On Monday, May 4, Jim Blasingame, the host of his nationally syndicated “The Small Business Advocate” radio show, interviewed me on issues related to my book Openness to Creative Destruction, and “Free to Choose a Possible Cure,” my April 17 op-ed piece on the web site of the American Institute for Economic Research. You can click on the links below to listen to each segment of the interview.
Category: Books
“Rational for Workers to Prefer a Seller’s Market in Labor”
If we adopt policies to maintain what I call a “robustly redundant labor market,” workers will have no reason to fear harm from free-trade and immigration. The policies that allow robustly redundant labor markets are described in my Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism.
(p. C2) Unwilling to admit that the center-left has been largely captured by the managerial elite, many pundits and academics on the left insist that mindless bigotry, rather than class interests, explains the attraction of many working-class voters to populist parties that promise to restrict trade and immigration. But it is just as rational for workers to prefer a seller’s market in labor as it is for employers to prefer a buyer’s market in labor. Blue-collar workers who have abandoned center-left parties for populist movements bring with them the historic suspicion of large-scale immigration that was typical of organized labor for generations.
And as MIT economist David Autor and his colleagues have shown, voters in the U.S. regions hit hardest by Chinese import competition were the most likely to favor Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders in 2016. Strict environmental regulations, which impose few costs on the urban elites, can threaten the livelihoods and lifestyles of workers in the exurban heartlands, like the French yellow vest protesters who rebelled against a tax on diesel fuel intended to mitigate climate change.
For the full commentary, see:
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Jan. 10, 2020, and has the same title as the print version.)
Lind’s commentary is related to his book:
Lind, Michael. The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite. New York: Portfolio, 2020.
The latest version of the paper co-authored by Autor, and mentioned above, is:
My book, mentioned way above, is:
Diamond, Arthur M., Jr. Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.
A Map as Large as the Territory It Represents
(p. A4) As more reliable data comes in, said Dr. Spiegelhalter, “the Covid-19 pandemic is rapidly becoming a constrained problem.”
. . .
Statistical science, he said, “is a machine, in a sense, to turn the variability that we see in the world — the unpredictability, the enormous amount of scatter and randomness that we see around us — into a tool that can quantify our uncertainty about facts and numbers and science.”
But as he acknowledged in his book, “The Art of Statistics,” models “are simplifications of the real world — they are the maps not the territory.” (This is reminiscent of Jorge Luis Borges’s story, “On Exactitude in Science,” about a map growing as large as the territory it was meant to represent.)
For the full review, see:
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date April 7, and has the title “Embracing the Uncertainties.”)
The Spiegelhalter book mentioned above, is:
Spiegelhalter, David. The Art of Statistics: How to Learn from Data. New York: Basic Books, 2019.
Thierer Defends Evasive Entrepreneurs
Thierer’s new book is:
Thierer, Adam. Evasive Entrepreneurs and the Future of Governance: How Innovation Improves Economies and Governments. pb ed. Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 2020.
Firm Adaptation and Entrepreneurial Innovation in Response to Covid-19
The piece mentions my book:
Diamond, Arthur M., Jr. Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.
87% of American Liberals Support Some Merit-Based Income Differences
In my Openness to Creative Destruction, I claim that most people do not care as much about inequality per se, as they do about unfair inequality. What they care about is the differences in income be roughly related to differences in contribution. I illustrate this by recounting a famous experiment that Frans de Waal conducted with capuchin monkeys. The evidence in the study quoted below, supports my claim.
(p. B3) In 2018, four economists at the Center for Experimental Research on Fairness, Inequality and Rationality at the Norwegian School of Economics conducted a huge experiment — mostly via face-to-face interviews — using the Gallup World Poll. The Norwegian team — Bertil Tungodden, Alexander Cappelen, Ingvild Almas and Erik O. Sorensen — worked with Gallup to survey 65,000 people across 60 countries about their beliefs related to the gaps between the rich and the poor.
Part of the survey was an experiment. Respondents were randomly assigned to different conditions and presented a real-life scenario: Two people were recently hired to independently complete a short assignment; they were both paid, but one was given an additional $6.
