Economist Writing Every Day

Why Eliminate Water Subsidies when we could Reform Our Entire Society?

October 3, 2020October 3, 2020Zachary BartschLeave a comment

I love the Gastropod podcast. The hosts do a great job of trying to explain the historical debates concerning food in a charitable and careful manner. Their guests also tend to be very careful.

But the guest from the September 15^th, 2020 episode about beef in the US was not nearly so careful. It’s a curse, really, to listen to a great podcast, only to have a portion of an episode ruined because a guest was allowed to spout on a topic outside of their expertise.

John Specht, a history professor at Notre Dame, committed such an offense that irked the heck out of me:

“Any reform is likely to make beef more expensive. So what that means is, I think, to avoid a charge of elitism, we have to recognize that changing how we produce our food has to happen in concert with building a more just society. We need to think of ways to make people better able to afford better-produced food. And we can’t just focus on one facet of that story. We have to think holistically about that. And what that means is that this is an even bigger challenge of what already was a big challenge. But it’s also perhaps even more powerful and even more important.”

Let me first say that I have no doubts concerning Dr. Specht’s knowledge concerning the history of beef in the US. If it’s like the rest of his Gastropod interview, I look forward to reading his book and I suspect that it is stellar. But the above quote has nothing to do with history and everything to do economics, public choice, and political economy. The above quote is why I can’t take seriously many people’s claims about what the ‘good’ is and how to achieve it.

Any regulation or legislation that introduces additional requirements for beef producers will, almost certainly, increase production costs. I’m not sure what a ‘just society’ means to Dr. Specht, but I’m sure that it’s not an objective thing (knowable or not) that aids in analysis.
“We need to think of ways to make people better able to afford better-produced food.” Luckily *we* don’t need to think of that. We don’t have the local knowledge of the beef market, nor the potential markets that beef-processing laborers face as alternatives (it’s different for everyone). The age-old, classical econ answer for improving people’s real incomes is to increase their productivity. Even if the labor supply for beef processing is perfectly elastic, and all increases in productivity accrue to the firm, the result of constant wages is a *partial* equilibrium conclusion. In general equilibrium, beef processing skills are probably partial substitutes for some other labor activity. This means that skilled employees can move to other sectors, employers, and industries. *We* don’t have much say aside from policy that makes productive innovation and skill accumulation easier.

Dr. Specht makes the problem out to be worse than it is and the solution to be more difficult than it is. We don’t need to reform an entire social and economic system. We don’t need a new political system that somehow, against all incentives, reflects compassion for beef processing laborers. That’s more than government can achieve.

Government *can* get out of the way. It can ease pathways to working legally in the US, which would reduce the labor abuses in which beef firms can indulge. Legal employment alternatives increases the opportunity cost of laborers. Government can stop subsidizing cattle hydration through water subsidies to ranchers. Reducing the number of cattle, and demand for meat processing laborers would cause fewer of these workers to be employed in what many consider an unpleasant job. With perfectly elastic labor supply, there is no decrease in wages. In general equilibrium, the decline in wages is small if there are many other firms that would demand the unemployed manual labor. Further, the decline in the quantity of beef produced would make the marginal carcasses more valuable. Employers will likely desire more skilled and better-compensated labor to carve the more valuable inputs. Importantly, the better compensation comes, not from a re-orientation of societal values, rather, from the higher opportunity cost enjoyed by labor that is more skilled.

But removing subsidies and permitting more foreign-born workers aren’t the reforms that are proposed by the likes of do-gooders. Do-gooders want to feel responsible for their good. It’s not enough for them to get out of the way – no one receives praise for permitting others to engage in hard work. Typically, it’s the hard-workers who get that credit. Do-gooders mistake proactivity with good intentions. The result is a desire to employ government in activities that are doomed to failure due to imperfect design and adverse incentives. The incentives provided by markets are inadequate – not for firms, but for the people who desire a prominent role as caring managers.

Experience at a lower price

October 2, 2020nortonnole2 Comments

In an earlier post, I discussed the idea that memorable and persuasive arguments have the force of logic, credibility, and emotional appeal. Economists who stink at emotional appeal do so to their own detriment. One strategy to make an emotional appeal is to use the power of beauty to promote a sense of wonder and awe (see here). In this post, I discuss the use of experience in the classroom.

