Scott Sumner: Most of the really important public policy issues are not even part of the ongoing debate in the press. Here are some examples: 1. The huge rise in occupational licensing. 2. The huge rise in people incarcerated in the war on drugs, and also the scandalous reluctance of doctors to prescribe adequate pain medication (also due to the war on drugs.)
most rational local property owners probably support zoning rules because it decreaces supply and thus increases prices, and in a very transparent way protects their property value against a certain sort of risk (eg high density housing appearing next to them.
same principle with most of the other issues, people close to it want a different result from the agregate. except imigration - I think i might disagree that the US needs more immigration unless one just means more quality immigration.
"Local zoning rules that prevent dense development."
Most replies seem to assume the public ignores this matter. In all suburban towns I have lived in the public is very much aware and vigorously opposed to 'dense' development - often to an irrational extent.
The 'elite' on this issue are a bunch of university people who have few if any children.
The key questions are, of course, why is it so hard to inform the public that intellectual elites disagree with them on such issues, and if being informed of this fact would be enough to change their minds.
Huh? How are those the key questions?
For someone who wants to drive the "élite" belief into policy implementation, isn't the key question "how can I convince the public that my belief is in the best interest of...."?
Ah, but in the best interest of whom? Of the individual being convinced? Of that individual's affiliation-group? Of the country? Of the human species? Of all species? Of the present generation? Of future generations?
Replying to the comments saying the elites have different values:
Genuine differences in values probably do exist. But let us refrain from automatically concluding all of it is. A lot of it is signaling. Do we really care about the negative effects of immigration, or do we want to show our community that we care? We should force non-elites (and elites too of course) to confront this hypocrisy, taking their explicated values seriously and going with them showing what policy recommendations result.
These 6 policy failures impose enormous damage on the country, far more than the issues typically discussed on the evening news. At the very least, this is very ambiguous. Is Sumner claiming that the total damage from the current policies in these areas exceeds the damage of issues typically discussed on the news, or that they each individually exceed that threshold? If the stronger claim is intended, then I don't believe it. The effect of local zoning on development density (#5 on the list) is supposed to be more damaging that the war in Afghanistan (a typical news item)??? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and none at all was presented.
1. The huge rise in occupational licensing.So small people don't care, and nobody is going to think hairdressers when you bring this up they will think doctors and lawyers.
2. The huge rise in people incarcerated in the war on drugs, and also the scandalous reluctance of doctors to prescribe adequate pain medication (also due to the war on drugs.)The best example on this list.
3. The need for more legal immigration.
Debatable from a policy standpoint, and we already allow a ton of immigration. Plus its probably a net negative for the portion of the population that would have to compete with them.
4. The need to replace taxes on capital with progressive consumption taxes.
People are too worried such a tax would end up being regressive after it goes through the political process.
5. Local zoning rules that prevent dense development.
So small its a non starter. Nobody pays attention to local politics and those that benefit directly are very involved.
6. Tax exemptions for mortgage interest and health insurance.
These are seen as middle class entitlements, and middle class will never want to get rid of them, and if they did they would be unlikely to get anything in return.
A big part of the problem here is that the elites don't tend to be any more correct or relevant than the general population. For example, half of the six points above, I can't take seriously. The "needs" aren't. Dense development hasn't been figured out (it has to beat sprawl, which is surprisingly hard) and most places don't have the infrastructure to handle it. So complaining about zoning issues is premature. Points 1 and 6 have merit, and I solidly agree on point 2 (though it does have some representation in the media). That's probably as much agreement as I'd get with anyone else.
The problem here is that most of these ideas don't seem particularly noteworthy or even grounded in reality. So why should the media pay attention to them?
The whole point of an intellectual elite is that their focus on some particular subject should give insight into those areas that the rest of society can borrow. When that insight goes delinquent, then they have lost their value to the rest of society.
Deep down, both the public and the elites know that their talk really isn't about policies and their consequences wrt. our values.
At least for certain matters, I do agree that the elites have on average more correct beliefs. But this is just a side effect of needing an objective criteria on which to judge their performance in the status games the elites play. Since academics tend to be smarter/push arguments further, it is necessary for them to rely on something other than the vague plausibility heuristics the public uses to judge policy proposals. Also because they are smarter, they tend to compete on trying to show off their intelligence. So they turn to an objective standard. In the humanities this turns out to be a coherentism which does not track truth. In the harder social sciences it turns out to be the truth, as best as anyone could determine.
The immigration restrictionist I read point out all the time what the gap is between elite and public opinion. But they include "corrupt Democrats" and "corrupt Republicans" in the elite.
Maybe I should be posting this question on Scott Sumner's blog but who exactly are the intellectual elite? Would economists at Harvard or MIT agree with the six policy failures? I'm not an intellectual elite by any means. From my perspective it would be more important to convince the general public who the intellectual elite are rather than convince them that the elites disagree with them. I don't know who they are and I would be vary wary of anyone who claimed to be one.
