There’s this thing where economists get frustrated when non-economists write about economics without understanding various basic “Econ 101” ideas.
I don’t think there’s any comparable ideas called “Poli Sci 101,” but maybe there should be, because often I see non-political-scientists exhibiting fundamental misunderstandings about politics.
In the U.S. case, three common mistakes are confusion between direct democracy and representative democracy, ideas about minority rights without considering what are the minorities in question, and views of a constitution as a sort of stable clockwork mechanism.
The example that I noticed today, though, was none of those; rather, it’s a lack of historical perspective, and it comes from economist Tyler Cowen, who writes:
It is not sufficiently remarked upon that many Democrats have an increasingly difficult time believing in democracy . . . many Democrats have arrived at the position that democracy works satisfactorily only when it delivers sufficiently low gas prices! . . . I don’t see how many current Democrats avoid an implicit or maybe even explicit super-charged skepticism about, yes, democracy. . . . Matters are easier for the classical liberal. Classical liberals are used to the idea of very bad politicians being elected. If some of those politicians become worse yet, that is highly unfortunate but it does not shake the underlying worldview to its core. Classical liberals also view government as pretty inefficient, often craven, inconsistent, and in many key matters unmanageable. That isn’t always so great! But it does provide some layers of protection against the very worst actors and their possible intentions.
The U.S. Democratic party includes a mix of views—not as broad a mix as, say, thirty years ago, but still a mix—and “classical liberalism” is not so clearly defined either—but, setting all that aside, my “Poli Sci 101” problem with Cowen’s remarks is that he doesn’t seem to realize that no political system is inherently stable. This is not to say that all systems are equal, or equally good, just that there’s a long history of political systems being taken over by non-democratic actors. This is the internet so we’re not supposed to mention Germany in the 1930s, but we can also consider Russia in the 1920s and the 2000s, or the U.S. south for most of its history, or eastern European countries after WW2. This is not about the Democratic party or classical liberalism or whatever; it’s about the basic idea that there is no political vacuum, and the historical observation that, in any political system, it can be possible for a group, having achieved some power, to change the rules and grab something like absolute power for themselves. The issue is not so much that “very bad politicians” are elected but rather that the rules themselves and the “layers of protection” can change, and quickly.
Anyway, my point here is not the particular issue of the stability of democratic governance, but rather that I’m not aware of any accessible “Poli Sci 101” document to help people avoid this sort of mistake.
Isn’t “Poli Sci 101” the point of high school social studies classes?
Exactly! My 8th grade history teacher: “absolute power corrupts absolutely”.
It’s good that there is no PolySci101 document – most of those Econ101 ideas are either wrong or dangerously over-simplistic. Take the case of minimum wages and unemployment – a classic textbook 101 example. But 80+ years of research has yet to put to rest the question of whether or not minimum wages increase unemployment (the current “consensus” seem to be that it does increase teenage unemployment with little net effect on other groups). My take on macroeconomics is that there is no generally accepted principles at all – other than principles about what one theory or another says, but not what the actual effect of any macro policy will be (consumer warning: I’m a microeconomist and make no claims to understand macro – I have even refused to teach macro for more than 40 years).
The Cowen quote is classic Cowen. It shows little understanding but is sure to rile his base – the political polarization makes it easy for him to do so. The political question of stability of form of governance I’d like to hear more about – I don’t even know how to conceive of “stability.” What time period are we talking about? Everything is stable until it isn’t.
The economic question of government “inefficiency” I believe I can say more about. The most insightful view I have seen is that governments act when there are either market failures or unacceptable consequences of markets. So, government policies should be compared with market-based policies to address those – not to idealized markets where no such failures or consequences exist. It is easy to show many “failures” of economic regulation. But deregulation does not make the original problem disappear – it only means private contracts will govern what happens (e.g., deregulating air travel in the US led to mergers, acquisitions, and marketing arrangements to deal with some of the underlying issues – in that particular case, I believe it is a net gain, but an imperfect one). Economists generally prefer to compare government failure with perfect markets rather than comparing imperfect systems. Perhaps there is a political analogy here – do political scientists compare imperfect political systems with idealized ones rather than comparing realistic imperfect options? To my untrained eye, it seems like most problems with democracies involve such imperfect tradeoffs.
