb's and Paul Douglas's Boon to Economics 243

  76. The Mormon Church Decides to Treat Gay Marriage as Rebellion on a Par with Polygamy 242

  77. Hannah Katz: The Pros and Cons of Tipping Culture 241

  78. Why I Am Not a Neoliberal 241

  79. Student Guest Posts on supplysideliberal.com 239

  80. What is the Effective Lower Bound on Interest Rates Made Of? 234

  81. Economics Needs to Tackle All of the Big Questions in the Social Sciences 232

  82. Let's Set Half a Percent as the Standard for Statistical Significance 231

  83. The Message of “Sal Tlay Ka Siti” 221

  84. How to Introduce the Next Generation to Literature 220

  85. Markus Brunnermeier and Yann Koby's "Reversal Interest Rate" 213

  86. Capuchin Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay 211

  87. New Evidence on the Genetics of Homosexuality 209

  88. Christof Koch: Will Machines Ever Become Conscious? 206

  89. In Honor of Alan Krueger 203

  90. The Egocentric Illusion 199

  91. Charles Murray on Taking Religion Seriously 195

  92. Why We Want More Jobs 195

  93. Two Types of Knowledge: Human Capital and Information 193

  94. Heroes of Science Action Figures 191

  95. Eric Weinstein: Genius Is Not the Same Thing as Excellence 184

  96. Godless Religion 183

  97. Roger Farmer and Miles Kimball on the Value of Sovereign Wealth Funds for Economic Stabilization 182

  98. Wrath of Gnon: Bringing Back to Mind How Traditional Technology Kept Buildings Comfortable before Air Conditioning and Central Heating 180

  99. Chris Kimball: Having a Prophet in the Family 175

  100. What Monetary Policy Can and Can't Do 173

  101. How the Original Sin of Borrowing in a Foreign Currency Can Reduce the Effectiveness of Monetary Policy for Both the Borrowing and Lending Country 171

