In *my own* experience, Bryan seems absolutely right to guess that Protectionism is a, to borrow a term from epistemologists, "properly basic" belief that really has to be *un*learned with formal instruction.
Rhodesia actually DID have voting rights based on property rather than race (plus a separate list to give blacks representation because they knew very few would qualify for the first list). But Mugabe took over in the 70s, during the Cold War, rather than after like Mandela in South Africa. So now Zimbabwe is far worse off than the more racist South Africa (which admittedly had a higher white fraction of the population, making it more viable for them to exclude non-whites).
Garett Jones' argument is that syndicalism was popular in Spain & Italy at the time those big waves of immigration occurred (prior to WW2). If the immigrants were coming after WW2, then they'd reflect the opinions in Italy at that point in time.
No individual scientist has a monopoly on all the relevant facts or on drawing correct inferences from the available facts. Thus, genuine science requires that if you want to discredit someone else's conclusion, you need to present your evidence, access to the means by which you obtained your evidence (i.e. the materials and methods, enabling others to replicate the evidence for themselves), and the inferences you made from that evidence that led you to draw a different conclusion. You also need to respect your opponent's efforts to discredit you by letting him presenting his own evidence, etc. and to respect on-lookers exercising their own independent judgement about who is right.
There are numerous problems with having some authority figure pose as "the Science™" to berate and talk-down to everyone else (if not censor and deplatform the dissenters) about alleged "misinformation" spreading among them. For one thing, unsupported assertions are not rationally persuasive--it may well be the authority who is misinformed, and the dissenters who are on the side of truth. A war on "misinformation" that goes beyond the bounds of rational debate outlined above amounts to a claim that the warrior has privileged access to an inerrant, omniscient source of truth. Such pretense is an exercise in irrational religious apologetics, not rational science.
For another thing, even a properly-informed authority who can monopolize discourse is incentivized to suppress truth and falsely label it "misinformation" if deceiving the public happens to serve the authority's ideological, political, or financial interests. Given that most academics, scientific journals, news organizations, etc. are loathe to bite the hands that feed them, scientific consensus itself can be systematically hijacked and corrupted by such interests even without an information war against dissenters, whose opinions are confined to disreputable fringes of the intelligentsia and whose ability to keep the mainstream honest is gravely weakened. With such a war in place, however, there is no longer any real science that is capable of speaking truth to power at all; one merely gets Lysenkoism ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism ) masquerading as science.
Economists do have the advantage that the relevant datum that serves as the foundational empirical premise for the field, namely the self-evident truth that human beings act in a purposeful fashion, makes it irrational to deny that the logic of purposeful action applies universally to all human affairs. The good news is that a deductive logic starting from incontrovertible premises is something that even most non-experts can understand if they make a modest effort, so it is possible to educate a broad non-expert audience without talking down to it, etc.
The bad news is that economics is limited by its foundational premise too, and economists often discredit themselves when they forget that. For example, one can deduce that the imposition of tariffs, all other things being equal, will cause a diminution of consumer utility by increasing prices, reducing quantities purchased, and shifting incomes from the most productive elements of society to the state and to domestic industries that can harvest politically-generated rents by being sheltered from foreign competition. However, economics can't prove that diminishing the utility of consumers is a bad consequence or that rewarding parasites at the expense of the productive is a bad consequence, nor can economic theory quantify the timing and magnitude of the predicted effects nor rule out possible contrary effects arising from unrelated causes (all other things not being equal in the real world). If you want to add ethical judgements to your argument or speculate about the quantitative effects, you need to make it clear that you are going beyond pure economic reasoning and be prepared to address non-economic objections to your conclusions.
Robin Hanson's futarchy provides a way to respond to all populist objections to elites claiming too much epistemic authority: just bet on outcomes. People who don't know as much as they think will lose money, and they will be replaced over time by accurate bets. "A bet is a tax on bullshit", so if people cared about bullshit they'd demand bullshitters bet.
Between massive, all-pervasive ignorance and the psychological basis of economics as a SOCIAL science, securing widespread acceptance of the intellectual canon is an impossible dream.
BUT... ultimately, economics is really only "common" sense (logic). Any hope there?
My opinion: nah. You either have that or, more-often, you don't.
