ハイエクのCounter Revolution of Scienceが次のURIから全文をPDFまたはTXTでダウンロードできる。
http://www.archive.org/details/counterrevolutio030197mbp
ここにあるFlipBook形式もなかなか面白い。
なくなるといけないので、以下のリンクからもPDFをダウンロードできるようにした。（１２MB）
Hayekcounterrevolutio030197mbp.pdf
この本はハイエク全集の中にも入っていない貴重な著書である。
1955年に書かれているから、ハイエクが56歳の時の著書だが、ハイエクは90才過ぎまで長寿を全うし８０を過ぎても著作をだしていたため、ハイエク中期の作品と呼べるかもしれない。思想的には脂の乗った時期であろう。
ちなみに、この本を、ハイエクの最重要の本と呼ぶ人もいる。
例えば、David Gordon氏によると、この本は
”Perhaps Hayek’s most important book. Attacks social engineering and defends individualist methodology in the social sciences.”
と、いうことだ。
この邦訳も「科学による反革命」というタイトルで木鐸社から出ているが、4725円もする。
私は、図書館で借りて以前読んだので改めて邦訳を買うつもりはないが、そのうちこの英語で再読してみようと思う。といっても、なかなかまとまった時間がとれないが・・。
2007年10月30日
| 
2007年10月27日
Multicollineality between libertarians
このところ、タイムリーに、Charles MurrayのBell Curveをめぐる話題が重なった。
一つは蔵氏のBlogでの会話で、そのすぐ後にワトソンの発言問題があり、これは池田信夫さんのBlogでもすぐに話題になった。
まず、Charles Murrayについて私の印象を簡単に述べる。
マーレーは”What it means to be a libertarian"という本を書いているために、自称リバタリアンであることは間違いない。
私はこの本を昔、Ken Schoolland氏から他の本と一緒にプレゼントしてもらったことがある。ざっと、この本を見直してみても、チャールズ マーレーは、リバタリアンというよりはStatistであり、露骨に公共政策論者であることが分かる。この点に関しては、他のリバタリアンからも同様の批判がある。
また、マーレーの”The Bell Curve"という本はIQの優劣を論じることで、それを公共政策に反映させることが趣旨の本である。
もとより私はこの本を読んだわけではないが、人種間格差というタブーに挑戦した本として捉えられているようだが、それは事実ではないようだ。
マーレーのベルカーブに対する批判としては、リバタリアン経済学者のトマス ソーウェルの批判が的確だ。
”Perhaps the most intellectually troubling aspect of The Bell Curve is the authors' uncritical approach to statistical correlations. One of the first things taught in introductory statistics is that correlation is not causation. It is also one of the first things forgotten, and one of the most widely ignored facts in public policy research. The statistical term "multicollinearity," dealing with spurious correlations, appears only once in this massive book. ”
さらに言えば、IQという設計指標の意味が間違って使われていることが問題なのだ。どんな次元をもった数であっても、Logでまるめて何でもかんでも多変量解析にぶち込む習慣のある経済学者からすれば、IQは充分に科学的な指標と思えるのかもしれないがそれは間違いである。
ベルカーブをめぐる論争とは、社会的に触れてはならない「タブーという真実」に触れたから問題だったのではない。マーレーの議論の科学的素性そのものが問題とされたのだった。
何がしかの偏見は誰でも持っていることで、それは主観的な真実ともいえる。偏見そのものが悪だとすれば、全ての人が悪人だということになろうが、そうとはいえない。我々は偏見を抱く自由も持っている。例えば、人の好き嫌いなどの偏見は誰にもであるし、それは本人の自由であることは間違いない。それは希少財である自分の時間を有効に活用するためには必要不可欠な自由といえる。
しかし、科学的な装いで、偏見を語ることは、科学として許されないことなのである。
ワトソンがクビにされたことは、学位剥奪にも相当する非科学的な発言を公式にしたわけだから、当然であろう。
| 2007年10月17日
Changing the guard
Changing the Guard
Private Prisons and the Control of Crime
Edited by
Alexander Tabarrok
Highlights
- Until the mid-1980s, the number of privatized jails and prisons
could be counted on the fingers of one hand. Overcrowding and rising
costs, however, prompted lawmakers to take prison privatization
seriously. By 2002 there were 184 fully privatized jails and prisons in
operation or under construction around the world, with total housing
capacity of approximately 143,000, including 153 in the United States,
with a capacity of nearly 120,000. (p. 77) - Private prisons have grown faster than the prison population.