Another problem is that I'm not sure intellectual elites roll in society is to effect change. I see them more as agitators than leaders. Aren't the intellectual elite by definition avant garde?
Some local zoning rules restrict low-density development. Sometimes we even see a combination of restrictions on both low-density and high-density development. The resulting housing shortage is blamed on greedy landlords and used as a pretext for more regulations.
"why is it so hard to inform the public that intellectual elites disagree with them on such issues"
It's not; the public is well aware of this. It's actually fascinating to think you might not realize this, though I doubt that's the case.
"and if being informed of this fact would be enough to change their minds"
As others have noted, our intellectual elite have advocated any number of mind-numbingly idiotic, demonstrably unworkable ideas. Also, many of us have had sufficient exposure to our intellectual elite to have realized that when it comes to subjects outside their specific area of expertise, they are no more knowledgeable than a randomly selected housepet.
"It might also be that even if the public does hear it, they would not change their minds. In which case democracy just loses."
How so? The fact that a given system of government doesn't work perfectly doesn't mean it doesn't work better than the alternatives.
A good example of this problem can be seen in your colleague Caplan. He likes to say that elites are better than the masses on economic matters (factually) but then conflates his values with more positive claims. He is generally a pacifist who shows contempt for both nationalism and patriotism and disdains those who want to preserve their home culture. He actively despises mainstream religions. When confronted with a scholar like Borjas who shows quite rigorously some of the downsides of recent immigration, he actually labels this work as leading to "evil" not just error. This smacks of the libertarian equivalent of Marxism.
From the standpoint of the public, hair splitting between left libs and libertarians on these matters is pointless. They understand the signals well and they see no reason to trust elites who can barely conceal their contempt for non-elite norms.
Which is doubly sad because genuine opportunities for mutual gains are squandered in the process.
On 6, it's hardly off the table: John McCain proposed ending the exclusion for health insurance. Most intellectuals (or at least most academics) didn't vote for him, however.
In fact, given their voting behavior, I am highly skeptical that idealistic intellectuals generally agree with Sumner or Hanson on much of anything. This is a well-known sociological phenomenon, the delusional belief that the people around you agree with you.
Politics is about normative issues, not about positive statements. Experts have more weight than the average person in factual/positive questions. Even then, when the issue is complex, it boils down to a kind of crude democracy of the experts, which changes opinion every decade or so.
But: In which way exactly does an elite carry more weight on a normative issue? Why should it have more power over what essentially IS a question of opinion and preference? And I say this although more often than not I'd agree with the "elites".
most rational local property owners probably support zoning rules because it decreaces supply and thus increases prices, and in a very transparent way protects their property value against a certain sort of risk (eg high density housing appearing next to them.
same principle with most of the other issues, people close to it want a different result from the agregate. except imigration - I think i might disagree that the US needs more immigration unless one just means more quality immigration.
"Local zoning rules that prevent dense development."
Most replies seem to assume the public ignores this matter. In all suburban towns I have lived in the public is very much aware and vigorously opposed to 'dense' development - often to an irrational extent.
The 'elite' on this issue are a bunch of university people who have few if any children.
The key questions are, of course, why is it so hard to inform the public that intellectual elites disagree with them on such issues, and if being informed of this fact would be enough to change their minds.
Huh? How are those the key questions?
For someone who wants to drive the "élite" belief into policy implementation, isn't the key question "how can I convince the public that my belief is in the best interest of...."?
Ah, but in the best interest of whom? Of the individual being convinced? Of that individual's affiliation-group? Of the country? Of the human species? Of all species? Of the present generation? Of future generations?
Replying to the comments saying the elites have different values:
Genuine differences in values probably do exist. But let us refrain from automatically concluding all of it is. A lot of it is signaling. Do we really care about the negative effects of immigration, or do we want to show our community that we care? We should force non-elites (and elites too of course) to confront this hypocrisy, taking their explicated values seriously and going with them showing what policy recommendations result.
These 6 policy failures impose enormous damage on the country, far more than the issues typically discussed on the evening news. At the very least, this is very ambiguous. Is Sumner claiming that the total damage from the current policies in these areas exceeds the damage of issues typically discussed on the news, or that they each individually exceed that threshold? If the stronger claim is intended, then I don't believe it. The effect of local zoning on development density (#5 on the list) is supposed to be more damaging that the war in Afghanistan (a typical news item)??? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and none at all was presented.
1. The huge rise in occupational licensing.So small people don't care, and nobody is going to think hairdressers when you bring this up they will think doctors and lawyers.
2. The huge rise in people incarcerated in the war on drugs, and also the scandalous reluctance of doctors to prescribe adequate pain medication (also due to the war on drugs.)The best example on this list.
3. The need for more legal immigration.
Debatable from a policy standpoint, and we already allow a ton of immigration. Plus its probably a net negative for the portion of the population that would have to compete with them.
