P.S. Dan asked me to link to the latest Milei news.
I define popuphobe as someone who propagates revilement of something that he or she calls ‘populism.’ A leading organ of popuphobia is The UnPopulist, a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, led by Shikha Dalmia. Another popuphobe is Nils Karlson, author of Reviving Classical Liberalism Against Populism (2024).
Michael Benz explains that the term populism is now used as a watchword against individuals and movements who challenge certain establishment elites. Benz explains that an unholy skein of institutions and political factions has fashioned a narrative holding that they, the skein, is democracy. The intelligence community, the administrative state, the World Health Organization, the Clinton Foundation, the New York Times, etc. are democracy. Their adversaries—such as Donald Trump—are, therefore, threats to democracy and are reviled as populists.
Dalmia and Karlson theorize about populism is such a way that badness is built into ‘populism.’ Karlson makes a list of features, each of which is necessary to terming a political leader or movement “populist.” One feature is badness, from a classical liberal perspective. In an article at The UnPopulist, Karlson writes: “Populism is the opposite of classical liberalism.” Dalmia, as well, seems to hold that populist implies bad. Neither Karlson nor Dalmia, however, justify building badness into populism.
Like my friends Karlson and Dalmia, I profess classical liberalism. But we differ on populism. My own definition of populism accords with long-standing semantic conventions:
A political movement is populist when it portrays itself as being in opposition to corrupt elites. The elites that matter here are especially those of governmental structures. Populists suggest that a governing class have ensconced themselves into positions of power, that the elites network with one another to serve their own interests rather than the common interest, that they have abused their powers.
I offer that definition in “One Cheer for Populism.” Not three cheers. Not even two. But one. Contrary to what Dalmia and Karlson say, populism is not necessarily bad. It can be good. Indeed, under certain conditions, it may be good’s only hope.
What then is good populism? What is an example?
Milei, the populist
The best current example is Javier Milei of Argentina. He is both populist and good.
Milei’s populist credentials are unimpeachable. He works in opposition to his country’s established structure and its elites—he dubs them “the caste”—who ruined Argentina. Milei justly blames them for their failures. His personal authority and political movement did not rise out of a traditional political party with a traditional platform.
Wikipedia describes Milei’s populist political trajectory:
During his [2020–2021] campaign for the Argentine Chamber of Deputies, Milei focused on Buenos Aires neighborhoods, where he took strolls and had talks with ordinary people. He pledged not to support any tax increases or new taxes. He ran under the slogan ‘I didn't come here to lead lambs, but to awaken lions’, denouncing what he saw as a political caste, which he said was composed of ‘useless, parasitic politicians who have never worked’. He called politicians ‘rats’, and said they form ‘a parasitic caste’ that thinks only about getting rich. … [H]e promoted his political views on television, radio, and YouTube.
As for the 2023 presidential campaign in Argentina, which Milei won, he ran as part of La Libertad Avanza (Liberty Advances), a recently formed political alliance, not an established political party. Milei’s campaign was thoroughly populist in messaging, appeal, and agenda. As president, Milei has followed through by taking on many of the established elites that he promised to fight.
That Milei is a populist is uncontroversial. The Wikipedia page notes that Milei “has been described politically as a right-wing populist.” Headlines call Milei populist:
Washington Post: “Far-right populist Javier Milei…”
New York Times: “…Javier Milei…is a right-wing populist…”
Associated Press: “Fiery right-wing populist Javier Milei…”
NPR: “Janier Milei, a radical libertarian populist, elected…”
PBS News: “After electing right-wing populist…”
Politico: “Right-wing populist Milei…”
The Guardian: “Far-right populist Milei…”
The Economist: “Argentina’s Populist Political Movement…”
France 24: “Populist Milei wants to dollarize economy”
Milei, the classical liberal
Milei describes himself as libertarian and liberal in the classical sense. Others often call him libertarian. Libertarians and classical liberals justly acclaim Milei. A man who says, “If printing money would end poverty, printing diplomas would end stupidity,” would, I would think, win the hearts of classical liberals. More gems from Milei are here.
Milei’s words are classical liberal. But Milei is now a politician, and a politician’s actions often do not live up to his words.
Milei came into the presidency on 10 December 2023. An assessment of his first year could examine questions including:
1. Whether his efforts at reform have been classical liberal.
2. Whether he has succeeded in effecting classical-liberal reforms.
3. Whether his reforms are generating improvements, which is something that classical liberals would expect classical-liberal reforms to generate.
It is effort (item 1) that we wish to judge, but since our knowledge of sincere effort, based on direct evidence of effort, always remains quite limited, to form a judgment we rely also on other signs (such as items 2 and 3), as explained in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (pp. 104–108).
Regarding Milei’s effecting of classical-liberal reforms, National Review’s Andrew Stuttaford writes in “Javier Milei Takes Up His Chain Saw” (25 July 2024):
Milei revved up the chain saw straight after taking office — and a wave of regulatory reforms and tough, sometimes crude spending cuts made it possible, in June, for Argentina to record six consecutive monthly fiscal and financial surpluses for the first time in years… [A] significantly slimmed-down version of Milei’s giant “omnibus” reform bill, which included wide-ranging deregulation, measures designed to encourage foreign investment, and the go-ahead for (a reduced number of) privatizations has received final approval. Enough of the original survived for Milei to declare victory… Another large deregulatory package, the “Megadecreto,” introduced in December under a procedure that permits the president to change the law in cases of national emergency, will remain in force unless the courts object or it is rejected by the congress. The senate has done so, but the lower house seems (for now) unlikely to follow its lead. One early success was a major deregulation of the rental market.
Cato Institute’s Michael Chapman writes (27 September 2024):
[S]ince taking office, Milei has slashed government spending up to 30%, fired more than 25,000 federal workers, reduced federal agencies, frozen public works projects, lowered a major import tariff, maintained budget surpluses every month, reduced monthly inflation to 4.2% (August 2024) from 25% (December 2023), and is pushing for currency competition among the peso, US dollar, and other currencies.
As for improvements in living in Argentina, month-on-month inflation rates are, according to a post by Ian Bremmer, at a three-year low. Argentina seems to be finding her feet.
Overall, then, in addition to all that Milei claims to be, the signs do indeed suggest classical liberalism. On 18 November 2024, the Cato Institute tweeted: “Javier Milei’s…reforms in Argentina show the power of fiscal responsibility and free markets—echoing Cato’s belief in individual liberty, economic freedom, and peace.”
How do popuphobes handle Milei?
The popuphobes say that a populist cannot be good, and yet Milei is a good populist. How do they handle this challenge?