From 1991 to 2000, the U.S. prison population, including those confined
in local jails, increased by 65 percent. During the same time period,
the worldwide capacity of privatized facilities increased an astounding
849 percent. (p.78) - Private prisons are cheaper and faster to build.
Constructioncost savings are typically 15 to 25 percent. (p.134) In
Florida, a prison with capacity for 1,318 inmates was built privately
for $69.9 million, while another of comparable size was built publicly
for $85.7 million, 23 percent higher. In Texas, a private company built
a detention facility for the U.S. Immigration and Nationalization
Service (INS) in six months, as compared to the INS’s own average of
2.5 years. (p.135) Cost savings typically are larger the more authority
the private firm has to choose where and how to build prison
facilities. (p. 136) - Private prisons are cheaper to operate. Twelve of 14 studies
found that private prisons are 5 to 28 percent cheaper to run. (p. 137)
If all the studies on cost savings published in the U.S., Australia,
and Great Britain were taken as a group, estimated operating-cost
savings would be 10 to 15 percent. (p.139) - Critics’ predictions of legal obstacles to prison
privatization haven’t panned out. No correctional facility management
contract awarded by a local, state, or federal agency has been
invalidated on legal or constitutional grounds. Nor has any agency
faced legal action as a result of alleged wrongful acts or omissions of
a private prison firm. (p.78) - Opposition to private prisons has limited their adoption. The
public sector rarely competes directly with private firms and very few
public prisons have been converted to private. (p.81)
Synopsis
Changing the Guard: Private Prisons and the Control of Crime, edited by Alexander Tabarrok
(Research Director, The Independent Institute), examines a
controversial aspect of prisons and crime control -- the growing use of
private prisons. Virtually unheard of twenty years ago, private prisons
are now a big business not only in the United States but increasingly
in Canada, England, Australia, South Africa, and elsewhere. Although
private prisons now house approximately 120,000 prisoners in the United
States, the private sector is still small relative to the total prison
population of some 2,000,000 prisoners.
In the United States, private prisons have grown because of prison
overcrowding and the desire of the states and Federal government to cut
costs. Numerous studies now exist demonstrating that private prisons
have operating costs approximately 15 percent lower than equivalent
public prisons. In addition, private prisons can be located and built
more quickly than public prisons.
Although there was initially a concern that cost-savings might come
at the expense of quality, the data has not borne this out. Whether in
terms of physical quality of the prison, legal access, food quality,
and other measures, private prisons have been found to be as good as
public prisons and sometimes better. Thus after surveying some 333
indicators of quality at two public and one similar private prison,
noted prison-privatization expert Charles H. Logan (University
of Connecticut) concluded that “the private prison outperformed its
governmental counterparts on nearly every dimension.” Surveys of
inmates also find a preference for private prisons because they tend to
control violence, committed by staff and prisoners, better than at
public prisons (p. 141).
The Economics of Prisons
Private prisons cannot be evaluated without also evaluating prisons and punishment more generally. Economist Kenneth Avio (University of Victoria) opens Changing the Guard
with an analysis of the broader questions surrounding the
private-prison debate: Does prison pay? What do we know about
punishment and recidivism? How large is the crime-deterrence effect?
What is an optimal prison sentence? Are too many people in prison or
too few? Avio concludes that, on average, the criminal justice system
“works,” but the system could be improved dramatically if
attention were focused on the small number of criminals who commit the
vast majority of crimes. Drug offenders and other non-violent criminals
are jailed far too much.
Avio focuses his survey on the economic analysis of crime but
concludes that we need a more comprehensive understanding of human
nature than that depicted in the economic model. “We know little about
how and why a shared moral order is developed and maintained. This
change in perspective . . . suggests a return to a relatively neglected
part of the research program Adam Smith laid out in 1791. Analysis of
the social institutions that inculcate self-command and that otherwise
function as civilizing forces in our society, should be part and parcel
of the research strategy social scientists adopt to help understand and
control crime.”
Correctional Privatization: Past, Present, and Future
Private prison authority Charles Thomas (Homeland Security
Corporation) provides the empirical context for understanding the
debate over private prisons, examining their historical origins,
present status and future prospects. Intriguingly, Thomas notes that
many aspects of the criminal justice system have long been privatized.
