Evolutionary Psychology and the Antimarket Bias

by Toban Wiebe

Mises Daily
September 15, 2010

Economic illiteracy is widespread, but why should this be a problem? Ignorance is even more pervasive in microelectronics and computer programming, and yet computer technology is nothing short of astounding.

In most fields of study, people leave science to experts and trust the correctness of their conclusions. Not so for economics: rather than leaving the matter to economists, people hold strong positions that are plainly false. Economic ignorance by itself is not the problem. As Murray Rothbard put it,

It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a "dismal science." But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.

If people trusted economic theory to professional economists, their economic ignorance would be as harmless as their ignorance of most other subjects.

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Models tell us more than hindsight

by Tim Harford

Financial Times
September 11, 2010

According to my esteemed colleague Gideon Rachman, economists should be swept off their thrones by historians. Economists have had far too strong a stranglehold on the levers of power, he claims. They think they are scientists. They think they can foretell the future. They are wrong: “pseudo-scientists”, “peddling brash certainties”. Historians such as Gideon and Professor Niall Ferguson, hitherto relegated to backwaters such as the FT’s op-ed page, should at last be paid a bit of attention.

In pondering how to respond, I suffered an acute shortage of brash certainty. Gideon is quite right about the importance of history. When it comes to economics, however, the chief source of brash certainties appears to be Gideon, who wouldn’t know an economic model if it paraded down a catwalk at him.

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Montgomery County schools posting calorie counts in cafeterias

Washington Post
September 6, 2010

Brianna Lattanzio wound her way through the bustling cafeteria line at her Silver Spring middle school one recent morning, weighing her options. Nutritional information was listed for each of the choices: an Asian-inspired chicken and rice dish (352 calories), vegetarian "chik'n" nuggets (190 calories), a steak-and-cheese sub (420 calories) and macaroni and cheese (481 calories).

The Sligo Middle School student opted for the macaroni. Brianna said that she picked the dish because it looked the best but that she appreciated having the calorie information.

"I pretty much wrote a letter last year saying that they should have more soups and salad," she said. "I think if they could try to lower the calories, that would be good."

This school year, all Montgomery County schools began posting nutrition information in cafeterias to help their young calorie-counters and encourage healthier choices. They also did it to comply with a new county law that requires food outlets with more than 20 locations to post calorie information for items served.

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Paranoid About Paranoia

by Ross Douthat

New York Times
September 5, 2010

Last Wednesday, a man named James Lee entered the headquarters of the Discovery Channel with explosives strapped to his body, took three hostages at gunpoint, and waited for his demands to be met.

A foe of population growth, Lee had apparently decided that shows like “Kate Plus Eight” and “19 Kids and Counting” were pushing the planet toward destruction. “All programs on Discovery Health-TLC must stop encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infants,” he decreed, before moving on to demand solutions for “global warming, automotive pollution, international trade ... and the whole blasted human economy.”

By the end of the day, the hostages were safe, Lee had been killed by police, and TLC’s fall lineup was preserved. But the debate about the hostage-taker’s politics was just beginning.

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What I Believe (about Markets and Morals): A Reply to Jerry Coyne & My Critics

by Michael Shermer

Huffington Post
August 31, 2010

In his endearingly titled blog, "Michael, we hardly knew ye," the venerable evolutionary biologist and slayer of creationist dragons Jerry Coyne (author of Why Evolution is True) wonders if I've gone 'round the bend over capitalism and sold my skeptical soul to the Templeton Foundation, the alleged evil subsidizers of religious and capitalist propaganda. Allow me to set the record straight (again) for all my critics out there (and in reading the comments to Jerry's blog there's more than I thought, and many of them are darned right caustic!).

First, on the Templeton Foundation, I was invited to write a monthly column for their new magazine, Big Questions Online, and as with my work for them in years past, I'm allowed to write just about anything I like. It is interesting that Jerry and his commentators would hone in on this, my second column, ignoring my first column, which was a stinging rebuke of religion in general and Deepak Chopra's New Age spirituality in particular. No one could possibly read my list comparing God 1.0 to God 2.0 (omnipresent--nonlocal; fully man/fully God--wave/particle duality; miracle--wave function collapse, etc.) and conclude that I'm the pay of a religious propaganda machine. And if that doesn't seal the deal for ya, the God critique was originally my second column, but the BQO editors liked it so much that they bumped it up to number 1, and it was, in fact, the most popular article on the site for the entire month. So there!

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