货币幻觉

货币幻觉 关于货币问的一点稍微偏离中心的看法。 透过政治有色眼镜看世界 如果有人能忍受我这些关于政治的散漫言论的话，我的话题最终还是会转到货币政策上。我会尽力证明我聪明的对手们正在把这个真实的世界与他们想要的世界混为一谈，以混淆视听。 1．“我要感谢主今天带领我们走向胜利。” 你们这些知识分子当中很多人都曾经听一个运动员讲过这样的话，然后你会不屑道“好像上帝会在乎哪个队赢得比赛一样，真是个愚蠢的运动员！”当然你是永远不会犯这样的错吧？那么我现在就来证明你（我）将会一次又一次地犯完全一样的错误。 运动员所犯的错误（如果这算是错误的话）就在于假设开辟这个宇宙的瞎了眼的力量或者说创造这个宇宙的聪明师这样做是为了满足这个特殊运动员的愿望。我会证明大多数人都是这样想的，也就是认为这个世界是遵照他们的意愿偏好构建的，而非按照隔壁那些讨人厌的吹牛大王的愿望。 考虑一下下面几条吧： 1．科学证据强有力地明由食品上的杀虫剂，饮用水里的石棉引起的对环境卫生产生的恐慌被很大程度上过分渲染了。好莱坞那一整套灾难电影里的环境灾害都是莫须有的。 2．科学证据强有力地表明人类由猿进化而来。 3．科学证据强有力地表明男人和女人在行为上的差异一定程度上是天生的。 4．科学证据强有力地表明全球变暖的罪魁祸首是人类排放的二氧化碳废弃物。 为了避免争论，我先声明我毫无兴趣辩论这些科学观点是否正确。我也没有这些方面的专业知识。但是这里有些东西是我坚决主张的，那就是某些人并不以客观证据决定是否相信这些论断，而是以他们所希望的构造这个世界的方式来决定。则保守党人更有可能相信第一条和第三条，而自由党人更愿意相信第二条和第四条。的确，引用罗宾·汉森的话来说，只有少部分人而非大多数能够“克服偏见”，我不知道是否有人能完全避免这个问题。  政治使人各方面都变的迟钝，愚蠢运动员的问题只是一个开端。 2．你错了而且你还很邪恶。 就算是才华横溢的人也总是会犯这种错误。下面是鲁格曼评价那些邪恶的保守党人的一段话： “事实就是里根派也就是一群乌合之众. 回溯历史去寻找美国的保守知性主义黄金时代, 回溯再回溯，最终你会跟50年代称黑人还没有达到参加选举的标准的威廉·巴克利和巴西文化的救世主佛朗哥撞上。” 我不知道他对巴克利观点的描述是否正确，我也没有兴趣去维护巴克利。但是鲁格曼不是想说巴克利是愚蠢的（没有人真的相信这一点），他是想证明巴克利是邪恶的，所以保守主义在道德上已经沦丧了。我的确对现代保守主义有诸多意见，但是在鲁格曼的智力竞争当中所能用到的所有论据里他选了一个最糟的。 在二十世纪中期那段漫长的可耻的时期那些自由主义者对几个历史上最为残暴的专制统治者的颂扬都被很好地记录了下来，整本整本的都是以此为主题。而鲁格曼所能想到的东西就只有弗朗西斯科·佛朗哥吗？聪明如鲁格曼怎么会掉进这么个陷阱里？  我们总是直觉地相信我们所不认同的最坏的那部分。 3．是轮廓还是花瓶？ 对，是有一些激不起热情的温和中庸派愿意妥协，比如：缅因州的参议员苏珊.柯林斯或者印地安那州的参议员埃文.贝赫。但是多数政客是坚定地抱有自己的看法的。例如希拉里·克林顿，她强烈支持03年伊拉克战争，支持爱国者法案，支持对美国的吸毒人口进行全国大扫荡，这场战争已经导致五十万无辜的美国人入狱，其中绝大部分为美国黑人（如果你是个自由主义者，想想将关塔那摩乘以一千）我还可以列举更多。对了，跟加利福尼亚小姐一样，她也反对同性婚姻。现在让我们来看看截取自约翰·斯托塞尔接受真理杂志采访时所说的几段话： 真理：如果你回顾一下这些年你所担任的职位，有很多是会让保守主义者讨厌而让自由主义者喜欢你的。你曾经公然抗议公司义务福利制，反对利用垃圾科学的贪婪不法商贩，同性恋者的权益和言论自由。但是看起来你却总是广受保守主义者的喜爱而遭到了自由主义者的广泛憎恶，这是为什么呢？ 斯托塞尔：我不能肯定，但是你绝对是对的。曾经在纽约有个人走过来跟我说：“你是约翰·斯托塞尔吧？我希望你死得越早越好！”他是一个法律援助律师。因为我是一个拥护商业的消费者记者所以会遭到反对商业的左翼人士的憎恨。我不清楚，我的意思是虽然我主张人工流产合法，反对伊拉克战争，还希望毒品和卖淫合法化，但是保守主义者邀请我去参加他们的会议，还会长时间地起立鼓掌欢迎我。有些时候，不是经常，他们普遍喜欢我所讲的。我甚至提到过这一点，我一个自由主义者居然是他们能邀请来参加会议的最亲近的人，这表示身陷主流媒体中的保守主义者们何其可悲！ 你或许曾经看过轮廓/花瓶的错觉效果。你看见了其中一个但不是两个都能看见。我第一次听见有人称克里斯托弗·希钦斯为右翼分子，我的下巴都快掉下来了。好像人们只会认为坚持不同看法的人不是自由主义者就是保守主义者，而且如果关于某个问题的看法发生一丁点改变都能让“轮廓翻转”。什么希拉里·克林顿被自由主义者所喜爱，斯托塞尔被憎恶，这些都是毫无意义的。对，我的确是对一些经济管理问题持保守态度，但是这些又哪里比的上伊拉克战争和美国吸毒人口大扫荡重要？    一旦人们把决定把某人划到“我们和他们”当中，这个“他们”就会被妖魔化。如果一些部落把与其邻近的另一些部落视做“坏人”，你会认为部落社会在“倒退”吗？同样，知识分子们又何必将邻近意识形态的拥护者视为邪恶？只是这样你不会认为我在将我自己排除在外，那么我可以给你举一个最近的例子，对于一些好莱坞式作风的人将那些在麦卡锡时代被记入黑名单的烈士偶像化的行为我常常感到愤怒，他们所做的就好像失去几个电影创作的工作机会能等同于那几百万人因为他们所支持的政策所遭受的饥饿一样。所以当我听说他们现在正在把曾经资助加利福尼亚反同性婚姻提案的电影产商那群假冒者列入黑名单时我最初的反应是欢喜。但是事实证明我的反应错了，说起来真理杂志给我灌输了一些道理： “50年代的政治迫害极大地毁坏了反共产主义，同性婚姻事业（2000年的另一份婚姻限制提案所取的更为广泛的胜利已经让同性婚姻开始得到认同）也可能会遭受来自8号提案黑名单的附带损害， 但是那些是出于战略上的而非道德上的考虑。一个敢于动用国家力量来阻挠他人的家庭幸福（或者，同样的，以国际工人的团结的名义叫嚣的人）最好是愿意付出失去工作机会和面对因他的主张而疏远的人们的代价。黑名单缔造者和黑名单在列者应该排除在外而且应该感到自豪。” 倘若只有最后一点对作者提姆·卡瓦诺造成了伤害的话，读完全篇文章，我不知道我以后还会不会因为某人的政治观点而将其列入黑名单，政府也不应该这样做。但是这篇文章是具有说服力的。而且它告诉我除非有些时候反其道而行之那么我所做出的政治方面的评价就不能算是正确的。 如果这个宇宙是以连本杰里的覆盖着新鲜木莓子的冰淇淋都是健康的这种标准来建造的话，那该有多好！但是事实不是如此。我也很希望货币供给会不可避免地导致通货膨胀这种事是真的，但是事实并非如此。我所有的同情都是伴随着通货膨胀的扩散的。我有着同所有其他芝加哥/奥地利/支持供应经济学政策/加图派/真理派/支持自由论的对降低货币价值的政策持怀疑态度的人同样的直觉。我认为引起通货膨胀的原因是印制过量的货币。 相比之下，我读保罗·克鲁格曼写的纽约时报专栏时常常会觉得恼火，所以当他做出我们不会经历高度通货膨胀的预测时，什么能比他的论断是错的更让我欢喜呢？但是想去相信某件事和有一个好的理由去相信某件事是不一样的。事实就是克鲁格曼是对的，而我的右翼同志们很多都错了，危机不是通货膨胀太多而是太少。 我们该怎么避免我们的判断被我们的政治激情歪曲呢？人均国内生产总值期货市场怎么样？当货币岌岌可危时，人们会想得更清楚，或者说是会泄露他们的真实想法。贾斯汀·沃尔弗斯和罗宾·汉森在这方面已经进行了十分全面的论述，我的同事亚伦·杰克逊和我将这一点应用在了货币政策期货市场上。我注意到很多人都告诉我说他们真的很担心通货膨胀，但是当我问他们都投资了哪些东西时，他们给了我一些诸如股票这种会在高度通货膨胀时期会受到严重影响的例子，而不是那些防止通货膨胀的保护措施，比如技术情报处理系统。所以他们真的害怕通货膨胀吗？他们的言行是出自他们真实的想法吗？