Many states, for example, house one-third to two-thirds of their
interned juveniles in private facilities. Seen in this light,
opposition to private prisons is difficult to understand.
Thomas argues that the full benefits of privatization are threatened
by “governmentalization,” i.e., the tendency of contracting agencies to
require contractors to run things exactly as a government bureaucracy
would, only cheaper. In some cases, private prisons have even been
required to have the same menus as their government counterparts! The
real benefits of privatization come when private firms are allowed to
innovate to find new and better ways of doing things. Flexibility in
contract design, however, raises the possibility that private firms
will take advantage of the government. Addressing these issues may
require careful design of contracts and more attention paid to
monitoring outputs rather than inputs. Further diffusion of “best
practices,” such as performance incentives and on-site compliance
monitors that have developed in twenty years of contracting, can manage
these twin difficulties.
Privatization and Public Policy
Samuel Jan Brakel (Issac Ray Center) and Kimberly Gaylord
(DePaul University College of Law) survey the evidence on construction
cost, operating expenditure, quality and other factors and find strong
reasons to favor prison privatization in the United States. Brakel and
Gaylord also examine the moral and ethical arguments against private
prisons and find them deficient. Perhaps the most compelling evidence
that prison privatization works is that prisoners themselves have few
objections to private prisons.
However, Bruce Benson (Florida State University and The
Independent Institute) raises some objections to prison privatization,
even while accepting the findings of lower costs and higher quality.
When secondary effects are considered, Benson suggests, prison
privatization may be seen as a Faustian bargain resulting in a more
efficient way to punish people for victimless crimes or for breaking
laws that may be unjust. The Roman Empire’s private tax collectors, for
example, may have raised revenue efficiently, but it’s hard to see that
such efficiency benefited the populace. Thus, legal reform should
considered along side prison privatization.
Benson himself notes that public law enforcement bureaucracies have
been among the most powerful lobbyists for expanding the war on drugs,
which increases the demand for their services. The California
Correctional Peace Officers Association, for example, was a key funder
of California’s “three-strikes” ballot initiative and is today a key
opponent of limiting three strikes only to violent offenders. The union
also works to restrict drug policies that promote treatment over
imprisonment, Benson notes.
Owners of private prisons would also have an incentive to lobby for
more prisons, but there is a difference. The union has a virtual
monopoly on prison workers, so any increase in prisons benefits its
constituents. But even today there are multiple firms that run private
prisons; thus, a firm that lobbies to expand prisons in general (as
opposed to lobbying to expand its prisons) does more to benefit its
competitors than it does to benefit itself. Indeed, as the
private-prison industry grows larger, the incentive for any one firm to
lobby for general prison-expanding policies declines.
Conclusion
Although prison privatization has slowed somewhat during the
twenty-first century, its rapid progress during the 1990s -- and the
serious fiscal troubles experienced recently by the federal government
and many state governments -- suggests that the issues examined in Changing the Guard
make its release timely. Not only has the time for prison privatization
come, its relative infancy suggests that the number of private prisons
will increase, thus making the practice less controversial over time.
As editor Alexander Tabarrok puts it in the book’s Introduction: “At
present, private firms compete primarily with public bureaus -- which
is sort of like the repeated competition between the Harlem
Globetrotters and the Washington Generals. But to raise the level of
the industry truly, it is necessary that the best compete against the
best. Competition works better when all the competitors have strong
incentives to achieve, which means that privatization will be more
successful when a large share of the prison industry is privatized, and
competition between private firm and private firm is the norm.”
この本は前のポストとの関係で興味深い。Privatize Prisonは必要不可欠だろう。
しかしBruceBensonの指摘はもっともだ。”被害者なき犯罪”の”犯罪者”に対する投獄という手段は許されないとするべきである。そうなったとき、受刑者は激減し、生産性もそれ以上に低下する可能性はあるように思う。
2007年10月16日
Mechanism Design
http://blog.mises.org/archives/007306.asp
Alex Tabarrok tries to explain mechanism design in terms your grandmother would understand.
Tyler Cowen has his doubts about the practicality of their results.
