The World Isn't Fair. Any Fairness You Stumble Across Is There Because Someone Put It There.

At every moment in history, all human groups and institutions have been messed up to some degree. One of the marvelous things about human beings is that, despite having no supernatural essence or powers, they have a moral compass within them that allows them to judge groups and institutions as deficient in justice.

There is a fork in the road when confronting injustice. One path is the path of anger. Occasionally this works: after seeing how deeply you feel about an unfairness, the perpetrator of that unfairness might back down and rethink. And sometimes it may be that an institution needs to be torn down because its injustice is great and irredeemable.

The path of anger is not one to be undertaken lightly. Many will react to your anger with anger of their own rather than with the reaction you want. And when you succeed at intimidation that leads to an immediate result you consider fairer, it can lead to long-term resentment that can cause trouble in the future.

The other path is the path of reconstruction and fixing. The path of reconstruction and fixing and works best when you emphasize justice for others as much as or more than justice for you. Often, only justice for others is at issue; you are called on to put in great effort to make it possible for an institution to deliver justice in a particular instance. In other cases, you are trying to improve rules, processes and execution to achieve more justice for everyone, including yourself.

The turn toward the path of reconstruction and fixing comes with saying “How can I make things better?” rather than focusing on “How could they do this?”

Justice is water in a glass that is both half-full and half-empty. The half-emptiness hits us like a brick. Seeing the half-fullness requires a shift in perspective toward gratitude that due to those who have gone before us, and those around us now, there is occasionally some justice in the world. When we feel gratitude for the portion of justice that is there, it provides inspiration for us to do our part to contribute to the justice in the world and improve things—without too quickly deciding to tear down the structures that may stand between us and a situation of even greater injustice.

Posts on Positive Mental Health and Maintaining One’s Moral Compass:

Michael Sandel on the Dignity of Work

Link to the Wikipedia article “Michael Sandel”

In his book The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good, Michael Sandel argues that redistribution that just hands people money isn’t enough; everyone needs to feel that they are contributing value to society. As a way to achieve this, he has some bad ideas. Two are to reduce immigration and to have less free trade. The trouble with these measures is that they hurt people in other countries who are worse off than the Americans they help. Similarly, increases in the minimum wage hurt people at the very bottom who now can’t find a job in order to help those who are one rung up on the economic ladder.

A much, much better idea is wage-matching for those near the bottom of the heap: taking whatever money a private employer is willing to pay and matching it with a corresponding amount of money from the government. I write about this in my post “Oren Cass on the Value of Work.” In one spot in The Tyranny of Merit, Michael Sandel speaks approvingly of wage subsidies, but it turns out he is mainly talking about trying to keep workers in jobs they already have. A robust wage-matching system would go far beyond that, helping create new jobs.

Philosophically, there are two justifications for a wage-matching system. The first is a principle that Michael Sandel emphasizes: it is valuable to the members of society to have a job because work gives people dignity and also helps them develop capabilities that make them better citizens when they aren’t at work. The second is that those at the bottom of the heap who get their wages matched are likely to provide many goods and services appropriate for the poor. (Those who provide high-end services probably already make a high enough wage they would not get wage-matching.) The poor don’t have enough purchasing power to fully represent the value of goods and services to them, so more work by people at the bottom of the heap making goods and services for them abundant is valuable.

Note that making a wage-matching system work smoothly requires cutting back on unnecessary occupational licensing and letting the minimum wage apply to the wage including government wage matching. The purpose of wage-matching is to make it easy for people at the bottom to find jobs as well as to give them a living wage after the wage-matching.

I would like to see arguments for a universal basic income routinely parried by arguments for a wage-matching system. A wage-matching system is better.

There is one place where those favoring a universal basic income and those favoring a wage-matching system ought to be able to agree. Being the parent of a young child is real work. Hence tax credits for young children can be seen as akin to a wage-matching system with the implicit private part of the wage being all the time and effort the parents were already willing to devote even when in poverty.

Don’t miss these other posts (some of them link-posts to outside pieces) on these alternative policies:

Suggestive Evidence that Vitamin D Supplements Lower Risk of Autoimmune Disease

Vitamins typically don’t do much for health unless you are deficient to begin with. But many Americans are deficient in Vitamin D, in part because of an error in setting the minimum daily requirements for Vitamin D. One of the consequences of Vitamin D deficiency seems to be autoimmune disease.

The evidence is high-quality evidence from the large-scale vitamin D and omega-3 trial (VITAL):

VITAL is a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled research study of 25,871 men (age 50 and older) and women (age 55 and older) across the U.S., conducted to investigate whether taking daily dietary supplements of vitamin D3 (2000 IU) or omega-3 fatty acids (Omacor fish oil, 1 gram) could reduce the risk for developing cancer, heart disease, and stroke in people who do not have a prior history of these illnesses. Participants were randomized to receive either vitamin D with an omega-3 fatty acid supplement; vitamin D with a placebo; omega-3 fatty acid with a placebo; or placebo only. Prior to the launch of VITAL, investigators determined that they would also look at rates of AD among participants, as part of an ancillary study.

The probability the results could be due to chance can be calculated with these additional details:

Among patients who were randomized to receive vitamin D, 123 participants in the treatment group and 155 in the placebo group were diagnosed with confirmed AD (22 percent reduction).

That difference has close to a 5% probability of happening by chance (a p-value near 5%). And of course the chance that one of the set {cancer, heart disease, stroke, autoimmune disease) would show a different incidence this big is considerably higher (multiple hypothesis testing). So the evidence is only suggestive, but with something this serious, a good Bayesian should take the evidence seriously in the absence of other contrary evidence.

