[N.B. The words 'Progressive', 'Conservative', and 'Libertarian' are capitalized for clarity on this page. They refer to groupings of ideas and systems of thought, not to political parties with the same names.--Econlib Ed.]

0:33 Intro. [Recording date: May 9, 2013.] Russ: We're going to be talking about his new Amazon single, an extended essay in digital form, called The Three Languages of Politics. I love your book. It's only about 50 pages, by the way, and it's only $1.99--just want to set people's minds at ease. It's a bargain at twice the price, I would say. The main theme is that when we talk politics we often talk past one another because we have very different frameworks or lenses for how we look at the world. And you identify three different axes, or lenses, or heuristics, as you call them, for seeing the world. What are those three? Guest: Okay, so there are three things that set aside oppositions, or the good and the bad. So what I claim is that Progressives organize the good and the bad in terms of oppression and the oppressed, and they think in terms of groups. So, certain groups of people are oppressed, and certain groups of people are oppressors. And so the good is to align yourself against oppression, and the historical figures that have improved the world have fought against oppression and overcome oppression. The second axis is one I think Conservatives use, which is civilization and barbarism. The good is civilized values that have accumulated over time and have stood the test of time; and the bad is barbarians who try to strike out against those values and destroy civilization. And the third axis is one I associate with Libertarians, which is freedom versus coercion, so that good is individuals making their own choices, contracting freely with each other; and the bad is coercion at gunpoint, particularly on the part of governments. Russ: So, let's apply it to one example you do in the book, which is immigration. Talk about how the three different languages would work with that very sensitive political issue. Guest: Okay, so in the United States today, a Progressive might think of the people who have crossed the border from Latin America as an oppressed group, and native white Americans who are hostile to the immigrants as oppressors. And so they would be favoring allowing these immigrants to come in. With one sort of caveat, in that they also think that, would classify low-skilled working Americans as among the oppressed group and they wouldn't want to create conflicts where bringing in more immigrants hurts low-skilled Americans. For Conservatives looking along the civilization/barbarism axis, I think that having a border, and a well-defined border, and a well-defined population is part of civilized values. They would worry that if you allow immigration that you might undermine that, and they would feel very strongly that people who have crossed the border illegally have, by definition, carried out an illegal act and therefore certainly ought not to be rewarded for it and perhaps ought to be punished for it. Finally, Libertarians don't like the idea of government coercion at all, and don't see why political borders should have any significance, and so they would tend to favor open borders. So that they would see this as a freedom versus coercion issue. I should probably say that I don't think of these axes as some kind of fundamental explanation of why people think what they do. More, it predicts how they will be most comfortable expressing their points of view. So, a Progressive will be most comfortable expressing their point of view on immigration, whatever it is, in terms of how it deals with oppressed groups. Conservatives will be most comfortable talking about it in terms of how it affects civilized values versus a tax on civilized values. And Libertarians will be most comfortable talking about it in terms of freedom versus coercion. It's how they feel most comfortable talking about it, not necessarily an explanation of why they believe what they believe.