This idea really hit home with me in an EconTalk podcast with Milton Friedman. In that episode, Friedman suggested that public appetite for price controls was low — not because economists educated the public on their dangers — but because people still remembered the long waiting lines for gasoline. Once those memories faded, or the people who experienced those lines died, there would be a renewed desire for price controls.

Gas Lines Evoke Memories Of Oil Crises In The 1970s : The Picture Show : NPR

Experience is important. But, the gas lines were a costly way to learn that lesson, especially if the lesson needs to be re-learned in every generation. How can we give students experience at a lower price? We can tell them stories from experiences around the world. I am in favor! I love case studies and their thick descriptions. At some point I will blog about my favorite stories to tell. But, for this post, let me propose the widespread use of classroom experiments.

The basic idea of a classroom experiment is to embed students inside an economic environment and give them a goal to maximize. For example, in an experiment on supply and demand students are embedded in a market institution and serve as either a buyer or seller. Their goal is to buy something at a low price or sell at a high price. These experiments can be run either with paper-and-pencil or electronically.

Talking Through the Results: Competitive Market Game

To show how these experiments can result in emotional appeal, let me recount a story. In a unit on price controls, I had students participate in a market without price controls followed by a market with a price ceiling. Back when I taught the Economics of Compassion class at FSU — specifically to the Social Justice Living Learning Community — I remember the following (quoted from here):

“The market without a price control demonstrated smooth convergence to the equilibrium prediction. The double auction with the price ceiling was chaos. Once the frenetic burst of trades stopped, buyers started yelling at sellers, “Post some asks!” and “Why aren’t you selling anything? We’re posting bids, why aren’t you doing anything?” The sellers of course shot back, “If we sell [at the max price] we will lose money!” It was chaos! I remembered that visceral reaction, the frustration, and the silence as all students waited with no trades happening … tick-tock, tick-tock, until the clock timed out. They felt the shortage. Students would stop me on campus (sometimes years later) saying they remembered playing that game.”

Experiments enhance credibility through engaging students in theory testing. But, to close I want to emphasize that experiments also help provoke visceral reactions and audible sighs. Experiments can help provide experiential punch in different institutional contexts at a low price. All of that connects students to the material in a way our logic and credibility alone cannot do.

Bart Wilson on “The Property Species: Mine, Yours, and the Human Mind”

October 1, 2020SantiLeave a comment

As part of the spectacular lineup of seminars this semester at the USFQ School of Economics, we had the honor hosting the amazing Bart Wilson from Chapman University yesterday to present his book “The Property Species: Mine, Yours, and the Human Mind”. It was a very interesting talk and it definitely made me think differently about the traditional “bundle of rights” conception of property rights. One of the major perks of the switch to virtual conferences due to the pandemic, is having great international speakers (mostly US and UK based) present in our seminar.

The presentation made me rethink a small experiment (more a classroom demostration really) about the emergence of property rights I do with my intro students each semester. I can’t tell about the experiment just yet, just in case one of my students is reading this, because we are doing it in class today. You’ll have to wati until my next post.

You can watch the zoom presentation via Facebook Live (and like the USFQ School of Economics page in the process). Link: htps://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=626917664660173

OK, Millennial?

September 30, 2020September 29, 2020Jeremy Horpedahl1 Comment

How do young people fare when it comes to household wealth? The recently released Survey of Consumer Finances from the Federal Reserve provides some insights. One major takeaway: the much-maligned Millennials are doing pretty good! Ernie Tedeschi created this informative chart on Twitter:

Looking at household net worth at roughly the same age, Millennials today have roughly the same household wealth as Boomers did in the past. And both of these generations beat the generation between them, Gen X, as well as the “microgeneration” creatively labeled Oregon Trail.

And it’s something of a running joke on Twitter, but I must add: Yes! It’s adjusted for inflation!

Part of this may be driven by the increase in dual-income households. Certainly that matters. While wealth data by number of earners is harder to track down, income data is more readily available. What if we look at single-income households? Millennials are still in the lead! (Once again, the chart comes from Ernie Tedeschi.)