Don’t miss these related posts:

The Federalist Papers #48: Legislatures, Too, Can Become Tyrannical—James Madison

Link to the Wikipedia article “Oliver Cromwell.” Oliver Cromwell led the armies of the Parliament of England and later effectively became a dictator under the title “Lord Protector.”

Link to full text of The Federalist Papers #48

In the Federalist Papers #48, James Madison argues that there need to be checks and balances against legislatures as well as against executives. In English history, Oliver Cromwell provides a good example of a dictator created by the legislature (Parliament). For a US example, James Madison refers to a report of the Council of Censors in Pennsylvania, who reported both legislative encroachments on the constitutional powers of the executive and the judiciary and executive encroachments on the constitutional power of the legislature. He explains the frequency of executive encroachments on the constitution power of the legislature partly by the exigencies of the Revolutionary War, actions the executive knew the legislature would approve of (even though it hadn’t authorized those actions) and as a result of diffusion of responsibility:

THIRDLY, the executive department of Pennsylvania is distinguished from that of the other States by the number of members composing it. In this respect, it has as much affinity to a legislative assembly as to an executive council. And being at once exempt from the restraint of an individual responsibility for the acts of the body, and deriving confidence from mutual example and joint influence, unauthorized measures would, of course, be more freely hazarded, than where the executive department is administered by a single hand, or by a few hands.

For Virginia, James Madison refers to Thomas Jefferson’s “Notes on the State of Virginia,” using this quotation:

All the powers of government, legislative, executive, and judiciary, result to the legislative body. The concentrating these in the same hands, is precisely the definition of despotic government. It will be no alleviation, that these powers will be exercised by a plurality of hands, and not by a single one. One hundred and seventy-three despots would surely be as oppressive as one. Let those who doubt it, turn their eyes on the republic of Venice. As little will it avail us, that they are chosen by ourselves. An ELECTIVE DESPOTISM was not the government we fought for; but one which should not only be founded on free principles, but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among several bodies of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits, without being effectually checked and restrained by the others.

James Madison seems to assume quite a bit of familiarity with these other documents by his readers.

The Federalist Papers #48 is not that impressive all by itself, but it provide an additional brick in the wall of argument for checks and balances.

Below is the full text of the Federalist Papers #48.

FEDERALIST NO. 48

These Departments Should Not Be So Far Separated as to Have No Constitutional Control Over Each Other

From the New York Packet
Friday, February 1, 1788.

Author: James Madison

To the People of the State of New York:

IT WAS shown in the last paper that the political apothegm there examined does not require that the legislative, executive, and judiciary departments should be wholly unconnected with each other. I shall undertake, in the next place, to show that unless these departments be so far connected and blended as to give to each a constitutional control over the others, the degree of separation which the maxim requires, as essential to a free government, can never in practice be duly maintained. It is agreed on all sides, that the powers properly belonging to one of the departments ought not to be directly and completely administered by either of the other departments. It is equally evident, that none of them ought to possess, directly or indirectly, an overruling influence over the others, in the administration of their respective powers. It will not be denied, that power is of an encroaching nature, and that it ought to be effectually restrained from passing the limits assigned to it.

After discriminating, therefore, in theory, the several classes of power, as they may in their nature be legislative, executive, or judiciary, the next and most difficult task is to provide some practical security for each, against the invasion of the others.

What this security ought to be, is the great problem to be solved. Will it be sufficient to mark, with precision, the boundaries of these departments, in the constitution of the government, and to trust to these parchment barriers against the encroaching spirit of power? This is the security which appears to have been principally relied on by the compilers of most of the American constitutions. But experience assures us, that the efficacy of the provision has been greatly overrated; and that some more adequate defense is indispensably necessary for the more feeble, against the more powerful, members of the government. The legislative department is everywhere extending the sphere of its activity, and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex. The founders of our republics have so much merit for the wisdom which they have displayed, that no task can be less pleasing than that of pointing out the errors into which they have fallen. A respect for truth, however, obliges us to remark, that they seem never for a moment to have turned their eyes from the danger to liberty from the overgrown and all-grasping prerogative of an hereditary magistrate, supported and fortified by an hereditary branch of the legislative authority. They seem never to have recollected the danger from legislative usurpations, which, by assembling all power in the same hands, must lead to the same tyranny as is threatened by executive usurpations. In a government where numerous and extensive prerogatives are placed in the hands of an hereditary monarch, the executive department is very justly regarded as the source of danger, and watched with all the jealousy which a zeal for liberty ought to inspire. In a democracy, where a multitude of people exercise in person the legislative functions, and are continually exposed, by their incapacity for regular deliberation and concerted measures, to the ambitious intrigues of their executive magistrates, tyranny may well be apprehended, on some favorable emergency, to start up in the same quarter. But in a representative republic, where the executive magistracy is carefully limited; both in the extent and the duration of its power; and where the legislative power is exercised by an assembly, which is inspired, by a supposed influence over the people, with an intrepid confidence in its own strength; which is sufficiently numerous to feel all the passions which actuate a multitude, yet not so numerous as to be incapable of pursuing the objects of its passions, by means which reason prescribes; it is against the enterprising ambition of this department that the people ought to indulge all their jealousy and exhaust all their precautions. The legislative department derives a superiority in our governments from other circumstances. Its constitutional powers being at once more extensive, and less susceptible of precise limits, it can, with the greater facility, mask, under complicated and indirect measures, the encroachments which it makes on the co-ordinate departments. It is not unfrequently a question of real nicety in legislative bodies, whether the operation of a particular measure will, or will not, extend beyond the legislative sphere. On the other side, the executive power being restrained within a narrower compass, and being more simple in its nature, and the judiciary being described by landmarks still less uncertain, projects of usurpation by either of these departments would immediately betray and defeat themselves. Nor is this all: as the legislative department alone has access to the pockets of the people, and has in some constitutions full discretion, and in all a prevailing influence, over the pecuniary rewards of those who fill the other departments, a dependence is thus created in the latter, which gives still greater facility to encroachments of the former. I have appealed to our own experience for the truth of what I advance on this subject. Were it necessary to verify this experience by particular proofs, they might be multiplied without end. I might find a witness in every citizen who has shared in, or been attentive to, the course of public administrations. I might collect vouchers in abundance from the records and archives of every State in the Union. But as a more concise, and at the same time equally satisfactory, evidence, I will refer to the example of two States, attested by two unexceptionable authorities. The first example is that of Virginia, a State which, as we have seen, has expressly declared in its constitution, that the three great departments ought not to be intermixed. The authority in support of it is Mr. Jefferson, who, besides his other advantages for remarking the operation of the government, was himself the chief magistrate of it. In order to convey fully the ideas with which his experience had impressed him on this subject, it will be necessary to quote a passage of some length from his very interesting "Notes on the State of Virginia," p. 195. "All the powers of government, legislative, executive, and judiciary, result to the legislative body. The concentrating these in the same hands, is precisely the definition of despotic government. It will be no alleviation, that these powers will be exercised by a plurality of hands, and not by a single one. One hundred and seventy-three despots would surely be as oppressive as one. Let those who doubt it, turn their eyes on the republic of Venice. As little will it avail us, that they are chosen by ourselves. An ELECTIVE DESPOTISM was not the government we fought for; but one which should not only be founded on free principles, but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among several bodies of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits, without being effectually checked and restrained by the others.