In the first group, survey takers were told that the additional $6 was given out randomly. In the second group, they were told the $6 went to the worker who was more productive in completing the assignment. In both cases, respondents were asked how they would divide the additional earnings: whether they would transfer none of it, some of it or all of it to the other worker.
. . .
American conservatives might assume liberals are averse to merit-based compensation. The experiment proves that’s not so. When told the bonus payment was made only to the most productive worker, only 13 percent of the liberals transferred all of the money equally to the less productive worker, which is within the margin of error of the American conservative response (10 percent).
Americans both liberal and conservative were more likely than most people worldwide to accept merit-based income differences. As one of the study’s investigators, Mr. Tungodden, mentioned in his public presentation on the study, people in richer countries were more likely than people in poorer countries to allow merit-based differences. In the rich and more egalitarian country of Norway, 88 percent of respondents transferred the bonus payment equally when told it was allocated by chance, but only 33 percent did so when allocated by merit.
For the full commentary, see:
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary was last updated February 14, 2020, and has the title “THE UPSHOT; Experiment Shows Conservatives More Willing to Share Wealth Than They Say.”)
The soon-to-be-published version of the research discussed above, is:
Almås, Ingvild, Alexander W. Cappelen, and Bertil Tungodden. “Cutthroat Capitalism Versus Cuddly Socialism: Are Americans More Meritocratic and Efficiency-Seeking Than Scandinavians?” Journal of Political Economy (forthcoming 2020).
My book, mentioned above, is:
Diamond, Arthur M., Jr. Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.
“Very Smart People Doing Things in Half the Time With Great Urgency and Loving It”
(p. A15) As World War II gave way to the Cold War, jet engines and nuclear weapons increased the importance of radar and the strategic significance of countering it. Mr. Westwick fast-forwards through early, tentative attempts to do so, taking the reader to Southern California in the 1970s, where two defense contractors—Lockheed and Northrop—competed to develop modern stealth aircraft.
. . .
“Stealth” is leavened with plenty of anecdotes. One engineer designs a key curve for a stealth plane called Tacit Blue by fidgeting with modeling clay while on a trip to Disneyland with his kids. Another jury-rigs an F-117 by stringing a grid of piano wire over a hollow in its exterior to block incoming radar waves. It was meant to be a stopgap but ended up becoming part of the aircraft’s design. But Mr. Westwick’s main concern is to convey a sense of what it was like to work with such collaborative intensity. As one engineer recalls: “It’s very smart people doing things in half the time with great urgency and loving it. Absolutely loving it and in a way loving the people they work with.”
For the full review, see:
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Jan. 29, 2020, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; ‘Stealth’ Review: Mission Invisible.”)
The book under review, is:
Westwick, Peter. Stealth: The Secret Contest to Invent Invisible Aircraft. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.
Mickey Mouse “Was a Beloved Little Guy Defying Authority, Beating the Odds”
(p. C8) “. . . like Mickey Mouse, Harry Houdini was a beloved little guy defying authority, beating the odds, standing up to the bully, making it on his own.”
For the full review, see:
Robert Wilson. “Houdini.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, March 14, 2020): C7-C8.
(Note: the online version of the review was updated March 13, 2020, and has the title “Two New Lives of Harry Houdini.”)
(Note: ellipsis added. The line in quotation marks is from Begley, as quoted by Wilson. In the print version this line is part of a longer indented quote from Begley.)
The Begley book, is:
Begley, Adam. Houdini: The Elusive American. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020.
“Working-Class Louis-François Cartier” Succeeded Through “Industry, Shrewdness, and Sheer Luck”
(p. 21) While Cartier is now a fixture in every major city, a synonym for international panache, its origins were modest. The author’s great-great-great-grandfather, , founded his eponymous company in 1847. Through a combination of industry, shrewdness, and sheer luck, he managed to transform his small shop into a fashionable destination: no small task in an era of civil unrest and regime change.
Thriving in the fickle fine jewelry market required finesse, and Brickell highlights the complementary skills different members of the close-knit Cartier clan brought to their ever-shifting business: innovative design, meticulous craftsmanship, an early appreciation for the power of public relations, and a keen eye for spotting counterfeit stones. Early on, Cartier also, crucially, developed a reputation as an honest and reliable dealer when droves of aristocrats were hocking their jewels following the Franco-Prussian War.
For the full review, see:
Sadie Stein. “Family Jewelers.” The New York Times Book Review (Sunday, December 22, 2019): 21.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Nov. [sic] 26, 2019, and has the title “Can’t Afford a Shopping Spree at Cartier? This Book Is the Next Best Thing.”)
The book under review, is:
Brickell, Francesca Cartier. The Cartiers: The Untold Story of the Family Behind the Jewelry Empire. New York: Ballantine Books, 2019.
Scientists Are “a Political Interest Group Like Any Other”
(p. B15) Mr. Greenberg, who spent most of his professional life in Washington, became a science journalist at a time when many practitioners seemed to view their job as advancing the cause of research — a consideration that many researchers expected.
As an author, newspaper reporter and magazine editor, and as the founding editor and publisher of Science & Government Report, a newsletter he ran for almost 30 years, Mr. Greenberg took a different view.
From his vantage point in the capital, he tracked scientific rivalries and battles over the government’s science priorities, describing research not as a uniquely worthy activity but rather as one of many enterprises competing for federal largess.
“He recognized that science, and the scientific endeavor broadly, was a political interest group like any other, and they behaved like any other, and he covered them like any other,” said Daniel Sarewitz, a congressional staffer in the science policy arena in the early 1990s and now director of the Washington-based Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes at Arizona State University.
“He was not a toady or an advocate for the science community,” Dr. Sarewitz said. “He was a journalist covering science.”
Writing in The New York Times Book Review in 1968, Robert K. Merton, the eminent 20th-century sociologist of science, said Mr. Greenberg’s “perceptive” first book, “The Politics of Pure Science,” was one that “should be read by the President, legislators, scientists and the rest of us ordinary folk.”
For the full obituary, see:
(Note: the online version of the obituary was last updated March 26, 2020, and has the title “Daniel S. Greenberg, Science Journalist and Iconoclast, Dies at 88.” Williams’s question is in bold; Achorn’s answer is not in bold.)
The second edition of the book by Greenberg, mentioned in the passage quoted above, is:
Greenberg, Daniel S. The Politics of Pure Science. Second ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.
Lincoln Was “Always Full of This Loneliness and Sadness”
(p. C6) What’s the most surprising thing you learned while writing it?
I’ve read all these books about how Lincoln was hated, but I was still surprised by how disdained and disliked he was by so many of his contemporaries. Liberal Republicans thought he was too calculating, too quick to weigh public opinion. Democrats thought he was a tyrant, a rube, and was destroying the Constitution. I think a lot of this was airbrushed out of history after he was assassinated, when he became a martyr. But when you go back to that day and look at what people were saying, you get a stunning sense of what Lincoln was up against. There’s a lot of hostility from all sides. I’m not sure how he withstood it. I guess he was defeated so many times in his life, had been down so many times, that he was able to take almost anything.
And Lincoln is always surprising to me for his extremely peculiar qualities. He’s got this immense intelligence, and he’s always full of this loneliness and sadness. He goes up to the inauguration alone. He’s a strange guy. He has an ability to step outside himself and to view issues dispassionately. All of those qualities are seen in the book.
For the full interview, see:
(Note: bold in original.)
(Note: the online version of the interview has the date February 24, 2020, and has the title “5 THINGS ABOUT YOUR BOOK; 24 Tense Hours in Abraham Lincoln’s Life.” Williams’s question is in bold; Achorn’s answer is not in bold.)
Achorn’s book, that he discussed in the passages of the interview quoted above, is:
Achorn, Edward. Every Drop of Blood: The Momentous Second Inauguration of Abraham Lincoln. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2020.