5:56 Russ: And as you argue in the book, and it's certainly part of my life experience, which is that people like to hang out with certain types of people that are like themselves, typically; a certain tribalism that is true of religion; it's true of politics, too--although people don't like to think of it that way, but I think it is a good way to think about it. So we get into the habit of talking to our inside group. And then when we take that language and confront someone who is on the other side, it's extremely ineffective. And they don't get it. Guest: Exactly. So, Libertarians feel like they've played the trump card when they've said, when they've talked about freedom versus coercion; and other people just don't think of it as a trump. And similarly the Conservative, when they say, when they've described an issue in terms of civilization versus barbarism, they think that trumps; and other people disagree. So, you get exactly that kind of miscommunication. In some ways, it's worse than that. In some ways it's almost intentional miscommunication. I've used the analogy of a football quarterback in American football calling an audible, where the intent is for his team to understand it and for the other team not to understand it. I think some of the political discourse almost goes to that level, where you are sending, by using the axis of your tribe, you are sort of signaling that you want to raise your status within the tribe and that you don't really care what other tribes think. Russ: And as a result, because we have trouble seeing the arguments of the other sides, we dismiss them as obviously misguided, foolish, wrong, evil, immoral. It explains one of the things that I always find very troubling about policy discourse, which is: Not only am I wrong, and not only are you wrong, but I'm a better person than you are. Which is a bizarre outcome for political discourse. But it is the, I'd say it's sort of the default right now. Guest: Yeah. And I think part of the use that people make of the axes is that they ultimately come to think of their opponents in those terms. Like, one of the things that I read that started me thinking along these lines was a book, I think it's called something like In Defense of Libertarianism, or something like that, by John Brennan. [Jason Brennan? Libertarianism: What Everyone Needs to Know?--Econlib Ed.] I forget the--there are many books with 'Libertarianism' in the title. At one point he says: Well, there are two alternative points of view to Libertarianism--one of them wants a nanny state, and the other one wants a police state. And what he's in effect doing is saying that people who disagree--he doesn't look at them along their own axis. He looks at them solely along the freedom vs. coercion axis, and say they want coercion. Whereas, they wouldn't describe themselves that way. Similarly you'll hear people say about Libertarians, you know, they just want to see people starve. They want to let people suffer. And again, that's not how they would describe themselves; that's not how they arrive at their position. But if you are trying to simplify the world into oppressors and oppressed, then it simplifies your world to describe your opponents, whether they are Conservatives or Libertarians, as oppressors. And then you've kind of simplified the problem and made them demons. So, people demonize their opponents along these axes. And you'll see Conservatives say that Obama's actually just a barbarian--he's really on the side of the terrorists. Russ: He's trying to destroy the country. His goal is to destroy the country. Guest: Yeah. And they'll say that Libertarians are doing the same thing, by advocating, eliminating drug laws and not doing enough to support the family through government, and so on. But it really goes to the point of deciding that people who disagree with you don't disagree with you legitimately, but because they are on the opposite end of your preferred axis. Russ: Which is a place they would not put themselves. But your claim is we have this natural habit of dividing the world into one axis, really, with one end that's good and one that's bad; and to shove people into the--they disagree with us, they must be at the other end. But they are orthogonal to us, it turns out. Guest: Yeah. And I think it's part of a process of reaching what some psychologists used to call 'closure'. You feel that everything is settled when you can dismiss anyone who disagrees with you by just saying, oh, they are just on the opposite end of my axis; they are actually just bitter opponents to everything I stand for. Russ: They are evil.

11:21 Russ: So, I have often--you don't sell the ideas in the book this way, but I have often suggested that something along these lines--I don't think of it the same way, obviously--that if you want to get people to agree with your world view, I think that most people think the way to do that is you just prove they are wrong. And then they'll just throw up their hands and say, Oh, I'm sorry; my whole life's been a lie. And that doesn't work. It doesn't work in proselytizing for religion; it doesn't work in proselytizing for ideology. And so what this book suggests--this is the part I think you talk about explicitly--but it implies that if you want to encourage someone to think the way you do, you ought to put yourself in their shoes and use their axes. Guest: Yeah. Or at least understand the legitimate side of their argument, rather than try to characterize it in the most illegitimate way. I really want to fall short of claiming that you can, sort of--it's called The Three Languages of Politics, and I want to fall short of claiming that by learning to translate into someone else's language you can suddenly persuade them that you are right. I wouldn't promise that at all. I do think you have a better chance if you understand them. But I think you also take the risk, if you understand their language, that they may persuade you. Russ: Ooooo. Guest: And my guess is if you are not willing to take that risk then your chances of persuading someone else are probably less. Russ: But you'll have a better marriage, if your marriage is someone whose axes aren't the same as yours. I mean, my claim--again, mine's a simpler claim that I've made in the past, which is that you should be empathetic. And you should consider whether your opponent can possibly be right. And by doing so, you could actually learn something and understand better how to think the way they do. And my other benefit is, it's the right thing to do. You are a nice person. Why would you enjoy treating your ideological or religious enemies as evil? Or even misguided--is also disturbing way to treat another human being. They're smart, thoughtful, nice--most of them, not all of them. Some of them are monsters, you're right; but a lot of them are just like you. They have a viewpoint and they've crammed a lot of facts and studies into that viewpoint to convince themselves that they are right--just like you do. Guest: Yeah. I guess that's a difficult way for people to think. So maybe one of the benefits of reading the book is it will make it easier for people to think that way.