For this reason, that convention which passed the ordinance of government, laid its foundation on this basis, that the legislative, executive, and judiciary departments should be separate and distinct, so that no person should exercise the powers of more than one of them at the same time. BUT NO BARRIER WAS PROVIDED BETWEEN THESE SEVERAL POWERS. The judiciary and the executive members were left dependent on the legislative for their subsistence in office, and some of them for their continuance in it. If, therefore, the legislature assumes executive and judiciary powers, no opposition is likely to be made; nor, if made, can be effectual; because in that case they may put their proceedings into the form of acts of Assembly, which will render them obligatory on the other branches. They have accordingly, IN MANY instances, DECIDED RIGHTS which should have been left to JUDICIARY CONTROVERSY, and THE DIRECTION OF THE EXECUTIVE, DURING THE WHOLE TIME OF THEIR SESSION, IS BECOMING HABITUAL AND FAMILIAR. "The other State which I shall take for an example is Pennsylvania; and the other authority, the Council of Censors, which assembled in the years 1783 and 1784. A part of the duty of this body, as marked out by the constitution, was "to inquire whether the constitution had been preserved inviolate in every part; and whether the legislative and executive branches of government had performed their duty as guardians of the people, or assumed to themselves, or exercised, other or greater powers than they are entitled to by the constitution. " In the execution of this trust, the council were necessarily led to a comparison of both the legislative and executive proceedings, with the constitutional powers of these departments; and from the facts enumerated, and to the truth of most of which both sides in the council subscribed, it appears that the constitution had been flagrantly violated by the legislature in a variety of important instances. A great number of laws had been passed, violating, without any apparent necessity, the rule requiring that all bills of a public nature shall be previously printed for the consideration of the people; although this is one of the precautions chiefly relied on by the constitution against improper acts of legislature. The constitutional trial by jury had been violated, and powers assumed which had not been delegated by the constitution.

Executive powers had been usurped. The salaries of the judges, which the constitution expressly requires to be fixed, had been occasionally varied; and cases belonging to the judiciary department frequently drawn within legislative cognizance and determination. Those who wish to see the several particulars falling under each of these heads, may consult the journals of the council, which are in print. Some of them, it will be found, may be imputable to peculiar circumstances connected with the war; but the greater part of them may be considered as the spontaneous shoots of an ill-constituted government. It appears, also, that the executive department had not been innocent of frequent breaches of the constitution. There are three observations, however, which ought to be made on this head: FIRST, a great proportion of the instances were either immediately produced by the necessities of the war, or recommended by Congress or the commander-in-chief; SECONDLY, in most of the other instances, they conformed either to the declared or the known sentiments of the legislative department; THIRDLY, the executive department of Pennsylvania is distinguished from that of the other States by the number of members composing it. In this respect, it has as much affinity to a legislative assembly as to an executive council. And being at once exempt from the restraint of an individual responsibility for the acts of the body, and deriving confidence from mutual example and joint influence, unauthorized measures would, of course, be more freely hazarded, than where the executive department is administered by a single hand, or by a few hands.

The conclusion which I am warranted in drawing from these observations is, that a mere demarcation on parchment of the constitutional limits of the several departments, is not a sufficient guard against those encroachments which lead to a tyrannical concentration of all the powers of government in the same hands.

PUBLIUS.