Peter Boettke discusses the links between Hurwicz and Hayek and links to Co-Nobel Prize winner Roger Myerson's views on the connection between Hurwicz, Hayek, and Mises.
Barkley Rosser looks at the influence of the Committee Chair, Juergen Weibull, a game theorist, in the awarding of another prize for game theory so soon.
Rosser concludes:
"In any case, for those who are not aware of it, Hurwicz's approach to mechanism design looks an awful lot like an effort to figure out how to do central planning right."
As The New York Times noted:
"The prize winners’ groundbreaking work has been pivotal in assessing how institutions perform under such conditions [where markets supposedly work imperfectly], and in designing the best mechanism to make sure that goals, such as optimal social welfare or maximum private profit, are reached, the academy said. The winners’ work has helped determine whether government regulation may sometimes be necessary."
As Thomas DiLorenzo sees it the prize was awarded to three mathematicians who clearly do not understand the freshman-level idea that benefits and costs are subjective, and that human beings tend to place different subjective values on goods and services.
ノーベル平和賞と、経済学賞は、政治的な賞に過ぎない。
リンクの文献は後でゆっくりと読むことにしよう。
The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences 2007
Justin Ptak
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2007 jointly to Leonid Hurwicz, University of Minnesota, Eric S. Maskin, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and Roger B. Myerson, University of Chicago, "for having laid the foundations of mechanism design theory".Alex Tabarrok tries to explain mechanism design in terms your grandmother would understand.
Tyler Cowen has his doubts about the practicality of their results.
Peter Boettke discusses the links between Hurwicz and Hayek and links to Co-Nobel Prize winner Roger Myerson's views on the connection between Hurwicz, Hayek, and Mises.
Barkley Rosser looks at the influence of the Committee Chair, Juergen Weibull, a game theorist, in the awarding of another prize for game theory so soon.
Rosser concludes:
"In any case, for those who are not aware of it, Hurwicz's approach to mechanism design looks an awful lot like an effort to figure out how to do central planning right."
As The New York Times noted:
"The prize winners’ groundbreaking work has been pivotal in assessing how institutions perform under such conditions [where markets supposedly work imperfectly], and in designing the best mechanism to make sure that goals, such as optimal social welfare or maximum private profit, are reached, the academy said. The winners’ work has helped determine whether government regulation may sometimes be necessary."
As Thomas DiLorenzo sees it the prize was awarded to three mathematicians who clearly do not understand the freshman-level idea that benefits and costs are subjective, and that human beings tend to place different subjective values on goods and services.
ノーベル平和賞と、経済学賞は、政治的な賞に過ぎない。
リンクの文献は後でゆっくりと読むことにしよう。
2007年10月14日
Stop the movement
ロンボルグは、環境問題に対して比較的まともなことを言っているが、元々左翼であるため最終的には政府に環境問題をどうにかせよという結論になってしまっているようだ。
現代の反ーエコロジストは、武田邦彦氏にしても、途中まではなかなか鋭いが結論部でずっこける。
一方で炭素税の導入も、D.フリードマンが批判するようにナンセンスだ。これも政府に何とかしろというのと全く同じ発想である。
もっともマンキューが言っている炭素税導入のアイデアは、他の税をその分下げるという点がアイデアのポイントなのだが、単純に考えても全ての化石燃料使用を増税すれば、ほぼ全ての価格があがり、物価上昇が起こるだろう。
”環境問題”に対する最善の対処策は、政府が一切何もしないことにつきる。
地球環境は常にロングレンジでは変動しているが、これは単に自然現象であり”問題”ではないし、必ずしもHazardとはいえない。
環境問題とは杞憂問題に他ならず、現実におこってから対処するべきなのである。なぜならそのような"問題”は空が落ちてこないのと同様に決して起こらないからだ。
環境問題という犯罪的なデマの総元締めである国連は何とかして廃止しないと、ほんとに世界社会主義が実現してしまいそうだ。国連は環境危機のデマをあおることで「人類一家、皆兄弟」の世界政府となろうとでもしているのだろう。そしてその世界政府なるものは社会主義政府なのだ。
地球温暖化より世界が社会主義化する脅威の方がはるかに深刻である。
AdamSmithInstituteでのCool It : Bjorn Lomborgに対する書評を抜粋しておく。
Cool It : Bjorn Lomborg
http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/index.php/blog/individual/cool_it_bjorn_lomborg/
However, it's his suggestion for positive action that I take issue with.
