I think the counterfactual, convenient view for him to hold on natalism would be to just not talk about it, which is the strategy most people adopt with inconvenient facts and allows them to simply ignore them when doing policy analysis.
Higher education is currently very subsidized, and I agree that he thinks removing these subsidies would be a big improvement. But his views imply that even with no subsidy it would still be over-consumed, because each credential imposes negative externalities on everyone else’s credential.
I don’t have much of a direct response to you, except that many left wing people seem to think “but humans aren’t perfectly rational” is a compelling objection to free market policies, and I think he should be given some credit here.
Fair, fair, and fair. I do think there are mitigating responses to all of these points as well, but I’ll concede the point that these are cases on the fringes of convenience for him. I was personally more thinking about IQ if I had to think of an example—he seems to place more importance on it than most people, but as I think he pointed out in a blog post I can’t find now, this leads just an awful lot of people to really statist and quasi or outright fascist views, so even if it doesn’t actually imply fascism, it’s an area where adopting a view closer to the average would be more convenient, provide an additional reason he could give against such people.
I think the counterfactual, convenient view for him to hold on natalism would be to just not talk about it, which is the strategy most people adopt with inconvenient facts and allows them to simply ignore them when doing policy analysis.
Higher education is currently very subsidized, and I agree that he thinks removing these subsidies would be a big improvement. But his views imply that even with no subsidy it would still be over-consumed, because each credential imposes negative externalities on everyone else’s credential.
I don’t have much of a direct response to you, except that many left wing people seem to think “but humans aren’t perfectly rational” is a compelling objection to free market policies, and I think he should be given some credit here.
Fair, fair, and fair. I do think there are mitigating responses to all of these points as well, but I’ll concede the point that these are cases on the fringes of convenience for him. I was personally more thinking about IQ if I had to think of an example—he seems to place more importance on it than most people, but as I think he pointed out in a blog post I can’t find now, this leads just an awful lot of people to really statist and quasi or outright fascist views, so even if it doesn’t actually imply fascism, it’s an area where adopting a view closer to the average would be more convenient, provide an additional reason he could give against such people.