14:11 Russ: So, how did you choose the axes? The idea that there are different worldviews is not a unique idea. What's I think particularly thoughtful about the book, and thought-provoking, is the axes make sense to me. Now, I, of course--you can't more or less--I'm in the L-camp, the Libertarian camp, the freedom/coercion camp mostly. So maybe it's just natural that they would make sense to me. But I do seem to see them around me, those different, the axes of people who don't agree with me. So, how did you come to that idea? Guest: Well, maybe at some point in my life I've sympathized with all three points of view. So I kind of was thinking: What did I think back when I was a New Left, Anti-Vietnam War liberal, progressive; and what did I think when I was thinking that George Bush was a good president for how he was reacting to 9/11--so maybe I was focused on civilization/barbarism? And by the way, when I think about terrorism, it's pretty hard for me to not think about civilization vs. barbarism on that one. So, as a Libertarian, I'm certainly familiar with how Libertarians speak. And I just sort of--and I was asking myself--I had this insight about a year ago, maybe a little more, that it seems like so much punditry, if you step back and look at it, is an attempt not to open the minds of people on your own side, or even to open the minds of people on the other side, but it looks like the real purpose is to close the minds of people on your own side. So then I started asking myself: Well, how would you go about closing the mind of someone on your own side? Well, if I were a Progressive, how would I try to close the minds of my fellow Progressives on issues? Well, if I could frame this as oppressors and oppressed in a convincing way, then that would make them shut out all disagreement. And similarly with civilization/barbarism, for Conservatives. Once I frame that issue that way, a. they'll think I've been really smart, and b. they'll feel even more closed on the issue, more settled that they are right, if I can frame it along that axis. I was looking--it's also like my own experience. To the extent that I phrase something in freedom vs. coercion terms, I would get this tremendous applause from people on the Libertarian side; and the opposite from people coming from different points of view. So, it was those types of things that led me to think that those were the axes. Russ: So, your examples, in that little mini-history reminds me of something I don't think you talked about, which is that occasionally there is an issue of oppressed vs. oppressors, for everybody. Or, civilization vs. barbarism, for everybody. The terrorism issue is a great example. A lot of people across the political spectrum worry about terrorism. Might react to it differently; they might react differently to what policies are justified or should be put in place to stop it. Guest: Well, let's look at that. I don't want to interrupt too much. But let's take the Boston Marathon bombing that took place recently. Russ: Okay. Guest: So, let's look at the reactions to it. The Weekly Standard, I think this was a cover piece or lead editorial, was entitled, exactly, Civilization and Barbarism. They felt like this was right in their wheelhouse, and this is exactly how you'd have predicted they would react. I think others had great difficulty with it. It had this infamous column in Slate Magazine, before the bombers were identified, saying, boy, I hope it's white male. It's like, I hope it's somebody that's certified from the oppressor class. You had President Obama referring to--what was the term--self-radicalizing terrorism. As if you or I could walk down the street and all of a sudden, poof, we self-radicalize. Russ: It's like a virus. It just gets in your bloodstream and then you are stuck, you are off the track. Guest: Yeah. Which seems to me like an attempt to avoid talking about it in civilization/barbarism terms. And finally, many Libertarians talked about, were very critical of the lockdown in Boston; said, this is a police state, there are tanks in the street, all this stuff. And I think Libertarians may have some very valid points going forward about how society reacts. You know, there may be a lot of unnecessary and civil-rights-reducing kinds of surveillance and limitations of people put on as a result of this. I'm not saying Libertarians don't have anything to worry about. But I think that the focus on the lockdown and the actions of the police might very well be inappropriate, and it certainly is not going to win Libertarians any friends, because I think most people's reaction to the police after the bombing--I mean, before the bombing you can argue that some dots should have been connected that weren't--but afterward that their conduct was pretty brave and pretty effective. I think that's what most people would say. Russ: I agree with you, and that's a great example. The only point I was trying to make is sometimes there are actual issues where the axes apply absolutely directly; you don't have to stretch to make them fit. And in those cases sometimes people drift into different categories. So there are Libertarians and Progressives who were initially in favor of the response to 9/11, who supported the war in Iraq because they thought it was a blow against barbarism. I think. Or maybe just public safety. But I think a lot of people were accepting the Conservative axis temporarily at least, or not temporarily but for this issue. And temporarily, as it turned out. Guest: Yeah. Russ: And similarly, when there is a case of oppressor and oppressed, there are Conservatives and Libertarians who will spring to emotional reactions to those issues. I think what makes the paradigm so powerful is that for most of us, we wedge every issue into these categories, our respective categories. I think that's what makes it powerful. Guest: Yeah. I think that putting them in those categories when it's appropriate--when it's something like using the oppressor/oppressed axis to describe the fight against Jim Crow laws, I think is perfectly fine, and you could understand why anyone would do it. But it's when--it's really noticeable, as you say, when people force issues into that mode when there's--most typically when there are just a lot of nuances to the issue, and that if you are really going to think about it carefully you can't reduce it to those simplistic terms.