In *my own* experience, Bryan seems absolutely right to guess that Protectionism is a, to borrow a term from epistemologists, "properly basic" belief that really has to be *un*learned with formal instruction.
Rhodesia actually DID have voting rights based on property rather than race (plus a separate list to give blacks representation because they knew very few would qualify for the first list). But Mugabe took over in the 70s, during the Cold War, rather than after like Mandela in South Africa. So now Zimbabwe is far worse off than the more racist South Africa (which admittedly had a higher white fraction of the population, making it more viable for them to exclude non-whites).
Garett Jones' argument is that syndicalism was popular in Spain & Italy at the time those big waves of immigration occurred (prior to WW2). If the immigrants were coming after WW2, then they'd reflect the opinions in Italy at that point in time.
“the best country in the world” lol absolute fucking clown show
https://substack.com/@cryptadamus/note/c-162729655
No individual scientist has a monopoly on all the relevant facts or on drawing correct inferences from the available facts. Thus, genuine science requires that if you want to discredit someone else's conclusion, you need to present your evidence, access to the means by which you obtained your evidence (i.e. the materials and methods, enabling others to replicate the evidence for themselves), and the inferences you made from that evidence that led you to draw a different conclusion. You also need to respect your opponent's efforts to discredit you by letting him presenting his own evidence, etc. and to respect on-lookers exercising their own independent judgement about who is right.
There are numerous problems with having some authority figure pose as "the Science™" to berate and talk-down to everyone else (if not censor and deplatform the dissenters) about alleged "misinformation" spreading among them. For one thing, unsupported assertions are not rationally persuasive--it may well be the authority who is misinformed, and the dissenters who are on the side of truth. A war on "misinformation" that goes beyond the bounds of rational debate outlined above amounts to a claim that the warrior has privileged access to an inerrant, omniscient source of truth. Such pretense is an exercise in irrational religious apologetics, not rational science.
For another thing, even a properly-informed authority who can monopolize discourse is incentivized to suppress truth and falsely label it "misinformation" if deceiving the public happens to serve the authority's ideological, political, or financial interests. Given that most academics, scientific journals, news organizations, etc. are loathe to bite the hands that feed them, scientific consensus itself can be systematically hijacked and corrupted by such interests even without an information war against dissenters, whose opinions are confined to disreputable fringes of the intelligentsia and whose ability to keep the mainstream honest is gravely weakened. With such a war in place, however, there is no longer any real science that is capable of speaking truth to power at all; one merely gets Lysenkoism ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism ) masquerading as science.
Economists do have the advantage that the relevant datum that serves as the foundational empirical premise for the field, namely the self-evident truth that human beings act in a purposeful fashion, makes it irrational to deny that the logic of purposeful action applies universally to all human affairs. The good news is that a deductive logic starting from incontrovertible premises is something that even most non-experts can understand if they make a modest effort, so it is possible to educate a broad non-expert audience without talking down to it, etc.
The bad news is that economics is limited by its foundational premise too, and economists often discredit themselves when they forget that. For example, one can deduce that the imposition of tariffs, all other things being equal, will cause a diminution of consumer utility by increasing prices, reducing quantities purchased, and shifting incomes from the most productive elements of society to the state and to domestic industries that can harvest politically-generated rents by being sheltered from foreign competition. However, economics can't prove that diminishing the utility of consumers is a bad consequence or that rewarding parasites at the expense of the productive is a bad consequence, nor can economic theory quantify the timing and magnitude of the predicted effects nor rule out possible contrary effects arising from unrelated causes (all other things not being equal in the real world). If you want to add ethical judgements to your argument or speculate about the quantitative effects, you need to make it clear that you are going beyond pure economic reasoning and be prepared to address non-economic objections to your conclusions.
Robin Hanson's futarchy provides a way to respond to all populist objections to elites claiming too much epistemic authority: just bet on outcomes. People who don't know as much as they think will lose money, and they will be replaced over time by accurate bets. "A bet is a tax on bullshit", so if people cared about bullshit they'd demand bullshitters bet.
Between massive, all-pervasive ignorance and the psychological basis of economics as a SOCIAL science, securing widespread acceptance of the intellectual canon is an impossible dream.
BUT... ultimately, economics is really only "common" sense (logic). Any hope there?
My opinion: nah. You either have that or, more-often, you don't.