（全面披露：我的投资策略并不总是遵循我的有效市场假说赞成论。） The Money Illusion A slightly off-center perspective on monetary problems. Looking at the world through politically-colored glasses I will eventually get to monetary policy, if anyone can last through my wandering political observations.  I am going to try to show that some of my intellectual opponents are confusing the world as it is with the world as they want it to be. 1.  “I’d like to thank the Lord for leading my team to victory today.” How many of you intellectuals have heard an athlete say something like that and said to yourself: “what a dumb jock, as if God cares which team wins.”  You’d never make that mistake, would you?  Well I am going to try to show that you (and I) would make exactly that mistake over and over again. The athlete’s mistake (if it is a mistake) is to assume that the blind force that created the universe and the laws of nature, or the intelligent designer who created the universe, did so in a way to favor that particular athlete’s wishes.  I’m going to argue that most people think that way, that is, most people think the universe was created in such a way as to conform to their preferences, rather than those of the annoying blowhard in the office cubicle next door.  Consider the following: 1.  Scientific evidence strongly suggests that most environmental health scares relating to pesticides on food or asbestos in drinking water are vastly overblown.  There are entire Hollywood films based on environmental tragedies that never happened. 2.  Scientific evidence strongly suggests that humans evolved from apes. 3.  Scientific evidence strongly suggests that behavioral differences between men and women are partly innate. 4.  Scientific evidence strongly suggests that human CO2 emissions are making the climate warmer. Just to head off any arguments, I have zero interest in debating whether these scientific views are correct.  Nor do I have any useful knowledge in these areas.  But here’s something I will strongly argue.  Whether someone believes these assertions usually has little to do with the objective evidence, and a lot to do with the way they wish the world was structured.  Thus conservatives are much more likely to believe 1 and 3, whereas liberals are much more likely to believe 2 and 4.  Yes, a few people are capable of “overcoming bias” to use Robin Hanson’s term, but not many, and I don’t know whether anyone can completely avoid this problem. Politics makes people stupid in all sorts of ways, and the dumb jock problem is only the beginning. 2.  “You are wrong, and by the way you are also evil.” Even brilliant people make this mistake all the time.  Here’s Krugman on those evil conservatives: And the truth is that the Reaganauts were a pretty grotesque bunch too. Look for the golden age of conservative intellectualism in America, and you keep going back, and back, and back — and eventually you run up against William Buckley in the 1950s declaring that blacks weren’t advanced enough to vote, and that Franco was the savior of Spanish civilization. I have no idea whether he correctly characterized Buckley’s views, and have no interest in defending Buckley.  But Krugman isn’t really trying to show William F. Buckley was stupid (no one really believes that), he is trying to show that Buckley was evil.  And therefore that conservatism is morally bankrupt.  I do have a lot of problems with modern conservatism, but Krugman picked the worst argument he could have possibly used in his intellectual battle.  