I agree with everything here except open borders. Assortative mating for IQ has extremely beneficial effects on GDP because children's IQs are linearly related to the midparent but productivity is exponentially related to IQ. Take a minute to think through the consequences of that. Mixing all the world's low IQ populations with the world's high IQ populations could hugely diminish the world's per capita productivity by that mechanism. The newcomers are also likely to politically agitate for more redistributive policies, and in particular affirmative action which would hugely diminish the productivity of the O-ring sector:
High wages in the first world are just a baumol effect caused by the existence of the O-ring sector, and the O-ring sector is only possible because of a high average IQ. If you import too many low IQ people you can kill the golden goose. Any menial jobs IQ85 immigrants could take in the first world would be obsoleted by robots in a few years and they'd be permanent welfare dependents / socialist voters thereafter.
Nice piece. Disagree on immigration. Drug enforcement in SF is non-existent and we didn't get what libertarians said we would get. We got open-air drug markets with rampant and open drug use instead. Isn't defacto drug legalization in SF hurting the poor?
I would suggest that San Fran has so many problems and dysfunctional policies that drug liberalization wasn't going to help much in any case. There have to be a lot of bad things going on when spending all day doing drugs is your best bet, whether in the open air or not. Lack of jobs, mental health facilities, and being fully supported while just sitting around doing drugs all day all spring to mind as possible issues to address.
I'm not sure that it is, but even *if* it is, that doesn't detract from Bryan's point that other things we do to hurt the poor via policy can outweigh the "harm of omission" letting them do as many drugs as they like "causes".
At some point one has to suspect that those hurting the poor while claiming to want to help are doing it on purpose. Not all by any means, I am sure most are well intentioned. I expect there are some in the inner ring, however, who know full well what economists and others have been pointing out about how much policy purported to help the poor actually hurts, and think "Good. I can look good while perpetuating need for my services." Soft hearts might go with soft heads, but there are enough hard heads to know better. Seeing how the career poverty crusaders attack those who disagree with them is suggestive.
i agree with you on all the policies you mention that hurt the poor. That said, isn't part of being a data driven Effective Altruist assessing which policies can actually get done in the world as we find it not as we wish it to be?
What's your point? That preventing policy harms is impossible? That we shouldn't try to push policy in ways that reduce the barriers poor people regularly face?
My point is to focus first on what can be done. I'm all for open door immigration and for zoning reforms. Opposition to these two initiatives , however, seems implacable.
I agree with everything here except open borders. Assortative mating for IQ has extremely beneficial effects on GDP because children's IQs are linearly related to the midparent but productivity is exponentially related to IQ. Take a minute to think through the consequences of that. Mixing all the world's low IQ populations with the world's high IQ populations could hugely diminish the world's per capita productivity by that mechanism. The newcomers are also likely to politically agitate for more redistributive policies, and in particular affirmative action which would hugely diminish the productivity of the O-ring sector:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1515857
https://www.unz.com/akarlin/stupid-people/
High wages in the first world are just a baumol effect caused by the existence of the O-ring sector, and the O-ring sector is only possible because of a high average IQ. If you import too many low IQ people you can kill the golden goose. Any menial jobs IQ85 immigrants could take in the first world would be obsoleted by robots in a few years and they'd be permanent welfare dependents / socialist voters thereafter.
Nice piece. Disagree on immigration. Drug enforcement in SF is non-existent and we didn't get what libertarians said we would get. We got open-air drug markets with rampant and open drug use instead. Isn't defacto drug legalization in SF hurting the poor?
I would suggest that San Fran has so many problems and dysfunctional policies that drug liberalization wasn't going to help much in any case. There have to be a lot of bad things going on when spending all day doing drugs is your best bet, whether in the open air or not. Lack of jobs, mental health facilities, and being fully supported while just sitting around doing drugs all day all spring to mind as possible issues to address.
I'm not sure that it is, but even *if* it is, that doesn't detract from Bryan's point that other things we do to hurt the poor via policy can outweigh the "harm of omission" letting them do as many drugs as they like "causes".
At some point one has to suspect that those hurting the poor while claiming to want to help are doing it on purpose. Not all by any means, I am sure most are well intentioned. I expect there are some in the inner ring, however, who know full well what economists and others have been pointing out about how much policy purported to help the poor actually hurts, and think "Good. I can look good while perpetuating need for my services." Soft hearts might go with soft heads, but there are enough hard heads to know better. Seeing how the career poverty crusaders attack those who disagree with them is suggestive.
How about affordable energy to help the poor? Seems like the most important thing that can be done.
i agree with you on all the policies you mention that hurt the poor. That said, isn't part of being a data driven Effective Altruist assessing which policies can actually get done in the world as we find it not as we wish it to be?
What's your point? That preventing policy harms is impossible? That we shouldn't try to push policy in ways that reduce the barriers poor people regularly face?
My point is to focus first on what can be done. I'm all for open door immigration and for zoning reforms. Opposition to these two initiatives , however, seems implacable.