Rome’s Economic Suicide with Lawrence Reed and Marc Hyden

February 14, 2016 Garrett M. Petersen 1 Comment

Ancient Rome went from a thriving civilization to a dystopia before its eventual collapse. My guests today explain how that happened. Lawrence Reed and Marc Hyden co-authored “The Slow-Motion Financial Suicide of the Roman Empire.” Lawrence is the President of the Foundation for Economic Education, and Marc is a political activist and amateur Roman historian.

Many accounts of the fall of Rome focus on military problems and the barbarian invasions. However, the Empire was in decline long before the barbarians showed up to finish it off. The barbarians didn’t kill the Roman Empire; the Roman Empire committed suicide. There were six important factors in the Empire’s decline:

1. Political violence became normalized.

The populist reformer Tiberius Gracchus redistributed public farmland to Roman citizens. His reforms angered the Senate, and his political enemies clubbed him to death in 133 BCE. This was the first open political assassination in Rome in nearly four centuries, but it wouldn’t be the last. Suddenly, it became acceptable for powerful Romans to kill their political enemies, and this would spell doom for Rome’s republican government.

2. The Roman state gave ever-increasing amounts of free food and entertainment to the masses.

Despite having killed Tiberius Gracchus, the senate did not repeal his reforms in an effort to assuage the masses. Tiberius’ brother Gaius Gracchus would take his brother’s position and further his reforms, also introducing a system of subsidized grain for the masses. When Gaius also succumbed to political violence, most of his reforms died with him, but not the grain dole. The dole was retained and expanded, proving a huge burden on the Roman state. Successive generations of Roman leaders would buy political popularity with panem et circenses (bread and circuses). The Roman people came to value the dole over all other values. When the emperor Caligula was assassinated, there was a brief opportunity to restore the Republic, but the people preferred the rule of strong men who could provide them with ever more panem et circenses.

3. Roman armies became personally loyal to their generals rather than being loyal to the Roman state or the people. Continue reading Rome’s Economic Suicide with Lawrence Reed and Marc Hyden →

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Economics, Finance, News, Politics, Predictions, Research

Predictions for 2016

January 26, 2016 Garrett M. Petersen

This year I will be making a series of predictions about the future, and assigning each of them a probability. I was inspired to do so by Scott Alexander and Phillip Tetlock. Too many commentators make vague predictions about future events and then declare victory however things turn out. So, in the interest of holding myself to a higher standard than a fortune cookie or horoscope, here are my predictions for 2016:

World Events

Canadian year-over-year CPI growth will be higher than it was in December 2015: 90%
Canadian year-over-year CPI growth will be at least 2.0%: 60%
American year-over-year CPI growth will stay below 1.0%: 60%
American year-over-year CPI growth will stay below 2.0%: 80%
Unemployment in the US will be lower than it was in December 2015: 60%
Unemployment in Canada will be lower than it was in December 2015: 60%
Canadian year-over-year real GDP growth will be lower in 2016 than in 2015: 70%
American year-over-year real GDP growth will be lower in 2016 than in 2015: 60%
Iranian year-over-year real GDP growth will be higher in 2016 than it was in 2015: 80%
The S&P 500 will end 2016 lower than it started: 60% (note that I am making this prediction on January 26th, and it has already fallen since January 1st)
The price of crude oil will be above $35 USD at the end of 2016: 70%
The price of crude oil will be above $30 USD at the end of 2016: 90%
The price of Bitcoin will be above $400 USD at the end of 2016: 70%
The Canadian Federal Government will not decriminalize marijuana: 90%
The US Federal Government will not decriminalize marijuana: 99%
At least one more US State will decriminalize adult use and cultivation of marijuana: 60%
Donald Trump will not win the Republican nomination: 60%
Conditional on Trump winning the nomination, voter turnout as a percentage of the voting age population will be higher than it was in the 2012 presidential election: 90%
Conditional on Trump losing the nomination, voter turnout as a percentage of the voting age population will be lower than it was in the 2012 presidential election: 60%
Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee: 80%
Hillary Clinton will be elected President: 60%
ISIS will hold less territory than it did at the beginning of 2016: 90%
ISIS will lose Raqqa: 60%
The Force Awakens’ worldwide gross will exceed that of Titanic: 80%
The Force Awakens’ worldwide gross will not exceed that of Avatar: 80%
No 2016 movie will gross more than The Force Awakens: 90%
Leonardo DiCaprio will finally win an Oscar: 90%

Continue reading Predictions for 2016 →

Medicine, News

New Study Finds Strong Evidence of Male-Female Brain Differences

December 1, 2015 Garrett M. Petersen 45 Comments

Perhaps you’ve heard about a precocious study making the rounds about the differences between male and female brains. Perhaps you’ve noticed it reported under headlines like, “Stereotypically ‘male and female brains’ aren’t real, say scientists” or “Brains aren’t actually ‘male’ or ‘female,’ new study suggests” or “Scans prove there’s no such thing as a ‘male’ or ‘female’ brain” or “Male brain vs. female brain? Research says they’re unisex” or “There Is No Difference Between Male and Female Brains, Study Finds” or “There’s no such thing as a ‘male brain’ or ‘female brain,’ and scientists have the scans to prove it” or “Men are from Mars….and so are women! Scans reveal there is NO overall difference between the brains of the sexes” or “A welcome blow to the myth of distinct male and female brains.”

I could go on, but I won’t. Given all these headlines, it might surprise you that the study all these journalists are reporting on actually finds strong evidence of differences between male and female brains. The study is “Sex beyond the genitalia: The human brain mosaic” by Daphna Joel et al. (and that’s a big et al!). It’s sadly behind a paywall, but here’s its abstract in full:

Whereas a categorical difference in the genitals has always been acknowledged, the question of how far these categories extend into human biology is still not resolved. Documented sex/gender differences in the brain are often taken as support of a sexually dimorphic view of human brains (“female brain” or “male brain”). However, such a distinction would be possible only if sex/gender differences in brain features were highly dimorphic (i.e., little overlap between the forms of these features in males and females) and internally consistent (i.e., a brain has only “male” or only “female” features). Here, analysis of MRIs of more than 1,400 human brains from four datasets reveals extensive overlap between the distributions of females and males for all gray matter, white matter, and connections assessed. Moreover, analyses of internal consistency reveal that brains with features that are consistently at one end of the “maleness-femaleness” continuum are rare. Rather, most brains are comprised of unique “mosaics” of features, some more common in females compared with males, some more common in males compared with females, and some common in both females and males. Our findings are robust across sample, age, type of MRI, and method of analysis. These findings are corroborated by a similar analysis of personality traits, attitudes, interests, and behaviors of more than 5,500 individuals, which reveals that internal consistency is extremely rare. Our study demonstrates that, although there are sex/gender differences in the brain, human brains do not belong to one of two distinct categories: male brain/female brain.

Continue reading New Study Finds Strong Evidence of Male-Female Brain Differences →

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