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.
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.
Yeah, I try a bit to move my pissed-off-edness heuristic towards utilitarianism, but...part of being human is that we get pissed off by a fairly arbitrary set of things, depending on both preferences and life experience. It would be pretty hard for anger to be rational, it's emotional reaction triggered in the amygdala which uses crude association heuristics.
Huge parts of my life, like my current profession, are based on what pisses me off.
"Or why people would refer to a female atheist instead of the more common male atheist as a reference, knowing that they are to the most part just making the sentence harder to read"
OK, I'll bite. Why are sentences with women in them harder to read?
True, the Mom-example was an intentional exaggeration, but I don't know if it was that far off.
It seems to me that a furniture store owner might in fact be prevented from saying, "You know what would look great with the olive sofa you just bought? These yellow and gray throw pillows." This furniture store owner isn't getting paid for the advice itself, especially if the sofa-buyer who has already paid says, "nah". But if the law isn't aimed at this guy, I don't know who it's aimed at.
Leo, unfortunately that doesn't hold. I think it was in Virginia Postrel's "The Future and Its Enemies", but wherever, the was a report that hair cutters in Nebraska (?) sued to prevent two ladies from giving free hair cuts to prison inmates. This was years ago hence my uncertainty as to specifics.
"Or why people would refer to a female atheist instead of the more common male atheist as a reference, knowing that they are to the most part just making the sentence harder to read. Is that just another example of someone advancing one of their pet peeves?"
I thought people would sympathize more with an atheist if I could get them to imagine a pretty one.
I suspect that things done at no charge, like sharing recipes with mom, are unlikely to be regulated. Selling recipes for money, conversely, is likely to get restricted in the near future to people trained to measure caloric content and to distinguish between gluten and peanuts.
Licensing of florists and interior decorators may not be a big issue, but when you factor in all the industries and professions with unnecessary licensing requirements, it's economic death by a thousand cuts.
I think there is some kind of fallacy here. This is the most recent thing to piss Hanson off (It pisses me off too, btw). That doesn't mean it ranks high on his list or that he doesn't have better things to be pissed about.
Also, if you generalize it away from interior decorating, you have a long list of outrages: cosmetologists vs. hair braiders, bus driver unions vs. jitneys, etc.
Creeping interest-serving bureaucratic burdens such as licensing laws represent serious erosions of liberty and contribute to calcification of our economies, retardation of progress, and may in fact cause our civilization to become stuck in mediocrity and stagnation. The only way this doesn't happen is if enough people are outraged enough to prevent it.
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.
Yeah, I try a bit to move my pissed-off-edness heuristic towards utilitarianism, but...part of being human is that we get pissed off by a fairly arbitrary set of things, depending on both preferences and life experience. It would be pretty hard for anger to be rational, it's emotional reaction triggered in the amygdala which uses crude association heuristics.
Huge parts of my life, like my current profession, are based on what pisses me off.
"Those who think they know everything are very annoying to those who do"-SAI_2100
"A person is best defined by the nature of his evil."-- Piers Anthony, On a Pale Horse
A surprisingly low-quality post by OB standards.
"Or why people would refer to a female atheist instead of the more common male atheist as a reference, knowing that they are to the most part just making the sentence harder to read"
OK, I'll bite. Why are sentences with women in them harder to read?
Leo,
True, the Mom-example was an intentional exaggeration, but I don't know if it was that far off.
It seems to me that a furniture store owner might in fact be prevented from saying, "You know what would look great with the olive sofa you just bought? These yellow and gray throw pillows." This furniture store owner isn't getting paid for the advice itself, especially if the sofa-buyer who has already paid says, "nah". But if the law isn't aimed at this guy, I don't know who it's aimed at.
Leo, unfortunately that doesn't hold. I think it was in Virginia Postrel's "The Future and Its Enemies", but wherever, the was a report that hair cutters in Nebraska (?) sued to prevent two ladies from giving free hair cuts to prison inmates. This was years ago hence my uncertainty as to specifics.
Why would this crowd find it hard to sympathize with an atheist? Aren't most of us Atheists?
"Or why people would refer to a female atheist instead of the more common male atheist as a reference, knowing that they are to the most part just making the sentence harder to read. Is that just another example of someone advancing one of their pet peeves?"
I thought people would sympathize more with an atheist if I could get them to imagine a pretty one.
@Shae,
I suspect that things done at no charge, like sharing recipes with mom, are unlikely to be regulated. Selling recipes for money, conversely, is likely to get restricted in the near future to people trained to measure caloric content and to distinguish between gluten and peanuts.
Licensing of florists and interior decorators may not be a big issue, but when you factor in all the industries and professions with unnecessary licensing requirements, it's economic death by a thousand cuts.
I think there is some kind of fallacy here. This is the most recent thing to piss Hanson off (It pisses me off too, btw). That doesn't mean it ranks high on his list or that he doesn't have better things to be pissed about.
Also, if you generalize it away from interior decorating, you have a long list of outrages: cosmetologists vs. hair braiders, bus driver unions vs. jitneys, etc.
I think the opposite is true: rational people can all get pissed off at different things, and yet end up at the same consciously-held ideology.
Creeping interest-serving bureaucratic burdens such as licensing laws represent serious erosions of liberty and contribute to calcification of our economies, retardation of progress, and may in fact cause our civilization to become stuck in mediocrity and stagnation. The only way this doesn't happen is if enough people are outraged enough to prevent it.
So, yeah, the outrage is justified, a lot.