The what-pisses-you-off heuristic
This post by Robin, in which he is annoyed that an organization of interior designers has persuaded state legislatures to license their profession (such as it is), and which he is also annoyed that his fellow economists don’t make more of a fuss about such regulations, reminds me of a principle that I heard once (I don’t remember where) that you can really understand someone’s deeper ideology by looking at what pisses him or her off.
As Robin himself notes, the licensing of florists, funeral directors, and interior designers is not a big deal–certainly nothing on the order of the problems caused by overfishing, say, or by various trade and migration restrictions, or even the (arguably) large problems caused by policies such as the mortgage tax deduction which reduce people’s ability to move.
Nonetheless, Robin writes of economists’ disinclination to fight the licensing battle that it “saddens me more than I can say.” I don’t doubt his sincerity. but what’s most interesting to me here is to think about why this bothers him so much.
P.S. I certainly don’t mean this to be a personal criticism of Robin in any way. I certainly have my own things that piss me off for no particular reason, ranging from socks lying around on the floor–they’re not a practical obstacle so why does the messiness bother me so much–to misinterpretations (as I see them) of Bayesian statistics–things that are probably lower on the scale of importance than the net welfare loss caused by economists not fighting the licensing of florists.
There are so many things to be pissed off about, that the choice of what we decide to let bother us can perhaps be revealing.
There are so many things to be pissed off about, that the choice of what we decide to let bother us can perhaps be revealing. Andrew, you say that Robin’s post is incredibly revealing about his ideology. Would you care to tell us what it reveals?
I am also interested in your views of what this reveals..
I think Robin's reasons for being pissed off are completely typical and standard. At the very least it's the same reasons that things piss me off.
For starters we tend to only really get angry at those we view as reasonable enough to regard as peers. Religions tend to spend more time denouncing their own heretics than members of other faiths, middle class suburbia is more outraged by murders committed by people like them, and economists are going to get more peeved at unacceptable behavior by economists. Each person thinks so many people are so gloriously wrong that we could never interact successfully with our peers if we didn't behave in this fashion.
Secondly, we tend to get most angry when an issue seems extremely clear to us and yet others still don't act as we think is appropriate. And finally if the issue only comes up infrequently then you aren't likely to build up sufficent irritation.
These types of legislative protection rackets are a perfect storm for irritation in this regard. There can't be any reasonable debate about the merits of these rules and unlike the big problems where there are already plenty of economic voices heard by the public and policy makers it seems pretty clear that speaking up would get something done. So to Robin the issue seems black and white (and perhaps is). Unlike other issues where most of the impediments are politicians or the public here Robin thinks his peers are at fault. Finally, these kind of laws are seen commonly enough to nurture great irritation.