Or is this another case where binary thinking prevails? Markets vs government, democracy vs totalitarianism, significant vs non-significant, etc.
“The most insightful view I have seen is that governments act when there are either market failures or unacceptable consequences of markets.”
Definition of “market failure”: “my anti-free-market social policy causes most problems to get even worse so I need more anti-free-market social policy to cover it up”
Definition of “Unacceptable consequences”: “less productive workers get lower pay”;
your definitions, not mine.
… speaking of Definitions, PoliSci 101 can NOT provide an objective definition of “democracy” — it is too vague & generalized a term.
and nobody here can define it satisfactorily either
the objective concept of democracy is too complex for most people to even be aware of … and they would not like the concept if enlightened
Now that you rebutted him in such an evenhanded way we can settle this argument in your favor. Bravo.
Dale:
It’s tragic that you claim that “most of those Econ101 ideas are either wrong or dangerously over-simplistic.” It’s a ridiculous and patently false claim. But the fact that you’re making it openly and no one challenges it says a lot about why democracy is threatened in the US.
I usually think it is hopeless to engage with you. But, in this case, I don’t think you understand what I am saying at all. I am not claiming that most economics ideas are wrong or over-simplistic: it is the presentation in Econ 101 that I object to. I’ve spent more years teaching out of those books than I care to admit – the entire macro sections are a collection of theories that may or may not make sense (does Keynesian theory apply to today’s economy? what about monetarism? rational expectations? And, putting it all together, should the Fed be continuing to raise interest rates or not?). The books present these as controversies, but can only offer competing theories that provide different answers. At least the controversy is acknowledged.
The micro sections present themselves as more scientific. Yes, I believe demand curves slope downwards and incentives matter. No, I don’t think utility theory tells us much. Government policy is presented as mostly counterproductive or fail to provide enough detail to understand why policy is as difficult as it is. But it is constantly emphasized that there is no such thing as a free lunch. And yet every inefficiency in the economy can simply be “corrected” with the right policy (e.g. pollution taxes) to yield benefits without costs (or with the simplistic notion that the losers can simply be compensated for losses, so there are net benefits.
It is not that these ideas are wrong – but they are overly simplistic. The defense (which I have heard from many of my colleagues) is that it is only a principles course so those matters belong in more advanced courses. However, the 101 course is all that most people that study economics come away with. Much like the damage done in most introductory statistics courses, there are dangers in this. Techniques get emphasized at the expense of useful and important content.
My personal view is that Econ 101 should be the capstone course for economics majors. Most applied courses (labor economics, environmental economics, health economics, etc.) would better serve as the introductory economics course.
The problem isn’t so much that people don’t know econ 101, but that they don’t follow up with the many, many courses that remove 101’s simplifying assumptions. Econ 101 (on the micro side) doesn’t cover agency frictions, transaction costs in markets, contracting frictions, imperfect information, noise and bias in measuring performance and profit, and many other topics that can turn 101’s claims on their heads. I’m less sure of the story on the macro side.
As a related issue, micro 101 tends to ignore the longstanding role of regulation in markets, like ‘law merchant’ from the middle ages. Fully unregulated markets have long been understood to be disastrous, and for good reason.
“My personal view is that Econ 101 should be the capstone course for economics majors. Most applied courses (labor economics, environmental economics, health economics, etc.) would better serve as the introductory economics course.”
I could not agree with this more. Where I went grad school, the undergrad intro micro course had a “debate” that the students had to participate in during a recitation section as part of their grade. It fulfilled some core university requirement or something. But it was always painful because they’d finish and ask me “who was right?” To which the answer was usually “well, based on what you were taught in class, you’re both on the right track, but…” I mean, in we still were teaching the Laffer Curve and stuff. People who only take 101 leave thinking that the gravity model is still what trade economists are doing, etc.