4. The need to replace taxes on capital with progressive consumption taxes.
People are too worried such a tax would end up being regressive after it goes through the political process.
5. Local zoning rules that prevent dense development.
So small its a non starter. Nobody pays attention to local politics and those that benefit directly are very involved.
6. Tax exemptions for mortgage interest and health insurance.
These are seen as middle class entitlements, and middle class will never want to get rid of them, and if they did they would be unlikely to get anything in return.
A big part of the problem here is that the elites don't tend to be any more correct or relevant than the general population. For example, half of the six points above, I can't take seriously. The "needs" aren't. Dense development hasn't been figured out (it has to beat sprawl, which is surprisingly hard) and most places don't have the infrastructure to handle it. So complaining about zoning issues is premature. Points 1 and 6 have merit, and I solidly agree on point 2 (though it does have some representation in the media). That's probably as much agreement as I'd get with anyone else.
The problem here is that most of these ideas don't seem particularly noteworthy or even grounded in reality. So why should the media pay attention to them?
The whole point of an intellectual elite is that their focus on some particular subject should give insight into those areas that the rest of society can borrow. When that insight goes delinquent, then they have lost their value to the rest of society.
Deep down, both the public and the elites know that their talk really isn't about policies and their consequences wrt. our values.
At least for certain matters, I do agree that the elites have on average more correct beliefs. But this is just a side effect of needing an objective criteria on which to judge their performance in the status games the elites play. Since academics tend to be smarter/push arguments further, it is necessary for them to rely on something other than the vague plausibility heuristics the public uses to judge policy proposals. Also because they are smarter, they tend to compete on trying to show off their intelligence. So they turn to an objective standard. In the humanities this turns out to be a coherentism which does not track truth. In the harder social sciences it turns out to be the truth, as best as anyone could determine.
The immigration restrictionist I read point out all the time what the gap is between elite and public opinion. But they include "corrupt Democrats" and "corrupt Republicans" in the elite.
Maybe I should be posting this question on Scott Sumner's blog but who exactly are the intellectual elite? Would economists at Harvard or MIT agree with the six policy failures? I'm not an intellectual elite by any means. From my perspective it would be more important to convince the general public who the intellectual elite are rather than convince them that the elites disagree with them. I don't know who they are and I would be vary wary of anyone who claimed to be one.
Another problem is that I'm not sure intellectual elites roll in society is to effect change. I see them more as agitators than leaders. Aren't the intellectual elite by definition avant garde?
Some local zoning rules restrict low-density development. Sometimes we even see a combination of restrictions on both low-density and high-density development. The resulting housing shortage is blamed on greedy landlords and used as a pretext for more regulations.
All of this is often discussed in The Economist. Of course, pretty much only elites read it.
"why is it so hard to inform the public that intellectual elites disagree with them on such issues"
It's not; the public is well aware of this. It's actually fascinating to think you might not realize this, though I doubt that's the case.
"and if being informed of this fact would be enough to change their minds"
As others have noted, our intellectual elite have advocated any number of mind-numbingly idiotic, demonstrably unworkable ideas. Also, many of us have had sufficient exposure to our intellectual elite to have realized that when it comes to subjects outside their specific area of expertise, they are no more knowledgeable than a randomly selected housepet.
"It might also be that even if the public does hear it, they would not change their minds. In which case democracy just loses."
How so? The fact that a given system of government doesn't work perfectly doesn't mean it doesn't work better than the alternatives.
A good example of this problem can be seen in your colleague Caplan. He likes to say that elites are better than the masses on economic matters (factually) but then conflates his values with more positive claims. He is generally a pacifist who shows contempt for both nationalism and patriotism and disdains those who want to preserve their home culture. He actively despises mainstream religions. When confronted with a scholar like Borjas who shows quite rigorously some of the downsides of recent immigration, he actually labels this work as leading to "evil" not just error. This smacks of the libertarian equivalent of Marxism.
From the standpoint of the public, hair splitting between left libs and libertarians on these matters is pointless. They understand the signals well and they see no reason to trust elites who can barely conceal their contempt for non-elite norms.
Which is doubly sad because genuine opportunities for mutual gains are squandered in the process.
On 6, it's hardly off the table: John McCain proposed ending the exclusion for health insurance. Most intellectuals (or at least most academics) didn't vote for him, however.
In fact, given their voting behavior, I am highly skeptical that idealistic intellectuals generally agree with Sumner or Hanson on much of anything. This is a well-known sociological phenomenon, the delusional belief that the people around you agree with you.
Politics is about normative issues, not about positive statements. Experts have more weight than the average person in factual/positive questions. Even then, when the issue is complex, it boils down to a kind of crude democracy of the experts, which changes opinion every decade or so.
But: In which way exactly does an elite carry more weight on a normative issue? Why should it have more power over what essentially IS a question of opinion and preference? And I say this although more often than not I'd agree with the "elites".