Three cheers for crass consumerism!

by Roger Koppl

Over an Marginal Revolution Tyler Cowen quotes approvingly a new book by Geoffrey Miller.

From my perspective as an evolutionary psychologist, this is how consumerist capitalism really works: it makes us forget our natural adaptations for showing off desirable fitness-related traits. It deludes us into thinking that artificial products work much better than they really do for showing off these traits. It confuses us about the traits we are trying to display by harping on vague terms at the wrong levels of description (wealth, status, taste), and by obfuscating the most stable, heritable, and predictive traits discovered by individual differences research. It hints coyly at the possible status and sexual payoffs for buying and displaying premium products, but refuses to make such claims explicit, lest consumer watchdogs find those claims empirically false, and lest significant others get upset by the personal motives they reveal. The net result could be called the fundamental consumerist delusion — that other people care more about the artificial products you display through consumerist spending than about the natural traits you display through normal conversation, cooperation, and cuddling.

At least one commenter took the  passage as a slam on capitalism. I don’t think we should see it that way. Some of us do think that designer labels will save our souls. That’s bad. But it’s a whole lot better than thinking that, say, the Führer will save your soul, or a crusade against the infidels, or nationalism, or a host of other collective salvations. When the inevitable disappointment from consumerism comes, it’s a private tragedy.  When the inevitable disappointment from a collective salvation comes, it’s a national crisis inviting some new, possibly worse, collective salvation. Until humans learn the wisdom of angels, I will remain a great supporter of crass consumerism and conspicuous consumption.

Two interesting models of urban redevelopment

by Sandy Ikeda

From the New York Times, “An Effort to Save Flint, Mich., by Shrinking It”:

Instead of waiting for houses to become abandoned and then pulling them down, local leaders are talking about demolishing entire blocks and even whole neighborhoods. The population would be condensed into a few viable areas. So would stores and services. A city built to manufacture cars would be returned in large measure to the forest primeval.

After Katrina, some urbanists urged New Orleans authorities to adopt something like this policy of “planed shrinkage,” but largely for political reasons it was summarily rejected.

Given New Orleans’s cultural heritage, perhaps they might also find Cleveland’s approach useful, as reported in The Wall Street Journal, “Artists v. Blight”:

Best line of the day

by Sandy Ikeda

“Before there was eBay, there was Manhattan.”
– Francis Morrone

University of Michigan: Teacher Yes, Father No

by Mario Rizzo  

 

The University of Michigan has announced that it will become completely smoke-free in 2011.   

 

The University has chosen parentalism (in loco parentis) over encouraging the development of responsible, intelligent adults capable of making choices for themselves.

 

Normally, I would refer to such policies as paternalism but in this context in which a university is involved with the nurturing of young adults, the former term seems appropriate. But unlike normal parents, however, the school is an organ of the state (here, Michigan). So there is a case for the (legal) paternalism description as well.

 

Before we even get to the reasons for this policy, however, we are told, as in many cases of abridging liberty, it is both no big deal and an important innovation for the public good.

“No one deserves their pay”

by Sandy Ikeda

Megan McArdle, blogging about the issue of “fair pay” on Wall Street, in the context of the recent bailouts, makes the following provocative statement:

No one deserves their pay, so I can hardly be angry at the folks on Wall Street for taking what they could get… Trying to make as much money as an employer will legally give you, and making mistakes, are neither legal nor moral offenses. Why isn’t it enough to say, no, thank you, I’d rather not pay you that much money? Why is it also necessary to hate them?

Right.

NYU Economics Department Ranked Twelfth in the Nation

 

by Mario Rizzo

 

For those who like to rank, rate, and evaluate, US News & World Report will feed your desires. One good thing about these rankings is that it also includes, for the top 54,  a “grade” from 1 to 5 where 1 is “marginal” and 5 is “outstanding.”   

 

A summary of the method used:  

 

Each year, U.S. News ranks professional-school programs in business, education, engineering, law, and medicine. These rankings are based on two types of data: expert opinions about program quality and statistical indicators that measure the quality of a school’s faculty, research, and students. These data come from surveys of more than 1,200 programs and some 11,000 academics and professionals that were conducted in fall 2008.  

 

More is here.

 

As always, go beneath (above?) the rankings.

 

 

Another Flaw in the Diamond

by Gene Callahan

The famed “geographical historian,” Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, is being sued, by two New Guinea tribesmen, for $10 million. It seems a feud he described didn’t occur, and a man he describes as paralyzed in that feud has been found walking about just fine.

Diamond’s failure, I suspect, is not one of honesty, but one of gullibility: he heard this story from someone and failed to check it out. This is something of which he frequently has been guilty in the past. In a paper of mine, which is forthcoming in a volume entitled The Meanings of Michael Oakeshott’s Conservatism, I write:

Early Boom-and-Bust Theory?

by Gene Callahan

“As little as steam engines can be quelled, so little is this possible in the behavioural realm: the lively pace of trade, the rapid rush of paper-money, the inflated increase of debt made in order to pay off other debts, these are the monstrous elements to which a young man is now exposed.”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister’s Journeyman Years

Gombrich and Hayek

by Sandy Ikeda

Many of you have read or at least know of E.H. Gombrich’s The Story of Art, a book that any serious student of art history should have in his library (along with the authoritative but somewhat-less-user-friendly History of Art by H.W. Janson). It’s the best-selling book on art in the world, having gone through some sixteen editions.

Now, this semester (in my dotage) I’ve been attending an adult-education class at NYU called “Creative Cities in History,” taught by the excellent architectural historian, and my former colleague at The New York Sun (where he was the architectural critic and I was a mere blogger), Francis Morrone. Francis has encyclopedic knowledge of the art and architecture of New York City, as well as of most of the other great cities in Western history. Needless to say, I’ve learned a great deal from this marvelous course.

Recently, Francis told me another thing I didn’t know: Gombrich and F.A. Hayek were close personal friends.

Tarred by TARP

by Mario Rizzo

My long-time friend and coauthor, Jerry O’Driscoll, has an excellent post at Cato-at-Liberty on TARP. In a relatively few words he gets to the heart of the matter. Take a look here.