22:35 Russ: And besides the fact that it's nice to think of your intellectual or ideological opponents as decent human beings, in many ways for the book is a calming influence. So, when you see a column or a pundit saying something that drives you nuts--because of course it goes against your axis--instead of saying, what a jerk, what a fool, he's evil--it's interesting to say, well, you know he's got his own little goofy way of looking at the world and he sees everything as related to his issue. And--pity is not the right word. You understand it. It's not as offensive as it is if you think they are just crazy. Or, against your view, which is even more maddening. Guest: Yeah. Although, what I end up being offended by, then, are people who--not because they look at an issue in a particular way, but jump to presuming that the other side is evil. David Brooks had a column about a week ago that I was very sympathetic to, where he talked about a detached point of view versus an engaged point of view. That a pundit who is engaged, it's just like they are in the battle zone and throwing punches as fast as they can. And detached, is actually observing and trying to see the point of view of both sides. The goal--I think Brooks is arguing--at this point we've certainly got plenty of engaged pundits. We might be able to use a few more detached ones. I would be making a similar point. And again, a goal of the book is to enable you to have some sort of detachment. Russ: It reminds me a little bit of the earlier insight of yours that for some reason I associate that you had from your father, the insider/outsider aspect of politics, that insiders invest a lot of time and energy, know what they are doing, and they are able to make the system work in their direction; and the rest of us are just watching them on the outside, not really paying attention so much. When you think of the world that way, again, for me, it's kind of like: What would you expect? That's the way it's going to turn out. And it's not plausible that our side wins every time or the good policies prevail. Guest: I think, if I could try to imagine what my father would say, it would be that all of the storm and fury along the three axes is just for show, to give people a sense of ownership in the process; and meanwhile the sober, rational people are in the back rooms dividing up the goodies. So, for instance, if you look at labor unions, so one side looks at it from an oppressed/oppressor point of view; another view says these unions are like thugs, so it's a civilization/barbarism issue; and meanwhile in the back room the unions are raising wages and the firms are raising prices and everybody else is kind of getting less to take as a result. That would be kind of the classic insider/outsider story. All the ideological stuff is just to keep the outsiders entertained and distracted. Russ: It's the window dressing. It's circus.