Karlson on Milei
Karlson does not mention Milei in his 2024 book nor in his subsequent article in The UnPopulist. In a video from the Institute of Economic Affairs with Nils Karlson, the case of Milei is brought up. The proper way for Karlson to respond to that question would have been to say either that Milei is not a populist or that Milei is not classical liberal. But Karlson says neither of those things. Besides saying that he wishes Milei luck, Karlson speaks of “the rule of law” to cast some doubt on Milei’s claim to being a good liberal, as though Milei may transgress Argentina’s rule of law. The rule of law deserves a sacred regard. But in its broad and deep sense, law is a many-layered thing. Controversy will persist as to whether an action constitutes a departure from norms and conventions or a redressing of previous departures. We cannot expect real efforts at correcting a corrupt government not to be ferociously combatted and not to be decried as unprecedented violations of established convention. As for Milei, to my knowledge he has not committed patent violations of Argentina’s legal rules or fundamental political conventions.
The UnPopulist on Milei
I searched their archive (at Substack) on “Javier Milei.” The archive contains 456 articles (as of 17 November 2024), going back to August 27, 2021.
Of those 456 articles, I found only two articles in which Javier Milei is mentioned. The dearth of mentions of Milei is remarkable for a publication that presents itself as liberal and as concerned with populism. Let’s take a look at the two articles that do mention Milei.
The more recent one, published 18 May 2024, is insignificant for our purposes. Milei is mentioned only because the author briefly tells the reader what someone who goes by “Bronze Age Pervert” thinks about Milei.
The other one is lengthy and more telling. The title is “Javier Milei: An Illiberal Libertarian?” by David Agren, published 4 April 2024. Beneath the main title is the lead-in: “The Argentine president’s socially conservative populism might trump his free market economics”. Early in the article the author reiterates: “when we dig through Milei’s emergence and his curious mix of policies and populist rhetoric, it is clear he is no consistent classical liberal.” Thus does Agren try to parry the Milei challenge, not by denying that Milei is a populist, but by denying that he is a classical liberal. Yet when thoughtful readers dig through Agren’s essay of 2800 words, it is clear he has very little to substantiate his headline detractions of Milei. When we get down to brass-tacks, we find Agren:
fussing over Milei’s dislike of abortion while noting that Milei “ultimately disavowed” an effort to overturn the decriminalization of abortion,
claiming in passing that Milei “raised taxes on imports and exports” (but see update here),
quoting a Milei detractor who claims in passing that Milei “escalates the drug war,”
and mentioning Milei’s views on foreign policy.
Other than that, Agren can only lob empty cant against Milei’s liberal credentials, saying, for example, that Milei’s agenda “requires economic upheaval” which “could mean less freedom.” Agren is unfair, in that we all know that classical liberals will disagree on thorny issues like abortion, foreign policy, and fiscal continence, and that winning and actually governing are compromising callings.
Course correction
Over the past eight years, events and developments have taken me by surprise. Most remarkable has been the turn toward virulent anti-liberalism. Never before had I imagined that the powers that be, and institutions at large, could behave so wickedly.
Nearly as shocking to me has been the reaction of many of my libertarian and classical liberal friends and associates. The corruption of elites has been exposed daily, as well as the blatant weaponization of powers and the propagation of big lies. I have trouble understanding how my friends and associates could not be appalled as I am. How can they not see where the greatest threats to liberty lie?
It is as though they do not want to face the possibility that our elite institutions are deeply corrupted.
Over the past eight years I have come to think of the United States as an erstwhile ‘first-world’ country. We become ‘second world’, like China, or ‘third world,’ like Argentina—countries in which governmental elites are deeply and systematically corrupt.
How could someone who calls himself classical liberal not root for Javier Milei? Milei is pushing back the enemies of liberty.
And he is populist.
When popuphobes are faced with a confound to their “populism bad” belief, they elide the confound or explain it away and carry on with popuphobia. I find it remarkable.
The good can be advanced by populism. In the Acts of the Apostles, it is written: “[T]he captain with the officers…were afraid of being stoned by the people” (Acts 5: 26).
Daniel Klein is professor of economics and JIN Chair at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He is the author of Central Notions of Smithian Liberalism.
]]>P.S. I’ll reply next week. If you want to email Matthew directly, he’s matthew.o.gagnon@gmail.com.
Professor Caplan —
I hope things are well with you. You may recall, but I recently went through George Mason’s Master’s program in Economics online, and graduated this past spring. I wasn’t fortunate enough to have taken any of your classes via that program, but you and I met on a trip you took to Maine a couple years ago, and I’ve interviewed you a couple times for my morning radio show, which is based in Portland, Maine. I also run the Maine Policy Institute, which is a free-market think tank headquartered in Southern Maine.
The reason for my note to you is that I recently had cause to revisit your 1997 essay, "Why I Am Not an Austrian Economist," and it prompted me to want to ask what your own thoughts of self-definition are today, almost thirty years later. I find it an interesting question, just knowing what my own experiences have been related to the development of my own philosophy over the years.
I came to economics as a formal discipline a bit late. My undergraduate training was in political science, and my early career after college was in campaigns and elections, primarily in Washington. I didn’t academically study economics until I enrolled in the Mason’s distance program when I was already 41.
Flashing back twenty years ago, I was a fairly typical self-described libertarian, and as such I used to describe myself as broadly “Austrian” in philosophy. My attraction to Austrian economics had little to do with actually understanding it, but instead related to my perception of what Austrians represented in the broad debates about economic policy.
In my mind, they were the rebellious champions of free markets and individual liberty doing battle against the mindless orthodoxy of Keynesian interventionist thought in economics and government. They were the challengers of conventional wisdom, and didn’t play nice in the sandbox with others. A perfect fit for my youthful non-conformism.
In actuality, though, my grasp of economic theory was quite superficial. I had only the most rudimentary understanding of the Austrian tradition, and would have struggled to even define it if asked. I had no real sense of the depth of their theories or methodologies. I couldn't have told you much about Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard or Friedrich Hayek, other than they were venerated as economic saints in comparison to the villainous Keynes. That damned rap battle didn’t help.
It wasn't until I grew a bit older that I started to become more engaged with the nuance and complexity within different schools of economic thought. I had certainly heard of Milton Friedman, but I had just assumed that as a cherished libertarian hero, he was more-or-less in the same camp as the Austrians on most things. Remember, at this point I had no real training as an economist and was just an interested politically-minded person. I had never really heard of the Chicago School, but when I started reading about it I began to figure out that while Friedman was a leading advocate for free markets, he wasn't an Austrian. In fact, it looked like some Austrians really hated the guy.
This prompted me to delve deeper into the distinctions between the Austrian and Chicago Schools, which ultimately resulted in me going much further than that, allowing me to begin to comprehend just how varied the field of economics was, and how little I understood about it all.
Then in 2010 a funny thing happened. Back in my home state of Maine, the state Republican Party Convention was overtaken by libertarian activists, who then proceeded to introduce a new platform. One of the planks included a call to, "return to the principles of Austrian Economics, and redirect the economy back to one of incentives to save and invest." This development intrigued me. Why the specific emphasis on Austrian Economics? Was it, like my youthful self-identification, a result of sentiment, rather than actual knowledge? Would the people who wrote that plank struggles as much as I would to even definite it?