  102. Silvio Gesell's Plan for Negative Nominal Interest Rates 170

  103. Miles Moves to the University of Colorado Boulder 168

  104. Andrew Carnegie on Cost-Cutting 168

  105. Legitimate Power and Authority 165

  106. Nicholas Kristof: "Where Sweatshops are a Dream" 163

  107. The Coming Transformation of Education: Degrees Won’t Matter Anymore, Skills Will 162

  108. Robert L. Woodson Sr. on Helping the Poor 162

  109. A Book of Mormon Story Every Mormon Boy and Girl Knows 161

  110. The Racist Origins of the Idea of the ‘Dumb Jock’ 161

  111. Miles Kimball - Google Scholar Citations 160

  112. How and Why to Expand the Nonprofit Sector as a Partial Alternative to Government: A Reader’s Guide 159

  113. Brio in Blog Posts 158

  114. Robert Eisler—Stable Money: The Remedy for the Economic World Crisis 158

  115. My Objective Function 156

  116. Next Generation Monetary Policy 152

  117. Sticky Prices vs. Sticky Wages: A Debate Between Miles Kimball and Matthew Rognlie 152

  118. My Proudest Moment as a Student in Ph.D. Classes 145

  119. An Agnostic Grace 144

  120. Can Taxes Raise GDP? 139

  121. How I Became Optimistic 136

  122. Chris Kimball on `A Liberal Turn in the Mormon Church' 131

  123. Electronic Money: The Powerpoint File 131

  124. Marriage 102 130

  125. Division of Labor in Track-and-Hook Songwriting 129

  126. Restoring American Growth: The Video 128

  127. How Albert Einstein Became a Celebrity 126

  128. Harvard 35th Reunion Profile: Miles Kimball 125

  129. On the Great Recession 124

  130. Dynamic Map of Europe from 1000 A.D. to 1900 124

  131. Matthew Shapiro, Martha Bailey and Tilman Borgers on the Economics Job Market Rumors Website 121

  132. Noah Smith: Sunni Islam is Failing 120

  133. The Mystery of Consciousness 120

  134. Selfishness and the Fall of Rome 119

  135. Kenneth W. Phifer: Is Death Meaningful? 119

  136. Why I am a Macroeconomist: Increasing Returns and Unemployment 115

  137. Miles's April 9, 2006 Unitarian Universalist Sermon: ‘UU Visions’ 113

  138. The Litany Against Fear 113

  139. The K-12 Roots of Moral Relativism 112

  140. Tom Gauld's Sympathy Cards for Scientists 112

  141. How Did Evolution Give Us Religion? 111

  142. The Virtual Reality Theory of Dualism 111

  143. Italy's Supply-Side Troubles 111

  144. Facebook Convo on Women in Economics 109

  145. Thomas Sowell on How to Succeed as an Ethnic Minority 109

  146. Ruchir Agarwal and Miles Kimball—Enabling Deep Negative Rates to Fight Recessions: A Guide 109

  147. Chris Kimball: The Language of Doubt 108

  148. Leveling Up: Making the Transition from Poor Country to Rich Country 108

  149. Noah Smith: Why Do Americans Like Jews and Dislike Mormons? 108

  150. Matt Stoller: How Democrats Killed Their Populist Soul 107

  151. In Honor of Martin Weitzman 104

  152. Against Narcissism 101

  153. How to Handle Worries about the Effect of Negative Interest Rates on Bank Profits with Two-Tiered Interest-on-Reserves Policies 98

  154. Bruce Bartlett on Careers in Economics and Related Fields 98

  155. Flexible Dogmatism: The Mormon Position on Infallibility 98

  156. ‘The Hunger Games’ Is Hardly Our Future--It's Already Here 98

  157. How Conservative Mormon America Avoided the Fate of Conservative White America 97

  158. Helicopter Drops of Money Are Not the Answer 96

  159. On the Virtue of Self-Distraction 96

  160. Signalling When Everyone Knows about Last-Place Aversion: An Application to Economics Job Market Rumors 95

  161. An Agnostic Invocation 95

  162. The Costs and Benefits of Repealing the Zero Lower Bound...and Then Lowering the Long-Run Inflation Target 93

  163. Rodney Stark’s Contrarian Assessment of the Crusades 92

  164. Scott Adams's Finest Hour: How to Tax the Rich 92

  165. Ryan Silverman—$15 Federal Minimum Wage: Positive Intentions, Negative Results 91

  166. Why I Am Not a Physicist 91

  167. Wallace Neutrality Roundup: QE May Work in Practice, But Can It Work in Theory? 91

  168. So What If We Don't Change at All…and Something Magical Just Happens? 91

  169. My Dad 90

  170. Annie Atherton: I Tried 7 Different Morning Routines — Here’s What Made Me Happiest (linkpost) 90

  171. Less is More in Mormon Church Meetings

  172. The Logarithmic Harmony of Percent Changes and Growth Rates 89

  173. Eric Schlosser on the Underground Economy 88

  174. How Mormon Scripture Declares the US Constitution to be the Work of God 87

  175. Joshua Foer on Memory 87

  176. The Path to Electronic Money as a Monetary System 87

  177. On Being a Copy of Someone's Mind 86

How Many Thousands of Americans Will the Sugar Lobby's Latest Victory Kill?

Here is the news from Andrea Petersen’s December 29, 2020 Wall Street Journal article “New U.S. Dietary Guidelines Reject Recommendation to Cut Sugar, Alcohol Intake Limit”:

The federal government on Tuesday issued new dietary guidelines that keep current allowances for sugar and alcohol consumption unchanged, rejecting recommendations by its scientific advisory committee to make significant cuts.

The scientific committee, which was composed of 20 academics and doctors, had recommended cutting the limit for added sugars in the diet to 6% of daily calories from 10% in the current guidelines, citing rising rates of obesity and the link between obesity and health problems like Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and cancer. The committee also recommended lowering the limit for alcoholic beverages for men to one drink per day from two, matching the guidance for women. It pointed to research linking greater alcohol consumption to a higher risk of death.

Many of my readers are already convinced of the toll that sugar takes on our bodies, but may think that moderate drinking is harmless. If that is you, take a look at “Data on Asian Genes that Discourage Alcohol Consumption Explode the Myth that a Little Alcohol is Good for your Health” to have all the relevant information at your disposal. For some, the benefits of moderate drinking in other dimensions may make up for the physical harm, but there is some physical harm. If you thought in the past that there was no physical harm (or perhaps even the benefit claimed by those only looking at raw correlations) from alcohol, understanding the “Mendelian randomization” evidence about alcohol should lower your estimate of the optimal level of alcohol consumption.