26:45 Russ: You make an analogy between your three kinds of language and the Myers-Briggs test. Now, explain that analogy. Explain what Myers-Briggs is for people who don't know what it is. Guest: Myers-Briggs is a personality test that's always been more popular in the business world than in sort of academic psychology. So, I've got to put that caveat out there. It tests your propensity on things like introversion versus extroversion, or intuition versus facts, and things like that. The use that is made in the business world is, in a business, complex organization, you need all sorts of people. You need detailed people, you need big picture people; you need people who like to mull things over; you need people who want to see decisions made and made quickly. You need these different types of people, and they often don't get along. Somebody who is very intuitive doesn't have the patience for somebody who is very detailed; somebody who is very detailed doesn't respect the person who is intuitive because they just can't follow their crazy leaps and they see all the mistakes they make with details. So, these people, their natural tendency is to not get along. And the idea of the Myers-Briggs training is to first of all, you take a test and you see where your tendencies are. And then you learn insights into other people's tendencies and you become more tolerant of them. That's kind of the long story. The analogy with the book is that I'm hoping that if you can see which tendencies you might have and understand the tendencies of other people that it would be easier to get along with people who have different tendencies. Russ: Well, I think it's true. And I think the personality difference--I know it's not "scientific"; I'm putting "scientific" in giant quotes because very little is scientific in my mind. So I don't make that big a distinction between Myers-Briggs and academic psychology. But the idea would be that somebody who is obsessed with getting their to-dos checked off, versus somebody who doesn't keep a to-do list and sort of is always flying, doing things at the last minute and doing things on the fly--and each of those people looks at the other one like they are crazy. You don't keep a to-do list? How do you get your tasks done? Oh, well, some things fall through the cracks. What? And the obsessive person--which is a slightly derogatory term--the detail-oriented person, the person who is focused on the tasks, can't understand that other person; the other person thinks, what's wrong with that person? All they care about is their little to-do list. They don't have time to think and ponder and do the big-picture stuff. And when you think about how that challenge of interacting, especially if you are doing a project together, which is why business care about this stuff and organizations care about it. And the political thing is not that different. It's very similar. And I've noticed in a lot of organizations, political attitudes spill into personality traits and, you know, organizational policy. Guest: Wow. It's been a while since I've been in a big organization, but I do see alarming signs of politics taking over things--maybe it's just me, but more Facebook posts I see--and these are from people I don't think of as being in my sort of academic/political circles, they are all political posts on Facebook. Russ: Meaning that they are just more politicized? Guest: Yeah. It's Facebook. Stereotypically it should be people putting up pictures of themselves drunk at parties. Of course, the people I'm friends with are too old for that. It's still--in some ways this is worse. Russ: I don't think--I think that stereotype of Facebook and Twitter is not true. I think it's just a different blogging platform, and people who normally wouldn't even bother starting a blog are using their Facebook and Twitter accounts for their blogging.

31:51 Russ: Moving on. One thing I thought of as I was reading the book was Thomas Sowell's book, A Conflict of Visions, which is a fabulous book. And you refer to it, when you are talking about other similar viewpoints. Talk about Sowell's vision in that book and how it relates to yours. Guest: That's a good question. So, the terms that stand out are 'unconstrained vision' and 'constrained vision.' So, in his view, a Conservative has a constrained vision, very aware of the limits of human nature, the limits of resources, and things like that. Russ: The limits of reason, the limits of experts, the limits of lots of things. Guest: Yeah. You might very well do a better job than I could of summarizing that. And the unconstrained vision just says in some sense--this quote that I'll probably get wrong from Robert Kennedy: some people see things as they are and ask why; I dream dreams that never were and ask why not. That would be sort of an unconstrained vision, dream dreams that never were and ask why not. Russ: Utopian. Guest: Yeah. Having said that, a difference between Sowell's view and my view is Sowell, I think, is really trying to get at why people believe what they do. Why do Progressives believe what they do? And he would say it's because they have this unconstrained vision. And Conservatives believe what they do because they have this constrained vision. I very much am not claiming to explain why people do what they do. That is, it isn't because you focus on oppression and the oppressed that you have your Progressive point of view. I'm saying that it's part of the process of how you believe what you believe, or how you process your beliefs. How you express them, and how you respond to the way other people express beliefs. I think that Conservatism, Libertarianism, Progressivism are all very complex belief systems and there's just a lot more going on than just these three axes. But I think that the three axes are kind of what people use, like magnetic poles, to kind of line up their side versus their opponents. It's like a set of cheers or taunts that they use to whip up tribal solidarity. Whereas I think Sowell is attempting to explain why people believe what they do. I'm talking more about the process by which people push for tribal solidarity in what they believe. Russ: So, in the back of the book you have an appendix where you go through some pundits and try to see how well the theory, the model, the idea explains what they write about and how they write about it. It strikes me that maybe another interesting way of examining the usefulness of the model would be to look at political conventions, particularly the non-prime-time people, which I occasionally watch as a source of humor and I don't know--academic interest in how easy or hard it is to motivate a large group of people. I find it interesting to see how well and badly people do at that. But my thought would be that when you look at the two major parties, a lot of that would be their warm-up acts for the keynotes, operate along your axes. I think that would be an interesting thing to look at. Guest: Yeah. I hadn't thought of that but that would be, that sounds absolutely right. That would be a situation where your main goal is kind of whipping up the tribe, sort of like the locker room speech for a football game. And that's when you would expect people to really use these axes the most. So that would be a good test of this.

36:46 Russ: So, why did you write this book? Was your goal--I mean, obviously there are many goals. But was your goal simply to--you suggested a minute ago it was to improve political discourse and tolerance. Is that your goal? Guest: Good question. I think that some of it, I think part of the motive is to get people to back off from the point of demonizing those who disagree as if they were on the other side of the preferred axis. So, if we could get Libertarians to stop thinking of Conservatives and Progressives as wanting coercion, loving power, that kind of thing. Russ: But Arnold, they do. That's what they're about. It's sometimes hard to keep out of that. Sorry. Just kidding. Guest: And similarly to get Progressives to not think of Libertarianism as a dog whistle for racism or whatever they accuse it of being. Russ: No, Libertarianism is for rich people. It's to help rich people get really rich and stay rich. That's what Libertarians are in the Progressive world view. Guest: Yeah. So, you get the point. If we could just reach the point where we don't automatically demonize people then I think the book would have accomplished something. Russ: Of course one thing that runs through the book is confirmation bias, which we all suffer from. And I was reminded of the Richard Feynman quote, which is: The most important principle is not to fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. It strikes me that we fool ourselves a lot along these lines, and cherish being fooled, because it's a good cozy feeling to be part of the tribe. Guest: Yeah. I think that the book discusses a number of findings in the psychology of political beliefs, including confirmation bias, which is a very important one, that I think are reasons to be aware of the three axis model, because I think people use these axes in ways--I think it promotes biased thinking. There's a lot of--everyone wants to talk about predictable irrationality, thinking fast and slow, all these findings that suggest that we cannot reason very well. And I have this faith that we have something that I call constructive reasoning, where we can actually look at things objectively and not from entirely biased point of view. And I call that a 'faith' because the psychology seems to always go the other way. And I think people can reason more constructively if they can not automatically react along these axes. Russ: I guess I could accuse you of having a somewhat unconstrained vision. Right? Guest: Yeah. Right. Russ: There's not much more quixotic than trying to improve political discourse. Guest: Um, yeah, that's true. I'll grant you that.

40:45 Russ: Let's turn to our home team, not the Libertarian part of it, but the economist part. We're both trained as economists, and I am particularly disturbed by the nature of economic political debate, or political economy debate--whatever you want to call it. The policy debate that economists are engaged in. How do you see your axes playing out in economic policy among economists? Guest: Wow. That's a good question. I'll probably have an excellent answer a few hours from now after I've mulled it. Russ: You can blog on it; we'll put a link up to it when we run this in a couple of weeks. So, you have a couple of weeks to mull on it. But give us your quick thought. Guest: The off-the-cuff story. I think that one thing that the three axes might enable one to do is to recognize an economic argument from an axis argument. So, if a Progressive economist starts writing in oppressor/oppressed terms, you can say: okay, you are entitled to say that, but at that point you are speaking from outside the economic paradigm, because that's not really the economic paradigm unless you are actually a literal Marxist, which I don't think any real pundits genuinely subscribe to that. And similarly if a Conservative economist starts to write along civilization/barbarism terms, that's a sign that they've sort of vacated their economic thinking for a moment and have switched to something else. Maybe that would be one application of the model. Russ: I noticed you didn't say anything about the Libertarian economist. Guest: Well, actually the Libertarians are more often slipping into their axis than anybody else. Right? Russ: We're talking about government intervention, so once you do that-- Guest: Yeah. So, when a Libertarian makes a sort of Hayekian argument about lack of information or a Friedman argument about people making better choices for themselves than the choices they make for others, those I think are economic arguments. But you can see a Libertarian economist sort of put on his full Libertarian clothes and start talking about, this is taxes collected at gunpoint; at that point they've taken off their economic clothes. Russ: I thought you were going to say that that example of Friedman was an example of the axis. Because it's hard to distinguish between people spending their own money on themselves and people spending other people's money on other people from the freedom/coercion argument. But maybe. Guest: Well, if you think of it as choices, where do the choices get made? Without saying it's freedom versus coercion--you can say that: I voluntarily have government tell me which side of the road to drive on. You know, no problem there. Then, just as easily could say: I voluntarily have government decide how to educate my children. You can certainly say that the essence--I don't think most people other than Libertarians wouldn't say that the essence of public schools is coercion. That's not the essence of them. And most people, including Milton Friedman even, would say what fundamentally is wrong about the way our public school system works isn't so much the coercion--it's the monopoly. It's that if people had more choices and could, to use the familiar exit versus voice terminology, if they had more opportunity to exit, that would lead to better schools just as it leads to better grocery stores when people have the option to exit there. So I see that as something that's grounded in economics. Whereas saying, if you say public schools are just tools of the state to get the state to have obedient citizens, you may or may not be right about that, but you are not making an economic argument. Russ: I think it's interesting, for people who are listening at home, or wherever you are, how often when Arnold said that when coercion isn't the essence of the public school system, did you think to yourself: oh, yes it is? In which case, maybe you've learned something about yourself. It could be true, by the way. I don't want to suggest that it's false. But what I find fascinating about these issues is how hard it is, how difficult it is to step outside your own paradigm. And how easy it is to see the world through your particular kind of glasses, the kind of glasses that we've become accustomed to wearing. I find that fascinating. Guest: Yep. It will be interesting to see people's reactions to some of that stuff.

