Ash Navabi's blog mostly about economics, language, and the language of economics.
On January 24th, 2022, I was a guest on Counterpoint (hosted by my old friend David Clement) to discuss an article I wrote on private hospitals in Ontario.
(I apologize for the audio quality. I didn’t realize until after this aired that my AirPods had mic issues.)
In late 2019, Jordan Peterson went on an extended absence from public life. In a series of videos on his and his daughter Mikhaila Peterson’s YouTube channels (1, 2, 3, 4), it eventually became clear that he was suffering side effects from taking benzodiazepine medications (commonly known as “benzos”).
Despite the extreme detail the videos went into, the press reported these events in an incorrect and misleading manner. The most common headline and talking point became that Jordan Peterson was “addicted to benzos.” The reports later embellish this claim by declaring that Peterson was taking benzodiazepines to treat his anxiety.
Peterson was never “addicted” to benzos. He developed a physical dependency to them. There is a difference between these terms.
Continue reading “Jordan Peterson Was Not “Addicted to Benzos””Introduction
I am currently in a reading group on the Leo Strauss book On Tyranny, which also features essays by Alexandre Kojève. We just wrapped our first online discussion of the book, and it inspired me to write this post.
One of my fondest memories as a student was attending more than a dozen invite-only seminars on economic and political theory, which ranged from an afternoon to a full week. These were times when I got to spend time with some of the smartest students and scholars from around the world, to spend hours and delving deep into specific books, articles, and other intricacies of thinking, writing, and debate.
Continue reading “The “Liberty Fund Rules” For Seminars and Discussions”There are many ways to structure a story. But one theory says that they are all really saying the same thing.
Here I create a table comparing the four major narrative structures: Aristotle’s chronological structure, John Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, Dan Harmon’s Story Circle (the source for my “But-Fore Story Circle“), and the classic three-act play.
I’ve also included two other structures, which aren’t normally considered part of dramatic storytelling. First is something I call “MMO”, which stands for means, motive, and opportunity. This is how typically how detectives determine who is the perpetrator of a crime. Second is “Human Action”, Ludwig von Mises’s title for his treatise on economics (I wrote a one-syllable summary here); it is a theory of how basic principles of choosing can be used to explain all economic phenomena.
| Chronological | Hero’s Journey | Story Circle | Three Acts | MMO (detective principles) | Human Action (economic theory principles) |
| Beginning | Call to adventure | You. Need. Go. | Setup | Motive | Prerequisites of action: felt unease about the current state of affairs, ideas about a possible better world, and a logical connection between ends sought and means required to instigate the change to get them |
| Middle | Challenges and transformation | Look. Find. Take. | Confrontation | Means | Entrepreneurial judgment: whether the benefits of change outweigh the costs |
| End | Atonement and return | Return. Changed. | Resolution | Opportunity | Action: making the choices necessary to bring about the desired state of affairs: exchanging with oneself and others to alter the structure of production. |
What can Rick and Morty and South Park teach about writing a good story? Combining elements from the writing advice from the creators of both shows, I’ve devised a new way of structuring stories quickly and efficiently. In short, it is Dan Harmon’s story circle, with a logical transition between each stage: either a “but” or a “therefore”—a trick I learned from Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the creators of South Park.
I explain the reasoning behind the But-Fore Story Circle in more detail below.
Continue reading “The But-Fore Story Circle”Can we have an axiomatic theory of psychology?
A bit of background: since at least the time of Spinoza, up until the present day, a limited number of people have made attempts at creating an axiomatic approach to understanding and studying the human psyche.
They have all failed to gain any traction or respect. The most likely reason, in my assessment, is quite simply having way too many axioms.
An axiom is supposed to be a clear, “self-evident” truth, from which one can then logically derive other truths. The most famous use of axioms is by Euclid, where he used 5 very simply stated axioms (like “The whole is greater than the part”) to derive a few hundred pages of geometry. Modern mathematical economics also uses a handful of axioms, while the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises only required one axiom (“Human action is purposeful behavior”) to understand the world.
However, modern attempts at axiomatizing psychology include dozens of axioms. For example, the “pyscho-logic” approach has over 50 axioms. What’s worse, is that many of these axioms have been expressed mathematically.
To me, this is unnecessarily complicated analysis. So below, I have attempted to give a start to a new kind of axiomatic psychology, using only one axiom:
Axiom: Thinking is the ability of a brain to observe, analyze, and decide.
Continue reading “Axiomatic Psychology”Professor Walter Williams passed away last night. He was an extraordinary man who I had the pleasure to learn from through his articles, videos, and his lectures at George Mason University.
Many others have shared their Williams stories today, and I’ll share one of mine that I still think about often.