Also, it should be noted that, according to Peter Attia, alcohol, even in moderate amounts, tends to seriously lower sleep quality. That alcohol sometimes makes it easier to fall asleep sometimes gives people the idea that alcohol is good for sleep, but overall it is disruptive of sleep. (It is seen as a bad sign in our culture if someone begins drinking early in the day. But for the sake of sleep, it would be better if our culture saw drinking at any time other than the morning—and that in moderation—as a shocking thing.)

Turning to sugar, I don’t know the precise death toll from the sugar lobby’s victory, but my title above asks the right question. Suppose for example that a reduction in the recommended ceiling from 10% of calories from sugar to 6% of calories from sugar led to people actually reducing sugar intake by half a percent of all calories? How many lives could have been saved over the coming five years (before the next set of guidelines are created)?

Although Brandon Lipps, deputy undersecretary for food, nutrition and consumer services at the Department of Agriculture paid lip service to an insufficiency of scientific evidence in explaining the decision. But Andrea Petersen reports this on the lobbying in favor of that decision:

The American Beverage Association, which represents drink makers including Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, urged the government to keep the 10% added-sugars limit during a public meeting in August. In response to the new guidelines, the organization’s president and chief executive Katherine Lugar said in a statement, “America’s beverage companies appreciate the common sense approach taken by USDA.”

The alcohol industry also lauded the government’s decision, with a spokesman for the Beer Institute praising “maintaining the long-standing definition of moderate alcohol consumption.”

A surprisingly large percentage of Americans believes in secret conspiracies. It is hard to keep secrets in large groups of people, so I tend to be skeptical about claims of secret conspiracies. But all one has to do is look around to see open conspiracies to harm the American people (for the sake of a buck). This is one.

(At least the new official guidelines recommend zero added sugar for children under two years old.)

For annotated links to other posts on diet and health, see:

Only What is in Our Power is Our Duty

Too often, we act as if we have control over external things we can’t control—and as if we can’t control our own attitudes, which are well within our control. Seeing the truth of what we control and what we don’t control is a big part of wisdom. Here is how Ryan Holiday puts it in The Obstacle is the Way:

… recovering addicts learn the Serenity Prayer.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change

The courage to change the things I can,

And the wisdom to know the difference.

This is how they focus their efforts. It’s a lot easier to fight addiction when you aren’t also fighting the fact that you were born, that your parents were monsters, or that you lost everything. That stuff is done. Delivered. Zero in one hundred chances that you can change it.

So what if you focused on what you can change? That’s where you can make a difference.

Behind the Serenity Prayer is a two-thousand-year-old Stoic phrase: “ta eph’hemin, ta ouk eph’hemin.” What is up to us, what is not up to us.

And what is up to us?

  • Our emotions

  • Our judgments

  • Our creativity

  • Our attitude

  • Our perspective

  • Our desires

  • Our decisions

  • Our determination

This is our playing field, so to speak. Everything there is fair game. What is not up to us? Well, you know, everything else. The weather, the economy, circumstances, other people’s emotions or judgments, trends, disasters, et cetera.

…

In its own way, the most harmful dragon we chase is the one that makes us think we can change things that are simply not ours to change. That someone decided not to fund your company, this isn’t up to you. But the decision to refine and improve your pitch? That is. That someone stole your idea or got to it first? No. To pivot, improve it, or fight for what’s yours? Yes.

There are many things beyond your control. For example, for economists, opinions differ so widely on what is good and what is not so good that which referees an editor assigns to read your paper makes a huge difference to whether your paper gets accepted to an economics journal. And unfortunately for you, which particular referees an editor assigns to judge your paper is probably beyond your control. (I call this the “referee lottery.” Understanding the importance of the referee lottery is crucial to the mental health of economists who meet with bad luck when trying to publish. That understanding can also be a source of appropriate humility for those who meet with good luck in trying to publish.)

Many things are beyond your control. But I’m willing to bet that if you look closely enough, you’ll find that at least half of what makes your life pleasant or unpleasant has to do with what is going on within your own brain. This is your domain. It can be tricky to avoid overly self-critical or otherwise unproductive states of mind, but I’m willing to bet that the total amount of effort and consistent practice it takes to be able to intentionally get your mind into a better state is much, much less than the amount of effort and consistent practice that you and others reading my blog put into getting good at changing things in the world outside their heads. For many, then, there is likely to be a serious imbalance between the effort put into learning outward skills and the effort put into learning inward skills.

