Penn on Obama: can the counterintuitive work?

[bascule]

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/04/01/jillette.skid/index.html

 

I really respect Penn. And this is another one of those articles where he expresses his own inability to know what the outcome will be given a paritcular set of circumstances.

 

This article is him expressing that Obama is doing something that Penn philosophically agrees with, but rather than outright attacking Obama for it (actually he roundly compliments Obama, if somewhat sarcastically) he points out that what Obama is doing could actually work.

 

This is more than I've seen from any other free market libertarians, who seem to be foaming at the mouth ranting over Obama's perceived madness.

 

Nice one, Penn.

[swansont]

"Intuition can be wrong" is a very important lesson. We se it in discussions (usually ones that end up in speculations) all the time .

 

He doesn't really explain one thing, though, that IMO is important. The comparison to an individual trying to spend their way out of debt is argument by false analogy to what the government is doing.

 

Not all debt is the same. People or companies can take on debt to improve their financial situation, as long as there is a return on that money. If you borrow to buy a car to get you to work faster, and can work longer as a result and get paid more, it's possible the car will have a positive return even though you went into debt to get it. Spending money you don't have on a new wide-screen TV? Not so much. But is the goal to spend ourselves out of debt, or spend to jump-start the economy?

 

(One of this issues in all of this is the unwillingness of some arguers to engage in honest debate, so things get painted with a very broad brush.)

[bascule]

The "you can't spend your way out of debt" adage seems to ignore the "you have to spend money to make money" adage

[jackson33]

 

This is more than I've seen from any other free market libertarians, who seem to be foaming at the mouth ranting over Obama's perceived madness.

 

Nice one, Penn.

 

I don't know what Jillette claims as a party affiliation, but if he claims Libertarian, I doubt they would endorse his views on Mr. Obama. He could be a Free Market Capitalist, but if he does claim this, he could not then turn around and say destroying it could be something good. Think I'll stick with Al Franken as the best Comedian/Politician, since he at least has had some success, even if ill gotten.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penn_Jillette

[Sisyphus]

"Destroying it?"

[waitforufo]

This article is him expressing that Obama is doing something that Penn philosophically agrees with, but rather than outright attacking Obama for it (actually he roundly compliments Obama, if somewhat sarcastically) he points out that what Obama is doing could actually work.

It seems to me that he disagrees with but hopes that the counterintuitive is correct. Maybe we each read it the way we choose. Anyway I agree that Penn provides his commentary with style.

Edited April 2, 2009 by swansont
fix quote tag

[bascule]

It seems to me that he disagrees with but hopes that the counterintuitive is correct. Maybe we each read it the way we choose.

 

Actually that was a typo... considering Penn is a fellow at the CATO Institute I don't think he's going to be too happy about Obama fiscal policy.

 

His overall attitude is "I don't like what you're doing but I trust you guy" which is pretty damn cool.

[swansont]

Actually that was a typo... considering Penn is a fellow at the CATO Institute I don't think he's going to be too happy about Obama fiscal policy.

 

His overall attitude is "I don't like what you're doing but I trust you guy" which is pretty damn cool.

 

Or, "My gut tells me you're wrong, but my head realizes that I don't really know a lot about this"

 

IOW, not letting the emotional irrational instinct trump your rational intellect.

[bascule]

IOW, not letting the emotional irrational instinct trump your rational intellect.

 

Yes, exactly.

[waitforufo]

His overall attitude is "I don't like what you're doing but I trust you guy" which is pretty damn cool.

 

Penn is however staking out his "I told you so" rights.

[ParanoiA]

I don't know how much he "trusts" him, but it's clear he isn't sure one way or the other if this will work, and basing a bit of hope on counterintuition, which he has experience with. And hey, for that matter, why not? They already spent the money whether we agreed with it or not, so it's in our best interest to hope it works wonders. So, yeah, let's hope for some major counterintuition.

 

And no, it won't vindicate the biggest spending bill in history, passed without being read by most, if any.

[padren]

It's actually very easy to follow logic - spend money to do repairs, so you don't waste money in the long run, like weather proofing your house to lower energy costs, or fixing your car so it doesn't leak oil. That's why we are revamping hardware for tracking medical records and all that. That is intuitive. So is the other side: the idea of spending money to get people to work - it's just a more aggressive form of "welfare to work" programs that have always existed and taken to a similar preemptive level that was done in the great depression.

 

It's not hard to trust because it's counter intuitive - it's hard to trust because all the details are missing. Either it's too complex or they just aren't "tracking" or sharing how that money is fixing everything. Because we are left in the dark, trust is required. Maybe it's too complex for us to follow it all, or revealing all the details would require making private corporate operations public and hurt the competitive edge of the businesses we now own.

 

Penn has a nice idea there but I think it's actually the wrong description for the current situation. The only people who find it counter-intuitive are those who think tax cuts are the universal tool to apply to all economic situations. To that crowd though, social spending is never intuitive, so it's inaccurate to say this situation involves a counter intuitive solution specifically.

[swansont]

It's actually very easy to follow logic - spend money to do repairs, so you don't waste money in the long run, like weather proofing your house to lower energy costs, or fixing your car so it doesn't leak oil. That's why we are revamping hardware for tracking medical records and all that. That is intuitive.

 

That's true, but I'd argue not necessarily intuitive. From my perspective it's pretty obvious that fixing something before it breaks ends up being cheaper in the long run, but I also have experience with people (they live in budgetland) who have the attitude that money not spent is money saved. Cutting back on maintenance is a cost-saving exercise, because it results in reduced expenditures now. AFAICT they do not see a causal connection to the spending that occurs when their ill-maintained widget later fails.

[Sisyphus]

"Intuitive" is not an absolute. Most people's intuitive understanding of physics starts out mostly in agreement with Aristotle. "How far it goes depends on how hard I throw it." "Rocks want to go down, fire wants to go up." But then classical, Newtonian physics, once learned, often becomes so intuitive that it becomes very difficult to grasp things like the uncertainty principle or relativity.

 

Economics, I imagine, is probably similar. The initial intuitive understanding is almost instinctive - the sort outlook one might have living in a tribe of hunter-gatherers. Stuff like, "If I work hard and somebody still has many times my wealth, their wealth must be stolen somehow." Then, the principles of the free market are like classical physics. Self-contained, simple, elegant rules that can always give you an answer, which become intuitive and "obvious." The only problem being that sometimes reality refuses to cooperate!