I was a physics major undergrad, and I wish we taught econ the same way. Physics has a natural build to it – for example, you start with Newtonian mechanics, then move on to Hamiltonian and such, then quantum mechanics… but at each stage, it doesn’t say that the previous stage was wrong, just that the previous stage is essentially a special case of what you’re learning now. Econ has a huge amount of physics envy, so I’m sort of surprised this hasn’t been picked up on.
RJB
If the problem with Econ 101 is that people don’t follow up with those additional courses, then I suppose the problem with Intro Stats is that they don’t follow up with additional stats courses. I’m sure the philosophers and sociologists and biologists can say similar things. At some point, we should reconsider the role of introductory courses if they are all dangerous without follow-up courses. My own belief is that the intro courses (all of them) should give up breadth in favor of depth. I’d like a student to come out of an intro course knowing how an economist (or statistician or biologist, etc.) thinks about things rather than an overview of the world from a simplistic and dangerous treatment of everything. That’s not what introductory courses do today (my opinion), and I think that has more to do with the incentives within higher education rather than a carefully considered view of what these courses “should” be. In terms of incentives, just consider who is usually assigned to teach the intro courses (there are exceptions, but they are exceptions) and the usual size of those classes. Then, of course, the nature of testing follows – multiple choice, but we’ve already had that discussion.
> My personal view is that Econ 101 should be the capstone course for economics majors. Most applied courses (labor economics, environmental economics, health economics, etc.) would better serve as the introductory economics course.
In other words, you want to inculcate your personal ideological views before your students have the technical understanding and tools to rebut them.
Pretty good summary by Professor Lehman. I would go on to note that even (maybe especially) economists often lose sight of the trees in the forest. I remember back in 2008 when Hyman Minsky had his day in the sun, albeit 12 years after his death. All the economists were trying to figure out why he got it right and they didn’t.
My take on Cowen is he tries to know everything about a lot of things which is always a recipe for failure at some junction. I’ve always tried to just know a little about a lot of different things and found it has always served me well.
> governments act when there are either market failures or unacceptable consequences of markets
The former is neither necessary nor sufficient for the latter.
> Economists generally prefer to compare government failure with perfect markets rather than comparing imperfect systems
Evidence?
I’m not sure I understand Andrew’s critique of Cowen’s post, tbh I’m not even sure I understand Cowen’s post very well. Is his argument just that Classical Liberals have more trust in the stability of Democracy than the current American Democratic Party does? To me it reads like one of those classic Tyler Cowen ‘gotcha’ posts where he’s showing the actions of the Democratic party are not consistent with their claims (see his further post about the Median Voter Theorem). So his post is more ‘Democrats only believe in the stability of Democracy when it suits them’ rather than ‘Democrats fail to realize the true stability of Democracy’. In that sense I do kind of agree with him that everyone talks a big game about reducing CO2 output until the price of gas rises.
Putting all of that aside, I’d appreciate a Poli Sci 101 document, but I’m not sure how much it would help in cases like this. I imagine Cowen has taken Poli Sci 101 or has done enough reading to qualify for it. Plus what should we make of Fukuyama’s famous book? Doesn’t it imply that Western Liberal Democracy is a sort of stable equilibrium?
Blackthorne –
> tbh I’m not even sure I understand Cowen’s post very well.
You mentioned Galef’s scout vs. solider framework elsewhere. Methinks that applying that framework helps to understand Cowen’s post.
As you say:
> To me it reads like one of those classic Tyler Cowen ‘gotcha’ posts where he’s showing the actions of the Democratic party are not consistent with their claims (see his further post about the Median Voter Theorem).
It can be summed up as: People who have different political views than mine = hypocrites. People who have views similar to mine = logical thinkers.
Joshua’s post can be summed up as: People who have different political views than mine = hypocrites. People who have views similar to mine = logical thinkers.
To put it bluntly, I also had trouble understanding what the fuck Cowen was waffling about.
I believe the chain of events is:
1. Democrats create a somewhat melodramatic narrative for the 2022 midterms that “the fate of democracy hangs in the balance” because Trump endorsed candidates who are nakedly anti-democracy and pro-coup were up for election.
2. Some Democratic pundits remark that oil prices have a strong effect on election outcomes. Putting it together with 1 meant that the contemporaneous trajectory of oil prices may be having a negative effect on democracy.
3. “Superreader” Tyler Cowen mistakenly inverts the causal claim they’re making to be “democracy is having a negative effect on oil prices”. Hence, the sentence “many Democrats have arrived at the position that democracy works satisfactorily only when it delivers sufficiently low gas prices” and an ensuing paragraph about how people are judging the process by its outcomes.
I think the problem is more basic than a lack of background in any particular field:
> It is not sufficiently remarked upon that many Democrats have an increasingly difficult time believing in democracy . . . many Democrats have arrived at the position that democracy works satisfactorily only when it delivers sufficiently low gas prices! . .
The problem is the whole structure of the thinking. Let’s start with the “it is not sufficiently remarked upon” which then goes on to lay out an argument that a modicum of investigation would find is, actually, ubiquitous.
But even more basic than that, the whole facile reliance on a tribalistic mindset, that finds a set of negative attributes characteristics in an out-group (libz), and a corresponding positive set of attributes in an in-group (“classic libz”) is inherently suspect unless accompanied by carefully quantified and qualified evidence to support the claim.
There’s a list of well-known cognitive biases here: motivated reasoning (confirmation bias), fundamental attribution theory, etc.
Where is that actual data showing some difference in what different groups “believe” about democracy, controlled for the bias that would be introduced by issue-related context? I think that “beliefs” about democracy are highly influenced by the issue context, and not so much a function of general principles or values. For example, I can think of issues where libz are more skeptical about “democracy” than “classical libz” as we see in the real world (not as categorized in some theoretical, tautological, self-sealing taxonomy used to define what a “classical lib” is).
Put me down as another who doesn’t get Dr. Cowen’s remark. Does he mean that Republicans favor higher prices for gasoline? The price of oil is not determined by an open market of many producers vying for customers with no barriers to entry. There is an actual cartel doing what cartels do. Some of the chief drivers of the cartel do not have our interests at heart; Wahhabism is not a Adam Smith advocacy philosophy. Recent meetings of MBS with the PRC should make us think. Having our politicians advance our interests does seem that bad.
I’m sure that I don’t understand and welcome correction.
At the risk of misinterpreting Cowen, it seems to me obvious that there is a popular tendency on *both* sides of the polarized divide to invoke democracy as the *determining* perinciple for some public policy debate whenever that side thinks they have the numbers to do so. The fact that Democracy (particularly in its most vulgar Populist form, but even in the less vulgar Representative form) is not stable but simply instrumental, good for some things but not for others, is well understood by Cowen, though he is in this statement highlighting the selective invocation of Democracy by one side for one issue in this paragraph.
The best recent statement of this is by Kevin Williamson
“[T]here is no obvious moral good to be derived from taking a crude, self-selecting measure of the views and preferences of an electorate, giving absolutely equal weight to the views of the fools and the wise, to the good and the wicked, treating the preferences of Archbishop Chaput and the ringleaders of neo-Nazi gangs as though they were morally or intellectually on the same footing, aggregating all this pseudo-data together every few years in a series of contests in which practically every issue is lumped together in a messy wad with every other issue, and decocting from that mess a series of decisions about who occupies which representative office and whether this or that ballot initiative is to be enacted. We don’t do things that way because it is good or smart—we do things that way because it is the only workable alternative to violence we’ve come up with. We don’t want to go around bonking each other over the head. Democracy is precious for that reason, to achieve a public life of ‘rien de bonk.’ Democracy in the sense of majoritarian voting (or even super-majoritarian voting) is only a procedure—it is useful, but it is not sacred.” https://thedispatch.com/newsletter/wanderland/two-cheers-for-partisanship
I just had a “classical lib” elsewhere on the Interwebs first ‘splain to me this is a republic not a democracy, and then talk to me about how important it is that lots o’ citizens think the election was stolen.
> this is a republic not a democracy
Correct.
Sorry, I can’t resist the pile-on. There are approximately zero Democrats — and, I imagine, scarcely any more independents and Republicans — who believe “democracy works satisfactorily only when it delivers sufficiently low gas prices.” I mean, like, nobody actually believes that, so we gotta back up and figure out where the argument went wrong, right?
Cowen no doubt convinced himself that Democrats’ other views imply this crazy view, which shows you more about his reasoning ability than anything else … he’s beyond the help of Poli Sci 101.
In Cowen’s defense if you follow his links you do come across multiple Democratic (at least Democratic leaning) sources that are worried that high gas prices will doom Democracy in the US. I guess the implied linkage is that high gas prices will cause voters to vote for “Anti-Democratic” candidates in the Republican party. I suppose this is where the whole stability thing comes into play. My most generous version of Cowen’s argument is that he is suggesting that Classical Liberals think Democracy is stable enough to survive an election cycle of angry/potentially disillusioned voters thus they’re not all that worried about higher gas prices. Meanwhile Democrats must think Democracy is fragile if they think that this one election cycle will doom it. Then I guess Andrew’s comments about stability make more sense, where he’s essentially saying that there is no guaranteed stability so it makes sense to be worried about the current political climate.
After following a bunch of links I think this my main takeaway of the series of posts, of course all of this is made more confusing by the rhetoric of NYT opinion columnists and Tyler Cowen, a case of Soldiering as Joshua points out. Perhaps back in October it was all much easier to understand given the news cycle and the upcoming midterm elections.
There is just a huge, huge leap from “high gas prices may motivate some voters to vote for antidemocratic candidates” to “democracy works satisfactorily only when it delivers sufficiently low gas prices.” They are not even close to being equivalent. For example, there could be situations where all parties reject antidemocratic candidates and high gas prices cause unproblematic changes in the governing party.
It is much more reasonable to say “some people think democracy only works satisfactorily if parties agree on certain general principles, including the need to shun antidemocratic candidates and the legitimacy of fair elections, no matter which party wins, etc.” This has basically zero to do with gas prices.
I know this and I have never taken a political science course, 101 or otherwise.
Dmitri:
Just to respond to your last paragraph: As with “Econ 101,” the ideas of “Poli Sci 101” are pretty basic so there would be no need for someone to take an actual poli sci or civics class to learn them. I guess the point is that these ideas, although commonsensical, happen to contradict some natural intuitions.
For example, the “Econ 101” lesson about supply and demand is very sensible and straightforward, but it contradicts an intuition that we could just make product X more affordable for all by setting its price to a low value. The “Poli Sci 101” lesson about representative democracy being different from direct democracy is sensible and straightforward, but it contradicts an intuition that whatever happens in a democracy represents the popular will.
Various prominent and smart people sometimes seem to have naive economics intuitions, which is why economists will recommend “Econ 101” to explain the problems with simplistic notions such as price controls. Meanwhile, various prominent and smart people sometimes seem to have naive political science intuitions, for example when Cowen talks about the median voter with the implication that an existing policy that he happens to support also represents the popular will.
In response to some of the other points on the above thread: Econ 101 and Poli Sci 101 are both simplifications of reality. My point is not that people should defer to these ideas but rather that they should be aware of them.
How can you take Cowen’s quip “democracy works satisfactorily only when it delivers sufficiently low gas prices” as a serious statement?
And there’s a huge huge leap from gas prices to “some people think democracy only works satisfactorily if parties agree on certain general principles, including the need to shun antidemocratic candidates and the legitimacy of fair elections, no matter which party wins, etc.”