For the development of inward skills, in addition to using one of the many good meditation apps (in my case, “10% Happier”) I am a fan of the Shirzad Chamine’s pedagogy, which he has branded Positive Intelligence. He lays things out in a no-nonsense way, trying to use the latest neuroscience and findings in psychology. I have been impressed enough with the results from using these Positive Intelligence tools in my own life that I wanted to teach them to economists and their families. On that, see “How Economists Can Enhance Their Scientific Creativity, Engagement and Impact.”

At a more modest level, I have a set of blog posts about positive mental health and how to maintain your moral compass. I think you will find them useful.

Don’t Miss These Other Posts Related to Positive Mental Health and Maintaining One’s Moral and Scientific Compass:

How Perfectionism Has Made the Pandemic Worse

The Covid-19 pandemic has dominated the news in 2020. I’ve noticed one regularity in how the US (and many other countries) have handled the pandemic: perfectionism has been getting in the way of a quick and powerful response. Every little bit would have helped reduce the reproduction ratio of the coronavirus, but only things that were big bits were allowed. Let me list some instances of this perfectionism:

  • Early on, not yet having clear evidence of the benefits of masks was described to the public in a way that made it sound as if masks wouldn’t help much.

  • Highly accurate tests whose results take many days to arrive are next to useless. But the US government was very slow to approve tests of lower accuracy that could have made a big difference because they gave results within minutes.

  • Many decision-makers acted as if each person needed a test, when tests of samples pooled from many people could be very useful in showing where individual tests were needed and where they weren’t.

  • In what could have been a big mistake, the government was saying it would only allow a vaccine that was at least 50% effective, when even a 30% effective vaccine could have put a lot of downward pressure on the reproduction ratio of the virus—meaning that in conjunction with continued social distancing it could have brought the epidemic under control. Fortunately, the key vaccines seem to be coming in with effectiveness closer to 95%, making what could have been a big mistake moot.

  • Despite evidence that having had Covid-19 confers decent immunity, there is little push to conserve currently scarce vaccine doses by strongly discouraging those who have had Covid-19 from getting vaccinated until supplies of the vaccine are more abundant. I think using scarce vaccine doses on those who have already had the disease is motivated by the idea that the immunity of those who have had the disease is probably imperfect, which no doubt is true, because nothing is ever perfect. But Tom Frieden writes in “How to Handle the Covid-19 Vaccine Breakthrough the Right Way”: “very encouraging are the results of three new studies appearing to show that infection with the virus creates a high level of immunity to Covid-19. In the first study, examining a large outbreak on a fishing ship, none of the three people with antibodies got sick, while nearly everyone else got infected. In the second, of an outbreak at a summer camp, none of the 16 people with prior antibodies got sick or tested positive, while nearly everyone else did. More recently, a preliminary report from a study of infected health-care workers found that immunity appears strong and seems to last at least six months.”

  • Because the vaccine protocol used two doses, the vaccine-rollout plan while vaccine doses are scarce is to vaccinate half as many people with two doses rather than twice as many people with one dose, which the vaccine trials suggest has a high enough level of efficacy that vaccinating twice as many people with one dose would lower the vaccines reproduction ratio much more.

  • Finally, in something that shocks me, the article at the top, “Highly Touted Monoclonal Antibody Therapies Sit Unused in Hospitals” by Sarah Toy, Joseph Walker and Melanie Evans suggests that there is a reluctance to use monoclonal antibodies because there is not yet evidence that goes far beyond what was needed to get government approval. Monoclonal antibodies work by the same principles as vaccines; the big differences are (a) vaccines get your body to make antibodies, monoclonal antibody treatment directly injects antibodies, (b) the monoclonal antibodies are chosen to be especially high-quality antibodies, while your body might or might not make a lot of high-quality antibodies after you are vaccinated, and (c) you have to vaccinate everyone, but the monoclonal antibody treatment can be given to people after they start to show some symptoms and so can be prioritized better. You can bet that I would ask for monoclonal antibody treatment if I got Covid-19.