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

Quicksand →

The reality of quicksand is very different that in the movies. In particular, the Wikipedia article linked above says:

It is impossible for a human to sink entirely into quicksand, due to the higher density of the fluid. Quicksand has a density of about 2 grams per cubic centimeter, whereas the density of the human body is only about 1 gram per cubic centimeter. …

…

Quicksand may be escaped by slow movement of the legs in order to increase viscosity of the fluid, and rotation of the body so as to float in the supine position (lying horizontally with the face and torso facing up).

Technically, quicksand is a “shear thinning non-Newtonian fluid.”

How to Foster Transformative Innovation in Higher Education

In his book The Tyranny of Merit, Harvard Professor Michael Sandel propose that prestigious universities have an explicit admissions lottery among the many qualified applicants as a way to combat the meritocratic treadmill and the meritocratic hubris to which their students are subject. He misses a more direct and more productive way of toning down the size of the prize that admission to the top schools now represents: pushing these top schools to increase the size of their undergraduate classes. (See “The Extensive Margin: How to Simultaneously Raise Quality and Lower Tuition at Elite Public Universities” and “Noah Smith: If Elite Schools Care About What They Claim To, and Believe in the Value of What They Do, They Should Take On More Students.”)

I want to make the radical claim that colleges and universities should, first and foremost, be in the business of educating students well. One implication of this radical claim is that colleges’ and universities’ performance should be measured by value added—by graduation rates and how much stronger graduating students are academically than they were at matriculation. By this standard, bringing in students who were impressive in high school raises the standards for what one should minimally expect a college’s or university’s students to look like at graduation, and colleges and universities become truly impressive if they help weak students become strong.

I doubt that higher education in the United States will reform itself without a push from the outside. We need more competition from new kinds of higher education. The key to allowing alternative forms of higher education to flourish is to replace the current emphasis on accreditation, which tends to lock in the status quo, and instead have the government or a foundation with an interest in higher education develop high-quality assessment tools for what skills a student has at graduation. Distinct skills should be separately certified. The biggest emphasis should be on skills directly valuable in the labor market: writing, reading carefully, coding, the lesser computer and math skills needed to be a whiz with a spreadsheet, etc. But students should be able to get certified in every key skill that a college or university purports to teach. (Where what should be taught is disputed, as in the Humanities, there should be alternative certification routes, such as a certification in the use of Postmodernism and a separate certification for knowledge of what was conceived as the traditional canon 75 years ago. The nature of the assessment in each can be controlled by professors who believe in that particular school of thought.)

Having an assessment that allows a student to document a skill allows for innovation in how to get to that level of skill. For example, certification of skills separately allows academic instruction to be unbundled into instruction in each of the specific skills a student decides to acquire. One place this has already happened is in coding. It is straightforward to get a certification in a particular programming language. Having a good assessment of what students know at the end of their instruction also allows new entrants to higher education to show they are doing a good job.

I think this is doable. There are enough students who come out of colleges and universities not being able to write well or read carefully that it should be helpful to students in getting a job to have a certification proving that they can. To the extent colleges and universities claim to be teaching higher-order thinking, an assessment tool to test higher-order thinking is needed. One might object that testing higher-order thinking would be expensive, but it takes an awful lot of money to amount to all that much compared to four or more years of college tuition. And colleges and universities should be ashamed if they think we should take them seriously were they to claim that what they taught was so ineffable that it would be impossible for a student to demonstrate they had that skill in a structured test situation. On this, see “False Advertising for College is Pretty Much the Norm.”

Everything I am writing here is very much in line with my Quartz column “The Coming Transformation of Education: Degrees Won’t Matter Anymore, Skills Will.” This transformation can be hastened if the government or some other large actor creates appropriate assessment tools.

On a modest initiative to better measure student learning in my Economics Department, see Measuring Learning Outcomes from Getting an Economics Degree

Don’t Worry about the Fasting Thirst Roller Coaster

Let me add to what I wrote in “Fasting Tips” a little insight into a minor side effect of fasting that could puzzle you if you don’t know about glycogen. Near the beginning of a several-day fast, there is a day or two when I am much less thirsty than usual; then after I go back to eating normally I there is a day or two when I am much thirstier than usual. What is going on is that glycogen, the body’s short-term sugar storage doubles as water storage as well. Evolutionarily, this seems like a good trick.

The body taps into these glycogen sugar + water stores at the beginning of a fast before dipping into the long-term storage of energy in body fat. After going back to eating normally, the body needs extra water along with carbs to reconstitute the glycogen sugar + water stores.

You probably have 6 cups to half a gallon of water bound up with your glycogen. The glycogen proper amounts to about half a kilogram. Quoting from the current version of the Wikipedia article “Glycogen”:

… the liver of an adult, weighing 1.5 kg, can store roughly 100–120 grams of glycogen.[4][6] In skeletal muscle, glycogen is found in a low concentration (1–2% of the muscle mass) and the skeletal muscle of an adult weighing 70 kg stores roughly 400 grams of glycogen.[4]

Then there is 3 to 4 times as much water bound up with the glycogen:

Glycogen in muscle, liver, and fat cells is stored in a hydrated form, composed of three or four parts of water per part of glycogen associated with 0.45 millimoles (18 mg) of potassium per gram of glycogen.[5]

3 times 500 grams is 6.34 cups of water. 4 times 500 grams is 8.45 cups of water. Your glycogen probably won’t go below 10% of its normal level, so to get available stored water these need to be multiplied by .9, which is 5.7 to 7.6 cups of water. That is a lot!

In terms of calories, there are about 4 calories per gram of glycogen, so if 450 grams are available to be run down, that is 1800 calories—a large share of the calories needed for a day. So you might not burn much fat with a fast of just one day if your body leans strongly toward running down the glycogen first. I talk about that in “Increasing Returns to Duration in Fasting.”