My attempt to explain Cowen – several steps here.
1. Democrats and classical liberals are in opposition – the former favor government intervention, the latter favor the “free market”
2. “democracy” is not defined, but in the context of this quote appears to be “what most people want” and that would be lower gas prices
3. Gas prices are presently (or were recently) high, so Democrats see it as a market failure and believe the government should intervene. Classical liberals see it as what markets do, and know (believe?) that government intervention will be inefficient and counterproductive.
4. Therefore Democrats see the government as needed to produce lower gas prices whereas the classical liberal would reject such intervention.
5. The missing piece is the implicit equating of government intervention with lack of democracy. The comes natural to many economists, because democracy and free markets are viewed as synonymous.
If this is the logic Cowen is employing, then it is certainly strained, so say the least. There is a natural tension between Democratic tendencies to favor government intervention and classical liberal tendencies to minimize it. But to equate the latter with democracy and the former with anti-democracy – without ever defining what democracy is – just confuses what might have been a straightforward issue. It does appeal to Cowen’s base, however.
A few days ago I unsubscribed from Marginal Revolution. I’d been subscribed for around 15 years or so, but in the last couple of years Tyler has become increasingly incoherent and increasingly happy to rile up his increasingly unhinged base. It’s a bit sad. (And I’m not sure what else to replace it with! There aren’t many blogs as active and as eclectic as peak Marginal Revolution.)
> in the last couple of years Tyler has become increasingly incoherent and increasingly happy to rile up his increasingly unhinged base
What do you mean by that?
I have reached the same conclusion after 30 years of reading MR (since I come across many things I otherwise may not have seen). But I am giving up. I’m sick of hearing the world simplified to left/woke/right – reflecting the intelligence of a below average monkey. I’m sick of seeing endless harping on Jan 6 not being an insurrection because these people were not armed and felt aggrieved – just more evidence that truth has become whatever you say it is. I think blogs ultimately reflect the personalities of their authors. While I think Cowen and Tabarrok are both quite intelligent, they are making their choices to get attention and fame even at the cost of inviting careful thought and reasoning. I, for one, am thankful that Andrew has not chosen that route.
Thus far, the phrase, Democratic Party, has appeared five times today. This is in contrast to the usual dog whistle, “Democrat Party,” ubiquitous on AM radio, Fox News and Alex Jones. Conclusion: this blog is outside the U.S. mainstream.
the context of the post, which is from october before the midterms, was a time when gas prices were high and it looked like democrats would lose badly in the midterm elections
Tyler links to a contemporaneous post by Paul Krugman entitled “Will Gas Prices Doom Democracy?” which begins
“Will the price of gasoline — a price that has very little to do with which party controls the government — nonetheless determine the outcome of the midterm elections, and quite possibly the fate of American democracy? I wish that were a silly question, but it isn’t. This year there has been a strong correlation between the price of gasoline and political polls.”
and concludes with
“So what does this tell us about the success or failure of Biden administration policy? Very little. Biden’s jawboning of refiners over their margins might be having some effect; so might his release of extra oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Overall, however, it’s hard to think of a worse metric for judging a president and his party than a price determined mainly by events abroad and technical production issues here at home, a price that isn’t even high compared with, say, a decade ago. Yet gas prices may sway a crucial election, a fact that is both ludicrous and terrifying.”
i don’t think it’s completely unfair to call Paul “skeptical about democracy” here. the point of the piece is that voters are punishing democrats for the price of a commodity largely outside of their control set on world markets. furthermore, many democrats believe Trump Republicans will overturn democracy if elected, so democratic voters themselves are implicitly choosing low gas prices over democracy.