And before you ask: Yes! It’s adjusted for inflation!

None of this means that Millennials don’t face challenges, including financial ones. This data is current through 2019, so 2020 will almost certainly make these numbers look worse, for a time. But all things considered and anecdotes aside, the kids today seem to be as well or better than past generations.

(Oh, and before you ask: Yes! It’s adjusted for housing, medical, and education costs! In fact, these three factors make up half or more of most inflation adjustment indices.)

C. S. Lewis on the Medieval Mind

September 29, 2020May 14, 2023Scott Buchanan1 Comment

I recently read C. S. Lewis’ The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature for a Zoom reading club at Samford University. It is based on his course lectures given at Oxford. I had expected a somewhat boring discussion of one obscure manuscript after another. But the book went in a different, highly engaging direction.

The Medieval Model

Lewis spends much of his time in describing the general mindset and methodology of the medieval writers, what Lewis terms their “Model”, to give us the necessary background for understanding and appreciating medieval literature. This helped me to better understand how people were thinking back in the Middle Ages (c. 500-1500 A.D.). Obviously, the particulars of their model of the universe were incorrect. But having a comprehensive model of reality which worked at the time helped to ground them, so they did not experience the sort of alienation which characterizes our age.

Medieval and early Renaissance authors did not generally just make things up. They very much relied on whatever Greek and Roman texts they had from pre-Middle Ages or early Middle Ages, which included a mix of philosophical/scientific (e.g. Platonic, Aristotelean, neo-Platonic), historical, and mythological treatises. In the medieval model of the universe (which was pieced together from readings of pre-500 A.D. authors), things below the orbit of the moon were contingent and corruptible and somewhat unpredictable. This was the realm of which we would call “nature”.

From the moon upward, was a more exalted realm, where the seven visible “planets”, which included the moon and sun, was each carried on its own transparent sphere. And also there was a sphere holding the stars. All these concentric spheres moved regularly (with some complications) and predictably. Beyond that was the “prime mobile” sphere, invisible to us, which gave motion to all the other spheres within it. God is the “Unmoved Mover” who gives motion to everything else.

Above the moon the space was filled with rarefied “aether”, instead of the thick, sometimes noxious air down closer to earth. Up there, it was always light, not dark, as we now think of “space”. (They understood the darkness seen when we look up at night as simply the relatively narrow shadow cast by the earth; everyplace else in the heavens was bathed in light). The heavens rang with the beautiful “music of the spheres”, and was inhabited only by good, incorruptible beings such as angels and the stars and planets, and, of course, God. Any daemons or other evil spirits were down in the thick air closer to earth, below the level of the moon.

The planets (which included the sun and moon) and the stars were perhaps not fully conscious beings, but they were not dead lumps of rock and gas. They were, in some sense, intelligent beings who were happy doing what they were made for as they danced their patterns in the heavens over and over again. They had effects or “influences” on the affairs of men. The moon could make people a little crazy, Venus called forth romance, Mars promoted warring passions, and so on. This influencing was not some kind of creepy, occult operation, but just the way things are, a more or less natural principle like gravity.

Some people could take this to a fatalistic determinism. The more judicious thinkers held that, while the planets and stars did indeed exert such influences, humans could and should exercise their reason and free will to resist being driven solely by such propensities. This nuanced notion carries down into Shakespeare, writing around 1600: “Men are at some time master of our fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.” (Julius Caesar)

Feeling at Home in the Universe

Medieval folks were aware that the universe was really, really huge. The earth was a tiny speck compared to the whole universe. However, the universe was finite, not infinite. That meant when they looked up, it was like looking up into a huge towering cathedral, not into empty space. So they would not experience what Pascal referred to as the frightening infinite dark empty silences of space. Also, they were looking up at a realm which was essentially happy and orderly, with each planet and star fulfilling its proper destiny.