46:43 Russ: Let me give you another application of where to think about it with economists. When I asked you this question, you said, well, you'd have to look and see do the economists, do they step into the axis, meaning they take off their economist hat more or less. But of course, the temptation is to do that. If you only talk the economics, you are not going to get any fans. If you want to get the crowd cheering for you, if you want to get your tribe riled up and you want to be carried around the arena on their shoulders, if you just say things like: Well, I think the elasticity of demand for labor is .7, not .75, or more accurately, not 1.3, but what you do is take your economics argument and you shove it into one of these paradigms, and that's what makes you popular. Guest: Well, sad to say, I think there's a lot to that. I think one of the things about if you discipline yourself never to leave the economist camp and to never rely on these axes, then I think your ability to have high status within a camp will be diminished, or just won't be there. That's why I think someone like Gary Becker, someone who writes well, writes on policy issues, has a blog--I don't know how many followers it has but probably he has 1/100th of the followers of Paul Krugman; and yet they are both Nobel Prize winners. I'd say if anything, Becker does more economics on his blog. But I don't think he is as willing to play to any of the axes as Krugman. Russ: Yeah, without picking on particular people, I do think that there are folks who, as you say, have a lot to say and you can learn from, if that's your goal, who aren't as prominent. Of course, that isn't always our goal. Sometimes our goal is just to get a good cathartic read and feel good about ourselves or bad about the other side, and that's a different product. Guest: I think that, to me, I really care about style. So I really appreciate most the economists who try to stay away from arguing along the axes. And I will pick on Krugman because I think he sets a horrible example in that regard. And his success, I don't think it has been a healthy thing for economists. It gives you an impression of how to succeed that I think takes you away from talking like an economist. Russ: So, when I think about that, about the incentives that we face--and of course, you and I are in this market in a very modest way. We blog, we write policy books, we appear on podcasts. And when I think about what to do about it, I think the incentives all work toward, what I said a minute ago, toward playing to the crowd and the axis and finding a home along an axis that is pleasant and comfortable. It's hard to imagine that this is going to change. And I see your book mainly as a self-help book, as a way to improve the way you think about yourself and to some extent maybe to help some others. There's always a tendency to say: Well, I don't have this problem; here, you need to read this book. I'm fine. Guest: Right. I agree with the self-help notion. One of my lines in the book is you really have no business pronouncing someone else unreasonable. The only person you are qualified to say is unreasonable is you.