That was my turning point. After that, I simply had to learn more and settle the question for myself. That's when I actually started reading Hayek, Mises, Rothbard, as well as Friedman and others. I wanted to understand not just their economic theories but also the philosophical underpinnings and methodological approaches that set them apart from one another. I learned an awful lot about the internal debates within libertarianism — the divides between Rothbard and Hayek, between Hayek and Friedman, and between various organizations such as the Mises Institute and Cato. I even got into the differences between Ayn Rand's objectivism — or what I would call the gateway drug of libertarianism — and the broader libertarian movement.
This was pretty humbling. To realize that there was that much internal discord among figures that I had believed to be generally aligned with one another ultimately deepened my own confusion about what I was. I’m not sure anyone has ever had an existential crisis over what their economic philosophy could be defined as, but I may have come close.
In the end, this was one of the primary motivations for pursuing a Master’s in Economics, and in my choice of George Mason as the place I would study it. I wanted to gain a deeper understanding of both mainstream economics, as well as the Austrian philosophy. I wanted to explore some of these questions in depth, and lift the veil of ignorance from my eyes to help me better understand what I believed and why.
After going through the program, which was excellent by the way, I now think I can say definitively, as you once did, that I am not an Austrian economist. I remain sympathetic to many Austrian insights, but I place far too much value in empirical analysis, data, and mathematical and statistical modeling — tools often rejected by the Austrian School — to really count myself among them. I suppose in the long run, I side more with the Friedmans than the Rothbards, though I do feel a strong pull to the Hayekian wing of Austrianism, particularly the emphasis on things like spontaneous order and the knowledge problem.
In any event, that brings me to the question I have for you:
Nearly three decades have passed since you wrote your essay distancing yourself from the Austrian School. Given the passage of time and your experiences teaching and collaborating with colleagues who are prominent figures in Austrian Economics, I'm curious whether or not you still hold the same position today? Has your perspective evolved in light of new developments in the field or through interactions with your colleagues? Have you found areas of convergence that weren't apparent before, or have you perhaps become more convinced of your original stance?
As my own story illustrates, we all reassess our beliefs as we gain new experiences and insights. I'm very interested to hear how, if at all, your views on the Austrian School have changed.
If you've already addressed this topic elsewhere, I apologize for any redundancy. However, I believe that an updated reflection from you would offer valuable insights to those of us grappling with similar questions about our own intellectual identities within economics, particularly for those who may be outside the economics profession, but be interested amateurs.
Thank you for taking the time to read my note, and I look forward to any thoughts you might be willing to share.
Sincerely,
Matthew Gagnon
]]>Borjas:
Me:
If you pay close attention to my opponent’s presentation, you’ll discover that he’s quite unlike every other critic of immigration. In a strange sense, he’s not a critic of immigration at all. Instead of asserting that immigration is bad, Borjas mostly insists that immigration research is bad. Since experts barely know more than the man in the street, the man in the street needn’t feel ashamed to “go with his gut.”
Officially, Borjas is then content with whatever immigration policy gut-based democracy delivers. (Though he definitely seems to realize — and even revel in — that median gut favors tighter immigration restrictions).
As this 2016 interview reveals, Borjas is one of those victims of Communism whose chief takeaway is not that statism is evil, but that ideology is evil. In my words:
Most victims of Communism, in my experience, take away lessons like, “Human rights matters,” “Government should respect individual liberty,” “The fact that government does something doesn’t make it right,” “Forbidding emigration is monstrous,” or just “Socialism is evil.” Borjas, in contrast, takes away the lesson that “Ideology is bad.” Which is simply bizarre. Castro ruined Borjas’ native Cuba because his ideology was totalitarian. If Castro’s ideology had been pro-market and pro-freedom, Cuba would be a great place today – and Borjas might be at the University of Havana writing books to keep immigrants out of Cuba instead.
To belabor the obvious, belief in gut-based democracy isn’t just an ideology, too. It’s one of the silliest.
]]>Huemer’s The Problem of Political Authority is the best book on political philosophy.
Huemer’s Ethical Intuitionism is the best book on meta-ethics.
Huemer’s Knowledge, Reality, and Value is the best introduction to philosophy.
And now to this list of superlatives, I add: Huemer’s new Progressive Myths is the best book on wokeness.
The quality of Progressive Myths is evident right from the introduction.
I will not give a neutral presentation in the following chapters, but I do aim to give an objective presentation. I am a philosopher, not a lawyer or a campaign manager. My task is not to replace left-wing propaganda with right-wing propaganda. My task is to replace propaganda with a fair and accurate account. Hence, though the myths herein are chosen for being incorrect in some way, I will mention when I think there is something in the vicinity of the myth that is correct…
The myths I address herein are about relatively circumscribed, objective points of fact. I do not address such big-picture issues as “Can socialism really work?” or “Is wealth inequality unjust?” Those sorts of questions would take much longer to address, and it is difficult to answer them decisively. Instead, I address simpler questions such as, “Do women really earn 30% less than men do for the same work?”, because there we are much more likely to make actual progress.
And you have to love Huemer’s humble request near the end of the intro:
I have one request for readers, whether you are left-wing, right-wing, or other. Please do not make up views that I didn’t assert and ascribe them to me. Do not assume that I am a stereotypical “right wing” extremist or that I agree with right wing people where I haven’t explicitly said so. (I have found, by the way, that leftists tend to be extremely bad at understanding what rightists think anyway.) Do not “read between the lines” to infer what I “must be implying”. If you think of some ridiculous or horrible political view that you think I’m implying, that is almost certainly just in your imagination. I am not the sort of writer who likes to imply his point.
The rest of the book calmly criticizes common progressive beliefs about “relatively circumscribed, objective points of fact.” He starts, much to my surprise, with five chapters about five specific people who are “infamous for being infamous.” Kyle Rittenhouse is one of the five. Huemer exculpates all five. Why bother with this trivia? Because it exposes deep epistemic corruption of what Alex Epstein calls our society’s “knowledge system.” Huemer again:
If you didn’t follow these cases, you may wonder why these cases are important for understanding our society. The answer is that these are case studies in the sort of distortions found in prominent information sources. These cases are particularly useful because it is usually more straightforward to determine the truth about a single episode than it is to determine the truth about some generalization about society. Once we see how media and activists treat relatively straightforward matters of fact, we will know better how to receive their claims about more complex issues.
Ever mindful of confirmation bias, Huemer finishes this section with a chapter on “Three Non-Myths,” leading with “The correct conclusion is neither ‘Police are always in the right’ nor ‘Police are always in the wrong.’ The correct conclusion is ‘One must examine the facts of each individual case.’” The chapter ends with George Floyd, where Huemer’s verdict is: “Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd accidentally but culpably.”
Next, Huemer turns to the broader question of “Racial Myths.” However you slice the data, police shootings of unarmed blacks are ultra-rare: 36 for the entire United States in 2019. Perspective:
It would not be shocking if, of 47 million black people, a total of 36, despite being unarmed, did something sufficiently threatening to cause them to be killed by police. In any case, the risk of this happening to a given black person is extremely small; they are literally more likely to be struck by lightning.
A disproportionate share of people shot by the police are black, but the same is true for males. In both cases, the key question is “Why?” And in both cases, the answer is almost monocausal: Because both groups commit a disproportionate share of crime.
After reviewing several more myths about racism, Huemer turns to myths about sexism. He handles the gender pay gap like a well-trained economist — yet he’s not shy about citing Warren Farrell. He also criticizes broader notions of sexist harm like, “Maybe sexism causes women to value money less than men”:
Just focusing on the possible cultural component, perhaps men are conditioned to value financial success more, relative to other life goals. One could interpret this as indicating that society values men’s interests more and therefore cares more about their financial success. But one could just as well interpret it as indicating that society values women’s interests more and therefore cares more about their personal fulfilment.
I especially enjoyed the “Women Don’t Lie” chapter, which carefully examines some advocacy statistics on false rape accusations. Despite desperate defenses, #BelieveWomen really is a preposterous slogan. Huemer quotes Biden’s “From the very beginning, I’ve said believing women means taking the woman’s claim seriously when she steps forward, and then vet it. Look into it,” and responds:
Pace Joe Biden, “believe x”, in English, does not mean “look into it”. (Admittedly, “Don’t automatically disbelieve women” is a less catchy slogan than “Believe women”.) One might as well claim that “Lock up Joe” means “Give Joe a fair trial.”
As a philosopher, Huemer is well-positioned to explain where “false accusation” statistics come from:
How could researchers know what percentage of rape accusations are true and what percentage are false in a particular sample? Wouldn’t that require having some sort of crystal ball to see what really happened in each one of these cases?
Suppose a woman accuses a man of rape, and the man denies it. There are no other witnesses and no physical evidence. How would scholars figure out whether this was a true accusation or a false one? The key lies in redefining the word “false”. In Lisak et al.’s article, “false report” does not mean “report that isn’t true”. It means roughly, “report that was proven not to be true”. That is, a “false report” is one such that the accuser admitted that she was lying, or other similarly clear evidence showed that the events she reported definitely did not happen. If it was never determined whether the events happened, the report is not “false”. So the sort of “he said, she said” case described in the preceding paragraph would be deemed non-false. That covers a large portion, perhaps half or more, of all cases.
Now that we know what we’re talking about:
What is the actual rate of false rape accusations, then? No one knows. It is at least 2-10%, but it may be much more. In Lisak et al.’s study, police found insufficient evidence to proceed with the case 45% of the time. There is no way of knowing how many of these were in fact false accusations. In another 35% of cases, the police proceeded with the case, which probably means that most of these were true accusations. Finally, there were another 14% of cases about which we can say nothing because the case file was incomplete. So we can say with confidence that the false accusation rate was somewhere between 6% and 80%.
Several people I know were disturbed that Huemer has a section on “Environmental Myths” that includes two chapters on climate change. But if they actually read his words, they’ll discover a deeply reasonable discussion of two specific points. First, though there is a strong expert consensus view that man-made climate change is a serious problem, this consensus is, contrary to the media and activists, far from unanimous. Second, and more importantly, there is a strong expert consensus that man-made climate change is not anything close to an “existential risk”:
What sort of consequences do mainstream scientists expect from global warming? Ocean levels are expected to rise by 0.4-0.8 meters by the year 2100. This will not submerge New York City (as some alarmists in the media imagine); it will, however, slightly increase the risk of flooding in coastal cities.
The IPCC projects that an excess 250,000 people will die annually worldwide due to climate change by mid-century due to increased heat, undernutrition, and disease. That will be out of an expected total of 92 million deaths per year from all causes by that time, so global warming will account for about a quarter of a percent of the death rate. A more pessimistic study suggests that excess deaths due to global warming could increase to 2 million per year for the second half of the century.
Among the more alarming projections is one claiming that, if left completely unchecked, global warming could cause as many as 73 deaths per 100,000 population per year by 2100, which would make it comparable to the current death rate for infectious diseases. (For an expected population of 10 billion by 2100, that would mean 7.3 million deaths per year.) Economist William Nordhaus, a leading expert on the impacts of climate change, estimates that global warming will have costs on the order of 2.5% of total world GDP by the end of the century.
The last section of Progressive Myths zooms out to ask bigger questions. A few highlights include…
The thinly-veiled agenda of DEI statements:
No conservative could honestly write a statement that would get past the DEI screeners. Right-of-center thinkers are already a tiny minority of the academy, but in the next few decades, if woke administrators have their way, non-leftist voices will be completely eliminated from the academic world, and college “education” will consist of pure ideological brainwashing. This will not be an unintended side effect of programs to increase “diversity”; this is precisely what woke activists want. They want complete, unquestioning submission to every element of their ideology, from every single person in the academic world. Such is their commitment to diversity.
The function of the notion of “white fragility”:
Notice that white fragility, in DiAngelo’s reckoning, includes virtually any response other than saying, “Yes, Robin DiAngelo, you are correct.” If someone argues with DiAngelo, or remains silent, or declines to talk to her, all those indicate white fragility, which is bad because it perpetuates racism. So virtually the only way to not support racism is to agree with whatever DiAngelo says. It never occurs to her that the reason people react defensively to her could be that she is attacking them unfairly.
The big meta-lesson:
What should we do to avoid the harms of political myths? My central advice is obvious, but I will say it anyway. The main thing we should do is to be a lot more skeptical. When you hear some politically relevant information, ask yourself whether this is the kind of information that plays to a particular ideological orientation. Would you expect this, say, to be shared only by conservatives, or only by progressives?
If the answer is “yes”, you should immediately be skeptical. Do not presume that it is honest content; presume that it is deceptive until proven honest…
I cannot cover all political myths or even all progressive myths; however, the myths discussed above are, I believe, not atypical. Persuasive political content that is transmitted in the popular culture is almost always deceptive—oversimplified at the very least, often omitting crucial details that would reverse the conclusion you would naturally draw, and sometimes founded on outright lies.
Coda: To repeat, I deem Progressive Myths the best book on wokeness. Tyler Cowen, in contrast, is dismissive: “Michael is a very smart philosopher, but this book seemed like a waste of time to me. Will it persuade anyone? Do we need Michael writing seven-page essays rebutting various claims of the BLM movement and the like?”
Here is my response to Tyler.
Huemer’s book will be highly persuasive to any reasonable human, including reasonable humans who initially disagree with his thesis. That’s the maximum that an intellectually honest thinker can accomplish on a controversial topic.
Tyler misses the broader point of the book. Huemer’s not merely debunking specific woke claims. He teaches readers how to analyze confusing, emotional issues in order to reach objective truth — and how to avoid embracing the new woke myths that will arise in the future. Progressive Myths trains readers to resist media bias in a fundamental way.
Would an epistemically exemplary book on wokeness be worthwhile writing? Given the cultural power of wokeness, it’s hard to say No. Do any pre-Huemer books on wokeness qualify are “epistemically exemplary”? Given the oppositional culture of the right, it’s hard to say Yes. Progressive Myths is the epistemically exemplary book on wokeness that the world badly needs. And the prose is a joy to read.
Back in 2017, Tyler wrote a short piece on BLM stating: “My views are pretty simple, namely that I am a fan of the movement.” Please read his whole post. All I can say is: Hopefully Tyler has changed his mind since. If he hasn’t, he really should re-read Progressive Myths and be persuaded. It will be time well-spent.
P.S. Go here if you prefer the audio-only version.
They say there is a brain drain. Let these decayed brains flee. Do not mourn them, let them pursue their own definitions of being. Is every brain with — what you call — science in it honourable?
Shall we sit and mourn the brains that escaped? Shall we worry about these brains fleeing to the US and the UK? Let these brains flee and be replaced by more appropriate brains. Now that they (the Islamic Republic) are filtering, you are sitting worried why they are executing [people]? Why are you discussing these rotten brains of [these] lost people? Why are you questioning Islam?
Are they fleeing? To hell with them. Let them flee. They were not scientific brains. All the better. Don't be concerned. They should escape. [Iran] is not a place for them to live any more. These fleeing brains are of no use to us. Let them flee.
If you know that this is no place for you, you should flee too.
Due to immigration restrictions, of course, most Iranians have nowhere to go. Just imagine how low Iran’s population would be today if everyone who “knew that this is no place for them” had been welcome in the West?
]]>You can tell me “One of these candidates must be the lesser evil” from dawn to dusk. But I just can’t stop thinking, “They all make my flesh crawl — and if you don’t feel the same way, there is something very wrong with you.”
Yet there is a simple and obvious reply to my extreme negativity: “Bryan, your standards are too high.” Critics could elaborate as follows:
The modern United States is one of the best times and places to live in all of human history, so the alleged “demagogues” who rule it can’t be that bad.
The same holds for both of the alleged “proudly irrational tribes” who share power in this country. Objectively speaking, both tribes have a lot to be proud about. Despite their mutual animosity, the fruit of their power-sharing is: an amazingly great country to live in.
The candidates are much smarter and wiser than they sound. Judging their cognition from their public statements is silly. Everyone who speaks to mass audiences dumbs down their rhetoric. Look at what they actually do with their power, not how they describe their intentions.
The candidates probably aren’t smart enough to get econ Ph.D.s from Princeton, or thoughtful enough to impress professors at a GMU econ lunch. But that just proves that neither of these egghead qualifications matters in the real world.
Human beings enjoy spectacles, but no spectacle pleases everyone. The most observers enjoy election season, just as they enjoy football season. Why must you yuck their yums?
Most societies throughout history have been dictatorships. Show some gratitude that we’re not one of them.
If democracy and dictatorship were the only two ways to organize society, I’d reluctantly grant the merit of many of the preceding criticisms. But in point of fact, there is a third alternative — an alternative that politicians vaguely yet incessantly acknowledge: the free market. The very system that almost all politicians have to attack to justify all the government regulation and government spending that they propose.
Immanuel Kant famously stated, “I have found it necessary to deny reason in order to make room for faith.” The subtext of virtually every political speech is, “I have found it necessary to deny the free market in order to make room for government.” A handful of archetypal examples:
On the free market, businesses sometimes get a monopoly… so government should restore competition.
On the free market, consumers sometimes have imperfect information… so government should make sure they’re not misled.
On the free market, developers often fail to consider the harms they inflict on surrounding homeowners… so government shouldn’t allow them to build without proper permits.
On the free market, people rarely give large amounts of charity to strangers… so government should force them to help the poor.
On the free market, employers sometimes fail to hire the best worker for the job… so government should ban and punish employment discrimination.
Where am I going with this? Here: Before you claim that my standards for voters and politicians are too high, you should seriously consider the possibility that voters’ and politicians’ standards for the free market are too high. Prior to any call for government intervention, people should contemplate all of the following:
No country approximates a free market, but almost all rich countries have a long history of relatively free-market policies.
In contrast, dozens of countries have approximated full socialism. All of these countries have been abject disasters for human well-being. To quote an American politician in a rare moment of clarity, “We have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in.”
Looking at the very freest economies in the world, there is little sign that they have taken a good idea too far. As far as we can see, the freer the economy, the better.
People around the world attack the United States for having smaller government than Europe, yet people around the world also name the U.S. as the country they would most like to migrate to.
“Monopolies” rarely arise on the free market by chance. Firms obtain monopolies by being — and staying — the best at pleasing their customers. When they stop being the best, they quickly stop being monopolies. Often, they stop existing entirely.
One of the main functions of actual free markets is giving consumers enough information to make them comfortable. A good reputation is the foundation of every successful business. Thanks to the internet, word of mouth now works better than ever. Which explains the prevalence of 100% money-back guarantees — firms don’t want anyone talking bad about them.
Developers cause some problems for surrounding homeowners — traffic, parking, and noise for starters. But they also provide notable benefits for surrounding homeowners — an array of social, shopping, job, and cultural opportunities. The fact that people pay large upcharges for density proves that the package of (all the good + all the bad) that development brings is highly positive.
People rarely give large amounts of charity to strangers. But they also often refuse to give large amounts of charity to their parents, adult children, and siblings. When you hear about such refusals, you probably don’t reflexively take the side of the would-be recipient. Maybe the refuser has a good reason to say, “I’ve done more than enough for my brother.” Why then should we reflexively side against taxpayers who don’t want to fund redistribution to strangers?
Illegal immigrants are one of the least-liked groups in the country, yet most people still fear that employers will hire them. Why? Because employers have a strong incentive to set personal prejudice aside and hire the best person for the job. Once you acknowledge this truism, how can you take the ongoing moral panic about race and sex discrimination seriously? If you’re paying attention, the real story is that government requires discrimination against whites, Asians, and males.
You needn’t agree with all of these bullet points. As soon as you grant that I’m making some plausible observations, politicians and voters suddenly look bad in a new way. While the free market isn’t perfect, their standards are too high. Instead of piling on even more regulation and government spending, they should be musing, “Laissez-faire seems pretty good. Maybe we should just live with it.”
If this thought ever becomes common, I promise that — after fainting from shock — I will give credit where credit is due. I’ll even declare, “Wow, no true demagogic mediocrity would speak this way. I guess I judged you too harshly.”
Yet until then, I am standing my ground. Politicians and voters hold the free market to an unfairly high standard.
I, in contrast, hold politicians and voters to an eminently reasonable standard: Don’t advocate government action until you credibly show that, despite all the free market’s merits, you know how to do better.
]]>Don’t I at least see the entertainment, the hilarity, in this situation? No. I don’t find the election funny at all, and I have a great sense of humor.
American democracy was already a disgrace when I wrote The Myth of the Rational Voter back in 2007. Readers often ask me if anything that’s happened in the meanwhile has changed my mind.
Answer: While my expectations were already very low, politicians and voters have worked in tandem to make my pessimism look like optimism. Much of the American left somehow managed to play Dr. Frankenstein with the corpse of socialism, while figuring out how to invent and propagate a new secular religion that is Orwellian and Kafkaesque at the same time. Much of the American right, similarly, has forgotten whatever half-hearted appreciation they ever had for free markets in favor of xenophobic scapegoating of immigrants and international trade. Perhaps the Republican shift is largely rhetorical, but it’s still grotesque to hear.
Meanwhile, both parties are committed to massive, permanent deficits, which is why I’m maxing out every Roth IRA I can get my paws on. If U.S. finances get bad enough, admittedly, the government will break its promise not to double-tax Roth accounts. But when fiscal crisis finally hits, I still give a >90% probability that the U.S. sticks to conventional tax hikes to balance the books, starting with the end of the Social Security tax phase-out. And maybe a big bout of inflation.
To be fair, democracy has exceeded my expectations on a couple of margins. Although I expected strict Covid policies to enjoy long-term bipartisan support, many red states swiftly returned to near-normalcy. Republican politicians in red states were, shockingly, probably better on Covid than the average libertarian professor. On the other side, Biden’s relatively lax border enforcement has allowed over a million extra people to join the U.S. economy. I doubt that this was Biden’s goal; his first choice is low immigration combined with mild enforcement. But his accidental liberalization is about the best we can expect.
How can I cope with this depressing worldview? By refusing to identify with the world. Every day, I focus on making my corner of existence better — tending my Epicurean garden, building my Beautiful Bubble. Yes, the underlying theme of all my books is that humanity is capable of massive improvement, but I’m not Don Quixote. The best predictor of what will be is not what could be, but what has been. The economy will improve. Technology will improve. Your life will improve… if you strive to improve it. Politics, however, will remain roughly stagnant despite your best efforts.
Sorry, especially to all my younger readers. I sincerely wish I had better news.
]]>Pro-wrestling-themed.
Though I’m a big fan of karaoke, Papola wisely cast professional singers (and actor/athletes) to play Bryan Caplan promoting open borders, George Borjas promoting immigration restriction, and a surprise guest professor to highlight the culture transplant.
In case you’re wondering, I’ve non-musically debated immigration against both opponents in real life. Here’s Caplan versus Borjas; here’s Caplan versus the surprise.
My favorite line in the immigration rap battle:
If you're worried about civic knowledge, Your bigger concern should be who's teaching college.
I only wish my character got to use a hardback Open Borders as a bludgeon, with an extreme close-up of the cover. Blood spatter optional.
Please share “Battle of the Borders” far and wide, this video is awesome beyond words. Family friendly; your kids should see it.
P.S. If anyone in the world of ideas wants to follow up with a more serious discussion, I am game.
But this one also fits.
Though, all self-serving bias aside, it’s hard to beat:
]]>I enjoyed your posts on the U.A.E. When I worked for the Fed, I served on a team that shared best practices in capital-market risk measurement/management with examiners/supervisors around the world. I typically got to spend two full weeks in a country, and the hosts made sure the team got to sample fully the food, culture, and entertainment during off hours. In January 1999, I spent two weeks in the U.A.E. working with representatives from the Arab Monetary Fund. Even though 25 years has passed, it sounds as if not much has changed. I agree it is a country that works.
Two incidents stand out from my visit. I got my haircut in the hotel barbershop. The barber was from Turkey (which was considerably more open then than today). He and his family were in the U.A.E. on a guest worker visa. We had a nice long solitary chat (i.e., the door to the shop was closed, and no one else came in while I was there). He went on and on about how much he and his family loved the U.A.E. (offering many detailed reasons, so it did not sound canned). I asked him if he missed Turkey’s relative openness. [Just that morning, I had purchased the latest edition of THE ECONOMIST in the hotel gift shop. Stories had been physically cut out of all the copies. When I got back to the U.S., I looked at those issues to find out what had been cut – a story about the U.A.E. and a couple of stories about other Arab countries.] He looked at me as if I had two heads. He said words to the effect of “only an affluent American would ask a question like that.” To him, all that really mattered was the economic opportunity U.A.E. afforded.
Second, (and I wonder if this is still true), I had to go through T.S.A.-style security to get INTO the country. My driver explained that the government takes a very hard line on drugs and pornography, and the searches were designed to keep that stuff out of the country. The next day I went to an internet café to email my family. The place was full of young Arab men looking at porn on the internet. From that experience, I came to understand why many devout Muslims loathe the West. It’s almost impossible to insulate your country/society from “the decadent West.”
Again, I very much enjoyed your class, and I hope to see you in another down the road.
Sincerely,
Mark
]]>Controlling for possible confounding variables does little to undermine the statistical strength of this negative relationship. In U.S. data, controlling for income makes the negative relationship between education and fertility stronger. Quasi-experimental estimates usually reinforce the common sense conclusion: Getting more education causes your fertility to fall.
What, though, is the mechanism? Economists routinely state with great confidence that education reduces fertility because it raises the opportunity cost of having kids. The more education you have, the higher your income; the higher your income, the more income to lose when you work less to care for another child. But even in terms of pure economic theory, this is a weak argument. Sure, education raises the cost of having kids; but education also gives you the income to more easily afford that cost. Yes, there’s an income effect as well as a substitution effect! Any economist convinced that education has to reduce fertility should also believe that education has to reduce the number of massages you get. After all, massages take time away from work, too.
Sociologists have a considerably better story: Education changes students’ values. Never mind rare heavy-handed propaganda about overpopulation. Education dethrones fertility via emphasis. Telling kids that academic and career success should be their top priority implicitly says, “And having kids should be a lower priority.” Not teaching religion and traditional values implicitly says, “Religion and traditional values aren’t very important.” And so on.
Though I’ve long preferred the latter story to the former, only recently did I realize that I’ve been overlooking a far simpler and practically bulletproof mechanism that explains why education reduces fertility. Namely: Almost everyone wants to finish their education before having kids — and there is a strong stigma against those who do otherwise.
If school ends in 12th grade, this norm lets you start having kids at 19 or 20.
If school ends after you get your B.A., this norm lets you start having kids at 23 or 24. (And since most students don’t finish on time, that should usually get bumped up to 26 or 27).
If school ends after your get your second Ph.D., this norm lets you start having kids around the age of 38.
Key point: Staying in school longer does nothing to alter the effect of biological age on fertility. The later you start having kids, therefore, the fewer kids you are ever likely to have. Late fertility almost automatically means low fertility.
Note: This mechanism also explains the standard result that women’s education cuts fertility much more than men’s education. Biologically, a man can work on his Ph.D. well into his 30s, finish, marry a woman years younger, and end up with a large family even though he followed the “Finish your education before having kids” rule to the letter. Not so for female Ph.D.s.
Is my mechanism really so novel? It shouldn’t be, but I’ve been pondering these issues for about twenty years, and I can’t recall anyone explicitly naming it as a possible explanation for the education-fertility connection.
All three proposed mechanisms behind the education-fertility link imply that societies can make babies with budget cuts. If governments cut education spending, education will fall, and fertility will rise. But my obvious-once-you-think-about mechanism implies an extra point of leverage: undermine the norm against students having babies.
But doesn’t that makes graduation harder? Without a doubt. Life is full of trade-offs. The trade-off rich countries ultimately face is between runaway credential inflation… and oblivion.
]]>My pair of AG interviews starts with immigration, but quickly fans out to cultural evolution and futurism. Enjoy!
Institutional Neutrality is the idea that colleges and universities should not, as institutions, take positions on social and political issues unless those issues “threaten the very mission of the university and its values of free inquiry.” Instead, these discussions should be left to students and faculty.
Since then, the number of such schools has multiplied by more than a factor of 7. (My own George Mason University isn’t one of them, though by my count the number of official emails on current events has dropped to zero). And what the list lacks in quantity, it makes up for in prestige:
Claremont McKenna College: December 6, 2018
Vanderbilt University: February, 2021
University of North Carolina System: July 14, 2023
Utah State University: December, 2023
University of Wyoming: December 5, 2023
College of the Holy Cross: February 6, 2024
Syracuse University: May 7, 2024
Harvard University: May 28, 2024
Stanford University: May 30, 2024
Purdue University: June 3, 2024
Clark University: June 10, 2024
Johns Hopkins University: August 15, 2024
University of Southern California: August 20, 2024
University of Texas System: August 22, 2024
Emerson College: August 23, 2024
University of Colorado Boulder: August 28, 2024
University of Alabama System: September 5, 2024
Washington State University: September 9, 2024
University of Pennsylvania: September 10, 2024
University of Wisconsin System: September 13, 2024
University of Virginia: September 13, 2024
Northwestern University: September 27, 2024
Some of these schools, most notably Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, have recently eliminated mandatory Diversity Statements, too. (Though this is still up on the Harvard website).
Yet as far as I know, no school has, after vowing Institutional Neutrality, said, “Pursuant to our vow, we no longer require Diversity Statements.” And as a matter of consistency, they all should.
How so? DEI is a novel society-wide movement. Support for DEI correlates almost perfectly with leftist ideology. To require Diversity Statements, then, amounts to declaring, “We refuse to hire anyone who rejects a recent innovation in leftist thought.” Which makes such statements notably more restrictive than a blanket policy of “non-leftists need not apply.”
What about the “unless those issues ‘threaten the very mission of the university and its values of free inquiry’” exception? Universities existed for centuries without DEI. So unless you think that universities failed to pursue their missions or uphold the values of free inquiry until the 21st century, the exception does not apply. Indeed, given DEI’s notorious hostility to free inquiry, an anti-DEI exception would make far more sense than the status quo.
I understand people who hold controversial worldviews. I am one such person. When DEI proponents treat their controversial worldview as accepted fact, I’m tempted to scoff at their sheer obliviousness. But in reality, their obliviousness is strategic. When they preach their secular religion as established fact, I can’t help but feel like they’re trying to intimidate us into pretending to agree with them.
Any institution that takes Institutional Neutrality seriously will stand up to this ongoing, on-campus intimidation: “DEI is a controversial social and political issue, therefore our university does not take a side. And refusing to consider job applicants who question DEI is an extreme form of taking a side.”
]]>Remember: This is the only immigration debate I’ve ever done where the resolution was explicitly about “benefit to humanity.” Which really does make the case for open borders open-and-shut. Enjoy!
P.S. In case you didn’t get the title of today’s post…
]]>Happily, however, my recent Steamboat Institute debate against Sohrab Ahmari broke my long-running immigration debate losing streak. The simplest explanation: The resolution was heavily stacked in my favor — but most attendees didn’t notice until the debate was underway.
Normally, the topic under discussion is something like, “Would open borders be good for America?” This time, however, the resolution (set by Steamboat, not me) was:
Does open borders benefit humanity by reducing poverty and boosting the economy?
…which made my job easy indeed.
Throughout the debate, I emphasized the undisputed massive benefits for immigrants and their families — most notably, earning 5x, 10x, or even 15x as much abroad as they could have earned at home. Ahmari never challenged this debate-settling fact. Instead, he presented the standard Americentric complaints about immigration. When I reminded him that these harms to Americans, even if true, were rounding errors compared to the gains to non-Americans, he vaguely claimed that “benefit to humanity” is a meaningless phrase.
In my closing statement, I ridiculed Ahmari’s evasive position. Is it really “meaningless” to claim that “World peace would benefit humanity” or “Vaccines benefit humanity”? Then how can it be meaningless to claim that “Open borders benefit humanity”?
Further thoughts:
After seeing the incredible economic power of mass migration in the United Arab Emirates, I decided to work my experiences into my talk. Tyler Cowen warned me that this was strategically foolish, but I kept my own counsel — and I’m very glad I did. Not only did I win the post-debate vote. The UAE really is the world’s strongest visible proof that the First World is ignoring an awesome missed opportunity. Credit where credit is due, people.
Ahmari attacked UAE’s immigration policies as “serfdom” and even “slavery.” To fully appreciate the topsy-turvy absurdity of his accusations, note that under serfdom and slavery, workers want to escape. But low-skilled workers around the world are eager to enter the UAE’s labor market.
Ahmari made many lurid claims about the horrible treatment that foreign workers endure in the UAE. Employer passport withholding, the most infamous, is now illegal in the UAE, and locals tell me that the law is strictly enforced. Regardless of UAE law, however, what really matters is that — thanks to cellphones and the internet — virtually every worker who comes to the UAE correctly expects to have a much better life in the UAE than they have at home.
Yes, I know that even the UAE doesn’t have fully open borders. But if the U.S. allowed it’s foreign-born share to rise until it matched UAE’s, we’d admit an additional 2.4 billion foreigners. Which really would be tantamount to open borders.
Ahmari repeatedly twisted my targeted praise of UAE’s immigration policies into a general praise of all UAE policies. If he’d been more strategic, he would have posed pointed questions instead of willfully mishearing me. For example, he could have probed, “If the only way to get open borders was to put power into the hands of a Sheikh Zayed, should we do so?” To which I would have candidly replied, “Probably.”
At one point, Ahmari referred to UAE as a “tyranny.” Perhaps his standards are so high that practically every government is a tyranny, but I doubt it. He never condemned India, though I mentioned its grotesque shortcomings multiple times. So why didn’t he? Because India is a “democracy” that traps its people in poverty, instead of a monarchy that enriches natives and foreigners alike?
Ahmari offered one on-point criticism: that open borders is “utopian.” In other words, a pile of feel-good wishful thinking that would in practice harm humanity. But not only did he fail to flesh out this criticism; the real-world experience of the UAE shows open borders works well when tried. One initially unpromising country has used mass migration to produced stunning prosperity; therefore, more functional countries are fully capable of mimicking its success.
“Utopian.” It would have made a lot more sense for Ahmari to claim that open borders is dystopian rather than utopian. (Though he did briefly mention Blade Runner!) My reply: Open borders would only look “dystopian” to someone who was oblivious to the desperate poverty that billions of humans on Earth still endure. Once you witness how most people live in India, how can you condemn a society as “dystopian” for allowing the global poor to swiftly work their way out of poverty?
Here’s full debate video.
Per-capita, UAE is the most amazing country I’ve ever seen. With a population about the size of Austria’s, they have virtually every consumer product you can imagine (and many you haven’t) in abundance. In cleanliness and crime, UAE rivals Japan. While the official language is Arabic, a local told me that English is far more useful. And while the country’s official religion is Islam, the country looks very secular. I saw not the slightest sign of Islamist fanaticism.
The key ingredient of Emirati success: 88% of UAE’s population is foreign-born. That’s the highest share of any country on Earth. Why is the share so high? Because UAE is closer to open borders than any other country on Earth. They don’t just welcome petroleum engineers and architects. They welcome drivers, maids, janitors, waiters, and clerks. They don’t just welcome Europeans and East Asians. They welcome South Asians, Pacific Islanders, North Africans, and plenty of sub-Saharan Africans, too. I chatted with workers from both Zimbabwe and Sierra Leone. Yes, would-be migrant workers face a government approval process, so the border is not 100% open. But if you want to work hard to make a better life for yourself, your prospects of landing a work visa are decent no matter how humble your credentials.
Abu Dhabi and Dubai are living proof that Michael Clemens’ “Trillion Dollar Bills on the Sidewalk” is literal truth. Both cities look like Coruscant from Star Wars. They are absolute marvels: Gleaming cities of the future where humanity gathers to produce massive wealth. And without mass immigration, almost none of this could have been built! They need foreigners to help them run the petroleum industry. They need foreigners to build their skyscrapers, malls, and mansions. And they need foreigners to run their hotels, restaurants, and stores.
Try to imagine a nativist version of UAE. Even if they managed, with incredible toil, to keep fossil fuel extraction constant and share the mineral wealth with the citizenry, what would the recipients do with the money? In a country where everyone is rich, rich people would have to hire other rich people to clean their homes, cook their food, and watch their kids. In a nativist UAE, the only way to get good value for your money would be to leave the country!
Sheik Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, founder of the UAE, had the brains and vision to follow the opposite of the nativist strategy. Why make your citizens leave their homeland to consume their riches, when the world is full of poor foreigners who are eager to move to you? A typical demagogue would have objected, “We don’t want to become a minority in our own homeland,” but Zayed boldly forged ahead — and created a cruise ship the size of a country. Since 1971, UAE’s population has grown from 280K people to 9.5 million. A miraculous multiple of 34x.
Who’s the most benevolent dictator of the last century? Lee Kuan Yew is probably the top response, but in fact he wasn’t a dictator at all. Yes, Lee ruled for 31 years — but only because he kept winning fair and free elections. Zayed, in contrast, was plainly a dictator. The only elections he won had just seven voters — the hereditary emirs of UAE’s member states. Yet the man found UAE an empty desert of sand and left it a vast metropolis of marble. In the world’s bloodiest and most fanatical region, he delivered peace, prosperity, and pragmatism. Upshot: I hereby nominate Zayed for the Most Benevolent Dictator of the Last Century. Can you name anyone who deserves the honor more?
Most observers glowingly describe UAE’s overflowing welfare state. In a sense, they’re right:
The government benefits that Emiratis have long enjoyed would be unthinkable in most of the world: Tax-free income, free high-quality health care, subsidized fuel, generous government-funded retirement plans, access to land to build homes with interest-free loans and free higher education, even when pursued abroad.
To ease marriage costs, the government gives Emirati men 70,000 dirhams ($19,000) when they marry an Emirati woman. A debt settlement fund provides a one-time bailout to entrepreneurs who need it. On some occasions, the UAE's rulers have paid the debts of Emirati nationals ahead of major holidays.
The welfare system emerged when seven emirates joined to form the UAE under Sheik Zayed's leadership. Lifting Emiratis from poverty through a lifetime of aid coincided with transforming the UAE from a nation of disparate fishing villages into one of the world's leading investment and commercial hubs.
"The federal government is a huge welfare society and welfare state," said Abdulkhaleq Abdullah, a professor of political science at Emirates University. "This is a fact of life, and people appreciate that.”
In a more important sense, however, the UAE’s welfare state is admirably austere, because these lavish benefits are limited to Emirati citizens — and these citizens are a tiny minority of the population. If 88% of the residents of Sweden were ineligible for redistribution, no one would call it “a generous welfare state” — no matter how high the benefits for the remaining 12% happened to be.
In 1971, UAE would have been overwhelmingly Muslim and Arab. Culturally, they were probably close to the rest of the Arab world. Superficially, they still are, but it’s a hollow shell. Blasphemy is illegal… but the punishment is mild and rarely applied. Apostacy from Islam still carries a death sentence… but it’s never applied. Homosexuality is illegal… but no one has been arrested for it since 2015. Porn is illegal and blocked… but you can just switch to a VPN. The main people who should fear for their lives in UAE are the few Islamist fanatics who want to burn the country down. Toleration and moderation… or else!
Does all this show that assimilation doesn’t work? That the Emiratis adopted the norms of their migrants, rather than the other away around? Absolutely not, because only a tiny share of the migrants are Western! Instead, the UAE has decisively Westernized two initially un-Western populations: native Arab Muslims and Third World migrants. How? By creating an economy dominated by Westernized multinationals. Though the Western population is low, their “soft power” has slowly but surely taken over the soul of the UAE. Verily, Western culture is a hardy weed.
UAE’s most awful problem is the weather, which combines stereotypical Arabian heat with stifling humidity. The random late September day I experienced had worse weather than Washington, DC on the worst day of 2024. While air conditioning is ubiquitous, UAE residents are practically trapped indoors for most of the year. Which is further testament to the Emiratis’ success. Despite one of the world’s worst climates, they built one of the world’s best countries.
“What about businesses withholding their workers’ passports?” That’s now illegal, and locals tell me the new law is well-enforced. But either way, it’s a rounding error. Foreign workers have phones, so what do you think they tell their friends and family back home? “Don’t come; they’ll confiscate your passport”? Or, “Definitely come; in five years you’ll return a rich man”?
Ponder this: If a foreigner causes problems in the UAE, the standard punishment is deportation. So how dire could the problem of withholding passports have ever been? The main function of the new UAE law is not to protect foreign workers from employers but to protect the UAE’s reputation from international muckrackers.
Learning about the UAE fills most Western thinkers with self-righteousness. “Sure, they have the world’s tallest building, but we have freedom.” My reaction is almost the opposite. The UAE is far more committed than the West to the freedoms that matter most: to work for a willing employer, rent from a willing landlord, and shop with willing merchants. The standard Western migration formula — generous government support for the few immigrants we admit — is a crying shame. The UAE formula — invite the whole world to come work for a better life — is glorious. And the fact that no democracy would emulate the UAE’s migration policy is not a black mark against the UAE, but against democracy.