Despite knowing about glycogen, I have had many moments after I begin eating again after a several-day fast when I have been alarmed at how thirsty I am, until I remember what is going on. Then I am reassured.

Being less thirsty at the beginning of a fast hasn’t ever gotten me needlessly worried. Note that this is something you could use if you are ever in a situation in which you have food available but not much water. If you don’t eat the food, then you will get access to your body’s stored water and for a while are likely to suffer less from thirst.

Let me share one more bit of experience. I just came off of three weeks in which I did a modified fast very low on the insulin index as I describe in “Forget Calorie Counting; It's the Insulin Index, Stupid” for 4 days each week and then did an almost total fast for 3 days each week. It was only when I began eating additional things higher on the insulin index after the three weeks were over that I experienced the extra thirst. Thus, eating low enough on the insulin index seemed to also be lowcarb enough that my glycogen couldn’t reconstitute.

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

The Curse of Meritocratic Hubris

In his book The Tyranny of Merit, Michael Sandel documents in excruciating detail the rise of meritocracy as a cultural ideal and the concomitant vice of the educated and successful looking down on the uneducated. I am aghast at this bad behavior. It is incredibly destructive socially for anyone to look down on anyone else, let alone a large fraction of our society looking down on another large fraction.

To me, this suggests a serious failure of moral education in our society. Everyone should be brought up and taught to appreciate the virtue of appropriate personal humility and gratitude and appropriate respect for other human beings. Let me be specific about what I have in mind, limited as I am by the perspective offered by my own experience.

After 45 years, I still remember my Dad taking me aside after a high school awards ceremony in which I won a large number of awards to remind me that it is more important to be good than to be smart. In the Mormon Church I grew up in, there were regular sermons about how “No success can compensate for failure in the home” and about how riches and success could make people proud and thereby lead them to go off-track in their lives.

In my Economics PhD program, we read Frank Knight arguing that despite the virtues of the free market, it was not fair—sentiments later cited approvingly by Friedrich Hayek. To put my own gloss on the argument, first, there is a moral arbitrariness to the genetic lottery that assigns raw talent. Second, there is a moral arbitrariness to which raw talents are scarce or in high demand and which are abundant or in low demand at a given moment in history. Third, market imperfections and poor regulatory design can make prices diverge from social value. And fourth, internal conflicts can give high prices to things such as drugs, gambling and other addictive or quasi-addictive things that part of an individual dearly wants and part of the individual wants to abjure. The social value of these things depends on which parts of people’s divided selves we want to foster.

Here is what I think a good society would look like. Everyone considers themself “just folks” without putting themself above anyone else—except insofar as hierarchy is needed to accomplish a necessary task, and then with as little differentiation as can do the job. Incentives involving one person being richer than another are only used to raises Utilitarian social welfare. (Despite John Rawls’s critique of Utilitarianism, this is much closer in practice to John Rawls’s Difference Principle than many realize.) Freedom and being treated with dignity are themselves brought into the Utilitarian social welfare function as valued goods in themselves.

One thing that need not be there at all in a good society is any notion of what someone “deserves” beyond what everyone deserves as a human being. Reward and punishment, honor and blame are there in an instrumental role as incentives, but they are not seen as having any ultimate significance outside of their role as cogs in the design of a society that works well.

Our higher education system is dysfunctional in many ways. Prestigious colleges universities becoming more and more selective instead of expanding their number of students seems to be contributing to the rise of an ugly meritocratic hubris. Once a student has added to whatever advantages they had to start with a huge amount of effort in order to get into a selective college or university, the temptation of thinking they “deserve” their high station is strong. What would be a better attitude? “To one to whom much is given, much is expected.” Having a high station in society increases one’s responsibility to do good. It doesn’t justify lording it over or looking down on others.

Posts on Positive Mental Health and Maintaining One’s Moral Compass:

The Source of about Half of the Gap Between Judgements of Male and Female CVs in Economics at Promotion Time—A Conjecture

Link to video of the “Conference on Diversity and Inclusion in Economics, Finance, and Central Banking November 9, 2021” on YouTube

It would be good to have more women in economic research. The conference shown above is just one example of official concern about not having enough women in economics. There is some evidence that even given quantitatively similar CVs, by all the measures used by economists who study publishing in economics, women fare worse in tenure and other promotion decisions. Why might this be? Let me propose a mechanism in which everyone might try to judge as fairly as possible and still collectively judge in an unfair way.

Bean-counting does not do enough to adjust for the vastly different qualities of papers that appear in the same journal. So there is something valuable about having a promotion committee read the papers of someone up for promotion to see how impressive they are. One key factor in judging the importance of an economics paper is, and should be, a judgement about the importance of the question the paper addresses. However, men and women are on average interested in different questions, and so these two groups will differ systematically in their judgements about the importance of the questions are that are addressed by the one up for promotion. Men up for promotion are on average more likely to have chosen questions for their research that men judge as important, while women up for promotion are on average more likely to have chosen questions for their research that women judge as important. When those voting on a promotion are mostly male, this puts women at a disadvantage.

Note that when looking at promotion prospects for men and women, what matters is always how those voting on the promotion deal with marginal cases. So we are talking about folks up for promotion who are either going to barely get through or barely lose out. It is easy for a modest gap in judgements of the importance of research questions to make a difference in those cases.