I will close with a set of excerpts which convey their sense of being at home within a well-functioning universe and also their feeling of relatively seamless continuity with many previous centuries of interesting and often honorable human history. Their technology of plows drawn by oxen and of wars fought with swords and shields was not too different from the physical world of ancient Greece and Rome, and their culture of honor was likewise similar. I italicized some phrases which seemed particularly illuminating:

“Because the medieval universe is finite, it has a shape, the perfect spherical shape, containing within itself an ordered variety. Hence to look out on the night sky with modern eyes is like looking out over a sea that fades away into mist, or looking about one and a trackless forest – trees forever and no horizon. To look up at the towering medieval universe is much more like looking at a great building. The great ‘space’ of modern astronomy may arouse terror, or bewilderment or vague reverie; the spheres of the old present us with an object in which the mind can rest, overwhelming in its greatness but satisfying in its harmony.
…This explains why all sense of the pathless, the baffling, and the utterly alien – all agoraphobia – is so markedly absent from medieval poetry when it leads us, as so often, into the sky. ”

“Thanks to his deficiency in the sense of period, that packed and gorgeous past [i.e., of classical myth and history] was [i.e., seemed or felt] far more immediate to him than the dark and bestial past could ever be to a Lecky or a Wells [i.e. modern science or science fiction of cave men, etc.]. It differed from the present only by being better. Hector was like any other knight, only braver. The saints looked down on one’s spiritual life, the kings, sages, and warriors on one’s secular life, the great lovers of old on one’s own armours, to foster, encourage, and instruct. There were friends, ancestors, patrons in every age. One had one’s place, however modest, in a great succession; one need to be neither proud nor lonely.”

“Other ages have not had a Model so universally accepted as theirs, so imaginable, and so satisfying to the imagination…. Every particular fact and story became more interesting and more pleasurable if, by being properly fitted in, it carried one’s mind back to the Model as a whole.”

“If I am right, the man of genius then found himself in a situation very different from that of his modern successor. Such a man today often, perhaps usually, feels himself confronted with a reality whose significance he cannot know, or a reality that has no significance… It is for him, by his own sensibility, to discover a meaning, or, out of his own subjectivity, to give a meaning – or at least a shape – to what in itself had neither. But the Model universe of our ancestors had a built-in significance.”

“I doubt they would have understood our demand for originality… [Why would one want to] spin something out of one’s own head when the world teems with so many noble deeds, wholesome examples, pitiful tragedies, strange adventures, and merry jests which have never yet been set forth quite so well as they deserve? The originality which we regard as a sign of wealth might have seemed to them a confession of property. Why make things for oneself like the lonely Robinson Crusoe when there is riches all about you to be had for the taking? The modern artist often does not think the riches is there. He is the alchemist who must turn base metal into gold.”

[Abridged from C. S. Lewis on the Medieval Mind , which includes literature references]

Affording a second child

September 28, 2020September 28, 2020Joy BuchananLeave a comment

I have been reading Matt Yglesias’s book. I’m going to quote his podcast with Tyler here:

I also think that a lot of the way society is structured disincentivizes educated professional people from having a second or third child, even though it’s not that the objective financial cost of doing it is so high.
But you think about Democratic Party micro-targeting of everything. They’ll say, “Well, okay. If this little extra boost will help lift some people over the poverty line, we should do that. But if you’re making $140,000 a year, you don’t ‘need’ help with your childcare costs.” That’s how the people in the think tanks think.
Matt Y

On the margin, people who don’t live in poverty still feel financial pressure. They still worry about whether they can “afford” more children.

The following Facebook post stood out to me yesterday. I went to high school with this woman (call her Rachel). She teaches at a public elementary school in New Jersey. She is married with one daughter.

It sounds like Rachel wants another child, a sibling for her daughter. As a working mom, I can sympathize with her desire to not quit her job.

More answers from her peers include “I’ve been also looking for this answer. Anyone I know who has had more than one, one usually stays home and the partner works. I don’t know how people do it!” and “I have to say this month has been TERRIBLE! Paying $250 a month for my baby at daycare and then having my oldest there a few days a week bc my in-laws can’t handle zoom 😳 I’m literally working for health benefits.”

This response is probably from someone who is one stage of life ahead of Rachel, “It was hard but we lived off one salary till the kids were 5 years old. We didn’t go out or do much at all. Cost of daycare for twins was insane. Once they were in school most of the day I got my job…”

Matt Yglesias wants Rachel to have another child, and a third if she wants a “big family”. That’s not how we get to one billion Americans, it’s simply how we avoid population shrinkage.