Vitamin D has been in the news lately, especially for its beneficial effects on immunity (as well as other benefits), and its potentially beneficial effects in preventing the development of COVID-19.
So how much vitamin D should a person be getting every day? The “recommended daily allowance” suggested by the Canadian and American nutrition authorities is 600 “international units” (equivalent to 15 micrograms).
A Brief History of the Modern RDA
Where did those RDAs come from? The answer is a 2011 report published by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), called the Dietary Reference Intakes for Calcium and Vitamin D. It determined that Americans and Canadians require a daily vitamin D intake of about 600 IU per day by analyzing 32 studies of vitamin D supplmentation.
Their findings are explained and graphed in Chapter 5 of their report, pages 380-383 and figure 5-3. They claim that by supplementing with 600 IU of vitamin D per day, 97.5% of people will achieve adequate levels of vitamin D.
Continue reading “The RDA of Vitamin D is based on bad statistics”
Over the past few years, many “urbanists” have taken to advocating for bicycle supremacy.
They demand existing urban and suburban roads be narrowed to make way for bicycle lanes; that new infrastructure be provided for the exclusive use of bicycles; the demolition and prohibition of public parking lots; and that the rest of us be forced via increased taxes, fees, and a public shaming campaign to change our car-driving ways.
Enough is enough. As someone who hasn’t ridden a bicycle since earning my driver’s license 15 years ago, I’m choosing to fight back against what I am calling the cycle supremacists.
Bicycles, and cyclists generally, should be shunned for four reasons. Here they are:
Continue reading “Bicycles are Bullshit”Originally published at the Hill Times.
In the midst of multi-phase re-opening plans, Covid-19 cases are back on the rise around the world. This has caused talks of a second round of lockdowns to circulate before this first round of unlocking. This is music to the ears of struggling business owners. Yet we shouldn’t expect a government-orchestrated economic plan to be harmonious. The new normal for businesses will still mean a cacophony of higher input prices and disrupted distribution networks.
Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s fiscal snapshot delivered Wednesday predicts a very sharp recovery in GDP, with a gentle tapering of unemployment. This is a bad prognosis. With or without a second round of lockdowns, the economy will fall sharply ill again. Simply put, the global economy of the past few months has produced less stuff to use in trade, production, and manufacturing. What makes it worse is that these disruptions have happened at the arbitrary whim of bureaucrats. Even if demand returns to pre-Covid levels tomorrow, businesses may not be able to support their existing workforces or capital structure.
The invisible hand of supply and demand will soon be greeting the market not with a socially distant salute; but rather with an invasive groping of revenue streams and supply chains. Investors and business owners must prepare for the worst. Expect more layoffs, store closures, and bankruptcies, as entrepreneurs unmask what the new normal will look like.
Politicians themselves will never admit to these problems. Many will tout that their decision-making has been prudent and shrewd, as they’ve been seeking expert advice. Officials tell us to expect the economy to bounce right back, even though these advisors are not economists themselves. Whether the recovery will look like a “V” or “U”, we should seriously question the alphabet soup of optimism that we’re being told to swallow.
Foremost: politicians have no objective measure for determining what is and isn’t essential. The global supply and distribution system is, quite literally, unimaginably complex. The metaphor of a supply “chain” is misleading, as it implies a clear beginning and end. Since what may be a consumption good for one person may be a capital good for another, it’s more accurate to talk about an economic crochet—an intricate interweaving of supply threads and demand threads, coming together in an ever growing pattern of commerce. Plucking away at random threads may seem harmless at first, but it fundamentally alters the structural integrity of the whole economy.
The impacts are already being felt. Scholars estimate an increase of over 253,000 cases of infant mortality this year due to the global lockdowns (compare that number to 550,000, the worldwide death total of Covid-19).
Between overloaded mental crisis hotlines, deferred cancer testing and treatment, an increase in domestic abuse, disruptions in supplying pharmaceuticals, and a global food supply crisis that the UN’s World Food Programme says could lead to 270 million people being “acutely food insecure”, it will be years until the full effects of these lockdowns will be reckoned with.
Governments around the world have been almost uniform in their response: hand out money to seemingly anyone who asks for it. Where did all this money come from, in a time when many are working and earning less? The central banks. Yet printing money to prop up financial assets devalues the currency overall. Ultimately, all of us will be forced to pay higher prices for everyday goods and services.
Although this pandemic is novel, the laws of economics remain unchanged. Prices are determined by supply and demand, and enterprising individuals will find a solution to anything profitable. Understanding these principles will be the key to a healthy prognosis for recovery. The only complication to worry about is more meddling by politicians, which has a simple cure: civic vigilance.
Ash Navabi 