Note that the gender gap in the judgement of the importance of various research questions has an effect beyond promotion meetings. A senior colleague is more likely to be motivated to give advice and other mentoring on a research project that seems to them to be an important question.

Note that this mechanism could operate without any direct sexism at all—everyone could be indifferent between a man and a woman working on the same topic and there would still be a problem. Abstractly, what is needed is to get to the result one would get to if an equal number of male and female economists were honestly judging how impressive a paper is. If there aren’t an equal number of male and female economists doing the judging, that won’t happen automatically.

I am of course taking the philosophical position that the research questions that women think are important matter just as much as the research questions that men think are important. That sounds uncontroversial, but think through what that means in terms of the specific types of research questions that are upgraded in importance when women’s judgements are given an equal weight to men’s judgements as if there were an equal number of men and women in economics. In terms of fields, questions in applied micro fields, broadly writ, would likely be upgraded. And I think Behavioral Economics questions would likely be upgraded. Abstract theory questions would likely be somewhat downgraded (but one should not exaggerate how much).

You Probably Need More Vitamin D

Inspired by Carola Binder’s guest post “Why You Should Get More Vitamin D: The Recommended Daily Allowance for Vitamin D Was Underestimated Due to Statistical Illiteracy,” I take 5000 IU of Vitamin D each day when I am not fasting. (That is one very small pill. I buy them at Costco.) Two simple facts also reinforce for me the importance of Vitamin D:

  1. Many diseases have worse incidence in high latitudes; something not so easy to explain by confounding factors other than the sunlight that produces Vitamin D.

  2. Folks like me whose ancestors lived in high latitudes for a few thousand years are white, despite being descended further back from black Africans. The only plausible reason is that folks with darker skins couldn’t produce enough Vitamin D in places with weaker sun exposure. Vitamin D has to be a big deal to cause evolution of skin color that fast.

A friend recently pointed me to a website, vitamindwiki.com, that might go overboard in its advocacy for Vitamin D, but does marshal an impressive array of facts and citations that, properly winnowed, backs up this view of the importance of Vitamin D. I give links to three of its posts underneath the screenshots at the top of this post.

Among the supplements I take, I don’t take many vitamins. Indeed, as I’ll write about later, I worry that taking a multivitamin too often might help provide cancer the vitamins it needs and so foster cancer. But I do take Vitamin D supplements.

Appendix: Here is a post on another website on latitude and disease:

The Federalist Papers #47: Separating Legislative, Executive and Judicial Powers is a Good Principle, But Perfection in this Regard is Impossible—James Madison

In the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison have severe words for many of the opponents of the proposed Constitution. But in the Federalist Papers #47, there is one objection to the proposed Constitution that James Madison treats as a legitimate objection if true—though factually inaccurate:

One of the principal objections inculcated by the more respectable adversaries to the Constitution, is its supposed violation of the political maxim, that the legislative, executive, and judiciary departments ought to be separate and distinct. …

The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, selfappointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. Were the federal Constitution, therefore, really chargeable with the accumulation of power, or with a mixture of powers, having a dangerous tendency to such an accumulation, no further arguments would be necessary to inspire a universal reprobation of the system.

James Madison then goes on to say that Montesquieu was one of the foremost advocates of the separation of powers, yet saw the British Constitution as a model of this:

The oracle who is always consulted and cited on this subject is the celebrated Montesquieu. If he be not the author of this invaluable precept in the science of politics, he has the merit at least of displaying and recommending it most effectually to the attention of mankind.… The British Constitution was to Montesquieu what Homer has been to the didactic writers on epic poetry. As the latter have considered the work of the immortal bard as the perfect model from which the principles and rules of the epic art were to be drawn, and by which all similar works were to be judged, so this great political critic appears to have viewed the Constitution of England as the standard, or to use his own expression, as the mirror of political liberty …

James Madison points out that in the British political system of the time, the separation of powers was not complete:

On the slightest view of the British Constitution, we must perceive that the legislative, executive, and judiciary departments are by no means totally separate and distinct from each other.

He then goes through many details to demonstrate this incomplete separation in the British political system and then the constitutions of many states in order to show that none managed a perfect separation of powers—and indeed the details suggest that in all of these the separation of powers is less perfect than in the proposed Constitution of the United States.

At all points in the Federalist Papers #47, James Madison evinces a strong belief in the principle of the separation of powers, while showing that even the many states that explicitly state in their constitutions that there should be separation of powers are not able to separate them perfectly. Indeed, no political system in view had a perfect separation of powers.

The full text of the Federalist Papers #47 is copied out below so you can see the detailed examples James Madison gives.

FEDERALIST NO. 47

The Particular Structure of the New Government and the Distribution of Power Among Its Different Parts

From the New York Packet
Friday, February 1, 1788.

Author: James Madison

To the People of the State of New York:

HAVING reviewed the general form of the proposed government and the general mass of power allotted to it, I proceed to examine the particular structure of this government, and the distribution of this mass of power among its constituent parts. One of the principal objections inculcated by the more respectable adversaries to the Constitution, is its supposed violation of the political maxim, that the legislative, executive, and judiciary departments ought to be separate and distinct. In the structure of the federal government, no regard, it is said, seems to have been paid to this essential precaution in favor of liberty. The several departments of power are distributed and blended in such a manner as at once to destroy all symmetry and beauty of form, and to expose some of the essential parts of the edifice to the danger of being crushed by the disproportionate weight of other parts. No political truth is certainly of greater intrinsic value, or is stamped with the authority of more enlightened patrons of liberty, than that on which the objection is founded.