I’ll probably deal with more of Matt’s ideas in future posts. Even if you disagree with all his policy recommendations, it’s a great book to get you thinking.

I did some quick Googling and it seems like Rachel’s job pays over $40,000 per year. It wouldn’t be crazy to assume that Rachel’s household income is “6 figures”. If their daughter is currently in daycare and they have a second child who needs daycare, then they could be looking at a daycare bill over $20,000 per year during the crunch time. That crunch time wouldn’t last very long, BUT that is a daunting bill to pay when you are also paying for rent and diapers and don’t want to eat beans every day. New Jersey has relatively high property taxes, rents, and daycare costs.

Bullfighting with cars and economic development

September 27, 2020November 26, 2020Santi1 Comment

In Ecuador we bullfight with cars, literally. It’s not a game, its the name we give to the strategy we use when we cross the street. As in a bullfight, you stand on the edge of the curb, waiting for the car/bull to pass and then run behind the passing car to succesfully cross the street.

This is true no matter what the right of way legislation says (pedestrians have the right of way, de jure, in Ecuador as elsewhere), and as such is a very useful example to teach the difference between law and legistlation when talking about institutions. Although the actual phrase has fallen out of fashion lately, along with the falling popularity of bullfights (cue nostalgic music for dying traditions), the strategy remains as strong as ever.

Both pedestrians and drivers are familiar enough with the strategy that it is not uncommon to see pedestrians motioning angrily at the innocent driver that stops at a crosswalk, usually a foreigner, so that the car can pass and they can safely cross the street. Drivers speed up at crosswalks where people are waiting to cross, not in attempt to run them over, but as a courtesy, so as to get out of pedestrian’s way faster (at least many people I’ve talked to have shamefully confessed that is why they do this!). When a driver does stop at a crosswalk to give the people on the sidewalk the right of way there is a marked delay and drivers and pedestrians are incovenienced by the delay.

From conversations I have had with people from other developing nations, the strategy used by drivers and pedestrians to cross the street is nearly identical to bullfighting with cars we use in Ecuador. Although it’s not the best possible strategy for coordinating street crossing, it is an effective strategy that allows for social coordination since everyone knows that game that is being played. It is an institution of the developing world.

Moving to the US for my undergraduate degree, many years ago, I packed this institutional baggage along with me, which led me to be late for the first class of the semester. When I arrived at the crosswalk in front of a big red brick building in Boston’s suburbs, a car pulled up to the stop sign and stopped. My mind was lost thinking about what college in the US would be like, as I patiently waited at the edge of the curb for the car to pass so that I could bullfight the car to cross the street. A sudden honk of the horn startled me as I looked around to see an angry driver waving for me to cross the street. Partly because I was startled, but also because I was used to bullfighting with cars, instead of jumping out immediatly to cross, my feet began to do an akward one-step-forward one-step-back shuffle. It wasn’t until I made eye contact with the now exasperated driver, that I was confident enough I wouldn’t be run over to gathered my courage, break out of my developing-country meet developed-country shuffle, and finally cross the street.

Talking to a classmate from Central America later that day, he told me that he was all too familiar with what had happened to me, and with the one-step-forward one-step-back shuffle being discovered by tourists, immigrants, and foreing students all over the developing world. Many years later I have informally confirmed the shuffle still exists in conversations with students that have traveled abroad to the US and Europe.

When I tell this story in class, the question of how to switch to the obviously superior institutions of the US and Europe for street crossing, where pedestrians have the right of way, de jure and de facto always comes up. For institutional change to succeed without pedestrian bloodshed, the new institution would need to become common knowledge rather quickly. In more technical language, bullfighting with cars is the equilibrium now in the developing world, and we know a better equilibrium exists, but the path to the new equilibrium is difficult to traverse.

When I ask what students would do to change to this superior equilibrium, the most common first response is very economic in orientation. Increase monitoring and impose larger fines they say. But given the costs of these policies in an already poor and corrupt institutional environment, I doubt this is necesarily the path to superior institutions, for street crossing or anything else. This is especially true when we consider the relative cost effectiveness of changing this institution vs. other potential institutional investments in the developing world.