The long despicable history of mid-20th century liberals praising some of history’s most bloodthirsty tyrants is now very well documented.  Whole books have been written on the subject.  And all Krugman can come up with is Francisco Franco?  How could a brilliant guy like Krugman fall into to this trap?  Politics makes us stupid, including me.  We instinctively believe the worst about those with whom we disagree. 3.  Is it a profile or a vase? Yes, there are some bland moderates who like to compromise and don’t stir strong passions.  Examples might be someone like Susan Collins of Maine or Evan Bayh of Indiana.  But most politicians are polarizing figures.  Take Hillary Clinton.  Strong supporter of the 2003 Iraq War.  Supporter of the Patriot Act.  Supporter of our nation’s war on drug-using Americans, which has imprisoned 500,000 innocent Americans, disproportionately African- Americans.  (If you’re a liberal, think Guantanamo times 1000.)  And I could go on and on.  Oh yes, and like Miss California she also opposes gay marriage.  Now consider the following from an interview of John Stossel in Reason: reason: If you look at the positions you’ve taken over the years, there’s a lot for conservatives to dislike about you and a lot for liberals to love. You’ve spoken out against corporate welfare, against greedy peddlers of junk science and medicine ripping people off, in favor of legalizing drugs, gay rights, and free speech. Yet it seems almost always that you’re widely adored by conservatives and widely scorned by liberals. Why is that? Stossel: I’m not sure, but you’re absolutely right. Somebody came up to me in New York and said, “Are you John Stossel?…I hope you die soon.” He was a legal aid lawyer. There is this real hatred on the left because I’m a consumer reporter defending business, and they just so hate business. I don’t know. I mean, I’m prochoice. I was against the war in Iraq. I think homosexuality is just fine. I want drugs legal and prostitution legal. Yet conservatives invite me to their conferences and give me standing ovations. Sometimes. Not always, but they generally like what I have to say. I even mention some of that, and it shows how pathetic it is for conservatives in the mainstream media that I, a libertarian, am the closest thing that they have to invite to a conference. You may have seen the profiles/vase optical illusion.  You see one or the other but not both.  The first time I heard Christopher Hitchens referred to as a “right winger” my jaw dropped.  It seems like people can only see these highly polarizing figures as liberal or conservative—and the profile can “flip” with just a change in views on a single issue.  It makes absolutely no sense that Hillary Clinton is loved by liberals and Stossel is hated (and vice versa.)  Yes, there are some economic regulation issues where he is more conservative.  But can anyone seriously suggest those issues are more important that the war in Iraq and the war on drug-using Americans? Once people decide where to put someone in an “us and them” sense, the other side is demonized.  Do you regard tribal societies as “backward” if they view neighboring tribes as “bad guys?”  How is that different from intellectuals who view neighboring ideologues as evil? Just so you don’t think I am excluding myself, I’ll give you a recent example.  