The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, selfappointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. Were the federal Constitution, therefore, really chargeable with the accumulation of power, or with a mixture of powers, having a dangerous tendency to such an accumulation, no further arguments would be necessary to inspire a universal reprobation of the system. I persuade myself, however, that it will be made apparent to every one, that the charge cannot be supported, and that the maxim on which it relies has been totally misconceived and misapplied. In order to form correct ideas on this important subject, it will be proper to investigate the sense in which the preservation of liberty requires that the three great departments of power should be separate and distinct. The oracle who is always consulted and cited on this subject is the celebrated Montesquieu. If he be not the author of this invaluable precept in the science of politics, he has the merit at least of displaying and recommending it most effectually to the attention of mankind. Let us endeavor, in the first place, to ascertain his meaning on this point. The British Constitution was to Montesquieu what Homer has been to the didactic writers on epic poetry. As the latter have considered the work of the immortal bard as the perfect model from which the principles and rules of the epic art were to be drawn, and by which all similar works were to be judged, so this great political critic appears to have viewed the Constitution of England as the standard, or to use his own expression, as the mirror of political liberty; and to have delivered, in the form of elementary truths, the several characteristic principles of that particular system. That we may be sure, then, not to mistake his meaning in this case, let us recur to the source from which the maxim was drawn. On the slightest view of the British Constitution, we must perceive that the legislative, executive, and judiciary departments are by no means totally separate and distinct from each other. The executive magistrate forms an integral part of the legislative authority. He alone has the prerogative of making treaties with foreign sovereigns, which, when made, have, under certain limitations, the force of legislative acts. All the members of the judiciary department are appointed by him, can be removed by him on the address of the two Houses of Parliament, and form, when he pleases to consult them, one of his constitutional councils. One branch of the legislative department forms also a great constitutional council to the executive chief, as, on another hand, it is the sole depositary of judicial power in cases of impeachment, and is invested with the supreme appellate jurisdiction in all other cases. The judges, again, are so far connected with the legislative department as often to attend and participate in its deliberations, though not admitted to a legislative vote. From these facts, by which Montesquieu was guided, it may clearly be inferred that, in saying "There can be no liberty where the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or body of magistrates," or, "if the power of judging be not separated from the legislative and executive powers," he did not mean that these departments ought to have no PARTIAL AGENCY in, or no CONTROL over, the acts of each other. His meaning, as his own words import, and still more conclusively as illustrated by the example in his eye, can amount to no more than this, that where the WHOLE power of one department is exercised by the same hands which possess the WHOLE power of another department, the fundamental principles of a free constitution are subverted. This would have been the case in the constitution examined by him, if the king, who is the sole executive magistrate, had possessed also the complete legislative power, or the supreme administration of justice; or if the entire legislative body had possessed the supreme judiciary, or the supreme executive authority. This, however, is not among the vices of that constitution. The magistrate in whom the whole executive power resides cannot of himself make a law, though he can put a negative on every law; nor administer justice in person, though he has the appointment of those who do administer it. The judges can exercise no executive prerogative, though they are shoots from the executive stock; nor any legislative function, though they may be advised with by the legislative councils. The entire legislature can perform no judiciary act, though by the joint act of two of its branches the judges may be removed from their offices, and though one of its branches is possessed of the judicial power in the last resort. The entire legislature, again, can exercise no executive prerogative, though one of its branches constitutes the supreme executive magistracy, and another, on the impeachment of a third, can try and condemn all the subordinate officers in the executive department. The reasons on which Montesquieu grounds his maxim are a further demonstration of his meaning. "When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person or body," says he, "there can be no liberty, because apprehensions may arise lest THE SAME monarch or senate should ENACT tyrannical laws to EXECUTE them in a tyrannical manner. " Again: "Were the power of judging joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control, for THE JUDGE would then be THE LEGISLATOR.

Were it joined to the executive power, THE JUDGE might behave with all the violence of AN OPPRESSOR. " Some of these reasons are more fully explained in other passages; but briefly stated as they are here, they sufficiently establish the meaning which we have put on this celebrated maxim of this celebrated author.

If we look into the constitutions of the several States, we find that, notwithstanding the emphatical and, in some instances, the unqualified terms in which this axiom has been laid down, there is not a single instance in which the several departments of power have been kept absolutely separate and distinct. New Hampshire, whose constitution was the last formed, seems to have been fully aware of the impossibility and inexpediency of avoiding any mixture whatever of these departments, and has qualified the doctrine by declaring "that the legislative, executive, and judiciary powers ought to be kept as separate from, and independent of, each other AS THE NATURE OF A FREE GOVERNMENT WILL ADMIT; OR AS IS CONSISTENT WITH THAT CHAIN OF CONNECTION THAT BINDS THE WHOLE FABRIC OF THE CONSTITUTION IN ONE INDISSOLUBLE BOND OF UNITY AND AMITY. " Her constitution accordingly mixes these departments in several respects. The Senate, which is a branch of the legislative department, is also a judicial tribunal for the trial of impeachments. The President, who is the head of the executive department, is the presiding member also of the Senate; and, besides an equal vote in all cases, has a casting vote in case of a tie. The executive head is himself eventually elective every year by the legislative department, and his council is every year chosen by and from the members of the same department. Several of the officers of state are also appointed by the legislature. And the members of the judiciary department are appointed by the executive department. The constitution of Massachusetts has observed a sufficient though less pointed caution, in expressing this fundamental article of liberty. It declares "that the legislative department shall never exercise the executive and judicial powers, or either of them; the executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them; the judicial shall never exercise the legislative and executive powers, or either of them. " This declaration corresponds precisely with the doctrine of Montesquieu, as it has been explained, and is not in a single point violated by the plan of the convention. It goes no farther than to prohibit any one of the entire departments from exercising the powers of another department. In the very Constitution to which it is prefixed, a partial mixture of powers has been admitted. The executive magistrate has a qualified negative on the legislative body, and the Senate, which is a part of the legislature, is a court of impeachment for members both of the executive and judiciary departments. The members of the judiciary department, again, are appointable by the executive department, and removable by the same authority on the address of the two legislative branches.