I also doubt that larger fines and increased monitoring are the main reasons that superior institutions for street crossing have emerged in the developed world. I have rarely seen police monitoring crosswalks (with the excpetion of school crossings) in the US and Europe, and while fear of punishment is definately an important influence, I don’t know how heavily the expectation of punishment weighs on the minds of drivers in developed countries.

Institutions are important for development but we know very little about how to change them. More thoughtfull students also suggest that a superior institutional arrangement could be reached by convincing people to change their perceived payoffs of playing different strategies. The hard and long process of social entrepreneurship, seems more effective and conducive to robust success.

Proxy Culture Wars 1

September 27, 2020Santi2 Comments

When contentious cultural and political issue arise in the USA, foreign intellectual elites invariably align themselves along partisan lines that try to mimick those of the cultural center of the world, the USA. The incomplete, and often contradictory overlap between foreign social reality, and that of the USA never fails to offer interesting paradoxes.

The intelectual battles, fought on foreign intellectual soil, are part of what I will call the proxy culture wars. The resulting paradoxes tend to stiffle local debate on local issues (I will use local as in local to a foreigner, i.e. not in the USA) by locking the participants into paradoxical positions. While the situation is amusing it causes real problems when trying to reach consensus on local solutions to local problems, communicating across the local partisan divide, or even thinking clearly about local issues.

For example, with the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court of the USA, legal twitter in Latin America has exploded in support or condemnation of her nomination. Those on the local/foreign right express their admiration for originalist interpretations, while those on the left local/foreign begin reciting Dworkin and praise interpretations of a living constitution. The ensuing battle would be relatively harmless if commentary on the goings-on in the USA was all that was at stake. But this is seldom the case as the parties bring out full battle regalia and engage in terms of the underlying merits of these positions as if they were general positions, applicable to local reality. In the fog of war, the local conditions and the contentious issues in the USA get mixed together.

The paradox arises when the debate turns local. For example consider Ecuador, where the constitution adopted in 2008 largely reflected the policy preferences of the self described twenty first century socialist president Rafael Correa (local left, now conviceted for corruption to 8 years of prison). Do those on the local right really admire originalism as a judicial doctrine? Do those on the Ecuadorean right really wish local judges would faithfully apply our constitution with its 99 constitutionally protected rights? Mind you, these rights include a right to universal access to information and communication technologies (Art. 16), recreation, the practice of sports and free time (Art. 24), and permanent and secure access to heathy and nutricious food, preferibly produced locally and in correspondence to the diverse identities and cultural traditions (Art. 13). Interesting side note: as documented by the Comptarative Constitutions Project, Ecuador ranks #1 in number of codified constitutional rights. But the nature of these rights and the problems they bring about are topics for future posts.

Does democracy require codified constitutional rights? Evidence from Latin America.

The most democratic countries in Latin America have few codified constitutional rights.

And the least democratic countries in Latin America have many codified constitutional rights. pic.twitter.com/fw2GZWusfV
— Richard Albert (@RichardAlbert) September 19, 2020

Are those on the Ecuadorean left, oponents of originalism and supporters of a living constitution really arguing for a more expansive interpretations of these rights? For example when the fiscal reality of the Ecuadorean government makes it impossible for the government to guarantee one of the 99 rights codified in the constitution, do those on the left argue for an expansive interpretation? Do they really want an expansive interpretation so that the government is let off the hook when it fails to provide access to smart phone technology for all Ecuadoreans, because of unsustainable fiscal position?

Of course what is really going on is a great example of motivated reasoning. Conclusions are arrived at, and arguments follow to support those conclusions. The paradox arises as the arguments that support “things I would like in the USA” do not necesarily map well to “things I would like at home”. The lack of coherence between local reality and comentary on the affairs of the USA leads to paradoxical positions that muddy local debate, and lead to incoherence and sloppy thinking.

Slips of the Atheist’s Expert Tongue

September 26, 2020September 26, 2020Zachary BartschLeave a comment

People have a lot of opinions about diet. For many, dietary opinion is individual – they don’t prescribe that anyone else adopt their beliefs and practices. Others have a more universal bent. Some people are dead-set against starches and others think that meat is taboo – for themselves and others. There are a lot of beliefs about diet.

The reasoning that people use for their dietary beliefs are just as diverse. Motivations range from religious beliefs, moral systems, social signaling, personal experimentation, anecdotal evidence, and so on.

Some people use the theory of evolution. They reason that we have canine teeth, like carnivores, so our ancestors had advantages in meat-eating. Others reason that we have relatively long small intestines, like herbivores, so our ancestors had advantages in plant-eating. Expert scientists from any one of a plethora of subjects are interviewed or write as authorities on the matter.

Scientists who are atheists say things like “Were humans designed to eat meat?”, or “If humans were meant to eat meat, then…”, or “our canines aren’t specially meant for processing meat”.

The problem, of course, is that using words like ‘meant’ or ‘designed’ implies one who ‘means’ or one who ‘designs’. For most religious people, there is no conflict. For an atheist, it’s strange turn of phrase. Why? Because evolution has two parts: 1) mutations that introduce variety and 2) natural selection. The former occurs prior to an animal’s birth. The latter occurs as a result of environmental reproductive pressure and opportunity.

In other words, to an atheist, there is no designer. So, what gives? I’ve settled on several plausible good-intentioned explanations that I order by increasing charity.

Poor Evolutionary Understanding: The atheist scientist’s understanding of evolution is flawed. Maybe their theory includes first-person or third-person intentionality. An example would be that giraffes stretched and intended that their necks would become longer over the generations. An alternative poor belief is that environmental pressures, including predators and vegetation, intended that giraffe necks would lengthen. Environmental pressures achieved their goal through reward of the long-necked and the punishment of the short-necked. I like to think that scientists have a better handle on their area of expertise rather than having beliefs such these.

Poor Grasp of English: The atheist scientist has a perfect grasp of evolution, but they are unpracticed at English in contexts of emergent order. Economists often have similar challenges and often refer to speaking allegorically as a crutch. Economists will say that prices ‘want’ to change or that a government desires social outcomes. Neither of which is true. Suppliers lower prices as their sales become lackluster. Policy outcomes are desired by someone within a governing process – though the social outcomes may be desirable by nobody. Similarly, predators desire to eat and unknowingly exert selective pressure for genetic traits. Or, a drought causes smaller lizards to survive and larger ones to dehydrate and die. English speakers have difficulty discussing biological processes without intention-denoting verbiage.

Implicit Theism: The atheist is really no atheist at all, but has belief in God that they cannot shake, despite their professions and logic otherwise. Using the past perfect tense in regard to the design of humans is case of parapraxis – a Freudian slip.

An Expertise Gap: Specialists in arts and sciences utilize highly specific jargon so that very specific concepts can be expressed concisely. But such jargon muddies communication with those who aren’t specialists in the field. The specialist grapples with this expertise gap. Although the struggle deserves sympathy, anthropomorphizing is far different from the expert’s idea of the truth.

The problem is that jargon has highly a specific meaning. So, when a specialist makes a claim with jargon, the claim is also specific. A narrower set of applicability has less room for credible challenges at the margins of a claim and ideas can be clearly communicated precisely – though, the applicable cases may not be interesting. As the breadth of a claim increases, jargon can help to ensure that the breadth is limited to appropriately specific cases.

When the listener is not an expert, the scientist is uncertain of the gap in knowledge. They attempt to make relatively broad and interesting claims, but without the aid of their case-narrowing jargon. The result is that the expert says something which is clearly false to another specialist, but may be mostly true – or true enough for the listener.

Again, these four interpretations of misspeaking and miscommunicating experts are ordered by charity. I especially sympathize with the last interpretation. Imagine trying to teach a student that inflation is always costly, but sometimes more beneficial than costly. And that the costs still exist when the benefits outweigh the costs. So, should we have a policy of inflation? The true answer is highly specific.

Does an atheist scientist understand that there is no designer of human bodies – much less one that had diet in mind? Very much. Does the same atheist scientist know how to communicate unintentional biological advantages to the non-specialist? They do not. What’s more is that they are not alone. Specialization introduces a knowledge gap and the unavailability of common jargon prevents adequately finessed broad claims.