51:34 Russ: When we think about what's going on in economics in the last few weeks, we had this little problem where a couple of researchers left a line out of a spreadsheet. That was their main error. I'm talking about Reinhart and Rogoff, of course. They have written a paper about the relationship between public debt and GDP growth, and when some scholars tried to replicate their work, they couldn't do it; and one of the reasons they couldn't is they had forgotten a line. And when they included the line in the spreadsheet, it changed the results--not a trivial amount, but it didn't overturn the results. But it did reduce their impact. And the firestorm that followed was really extraordinary. What was your reaction to that? Guest: Well, I think that--and this may sound whiney, but I think that Conservative scholars are given much less margin of error in the world. If you take Elizabeth Warren's research, which I think would embarrass some undergraduates, she gets a free pass or praise in the media. Maybe I'm being narrow, but I think that it's amazing to me how many of these firestorms seem to involve people who stray from left-wing orthodoxy. And that people who subscribe to left-wing orthodoxy seem to have a teflon coating in the media. It's a paranoid point of view, and maybe if I watched Fox News's take on climate scientists or something, I would be paranoid from that point of view. Actually, I wouldn't be because I'm not a climate-science believer--don't tell anybody. Russ: Don't worry--nobody listens to EconTalk, Arnold. Your secret is safe with me. Guest: Good. That was the main impact. Part of it is that 90% thing, when I first saw it in Reinhart and Rogoff was--oh, no. Russ: Explain that. Guest: So, the way it's been read in the media--and maybe they intended this, and if they did, they deserve some opprobrium for that regardless of the spreadsheet error--but in interpreting of the media it made it sound like, well, you can run a debt to GDP ratio that's pretty high, but once you get to 90% you are going to have really bad impacts on economic growth. It's like there's this speed limit of 90% debt-to-GDP ratio. And that looked to me to be in a class of statistical findings that are just highly suspect. It's just not a good way to think about that issue. So, I reacted to that negatively when I first saw it. So, maybe I just assumed that other people didn't make a big deal out of it. But other people clearly did. I just opened up a book the other day where on p. 5--these are Conservative economists and they pound on that 90% number: Reinhart and Rogoff have shown that if the debt-to-GDP ratio hits 90% then-- Russ: research shows-- Guest: horrible things happen. Again, for me, that's the class of findings that I wouldn't have trusted from the get-go. It's not even a good way to think about it. So, maybe this controversy in some sense is legitimate. Maybe there were Conservatives who really did base all of their policy arguments on this. But I have a hard time seeing that because I don't think I've ever cited that number. Russ: It's bizarre. But on the flip side, I just interviewed Austin Frakt on the Oregon Medicaid Study and he said it seems to me that we are having a similar blogosphere explosion overreacting to one study; therefore, the Reinhart-Rogoff thing is wrong so any kind of debt is allowed; it doesn't matter what it is now, because they are wrong. Guest: Yeah. There is no limit to how much debt you can have-- Russ: because they are wrong. Because they made an error. Although it's interesting--no one has accused them of deliberately making an error. They have accused them of negligence but not malfeasance. Not fraud. But the Medicaid thing is similar. There are some results for the pro-Medicaid side; but most of the results are for the anti-Medicaid side. So now it's: Well, Medicaid doesn't have any effect; okay, we can eliminate it. A little bit of an overreaction. Guest: Yeah. It would be nice if you could get some kind of--I think you could get some kind of a sober consensus that--to me, the significance of the Medicaid Study is that a lot of people will argue that the reason you want to have comprehensive health insurance is that the small procedures that you subsidize will, down the road, save you money because people will have taken better care of themselves. And that is the argument that I believe is threatened by the Medicaid Study. And I think for people to have a sober discussion about whether comprehensive insurance is the only legitimate form of insurance or whether catastrophic health insurance would be better. I think Kathleen Sebelius, the head of Health and Human Services (HHS) was quoted a few weeks ago to the effect of saying that people who--catastrophic health insurance is just an evil; people need comprehensive. And I would hope that any economist would at least look at this and say, well, it did not support one of the main arguments for comprehensive health insurance, which is that subsidizing people to spend on the little things will cause them down the road to have less long-term expensive illnesses. Russ: But it doesn't refute that. I mean, it was only a two-year study. It's suggestive; it didn't confirm that view. Guest: Right. I don't want to overstate what it accomplished. But they did focus a lot on people who had these chronic illnesses, like diabetes, to sort of see in particular whether it made a difference there. And then you also have to look at it in the context of lots and lots and lots of studies showing different groups of people with different levels of health care spending and not different outcomes. If this were the only study that found that, I think you would just throw it out as an outlier. But in fact, it's what every study shows. There's that great paper by Robin Hanson that just walks through all of them. And even since Robin wrote his paper--Amy Finkelstein did a study of the introduction of Medicare, looking at different states, because some states already in 1965 already had coverage for the elderly; others didn't. She finds the same thing--no difference in outcomes. I think it's in that context that you have to see the study as one more straw.