Lastly, a number of the officers of government are annually appointed by the legislative department. As the appointment to offices, particularly executive offices, is in its nature an executive function, the compilers of the Constitution have, in this last point at least, violated the rule established by themselves. I pass over the constitutions of Rhode Island and Connecticut, because they were formed prior to the Revolution, and even before the principle under examination had become an object of political attention. The constitution of New York contains no declaration on this subject; but appears very clearly to have been framed with an eye to the danger of improperly blending the different departments. It gives, nevertheless, to the executive magistrate, a partial control over the legislative department; and, what is more, gives a like control to the judiciary department; and even blends the executive and judiciary departments in the exercise of this control. In its council of appointment members of the legislative are associated with the executive authority, in the appointment of officers, both executive and judiciary. And its court for the trial of impeachments and correction of errors is to consist of one branch of the legislature and the principal members of the judiciary department. The constitution of New Jersey has blended the different powers of government more than any of the preceding. The governor, who is the executive magistrate, is appointed by the legislature; is chancellor and ordinary, or surrogate of the State; is a member of the Supreme Court of Appeals, and president, with a casting vote, of one of the legislative branches. The same legislative branch acts again as executive council of the governor, and with him constitutes the Court of Appeals. The members of the judiciary department are appointed by the legislative department and removable by one branch of it, on the impeachment of the other. According to the constitution of Pennsylvania, the president, who is the head of the executive department, is annually elected by a vote in which the legislative department predominates. In conjunction with an executive council, he appoints the members of the judiciary department, and forms a court of impeachment for trial of all officers, judiciary as well as executive. The judges of the Supreme Court and justices of the peace seem also to be removable by the legislature; and the executive power of pardoning in certain cases, to be referred to the same department. The members of the executive counoil are made EX-OFFICIO justices of peace throughout the State. In Delaware, the chief executive magistrate is annually elected by the legislative department. The speakers of the two legislative branches are vice-presidents in the executive department. The executive chief, with six others, appointed, three by each of the legislative branches constitutes the Supreme Court of Appeals; he is joined with the legislative department in the appointment of the other judges. Throughout the States, it appears that the members of the legislature may at the same time be justices of the peace; in this State, the members of one branch of it are EX-OFFICIO justices of the peace; as are also the members of the executive council. The principal officers of the executive department are appointed by the legislative; and one branch of the latter forms a court of impeachments. All officers may be removed on address of the legislature. Maryland has adopted the maxim in the most unqualified terms; declaring that the legislative, executive, and judicial powers of government ought to be forever separate and distinct from each other. Her constitution, notwithstanding, makes the executive magistrate appointable by the legislative department; and the members of the judiciary by the executive department. The language of Virginia is still more pointed on this subject. Her constitution declares, "that the legislative, executive, and judiciary departments shall be separate and distinct; so that neither exercise the powers properly belonging to the other; nor shall any person exercise the powers of more than one of them at the same time, except that the justices of county courts shall be eligible to either House of Assembly. " Yet we find not only this express exception, with respect to the members of the inferior courts, but that the chief magistrate, with his executive council, are appointable by the legislature; that two members of the latter are triennially displaced at the pleasure of the legislature; and that all the principal offices, both executive and judiciary, are filled by the same department. The executive prerogative of pardon, also, is in one case vested in the legislative department. The constitution of North Carolina, which declares "that the legislative, executive, and supreme judicial powers of government ought to be forever separate and distinct from each other," refers, at the same time, to the legislative department, the appointment not only of the executive chief, but all the principal officers within both that and the judiciary department. In South Carolina, the constitution makes the executive magistracy eligible by the legislative department.

It gives to the latter, also, the appointment of the members of the judiciary department, including even justices of the peace and sheriffs; and the appointment of officers in the executive department, down to captains in the army and navy of the State.

In the constitution of Georgia, where it is declared "that the legislative, executive, and judiciary departments shall be separate and distinct, so that neither exercise the powers properly belonging to the other," we find that the executive department is to be filled by appointments of the legislature; and the executive prerogative of pardon to be finally exercised by the same authority. Even justices of the peace are to be appointed by the legislature. In citing these cases, in which the legislative, executive, and judiciary departments have not been kept totally separate and distinct, I wish not to be regarded as an advocate for the particular organizations of the several State governments. I am fully aware that among the many excellent principles which they exemplify, they carry strong marks of the haste, and still stronger of the inexperience, under which they were framed. It is but too obvious that in some instances the fundamental principle under consideration has been violated by too great a mixture, and even an actual consolidation, of the different powers; and that in no instance has a competent provision been made for maintaining in practice the separation delineated on paper. What I have wished to evince is, that the charge brought against the proposed Constitution, of violating the sacred maxim of free government, is warranted neither by the real meaning annexed to that maxim by its author, nor by the sense in which it has hitherto been understood in America. This interesting subject will be resumed in the ensuing paper.

PUBLIUS.

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