He suggests that governments pledge to spend $25 billion a year on devising low or no carbon technologies.
Now I agree that the best solution to the whole thing is for us to invent such technologies, make them cheaper than current ones and Bob's your parental sibling of choice.
The foolish part is in asking governments to spend that money, in asking them to pick winners.
We've already seen what happens here with the biofuels and corn ethanol fiascos on both sides of the Atlantic.
We also know that a large part of the Green movement (who would, of course, be asked to help direct this sort of research program) aren't so much interested in reducing emissions as in abolishing capitalism or imposing a Morrisonian rural socialism.
It just doesn't seem sensible to rely upon a governmental process, one we know doesn't work very well, to do such a thing.
But then perhaps Lomborg is actually correct when he claims to be a bit of a lefty.
Only someone on the left would believe that governments are capable of running such a program with even the minimum of the necessary efficiency.
| 2007年10月09日
Technology Schedule
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2007/10/malthusian_myop.html
Intuitively, this make sense: When more people share a pie, each slice gets thinner. And in the short-run, this Malthusian assumption is clearly correct. When a couple has its first child, the family's per-capita income plummets by one-third. Clark documents, similarly, that when repeated plagues cut England's population in half, living standards for the survivors roughly doubled.
1. More people increase both the supply and demand for new ideas.
2. More people make it possible to exploit economies of scale - including scale economies of transportation and communication.
3. Since human diversity rises with human population, more people allow for efficiency gains from specialization and trade.
These effects could easily suffice to overpower the Malthusian diminishing marginal returns effect, so the right diagram looks like:
econlogのBryan Caplanの記事から抜粋した。
マルサスの人口論に関する誰かとの議論から発展して、このSimon/Kremer modelのグラフを載せている。
要するに、人口が増えることで、新しいアイデアに対する需要が増え、規模の経済が可能となり、技能の専門化などが可能になることで、テクノロジーが発展する。
こういったlong-termの効果が大きいために、マルサスモデルのように人口が増えることはパイの取り分が減ることにならない。むしろ増えるのである。
このTechnology scheduleはある意味で、自生的秩序でありevolutionだろう。
| 2007年10月03日
Poincare conjecture
昨日、NHKでポアンカレ予想の特集をやっていた。
ポアンカレ予想を巡る数学者の１００年に及ぶ挑戦の経緯がなかなか分かりやすく説明されていた。
ペレルマンというロシアの天才がサーストン幾何化予想を解決し、その系としてポアンカレ予想を解いてしまったそうだが、従来のトポロジーからのアプローチではなく、微分幾何を用い、RicciFlowという物理学的な手法を用いて解いたということまで説明していた。
サーストンやスメールなどもテレビに出てきてコメントをしていた。
だが、ペレルマンはアポをとろうとするが一切拒否され出てこなかった。
もとよりフィールズ賞もいらんと言う位の人だから、テレビの取材などに応じるはずがない。
こういう数学の天才というのは、ある意味、超人的な能力の持ち主であるわけだが、ペレルマンはポアンカレ予想の解決に打ち込む中で、人間が変わってしまったそうだ。
今は世捨て人のように暮らしているらしいが、やはり数学には人類のエピステーメーとしての精神的な重さのようなものがあるのかもしれない。
ポアンカレ予想を巡る数学者の１００年に及ぶ挑戦の経緯がなかなか分かりやすく説明されていた。
ペレルマンというロシアの天才がサーストン幾何化予想を解決し、その系としてポアンカレ予想を解いてしまったそうだが、従来のトポロジーからのアプローチではなく、微分幾何を用い、RicciFlowという物理学的な手法を用いて解いたということまで説明していた。
サーストンやスメールなどもテレビに出てきてコメントをしていた。
だが、ペレルマンはアポをとろうとするが一切拒否され出てこなかった。
もとよりフィールズ賞もいらんと言う位の人だから、テレビの取材などに応じるはずがない。
こういう数学の天才というのは、ある意味、超人的な能力の持ち主であるわけだが、ペレルマンはポアンカレ予想の解決に打ち込む中で、人間が変わってしまったそうだ。
今は世捨て人のように暮らしているらしいが、やはり数学には人類のエピステーメーとしての精神的な重さのようなものがあるのかもしれない。