Tyler’s post is not very good, but i don’t understand Andrew’s criticism that Tyler doesn’t acknowledge that different political systems are also unstable. it doesn’t seem like the post relies on that claim, even implicitly. Tyler’s not implicitly comparing the stability of democracy to other systems, he’s just pointing out some “skepticism”
Its an old observation that people often punish figureheads in hard times, even when those hard times are no one person’s fault (eg. a drought leading to famine) or caused by an outsider (eg. the Russo-Ukrainian war driving up the price of gasoline by taking fossil fuels off the market). This is a popular observation with conservatives and other believers in rule by a wise self-selected few, but economists have often noticed that executives are more likely to get fired when a company is doing badly even if the cause is in the wider economy or the situation they inherited. Why Cowen presents this observation as a 21st century “liberal” idea is a question for sure.
I believe David Laitin had a proposal for a sort of Poli Sci 101; I haven’t read the proposal, but I am familiar with Ian Shapiro’s critique of the idea, which you can find in his collection The Flight From Reality in the Human Sciences. From what I remember, he is skeptical that anointing a 101 dogma has actually been good for economics, and that it’s preferable to foreground debates, questions, and tradeoffs instead.
As an economist I find this interesting, since I often wish people WOULDN’T use many Econ 101 concepts. For example, supply and demand as taught in econ 101 is good as a conceptual tool for teaching, but many people take it as an actual model of how things work in the real world. It doesn’t teach how often you will end up with multiple equilibria. Or if you think of Sonnenschein-Mantel-Debreu, which essentially says that under pretty standard assumptions a demand curve can have any polynomial shape. Whenever people say “it’s simple supply and demand!”… there’s no such thing.
If you think Tyler Cowen doesn’t grasp poli sci 101 the most likely reason is that you failed to grasp the meaning of his post. He’s probably read more political history in the last year than most people here have read in their lifetime. Not to say he is always right, but it’s like saying Terrence Tao is innumerate.
If by “read” you mean carelessly skimmed through the introduction and half of the first chapter of a handful of books he was given… then sure.
That’s still more than you read, so, yeah, Cowen has read more political history in the last year than you have read in your lifetime.
It’s actually not, but I admire your willingness to just make things up to support whatever inane point you’re trying (and failing) to make.
Just making up things up to support whatever inane point you’re trying (and failing) to make that’s your forte. Funny that, innit?
Did you really just pull an “I know you are but what am I?” Jesus.
I think the issue that causes there to be a set of “Econ 101” ideas and not a set of “Poly Sci 101” ideas is the need to establish credibility is different between these fields when being discussed in an informal setting.
Economics is seen as “hard” while political science is seen as “soft”. Sitting around a dinner table with family or friends, you might be expected to give evidence if you make a claim about economics (or at the very least you might be expected to state some of the buzz words found in this “Econ 101” pamphlet). Meanwhile, a claim about politics is seen more as an opinion and you might be given no need to defend your claim, or you might only be asked to defend perceived consequences of that claim. Regardless, a need to fall back on buzz words or famous theorems typically doesn’t exist.
For some reason Hitchen’s Razor gets put away in these settings. Which is a shame because it should be carving Cowen’s article to shreds. Where is the evidence for any of these claims? Why does the article make just as much sense by itself if all of the political nouns are permuted? Why are there wild, undefended assumptions like the idea that people that vote democrat and people who subscribe to “Classical Liberal” ideologies are monoliths that can be painted with a single brushstroke and then compared?
“Poli Sci 101” problem with Cowen’s remarks is that he doesn’t seem to realize that no political system is inherently stable. ”
Cowen does not mention anything about stability of political systems. He talks about the Democratic Party.
“Fully unregulated markets have long been understood to be disastrous, and for good reason”
There can not be any fully unregulated markets. Markets are always regulated by, for example, property rights. That’s Econ 101 for you.
“> To me it reads like one of those classic Tyler Cowen ‘gotcha’ posts where he’s showing the actions of the Democratic party are not consistent with their claims…It can be summed up as: People who have different political views than mine = hypocrites. People who have views similar to mine = logical thinkers.”
Applies to everyone talking about politics in the U.S.