Some of the caution about evidence, accuracy, efficacy and side-effects would make sense if we were facing a lesser disease. But when people are dying all around, getting the job done is what counts, even if you get the job done by imperfect means. The way the reproduction ratio works, combining a set of several very imperfects means that pushed the reproduction ratio below the critical value of 1 could crush the spread of the coronavirus.

For a while, the Union’s top general in the Civil War was a perfectionist: George McClellan. George McClellan kept looking for the perfect opportunity to engage the forces of the Confederacy in battle. He accomplished little. Ulysses Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman got the job done by their willingness to use imperfect methods.

Daniel Jacobson on Freedom of Speech at Universities in the Age of Cancel Culture →

The title of this post links to an interview with Daniel Jacobson. I am proud to have served on the search committee that chose Daniel Jacobson for his current position at the University of Colorado Boulder. As a teaser, here are some quotations from this interview (bullets added):

  • I have become increasingly alarmed at the lack of intellectual and political diversity in philosophy and academia, as well as by its political biases and even bigotry. Scholars with heterodox views — conservatives, libertarians and classical liberals — are widely discriminated against and called racists for supporting race-neutral principles.

    In my experience, some universities practice hiring and admissions policies that are blatantly illegal, even at public institutions in states that have more stringent anti-discrimination laws. Meanwhile, Jews and Asian-Americans are discriminated against openly …

  • … universities increasingly accept a dubious ideology that demonizes whatever it considers “whiteness.”

  • The University of Colorado, to its great credit, has a conception of diversity that includes opinion, not just identity group.

  • The series is about the rapid increase in social coercion of speech and the narrowing of the range of socially acceptable opinion among elite institutions. More and more, scholars and journalists with politically unpopular views are being harassed and personally attacked for questioning prevailing dogma. In the current phrase, they are being canceled — or at least people are attempting to cancel them.

    This is antithetical to the proper mission of universities and the media. It is also exactly what those of us who have been defending freedom of speech predicted would happen once classes of opinion were put beyond the pale with terms such as “hate speech.” That creates an incentive for those who would silence unpopular opinions to classify their opponents as being motivated by hate or fear (as with the tendentious “-phobic” suffix). It seems absurd, but Martin Luther King Jr. would be guilty of committing “microaggressions” according to official University of California guidelines, which are unofficially accepted far more broadly in academia.

  • We humans are deeply conformist, and we tend to accept uncritically the opinions of those around us. This makes the ideological takeover of academia and prestige media especially harmful to the intellectual development of students.

  • I have taught advanced undergraduate courses where most students had never been exposed to the arguments for the morality of capitalism, for example. They were entirely unaware of arguments in favor of market-based economies over central economic planning. Somehow senior majors in PPE (Philosophy, Political Science, and Economics) had never read Hayek, Friedman or Thomas Sowell.

Nicole Rura: Close to Half of US Population Projected to Have Obesity by 2030

A big part of my motivation for blogging about diet and health (along with all the other subjects I blog about) is my awareness of how bad the trendlines are for obesity and other avoidable health problems.

Because we are affected by the behavior of those around us, anything visible that you do that is good or bad for your health also has spillovers for those around you. If you go off sugar, or pursue a more ambitious program of eating right, or exercise, you are benefitting not only yourself, but all the people who (possibly unconsciously) are inspired by your example. Conversely, if you eat scores of different foods with substantial sugar content (as you well might—look at the details on the box), delve deeply into junk food, or pursue the life of a couch potato, you harm not only yourself, but all the people who see such destructive behavior as a little more normal because so many people act that way. And some of the people you are likely to affect most strongly by the example of your behavior are those in your own household.

I am coming more and more to the view that a lot of what we think of as the normal effects of aging are the result of ways of behaving we take for normal in 2020, but won’t look normal at all when people look back from the year 2100. Much of what you need to know to be much healthier is known now but will take decades to become conventional wisdom and decades beyond that to be embraced as actual behavioral change. I hope to shorten that lag time for readers of my blog.

So far in this post, I was talking about physical health. But mental health is crucial as well. A key dimension of positive mental health is turning down the volume on the voice in your head that is constantly hypercritical of you. I am trying to write things that will be helpful there, too.

Don’t suffer in ignorance of all the things that could make your life better.

For annotated links to other posts on diet and health, see:

For links to posts on positive mental health and maintaining one’s moral compass, see: