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Cross-country Comparisons
I was just on an NPR panel on Capitalism, squaring off against socialists Kristen Ghodsee and Vivek Chibber. Enjoy the full show!
I was just on an NPR panel on Capitalism, squaring off against socialists Kristen Ghodsee and Vivek Chibber. Enjoy the full show!
Jun 30 2021
Here's a guest post by ASU's Richard Hahn, reprinted with his permission. I suspect he'd be happy to respond to comments! The problem with punchy slogans is that they are subject to (mis)interpretation. In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, it has become common for folks to urge policy-makers to “follow the ...
Jun 29 2021
Many people would regard my approach to teaching monetary policy during my final years at Bentley to be hopelessly "out of date". Marginal Revolution University has a new video out that discusses new ways of teaching Fed policy in light of changes made during and after the Great Recession. Here I'd like to push back ...
Jun 29 2021
I was just on an NPR panel on Capitalism, squaring off against socialists Kristen Ghodsee and Vivek Chibber. Enjoy the full show!
READER COMMENTS
astew
Jun 29 2021 at 12:34pm
Why do people keep accusing you of that..?
BC
Jun 29 2021 at 1:30pm
Best part: Chibber also goes on to say, “It’s an answer that’s appropriate to any situation.” So, his complaint is that Bryan’s answer applies not only to the questioner’s situation, but to others’ as well! Chibber must define “serious” to mean, “hard to dispute”.
It’s also interesting to hear what Jade’s actual complaints are, along the lines of Bryan’s general point about what people in 21st Century capitalist countries complain about. (1) She can afford to sleep in a separate room from her wife to minimize risk of infection, an option that actual poor people wouldn’t be able to afford. (2) As a nurse, she risks infection by working around sick people. Could someone please point to a socialist society in history where medical professionals didn’t have to work near sick people, yet those sick people could still get the same level of care as Jade’s patients? Note also that Jade implicitly admits that capitalism is the reason her patients get care: she says that, were it not for the paycheck, she wouldn’t show up to work. “Professional duty as a nurse”, i.e., from her according to her ability, is insufficient motivation for her to deliver heath care to each according to their need.
astew
Jun 29 2021 at 2:39pm
Jade also specifically mentioned student loans as one of her burdens. If only someone would write a book to make the Case against Education!
But really, I fully sympathize with that. But even there, the problem isn’t so much capitalism as it is subsidization of student loans and the legal inability to discharge student loans through bankruptcy. “We” should not be making it so easy for a person to get a loan if there’s little expectation they’ll be able to repay. All it does is make the cost of education skyrocket (and the value per dollar plummet).
But I get the anguish to some degree. I often wish I hadn’t taken on so much debt (student loans, mortgage, car payment) myself. It also keeps me feeling like I’m stuck. Without that debt I could probably be happy doing my job one day a week (with 20% the salary) and doing things I enjoy with all that extra free time.
fika
Jun 29 2021 at 1:38pm
well, bryan didnt begin his response that well. What he said about how it doesn’t matter how good the world is, people will always be unhappy, to a normal person he strongly implied that the nurse is whiny (and in a sense, deserves the poverty/ low status the nurse has). Of course, what he said was basically true, but it wasn’t really what the nurse was asking for. And i think the other participants sensed that, and therefore said Bryan wasn’t serious.
A better way to start would be “I’m really sorry that life is tough for you.” And then maybe segue into his response. They would probably still say he wasn’t serious, but it would be a start.
TLDR: People think in status and psycho logic, and bryan Disputed The nurse, Therefore breaking the norm to the average person that nurses are good people and deserve status and wellbeing. He would have needed to say something very charismatic to turn that around
Dave Smith
Jun 29 2021 at 2:09pm
Do people really believe that in socialist countries people have no stress? Seriously, is this question a strawman?
Phil H
Jun 30 2021 at 4:59am
Yep, this would have been my point as well. What exactly were the pro-socialist pair recommending, and why did they think that would be better? I thought Bryan did a much better job of crisply comparing his recommendations against other possibilities.
For example, there was a caller who felt that she didn’t have any choice in her job and work. I get that that feels bad. But if you want to suggest that a different system would give her more choices, you’re going to have to demonstrate it. Where I live, literal doctors in China left to go and be literal dockworkers in Hong Kong. Talk about freedom to choose your occupation!
Mark Z
Jun 30 2021 at 12:04pm
I think socialists might argue that we already have the technological capacity to produce everything we need without nearly as much work as we do today, but capitalism squanders it on either things we don’t need, or to provide abundance for the wealthy. I don’t think the latter point is true (consumption inequality is such that we would each only get slightly wealthier from reallocating rich people’s consumption to everyone); with the former I would expect some socialist or quasi-socialist society to have figured out how to stop wasting all these resources. There are a few somewhat-more-socialist developed countries where people work less, are more insulated from work-related decisions or circumstances, and have less ‘gratuitous’ consumption (e.g., France?), but even they usually have slightly negative net migration rates with the US, so I’m not sure they’ve really figured anything out better than we have.
Mark
Jun 29 2021 at 2:49pm
It seemed clear to me that Kristen didn’t really respect Bryan enough to actual argue with his points.
Vivek did seem to address them, at least tangentially. And I think one of his points was a good one.
It was something along the lines of “if almost everyone in this situation feels this way, this is a societal problem”, something like that.
I think that is a fair point that I would have liked Bryan to address. When almost everyone responds the same way to a given situation, that would seem to be evidence that an intervention at the system level could be especially effective. I don’t think that means socialism is that intervention, nor does it mean Bryan’s proposed solution of helping this one person is wrong. But it does mean there may be an ounce of prevention out there to replace Bryan’s pound of cure.
Mark Z
Jun 30 2021 at 12:07pm
I’m not sure I believe this feeling is evidence of anything. Almost everyone feels that life is too short, that doesn’t mean there’s an intervention that makes it longer. Everyone wishes they made more money and is frustrated by their perceived lack of choices seems like the same kind of sentiment.
Joel Pollen
Jul 6 2021 at 1:21pm
I agree with Mark Z, to some extent. No society is optimal. Everyone realizes this and feels some amount of discontent, but this doesn’t imply that there’s anything to be done about it.
I am willing to grant that widespread discontent sometimes does indicate a problem, but it doesn’t imply what the solution is. It’s very hard for left-leaning people to remember this, but changes in government policy are only one kind of solution. The fact that almost everyone in a particular situation feels discontent may imply that there’s a systemic problem, but not all systemic problems imply the need for a government solution. In the late 19th century, transportation was a problem. It wasn’t practical for everyone to ride around in horse-drawn carriages. People were surely very discontented with the status quo. The solution wasn’t regulatory reform, it was the invention of the automobile. Policymakers in the late 19th century would have been mistaken to try to solve the problem by, say, massively redesigning cities. The solution was going to arrive without their help, and there was no way for them to see that coming.
Finally and most pragmatically, it’s simply not true that all nurses feel discontent like Jade describes. I’ve known and worked with many nurses in my career, and as far as I can tell most of them are pretty satisfied with their job opportunities and career choice. Despite what the other panelists said, it actually is pretty easy to change jobs as a nurse. Regarding unionization: people have been trying to organize a nurses’ union at my local hospital for years without success. Most nurses here aren’t interested and vote against them.
Kyle
Jun 29 2021 at 4:25pm
Do we think Chibber knows that trade unions supported the Chinese Exclusion Act, literacy tests for entry, and the Immigration Act of 1924?
Floccina
Jun 30 2021 at 9:44am
I would have mentioned savings, for 95%+ of citizens in a developed country saving can lead to an incredible level of freedom.
How to Become a Millionaire on Minimum Wage
Also I’d contend that labor unions are a part of capitalism not socialism.
Floccina
Jun 30 2021 at 10:10am
BTW didn’t you, Robin and others show that the richer at any given level of schooling completed have more children? That is that school gets in the way of having children and that children get in the way of schooling?
More Money More Children
Wouldn’t the better argument to what she said be that USSR produced very low birth rates. Is there also a little evidence that Social Security and the welfare (welfare=government charity) state produces slightly lower fertility?
Brandon
Jun 30 2021 at 11:36pm
Oh lordy, Bryan, I loved that zinger at 46:10.
Kudos to NPR for putting this whole thing on. Very informative. I think Vivek exemplifies the Indian/South Asian tradition of dialogue well. You and Vivek should work together. The South Asian tradition has been hampered by the confusion between “capitalism and crony capitalism,” and the only way to get out of this confusion is via people like you.
PS: did you hear the anthropologist’s voice start to quiver near the end of the podcast. My lord!
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