I have always been annoyed by Hollywood types who idolize those martyrs blacklisted during the McCarthy era, as if losing a few screenwriting jobs was equivalent to the starvation of millions that resulted from the policies they supported.  So my initial reaction was glee when I heard that they were now trying to blacklist film industry people who had contributed money to the anti-gay marriage proposition in California.  What a bunch of phonies!  But that doesn’t make my initial gut reaction right, and Reason magazine knocked some, well, reason into my head: Anti-communism was gravely damaged by the ’50s witch hunts, and the cause of gay marriage (which has been gaining acceptance in California since the much wider victory of another marriage-restrictive proposition in 2000) may suffer collateral damage from the Prop. 8 blacklist. But those are strategic, not moral, concerns. A person agitating to use the power of the state to interfere with the domestic happiness of others (or, for that matter, an artist propagandizing on behalf of international worker solidarity) had better be willing to pay the price in lost work opportunities—and to face the people his opinions alienate. Blacklisters and blacklistees alike should be out and proud. BTW, providing only the last bit does a disservice to the author, Tim Cavanaugh.  Read the whole article.  I doubt that I would ever blacklist someone for their political views, nor should the government do so.  But the article is persuasive.  And this tells me that I am not making good political judgments unless I sometimes adopt positions where every bone in my body says go the other way.  Which finally brings me to monetary policy. I’d love for the universe to be constructed in such a way that a bowl of Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey ice cream topped with fresh raspberries was healthy.  But it is not.  And I’d love for it to be true that big increases in the money supply inevitably cause inflation, but it is not true.  All my sympathy is with inflation hawks.  I have the same instincts as all the other Chicago/Austrian/supply-sider/Cato/Reason/libertarian people on the right who are skeptical of policies that debase the currency.  Milton Friedman is my favorite economist.  I think that inflation is caused by printing too much money. In contrast, I am often annoyed when I read NYT columns by Paul Krugman.  So I would like nothing more than for him to be wrong in his prediction that we won’t have high inflation.  But wanting to believe something is not the same as having a good reason to believe it.  And the fact is that Krugman is right, and many of my fellow right-wingers are wrong, the danger is not too much inflation, but too little. How do we avoid having political passions distort our judgment?  How about NGDP futures markets?  When money is at stake people tend to think much more clearly; or perhaps reveal their true beliefs.  Justin Wolfers and Robin Hanson have written extensively on this topic, and my colleague Aaron Jackson and I applied the idea to monetary policy futures markets.  I’ve noticed lots of people tell me they are really worried about inflation, and yet when I ask them what they have invested in they give me examples (like stocks) that do horribly during periods of high inflation, not inflation hedges like TIPS.  So do they really fear inflation?  Is your true belief what you say or how you act?  [Full disclosure: My investment strategy doesn't always follow my pro-EMH views.]